I've played a little bit of this now since I managed to snag a key.
Sadly I'm unimpressed so far.
Unlike you, I don't like the combat system. I prefer having a hard target lock. Or SOME kind of target lock. DCUO has a good compromise I thought. It's not a lock like in COH or Champions or Star Trek. But you did tend to target something specific if you were pointed at it. And you can tab to KEEP a lock on something even if it's out of your field of view. Here - I never get the sense that I'm locked on anything at all. Also - you can waste an encounter power (meaning you can't use it AT ALL until you're out of combat and then go back in) on an enemy that's out of range of your attack. DO NOT LIKE. After a while I gave up on using encounter powers or anything at all other than what was on my left click of the mouse. Because it was the only really reliable way I had to damage anything. That got boring VERY fast.
It is a polished world and environment. I'll give it that. The interface looks pretty. But again - there's deal-breaking elements in it. There's no ability to change the camera distance at all. You can't look at something closely unless you go to a specific mode called "inspect" and you lose the HUD and UI interface completely. You can move around and do basic attacks in "inspect mode". But I don't know if you can use any other powers. And you certainly wouldn't have access to the map or be able to see your health in that mode. Or chat. *sigh*
As for the characters. The character customization is fine for what it is. But I have to say - I don't care for the artstyle. That's just a personal thing. I didn't like the default Champions character style as much as I did COH - but the sliders are so varied that it wasn't a deal breaker for me. I could eventually learn to work with the sliders and get something I liked. Star Trek's artstyle I REALLY like. They have the perfect blend of slight "animation" style mixed with realistic. Neverwinter? Meh. It just looks... bland. The characters are stiff. There's no variation in the poses. I got into town and immediately I'm struck with the thought - "Call in the clones!" Because everything looks the same. And that bit with the camera distance being locked doesn't help matters. You can't look at anybody close to see any variations. It's all a blur at the default camera distance. And did they have to make ALL the hairstyles look like no one has ever bathed? Really? I know this is "medieval fantasy" but come on?
Honestly - they could have imported the character artstyle over from STO and tweaked it for fantasy and they would've had a win.
Oh - no way to walk either. Everyone has the same jogging speed. That's something that's started to really annoy me about Fantasy games in general. It's not specific to Neverwinter. But at least in other games, they've maintained the QOL ability to just walk casually if you wanted to - for RP in a bar, say. I can't believe that with "Walk" already an option in CO and STO that they would leave that out of NW.
This overall feels like a step backwards in so many small ways. Their are too many "quality of life" elements that they seem to have deliberately left out of the game. It's like they said - "let's make the MMO equivalent of Diablo forget all that silly stuff that makes RPers happy, no one plays games to RP after all, right?"
Some of my problems with the combat may be the character class I went with first. Great Weapon fighter. I'm making a trickster Rogue now. I'm trying REALLY HARD to give NWO a chance to impress me. So far it hasn't. Maybe trickster rogue will convince me the combat doesn't suck, at least.
Sadly I'm unimpressed so far.
Unlike you, I don't like the combat system. I prefer having a hard target lock. Or SOME kind of target lock. DCUO has a good compromise I thought. It's not a lock like in COH or Champions or Star Trek. But you did tend to target something specific if you were pointed at it. And you can tab to KEEP a lock on something even if it's out of your field of view. Here - I never get the sense that I'm locked on anything at all. Also - you can waste an encounter power (meaning you can't use it AT ALL until you're out of combat and then go back in) on an enemy that's out of range of your attack. DO NOT LIKE. After a while I gave up on using encounter powers or anything at all other than what was on my left click of the mouse. Because it was the only really reliable way I had to damage anything. That got boring VERY fast.
It is a polished world and environment. I'll give it that. The interface looks pretty. But again - there's deal-breaking elements in it. There's no ability to change the camera distance at all. You can't look at something closely unless you go to a specific mode called "inspect" and you lose the HUD and UI interface completely. You can move around and do basic attacks in "inspect mode". But I don't know if you can use any other powers. And you certainly wouldn't have access to the map or be able to see your health in that mode. Or chat. *sigh*
As for the characters. The character customization is fine for what it is. But I have to say - I don't care for the artstyle. That's just a personal thing. I didn't like the default Champions character style as much as I did COH - but the sliders are so varied that it wasn't a deal breaker for me. I could eventually learn to work with the sliders and get something I liked. Star Trek's artstyle I REALLY like. They have the perfect blend of slight "animation" style mixed with realistic. Neverwinter? Meh. It just looks... bland. The characters are stiff. There's no variation in the poses. I got into town and immediately I'm struck with the thought - "Call in the clones!" Because everything looks the same. And that bit with the camera distance being locked doesn't help matters. You can't look at anybody close to see any variations. It's all a blur at the default camera distance. And did they have to make ALL the hairstyles look like no one has ever bathed? Really? I know this is "medieval fantasy" but come on?
Honestly - they could have imported the character artstyle over from STO and tweaked it for fantasy and they would've had a win.
Oh - no way to walk either. Everyone has the same jogging speed. That's something that's started to really annoy me about Fantasy games in general. It's not specific to Neverwinter. But at least in other games, they've maintained the QOL ability to just walk casually if you wanted to - for RP in a bar, say. I can't believe that with "Walk" already an option in CO and STO that they would leave that out of NW.
This overall feels like a step backwards in so many small ways. Their are too many "quality of life" elements that they seem to have deliberately left out of the game. It's like they said - "let's make the MMO equivalent of Diablo forget all that silly stuff that makes RPers happy, no one plays games to RP after all, right?"
Some of my problems with the combat may be the character class I went with first. Great Weapon fighter. I'm making a trickster Rogue now. I'm trying REALLY HARD to give NWO a chance to impress me. So far it hasn't. Maybe trickster rogue will convince me the combat doesn't suck, at least.