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Why Challenging endgame content is good for the game:
thefabricant
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
I often see the argument for or against challenging endgame content. Some people are for content aimed at the 3k+ ilvl player, other people are against it. I will try to summarize the bulk of the arguments here and then I will provide my own.
The first argument I often see is, "there aren't enough players with gear at that level to justify having endgame content." To which geared players respond, "if there isn't content requiring 3k ilvl+, then there is no reason to gear up and so you will never get a large number of players with that 3k ilvl+ because players have no incentive to gear that high."
The second argument often made is, "Content needs to be accessible to everyone, if you want a challenge, take off all your fancy gear and do dungeons without it, or run with specific classes, or run with fewer members." To which geared players respond, "We have done all of the above, however, it would be nice to have a place to put our toys to use instead of having acquired all this stuff and then leaving it alone. Players like having a sense of progression and taking off gear is not progression at all, the bigger the mallet gets, the bigger the rock needs to be that you are trying to smash." The response I often see to this argument is, "It was your choice to gear up, so don't complain that its too easy." My response to this argument would probably be along the lines of, "there is nothing else to do that gives you a sense of progression and keeps you playing, other than working towards improving your character. Once you stop working towards having a better character, you stop playing the game." I imagine the response to this would be along the lines of, "If you want challenging content, then go play PVP, PVE will never be challenging." To which I would reply, "Why shouldn't pve contain challenging content, it exists in other games like PoE and some of us have a low tolerance for the trash talking in pvp."
The third argument often made is, "If you want a challenge, just pug it" to which geared players respond, "why should we be forced to play with random players they do not know when they would rather play with friends. Why is there no challenging content aimed towards those groups, to encourage that kind of group play." Sometimes I see the argument made that content is actually difficult at the required item level and its only those of us with "fake item level" or "unrealistic circumstances" are able to beat it and honestly, all I can say to that argument is l2p.
So, what is my argument? My argument is this:
If there is no challenging content for players to work towards, then experienced, skilled players simply pick up and leave. Furthermore, people stop theorycrafting, simply because there is no need to. With a smaller group of players testing content and trying to optimize their gear, there is a decrease in the skill of the average player and content gets artificially harder for them. The skilled players are not effected, because they find the game easy and they still develop their own characters, but because they find the game so easy, they feel there is no point to explain how things work to new players. This leads to more complaints about difficulty from inexperienced players, saying it is too difficult because they live in a bubble of artificial difficulty and it leads to frustration in experienced players because they want challenging content. Just remember, if you design for the lowest common denominator, then eventually, only the lowest common denominator will stick around. The moment anyone starts to actually work on improving their character is the moment they will start heading towards another game. Challenging content creates incentive for experienced players to stick around and share their experience. This is something that is good for the game.
The first argument I often see is, "there aren't enough players with gear at that level to justify having endgame content." To which geared players respond, "if there isn't content requiring 3k ilvl+, then there is no reason to gear up and so you will never get a large number of players with that 3k ilvl+ because players have no incentive to gear that high."
The second argument often made is, "Content needs to be accessible to everyone, if you want a challenge, take off all your fancy gear and do dungeons without it, or run with specific classes, or run with fewer members." To which geared players respond, "We have done all of the above, however, it would be nice to have a place to put our toys to use instead of having acquired all this stuff and then leaving it alone. Players like having a sense of progression and taking off gear is not progression at all, the bigger the mallet gets, the bigger the rock needs to be that you are trying to smash." The response I often see to this argument is, "It was your choice to gear up, so don't complain that its too easy." My response to this argument would probably be along the lines of, "there is nothing else to do that gives you a sense of progression and keeps you playing, other than working towards improving your character. Once you stop working towards having a better character, you stop playing the game." I imagine the response to this would be along the lines of, "If you want challenging content, then go play PVP, PVE will never be challenging." To which I would reply, "Why shouldn't pve contain challenging content, it exists in other games like PoE and some of us have a low tolerance for the trash talking in pvp."
