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Revolutionary...No. But still fun and unique.
tinypyro
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 371 Bounty Hunter
For all of you complaining that this game isn't "Revolutionary" or that it's "nothing new", or that it's a "clone" of this game or that game because it has certain elements or play styles of those games, my advice for you is this.... Quit gaming for a decade or so, then come back. By then you may see something truly different and revolutionary.
Until then, try to understand that with the current technology we have, almost everything that can be done, has been done. There are so many MMOs out there right now that it would be almost impossible to develop one that didn't copy one thing or another from other successful games.
Yes the action style combat closely resembles that of Tera or GW2, but keep in mind that those combat styles were developed because people were getting tired of clicking on 20 action bars filled with 200 abilities. Age of Conan for example tried to be revolutionary with its combat style and it didn't work out so well for them. It's only natural for game developers to copy what works, eliminate what doesn't, and perhaps add a few things of their own (that hopefully will be successful and copied by other games in the future)
The lore, the foundry, and event calendar are what sets this game apart from most MMOs out there at the moment.
Yes the foundry isn't a brand new concept, but this game is going to take player created content to a new level.
Yes there are other MMOs with scheduled events, but nothing quite so diverse as this (as far as I am aware of).
Yes there is another MMO with the exact same lore, but D&D lore is still a very limited MMO market considering there are only 2.
The days when games like UO, and EQ, and then WoW dominated the market with truly unique and revolutionary ideas, concepts, and graphics are long gone. At least until we take a giant leap ahead in gaming and entertainment technology.
Try to be open minded when you try this game and appreciate it for what it is:
A fun, entertaining game with a few new concepts that could have limitless possibilities.
Until then, try to understand that with the current technology we have, almost everything that can be done, has been done. There are so many MMOs out there right now that it would be almost impossible to develop one that didn't copy one thing or another from other successful games.
Yes the action style combat closely resembles that of Tera or GW2, but keep in mind that those combat styles were developed because people were getting tired of clicking on 20 action bars filled with 200 abilities. Age of Conan for example tried to be revolutionary with its combat style and it didn't work out so well for them. It's only natural for game developers to copy what works, eliminate what doesn't, and perhaps add a few things of their own (that hopefully will be successful and copied by other games in the future)
The lore, the foundry, and event calendar are what sets this game apart from most MMOs out there at the moment.
Yes the foundry isn't a brand new concept, but this game is going to take player created content to a new level.
Yes there are other MMOs with scheduled events, but nothing quite so diverse as this (as far as I am aware of).
Yes there is another MMO with the exact same lore, but D&D lore is still a very limited MMO market considering there are only 2.
The days when games like UO, and EQ, and then WoW dominated the market with truly unique and revolutionary ideas, concepts, and graphics are long gone. At least until we take a giant leap ahead in gaming and entertainment technology.
Try to be open minded when you try this game and appreciate it for what it is:
A fun, entertaining game with a few new concepts that could have limitless possibilities.
Post edited by tinypyro on
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Neverwinter is definitely those things.
I left the game and now I'm awaiting Neverwinter because I know from my experience with post PW STO what to expect with this title.
This......
So, for this game, one of the often copied, not really thought about criticisms is that it isn't "revolutionary". Trust me, if it were revolutionary, the criticism would be the game was "too complicated and weird".
You see some of the critics here decided to hate this game, long before they even played it. Some have never even played it. Some are reactionary old guys, stuck with old thinking that is stifling the paper industry to the point where D&D is reeling and fairly close to dying (and allowed other companies to take the lead in the industry).
There is valid constructive criticism to be had by the way. But most criticism you read here isn't constructive, it's arrogant. It's not really designed to do much but pick fights, scream, mewl and stamp their feet and demand things like a kid angry about his bed time. Often it confuses opinion with actual fact, see the endless, ridiculous and utterly embarrassing "this isn't D&D" threads littered around this forum.
