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Content Features I Want To See
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This is a long, rambling post on the sort of options and features I want to see both in the pre-made content and what I want to be able to do in the Foundry for Neverwinter.
Repeatable Content
If a module is fun to play, let us repeat it.
If a module has a good piece of loot, let us repeat it.
If the module has an intriguing or fun or amusing story, let us repeat it.
If the wind is coming from NNE or a blue moon is rising or we just feel like playing it again, let us repeat it.
If we have a choice between a module full of slimes and oozes that we really don't enjoy fighting and a module full of life-draining blood-sucking undead that we do enjoy fighting but that we've already played through before, left us repeat it.
We just shouldn't get the full experience on the repeat play because we've already seen all the suprises and tricks and traps in the module, but we should still be able to go back and replay an enjoyable experience again if we want to.
Random Encounters
D&D way back in the day used to include 'Random Encounter Tables'. It was a chart the DM would roll upon to find out what sort of stuff the party stumbled across that made their life interesting but wasn't necessarily part of the campaigns ongoing story. That wouldn't work quite right for Neverwinter, lacking an active DM overseeing but some form of variety or randomness would be nice to be able to include.
For example you have a wing of a module, say a hallway off of which there are seven rooms and of those rooms two will be empty, two will have fights in them, two will have traps, and one will have a treasure chest. Make it random, don't make it the same rooms each time you go through the module.
One time the kobolds might be hiding out in the castles barracks, behind upturned beds with their treasure chest with them. Repeating the module might find those kobolds instead camping out in the armory while their treasure chest is in the mess hall guarded by the wild dogs that turned out not to be as friendly as the kobolds thought they'd be.
The same basic encounters (kobolds, wild dogs, treasure chest), same rooms and map for the module, just different placements of the elements.
This is part of why L4D is so successful. There are only a few maps and campaigns in L4D but everytime you play through them it is a unique experience because while you know the zombies are coming and you know where you have to go to complete the map, you don't know what EXACTLY is going to happen between when you arrive and when the map is over.
That bit of suspense, of unexpectedness, could add a lot to Neverwinter. It wouldn't be quite the same as the L4D experience is, but then it doesn't have to be because your character will be leveling up and moving on to other modules instead of just playing the same small number of maps over and over.
It would mean a fair bit more complexity in building the module, it would require a bit of scripting to setup the list of possible encounters in a hallway and which ones would be exclusive of others, but I think it would definately add to the variety and replayability of the games content.
Plus it would drive the people who write game guides insane as they'd never be able to write a 'definitive' guide to the content as it'd never be quite the same twice.
Epic Experiences
The sort of stories that you want to tell are the ones where it feels like your character made a difference, where your character saved the day, where you were the crucial element to success, and the time and effort you spent on playing the module feels like it was well spent because of what you accomplished.
It has to be memorable, it has to have rises and falls, challenges to overcome, points where it looks like you are on the verge of success only to have it stolen away only to persevere and overcome in the end.
This doesn't have to be 'save the world' stuff, it can simply be 'save the girl' or 'save the orphanage' or 'save the farmers cow'. As long as it is interesting, well told, and the player suspends disbelief and comes out of it feeling like their character made a difference.
Every module needs a hook. Whether that is a twist in the plot, or stakes that are high, or just an unusual character or situation, an usual puzzle to challenge the party, or a deadly fight that tests their mettle and teamwork. There should be something unique and individual about it that makes it stand out from the other modules.
There should never be a time when you try to describe a module, without using it's name or the specific name of any unique characters in it, and people can't figure out which one you are talking about by describing what it was that made the module unique.
If people don't recognize it, if it doesn't stand out in their memory well enough that they can't tell right away which one you mean, then the module probably needs more work to make it something that is memorable and fun.
Puzzles & Traps
Tomb of Horrors.
That, right there, should be argument enough to include a variety of traps, puzzles and tricks in the game and the Forge toolkit.
For those that don't know, "Dungeon Module S1: Tomb of Horrors" is one of the most memorable D&D modules ever written. It is one that shows up repeatedly at the top of lists when players are asked to list their favorite or more memorable D&D experienecs.
It has 30-odd rooms/encounters culminating in a fight against a demi-lich. Along the way, among those thirty rooms, and before the final boss encounter, there are about as many fights as you have fingers on one hand.
