No, listen, that I know myself. However, let's be clear, it's a long game, and one single play through by one bug tester would unavoidably have run into the 'residual follow me mode while in combat -> suddenly stop attacking, run back to leader and ask whether he should attack, (while everyone else is getting butchered)' kind of situation. Doing things right in this game is simply too hard, or too complicated - see the camera - and in any case it's ridiculous to no end, and had the game got released five years later, it'd have made a meme. Unequivocally.

Ok, so... It's broken. I mean,

>> I'm trying to keep my companions by a door in order not to get overwhelmed by challenging level mobs. Then the mob charges, right towards the ranged DPS who's way behind, and I'm like well whatevs, the tiefling is blocking the d... And then the tiefling literally walks backwards away from the door so as to let the mob pass. Literally, as I'm telling you. He didn't even need to stop running.

>> I'm using my companions to distract the mobs, as I'm trying to stealth my way into an enemy base. Combat begins, but I'm hidden away from any possible accidental bumping into by mobs. Well, alarmed by the noise, a mob opens a door, comes in, then instead of attacking my comps who are right there in the darned middle of the room, the fella makes an U turn, ignoring the combat, and comes straight towards me, where I'm hiding behind a column -- walking. Then stands right in front of me, then finally detects me and starts attacking me.

>> Load a game close to mobs. I'm dead upon starting.

>> Load a game where everyone's unconscious except for me, I'm hiding from mobs nearby. Upon loading, suddenly everyone's by me, back alive, completely in the open. With 1HP. We get our a**es handed to us. Please tell me this one was unfixable.

This all happened in the very same dungeon!

And that's the thing, just give me 30 more minutes with this game, and I'll be back with more stories like these.

Yet don't get me wrong, I completely see the good intention behind the game. I won't call it love, though, because if you love a game and you release what was released (it's the 2nd copy I buy in 10 years, but call me biased if you will), something is wrong. The first time I played I actually could not progress after a point where a bug completely broke it for me.

And yet I tried it all. Some community mods, stories and whatnot, oh my god was I trying to love this game. I need a game with a character creator like this, with an IP that's as flexible as this one is, it's pretty much everything I needed. But then why the da** did they make it a railed, empty themepark? There's the druid dog dialogue, and then the main quest to the Docks of Neverwinter -- this game is called Neverwinter Nights! Yet there're more missions in the previous village! I go back to past zones, and not even zombies respawn, it's miserable.

So, yes. I do like the game. And because I like it, I say: What they made is not fair.

And one last thing. If you know what you're releasing, and I'm talking about 2006, the least you do is putting together an autosave that saves the progress every five minutes. Seriously, I don't want to call anyone anything, because it's useless at this point, but seriously.

It's fine if you think it's broken for you, or it's too hard/complicated to do things right for you, but since these things are not problems for me, the game is not broken or too hard or complicated for everyone. In fact, I love the game and enjoy playing it, and wish you could enjoy it like I do (I also really liked the harvest festival beginning that you didn't like). You keep mentioning things you hate that are design choices specific to the OC, so I've said several times that you should try the other campaigns that do things differently because you might like those better, but I really don't think you should keep trying in your current state of mind, since it's frustrating you so much.

Even so, I never felt like there weren't enough quests in the city of Neverwinter itself. There are things in Neverwinter that you haven't gotten to yet. Not everything is available right from the start.

As for one of the things you mentioned, since the OC revives all dead companions with 1HP at the end of combat, yes, your companions will be alive and next to you if you load a saved game, so if you want to be hiding, you shouldn't try that in the OC. But in SoZ, for example, your dead companions will not be revived at the end of combat.

I have played all the 1st party content. Including playing the OC and MOTB at least twice and I did NOT have this problem. Even if this was a problem, it would be a trivial one.

Hit space and the game is paused. This is not an FPS, you can pause anytime, and adjust orders to any/all characters. Take direct control of the character that is "misbehaving", issue the global "Attack Nearest" command, etc...


Haven't seen this, but you can't count on the exact position of party members in combat, unless you are directly controlling them, which is the only time I try to block doorways with a character. You can't expect AI from 10 years ago to read your mind (or even modern AI IMO).

Stealth is not guaranteed, especially at low levels. But you are better off stealthing alone rather than putting the enemy on a combat footing by having nearby unstealthed members.

I played a lot of stealthy characters through a lot of Mods, never really had any issues that were not expected: sometimes they see you! That is why it is good to have HIPS if you want to rely on stealth a lot.

Save behavior has always pulled the party together, in both NWN1 and NWN2. You should learn this pretty quick and plan accordingly. Why would you save a game with your whole party down?

Save often in safe locations. That is just common sense.

Really I am not sure what you are comparing this with. NWN1 does many of the things you are complaining about, and they are mostly trivial, and easily dealt with using common sense.

NWN2 is a difficult game. Especially to people who has been playing lots of Skyrim and those cheap MMOs where you can kill a dragon while you are only level 1. In real RPGs, a dragon would brush her teeth, yawn, sip her tea and occasionally smile at you while you are trying to hurt her. That is why NWN2 is difficult. Because you are spoiled by the comfort of all those cheap so called RPG.

So you have to empty your cup (your brain) from your past experiences to be able to understand and enjoy NWN2. I am guessing you have not played any of the infinity games (Baldur's Gate, Ice Wind Dale, Planescape: Torment). Forget everything you know.

