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How Cryptic can actually earn back the trust of the player community
feanor70118
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,170 Arc User
(If they're at all interested in doing so)
Nerfing Dragon's Hoard Enchantments, binding bags, new artifact equipment, ignoring playerin put and warnings of bugs, promising to fix mod 6 and then taking months to even begin, ignoring longstanding bugs and balance issues too numerous to mention, and now removing the only way players can advance their characters past a certain point without spending a fortune have amounted to Cryptic/PWE almost completely forfeiting the trust of the player community, not to mention progressively alienating more and more of the player base since about the beginning of 2015.
So if they truly want this game to manageable and enjoyable for solo f2p players without the AD from leadership, here are my suggestions:
1) Remove the RNG from the game as much as possible. This means skill kits always open skill nodes. Enchantments (except those requiring coalescent wards) and artifacts always upgrade with the prerequisites. Preservation wards should be salvageable for 5k AD apiece and otherwise removed from the game.
2) Allow players to use their old class sigils to refine anything - enchantments, other artifacts, artifact gear - at a 1:1 ratio with no intrinsic value for the sigil itself. This would stop penalizing players for not having spent a fortune to acquire a specific artifact early.
3) Remove the duplicate enchantment requirement for R7-R9 upgrades.
4) Eliminate AD sinks wherever possible. Just get rid of dungeon and skirmish keys - the chest should open and that's it. No AD sinks for guild upgrades and crafting.
5) Increase the in-game drop rates for GMOPS, blue and purple marks of power/stability/union, and artifacts.
6) Actually fix longstanding bugs such as the elven battle vs. thorned roots interaction, having to leave a party when declining the chest in LoL, broken BID instances, the broken HR dodge immunity frames, and too many others to list.
7) Stop binding RP from invoking to characters. It's pointless.
8) Undo the nerf to dragon's hoard enchantments. Before the nerf, drops were already account bound and had to be picked up by the player. This was all that was needed to combat botting or at least remove the profit from it. The subsequent nerf was a transparently anti-player measure and we have not forgotten.
9) NO MORE ARTIFACT EQUIPMENT. Just stop. The insane RP grind was bad enough the first time. Lying to us about the refinement value of our old gear (80% when it was actually 40%) was worse. If you're going to introduce gear like the stronghold set anyway, old equipment should have a 1:1 refinement value.
10) Reduce the cost of all fixed-cost items and services by 90%. This means companion upgrades, GMOPs, marks of potency, cubes of augmentation and everything else available from the Wondrous Bazaar. Some things, such as cats and mount training, should remain more expensive but only about 30% of their current price at most.
11) Give us back our dungeons. Especially if we have to run them to get daily RAD, this will keep us from being bored to tears with the game and keep players around.
12) Do NOT expect players to be happy with running dungeons and skirmishes they've already done a thousand times. Every quest should reward RAD. The daily refinement limit is enough to keep inflation in check. This allows players to choose what content they wish to play and eliminates resentment of repetitive and boring grinds.
13) Restore the salvage value of epic gear from dungeons (and drop rates) to mod 5 levels.
14) When releasing new content, stop recycling old content. It was amusing when I figured out that the Thayan Magical Shelter was the Dread Spire backwards, but that's the best I've even been able to say about recycled content.
15) Finally, move guild donation vouchers to currency. Taking up more of our bag space while we wait for hall upgrades is just irritating.
16) Take some technical lessons from other games that have successfully combated bots without repeatedly penalizing legitimate players. Don't ever penalize legitimate players again.
Zen will still be necessary for keys, some mounts, special companions, packs and coalescent wards for the impatient. Otherwise the economy will be scaled down to a level that makes botting pointless. The ubiquitous RNG annoyance of players will be eliminated. There will no longer be an unbridgeable divide between p2w and f2p players. And, moreover, the game would actually be fun and rewarding again, as it hasn't really been since mod 4.
I don't actually expect any of this to be implemented because I do not for an instant believe the official explanation for the change to leadership any more than I believed the explanation for the nerf to DHEs, but I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.
Nerfing Dragon's Hoard Enchantments, binding bags, new artifact equipment, ignoring playerin put and warnings of bugs, promising to fix mod 6 and then taking months to even begin, ignoring longstanding bugs and balance issues too numerous to mention, and now removing the only way players can advance their characters past a certain point without spending a fortune have amounted to Cryptic/PWE almost completely forfeiting the trust of the player community, not to mention progressively alienating more and more of the player base since about the beginning of 2015.