It is memorable rather because you had to think. If you rushed in, if you came seeking quick fights and quick victories and a quick finish and thought you could just power your way through the module then you were going to die. Horrific embarassing brutal deaths.
To make a module challenging you don't have to fill it full of fights, you have other options instead. Put in a puzzle, or a series of traps. Make players navigate a floor of trap triggers to escape a room instead of just throwing a few more monsters into it.
Engage our minds while we play.
A puzzle or a trick or a set of cunning traps challenges us as players in a way that no horde of enemies ever will. It tests our ability not to click on a powerbar and make our character swing their sword over and over but rather our abililty to know which button to or not to push. To solve the riddle and figure out where the safe places to step are. To look for clues and put the puzzle togethor and see the bigger picture.
Those are all things that have been part of the D&D experience since the beginning, carry that legacy forward with Neverwinter and show that a co-op RPG or OMG or MMORPG or whatever people call the game doesn't have to be just combat but can involve using your brain for something other than just twitch reflexes.
Multiple Routes & Secret Doors
Consider allowing for multiple paths through modules.
D&D for a couple editions now has had skills like Climb, Jump, Swim. So let us use them.
If a path takes us around a curve but we can see that where we want to be is on the otherside of a tall wall, allow someone with a high climb skill to just climb up and over the wall. Let them use a consumable '50 feet of Silk Rope' item to add a dangling rope to the wall for the length of that run through the instance to allow other less climb-endowed party members to follow them up the wall.
If the floor has given way, let those people with high jump skills leap across and tie a rope on the other side letting people climb down to whatever is below and then back up the other side.
Give us other paths, paths that make use of our characters abilities that aren't combat related, to interact with and make our way around and through the games environment.
Not just skills either. Rogues and Wizards get utility powers like 'Great Leap' or the 'Jump' spell for situations just like that.
The powers and skills exist in 4E to be used, consumable items like ropes can help party members follow along, all that is missing is making sure that the module environments are designed with these things in mind.
Along with simply making a characters contribution to a module more interesting, multiple routes adds to replayability for a module. It encourages people to want to want to spend more time exploring, more time looking up and around instead of just focusing on where the next fight is going to be. It would make people want to come back to an earlier module levels later after they've gained more skills or powers just to see what they might have missed before.
To go with this don't forget to put in a plethora of secret doors and hidden hallways.
While it is always fun to find a hidden treasure chest behind a secret door (and your party will love you for it), or an alternate path to a room further in the dungeon, simply knowing that they might or might not be there. That there is a chance that something could be hidden. Makes you want to spend more time searching, more time exploring.
Whether it is through a 2nd story window, or a hidden door in the back wall of the room, any way to vary the experience someone has on a module and give them options other than just traveling in a straight line from point A to point B will make a module more memorable and make the player feel like they have more choices and more control of their characters fate.
The "real world" isn't linear paths to get from one point to another. If you look around your office you can probably find multiple ways to get from the front door to any particular cube or office on a floor of the building. Keep that in mind with the world of Neverwinter as well.
Repeatable Content
If a module is fun to play, let us repeat it.
If a module has a good piece of loot, let us repeat it.
If the module has an intriguing or fun or amusing story, let us repeat it.
If the wind is coming from NNE or a blue moon is rising or we just feel like playing it again, let us repeat it.
If we have a choice between a module full of slimes and oozes that we really don't enjoy fighting and a module full of life-draining blood-sucking undead that we do enjoy fighting but that we've already played through before, left us repeat it.
We just shouldn't get the full experience on the repeat play because we've already seen all the suprises and tricks and traps in the module, but we should still be able to go back and replay an enjoyable experience again if we want to.
Random Encounters
D&D way back in the day used to include 'Random Encounter Tables'. It was a chart the DM would roll upon to find out what sort of stuff the party stumbled across that made their life interesting but wasn't necessarily part of the campaigns ongoing story. That wouldn't work quite right for Neverwinter, lacking an active DM overseeing but some form of variety or randomness would be nice to be able to include.
For example you have a wing of a module, say a hallway off of which there are seven rooms and of those rooms two will be empty, two will have fights in them, two will have traps, and one will have a treasure chest. Make it random, don't make it the same rooms each time you go through the module.
