Enchanced Edition - Discussion

[kTravio]

Also like, someone please confirm for me that the graphics look better in play than in screenshots. I feel like I'm going nuts.

The new graphical options are subtle but, I feel, add to the game especially in play when things are moving around.

Screenshots from something I've been slowly working on for awhile (taken as close to the same angle as I could manage):
https://i.imgur.com/WXEbvmV.jpg - without the new effects on
https://i.imgur.com/6uPlAe1.jpg - with the new effects on

The depth of field shows up in the background with the contrast/vibrance being the most noticeable difference between the two. Aside from turning on the three new graphical settings, all graphics settings between those two screenshots are identical (and both were taken in the current EE client).

[Cortex]

Picking a mostly white and gray background is a very poor option to display the effects. In the screenshots above, the only difference is that in one the colors on the character are more vibrant.

[kTravio]

Picking a mostly white and gray background is a very poor option to display the effects. In the screenshots above, the only difference is that in one the colors on the character are more vibrant.

Actually why I picked that particular place to do the shot; the background shows off the DoF without a lot of foreground distraction and the character in front shows off the other two effects without a lot of distraction from the background. Right now, the three new effects are the Depth of Field, High Contrast, and Vibrance.

Like I said, the new effects are fairly subtle but add something to the game when in play.

[RedGiant]

After meditating on this extensively...I've a few thoughts.

1) Much of the angst here is because, like it or not, this change will leave some of the community behind. Searching for a maybe mythical stream of new blood must seem particularly painful for these folks.

2) The roll-out was handled in a way that was meant to feel like the sheet being pulled off a grand-prize, but felt a little more like the carpet being pulled out from under the feet. We used to have player meetings about big changes. We used to move forward together. The air of secrecy here, maybe a necessary contractual evil, just didn't help.

3) Some of the online adverting/articles about what NWN:EE actually "is" is itself misleading. Words like "remastered" are being used and they are a little strong for EE. I'm not blaming beamdog for this, but unless you want to pour through pages of tech specs (I don't) or use your precious time to watch hour long twitch feeds (again, I don't), these articles don't help.

4) There is a fairly ridiculous dichotomy set up between the two camps. One sees any questioning about the change as an almost personal attack on the staff (its not), while the opposite extreme tends to veer into proto-Marxist-profiteering-sniffing-conspiracy-theory (again, I think its not).

Where does that leave us?

I can only speak personally, and, in all honestly, I have great skepticism whether that, once the 20$ is spent, beamdog proper will continue to crank out the kind of content players actually want without further remuneration. But, they are here 15 years later, working on DnD products, so I'm inclined to give them a chance.

That being said, I think the risk is also small, because our staff is still here, and if we're half-way nice to them, maybe they'll continue to do the same, since they have already been here for years, cranking out the content we love, for their simple love of the game.

Finally, I think the change is ultimately necessary. I've frozen all Windows Updates to continue playing this game...rolled back to at least January last year. I have dealt with one serious virus issue already because of this decision. Its also getting harder and harder to plug people in. I used to be able to plug in folks from work with GoG alone...then I had to start going to their houses and setting it all up... and now half the time it doesn't work at all.

I feel for the part of the community we may be leaving behind, but I also think to stay on old windows boxes means the soon death of the community in any case, as we wink out one by one.

The one remaining mistake I think we made is shutting down the conversation on how to help those of our community who don't have the means to move forward. I understand Irongron's point in doing this, but I think maybe a no reply-sticky is in order with those willing to help and instructions to take all such business to the PMs.

[TimeAdept]

I think I might be the only person ever hate hates Depth of Field. Why do I want a setting that makes everything look blurrier?

[TimeAdept]

Also, you really shouldn't stop windows Updates because of this game. i'm current and have no issues. Strongly suggest you not compromise your personal security.

[PlunderBunny]

I think I might be the only person ever hate hates Depth of Field. Why do I want a setting that makes everything look blurrier?

