The developers of MMORPG Neverwinter Online have shared their plans regarding the combat changes coming into the game, which available for early looks on the preview server right now.
The team set 5 goals for themselves:
- Improved Scaling – Scaling should be seamless and smooth so that players don’t need to focus on it.
- Easier to Understand – The live setup of ratings left a lot of players asking others what numbers they should be aiming for.
- Item Level More Accurate – Due to some different setups, Item Level wasn’t a solid measure of where a given character was and how they’d perform in various content.
- Easier to Gear Up – It can be a challenge for a lot of players to get the correct mix of stats with their different gearing options.
- Keep Options for Creative and Min/Max Builds – With all of the above, the team also wanted to leave players plenty of avenues to customize their characters as well as fine tune their stats to optimize their builds.
Changes:
- Rating caps are now based on players’ Total Item Level. These ratings work the same in all content, even when scaled. This means when you’re character sheet says you have 45% Defense, no matter where your character goes, you will have 45% Defense. When scaled, your ratings still work off of your unscaled item level.
- Players’ base damage now comes from your total item level. This means that weapons no longer provide damage. They still provide stats, item level, and equip bonuses as they always have.
- The team raised the item level of enchantments, runestones, and insignias to help them be a more meaningful part of the character as item levels in other areas have increased over time.
- Bonding Runestones have been removed from the Companions, the Companion Influence has been turned off. In response to that the team increased the Item Level of companions significantly so that a companion provides a much larger amount of stats directly.
- Companion powers have also had an increase in item level. Like other items they grant a portion of their item level to combined rating. In addition, they grant other stats directly as a percentage instead of a rating. This allows them to better compliment your equipment by not competing with ratings. Their item level is based on their associated companion item level.
- Companions no longer have levels. They still have quality ranks that players can upgrade which now go up to Mythic rank like mounts. Their bolster total has also been increased to a maximum of 100% with 10% per Legendary and 20% per Mythic. The top 5 quality companions per category are still the ones counted for bolster.
- Fighting companions take their base stats from their owner to help them be a useful extension of the player in combat. The Companion Stat Panel now shows the ratings the companion is giving to their owner.
- Boons no longer give item level and their stats are applied to the final percentage to make them better bonuses for players which compliment gear instead of competing with it.
- Racial Bonuses also give their stats to the final percentage. Many have been boosted up to give players more interesting options with their character building.
Check out the official site to see all the changes coming to combat in Neverwinter Online.
