ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited January 2013
I think the Power Selection was one of the few things players couldn't complain about in D3. The only gripe I had with any of it was the fact the game and powers were so blatantly dependent on items it sickened me.
Also, I am 100% Against giving one character access to every feature. A wizard should be a wizard, a fighter should be a fighter.
But I don't see a problem with giving a fighter all abilities of a fighter and allowing players to customize their character as a whole to effect different abilities in different ways. Especially since they have also split the classes into themes (specialty classes).
It's important to remember, powers are new to Fourth Edition. They are an addition and not a replacement to the pre-exiting customization features.
...Also, I am 100% Against giving one character access to every feature....
And race, for increased replayability and thus higher rate of retention. (But ofcourse, cryptic already has all the data from PWE regarding that as he says here).
It really does seem like game developers are all going the route of, you get all the skills and abilities no matter what and its up to you which ones you put on the action bar at any given time. This way I guess they get less complaints about classes because there is no real way to make any mistakes. Elder Scrolls Online, another new MMO in development right now is the same way, all players will have access to all skills in the game, there will apparently be classes but once you hit level cap the devs for ESO have said that you can then go on to max every single skill in the game.
Not sure I like this approach though because it takes away the need or want to re-roll, instead just change what skills you are using and wholla a new build, there are no mistakes.
I hated this in Diablo 3 but there was a lot of things wrong with that game besides the way the skills worked...
And where did you get this profane knowledge that each class will have the same skills on a game that is very much in closed Alpha? According to those that actually played in the showoff invite play each of the classes available had distinct different abilities and that they are not restricted to weapons and armor which each one has distinct abilities. There is plenty of distinction and difference in skills and style between classes in ESO.
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pentruisMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 3Arc User
edited January 2013
Has anyone taken into account that the 4e rule set lets you choose any at-will powers for say a trickster rogue, but they add modifiers that are beneficial to the trickster build over a brawny build? Or that they are only showcasing a small set of skills because they are playing the same characters in each demo?
I am hoping for a massive amount of customization but also having to strategically pick skills based on my build, not that picking a build just shoe horns you into the set of skills optimized for the build you choose.
Forgive my ignorance; I've never played any of the pen and paper games and have only read the Drizzt novels, and that was quite a few years ago. I do remember that the dwarves had a particular type of fighter and I'm wondering if anyone knows if they'll be ingame: they were the ones that went into battle unarmed but had this crazy jagged, spiked armor and basically just went into battle a'swingin'. Can't remember what they were called for the life of me, but I've noticed people mentioning monk classes and "specs"(though maybe monks aren't a hand to hand fighter in the D&D universe?). Either way I'll be checking this out, was just wondering if anyone knew if these fighter would be in it.
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iamdoctordeathMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
I just hope there's plenty of customization, to me that's a big part of D&D, being able to make your character.
In 3.5 and Pathfinder PnP I've made;
A bard that focused on CC magic, but still had healing and decent defenses.
A rogue/sorcerer who backstabbed with a greatsword.
A cleric who saved an ally from a dragon who decided to drop him from a mile by summoning an air elemental who caught him.
In DDO I've made;
A rogue who could offtank while still having adequate skills.
A frost sorc.
An artificer who went jack of all trades
A full offensive casting favoured soul.
A self healing solo monk.
And I could have gone acid or crowd control or negative energy wizard, or a rogue focused on repeater xbows or on using a staff and fast attacks, a favoured soul which attacks like a barbarian, a monk with as much damage dealing as an assassin rogue.
Point is- I've considered D&D to have large amounts of customization, where I can make a character into just about anything I want it to be, where it can be hard to find someone else that's anything like mine. When I played DDO- I'd rarely run into players using the same builds as my monk and arti and fvs, though it was more common with my sorc (water savant was pretty popular), and I didn't see any rogues that resembled mine at all. I liked that aspect a lot.
