No one likes to play alone

This will be old news to those who visit our site, but I thought I’d finally officially post the results of the poll we conducted some time ago on preferred party size.

Sixty-eight people responded to the question (a great turn-out!): “In a solo mod, what is your ideal NWN2 party size?”. And the results were:


Two results of special note: no one likes to play solo, and a larger proportion of players like to have 3 companions to adventure with.

Sure seems like the folks at OEI got it right in SoZ with their party of 4 player-created characters, doesn’t it.

Trinity is built around a party of 5 and you start off with the full roster of 4 companions. While players will be able to dismiss any of them at any point in the game without breaking conversations or quests, the mod will be balanced for the complete party and a good part of the banter and interjections will rely on all party members being present. My recommendation then will be to play with all companions, on a first run-through at least.

If I were to do it again, I’d probably go with 3 companions. But now, I’ve grown too attached to each of them and can’t see myself cutting anyone from the roster.

Poll results : Most NWN2 players don’t own hot rods!

At least that it the safest interpretation I can make of the answers to the question we’ve been asking these past few weeks: What resolution do you play NWN2 at?

According to the poll results, about 3 out of 4 NWN2 players do not play the game at max resolution. About half play at the average res of 1280*960/1024.

Since I think it’s safe to presume that players would play at max resolution if they had the machine to do so, I conclude that most people who play NWN2 don’t do so on killer machines. On the upside, I think we can say that somewhere around 75% of players play on pretty decent ones.

If this tells us anything as builders, IMO, it is that we have to be mindful of the performance of our mods (expressed in fps), and most particularly of their areas, if we want them to be playable by the majority of the playing community. Making huge areas with loads of VFXs, shadow casting lights, grass and tons of tree varieties and seeds, even if one’s own machine can handle it, may make one’s mod inaccessible to most players, or at least make it a less than enjoyable playing experience.

This probably goes without saying, but it doesn’t hurt me at least to have it confirmed in this way.

On the other hand, the toolset allows so much creative freedom, that a builder might still chose to make the mod and areas he/she envisions, even if it means cutting oneself off of much of the player base.

If you make another interpretation of these results, please don’t hesitate to write it up here.

Also, if you know of other aspects of (offline, not PW) mods that can have a perceivable effect on performance, please do share them. For instance, is the surface mesh complexity of exterior areas much of a factor: everything being equal, do areas with less mesh variation (flatter, smoother terrain) perform noticeably better that those with lots of it (peaks and valleys, noise and bumpiness)?