Official Feedback Thread: Cloaked Ascendancy Campaign

adinosii · January 2017

Just wondering if there will be a patch today that fixes the quest progression issue. As it is, people have mostly stopped playing on the Preview server - recently when I have logged in, I have seen only 1-3 other players - not even enough for a group for the Skirmish.

Apart from a handful of people that choose to do the introduction quests over and over, the rest of us is just stuck, and not only is that kind-of boring, but it also means that we don't get to do any testing of later later parts of the campaign.

hustin1 · January 2017

BUG: Lingering audio
In the mission Going Undercover, after you take the scroll and are on your way back to the entrance, you can still hear people moaning in pain in the room where Celeste was treating them. This should not be the case as the room is now empty. Likewise, when you get to the entrance room, there are still sounds of conversation even after you have defeated everyone.

(Yes, I know it's 5am here. Danged allergies woke me up...)

adinosii · January 2017

Ran into an odd bug today

Was doing "Secure the district", when I got an error message: "You do not meet the requirements for that item".

Huh?

I scratched my head a bit, and I think I might have found the problem. I did not have any free space for Profession resources. M11 introduces a few things that end up in the profession tab, but the total space there does not increase. I really, really suggest giving us 10-12 more slots.

Edit: No, this is clearly something different. I repeated this, after throwing some profession resources away,
except this time for "Resist the rituals", and got the same error message. The problem is with the ornately carved box....I failed to get that...but got the other stuff.

adinosii · January 2017

Another small bug

Was clearing a dungeon. When I reached the treasure room, there was the ccounter for "Clear the treasure room of enemy groops 0/3" or something like that, but I was stuck. No enemies appeared, so eventually I just waalked back to the entrance.

I tried to replicate this, and think I found the problem. If I pull all the enemies from the treasure room and kill them, before I get the "Reached the treasure room" message, the kills don't count....so, when I walk into the (empty) treasure room later, no monsters appear, and I'm just stuck at 0/3

beckylunatic · January 2017

That makes sense. The same bug can happen in some other locations where it is possible to pull mobs out of a room and kill them before the objective updates. There's one in Neverdeath that is bad for this.

ontheriver · February 2017

adinosii said:
Ran into an odd bug today

Was doing "Secure the district", when I got an error message: "You do not meet the requirements for that item".

Have you completed any of the "Confront" wizard tasks at all?

adinosii · February 2017

ontheriver said:

adinosii said:
Ran into an odd bug today

Was doing "Secure the district", when I got an error message: "You do not meet the requirements for that item".
Have you completed any of the "Confront" wizard tasks at all?

No, not yet. Because of the bug that caused the delay in getting the daily tasks I will not be able to do that until tomorrow, I think. If that is the reason, then maybe it would be sufficient to rephrase the error message, or rethink this a bit. Players can easily get to the "Secure the district" or "Resist the rituals" on the first day they go to the River District, while it will take several days to get to the point where you can confront the wizards. Being shown a particular reward and then getting just an error message instead is going to frustrate most players.

ontheriver · February 2017

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm not certain that's the issue, but it gives me somewhere to look. Thank you for the feedback.

adinosii · February 2017

To be specific, here is where I am. I need 4 more days to finish the first "Confront" task at all

adinosii · February 2017

A few comments

Regarding the campaign window and the tasks at the bottom. for "Restore Commerce" and "Establish Trade Routes", there is a description of the benefits you get for completing those tasks, but for "Reap the Rewards" there is not - there is no indication of what I gain from doing that. Intentional or an oversight ?

It would be nice to have some indication of whether I have reached 100 Resistance and/or Security points on the main screen. For example, a couple of icons at similar place as the three counters for recovered magic,riches and weapons. The reasons is that it is annoying to constantly have to check the campaign window, and because the points decay over time, you want to claim the rewards as soon as you get them...say you get 101 points - if you don't realize right away you could claim the reward, they might decay below 100 before you do.

Now, I am quite a bit away from completing the campaign of course, but one thing I noticed is that there seems to be very little to encourage me to come back to the campaign after I am finished with it. For some of the other campaigns, I regularly go back and do some of the daily tasks, or at least the weekly ones to earn campaign currency to make keys, enchants or vouchers for the stronghold. Here - there is nothing. Sure, I may continue to do the skirmish, or the dungeon if there is a particular reward I want, but the campaign itself? I see no reason to come back to that.

On the subject of weekly tasks - is there really no weekly task in this campaign?

fester69troll · February 2017

Cabal, demi-plan.

