State of The Game

crosschan · August 2013

Neverwinter Online State of The Game

Dear Cryptic/PW,

Remember these? How about tossing one our way?

Thanks,
-Cross :biggrin:

xaogarrent · August 2013

Oh, but what oh what would they say?

Risk "promising" people a new zone again?

Talk about that XP gifting thing we were told we were getting ages ago?

As much as I'd like to see another across the board powers balancing, even if such a thing were announced, would we really want it right now?

Supergroup bases? Foundry? Any other number of things STO has that we've been wanting for how long?

I guess we might be getting auras sooner or later, but that's already been mentioned already, as well.

Sorry to be negative, but I can't really see them announcing anything that they, A: Haven't already or B: Isn't completely unrealistic.

crosschan · August 2013

While I do not disagree with you entirely, there is the possibility that "The Miracle That is Cryptic North" might come up with something....even if it's some bug fixes? Overall, I'd just like the basic attempt at this level of communication to occur. If there's nothing then come right out and say it. It would be SOMETHING.

kojirohellfire · August 2013

I guess they don't want to depress us. How thoughtful. Curious, does the New World Order have drow yet?

itsbrou · August 2013

States of the game are for young games.

zer0x0ne · August 2013

State of the game: Lethargic.

That wasn't so hard, devs, was it?

zahinder · August 2013

They can't even manage to tell us that Cryptic North exists.

That's... yeah.

nextnametaken · August 2013

PWE recently shut down all but North American access to RaiderZ which was only released a year ago.

Be content you still have a game to play when there are only 300 people in the main zone at 8PM server time and only a handful of them are paying fifty cents a day to play.

draogn · August 2013

nextnametaken wrote: »

PWE recently shut down all but North American access to RaiderZ which was only released a year ago.

Be content you still have a game to play when there are only 300 people in the main zone at 8PM server time and only a handful of them are paying fifty cents a day to play.

That isn't how it works.

Being thankful for the sake of being thankful doesn't get anything accomplished.

lafury001200 · August 2013

nextnametaken wrote: »

PWE recently shut down all but North American access to RaiderZ which was only released a year ago.

Be content you still have a game to play when there are only 300 people in the main zone at 8PM server time and only a handful of them are paying fifty cents a day to play.

Ummm...what? Who are you and what have you done with my friend? Yikes.

Too topic:

I think Crosschan is on too something. There have been...I dunno I wanna say "stealth patched qol changes" or some such. No one has noticed some cosmetic changes in certain old enemy npc groups? Some changes to Demonflame? A whole lotta Canadian purple tinge lately?

Someone is working on Champions Online on stuff that isn't made front page news.

Tinfoil hat time: I think it's Cryptic North. The changes I noticed happened roughly around the time the publicly acknowledeg creation date in the article indicates.

Now we know they are working on all titles, not just Champs. My question, to TT specifically; Are they being trained on code much like TB was with plans on being moved up as their knowledge base grows/code familiarizing etc? Or as some suggest, will this mean that the amount of content will increase as we have an (albeit) floating staff now?

neuraldamage · August 2013

crosschan wrote: »

While I do not disagree with you entirely, there is the possibility that "The Miracle That is Cryptic North" might come up with something....even if it's some bug fixes? Overall, I'd just like the basic attempt at this level of communication to occur. If there's nothing then come right out and say it. It would be SOMETHING.

C'mon... saying nothing so they can pretend no problem exists has been their MO for years now.

I highly doubt this will change.

chaelk · August 2013

laughed at a thread on Nevermind forums.

someone complained that Fury of the feywild is NOT a F2P game because you have to use INGAME currency to access part of it.
someone had told them you had to pay for the new area and someone else confirmed it. I posted the link to the CORREC T info.

founder packs cost money. module is free.

morfedel2069 · August 2013

Well, I'm not sure to think about this. One the one hand, general griping about an mmo on the forums is pretty common; you see it happening with even the most popular games, even at the height of their popularity.

This being the case, I have to wonder... I stopped playing CO over a year ago.... in fact, longer, because it didn't have enough content. I mean, I have to say, CO seemed like a better game in terms of customability of the characters, power mix and matching, etc, over COH and DCUO.

and I have to tell you, I loved the halloween zombie pvp stuff. That was amazing!

