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(on Wikipedia)
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter

While a really great game, it somehow didn’t do it for me.

• https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/categories/neverwinter

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• 2015-09-17 – I’ve been back on World of Warcraft for some time now.

• 2013-09-29 – I’m an orphan from years of World of Warcraft, but that game has been sliding downhill for too long so I’m done with it.

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• Neverwinter Feats and Powers calculator

• Neverwinter Gateway – Professions Robot Mod for Greasemonkey

An earlier opinion ∞

There was an associated forum thread, but their forum structure was destroyed and with no redirects, I’d have to poke around to find it. I don’t want to bother. I wonder if I got any responses, but since there’s no email notification I have no idea.

I just started playing Neverwinter a few days ago, and it was a good experience. I say was, because now I’ve been kicked in the teeth by Cleric mechanics so I’m starting to feel horrible gameplay pain.

I rolled a cleric and am past 40 now. These are some random thoughts on the game/gameplay and class.

General ∞

• I’m using Linux/Wine, and it’s running well. I wouldn’t play this game if I couldn’t run it on Linux. No I won’t give support. =p

  • If it helps, I have a launch script with lots of notes.
• The game looks good, although I had to tweak some settings because I’d get my butt kicked in some random situations, like whenever there’s a monster treasure chest. A single specific mob that can force me into slideshow-mode is a very serious problem.
• Sometimes when I’m in the main city, I’ll teleport around. I assume this is lag from heavy time-of-day activity. It’s obnoxious. I was lucky that I started playing during a good time of day and didn’t see this until I was comfortable with the game. This will definitely turn new players off.
• The city is huge and confusing. Sending me on tours to various places when I don’t have a mount is hell. Another poor new player experience. Perhaps introducing the player to the autorun hotkey will help a little.
• The sparkly path mechanic is amazing. I don’t think I’d play the game without it. I get terribly lost. It being able to point the player at a travel-door is helpful. The travel map needs to indicate the suggested quest-path more clearly. There are circumstances when that mechanic is unable to draw a path because the player isn’t in the right area. That needs to be fixed. I had to randomly try areas until the pathing mechanic started working again.
• I hate cutscenes and think they’re a waste of resources, but having a cutscene as an introduction to each new area would probably be exciting and informative for new players.
• After getting comfortable, I accept quests and run away, but the speech ends up dying if I go too far. Sometimes I do want to listen to it all without standing next to the quest-giver.
• A new player needs to be introduced to the bank.
• I wonder if it would be a good idea to allow experienced players to skip the “tour” quests or give them some alternative.
• The “what’s new” (u) when levelling is really cool. However, since I’m anti-PvP, I won’t complete that one PvP quest, so I have to dismiss that dialog every time I level.
• Levelling is easy. I’d say it’s too easy.
• There isn’t enough content for alternate levelling paths. I hope that’s fixed in the future.
• Two character slots, seriously? Since it’s so easy to permanently screw up a character, there’s no room to experiment.
• I’m completely confused about the zen coin thing. The new player experience for this is just awful.
• The game is “just hard enough”. There are moments of panic, and there is a lot of mobility.
• Imagine a railroad spike through your eye, then tie your hand to it. This is what the mouse-look experience is for me. The “do that ability in that general direction maybe at that thing over there perhaps” is crap. I can get used to some of it, but it eliminates the value of most single-target abilities. I have to do everything with random AoE. Also, I keep trying to left or right-click (or do both, like WoW) and I get dismounted even if I wasn’t mousing-over an enemy.
• In combat, over an enemy, hold left-click. Auto-attack commences. Without letting go of left-click, shift to dodge. The auto-attack does not re-start. This gets me so often.

• The powers/feats thing is really confusing. I think it’s partly a layout issue, but the information is absolutely incomprehensible in places.

  • Powers are confusing. It’s hard to know what any abilities is.. there’s no way to “try out” anything. I thought I would be locked into my choices and have a limited number of points as I levelled, forcing a specialty. I didn’t know that I would eventually be forced to get everything.
  • Guardian of Faith leaves enemies prone. Great, that’s a new mechanic. What does it mean? For how long?
  • There are lines leading from feats on the left to the right, I didn’t know if I was restricted to taking a certain path before “unlocking” one of the rows on the right. I later noticed that it’s a certain number of points that unlocked all of the items on the right, but now I can’t go back and “fill in” all the other interesting ones I’d prefer. Looking at the stuff on the right, there are references to abilities I can’t get information on. “Power of the Sun” references “Brand of the Sun”, which doesn’t exist. The same is true for other items.. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Not giving free respecs to a new character is extreme punishment.
  • Powers/feats is so outrageously confusing that it’s best to follow a guide. This kicks new players in the pants, removes the player from the game out onto the internet and diminishes the fun of exploring new abilities.
• I levelled two pets up, but the cost to upgrade them is outrageous. So I have a barely-functional pet which often doesn’t do the right thing which I can’t even make survivable letalone useful. Not a good experience for a new player. Also, it would be nice to have a toggle to remove pets from the city. Less clutter.
• I often attempt to mount, don’t get feedback fast enough, press the mount hotkey a second time, and end up not being mounted at all. That’s frustrating.
• Implement a pet emote audio toggle. Some player’s pets keep emoting every time we drop out of combat, and it’s extremely annoying.

