Games Neverwinter

[Mabs]

Its strange tho, people say MMO games lack innovation yet barely anyone praised DDO (mentioned since neverwinter is D&D) itself, which did away with most of the things people have whined about here. Was it the lack of pvp that put so many off?

no it was the fact it was based on DnD, and that was never a solo game, have to group = problem

 

[Talivar]

They changed it pretty fast tho and added solo options for most quests and wilderness explore areas, and its reached point now where you can solo to max, it just takes longer than grouping

 

[Ctuchik]

I think lore is a huge waste of time, but only in it's current form. Lore could be woven BY the players, rather than at or for them.

How do you make that happen though when you have (in WoW's case) 9 million people playing?

You'd end up having that many (plus alts) different lore stories.

And how do you show all that in the game world?

No the game needs to handle the lore bit, they just need to make it interesting, meaningful and have a true impact in the game world.

So when you do something that is important lore wise it needs to show in the game that it has happened and it needs to be persistent. Not just give you a fucking achievement some shinies and a instance reset...

GW2 is going in the right direction but what you do is still not persistent, it just resets what you've done differently. You might see that you've fixed that bridge but 5 - 10 minutes later a mob will go and "blow it up" again, effectively resetting your impact in the game world.

 

[svartalf]

You'd end up having that many (plus alts) different lore stories.

You would!

I've given this a lot of thought over the years and I think it's possible. It'd take a sophisticated engine to deal with, for example, character deaths and weave plots around actions that players have made. The world, including the plots of missions/quests could change while players are on them.

IMHO the simplest thing that MMOGs could do to make them more interesting is to allow players to leave things on the floor, or leave a "permanent" mark in the world.

 

[Ctuchik]

Well, it's ambitious that's for sure. Not sure how it would work myself though. You'd have to make the game 100% sandbox and give the players nothing what so ever to work with other then the world they play in.

Quests as we know it would probably be out of the question as well. Maybe the "dynamic" events that GW2 has could work, but i'm not sure.

It would almost have to be an advanced minecraft sort of game...

 

[Scouse]

I liked Raven's post above. I played WoW for about 18 months (the G/F loved finding new areas, got bored quickly, wanted to find another, got bored, ran out of content yadda yadda). Agree with everything he said about soulless design.

However the single biggest thing that stopped me playing? No skill. No *real* skill. I missed the feeling I got from, say, a proper old-school FPS where you knew how good you were from beating an indentically armed guy in a fight.

Never played an MMO that gave me any of that. At best, they were just about timing your spells correctly.

 

[Mabs]

I liked Raven's post above. I played WoW for about 18 months (the G/F loved finding new areas, got bored quickly, wanted to find another, got bored, ran out of content yadda yadda). Agree with everything he said about soulless design.

However the single biggest thing that stopped me playing? No skill. No *real* skill. I missed the feeling I got from, say, a proper old-school FPS where you knew how good you were from beating an indentically armed guy in a fight.

Never played an MMO that gave me any of that. At best, they were just about timing your spells correctly.

different type of skill , not lack of, no ?

horses for courses tho

 

[Scouse]

different type of skill , not lack of, no ?

It just didn't feel like anything that needed to be honed over time. I picked up WoW and once I knew what the spells did and figured out what combinations worked well I hit the ceiling.

Tribes? - I could play it my whole life and keep getting better. My age slows my reaction times but experience means I can subtly change tactics. It's a harder skill, so maybe that makes it more rewarding.

WoW (and every MMO I've played) feels like a pretty front end to a database.

 

[Talivar]

I found Daoc to be skillfull, reactionaries,positionals,timing ect. It became more item orientated after TOA but before that was much more skill based imo.

 

[svartalf]

I found Daoc to be skillfull, reactionaries,positionals,timing ect.

IMHO you shouldn't put any of those in such a laggy game, or a game prone to huge amounts of people being in one place and thereby creating lag (or whatever you want to call it, I know it's probably not technically the correct term but it's effects appear to be the same).

 

[svartalf]

Well, it's ambitious that's for sure.

THis upsets me. I thought it was ambitious 10 years ago, but surely by now it'd be feasible?

