At what point does the combat become good? Because I did some low level group content and hated it. I preferred even GW2. The main thing that made me quit though was that I hated the questing. I can't do another quest grind game.
Neverwinter: PC
- Thread starter qwertyqweqwertwqert
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Depends if you like action combat or hotbar combat. I hate, hate, hate hotbar combat. By hotbar combat I mean everything from DDR whackamole EQ2 style to CD/animation time "rotation of the same 3-5 button presses" WoW style combat. I especially hate UI minigame combat that's been built on top of this style of combat where you're required to pay attention to a UI element instead of the mobs you're fighting or what's going on in the room you're fighting them in.
A lot of recent mmo's have started going more action and I prefer it, but none have really nailed it the way Neverwinter has, since it completely abandoned the hotbar concept entirely. Basically if you think people who use their mouse to click on abilities to activate them or use their keyboard to turn their characters are bad, and games designed that either enable, encourage, or even require that kind of gameplay are bad, then this is the game for you, as this game actually won't let you do that shit.
So having read that, if you still care: Group content. Soloing to level cap via quest grind version 27.4 is one of the eleventy billion things that it's perfectly reasonable to hate on the game for. Unlike most games though, the solo questing involves a lot of solo quest dungeons, with bosses and boss mechanic style fights, which becomes difficult to impossible to actually complete solo around the late 40s/early 50s depending on class (except Guardian Fighters, which are just incredibly overpowered and can solo everything), which forces grouping/duoing while still leveling up.
The low level dungeons are face roll easy but it's just leveling content, of which the game has too much of as you'll hit level cap before you even reach the last leveling zone if you actually do all the stuff along the way. It only takes about 4 days to hit level cap so as many flaws there are with it I don't really consider it part of the game as such a comically small portion of your time is spent leveling. All of these things are also perfectly reasonable things to hate on about the game, but I really can't fault them for making this part so easy otherwise people would just quit and not spend cash on stupid mounts and shit in the cash shop.
At level cap in epic dungeons is where combat goes from good to great. If you didn't like combat by level 10 when you start to unlock your class defining features and abilities then you probably won't ever like the combat system (each class does play completely differently though, you may have just been playing a dull class for you), because the difficulty ramps up drastically from faceroll easy to holy shit I actually have to pay attention and know how to play.
Things I like about the combat:
class roles and class interdependency; This really comes into play at a level that I haven't really seen since original everquest, primary because the difficulty ramps way up.
There isn't a trinity. most groups will have a cleric by default, but some dungeons do not require them. You can complete any dungeon with 5 competent players of any class, the only thing that changes based on group makeup is the strategies that you use to beat the encounters.
Mobs are hard again. They have a lot of hp. They can easily kill players, and not just "oh you died because dps to hps ratio was slightly negative and you lost due to attrition." Mobs can and do 1-shot players on a regular (if you are bad).
It's nearly impossible to carry bad players through content, everyone in the group is there to fill a role and if someone fucks up you'll usually wipe.
it's fully committed to being an action-RPG style game so skill/twitch/knowledge are far more important than gear (gear is practically irrelevant, except that your "gear score" must meet certain threshholds to enter the Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2.5 dungeons). Good players can beat content naked, bad players will fail repeatedly despite having the best gear in the game (p2w bads)
the majority of your damage (like 90%) comes from a standard attack which roughly translates into auto-attack (though it's not actually automatic). You have a very limited number of special abilities that require thought when utilizing them. You don't just spam shit as it comes off cooldown.
When games went all "solo to 60 ftw" they did so primarily by skewing the power balance between player characters and mobs drastically in the favor of players so that players can kill shit in 2 hits but it takes a player going AFK being hit by a mob for 10 minutes for the mob to kill the player. Then they just took those mobs and scaled up their hp x5 or whatever, called them "elites" and that was their group content. It wasn't really until raid level encounters/mobs that the power ratio shifted towards mobs, and even that was just using the same formula and scaling hp x40 due to raid sizes. In Neverwinter group content actually requires a group to defeat them.
