A Suggestion to Help the Player Experience

s3186

I recently returned to Neverwinter after taking an extended break. When I returned, I remembered all the reasons I fell in love with the game. And, aside from inconsistencies and bugs, I fell back into enjoyment. But after "catching up" and delving into the more recent content, I remembered why I took the break...

The reason had nothing to do with any of the mods, nor the bugs, nor time-gating, nothing like that. It was that I remembered how the game seemed to encourage players in regular PvE to be competitive instead of actively work together and help each other.

I'm going to give an initial summary featuring examples of things that happened to me in my first month back:

I was insulted or talked down to in a PUG on multiple occasions, despite making it clear how rusty I was; I was dying and calling for help and people would just pass me by - not once did I receive a revive from any player in the open world; while trying to farm relics or other gatherables, a few players would steal the relic right out from beneath me while I struggled to position the cursor so the "use" function would show up; I gathered a relic that was near me and someone ran up and swore at me (I have no idea where they came from); I attempted to help a player kill a difficult monster - their health was low, I assumed it was a nice thing to do. Instead, they whispered to me something like "Nice poaching" and blocked me. (I got no credit for any quest, nor did I remember things in the game could be "poached" like that! And I didn't even get a chance to explain myself.); I was in ELoL and it was obviously someone's first time (they were having a lot of trouble with the jumping), and someone actually initiated a vote kick with some bs reason (fortunately, the other players and I declined the vote and went back to help)... The list goes on.

To my suggestion: I would LOVE to see the game shift toward encouraging people to work together, whether in the same guild, party, or not! Some kind of reward or worthwhile bonus for reviving a downed player, individual nodes for gathering things (or ones multiple people can take from, one at a time, before it disappears? I don't know), bonuses or at least it being OKAY to share a kill with people in the open world - two people working on the same quest and start killing the same giant or wizard? Why shouldn't they both get credit? Why should someone feel they *shouldn't* help someone? Help should never be something that angers another person.

What I'm proposing and asking is that the Devs consider the player to player atmosphere in the game, and the kind of interactions the game encourages. I'd love to see people valuing one another, helping new players, working together, or, at the very least, not getting angry at one another because there's a weird dynamic of competitiveness and isolation in open world PvE. There's a lot of anger and volatility in NW's game culture that I think could be diffused by eliminating some of these stressors... the ones that do not add to the experience.

Thanks for your time!

earlgreybeard

If you want to take action if someone abuses you in a pug or in the open world , note their nick@handle and guild/ alliance and take a screenshot.. contact their alliance guild leader first if possible.. there is way too many nasty abusive trolls and players that think griefing your objective is part of normal gameplay in neverwinter

Pretty likely you will find these sort of hamsterwits in every MMO unfortunately


I dislike the way more and more players want to just keep rushing ahead pulling multiple mobs and dragging enemy away from other players that are trying to fight them... the nature of support classes is rapidly changing from those who help and buff a party to those that run ahead of the party or intentionally pull enemy away from fights because all they care about is being highest DPS

Boasting, grandstanding and one-up-manship rule the day in neverwinter , It is kind of sad because the cooperative nature of D&D is kind of getting lost now.

callumf

s3186#2073 said:

I recently returned to Neverwinter after taking an extended break. When I returned, I remembered all the reasons I fell in love with the game. And, aside from inconsistencies and bugs, I fell back into enjoyment. But after "catching up" and delving into the more recent content, I remembered why I took the break...

The reason had nothing to do with any of the mods, nor the bugs, nor time-gating, nothing like that. It was that I remembered how the game seemed to encourage players in regular PvE to be competitive instead of actively work together and help each other.

