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Random Queues and Item Level Requirement
With the reworks seen until now we are in a state where the matching of groups are pretty bad if Queue groups aren't pre-formed. The main issue can be found in the Random Advanced Dungeon Queue where the IL (Item Level) set as requirement is far from being enough for that kind of queue. A new player with base equipment and few other things is up to that IL, however they have not a strong character able to do the kind of contents that are in the queue mentioned above.
I'd like to suggest to rise the minimum IL required to 40k (up from 30k) in which players are supposed to have worked a bit on their toon and being able to complete the advanced dungeons that that random queue has.
I've often found that if a group isn't pre-formed it can barely (if you aren't lucky to get a half pre-formed group of people) complete the content or even doing things properly.
Also, another thing to mention (and this is not the first time I report it in the forums) is that particular mechanics of contents must be explained somewhere in the game. Maybe a pop-up guide when entrying in certain contents or before fighting certain bosses could be helpfull.
Cheers
I'd like to suggest to rise the minimum IL required to 40k (up from 30k) in which players are supposed to have worked a bit on their toon and being able to complete the advanced dungeons that that random queue has.
I've often found that if a group isn't pre-formed it can barely (if you aren't lucky to get a half pre-formed group of people) complete the content or even doing things properly.
Also, another thing to mention (and this is not the first time I report it in the forums) is that particular mechanics of contents must be explained somewhere in the game. Maybe a pop-up guide when entrying in certain contents or before fighting certain bosses could be helpfull.
Cheers
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Comments
This is an MMO, being social should be required for some content, join a guild, make some friends. Games hardly ever tell you how to do boss mechanics, this know how is something the community develops and shares. Neverwinter does have several people who either stream on Twitch or post videos on Youtube, the information is out there.
Also, you are talking about skills, but as mentioned in my initial post the simple levelling gives you stuff enough to get the minimum IL requirement to join the most advanced queue. And, at that point, you can't call a player skilled nor experienced. It's just a player not ready for the content they got the IL to join to. This is the reason I'm asking for a raise of IL requirement for that queue. A player that just started the game has a lot to do (campaigns etc), and has a lot to learn about game mechanics and class mechanics that make the advanced dungeon the least of the problems.
Moreover, there are a lot of sources of rAD and a new player isn't obliged to run ALL randoms to reach the daily cap of rAD (and daily cap of refinement).
Last thing: the concept that to do/complete an advanced dungeon requires to premade a group it's totally wrong. The entry in the content should allow to filter the players who can actually really do that content and not allow everyone to entry just because got free stuff by creating a toon.
I completely agree that the normal dungeon queue should not be available at level 5, and should just be a level 20 thing. With how leveling works now, there is no point in letting people in early when they don't have access to their full class and paragons.
One thing is RADQ, where people quickly learn they will get fail or kicked if they go in there below 40k.
Another thing is RDQ, where the variation in dungeon difficulty is so large that low IL is fine in some, but completely insufficient in others.
The stats gained from enchantments and gear have been heavily reduced to accommodate the new class of stats gained from companions - but the enchantments and gear alone can bring a player to 30k to access dungeons they do not have the stats to effectively contribute to the run.
The bonuses from companions are heavily slanted. A purple companion gives 3% but a mythic gives 7.8%. That is a huge gap and is expensive to address. Add on top the companion bolster & the reason for the capability difference becomes pretty obvious.
There's a huge difference in capability between a reasonably geared 40k player (i.e. someone who has at least 2 or 3 mythic companions and the rest at leg or epic) and someone at 30k who has a couple of purples and the rest at green / blue (possibly not even a full complement of 10 and certainly not chosen for the appropriate bonuses for the player's role).
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
In the past there were always bad players, but you were able to finish the dungeons, but the same is not happening now. So something has changed.
With mod 21 the structure of random queries has undergone a radical change, which clearly aims to create an artificial obstacle that leads players to spend real money on the game and, at the same time, radically reduce the amount of AD accumulated by veteran players. Novice players, but not only, will face a very difficult barrier to overcome.
