we still plays same old basic class, and we may never get "prestige" archtype template like weapon-master, Dragon disciple, or Shadow dancer, or even "Pale-Master". or not even chances for daul-class.
old Guild Wars really do make character less cookie cutter when Warrior can take 2nd mastery with healing monk or Mesmer for buffs or fighter-wizard for aoe effects.
I play pretty much everyday and have played since the game started (minus when I quite for 2 years after mod 6),but I haven't played since mod 16 came out cause I knew it was just going to HAMSTER me off.I finally played a bunch today and it's just pathetic.Sorry I don't have anything constructive to say I simply don't care enough to discuss it with anyone.
I don't get this. Why do people feel the need to say this? If I didn't like this game, I'd just be gone.
You're just going around badgering people lol.People say their opinions,that's how forums work.You have been on here for 4 months I have been on here for 7 years and watched everything go downhill consistently while you literally just started playing.Well just quit and don't say anything lol.I been here 4 months and know better than everyone else.
I play pretty much everyday and have played since the game started (minus when I quite for 2 years after mod 6),but I haven't played since mod 16 came out cause I knew it was just going to HAMSTER me off.I finally played a bunch today and it's just pathetic.Sorry I don't have anything constructive to say I simply don't care enough to discuss it with anyone.
I don't get this. Why do people feel the need to say this? If I didn't like this game, I'd just be gone.
You're just going around badgering people lol.People say their opinions,that's how forums work.You have been on here for 4 months I have been on here for 7 years and watched everything go downhill consistently while you literally just started playing.Well just quit and don't say anything lol.I been here 4 months and know better than everyone else.
Umm, are you talking about yourself? If you don't like the game, leave. You don't have to say anything. YOU are the one making a big deal about leaving. Announcing it. Your 29th post in 7 years.
As for me, I've been playing the game for a few years now. I just don't post in forums. Or even care, usually. I just decided since Mod 16 was announced that I DID care. And that I wanted to make a point - that the negativity for this was not universal. I LIKE this mod. My complaints atm are that the fumble fingered devs have once again released a bug ridden mess but everything they said they wanted to do I AGREE WITH.
Just tried an RLQ and got DR skirmish today - this is after the latest patch that was supposed to address scaling as an issue. It still took almost 15 minutes - but the PUG I was on was successful - with 1 parasite player not contributing (of course). It was still significantly more difficult than pre-M16, but do-able.
I earned top paingiver - by a factor of maybe 4+ - opened the chest at the end and got....exactly the same type of reward I would have received playing the exact same skirmish pre-Mod 16, when the level of effort was significantly less. (20 Crown Seals, approx. 3000 RAD, some basic RP and a Turmian weapon).
What really bugs me isn't the increased challenge/difficulty - I'm fine with that. What makes dungeons unplayable for me right now is the utter lack of return on investment.
If I am going to invest 15 minutes on an RLQ, or 30 minutes to an hour on an RIQ and above, the rewards at the end of the dungeon should be in line with that level of time commitment. In my opinion they are absolutely not right now.
Just tried an RLQ and got DR skirmish today - this is after the latest patch that was supposed to address scaling as an issue. It still took almost 15 minutes - but the PUG I was on was successful - with 1 parasite player not contributing (of course). It was still significantly more difficult than pre-M16, but do-able.
I earned top paingiver - by a factor of maybe 4+ - opened the chest at the end and got....exactly the same type of reward I would have received playing the exact same skirmish pre-Mod 16, when the level of effort was significantly less. (20 Crown Seals, approx. 3000 RAD, some basic RP and a Turmian weapon).
What really bugs me isn't the increased challenge/difficulty - I'm fine with that. What makes dungeons unplayable for me right now is the utter lack of return on investment.
If I am going to invest 15 minutes on an RLQ, or 30 minutes to an hour on an RIQ and above, the rewards at the end of the dungeon should be in line with that level of time commitment. In my opinion they are absolutely not right now.
Gotta love how Cryptic manages to wreck the game yet still fails to address the endemic pandemic of parasitic "AFK" players in RQs. It's so asinine that one almost has to laugh at it or risk going apoplectic.
Just tried an RLQ and got DR skirmish today - this is after the latest patch that was supposed to address scaling as an issue. It still took almost 15 minutes - but the PUG I was on was successful - with 1 parasite player not contributing (of course). It was still significantly more difficult than pre-M16, but do-able.