One time the kobolds might be hiding out in the castles barracks, behind upturned beds with their treasure chest with them. Repeating the module might find those kobolds instead camping out in the armory while their treasure chest is in the mess hall guarded by the wild dogs that turned out not to be as friendly as the kobolds thought they'd be.
The same basic encounters (kobolds, wild dogs, treasure chest), same rooms and map for the module, just different placements of the elements.
This is part of why L4D is so successful. There are only a few maps and campaigns in L4D but everytime you play through them it is a unique experience because while you know the zombies are coming and you know where you have to go to complete the map, you don't know what EXACTLY is going to happen between when you arrive and when the map is over.
That bit of suspense, of unexpectedness, could add a lot to Neverwinter. It wouldn't be quite the same as the L4D experience is, but then it doesn't have to be because your character will be leveling up and moving on to other modules instead of just playing the same small number of maps over and over.
It would mean a fair bit more complexity in building the module, it would require a bit of scripting to setup the list of possible encounters in a hallway and which ones would be exclusive of others, but I think it would definately add to the variety and replayability of the games content.
Plus it would drive the people who write game guides insane as they'd never be able to write a 'definitive' guide to the content as it'd never be quite the same twice.
Epic Experiences
The sort of stories that you want to tell are the ones where it feels like your character made a difference, where your character saved the day, where you were the crucial element to success, and the time and effort you spent on playing the module feels like it was well spent because of what you accomplished.
It has to be memorable, it has to have rises and falls, challenges to overcome, points where it looks like you are on the verge of success only to have it stolen away only to persevere and overcome in the end.
This doesn't have to be 'save the world' stuff, it can simply be 'save the girl' or 'save the orphanage' or 'save the farmers cow'. As long as it is interesting, well told, and the player suspends disbelief and comes out of it feeling like their character made a difference.
Every module needs a hook. Whether that is a twist in the plot, or stakes that are high, or just an unusual character or situation, an usual puzzle to challenge the party, or a deadly fight that tests their mettle and teamwork. There should be something unique and individual about it that makes it stand out from the other modules.
There should never be a time when you try to describe a module, without using it's name or the specific name of any unique characters in it, and people can't figure out which one you are talking about by describing what it was that made the module unique.
If people don't recognize it, if it doesn't stand out in their memory well enough that they can't tell right away which one you mean, then the module probably needs more work to make it something that is memorable and fun.
Puzzles & Traps
Tomb of Horrors.
That, right there, should be argument enough to include a variety of traps, puzzles and tricks in the game and the Forge toolkit.
For those that don't know, "Dungeon Module S1: Tomb of Horrors" is one of the most memorable D&D modules ever written. It is one that shows up repeatedly at the top of lists when players are asked to list their favorite or more memorable D&D experienecs.
It has 30-odd rooms/encounters culminating in a fight against a demi-lich. Along the way, among those thirty rooms, and before the final boss encounter, there are about as many fights as you have fingers on one hand.
It is memorable rather because you had to think. If you rushed in, if you came seeking quick fights and quick victories and a quick finish and thought you could just power your way through the module then you were going to die. Horrific embarassing brutal deaths.
To make a module challenging you don't have to fill it full of fights, you have other options instead. Put in a puzzle, or a series of traps. Make players navigate a floor of trap triggers to escape a room instead of just throwing a few more monsters into it.
Engage our minds while we play.
A puzzle or a trick or a set of cunning traps challenges us as players in a way that no horde of enemies ever will. It tests our ability not to click on a powerbar and make our character swing their sword over and over but rather our abililty to know which button to or not to push. To solve the riddle and figure out where the safe places to step are. To look for clues and put the puzzle togethor and see the bigger picture.
Those are all things that have been part of the D&D experience since the beginning, carry that legacy forward with Neverwinter and show that a co-op RPG or OMG or MMORPG or whatever people call the game doesn't have to be just combat but can involve using your brain for something other than just twitch reflexes.
Multiple Routes & Secret Doors
Consider allowing for multiple paths through modules.
D&D for a couple editions now has had skills like Climb, Jump, Swim. So let us use them.
