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tau41
Member Posts: 70
So... messed around with beta for two hours, and saw everything I needed to see. Before I talk about WHY two hours is all I needed to see, you should know two things. You've done a lot of hard work and it shows, AND this is a VERY bad place to be.
The problem is very simple. You guys have done all the safe things. Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and because you needed a healer for your idiotic trinity model, you cut Cleric in half and made us play the casty Cleric. Way to go. Elves. There's already two kinds of elves in the game. There should be three presently considering the Eladrin are missing and are essentially a texture swap and magic focus variance of the Elf. But let's get away from elves for a moment.
Tieflings were brought into DnD 4e to spice up the mixture because it had become stale, and it is GOOD to see them here. But there was another thing that was brought in. Dragonborn were brought in to make us more immediately aware of the DRAGONS in DnD. So we're missing the ONE player outlet to genuinely have something to do with dragons. But even this? This isn't really so bad. In fact, no lies, it makes for a great Zen store addition down the road.
What is bad is what you did to the classes and all the gear restrictions. You've made a game that pretty much tells the player how to play. Is it pretty? Yep. Sound design great? Really, REALLY is. Character animation is fluid and alive. You guys have done great, great work! The controls are snappy and responsive IN BETA. I am LEGITIMATELY impressed by the technical merits of your game!
...and yet... you made your game tell me how to play. So far as I can tell (I may need to give it more than 2 hours), the 'skills' system is non-existent, so you lost entire dimensions of characters there. No 2H fighters, or even dual wield fighters. No battle clerics. Currently, the lack of Warlord and Warlock are big turn offs in general for me. I'd be upset about no Monk and Barbarian, but even WotC rolled a 1 on getting those done in a reasonable amount of time for 4e, so I'm not holding my breath.
I look at the work that's put into this so far, and truly, I am humbled. I don't know Forgotten Realms well enough to know how good you have the setting nailed down, and I'm not sure it matters if I do or don't because what you have lives and breathes. But none of these characters are 'my' character. I have no personal stake in what's in beta after two hours, and I have every reason to believe that I'm not the only one.
The problem is very simple. You guys have done all the safe things. Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and because you needed a healer for your idiotic trinity model, you cut Cleric in half and made us play the casty Cleric. Way to go. Elves. There's already two kinds of elves in the game. There should be three presently considering the Eladrin are missing and are essentially a texture swap and magic focus variance of the Elf. But let's get away from elves for a moment.
Tieflings were brought into DnD 4e to spice up the mixture because it had become stale, and it is GOOD to see them here. But there was another thing that was brought in. Dragonborn were brought in to make us more immediately aware of the DRAGONS in DnD. So we're missing the ONE player outlet to genuinely have something to do with dragons. But even this? This isn't really so bad. In fact, no lies, it makes for a great Zen store addition down the road.
What is bad is what you did to the classes and all the gear restrictions. You've made a game that pretty much tells the player how to play. Is it pretty? Yep. Sound design great? Really, REALLY is. Character animation is fluid and alive. You guys have done great, great work! The controls are snappy and responsive IN BETA. I am LEGITIMATELY impressed by the technical merits of your game!
...and yet... you made your game tell me how to play. So far as I can tell (I may need to give it more than 2 hours), the 'skills' system is non-existent, so you lost entire dimensions of characters there. No 2H fighters, or even dual wield fighters. No battle clerics. Currently, the lack of Warlord and Warlock are big turn offs in general for me. I'd be upset about no Monk and Barbarian, but even WotC rolled a 1 on getting those done in a reasonable amount of time for 4e, so I'm not holding my breath.
I look at the work that's put into this so far, and truly, I am humbled. I don't know Forgotten Realms well enough to know how good you have the setting nailed down, and I'm not sure it matters if I do or don't because what you have lives and breathes. But none of these characters are 'my' character. I have no personal stake in what's in beta after two hours, and I have every reason to believe that I'm not the only one.
Post edited by tau41 on
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The problem is 'general' people don't know how 4e plays, and that the classes are split just like they did it in NW
Even in the earliest adventures I found a myriad of off-the-beaten path rewards for the diligent explorer, but Cryptic's focus has obviously been to give us a compelling combat system with which to build our own adventures around via the Foundry.
I submit that if you can't find a way to make your character unique, this isn't a problem with the class design, but with your inability to creatively adapt to a new system. I for one have had a lot of fun theorycrafting alternate builds for my characters.
