Neverwinter (MMO)

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aliasmask
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Re: Neverwinter (MMO) Open Beta has started

Post by aliasmask »

Oops, I broke Neverwinter...

Actually, it was already broken but since their customer support was lacking (overloaded?) and I found a real serious exploit that was going to ruin the economy and it was rampantly being used, I decided to post it on their boards so they would take immediate action. It took about an hour an a half, but the servers have been down all day today because of it.

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Jagged
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Re: Neverwinter (MMO) Open Beta has started

Post by Jagged »

Well done. Consider yourself a real beta tester, and not just a free ride loafer.

Like me ;)

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aku
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Re: Neverwinter (MMO) Open Beta has started

Post by aku »

I have to say I'm mostly disappointed with the game, primarily because of the combat system. as a melee rogue, I have been struggling to keep live people within distance. My general results are "stealth, get in range, attack, come out of steal, CW teleports away, freezes me, attacks, i roll into range, he teleports away, rinse, repeat, dead" So I've basically stopped playing at this point.

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Re: Neverwinter (MMO) Open Beta has started

Post by aliasmask »

The majority of people play control wizards and rogue in the game, so there must be a good reason. Personally, I went great weapon fighter and cleric. In PvP, my GWF dies alot but I'm a sufficient enough distraction for the rest of the team when I run to their closest capture point. I try to rotate through my stun and knock down powers and sprint away from rogues until I can get them in my rotation. I'm still learning how to PvP with the cleric, but he has a couple of DoTs and keeping people at range is my main goal. I've had rogues take me out without ever giving me a chance to break out and react, so they have something going for them. Of course there was the Daze bug they just fixed which prevented me from using my Tab power after the Daze ended. That only happened to me once though.

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Re: Neverwinter (MMO) Open Beta has started

Post by Jagged »

aliasmask wrote:The majority of people play control wizards and rogue in the game
That made me chuckle. I am playing a Control Wizard and my son is playing a Rogue. I haven't tried any of the other classes yet though, not even in the character creator ;)

I've only played a couple of PvP matches, since PvP is not really my thing. I played Domination, which I think worked reasonably well. At least as far as the fact that getting the most kills didn't guarantee you the match, which suggests the have the match balance right.

Incidentally my son says that clerics can be quite a pain for him, due to certain powers they have (not sure of the names). He's regularly the top player of his team, so I am assuming he knows something ;)

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Re: Neverwinter (MMO) Open Beta has started

Post by aliasmask »

Depending on the character level for clerics, but they have a couple of DoT (Damage over time) abilities and astral shield which grants healing to whoever damages target. So, in PvP as a cleric I'll stand back hit em with an astral shield then 2 or 3 DoTs and watch them go down while I get healed while hitting them with standard attack and sliding out of way. They have another ability where if you crit against them they get 100% recharge of stamina letting them continually slide out of the way for 10 seconds, but that's at 50+ level.

They have some nifty area effect attacks, but that's hard to do in PvP because people are always moving around.. easier to use the DoTs.

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Re: Neverwinter (MMO) Open Beta has started

Post by Jagged »

The Neverwinter Beta is coming to a close and the product goes live on the 20th (in 3 days at the time of writing). So I thought I'd give a quick summary of my thought on the product.

Overall I do like it, but no to the extent that I fell like spending any money on it (cheapskate that I am). :)

The combats are decent. I do feel like the decisions I make during combats have an effect on the outcome, I am not just mashing away at buttons and it is not all down to my character build although character build does play a part (as it should). :)

Content is an issue. In most MMOs I try, I end up playing several characters, not so here. In Neverwinter I am reluctant to start a second character due to the fact that I will end up repeating some very familiar early missions. In other MMOs I would expect to have the content vary by class or race or other character choices. Here its all the same. :(

The Foundry is a good implementation of player-created content and I like how it has been integrated into the game. Big tick for game immersion. That may provide some mitigation for the general lack of content. :)

I am not really into PvP but my forays into it in Neverwinter have been okay. I've seen lots of complaints on the forums about bots and other bad behaviour but I have not experienced it. I have had plenty of random team pick-ups that have been closely fought, but you know when you come up against an organised party. Which is as it should be. :)

There are a lot of complaints about PerfectWorld's attempts to monetise the game. This hasn't bothered me, since I have not been tempted to spend any real world money on the game. If you want a fancy pony (like an armoured bear) you have to sell out real world money but if you happy with a normal horse you can do that through normal game play. If you want to carry lots of rubbish you will have to shell out for extra Bags of Holding but the game is manageable with the default. One possible issue may be with high level enchantments. These are things you can add to your equipment slots for an additional boost. If you want to upgrade an enchantment you need to fuse 4 together. Fusing enchantments comes with a chance of failure and failure results in the loss of an enchantment. Unfortunately the chance of success for the best Enchantments is 1%! But don't worry, PerfectWorld have a solution! You can buy (with real world money only) wards that guarantee success. That strikes me obnoxious but the rest of their monetising attempts are fine IMO :|

There seems to be a disparity between the classes, in that Wizards and Rogues seem the most enjoyable to play and there is a definite bias in the number created. Its not difficult to find other classes, so maybe thats not a problem, but I hear lots of people talk about trying other classes and then just reverting back to Wizard or Rogue. :|

The voice acting is atrocious. I mean really bad. You do come across an occasional decent sounding character, but the vast majority are terrible, with awful corny accents piled onto grating performances. I wonder if they've got the developers doing it, rather than paying proper actors. Terrible, truly terrible. :evil:

So if I was to provide a prediction of its success I would say it has some good features but nothing that's going to distinguish it from the many better alternatives out there. :(

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Re: Neverwinter (MMO) Open Beta has started

Post by aliasmask »

I've heard about the complaint about voice acting as well. There's only 1 voice I ran across that seemed kind of bad and that was a halfling with a bad Scottish accent. The others seem typical to me. I love Ol' Jerry.