If a path takes us around a curve but we can see that where we want to be is on the otherside of a tall wall, allow someone with a high climb skill to just climb up and over the wall. Let them use a consumable '50 feet of Silk Rope' item to add a dangling rope to the wall for the length of that run through the instance to allow other less climb-endowed party members to follow them up the wall.
If the floor has given way, let those people with high jump skills leap across and tie a rope on the other side letting people climb down to whatever is below and then back up the other side.
Give us other paths, paths that make use of our characters abilities that aren't combat related, to interact with and make our way around and through the games environment.
Not just skills either. Rogues and Wizards get utility powers like 'Great Leap' or the 'Jump' spell for situations just like that.
The powers and skills exist in 4E to be used, consumable items like ropes can help party members follow along, all that is missing is making sure that the module environments are designed with these things in mind.
Along with simply making a characters contribution to a module more interesting, multiple routes adds to replayability for a module. It encourages people to want to want to spend more time exploring, more time looking up and around instead of just focusing on where the next fight is going to be. It would make people want to come back to an earlier module levels later after they've gained more skills or powers just to see what they might have missed before.
To go with this don't forget to put in a plethora of secret doors and hidden hallways.
While it is always fun to find a hidden treasure chest behind a secret door (and your party will love you for it), or an alternate path to a room further in the dungeon, simply knowing that they might or might not be there. That there is a chance that something could be hidden. Makes you want to spend more time searching, more time exploring.
Whether it is through a 2nd story window, or a hidden door in the back wall of the room, any way to vary the experience someone has on a module and give them options other than just traveling in a straight line from point A to point B will make a module more memorable and make the player feel like they have more choices and more control of their characters fate.
The "real world" isn't linear paths to get from one point to another. If you look around your office you can probably find multiple ways to get from the front door to any particular cube or office on a floor of the building. Keep that in mind with the world of Neverwinter as well.
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Comments
Give the rogues something to do to earn their pay that is actually roguelike, and not just generic DPS with a pointless pick locks skill.
Destructables, climbing, levers and puzzles make it intresting, and not just a wander down a tunnle killingas you go.
One thing I would love to see as well is propper sized mobs.
Forget 3 Kolbolds with boosted HP to make them a challenge ala 'generic other MMORPGs', give me a swarm 20 to fight through (Think City of Heroes big mobs but with orcs not thugs). Yeah they go down easy 1v1, but this aint 1v1... Numbers and good team AI should make it a tough fight with our choice of tactics vs theirs being a deciding factor. Make it a memorable battle that feels heroic, and not just a long boring DPS race against a pair of mobs with overinflated HPs. Special bosses, or big mobs likes Ogres and Dragons should be the ones that come in ones and twos, not puffed up trash mobs.
That is something 4E D&D does well with Minion typed foes. In PnP 4E minions only have a single hit point so die quickly, but they come in large mobs and are dangerous because their are so many of them.
Be nice to see that sort of thing with Neverwinter, content based around fighting off a Kobold tribe or a wandering pack of half-rotten Undead rather then the 'invading Kobolds' being all of a group of 3 or 4 leaving you outnumbering the 'horde of foes'.
Even if they die fast, it would feel heroic to turn a hall and see the horde of foes charging at you from down a flight or stairs or bursting in multiple doors around a room (maybe not even always the same doors with some Randomness like I mentioned above) and making you feel like it is actually a big dangerous fight you are in and not your party of 5 heroes beating up on just a couple of small foes.
I would also like a higher focus on actual role-playing and non-combat interaction, either with NPCs or actual players.
One of the best games I had back on the NWN days with DMs was playing an airheaded pacifist cleric that loved everyone. One game, she thought this pale fellow talking to my party was anemic, so she cast a Heal spell on him. Needless to say, the vampire did not survive much longer after that. Obviously the DM hated I took one of his boss encounters down so quickly, but loved how my cleric went about doing it.
Contrast with a standard game, you'd have the vampire go through some wall of text monologue, the only conversation option to the players is [CONTINUE], then when he's done, a fight occurs. Repeat. STO's diplomatic missions is a step in the right direction, offering alternatives to combat.
What would also be really cool is to set up a dungeon where two parties are indirectly pitted against each other - like one to kill the possessed woman, the other to save her. Or as mentioned above, the puzzles might require them to talk to the other team and help or hinder them.
