Improving the Level 60-70 Experience

scathias

commanderander said:

Hi guys,

Here are some of the answers I can give to questions:

1) The content, as it is set up right now, does not allow for level 70's to replay it. I understand wanting that, but the amount of dancing around we would have to do to make it both replayable at level 70, get existing players pre-70 to slide in to the proper neighborhood and not replay older neighborhoods, and have it just work normally for players leveling up, would be a lot and we would be biting off more than we could chew for the already enormous task of revamping 60-70 and also lessening the quality of what we're trying to put out if we try to do it now.

If i want some of this unique gear on my characters that have completed EE then i can only ever claim it once. I use it on a piece of gear and then i want to get use that same look for a second set of gear I am stuck. A good solution to this would be to make the gear that you are rewarded with BoA so that I can at least level up an alt if i really wanted that gear again.
Making the gear BoA has the added benefit of keeping other BoA gear at the BoA status when you transmute it (since if you transmute a BoA item with a BoC appearance the BoA item becomes BoC, which really really sucks.
Making these unique appearances BoA would go a long ways to having these items be more useful to all players at all levels, and also for storing the gear, that is 16 pieces of new (recycled) unique appearances that i can't toss because i might want to use it some day... but i don't have 16 spaces to magically hold more gear. If it was BoA i could at least send it to an alt to hold.

Perhaps you could add a store at the end of EE using the same currencies as the Resist the Cults of Elemental Evil repeatable tasks. That way we would be able to regain the gear after we dropped it. And make the gear BoA of course, and allow us to buy the gear for other classes. It would be a horrible shame for you to have finally added some of these old gear looks back into the game for them to be only usable once ever

beckylunatic

ribbs1 said:

Wait, so say that I already have a level 70 character but chose to skip a zone during my leveling to 70... That character won't be able to get the boon associated with the skipped zones? You have to remember that the vigilance stuff was so abhorrent that many people skipped large chunks of it or only completed Spinward Rise for the artifact weapon reward. What then?

You get credit for parts you did (including automatic boons), but parts you skipped will be available in the new campaign to do and earn all the new rewards.

So my TR that I did alllll of Elemental Evil with will have all his boons immediately. My characters who did Drowned Shore and Spinward Rise will still have half of a campaign to complete. My characters who have done the first stage of Reclamation Rock (as defined by a "wrapper" quest of X vigilance tasks) will still have part of that zone to complete.

weaver936

cromejohnsen said:

Why did you remove a substantial amount of repeatable quests which could be used to gain overflow experience????
They were a good resource to farm additional power points. Either change the level up rewards and make it a 100% chance to gain a power point or bring those hourly repeatable quests back. A lot of people already dont like running campaign quests everyday to make a little bit of experience. It is much more efficient to run hourly quests in spinward rise. Please reconsider this when removing them totally or blocking acces to them.

Edit: I know there are also people who like to mindlessly kill mobs to earn experience. I can say from what i have seen on preview that i s possible to do that to reach your 1,75 million exp. Its just painful but probably our only option from now on.

This is what the intellectually lazy whiners missed... Easy Xp for over levels... even helping 60-70's (making it not so hard) a early 70 could benefit themselves...

beckylunatic

I think we should see how much XP the repeatable quests that unlock after you're done the EE campaign are worth before complaining to much, even though they're tied to HEs.

Also, while you only get one Bruenor daily per day, those are a boatload of XP and usually really fast to complete.

minotaur2857

Does it mean that a 70 that missed the quests (I have 14 70s, so some got to 70 just by crafting and invoking before the XP threshold went up) will have to do all 4 zones rather than just the final one to get the artifact weapon ? If so I'm going to need to run some chars thru spinward before I have to do so many quests I'm really not going to bother. Please let us know in good time when you're putting this update in.

lwedar

commanderander said:

Hi guys,

Here are some of the answers I can give to questions:

1) The content, as it is set up right now, does not allow for level 70's to replay it. I understand wanting that, but the amount of dancing around we would have to do to make it both replayable at level 70, get existing players pre-70 to slide in to the proper neighborhood and not replay older neighborhoods, and have it just work normally for players leveling up, would be a lot and we would be biting off more than we could chew for the already enormous task of revamping 60-70 and also lessening the quality of what we're trying to put out if we try to do it now.