The third argument often made is, "If you want a challenge, just pug it" to which geared players respond, "why should we be forced to play with random players they do not know when they would rather play with friends. Why is there no challenging content aimed towards those groups, to encourage that kind of group play." Sometimes I see the argument made that content is actually difficult at the required item level and its only those of us with "fake item level" or "unrealistic circumstances" are able to beat it and honestly, all I can say to that argument is l2p.
So, what is my argument? My argument is this:
If there is no challenging content for players to work towards, then experienced, skilled players simply pick up and leave. Furthermore, people stop theorycrafting, simply because there is no need to. With a smaller group of players testing content and trying to optimize their gear, there is a decrease in the skill of the average player and content gets artificially harder for them. The skilled players are not effected, because they find the game easy and they still develop their own characters, but because they find the game so easy, they feel there is no point to explain how things work to new players. This leads to more complaints about difficulty from inexperienced players, saying it is too difficult because they live in a bubble of artificial difficulty and it leads to frustration in experienced players because they want challenging content. Just remember, if you design for the lowest common denominator, then eventually, only the lowest common denominator will stick around. The moment anyone starts to actually work on improving their character is the moment they will start heading towards another game. Challenging content creates incentive for experienced players to stick around and share their experience. This is something that is good for the game.
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I'm convinced that they don't know HOW to make challenging content. The only thing they know how to do is to turn up and down damage/hit point settings. EDemo was as creative as I've seen, and the biggest challenge there is still avoiding people who don't want you to win.
Overall, the game provides more power than the content allows. However, they seem content on the premise that they want everyone to be able to access all content. This will never be the "Raiding/End Game 1%'er game" that some want it to be. At some point, you will likely outlevel the content and have to find other things to do. They styled the game around each activity being done in about 30 minutes and having overpowered classes does that just fine. They don't want you to focus on 1 toon, they want you to focus on 5, gearing them all equally.
Again, I think if you want a game in which there is end game raiding, an "action MMORPG" probably isn't for you....at least not a F2P one. The only way they make money is by attracting players and you don't do that by cattering to those who are geared.
The problem with Neverwinter isnt the challenge. Its power creep. No content will ever be challenging if you can over gear it massively.
The content is just fine if you go in at or about the recommend item level. And done so without broken sets, broken bonding stones, or legacy item sets.
I think thats truly a misnomer.
anyone after 6 months or so can have 1 toon at 3k.. and most , if not all the boons done.
I'm rather torn on this issue. Having more challenging content would be fun, and would give me a reason to gear up my CW more (I did exactly what you said and stopped gearing after things became easy), but as someone who only has a few friends who play the game, I don't have the luxury of playing with a full group and as such, I usually end up pugging or tagging along on guild runs. This can end up good or bad, as I've had runs that rival your own speed runs, and I've had runs in elol with several team wipes because of new/inexperienced players. I would be fine with 3k+ dungeons if class mechanics were clearer and easier to learn.
Which brings me to my next point. If there were 3k dungeons, (or, God forbid 3.5k) would you and your speed running group have trouble with them? I know the average group certainly would, but your group obviously knows how to utilize buffs to their maximum effectiveness, certainly better than the average player. For a group such as this, is it possible to create challenging content that is still do-able to the average group?
tl;dr 3k dungeons are good, and I'd like harder dungeons, but it is also has its drawbacks.
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This game is designed for bots.
If it wasn't, would any of those mechanics still exist?
Leadership -> Make it a mini-game CAPCHA .. Nibbles(snake), or Cornhole, or Lockpicking, or Pipedream, or SOMETHING that requires active intelligence, and then gives an appropriate reward.
Invoking -> Only count down the timer for a player who is logged in. Increase rewards accordingly.
Skill nodes -> put them at the center of 2 enemy encounters. Not behind a post in the first hallway of the dungeon.
Glory PVP -> Hrm. This one is tricky. It would require the 'exit point' of the respawn area to change locations after every death.
Goldspamming -> Ban em. Ban em hard. Ban them so hard. You don't allow ipv6, how hard can it be?
