This needs to be said

travis · September 2021

This message is for the developers. I understand you guys need to make your money from the zen store seeing as the game is free to play. You recently lost one of your games and have been pushing more sales in the Zen store which would be completely fine in my opinion if you took care of the bugs in the game. You’re too focused on the short gain and getting those players who have addictions to keep spending. But you guys are just going to lose players if you don’t keep them happy. You need to focus on the long run and remember the number one thing that will boost your sales is making your players happy. Fix the bugs over everything else or it’s going to bite you in the butt later. Have you not been paying attention to blizzard with world of Warcraft? You need to keep your players satisfied or eventually you’re going to lose them. Don’t wait until everyone gets fed up that more bugs keep appearing rather than being taken care of. While at the same time you’re pushing your zen market sales to make that money. If you guys were smart you’d spend a good amount of time fixing most of the major bugs to show your players that you give a sh$! about what they want. Atleast just try to fix the bugs and see what happens. I recommend no one spends any money until they make somewhat of an effort to clean up the bugs in their game. Don’t be like blizzard and make it obvious you don’t give two sh!$s about what your players want. Show them that you care about their gaming experience more than the money you make off of your zen market sales. I mean you can keep taking advantage of those players who have the addiction problems and can’t stop spending no matter how many bugs you ignore…. But it’s not going to make you more money in the long run. Make the players without the addiction problems happy and they’ll actually spend money too. Try it out and at least see for yourself.

travis · September 2021

And don’t tell me it’s super hard or too complicated to fix all those bugs or whatever type of excuse you give. Blizzard was telling their players that things couldn’t be fixed or changed because it was impossible and just too difficult but when they lost all of their players in almost an instant they somehow magically were able to fix and make ALL the changes that all of the gamers were asking for. If you lost 99% of your players and the only way to get them back was to fix the bugs. Those bugs would get taken care of really fast. The reason they aren’t being taken care of is because you don’t view those problems as something that will be profitable if you spend your time on it. Neverwinter is a fun game and could be so much more popular if you took the initiative to actually listen to your players and fix bugs that have been their for god knows how long. Just quit being greedy and just spend your next maintenance fixing bugs. Look at all your past notes on the bugs that have been reported in the past that haven’t been taken care of and fix atleast 75% of them. If that seems too impossible then that means you’ve been ignoring them for far too long. Get it together and listen to the people who play your game.

armadeonx · September 2021

You've made some valid points in your posts but if you don't break up your text into manageable paragraphs, most people will refuse to even read it.

Is it just me getting old or are people losing the basic life skill of presenting text in a way that is friendly to the reader?

plasticbat · September 2021

Hard to read means won't be read. Waste the time writing to the void.

froger · September 2021

After seeing the first post I was really hoping for a TLDR from someone.

armadeonx · September 2021

I have to assume that people that write like this haven't started working life yet (or work in a field that doesn't require written communication).

If I'd ever sent out a work email in such a form, my boss would've said "How old are you, eight?! Didn't you ever learn grammar at school?!".

Unknown · September 2021

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armadeonx · September 2021

arkhadiam#2543 said:
It is incredible how a post literally points out the main problem that NW has, and the reaction of the community is to ignore it because of how it is written ... to the point of laughing at the user who created it.

Yep ... every time I understand better the evolution that NW is taking and the role that the community is playing.

Nice!

I said he had some valid points but also said that presenting a wall of text will result in most people not reading it. A person can take that as either instructive or offensive depending on their perspective.

Personally, if someone had advised me that my delivery style was preventing me getting my message across, I would listen. I am already well aware that you would take the opposing view. But the comment wasn't directed at you.

Addition: I find it interesting that you never comment when myself and others are being more obviously nice and helpful - I never see any "now this is the kind of community spirit I like" replies from you when we are saying 'sure, do this & that and you'll be fine'.

If you try and say "that's because it never happens!" I will post links to threads as proof that we do, because that would be blatantly and provably false.

Unknown · September 2021

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armadeonx · September 2021

you have something of a point regarding my second post, it was not aimed at being helpful, it was a complaint, born of the fact I see an increase in 'wall-of-text' posts.

It is however, as unassailable fact that such posts are generally ignored by most potential readers. Should I have just said nothing and left it to die? Probably.

Anyway, please allow me the opportunity to thank you for your community activism by coming in and regularly informing us how toxic we all are. Your contributions are (as ever) always welcome.

Unknown · September 2021

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greywynd · September 2021

It isn't a matter of "not like how it is presented". Clear communication is essential. Presentation matters when you are trying to say something clearly.

Personally, @armadeonx did better than I did. Literally because of the wall of text. Too long; not worth reading as presented.