 

[Ctuchik]

THis upsets me. I thought it was ambitious 10 years ago, but surely by now it'd be feasible?

I'd say it's theoretically possible. But how do you make such a game? You'd have to have a development and support team in the tens of thousands just to keep the damn thing going after release. And how are you going to fund a project this monumentally massive?

After you have decided what setting to use (sci-fi, fantasy, post apocalypse etc etc) you would have to make a game that is basically a digital copy&paste of earth in every meaning of the word (and even then you'd have to factor in every single possibility and make it available), and you can not leave ANYTHING out.

So how are you going to deal with moral issues? If you're going to allow someone to create their own personal bit of lore/story you would also be forced to allow that person to do pretty much anything he/she wanted within the game. Be that a mass murderer, necrophiliac, cannibal or a rapist (including child rape), and you can't really censor any of that either because that won't work in a game like the one you're suggesting. And then we're coming to the real hurdle, how the hell do you RELEASE such a game?

So yeah, it's theoretically possible but not realistically possible in any way.

Sure you could always impose a TON of restrictions, but then you're not letting people create their own story or lore any more. Your letting them create things that you ALLOW them to. So then what's wrong with SWTOR?

/edit: I thought of another impossibility: One person wants to transform the gameworld to a new "garden of eden" and another wants to nuke the living shit out of it. How are you going to allow both?

 

[svartalf]

You'd have to have a development and support team in the tens of thousands just to keep the damn thing going after release.

I don't see why. The idea is that the machine processes possibilities. I think I understand what you mean, but I've been looking at computers that are capable of creating stories - it'd probably use a three-act story structure with 5 plot points, but that's not strict and it's feasible to change that.

Imagine the NPCs as nodes and that connections are made between them when a story is created. You can then use the same nodes over and over. Perhaps when a NPC has no connections, they die, or walk off or get assassinated or become targets for players. So then a new NPC can replace them - this allows that node to be re-used without contradicting all of their previous stories.

And how are you going to fund a project this monumentally massive?

I'm not. It's not a project, it's an idea.

After you have decided what setting to use (sci-fi, fantasy, post apocalypse etc etc) you would have to make a game that is basically a digital copy&paste of earth in every meaning of the word (and even then you'd have to factor in every single possibility and make it available), and you can not leave ANYTHING out.

I would certainly not want to make such a detailed gameworld, no. You only need to create a web of characters. Of course, in some MMOs they don't let you hack down quest givers. I guess that could be a restriction, but I'm not so keen on it because it limits the potential for antagonism between NPCs - perhaps a harsh penalty for doing it, or flagging an NPC to be killable when certain things have happened - rival angry, check, rival given player licence to rid them of this turbulent priest, check, etc.

And then we're coming to the real hurdle, how the hell do you RELEASE such a game?

I'm not. It's not a project, it's an idea.

Sure you could always impose a TON of restrictions, but then you're not letting people create their own story or lore any more. Your letting them create things that you ALLOW them to. So then what's wrong with SWTOR?

Limitations happen all the time in sandbox games. You can't land on planets in Eve, or leave your pod (er...), for example. What I mean is that you don't have to make everything possible for the game to feel expansive.

/edit: I thought of another impossibility: One person wants to transform the gameworld to a new "garden of eden" and another wants to nuke the living shit out of it. How are you going to allow both?

Let's say that I did want to make this replica earth (which I don't). To allow both, you would leave them to it.

 

[Ctuchik]

I don't see why. The idea is that the machine processes possibilities. I think I understand what you mean, but I've been looking at computers that are capable of creating stories - it'd probably use a three-act story structure with 5 plot points, but that's not strict and it's feasible to change that.

Ok, no idea what that would mean so not going to comment.

Imagine the NPCs as nodes and that connections are made between them when a story is created. You can then use the same nodes over and over. Perhaps when a NPC has no connections, they die, or walk off or get assassinated or become targets for players. So then a new NPC can replace them - this allows that node to be re-used without contradicting all of their previous stories.

Who is creating the story? The players or the developers?

I'm not. It's not a project, it's an idea.

I know.

