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An experienced gamer's view on Neverwinter
zacharus85
Member Posts: 25 Arc User
Hi there,
after playing the game for nearly a month i wanted to write my thoughts down on Neverwinter.
A little background info on me, my rpg experience dates back to diablo 2, which was the first online rpg i played, after that i've played lots of WoW with sidesteps to Aion and AoC.
I'm an achievement *****, pve'er and i love playing an mmo's economy.
Play time varies from 25-60 hrs a week, depending on rl obligations.
Note that English is not my native language so please excuse me for any grammar mistakes i'll make.
I will not review on the lore and how close the game itself is following the lore, this is my first d&d experience.
These are my views, they might not stroke with yours, i'm open for a constructive discussion tho, after all that's why i made this topic.
I have leveled a CW to max level, started a guardian fighter (12), a cleric(14) and currently leveling a Trickster rogue (38).
Leveling experience
The leveling duration is where it needs to be, you hit max level before it gets boring, there are no gaps in quests where you need to start grinding mobs to level up before you can unlock new quests.
The difficulty while leveling for a rogue and a wizard is imo a bit to easy, there is very little challenge, the rogue i'm leveling died once so far and that's because i drove my horse of a cliff while not paying attention.
Although i stopped leveling a guardian fighter and a cleric because they bored my brains out, leveling might be more challenging with those classes.
Maybe i'm just not the guy to play anything but pure dps classes.
Overall an enjoyable experience to lvl a character up.
Dungeons while leveling.
Low lvl dungeons are easy, but slow down the leveling, i did some on my CW but totally ignoring them on the TR i am leveling at the moment.
Leveling up goes so fast that the rewards are far from worth it to do a dungeon either, they get replaced to fast to spend time in a dungeon, time that could grant me two levels doing quests.
Powers, feats and abilities.
I love the fact that there is no such thing as cookie cutter builds to be competitive, at least on my CW i feel there's room for a few personal notes in my spell choice.
The amount of spells we can use at one time feels a bit limited though, i can understand we should never have our full range of spells available at all time, but having to swap powers multiple times in a dungeon for single target and aoe dps is a bit frustrating.
This could easily be solved by allowing us to save multiple power configurations that we can swap with.
I think dual speccs would be quite welcome for healers and tanks as well, so they're not forced to do their daily quests/solo content in a healing/tanking specc.
Economy and currency
I love the way how there are different currency's in the game, this gives bots a very low chance of success, since there's no such thing as grinding for AD's, gold is just there to buy potions and skill kits and that's fine, and it seems it only gets used as payment when a player is actually in need of it.
There seems to be allot of trading going on where goods have a certain value (Enchanted keys, Wards, dragon eggs) this is fine, but there does need to be a limit on how many of those items get introduced into the game to avoid making AD's worthless except for buying these goods to trade goods.
There is a strong need for an economy where AD's are considered a valuable currency, if AD's would become worthless the whole economy would collapse and turn into a trade based economy which could potentially seriously harm the game.
Professions
In my opinion, professions need some sort of revamp, it is very time consuming, and except for pants, shirts, potions and weapons they are imo worthless.
I love professions in an mmo, but there is to little of value that these professions can make to consider leveling multiple professions up, let alone level the same profession up on an alt.
End game experience, Dailies, dungeons and gearscore.
I'm going to start off with the gearscore system, there needs to be some kind of gearcheck to enter a new dungeon, but the one in place right now is downright stupid, the only thing that matters at the moment is stacking as much stat points as possible without even considering if they are any good for your class.
You could stack up on deflection and recovery as a wizard and get in while another wizard who balanced his gear for the right stats would not eventhough he probably out dps'es him by 4 times.
A better way is either getting attunements in place or working with an itemlevel system which gives items a certain lvl so you would need to hit a certain ilvl average to enter a dungeon.
Dailies are ok, it keeps you busy every day, but not to long, i'd hate to do 20 quests every day, although i'm looking forward as to what the future will hold for us.
Dungeons are imo broken at the moment, i have tried and tried, but i gave up on lfg, the amount of people exploiting or campfire running is incredible, everybody has to if you want to get anything at all.
