Neverwinter: PC

Anyone else think they kind of nailed the environments / music / animation ?

The art style is very good in my estimation. It certainly feels high fantasy D&D to me and they make a point to include D&D staples like mimics and beholders etc. My only complaint, and it is minor, with respect to the art and setting is that they overuse pirates. You fight orcs in one dungeon in the game and then come up against pirates either as the whole dungeon or as end-bosses no less than 4 times.

Im actually finding myself switch up abilities more and more as I get accustomed to certain fights and different group setups. There are still abilities that I never use and cannot see myself ever using, but that is mostly due to them being broken rather than not having the space on my 'hotbar'. Was just in a 3 cleric group and so busted out my DPS abilities I dont normally use and was able to do quite respectable damage. Would have been able to do a little better but I just couldnt trust two random clerics enough to completely take Astral Shield off its button.

I think as they add in more classes and fix some abilities / adjust the fight concepts we will see more use of the alternate abilities.

What class are you again Qhue? Wiz?

Qhue_sl said:

The art style is very good in my estimation. It certainly feels high fantasy D&D to me and they make a point to include D&D staples like mimics and beholders etc.
-snip-
I think as they add in more classes and fix some abilities / adjust the fight concepts we will see more use of the alternate abilities.

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I thought it was great the first time I saw a mimic.

I'd love an out of combat hotkey to switch ability sets. Also a hotkey to switch between active companions.

Sylas_sl said:

The choice of a handful of skills and the mapping of them is quite awesome actually. everything is within reach of WASD. Not since original EQ have I been able to play an MMO solely by WASD and mouse. Oh and mapping both mouse buttons to attacks so that you are always in mouselook mode is great, god i hate mouse clicking and games with so many action bars that the only way to play is whack-a-mole mouse clicking (EQ2 i'm looking at you). I've only been playing for a few days maybe a total of 10 hours, but at my level everything I need is within range of WASD. the farthest key for me is 6 which is to summon my mount.

The game reminds me a bit of The Secret World especially with the action pacing and MOB AOE alerts allowing you to dodge, but even TSW had you using 1-9 keys meaning you had to move your hand off of your movement keys, and with sooo many AOE you had to avoid, leaving your movement keys even for a second was bad.

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Yes if you like less think and more twitch...

Qhue_sl said:

The art style is very good in my estimation. It certainly feels high fantasy D&D to me and they make a point to include D&D staples like mimics and beholders etc. My only complaint, and it is minor, with respect to the art and setting is that they overuse pirates. You fight orcs in one dungeon in the game and then come up against pirates either as the whole dungeon or as end-bosses no less than 4 times.

Im actually finding myself switch up abilities more and more as I get accustomed to certain fights and different group setups. There are still abilities that I never use and cannot see myself ever using, but that is mostly due to them being broken rather than not having the space on my 'hotbar'. Was just in a 3 cleric group and so busted out my DPS abilities I dont normally use and was able to do quite respectable damage. Would have been able to do a little better but I just couldnt trust two random clerics enough to completely take Astral Shield off its button.

I think as they add in more classes and fix some abilities / adjust the fight concepts we will see more use of the alternate abilities.

Click to expand...

quite good.

There have been more then a few times, I had to stop and take notice.

capes, banners, curtains, grass blowing in the wind, and being impacted by the player walking through them.
horse, standing jump animation. (makes it rear up)
dx 11 light, and water. under the waterfall camp in the werewolf area.
Frost giant axe. just made me stop and consider taking a screen shot a few minutes ago.
Rogue attack animations. despite the stop to attack. attacks are solid and land. sly flourish's animations are fantastic.

frost giants, mimics, gelatinous cube.
mimics and the cube had me smiling.

just needs displacer beast now..

also, but they are undead sky pirates!


Although the sky pirates does bring up another problem.

Skirmishes kindof ruining alot.
they fuck up the story, by revealing shit in zones you shouldn't know until the end. And they make these epic bosses chumps, you kill in a 5min 5 man.
The sky pirate area really shows this off.
you get all these side quests about figuring out why the water is toxic. what caused all the damage to these floating islands? Slow reveals as you put the clues together. if you know your dnd lore you might be able to figure it out. When you go to the first pirate keep, they let you know. or if you did the skirmish, you already killed him in a 5 man. So this ancient black dragon that wrecked the entire sky pirate fortress, armada, and cursed them all with undead, poisoned the water, and just all around fucked up the entire place. you killed in a pick up 5man 2 hours ago. come on.
All that effort to build up the zone, set up a story, and you spoiled it yourself. game designers, what are you doing?