• The auction house UI is garbage. There’s just too much wrong with it, from tabbing to browsing, to not seeing per-item costs..

  • When posting an item, I need to be able to easily see competing items, and not just exact matches either. For World of Warcraft, AuctionLite was a decent start.
  • Lists of items are both scrollable and paginated.. that’s retarded.
• Introducing new players to voice chat would be helpful. I looked and looked and never found the push-to-talk hotkey. I must have skimmed past it three times. It needs to be made much more obvious.
• The death/wounds/injury and revive sickness mechanics are stupid. The mechanic to stand in a fire.. wait, I mean stand by a campfire for three minutes to recover has actually had a group grind to a halt on more than one occasion. Stupid. Hey wait, aren’t I some sort of healer or something? Naw.
• Diablo – (1997 game) called, they want their gems back. Removing bag space with this mechanic is stupid. Have it all go into some well-organized virtual space that’s separate from the character’s backpack.
• I have a crapload of these purple lock boxes and no way to open them. Is this some sort of “pay to win” scheme?
• The gem fuse window doesn’t remember its positioning. It’s overlapping my bags, and I have to move it every time I use it.
• Grouping gives no money for kills. Seriously two copper per pile?
• I can’t identify an item while at a vendor, the one place where I’d want to do it most.
• If existing a vendor with my bags open, my bags are closed, and when I re-open them my position was not remembered.
• Instant-mounting is a refreshing change from WoW. I really hate having to wait to mount.
• Many basic slash commands are missing. All of the standards from MUDs should be implemented.
• I made a new character, and the key bindings weren’t brought over from my first one. Man that sucks. I wonder what other settings are inappropriately per-character.
• Why do pets get experience when I turn in a quest?
• Seals (e.g. seal of the drake) is an inventory item, and doesn’t work like riches like I’d expect. So I’m punished by having another bag slot removed.
• There’s no hotkey to mute/unmute audio.
• Sometimes a corpse will fall and twitch rapidly until it rots.
• It’s more than a little stupid to have quest text read out and simultaneously have that same NPC emote overtop of it.
• NPC emotes are far too regular and repetitive.
• If f is used to “loot all” (which I like), then why isn’t it used for looting end-quest treasure chests? Why is there even a 2 option, to decline?
• I like that there are no real invisible walls, but I hate that I constantly get stuck on terrain. Also, the notion of lagging for a moment and falling off a cliff into 2′ of water and dying really bothers me.
• Things dying and loot flying all over the place is stupid and annoying. Loot flying off of cliffs is also stupid and annoying. Having to bend down and pick things up is annoying, but doable, but how come certain things have to be looted and other things don’t, when they look exactly the same on the ground?
• In a shop, it would be nice if I could mouse over something and see how many I already have of it. For example, all the loot-kits. Better yet, get rid of that ridiculous concept entirely.. it’s just more bag slots being wasted by a pointless mechanic.
• There are teeny tiny buff icons under the character portrait. So small and out of the way there’s no real way to know what they mean. A timer underneath them would be nice once the player memorizes what they mean.
• Press n to pull up the professions list, then click “finish now” on an item, then press escape a few times. The resulting game menu cannot be closed with the escape key.
• There are constant admin messages about people I don’t care about looting gear I don’t know anything about. The gear isn’t even linked. Also, this isn’t translated into my local language (English), so I get admin messages in various other languages.
• Powers can be swapped out at will while out of combat, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to do this in a “set”. So it’s a pain to change play styles when facing certain circumstances. Including a specific pet and gear set with some sort of “set” concept would also be helpful.
• When you learn a pet, there’s no way to know it’s sex, so you can’t really know what to name it.
• The chat tabs are a bit awkward. I can’t change their order in the configuration UI, but I’m supposed to be able to right-click and drag them when in the regular game world. That doesn’t seem to work.
• Can’t have more than one hotkey assigned to one action. This messes me up a lot. I have left-hand and right-hand hotkeys for some actions, so I can reach with whatever fingers are closest.
• Vendors in low-level areas offer high-level items, and high-level places still offer low-level garbage.
• Plaguegazers can be bumped up onto a rock, and their beam attack will go overhead.
• Why would I get religion kits as a cleric? I’ve gotten maybe a half dozen so far.. extremely rare, but still odd.
• In “The Twisted Fane”, the quest “Source of Corruption”, I was at the last part, with the quest goal “Destroy the Empowering Crystals”. I backed away from incoming mobs, and fell off the edge into a bowl-shaped room below. There is no way out, and the clipping suggests I was not meant to be there. Looking into that room, it’s to the left just as you get into combat range.
• Prone/knockdown is a shitty mechanic..