One nice thing will be, once the game launches and the community settles, there will be far more constructive threads than the "this isn't D&D and I know because I played Caves of Chaos once in 1982". There will be far more constructive threads than "well if there are no Drow at launch this entire game is doomed and Cryptic are complete idiots".
There will be discussion like the thread on how to improve Foundry content, like the thread on how one can RP in an action-oriented game, or like the thread on how guild spaces might be incorporated in the game. You know, constructive criticism, from the very people invested in the game.
Right now, we're essentially a book club, where 50% of the people hate reading and are just posting "books suck, LOL". So you can't really get into whether The Great Gatsby is a deep allegory for America in the 20's, or whether it's a subtler book about misplaced affection and hatred. Right now, the rafters are just telling us that paper books are lame and if Cryptic were smart, Great Gatsby would have been released as a comic book, with Wonder Woman as Daisy.
If I sound snotty about some of the threads here, I suppose I am. For me, I get tired of gamers who seem to delight in entering a community, merely to tell everyone in it, that the centerpiece on which the community is centered around is a pile of junk, but their own fabulous egos are pristine.
I just wish people stopped showing up, just to pee in the pool, and instead, they actually, you know tried swimming instead.
Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
Aye. Although I must say that there seems to be less negative feedback here than many other games Ive played prior to launch.
There will always be, and should always be criticism. I myself have questioned Cryptic's marketing tactics. Rather harshly at times. And of course I (like all of us) have concerns and suggestions. But most of the time that criticism comes from people that want this game to succeed. People that love D&D lore and people that just love a fun MMO alike.
And then there are some that just complain to complain. It's the "just another clone" and "same old same old" complaints that I find amazing.
And some are WOWist, who think that WOW did everything first and better...lol mostly young teens who lash out without thinking.(From my experience at playing wow, and many other MMOs)
Hehehe, but let's be honest, WOW did do a lot first, like pretty much become the biggest fantasy-based brand in the history of gaming. So, you know, give it the props it deserves. It became a billion dollar brand for a reason, it crushed the competition. During its peak, more people were online playing WOW during prime time, than watched a network evening news broadcast.
It achieved a level of success unprecedented before and never matched since.
You can snob WOW all you want, for whatever pedantic, elitist reasons that justify that for you. Fine. But don't suggest for a second WOW wasn't a massive success, both innovative and clever on a variety of fronts, that made it the juggernaut that it was (and to a large degree still is).
I think actually, you could argue WOW was revolutionary, at least its impact was so large, it altered the industry, which I think pretty much defines "revolutionary".
NWO is not particularly revolutionary, it seems like it derived from numerous sources, borrowing ideas from all kinds of other things, but not really trying to stake out virgin territory. I think its more "revolutionary" feature is the Foundry (which of course was borrowed from other games). And perhaps its legacy will rise or fall based on how well, we, the players use that Foundry to enhance the game.
Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
WoW was special because yes, as you said, it did stuff first, followed by the endless prattle that is "lol WoW clone" that I am so sick and tired of hearing. But if you take a step back and looked at all the new MMOs that came out recently, WoW doesn't stand out that much. I seriously think that the main reason we've seen all these new MMOs fail (or at least fail to live up to their hype) is because it's pretty hard to establish a solid player base from scratch.
Without a definitive "revolutionary" hook, players these days get bored quickly. I mean look at swtor and gw2, people started shouting (whining really) for new content after a mere month, which is understandable. Why play a newly released MMO that doesn't have some "revolutionary" appeal, when, for example, I've been nurturing my WoW account for years? And so, all these bored players take a break (or quit as they say), which gives the appearance of the games to be seemingly dying, which in turn turns off prospective new players, which causes the game to appear even more dead - see the cycle?
And what gets on my nerves even more is when a would-be "WoW killer" (exaggerated fan-generated hype much?) doesn't kill WoW, fickle players immediately deem it a failure. Sorry, nothing will ever kill WoW because it is well too established to just suddenly die. But that doesn't mean no game will be as good as, or better, than WoW, because indeed there currently are. But as I've said, it's just hard to establish a solid player base/community.
