Now I am not picking sides here but don't you all think it's a little strange that they announce "Underdark" with one of the fathers of Neverwinter writing quest lines for them. And then this BS with the AD changes. And with all the noise that every one is making has any one else notice how quiet it is on the "other side" of the fence? It does not make any kind of sense at all. Why drop a bomb like this? A bomb that will get everyone all upset and looking at one thing instead of another? Something BIG is up with Underdark so much that they are banking on it even at the cost of losing some customers. Is all I can think of. Any one care to comment?
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I'd bet all my remaining ADs that mod 8 will not be a savior for the game. If anything it will be pretty much like every other mod not counting mod 6, it be released with a bunch of bugs, some will be fixed, others will not, some players will quit, others will not.
And I might be a bittr person here but: I dislike Drizzt as well. Love killing him in BG and BGII
Seeing how hells seem on move once more and how Demogorgon appears in new installment of DnD overall: I hoped that Jon Irenicus might return I loved him as a villain
WELCOME TO MY ART CORNER!
"I choose You Jymaru!" ~for there are times when more than words need to do the talk
Worst thing is that we see long time loyal players quit. Those who did play over a year and might had played way more. I would suggest it was the most valuable player base game had. Newbie players are bit more 'divided' but then again: they might quit soon, nothing is sure. Especially if Mod8 will be bad.
WELCOME TO MY ART CORNER!
"I choose You Jymaru!" ~for there are times when more than words need to do the talk
What would be nice is a class rebalance, and a rebalance of stupid broken HAMSTER like PvP. Oh, and fixing my FPS issues...
WELCOME TO MY ART CORNER!
"I choose You Jymaru!" ~for there are times when more than words need to do the talk
Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance
Somebody should write a petition to PW/WotC on some neutral site to ask help in dealing with this incompetence
So you can have a good story line and a crappy mod 8.
But if the mod 8 is a fail i think it will be the last, i don't think they can survive another PVE module without a true new challenging PVE content.
For the moment i m not optimist too much recycling too much bugs, too much lag.
I'll just quote from the about for the game. Wonder where Wizards of the Coast attention will be.
cheers
Ello
▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ Gankdalf The Icehole █ ▇ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁
Seems the changed executive management has had a negative impact on most PWE games - not just Cryptic ones.
I went to the forums of some other PWE games - namely some of the China-developed ones that I used to play. Players there have similar complaints as the ones found here.
Take a look at some of these threads
Battle of the Immortals - headline topic by a player: Dead Game http://forum.arcgames.com/battleoftheimmortals/discussion/113006/dead-game#latest
Did I not know better I would swear the complaints listed by the players were NWO players, not BotI (right down to complaints about zen, refusing to fix dupe bugs that were game-breaking to the economy, refusing to ban players or if they did it was only for 3 days, bugs, bugs, bugs that persist for years but never get address, etc. etc. All signs in my opinion that the company was from the very beginning run very lean money-wise that spent the least on salaries and infrastructure. Be sure to check out himatori's post.
Another thread:
Jade Dynasty
http://forum.arcgames.com/jadedynasty/discussion/1200790/important-where-is-our-compensation#latest
A thread directed at PWE about content and rewards that used to be in the game but were taken away. Sound familiar? Read the whole thread - lizzgirlwl gives a good accounting. And...this is a Chinese-dev'd game. Not a N.A. or European-dev'd one.
Another:
http://forum.arcgames.com/pwi/discussion/1203074/pwi-just-your-star-chart-prices#latest
PWI - the original flagship PWE game that started it all.
A post dated Sept 16, 2015 on how many Euros it takes now to get a BiS PWI toon. I'm not sure what that would equate to in equivalent years for a free player but it probably won't look very good for anyone who does the math.
edit: found out 400,000 euros = 452,080 u.s. dollars (that's for one PWI item for a toon, not all the items to be upgraded on the toon).
Another:
Royal Quest
http://forum.arcgames.com/arc/discussion/1202901/how-bad-refining-is-in-this-game#latest
I remember this because Ether Saga Odyssey had a similar system. If you think it's bad in NWO it's much worse in some PWE games. I remember in Ether Saga if you didn't have the equivalent of a Coalescent ward when you refined there was a very high chance your weapon would be destroyed. That's right...destroyed. you'd refine...the rng would do it's thing and the weapon you'd spent months on upgrading would just...disappear. Ditto for the equivalent of upgrading enchants, etc.
Royal Quest:
http://forum.arcgames.com/arc/discussion/1202902/why-isnt-any-game-people-even-bothered-to-respond-to-any-real-issues#latest
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I provided the above to show people that the problems NWO, STO and CO face are likely not with Cryptic specifically. These problems seem to be across the board - the games may be different and developed by different dev teams - including teams that likely speak only chinese and are based in China. Yet the problems are strikingly similar across all of them.
That tells me the problems players are complaining about likely can't be fixed solely by the Dev team. Things are the way they are because the guys at the very top have a monetization model that is failing across *all* of their games. Judging from the awful reviews current and ex Cryptic employees are giving the company it seems many share the anger of their players and are just as neutered in their ability to do something about it as players are.
I remember reading that had that private investor in China not bought PWE the company would have been liquidated. It was failing *that* badly. Of course I'm sure some of that had to do with the toxic misallocation of investment money due to Chinese economic policies but surely some of it has to do with the fact that PWE couldn't figure out how to deliver a value that paying customers perceived as worthy. All these game's experience were (and are) too high priced for too little in return led to sinking revenue to the point of near-liquidation.
I don't know whether to be grateful that that Chinese business man bought the company (since at least it means *some* kind of Cryptic-made games are still around) or to regret it - since it still doesn't seem that the new executive team has figured out how to hit the value-for-money trade right. The same problems of too high a price for too little value are still there. And seem to have gotten worse for all PWE games.
I suppose one good thing is that at least Cryptic's games haven't been put on maintenance-mode yet like some PWE games (Ether Saga Oddysey for example).
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edits: typos
Wanted to explain this a little bit better. I had the most experience with this in Ether Saga Odyssey but also in PWI - because it was first introduced in PWI.
You could upgrade most of your toon's weapons, armor and enchants. You would go to a Forge and needed duplicate leveled items plus the equivalent of a preservation ward or coalescent ward. Having either would prevent whatever item you were upgrading from being destroyed. Yes...armor and weapons could be destroyed. Frequently. Now remember this is the scenario for the required dupe items too.
However...even use of the equivalent of Coalescent wards was no guarantee of upgrade like it is in NWO. In Ether Saga you could use it but the RNG would see it as a chance to *downgrade* your weapon, armor, enchant or whatever. If you didn't use one at all there was a strong possibility the weapon, armor or whatever would be destroyed completely. Now...it wasn't like this in the early days of the game. This was a later "update". To combat "bots". It would also "help the in-game economy."
Of course it also happened to help encourage the playerbase to keep purchasing ESO's version of Coalescent wards to "reverse" the downgrade. The equivalent of Preservation wards didn't cut it. A player would have to buy the equivalent of a Coal Ward. Heaven help you if you got on an unlucky streak and your attempts to upgrade kept resulting in a downgrade instead. But hey! At least you still HAD your weapon or armor instead of it being destroyed.
It was one of the things I found most frustrating about the game. I moved to PWI when I discovered they had a similar system. Not exactly the same but similar enough I knew to leave or my wallet was doomed.
And heaven help us all if the suits in China decide that all their games need to implement this system. Chinese people are much more tolerant of this business model - probably because they don't have a market saturated with alternatives that offer different monetization models like the West does.
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