Here a simple feedback from a small guild: we're bored

rapo973

I'm from a small italian guild made of 15 active players. Even if we're a few, our guildies are quite strong: we can complete all the current PvE contents in few minutes.
The UD module is already over for us: before Christmas we have completed the campaing, taken gear set, weapon sets, etc...
As a small guild, the SH is the only thing to do that we have: we're still rank 6 moving to 7. But we don't live for the SH: whatever effort we put in, it will take an infinite amount of time. So why being in a hurry? In few words, the SH is not achievable for us.

And now the point: we're in human bot mode and we're bored. 1-2 pvp to donate, 2/3 dungeons, 2/3 campaing tasks and that's it.

A very boring game experience: no new contents to collect some challenging but exciting rewards (Demogorgon is just a RNG), no fantasy, just infinite repetition of the same things over and over.
The future is an empty box made of unclear statements (ETA for new/old dungeons? PvP improvements?) while the current end-game is over, bugged, easy with no excitement: I think that the devs didn't design eGWD to be done as a team run, but that's how we - and many others - are able to do such dungeon today.
PvP is a coin toss and a losing experience: yesterday my team got 2 nodes in 1 minute and the enemy team said: "GG". We stopped playing until the end of the pvp.

This forum is full of inputs and recommendations from the players base: I don't have anything else to add, but reporting our current game experience.
Please do something to wake us up.

micky1p00

More or less in the same boat, but only with half the guild Italians ;p
Some in my guild are still trying to get the rings, I gave up on this idea unless they will make it reliably farm-able.
All is left to do is mainly Influence + Tyranny, and we too as a small guild in no hurry...

vinceent1

why i am not surprised? its longtermly obvious that this game is not meant for premade group combat challenging and proper reward at the end. this game is meant to be played as trying different classess, trying different party setups to do content at pve. the same is pvp, but there are still so many pvp guilds premading, stomping others all around even if they dont fight anymore and calling that skill and fun play. Hi Lancer how are you today?

there are people here who write stuff and terrible pugging, but the opposite is the truth. If you are geared, you have no problem pugging ELOL, you get different party setups all the time and you can carry newbies to the end with your damage. I like that and its excitement you ask for. Go past obstacles and help desperate newbies to progress. You should try it sometimes, duo que for example. Since i am trapper i have zero isues at pugging elol, players not trolling and i can carry team to end (i cant do that as archery sadly, many newbies must be kicked to strenghten team, i am glad its not needed anymore)

content development side will not be better, try thinking about your gameplay

rapo973

vinceent1 said:

this game is meant to be played as trying different classess [...] Go past obstacles and help desperate newbies to progress. You should try it sometimes, duo que for example.[...]
content development side will not be better, try thinking about your gameplay

I don't love absolute statements like: "this game is meant to be played as trying different classess". You can only say that this how you mean to play this game and if you like it, good for you. We've a complete different opinion.

Btw I've played all the classes, I've 3 active toons (I don't have infinite time to play NW) , my main is 3.7k cleric joining pug teams in search of challenge: my friend list is full of pugs asking to be helped everyday.
I've created the DC channel with other clerics in order to invent some variations and have some fun: I still have some creativity.
In few words,you're not talking with a newbie and I've already done what you're saying over and over in the last two years and for this reason I'm bored to do it again and again.

Back to the intention of this post, this is just a feedback from a small guild, it's not my personal feedback. I kept it short by purpose, otherwise I've to write too much.
It's obvious that there are other players that don't agree with it, but I'm quite sure that a big amount of players is bored too: just read the forum and check some stats around.
This game is in "survive mode" and it's a pity.

zibadawa

I'm bored, too. I was fairly content for a while to play and do my stuff, and then one day recently it dawned on me that I was just grinding away to make minor progress towards another shiny trinket and hoarding stuff until the next random event occurred that was the only worthwhile time to cash in on the grind. And while I accept that this is pretty much what all MMO games are these days, and clearly I play them anyway because for a time at least I enjoy it, the feeling I'm talking about is that epiphany where you calmly and peacefully conclude "Okay, I've finished this game. What's next?"

rapo973

zibadawa said:

The feeling I'm talking about is that epiphany where you calmly and peacefully conclude "Okay, I've finished this game. What's next?"

Great conclusion!

vinceent1

if you wanna talk about boringness i am too. i am mostly pvp player in mind and we know where we are and nobody knows if it get better somewhere in the future ...

instynctive

With only 15 active players, you're doing better than we are. We're still GH L6 and at least another week or two before we'll be able to grow to GH L7.