Another method of working this is instead of just limiting areas to certain classes, set up puzzles where you have to split the party up to achieve the goal.
To use the L4D example, say one area, Francis has to keep the door open since he's probably the strongest, and Zoey crawls through the opening since she's probably the thinnest character. She then triggers a button that would power a generator. Then Louis accesses a computer since it now has power to unlock the gate.
Yeah I might be using some stereotypes here based on their appearances, but you can see where I'm going with this. Sure it might break down if a player is dead, but then you just have fallbacks for each criteria, like Louis might take 5 seconds on the computer, while Francis will take 15 seconds. Or Bill can assemble a turret much faster against an on-coming horde.
For NW, since player stats can vary so much, one can just limit the design to whomever has the highest of a particular stat, so if it's just one player going through the dungeon, he can manage everything, but in a party, creates a need to work together. Whomever has the highest Charisma would probably want to be the one that talks to the guard to get back the gate.
Yeah it gets repetitive after a while when you see RPG after RPG come out where the 'Role-Playing' aspect has been reduced to the 'Roll Playing' of the random number generator just kicking out combat results with no actual characterization or story or plot-based designs involved.
Having more dialogue choices, more options to resolve conflict in a way that doesn't involve your character simply demonstrating their knowledge of which end of their sword they hold and which end they introduce to strangers, is something that I would really love to see.
Some solid robust dialogue trees, ways to avoid combat by diplomacy, ways to discover more story or more paths through the story by asking the right questions, simply a focus more on non-combat interactions and that your character can be and is more then just a walking death machine that gets pointed towards foes and unleashed upon them.
That would be great. Having the entire party feel like they are or can contribute something to completing the module, something more then just being another source of damage or another meat shield.
STO is starting to do that somewhat with the optional objectives in some missions based upon Career over there, Neverwinter could simply be that simple about it but if they are really implementing 4E D&D there are so many other choices or ways to do it.
The examples you gave of doing it based upon stats would definately work well, in some cases needing to be X strong (or simply strongest in the party like you suggested) to open a door, or X dextrous to be able to wiggle through a tight passageway without getting stuck, or etc.
If they do a solid implementation of the skill system bits like that could also be based upon something like the Arcana skill recognizing some runes on a wall, or the Religion skill knowing that churchs of Bane tended to have hidden doors beneath their alters, or passively discovering other options or unlocking other paths based upon the choices you made in character creation.
Definately something, some systems of tricks or puzzles or challenges in place that you solve via teamwork, with the aide of fellow party members, and that doesn't devolve down to 'Insert sword until dead, repeat'.
Traps, puzzles and roleplayed 4E skill-challenges should definitely be made possible both in the dev content and in UGC. Skill challenges are an integral part of 4E, and done right, can be immensely satisfying to see your skills pay off with rewards.
Also, awarding experience for skill-based outcomes is important, as too often people will just go around killing monsters to get XP. I actually think awarding XP for completing an objective makes much more sense. That way, if the wizard wants to cast invisibility on the party so they can sneak past a particular monster, they don't miss out on XP for being creative.
I want to be able to rest anywhere i want not some pre-determined campsite by the devs or only where it fits into the storyline!
Why not let us use non-combat skills in camp like repair weapons, heal injured players, cure ailments like poison or disease or pray to our diety and scribe spells!
What about random encounters during camp? That would add a great element to the game and add alot of randomness to the combat system!
I'm all for random encounters being in the game also for the replay value!
Who wants to go through a dungeon and know just how many monsters spawn in a room of the same type? Boring!
Devs please make this happen it needs to be in there!
For me a "real rest system" is one that doesn't allow you to rest anywhere. Especially in 4E rules where things like daily powers should only reset when you take an extended rest. Unless you mean, being allowed to rest anyway, but not necessarily gaining the benefits of a rest due to wandering monsters interrupting your sleep etc.
One of things that drives me up the wall with MMOs is how un-responsive the world is. It is part of the nature of the game, the fact that the world doesn't respond to you outside of a tiny little bubble around your character that corresponds to the aggro-range of enemies because you are sharing it with the rest of the playerbase at all times.
