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Thinking about returning. Any better yet?
tsark
Member Posts: 1 Arc User
Joined the game during launch and played religiously. The combat was beautiful, adventures and dungeoning was awesome, but was completely turned off after a year or so by the cash grabby tactics, the buy your mountain of buffs and way to endgame which had a direct correlation to one shotting in PvP/Glitches abusing ETC. Rejoined almost a year ago only to see that it's the same but with more grind and quit that same day. Also, as a disclaimer, I believe/know the game is p2w, so if you're going to make a rant about it not being p2w then you might as well be preaching to the deaf.
I just got an email to come back and try the new game-- Wanna know if this expac bring anything better or am i just gonna waste my time picking it up again?
I just got an email to come back and try the new game-- Wanna know if this expac bring anything better or am i just gonna waste my time picking it up again?
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I've seen lots of people on my friends list leave in recent months, including an alliance leader. I have to admit even my patience with the game is wearing thin, and I've had more patience than most. I've played since beta and stuck with it until the last week or so where my interest has finally started to dwindle.
there's only so much mind numbing repetative tedium players can endure day after day after day, and the continual shifting of the goalposts in terms of gear, weapons and nerfs that punish players that actually put the effort in hasn't helped my feelings.
it's sad to say, that after so long, missing playing with friends that are long gone, but I think the flame is starting to go out for me.
You're going to find some negative sentiment on the forum at the moment because some planned changes are unpopular at least with some active forum active forum participants. My personal opinion is that the changes are for the good of the game. For example, bonding runestones have been the one-meta-to-rule-them-all for a long time. They're too powerful compared to the alternative of using an augment, and represented too much of a character's total power. That should have been adjusted long ago. Since it wasn't, many players invested in bondings. They're rightly upset that the investment is losing value, yet not bringing them inline would have maintained the imbalance even longer.
You mentioned PVP. For the first time in a very long time, serious attention is being paid to PVP. Mod 12b will bring some balance improvements. Hopefully, we'll see a continued focus on that game mode in coming modules as well.
The first year of Neverwinter was a great time for me, too. My feeling is that the game is on a good path now, regaining some of the charm of its beginnings while benefiting from far more content than at launch. The design team is engaged with the player base like I haven't seen before. Not every decision they make will be popular, but plenty of good things have happened lately. I suggest you hop in for a while and check out some of the newer content. Even if I can't change your opinion about whether or not Neverwinter is P2W, you certainly don't need to open your wallet to check out the PVE content that's been developed while you've been away.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
I have, however, stopped recommending the game to my friends. There is simply too much potential for frustration because of the bad decisions that are being made.
Module 12 is relatively good - challenging for "end-game" players, got the reward/effort ratio (mostly) right and added some great improvements. It does have some flaws, though.
- The HEs. The KoS HE is only worth doing once per week for the weekly quest, but the rewards simply do not justify doing it more often. The other HE is nothing more than a deliberate annoyance. No wonder many players will just switch instances to get away from it.
- The ToNG dungeon is really good - some of the best new content in a long time, but a weekly limit of 400 Seals of the Brave is just too low. The big issue, however, will be the drop rate for the new marks introduced in Mod 12B. If it is anything like the drop rate for fartouched residuum in mSP, we have a problem.
- Hunts are a great idea, although the best rewards (the +5 rings) are really hidden behind too many layers of randomness: Random spawns of rare mobs, multiple random drops of trophies, and finally a random chance of a treasure drop.
- The decision not to allow trophies and lures to stack serves no useful purpose - it just annoys players and forces them to create workarounds.
Module 12B on the other hand - now, that looks bad. On the positive side, the new skirmish is decent. I will (grudgingly) admit that bonding runestones are overpowered and some change was needed (although I would have gone a different route myself). I am neutral on the changes to refinement - it will be nice to get more inventory space, but I do not like how much more expensive refinement of artifacts will be. The (few) remaining PvP players are not happy with the PvP changes, but as I don't do PvP, I don't really have a strong opinion there.What I intensely dislike, however, are the random queues. They fundamental problem with those is the thinking behind them - they are an attempt to fix the symptoms of a few problems, but do nothing to fix the underlying causes and will do more harm than good in the long run.
