As soon as i tried the PvP i uninstalled it. I pretty much only play mmo-s for a good pvp system but my god is the PVP dumb in neverwinter. I don't understand the spell system, you can use like what only 7 skills? Compare that to my old warlock in wow that used around 50, 10 of them regularly in PvE and like 30 of them in PVP. And the dodge skill isn't even fun at all, couldn't even cap my char how boring it became
Neverwinter Review: Welcome to D&D Infinite
- Thread starter P0rtl
- Start date
Steer clear of this game.
Neverwinter is basically a siren - it lures you in with superficial pleasures and then gobbles you up. When I first started playing it, it was great, and got steadily worse until I hit max level, at which point it became abominable.
You level up so quickly that it's practically meaningless, and often even harmful - you'll likely start groaning when you level up, because you get locked out of skirmishes (see below) and quests (some of which give important stuff, like a bigger inventory). Initially, you go through interesting, well-crafted questing areas of which each will entertain you for an afternoon. They look nice, but they're designed the same - a sequence of fields chock-full of enemies, connected by corridors, with 2-3 merchant/health regen stations in-between. If you do any PvP or invocation (XP-and-money button that you can use every hour), you'll overlevel and get locked out of stuff.
Each area has one skirmish (a 15-minute dungeon with one boss, most of which you'll skip because you'll overlevel) and a dungeon (40 minutes to 2 hours, linear sequence of rooms, 3 minibosses and 1 big boss). They are always optional. Even without doing much, you'll hit lvl60 in two weeks (I did, and I'm the ultimate pansy casual player).
And the endgame... just isn't there. Once you hit 60, you have no questing areas. You'll stay in the first and only hub area (Protector's Enclave), invoke, craft (which is busywork - you do it to upgrade your craft level, but you'll never get anything that you won't want to discard immediately), and - get this - do all the dungeons from level 1 to 60 again, except now they're "epic" variants (with harder monsters).
That's all there is to the endgame: doing the dungeons you've done already, again. And it's a complete waste of your time unless you do them at a specific time each day (during the "Dungeon Delve" event), when a chest after the last boss drops a rare, purple item. And unless you have four friends that'll come with you, you have to queue with random people for each dungeon. The party-leader has absolute power and can kick people out (they won't be replaced), and if anyone disconnects, you might as well all leave because doing a dungeon in 4 is suicide. If the leader disbands the party or kicks you all out after the boss is dead, he gets to keep all the loot, and you've just wasted hours of your time. Every enemy is a HP-sponge, and can be tackled by simply dealing the maximum amount of damage. Bosses are even worse - they are HP-sponges as well, but they'd be pushovers... except for their one mechanic (and every boss has it, in a completely identical fashion): spawning tons of monsters, each a HP-sponge, continuously, and a horde at certain fractions of its health. Every boss battle is an exercise in herding an army of imps and zombies, which are a bigger threat than the boss.
You can PvP too. There are two maps, each 5 vs. 5, with three points that you have to hold (domination/king-of-the-hill style). If the class balance wasn't screwed up, PvP might actually be fun, but there's really no different roles to the classes - except for the cleric, they all succeed by simply doing the most amount of damage possible; the "tank" is barely 10% more sturdy than the rest, and can actually be statted to do the most damage; clerics are dispensers of a single AoE healing power, Astral Shield, and nothing more; everyone else is a damage-dealer. Half the stuff you spend points in doesn't work (there is no disclaimer which feats are broken) and there is often a single "good" build and countless horrible ways in which you can make your character completely useless. Similarly, there is often one "good" set of equipment, the rest is there to sell. Oftentimes, a single thing makes-or-breaks your build - you can spend five points in a feat and get nothing, or 1 point in another feat to double your power, and if you don't know which abilities are best by concensus, then good luck.
They've just added "Gauntlgrym," the supposed endgame. It only works for guilds, can only be accessed at certain times in a day, and consists of three stages: a dungeon, a 20 vs. 20 PvP, and another dungeon. It also doesn't work, and it's been currently taken offline.
Anyway, fair warning. This game is the first 20% of a good MMO, and nothing else.
Neverwinter is basically a siren - it lures you in with superficial pleasures and then gobbles you up. When I first started playing it, it was great, and got steadily worse until I hit max level, at which point it became abominable.
You level up so quickly that it's practically meaningless, and often even harmful - you'll likely start groaning when you level up, because you get locked out of skirmishes (see below) and quests (some of which give important stuff, like a bigger inventory). Initially, you go through interesting, well-crafted questing areas of which each will entertain you for an afternoon. They look nice, but they're designed the same - a sequence of fields chock-full of enemies, connected by corridors, with 2-3 merchant/health regen stations in-between. If you do any PvP or invocation (XP-and-money button that you can use every hour), you'll overlevel and get locked out of stuff.
