Maybe it ain't so bad

nordveig · March 2013

I know a lot of people have been complaining about the lack of choice in this game regarding classes but I stumbled upon neverwinter wiki it may indicate what the developers plan to do in the future. It looks promising

http://neverwinter.wikia.com/wiki/Classes

I can see multi-classing....

quorforged · March 2013

Most of that is just pulled directly from 4E DnD. I don't think it means to say that multi-classing has been confirmed for Neverwinter.

zorlun · March 2013

For a game inspired of a great bloodline of role playing game surely older than the majority of the players which will play to this game, I find it a bit sad that the great classic classes of D&D are not present.

elve · March 2013

I told them a while ago to not fill a Neverwinter wiki with info from 4th edition but nobody listened... Oh well.

malagarr · March 2013

Never rely on a wiki. That is just a list put together by a fan based on his own perceptions/desires.

nordveig · March 2013

Oh dear, not looking good.

roninthehood · March 2013

.Um.... forget wiki.. the devs themselves have said very clearly that they will be adding "many more classes and races after lunch" how is that even kinda hard to understand....

quorforged · March 2013

roninthehood wrote: »

.Um.... forget wiki.. the devs themselves have said very clearly that they will be adding "many more classes and races after lunch" how is that even kinda hard to understand....

I don't think anyone doubts that.

However, the "lack of choices" isn't just a lack of classes. It's a lack of options to be creative in how we use classes, and make builds of our own that aren't essentially predetermined by the devs.

elve · March 2013

quorforged wrote: »

It's a lack of options to be creative in how we use classes, and make builds of our own that aren't essentially predetermined by the devs.

There already are options on how you use your class, what you have no choice in is what weapon a class wears and that is about it. All the classes have diverse powers suitable for a variety of situations and can be specialized in several ways through the power selection and the trait system.

danxbx · March 2013

I think the number of skills are fine. At the end of the day, in most MMOs, most people end using the same rotation of 4 or 5 skills. Lack of armor and weapons needs to be addressed in the very near future.

clcmercy · March 2013

elve wrote: »

There already are options on how you use your class, what you have no choice in is what weapon a class wears and that is about it. All the classes have diverse powers suitable for a variety of situations and can be specialized in several ways through the power selection and the trait system.

I'm sorry, but no. Wrong. I had absolutely no choices leveling up this last beta weekend. Not once did I even get a "this one or that one" pick. The game just told me what I'd acquired as far as new abilities every time I leveled up. I couldn't even opt out of "choosing" a companion/pet thing. I literally HAD to choose one. Could not pass on it. The only saving grace was I did not -have- to summon it.
Class development is totally nonexistent in this game.

elve · March 2013

clcmercy wrote: »

I'm sorry, but no. Wrong. I had absolutely no choices leveling up this last beta weekend. Not once did I even get a "this one or that one" pick. The game just told me what I'd acquired as far as new abilities every time I leveled up. I couldn't even opt out of "choosing" a companion/pet thing. I literally HAD to choose one. Could not pass on it. The only saving grace was I did not -have- to summon it.
Class development is totally nonexistent in this game.

Oh, no choices, huh? So you didn't choose what powers to equip in the power slots? And you didn't choose what traits to learn?

lanessar13 · March 2013

elve wrote: »

There already are options on how you use your class, what you have no choice in is what weapon a class wears and that is about it. All the classes have diverse powers suitable for a variety of situations and can be specialized in several ways through the power selection and the trait system.

elve wrote: »

Oh, no choices, huh? So you didn't choose what powers to equip in the power slots? And you didn't choose what traits to learn?

That's actually "faux" options. At level 30, I had maybe 4/8 powers which I would actually choose from while soloing, as the rest of the powers really didn't deliver or were highly situational in use (this is a Cleric by the way). In talking to many clerics (several via forum messages recently), sunburst, boh, hw, and another were just to be left off of the bar.