Has anyone figured out how to get past the boss?

PS. Question withdrawn. Mystery solved.

beckylunatic · February 2017

adinosii said:
On the subject of weekly tasks - is there really no weekly task in this campaign?

A dev post indicated there should be, but it was also unintentionally locked out. Educated guess, you should get it after completing a "confront" campaign task, so the missing daily was affecting the ability to get the weekly.

ontheriver · February 2017

adinosii said:
A few comments

Regarding the campaign window and the tasks at the bottom. for "Restore Commerce" and "Establish Trade Routes", there is a description of the benefits you get for completing those tasks, but for "Reap the Rewards" there is not - there is no indication of what I gain from doing that. Intentional or an oversight ?

There was a problem with the campaign window layout that should be corrected in the next build. The Heir Apparent and Secure the Docks tasks were switched and this led to some unlocking issues, which culminated with the Reap the Rewards task having no effect.

The tasks along the bottom should all have a store related purpose in the coming build.

Thanks!

ontheriver · February 2017

beckylunatic said:

adinosii said:
On the subject of weekly tasks - is there really no weekly task in this campaign?
A dev post indicated there should be, but it was also unintentionally locked out. Educated guess, you should get it after completing a "confront" campaign task, so the missing daily was affecting the ability to get the weekly.

This is correct. The missing daily made it very hard to unlock the weekly.

beckylunatic · February 2017

adinosii said:
It would be nice to have some indication of whether I have reached 100 Resistance and/or Security points on the main screen.

There's a system notify, and it actually notifies at intervals if you're wandering around with it full. But it probably suffers the same fate as anything that might be mistaken for lockbox announcements and gets tuned out by most players.

ontheriver · February 2017

adinosii said:
A few comments

It would be nice to have some indication of whether I have reached 100 Resistance and/or Security points on the main screen. For example, a couple of icons at similar place as the three counters for recovered magic,riches and weapons. The reasons is that it is annoying to constantly have to check the campaign window, and because the points decay over time, you want to claim the rewards as soon as you get them...say you get 101 points - if you don't realize right away you could claim the reward, they might decay below 100 before you do.

The decay from these items has been removed. It wasn't intended to feel like lost progress, but of course that's how it felt. I appreciate the feedback here that helped us course correct. You should see that change in this coming build.

I will look at what we can do for notifications about ready tasks.

beckylunatic · February 2017

ontheriver said:
The decay from these items has been removed. It wasn't intended to feel like lost progress, but of course that's how it felt. I appreciate the feedback here that helped us course correct. You should see that change in this coming build.

That's wonderful. Thank you.

adinosii · February 2017

Great to see the decay is gone...that makes this an even more casual-friendly campaign that before. Appreciated.

mistran · February 2017

would it be possible for reclaimed items to stack upto 999 instead of 99?

adinosii · February 2017

I completed 'Investigate Nostura' before picking up the quest 'Defeating Nostura'. When I picked up the quest, it did not see that 'Investigate Nostura' was already done.

beckylunatic · February 2017

Feedback - daily structure
Having finally had a chance to get back onto preview and complete a daily mission, I am mostly really liking this unstructured choose-your-own-adventure daily. It probably took a little longer to finish than it would if other players were present, but the amount of time wasn't excessive and rate of progress was mostly satisfying and tangible. It would be nice if it ticked up a little faster from killing random mobs; I understand that just killing mobs in the open zone isn't intended to be the optimal way of progressing in any respect, but not every group can be skirted and it's a bit frustrating to get jumped and delayed and not see much return from it... and I'm above average at pathfinding to avoid anything I don't want to waste time with. It'll be worse for players who aren't good judges of aggro distance.

I did have a slight issue with the quest selection, having opted to run a specific type of dig site, and then realized that I could not use the sewer map I bought on a dig site opened by another player. I cleared a different guard post to activate as a sewer but if there is a way to tell what kind of dig site has been activated by another player, I didn't see it. Also, unless the site pass sends you to the type of dig site activated for the first player, that would be random, so... you just keep going to sites and hoping you get the right kind? It's unlikely but still possible that you could explore them all and not find the correct type.

adinosii · February 2017

Regarding the three HEs...eh, rituals, I assume they are supposed to be sort-of equally difficult.

Well, they are not. I play as a DC - not a pure DPS class by any means, and on Preview I am a bit weaker than on Live, as I am lacking a pretty big boon from my Lvl 18 guild stronghold. Nevertheless, I find Gyrion's ritual trivially easy to solo, while the other two are far less forgiving - yes, they are soloable by me as a DC, but I really have to pay atttention - one mistake and I'm dead.