Speaking of which, the game requires knowledge of the mobs and their abilities. There are no + * dots or stars or any other UI bullshit to tell you how tough mobs are. The game has mobs scaling from minions to normal to elites to lieutenant to mini-bosses to bosses, but they aren't fucking labeled, you just have to know or learn from experience which are which. Also somewhat related, you have to know mob animations as well. While the game has telegraphs (red areas in various shapes and sizes that appear on the ground to inform you where AOEs will hit) similiar to other action mmo's like TSW or Wildstar or whatever that in itself is not the challenge of combat. The telegraphs are really just a segue from the normal combat that you are used to from leveling up (basically AFK checks) to the real dungeon combat where the most lethal attacks are not telegraphed AOEs but animation specific abilities that you must recognize and either counter, avoid, or mitigate.
All of those things combined results in combat that is engaging and requires thought and knowledge of the fights to pick your very limited set of active abilities and when to utilize them. You must pay attention to things like movement and positioning and what mobs are doing and what adds are spawning and what they are doing and what is attacking who and etc and so forth. You do things like Pulling, kiting, crowd control, etc tactics that I haven't really seen since EQ (since that was the last game where mobs where hard enough that you couldn't just leeroy through shit) You must pay attention to fights and be actively engaged while fighting, yet none of that focus has anything to do with your goddamn UI or staring at abilities waiting for them to come off cooldown or light up to signal that you should hit that button now or sit in the corner staring at health bars clicking the ones that are dropping and pressing your heal key.
A lot of recent mmo's have started going more action and I prefer it, but none have really nailed it the way Neverwinter has, since it completely abandoned the hotbar concept entirely. Basically if you think people who use their mouse to click on abilities to activate them or use their keyboard to turn their characters are bad, and games designed that either enable, encourage, or even require that kind of gameplay are bad, then this is the game for you, as this game actually won't let you do that shit.
So having read that, if you still care: Group content. Soloing to level cap via quest grind version 27.4 is one of the eleventy billion things that it's perfectly reasonable to hate on the game for. Unlike most games though, the solo questing involves a lot of solo quest dungeons, with bosses and boss mechanic style fights, which becomes difficult to impossible to actually complete solo around the late 40s/early 50s depending on class (except Guardian Fighters, which are just incredibly overpowered and can solo everything), which forces grouping/duoing while still leveling up.
The low level dungeons are face roll easy but it's just leveling content, of which the game has too much of as you'll hit level cap before you even reach the last leveling zone if you actually do all the stuff along the way. It only takes about 4 days to hit level cap so as many flaws there are with it I don't really consider it part of the game as such a comically small portion of your time is spent leveling. All of these things are also perfectly reasonable things to hate on about the game, but I really can't fault them for making this part so easy otherwise people would just quit and not spend cash on stupid mounts and shit in the cash shop.
At level cap in epic dungeons is where combat goes from good to great. If you didn't like combat by level 10 when you start to unlock your class defining features and abilities then you probably won't ever like the combat system (each class does play completely differently though, you may have just been playing a dull class for you), because the difficulty ramps up drastically from faceroll easy to holy shit I actually have to pay attention and know how to play.
Things I like about the combat:
class roles and class interdependency; This really comes into play at a level that I haven't really seen since original everquest, primary because the difficulty ramps way up.
There isn't a trinity. most groups will have a cleric by default, but some dungeons do not require them. You can complete any dungeon with 5 competent players of any class, the only thing that changes based on group makeup is the strategies that you use to beat the encounters.
Mobs are hard again. They have a lot of hp. They can easily kill players, and not just "oh you died because dps to hps ratio was slightly negative and you lost due to attrition." Mobs can and do 1-shot players on a regular (if you are bad).
