Neverwinter Nights Online. (Cryptic Studios)

[Phred]

The biggest issue I have with this game, aside from the janky running animations and the apparently state-mandated plunging necklines on EVERYTHING, is that there's no DM. 

This'll get a bit better after Foundry authors get the ability to use DM notes (basically raid warning-style text in the middle of the screen) and tie it into the trigger system. It's on the dev shortlist, which means... buggerall, probably.

I thought I'd already seen this in a couple of them. The Hidden Blade and it's sequel  The Lanaar Legacy both use on screen text to tell you what is happening.

[Stormwaltz]

I thought I'd already seen this in a couple of them. The Hidden Blade and it's sequel  The Lanaar Legacy both use on screen text to tell you what is happening.

I just did those, and I don't recall that. But maybe I was too busy reading all the books and such.

The Lanaar Legacy is the best thing I've seen in the game thus far, either official or Foundry. Creeped me out and wound me up.

EDIT: "Two busy?" Log off, Stormwaltz, you're drunk...

[Zetor]

The biggest issue I have with this game, aside from the janky running animations and the apparently state-mandated plunging necklines on EVERYTHING, is that there's no DM.  

This'll get a bit better after Foundry authors get the ability to use DM notes (basically raid warning-style text in the middle of the screen) and tie it into the trigger system. It's on the dev shortlist, which means... buggerall, probably.

I thought I'd already seen this in a couple of them. The Hidden Blade and it's sequel  The Lanaar Legacy both use on screen text to tell you what is happening.

Yeah, my quest has it too. There are two ways to kludge it: by having a "go to x" story objective that'll pop up text on the screen when you reach the marker (this is only usable for really linear maps), and using some trickery with 'fail states' of an interactable object that pops up red text on the screen.

These two are really, really restrictive, though. The DM notes system would allow such text to pop up from any marker / encounter / item / NPC / etc, which is a lot more powerful.

[Phred]

Already kind of bored by level 5. Glad I didn't pay anything.

My first impression can be summed up as: DDO did this same game better, years ago.

If this is true then why did DDO bore me to tears when I tried it and this game has it's hooks in me already?

[Ard]

Yeah, i was really impressed with the hidden blade also.  I just did that today.  It did have popup text in a few places, but you might have missed it, it usually announced the surprise attacks as you touched stuff.  I haven't done the follow up yet, but will tomorrow for the daily probably.

[Ginaz]

I played to level 13 just now. It's pretty fun but every new element of the game seems to have like a dozen currencies or some shit tied to it.

So far there is:
Zen
Astral Diamonds
Gold
Trade Bars
Celestial Coins
Astral Coins (or whatever the other deity coins are)
Wow Style Seals

And all of these of varying usefulness and interchangability.

Also the game is pretty shameless with trying to lead you by the balls to the cash shop. Right now there's a special purple lockbox that can have a mount or other various high-powered goodies in it. It can drop for anyone because I happened to get two of them. The catch is you need to buy a key with Zen (the direct $ currency). Yeah no thanks, so I throw away the lockboxes. I find 2 more. Repeat.

The Foundry/skirmish thing is pretty cool however.

I didn't think you could throw away the lock boxes?  You don't really want to anyway as they can sell for a few hundred AD.  And yeah, there are way too many types of currency and they do push you to the cash shop a bit too hard for my liking but I haven't really come across anything yet that would require real cash purchases.

[Stormwaltz]

Just had my first death.

At level 29.

From falling into a 6-foot deep hole. 

[Ironwood]

Did it crash the servers ?  Because they're down.

That was a hard fall.
 

[Stormwaltz]

Yep, that was a dramatic crash.

Fortunately, I had just gone back to a camp.

EDIT: It killed ALL the Cryptic login servers. STO is down too.

[Zetor]

Reminds me of the server crashing yesterday ~1-2 seconds after my guildie got his first PVP kill. Cue the usual jokes about PKing the server, etc. 

[Ironwood]

What's the deal with the AH ?  Seems to be all in Astral ?

[Goumindong]

What's the deal with the AH ?  Seems to be all in Astral ?

Yes. It is.

[Falconeer]

How does it work for Foundry quests' rewards? Meaning, if I create a quest/module, how do the loot tables and the rewards work? I know it sounds dumb, but can I set up immense rewards, or bosses dropping insane loot? Assuming I can't, how do the limitations work?

EDIT: This game completely messes up my Alienware keyboard colour configuration. It makes everything blink and change constantly during gameplay, which is beyond disturbing, and when I stop playing it doesn't revert back to default and leaves it the way it was when I quit the game. Signe was having something similar? It's annoying, feels invasive as a virus.

[Goumindong]

Rewards are set by loot drop tables for the mobs you place and the end reward is determined by iirc the average completion time. You can't make a loot run

[Signe]

How does it work for Foundry quests' rewards? Meaning, if I create a quest/module, how do the loot tables and the rewards work? I know it sounds dumb, but can I set up immense rewards, or bosses dropping insane loot? Assuming I can't, how do the limitations work?

EDIT: This game completely messes up my Alienware keyboard colour configuration. It makes everything blink and change constantly during gameplay, which is beyond disturbing, and when I stop playing it doesn't revert back to default and leaves it the way it was when I quit the game. Signe was having something similar? It's annoying, feels invasive as a virus.

Yes!  That's what I was asking about before!  My laptop goes insane, mostly in red, with this game.  I'm glad I'm not using an Alienware mouse and headset.  I'm afraid they'd control my hand and argue with the other voices in my head.

[Signe]

Also, I was about to give up with this game because of how crowded the towns are, but then I remembered... TURN OFF OTHER PLAYER'S NAMES!!!  100% better!  Completely playable and even the stuttering has almost disappeared.

