328 replies to this topic

[Draino]

My second day of playing in Neverwinter, and I have to say I'm loving it so far. It somehow feels fair to me. To elaborate, ran guild rush tonite in Karkaland, and our players transformed into crabs had to contend with all the usual mobs, but also with green enemies. So Anet noticed that running rush with some escorts lets us win. So they add green enemies, which the escorts can't easily stop. An adversarial position...they don't set up a game and let us figure out a winning strategy; they see our winning strategies then outlaw them. I suppose I'm a bit weary of that. Maybe that's just my feeling, don't know. But I'd like to see the game set, and our solutions keep working for some time. Seems like that will be more consistent in Neverwinter, but I'm just guessing at this early date.

[Soki]

MindlessBrute, on 04 May 2013 - 07:20 PM, said:

I tried the game and seemed pretty mediocre to me, at least miles below Guild wars 2.
Combat had a punch to it but being unable to move is not something i like, and it just has this very unfinished feel to me, all the way from the animations to my surroundings while ingame.. nothing seems finished. Everytime combat ends my character glitches out in animation as he has no ''sheathe weapon'' animation.. so sword suddently appears on your back and your animation resets.

So yeah, has a punch to the combat, also liked that enemies seemed to just fly to the direction you hit them once they die. But i honestly couldnt find anything else about the game that was a + over other MMOs.

I wonder why the beta feels unfinished and a bit unpolished.
Something other MMOs don't have? The player-generated scenarios. Granted, those defiantly need more tools - but being so modular, it's easily expanded upon.

[aspi]

Tried it for about an hour. Some pretty nice things in the game, but none of them I have not seen before yet. So far it seems way more instanced than any other mmo, I dont know if that's a bad thing though.
The gfx are ok, the city part is much nicer than some of the other parts. The characters seem to iceskate to me instead of running, I wonder if they can fix that. No being able to move during combat is a very large step back, I almost feel like going back in time playing this game for now.
And yuck allready stupid mounts and gold spammers.

[Locuz]

Got to level 25 as a control wizard and i cant stand it anymore. Gave it a serious try i guess..

If a game is this limited in terms of free roaming/exploration it needs to have really good combat. And in my eyes the combat is stiff and not actiony enough to make up for the game's limitations.

[Stargate]

Soki, on 05 May 2013 - 07:11 AM, said:

I wonder why the beta feels unfinished and a bit unpolished.
Something other MMOs don't have? The player-generated scenarios. Granted, those defiantly need more tools - but being so modular, it's easily expanded upon.

Well I have been busy with real life issues like overtime on work etc. and I am not pleased with my current job so I also search for better work. On top of the Icehockey World Tournament 2013 has started and yes I watch it!

That gives me very little free time in May. That said I have casually started playing it and I am level 14 devoted Cleric. I also have started crafting and I already did my first Dungeon run as level 14. One of my real life friends has promised to join me  next weekend and once together we will likely join a guild.

I think economy is ok though not paradise for a free player. You can earn Astral Diamonds through praying, dayly dungeon and dayly Foundry quest. I love the fact that they have made dayly Foundry quest because there is no limit to Foundry quests.

I have played 4 foundry quests so far and I only remember the names of the good ones.
Blood and Sand has more or less theme from the:
Spartacus: Blood and Sand TV series
http://www.imdb.com/...2449/?ref_=sr_1
It is teens rated so you can not see full nudity that said there are pleasure slaves that have very little clothes. One combat scene is directly inspired from the TV series. The only thing lacking is that there are no romans, but otherwise yeah raw violence and the adventure text warns about partial nudity.

Witch Hammer
This one is good. You do not have a clue what it is about when you start the adventure. There are very sexy Succubus monsters and they are actually smart you can try to talk with them.

It has a follow up adventure as a campaign and again story has some good suprises. Succubus monsters are very rare 99% of the creatures you meet in this adventure are not Succubus.

Witch hammer is low level meant for one  level 7-11 character.

These 2 are the best Foundry low level quests so far for me. 5 star? Naah, but give it some time. Really good adventures might take a long time to create, but that said these I enjoyed most so far.