If they wanted a challenging endgame they would have a "Foundry Campaign" that only worked with 'featured' approved Cryptic/PWE quests.
If they wanted a variety endgame they would have a Level 70 "Daily Lair" challenge that randomly picked one of the MANY MANY questing/levelling lairs we have from 0-60, and then rescaled enemies to 71-72-73 depending on the "challenge" level we pick, for appropriate rewards.
If they wanted a competitive endgame they would have NCL and Balance and spectating, and new PVP maps and all the things an eSports game needs.
I really have no idea what kind of endgame they want. I think they're going for 'stable' .. but unless they address the core fact the game is currently designed for bots, soon they will only have bots playing it. =X
edit: as far as 'difficulty' is concerned. Foundry authors can create dynamic mob encounters, that are actually quite difficult. I have an encounter in 'To Infinity, and BEYOND!' that has 2 greenskin trappers (those nets) and some kind of storm mage (lots of lightning) .. Even with a fully geared character, you'll still get bounced around a little. It's very fun. ;D
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Real hard challenges would be things like escort the weakling missions, paper rock scissors enemies, meaningful path decisions. Obviously this is far beyond the capabilities of Cryptic, so it is better to ask for content that does not cater exclusively to wallet warriors and to tone down on the DPS races. The pre mod 6 dungeons were much more fun, and some much more challenging, if you want challenge then you should ask for that.
I personally would like to see more challenging content in a group. Orcus has already been soloed so CN is definitely not the challenge they had hoped to provide.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
I wanted to comment on your statements, cause I'm one of those usually less voicy forum participants, who wouldn't share their opinions, when interest is limited to character progession.
edit: typo
Before we need more difficult content we need to get rid of all the malfunctioning things in this game, like the "perma-bubble" and the lostmauth set. But even the devs are scared of that because exactly these "experienced, skilled players" would be the first to cry bloody murder all over the internet if that happened. The mere fact that people with 3k+ item level think of themselves as "skilled" just because of that fact is proof of how skewed their perspective really is.
Yet it is those broken things in the game that stop all theorycrafting. Get a bubble on and a lostmauth set on all strikers and it doesn't matter how or what you play, you can't lose. No theory needed.
If you are still looking for a challenge and a reason to gear, why not start a new character and gear them up? Or remove the broken stuff from your chars and play without it. If you make content for the broken stuff it will just get worse.
Besides, if they would implement a "hard mode" or something for dungeons, then you would cry for bigger rewards. (cause you "deserve" it) and that would lead to an even larger gap and is basically the road that leads straight to power creep. And if there weren't any better rewards, nobody would play a hard mode, because it's really not about challenging content at all.
there is no other way to keep people.
build a nice set of low difficulty dungeons and then bring always something more challenging mod by mods.
when you are ready you can try them all otherwise stick to the others...doesnt seem foolish to me.
i can only agree on nerfing lostmauth and bubble... probably a rework of soulforged is something i would like to see too.
its math d/dx[f(x)] ---> 0 when x is high enough
There was another poll about re-introducing stat curves, large concensus was against it.
The average player here wants to feel powerful and do things fast. Most of the PvE videos are about how "powerful" they are or how big their numbers can reach.
Not many people want a challenge, most of the MMO gamers is not like regular gamers nor even play other regular games. And even then, games like Dark Souls are a niche. I bet 95%+ of the players on this game haven't and will never play a game like that.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Just look how easy it is to ROFLstomp Valindra now. Back in mod 2 if her minions started getting out, you get swarmed and die one by one.
There are almost no PVE enemies can just fling players around like ragdolls and kill them. They all can be round up for a slaughter with no contest.
Ya know, it's pretty disappointing. They've been creating all these artifact powers and mount powers and new buffs, ect. They don't give PVE enemies new powers. Slap more CC powers, and debuffs on mobs. Let them give eachother crazy buffs.
That's power creep, and a "hard mode" with even more powerful gear as reward would lead straight to it.
