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Pleasantly surprised...my thoughts
cataphracht
Member Posts: 50
After reading quite a lot of negativity about this title, I was reluctant to even consider testing this game. It was my love for the whole neverwinter / forgotten realms franchise which persuaded me to give this game a run this weekend. I thought I'd share my thoughts about the experience.
My thoughts:
I didn't expect much. This was never going to be Neverwinter Nights 3, and ofcourse it isn't. The 4e edition or whatever it's name is pretty much a modified version of the earlier d&d ruleset. I don't mind it, it makes for a nice action MMO.
The graphics are not that 'bad' especially for a free mmo, a lot of people say they are dated, which is hard to argue - but fortunately I'm no graphic whore. The graphics are at the very least reasonable for anyone to enjoy the game.
The lag in town was offputting, maybe it was because it's a stress test idk, but overall the games performance was good. Ran this on a budget pc, keep in mind not the greatest of machines was used.
The combat was refreshing, while not over complicated it was far from trivial. A nice blend for my Cleric, I didn't have the time to try other classes out.
The quests were 'meh', needs more voices and less reading too. Pacing became a slight issue as the npc's had too much to say in text form. The script was also easily forgotten and were a bit underwhelming.
After completing only one foundry mission, I believe the foundry has awesome potential for both creators and adventurers. It will become special if you could voice the npc you created for your mission. Excited to see how this particular feature pans out.
The bad:
Hard to find anything but quests objectives, e.g looking for a bank was frustrating, never found one.
Quite linear for the early period of the game. The group dungeoun was disappointing, no voices from any bosses, cutscenes were awful (might be because of beta). Horrible UI. Horrible PvP. Not enough Classes/ item customization.
Summary:
Clearly this game isn't for everyone, but it has lots of charm and some appeal to me. it felt like it could be a quick fix. reminiscint of how I used the diablo series.
This game certainly isn't going to be in my long term mmorpg entertainment options that I am looking for, but I'm glad they decided to publish it, and I will probably play it when it comes out which is a pleasant surprise.
Comments
I'm an old school pen-and-paper MMO'er and tend to favor sandbox / open world games, but got a chance to try the open beta this weekend and found it well... FUN.
Don't get me wrong, there was stuff about the game that I didn't enjoy much, but the core stuff was pretty fun. I played the Great Weapon Fighter (GWF) to level 24 and the Control Wizard to level 12 and enjoyed them both. Unlike some people, I didn't find fights that difficult and the main challenge running content was in trying to go through one of the "boss" fights without using any potions at all on my GWF. Most of the time I had to use 1 potion and had to use my "special" skill during the battle. I never bought a potion and had about 70 extras before the weekend was over.
Playing the GWF in PvP at lower levels could be a bit frustrating at times. I could never successfully solo a Trickster Thief because I would get skill locked and then insta-dpsed to low health or death. But as my level and health went up, it took longer to get killed and I gained some skills that allowed me to jump into or out of combat range quickly. That allowed me to put together some pretty good high-dps combonations and be fairly effective in my team group. All-in-all it was fairly enjoyable for what it was.
The thing I was and still am most excited about is the Foundry. I played through just a few of the content pieces made by other players and was impressed at the creativity. I don't recall the name of the scenario, but there was an incredibly clever one that I ran through where you start off playing a game of cards and end up on one of the planes of Hell. It all made sense within the storyline and actually reminded me of the kind of crazy AD&D campaigns you could get going back in my pen-and-paper days.
I honestly think Player Generated Content (PGC) + large open world/themepark enviornments will be next big thing in MMOs. It really bummed me out that the Neverwinter world was so instanced and small-feeling. Whatever developer figures out how to cleverly hook PGC into a huge, seamless MMO world is going to have some good success.
Your review is a pile of self contradictory rubbish.
To have praised so little you should not have been "pleasantly surprised" if you are comparing the game with any other decent MMORPG.
agreed:) i enjoyed my time.. looking at the timeline for 2013-2014 there are about a dozen MMOs I'm interested in yet none I have seen allow you to create your own dungeons... this alone is huge for me and would keep me around even while playing others
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
This wasn't intended to be a master review or a technical analysis, just an opinion of my experience to share with others who didn't try the beta.
My reason for the 'pleasantly surprised' title is merely because I now have a game to play when this releases nothing more and nothing less.
Understand that I am not selling their game for them, I'm not required to praise anything, my insight was what I experienced in 16 levels of playtime. Good, bad, and mediocre like in any other game but the most important thing was I had fun.
FYI Neverwinter Nights runs exclusively off player generated content and it has done so brilliantly. The foundry having 'awesome potential' and me being 'excited' about the feature is actually praising this game highly. A creative community will make this game much more valued.
I wasn't comparing, but why must you? Do you always need that kind of guidance with your entertainment?
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
You can have nonlinear quests made in foundry. I made a nonlinear quest with open world map just to prove it (Maiden in the Moon).
The reason game has linear gameplay even when it is easy to make nonlinear quests in foundry is a question of choice - for story-telling purposes you need a linear quest. Also linear quests are definately more popular than non-linear quests because most MO players find non-linear quests confusing (and because they have to read a lot and think).
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very true and from some comments people left about your mission they had no clue what to do heh.. in this sort of game i actually like the more linear story driven quests
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
The default game has to cater to everyone, even 12 year old kids that can barely reach all the keys of the keyboard.
But the beauty of NWO is that you can create your own content of the same and even superior quality to what NWO offers by default. And that does not have to cater to everyone. It can cater to the sector that you aim it for: Roleplay, hardcore combat, casual, fun/comedy, whatever. That's where NWO will thrive.
I believe Cryptic has set a model that other companies may follow, and that is good news, because they may have more budget and talent than Cryptic, and then we will all be benfitted.
My opinion is my own. I respect all other opinions and views equally, but keep in mind that my opinion will always be the best for me. That's why it's my opinion.
I will be sure to check out your Foundry quest next chance I get to play.
I just removed and deleted it. Based on feedback it was replaced by a more ambitious project.
Campaign:- "Shards of Selûne"
However this one also has non-linear quests, though it does have a linear back-bone mission too. However main non-linearity starts from quest 3. But you will not be able to participate in it if you have not played part 1&2.
It is sort of complicated, but suffix to say you should play quests in sequence. But only after second quest will you start noticing the non-linearity. This is because non-linearity now comes from actions you took in previous quests and stuff changes based on that.
This campaign will have all my energy in it, so I am expecting it to overtake all the official content made by devs.
*tounge in cheek*
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