Neverwinter

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » March 11, 2013, 1:34 pm

Has anyone played the new Neverwinter MMO? It's done by Cryptic Studios who also did City of Heroes and Star Trek Online so they have a bit of experience at it. It's currently in beta. I only bothered because I had a code from PCGamer which supposedly will give a free horse and I was like "Oooo.. Free stuff". I played some over the latest beta weekend and it wasn't bad. It's going to be free to play but from what I saw you can play a lot without spending anything. Most of it's the usual things like pay for more bank or bag space or some different mount.

The one thing that was starting to become annoying though had to do with companions. They level up and when they do you have to send them off to train at which point they aren't available to use. With each level it takes longer until they return with the last level mine made it to (17) being 2 hours but you can pay to 'Rush Training' so it's more a convenience thing. I don't know if they train while you're offline but it would be nice if that were the case so you could just send them off then log for the night.

Most of the missions are the typical kill or fetch type quests with a handy glowing trail guiding you to each spot you need to go so I wasn't really confused as what to do next. Although sometimes the trail seemed to be buggy and not show up until I deactivated and reactivated it. And one juncture where it kept leading me in a big circle so I eventually had to navigate with the map to reach my destination.

I played it mostly solo with an AI companion (sort of like a mercenary in EQ) and was mostly successful. There was one where I had to go out and level a couple more times before trying it again. The cleric, which I chose, does damage as well and ends up drawing a lot of hate. They also aren't smart since if they're not healing (which they don't seem to do much!) they'll usually stand right next to enemies. And a lot of enemies seem to have knockback types of attacks. So the companion doesn't really last long in some encounters so you pretty much have to rely on healing potions and hoping for the best. I don't know if missions scale if you have multiple people with you so if not that could be the way to go.

Every 5-10 levels there are a couple of five player missions you can queue up for and they seem fairly tough. I made it to the dragon event which is aimed at level 34 players. I was actually 34 while everyone else was level 30 and 31 and soon as I saw that I was like.. "Yeah this will not end well". And after several wipes later with only getting the boss down to 80% my suspicions were confirmed! There is also a Need/Greed/Pass system which streamlines loots which does the dice rolling for you but it's pretty annoying the number of people that roll on everything. I don't know if the Greed rolls are skewed at all, which I doubt they are, but it would be nice!

A lot of the group encounters seem to consist of the boss doing AE and a lot of adds which I find a bit cheap. Also you're locked out if you die so you can't zerg it and also meaning if one person dies you can be hosed. Anyone can revive fallen members but you only have 15 seconds or so to do it. Your companion can also die but it looked like only the owner could revive them and there didn't seem to be a time limit. Although I revived mine like 10 times and it always kept dying nearly instantly.

This will also have user generated content and I tried three of those missions. Well two anyway since I could never find the starting place for the third. They weren't terrible but you could see the obvious difference between those and the native game content. The enemies seemed to scale to my level but not sure how that would work in a group if it would scale to the highest player level or an average. I didn't try creating anything myself, assuming that's even possible at this point, so not sure how smooth that process goes. I got nearly a level just doing one event so I imagine someone could create missions with a single enemy one after another just for XP purposes. Although I'm not sure what sort of review process, if any, they go through so that might not be possible. I'm sure there are some limits so you don't place like 2000 treasure chests or something crazy.

I haven't played a "modern" MMO like WoW (WoW sucks!) so I don't know how it compares. But as it's free I'll probably play a bit when it's released which will be sometime in April if I had to guess as the last beta weekend is March 22-24. It will give something to do while maxxed out in EQ so I see this cutting into my PS3 time a lot at least initially. I'm not sure how much appeal it will hold long term as free to play games typically come to a point where you need to spend money to keep your interest but just playing through the main story arc seems pretty fun so far and didn't require any outlay of cash.

Leonaerd · Post by **Leonaerd** » March 11, 2013, 1:47 pm

Slow day at work?

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » March 11, 2013, 2:42 pm

imho, it would be hard for a new mmo to compete with the completeness that I experience with Guild Wars 2. I never really find myself complaining about things that are missing from the game or fixes that need to be done. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are things that could be improved but I haven't found a need to complain about it.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » March 11, 2013, 9:00 pm

Aslanna wrote: I haven't played a "modern" MMO like WoW (WoW sucks!) so I don't know how it compares. But as it's free I'll probably play a bit when it's released which will be sometime in April if I had to guess as the last beta weekend is March 22-24. It will give something to do while maxxed out in EQ so I see this cutting into my PS3 time a lot at least initially. I'm not sure how much appeal it will hold long term as free to play games typically come to a point where you need to spend money to keep your interest but just playing through the main story arc seems pretty fun so far and didn't require any outlay of cash.

