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Arthmoor

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So you're saying I should expect a rock solid, absolutely buttery smooth perfect experience then, right? I mean, after 300+MB of patches downloading from the slowest servers on Earth I have a right to expect greatness, don't I? :whistle:Somehow I don't think I'll be getting it, but hey. I'm not going into this with any high hopes or grand expectations. Who knows, it may get passed along to Conner after I'm done with it :POdd how most of what's being hit seems to be toolset files too.

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Yeah, but not being Dragon Age might be good, might not. DA is by no means the model of gaming perfection everyone said it was.

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Don't go in expecting a perfectly smooth game. Especially without Mask of the Betrayer or Storms of Zehir installed. The base game is full of engine issues that cause it to run extremely sluggish and jumpy on even high end systems. The patches KINDOF address the issues, but not in the way that installing the expansions themselves do.Aside from that Neverwinter Nights 2 has a great story, the ending is a bit of a let down, but the ride to that ending is pretty good. Mask of the Betrayer will answer a lot of the questions that ending leaves in the air, but it was a pretty good story too, for as short as it was.Haven't played Storms of Zehir yet, life took over and I haven't had a chance to do a lot of gaming recently.

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Well I'm not sure I can endure this piece of shit interface long enough to finish it. I mean HOLY FUCK. I didn't think it was possible to make one worse than the original NWN, but they've managed to pull that off and then some. It's almost unwieldy to the point of being unplayable even after nearly 4 hours of waiting through what looked like dozens of patches.Seriously, I don't get how anyone actually finished this thing. Just the opening village alone was beyond frustrating trying to get a proper response out of it.Great story or not, this interface is shattering any hope of actually becoming engaged with it. It's not running sluggish or jumpy or anything like that, when I can even get my guy to navigate that is. Surely it can't have been this bad back in 2006?

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Well, there's two camps for getting around the interface. On one side, you ahve the group that play using only the keyboard, they ignore the mouse as much as possible and only use the keyboard, this involves walking with WASD (which is a pain to get used to) assigning key abilities for combat to the 1-0 keys, and moving the camera using the arrow keys.On the other side, you have the group that don't use the keyboard at all and just use the mouse. I used the mouse to get through it, and while the interface is horrible, playing in Strategy or Exploration Mode with the mouse made it somewhat more bearable. I can't remember if the Expansions cleaned up the interface any or not, but they might have.

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Somehow I knew you were going to go ballistic at the camera. Which sucks, make no mistake.As I recall, it's possible to get some semblance of a top down view and mostly mitigate the camera issues, but only mostly.

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Well I tried strategy mode, that's basically broken beyond all hope of use. So obviously I'm not going there.I guess character mode is just about as bad because I tried navigating with that too and it's just not going to work out.I'll have to see if exploration mode works, but god damn. There's got to be some way to make the thing behave like a normal game and not an aborted science experiment gone wrong.

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Who knows' date=' it may get passed along to Conner after I'm done with it :P[/quote']While I would certainly welcome a free game, the prospect of "300+MB of patches downloading from the slowest servers on Earth" does sound a wee bit daunting... :lol:
Well' date=' there's two camps for getting around the interface. On one side, you ahve the group that play using only the keyboard, they ignore the mouse as much as possible and only use the keyboard, this involves walking with WASD (which is a pain to get used to) assigning key abilities for combat to the 1-0 keys, and moving the camera using the arrow keys.On the other side, you have the group that don't use the keyboard at all and just use the mouse. I used the mouse to get through it, and while the interface is horrible, playing in Strategy or Exploration Mode with the mouse made it somewhat more bearable. I can't remember if the Expansions cleaned up the interface any or not, but they might have.[/quote']Well, don't you make a great sales pitch for this game? :(WASD isn't that hard to get used to... :shrug:
Somehow I knew you were going to go ballistic at the camera. Which sucks' date=' make no mistake.As I recall, it's possible to get some semblance of a top down view and mostly mitigate the camera issues, but only mostly.[/quote']Having a totally free-floating camera that you need to spin and such to see folks attacking you is more than a minor pain in the ass. :facepalm:
but god damn. There's got to be some way to make the thing behave like a normal game and not an aborted science experiment gone wrong.
This is definitely not sounding like the game these two were praising a few days ago... :(
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Well Dwip has a huge bias in favor of D&D stuff and is apparently willing to overlook quite a bit, unless I missed an equally scathing rant about the game's interface on his blog. I guess Kayle is willing to overlook quite a bit as well. Me, not so much. If the game's interface is so bad it's all I'm thinking about overcoming, the game quickly loses all hope.The camera in this thing doesn't spin your view either. It spins your character. So far it's only ever spun the view to match when I've started to walk forward, and obviously in combat that's a bad thing. It really does feel like they regressed compared to the original NWN.I'm not far enough into the story yet to know if it's worthwhile or not. The beginning felt a bit cliche but it wasn't terrible either. Apparently I get to go off to some ruin next to get some kind of silver shard my "stepfather" was dumb enough to bury there.

