Preview of Neverwinter From Cryptic and PWE

What server is everyone on these days?

Dragon last I knew. I'll admit that lately I've spent far more time managing my crafting queue on their web gateway than I've spent in game.

Any news/date on the new classes?

All I keep hearing is rumor, the most popular of which is that the ranger class, and possibly drow race, will be made available on the "official" launch date.

I want Swordmage... >_> Also, Monk.

The rumored ranger and warlock would get me back playng in a New York minute!

The "official" launch is the 20th right? I thought the drow race was for those with deep pockets that bought the $200 founder pack...

fangblackbone wrote:

The rumored ranger and warlock would get me back playng in a New York minute!

The "official" launch is the 20th right? I thought the drow race was for those with deep pockets that bought the $200 founder pack...

As I understood it, the Menzoberranzan race and the spider mount were given to those of us with deep pockets as a 60-day head start on availability. So the idea was that the race and mount would be available to everyone (for purchase, of course) after 60 days. Not sure what the prices would be for that, but I'm sure the spider will be at least $40 based on similar mount prices.

I'm looking forward to the ranger and warlock as well - one of the devs did state that one of the new classes would be able to have native utility of the Nature nodes. That makes me think of Ranger, Barbarian, and Druid as potential classes. The devs have also stated that they're adding a ranged striker class, but they haven't stated the striker class will also be the Nature class. So that means that to me the list looks like: Wizard variant, Warlock, Ranger, Barbarian, and Druid.

Personally, I'm upset about the way that the classes are built to begin with. If I were in charge of the classes, I'd do things like this:

I would design my classes around the four core archetypes, as they did in 4th edition: Defender, Leader, Striker, Controller. Down the road, Tank would be expanded to include Paladin for example. Leader would add Warlord. Controller would add Druid and/or Invoker. I'd release the classes similarly to the release in the books. Initially, I'd have 2 Leader classes, 2 Defender classes, 3 Striker classes, and 1 Controller class. Then I'd add the classes from PHB2 and PHB3, finally (or with either of the other releases) I'd release Swordmage, which is unique to the Forgotten Realms setting.

After all is said and done, you'd have 6 Leaders, 5 Defenders, 7 Strikers, and 5 Controllers. That's a lot of classes, sure. But think of it this way: we're looking at a minimum of 2 variants of each class released (Great Weapon Fighter and Guardian Fighter, for example). Within each variant, we're looking at a minimum of 2 Paragon Paths (I expect we'll see 3). So if they released only these next two classes, we'd still have a minimum of 28 variants. My suggestion is that we only have 23. For true variation, I would delve into itemization.

If we didn't have class-restricted equipment, then the variations would be inherent to the players, not to the system. This would give the players more freedom of options while still allowing the developers to control the overall flow of the game more easily. Also, D&D doesn't have much in the way of gear restrictions outside of restrictions tied into the classes themselves. I understand not wanting to allow someone with a great weapon to wear full plate, but D&D overcomes this by giving a Fighter a lot of bonuses for operating within his/her role. The only concern I could see would be the appearance factor. Gear has a unique appearance, and so making all chain mail available to Rogues would mean a lot more work with animations and such. But this is overcome by making it so that all Rogue gear shares models. So a Rogue wearing chain would look like a Rogue wearing leather, but with a chain texture in spots. This reduces the amount of work the artists have to do in the long run (it's more up-front though). Besides, with the cosmetic appearance option that already exists, a Rogue can run around in a dress.

Anyway, enough of my rant. I'm reposting this rant in the Neverwinter forums though. I hope the devs see it and decide to take some of my suggestions into consideration.

TL;DR version: No to multiclassing in my book, no to gear restriction, yes to class purity.

Some of the gear variations can be done with texture swaps to. Like you said, a rogue wearing chain could look like a rogue wearing leather with half of the leather bits textured as scale or chain. (or increase painted on studs and adornments) This way, no new animations would need to be created. (which takes much more dev cycles than retexturing or remodeling)

Imho, the proper way to tackle creating armor look art assets is to start from the top. What I mean by this is start with the most advanced/ornate armor the race/class can wear, then animate that model so that it looks as dynamic as possible without the bits intersecting or awkwardly positioned. Then it should be easier to scale back the ornamentation for the middle and lower tiered armors. In this case, I would also create ornate plate or scale like structures for the leather, cloth and padded armors even if they won't be used so that you have room to grow or options should you decide to loosen armor restrictions.

I think one mistake devs make that requires less work, is to have standard animations that are used as a base for the weapons equipped regardless of armor type or race. Yes it isn't too hard to tweek an existing animation to fit a half ogre and a halfling swinging dual daggers. However, I think devs make a mistake in believing that not only do armor types dictate fighting styles and stances, but looks within the same armor are more effective when they dictate posture, attitude in the attacks or fighting style.