Depth of Field blows. It makes sense in a cinematic context, where the camera's focus is consciously used to draw attention to certain objects in the frame, but it's always just struck me as an idiotic, misguided attempt to make video games look "better", i.e. more cinematic. Same goes, for the most part, for lens flares and motion blur and whatnot.

So no, you're not the only one.

...and yes, I feel way too strongly about this.

[Ebonstar]

In regards to leaving some of the community behind, People are reacting like the price point is 200 dollars and not the price of a pizza. a lemonade stand can make 20 dollars in a days time, and whats worse is I keep seeing doubled billed as a phrase of choice, which means they didnt even play the game when its was 60 for the OC and 50 for each expansion that were mandatory to move forward.

Im on the side of being tired of having to rollback tech as well. New machines are not 1000 or 2000 dollars anymore, heck you dont even need a new machine. A fifty dollar fix can take any 10 year odl toaster and bring it to near current specs, sure not a super gaming rig but an efficient rig that will run everything needed for modern day uses.

some have said I only buy NWN to play on Arelith, and I have to have something in my hand to beleive whats being said. Now before you bought the game ever be it for 20 or 60 or whatever dollar amount, you didnt know you would like it, it might have ended up on the shelf with those other I dont play these anymore games collecting dust.
So here is what we can prove and put it in your hand. Liareth has done more than enough for us in the past for us to trust her word in matters such as these.
Our dev team is one of the best in the world, or we wouldnt have the most populated sandbox to call our home. Our leads and server owner are also some of the best people in the world, for providing us this sandbox to play a game at sometimes the expense of sanity and Im sure peace at home.
If there is nothing whatsoever worth putting your faith and trust into from what you have read in the Beamdog notes, then put your trust and faith once again in our people.
Our people who spent more time in the closed beta, and that are with some of us still posting ideas and wants and wishes to the Beamdog site, because Trent even said that the game will not roll out until its ready, and this what we have now is just the tip of the iceberg.
You want something to show for your 20 dollars. Fine. 20 dollars is well worth being able to jump into a game we all love, that the people we trust and have trusted for years are excited about.

[Mithreas]

2) The roll-out was handled in a way that was meant to feel like the sheet being pulled off a grand-prize, but felt a little more like the carpet being pulled out from under the feet. We used to have player meetings about big changes. We used to move forward together. The air of secrecy here, maybe a necessary contractual evil, just didn't help.

Good points, but especially this one.

Firstly, it was absolutely a contractual evil. We all signed NDAs as part of getting involved. Standard practice for this sort of thing, but definitely made things more difficult here.

Secondly, it's fair to say that all of us who were invited to participate in the beta were extremely excited by the thought of NWN becoming a live game again. Yes, the fixes are good and useful, and supporting more resolutions etc. is a nice perk... but the big improvements here are making it technically compatible with modern hardware and the marketing boost that, we trust, will bring us a significant influx of new players. We're excited because we see this change as giving NWN another 15 years of life to match the 15 it's already had.

The dev team are paying more for this upgrade than any player, because as well as buying the new game, we are also investing hundreds of hours of effort in testing EE and implementing the migration of the server. We're excited to do this work, though, because it secures the future of our community. To us, that's the biggest prize we could ask for.

But all this means we weren't really expecting a significant number of people to be seriously upset over the prospect of paying $20 to refresh their game for another decade plus. With hindsight, we should probably have anticipated that and made our announcements with that in mind. It's just that the dev team has been concerned about the death of NWN for half its lifetime now (e.g. FL was invented precisely to ensure that we could cope if player numbers fell significantly, and maintained since in the assumption that some day NWN would wander into the twilight) so this is kind of the best news we've heard in a long time. We should really have anticipated that it wouldn't be seen that way by everyone, but I hope that helps explain why we didn't!

[Black Wendigo]

It would make me happy if Beamdog had made and EE out of a game they actually made. I have a lot of reservations about EE and remastered games that have no actual content added because I see this as a money grab by people who are trying to cash in on peoples' nostalgia. These games already made plenty of money for their creators when they came out. Worse is when fanboys decide to remaster a game and then make contractual agreements that allow them to make so that only they can sell a game they did not make or already had made royalties from. This is how I see NWN EE.