[palmer_eldritch]

One thing that struck me about this game is that the town looks really nice (the first one you come to - that's the only one I've seen). Lots of levels (as in, higher bits and lower bits) and a sense that you are in a big bustling city, yet really you're led around a fairly small area and can't get lost. It's cleverly designed and it looks beautiful. Most MMOs do a horrible job with towns and cities.

[Numtini]

I'm liking it so far and I'm just a weak squishy cleric. Got to the first skirmish and that was good. Looking forward to dungeons and such. It's definitely above the usual level for Cryptic. I really didn't pay any attention because it was them. I suppose I should go buy some gold or whatever the thigns are.

[Signe]

There's a chat channel named F13 but I didn't recognise any of the people in it so I guess it's not ours.  Bat Country isn't taken, though. 

[Xilren's Twin]

How does it work for Foundry quests' rewards? Meaning, if I create a quest/module, how do the loot tables and the rewards work? I know it sounds dumb, but can I set up immense rewards, or bosses dropping insane loot? Assuming I can't, how do the limitations work?

EDIT: This game completely messes up my Alienware keyboard colour configuration. It makes everything blink and change constantly during gameplay, which is beyond disturbing, and when I stop playing it doesn't revert back to default and leaves it the way it was when I quit the game. Signe was having something similar? It's annoying, feels invasive as a virus.

Yes!  That's what I was asking about before!  My laptop goes insane, mostly in red, with this game.  I'm glad I'm not using an Alienware mouse and headset.  I'm afraid they'd control my hand and argue with the other voices in my head.

Yeah the Alienware lights thing is a known issue, but intentional...  Dev quotes below

Environment-triggered lighting stuff are some of the initial ideas we had but haven't made it in yet. At some point, hopefully we can get that all hooked up and have some of the environment artists set up some nice moody lighting to take advantage of the hardware. I'm just afraid I can't promise this will happen right away because everyone's scrambling to fix a whole slew of new issues from open beta at the moment.
I will be looking at the Alienware lighting issues independent of that, however.

Hey guys. I just fixed the bug where the Alienware lights would not going back to your own settings after you quit the game. It may take a little while to go through all the process of getting this fix to the live game, but I'll keep you updated.

Unfortunately, there's still not a menu option to disable the game taking over the lighting, so you'll still have to do that through the option in the Alienware command center software at the moment for that.

[Bzalthek]

Great Weapon Fighter is a beast

[Pennilenko]

What a huge difference having a companion or two makes.

[Malakili]

I'm enjoying group play a lot.  Which is saying something when it comes to playing an MMO with strangers. 

[Falconeer]

What would you say is making group play more enjoyable for you here than in other recent MMOs?

[Signe]

Currency is freaking me out, man.

[bhodi]

It's still a MMO. It's just reskinned. There isn't a whole lot of innovation. And by a whole lot, I really mean any, really. That said, it's still kind of fun; I like the more active combat where positioning matters and you have to dodge, I like the fact there is basically no way to fuck your character over by picking the wrong skill, how you get enough points to basically buy everything. I would like to see more enemy abilities than 'suck everyone in and do an aoe attack' and 'wind up really far back and hit this cone in front of me', though.

I don't like the fact that Rogue > Priest >> Guardian fighter > Wizard > GWF. There needs to be a balancing patch, because GWF is seriously, SERIOUSLY lackluster and for all it's flash and fun ability, wizard is not far behind. Rogues are mobile teleporting buzzsaws and priests are all around awesome.

I don't like the dozen confusing currencies. I hated tokens in WoW and I hate this ten times more. There's really no reason for it. Paying $20 for a horse or $200 for a spider mount is absurd. Wedding dresses are $20. They're trying to nickle and dime you for currency and there needs to be another pass over the costs because they aren't getting any of my money like this. I might buy a few character slots, I guess.

The crafting is neat but reminds me of eve training in that "make sure you're online so you can start something new" kind of way. The fact you can use the AH and craft on a website without logging in, to poke at while at work or whatever is a really nice touch.


The biggest thing I realized is that aside from weapon damage, the stats are so incredibly minor that there is no difference between wearing gear and not, at least from levels 1-30. So don't sweat it.

[Malakili]

What would you say is making group play more enjoyable for you here than in other recent MMOs?

As a cleric - that I have several ways of doing incidental healing, that I have an ability that effectively gives people life leech, and a PBAoE heal blast that is decent.  Combine that with that fact that damage is not burst enough to take someone from full to dead in 1 second and it makes combat a lot more interesting for the healer AND it makes it a lot less "blame the healer because someone died" type situation because there is a fair amount of self healing and damage mitigation that each class is responsible for.

I guess in a way, it is better because I don't actually have to depend on my party members a lot  

EDIT: How can I craft using a web interface?

[Ironwood]

The fact you can use the AH and craft on a website without logging in, to poke at while at work or whatever is a really nice touch.

?

[bhodi]

http://gateway.playneverwinter.com/

[Ginaz]

The fact you can use the AH and craft on a website without logging in, to poke at while at work or whatever is a really nice touch.

?

Its here.  I find it a little difficult to use on my iPhone because you have to do a lot of tapping before you can select what you want.  Its like its not registering the taps correctly.

https://gateway.playneverwinter.com/

[Malakili]

Thanks

[Threash]

It has not worked for me since last night, it keeps hanging on character select.

[Ironwood]

Interesting.

[Ingmar]

Unskippable cut scenes are annoying the 2nd time through.

[Sjofn]

why let me look at my mail if I can't take items out unless I'm talking to a mail dude arghghghghghgh