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My unbiased opinion on the game
Dhaeman
Member Posts: 531
Hi, I've been playing DDO the past couple of days and would like to give the most unbiased opinion of what the game does well and poorly. I've played two characters up to level 2. I've been avoiding most threads here to form my own opinion and my extent of involvement with D&D has been Baldur's Gate and very little NWN. So here's what I have to say:
Pros:
- I feel this is the best instancing I've seen in a game. I'm typically against it but going through each quest the first time or two, it really does feel like an adventure. The DM voice is a nice touch.
- Combat is fairly enjoyable due to the D&D ruleset. Multiple encounters besides the main boss can be difficult which keeps a party on their toes.
- Experience for finishing objectives is a plesant alternative to killing enemies. It takes some of the grind mentality away and replaces it with the feeling you are actually playing a game.
- You can create a guild right away. And you'll want one for questing.
- Level/Rank advancement happens at regular intervals and the enhancements and level up benefits are fun and unique.
- You can only rest a limited number of times per mission. Some people are annoyed by this but I think it puts more pressure on the party to play like a team. If you mess up too often you'll need to run to a tavern instead of plopping down in the middle of a dungeon.
Cons:
- The servers are too small and can make it difficult to find a group, especially once people spread out even further in levels.
- You need a group to advance. This isn't the problem. What is though is the fact that you may not be able to find a group and even if you do, they may offer a very poor experience.
- I don't see any interesting content will be available at max level (10).
- Going back to the tavern to heal after finishing every quest is an unnecessary drag. This downtime not only slows the pace of the game down but splinters parties into various activities that make getting back in the swing of things even more difficult.
- Finding and outfitting a good group with similar objectives in mind is difficult. You really need a decent sized guild or a group of regulars to play with.
- New players will run into trouble a few weeks after release. This goes back to the required grouping. Who are these players going to adventure with?
- The world is not very immersive due to the instancing.
- No crafting but it's very minor in the scope of what DDO offers.
In the end, when I really go into the quest I had a very enjoyable time. The problem was that it was difficult to find a group who took less than 15 minutes to rest up/sell items/whatever between each quest. Not to mention, sometimes people were just poor players or there weren't enough people interested in what I was doing. But this is remedied by finding a group of regulars or a guild. The area where DDO loses value is when compared to NWN. DDO stores characters on an official server but if you want what DDO offers (concentrating on the adventure and not the level up) then NWN does this just as well, if not better. That's especially true with all of the player made campaigns available.
I've now uninstalled after several hours of play the past couple of days but still think this is more enjoyable than several MMOs on the market to date.
Comments
Very well done review.
The only thing I disagree with is the immersion factor.
I find this game more immersive because of isntancing. There are no intruders into your adventures and with less adventurers running about it all seems more believable. NWN is also "isntanced" and so are most other SP rpgs, except a few, like Morrowind, and I don't find that the "instancing" in those games detracts from immersion. In the end it only cuts down on sensless travel time.
Would I have liked to see actual ships that move around? Sure. Would it be more immersive? Sure, the first time you get on them. Yet in the end it saves production time, and really does not add anything to the gameplay in major way.
nice!
but well its one thing all mmo got its problem none is perfect, yet!
Always do the right thing
As far as immersion goes, DDO does it right and it does it wrong.
I feel the game lacks immersion as far as believing you are part of a living, breathing world. There is nothing really happening in the world. Nothing changes. You don't really feel anything one way or another about what happens. Your goal is to quest and level up.
As far as the instances themselves go, yes you are quite immersed. These don't feel like a WoW instance your first time through. You can really get into the adventure, especially using voice communication. After doing a particular mission a few times though it really does turn into a bore.
Because of this, I feel there is more of a lack of immersion than depth.
Instancing is really a tough thing to do in an MMORPG because in all honesty it just doesn't work. It kills the feeling of a greater community with an actual impact on the world around them as well as on other players around them and I think that's really what players want. They want a virtual world that simulates the real world in many aspects including the possibility of impacting that world greatly. But being that this is Dungeons and Dragons it makes absolute sense for the devs to make the game instanced. The focus in DnD is on you and your party and no one else. It would be too conflicting to the genre to make the game any other way. If you're questing through a massive dungeon and suddenly you run up on another group of adventurers on their way out who've already tore through the place then you need to wait for everything to respawn and this really just kills the feeling of a DnD game.
However, if the game is going to be instanced then there needs to be a huge GM team on hand like Hero's Journey is going to have that can continually make new and different missions that are only available for a limited time. GM's who can constantly create new dungeons and breathe new life into the game. I'm not sure but I don't think that DDO is going to have this so...
I really wanted to like this game. I am a big fan of the Eberron setting. But D&D online isn't really a mmorpg, as much as it is a kind of NWN online experience. Goto tavern, talk to static npc, get quest, enter instance, rinse and repeat. If it was on a pricing scheme like Guild Wars where I pay for the game and then did not pay a monthly fee, then I would buy this game; but for $15 or so a month? Goodness no.
The interface is rather counterintuitive, then again Ive been terribly spoiled by wow's very easy from the get go interface and movement via holding down both buttons of the mouse. I had the same kindof problems when beta testing Matrix Online. Indeed, I had the same feeling of "hrmm not a game I am going to pay to play when it goes live". And I have beta tested about a dozen games, some of which, like wow, coh and eve I played for many months, and in the case of wow, for nearly a year.
Not sure what to make of all races being able to play any of the classes. Naturally given some of the inherent buffs and stat losses of some of the classes I am not sure why Id want a warforged rogue, though honestly the thought of a seven foot tall, several hundred pound golum of iron being a ninja is a bit odd ;-)
All in all, this game could have been better, deeper and more engaging. Yes it is a beta, but I think it is safe to say, what we see currently is a good dose of what we're going to get when the game goes live in ? four weeks? Ill save my pennies for NWN2. peace now