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The good, the bad and the downright ugly..
Ragana
Member Posts: 458
Alrighhty.. I hit level 10 on my Control Wizard so I figured I'd share some of my thoughts..
The Good:
Character creation- As many others have pointed out, the character creator in this game is pretty deep and gives you a ton to pick from.
Combat- The combat I like a lot. While it's still tab targetting, with the constant dodging, CC's, etc.. it feels pretty much fluid and action-packed.
The Bad:
The game is not polished- I don't want to bring up WoW but when you play a triple A title and then go to something like Neverwinter, the difference is extremely blatant. For instance, my friends and I tried to create a guild. We got a full party, everyone was in the same zone, etc.. I tried clicking on the guild master to officially form it but the "create" option was grayed out. We met the requirements but nothing was happening. Later on, I passed the lead to another member and he found out that the creator needed to be a founder. We passed the leadership on once again and all the sudden the members had to be level 15.
Something that should be completely straight-forward is all the sudden extremely obscure.
In addition to the guild creation, other aspects of the character creator were confusing as well. I chose my starting zone on the map while making my CM and yet I spawned in Neverwinter just like all of my other friends.. I'm assuming that's a bug or I end up there later on in the game but I was curious what was the point of the choice at all if it doesn't really impact anything. In GW2 when you create your character's story, the decisions actually somewhat impact your quests and whatnot.
Skirmish Rewards: So after logging in a second time around, a pop-up came up urging me to run a skirmish. I joined a que, waited 10 mins and got into the thick of things. After killing off zombies and some sort of skeleton king, the reward was 2 silver. That's it. Thinking that can't be right, I ran it twice more and nothing changed.. Questing and killing mobs is a faster method of leveling so I don't see any point as of now to even bother with the skirmishes.
The UGLY:
Servers: Who in their right minds thought that three servers would be enough? 20,000 people ques are not a good thing..
Cash shop: I understand that it's a F2P title, I honestly do.. but this has one of the most outrageous cash shops of any game I played. Want to respec? $7. Want to buy the best armor in the game? It's in the cash shop... Yes, you can earn it all by questing and grinding but at this rate, it would take you five to six times longer than someone who just purchased it outright. Things need to balance out a bit.
Final Thoughts:
I'll keep playing and see how the game is later on. So far the quests have been pretty much and I really enjoy the Control Wizard's mechanics. Unless the PvP is half-decent or there is some sort of casual end-game, I honestly don't see this holding the attention of many players past the first month mark. I guess only time will tell.
Veni, Vidi, Vici
Comments
I would add Foundry to the good category. I only did one but it was fun and lots of story to it. The creative people will create some truly fun experiences for us.
Still early, but it seems the best attempt at action combat so far.
as for the bad column, only one starting area is absolutely inexcusable. the linearity (and the cash shop) will really hurt this games chances.
Skirmishes do offer +Astral Diamonds if you do them when the "Even" is up.
And you can use said Astral Diamonds to respecc...and you can convert your Astral Diamonds into Zen (Money) so that is not true.
However 3 servers with 20k queues on them is horrible if not laughable
I don't know why many are praising the char creation, I find it downright fugly and atrocious. Reminds me a bid to SWTOR platic creation.
Having more options does not equate to quality.
I just typed this on another thread, but it's an appropriate response to one of your "ugly" items.
It will be detrimental to the long term health of the game if they prematurely create servers that they may not need a week from now. The problem is, if the population does not maintain these numbers, and it almost certainly will not, then Cryptic is left with all these extra servers and the overall playerbase becomes fragmented. This lends the illusion that the game is not successful and starts a downward spiral with more and more players leaving. Such an easy and innocent way to ruin your game. I suspect this effect will be even more pronounced with a F2P game like this where you don't have that free month or subscription keeping you tied to the game.
I thought Character Creation was a bit basic. Am I right in thinking all the options such as starting town and deity, etc., have no actual effect in the game?
ARMOR IS NOT IN THE CASH SHOP! And what you can (speed) craft yourself is only a fraction of what you need. With that, who gives a damn about Pay2Win for Neverwinter? It's a PvE game to the core and only the arena is PvP (for which gear is the least you need - it's more skill and teamwork there).
I do agree though that the prices of the cash shop are quite insane. $40 for an account-bound (for every char) T3 mount? You only get 2 slots so it's $20 a character and an addirional char slot is $10-$15 as well I thought...
The thing is, they're going to be merging all servers into 1 big shard, just like all other Cryptic games. So only starting with 3 is absolutely horrid.
One thing I want to point out is the game does not have "tab targeting". You have a reticle in the center of your screen and what ever that is over, the ability you use hits. The only way you can lock onto a target is by putting the reticle over the target and holding down the ctrl button. If I try to "tab" through targets, I activate my classes special ability since it's default bind is the "tab" key.
