Help me not hate NWN2

[TVC15]

I really, really want to like it, and I swear to god I enjoyed it more during my previous attempt at a playthrough.  I have no idea if I had it configured differently then so it was more playable, or if I was just more tolerant of the game's shortcomings back then, but I just can't enjoy playing it right now.  If anyone can offer some suggestions, mods, fixes, or options I've missed (I can't find auto-pause anywhere, I KNOW I am missing that somewhere, that has to be a feature), please tell me, because I'm about ready to give up on this game again.

The issues:

-  Party control.  The AI is terrible, but if you turn puppet mode on (so you have direct control of the other party members), the characters no longer follow the main character at all, meaning that you have to manually move each and every character every step of the way.  This is totally obnoxious, since there is no Infinity Engine-style bounding box to select multiple characters at once.  I want total control of my characters in combat, however, I do not want to have to micromanage MOVING them when I am jaunting around town.  This flaw makes the game just about totally unplayable.  There *has to* be a fix for it.

-  Even when you have AI turned on, letting the computer do everything and playing the gameby itself, the computer controller characters always lag behind the main character too much in movement, even f you have them set to follow closely.  This is especially terrible in areas where there is frequent combat, since you may just want to keep pressing forward, but the AI controlled players are taking their god damned time playing catch up.  Also, the path-finding is terrible, and you can't crank pathfinding nodes like you could in Infinity Engine games.

-  Since you are pretty much screwed into having to leave the AI of the other players on, you have to constantly wrestle with its dumb quirks, like when while chasing an enemy, it decides to run all over the map, aggroing EVERY FUCKING ENEMY ON IT and delivering them directly to your character, choo choo train style.  This game has the most terrible AI I have had to endure, and it's like its fucking teasing you with the option of total control, but that option is totally unusable.

- The interface is too scattered.  I know this is a western RPG with menus upon menus and numbers upon numbers, but things definitely could have been put together more smoothly. I've been playing the game for 4 nights and I still have no clue where the auto pause options are.  I know they have to exist.  Why is the inventory screen for each character not a tab on their respective character window?  There's no logical reason for that.  It always feels like I am looking harder for things than I should have to, and it doesn't help that I am usually looking for shit in combat, and trying to wrangle in the terrible AI of the other characters.

- Camera control is shit.  I don't have as many issues with it as MAF and Prole, but I do have some.

- Similar to the previously mentioned laginess of the AI characters following you, there is a generalized lagginess about the game when telling characters to perform actions in general.  Take note, the game performs very very nicely on my PC, with a solid framerate and everything cranked--this is not a technical issue on my end.  The game just does not feel snappy.  When you cleck to give a character a movement or action order, expect it to take a moment to register. 

-  I know this is going to seem kind of odd due to all my previous complaints, but the game, on Normal difficulty, is way too easy.  It is clearly fudging die rolls to be on the high end of the scale.  It feels odd to bitch about the game being too easy, but to me it's clear they had to cheese down the difficulty in order to make the turd float.

So here we are, 10 yearsish after the first Infinity Engine game shipped, and we're left with an ugly, performing relative that doesn't even have the decency to try to rip of IE's best-in-practice (though still not perfect) D&D interface.  Yes, patches have made things better since launch, particularly in the area of performance, but the AI is still just terrible.  Even if there are mods that make the game decent, this is totally strike two for Obsidian.  I give Bethesda shit for shipping a game that modders had to fix, Obsidian gets the same treatment, Black Isle legacy or no.

[Smooth Groove]

Did you turn off AA?  Although the game might still seem smooth, performance is definitely not as consistent with AA turned on.  I've checked with Fraps. 

With regards to difficultly, you should play it on Hardcore for maximum enjoyment, at least according to gamespot. 

Neverwinter Nights 2 defaults to a "normal" difficulty setting. This is probably a good difficulty setting if you just want to experience the storyline without too many problems, but if you want to reap the fruit of the game’s combat system, or if you’re used to the traditional D&D pen and paper rules, then bumping the difficulty up to Hardcore is a good idea.

