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Undermountain Update
wesker
Member Posts: 39 Arc User
What in Holy Hell is going on? Just got the new PS4 update and it SUCKS! This new system is completely BullS#@T! Why do they insist on making changes nobody wants that continues to ruin the game? First the random dungeon/skirmish B/S, then the AD limit and the change to the professions and now this?! Enough is enough already!
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for release.
Anyhow....here is what I think:
The good
- The campaign. The new areas look great, and the storyline is fine. OK, maybe some bits and pieces are slightly silly, like the sandcastle-building Kuo-Toa and the Sword+Dragon combination, but overall the new campaign is enjoyable and well done. Sure, there are bugs and issues here and there, but those can get fixed - the campaign design is solid.
- ID scroll removal. The ID scrolls were just an annoyance - I am glad to see them gone.
- Enchant exchange. With all the changes most players will have to change their builds - they may find out they have too much of one rating and too little of another. Being able to swap enchants and obsolete insignia solves that problem really nicely.
- The ward use cap. No risk of needing 10 wards on a 50% chance. Great.
- Companion changes (companion active powers and decoupling gear from companions)
- Discouragement of bad practices. Things like "standing in the red" or rushing ahead of the group are now actively punished. You have to learn to play.
- The stats/counterstats. The implementation is not perfect, but the basic idea is good, and should help with the long-term viability of the game - it is easy to add new areas with even higher rating requirements provided by new ranks of gear.
The mixed- The new level cap. Going from 70 to 80 had to happen at some point, and it opens up progression, but at the same time it makes a ton of gear obsolete. Blue level 72-73 random drops outperform BiS level 70 gear, but that is simply the nature of games of this kind.
- The game is harder - partly due to the removal of lifesteal. That is a good thing...it brings back a sorely-needed challenge for well-geared players. At the same time, the game may have become annoyingly hard for less-geared players, who might have to grind or spend money to get back to actually being able to handle content they could manage before.
- The "1DPS+4Buffers" meta-group is effectively dead. Group content is intended to need a healer now (In some cases it doesn't, but that is partly a tuning issue). Some people may enjoy that - there are people that want to play healers and have been annoyed by the fact that they are not needed. Others liked being in a more generic buff/support sole and may not like the restrictive choices now open to them.
- Companions now take only companion-specific gear. That's logical, really. However, many players are now stuck with rings they previously used on companions and those rings are now essentially useless.
The bad- Character creation is being dumbed down. Initial primary stats (STR/DEX/etc) now depend only on your class (modified by racial bonuses and later choices). We lose our ability to customize characters and gain nothing.
- The bonuses from primary stats are the same for all classes.. The is fine for some classes, but not others - the highest stats may give bonuses that are just inappropriate for that class.
- The bonuses from the primary stats are so bad that it really does not matter what they are (which somewhat invalidates the previous complaint).
- The boons have been dumbed down too. No more hard choices to make. No chances to customize characters based on playstyle.
- Feats used to be meaningful, and have an impact, but the current arrangement of 5 pairs is just bad. There is just no logic to the feats for many classes - and sometimes you have to choose between two good or two really bad ones.
- Professions are practically useless for now. There is not a single Masterwork item worth making. Crafters can make +1 Armor kits (for the new level 80 armors players are getting) or healing potions, but that's about it. There may be new recipes in Mod 17, but for now crafting is effectively dead. I would have liked to see something like craftable BiS shirts/pants or (better yet), craftable Masterwork companion gear.
- Healers are effectively required, but no real attention is given to them. None of the new weapons, artifacts or artifact gear seem to be designed to benefit healers - they all seem designed for DPSers or Tanks. Forcing players into one of three rigid roles and then ignoring one of the roles like this is not fair.
So, yes...there are issues, but it's not all bad. You are overreacting.> Look on the bright side ... what you got is not nearly as bad as what the PC players got, which quite frankly was just not ready
> for release.
>
> Anyhow....here is what I think:
>
> The good
> * The campaign. The new areas look great, and the storyline is fine. OK, maybe some bits and pieces are slightly silly, like the sandcastle-building Kuo-Toa and the Sword+Dragon combination, but overall the new campaign is enjoyable and well done. Sure, there are bugs and issues here and there, but those can get fixed - the campaign design is solid.
>
> * ID scroll removal. The ID scrolls were just an annoyance - I am glad to see them gone.
>
> * Enchant exchange. With all the changes most players will have to change their builds - they may find out they have too much of one rating and too little of another. Being able to swap enchants and obsolete insignia solves that problem really nicely.
>
> * The ward use cap. No risk of needing 10 wards on a 50% chance. Great.
