I think the difficulty was OK. As a Control Wiz It was very easy up until 25-ish. Then it started getting harder.
First death at level 24 I think it was. at 32 some of the encounters was really hard and involved alot of kiting and potion spamming
It's my understanding that they upped the difficulty from beta weekend 1. I can't speak for the other classes though since I only tried the CW. But solo, the difficulty is just right.
Im not sure if it can be discussed here, so I will not go into detail. But this game really needs to get harder, alot harder.
What level did you reach? because game starts to get more challenging at lvl 30 onward. The current difficulty is all right and the way it should be. Making early levels hard is a bad idea for the majority of players.
I think that the dificulty of the game is ok for solo. For 2 or more people the game is too easy, I think that Cryptic or the Founfry betatesters need to do missions for group play before release.
It was a beta test. Not a difficulty test. The XP was ramped and the mobs were easy as a result.
I dont think thats the case unless they plan to add more quests or expect players to grind mobs for xp. Up until L20 I was doing quests of my level, after that I actually fell behind a bit and was -1 or -2 to the quest levels.
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ethanloveMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 4Arc User
edited March 2013
difficulty was okay up to 24
then leveling to 26 with lvl 18 gears was rough because still waiting to equip them 26 gears.
after i equip 26 gears everything uptill 33 was easy. human rogue
33 is far as i got though, so yea maybe will need to adjust some more difficulty after 26-28 hence lots of gears are allotted around 26
i think there is too much solo content for it being d&d. secondly, yeah the first 20 levels were easy. pots need cooldown increased for live, for sure. drops will need to decrease or money will be too easy as well. and the quests are too simple so far. there is no thought for me. just run through and button mash. rinse and repeat. with some skill and some pots i could solo anything. which i guess is what mmos are all about these days? i think its an important design question. do you want a game where its easy for anyone to level pretty quickly and reach lvl 60 like most wow-clone types of games, or do you want a more traditional d&d type game where there is adventure, interesting content to explore, things to learn, puzzles to solve, lore to be mindful of? gaining 1 lvl in d&d should be a big deal. but here it's nothing. and if the foundry can only create simplistic quests, then that is gonna be a bad thing.
I only had one death, but both my CW and GF were "on the ropes" in dungeons often enough for my tastes. Open world was relatively easy - but, then, it'd have to be. I don't think that can change.
If Cryptic is true to form, they'll probably put in a difficulty slider of some kind at some point. Granted, it will probably only affect instances, but instances seem to be frequent enough here that you'll feel the difference.
started off simply then got hard as got into the game.
I died at black dagger after healing a very respectable 270,878 HP with my elf cleric Aurora Blight.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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sardokusMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited March 2013
I agree...too much catering to the insta gratification crowd but I suppose for newer players the introductory dungeon is fine. I do have a huge problem with how fast people are levelling and Cryptic for the games sake better nerf bat that xp speed so it actually requires some time to level. Halfway to cap in two days will be a ridiculous disaster for release.
I think that some players claiming the game is too easy never made it to the Neverdeath Graveyard, or always played while in a group.
The game does ramp up its difficulty significantly in the mid-twenties, and it increases appropriately before that, too.
If you want difficult, have fun with Malus Blackdagger in the skirmish. That guy does not mess around.
In the mid-20's. That is a lot of easy game up to that point. Being in a group isn't a bad thing. I think the open area's could be debated on should they be easy or challenging. The easy side says, well that could be solo'ers they need to make it through. The flip coin is anyone can contribute to the kill like GW2, so you can pseudo group to get past more difficult area's. I noticed they max player in these open world instances was rather small, if they can increase that to a point, a solor'er in an open area doesn't have to be considered solo, but in general free for all play.
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juiceboxjunkyMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited March 2013
Ah Malas Blackdagger, had 2 level 20s in my party the first time through. They made no effort to move out of attacks and never used a single potion. I healed the best I could, however ended up nearly falling over in laughter. That fight ended up being my first death of the game. Stopping to do that channel heal might have been a bad idea
The game does seem to be gradually increasing in difficulty level.
Gear wise there are some level 20 blues you can buy from NPCs. Touching up gear holes with them seems to help out. I would only spend money on slots you have had a hard time updating though, otherwise even the green 24s start to compare.
Difficulty is nicely balanced for solo content. Some of you might've been grouped up and playing the solo content, which is always going to seem easy. The 5 man dungeons did provide a challenge (especially for pugs, plus sometimes you'd load in with no healer).
All classes were needed in 5 man dungeons.