I earned top paingiver - by a factor of maybe 4+ - opened the chest at the end and got....exactly the same type of reward I would have received playing the exact same skirmish pre-Mod 16, when the level of effort was significantly less. (20 Crown Seals, approx. 3000 RAD, some basic RP and a Turmian weapon).
What really bugs me isn't the increased challenge/difficulty - I'm fine with that. What makes dungeons unplayable for me right now is the utter lack of return on investment.
If I am going to invest 15 minutes on an RLQ, or 30 minutes to an hour on an RIQ and above, the rewards at the end of the dungeon should be in line with that level of time commitment. In my opinion they are absolutely not right now.
Gotta love how Cryptic manages to wreck the game yet still fails to address the endemic pandemic of parasitic "AFK" players in RQs. It's so asinine that one almost has to laugh at it or risk going apoplectic.
What patch can they release that will fix this? If you have one, you may want to share it with all the other MMOs that have queues for content that wind up with the same problem. We have the tools to deal with it here, in fact, we used it yesterday, vote kicking.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
Players post their distain for many reasons, I posted my opinions as I have been playing NWO since Beta, and have weathered all the changes throughout the years because I have a love for this game, it was my sanctuary where I could got to relax, play and just have fun. I have time AND money invested and, like others, would hate to lose this game over what we feel are unnecessary changes.
Now..... some feel the changes are needed, some don't. We are all trying to make this game something "WE" want personally as opposed to Something for all (Which will NEVER be achieved), BEACUSE each player is an Individual with their own reason for playing and play style. When you invest time and money into anything, the need to voice an opinion is just Human nature.
Probably no surprise that a bit of AFK/multibox farming still exists. People will try. But now that they can be consistently kicked, this practice should decrease over time. Who wants to keep waiting in the queue only to be kicked five minutes into the run and have to do it all over again.
Just tried an RLQ and got DR skirmish today - this is after the latest patch that was supposed to address scaling as an issue. It still took almost 15 minutes - but the PUG I was on was successful - with 1 parasite player not contributing (of course). It was still significantly more difficult than pre-M16, but do-able.
I earned top paingiver - by a factor of maybe 4+ - opened the chest at the end and got....exactly the same type of reward I would have received playing the exact same skirmish pre-Mod 16, when the level of effort was significantly less. (20 Crown Seals, approx. 3000 RAD, some basic RP and a Turmian weapon).
What really bugs me isn't the increased challenge/difficulty - I'm fine with that. What makes dungeons unplayable for me right now is the utter lack of return on investment.
If I am going to invest 15 minutes on an RLQ, or 30 minutes to an hour on an RIQ and above, the rewards at the end of the dungeon should be in line with that level of time commitment. In my opinion they are absolutely not right now.
Gotta love how Cryptic manages to wreck the game yet still fails to address the endemic pandemic of parasitic "AFK" players in RQs. It's so asinine that one almost has to laugh at it or risk going apoplectic.
What patch can they release that will fix this? If you have one, you may want to share it with all the other MMOs that have queues for content that wind up with the same problem. We have the tools to deal with it here, in fact, we used it yesterday, vote kicking.
Several suggestions have been offered up on these forums over the months, heck, years this has been an issue (which it apparently still is - surprise, surprise /s). Abuse of votekicking is one of the main reasons cited by Cryptic staff to justify the overly long cooldown time on votekicking (and which exacerbates the issue since - in the past - a number of RQ runs could be and were completed before the cooldown timer expired). However, some quite valid alternatives have been proposed by the playerbase:
1. Any player that leaves the instance for whatever reason will automatically be kicked from the party. Yes, some people have poor internet connections which is unfortunate for them, but they play online-only games at their own peril knowing this. That being said, I'm not opposed to a compromise whereby a player can be disconnected or be outside of the instance for, say, 2 minutes before being auto-kicked. (This also makes it possible for players with VIP sign posts to travel to PE or wherever as needed if they don't have access to VIP vault.)
2. A continuous system check in the background verifying that a player is in fact moving. This does not completely eliminate the issue of botting, though more complex algorithms for measuring/determining character movement might help. Some players have also suggested adding a dmg/heal contribution counter, though pre-Mod 16 this was problematic due to some players being so outclassed that they might not do much, if any dmg/healing. That, however, seems to be less of an issue now given the train wreck that is current scaling/capping with Mod 16.
3. Remove abandon penalty and improve reinforcement function. This caters to all sides - both those who want to run a specific piece of content, as well as those who merely want a quick run for daily rAD (and may not care to do an hour+ long FBI/Cloat Tower these days thanks to Mod 16), and those who find themselves stuck with parasitic AFK'ers. Wouldn't we all rather play with other players who at the very least show an interest in running a piece of content?