And then, once you learn the dynamics of the game, you will see how easy it is and will start enjoying the game. And then you will understand that everything you called as bug is actually a feature of the game. You wont expect your level 3 rogue to hide from everything, you wont expect the game to save every 5 minutes because you will realize that would be utterly silly since that 5 minute might come any minute ruining the game. You will learn to have a different saves and learn to save both before and after fights.

This is not Diablo 3. This is not Skyrim. This is not WOW.

Actually, I can point out a game that is not considered easy where you *can*, indeed, kill a dragon at level one; namely Final Fantasy 5. In that game, there is a superboss named Shinryu, who is an extremely powerful dragon; in fact, so powerful that its initial Tidal Wave attack can easily do around 6000+ damage to your entire party (and your characters might have, maybe, 3000 HP at this point; certainly less than 4000, and this is assuming high HP jobs).

Turns out, people have, with the help of substantial knowledge of the game mechanics, beaten that dragon with a level 1 character solo; players have even done it with that character in Toad status (which makes your normal attack useless and prevents the use of most spells). Doing this is not exactly easy, but it is, indeed, possible.

Anyway, you are complaining about the camera guys; since this is an WRPG, why don't you just find them and kill them? That should solve your problem.
Actually, in Baldur's Gate 2, you can one hit kill the final boss at a low level by shapechanging into an Iron Golem and then backstabbing him. (Remember, there's no level requirement for using scrolls in that game, and you can backstab with Iron Golem fists. The speedrun actually uses Yoshimo (with the help of a few glitches) to do this deed.)

Speaking of glitches, I hear that in one of the NWN games it is possible for a high level Monk to go fast enough to clip through doors.

Trivial problem? I'm in a 4 people party where there's one single tank, and as everyone else tries their best against mobs in their respective positions, the tank suddenly stops fighting, comes back from front line to ranged positions, dragging his mob with him, leaving dps alone, and then asks whether he should actually attack, and you call that a trivial problem? What does a trascendenfal problem look like for you, then?

Secondly, IDK man, I create a game that's got an strategy combat component to it, I program a combat status where NPCs don't walk away to let mobs pass by default. Doesn't sound that hard. I can't actually think of many combat situations, real or otherwise, where an NPC willingly walks aside to let a mob pass through and flank the party, but that's just me.

Answering your input on stealth: No, man, that's not what I'm talking about. I wasn't in sight. Its not that I was simply hidden. I was away, physically away from combat, hidden god knows where, and there was no logical reason a mob opens a door, sees my companions and his thugs killing each other, shrugs it all off and decides to take a walk around combat, around the dungeon, straight to where I was, again, completely out of sight, then stands right in front of me until he detects me. It's like they're programmed to basically know where everyone is, upon entering a room, even if we're physically and as by mode hidden. Imagine you're playing hide and seek with your brother in a huge depot, and he basically walks straight to where you're hiding, exactly there, without a second thought. Your brother is Charles Xavier or what?

The fact that a 90s game is coded like a 90s game doesn't justify that a 00s game is coded like a 90s game. When you're sneaking away from your dead companions in order to try to solve things as the rogue you are, and then pum they all show up as if by magic, back alive... Man, I mean, there's a reason why that kind of crap doesn't happen in pen and paper D&D, it's called sh*tty coding.

I'm telling you, I like this game way too much to uninstall it for nothing. But as I'm telling you, seriously, there's a combination here of complication (camera, controls, modes, rules) and poor coding (saves, crashes, AI, excessive modulation, poor atmospheric design), that's just the recipe for frustration. And I'm reading an interview they did with one of the creators, back when MOTB was released, and yeah the journalist is completely sweetening the issues, but man it's so evident that the guy just doesn't give a sh*t about the state of the game -- back in 2006, which as we all know was practically unplayable. And it was released actually after oblivion was. What sense does it make? Yeah call me whatever you will, but a sequel to NWN? Even for that single reason the scenarios, explorability, atmosphere... Shouldn't have been like this.

Yes Trivial.

Did someone break into your house and tie you to your chair so you couldn't hit the space bar when a character started moving out of place? Because why would just observe it happening and do nothing if it upset you so much?

Also NWN1/NWN2 are NOT setup like WOW, there are no defined rolls like DPS/Tank, and there is no real "aggro" management. The enemy will always be attacking those who you don't want them to attack. You can't draw them away. You have to run and kill them.

Unless you issue specific orders, your other characters will move and attack whatever they feel like, this will almost never represent any kind of cohesive strategy. Enemy will also not flow blindly into your strategy setup.

Think of it like the fog of war. Combat is more fluid and unpredictable, so you need to make continual adjustments in difficult combats.

But hard combats are rare. For most combats, I usually would charge in with my main char (A strong Ranger) and let the others catch up and do their own thing. I would then go where I was needed in the battle, aiding those in trouble, double teaming certain enemies to take them down sooner.

Other times I would issue "Stand your ground" command then stealth in alone, and engage the mage or other high threat range target. Once I was in position, I would then issues an "attack nearest" command to bring the party into the mix. And again, control the battle only when/where needed. Stealthing like this worked the vast majority of the time as well (still Ranger char).

Either way, you don't count on AI party member making perfect decisions, you monitor and adjust as needed. Since you can take total control of any character at any time and pause at will to issue orders, throwing up your hands and complaining that your "grand strategy" is failing because of poor AI, is misplaced blame.

If your strategies are failing it's on you because you have total control over all characters, any time you want it.

But it's not chess, don't over strategize. Just attack and adjust as necessary.