I know this is not something that can be done overnight, but if the devs would run all dungeons 2 times they would know exactly where the problems are, since every group does it.
As long as this does not get fixxed i'll only be running dungeons with people i know, even though i would love to do more dungeons then i am doing now.
The campfire problem could easily be solved, remove all the campfires from dungeons except the first at the entrance, replace the removed campfires with a portal that teleports you to the last boss your group killed to avoid endless running around after every wipe.
Dungeon difficulty is ok i guess at least for a first content patch, i'd love to see some change in tactics though, since harder bosses only seem to be about more adds and more dmg.
What i'd love to see as well is an effort to make sure a tank is of importance to a group, at this point there are dungeons where you can run them without the need for a tank as long as you do enough class stacking.
That's all i can come up with at the moment, i will update this with my take on the Zen store later on.
If you read all the way down, thank you, feel free to discuss your views with me!
after playing the game for nearly a month i wanted to write my thoughts down on Neverwinter.
A little background info on me, my rpg experience dates back to diablo 2, which was the first online rpg i played, after that i've played lots of WoW with sidesteps to Aion and AoC.
I'm an achievement *****, pve'er and i love playing an mmo's economy.
Play time varies from 25-60 hrs a week, depending on rl obligations.
Note that English is not my native language so please excuse me for any grammar mistakes i'll make.
I will not review on the lore and how close the game itself is following the lore, this is my first d&d experience.
These are my views, they might not stroke with yours, i'm open for a constructive discussion tho, after all that's why i made this topic.
I have leveled a CW to max level, started a guardian fighter (12), a cleric(14) and currently leveling a Trickster rogue (38).
Leveling experience
The leveling duration is where it needs to be, you hit max level before it gets boring, there are no gaps in quests where you need to start grinding mobs to level up before you can unlock new quests.
The difficulty while leveling for a rogue and a wizard is imo a bit to easy, there is very little challenge, the rogue i'm leveling died once so far and that's because i drove my horse of a cliff while not paying attention.
Although i stopped leveling a guardian fighter and a cleric because they bored my brains out, leveling might be more challenging with those classes.
Maybe i'm just not the guy to play anything but pure dps classes.
Overall an enjoyable experience to lvl a character up.
Dungeons while leveling.
Low lvl dungeons are easy, but slow down the leveling, i did some on my CW but totally ignoring them on the TR i am leveling at the moment.
Leveling up goes so fast that the rewards are far from worth it to do a dungeon either, they get replaced to fast to spend time in a dungeon, time that could grant me two levels doing quests.
Powers, feats and abilities.
I love the fact that there is no such thing as cookie cutter builds to be competitive, at least on my CW i feel there's room for a few personal notes in my spell choice.
The amount of spells we can use at one time feels a bit limited though, i can understand we should never have our full range of spells available at all time, but having to swap powers multiple times in a dungeon for single target and aoe dps is a bit frustrating.
This could easily be solved by allowing us to save multiple power configurations that we can swap with.
I think dual speccs would be quite welcome for healers and tanks as well, so they're not forced to do their daily quests/solo content in a healing/tanking specc.
Economy and currency
I love the way how there are different currency's in the game, this gives bots a very low chance of success, since there's no such thing as grinding for AD's, gold is just there to buy potions and skill kits and that's fine, and it seems it only gets used as payment when a player is actually in need of it.
There seems to be allot of trading going on where goods have a certain value (Enchanted keys, Wards, dragon eggs) this is fine, but there does need to be a limit on how many of those items get introduced into the game to avoid making AD's worthless except for buying these goods to trade goods.
There is a strong need for an economy where AD's are considered a valuable currency, if AD's would become worthless the whole economy would collapse and turn into a trade based economy which could potentially seriously harm the game.
Professions
In my opinion, professions need some sort of revamp, it is very time consuming, and except for pants, shirts, potions and weapons they are imo worthless.
I love professions in an mmo, but there is to little of value that these professions can make to consider leveling multiple professions up, let alone level the same profession up on an alt.
End game experience, Dailies, dungeons and gearscore.
I'm going to start off with the gearscore system, there needs to be some kind of gearcheck to enter a new dungeon, but the one in place right now is downright stupid, the only thing that matters at the moment is stacking as much stat points as possible without even considering if they are any good for your class.
