Neverwinter Review: Welcome to D&D Infinite

klaynexas3

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Dec 30, 2009
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Three21 said:
Unfortunately, I have not. Other games that look like they will grant this kind of freedom are WildStar (to a small extent), and Pathfinder Online, which looks very promising. Though the game is still 1-2 years at least from release, the Pathfinder team has released some exciting initial content, but as always, we will need to wait until more information is released. I have heard good things about Tera, but have not played it myself. RIFT has a very popular multi-class system, but I do not know what people think of it now that it is free to play.
I've been thinking about giving Tera a try again, as the combat itself was relatively fun, I just never made it that far in it. And I've tried Rift, and maybe it gets better further on, but so far it feels just like a WoW clone, except I haven't put enough investment into the lore for me to care about the world enough to be able to continue playing past the first few levels.
 

LetalisK

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May 5, 2010
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I kind of enjoyed Neverwinter, but I was particularly excited about the Foundry. I wonder if it's just a matter of time before Blizzard develops something like that since they have the perfect vehicle for it in scenarios.

klaynexas3 said:
I know those two games have nothing to do with D&D, but the differences in their character progression hopefully get across what I'm trying to say.
The first one reminds me of FFX. Is it from a final fantasy game?
 

klaynexas3

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Dec 30, 2009
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LetalisK said:
I kind of enjoyed Neverwinter, but I was particularly excited about the Foundry. I wonder if it's just a matter of time before Blizzard develops something like that since they have the perfect vehicle for it in scenarios.

klaynexas3 said:
I know those two games have nothing to do with D&D, but the differences in their character progression hopefully get across what I'm trying to say.
The first one reminds me of FFX. Is it from a final fantasy game?
No, the first picture is(I'm guessing an old version of it now that I take a better look at it) the skill tree from Path of Exile. It's a singular skill tree for all six classes in the game, it's just each class starts at different points on the skill tree. However, it makes it to where you can make you class basically whatever you want it to be. For instance, the progression I was going to go for was based off a singular passive on the tree called Chaos Inoculation. Basically you're immune to chaos damage, however, you are reduced to one health, so you would have to invest heavily in shield passives in order to make up for the lack of health. It'd make for an interesting play through.
 

ms_sunlight

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ASnogarD said:
fight over loot (typical need / greed system but no limiting need to the class... so basically everyone just needs everything).
They have at least fixed that. It's no longer possible to need on something you can't use. In my experience lots of people pass on loot they don't want, especially unidentified green items. I do - your limited bag space means that it's just not worth the hassle.
 

Seydaman

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Nov 21, 2008
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I looked at it.

And wanted to stab my face with a fork thereafter. Not because of the gameplay, but because of 4e lore, it makes the whole thing unplayable for me. Whose idea was it to make drow a main race? And tieflings? Wat.
 

Jburton9

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Aug 21, 2012
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wulfy42 said:
I tried to help shape the game in the Alpha and beta...I posted about the fact characters needed to have some form of customization etc. Sadly it didn't help and to me, the game is just a waste of $60....and another disappointment. I have not had much luck with games that I have been waiting a long time and pre-ordered in the last year or two. I was very sad how D3 turned out...and now NO also underwhelmed greatly. I hop hope hope, that Shadowrun Returns is good to great...as I am starting to get very discouraged.
Yup did something similar, I was very disappointed as well with what Cryptic has done with the Neverwinter license. Heck character creation is so bland, so dry yet Cryptic knows better, they made Champions Online so they know about character creation variety. So much potential wasted. Even more I did not feel the D&D difference at all, feels like a generic F2P fantasy game that I downloaded to play for the weekend, forget about and then later uninstall wondering why I installed it in the first place.

Here is to hoping for better devs/publishers and the newer MMO's coming out soon : )
 

Lvl 64 Klutz

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Apr 8, 2008
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The problem with the game is having Perfect World as the publishers for the game. Everything that screams Cryptic is great about the game, but they had to include plenty of little things for the sake of PWE. And if there's one thing I've learned about PWE is that they're far more interested in creating a pay to win environment than an entertaining one.
 

Fursnake

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Jun 18, 2009
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I can't say I agree with the gushing reviews coming out for Neverwinter, I was bored with it before I even capped my first character.

Brutal combat? Are you kidding me? The combat feels stiff and awkward at times.
 

Xisin

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Sep 1, 2009
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I have to disagree greatly with this review. Many things in this game are annoying at best and quite a few are just broken.

The pvp is basically unplayable. It's one of five ways to earn rough astral diamonds, but actually playing isn't a requirement, so there is almost always an afk person. In all the games I played, I never saw a 5vs5 match. Also the pvp is a capture the base type deal, but for some reason mounts are allowed. This means that people that have paid money for the faster mounts have a large advantage over the people playing for free.