As a CW, I had 8 powers, 6 of which were viable. Two were completely situational and useless in a solo situation (though worked well in a group situation).

I'm a tinkerer. I enjoy playing with different things, finding combos of powers that work well together, and getting into weird rotations, etc. However, the powers are narrowly selective.

Granted, I enjoy the game. I don't think this makes or breaks it for me. But it's not just "a different weapon" when people don't have a choice. It's because, really, there isn't much variation. Feats give a slightly different playstyle, but not to the degree that people are asking for.

This might be a bit different for TR, I didn't explore power variations with him much. But into the 30s, it did hold true for CW, DC and GWF.

The "using your class differently" variation in this game as of last BWE was basically "Do you want Wendy's, McDonalds or Burger King?"

However, that being said, this has been stated on the forums a lot. I've seen the devs respond well to what the players desire, so I'm pretty sure we'll see something which addresses the issue. What form it will take, I have no idea.

One thing I do know, the devs have changed stuff based off of player feedback.

elve · March 2013

lanessar13, can't agree with what you said. I have played GF and CW into the 30s and beyond and both classes offered a set of vastly different skills that promoted different playstyles and the variations some of the traits offered completely changed how some of the skills worked and how they interacted with other skills. It is true that there are only 3 or 4 skills per playstyle but they each did a unique thing. In other MMOs you have large variations of skills but you basically choose one or several skills per type(because of the cooldowns) and you rotate them. On the other hand in Neverwinter you choose what types of skills you use and you don't have 10 types of OMG BIG DMG skills that are different only in their animations because you don't need them.

I think there should be some more skills but I like the way the skills are now - each of them is unique - and I do not want to see clones of the same skill functionality only for the sake of having a different animation to go with it. I think that kind of thing is what a faux option is.

shphgr · March 2013

i agree that the choices seem kinda fake, at least for the cleric.

the feats don't do much, i mean 1%crit or 1%more healing/damage is kinda the same thing.

there ARE a few exceptions like the feat where your crits heals for a portion of the damage, but those are also quite limited, both in number and also in functionality (like only working with at wills).

imo, feats (at least) should change the way you play and add to that playstyle. making a 5%DR into a 6%DR doesn't do that.

then come the actual skills, most of the are redundant or there is a clear time for them (party, solo, dungeons, etc). p.e. if a cleric is healing in a dungeon his skill choices are limited. if he is soloing the same.

i believe this is a class problem mostly, and probably something that say a class like trickster rogue wont see so much: when you have 8 skills for damage, either for party or for solo you can make a build. but when out of those 8 skils you have skills for damage/healing/cc/etc then it only leaves very few of each category.

what i would like to see is: feats being FEATS. ways to change and shape your character, not just slight boosts way way lower than a single piece of equipment (a crit weapon was giving me more crit than 3 feats spend on crit chance...) and skills that actually serve the same purpose with different ways.

lanessar13 · March 2013

elve wrote: »

I think there should be some more skills but I like the way the skills are now - each of them is unique - and I do not want to see clones of the same skill functionality only for the sake of having a different animation to go with it. I think that kind of thing is what a faux option is.

Personally, so many people have posted "there are no builds!" that I'm sure some sort of change is being considered. I've counted at least 23, most with several pages of supporting wanting more than just feats to choose from.

I agree with the general sentiment just on principle. Everyone has your powers at your level. At all levels. Even WOW at least had shadow priest, discipline priest and holy (healing) priest at launch. And they played VERY differently. The feats here don't give that feeling of difference.

elve · March 2013

I cannot really speak for the DC as I've played it only to level 6 cause I'm kinda burned out on clerics(played Medic in Firefall, Cleric in RIFT, healing guardian in GW2 and Blood Magic user in TSW).

