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This Game's Classes: Background and Commentary
joe15552
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Perfect world released Forsaken World a few years back. At the game's release they had 5 classes: protector, warrior, priest, mage, and assassin. Sound familiar? It should. Neverwinter uses the same game-engine as Forsaken World. There were a lot of complaints in that game about protectors and warriors. Mostly that warriors were underpowered (because they died to easy and didn't do much damage) and that protectors were overpowered (because they were practically invincible and did a lot of damage). There were complaints about assassins one-shotting people too easy and mages doing too much aoe damage. There were also complaints about priests being a requirement to do anything as a group in the game. Sound familiar? It should. Neverwinter uses the same game-engine as Forsaken World.
That being said, the classes in Neverwinter are put together in a MUCH more interesting way than Forsaken World. If specced and equipped correctly, Guardian Fighters and Great Weapon Fighters are two classes that have two different roles, and add a LOT to their groups. Devoted Clerics are a requirement for groups in this game, but they are much more fun to play than the priest in Forsaken World. The way players can mix and match their encounter powers for use in specific situations is very cool, and very different from Forsaken World in a good way.
From my point of view, Neverwinter has done VERY well with class design using this game engine in such a short time. Sure, there needs to be improvements, but Great Weapon Fighters and Guardian Fighters are far from useless in groups. Perhaps their use needs to be more obvious for the average player, or perhaps it needs to continue to be ambiguous. If it remained ambiguous, only the good players will excel at showing what these classes can do... which is fine by me.
That being said, the classes in Neverwinter are put together in a MUCH more interesting way than Forsaken World. If specced and equipped correctly, Guardian Fighters and Great Weapon Fighters are two classes that have two different roles, and add a LOT to their groups. Devoted Clerics are a requirement for groups in this game, but they are much more fun to play than the priest in Forsaken World. The way players can mix and match their encounter powers for use in specific situations is very cool, and very different from Forsaken World in a good way.
From my point of view, Neverwinter has done VERY well with class design using this game engine in such a short time. Sure, there needs to be improvements, but Great Weapon Fighters and Guardian Fighters are far from useless in groups. Perhaps their use needs to be more obvious for the average player, or perhaps it needs to continue to be ambiguous. If it remained ambiguous, only the good players will excel at showing what these classes can do... which is fine by me.
Post edited by joe15552 on
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No, STO and CO are Cryptic games. Both were made while Cryptic was owned by Atari. PWE aquired them when Atari sold Cryptic off. PWE simply publishes Cryptics games. The engine and core programming has ALWAYS been up to Cryptic.
Why do you think only the three Cryptic games STO, NW, CO are chat linked and not all of PWEs other games? And BTW most of those are also made by other deveoplement houses.
Cryptic studios is a wholly owned US subsidiary of Perfect World entertainment. The game engine that runs Neverwinter, Star Trek, and the other Cryptic games is a Cryptic game engine, and is owned by Perfect World entertainment. Since the game engine is owned by Perfect World entertainment, it can be called a Perfect World game engine. I am not sure that these facts indicate that I do or do not know what the phrase "game engine" means, and the fact that you are constantly bringing it up makes me think that you are simply trying to change the subject, and not add to my commentary on classes in Neverwinter.
To say this is a PWE game simply because PWE publishes it and had some design influance. Would be the same as saying this is a Hasbro game, simpley because they had to approve the various licensed elements.
Fine, it's a Hasbro game engine then. Happy? Now do you have any commentary on the state of classes in Neverwinter, or are you just trolling?
The game engines are not just similar.... they are the same. If they were not owned by the same company, one company could sue the other one for stealing their product. Do you want different names on your engines than what I am puting on them? Fine. Slap whatever name you want on them you like... but the GAME ENGINE, is exactly the same in both Forsaken World and Neverwinter. I've played through them both, and character class (play and design), map connectivity, pvp, chat interface, group queue, equipment design, and in-game economy are the SAME. Not similar, or inspired by... THE SAME!!!!!!!!!!
However, Neverwinter is a vast improvement over what Forsaken World did with those SAME elements.... and this is the only thing I will discuss in this thread. Neverwinter class design, while very similar, and in some ways the SAME, to Forsaken World, is doing very well. In particular, I find the Great Weapon Fighter to be a vast improvement over how the Warrior class was used in the past in Perfect World games.
I think this entire statement is garbage.