I would certainly not want to make such a detailed gameworld, no. You only need to create a web of characters. Of course, in some MMOs they don't let you hack down quest givers. I guess that could be a restriction, but I'm not so keen on it because it limits the potential for antagonism between NPCs - perhaps a harsh penalty for doing it, or flagging an NPC to be killable when certain things have happened - rival angry, check, rival given player licence to rid them of this turbulent priest, check, etc.

Ok so what happens when the next player walks up? You're gonna respawn a different NPC scripted the same way and handing out the same quest? I thought you wanted to get rid of that stuff?

Limitations happen all the time in sandbox games. You can't land on planets in Eve, or leave your pod (er...), for example. What I mean is that you don't have to make everything possible for the game to feel expansive.

Sure, but it also makes the games feel half assed. A true sandbox game doesn't have limitations but it's not possible to make such a game.

Let's say that I did want to make this replica earth (which I don't). To allow both, you would leave them to it.

Ok, how are you going to please both those players then? You're not going to be able to unless you want to start instancing.

 

[svartalf]

Who is creating the story? The players or the developers?

Now that's an interesting talking point and could be debated. Obviously even the most simplistic game needs a setting, so I think the devs should write a setting. I also believe that the quests should be written by the devs, but not in the traditional manner. I think the quests should be written in chunks, and the programme should generate a quest from the elements that the devs have put into the quest database. The players then run through the quest elements. The variety comes when several quests overlap or counteract one another, then repercussions can spin off creating relatively unique situations.

Ok so what happens when the next player walks up? You're gonna respawn a different NPC scripted the same way and handing out the same quest? I thought you wanted to get rid of that stuff?

The players would not necessarily get the same quest. For example, let us put ourselves in the shoes of an NPC. I want something to happen, but I need someone to do it for me. So I tell an adventurer that I will reward him if he goes and does my thing for me. If he doesn't come back in a certain amount of time, I might send someone else on the same quest (competition), or I might just wait and not offer the quest to the next Joe Bloggs. If you can't compete, you'd miss out - maybe another NPC might become available to you to get revenge for being usurped, maybe not. I'm just throwing ideas around here. I think it'd be fun to have the guy say "I already have 10 dead rats, but thanks" at least once.

One NPC doesn't necessarily have to be available to everybody. Different players could have available quests from other NPCs, depending on their actions.

As for scripting, the idea is that the NPCs are nodes, and that each time an NPC spawns, he has a certain personality, back-story, relevant to the quests he might create. So a criminal thug would have quests relevant to his job, faction, etc : he would want someone to do a hit, steal something, lean on someone, complete an underworld trade, whereas a diplomat would be more sinister (see what I did there? Harsh but true).

I would like to see this combine with another system I have in mind to do with factions. To mix up the active factions, the leaders would rise in fame and fortune from nothing to all-powerful. For example, if you talk to a shadowy character in the back of a pub he might be an aspiring guild leader with no followers. You do quests for him, boosting the membership, eliminating rivals, enhancing the treasury and because you were instrumental in the organisation's creation and success, you gain a trusted role in it as it rises to power. As you do this, the NPCs in the organisations are all on a similar path. Of course, at any time you or any of the NPCs might defect or attempt an assassination, and this feeds more quest options to the quest database system.

So the idea is that the world is changes with the players, not that the players generate the world or just do whatever they want without repercussion.

It does sound insanely complicated, but I have faith that one day it'll happen.

Ok, how are you going to please both those players then? You're not going to be able to unless you want to start instancing.

They will have to work against one another in some way, be it combat, by influencing a rival faction's NPCs or some other nefarious means (sabotage, character assassination, etc).

 

[svartalf]

Your first 15 minutes in Neverwinter
by Richie Procopio on Feb 12th 2013 9:00AMBetas, Fantasy, Video, Classes, Game mechanics, Previews, PvE, Free-to-play, Hands-on, Massively Hands-on, Guides, Dungeons, Neverwinter0



The first Neverwinter beta weekend is behind us, and while founders got a chance to hack their way through throngs of kobolds while exploring the Forgotten Realms, everyone else is no doubt still eager for more information. How does the combat feel? Do the powers follow the D&D rules closely? What kinds of attacks will I use as the various classes? How does the questing work?