Each area has one skirmish (a 15-minute dungeon with one boss, most of which you'll skip because you'll overlevel) and a dungeon (40 minutes to 2 hours, linear sequence of rooms, 3 minibosses and 1 big boss). They are always optional. Even without doing much, you'll hit lvl60 in two weeks (I did, and I'm the ultimate pansy casual player).
And the endgame... just isn't there. Once you hit 60, you have no questing areas. You'll stay in the first and only hub area (Protector's Enclave), invoke, craft (which is busywork - you do it to upgrade your craft level, but you'll never get anything that you won't want to discard immediately), and - get this - do all the dungeons from level 1 to 60 again, except now they're "epic" variants (with harder monsters).
That's all there is to the endgame: doing the dungeons you've done already, again. And it's a complete waste of your time unless you do them at a specific time each day (during the "Dungeon Delve" event), when a chest after the last boss drops a rare, purple item. And unless you have four friends that'll come with you, you have to queue with random people for each dungeon. The party-leader has absolute power and can kick people out (they won't be replaced), and if anyone disconnects, you might as well all leave because doing a dungeon in 4 is suicide. If the leader disbands the party or kicks you all out after the boss is dead, he gets to keep all the loot, and you've just wasted hours of your time. Every enemy is a HP-sponge, and can be tackled by simply dealing the maximum amount of damage. Bosses are even worse - they are HP-sponges as well, but they'd be pushovers... except for their one mechanic (and every boss has it, in a completely identical fashion): spawning tons of monsters, each a HP-sponge, continuously, and a horde at certain fractions of its health. Every boss battle is an exercise in herding an army of imps and zombies, which are a bigger threat than the boss.
You can PvP too. There are two maps, each 5 vs. 5, with three points that you have to hold (domination/king-of-the-hill style). If the class balance wasn't screwed up, PvP might actually be fun, but there's really no different roles to the classes - except for the cleric, they all succeed by simply doing the most amount of damage possible; the "tank" is barely 10% more sturdy than the rest, and can actually be statted to do the most damage; clerics are dispensers of a single AoE healing power, Astral Shield, and nothing more; everyone else is a damage-dealer. Half the stuff you spend points in doesn't work (there is no disclaimer which feats are broken) and there is often a single "good" build and countless horrible ways in which you can make your character completely useless. Similarly, there is often one "good" set of equipment, the rest is there to sell. Oftentimes, a single thing makes-or-breaks your build - you can spend five points in a feat and get nothing, or 1 point in another feat to double your power, and if you don't know which abilities are best by concensus, then good luck.
They've just added "Gauntlgrym," the supposed endgame. It only works for guilds, can only be accessed at certain times in a day, and consists of three stages: a dungeon, a 20 vs. 20 PvP, and another dungeon. It also doesn't work, and it's been currently taken offline.
Anyway, fair warning. This game is the first 20% of a good MMO, and nothing else.
Couldn't agree more. The changes to 4th edition forgotten realms basically killed the setting for me.seydaman said:
I agree the whole 'good guy drow' thing seems pretty silly to me-if you are going to have playable drow in a game, they should be evil, darn it. I think it's to capitalize on the whole Drizzt fandom thing-people who want to play 'badass' 'dark and edgy' characters without having to worry about the 'evil' baggage. annoyingly enough, they seem to have also gone this route in Star Trek Online, with the much requested Romulan (basically the closest Star trek gets to having dark elves) faction turning out to be basically the rebel alliance from star wars, complete with hokey 'evil empire attacks your homeworld' storyline, instead of the arrogant and backstabbing Romulans everyone had expected from such a faction.
It's just pandering to the lowest common denominator.
"Dungeons & Dragons fans will enjoy this game for the iconic feel that the game has, and for the huge host of favorite monsters that Cryptic has included"
Im almost level thirty and im really not seeing these huge hosts of monsters. every group of enemies is the same. humanoid species of marginally variable size, in groups composed of rangers, fighters and sometimes a caster. for the most part they even have the same animations and attacks, same model just reskinned with a rats head or whatever, and the boss fights are even worse.
all the boss fights are against a roid raging juggernaut brick-shithouse, with a rediculous amount of health and groups of the other three types of enemies that respawn every minute or so. either that or a caster boss which is basically the same, just without the brick-shithouse aspect.
i have yet to encounter an actual "monster" in this game. i looked through the achievements and the only one i could find that wasnt "kill x number of this type of dude" was for killing a dragon.