You actually can't buy armor in the cash shop, just cosmetic armor that you can use to replace the look of your current armor to make it look awesome, but otherwise, it is statless and completely useless.
Also, for the prices of cash shop items, this is just a theory, but maybe it is so expensive because Cryptic is planning on releasing future classes and races, things that would normally be the most expensive stuff in the cash shop, for free?
Since when is Tuesday a direction?
The foundry is a plus in the game for sure. I have played some player generated content that was much more interesting than anything in game so far. Not that the developer created content is bad it's just your pretty generic fetch and kill type of quests where your better Foundry quests have a lot more writting wrapped behind them to hide the fetching and killing a bit better. I think somewhere content creation schools started to teach the need for quests in shorter chunks to overcome ADD in the average player where at least the better foundry creators are more looking at the old D&D modules for inspiration.
The 20 person in a zone instance limit is a bit of a turn off and makes some of the zones feel very empty. The first time I clicked the change instance button on the map and noticed a cap of 20 people in a zone I was really thrown back. That's a negative for me.
Queue sizes don't bother me because unless you are trying to consume the content in a few days they are more a short term annoyance than a long term issue.
Astral Diamonds bug me a great deal. Gold is pretty much worthless in the game except for buying basic crafting supplies (rare supplies still require AD's or dungeon running random drops to get). PWI/Cryptic could have taken AD's out of the game completly and left all the other cash shop prices the same and still made tons of money off this game. Adding AD's into the game just strikes me as over the top IMO and really does boarder if not cross into the P2W catagory.
Game mechanics are ok but there is nothing there really special that stands out in how the game plays. It's not bad by any means but there isn't any part of it that wow's me either.
I agree that the mounts are a bit steep, but completely unnecessary as a player. Just saves time early in the game. The character slots are two for $5. So $2.50 each... wow what a rip off!
Respecs are $6. And makeovers are $2. Not sure where anyone is seeing the crazy rediculous prices. This is a F2P game, if spending $6 is going to bankrupt you, feel free to level up another character. The only thing you are losing is time.
The good:
Events running for an hour with extra rewards gets you around and wanting to do skirmishes, foundry and so on. Also the event in tower?(orc zone) where you compete to collect most lost artifact (or something) in xx minutes.
Instance running feels like a good ole skool pen n paper adventure, and there is a good potential for great stories.
Foundry.. awesome, player created content. It needs adjustments such as actually beeing worth doing for other than the stories, still giving players the adventure writing tool means much better adventure than what a developer can come up with (collect 10 rat parts).
Some aspects of combat, that you can visually see an attacker is about to take huge swing at you and move accordngly, it needs some smoothing because you are often stuck in animation too long. Personally I don't mind that you can't move while using an ability, it gives my mind time to focus on my next move and therefore feel I am tactically more in control.
World graphics is nice, gives a good adventure fantasy feel, nothing fancy like gw2 but it works. Also objects in the world behave nicely so far, not sure to what extent this goes.
The bad:
Lacks smoothness in every sense. It is a little too true to DnD and therefore avoids some obvious gameplay enhancing features. I am missing class roles a little, even knowing it is DnD. UI is not only different, its just tedious and in the long run going to be an annoyance. Well, it is not an AAA title but the bad is we can't help but compare features with those.
It doesn't show any sign of long term replayability fun factor, and that I also want to bash DnD rules for :P
The ugly:
Character models period... Yuk, they are not just fantasy special, they are just wrong. I can live with that if gameplay is great though.
The voice in the back of my head saying, mooo I am your cash cow you know you have to give in at some point. I am aware you can play the game without buying anything, and that you can farm your astrals/zen if you give it 10 hours a day for a month.
Well Neverwinter does have it's charm, and one of the charms is that it is nothing like every other mmo. If you can forgive the flaws, it is not a bad little game at all, and it has potential within its own limits. A real mmorpg it will not be, but a fun game it can become.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Fair enough but consider this thought experiment.
If two people one who has a credit card attached to their account and is willing to use it and one who does not are both bidding on a high end piece of equipment they really want on the broker who do you think is going to win it more often than not?
Add on top of that enhancements which can be combined with Zen shop purchased items that ensures you never fail and loose the items. I put four tier 4 enchancments into the combine window and the chance of success was 10% without a cash shop item and that's only tier 4 to 5.
The quality of the gear you wear is only limitied by your credit limit.
You're sure about the character slots being that low? Will check and if they're indeed this low I'll add 2 more so that I can play every class there is ;-)
I can't understand how character models are that ugly; they are uglier than those in Star Trek Online (which uses the same engine as far as I know), and that game was launched a few years ago.