Edited by Kamatsu, 06 May 2013 - 07:14 AM.
Lets not re-quote those video's.

[Featherman]

Tried it this afternoon. The combat is tight, definitely more tactical and reactionary than GW2, but the customization is a rather shallow and I don't see much room for depth because of it. Cast slightly faster? Do slightly more damage? Meh. The same goes for the companion system, although I do wish that GW2 adopted the AI and general mechanics for player pets.

The animations are... floatey. I made a human male, and It feels as though the character's limbs are being dragged by the momentum of the character's torso, rather than causing the momentum. It's as though I was riding an invisible unicycle.It's strange, but I got used to it after a while.

Questing is the same banal affair present in all other cookie cutter MMO's. I can't really comment on the delivery since I immediately muted the game and made an effort not to read NPC dialogue after listening to Wilfred's abominable voice acting.

Edited by Featherman, 05 May 2013 - 09:43 PM.

[Shadok]

I hit level 60 earlier today and started running epic dungeons. I have to say, as I've leveled the gameplay has only gotten more interesting. Tanking dungeons is great, it's not just "stand in place, go through your rotation, pull x mob here, aggro adds, etc etc" or anything like that. Some fights I need to focus on add control, some only on the boss, some on both, some attacks need to be avoided, some blocked, some I need to just eat to save my guard, some mobs need to be turned and held in place, some I need to just continue to kite without stopping, and the list goes on. Obviously none of this is revolutionary, but all of it coupled with the interactive combat is awesome (and not something I would expect from a F2P game).

You don't get that many abilities on your bar at once, but some can be combined to be really useful. For example, I have a daily that makes my attacks steal health for a few seconds, then an AoE taunt that does damage. If I'm low, the 2 pretty much spike me to full health instantly (which can't really be done any other way since I don't have any real AoE aside from my taunt). Another example would be using my cone ability that knocks mobs back to bunch them up, then using my lunge that marks all of the adjacent targets to whoever my lunge hits (marking targets basically gives you threat and increases threat generation). The lunge has no CD so half the time I'll be flying from the boss to adds that peel off, then back to the boss, then to more adds, and back to the boss, all very quickly throughout the fight.

All in all I'm very pleased with this game and the massive amount of potential it has. Before GW2 had released I thought I was sick of the holy trinity (despite the fact that I had always been a tank, one of the roles that generally didn't have a hard time grouping), but now it's beginning to look like the lack of interactivity with the combat was what made tanking, or healing, or DPS'ing hurtful to MMOs. The way that the attack animations are designed, the block animation, the sound effects, and many other factors make the majority of the combat feel like an epic battle regardless of what's going on. However, the fact that the fights are actually for the most part interesting and somewhat difficult is really what seals the deal.

Edited by Shadok, 07 May 2013 - 07:45 AM.

[Kysio]

I got to say that Cryptic screwed up big time with allowing players to create XP grind scenarios in Foundry. 50 elite ogres stacked in 1 place not being able to reach you is so retarded and yet nothing is being done about it by the looks. I guess they don't mind players exploiting it to get max level in a day.

[Juanele]

Indeed it is exploiting (or is it an exploit if Cryptic allows it). That's one of the dangers of allowing player created content in an mmo. Doesn't Dungeons and Dragons have a level 20 cap? Did 4e change that?

[FoxBat]

4E goes to 30, but Cryptic's game goes to 60, but it's only roughly equivalent to 4E's 20, since 20-30 are Epic...

It's all irrelevant anyways. It takes months for a newbie to bring a character to 20 in DDO. Low numbers don't mean short leveling.

Edited by FoxBat, 06 May 2013 - 08:45 PM.

[Soki]

Kysio, on 06 May 2013 - 04:17 PM, said:

I got to say that Cryptic screwed up big time with allowing players to create XP grind scenarios in Foundry. 50 elite ogres stacked in 1 place not being able to reach you is so retarded and yet nothing is being done about it by the looks. I guess they don't mind players exploiting it to get max level in a day.

It's fairly easy to negate - a hard XP cap on a scenario; or an XP devaluation on mobs killed in a certain proximity to others.