But actual stuff to do seemed to just run out real fast, with only a few zones total. I got bored, fast, and that with hitting a level 33 character.

Well, I started wanting to play again just a little over a year ago, logged on for like, oh, a month, and didn't come back. It seemed like little had changed.

So I just started thinking about coming back again, and maybe even subscribing since every single one of my characters are gold level characters, and I'd LOVE to be able to play them. But, I began wondering if it still had the same problem, if any real content had been added in the last year or so.

And then I see this thread.

So now I'm not so sure it's worth it.

So, have they added much in terms of playable content in the last year or so?

meedacthunist · August 2013

morfedel2069 wrote: »

So, have they added much in terms of playable content in the last year or so?

Short answer:
No.

Long answer:
No, only a few quests and maybe a new Alert or two.

morfedel2069 · August 2013

meedacthunist wrote: »

Short answer:
No.

Long answer:
No, only a few quests and maybe a new Alert or two.

That's... most unfortunate.

Having once worked in the software field myself, I don't entirely blame them. If the game isn't doing well, they can't afford the staff to continue to update the game. Still, if they don't update, they lose more people, etc, until it eventually goes the way of COH; it becomes a vicious downward death spiral.

And that's too bad. If they had more content, I'd have said this game would have outshown both DCUO and COH easily. It was the lack of content that had me eventually move on to other things.

morfedel2069 · August 2013

meedacthunist wrote: »

Short answer:
No.

Long answer:
No, only a few quests and maybe a new Alert or two.

Are you all still playing, or just posting here without playing? I see people do that in the forums of other games.

zahinder · August 2013

chaelk wrote: »

laughed at a thread on Nevermind forums.

someone complained that Fury of the feywild is NOT a F2P game because you have to use INGAME currency to access part of it.
someone had told them you had to pay for the new area and someone else confirmed it. I posted the link to the CORREC T info.

founder packs cost money. module is free.

Except the amount of ingame currency... for a number of people it's effectively pay to play.

The module takes 120 or 150 gold and 300k AD to unlock fully. That's... more than any of my characters have, so to do it I'll either have to grind lengthily or... spend cash.

People who grind dungeons a lot won't have problems, probably. Except they are removing one of the major sources of revenue for dungeon running.

I dunno. Enough of an ingame cost shifts the functional definition.

zahinder · August 2013

morfedel2069 wrote: »

Are you all still playing, or just posting here without playing? I see people do that in the forums of other games.

I post without playing. Because this is my favorite game I can't bear to play, and I keep holding out a faint hope that the game will improve enough to want to play.

(Foundry, for example, would have me running around shouting for joy, but I know there's a close to 0 chance of it happening. Which makes me very sad)

nesno · August 2013

crosschan wrote: »

Neverwinter Online State of The Game

Dear Cryptic/PW,

Remember these? How about tossing one our way?

Thanks,
-Cross :biggrin:

It's hard to release a state of the game when all of the revenue flows from this game to fund other projects and their state of production and deployment to operations. Expecting to be treated like anything more that the hookers we are would be setting false expectations and creating illusions around our current position on the priority list. You see PWE owns Champions online but they don't own the franchise to Star Trek, if that flops then they are open to monetary risks. Champions online will never see the light of day to production values as NW and STO. It will never happen, ever, in fact all real MMO landlord ownership stopped right when STO went into production and ceased almost completely when STO went live. Ever since then it's been a theme park MMO model. You come for awhile, spend some cash and move on. But Although I would say CO is more like a cheap carnival ran by little people with grubby little hands, they freak me out.

-Xeno

cgta1967 · August 2013

I seem to remember CO having things made since STO went live....

I also seem to remember things being made and going live very recently.....

doesnt seem so doom'y to me.

.

meedacthunist · August 2013

morfedel2069 wrote: »

Are you all still playing, or just posting here without playing? I see people do that in the forums of other games.

I'm still playing through CO, though not very often. Slowly crawling with all my toons to 40.

nextnametaken · August 2013

zahinder wrote: »

I post without playing. Because this is my favorite game I can't bear to play, and I keep holding out a faint hope that the game will improve enough to want to play.

This kills games. Missing bodies do not make communities.

zahinder · August 2013

How do you mean?

canadascott · August 2013

Depressingly little has changed since about October of last year, although it has picked up since NWO went into open beta and I have hopes for some cool stuff coming down the pike.

