Next up for our What Would You Change About... feature we head over to Dungeons & Dragons' Forgotten Realms in the Perfect World Entertainment/ Cryptic MMORPG Neverwinter. Released back in June 2013 the game has overall received a mixed bag of feedback, whilst a nice and more polished looking version of Dungeons & Dragons Online (even though the games don't specifically have any relationship to each other), the game has had a number of issues from early release and even beta that seemingly don't get addressed. So when tasked with determining what we would change to make the game better we had a year and a half's worth of content to look back on...
The BOT Accounts
BOTs demean the player economy: One of the key in game currencies of Neverwinter is the Astral Diamond, with many ways in game to acquire it; it has become a proverbial cash cow for "gold" farmers. The biggest issue is that AD can be acquired in small amounts relatively easily and so as a free to play game if you have enough accounts then farming this high-value currency it is just a matter of time and clever automated scripted bots. This has been an issue since release and seemingly nothing has ever been done to try and curtail the issue. Plenty of free to play games have been destroyed by BOTs, we think it's way past time that Cryptic/ PWE pay more attention to the matter.
Shops Lacking New Items
In-game shops selling same old items: This problem presents itself in particular with the Celestial and Ardent coins "shops", most of the items available have been around from release and the shop has had little time or effort spent on it. Anyone who has played the game for a while will have already been able to purchase every item in the respective shops and so without a constant influx of new items the shop and their currencies become redundant. Unfortunately the game seems to have no problem pushing out items in its ZEN store (Zen being the game's premium currency that uses real-world money). Little less time spent trying to glean every dollar from its customers and little more time spent providing new content would be more than welcome.
Repetitive Content
The same quests and content being recycled: Particularly when it comes down to the Daily Quests players are given the same quests constantly, even worse with the Daily Quests is that every player in the game is given the same three quests each day to complete. What this means is that everyone is trying to kill the same boss, queue for the same event, loot the same clickable world items, that whilst the quests themselves are easy actually getting them completed isn't. Aside from that it's always the same quests that players are being asked to do, forcing them into doing the same content over and over. We'd suggest maybe adding more Daily Quests and making them a little more random as to who is assigned which quest each day.
Lacklustre and Boring Content
PVE is challenge free: One of the bigger issues with the content is that, in general, it provides very little challenge and learning curve and its skill requirement is shallow, but combined with the level that you acquire gear always has you statted way ahead of the challenge you face; there is rarely a time with the game becomes difficult. High hopes were held for even the 25-man "raid" battle against the 5-headed dragon deity Tiamat in the newest expansion, but the simplistic combat has won out once again and for many the challenge is lacking and players being able to fight her twice a day has made it just a another encounter to be grinded. The game has to stop holding players hands through fear of making the game too challenging, what use is an achievement if the achievement is so easily acquired?
Game Performance
Performance anxiety: Even from release Neverwinter has had issues with game performance, suffering lag and latency issues (Neverwinter isn't the only AAA title that seems to suffer with this). Players are constantly divided into different instances of the same location to try and handle overcrowding, and given that there's not necessarily that many people populating an instance it is testament to how much the game struggles with a higher server load. Similarly with systems such as the Foundry where players can create their own quests, fairly drastic limitations on the number of items can be placed in your quest, how many mobs, etc. makes it difficult to make anything but more rudimentary creations due to game performance. How to solve this problem? Absolutely not a clue.
Same Old Broken PvP
PvP needs some attention: Save from the more recent introduction of Gauntlgrym the game has been given very little attention when it comes to PVP, which for most is the endgame content in an MMORPG. A single battleground mode (with Domination point capture) and only a small handful of PVP maps has made PVP pretty boring after a while. Second to this are the complete imbalance of the PVP classes and the actual lack of matchmaking available. The game focuses on offering a level matching system that upgrades players' levels if they are lower than the other players in the match, but doesn't account for extra skills and especially the Gear Score (GS) where players can have far superior gear than their opponents. The game needs new maps and to fix the matchmaking system so that more players might actually be interested in playing PVP, it might be a smaller community but in no small part that is due to the fact that PVP just isn't fun.
The Foundry
More attention is needed to fix and improve the Foundry: The Foundry system is potentially one of the best features of Neverwinter, players are able to create their own instanced based quests, create the environment, choose the mobs that players will fight and the NPC's that they will interact with and even able to fully write out the NPC's dialogue options. It's a great system. It's also pretty buggy with lots of glitches and issues that have been around since beta and never been handled. Added to this is the small item budget for placing mobs/ items into your instance, limited group size for entering, the many ways to abuse the system to simply gain quick XP with basic quick to complete quests. The irony is that if the developers spent more time fixing the Foundry and turning it into the system it was meant to be then they would have more players being willing to create more content, saving themselves the job, potentially opening it up for players to make battlegrounds the PVP, saving themselves the job, opening up the instances to more players to use as their own Guild Hall and private housing, saving themselves a job. It's a no brainer for us.
So that's what we'd change with Neverwinter, but more importantly what do you believe should be changed? What do you think could/ should be added to improve the game? What would you add to your own personal wish list? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Please also consider our F2Pmeter of Neverwinter.
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