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scerd of the grind
overdriver13
Member Posts: 1,521 Arc User
So aside from the past week or so I have been away from neverwinter since iwd came out. I HATE HATE HATE grinding and even boon grinding was something I could only BARELY tolerate. I stopped playing.
Now I see pretty much everything is an artifact, requiring endless amounts of rp, not to mention getting the artifacts themselves.
Just how much grinding is ahead of me? Ya I'll pay, but not a lot. This is "once a month dinner and movie" level of disposable income quality, not "restoring antique muscle cars" level of disposable income quality.
So ya, being a person who HATES grinding and won't play a game that requires more than a little of it, is it worth to play past 60?
A little grinding and a little money and most of my time in pvp is what I want. Is this the wrong game for me, in its current state, at level 60?
Now I see pretty much everything is an artifact, requiring endless amounts of rp, not to mention getting the artifacts themselves.
Just how much grinding is ahead of me? Ya I'll pay, but not a lot. This is "once a month dinner and movie" level of disposable income quality, not "restoring antique muscle cars" level of disposable income quality.
So ya, being a person who HATES grinding and won't play a game that requires more than a little of it, is it worth to play past 60?
A little grinding and a little money and most of my time in pvp is what I want. Is this the wrong game for me, in its current state, at level 60?
Post edited by overdriver13 on
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'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
As for money, I feel like giving money to them is like giving a chef who microwaves his meals a solid income.
Notice that I specified skipping ALL the Grind.
$50.00 each for the Sharandar and Dread Ring Campaigns.
Enough RP to get a Legendary in your Main and Offhand, Belt and Cloak.
This seems to be his definition of "Grind" from what I can tell from his posts.
If you want Legendary Artifacts in your three Artifact Slots, alternate BiS Gear for PvP and PvE, those are a further substantial investment.
Add on your Perfects and Rnk 10's.
If you want a few things like special Mounts or Pets you can add even more.
So, yeah, I stand by my thousands of Dollars, US., based on his description of what he is dreading doing.
Personally, I don't do any of that, myself, and couldn't imagine wanting to even if it was a financial option. I rely on my Leadership Army to supply my AD needs and buy what I want/need with that. As for Gear, I Grind it myself, only rarely buying Gear from the AH.
'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
Then what do you expect to do?
You basically said, 'I want everything now so I don't have any goals.'
I would love more dungeons and more diverse and meaningful quests. Right now it does feel like new modules just add in additional FedEx Quests that only serve to give players something to do rather than something they truly enjoy doing...
However to complain that you want everything right now without saying what else you would enjoy seems shortsighted at best. Farming for RP is fine as long as players enjoy what they are doing while trying to get RP and at this point I can't say with certainty they are and long terms goals are necessary for an MMO to keep its appeal so being able to get everything right away because you are tired of grinding is not a good solution at all.
In short you are blaming the long period of time it takes to obtain goals. That's not accurate. It's the content which causes the problem. Or rather the repetitive grindyness of the content.
If more content was available which wasn't part of some daily grind either for AD or Boons the whole process would be far more reasonable.
Where on earth did that come into it? It's quite the jump from "I hate grinding" to conclude that someone "wants it all now". Of course it's a pretty subjective spectrum of progression but still...
Well, as somebody who quit WoW after Burning Crusade due to School, there are plenty of things to do after finishing the grind in that game.
1) PvP which can also be done in this game
2) Explore, which is the equivalent of foundries in this game.
3) Do fun things with friends, which is getting harder to do as many of my new friends to the game are undergeared for PvP and will not be able to do top gear PvP with me. The fact that many old locations are neither hubs for AH/mail/fun stuff is another big deterrent. PvE is different, but with the gear discrepancy, I literally carry them the whole time while they sit back with minimal input.
In fact, these are things I would rather be doing than grinding, but the gear is needed for PvP, hence why I (begrudgingly) grind.
Heavily agree a bit here, especially when they purposely place quest objectives in the furthest areas of a very large map.
I believe you misunderstand. What he's saying is that he wants to have fun, but there's giant roadblocks(in the form of grinding) preventing that fun from being had.
This right here is good that you're acknowledging the fact that the RP grind is more strenuous than fun.
I suggest taking another look at things another MMO like WoW got correct. There were certainly grindy aspects of the game, but the grind wasn't so much of a grind rather than just actually trying to figure out difficult content. And after you geared up, there was another level of the game in the form of developing PvP strats (and PvP was very balanced in that game btw) and overall exploring the entire landscape. I hope both hiring a new environmental designer and providing more attention to foundry go a long way towards this exploration part.
