Neverwinter Nights 2!!!

[LightPhoenix]

I'm a per pixel lit game! Er....

A current-gen video card is definitely necessary to run the game optimally. In contrast to The Truth, I only have a P4 3.0 Ghz CPU, and the same RAM (1MB), but I'm running an ATI 1600XT, and I'm running quite well. With 2MB of RAM, I could probably run with full settings no problem.

On a different note, another complaint I'm finding with the game is that the AI for casters is pretty awful. Druids aren't so bad, but Wizards tend to blow their wad too early, even on the tiered casting mode. Also, Bards (my main char, aiming for Duelist) are rediculous under the AI. Don't use Inspire Competance in the middle of a battle! Even with Ability Use turned off, they still use it. Most casters are an easy fix, if you don't mind a little micromanagement - turn off casting and manually cast spells when you need them (Quick Cast rocks). Bards (IMO) are a lost cause though, and really need to put on Puppet Mode to be used effectively.

Also, does anyone know how to put the commands like "Follow Me" on the quickbar? It would be great if there was something like the mode bar for them. Also, is there a way to display (I know about Shift-1 etc) more than one quickbar? It's not really a problem for any class (thanks to Quick Cast) I've run into except for... you guessed it, Bards. Between weapons, bard songs, and healing, I don't have room for much else, so a lot of the "toys" get neglected.

 

[2WS-Steve]

It's a per pixel lit game. It isn't ever going to be patched to suddenly make old machines run a per pixel lit game well. People really don't like this technicial reality though and they are bithcing bitching bitching about it.

Frankly, all this talk about the technical wizardry underlying the game is very nice, but all that matters to me is that it looks good and it runs smoothly -- and it's not doing that.

WH40KoW looks better and runs more smoothly, and it has larger maps and more guys on it.

That said, NWN2 does look okay, and it has enjoyable gameplay, which I value more than next-gen graphics. But I do get annoyed when people try to come out here and tell me "Don't trust your eyes, trust my words, actually it looks and runs great."

 

[Thanee]

Yeah, it's not the smartest choice to use such hardware-intensive graphics technology in a multiplayer game, anyways.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Steel_Wind]

Frankly, all this talk about the technical wizardry underlying the game is very nice, but all that matters to me is that it looks good and it runs smoothly -- and it's not doing that.

WH40KoW looks better and runs more smoothly, and it has larger maps and more guys on it.

That said, NWN2 does look okay, and it has enjoyable gameplay, which I value more than next-gen graphics. But I do get annoyed when people try to come out here and tell me "Don't trust your eyes, trust my words, actually it looks and runs great."

Dawn of War is a shader 2 vertex lit, not a shader 3 pixel lit game.

If you had a high-end shader 3 card, you wouldn't be saying what you are saying.

From your comments, I expect that you don't. So you are aren't seeing any advanced shader effects - but you are seeing the results of not having enough GPU power on your system for NWN2.

As for your annoyance - I'll try not to confuse you with facts any further, ok? Carry on.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

Glad to see I'm not the only one experiencing roughness & chunkiness of graphics.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Yeah, it's not the smartest choice to use such hardware-intensive graphics technology in a multiplayer game, anyways.

The vast majority of people who played NWN1 played it in SP mode. NWN2's tech design is aimed principally at a singple player experience, while it accomodates multiplayer play.

In terms of design choices, in NWN1, the technical questions were always resolved in favor of multiplayer when the game was written. That is no longer the inflexible rule that was the case during the first game's development. The tail no longer wags the dog.

Whether you like this or not was not the point of the above; it simply reflects the design choices of Obsidian and the market data of how NWN1 was played.

It also reflects the intended shelf life of the game - which is contemplated in years, not months.

 

[takyris]

Steel, it's difficult to tell people what they should like, and it sounds a little like that's what you're trying to do, here. If the designers believed so strongly that the game should have the graphic power to support a three or four year lifespan, then they should be willing to accept the criticism coming out right now because they know that they'll be proven right.

Believing that a long-term benefit outweighs the short-term problem it creates does not make that short-term problem suddenly disappear. You've explained their reasoning, as have some of the designer diaries I read, and I don't think taking people to task for their opinions is going to have any further benefit.

Personally, with respect to the review debacle: I didn't think it was a valid review as much as an attack on D&D as a concept, so it had to be thrown out. I look forward to seeing whether the real review also says that the plots and NPCs are cookie-cutter, because I hadn't heard that anywhere else. That said, I'm concerned by one phrase you used:

I know some of the guys at Obsidian and have some sense of how hard they crunched on this...

