NeverWinter

[Electric-Knight]

An old friend of mine got to try the beta the other week as well and, while he had a lot of positives to say about it, I thought one of the negatives he raised was interesting.
He is worried about the strict classes as he was wanting for more of the feats/skills to be available to all classes. He felt like this was possibly some attempt to make it more inline with the traditional mmorpg approach, as opposed to the tabletop approach.
I too find that disappointing to learn, as D&D is already class restricted enough for me without adding some further restrictions to it.

It's not a deal breaker, on paper, but I'm curious to see how it plays out in practice for my enjoyment (or lack there of).

Just thought I'd mention that in case anyone else has any thoughts or light to shed on it.

[General Idiot]

On the other hand, if you allow a more freeform approach to classes and feats and such as in the tabletop then characters naturally vary in power a lot. Someone will make something to fit a concept that's actually a little gimped, but they won't care because concept. Others will go the other way and make the most overpowered character they can, concept be damned. And of course all sorts of variations in and around those.

Thing is, in a tabletop game that works because you have a real person running the bad guys who can tailor them to whatever his specific players made. In an MMO though, all content has to be playable by all players and thus either the content needs to allow variable difficulty or the players have to be forced into a more rigid system so their power levels don't vary quite so much.

CoH chose the former. Neverwinter by all appearances has chosen the latter. Personally I think both are valid approaches, but I prefer the way CoH did it.

[Knightslayer]

Thing is, in a tabletop game that works because you have a real person running the bad guys who can tailor them to whatever his specific players made. In an MMO though, all content has to be playable by all players and thus either the content needs to allow variable difficulty or the players have to be forced into a more rigid system so their power levels don't vary quite so much.

Some dedicated storytellers might be able to do this through the Foundry, I don't know yet how customizable the baddies are going to be.

[General Idiot]

I believe you pick from predetermined mob packs, but don't quote me on that.

[Kistulot]

I believe you pick from predetermined mob packs, but don't quote me on that.

If this is true (hah, quoted you - but I wont hold you to it!) thats a huge step down from what I was hoping for from it. Sigh.

[Synnerman]

Hello,

I hope this isn't too silly a question, but did the D&D flight spell make it into the game?

Thanks

[General Idiot]

Not that I've seen or heard about, no.

[Lily Barclay]

On feats. No, classes don't share feats in the sense that if you are a fighter you can't pick something from a rogue's trees. However, there are common feats that are in more than one class's tree. Also, there are the different paths within each class's feats that you can choose from. Each of these can make how you play your class vary wildly from someone who picks a different path. And now I feel like I am bumping against the NDA, so I will shut up until after the next beta.

But no, it still doesn't allow you to customize as much as CoH does. Nothing does really and still remains not confusing. It does allow you to change your character for your preferred style and does allow you to roll two characters of the same class that play differently, but not as many combinations as CoH would give you.

[Mistress Urd]

On the other hand, if you allow a more freeform approach to classes and feats and such as in the tabletop then characters naturally vary in power a lot. Someone will make something to fit a concept that's actually a little gimped, but they won't care because concept. Others will go the other way and make the most overpowered character they can, concept be damned. And of course all sorts of variations in and around those.

Thing is, in a tabletop game that works because you have a real person running the bad guys who can tailor them to whatever his specific players made. In an MMO though, all content has to be playable by all players and thus either the content needs to allow variable difficulty or the players have to be forced into a more rigid system so their power levels don't vary quite so much.

CoH chose the former. Neverwinter by all appearances has chosen the latter. Personally I think both are valid approaches, but I prefer the way CoH did it.

That is often the fine tuning balance act in game design. How do you allow for maximum freedom without appearing to "dumb" the game down by limiting choices to prevent gimping. I saw this with 4E. When they released Essentials, they really took choices away from the player and that didn't go over too well. I can see why they made Essentials, to keep player power levels within a predictable range. It never is an easy choice. I had the same impression with Diablo 3, the game got dumbed down.

Anyways, it will be interesting to see how this game does.

[malonkey1]

Well, Essentials looked gimped, until you realized that there were a lot of classes that had buffing powers which granted free normal attacks. A lot of Essentials powers are used as normal attacks. Ergo, with a Bard or similar buffer, you could clobber anything.