I disagree. You are confusing his goals. It seems that his goal is to have *fun* and rather is describing the roadblocks to that. PvP, when gear is equal, becomes fun. Having to face the grind of gearing up just to be on an even keel is not.
Very true, but in addition to that, balancing PvP. And before you say you don't pay much attention to PvP, I've run into more PvPer's that have put hundreds of dollars into the game than any PvEr's. Hardcore PvPer's support this game much more than you think. I know many that have put at least $400 into this game, all of them with PvP as a focus.
'I've run the dungeon 10 times and didn't get my gear! This is unacceptable!'
To which the obvious question is, at least to those who think more than one step at a time is, after you get your gear what are you going to do? And the answer is to continue running the dungeon or stop playing the game.
It's a me now mentallity. There are certainly some cases where the time investments can and do go beyond reasonable such as the freaking horrid Black Ice Gauntlet Drops that I hate so much...
But generally threads which complain about needing to invest time to get BiS items are, as I now noticed this thread is, a me now PvPer.
To which the answer to the question is, yes if you play a PvE game only for PvP you will always end up having to actually play the PvE. If you don't want to play the PvE you should not play PvE games with PvP and instead play PvP games.
PvE games with PvP always have the PvPers request the BiS items with minimal time investment without considering that if they got BiS gear as fast as they want then the PvE players would quite seriously have nothing to do.
So as such...I can get behind asking for varied content and less grinding...
But time requirements to obtain BiS gear is not grinding. Grinding pertains to the means in which those time requirements are created.
You more or less said is that PvPers want BiS items to have fun so they should get them.
In the AMA with HeyRogers it was actually confoirmed the PvP playerbase in NW is small. Straight from his mouth...er..hands. The game can not be balanced around PvPers getting BiS items in a time frame they consider reasonable otherwise the PvE players would literally have nothing to do.
You can call that misunderstanding...it's more of a past experience situation though.
When you read his post he made no mention of anything except that he has no desire to participate in the current progression. That's what I am seeing. And progression times in a PvE game have to be based on the PvE time frame.
If your goal is to only play PvP in any PvE game you are setting yourself up for this. Hence why I consider it a me-now standpoint. And as such...
I can get behind varied content...
But BiS is going to require a time investment no matter what.
Here are your options based on what you want and expect from the game:
1) If you want bis for free - cancel your life outside the game for at least half a year..but even with Dragon Hoard at 10% getting the RP needed runs the risk of killing your will to live.
2) If you want bis and demand instant gratification - prepare your credit card and make sure you got at least 1000 in it (euros,dollars, whatever)
3) If money and grind are out of the question - your best chance of having some fun is to always play with a group of friends and stick to PVE. Avoid PVP!
*bis = best in slot
Neverwinter can be a very fun game thanks to cool classes and awesome action combat but if you are still not attached to it ( no money invested ) you are honestly better off somewhere else.
Pretty much this is how I see things. I still play cause like I said I enjoy my class (GWF) and the combat and because I have invested money.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.
You're not understanding his post. So let me state it in such a way that the marketing and sales department will understand.
This guy is opting to *not* pay or play anymore due to the enormous grind involved. This isn't just a "me now" mentality. You're a game company providing a service that's supposed to be *fun* and not require more work put in than a 9-5 job.
It seems to me that you and the devs seem to be afraid of having people run around in BiS gear is due to a *lack of endgame content*, and instead place the blame on the player for desiring to bypass the grind and go right towards having a fun experience within something made for that, a video game.
I will once again put what a very successful MMO does:WoW. They have a tier of PvP gear that is best for PvP and obtainable only through PvP. Don't get me wrong, I have had some enjoyment in PvE as I do both to avoid boredom, but here it is in Mod 5 and there is no Mod 5 PvP set released. In any case, why would it be a bad thing for BiS PvE players to dabble in PvP?
If BiS PvE players have nothing to do beyond getting gear, would that not be a flawed design in the form of no playable content? They could easily pay more attention to Foundry and with this new raid boss, introduce player made raid designs with unique scripting and custom made landscapes.
But this goes beyond that, it's about having a *fun* PvP experience. Due to inherent imbalances in the PvP environment between classes, gear is the only measure in such a case as skill will count for little due to aforementioned imbalances.
And the time requirements for BiS gear is very much grinding
I posit to start a poll to the players based upon how much zen they've purchased and what part of the game they focus on, PvP or PvE. In the end, the bottom line will be that most of your revenue comes from people with a PvP focus.
