Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[General Article] Neverwinter: Port to XBox One Done Right
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Hey there MMORPG fans, Terry here, coming at you with a review of Neverwinter on the X-BONE. Full disclosure, I have a couple of hundred hours logged into the PC version of the game, so there is not a lot here that surprised me, as far as gameplay and plot goes, but that's really a GOOD thing, because it means that the 'port to Xbox was done right!
Read more of Terry O'Brien's Neverwinter: Port to XBox One Done Right.
)
Comments
Can't comment on the review part since I don't play consoles, so just a slight correction: NWN =/= Neverwinter
NWN, Bioware, single (mostly)
Neverwinter, Cryptic, online (though very solo-able
)
Neverwinter online, solo-able -> Until the new Module 6, which has just hit the PC version and will arrive on XBox in due course, and has raised a storm of epic forum proportions.
As 'new' content they have forced players back to the old leveling areas - just with higher level mobs in. Players currently going through the Mod5 areas to rack up tokens for their gear have been blocked overnight, as these areas have been raised and filled with hard hitting level 73 mobs.
There is a brand new area toward the end of the leveling quests. But by then players have lost interest due to the mind numbing leveling quest mechanics, which take repeat questing to a new low - and that takes some doing.
What does cash grabbing even mean? People seem to use it to refer to anything they think is over priced.... makes me cringe every time I see it used which is far too often.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
well.. no went so well. Chat not work and the greed hotkey is the same hotkey for leaving the party.
fun times.
Lock boxes is gambling! Pure and simple! Cash grabbing in it's purest form! Las Vegas inside an MMO!
I have said it many times! I am still baffled governments let these game companies getting away with it! Especially here in Europe, where gambling is forbidden in many countries and/or heavily legislated!
Especially since the majority of people playing these games are teenagers (minors) !
[...]they are honestly not REQUIRED to enjoy the game[...]
Depends. Unless you are extraordinarily lucky (and i mean, really really really extremely super extraordinary, not just ordinardy extraordinary. I have a friend who always gets those rare drops, manages to sell something for like 100 times the regular price by mistake (typo when selling it via AH, and someone actually buys it..), and even though he had like 5 times my money, that little additional high end equipment he could afford with that barely made a scratch when looking at damage etc.) you will never get even close to real high end gear. You may get the armor drops, or the occasionally pricy resource used to craft said armor, but the enchantments? No chance.
Well okay, i guess you can play like 1000 hours per piece. Which means what you are aiming for will be horrendously outdated before you acqurie even the first piece. And remember, almost every piece of armor needs an enchantment aswell as the weapons.
And with the highly varying difficulty among the endgame dungeons, and with said difficulty taking another step with the "special" dungeons like Valindras, Malabogs (though relatively easy among them) and Castle Never. And whatever they added in the mean time.
So yes, the game is fun while it lasts, but if you want to compete in PVP or just want to see all there is to see, you will either have to grind incredibly hard, call Daft Punk or simply pay.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
All it takes is one legal complaint at the European commission.
+1
Cash grabbing obviously refers to a game that's free.... and you don't have to pay anything for. IMO, the price doesn't really matter because it's rare that price is going to influence someone to actually purchase something at a cash shop. I think the purchase decision has very little to do with principal.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
On the PC side, there are currently severe lag issues in the higher level areas, have been since the introduction of Mod 6 - which lasted less than an hour before the whole thing crashed for a several hour blackout.
At last the XB1 owners finally have their own Fantasy MMO, not the greatest one perhaps but a decent enough game, if a tad on the cash shop heavy side, and anyone who thinks those boxes don't impact much, i lucked out with a sword at level 8 that was still better than the random loot stuff at level 30
which only proves that if your prepared to drop a few $$ on the game, you can totally grab yourself some nice gear, probably P2W, but its not a pvp game afaik, or at least, i only experienced the PVE part of it, not a bad game to keep you amused for a month or two, not sure about long term, although some will like it enough, and frankly, on the XB1, its not like the game will really have much competition 
But, good to see that the XB1 finally gained a proper MMO, and with all the player created content in the game already, at least it won't be like Destiny, where the content wasn't just lacking, it was practically nonexistent
Spot on review Terry, I agree with all of it and especially the INTRUSIVE admin broadcasting when someone finds something in a lock box. It is absolutely horrible! It was so bad one night that there was a message every few minutes and it was interfering with game play.
