What the....I was expecting to see a Prius rolling around for all the whining I see. They're rickety, seemingly steam-powered vehicles. They're not high-tech or anything. Why do people assume that a fantasy world is completely ignorant to technology? There's like hundreds of high-fantasy games out there that have nothing but swords and wands for days, let AA try its own thing.

I don't even want to play this game and I'm annoyed at its community now.

I'd assume it's unnecessary parts of the development team if it weren't for their recent announcement that Rift is going F2P. Do people really think these two events aren't connected?

I think the company is in a bit of trouble, but it's probably a short-term thing. Defiance seems to be doing well despite its issues, which I'm sure will get ironed out and worked on, and the show version got picked up for another season (God knows why, but whatever). Rift is a very solid game and will probably rake in plenty of money post-F2P. They'll probably be hiring again within 6 months.

Originally posted by Vlacke

This is all nice and well, and the game itself is not bad by any stretch of the imagination, it has plenty of potential to become a really good ARPG.

That being said they need to polish the hell out of it and hopefully think of something which will prevent scenes where six Hulks, four Spiderman and an army of iron Man clones are pounding the same mob/boss on screen, that is just about the only thing in Marvel Heroes i find verry annoying.

There's nothing really to fix that in the short-term, just going to have to live with it really. It's not a complaint I ever understood in the first place, by endgame in nearly any MMO people end up in the same armor, and classes generally have the same gameplay. I can't remember the last time someone in WoW or Rift or Diablo complained that the person next to them had the same end-game tier set equipped. What good is personalizing your face when its hidden behind armor?

On the plus side, they seem to be coming out with tons of costumes at a very fast, surprising rate. Given enough time I'm sure there will be enough variety that this is less of an issue regardless.

The surge of anti-social players is due to all the things that people FOR YEARS claimed for 'part of the game'.

FFA PvP

Spawn Camping

Ninja Looting

No Dungeon Finder - People say without it you talk more. You don't. Without it you afk and watch tv until the group fills up, then you rush through the dungeon cuz you're already tired of standing around doing nothing.

World/Area Chat Trolling

Elitist Guilds

etc., etc., etc. Basically, the MMO environment has become anti-social because it was allowed to degrade to that point via elements used and abused in the game that made people feel battered and unwelcomed. In real life, when someone is raised in that kind of environment, they grow up jaded, cynical and anti-social. It's a defensive mechanism. Sure enough, we see that in the new generation of games and gamers now, as well.

Originally posted by lizardbones

I might be the only person who saw what I thought I saw. What I thought I saw was a multiplayer game being developed by Cryptic, that got rushed into being an MMO by Perfect World. I never really planned on playing, but I was interested in the development of this game. It seemed like a good fit for Cryptic's development model.

I could also see why PW would force an MMO direction with the game in a conspiracy theory kind of way. A NW game that was online, but not an MMO might seem like a step back, rather than a step forward and wouldn't sell well.

But again, it could just be me seeing something that isn't there. :-)

You weren't the only person, it's pretty much been stated openly as fact. Neverwinter was just a co-op RPG until Cryptic was acquired by PW. On one hand, early videos of Neverwinter at this stage of the game were pretty terrible, but I'm not sure I'd call the current Neverwinter much of an improvement over what it was once trying to be. I've actually stood up for Cryptic in the past, and still think they're a pretty good team, but they were the wrong people to pass this IP off to. They haven't done anything right from the beginning, and now with their Neverwinter MMO out, I doubt someone who ~could~ do it better ever will.

Guess I'll just continue hoping and praying for a Dragonlance MMO.

Amazing to me how many people here that agree with the author have also complained that a game like GW2 needs more progression/higher level cap.

I for one would rather ditch the 'level' system entirely and simply introduce new skills into the game that need to be worked on. It's possible to ditch the numbers entirely, but by focusing less on an overall player level and more on leveling facets of the character through gameplay, you prolong the reward and enjoyment you get from playing with the same avatar. Further, it's far easier to introduce new skills, new crafts, new spells to a game than it is to constantly raise a singular level cap and create new content for it. That's not to say skill-based systems don't have their own problems, one has to find the proper balance between grind and longetivity, but its still the better option. Ideally we have a combination of both systems, but with character level being only an overall indication of a person's strength (i.e., Elder Scrolls, Demons Souls, etc) rather than the basis for it.

Originally posted by azzamasin

Much to my chagrin I spent 12 hour downloading the client for the Open Beta and much to my chagrin I discovered this is not an MMO it is an ARPG.  /Sad Panda.

 

/uninstall

The game has only been getting previews and reviews everywhere, all over the place, for months now. Did you expect pity from such a ridiculous faux pas?

Originally posted by ShakyMo
Rps did a preview of this a few months back, where they really slated it. Now when you consider one of the RPS writers also writes for marvel, knew this had disaster written all over it.

The RPG preview was a long time ago from a very early iteration of the game, before the textures on the models were even complete. The game is vastly different since then.

All the people suggesting people will play with foundry regardless of loot and rewards are deluding themselves. The point to any RPG is the loot and rewards you get as the story progresses, that's part of the mechanic. If it wasn't, there'd be no point to loot at all. Why not just get rid of it entirely? Everyone stays in the same outfit, the same level, with the same skills and with the same weapon forever! That sounds stupid for a reason; because it is.