• There’s some sort of “nude bug” present. I see some people mostly-naked, but with their weapons. This seems to happen when doing a load/transition.

Cleric-specific ∞

• I assume I’ll be given a free opportunity to respec if new thingy-things are introduced. Paragon? Whatever it’s called. If not, I’ll rage.
• Channel Divinity is a stupid mechanic. I’d rather be able to assign some hotkey to immediately use the alternate for a power. I’m constantly forced to tab-use ability-tab, which isn’t fun. Getting stuck in the wrong mode and being confused in the spur of the moment is not good gameplay.
• “Divine Fortune” doesn’t work with Sun Burst if I use it out of combat to only heal.
• I’m always in horrible pain. I can’t keep healed, even if given time between fights. I understand not being able to heal myself as well, but calling it “Righteousness” is insulting. I’m righteous, so I suck at healing myself? I recommend regeneration when out of combat, and specific abilities heal the character better. For example, sun burst could heal based on the number of friendly targets, with stronger heals the less characters near. Perhaps have a pool which is split into damage and healing depending on the targets present. How about regeneration if standing still? More out of combat, but some while in combat. Perhaps a self-channelled spell, but not a self-Soothing Light, since that’s crappy.
• Sun Burst’s knockback is annoying at times. Sometimes I just want a decent heal. Most if not all of the knockback mechanics are frustrating when playing with others. This is probably due to the targeting mechanics. Yes I can and do hold control to target, which helps.

• Around level 20-30 I was really having a blast, and now in my 40s I’m hopeless.

  • I can’t get enough scrolls of identification, so I bet my gear sucks.
  • I always have threat unless the group is particularly good. Having a game require other players be particularly good with awareness and teamwork in this manner is forcing players to collect into exclusionary cliques, making the new player experience even worse since far fewer good players will be available for random grouping. I can stay alive most of the time, unless there is ranged in which case I’m dead, but all that movement is fun when solo and terrible with a group. I may as well just sit on my hands and let myself die in the few seconds it takes than run around for minutes on end.

“Unlock Rank 3 of all previous powers!” ∞

There’s a secret ability available at 20 points. If you level all earlier powers up to rank three, you unlock a replacement for Channel Divinity.

Or not.

Like SO MANY other people, that thing which looks exactly like Channel Divinity is just an info box placed there intentionally and worded in a misleading way to make players ruin their character.

Thanks Hasbro.

Like everyone else, yes I do expect a free respec. For starters, it should be rewarded a couple of times as a quest reward, and UI stupidity as bad as this is unforgivable.

Other notes ∞

• I’m really pleased there’s no durability mechanic.
• Sometimes abilities go off more than once.
• When playing with video settings, it’s really annoying that my camera is locked out so I can’t test “wiggle lag”, and even more annoying that I can’t exit to test wiggle lag and return to the video options screen at the same place.

• A sparkly for “you’re facing the wrong way” might be helpful.

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• Divine glow followed by daunting light is great. Especially if you let the monsters get near enough that you can catch yourself in the radius of a D’d Divine glow so you get a damage buff: follow that with a normal daunting and watch the big numberz arrive. Hell, if you want to speed things up, get a cleric companion and have her handle the healing.
• Gear with regen stacked on it can really help (mostly only needed in “stupid damage” areas, i.e. pvp), but for most common & garden PvE you should be able to keep yourself up with just sunburst + astral seal ticks. Take forgemasters if you like: cast it in divinity on something trying to melee you to death and watch them flail in vain as your health increases. Forgemasters is great.
• Flamestrike is great for interrupting big red splat attacks

• Hallowed ground is a defense and damage buff AoE over a GIGANTIC area (and if feated into -moontouched-, it’s a heal too).