You could stack up on deflection and recovery as a wizard and get in while another wizard who balanced his gear for the right stats would not eventhough he probably out dps'es him by 4 times.
A better way is either getting attunements in place or working with an itemlevel system which gives items a certain lvl so you would need to hit a certain ilvl average to enter a dungeon.
Dailies are ok, it keeps you busy every day, but not to long, i'd hate to do 20 quests every day, although i'm looking forward as to what the future will hold for us.
Dungeons are imo broken at the moment, i have tried and tried, but i gave up on lfg, the amount of people exploiting or campfire running is incredible, everybody has to if you want to get anything at all.
I know this is not something that can be done overnight, but if the devs would run all dungeons 2 times they would know exactly where the problems are, since every group does it.
As long as this does not get fixxed i'll only be running dungeons with people i know, even though i would love to do more dungeons then i am doing now.
The campfire problem could easily be solved, remove all the campfires from dungeons except the first at the entrance, replace the removed campfires with a portal that teleports you to the last boss your group killed to avoid endless running around after every wipe.
Dungeon difficulty is ok i guess at least for a first content patch, i'd love to see some change in tactics though, since harder bosses only seem to be about more adds and more dmg.
What i'd love to see as well is an effort to make sure a tank is of importance to a group, at this point there are dungeons where you can run them without the need for a tank as long as you do enough class stacking.
That's all i can come up with at the moment, i will update this with my take on the Zen store later on.
If you read all the way down, thank you, feel free to discuss your views with me!
Chronic Disorder is looking for more members, if high-end pve progression in a small guild is something for you, check us out on http://chronic-disorder.enjin.com
Post edited by zacharus85 on
0
Comments
You have nothing to worry about.
I'm quite impressed.
Your grammar and spelling are better than many whose native language is English.
All it's doing if giving them more avenues for revenue. This recent event, and past, is a massive example. It's easier enough for your legitimate player to milk these events, you probably noticed how many "dedicated" foundries popped up during this event, making it really easy to amass purses, now consider someone running 20-30 bots, 24/7 during this event, assume they dont get caught, most of them probably know what they're are doing.
All the alternative currencies are just as accessible to someone who is botting as it is to us.
Only thing I would add would be BoA (Bind on Account) instead on BoP on some items since having few alts becomes annoying (or boring to do same stuff to get basic gear) when one class that's undergeared is needed at a time (had such situation with DC, when we needed one for dungeon but either couldn't find any in lfg/guild only 2 rank 5 ench. saved the day)
I didn't look at it like that, you are right tho, events like these do indeed give them access to AD's.
However it's refreshing to see that the rest of the gameworld isn't infested with bots, or at least none that i have seen, with multiple instances up at a time they could be in a different one then mine.
I can agree with the fact that novelty items like transmutation weapons and the cloak, and cosmetic items of past and future events should be BoA, i've got 2 pants on 2 characters as well. Making dungeon drops like epics and so on BoA would only hurt the replayability of the game, not to mention that it would spawn allot of players with great gear, but zero experience in T1/T2 dungeons and up.
I hear a lot of complaints about the dungeon thing, I don't disagree, but seriously start a guild and recruit, join the Legit channel (its in someone's sig around here). Do something to recruit and train like-minded players. Until dungeons are not 4+ hour endeavours to get a small chance of getting a drop you can use and little other reward expect campfire running etc to remain common. Dungeon's need to change from "more of the same" to an "experience" where new and distinct tactics are needed to solve each dungeon. If that happens, & they implement some specific anti-exploit fixes on the bosses then people will play the way you want. However for X% of players finding the exploits is part of the fun, its a metagaming experience they enjoy.
Funny thing I know at least 1 boss that I have seen more success with doing legit than by exploiting, so good design of environment can solve the problem as well.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
1)Leveling speed is ok, but difficulty is mind-numbingly easy. And this is group-based game, right? I leveled solo, but playing in group is probably just faceroll. How about introducing a tiered reward system for quests, i.e if you just complete it you get some exp and gold as usual, but if you do in less than x minutes, you get blue materials, and if you do even better, you get some fashion items or unique mats for crafting them. Which leads us to the next point:
2)Crafting system needs to be redone. So far it's just useful for making shirts, and even that requires investment of 1600k+ AD. At very least, give us ability to reforge items. Dragon eggs must be made much more available, maybe introduce a rare recipe for alchemist to make 1 egg from 10 arcane shards. Make recipes for making some vanity items.