4. My personal preferred solution is the previous ability to farm rAD in solo/private runs, though that too is now a questionable solution thanks to Mod 16 scaling and total class destruction.
There are likely other additional measures that can be offered up. One can debate the effectiveness of any of those measures - in isolation or as a combination, but what is not open for debate is the long-running blatant parasitic abuse of RQs by far too many players which directly results in active players being punished. Punished either by having to wait on parasitic freeloading scum going AFK outside of activation circles. Punished by being under-manned for a RQ run (or even having to run it solo - which you can only do until you hit the aforementioned activation circles). Punished with a 30 minute lockout if they manually "Abandon" an instance while those who use VIP sign post travel to leave the instance receive(d) no punishment, and simply went to do other content until either the party they left behind succeeds, votes to kick them - incurring no penalty, or until another player leaves the party, at which point they too can abandon and again without penalty. (On a personal note: I've always opposed the leaving/abandon penalty. Sometimes a player may want/need to leave for a variety of reasons, and frankly no other reason than not wanting to run something is required to be a valid reason to not run a specific piece of content. It's a game; not a job, and not a military mission - those who claim to long for such precision and camaraderie can enlist in their local armed forces. Cryptic has yet to take to heart the lesson that you can't force someone to want to do something. You can, however, try to persuade/coax them - you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.)
Cryptic could hardly make it worse and more unfair to those players who are actually trying to play the game, if they tried. Thus, at this point any attempt at something other than the current state of affairs seems preferable. If nothing else they can truthfully claim they've tried other solutions. Then again, with the way things currently stand with Mod 16, fewer players are going to be running RQs and PUG parties, so I suppose that 'solves' the issue, though in a Pyrrhic fashion.
What suggestions do you have to mitigate the rampant abuse of RQs? (Other than the ever-so-popular-to-claim yet not-quite-so-viable-for-all idea of a 3-4 pre-made party since in order to qualify for rAD it still has to be a public party.) Your previous mention of votekicking wasn't a viable option in the past given the ludicrously long cooldown timer on it. If that is now in play, it isn't because it's a great solution, but rather due to the spectacularly poor job they've done with Mod 16. Actually, votekicking can be a fine solution if the cooldown timer on it is reduced to 30 seconds - no more than 1 minute at most - but that brings us back to my opening comment regarding past official statements from Cryptic on the matter of votekick cooldowns.
1. Any player that leaves the instance for whatever reason will automatically be kicked from the party. Yes, some people have poor internet connections which is unfortunate for them, but they play online-only games at their own peril knowing this. That being said, I'm not opposed to a compromise whereby a player can be disconnected or be outside of the instance for, say, 2 minutes before being auto-kicked. (This also makes it possible for players with VIP sign posts to travel to PE or wherever as needed if they don't have access to VIP vault.)
Easiest thing to do is give penalty for leaving for any reason. The amount of people abusing "disconnect" to leave is much greater than people with legit disconnect and not able to reconnect in time.
2. A continuous system check in the background verifying that a player is in fact moving. This does not completely eliminate the issue of botting, though more complex algorithms for measuring/determining character movement might help. Some players have also suggested adding a dmg/heal contribution counter, though pre-Mod 16 this was problematic due to some players being so outclassed that they might not do much, if any dmg/healing. That, however, seems to be less of an issue now given the train wreck that is current scaling/capping with Mod 16.
Too complicated and needs to be tuned often as players come up with creative ways to defeat them.
3. Remove abandon penalty and improve reinforcement function. This caters to all sides - both those who want to run a specific piece of content, as well as those who merely want a quick run for daily rAD (and may not care to do an hour+ long FBI/Cloat Tower these days thanks to Mod 16), and those who find themselves stuck with parasitic AFK'ers. Wouldn't we all rather play with other players who at the very least show an interest in running a piece of content?
Abandon penalty is needed. Without it, players with rare heal/tank role can keep re-queuing until they get a good group. If anything, the penalty should be increased for multiple abandons. Back in mod 15, the 30 min penalty is nothing for a healer if they end up in a group that will take more than an hour to finish the run, if they can even finish.
4. My personal preferred solution is the previous ability to farm rAD in solo/private runs, though that too is now a questionable solution thanks to Mod 16 scaling and total class destruction.
