Anyone else disappointed with NWN?

[FallenPaladin]

Greetings there. The topic says it all. Anybody disappointed with the game? Found it doesn't meet his expectations? I am. I wrote a post explaing why I'm disapoointeed in the game in the Bio forums and some other forum I frequent. Here's aa copy of it, so you know WHY I don't like the game. Just want to know what other people think.

Anyway here's that post about why I don't like the game:
'I'm sorry but I can't get ANY enjoyment out of the game. Not at all. And frankly I can't see HOW anybody could praise it without having gone through some serious brainwashing.
Let's take things from the beginning. The single player campaign. Quite simply the biggest pile of RPG crap I ever had the misfortune of playing. Wuite simply I have NEVER played a worse RPG campaign. It reminds me to much of Diablo and doesn't even manage to surpass that game at what it does. Dialogue is boring, bland and monotonous, with a standard Good, Bad, and Indifferent option. That's the only 'Role Playiong' available in the game, and quite frankly some of the dialogue options are idiotic anyway. Quests are boring. The game is to action heavy. First chapter is "there are four animals and four areas, find the animal in each area". Subquests include, "there are four laboratories in each of the four areas, find each laboratory and get something" , and 'there are four tombs in each of the four areas, get an item from each of the tombs'. After which you are guided through maze like districts, killing the same ba guys over and over and over again, just to find the building you must enter, to enter the maze like interior and kill everybody again. In the quests to find the artifacts from the nobles from that woman, each and every noble's house is a huge maze of the same identical rooms with the same identical guards, apparently designed to annoy and be a pain in the ass to navigate. There's no immersion and realism is always broken. Why on earth are noblemen cupboards filled with healing potion, and the crates in their living rooms filled with weapons. Why the hell did a noblemen trap a chest in his bedroom with a cloudkill trap? Why ios everybody locked, which leads to the next problem of having to wait forever for almost every door and chest to be unlocked or broken in order to proceed. Unlike in BG where unlocking and bashing was imediate now you just have to wait continusly in order to continue. There's no tactics with just one party member, you just click an enemy and wait. At least in Diablo you fought hordes of different monsters none of which took more than a hit or two to be killed, so you constantly did somthing. Here its 'click on enemy, wait while henchman rushed blindly forwards, wait, zzzzzzzzzzzz'. That teleportation gem and respawning just go more into making this look like a Diablo game instead of a true 3D game. After having endured the sit quests of chapter 1, I went to chapter 2 to find such amazing quests as 'there are 4 areas, and four cursed boys in each area, go and find them' and 'there are 4 areas and evidence for this cult or whatever in each area, find the evidence in each area'. Trying to enjoy this, I go to the first area, and enter the Orc caves, to find guess what, another huge endless maze full of Orcs to kill and pretty much nothing else. I'm sorry but that's not what I call entertainment' I quit the single player campaign then. The characters do nothing for you. The voice acting is pitifull, I almost cried when I first heard Aribeths voice. And the graphics, well though the animations are nice, the environments, and models are rather too simplistic. The graphics are dated truth be told, and they detract from the game)
But then there's the Aurora toolset right? Well unfortunately it falls short of the revolutionary tool it was hyped out to be. Unfortunately, apparently the only thing it can do is produce identical, boring, and unoriginal location. Why can't I change the colour of the walls in each room, add paintings on the wall, and add some carpets around? Why is it that I can't make my own indoor rooms, havng to settle only for what's in the toolset. The contents are simply extremelly limited. The tile structure means you can't have any decent cliffisides or really narrow coridors, circular rooms or really small rooms. And practically all custom modules look the same due to the small amount of content available, every town has the sime architecture as Neverwiter, every forest the same trees and features. It looks more liked everything was build by the same builder just following different design plans.
I tried playing Spires of Ravenloft supposedly one of the best modules around. And I was struck by how much the architecture was so similar to that in the official campaign, how little individuality the moduler can put in. I wasn't that imprresed to say the least. Other modules available vary from moderate to painfully crap (the second category being the most plentiful).
Custom content right now is severely limited and badly supported and difficult. Customising and adding new contnenmt should be as easy as 'create model,skin, sound, portrait, click import in toolset, select file, voila'. Unfortunately it's not, you have to dowbload a huge lot of unofficial user made utilities, hack into .2da files, and do stuff which I don't understand, and don't care to understand.Adding new content is a difficult procress as it is, meaning few module builders care to use it, and few people care to try and add custom content). Ever since the release of the game I've been watching the forums, and there's barely any progress being made in the custom content front) Meanwhile the hak pack system creates more problems, since having to use only one hack pak in each module, means module builders have to build merged, huge hack pak,s at times measuring in the 100s of MBs, in a way elienating the 56k players. Also consider this situation, there Hak A (25MB), Hak B (50MB) and Hak C(10 MB). Module editor A decides he wants Hak A and B in his module so merges them in MetaHak, while editor B decides he wants Hak B and C so decides to merge them into MetaHakB. In order to play both modules I have to download both MetaHak A and B, meaning I've downloaded Hak B twice, adding an extra 50MB to my hard disk.
Lets' not talk about the locked Diabloesque camera (why they couldn't do it like BG2 is beyong me), the small selection of monsters and placables, the lack of a Z axis, the lack of dresses for women and robes for wizrads (!!! come on, robes for wizrds should be a stable for D&D games !!!) .
And then there's MP, which is supposed to be what this game is for. Unfortunately, none of my friends knows what D&D is so I can't play any organised games, and most open games are non-role-playong, so taking away most of the point of the game. Let's not go into character imbalance brought about by the incorrect implementation of 3ed rules, and the adding of Bioware's own rules or the way many skills have been ignored), as well as many gameplay quirks I'd rather not go into.'