But yeah.. I understand your sentiment. And thanks for linking my post. :-)

plasticbat

It has been like this right from the beginning (mod 3) for me. If I feel bore and it appears doing the same thing again and again, I create a new character or go back to an old character to catch up the new (to that character) content.

lemonchill

+100 to this post

i come from a big guild and i approve this post, no real content for end game all i do the dungeons the skirmish feels like i do it for guild advancement only. after two months doing this same stuff each day it feels boring and as work more then a fun game. strongholds was by far the worst idea you devs introduced to this game. not only it ruined small guilds and made players leave game. it made the gear gap even more noticeable now. you wanna join a big guild? pay a big amount of ad. you are in a medium or small guild you will suffer from not having the benefits of boons, food wards etc.

serious re-thinking should be implemented about this whole strongholds idea and what it did to guilds and players having fun .

silverkelt

small, medium , big..

doesnt matter.

we are bored because of ignored direct feedback.

Give us dungeons , higher i level requirements and rewards please.

Thanks.

wylonus

what i am offering a classic idea, see Star trek online, they have "fleet" as Stronghold, they just recently added as "Admiral", so any fleet/guilds can make "alliance" for multiple guilds joining for common cause to help smaller guilds to assist with stronghold buildings format.

that what we all need, "Alliances" format, your guild dont have to visit other guilds, just open the menu to see what they can offer to donate, under Alliance tab.
only if leaders allow and they need to meet other leaders to make agreements, they can leave alliance if needed, with good relationship.

instynctive

silverkelt said:

small, medium , big..

doesnt matter.

we are bored because of ignored direct feedback.

Give us dungeons , higher i level requirements and rewards please.

Thanks.

Or...

Give us ADVENTURES. Not errands for the Steward or Sergeant Knox or whatever.. but ADVENTURES. Multi-branched storylines, "choose your own adventure", exploring... finding great gear and riches and wealth. SOMETHING.

I've been trying to build a grand adventure in the Foundry, but the bugs are absolutely killing me... I've nuked 30 hours of work in the past three days... at least please fix the foundry.

rapo973

vinceent1 said:

if you wanna talk about boringness i am too. i am mostly pvp player in mind and we know where we are and nobody knows if it get better somewhere in the future ...

I'm not pvp, but my ingame experience says to me that pvp is rarely fun even for a high gear pvp player. When I met 4k pre-made teams, I got spanked in 2 minutes and my team stop playing immediately. And it's true the opposite when I randomly join a 4k team. Good matches are very rare (Assumption: I q pvp domain without pre-make the team, that's the only chance I've to win one). So one of my questions is:"what kind of pvp is it? Why don't we have any tool to manage our pvp experience and we are forced to be managed by a broken pvp queue system?". Some good answers can be found in this forum.

instynctive said:

With only 15 active players, you're doing better than we are. We're still GH L6 and at least another week or two before we'll be able to grow to GH L7.
But yeah.. I understand your sentiment. And thanks for linking my post. :-)

To be honest, we've started the sixth rank 3 structure: it will take 2 weeks more or less before moving the guild hall to 7 . I didn't enter in such a detail because it's irrelevant for the purporse of this post. For a small guild, 2/3 weeks ahead or back is like talking about millimeters on a scale of km.
Your post is great because you've touched the problem at the core imo: design.
I've no problem if I have to grind all my life: the problem is how I do it. For example, they tried with this "repeatable vs replayable", but it's far away from the final solution and it's wrong by design: the player doesn't choose anything, he/she's subject to an engine that decide on him/her behalf what variation to play. And in any case, the variations are 2 only: game longevity = close to zero.

silverkelt said:

small, medium , big..
doesnt matter.
we are bored because of ignored direct feedback.

Correct.
The discussion I've started is just another layer of dissatisfaction and it addresses the final consequence: nothing really new.
If this company wants to know the source of this sentiment, I can only suggest to read this forum carefully.

rickcase276

Try me, I am the only active member of my guild. I have gotten my guildhall to level 3, working towards level 4. Even the boon structures are really out of the question for me, at this rate. All I am doing now is getting the new artifact weapons on my 16 characters, not much else for me to do. And I have issues running dungeons, graphics card related, so I do not run those.

rayrdan

enjoying the fruits of masterwork professions?
good luck with that even with your rank 12 guild hall

asterotg

defiantone99 said:

The SH system is truly flawed, I keep making posts about it to no avail. My guild is waiting on the rank 10 upgrade. We have grinded our brains out. But, because we are not rich, we are not at rank 12. Those who are rich are enjoying the fruits of Masterwork Professions. They are getting even more rich. Soon they will be mass producing things and be able to race to SH 20. The rest of us are getting more poor and left behind. Of course we are bored and disillusioned. The costs must be dropped this week, not next year.