Everyone having the same powers is... normal. In pretty much every MMO you can respec your skills for some small cost and every character your class in fact has the ability to use the same skills you do. I see no difference between learning 1/3 of the skills and equiping 1/3 of the skills. Well there is - one of them does not force me to pay to change it but that is another kind of rant. Instead of choosing what skills to learn and level up I want to have more skills in general that can be equipped in the skill slots at any given time.

And yeah, the feats seem kinda inefficient when you are considering the outcome of a single point invested. Still you have 51 points at endgame and even if it was only 2% increase in damage or healing in the end you still have a significant effect for your character and most of the feats are a lot more effective than that(actually everything above level 30 seems to alter your gameplay in some way in my experience and stimulates you to play a different way).

Still I really hope they are doing something to improve the game's power system and I've posted a list of suggestions to improve on the system as well. I just hope that they do not cave into the pressure and significantly change the system itself as it works fine. In fact it is pretty much the same system there is in Guild Wars, Diablo 3, Path of Exile and pretty much everywhere else - you choose what active skills you use and then you choose what passives you want to learn to improve the said skills or your character in general.

shphgr · March 2013

elve wrote: »

And yeah, the feats seem kinda inefficient when you are considering the outcome of a single point invested. Still you have 51 points at endgame and even if it was only 2% increase in damage or healing in the end you still have a significant effect for your character and most of the feats are a lot more effective than that(actually everything above level 30 seems to alter your gameplay in some way in my experience and stimulates you to play a different way).

Still I really hope they are doing something to improve the game's power system and I've posted a list of suggestions to improve on the system as well. I just hope that they do not cave into the pressure and significantly change the system itself as it works fine. In fact it is pretty much the same system there is in Guild Wars, Diablo 3, Path of Exile and pretty much everywhere else - you choose what active skills you use and then you choose what passives you want to learn to improve the said skills or your character in general.

some things about DC here:
http://nwowiki.co/index.php?title=Devoted_Cleric

there is the complete feat list in the above link, even after lvl 30, the feats that do modify playstyle (and not just enhance it by a bit) are limited to a 1-digit number (repurpose soul, cleanse, power of the sun, second sight, disciple, cycle of change, linked spirit, warding shield).

sure, there are feats that give you more damage when you do damage, or more healing when you heal, but those aren't classified as gameplay changing things, at least not from me.

in your post you mention PoE. in that game, you also have a number of limited skills that you can use, 7 all in all (excluding auras sometimes) and in reality most people wont even actively use all those 7 simultenously. YET the number of builds is astounishing due to simple passive changes and insanely good main skill-support combinations that exist. i am not saying that nwo can become something like PoE, different game, different genre and etc. What i am saying that with ONLY 50 points to spend on feats, they should better be worth it. take for example "Righteous Flames: Flame Strike now Stuns target for 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 seconds."

imo 1 point is good if you just want it to use for interrupts, but the way that it scales it is very poor. make it just a 2-step feat: 1 point leave it a 0.1sec, 2 points make it a 0.5sec. Then you are left with spare points, maybe they could add more feats in the same tier that affect other skills then.

so you have p.e.:
tier 4 in paragon path:
healing step: 1point for all 5 points effect
righteous flames: 2 points for full effect
afasadfdf: x points add to y(x) skill effect
adsfadf: z points add to y(z) effect
.
.
.
dsafasdf: etcetcetc

so in the end you do need to make choices at every step about which skill to modify and for how much enabling different character builds even though they have chose the same path.

clcmercy · March 2013

elve wrote: »

Oh, no choices, huh? So you didn't choose what powers to equip in the power slots? And you didn't choose what traits to learn?

I most certainly did not. This last beta weekend, I set out to test a theory, and that is what I did. Your leveling path is a railroad, nothing more. At no point can you opt out of any choice along said path, nor can you interchange at what level you get things.