[Willard]

Dude. Calm down. It's just a game. You can always turn your computer off .Some of the stuff you said in there was true, but most of it was bologna. I mean, why don't you just go and play BG2 or Diablo?

[FallenPaladin]

Actually I AM playing Baldu'r Gate right now . Did I sound liek I was angry in that post. Didn't mean to. Just really disappointed.

[Tomas Darknite]

Have you played MP online yet?? and if you haven’t I believe this is the games real strength also I disagree with you on the modules. I have seen allot of very good ones out there and the persistent worlds I've visited don’t even compare to the solo game, they are expansive and very diverse. I know that my first reaction to this game was also very poor, but I hadn’t played with the toolset or played online. this game in my opinion is the best thing out there for rp ers. I think you should get online and hook up with a good group of players and you will change your opinion. get out there and travel the online world of NWN.

"Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar."

[AndyG]

I'm wondering what RPG games you've played that have met your rather high standards? All games have Fed Ex style quests. All RPGs have fairly ordinary looking dungeons or mazes full of enemies. All games have mediocre at best voice acting. I'd love to hear about the games you've played that are that much better than NWN. I've obviously missed a few.

[Tobbin]

I hate to say it, but I'm leaning towards agreeing that NWN isn't exactly everything I had hoped it to be. With the constant crashes and other problems of online, it is very difficult to find a certain level of enjoyment. You say there are a few online mods that are really good. Ok, I can agree to that, but there are 100's that aren't any good. Also, for the ones that are good, EVERYONE goes there. Thereby limiting access to those games. It's gotten so bad that I have gotten to the point that if I think a mod is promising, I will download it and play it single player or will post it myself. Most people seem to go to KNOWN servers, so it gives me a chance to get the mod running and explore myself. What also is discouraging is the people that come online that decide to PK everyone. On many of these servers that are good, they have at LEAST Party PvP. I have found the only defence to this is either Time Stop scrolls (I carry about 20 or so now because of this) and/or Gate scrolls. I will cast about 10 to 15 Gate spells arround the person that is Pk'ing (without protection) and they end up getting to waste time taking out the Balors. With Time Stop, I can freeze them in their tracks. On most servers, as long as it is not HCR or something, if I die, I respawn. Pk'ers hate that. They have been known to stand over the respawn spot and just wail away at me until they hope I get discouraged and leave. I don't. I stay there as long as they do making it as much less fun for them as they make it for other players. Even if you do find a good group to play with, more often than not, you get the Server disconnected message. AAAAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH. And even with all of these updates they have had, it is getting worse. Don't get me wrong, it is fun to a point, but it's not as fun as it used to be.

[ 09-11-2002, 10:08 PM: Message edited by: Tobbin ]

[Tomas Darknite]

Well Tobbin I've been where you are now and that is why I have sought and found a PW thats passworded and online 24/7. http://www.caenyr.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=11&sid=
check it out.
I can't explain it better than to say go see for your self. Their's a place for every alignment in the game. Lots of good RP at all times of the day or night. It's hidden so you can't see it on gamespy you have to direct connect.

[WOLFGIR]

Nice ranting FallenPaladin!

I have to agree that NWN wasn´t up to my expectations, but then again which game is?
The Fed ex syndrome is the oldest style of RPG and the one that can easily be implemented with every system out there, and few diverge from it.

Even the mighty Morrowind can easily be compaired to your statements, unfortunately.

A free dynamic crpg we will never see, unless something really drastic happens. MMORPG´s can possibly be close to it, NWN with a DM perhaps?

For after all, NWN gives you more opportunities to play then many other games out there. At least that I have found, and dreaming of a game on my puter as I can have with friends in my living room.. well still dreaming

[Zuvio]

Well, I for one agree totally with the FallenPaladin. I dont know what a Fed Ex gamestyle is, but if it has anything to do with pre-dated mailorders, I'm screwed. NWN=Diablo and I didnt liked diabolo so I dont like NWN. Baldurs Gate is a whole different ballgame from NWN and Diablos and BG rules! I must say I havent XP'd NWN online, but frankly that doesnt apply to me because I dont play RPG online!

[Lady Avalon]

I have to agree with a lot of you. The game just doesn't have it. Yes, Wolfie, it can be compared to Morrowind. But there seems to be a huge difference here. When I was playing Morrowind, I could play for several hours on end. The game made me want to continue and not stop. With NWN, that is not the case. I can barely play for an hour and then I get bored, seems to be the same thing over and over again, everything winds up looking the same and there doesn't seem to be any variety. There are always good and bad things about any game played. We always have things that we would have liked to see, things that disappointed us and things we absolutely loved. I usually base games on how well they hold my interest and NWN just doesn't have what it takes, in my opinion. I definitely plan on finishing the game, as I am in Chapter 3 and I will definitely give multi a chance since everyone says that is much better than the single player. Hopefully, the multi will hook me. Morrowind is definitely a game that I will go back and replay, also BG2 and TOB, but NWN, probably not.