And yes, I am saying this as someone who probably has more experience in software development than most (or even all) of the developers. I even sat on the board of directors of a gaming company for a couple of years so I am pretty familiar with that side of things as well.
The RIGHT thing to do would have been the following.
Adjust various rewards up or down so all content of a similar difficulty has a similar reward/effort ratio - that way people can choose what to do based on how entertaining they find it - not just because it gives the biggest average reward per minute spent.
If you still find that players will not run some particular content, the problem is with the content, not the players.
Abandon the idea that groups should have "1 Tank, 1 Healer and 3 DPS" - that's good enough for random PUGs, but do not punish people who prefer different configurations, either to help guildies, or just for the challenge.
Abandon the idea that players should play the game the way the developers intended. Start with the idea that this is a game - it is supposed to be fun. Set your primary goal to:Maximize the enjoyment of the maximum number of players for the maximum period of time.
I understand the game needs to make money, but the simple fact is that happy, motivated players are probably more likely to spend their cash than frustrated and disappointed ones.
As it is, I am just hoping the game lasts until late 2019. PM me if you want to know what I am waiting for ... I will not discuss a different game here.
We now have so many campaigns that new L70's can't do them simultaneously and if you can't play all day you are looking at 6 months to complete them all - by which time you have another two to worry about.
This is made worse by the new trend (since mod 10) that campaigns take at least 2 months to complete and have time consuming aspects such as farming voninblod, fishing or running hunts.
New, helpful changes which are due (removing the need for a 2nd ench to rank one up, unlocking dungeons on all alts once 1 character has finished the campaign) are offset by the reduction in effectiveness of bonding stones.
The power drop on all characters increases the necessity of investment across all aspects of your character. In other words, to compensate for the reduced effectiveness of 3 runestones you'll have to get 19 enchantments to rank 14 and at least 3 companions to Legendary.
I have logged more 'game hours' than any other person I know and maybe that's a bad thing for feeling ok with the game. It could be colouring my perception. But these days the game feels like work and the fun element has gone from around 80% of my time to about 5%.
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Xane De Armadeon: CW
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Don't make any big changes to your character(s) or spend ANY $$ in the game until the next mod release - 12b - comes out (sometime in October). Once it does - reassess how the changes affect your play style and enjoyment of the game, and decide whether to get back into the game full bore or to leave again.
While there is a lot of catch-up I have to do - I am having a lot of fun. I find this game superior to warcraft and not sure why it isn't more popular.
There is also a VIP system now which for 10$ gives you 30 keys. Much cheaper to get keys now. Very good system.
I would definitely give it another try. If you enjoyed it the first time you played you will enjoy it now.
I did that mistake a few times, left the game and decided to come back after few months..not worth it. Im a PvP player but I also do a lot of PvE when needed (used to grind dungeons for +10hrs daily back when I didnt work lol), but if you dont have 10hrs daily to grind, you are pretty much forced to P2W everything.
Unless you can have fun by never being BiS :P
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There is plenty of relatively fun content as long as you aren't playing to win or expect to ever get to BiS. I gave up ever catching up with all the campaigns [although I have nearly got there!] and I will never have higher than rank 10 enchants. It isn't going to happen.
Luckily I have a real life to live and spending a million hours grinding Neverwinter to get an extra few hundred IL isnt an option. I am happy sitting at 12.2k IL and maybe getting to 12.5k IL one day. So yes return, theres loads of fun IF you enjoy the content and are not expecting to "win" or "finish" the game.