And am I the only one annoyed that you can't zoom in and out at will, unless you enter 'Inspect mode'? I find it rather ridiculous, but I guess I always took the ability to zoom as granted. Why some people try to 'reinvent the wheel' is beyond me.
OP is a very good example of why a person that has played one class to level 10 opinion of a game does not ( or should not) hold much sway.
1. Misinformation. This is not a tab target game. You cant buy armor in the cash shop, and there is no cash items that give a person advantage over a regular player in pvp. That was your ass typing.
2. apples and oranges. Comparing the polish of a 10 year old game to a soft launch title is moronic. Of course there are bugs and glitches. Stop expecting new games to have as much polish as ones that have had thousands of man hours to polish.
3. As for skirmishes, you have only played the first one...again you dont have enough data to draw a conclusive opinon. Earning 2 silver at level 8 is decent FOR LEVEL 8. Considering that mobs drop about 2-3 copper. I got a blue cloak from the next skirmish at around level 16
4. The server que thing was a nightmare but the only way to know how many changes they needed to make in terms of capacity...is to actually learn what kind of traffic they are getting. Untl a game actually goes live to the public everything up to that point is speculation.
I think this is a fun game with some good potential. Its not mind blowing, but it is fun. I played in all of the betas to about level 40 on each class and 50 on one.
How is it moronic? Does that mean every company should have a "soft launch" now? Does that make it okay to release unfinished games just because of greed?
All I did was list my experiences for the first ten levels. I didn't say that's how the rest of the game will play out, just what I saw up to this point.
Veni, Vidi, Vici
Always makes sense to compare a game just released to one that has been out for years throwing out what that very same game was like at release...
3 mega servers, not 3 normal servers and no game ever released that was POPULAR at release went without massive server issues. WoW had them for MONTHS. Talk to me in a month about "issues".
The character models are pretty bad in this game. It's the eyes that are the problem. Whoever is working at Cryptic doesn't do eyes very well. The hairstyles offered are all pretty basic as well. While I think there are plenty of options, most of them are pretty low impact. I actually like SWTOR's character creator more; comparatively, in that afterwards I felt like I had something that I liked; whereas in NW I really did feel like I was forced to just settle with a look.
I find the game a lot of fun to play. I like the combat system. Most everything about this game feels really linear, though. The cash shop is a negative, especially since the game has so many different currencies. I haven't seen any use for gold at all. Sure, there are a few things you need to buy but they don't even let you buy more bank slots with it. It doesn't have that MMORPG feel that most of us remember the older games having, but what really does anymore?
I'm struck dumb by the thought that only founders can create a guild. Seriously? So if I wanted to make my own guilld it's gonna cost me $60? I have to buy a founders pack just for that?
Why is that not in "The Ugly" section? In fact, why is that not in the "Are You FUCKING SERIOUS" section?
I'm sorry, I'm trying to articulate what I'm feeling and I just can't form the words. It's just..... seriously? I'm having problems believing this.
Good: Less annoying version of tera combat, easier to target and smoother. Very noob friendly, easy to get into. Few classes but they feel complete.
Bad: Blatently stole Diablo 3's interface and Guild Wars 2 dodge system just shows how uncreative the Cryptic guys really are. Game also plays very similiar to DDO with far less class options.
Ugly: Graphics are terrible, on max settings the game looks like it was made 10 years ago. That would never bother me except it doesn't make up for it with massive content, which is typically the tradeoff. Lack of servers is beyond stupid. When people have to wait in a 1 hour que it makes them never want to spend a dime in the cash shop.
Off-topic comment: Play a Neverwinter Dungeon then play a DDO dungeon and see why most D&D fans hate 4th edition
Man threads like this and the OP make me laugh. It's like some of you kids have no idea what an MMO launch is.
Warhammer Online? 3 hour queue
Aion Online? 13 hour queue
World of Warcraft? 17 hour queue
And those are just some of first ones to come to mind, every MMO has queue's. GW2 had to almost literally invent a new tech to get around queue times. There common, yea they suck, but its not that bad. And they'll go away as the standard looky loo's and terrible gamers leave. Every game has that.
Also WoW was TERRIBLE at launch. Perma bugged looting like being stuck in loot position FOREVER. Rubberbanding, constant crashing etc. Some servers went down for days while they tried to fix it. It was so bad they gave everyone almost a month in free days.
What boggles me the most is the bitching abour free 2 play. You KNOW that your going to have pay money eventually. It would be litterally impossible for them to make a game totally free, the studio would be bankrupt in a month. But the game lets you enjoy all aspects for free.
This is the price everyone pays for the incessent whining about subscription models. I can't wait for another few years when everyone is crying and begging for subs to come back.
You do know that lying about a F2P game doesn't work right? Cause people can try it out and see how mistaken you are about almost everything that's been said in here.
You don't have to be a founder to create a guild.