Also, I only ever used the initial mouse attack this time around from level one to twenty five...and not once was my gameplay impeded because of doing so. Four hours of "whack-whack-slash" animations. Solo. I should not have been able to do that at all. These "daily" and "per encounter" "abilities" should be at least needed once you gain them. They aren't. Fluff, nothing more. Fluff that was forced upon me, to boot.

Let me reiterate, so as to avoid a misunderstanding.

DURING MY GAME PLAY, my goal was to see if these daily, per encounter, etc. abilities were necessary to continue leveling. They weren't, and I found that out quite quickly...so I paid more attention to the leveling system itself. No choices at all, just the game telling me what I'd gained that level and a pat on the head for doing so. I did not find that enjoyable at all, and sincerely doubt it will change, as it is a core mechanic in this game..which in my opinion is a Very Bad Thing.

elve · March 2013

shphgr, thank you for the link! I have seen the abilities and two or three builds pop right away. Still I have to agree some of them are quite ineffective and even baffling but most of them aren't and some seem to change quite a lot when it comes to what you can do with an ability. You cannot have abilities that reduce damage by 50% or increase the healing for 50% or increase the damage for 50% because if you do that then every character that choose to go another way that get those abilities will be quite ineffective in what he does, wouldn't he?

As for PoE - you get big numbers there from the skill tree but the actual change from build to build is not that great except when you are going for something really extreme. As an example - I decided to make a ranger in PoE that used dual wielding and got with that through half of the game. Then there was a forced respec for all the characters(this was still in beta) and decided that I would go with a build that used 2-handed weapons so I got myself a big sword, specced at the exactly right things and... it felt exactly the same as when I had 2 fist weapons in terms of gameplay... So it is really how you look at it.

clcmercy , I suppose that you can go without using any dailies and encounters as it is an action game and you can do quite a lot with just positioning and at-wills but then again you can also dig a grave with a spoon if you work hard enough but why the hell would you when you have spades and picks and other really good tools for digging holes.

ironzerg79 · March 2013

clcmercy wrote: »

DURING MY GAME PLAY, my goal was to see if these daily, per encounter, etc. abilities were necessary to continue leveling. They weren't, and I found that out quite quickly...so I paid more attention to the leveling system itself. No choices at all, just the game telling me what I'd gained that level and a pat on the head for doing so. I did not find that enjoyable at all, and sincerely doubt it will change, as it is a core mechanic in this game..which in my opinion is a Very Bad Thing.

Yes, you can clear the early levels only spamming an at-will. So what? You can probably do that in almost any MMO. Hell, in GW2, I bet you could use your auto-attack to clear the entire game. There were people in GW2 and CO who tried to get to max level without leaving the tutorial zones. All it speaks to is the tenacity of some players.

So you made it to level 25 with only at wills. Next time, try to get to level cap and tell us about it. Or race another person who's playing the exact same class, but using all their skills. See who gets to 25 first. Or even better, who has more fun.

But ultimately, there's going to be people who can't figure this game out. Who see it all on rails, and can't dig any deeper. That's going to happen...so why even argue?

elve · March 2013

ironzerg79 wrote: »

But ultimately, there's going to be people who can't figure this game out. Who see it all on rails, and can't dig any deeper. That's going to happen...so why even argue?

Personally I do it because if these guys get too loud they can turn a lot of players away from a great game by the sheer force of their fallacies.

mightybeer · March 2013

All the game classes is based on builds of the D&D players handbook, will be great if the devs create more options to a same core classes, like they did whit Fighert (great weapon and fighter). We will have Control and War Wizard, Fighter and Devoted clercic and etc. In my sight, it is a solid possibilty.

lanessar13 · March 2013

elve wrote: »

Personally I do it because if these guys get too loud they can turn a lot of players away from a great game by the sheer force of their fallacies.