And yet player-created content was immediately used to exploit, as it always will be. That's not Neverwinter or Cryptic's fault, that's just how people are. That's blaming Cryptic for human nature. Not their fault, but still something they should have anticipated. They attempted to reverse some of those nerfs, but it didn't actually fix anything, and almost as soon as they offered that patch players found a NEW quest that would get them to 60 within a few hours. They can't win. It's going to become just like City of Heroes where people use player-created content to grind levels, skip ALL of the game content and just grind endgame. This is an inevitability.

This isn't just a game based on superheroes, it's also an RPG. In every RPG in the history of ever, mobs prove a challenge in the first few levels. Even the zombies in the very first Act of D3 didn't die in just a couple a hits when you first start the game.

In Marvel Heroes, by level 10 mobs will be dying in 1-2 of your aoes and by 15-20 you'll be destroying swaths of them with a flick of the finger. If you can't stick it out that long then you probably have some ulterior motive for disliking the game, because that's really not a lot to ask.

Game blows D3 out of the water far as I'm concerned, by miles. I played D3 to Hell and got bored, and that took less than a week to do. Ended up getting my money back for that trash. Marvel Heroes has kept me interested through all of the betas, across multiple heroes. I'm not saying it's for everyone, but it's a great game on its own even some might prefer a competitor more.

Originally posted by OgreRaper

Taken from their FAQ:

How do I activate AFK Mode?

Lunaria Story provides its players with an AFK mode to enhance their gaming experience. To activate AFK mode, open up the AFK mode panel, located left of the mini-map. Within this panel, you may select which skills you would like to be used and which items you will pick up.

 

Really? Are there people who enjoy "playing" games that have a built in botting system?

Utter crap.

They do actually, and after years of not getting it, I'm starting to understand why. The combat and movement is automated if you chose to let it be, but it's not merely standing around watching your character do things like in Perfect World games. In browser games, this feature turns the gameplay into micro-management, rts-ish type gameplay; you give commands to your character(s) and let them run around doing them while you focus on other things. These games appeal to the facebook gamer generation, those that like to set their characters to do something while they're working on their farms or building a castle or some other crap. That's the mentality these games are created for, they're just taking what facebook did and recreating it on a grander scale.

Not my kind of thing, but I 'get it' now.

1) You're in the wrong forum, which is obvious, so I'm guessing you just want to vent and are looking for people to agree with you.

2) It happened 'tonight' and you're grumbling? Give them a day or two to sort things out first. Clearly it's not just an issue for you alone, something bigger is happening. How often have you solved major problems the moment they occured?

Originally posted by Yaevindusk

Originally posted by jmcdermottuk

Originally posted by Yaevindusk

Originally posted by MarlonB

Astral Diamonds are earned in game through daily quests, events, foundary usage and other things.  It is not currency you buy from Cryptic, but rather one of two forms of currency within the game that players trade amongst themselves.  It is ZEN that the cash shop uses, which is the third currency in game.  Astral Diamonds are the middle currency whereby a player that spends time doing their dailies and such will be able to use Astral Diamonds to trade with other players in the same way they would trade gold (though players that have excess zen could trade it to other players for the Astral Diamonds they unlocked).

 

Astral Diamonds (again, they're not the cash shop currency of Zen and require work to get) can be spent at shops/stores in game for specific items, just as there are shops that sell items for copper/silver/gold.

 

 

Then the question is can astral diamonds be bought with Zen? It sounds like GW2 where you buy gems for cash, if it's the same then you are effectively buying the speed up with cash, after converting it to AD's.

 

This part is from my understanding, which I do not claim to be perfect.  But you are not able to buy Zen and then trade for Astral Diamonds or Gold directly from Cryptic (Though they do have set trading currencies; I'm not sure if that's for their own trade or to regulate trade among players).  You will however be able to trade for already existing AD's that players have grinded out.  That being, if you spent a month doing dailies and want something from the cash shop, you could trade your ADs to someone who has Zen, and then buy what you want from the Zen shop.

I do not think they simply create ADs (Maybe wrong on this, as I read different things from different testers and haven't touched the Zen store yet) out of nothing and then just trade it for any Zen you buy; it has to exist in the economy and had to be worked for by someone.

This is indeed incorrect. As of the last beta I played, Astral Diamonds can be converted from purchased ZEN. Further, while it's earned ingame, its done at an incredibly slow rate and one that's based on a lottery system. Some days I earned 3k, other days I earned less than 300. In neither case is it sufficient to 'keep up with the Joneses', as the saying goes.

In this case a 'cursory glance' was clearly not enough. These are not as close to the 4th ed ruleset as is suggested. You START a 4th ed character with similar skill choices and options, it STARTS feeling comparable, but later in the lifespan of a 4th ed character they end up with far more choices and versatility in their builds that allow for much more diversification than is offered in Neverwinter Online. For example, at level 30 (the highest I got in Neverwinter Beta) I SHOULD have had  3 class encounter powers, 1 paragon encounter power, 3 dailies, 1 paragon daily, 5 utility powers, 1 paragon utility, 1 Epic utility, not including your two at-wills of course.

That's why, despite roles also existing in 4.0 pnp, there is no differentiating within the classes outside of what the player specifically decides his build will incorporate, ie, there's no caster cleric, ranged cleric, melee cleric, etc., in an official capacity, there is only a Cleric and how people choose to play them. At its core, 4.0 is still DnD. Neverwinter is not.

This kind of info is within the first 20 pages of a dnd manual by the way. Or here:

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ex/20080416a

Edit - Couldn't find a list of available Spells outside of the books, but some googling would easily lead to forum discussion about the assortment of available spells at any particular level tier.