Why haven't anyone done a game like NWN since?

[Legacy_AmstradHero]

               A lot of posts here have glossed over a few key issues here:

• Making a game/mod is difficult. It's time consuming, it's challenging and requires a lot of ongoing dedication.
• In general, the public's standards for what is a "good" game has only risen since NWN's release. Especially for AAA titles, you cannot get away with a game that doesn't have the latest and greatest technology. That means graphics, sound, voice, music, etc.
• A toolset has to undergo a LOT of QA in order for it to be released as a "commercial" product. BioWare put a LOT of effort into making the NWN toolset usable by the general public, and a fair amount of effort into supporting it. A lot more than would be required for an internal toolset where they can develop in house workarounds for their problems.
• A lot of game engines now use licensed "middleware" to provide certain assets to the game. The developer/publisher will find it almost impossible to be able to incorporate this middleware into a publicly releasable toolset because then they will effectively have to pay the licensing costs for that middleware for each person who gets the toolset.
• AAA games cost a LOT of money to make these days because of the aforementioned costs of the above. That means that each sale not only has to recoup the development costs, but also the costs of the associated licensing, ongoing support, and other such costs.
• Because of (1) & (2), it's typically not possible for modders to release mods of a "marketable" quality within a "marketable" timeframe for most gamers. How long did it take before the "really good" modules came out for NWN1 and NWN2? In most cases, a long time after the bulk of the people who bought the game had moved on.
• Mods are PC only. Getting content onto consoles and through the QA processes of MS/Sony are both difficult hoops to jump and fraught with compatibility issues.
• The quality of mods is variable. Are mods going to be given ongoing support? Do they have bugs? Are they balanced?
• How do the developers regain money from the extra investment that they have had to invest to get the toolset out? How can they charge for mods when the overwhelming expectation is that MODS ARE FREE?
• If a way is worked out to charge for mods, how do the developers prevent/reduce piracy? How much money does the mod developer get versus the developer of the game? What happens if someone complains that the mod doesn't work/crashes their system/or doesn't deliver what it advertised?

That's just ten challenges and difficulties that I can think of off the top of my head.  The short answer as to why developers don't do this is because it's very difficult, doesn't necessarily offer any real gains for them except for a small community of die hard fans (which a decent game is likely to get anyway), and is very expensive.  A publisher that is fronting the money for a developer and the salaries of all their staff and associated costs is not going to see it as a good investment, and as such is not going to put their money towards it.

Making games is a business, and things like Unity and the Unreal Development Kit have made it easier for aspiring groups to make their own games free of things like IP (Intellectual Property) issues and potentially provide them with the ability to make money from their efforts.

I'm still working on my Dragon Age mod because I've done so much work that I can't not release it now. Rest assured, however, that once that is done, I won't be doing any more modding on other people's IP/games. I'll be looking at creating my own game with a licensed engine or joining a dev group doing that.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_rogueknight333]

               I think AmstradHero's list of some of the major obstacles is a good one. In particular, the increasing focus of major developers in the years after NWN came out on cinematic elements like the latest graphics, voice-acting, etc., in preference to core gameplay has made it a lot harder to make modder-friendly games.

Several other issues that I think play a role:

1) The "sweet spot" for a toolset between versatility/potential and ease of use. 

NWN managed to achieve an almost perfect balance between these two. It is relatively easy to learn how to use the NWN toolset, and once learned, one can produce content with it relatively quickly. At the same time, it is versatile enough to enormously modify the type of gaming experience offered for those who wish to do so. Most game toolsets fall short in one or other of these areas: either the toolset is too simple and does not allow one to make anything all that different from the official campaign it is using as a base, or else it requires more technical skills (or simply more time to work with) than the typical amateur would-be modder is likely to have.

For me personally this aspect of NWN is enormously important. If I need to, I can throw together a basic area in the NWN toolset (excluding "meatier" elements like scripts, conversations and encounters) in less than 15 minutes (in fact, I will probably spend a lot more time than that fussing over details, but it is still a relatively quick process). Given that I, one guy working off and on in his spare time, am embarked on the insanely ambitious project of making an RPG campaign that rivals professionally produced ones in size and scope, that kind of ease of use is absolutely vital. Since I also aim to surpass such campaigns in quality (at least as far as my particular tastes as a player are concerned), I also need a toolset sufficiently versatile to alter the way many things work by default, by, for example, creating a more robust ethical system in which all kinds of actions a PC performs can affect alignment. I find it hard to imagine even attempting to do what I am doing with anything other than the NWN toolset.

The trouble, of course, with regards to any new game imitating this advantage, is that balancing two contradictory elements in a satisfactory way is by its nature always going to be tricky and difficult to pull off.

2) D&D

One reason there has been no NWN3 (by which term I include a game that would be a de facto NWN3 even if it did not use that specific name), is that Atari owned the rights to make D&D related CRPGs, and since after releasing NWN2 Atari was in the process of both going bankrupt and getting sued over those rights it was not in a position to do much with them. At the same time, of course, its possession prevented anyone else from doing anything D&D related either.