This was questionable even before mod 16. Toons were so OP that they can carry an entire group through all the leveling, T1 and T2 content. At best, these players would just solo it. Even this has a negative effect on the population because they are not helping newer players with runs. But surely, even more people would be multiboxing, because they can do it out of sight of other human players.
appearantly we aren't only ones who absolutely loath this module
this is a screenshot of steamcharts for Neverwinter in the date between the release of mod shitsteen and today (28/04/2019) https://prnt.sc/nhwo7b
as you can see the log ins peaked on release day wich is to be expected as people want to try out the module (peak was about 4K people) then started to fluctuate with being mostly a downward spiral till it stopped at ~1.900 ~ today wich is the weekends for it's when you expect a lot of players to log in
i have yet to see a single positive comment about this module besides julia's opinion wich we can't take into account for various obvious reasons
1. Any player that leaves the instance for whatever reason will automatically be kicked from the party. Yes, some people have poor internet connections which is unfortunate for them, but they play online-only games at their own peril knowing this. That being said, I'm not opposed to a compromise whereby a player can be disconnected or be outside of the instance for, say, 2 minutes before being auto-kicked. (This also makes it possible for players with VIP sign posts to travel to PE or wherever as needed if they don't have access to VIP vault.)
Easiest thing to do is give penalty for leaving for any reason. The amount of people abusing "disconnect" to leave is much greater than people with legit disconnect and not able to reconnect in time.
2. A continuous system check in the background verifying that a player is in fact moving. This does not completely eliminate the issue of botting, though more complex algorithms for measuring/determining character movement might help. Some players have also suggested adding a dmg/heal contribution counter, though pre-Mod 16 this was problematic due to some players being so outclassed that they might not do much, if any dmg/healing. That, however, seems to be less of an issue now given the train wreck that is current scaling/capping with Mod 16.
Too complicated and needs to be tuned often as players come up with creative ways to defeat them.
3. Remove abandon penalty and improve reinforcement function. This caters to all sides - both those who want to run a specific piece of content, as well as those who merely want a quick run for daily rAD (and may not care to do an hour+ long FBI/Cloat Tower these days thanks to Mod 16), and those who find themselves stuck with parasitic AFK'ers. Wouldn't we all rather play with other players who at the very least show an interest in running a piece of content?
Abandon penalty is needed. Without it, players with rare heal/tank role can keep re-queuing until they get a good group. If anything, the penalty should be increased for multiple abandons. Back in mod 15, the 30 min penalty is nothing for a healer if they end up in a group that will take more than an hour to finish the run, if they can even finish.
4. My personal preferred solution is the previous ability to farm rAD in solo/private runs, though that too is now a questionable solution thanks to Mod 16 scaling and total class destruction.
This was questionable even before mod 16. Toons were so OP that they can carry an entire group through all the leveling, T1 and T2 content. At best, these players would just solo it. Even this has a negative effect on the population because they are not helping newer players with runs. But surely, even more people would be multiboxing, because they can do it out of sight of other human players.
We appear to agree to some extent on some things, and very much disagree on others.
I recognize that you place some personal value in teaching other players how to play. That's well and good; sometimes I've been taught by other players, and sometimes I've been the one doing the teaching. My issue is not that such happens. My issue is with the unspoken expectation that it is the task of other players to teach others. No, it isn't. If it happens, fine. If someone wants to go out of their way to do so, fine. Forcing everyone else to do things the way you/they think it should be done is not fine. That door swings both ways - always.
P.S. Whether it is/was for you or not, historically one of the big draws of Neverwinter was the ability to solo much of the content. While a tiny minority appear to have been clamoring for the opposite (and have now gotten exactly that thanks to Mod 16), it also appears to be far from what a majority of the playerbase wanted/wants. There are numerous causes for the current disgruntlement and outright anger towards Cryptic and NW 2.0, and while destroying much of players' ability to solo isn't the only cause, it is nonetheless one of the significant causes. Expect playerbase numbers to decrease further if this doesn't revert back to a more solo-able experience.
I am lvl 80 with 19000+ item level and I used to be able to manage dungeons like lostmauth and even skirmishes like Manycoins but now because of the cooldowns being so long and absolutely no lifesteal I die over and over and most people do and abandon the instance please put the cooldowns back where there were and put lifesteal back in the game to give us a fighting chance...as it stands...you will get no more of my money and if not corrected I don't see the point in playing anymore
I recognize that you place some personal value in teaching other players how to play. That's well and good; sometimes I've been taught by other players, and sometimes I've been the one doing the teaching. My issue is not that such happens. My issue is with the unspoken expectation that it is the task of other players to teach others. No, it isn't. If it happens, fine. If someone wants to go out of their way to do so, fine. Forcing everyone else to do things the way you/they think it should be done is not fine. That door swings both ways - always.
