Review the Neverwinter MMO for me!

[Captain Electric]

Tenzhi I hope you're putting these things on the official boards somewhere too. They could really use feedback from people other than powerlevelers, and judging by the interviews I've seen lately (like this one), they are listening.

I am about to leave the Tower District with my first character, but I'm already level 19, so hopefully this wall won't be a problem for me at Blackdagger.

Oh and if you're wondering why I'm level 19, it's because I gave myself a personal challenge yesterday morning.



Kind of disappointed to discover just now that the screenshot didn't also include the UI. But that should be me, standing over Vansi Bloodscar at the end of the Cloak Tower, with a team score chart showing only me. It took about 5 hours to solo the tower. I never got bored! 

[Minotaur]

Tenzhi, did you slot any blue enchantments in utility slots in your gear ?

These give bonus XP, and different ranks seem to stack but the same rank doesn't. I was usually able to keep a rank 1,2 and 3 in the mid levels for +4/3.5/3 = +10.5% XP which is probably why I didn't hit the walls.

I've just met a boss I can't beat at a level in the low 30s with my cleric, will come back to it when fresh.

Looks like they have bigger problems with an auction house exploit atm.

[Ionmatrix]

Hey all just wanted to put in my 3 cents. I have been playing NWO since April 30th and I am having loads of fun. I fixed my key binds to use the arrow keys and a few other key mods and I am stoked. I like the fact that you can combine enh and even get them to rank 4. Rolling the dice at the beginning to get the best attribute scores was fun as well. I highly recommend Neverwinter Online since its the ONLY game that reminds me of COH. (I.E. Enhancement combinations). Peace yall.

[Tenzhi]

Tenzhi, did you slot any blue enchantments in utility slots in your gear ?

On one character I think I had one.  But such shouldn't be necessary to just keep up with the basic quest line.

[Minotaur]

removed post

I do find it quite amusing what the exploit was actually based around, negative numbers on the AH. I wonder how many things like that are in MMOs and get picked up in alpha or early beta testing. This is one of the worst I've seen get through to what is basically launch, I know it says open beta, but the intent was that there was no wipe at the end and RMP was enabled so it was a soft launch.

[Taceus Jiwede]

Tenzhi.  Do you do the daily foundries during the Foundry Event?  Even doing them normally gives you a huge amount of XP.  Then doing two a day during the event  helps out a lot.  Doing the skirmish dailies help a lot too because they require you to complete it 3 times for the reward.  Another thing you can do is run the skirmishes during the event as much as you can.  Gives you AD and decent XP.  You will actually start outleveling entire zones if you do all of these things everyday.  Especially the foundry one.  150% XP is niceeee.  You could play an hour a day and still level pretty fast heh.

[Golden Girl]

I know it says open beta

That's just another bit of deceptive wordplay from the corporate scum - it's designed to give them an excuse for pushing out a bug-ridden sub-standard game while still letting them start milking the players as soon as possible.
The problem that they have now is that by starting to operate their cash shop so soon, it's making server wipes/resets way more tricky as an option for fixing major exploits.

[Tenzhi]

Tenzhi.  Do you do the daily foundries during the Foundry Event?  Even doing them normally gives you a huge amount of XP.  Then doing two a day during the event  helps out a lot.  Doing the skirmish dailies help a lot too because they require you to complete it 3 times for the reward.  Another thing you can do is run the skirmishes during the event as much as you can.  Gives you AD and decent XP.  You will actually start outleveling entire zones if you do all of these things everyday.  Especially the foundry one.  150% XP is niceeee.  You could play an hour a day and still level pretty fast heh.

I haven't particularly enjoyed any of the Foundry quests I've done so far, and just like with AE I'm not interesting in spending hours wading through crap just to find the occasional slightly shiny gem.  Thus I don't do the daily Foundry on a regular basis, and indeed only delve into the Foundry when I get stuck in the actual quest lines due to level limitations.  And then dealing with Foundry quest progression randomly not working, custom maps that run poorly, and mission exits that randomly decide not to work barely seems worth it unless there's a Foundry event bonus going on.

