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[Dungeons and Dragons: Neverwinter] PA Server is Beholder!
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...Unless that came after Cryptic sold CoH, I can't even remember now.
I hope it ends up being for 4th ED what NWN was to 3rd ED : a god damm all-included virtual package of the PNP game in a virtual realtime environment, packaged with a powerful but easy to use module builder, online capability and... perisistant worlds wich are free to use once you got the "core" game.
NWN is not a game in my opinion. Okay it comes with campaigns, but thats not its essence. Its essence is being a virtualization of the PnP game, and a quite good one. Much better than NWN2, albeit with expansions and subsequent patches its also a good game in its own right... but its "just" a game.
Based on what they've said on the payment system my guess is that they'll have an MMO with a box fee, no sub and a load of DLC including various stuff that people can add into their own quests and maps.
That doesn't sound too bad and might turn out to be interesting but it wouldn't really be a true successor to NWN imho.
This actually sounds really good to me. I would buy that product, and pick and choose the DLC I found most interesting. I would pony up $50 for this product if this was the plan.
MechWarrior Online: Khyber Pryde
No. It's worse.
And to show more proof how bad it is, Bill Slaviscek was FIRED last week at WOTC. FIRED. FRAGGED. As others were in Wizard's RPG R&D department.
And D&D novels are ending.
And Paizo's miniature's line will be expanding beyond the basic set you mentioned.
2E-3E wasn't even a split, D&D surged after 3E. It was a win. A huge win. It saved D&D. In fact, WOTC saved TSR from its own ineptitude and one of the key ways it did this was to shred 2E, embrace 3E and bring back many of the elements that 2E shunned. 4E was a massive step backward from that.
So much so, that with Slaviscek fired, we're about 12-18 months away from seeing D&D announce that it will move in a new bold direction again.
It's good you play PF. It's a solid game.
And I love D&D. I love Wizards. I want them to succeed. But the reality is 4E didn't work.
No, 4E was a step back, make no mistake. They'd have made more money with a cleaner, tighter revision of 3.5. 4E was seen (rightly) as too radical a departure from the roots of the game and most of all, as a miserable money grab, when it failed to deliver iconic pieces of D&D in its core set. The idea that 2E to 3E also fractured the community is not correct. Sure some fans stuck to 2E, but for the most part 3E was a boon for D&D. 4E, by contrast, fizzled shortly after the core books released. It also broke too abruptly with the open source community. I agree, Wizards had some right to pull back from its open source commitment, but the abrasive break seemed too much like a middle finger to the fans.
Bill's dismissal is a recognition of 4E's failure. This, I firmly believe will be made even more apparent in the next 12 to 18 months.
Slaviscek made too many bad moves. I mean he was one of the chief advocates for Dreamblade too, (an AWFUL mistake for Wizards that cost them a ton of moneu). He was awful a chief advocate for GleeMax, another HUGE misfire for Wizards. Its good he's gone. It will help the brand revitalize and rethink itself.
Bill does great work and has a spectacular resume. I mean he invented the term "Twi'lek" for crying out loud. I have massive respect for him.
But for D&D, it was time for him to move on. He'll land softly, somewhere. He'll go to EA (where Wizards employees often seem to go), or he'll go to Paizo, or start something of his own and thrive. But for D&D it was time for him to let go. He was hurting it. This happens to just about everyone in a creative industry.
I wish him well and look forward to see where D&D goes from here.
If I were Wizards I'd farm out the content production entirely. Keep the rights to the brand, but license it out to content makers. You can augment that process with some of your own targeted skus (like revamping the core books every 2 years), but farm the rest out. It's too expensive, the margins are low and the sales are dwindling. Smaller companies (hey like Paizo) can make a go of it, but Hasbro has bigger fish to fry.
But I'm just a moron with an opinion, nothing more, so it is entirely possible (and indeed very likely) my ideas completely suck.
D&D 4e was doing fine... but then they decided to make what is essentially D&D 4.5 and called it... Essentials. This led to a break in design methodology and the players rightly protested it. The devs however said the Essentials class design and the books would only be a run of ten products.
They lied.
Essentials is the default design method for all future products now and it's created a muddle mess of things with two editions of D&D that while they are compatible, are not alike and not of the same quality. It'll be interesting to see which version of D&D 4e that Cryptic is using in Neverwinter.
Lets not feed the troll maybe.
On the topic of Essentials, I think it's kind of hit or miss. Thief and Slayer? Not a fan, too bland. Hexblades and Blackguards? A++ can I have some more? I think Essentials does pretty good when the design methodology is applied to classes and concepts with a narrower focus and less of a need for the sheer wealth of options that say, Clerics or Fighters being more of a catch all possess.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Stop it.