The queues "work" but make no sense. A player can wait 30 minutes in queue to get into to a dungeon, only for the game to match 5 trickster rogues together.

The End Game is just the early game re-skinned. Once you finish the last quest zone you expect to be able to go to Castle Never for what I assume is some sort of conclusion to the story, but the dungeon is locked by a gear score. This forces you to play through the other "Epic" dungeons in order to get a good enough purple in each slot. The other dungeons though, are just the same dungeons you have already done at a higher level. All the secrets, enemies, and number of mobs are the same. Oh and I hope you are playing during dungeon delve! You see, every dungeon drops a certain slot of gear and there is no guarantee that anything of value will drop because the chest at the end of the dungeon is locked. It's only unlocked during an event called dungeons delves, which lasts for an hour and happens randomly.

The epic dungeons come in tiers, so once you get your first set of good gear you'll be able to do the next tier of dungeons...for a set of gear to enter the next set of dungeons >.>

Augmenting gear is a great concept but the way they implemented it feels like a boot up the bum. Runes can be placed in armor for free, but take astral diamonds to remove. The more powerful the rune, the more astral diamonds it takes to remove it. Runes, like the dungeons, come in tiers(10 in this case.) Crafting a new tier of rune takes four of the previous. So 4 tier 1 runes can become 1 tier 2, 4 tier 2s can become 1 tier 3 and so on. Combining runes doesn't always work though, there is always a chance that the crafting will fail. This percent of failure raises as the runes become higher tier and failure results in the loss of 1 of the base runes. Tier 1 runes have a 95% chance of succeeding, but tier 7 is only 30%. I've never attempted to make a tier 10 rune so I can only imagine what % it would be. There are also epic runes, which have an even worse rate of success. These losses can be prevented by, you guessed it, real money. Certain wards can prevent loss of runes in the case of failure or even force the synth to succeed. They can be purchased for Zen or there is a very small chance to receive one from your deity every seven real life days.

The crafting >.> Leveling one craft to max level can either take forever or an hour, just depends on how much real money you'd like to spend. Hiring an asset takes 18 real life hours, and they come in tiers... Four tier ones make one tier 2, does this sound familiar? You can buy assets for real money of course. You can also trade them, which helps a lot if you are working on a second craft. Each synth takes anywhere from 5 to 50 minutes normally to complete. Unless you buy the Zen craft materials, which in that case the synth is finished in 10 seconds and gives vastly more experience.

That's really the problem, everything is saturated in Zen. Inventory, bank slots, companions, mounts, gear, respecs, crafting materials, and assets can all be bought with Zen and in most cases are best bought with Zen. A player can farm for days for a bag to increase their inventory that is only half as good as the one in the Zen market.

The foundry and to a lesser extent, the combat are this game's saving grace. The foundry has some great player made content that I was happy to play through at first. But the game doesn't mark which one's you've done, so I hope you are keeping track. Some of the stories are really interesting, but as with all player made content, they are a mixed bag. I once started a quest that led me to an inn bursting with bad guys and I do mean that literally. The creator had placed so many hostile mobs in the rooms that they were glitching through the doors.

The combat is varied and interesting between the classes, everyone feels different. Guardians block, the two handed fighters sprint, rogues dodge roll, wizards teleport and clerics electric slide out of the way of attacks. The problem is that it can become a mess very fast. Enemy aoe attacks appear as red circles on the ground. Clerics use several aoe buffs and heals that appear as a different color on the ground. Control wizards have spells that can throw enemies around or lift them up into the air. Rogues can leave shadow images of themselves strewn about the battlefield. Several daily abilities cause the color scheme to be filtered to for example just red and black. Boss mobs can spawn tons of adds, destroy terrain and fling players about like rag dolls. Now imagine all of those things happening at once...because that's almost every boss battle past level 35.

When a player falls in battle, they can be revived by a party member for a short period of time. If a party member doesn't get to you in time or you've fallen too many times you'll die and be forced to respawn at your last campfire, with an injury. In the case of bosses, this means you're out of the fight til your party succeeds or they wipe. Don't worry though! When you die, for 30 seconds, the game gives you the option to buy a raise for yourself or your entire party for real life money! No game, I don't want want to pay $3 to get back up. I'll take my $3 and buy something useful, like an ice cream cone or a set of dice so I can play more D&D.
 

GratchDDO

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Mar 26, 2009
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klaynexas3 said:
Would you have a recommendation of an MMO that might emulate that sort of freedom in character progression? I've been stuck on the look out for a good MMO for the past few years, and the idea of getting to make a bit more of a unique character seems like it could be a good footing for getting me to stick with a game.
Though they often do things in the game that seems to break characters, I haven't hit a more character progression open game than Turbine's 7 year old 3.5ed D&D: DDO. Not just that their race(8)/class(13) matrix is huge (with no restrictions), but throw in up to triple multi-classing, feats/skills open to most classes, their added enhancement system and a 11-choices destiny system for epic levels. You'll only find cookie-cutting characters because people followed someone else's build design (or it's the semi-exploiting flavor of the month). Though one thing that allows so much variability is complete focus on PVE design. When I want flashy PVE I go Planetside2.