It's really not that hard - but we'll see if they do it.

[Faer]

http://gateway.playneverwinter.com/

You can manage your professions and auctions on the go, at no additional fee, from probably any browser on probably any web-capable device.

Just in case you guys who are also playing didn't know this yet.

[Shadok]

Honestly I think they should just set a lock timer on exp for the foundry. For example, players could gain no more than 4000 exp in an hour via the foundry (just a random number to prove my point, it could of course be something higher or lower). Or they could do some sort of diminishing returns. The key is to stop people from grinding out levels ridiculously fast, but at the same time not punish people that play the foundry the way it was intended.

The big questions is "Will they do something to stop this?". Players could do pretty much the same thing through AEs (which was basically like the foundry) in CoH (which was made by the same company). I find it hard to believe that nobody within the company saw this coming. At this point even the people who are complaining about the exploit are using them due to the adoption of a "Well they're exploiting, why the hell should I waste all this time leveling?" mentality.

Honestly, the fact that all of these exp grind foundry missions generally get deleted within a day and the creators get banned leads me to believe that they'll do something to stop them. I've seen moderators basically flipping out on the forums at people posting to report specific foundry missions, since as a result these missions are publicized. Let's just hope that if they do implement something to stop the exploiting, they don't end up screwing over people in a different way.

[FoxBat]

Trying to ban people for this is rather ridiculous. There is some optimally ridiculous scenario like a room full of ogres that don't fight back, but there are any number of scenarios that have half or a quarter the XP gain and are still exploitative compared to standard questing. People can just make foundry missions 50% faster and easier than standard leveling and it would still be an advantage to use, even if the creator didn't have that particular intention when putting the mission together. This kind of thing needs some hard coded rules, not to be left up to arbitrary interpretation of mods.

Edited by FoxBat, 07 May 2013 - 08:43 AM.

[Bryant Again]

Well, whaddya know. This game's pretty fun. Nearly nothing like the Bioware Neverwinter Nights I poured hours into, but still good fun. Plus I missed tanking in an MMO.

Is there anyway to see a gallery of the weapon models and skins? This sword model I've been using has been a bummer.

[Featherman]

I gave the game another shot and I gotta say the foundry makes up for all the gripes I have with the game. Some of the quests have been better than the main story line quests I've experienced. It's likely that they'll get better as the publishers polish their skills and also as the devs release more tools.

IMO, the leveling exploit is a non-issue. Players will always find the fastest route to the level cap, regardless of what the developers intend. I think the best solution would be to make the leveling process inconsequential (the Foundry pretty much does this already), and for PW to  focus on monetizing and polishing max level activities.

Edited by Featherman, 07 May 2013 - 11:00 PM.

[madmaxII]

Since I still can't post on their official forums I am going to post my noob questions here. Tried to ask in the town chat but I never got answers. Probably disappearing too fast due to all the spam.

1. I have two characters and each of them has stuff that I would like to have on the other one. It looks like the bank isn't shared, so that doesn't work. I tried sending mails to myself but they never arrived. Lost nothing valuable, but it shows that I can't transfer my stuff that way. So, any easy ways to get my items to other chars without asking someone else for help/bringing a second account?

2. What's the point of gold? I know that you need some to buy a horse, additional companions and basic profession items. But once you have them, what to you do with your gold? Everything besides the cheap kits and potions costs AD, Zen, Glory, Seals or whatever other currency they may have.

3. How do I get the non-normal profession assets, i.e. the ones that reduce the time a task takes? There is no profession task that crafts them but people are selling them on the AH so they have to come from somewhere?

That's it for now, would be nice if someone could give me the answers.

[Dilbon]

I think you can buy a box of profession goodies with celestial coins. Also Nightmare Lockbox can have them.

[Shadok]

madmaxII, on 07 May 2013 - 10:08 PM, said:

Since I still can't post on their official forums I am going to post my noob questions here. Tried to ask in the town chat but I never got answers. Probably disappearing too fast due to all the spam.

