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New-Revised Siege of Neverwinter Event Feedback
hexngone
Member Posts: 370 Arc User
My comments here are my own impression of the changes made or not made to the event in comparison to the past 5 times the event was run.
Day 1 -
I am glad to see that the vendor in PE will accept the old currency that our characters have from previous Siege events and that the items available previously are still attainable. The menus appear to be identical to the last time it was run including items for the Medal of Heroism obtained by trading in the defense supplies. As the current event reward description indicates that defense supplies will be available in week 2, I am hopeful that that means the exchange of donated supplies for the old currency (for at least the Stronghold voucher boxes) may still be possible.
I realize the new rewards from the 'Appointment'-style event is in line with other current event rewards. Siege of Neverwinter (at least for me) has *always* been about helping the stronghold and providing new players/toons access to a mount/Griffon that has Wanderer's Fortune bonus for the RP needed by new players. It is unclear to me why the Dye packs unique to the event are not included in the new currency tabs as this is the only source of them (to feed the AH).
The Battlefield
I equipped my Injured soldier outfit and my Siegebreaker Charger mount and headed to the ever-familiar battlefield map. The 'new' version of the quest specifies the type and quantity of Heroic Encounter needed to obtain credit for defending Neverwinter. In the old event I believe it was 3 of any kind for the daily writ of commendation. The spawn rate of instances seems to be close to what is was last time (max 3-5 min wait) but the sequence appears to be totally random. Instead of a fixed sequence (Ex. mHE, bHE, mHE, Bhe, mHE) that could predictably determine the time required to complete the quest ... we have a totally random situation that results in instances with 5 or more mHEs before a single bHE spawns. This results in instance hopping just to finish a quest, something that should not be needed if properly/fairly designed. On some toons I have spent more than 1-1/2 hours just trying to complete 5 or the right type of HEs to finish the quest. I'm sorry, but the reward for that much time doesn't seem correct.
Observed Issues:
The Stronghold Guard Recruitment quest from the Master of Coin is active and available ... but there are no guards to recruit. It is unclear at this time if they will appear in week 2 or the entire quest should not have appeared.
There is no Siege artisan or recipe for Defense supplies in the Workshop. Again, the hope is that this will appear in week 2 and function as before.
For 4 years every time this event was run we would see the error message 'You cannot have more than one of this item' and every year players asked that the program check our stable and inventory for the item and not have it appear (the error triggers a re-roll for another item). The longer one plays, the more of the possible unique drop items are in your inventory and the more often the message comes up. As this had been reported so many times, I had hoped the update had been changed to prevent the message ever appearing, but I am disappointed.
My characters are around 24K so they were scaled to 26K in the instance. I no longer have an 18K character to try the event at the minimum level. I know previously participating with groups was ok, but trying to attack any of the cultists solo/with NPCs was a failure because they could not be killed before the black cultists read their scrolls and grew in size. I tried my favorite spot with my 24/26K characters and noticed that instead of 4 cultists there were now 8 or 12 at a time which was disappointing. Voucher Drops seem to be similar to last event running, so I'm ok with that part of the event.
The rocks to the right of the south ramp to the forward camp have been changed removing the nice plateau that was a nice spot to sit and observe the battles below, I am saddened by it's removal.
The mHEs are very erratic/bugged for Cult Assault and Invasion. There was a hypothesis that the Cult Leader would not spawn because the mobs were not allowed into the stockade area or up the hill. In testing this for hours it seemed to be more instance number related rather than player action driven. Players adjusted but once the required enemies were defeated the leader never spawned on some instances. This led to very annoyed players after killing enemies for 15 minutes straight. I also had one red dragon stand perfectly still while 3/4 of his health slowly decreased never attacking any of the players (was over 5 minutes).
I'm not quite certain why the developers felt that adding Siege of Neverwinter to the 'Appointment'-style event (a term that most players find vague and ignore it) rotation would be a good thing. I know I had always ignored the Hell Pit and the other event because the IL requirement was always 20K higher than I was. So I'm uncertain how having the rewards equal accomplishes anything for the newer player that just wants to help his growing guild stronghold.
In summary, I find the new version of the event not significantly more engaging than it always was, instruction/blog notes vague and incomplete, and the flow/execution of the HEs in the event unpredictably buggy and tedious because of unnecessary RNG/quest requirements.
Short term recommendation:
1) Change the quest to accept any 5 HEs or change the spawn to fixed rotation order instead of random
2) Clarify the defense supply/guard situation for week 2 now.
