yeah, it seems a bit odd that they're still "evaluating" whatever to determine real issues. Reminds me of management I've dealt with in the past that wouldn't move a muscle until you gave them "metrics" to work off of.
It could be that they need a framework of in game data and it just takes time to gather that data. In other words, not just players experiences, but what the industry would call "replicate-able" data. data that they can replicate at will that provides those metrics. In some industries, that replicate-able data is critical to isolating a problem, so you actually fix the problem instead of just putting a Band-Aid over cancer.
Could be that they know the players don't like the grind, but they also know that when players express frustration with a "grind" it's more then just one element. Players tend to express frustration with "grind" when whatever they are grinding on isn't engaging enough or rewarding enough. so metering out changes in those areas can require a balance of many elements, not just boosting exp by X %. It could be that they want a holistic approach at this point, and not just more "temp fixes". perhaps they have a bigger overhaul that will benefit the game in larger ways, but they want to do it right this time...
But even given that, a simply exp boost for anything involving the level 61 onwards would be a good start. You would call that the "emergency bandaging" to keep things afloat until you get a deeper understanding. to continue my medical example...if the doctors spend too much time discussing what to do to a patient...and the patient dies...the doctors failed their primary purpose. I think the real issue is lots of players see this game on the edge of it's "death knells". So emergency bandages is a necessary item at this point...metrics bedammed.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
edited August 2015
Agreed. The thing that Strum said that caused me to go "Whoa, hold on" was that the defense of "But it's been months!" was "Well, things take months."
You can't survive like that. Some decisions (long term ones) obviously take months, but if your decision making process as a whole takes that long to enact, get a new decision making process. Businesses in the 21st century need to be agile; failing to achieve that agility is a death sentence.
Agreed. The thing that Strum said that caused me to go "Whoa, hold on" was that the defense of "But it's been months!" was "Well, things take months."
You can't survive like that. Some decisions (long term ones) obviously take months, but if your decision making process as a whole takes that long to enact, get a new decision making process. Businesses in the 21st century need to be agile; failing to achieve that agility is a death sentence.
I agree completely. The decision cycle has been too long. We should've at least heard more about prospective changes, if not actually seeing them implemented yet.
This has led me to believe that Cryptic is not concerned with long term player retention, and that they only care about short-money from new players
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Since the next big WotC friendly module is Underdark, I suspect that may be where the big emphasis is. But near as I'm aware, there's not even an official release date for it yet.
So many people complaining about experience and the time it takes to hit 70. I'm fine with that, honestly, and this is a problem so simple and small in comparison to some of the other problems out there that people shouldn't even be complaining about it. Yes, I agree, nerfing experience rewards and then charging $50 for a booster to get you to 70 in the same amount of time it should have taken you before the nerf was a pretty scumbag move, but it's not a PROBLEM- it's the opinion of lazy gamers who want everything right now. Ask the community what they think and you'll always get inconsequential answers like this. You want to discuss actual problems? Here are some:
1.) Increasing Item Level You guys want to promote people making alts. I get that. It's seriously disappointing enough knowing you have to level to 70 but then you consider gear. Yes, you can do dungeons to get gear. Yes, you can get free artifacts. You even get the best weapon and offhand now just for doing quests and hitting 70. That's great and all, but consider what you have to do to upgrade those items. For starters, let's talk enchantments. You have to have enchantments in your gear. Upgrading enchantments from rank 7 to rank 10 is scaled horribly when you consider both stats and the cost to upgrade them. Personally, I buy rank 10s because it's so much easier to upgrade them to rank 12 than it is to buy 7s and upgrade them. By the time you upgrade your own rank 7 enchantment to rank 10, you've probably spent 2x or 3x the amount of AD it would have cost you to just buy a rank 10 straight from the AH. This is a problem that turns people off to the idea of making alts (and in some cases gearing their main character). Next, you need to upgrade your artifacts. Thanks to the botters, this is sitting perfect and is actually very reasonable and cost efficient for people to upgrade. The problem is after the botters are stopped. Then what? It becomes a mundane grind to feed your artifact 12034802174 enchants. Theoretically, people can upgrade their artifacts at no cost. Realistically, they'll have rank 140 artifacts by next year (if they're lucky) by farming enemies. THEN you consider your artifact GEAR. Sure, sure- you can use your farming enchants to get items... but you have to upgrade them as well. You can even do your leadership professions and get free refining items... but it takes over a month to legitimately level leadership and make your own profession people to do the tasks. Basically, your options for upgrading are: farm non-stop, every day for over a year to completely upgrade your stuff or throw money at something to make it go faster. These are both unacceptable options and extremely BORING. This type of "upgrading" feels more like a job or a chore than a fun game. So do these dailies and boons. Everything in this game so far has been a boring, uneventful, and tedious grind. Throughout my time playing this game I have seen so many people quit simply because of how long and arduous this upgrading process is. Nobody likes feeling horribly under-geared all the time, especially when high item levels are required to not only get into these dungeons but also because the community requires insanely high item levels just to join a party. Really? Some one with an item level of 3k? 4k? It's the people who are 2k that NEED to do these dungeons because they legitimately need the gear but can't get into them because, ironically, their item level isn't high enough. Do you know that there are people playing this game currently that STILL haven't completed an epic dungeon?? This leads me to my next problem...