There isn't an expectation to teach. Generally, it is good to help lesser geared players complete runs. You don't have to teach, just do more of the smashing.
P.S. Whether it is/was for you or not, historically one of the big draws of Neverwinter was the ability to solo much of the content. While a tiny minority appear to have been clamoring for the opposite (and have now gotten exactly that thanks to Mod 16), it also appears to be far from what a majority of the playerbase wanted/wants. There are numerous causes for the current disgruntlement and outright anger towards Cryptic and NW 2.0, and while destroying much of players' ability to solo isn't the only cause, it is nonetheless one of the significant causes. Expect playerbase numbers to decrease further if this doesn't revert back to a more solo-able experience.
You can still solo a private run and get the run specific rewards for them. Just the RQ reward is an incentive to socialize the run.
Just tried an RLQ and got DR skirmish today - this is after the latest patch that was supposed to address scaling as an issue. It still took almost 15 minutes - but the PUG I was on was successful - with 1 parasite player not contributing (of course). It was still significantly more difficult than pre-M16, but do-able.
I earned top paingiver - by a factor of maybe 4+ - opened the chest at the end and got....exactly the same type of reward I would have received playing the exact same skirmish pre-Mod 16, when the level of effort was significantly less. (20 Crown Seals, approx. 3000 RAD, some basic RP and a Turmian weapon).
What really bugs me isn't the increased challenge/difficulty - I'm fine with that. What makes dungeons unplayable for me right now is the utter lack of return on investment.
If I am going to invest 15 minutes on an RLQ, or 30 minutes to an hour on an RIQ and above, the rewards at the end of the dungeon should be in line with that level of time commitment. In my opinion they are absolutely not right now.
Gotta love how Cryptic manages to wreck the game yet still fails to address the endemic pandemic of parasitic "AFK" players in RQs. It's so asinine that one almost has to laugh at it or risk going apoplectic.
What patch can they release that will fix this? If you have one, you may want to share it with all the other MMOs that have queues for content that wind up with the same problem. We have the tools to deal with it here, in fact, we used it yesterday, vote kicking.
Several suggestions have been offered up on these forums over the months, heck, years this has been an issue (which it apparently still is - surprise, surprise /s). Abuse of votekicking is one of the main reasons cited by Cryptic staff to justify the overly long cooldown time on votekicking (and which exacerbates the issue since - in the past - a number of RQ runs could be and were completed before the cooldown timer expired). However, some quite valid alternatives have been proposed by the playerbase:
1. Any player that leaves the instance for whatever reason will automatically be kicked from the party. Yes, some people have poor internet connections which is unfortunate for them, but they play online-only games at their own peril knowing this. That being said, I'm not opposed to a compromise whereby a player can be disconnected or be outside of the instance for, say, 2 minutes before being auto-kicked. (This also makes it possible for players with VIP sign posts to travel to PE or wherever as needed if they don't have access to VIP vault.)
2. A continuous system check in the background verifying that a player is in fact moving. This does not completely eliminate the issue of botting, though more complex algorithms for measuring/determining character movement might help. Some players have also suggested adding a dmg/heal contribution counter, though pre-Mod 16 this was problematic due to some players being so outclassed that they might not do much, if any dmg/healing. That, however, seems to be less of an issue now given the train wreck that is current scaling/capping with Mod 16.
3. Remove abandon penalty and improve reinforcement function. This caters to all sides - both those who want to run a specific piece of content, as well as those who merely want a quick run for daily rAD (and may not care to do an hour+ long FBI/Cloat Tower these days thanks to Mod 16), and those who find themselves stuck with parasitic AFK'ers. Wouldn't we all rather play with other players who at the very least show an interest in running a piece of content?
4. My personal preferred solution is the previous ability to farm rAD in solo/private runs, though that too is now a questionable solution thanks to Mod 16 scaling and total class destruction.