One could argue that this should not have mattered because there is no reason why a toolset-oriented, modder-friendly game must be based on D&D. While I would certainly agree it was not necessary, I do think being based on D&D was enormously helpful in making NWN modding what it was. It provided a set of rules and content that was not overly specific to a particular storyline or setting, and a base of players who were highly accustomed to thinking of their game as modular and customizable (in D&D a campaign could often be essentially the creation of the DM, even if using published materials as a base).

3) Lack of awareness that this particular gaming niche even exists and might be worth catering to.

One has to remember that there are a lot of people, even people involved in gaming, who are barely aware, or not aware at all, of the existence of the NWN modding scene. One still encounters people who, if they know about NWN at all, still somehow think that the official campaigns are the main thing it offers. The brief description of the game on GOG (for one example of this blind spot) only talks about the official campaigns and makes no mention of the toolset, the masses of community created modules and content, PWs, etc. (albeit some of the user reviews do refer to some of these elements). The game developers who make official campaigns, of course, are understandably especially likely to focus on them, and I suspect very few of them have any clue as to just how much the NWN community has been doing with this game. If developers do not even know a potential market exists, then naturally it will not occur to them to make a product for it.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               /derail

rogueknight333 wrote...

Given that I, one guy working off and on in his spare time, am embarked on the insanely ambitious project of making an RPG campaign that rivals professionally produced ones in size and scope

It does.

rogueknight333 wrote...

Since I also aim to surpass such campaigns in quality.

You did.

/rerail
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lazarus Magni]

               Umm... wow... don't get me started on this... So much unseen potential for developers, and missed enjoyment for us consumers.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Kellendor]

                What is the latest news on that Neverwinter game that was supposed to come out last year or whenever? (Soon?)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_AndarianTD]

               I just want to second RogueKnight's comment on the thread. Every word of it was spot on. AmstradHero's remarks were very insightful as well.

(And just for the record on the /derail comment, I concur as well. I haven't gotten to the sequel yet, but Swordflight 1 was excellent.)
               
               

               

                     Modifié par AndarianTD, 21 août 2013 - 12:22 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               

Kellendor wrote...

 What is the latest news on that Neverwinter game that was supposed to come out last year or whenever? (Soon?)

It's officially live and out of beta.  Called simply "Neverwinter", it seems to be an action-y game, but being run on the developer's servers as a single world means that it's basically an MMO with very limited potential for individual builders (no adding new art assets, no real customizing of loot for players, no creating your own gameworld, etc.).

I've played it a bit, but it doesn't come anywhere close to what NWN and NWN2 offer for player/builder creativity through their "Foundry" (their toolset, which you get to use after hitting a certain level in-game) or through the game.  And being a "free to play" game means you're constantly reminded that the coolest stuff is for people that either pay actual money for things or play 24/7 to earn enough of the in-game currency to trade (at a lousy exchange rate) for the out-of-game currency that the cooler stuff requires.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Urk]

               I've taken the liberty of getting to know "the Foundry", Neverwinter's building tools. They were developed and tested on Star Trek online. I have built 2 "missions" using these tools and commited myself to one more, but when that's done I am not going back.

In short... the Foundry sucks.

You cannot add ANY art assets or ANY loot to your mission beyond random monster drops. Some builders are offering rewards out of their own pockets, but in short, player missions are pretty much ignored in favor of loot rich official ones and grinding.

The mapping tools are VERY limited. You cannot build terrains, you can only modify existing maps by adding placable walls so everything suffers from a cloying sense of sameness.

You cannot alter creature factions, so you can only create hostile federation personnel (for example) by placing a kligon or some other hostile and applying a federation skin, so while they my look like feds they won't use fed tactics or weapons. 

I could go on all day. The Foundry is just not a suitable tool for even a hobby builder. It's a toy for people who don't know or care to know anything about design.

There's no point in comparing Neverwinter to NWN. They are simply not the same thing. NWN is a brand new fully loaded GT-40 and Neverwinter is a 1981 Escort.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Urk, 21 août 2013 - 02:57 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_kamal_]

               

The Amethyst Dragon wrote...

Kellendor wrote...

 What is the latest news on that Neverwinter game that was supposed to come out last year or whenever? (Soon?)

It's officially live and out of beta.  Called simply "Neverwinter", it seems to be an action-y game, but being run on the developer's servers as a single world means that it's basically an MMO with very limited potential for individual builders (no adding new art assets, no real customizing of loot for players, no creating your own gameworld, etc.).

I've played it a bit, but it doesn't come anywhere close to what NWN and NWN2 offer for player/builder creativity through their "Foundry" (their toolset, which you get to use after hitting a certain level in-game) or through the game.  And being a "free to play" game means you're constantly reminded that the coolest stuff is for people that either pay actual money for things or play 24/7 to earn enough of the in-game currency to trade (at a lousy exchange rate) for the out-of-game currency that the cooler stuff requires.

Neverwinter Online is basically multiplayer Diablo/Torchlight, just with a different camera. It's a generic MMO that got DnD text cut and pasted on content. It really has nothing to do with Neverwinter Nights or DnD.

