In the meantime...

[Irongron]

I really can't say how long this period of being offine is going to go on for.

While I'm sure many of you can find other things to do, rather than endlessly hitting refresh on the forum topics or searching for a server that isn't there I want to suggest trying out the server 'Original Thain' (No Haks required)

One of our own developers is heavily involved there, and Ive been meaning to take a look at it for a while, so will probably log in for a while later myself.

So how about we all go and pay them a visit?

(Please behave while there!)

[Xerah]

We do have forums and feel free to ping me (here or on Discord) if you have questions!

Very much appreciate Irongron and the Arelith team for the suggestion!

[Irongron]

I'm interested to see whether the weight of our community can get Thain topping the list.

I've always liked low level adventuring, and with a bit of effort we could make the Thain the place to be tonight.

[Rebel4ever]

Hmm well i could test out my new build there.....could give it a go.

[Nitro]

We do have forums and feel free to ping me (here or on Discord) if you have questions!

Very much appreciate Irongron and the Arelith team for the suggestion!

Woah, that forum layout is atrocious, it's all over the place.

[Baron Saturday]

Also a great time to mess around on some SP modules. Just finished Runes of Blood, myself. Quite well done, only ran into 3 bugs (if you see any quest items stacking, be sure to manually unstack them), and it's got some interesting systems and multiple endings. Unfortunately the custom movies don't work with EE unless you know how to convert a .bik into whatever media format EE prefers, but you can always just watch them directly from the file.

Starting on Adam Miller's massive Shadowlords/Dreamcatchers/Demons campaign. Gotta say, though, these old modules really make me appreciate the level of detail in Arelith areas. They feel so barren in comparison!

I also discovered that if you leave the Arelith baseitems.2da in the override folder, you can use quarterstaves as double weapons in single player, which is very entertaining. Not finessable or monk weapons, sadly, but I had some fun with ranger + improved disarm.

[TimeAdept]

Shadowlords/Dreamcatcher/Demon remain some of my favorite SP campaigns ever made to this day.

the two Paladin modules, Sunset and Midnight are great too. It'sa shame Dawn was never finished, the creator got hired by Bioware.

The Blackguard trilogy is also entertaining, but is entirely an action focused module based around being a comic book evil villain CE of Talos so may not be everyone's cup of tea. Not rgeat writing.

Honor Among Thieves is an excellent rogue related module for sneaky-breeki stuff.

[Void]

Tried to register on beamdog forums toa ask a few questions about lack of updates and bugs that has been around for a month - along with this issue.

Seems like the forums have manually reviewed applications.

What the hell.

[Ozzy.nl]

Beamdong... Enhanced nwn for you *sighs*

[PeterRasta]

As far as SP modules go, I'd seriously recommend the Almraiven and Shadewood modules. Just superbly written with it's own neat little mechanics. Whilst limited to playing a wizard, though, so if you don't mind that, give it a go.

[BegoneThoth]

Sigmar compels you to play Vermintide 2

[Baron Saturday]

I tried the Blackguard trilogy (not great writing is something of an understatement, but enjoyable even so) but ran into a game-breaking bug halfway through the third chapter. Conversation on the door to Yartar (when you're finally getting out of the UD) wouldn't start, so I couldn't progress without cracking open the tileset, trying to fix the issue, and restarting chapter 3.

I would love to play Tales of Arterra - The Lost, but ran into two broken transitions within an hour of gameplay (missing destination waypoints), which was easy enough to fix, but I'm leery of investing more time in the game after having to start over twice.

[Void]

Beamdong... Enhanced nwn for you *sighs*

I have a feeling, sometimes, that those guys have only one programmer in their entire company, and that programmer is not very good.

I only bought EE to play here.

NWN:EE has abhorrent performance compared to original when transparent effects are present. The first edition was giving stable 60 fps everywhere. In NWN:EE I hit as low as 4 FPS in few places (I finished witcher 3 on this machine). Notable examples are fugue plane and plane of water.

The stereo effect has been botched for almost a month with no fixes. Stereo is frequently flipped and stereo behavior is inconsistent at best. It is not possible to determine where some sound effect sounded, at all. Apparently listener frequently either detachs from the camera, or fails to track camera orientation.

And now this.

Sigh.

I suppose I'll finish some games from my library and mayvbe try a few modules on original nwn.

[Ozzy.nl]

The only reason for me to buy nwn ee was to play here on arelith, so far I feel kicked in the teeth. The intel bug making it impossible to play on laptop. And now this.

[Irongron]

We're back online now

[BegoneThoth]

The only reason for me to buy nwn ee was to play here on arelith, so far I feel kicked in the teeth. The intel bug making it impossible to play on laptop. And now this.

Yeah I really think it's inexcusable that they didn't test their game with the most widely used graphics hardware.

Ee isn't even listed as early access, it's listed as finished.

[Void]

The servers are up.

[CragOrion]

I played a bit on thain and found it pretty fun for low levels

[Irongron]

Glad you enjoyed it. Sadly I didn't find time myself, but do plan on trying it one day soon.

