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Neverwinter Nights seriesThis Game Shouldn't Exist(24 posts)(24 posts)
(24 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 18, 2017
low rated
People talk about games being released broken, incomplete and glitched into an unplayable state. Neverwinter Nights 2's completely broken functionality is inexcusable. I never fully understood people's disdain for Obsidian. After several hours with NWN2... I know why. And as much as I enjoyed Pillars of Eternity, I'm probably going to boycott Obsidian from now on. EDIT: probably not

How did anyone make the conscious decision to ship NWN2 in this state? I have never used a more broken piece of software. Nevermind the utter ineptitude of the companion AI and camera. Nevermind the utterly perplexing THREE separate horrendously contrived control modes, one of which is functionally useless and another of which is completely unnecessary. Disregard for a moment that companion AI routines and user interfaces WERE ALREADY WELL ESTABLISHED AND WORKING!!! in multitudes of crpgs prior to NWN2's release and for some idiotically hairbrained reason Obsidian decided to forgo them all in favor of whatever madness they programmed into NWN2.

The atrociously bugged interface is enough on its own. I've witnessed the game outright ignore interface commands via UI or keyboard input despite all attempts to toggle or cycle functions. Hence, THIS GAME LITERALLY CANNOT BE PLAYED since it will not respond appropriately to user input.

And the sad thing is, the story of this game is passable and the characters are actually pretty entertaining. The combat is laughably pathetically simple considering that this is a Dungeons and Dragon's game. Ninety percent of this game's challenge will be fussing with the obtuse camera, babysitting your obstinate and suicidal companions, or dealing with a UI that flat out frequently refuses to obey your commands.

BUYER BEWARE

/rant
Post edited April 19, 2017 by eVinceW21
Posted April 18, 2017
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eVinceW21: THIS GAME LITERALLY CANNOT BE PLAYED since it will not respond appropriately to user input.
I played it, both when it came in a box and later when I rebought it on gog. I even enjoyed it. I don't recall any control issues whatsoever. I never babysat my companions (except for my spellcasting, but I have to do that in every game). I'm also tired of people taking games that are well-liked and posting "this shit game won't work for you our anyone!!! Wahh!!!!!!'. No further response necessary, I think. After all, like other games I've tried to defend, I'm sure the haters will come down on me for daring to actually like a game with such a well-articulated argument against it. I'm sure Obsidian will miss you.

Then again, maybe I have built a high tolerance for poor game design over the years; after all, I bought Daggerfall new in the store, as well as Morrowind and Oblivion, and Bethesda can't deliver even remotely bug-free software to save its life.
Posted April 18, 2017
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eVinceW21: THIS GAME LITERALLY CANNOT BE PLAYED since it will not respond appropriately to user input.
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darktjm: Then again, maybe I have built a high tolerance for poor game design over the years; after all, I bought Daggerfall new in the store, as well as Morrowind and Oblivion, and Bethesda can't deliver even remotely bug-free software to save its life.
I always thought I had a high tolerance for bugs and glitches. I either luck out when playing games reportedly rampant with bugs or avoid them entirely. And when I do encounter the occasional glitch I just acknowledge that these things are par for the course. PoE ran just fine. Purred like a kitten. Heck it's one of my most favorite recent gameS in years and I've heaped glowing praise upon it.

But NWN is virtually unplayable. Nevermind that it's a lazy game to begin with. But even that's worth a few hours of enjoyment assuming it basically functions

I'm also tired of people taking games that are well-liked and posting "this shit game won't work for you our anyone!!! Wahh!!!!!!'. No further response necessary, I think. After all, like other games I've tried to defend, I'm sure the haters will come down on me for daring to actually like a game with such a well-articulated argument against it. I'm sure Obsidian will miss you.


You come off as a might sensitive there. I'd apologize for striking a nerve, but I don't think I could avoid hitting it if I tried.
Post edited April 19, 2017 by eVinceW21
Posted April 18, 2017
The game plays great over here.
Posted April 18, 2017
lmao, the only existing bugs in this game (unmodded of course) are not game breaking in nature. Movement can get glitched if not using point and click movement, and using point and click will fix it. Sometimes a round can break and you'll have to clear your action queue and disengage to refresh it. I think that's all. I have over 400 hours in it.
Posted April 19, 2017
NWN2 was developed under enormous time constraints and pressure from the publisher, who gave Obsidian access to only an outdated version of the game engine of NWN to start (a lot of old bugs came back form the grave therefore). Same thing also happened with Knights of the old Republik 2 and to a degree Fallout NV.