There are likely other additional measures that can be offered up. One can debate the effectiveness of any of those measures - in isolation or as a combination, but what is not open for debate is the long-running blatant parasitic abuse of RQs by far too many players which directly results in active players being punished. Punished either by having to wait on parasitic freeloading scum going AFK outside of activation circles. Punished by being under-manned for a RQ run (or even having to run it solo - which you can only do until you hit the aforementioned activation circles). Punished with a 30 minute lockout if they manually "Abandon" an instance while those who use VIP sign post travel to leave the instance receive(d) no punishment, and simply went to do other content until either the party they left behind succeeds, votes to kick them - incurring no penalty, or until another player leaves the party, at which point they too can abandon and again without penalty. (On a personal note: I've always opposed the leaving/abandon penalty. Sometimes a player may want/need to leave for a variety of reasons, and frankly no other reason than not wanting to run something is required to be a valid reason to not run a specific piece of content. It's a game; not a job, and not a military mission - those who claim to long for such precision and camaraderie can enlist in their local armed forces. Cryptic has yet to take to heart the lesson that you can't force someone to want to do something. You can, however, try to persuade/coax them - you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.)
Cryptic could hardly make it worse and more unfair to those players who are actually trying to play the game, if they tried. Thus, at this point any attempt at something other than the current state of affairs seems preferable. If nothing else they can truthfully claim they've tried other solutions. Then again, with the way things currently stand with Mod 16, fewer players are going to be running RQs and PUG parties, so I suppose that 'solves' the issue, though in a Pyrrhic fashion.
What suggestions do you have to mitigate the rampant abuse of RQs? (Other than the ever-so-popular-to-claim yet not-quite-so-viable-for-all idea of a 3-4 pre-made party since in order to qualify for rAD it still has to be a public party.) Your previous mention of votekicking wasn't a viable option in the past given the ludicrously long cooldown timer on it. If that is now in play, it isn't because it's a great solution, but rather due to the spectacularly poor job they've done with Mod 16. Actually, votekicking can be a fine solution if the cooldown timer on it is reduced to 30 seconds - no more than 1 minute at most - but that brings us back to my opening comment regarding past official statements from Cryptic on the matter of votekick cooldowns.
The immediate problem with 2 is the lag generated by the scripts running constantly in the background. It won't just be in one dungeon, it will be in all of them, in all skirmishes, and any other group content I may be missing here. This is compounded by "there's not just one version of each". It's possible, even likely that during peak hours there are hundreds of instances running at any given time, and this is going to strain the entire server. Neverdeath today is a lagfest, with constant rubberbanding. I had thought it was just me, and logged out, restarted my machine, and rejoined, only to find that everyone in the zone was experiencing it. Adding what, in Neverwinter Nights would have been on "OnHeartbeat" script to check for activity is going to kill the whole system.
I'd say: If you're vote kicked for being AFK x number of times in y period, then you're going to be given a suspension. People shouldn't queue for content they don't want to run, and if they get something they don't want to run on the RQ, they should leave the group. "But my AD" isn't an excuse to put other players at a disadvantage, or to inconvenience them. But yes, the best solution is to indeed queue with a premade, you know what you're getting, and while the group I was in last night wasn't a full group, so I don't know how that works, our group remained intact until we broke it up.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
1. Any player that leaves the instance for whatever reason will automatically be kicked from the party. Yes, some people have poor internet connections which is unfortunate for them, but they play online-only games at their own peril knowing this. That being said, I'm not opposed to a compromise whereby a player can be disconnected or be outside of the instance for, say, 2 minutes before being auto-kicked. (This also makes it possible for players with VIP sign posts to travel to PE or wherever as needed if they don't have access to VIP vault.)
Easiest thing to do is give penalty for leaving for any reason. The amount of people abusing "disconnect" to leave is much greater than people with legit disconnect and not able to reconnect in time.
2. A continuous system check in the background verifying that a player is in fact moving. This does not completely eliminate the issue of botting, though more complex algorithms for measuring/determining character movement might help. Some players have also suggested adding a dmg/heal contribution counter, though pre-Mod 16 this was problematic due to some players being so outclassed that they might not do much, if any dmg/healing. That, however, seems to be less of an issue now given the train wreck that is current scaling/capping with Mod 16.
Too complicated and needs to be tuned often as players come up with creative ways to defeat them.
3. Remove abandon penalty and improve reinforcement function. This caters to all sides - both those who want to run a specific piece of content, as well as those who merely want a quick run for daily rAD (and may not care to do an hour+ long FBI/Cloat Tower these days thanks to Mod 16), and those who find themselves stuck with parasitic AFK'ers. Wouldn't we all rather play with other players who at the very least show an interest in running a piece of content?
