I was remarking on the extensive customizablility of the CO's original Freeform characters. I could easily see that sort of system being applied to D&D character construction...and that was my original expectation when first I heard about the project. Now, though, I see that they're using the Archetype system with their class/race options...which, I admit, is fantastic for a F2P model ("Here's a new class/race! Only a couple bucks!") but which is terribly restrictive for D&D style character building....where the only limit is your creativity (and creative use of the rules...).
I have to agree. The amount of choice when developing your character (heck, even character appearance) is extremely sub-par not even comparing it to D&D 4E (and those saying 4E has no choice, shame on you for lying). I'm just comparing it to the previous video games cryptic themselves have created.
Add to that the fact that items are so segregated, that the same rings and amulets drop for all classes (as the stats can be used by all), but are not able to be worn by all classes. Two suits of identical armor are restricted between GW and GWF. It's absurd. Weapons and off-hand restrictions I can understand, maybe, but even the lack of choice here is telling.
Sadly, this makes the world feel somewhat lacking in depth,shallow, and one-dimensional.
I would love to see spells as cash purchase items. Color Spray, Sleep, Web, etc... Now before everyone goes off the reservation at this idea, if you think about this, these all basically do the same thing but with a different animation. This would give devs time to roll out the animations, provide a bit of customization to characters, while not creating an imbalance between payers and non-payers.
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sirglenoMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 75
I would love to see spells as cash purchase items. Color Spray, Sleep, Web, etc... Now before everyone goes off the reservation at this idea, if you think about this, these all basically do the same thing but with a different animation. This would give devs time to roll out the animations, provide a bit of customization to characters, while not creating an imbalance between payers and non-payers.
Totally disagree for two reasons. It sounds silly to just re-skin frost bolt (or whatever the CW's at will power is called) and call it color spray, web, or (especially) sleep. If they have these spells in game, they better **** well do something close to what their name implies. Additionally, charging out of game currency (zen/AD) for spells is so far out there, that it is not even pay-to-win, its essentially pay-to-play. If they had spells available for a modest price in AD, for example what a player could get by praying 4 times or something, that does seem ok, but if they make it cost prohibitive so that the only realistic way for most players to get a full spellbook would be to dump money into Zen, I can tell you right now that would be a game-killer for me.
Don't get me wrong, I am reasonably happy to pay for game enhancements (e.g. bank slots, uniquely skinned mounts, upgraded player housing, etc., etc.), although the minute they charge more AD/Zen than I can reasonably earn by playing my character for FUNCTIONAL ABILITY is the minute I put the game down and go play something else. They already have my $60, and I feel that what I get out of a founder's pack is well worth it, but if they want any more from me, they have to maintain a level of decency about when they require use of AD/Zen (again, small costs in AD does seem ok in my book, but for functional uses, should not exceed what a player can reasonably acquire by simply playing).
Well that sucks, i just kind of took it for granted that a DnD game would have a very in-depth character customization system. I honestly just kind of figured on a DDO style - aka 100 ppl with the same starting class will have 100 different builds at max lvl. Played that game for so long just for its customization.
Whelp, my first shot at the game is coming up tomorrow but my expectations just went way down for something thats gunna keep me interested passed my first max character.
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mokahMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Well that sucks, i just kind of took it for granted that a DnD game would have a very in-depth character customization system. I honestly just kind of figured on a DDO style - aka 100 ppl with the same starting class will have 100 different builds at max lvl. Played that game for so long just for its customization.
Whelp, my first shot at the game is coming up tomorrow but my expectations just went way down for something thats gunna keep me interested passed my first max character.
Yes, I agree that compared to DDO (spare me the "but apples to oranges" argument) NWO is very lacking when it comes to player choice and character building. That will hurt them. I don't care if you are the biggest NWO fanboy that ever was, you have to admit that it will hurt them come release day.
The only thing that I see that NWO has that other games of it's type do not is the free access to the Foundry. That will help a lot and is why I'm interested in the game. Here's hoping that it will help enough to offset the class building disappointment.
Mokah - The Grumpy Strumpet
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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elveMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 336
edited March 2013
How come when you choose 2 to will saves or 2 to reflex saves it makes a whole new build but when you choose 10% to damage or 10% to health it doesn't?