I do have strong reason to believe that Cryptic North is working on some very cool things for us in the near term. It may not be exactly what we're clamoring for, and I suspect CO's primarily being used to train Cryptic North to work with the engine while they put together a proposal for Cryptic's next generation MMO, but I do think we'll be the beneficiary of a reasonable amount of content over the next six months.

It's not as much as I'd like, not by a long shot, and it's not the major shot in the arm that this game needs. But it's not DOOM! either.

vorshoth · August 2013

I still play and will continue to, I'm not as excited about what's going on with the game overall, as it seems like we're getting a lot of promises of interesting and new content when all we get is ways for the game to fund other games.
It's lost a lot of its heart. I think when we shifted the items to the type without any fluff text to them, it was then the fun began to wane for me personally.
Alerts too, though they make sense as 'filler' analogous to what comics do to keep sales going between meaningful stories... Well... They're not really tha fun in my opinion.

We don't need States of the Game posts. No, leave those for games in a state they want to talk about. Instead... We need an Earth-Shattering-Kaboom Event. At least three MMOs I know of have done it when things go bad and stale.
Nuke the newbie area to give the game a fresh appearence to get more people in as quick revenue to improve this game, not others.
In short...
I am calling for Destroyer's Orbital Cannons to be fired anew on Millenium City, with slightly less damage than is implied having happened previously due to the improved structure.

Make it big and distracting, enough that it gives time to make zones that aren't mostly one-colour eye pains, or mission things that feel like they exist within the universe's timeline and not a disconnected bubble of filler between 'episodes'.

kojirohellfire · August 2013

cgta1967 wrote: »

I seem to remember CO having things made since STO went live....

I also seem to remember things being made and going live very recently.....

doesnt seem so doom'y to me.

.

Temporary content that's easily completed in about 15 to 30 minutes yet takes months to release completely? I don't think you have a solid grasp on what kind of updates are expected from an MMO.

Sure, it's not "nothing," but it can hardly qualify as "something" either.

gamehobo · August 2013

canadascott wrote: »

I do have strong reason to believe that Cryptic North is working on some very cool things for us in the near term. It may not be exactly what we're clamoring for, and I suspect CO's primarily being used to train Cryptic North to work with the engine while they put together a proposal for Cryptic's next generation MMO, but I do think we'll be the beneficiary of a reasonable amount of content over the next six months.

I am interested in hearing your reasoning for this belief.

caycepollard · August 2013

gamehobo wrote: »

I am interested in hearing your reasoning for this belief.

I'm going to guess that it's "blind optimism". :redface:

canadascott · August 2013

caycepollard wrote: »

I'm going to guess that it's "blind optimism". :redface:

Yep. That's me. Mr. Blind Optimism. That sums up my historys oh so well after all these years on these boards.

Of course, there was also me spending seventy hours straight eating cotton candy, and riding "It's A Small World After All" in Disneyland while watching Sound of Music on my iphone along with a busload of singing nuns. Which occurred right after I attended the Make-A-Wish Foundation's Happinessfest 13 presentation of twenty consecutive grade school performances of "Pollyanna" and "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown" over at the Hayley Mills School for the Performing Arts. Which I attended right after being tied to a chair for twelve hours with my eyelids forced open while Jon Sills' most optimistic posts were recited dieectly into my eardrums at a volume comparable to a space shuttle launch. After which I finally could no longer stand it, but just had to Gene Kelly my way into this singing, dancing, crazy sunshine world of ours so full of hope and joy and beauty and Ned Flanders that I came bursting onto these boards to tell the world "Hallelujah ladies and gentlemen, sing it to the rooftops. THE NEXT SIX MONTHS FOR THIS GAME MIGHT NOT COMPLETELY SUCK!"

It is said that sarcasm is hard to portray on the Internet. Hopefully I have managed to overcome that difficulty. And yes, I have my reasons, but some of them are based on private conversations that should remain private, and others are educated inferences from those conversations based on ten years of game producing and design experience and dealing with the internal politics of game companies that lead me to believe things are in motion. While I may very well be mistaken, and computer game companies are capricious beasts prone to changing direction at a moment's notice, I am not blind.

biffsmackwell · August 2013

canadascott wrote: »

Yep. That's me. Mr. Blind Optimism. That sums up my historys oh so well after all these years on these boards.

