Neverwinter Nights Online. (Cryptic Studios)

[Signe]

Don't worry, Nija, there's so much that needs fixing that by the time they get around to nerfing rogues, we will have moved on to something else.  Anyway, Wiz is easy but dies a lot in PvP because they can't seem to get out of the way fast enough.  I still like it though.  I really liked the rogue.  I was fast and felt deadly.  I haven't tried it in PvP yet.  I think I might keep the wiz, who is level 14 and that the highest of my chars, and then try out the others in PvP before I decide.  You only get 2 chars per account so you can't be an alt whore unless you're a rich boy and buy more slots.  Dammit.

[koro]

Great Weapon Fighters I can't speak for in PvP, but I know they are beastly in PvE later on. They start out pretty slow though.

I have a Guardian Fighter and it's kind of meh. Pitiful damage and you can't really effectively tank more than one guy at a time.

Clerics are pretty great: high survivability and extremely high damage. When I run skirmishes and dungeons on my Cleric, it's not uncommon to come in first or second place on damage, first on kills, and within the top three in healing (thanks to the odd way healing is calculated).

[Nija]

Rogue is ridiculous in PVP. Try it out ASAP, Signe.

Looks like I'm leaning Cleric at this point. I didn't expect their damage to be as good as you say it is. I think I'll delete my level 6 control wizard, as I'm already seeing the squishyness and having problems taking on the larger groups of mobs.

[koro]

If AoE's your bag, the Cleric has it in spades. With the exception of the single-target heal, every Cleric encounter power I have has at least some AoE component. When you hit level 10, you can use your Tab ability to great effect, popping it on to augment a strong AoE, then flicking it off while you build more charge, then flicking it on again for something else.

Edit: The Cleric's daily powers are also really good. The one you start off with is extremely nice, but I've been running with Flamestrike as my go-to damage daily (if it can be knocked in the air, I have a pretty good chance of one-shotting it), and for groups I also roll with the daily that sets down this huge AoE damage/defense-boosting field. For boss fights in groups, I build up to full divine power, drop the buff AoE, then go into Gandalf Mode and use my death beam on the boss. It's quite potent.

[Ingmar]

Year 2013 AD: a game releases without logout to character select.  

EDIT: Another solved problem that this game fails to solve: Everyone can need roll on everything, regardless of the items having a required class.

[PalmTrees]

Got a wizard up to 9 this afternoon. It's an ok game so far. Seeing the D&D spell names makes me want a whole spell book of all the other spells I could switch to, but I know that'll never happen. I dislike the event schedule thing attached to the mini map. Don't set appointments for me! It's ignorable and all, but having the game trying to set my schedule like that bugs me. I don't like having both wasd and powers set on qer. My setup has always had camera turn on qe. It's just not where my fingers are used to going for powers.

Voiceover have been meh, but what really bugs me is the way the npcs stare off to the side, instead of at you. Oh, and the really bad lip synch, when they try to lip synch.

I want to try making stuff in the foundry next. I had fun with that in CoH. My most played mission there had like 35 plays, I wonder if I could beat that record? 

[Zetor]

I want to try making stuff in the foundry next. I had fun with that in CoH. My most played mission there had like 35 plays, I wonder if I could beat that record?  

Well, consider the following:
* Right now, the default browse window ("best") only displays the top 20 quests (or so).
* The foundry is absolutely flooded with pure powerlevelling / xp-grind quests (3-minute affairs consisting of a ton of melee mobs you can easily AOE down for max xp). "I am Jack's complete lack of surprise".
** Even though the GMs seem to be hunting down powerlevelling quests (which is going to be fruitless and pointless, just as it was in COH), there are more popping up every day, and getting hundreds of votes/plays when they do ('cos that's what most of the players actually want from the foundry)
* All new quests are put in a 'for review' queue, and are only allowed to move on from there if they get an undisclosed number of ratings (probably 5 or so).
** The 'for review' queue is extremely long, slows the client down to a crawl when you click it, and has no search functionality at all.
** Basically, to get someone to review your quest so you can move on from the queue means you have to explicitly solicit the review. The foundry forums are full of people doing the "review my quest and I'll review yours" dance.
* There's a bug that intermittently prevents quests from being visible even if you search for their name (or the author's @name) explicitly. You have to use the shortcode (NW-XBLARGHLE-29 or something like that).
* A quest is only eligible for the daily foundry reward (the quest with the 1k AD) if it's both longer than 20 mins in average playtime AND has at least 25 plays. This is the green text you see on some quests' description pages.

So yeah, good times.