It's nearly impossible to carry bad players through content, everyone in the group is there to fill a role and if someone fucks up you'll usually wipe.
it's fully committed to being an action-RPG style game so skill/twitch/knowledge are far more important than gear (gear is practically irrelevant, except that your "gear score" must meet certain threshholds to enter the Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2.5 dungeons). Good players can beat content naked, bad players will fail repeatedly despite having the best gear in the game (p2w bads)
the majority of your damage (like 90%) comes from a standard attack which roughly translates into auto-attack (though it's not actually automatic). You have a very limited number of special abilities that require thought when utilizing them. You don't just spam shit as it comes off cooldown.
When games went all "solo to 60 ftw" they did so primarily by skewing the power balance between player characters and mobs drastically in the favor of players so that players can kill shit in 2 hits but it takes a player going AFK being hit by a mob for 10 minutes for the mob to kill the player. Then they just took those mobs and scaled up their hp x5 or whatever, called them "elites" and that was their group content. It wasn't really until raid level encounters/mobs that the power ratio shifted towards mobs, and even that was just using the same formula and scaling hp x40 due to raid sizes. In Neverwinter group content actually requires a group to defeat them.
Speaking of which, the game requires knowledge of the mobs and their abilities. There are no + * dots or stars or any other UI bullshit to tell you how tough mobs are. The game has mobs scaling from minions to normal to elites to lieutenant to mini-bosses to bosses, but they aren't fucking labeled, you just have to know or learn from experience which are which. Also somewhat related, you have to know mob animations as well. While the game has telegraphs (red areas in various shapes and sizes that appear on the ground to inform you where AOEs will hit) similiar to other action mmo's like TSW or Wildstar or whatever that in itself is not the challenge of combat. The telegraphs are really just a segue from the normal combat that you are used to from leveling up (basically AFK checks) to the real dungeon combat where the most lethal attacks are not telegraphed AOEs but animation specific abilities that you must recognize and either counter, avoid, or mitigate.
All of those things combined results in combat that is engaging and requires thought and knowledge of the fights to pick your very limited set of active abilities and when to utilize them. You must pay attention to things like movement and positioning and what mobs are doing and what adds are spawning and what they are doing and what is attacking who and etc and so forth. You do things like Pulling, kiting, crowd control, etc tactics that I haven't really seen since EQ (since that was the last game where mobs where hard enough that you couldn't just leeroy through shit) You must pay attention to fights and be actively engaged while fighting, yet none of that focus has anything to do with your goddamn UI or staring at abilities waiting for them to come off cooldown or light up to signal that you should hit that button now or sit in the corner staring at health bars clicking the ones that are dropping and pressing your heal key.
Ninen
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 2,261
- 7,958
Overall, a good write up, just a few nit-picks. A CW easily solos all level up content, never needed another player for anything other than a zone's 5man dungeon.
While they don't specifically label elites, when you mouse over a group and 4 of the mobs have health bars with 2 sections, and the last has 5 sections, it's pretty clear which are which.
Very little of the CW dps needs to come from auto-attack. It's relatively easy to gear and skill out so that you're only a couple of seconds away from a cooldown being up. You most often do just "spam shit as it comes off cooldown". Note, I'm talking regular fighting, when you, as a CW, get into a "hur dur just punt everything into the lava" group then gameplay goes down to 2 abilities, positioning becomes more important, nothing else about your character other than those 2 abilities matters anymore.
Neverwinter is a fun little game, it's just incredibly flat. You play it to 60, you play the end game dungeons, you're done. Unless you've got a crew that keeps you coming back, there's very little to keep you playing once you top out; and it's very very easy to top out.
I started to play Neverwinter around 2.5 weeks ago as a couple of my friends got into the game and I really enjoy MMOs with a known group of people.
We all started in slightly different time frames, about 1 week apart or so. The problem we ran in to is half of our group hit 60 ahead of the second half. In the time it took the rest of us to get 60 they got bored and decided to never play again. The 2 - 3 of us that are left have been left high and dry. I have been trying to get some high level interaction, but it is largely farming dailies to up my gear score to do epic dungeons.