I am not a troll. I love D&D. Loved it for decades. I love WOTC, purchased a lot of their product in my time.
I just cite the facts on the ground:
Slaviscek and others in D&D R&D were fragged last week.
Paizo is expanding their brand and hiring.
D&D is shrinking their brand and firing.
3E's sales lifted D&D and TSR was near bankruptcy when purchased by WOTC, effectively saving D&D's life as a brand, so the idea that the 2e-3e split was similar to the 3e-4e split is a lie.
That's not trolling and its not bold sweeping claims. Those are the facts on the ground. Don't hate the messenger...just face the facts that WOTC"s recent stewardship of the greatest game ever invented has sucked. And it is not only okay to say so, it demonstrates a sincere love of the game, to recognize what is going on.
Sorry guy, I am happy to move onto other discussion about NWN, but D&D is a mess right now. And it does not do D&D one bit of good to put your head in the sand and pretend otherwise. And worse, calling me a troll just drags the discussion down to petty personal insult.
This isn't personal at all. I don't delight in this situation. I want D&D to thrive and given how starved for fantasy gaming product the market has right now, it's completely tragic that it is not thriving.
A bunch of 3.5/AD&D die hards bemoaning the lack of support for their preference and wishing dearly that 4E would be a financial failure does not make it so. And as previously mentioned, the notion that a thriving Paizo and a thriving 4E are mutually exclusive is more than a little bit of an assumption.
Bottom line? Insufficient data, try again later.
Edit: Oh wait I forgot a point!
I guess if you're working from the fundamental assumption that the 3E/4E split entails some manner of financial downturn, but as we just went over that's hard (read: impossible) to prove conclusively. Diehards clung to 2E and spurned 3E as "not real D&D" much the same as 3.5/Pathfinder die hards do so 4E, what isn't similar?
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Once you get to this you don't really need to read much more
There is no argument there, there is no reason as to why 3e>4e. There isn't even an acknowledgment that the distinction might be a preference based on intangibles. No, it is cold hard objective fact that 3e>4e. Why? Because! And that is why 4e must be failing.
That's not a "they're dying" thing, I don't know. And even if they were? Someone would just buy up the company cheap and use the brands to do something completely different. Hell, Atari is still alive, which means some things just don't die. I suspect D&D is going to be one of those that can limp along for YEARS even when it's "dying" due to very low costs if they retreat to the core parts of the brand (drop books, figurines, blah blah).
You know, while this game isn't going to do jack to draw people to the brand I'd bet, if they had another Torment or Bioware-done D&D game, things would probably pick up, at least for awhile.
Uh... what does 4e not have that 3e does? There are still base classes, prestige classes (paragon paths), and epic classes in both games. The only things really different are that spellcasters aren't all powerful like they used to be and there's no Vancian spellcasting. Everything else is essentially the same or similar enough as to not matter.
There is no point in arguing about it without the space to get deep into what makes the system tick and explain why certain things are better or worse[which I am happy to do so in the right setting(probably PM)]. And if you will allow me to bring in some personal experiences with your argumentation which may be a bit out of date, getting into an argument like this is not the kind of thing that is conductive to your getting unjailed.
Because it continues to be a level-based class-based RPG, it won't really appeal to me as a Pen and Paper game. Currently, I'm playing Shadowrun, Earthdawn (because if you HAD to play a Level/Class RPG in a dungeon crawl style, you might as well play a good one), and One Roll Engine as my tabletop games (I will note that most of the "innovations" of 4th Edition was done first in Earthdawn 20 years ago, from Points of Light to Melee Powers that match Spellcasting Powers to Healing Surges). However, I consider the years I spent developing, GMing, and playing Neverwinter Nights 1 some of the best online/CRPG gaming years of my life. You can do almost anything with Aurora and NWScript.
If they include a robust adventure creator like The Forge in Star Trek Online and the ability to GM (or at least, fake it with scripting) your own adventures, this would be worth a look. Being able to create custom content will bring it much closer to "playing tabletop, but online" than "generic sandbox or themepark MMO".
I'm hoping for more, but my expectation is a hack'n'slash generator - you'll basically be able to create a dungeon layout, throw in some mobs, plop a treasure chest down at the end and call it a day.
But maybe I'm just setting my expectations really, really low.
Steam, Planetside 2
With Cryptic, that's probably a good idea. Lofty ideas, shit execution, then a year and a half of patches trying to figure out what the hell they're doing.
This is correct. For most people, their favorite form of D&D is the first one they played. Which is what leads to goofy shit like idolizing Gygax and championing silly terms like Gygaxian Naturalism while simultaneously being a 3.5 diehard.
