Useful things hold their value. Switch BTA/ BTC to BOE and lets see how many players suddenly find NW fun again. People want to conquer dungeons and get rich. Most dont care about the newest artifact that will make them 1% better. Why was dungeons and dragons left in the hands of this company?
These rewards do not justify the changes to keys. Simply put, go back to the drawing board.
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
I want to add, if you haven't already, re-read what @beckylunatic wrote a couple pages ago.
For those of us who were here since the beginning, we remember when the key to getting loot (no pun intended) had NOTHING to do with keys. You went into a dungeon, killed the bosses, and the bosses dropped loot.
And if you ran dungeons during the Dungeon Delve event, you got even more loot, which was fantastic. The only ROI people consider was their time. I don't want to feel like I'm at working, plugging numbers into a spreadsheet to determine the ROI of my choices in a video game.
I want to go into a dungeon, kill monsters and get loot.
So @rgutscheradev@mimicking#6533 why can't we get back to the days where the monsters dropped good loot, and the dungeon chests were extra. My biggest piece of feedback is this...
Let every boss drop some sort of loot for everyone, and one piece that gets rolled on (because for better or worse, winning a loot roll is still exciting).
Take your current chest loot table and have each minor boss drop 25% of that on the ground for each party member.
Add on roll from the top half of the chest loot table that is a random drop everyone rolls on.
Take your current chest loot table and have each end boss drop 50% of that on the ground for each party member.
Add two rolls from the top half of the chest loot table that is a random drop everyone rolls on.
Allow people with a key to open up the end "dungeon loot" chest for a chance at 100% of your current chest loot drop
What this does is make the entire dungeon exciting and worth running. Every boss has a chance to drop something cool, but the last boss (and possibly the end dungeon chest) has the best loot, so it's still worth running until the end.
For players who have extra keys (or want to buy more), they can keep farming dungeons and getting bonus loot from the chest. For those who are trying to make more AD and don't want to invest in keys, they can keep getting loot from the dungeon without needing a key. Essentially, what the above does is make a majority of the loot (25%+25%+50% chest loot, plus a shot at 4 random "high quality" items) is earned without a key. With a key, you essentially get double your core boss loot guaranteed.
I think it's fair. It allows those who want to grind dungeons all day long the feeling that their game time is not tied to keys. It allows people who aren't rich enough to constantly invest in keys the chance at still getting a meaningful pile of loot. And it doesn't change much for those who are already sitting on a stack of keys.
But I implore you. I'm on my knees here, begging for relief. Let's get back to the roots of D&D. Go to dungeon. Kill monsters. Get loot.
Ran this change past my guild and alliance mates on ps4...The reaction was universal.... Negatively universal. Nobody is willing to pay to grind. Like so many others have stated....Dungeons are supposed to be FUN. They are the end game for most of us, and being artificially constrained(or forced to pay significant amounts of money) to continue to run end game content is HORRID game design. I fear you'll lose more paying players than you'll gain. More than you have already anyway. It is becoming more difficult to replace leaving members. Even finding pug groups are yet still getting worse. The game(when we can play it) is enjoyable, but whomever your economy manager is, needs to be replaced. He/she is slowly killing your game, and killing the fun.
Let every boss drop some sort of loot for everyone, and one piece that gets rolled on (because for better or worse, winning a loot roll is still exciting).
Take your current chest loot table and have each minor boss drop 25% of that on the ground for each party member.
Add on roll from the top half of the chest loot table that is a random drop everyone rolls on.
Take your current chest loot table and have each end boss drop 50% of that on the ground for each party member.
Add two rolls from the top half of the chest loot table that is a random drop everyone rolls on.
Allow people with a key to open up the end "dungeon loot" chest for a chance at 100% of your current chest loot drop
What this does is make the entire dungeon exciting and worth running. Every boss has a chance to drop something cool, but the last boss (and possibly the end dungeon chest) has the best loot, so it's still worth running until the end.
This. Let the first chest be a return of investment for the daily AD grind, the second one be a bonus, and have bosses drop more than a peridot or a salvageable. There are other ways to monetize the game if you don't make people run after their losses.