I'm going to give an initial summary featuring examples of things that happened to me in my first month back:

I was insulted or talked down to in a PUG on multiple occasions, despite making it clear how rusty I was; I was dying and calling for help and people would just pass me by - not once did I receive a revive from any player in the open world; while trying to farm relics or other gatherables, a few players would steal the relic right out from beneath me while I struggled to position the cursor so the "use" function would show up; I gathered a relic that was near me and someone ran up and swore at me (I have no idea where they came from); I attempted to help a player kill a difficult monster - their health was low, I assumed it was a nice thing to do. Instead, they whispered to me something like "Nice poaching" and blocked me. (I got no credit for any quest, nor did I remember things in the game could be "poached" like that! And I didn't even get a chance to explain myself.); I was in ELoL and it was obviously someone's first time (they were having a lot of trouble with the jumping), and someone actually initiated a vote kick with some bs reason (fortunately, the other players and I declined the vote and went back to help)... The list goes on.

To my suggestion: I would LOVE to see the game shift toward encouraging people to work together, whether in the same guild, party, or not! Some kind of reward or worthwhile bonus for reviving a downed player, individual nodes for gathering things (or ones multiple people can take from, one at a time, before it disappears? I don't know), bonuses or at least it being OKAY to share a kill with people in the open world - two people working on the same quest and start killing the same giant or wizard? Why shouldn't they both get credit? Why should someone feel they *shouldn't* help someone? Help should never be something that angers another person.

What I'm proposing and asking is that the Devs consider the player to player atmosphere in the game, and the kind of interactions the game encourages. I'd love to see people valuing one another, helping new players, working together, or, at the very least, not getting angry at one another because there's a weird dynamic of competitiveness and isolation in open world PvE. There's a lot of anger and volatility in NW's game culture that I think could be diffused by eliminating some of these stressors... the ones that do not add to the experience.

Thanks for your time!

Great post/ totally agree on all points.

I made a similar post a while back about how NW was such a hard game to get players to work together in.

thegravelnome

I agree with you a 10,000,000%. this is not just a PC problem. it is game wide on the consoles as well. In my personal opinion there are two types of gamers in MMOs. Those that care only for themselves and those that are team players. the first group will use any tactics and strategies that they can find to benefit and enhance themselves no matter the cost to others. they then use their status to Lord over other people. My alliance refers to them as elitist.

The second type of player is more than willing to help others. they will jump into a group purely to help out people in their Guild that are struggling with a certain piece of content. They will happily give away drops that they receive that they don't need to allow someone else a greater chance at success. Instead of quitting a dungeon that's not going the way they think it should they take the time to try to teach and help the people in it to understand the tactics necessary. they build others up instead of tearing them down.

In order to encourage more of the second type of player in this game I would welcome a mechanic being devised and implemented by the Developers. However it is not their sole responsibility to deal with this problem. The player community has to at some point learn to take care of itself.

There is one last class of player that I neglected to mention before. The undecided. The ones that don't take part in either method and are still learning the accepted behaviors of the game. In my alliance we reach out routinely to these people to attempt to show them what good player conducts is. The more team players we can create and build the more of us that will be available to fight elitist Condit. With enough of these people the game Dynamics will change radically.

Imagine if you will for a moment a different type of online community in this game. A community where anyone who is qualified by the developers to run a piece of content is welcomed to run what they choose. A community where the chats are not spammed with people demanding High item level toons. A game without the need for random Q's because people are working together. A game where new players feel safe to ask their questions without fear of being ridiculed. I could go on but I trust the point has been made.

This dream of mine is a long ways off because there is a lot of resistance to the idea of helping someone else out when it does not benefit yourself. The thing that people are missing though is it does benefit them in the long run. A Cooperative Community is a giving community. There will be more end game content because the developers won't have to spend their time policing in modifying things to prevent people from exploiting and cheating. Again I can go on.

The choice when it comes down to it belongs to the individual player. Which side do you choose to be on?

plasticbat

s3186#2073 said:

Some kind of reward or worthwhile bonus for reviving a downed player,

It does not even need to be something significant. It can just be as simple as a title for such as after you revived 100, 200, 500, 1000 players.

thegravelnome

plasticbat,
I like your suggestion. Give people an incentive to revive other people. Another thing that I would personally like to see is the ability to permanently deactivate scoreboards. It promotes more competition against other players in PVE when we should be working cooperatively

greywynd

plasticbat said:

It does not even need to be something significant. It can just be as simple as a title for such as after you revived 100, 200, 500, 1000 players.

