Doors, chests, barrels, armoires, desks, etc. I just finished chapter 2 and I bet I’ve opened at least a thousand of these things. Frankly, it’s gotten to be quite boring.
Why, oh why, does picking a lock not open the chest? Does my character think I’m only interested in seeing if he can pick the lock? Why must I then tell him to open the chest after he’s picked the lock?
It’s even worse when it’s a trapped container. “Hey, disable this trap.” “Duh, ok boss.” “Good job. Now pick the lock.” “Duh, ok boss.” “Any idea what we’re going to do now? Didn’t think so. Open the chest, dummy.” “Duh, ok boss.” “Do I need to tell you to grab the loot? I guess so.” “Duh, ok boss.”
It’s just tiresome, and I have two more chapters to go.
I know this is a minor complaint, but it does stick out after awhile.
Oh, another couple of things. I’m playing a rogue with a fighter henchman. If I click on anything that’s locked, my fighter goes nuts and starts bashing it. It annoys me. I want to pick the lock because it’s often quicker and I don’t have to wait for the little treasure to materialize.
The other annoying thing is in dialog trees. Why do I get a single “End dialog” message I have to click on? It’s not like I have the option to continue the dialog with the NPC at that point. When I get healed by the priest at the temple of Tyr, he heals me and then I have to click on the end dialog selection, which is my only choice? Isn’t this what computers are supposed to excel at, making simple yes-no decisions like this? This one’s even simpler – “yes” is the only valid choice. Shouldn’t it just be automatic? Shouldn’t someone have caught this in a game four years in development?
This one you can fix. Talk to him and say “I want to change your tactics.”
The unlock should open the container automatically on success, I agree. And they should probably change End Dialog to “Press Any Key” instead of having to click on it or push the 1 key.
Then again, what do I know? I can’t even get a job as a QA Tester.
I seem to remember seeing a “macro” option on the radial menu that I have not tried out yet. Maybe that can be done with your henchmen as well. Don’t know.
You are right. It is growing tiresome for me as well and I am only in Ch. 2.
Lose 80 HPs because you do not have thieving skills handy and what do you get: one Flourospar gem. Maybe 1 GP in a locked armoire. It is almost worth skipping them as a time saver.
What do you do when you detect a trap, but have no one to disarm it? A safe you can fire arrows into, but a floor trap I guess you just have to go ahead and trigger. I should at least be able to navigate passed it as I know exactly where it is and it does not cover an entire room’s floor. Argh!
“The unlock should open the container automatically on success, I agree. And they should probably change End Dialog to “Press Any Key” instead of having to click on it or push the 1 key.”
Any container that’s locked or trapped should be opened as soon as the trap is disabled or the lock is picked. If the container is both trapped and locked, the game should roll for both at the same time. There are some time elements involved since the game is measured in rounds, but it’s boring to have to wait, so they should amend the rules a bit to make the game more fun.
The End Dialog dialog should simply fade away after a second or so. You shouldn’t have to intervene at all to make it disappear. There may be some coding issues I don’t have an appreciation for, but from a user’s perspective it seems like BioWare came up with a lazy solution.
I bit the bullet and trained disarm traps with my Ranger despite it not being a class skill (I don’t know if everyone can train this or not). This allowed me to abandon Tomi and pick up the female bard (can’t remember her name). She can get the locks plus heal and buff while I disarm most of the traps and just set off the rest. With my resistance spell I never die to traps.
What if you’re a slow reader or distracted by something else? Then you have to scroll up and read the last bit of dialog that you missed. What if you didn’t read it because a patrolling monster came around the corner? You’d have to scroll through all the fight messages, if you left them on.
I’m going to disagree. I don’t think you can put something on screen that’s ostensibly important and then not let the user decide when it goes away.
I’m talking about a dialog that says “End dialog” and nothing else. That’s it. It pops up with two words and forces me to click on the words. What is the point of that? What would I miss if it just faded away?
If “end dialog” is just one choice of several, then yes, make me actively select it. But there are times in the game when that’s the only choice I’m given. It’s an anti-choice, really.
Why not have it work like this?
“Have you seen anything odd lately?”
“What do you know of the cult behind the plague?”
“You look troubled. Is something wrong?”
“Goodbye.” (End dialog.)
Instead choice #4 leads to a new popup dialog that simply says:
“End dialog.”
I realize I’m picking nits out of the game’s hair, but when you have to do something that’s pointless over and over again, it becomes irksome.
Not to be a Bioware defender but I’m pretty sure Infogrames bullrushed the release of NWN to the market. A couple of weeks of beta testing, the game gets suddenly released “on schedule”, then a few days later Infogrames sends a press release toting the release of the game (with a million+ shipping) and of another big shipping title, Stuntman, right before the end of the fiscal year I thought it was. Pretty suspicious.
>Not to be a Bioware defender but I’m pretty sure Infogrames bullrushed the release of NWN to the market.
Yeah, it’s not a coincidence that there’s big releases in March, June, September and December. There’s often a bonus to the developers if the game is completed and available within a given fiscal quarter. I know that Infogrames’ contracts work that way.