1. I have two characters and each of them has stuff that I would like to have on the other one. It looks like the bank isn't shared, so that doesn't work. I tried sending mails to myself but they never arrived. Lost nothing valuable, but it shows that I can't transfer my stuff that way. So, any easy ways to get my items to other chars without asking someone else for help/bringing a second account? There's a moderate chance that the inability to mail items to yourself is just a bug, especially considering that you didn't even receive an error or warning message when trying to do so. However, I can't really say with much certainty.

2. What's the point of gold? I know that you need some to buy a horse, additional companions and basic profession items. But once you have them, what to you do with your gold? Everything besides the cheap kits and potions costs AD, Zen, Glory, Seals or whatever other currency they may have.

3. How do I get the non-normal profession assets, i.e. the ones that reduce the time a task takes? There is no profession task that crafts them but people are selling them on the AH so they have to come from somewhere?

That's it for now, would be nice if someone could give me the answers.

1. If you don't want to trust someone to help you out you pretty much need to just make another account to use. This game allows you to be logged into more than 1 account at a time, so you could quickly make another account to use whenever you want to trade items and get a character to Protector's Enclave within ~10 minutes. Sadly there is no other easy way to transfer items.

2. Potions and repair kits become very expensive at level 60. For about 60 potions and 30 repair kits I spent around 10 gold, and I'll probably need to resupply in a day or so. I run a few epic dungeons a day with a competent guild healer, but on some of the harder dungeons it's not uncommon for me to use 5-10 potions and a repair kit or 2. You also can only trade with other players directly using gold, and I have seen some players selling things for gold. However, at the moment this mainly seems to only happen with items below level cap. Any rare+ level 60 items so far are only really sold on the auction house. Hopefully some time soon they will implement more uses for gold, it could lead to a very interesting economy with the different currencies. However, at the moment I think they're content with the way things are considering it encourages players to buy zen in order to transfer it to AD.

3.You get these either from the profession asset packs in the zen shop, or by opening nightmare lockboxes. Either way requires you to either buy zen or convert AD to zen, and each includes a bit of RNG (though the lockboxes require significantly more luck). It sort of sucks that the materials you need for some of the best crafted gear in the game are only introduced to the market via the cash shop, but if that's as close as the game gets to pay2win I'm content considering that you can still acquire zen without spending money. Hopefully in the future these items are added to drop tables or something along those lines.

[Featherman]

Seems like I've developing a love/hate relationship with this game. As soon as I get into the systems I realize how invasive the payment model is. The game uses time gates gratuitously and the game steers me towards the cash shop at every turn. Max rank companions and the statistically superior mounts are sold almost exclusively in the cash shop. It's not realistic for someone of my playstyle to earn enough AD to afford one of them, and even if I could afford them there's always the risk that they'll increase the max tier. :/

[Kysio]

Difficulty level of first dungeons is just lame. 2 manned it today with lvl 19 cleric and lvl 16 control wizard... We only had to use potions on 1st fight because adds surprised us. On other fights including last boss we only relied on my healing and did it easily.

[Eon Lilu]

Featherman, on 08 May 2013 - 07:38 AM, said:

Seems like I've developing a love/hate relationship with this game. As soon as I get into the systems I realize how invasive the payment model is. The game uses time gates gratuitously and the game steers me towards the cash shop at every turn. Max rank companions and the statistically superior mounts are sold almost exclusively in the cash shop. It's not realistic for someone of my playstyle to earn enough AD to afford one of them, and even if I could afford them there's always the risk that they'll increase the max tier. :/

Welcome to cryptic. Is why they are on my blacklist of gaming companies, don't touch anything they make after the terrible STO.

[Featherman]

Eon Lilu, on 09 May 2013 - 11:13 PM, said:

Welcome to cryptic. Is why they are on my blacklist of gaming companies, don't touch anything they make after the terrible STO.

I've never played STO, but I guess I can finally see why fans disliked it so much.
I don't think I can get anything out of this game. The foundry is amazing, and I think it's a tool that other games should adopt, but infrastructure of the progression system and cash shop are keeping me from enjoying the rest of the content.

Edited by Featherman, 10 May 2013 - 09:21 PM.