I also resent it when people chide me for objecting by saying "oh people worked hard for free to support this game why not pay them now?" Well that's not the way it is. People like Bamdog are not an altruistic nonprofit company. They are making EEs and remasters because it there is a market for them. The people who worked hard for free are the Arelith staff, whom I have only respect for and don't mistrust thier motives, Tey have been more than generous, fair , and honest.

Paying $20 for "support" of a game that someone did not create feels like a rip off. WHen developers make games part of the deal is that they have to provide tech support, fix bugs and keep thier games up to date for the life of the product. Once the game becomes abandoned and is no longer supported, then people shouldn't be ask to pay for that. There are other ways to support old games other than -for profit- business models.

Now I want to make this very clear: I expect nothing form anyone. I am expressing my objections but I am NOT seeking to change peoples' minds or tell them what to do. And despite what certain people imply, people like me are not ingrates. And before people decide that I am, please read -everything I've said and respond to what Ive actually written and not what you think I'm saying.
I have no ill will in objectiong nor an agenda.

What would make me happy is if people either bought the EE and continued with Arelith or they decided this is the end and parted ways. Both without any ill feelings to the other. I don't have any. This isn't personal for me to object. I've said my case and that is that.

[Invader_Nym]

Yeah, the more I think about it the more indefensible the whole thing seems. I feel like I'm having my arm twisted into buying the game by virtue of my loyalty to Arelith. I wouldn't feel that way if the enhanced edition were actually in some way different than what I've got now.

Edit: Yeesh they're selling a digital deluxe edition which is also remarkably unremarkable for 40 USD. Making a few tweaks and re-selling a 15 year old game for $50 CAD is ballsy.

[Scimiter]

I think you are missing their intent with this version. Unlike some of the others which they made some great visual changes the essence of NWN has never been in the visuals but in the community.

By focusing on making the game compatible with modern OSs and enhancing the ability for backend improvements via removing hardcode locks that have plagued us since the original release they give our DEVs the tools to make whatever they want out of the platform. Far, far beyond what we have had access to before.

ON the visual side they may not be adding much themselves but updating and unlocking access to the shaders and other such tools will allow the community to make their own visual enhancements over time.

As a professional programmer I've never had real time to dive into the code of the game, I lament not joining the Minions when I had the time way back when, the list of improvements (and it's not even a full list as it is not finished) for backend things alone is enough to make me want to dive into it and see what we can really do with it.

That's what it comes down to. Beamdog did not start this project to make a new game but to give us the tools to remake our worlds as a community that loves the game and the worlds we have built and lived for over 15 years.

As a Canadian it actually cost me $27 to get my copy (and a night in the dog house from the wife for buying something for myself so near christmas) and I still would do it again. I still do not have a great deal of time to get on the server these days but I'll pay it just so I can come back to the community I love when I can and I hope that many are with me on that.

Let Beamdog have the little profit from this because they have given us a great gift as far as I'm concerned. Wait and see what the community does with the real enhancements on the back end over time. It will be worth it. We have a brilliant DEV team here and a community that contributes blood, sweat and tears. Either in content or plot arcs but all amazing.

[Improv]

Not gonna argue but to clarify one point: Trent Oster was producer of Neverwinter Nights at Bioware and there are likely other original team members at Beamdog (haven't done research on that, just seems likely.) So there is more connection than just a new company buying the assets, I think they actually have more than purely mercenary interest in the game, people working on it now were there for its creation. Frankly in 2017 I'd trust Beamdog more with NWN than anyone at what Bioware has become now (if for some reason Bioware and by extension EA were to take an interest in it.)

[One Two Three Five]

Notable beamdog staff includes Trent Oster (NWN Producer, bioware founder), David Gaider (Hordes of the Underdark- responsible for Deekin and Valen Shadowbreath, also has credits for the rest of NWN/expansions), Cameron Tofer (Baldur's Gate 2: Shadow of Amn programmer).