I haven't done any skirmishes because you have to queue up for them.  The dungeons are better (despite having poorly forced difficulty via increased HP on all enemies - imps are quite bad enough in large numbers without having 3x their normal HP, thanks) in that you can actually walk up to the entrance and enter them with your current party without having to have five members or wait for randoms to be forced on you.  If I could force a queue event to start with my current party I might've done a skirmish, but I didn't see a way to do that from the queue screen.

[Tenzhi]

Tenzhi I hope you're putting these things on the official boards somewhere too. They could really use feedback from people other than powerlevelers, and judging by the interviews I've seen lately (like this one), they are listening.

Judging from the hubbub on the message boards about the recent downtime caused by the abuse of an exploit that's allegedly been around and reported on more than one occasion since closed beta, along with my own past experience with Cryptic games, I doubt they're listening all that well.  I say that as a wry observation completely lacking in venom.  Which is to say they ain't fighting words.

[Taceus Jiwede]

I haven't particularly enjoyed any of the Foundry quests I've done so far, and just like with AE I'm not interesting in spending hours wading through crap just to find the occasional slightly shiny gem.  Thus I don't do the daily Foundry on a regular basis, and indeed only delve into the Foundry when I get stuck in the actual quest lines due to level limitations.  And then dealing with Foundry quest progression randomly not working, custom maps that run poorly, and mission exits that randomly decide not to work barely seems worth it unless there's a Foundry event bonus going on.

I haven't done any skirmishes because you have to queue up for them.  The dungeons are better (despite having poorly forced difficulty via increased HP on all enemies - imps are quite bad enough in large numbers without having 3x their normal HP, thanks) in that you can actually walk up to the entrance and enter them with your current party without having to have five members or wait for randoms to be forced on you.  If I could force a queue event to start with my current party I might've done a skirmish, but I didn't see a way to do that from the queue screen.

Fair points.  The foundry is riddled with bugs, though once you complete it there is an exit zone button on the mini map.  The skirmishes are a pain to wait for, but they tend to go faster during the skirmish event hour and you can still do quests while waiting for the que.  They may not be your first choice, but they will level you if thats the problem, and it beats grinding. I out leveled both Ebon Dawns and the werewolf zone when trying to farm up AD to exchange for some zen just by doing dungeons, skirmishes, and foundry quests and that was just in a matter of a couple days.  And the same thing happened after finishing the Pirates flying whatever island, I have out leveled the Icespike zone and can move onto the next area.  Of course these are just ways that worked with me.  If you aren't into them I understand that, but it does beat grinding.

[Tenzhi]

Well, like I said, I *have* used the Foundry in the past to get over the level humps.  However, I consider that grinding just as much as sweeping.  One of these days I may even try to make my own, though I hear the interface is pretty terrible.

[LydiaFrost]

I played a tactical Wizard up to 42 now, and did only hit a wall in the 19. I did exactly 1 Foundry quest and the dungeon with the dragon, failing at the dragon. Rest purly solo running around doing evry quest.
 
I skip evrything where a party is required.

I dont like the game too much. I think only one kind of clothing is very bad.
I cant understand why you all like this, comming from the CoX Char generator. Char generation at CO and even STO has more options.

There are too few powers to keep me intrested. and the swaping out of powers for other ones I couldnt stand in GW2 already.

I dont have problems with the combat, besides that dodge doesnt interupt what im doing, and has to wait till my cast is done.

For me its a game to play through the storyline ( there is only one ) and uninstall.

Lydia Frost MM

[Tenzhi]

I dont like the game too much. I think only one kind of clothing is very bad.
I cant understand why you all like this, comming from the CoX Char generator. Char generation at CO and even STO has more options.