----Rant off----
In any case, I do believe that the Foundry will be the "revolutionary" factor in this game. As much as people have said that we shouldn't compare NWN series with this game, they'd have to admit that NWN 1&2 probably has the best modding community, and the Foundry sounds like just the perfect outlet for those creative ideas.
Sure, but let's remember it became a billion dollar brand and translate fantasy role play so far and so successfully it wound up selling pick up trucks during the Super Bowl. That's just an unprecedented success into mainstream consumption and media, at a level D&D NEVER obtained and no fantasy game has ever come close to matching. That is revolutionary in its own way.
As for "WOW killer", I think you are right, in that WOW won't die, it just slowly fades away. I think we see this already.
Like all games WOW has zealots who refuse to play anything else and mock all its competitors. But Warcraft is and was, always derivative. So you are right, there's a certain irony to anyone laughing at "WOW clone". D&D begat White Dwarf, White Dwarf begat Warhammer and Warhammer begat Warcraft. It's about as derivative a product as you can get and not get sued.
But WOW was a revolution. That's obvious and if you love video game history, you must give WOW its due.
As for the Foundry, yeah I agree, this is the signature the game will be known for. Although, better modding games exist as you say, this is also a simpler, "lego like" approach to building adventures. So with less flexibility and complexity, you gain easier access and understanding, which leads to more people being able to build their own content. It's not revolutionary, UCG of this sort has been done before, but I do believe it will be the thing that makes or breaks NWO.
What might be revolutionary in NWO is the community itself. If creative minds come together and start to use the UCG to create fantastic campaigns, where multiple authors are collaborating to build an entire culture and story that the community at large augments, builds on and keeps enhancing, that could be quite something.
Or it could be 300,000 miserable modules of boss rush as soon as you open the door, and weak attempts at exploitation and XP farming.
Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
Character is what a man is in the dark
I also agree there will be no "WoW Killer" but it is "bleeding" from people getting older and some going to games they find more enjoyable from it.
The thing Blizzard did was release an MMO in a vacuum of sorts and made it more appealing to common everyday folks. (Cartoony, not too rife with RolePlaying etc). Plus they got on the heels of a new generation that wasn't so "icky" to technology and video games (as those who were teens in the 80s experienced). In summation, Blizzard got lucky with WoW
2 things did this imo, first was insta queue dungeons... was a good idea with bad consequences, mainly since you can queue any time with anyone one and it was multi sever you could run a dungeon any time (a little longer wait for DPS) however, you ran in to a lot more players who were just A-holes and loved to grief and ruin other's experience and since seeing the same players in a dungeon was little to none with the insta queue there was no consequence for being a jerk. This ruined my experience entirely.
The second was dumming down the game mechanics there was a huge influx of immature players that made you want to bang your head on the keyboard. I hope and pray that this does not happen to Neverwinter and that interactions with a majority of the community will always be a positive and friendly one.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
On a side note, i would love to see someone write an article up on what they think the "Next Gen MMORPG" should be and all the new revolutionary ideas they can come up with.
What I think, MMORPG's are what they are and will not really change. What will change is the technology and the way that we play them. Such as VR and even different input devices aside from keyboard, mouse, controllers... etc..
I also think PvP being added to a mainly PvE game kinda ruins the game... restricts a lot of what you can do, makes balancing a headache and then prevents you from making a real Controller class for folks to play.
"I'm not looking for a WoW killer, I enjoyed playing the game immensely and the one thing Blizzard did do right and I have yet to see another game compare is the dungeons and interesting and unique boss fights. I no longer play but that is mainly due to the community the game attracted in the later releases like WotLK." - apocrs1980
Try The Secret World.