I don't know if this is intentional - in one sense it is nice to have an easily soloable task, but if they are supposed to be of similar difficulty, you might want to look into this.

beckylunatic · February 2017

I haven't tried the fey one, but fire is definitely way harder than plaguechanged. Basically only because of the AoE from a new creature type, imo. I want to call it a Dreadknight but that might be wrong. It's a very large AoE and tough to get out of for long enough to cast, and it hurts. I don't necessarily think it's unfair or unbalanced either. Once the big guy is down, the rest of the encounter is fairly manageable.

I also wouldn't expect to be soloing once this is live.

adinosii · February 2017

beckylunatic said:

I also wouldn't expect to be soloing once this is live.

The question is really what is expected. If they are supposed to be pretty hard (at least for some classes) to solo, then make Gyrion's harder...if they are supposed to be easily soloable, then make the other two easier.

Either way is fine to me...I just find the difference in difficulty to be...odd.

beckylunatic · February 2017

I'm less concerned about them all being exactly equal. There are lots of prior examples where HEs of the same tier in the same zone vary in difficulty depending on the enemy type or the scenario. Having one that is slightly easier balances difficulty for players who are there when the zone is less populated. The IWD campaign would be much more punishingly difficult in the current state if there weren't some HEs that are comparatively easy to solo.

adinosii · February 2017

Yea, you are right ... fine to leave this as it is.

adinosii · February 2017

I have iddentified two issues which look to me like design flaws in the campaign.

The first flaw only became apparent after the most recent changes.

The "bottom line" tasks Restore Commerce, Establish Trade Routes and Reap the Rewards are utterly pointless and useless.

Here is why. Most players will only want a single set of weapons from the store. Getting Abandoned Treassures is easy - the bottleneck is Evidence of Evil (EoE), so I will focus on that. The total number of EoE that I need for mainhand and offhand is 180.

Now, why on earth would I want to spend 120 EoE on Restore Commerce? Even if the cost for the weapons is cut in half, down to 90 EoE, it still means that my total cost would be 120+90, or 210 - which is a net loss for me, compared to the 180 I would spend otherwise. This gets even worse when you consider Establish Trade Routes.

This makes no sense whatsoever.

However, I can see a nice solution....which would also solve another problem at the same time - you see, the campaign also has the problem that there is nothing to encourage people to come back to it after they have gotten their weapons and the boons.

Now, maybe that will change if there is a good "weekly" task (which I have not seen yet), but as I said, I can see a nice solution here. Add a tab to the campaign store, with some appropriate consumables or similar items. One ideal candidate would be the Potion of Heroism that is available in the Sharandar campaign store. If I could buy something like that for extra EoE after I finish the campaign then it would make sense to do the bottom tasks to cut the campaign store cost.

Here is a correction to an earlier complaint from me.

I had complained about not getting the Ornately carved box before, just an error message, but I just realized I was wrong - I got the box - I just cannot open it, so there is no problem here. Ignore what I was saying about this earlier.

The box says "you must have completed the campaign task to defeat the wizards..." - shouldn't that be "...confront the wizards..." as that is how the task is named?

gabrieldourden · February 2017

Hello, I took the daily "Mercantile Missions" and completed it 100%. Anyway I can't give it back. In the quest log every line is completed except the first one (Complete Ostaram's Mercantile Mission). I even got the 100% completion message on the screen, but still can't get any way to talk to Ostaram. Am I missing something or is it a bug?

hustin1 · February 2017

Feedback: Campaign needs more storytelling
Something has been nagging at me for quite some time, but I hadn't been able to put my finger on it. I've completed up through the "Confront Nostura" part of the tree, and I think I've got it -- sort of.

IMO the four story quests at the beginning really aren't enough. I strongly recommend fleshing the story out as you progress through the campaign: while the story so far sets the stage and provides insight into Neverember, it seems to me that a lot more can be done.

Gyrion claims to be the heir of Lord Nasher Algondar, yet he also claims to not have known about it. Unless Lord Nasher was some sort of womanizer, right off the bat his story doesn't hold water. However, it also presents an opportunity in the opening quests to do some sleuthing. Further, in our discussion with him the player points out that his allies all look like monsters. The obvious question is, why wasn't Gyrion transformed?