However I've come to realize that the majority of these threads are barely worth responding to, because most of them are simply people who have come here expecting something they are more familiar with. The DnD crowd is by and large a group of older players familiar with old systems, and you know what they say about old dogs learning new tricks.
EDIT: Wonder why it still just says PWE User....
Having said that let's go deal with races first. In Beta they've produced all but two of the standard 4e races, missing as you pointed out the Eladrin and the Dragonborn. But there's still one unreleased race and my money is on Dragonborn. In my opinion missing out on Eladrin's isn't that big of a deal. I mean really a third elf variant seems over kill to me.
As for classes Neverwinter has been continually announcing classes for a while. As of next month's beta weekend we'll have both sides of the Fighter Class in game. This gives me great hope that by the time Launch rocks around we'll have at the very least both sides of the Fighter, Cleric, Wizard and Rogue classes.
So for a F2P game having on launch, 8 Classes and 7 Races available is a staggering amount of playable choice. Now you then go onto mention that while you think they've done a bloody awesome job with the setting and they have. This is one of two MMO's whose settings I actually give a toss about. What gets me and what you really failed to grasp in a mere two hours of gameplay is the following.
Believable Quest Motivations.
I have to say as a prolific MMO player and beta-tester nothing annoys me more then half *** pansy reasons for doing quests. Want an example of what I mean, play SWTOR long enough and eventually you run into the penultimate pansy. A Jedi-Master who is incapable of killing a bear in the woods. He's not busy, just lazy and/or incompetent.
In Neverwinter I (I got to 20 this weekend, just starting on the Blackdagger content) have yet to run into a single quest where there wasn't a good reason as to why the quest giver couldn't do what he was asking you to do. Sometimes it was a little old lady, sometimes it was a Guard protecting a mage who was unbinding the undead. Even the standard Kill/Collect quests had good reasons other then that the quest giver hungered for scalps the gory sick *******.
Evolving NPC Relationships.
It starts in the prologue and continues on through. Private Wilfred fishes you out of the drink, then he dies fighting the lich Valindra. The first Leiutenant you meet along the beach a Lt Linkletter, he's got his own plot later on too. Sgt Knox, jeez he and I should be on a first name, promised to his daughter stage by now. They don't just palm you off to a new set of NPC's for you to go through the whole earning their trust bull**** every god **** time.
Cryptic have done a hell of a lot right. Some lag tweeks and bug fixes and they are well on their way to having the best 2 Play MMO out there. Partly because 4th edition just lends itself so well to the MMO scene, but because they've put the hard work in and lovingly and faithfully rendered the next chapter in the Forgotten Realms saga.
That they go cross eyed the moment you dumb down things for them to the point of taking away all the choices? Because from what I've seen so far there's nothing TO learn. They've already done all the learning for you. All you have to do is pick the class they've already build for you, and play it how they want you to play it. You don't even get to pick your own weapon, which is something that has been on since D&D Basic and even 4e allows.
If anything its the noobs that have difficulty learning, because even D&D 4e is way more complicated than this.
4E doesn't pigeon hole classes. The builds they're taking are the "recommended" builds for new players. You don't have to follow them at all.
The gear restrictions don't bug me that much. At least playing cleric the gear possibilities still vary. You can go for more restore, more defense, more crit, more power. Basically there's gear to raise any stat, not just pushing you into raising your restore.
The skill choices however are atrocious. For the amount of skills available in the PhB they just recycled a few of the same ones all the way up the skill tree. Leveling for skills means very little.
If people are looking for a close to pnp dnd experience, this won't be it. An action adventure game in a dnd world though covers it about right.
Edit: On a plus though, if they do release ALL the PHB builds, there will be A LOT of character choice at generation. And they did say classes would be free, so if they stick to that there's hope.
Did you go into your forum control panel and activate your title?
true there s no freedom into the built...there s not much difference between 2 level 20 fighters...beside statistics, and the weapon restrictions...why on earth would they do that...why can t i have a war mace and a shield? one solution came to my mind, easier and faster to make...(read cheaper in development cost)
can you tell us how can i not follow them while they have already been picked in advance for me?
I believe they said races will be free not classes...and even if they are too, cryptic is not known to keep up their words...their favorite argument is that the business is evolving so they have too and us as well i guess...