The only way out is to make everyone weaker, which they tried with mod 6, but went way overboard back then. But again, if they would do some big things now like cap crit chance, reduce ls severity, introduce a dr on power or anything like that people would go berserk here. And so nothing ever happens...
That is what they did with IWD and later with WOD.
You want Dread Ring to feel HARD again? Roll up a new character and take them through it.
As for Stronghold boons and all the new mount stuff--I don't know what to tell you there.....
this game should have equalized pvp to allow player play pvp but not overgear for pve
as for a challenge i really like the pug, the terriblier they are the more challenging exciting run (to a some degree) i have. of course it dont work for all. elol is full of newbies, i feel really good for helping them
In mod 2 there was a dungeon called CN. Also VT was quite challenging, so was Dwarf King.
Yes, there were only a few players, who could do these.
However, all of the other players were aiming to build a good character, so they could go to these dungeons. People were theorycrafting, even struggling sometimes to overcome these dungeons. If you could do CN, you could call yourself a good player. (or at least a good cw anyway). You could'nt carry bad players through CN.
Yesterday we brought a 2k beginner TR to CN. We were with 2,4k not perma OP, without heal, I guess maybe 2 players who were even there before. Took 2 or 3 tries at boss, but went relatively smooth, minding the party composition. This is not a challenging dungeon, this is a joke.
My suspicion is that current devs are afraid to make major changes (especially in difficulty) because they are afraid to lose their jobs. I also read something, don't know if it's true, that mmo gamers are becoming more casual and less hardcore.
Seems to me that it would be easy to make a super-elite version of every dungeon, double the HP and damage of monsters, and boost the reward by 1.5-2x. But it seems super casual gamers are the target market now. Hence, more leveling dungeons.
In Star Trek online, over the past 1-2 years, missions have become much easier to win and there is little need for tanking and healing. just get as much dps as possible to finish as quickly as possible, then change to alt, and farm more. I still enjoy playing Neverwinter because this game still feels like a Sword Coast Adventure, but I can hardly force myself to log in to STO.
1) Lostmauth's Set
2) Bonding Runestones
3) AP Gain
All of these add SUBSTANTIAL power to the parties that have them, with little to no effect on the item level of the character. These are the most insidious parts of the "power creep".
A party of DPS players all using Lostmauth's set and R12 Bonding runestones will likely double, if not more, the output of a party of the exact same iLevel that's not using these. Throw in ridiculous levels of AP Gain that allow OPs to basically make any damage output a monster can throw at you trivial, and you have easy content.
It goes back to the "Oh, these dungeons are EASY at only a 2k iLevel, look at this!" Again, while using the Lostmauth set and R12 Bondings, plus all your AP gain gear? Of course it's easy.
In my opinion, until those three topics are addressed, you'll never achieve any sense of balance because of what those three points do for the HAVES and how vastly they separate themselves from the HAVE NOTS.
I'm sure it would ignite a firestorm among those "top geared" players (I guess I fall into that group, because I utilize all three to devastating effect as well), but long term it would be much better for the game.
I would rather the players who can't be successful without the Lostmauth/R12/AP Gain crutches go elsewhere, and we can get balanced content that challenges reasonably geared people.
And we all know that is never going to happen.
This doesn't even get into the effect of party composition on dungeon runs. If you've got a well geared fury warlock+GF+DC you don't even really need to rely on the elol set or r12 bondings. So by nerfing things you're also running into the problem where you gimp specific classes instead of all classes.
The game is also never going to be devoid of similarly imbalanced items. What you're essentially asking for is to get hit over the head with a nerf bat so that Cryptic can break everything and we have to wait six mods for them to try to fix it. And it'll just means switching to whatever OP HAMSTER they release while we wait for that.
I actually think that the OP HAMSTER we have now is actually about as reasonable as we're likely to get. At the very least it's a an enchant and an artifact that aren't .01% drop rate items in a lockbox. Because that's what I'd be more worried about than the problems we currently have. It would suck to ask for these nerfs and then have them gate things behind a legendary drop in a lockbox.