Do I Smell Panic..? I kinda hope so

armadeonx

I'm suspicious about the sudden flurry of events, many being re-rolled out well before the normal repeat schedule:
Double AD, refinement, XP, Tymora etc etc - lasting longer too. Also the 100k give-away.

Do I smell panic tactics from those at the top? Are the quarterly figures showing what players have been predicting?

In a sense I hope there is panic, it would signal that the 'business as usual' attitude we usually see is not reaping the expected results by any definition.

I would however like to make a suggestion:

Instead of re-running old favorites in a hope to generate some 'feel-good-factor' Cryptic & PWE need to get to the root of the issue. I'm firmly of the opinion that the one thing lacking from the decision making process is clear, factual, useful feedback from respected & established players.

Forums are not good for this. Never have been and never will be. There are too many trolls, flamers, immature idiots (I have on occasion been each of these).

You need a closed 'focus group' of trusted, established players where ideas can be presented in both directions for feedback and assessment. Customer focus groups are common practice in many businesses, the difference here is you have a customer base where a large number have a real desire to see the game improve.

Personally I would suggest reaching out to the more established guilds and try to get a cross representation of PvP and PvE as well as some form of application process.

Examples of where this would've helped:
Permastun Rangers - There's no shortage of experienced players who could've pointed that out before it went live...
OP Glyphs (stamina / AP drain)
Class Killers (Stealth detect rings (TR Nullifiers) / Elven Battle (CW Nullifiers)

There are many dedicated, experienced & intelligent players who would love to assist purely out of love for the game and a real desire to see it progress and improve.

You need a source of constructive feedback (and sometimes dissent) that doesn't weight it's paycheck or interpersonal relationships into a decision of whether or not to voice an opinion.

wdj40

Its the festive period, tis the season to be jolly after all, maybe that is why they have lots of events on etc

beastpro

From past experience I don't think it is them getting worried or panicking. Its just the holidays, and many company's do things like this around the holidays.

respectpays

I give this game 1 week and I bet 80% of players leave lol unless they change how every character in the game works and rewrite wards this game is dead just like pc lol

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thefiresidecat

I think it's just the holiday thing. that spat of stuff early was thanksgiving. I'm pretty sure they were just giving us a feast of sorts. the AD was acknowledging an imbalance in the ad exchange. they knew they were going to have problems when they changed things. they stated as much. now they're balancing the ad flow to be more optimal in small steps. makes sense to me.

bratleyray

I would assume they are also doing this to catch us up to pc for the release of underdark.

yourenext2die

respectpays said:

I give this game 1 week and I bet 80% of players leave lol unless they change how every character in the game works and rewrite wards this game is dead just like pc lol

We're still here. :Yet another doomsayer proven to be a fraud:

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armadeonx

calm down mate, it's a game not WW2....

Lobbying is where an interest group petitions those in power. Fascism is a right wing dictatorship. Neither of those things apply to NW or in my OP.

The problem with broad spectrum questionnaires is they give the most basic of feedback via tick boxes and unless people fill out 100 pages and submit profiling information their use is vague.

Customer focus groups provide more detailed feedback as they are able to engage in discussions - having a filtering system means the company can focus on a target customer base.

This is not about politics, its about the business creating a product that is desirable to their target audience.

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armadeonx

On the last point, I'd say there is very little difference between extreme right and left wing in politics - in fact, other than window dressing/language they both play the same game of 'we are in power, do as you're told'. However if we go further into that this discussion will probably get 'closed' so interesting as it is I won't go further.

I understand your point that people push for selfish reasons - rarely do you come across those that consider everyone and not just their own position. Rarely do you get any kind of consensus when you don't have a range of those 'self centered' positions being equally represented. You'd need representation from established and newer players, casuals and 'hardcore', Free to play & pay to win.

Focus groups can consist of such elements but I think what you're also suggesting is that when people become a part of the 'in' group the ego kicks in and can warp their views - also true, power corrupts

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azuosed89

I have two hypothesis for those events:
1- They are trying to force xbox players to catch up with PC players.
2- The population is declining, and they trying to retain players. Which is probably more likely the case... probably more than 2/3 of the players who I started playing neverwinter with already quit the game to play different games because the keep up with spending money to stay at competitive zone was too insane + items/classes/etc inbalanced. Although they made it a little easier on the two items mentioned above, we are still way behind a true balance on both money spending and pvp/pve class balancing. I really think if they addressed those aspects of the game the game would retain a lot of players...

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armadeonx

Whilst more content is usually welcome, they'd be better off addressing the quality of the existing content first.

They need a rethink on the positioning and effectiveness of all classes, introduce balanced pvp skill definitions for ALL skills instead of relying on tenacity and rebalance PVE content (inc rewards) so it matches the T1, 2 or 3 armor required to participate in that zone.

I suspect the amount of testing done before rollouts is sparse at best.

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yourenext2die

armadeonx

destrowod

Altough i did enjoy the events a lot, i somewhat had an overdose of Neverwinter lately. Im waiting a bit on the event to calm down and take a break of this game. I mean, who does not feel compel to play and grind when its double everything?

Once it calm down, ill take a week off probably to play something else, just logging for professions and the daily coin...

The game is fun, but lately have been more a grind fest for me, grind for AD, grind for refinements, and so on. I mean we have been grinding shores like 15 times back to back on some days with the guild... There is a point where repetition is not fun anymore, yet those chest at the end with all the rewards inside made me continue and continue.... and continue...