In any case, if the devs provided more attention to the foundries (outside of nerfing the literal grinding rate of RP) BiS PvE players could have actual *hard* encounters devised as such by people looking to play and create actual hard content. This would have no cost to Cryptic other than beefing up the Foundry system.
The reason for this is because he sees that he would never be able to catch up with the current system in place. As he said, he sees nothing but artifacts and he knows as a new player that it would require tons of resources he doesn't have to obtain them, and there is no guarantee that those things for which he grinded would even remain viable.
Once again, I suggest you put up a poll and make a pie chart on the zen sold and what % of that zen is bought by PvPer's or PvEr's.
In any case, many of my friends from a PvP centric guild have been leaving due to imbalances, the grind, and the cost of continuing to play. These are paying people.
And somebody who is simply stating what you seem not willing to understand: BiS Gear needs to remain challenging to procure by the player base to give a vested long term goal.
This is not a PvP game with no gear progression.
Being a PvPer and not wanting to do PvE to aquire BiS gear is...well I've seen the cries in every MMO I have played before and I have not grown any more sympathetic over the last couple of decades. So, as you seem to have missed a crucial bit since you brought up the dreaded loss of profits...
I specifically said PvP players who do not want to play PvE should not play PvE games that happen to have PvP because the game can not be balanced around PvP. The PvPers will always be forced one way or another into doing PvE.
And again, the PvP community is small. It just happens to be vocal. As always.
As such losing the interest level of the PvE crowd which is the majority of players in order to appease the PvP minority it's not a hard decision. The game is a PvE game. As the case always is you will be penalized in some way if you don't want to particpate in the PvE as it is required to progress.
The reason you have stated that BiS gear needs to be hard to procure is that PvE players would have nothing to do. I have provided a solution for that problem.
I never said I was unwilling to do PvE for PvP gear, as I have mentioned farming (a literal grind) foundries to get RP to level artifact equipment. Rather, I said, I view it (the grinding) as more of a roadblock in the way of doing fun things (PvP) which is a sentiment matched my the original thread poster with a difference that he's a new player and I've been around for a while, and put quite a bit of money in the game.
And for the record, this game can be balanced around both PvE and PvP, it just takes some form of careful and planned development and full on understanding of game mechanics for each class. This also requires periodic fine tuning and monitoring as when innovative players find builds that push the power scale too far in a particular direction.
And I'll reiterate, I know PvP players have put in more money than PvE players. In any case, I don't see how making things good for PvP harms PvE players. This is the point I'm not fully understanding. How does making things good for PvP harm PvE?
And for the record, I've read these forums, there have been plenty of complaints regarding PvE content that is *too easy*.
No, by asking around. Browse the top PvP guilds and ask them how much money they've put into the game. It's surprising how many of them are in the 4 digit figures.
Rank 9-10/perfect enchants on more than 1 character are not easy(read:impossible) to get without converting zen to AD or grinding bleeding edge content within the first 2 weeks.
Meanwhile, the average PvEr I run into is completely free to play.
The very people in the first page in this thread say this game is truly only free to play when you focus on PvE.
There are many games finely tuned for PvP (Nosgoth comes to my mind, it has pretty much the same mechanics as NW regarding movement, powers/skills selection and classes, as well as asymmetric play), there are other games that are PvP-oriented (Guild Wars!) where you can do PvE to some degree too, but it doesn't really affect PvP much. This game is explicitly PvE oriented (as is pretty much the whole D&D franchise, by design), so you definitely can't have PvP dictate the rest of the content.
You don't need legendary artifacts to be efficient in PvE. All it takes to be efficient and enjoy end game content is a 20k AD T1 set from the AH. Legendary artifact equipment is for topping paingiver charts and clearing content slightly faster so you can save 5 minutes out of a 30 minute dungeon/skirmish. Even if you don't want to grind *at all*, with 5$ you can buy everything you need to clear pretty much every piece of content in NW.
Well thanks for the info on Nosgoth.
But that brings to light is that I really do enjoy Neverwinter. I don't want to quit at all (though I'm losing the desire to continue grinding or buy zen), and I'd rather see this game get it together with the content than have to jump ship. I don't mind buying zen, I just don't want exorbitant prices and stuff being grindy just for the sake of poor development, or neglected class balance.