They have stopped doing this kind of contract work since then and seriously stepped up their QA with the first South Park game. They still aren't the poster child of bug free game development, but I'd call it unfounded to boycott their more recent releases for the troubles they went through with NWN2.

Just an FYI
Post edited April 19, 2017 by VaultDuke
Posted April 19, 2017
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VaultDuke: NWN2 was developed under enormous time constraints and pressure from the publisher, who gave Obsidian access to only an outdated version of the game engine of NWN to start (a lot of old bugs came back form the grave therefore). Same thing also happened with Knights of the old Republik 2 and to a degree Fallout NV.

They have stopped doing this kind of contract work since then and seriously stepped up their QA with the first South Park game. They still aren't the poster child of bug free game development, but I'd call it unfounded to boycott their more recent releases for the troubles they went through with NWN2.

Just an FYI
Fair enough. I have seen Obsidian make great strides as of late, with knockout successes like PoE. IMO, Tyranny could have been more than it was, but it wasn't a broken or shoddy product. I've just become extremely wary of developers failing to deliver and Obsidian's track record is dubious at best.

Really though, "boycott" is a strong word and probably one I don't mean and certainly one I can't recommend. I don't have it in for Obsidian. In fact I kinda admire how they've grown out from under the yoke of publishers and appropriating other developers work and started making their own IPs and doing pretty well. Really though, I never should have mentioned it. And yes, the onus of Obsidian's reputation for bug-ridden products is not entirely on them. They have a history of being treated unfairly by publishers.

NWN2 is however a deeply flawed program. I notice the user reviews on its store page have 32 pages worth of four and five star reviews that quite frankly sound less than legit compared to a handful of reviews that actually mention the game's known issues.

What else I find interesting is how notoriously glitchy games like Vampire The Masquerade get tremendous fan support that put the games in a playable state. Not so with NWN2, which incidentally is a game designed to be modded in its entirety. Apparently if NWN2 was worth fixing, this wouldn't be a problem in the first place.
Posted April 19, 2017
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eVinceW21: People talk about games being released broken, incomplete and glitched into an unplayable state. Neverwinter Nights 2's completely broken functionality is inexcusable. I never fully understood people's disdain for Obsidian.
How did anyone make the conscious decision to ship NWN2 in this state? I have never used a more broken piece of software.
Get a grip.

I played the entirety of the GoG NWN2 release. All the included modules and many third party modules.

The camera doesn't work quite a well as the one in NWN, but it gets the job done decently.

Altogether I have played a few hundred hours of this release.

I find your complaints over the top and kind of silly.

This is a VERY solid and stable release. Better than most modern games.
Posted April 19, 2017
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eVinceW21: What else I find interesting is how notoriously glitchy games like Vampire The Masquerade get tremendous fan support that put the games in a playable state. Not so with NWN2, which incidentally is a game designed to be modded in its entirety. Apparently if NWN2 was worth fixing, this wouldn't be a problem in the first place.
There is a comprehensive fan-supported bugfix patch, because it was indeed worth fixing. It's called the Client Extension. It's been mentioned on this forum and linked to dozens of times. There's also a community-made patch to fix things in the official campaigns.
Posted April 19, 2017
low rated
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eVinceW21: People talk about games being released broken, incomplete and glitched into an unplayable state. Neverwinter Nights 2's completely broken functionality is inexcusable. I never fully understood people's disdain for Obsidian.
How did anyone make the conscious decision to ship NWN2 in this state? I have never used a more broken piece of software.
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PeterScott: Get a grip.

I played the entirety of the GoG NWN2 release. All the included modules and many third party modules.

The camera doesn't work quite a well as the one in NWN, but it gets the job done decently.

Altogether I have played a few hundred hours of this release.

I find your complaints over the top and kind of silly.

This is a VERY solid and stable release. Better than most modern games.
Oh boy! Look at all the triggered fanboys. Peter here must be an especially dense one to be completely ignorant of such obvious flaws.

There is a comprehensive fan-supported bugfix patch, because it was indeed worth fixing. It's called the Client Extension. It's been mentioned on this forum and linked to dozens of times. There's also a community-made patch to fix things in the official campaigns.