2.) Lack of Content You grind to 70. You get your stuff from dungeons. Now it's time to... Wait- what? There's nothing to do? You have your gear. Your friends have their gear. There's literally NOTHING to do that you feel the actual need to do and nothing that's worth doing otherwise. Run eLoL 50 million times, crossing your fingers for the Horn to drop, hoping to sell it for a mil? Chances are you'll probably spend all of that upgrading your gear because of the ridiculous amount of refinement points needed compared to the horribly low availability of refining items. Then what? Do it AGAIN?? Totally not fun. There are so many AD sinks in this game and not enough ways for people to make it. Some people don't want to farm leadership on 50 characters. Not exactly fun. Some people don't want to spend money on the game. That's not fun or feasible in some cases.
These are my two biggest problems simply because they're the two main reasons why I see people quitting. More problems? Ok.
3.) PvP Pv-what? It's so trashy now. For starters, Tenacity NEVER should have been a stackable stat- that was just stupid. It should have been a 50% blanket effect across the board when you queue up for PvP and that's it. This is also the only game I've ever played with this much control in PvP. All PvP has become is a contest to see which class has the best control or exploitable features. PvP in this game is about 5% skill, 75% gear, and 20% knowing which skills aren't working properly. You can be a completely awful player and still rock in PvP as long as your IL is 4k+. How is that fun? Or you can roll with a premade and get matched up against kids with less than half of that IL. How is that fun? I've been on both sides and it's not fun AT ALL. Plus, these modes are getting completely boring. What about team death matches? What about a last man standing match out of 20 people? Anything would be better than this king of the hill HAMSTER. Go to a node to see which unkillable tank will be there holding it all game? Pu-lease. At least with different modes you could make other class builds a little more viable. Oh, and get rid of the Leaderboard. It only promotes elitism, making an already bad PvP community even more intolerable.
4.) Bug Fixes I don't know about you guys, but if I made a game that I wanted to make money off of and have it last a while to keep making money off of it, I'd make fixing bugs my top priority. Instead, we get "new" content to distract us from the problems. Unfortunately, that doesn't work. This is the internet. People talk and people listen. These bugs are also killing the game. Unable to complete quests. Skills not working properly. Items not working properly. Things people PAY REAL MONEY FOR not working properly. I think I can speak for the majority of the Neverwinter community when I say I would rather the release date of new content be pushed back another month before it was released with all of these bugs. I strongly recommend fixing what you already have before you add more stuff that's also buggy. You'll solve 2 problems by giving people more time to catch up gear-wise and you'll keep people thinking that you actually care abut the quality of your game. Do you know what my honest opinion is? Right now, my opinion is that Cryptic only gives a HAMSTER about money and not about their player base or the quality of game they're providing them. The ONLY reason I'm still playing this game after quitting so many times is because there's literally nothing else out there to play. This game is actually pretty fun. It's a shame that greed and negligence is ruining it. The next game that is released that pays attention to quality, balance, and their community will likely steal most of what's left of this community. And that's sad.
5.) Class Balancing No, I don't mean "nerf this and buff that." I play all classes and all classes have their problems. CWs should NOT ignore any amount of control resist AT ALL. That's stupid. GFs should NOT be able to be unkillable and also able to take away 3/4 of your life with 1 attack. They're tanks. Let them tank. If they want to go DPS, let them go DPS but make their block less effective. GWFs do HAMSTER amounts of damage as Destroyer. It's the only viable path. Sentinel is supposed to be a tanky path. Cool. You get a lot of additional threat but nothing to help you survive when you actually get it because of how poorly these epic dungeons are designed. All Sentinels get are damage resist buffs that really don't matter at all when you still get 1-shot. They need to absorb some damage or something to make them viable tanks. But how do you do that without breaking them in PvP? Hmm... Since you guys can't separate PvE and PvP, maybe you can do something like activating unstoppable as a Sentinel increases your damage resist and your GWF spirit absorbs 50% of all incoming damage. Make it 10% in PvP or something and the damage resist half as effective. The point I'm trying to make is that you guys are buffing one thing, nerfing another, making some classes worthless (SW) and some OP as hell (GWF, OP). Then there's the gimmicky classes like the HR. Essentially, what you're doing is taking 2 paragon choices and 3 paragon paths and making them all useless except for 1 build. The OP is a great example of how you SHOULD be building your classes. OPs can either go full tank, full DPS, or full heals. THAT'S awesome and makes it a highly versatile class. All I'm trying to say is that DPS classes shouldn't be tanky and tanks shouldn't have high DPS. You NEED to find a way to balance this like I suggested with the GF above.
The biggest problem is still the first 2 I mentioned. Sad thing is that you could solve that problem by adding more dungeons worth doing. Make gear more versatile and add more of it. Find ways (maybe set bonuses again like HV) to make certain sets more appealing than others for certain builds. For example, armor set for Instigator, Destroyer, and Sentinel that gives bonuses to those specific paths in some way. Go a little more "above and beyond" to do it but do it without completely ruining other classes. What about a refining item dungeon? People want end-game content AND they want to be able to upgrade their stuff. Why not make a 3-boss dungeon that has a really nice chance of each boss dropping a black opal. Want to make money off of it? Make it 2 chests. 1 chest, opened normally, with something like 10-20k worth of refining items in it (bind them to account if you're afraid of flooding the market), and another chest that you need to open with keys from the Zen market that have a small chance of containing something like a brilliant diamond (or even some new lesser version of the diamond that still awards a high amount of RP- emeralds? topazes?). What about Skirmish credits? Something you get at the end of the run, in whatever amount, that you can use at the bazaar somewhere to buy some useful stuff that are bound to account? Maybe some Man-at-arms or something actually USEFUL. If you want to promote people spending more money on the game, the VIP program is a cool start, but what about lockboxes? Cool, you get tradebars, but there's nothing useful to buy with them at a reasonable cost except for coalescent wards. Maybe you could throw the man-at-arms and stuff in there. I don't know. It just seems too much to me like you're making the game free to play but expensive to get anywhere or get things you want. My main character has an item level of 3.8k. I'm sitting pretty well for myself. What about other people? What about the newcomers? From their perspective, this game just looks like a constant disappointment to them for all of the reasons I mentioned above, and these things are just a collection of players' complaints that I've heard directly from members of my guilds.