2) I can't give a date when this goes live, but it will be Soon (tm). We're testing alongside you guys and seeing where pain points are, what quests could be better (like making Learning to Fly's interacts less painful), and ensuring the flow is great. We've finished the large part of the work, now it's time to hit all of the very important smaller bits.

3) We're not changing the artifact reward at the end.

4) Regarding HE's. The change we made with the master controller was to help alleviate the grind involved with the's HE's. We want to improve the experience of obtaining these weapons by making more HE's a viable option instead of Neverwinter feeling like a really weird episode of Deadliest Catch (in the case of Drowned Shore). We feel the new system will be better, based off of the team's internal experience playing through the HE's on live. If you guys play it on Preview and feel we've made the experience worse, tell us! We'll figure out what we can do to remedy the situation in the remaining time we have.

2 Things:

1. This makes the decision to spend time making "leveling dungeons" very confusing. Seems like a waste
2. Does this mean my lvl 70 will not be able to get the new gear to transmute? Or just get it automatically.


Thank ya

nealbeat

So i just test the preview shard and the Boons unlocked are really appreciated but there is a problem with the system reagarding the Mote farming.

If you go that way the artifact sets form EE are the hardest ones to get so far, cuz every person will get 1 mote at the same time in every instance, according to the explanation you just give will be like ndemo or tiamat a timer rule makes getting those sets extremely painful.

So what to do?
-Make it a task like Tyranny of Dragons did. Which currency will be used? Elemental Aggregates or Unified Elements
Or
-Like @silvergryph said make the Motes requirement around 250 but let the minor encounters drop the motes.

The reason is simple even at lv 70 soloing those encounters is tiresome you have to remember not everyone needs the same set, for the earth set a tank class for example dont have much damage to solo those encounters and if they do they hardly ´finish in time before the HE ends. They could do many encounters if more people do the minor encounters and that will only happen if they have a reason to do them. And to do Main HE you surely need dps to finish it, just try to get that set now on live shard, yeah is impossible cuz not enough people is farming for it. The only one people is still doing is the Water one cuz the HE is the most easy of them.

throsbi

weaver936 said:

cromejohnsen said:

Why did you remove a substantial amount of repeatable quests which could be used to gain overflow experience????
They were a good resource to farm additional power points. Either change the level up rewards and make it a 100% chance to gain a power point or bring those hourly repeatable quests back. A lot of people already dont like running campaign quests everyday to make a little bit of experience. It is much more efficient to run hourly quests in spinward rise. Please reconsider this when removing them totally or blocking acces to them.

Edit: I know there are also people who like to mindlessly kill mobs to earn experience. I can say from what i have seen on preview that i s possible to do that to reach your 1,75 million exp. Its just painful but probably our only option from now on.

This is what the intellectually lazy whiners missed... Easy Xp for over levels... even helping 60-70's (making it not so hard) a early 70 could benefit themselves...

Let us not forget the loosing the vigilance quests we also loose the 2 unified elements per hour one could farm by running thru the zones checking the random quest rewards to take the ones rewarding them and 5 minutes later - boom unified elements instead of the 4 to 7 days to craft. On a good day you would have all the unified elements you would ever need on a toon. Wonder how all those unified elements got on the AH.......

Anyway I am glad they are making the change, my other half gave up playing because of the confusion of what to do next......lol. I will have to pass on this news post haste.

totallynotadrow

First off, am I the only one who has problems getting to the boards from the blog posts? THe links never seem to work.

Anyhow, I'm kind of excited about this change, and I'm looking forward to more meaningful content for the 70 experience; the lower levels have such rich content that the upper stuff just pales in comparison.

bitt3rnightmar3

Awesome!

hustin1

@commanderander ,

I've asked this before: have you guys and gals looked at the bug in Fiery Pit whereby enemies are at Heroic Encounter difficulty (i.e. thick HP bars) even when there is no HE active there in the area? (In fact, it occurs in places where there is *never* an HE in the area). That is a major impediment to new players who are trying to complete quests.