So if they truly want this game to manageable and enjoyable for solo f2p players without the AD from leadership, here are my suggestions:
1) Remove the RNG from the game as much as possible. This means skill kits always open skill nodes. Enchantments (except those requiring coalescent wards) and artifacts always upgrade with the prerequisites. Preservation wards should be salvageable for 5k AD apiece and otherwise removed from the game.
2) Allow players to use their old class sigils to refine anything - enchantments, other artifacts, artifact gear - at a 1:1 ratio with no intrinsic value for the sigil itself. This would stop penalizing players for not having spent a fortune to acquire a specific artifact early.
3) Remove the duplicate enchantment requirement for R7-R9 upgrades.
4) Eliminate AD sinks wherever possible. Just get rid of dungeon and skirmish keys - the chest should open and that's it. No AD sinks for guild upgrades and crafting.
5) Increase the in-game drop rates for GMOPS, blue and purple marks of power/stability/union, and artifacts.
6) Actually fix longstanding bugs such as the elven battle vs. thorned roots interaction, having to leave a party when declining the chest in LoL, broken BID instances, the broken HR dodge immunity frames, and too many others to list.
7) Stop binding RP from invoking to characters. It's pointless.
8) Undo the nerf to dragon's hoard enchantments. Before the nerf, drops were already account bound and had to be picked up by the player. This was all that was needed to combat botting or at least remove the profit from it. The subsequent nerf was a transparently anti-player measure and we have not forgotten.
9) NO MORE ARTIFACT EQUIPMENT. Just stop. The insane RP grind was bad enough the first time. Lying to us about the refinement value of our old gear (80% when it was actually 40%) was worse. If you're going to introduce gear like the stronghold set anyway, old equipment should have a 1:1 refinement value.
10) Reduce the cost of all fixed-cost items and services by 90%. This means companion upgrades, GMOPs, marks of potency, cubes of augmentation and everything else available from the Wondrous Bazaar. Some things, such as cats and mount training, should remain more expensive but only about 30% of their current price at most.
11) Give us back our dungeons. Especially if we have to run them to get daily RAD, this will keep us from being bored to tears with the game and keep players around.
12) Do NOT expect players to be happy with running dungeons and skirmishes they've already done a thousand times. Every quest should reward RAD. The daily refinement limit is enough to keep inflation in check. This allows players to choose what content they wish to play and eliminates resentment of repetitive and boring grinds.
13) Restore the salvage value of epic gear from dungeons (and drop rates) to mod 5 levels.
14) When releasing new content, stop recycling old content. It was amusing when I figured out that the Thayan Magical Shelter was the Dread Spire backwards, but that's the best I've even been able to say about recycled content.
15) Finally, move guild donation vouchers to currency. Taking up more of our bag space while we wait for hall upgrades is just irritating.
16) Take some technical lessons from other games that have successfully combated bots without repeatedly penalizing legitimate players. Don't ever penalize legitimate players again.
Zen will still be necessary for keys, some mounts, special companions, packs and coalescent wards for the impatient. Otherwise the economy will be scaled down to a level that makes botting pointless. The ubiquitous RNG annoyance of players will be eliminated. There will no longer be an unbridgeable divide between p2w and f2p players. And, moreover, the game would actually be fun and rewarding again, as it hasn't really been since mod 4.
I don't actually expect any of this to be implemented because I do not for an instant believe the official explanation for the change to leadership any more than I believed the explanation for the nerf to DHEs, but I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.
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Comments
I would be perfectly happy to invest $10-$15 per month if they would stop with the massive changes to the game ("you built your character around the XYZ paragon path? Well guess what, now that path is no longer viable"; the leadership AD changes; your very expensive mount orange now sucks because there are orange mounts that also give 25% of AP back and no upgrade path; the failure to deal with Ioun Stone and lockbox-mount cheaters; etc) and if they would add net content instead of removing net content.
If I want to buy BIS gear because I have real money and no time, it should not be so freaking expensive. Nobody will buy all of those Coalescent Wards etc. for BIS at the Zen store price. That spurs leadership armies, botting (real players running scripts, not gold sellers) and other forms of game manipulation far more so than if the prices were reasonable.
