Developer Blog: Endgame Improvements

strumslinger

We're here to talk to you today about some upcoming improvements in The Maze Engine to a variety of endgame content, including: campaigns, Tiamat, and Stronghold Siege.

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/9855123-developer-blog:-endgame-improvements

santralafax

Good deal! Esp. appreciate removal of AD from boons and Stronghold vouchers.

xxmantaraxx

This is a welcome change! The only thing I would have added is reducing the amount of Linus Favor (pizza slices) needed for the final two boons in the WoD campaign. With these changes to Tiamat it may make it easier for guilds to get the favors needed but it is still a MASSIVE grind. I still have not gotten the last boon on my main (playing since beta) and have given up on the idea of getting them on any of my alts.

mrvincent1959

These are all great improvements, but we are going to need NEW endgame content in the next Mod. With Maze Engine the only endgame content we are getting is a reworked CN. I am hoping that Mod 10 will be purely a new dungeon system for level 70 players and at least three tiers of difficulty scaling from 2500 ilvl to 3k+ ilvl. Thanks for all the efforts.

scathias

That is some nice news that the strongboxes are being added to Dragonflight rewards and not just siege

beckylunatic

Question about the new strongboxes. When you say that they can drop from non-demonic HEs on the SH map, what difficulty tiers can they drop from? Any, or only the harder ones?

arkantosdrakon

Strumslinger, do you know if they are going to adjust the requirements for increasing the Dragon Hoard level? It has been ages that the level on Xbox even reaches tier 1. How is anyone supposed to obtain the tiamat orb artifact if it never reaches tier 4? Also, any word on the old draconic templar armor? What i mean, will it be available for purchase maybe? I really loved the look of them and would like to be able to teansmute to them...specially on my HR.

Also a suggestion, jow about maybe a personal tier for dragon hoard level instead of a world hoard level that never reaches 100%? This way you would personally increase your reward tiers by donating say like 100 coffers or something...

andorrabell

Great. I agree with the above poster that some Linu-relief would also be welcome (as well as some reductions to AD cost for upgrading companions- pretty please?)

kievitz

clap clap clap, yey....

some of this stuff was already shot down by the players in preview *seems you fixed the strongbox drops to include SH also, good.

Calling this "Endgame improvements" is too much.

Calling it "Finally some cost reductions" would be closer.

Best improvements: costs lovered and lowering the treshold to make alts

Btw, to make improvements in the so called "end-game" u need one first. Campaigns and SH are not end-game, its something to do while waiting better content.

End-game/non-end game, should be the pinnacle of the game, toughest monsters, tiers of gear to fight for, sht load of content to run and explore, loads of crafting to be made, etc.

What do we have, last 2 WoD boons(for most), SH buildings and for PVP Siege....

*fixed a typo
*didnt notice the strongbox update, my bad

mstrssihr

beckylunatic said:

Question about the new strongboxes. When you say that they can drop from non-demonic HEs on the SH map, what difficulty tiers can they drop from? Any, or only the harder ones?

"as well as non-demonic heroic encounters on the Stronghold map"

beckylunatic

mstrssihr said:

beckylunatic said:

Question about the new strongboxes. When you say that they can drop from non-demonic HEs on the SH map, what difficulty tiers can they drop from? Any, or only the harder ones?

"as well as non-demonic heroic encounters on the Stronghold map"

Buuuuttttt Peachyyyyy... even the little ones are still called heroic encounters, even if defeating them is not entirely indicative of our status as great heroes of the Realms.

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peregr1nus

xxmantaraxx said:

This is a welcome change! The only thing I would have added is reducing the amount of Linus Favor (pizza slices) needed for the final two boons in the WoD campaign. With these changes to Tiamat it may make it easier for guilds to get the favors needed but it is still a MASSIVE grind. I still have not gotten the last boon on my main (playing since beta) and have given up on the idea of getting them on any of my alts.

So im not the only one caring about the Linus favor! Great. Is it possible devs have forgotten they even exists?