The game felt fun. This is definitely the sweet spot, don't change a thing. (except for Control Wizard, that class needs a buff - longer control, more aoe).
Also fix the Control Wizard and Cleric dodge skills (teleports) - those two have teleports that don't calculate whether mob hit landed until the animation is finished - it was more reliable to just manually move out of the way of an attack (stepping aside), because the teleport animations took too long and the mob's hit generally landed because of this waiting till animation finished issue.
Im not sure if it can be discussed here, so I will not go into detail. But this game really needs to get harder, alot harder.
You did not play the control wizard.
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stridionMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited March 2013
I agree the game does need to be hard. I am with everyone else that doesn’t get the rush to end game, end game is just gear grind and no journey. I have played a lot of MMO’s and the ones that had my attention the most where harder. I have found myself quitting a game when I hit the level cap and only coming back when there was an expansion release. Myself, I enjoy progress and leveling see the land scape and grouping. To me the end game gear grind is doing the same dungeons over and over, waiting for one or two drops. I personal get worn out of that really quick, I want to see landscape; I want to see seasons/night/day shifts. I prefer to grinding areas instead of the same dark dungeons over and over again. Most people I know that get to the end game get their gear and are done with the game, doesn’t sound very fun to me. Too me XP grind brings a lot more than end game gear grind. XP grind bring gear drops and level progression, whereas end game grind comes down to who rolls better or your DKP isn’t high enough..LOL, yeah I just said that. Once you have all your end game gear, what do you do next, except for giving it up for a green when a new expansion comes out?
They can make it good for both worlds, if they would make two different types of servers:
One for causal gamers
One for hardcore gamers
They could also truly separate PVP vs. PVE, so a nerf bat doesn’t hit the PVE players.
Anyways +1 for making it a little bit harder, it does wear the D&D label. Also MMO’s weren’t designed to have an ending, but here we are…. I prefer open end games more than closed ended.
I played from 1-36 but finished all the content (got stuck in ebon and couldn't find the way back lol...no more paths at that point).
I played as a halfling rogue and just ran through the content. I did all the side quests, but I still was always way under leveled compared to the areas I was fighting. At one point I was lvl 26 and getting level 34 equipment!
That did seem to fix itself a bit though around lvl 31...EQ was still a few levels higher, but a couple of the quests gave nice chunks of exp (4.8k or so) and that leveled me up 2 levels fairly fast.
I died once along the way...but it's really a bug that killed me. One of the boss fights (don't even remember which one) ended with a win (me killing the boss) but after killing him there was a freaaaaking swarm of enemies left over. They all ganged up on me and killed me before I could say "eeep!!". Made me have to run all the way back from the start of the dungeon......at which point all the minions were gone and I just had to open the chest. Was annoying.
Other then that I did the run through the game without using stealth at all. I found stealth to be an easy button in the last beta. Used in combo with the stealth regen abilities and regen stealth when you dodge, I could stay in it almost constantly and solo no enemies would attack me at all.
So this time I just grabbed a man at arms and used bait and switch, the first "daze" attack that stuns (can even hit more then one) and the hard hitting lacerate ability. I ran through with the primary flourish at will, and the rain of daggers at will (which is amazingly good at killing bosses while you heal etc).
Difficulty was pretty good that way once you got past the early levels though. I had to dodge around and wait for potion cool downs a few times on boss fights..and really work hard to stay alive. Difficulty would have been a bit less if I was getting lvl 22-28 gear when I could use it instead of eq 6-10 levels above me. I believe I ended up in the 31+ area (based on last beta's end point) at level 26....so the exp for finishing quests was not keeping up with the level expected this weekend. Perhaps grinding/foundry quests or events were expected to be played. I did all the side quests along the way, so didn't miss any quest exp.
Potion use got a bit better the further I went. The first "lesser potions" I ended up with like 60+ extra by the time I switched to the next level of potions. I only had like 30 of those before I switched to the healing potions..which is what I was using at the end (greater potions had dropped but only like 14 of them, so I hadn't switched yet). I had like 20 something of the healing potions when I stopped playing. I would just fill all of my item slots with the same potion type so if I needed to heal quickly, I never hit the wrong button (3-5 was all healing potions).
I played with a man at arms...who got to around level 20 I think. I would just rush level him each time he got enough exp with my astral diamonds. Was really the only use I found for astral diamonds so far really...especially since you level so fast. With such a fast leveling rate I'm not sure how crafting, buying eq off the auction house or using the seals you get for dungeons is going to matter much. Will people spend the extra time to get a bit better eq that will only be better for an hour or 2 at max....especially if it's not really needed to complete the quests content?
