I can't talk to the Foundry, but the CoH/V system allowed for a range of different mission types, customisable enemies, map selection, triggers that effected map events like ambushes and the like. No cut scene capability and combat is ultimately at the heart of it, but there was quite a bit of flexibility. No real-time DM functionality though - the missions run as you've set them up.
I guess what it really comes down to is how linear they are. Is there ever any choice to be made being which attack to use? Or can you only make traditional (i.e. boring) MMO quests? I guess if the set pieces were well enough done you could create a range of scenarios, and string them together yourself. So perhaps I'm overthinking it.
If anyone is in this weekends beta and hasn't downloaded yet, I'd recommend starting the download now. I did the direct download last night and it took forever it seemed to download at moderately slow speeds for a while, and then stall for a long period, and then download slowly and then stall. I suspect it took around 6-7 hours to download (not sure, I ended up going to bed and it was finished in the morning). The torrent might be a lot faster though. http://nw.perfectworld.com/download
I played this today and got a Rogue to 5th level and a Fighter to 6th level. I wasn't impressed. When you roll your character, you can never get higher than 12 in a non-primary or secondary stat, and your primary and secondary stats seem to be limited by a cap on sum of your primary and secondary stats. "Rolling" just shuffles the numbers around. There also doesn't seem to be any flexibility in builds; the abilities you have are completely determined by your level. Your weapons and armor are also very limited by your class. For example, Guardian Fighters can only use plate armor even if you find chain that is better, and they can only use longswords for their weapon. It doesn't seem anything like D&D and really limits the discovery aspect of finding loot and equipping your character. The combat isn't bad, but the game is just not that interesting or enjoyable.
I played some more and got my Fighter up to 9th. Then I joined a group skirmish (Blacklake Terror) where we had to fight off a bunch of attacking undead. After we finished, we all got trapped in the instance because the game insisted we hadn't collected our loot from the reward chest and the portal wouldn't activate. Logging out and back in just put us back in the instance, so the entire group is stuck there until someone either fixes it (a couple of us submitted bug reports) or the weekend is over.
I did get back in yesterday before the beta ended and got my Guardian Fighter to 20th. You do get a small amount of flexibility starting at 10th level by letting you spend a point per level in one of three feat paths. These are not D&D Feats (go figure), but marginal improvements to your existing level-based abilities. There are three linear feat branches with four levels each, and either 1-5 or 1-3 counters (at least for the Guardian Fighter) you need to max out before moving on to the next tier. I also started finding socketed items, so I could start using the various runes I'd found. You can remove runes after you've socketed them, but it costs Astral Diamonds (which I'll get to later). Runes have weird bonuses like +10 Power/+10 Recovery, so who knows what they do. The weapons, armor, and other wearables have the same sorts of bonuses. Things like +58 Regeneration/+26 Recovery. Is that better than +1 AC/+48 Power/+18 Defense? Which edition of D&D is this? I also finished a 5-player dungeon. We didn't have a healer, so we burned a lot of potions, but we got through it in about 25 minutes. It was a FFA with little coordination, or your typical PUG. We mostly stayed together and fought the same things, even if it was only to save on healing potions. You can't start boss fights without the entire group, so there was some waiting around while everyone meandered over to the magical circle of boss fight entry after scouring every corner for loot caches. Loot caches come in six different varieties: basic treasure chests anyone can open, caches that can only be opened with Dungeoneering Kits, caches that can only be opened with Theives' Tools, caches that can only be opened with Religion Kits, caches that can only be opened with Arcana Kits, and caches that can only be opened with Nature Kits. The kits and tools are consumables and you can fail at trying to use them. They also take up inventory space, as do quest items, loot, runes, and everything else, so you can have a jumble of inventory garbage pretty quickly. Crafting supplies automatically go into a separate, special storage bag when you pick them up. Yeah, I don't know, either. You get a free Companion after finishing a certain quest line at around 17th level. There were five free Companions to choose from, representing the five different classes in the game, but there are others you can apparently find or buy. I picked the cleric,who can both heal you and zap enemies with a fire attacks. Companions level up with experience just like you do, improving their abilities, but you have to send them away to train. Training takes longer as they go up in level. For example, for my cleric to train from 9th to 10th level took about 15 minutes. You can rush that training by spending Astral Diamonds, which you can get (among other ways) by praying to the gods every hour. Astral Diamonds are also used for buying some magical things like Identify scrolls, and for buying and selling everything in the Auction House. These are different from Zen, which are the currency you can buy with real dollars to spend on items to twink your characters or to buy more Astral Diamonds. They're also different from the gold/silver/copper currency in the game. Yes, it's ridiculously convoluted. Anyway, my cleric companion saved me tons silver in healing potions, so she was a pretty good pick for my character. You can also socket Companions with runes(???) and eventually, as they level up, a few different items. I wanted to buy an amulet for my 10th level cleric Companion since her neck slot unlocked at 10th, but the vendors stopped offering me items under level 19 for sale once I hit 20th. Because that makes sense.
Pretty much all the specifics I've heard about this game make it sound terrible. How are the action fighting mechanics? Are they at least somewhat involved, or is it just rote cooldown rotation?
I played a bit during the 2 beta weekends, and the actual gameplay is... all over the place. It doesn't have much to do with D&D at all, it's more like an ARPG with a Forgotten Realms skin. The only reason I'm still keeping tabs on this game is the Foundry, which is actually a surprisingly powerful UGC system for a MMO. I'm a sucker for that stuff; I miss the Mission Architect community from COH :( My #1 gripe: I don't get why it's so great to root the player during every single freaking combat animation -- even the auto-attacks! I enjoy GW2's combat much better, but I read a lot of feedback from peeps that think this is more weighty and make combat more strategic (because you aren't circlestrafing the enemy)... eh.
Like I said earlier, the combat isn't bad. As a Guardian Fighter, I could time raising my shield with enemy special attacks (which are telegraphed by red circles) to greatly reduce damage and eliminate knockdown or knockback effects. That alone made a huge difference in survivability. I also had the usual tank aggro taunts, but since I rarely grouped, I didn't use them much. Your basic abilities improve at level milestones, and they have very short (or no) cooldowns, so they're mostly what you use. My primary attack was Cleave, which hit every enemy in a small angle in front of me, so I had to maneuver to maximize it. I also had a shield bash, which lowered enemy defenses (but didn't interrupt them). You also have "Encounter Powers", which just means that they have a cooldown. I had an overhand swing which did quite a bit of damage, particularly when I hit them with the shield bash first. The cooldown on that was about ten seconds. I also had the taunts I mentioned. Then you get your "Daily" specials, which means they need to be charged up by attacking lots of enemies. At level 20, I had two of these. The first one I got was a small-radius AOE blast centered on me, and the other let me recover health by damaging enemies. I could only use one or the other before having to charge the meter again, not both. For my Rogue, the DPS class, I had to do a lot of ranged attack knife throw kiting since I was solo. Up close, I could do a lot more damage than my Guardian Fighter, but was obviously a lot softer, particularly against bosses. Solo Rogues have to move around A LOT. I'm pretty sure Rogues get bonus backstab damage, but they're hard to pull off solo. I only got my Rogue to 5th level since I didn't particularly like the frenetic solo combat. I'm sure the other classes have similar active things they need to do to succeed in combat with varying degrees of twitch demand, but why would you even be interested in playing this game?
