Does NWN2 party control just suck or is it me?

[Specop 007]

So in an effort to try to catch up with current games I decided to buy NWN2 and give it a shot.

I absolutely loved NWN, and thoroughly enjoyed Dragons Age.

NWN2 seems to be missing on a few cylinders though. Admittedly I've only just begun but goddamn if my party doesnt do the dumbest shit when I try to give them orders. Mage? Yep, charges into battle. Thief? He'll run to the farthest reaches of the map leaving the mage unprotected. The character control just feels really clunky and poor.

Am I doing something wrong? Aside from that, any hints of a decent class to take? I went with my tried and true dwarf fighter so far.

 

[shortylickens]

Nope, it sucks. And one of the main reasons I've only played through it one and a half times whereas I have now completed BG2 twice with each character class. Not just the movement but also the AI is worlds apart.

 

[Kalmah]

You can turn off party ai by clicking a little button in the lower left corner. (It still seems a little flunky though)

Also, go into each character sheet and have a look at their behavior tabs.

I liked nwn1 better because it had a larger following. (online community was awesome) I think nwn2 is the better game though. The toolset was so buggy I got tired of waiting on obsidian to fix the bugs so that I could start playing on persistent worlds. (kind of hard for people to make mods when the toolset crashes every 15 seconds)

It might be worth checking to see how the online portion is fairing now though after all this time.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Nope, it sucks. And one of the main reasons I've only played through it one and a half times whereas I have now completed BG2 twice with each character class. Not just the movement but also the AI is worlds apart.

i never used the AI in BG2. all i had my party members do was attack when attacked. otherwise, they were 100% under my control.

cant remember if NWN2 had a similar setting - but I did beat NWN2 multiple times. was very enjoyable, IMO, especially once bioware did a huge patch that fixed tons of things (among others, the AI).

 

[Bateluer]

i never used the AI in BG2. all i had my party members do was attack when attacked. otherwise, they were 100% under my control.

Same here. With 100% party control, you don't want your party members doing stuff on their own in a battle.

cant remember if NWN2 had a similar setting - but I did beat NWN2 multiple times. was very enjoyable, IMO, especially once bioware did a huge patch that fixed tons of things (among others, the AI).

It does have a setting to turn off party AI. But, Bioware didn't do any patching for NWN2. It was an Obsidian title.

 

[Martimus]

The way I remembered, I used to pause at the beginning of each fight and tell each character exactly what to do. I actually enjoyed the game quite a bit, but the second or third time through I enabled all of my followers at once so I wouldn't miss any of the side quests (plus it didn't make any sense that they didn't come with me anyway, rather than wait at the bar.)

 

[Arglebargle]

NWN2 had a worse interface than NWN1. I switched back to the earlier game, as I hate having to fight the interface to get things done. Lots better player designed enviornments as well.

 

[Martimus]

NWN2 had a worse interface than NWN1. I switched back to the earlier game, as I hate having to fight the interface to get things done. Lots better player designed enviornments as well.

I agree with both of those points, but NWN2 had a FAR superior story to NWN1. That story was absolute garbage in the original game.

Edit: And I played more NWN1 than perhaps any other game. I actually bought 4 copies of it, since I moved so often and kept losing the disks. The player mods were better than tbe base game, which is kind of sad. At the same time the creation kit was very good for the game and I made some of my own mods for it (I tried in NWN2 but I could barely do anything)

 

[Kalmah]

NWN2 had a worse interface than NWN1. I switched back to the earlier game, as I hate having to fight the interface to get things done. Lots better player designed enviornments as well.

I completely disagree. NWN2 has the mode bar in the bottom right corner so you can select things on and off such as sneaking, searching, bard song, combat casting etc... In nwn1 you had to hunt around in a maze of circular menus and try to find a way to drag commands to the quickbar. Then once a mode was enabled there was no way telling if it was enabled or not until you were fighting.(and then only by watching the combat rolls and such in the text window)

 

[OVerLoRDI]

NWN2's party AI is not great, you generally have to control your characters individually and pause quite a bit.

As a game I really enjoyed NWN2. The original campaign is quite fun once it gets going. The slow start is kind of frustrating. The Mask of the Betrayer expansion is one of my favorite campaigns of any video game. The characters are incredibly unique and interesting in MotB as well.

Just make sure you have the game fully patched. It is a broken piece of junk at version 1.0

 

[MrDuma]

for the time it was great.
but after trying some other more recent games like let's say Dragon Age you start to see the bad parts of the party control.....

 

[shortylickens]

i never used the AI in BG2. all i had my party members do was attack when attacked. otherwise, they were 100% under my control.

cant remember if NWN2 had a similar setting - but I did beat NWN2 multiple times. was very enjoyable, IMO, especially once bioware did a huge patch that fixed tons of things (among others, the AI).

NWN 2 had more AI settings but they didnt work well at all. Eventually in one of the patches they introduced an AI OFF button in the corner just like BG 2 had, but by then most people had grinded through the main campaign and stopped playing.
Also you were still left with shitty controls so manual wasnt that hot anyway.

 

[Fenixgoon]

NWN 2 had more AI settings but they didnt work well at all. Eventually in one of the patches they introduced an AI OFF button in the corner just like BG 2 had, but by then most people had grinded through the main campaign and stopped playing.
Also you were still left with shitty controls so manual wasnt that hot anyway.

yeah, i recall manual being a vast improvement, but still not as good as BG2. the thing that killed me was they switched the function keys and number keys.

in bg2, F1-6 selected party members, etc. but in NWN2 it was 1-6...annoyed the shit outta me.

 

[DaveSimmons]

AI was spotty.

I had to be careful with inventory since the characters are recovering alcoholics who will drink every potion they have at the start of a combat, even if the enemy is one sickly goblin with a pointy stick.

I would also often turn off AI spellcasting for similar reasons -- oh no, one giant spider! I'd better cast my last Delayed blast fireball!

I liked the NWN2 original campaign better than the NWN 1 OC.

 

[LurkerPrime]

When I first got NWN2, the interface seemed so ass backwards compared to NWN1 that I shelved it for years before I ever played it. I've still never finished NWN2. I got bored playing my mage, as all the spells are pretty much the same (your level)d6 with a different animation. Also turn party AI off immediately, its only useful on fighters with simple commands to attack the nearest enemy.

 

[QuantumPion]

Companion and Monster AI 2.2

1) All creatures, both friends and foes, will make more intelligent choices about weapon switching, spellcasting, targeting, healing, feat/skill usage, dual wielding, and summoning during combat.
2) Companions will be more useful outside combat. You will be able to ask them to pick up items for you, open locks, recover traps, and cast infinite buff spells automatically for you if they have the appropriate spells or skills.
3) More behavior settings in order to guide actions of companions and associates.
4) Spellcasting companions will not waste their spells on weak enemies.
5) Companions will use or better use thieves' tools, healing kits, and certain non-equippable magical items such as wands.
6) Spontaneous casting of clerical cure and inflict wounds spells.
7) AI is scaled based on the creature’s intelligence. Very low intelligence creatures only attack closest target, high intelligence creatures find and exploit enemies’ weaknesses. The AI will not cast inappropriate spells against a target that is immune to them, including elemental immunities like fire.
8) Summoned associates remember their behavior settings between summons.
9) Companions can be asked to buff or heal you, themselves, or the whole party outside of combat.
10) Summoned creatures can scout looking for enemies first in order to soak up damage.
11) Companions can be set up to follow or guard something other than the currently controlled character. Associates can be set up to follow or guard something besides just their master.