Strum can't be the only employee to read the forums. Or is he?...
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
Strumslinger's the community manager for Neverwinter. Part of his job is staying in tune with the players and reporting back to the developers, but he doesn't actually work on the game. He doesn't actually work for Cryptic, either, but PWE, which is the publisher.
But that being said, a lot of the developers and producers who DO work for Cryptic regularly read the forums. I'm sure they're aware that players aren't happy with the Empowerment system. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt here. This system is/was a pretty big intended component to the module, so it's probably something they really need to think about and discuss before making a major revision.
Again, as I said above, this isn't a show-stopper. More of a disappointing first act. I'd would personally prefer they take some time to more thoughtfully consider how they're going to revise the system, as opposed to start throwing out poorly thought through changes.
"Meanwhile in the moderator's lounge..."
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feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
edited August 2016
Major revision made simple: Extend empowered combat time to 12 hours. Decrease empowerment requirement by 80% (or more) so running dailies is enough to keep armor empowered for a full day's play. Then players won't need to maintain two sets of armor.
Oh, also make armor reinforcement kits removable and/or eliminate the AD requirement for crafting them. With less AD in the economy, forcing players to spend minimum 400k on reinforcement kits for armor - if they have all the materials and can craft their own - and possibly over 1 million AD in the AH is unrealistic and downright cruel.
There. Done. Easy.
But really, there's no need for or benefit to an empowerment system at all. If you want to put players through a grind to obtain crafting supplies for relic gear, fine (once the HR grind is fixed, which it badly needs....). Putting players through a grind to maintain their gear was the worst thing about mod 3. It's why no one wears Black Ice gear anymore and, really, no one did then. It's a terrible idea. Throwing it out is the obvious move.
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
Well, no one wore Black Ice Armor because statistically it was far inferior to the other sets...
feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
I will admit that I wore my Purified armor in pvp as a SW archer (I know, I know), but at the time with couple of deflect or life steal greater BI reinforcements it made me nearly immortal in pvp. However, empowerment is still a terrible idea. Empowerment at a rate that cannot be sustained and requires about a 1:1 grind in a different armor set to maintain is an unbelievably bad idea. Someone dropped a decimal point somewhere.
On the upside, we'll have a new mod in 3 months and FBI will go the way of other pointless aspects of the game.
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
Voninblood is not a big issue. Yesterday evening I went farming relics in Bryn Shander/Lonelywood and was able to make 6k an hour while making my dailies too. If you only need Voninblod farming HEs is a bad idea. The real problem are TT resources. I'm not against a "take your time" approach. What I would like is something more to do in the meantime.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Voninblood is not a big issue. Yesterday evening I went farming relics in Bryn Shander/Lonelywood and was able to make 6k an hour while making my dailies too. If you only need Voninblod farming HEs is a bad idea. The real problem are TT resources. I'm not against a "take your time" approach. What I would like is something more to do in the meantime.
You not mention lanolin or fat drops. Thats why zerging HEs with good group is after all more profitable than derping around and hunting relic that gives you 50 vonin. Tho you can prepare before fangbreaker because some HE mobs will one shot you easily.
And its a big issue if you count all vonin we need for campaign+to restore gear+fill gear to t3+keep gear tiers active+store costs... 6k means nothing.
From all the posts here seems like it will end up being another dungeon like Cragmire or Gray Wolf den that will get run a few times so people can brag about completing it and then abandoned. I'm sure everyone appreciates the development time that has been put in but grinding is only acceptable if there is a worthwhile goal to move towards. +1 rings, rank 8 enchants, and salvage cosmetic items are not. It's like someone enduring months of tedious training to enter a competition where the prize is a 20$ starbucks gift card.
I think the question the developers need to answer is why bother spending any time developing new gear that no one will want to wear and why bother developing a dungeon that no one will want to pay the entrance fee to run. This certainly doesn't entice people to keep playing the game. That is for certain.
A new work week us starting in the States. I wonder if they'll make their presence felt. Personally, I'd like to see this whole mod reworked before it hits the consoles...
@ironzerg79 appreciate your insights here. I agree with what you are saying. I play a ton of games too, including tabletop d&d once a week (5 hour session). I understand that with MMOs, they'll always add new gear to keep you interested and wanting to upgrade/play...I'm cool with that, but this doesn't translate to the tabletop paradigm. If a DM did what they are doing, the players would revolt and say the DM is trolling them and the game would come to an end. You can't let people invest the time and energy into developing their character (including planning out their future) to suddenly change the game on them and render their character obsolete (which is essentially what they are doing here (and have been doing)...anyone play an OP since they nerfed it without properly balancing it? or Hey thanks for spending months to get masterwork going, now it's useless when there is finally content worthy of it's stats?)