As free to play goes, it looks pretty bad. Aion and Tera are two really high quality, polished games that are free to play with no hassles. I'd recommend trying Tera as once you play an MMORPG with a controller (has built in support for PC 360 controller) it's hard to go back to non controller MMORPG games. It also will take advantage of a nice graphics card.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » March 11, 2013, 9:23 pm

It looks fine to me! I was mainly interested in this based on the name. And I'm a fan of Forgotten Realms in general. I don't need another MMO in my life I have EQ! I think it will be fine to play in a couple hour chunks here and there though.

And from what I read it has controller support. I didn't try it out though.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » March 15, 2013, 9:40 pm

Video of the Foundry thingie where you can create your own missions.

As for the game itself... I'm looking forward to beta weekend 3 next weekend!

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » March 20, 2013, 11:08 pm

Code for Beta Weekend 3 if they haven't ran out. Will need to be a Gamespot member but can always just sign up!

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » April 4, 2013, 4:00 pm

Open beta April 30th!

Dungeon delvers of Neverwinter, mark your calendars. We are pleased to announce that on April 30, 2013, Neverwinter, our upcoming free-to-play action MMORPG, will officially enter Open Beta! The Forgotten Realms will soon be open to millions of brave heroes and heroines who cannot wait to join the battle against Valindra Shadowmantle and hordes of other foul creatures on Faerûn. Make a stand and protect the city of Neverwinter against the ever-present dangers surrounding the city.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » April 4, 2013, 5:48 pm

Open to millions? That's pretty optimistic.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 4, 2013, 7:39 pm

I did try this game a few weeks back.

It feels like any other free to play game that was released a few years ago. Not sure what their plan with this is when there are AAA titles that went free to play that are much better. You owe it to your graphics card to try out TERA, or even SWTOR. Even Secret World, which is a step down from some other games in graphics (but still better than Neverwinter) has a much more entertaining theme/story/lore/skill/level sytem to it as well but that still costs for the actual game and then F2P like GW2 afterwards.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » April 4, 2013, 8:44 pm

There's more to a game than graphics! I still play EQ with original models so I should know.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » April 5, 2013, 1:09 pm

What is Neverwinter?

Looks good to me!

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » April 18, 2013, 9:24 pm

45 minute video of creating a basic quest in The Foundry. Looks like it could be interesting even just to mess with on your own.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » April 30, 2013, 5:42 pm

I downloaded it last night but probably won't get to play it until tomorrow night. Mainly because our GW2 has fewer people logging in as of late. Mostly due to the nice weather and college exams, at least that is my hope for the reason. Playing free games though makes me feel better about game hopping due to lack of monthly script.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » April 30, 2013, 5:58 pm

Bubba Grizz wrote:I downloaded it last night but probably won't get to play it until tomorrow night. Mainly because our GW2 has fewer people logging in as of late. Mostly due to the nice weather and college exams, at least that is my hope for the reason. Playing free games though makes me feel better about game hopping due to lack of monthly script.

Don't rush! Apparently their servers couldn't handle the load today at noon when open beta started.. Where have we heard that before?

And there's been lag issues since. Servers just went down for some sort of maintenance. I expect issues will be resolved soon!

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 1, 2013, 9:48 am

yeah had a 7500 queue last night and at 5am this morning I had a 6000 queue. I got my daily done in GW2 at least. Yay me.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 1, 2013, 10:48 am

Bubba Grizz wrote:yeah had a 7500 queue last night and at 5am this morning I had a 6000 queue. I got my daily done in GW2 at least. Yay me.

More server maintenance today at 10:00EST AM so... Hopefully that fixes it!

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 1, 2013, 6:36 pm

Maintenance done. Sounds like queues are gone so no waiting! There were still some reports of lagginess but not sure how much of an issue that is.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 2, 2013, 10:13 am

I got in last night. I played with our group for a while but it took me a while to get used to how they have it set up. I got the impression that it was designed but one of those elite pvp players who remaps all their keys and put the attacks on the mouse buttons. It was tough to get used to and I felt motion sickness even after I stopped playing. I can't tell you how many times I hit my 1 key to attack and end up blowing my special attack. Having to shift+1 or which ever number is a pain and a tangle for my fingers. By the end of the night I was getting the hang of it but was still feeling sick.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 2, 2013, 10:38 am

Motion sickness! I guess in combat there is some 'screen shake' that I saw pointed out in a video. Maybe that's it? I myself never even noticed it. And I don't think there's an option to turn it off. Or was it just from moving around?

