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My thoughts after giving it a second go
natuxatu
Member UncommonPosts: 1,364
Well when I heard it was going to be free to play this summer i downloaded and give it a second go.
I think this game has a lot of potential but kinda missed the mark. It's not bad at all. I just feel like the controls and character models are still a little clunk. Example: The characters well more often than not freeze in animation and the swinging stuff needs work.
The only other things are the lack of tutorial. I still don't know what some of the stats do. I know it says in the manual.. but a game as complex as this should have a little more of a tutorial in my opinion. Also more content. I don't mind doing dungeons over again but right off the bat before I even got to level 2 I had to repeat dungeons several times... this may change later on but it gives a bad first impression. Even more quests in the same dungeon early on would be nice.
NOW there are some things about this game I love... I like the use of traps, ladders, breakable items, and all that. No other MMO compares to D&D in that aspect. I wish this game would make a D&D2 I would be all over it.
I think it has it's problems and I don't know if I'll play it much more but I hope other MMOs or a future D&D MMO take note at the quality of the instanced areas. I love it. Solving the tile puzzle in one of the first dungeons and stuff like that are a major part of the mmoRPG aspect that is missing. I'd give the game a 7/10
Comments
I think that Neverwinter Night Online would fill the D&D online hole.....if it even gonna be good
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
You may want to give the game a little more time. You won't enjoy DDO as much if you don't really know what you're doing.
The animations are actually really good. You get more swing animations as you level up. Starting you'll only have the one. Also, in the new mod they added a couple things to the animations to make them smoother. For example, your feet will shuffle around when you turn instead of just a rotating character. Also, in the next mod they added full speech to all the NPC's in dungeons.
Starting out the character development can be overwhelming. Without any D&D experience you're better off using a template character or finding a template on the official forums. There are lots of them and the people there will help you out with anything you need to know. After a while it will make sense and you'll come up with all kinds of strange and interesting builds. Its quite a bit more flexible than any other MMOG out right now, but you gotta know what you're doing.
I don't know why you repeated any dungeons. If you do them all on the normal difficulty you shouldn't have to repeat a single dungeon until you are about level 12-13. I don't know why you were thinking you'd have to repeat dungeons so early.
The combat gets better. Overall its probably the best combat system in any MMOG. Even better than Spellborn which is also very good. Starting out things die way too fast so there is no time or need to use any tactics. That will change by level 3-4 and only gets better as time goes on.
You may want to give the game a little more time. You won't enjoy DDO as much if you don't really know what you're doing.
The animations are actually really good. You get more swing animations as you level up. Starting you'll only have the one. Also, in the new mod they added a couple things to the animations to make them smoother. For example, your feet will shuffle around when you turn instead of just a rotating character. Also, in the next mod they added full speech to all the NPC's in dungeons.
Starting out the character development can be overwhelming. Without any D&D experience you're better off using a template character or finding a template on the official forums. There are lots of them and the people there will help you out with anything you need to know. After a while it will make sense and you'll come up with all kinds of strange and interesting builds. Its quite a bit more flexible than any other MMOG out right now, but you gotta know what you're doing.
I don't know why you repeated any dungeons. If you do them all on the normal difficulty you shouldn't have to repeat a single dungeon until you are about level 12-13. I don't know why you were thinking you'd have to repeat dungeons so early.
The combat gets better. Overall its probably the best combat system in any MMOG. Even better than Spellborn which is also very good. Starting out things die way too fast so there is no time or need to use any tactics. That will change by level 3-4 and only gets better as time goes on.
Oh come on it's common that people run each quest 3 times to get XP and Favor. Do you have to? Maybe not but most seem to do it.
The point, HorrorScope, is that you don't have to repeat quests to level up. My first character repeated quests to get enough favor to unlock Drow. My second hasn't repeated a quest yet at level 10 and still has plenty of quests left. You DEFINITELY don't need to repeat quests to reach level 2.
It might, but I don't hold too much hope of it, Cryptics CoX have really boring quests while the first NWN had great ones and I don't think Cryptic can pull this off.
I hope I am wrong however, love Forgotten realms.
The point, HorrorScope, is that you don't have to repeat quests to level up. My first character repeated quests to get enough favor to unlock Drow. My second hasn't repeated a quest yet at level 10 and still has plenty of quests left. You DEFINITELY don't need to repeat quests to reach level 2.
But... On a good day if you can find groups running quests on Elite, yes to running once perhaps. To level to 10 or so and only run the quests once, yes possible. To a noob, most likely they will be running the same quest many times because they don't know you can go here and there for XP, they go with the way the game leads you. Only runnning them once and only on Normal is like sleep walking, I think for some the fun starts when there is a challenge. Even when I started an ALT I liked a challenge in the quests, yes you look for Elite runs to save time, but that always isn't an option and again means you know a little something more then a noob.
The point, HorrorScope, is that you don't have to repeat quests to level up. My first character repeated quests to get enough favor to unlock Drow. My second hasn't repeated a quest yet at level 10 and still has plenty of quests left. You DEFINITELY don't need to repeat quests to reach level 2.
But... On a good day if you can find groups running quests on Elite, yes to running once perhaps. To level to 10 or so and only run the quests once, yes possible. To a noob, most likely they will be running the same quest many times because they don't know you can go here and there for XP, they go with the way the game leads you. Only runnning them once and only on Normal is like sleep walking, I think for some the fun starts when there is a challenge. Even when I started an ALT I liked a challenge in the quests, yes you look for Elite runs to save time, but that always isn't an option and again means you know a little something more then a noob.
I'm not sure what you're point is. I ran the quests on normal difficulty with 3 other friends. It was sorta easy on the level 1-4 content, about right on the 5-8 content, and was getting very challenging on the 8-10 content. And I'll say it again... We never repeated a single quest on those characters.
I'm too much of a soloer to get into this game but, that said, it is the closest thing to a tabletop game of ANY MMO. I don't know why other devs haven't added traps, hidden passages, mini puzzles and such to their MMORPG's. Best part of DDO imho.
OP, I would greatly recomend you to upgrade your PC in some fassion. What you describe sounds like you have the game set to the absolute LOWEST graphical settings possible. The example given is related to a setting that reduces the system resources so your machine would be able to actually play it.
Also, if the OP is still lurking, could you please post your graphic card, cpu and ram for the PC used to play the game?
The game's animations are VERY smooth and the only time I've recalled seeing anything like what's described is when I was testing various settings in the graphics options; turned everything to the lowest possible setting to get the effect described. The "clunky" appearance is actually what allows the game to scale to PC's that simply lack the processing power needed for better graphics.
Turning up the graphical settings should eliminate the problem. The game's graphics are quite superior if you have everything cranked up all the way with DirectX10 active.
I agree, sounds like the OP has a poor computer.
I thought the animations and controls were very smooth and brilliant.
In anycase, DDO isnt just going free its got a massive expansion with it, which claims to even further improve the controls and animation.
So its a bit premature to judge it prior to the expansion tbh. In anycase even before the expansion I think the game is brilliant! But not for the soloer.