You can play the Foundries. You can become a Foundry reviewer, post your feedback in the Foundry subforum and so on. Otherwise, in the game itself, there is barely any content once 60, it's just improving your gs. The realms are small, there are no unexplored areas. There are no secondary quests either, unlike Skyrim where just any NPC will tell you about his life and give you quests
Tired of Dailies/Tyranny of Dailies/Timers of Doom/Tricked Or Duped/Tremendously Obnoxious Dailies/Try Otherwise, Devs
You are not alone in absolutely hating grinding. For me, mod 5 is a complete grind fest. Bots actually kept down prices for refining; they removed most of the bots, refining prices through the roof. Lessor dragon horde enchantments allowed you to do your own refinement grinding where you get a random refining stone once every TWENTY (20) seconds in mod 4. Mod 5 now several minutes.
They stated they fixed the dragon hoard coffer drop rate; I am getting TWO (2) every 30 to 45 minutes; and that's my complete play time for one day. So that's two coffers every day, 100 coffers every 50 days. Which means 1 Linus favor every 50 days. In one year, an estimated SEVEN (7) favors. Yes, a complete grind fest.
So as a casual player, I'm playing less and less and have less incentive than ever to purchase ZEN because I'm one of those people, like you, who believe grinding is a terrible waste of time.
Thank you.
But if you don't like it, don't do it. It's not compulsory.
Why would you spend your time playing a game you don't enjoy???
I didnt mean it to sound like "I quit", more like I am not going to invest the resources I had originally planned unless/until things change. I will still level my new sw and gf to 60 and see how far I can get them, play till its not fun but my original idea of getting back into really competitive pvp is about shot, knowing that one cannot compete at like 3 or 4k below bis. No quitting just slowing down
Thanks for the reasonable reply! By "grind" I mean playing the same pve content over and over and over again to achieve a goal. I hate playing the same pve content over and over and over again. If rp came from pvp at a rate of about (y)x current glory rate, I would love it.
Boon grinding is an example of what I hate. Same daily quest x a million for a boon or to unlock the next phase of the campaign. The dragon campaign seemed pretty sweet with starting at lower levels and the first dragon in an unexpected place, I got my little cow-patty dragon coins and took them to the dealer in pe was like, zomg really. The end goal being artifact main/offhand, one does some research and starts to see that it is going to take time to just research all of the currencies and crafting and mess it takes to get those artifacts with minimum grinding. So that research becomes a grind in its self.
The game is a Rube Goldberg contraption of currencies, gear, crafting, treasure, ingredients, dungeons, heroic encounters, patchy storyline lacking almost completely in synergy. Not like you are doing or interacting with thing (g) and then when you interact or do thing (k) you intuitively "get" exactly how it interacts with (g) and how they relate to each other.
The very best times I had in Neverwinter was serious cooperative and competitive gameplay with people whos company I greatly enjoy. It had taken me quite a few guilds to find a group I really really liked that also played in the same time frame as I did. The kind of people you can drunkenly grind the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> out of pve content for pvp purposes and hilariously troll content over voicechat as you play. Cryptic could do A LOT more to greatly improve the quality of Neverwinter by simply improving it as a platform for social networking. Yes it takes initiative and being social on the part of players but that is not facilitated in the least. You run into someone you click with and if you forget to friend them you are just as likely to not see them again, unless it is pvp, or one of the less obvious subsets of pve like the legit channel or *gasp* the moonstone mask. Player housing, being put into the same instances every time you start (to increase running into te same people over and again), actual assigned roles at que for dungeons and pvp (healer, dps, tank) would go a long long way. Neverwinter simply needs to be a better mmo.
Ok, there is a little more thorough reasoning.
No, not what I meant at all. It is NOT "I have to play pve to play pvp". It IS "I ave to play the same pvp content ovr and over and over and over and over again to play pvp". THAT is the problem. Short and simple.
Nope. See my post above. I started playing pvp because I got sick of grinding pve only for the sake of more pve grinding. Pve is just a grind. The same stuff over and over again. That was mod 3 when you COULD grind pve only over and over again (not over and over and over x500) and spend a little cash and be content playing pvp.
Any mmo eventually runs into the problem of end game content. That is what pvp is all about. Managing that can be well done. Here it is not.
If the foundry was even close in power to neverwinter nights 1 tool set I would be all about it. But the authors are so limited in what they can design that I find most foundries to be not so fun. The very best of them are fun simply because some of the authors are fantastic story tellers. I love a good story but to me, while playing an mmo, any content should combine characted progression with good story with gameplay challenge. Not just good story. For that I'll pick up a book or watch a movie.
See here is the thing and it is true for most everybody. There are parts of the game people enjoy and parts they hate. People want to do what they enjoy and not what they hate. Neverwinter has done a horrible job at making the less enjoyable parts less painful. PVE players generally HATE pvp and the PVP players generally hate the horrid grind that is pve.
So like I said, I will play it till don't enjoy it.