I guess it really does relate to what you mentioned about class purity. It is something GW2 does absolutely right because a Mesmer and an Elementalist have completely different fighting styles and personalities even though they are both adorned in silks, and cottons. The Ranger and the Thief both wear leather and both wield short bows but neither would be even remotely confused for the other in combat. Warriors and Guardians wield great swords, hammers, maces, shields, and heavy armor yet they remain distinct as well.

TLDR - I think weapon equiping/animating restrictions are the lazy way to address class core identity.

fangblackbone wrote:

The rumored ranger and warlock would get me back playng in a New York minute!

The "official" launch is the 20th right? I thought the drow race was for those with deep pockets that bought the $200 founder pack...

Drow as a race option will be open to everyone eventually. The Menzoberranzan Renegade, along with the mount, is exclusive to folks with deep pockets.

as off today, Neverwinter is LIVE!

http://nw.perfectworld.com/news/?p=9...

Uh oh, here comes the riff raff
IMAGE(http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/21700000/Riff-Raff-the-rocky-horror-picture-show-21700878-510-290.gif)

Sun and Moon Elves in the first module as playable races.

Hopefully we will hear soon about the new class(es).

groan wrote:

Uh oh, here comes the riff raff
IMAGE(http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/21700000/Riff-Raff-the-rocky-horror-picture-show-21700878-510-290.gif)

Lol, ironically I JUST installed this on Tuesday. Kinda forgot about it for a bit (got sidetracked on Far Cry 3). I wasn't sure about it at first. But someone once said this felt more like Diablo 3 than a WoW-style MMO, and that's not a bad thing. Once I installed and started playing with that mindset, it really is pretty fun.

I'm still way early, and except for the end of beta invasion events, I haven't done anything that involves other people at all. But I like how it feels and I'm finding the setting interesting.

So yea, count me among the riff raff

Sorry, had checked out of this thread for awhile. Someone posted a frustration with Mad Dragon, and that's normal, that dungeon is so annoyingly difficult. I've beat it four times now trying to get that Stalwart helm to drop, it didn't and I finally made enough AD playing the AH to buy it outright (625k AD).

And the pathing in Mt Hotenow was terrible but has since been fixed for questing.

Are any of you guys frequently on the Grievance team speak? I'm often on there and I'm feeling really comfortable with that group.

Username: Waeward

I'm usually in the Grievance TS whenever I'm in game. I'm always looking for T2 runs with either my CW or GWF. At the moment I've been leveling up my DC in between dungeon delves.

RifRaf here... Groan mentioned that this was the closest thing to an active thread... as almost all the other people I used to group with seem to have fallen off the planet, I was wondering how active GWJ is in Neverwinter.

My highest toon is only level 20 (GWF), but I'm beginning to get bored of solo play in massivly online games....

Join the grievance guild. They are quite active and helpful.

Let me know when you want to get on and I'll run around with you. groan Jr (Darckus) also likes to play.

I'm still on almost nightly and I joined up with the Grievance guild. Even a lot of Grievance's alpha players seem to have dropped out for a bit to go player other stuff. That is one problem with a lot of hardcore players, they wring all of the content out of a MMO in a matter of weeks instead of months and then they're gone until a new expansion comes out.

I haven't played in a couple months. Made it to 60 and becuase the high tier dungeons would make me crash to desktop, I got frustrated and stopped playing.

The complaint I'm hearing from more than a few of early dungeon runners is that the boss fights are dull and uninteresting and that's why some of them are leaving. I'm still enjoying the tier 2 dungeon runs but others point out that it seems Cryptic's solution for making every boss fight hard is "spawn more adds" and "have them cast more red circles" which I can definitely see. A couple of the bosses have an extra mechanic or two that you have to work around but, for the majority, the fights are all about kiting adds around while a rogue beats on the boss. To be honest, if I wasn't continuing to level up alts and outfit them for dungeons run I might've been done by now too but the different ways the classes approach a fight has kept it fresh for me.

I think also is that its just not that interesting enough. I strongly believe that the traditional MMO is a dying breed. People just dont want to do the grind over and over anymore. Neverwinter brought a few new things to the table but IMO not nearly enough to keep people playing.

I know for me the crazy AD vs gold vs grind in this game is crazy bad. Just the thought of how much you need to do to get some of the end game stuff (top level enchantments for example) are enough to make me not want to play.

I feel like that aspect of the game is definitely geared towards convincing people to spend real cash. I've spent 20 bucks on the game to buy a mount that was on sale and some character slots. All of my level 60's are in full T2 gear with mid-range enchantments on them. It's nothing mind-blowing but it lets me experience all of the content in the game if I want. If I wanted the best of the best gear then I'd either have to grind content like a madman or spend hundreds of dollars of real world money.