However- that said. I do understand why PWE might not want to give us that much customization. When it comes to balance- D&D has never been good for it- and I'm not talking about wizards being super OP at level 20- there's ways for smart players to min/max that give advantages that can be drastic... and, even more, any new players have a far greater chance to make a terrible character than to make a good one.
In terms of an mmo with balance... you unfortunately can't do that with the amount of customization we had in edition 3.
That said- I am still hoping there will be good customization, even if it's more or less streamlined to avoid imbalances.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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alphastrikeMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
To me this does feel overly restrictive, I am sure others feel like this as well and thus much of the hate many have towards 4e, I like to have the freedom to make my rogue either brawny or trickstery. It seems to me my rogue would be more brawny or more trickstery depending on my build but yet here they make it a whole new class so they can "limit" how it is built. I understand that things need to be balanced BUT I think they went too far in 4e.
It almost seems to me that 4e "dumbed down" choices so that those that can't or don't know how to build a toon can't "mess up their builds" but at the expense of those of us that know how to build a toon. Peeps keep saying its to avoid OP toons that "break" the game and I have always found this argument kind of lacking.
To me it feels more like lets nerf all those peeps that can and know how to build a toon so those that can't and don't want to learn how don't roll gimps and can play their flavor toon and still feel as proficient as those that do.
Guess we shall see what 5e brings hopefully much of the shenanigans of 4e will be gone.
Well I have been using 4e for awhile, I get the concept of what they did. That made each build of a class becomes more specialized as they gain levels. I would like to see hybrids in this game to make things really interesting, like if you want to be a leader roll as well as a defender roll. I.E. a Paladin | Warlord. Party buffs from warlord, healing and high to average defense.
denkasaebaMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
I don't completely agree, actually. 4th edition started "vanilla", with very precise class roles and powers. But it actually went far from it, with more support. Only a few of the classes can completely fit only one role concept, most of them are more a mix of two or more roles that can easily blend.
Especially once you get a couple of items, you can make a very hard hitting non-striker quite easily. Some of the best strikers are also good controllers, and some controllers can also lead.
TL,DR: i don't think that 4e has less customization potential than 3.5, considering updated material.
Dilige, et quod vis fac (Love, and do what you will)
I only skimmed the thread so please excuse me if this sounds off-topic. But when it comes to MMOs, I recognize that with MMOs comes needs specifically related to that medium, compared to tabletop games.
PnP games were designed so that a couple of friends could sit around the table and have fun with a wide variety of customization and with the DM able to fudge things a bit if one person's build proved underwhelming. If you get a power gamer, there are a number of rather delicious options that the DM has at his disposal to put that uppity git back in his place. I saw this DM pull this thing where he put a rules-bender in his place by having his antics result in being attacked by a monster that aged his character 30 years. It was glorious.
In MMOs, you're going to get power-gamers. People who treat the game like it's battle.net or Halo online. It's a large online community. If there's a variety in class builds, people are going to find the build that does the most damage, absorbs the most damage, and does the most healing, and then you are expected to conform to one of those builds in order to remain competitive. Whether you hate it or are indifferent, it's just a fact of MMO life.
So taking the realities of MMO game mechanics into account, I have no problem with them starting out with builds that are optimized and working from there. Instead of having a fighter class with 10 different builds but only two or three of them are viable, have sub-classes with that optimization built in and go from there.
To use an analogy, I've heard it said that the difference between iphone and android is that android gives you tons of customization options while iphone makes it so that you don't really need to customize anything. Of course no analogy is perfect but the point I'm making is that it is nice to have peace of mind knowing that when I pick two-hander fighter I don't have to worry about whether or not my build is optimized for leveling or end-game content or pvp or whatever.
The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact.
Also, I am 100% Against giving one character access to every feature.
Letting the players have an ultimate option to create any char imaginable does not restrict all chars to the same build. In the contrary, it will increase the number of possible solutions.