I still found the bonuses (especially from stats) a bit meh). Life steal, power etc...all add a fairly small amount..although it does get better later on (think my power was adding like 30 damage or something...and my base was 177-200 per weapon...and crit was adding like 7% crit). Movement speed only ever added 2% to runspeed I think...so even stacked on 3 pieces of EQ...it just didn't seem worth it. HP bonus was fairly nice even high level if you got it on multiple pieces (each added like 4% max hp....or so). Regen and life steal were really not making any difference though...and you needed waaay to much life steal to even notice it.
This weekend EQ was......not dropping always according to the level you were, partially do to leveling too slow compared to the level of content. What this really showed though was that you could totally fight in lvl 31 areas with a level 26 character who was wielding level 20-24 equipment...without a huge increase in difficulty. It made EQ seem.....unimportant I guess. I often would just sell everything ever though I could use the equipment in another 4-5 levels. I figured I would get more by then (of course by then the EQ that was dropping was 4-5 levels higher again lol). I think EQ needs to be more important/difference from level to level so you can't just ignore upgraded for 4+ levels. I think we need to gain a stat point every level instead of the current setup, and perhaps increase how much difference the stat points make. Double con's hp bonus and give the resistence bonus to all characters (not just con primary ones). Double strengths bonuses across the board. Same with cha/int/wis and even dex. Add more stat point choices in so players feel like they can create their characters...and have a direct impact on how each character plays.
At character creation, have pre-set starting points like now...that you can pick/roll through....but also give each character 4 stat points they can allocate anyway they want...again giving them more options in how they make a character.
I also never saw a reason to use gold except for purchasing my mount (and in live I think i'll get my mount free as a founder?) I mean, the stores sold stuff...and I guess if I had bothered to go to the market I could have bought eq for those levels when I didn't get any lvl appropriate EQ...but it wasn't needed so I never bothered buying anything with gold (or astral diamonds).
I think it would be good to increase the differences at each level (bonus stat point to be placed per level, eq differences are larger per level etc) and then slow down the leveling...requiring players to do foundry missions etc in order to level up to the right point for the next content (although still let them move forward if they want the extra difficulty).
Alot of my difficulty may have come through doing content at a much lower level then was intended. Allowing players to move ahead faster would give them an option in how difficulty the game is...solving the whole difficulty problem fairly easily.
Was a fun beta weekend. I didn't play hard core (10+ hours a day)...like I would probably on a real launch, but I still feel like I got a majority of the way through the games content. Even casual players (10 or less hours a week) would easily make it through that content in a month, so more needs to be added (more content...not higher levels etc...just more content per level up...more quests etc basically) to make the game last a fairly long time.
I only rolled up a CW this beta as did my buddy and we both were -2-3 levels ahead of the content. Once we got to the graveyard it started to get considerably harder to solo the end bosses only and had a lot of pot chugging which I felt is where all my money was going after that. When we grouped with just the two us us we had no problems and were still doing stuff a few levels higher than us. I would expect the CW not to be able to solo everything being a little squishier.
I wish I could have tried my rogue from the first beta because I had no problems with him getting to 30 last time, with a lot less pot chugging, and was wondering about the difficulty being different this round.
I played a cleric. Except for bosses I had no real trouble till 25th unless I was the only one in an area when adds would get me some times. Then at 25th entered the grave yard and was getting killed left and right by almost all the encounter fights. Lot of running fights thinning out the mobs getting killed and repeating. I only spent gold on my horse which I did not have quite enough of when I reached 20th but got the rest quickly otherwise really did not spend my earned gold on anything. I was below level of most the quests after 10 but did not do the multiplayer dungeons which would of made a difference.
The game was certainly easy and for Control Wizard it became a little a bit more challenging at lvl 30+ but not by much. Dungeons were super easy. I mean, yes - mobs did hit harder and had quite a bit more health, but overall pretty easy. I think the reason for the easy feeling is the fact that mobs and bosses only have 1 or 2 mechanics and mostly those are - some kind of cone attack, some kind of area attack and some kid of teleport-backstab or a charge move. You could just do one thing over and over and keep chipping any boss's health over time and be done.
I thought the difficulty was perfect. Starts out easy and gradually gets more challenging. That's the way it should be.
We haven't seen any content for the last 20 levels. It would be wise to reserve judgment on the overall difficulty until we experience the entire game. That is just my 2 cents.