It took a decent amount of time to grind to get the dragonflight armor for the casual player. It takes an incredible amount of time to grind to get the masterwork armor (causal or otherwise). Now they want to add in a new, worse grind...MMOs are about grinding, but successful ones find the right balance...this is not a good balance...and they have shown a general lack of understanding in this area in general... (I've done around 200 runs of CN and still no +5 or orcus shard, and I'm not alone in this)
Seeing as how a lot of us have spent a lot of time and effort to acquire the masterwork armor, wouldn't it make sense to add the ability to infuse it? They should offer different infusions and allow us to customize as we see fit...examples, infuse with EF, BI, or something like the drowcraft...let us decide how we want to customize and play... they've really dropped the ball with allowing us to customize our items other than dyes and transmutes...they should allow us to customize our armor stats and abilities/set rewards...this would have been a good opportunity to introduce that mechanic... 'hey grind for the new armor or do a lesser grind to update your existing armor'
they could make it so after doing so much of the story/campaign you unlock some of the dungeon say upto the first boss then you have to do some more of the story/campaign to unlock the 2nd boss and so on and so forth that way it would be a little less of a boring grind?
Voninblood is not a big issue. Yesterday evening I went farming relics in Bryn Shander/Lonelywood and was able to make 6k an hour while making my dailies too. If you only need Voninblod farming HEs is a bad idea.
I would genuinely like to know how you managed to farm 6k of Relics/Voninblod in an hour. The six dailies from Lonelywood and Bryn Shander would give you 600VB, so that leaves 5700. That would require 57 Green Relics. Unless you are using a Masters' Trowel and/or a Remorhaz Companion, you wont be seeing any Epic relics and only one or two rare ones in 60 minutes of farming. So to get that sort of figure you would need to be picking up near enough one relic a minute, which would be quite an achievement if you are also doing dailies. I'm not saying it is impossible, I would just like to know your method of achieving it.
The real problem are TT resources. I'm not against a "take your time" approach. What I would like is something more to do in the meantime.
TT resources are definitely a limiting factor, along with Reputation and Secrets of Ostoria. But these are more in keeping with the time sinks we are used to in NW.
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silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
My take on how to fix this:
1. Lanolians (or whatever you spell them) should drop as a 50% loot table in hes, so you shouldn't have to do more then 50 major hes really to get it done. 2. Vblood needs to be increased from all sources to 50% at least. 3. Empowerment should be changed, to a bare minimum.. not harsh, like a 80% reduction of costing. Im serious here.. if we have to do more then say some weeklies, random relics and stuff we get from FBI itself to reempower it.. then no one is ever going to wear this junk. 4. Reduce or remove FBI requirements to enter and make it unlock by account like underdark please. 12% seems reasonable to me. But 28% is HAMSTER full of frustrating to get to and makes it that ALTS are VERY hard to get into the dungeon. Stop being so unreasonable with this stuff. If we need more then 12%, then we will judge that for ourselves please. 5. Boots, need to be increased a bit, some people are doing 100 major hes and not seeing any, make them salvageable for 2k Ad as well. 6. Up the weekly rewards a bit, so if you have no other time, you can progress (slowly ) but at least progress a bit faster then now.
These fixes would make most of us happy.
3.1k gear gate 12% requirement to enter, make empowerment system fixed to not so much grind(no harsher then Black ice was please), drop boots a bit more and drop lans , a whole bunch more.
We are willing to grind, but you are asking us to abandon all alts almost.. we do not find this a acceptable approach and we need more balance back into this campaign.
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
I use the Master Trowel and one piece of Frostborn armour for 25% chance of getting one relic more, as I used the special pick in IWD for more Black Ice.
The only thing I don't like at the moment is the loss rate on empowered armor, everything else is fine. I guess it should be every 4 or 8 hours instead of one. Relic armor is the best for my class as it stands so I'll use it anyway. By the way it's likely the next mod will be a continuation of this one so I see the Trowel as an investment in two mods. And maybe they will recycle Voniblood in the future as they did with Black Ice for some other gear.