Since the events and stuff i have not even be able to finish the zones i still have not finish and/or played yet. I have not touch Dread Ring and i want to try it out lol. I want to finally finish spinward rise, wich is in my journal for so long (when i turned 70 obviously those elemental zone where not a priority anymore) I need to also do icewindale despite not liking it too much.

Thats kinda like my goal to keep enjoying this game lately. Cause in term of dungeons... i did everything i could... im sick of spider, so badly, both the normal version and the epic one, wich is sadly the only T2 people seem to want to do(nobody want to touch grey wolf, i never been able to even atempt it) Then in T1 its shores shores shores elol shores shores elol and thats almost it... I heard they are gonna bring back old dungeons... can't wait cause im so sick of the current ones that i did way too much.

After that i hope Underdark is fun enough to keep me hooked. Stronghold is not bad in itself but its just that its again such an enormous grind... Can't say farming heroics is that fun...

I may look like i just complain, but i enjoyed this game for quite a lot of time, and i still do, but i just realise lately that when i sign in i have a TO DO LIST, and its almost like work. Got to grind AD, then tyranny, then heroics in stronghold, then winter festival (currently) then switch character and rinse and repeat... This ain't fun... Oh and also gotta grind dragons ... only 25% in that 1000 achievements, wich is probably the worst achievement i attemp since Seriously 3.0. I mean in term of "its way too long"

I want character progression sure, but i want a story to unveil, new quest to do and so on. Thus why im saying as soon as the festival is all done, im going Dread Ring and screw the rest, the AD, the heroics, whatever... Ill enjoy the story and the new zone. lol.

In any case a game on CONSOL is not like on PC. I checked a bit the status of this game, it was release i think in april or was it march? Took me til august to really get into it a lot (before that i played a bit here and there) so its like 5 months i play this and i feel a bit "exhausted" ...

I give the game for me another 2 months maybe to do Dread Ring, then Icewindale, wich is around the time Underdark will be out, so like i said UD better be really cool, cause it will decide if i stick to it or not.

Last Module was awesome on paper, but turned out to be just a damn grind fest. It made some guild turn into workshop as well, everybody invest so much stuff into the bottomless pit coffer... in the end for what? Some boons and a slightly better armor? lol I mean yeah the boons are good, and the armor is surely better than what i have now, but thats a lot of work just for that... Cause the map itself is just a 4 dragon encounter and some heroics.. thats all. Go kill this, go kill that, not much story...

I know lot of people don't care about the story in a game like this but i do, and believe it or not, story is what drove me to keep playing this game in the first place when doing the regular zones and all.

Anyway im rambling, i supose its to me to fix my limits, and as much as cool it may be to get diamonds and refinements etc, i need to realize its just grinding. They will probably put some new achievements for underdark, so that will depend on what those are, but i wouldn't be surprise if one day i will log to NW just to kill 5 dragons for the achievement than log off... This one will take forever lol

myfist2yourface

Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing weapons
is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives
from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

respectpays

they trying to keep players but the game is dead pretty much after mod 6 came out they lost probly easy 50% now they probly down to about 20% of their full player base unless the game goes back to simple minded things they probly going to have a dead game in a few months

mahburg

Favouring the Large guilds due to the target size in Strongholds is the biggest game killer imho
They need to rebalance things

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xxxsfalxxx

If you watch carefully it's usually easy to see who are dedicated players that will give honest feedback and who are troublemakers that have an agenda. Well, for some people it's usually easy. As far as playing, I'm a casual (mostly) but I have played every day on the XB since this came out, most often alone, and have no intentions of stopping. The guild thing is pretty resource intensive (for most) and maybe not worth the time but for the most hardcore and/or those who love big groups to play with. The Tiamat last two boons are a joke with the Favor requirement. The current epic dungeons are remarkably difficult for a pickup group unless there's one of the paladin bubble twins and then it's silly easy. 10 unified elements to get black ice up a rank you must be kidding. They fix the vote kick system by removing anything you want to casually run. If you don't buy all the best PvP gear and spec PvP you'll get eaten by any team who has and often those who haven't but work as a team. For what 3 game types on 5 maps or so, oh well, it's easy to get a Grim set and Stronghold accessories (as long as your guild does something other than invite you) Players who play and make their ad to turn into zen and so on, everyone who plays knows what the game is like. Maybe it doesn't matter what we think. There just needs to be x number playing and x percent of that buying zen with real money, and beyond that, why would they care? I don't either as long as new content comes out. So there we are - come see the violence inherent in the system.

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s4v10rx

tbh, devs should let leave this game alone for 1 or 2 months so that new players can catch up on their gear and enchantment. the devs is so focus on playing catch up of this game for the xb1 that they forgot the most important thing is that they got to attract new players in order for them to keep this game alive. i know my comments is gonna HAMSTER the devs but i'm just being realistic and up front.

mahburg

Its hard not to draw the conclusion that the game may be hurtling towards a brick wall, there is only so much Grind that one can Stomach, If they had made the Guild targets more realistic then it would have eased the grind for a lot of players, the drop rate in Boxes seem to have gotten worse as well (or maybe its just me). We are just farming for Surplus now for level 7 guildhall with our first two levels on the stable in the bag, however having to run the same three dungeons again and again and again and again to get purples for the coffers is getting old really fast.
They need to get the old Dungeons back fast or add content quickly as this clearly cannot continue imho.