Returning Player - when did NWO become such a grind fest?

trinxo87

I loved leveling 0-60, after 60 leveling is "do these quests over, and over and over". I'm having problems doing it on one character and can't seem to even think how bad it will be to try to do it on more than one.

Then there is the nerf to Astral Diamonds, guessing that people exploited or they just had too much being generated from Leadership, still seems like a drastic step to cut them out (do a mission that had diamonds in the title and nothing!) Just seems like they want to push you to do more daily activities to get diamonds, are the crafts worth anything at all?

Finally there is refining. First get all these things that give refining points, then you have to have all these stones that match what you want to upgrade. My bags run over with many things, except what is needed to upgrade my artifacts. Seems like these are locked up somewhere while my bags overflow with bound refining items.

Game has lost its fun and has become a repetitive bore, feels like I'm at an assembly line doing things over and over again. What am I missing?

zibadawa

Mod 6.

EE (60-69 content) is a god-awful grind relative to 1-60, and they actually made it only half as god-awful as it was originally designed as. It gets a little better once you know how it works: which quests are just painful wastes of time, which are actually reasonable to do, etc. I think most people suggest that if it's getting to you, then try waiting for a double XP event (there's one coming up with the winter festival, I think). If you play a bunch you'll get all the way to 70 from 60. If you play more moderately you may need to be 65+ before a weekend of double xp will get you to endgame.

But, yeah, there's lots of grind. You can make incremental improvements--get one artifact up a rank or two, or get a better companion, or upgrade your weapon enchantment, etc.--that can give you objectives to feel good about. If you keep setting your eyes on those 4k+ Best-In-Slot guys then you're going to kill yourself or empty your wallet just to make it end.

You can reasonably expect to be able to solo all PVE quests (that aren't explicitly for parties) around 2.5k ilvl, give or take your class and such. Well of Dragons and Icewind Dale are the zones that will be most challenging to get to this stage for--Sharandar and Dread Ring are more like the "starter" endgame zones, and you may be able to walk into those right away and not have significant issues after you learn the mobs' attacks. And that doesn't take ridiculously long (though, to be fair, I say this from my own perspective: a guy who plays a lot, though not necessarily optimally, especially with regards to AD acquisition). You can pick up another 50-100 ilvl chunk fairly regularly, up to around 2.5k ilvl. Being able to decimate pve content, and practically solo group content, will take a lot longer.

lldt

They made one mistake: they sacrificed good pvp and focused on stuff like class mechanics that are suited only for pve, controls made to be compatible with consoles and added more p2w pve stuff (if you get impatient upgrading something, pay to speed it up!).

Sure, not everyone wants to pvp, but even higher revenue generating MMOs can't produce pve content fast enough for players. Various casual and competitive pvp is important in keeping the interest of a lot of players. As the player base continues to dwindle, there's even less resources available for producing pve content.

mentinmindmaker

They did chose an unfortunate and very repetitive format for the level 60->70 zones. It was cheap for them to make I guess.
But IMO the total effort required is not that bad now compared to the lower levels. It takes more effort to do 60->70, but not unreasonably more so. It just feels like it because it is the same over and over again.

AD generation is fine now, you can fairly easily fill up the 36k daily AD quota in 2-3 hours when you are level 70.
Do 2 dungeons a day(3-man ones do count), 2 skirmishes, and then grind demon HE's for some salvageable blue drops.

You will have to interact with other people though, if you do pure solo play your income will be limited. This _is_ a multiplayer game after all, so if you don't want to play with others a solo game should be better for you.

At 70 you really only have two options:
* PvP - but only a minority seems to enjoy that
* Or grind PvE for better gear

But that is the way it is in all multiplayer games. Making fresh and new content all the time to keep the players busy is way way too expensive, so repetitive content is a necessity.

suicidalgodot

Mod 5 laid out the deathtrap cliff's edge, Mod 6 pushed it over the brink - in combination with some "anti-botting" lemon-squeezing measures...

