Neverwinter Nights - Capitalist Utopia

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I didnt even find the start NPC for the 3rd page yet. I know where Dwar Proper is. Is it there?

Btw, woot, I just got my invitation for the beta test of Vauguard Saga of Heroes. Registered kind of late (didn't follow the hype a few months ago) but nonetheless got in. That'll limit my free time for other games somewhat.

I put high expectations on Vanguard. It's made by a few renegades from Verant (the maker of original Everquest, before it was raped by Sony). Following the announcement, it will be a MMORPG for hardcore fans, no cheap powergaming, you earn hard what you own. I'm pleased with the announcements so far. Now let's see how it plays out.

I'd be interested to see how it goes. What's cheap powergaming though?

[Harovan]

Well, not from me (I suppose you know what an NDA is ). But you can inform yourself about the basics on http://www.vanguardsoh.com.

Under cheap powergaming I understand the possibility to create a relatively powerful character quick and without much effort, even solo and as casual player. Kind of Guild Wars (remember I got to the level cap in a week and to the last zone in two - doing all quests I found and zapping all skills for both E and Me including elite), or World of Warcraft and all the games that were dumbed down in the last year to cater to the impatient player with a short attention span (which sadly includes EQ2 and explains my demise from it).

Here is a vision how Vanguard will be, taken from the FAQ of the game (link see above):

The game is going to be challenging.

The game is going to focus on character advancement, item acquisition, and interdependence to build community and teamwork.

If I had to compare it to another game, take original EQ, Kunark, and Velious -- that sort of challenge.

One of our big goals is bring back the challenge we feel is being abandoned in MMOGs as of late, but without a lot of the tedium. We want travel to be fun, and there to not be a lot of teleporting around. We want exploration to be key and for you feel compelled and then rewarded for exploring and traveling.

We really don't want camping, where you sit in one spot waiting for a spawn. We have plans to have our encounter system strongly encouraging moving around, 'doing' a dungeon. We want to have cool vehicles, whether they be horses that you can equip and also use for storage that help you move across land; we want you to own ships and sail the oceans, but not empty oceans -- oceans filled with content as well -- sea monsters, pirates, and lots of little islands en route to your destination.

Additionally we will have areas that are more geared for one of the categories: casual, group, and raid. The casual areas require less of a contiguous time commitment and you don't need a full group. The grouping areas, well, require you to group. Think classic, old school grouping. Then the raid areas, well that's pretty obvious.

Both risk and reward will be present, however, so one shouldn't expect to see as much of a reward in a casual area vs a group area. It's something to do when you have less time, and it should be fun, but you're not going to get the fiery scimitar of ultimate doom in a casual region.

Also, our crafting system is there and arguably just as important as the adventuring side of things. So if your buddies aren't on one evening yet you still want to play, you could go and hone your crafting skills, and then return to adventuring the next evening when the guild logs on and off you go.

The interface and character class selection is also somewhat newbie oriented if you want it to be. We don't want to beat the noob over the head with all the depth and detail of the game right off the bat. It's intimidating. So if you choose the noob path to character creation, expected to be gently led into the UI, the gameplay, etc.

Basically, we want to remove as much tedium as possible, as well as barriers to entry. But, and this is key, we strongly feel this is NOT mutually exclusive with making a darn hard and challenging game. Battles will be tough. NPC AI will be smart. Lots of group tactics will be used, with even more collaboration then you've probably seen before, and an even more visceral feel.

Dungeon crawls will be back, and those who risk the depths of these nasty areas and return alive will most likely have some pretty awesome loot.

Death will have a sting, and it's mostly classic corpse retrieval with a few variations like we'll make it easier to find your corpse, yet you'll still have to fight to it. Also, corpses will never truly deteriorate as long as a certain amount of loot is on the corpse. And, the way the game is designed, you are expected and will need by a certain level to start putting together multiple sets of armor (gets into situational stuff that I can't talk a lot about now). In any case, the old 'gotta head back into the dungeon naked to my corpse' should pretty much go away, as you will have spare/alternate set(s) of equipment relatively nearby.

Anyway, tough, yes. Rewarding, yes. Challenging, yes. Tedious, hopefully no. Camping, minimized the best we can. Travel, fun and dangerous in and of itself. Needing to group and work with others to really advance optimally and get the phat lewtz, yes.

Return of the challenge, yum! No porting around, yum! The travel is part of the fun (which I liked in GW btw - I don't want to trash it, it DOES have it's strong sides). Death having a sting, great (it has really lost its meaning in EQ2, the nerf of the death penalty was pretty lame). <-- EDIT for explanation (from an EQ2 quest guide): Hint for classes who can not 'evac' - "Get yourself killed and revive at the docks!" Using death as teleportation, how lame is that?

Sounds promising IMO. YMMV.

EDIT2 (hell the download is at 2.49GB of 4.77): Return of dungeon crawls - teh w00tness. It was sooo lame in EQ2 having a rogue or enchanter with group invis, so you could bypass 95% of the dungeon and get to teh phat lewtz in 10 minutes, that was lame cubed. Bah!

[Harovan]

4.06GB of 4.77...