I've been playing games for years, and while I enjoy the rare bit of detailed character creation finding such character creation in a game is the exception rather than the rule.  I can't recall any fantasy RPGs, MMO or otherwise, that have had customization on par with CoH right there in an easy to use interface.  And thus I didn't go into this game expecting such creation.  I expected to pick a race, pick a class, and hopefully have enjoyable action.

[Minotaur]

Well, like I said, I *have* used the Foundry in the past to get over the level humps.  However, I consider that grinding just as much as sweeping.  One of these days I may even try to make my own, though I hear the interface is pretty terrible.

I tend to stick to the featured/best foundry quests, and providing I read them carefully and pick the ones designed for solo characters, haven't had a bad one so far, there are a few I won't do again, but I've enjoyed almost all of them.

The 7 hour rollback while it hurt me (I'd done some serious grinding on my crafting and lost about 3 levels in the mid 30s off one of my characters), was not as bad as it might have been.

Just had a lightbulb moment, do you craft ? almost all my toons even quite low level have rank 10+ leadership, this generates character XP on the way.

[General Idiot]

I skip evrything where a party is required.

I hear that from so many people in almost every MMO... one of these days people are going to realise that encouraging players to avoid teams entirely in a supposedly multiplayer game kind of defeats the point of making a multiplayer game.

[Golden Girl]

I cant understand why you all like this, comming from the CoX Char generator.

Desperation?

[LydiaFrost]

I hear that from so many people in almost every MMO... one of these days people are going to realise that encouraging players to avoid teams entirely in a supposedly multiplayer game kind of defeats the point of making a multiplayer game.

I try grouping at least once in each game I try, and if I stay there and have a clan, I group more regulary. Usually encounters for groups are made purposefully difficult, with a piece of loot or massive XP at the End as justification.
In CoX I could choose my difficulty level and with a normal setting, you could grab anybody and do the Mission. In CoX monsters are supposed to die, because we are the heroes. In evry other games it has to be hard to kill them because you need a 'challenge'

Its simply that I need some better justification than a piece of loot or some XP to endure the stress of being continually on alert so that the group can do the mission.
I need a difficulty slider and an easy as cake setting :-)  I Leave the Challenges to the 'Pros'

[Tenzhi]

Just had a lightbulb moment, do you craft ? almost all my toons even quite low level have rank 10+ leadership, this generates character XP on the way.

I've never met a crafting system that I liked, and this game's is no exception; however, I casually work on Leadership on some of my characters (and even more casually the crafting skill for their class appropriate gear), but I've not gotten any over rank 3.  At a couple of hours for 150 XP that basically ends up being 150 to 300 XP per day for me.  So absolutely not a significant source of XP for me.

[Taceus Jiwede]

I've never met a crafting system that I liked, and this game's is no exception; however, I casually work on Leadership on some of my characters (and even more casually the crafting skill for their class appropriate gear), but I've not gotten any over rank 3.  At a couple of hours for 150 XP that basically ends up being 150 to 300 XP per day for me.  So absolutely not a significant source of XP for me.

From what I have seen, crafting in this game is more so meant for people who just enjoy it.  While it does give people a decent amount of experience from leadership.  I have yet to make any tailoring item that I can use, and the end game gear you get from drops.  So as of now crafting seems kind of pointless besides the money and experience.

I cant understand why you all like this, comming from the CoX Char generator.

I enjoy it because I think it is fun.  Character creation has never been a big deal to me, I know my character wont play like anyone else's so I am not too concerned with how they look.  CoH was a great game but I don't use it as comparison for other games, I would never find a game I enjoyed in that case lol.

[Minotaur]

From what I have seen, crafting in this game is more so meant for people who just enjoy it.  While it does give people a decent amount of experience from leadership.  I have yet to make any tailoring item that I can use, and the end game gear you get from drops.  So as of now crafting seems kind of pointless besides the money and experience.
 

Shirts and pants are basically the items that you craft to use.