I feel adding some of these special companions is an insult to the people who already have them.
Take the Cambion Magus for example. It was originally offered as a charge reward for spending $300. This feels like a slap in the face to those who spent $300 specifically to get one, and those who spent multiple millions to buy one on the AH from someone who spent $300.
What is the point of a charge reward, when you don't need to charge to get the reward? Spending money to get what you think is a unique item is not actually what happens.
I see now that spending money specifically for a charge reward is foolish, and not rewarding at all.
Why not just bring back the original charge reward program that offered it in the first place. Then people can either spend $300 to buy the Cambion Magus, or buy one from the Auction House from someone who spent $300 in order to get one.
I have the Cambion Magus and I feel highly insulted by this.
If this is how you thank those for charging, I WILL NOT participate in any future charge reward programs.
Over time all rewards will be easier to get. Haven't several promotion companions been made available in the Winter Gifts? You pay to get stuff first, not exclusive.
If we’re being forced to use a key, then we should be getting stuff we can sell in the Auction House, not stuff that is bound to us. Lower prices in the market is a good thing. We won’t make much off of the items we get, but if everything is having its priced lowered, we won’t have to.
I never have posted on here, but I will say this is a really Horrible Change unless you change your loot system all around
1st thing I would like to see added would be a Seal Vendor with things like + 5 rings and +4 rings, Various other items as well.
What can now happen is when we use a key, that chest has a guaranteed seal anywhere from 1-5 seals in the chest... Now we can save up these seals and buy items to progress our character... The items we buy from the Vendor can be BOA with a few being BOE... Everyone wins, but it allows us to progress. You can also still have that .00001% chance that you have now to get something valuable.
I do really believe that a change like this will kill this game...
I have seen a lot of comments about the keys and loot system, I agree with everyone's comments in this thread, the thing I haven't seen and maybe I just missed it is regarding the "useful items" tab........is this tab going to allow us to remove keys and send them to our alts or are all the keys going to be bound to character now? Also, something I am concerned about.....IF a player gets an item that they already have, are we going to be able to salvage/sell to vendor or is it going to be stuck in our inventory forever (as seen in the winter event with multiple copies of mounts that are now taking up precious inventory space???
Hello everyone, I only want to point out two things.
1) As a player of 3 years experience, I need say, the rare loot is not what I want. What I want is to complete the build in my mind. For instance, lets say I want a support HR, damager GF or a healer OP. The problem is, I didnt even manage to complete my main over 3 years after running all these contents for hundreds of time. The problem is not only the rings. I, as a player want to progres by running the dungeons doing the campaigns etc. But tell me why we are getting greater mark of power from Dread Ring dungeons instead of Etos or CN or Msva?
2) This is only a bit of suggestion, can you please think about making rough AD to be used for things like companion upgrade?
Thanks for reading.
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viperwitch23Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 205Arc User
I have seen a lot of comments about the keys and loot system, I agree with everyone's comments in this thread, the thing I haven't seen and maybe I just missed it is regarding the "useful items" tab........is this tab going to allow us to remove keys and send them to our alts or are all the keys going to be bound to character now? Also, something I am concerned about.....IF a player gets an item that they already have, are we going to be able to salvage/sell to vendor or is it going to be stuck in our inventory forever (as seen in the winter event with multiple copies of mounts that are now taking up precious inventory space???
Keys are bound to characters now. Those that you make in campaign. Only Legendary key, Epic 5K AD dungeon key and 2.5k normal key not bound - all others are
AD value of dungeon drops has almost nothing to do with scarcity, I find it very hard to believe that the developers think that. Almost all AD values in the game can be directly tracked to nearest equivalent value from the zen store. Even basic enchantments can be correlated to Taramalune trade bar costs and hold at a price near equivalent to their percentage of value against one of the higher value trade ins.
Now, admittedly, some of that may hold true simply because the game skews hard towards 'annoyance into paying' rather than 'convenience'. But that's hardly something I would risk bringing up in discussion.
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
I've been seriously thinking this over looking for options that are good for players without breaking anything, and I've had an idea. Maybe not every detail accounted for and could use a little more polish, but a possible solution.