Accepting that the review was bad and delete-worthy, I really don't think that how hard the designers tried is or should be an issue. Over in the media thread, there were a few posts discussing something similar to this. If game designers try really hard and end up producing a bad game, they've still produced a bad game. Every game is hard to make. Every game involves crunch hours, difficult work, and complicated and sometimes frustrating talks with the publisher and license-holder.

I haven't seen NWN2 personally, so I can't say whether I think it's a bad game or not. Most of what I've heard about the story has been positive, which bodes well. We'll see if it has an ending this time. When I've got a computer that can run it, I look forward to finding out for myself.

But the customer is always right. If many many people are having trouble getting it to run well because of the graphics choices that were made, all the explanation in the world won't change that. A frustrated customer is a frustrated customer.

 

[LrdApoc]

While I can accept the technical brilliance and expandability building this sort of engine offers for the future there is a problem in planning it into technology for today. I think it's great its per-pixel lit. I think it's gorgeous when running at full spec.. however the average gamer - not the power gamer - will not grok that difference and will only see a game that does not run well. D&D is niche but Power Gamers are even more niche within that group.

Tech orgasms are one thing but its not bitching to say "Hey, it doesn't run well on a majority of systems." Frankly I find it interesting the concept is to adopt advanced hardware to give the system and game longer shelf life at a trade-off of low acceptance in the beginning of the products life cycle.

Hey face... screw that nose, just drop it. (sorry if the phrasin' on that is too vague)

Atari and Obsidian have released a great product. One I am going to write a very commendable review regarding. The bottom line is that without guidance or newer tech than the mean system sold by HP, Dell and Compaq in the last 2 years the game will underperform or garner bad reactions from casual fans of the genre who have seen games like Guild Wars - with a similar camera system and massively online environment - produce amazing graphics on older technology cards with a suitable boost on newer cards.

You can justify the performance and technology requirements all you like but frankly it comes down to having an engine that can be played by the majority of your consumers and will not cause them hours of frustration to tweak settings. Most will just bitch and walk away with a memory of what it was like when the expansion or next game from the publisher is released.

The biggest problem is the autodetect function on the graphics not suitably detecting thresholds and warning players to set their expectations properly.

The poor quality of NWN graphics did not kill it - it was the gameplay that people wanted and got, eventually the graphics became better and folks accepted that it was never going to be a "knock your socks off graphical RPG".

Will this happen for NWN2? Sure but it will take some help setting expectations and calming those who purchase it down after they are initially disappointed int he performance. I can remember having similar disappointment in Doom 3 when it was released - it could look amazing - but it took a few years for the hardware to catch up and dialing back the graphics still left you with a good looking experience and solid FPS gameplay.

People don't expect FPS graphics in an RPG - Oblivion notwithstanding - they want a great story and good experience out of the box. That's my take at least at this point.

Now I have tweaked my two systems to play the game well. I simply had to turn off the per-pixel shading, shadows, reflection and Normal Maps to get one working well and the other just lost the shadows but I had to spend time reading and experimenting to find the best settings and Atari/Obsidian/Fanboys on the next complaining about my question of how to optimize for my system didn't help much.

Two days after Doom 3 hit there was a guide helping people scale their settings. Two hours after Oblivion came out there was the same thing... why isn't something like this available for NWN2?

 

[trancejeremy]

I actually wonder if perhaps NWN2 wasn't designed for the Xbox 360 in mind. Not so much for NWN2, but KOTOR3. And thus the fancy technical stuff, which honestly, very few PC gamers will be able to take advantage of right now. It also seems like it runs a lot better on ATI cards than nvidia - a GeForce 6800 generally benchmarks the same as a ATI 1600, and it also supports 3.0 shaders, yet the Truth (Nvidia 6800) apparently gets 15 fps with graphics on low, while Steel_Wind (ATI 1600) gets twice that with them on medium. The 360 uses ATI's graphics. Also, apparently they didn't put Anti-aliasing in NWN2, which could mean they were planning to use the one in the 360 (which I think has a special chip for, and thus not done like PC AA).

Anyway, ultimately, game players just care about the end results - not any of the fancy technical stuff. As LrdApoc points out, Guild Wars looks simply amazing, and even on really lousy hardware, it still looks great. The original NWN was a fairly mass market game (I played the original on a Pentium 2/400 with a TNT2 card), so they should have realized that NWN2 would be the same.

(And oh yeah, when I mentioned CGW and Outpost, I was actually referring to their constant fawning previews over it, then giving it (a deservedly) bad review when it finally came out. That was a problem they had, and a problem especially because back then, mags often were about a month later than the game itself, so the previews were more timely when the games release than the "review".)

 

[Shag]

I've been enjoying the game so far. It's only crashed once on me, I rested and all the sudden the druid went up a level and the game froze.
The only things bugging me are that I can get the patch to work at all, and the game is very linear so far.