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Gear: It can destroy this game.
bunnyfocker
Member Posts: 35
The development team needs to think clearly about gear as this determines the staying power of a game. I hope gear becomes a much smaller factor and game skill.becomes more dominant. But what I would like to see is an across the board reduction in crazy overpowered gear. My three hopes...
1.) A +3 long sword is crazy powerful. A sword this powerful should stay with the player for most of his career a name and back story for the weapon should exist.
2.) No more raid grinding for uber gear. Please be the first and break the cycle.
3.) Artifact gear like say Drizzts icing death and twinkle should exist only one per server. No one can keep it forever once acquired and it can be taken by another player through battle/death drop or through contest/questing where the winner gets to claim the item for a week.
That's all for now I hope you make a great game as I'm planning to move my entire guild from that older dnd mmo. Good luck.
1.) A +3 long sword is crazy powerful. A sword this powerful should stay with the player for most of his career a name and back story for the weapon should exist.
2.) No more raid grinding for uber gear. Please be the first and break the cycle.
3.) Artifact gear like say Drizzts icing death and twinkle should exist only one per server. No one can keep it forever once acquired and it can be taken by another player through battle/death drop or through contest/questing where the winner gets to claim the item for a week.
That's all for now I hope you make a great game as I'm planning to move my entire guild from that older dnd mmo. Good luck.
Post edited by bunnyfocker on
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Comments
1. +3 in the d&d world is crazy, in the rest of the gaming world +3 is a noob weapon. lets face it +10 is where its gonna be, yes this game is following d&d, but, it is by no means following it strictly.
2. its already been stated that you can grind dungeons for "that piece of gear", there will be uber items in this game, and as i stated above, this is not d&d strictly.
3. definitely no, if someone grinds a dungeon for a piece of gear that they can possibly lose, there is no motivation to grind said dungeon. face it, this game will have power gamers. its up to you if you choose to be one of them or not.
2cents
Alas, then the real question becomes . What's the difference between this game and the countless iterations that came before it?
1. excellent game play
2. multiple class/race choices
3. rich history/lore
4. vibrant locations to explore
5. a social atmosphere
hopefully this separates NWO from WoW, DDO and the multitude of other MMORPGS we see today. its a dream that a game can be fun all the way to max level. where each level isn't just a let down because you aren't powerful enough yet. where we doing have to grind for 4 hours in an evening just to maybe get to level X. i hope the game play makes us want to play no matter what level we are. i hope that the choices in race/class give the game diversity. no one wants to see 1000's of X DPS class in the same area... talk about BORING. i hope that each quest is immerses and makes you want to do quests, i don't wanna kill 3million hogs because X wants us to. i hope the locations are amazing, not repetive and sloppily laid out... WoW i'm looking in your direction. and finally the social aspect, its important, yes we all like to solo, but please, its way more fun in a group, and for must of us we solo because we can't find a group....
lets face it, if NWO doesn't deliver, no one will play it. we will all leave and it will be another MMO failure. we as gamers have power. power enough to shut company's down. if there is somehting we don't like we can demand it changed. and if the entire thing is a buggy mess. we move on. look at blizzard and how D3 is doing, yes its wildly successful, BUT the multitude of problems that it is having and has had, are killing it.
4cents?
Here's what I think. I believe that all gear in general should be very specialized. There should be few jack-of-all-stats items. For example; a belt might have one of these attributes but not more than one: +3 Will, +3 Fortitude, or +3 Reflex.
Or you're a mage and you find two cloaks, one with +1 Int and one with Slashing resist.
It would make almost all gear have value and wont be viewed as trash you don't even want to pick up. You'll want to collect a little of everything just in case you need to switch strategies for a particular quest or dungeon.
But then of course you may find rare or legendary gear that has multiple specialized attributes to it, but ultimately it's up to you to determine what strategy you want to use to build your character.
So that is how I feel about it.
well that would be nice.
let us hope not. this would make the game far to dull and boring. i personally don't want to waste my time grinding. so boring.
Just because it is owned by an Asian company doesn't mean that it will be an Asian grinder.
The speculation is getting a bit idiotic.
Definitely not, especially since a +3 sword isn't as crazy powerful as in earlier editions of DnD. Let's face it, DnD is a gear-oriented game and practically invented the gear grind. 4th edition revolutionized the game system by including magical items in the math, meaning that it's practically required for a character of X level to have a certain number of magical items to survive. A +3 Weapon is something a player will keep at around level 11-16ish. That's roughly five levels.
I do agree that there should be quality behind the more powerful items, with backstories and names and such, but I don't think that's 'required'. I doubt that we'll reach levels of that caliber in the MMO.
I think you might be barking up the wrong tree here. As I said before, DnD is known for being item-focused, especially if you're not a spellcaster in editions before 4th. 4th edition is no different, as stated before, it's part of the game.