I generally find the "thank you" from the person you revive sufficient.

dafrca

thegravelnome#9466 said:

Another thing that I would personally like to see is the ability to permanently deactivate scoreboards. It promotes more competition against other players in PVE when we should be working cooperatively

When I first started I search long and hard for a way to turn that thing off. I really find it to be a distraction. And some folks put way too much value on DPS and not enough of playing your role.

thegravelnome

Another possibility is swap it out with more Cooperative minded tasks. The number of times you Resurrected members of the party, the number of assists you gave, the amount of healing of party members that you did or the amount of aggro you pulled as a tank. There's a lot of other data I'd be very interested in seeing in cooperative play

gabrieldourden

@thegravelnome#9466 : you're 100% right.
In MSVA if you're the only HR you should use Longstrider's shot to help the team burn the boss. I stopped doing that because if I get frozen when I am away from the boss to trigger the buff from Longstrider's nobody comes to free me and I die.
I have the luck of being in a guild where people take cooperation seriously (no Zerg policy, we stop to explain new players what to do, we move at the pace of the slowest character) so guild runs are fine, but as soon as I pug or join a queue in a channel it's often a nightmare.

It's really sad to see how the Legit channel on PC looks less and less active too. One of the rules there is that as long as you qualify for content you're welcome. But this in contrast with the current situation where certain party combinations will simply not make it through content: try going to Tong with 2 OPs and 3 Archer Rangers in the 14k range and see if you can burn Orcus in time, survive the second boss or destroy portals in time at the last boss.

When NWO started there was little focus on farming. Dungeons were hard but loot in the chest was making a difference (armor set bonuses in particular). The only "farmable" thing were enchantments but rank 10s were sort of icing on the cake. There was also more variety with armor set bonuses tailor-made for different trees.

Now the focus is all on farming as fast as you can. It looks like any Korean game out there. When fast farming is the only way there is little incentive in cooperating, you just want the best team possible to run through content as fast as you can.

During mod10 I left a certain SKT channel after a discussion with the creator of that channel where I told him that he was only selecting the best possible parties for a run while claiming that it was a channel open to everybody... His answer was basically that he wanted easy wins because there was too much farming to be done to lose time with non-optimal parties....

To get rid of all these issues we need changes that improve the importance of control, healing and aggro management (no more single target control-immune boss fights please) and reduce the impact of buff/debuffs so that you can't simply burn through the HP of monsters before they can do anything (DPS checks should be removed too). Runs will be longer so loot should be better. I bet everybody would prefer 2h Tong runs if they'd get an Ultimate Enchanting Stone 100% of the time in the chest.

Reducing the impact of buffs/debuffs would also go a long way towards making some concepts work (like Archer Rangers being not penalized for following their core mechanics and staying at distance, or off-tanking having some sense).
Unfortunately I don't see that happening...

s3186

There's a lot of good ideas in this thread. I hope someone's listening!

The newest thing I've been experiencing is high level players leeching the random dungeons. It's frustrating to be helping new players and doing all the work while someone sits back and waits, or follows along just out of combat until combat is over, especially when they are more than capable of assisting. Even had a proud leecher brag about it. (And for some reason, the kick vote wasn't working. Not sure if the other guy was too nice, too new, or if it bugged.)

I'm frustrated and losing interest quickly. I realize there's a "humanity problem" in here, somewhere. Being a jerk is a choice one makes, so... there's that. Thanks to everyone who chooses not to be.

minotaur2857

earlgreybeard said:

Pretty likely you will find these sort of hamsterwits in every MMO unfortunately

Cryptic in 2004 had a game that had very little of that (City of heroes) but nobody has replicated the community experience of that game. What were the ingredients that led to that experience ? MUCH more active policing of forums and interpretation of what was griefing. Drops were secret and specific to you, no need/greed etc. No paingiver tables etc, and you couldn't parse the combat logs in quite the same way as not everything went in there (and I can't remember if you could only see your own stuff).