Their main complaints revolved around PVP being terrible. This was somewhat their expectations of getting to 60, queuing for PVP, and being summarily destroyed by people who were geared far better than them. There doesn't seem to be much of a pairing system. Personally, I made it through that initial muck of being destroyed at 60 and now it doesn't really matter. Sometimes you win, sometimes you are destroyed. You just learn to take the fights you can win and run or harass the ones you can't.
I play a Control Wizard and in PVE content I felt pretty overpowered from day 1. I soloed from 1 - 60 more or less and it took approximately 4 - 5 days. The quest content speeds along leveling in a very rapid fashion, you get to see some neat zones, etc. I ended up doing Foundry for 50 - 60 just because I could gain nearly a whole level during the Foundry event hour and running the est. 15 minute Foundries (Bills, Nightmare on Market, 27th Level, etc), I was able to bring down the average for some of those zones running them in 9-12 minutes. They each gave around 9-10k xp per run when the event was not running, even more when it was.
My main frustration with the game now is that for Epic dungeons you have two choices. Queue up and PUG it, which I have some mild success with, or finding a premade. The issue with PUGs is that it is hit or miss in terms of basic knowledge about their class, zone knowledge, and terribad gear.
The issue with premades is that they all want 10 - 11k+ gear score and an experienced player. As a player new to 60 and without a guild I am not entirely sure how to get the experience necessary to run the zones. Also, the gear score they want you to have can require you to buy some of the stuff from the AH that the dungeons you are trying to queue for drop.
In order to get gear I have been largely leveling Leadership as a profession. It is working out alright and I am almost to level 15. When the right rares hit I can queue up to make some decent diamonds that help with the AH purchasing. I am a sucker for lock boxes so I have quite a few blue / green leadership slave guys.
If you are going to play this game, have a group of friends or a guild otherwise it is not too much fun. With that said, if anyone plays on Mindflayer and needs a Control Wizard, look me up ([email protected]/* <
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We all started in slightly different time frames, about 1 week apart or so. The problem we ran in to is half of our group hit 60 ahead of the second half. In the time it took the rest of us to get 60 they got bored and decided to never play again. The 2 - 3 of us that are left have been left high and dry. I have been trying to get some high level interaction, but it is largely farming dailies to up my gear score to do epic dungeons.
Their main complaints revolved around PVP being terrible. This was somewhat their expectations of getting to 60, queuing for PVP, and being summarily destroyed by people who were geared far better than them. There doesn't seem to be much of a pairing system. Personally, I made it through that initial muck of being destroyed at 60 and now it doesn't really matter. Sometimes you win, sometimes you are destroyed. You just learn to take the fights you can win and run or harass the ones you can't.
I play a Control Wizard and in PVE content I felt pretty overpowered from day 1. I soloed from 1 - 60 more or less and it took approximately 4 - 5 days. The quest content speeds along leveling in a very rapid fashion, you get to see some neat zones, etc. I ended up doing Foundry for 50 - 60 just because I could gain nearly a whole level during the Foundry event hour and running the est. 15 minute Foundries (Bills, Nightmare on Market, 27th Level, etc), I was able to bring down the average for some of those zones running them in 9-12 minutes. They each gave around 9-10k xp per run when the event was not running, even more when it was.
My main frustration with the game now is that for Epic dungeons you have two choices. Queue up and PUG it, which I have some mild success with, or finding a premade. The issue with PUGs is that it is hit or miss in terms of basic knowledge about their class, zone knowledge, and terribad gear.
The issue with premades is that they all want 10 - 11k+ gear score and an experienced player. As a player new to 60 and without a guild I am not entirely sure how to get the experience necessary to run the zones. Also, the gear score they want you to have can require you to buy some of the stuff from the AH that the dungeons you are trying to queue for drop.
In order to get gear I have been largely leveling Leadership as a profession. It is working out alright and I am almost to level 15. When the right rares hit I can queue up to make some decent diamonds that help with the AH purchasing. I am a sucker for lock boxes so I have quite a few blue / green leadership slave guys.