But yeah as it's an action RPG the interface took me awhile to get comfortable with. Now when I play EQ I try to move with WASD and it doesn't work! Using the arrow keys now feels unnatural to me.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 2, 2013, 11:40 am

yeah it's like you are expecting to move one direction and instead you are going another. Then you have to scurry to get your bearings in the game. I'm used to using the mouse for movement and for panning left or right to see behind me as I move and that can't be done now because a right click is an attack. I'm sure I'll adjust. It will take a bit though.

Another thing that screws me up is when moving and trying to use vent. I use the left control key to talk but when you move the control key has some purpose and totally messes me up. That's annoying.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » May 2, 2013, 1:00 pm

Yeah the mechanics are pretty bad in this game. There are three things I consider when trying a game:

1. Playability/UI/Controls
2. Story/Lore
3. Appearance/Graphics/Style

If any one the above are good, I can forgive some weakness in the other parts. I found Neverwinter to be bad in all three areas.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 2, 2013, 1:34 pm

The mechanics are just fine once you get used to them. Which doesn't take that long. Just because you're used to playing another game and hit the wrong keys... Whose fault is that!

Story seems ok but honestly I don't follow the stories much in most games. Just let me get in and play.

Graphics are great!

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » May 2, 2013, 1:38 pm

Aslanna wrote:The mechanics are just fine once you get used to them. Which doesn't take that long. Just because you're used to playing another game and hit the wrong keys... Whose fault is that!

Well that's the thing. I play a lot of MMO betas so am used to adjusting to different types of controls and UIs. Still didn't like it!

The game would have benefited from native controller support.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 2, 2013, 1:46 pm

Winnow wrote:The game would have benefited from native controller support.

It had it in the beta at one point but it was removed for some reason. I'm sure it will probably come back eventually. You can always use xpadder or whatever. It's not "native" (or free) but gets the job done!

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 2, 2013, 5:46 pm

So when the beta is over, are they going to do a p-wipe or do you get to keep your characters? I just want to measure how much effort I want to put in for the open beta. I'm still going to play GW2 and my friends at work are roping me back into SWTOR maybe once a week.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 2, 2013, 5:53 pm

No more character wipes. May want to be careful how to spend points though as currently it costs money to respec. There is much debate about that on the forums!

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » May 2, 2013, 7:22 pm

Bubba Grizz wrote:So when the beta is over, are they going to do a p-wipe or do you get to keep your characters? I just want to measure how much effort I want to put in for the open beta. I'm still going to play GW2 and my friends at work are roping me back into SWTOR maybe once a week.

/offtopic on

From what you've said about GW2, you're going to like Wildstar when it comes out. You like to explore and there's an entire explorer profession in Wildstar.

Secondary professions announced so far you can choose after your main class:

Soldier
Scientist
Explorer
Builder

/offtopic off

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 6, 2013, 5:37 pm

Ok so I am level 24 right now. I have to admit that I do like the game so far. What I don't like is the feeling that eventually you have to spend money to eliminate annoyances. I will refuse to put any money towards this game as long as I can. I still really like GW2 but right now this game has my attention. Luckily there is no monthy subscription for GW2 so I don't feel guilty about not playing for a bit.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 6, 2013, 6:17 pm

Bubba Grizz wrote:Ok so I am level 24 right now. I have to admit that I do like the game so far. What I don't like is the feeling that eventually you have to spend money to eliminate annoyances. I will refuse to put any money towards this game as long as I can. I still really like GW2 but right now this game has my attention. Luckily there is no monthy subscription for GW2 so I don't feel guilty about not playing for a bit.

Honestly the only thing I bought was a single bag. Other than that I haven't really found many annoyances. Vendor bought horses (for gold) are a bit slow and vendor companions can only get to Rank 15 (out of 30). That's about the only thing I can think of that might annoy.

