Gadgetory

hey everyone this is steve from gamers nexus net and today we are looking at the neverwinter mmorpgs gameplay mechanics and the depth of play we first looked at the game in our previous character creation video where I walked you through the basic classes races and the tweaking of your appearance but now that our team of three editors has had time to play for the entire weekend I am confident enough to voice opinions on gameplay the game itself is based on current Dungeons and Dragons the 4th edition rule set which was purpose built by Wizards to be easily accessible to players of both tabletop and of course online gaming experiences and while all of the classes Paragons which are effectively subclasses and abilities are not yet integrated with neverwinter online it did have much of its framework in place for this past beta weekend and a quick disclaimer this was a beta this was the first beta weekend so I am not really going to spend a lot of time mentioning things that were bugs because I think they'll be fixed but gameplay I am fairly positive is set in stone so we can talk about that for a crash course on the background the game is based in the Forgotten Realms universe and specifically takes place and neverwinter the city and its surrounding provinces this is the same universe where baldur's gate those games if you remember those they took place in the Forgotten Realms universe and of course the city of baldur's gate and never wonder is actually located just slightly north and a little west of baldur's gate on the sword coast as soon as you step foot into the world of Neverwinter online after the tutorial of course you're greeted with a setting appropriate really just entire city the architecture is all setting appropriate there's high fantasy style structures floating masses of Earth up in the air with Citadel's on top of them all kinds of crazy stuff that is really just perfect for the universe so I commend the developers we're doing a good job aesthetically and setting wise and the games overall aesthetic is cohesive and matching the they're even watering NPCs that breathe a bit of life into the city you don't always see that in most was nice the controls feel mostly fine animations are smooth and the basic elements of combat are all fluid enough but there's a major flaw that we noticed immediately just on character creation all the way through to whatever level we played to this weekend and it kind of grew and concerned us more as we progress because we were noticing that the problem was continual it was not subsiding anytime soon so here's what we noticed character customizations and specifically ability options pathways subclasses all the stuff overall depth is what we're talking about of development and are all incredibly shallow and weak all of that stuff is very weak from the get-go unlike the tabletop game and unlike many other MMOs out there neverwinter sort of drops you into a universe with a flat template race class appearance that's it then sends you out on collection quests courier quests and kill X of Y quests almost immediately I think this is sort of catering to the more novice audience I feel like it's it's really appealing to the people who need to be handheld quite frankly all of us are fairly and I say Azmi and everyone who is familiar with gaming and RPGs especially we know what we want to it comes to a character you can come up with the concept very quickly think of something really cool and then just execute and you figure out the rest as you go right as you level up you learn about the game that's just how it works but this is completely templated so you're not different from anyone else when you start here I mean you're every other fighter so do keep that in mind there's no hesitation when it comes to getting right into the grind either not even a honeymoon stage with an alluring veneer sort of like rift has a very cool looking introduction that doesn't exactly follow through the entire game although separate topic this is I think this is likely due to the games beta stage I feel like this will change in terms of the introduction that's probably a placeholder for now but still kind of disconcerting quests are nothing original honestly it's all stuff that we've all seen before they're really just used as an excuse to grant additional XP when you're killing things anyway it happened to be in the area and in some cases I suppose it's a way to force players to explore so there's that I guess ? so yes the quests are rather boring and bland but I can look past boring quests if the gameplay is there if there's enough character depth heck yeah I'll play those crappy quests all day long if I have a really cool character to look forward to in the future that's just--that's these games are a trade off like that you can't have it all but this game has neither right now so first of all you're limited to somewhere around eight or ten total abilities on your bar including passive abilities that to MMO gamers is not a lot right you're used to three hot bars or more at mid-range this is fixed you're stuck with those and I can see that working I could see myself playing through rift with five abilities and nothing else obviously not competitively or anything but I can see it working if it's done right the problem is it isn't not neverwinter anyway so you have for example I I'm not going to go to into depth how this works but they're our encounter abilities at will abilities and daily abilities in fourth edition some of us know how it works daily user once per day encounter once per encounter at will anytime okay very simple in Neverwinter they have to bypass some tabletop to desktop logistics issues and instead just make daily a effectively a charge up I hate to use that phrase but think of daily as you work toward it progressively as you deal more damage so that's that encounter is based on charges like a magic wand might have three charges before needs to be recharged okay so it's just like that you deal damage it recharges over time that's that and that's that's really the end of it so that's what you get you have a couple of slots for each of these on your bars so you might have two slots