If you are going to play this game, have a group of friends or a guild otherwise it is not too much fun. With that said, if anyone plays on Mindflayer and needs a Control Wizard, look me up ([email protected]/* <![CDATA[ */!function(t,e,r,n,c,a,p){try{t=document.currentScript||function(){for(t=document.getElementsByTagName('script'),e=t.length;e--
if(t[e].getAttribute('data-cfhash'))return t[e]}();if(t&&(c=t.previousSibling)){p=t.parentNode;if(a=c.getAttribute('data-cfemail')){for(e='',r='0x'+a.substr(0,2)|0,n=2;a.length-n;n+=2)e+='%'+('0'+('0x'+a.substr(n,2)^r).toString(16)).slice(-2);p.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(decodeURIComponent(e)),c)}p.removeChild(t)}}catch(u){}}()/* ]]> */).The solo dungeons were an issue for me, because I wanted a party like Baldur's Gate or NWN2 or whatever. Doing it solo felt dull.
Just started playing this today just because some people I know started and wanted me to join. I've gotten to level 7 fast enough and have done one foundry mission (Ultimate Battle Arena). Can someone tell me how the Foundry's drops compare to the game's original content? I know players can't control loot and have some limitations on one chest they can place Foundry, but I'm curious how far people can exploit it for progress. The game seems entertaining enough so far, I just want to understand how much people might be cheating character progression with the foundry.
Celebrindal
Golden Squire
- 516
- 11
I don't play much, but I haven't gotten anything useful for my cleric in foundry. I've gotten drops that are not useable for my class.
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Foundry drops are the same as open world content drops for your level range. that's gold/potions/enchants/green loot/etc. Foundries do not have skill kits though, b/c it's too easily abused, and that's your best source of crafting resources/enchants/etc. Foundries are a good place to farm enchants from bc it's tons of instanced mobs just for you to kill and if you do the right foundry can be done very efficiently. I wouldn't bother doing Foundries until 60 though for this purpose (actually wouldn't bother doing Foundries until 60 period but whatev, dailies gives you diamonds so there's that)
It's also quite easy to make foundry missions for speed leveling purposes such as mobs stuck in a box/trap that you can knock off ledges which allows classes like CW to instakill them with shield, but foundry exp is limited to # of mobs/mob types you can kill in a certain time frame so you may get a ton of xp all at once but then can't gain xp in foundries for 2 hours because you've become foundry xp locked.
Basically it's good for leveling an alt that you hardly play, just log on every 2 hours and gain a level. My CW hit 60 with 8 hours /played time, but that was like my 4th class to 60 and just didn't feel like doing quests again.
It's also quite easy to make foundry missions for speed leveling purposes such as mobs stuck in a box/trap that you can knock off ledges which allows classes like CW to instakill them with shield, but foundry exp is limited to # of mobs/mob types you can kill in a certain time frame so you may get a ton of xp all at once but then can't gain xp in foundries for 2 hours because you've become foundry xp locked.
Basically it's good for leveling an alt that you hardly play, just log on every 2 hours and gain a level. My CW hit 60 with 8 hours /played time, but that was like my 4th class to 60 and just didn't feel like doing quests again.
Ninen
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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TLDR: you shouldn't need more than the occasional foundry mission to get you through dry spots in the main quest chain. All the really exploitable stuff has been nerfed in foundries, so it's really only the fact that it's instanced (and whatever story/lore/w-e chuckles you get from that stuff)
I'll go so far as to say that you're probably better off doing skirmishes to get over those dry spots rather than foundries. At least skirmishes can net you the double AD during the right hours.
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Theres an entire zone more quest xp in the game than whats required to hit 60 so not sure what you mean about dry spots. theres no need to do anything beyond questing to hit level cap. Though id recommend skirmishes as they are currently level locked meaning you cant go back and do them later. This will probably change later (the lvl 15 one is now all levels on ptr)
Theres a new content patch called module 1 but its free just like everything in this game.