As it stands there is no official release date set. After this beta week end for all we know they may look at how things are, read more feedback and come back to us with more classes/races/customization. Although I agree that there are not many choices at this time, I am hopeful that as the game progresses more will be added.
I think after 1 month of release we will all know how this game works. To keep people interested there is either going to be lots of content to keep people interested, or customization is going to be more open than what people are presuming, therefore maybe lead to players creating alts etc.
I do not think this game can rely on foundry content alone to keep its fire burning, because although foundry content can be great fun, foundry content can not provide epic uber gear for the players who want to get from A-B as quickly as possible and get the uber loot, they will be the first ones on here poking it with the MMO doom stick saying how endgame has ruined their life!...
There is also going to be the 'normal' gamer who will take time and enjoy the quest and dissolve themselves into the Lore etc, but eventually they will reach the light and wonder what to do next.
There have been a lot of questions and discussions on this forum over the past couple of months, there have been key questions that have been brought up multiple times by players who are very passionate about this game and its success. I do feel that the input given from these peoples concerns and suggestions has been treated with lacking response and information from the Devs. this I think was a bad move and will influence their personal negativity towards the game.
How come when you choose 2 to will saves or 2 to reflex saves it makes a whole new build but when you choose 10% to damage or 10% to health it doesn't?
Lol, you have obviously never played or even casually glanced at ddo. The comparison is so far out there it's not even funny. ddo has probably the single most sophisticated customization system ever seen in a major mmo, and it also completely blows single player titles like the original neverwinter out of the water. Compared to that, this game's character progression has the railroaded simplicity of a cheap chinese browser game.
I'm not saying it can't be fun for what it is, but saying it's character customization could stand up to a heavyweight like ddo is just absurd.
Well FoxSilver, I think there is quite a bit to do at L60. Sure you are correct about gear not coming from the foundry per se, but every single dungeon has a ramped up heroic mode for capped players, as well as their actual endgame content. Some of which revolves around pvp I hear.
Depending on how crafting and pvp are, it can certainly extend the endgame replayability. They are also keeping their full dev staff on for adding content, which I admire
Lol, you have obviously never played or even casually glanced at ddo. The comparison is so far out there it's not even funny. ddo has probably the single most sophisticated customization system ever seen in a major mmo, and it also completely blows single player titles like the original neverwinter out of the water. Compared to that, this game's character progression has the railroaded simplicity of a cheap chinese browser game.
I'm not saying it can't be fun for what it is, but saying it's character customization could stand up to a heavyweight like ddo is just absurd.
I agree ive played DDO for the last 7 yrs full time lol like a job . this game is fun but im afraid it will not have any re playability ill run through then back too ddo , which makes me sad because im getting burned out on DDO have been for a few yrs now looking for DDO2 that would be great.
Die
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elveMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 336
edited March 2013
Yeah, what a surprise - DDO has 7 years worth of content. The point still stands.
Yeah, what a surprise - DDO has 7 years worth of content. The point still stands.
Then compare it to ddo in it's release state if you want. It always had more options, and the ones it had only got more fleshed out over it's lifetime of course, but it always was substantially more complex and deep to begin with.
The whole multiclassing and feat system was just vastly more advanced from the get go, and it was something that you really could expand on, because it set a foundation for what was to come. When every class splash and feat is available to all characters, every addition to it affects drastically more other systems then it does in neverwinter. If they add another at-will power or another feat in neverwinter, it will just be an option for it's specific class/paragon path or whatever, they don't interact as much.
Now you could of course say they can add all that in the future, and "it's just beta" or something, but seriously, a complete 180 turn this late in a development cycle doesn't seem that likely to me.
It's not called NWN, it's called Neverwinter Online (NWO). It has absolutely nothing to do with the Neverwinter Nights game/series. This is not NWN 3, this is not a tabletop import of D&D; it's an Action-RPG MMO designed by Cryptic using D&D lore, and loosely based on D&D "rules".