BTW awesome changes,thx! And keep improving,good luck.

fatguns

yay?

arabatur

Looks like invoking has a new challenger! But who will go the distance?

theonlyopinion

Love the changes. Can we address fixing annoying little things, like the fact that the mini-contests in Dread Ring (great way to get Enchantments) have been broken for a Looooooong time?

Thanks for the updates.

beckylunatic

theonlyopinion said:

Can we address fixing annoying little things, like the fact that the mini-contests in Dread Ring (great way to get Enchantments) have been broken for a Looooooong time?

Considering the devs "broke" them on purpose, but only did a halfassed job of it, not bloody likely.

What happened was they "disabled" Dread Ring contests when they added the demonic HEs in Underdark. You can find the reference to this in the Underdark patch notes. Unfortunately, their implementation of "disabling" the contests has been nothing more than to turn off the scorekeeping, leaving all the timers and spawns in place. Assuming the idea behind "disabling" the DR contests was to prevent them from overlapping with the HEs (which they do, though they are now good for absolutely nothing but being in the way), a fix would involve actually removing the contests completely, not re-enabling them.

@terramak, calling this out as an annoying problem, yet again

solbergx

Very nice, i will be able to buy some things for my alts!!

minotaur2857

So lots of people will join Stronghold siege and AFK to get the rewards for losing unless there's any way of dealing with that incuded, much as happens on Tiamat now.

kreatyve

I can't wait til Tuesday!!! This is gonna be great. Loving all the QoL changes.

rollingonit

This may honestly get me back into the game somewhat and give me reasons to run alts through campaigns.

I also think them emphasizing the campaigns as PART of THE ENDGAME is good. This gets lost to many, including myself.

There are many more past issues that need to be touched upon, but these changes are all beneficial for your avg player.

pterias

Removing boon AD costs is great, but I have to agree with others about how many Linu's Pizza Slices are needed for the last 2 WoD boons. It's insane. My main is 2 1/2 years old and I finished getting his last 50 Linu's LAST WEEKEND!!! It was a mixture of intermittent boredom, despair, and disbelief that made it take so long. My last thoughts were "Thank the gods I can finally blow this taco stand!"

Without some MAJOR pizza relief, I don't think I'll ever bother doing Tiamat even once on any of my alts, even with the new rewards. That's especially true since I'd have to transfer all my enchants from my main to the alt to have a prayer of being able to actually get into a group with a viable chance of success thanks to new the queue system.

Oh well, if me killing her over 70 times didn't adequately get the "you're not welcome" point across, nothing will.

ageric

Finally!! An actual improvement! Thank you!

Maybe now you can give us back our wards in the trade bar shop? Have you seen what you guys have done to the AD and Zen prices?

kievitz

ageric said:

Finally!! An actual improvement! Thank you!

Maybe now you can give us back our wards in the trade bar shop? Have you seen what you guys have done to the AD and Zen prices?

zax shots up every mod launch, new zen items coming, so people are selling zen at high rate to profit when they bought it with 350AD. but yeah backlog piles up again and coals shoot to 500K in AH, not a good time to invest in zen or coals. itll come down eventually if not...too bad,

they themselves dont know yet how the coalgate affected the economy mod 9 being so close to it, to make any sense, well see in the next month whats going on.

zibadawa

kievitz said:

zax shots up every mod launch, new zen items coming, so people are selling zen at high rate to profit when they bought it with 350AD. but yeah backlog piles up again and coals shoot to 500K in AH, not a good time to invest in zen or coals. itll come down eventually if not...too bad,

they themselves dont know yet how the coalgate affected the economy mod 9 being so close to it, to make any sense, well see in the next month whats going on.

In other words, they have a convenient delay tactic that they will roll over into never bothering with it for at least a year.

mynaam

With the improvements to the queue system it will be easier than ever to queue for Tiamat, be it solo or with your friends and guildmates

The new queue system will kill of PUG edemo and Tiamat, since zerg channels will be the only way to win them. This is sad for those still doing their boons.

Players will be forced to join a big guild or not to ever complete their boons. I guess the lesson to learn here is that small guilds and solo playes are not welcome in Neverwinter.