I have yet to spend any real world money on game (also because I'm cheap), but you can earn Zen in game through the AD/Zen exchange. I've bought keys for the lockboxes which turned out pretty bad for me (nothing good for about $20 worth). They're having a sale now on some cool stuff, so I'm saving up for a Armored Bear mount and I'm only a few Zen away from that.

The content is a lot less than lets say WOW and leveling another character will have you doing many of the same quests, with the exception of the class/race based ones. When I first leveled I tried to get in everything, but couldn't so when leveling my 2nd I made sure to do things I missed the first time. The official release comes with more content as well and I look forward to that.

The release also has an end game now called Gauntlegrim, but is for Guild play only. 20 vs 20 PvP/PvE to have access to final instance where the winner gets the instance with the better loot.

Yes, too many Control Wizards and Theif Rogues. I have yet to play a CW, but I've played all the others at least a little bit. Healer is tough because the PvE powers you have differ from the dungeon runs you will have. And the mechanic to execute powers can be a hindrance to some. I do like the Greatweapon Fighter, but he's pretty simplistic. Now that they un-nerf'd him, I think more will play that class. Devoted Clerics got a small nerf with Astral Shield being too powerful (lasted too long) but supposedly the agro isn't as bad so you don't spend your whole time running away rather than healing people. The Fighter is tough because he doesn't have any special movement but can block all the major attacks, so he doesn't need to run.

When putting a party together for a dungeon, the queue system looks for 1 of each class, so if you don't have that, you wait a long time. I just create my own group and then go that way. So, 3 rogues a wizard and cleric is not unusual, but queue system would never make that match up. You don't even need a cleric, but many people won't play without one. Everyone gets a companion and they are usually a cleric or fighter to draw agro. Dog is good too because it trips.

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Re: Neverwinter (MMO)

Post by aliasmask »

Neverwinter online is coming out with an expansion and a big game balance patch (nerfs for everyone) in the next couple of days. I suspect they may give out free respec tokens so you may want to create a couple of characters before the release in the next couple of days.

I'm also looking forward to the Foundry updates for quest building.

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Re: Neverwinter (MMO)

Post by Jagged »

I'm looking forward to more content in general. It strikes me as rather content-poor compared to over MMOs. Mind you, have not done any of the Gyntlegrimm stuff, due to not being a guild member. Although that's end game content whereas what I think it needs most desperately, is enough content to allow different paths to level 60. Its the main reason I haven't bothered with a second character.

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Re: Neverwinter (MMO)

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True. As far as leveling, it's more or less the same (less the racial/class quests). I know when I leveled my first character I wasn't able to hit all the dungeons and skirmishes and made sure I did that the 2nd time around.

GG is interesting the first time around, but they really left the door open for some exploits for the dungeon part. Recently when they tied bosses to their areas (so you can't drag them to a safer spot) it made it more challenging. With the upcoming nerf, some of the more difficult dungeons will be even more difficult now. I still haven't completed Dread Vault on Epic.

I'm definitely looking forward to new content. They've had several weekend events which I enjoyed. I'm also looking forward to salvage on purple items. 10k for a t2 set item isn't too bad, especially if it is bound to you and you don't need.

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Re: Neverwinter (MMO)

Post by aliasmask »

What do you think of the new Campaign system? Performing daily quests to unlock new areas and abilities. I think it's a pretty smart move on their part. It allows them to "leak" new content to people rather than having it all available at once. It extends the life of the game, imo.

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Re: Neverwinter (MMO)

Post by Xaelvaen »

While I've not tried this particular MMO itself, I haven't played any MMO in so long due to that very thing - daily grinding to extend the life of the game. I'm sort of a sporadic player of any game I play, online or otherwise (with exception to my tabletop games) and can't even guarantee I get on every single day. This stems from the fact that when I first joined MMOs (FFXI and later WoW) I played them ridiculously to an extent of which I'm now ashamed to admit. However, when it became a race for content (Oh I did all 24 dailies per day for 2 months and now I have an advantage) it ruined pvp, which is pretty much the only reason I even continued playing WoW after Burning Crusade (and quit long before Wrath).

So alas, this entire concept and approach bothers me - I'll likely not play another MMO until gear (and time-consumption) checks are obliterated. Which is sad, because I love the Neverwinter setting immensely.
"An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life - becoming a better person." - Leo Tolstoy

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Re: Neverwinter (MMO)

Post by Jagged »

aliasmask wrote:What do you think of the new Campaign system? Performing daily quests to unlock new areas and abilities. I think it's a pretty smart move on their part. It allows them to "leak" new content to people rather than having it all available at once. It extends the life of the game, imo.
My first impression is that its just time-gating limited content. So I play for a bit, then can't do anything new for a day. The first part of which will be a repeat of what I did yesterday. Can't say its encouraging me to play.

They have also made a mistake IMO with the salvaging of epic items. It has had the effect of making Epic items vanish from the auction house and what little is there, is now many times the price. This is a classic mistake many MMO devs make, in making a change the pulls the ladder up from newer players. Those that play loads and have all the stuff won't be affected. Those that don't play massively are effectively gated from the top content.

The time it would take me to earn the money to buy the top tier equipment necessary for high end dungeons, is now beyond my boredom threshold.

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