Can't really convince you further on this matter and I can't blame you for the distrust. I, myself, am hopeful, but also afraid. We'll have to wait and see how it is and that's what I wanted to convey.

giving them benefit of the doubt once is wise and reasonable (and we saw where it led to)
giving them the benefit of the doubt twice is inbetween overoptimistic and naive (of even gullible), and we saw where it led to.

now, giving them benefit of the doubt a third, or a fourth time ? this make us just dumb flock of sheeps and it makes any abuse of their side to be rightful and well desserved because it just proves we don't know any better.

so for now, defiance will be the default stance, and it will be on their side to prove us wrong, with actual results and gestures.

It must be exhausting living in a world where creators are all part of a coordinated agenda targeting you, the beleaguered white male nerd, rather than just people with different beliefs than you expressing themselves.

Ooo, nicely done! You managed to work in a lot of the standard insults in one post! Good for you!

Personally here's the way I view it:

1. Chances are that a company with a bad rep is likely just going to further dig it's grave in eventually, it may have one or two redeeming moments, but usually it is permanantly on a downward trajectory towards screwed.

2.The game looks EXACTLY the same.

3. I don't care in particular for getting a supposed 'Enhanced edition' of a game if the original edition was perfectly functional for me in the first place. When this enhanced edition comes with adjustments to a game's storyline and the inclusion of new classes and such talk to me then.

4.While I'd love to give things the benefit of the doubt, I've seen EA ruin many things gamers love and we've given them the benefit of the doubt only for them to kick us in the crotch time and time again, So Taro94 seems FAAAR too insistant we give them a chance.

5. While some might see this collaboration with the community as a good thing, I'd like to remind you, that the developing company and publisher has the final say. Meaning the 'collaboration' is fishing for ideas they like, and that the community is being leeched off of.

Taro94 you may have good intentions, but I highly doubt beamdog does. Beamdog has marked itself for eventual death, and it is only scrabbling now for what it can leech off of us.

OK, I'm taking a more agnostic view. Taro has been around for a long time, and I'm willing to wait and see what comes out from Beamdog. In any case I won't buy their release because I have tweaked mine to my own satisfaction.

Even with character model mods in my sub-HD setup the characters look roughly carved. I haven't looked at the promo video but I can't believe that Beamdog won't upgrade the character models for 4K setups. And if there is a decent level of compatibility with existing mods I think that will be great.

I'm prepared to hack around with different versions of the CEP to make mods work. Most people are not. In my view if more people start to play NWN there will be more incentive for the creation of new mods, and the tweaking of existing mods to work with the EE release. The people running the Neverwinter Vault are dedicated and I can't believe that they will let the "vanilla" versions disappear.

Beamdog isn't updating the character models. That is a large amount of hard original work. It isn't the kind of thing Beamdog does. Beamdog packages up a few tweaks and massively increases the price.

Look at the UI changes. They aren't doing new higher resolution art for the 4K UI. They are just zooming in on the old low resolution UI, so it looks bigger but blurry.

What you can't believe is exactly what is happening. This is just very superficial tweaks and jacking up the price. You will probably get the original version in the new double priced package, but it won't be available separately anymore.

Beamdog tweaks and upgrades things that mods can't.
What's the point of updating character models if there's already a mod for that on the Vault?

https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/original-hakpak/gunners-body-rebuildretexture-male-female-all-races-phenos

Here it is. Available for everyone, players of NWN:DE and NWN:EE alike.

Here is what Beamdog can do:
a) ask the mod creator for permission to use this mod officially in the release
b) ignore the fact this mod already exists and waste time on creating their own from scratch instead of doing other things
c) acknowledge that it's already been done and focus on hardcoded tweaks, fixes and features

Beamdog has chosen option C and meets with criticism for not changing textures.
Were Beamdog to choose option A, it would meet with complaints (as it did in case of earlier EEs already) that they only steal other people's work and then charge a high price for it.
Were Beamdog to choose option B, people would not be given anything aside from what is already available to them and it would again meet with complaints of selling the same game for a higher price.

Beamdog can't win such a game, but if you were to ask me, focusing on hardcoded stuff - that is, the route Beamdog has taken - is the best option available.

Note that I am mainly criticizing them for their claims about the updating the UI for high res. But it does serve as example of the kind of "work" we can expect.

All they do for their "high resolution UI" is Resize the Low res UI to be bigger and thus make a it a bigger blurry version of the current UI.

Nothing they do justifies doubling the price. They are just making superficial changes, that require negligible work.