Neverwinter Nights Forum News

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(Originally posted by Veldrin)

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

David Gaider, Designer

Drow: Unless I'm mistaken, I read in a recent sourcebook that there's a whole bunch of drow who have begun to live on the surface and have lost their vulnerability to sunlight. Of course I could be wrong... I did start barfing uncontrollably about half-way through the paragraph. Personally, I don't mind drow so long as they're well-played. When they're run by a player like he's an elf who just happens to be cool and dark-skinned... or a Drizzt clone... that's when I begin to get nauseous. At any rate, I loved writing the drow city in BG2. I'd love to get another crack at it.

SoU Campaign: Well, one thing about having a smaller campaign is that we're fitting more into less areas. So you don't have wide open vistas that exist just for exploration... but, then, that's not really the point of the adventure. That shouldn't mean it lacks for immersion or excitement, however. As for structure, let's see. The first chapter has a hub... sort of... but only in terms of the fact that it's the town you return to. The areas don't radiate out like a wheel or anything like that. You can also do the quests involved in any order, but I can safely say that they aren't structured to be completely independent... the progression you choose will alter how the chapter flows and affect your subsequent encounters. Can't really say much more than that without going into the story. The other chapters are entirely different. Um... no hub, no spokes, no respawning (at least not at this point). I can't really describe what's going on except to say that the structure is less important than the flow of the story. Does it sound like I'm telling you what you want to hear? Maybe so. We do listen to feedback, you know. The adventure is much shorter, though, like I said previously... and that will be noticeable... but hopefully that doesn't mean it's less enjoyable.

Alignment Shifts: What defines a truly 'neutral' act is pretty difficult, however. The only one I would say that qualifies is something that restores the balance... or perhaps exemplifies 'fairness', but not fairness in the concept of being good but fairness as in being equal with good or evil irrelevant concepts. Unfortunately not much fits under there.

I'll tell you one thing we're trying currently (we'll see if it pans out... maybe this is a good spot to get some feedback on it) is approaching the alignment shifting a little differently. By this I mean that not all acts that can potentially shift alignment need exclude neutrality... you could have acts that are 'Chaotic', for instance, and these are acts that would be clearly chaotic in all instances. Even Neutral characters would lean more towards Chaotic as a result of performing them. But another type of act would be 'Non-Lawful'... these are acts that would be acceptable to both Chaotic and Neutral characters, and only actually Lawful characters would receive the Chaotic hit and slide towards Neutrality. As an example (and perhaps a poor one, but here goes):

Let's say a character breaks a deal he's made... perhaps he's decided to double the money he's asking for after the fact (which does go back to the greedy bit we said we were trying to avoid, but oh well... keep in mind this is Chaotic we're talking here and not Evil). This is not somehting a Lawful character would do... but a Neutral character? It's likely not against his ethos. So only a Lawful character would receive the Chaotic "hit".
Now let's say that same character not only broke his agreement, but double-crossed the person he made the agreement with in a very large way. That would be a Chaotic hit for both Lawful and Neutral characters.

That's what we're trying out currently. The problem, really, once you start looking at all the angles is that you can only do it when the ethos behind the decision is really clear... you don't want a player sitting back and shouting expletives at the screen because his paladin had a valid reason for breaking that deal. You also have to make sure that there's just as many opportunities to move along both ends of the scale... if you hit a character for performing Chaotic acts you have to also hit them for the Lawful ones just as much, as well as make sure there are opportunities for such. This is the current theory, anyhow. We'll see if it pans out. My only doubt is that in the space of a small campaign there might not be enough time to implement all the opportunities for each side of the scale, as I mentioned, but we'll see.

Treasure System: As was mentioned, we're playing with the treasure system that we used in the NWN campaign for SoU. That said, I will say that you definitely will not find chests and crates and barrels everywhere again, either. Well, okay, barrels maybe... but it's probably going to have, like, fish in it and not gold. We're making an effort to restrict treasure to what's found on your opponents and where it's logical to find loot.

SoU Functions: Besides a few odds and ends, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the new scripting functions in SoU relate mostly to the cut-scene controls.

Quote: Well, sure. But I didn't think you'd GIVE us that. I was looking for a less demanding change. But if you think you can knock a few programmers around and get us pricing by Base Item Type, go for it.

