We've already established in my first reply to you that the primary issue with NWN combat is the lack of control of party characters.
Actually, no. I said that my problem with NwN combat is that its controls are much less precise than that of the IE games. Or those of some other RTwP RPGs that came out since. The way characters walk and battle lines are drawn, when compared to something so crisp as BG/IWD or even PoE seriously feels like building a sand castle without water. Or a castle of cards while suffering of Parkinsons.
In case you hadn't noticed, we'd moved onto a discussion about combat mechanics and how the combat mechanics themselves are fine. If you were controlling a melee character then they'd have more actions, duh.
Actually no. You'd have more options but you'd be fain to use them.
Games have to be balanced for party play, simply adding the option to control 4 or more characters at once doesn't make for very good combat. Both the Dragon Age and the Neverwinter Nights series are good examples of that.
Dragon Age: Origins was a party based game from the start of its development. Its ruleset wasn't very good and its controls included glitches where characters would sometimes phase through terrain: collision was never accounted for since the battle line was meant to be drawn via threat mechanics. Yet it played well enough for a party game. You always feel as though you're in control of the situation and there were incentives to micro manage everything at once.
Dragon Age 2 on the other hand attempted to be a much faster paced game than its predecessor. It kept its 4 member party make up but supercharged animations and attacks so much that it became counter productive to micromanage everyone's actions between rounds. Instead you're better off leaving the AI to spam abilities willy nilly and making use of the game's combo system by only controlling the MC.
Dragon Age: Inquisition rolled things back a bit but didn't care to build up on the Ruleset to make for more interesting party play. I don't think even DA:O's small list of spell combinations came back. Its a half hearted attempt to create a strange Action/or/CRPG hybrid a la Arcanum's combat switch that couldn't succeed.
Now, I'd argue that Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 went through a different history that shows the same kind of lack of forethought that BioWare suffered of with Dragon Age.
You can see even in the marketing for the first NwN that the ideal scenario was one where a DM and a group of friends all played together in a virtual campaign, each player controlling their individual characters. But of course, it had to ship with something that showed the game's potential as a CRPG since it was released on the heels of the IE games. Hence the OC.
Eventually it seems both of these playstyles branched into the PWs and official expansions/modules. What is interesting about the latter is that it seems a different focus when compared to the OC: you have less battles and way more interactions via exploration and dialogue.
This is due to a combat system where its a relief that the average combat experience is as mediocre as you've shown us. Your character stands there, with his braindead allies, throwing damage spells and healbotting to their heart's content. There's no footwork. There's no AI involved. But there's a silver lining: I wouldn't want to control a small company of adventurers in NwN's engine. Which is why NwN2 is so much worse. The living hell of AoOs slapped party control in an engine that was never good for it.
Aside from hyperbolic crap, what was actually wrong with NWN mechanics?
Well, in my opinion the controls of the NwN series are much less precise than those of the IE games.
You know, without repeating AW BUT I CAN'T CONTROL MY COMPANIONS 3 billion times to any other point anyone else makes?
Actually what I said up there is that summons and party members aren't much more than attack automatons. And that positioning and footwork don't seem to factor into NwN battles very much. In my opinion that isn't very good. Nor competent. If you think that's ok, that's fine. But not even I think that's the real problem. They are more like symptoms.
You see, the controls of the NwN series are so much less precise than those of other RTwP games that you're often relieved that the games are balanced for single character control. Which is why NwN1 isn't as bad as NwN2's living hell of AoOs.
Both games have a solid foundation of an easy to use creation kit and their Ruleset, coupled with controls that just aren't very good. This fits into why people seem to hate the combat filled OCs so much and love the Story/C&C/Exploration fests that modules and official expansions tended to be.
I like to compare these games to the WC3 World Edit. Both games spawned a large creative community of asset creators, mappers and writers whose work is to be cherished. But while I wouldn't play a plain arena module for NwN (or its OC), I sure as hell would play plain vanilla WC3. Even against the computer.
Just in case: Are there essential mods for optimal experience? Does nexus contain all essential stuff? Is there an essential nwn2 mods listing anywhere around? Essentially essentialating essentialation essentialated? Do mods work with platinum edition off of steam?