Looking forward to try the greater weapon fighter on the 3rd beta weekend if its playable that is if not will roll another dont want to play 1 class to much then have to replay everything all over again.
Plus hope they have crafting in the next time as well for us to play about with but good job so far.
They can definately improve on the game with the tools they have in it now, I think Traps should be more important to disarm and hurt more. Would be nice to see a reward from disarming them as well like bonus XP or trash loot trap parts or something. I only played a rogue but does every class have something they can do in dungeons like disarming traps? Would be nice to see, and to see a real reason for doing those things.
I am a real sceptic when it comes to games these days. I usually don't expect too much, I came into this beta weekend expecting to load it up and play just a few hours to get a taste. But ended up playing all day all weekend and getting my rogue to level 36 without it even feel like I was really leveling. That's impressive since It's been quite some time since I've played any game like that. Now I don't expect this game to kill any other game out there, but for people like myself that are tired of the current games available it will be nice and fresh for a least a few months.
The trees are also FILLED with redundant skills, and I feel like they all could have been placed to a certain weapon (Guardian Skills usable with Sword and Shield, GW with a Great Weapon, some skills between the two the same, like taints), allowing a Fighter to, at one point, go from Great Weapon Fighter to Guardian Fighter, so Fighters could easily be DPS or Tanky.
This is the sort of system people seem to want, really. Where everyone starts as a basic character, get all the skills of all classes (A Fighter getting Great Weapon and Guardian skills), then just picking a weapon to choose which Fighter they are. It certainly takes down the grind factor, I suppose. But they couldn't sell you character slots, and it'd actually take a butt load of work to keep it all focused.
With the bile out of the way now, really I don't see why they couldn't suggest gear for the class you want, IE, put power buffs on scale mail for Great Weapon Fighters, Defense on Plate for Guardian, even mix the two so you could be tanky GWF, since that's what they're going for anyway, and just collapse all these classes together.
Let the Paragon paths decipher what happens! But we're also forgetting Multiclassing. Would you be able to unlock all classes on a single character? Level all them up? Choose how much of one class you want, losing crazy higher level skills for the other?
Would you unlock just the lower level versions of that skill? Would it be max level, but you only had as many abilities from that class as you put levels in? These are questions the devs probably asked themselves, and they decided to streamline it and make it completely Newb Friendly. It's very hard to screw up a build, and there's still the ability to respec (which costs money, btw).
Personally, I'm for just collapsing the classes into basic ones, and making it so the weapon you wield decides your class. It'd make it that much easier to add classes, but I figure it'd also make it so people could instantly grab the new weapon, rather than having to level the new class altogether.
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?51991-Class-builds-from-4e
The class list through PHB1-3 is very pleasing in the long run. That combined with Dragonborn and other races otw. As far as being told how to play... I do feel the right/left mouse clicks should be more diverse for playstyle but you get decent amount of skills to swap. I played a Trickster Rogue along with another one in the skirmish and he used stuff I didn't and vice verse. It allowed for unique playstyles. Also I play a more Erevis Cale type rogue and Lurker Assault was gold to me while most other rogues use the teleport or the dagger projectile Daily.
Agreed a million percent. There should be more options for building. I especially don't like the preset dice choices. What if I want my rogue to have 20 Con? What if I'd perfer my wizard to crit more often?
It's nonsense. We should be given the choice to roll and then allocate each stat where we want it, then apply the racial bonus.
Amen. And while you can say "it's just beta" anyone whose done years of betas will tell you, some things just don't change..>>EVER. Somethings it takes a lot of people beeching about to get it changed. So to you who say "bend over and take it" I say bugger off.
Too bad we can't make our own dungeon with tons of traps...oh wait.
I agree 100% with your thoughts !
I support this reply !
To you, the one guy in here who totally misses the point. I don't care that you felt like you had to take a pot shot at me personally at the end of your little comment, but since you did, the least I can do is return what you asked for.
I don't give a **** what's buried in the UI to make one class tanky, or another class casty. I care that the effects are present AND visually apparent. They might have buried some of those things in the UI, sure-but they don't fulfill the VISUAL side of it.