[xarallei]

Featherman, on 10 May 2013 - 08:04 PM, said:

I've never played STO, but I guess I can finally see why fans disliked it so much.
I don't think I can get anything out of this game. The foundry is amazing, and I think it's a tool that other games should adopt, but infrastructure of the progression system and cash shop are keeping me from enjoying the rest of the content.

That's basically the way I feel about it. I just can't play a game set up like that. It's just abhorrent to me.

[Eon Lilu]

xarallei, on 10 May 2013 - 11:36 PM, said:

That's basically the way I feel about it. I just can't play a game set up like that. It's just abhorrent to me.

Thats what all cryptic games are like, very heavy monetization, heavy rng gambling, restrictions and heavy microtransactions  with sometimes pay2win, is why im so hating the gw2 cash shop with the gambling and rng but atleast it's not as bad as cryptic games, they take it to a whole new level of cash whoring.

Edited by Eon Lilu, 11 May 2013 - 03:39 AM.

[Shadok]

One thing I will say about the monetization is that it doesn't restrict you. You can access all of the content, it just turns getting a maximum movement mount, or an epic companion, into a month long grind. You can still access the foundry, epic dungeons, and so on. You can also get the best gear in the game without paying any money. Respec'ing is $6, which sucks, but after a few days of doing a few dungeons a day you can afford that. Believe me, I feel that some things need to be capable of being bought with gold, and the maximum movement speed mounts need to have their prices cut down big time, but this game's monetization model is far better than most P2P games end up with when they go F2P.

I know someone with the best gear in the game so far, an epic companion, and a max movement speed mount. He achieved all of this without any founder pack bonus AD, or even early access. He has made it a point not to spend any cash on the game. Of course, doing all of this if you're a casual player would take many months, but it could be done. I will say that being able to convert zen to AD to nearly get enough gear score for T2 dungeons is crap, but hopefully when they release higher tier content it becomes impossible to progress any further just by spending money. That will pretty much depend on whether or not they ease up on the BoE gear.

Edited by Shadok, 11 May 2013 - 03:34 AM.

[Stargate]

Shadok, on 11 May 2013 - 03:32 AM, said:

One thing I will say about the monetization is that it doesn't restrict you. You can access all of the content, it just turns getting a maximum movement mount, or an epic companion, into a month long grind. You can still access the foundry, epic dungeons, and so on. You can also get the best gear in the game without paying any money. Respec'ing is $6, which sucks, but after a few days of doing a few dungeons a day you can afford that. Believe me, I feel that some things need to be capable of being bought with gold, and the maximum movement speed mounts need to have their prices cut down big time, but this game's monetization model is far better than most P2P games end up with when they go F2P.

I know someone with the best gear in the game so far, an epic companion, and a max movement speed mount. He achieved all of this without any founder pack bonus AD, or even early access. He has made it a point not to spend any cash on the game. Of course, doing all of this if you're a casual player would take many months, but it could be done. I will say that being able to convert zen to AD to nearly get enough gear score for T2 dungeons is crap, but hopefully when they release higher tier content it becomes impossible to progress any further just by spending money. That will pretty much depend on whether or not they ease up on the BoE gear.

Yes. I have NOT used any exploits of Foundry that allows you really fast level. I am only level 25 and yesterday I played 6 hours and got 3 levels. I also love PvP and in PvP you get no exp.

When I first time level up a character in WOW it took me 6 months and I played hardcore average 40 hours/week. I like SLOW levelup and HATE powerplateau.

Everything is not perfect. In my previous posts I mentioned Foundry Quests Witch Hammer and Blood and Sand and they are still clearly the top Foundry quests that I have enjoyed. There are many 1-3 star Foundry quests that I hate. For example some stupid Foundry quest with a riddle that you must solve to get further. I sincerely hate those. There are also annoying find these clues quest that was supposed to take 30 minutes and took 2 hours. The Foundry rating really sucks. If you abandon a Foundry quest you can not rate it as 1 star as I would like to rate more then a few Foundry quests.

I agree on challenge is to easy on levelup at least in the first 2 Dungeons. FFS the Orc outside area felt as good challenge(try it solo and before you get any NPC companions).  That said when I have outleveled that area only PvP gives really good challenge. However do not worry. Usually in MMO:s endgame i.e max level content gives good challenge.