Sad, but also realistic. I'm unconvinced we'll see anything like NWN1 again anytime soon. I'll miss it.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
NwN was my introduction to D&D, which is why I still play it on occasion even now.
I didn't know anyone that played tabletop D&D when I was growing up, and I lived in a small town where it wasn't really sold anywhere. And since it was pre-internet...
Anyway, playing NwN got me interested enough that I tried the tabletop game last year, playing 4e with some guys from work. It was entertaining enough, though with a good group it would've been better. We had two guys that were constant no-shows, and our DM...
Well, while he was quiet and reserved at work, as a DM at home he was an angry drunk. We died a lot. :lol:
Steam, Planetside 2
I think this new product has a potential to outpace the content creation in previous NWN iterations. If only because it will be simpler and probably less buggy. This should open the door to artistically talented people, who simply have good stories to tell, but lack the skill (or ability) to deal with intense scripting and coding the older iteration of NWN forced you to learn.
Sure, the mechanics of those stories might be simpler, but the stories themselves could be far more interesting. And we now live in a world far more open (and familiar) with fantasy gaming than ever before, so the perspective players and GMs out there are far more diverse than ever. This could yield content, that we never saw in previous expansions.
I think the time for really intriguing (but simple) content generation has come. I don't know if NWN provides the definitive solution to this, because I think they might lack the money to really take MMOs to the next level.
But I do know stories, good stories sell a game more than we realize. That they sell a game more than the "step and fetch" model that people think fuels WOW. I think SW:TOR might prove this to some degree. I think NWN has a chance of showing how you can expand your narrative core in a game.
I think NWN will not be a juggernaut, but might be looked upon as one of those games that set the table for the next revolution in MMOs. That is my hope anyway.
You are clearly intelligent and passionate Sky. I'd love to buy you a beer and discuss this more. If you are in the Seattle area, lets do exactly that. I can even tell you things, that I can't divulge here, that might make you see why I am so adamant in my opinion.
Until then however, lets give the readers of this thread a break from my monotonous, poorly constructed rebuttals and shift back to NWN specifically.
Also Neverwinter Nights Podcast grabbed Shane Hensley, executive producer, for a chinwag.
Don't watch the videos for the "chinwag". They only got him recorded on audio.
The image posted on the main Foundry info page, that actually shows the mapper and the options is exciting.
COH's content generator lacked custom maps and lacked the ability to put objects in precise places (you could only say where you generally wanted them).
The limited details we have here, seem to suggest all those limitations are lifted. But at the same time, the excruciating scripting required for the original NWN isn't necessary, plus the graphics kick butt.
Awesome.
If you look at Star Trek Online's version of custom content, The Forge, it's actually fairly robust and easy to use. There are a lot of great little modules on there. The problem will be integrating those custom content modules with the MMO at large, since dungeon crawls have the obvious effect of rapidly boosting power levels all across the board.
EDIT: NWScript may seem excruciating to some folks, I guess. It's just a modified (and simplified, using plain language) version of C++ that's a scripting language rather than a programming language. But with that complexity, you also can do things that you can't do with a simple editor. For example, you can have Goblins that hack down trees and make their own spears. You can have Orcs that set bombs as booby traps, running away from the party, and then ambushing them later. I personally scripted a hit location system and armor damage/durability systems on my persistent world, among hundreds of other little things (sentient swords that insult you and sometimes leap out of your hands to fight on their own, the ability for Bards to learn alternate bardsongs from various groups, a summon monster "capture" system like Pokemon, etc.). The scripting was totally unnecessary to building mods in NWN 1 and 2, though, since all of the useful ones were built into the game world objects. I think the main difficulty was the nonsensical "resref" and "tag" system that made it very confusing to spawn entities dynamically in the game world, but I digress.
I've long since forgotten how to do all that haha.
I loved working with their engine.
My main problem came from when I played with the faction editor (which was badly bugged at the time I used it, but the bugs were undocumented). I tried to create a Halfling tavern, with two distinct factions in it and it became a mess once you entered the tavern.The game froze during a trial of one of my large modules and when I rebooted, the module itself was corrupted and unusable.
I had no backup and at least a week of work was lost.
This was very early in the game's release and I learned later that faction editing was resolved and crashing and file corruption were less frequent.
I loved what I made though and went back later to make simpler adventures.
One of things I liked most, was I could "strip" players of items upon entry into the module, even bar them from full access if they were not at a certain level. So I could ensure players entered a session at an appropriate power level. I could even use unique item markers to denote where you were at in a story and plot accordingly (as long as you did not delete the item). It was really rich. Clues could have in-depth descriptions and the dialog editor was really robust.
It was a great tool. I look forward to the new iteration.
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
there goes all my excited feelings for this game
wtb neverwinter nights 3 i guess