Now, there are optional rules available for having items that level up with the character. Looking at PWE's other games, however, it seems that items are a major component in those games. I doubt that Neverwinter will be any different.
This is a good way to have players stop caring about said artifact items, and to keep a certain group of players high on the PvP chain. My feelings on the presence of PvP in a DnD game aside, this kind of WoW-esque artifact treatment doesn't work well. What usually ends up happening is that a group of players find an exploit. They use that exploit to amass power, and then they cycle around so that they continue to 'own' said artifacts.
What I'd rather see them do is ensure that every character gets an artifact quest, allowing them to pursue an item that is relevant to the character at a high level. This item doesn't necessarily have to be a weapon. There's no reason it can't be armor, or something useful, but it should be based off the character's choices in the game. These items are untradable and serve as a penultimate success of the character's personal goals.
The game should also allow for appearance previews of an item before purchase.
Will we have named items binded to specific dungeon like WoW, we will have random propreties to items like DDO ?? We dont have a clue how they will handle with items and item drops yet
But i understand from dev interviews that all delves will have a static loot table coz they told u can run delves multiple times to get that item u didnt get the last run....
But yeah, i agree with the thread tittle...Gear: It can destroy this game.
That would be crazy fun!
I think you are closer to what the devs said. Remember that interview about soloing. Devs said that solo person would take more time as he would have to dodge more. That means if you dodge every bad move without getting hit, you can do mostly any content(will take longer time).
However, with party or having better gear will make the stuff more easy and less risky as you can then afford a hit instead of dodging.
*resisting urge to make that old lady of pain joke I always make*
There will be differences- gear is not the only part of a game that one can innovate. There are games which revolve entirely around gear grinds, and there are games that have next to none or none at all (GW and GW2 come to mind)- so regardless of what they do with gear they'll likely be between extremes already done by successful mmos.
If anything, I'd rather see other things being the focus of their innovations- if a brand new gear system is one of the things they're going to boast then alot of interest will be lost- people are tired of companies trying to do something new and spectacular with the gear, what we want is a more fluid combat system, more interesting gameplay and more emphasis on cooperative community and all three of those are things that D&D is perfect for, and this game potentially looks like it'll touch on.
For your points directly- a +3 weapon is nice mid levels, but once you get to level 20 +5 is pretty normal with some sort of bonus like shocking burst on top of it- DDO definitely went a little far, with a +3 flaming longsword of holy burst being something you'd get at like level 12- but I can't see them being modest with the nice gear drops even if they don't go as loot crazy as DDO do- after all, dungeon crawling and gear are expected in an mmo, and people will get far more bored if they're getting masterwork items at level 5 and don't have a full +1 set til level 8. Basically, an overabundance of super powerful gear may be overwhelming, but it's far more boring and mundane to have an overabundance of uninspiring gear.
I don't expect to ever see gear switching of artifacts to be a part of any game that isn't focused entirely on competition and pvp, and likely has an extreme niche. Sure, UO did the whole gear loss thing on death, but it's also ancient and no game like that has ever managed more than a tiny niche for a reason- most people loathe that type of extreme hardcore gameplay. NWO isn't a pvp centric or hardcore rules game- the game won't even start with pvp so it's pretty clear that's not the focus. You definitely won't see objects switching hands or penalties for pvp in this game- at most you might see keep/castle battles but I'm doubtful they'd go to the trouble of making a complex pvp system like that for a game that has one faction and is heavily based on cooperative play.
Ultimately, people will eventually acquire a +5 suit of full plate armor, but it'll be ultra rare perhaps a few on the server here and there, and completely random. To avoid the grind you have to remove the grind "xyz quest X amount of times to get xyz loot".
Further, customization of each armor, either by looks or by minor differences makes items feel special or unique. It doesn't neccesarily need to be numerically more powerful to make a person want it.
If there's going to be +5 armour, which there will be, to avoid a grind it has to be openly available to everyone. If it 'eventually' is gained and ultra rare- only those with the most time will have it, and those without it will get stuck in a grind- if it doesn't drop from a specific mob, people will just farm the spot with the highest level mobs that can be killed in the least time.
Best way to avoid a grind is to make all that great gear fairly easy to attain, or to make many paths to attain it that overlap, without having the cost so high that people must do it all- for example, having tokens that'll take a month to get the gear if you do 25 dailies every day- sure, reasonable for a no lifer, but for people with jobs that gear'll take half a year to attain.
Customizable gear is a better thing to make a grind because it's completely unnecessary- the grinders will still spend lots of time getting cool looks, pets, mounts, etc... but at the same time it doesn't make the game feel impossible for casuals that'll simply never ever have the best gear- always be a set or two behind.