I'm with Ironzerg on the campaign. Take your time. Rushing trough content is not helping. I have no interest in chain running Fangbreaker ad nauseam....
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
I use the Master Trowel and one piece of Frostborn armour for 25% chance of getting one relic more, as I used the special pick in IWD for more Black Ice.
The only thing I don't like at the moment is the loss rate on empowered armor, everything else is fine. I guess it should be every 4 or 8 hours instead of one. Relic armor is the best for my class as it stands so I'll use it anyway. By the way it's likely the next mod will be a continuation of this one so I see the Trowel as an investment in two mods. And maybe they will recycle Voniblood in the future as they did with Black Ice for some other gear.
I'm with Ironzerg on the campaign. Take your time. Rushing trough content is not helping. I have no interest in chain running Fangbreaker ad nauseam....
For some of us, "chain running FBI ad nauseam" is what this game is about. I play for the team content (team as in 5 people working together, not 10 random people zerging down a HE without any communication), not the solo content.
I use the Master Trowel and one piece of Frostborn armour for 25% chance of getting one relic more, as I used the special pick in IWD for more Black Ice.
The only thing I don't like at the moment is the loss rate on empowered armor, everything else is fine. I guess it should be every 4 or 8 hours instead of one. Relic armor is the best for my class as it stands so I'll use it anyway. By the way it's likely the next mod will be a continuation of this one so I see the Trowel as an investment in two mods. And maybe they will recycle Voniblood in the future as they did with Black Ice for some other gear.
Fair enough. I do not have a Master Trowel or any Frostburn armour and probably wont in the near future as I don't have the AD/Zen to spend for the former and have other things I want to spend my Tradebars on, especially with the fast approaching 20% TB Store sale so close Without those things, 6k an hour is simply unachievable.
I'm with Ironzerg on the campaign. Take your time. Rushing trough content is not helping. I have no interest in chain running Fangbreaker ad nauseam....
With this campaign, there is no alternative but to take the campaign slowly. Just looking at the Reputation reequirements makes that clear. 500 to reach the final boon anyone. The part that bothers me is the link at the top of the current campaign chart that leads nowhere....yet. Cue Twilight Zone theme tune and engage 'Conpsiracy Theory Mode':
From the way the Devs have been talking in the blogs and in their responses on the forum, it would seem that they have placed a lot of emphasis on obtaining the Relic Armour that is only available from running FBI. They genuinely don't want people to invest in Frostborn gear. Now why would that be the case ? My guess is that it will be a requirement to get into the next big dungeon/skirmish/encounter/whatever that will appear at the end of that link when Mod 10.5 drops. To this end, they are trying to avoid the backlash from people who picked up Frostborn gear and almost immediately need to replace it. There cannot be many of the 'Why didn't you warn/tell us this would be redundant so quickly ?' type of complaint forthcoming if the Devs have gone to the trouble of stating that this gear is not required. The worrying part is how high the Everfrost Resistance requirement will be for the next set of content to justify the work/need for getting and empowering the Relic Armour, or even the iLevel requirement. My wild, hopefully totally inaccurate, guesstimate would be 40% Everfrost and 3.5k ilvl. The really big problem is that this will have been built into the plans for this mod and the next one. The timescale has been allowed for with the large Reputation requirements. Changing any or all of that would be a massive headache/undertaking at this stage. The disapproval being voiced already by players would be trivial compared to what it would become if my speculation is even close to being correct. I would love to be a fly on the wall in the Cryptic offices at the moment >:)
But of course, that is all just wild speculation brought on by frustration with so many aspects of the new Mod ....and probably lack of caffeine today
OK, 'Conspiracy Theory Mode' disengaged. Let normal discourse resume >:)
@thefabricant : if you really think that I wonder why you're still playing this game...
Because believe it or not, I run team content for hours and hours each day. I don't do dailies, I don't do HEs, I don't do solo content. There are a lot of people I run with and they can all testify to that.
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
edited August 2016
That's what I was saying. If you are that kind of player there are better games for you out there. NW is more casual-player oriented with quite a large part of solo activity.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
funny how a so called free to play game has forced paying to play its content, isnt that some sort of infringment or something lol. As now that content is not free to play, on a side note, the gear needed is a joke, the amount to keep it powered is a joke, to bad they screwed up an fairly cool new area's with such poor decisions. OH well as per usual another fail'd mod, nothing new about that.