3) Get the dev team in the game actively experiencing the HEs that do not spawn Cult Leaders and either fix the code or clarify what player action is causing the failure to spawn.
Thanks for listening. Please help make Siege of Neverwinter my favorite again.
@nitocris83 @noworries#8859
Day 1 -
I am glad to see that the vendor in PE will accept the old currency that our characters have from previous Siege events and that the items available previously are still attainable. The menus appear to be identical to the last time it was run including items for the Medal of Heroism obtained by trading in the defense supplies. As the current event reward description indicates that defense supplies will be available in week 2, I am hopeful that that means the exchange of donated supplies for the old currency (for at least the Stronghold voucher boxes) may still be possible.
I realize the new rewards from the 'Appointment'-style event is in line with other current event rewards. Siege of Neverwinter (at least for me) has *always* been about helping the stronghold and providing new players/toons access to a mount/Griffon that has Wanderer's Fortune bonus for the RP needed by new players. It is unclear to me why the Dye packs unique to the event are not included in the new currency tabs as this is the only source of them (to feed the AH).
The Battlefield
I equipped my Injured soldier outfit and my Siegebreaker Charger mount and headed to the ever-familiar battlefield map. The 'new' version of the quest specifies the type and quantity of Heroic Encounter needed to obtain credit for defending Neverwinter. In the old event I believe it was 3 of any kind for the daily writ of commendation. The spawn rate of instances seems to be close to what is was last time (max 3-5 min wait) but the sequence appears to be totally random. Instead of a fixed sequence (Ex. mHE, bHE, mHE, Bhe, mHE) that could predictably determine the time required to complete the quest ... we have a totally random situation that results in instances with 5 or more mHEs before a single bHE spawns. This results in instance hopping just to finish a quest, something that should not be needed if properly/fairly designed. On some toons I have spent more than 1-1/2 hours just trying to complete 5 or the right type of HEs to finish the quest. I'm sorry, but the reward for that much time doesn't seem correct.
Observed Issues:
The Stronghold Guard Recruitment quest from the Master of Coin is active and available ... but there are no guards to recruit. It is unclear at this time if they will appear in week 2 or the entire quest should not have appeared.
There is no Siege artisan or recipe for Defense supplies in the Workshop. Again, the hope is that this will appear in week 2 and function as before.
For 4 years every time this event was run we would see the error message 'You cannot have more than one of this item' and every year players asked that the program check our stable and inventory for the item and not have it appear (the error triggers a re-roll for another item). The longer one plays, the more of the possible unique drop items are in your inventory and the more often the message comes up. As this had been reported so many times, I had hoped the update had been changed to prevent the message ever appearing, but I am disappointed.
My characters are around 24K so they were scaled to 26K in the instance. I no longer have an 18K character to try the event at the minimum level. I know previously participating with groups was ok, but trying to attack any of the cultists solo/with NPCs was a failure because they could not be killed before the black cultists read their scrolls and grew in size. I tried my favorite spot with my 24/26K characters and noticed that instead of 4 cultists there were now 8 or 12 at a time which was disappointing. Voucher Drops seem to be similar to last event running, so I'm ok with that part of the event.
The rocks to the right of the south ramp to the forward camp have been changed removing the nice plateau that was a nice spot to sit and observe the battles below, I am saddened by it's removal.
The mHEs are very erratic/bugged for Cult Assault and Invasion. There was a hypothesis that the Cult Leader would not spawn because the mobs were not allowed into the stockade area or up the hill. In testing this for hours it seemed to be more instance number related rather than player action driven. Players adjusted but once the required enemies were defeated the leader never spawned on some instances. This led to very annoyed players after killing enemies for 15 minutes straight. I also had one red dragon stand perfectly still while 3/4 of his health slowly decreased never attacking any of the players (was over 5 minutes).
I'm not quite certain why the developers felt that adding Siege of Neverwinter to the 'Appointment'-style event (a term that most players find vague and ignore it) rotation would be a good thing. I know I had always ignored the Hell Pit and the other event because the IL requirement was always 20K higher than I was. So I'm uncertain how having the rewards equal accomplishes anything for the newer player that just wants to help his growing guild stronghold.
In summary, I find the new version of the event not significantly more engaging than it always was, instruction/blog notes vague and incomplete, and the flow/execution of the HEs in the event unpredictably buggy and tedious because of unnecessary RNG/quest requirements.
Short term recommendation:
1) Change the quest to accept any 5 HEs or change the spawn to fixed rotation order instead of random
2) Clarify the defense supply/guard situation for week 2 now.