They're also adding what I would call "subraces" (but they call Iconic characters) which are based off one of the current races but with different starting stats, slightly different creation-looks, and some "lore'ish" benefits to one specific class, e.g. the Bladeforged Paladin (which many of us have rolled as a sorc - because they get a charisma bonus).

Though the game is in a bit of a bug-phase right now. They're changing their enhancement system to go from list selection to graphical selection which means they have to maintain two systems at once and it's caused quite a few bugs to hit live servers.

If you like building different characters this is the place for you. Even if you do it wrong, there's 4 to 7 levels of difficulty per quest so your great-axe-wielding wizard/rogue can still run through their game master voiced quests and very few of their quests have role-requirements. (Well the raids have role-requirements... but they're rarely particular about which class fills that role).

-GratchDDO (I was thinking about suggesting NWN2 but it's too olde and DDO is in my name).
 

VoidWanderer

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Sep 17, 2011
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So a MMO clone, based on a pen and paper role playing game, where all the characters are essentially clones of each other with different damage sources...

Thanks, but no.
 

Clive Howlitzer

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Jan 27, 2011
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I think it's funny that a lot of the stuff he said is what people like in D&D is not even close to what I enjoy in D&D. I guess that's why I thought 4th Edition sucked.
 

Remus

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Nov 24, 2012
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Having not come from a D&D background, but rather an MMO background, I'm liking this game so far. It has the linear quest paths of WoW mixed with the more mobile, varied combat like GW2. I fully admit that I'm not a D&D lore hog so i might be missing something huge, but judging the game purely based on the game and not the source material, I'm finding it fairly enjoyable. Some games should be played like some movies should be watched - not as direct translations of the material they're based on but as an artistic interpretation of that material. This will be a nice addition to my library of MMOs that I play off and on every day. For your basic 25m raids with their set roles and uniform player choices / damage rotations, I have WoW. For dynamic events, responsive, fluid combat, and regular content updates, I have Guild Wars 2. For those games that fall between the two, I have The Secret World, LOTRO, and now Neverwinter. I need more hours in the day.
 

Kahani

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May 25, 2011
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Three21 said:
Neverwinter is an MMO that knows exactly what it wants to accomplish, and does so very well. The developers of Neverwinter at Cryptic know what makes people (especially Dungeons & Dragons nerds) able to play the same game for hundreds of hours without flagging: gratifying, crunchy combat, and a permanent sense of purpose. Neverwinter takes the most satisfying aspects of D&D's 4th edition in terms of combat and development, and turns it into a D&D adventure that left me squeeing with the joy of seeing my favorite monsters and mechanics.

Neverwinter succeeds at making each class' gameplay unique and pulpy
Any idea where I can get a copy of this? Because the version released to the general public appears to be a completely different game. Utterly generic fantasy MMO with no connection whatsoever to D&D, the slowest, clunkiest, most incredibly unsatisfying combat ever, and every class is essentially identical with exactly the same mechanics and progression (and nothing to do with any D&D class or mechanics).

I can't say it's the worst game I've ever played. After all, it may be incredibly boring and generic, but everything at least works. But no matter which part of it you look at, there's another game that does it better in every way. And with most of those other games also being F2P (or at least pay once for GW2), I can't imagine why anyone would want to waste their time with this crap.
 

piinyouri

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Mar 18, 2012
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It occurs to me that this game may not be (at least as of yet) for MMO people.
Most of the firnds that buckle down on these types of games really spurned Neverwinter, and their reasons make sense to me, but on the other hand I just can't stop playing it.

I really hope they open more RP options and expand on it, as I feel it's the games greatest strength.
 

Killclaw Kilrathi

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Dec 28, 2010
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I played Neverwinter for maybe a few days before giving up on it. I personally think it has the same problem as Tera with the combat, dynamic fighting systems seem like a good idea until you apply MMO grind to them. Then it's just hand cramps.

