[Unofficial] PVE Class Survey

darthtzarr

Hello everyone! I am jumping the gun a bit and making a survey before Cryptic does because I don't think they have the time to do it right. I'm not okay with that I would like them to have as much useful information as they can get moving forward.

This survey has very few required questions, so if you don't understand, or don't feel qualified, just skip over it. If it is required, it is likely just an opinion that I want from you, not a fact. This is aimed at trying to find what single changes to your own class would have the most positive impact on your play in Neverwinter. For this reason you can only give class specific feedback on one class.

This survey has only two pages. If it says Section X out of 9, it's because of the way I made it. Please let me know if I messed something up, like forgetting your class/power/feat etc. You can always come back and edit your answers, since it only allows you to take the survey once, but will allow you to reopen it and change your answers

If you don't know the names of powers and feats, and aren't in game you can always use http://www.nwcalc.com/ and the neverwinter wiki as a reference.

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Results
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I have now graphed out all of the results from the survey. The answers from the "Worst bug" and "Most important change" are not currently included.

Note that also only the #1 item from each question is listed in the comments. There is a dropdown menu that is hidden in the public version of this document, since changing it would change the comments for everyone in the document. There was not enough space in the document to show all of the comments in the static form.

WARNING These results are completely uncensored, so expect to see words that would normally be HAMSTERed out

Note to HRs that saw the Option 1 bug on the form. Any answers that were not fixed by you were manually adjusted to the answer they stated in the comment by me, and are included with the rest of the parsed results.

Results:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OcCbucNRHosp4iYhbYOOd2_pmMqBsG57hXQuZbrd2bw/edit?usp=sharing

For class specific answers:


@nitocris83 @zebular @kreatyve @ambisinisterr hopefully I put this in the right place

silence1x

Just filled it out. Nice set of questions. Sad to see how few people main an SW these days.

darthtzarr

Okay so apparently the HR class was basically missing. If there are any more problems, you can PM me or message here. I probably won't see feedback given in the survey until after I parse it properly, which will obviously be too late.

Any HRs that already answered can update their responses with the working version if they so wish.

gabrieldourden

Done. Nice work to start with.

werdandi

Good idea. The only thing is that I would have liked to comment on both paths and three parangons: I was not comfortable to say what path was the most urgent to fix, when both paths need to be fixed (and I was able to tell what was wrong with both of them). Same for the parangons, feats, power etc..

ravenskya

@werdandi#8366 I felt the same way - I was debating between the tree that no one uses at all because it's so worthless or the tree that needs help to become more viable and shouldn't be used currently, but does have good things in it.

darthtzarr

werdandi#8366 said:

Good idea. The only thing is that I would have liked to comment on both paths and three parangons: I was not comfortable to say what path was the most urgent to fix, when both paths need to be fixed (and I was able to tell what was wrong with both of them). Same for the parangons, feats, power etc..

This is somewhat the point. We all would like to see all of them fixed, but it's far more important to determine what we would like to see fixed first. The useless stuff? Or the stuff that is good, but maybe not working the way it should? They have already said they cannot/will not be reworking whole classes at this time, so the best we can do is let them know what things we would like to see fixed first.

Even if you just pick one and go with it, patterns should form if there is a clear lack in the functionality of a path.

cellablock

i like this

artifleur

Good job overall. There is however one flaw in your survey :

We can only select one skill of each type (power, feature, feat, capstone...) that needs to be fixed or reworked but what if the 2 most important bugs relate to 2 skills of the same type?

I didn't select any HR feat because they all work fine. However I know two class features that are bugged and should be fixed ASAP.

I think it would be better to ask people to select the 4 or 5 most important bugged or inefficient class skills regardless of type rather than one of each type.

darthtzarr

artifleur said:

Good job overall. There is however one flaw in your survey :

We can only select one skill of each type (power, feature, feat, capstone...) that needs to be fixed or reworked but what if the 2 most important bugs relate to 2 skills of the same type?