Of course, there was also me spending seventy hours straight eating cotton candy, and riding "It's A Small World After All" in Disneyland while watching Sound of Music on my iphone along with a busload of singing nuns. Which occurred right after I attended the Make-A-Wish Foundation's Happinessfest 13 presentation of twenty consecutive grade school performances of "Pollyanna" and "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown" over at the Hayley Mills School for the Performing Arts. Which I attended right after being tied to a chair for twelve hours with my eyelids forced open while Jon Sills' most optimistic posts were recited dieectly into my eardrums at a volume comparable to a space shuttle launch. After which I finally could no longer stand it, but just had to Gene Kelly my way into this singing, dancing, crazy sunshine world of ours so full of hope and joy and beauty and Ned Flanders that I came bursting onto these boards to tell the world "Hallelujah ladies and gentlemen, sing it to the rooftops. THE NEXT SIX MONTHS FOR THIS GAME MIGHT NOT COMPLETELY SUCK!"

It is said that sarcasm is hard to portray on the Internet. Hopefully I have managed to overcome that difficulty. And yes, I have my reasons, but some of them are based on private conversations that should remain private, and others are educated inferences from those conversations based on ten years of game producing and design experience and dealing with the internal politics of game companies that lead me to believe things are in motion. While I may very well be mistaken, and computer game companies are capricious beasts prone to changing direction at a moment's notice, I am not blind.

/applause

.=-

zahinder · August 2013

Well, if you have strong reasons that you can't tell us about... ... what the heck are we supposed to do?

We don't know you, and any winking and nodding about stuff you may or may not be 'in the know' could A) be complete BS, or

you were BSd to.

So, um. Yeah.

Sorry, I'm going with track record over 'TRUST ME GOD TOLD ME'

zahinder · August 2013

So got that itch from these threads, rolled a new character (deer-themed Inferno... Hart Burn. Hyuk hyuk)

Finished tutorial.

... I am literally depressed thinking of how cool this game would be with Foundry. But without it, all those cool costume ideas and themes...sigh.

nextnametaken · August 2013

Sounds like you have depression. its not the game, its you.
Get help and then find something to enjoy in life.

biffsmackwell · August 2013

zahinder wrote: »

... I am literally depressed thinking of how cool this game would be with Foundry.

nextnametaken wrote: »

Sounds like you have depression. its not the game, its you.

How on Earth did you come to this conclusion!? :biggrin:

zahinder · August 2013

Well, there WAS the recent Telepathy overhaul...

kojirohellfire · August 2013

zahinder wrote: »

Well, if you have strong reasons that you can't tell us about... ... what the heck are we supposed to do?

We don't know you, and any winking and nodding about stuff you may or may not be 'in the know' could A) be complete BS, or you were BSd to.

So, um. Yeah.

Sorry, I'm going with track record over 'TRUST ME GOD TOLD ME'

A little bit of Internet sleuthing could do you well. Judging from the apparent fact that his name is "Scott" and that in the past he's made references to working on games including the Champions RPG itself, it's a simple matter to deduce that he's none other than Scott Bennie.

So the odds that he's privy to some insider info are pretty good.

Me? I'll wait and see if what he claims ever comes to fruition. I'm prepared to meet the worst, though.

canadascott · August 2013

zahinder wrote: »

Well, there WAS the recent Telepathy overhaul...

Heh.

As for what to do, I would hope I've left enough of a record on these boards that my credibility should not be dismissed out of hand, and enough a paper trail to establish I'm not a "blind optimist". If it's necessary to defend that assertion, I can post some links. But it does seem silly to have to go to that lengths to defend the proposition that "Cryptic North is working on CO, and there's some cool stuff in the works in the near term". Even without what I've surmised from things I've heard the devs say, it's not a spectacularly difficult claim to believe. We know that the current CO producer Lordgar has historic ties to that studio and we've seen new content arrive at a reasonably steady pace since NWO went beta. It's not like I'm saying a new zone, a Foundry or a nemesis system revamp is in the works, much as I'd love them to be able to credibly make those claims. I understand the skepticism, but there's skepticism that's supported by a reasonable analysis of the facts and a credible analysis of the individuals making their claims, and then there's a blanket dismissal of whatever doesn't fit your worldview, be it positive or negative. I would hope for the former.