Theres a new content patch called module 1 but its free just like everything in this game.
I remember a few dry spots if you didn't do the instanced dungeons and stuff. I can't remember the level ranges though, but there were two different times that I was under leveled by a level and it was a pain in the ass to get through. Then once you pushed through it, it was super easy. I think there is one area where the quest exp/kill exp is lower than everything else.
Ninen
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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When I say a dry spot I mean that you've completed the existing zone, but are still a level or 2 too low to trigger the quests for the next zone. But yes, that said, I *did* eventually hit 60 3 zones early (from hitting too many skirmishes (trying to get AD) and 5 man dungeons (seeing content)).
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Were you not invoking? You get a surprising amount of xp/ad in addition to coins/wards/pots/buffs/etc while leveling by simply invocating at camp fires.
Assuming you were invoking (why would you not?) You missed quest content somewhere. While 90% of the game is bread crumb hand holding every zone has some hidden gems off the beaten path. Some are item drops by unique mobs which give you a quest, some are random ground spawns, but there's more than enough solo quest xp to hit 60 without doing any group dungeons/foundries/skirmishes/etc. Doing only quests you should hit 60 by the end of Mt Hotenow or the very beginning of Whispering Caverns. It's kinda dumb since you want to complete the WC story line anyway to get the Clicky cloak. I've leveled legit to 60 3 times in this game and every time I never hit any dry spots. First as a rogue when "open beta" began doing only quests. then as a Cleric, I decided to do every group dungeon, and most quests but skipped a lot of solo dungeons as it took way too long as a cleric. Then as a GF doing every skirmish (this is actually a challenge as most have a level range of only 2-3 levels and then it's no longer available to you), every quest, and every group dungeon leveling up, basically achievement/title whoring. my GF hit 60 long before WC, most others hit 60 either at the start or in the middle of WC.
All the while I was gunba'ing (popular xp exploit foundry) a CW to 60 without doing any content at all.
yeah just more of the "Pay4Uniqueness" via casino/lottery cash shop that they've got going. I think this game's cash shop is based on gambling addiction and abusing the fuck out of said types of people.
I got Lilend but i don't even want to say what it cost me. The heal seems kinda weak but the level 15 ability sounds fairly OP. Currently the only healer companion you can get to R30 though.
Ninen
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Sure I was invoking. As for what rare random drop or ground spawn shit I missed, fuck if I know, it's rare AND random AND trying to prove the negative.
Good, Bad, or Ugly, I'm just relaying my experience.
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eh they are not rare they are always there, but they are off the beaten path as in your little sparkly trail will not lead you to those area's where other quests are. it's really nbd, you missed quest content and had to run a foundry or skirmish to level up, no biggie, not really sure why we're discussing it.
Saban when the new module comes out aug 22nd you will be able to upgrade any companion to R30, but it's going to cost a metric fuckton of AD. 300k from white (15) to green (20), and it progresses from there. Not sure what it'll cost for green to blue (25) as I don't have any green companions, but it's 750k to go from Blue to Purple (30), so i'd assume 500k. that makes it 1.5mil AD to get a white companion to 30.
Of course it's pointless anyway as the only companion you use in the game is a Cat or Stone, neither of which get a level 30 ability unlock and 4% more of their base stats (power/crit/recovery or Crit/Recovery) is not worth 750k AD.
Saban when the new module comes out aug 22nd you will be able to upgrade any companion to R30, but it's going to cost a metric fuckton of AD. 300k from white (15) to green (20), and it progresses from there. Not sure what it'll cost for green to blue (25) as I don't have any green companions, but it's 750k to go from Blue to Purple (30), so i'd assume 500k. that makes it 1.5mil AD to get a white companion to 30.
Of course it's pointless anyway as the only companion you use in the game is a Cat or Stone, neither of which get a level 30 ability unlock and 4% more of their base stats (power/crit/recovery or Crit/Recovery) is not worth 750k AD.