It is slightly less painful to fashion keys for Underdark content, because the content gives you faezress. 20 hours between is still annoying for players who want to spam the content, but at least you don't so much need to grind outside of the content you're interested in running.
I haven't run Fangbreaker, so I'm not sure how sustainable the key model is there. I *think* the key cost was sufficiently reduced that the time to craft it is the big limiting factor, not the currency.
What I propose is that bags of campaign currency can be added to the guaranteed loot from their corresponding dungeons and skirmishes. This is the loot currently accessed via an epic/VIP dungeon key, or in the default chest in a skirmish. The bags should be unbound (like the dragon hoard coin pouches from Tiamat), so that players who do not need them for anything can sell them to players who do need them. This adds value to the basic chest and key; the lack of reliable value for these is one of our major complaints.
Sharandar - Master of the Hunt, Malabog's Castle Dread Ring - Dread Legion, Valindra's Tower IWD - Kessel's Retreat ToD - Shores of Tuern, Lair of Lostmauth, possibly Tiamat
It's not quite the same as offering Genie's Gifts, since the proposed item would always be campaign-specific. If there's concern that skirmishes shouldn't reward the same as dungeons, give them their own bag with less currency value. But the main thing this accomplishes is to give players choices, building in alternatives for how to accomplish goals within the game. A huge problem in Neverwinter is having a ton of different things that you "have to" do in order to meet various objectives, while there is only one way to achieve each thing, adding up to an unreasonable demand on the free time of the average mortal. I have referred to these problems at various times as lack of self-direction and a snowball effect: campaign says I have to do this, Stronghold says I have to do that, gear progression says I have to do another thing, and I'm just plain exhausted and don't want to do any of it.
So here's what the addition of campaign currency to group content could do:
The currency can be used to craft a campaign key used for the same content again, without requiring grinding of dailies. Potentially provides a meaningful sink for gold, if players wish to keep chaining currency into a key for another run.
The currency can be used to feed our bottomless stronghold mimics. Feeding the mimic continues to be painful for small guilds, and especially guilds with players who are still working on boons. And grinding quests over and over again that you would otherwise have been happy to see the back of, because the stronghold demands it... that's a kick in the teeth. If you can get some Treasures of Tyranny from a couple of Lostmauth runs instead of please-just-kill-me dailies, oh joyous day.
The currency can be used towards campaign progression, providing alternate paths for players who would rather progress via group content, or prefer to focus on PvP (where PvE-earned boons aren't optional). I don't foresee this becoming a cheap alternative because the currency holds inherent value due to multiple ongoing uses. Many campaigns still have some form of time-gating. Boosts for completing them more easily without buying them out are already being implemented, but are mostly event-based and therefore not always available. If somebody wants to finish off Sharandar by running Master of the Hunt a bunch of times, at this stage of the game (literally), it's not going to hurt to let them.
Campaign Completion packages are still viable for instant gratification. So are Zen keys. And honestly, if this idea breaks your business model because it actually is that reliant on players paying to skip campaigns, or feeling pressured into a microtransaction every time they participate in group content, you do not deserve any of our business.
This idea adds nothing to ECC, EGWD, or EToS, but these are in better shape with the key model anyway due to higher salvage value and no "bonus" chest.
A few other things: Drastically reduce the cost of a key for a normal dungeon and/or make VIP keys function like the daily dungeon key and work on the end chest from normal dungeons. Asking 2.5k AD is utterly appalling. If the Renegade Evoker companion hasn't been fixed to drop from VT again, do so. As far as I know, this was broken in EE.
I came here to comment the same as @sirjimbofrancis regarding mSVA. FBI will be rough farming relic armor but you can farm voninblood for the keys if needed. To farm those legendary marks though? I'm concerned about that, the bulk of the community does not have time to farm for 3 keys everyday to run the trial once. Based on the drop rate it will be so difficult for most to acquire I can envision giving up on it entirely.
I like these changes, they are all very nice and helpful. The new gear offers interesting options, more salvage or transmutes and the "key ring" is great. Farming those marks though? Ugh.
If the marks of sva was unbound, surely that would be a great source of ad for the hard gamers that can run it many times ina a row...