>
> * Companion changes (companion active powers and decoupling gear from companions)
>
> * Discouragement of bad practices. Things like "standing in the red" or rushing ahead of the group are now actively punished. You have to learn to play.
>
> * The stats/counterstats. The implementation is not perfect, but the basic idea is good, and should help with the long-term viability of the game - it is easy to add new areas with even higher rating requirements provided by new ranks of gear.
>
>
> The mixed
> * The new level cap. Going from 70 to 80 had to happen at some point, and it opens up progression, but at the same time it makes a ton of gear obsolete. Blue level 72-73 random drops outperform BiS level 70 gear, but that is simply the nature of games of this kind.
>
> * The game is harder - partly due to the removal of lifesteal. That is a good thing...it brings back a sorely-needed challenge for well-geared players. At the same time, the game may have become annoyingly hard for less-geared players, who might have to grind or spend money to get back to actually being able to handle content they could manage before.
>
> * The "1DPS+4Buffers" meta-group is effectively dead. Group content is intended to need a healer now (In some cases it doesn't, but that is partly a tuning issue). Some people may enjoy that - there are people that want to play healers and have been annoyed by the fact that they are not needed. Others liked being in a more generic buff/support sole and may not like the restrictive choices now open to them.
>
> * Companions now take only companion-specific gear. That's logical, really. However, many players are now stuck with rings they previously used on companions and those rings are now essentially useless.
>
>
> The bad
> * Character creation is being dumbed down. Initial primary stats (STR/DEX/etc) now depend only on your class (modified by racial bonuses and later choices). We lose our ability to customize characters and gain nothing.
>
> * The bonuses from primary stats are the same for all classes.. The is fine for some classes, but not others - the highest stats may give bonuses that are just inappropriate for that class.
>
> * The bonuses from the primary stats are so bad that it really does not matter what they are (which somewhat invalidates the previous complaint).
>
> * The boons have been dumbed down too. No more hard choices to make. No chances to customize characters based on playstyle.
>
> * Feats used to be meaningful, and have an impact, but the current arrangement of 5 pairs is just bad. There is just no logic to the feats for many classes - and sometimes you have to choose between two good or two really bad ones.
>
> * Professions are practically useless for now. There is not a single Masterwork item worth making. Crafters can make +1 Armor kits (for the new level 80 armors players are getting) or healing potions, but that's about it. There may be new recipes in Mod 17, but for now crafting is effectively dead. I would have liked to see something like craftable BiS shirts/pants or (better yet), craftable Masterwork companion gear.
>
> * Healers are effectively required, but no real attention is given to them. None of the new weapons, artifacts or artifact gear seem to be designed to benefit healers - they all seem designed for DPSers or Tanks. Forcing players into one of three rigid roles and then ignoring one of the roles like this is not fair.
>
>
> So, yes...there are issues, but it's not all bad. You are overreacting.
Ok, I never actually played the game last night so I can't say I agree or disagree with most of your points. I was so pissed off about the character/companion <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> that I just shut it off.
I've been playing for about 2 1/2 years and have 9 characters, 8 of which are level 70. (The 9th was made for a failed experiment that I just decided to keep.) I had them all exactly how I wanted them as far as powers, feats and whatever boons I had unlocked. Also had my companions geared the way I wanted. All that was left was to get the enhancements to level them up (something I could do for all of them at once before but have had to do each individually for awhile now) and they were done, so you can imagine why I got so mad when the "powers that be" essentially said "screw you, it was all for nothing because we're taking it all away and replacing it something ridiculous.) Now I have to go through and redo all of them and deal with all the stuff in my giant overflow bags. I consider it a slap in the face honestly.
Like I said, I haven't actually played yet. Maybe it's not as bad as I think. Time will tell.
What the update did is introduce a wave of new bugs/issues without really solving the old bugs/issues that were present in the game.
Companions Bugs / Issues: Not all companions bonus feature / stats are working as expected. For instance the Tamed Raptor companion bonus provides the full group buff bonus all the time, even when you are not in a group. There are other that are suppose to provide bonus damage after a specific criteria is met and yet many of those companions don't work.
Action Points: This is a HAMSTER show; Quick action from mount doesn't work, AP gain from at least the Wizard class is not working, etc...
Recovery Speed: Some of these bonus work and others are not working.
The other issue I see with this update is that combat is really slow after the encounters go on cool down. Once you don't have an encounter to use you have to spam your at wills. With the better encounters having 20 second cool down and many having around 15 seconds it becomes very common to spend time using your at wills which have a very low damage value. The other issue I see with this is that this mod increased the respawn time for adds meaning you may get another set of adds right after clearing the set you just fought. I fought 5 sets before I got annoyed and moved them to where I know no adds respawned and cleared them out. I than noticed another set was already there. With adds respawning so fast and our damage being lower, low cool down on encounters and very low damage for at wills this makes some areas a pain in the butt to clear.