That's the only way to understand why a minimum level of equipment is not required to face one such as Castle Never, Fangbreaker Island, Valindra’s or Lostmouth, even more so for a measly reward of 6,000 AD. These queus have been integrated into the most accessible group, but as players are not stupid, no one makes them (I stopped doing them some time ago), because the waiting time is very long, and the participating players are very inexperienced, overwhelming the more experienced.
As novices go through leveling and adventures, the system provides gear and AD with plenty of generosity and, consequently, they practically don't need to do the random ones. However, after reaching 30K, you can only progress, without spending real money on the game, running the random ones. And that's the real problem, as new players, with luck, can only raise around 40K AD a day, which is very little compared to mod 20, where they managed at least twice as much.
Seeking to increase revenue is perfectly legitimate, but not in this way. After so many mistakes in the past, I thought Cryptic had already learned its lesson. It seems that I was completely wrong.
Now I understand why Cryptic has become so generous with novice players, it hits with one hand and takes off with the other.
I love Neverwinter (I fiercely defend it when it should be defended and I criticize it the same way when it should be criticized), and I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but if Cryptic doesn't change their strategy quickly, the result will be the opposite of intended, because, after spending money and getting no results, newcomers will swell the ranks of the game-haters, and curse it every day on the ARC and Steam forums.
For most players, who play for free, the problem is easy to solve, they will play another game that is friendlier. And, the few veterans who are still present, leave for good.
The increases, the changes from REDQ to RADQ and now to SuperAdvancedDungeonQueues as I prefer to call them SADQ now, you have players below the 40k IL that know more than many players above 40k IL and are denied 34k AD per day now, simply, we are being robbed.
The impact of not being able to do RTQ's anymore is so great that it will lead many players to leave this game for this will be enough to make them think there's no future for a game that is losing it's "fun" factor.
Only the elites can safely say "Just raise IL for everything" without even thinking for one minutes about the players, the majority of players that can no longer do a type of content which could have -easily- being replaced by another type of content for people under 40k IL.
Self-destructing games, I have seen many since 2001.
> Well... There're plenty of other games... It looks like i'll leave this one too... I don't have problem with ilvl, but i have "problem" with changes. This game became a job... And ofc... p2w with battlepasses lately.
I couldn't agree more. As I said before, when game makers forget they are making a game and the purpose of a game is nothing else... nothing else but pleasure, fun and the modifications are killing this fun and making a game a chore, very hard and tedious work to do on a daily basis, these kind of games lose players.
The modification made to RADQ could have only affected the "elite" players, given they would have had a plan B for players under 40k IL, they did not, in fact, they slapped all players under 40k IL by telling them they are worthless trash and deserve to lose 34k AD per day as they have no right to do RTQ's now. It's not just a insult, it's a attack on most of the players, telling them either spend the money or just go play somewhere else.
* have a product that lots of people like
* make their customers feel valued
* position their pricing to maximise earnings by balancing sales quantity & product value
To my mind, Cryptic are failing on all three of these points.
On the first; they have a good core product but it's seriously hampered by nonsensical choices that cause their customer base a lot of frustration.
On the second; they have very little direct feedback to customer concerns (apart from Julia saying "I'll escalate this") and an obvious tendency to mostly address issues that cost Cryptic money instead of player happiness/welfare. Of course, we are now seeing changes rolled out with no advance warning!
On the third; lets face it, a $10 investment buys you almost nothing in this game. If you want to pay your way to a well geared toon it will cost you more like $500 - $1000, which puts them at the far end of what most players would consider an acceptable expense on what is only a game. To my mind, this incredibly low cost to value ratio is the biggest inhibitor to their earning potential.
It's truly a shame.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
From the top of my head:
- ingame motivation: when you know what you farm for right now is bound to be useless soon (don't hit me with the "this is every mmo ever" argument, what I am talking about is frequent changes to the system that lead to "core elements" of builds being shot to hell alongside normal grind-each-module items.)