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Hahahaaa!!!Arthmoor, hearing you I hear me talking!! :lol:Yes, it's not one of the Seven Wonders of the World, this NWN2... I warned you about the patches download too! :lol: The interface was hard to bear for me too especially having played Oblivion in first person sight... I don't remember how I navigated in NWN2... probably with WASD. Again my memory is almost totally blank on what I did in NWN2 and how it was... it just left no really lasting impression on me...Usually I'm quite forgiving about the interface if the game is otherwise worthwhile where it counts. For example I like(d) Hearts of Iron 2 a lot despite the really blaaahhh interface. But the game was deep and smart so I learned to live with it.As to WASD, this is what I/we do in Oblivion, no? I mean there is no other way, is there?? The one post from Kayle suddenly makes me think I have missed out on some secret interface feature of Oblivion?? And Yeah, feel free to pass the game on to Conner! Chances are he'll throw the disc away after one week of downloading patches. Hihihihiiii... :)

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WADS is what it's usually called, and yes, it's a keyboard interface that's as old as the hills. Or at least as old as Castle Wolfenstein. The original. Not the newer remake. It works phenomenally well in first-person games like Oblivion. If you provide functional camera rotation, it even works well enough to be able to adjust to it an play the game, like in Dragon Age. However, when incompetent game companies like Obsidian come along and butcher it, WADS falls flat.What Kayle is referring to is the fact that NWN and NWN2 also allow you to navigate the world by clicking your mouse on the spot you want to go to. I usually hate that method of navigation, but it's starting to look like the only way this is ever going to work. Oblivion does not have a point-click navigation interface. You didn't miss anything :P

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NWN2 has some issues' date=' though. First and foremost, the camera STILL sucks the good suck. I’m not sure how they managed, because it worked ok in KOTOR, and we’ve somehow stepped back from that. It’s not quite NWN1 levels of awful, but it tries hard sometimes. Top down mode fixes a lot, but not all.[/quote']Just saying. I've never praised that interface even one iota. That said, they got an awful lot right in terms of story and cool features, which is why I ended up liking it. Dragon Age it is not, however. Think of it as Dragon Age's retarded 2006 cousin.And yeah, it's mouse nav all day long in NWN2. Like, you know, Dragon Age. Only way to run the tactical combat railroad. I can manage WASD sometimes in KOTOR and Jade Empire, but anything else Bioware/Obsidian not so much.Also, I don't remember the patch servers being all THAT slow, even in 2006 on shitty DSL.
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Well we'll see. It'll need to be almost phenomenal in the story department before I can dismiss this interface's interference in things.I was able to adjust WADS play in DA just fine. It worked when the Q and E keys could be bound to turning the camera view, which did follow properly in line with the controlling character. This is not the case with NWN2. Your character simply rotates in place, camera makes no effort to respond to it until you start walking. UGH.Combat seems a bit retarded btw. Do you seriously need to keep telling your guy to swing until the target dies? Or does my guy suck so hard at combat that he swings half as many times as my allies? I think this is one of the reasons I'm personally happy the fascination with these archaic D&D rules died out finally.I'm pretty sure that back in 2006 the patches were on higher priority servers. Today, not so much. I'm sure they're on lower priority throttled connections due to the low demand for patch downloads for this game today. Hence my 4 hour long wait to get them. Almost looks like they replaced the entire disc's worth of content :P

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Pretty sure there's a way to more legitimately map WASD in NWN2, but I don't really remember as it's been ages.Re: AI, two things. 1. You are selecting party AI via wherever it is party AI is selected, yes? I think that's automatic, but. 2. The round system can be a bit slow. I generally find that if you target them at one guy, they'll do ok fighting that dude, but I probably need to retarget when they drop.And I dunno, I went through the whole patch experience a few days ago, and it didn't seem all THAT horrid, better connection notwithstanding.