i want to throw my vision of what will improve neverwinter if they change something in future :
1 : renable old closed dungeons
2 : reevaluate some one shoting hits from monsters (i have an idea for that and i will tell about it later in thread)
3 : lower the price of greater mark of potency (for new players it prevent too much from upgrading artefacts fast)
4 : make a diminushing return (or a window when for 3 seconds if the same ability is used against the same player : reduce by 80 % the effectiveness of it )of abilities that are the same and stacks in pvp (exemple abilities from hunter ranger , this will allow diversity too in group/guild/team play )
5 : UNIFORMIZE kinds of players : the casual player , the 15 day per month player , and the "every time" here player (i will explain details later in thread)
6 : upgrade by 2,5 times the exp we get from quests and monsters after level 60 , i tell you , your base player will grow if you do that , because every one want to try new classes and not staying on a single class an entire month , it's boring to use always "the same skills" in the "same area" .
7 : revise the percent of chances of upgrading runes and enchants : depending of the power of the enchant or rune
for exemple make the 1 % on vorpals etc become at least 10 % , 1 % is nothing it's a chance on 100 , it's not enough .
the highest rank enchants should have at least 10 % of chance of getting upgraded .
details :
2 : make a low cost enchant that work like that : "if you take more that 75 % of your hp in one hit , reduce that hit to 75 % hp removed , work only every 15 seconds , so the player after procing that effect , will know that he need to stay safe of danger for these 15 seconds .(in utility slot) , only one will work if more sloted)
5 : for casuals make dungeons 1600 less harder for the ones that are very difficult , casual gamers who try to reach these dungeons after level 70 are frustrated and a lot of them leave because they fail and are unable to progress and get items .and upgrade the number of seals you can get from these dungeons .
for the 15 days per month player : make artefacts more easily obtainable , the upgrade system : why to not make we can upgrade it with enchants too ? or at least reduce the points needed to upgrade artefacts after "epic" state. and the price of component needed to upgrade it (refinement and upgrade )
make 2000 dungeons less harder because even sometimes at 2000 gear score we get kicked out , again upgrade the number of seals we can get out from a dungeon .
the very time player , will benefit from all this , and can focus on what ? rerolling another class or continue his way on same class ,
reduce the power of tankiness of the protection paladin (make him able to tank more only if they are players around him, or something like that), according to reducting the monsters damage , a paladin protection can tank epic events in icewind dale and a devotion can't , i don't want that devotion "can" tank epic encounters but if you are a great weapon fighter or something you have no chance at all , so the "balance" is not here.
most encounters epic (example icewind dale) need to be "15 players max" not more (i don't talk abou tiamat like encounter or dragons which is different).
by doing this the game will drop from "elitists " (dominating) players
to "thanks god less pain " for all players
edit 11/08/2015 : with mod 7 stronghold they have augmented the numbers of seals after finished a dungeon or skirmish so , let's see if it will be better .
my issue that i have is that i have linked my xbox account and my pc account and i have spent a lot of money on zen for my pc why can you not at least let us get items like mounts and companions with the linked account if i bought already for pc version why do i have to rebuy for xbox version cant they give it to us like we can when we log with a new character? i think this will b helpful
PVE: Whether it's a building structure or a landscape, getting stuck in the environment happens too easily. There are many options to get into a blackout area of a map which creates uncertainty as to whether I should or could explore this for some kind of reward and frequently this results in getting stuck somewhere. Clear boundaries for playable and off-limit areas might help. However there are also many circumstances in which getting stuck inside a playable area results. I'm guessing that reporting on specific locations inside a playable area is the best way to get to fixing this kind of getting stuck. Logging out usually resolves the problem but not always (eg. I was stuck in lava in Hotenow but was unkillable so I took off all gear to die).
PVE/PVP: Unlimited 'physical' projectiles doesn't make sense to me (ie. Hunter and Rogue classes predominantly) and seems to be a source of OP for these classes. I deleted the character I created first, a Rogue, right after getting to Protector's Enclave because I don't like the unlimited dagger mechanism. A resource management mechanism/s would make more sense and provide a Profession option for weapon creation and/or repair. The irony is even presented within the opening map of the game with a quest to resupply the archers with arrows retrievable from the battlefield. A deeper application would be to consider the damage incurred to a projectile when used and how much sharpness it loses or if it even breaks and essentially is unusable. I started a separate discussion on this topic today in the Player feedback section before checking this section.
PVE/PVP: There's at least one companion I've found that can cause damage to allies. This exemplifies and also proves that it is possible to implement AoE effects on allies. I can't comprehend why allies are immune to splash damage period. Making it impossible to lock on and attack an ally would prevent/lessen the abuse of player kills but I see no reason why they should be immune because we're allies. There could be a craft item/blessing for party immunity I guess but without that in place it's too much of a leap for me that immunity is possible. Of course this applies to the attacker also--why should a character be immune to it's own AoE attacks (or at least ALL of them)?
