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Second Thoughts
gelatinouscoat
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 16 Arc User
Secondary Thoughts
Another downtime, another post...though this was completed later. Since my "Initial Thoughts", I have now played a Rogue up to level 22. So I now have a Wiz32, Clr30, Rog22 and my highest crafter is level 10.
I still largely agree with my original post, but here are my updates. Bear in mind of course that this really is a "New Player Experience" comment. Maybe things change a lot at level 30, 40 or 60.
Crafting
Balance
People have said elsewhere that rogues are OP. I'd prefer to say that other classes are unbalanced. My cleric is fun and all, but no decent CC, no decent healing and no decent damage makes for a dull day.
I thought my wiz was pretty awesome until I played a rogue who breezes though stuff in a most spectacular way.
Overall though, I think the caster is most fun to play because it involves more thought than the other two.
My suggestion here is to open up options for the all classes. Give them more choice and more flexibility. 2 more Encounter slots, perhaps.
The cleric "Divinity" feature is nice, but my suggestion is that it should be "always-on" and at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% you get more/better/different additional effects. Pressing tab here is just lame.
I may be wrong, but it *feels* like my Wizards Magic Missile has a lower DPS than a rogues thrown dagger. This is probably not too unreasonable since the daggers have a limited supply, but doing something about low level Wizard (and cleric) DPS would be nice.
Gameplay
Gameplay is getting boring now on my Wiz32; I've just got the new abilities at level 30, and it just drove home the button mashing nature of the game play. As a character grows they should be more abilities not just different visual effects for slightly changed abilities. On a CW, in fact, the new abilities often seem weaker than the old ones.
As a contrast, I went back to DDO briefly and did a fairly old quest. Aside from the huge array of options my capped character had, the first question we faced was which was do we want to do this quest -- ie. it was a quest whose difficulty and outcome depends on skill checks against an NPC. The decision we made was based on the skills in the party and how greedy we felt (you get more chests for the harder path). This is typical of DDO: quests depend intricately on party skills and choices abound.
As I fought (with my caster) I moved around, dodged stuff, carefully checked available targets and spent most of my time thinking how best to use my spell points. It was a stark contrast to the linearity of most quests and the "Tunnels & Trolls" swarm combat in NW.
More on Combat
As I said, I come from DDO. NW combat is, to put it as politely as possible, unexciting. Once you get over the gorgeous graphics, it reduces to button mashing with occasional dodging (also a button).
Compare that to the only other MMOs I have played (DDO & EVE), and it feels completely inadequate.
Combat should be about moving, dodging, hiding, ducking, using cover etc etc. In DDO, I can actually dodge attacks, by -- you guessed it -- dodging. Not pressing the 'Dodge' button if and when it's off timer.
I don't want a reproduction of DDO; what I do want is a combat system that feels like have real combat decisions to make when I am in combat.
Fexibility
I mentioned this one in my previous comments. Basically, every class has such a limited set of choices and such a limited set of hotbar keys, that I suspect my rog/clr/wiz is very substantially indistinguishable from any other persons rog/clr/wiz.
Compare that again to DDO, where I have two wizards (among others) who each play very differently. And I could respec either to make a very different wizard build again.
I know 4e largely did away with multi-classing, but some means of adding flexibility would be great. But please, don't just add more button mashing -- the increasing button-mashing in DDO is what drove me to try NW.
Sociability
This was actualy touched on in my previous post, but needs expanding.
The party UI is flawed as previously described.
The system seems to actively reward anti-social behaviour:
At the very least the need/greed/pass mechanic needs to be replaced by simple random assignment. People can hand you stuff at the end of the quest if they don't want it.
User Interface
This game looks and feels like a Massively Single-player Onlinge game. The UI going dim when in a shop (even if in combat!), is just insane, but so much like a single-player game (where it's OK for the game to freeze during a dialog).
Voice-chat (when it's functional) can't be used in shops or during some dialogs. Neither can normal chat.
A fundamental rule should be: don't stop any part of the UI from functioning unless there is a good in-game reason to do so (like I died).
Foundry
Still have not tried building something.
Have tried running stuff (Daily's), and they are "quite good". I gave the 3-5 stars from memory, with 5 stars meaning it was as good as if not better than PW content.
Quests
They are generally too linear. This may be OK with a game learning curve as well, but I hope that we get to quests that have multiple solution and/or multiple ways to solve them.
Rogues
Not all Bad
Just to be clear, there are definitely things this game seems to be doing right:
I looks forward to seeing how it develops, and genuinely hope this beta phase is a genuine beta (or even an alpha in terms rethinking some features), not just a glorified load test.
Another downtime, another post...though this was completed later. Since my "Initial Thoughts", I have now played a Rogue up to level 22. So I now have a Wiz32, Clr30, Rog22 and my highest crafter is level 10.
I still largely agree with my original post, but here are my updates. Bear in mind of course that this really is a "New Player Experience" comment. Maybe things change a lot at level 30, 40 or 60.
Crafting
- It's still good for the same reasons stated before (unobtrusive)
- Except, so far it is largely irrelevant. I get better random loot than can be made at any given level.
- Why no rune slots on crafted gear until evel 60?
- Why am I not permitted to mod random loot? This would be a good addition.
- Let me choose the attributes that go on to items rather than having the predefined sets
- Why not allow me to to make the runes that go into slots?