Now, if I *were* put on my skeptical cap, I might question whether the dev's unwillingness and/or ability to adjust the FM's difficulty makes confidence in their ability to reliably deliver that cool content difficult to justify. Hopefully as Cryptic North gets more experience with the system under their belt, they'll develop better testing procedures and adjustment protocols.But time will tell; the feedback from today's new alert isn't encouraging (it does take time for a gamer population to adjust to new content that's designed to be difficult, but it does sound like there are some design flaws that need adjusting as well). Their ability to fix these two alerts are probably a good litmus test.

zahinder · August 2013

Oh sure. I think it's reasonable to conclude that Cryptic North exists, is at least partially working on CO, and will roll out some content in the near future.

I was just balking a bit at the notion that we're getting much more than a few alerts and events, a few more boxes, and maybe another few vehicles.

If that's all you were suggesting, then my bad!

crosschan · August 2013

lafury001200 wrote: »

Ummm...what? Who are you and what have you done with my friend? Yikes.

Too topic:

I think Crosschan is on too something. There have been...I dunno I wanna say "stealth patched qol changes" or some such. No one has noticed some cosmetic changes in certain old enemy npc groups? Some changes to Demonflame? A whole lotta Canadian purple tinge lately?

Someone is working on Champions Online on stuff that isn't made front page news.

Tinfoil hat time: I think it's Cryptic North. The changes I noticed happened roughly around the time the publicly acknowledeg creation date in the article indicates.

Now we know they are working on all titles, not just Champs. My question, to TT specifically; Are they being trained on code much like TB was with plans on being moved up as their knowledge base grows/code familiarizing etc? Or as some suggest, will this mean that the amount of content will increase as we have an (albeit) floating staff now?

Take this as you like but it's information I have to share reguarding your post. Stealth Patching of the live files and such has been going on for years now. Brou made a thread which illustrated just the tip of the iceberg of what's there. Just last night I ran a Bludhound Dockside and they've made updates to his costume(he's less veiny now and has fireglow eyes...I am uncertain as to when this actually happened though since it kinda caught me offguard). A while back a picture of Trump Knight, PnP Villian, showed up on the forums from the Live Files yet....he's nowhere to be seen. Minor edits, costume updates, and the creation of things we have no access to seem to be par for the course. The rumors of "Something big" have been floating around in various channels and groups of players for years now. So Cryptic North may very well be up to something but the real question, for us, should be will we ever see anything from these particular changes? Do the pieces add up to anything? If this is, indeed, a new project, then will it see completion or take a spot next to PvE Survival(which never hit Live for player access)?

Zahinder: In all honesty CO's communication boils down to TT(who does a better job than ANYONE who has ever held his position with this game and, IMO, constantly raises his own personal bar), Lordgar(who makes the occasional post but is mostly associated with PTS notes), and some convserations which occur "off the radar." It's is true that in some cases a player will encounter someone either ingame, on PTS, or through other means of communication and learn something via chat.

The problem then becomes if I, for example, know something you do not and I tell you then "faith" is kinda all I have to back it up. Actual proof of some claims could put the jobs and livelyhood of employees in jeopardy and, despite some of the venom seen on these forums from time to time, I do not believe anyone here really wants that. This is the reason that some people, like myself, try to reach out to TT/Cryptic/Devs/PW/Anybody and get proper communication on these kinds of things. If for nothing else than it would be a good PR move for them to actually make these kinds of announcements either here and/or on the main page than it would if a player beat them to the punch.

Having said that, if Thundrax is talking about what I think he is talking about then I would be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and I understand why he is being so Cryptic. Heck, IMO, the guy should be the story writer for this game since that is something that has been sorely lacking for a while now. Of course, the problem with this is, again, you'd have to take my word to support taking his word so....dunno what to tell you, honestly. Sorry.

Kojiro: Clever = Clever :biggrin:

zahinder · August 2013

My #1 complaint about Cryptic is their communication. On all their games.

#2 would be 'why the frak have a test server if you aren't going to look at any of the bug reports?'

#3 would be 'oh wai no CO foundry????'

State of The Game

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