Someone else raised this point, one which I hadn't thought of: from where will we get Unified Elements? I saw that someone said that they can be crafted, but I have yet to see a professions task that allows it.

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rubicante4

how will this affect the xp needed to level up if any at all

rapo973

commanderander said:

1) The content, as it is set up right now, does not allow for level 70's to replay it. I understand wanting that, but the amount of dancing around we would have to do to make it both replayable at level 70, get existing players pre-70 to slide in to the proper neighborhood and not replay older neighborhoods, and have it just work normally for players leveling up, would be a lot and we would be biting off more than we could chew for the already enormous task of revamping 60-70 and also lessening the quality of what we're trying to put out if we try to do it now.

I checked the end boons of the Elemental Evil campaign on PTS, in particular the ones providing a massive amount of healing (24k = ~ 20-25% max HP of a high end toons).
On one hand, they are needed for sure by a fresh lvl 70 because they help a lot to face IWD or WoD (examples). But on the other hand and on the long run, they create a problem.
As soon as a player gets the drowned shore weapon set, some heal bonuses from the mount system, a decent amount of life steal from the Stroghold or other sources, maybe some income healing bonuses from the other compaign boons, a player doesn't need heals anymore (or just minor heal ticks).
High IL players don't need heals today, the next generation of medium/high IL players will need even less. Getting such bonuses don't require a huge investment; in 2/3 months most of the above features can be in the hands of every player.
This has an impact on the healing classes like DC\OP devotion: @commanderander do you have plans on how healing should perform in NW (as you have done for protection and dps to some extent)?
I'm a cleric and such info would be useful to review my build.

phoenix1021

But those boons are basically the same as enraged regrowth and elven tranquility, which have been in the game since forever. They are great for questing, but won't save you in a dungeon.

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rapo973

phoenix1021 said:

But those boons are basically the same as enraged regrowth and elven tranquility, which have been in the game since forever. They are great for questing, but won't save you in a dungeon.

Indeed. My question is different: do you need a strong healer in DG? My answer is no, you don't (as it is today for some groups). These boons make a healer less and less needed.

Next step - dear devs, please rework the cleric healing feats\powers: less heals, more buff\debuff, more mitigation.

urabask

hustin1 said:

@commanderander ,

I've asked this before: have you guys and gals looked at the bug in Fiery Pit whereby enemies are at Heroic Encounter difficulty (i.e. thick HP bars) even when there is no HE active there in the area? (In fact, it occurs in places where there is *never* an HE in the area). That is a major impediment to new players who are trying to complete quests.

Someone else raised this point, one which I hadn't thought of: from where will we get Unified Elements? I saw that someone said that they can be crafted, but I have yet to see a professions task that allows it.

This happens in Icewind Dale too. Especially in the area for the quest Lost on the Pass. That one is annoying enough because there are only ~ five spots to rescue NPCs but then any of them that get hit by this bug are basically impossible to solo depending on your class/ilvl and it means you have to hop instances until you find one without bugged mobs.

putzboy78

commanderander said:

Hi guys,

Here are some of the answers I can give to questions:

1) The content, as it is set up right now, does not allow for level 70's to replay it. I understand wanting that, but the amount of dancing around we would have to do to make it both replayable at level 70, get existing players pre-70 to slide in to the proper neighborhood and not replay older neighborhoods, and have it just work normally for players leveling up, would be a lot and we would be biting off more than we could chew for the already enormous task of revamping 60-70 and also lessening the quality of what we're trying to put out if we try to do it now.

Why can't you just allow 70's to play it as over powered or atleast give each character the questline so they can do it once. If new stuff is being introduced that long standing players don't have access to, people will just scream foul (and rightfully)

Why introduce a big change that helps almost noone (yes i understand your target audience here is the new people to the game and making leveling more enjoyable. It's obvious you've seen a high game departure rate in the 60-70 lvl range which you've determined is worth the LOE to improve that gaming experience.