- Perhaps it's a low effort gig, so the reawards should be low, but tweaking existing gear would be a nice option
- Where are the belts?
- I get that the crafting is basically class-based, but why? Why can't my cleric wear robes if he wants to?
- We need a queue. Especially with the buggy web interface and downtimes. Let me queue up 24 hours of tasks. Or even 12. Or even just 3 tasks.
Balance
People have said elsewhere that rogues are OP. I'd prefer to say that other classes are unbalanced. My cleric is fun and all, but no decent CC, no decent healing and no decent damage makes for a dull day.
I thought my wiz was pretty awesome until I played a rogue who breezes though stuff in a most spectacular way.
Overall though, I think the caster is most fun to play because it involves more thought than the other two.
My suggestion here is to open up options for the all classes. Give them more choice and more flexibility. 2 more Encounter slots, perhaps.
The cleric "Divinity" feature is nice, but my suggestion is that it should be "always-on" and at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% you get more/better/different additional effects. Pressing tab here is just lame.
I may be wrong, but it *feels* like my Wizards Magic Missile has a lower DPS than a rogues thrown dagger. This is probably not too unreasonable since the daggers have a limited supply, but doing something about low level Wizard (and cleric) DPS would be nice.
Gameplay
Gameplay is getting boring now on my Wiz32; I've just got the new abilities at level 30, and it just drove home the button mashing nature of the game play. As a character grows they should be more abilities not just different visual effects for slightly changed abilities. On a CW, in fact, the new abilities often seem weaker than the old ones.
As a contrast, I went back to DDO briefly and did a fairly old quest. Aside from the huge array of options my capped character had, the first question we faced was which was do we want to do this quest -- ie. it was a quest whose difficulty and outcome depends on skill checks against an NPC. The decision we made was based on the skills in the party and how greedy we felt (you get more chests for the harder path). This is typical of DDO: quests depend intricately on party skills and choices abound.
As I fought (with my caster) I moved around, dodged stuff, carefully checked available targets and spent most of my time thinking how best to use my spell points. It was a stark contrast to the linearity of most quests and the "Tunnels & Trolls" swarm combat in NW.
More on Combat
As I said, I come from DDO. NW combat is, to put it as politely as possible, unexciting. Once you get over the gorgeous graphics, it reduces to button mashing with occasional dodging (also a button).
Compare that to the only other MMOs I have played (DDO & EVE), and it feels completely inadequate.
Combat should be about moving, dodging, hiding, ducking, using cover etc etc. In DDO, I can actually dodge attacks, by -- you guessed it -- dodging. Not pressing the 'Dodge' button if and when it's off timer.
I don't want a reproduction of DDO; what I do want is a combat system that feels like have real combat decisions to make when I am in combat.
Fexibility
I mentioned this one in my previous comments. Basically, every class has such a limited set of choices and such a limited set of hotbar keys, that I suspect my rog/clr/wiz is very substantially indistinguishable from any other persons rog/clr/wiz.
Compare that again to DDO, where I have two wizards (among others) who each play very differently. And I could respec either to make a very different wizard build again.
I know 4e largely did away with multi-classing, but some means of adding flexibility would be great. But please, don't just add more button mashing -- the increasing button-mashing in DDO is what drove me to try NW.
Sociability
This was actualy touched on in my previous post, but needs expanding.
The party UI is flawed as previously described.
The system seems to actively reward anti-social behaviour:
- I seem to get more loot if I solo quests or areas
- I seem to get more loot if I always click 'Need'
- In a PUG, I get almost no loot unless I always press 'Need' since at least someone always presses 'Need'
At the very least the need/greed/pass mechanic needs to be replaced by simple random assignment. People can hand you stuff at the end of the quest if they don't want it.
User Interface
This game looks and feels like a Massively Single-player Onlinge game. The UI going dim when in a shop (even if in combat!), is just insane, but so much like a single-player game (where it's OK for the game to freeze during a dialog).
Voice-chat (when it's functional) can't be used in shops or during some dialogs. Neither can normal chat.
A fundamental rule should be: don't stop any part of the UI from functioning unless there is a good in-game reason to do so (like I died).
Foundry
Still have not tried building something.
- It needs to work offline, then I would stop making these posts.
- Need to be able to review quests that you did not complete. One bugged out on me and could not be completed. This needs to be noted, or at least sent to the writer.
Have tried running stuff (Daily's), and they are "quite good". I gave the 3-5 stars from memory, with 5 stars meaning it was as good as if not better than PW content.
Quests
They are generally too linear. This may be OK with a game learning curve as well, but I hope that we get to quests that have multiple solution and/or multiple ways to solve them.
Rogues
- No XP for disarming traps. WAI?
- No benefit for disarming traps? Not even parts or sellable items?
- OP? Not really. Their DPS just makes the game move at a fun pace. Playing my clr and wiz now seems very pedestrian, especially the cleric.
Not all Bad
Just to be clear, there are definitely things this game seems to be doing right:
- Nice graphics
- (Hopefully on release) excellent, integreated and non-burdensome crafting
- Good introductory quests
- I still love the quest guide
- Permanent, trainable, equipable companions
- Foundry quests
I looks forward to seeing how it develops, and genuinely hope this beta phase is a genuine beta (or even an alpha in terms rethinking some features), not just a glorified load test.
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