Devs should not attempt to control the role distribution. Players should do that. You may stick labels on a build that say something about survivabilty/dmg ratio, preferred combat range, available group buffs/controls.
Role playing requires a free customization of all your abilites and delis.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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deronokMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 2Arc User
edited January 2013
More customization doesn't entirely mean everyone will be different. Usually on a few builds, or setups will come out on top anyway and most others will be ignored. Besides, I have bad memories of some of the NwN builds.. Bard/RDD/PM comes to mind.
I love this thread, but seems most don't notice you can use RESPEC tokens, they wont let ya respec to change your class, or just to roll ability scores.
Neither will they allow respec for character appearance.
So wait till more info is out and who knows there might be more customizing than people think.
I know it looks like a premade class but what if the control wizard could focus on fire, or acid and your first spell is one you can set.
Still so many questions so wait for either official info or when beta information comes out before judging it.
Btw the respec token is even in the 200$ pack so you can see i aint lying.
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prophetdarkMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 23Arc User
edited January 2013
My confusion is why there is a comparison being drawn between AD&D this game and 4th being attempted in this thread.
This game is barely a glimpse into 4th, has no real ties to AD&D aside from lineage.
Those looking to draw any sort of insight into 4th from this game will be sorely mislead. Unlike the good old gold boxes of old we are pretty much beyond direct translations between computer and pnp. I would love to go back to a gold box standard but its not happening.
Essentially because 4th offers such a ridiculously large variety of choice with alot of pitfalls and high points they are using the suggested class makeup from the guides that I assume they feel will be popular.
I would love to see a more robust choice base, but I can see the clear issues that it could represent.
Letting the players have an ultimate option to create any char imaginable does not restrict all chars to the same build. In the contrary, it will increase the number of possible solutions.
Devs should not attempt to control the role distribution. Players should do that. You may stick labels on a build that say something about survivabilty/dmg ratio, preferred combat range, available group buffs/controls.
Role playing requires a free customization of all your abilites and delis.
I will agree here with ambi (though I rarely do these days ) because it will kill replayability of the game.
Boundaries are a key tool of game design. So the question is, are those boundaries too confining?
After playing 4e, I'd say no. There are many, many, many possible builds. It will depend heavily on the number of abilities available, and much more influentially, the Paragon classes. Particularly how many there are, and how multiclassing works (if it is in at all). There are a truly mind boggling amount of combinations when you factor those in.
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gyloirMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
I'm hoping that Clerics aren't "Healbots" in this game. What I loved about NWN1/2 from Obsidian was how Clerics , although could heal, could also deal quite a lot of damage as well as wear good plate armor and such. I loved playing the Cleric in those games but if the Cleric is seen as a "healbot" type of player (IE sit in back, healing hte group, not fighting or getting into the "thick" of it I'll be a bit disappointed.
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prophetdarkMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 23Arc User
I'm hoping that Clerics aren't "Healbots" in this game. What I loved about NWN1/2 from Obsidian was how Clerics , although could heal, could also deal quite a lot of damage as well as wear good plate armor and such. I loved playing the Cleric in those games but if the Cleric is seen as a "healbot" type of player (IE sit in back, healing hte group, not fighting or getting into the "thick" of it I'll be a bit disappointed.
Give its relation to 4th edition its highly unlikely. 4th edition doesn't really have a "healbot" per se. You can make them, but you really don't need to. I expect that they will have similar health regen out of combat and the leader classes will have their heal abilities, and I am curious if they have second wind.
If, for example, druids will take rogue abilities to enhance their travelling experience. This will only be possible if it does not entail losing your whole thorny paragon choice, it would just be too expensive. The whole guy is still a naturalist aoe caster. Getting "wrong" abilitetes does nothing to the class you are borrowing from. Doing rogue will still be a fully different experience because the main abilittes will be rogue abilteees, not aoe caster ones. Putting a shield on a wizard may look kinda funny, but not more funny than say, Teddy bear with 10-ton jousting pole on a racing turtle. Or getting inspiring songs to tanks. Just letting ideas get hunked up together.