Avestruz.Q.T.Seduz - Rogue, natural born assassin.
And honestly, if this idea breaks your business model because it actually is that reliant on players paying to skip campaigns, or feeling pressured into a microtransaction every time they participate in group content, you do not deserve any of our business.
Regardless of the specific items or implementation, this should be the takeaway from these threads, and, in fact, all of the complaints and free-falling playerbase of the past year.
STO gets away with it because there's a certain delightful honesty to Ship Masteries being just that much cooler with every new ship introduced, and, I can't stress this enough, they're ACTUALLY COOL.
CO gets away with it because, well, someone's gotta pay server costs somehow and Freeform is actually a pretty big power boost and worth it. Plus monthly fashion freebie for our electronic superhero barbie dolls.
But nickel and diming annoyances, going out of the way to make dailies and dungeons more annoying? Annoying players into paying eventually results in them just being annoyed.
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lordseth1985Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 319Arc User
I want to add, if you haven't already, re-read what @beckylunatic wrote a couple pages ago.
For those of us who were here since the beginning, we remember when the key to getting loot (no pun intended) had NOTHING to do with keys. You went into a dungeon, killed the bosses, and the bosses dropped loot.
And if you ran dungeons during the Dungeon Delve event, you got even more loot, which was fantastic. The only ROI people consider was their time. I don't want to feel like I'm at working, plugging numbers into a spreadsheet to determine the ROI of my choices in a video game.
I want to go into a dungeon, kill monsters and get loot.
So @rgutscheradev@mimicking#6533 why can't we get back to the days where the monsters dropped good loot, and the dungeon chests were extra. My biggest piece of feedback is this...
Let every boss drop some sort of loot for everyone, and one piece that gets rolled on (because for better or worse, winning a loot roll is still exciting).
Take your current chest loot table and have each minor boss drop 25% of that on the ground for each party member.
Add on roll from the top half of the chest loot table that is a random drop everyone rolls on.
Take your current chest loot table and have each end boss drop 50% of that on the ground for each party member.
Add two rolls from the top half of the chest loot table that is a random drop everyone rolls on.
Allow people with a key to open up the end "dungeon loot" chest for a chance at 100% of your current chest loot drop
What this does is make the entire dungeon exciting and worth running. Every boss has a chance to drop something cool, but the last boss (and possibly the end dungeon chest) has the best loot, so it's still worth running until the end.
For players who have extra keys (or want to buy more), they can keep farming dungeons and getting bonus loot from the chest. For those who are trying to make more AD and don't want to invest in keys, they can keep getting loot from the dungeon without needing a key. Essentially, what the above does is make a majority of the loot (25%+25%+50% chest loot, plus a shot at 4 random "high quality" items) is earned without a key. With a key, you essentially get double your core boss loot guaranteed.
I think it's fair. It allows those who want to grind dungeons all day long the feeling that their game time is not tied to keys. It allows people who aren't rich enough to constantly invest in keys the chance at still getting a meaningful pile of loot. And it doesn't change much for those who are already sitting on a stack of keys.
But I implore you. I'm on my knees here, begging for relief. Let's get back to the roots of D&D. Go to dungeon. Kill monsters. Get loot.
Please!
That's reminds me of the good old days of the old armor sets... each dungeon had a chance to drop a piece of 2 different sets, and 1) they were all unbound, so you could sell them on ah if you don't want it and 2) this kept me busy for a long time running many dungeons just to get the piece I wanted...
Avestruz.Q.T.Seduz - Rogue, natural born assassin.
@viperwitch23 I was talking about the ones you purchase in the zen store (which are BOA), if this new tab makes ALL keys BOC then those of us who run multiple alts will have to purchase keys for each character, the keys that you can make aren't the issue
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viperwitch23Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 205Arc User
@viperwitch23 I was talking about the ones you purchase in the zen store (which are BOA), if this new tab makes ALL keys BOC then those of us who run multiple alts will have to purchase keys for each character, the keys that you can make aren't the issue
I bought 5 last week and gave 1 to each char who don't have own keys from campaign. Grind campaigns on more then 2-3 chars is impossible. Well many hours I grinded Faezers on 2 DCs as they are my best sellers in dungeons And on GF And beyond that just not much point I am really worried how this will affect dungeons tho many people say it be a peachy life with loads of sellable drops Any idea when this patch will happen? And is here any chance for another change at this point?