One time I was in a dungeon fighting this boss and the message pops up and blocked my view. I was almost killed. In case anyone has not seen this yet, it's not a chat message but a message that pops up directly in the middle of your screen in large bold lettering and you can't turn it off!!!!
I never seen anything so intrusive to game play then this system. They should really stop it.
And if they are popping up that often, how much money is being spent on those keys to unlock them!!?? Since it is never a one to one ratio, you know players are spending a lot of money opening these boxes until they get 'the prize'. I bet some players spend more money trying to get this silly prize then they would on a monthly subscription to another game. So much for f2p.
Mystery Bounty
The game was made with consoles in mind so I don't see how they couldn't port this right.
Action combat, limited skills, bland controls and camera movement and gameplay that wont tax a system.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
I wouldn't have called it "Done Right" by any means! HA! That's a good one!
First they didn't port over the founder packs which btw weren't pc saved data they were purchases made using the PWE store system before the game launched so their excuse not to do this because it's a PC save and therefore not compatible isn't fooling anyone.
Second, their hampsters are still dying I dunno if they hired Timex to maintain their servers or what but whoever they have doing it is the worst in the business. You know darned well that there's an issue on their side when both the PC and the Console version has the exact same lag spikes and the exact same unresponsive server problems!
And Finally, just after doing "maintenance" honestly I don't know how they can call it that when every time they do it they end up with more problems then what they were doing maintenance for in the first place, they suddenly started having problems where people couldn't get their Zen and some people were charged multiple times because it didn't complete which made them have to wait longer to get a refund!
This launch was so far away from "Done Right" you just might as well change the title right now.
every time i logged in to Warframe on PC and landed a 50% cash shop discount i would make a purchase right away. Too bad i never landed a 75% discount, i would have totally go on a limb. I dont buy overpriced microtransactions in a free game because i can use that money on higher quality games and still have some leftovers for something else.
So yes, if you like the game, pricing makes a huge difference.
Steam sales are another example.
Cash grabbing is when a company tries to hide the requirements behind a cleverly designed currency conversion system. It's a system that's been used to fool a number of players out there into thinking that they aren't paying for anything they wouldn't normally buy when in fact it's often tied to progression as it is here in this game and others out there. For example, they make crafting extremely difficult to complete without a large amount of money to even get the most basic of progression out of it such as buying crafting packs from the store in order to get the higher quality crafting workers, or the enchanting system that requires that you buy wards to prevent a failure from completely destroying your work at higher levels (a korean invention btw). It's not entirely free and we really need legislation in this country that keeps companies like PWE from mislabeling their products as we've seen in other countries with stronger court systems.
Come check the game out if you havnt seen it
Ill be streaming everyday afternoonish time (mountain time) for a couple hours. Please stop by and hit up chat with any questions you have about the game or want to ask me if its worth playing, or stop by just to chat. Ill be making a guild here today in the game so if anyone is looking for an inv, again hit me up in twitch chat. Today im leveling up my cleric.
Make sure you sub up as well please, trying to build up followers so i can do this full time and test/review games
Nah, I believe the freedom and/or privacy from governments is maybe even wider here than over there with Patriot Act and HS and stuff
but I guess JeroKane ment the customer protection which is indeed stronger here, just check the ignorable TOS-es if those contain any bullsh.t, or the copyright handling.
Anyways, publishers are smart enough to maneuver within the grey area, so while I agree with JK that it's gambling in the end, technically it's not. So, nothing will happen to them in Eu either...
It's a simple digital good purchase, you buy the key for a fixed price, just like any other stuff from the Store... It's up to you what you'll do with it, you can sell it (safe method of ingame money purchase, and of course legit) or use it with a box. If the latter, it's still not gambling, more like a raffle, since you always get something in return. True, it's luck-based, you can get something cheap, or something cool. When it started to raise some concerns, they bypassed it with Lobi (in STO, I think Neverwinter started with the bars already built in).
edit: "but I'm glad I can make my own choices about what I want to spend." JK was wrong in that, you can spend it here too
gambling is not forbidden here either, just most countries keep it to themselves, and taxing it like hell.
It is not so much that this was a "port done right", so much as the game was so shallow and its game mechanics so mind numbingly simple, that it should never have been a PC title in the first place.
If done in reverse (released on console first) this game would have been considered an even bigger joke than it already was.
(And it was an affront to D&D fans everywhere and to all others but a few hardcore fanbois: shallow game, bad game management, bad company running the thing.)