I dinged 60 last night! I don't expect this to replace EQ (EQ!) but I think it will be a decent casual thing to play when not in Norrath. I like the idea of no raids.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 8, 2013, 12:45 pm

Are you still getting woozy? Apparently some other people were and they resolved that by changing the field of view from the default of 55 to something else like 60 or 70. The line is PrefEntry GfxSettings.DefaultFov and is in the Gameprefs.pref files. Which is located at \Cryptic Studios\Neverwinter\Live\Localdata or whatever is applicable to your install.

I tried out the PVP stuff since you can get some pretty decent equipment compared to what I have. It seems pretty similar to MP shooters.. Spawn.. Run over there and fight for 30 seconds (if I'm lucky).. Die.. Respawn.. Repeat. There are three points to defend and you get points based on how long they are under your teams control. First to 1000 wins. Matches seem to last about 15 minutes or so. Fairly boring to me and I don't see myself playing it once I get the items I want.

As a Guardian Fighter, Rogues and Wizards seem over powered though! And I did one match where the other team was 3 or 4 clerics and they seemed just about invincible with each one healing the others. It was a little ridiculous really. Also fairly awesome is you get points even if you lose (350 vs 700) so there are some people who just join and sit there at the spawn point. Hopefully they fix that so you actually have to participate since it makes it hard for your team to win if some people aren't doing anything.

Also don't forget about the Gateway where you can do some professions stuff and such from your web browser. It's a bit buggy but it mostly sorta works.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 8, 2013, 4:34 pm

Did not know about the gateway. It is unavailable at the moment but I'll be sure to check that out. I play a GWF and I am only 26 atm. I heard that they really don't start to shine until after 30. I'm hoping so because I'm tired of ending up at the bottom of the scoreboards for skirmishes and pvp. I created a rogue last night and will level him to 10 so I can pvp and get my fix from that point on.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » May 9, 2013, 8:38 pm

Assling cleric

Seems OK at first glance, not sure how engaging it'll be. UI is a bit clunky but not terrible to use (yet).

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 10, 2013, 12:22 am

We need a Veeshan Vault guild!

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 10, 2013, 9:10 am

After putting some time into this game I found that it totally ruins playing other games. This is because of the controls. When to click when not to click, can I strafe or not, how the hell do I target now. I did a couple hard modes last night in TOR and I was seriously lacking in control of my weapons.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 10, 2013, 12:14 pm

I'm not sure if you're saying that's a bad thing or not!

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 10, 2013, 12:48 pm

Not totally sure. I'm trying to decide if I need to change my controls in the other games to match how it is done on NW. I think this is how the great pvp'ers do their controls so it can only be a good thing, right?

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 10, 2013, 1:18 pm

Not sure. I think PVP is lame! I just finished my armor set you can get via PVP matches so I don't see myself doing much of that anymore. I'll probably still do the 4 a day to get 4,000 astral diamonds even though AFKers are starting to become a bigger issue. Other than that guess I will try some tier 1 epic dungeons since I have finished all the story quests. The last boss was fairly lame so I lamed him back by pulling him halfway back to the zonein which seems to negate the adds adding. I wonder if they'll ever implement leashing like EQ has to prevent that.

The epic dungeons should be should be fairly awesome with random pickup groups.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 10, 2013, 3:03 pm

This weekend is double astral diamond weekend. So do more! I'm on call this weekend so can't do much of anything else so I'll probably get a lot of AD's.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 10, 2013, 4:23 pm

Double! Yeah I'll definitely hit up the PvP events. Unfortunately it's once a day for the AD bonus so that's only like 2-3 times at best for that. And at 60 since the foundry events scale that apparently makes them a lot tougher from what I've read so not sure I want to take the time doing four of those but I might give a couple a try and see how it goes.

Overall still having fun!

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 13, 2013, 9:12 am

Ok I have stopped playing this game. Just short of a rage quit. The negatives have over powered the positives and I just can't invest anymore time in a game that I know is more frustrating than fun for me. Two things pretty much put me over the edge on this. The first is that I wanted to get another bag so I thought I would invest some AD's and hit the auction hall. Part of this is my fault but part of this is a design that rewards assholes and punishes the unwary. I bought a Bag of Holes for 3000 AD. Naturally the name itself should have been a red flag but I was up late and wanted a bag in a bad way. I found that this bag had a mighty 1 slot and you can't put anything in it. That nearly made me rage quit. I recovered and chalked it up as a lesson learned and thought that I would explore making my own bags.