Idunno, it's as indefensible as releasing an expansion pack back in the day.

Alright, how's this: Those names up there? They were last notable to the NWN community back when 1.69 came out. The thing with 1.69 was that it was mildly rushed, and PDK specifically shipped kind of broken. But it added: PDK, many of the newer-looking tilesets, music, creatures, placeables, doors, VFXs, those gem swords certain WMs keep using, tabards, various fixes, windows Vista combatibility, several toolset/scripting improvements, so on. So forth.

And do you know what happened? There was a series of arguments in the IRC (and some on the forum if I remember?) and in MSN chats about whether or not to update Arelith. Imagine that. Arelith without tabards. With old epic dodge. No trenchcoats. Missing scripting functions. No windows vista compatibility stuff. That last one? Would've sank the entire NWN community in a couple years. Probably 1.69 and some of the improvements/modernizations in that one last patch is the only reason the game limps along on modern systems.

So why are the old coders of NWN notable for 1.69? They had lost the license already. This was the first rumble of the plug getting pulled. Gamespy support dropped not too long after, in the grand scheme, and Bioware's own NWN forums went dark after the crew that would become Beamdog left. But the fact was, with little legal allowance to touch NWN anymore, they dropped one big final goodbye patch for the NWN community before they went. Idunno. Dumb, sappy, whatever. I just don't think it's a cash grab. There's easier ways to grab gamer cash. NWN holdouts are nowhere near as profitable as MMO Whales, for instance. There's MMO players that drop thousands of dollars on cash shop garbage. Often. Hell, Battle Royale games are heating up- or they could've jumped on the Survival Gankbox Semi-MMO trend, right?

I'm not trying to convince anyone, but- saying it's a bunch of randos who stole someone else's game to make a quick buck is being deliberately obtuse at this point.

For my other point: After a little waffling that I remember, and some arguments and trepidation-tinged-excitement, Arelith switched to 1.69. Some people wailed that they wouldn't do it, or couldn't, or whatever, and I could swear I still see them logging in from time to time. In short order, with the server patched and the playerbase grumbling but quieted down with new toys, .69 (nice) became an integral part of Arelith. It would be unimaginable to revert at this point. It was unimaginable to revert five minutes it. It was better. It was good. I fully believe after the upgrade we'll see the same thing. Some grumbling, so low murmurs, and then nothing six months in as the controversy becomes the day-to-day of server visitation for everyone.

Edit: All that said, I'm not trying to sell anyone on anything. If you don't want it, don't get it. You want it, do your own thing. Arelith FL will be there, and Arelith Classic (tm) is around for at least a while in .69. I'm just getting a little 'ehhh' about the whole back and forth. It's like the hak thing. Happening either way, so both sides are screaming into the wind. I've liked what I've seen and damn but it'd be cool to have an informational thread/discussion about something without shill/cash grab accusations.

[Black Wendigo]

Beamdog would serve the gaming community better if they had made a new game in the spirit of NWN, or baldur's gate, icewind dale and so forth instead of trying to keep a dead horse alive. Games cannot last forever and they should not. I"d rather have better new games than trying to keep old ones viable.

[CragOrion]

I'm just glad Obsidian didn't touch it. They halfass everything they get involved in which has ruined game franchises for me, including their NWN and KOTOR games.

That said, I do have a question

After looking at the game directory after install, I'm wondering how will EE do haks/overrides/portraits? Can anybody from the development clue me in as to how I can add in my big portrait folder or overrides?

[One Two Three Five]

http://store.steampowered.com/
Like.
At this point the box is open, neighbor. The game is patched, being actively developed, and is coming. There's no amount of 'should have' or 'would rather' or 'serve better' that's going to change any of that. So, looking forward? If there's something you think could be done to the enhanced edition to make you happy about it, I've linked their forum in several places.