Well... the base item sort is the least likely of the lot to get done. But I'm willing to wrestle the programmers for it, and let's face facts: I got the weight advantage on them all. I'm not sure you could apply a modifier to a page. Sorting the items into their pages is more a GUI function than an actual characteristic of the items themselves (and I imagine it sorts them by base item type, anyhow). And to the earlier question: yes, you could still have stores that didn't adjust their prices according to Appraise. The OpenStore scripting command itself remains unchanged.

Quote: I really like the idea of the store gold pot. In the PnP campaigns I've played, it wasn't always possible to offload every little item I got ahold of. Sometimes I'd have to find a wealthier merchant to buy some of those high priced gems, or perhaps find a wealthy collector.

Sure, but keep in mind that this is like camping... it's one of those things that is really easy to do in PnP but very difficult to do in a CRPG. In PnP, the DM can just say "okay, you camp for the night" or "you spend several days finding buyers for all your loot". Such skimming over time isn't really possible on the computer... do you really want to run around from merchant to merchant trying to convince them to buy portions of your loot? I agree with you on the high-priced stuff, to a degree. Certainly I feel uneasy when I'm selling magic items to tavernkeepers for tens of thousands of gold pieces... if he has that kind of money, what the heck is he doing running a tavern?! But then again trying to find someone wealthy enough to buy the best stuff is good for a one-time quest... doing it repeatedly doesn't sound so great. The answer may be just to give out less loot... but that has it's own consequences and will be a design issue you're always going to have to face.

Quote: Just out of curiousity - of your personal list of things you would really like to see added/implemented in SoU or XP2 - what percentage have you coerced the programmers into including so far? Versus what percentage have they told you really just can't be done? (Leaving, I am sure, a long list of things that you are still harassing them about).

Programmers always tell you it can't be done... at least initially. And as for coercing, I'm just joking on that... I don't do any coercing, myself. I submit the stuff I want to see done to the producer or lead technical designer and then argue with them if I don't get what I want and I feel like crying about it. As for the number of things I have wanted to put in that I have been given a definite 'yea' or 'nay' on so far (as opposed to 'we'll see')... I'd say it's about 50/50 so far, which actually isn't that bad.

Quote: It would be nice to see a choice if you are a Druid to use animal empathy on a flying bird and learn that the enemy went into a secret cave nearby that you couldn't normally find.

Done! We're making an effort to include plenty of animals in the SoU campaign that you can talk to and often gain useful information from. Sometimes being able to use animal empathy is an alternate route to solving a quest and there's even a couple of small quests that Druids and Rangers can only get. (We did this in a few spots in the NWN OC... trying to do it regularly in SoU. One of the advantages of a much smaller campaign is that you can concentrate more on the individual plots for extra neat-o-ness.) We've also made sure that there's animals in a few places where using Animal Empathy to gain control over them can be very handy.

Quote: It would be nice to have tracking scripts for Rangers.

While it's difficult to script real-time tracking, we do have something planned that's similar: the 'track' placeable. In the SoU campaign, Rangers can glean significant information from these frequently-placed tracks ("about two dozen humanoids, perhaps kobolds, came through this area very recently running south...") while others get much less.

Quote: Use spells more often in conversations i.e., Fear, Scare, etc.

Done! (Where appropriate, anyway.) We also allow Bards to Fascinate, healing spells to be used and even divinations to gain info.

Quote: It would be nice to find uses for useless spells like Virtue as an act of kindness. Casting Mage Armor or Shield on a farmer who is going to be impaled by and Orc arrow (all done during a scripted conversation "Suddenly and arrows whiz past you and you see one heading straight for Darnin, the poor farmer!

Mmmm... nothing like this, so far, except in perhaps an isolated instance or two. This particular example doesn't work for us (no narrative), but I get what you're aiming at. I'll try to keep it in mind.

Tom Ohle, Communications Associate

SoU & Familiars: Unfortunately, Wyverns will not be in Shadows of Undrentide. There _will_ be new familiars... just not wyverns.

Jonathan Epp, Quality Assurance

Quote: Will it automaticly work on all merchants using the standard "store" setup-- or will we need to add a specific script in order for it to work. I'm hoping for a simple checkmark --Appraise applies(defaulted to yes). Otherwise Appraise will quickly become useless in Multi-player games AND it will be uselss in the NWN OC.

To get back to the original question, I think there are a couple of things Dave may not yet be aware of.

1) The merchants in the official campaign have been updated to use the player's Appraise skill.

2) The wizards for setting up stores in the toolset have also been updated. The wizards have a checkbox which allows the module builder to specify whether they want Appraise to be used or not (the default setting is to use it).