The system they've put in place is actually extremely complex from a money-making perspective. They allow access to the majority of the gear at no real cost but the top tier items all have a choke point of sorts that costs tons of AD. Those few choke points have a ripple effect that increases the cost of all higher tier items by an insane amount due to the amount of AD that MUST be spent by someone, somewhere, to make these things. That inflation then puts the high end stuff out of the realm of most non-paying players.

To use something with a fixed cost for an example, let's say you really want that one companion that's only available in the zen (real money) store for $40 but you don't want to spend the cash to get it. You can convert your in-game astral diamonds to zen but you only make astral diamonds from running daily quests or selling items on the auction house to other players. Right now it costs about 333 astral diamonds to purchase 1 zen so to purchase that companion you would need about 1,332,000 astral diamonds. If you're not selling some of the better raid gear pieces that can go from 100k to over 500k astral diamonds a piece then you would need to run all of your daily quests for about 166 days in order to buy it. I basing that on you getting something like 8k astral diamonds a day if you run everything but the new gauntalgrym dailies. The fact that the high end enchanments can go anywhere from 1-3 million AD a piece would mean that some people would have to play the game for years to get the highest end stuff without dropping any realy money.

There are some guys in the Grievance guild that have spent thousands of dollars on this game buying keys to open the random gift chests. Yes, thousands. I know one of those guys has over 100 million AD and tons of rare loot in the bank but he's definitely the outlier. Of course for every one of those guys that Neverwinter hooks is worth a hundred WoW players who are only paying $15 a month to play.

Kehama wrote:

Of course for every one of those guys that Neverwinter hooks is worth a hundred WoW players who are only paying $15 a month to play.

Or to not play, as many of my friends still keep a subscription active in WoW for God-knows-why.

Re: the dungeon bosses. I've read somewhere that in the Feywild expansion, the bosses will focus more on mechanics and less on adds. Time will tell though.

Any chance we have a GWJ guild and its on Mindflayer?

As far as I know all of us GWJ guys are in the Grievance guild on Dragon.

Mind if I filthy skim and ask a few newb questions?

What level do you need to be to join a guild?
Did they separate U.S. from Europe (cause I looked at guild list on Dragon from here and did not see Grievance)?

I asked in a channel, what's a newb to do besides quests, and they kept saying PvP, and...okay, where does that happen?
(I've played WoW, so I've seen all the models of PvP there...)

Best way to find a low level group? I looked at that interface for finding groups, and it didn't seem terribly informative...just what quest they're doing, which at this point means nothing to me.

Any other advice?

There's no level restriction on joining a guild.

Grievance is still on the Dragon server and we've got members from every continent in game and in the guild so that shouldn't be an issue.

You can PvP once you hit level 10 and you get into a match the same way you queue for a dungeon, just be sure to grab the daily quest before heading in so you can get some extra AD. You can get the quests by either talking to Rhix or, I think, hitting K to bring up the menu with daily quests and foundry content. Just going from memory, could be wrong. There are only 2 PvP maps and both are 3 capture points where the winner is the first team to get to 1k points.

The only queue they have for grouping is for dungeons, skirmishes and PvP. The dungeons and skirmishes available to you change based on your level. They also just added a LFG chat channel so you can spam that if you're just looking for a questing group. To my knowledge the LFG channel is instance and map specific.

Roo wrote:

I asked in a channel, what's a newb to do besides quests, and they kept saying PvP, and...okay, where does that happen?
(I've played WoW, so I've seen all the models of PvP there...)

PvP in Neverwinter sucks. Last time I looked, you get stunlocked indefinitely - there's no resistance build up or whatnot. So Control Wizards just destroy the battlefield. If you want to do PvP, hit level 10 and you'll get a mission to take you to the PvP person. After that, you can queue up from anywhere with the K button menu.

Roo wrote:

Best way to find a low level group? I looked at that interface for finding groups, and it didn't seem terribly informative...just what quest they're doing, which at this point means nothing to me.

You probably won't need a group until you try to do a dungeon delve. At level 15-16 (when you finish the Tower District) you get the ability to have a companion. Many players go with the Cleric companion specifically for soloing. Companions don't have much in the way of damage output, crowd control, or tanking ability - so unless you're a Cleric yourself, you probably want a Cleric companion.

I didn't have time at lunch to read the whole thread. I just started playing Neverwinter Online, taking a break from Path of Exile.

My Question: When in running through an area and see someone battling, do I mess up his EXP if I stop and help him or her out? In Guild Wars, there is no harm in helping others in a fight. What's the deal in Neverwinter?

You don't get credit like GW2, but no harm as far as I know.