Honestly if you're paying you're doing it wrong. All you really needed to do to get the frostborn gear is grind out the 425k for a month of VIP then sell the drops to buy more VIP. One month of VIP should net you minimally 500,000k after AH fees so it pays for itself.
Even if you're set on not getting frostborn gear you're looking at more of a time gate than a pay gate. The main issue is the ten town's costs on items in the campaign store. That adds something like another week or two of grinding to get the underwear and armor kits.
IMHO there is already a system in place to help with lanolin and the other components required to build this armor... the crafting system. Take a look at the elemental evil campaign and you will see what I mean. Unified Elements are crafted by Alchemists, it a pain but in the course of a month you could have easily crafted all the unified element you needed to upgrade your gear. Cryptic should have used a similar approach to the other pain in the butt crafting elements. I think using Tailoring, Platesmithing, Leatherworking, and Mailsmithing with similar requirements as crafting unified elements would go a long way to help ease some of the grind associated with this mod plus breathe some new life in the non masterwork craftsmen. As for the boots and other base gear items they should be bought from the campaign store (the way its done with other mods) and get rid of the RnG mechanic associated with getting the gear just to enter FBI.
Also, the amount of lanolin should lowered to elemental empowerment requirements, which if i remember correctly requires no more than 3 unified elements to upgrade a piece of gear.
Last thing, I think upgrading at least 1 crafting component per Mod is not asking for to much. I like how the alchemist is probably the most relevant crafter (not including master craftsmen because those are pain to get) and its because its needed to upgrade gear in elemental empowerment. They could have went the same route with the above mentioned craftsmen and saved on some of the groaning they have within the gaming community now.
If something like this was available I would say that Cryptic wouldn't have to make the crafters automatically update with the recipes (they are trying to make a living on a FTP game), instead make the recipes available in 3 places: 1.) The campaign store 2.) Trade bar merchant (reasonable price) 3.) Zen market, bundle the recipes with something else and at reasonable price (<2500 for all craftsmen recipe upgrades).
Comments
But that being said, a lot of the developers and producers who DO work for Cryptic regularly read the forums. I'm sure they're aware that players aren't happy with the Empowerment system. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt here. This system is/was a pretty big intended component to the module, so it's probably something they really need to think about and discuss before making a major revision.
Again, as I said above, this isn't a show-stopper. More of a disappointing first act. I'd would personally prefer they take some time to more thoughtfully consider how they're going to revise the system, as opposed to start throwing out poorly thought through changes.
Oh, also make armor reinforcement kits removable and/or eliminate the AD requirement for crafting them. With less AD in the economy, forcing players to spend minimum 400k on reinforcement kits for armor - if they have all the materials and can craft their own - and possibly over 1 million AD in the AH is unrealistic and downright cruel.
There. Done. Easy.
But really, there's no need for or benefit to an empowerment system at all. If you want to put players through a grind to obtain crafting supplies for relic gear, fine (once the HR grind is fixed, which it badly needs....). Putting players through a grind to maintain their gear was the worst thing about mod 3. It's why no one wears Black Ice gear anymore and, really, no one did then. It's a terrible idea. Throwing it out is the obvious move.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
The real problem are TT resources. I'm not against a "take your time" approach. What I would like is something more to do in the meantime.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
And its a big issue if you count all vonin we need for campaign+to restore gear+fill gear to t3+keep gear tiers active+store costs... 6k means nothing.
It took a decent amount of time to grind to get the dragonflight armor for the casual player. It takes an incredible amount of time to grind to get the masterwork armor (causal or otherwise). Now they want to add in a new, worse grind...MMOs are about grinding, but successful ones find the right balance...this is not a good balance...and they have shown a general lack of understanding in this area in general... (I've done around 200 runs of CN and still no +5 or orcus shard, and I'm not alone in this)
Seeing as how a lot of us have spent a lot of time and effort to acquire the masterwork armor, wouldn't it make sense to add the ability to infuse it? They should offer different infusions and allow us to customize as we see fit...examples, infuse with EF, BI, or something like the drowcraft...let us decide how we want to customize and play... they've really dropped the ball with allowing us to customize our items other than dyes and transmutes...they should allow us to customize our armor stats and abilities/set rewards...this would have been a good opportunity to introduce that mechanic... 'hey grind for the new armor or do a lesser grind to update your existing armor'
The Legendary Outlaws
Preferences:
PvE and PvP - Pathfinder Combat
1. Lanolians (or whatever you spell them) should drop as a 50% loot table in hes, so you shouldn't have to do more then 50 major hes really to get it done.