- lack of community involvement: other games do way more to engage the community. I am pretty sure that NW fails in this department because there is a bit of "running it with the current setup" from the top of the chain downwards. When CW joined it seemed like PWE/Cryptic made a last big effort to change the game to make it somewhat popular again, but they did it how they thought was best/how they were told (by CW) it was best, thats why they changed the lead of course. Apparently that was financially successful (Redeemed Citadel) or they wouldn't copy paste it into future content.
What could be done is: social media work, streams (that are about gameplay), community events hosted with, by and for the community that are not about selling some new zen package deal, but to actually improve and form a tight community. Races, Titles, Transmutes for special occassions (that are not released on Zen store after the race/event
Creative Competitions, actively motivate players to help with the content in a creative way. Player-designed little nooks in modules. Polls on the best design for a transmute we might want to see.
It's not nice to work with a frustrated and tired community, but it gets progressively worse the less interaction we see and with every thread, bug, insight that gets ignored because they don't make it on the list of what - 5 topics every monday?
A problem I had with CW's way of interacting with the community was that it was done through favoritism and antagonism. Instead of letting the community feel some love and growing together it was driving many apart by only acknowledging what already fit the current opinion of Cryptic.
Active ways to motivate the community were discussed in CDPs somewhat (I remember a discussion about mentoring, which leads me to)
- new player/vet frustration with eachother because the game does not balance well and yet expects both to play with each other. There's not enough players for the game to afford us disliking each other from the get go.
I am not sure how your ingame time is spent, but I have heard from several types of players that Neverwinter is one of the best chatting and economy-gone-worse simulators out there. A lot of people (me included, when I still logged in) didn't play most of the time. Sure, socialising IS a big factor in a mmo, but for sure shouldn't be the only one.
Imo, its easier to see clearer with some distance to NW - what do other games do that are 6-10 years old? What makes them fall apart? What could NW learn from it? But I don't think that this is much of a discussion topic.
Not as much as: How much does it cost? How much does it make?
A product needs to sell well, of course. But it only sells well if it's either necessary to have, cheap (quantity), or high quality (higher price). Reducing the cost and the effort (by reducing staff, by stretching resources too thin etc) spent will not make people keep wanting to have it. There is little advertisement and the reviews are so-and-so. A steam review from this month recommends the game because it is "good enough" - sure, there are good reviews too. There will always be. But "good enough" hit me right in the feels because when I joined NW I was so ecstatic to play it. I couldn't wait to play it when I got home/had some time off. I don't suddenly hate NW, I am just sad about this.
This quote above caught my eye. When I read it I hear new players say "But if I can't have it too, it's not fair to everyone and it should not be in the game, it should be deleted." And I think this is connected to part of the problem. The company is so focused on making changes which attract new players at the expense of keeping old ones happy, ideally what you want is to retain your loyal player base and build on that and grow the game with new ones as well, but existing loyal players (who are after all responsible for the game still being in existence after so many years) just keep getting offended by damaging idiotic decisions which feel like a slap in the face and play less or leave entirely, and it becomes a thing where the majority player base just slowly mutates into something else where new players bring their existing expectations into the game and there is less and less of an existing playerbase around to teach the new ones and help them assimilate into the existing community. Only a small proportion of new players will stay long term, many will try the game and then move to another one after a time with no loyalty, so players who stay and are loyal to the game should be the #1 priority. Until they value the veterans the game is just going to die because the new players who do end-up becoming loyal will not outweigh the amount of players who ultimately leave. I personally am having a very hard time right now with what the game has become and how it is being run and although I'm trying to log-in here and there to help my guild I don't stay for that long, I don't know how much longer I want to play tbh.