Comments
First death at level 24 I think it was. at 32 some of the encounters was really hard and involved alot of kiting and potion spamming
It's my understanding that they upped the difficulty from beta weekend 1. I can't speak for the other classes though since I only tried the CW. But solo, the difficulty is just right.
What level did you reach? because game starts to get more challenging at lvl 30 onward. The current difficulty is all right and the way it should be. Making early levels hard is a bad idea for the majority of players.
It was a beta test. Not a difficulty test. The XP was ramped and the mobs were easy as a result.
I dont think thats the case unless they plan to add more quests or expect players to grind mobs for xp. Up until L20 I was doing quests of my level, after that I actually fell behind a bit and was -1 or -2 to the quest levels.
then leveling to 26 with lvl 18 gears was rough because still waiting to equip them 26 gears.
after i equip 26 gears everything uptill 33 was easy. human rogue
33 is far as i got though, so yea maybe will need to adjust some more difficulty after 26-28 hence lots of gears are allotted around 26
If Cryptic is true to form, they'll probably put in a difficulty slider of some kind at some point. Granted, it will probably only affect instances, but instances seem to be frequent enough here that you'll feel the difference.
The gorilla formerly known as Kolikos
started off simply then got hard as got into the game.
I died at black dagger after healing a very respectable 270,878 HP with my elf cleric Aurora Blight.
The game does ramp up its difficulty significantly in the mid-twenties, and it increases appropriately before that, too.
If you want difficult, have fun with Malus Blackdagger in the skirmish. That guy does not mess around.
Every time I did that skirmish people in the group were all "Is this supposed to take this long?"
The difficulty is fine...
In the mid-20's. That is a lot of easy game up to that point. Being in a group isn't a bad thing. I think the open area's could be debated on should they be easy or challenging. The easy side says, well that could be solo'ers they need to make it through. The flip coin is anyone can contribute to the kill like GW2, so you can pseudo group to get past more difficult area's. I noticed they max player in these open world instances was rather small, if they can increase that to a point, a solor'er in an open area doesn't have to be considered solo, but in general free for all play.
The game does seem to be gradually increasing in difficulty level.
Gear wise there are some level 20 blues you can buy from NPCs. Touching up gear holes with them seems to help out. I would only spend money on slots you have had a hard time updating though, otherwise even the green 24s start to compare.
let's face it..like many of the MMO's that come out .. we play them we beat them and move on to the next..
Not many games today will hold your attention for a long period of time .. like for me EQ1 did or Daoc..
Not spaming here or disliking this game.. i plan and will play this till i beat it with friends and enjoy it ..
The only thing i can see myself doing to a great extent is the Foundry creating player content
Feel free to spam
All classes were needed in 5 man dungeons.
The game felt fun. This is definitely the sweet spot, don't change a thing. (except for Control Wizard, that class needs a buff - longer control, more aoe).
Also fix the Control Wizard and Cleric dodge skills (teleports) - those two have teleports that don't calculate whether mob hit landed until the animation is finished - it was more reliable to just manually move out of the way of an attack (stepping aside), because the teleport animations took too long and the mob's hit generally landed because of this waiting till animation finished issue.
You did not play the control wizard.
They can make it good for both worlds, if they would make two different types of servers:
One for causal gamers
One for hardcore gamers
They could also truly separate PVP vs. PVE, so a nerf bat doesn’t hit the PVE players.
Anyways +1 for making it a little bit harder, it does wear the D&D label. Also MMO’s weren’t designed to have an ending, but here we are…. I prefer open end games more than closed ended.
Just my two cents
I played as a halfling rogue and just ran through the content. I did all the side quests, but I still was always way under leveled compared to the areas I was fighting. At one point I was lvl 26 and getting level 34 equipment!
That did seem to fix itself a bit though around lvl 31...EQ was still a few levels higher, but a couple of the quests gave nice chunks of exp (4.8k or so) and that leveled me up 2 levels fairly fast.
I died once along the way...but it's really a bug that killed me. One of the boss fights (don't even remember which one) ended with a win (me killing the boss) but after killing him there was a freaaaaking swarm of enemies left over. They all ganged up on me and killed me before I could say "eeep!!". Made me have to run all the way back from the start of the dungeon......at which point all the minions were gone and I just had to open the chest. Was annoying.
Other then that I did the run through the game without using stealth at all. I found stealth to be an easy button in the last beta. Used in combo with the stealth regen abilities and regen stealth when you dodge, I could stay in it almost constantly and solo no enemies would attack me at all.
