Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Neverwinter: A MMO with an enormous amount of potential (review)
jdnyc
Member UncommonPosts: 1,643
I heard about the Founder's program when it came out and I initially thought 'cash grab.' I wasn't interested in the game really until I read Massively's article last week and the livestream/articles here on this site.
Based on the hours long video I watched and the articles I read, I jumped in and bought the Founder's pack of $60.
I have tested and played numerous amounts of games. By default I do not pay to test a game, but I have pre-ordered games to get early access and other perks (vanity items, bags, etc.) I looked at what I was getting for the $60 investment and decided it was a good deal if I saw myself playing the game for a good while. I have wasted plenty of money in the past on crap games, but based on what I saw I had a feeling I would enjoy this game. So I went for it.
Boy am I glad I did.
What I experienced last weekend surprised me. Normally with Betas that I know will have wipes, I don't invest too much time into them - especially if you only have a few weekends access. 24/7 Beta access or Alpha access is another story. That's the real testing if you ask me. Regardless I usually jump in a game, try it out and fill out some bugs. This last weekend I hit level 30 with my Rogue and put in over 19 hours of game time. I didn't even push myself. I wanted to play. Here's the big take-away for me with Neverwinter. THE GAME IS FUN.
Now here's some stuff I noticed:
The game allows keybinding for all abilities.
The game is VERY influenced by 4e. I personally didn't care for 4e in PnP, but for this game it works damn well.
For the Rogue at least positioning means a lot. Like 4e flanking and attacking from behind, along with exploiting attacks from stealth all matter and increase damage.
Mobs will also try to exploit attacks against you. There are numerous ground target options to avoid and enemies that have their own thing.
Game is pretty easy up until around level 25 or so. Trying to solo after that is more challenging, but no way impossible. Grouping up with others make it pretty faceroll however. So scaling is either not in or not optimized yet.
Second dungeon is about as cool as the first. I played two dungeons Cloak and the Craig one. The Craig bugged at the end so I think that one might not be quite ready for prime time. It was cool though and really enjoyed the castle set pieces.
Collision detection is in.
Game is mouse target, but all the keys including left and right click mouse buttons can be remapped.
The Foundry system looks like it will be amazing. You hit L and you basically get this homepage of events/dungeons etc that you can see what's coming up. From here you can queue stuff up and remind yourself of events that are going to happen later in the day. You access Player Created stuff (Foundry System) form here as well.
Quests get more involved as you go. Some of the storyline is really, really well done. I won't discuss what happens, so there's no spoilers; but I enjoyed parts of it a lot. Plague Tower line was one of my favorites.
Talking to a few friends that played clerics, all the classes seem to have completely different playstyles and mechanics.
Astral Diamonds will allow you to buy equipment, horses, rush the training of your companion, etc.
You can set a waypoint on the map.
Rogues and Clerics get double tap dodge ala GW2.
Some clipping issues when you put on capes, but you get capes 
Quests are very easy to follow and what I thought would be obtrusive, oddly isn't. There's a gold sparkly line that leads you to your quest destination. You can turn this off by hitting z.
Summation:
The game draws you in and the hours fly by. But what about lasting appeal? Here's where the potential comes in. Basically the Foundry System with user generated content that seems from what I played, fairly involved. We couldn't create anything ourselves, but we had access to stuff alpha players had already created. The toolset allows players to create fleshed out encounters and scripted storylines that can build into campaigns. You have a peer review system that allows the cream to float to the top. You access this by hitting the L key.
I think that if the player generated stuff is great, which it most certainly could be; along with the numerous more classes and races being available for sale, which it most certainly will be - Neverwinter has the chance to be the League of Legends of the MMO world as far as a business model goes. We'll have to wait to see if my guess of selling classes like they do Champions in LoL pans out. Regardless, the game has an enormous amount of potential and excited to see what more comes from it in the future.
Comments
thanks for your impressions
I dont know how many levels are in the game .. is it 60 levels?
30 levels in 19 hours seems fast for Dungeons and Dragons inspired mmo
EQ2 fan sites
Yes, there is 60 levels when it releases. For the last beta, they allowed up to 30. I was to surprised how fast I got to level 28 on my rogue. I did it in about 12 hours. There is still time for them to tweak the xp gain.
I have been in other betas where the xp was purposely tweaked high so that higher level content and skills could be tested. Was this the reason of the high xp gain, I dont know.
Even if you level fast, I think the player created content is what would keep me going.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
I agree with OP, I played all weekend notching up a lvl30 Rogue/ 21 Cleric and 13 fighter. I had a blast all weekend game was great fun, dungeons were great, graphics and atmoshpere very good.
The only misgivings I have so far about the game are:
1. World feels very instanced to the extent that I felt you go from a player hub area (like GWs1) to a sort of open player adventure instance hub (where players can quest in the same area as other players) to dungeon instances. I may not be explaining this well but lets take WOW where u can ride all the way down the world map, well in Neverwinter each open area is a closed instance that you must map travel via one of the entrance gates in order to get out of it. This made the world seem a bit small and also when I opened the world map to travel it just left me wishing I could ride through all the wilderness to get to the next hub
.