or encounter abilities two slots right we'll of the abilities and so on if you think about this mechanically what that means is as you progress through the game when you're choosing between one ability or another you really do not have a whole lot of options you have to make choices effectively based upon what number is higher that's not too dissimilar for most MMOs but most MMO will at least disguise that in some kind of other Shroud of story or cool abilities for instance in Neverwinter if you want to be a damage dealing fighter vs a high hit point fighter tank fighter the difference is it's really just stuff like you have two percent higher health or you have two percent more damage that's so boring I can't even begin to express it in thoughts partially because it's 8am and i stayed up writing the full article linked below all night but it's just crazy boring so where do we see the difference in normal MMO as well for example you might see something like if you wanted to make the fighting type the damage dealing fighter you would maybe see something more along the lines of deal and extra two percent damage with slashing weapons and have a chance to inflict a bleed damage over time wound on your opponent much more interesting right because suddenly you are now a slashing weapon focused fighter so axes and swords which differentiates you from the pack and you have an ability that is useful in certain situations bleed against humanoid guys when you're trying to kite or something like that so instantly gives you a lot of options in combat and separates you from the pack a bit more which is what it all comes down to in the end because otherwise you get stuck in that why am I playing this game oh my gosh did I just spend my whole weekend playing that right so that's what I'm talking about and it's all accentuated by the fact that combat is so easy I can't even express how easy it is for the first I don't know a couple hours we put maybe each put 10 hours into it this weekend to collect them somewhere 2234 half of it you don't even need to use most of your abilities you can get through just holding down left click and then as it does get harder there's no actual difference between your enemies it doesn't register in your brain I'm fighting an orc or I'm fighting a halfling they're all freaking the same because they're all equally easy to kill and equally unimpressive you're not nothing psychologically ticks that may she say I should run away from this guy where I should be scared of this guy because you know you're going to kill it and your party is going to be fine because the game is so really just scaled I think a little bit geared toward the low end where they're holding hands too much maybe this is a beta thing okay so I'm not going to like eviscerate it because it is in beta so i will granted that but if we're honest you know at this point in the game it's almost done so so just you know keep that in mind we do have to look at it fairly though so it's it's not challenging you don't have a lot of depth of customization all of your customization options are just increased numbers and one stat or another there's not really any flourish to it there's no really added like it's not fleshed out you're not fleshing out your character you don't feel like you're being super awesome and different from everyone else it just feels very templated and bland and I think that's that's sort of the statement for today and further a lot of the skills that are specific to classes for example Dungeoneering is fighter specific thievery steve is a rogue specific excuse me and religion is cleric specific stuff like that those skills which are class specific when you encounter items that require them in the dungeon it is often boiled down to its trivialized to the point where it's a difference of getting a piece of leather or not it's a it's a crafting material that you gain from using that's that skill as opposed to what I'd like to see like indie do dungeons dragons online for example is something that requires the party to work together to maybe use their skills to unlock a secret door yes we did encounter one secret door by using Dungeoneering but that I mean that was it compared to all the countless pieces of leather I got for using it so there's nothing really compelling the player to use those skills and use them together there's it's just not as cohesive as I would like it to be I do encourage you to read the full article below it's it's fairly lon it goes into depth on all of these thoughts and in a very organized manner that lays out the arguments cleanly so I highly her that at the end of the day do I recommend it sort of I think it's actually a fun game if you're a novice to MMOs or if you don't mind being treated like a moron because it does hold your hand quite a bit I I think that sort of the novices to both D&D and mmos will be that small niche where they will be most entertained because it doesn't feel overwhelming it doesn't throw a ton of complexity at you it's just like hey here's a character go have fun you're not really going to see anything you haven't seen before as an experienced player so i don't think i can honestly recommend it to experienced MMO to the veterans out there if you're a massive fan you know of Forgotten Realms absolutely try it I think there's like some I think it's all you can still sign up for beta so definitely go do that give it a shot don't take my word for it but personally having played thousands and thousands of hours of MMOs and having played many years of tabletop RPGs and having played far too many games i'm looking at my shelf and just seeing like hundreds of games it's kind of terrifying far too many games to count my thoughts are that this game has a lot more a lot of potential can take advantage of but it hasn't yet it hasn't tapped into it and frankly I think it may be too late to tap into it until perhaps a further patch down the road that's just what I think checked it out for yourself if you would like to I i would encourage getting your own opinion on it read the article below for the the more laid out arguments and structured argument and with that I will see you all next time peace