Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Darien)

Trent T. Oster, Producer

Level Gaining: We plan on the end user completing our story (60 hours) around level 12-14. The 60 hour play time is probably a little conservative, as you could easily spend a lot more time in our story. We have to re-work the advancement schedules a bit in NWN due to the nature of combat. Pen and Paper advancement is very fast, due to the fact it take an hour or so to play a combat. In NWN the same combat is over in 60 seconds. We are striving for fast advancement at the lower levels, tapering off as you get to be higher level. We aren't out to re-invent the pen and paper advancement sceme, but we do have to "interpret" the desired advancement vs the requirements of our game.

Treasure and XP: Treasure and XP division are huge issues in a multiplayer game. We are planning to deal with XP by sharing it among the party and giving a bonus multiplier for the number of people in the party. ie: soloing a monster you get 100% of 100%. A party of two players, each player gets 50% of 110%. (You would also get more creatures in the encounter, thus higher xp overall). We fought over this point for a long time and the key issue is: Does the cleric deserve fewer XP for healing the party and enhancing the stronger frontline characters than if he/she were fighting alongside. After a long "Discussion" we came to the conclusion there was no fair way to split XP without making the system so complex it became brittle and subject to bugs, so we came up with the sharing system.
As to treasure. The "discussions" on XP were mild compared to the treasure ones. After days of "calm", "Rational", "Discussion" we decided to leave it to the players. If the thief can't be found during the combat and the treasure just doesn't seem very good it might be time to hold the thief upside down and shake him/her for a bit. We are looking into the possibility of "snooping" in someone's inventory for this purpose.

Module Building Tools: The sweet thing about NWN is the rapid turnaround. I can make a module and play it almost immediately. You fire up the toolset, make a few changes, save the file out, launch the game and load it up. Out of all the development tools I've worked with the toolset and game have a very fast revision loop. So, to answer your question, I'd have to say both. Building is really cool, you create a script, fire up the game and nothing happens like you expect. You fire up the tool, fix the obvious stupid thing you did and then launch the game and whammo, it works. Sometimes it even does exactly what you intended. I think a number of people will never touch the tools and NWN will still be great entertainment. I also believe some people will use the game only as a debugging and testing platform, concentrating soley on the tools. Either way it will be fun.

Other Last-Minute Additions? We are quite interested in adding as much functionality to the game as possible. The possible additions with NPC's are very interesting and we have discussed a great number of options. However, we are very tight on development time and we have to concentrate on the core systems to ensure a robust and enjoyable game. An expansion or sequel would be a great place to build on the solid base we are building in NWN.

And the plot is...? We ran about 15 different story concepts in the initial proposal for NWN. The Lizard Queen Plot was one of those initial proposals. The story as it currently stands differs radically from all the early proposals. Have no fear, a few lines of ad copy do not a spoiler make.

Death and Resurrection: The default death option in the official campaign will result in a choice. You can choose to be raised instantly nearby with an XP penalty or you can rely on your group to raise your sorry, dead butt and have no XP penalty. I'd be willing to bet Raise Dead and Resurrection scrolls and items won't be cheap though.
As to permanent death, it is a user setting so, when you go to launch the game, you get to change the settings. If you want, run our campagin with the permanent death setting.

Buying Expansions: Our intent with NWN has been to follow the expansion model. You don't pay a $10 a month fee and trust us to provide content. You have the option of purchasing the new content when it is available. You pay money you get content. I like that. Nice and simple.

The Money: We are still planning Gold as the basic unit. With the million or so data objects we are chucking around we have little desire to add complexity in the money system. I personally like the idea of Platinum down to Copper, but I don't have the heart to even mention adding complexity in this area.

Karl Schreiner, Quality Assurance Lead

Tireless Bioware Staff: Fed Up? Never -- we are specially bred in the Top Secret BioWare QA vats. Genetically altered to have specially padded bums so they never get tired of sitting, and we have this little computer chip in our head that alters perception. So even though I've run through this module 10,000 times now - my brain believes that this is the first time I've ever seen it.
You want to know what the real secret is though... It's the Starbucks downstairs (mmmmMMMMmmmm Triple Red Eye's - It's a Heart attack in a cup), and the mountain of Coke cans piled on my desk. (Donations of cheeto's are of course always appreciated).

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design

Non-Campaign Modules: Well, I believe the plan is still to squeeze some non-campaign modules into a "Goodies" folder on the Neverwinter CD. I'm not sure if any of them will be full-fledged modules, or just stuff like Capture the Flag, Castle Sieges, and games like Chicken Pong. After release, when we all are only working 8 hour days but the caffeine is still keeping us up late, I know we'll all be hard at work on new non-campaign modules in our spare time. I have an implementation plan up and ready to go, and Rob and I have talked about putting together a story idea of his. Believe me, I'm sure most of the office will be wanting to show off what they can do.

Composer: I agree with the Danny Elfman fans - that's the only reason I didn't mention him in this thread myself. I have his Music for a Darkened Theatre volumes 1 & 2 and listen to them somewhat often. I think he would do a great job.
As for Patton, the stuff he does solo (the Mike Patton albums) and with his two main projects (Fantomas and Mr. Bungle) is a lot different than the stuff he did with Faith No More. I think he'd make for a great composer.

Alan Miranda, Associate Producer:

NWN Music: Real orchestras are fairly expensive. TA was a full orchestra (the Seattle Symphony) for example, and yes they do sound great. The alternative is to do synth orchestra - now don't think I'm talking about some guy on his Yamaha keyboard here . I'm talking about real musical samples all layered atop of another to create a virtual orchestra. What was used on BG was a synth template of the whole track. Layered on top of this were real instruments which would replace the more prominent synth ones in the track. The end result sound very good, and if the composer's synth library has a lot of samples for each instrument, the music can come out sounding very close enough too a real orchestra. This is more in line with what we're shooting for on NWN.