But do not ignore your long standing players by not giving them access to something at the least make sure its purchasable whether its gear or boons. If you create something for newly lvld characters there is a chance that in 3 months we see those new lvl characters with and advantage over existing characters and then we would have more drama to contend with. I'm doing the best i can to keep the people in my circle of influence calm and engaged in the game as is. Please don't make my job more difficult

silverkelt

i dont understand the need for this.. maze engine itself is enough exp now to bridge any gap people wanted..
I have no interest at all going back here to finish these off.. in addition how the heck to you guage what we did or not?

I skipped some of it, did some of it.. ect.

this just sounds like a mess. like if I didnt do all the quests I will have to go back and do it all anyways.

mysteriasdrassa

While agree that the whole Elemental Evil thing was a bit of a fiasco,, not at all what I had expected. And that these changes are all nice and fine and good,, yay. But how about capping the entire thing with a end dungeon like say,, I don't know,,, off the top of my head,, possibly,,, THE TEMPLE OF ELEMENTAL EVIL?

kvet

So one: I approve of this change. Make it so.

Someone mentioned the last two ToD boons - I wrote them off a long time ago. I never expect to earn them. I would love for them to be reasonably obtainable, but simply put: they are not. Not for anyone that even closely resembles a casual player. I would LOVE to see those two boons reconsidered.

Someone else mentioned the mote gear. Again - I consider those patently unobtainable for anyone resembling a casual player and have absolutely no intention of trying to earn them. There's plenty of other things I can do in Neverwinter and after taking a look at what's needed to earn that gear, I simply put it out of my mind. Eventually, there will be gear that makes them obsolete (if its not obsolete already) and until then the gear I have now is perfectly suited to all my Neverwinter needs. I'm sorry that the Cryptic crew spend time on implementing that gear - frankly speaking it was a complete waste of time in my opinion.

One the XP earn issue... I can see that. There are other repeatable content items that can be run, but none with the consistent XP gain of the vig tasks. I can't bring myself to grind those for XP rewards, especially since that reward box is generally unimpressive and I don't actually NEED to power points anymore (all the powers I actually use are already rank 4)... but I can see how this would cause a hole in someone's game. SH tasks are pretty good XP, though they're dailies, also I suggest simply running the gambit of dailies in Shar (there's LOTS of them there), DR, IWD and WoD - that's a ton of XP. It's harder than Drowned Shore, but perhaps the best alternative (it also gives you the area currencies, which helps your guild if nothing else, if you're a member of one that is - if you're not, give me a PM the Cloaks are always recruiting!!)

beckylunatic

urabask said:

hustin1 said:

@commanderander ,

I've asked this before: have you guys and gals looked at the bug in Fiery Pit whereby enemies are at Heroic Encounter difficulty (i.e. thick HP bars) even when there is no HE active there in the area? (In fact, it occurs in places where there is *never* an HE in the area). That is a major impediment to new players who are trying to complete quests.

Someone else raised this point, one which I hadn't thought of: from where will we get Unified Elements? I saw that someone said that they can be crafted, but I have yet to see a professions task that allows it.

This happens in Icewind Dale too. Especially in the area for the quest Lost on the Pass. That one is annoying enough because there are only ~ five spots to rescue NPCs but then any of them that get hit by this bug are basically impossible to solo depending on your class/ilvl and it means you have to hop instances until you find one without bugged mobs.

Lighting the Pass is worse, because one of the beacons is *always* guarded by bugged too-strong mobs (since IWD launched, in fact). This is why I always go AB on the first day, and never, ever take this quest when it's offered. Just not worth the trouble. ("Your face can light the pass.")

As for rescuing caravan survivors, a lot of people seem to think you have to find them in the caves, but it's way quicker to complete out in the open, where the survivors are menaced by bears (area marked off if you have Maul of the Wild). Respawn is quick. Too-strong bears are still possible, but the survivors respawn so quickly that you could get away with waiting for one spawn point if you really had to.

beckylunatic

mysteriasdrassa said:

While agree that the whole Elemental Evil thing was a bit of a fiasco,, not at all what I had expected. And that these changes are all nice and fine and good,, yay. But how about capping the entire thing with a end dungeon like say,, I don't know,,, off the top of my head,, possibly,,, THE TEMPLE OF ELEMENTAL EVIL?

