Enchanced Edition - Discussion

[One Two Three Five]

I mean, I'm sure there'll be non-EE servers, if that's the route you want to go down.

[Dr_Hazard89]

We get to keep our characters? New life being breathed into my favourite game? Only $20 after FIFTEEN YEARS of playing this game? Fresh blood!?

Aaaaaah! The excitement! This is great news. I feel for anyone struggling with the $20, but we're a community! Let's talk to one another and see who can help who out (:

Besides, seems to be plenty of time to dig around in couches.

[Ebonstar]

just giles being giles, you know the danny kaye in white christmas, annoying as hell with the arm bit but not enough to feed him to the dog

[Ebonstar]

I mean, I'm sure there'll be non-EE servers, if that's the route you want to go down.

actually since all the new players and blood will be buying the EE there wont be any non EE servers for long due the backward compatibility to bring everything forward

[gilescorey]

What about this is shady?

Beamdog's thing is remaking old DND games with resolution enhancements, bug fixes, and that sort of thing. That's cool, and I've bought multiple products of theirs' in the past, and I don't regret doing that. Those remakes were cool. However I do not like NWN EE and I will not be purchasing it.

The simple difference is that NWN EE is not optional, whereas BG EE, BG2 EE, etc. were, due to the enjoyment of those games not hinging on the multiplayer aspect. NWN absolutely does; HoTU and stuff are cool and all, but nobody in 2017 is playing NWN for the singleplayer.

Further, the purported "balance changes," while not an issue in and of themselves, seeing as how those are easily repealed, are terrible. The issue with that is they demonstrate a clear lack of understanding with not even the nuances of game mechanics. Nerfs to assassin? Buffs to G. sanc? What is this? Nobody seriously thinks that vanilla assassin is strong and g. sanc is weak, in fact it's the complete opposite. They're tacked-on and ultimately poor additions that reek of a "hey, look, we did something other than graphics enhancements!"

Watching the stream they had on twitch, they had a few guys playing on there who thought the DM jump button was something incredible. Really? These are the guys you pick to represent your "original designers" and "integral parts of the community"? People who are blown away with a feature that came with the original game, and has absolutely nothing to do with your new enhancements?

Don't get me wrong, the resolution and UI changes are great and well-needed for modern PCs, as is the plethora of (as of yet, unfinished and unimplemented, so why all this work on "demos" for Arelith is beyond me) NWNX and technical improvements is nice.

But the graphic enhancements are straight up laughable, even if prior Beamdog games didn't quite wow me with their graphics updates, you could at least tell the difference.

The whole thing reeks of "how to milk money out of these people still playing a 15 year old game." I'm not willing to put 20$, or 1 cent down for people who think like that.

With all that being said, I'd be very, very glad to be wrong. From what I've seen, though, I don't know if I will be.

[Astral]

At the very worst case you'll be spending 20$ just to continue playing with us with slightly better graphics and better platform for presistant-world personal modifications if you end up buying it instead of quitting arelith.

[RedGiant]

Upon further reflection, short of my earlier doom and gloom and "bottled water" comments...

...if this reverts Dragon-Shape...I'm in.

I can be bought.

[Black Wendigo]

The fact that you are being forced to pay for something you already own because someone made an enhanced edition. If I were cynical I might call that [planned obsolescence. That's what's shady.

Chiding people and lecturing them on how many hours they got out of NWN isn't the way to earn their trust and convince them to buy your enhanced edition. It just angers people because so many others have abused gamers with shady marketing practices. So if you want people to not put Beamdog in the same light don't cope an attitude.

[Maladus]

Well I guess it's your choice not to buy it, but I'm sorry you feel that way. A lot of the changes that have been made in the initial 'launch' are aimed at fixing a lot of backend issues without completely wrecking the mountain of custom content that already exists for the game.

In general though I'm an optimist in almost every situation, and since this is just their first announcement and development is still quite on-going I would not be surprised to see them reveal a lot more over the coming months leading to the official launch of the game. I personally feel that $20 is a reasonable amount of money to charge considering the amount of work that still needs to get done to make it a more complete project.

Hopefully I didn't come off as combative or as having an attitude about this, it generally was not my intent.

[Stath]

/self edit

[Baron Saturday]

Here's where I disagree with you, giles: It is optional. Beamdog is not forcing the server to convert to NWN EE. The admin team has chosen to make the switch, because they believe that the benefits are worth asking their players to pay $20.

Given that this same admin team has asked remarkably little of us over the years, and that they themselves are not receiving the money, I think I trust their judgement that this switch is worthwhile. I don't believe that they would ask players to do this, otherwise.

You're totally right about Beamdog's balance changes, though, some of those are absolutely idiotic. My own biggest concern is that we find ourselves constantly at the mercy of similarly ignorant "updates".

A question for the admin/dev team: Will it be more difficult to produce new content (and maintain our own idea of what mechanical balance should be) if Beamdog is constantly fiddling with the base game?

And RG, I really doubt that the Dragonshape change is going away.