Hardcore difficulty initiates three major changes to combat. First off, your characters will be vulnerable to attacks of opportunity. That means that your enemies will get free attacks on you if they’re within melee range when a character casts a spell or attempts to use a scroll or drink a potion. (Your own characters can always use attacks of opportunity on your enemies, even on normal difficulty.) This makes it much more important to protect your spellcasters by keeping them away from enemies.

Secondly, enemies are allowed to score critical hits on you; they can’t do so on normal difficulty. You’ll take more damage, and thus will have to be more on the ball with things like healing spells and defensive buffs.

Lastly, your area-of-effect spells, like Fireball, will hit your teammates when they’re caught in the radius of effect. This is going to change the way you play quite a bit. On normal difficulty, you can feel free to throw down area of effect spells willy-nilly, since they won’t hit your teammates, but you’ll have to be a lot more cautious on Hardcore.

You've probably played more than me so I don't know if I could offer any good advice.  Personally, I found that the game was much easier for me after I started using the hotkeys.  Like you mentioned, there're just too many menus.  I mostly use the big ones like Spells, Inventory, etc for much faster gameplay. 

I noticed that you had this game as a purchase last week.  Were you frustrated enough to sell it the first time? 

[TVC15]

Unfortunately, difficulty is probably the least of my concerns.  Indeed, with those changes, using the real rules, the game would be even more frustrating to play, what with the terrible AI.

I bought the game when it came out, but I got a CD copy (7 discs).  I misplaced my game disc, so I just bought a new copy of the DVD version cheaply.

I do have AA turned on.  The game runs perfectly smoothly the way things are.  The general sluggish feel of the game is definitely by design.

I'll try with AA off right now to see if the game still feels sluggish, but I see no real evidence that it is a technical issue.  The game, particularly fibrous materials and the hair of charactersm is really really ugly without AA on.

[Van Cruncheon]

the ui is pretty bad. i dunno, while the ai is distinguished mentally-challenged, i never felt it was an impediment to sucess; rather, it was an impediment to a sense of engagement and immersion.

i still think when the game is doing what it does best -- characterization, set piece battles, and certain dungeons -- it's brilliant. when it's doing what it sadly does worst -- standard dungeon trawling and combat controls -- it's a nightmare. it won't disagree that it's a totally bipolar game, but in the end, i wound up having a lot of fun and beating it. note that i'm not excusing the flaws, but that for me d&d-style stat mongering and character building/tweaking, as well as those wonderful dialogue trees, outweight the misery of busted general purpose combat controls.

[Fragamemnon]

As senior NWN2 apologist on this board, I will take a stab at this:

The issues:

-  Party control.  The AI is terrible, but if you turn puppet mode on (so you have direct control of the other party members), the characters no longer follow the main character at all, meaning that you have to manually move each and every character every step of the way.  This is totally obnoxious, since there is no Infinity Engine-style bounding box to select multiple characters at once.  I want total control of my characters in combat, however, I do not want to have to micromanage MOVING them when I am jaunting around town.  This flaw makes the game just about totally unplayable.  There *has to* be a fix for it.

A few things:

Everyone who plays NWN2 with some knowledge of the game recommends the following AI fixpack:

Tony_K's AI

Infinity Engine style bounding box controls are being added in the 1.07 patch, which already has a beta release (not compatible with the above mod yet).

-  Even when you have AI turned on, letting the computer do everything and playing the gameby itself, the computer controller characters always lag behind the main character too much in movement, even f you have them set to follow closely.  This is especially terrible in areas where there is frequent combat, since you may just want to keep pressing forward, but the AI controlled players are taking their god damned time playing catch up.  Also, the path-finding is terrible, and you can't crank pathfinding nodes like you could in Infinity Engine games.

I usually spammed follow me from the broadcast menu when they were lagging behind. It wasn't too bad.

