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State of the game
Lord.Bachus
Member RarePosts: 9,686
in Neverwinter
Whats the current state of this game?
what has improved since release?
would it be a good time to return?
how is the player created content comming along?
is there any good PvP going on?
is there enough grouping pve content and is it not to hard to find groups?
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Comments
I've only been playing for about a month but it is a ton of fun so far. It's casual enough to where you can play for an hour and walk away, yet deep enough to where you can play for several hours straight. To answer your questions (best I can):
State of the Game: Polished game with active players. I guess that's about all that really matters, right?
Has it Improved?: Didn't play at release, so I don't know. From what I understand there is a ton of new content compared to its earlier months. I don't know if it was buggy at release, but I haven't run into any bugs while playing.
Good Time to Return?: It seems active to me, and that's how I always gauge that question. No one wants to return to a dead game.
Player Created Content: I did not expect this feature when I started playing and just recently started exploring it. There are tons of Foundry missions you can do and (most) of them I've played are better than the developer created stuff. Some really cool themes and such.
PvP: Well, the PvP is all instanced and I have mixed feelings about that, but I can say this: It's active. I queue for PvP and find a match in a minute or two. The balance is so-so. Rogues rule the world, but if you can get a match without rogues it can be very fun.
Grouping PvE: Finding a group is not that hard during primetime. It is not that hard during off-hours, but takes a little more time. If more people would just use the freaking group queue then it would quick and easy. For reason about half the players don't use it though so you have to manually get a group together. I would imagine this is easier if you're in a guild (which I'm not). There are times I queue for a skirmish or dungeon get put in a party almost instantly.
As for monetization (I know you didn't ask about that), I *think* it's better than it used to be. I guess mounts used to be $40 or some craziness like that. The prices right now are about average if not a little higher than is typical for cash shops. I prefer sub-based games, but I've spent about $20 so far and don't really regret it. I do hate, HATE, buying inventory and character slots. So I do have give this game a -1 for making you pay for that. The other stuff all seems reasonable to me.
Hope that helps some.
What greater tribute to free will than the power to question the highest of authority? What greater display of loyalty than blind faith? What greater gift than free will? What greater love than loyalty?
the game is F2P so just update it and try it
I have been playing for about a year and it has really really gone downhill, it was really fun at first but now everything is about getting you to spend money. They account bound many items you buy for cash/zen that I used to purchase to sell on the auction house for in game currency.
Also the campaigns on the last 2 mods were basically non existent, only more grinding and instead of leveling your character , you had to get the new artifact gear and level it at ungodly prices. it's become grind grind grind with no new exploration or story line, even the Icewind mod was pretty weak on chain quests or campaigns. They have things they call campaigns but really it's just repeat the same missions over and over til you get enough drops/rewards to get the next tier of the campaign.
Also they rarely fix any big problem, the temple of Tiamat is such a mess that most people just skip it. IMHO The bean counters have just demolished the creative talent. I was hoping for some more ares to explore and some more storylines in the new mod 6 but I just saw a post that there would be none in it.
When I first started I read a review that you could get anything that you could pay for for free also but that is just because you have a way to exchange in game currency for ZEN which is the currency you buy for cash but usually there is such a backlog buying Zen for ingame currency that it takes forever.
There's also no good way to make ingame currency, crafting is practically useless, anything you craft usually sells for less than the mats cost on the AH and the drop rates on crafting materials is horrendous (and most everything else worth anything)
New players may not see this at first but as you get close to max level it becomes quite obvious. I have played other mmorpgs, SWTOR and WoW to name 2, and I have never had to ASK for the rules to make sure I don't accidentally break an unknown rule or for any other reason come to think of it and I been playing online since before AOL.
Anyway the mechanic in the other online FTP games has been non cash players grind out drops to sell on the AH to cash players who don't want to go thru the trouble. Or by getting epic/legendary items to sell on the AH but in NW most are bop so there goes that.
And for some reason, not sure why the trading behaviour of the NW population is inane. Things you can buy in game are sold on the ah for more than you can just but them for. Things are sold for ungodly prices that makes me think there are a lot of cash players with lots of cash to throw at this game. It's all I can think of that would account for it. For instance peridots, a refining stone to level uo enchantments and artifact gear were about 15k for 99 on average, then there was a double rp weekend and they went 100k plus, thats an increase of over 700% and they just stayed there. And thats just one example.I have no idea why this happens.
So in my opinion this game has lost a lot and it saddens me. I still play but not as much and I don't spend money on it anymore because of the changes they've made. I mean once I've bought everything I want, why spend more? I can't sell things on the AH anymore because most are bound.
And one more really important thing, if you play this DO NOT spend a lot of time leveling your gear because in a short while it will get nerfed. This is a real hot topic right now but kind of a nono to discuss on their forum. 3 months (maybe 2) of grinding and/or spending lots and lots of in game currency to level the "NEW" artifact gear and now a new mod comes out with better gear and more leveling to go with it, so all that time and effort wasted because here comes mod 6 with new better gear to waste time on, what are they thinking? $$$$$$$$$$ is what I think
Anyway to some up, no real new content just redecorated grinds and a terrible in game currency ratio of time to value and more and more ways to try to force you to spend money. YEEEAAAAAA I feel better, been muzzled for so long by the nazis on that "other" forum. Sorry I was so long winded
I like the graphics,a lot, and the secondary stats have all been given actually useful mechanics in game. But that's all; there's not much left to recommend for the game.
It bears only a passing resemblance to actual D&D mechanics. My mage is level 60 (70 with the new module next week) and has some absurd 10,000+ hit points. Each character class gets fixed skills. You can very slightly tweak which skills get more bonuses, but everyone gets the same skills regardless. (Dungeons & Dragons Online was/is far more true to the pen-and-paper experience.)
The game is very much "on rails", so there's really only one zone you should be in at any given time, and the point of the zone is to outlevel it and leave it as soon as possible. The population is now so top-heavy in character levels, that you'll have trouble finding full parties for the dungeons anywhere but the current "in" place to be for the latest module.
Don't bother leveling equipment, as someone else pointed out. They keep adding modules and increasing character levels, so your gear is irrelevant in a short time anyway.
There's a pray-at-the-altar mechanic in game that's getting nerfed in the upcoming mod. Instead of getting a front-loaded bonus on the first prayer (with diminishing returns on the next 2 prayers), they are now rear-loading so that you have to do it 6 times daily in order to reap the most significant reward (a second helping of another kind of in-game currency). I'm unhappy with this particular change.
All of the crafting skills that generate items are useless. You'll be far beyond their level before you are able to craft them, and even if you can craft them, you get better stuff adventuring. The only crafting skill that's useful is the one that generates no items... just money.
I can't think of a single pc game that was well served by designing it to work on a console too.So, what you're saying is that the game hasn't changed at all. Glad to know. No need to waste any time giving the game another shot. I was a $60 founder before launch. The game had a lot of potential. Quickly destroyed by greed. I think they could even teach Trion a thing or two.
Minecraft?