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New Player: First Impressions
diorn
Member Posts: 1 Arc User
I am fairly new to the community and have been playing a little over a month now. When I was introduced to Neverwinter I fell in love with it right away. It is visually stunning and the class skills layouts (trees), though seeming simplistic at first, are actually quite enjoyable and offer a lot of options. I am also a longtime D&D enthusiast, so being immersed in that world is also appreciated. The crafting system is somewhat convoluted and I don't feel like it is easy to grasp. Thankfully, the guild system is well ordered and beneficial so that questions can be directed to others in that way. As for artifacts and enchantments, there are so many different stones and mats, that it feels quite intimidating really. What concerns me, however, is the countless [underscored] monetary systems in place. It makes me not trust the game or really want to make a commitment by investing in it. Especially with regard to pvp (which is great), I feel that in order to acquire the appropriate leveled items that I will have to spend real money (Zen) in order to have a fighting chance. I don't mind paying a subscription for a game that offers countless hours of enjoyment, but if I have to pay additional sums in order to just compete, I only wish this were made more clear. I have also heard that moderators are rather discriminating with regard to the forums, and so am putting this out there in order to test the waters and elicit any feedback from the player-base. ~ Thank you
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Anyway, good luck here.
Don't take any veteran's advice for granted (as usual, do research on people agree on this advice first before commit).
Don't let yourself in defeat when you see other players done better than you. You only just started after all.
As with my guild's advice, the fun ends when you hit level 70. The grind begins from here on out.
Be rational on whatever little things you do:
Class mechanics
Encounter and at-will slots
Paragon and feat paths
Window shopping on auction house and buy something
Astral diamond finance management
Dungeon and skirmish choices
Mount powers and insignia choices
Ask yourself whether you need an alternate character besides your main character.
Enchantments
Companions and runestones
Professions
Event awareness - Make use of the in-game calendar
Patch notes
Bug reports
NW is a lot of fun if you let it be, despite all its flaws - just keep it in perspective.
Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance
Now I have to stop right there where PVP is concerned because I don't engage in any of that but certainly there are some parallels. Buying diamonds to buy gear, flat out buying gear, buying companions, mounts, stones, anything really.
And the moment that you are outpaced by someone's purple or gold mount or get crushed in the stats and figure out its all those transcendent items making them into digital gods, you may feel a pang, a stirring of desire for that kind of performance. At the very least you may not want to feel like extra number 5 standing next to Achilles.
And you can have all that right away for a cost. You CAN have it all for free as well, years down the road. Which is only the slightest hyperbole. Months with real and diligent work, teams, events, catching x2 periods, using every mechanic to generate currency and advance your Item Level, and skill too I guess (pfft whatevs). It may feel like much more than months.
All that brings me to the two points that I think are salient here.
1 - The game seems to not be balanced or developed for the free player. If you stick to a zen free diet you might always feel behind the curve. The balancing and development paradigms tend to favor those who purchase things and that's because it has to.
Those guys running around with the transcendent ioun stones and full bonding for the min maxed zen store companions and zen keyed dragonflight armor are the people the developers have to be concerned about. No one wants to make trivial content straight out of the box. It has to be at least somewhat engaging for that bunch.
Which means you in your blue armor and green companions, on your 80% mount and lone artifact weapon unenchanted might have a challenging time and by challenging I mean “holy katzenjammers! What am I even doing here?”
Doesn't mean you can't do it and there is no shame at all in sporting gear that you earned in the game. But you are going to witness lots of people who will make it look far far easier than it will be for you for a long, long time without dropping some chaa-chiinng.
2 – You will not be allowed to work harder.
Remember those animes where the young protagonist swears that he or she will work tirelessly to learn that new technique and not let their master down. And then you see them train day and night, sitting under waterfalls and punching monkeys until through superhuman effort the power is theirs?
Yeah, you can't do that here. There are tons of artificial slow downs and hard stops designed to keep you from advancing too quickly and they will outright halt your progress until a certain amount of time has passed. And by time I mean like 15 wibbely-wobbely hours worth of that stuff. Lock down, lock out, yer done kid, come back tomorrow. (You will actually see text amounting to “come back tomorrow”.)
Ostensibly these are to hinder bots... I guess. But you might not see that angle. What you will likely see is an entire campaign that is comprised of a single quest that you have to repeat over and over at 6-8 hours cool down per quest (lookin' at YOU Battlehammer) and then you will start counting the number of times you will have to do this quest and multiplying it by the number of roadblocks to come out with a set of weeks that might be alternately depressing or ridiculous depending on your personal brand of comedy.
If you get really good at raking in the diamonds you will find there are only so many you can refine in a day. Like doing dungeons? You get one key a day. You can buy more with diamonds, did I mention the diamond limit? It goes on and on.
This is not a free play tax though. Everyone has to endure these slowdowns. But those wiling to drop real money can buy their way around some of them like just buying more diamonds, no refining needed; buying keys with zen and so forth. Not that it is a bad thing, its just a thing that people can do and you can too.
My admittedly jaded advice would be to find a happy place in yourself and try not to notice the performance of others. The game is not terrible at all and if you can keep creeping jealousy at bay I think you can have lots of fun learning your character(s).
Just grit and bear your way through the rubble patch that is advancement and don't count. Don't count anything. Wondering how many 100 point items you will have to feed that artifact just to get one more purple pip? Don't. How many crafters do you need to recruit at 18 hours apiece to make how many next level crafters at 18 hours apiece to make the gems to get that Ilevel up a few more points? Don't ask. What does it take to make level 12 enchants from scratch... just play. Don't count, just play and find fun where you can.
I can promise that it is in there somewhere.
One thing you need to watch out for are the monthly events. Older players don't like to grind those, we have done those events before and there are better things to do (like pvp). Anyway, if you grind those events, it can be a very good source of cash. One lowbie blogger did that last event and grinded it whole day everyday. He ended up making 4 million astral diamonds in a span of two weeks. Not bad, considering that he has not hit lvl 70 yet.