3)Dungeon difficulty is weird now. I understand the game is designed to be accessible, but the way difficulty is implemented backfires on the game. I mean, it's very common for pug to rush through 99% of the dungeon with ease, only to wipe at the final boss in few seconds, after which everyone quits. Disfunctional groups should break after 5 minutes in the dungeon, not an hour later.
4)After character gets level 60 and completes the plotline, he should get access to old zones scaled to level 60. Maybe make option to replay the quests, or make zones phase and depict the results of player efforts, with some advanced quests for groups appearing. Having 90% of the game content obsolete after player ends leveling is just a waste.
I was trying to make a point the 2 stats i mentioned could've been anything.
Indeed, at this point its just a waste of time to be re-selecting new spells for trash, bosses and solo play.
We're definitely trying to get a group of like minded players, but so far recruitment is going a bit slow. On the other hand the fact that the players need to come up with a legit channel shows there is something very wrong that the devs need to address soon.
Low lvl dungeons and the likes will always feel less rewarding to clear then the actual end-game dungeons, but so far i've seen just more of the same, i really hope they will come up with some better boss fights for the next content pack...
On the other hand they will need to make sure they don't make it to hard or a majority of the player base will not be able to clear it, which is in fact the difficulty for every game these days, and that's how many sacrifices to difficulty and need dedication they can make to still cater to casual players.
This indeed! Having to do the same starter dungeon for the daily is plain stupid...
1/ That would be quite interesting, if applied well it would be a great addition to the game, but solo clerics and GF would most likely have trouble getting it done in time, no?
2/ Couldn't be more right, i love the idea for vanity items!
3/ Hmm i don't think it's that easy to avoid, in the end the last boss of a dungeon should be the hardest boss of that dungeon, so you are most likely to encounter problems there.
4/ GW2 has this, no idea how well it works though. Another option is to add achievements for more the just "slay 500 X" which would have players going back to old zones looking for lore books, maybe rare mobs and so on... the things to do to keep you busy at lvl 60 at the moment are very thin spread, you can do your dailies, dungeons or foundry (which rewards are far from worth it either) but after that it's done, there's no point in exploring old maps and so on... Characters just get stuck in Protector's Enclave.
Well it isn't. Just take Karrundax. Most pugs won't make it passed 1st boss although they should be able to beat last boss easily. Take SP, the last boss is very easy while 2nd boss will wipe some pugs very often. There is no real progression in difficulties of the bosses.
That is correct, but i was more pointing at the fact that someone says that groups fall apart after an hour, where he would like to see them fall apart sooner.
In a normal linear difficulty progression of a dungeon it is pure logic that a group has more chance to fall apart due to wiping on the last boss then it has on the first.
to sum it all up.. slightly bump up drop rates in dd chest for t2 since its BoP and it will drive down the desire to farm for profits decreasing efficiency of speed runs.. decreasing the demand for supply will impact the auction house prices lowering the cost of items making it so that even the person with really bad luck can at least afford to buy a piece with the ad made from salvage over time.. increase daily refine amount to a reasonable amount so that the rough ad doesnt just pile up.. in an average day i can pile up without much effort ~50k rough ad and upwards of 100k if i really give it a go.. simple solutions that require just a couple of minutes to apply during a hotfix
even if they fixed all the jump tricks and glitches.. removed bonfires.. more ways would surface.. there are more people looking for ways to break it than there are to fix it.. over a long period of time and many, many extra hours put in by the dev team to research and play through dungeons.. id suggest with players for optimal results.. could eventually fix everything.. but the way its viewed from a company standpoint, at least in my opinion lol.. its not broken.. it is not costing them any money in its current state and would cost them money to go through each dungeon and apply the changes that just a small handful of players actually want to see.. if you created a poll today asking the games community if they wanted all dungeons reworked or left as is.. majority would say leave it as is.. especially if that poll was along side of "create new content", "create new classes", "create new paragon trees" or here is one for pwe/cryptic.. "create new cash shop possibilities" lol
You’ve done all the classes except the GWF. May I ask why?