I didn't select any HR feat because they all work fine. However I know two class features that are bugged and should be fixed ASAP.

I think it would be better to ask people to select the 4 or 5 most important bugged or inefficient class skills regardless of type rather than one of each type.

The only reason they are divided by type, and allow you to pick more than a single issue is because of how the form program works. In a perfect version of the form, you would only be able to select one issue... total. It is a lot harder to make up your mind on which single issue is the most important, rather than being able to select the top 5. That is intentional. The results are a lot clearer because of it. The purpose isn't to find all of the issues, it's to find the one issue that is bugging us the most.

rjc9000

How many people are named Sharpedge?

darthtzarr

rjc9000 said:

How many people are named Sharpedge?

Over 20 apparently.

mamalion1234

Is there an option all of them?

darthtzarr

grrouper said:

Well biggest issue with the survey is each class has 3 trees it can follow and can change all the questions asked depending on that.

But which one would be more important? That's the point of the survey.

darthtzarr

mamalion1234 said:

Is there an option all of them?

If the devs could fix them all at the same time, sure, but I doubt they can (mainly because they said they couldn't/wouldn't).

ase

silence1x said:

Just filled it out. Nice set of questions. Sad to see how few people main an SW these days.

Still more than HR and Pallies it seems

ravenskya

Interesting enough that 30% of the people main a Tank or Healer (according to the game - I know Templocks can heal) but 40% of a pug needs to be either tank or healz.

All the more reason for the game to consider templock as heals

armadeonx

Done - good questions

mebengalsfan

This chart is misleading for a few reasons.

Limited participation: Even if you hit other media streams like FB and Twitter you are limited to only those individuals who respond. Because of this you are truly providing limited data that can be very misleading of the general population.

Cryptic may not know who our main is, but they can uses queries to pull data to see the player population based on a variety of factors such as IL to see where their player base is at within the game. This data would be a more valid representation of the full population; however, it would include our alts but at least it would show Cryptic a better % of characters across the game and at various stages such as Level 1-60, 60-70, characters that are 70 but below 8K IL, characters between 8-11K IL, characters between 11-13K and characters that are 13-15KIL and characters that are 15K+ IL.

The data above would be more useful for cryptic than just knowing who my main is as my main IL is lower than one of my alts and that is because my main is a DC and I do not need max IL to perform my role in content but alt that is a CW I need a higher IL for higher stats to perform my role and that is why my CW is higher in IL than my main.

Cryptic can extract this data fairly quickly with the right queries and use it to modify the direction of the game or to see where some classes may stop playing due to play style. For instance, if there is a large group of SW at say level 40 than the devs can look into level 40 content to see if there are issues that SW face that other classes do not. Etc....

You did put some effort and thought into doing this and I thank you for that. But given what I have outline I will leave it up to Crytpic to pull the information they need about their player base.

darthtzarr

I will be closing the ability to submit/edit answers on Sunday the 3rd of September, so make sure to tell any friends who haven't taken it yet, and make sure your answers are all setup the way you want them.

darthtzarr

mebengalsfan#9264 said:

This chart is misleading for a few reasons.

Limited participation: Even if you hit other media streams like FB and Twitter you are limited to only those individuals who respond. Because of this you are truly providing limited data that can be very misleading of the general population.

Cryptic may not know who our main is, but they can uses queries to pull data to see the player population based on a variety of factors such as IL to see where their player base is at within the game. This data would be a more valid representation of the full population; however, it would include our alts but at least it would show Cryptic a better % of characters across the game and at various stages such as Level 1-60, 60-70, characters that are 70 but below 8K IL, characters between 8-11K IL, characters between 11-13K and characters that are 13-15KIL and characters that are 15K+ IL.