You should read some posts about masterwork professions. There ase some guilds with +R 12. Why do you think, that there are just a few ppl crafting masterwork. You need a) a hammer of gond and b) millions of AD to front up, to level one professon, until you can craft the desired item. The few ppl who hurried and are the first producing this things might break even or een have a profit. The rest either gave up or will have sunk abovementioned millions of AD, just to see, that prices sink and they wasted their time and effort.

The way they implemented the new 'endgear' is a joke. Grind EDemo and with some luck, you might get the desired ring. Triple gold counts nothing, regarding the quality of the rings. Your contribution is meaningless. Masterwork items are inferior to existing content in most of the chases and in the others, it is so expensive, that you can take the ADs and augment your chars better, doing anything else. It is just interesting, if you are BIS and you dont have anthing else, to spent your ADs on.

silverkelt

dont think that many of us in r12 + guilds are rolling in AD.. thats simply not the truth.. there are a "few" individuals who had a gond, invested in those guilds and got a return, but most of us gave up on masterworks ages ago.

Some others are doing it, because they like to finish things

but the vast majority of players in guilds past r12.. simply dont care.. they turned out of it after some initial calculations.. I was willing maybe to spend a couple million on crafting stuff , but relizing quicly that would escalate into the high teens to low 20's in terms of AD spent to do this stuff.. I gave up. So dont for a second think that those who got masterwork professions to the point they are selling stuff, IS simply due to them being in a guild that can offer it.

Its not the case.. not at all.. I would say less then 5% of people in r12+ guilds are doing anything at ALL with the new crafting systems.

santralafax

micky1p00 said:

More or less in the same boat, but only with half the guild Italians ;p
Some in my guild are still trying to get the rings, I gave up on this idea unless they will make it reliably farm-able.
All is left to do is mainly Influence + Tyranny, and we too as a small guild in no hurry...

Rosegold rings have come down in price and if you PVP, seem worth getting instead. 2.5 million AD no longer sounds like so much: 150 UD skirms/edemos and no +5 (that may or may not be of value.)

urlord283

It is hard to level up a guild... and that hurts

We are about to break LVL5

Would be nice to get some stuff from other encounters

AD and Gems are brutal

rapo973

We were discussing boredom but now we're digging into the SH masterwork professions.
Imo, SH is just a piece of the puzzle (even if important). As a small guild, masterwork professions are out of our radar so it's not an issue because we will never see them.
SH is not a problem per se: SH is a problem because it's based on the old contents already done so many times that I'm sick of them. It's an infinite source of tremendous boredom.

instynctive

@terramak did say during the Q&A yesterday on Twitch that they are looking at making things a little easier for smaller guilds to rank up.

No specifics were given, of course, but at least we have confirmation that the Devs know and are not completely deaf to our complaints..

rapo973

instynctive said:

@terramak did say during the Q&A yesterday on Twitch that they are looking at making things a little easier for smaller guilds to rank up.
No specifics were given, of course, but at least we have confirmation that the Devs know and are not completely deaf to our complaints..

On one hand we have good news, but on the other hand, this is the same old story: no specifics, no ETA and the usual vagueness.
We already saw such attitude in the past: 9 months without dungeons while all the world, devs included, knows that many pve players want them back. They will be back, but we're still waiting and waiting and the priority was given to other things.
We will not see anything about SH for months: the best they could do was not a better SG design, but they did the opposite by adding SH stuff behind a huge paywall.
My level of trust is very low at the moment: why have they wasted so many months to recognize that the SH requirements are a disaster (at least for the small guilds)? It's so evident that I wonder if the guys in the buttons room come from Mars or they are fooling us.
Even decreasing the requirements, I've to run Sharandar again and again: this is a 2 years+ old content. Can anyone run the same content for 2 years? Yes if someone wants to achieve a goal, but this is work, not fun. And that's boring as hell.
Hereunder our guilds today playing SH:

okeephe

I'm a solo guild, and it took me a couple of days to make lumber yard, 4 months, 6 days to make farm, and I goofed and upgraded guild hall to 2 before making the market.

I have maxxed out my guild marks on all 5 characters, so now there is no incentive to build any further. There is no point in grinding and still only having 30K guild marks no matter how much I do.

They completely missed the boat on the purpose of housing. Giving everyone the same house, and hiding them in instances negates much of the purpose, which is to impress others. Starting with a small keep and working your way to a palace, to show off your success would have been the way to go.

On top of that I am not going to PUG Taimat 1000+ times to get my 150 Linu's favors, (30ea x5), just for the 4th boon, let alone the 5th.

I am levelling jewelcrafting on 4 so that they can personaliz their own jewelry and that is pretty much it.