[One Two Three Five]

Unless balance changes are hardcoded (something they're apparently moving away from, according to the stream so not likely), I think our changes will override theirs anyway. Pretty sure that's how it worked back in the day. NWN patches that changed stuff Arelith had modified, if I remember right, didn't change our modifications.

If Midnight/Liareth, Dunshine, and Irongron say the serverside stuff is good enough, I suspect they're the best positioned to know. (The little bit I messed around felt less chuggy than NWN usually does for me, and while the graphics update are subtle, they're nice.)

[rookie]

I'm happy to see Linux support (I hope it will not require the hoops to the jump through that playing on Linux currently does) as well as the hope that with paid professionals with full rights to the code base that the game will continue to run with new OSes, drivers, and hardware as time passes.

I had my doubts about that with the current NWN as I've already had to jump through hoops for certain elements to work and I doubt those hoops would lessen over time. I'm satisfied paying $20 if it means a smoother ride in the future. Anything else is simply gravy to me.

[Montaugh]

Seems interesting and I'll pick it up at some point. I'm not in a huge rush though.

[gilescorey]

Here's where I disagree with you, giles: It is optional. Beamdog is not forcing the server to convert to NWN EE. The admin team has chosen to make the switch, because they believe that the benefits are worth asking their players to pay $20.

Given that this same admin team has asked remarkably little of us over the years, and that they themselves are not receiving the money, I think I trust their judgement that this switch is worthwhile. I don't believe that they would ask players to do this, otherwise.

If parts (technically a third? but that sounds a little grandiose and misleading) of the admin team are working with Beamdog...

EDIT: oh yeah, and also
New, digital BG1/BG2 non-EE copies are no longer available for sale. The only (legal) option you have for playing BG1 or 2 is now through Beamdog.

I will assume a similar notion applies for NWN:EE.

[Ork]

I think the feature where Beamdog has literally unhardcoded the nwn script is of the greatest interest to me. Literally the game becomes fully open to alterations.

[RedGiant]

If what Ork says is true, I could also perhaps be bought with z-axis enhancements that they promised us for NWN 2, but utterly failed to deliver.

(Yes I know this was Obsidian and not Bioware. And Obsidian is at least 0/2 on Bioware sequels, to put it nicely.)

[Stath]

Are any members of Arelith's Staff/development team receiving any sort monetary compensation in relation to NWN: EE from Beamdog?

Be honest

[Black Wendigo]

I'd rather not know that. On account of any answer would probably be misleading or cast doubt whrer there should not be any. I think the decision to go with EE was sincre and the reason to do so made very clear.

[One Two Three Five]

Is it really that hard to believe that people could be excited about something that they put time and effort into? After volunteering their time and effort and work for years, seeing that effort getting a facelift & becoming easier to work with? Or are you just being an edgy killjoy because it's the contrarian/cj response?

Be honest

[frightnight]

Is it really that hard to believe that people could be excited about something that they put time and effort into? After volunteering their time and effort and work for years, seeing that effort getting a facelift & becoming easier to work with? Or are you just being an edgy killjoy because it's the contrarian/cj response?

Be honest

this

[RedGiant]

Seriously, do you think a fifteen year old game is populated with people who like change? *shakes his cane at 1,2,3,5*

*voice wavering with age* Back in my day, sonny, we considered it a big update when Rangers could make arrows!

[One Two Three Five]

Surely this isn't the only game you people play.
Surely some of you remember back when this game was actually updated? I miss those times. We had a server browser! And tech support!

Also, man, what an amazing long con that would be, right? First you volunteer to run a niche roleplaying community server for a game released in 2002, before some of the playerbase was born. Then, you volunteer to help get that game in working form for modern computers again. You set up a server on this new version, using your free time.

In secret, you get a .0005% comission, less development costs, for every copy of the game sold. And you just wait for the nickels to roll in. Rubes, all of them.

In less bad-faith-argumentative-trolling news, it is legitimately neat to see an active NWN forum that isn't dedicated to a specific server again. Gonna go suggest seven different kinds of base class warlocks, I think.

[susitsu]

some of you guys seem pretty unironically mad over this

too bad for you i'm spending my money on it

[Wytchee]

Here's where I disagree with you, giles: It is optional. Beamdog is not forcing the server to convert to NWN EE. The admin team has chosen to make the switch, because they believe that the benefits are worth asking their players to pay $20.

Given that this same admin team has asked remarkably little of us over the years, and that they themselves are not receiving the money, I think I trust their judgement that this switch is worthwhile. I don't believe that they would ask players to do this, otherwise.

You're totally right about Beamdog's balance changes, though, some of those are absolutely idiotic. My own biggest concern is that we find ourselves constantly at the mercy of similarly ignorant "updates".

A question for the admin/dev team: Will it be more difficult to produce new content (and maintain our own idea of what mechanical balance should be) if Beamdog is constantly fiddling with the base game?

And RG, I really doubt that the Dragonshape change is going away.

Which balance changes in particular are "idiotic?"