The data above would be more useful for cryptic than just knowing who my main is as my main IL is lower than one of my alts and that is because my main is a DC and I do not need max IL to perform my role in content but alt that is a CW I need a higher IL for higher stats to perform my role and that is why my CW is higher in IL than my main.

Cryptic can extract this data fairly quickly with the right queries and use it to modify the direction of the game or to see where some classes may stop playing due to play style. For instance, if there is a large group of SW at say level 40 than the devs can look into level 40 content to see if there are issues that SW face that other classes do not. Etc....

You did put some effort and thought into doing this and I thank you for that. But given what I have outline I will leave it up to Crytpic to pull the information they need about their player base.

You are correct. There is no possible way I can get a large enough sample size to be accurate, especially considering it requires a google account to even take the survey. However, determining a player's main is not the point of the survey. The survey is intended to find the most popular problems with each class in a better format than an open forum. I understand that the players who respond from the forums, social media, and some fan-made sites do not represent the game population accurately. This is somewhat the purpose of asking your main and some of your beliefs on the game. It is to be able to see where the person answering is coming from, rather than gathering population information (which Cryptic themselves can simply query from their database).

siegeric

I found page 1 of the survey (who is your main, how effective is each class) less important as it is mostly subjective observations and preferences, than page 2 of the survey which looks at actual class issues as that is likely where the real value of the survey is. I would have liked an "Other" option for some of the questions that could then be explained in the comments.

darthtzarr

siegeric said:

I found page 1 of the survey (who is your main, how effective is each class) less important as it is mostly subjective observations and preferences, than page 2 of the survey which looks at actual class issues as that is likely where the real value of the survey is. I would have liked an "Other" option for some of the questions that could then be explained in the comments.

It's a tad late at this point, but where would you have liked an "other" option? I attempted (and probably failed) to include every feat and power.

santralafax

I enjoyed the survey and look forward to the results, in whatever form you put them out.

mebengalsfan

darthtzarr said:

mebengalsfan#9264 said:

This chart is misleading for a few reasons.

Limited participation: Even if you hit other media streams like FB and Twitter you are limited to only those individuals who respond. Because of this you are truly providing limited data that can be very misleading of the general population.

Cryptic may not know who our main is, but they can uses queries to pull data to see the player population based on a variety of factors such as IL to see where their player base is at within the game. This data would be a more valid representation of the full population; however, it would include our alts but at least it would show Cryptic a better % of characters across the game and at various stages such as Level 1-60, 60-70, characters that are 70 but below 8K IL, characters between 8-11K IL, characters between 11-13K and characters that are 13-15KIL and characters that are 15K+ IL.

The data above would be more useful for cryptic than just knowing who my main is as my main IL is lower than one of my alts and that is because my main is a DC and I do not need max IL to perform my role in content but alt that is a CW I need a higher IL for higher stats to perform my role and that is why my CW is higher in IL than my main.

Cryptic can extract this data fairly quickly with the right queries and use it to modify the direction of the game or to see where some classes may stop playing due to play style. For instance, if there is a large group of SW at say level 40 than the devs can look into level 40 content to see if there are issues that SW face that other classes do not. Etc....

You did put some effort and thought into doing this and I thank you for that. But given what I have outline I will leave it up to Crytpic to pull the information they need about their player base.

You are correct. There is no possible way I can get a large enough sample size to be accurate, especially considering it requires a google account to even take the survey. However, determining a player's main is not the point of the survey. The survey is intended to find the most popular problems with each class in a better format than an open forum. I understand that the players who respond from the forums, social media, and some fan-made sites do not represent the game population accurately. This is somewhat the purpose of asking your main and some of your beliefs on the game. It is to be able to see where the person answering is coming from, rather than gathering population information (which Cryptic themselves can simply query from their database).