[Phred]

Hah "You may not send a private messages until at least one character on your account has reached level 15, you have purchased a Founder's Pack, or you have transferred Zen into the game."

You can't buy Zen until you get a character to 15 either.

[Phred]

Yeah, my Half-Orc GWF is "Bzalthek" as well.  Just did my first Skirmish, was pretty cool, though took a while before enough people started it.

There's something wrong with the queue for skirmishes. I had a full group queue up for one today and it still took 15 min to start up.

[Phred]

You only get 2 chars per account so you can't be an alt whore unless you're a rich boy and buy more slots.  Dammit.

Multiple email addresses can work for you. Just make new accounts. You can even log in multiple characters and trade stuff between them. I tried to make a guild but my machine went into hard swap on the 5th client :(

p.s. stuff+email_address@gmail.com works too.

[Cyrrex]

I have played all the way to the lofty heights of level 4, and I am wondering something.  Is there any point during the game where you actually get to pick a skill/feat/power or something?  I level up an it tells me what new skill I am receiving as a reward.  No choice, no illusion of having to select and train a skill.  I don't know if this is a bad thing, but it is a thing.

It occurs to me that with every new MMO that comes out, variation, customization and all illusion of choice is taken away.  There are no more worlds, only zones we magically transport between and ultimately have no sense of where we physically are in the game realm.  It appears that there is a new niche out there for some brave upstart to take a chance on:  an actual goddamn RPG.  That a game with both Neverwinter and D&D on the splash screen has bascially zero actual RPG or even D&D elements in it at all....it just hurts me on some level.  Let me actually roll my fucking stats how I like, for chrissakes.

No, I am not hating on the game, at least not yet.  But I am sad for what once was and will apparently never be again.

[Phred]

I have played all the way to the lofty heights of level 4, and I am wondering something.  Is there any point during the game where you actually get to pick a skill/feat/power or something?  I level up an it tells me what new skill I am receiving as a reward.  No choice, no illusion of having to select and train a skill.  I don't know if this is a bad thing, but it is a thing.

Patience grasshopper you've only just finished the tutorial at L4. At the Lofty hight of L6 you can start choosing spells and feats.

[Ironwood]

Except it's not really a choice, frankly, and you can't save points for later, since it's points capped, not level capped, as I found out yesterday.

Which is wank.

[Fabricated]

Yeah I made a Great Weapon Fighter first then after having to spend forever trying to kill anything I deleted him and made a trickster rogue who is pretty much just as tanky if not more so since I found some life-steal equipment.

I ran the first dungeon yesterday. Pretty not bad overall but for some reason I can't make it through without someone DCing permanently. Me and two other rogues rather successfully fought the last boss with no companions out on one run. Was really fun actually; we tanked through staggered use of our decoy skills, burning our major skill when the adds came out. No deaths either.

...but for some reason they have a bonus loot chest tied to picking up like 6 different innocuous looking items which go into the inventory of whoever happens to pick them up. Meaning- you never get the bonus shit because some fucking dipshit always picks up half the shit and gets DC'd before the end.

[Cyrrex]

I have played all the way to the lofty heights of level 4, and I am wondering something.  Is there any point during the game where you actually get to pick a skill/feat/power or something?  I level up an it tells me what new skill I am receiving as a reward.  No choice, no illusion of having to select and train a skill.  I don't know if this is a bad thing, but it is a thing.

Patience grasshopper you've only just finished the tutorial at L4. At the Lofty hight of L6 you can start choosing spells and feats.

I guess my frustration is this:  I loved the original NWN.  I wanted them to straight up rip out and plop that same character building structure (updated for 4 or 4e or whatever the fuck is relevant these days, but even 3 would be fine with me).  Or, you know, some kind of system that makes me feel like I am playing a role.  A game where roles are played.  A role playing game, if you will.  None of these games make you feel invested in your character any more.  I really want to go on an SWG derail right now, but I won't.

[Merusk]

I'm noticing roles starting to get more defined in the 30s.   The forums also mention that GWFs destroy rogues in PVP around this time. It's probably not a coincidence that the beta weekends capped you at 30 for a long time and issues are beginning to show up there.

[Ironwood]

I really, really can't believe D&D has come to this.  Jesus Wept.

[Shannow]

I really, really can't believe D&D has come to this.  Jesus Wept.

I can't believe MMOLG's have come to this. I'll admit I didn't play EQ or WoW, I've watched from afar....so to jump into NWN and realise that after 15 years or so of development in this arena this is what we are getting is really disheartening.