2. Vblood needs to be increased from all sources to 50% at least.
3. Empowerment should be changed, to a bare minimum.. not harsh, like a 80% reduction of costing. Im serious here.. if we have to do more then say some weeklies, random relics and stuff we get from FBI itself to reempower it.. then no one is ever going to wear this junk.
4. Reduce or remove FBI requirements to enter and make it unlock by account like underdark please. 12% seems reasonable to me. But 28% is HAMSTER full of frustrating to get to and makes it that ALTS are VERY hard to get into the dungeon. Stop being so unreasonable with this stuff. If we need more then 12%, then we will judge that for ourselves please.
5. Boots, need to be increased a bit, some people are doing 100 major hes and not seeing any, make them salvageable for 2k Ad as well.
6. Up the weekly rewards a bit, so if you have no other time, you can progress (slowly ) but at least progress a bit faster then now.
These fixes would make most of us happy.
3.1k gear gate 12% requirement to enter, make empowerment system fixed to not so much grind(no harsher then Black ice was please), drop boots a bit more and drop lans , a whole bunch more.
We are willing to grind, but you are asking us to abandon all alts almost.. we do not find this a acceptable approach and we need more balance back into this campaign.
The only thing I don't like at the moment is the loss rate on empowered armor, everything else is fine. I guess it should be every 4 or 8 hours instead of one. Relic armor is the best for my class as it stands so I'll use it anyway.
By the way it's likely the next mod will be a continuation of this one so I see the Trowel as an investment in two mods. And maybe they will recycle Voniblood in the future as they did with Black Ice for some other gear.
I'm with Ironzerg on the campaign. Take your time. Rushing trough content is not helping. I have no interest in chain running Fangbreaker ad nauseam....
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
From the way the Devs have been talking in the blogs and in their responses on the forum, it would seem that they have placed a lot of emphasis on obtaining the Relic Armour that is only available from running FBI. They genuinely don't want people to invest in Frostborn gear. Now why would that be the case ? My guess is that it will be a requirement to get into the next big dungeon/skirmish/encounter/whatever that will appear at the end of that link when Mod 10.5 drops. To this end, they are trying to avoid the backlash from people who picked up Frostborn gear and almost immediately need to replace it. There cannot be many of the 'Why didn't you warn/tell us this would be redundant so quickly ?' type of complaint forthcoming if the Devs have gone to the trouble of stating that this gear is not required. The worrying part is how high the Everfrost Resistance requirement will be for the next set of content to justify the work/need for getting and empowering the Relic Armour, or even the iLevel requirement. My wild, hopefully totally inaccurate, guesstimate would be 40% Everfrost and 3.5k ilvl. The really big problem is that this will have been built into the plans for this mod and the next one. The timescale has been allowed for with the large Reputation requirements. Changing any or all of that would be a massive headache/undertaking at this stage. The disapproval being voiced already by players would be trivial compared to what it would become if my speculation is even close to being correct. I would love to be a fly on the wall in the Cryptic offices at the moment >:)
But of course, that is all just wild speculation brought on by frustration with so many aspects of the new Mod ....and probably lack of caffeine today
OK, 'Conspiracy Theory Mode' disengaged. Let normal discourse resume >:)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Even if you're set on not getting frostborn gear you're looking at more of a time gate than a pay gate. The main issue is the ten town's costs on items in the campaign store. That adds something like another week or two of grinding to get the underwear and armor kits.
Also, the amount of lanolin should lowered to elemental empowerment requirements, which if i remember correctly requires no more than 3 unified elements to upgrade a piece of gear.
Last thing, I think upgrading at least 1 crafting component per Mod is not asking for to much. I like how the alchemist is probably the most relevant crafter (not including master craftsmen because those are pain to get) and its because its needed to upgrade gear in elemental empowerment. They could have went the same route with the above mentioned craftsmen and saved on some of the groaning they have within the gaming community now.
If something like this was available I would say that Cryptic wouldn't have to make the crafters automatically update with the recipes (they are trying to make a living on a FTP game), instead make the recipes available in 3 places: 1.) The campaign store 2.) Trade bar merchant (reasonable price) 3.) Zen market, bundle the recipes with something else and at reasonable price (<2500 for all craftsmen recipe upgrades).