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Neverwinter's Flawed Encounter Design
jaysun1977
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 177 Arc User
Neverwinter’s Encounter Design is flawed and I would like to take a few moments of your time to explain why and how to make it better. To do so, I will provide a look at reward mechanics and encounter design as it relates to MMORPGs.
Let’s start with reward mechanics. We can generally differentiate between small incremental rewards and substantial individual rewards. Among those we differentiate between “rare” and “common” rewards. As we are talking about mechanics, still, “rare” in this context means “low to very low chance at a reward for a particular action”, in other words: low drop rate. “Common” by contrast means “likely to very likely chance at a reward for a particular action”. This could be a high drop chance or currency-reward-exchange.
This is not just a simple distinction, though. They are fundamentally different reward mechanics and have drastically different implications for the content design around them:
“Common rewards” are plannable. They are either acquired via a reliable and satisfying randomization (high drop rate) or a steady and incremental acquisition of reward tokens (loot currency) that can then be traded in for the desired reward. Encounters designed around those rewards can be made very tough and complex. Players can expect to yield their reward with a degree of certainty. Neverwinter examples for that would be campaign boons or seal vendor items.
By contrast “rare rewards” are erratic and slippery. They represent a lottery. You may win the jackpot and get your loot or you may not. As in any lottery, expect your bets to be lost. While such lottery mechanics are rewarding for a player that hits the jackpot, they are frustrating for everyone else. That’s not to say they have no place in MMORPGs but they require a different encounter design. And here we can differentiate between three design options: ante, timed allotment and open access:
“Ante” requires a buy-in from the player. The player pays up front for a chance to participate in the lottery. A Neverwinter example for that would be Lockboxes.
“Timed allotment” requires no payment from the player but limits participation in the lottery. This could be daily, weekly or even several times a day. Neverwinter examples for that mechanic would be the SCA roll (even though its rewards blow donkey balls).
“Open access” requires no investment other than the player’s time. In Neverwinter this would be boss drop mechanics.
So far, so obvious. It is relevant, however, to look at how rewards interact with encounter design to create satisfaction or enjoyment. Common rewards require little extra effort. They allow for complex and difficult tasks to acquire the reward, as the player can reliable expect to be rewarded upon successful completion. In the case of the “high drop chance” variant this is not entirely true but close enough. In the case of very small reward increments (i.e. requiring a lot of completions to acquire sufficient currency to buy the reward) it follows similar design limitations to an open access lottery, though: Cutscenes need to be skippable and the encounter must not have unavoidable time sinks.
In the case of rare rewards, however, the content needs to be streamlined. That does not mean it needs to be easy. It can be as difficult as you want it to be, but it must not be complex or hindered. But what do I mean by that?
In the case of low drop rates (Lostmauth’s Horn of Blasting, Legendary Rings, Legendary mounts, etc.) players will want to consume the related content repeatedly, often and as fast as possible to increase their odds of attaining the coveted reward. In the case of Lockboxes and mount drops, this works as well as to be expected of an ante lottery and serves well to explain how it should be: It is easy to access (double clock on the lockbox) and easy to repeat (just hit “open more”). Unfortunately this doesn’t hold true for most of the open access lottery. The worst example for that would be Portobello’s dungeon and its attached campaign progression. While this is a “common reward” mechanic with its small and steady increments it still falls into the same design trap: players need to consume the content repeatedly to get to the desired reward. They can tell exactly how often they have to venture into the dungeon to get to the end but they have to enter it a hundred times regardless (not counting additional accreditation rewards). This is where the encounter design falls flat on its face though: unskippable and unbearably long cutscenes. Players wish to consume the content, not watch the same cutscene for the hundredth time. Regardless of how well it is made, it is merely frustrating after the tenth time. It turns the progression from fun (for the dungeon is actually quite fun) to grinding (you just keep doing it because you have to not because the content in itself is entertaining.
It is not just unskippable video sequences, however. It is also unavoidable time sinks. Let me use a few examples to illustrate what I mean by that:
Valindra’s Tower:
While the dungeon can be run fast and repeatedly with little effort, the Boss mechanic is no longer up to its current function. Where the dungeon (and its associated boss mechanics) were once top level content, rewarding with the best equipment available, where multi-stage boss fights made perfect sense, it no longer serves that function. With its new function as a source for seals and salvageable items to increase your astral diamond reserves, Valindra’s second and fourth phase merely serve as a time sink. It’s boring for the players, especially in a fourth phase where Valindra has only about 10Hp remaining and you keep running in circles for what seems like an eternity to hit her that one more time it needs to kill her. That mechanic is no longer engaging.