Developers are not making a game with all the features in one because they are scared to lose customers or cutting corners to get the game done faster and cheaper for more potential profits. They have enough technology now to make all the features from old games and newer ones all in one and add newer things on top all in one to make epic games, they just refuse to do it up to now.
They could have housing in every game, they could allow us to build and shape the world like in minecraft in many ways, they could have boats in every game that you can build/battle/sink, they could have open pvp in every game, could have it where you can steal resources from players transporting them, could allow us to farm our own foods and plants in our towns, they could have looting of players in every game, could have bounty systems, they could have player run shops, player built/destroyable cities, and tons and tons of "sandbox" features with today's technology, they just dont do it and continue to make games with only 1 or 2 features, never all of them in one that is a quality AAA game.
You get the idea, technology is not the thing limiting the games. All of the features I mentioned are all done in old games with way older technology, but developers fail to put it all together in one package that works.
There are a few games in development around that, look at mmorpg.com list
We do not have the ability to modify the ruleset or to create persistent worlds. (Before you yell "EXPLOITER!" I come from a Hard Core rules server in NWN. You died you were dead, we built/used many tools to make the game as close to the core rules as possible). We do not have the ability to create Greyhawk, Eberron, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, etc. We do not have the ability to generate custom models/terrain and thus create custom monsters, areas. Look at the fantastic work CODI was doing by creating SIGIL in NWN1, some amazing stuff came to the community from that group alone. There is not a DM client.
So until many more features are actually incorporated into the foundry - it will not be really 'revolutionary'.
Right now the foundry allows players to use cookie cutter areas to make adventures, that ability is available in other games and is/was not a core part of the success for those games. For the Foundry to set NW apart from the rest it needs to be much more powerful.
We're honestly not going to get all the customization in this game which we had in the NWN of old; it's too exploitable, and most of the content that you mention is additive to the base game. They're pretty firm that user-generated assets are too difficult to add to the Foundry, so do not hold out expecting that level of customization.
This in and of itself will not make or break the Foundry, or make it not revolutionary. We're dealing with an MMO here, not a multiplayer game - so it's two different beasts. Being a Hall of Fame content contributor, I can say it would be nice to have that ability, but it is not necessary to make UGC for an MMO an incredible feature. The key thing that NWN allowed wasn't hacked races, PRC or custom spells or different worlds. That's hard for me to say, as I was a PW builder - PWs were an awesome feature which allowed us to unleash all sorts of content.
It was the ability to tell a story or have someone experience your adventure, and the fact that with a little effort, anyone could do it. I'm reminded of some great mods (and many early PWs, such as Menzo, Myth Drannor, Avlis, Abyss 404) which had no custom content - just the base game assets - yet won many, many awards and in many cases in and of themselves were revolutionary.
That being said, the community actually made the "NWN customization" that you're referring to. Did you know that for the first year, only one .hak file could be associated with a module in Aurora? We got that changed. Cookie-cutter areas? Did you use NWN toolset? It was blocks of five different tiles you could rotate.
So, our task in UGC, as it was for NWN, is to take the system, make amazing things with it, take it to it's limits, and beyond, and get the developers to add functionality within possible parameters for the UGC in this game type, and not necessarily demand all the toys for a different class of game straight out of the gate.
I was one of those who spearheaded the original, release NWN toolset improvements. We didn't do it by saying it was boring because we couldn't do XYZ, or pooh-pooh it because of cookie cutter features.
We took it, and made it into something great.
I do not hold out hope for that. I stated that the foundry as it stands is not that revolutionary as some are claiming. It is a really cool feature, but not a super cool awesome feature. There will be some really good stuff come out of the foundry - of that I am certain - there will be a whole lot of garbage too - and I am just as certain of that.
The thing that made NWN so revolutionary was it actually took the game and allowed nearly anyone to both build AND DM for their friends. You did not have to know how to script, you did not even have to know how to create a merchant. You just had to learn how to build an area and put npcs there. Then you could possess everyone as a DM - have fully on the fly conversations with your party, spawn gear they could buy, spawn mobs for them to fight, etc. Treasure, everything could be custom made. THAT was what was amazing about the original game.