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WASD doesn't work in NWN2 like it does in any other game I've played, Wand S were forward and backward, and A and D were turning, with Q and E being strafe left/right. I never tried changing the key mappings, I just abandoned the keyboard for the mouse and went on my merry way getting to the end of the game so it can be uninstalled and shelved.Atari has indeed moved the NWN2 Patch servers to low-priority but I never had to wait 4 hours to get them.. Even when I installed the game two weeks ago, I think I got all the patches in 20ish minutes. (Granted, I had Mask of the Betrayer and Storms of Zehir installed which cuts down on the amount of patches considerably, because a lot of the patches are built into the xpacs.)The round system is incredibly slow at first, and depending on your class, it may never speed up all that much. It also depends on the type of weapon you're using. A heavy greatsword is going to have a slower rate of attack then a longsword, and a longsword will have a slower rate of attack then a dagger. But it is all automatic, you only have to click them once.

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The keymappings I have, which I made no effort to change:W = forwardS = backwardA = move leftD = move rightQ = rotate leftE = rotate rightThe camera, being the big pile of crap it is, only moves into proper position once you begin walking forward or backward. Which needless to say is worthless enough to be totally broken. So I guess the mouse it is, as foreign as I find the whole idea of click-walking my way to everything. I guess I'll find out just how useful that turns out to be.

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Well Dwip has a huge bias in favor of D&D stuff and is apparently willing to overlook quite a bit' date=' unless I missed an equally scathing rant about the game's interface on his blog. I guess Kayle is willing to overlook quite a bit as well. Me, not so much. If the game's interface is so bad it's all I'm thinking about overcoming, the game quickly loses all hope.[/quote']Well, I can't fault him too heavily for that sort of failing, I tend to be pretty D&D biased myself, though if the interface is really bad enough to make the game unplayable, well, then the D&D aspects can't really shine through either. :shrug:(I suspect Kayle shares that failing as well.)
The camera in this thing doesn't spin your view either. It spins your character. So far it's only ever spun the view to match when I've started to walk forward' date=' and obviously in combat that's a bad thing. It really does feel like they regressed compared to the original NWN.[/quote']Oh, that sounds bad, the original NWN had some issues that were pretty significant without regression. :(
I'm not far enough into the story yet to know if it's worthwhile or not. The beginning felt a bit cliche but it wasn't terrible either. Apparently I get to go off to some ruin next to get some kind of silver shard my "stepfather" was dumb enough to bury there.
Ah' date=' but did you start out in a tavern with a bunch of strangers that were already in your party? ;)
As to WASD' date=' this is what I/we do in Oblivion, no? I mean there is no other way, is there?? The one post from Kayle suddenly makes me think I have missed out on some secret interface feature of Oblivion??[/quote']Nope, same commands, but it's not common to all graphic games of this nature either. :shrug:
And Yeah' date=' feel free to pass the game on to Conner! Chances are he'll throw the disc away after one week of downloading patches. Hihihihiiii... :)[/quote']Nah, I'm way too much the pack-rat to ever consider just throwing out an original game disc. ;)Besides, if I'm going to spend that much time and effort to get all the patches, what could possibly possess me to throw out the game disc so I couldn't even try to put them all to use? :lol:
WADS is what it's usually called
No' date=' no, WADS are what teenage boys blow on a date.. WASD is the game keyboard based walking interface command set. ;)
What Kayle is referring to is the fact that NWN and NWN2 also allow you to navigate the world by clicking your mouse on the spot you want to go to. I usually hate that method of navigation' date=' but it's starting to look like the only way this is ever going to work. Oblivion does not have a point-click navigation interface. You didn't miss anything :P[/quote']Same point-click navigation interface that was used in the Diablo series, if you need a point of reference... at least, I think that's what we're talking about. You can continue to walk while you continue to hold the mouse button, right?
Your character simply rotates in place' date=' camera makes no effort to respond to it until you start walking. UGH.[...']Do you seriously need to keep telling your guy to swing until the target dies?[...]Hence my 4 hour long wait to get them. Almost looks like they replaced the entire disc's worth of content :P
The camera rotation just turns your character? Not just his view? :blink:Speaking of the Diablo series... that sort of combat system sucks in general, though I suppose one could argue that it does help prevent you from accidentally killing someone because you couldn't stop the fight after the first mis-swing.Um, seriously? A 4 hour wait to start the downloads or just to get them all? I wonder how long it'd take on my connection. :(
WASD doesn't work in NWN2 like it does in any other game I've played' date=' Wand S were forward and backward, and A and D were turning, with Q and E being strafe left/right.[/quote']What's unusual about that?
Atari has indeed moved the NWN2 Patch servers to low-priority but I never had to wait 4 hours to get them.. Even when I installed the game two weeks ago' date=' I think I got all the patches in 20ish minutes. (Granted, I had Mask of the Betrayer and Storms of Zehir installed which cuts down on the amount of patches considerably, because a lot of the patches are built into the xpacs.)[/quote']Sounds like a bandwidth difference then. Maybe it'd take me 8 hours to get them all then. :(
The round system is incredibly slow at first' date=' and depending on your class, it may never speed up all that much. It also depends on the type of weapon you're using. A heavy greatsword is going to have a slower rate of attack then a longsword, and a longsword will have a slower rate of attack then a dagger. But it is all automatic, you only have to click them once.[/quote']Oh, so the combat is automated once you target, it's just only taking your class rate of attack and weapon speed into account on an already slow round system? :(
The camera' date=' being the big pile of crap it is, only moves into proper position once you begin walking forward or backward.[/quote']What?!? That's beyond craziness. :(:facepalm:
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The keymappings I have' date=' which I made no effort to change:

W = forward

S = backward

A = move left

D = move right

Q = rotate left

E = rotate right

The camera, being the big pile of crap it is, only moves into proper position once you begin walking forward or backward. Which needless to say is worthless enough to be totally broken. So I guess the mouse it is, as foreign as I find the whole idea of click-walking my way to everything. I guess I'll find out just how useful that turns out to be.[/quote']Just use the mouse, think of it like a strategy game rather than an FPS/RPG like Oblivion, really this isn't a new thing. NWN1, KOTOR 1 & 2, even the original Balder's Gate basically did the same thing. The difference here is that the camera is being held by a drunk guy, the interface itself I have never had a problem with.Really, you don't want to enven be using movement keys in combat because it's all turn based, side-stepping to the left will not stop that Orc's claymore from connecting.There's also the pause button, of course.

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I'm aware of the pause feature, and aware of how BG and BG2 both worked. NWN2 is neither of those and does not contain an interface worthy of comparisons to such greatness. BG+BG2 actually worked, you know?The mouse gets the job done, badly, and only if you set explore mode and look straight down over the world plane. No other view point is getting the job done. It's barely passable even like this. Honestly I don't see how you guys put up with this game with this much hassle.One should note I've never played KOTR or KOTR2 but if they have this type of interface I'm not likely to either. I really do think someone somewhere had an anurism halfway through programming it and nobody bothered to replace him.

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Actually the interface for KOTOR is incredibly good, both by comparison and pretty much in general. WASD works pretty well out of the box, the camera almost never fucks you (the odd hijink, but nothing to write home about), the list goes on. It's kind of why I was talking about it in my NWN2 review - you know Bioware and Obsidian worked on the KOTOR series, which had a really great camera, but somehow with all that went into NWN2, a good camera just wasn't there.Too, NWN2 would be a much better BG clone if you could actually blood well zoom the hell out. Anger.

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Hmm, I've not played KOTOR or KOTOR2 either, but I definitely played BG and BG2 plenty...So, if the combat system is so slow, why do you need a pause?

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You don't really, the only thing I ever found I needed pause for was if I needed to walk away, or if I had my party set to puppet mode so they didn't do retarded shit.

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Oh, ok, that sounds like about how I usually play then, I was thinking maybe you needed to pause it to issue party attack orders or something.

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