So this time I just grabbed a man at arms and used bait and switch, the first "daze" attack that stuns (can even hit more then one) and the hard hitting lacerate ability. I ran through with the primary flourish at will, and the rain of daggers at will (which is amazingly good at killing bosses while you heal etc).
Difficulty was pretty good that way once you got past the early levels though. I had to dodge around and wait for potion cool downs a few times on boss fights..and really work hard to stay alive. Difficulty would have been a bit less if I was getting lvl 22-28 gear when I could use it instead of eq 6-10 levels above me. I believe I ended up in the 31+ area (based on last beta's end point) at level 26....so the exp for finishing quests was not keeping up with the level expected this weekend. Perhaps grinding/foundry quests or events were expected to be played. I did all the side quests along the way, so didn't miss any quest exp.
Potion use got a bit better the further I went. The first "lesser potions" I ended up with like 60+ extra by the time I switched to the next level of potions. I only had like 30 of those before I switched to the healing potions..which is what I was using at the end (greater potions had dropped but only like 14 of them, so I hadn't switched yet). I had like 20 something of the healing potions when I stopped playing. I would just fill all of my item slots with the same potion type so if I needed to heal quickly, I never hit the wrong button (3-5 was all healing potions).
I played with a man at arms...who got to around level 20 I think. I would just rush level him each time he got enough exp with my astral diamonds. Was really the only use I found for astral diamonds so far really...especially since you level so fast. With such a fast leveling rate I'm not sure how crafting, buying eq off the auction house or using the seals you get for dungeons is going to matter much. Will people spend the extra time to get a bit better eq that will only be better for an hour or 2 at max....especially if it's not really needed to complete the quests content?
I still found the bonuses (especially from stats) a bit meh). Life steal, power etc...all add a fairly small amount..although it does get better later on (think my power was adding like 30 damage or something...and my base was 177-200 per weapon...and crit was adding like 7% crit). Movement speed only ever added 2% to runspeed I think...so even stacked on 3 pieces of EQ...it just didn't seem worth it. HP bonus was fairly nice even high level if you got it on multiple pieces (each added like 4% max hp....or so). Regen and life steal were really not making any difference though...and you needed waaay to much life steal to even notice it.
This weekend EQ was......not dropping always according to the level you were, partially do to leveling too slow compared to the level of content. What this really showed though was that you could totally fight in lvl 31 areas with a level 26 character who was wielding level 20-24 equipment...without a huge increase in difficulty. It made EQ seem.....unimportant I guess. I often would just sell everything ever though I could use the equipment in another 4-5 levels. I figured I would get more by then (of course by then the EQ that was dropping was 4-5 levels higher again lol). I think EQ needs to be more important/difference from level to level so you can't just ignore upgraded for 4+ levels. I think we need to gain a stat point every level instead of the current setup, and perhaps increase how much difference the stat points make. Double con's hp bonus and give the resistence bonus to all characters (not just con primary ones). Double strengths bonuses across the board. Same with cha/int/wis and even dex. Add more stat point choices in so players feel like they can create their characters...and have a direct impact on how each character plays.
At character creation, have pre-set starting points like now...that you can pick/roll through....but also give each character 4 stat points they can allocate anyway they want...again giving them more options in how they make a character.
I also never saw a reason to use gold except for purchasing my mount (and in live I think i'll get my mount free as a founder?) I mean, the stores sold stuff...and I guess if I had bothered to go to the market I could have bought eq for those levels when I didn't get any lvl appropriate EQ...but it wasn't needed so I never bothered buying anything with gold (or astral diamonds).
I think it would be good to increase the differences at each level (bonus stat point to be placed per level, eq differences are larger per level etc) and then slow down the leveling...requiring players to do foundry missions etc in order to level up to the right point for the next content (although still let them move forward if they want the extra difficulty).
Alot of my difficulty may have come through doing content at a much lower level then was intended. Allowing players to move ahead faster would give them an option in how difficulty the game is...solving the whole difficulty problem fairly easily.
Was a fun beta weekend. I didn't play hard core (10+ hours a day)...like I would probably on a real launch, but I still feel like I got a majority of the way through the games content. Even casual players (10 or less hours a week) would easily make it through that content in a month, so more needs to be added (more content...not higher levels etc...just more content per level up...more quests etc basically) to make the game last a fairly long time.
I wish I could have tried my rogue from the first beta because I had no problems with him getting to 30 last time, with a lot less pot chugging, and was wondering about the difficulty being different this round.
We haven't seen any content for the last 20 levels. It would be wise to reserve judgment on the overall difficulty until we experience the entire game. That is just my 2 cents.