Unknown · September 2021

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plasticbat · September 2021

I did not read OP's post at all. Some may choose to do the same thing. So, whatever valid complaint it was, it has a good chance not be heard by the "intended" audience.

nitocris83 · September 2021

Hey folks! I try to focus on addressing the main concern in a post but this one branched out into an important topic as well so I'll get to that in a sec.

For the original feedback:

We are aware of the issues present in the game and the balance between content that generates revenue vs. dedicated time for bug fixing. While most people don't like to hear this, Cryptic is a small studio with lower people resources than other companies. This means having to make calls on time spent on bugs (investigating, replicating, identifying fix, implementing fix, shipping fix), feature development for content hungry players, and monetization so we can keep the game alive. I don't envy the people who have to make those calls because they are difficult.

For the secondary issue brought up in this thread:

Information presentation is important and will impact our ability to receive and process it. Larger walls of text, run-on sentences, or other formatting issues (color choices, etc.) slow down the ability to properly glean the information from a post. The more organized and broken down the information is presented, the better we can hone in on it.

stryker80 · September 2021

armadeonx said:
You've made some valid points in your posts but if you don't break up your text into manageable paragraphs, most people will refuse to even read it.

Is it just me getting old or are people losing the basic life skill of presenting text in a way that is friendly to the reader?

It's definitely not just you. I am also getting old.

tamtoucan · September 2021

My 2 2insert currency of choice"
1. Rewards. These were said to be getting reworked so long ago I can't rember. There is no point in running RDQ let alone RADQ for most players. Two mount tokens isn't a reward given how many you need.
- As for VoS, well I think one of the streams it was stated that "no one should need to run a dungeon 100 times to get a piece gear they want". If *only* it was 100 times and you knew you would get it.
- The secrecy of drop rates, and ninja-nerf'ing (It happens. I farmed VoS miniboss day1 and got all the gear, now we get 1 piece of gear between 5 people about 50% of the time), doesn't help the whole situation. I understand your reasons, but other games manage to tell people their odds.

2. Bugs. I have given up reporting problems. Three times I reported a problem with a companion power. No response.
- Even when a problem is in the system e.g. https://trello.com/c/E3HPRi7J/893-3967-bypass-gold-ring-gold-plated-ring we have no idea if/when it will be fixed. I suspect that issue may never be fixed, but I'm not going to create my build around it without knowing one way or the other.

Content, actually fixing bugs etc. take manpower and I understand the problem with that, but the above are more a community interaction thing. It's lack of communication/openness. That's the kind of thing I'd like to see change.

-Tam

greywynd · September 2021

Hire more bodies and don't lay off the ones you do have would be a start.

wigdahl · September 2021

As a retired IT professional, I understand everything that has been said and implied in this stream. But let me add my 2 cents worth.

Every decision made by the leadership of any organization has risk, so these decisions need to balance cost versus risk. Cryptic has made a decision that they need to increase revenue by creating items that the customer might want, ignoring the things the customer needs. This decision has an effect on customer satisfaction causing the customer base to decrease, to compensate for this decrease Cryptic needs to increase the spend rate of the smaller base.

It is, in my opinion, a death spiral ending in the failure of the game, program or company. Every company grows to a point where they need to expend the capital necessary to continue growth by meeting the needs of the customer, which leads to more customers. Return on this investment (ROI) makes it possible for the company to grow and increase its profits by meeting the wants of a larger, happier customer base.

onodrain · September 2021

Every MMO I have played has had very poor documentation for the players. Online games rely on their player community to document their game. And usually, this happens. But NWN keeps changing the game and updating the documentation is tedious. This is my #1 issue with NWN: it is lacking good documentation that is easily accessible.

My understanding of NWN is that it was built as a game to emulate the table top role playing experience. So a group of people from around the world, can gather and enjoy a dungeon dive or experience different zones. It is my opinion, the game does this extremely well. The issue is, most people have bastardized this. Content intended to take 30 minutes, people cram into 5 minutes. Go Go Go Go! Everything has to be done quickly. That was not the game design or intent.

I had a friend start playing. I tried to get them to play things quickly top maximize their iLevel ASAP. It was obvious they did not enjoy it. So I slowed things down. Why the rush? It is not needed. There is so much content to play along with friends in a casual way. When playing tabletop, it takes a long time to get thru a dungeon and much longer to get thru an adventure. Slow down. Enjoy the game. There is a lot of content here to play.

My friend commented that this game has more voice acting than other online games we have played together. He enjoys that. He enjoys a slower pace. We have lots of time to enjoy the different zones and campaigns, no need to rush.