Im almost level thirty and im really not seeing these huge hosts of monsters. every group of enemies is the same. humanoid species of marginally variable size, in groups composed of rangers, fighters and sometimes a caster. for the most part they even have the same animations and attacks, same model just reskinned with a rats head or whatever, and the boss fights are even worse.
all the boss fights are against a roid raging juggernaut brick-shithouse, with a rediculous amount of health and groups of the other three types of enemies that respawn every minute or so. either that or a caster boss which is basically the same, just without the brick-shithouse aspect.
i have yet to encounter an actual "monster" in this game. i looked through the achievements and the only one i could find that wasnt "kill x number of this type of dude" was for killing a dragon.
Actually, there's a trope for thatOroboros said:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverusedCopycatCharacter?from=Main.DrizztSyndrome
I know the author actually said that the syndrome is a problem, and it's rather unfortunate and really diminishes the idea of a good drow.
I'm unimpressed by NWO. Not saying it's a bad game, per se, but far too many annoyances detract from the overall experience. Most of the annoyances are personal opinions, so I won't bother mentioning them, but the two I think are relevant to most people are the rampant exploits and terrible customer service.
I'm sure everyone's heard about the (now nerfed) Foundry rewards and (supposedly fixed) auction hall negative bid exploits, but things like boss farming (where you reach a boss, kill it for the rares, reset the map, rinse, repeat) and PvP AFK farming (one side throws a PvP match just to make things faster) have plagued NWO since beta, but Cryptic has made no attempts to address it. Most of the PUGs I see advertising openly ask for people who know farming and/or bypassing exploits, and I see a fair number of PvP AFK farming requests as well; for a game that only takes a week to hit max level that's pathetic.
Then there's the terrible CS - or rather the automated CS. Have 20 people (easy for a decent sized guild) report a single player for spam and the chat server will automatically mute them for 24 hours. There are no GMs to review the reports, much less revoke unwarranted muting, and no limit to how many people your group can report. To make matters worse, just last month Cryptic introduced a new automatic banning system that permanently bans you if you mention gold seller names: it will block your first message, issue a warning through the same channel as lockbox spam (which can be muted, so you might not even get the warning), and lay down the ban if you repeat yourself. Everyone who automatically hits up and enter when their messages don't go through, raise their hands.
For a player who doesn't want to exploit the game or wind up getting muted/banned for saying the wrong thing by accident, the only solutions are to either only game with a small group of trusted friends or go completely solo without saying a word to anyone else (which is entirely possible with NWO's content), but at that point can it even be considered an MMO?
tl;dr: decent game, but Cryptic's handling of farming exploits and terrible chat system design choices make it unenjoyable as an MMO. Feels more like a single player game with an always-online requirement and the possibility of other players coming in to ruin your day with exploits. Might as well play Dark Souls.
I'm sure everyone's heard about the (now nerfed) Foundry rewards and (supposedly fixed) auction hall negative bid exploits, but things like boss farming (where you reach a boss, kill it for the rares, reset the map, rinse, repeat) and PvP AFK farming (one side throws a PvP match just to make things faster) have plagued NWO since beta, but Cryptic has made no attempts to address it. Most of the PUGs I see advertising openly ask for people who know farming and/or bypassing exploits, and I see a fair number of PvP AFK farming requests as well; for a game that only takes a week to hit max level that's pathetic.
Then there's the terrible CS - or rather the automated CS. Have 20 people (easy for a decent sized guild) report a single player for spam and the chat server will automatically mute them for 24 hours. There are no GMs to review the reports, much less revoke unwarranted muting, and no limit to how many people your group can report. To make matters worse, just last month Cryptic introduced a new automatic banning system that permanently bans you if you mention gold seller names: it will block your first message, issue a warning through the same channel as lockbox spam (which can be muted, so you might not even get the warning), and lay down the ban if you repeat yourself. Everyone who automatically hits up and enter when their messages don't go through, raise their hands.
For a player who doesn't want to exploit the game or wind up getting muted/banned for saying the wrong thing by accident, the only solutions are to either only game with a small group of trusted friends or go completely solo without saying a word to anyone else (which is entirely possible with NWO's content), but at that point can it even be considered an MMO?
tl;dr: decent game, but Cryptic's handling of farming exploits and terrible chat system design choices make it unenjoyable as an MMO. Feels more like a single player game with an always-online requirement and the possibility of other players coming in to ruin your day with exploits. Might as well play Dark Souls.