You are capturing opinions mostly. Even if it is not an opinion and data can be used to back it up, Cryptic should have tools at hand to know what is wrong with the classes and should have a QA and Prod Support team working on these issues. I know where I work it can months to even a year if not more to fix some issues all based on complexity of the issue and can it constantly be replicated. Some of the fixes takes a few years to find a code that does strain the processing of the system and with Cryptic and a game like this, I'm sure they are in the same boat as any other company that works on software, always end up a behind a bit in production fixes due to system strain, even though they may know how to fix it, but it make causes to much strain on the system and will wait until a better solution becomes available.

I wish tech was easy but it isn't. I mean it is a bunch of 1 and 0 that can be problematic more than we would like at times.

darthtzarr

mebengalsfan#9264 said:

darthtzarr said:

mebengalsfan#9264 said:

This chart is misleading for a few reasons.

Limited participation: Even if you hit other media streams like FB and Twitter you are limited to only those individuals who respond. Because of this you are truly providing limited data that can be very misleading of the general population.

Cryptic may not know who our main is, but they can uses queries to pull data to see the player population based on a variety of factors such as IL to see where their player base is at within the game. This data would be a more valid representation of the full population; however, it would include our alts but at least it would show Cryptic a better % of characters across the game and at various stages such as Level 1-60, 60-70, characters that are 70 but below 8K IL, characters between 8-11K IL, characters between 11-13K and characters that are 13-15KIL and characters that are 15K+ IL.

The data above would be more useful for cryptic than just knowing who my main is as my main IL is lower than one of my alts and that is because my main is a DC and I do not need max IL to perform my role in content but alt that is a CW I need a higher IL for higher stats to perform my role and that is why my CW is higher in IL than my main.

Cryptic can extract this data fairly quickly with the right queries and use it to modify the direction of the game or to see where some classes may stop playing due to play style. For instance, if there is a large group of SW at say level 40 than the devs can look into level 40 content to see if there are issues that SW face that other classes do not. Etc....

You did put some effort and thought into doing this and I thank you for that. But given what I have outline I will leave it up to Crytpic to pull the information they need about their player base.

You are correct. There is no possible way I can get a large enough sample size to be accurate, especially considering it requires a google account to even take the survey. However, determining a player's main is not the point of the survey. The survey is intended to find the most popular problems with each class in a better format than an open forum. I understand that the players who respond from the forums, social media, and some fan-made sites do not represent the game population accurately. This is somewhat the purpose of asking your main and some of your beliefs on the game. It is to be able to see where the person answering is coming from, rather than gathering population information (which Cryptic themselves can simply query from their database).

You are capturing opinions mostly. Even if it is not an opinion and data can be used to back it up, Cryptic should have tools at hand to know what is wrong with the classes and should have a QA and Prod Support team working on these issues. I know where I work it can months to even a year if not more to fix some issues all based on complexity of the issue and can it constantly be replicated. Some of the fixes takes a few years to find a code that does strain the processing of the system and with Cryptic and a game like this, I'm sure they are in the same boat as any other company that works on software, always end up a behind a bit in production fixes due to system strain, even though they may know how to fix it, but it make causes to much strain on the system and will wait until a better solution becomes available.

I wish tech was easy but it isn't. I mean it is a bunch of 1 and 0 that can be problematic more than we would like at times.

They specifically said themselves that they would open a forum on here to ask for opinions... why would they do that if literally everything could be determined by a query in their database? It cannot. If they know which powers annoy me the most, I need a tin foil hat to match @micky1p00 's cuz they be reading my mind.

micky1p00

darthtzarr said:

mebengalsfan#9264 said:

darthtzarr said:

mebengalsfan#9264 said:

This chart is misleading for a few reasons.

Limited participation: Even if you hit other media streams like FB and Twitter you are limited to only those individuals who respond. Because of this you are truly providing limited data that can be very misleading of the general population.