These are all valid questions for any gamer still on the fence about Cryptic's inbound MMO. Neverwinter will be free-to-play at launch, but the only way to guarantee access to the next two beta weekend events is to shell out $60 or $200 for one of the Founder's packs.

In case you've missed our previous coverage, we've reported on the Cloak Tower dungeon, character creation (twice), and given our first impressions of the beta weekend. Today, we'll highlight the low-level powers and feats from all three available classes and the first 15 minutes of Neverwinter's gameplay. Hopefully, these videos will help you decide whether to wait for the game's launch or pony up some scratch to get into the next beta event.

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  View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gZYlS4PZji0
  
  
  
  View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NSx1gSFdec0
  

Tags: action-mmo, beta, beta-test, beta-testing, cryptic, cryptic-studios, dnd, f2p, fantasy, featured, free-to-play, hands-on, neverwinter, perfect-world, perfect-world-entertainment, preview, previews, pwe, testing, trailer, trailers, video, videos

 

[Urgat]

Been following this.

It doesn't look like it will be a serious MMO, but i suspect it might be entertaining in small bursts with mates. Bit like World of Tanks.

Will almost certainly give it a go.

 

[svartalf]

Jewel of the North: Impressions of Neverwinter to the level 30 cap
by Matt Daniel on Feb 25th 2013 12:00PMFantasy, Previews, Opinion, Free-to-play, Hands-on, Massively Hands-on, Neverwinter0


I've been stoked for Neverwinter ever since I first got my hands on a short demo of the game at PAX East a year or two back. The game's stylish, fast-paced combat hooked me, and I've always been particularly fond of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, having spent a considerable amount of my teenage years in the original Neverwinter Nights and its many persistent worlds.

So of course when I got my hands on a Neverwinter beta key, I was thrilled and waited on pins and needles for the duration of the excruciatingly long download, courtesy of my lovely ISP. Once the game was finally installed on Friday, however, my weekend was consumed by my adventures in the Jewel of the North and its surrounding environs. Over the course of the weekend, I managed to take my Trickster Rogue to the level cap of 30 and experienced a fairly large amount of the available content. Spoiler alert: I liked it. But if you wanna know the details, listen up and I'll recount my tales for you.

So let's start off with character creation. I already had high hopes for the game's visuals because on previous occasions I had been taken with Neverwinter's style, but it wasn't until I got to the beta's character creation screen that I realized that Neverwinter's characters are... kind of hideous. I had never really paid much attention to my character before, but after perusing the customization options for the male Halflings and Elves, I couldn't really make a character I particularly liked.

That's not to say that the models themselves are bad, but I found the options a bit limited. The skin complexion option starts from "haggard" and works its way up to "ancient," so if you're the kind of person who likes making attractive characters (like I am, so sue me), it's a bit difficult to do so. But if you're more the type to make your characters a little rough around the edges, you'll be satisfied with Neverwinter's options.

Other than that, though, the game's graphics are rather dashing. The splendorous city of Neverwinter is well-rendered and populated with huge numbers of NPCs going about their daily lives. Animations, likewise, are fluid and largely well-done, but I have a bone to pick with the Trickster Rogue's Quasimodo-esque run animation. Nothing screams inconspicuous like skulking around as if you've just kicked a puppy, right?

As far as quest structure goes, Neverwinter is decidedly a themepark. You will be guided through quest after quest to hub after hub, seeing the sights, meeting the locals, and killing them. I actually rather enjoyed the story, though, which focuses on the city of Neverwinter after the catastrophic event known as the Spellplague, which caused massive damage to the lands of the Forgotten Realms. It may just be because of my aforementioned fondness for the setting, but I found myself engrossed in the story enough that the typical hub-to-hub slog didn't bother me.

Of course, that's also assisted by the game's shining feature: combat. The devs clearly understand how important the "badass factor" is in games like Neverwinter, which largely consist of slaughtering baddies en masse. Take, for example, World of Warcraft. Somehow, I don't feel particularly badass when my high-level Rogue struggles to hold his own with a single, mangy wolf, which somehow made it to the same level as people who have killed gods.