Yes there are bugs. But nothing breaks the game, IMHO. People come here and rant because the game is not exactly as they want. While they make some good points, they are naive. A game this complicated is going to have bugs. At the end of the day, you can still enjoy the content, if you look for content to enjoy. You find what you look for.

bomber · September 2021

wigdahl said:
As a retired IT professional, I understand everything that has been said and implied in this stream. But let me add my 2 cents worth.

Every decision made by the leadership of any organization has risk, so these decisions need to balance cost versus risk. Cryptic has made a decision that they need to increase revenue by creating items that the customer might want, ignoring the things the customer needs. This decision has an effect on customer satisfaction causing the customer base to decrease, to compensate for this decrease Cryptic needs to increase the spend rate of the smaller base.

It is, in my opinion, a death spiral ending in the failure of the game, program or company. Every company grows to a point where they need to expend the capital necessary to continue growth by meeting the needs of the customer, which leads to more customers. Return on this investment (ROI) makes it possible for the company to grow and increase its profits by meeting the wants of a larger, happier customer base.

I agree 100% percent a good game and happy playerbase alone will make money!
Happy players/customers are more likely to open their wallets and return to do so again...

You sure would think that type of poor behavior exhibited by any sort of business would and rightfully should lead to a "death spiral". However unfortunately IMHO the behavior that you described has been the M.O. of this game for as long as I've played (5 years on PS and a little bit on PC prior).
•They have an unfettered track record of focusing on monetization and putting out new buggy unfinished content without fixing the existing buggy content.
•Not learning from and making the same mistakes as other games and developers who came before them.
•Ignoring their customers valid issues/concerns/ideas.
•They cater the game to the whim and musings of a small handful of YouTube streamers over the rest of playerbase.
...and many other things.

One of my major grievances is the removal of items and/or content that people have purchased with real money. That type of behavior would not be acceptable in any other market and I'm not sure how it is even legal here lol.
It wouldn't go over well if you bought a car that got 50MPG and a few months later the manufacturer showed up at your door to inform you that they have pulled the motor out of your car and changed it to one that gets 25MPG because they felt it was getting too good of a fuel economy. It also wouldn't go over well if you scrimped, saved, and worked your butt off your whole life to buy a Lamborghini only to have it taken away and replaced with a bicycle because your 40 year old unemployed neighbor felt it wasn't fair that you had a Lamborghini and he didn't..
*I know that it may not be an apples:apples comparison but the point remains.

Yet for reasons unbeknownst to me the game is still here and we are still here.

Sadly being a long time player has been compared to being in an abusive relationship...

Taking all that into consideration as a salty old-timer my two biggest pieces of advice to new players is.
• Have fun with the game but don't get too attached to it.
• Don't spend anything other than your spare time on it, no real money! There's pretty much nothing that you really need in the game that can't be gotten for free if you're patient.

**Apologies if any of the above comes off as incoherent rambling as I'm on lunch break trying to do five things at once.

alchemistxiii · September 2021

@nitocris83 I’m not sure expanding the deities we can pick is really content or bug fixes… just saying, possibly get the people who did this to maybe work on bugs instead?

tamtoucan · September 2021

bomber#7738 said:
It wouldn't go over well if you bought a car that got 50MPG and a few months later the manufacturer showed up at your door to inform you that they have pulled the motor out of your car and changed it to one that gets 25MPG because they felt it was getting too good of a fuel economy.

Or, say, used an Air Archon it for MONTHS, and suddenly after a a patch find it's damage has been reduced so much it's unviable? I mean NO ONE would do that without telling the players......oh wait*

*Check your combat logs of Air Archon if you've been using one.

The above is nothing to do with manpower, time etc. it's a culture/management approach. I would LOVE to have seen the decision making process behind the above change. The cynic in me thinks, "Some of the player base has done testing and Air Archon is slightly better than our money-maker Xuna for single target. Fix that"......*dev just makes the 2 attack the same value, since no one has given them time to do testing.

armadeonx · September 2021

@nitocris83 you guys must know that the inevitable interpretation by players of nerfing a widely used companion is that it's done to force players to rank up a new companion: meaning more companion upgrade tokens.

If Cryptic are so short on cash, why not just put the best companions on the Zen market? In fact, just adjust all 5 of the Companions of the Hall upward to make them BiS for various roles:

Single target dps
Multi target dps
Tanking
Healing
Buff/Debuff

The one thing that is the biggest source of complaint in this game is that things get nerfed. Not across the board - just the things that are popular. I mean, if ALL companions were nerfed equally you could call that fair - but targeting things just because everyone uses them really loses Cryptic a lot of positive feeling from the player base.

Unknown · September 2021

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Unknown · September 2021

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travis · September 2021

If you’re too lazy or not interest to read it then don’t read it. Breaking it up isn’t gonna change the amount of text lol

This needs to be said

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