I'd really like to see further implementation of 4e. At first I found it unwieldy but after playing for a while, I appreciated the ability to create a diverse range of characters.
Orcus bane, Knight-wanderer of the Sword Coast
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jaffrojonesMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
I do feel the same as almost everyone else that this seems a little too restrictive; but given the fact that when I play a Cleric, I play to heal, and when I play a Fighter, I play to hurt things, I am not too worried about it. Seriously, why would you play a Cleric if you didn't want to heal? What would be the point?
Edit: One more thing. I don't mind at all if they do these specialized name classes like Guardian Warrior and Devout Cleric as long as they give us a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> ton of different ones. If they don't have 5+ at launch they will add them throughout the lifespan of the game, which I hope given the Foundry is a long long time.
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aeonbluessMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
I am personally a supporter of only 5 classes at launch. As said earlier in this thread, 4th edition allows players to pick from a list of potential powers, which will allow for a fun variance of game style. This model also should... eliminate many of the class flaws that came with NWN 1 & 2, being incredibly unbalanced classes. The rouges, rangers and bards suffered immensely in persistent worlds, where they just didn't survive well or deal enough damage in combat.
The game footage I have seen makes all the classes look fun to play tactically, and all maintain a high caliber of action when engaged in close combat. All classes seem able to keep on the offensive independent of a tank, which is a major improvement not only from NWN but from most mmo's IMO.
I am personally a supporter of only 5 classes at launch. As said earlier in this thread, 4th edition allows players to pick from a list of potential powers, which will allow for a fun variance of game style. This model also should... eliminate many of the class flaws that came with NWN 1 & 2, being incredibly unbalanced classes. The rouges, rangers and bards suffered immensely in persistent worlds, where they just didn't survive well or deal enough damage in combat.
The game footage I have seen makes all the classes look fun to play tactically, and all maintain a high caliber of action when engaged in close combat. All classes seem able to keep on the offensive independent of a tank, which is a major improvement not only from NWN but from most mmo's IMO.
This is my fear, this game might be all about combat and nothing about story. Something like an Ego-Shooter as Action-RPG. Every video so far is about killing stuff and fighting through dungeons.
Who cares if a class is balanced?
What does that even mean? He can solo boss-mobs or people are forced to build raids to finish a part of a story? Everybody should have equal chances to kill each other in PvP?
It is intended that a Bard is more likely to convince an NPC to do something than a Barbarian?
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providenttMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
Like everyone else, I too am concerned about the level of customisation of the classes, however I can't help but feel that come of this concern stems from their strange naming conventions for the classes.
Is there a real reason why the classes aren't just Fighter, Barbarian, Cleric, Wizard and Rogue?
On a certain level without even seeing what customisation the game offers, I feel that rolling a Great Weapon Fighter would pigeonhole me a great deal, while simply naming the class Barbarian would have eliminated these concerns.
Therefore I feel that there is one of two possible things wrong here. Either the classes have been named far too specifically, or the classes are far too specialised.
I understand balance is a big concern, but honestly the demographic of this game is most likely going to value customisation far more than balance. All I can hope is that they find a good middle-ground.
This is my fear, this game might be all about combat and nothing about story. Something like an Ego-Shooter as Action-RPG. Every video so far is about killing stuff and fighting through dungeons.
Who cares if a class is balanced?
What does that even mean? He can solo boss-mobs or people are forced to build raids to finish a part of a story? Everybody should have equal chances to kill each other in PvP?
It is intended that a Bard is more likely to convince an NPC to do something than a Barbarian?
+1 Hate sacrificing my fun in the name of balance. D&D is a party game. I know it is mmo but the game also has other tags they are using to sell it.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
*sniffs* Me want ranger
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iamtruthseekerMember, Moonstars, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Like everyone else, I too am concerned about the level of customisation of the classes, however I can't help but feel that come of this concern stems from their strange naming conventions for the classes.