I really hope I am wrong about this, but I simply can't see that I am.

twidget72

Man this is just insane. Once again they have found a way to trivialize all the players that have come before this point and invested the time and energy in bringing their characters up in NVW.

From my perspective, this is an attempt from PWI to keep the newer players in the game and bleed them of whatever currency they can, since it has a direct impact on them and no real tangible effects on the long term player base who have been here from the beginning and watched a lot of very poor decisions go through; broken mechanics, broken classes, massive amounts of long standing bugs, broken content, broken PVP, broken equipment sets etc....

First they remove the Coal wards and Pres Ward from Trade bar store; which in essence killed the re-ups on VIP because they were not making any money off them in the Zen Market. They show off the Maze Engine, which is severely lacking on endgame content. But hey.... they are finally going to bring back some of the dungeons that they took away ohhh so long ago; but hey they are going to slap a new coat of paint on them and make them look pretty and shiny. (Don't forget they are leveling dungeons now)

Now we get a whiff of "ENDGAME IMPROVEMENTS"...
-The new Que system: see how long before that is broken.

-Adding the Cache for Tiamat; nice touch for refinement (oh yeah, almost forgot Coal Ward prices are thru the roof on the AH or you could spend $10 per (x10-20... good luck on the upgrades there). At least a Res Stone "or better" and 100% chance drop of Elven armor and Seals of the protector. Laughable at best. You can get those by running dungeons anyway.

-Stronghold Siege: Seems nice enough but our guild didn't do much in that part since we are not a PVP type of guild (see above note about broken PVP); so this whole part was lost on most of our guild as a whole. Yes I get that they will be added for Dragonflight.... because hey I already have 40 or so of the others that I refuse to spend about 15k AD per key just to open and then wait even longer just to get to that Dragonflight gear which will probably be void by the time I get to it anyway, so those boxes will be collecting a lot of dust in my bank.

-Remove AD costs from Boons and Tasks across all campaigns: Thanks for the kick in the pants after I have dumped in all my AD already getting boons and tasks maxed.

-Lastly...Sharandar: Ah such a magical place, until it sucks you in until you realize how far and way too late,... so you begin the long grind just to get those boons complete since you got such a minimal reward for the amount of effort you put in the first go round, not to mention the AD cost on just about everything.

Great going PWI , demolish the efforts of the long standing player base that has given loads of time and money so PWI can steadily sucker the newer players with "new mods and endgame content and improvements".

And I will step down from my proverbial Soapbox to let you all enjoy this wonderful game.............

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aganway

This is all wonderful, but I still wait with bated breath for you to fix the PVP endgame queues. It would not take much to introduce a 3-tier system where those who have not spent a thousand bucks on ranking-up every single thing to max and can kill you with one or two hits can have an elite queue, and the lower two queue tiers while anyone can join, force anyone higher than the top item level cut-off for that tier to reduce down in scale to the max for that level. (A low level for those starting out and a mid level for those halfway through building for instance.) Not everyone who is 70 or over is equal as we all know, and post-level 70 PVP is rife with elitist maxed-out bullies in pre-made teams spoiling gameplay for those who are weaker, often a LOT weaker. It's through no fault of their own either that they are on the low side, it's usually just they have just recently reached 70, or they still need the time to earn better gear, but even then, when you have the burning gear, you often still cannot compete with those who have maxed all artifacts and enchants and never will.

There ABSOLUTELY needs to be a way for those who are lower in stats to have a fairer match with other players of closer matched gear after reaching endgame content, where they are not forced to just give up immediately and stand by the fire until it is over or else get killed over and over and over again adding hundreds of unnecessary deaths to their log. You already have the mechanism ingame to reduce-down higher level players to a lower map, you do it all the time, so it is already possible with what you have, to introduce a system such as this. Those who have only recently reached 70 or are still working their way up the gear ladder need a place where they can play against people at least marginally similar to their own power/def. This system would allow anyone of any level to join any queue, however those highest players would know that should they join a lower queue than their gear set, it would be reduced down to make the game more even and fair. You would also be free to join a higher queue, but at least you would know the risks and do it of your own free will. It is a simple concept, there are multiple queue tiers and anyone higher than the cut-off level for that tier while still free to join, just gets reduced down to the highest level for that tier.