I wonder if Wizards had any idea how much confusion they'd spawn when they used "Elemental Evil" as a title for this elemental cultist storyline as a callback to a classic, even though it is completely unrelated.

commanderander

Hi guys,

Regarding enemies that have HE buffs on them that are not part of HE's. I've seen (and fled) from this before on live. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to mark the location when this happened (chalk it up to playing and watching my son at the same time).

If I can get the locations where you're seeing this, I can get it tasked out to myself or someone else to review those encounters to see what's going on. Even something as simple as, "it's near the last beacon in Icewind Dale" (which @beckylunatic mentioned) helps. Screenshots are especially helpful. I would love to squash these issues.

beckylunatic

commanderander said:

If I can get the locations where you're seeing this, I can get it tasked out to myself or someone else to review those encounters to see what's going on. Even something as simple as, "it's near the last beacon in Icewind Dale" (which @beckylunatic mentioned) helps. Screenshots are especially helpful. I would love to squash these issues.

I think it's the second-last beacon (since I avoid this quest, I'm not sure!). It is the only beacon that has any monster spawn point by it at all though, so shouldn't be difficult to identify which one. Every other beacon is free and clear, and this is the only hitch in an otherwise straightforward errand quest.

The big problem with the bug is that the beacon guards are the only mobs I'm aware of that are *always* affected, and the rest of them randomize. I think if you went around and checked every Marauding Barbarians HE on a map with full spawns, you'd find that one of them would be extra-tough (because minor HEs only have normal mobs, ordinarily), but until you check them, you can't know if it's going to be the one on ice, or the one just off the road, or one far at the back of the map. Likewise, you might find one group of extra-tough frost giants or giant and wolves, but they could be anywhere. I've jumped in with people battling extra-tough yetis in a locations where they're usually normal, and gotten thoroughly thrashed by extra-tough bears in a location where... they're usually normal. I know this makes it a hard bug to squash. Could it be something in the respawn cycles? (Normal, normal, normal, normal... ok, aaaaannnnd the next one that respawns will be on steroids.)

Last night, I saw that Old One-Eye was extra-tough, and I think he's usually just a named dire bear but not especially buffed.

two30

commanderander said:

If I can get the locations where you're seeing this, I can get it tasked out to myself or someone else to review those encounters to see what's going on. Even something as simple as, "it's near the last beacon in Icewind Dale" (which @beckylunatic mentioned) helps. Screenshots are especially helpful. I would love to squash these issues.

No screenshot because the servers are down, but I marked the spot to which she is referring with a green dot on the map. I think it's actually the second last beacon.
http://imgur.com/fmkCed6

rickcase276

There are also a few groups in the Fiery Pit that are buffed. Mostly in the bottom left portion, down below where the Rock Falls HE takes place. The group that has a Razerblast and some sorcerers is sometimes special monsters and sometimes not. There is a group of hellhounds very near to there too that are sometimes buffed and sometimes not.

hustin1

commanderander said:

Hi guys,

Regarding enemies that have HE buffs on them that are not part of HE's. I've seen (and fled) from this before on live. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to mark the location when this happened (chalk it up to playing and watching my son at the same time).

If I can get the locations where you're seeing this, I can get it tasked out to myself or someone else to review those encounters to see what's going on. Even something as simple as, "it's near the last beacon in Icewind Dale" (which @beckylunatic mentioned) helps. Screenshots are especially helpful. I would love to squash these issues.

An example is the area of the hell hounds in Fiery Pit. It happens to them all along that hill (top, middle, bottom).

mrvincent1959

I like that there are new boons for Elemental Evil and that we dont have to redo the whole thing since many of us did it already. I brought up the campaign screen in preview and was able to get the first two boons. I think it is going to need alot more testing however.