Snipped the majority of the quote, since i'm referring to your whole post..
I understand that bad luck in loot is a personal experience, some people get lucky some don't, that's what RNG is all about, a solution to this might be to revamp the loottables of all the T1 and T2 bosses or put a token system in place where a boss drops for example a boot token for 2-3 classes that you could trade in at PE for your desired boots.
I know most people will rather go for new content then to fix the current content, but you have to look at these things in the long run... I understand that a new games comes with bugs and is going to need allot of fixing. But most of the players do not have that patience, and if they don''t get a chance to completing dungeons trough all the glitching and campfire running (try running on your own when everyone already made it to the next) they will eventually give up on the game. Imagine new content being released and new players have to go trough buggy and glitchy content first, allot of people will quit before seeing how good the game is.
This is not a good thing for the future of the game, and yes not fixing the content will make them lose money over time...
Because i don't want to recharge zen at the moment to buy new character slots and i'm saving my AD's for other things, hope that answers your question :-)
I would ofc really like to see campfire replacements in dungeons, thats why I suggested it....but it was hardly a new idea from me either when I posted in since its based on another games system for long raidable dungeons restricted to once per day (which included 'save progress too').
I'd also like to see the ability to define 1 or 2 more power tray set ups. Though I'd like to see a global CD 'on switch' to avoid it being treated as extending the available skills.
The rest I'm not too bothered with though I would like to see Skirmishes opened up in other ways than just CTAs.
Far too much importance is attached to gear score by players in this game. It IS an attunement which gives you the opportunity to try a dungeon, no more no less. Although I have not totally committed to this game yet (was waiting on a Scout/Ranger while I explored how things work (Eg economy)) I hope when I do that my toons gets asked about that classes key stat effects (recharge, crit etc) as a better judgement on party suitability rather than a high GS.
Yes, thank you it does. I asked because my first toon was a GWF. When I discovered there was no PvE end game for a GWF I left the game for a bit. I now only run a CW unless me and a few of my other guildies feel like giving our dungeon leader a hard time and we make them do a pity run with us.
Your OP was very good overview. I see so many things falling short. Each one not so much a big deal, but they pile up. Overall I find that NW could have been a great game but also it seems to more a short term playing game. To many constant changes to class, race, gear, abilities and powers have worn me down. With a new class I have to ask what history has shown me so far. I fear with current dungeon designs there will be no end game for a ranger if that is the next class. Will I have another 'farmer' and 'bank' toon to join my GWF?
Shrugs...
Good Luck in your journey
Unfortunately i think i'll have to agree with you on the fact that this might be just a short term game.
This game has great potential, but there's to many flaws to take full advantage of them, the most dangerous thing for an mmo is players getting bored.
To be honest i'm getting bored atm, lfg is not something i'm using because of all the cheating, so except for levelling more alts, Sharandar and waiting for friends to come online for a dungeon there's not much to do at the moment.
If the current content would get fixed on the other hand, and i was able to run dungeons in a legit way i'd be in lfg most of my online time.
So for me there's 3 options right now, either i can fill up the guild i started with a rl friend and get groups going from there or i can disband my guild, and join one of the (huge) existing guilds, big guilds are not something i like since imo it takes allot of the social aspect away with clique's forming and so on...
The last option is to just quit the game, and find a new game, which would be a shame since i can see the potential this game has.
I certainly agree, nothing i'm saying is new, but without trying to sound degrading i think 90% of those posts are formulated in a wrong way.
Just ask yourself, who would you rather go in discussion with, someone that screams FIX THES NAW FFS, or someone who brings arguments to the table.
I'm not saying i'm the best writer or have the most experience, but i'm hoping to achieve an open discussion where people can voice their opinions while refraining from flaming or trolling.
At the least i hope it might make someone write their own view on the game and what needs fixing or what should be changed.
Thats why i haven't wrote anything about the Zen store either, at this point with the state the game is in i think they're overpricing their items way to much, but if they would be able to get it running smoothly without possibilities to cheat they could charge a monthly subscription for all i care...