I can agree this is an MMO and as such there are many features that can not be implemented *until* there is a fix for it. Player DMs just beg for Griefing, cheating, etc. However *IF* what Jack said at Gencon is true and *IF* they are able to host custom persistent worlds then giving players a form of DM access *could* be feasible. After all the condition was the characters would be LOCKED to that setting/world and could not be taken into the 'live' world. Thus a DM client is not too far out of bounds.
Fully custom models are certainly out. That I understand as well. And again, it is up to cryptic to see how fast or how many of the player requests for monsters, areas, etc. we see come into the game/foundry. This is another point where it is up to Cryptic to make or break the foundry as something more than what other games already have.
See above - it was the toolset in addition to the DM client.
I was there.
You can not take something past its limits when you can not hak it. Granted they are working on making more basic areas where the foundry user can actually customize everything - that is a HUGE step forward. They are working on many features that they can not talk about at this time, etc. I played STO to get a feel for the Foundry system there and test out some of the fan made content - some that I tried was pretty good, some was super lame, etc. but they had one thing in common - they all looked pretty much the same. I fear having Dragon Age 2 flashbacks as I go into the 5th UGC dungeon only to think ... "Hey, I have been here before, over and over in fact..."
and again, the foundry will ONLY be as 'revolutionary' as cryptic allows it to be.
As to the forge, the ability to DM a module for friends and guildmates on the fly would be a huge step forward, even without custom content and all the rest, being able to react to and provide for the PC inside the module would be phenomenal.
Actually, that was present in the Vampire: Redemption toolset. We can go back and forth on it, but there were many successful PWs and modules created which required no DM present to enjoy.
I don't disagree. However, the tone of your post came across a bit "defeated out of the gate. If that wasn't the intent, forgive me. Ther eis tons of negativity and not enough "stickituitiveness" to actually make the tool better. From the videos I have seen, with two notable features missing, the tools we have are actually pretty good.
I cut out the rest because it's actually going off of a false premise. The developers have stated they intend to take the game in whichever direction the players desire it to go. The lead designer in an interview (NOCS), when asked where he saw the game in three years, replied "I cannot answer that, as the players determine the direction the game will take."
This was pretty much BW's approach. And the toolset was what we (the players) requested, built with, and changed the face of NWN with. So, being that the lead designer of the game is being honest, then the duty falls on us to break stuff, make amazing content, and practically force the devs to expand the toolset.
I made the examples of the un-hacked content and modules and PWs as in your post it was "custom content, custom models, etc." and then the DM client mentioned at the end.
One thing I think HAMSTER the growth of NWN 2 was the failure of the community to take the same attitude as NWN: "Build it, and they will come". It was gung-ho, positive, creative. Using that same energy, instead of complaining about what isn't there, will go further.
Definitely Lanessar, but Legasus was the pumpkin knight.
I agree. I'd love for a DM-level interaction (even if just possession for NPCs) was present. We'll have to get them to make it
Right, sorry, it was what...six or more years ago.
If what you say is true about making what the players want then I hold out hope of possible DM level interaction within the Forge. Even if there was no ability to give xp rewards within it, or to give treasure, just the interaction would be a huge step into making a tight knit creative community that will endure. Even near ten years out, nwn still has a small but active community.
well again, *IF* they actually do implement the PW possiblity which jack said they were looking into (of course it came from jack so take that for what it is worth), they could allow for full control over loot, xp, etc. (Again jack said this is theoretically possible). As characters who are created/go to the PW in question would be locked there - who cares if it is a monty haul or not?
Me I would LOVE to see a more low magic Greyhawk PW with much slower XP gain.
I would love to see a DM function eventually hit something like that as I have fond memories of crashing our NWN server by my DM events causing so many players to log in at once.