It was a truly cooperative experience, whether the fact that its playerbase were generally a little older helped I'm not sure. People felt safe letting their quite young kids play which I don't think would be the case here.

There was also a much sought after achievement for reporting an exploit which several people had.

s3186

minotaur2857 said:

Cryptic in 2004 had a game that had very little of that (City of heroes) but nobody has replicated the community experience of that game. What were the ingredients that led to that experience ? MUCH more active policing of forums and interpretation of what was griefing. Drops were secret and specific to you, no need/greed etc. No paingiver tables etc, and you couldn't parse the combat logs in quite the same way as not everything went in there (and I can't remember if you could only see your own stuff).

It was a truly cooperative experience, whether the fact that its playerbase were generally a little older helped I'm not sure. People felt safe letting their quite young kids play which I don't think would be the case here.

There was also a much sought after achievement for reporting an exploit which several people had.

Since you've brought up another game... I have heard very good things about City of Heroes and its wonderful community. And, honestly, when I was writing my post, I was thinking about Guild Wars 2 and a lot of the ways they encourage helping one another in regular PvE. The sharing of resource nodes, the helpful benefits of reviving players, the way events share and give better rewards the more people participate and help, the way everyone gets individual rewards for killing/completing things - no fighting over loot, no fighting over kills, no fighting over resources. There are literally trains of people doing events and bounties together. The open world is a pleasant place. Meta events, you pretty much have to work together or they fail. It's great to see commanders step forward and organize maps.

I long for this kind of cooperation in Neverwinter, and for all that crazy loot and node competition, for that selfishness to diminish.

wintersmoke

s3186#2073 said:

There's a lot of good ideas in this thread. I hope someone's listening!

The newest thing I've been experiencing is high level players leeching the random dungeons. It's frustrating to be helping new players and doing all the work while someone sits back and waits, or follows along just out of combat until combat is over, especially when they are more than capable of assisting. Even had a proud leecher brag about it. (And for some reason, the kick vote wasn't working. Not sure if the other guy was too nice, too new, or if it bugged.)

I'm frustrated and losing interest quickly. I realize there's a "humanity problem" in here, somewhere. Being a jerk is a choice one makes, so... there's that. Thanks to everyone who chooses not to be.

This is not entirely the player's fault. With 12b update, any lvl 70 player must have unlocked all content up thru FBI & or SP to random queue for epic dungeons. Any toons that have not can only earn AD by running leveling random queue. that's no excuse for being a jerk about it tho...

mithrosnomore

They should figure out a way to introduce tagging.

A lot of games do this. If I hit an enemy first then it doesn't matter what someone else does; It's *MY* enemy and if it is defeated then I get full credit.

Last night I was playing and started fighting a mission-objective enemy. A much higher level player came along, took the enemy out, and I got no credit. I was there first. It was my enemy to fight, yet they apparently got credit because, to no one's great surprise, a level 70 character does more damage than a level 50-something.

This wouldn't fix everything, but it would be a start.

thegravelnome

Unfortunately with that reasoning if they were to implement that it would open the floodgates to a whole news source of griefing people. Imagine if you need to kill 20 Undead say. All you have to do is get to them first Mark the enemies and then disappear and wait for somebody to kill them for you. You get the drops you get the credit and the person who actually killed it gets nothing. Can you imagine the Havoc this would cause with T-Rex hunting?

micky1p00

mithrosnomore said:

They should figure out a way to introduce tagging.

A lot of games do this. If I hit an enemy first then it doesn't matter what someone else does; It's *MY* enemy and if it is defeated then I get full credit.

Last night I was playing and started fighting a mission-objective enemy. A much higher level player came along, took the enemy out, and I got no credit. I was there first. It was my enemy to fight, yet they apparently got credit because, to no one's great surprise, a level 70 character does more damage than a level 50-something.

This wouldn't fix everything, but it would be a start.