Neverwinter understands this, and instead of throwing you against an endless conga-line of single mobs, it has you regularly going toe-to-toe with groups of four or more mobs. Of course, in the end, nothing has changed; fighting that group of mobs is just as challenging as fighting that single wolf in WoW, but to me it makes all the difference in the way the combat feels. Taking down a wolf with a pair of daggers is awesome, but killing a mob of six dudes in a flurry of steel as you teleport all over the place is exponentially more badass.

And we can't neglect the faciliatators of this badassery: your abilities. I'll go back to the ubiquitous World of Warcraft as an example. My level 90 Rogue has something like 20+ abilities, the majority of which I hardly use on a regular basis. Meanwhile, in Neverwinter, at any given time I have access to a total of only eight abilities, divided as such: two at-will abilities (basic attacks, bound to left and right mouse), three encounter abilities (bound to Q, E, and R; these are your bread-and-butter special abilities), two daily abilities (though you begin with only one; these are bound to your 1 and 2 keys), and one utility ability (for my Trickster Rogue, this was stealth; it's bound to the tab key).

Now that the technical stuff is out of the way, I'll tell you why this works so well: It removes all the filler. Remember those abilities in WoW that you never use? Well, Neverwinter cuts the fat and provides players with only the most badass abilities instead of forcing them to slog through bland filler skills to get to the good stuff. You still have everything you'd expect, such as damage, crowd-control, DoTs, and so forth, but they've all been rolled up into fewer, but more interesting, abilities. This system encourages players to more strategically utilize their skills. For instance, I had a high-damage attack rolled into a shadowstep-style teleport. While more damage is always useful, there was no telling when I'd need that teleport to make a quick escape or cover ground to a ranged mob that's harassing me.

And as I said before, combat just feels heroic. The ability animations are smooth and flashy, but tastefully so. A personal favorite ability of mine drew a stylish, ethereal purple dagger across my target as my character swung his weapon, and I found myself using it more often for its animation than for its utility.

However, stylish though it is, challenging is one thing that

combat is not. It's entirely possible that it gets more difficult at higher levels, but in the 30 levels that I played, I died maybe three times, tops, usually due to careless mistakes, and anyone who decided to group through the questing content would absolutely steamroll it. While there were some situations when I'd need to save certain abilities for situational use, more often than not I was perfectly fine just blowing all of my abilities and auto-attacking while they cooled down.

The potential is there to really have players scrutinizing their ability bars to ensure that their skills fit the situation, but as they are now, the fights simply aren't challenging enough to really make it worth paying that much attention, and I generally just used whatever abilities I felt looked the coolest, which frankly is fine; I'm all about a game that lets me just be a complete badass for a while. But I also appreciate a good challenge at least every once in a while.

The things that really drew me to Neverwinter, however, are the smaller details -- for instance, the ability to pray to your deity-of-choice once per hour, which provides delicious buffs, money, and valuable astral diamonds, which can be spent on a variety of things such as feat respecs or powerful gear. I would like to see the player's deity choice have more effect on this invocation, as I didn't see any difference between my rewards no matter which deity the character worshipped. Regardless, the feature is nifty and adds a bit of flavor to the game. Plus, the buffs are pretty useful.

Then there's the Foundry. Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to fiddle with the Foundry itself (if it was even fully available during the weekend), but I did get a chance to see how Foundry missions will be implemented into the game world, and the prospect excites me. See, when making a Foundry mission, the creator can choose any point in the open world to serve as an entry point for the mission. There are NPCs (often members of the Harpers, of whom I'm a fan) scattered throughout the various quest hubs; they'll give you a heads-up on any Foundry missions that start in the vicinity, and you can pick them up just like regular quests. The prospect is interesting, but I do wonder how those NPCs will work when the game goes live and there are dozens of Foundry missions in any given area.

Another thing I appreciate is the fact that Neverwinter embraces whole-heartedly the fact that it is a game and not a virtual world. With that in mind, it does everything it can to make content easily accessible to players. There's an entire panel dedicated to telling you which dungeons and events you can queue for, notifying you of any upcoming events (and offering to remind you when they begin), and showing you some of the top-rated Foundry content you might enjoy. I always felt as if everything was just a click away.