PVP is a sport at the end of the day, and like for instance tennis, you do NOT have elite athletes like Serena Williams being matched against other tennis players who only play on their local courts on the weekend. That is ludicrous and never happens in ANY sport, why is it happening in THIS one? Imagine how long the match would last if Serena was serving against the rank amateur, she would ace every shot, it would be pitifully boring for the other player and over very quickly, and they would just have balls shot at them at a million miles an hour with no hope of returning her gargantuan serve. Well this is exactly what it is like for those who are not ranked up to max when they join a PVP match against those who are. It is boring, it is pointless, it is demoralizing, and it turns people off even bothering to try. I myself love PVP, I have spent over 2 years playing this game and I did PVP right from the start. However even someone like me who loves it and wants to do it, just shudders most of the time and knowing from first-hand experience the staggering frequency of mis-matched games where the other (often pre-made) team just wipes the floor with you all from the very first moment, I now tend to avoid it subconsciously because I know that the experience for me (and the others) is going to be an unpleasant one. I do not mind getting killed, I do not mind having my backside handed to me by a better player, but we are not talking about this, we are talking about Serena Williams' serve against a weekend amateur player. It just does not work.

It used to be bad enough before Strongholds rollout, but now there are huge guilds with the extra PVP buffs they enjoy, it is even worse and more imbalanced than before for those who are either challenged in the money or guild area or still working their way up. I have heard complaints so many times about this issue in the past I have lost count, and most people openly admit that PVP is broken as it stands. When I have mentioned it anywhere before, I ALWAYS get someone reply either saying they fully agree, or others saying they totally avoid it for this reason. This is not what you want, you want participation. You want a fun experience. Please, for goodness sake, do SOMETHING about this broken horrible mismatched PVP queuing system which even when you rank up your character and have the best PVP gear you can buy, because of the enchants and rest of it they spent a fortune on, you will still NEVER be able to compete with those who have everything maxed.

I am happy you are making improvements and listening to feedback finally, but it is really time that this PVP issue was fixed for endgame content once and for all, to make it fun for all players of ALL levels after 70, so please do something to fix it. Cheers.

edit: To put it in a nutshell, at the moment post 70, PVP treats everyone as one level, and this just is not working.

wentris

I really love Tiamat changes. At first I though it may exclude weaker people from any chance of doing it, but then again - even zerg channels cant always have 25 people willing to do it at the same time, so it will probably look like that: 10-20 people from channel filled with PuGs from PE - that ensures a smooth run, since channel will have all necessary people for a quick run and PuGs will have an easy victory they normally wouldnt have if they randomly entered the queue. The only people excluded from Tiamat now are inexperienced and undergeared people nobody will want to run with - but honestly, if nobody wants them it means they are just too weak for end-game and players willingness to run with certain people is better filter than any iLvL cap devs could come up with. The only thing thats left to know now is figuring if multiruns are still possible and how to make them most effectively.

Also, since people may think that zerg channels are so elitist they wont take a PuG with less than 4k gs, or something - current state of game is so easy that phrases like:"LF1M for HAMSTER, any class, any ilvl" (or just "LF1M for HAMSTER") are pretty common - quick party assembly is more important, than its strength, if you have 2-3 people that can already carry the dungeon (or 10-15 people in Tiamats case).

firdraing

It's probably the first time when I am going to say this, but thank you, Arc games, for such improvements. I really like the part of increasing the rewards from Tiamat, since I am currently focusing on ToD's end boons, and it would also be awesome if the chest would also give Linu's favors! Good work there, I hope you're going to do less step backs rather than moves forward.
P.S. It would be really nice to find a channel for Tiamat, I am in 2 channels atm but Tiamat 17K is inactive and the other one failed to compete with any others so it stayed small.