...and the Strongholds infiniGrind(TM) was the impact on the rocky shores of assembly-line-work-style boredom.

mercedesman

Coming from one of those Best-in-Slot guys with a 4k+ GWF.. keep yourself around 2.5k-3k. The reason I say this is because some quests are still challenging and require some strategy. The problem, and yes it is a problem for me, with being 4K is that EVERYTHING costs so much to change (to go from R11->R12 is about $12 each) and there is very little challenge left in the game unless you want to start soloing epic dungeons. Walking around doing 15 man HE's by yourself gets old very quick and after I have spent tons of hours and money to get to this point I find that I have pinned myself into a place where there is very, very little joy left in the game.

rapo973

mercedesman said:

Coming from one of those Best-in-Slot guys with a 4k+ GWF.. keep yourself around 2.5k-3k. The reason I say this is because some quests are still challenging and require some strategy. The problem, and yes it is a problem for me, with being 4K is that EVERYTHING costs so much to change (to go from R11->R12 is about $12 each) and there is very little challenge left in the game unless you want to start soloing epic dungeons. Walking around doing 15 man HE's by yourself gets old very quick and after I have spent tons of hours and money to get to this point I find that I have pinned myself into a place where there is very, very little joy left in the game.

Indeed. I fully agree.
Currently I'm a 3.7K cleric: the cost (grind, time, money, resources) to increase every single point is very high and there's no reason to do it, but pure narcissims. You can run the current contents, as said, keeping yourself at 2.5K - 3K.
The design follows the same old logic:
- take an object called "HE", instanciate a number of this objects in some exsisting maps, repeat it again and again
- Draw a new place, put some merchants in it, call it a "new map" and you have Manthol-Derith
- Draw a large arena, fill it with mobs and new bosses and call it a "new quest/skirmishes": repeat it again and again.
- Design many new rings and....ok...salvage them for some ADs.

Honestly, I'm bored, while being in a small guild I really don't know how to progress with my InfiniGrind (TM) Stronghold: I'm not so rich to invest time and money in it.

lemonchill

neverwinter always was a grind festival , problem is two years ago it was a fun grind festival were we actually could make some AD doing it. the dungeons THE CORE OF THIS GAME!!!! were taken of and as a result the fun too.

many posts have been made about this subject before and many more will: pls bring back the dungeons

urabask

lemonchill said:

neverwinter always was a grind festival , problem is two years ago it was a fun grind festival were we actually could make some AD doing it. the dungeons THE CORE OF THIS GAME!!!! were taken of and as a result the fun too.

many posts have been made about this subject before and many more will: pls bring back the dungeons

And you've already gotten your answer about it in the Underdark AMA.

But sure, keep posting about it. It'll make a difference in some alternate dimension.

lemonchill

urabask said:

lemonchill said:

neverwinter always was a grind festival , problem is two years ago it was a fun grind festival were we actually could make some AD doing it. the dungeons THE CORE OF THIS GAME!!!! were taken of and as a result the fun too.

many posts have been made about this subject before and many more will: pls bring back the dungeons

And you've already gotten your answer about it in the Underdark AMA.

But sure, keep posting about it. It'll make a difference in some alternate dimension.

dont know what underdark AMA is and dont really care about it. just like nw eventually started listening to players posting here they are unsatisfied with nw economy it will happen with them been "forced" to bring back the old dungeons.

suicidalgodot

urabask said:

lemonchill said:

neverwinter always was a grind festival , problem is two years ago it was a fun grind festival were we actually could make some AD doing it. the dungeons THE CORE OF THIS GAME!!!! were taken of and as a result the fun too.

many posts have been made about this subject before and many more will: pls bring back the dungeons

And you've already gotten your answer about it in the Underdark AMA.

But sure, keep posting about it. It'll make a difference in some alternate dimension.

...it might lead to a sooner date than "shall return"...

...it might lead to some dev manpower being shifted from reskinning / revamping HE mobs to call those "NEW!!!"... ...to doing the same with Dungeon mobs? :^/

Big-point-potential here: Nobody actually expects something "NEW!!!" from the Dungeons! Apart from, hopefully, some tradeable BoE loot. Why don't they get that act together? The world wonders...

vortican

The lesson I took from the OP dudes is don't waste your money getting OP. Grind it out, spend as little as possible, and there will always be stuff to do. There is enough variety of content now to stay busy and accomplish things now that the economy is better balanced. In a decent guild, the grind for strongholds is bearable but anyone at level 60, do yourself a favor and HAMSTER some azure enchantments in your utility HAMSTER pronto. It seriously helps relieve the monotonous boredom of getting to level 70.