And thanks to them for taking on some of our refugees during the downtime. (And just because Arelith is up again doesn't mean we can't go give it a try)

[Ebonstar]

The only reason for me to buy nwn ee was to play here on arelith, so far I feel kicked in the teeth. The intel bug making it impossible to play on laptop. And now this.

Yeah I really think it's inexcusable that they didn't test their game with the most widely used graphics hardware.

Ee isn't even listed as early access, it's listed as finished.

no its not listed as finished and everyone crying forgets what nwn was like for a long time after each major release. somethings you simply cant fix until the people playing find that its broken.

its like when you make this plan to move and you think you have remembered everything to have on the list, but when you get everything moved and then you find the things that easily slipped by because they are not major things that pop right out.

not to mention some of the constant its broken, its not finished, beamdog sucks, beamdog is this , beamdog is that, they havent wiped my nose posts get kind of old. im sure our devs who are busting their backsides to alter things for us get tired of them as well.

so why dont we buck up buttercup and stop being negative

[Nitro]

The only reason for me to buy nwn ee was to play here on arelith, so far I feel kicked in the teeth. The intel bug making it impossible to play on laptop. And now this.

Yeah I really think it's inexcusable that they didn't test their game with the most widely used graphics hardware.

Ee isn't even listed as early access, it's listed as finished.

no its not listed as finished and everyone crying forgets what nwn was like for a long time after each major release. somethings you simply cant fix until the people playing find that its broken.

its like when you make this plan to move and you think you have remembered everything to have on the list, but when you get everything moved and then you find the things that easily slipped by because they are not major things that pop right out.

not to mention some of the constant its broken, its not finished, beamdog sucks, beamdog is this , beamdog is that, they havent wiped my nose posts get kind of old. im sure our devs who are busting their backsides to alter things for us get tired of them as well.

so why dont we buck up buttercup and stop being negative

It is fully released, and not wanting to invest in a proper QA team isn't a justifiable thing. It's becoming more and more common these days to rush releases with minimal testing just to do patching later on. Patching that would have been entirely preventable had the product been held back and tested more thoroughly.

Excusing this behavior isn't a good thing, neither for the industry or the average consumer, that just shows companies that it's OK to release buggy broken messes in the interest of hitting a target date instead of actually releasing a finished, functional product. It's also one of the few industries where this is seen as acceptable. If you rented a movie that you could only see the first 3/4ths of because it wasn't encoded properly, that would be inexusable. If you bought a car that didn't have working turn signals when you shifted gears you'd be able to take it back to the retailer right away.

NWN Enhanced Edition is definitely a nice thing, it fixes a lot of things that didn't work with the old NWN, but it's also in dire need of some TLC, and would definitely have benefited from being released later for a more fixed product.

[Maladus]

It is fully released, and not wanting to invest in a proper QA team isn't a justifiable thing. It's becoming more and more common these days to rush releases with minimal testing just to do patching later on. Patching that would have been entirely preventable had the product been held back and tested more thoroughly.

Beamdog is a small indie studio based in Canada. This means two things:
1) They don't have the same budget as a lot of big companies would and thus investing in a proper QA team may not be financially feasible.
2) They are based in Canada so finding qualified hires is a bit more difficult because if you don't live in Canada there is an entire process needed to qualify to work there.

Excusing this behavior isn't a good thing, neither for the industry or the average consumer, that just shows companies that it's OK to release buggy broken messes in the interest of hitting a target date instead of actually releasing a finished, functional product. It's also one of the few industries where this is seen as acceptable. If you rented a movie that you could only see the first 3/4ths of because it wasn't encoded properly, that would be inexusable. If you bought a car that didn't have working turn signals when you shifted gears you'd be able to take it back to the retailer right away.

We don't have any actual idea of what the circumstances were surrounding the timing of the release. As I stated before, Beamdog is an indie studio. It could mean that they set a date to release the game upon having met certain milestones achieved in the game. It could mean that they set the release date because they needed the additional influx of cash flow in order to maintain continued development on it and their other projects.

Second, comparing game development (i.e. software development) to the film and auto industry is fundamentally flawed. There are so many intrinsic differences between how these products get made that there really is no point in trying to list them.

NWN Enhanced Edition is definitely a nice thing, it fixes a lot of things that didn't work with the old NWN, but it's also in dire need of some TLC, and would definitely have benefited from being released later for a more fixed product.

I don't think anyone would disagree that the product could have been released in a better state, or that it could have used some more development time before it hit retail. But it is important to understand that game developers aren't greedy money grubbing scumlords like some people make them out to be. They are passionate about what they do, and every decision is agonized over for weeks (sometimes months). No decision is made rashly or without reason, and I think it key to note that the developers are people too who are trying to empower us to enjoy our hobby for many years to come.

[BegoneThoth]

Steam has early access, they didn't use it. Therefore it's finished, and all criticism is legitimate.

[Maladus]

I didn’t say it wasn’t legitimate, I even said the opposite. It’s also true that Early Access doesn’t attract the same numbers as a release would and has garnered a tarnished reputation with some titles.

[Freyason]

They're developing and prolonging a game for basically several thousand people and you're complaining.

LOL.