EDIT : Oh and mod 12 had a massive iritation that went completely in the wrong way. You only get to play the mod content 1 time a week then you have to waste around for 6 day grinding hunts
RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)
Have been thinking on returning too, but things I have main gripe with which completely turn me away are:
- Guilds. I'm the kind of player who plays actively over the course of month or so and then I might take a break for about 3 months or even whole year. No guild tolerates this, and it's perfectly understandable, but playing solo without guild is pretty hard. Guild bonuses are very useful. Some high level campaign zones are pretty much impossible to do for me without these boons, but with them it's a fair and fun challenge. While you in the guild, it almost like slavery, you have to run influence missions daily for guild to grow, not to fall apart and to be kept in alliance, it's also understandable, but it drains lots of fun when it becomes like part time job and you have to do it instead of content you really wanna do. Than again, DF events are very important for gearing up. Best gear at specific period of progression are gained from DF, plus doing dungeons is much easier with guildies than with randoms, and you will be stuck in gearing up your character if you won't be following those steps. It all makes guilds pretty mandatory thing if you want better progression, but it takes enormous amounts of time and dedication, which renders full experience not so fun in the end.
- Loadouts. Most classes, especially casters, usually have different requirement for different situations, like during quests where you have to clear out ordinary mobs, it's most convenient to have many AoE skills. In boss battles you need mostly single-target. In some dungeons you have to switch between defensive and offensive skills very often. There is a system where you can literally have several full builds, but it's clunky, as you have to be near campfire to switch. If there would be system where you can switch only skill loadout quickly without going into character screen every time, scrolling around to in search for it would be very neat. I mean system does already allow you to do this, but it's confusing that game doesn't allow you to do it quicker and easier.
- Race bonuses. It's pretty obvious that some races give you very big advantages and some have pretty much useless bonuses. So if you wanna run high level content and not letting your guild or party down, you have to pick specific races with specific class to be most effective. I'm talking about, f.e. how human gives +2 to ability score, while most other races give only attribute boosts which are pretty easy to get with gear, but you can't get ability scores anywhere and maxing out specific feat makes a world of difference. Better balance between race traits would be more welcome so you can choose to roleplay without hurting your character performance.
I mostly like how game handles F2P model, it's rather fair and not so punishing IMO, well, definitely less punishing than pretty much every other MMOs in same category. Content is fun, campaigns are fun, visuals are great. Combat is one of the best I've seen, class/race selections is very good I don't mind time gates either. But these points above really hurting gameplay experience and fun for me to the point of not wanting to return to this game...
Neverwinter also has the potential to be the best pvp mmorpg on the market. However, I do not think this will ever happen without queuing by approximate Item Level. There also needs to be a PVP campaign where players choose sides in a conflict. Icewind Dale just barely scratched the surface of what is possible. Also, Icewind Dale is just Domination on a zone map. (Not to mention that you can switch factions without penalty or consequence in IWD.*) The PVP campaign could have different scenarios with goals that must be accomplished by one or both sides in order to win the match. Slaughtering the other team (or least not the entire team) doesn't always need to be necessary to win in a pvp game.
*Also, being forced to switch sides sometimes even though I hate the Arcane Brotherhood is lame.
The grind is as strong as ever (stronger?) but it's way easier to earn AD. I earn the daily cap in 2 dungeon runs per day.
mod 12b should make it easier getting up the ladder, but it also made the ladder substantially longer.
You will be continually poked in the eye with the attempts to get you to spend money...but if you persist long enough, that eye goes blind...
Then you have what they did for Mod 6. Did they learn from it? Apparently not. 12b is going to be much the same. I think a lot of content will become either not doable or not worth doing due to the new difficulty (and lack of rewards).
12b to me, looks like another variant of Mod 6. They are just making existing content harder by across the board nerfs and making folks spend more to get back to close to where they were before.
So, clearly they didn't learn from their mistakes and I suspect they will lose a boatload of players after 12b hits. Folks in my guild have already started bailing. It will just get worse when folks get hammered on content that used to be fun.