It's about playing 'my character,' and 'my character' should have a different feel about it than yours does. You are already evidently new to the MMO scene, so while you ARE seeing all these seemingly viable, alternative play styles, the game is almost undoubtedly set up to reward people who game the system to do better at what their class is INTENDED to do. Even if it isn't intended to reward people who min/max, Cryptic games generally do anyways. Four classes is not enough variance, particularly with only one member of each role. But I'll go beyond your ignorance and EXPLAIN what I mean since you don't get it.
Let's use Cleric again. We're playing Devout Cleric, because apparently Battle Clerics aren't a thing. That means ALL Clerics are going to EXCLUSIVELY shoot light beams at mobs. Whether you ARE more tanky or more DPSy or more healy is *irrelevant* BECAUSE you and EVERYONE ELSE is shooting light beams. The difference between Battle Cleric and Devout Cleric-the thing I reasonably expected to be in the game was the ability to choose, at level one, between Lance of Faith AND Righteous Brand. It's quite literally two attacks. A ranged attack, and a melee attack. The fact that this one, very simple choice is NOT in the game means that I am going to have to wait for them to release an entire other class before I feel like we're getting closer to 'my character.' The fact that I'm upset about something that has been in DnD since before I ever played it not being represented in at all in a DnD game at all is not unreasonable either. It's unfortunate, but the implications are worse-that the whole GAME is missing core DnD elements.
There's an acceptable gulf between 'my character' and the character I can play in a game. I know about it, I accept it, it's a thing. In something called DnD, I EXPECT that gulf to be considerably narrower. This is not an unreasonable expectation of something attached to the DnD property. Your statement that it is however is unreasonable-you're acting like you can divorce the things that make DnD from DnD and that it's ok.
Now, I feel I said a lot of nice things about their game, and that they were well deserved. But I'm going to call a sham a sham when I see it. Right now, for me, and surely, many other people, NW can be more quickly defined by what it IS NOT than what it IS, and it IS NOT DnD. It's not even as close to DnD as the other Neverwinter games, which is the real punch here. So not only has it failed at being DnD, it's failed at being Neverwinter. THAT is what is damning, THAT is the problem, and THAT is why your talking about other business in other parts of the forum puts your ignorance on display. We're talking about WHAT THEY LET US SEE, not hypothesis happy land.
Neverwinter is almost entirely unlike 4E in terms of mechanics.
The classes are most certainly not split in the way Neverwinter does it. Neverwinter just took some example level 1 builds, and turned them into classes.
Neverwinter does seem to capture some of the spirit of 4E tactical combat, but doesn't come close in terms of build options.
I am very disappointed with number of skills and skill slots available in the game. If we ignore dodging, left and right mouse buttons (which should not be considered skills [they are auto attacks]) we are left with 4 skills (well 3 and a half). I would like to see more.
Oh, and another thing... How come some skills level up and others dont?
"Oh, i just got a new level! lets see what kind of skill did i got.... oh its... hmmm the same one that i already have."
So which skills are the good ones? the ones which level up or the ones that dont? If there is no difference why should there be this "dual" system?
honestly, not sure if i should take your comment as sarcastic or genuine... you guys did not notice any of this or even did not think about it when developing the game?
weapon/armor restrictions, limited character personalization (one class fits all), limited spells, already made tree skills etc... and these are core implementation in the game, i don t expect you to be able to make any changes so close to release...
i would like to play with a cross bow, a bow, a warhammer, a rapier, an axe or a stick... no can t do, i have to wait for you to release the matching class???? then i am stuck with it anyways...
as a spell caster i can t pick the spells i want to learn and use cause these s an already predetermined list?
I can t choose any skills to make my character more specific to my taste (which might not be the most efficient but i m the customer after all)
These and more are core part of DnD...any editions i reckon.
I believe you said you were playing PnP DnD, so can you answer this simple question: Do you like to play with the character you made from scratch or with a pre generated one included in the DnD adventure?
You would like some feedback, here s some: think about repercussions and consequences before implementing your ideas in the game...a bit like in real life. Did any of the dev ask him/herself? is this a good idea to bind only one type of weapon to a class? or make identical objects class specific?...a ring +1 is a ring +1... unless there are very powerful and specialized at doing one thing...how about using a bit of common sense here?
How did you miss so much? i mean a lot of Beta players are not complaining about minor stuff that you can tweak(like the price of ID scrolls), there are complaining about major design flaws.(IMO)
Unless you just wanted to make a dumb down action very orientated MMO in a DnD setting for 14 years old kids... then congratulation. However i have more income than most of them...