You mean the clunky Client Extension that purportedly fixes little and causes its own special set of problems? It mostly just restores multiplayer functionality. Nevermind that these fixes do little to address the camera and ai issues, and the UI remains bugged. Most of them dwell on toolset improvements. NWN2's user-made patches are severely limited, and not comprehensive the way Vampire Bloodlines' patches fixed virtually every issue for instance.
Post edited April 19, 2017 by eVinceW21
Posted April 19, 2017
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touched: There is a comprehensive fan-supported bugfix patch, because it was indeed worth fixing. It's called the Client Extension. It's been mentioned on this forum and linked to dozens of times. There's also a community-made patch to fix things in the official campaigns.
To be fair, this is mainly aimed at playing online, and replacing online functionality that was lost when servers were shut down. Losing servers is something that hits most older games.

I never used any community "bugfixes" in any of the hundreds of hours of playtime I have had. The game is rock solid as a single player game without this.
Posted April 19, 2017
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eVinceW21: You mean the clunky Client Extension that purportedly fixes little and causes its own special set of problems?
Nope, the one I'm talking about certainly isn't clunky and it fixes much and doesn't cause any special problems that I've seen.

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PeterScott: To be fair, this is mainly aimed at playing online, and replacing online functionality that was lost when servers were shut down.
It does that, yes, but that's not what I use it for. I don't play the game online. It has many other fixes, and I recommend everyone use it.

I haven't used the other one I mentioned, the community OC patch, so I can't speak from personal experience on that one. I only experienced one or two bugs when I played the official campaigns, myself, and the community patch wasn't around at that time, anyway.
Post edited April 19, 2017 by touched
Posted April 19, 2017
The only bug I ran into was the one where companions just stop responding after a cutscene. That is a big one, though. I am very surprised that that bug still hasn't been fixed.
Posted April 19, 2017
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touched: It does that, yes, but that's not what I use it for. I don't play the game online. It has many other fixes, and I recommend everyone use it.
Really what else does it do? Because when I read the description, it was server connection, player world, multiplayer, dm client stuff.

Which is all about multiplayer.

I saw nothing for the single player usage.

Don't join the troll in proclaiming that this game needs this to play because it is broken, because it isn't.

It is very solid in single player (never tried Multiplayer) with the standard install.
Posted April 19, 2017
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PeterScott: Really what else does it do? Because when I read the description, it was server connection, player world, multiplayer, dm client stuff.
I saw nothing for the single player usage.
Most significantly, it corrects the timing "stuttering" issue without having to reboot, and stops your main character from turning slightly when stopping moving. Those alone are enough for me to recommend people use it. It also contains some things useful for builders. I'll paste some of the non-multiplayer notes from the client extension's readme file.

- An /invertrun function is now available. This command switches the behavior
for point-and-click movement, so that by default, you will walk unless you
hold down SHIFT. WASD movement in the game still runs unless you use SHIFT.

Tip: You can use /invertrun instead of activating Tracking Mode if you would
like to walk by default. You still have easy access to run mode
without having to toggle a mode button when using /invertrun, as you
just need to use WASD or hold down SHIFT.

- A new area minimap is available. You can click on a point in the new area
minimap (not the in-game automap) in order to move to that point. This is
often useful if you need to cross a very large area without having to click
many different times. Note that if your pathing orders are too complicated,
the game engine will discard them. The map is further described in the
"Area Map" section.

- A new form of macro-enabled hotbar buttons are available. Macro-enabled
hotbar buttons are created with the /setmacro command (see the documentation
in this file for details). Macro-enabled hotbar buttons can perfrom many
actions per hotbar press, such as enqueuing up many buff spells all at one
time.

More details on hotbar macros are available in the "Custom Hotbar Macros"
section.

- Wizards with metamagic spells on their hotbars should no longer periodically
crash during area transitions.

- The client should no longer crash when the loading initial area after the
character selection screen, when the initial area has creatures with certain
VFX or animation parameters updating.

- Hotbar buttons should no longer occasionally flicker and fail to persist
changes when editing them.

- The client now properly displays Darkvision when transitioning to a new area.

- Animations (particularly terrain scrolling while walking) no longer begin to
stutter or "chunk up" in NWN2 after the computer has been running for several
days since its last reboot.

- Point and click movement in the game world no longer waits for a response
from the server before beginning to animate movement. In some cases where
there are dynamic path obstructions, this might result in minor path
"glitching". You may disable this feature by using the /mpredict command.

Movement prediction only applies for point and click in the rendered game
window and not point and click in the area map. This feature improves
perceived responsiveness with respect to movement on laggy servers.

- You may use the /tilegrid command to toggle display of the area tile grid on
the area map. This is generally only useful for builders.

- You may use the /rendertiles command to toggle rendering of tile tints on the
area map. This is generally only useful for builders.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
Neverwinter Nights seriesThis Game Shouldn't Exist(24 posts)(24 posts)
(24 posts)