Abandon penalty is needed. Without it, players with rare heal/tank role can keep re-queuing until they get a good group. If anything, the penalty should be increased for multiple abandons. Back in mod 15, the 30 min penalty is nothing for a healer if they end up in a group that will take more than an hour to finish the run, if they can even finish.
4. My personal preferred solution is the previous ability to farm rAD in solo/private runs, though that too is now a questionable solution thanks to Mod 16 scaling and total class destruction.
This was questionable even before mod 16. Toons were so OP that they can carry an entire group through all the leveling, T1 and T2 content. At best, these players would just solo it. Even this has a negative effect on the population because they are not helping newer players with runs. But surely, even more people would be multiboxing, because they can do it out of sight of other human players.
We appear to agree to some extent on some things, and very much disagree on others.
I recognize that you place some personal value in teaching other players how to play. That's well and good; sometimes I've been taught by other players, and sometimes I've been the one doing the teaching. My issue is not that such happens. My issue is with the unspoken expectation that it is the task of other players to teach others. No, it isn't. If it happens, fine. If someone wants to go out of their way to do so, fine. Forcing everyone else to do things the way you/they think it should be done is not fine. That door swings both ways - always.
P.S. Whether it is/was for you or not, historically one of the big draws of Neverwinter was the ability to solo much of the content. While a tiny minority appear to have been clamoring for the opposite (and have now gotten exactly that thanks to Mod 16), it also appears to be far from what a majority of the playerbase wanted/wants. There are numerous causes for the current disgruntlement and outright anger towards Cryptic and NW 2.0, and while destroying much of players' ability to solo isn't the only cause, it is nonetheless one of the significant causes. Expect playerbase numbers to decrease further if this doesn't revert back to a more solo-able experience.
Citations needed for "tiny minority". I left 5 years ago with this very concept in mind. I'm not adverse to running the entire game solo, but, if I'm going to be running solo, I can just play a SP game, and won't have to worry about zone chat at all, let alone worrying about it being flooded, quite literally, by other player's tears.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
Comments
or not even chances for daul-class.
old Guild Wars really do make character less cookie cutter when Warrior can take 2nd mastery with healing monk or Mesmer for buffs or fighter-wizard for aoe effects.
As for me, I've been playing the game for a few years now. I just don't post in forums. Or even care, usually. I just decided since Mod 16 was announced that I DID care. And that I wanted to make a point - that the negativity for this was not universal. I LIKE this mod. My complaints atm are that the fumble fingered devs have once again released a bug ridden mess but everything they said they wanted to do I AGREE WITH.
I earned top paingiver - by a factor of maybe 4+ - opened the chest at the end and got....exactly the same type of reward I would have received playing the exact same skirmish pre-Mod 16, when the level of effort was significantly less. (20 Crown Seals, approx. 3000 RAD, some basic RP and a Turmian weapon).
What really bugs me isn't the increased challenge/difficulty - I'm fine with that. What makes dungeons unplayable for me right now is the utter lack of return on investment.
If I am going to invest 15 minutes on an RLQ, or 30 minutes to an hour on an RIQ and above, the rewards at the end of the dungeon should be in line with that level of time commitment. In my opinion they are absolutely not right now.
Now..... some feel the changes are needed, some don't. We are all trying to make this game something "WE" want personally as opposed to Something for all (Which will NEVER be achieved), BEACUSE each player is an Individual with their own reason for playing and play style. When you invest time and money into anything, the need to voice an opinion is just Human nature.
1. Any player that leaves the instance for whatever reason will automatically be kicked from the party. Yes, some people have poor internet connections which is unfortunate for them, but they play online-only games at their own peril knowing this. That being said, I'm not opposed to a compromise whereby a player can be disconnected or be outside of the instance for, say, 2 minutes before being auto-kicked. (This also makes it possible for players with VIP sign posts to travel to PE or wherever as needed if they don't have access to VIP vault.)
2. A continuous system check in the background verifying that a player is in fact moving. This does not completely eliminate the issue of botting, though more complex algorithms for measuring/determining character movement might help. Some players have also suggested adding a dmg/heal contribution counter, though pre-Mod 16 this was problematic due to some players being so outclassed that they might not do much, if any dmg/healing. That, however, seems to be less of an issue now given the train wreck that is current scaling/capping with Mod 16.
3. Remove abandon penalty and improve reinforcement function. This caters to all sides - both those who want to run a specific piece of content, as well as those who merely want a quick run for daily rAD (and may not care to do an hour+ long FBI/Cloat Tower these days thanks to Mod 16), and those who find themselves stuck with parasitic AFK'ers. Wouldn't we all rather play with other players who at the very least show an interest in running a piece of content?
