First impressions by an old veteran of MMOs, action games, and D&D.

sill40k

I was positively surprised when I saw Neverwinter, they managed to produce what looks like a pretty solid MMO out of nowhere. After having played around with it a bit though some rough edges became apparent which I feel detracts from the game sufficiently to keep it from being a serious contender to current and coming AAA MMOs.

DISCLAIMER: This is based only on brief experiences in the first part of the game, and I do not claim this applies to the late game, but the average gamer will probably not stick around that long if they re not happy with what they see in the beginning.

There are many minor issues with the presentation and gameplay that feel off but are hard to put your finger on, but I will do my best to give a couple of examples in chronological order as I encountered them. I realize some may disagree with or feel offended with this list, but note that I only list the weak points I experienced.

The starting area:
I realize you must have a tutorial and start off easy, but as an experienced gamer I found the first hours of gameplay to be ridiculously easy. Further, you only had one or two skills. Pushing the same 1-2 buttons for an hour without any challenge isn't my idea of fun. Since you also run kind of slow it was a pretty painful experience. I feel like that an MMO in 2013 need to do a better job to entice their players early on. Especially as it is F2P. Players have not commited anything and they generally have an attention span of like 5 minutes. My reaction: *yawn*

The story and voice overs:
The intro video was actually pretty decent, but then you wake up at the shore and encounter a super-generic story set up. It doesn't help that the voice overs seem to intermittently be completely out of synch with the lips. There is also considerable variation in quality on the voice overs. Some of the verbal notifications are super-bad *** and make for a rather humorous backdrop to the otherwise rather lame voice acting. One of example of unpolished design: The initial surprise party quest where they cheer for you thrice. Except that they only verbally cheer once, and then just have text bubbles saying "Hurray" while the guard does what could be best described as a ****-erotic dance. My reaction: *facepalm*

The GUI:
I actually like the GUI a lot, but some minor details betray a need for more polish. The progress bars on looting for example, for some reason instead of being smooth they stutter which makes it feel like you are lagging (which you might be, but no reason to make it obvious). The windows generally tend to appear and disappear very suddenly also, it would be nice with some fade-in/out as it currently feels slightly off for some reason that is hard to put your finger on.

Movement & combat:
While the combat is usually touted as Neverwinter's strong point, and it is indeed better than several other MMOs, I still feel like it is lacking. For one, comparing it to DDO which is perhaps the spiritual predecessor of Neverwinter (though 3rd edition was vastly different from 4th), I really do not like that I cannot move at all while attacking. This might be difficult to change though, and I acknowledge that not everybody wants to move around in combat, but personally I don't like it. What could perhaps be changed though is to make the combat feel more responsive and... authentic.

Basically, right now it feels like you are slashing the air while generating flying numbers and then the enemies just melt away into nothingness. I have noticed that enemies seem to actually suffer some kind of mini-stun when attacked, but there is no audio cue for this. In general it does not feel satisfying to hit and kill enemies. Many MMOs suffer from this to varying extents, but this was worse than I had hoped. Part of the problem is also that enemies seem to spawn from nothing, in large quantities and are seemingly rather generic. This "de-humanizes" them for lack of better word, negatively impacting the immersion. I feel like it would be better with less focus on flying numbers and more focus on satisfying fights.

Music:
One word: lacking. More and better please. Regarding sound, see above.

Level design:
There is way too much large empty desolate space everywhere in the first parts of the game at least. It seems like the point of some of the space is just to give a separate room for each of the very boring divine/nature/whatever interactables here and there. To add insult to injury you have to wait to loot these even if you are out of combat. This is compounded by the fact that you seem to run rather slow. I was CRAVING for a sprint button (two dodges do not count). I'm not saying that people should have a sprint button, and I expect this to become less of a problem with mounts, but many will not have the patience to wait that long.

The Foundry:
Awesome idea, cannot really comment on the execution since I haven't played enough.

The Wizard animations (EDIT: I almost forgot this):
Yeah so this has to be said. Nowhere in D&D does it say that wizards have to look like complete dorks while casting spells. Why the hand, WHY?! I usually prefer mage characters, and though Neverwinter has an awesome character creator, I just cannot take that hand waving. Wizards in this game need less weird dorkyness and more dragonball.