2 Skills are limited. I do not think there needs to be never ending hot bars full of millions of skills, however 2 active skills on your mouse buttons and only 3 other skills to place on your hot bar is a bit too minimalistic. Mouse skills plus 5 or 6 others would be awesome and leave plenty of room for build customisation. Also there is not a lot of diversity in skills available at the moment and probably with 3 more slots available on your hot bar you would have all your skills available to you. This may change once they open up the advanced classes properly at lvl30 we will have to see.
All in all I did not find the above 2 points lessened my fun in the weekend but I have played many MMOs over the last 8yrs and I feel in the long run these 2 points will become a problem and will possibly contribute to the game not reaching the heights it is capable of.
Maybe this has been said, I'm a little foggy tonight as I've been busy all day. But is the foundry system essentially that architect system from CoH?
If so I worry about exploitations and the popular missions being ones that power level.
Looking for a family that you can game with for life? Check out Grievance at https://www.grievancegaming.org !
During the beta GMefreet or how ever it is spelt told us the XP was turned up for the beta but not the difficulty. The game is rather easy and very solo able as it is.
There has been a lot of demand to increase the difficulty of the game.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Yeah, a friend of mine hit that in even less time than that.
It seems a bit fast, but it might slow down at some point - max level is 60 after all from what I've heard.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
I enjoyed my beta weekend to the point where slept 4 hours a night just to play! After playing MMO's for 9 years, it was a refresher to finally play a game I was excited about and then get in game and fall in love with. As a D&D fan and long time player, I was not disapointed at all. Although I do agree the game does need a little tweaking here and there. All in all, the game is very fun and enjoyable. I can see this game becoming very addicting!
Ah, cool!
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
I'm really looking forward to this based on this and other positive reviews as well as some nice vids showing gameplay. It does look fun and as long as their is always something new to obtain or shoot for, which the Foundry looks to really help in this regard, and I usually don't enjoy player generated content, then this might be the most awesome casual MMO I'll ever play. It will become that MMO that lets me get a half hour of fun in much like I get from playing CoD multiplayer when I get home from work.
Even though it seems it's more instanced and less open world, which kind of sucks, if everything else is nice and polished, rewarding and just fun to use then I suppose I can overlook that one negative. Can't wait to give the game a whirl, but I still refuse to pay $50-60 just to get into weekend betas or a few days early start. Been burned too many times before. Hoping I get into one of the beta weekends for free.
The game is highly instanced but that means that foundry creators can add things to anywhere in the world. This is also much like Champions online if you have played that. You will have many places thoughout the town where you can enter instances but they will only be active when you have the quest for them. click on the grate to enter the sewers. Click on a door to enter an house or a "hidden alley" in the town.
Foundry and regular quests can also put new travel points on the city and region map in between the way points that can take you to the larger persistant zones. Again this allows foundry creators to place their "minizones' anywhere in the world.
That you essentially fast travel between major zones does make the map feel a bit disconnected. Yet on the other hand it keeps the world from feeling small. In D&D terms you can still imagine that it might take you a day or two on horseback to get to Lusken even though for you it only took the span of a screen load.
The city zones were not huge but they were densely packed and had lots of NPCs milling about doing stuff. It felt very much like a busy town. I only saw one region zone but it was a pretty big and from the number of pips on the travel map that never seem to go away it appears we will have about a dozen of these larger shared map zones just to start and lots of room for more.
So this highly instanced nature of the map may be off puting for those who like big seemless worlds but I think it will work well for this title give the size of the Forgotten Realms and the nature of the Foundry.
All die, so die well.
The game actually is fun, I was able to play from a buddy key.
To really appreciate the game you really just need to think of it as just a game, and not a D & D type of game... If you are looking for the character customization and complexity of say DDO or Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2 you will be disappointed.
Character design feels more GW2 where you are just slotting abilities vs complex builds based on feats and skills.
The one thing that really did feel D & D about the game is the foundry system... It reminds me of modules. Players can "be the GM" and create a "module" and let people play it, rate it and those who build really good modules can be rewarded with tips and just earn a great reputation of building these modules.
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
The game looks really great but...
I'll give it perhaps 2 months before PWE and Cryptic begin introducing the grindfest. Like STO, it will be small grinds that get bigger and bigger until your spending most of your time grinding just for your daily needs.
This has happened to every PWE game. The chinese looove grindfests...
There was a thread about Foundry before, but since all we got is a few videos and dev interviews it's safer to look at STO's Foundry if you're curious. With that, Cryptic made a good work, you can't even put it on the same page where the Architect was.
Based on STO I have high hopes that Neverwinter's Foundry - which they state will be much better that STO's - will be free from farming / exploits / powerleveling.
according to the devs, they have control over the loot content in the dungeons, which is automatically controlled and based on player level, so exploiting will not be possible since you still have to run through the dungeon and kill and do the objectives to earn the loot.
Gnomon Workshop Nov 2016, 3rd Place 3D Contest Winner
Gnomon Workshop April 2014, 1st Place 3D Contest Winner
Gnomon Workshop February 2013, 1st Place 3D Contest Winner
Gnomon Workshop December 2012, 3rd Place 3D Contest Winner
well the devs said you can pretty much do with the foundry what they can...and things shown and said so far seems to confirm that