I didn't read this entire discussion. I would agree with a lot of other postings I've read so far also though and would like to add other issues but will keep it at 3.
Thank you for this section!
Su
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urlord283Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,084Arc User
Please fix epic DDs
I have yet been in a random team which was successful since mod6 opened
First of all thanks for a "Free to play" game that is/was exciting and interesting to play. I know you should not suppose to have expectations from a game that is "Free" but i feel like i should mention some of the facts that i've been witnessing the past year that dwindled down my excitement towards this franchise in relation to the past. On the technical part i should start with the new "additions" to the graphics engine or swapping of it. There was a post somewhere about the "nvidia cards stop responding" issue that i read in the past months that occur to me as well, but it doesn't seem to be fixed for whatever reason. So isn't the free to play mmos purpose to attract large fan bases which play and potentially invest in the future? Isn't this achievable in making an engine that has different running possibilities and can be played on lower end pcs? and by lower end i mean (dual core, 4gigs ram, nvdia geforce 610gt)?
Expanding on this i can also mention that everytime you do a new module you reset the graphic settings which are store/client which means my already set "low" settings dissapear and i struggle to login... Is this really necessary? A minor thing to mention is the problem i think everyone noticed that malabogs castle has some textures or something that really makes it graphically laggy... Taking it to the in-game side relating to the latest module updates, at module 6 to be precise in my opinion you did something wrong... you didn't know how to make the game harder... so players didn't loose interest quickly so you went and buffed the mobs so high that even the ops of players are like twigs in front of a hurricane when entering in the fewest dungeons that are left standing...
Also pvp wise i had my share of action, and met the new paladins in the match up... i wont ad anything to their op abilities because i know the poor things will be so nerfed that they wont know which way is up and which way is down I had friends that read the books related to Neverwinter and shared some tales but for me i feel like you are missing some kind of "end game content" something that i can play on and on without being tired of it, of course you can add stuff to it that benefit you... (simmilar to your new vip program).
Personally i didn't really like daily "quest" which purpose i suppose was to widen the timespan people take to play the game. If i could i would do all the boons and all the progress quest in a day (i mentioned if i could), but no... i have to come everyday and do them, to me it feels like work, and a game to me suppose to be relaxing not a chore. Anyways that was my opinion... Ok, these were my thoughts for some whatever reason had to share with you, either you accept them either you don't but for me this is how it is
since the Strongholds intro yesterday my fiance and I have been completely unable to get the Game to get past the log in page and actually load. this is upsetting as we have invested hundreds in this game and NOW cannot play. neither of us is sure how to contact anyone to get help with this issue. please help.
blazious11Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 331Arc User
As for lack of content, I totally agree.
As for the new mod, it simply dont offer enough. I have to go back to do 3 Icewind dale and Well of dragons mission? For real? I have to tell you, that people mostly hate dailys, i was glad I finished them, and I refuse to even think about getting back to those areas. Daily quests are more like work than fun. That's what you call a new mod? Yeah we will be able to build some new boon structures, but for what content? Only playable dundgeons are elol, VT, and ECC, and we all know why people go to the last. MC is unplayable due to the lag. You can go to Tos with 3k+ team, even GWD, but for what? Some seal? Tiamat is screwed. Mod 8 pvp will have issues too, maybe it will be good, maybe not, but some or most of the people here dont like pvp. I liked back in mod 2-5, that I could chosse from 10+ dungeons, even get some AD from them. From BOE ITEMS!
(also, I really miss some exploring - Tos and ECC had secret places, with mod 6, those are are off limit. Yeah, maybe you couldnt get anything out of those, but exploring that TOS minidungeon with the Gelatine Cube, well I remember how much fun that was for the first time! First time i met with cube, there was the eyvitment of exploring, and, it was good, and one of the things I still remember from my early days, and why I get loved this game. Now dungeon are like tubes, that you go through...
I even miss those awful PK farms... But they were much more fun for the 5451th time, than dragon heroics nowaday.
I have to tell you, Heroic encounters are not fun, they are not really a content. Dragon slaying for the 5557th time is not fun at all. And with all the lag issues, the amateurish bugs it is really annoying right now.
Also mentioned here, but after leveling 2 and a half non dps class from 60 to 70, its reaaaaly bad, even with my higher gear, that i got from alts. It's not the time, It1s the monotonity. It kills me, mod 6 areas arenot fun at all. Wxcept for Venifer, I liked that lovely succubus.
My story is truly a grand tale! Of course, any story about me is going to be grand simply by virtue of the main character.
Hi
I do pvp domination most of the time, and I wanted to comment on this major new change in domination matches.
You cannot score on a node anymore unless you outnumber the ennemies, which is really BAD. Imagine a barely killable DC or an invincible OP sat on a node, you try to defend the node, there is nothing you can do unless you kill them by yourself which is impossible. What about former strategies such as soloing a node like rogues could do, rendered useless now. In brief be outnumbered on a node then you can't defend it alone anymore, you can't prevent the opposite team from scoring that is.
I never participate in forums but I needed to comment on that issue, let alone the various bugs forcing you to leave so you get a leaver penalty. If you read comments DO PLEASE COME BACK TO OLD RULES and do not ruin the only remnant good thing in the game.
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
In the personal bank, there's three rows. The top two are personal back slots, and there's a separate row of slots that's for account items. It lets you store items that can be accessed by anyone on the same account.