-  Since you are pretty much screwed into having to leave the AI of the other players on, you have to constantly wrestle with its dumb quirks, like when while chasing an enemy, it decides to run all over the map, aggroing EVERY FUCKING ENEMY ON IT and delivering them directly to your character, choo choo train style.  This game has the most terrible AI I have had to endure, and it's like its fucking teasing you with the option of total control, but that option is totally unusable.

Use the "stand your ground"  and "attack  target" broadcast commands, followed by another "stand your ground/follow me" once it is dead to keep them from running off into la-la land.

- The interface is too scattered.  I know this is a western RPG with menus upon menus and numbers upon numbers, but things definitely could have been put together more smoothly. I've been playing the game for 4 nights and I still have no clue where the auto pause options are.  I know they have to exist.  Why is the inventory screen for each character not a tab on their respective character window?  There's no logical reason for that.  It always feels like I am looking harder for things than I should have to, and it doesn't help that I am usually looking for shit in combat, and trying to wrangle in the terrible AI of the other characters.

The UI has seen a few fan facelifts, the best one is Slim UI.

- Camera control is shit.  I don't have as many issues with it as MAF and Prole, but I do have some.

Huge fixes in 1.07.

-  I know this is going to seem kind of odd due to all my previous complaints, but the game, on Normal difficulty, is way too easy.  It is clearly fudging die rolls to be on the high end of the scale.  It feels odd to bitch about the game being too easy, but to me it's clear they had to cheese down the difficulty in order to make the turd float.

D&D Hardcore mode is the only way to play. The game would be way too easy without it on IMO. You don't get the following in Normal:

- player and party are vulnerable to attacks of opportunity
- enemies are allowed to score critical hits
- area-of-effect spells will hit your teammates

So here we are, 10 yearsish after the first Infinity Engine game shipped, and we're left with an ugly, performing relative that doesn't even have the decency to try to rip of IE's best-in-practice (though still not perfect) D&D interface.  Yes, patches have made things better since launch, particularly in the area of performance, but the AI is still just terrible.  Even if there are mods that make the game decent, this is totally strike two for Obsidian.  I give Bethesda shit for shipping a game that modders had to fix, Obsidian gets the same treatment, Black Isle legacy or no.

Fair enough criticism, though at least I can really enjoy NWN2. I just couldn't get into Oblivion.

[MrAngryFace]

The AI is as bad as NWN's AI, its just there is MORE AI partners now, which makes it seem worse. NWN AI has always sucked. This game is no different.

I suggest shelving the game. I mean youre clearly not having fun, and NWN2 isn't exactly a game the PC community demands people like or even understand. In fact I rarely ever see it mentioned anyway. Just go play something you enjoy instead of mulling around in something you hate.

Me? I played Heroes of Mana for 30 minutes and knew I hated it, which means I get to trade it in. Hating a game is a very strong reaction, and almost impossible to completely turn around into positive feelings.

[ToxicAdam]

Well, I've stated it 100 times. If they could have merged the TOEE combat system with the NWN2 storyline, you would have finally had a game that surpassed BGII.

That's why I played the game on Normal .. the AI is too dumb to trust by themselves and the game crawls to standstill when you are on puppet mode (because of the clunky interface). Combat was easy (I think I may have died three times all game) but the storyline and characters made up for it.

It also helped that I picked a tank for my main character (dwarf fighter/weaponmaster). So, Khelgar and I could pretty much cut through 90% of the battles by ourselves. The "boss" battles still offered a bit of a challenge (I actually had to use buffs, spells and healing items).

NWN2 isn't perfect, but it's (sadly) the best party-based western RPG to come out in years.

Use the "stand your ground"  and "attack  target" broadcast commands, followed by another "stand your ground/follow me" once it is dead to keep them from running off into la-la land.

^^

I think this alone will alleviate much of your frustration White Man. Once you hotkey these commands, the combat becomes much more enjoyable.

[Smooth Groove]

I do have AA turned on.  The game runs perfectly smoothly the way things are.  The general sluggish feel of the game is definitely by design.

I'll try with AA off right now to see if the game still feels sluggish, but I see no real evidence that it is a technical issue.  The game, particularly fibrous materials and the hair of charactersm is really really ugly without AA on.

