No DM Client in NWN2 on release

[Lazybones]

At this point it seems to be a hot rumor, without official confirmation from Obsidian, but a developer apparently said this in response to a question:

Patrick Mills:The Sony rep was quoting me, I think, and neither he nor I misspoke. The DM Client will very likely not ship with the game. There just isn't enough time to finish, test, and polish it before launch and we don't want to ship something that sucks.

We do have plans to release one, but I don't know when it will be available.

http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=480610&post=4114003&forum=95&highlight=

This is IMO a big blow to the NWN community... while single-players outnumber the part of the community that played multiplayer, small groups of players with DMs and persistent worlds have given (IMO) the original NWN the long life and level of interest that it has enjoyed. If we're talking about a delay of a few weeks, that's one thing, but based on past experience with Obsidian as a developer (KotOR2) and Atari as a publisher (Temple of Elemental Evil), I'm not that confident about their post-release support.

 

[Morrus]

It pretty much defeats the point of the game for me - I have no interest in single player NWN. Ah well.

 

[KenM]

This reminds me when the put out the orginal NWN on the mac without the toolset. Whats the point?

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

It also makes it really hard to do the kind of ad-hoc stuff you sometimes need to do when a quest gets borked or someone gets stuck on the terrain, etc.

 

[Kem]

After a time scripting made it so that to DM you dind't even NEED to log on with the DM Client in NWN.

This will just cause that development to happen sooner.

 

[LightPhoenix]

Well, speaking as a player who doesn't really care for the online aspect of the game, I still feel bad. Not so much for the persistant worlders, because I tried a few of them and they weren't so great. The ability to play in groups online will be missed though... I think the only reason I didn't was because I didn't have people I liked to play with on a regular schedule.

I will point out though that browsing NWVault, the vast number of submissions for content seem to be either single-player modules or resources that are player-number-independant. So giving all the credit to the multiplayer crown for NWN's community seems to be short-changing the artists as well as the people who cater to the single-players. Maybe they're not as... vocal... but they're still there, and they're important.

 

[Ranger REG]

...and we don't want to ship something that sucks.

And yet you're doing just that.

Personally, I'd rather you delay the product release until you do have a DM Client added. This must suck to the customers who are waiting on NWN2 on the appointed sales date, but your decision sucks to everyone else that the product they're going to pay is not wholly complete. Like selling a house with no plumbing.

If you intend to stay on this current course -- simply to meet the deadline -- then the DM Client better not be a commercial expansion product (I'm not paying extra for something should have been a standard feature as the previous version) but provided as a free patch.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

If you intend to stay on this current course -- simply to meet the deadline -- then the DM Client better not be a commercial expansion product (I'm not paying extra for something should have been a standard feature as the previous version) but provided as a free patch.

From what I've read on the dev boards, it will be a post-release patch/download, not part of a paid expansion, and it would be relatively soon.

 

[LightPhoenix]

And yet you're doing just that.

Personally, I'd rather you delay the product release until you do have a DM Client added. This must suck to the customers who are waiting on NWN2 on the appointed sales date, but your decision sucks to everyone else that the product they're going to pay is not wholly complete. Like selling a house with no plumbing.

If you intend to stay on this current course -- simply to meet the deadline -- then the DM Client better not be a commercial expansion product (I'm not paying extra for something should have been a standard feature as the previous version) but provided as a free patch.

See, I feel just the opposite, that Obsidian did the right thing, if this is how it is going down. If they feel they can't get a non-critical feature done in time, cut it and release it later. And really, the DM Client is a non-critical feature, as much as people don't want to hear that. Is the game playable without it? To the majority of people purchasing the product, according to Atari/Bioware/Obsidian, yes. Therefore, it can be released later. If there's a base of people that won't buy the game because of that... well, that's just plain foolish, IMO. And honestly, I'm willing to bet most everyone that says they won't buy it are going to buy it anyway.

 

[Cergorach]

From what i've read of the issue i gather that you don't really need the DM client, just about everything is available through the player interface through scripting (which makes me believe that all they're missing is a GUI). While i agree that it's 'stupid' that they seem to have forgotten the DM client, they do promise to release it online so fast we won't notice it wasn't there in the first place. From the time the game goes gold (goes to press), is packed and shipped to distributors, to stores, to consumers should be atleast a week. Time enough for a team that's got nothing better to do to start doing some bughunting and make a DM client (GUI)...