I disagree with some of the specifics of your suggestion, but they're not going to literally implement those anyhow.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
Cryptic is not investing in the game so why should I?
▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ Gankdalf The Icehole █ ▇ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁
I've been with Cryptic since the launch of City of Heroes, and while they were always a bit aloof and well Cryptic with what they did and how they went about it. They at least appeared to care somewhat. But it's either a massively different crew with Neverwinter or PWE's influence. But I really dont think they give a damn about the player base.
Look, you don't play a game because of some morality play argument of "they don't do X why should I?" You play a game because it's worth your time or it isn't. If the game isn't worth your time, don't play. Say "Because they implemented this boneheaded change it's not worth my time." But I'm so tired of these dumb arguments that make it seem like Cryptic has a moral obligation to do this or that. No, they have a fiscal obligation, because it affects who plays their game and that affects their bottom line.
Things need to be framed properly, basically.
Max refine increased by same factor.
Salvage should remain the same.
Also increase the max ZAX to match new earnings.
What number X should have would be somewhere between 3-5
Traxus Atheanes GF
Bastiel Atheanes DC
Ellara Atheanes CW
Keira Atheanes TR
Sarasin Atheanes SW
Jerkface McGee HR
-MANTARA- OP
Exploiters who should be banned from cheating aside, most people who have huge leadership armies have been building them for years...
Oh, and BTW. If your doing this because your trying to get people who have exploited for funds and used them to make leadership armies. WHY WOULD YOU MAKE A LEADERSHIP ARMY FROM EXPLOITED FUNDS WHEN YOU HAVE ALREADY MADE SO MUCH AD AND ZEN IN GAME THAT YOU CAN BE BIS WITHIN A HOUR OF ANY RELEASE?
*takes a deep breath* These changes, as well as this whole line of thinking, is just stupid.
Alts are the problem. The intention was never "hey, let's have people make characters just so that they can use those characters to make their main stronger."
Not saying that people are cheaters for having leadership armies. It's totally legitimate. It's also bad game design, and it's what Cryptic is targeting. Calling them bots is just a way to sell the changes to the player base easier, but if you replace every instance of the word "bots" with "alts" there's really no discrepancy in what they're saying.
However, they have made Neverwinter a very unstable place, and the Leadership issue is simply the latest salvo. This all began back in April. Back in April people began to lose trust. Certainly I did.
we've seen it time and time again, they ignore us, punish us and frankly don't really seem to care what we think.
Forgot to add
17) find a way to separate PvE and PvP so that way when they try and balance classes for one mode they don't in turn unbalance them for the other.
Cmom you all are so unrealistic
well, cryptic seems to have no problem doing things that cut their profits so maybe they'll like these ideas
you all blame the staff and devs but keep in mind they are in a lot of pressure from incompetent management that only thinks about money and not as to how we can make this game more fun more player friendly and as a result lure and increase player base. sadly this happens all the time with capitalistic market where money is all the matters.
So how do you expect that they even listen to people here on the forums. On previeuw servers it's easy for them only one hour to do something, maybe a few mins more... pfff we did that and gave them an idea we do something with them.
PvP matches ? These matches are no matches, 1.5K IL against 3K to 4K ? really.......
They can monitor the astral diamond sellers but not the ones that buy them ? You really believe that ? Why not give the buyers a permanent ban and reward the ones that play the game fair....
How often are people complaining ? Just watch the forum, when do you notice they really listen ? Never......
The others I agree with.
And even then it took them a lot of time and some direct hints from a CM to get of their buts and do something about it. Therefore saying they do listen, is just a very bad joke.
Not to mention the ridiculous increase in XP needed to level from 60 to 70, and the XP needed to fill the overflow... but at the same time, they introduced new XP boosters in the ZEN shop.
But of course not without removing the active old XP boosters first, and of course deleting all the bonus XP from invoking too.
They don't listen to any player feedback, they just react to numbers. And the player numbers were going down after Elemental Evil was released, and they still needed a lot of time to get to work...
Well, they might be in for a big surprise, when they check the player numbers again at the end of this month.
The "attack", conveniently happening during East coast office hours, albeit on a Sunday, makes the conspiracy theorist in me nudge and squirm, and I can't find the power to field any more than token resistance...