Prophecy of Madness:
While this one yields end-level rewards in the form of legendary rings, it slows the content down with timers. There is no meaningful way to speed up the encounter as you wait for portals to spawn additional mobs to kill or wait for portals to spawn to open for additional mobs to kill
Demonic Escape:
The encounter takes five minutes and it’s pretty much irrelevant what you do in that regard. It may take les if you fail, but you cannot speed it up through your own actions. There is no wonder everyone hates that encounter with a passion.
On the current top list of how NOT to do encounter design would be the entire Underdark encounter setup, mainly due to the legendary ring drop rate. While eDemo at least provide Twisted Weapons and only then starts to drop into the oblivion of terrible encounter design, Prohpecy of Madness and Throne of the Dwarven Gods start out as terrible and only continue to be worse. “What’s wrong with them”, you ask? Unskippable cutscenes, unavoidable time sinks and extremely low drop rates combine into a boring slog. They would be fine in and of themselves, to just try them out once and have fun with them, but to slog through them repeatedly is simply a chore. There is no meaningful reward at the end of them and they simply cannot compete with more open encounters.
If it weren’t for the chance of a legendary ring, what point would there be to enter PoM over Kessel or Tuern? Kessel and Tuern both take about six minutes to complete, four if you’re really fast and yield the same ad value as PoM or TotDG, which take ten to twelve minutes. You are literally losing money, going into PoM over Kessel and you enter PoM well knowing that and it makes the disappointment over not getting the ring you went in there for in the first place sting that much harder.
Let’s start with reward mechanics. We can generally differentiate between small incremental rewards and substantial individual rewards. Among those we differentiate between “rare” and “common” rewards. As we are talking about mechanics, still, “rare” in this context means “low to very low chance at a reward for a particular action”, in other words: low drop rate. “Common” by contrast means “likely to very likely chance at a reward for a particular action”. This could be a high drop chance or currency-reward-exchange.
This is not just a simple distinction, though. They are fundamentally different reward mechanics and have drastically different implications for the content design around them:
“Common rewards” are plannable. They are either acquired via a reliable and satisfying randomization (high drop rate) or a steady and incremental acquisition of reward tokens (loot currency) that can then be traded in for the desired reward. Encounters designed around those rewards can be made very tough and complex. Players can expect to yield their reward with a degree of certainty. Neverwinter examples for that would be campaign boons or seal vendor items.
By contrast “rare rewards” are erratic and slippery. They represent a lottery. You may win the jackpot and get your loot or you may not. As in any lottery, expect your bets to be lost. While such lottery mechanics are rewarding for a player that hits the jackpot, they are frustrating for everyone else. That’s not to say they have no place in MMORPGs but they require a different encounter design. And here we can differentiate between three design options: ante, timed allotment and open access:
“Ante” requires a buy-in from the player. The player pays up front for a chance to participate in the lottery. A Neverwinter example for that would be Lockboxes.
“Timed allotment” requires no payment from the player but limits participation in the lottery. This could be daily, weekly or even several times a day. Neverwinter examples for that mechanic would be the SCA roll (even though its rewards blow donkey balls).
“Open access” requires no investment other than the player’s time. In Neverwinter this would be boss drop mechanics.
So far, so obvious. It is relevant, however, to look at how rewards interact with encounter design to create satisfaction or enjoyment. Common rewards require little extra effort. They allow for complex and difficult tasks to acquire the reward, as the player can reliable expect to be rewarded upon successful completion. In the case of the “high drop chance” variant this is not entirely true but close enough. In the case of very small reward increments (i.e. requiring a lot of completions to acquire sufficient currency to buy the reward) it follows similar design limitations to an open access lottery, though: Cutscenes need to be skippable and the encounter must not have unavoidable time sinks.
In the case of rare rewards, however, the content needs to be streamlined. That does not mean it needs to be easy. It can be as difficult as you want it to be, but it must not be complex or hindered. But what do I mean by that?
In the case of low drop rates (Lostmauth’s Horn of Blasting, Legendary Rings, Legendary mounts, etc.) players will want to consume the related content repeatedly, often and as fast as possible to increase their odds of attaining the coveted reward. In the case of Lockboxes and mount drops, this works as well as to be expected of an ante lottery and serves well to explain how it should be: It is easy to access (double clock on the lockbox) and easy to repeat (just hit “open more”). Unfortunately this doesn’t hold true for most of the open access lottery. The worst example for that would be Portobello’s dungeon and its attached campaign progression. While this is a “common reward” mechanic with its small and steady increments it still falls into the same design trap: players need to consume the content repeatedly to get to the desired reward. They can tell exactly how often they have to venture into the dungeon to get to the end but they have to enter it a hundred times regardless (not counting additional accreditation rewards). This is where the encounter design falls flat on its face though: unskippable and unbearably long cutscenes. Players wish to consume the content, not watch the same cutscene for the hundredth time. Regardless of how well it is made, it is merely frustrating after the tenth time. It turns the progression from fun (for the dungeon is actually quite fun) to grinding (you just keep doing it because you have to not because the content in itself is entertaining.