Cryptic may not know who our main is, but they can uses queries to pull data to see the player population based on a variety of factors such as IL to see where their player base is at within the game. This data would be a more valid representation of the full population; however, it would include our alts but at least it would show Cryptic a better % of characters across the game and at various stages such as Level 1-60, 60-70, characters that are 70 but below 8K IL, characters between 8-11K IL, characters between 11-13K and characters that are 13-15KIL and characters that are 15K+ IL.

The data above would be more useful for cryptic than just knowing who my main is as my main IL is lower than one of my alts and that is because my main is a DC and I do not need max IL to perform my role in content but alt that is a CW I need a higher IL for higher stats to perform my role and that is why my CW is higher in IL than my main.

Cryptic can extract this data fairly quickly with the right queries and use it to modify the direction of the game or to see where some classes may stop playing due to play style. For instance, if there is a large group of SW at say level 40 than the devs can look into level 40 content to see if there are issues that SW face that other classes do not. Etc....

You did put some effort and thought into doing this and I thank you for that. But given what I have outline I will leave it up to Crytpic to pull the information they need about their player base.

You are correct. There is no possible way I can get a large enough sample size to be accurate, especially considering it requires a google account to even take the survey. However, determining a player's main is not the point of the survey. The survey is intended to find the most popular problems with each class in a better format than an open forum. I understand that the players who respond from the forums, social media, and some fan-made sites do not represent the game population accurately. This is somewhat the purpose of asking your main and some of your beliefs on the game. It is to be able to see where the person answering is coming from, rather than gathering population information (which Cryptic themselves can simply query from their database).

You are capturing opinions mostly. Even if it is not an opinion and data can be used to back it up, Cryptic should have tools at hand to know what is wrong with the classes and should have a QA and Prod Support team working on these issues. I know where I work it can months to even a year if not more to fix some issues all based on complexity of the issue and can it constantly be replicated. Some of the fixes takes a few years to find a code that does strain the processing of the system and with Cryptic and a game like this, I'm sure they are in the same boat as any other company that works on software, always end up a behind a bit in production fixes due to system strain, even though they may know how to fix it, but it make causes to much strain on the system and will wait until a better solution becomes available.

I wish tech was easy but it isn't. I mean it is a bunch of 1 and 0 that can be problematic more than we would like at times.

They specifically said themselves that they would open a forum on here to ask for opinions... why would they do that if literally everything could be determined by a query in their database? It cannot. If they know which powers annoy me the most, I need a tin foil hat to match @micky1p00 's cuz they be reading my mind.

What ? Wait? Since when I have a tin foil hat ?!?!!?!!? I only sell those to the needed. I definitely don't need one.

darthtzarr

I have now graphed out all of the results from the survey. The answers from the "Worst bug" and "Most important change" are not currently included.

Note that also only the #1 item from each question is listed in the comments. There is a dropdown menu that is hidden in the public version of this document, since changing it would change the comments for everyone in the document. There was not enough space in the document to show all of the comments in the static form.

WARNING These results are completely uncensored, so expect to see words that would normally be HAMSTERed out

Note to HRs that saw the Option 1 bug on the form. Any answers that were not fixed by you were manually adjusted to the answer they stated in the comment by me, and are included with the rest of the parsed results.

Results:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OcCbucNRHosp4iYhbYOOd2_pmMqBsG57hXQuZbrd2bw/edit?usp=sharing

santralafax

Interesting that GWF got such a high "popularity" assignment, but when asked who their main is, gwf was "meh" in terms of numbers.

darthtzarr

santralafax said:

Interesting that GWF got such a high "popularity" assignment, but when asked who their main is, gwf was "meh" in terms of numbers.

I believe this is caused by how much they are noticed rather than actual popularity. A GWF is not only noisy, but their DPS can generally be seen on a boss' HP bar very noticeably. If a TR is doing the most damage (yeah it can happen in specific situations), a TR's DPS doesn't make any specific noise or special mark on the boss' HP bar (such as a GWF reaching max stacks would).

EDIT - That also reminds me... where has the "mains" graph gone?