That said, in a fully pve game you don't need the best gear- you can progress just fine. Gear becomes a problem in pvp where you don't get progression- in pve if you're in tier 1 gear you do tier 2 dungeons, maybe even tier 3 if you're adventurous but ultimately it is your choice to play what you are comfortable with- you choose your challenge. In pvp, if you're in tier 1 gear you fight people in tier 5 gear, no choice, period- the system is simply broken. I hope they consider that before they put pvp into the game.
Now in PW Action, it was action oriented. No one really roleplayed, it was about grinding to get gear and level up. Yeah, grinding. Then people would engage in PvP to see who's character build was the best.
So why was everyone OK with grinding in NWN? I think that it's because people liked to party together. They could assimilate a team that could wreck the mobs effectively. And everyone was OK with absolutely destroying the AI, it was fun.
The mobs were unique. Mobs that had immunities, they could have AOE's, stuns, they could be beefy tanks, they could be fast or slow. You were forced to change tactics in order effectively slaughter the AI. That could be anything from switching spells to having to equip your belt of Will +4.
There was a lot to explore. If it was a popular server, there was no doubt that the game world had thousands of areas.
After all the expansions and the Community Expansion Pack, there were so many different types of enemies. You could always run into new enemies while exploring new areas on the server. There were at least 20 different dragons. Not just with different colors, but different models as well.
So to summarize: A lot of content, variety in mobs, and variety in class skills and abilities. Just killing mobs all day long.
1) Honestly the number associated with an item shouldn't mean too much as long as it's worthwhile. I always enjoyed the older versions of D&D because a magical item was MAGICAL so I can see your point but to me as long as the gear is balanced and I don't go into places going "I hope I get something not worth leaving" I'm a happy camper. If items go to +10, so be it, as long as I don't feel I'm unrewarded for dungeon delves.
2) Grinding goes hand in hand with MMO's and Persistent Games, sorry. That's not to say I agree that every item should be a random chance from a chest but if everybody had the best gear because they have level ____ crafting or did ____ quests there'd be no fun in ever going through the dungeons, eh? Of course they should compromise but think about a game which makes all the gear readily available and tell me how fun it'd be.
3) Honestly I'd prefer artifact items to not be in the game.Maybe have them used in an instance map just for fun but no players should be walking around with Twinkle or Icingdeath as a permanent weapon, period.
GRINDING:
Grinding is the number one thing developers say they want to do away with and the number one thing players say they don't want to see in games. The thing is there's only 3 game categories and one of them is directly linked to grinding and it happens to be the one Neverwinter falls into.
1) Instance games like pong. A modern equivalent would be online first person shooter or PvP games Like Halo, Modern Warfare or League of Legends. Leveling, if even possible, in these games has minimal gameplay changes. The player normally plays matches rather than grind matches for levels.
2) Story Games such as Baldur's Gate, Prince of Persia or Skyrim. Basically these games don't have grinds because playing the content without repeating it will complete the game goal. Sometimes you can level more or repeat the quest but these feel optional, not required.
3) Persistent Games like [name any MMO], NWN Persistent Worlds or the upcoming Neverwinter. The goal of these games are to develop your character, not to deal with an hour or less objective or complete a story. Grinds come naturally because there's simply not enough content to maximize character's potentials without repeating content.
Grinding is going to occur in any persistent game. However, just so that I am not a complete downer the land line given by all the NWN Games was the toolset (foundry).
Unlike DDO who's quests take long periods of time to be released and cost money NW will have player supplied content which, if everything goes right, will give new places to play continuously thus alleviating the grind.
The biggest aspect to grinding, after-all, is doing the same actions in the same areas for a goal. If the goals and areas change it makes the grind less redundant.
We won't see the best loot given away as freebies and I hope they stick to Squez's claims that they won't be sold as micro-transactions but in the end we will be delving for treasures. However, let's hope they won't make any monster specific drops worth grinding for. As long as we can choose which path to 'grind' it makes it more enjoyable. I like killing boss monsters but encouraging players to camp them for unique drops is indeed a horrible feature many MMO's implement.
Perfect Imbalance (or I would prefer to call it asymmetrical balance) - is not really fun. It is actually just rock-paper-scissors. Or rather as sheldon puts it - Rock Paper scissors Lizard Spock. It was how most of the early RPG originated (like in fire emblem magic and weapon). Because there is unpredictability, it keeps the game engaging. So it is better suited to pure-PvP games rather than mainly PvE game like D&D.
I hope Neverwinter doesn't follow suit.
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This means that in any given game, any given battle, each character can bring something important to the table that is fun and engaging.
That being said, there are multiple options in 4e for each 'role' A fighter is good at close-range single target lock down. Targets of the Fighter's attacks find it hard or impossible to break free of his grasp, as the Fighter often gets free attacks against targets that engage other characters.