Also, what's with the ridiculous lack of races to choose from? 4th edition has pages and pages of player races, and Cryptic don't even have the excuse of huge development costs to make them since everyone starts in the same bloody place and have the same origin choices. I'd be less bothered about it if some of the races didn't already have models in the game, what's the point of not having kobolds as playable if you can have them as companions? Unless of course they're just going to sell them all through the cash shop at a later date, which wouldn't surprise me.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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klaynexas3 said:
Three21 said:
Hey Klaynexas3,

Thanks for the illustrative example. That's a great side by side comparison of part of how I see the problem. The other major problem that I see with 4th- at least in terms of linearity - is that the 'encounters' mechanism defeats what I understand to be the classic dungeon-crawling experience. I'm much less interested in a string of encounters tied together with narrow hallways than I am in a multi-level, living and breathing complex that the players have the opportunity to explore and attempt to understand. Some great D&D blogs have written about this subject [http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/jaquaying-the-dungeon] as well. I find this game-structuring to be a weakness in the system, as I find it to be destructive to exploration and role-playing. That said, I have played in many games involving, and know of many players who prefer to use this style of play. Ultimately, it's a player and designer content choice, and while this is a preferable model to some, I get the feeling that it will ultimately lose out to a more open, sandbox-style game.

The main thing I want from a D&D-based game is freedom to explore a character concept within a growing and changing world environment. Unfortunately, Neverwinter isn't that experience, but I find it to be a really enjoyable railroad game in a setting that I've been in love with for years. I have enjoyed my game time until this point, and look forward to continue enjoying it with friends.
Would you have a recommendation of an MMO that might emulate that sort of freedom in character progression? I've been stuck on the look out for a good MMO for the past few years, and the idea of getting to make a bit more of a unique character seems like it could be a good footing for getting me to stick with a game.
Really, character depth has to take a hit in MMOs if they want to balance things out since the GMs have to be able to predict what the players can do both in terms of balancing endgame raid encounters and of course PVP. You see a trend nowadays towards increasingly less options both in PnP (4E D&D) and MMOS, because when you give players a toolbox the first thing they are going to do is set out to break the system for their advantage and then you have to run around with a nerf bat left and right. With less options that still happens, but it's less pronounced. Granted Cryptic took this to an extreme (though I will be honest in saying I like Neverwinter just fine, though I play it very casually, without much of an eye towards being particularly competitive).

That said, your best bet for customization in the MMO-sphere right now is probably going to be "Rift" by Trion worlds. It's also gone free to play and thus added "pay to win" aspects up the wazoo, but it probably offers the greatest degree of freedom in setting up a character right now. You have the 4 basic classes (Mage, Cleric, Rogue, Warrior) and while initially made to select a pre-set you can ultimately wind up customizing each class with three different souls which grant different abilities and then choose how to allocate your points between them as you level up. It also lets you have more than one role saved, and each role can have different souls and point distributions. So thus by being a mage in RIFT you could say have a Melee build based around "Vindicator" (a mage that focuses on getting in people's face and beating on them with energy channeled through their staff/dagger/sword), one based around using a pet built around an Elementalist/Pyromancer combo, and another built set up to heal based around say Chloromancer. When not in combat you can switch between your roles so if your in the mood to run around doing melee DPS you can do that, switch into a healer form for a dungeon, or go into a ranged DPS form.

That said at it's core RIFT is very much a WoW-clone and wasn't trying to be anything but, though it has it's own unique tweaks on the formula. I'm not a huge fan yet (been tinkering with it again now that it's FTP), but I will give credit where credit is do. If this is your #1 priority for a game, your probably not going to do much better for character options and freedom than this right now.

-

As far as Neverwinter goes, one point I think has been missing from the article and criticisms is exactly how limiting "The Foundary" is. While you can pretty much assign dialogue, layouts, and place monsters, the foundary creator has no real control over rewards and loot, which come from a random item roll at the end, and an astral diamond reward for doing a daily. What this means is that there is little incentive to really play foundary adventures as they don't do a lot to advance your character, since they are not going to provide competitive gear to say raiding Castle Never if your at that level of progression, thus the item at the end tends to generally be a junk reward for serious players. This means the only real benefit is the Astral Diamonds, and since your getting that through a daily you generally want these quests to be quick and painless. A "good" foundary adventure is thus less an exercise in genius design and good storytelling, but a matter of trying to make it as quick as possible while still squeezing past review to quality for daily quest credit.

The point here is that in theory the idea of everyone being able to make adventures and take turns DMing for each other (also present in "Star Trek Online") is great, but the nature of the game which prevents player-GMs from being able to assign rewards for fear of flooding the game with awesome stuff, tends to render this kind of pointless. Sure, some people might play for the storylines and to see a cool build, but honestly like in any MMO most people want to keep advancing their characters, and truthfully a foundry adventure is only worth a handfull of Astral diamonds, knocking off Foundry quests being only one of multiple dailies you need to knock off every day to get your diamond allotment which you can save towards something worthwhile.
 

Vale

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Been playing it for... I think about 2 hours now.
Went BIG SWORD OVERCOMPENSATOR (for the fact that my character is a lady) and have been having pretty decent fun. It's just another dime-a-dozen MMO, but for a F2P its certainly enjoyable.
Character editor needs to be like in Champions Online though. GOOD GOD that editor was shockingly good (I know you cant edit a costume in Neverwinter anyway, but more options for your character in general would still be cool).