Fraps show that performance does drop quite a bit even with just 2x AA turned on, at 1920x1200.  My overclocked 8800 GTX at 1920x1200 probably performs the same as your GTX at 1680x1050.  With no AA on, the minimum framerate is like 40 outside.  With 2x AA, the minimum framerate drops to 25, which makes it very sluggish whenver there's a lot of activity outside. 

[MrAngryFace]

AA sux, play at 1280x1024

[TVC15]

My framerate is perfect. I even have v-sync turned on.  I experimented with settings last night, and there was no real significant technical improvement with any AA setting applied.  There was a small hit at 8x, but I only play at 4x anyway.

[Van Cruncheon]

i force v-sync on everything. screen tearing is the new jaggies for me.

[MrAngryFace]

Id much rather have V-Sync than AA at high resolutions. AA is meant for dorky low res users.

[Fragamemnon]

my tuning preferences:

A) monitor native res (always)
B) high settings in game
C) extra AF through drivers
D) AA

Better quality texture filtering at high resolutions buys you a lot more IMO than AA does.

[MrAngryFace]

Shadows have always killed my performance, im talking npc shadows tho, neverwinter got a little sluggish with shadows on, lemme tell ya.

I dont spend a lot of money on my PC tho, so it doesnt make sense for me to spend that much time tweaking UP, and instead tweaking for a pleasant middle ground. Its probably as good as its going to get.

[Smooth Groove]

My framerate is perfect. I even have v-sync turned on.  I experimented with settings last night, and there was no real significant technical improvement with any AA setting applied.  There was a small hit at 8x, but I only play at 4x anyway.

I guess it depends on your perception of framerate.  I can't bear it once it drops to below 35.  NWN2 is kinda weird in that there is a huge disparity in performance going from indoors to outdoors.  At 1920x1200, I can turn on 4xAA and still maintain 60fps indoors but 2x outdoors is much less playable with frequent drops to 20ish fps. I have Vsync on too.  Tearing is far more annoying than jaggies.  I really hate that so many console games have vsync off in order to maintain framerates. 

[Howard Alan Treesong]

what class am you playing Keith

[TVC15]

what class am you playing Keith

Ranger.  I remembered from earlier playthroughs that it's easiest to be a "tank" in the game (but I think in the first playthrough that I got far in, I was a pally).

[MrAngryFace]

Druids are still completely overpowered imo.  On normal difficulty so are wizards. FIREBALL FIREBALL FIREBALL SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP

[Howard Alan Treesong]

I'm wondering if Warlock is too hard a class for a total fsking D&D n00b

[TVC15]

A little update because things got a little better for me.

I installed the AI update that frag recommended, and, well, it's not as bad.  It's still clearly not good, but the worst behaviour seems to be at least curbed.  I'm still upset that there is an option for complete combat control, but that it is mostly useless, and that partaking of tactical combat is basically a total impossibility due to the bad pathfinding.

I've also been using the Free Map mode, which locks the map in an overhead POV, and scrolls the map when you go to the edge of the screen, Infinity Engine style.  There are still some annoying quirks with it this way, but for the most part is playable.

I encountered a very nasty scripting bug, though, and if it weren't for my constant saving, my game could have been screwed over.  I was talking to a quest NPC in the fort towards the beginning of the game.  Just as he was about to give me a quest, an enemy wolf randomly ran into the fort.  NPCs in the fort attack monsters that randomly wander in, so the NPC abruptly broke conversation in order to attack the wolf.  Unfortunately, once the wolf was dead and the NPC exited combat mode, I could no longer talk to him, and he hadn't given me the quest.  I saved the game and reloaded, seeing if that would reset his state.  It did not.  There was no way I could get my quest.  I loaded up an older save from just before I entered the fort, made sure I had killed EVERYTHING on the map, and did the conversation again and got my quest.  If a scripting bug that blatant is still present in the game this far after release, towards the beginning of the game no less, I shudder to think what other terrible bugs are present.  Save often!