No it has never been stated that it's "loosely" based on D&D rules, it's based but the word loosely has never been specified. If you have a game called Neverwinter and have dungeons and dragons next to it's name you can't expect people not to compare it to the NWN franchise and D&D rules. Hell there's even a link to the D&D website. Logic dictates that a lot of gamers will be attracted to this game because they have played NWN or and have played the tabletop game, therefore it's in the developers interest to study NWN and D&D rules and incorporate the positive aspects from these sources.
It any rate regardless on whats it's based on choice is always a good thing.
The amount of work required to add in everything tabletop offers, and keep the game balanced and oriented towards an MMO crowd, is more than I expect a company to commit to. Hell, even in NWN and NWN 2, a lot of the persistent worlds put severe limits on magic (Arcane and Divine) because it was ridiculously overpowered.
I don't know about that, maybe you should be more specific on what these actual restrictions where. I've seen some changes in some persistent worlds but not a lot. We need to consider that the developers are working hard but at the end of the day they're creating the game for us and not themselves. Choice is a defining aspect of D&D games and if they restrict this it's a bad move. Nobody is saying you should incorporate everything but choice in character creation and development is very important.
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auyumnMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 8Arc User
It any rate regardless on whats it's based on choice is always a good thing.
I don't know about that, maybe you should be more specific on what these actual restrictions where. I've seen some changes in some persistent worlds but not a lot. We need to consider that the developers are working hard but at the end of the day they're creating the game for us and not themselves. Choice is a defining aspect of D&D games and if they restrict this it's a bad move. Nobody is saying you should incorporate everything but choice in character creation and development is very important.
This was my basic thought as well. Choice won't hurt this game at all. It can only help people feel like their character isn't the same as everyone else. I'm not even talking about gear, I am talking about straight build from level one. I only hope this is something that is strictly beta and I will be pleasantly surprised come release.
According to the lead dev Zeke, every single change or idea they attempt to view through the lens of D&D. Some of it works, some of you end up having to concede and change.
They never planned on this to be an MMO and he's workin his tail off trying to get this to meet the expectations of the genre. Pretty tall task, if not impossible, but give it yer best!
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elveMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 336
Then compare it to ddo in it's release state if you want. It always had more options, and the ones it had only got more fleshed out over it's lifetime of course, but it always was substantially more complex and deep to begin with.
The whole multiclassing and feat system was just vastly more advanced from the get go, and it was something that you really could expand on, because it set a foundation for what was to come. When every class splash and feat is available to all characters, every addition to it affects drastically more other systems then it does in neverwinter. If they add another at-will power or another feat in neverwinter, it will just be an option for it's specific class/paragon path or whatever, they don't interact as much.
Now you could of course say they can add all that in the future, and "it's just beta" or something, but seriously, a complete 180 turn this late in a development cycle doesn't seem that likely to me.
At the beginning DDO didn't have that much content either and the customization was pretty limited. It was pretty limited actually until they converted the game to F2P and cash started flowing in. Also thanks to the system that is used there the game balance is a complete mess. Yes, you can make a lot of builds but 90% of them don't work at all. Now why would I want to make a character that doesn't work? In this game at least I can make a well-rounded, not-min-maxed character that does not suck.
nordveig, you also have to consider that the devs are making a game for every RPG fan, Forgotten Realms fan, MMO fan and actually PC gamer out there and not just for you or just for the D&D buffs. There is character development and customization and it is easy to use and gives you a lot of freedom within the boundaries of the chosen class. In the end - if you don't want to play a fighter with sword and shield then why did you pick a Guardian Fighter to play?
Also "loosely" means exactly that - loosely. The game is based loosely on the 4th edition D&D. It is not a literal translation into a computer game but the powers, the classes, the races and so on are inspired by 4th edition. And yes, there is more stuff in D&D books but then again it is way easier to invent stuff than to code it into the game and make the visual and audio assets for it.
At the beginning DDO didn't have that much content either and the customization was pretty limited. It was pretty limited actually until they converted the game to F2P and cash started flowing in. Also thanks to the system that is used there the game balance is a complete mess. Yes, you can make a lot of builds but 90% of them don't work at all. Now why would I want to make a character that doesn't work? In this game at least I can make a well-rounded, not-min-maxed character that does not suck.