Skirmishes in general are kindof dumb. Dailys especially.
3skirmishes to complete the daily.. atm for me.
really? you want me to play the same 10minute instance 3 times in a row to get the daily? are you TRYING to make me burn out, get bored, as well as outlevel the current level content? what possible reason could you have to make me grind something out on purpose?

My GWF's queues are awful. How are Cleric queues?

Might have been mentioned before but the que system is far from streamlined, I joined a full group earlier and the leader put us into the que, after waiting 5 minutes we all just ran to the entrance ourselves.

shabushabu_sl said:

Anyone else think they kind of nailed the environments / music / animation ?

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I think the music is ok, I really dig the song in the character select screen. But there's one that sometimes plays in dungeons that sounds way too much like the Dexter theme and breaks my immersion, lol.

Raes_sl said:

I think the music is ok, I really dig the song in the character select screen. But there's one that sometimes plays in dungeons that sounds way too much like the Dexter theme and breaks my immersion, lol.

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ha... dexter theme. i will listen for that... its crazy honestly i feel this game has no depth at all and is likely the most shallow and silly MMO i have played in a while, yet a bit of herbal remedy and the visuals and music and such has me still chugging along.. .

Turning the saturation up on my monitor makes the game look damn good ... also turned off Cinematic depth of field... much better.

Draegan_sl said:

My GWF's queues are awful. How are Cleric queues?

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Bad enough that I don't even bother. For dungeons anyway. Skirmishes are reasonably quick and pvp is near instant. This is on Beholder.

shabushabu_sl said:

ha... dexter theme. i will listen for that... its crazy honestly i feel this game has no depth at all and is likely the most shallow and silly MMO i have played in a while, yet a bit of herbal remedy and the visuals and music and such has me still chugging along.. .

Turning the saturation up on my monitor makes the game look damn good ... also turned off Cinematic depth of field... much better.

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The song in protector's enclave is a bit annoying, part of it sounds too "Pirates of the Caribbean" for me. Capes need a little work too, mine is always hanging forward over my head when I'm mounted. The graphics are nice, just wish the game didn't feel so claustrophobic.

I will say that it has been some time since I've played a game where I was kept on the verge of a heart attack while fighting against bosses. So much of the boss fights end up being only barely controlled chaos and, in a way, that is a bit more like what a melee should be rather than a simple gangbang or fighting a battle where every orc tries to beat on the most heavily armored guy. Dodging through overlapping ground effects and incoming AE attacks while trying to stay within the Astral Shield region while getting uppercut into the air on a regular basis... Im in no danger of falling asleep unlike playing other games I can think of.

This isn't to say that the game is well tuned, some of the encounters are so painfully dense with high hit point rapetastic adds that you want to slit your wrists...but when you actually manage to beat these encounters it feels all that more rewarding.

Draegan_sl said:

My GWF's queues are awful. How are Cleric queues?

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Instant for pvp/skirmishes. 5-10 minutes for dungeons. But I only roll in guild groups now, pugs are just awful for both pvp and pve.

Gadrel_sl said:

Instant for pvp/skirmishes. 5-10 minutes for dungeons. But I only roll in guild groups now, pugs are just awful for both pvp and pve.

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On Mindflayer? I got my GWF up to 40 this weekend and the queues are killing me, and I'm mostly playing this for the end game dungeon crawling. I'm thinking about going Cleric even though I kind of like my GWF.

Personally, I wish they made this game with a sub or a box sales model, I would gladly pay a few months to not have to worry/deal with the cash shop stuff, even if it's really not that bad.

Best F2P ever anyway, really well done.

I played a few hours this weekend and was pleasantly surprised. The game looks great, combat is fun, and it has an AD&D feel to it.

I just wish there were a few more classes available.

I find that I cannot refute "best f2p ever", and am frustrated with how low the bar is set.