Actually if you did at least some damage, in most cases, you will get credit. There are specific quests that are grief-able, but in general in PvE a kill registers to anyone who dealt some damage above some little threshold.

s3186

micky1p00 said:

Actually if you did at least some damage, in most cases, you will get credit. There are specific quests that are grief-able, but in general in PvE a kill registers to anyone who dealt some damage above some little threshold.

And that inconsistency is exactly why I suspect there may be many players that don't even know they're grief'ing. (Or, well, there really could be that many jerks. Entirely possible.) Maybe some want to share credit, maybe some think they're helping a lower level/lower geared player or someone in trouble (which was my case.)

There are SO many inconsistencies with things like this in the game - I've bug reported a lot in the time I've been back. So maybe add that to the "improved player experience" list: Improve consistency. Or create some. Whatever it might take to help this, as, like I said, it would be nice if there was no competition over kills.

When I see someone struggling with a difficult monster, I am currently unsure anymore whether or not it's polite to help. Will they think I'm rude for jumping in, as though I'm trying to steal their kill? Will they think I'm rude for running away and leaving them to die, or not being around to revive them? Do they think I'm rude for standing here watching while I try to make up my mind?

mithrosnomore

micky1p00 said:

Actually if you did at least some damage, in most cases, you will get credit. There are specific quests that are grief-able, but in general in PvE a kill registers to anyone who dealt some damage above some little threshold.

No, that was going to be my first of three needed kills. I definitely did not get credit.

thegravelnome#9466 said:

Unfortunately with that reasoning if they were to implement that it would open the floodgates to a whole news source of griefing people. Imagine if you need to kill 20 Undead say. All you have to do is get to them first Mark the enemies and then disappear and wait for somebody to kill them for you. You get the drops you get the credit and the person who actually killed it gets nothing. Can you imagine the Havoc this would cause with T-Rex hunting?

Just have them revert to untagged if the tagger goes out of range.

If someone wants credit they are going to need to stay fairly close to the hostile that they tagged.

therealprotex

Based loosely on Ghostbusters II:

The Mayor: What do you want me to do, go on television and tell 3 million people they have to be *nice* to each other?
[Begins to walk off]
The Mayor: Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every Neverwinter player's god-given right. Your 2 minutes are up, good night gentlemen.

I only hope we find "our" Statue of Liberty and can make it move...

pitshade

> @mithrosnomore said:
> Actually if you did at least some damage, in most cases, you will get credit. There are specific quests that are grief-able, but in general in PvE a kill registers to anyone who dealt some damage above some little threshold.
>
> No, that was going to be my first of three needed kills. I definitely did not get credit.

----

The issue then is that the threshold was not reached and that perhaps it is set too high. If you had dealt enough damage, you would have gotten credit regardless of who killed. I assume you were on one of the original maps like the Chasm? More recent maps seem to have been set that doing any damage at all gives credit, but in this game, changes rarely get applied to older content. (Fallen Templars vs. Patching Things Up)

There is also an issue that the Devs have added so many sources of XP that it is virtually impossible not to overlevel, causing the old maps to be flooded with higher level characters. Assuming again that you were on an old release map, if the other character was not overleveled, you would have had a chance to get credit.

While it is not the best thing to hear, sometimes it really helps to move to the lowest populated instance and run your quests there. That reduces the competition and filters out griefers who will likely want a more target rich environment.

greywynd

Patching Things Up seems to apply to the person/party that uses the vital sap on the tree and not anyone that clears the mob from around the tree.

pitshade

Yes, as I said the changes don't get backdated.

rannxeroxx

Sometimes the mechanics and goals of this game are a bit wonky. Take for instants the cleric. Say they come along and instead of a kill they do a heal of the fighters. Or the CW doing a non-damaging control to help out. Yet its all about the kill. In paper D&D you get as much XP avoiding getting into fights as you do fighting.

callumf

I have had trouble getting credit rescuing Scouts in Chult when some massive DPSer comes along and wipes all the mobs in one instakillhitthingy. I just wait till they have gone away

dafrca

wintersmoke said:

This is not entirely the player's fault. With 12b update, any lvl 70 player must have unlocked all content up thru FBI & or SP to random queue for epic dungeons. Any toons that have not can only earn AD by running leveling random queue. that's no excuse for being a jerk about it tho...