The last point leads to where there could be some further storyline quests throughout the campaign. We know he's an impostor, yet he alone wasn't transformed in the Far Realm. Is that part a lie as well, or is there a deeper story to his relation with the Far Realm? Is he a puppet? He clearly has some connection to the Far Realm, but prior to this campaign the denizens from there have been uncontrollable. There is an opportunity here to dig into his past and try to find out who wields the real power -- him, or someone else?

We know that Nostura is an archfey. For me this holds the greatest connection as my main is an HR and I created her shortly after HR's first went live. There is a lot of story potential here.

Nostura is *an* archfey, which implies there are others. Presumably she also hails from Sharandar (also known as The Plane of Faerie for those who read the lore). There simply have got to be other archfey who hold some sort of opinion on her doings. How did she come to be in Gyrion's service, and for that matter, why would an archfey *ever* serve a human? There simply has to be something more to this -- does Gyrion hold some sort of leverage? Does Nostura owe him for something? Was she exiled for some offense in the Fey realm? I should think that the Sharandar elves (at the very least) should be *hugely* offended at her actions, and it would be interesting to investigate what other archfey think. There may be several storyline opportunities here: sowing discord between Gyrion and Nostura, sowing discord between Nostura and other archfey, getting some form of aid from the Iliyanbruen, or something else. There's even a possibility that Malabog could decide to be a monkey wrench in the whole affair. Nostura's use of trolls could be a drain on available recruits for his army, after all. I also noticed that she isn't using redcaps in her schemes (thank goodness!) That alone raises an opportunity to use redcaps against HER.

Of course, dealing with other archfey carries its own complications. The Feywild is a place where the spark of life burns at its brightest, but that brightness makes no distinction between beauty and ugliness. The beauty of the Feywild is only matched by the corruption of the Feydark (which is why I take issue with redcaps "killing" the forest: their nature would compel them to twist and corrupt it, but *never* to kill it outright -- but I digress). The point here is that the nature of the Plane of Faerie is one of life unbounded, but that life will take all forms from beautiful to corrupt.

So what does this mean about other archfey? There is no reason to believe that any assistance from them will be immediately forthcoming. There is a reason why druids in AD&D are always of True Neutral alignment, after all: nature does not make moral judgments except for the need for balance. Some archfey might be willing to lend assistance to balance out the evil that Nostura brings, or they might want certain deeds performed in exchange -- to maintain either the balance in the Feywild or in the multiverse itself (though the latter I find less likely: they might not simply care about realms beyond the Feywild). In any case, treating with archfey should always be nuanced -- I would expect it to be in their very nature.

The same goes for the elemental (I can't remember his name off the top of my head). Surely there's a story behind him as well.

And then, to top it all off is the connection to the Many-Starred Cloaks. Are these truly the only survivors? Is there another survivor somewhere, in some far-off plane, who can provide assistance, even if it's only a critical piece of information we can use? It seems likely to me that there must be more to their legacy -- either under the Cloak Tower or somewhere else. For instance, if you've played Neverwinter Nights 2, you know that there used to be a school of magic in Upper Blacklake that mysteriously burned down (*cough* Qara *cough*). They would have *had* to have had a connection to the Many-Starred Cloaks, even if it was antagonistic. Perhaps Blacklake hasn't yet revealed all of its secrets.

In closing, the reason for my post is that I've found the campaign to become rather dull as time went on. A compelling story could spice it up tremendously.

beckylunatic · February 2017

I love a good story hook, and am mostly not commenting on these ideas or any thin-ness they are a response to because I haven't been playing on preview regularly enough to unlock much.

hustin1 said:
Feedback: Campaign needs more storytelling
Gyrion claims to be the heir of Lord Nasher Algondar, yet he also claims to not have known about it. Unless Lord Nasher was some sort of womanizer, right off the bat his story doesn't hold water.

I think the concept of "heir" here is spiritual. The Crown of Neverwinter doesn't recognize blood ties, but the wearer's inner qualities. Ehmmm... like a Sorting Hat, that just sorts you into "fit to lead Neverwinter" or "fit to die for your presumption", I guess.

This post made me think of the ghost wizard you can meet if you find the secret way into the Fallen Tower Tavern. Somehow, I think that guy might have something to say about Gyrion. He was fairly lucid.

Story payoff might come later. Particularly any that revolves around Knox's squad, where we are getting a very slow (but satisfying, imo) sequence of vignettes that has developed them as characters over multiple modules.

Official Feedback Thread: Cloaked Ascendancy Campaign

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