3) Get the dev team in the game actively experiencing the HEs that do not spawn Cult Leaders and either fix the code or clarify what player action is causing the failure to spawn.
Thanks for listening. Please help make Siege of Neverwinter my favorite again.
@nitocris83 @noworries#8859
1
Comments
How hard it can be to spawn a Leader?
In my tests it looks like it's about 50% chance that the Leader will spawn (maybe it's even worse since in the last 6 MHEs of Cult Assault or Cult Invasion only 2 Leaders spawned).
Another bug is that repeatable quests not marked as repeatable (it should be blue color instead of yellow):
First of all, it is said that this event have been revised. And to be fair I haven't notice that.
Minor or major Heroic encounters done solo easily, and it's look more like joke than challenge. As non heroic enemies, you blast them as they would be lv 5 creatures.
When I first time participated in Siege of Neverwinter with my warlock ( in early mod 4). The major/big heroic encoutners where tough, and to be able take down dragon solo was big thing. Now even ~35k IL toon beat the HAMSTER of dragon without any prolem.
My suggestion would be to split this siege of Neverwinter in three instances with different scaling.
For that purpose we can reuse the undermountain Master Expedition x3 rune scaling system. Which upscale enemies.
1) Instance - for ~25k IL players - event is same as it is now.
2) Instance - for 36k ~46k IL players - upscale as it would be x2 runes( also reward is increased by twice ( x2).
3) Instance - for 47 ~57k and higher IL players - the enemies upscaled as like x3 runes. Also reward increased by x3 times.
Now this will bring challenge for higher IL players, but also allow even lesser IL player participate in event.
This event also would act as good way for guilds to progress and have guild like content. I mean x3 reward increase from event, voucher drop. Guilds would definatly grind them. You can't do solo, then you bring guild members or friends to assist you.
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Gustave Le Bon.
==================================================
Details here: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1263510/siege-of-neverwinter-issues
Thanks @nitocris83 and dev team!
First the good news as posted above, both the lack of guards in the SH and the failure to spawn bosses has been verified and a patch is planned.
One of the other things I mention in yesterday's post was the effect of requiring 2 Major HEs (dragons) and 3 Minor HEs (other HEs) to complete the daily and repeatable quest - and the effect random spawns have on the time required to complete the quest. So, today as I ran the zone on multiple characters I tracked the time required to complete the quest each time. Here are the results (I'm including the time in EST for log benefit for the devs): I was able to remain on one zone every time except the 8th run where I was alone with a toxic dragon and catapults to do as a 24k IL character, it was not pretty, so I moved.
Zone Start/Finish/Duration Sequence of spawns (m=minor, b=big/major, f=boss spawn failure)
40 14:30/14:51/21 min m m b m m b
29 14:53/15:15/23 min b m m m m m m b
5 16:22/17:11/48 min mf m m mf b m m mf m b (players continued attacks for full 15 min on each failed HE)
11 17:13/17:36/23 min m m m m m b m b
38 17:36/17:58/22 min m m m b m m m b
20 18:00/18:20/20 min m m b b* b m (* Aragon the Pyre stays motionless for20 90 sec in battle)
20 21:01/21:35/24 min b m b b m b b b m
26 21:40/22:03/23 min m m m m (realized I was solo on the cats and the dragon was toxic so changed to 13)
13 22:07/22:16/9 min* m b b (*total time to complete quest of 32 min)
39 22:21/22:43/22 min m b b m m (got lucky)
So, as someone who ran this for almost a full 4 hours, only one instance provided the spawns in a sequence that matched the quest requirements. I would caution that the total timings also depended on the number of players in the instance of course (blue and green dragons taking longer).
If *any* 5 HEs were accepted the quest could be completed in 20 min and not require instance hopping (and associated zone chatter).
Voucher drop rate seemed fine, when there were fewer high-IL players I received more vouchers as expected. Most instances consistently had one HE at a time, a few had multiple active at once. Time to wait with no HE was less than 2 min it seemed (not actually timed but felt reasonable).
One last observation, I ended the day yesterday by taking the 'Breaking the Siege' quest from General Sabine. I was delighted to see that the quest did not 'expire' and stacked with the daily 'Siege of Neverwinter' quest. This allowed me to get credit for both quests by completing the appropriate HEs.
I must say I am enjoying doing the event in my Injured Survivor fashion riding my Siege Charger, makes me feel immersed and like I've got a real duty to perform.
