There's a ton of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> going around this game (as any MMO game, tbh) about balance and content and power creep and economy and devs/pervs/advocates/reporters/mods/blahs not listening and etc.
However, I see it as an indication that the community cares about this game. Players like it and want it to be better.
So do the devs and community managers (even if it's just money). We all keep coming back to NW (and complain), but it's for a reason - we like the game (and want to like it more).
Let's make a list of things why we do like Neverwinter and keep coming back to it.
Things to keep in mind:
-Please no "even though ABC is ****, I like CBA." Let's keep this purely positive without tradeoffs. Plus, I just listed all the bad stuff above anyway.
-Don't wish for things (e.g. "I like the boss fight but I wish they were less adds-based") - ya got other venues to ask for stuff (and see what's coming in the new Module).
-Repeat things that others listed in your own words. +1s and ^s are nice and all, but your own words will go further
-Be specific. Maybe an experience that exemplifies an aspect of the game that you like.
Things I like:
-Combat system. It's so smooth. It's in real time. It's very responsive, esp compared to other similar games. Makes PvP a lot of fun too.
-NW is free and Zen-AD exchange makes it even better. You can get all the relevant content for absolutely free. That's awesome.
-I like a lot of the boss mechanics. The Spellplague boss is fun with them platforms. The MC and VT bosses are nice teamwork oriented fights as well. And Dread Vault boss is also quite an awesome fight.
-It's pretty. I like the colors in the Malabog's Realm and MC and Grey Wolf Den is my favorite dungeon for that reason. You get get great views in the Chasm and Gauntlgrym.
-I like that it's DnD based. In lore and classes/races/powers. If you know the lore, a lot of quests have deep connections to previous installments. And the whole DnD based character creation is fun.
-Foundry. Some of my most favorite moments come from the Foundry. Very involved quests and lore and beautiful map designs showcase how great this game can be - and it's all done by the players. It's awesome.
-Content coming out pretty frequently (for free). Every few months we get a bunch of stuff to play with - new zones, new gear, new classes. Just in the past year we got a pretty good amount of content (IWD, PvP gear, ToD, new classes, dungeons, skirmishes). For new players the game is very big.
That's all I can think of at the moment. Those are big things for me and I am yet to find anything like it anywhere else.
Comments
- the scope of the game world: Doing stuff I've never done before still is an option (e.g. I never played through Mt. Hotenow or Rothé valley completely to the end...)
- The basic character building system, even more so on a party level - stacking tons of small-ish bonuses to add up to enormous effects.
...done my three, leave stuff for others to write.
The art. The game world looks good and inviting.
The Foundry. I don't use it much but just having it there, knowing that your characters have potentially unlimited adventures ahead of them, is good.
The class design. Tanks have to work to mitigate damage, it's not automatic. Healers have to stay near their targets and watch the fight, not just click on red bars and press buttons.
The setting is a big draw for me as well. Spent many many MANY hours playing in the Sword Coast a decade or so ago and I'm happy to be back. I was never too big into PnP DnD, but games like Baldur's Gate and SoA had me fall in love with the setting. Seeing Minsc in the upcoming mod makes me so happy.
Just the way the game looks too is actually really really good. I never noticed on my old laptop with low settings, but on my new laptop with settings cranked as high as they can go, I've just stopped to look at the scenery quite a bit. Isespire is gorgeous. Hotenow is AMAZING. Tiamat? The way her heads cast shadows and such? The tons of light effects going off as 25 people fight to protect clerics? Absolutely stunning. Really, the design team does an excellent job with the zones.
It's nice to take a moment to remember why I keep playign this game. There's so much negativity in these forums all the time. Thanks, OP.
Yeah. Heaven forbid we have the kind of quantity and selection of abilities and spells here, especially at higher levels, that they have in actual D&D.
Far better to trim it down to a handful of choices, from a list that's mostly things people won't ever use anyway.
All those choices on hotbars end up being either largely ignored anyway or a bias in favor of the quick-twitch and low-lag set. As I (and my desktop) have aged, I find myself drawn more and more to the simple elegance of games where you have to choose gear and "powers" ahead of time and then use the combination you picked effectively - sometimes in unexpected situations. Neverwinter does a good job implementing the wide variety of DnD without becoming inelegant. Not perfect, but fair marks on that one.
The huge potential of user-generated content is also still a draw. If Foundry could stop doing everything possible to hold the community back, this would be reason enough to ignore anything from the OP. The "lore" of DnD is not important, but the "ethos" of DnD is. A unique community willingness to design content (and support for tapping into that willingness) should be the hallmark of this game.