A am having a major issue with strong hold right now. I have a quest to complete "temple of the spider" yet temple of the spider is not avilable for que. Our guild is VERY small, bugged quests like these only hinder us instead of helping. I'd think that since we all, in my guild -in addition to hundreds of other players- paid 100+ for our keys, mounts, diamonds, etc you could do better with patch releases. Also, a few members in my guild have complained about not being able to post on the forums, at all, due to calling out moderators for greifing their forum accounts in the past... wth?
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I guess they didn't want people being able to trivially get purple (and thus salvagable) items. If you run a level 60 dungeon as a level 70 character, you may very well be able to solo it!
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hypnotoriousMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 10Arc User
First off, I'd like to say that SH has been fun. I'm in a small guild and we are building slowly. I'm fine with that. But I just ran into something that I seriously hope is a glitch that will soon be rectified.
I rolled a new toon for PvP. In my first 10s bracket match, I ran into a team equipped in Guild armor. These are level 10-19 characters using iLevel 125 gear. We couldn't even scratch them. If this is a 'feature' let us know. I'll quit PvP. It was hard enough to keep in the game with the whales before. Now it is impossible.
If this is a bug, and I truly hope it is, please make fixing this a priority. PvP has been tough enough for new players, this has just made it impossible.
There is no real matchmaking system in the general PvP, what makes you think that there is one in the Stronghold PvP?
And if you think gear alone is a problem, wait until you run into opponents with max. Stronghold benefits.
In other words, working as intended.
Comments
It could be that they need a framework of in game data and it just takes time to gather that data. In other words, not just players experiences, but what the industry would call "replicate-able" data. data that they can replicate at will that provides those metrics. In some industries, that replicate-able data is critical to isolating a problem, so you actually fix the problem instead of just putting a Band-Aid over cancer.
Could be that they know the players don't like the grind, but they also know that when players express frustration with a "grind" it's more then just one element. Players tend to express frustration with "grind" when whatever they are grinding on isn't engaging enough or rewarding enough. so metering out changes in those areas can require a balance of many elements, not just boosting exp by X %. It could be that they want a holistic approach at this point, and not just more "temp fixes". perhaps they have a bigger overhaul that will benefit the game in larger ways, but they want to do it right this time...
But even given that, a simply exp boost for anything involving the level 61 onwards would be a good start. You would call that the "emergency bandaging" to keep things afloat until you get a deeper understanding. to continue my medical example...if the doctors spend too much time discussing what to do to a patient...and the patient dies...the doctors failed their primary purpose. I think the real issue is lots of players see this game on the edge of it's "death knells". So emergency bandages is a necessary item at this point...metrics bedammed.
You can't survive like that. Some decisions (long term ones) obviously take months, but if your decision making process as a whole takes that long to enact, get a new decision making process. Businesses in the 21st century need to be agile; failing to achieve that agility is a death sentence.
I agree completely. The decision cycle has been too long. We should've at least heard more about prospective changes, if not actually seeing them implemented yet.
This has led me to believe that Cryptic is not concerned with long term player retention, and that they only care about short-money from new players
1.) Increasing Item Level You guys want to promote people making alts. I get that. It's seriously disappointing enough knowing you have to level to 70 but then you consider gear. Yes, you can do dungeons to get gear. Yes, you can get free artifacts. You even get the best weapon and offhand now just for doing quests and hitting 70. That's great and all, but consider what you have to do to upgrade those items. For starters, let's talk enchantments. You have to have enchantments in your gear. Upgrading enchantments from rank 7 to rank 10 is scaled horribly when you consider both stats and the cost to upgrade them. Personally, I buy rank 10s because it's so much easier to upgrade them to rank 12 than it is to buy 7s and upgrade them. By the time you upgrade your own rank 7 enchantment to rank 10, you've probably spent 2x or 3x the amount of AD it would have cost you to just buy a rank 10 straight from the AH. This is a problem that turns people off to the idea of making alts (and in some cases gearing their main character). Next, you need to upgrade your artifacts. Thanks to the botters, this is sitting perfect and is actually very reasonable and cost efficient for people to upgrade. The problem is after the botters are stopped. Then what? It becomes a mundane grind to feed your artifact 12034802174 enchants. Theoretically, people can upgrade their artifacts at no cost. Realistically, they'll have rank 140 artifacts by next year (if they're lucky) by farming enemies. THEN you consider your artifact GEAR. Sure, sure- you can use your farming enchants to get items... but you have to upgrade them as well. You can even do your leadership professions and get free refining items... but it takes over a month to legitimately level leadership and make your own profession people to do the tasks. Basically, your options for upgrading are: farm non-stop, every day for over a year to completely upgrade your stuff or throw money at something to make it go faster. These are both unacceptable options and extremely BORING. This type of "upgrading" feels more like a job or a chore than a fun game. So do these dailies and boons. Everything in this game so far has been a boring, uneventful, and tedious grind. Throughout my time playing this game I have seen so many people quit simply because of how long and arduous this upgrading process is. Nobody likes feeling horribly under-geared all the time, especially when high item levels are required to not only get into these dungeons but also because the community requires insanely high item levels just to join a party. Really? Some one with an item level of 3k? 4k? It's the people who are 2k that NEED to do these dungeons because they legitimately need the gear but can't get into them because, ironically, their item level isn't high enough. Do you know that there are people playing this game currently that STILL haven't completed an epic dungeon?? This leads me to my next problem...