Finally this is not pay to win. Already at level 25 I get decent AD income and ZEN can be bought from players. A third character  slot costs only 500 ZEN which is oddly less then respec. Respec feels to me it is overprized with cost of 600 ZEN. Solution? I create 2 clerics and play one as healer and one as more offensive dps. I am not going to start a silly back and forth respec route.

Edited by Stargate, 11 May 2013 - 07:16 AM.

[SunRoamer]

Stargate, on 11 May 2013 - 06:54 AM, said:

Everything is not perfect. In my previous posts I mentioned Foundry Quests Witch Hammer and Blood and Sand and they are still clearly the top Foundry quests that I have enjoyed. There are many 1-3 star Foundry quests that I hate. For example some stupid Foundry quest with a riddle that you must solve to get further. I sincerely hate those. There are also annoying find these clues quest that was supposed to take 30 minutes and took 2 hours. The Foundry rating really sucks. If you abandon a Foundry quest you can not rate it as 1 star as I would like to rate more then a few Foundry quests.

There are people who enjoy riddles, you know.
Live and let live - let the people who enjoy riddles make this kind of content

Maybe cryptic should just add different categories/tags along the lines of "arena", "adventure", "dungeoncrawl", etc. to the foundry, so that no such future grief will be inflicted upon people who did not get what they expected.

Mod Edit: Keep the personal comments out of the discussion. Keep on topic and discuss points and not the poster.

Edited by Kamatsu, 11 May 2013 - 10:37 PM.
removed personal commentary

[Stargate]

SunRoamer, on 11 May 2013 - 06:57 PM, said:

There are people who enjoy riddles, you know.
Live and let live - let the people who enjoy riddles make this kind of content, and then we won't judge you for the fact that you'd have given that exact same foundry quest 5 stars had they just added some extra half naked succubi on top.

Maybe cryptic should just add different categories/tags along the lines of "arena", "adventure", "dungeoncrawl", etc. to the foundry, so that no such future grief will be inflicted upon people who did not get what they expected.

Yes I like beautiful and sexy women, but if you think that is all or majority of the content that I like then you are not very smart. It is a good addition to the adventure and only a small minority of the Neverwinter Foundry adventures has that kind of content.

I have not played any 5 star or given 5 star to any Foundry adventure yet. Naah = No 5 star.
Fine some people like riddles nothing wrong with that. That said it would be very nice if some Foundry adventure could say that there are riddles and IF you can not not solve the riddles then you can not complete the Foundry adventure.

Finally I do like Action and Horror. I would not say these adventures have horror but they sure have lots of Action. I really like Spartacus TV series and also because it has hardcore Action. I voted these below to 4 star. To get 5 star I would like to have a more hard end fight and it was a bit easy. That said these adventures are low level so I did not expect really hard challenge which they did not have.

Witch Hammer felt at least the beginning as Mystery to me because you really do not have a clue what it is about when you begin the adventure.

Stargate, on 05 May 2013 - 08:04 PM, said:

I have played 4 foundry quests so far and I only remember the names of the good ones.
Blood and Sand has more or less theme from the:
Spartacus: Blood and Sand TV series
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1442449/
It is teens rated so you can not see full nudity that said there are pleasure slaves that have very little clothes. One combat scene is directly inspired from the TV series. The only thing lacking is that there are no romans, but otherwise yeah raw violence and the adventure text warns about partial nudity.

Witch Hammer
This one is good. You do not have a clue what it is about when you start the adventure. There are very sexy Succubus monsters and they are actually smart you can try to talk with them.

It has a follow up adventure as a campaign and again story has some good suprises. Succubus monsters are very rare 99% of the creatures you meet in this adventure are not Succubus.

Witch hammer is low level meant for one  level 7-11 character.

These 2 are the best Foundry low level quests so far for me. 5 star? Naah, but give it some time. Really good adventures might take a long time to create, but that said these I enjoyed most so far.

Edited by Stargate, 11 May 2013 - 10:57 PM.
removed quoted text that was deleted