Also, my understanding was that this game was made to emulate the table top experience. So a group of friends who used to play table top, but have now moved away from each other, can get a similar experience online. In that sense, this game is a hands down winner. There is a ton a content that is easily accessible with a 1-5 hour play time for groups to get together and have fun.
As for the random Q. One huge problem is the scaling system. As the top content that is not scaled requires a DPS centric focus. But if you are scaled with that DPS focus, you get killed easily in scaled content because your defensive stat percentages are not high enough. How they configured the new Demo is brilliant. No DPS check. Everyone at iLevel 48k. If you know the mechanics it is simple, but if you screw up the mechanics, it eats your lunch. Demo's hit points are still high enough that it takes you a while to kill him in Phase 3. IMHO, it is how the content should all be reconfigured. Devs did a brilliant job on Demo refresh.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
Some official help on those kind of events could be something interesting, in one form or another (advertising, prizes to be given away like what they do with the content creator program, extending temporarily the instance size to allow more player to be at the same place at the same time [like what they do on EvE online when devs know a sector will be flooded with players because a huge battle is coming], etc).
Personnally, i am already into organizing those kind of things in the limited population of my ally, i have always thought about trying something "server-wide" but always find there are too much limitations (one being the amount of AD i put in the rewards, it's already in the vinicity of 50M AD / event for my ally..., another one being the amount of players able to fit in the same instance [when i see they can be 35 allymates already for a 1h30 music quizz], etc)
Who would be into a server wide "Avernus Fury Road" race organized by a player but sponsorised by the devs themselves ? :P
Of course there are many ways to do AD, for people like you and me: selling rare items in the House of Auctions is also one of them and one of my favorites. The problem is that novice players don't have tens of millions of AD, like you and me, in order to trade and earn millions.
The problem is not me, or you, but the novice players who don't have any chance of getting where I got and where you got.
I don't spend a penny on the game and never will. I have 10 characters and I bought them exchanging AD po ZEN, but now beginners, in addition to not getting AD would have to wait many years to get the same.
I look at Neverwinter from the perspective of an average player, because it's that same player who will dictate the failure or success of the game. The game doesn't survive just with paying players and veterans, it needs a broad base of support.
In short, no game survives attacking your player base like Cryptic is doing.
compared to older mods..... cryptic devs nerf classes , destroy queues ,they bring out (expensive) upgrade possibilities for companions,mounts,collars,insignias....they bring out artifact weapons that even an average player cannot obtain( zariel,tomm,zariel favor that you cannot earn any more, stronghold mastered artis that cost 5mill both..) ...
If this is not enough , laggs and rubberbanding are present for at least one week ,what the hell...
In The Dragon Hoard you had to find the real name of the character Goro Thay. If you were wrong, or just drop word you played, you still got something better than what the Foundry offered as reward. Later I started everyone's favorite game show in the Blacklake district. Don't bother looking for Blacklake, it is no longer on the map.
Mad Monty's Mystery Maze, was a huge single map labyrinth of puzzles. The puzzles used a method of locking and unlocking doors, shifting walls, and a boss fight with Idris. Monty was streaming the game to evil wizards to sell them diabolical traps and spells. This was one with prizes a grand prize for collecting letters from banners and solving the combination to open Monty's vault. Anyone who played it knows, it was less about fighting and more about puzzles and humor.
I was working on another when they closed the Foundry. So I was on the verge of leaving in 2019 when I did the Fires of April contest based on the death of the Foundry and it being a vast library burnt to the ground. It was the player's job to find who did it. Since it was a big success, I did my first Barovian Bash in 2019.
It is very sad when, a player can produce more quality entertainment than an entire team of paid professionals. After 8 years, with the removal of yet more content, I have left Neverwinter. I am giving away anything legal, all unbound items must go, guilds, cars, houses, pets, kitchen sink, etc. to the players at the Barovian Bash this year. My account and characters here will remain dormant after that time. Cryptic has the right to change their game and I have no issue with them making changes. I am just tired of feeling like a fish on a line with a hook in my mouth.
Have fun!