Whining about the lack of dungeons won't change any priorities for the company. People have been whining about them forever and nothing will change until they are ready to bring them back. I just can't wait for the crying and whining when they actually DO bring the dungeons back and they're not everything they were hoped to be. It's going to be epic hilarity.

I will still be crafting many, many pairs of pants.

santralafax

urabask said:

lemonchill said:

neverwinter always was a grind festival , problem is two years ago it was a fun grind festival were we actually could make some AD doing it. the dungeons THE CORE OF THIS GAME!!!! were taken of and as a result the fun too.

many posts have been made about this subject before and many more will: pls bring back the dungeons

And you've already gotten your answer about it in the Underdark AMA.

But sure, keep posting about it. It'll make a difference in some alternate dimension.

If you are referring to the dungeons being said to be returning in Mod 9, well that was their response after the response that we would hear something about them "after Mod 8". When they took them away it was going to be "soon." That drum can't be beat enough.

Aren't there a lot of missing skirmishes as well?

tassedethe13

santralafax said:

Aren't there a lot of missing skirmishes as well?

No

zibadawa

tassedethe13 said:

santralafax said:

Aren't there a lot of missing skirmishes as well?

No

Yes, at least insofar as the 60-70 skirmishes aren't available to anyone under level 70 unless they were around to unlock them when the level cap was 60.

tassedethe13

zibadawa said:

tassedethe13 said:

santralafax said:

Aren't there a lot of missing skirmishes as well?

No

Yes, at least insofar as the 60-70 skirmishes aren't available to anyone under level 70 unless they were around to unlock them when the level cap was 60.

Do the campaign, you will unlock it.

santralafax

tassedethe13 said:

santralafax said:

Aren't there a lot of missing skirmishes as well?

No

Sorry, I started during Mod 4 and hadn't really done any of the dungeons or skirmishes as I was busy with levelling and then campaign content/gearing through Mod 5. I thought a number of skirmishes were disappeared along with most of the dungeons (which would still be NEW content to ME.)

Unknown

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zibadawa

tassedethe13 said:

Do the campaign, you will unlock it.

You cannot do the campaign before level 70 unless you had already unlocked it back when the level cap was 60. Yet there are skirmishes for Dread Ring and Sharandar that are for level 60-70.

Which is exactly what I said before. I fear repeating myself is futile, though, since you didn't catch this the first time around.

kurtb88

defiantone99 said:

This year we did not have Respen's Game

Does anyone know why we haven't seen Respen's again? That was the most fun.

Unknown

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reiwulf

NW has become more and more grindy with each new module since launch, that's no news for anyone, although mod 6 was a big jump to a whole new level.
I have no idea what will they do with module 9, I haven't heard anything about it and we're already pretty much in the middle of module 8 I guess.

sockmunkey

Ive heard that mod 9s tag line is going to be "More grind then a hipster coffee house"

tyrtallow

You people obviously didn't do enough of the old mod 4 grind. Imagine the current grind minus the extra currency from WoD and Underdark campaigns. Add to that the pressure of having to grind for (at the time) very rare artifact gear drops and the Black Ice gear (anyone remember the BI gloves grind?).

One can argue that the mod 6 grind was the hardest, but the mod 4 grind was definitely (regardless of rewards) the longest. By far.

zibadawa

tyrtallow said:

You people obviously didn't do enough of the old mod 4 grind. Imagine the current grind minus the extra currency from WoD and Underdark campaigns. Add to that the pressure of having to grind for (at the time) very rare artifact gear drops and the Black Ice gear (anyone remember the BI gloves grind?).

One can argue that the mod 6 grind was the hardest, but the mod 4 grind was definitely (regardless of rewards) the longest. By far.

