14 réponses à ce sujet

[kamal_]

The Neverwinter Online community would like to hear your impressions of Neverwinter Online.

Thread

If you're a content creator, I encourage you to provide a link in their forum to your Neverwinter Nights content. The thread in their forums has the blessing of a Neverwinter Online forum mod. Feel free to post your impressions of the game and or toolset.

Modifié par kamal_, 12 octobre 2012 - 12:56 .

[Tchos]

Hmm. A nice gesture, I suppose, but I personally don't feel like registering an account over there just to tell them why the game cannot fulfill my needs.

Or do you mean we should give our impressions in this thread?

Modifié par Tchos, 12 octobre 2012 - 02:41 .

[MokahTGS]

I would be glad to relay anyone's thoughts if they don't want to register on the NWO site.  I personally feel the NWO designers are a little out of touch with this community and would benefit from any thoughts we might have.

Post here and I will cut and paste.

Modifié par MokahTGS, 12 octobre 2012 - 03:39 .

[Tchos]

I'm not sure it would be useful to post this sort of thing over there, because the game will be what it will be regardless of any of this.  The only thing I think it might accomplish is that they might understand why some fans of the NWN games are not happy with their game (assuming at least one other person agrees with my reasons).  Still, here are the two biggest dealbreakers for me:

1. It's the wrong kind of game.  This is the main problem.  Now, this doesn't mean I won't play it.  I will certainly try it out, as I tried out LotRO and DDO.  I might even enjoy this one in ways that I couldn't enjoy those two.  I've enjoyed other MMOs, including some that you mentioned, Mokah.

But I want an RPG, not an MMORPG.  And the only kind of RPG I care about is the kind that lets me play it carefully, tactically, and thoughtfully.  In other words, it needs to be either turn-based, or give the ability to pause.  I like playing squishy casters, with limited spells and lots of scrolls, wands, and potions to dig through and consider what to use when making my moves.  I like to examine and consider the battleground and its participants, with their strengths and weaknesses, and decide how to proceed from there.

That's why I've never been able to get into the NWN1 or 2 PWs -- it's all realtime.  This is not to say I don't like action games, FPSes, and other realtime games.  I do!  But I have enough of those, and not enough games that let me play thoughtfully.  Neverwinter Nights 2 lets me play the way I want, and because there are so few games like that, I play it very often, where I don't play the action games.

Another thing that would keep me from playing it is that all of the footage I've seen shows solo gameplay.  I want to control a party, not a lone hero.  I need to be able to control other, more defensible party members to protect my squishy casters.  This is why I prefer NWN2 over NWN1 -- because 2 has fully controllable companions, while 1 only has henchmen that you can't directly control.

So, in summary, it's the wrong kind of game.  Not their fault, but that's the reason that I, as a huge fan of the Neverwinter Nights games, don't expect to be playing it anywhere near as much as NWN2.

2. The toolset they describe is too basic and limited.  I'm no expert in building, but I'm using a hell of a lot of custom content in my module.  I need those things to accomplish my purposes.  As you said, Mokah, I can work within limitations when necessary, but I don't consider it necessary to impose these limitations on myself by choosing to work with a limited toolset.  I've been able to accomplish almost everything I had envisioned for my module despite those abilities not being built into the toolset, because of the ability to import or write my own scripts, import or create new placeables, retexture things, and record custom sound effects.

My ideas for future modules require this kind of extensibility, too.  I will not knowingly choose a toolset that doesn't allow it, even though I like the idea of modders' incentives.  If it's "necessary" to forbid custom content for fear of inappropriate content or copyright violations, then how is it even possible to allow us to enter custom text for quests or item descriptions?  There is just as much and just as serious potential for those kinds of violations in text form.

I've built with this kind of toolset before, when I was testing out the Flip plugin for NWN2.  It's nice and intuitive, but it just doesn't do all of the things I want to do.

In conclusion, the toolset is too limited, and it doesn't attract me.

On the positive side of things, it looks very nice.  I'm pleased by both the graphics and the visual design.

Modifié par Tchos, 12 octobre 2012 - 07:21 .

[Tchos]

Another important consideration occurred to me as a builder, and that's volatility.

Time and survivability: By their nature, MMOs are volatile.  The content cannot be saved and played later, offline, or in the event of its closure.  Games like the NWN series can be installed and played, and the thousands of modules that have been made for them over the past 10 years can still be played today, despite having no further support by the companies, who have since moved on. 

MMOs, meanwhile, even during their active lives, are known to change drastically -- changes of fundamental rules, sweeping class changes, and large amounts of content being removed to make way for new content.  This could affect the modules made by users.

Policy conflicts, both immediate and over time: I don't know the full extent of the restrictiveness of the Foundry system, especially as it pertains to story material, but I imagine that unless they don't even allow you to write the dialogue or quest text, then there could be some story material that runs afoul of their TOS, and I imagine that they'd reject the module, require changes, or even just delete it.  If we can't save and backup our own work, then it's completely at the mercy of whoever's in charge of the community content.

For NWN modules, it's just a matter of hosting.  If some host somewhere doesn't allow some kinds of material that you have in your module, you can host it somewhere else, or even distribute it yourself.  Not so when it's an entirely centralised system.  Even if you could save your work and back it up somewhere, no one else could run it unless it were hosted on their server.

Also, modules that are acceptable at the time of their submission may become unacceptable at some later date due to changes in policy, a restructuring of mission, or corporate buyout.

For both of those reasons, I would have a hard time convincing myself to put months of work into something that could disappear at any time, for numerous reasons.

Modifié par Tchos, 12 octobre 2012 - 07:42 .

[MokahTGS]

 Tchos, I reposted your feedback in the NWO thread.