[Falconeer]

For fairness, Shannow, even those who are enjoying this game aren't really saying this is the pinnacle of MMORPG design. You might want to look at The Secret World to get a glimpse at something that isn't exactly an EQ/WoW clone design-wise. ("Design-wise" not equal to "fun-wise").

Personally I feel the biggest disappointment comes from the under-development of virtual worlds (sandboxes), something that was very promising 15 years ago. Then again, we all know that's going to be the next big thing. Better late than never.

[Merusk]

Only if you care about virtual worlds.  Which, y'know, is playing out closer to the way I said it would, not Raph. 

[Engels]

For me, Neverwinter is like the rock band AC/DC.

Mindless, easily digestible 12 bar blues based rock where all the songs are pretty much the same that you still find entirely palatable, even if you know you're not experiencing anything particularly intelligent.

[Draegan]

I played this game all day yesterday, on and off, and hit level 21 with my GWF. Holy shit this game is fun for all of it's simplicity. Should be interesting to see if I make it to the end game and starting doing the tiered end game dungeons. I heard they are kind of fun.

I dropped $60 on the founders/whatever pack.

Having a horse makes this game sooooo much better.

[tmp]

I can't figure out a way to turn off "admin".  Why the fuck should I care what someone I don't know purchased?  Is it supposed to make me so jealous that I rush out and give them my ex-husbands hard earned alimony?  NO.  It's the equivalent of pop up ads that I never click on.  

Tera has something similar, except the messages only announce people who scored the jackpot in current raffle events and such. It seems to work pretty well, in the sense people both get jealous and encouraged to buy stuff because "hey if I see so many people winning then the chances must be good!"

[Fabricated]

I'm fine with saying this is an okay game marred by a pretty ham-fisted F2P implementation. It wouldn't have lasted as a sub game, but as it is there are worse ways to waste your time (see: the scarlet blade thread).

[Ingmar]

I really, really can't believe D&D has come to this.  Jesus Wept.

It hasn't - the D&D license has. This doesn't even resemble 4e.

[Hoax]

I'm noticing roles starting to get more defined in the 30s.   The forums also mention that GWFs destroy rogues in PVP around this time. It's probably not a coincidence that the beta weekends capped you at 30 for a long time and issues are beginning to show up there.

This is just not even sort of true according to the every L60 I've talked to about pvp. Rogues dominate endgame PVP and the 2h guys are garbage. Don't want anyone to get the wrong idea.

[murdoc]

Probably depends on if you talk to a Rogue or a GWF 

[Phred]

The problem with discussing it with players is there's always that ONE GUY who tops the dps chars and  has rogues for breakfast. He usually hangs around in town so god knows how he levels.

Could someone point out examples of where the pay to play is shoved in your face because I must be immune and someone in a group I was in yesterday got a lot of agreement from the group by saying that it didn't constantly nag you to pay.

[Draegan]

The only time the cash shop is going to get in your way is if you have to have the best stuff ever. Apparently the best enchants are some of that archaic 1% chance to complete unless you buy some kind of thing in the cashshop.

The cash shop is pretty decent as far as what you can buy (read: does not interfere with your fun) the only problem is that the pricing is fucking retarded and whoever thought a bag should cost $10 or whatever is stupid. It's obvious that you can probably get 6 people to pay a buck to buy a character bound bag much easier to find one sucker to buy a single bag for $6.

edit:
I'm playing a GWF and I've kept reading that they are terrible. Then I keep hearing people say they actually are pretty good once you hit level 40 or so. Take that with a grain of salt.

I'm playing my GWF differently (only level 21). I'm going all defense/deflection, and going down the lower portion of the heroic feat line. I have no idea if it will work.

[Druzil]

So for Astral Diamonds so far I've figured out I have to:

1) Do the daily foundry quest
2) Do the daily deity thing and the hourly if I can
3) Play the Auction House game Nope

Anything else I'm missing?

[koro]

So apparently Cryptic's going around banning people who have made "exploitative" Foundry maps.

It's like they've learned nothing from doing the whole "user-generated content" thing for the better part of a decade.

[Mrbloodworth]

Or, banning is what they learned.

[Merusk]

So for Astral Diamonds so far I've figured out I have to:

1) Do the daily foundry quest
2) Do the daily deity thing and the hourly if I can
3) Play the Auction House game Nope

Anything else I'm missing?

Run a dungeon/ skirmish/ foundry mission when the hour special is going.  It can be even more efficient if you make it the daily at the same time.

[Nija]

50 ogres a day keeps the doctor away?!

[Malakili]

I just got a pirate hat.