2.) Lack of Content You grind to 70. You get your stuff from dungeons. Now it's time to... Wait- what? There's nothing to do? You have your gear. Your friends have their gear. There's literally NOTHING to do that you feel the actual need to do and nothing that's worth doing otherwise. Run eLoL 50 million times, crossing your fingers for the Horn to drop, hoping to sell it for a mil? Chances are you'll probably spend all of that upgrading your gear because of the ridiculous amount of refinement points needed compared to the horribly low availability of refining items. Then what? Do it AGAIN?? Totally not fun. There are so many AD sinks in this game and not enough ways for people to make it. Some people don't want to farm leadership on 50 characters. Not exactly fun. Some people don't want to spend money on the game. That's not fun or feasible in some cases.
These are my two biggest problems simply because they're the two main reasons why I see people quitting. More problems? Ok.
3.) PvP Pv-what? It's so trashy now. For starters, Tenacity NEVER should have been a stackable stat- that was just stupid. It should have been a 50% blanket effect across the board when you queue up for PvP and that's it. This is also the only game I've ever played with this much control in PvP. All PvP has become is a contest to see which class has the best control or exploitable features. PvP in this game is about 5% skill, 75% gear, and 20% knowing which skills aren't working properly. You can be a completely awful player and still rock in PvP as long as your IL is 4k+. How is that fun? Or you can roll with a premade and get matched up against kids with less than half of that IL. How is that fun? I've been on both sides and it's not fun AT ALL. Plus, these modes are getting completely boring. What about team death matches? What about a last man standing match out of 20 people? Anything would be better than this king of the hill HAMSTER. Go to a node to see which unkillable tank will be there holding it all game? Pu-lease. At least with different modes you could make other class builds a little more viable. Oh, and get rid of the Leaderboard. It only promotes elitism, making an already bad PvP community even more intolerable.
4.) Bug Fixes I don't know about you guys, but if I made a game that I wanted to make money off of and have it last a while to keep making money off of it, I'd make fixing bugs my top priority. Instead, we get "new" content to distract us from the problems. Unfortunately, that doesn't work. This is the internet. People talk and people listen. These bugs are also killing the game. Unable to complete quests. Skills not working properly. Items not working properly. Things people PAY REAL MONEY FOR not working properly. I think I can speak for the majority of the Neverwinter community when I say I would rather the release date of new content be pushed back another month before it was released with all of these bugs. I strongly recommend fixing what you already have before you add more stuff that's also buggy. You'll solve 2 problems by giving people more time to catch up gear-wise and you'll keep people thinking that you actually care abut the quality of your game. Do you know what my honest opinion is? Right now, my opinion is that Cryptic only gives a HAMSTER about money and not about their player base or the quality of game they're providing them. The ONLY reason I'm still playing this game after quitting so many times is because there's literally nothing else out there to play. This game is actually pretty fun. It's a shame that greed and negligence is ruining it. The next game that is released that pays attention to quality, balance, and their community will likely steal most of what's left of this community. And that's sad.
5.) Class Balancing No, I don't mean "nerf this and buff that." I play all classes and all classes have their problems. CWs should NOT ignore any amount of control resist AT ALL. That's stupid. GFs should NOT be able to be unkillable and also able to take away 3/4 of your life with 1 attack. They're tanks. Let them tank. If they want to go DPS, let them go DPS but make their block less effective. GWFs do HAMSTER amounts of damage as Destroyer. It's the only viable path. Sentinel is supposed to be a tanky path. Cool. You get a lot of additional threat but nothing to help you survive when you actually get it because of how poorly these epic dungeons are designed. All Sentinels get are damage resist buffs that really don't matter at all when you still get 1-shot. They need to absorb some damage or something to make them viable tanks. But how do you do that without breaking them in PvP? Hmm... Since you guys can't separate PvE and PvP, maybe you can do something like activating unstoppable as a Sentinel increases your damage resist and your GWF spirit absorbs 50% of all incoming damage. Make it 10% in PvP or something and the damage resist half as effective. The point I'm trying to make is that you guys are buffing one thing, nerfing another, making some classes worthless (SW) and some OP as hell (GWF, OP). Then there's the gimmicky classes like the HR. Essentially, what you're doing is taking 2 paragon choices and 3 paragon paths and making them all useless except for 1 build. The OP is a great example of how you SHOULD be building your classes. OPs can either go full tank, full DPS, or full heals. THAT'S awesome and makes it a highly versatile class. All I'm trying to say is that DPS classes shouldn't be tanky and tanks shouldn't have high DPS. You NEED to find a way to balance this like I suggested with the GF above.
The biggest problem is still the first 2 I mentioned. Sad thing is that you could solve that problem by adding more dungeons worth doing. Make gear more versatile and add more of it. Find ways (maybe set bonuses again like HV) to make certain sets more appealing than others for certain builds. For example, armor set for Instigator, Destroyer, and Sentinel that gives bonuses to those specific paths in some way. Go a little more "above and beyond" to do it but do it without completely ruining other classes. What about a refining item dungeon? People want end-game content AND they want to be able to upgrade their stuff. Why not make a 3-boss dungeon that has a really nice chance of each boss dropping a black opal. Want to make money off of it? Make it 2 chests. 1 chest, opened normally, with something like 10-20k worth of refining items in it (bind them to account if you're afraid of flooding the market), and another chest that you need to open with keys from the Zen market that have a small chance of containing something like a brilliant diamond (or even some new lesser version of the diamond that still awards a high amount of RP- emeralds? topazes?). What about Skirmish credits? Something you get at the end of the run, in whatever amount, that you can use at the bazaar somewhere to buy some useful stuff that are bound to account? Maybe some Man-at-arms or something actually USEFUL. If you want to promote people spending more money on the game, the VIP program is a cool start, but what about lockboxes? Cool, you get tradebars, but there's nothing useful to buy with them at a reasonable cost except for coalescent wards. Maybe you could throw the man-at-arms and stuff in there. I don't know. It just seems too much to me like you're making the game free to play but expensive to get anywhere or get things you want. My main character has an item level of 3.8k. I'm sitting pretty well for myself. What about other people? What about the newcomers? From their perspective, this game just looks like a constant disappointment to them for all of the reasons I mentioned above, and these things are just a collection of players' complaints that I've heard directly from members of my guilds.