Disappointed but def not unexpected with this game
Even if they fix the bugs and the heroic encounter respawn rate the whole event is just completing heroic encounters which is nothing special. Hellpit has a cool arena and Harvester of nightmares has a decent skirmish.
The best part is probably farming vouchers for the stronghold.
I look at Siege of Neverwinter as one of the best events for new players or players that have not invested heavily in upgrading their characters (think of them as 'I just reached level 70/20'). They are able to participate with a larger group of players in a skirmish event that gives them rewards for participating. They do not need to be in a guild/alliance but they get the same feeling as if they were doing Marauders or Stronghold Heroics as a group. If they are part of a Guild, then they feel like they are contributing because they can earn vouchers for their 'team' while having fun. They don't expect it to be easy, but with the help of others it can go smoothly for them. They might even try to beat some smaller groups of enemies and learn their character better in the process. If they do the daily quests for the weeks of the event, they also earn new Seal of the Fallen equipment for their character in the process.
Over the years the developers have seemed to struggle with enabling balance for the more advanced players. The large advances in IL numbers have made the difference between a 24K IL player and a 55K IL player viewpoint on what they event should be quite different. The more powerful players enjoy whacking a Cult Leader or Dragon in a few swipes of their mighty sword .. .that feeling of utter domination has it's thrill. And finding a lonely instance where you can solo a mighty dragon and tell your friends all about your adventure is what playing this game is all about for many. But it is nearly impossible to have both high level and low level players engaged in the same activity regulated by the game mechanics alone. It also requires discipline and civility to allow the weaker player to get a few whacks in before you come as mighty hero to save them from the terrible enemy. The reward is based on getting a hit in, don't ruin it for others just so you can. Some have suggested tiering the event with 'intermediate' and 'hard' modes to the enemies. I would caution that doing so would reduce the number of players in some of the instances removing the support/backup the weaker players need when things go wrong. I know the devs love to spawn adds (think catapults) and that can easily overwhelm some players. Perhaps a simple 'enemies killed' leader board would suffice to allow the stronger players some bragging rights without too much effort.
I'm continuing to track the spawn sequences but not belaboring the posts with the statistics here. After the bugged mHEs are fixed the instance hopping may slow down as well. I'm still getting a few instances each day with 8 of the same type of HE in a row though.
I am hopeful that the fix to the Cult Leader spawn issues tomorrow will remove much of the tension around efforts not to 'bug' the minor Heroics. Melee players must go to the enemies to 'get a hit in' ideally that is at a point within the encounter zone. The ranged players need to keep that in mind and attack from far inside the zone to allow the melee to enjoy the event without guilt/blame of breaking it. Remember, the Cult is the enemy... so grab your Injured Survivor outfit and mount your Siegebreaker Charger or Siege Griffon and have a good time (and keep General Sabine happy so she gets her old voice back).
I remember soloing my first Heroic [the one where you have to kill 175 mobs and the leader] many years ago and it was such a buzz it was great fun. And YES its like when you first defeat the Dragon in Neverdeath Grave Yard as a new toon years ago, when it took more than 20 seconds to kill a Dragon it felt GREAT to be a part of a team. Similarly, the Dragon Run gives that buzz to a new player at level 20. I remember soloing my first HEs in Icewind Dale... so many happy memories.
Did we used to be able to solo run dungeons and get rAD? My memory is all messed up.
Anyhow I enjoy the event mostly
Tip for ranged: hit a couple of times if you must at the start to register yourself by all means, but then stop and wait and watch to see that everyone has approached the targets and is fighting, then you can go for it. This ensures everyone gets their rewards.
Except for the few instances that would get stuck on the same type of HE in Siege, if nothing bugged, staying on one instance assures you can finish in 22 min most of the time.
If devs have run out of ideas why not actually listen to the community that stay loyal to the game regardless of the inane, regurgitated nonsense that has been spewing forth of late.
Many of the foundry quests showed much more imagination, yes with flaws but they could have acted as building blocks for future content release in terms of design and demand. Would even go so far as suggesting get rid of current staff and employ some of those that released foundry content.
Game development used to be about allowing the developers imaginations to tun riot and put out content that was engaging and leave the players wanting to log back in not this cookie cutter nonsense.
Would happily forgo any rewards for a game that left me gobsmacked.
Having siege situated in standalone instances shows how empty the game is at the moment with other zones largely denuded of players. I don't understand why you did not follow how EOP has been designed which draws players into zones they probably haven't inhabited in years. Yes there is a strong element of rinse repeat but having it spread across the neverwinter world was a great decision and saw previously dead zones feeling alive and vibrant.