As for the Foundry, I had beta Foundry access. Foundry is a mission editor. There are three quests, kill x, click x, go
to x. Even basic functionality such as picking random number involves building a rube goldberg contraption on the map.

Foundry is run by a clique of buddies, and their friends who are Cryptic employees posing as regular people (not kidding, I've caught several like this one ). If you make a quest that threatens to reach the best list, a group of authors will vote your quest down via the anonymous voting system. Complain about these things, and the community mods will ignore terms of service violating posts about you, and permaban you, as I was. Someone even went to the trouble of pretending to be me on Reddit in order to incite people there to downvote my quests (I've since deleted my quests), my Neverwinter Online username is the title of the "most controversial" forum thread in the Neverwinter subforum.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               

Urk wrote...

There's no point in comparing Neverwinter to NWN. They are simply not the same thing.

I agree.

I gave the newer game the benefit of the doubt until I was able to play it...and it's defintely not anything like NWN or NWN2.  I even ran it until my rogue was 60th level, and in that time his daggers have had a total of two different appearances (because a rogue can evidently only use daggers)  and all his gear is 90% bland brown.

For a player less accustomed to getting to change how things look, or used to playing games where your character only gets to use a single type of weapon, I could see the appeal. It's cheap (free, if you don't want the cool stuff), and doesn't require any knowledge of game mechanics (no worrying about things like attack rolls or spell variety as long as you keep the camera orientated so it's targeting your foe).  Kind of like a first person shooter, but minus the guns and plus a bigger time commitment.

For a builder and custom content guy like myself, I find it almost insulting that it carries the Neverwinter name.  It's like they were hoping just the name and a very limited "toolset" would be enough to get me to invest a lot of time (and money) in their game. NWN earned my money (I bought NWN, SoU, HotU, and Infinite Dungeons over the years, then another copy from gog.com), Neverwinter won't make any money from me, no matter how many times the game tells me someone else paid for a key to have a chance to get a nightmare for a mount.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Urk]

               

kamal_ wrote...
Foundry is run by a clique of buddies, and their friends who are Cryptic employees posing as regular people (not kidding, I've caught several like this one ). If you make a quest that threatens to reach the best list, a group of authors will vote your quest down via the anonymous voting system. Complain about these things, and the community mods will ignore terms of service violating posts about you, and permaban you, as I was. Someone even went to the trouble of pretending to be me on Reddit in order to incite people there to downvote my quests (I've since deleted my quests), my Neverwinter Online username is the title of the "most controversial" forum thread in the Neverwinter subforum.

Actually as paranoid as this sounds it's probably true. STO has the sam kind of BS going on. 
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_kamal_]

               

Urk wrote...

kamal_ wrote...
Foundry is run by a clique of buddies, and their friends who are Cryptic employees posing as regular people (not kidding, I've caught several like this one ). If you make a quest that threatens to reach the best list, a group of authors will vote your quest down via the anonymous voting system. Complain about these things, and the community mods will ignore terms of service violating posts about you, and permaban you, as I was. Someone even went to the trouble of pretending to be me on Reddit in order to incite people there to downvote my quests (I've since deleted my quests), my Neverwinter Online username is the title of the "most controversial" forum thread in the Neverwinter subforum.

Actually as paranoid as this sounds it's probably true. STO has the sam kind of BS going on. 

Here's some evidence of the anonymous one starring for threatening the best list.
neverwinter forums
another one

Here's a thread about the person pretending to be me on reddit.
reddit
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Asymmetric]

               I remember another project from a couple of years ago: "Rastullahs Lockenpracht". Which translates to "Rastullahs magnificent head of curls" or something like that. It was an Open Source RPG, based on The Dark Eye/ Das Schwarze Auge. It even had or still has a license.

The project is on hold since 2010 and I guess it's pretty much dead. It is supposed to have multiplayer support and a toolset. But the only thing ever finished are two techdemos (they are playable and contain a quest each). If you are curious you can download them at their homepage or have a look at their image gallery.

http://www.rastullah...kenpracht.de/en

Some videos can be found on youtube, like the soundtrack (royalty free, if you want to use it) or some gameplay and editor footage. Just search for "Rastullahs Lockenpracht". I don't think it will ever be finished, though.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Asymmetric, 22 août 2013 - 09:29 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <tossing a couple oldies...>

There are a couple other projects out there with promise (and not a whole lot of activity)...
The Worldforge Project - The original Open-source MMO project
Ryzom Core - "a full featured open source MMORPG platform"

Both of which I've been watching for some time.

My own personal agenda, when I have a few other things under better control, is to piece by piece leverage the NwN asset archive into something with all of the above :-)

Yup. I'm completely mad :-)

<...into the arena>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__Guile]

               Most likely because of the time & money it takes to build, secondly it takes a solid team to build something on the scale of the OC or the great online modules.  Most individual builders cannot produce a module worth getting excited about, even online modules built by one builder must go through rigorous testing.  I suppose because much of the community for this game has vanished, that too can be a huge contributing factor, for sure.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _Guile, 14 septembre 2013 - 09:06 .