I went out to the official forums and found that they didn't even have a forum for crafting. Nothing. So I did some searching online and from all the articles I had read, all had the same theme, you will have to pay a serious amount of real cash if you want to do any kind of serious crafting. In all the MMOs I play, crafting is a major part of it for me. I actually liked this system they have created but there is no way in hell I am going to invest serious cash into it. There are too many nails in the coffin already and this just became the last nail for me. So I am all done now. I went back to GW2 where the game is so good that you want to spend money on it.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 13, 2013, 9:39 am

3000 AD is like.. Nothing! Just by invoking 3 times in a day you'll get around 2000. And just by doing the quests you get one bag around level 10 and another around 30. It's not that bad. Not really sure how you can blame the game for people selling useless shit.

There are no bags to be made through the crafting system. So far I haven't ran into the part where you have to invest "serious cash" but I've just been working on Leadership.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » May 13, 2013, 10:28 am

Bubba Grizz wrote:Ok I have stopped playing this game. Just short of a rage quit.

Rage quit! I almost rage quit EVE this weekend. I still might pending a petition! I don't mind getting screwed over by players but not by the company (CCP).

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » May 13, 2013, 10:59 am

Yeah I may have over reacted but to be honest I don't want to play a game that makes me feel the way that this game made me feel at that time. I was furious, probably for the wrong reasons, but furious none the less.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 13, 2013, 11:08 am

Weird, I don't feel that way at all. Nothing that I've found that makes me "furious". It definitely has some issues but hopefully those will be sorted out by the time it's officially released.

Oh well you gave it a go. At least it cost you zero dollars!

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » May 16, 2013, 1:50 pm

The "Zen shop" for this game is ludicrously expensive. There are way too many different kinds of alternate currency. Cryptic has the shell of a decent game here but Perfect World has taken a warm shit all over it with their revenue model.

I am in no way against spending money on a F2P game I am enjoying but there is no fucking way on god's earth I am spending $30 on a fucking companion or $10 on a few inventory spaces. I went from sort of enjoying this game and looking at spending some money to make it more fun to completely losing interest in it.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 16, 2013, 3:31 pm

Oh, I definitely agree on the store prices. What makes the companion prices even more nuts is that it's not per account but per character. Meaning if you buy a companion for your Cleric that's the only character it will be available for. My defense of that is that the companions really aren't that great so it's not a consideration for me in whether or not I enjoy the game. There are 'free' companions in the game although they are sort of generic and generally only go to rank 15 although there are a few exceptions such as the blue one from the pvp vendor. I myself am using the free cleric companion who dies fairly quickly once conflict has begun but in the end still ends up saving me money on buying healing potions all the time. Unfortunately companions are nowhere near as robust as mercenaries in EQ are.

I also don't mind the alternate currencies once exposed to the game for awhile. That doesn't mean it's entirely necessary but I can look past that.

I did buy a bag to get 24 more spaces. That's really about the only purchase I felt was necessary as far a convenience factor goes. Most everything else in the shop I have zero interest in. So while that is a bit expensive I figure coughing up $10-$20 on bags isn't that bad if that's all I'm going to be purchasing.
However $6 to respec is just dumb.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » May 17, 2013, 1:33 am

I will never get these companies and their cash stores. Yeah you have to make money, but after the item is actually done it costs the company nothing to sell it. I bet the market for people who would pay $5 for a cool companion is way larger than the market for someone who will pay $30. Bags cost $10. Sure I bought one but most people I have talked to just suffer with the space the game gives you, even though the game overloads you with garbage passed level 15. If bags cost a dollar, probably ten times more people who would never buy one at a $10 would buy two or three.

These F2P games rely way too much on whales spending hundreds of dollars to finance their game when the majority of their playerbase could be doing it.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » May 17, 2013, 10:15 am

kyoukan wrote:I will never get these companies and their cash stores. Yeah you have to make money, but after the item is actually done it costs the company nothing to sell it. I bet the market for people who would pay $5 for a cool companion is way larger than the market for someone who will pay $30. Bags cost $10. Sure I bought one but most people I have talked to just suffer with the space the game gives you, even though the game overloads you with garbage passed level 15. If bags cost a dollar, probably ten times more people who would never buy one at a $10 would buy two or three.

These F2P games rely way too much on whales spending hundreds of dollars to finance their game when the majority of their playerbase could be doing it.

Well said. If things are reasonably priced, I'll spend a little money here and there; but when it's as ridiculously over-priced as it is in many games I rarely do, and it likely ends up being a major contributing factor to me quitting the game. You'd think they would catch onto this by now.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » May 17, 2013, 10:19 am