Now take a look at the Warden. While the Warden is close-combat, like the Fighter, he can control targets that are within his immediate range. Although he does not get the same kinds of free attacks the Fighters get, they do get a 'gravity well' effect around them, slowing opponents around them and preventing them from running away. This ensures that opponents are easily within range of a Warden's abilities. Both provide a measure of aggro control and protection, just in different ways.
The nature of 4e ensures that PvP is not a wise idea. Comparing a Wizard to a Fighter is fool hardy. The Figher is highly defensive and decent with damage. The Wizard is not. Although he has useful spells and abilities, up against a large, tough opponent, the Wizard is far weaker. It's better to put a Wizard up against many weaker targets. Where the Fighter would get beaten and have a harder time reigning them in, the Wizard can keep the ones he's not engaging locked down.
Imperfect Balance is good, but as mentioned in the video, only for PvP elements in games, and only so long as a rotation system is kept in play. With a game like NW:O where PvP is not the focus, and classes have balance, but different styles, it's a different matter.
The thing is, D&D was built around the idea of perfect imbalance. Unless you mean to tell me that there is not a definite difference in strengths and weaknesses between fighters, rogues, mages etc in D&D.
Well, you just described one form of perfect imbalance.
That's the whole idea behind it - every character/class/champion/you call it must have a different set of strenghts and weaknesses that overall balances out, ie a role in the team, or alternatively be a jack of all trades, master of none, ie filling in whatever role needs filling. Fighters are very good at defending and dealing damage, but lack controling abilities. Mages lack in defence, but are good at damage and controlling. Rogues lack in both defence and control, but provide spike damage and utility. Warlocks are somewhat of a jack of all trades - or at least they were in 3.5e - they can do everything decenty, but they don't excel at anything.
And all that creates a metagame, in which you put your fighters up front, your mages at the back, use your rogues to strike key targets and your worlocks to help in whatever area is lacking at that particular moment.
Perfect Imbalance has to do with how you balance out the roles of each class/build. Grinding has to do with how your character progresses. The 2 are completely unrelated.
You think League of Legends is grind oriented?
For you information, in 4e Wizards are less 'damage dealers' and more 'Crowd Control'. They get some of the weakest powers, in terms of damage, but some of the greatest versatility in utility and control. Having a Wizard in your party can ensure that fights are easier to manage, especially if there are multiple opponents.
Rogues and Warlocks are damage-dealers. Both get a mechanic that allows them to routinely deal regular additional damage to a target with their attacks. They usually outclass the other classes in terms of damage. Rogues tend to (but not always) use melee, and warlocks naturally use ranged attacks. Both classes play differently (Rogues are great for positional tactics, Warlocks are a good gun and run class)
I fail to see how they do not go hand in hand, for in order to compete one would need to progress. Thus enters the grind to compete.
I never said that. The term I used was, "often." Often does not mean, "League of Legends."
[ Support Center • Rules & Policies and Guidelines • ARC ToS • Guild Recruitment Guidelines | FR DM Since 1993 ]
Oh, sorry. I dont know any games that use the perfect imbalance method that are not skill based games.
b:tired Why are you compairing apples and oranges?
let me just list a few games for you:
League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, DoTA, DoTA 2 etc (basically all MOBA games)
Age of Empires, Starcraft etc (basically all RTS games)
NWN series, FF series etc (basically all RPGs)
Call of Duty, Mass Effect etc (basically most shooters)
Finally, D&D itself (the PnP game)
They are all based heavily on perfect imbalance. Some of them (AoE for example) do not even have a leveling system in place...
Grind is the result of not having enough content, and thus forcibly extending the gameplay time by making the player repeat content over and over, via the use of a very long and steep leveling curve. It happens mainly with MMOs, because they have to keep lots of players in the game to make back the costs for development + servers, but can't give them enough content because it's physically impossible - MMOs go on for years and years and there is no possible way to make a decade worth of pure content.Not even with things like the Foundry. And it happens to a lesser extend with spRPGs (FF XII for example was quite grindy at a few points, though not enough to really take a negative toll on it)
Grind is having to kill 1000 boars because there is no other way to progress.
Perfect Imbalance is knowing that a Pale Master will obliterate an Assasin, but will not even last 10 seconds vs a Paladin.
If you think those 2 are in some way related then... idk, keep thinking whatever you wish, I'm not gonna bother you anymore...
are all interconnected.
My hope is that the difference in power between say a ..level 3 and a level 4
is similar to the difference between a level 8 and 9.
if there are huge power jumps it is hard to group with other players.
My personal preference on importance is
Player skill > character developement > gear
gear has to be last or it becomes the only thing of importance.
in wow, if you want to join a raid guild...they want to see your
gear to see if your qualified and they don't care about anything else.
sad.