Conclusion: Neverwinter has yet to fully really realize its potential in my opinion, but it depends on what your expectations are. With some more polish I feel like it could become a pretty strong MMO (in the F2P segment at least) and I was generally positively surprised.

laendri

If this game was not based on D&D if would be really generic. D&D gives that little extra to make it attractive. But me, as you, have played way too many MMOs to stay for long after you see some of the cliche mechanics.

tykytys

I was underwhelmed when, during the surprise party, I was encouraged to grab a tankard and take a drink. I could, in fact, do neither. Is this any kind of a big problem? Of course not. However, it's essentially the very first time in the game that a player is treated as a hero. The developers might have done well to take a little extra time and code in a single clickable tankard that triggers a "drink" animation. If such a thing exists there, I couldn't find it. D&D's about atmosphere as much as about killing...even 4th Edition.

sill40k

Yeah. I think both the amount of features and the presentation in Neverwinter, at a glance, is amazing for a f2p. However, when you scratch the surface a bit you realize that it is all surface and no depth. It's kind of like they checked all the feature boxes in their spreadsheet and did proper bug testing (to their credit), but nobody took the overall responsibility to make sure it all meshed together into a consistent and enjoyable gaming experience.

emalore

Some points I agree with, some I don't, but one I feel the need to comment on.

Movement in Combat.

The thing that really caught my attention in this game was the combat. After playing Tera for a while, as an archer in particular, I LOVE that we are rooted in place when performing an attack animation. It adds both weight and strategy to the combat system, as well as sticking true to the classic D&D action system(movement then action, not both at once).

The root plus the over-the-top animations make your attacks feel like they are actually hitting, rather than just playing, and having to chose between attacking or moving out of the splat on the ground will help distinguish the great players later on.

sill40k

Actually, you can take a movement action, a standard action (attack) and a minor in 4th edition D&D which Neverwinter is (loosely) based on, so while I admit that movement in combat may be down to preference it is not grounded in the rules. In the 3rd edition you could also elect to do multiple attacks with a full round action, so there is some similarity there, but that is probably accidental. I suspect they chose to make people stuck in place for technical (targeting/lag) or balance reasons.

In DDO you had lots of ladders, vertical movement, jumping puzzles and could grab ledges and pull yourself up, so with that in mind movement feels like a severe downgrade coming to Neverwinter. The jump button in Neverwinter seems mostly redundant, you are not even allowed (invisible barriers ftl) to jump off ledges in certain places like the city.

Likewise in combat as a caster you were basically constantly jumping around abusing the Jump buff to avoid getting mobbed. Also, spells were actually real projectiles that could miss. I realize that the amount of action you want in combat is down to preference, but I was under the impression that Neverwinter labels itself an action MMO.

ralandar

I'm sorry, OP, but your review seems like it's based on maybe a dozen hours or so of playing the game, if that. If you really are a veteran of MMOs, you know that is not enough time to judge a game. Also, your glossing over of the Foundry, this game's truly unique mechanic, raises a bunch of warning flags in my mind.

rapticor

I don't agree with you on the music part. I think the music in NW is very good. Most games I turn off music but so far in NW I still have it on. Only one zone was annoying and that was the Idris one where it sounded like train wheels screeching. It was rather painful really.

labbb

If you only had 2 buttons to mash , you didn't even finish the tutorial .

Combat in this game is awesome. It grows on you with practice , since your not use to it. I couldn't go back to SWtOR after my second BW in this game. It requires planning and on the spot thinking , not macros .

demetrius94

The starting area
I was enticed enough by the cinematic. But alright, I agree with that.

The story and voice overs
It's an MMORPG, if you came walking in expecting a good story you haven't played quite as many MMORPGs as you claim. Not only that but there are some pretty good questlines. The Spellplague questline, A Lich's Lament had a bloody amazing plot and great voice acting. It's a very short quest though. And add to that the Foundry, I played The Shadow Campaign yesterday it was very good. The foundry alone will make this game have better quest plots and dialogue than any other MMORPG I've played.
But some of the voice acting is pretty bad.

Movement and Combat
Arguably the best or second best aspect of Neverwinter. If you're in active combat and you're gonna stab someone you generally won't run as it lessens the force of impact. I'm fine with not moving in combat. Also you can turn off the damage number pop-ups in the interface options.

The Music
Generally it's mostly unnoticeable but have you heard the main menu music? That alone makes me forgive any other shortcomings of the music department.

The Foundry
Try it.

All in all, you're negative impressions of the game seem like nitpicking to me. The game has some larger problems than that.
1)Bugs
2)The money grubby nature of the F2P system implemented in the game.

uxvorastrix

I'd like to give my 2.4 cents on the issue, but after 7 hrs of downloading (server only at 30% capacity yet I'm averaging 135 KB/s for a 3 GB download???). I have a fast internet connection, but after 7 hours I'm only at about 60% done.

That's after trying several different download servers (the first I got was advertising 15% capacity yet averaged 30 KB/s).

It's as if they don't want me to play this game?

zylaxx

Curious what up and coming Triple-A MMO's do you think that are going to get released soon that is going to be any good? Cause all I see in the future is more WoW clones, and blantant IP rip-offs.