It is not just unskippable video sequences, however. It is also unavoidable time sinks. Let me use a few examples to illustrate what I mean by that:
Valindra’s Tower:
While the dungeon can be run fast and repeatedly with little effort, the Boss mechanic is no longer up to its current function. Where the dungeon (and its associated boss mechanics) were once top level content, rewarding with the best equipment available, where multi-stage boss fights made perfect sense, it no longer serves that function. With its new function as a source for seals and salvageable items to increase your astral diamond reserves, Valindra’s second and fourth phase merely serve as a time sink. It’s boring for the players, especially in a fourth phase where Valindra has only about 10Hp remaining and you keep running in circles for what seems like an eternity to hit her that one more time it needs to kill her. That mechanic is no longer engaging.
Prophecy of Madness:
While this one yields end-level rewards in the form of legendary rings, it slows the content down with timers. There is no meaningful way to speed up the encounter as you wait for portals to spawn additional mobs to kill or wait for portals to spawn to open for additional mobs to kill
Demonic Escape:
The encounter takes five minutes and it’s pretty much irrelevant what you do in that regard. It may take les if you fail, but you cannot speed it up through your own actions. There is no wonder everyone hates that encounter with a passion.
On the current top list of how NOT to do encounter design would be the entire Underdark encounter setup, mainly due to the legendary ring drop rate. While eDemo at least provide Twisted Weapons and only then starts to drop into the oblivion of terrible encounter design, Prohpecy of Madness and Throne of the Dwarven Gods start out as terrible and only continue to be worse. “What’s wrong with them”, you ask? Unskippable cutscenes, unavoidable time sinks and extremely low drop rates combine into a boring slog. They would be fine in and of themselves, to just try them out once and have fun with them, but to slog through them repeatedly is simply a chore. There is no meaningful reward at the end of them and they simply cannot compete with more open encounters.
If it weren’t for the chance of a legendary ring, what point would there be to enter PoM over Kessel or Tuern? Kessel and Tuern both take about six minutes to complete, four if you’re really fast and yield the same ad value as PoM or TotDG, which take ten to twelve minutes. You are literally losing money, going into PoM over Kessel and you enter PoM well knowing that and it makes the disappointment over not getting the ring you went in there for in the first place sting that much harder.
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Comments
Players need to be able to speed up the completion of individual attempts through their own actions.
That way the disappointment of not getting your desired reward is offset by pride in your speed. It also rewards competence and development on part of the player. A well-played and well-geared character will thus be able to complete more individual encounters in the same time it takes a lesser-geared character.
Encounters based around a lottery reward system need skippable cutscenes.
Having to watch the same cutscene for the umpteenth time serves no purpose. It conveys no additional story, it provides no mechanical difference and leads only to irritation. I highly doubt there is even a single player in Neverwinter that can honestly state “I have watched Lostmauth’s introductory scene fifty times and it still gives me shivers of excitement”.
Boss mechanics need to follow their attached reward mechanic.
Does the boss have a high drop chance for desired loot then by all means make it complex and difficult. The old CN Dracolich mechanic worked great in that regard. The Orcus encounter is pretty close to the mark as well: skippable cutscene, hard hitting boss, changing environment. Just drop the “undead escape” deathsphere mechanic from the boss fight. It’s just silly. Everyone hates “demonic escape”, adding it to your boss fight won’t make the design more desireable.
So much for the encounter design, but what can be done to make random drops more rewarding? Currently the party rolls for random high quality loot and the winner takes it all (assuming standard loot settings). Here’s an idea from Blade & Soul:
Have players bet AD rather than rolling for loot. Give a timer of five to six seconds after each bet to allow other players to beat it. Allow for players to drop out of those auctions early and have the winner pay the amount of his bet and distribute it amongst the group members, even those that dropped out earlier.
Now that idea intrigued me and I found it very rewarding, but others may see it differently. I just wanted to throw it out here as well. If Cryptic doesn’t want to allow us to sell high quality loot on the auction house, let us at least auction them off within the group the moment they drop. It also helps prevent those “I went in here for fifty times for that blasted Insignia and every time someone else gets it” moments.
Thank you for your time. I know it’s been a long post, yet I hope you found it entertaining and/or enlightening.
Cheers!