[Tchos]

Thanks. And Mokah, I've just read your comments in the Cash Transactions thread over there, regarding what happened in the past in the NWN communities with rewards for authors. You've changed my mind about it, and I no longer support such incentives.

[MokahTGS]

Tchos wrote...

Thanks. And Mokah, I've just read your comments in the Cash Transactions thread over there, regarding what happened in the past in the NWN communities with rewards for authors. You've changed my mind about it, and I no longer support such incentives.

Yeah, it is a slippery slope that developers have been traditionally reluctant to jump on, for specifically the reasons I've sited.  If a good system could be figured out, with working checks and balances, I could see it working, but in the traditional MMO environment, it is just asking for massive trouble and lots of money invested by the developer to fix problems.

We haven't seen it yet, but I think it is only a matter of time before we see legal action taken by fans against publishers for breaches of contracts, and all sorts of crazy issues.

If I were a developer or a publisher, I would never allow such a thing to exist.  Just asking for trouble, IMO.

[Tchos]

Heh...legal action would certainly be a spectacle.

Eh, I'm sorry to ask this, but aandrethegiant over there has asserted that The Foundry "will be more limited in some ways, but more diverse in others."  Would you please ask him/her specifically in which ways it is claimed to be more diverse than the NWN2 toolset?

Everything I've seen about it in videos and heard about it from developers makes it sound like a plastic toy with training wheels and blinders on, and I know for a fact that what I consider to be "advanced features", such as scripting, landscaping, and custom content, are not in there, so what they characterise as "advanced features" in the Foundry would be what I would call "beginner or intermediate features" in the NWN2 toolset.

Probably best not to quote that last paragraph.  If I have any other questions, I'll go ahead and register over there so I don't impose further.

[MokahTGS]

Yes, I have stopped posting about the limitations of the NWO toolset as it has really just fallen on deaf ears. There also is a massive lack of actual information and a ton of conjecture and just outright guessing through rose colored glasses.

Unfortunately, as far as NWO is concerned no further debate can be had until there is solid information.

[Tchos]

I regret that it seems that way to me too.  Concerns about things that do seem to be confirmed to be true are hushed up with a "well, that might not be as bad as it sounds -- just wait and see all the other cool things you can do with it!" while positive speculation never gets such a dismissal.

It's funny...most often we're the ones that are accused of viewing things through rose-tinted lenses, usually with the inappropriate use of the word "nostalgia" as an excuse, when baseless optimism (especially when it's against the weight of available evidence and the lessons of the past) is even more likely to tint the vision.  People are calling it "closed-minded" to be tired of getting burnt by the promises of game companies.  Yes, I am closed-minded to the idea of putting my hand on the burner just one more time, on the off-chance that this time it might not hurt!

One case of unjustified optimism is where I see people saying that since there's no custom content allowed, including scripting, there'll surely be every script we could possibly want, premade and ready to use.  And then I hear that if it's anything like the foundry for their other game, there'll no equivalent of a ga_attack script to turn a neutral NPC hostile after you have a conversation first.  Instead, you would have to simulate such a thing with a workaround, such as putting a trigger just out of the NPC's preception range to fire a conversation that's not owned by that NPC.  I have yet to hear an explanation of how this kind of situation is actually a good thing.

The discussion about the inability to set a specific challenge level for a module due to the enemies all scaling to match the player is a huge mess, where people are misunderstanding each other and talking about different things.  Out of apparent desperation, some potential builders are considering using creatures that are tough for their level, even when they're scaled down, with the appearance of lower level creatures.  Say, a balor disguised as a kobold.  I can only imagine what a balor scaled down to match a level 1 player would be like in a fight.  This workaround sounds terrible, personally.  Never mind the problems that would create of making
monsters completely inconsistent in their abilities and weaknesses if people are always disguising them as other creatures.

But these concerns are misinterpreted as worries that people would intentionally make easy modules, letting low-level players kill level-scaled dragons.  That, I think, is what none of the concerned parties want.

Also confirmed is no XP for skill checks, but only for killing enemies and spending "active" time running around the dungeon.  And the dungeon is not successfully completed unless every hostile creature is dead.  That's fundamentally against my design philosophy.

What a mess.  Everything I read makes it sound worse.  I need to stop reading about it.

Modifié par Tchos, 18 octobre 2012 - 02:55 .

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

"That's fundamentally against my design philosophy."

There's the rub right there. The whole point of community-created content is to let the community take the game in different directions, according to different design philosophies. While most of the restrictions and limitations of the foundry seem to be about keeping things simple, the real cause is that they don't want to have to deal with the complicated that can ensue from different design styles created by community builders.

Ironically, they say the whole point is to make the game and toolset more accessible to a greater variety of players and builders, but the design philosophy they espouse (kill all the monsters, everything levels), mostly appeals to a particular kind of obsessive gamer, and is well met by scads of games out there. The folks who want more story, less fighting, or leveling through roleplay, not massacre, are gonna be left out.

[nicethugbert]

I saw the demo about a month ago, IIRC, and I was impressed. It's no NWN3. But, I'm looking forward to it.

[kamal_]

Somehow I missed nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php

Will there be night/day cycle? Or weather?



There is weather, but no dynamic day/night cycle. I'm a fan of
day/night cycles too, but speaking from an artist's perspective it's a
nightmare to set the mood/lighting of an environment if it keeps
changing. The tech is certainly there (with its share of graphical
problems) because we did it in Champions, so it can be done if it's
something players feel would drastically improve the game.


Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha 

[Tchos]

I saw that. They could have, of course, gone about it differently than just not including it. I know for us it's an incredible nightmare to control the mood/lighting of an environment in the manner that they propose, because that requires us to un-mark the little box that says "Day/Night Cycle".