Of course over 90% of build's don't work, but that is not neccessarily a bad thing. When you make a sandbox-like system and enable every combination of elements, you are bound to end up with an abundance of sub-par combinations which can't compare to other's, that's by design. That's not bad, it's just less **** and moron friendly, and personally, I couldn't care less. Even then, you could still opt for the hand-holding approach and use a build from the forums or even a preset path that wouldn't even ask you anything when you levelld up (admitteldy, those got outdated soon though) if you couldn't be bothered to make your own.
The only thing you get to do in this game is to chose one of the preset paths and maybe min-max it to get some more %dps out of it, but you will never be able to substantially change the way you played, as it was possible in ddo for many classes.
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lanessar13Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, SilverstarsPosts: 8Arc User
Lol, you have obviously never played or even casually glanced at ddo. The comparison is so far out there it's not even funny. ddo has probably the single most sophisticated customization system ever seen in a major mmo, and it also completely blows single player titles like the original neverwinter out of the water. Compared to that, this game's character progression has the railroaded simplicity of a cheap chinese browser game.
I'm not saying it can't be fun for what it is, but saying it's character customization could stand up to a heavyweight like ddo is just absurd.
You haven't played much with NWN 1 or 2, then.
This statement (as far as Neverwinter Nights) is absurd. I've played both systems. I alpha, beta and release-tested DDO. The number of feats and classes for DDO are around 70 feats, 13 classes. Compared to NWN (with mods) 300 feats (not including the rank 2, 3 feats) and close to 220 classes/PRCs. This isn't counting the fringe stuff where specific PWs (like Hyborian Age or Harry Potter or Wheel of Time) totally remade the class system (wardens, aes sedai and whatnot, which had only passing resemblance to fighters or mages from D&D).
I do however totally agree with your sentiment on customizability for this game. It actually hasn't been this "railroaded" in any game I've seen released since WOW. Make a character (even a normal F2P character) in STO or CO; CO, the worst of the bunch, still allows you to select a power at levels 8 and 24 (if I recall correctly). So, even the "totally free" version of Cryptic's other games (or even the original CO) has loads of customization options comparatively.
As to replayability, there is very little. You do the same quests, same storylines, and there is almost no difference between the experiences. I've leveled 3 characters to 30. Trust me, as they release new classes, normal people will start to try to figure out exploits to avoid the grind up.
The way to solve this would be three or four "quest lines" per area. Different quests, getting to the same goal. But as it stands currently, this game has less replayability than vanilla WOW.
This statement (as far as Neverwinter Nights) is absurd. I've played both systems. I alpha, beta and release-tested DDO. The number of feats and classes for DDO are around 70 feats, 13 classes. Compared to NWN (with mods) 300 feats (not including the rank 2, 3 feats) and close to 220 classes/PRCs. This isn't counting the fringe stuff where specific PWs (like Hyborian Age or Harry Potter or Wheel of Time) totally remade the class system (wardens, aes sedai and whatnot, which had only passing resemblance to fighters or mages from D&D).
Please note that this was aimed at today's ddo on one side, which got vastly expanded, especially beyond it's alpha/beta stage (full 20 levels available, prestige classes and epic destinies etc...), and vanilla nwn on the other side. You can of course count all the addons and user made content together and compare it to release day ddo, but I don't think this would be a very fair comparison.
My main point about ddo was that it was very open from the beginning. With the multiclass system available, you knew that whenever a new class, prestige class or whatever got implemented, it would also impact other classes' as a potential splash and enable new builds that combine the old and new stuff. In this game, however, we are extremely limited right now, and from what we know that system won't substantially change either. When scourge warlock gets released for example, then that's it. We won't see new weapons, feats or build options outside of just rolling a scourge warlock.
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elveMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 336
edited March 2013
@freemind25, yeah, why play a game where everything works when you can play a game where 10% of the stuff works but it costs the same time to produce. Isn't that a developer's and a player's dream...
@lanessar13, can't agree about the customization in NW part. This game definitely has more options than CO f2p stuff and even some of the more popular MMOs including TERA, LOTRO, Raiderz, Firefall and Age of Wushu. If they add a little bit more powers to the current system and alter some of the traits we will end up with really diverse build options.