My biggest issue with this update is the combat. I can deal with complexity being reduced, changes to companions (once all companions are fixed), higher level to reach, scaling, etc... Combat is slow, boring and tedious. I actually fell asleep on one of the missions do to the number of adds I had to clear to achieve the objective and I never ever have fallen asleep playing any video game ever; this was a first. I was neither tired or sleepy; it just this game combat is that boring.
After playing and going through the game for a while as an end game player I can state this; NWO is no longer a MMO. RPGMMO are designed with players having synergy between classes/roles and allow teams to use that synergy to quickly kill adds. The current design is simple to the point that this game is not a MMO; it is more inline with a loot shooter where you have one role for threat management (tank), one for health regeneration or buffs (healer / support) and than the other roles are pure damage dealers.
The higher use of at wills align NWO more with loot shooters than a RPGMMO. The low gain on action points also aligns with those high damaging abilities found in loot shooters and the high cool down of our encounters also align more as a loot shooter.
I than jumped on Anthem last night to compare a true action packed loot shooter to NWO. I picked the Storm which is similar to a Wizard. To put simply, Anthem does a better job with creating a RPGMMO and it is a loot shooter not a RPGMMO. That is something Cryptic should consider going forward in that NWO is an inferior RPGMMO and cannot even compare to a loot shooter such as Anthem for combat orcomplexity of character builds.
Since NWO sells itself as an action MMO it needs to improve the flow of combat. I remember @noworries#8859 asked the question about would you want lower damage if encounters got lower cool downs; my response is yes do this to improve combat flow. I would lower encounter damage by 33% and lower the cool downs of all encounters by 33% as well. Please lower cool downs on encounters.
As for character build complexity; please find a way to give us a bit of something to improve character build complexity. Right now the game current state most of the feats are either not working resulting in the other always being picked or both feats are worthless. Also, limitation of 5 feats total with only being able to pick from 2 is also very limiting in complexity and build. I also dislike that feats don't start until level 40. IMO we should get 1 feat at the start of level 1, one at level 10, and than every 10 levels there after. We would have 9 total feats. I would also make it so that we either got 3 feats to pick from or 2 with any we did not pick being available to pick from at the next feat selection.
With all the new bugs introduced causing many things not to be working as intended and with slower less engaging combat this game is going to suffer player loss on PS4. I sat in PE and for every 1 nice things someone wrote about the mod, there were at minimum 5 players complaining if not more.
You brought players in for Alpha Testing and I know more than one of those players said mod 16 should not happen unless ABCDEFG was fixed and those items were and still are not fixed/updated. As a company you didn't learn from the mistake of mod 6 and once again even with feedback of players in your hand you move forward with mod 16. Yes it is in a better place on console but it is still an inferior product that feels like it is in alpha testing and not a final product.
As someone who bought well into NWO over the last three years I'm not buying anything any more. You loss my support with this mod.
You may have been using three pieces of "normal" gear on your companions. Those have now been moved to your inventory and are essentially useless. Unless they have some special bonuses, just convert them to RP. You will get replacement companion-specific gear in the campaign anyhow.
Your old companion gear used enchantments....that's now sitting in your inventory. Use them, sell them or use the exchange vendor to convert to runestones. Empowered runestones for offensive slots are the "safest" option.
The playstyle changed for all classes - in some cases it changed very dramatically - in other cases you just have to switch out some powers and continue to play like you used to. Expect to spend several hours per class, just learning to play it all over again.
Finally, read this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ykL0hTzPr3eywNIG3fU3SNb1gchFJolrlnKIml7GaQ/edit?usp=sharing
To me, alot of the instrinsic fun I had with the game is gone, and while many of us asked for adjustments, we didnt know they were going to filter it so far down to the shell it is is.
Not saying its all bad, but its not good enough to stay anymore.. as soon as I tested the changes way back at the start of the year.. I stopped giving them money.
I cant for a second believe they made anything on this update.. but in fact do believe they are loosing money quarter to quarter at least for awhile.. some people will check in back in mod 17.. not sure I will bother or not.
The game I really loved, was probably pre mod 10.. and while some of the newer updates were actually fun to me.. there still was too much grind involved anyways.
I dont know.. whatever. I had many years of playing the game.. eventually you have to leave them all.
Change was good, IL scaling sucks (makes about anything outside undermountain unplayable), but you cannot win everytime.