Over time all rewards will be easier to get. Haven't several promotion companions been made available in the Winter Gifts? You pay to get stuff first, not exclusive.
Except that many rewards that we want are BTC/BTA. Like the legendary underdark rings.
I never have posted on here, but I will say this is a really Horrible Change unless you change your loot system all around
1st thing I would like to see added would be a Seal Vendor with things like + 5 rings and +4 rings, Various other items as well.
What can now happen is when we use a key, that chest has a guaranteed seal anywhere from 1-5 seals in the chest... Now we can save up these seals and buy items to progress our character... The items we buy from the Vendor can be BOA with a few being BOE... Everyone wins, but it allows us to progress. You can also still have that .00001% chance that you have now to get something valuable.
I do really believe that a change like this will kill this game...
This made me think of another variation of this idea. It's still a vendor, but to buy the +4 and +5 rings you would have to deposit 100 of the same +3 or +4 ring. Obviously we shouldn't have to hold on to the whole 100 rings of each type we want till it adds up to 100, so it should be a deposit system like the "Rewards of the Hoard" quest in Well of Dragons. Or like the nodes quest for the Elemental weapons. I think this will give us all a fighting chance without making it too easy. 100 might be a pretty high number, but I'd bet you'd score that long before you actually get a +5 with these drop rates.
AND SERIOUSLY, CAN WE GET A LEGENDARY MOUNT IN THE ZEN MARKET ALREADY! I WOULD PAY UP TO $100 TO GET ONE ACCOUNT WIDE! And no, I don't have a heart-on for the number 100...
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viperwitch23Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 205Arc User
Why can't we get Dungeon Delve event back on? Then people just do the dungeons like we used to do them And all this screaming with keys will go away largely You CAN do at last 3 edemo in 1h
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lantern22Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,111Arc User
We don’t always manage these tensions (bound, unbound, rare, common) as well as we should.
Please remember that this is a game, it should be fun, not "tense" or frustrating.
Fair enough, you need to make revenue but if you make the game intrinsically "not fun" or frustrating and the only way for ppl to enjoy it is to is to pay $$, then most ppl will just leave. There has to be a better business model than that.
Cut to the more recent round of changes. One of the things people have called out as frustrating is how incredibly rare the rarest things (like the Underdark Rings) still are. So this time we’ve increased them again, by around x5. This is on top of the previous change, so it’s a total of x10. Hopefully this will be enough to be noticeable.
It would need to be a minimum of 10x better loot, imo. For example - eDEMO. Once I got all the Twisted Ichor I needed, I would estimate that the chest holds loot worth me using the key in around 1 in 30 to 1 in 50 runs. Mostly it is trash with 2.5K (ish) of salvage and some minor RP. I can get the same salvage from running ESOT which takes 5-10 mins. If you are forced to use up the key (which takes 20 hours to make), then I would hope that the likelihood of the loot being worth while would be somewhere around 1 in 2. that doesn't mean something awesome in every second chest, but at least something that makes the chest worth opening.
From what I've read there may be more things dropped - but at the same time it appears there will be more items BTC/BTA even items that were just BoE before.
Seems to me we are going to be right back in exactly the same spot that we were in causing this ruckus in the first place...
People are going to wind up with their bags full of items they consider; "useless", "worthless" because they don't need them; can't use them can't trade them can't give them away and can't auction them off
Does that about cover it?
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frozenfirevrMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,475Community Moderator
There have been some questions about what the increased drop rates of Legendary Rings really means, and I wanted to give some info there. This is a topic I have some history with....
When I first came onto the Neverwinter team about 15 months ago (has it really been that long?!), one of the first things I had to do was make some reward tables for a dungeon (not make the loot itself, which had already been made, but make the random tables that determined how it dropped). I started by looking at the previous set of reward tables, and one of the first things I said was “What’s with these crazy low rates on the Legendary Rings? These should be dropping 10 times as often!” I couldn’t convince people of that, but I did manage to get the drop rate to be 2 times as often. (That was the previous Legendary Ring drop rate increase quoted above from much earlier patch notes.)