But Neverwinter isn't a MMO but a co-op RPG / OMG so I really do expect more from it in that regards.
I don't want to kick down the door to a villains lair, storm in with my party of heavily armored companions whose metal armor clatters loudly, only to find that the enemies in the room are completely ignoring us and just blithely going about whatever it is they do when they aren't being murdered by heroes (I wonder, do kobolds cross-stitch in their free time or do you think they are more of a knitting race?).
If we are a party where the closest thing we manage in terms of 'Stealth' is that we try to whisper when talking instead of shouting our names as we clatter and clank down the halls, then the enemies should hear us coming and take actions to prepare for us, set up ambushes, barricade doors, etc.
If I come back and repeat that module with a party that is entirely made of stealthy types, then it should be a different experience when we catch the enemy off-guard and are able to choose our terrain a bit better for when and where we do fight.
If I attack an enemy in a room, his friend on the other side of the room shouldn't just keep staring at the wall blankly but should hear me attacking as he comes to provide assistance to his friend.
This is old-school D&D thinking, from modules where the instructions to the DM read things like "If combat breaks out in area 8, then the ogres in area 12 will begin fortifying their door and the kobolds in area 9 will circle around to try to flank the heroes."
Have things like the Stealth skill have an effect on the play experience. Have short combats not necessarily alert foes as quickly as longer combats do. Have dungeons where the monsters become more and more aware of your presence as you proceed because you've been making a huge racket and setting off fireballs on your way in.
Simply have the world be a living one where when you are exploring the world responds to your actions.
Allow us to set this up within the Foundry too. Alertness states for the foes we place in modules, so if they are forewarned that the heroes are coming for them they can take up a more aggressive or defensive stance.
Allow us to setup Stealth checks so that the heroes have to decide if they take the short path over the noisy terrain and alert the enemies to their presence or maybe decide to take a sneakier route around and catch their enemies off-guard.
In short I don't want just alternate paths through a module, but alternate play experiences within one where based upon the actions you have taken during it you find the environment and enemies responding differently to you.
Creatures, clothing, animations, scripting, class definitions, races, new spells.
Some fantastic work done for the neverwinter communities by such luminaries as: RWS, Bouncy Rock, Jester, Aleane, Kaedrin, KEMO, and many others. Would be a shame to lock them out.
- Bar
I agree with this 100%. If I am walking around in a dungeon blowing things up with fireballs all over the place how can a group of monsters 10 feet down the hall in another room not hear me.
This would be an awesome feature but will most likely not be in the game. Something like this is never found in games for some reason though it should be.
As for what the OP wrote. I agree with all of it.
Traps. Tons of them.
Random encounters are awesome as is a random dungeon generator (would be great for this game)
Epic adventures with tons of throw away mobs would be awesome as well. Nothing like entering a castle and having 100 kobolds charging you and your party.
To swim under water and come up on non guarded area behind the enemy, etc.
Underwater adventures that have actual combat, traps, etc.
Random deadly traps.
Wilderness areas where the monsters wander and have random encounters.
The interaction piece is such an important part of PnP, there has to be a way to incorporate it in this type of setting. I am in 100% in agreement with the whole static MMO environment and how it takes away from the game. Picking a lock, smashing in a door, and slinging spells all makes noise, and all involves some sort of outside interaction with the environment. Smashing in a door doesn’t necessarily have to completely destroy; much the same as a disintegrate spell or any ray spell won’t necessarily destroy something, but creates a hole… or even the smoke from a burning door can obscure line of sight. So many things can be done.
Traps are indeed an awesome concept but they need to be randomized and not like in DDO where people can walk through a dungeon blindfolded and avoid all the traps because they are the same ones every time in the same location. I don't know if this can really be accomplished, but at least there will be player made content to help provide more variety.
I'm not sure about spells that remove traps, though. I'm still working on that one.
Traps are essential to the game IMHO, but I also think that an over populated trap room can be a bit much. I’d like to see some complex traps; not just nearly impossible puzzles, but traps that actually have countermeasures built in. Chain traps can be really fun to role-play through, and really nasty if not detected. Who knows, there might be a need for an all thief party, where they all need to disarm nasty traps in separate areas(timed correctly) in order to gain entrance to a stronghold to carry out some clandestine mission.