Material gathering is also handled in a somewhat novel way, as each class is granted a single knowledge skill, out of the possibilities of Arcana, Religion, Nature, Thievery, and Dungeoneering. Any given gathering node (which can also have special effects; for instance, Religion nodes sometime grant blessings, and Dungeoneering nodes sometimes open hidden areas) in a zone will be tied to one of these skills, but if you come across a node for a skill you don't have, you can buy a consumable that will grant you that skill for long enough to harvest a node or two. One thing I noticed, though, is that these consumables are incredibly cheap, and instead of finding them a nice perk to allow me to gather from another knowledge ability's node, I found myself ensuring that I always had a stack of each skill's consumables on me at any given time.

Obviously crafting materials and such don't matter as much during a beta weekend when everything's going to get wiped anyway, but once the game launches and crafting mats are in demand, I wouldn't be surprised if carrying around stacks of these consumables became considered a necessity, which kind of defeats the purpose of making the knowledge abilities class-specific in the first place. In my opinion, the devs should make these consumables more expensive to buy from vendors and rarer to come across in the field. That should hopefully encourage people to group together not only for combat advantages but for the advantage of having multiple knowledge skills available as well.

I could probably go on for a few more paragraphs about all the little details that tickled me about Neverwinter (like the fact that I'm pretty sure I saw a Head of Vecna joke somewhere), but despite all of these little things that made me warm up to the game, I'm not without my reservations. As I mentioned, the game isn't particularly challenging, and I question how well it will be able to hold the modern MMO gamer's attention, though it's completely possible that Foundry creations will make up for this deficiency. It also seemed to be a bit on the shallow end, with a huge breadth of content but not much depth to it. But of course, I played only the first 30 levels and didn't have the chance to see things like crafting, PvP, and of course, endgame content, so I'll reserve judgment on that until I've played more.

Ultimately though, that's the crux of it: I would like to play more. That's more than can be said for many games that just weren't able to hook me and make me want to come back for more, and Neverwinter has succeeded in that regard. It's piqued my interest, and I'll definitely be looking forward to seeing more of it in the future beta weekends, but whether it will have any long-term appeal remains to be seen.

Massively's not big on scored reviews -- what use are those to ever-changing MMOs? That's why we bring you first impressions, previews, hands-on experiences, and even follow-up impressions for nearly every game we stumble across. First impressions count for a lot, but games evolve, so why shouldn't our opinions?



Tags: action-mmo, beta, beta-test, beta-testing, beta-weekend, cryptic, cryptic-studios, dnd, f2p, fantasy, featured, free-to-play, hands-on, impression, impressions, level-cap, neverwinter, opinion, perfect-world, perfect-world-entertainment, preview, previews, pwe, testing, trickster-rogue

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[Ctuchik]

no it was the fact it was based on DnD, and that was never a solo game, have to group = problem

It only became a problem once publishers realized how much of a cash cow "casual gaming" was and indoctrinated that playstyle on us...

It was not a problem in vanilla DAoC, EQ, UO, AO etc etc...

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Looking forward to Neverwinter. Already planning the first dungeon I'll be building.

 

[Fafnir]

loved the weekend... .

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

I checked and there is no NDR. So:

Its decent. Spellcasters have to stand still, which is a bit of a step backwards. The combat mechanics are a cross between Star Trek Online ground combat and Guild Wars 2. You have to aim, and mobs or players moving in the way is an issue, so you have to check your line of sight. I can see this being an issue for uncoordinated people. Aiming is helped by your target cursor snapping to target so its not completely unaided. I can see though in situations where there is lag that this may become a nightmare.

There is no epic. Cryptic are sticking to small scale instances just like in STO.

If you're not a cleric or class with healing abilities and you want to play solo, expect to spend money on health pots. You don't heal up between fights - you either need to cast a heal, drink a health pot or go find a campfire (which is this game's mechanic for regen).
I'm undecided about this mechanic - it does nudge you towards grouping but in a single player instance, there's a temptation just to run back to the respawn point/campfire between big fights rather than wasting precious health pots that you might need in a fight.