Is there a real reason why the classes aren't just Fighter, Barbarian, Cleric, Wizard and Rogue?
On a certain level without even seeing what customisation the game offers, I feel that rolling a Great Weapon Fighter would pigeonhole me a great deal, while simply naming the class Barbarian would have eliminated these concerns.
Therefore I feel that there is one of two possible things wrong here. Either the classes have been named far too specifically, or the classes are far too specialised.
I understand balance is a big concern, but honestly the demographic of this game is most likely going to value customisation far more than balance. All I can hope is that they find a good middle-ground.
You might want to research what 4E class builds are, as that is where they get their naming convention. Nor am I going to discuss here how "accurate" those builds are from PnP to MMO as the conversion to computer requires a LOT of compromise based on originally just PnP imagination and once a week session rules.
providenttMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
I'm a DM for 4e. I'm very well accustomed to the specialties you're referring to. But like you say they won't be direct copies of these specialties so with the current information available I fail to see how the Neverwinter class would equate to the 4e specialties, especially since the PnP specialties differ on very specific technical mechanics (like adding your int mod to damage rolls for example) which is one of the things that Neverwinter is compromising on.
... PnP specialties differ on very specific technical mechanics (like adding your int mod to damage rolls for example) ....
You see, it is an implementation of mechanics - just in a way PnP is an implementation of reality (ok, you can lol here, but you get the point).
So in the same way - game simulates that reality using same simulation mechanics PnP uses.
So in a game, INT modifier may not be added to damage rolls but may just make your cooldowns lower, or targeting a bit faster.
Similrly, agility saves may just become giving a little more speed and little less response time to the PC.
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providenttMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
There's a problem with that though. You say these specialties make the cooldown shorter, or targeting faster etc. But faster than what? These are the base classes in Neverwinter, not specialties.
Basically, what are cool choices to make in 4e appear at this point to be the standard one way to do things in Neverwinter. If you know what I mean.
That is assuming I understand what the premise of the classes are. Sorry if this sounds like bitching or something. It's not. Just trying to understand the concept of the classes.
There's a problem with that though. You say these specialties make the cooldown shorter, or targeting faster etc. But faster than what? These are the base classes in Neverwinter, not specialties.
Basically, an important aspect to discuss when porting from pnp to digital is speed. An action that takes minutes on a card table will be automated on the computer. The number of rolls to do in one round becomes virtually limitless. And it has become a task to do for the player to increase these numbers to win. So for example, while equipping an offhand weapon used to double (!) your attack rate, nowadays it is not unusual to have a whole array of damaging actions on your task tray, all of which will fire simultaniously, depending on individual cooldowns.
Comments
Also, I am 100% Against giving one character access to every feature. A wizard should be a wizard, a fighter should be a fighter.
But I don't see a problem with giving a fighter all abilities of a fighter and allowing players to customize their character as a whole to effect different abilities in different ways. Especially since they have also split the classes into themes (specialty classes).
It's important to remember, powers are new to Fourth Edition. They are an addition and not a replacement to the pre-exiting customization features.
And race, for increased replayability and thus higher rate of retention. (But ofcourse, cryptic already has all the data from PWE regarding that as he says here).
And where did you get this profane knowledge that each class will have the same skills on a game that is very much in closed Alpha? According to those that actually played in the showoff invite play each of the classes available had distinct different abilities and that they are not restricted to weapons and armor which each one has distinct abilities. There is plenty of distinction and difference in skills and style between classes in ESO.
I am hoping for a massive amount of customization but also having to strategically pick skills based on my build, not that picking a build just shoe horns you into the set of skills optimized for the build you choose.
In 3.5 and Pathfinder PnP I've made;
A bard that focused on CC magic, but still had healing and decent defenses.
A rogue/sorcerer who backstabbed with a greatsword.