Having all the skills does not mean limited choice - you still choose what skills to use and upgrade through the trait system.
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morvian3520Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 4Arc User
I have been a NWN die hard fan since the beginning and I was disappointed with the leveling of the classes. There were no options on what abilities you wanted, you got what they gave you. To me this took away any customization and would make it so every wizard and rouge for example would play the same way. It makes for very little re-playability. Picking what spells and skills you wants to shape your character the way you envision it is what makes it a D&D based game. Yes even at beginning levels you should have the option to pick which spells you want. I have been cruising the forums and I haven't seen too many people talking about this. It was my biggest let down. I guess only time will tell if this is a Beta only issue. The game has great potential, but imo if they don't fix some of the basics it will not be able to live up to the NWN's name.
This. So much this.
I understand that there is a small amount of choice in the feats and things like that. Still though, it doesn't look or feel anything like NWN or DND.
Also, I don't want to hear "it's just different because it's 4e." I have lots of 4e books on my shelf in this room. There's a ton of things that could be and should be put in the game.
If it's not immediately noticeable that my wizard is built differently from the wizard standing next to me, then how are my choices validated? Or even important at all?
@freemind25, yeah, why play a game where everything works when you can play a game where 10% of the stuff works but it costs the same time to produce. Isn't that a developer's and a player's dream...
Having all the skills does not mean limited choice - you still choose what skills to use and upgrade through the trait system.
If 10% of what is good in ddo equals 1000% of what is even available in neverwinter, then yes, ddo wins. (not that I would agree with those numbers anyway)
What is the use of putting the DnD logo on a game that will not allow you to make the character you want. That is the corner stone of DnD. Your character is your persona, not just a template that you are pigeon holed into. I played both beta weekends and maxed my TR and CW to max levels on those weekends as was asked of me as a beta tester... and you know what? I felt nothing for either of those characters. That is not DnD. DnD makes you feel invested in your character, makes you upset if they die, makes you want to hit that next level, makes you actually give a s**t. My character dies in this game and I feel about as upset as I did when I played Pac-Man. Oh well he died.
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lanessar13Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, SilverstarsPosts: 8Arc User
What is the use of putting the DnD logo on a game that will not allow you to make the character you want. That is the corner stone of DnD. Your character is your persona, not just a template that you are pigeon holed into. I played both beta weekends and maxed my TR and CW to max levels on those weekends as was asked of me as a beta tester... and you know what? I felt nothing for either of those characters. That is not DnD. DnD makes you feel invested in your character, makes you upset if they die, makes you want to hit that next level, makes you actually give a s**t. My character dies in this game and I feel about as upset as I did when I played Pac-Man. Oh well he died.
With the "flattening down" dying animation and death sound, I find this likening somewhat apt.
Comments
I have to agree. The amount of choice when developing your character (heck, even character appearance) is extremely sub-par not even comparing it to D&D 4E (and those saying 4E has no choice, shame on you for lying). I'm just comparing it to the previous video games cryptic themselves have created.
Add to that the fact that items are so segregated, that the same rings and amulets drop for all classes (as the stats can be used by all), but are not able to be worn by all classes. Two suits of identical armor are restricted between GW and GWF. It's absurd. Weapons and off-hand restrictions I can understand, maybe, but even the lack of choice here is telling.
Sadly, this makes the world feel somewhat lacking in depth,shallow, and one-dimensional.
Don't get me wrong, I am reasonably happy to pay for game enhancements (e.g. bank slots, uniquely skinned mounts, upgraded player housing, etc., etc.), although the minute they charge more AD/Zen than I can reasonably earn by playing my character for FUNCTIONAL ABILITY is the minute I put the game down and go play something else. They already have my $60, and I feel that what I get out of a founder's pack is well worth it, but if they want any more from me, they have to maintain a level of decency about when they require use of AD/Zen (again, small costs in AD does seem ok in my book, but for functional uses, should not exceed what a player can reasonably acquire by simply playing).
Nyx - Divine Cleric
Medusa - Brush Wizard
Spinnerella - Combat Wizard
Don't forget to update the Wiki!