I loved the implementation of the Cleric. Healing by nuking a la Warhammer Online. I only played Control Wizard and Cleric, both were quite fun but it seemed to me the Cleric would be a better choice for solo play, if nothing else just to cut down on health pot usage

(Expect to see a lot of Despicable Me quotes from people playing Control Wizards, "Freeze Ray, Freeze Ray, Freeze Ray").

I like the dungeons (well, the single player instances anyway, I wasn't high enough level for the first proper instances). There are traps aplenty and if you're on the ball, you can use said traps to help kill the mobs by luring them onto them. I had a hoot doing this. Also, not all the rewards are easily laid out for you. Some are behind false walls, some are only accessable to classes with certain skills, again pushing you towards grouping. You can get around the problem of certain chests only accessable by certain classes by using 'kits'. These are one-shot consumables that will allow you to open, say, a chest that requires the Dungeoneering skill. So you can solo a dungeon and get all the rewards, but it will cost you a little.

I didn't get to try out the Foundry yet. I suspected before I played Neverwinter that it would stand or fall on the quality of its dungeons/instances and I'm even more sure of this now. The Foundry in particular I think will make or break Neverwinter since it looks like a game with very limited PvP and a strong PvE focus. So for there to be new content at a decent rate its going to have to come from within the community (well maybe Cryptic plan a strong schedule of content but based on every other game I've ever played...no). I look forward to seeing the toolset. So long as its not harder to use than my day job, I will definately be creating mayhem. Heads up if you play my stuff: I'm not going to make hack 'n' slash dungeons, it will be puzzles and looney logic with insta-gib punishments for people that barge on through. Bollocks to the never ending stream of mob smashing that everyone seems to do loosely tied together with a weak-ass story.

Will I play Neverwinter when it launches?

Yes. This could potentially be my PvE goto-game if it stays interesting and the higher levels don't get dull.

 

[Urgat]

Cheers Roo, good write up.

Sounds like it should be entertaining.

 

[Mabs]

problem i had with it, was as any class you can just faceroll solo, seems a bit WoWy in that aspect, solo all the way to end , then need to group ?
slightly counter productive

and not sold on the combat either, as Roo said, its a slightly odd system

time will tell

 

[svartalf]

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc0t8aoXY9M&feature=player_embedded

 

[Fafnir]

I like the guardian class, didnt die until i got into a lvl32-33 instance at lvl28 and used my ae taunt and got 20ish mobs on me....

 

[Shagrat]

how dumbed down is this game?!?! not impressed so far. seems very easy mode for want of a better phrase.

no fear of dying regardless of how many mobs ive thrown myself at so far. 1 spell when you level up?!?, and what is it, 5 or 6 skills in your "quickbar" tops.

what I liked about the ad&d world was the choices it gave you as a character, at the moment I'm not really getting any of that from this game.

 

[Aada]

Comon guys it's made by Cryptic Studio's you know the guys who made Star Trek Online?

I haven't even bothered with the beta as I know these guys will royally fuck it over.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Interface is annoying. At first I let it slide as I figured it was just a case of it being unfamiliar but its pretty bad. Auto-look defaulting to weapon for clicking on stuff in towns is a bit painful. You have to use a key combo to not try to shoot everything and this stops you from doing anything on the move. I think this was aimed at console players in terms of style. If you could at least toggle it off/on it would be an improvement (or maybe you can and I've just not found it yet.).

They need to switch off action music in towns. Save it for when there's action. Ambient or less intrusive musics for towns.

 

[svartalf]

I quite like the idea that you have to point the middle of the screen at what you want to hit, but it is annoying to have to press alt to use inventory etc. I think it's just something you will get used to as a player.

The greatweapon fighter felt very clunky, but the trickster thief is very nice. It's powers are feel insane and enemies melt in their 5s. Once you're using the decoy and then later on stealth, it's easy peasy. Also, some of the greatsword wielding mobs even do a 270 degree arc attack that prompts you to use your "automatically teleport behind the target" power. Mental.