Its fair to say that PWE had a hand in design influence on the classes. But its also fair to say the classes provided are a no brainer. They went for a basic trinity with a controller as a bonus. This is really nothing groundbreaking. You can look at any game to find the initial classes follow the whole Tank, Striker, Healer, Controller model. Even by a D&D model we have fighter, thief, wizard, cleric. So all things considered, even if PWE, played a hand in the starting classes, it was hardly anything new, groundbreaking or creative. More of a "do what everyone else is doing" approach.
The rest is just laughable. Balance is a mess. Its not PWEs engine its cryptics. and Cryptic has struggled with balance in the past. They could be forgiven with CO. There free form system is a balance nightmare and has been from day one. Most people overlook it simply because free form powers picks creates limitless balance problems. Its a mechanic issure that has allowed most folks to overlook its problems.
But if we look at STO, we have similar issues. It has been called world of escorts. Their version of strikers currently rule. Sound similar to TR perhaps? There was a time when their tanks ruled. But in the effort to find a ballance things changed. There is still no balance there.
So no, while I like and enjoy NW. I disagree that they have done a very good job. They have made the same mistakes they have made before on classes that are very basic in design. With their own time-tested in house engine. And still managed to fail to balance things even close to useable yet. Both for PVE and PVP. Its shameful that some classes are viewed as so useless and broken that the very class alone is enough reason to deny someone a group.
There is not a broken or useless class. Perhaps some of the classes are more difficult to use effectively, but that doesn't make them useless. There are members of all classes doing endgame content very effectively right now. Perhaps the average player lacks the creativity to use a particular class effectively, and when someone appears to be an average player playing that class, they may be kicked from the group. I see nothing wrong with this.
I admit that at first I thought GWF's were broken. Now, after some experimentation, I discovered they are far from broken. I also thought TR's were broken, but they are definitely not.... and are almost a requirement in boss fights in endgame. Control Wizards are not broken in pve. There are some serious balance issues in pvp, but in pve, I'd say that there are not outstanding balance issues, only some fine-tuning is needed. Guardian Fighters are a great addition to any group, and DC's are a requirement. None of that sounds broken to me.
You cant use personal examples as a basis for an entire classes balance. Sure some folks do fine as a GWF, but that is not the average. Some groups have beaten elites with GWF but that is not the average pug. If a class is only viable to a small percentage of players it is not viable. If a class is unwanted in groups because other classes offer far better options. It is not a viable class.
You need to balance for the average player in the average group. Not the extreme ends of the scale. And by that measure alone GWFs are totally broken and unbalanced. No one class should be a mandated requirement. It should make things easier or faster. But it shouldnt kill a group simply because one class left. Conversely no one class should be seen as a hinderance or useless. Short of the extremes of 5 of one single class. General group content should be achieveable with almost any class combination. That should be the standard defination of balance. That is not the case here.
That is not to say I dont believe Cryptic wont fix it. I have faith they will. It wont be perfect, but it will be functional. But right now as things stand they have problems. Problems that have plagued them from games past. This is the first game, however, they have made where a set of classes are underpreforming so poorly as to be unwanted by the general community. That alone should speak volumes.
PWE should be able to take action against Atari (or vice versa) then as the game engine aspects of NW were implemented before PWE purchased Cryptic.
Hmm, as NWO uses the same engine as CO and STO, that would imply that all of the way back to 2007 Cryptic was using PWE's engine without any indication of permission.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
I used no personal examples. I used general examples. Of course, if I wanted to use personal examples, I am able to do so without your permission.
I agree that a class is not viable if other classes offer far better options, which is why I think GWF is viable. GWF offers better options in some cases.
This is where I completely disagree with you, and from what I see from the game design, this game is not designed for average players to excel in endgame areas. If a player is average, they should not be able to succeed in high end areas.
Agreed...Endgame is endgame. Take vanilla WOW. Only like 1% of the playing population ever even stepped foot into the end game raids. Everyone just has dumbed down all aspects of gameplay in every game. Now when people run into an encounter they don't faceroll on the first attempt, they just whine and complain things are too hard. Try wiping for 3-4 hours, 3-4 nights a week on a single boss. That is real endgame is. This **** is easy compared to may other games. Take NES games. Just about every game that was not Mario was extremely difficult, anyone who disagrees I wanna see make it past 3/4 levels of NES Top Gun or something like NES Ninja Gaiden. After that come back here and see how easy games are today compared to games of the past.