Whelp, my first shot at the game is coming up tomorrow but my expectations just went way down for something thats gunna keep me interested passed my first max character.
Yes, I agree that compared to DDO (spare me the "but apples to oranges" argument) NWO is very lacking when it comes to player choice and character building. That will hurt them. I don't care if you are the biggest NWO fanboy that ever was, you have to admit that it will hurt them come release day.
The only thing that I see that NWO has that other games of it's type do not is the free access to the Foundry. That will help a lot and is why I'm interested in the game. Here's hoping that it will help enough to offset the class building disappointment.
I do not think this game can rely on foundry content alone to keep its fire burning, because although foundry content can be great fun, foundry content can not provide epic uber gear for the players who want to get from A-B as quickly as possible and get the uber loot, they will be the first ones on here poking it with the MMO doom stick saying how endgame has ruined their life!...
There is also going to be the 'normal' gamer who will take time and enjoy the quest and dissolve themselves into the Lore etc, but eventually they will reach the light and wonder what to do next.
There have been a lot of questions and discussions on this forum over the past couple of months, there have been key questions that have been brought up multiple times by players who are very passionate about this game and its success. I do feel that the input given from these peoples concerns and suggestions has been treated with lacking response and information from the Devs. this I think was a bad move and will influence their personal negativity towards the game.
Lol, you have obviously never played or even casually glanced at ddo. The comparison is so far out there it's not even funny. ddo has probably the single most sophisticated customization system ever seen in a major mmo, and it also completely blows single player titles like the original neverwinter out of the water. Compared to that, this game's character progression has the railroaded simplicity of a cheap chinese browser game.
I'm not saying it can't be fun for what it is, but saying it's character customization could stand up to a heavyweight like ddo is just absurd.
Depending on how crafting and pvp are, it can certainly extend the endgame replayability. They are also keeping their full dev staff on for adding content, which I admire
Then compare it to ddo in it's release state if you want. It always had more options, and the ones it had only got more fleshed out over it's lifetime of course, but it always was substantially more complex and deep to begin with.
The whole multiclassing and feat system was just vastly more advanced from the get go, and it was something that you really could expand on, because it set a foundation for what was to come. When every class splash and feat is available to all characters, every addition to it affects drastically more other systems then it does in neverwinter. If they add another at-will power or another feat in neverwinter, it will just be an option for it's specific class/paragon path or whatever, they don't interact as much.
Now you could of course say they can add all that in the future, and "it's just beta" or something, but seriously, a complete 180 turn this late in a development cycle doesn't seem that likely to me.
No it has never been stated that it's "loosely" based on D&D rules, it's based but the word loosely has never been specified. If you have a game called Neverwinter and have dungeons and dragons next to it's name you can't expect people not to compare it to the NWN franchise and D&D rules. Hell there's even a link to the D&D website. Logic dictates that a lot of gamers will be attracted to this game because they have played NWN or and have played the tabletop game, therefore it's in the developers interest to study NWN and D&D rules and incorporate the positive aspects from these sources.
It any rate regardless on whats it's based on choice is always a good thing.
I don't know about that, maybe you should be more specific on what these actual restrictions where. I've seen some changes in some persistent worlds but not a lot. We need to consider that the developers are working hard but at the end of the day they're creating the game for us and not themselves. Choice is a defining aspect of D&D games and if they restrict this it's a bad move. Nobody is saying you should incorporate everything but choice in character creation and development is very important.
This was my basic thought as well. Choice won't hurt this game at all. It can only help people feel like their character isn't the same as everyone else. I'm not even talking about gear, I am talking about straight build from level one. I only hope this is something that is strictly beta and I will be pleasantly surprised come release.
They never planned on this to be an MMO and he's workin his tail off trying to get this to meet the expectations of the genre. Pretty tall task, if not impossible, but give it yer best!
nordveig, you also have to consider that the devs are making a game for every RPG fan, Forgotten Realms fan, MMO fan and actually PC gamer out there and not just for you or just for the D&D buffs. There is character development and customization and it is easy to use and gives you a lot of freedom within the boundaries of the chosen class. In the end - if you don't want to play a fighter with sword and shield then why did you pick a Guardian Fighter to play?