1 : renable old closed dungeons
2 : reevaluate some one shoting hits from monsters (i have an idea for that and i will tell about it later in thread)
3 : lower the price of greater mark of potency (for new players it prevent too much from upgrading artefacts fast)
4 : make a diminushing return (or a window when for 3 seconds if the same ability is used against the same player : reduce by 80 % the effectiveness of it )of abilities that are the same and stacks in pvp (exemple abilities from hunter ranger , this will allow diversity too in group/guild/team play )
5 : UNIFORMIZE kinds of players : the casual player , the 15 day per month player , and the "every time" here player (i will explain details later in thread)
6 : upgrade by 2,5 times the exp we get from quests and monsters after level 60 , i tell you , your base player will grow if you do that , because every one want to try new classes and not staying on a single class an entire month , it's boring to use always "the same skills" in the "same area" .
7 : revise the percent of chances of upgrading runes and enchants : depending of the power of the enchant or rune
for exemple make the 1 % on vorpals etc become at least 10 % , 1 % is nothing it's a chance on 100 , it's not enough .
the highest rank enchants should have at least 10 % of chance of getting upgraded .
details :
2 : make a low cost enchant that work like that : "if you take more that 75 % of your hp in one hit , reduce that hit to 75 % hp removed , work only every 15 seconds , so the player after procing that effect , will know that he need to stay safe of danger for these 15 seconds .(in utility slot) , only one will work if more sloted)
5 : for casuals make dungeons 1600 less harder for the ones that are very difficult , casual gamers who try to reach these dungeons after level 70 are frustrated and a lot of them leave because they fail and are unable to progress and get items .and upgrade the number of seals you can get from these dungeons .
for the 15 days per month player : make artefacts more easily obtainable , the upgrade system : why to not make we can upgrade it with enchants too ? or at least reduce the points needed to upgrade artefacts after "epic" state. and the price of component needed to upgrade it (refinement and upgrade )
make 2000 dungeons less harder because even sometimes at 2000 gear score we get kicked out , again upgrade the number of seals we can get out from a dungeon .
the very time player , will benefit from all this , and can focus on what ? rerolling another class or continue his way on same class ,
reduce the power of tankiness of the protection paladin (make him able to tank more only if they are players around him, or something like that), according to reducting the monsters damage , a paladin protection can tank epic events in icewind dale and a devotion can't , i don't want that devotion "can" tank epic encounters but if you are a great weapon fighter or something you have no chance at all , so the "balance" is not here.
most encounters epic (example icewind dale) need to be "15 players max" not more (i don't talk abou tiamat like encounter or dragons which is different).
by doing this the game will drop from "elitists " (dominating) players
to "thanks god less pain " for all players
edit 11/08/2015 : with mod 7 stronghold they have augmented the numbers of seals after finished a dungeon or skirmish so , let's see if it will be better .
PVE: Whether it's a building structure or a landscape, getting stuck in the environment happens too easily. There are many options to get into a blackout area of a map which creates uncertainty as to whether I should or could explore this for some kind of reward and frequently this results in getting stuck somewhere. Clear boundaries for playable and off-limit areas might help. However there are also many circumstances in which getting stuck inside a playable area results. I'm guessing that reporting on specific locations inside a playable area is the best way to get to fixing this kind of getting stuck. Logging out usually resolves the problem but not always (eg. I was stuck in lava in Hotenow but was unkillable so I took off all gear to die).
PVE/PVP: Unlimited 'physical' projectiles doesn't make sense to me (ie. Hunter and Rogue classes predominantly) and seems to be a source of OP for these classes. I deleted the character I created first, a Rogue, right after getting to Protector's Enclave because I don't like the unlimited dagger mechanism. A resource management mechanism/s would make more sense and provide a Profession option for weapon creation and/or repair. The irony is even presented within the opening map of the game with a quest to resupply the archers with arrows retrievable from the battlefield. A deeper application would be to consider the damage incurred to a projectile when used and how much sharpness it loses or if it even breaks and essentially is unusable. I started a separate discussion on this topic today in the Player feedback section before checking this section.
PVE/PVP: There's at least one companion I've found that can cause damage to allies. This exemplifies and also proves that it is possible to implement AoE effects on allies. I can't comprehend why allies are immune to splash damage period. Making it impossible to lock on and attack an ally would prevent/lessen the abuse of player kills but I see no reason why they should be immune because we're allies. There could be a craft item/blessing for party immunity I guess but without that in place it's too much of a leap for me that immunity is possible. Of course this applies to the attacker also--why should a character be immune to it's own AoE attacks (or at least ALL of them)?