Don't worry, I'm sure the collective nerd rage (a thing to be feared *eyeroll*) will be addressed.

sheyjin · March 2013

After reading these post you can tell who plays alot of the different MMO's. This game is based on the 4.0 rule set for Dungeons and Dragons and if you stray from that then you ruin the game. Granted with other MMO's like GW2, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, WOW to name a few you have a ton of garbage on your task bar and alot of different abilities. These games are fun, but I am an old school table top D&D player, way back to 2.0 AD&D. You can play D&D online (rule set 3.0) and get the play style with alot of abilities and spells. I like the way they have it set up and hope they keep it that way.

If you look at the 4.0 game books and the classes and races, I can see alot of those being added later and hope they do. Don't just think we will have what is in the game right now. I do see more later.

mmoplaya1971 · March 2013

zorlun wrote: »

For a game inspired of a great bloodline of role playing game surely older than the majority of the players which will play to this game, I find it a bit sad that the great classic classes of D&D are not present.

Yes but it gives them years worth of expansions to work on as they roll out additional classes.

wednesdaywoe13 · March 2013

mmoplaya1971 wrote: »

Yes but it gives them years worth of expansions to work on as they roll out additional classes.

You're arguing that the poverty of character customization in this game is a tactical advantage?

If more of those classes were present at launch, the "years down the road" could be spent building more world and story content, cosmetic goodies and character services.

The reality is that the scope of the game was limited to make a faster launch...and perhaps to have stuff to fill out the cash shop, but mostly for a fast development.

1. Figure out what the bare minimum needed for launch is.
2. Develop that much, then launch.
3. Let people pay for the game while you develop the things that, 6 years ago, would have been mandatory for launch.
4.????
5. Profit.

This is the new normal. It's not just Cryptic. What I wonder is, how much can developers scrape away from the initial game before players refuse to go along? I wonder where is that threshold is.

bismar7 · March 2013

Really though if they did take from that and release even 1/2 of those classes I would be playing for years. Even if it was the same content.

devoteoftempus · March 2013

sheyjin wrote: »

After reading these post you can tell who plays alot of the different MMO's. This game is based on the 4.0 rule set for Dungeons and Dragons and if you stray from that then you ruin the game. Granted with other MMO's like GW2, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, WOW to name a few you have a ton of garbage on your task bar and alot of different abilities. These games are fun, but I am an old school table top D&D player, way back to 2.0 AD&D. You can play D&D online (rule set 3.0) and get the play style with alot of abilities and spells. I like the way they have it set up and hope they keep it that way.

If you look at the 4.0 game books and the classes and races, I can see alot of those being added later and hope they do. Don't just think we will have what is in the game right now. I do see more later.

This game is 4e INSPIRED not 4e based, the game really shows little resemblance to anything 4e beyond having a DnD skin. Everything got changed around or completely omitted.

As for the whole choices debate.... there are no choices.. Swapping out a power or two is not choices and don't even think that the talent tree aka "feats" provides any more choices. You have as much choices as in WoW which there I'd say you have more choices there.

beleb1 · March 2013

Actually my build for my GF is going to be placing points all over the place and in three different trees of paragon skills. I think there is a lot of customization actually. Especially when you consider all of the stat bonuses on gear. I mainly focus on pvp so I will basically gear and build my GF to those strengths. However, knowing I have to pve I'll have a second set of gear to make pve more bearable. Your options are only as limited as you make them.

delgatto42 · April 2013

want build options?

Build 1, pure DPS. Go Rogue
Build 2, DPS Tank, go GWF
Build 3, pure Tank, go GF
Build 4, Healzors, go DC
Build 5, DPS CC, go CW

Want to try out a different build, make a new char. We got plenty of options in what role you want to fill. We don't need a dozen ways of doing single target DPS. That's just silly. Honestly 2 classes for each role (one melee, one ranged) would be more than enough. Past that, spend time and money on content, bug fixing, balancing... things of that nature. Cosmetics are mostly a waste (having 10 classes [or 10 powers within a class] that does basically and functionally the same thing is a total waste of resources)

Maybe it ain't so bad

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