Neverwinter Interview
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MMORPG: Why did you all personally choose the 4th edition rule-set? There are a lot of D&D folks who dislike 4th Edition.
Andy Velasquez: Well Neverwinter is not exclusively a D&D 4th edition rules game and we draw inspiration from all of the different versions of D&D. For example we have things like Magic Missile as an ability for Control Wizards which is incredibly evocative of the D&D experience regardless of which edition you are a fan of. Our use of At Will, Encounter and Daily powers obviously draw directly from D&D 4th edition but we did that because we liked how it fit onto what we were trying to do with combat, not because we are beholden to a specific edition. For example Healing Surges, another mechanic from 4E, didn't really work for the game we were making and so we did not implement it into our game.
Our focus has really been on making a fun game that resonates with fans of D&D in general as opposed to any specific subset of them.
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MMORPG: Can you comment on why you chose to go with a more (action-oriented) style of combat, as opposed to tab targeting? It looks really fun from what we've seen, but are you afraid it will drive away traditional RPG gamers?
Andy Velasquez: There are awesome blurby things that I can, and often do say like: (we looked at the trends in the market) or (we saw the potential of being the first F2P Action MMO) that explain why we went down this road. But, there is also my personal favorite reason: because it's a whole lot of fun.
Way early in development we actually had 3 different control schemes available ranging from a version of the action combat controls that we debuted at PAX east all the way to click-to-move controls reminiscent of (old school) RPGs. After much iteration and playtesting we ended up picking this control scheme because it was the most fun. Done and done.