Also "loosely" means exactly that - loosely. The game is based loosely on the 4th edition D&D. It is not a literal translation into a computer game but the powers, the classes, the races and so on are inspired by 4th edition. And yes, there is more stuff in D&D books but then again it is way easier to invent stuff than to code it into the game and make the visual and audio assets for it.
Of course over 90% of build's don't work, but that is not neccessarily a bad thing. When you make a sandbox-like system and enable every combination of elements, you are bound to end up with an abundance of sub-par combinations which can't compare to other's, that's by design. That's not bad, it's just less **** and moron friendly, and personally, I couldn't care less. Even then, you could still opt for the hand-holding approach and use a build from the forums or even a preset path that wouldn't even ask you anything when you levelld up (admitteldy, those got outdated soon though) if you couldn't be bothered to make your own.
The only thing you get to do in this game is to chose one of the preset paths and maybe min-max it to get some more %dps out of it, but you will never be able to substantially change the way you played, as it was possible in ddo for many classes.
You haven't played much with NWN 1 or 2, then.
This statement (as far as Neverwinter Nights) is absurd. I've played both systems. I alpha, beta and release-tested DDO. The number of feats and classes for DDO are around 70 feats, 13 classes. Compared to NWN (with mods) 300 feats (not including the rank 2, 3 feats) and close to 220 classes/PRCs. This isn't counting the fringe stuff where specific PWs (like Hyborian Age or Harry Potter or Wheel of Time) totally remade the class system (wardens, aes sedai and whatnot, which had only passing resemblance to fighters or mages from D&D).
I do however totally agree with your sentiment on customizability for this game. It actually hasn't been this "railroaded" in any game I've seen released since WOW. Make a character (even a normal F2P character) in STO or CO; CO, the worst of the bunch, still allows you to select a power at levels 8 and 24 (if I recall correctly). So, even the "totally free" version of Cryptic's other games (or even the original CO) has loads of customization options comparatively.
As to replayability, there is very little. You do the same quests, same storylines, and there is almost no difference between the experiences. I've leveled 3 characters to 30. Trust me, as they release new classes, normal people will start to try to figure out exploits to avoid the grind up.
The way to solve this would be three or four "quest lines" per area. Different quests, getting to the same goal. But as it stands currently, this game has less replayability than vanilla WOW.
Please note that this was aimed at today's ddo on one side, which got vastly expanded, especially beyond it's alpha/beta stage (full 20 levels available, prestige classes and epic destinies etc...), and vanilla nwn on the other side. You can of course count all the addons and user made content together and compare it to release day ddo, but I don't think this would be a very fair comparison.
My main point about ddo was that it was very open from the beginning. With the multiclass system available, you knew that whenever a new class, prestige class or whatever got implemented, it would also impact other classes' as a potential splash and enable new builds that combine the old and new stuff. In this game, however, we are extremely limited right now, and from what we know that system won't substantially change either. When scourge warlock gets released for example, then that's it. We won't see new weapons, feats or build options outside of just rolling a scourge warlock.
@lanessar13, can't agree about the customization in NW part. This game definitely has more options than CO f2p stuff and even some of the more popular MMOs including TERA, LOTRO, Raiderz, Firefall and Age of Wushu. If they add a little bit more powers to the current system and alter some of the traits we will end up with really diverse build options.
Having all the skills does not mean limited choice - you still choose what skills to use and upgrade through the trait system.
This. So much this.
I understand that there is a small amount of choice in the feats and things like that. Still though, it doesn't look or feel anything like NWN or DND.
Also, I don't want to hear "it's just different because it's 4e." I have lots of 4e books on my shelf in this room. There's a ton of things that could be and should be put in the game.
If it's not immediately noticeable that my wizard is built differently from the wizard standing next to me, then how are my choices validated? Or even important at all?
I believe the leveling system needs redone.
If 10% of what is good in ddo equals 1000% of what is even available in neverwinter, then yes, ddo wins. (not that I would agree with those numbers anyway)
With the "flattening down" dying animation and death sound, I find this likening somewhat apt.