That is just poor design by the dm or devs in this case!
They should have some kind of check on the party to see if they have a thief before you enter a dungeon. If so add some traps! If not no traps just more hack and slash or obstacles that require you to make stat checks or use your bend bar/lift gate skills or something.
That would be fair!
Makes sense… There should always be a way to circumvent to avoid a trap if ya know where is it and what it does. Good point.
As to the OP, I certainly can agree that the content should be repeatable, and I see no reason to think it won't be. After all, everything is (finally) repeatable in STO and CO, and certainly the Foundry content will all be repeatable, and that will be the majority of the content. NW is being created as a way for us to re-create the tabletop experience, at least in so far as a DM making up a dungeon and then he and all his friends playing through it. And that should be repeatable, if the players want to do it again.
I also appreciate the OP's notes on "Epic Experiences," though in this case I would call it something different. In 4E, the word "Epic" has a very specific meaning: levels 21-30. This is not what the OP means. He very specifically points out that good adventure and storyline does not have to mean "save the world." And that is totally on target. What we want are exciting stories with drama, tension, and cool villains. We want stories where something is at stake and, ideally, where that something is personal. Maybe the "personal stakes" will have to happen in the Foundry.
Personally, I don't have a great need for "Random Encounters." Stocking the game world with wandering mobs is pretty standard for games these days, but I am more of a storyteller. In a story-based game, there are no "random encounters." Every fight happens for a story reason, even if it is just "wearing down the heroes so the final fight is harder." If there's a way to enable random monster patrols in a dungeon, that seems like enough for me. That way, DMs who want to put such random encounters in their dungeons can do that. But I don't want to HAVE to, and if I want my players to rest safely overnight, I should be able to.
DDO seemed to do traps pretty well, in my experience. But I have to take issue with the OP's example. Having DMd Tomb of Horrors on many occasions and in three editions, people seem to forget that what made Tomb of Horrors so deadly was that the traps were almost entirely random and there was no way to figure them out! They were usually a "screwed if you do A, screwed if you do B" sort of trap. As a tournament module, in which the few people who survive are the ones who win, it was great. But I've had too many TPKs with that module to really recommend it as a regular event. It's just not fair.
Traps can really slow down an adventure. 4E has a good attitude when it comes to traps. They become party-wide challenges that the whole group can tackle. While the Rogue is trying to figure out how to jam the razor-sharp pendulums swinging from the roof, the Ranger can see the control panel on the other side of the room and starts dodging his way across. Doors open to unleash a dozen skeletons, so the Fighter has to tank them and the Cleric "Turn Undead" to give the Wizard time to locate and turn off the arcane engine powering the trap. In other words, everyone has something to do, and traps occur during other combats.
Few things slow a dungeon down better than the players listening at every door, checking every door and chest for traps, and taking elaborate precautions to open such things after it shows up "clean."
Finally, the OP touched on "Multiple Paths." Ultimately, this is about preserving the illusion of player choice. Players have to feel like their decisions matter to the story. Even something as simple as "do you go left through the archway, or right through the door" is an empowering choice, especially if there are clues or hints that could give the players reason to go one way or the other. I don't think Neverwinter is going to be able to replicate the incredible freedom players have at the table, when they can literally say anything to the DM and the DM can roll with it, but player choice and impact on story is incredibly empowering. I'm not an MMO designer; I don't know how Cryptic can best accomplish that. But if they can make players feel like they have a real impact on the world, and that they can take the story in personal direction?
They will have a winner on their hands.
I can certainly understand what you mean if you are running a “choose your own adventure” type of campaign, but in my opinion, there certainly is a place for wandering monsters in wilderness areas and even in urban settings. Granted you probably won’t have a pack of wolves attack you while in a tavern, but there is a place for random encounters. What I think is great, is that there will be a place for differing play styles and designers. We all have different ideas about what makes the game exciting and entertaining – it will be interesting how things play out when the game is released.
-Custom class creation
-Race creation
-Abilities for large large large campaigns almost like self contained games in and of themselves in big sandbox type worlds.
I have had a rather large story in my head for a long time and I think that the Foundry might just have the depth to let me make it, I hope I am not just setting myself up for disappointment.