True, I wasn't there for mod 4, but every guide I've read from mod 4 basically said "just run a bunch of HE's and you'll get your gear in a week or two, no problem".

rickcase276

What is scary, I got the gloves on the first epic HE I ran on my DC, after I switched her out to do mostly healing. But it did take me about 2 months to get it on my guardian fighter.

santralafax

tyrtallow said:

You people obviously didn't do enough of the old mod 4 grind. Imagine the current grind minus the extra currency from WoD and Underdark campaigns. Add to that the pressure of having to grind for (at the time) very rare artifact gear drops and the Black Ice gear (anyone remember the BI gloves grind?).

One can argue that the mod 6 grind was the hardest, but the mod 4 grind was definitely (regardless of rewards) the longest. By far.

People keep talking about those mythical gloves. They never existed. Devs made it up to keep you busy. Haven't you figured it out yet? :-)

Seriously, I looked for them through Mod 4 and Mod 5, didn't matter how many HE's I did.

kurtb88

santralafax said:

tyrtallow said:

You people obviously didn't do enough of the old mod 4 grind. Imagine the current grind minus the extra currency from WoD and Underdark campaigns. Add to that the pressure of having to grind for (at the time) very rare artifact gear drops and the Black Ice gear (anyone remember the BI gloves grind?).

One can argue that the mod 6 grind was the hardest, but the mod 4 grind was definitely (regardless of rewards) the longest. By far.

People keep talking about those mythical gloves. They never existed. Devs made it up to keep you busy. Haven't you figured it out yet? :-)

Seriously, I looked for them through Mod 4 and Mod 5, didn't matter how many HE's I did.

I got them on two of 8 characters: TR and HR

wylonus

worst of all the grind of the grinds, whenever we reach "overlap XP" and we get screwed by RNG for not getting power points we need to fill rank 4 skills, and got few rank 5s and cheap gems instead, that is insulting, and even more insulting for 4-5 xp turnovers while few players got very lucky to get power point at every level they hit beyond 60.

Star trek's power points earned after each xp turnover we reached, made the captains more tougher.

silverkelt

This grind per mod is ok, the overall grind from start to finish is a little much. Most of my overreaching complaint is how it locks out alt play due to the severe amount or RP needed to advance in game.

They basically took the measuring stick and said, ok x # % of players play this much time and can earn this much RP in the game. Then never ever.. thought about playing anything else , EVER!

ITs sad AND true at the same time.

I have already proposed many tweaks (as HAVE many others) in refining the current system. But to me #1 is to lower the curve to epic on artifact gear.. by 50%. Leave the same amount of RP needed to go from epic to legendary.

This way we could play alts , but not be so limited on them, it will also be JUST as hard really to get to legendary, as that is the steepest curve anyways so there should be no major complaints from the (HEY I got my RP basically free 2 years ago.. to bad for you , you missed out crowd) CROWD.

(and yes that's basically what happened.. before dragon hoard nerf to the ground.. )

There was a 2 week period, that if you spend , morning, noon and night grinding RP, you wouldve caught up on some alts in IWD before they again nerfed that to the ground, basically by the same mis guided individuals in the game, who do not see the value of allowing some catch up. Again, remember, these people got thier RP.. for almost NOTHING back in that time frame. All they EVER had to reinvest is 20% more rp every 3 months or so and they ARE caught up.

Its so wrong and it has been the #1 mistake in this game the entire time.

Ironzergs system would work as well.. heck anything ELSE besides the system we have now would work.

tyrtallow

Except content is back to mod 5 levels and there is no need to actually get legendaries or better gear, except for PvP which is broken even for people with the same iLvL. You could all be in greens and a pally or a healing DC and his posse will still own your a$$es, among other things.

Making an alt is ridiculously easy atm, thanks to faster content progress from Underdark and the sheer amount of good stuff you can get just by doing skirmishes and HEs. It helps that content has been scaled down so you can do T2s in epic (purple) level gear again. In fact, going beyond purple (combined with experience/skill of course) seems to break content balance atm (people are killing bosses too fast and breezing through end game content with 1-2 less people in the group).

The last few mods have been like a seesaw. Content is either too easy or too hard, and we're just swishing back and forth. For the gear/grind to actually matter, something has to be done about content difficulty/the power creep.