I didn't read this entire discussion. I would agree with a lot of other postings I've read so far also though and would like to add other issues but will keep it at 3.
Thank you for this section!
Su
I have yet been in a random team which was successful since mod6 opened
Urlord
First of all thanks for a "Free to play" game that is/was exciting and interesting to play. I know you should not suppose to have expectations from a game that is "Free" but i feel like i should mention some of the facts that i've been witnessing the past year that dwindled down my excitement towards this franchise in relation to the past. On the technical part i should start with the new "additions" to the graphics engine or swapping of it. There was a post somewhere about the "nvidia cards stop responding" issue that i read in the past months that occur to me as well, but it doesn't seem to be fixed for whatever reason. So isn't the free to play mmos purpose to attract large fan bases which play and potentially invest in the future? Isn't this achievable in making an engine that has different running possibilities and can be played on lower end pcs? and by lower end i mean (dual core, 4gigs ram, nvdia geforce 610gt)?
Expanding on this i can also mention that everytime you do a new module you reset the graphic settings which are store/client which means my already set "low" settings dissapear and i struggle to login... Is this really necessary? A minor thing to mention is the problem i think everyone noticed that malabogs castle has some textures or something that really makes it graphically laggy... Taking it to the in-game side relating to the latest module updates, at module 6 to be precise in my opinion you did something wrong... you didn't know how to make the game harder... so players didn't loose interest quickly so you went and buffed the mobs so high that even the ops of players are like twigs in front of a hurricane when entering in the fewest dungeons that are left standing...
Also pvp wise i had my share of action, and met the new paladins in the match up... i wont ad anything to their op abilities because i know the poor things will be so nerfed that they wont know which way is up and which way is down
Personally i didn't really like daily "quest" which purpose i suppose was to widen the timespan people take to play the game. If i could i would do all the boons and all the progress quest in a day (i mentioned if i could), but no... i have to come everyday and do them, to me it feels like work, and a game to me suppose to be relaxing not a chore. Anyways that was my opinion... Ok, these were my thoughts for some whatever reason had to share with you, either you accept them either you don't but for me this is how it is
Cheers
I opened the patcher and putted the game & patcher on PROXY US... downloaded another 5G patch and voilà!
the game is up and running!
enjoy!
2. Difficulty
3. Bug/Exploit fixes
Any news about the top issues, or at least something from the Devs?
As for the new mod, it simply dont offer enough. I have to go back to do 3 Icewind dale and Well of dragons mission? For real? I have to tell you, that people mostly hate dailys, i was glad I finished them, and I refuse to even think about getting back to those areas. Daily quests are more like work than fun. That's what you call a new mod? Yeah we will be able to build some new boon structures, but for what content? Only playable dundgeons are elol, VT, and ECC, and we all know why people go to the last. MC is unplayable due to the lag. You can go to Tos with 3k+ team, even GWD, but for what? Some seal? Tiamat is screwed. Mod 8 pvp will have issues too, maybe it will be good, maybe not, but some or most of the people here dont like pvp. I liked back in mod 2-5, that I could chosse from 10+ dungeons, even get some AD from them. From BOE ITEMS!
(also, I really miss some exploring - Tos and ECC had secret places, with mod 6, those are are off limit. Yeah, maybe you couldnt get anything out of those, but exploring that TOS minidungeon with the Gelatine Cube, well I remember how much fun that was for the first time! First time i met with cube, there was the eyvitment of exploring, and, it was good, and one of the things I still remember from my early days, and why I get loved this game. Now dungeon are like tubes, that you go through...
I even miss those awful PK farms... But they were much more fun for the 5451th time, than dragon heroics nowaday.
I have to tell you, Heroic encounters are not fun, they are not really a content. Dragon slaying for the 5557th time is not fun at all. And with all the lag issues, the amateurish bugs it is really annoying right now.
Also mentioned here, but after leveling 2 and a half non dps class from 60 to 70, its reaaaaly bad, even with my higher gear, that i got from alts. It's not the time, It1s the monotonity. It kills me, mod 6 areas arenot fun at all. Wxcept for Venifer, I liked that lovely succubus.
I do pvp domination most of the time, and I wanted to comment on this major new change in domination matches.
You cannot score on a node anymore unless you outnumber the ennemies, which is really BAD. Imagine a barely killable DC or an invincible OP sat on a node, you try to defend the node, there is nothing you can do unless you kill them by yourself which is impossible. What about former strategies such as soloing a node like rogues could do, rendered useless now. In brief be outnumbered on a node then you can't defend it alone anymore, you can't prevent the opposite team from scoring that is.
I never participate in forums but I needed to comment on that issue, let alone the various bugs forcing you to leave so you get a leaver penalty. If you read comments DO PLEASE COME BACK TO OLD RULES and do not ruin the only remnant good thing in the game.
Thanks for your attention.
How do I do that? I haven't played in a while.
Also, a few members in my guild have complained about not being able to post on the forums, at all, due to calling out moderators for greifing their forum accounts in the past... wth?
I rolled a new toon for PvP. In my first 10s bracket match, I ran into a team equipped in Guild armor. These are level 10-19 characters using iLevel 125 gear. We couldn't even scratch them. If this is a 'feature' let us know. I'll quit PvP. It was hard enough to keep in the game with the whales before. Now it is impossible.
If this is a bug, and I truly hope it is, please make fixing this a priority. PvP has been tough enough for new players, this has just made it impossible.
And if you think gear alone is a problem, wait until you run into opponents with max. Stronghold benefits.
In other words, working as intended.