At this point the argument of 'they should've' is just throwing chaff. It feels like a sealion gambit. If you don't like it, don't want it, and truly never-ever-ever could find anything you'd be even willing to suggest? I wish you the best in the future, but apparently your path diverges when the server merges.

@Crag: user/documents/Neverwinter Nights
Mine's got a hak and override folder already. I'll try porting in my portrait folder and see if it works, but there's no reason it shouldn't. That all got moved to the documents folder because of how Windows treats games now, I guess. Someone more windows-y can probably explain.

[CragOrion]

@Crag: user/documents/Neverwinter Nights
Mine's got a hak and override folder already. I'll try porting in my portrait folder and see if it works, but there's no reason it shouldn't. That all got moved to the documents folder because of how Windows treats games now, I guess. Someone more windows-y can probably explain.

I just found that, thanks
Tested and the portrait pack works with EE

[Ozzy.nl]

I for one am happy with this.
Perhaps what windigo says makes sense, as games should not be around for ever. But concider the mmo market wow for example is around for as long as nwn by now. But theybare around because of full support and new content. While nwn has survived purely on the community. That says a lot about this game. It tells me that there are people here with a passion for this game. No matter there reason for not moving on and buying and playing new games. I can look at my self forbthis as i do have new games in the form of a nintendo switch, but still i play nwn to my heart.

Like many of us i seen that stream as well and yes i agree atm there is not much client side that that changes but on the dev side we get a load. And what the devs of arelith get now will finaly come back to us as well. Beyond that they have ensured this old game on life support now got a full reanimation and can stand on its own legs again with the newer machines. Yes they could have made a new game in the spirit of nwn. But why should they, the true xommunity is here and they wish to stay.

20 dollar might sound like a lot to one and like a pizza to another i find it heard to judge anothers person wallet. To me yes i have to save up for this as I have a kid and the holidays are inbound. But like I payed 60 euros the first time purchase and 15 the second time for the full DVD and later a mac version 15 euros again. I will pay 20 euro if it ensures we can play this game well in to the future.

As for beamdog, I give them my trust. This in term might be because they got midnight with them but also because they have some of the old devs from nwn and they sound like they realybstill care for the game and the community. So i say give them a change to prove it.

[Wordless Truth]

Unless I'm lucky it looks like I'm going to be on a longer hiatus until we switch to EE.

Simply because currently I can't play NWN on any of my hardware.

I think I've played NWN long enough to know what I can do to make the game work. Since the last Nvidia / Win updates however, I cannot get it to work without compromising the integrity or security of my setup.

[Mithreas]

Beamdog would serve the gaming community better if they had made a new game in the spirit of NWN, or baldur's gate, icewind dale and so forth instead of trying to keep a dead horse alive. Games cannot last forever and they should not. I"d rather have better new games than trying to keep old ones viable.

Maybe!

But consider this - nobody has made anything NWN-like since NWN2, which... wasn't exactly a resounding success. I could write a lengthy essay on the reasons why, but suffice to say, there are both technical and commercial problems with the business case.

Building a "new NWN" would be a massive, humongous, vast commercial risk. The cost to create a modern equivalent to NWN would be orders of magnitude greater than the investment into EE - money that would need to be recouped by game sales, which in today's climate would be far from certain.

It would be a massively different venture from Beamdog's core business, so they'd be unlikely to be the people doing it.

[Liareth]

There's another livestream tonight!

https://twitter.com/BeamdogInc/status/9 ... 9494706176

[Dovesong]

I also am in the camp that doesn't mind this. COULD they have done something else? Probably. But this is what they DID do. It's got the tremendous chance to be a fresh breath of life for the community. All the coding and dev things aside, that's a massive bonus in and of itself.

[If Valor Were Inches]

Once Phase 2 starts I plan to play exclusively on EE. My new computer's never liked NWN and I'm happy that I can keep it secure without delaying updates that jeopardize playing constantly.

[Purplemyst]

When is phase 2 taking place? Sorry if this has already been mentioned but I didn’t want to have to through 18 pages.