4. My personal preferred solution is the previous ability to farm rAD in solo/private runs, though that too is now a questionable solution thanks to Mod 16 scaling and total class destruction.
There are likely other additional measures that can be offered up. One can debate the effectiveness of any of those measures - in isolation or as a combination, but what is not open for debate is the long-running blatant parasitic abuse of RQs by far too many players which directly results in active players being punished. Punished either by having to wait on parasitic freeloading scum going AFK outside of activation circles. Punished by being under-manned for a RQ run (or even having to run it solo - which you can only do until you hit the aforementioned activation circles). Punished with a 30 minute lockout if they manually "Abandon" an instance while those who use VIP sign post travel to leave the instance receive(d) no punishment, and simply went to do other content until either the party they left behind succeeds, votes to kick them - incurring no penalty, or until another player leaves the party, at which point they too can abandon and again without penalty. (On a personal note: I've always opposed the leaving/abandon penalty. Sometimes a player may want/need to leave for a variety of reasons, and frankly no other reason than not wanting to run something is required to be a valid reason to not run a specific piece of content. It's a game; not a job, and not a military mission - those who claim to long for such precision and camaraderie can enlist in their local armed forces. Cryptic has yet to take to heart the lesson that you can't force someone to want to do something. You can, however, try to persuade/coax them - you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.)
Cryptic could hardly make it worse and more unfair to those players who are actually trying to play the game, if they tried. Thus, at this point any attempt at something other than the current state of affairs seems preferable. If nothing else they can truthfully claim they've tried other solutions. Then again, with the way things currently stand with Mod 16, fewer players are going to be running RQs and PUG parties, so I suppose that 'solves' the issue, though in a Pyrrhic fashion.
What suggestions do you have to mitigate the rampant abuse of RQs? (Other than the ever-so-popular-to-claim yet not-quite-so-viable-for-all idea of a 3-4 pre-made party since in order to qualify for rAD it still has to be a public party.) Your previous mention of votekicking wasn't a viable option in the past given the ludicrously long cooldown timer on it. If that is now in play, it isn't because it's a great solution, but rather due to the spectacularly poor job they've done with Mod 16. Actually, votekicking can be a fine solution if the cooldown timer on it is reduced to 30 seconds - no more than 1 minute at most - but that brings us back to my opening comment regarding past official statements from Cryptic on the matter of votekick cooldowns.
this is a screenshot of steamcharts for Neverwinter in the date between the release of mod shitsteen and today (28/04/2019)
https://prnt.sc/nhwo7b
as you can see the log ins peaked on release day wich is to be expected as people want to try out the module (peak was about 4K people) then started to fluctuate with being mostly a downward spiral till it stopped at ~1.900 ~ today wich is the weekends for it's when you expect a lot of players to log in
i have yet to see a single positive comment about this module besides julia's opinion wich we can't take into account for various obvious reasons
we really need to see a serious fix to combat
I recognize that you place some personal value in teaching other players how to play. That's well and good; sometimes I've been taught by other players, and sometimes I've been the one doing the teaching. My issue is not that such happens. My issue is with the unspoken expectation that it is the task of other players to teach others. No, it isn't. If it happens, fine. If someone wants to go out of their way to do so, fine. Forcing everyone else to do things the way you/they think it should be done is not fine. That door swings both ways - always.
P.S. Whether it is/was for you or not, historically one of the big draws of Neverwinter was the ability to solo much of the content. While a tiny minority appear to have been clamoring for the opposite (and have now gotten exactly that thanks to Mod 16), it also appears to be far from what a majority of the playerbase wanted/wants. There are numerous causes for the current disgruntlement and outright anger towards Cryptic and NW 2.0, and while destroying much of players' ability to solo isn't the only cause, it is nonetheless one of the significant causes. Expect playerbase numbers to decrease further if this doesn't revert back to a more solo-able experience.
I'd say: If you're vote kicked for being AFK x number of times in y period, then you're going to be given a suspension. People shouldn't queue for content they don't want to run, and if they get something they don't want to run on the RQ, they should leave the group. "But my AD" isn't an excuse to put other players at a disadvantage, or to inconvenience them. But yes, the best solution is to indeed queue with a premade, you know what you're getting, and while the group I was in last night wasn't a full group, so I don't know how that works, our group remained intact until we broke it up.