Whoa, I'm impressed by the customer support. I had a small problem in the registration form, sent a polite email complaint and got a handwritten (i.e. no standard response type of "read teh effing FAQ and stop nagging") email from a dev confirming a workaround within an hour. Sigil

[DrSpike]

Hmm. I consider myself a serious gamer, and usually powergame in that I work out the fastest ways to progress and do them. And I don't like very slow levelling. For me, I'd prefer to hit the cap after a couple of months (a la WoW) and have an endgame to look forward to. Then I'd be able to play other classes to the cap too. This wont happen if it takes months and months to reach the cap, a la the original EQ.

I think from what you just said that what you mean is you prefer games with slower progression than I do, and perhaps forced grouping.

Everyone hates cheap exploits; this isn't to be confused with powergaming.

[Harovan]

Well, then probably Vanguard is not for you. Play Wolrd of Warcraft, that should fit your preferences nicely. Or EQ2, which is less cartoonish and got quite some zones/dungeons for powerleveling too in the last year. On the recently launched PvP servers I got to level 33 (of 70) in 2 weeks while working fulltime (the level junkies got to over 50 in the same time).

From what I hear, you will be disappointed with the endgame content of WoW, though. EQ2 has a steady influx of bored WoW players who get sick of Battlegrounds and the limited amount of raids (that's what they say, I never got beyond the newbie levels in WoW). WoW is very fast-lived and seems to quickly burn out. Well, after all, that seems to be the type of game you like. Not me, though.

[Harovan]

..., and usually powergame in that I work out the fastest ways to progress and do them.

That sentence reminds me of the early days of EQ2. In Antonica and the Thundering Steppes were some fields with animated scarecrows of various difficulty, who were easy to kill for a group of 2-3 (although too hard to solo) and gave a nice experience. I could not understand, that there was quite a number of people, who played from level 10 to level 25 killing nothing but scarecrows. They certainly progressed very quickly and got to 25 in about a week (I needed ~2 months, but took my time to smell the flowers). But of course they skipped about 98% of the game content, and did not a single quest except - you guessed it - to kill scarecrows. We called them scarecrow campers. Interestingly, some of them complained in the forums about how boring EQ2 is. Oh the irony. Powergaming is usually cheap, and boring.

[DrSpike]

Well that's just poor balance. I'm not in favour of poor balance. However, if it's there, it's hard not to take advantage of it.

[duke o' york]

Anyhoose - regarding NWN (well, Folderol), the third page of the codex is to be found in Dwar Proper - Preacher Jones told you that when you got the second page!

[Harovan]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Well that's just poor balance. I'm not in favour of poor balance. However, if it's there, it's hard not to take advantage of it.

Except that it's not even poor balance. There were scores of zones and dungeons with similar experience, filled with quests and even some early raid mobs. Vermin's Snye for the mid-teen, followed by the Crypt of Betrayal for the early twen. Blackburrow (a mine 3 levels deep, populated with gnolls). Stormhold (an old fortress of dwarven knights, now populated by undead of many races). All filled with group mobs. And that's far from being all, and only the "good side". Of course you had to lose valuable time to get to the "interesting" parts. Time, in which you could have killed a dozen more scarecrows.

Duke: I parked my character in Dwar Proper. It's big and confusing, it'll take a while to find the right NPC. But time is limited, and tomorrow I'll have Oblivion and finally installed the Vanguard Beta client. We can get the quest, and perhaps you can level your character a bit to get closer (I'm 15 now).

[duke o' york]

Well I'll take a while to level up to 15, so how's about I post a time here when I'm ready and then we can take the quest (once we've found it ).

[Harovan]

Sounds good to me. No need to level all the way up to 15 (unless you want to), but I suppose with 5 levels difference you'll get not much experience, so you should get at least to 13.

[duke o' york]

I'm still not even at level 11 yet, despite spending some time fighting insane deer at the Nulbton rangers' gaff.
I'm also trying to work out how I have managed to get from Gypsy Camp to that area so easily in the past, because at the moment I have to go through south lakeside (and avoid the dire bears).
I did advance the quest for the third page of the Codex slightly (all right, I found the correct commoner then didn't go further). I'll tell you in-game so as not to spoil it for anyone else.

[duke o' york]

Oh, and Jamski - I was stunned that I couldn't buy shuriken at Kensai Ryu's. I mean, he has a magic sickle yet no shuriken whatsoever.

Not that I was going to buy it with my higher-level character and then use Sir Ralph's character as a stooge so that he could hand it to my monk or anything.

[Unspeakable Horror]

I'll tell you in-game so as not to spoil it for anyone else.

You can use

Spoiler:

spoiler tags

[Harovan]

Originally posted by duke o' york
I'm still not even at level 11 yet, despite spending some time fighting insane deer at the Nulbton rangers' gaff.

You should be about fine for manticores in Cragdale, giants in Twizzler pass, later the cave of backwood freaks (or whatsitsname?), bull's run (good loot there) and finally ants. Got me 11-14 in no time. Also, the crypt for the 2nd part of the codex is nice exp+loot at 11..12.