A cleric who saved an ally from a dragon who decided to drop him from a mile by summoning an air elemental who caught him.
In DDO I've made;
A rogue who could offtank while still having adequate skills.
A frost sorc.
An artificer who went jack of all trades
A full offensive casting favoured soul.
A self healing solo monk.
And I could have gone acid or crowd control or negative energy wizard, or a rogue focused on repeater xbows or on using a staff and fast attacks, a favoured soul which attacks like a barbarian, a monk with as much damage dealing as an assassin rogue.
Point is- I've considered D&D to have large amounts of customization, where I can make a character into just about anything I want it to be, where it can be hard to find someone else that's anything like mine. When I played DDO- I'd rarely run into players using the same builds as my monk and arti and fvs, though it was more common with my sorc (water savant was pretty popular), and I didn't see any rogues that resembled mine at all. I liked that aspect a lot.
However- that said. I do understand why PWE might not want to give us that much customization. When it comes to balance- D&D has never been good for it- and I'm not talking about wizards being super OP at level 20- there's ways for smart players to min/max that give advantages that can be drastic... and, even more, any new players have a far greater chance to make a terrible character than to make a good one.
In terms of an mmo with balance... you unfortunately can't do that with the amount of customization we had in edition 3.
That said- I am still hoping there will be good customization, even if it's more or less streamlined to avoid imbalances.
Well I have been using 4e for awhile, I get the concept of what they did. That made each build of a class becomes more specialized as they gain levels. I would like to see hybrids in this game to make things really interesting, like if you want to be a leader roll as well as a defender roll. I.E. a Paladin | Warlord. Party buffs from warlord, healing and high to average defense.
Especially once you get a couple of items, you can make a very hard hitting non-striker quite easily. Some of the best strikers are also good controllers, and some controllers can also lead.
TL,DR: i don't think that 4e has less customization potential than 3.5, considering updated material.
St. Augustinus
PnP games were designed so that a couple of friends could sit around the table and have fun with a wide variety of customization and with the DM able to fudge things a bit if one person's build proved underwhelming. If you get a power gamer, there are a number of rather delicious options that the DM has at his disposal to put that uppity git back in his place. I saw this DM pull this thing where he put a rules-bender in his place by having his antics result in being attacked by a monster that aged his character 30 years. It was glorious.
In MMOs, you're going to get power-gamers. People who treat the game like it's battle.net or Halo online. It's a large online community. If there's a variety in class builds, people are going to find the build that does the most damage, absorbs the most damage, and does the most healing, and then you are expected to conform to one of those builds in order to remain competitive. Whether you hate it or are indifferent, it's just a fact of MMO life.
So taking the realities of MMO game mechanics into account, I have no problem with them starting out with builds that are optimized and working from there. Instead of having a fighter class with 10 different builds but only two or three of them are viable, have sub-classes with that optimization built in and go from there.
To use an analogy, I've heard it said that the difference between iphone and android is that android gives you tons of customization options while iphone makes it so that you don't really need to customize anything. Of course no analogy is perfect but the point I'm making is that it is nice to have peace of mind knowing that when I pick two-hander fighter I don't have to worry about whether or not my build is optimized for leveling or end-game content or pvp or whatever.
Letting the players have an ultimate option to create any char imaginable does not restrict all chars to the same build. In the contrary, it will increase the number of possible solutions.
Devs should not attempt to control the role distribution. Players should do that. You may stick labels on a build that say something about survivabilty/dmg ratio, preferred combat range, available group buffs/controls.
Role playing requires a free customization of all your abilites and delis.
Neither will they allow respec for character appearance.
So wait till more info is out and who knows there might be more customizing than people think.
I know it looks like a premade class but what if the control wizard could focus on fire, or acid and your first spell is one you can set.
Still so many questions so wait for either official info or when beta information comes out before judging it.
Btw the respec token is even in the 200$ pack so you can see i aint lying.
This game is barely a glimpse into 4th, has no real ties to AD&D aside from lineage.