Your last point is the one I always try to make. I get that I am now stuck in a mindless run with little chance to be part of anything as some 70+ Speed Runners drive to their RAD. What I do not accept is that they need to be rude or mean while doing it.

Last night I was in a leveling RQ and clearly the other two were much higher power than I. But one of the high level players, who was a GF, kept boosting my speed so I could keep up with them. When the boost wore off he would run back and boost me again. This allowed me to run at their speed for almost the full dungeon. I even helped do a little healing and hit a few monsters before they melted. I felt like I contributed, not a lot of course but at least some. I was so grateful that the GF understood by working with me like I was part of the party, we all finished much quicker, I had a blast watching them in action, and I walked away feeling good about the experience.

I feel sorry that they have been cut off the content created for them. But by acting nice, this team got to their goal much faster and I imagine left less frustrated as well.

rannxeroxx

dafrca#4810 said:

Last night I was in a leveling RQ and clearly the other two were much higher power than I. But one of the high level players, who was a GF, kept boosting my speed so I could keep up with them. When the boost wore off he would run back and boost me again. This allowed me to run at their speed for almost the full dungeon. I even helped do a little healing and hit a few monsters before they melted. I felt like I contributed, not a lot of course but at least some. I was so grateful that the GF understood by working with me like I was part of the party, we all finished much quicker, I had a blast watching them in action, and I walked away feeling good about the experience.

I feel sorry that they have been cut off the content created for them. But by acting nice, this team got to their goal much faster and I imagine left less frustrated as well.

After reading your post, I started doing the same thing with my GF.

riftzm

I don't know where else to post this, so I guess I'll post it here. It'd be nice if new players like myself were warned in advance that Item ID scrolls are worth far more than random green drops. Whenever I'd try to sell an unidentified gree item, it'd pop up saying ID'ed items will sell for more. So, like the noob I am, I went nuts identifying everything so I'd get more money by junking. I was under the impression I could just buy more with coins - ya know, like every other game out there. Little did I know, Item ID scrolls cost Astral Diamonds, and cannot be purchased with coins. I feel like the pop up is deliberate to screw new players over who don't know any better, by getting them to blow through all their scrolls and either have to farm for more, or buy them. The auction house is useless to low level players for making diamonds, from what I can see.

It doesn't help that I can't send any messages to other players yet, so I can't ask any questions about the game. I can't even create any forum posts, either.

I don't mind spending money to buy stuff in game, but not when I kind of feel duped and cheated out of it. This is something players should be warned about. "Be careful with your ID scrolls, they cost diamonds that are worth way more than the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> you're going to just junk for coins."

I really like the game, but that was really disappointing. A lot of the gear I did ID has helped me progress to level 16 very quickly, so it wasn't a total loss. But, after finding out about the diamonds, I've been running around for 2 hours killing stuff to try and find scrolls and haven't found any. I have a blue item from a challenge, but can't ID it now.

greywynd

Actually, at this point, ID all "green junk" and turn it into refinement points and don't bother selling any of it.

pitshade

I don't have any sub level 70s, but I think Random dungeons and skirmishes still give AD at that level. Assuming that this is correct, make AD that way and buy cheap gear from the AH to upgrade your charcter. Save your ID scrolls for things you need (boots that might be useful for instance) and when you outlevel the scrolls, sell them on the AH. The Refinement Points don't add up to that much at low levels. Anything you ID and don't need, turn it to RP but don't worry so much about it. Sell the unidentified stuff as is. I think double clicking bypasses the warning pop up which has been pointless since Beta. Gold has its uses but isn't that important.

preechr

Gold can be pretty useful for leveling toons, as you can use that to but the kits for skill nodes

The crafting stuff will add up over time and can be valuable for sale or if they ever start leveling up professions