Those looking to draw any sort of insight into 4th from this game will be sorely mislead. Unlike the good old gold boxes of old we are pretty much beyond direct translations between computer and pnp. I would love to go back to a gold box standard but its not happening.
Essentially because 4th offers such a ridiculously large variety of choice with alot of pitfalls and high points they are using the suggested class makeup from the guides that I assume they feel will be popular.
I would love to see a more robust choice base, but I can see the clear issues that it could represent.
I will agree here with ambi (though I rarely do these days
After playing 4e, I'd say no. There are many, many, many possible builds. It will depend heavily on the number of abilities available, and much more influentially, the Paragon classes. Particularly how many there are, and how multiclassing works (if it is in at all). There are a truly mind boggling amount of combinations when you factor those in.
Give its relation to 4th edition its highly unlikely. 4th edition doesn't really have a "healbot" per se. You can make them, but you really don't need to. I expect that they will have similar health regen out of combat and the leader classes will have their heal abilities, and I am curious if they have second wind.
Edit: One more thing. I don't mind at all if they do these specialized name classes like Guardian Warrior and Devout Cleric as long as they give us a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> ton of different ones. If they don't have 5+ at launch they will add them throughout the lifespan of the game, which I hope given the Foundry is a long long time.
The game footage I have seen makes all the classes look fun to play tactically, and all maintain a high caliber of action when engaged in close combat. All classes seem able to keep on the offensive independent of a tank, which is a major improvement not only from NWN but from most mmo's IMO.
This is my fear, this game might be all about combat and nothing about story. Something like an Ego-Shooter as Action-RPG. Every video so far is about killing stuff and fighting through dungeons.
Who cares if a class is balanced?
What does that even mean? He can solo boss-mobs or people are forced to build raids to finish a part of a story? Everybody should have equal chances to kill each other in PvP?
It is intended that a Bard is more likely to convince an NPC to do something than a Barbarian?
Is there a real reason why the classes aren't just Fighter, Barbarian, Cleric, Wizard and Rogue?
On a certain level without even seeing what customisation the game offers, I feel that rolling a Great Weapon Fighter would pigeonhole me a great deal, while simply naming the class Barbarian would have eliminated these concerns.
Therefore I feel that there is one of two possible things wrong here. Either the classes have been named far too specifically, or the classes are far too specialised.
I understand balance is a big concern, but honestly the demographic of this game is most likely going to value customisation far more than balance. All I can hope is that they find a good middle-ground.
+1 Hate sacrificing my fun in the name of balance. D&D is a party game. I know it is mmo but the game also has other tags they are using to sell it.
You might want to research what 4E class builds are, as that is where they get their naming convention. Nor am I going to discuss here how "accurate" those builds are from PnP to MMO as the conversion to computer requires a LOT of compromise based on originally just PnP imagination and once a week session rules.
You see, it is an implementation of mechanics - just in a way PnP is an implementation of reality (ok, you can lol here, but you get the point).
So in the same way - game simulates that reality using same simulation mechanics PnP uses.
So in a game, INT modifier may not be added to damage rolls but may just make your cooldowns lower, or targeting a bit faster.
Similrly, agility saves may just become giving a little more speed and little less response time to the PC.
Basically, what are cool choices to make in 4e appear at this point to be the standard one way to do things in Neverwinter. If you know what I mean.
That is assuming I understand what the premise of the classes are. Sorry if this sounds like bitching or something. It's not. Just trying to understand the concept of the classes.
Basically, an important aspect to discuss when porting from pnp to digital is speed. An action that takes minutes on a card table will be automated on the computer. The number of rolls to do in one round becomes virtually limitless. And it has become a task to do for the player to increase these numbers to win. So for example, while equipping an offhand weapon used to double (!) your attack rate, nowadays it is not unusual to have a whole array of damaging actions on your task tray, all of which will fire simultaniously, depending on individual cooldowns.