The initial drop rate was very small, so twice as often was still very small. But it definitely was an attempt at a real increase --- we’re definitely not trying to trick anyone by increasing stuff by 5% and then writing a patch note claiming “big increase!” or anything like that.
Cut to the more recent round of changes. One of the things people have called out as frustrating is how incredibly rare the rarest things (like the Underdark Rings) still are. So this time we’ve increased them again, by around x5. This is on top of the previous change, so it’s a total of x10. Hopefully this will be enough to be noticeable. But they are still very rare -- that’s because they were so super-rare to begin with.
I know this brings up the question of “why were they so super-rare to begin with?” The easy answer would be to say “boy, those people who picked the initial drop rates were dumb, but we are much smarter!” I don’t think that’s right, though, so I wanted to talk a bit more about what goes into picking drop rates. (Feel free to skip the rest of this post if you aren’t interested in the generalities.)
So why should there ever be super-low drop rates? Well, the original idea of the Legendary Rings was that they were “the thing you don’t have yet”. It’s not much fun to run a dungeon when you have all the unique stuff it drops. You can run it just for numerics (RP and AD), but that’s kind of dull. So it’s good if there’s always a chance of a big win. That means that (even for the most hardcore player) there should be something that can drop that you don’t have yet. But that means there has to be *something* that’s crazy rare (or at some point you’d have everything). The Legendary Rings were meant to play that role. In my opinion, it was overdone. So we’ve raised the rates. But keep in mind the risk whenever we do that: the risk of players saying “there’s nothing in that dungeon I don’t already have, how boring!” (For the Legendary Rings, I think that’s unlikely, because there are so many different kinds, which is part of why raising the drop rate makes sense to me.) So I think there absolutely is a place in the game for extremely rare loot, even if the Legendary Rings weren’t in the ideal spot.
While we’re talking drop rates, another big tension that’s related is the one between sellable and non-sellable stuff. I’ve noticed this has come up a lot in the thread. Some players don’t like the RNG aspect, and want loot to be more predictable. But some players want loot they can sell. If the loot drops fairly often, though, and it’s BoE, then it won’t sell for much. So the really good sellable loot has to be really rare. Dungeon artifacts (like Lostmauth’s Horn of Blasting) have sometimes played this role in the past. This is also a narrow line to walk -- some players really want a chance to get a thing that sells on the Auction House for 100,000 AD, others want the feeling that they can get the things they want directly from drops without having to get really involved in the larger AD economy. I’m sympathetic to both points of view, but I don’t know any way to satisfy both players *with the same item*. What we’ve been going for is a mix: some items that you can earn steadily (say by accumulating a currency and then buying the item in a store), some that you get randomly but they come pretty often (and thus aren’t worth much for resale), and some super-rare things that have a chance to maintain their value (but they can’t drop that often!). Sometimes we can get around these problems by taking something that’s otherwise pretty rare and dropping a bound version of it with a higher chance -- then there’s a higher chance you’ll get one, but the AD value is maintained (the down side here is you can feel bad that you got a 100,000 AD thing but you can’t sell it -- of course, if you could sell it, so could everyone else, and it wouldn’t be worth 100,000 AD anymore!).
Recently we’ve been pushing a bit more towards more stuff that more people can have (hence things like the increased chances on some drops with these changes), but of course the flip side of that is potentially less value for those who want to farm and sell. But overall we still want a mix of these strategies, even if the exact mix shifts over time.
We don’t always manage these tensions (bound, unbound, rare, common) as well as we should. (For example, I think we’ve frequently had a shortage of the sort of inbetween loot -- not so rare that you never see it, but rare enough that it still feels like a win -- loot that can be fun to get even if it doesn’t sell for a ton.) And sometimes we just need to plain make more loot (this is something I’ve been trying to push for, but of course those resources compete with other things like class balance or building new dungeons). But I wanted to give some insight into why some things are more or less rare, or why some things are bound or unbound, and what some of the issues are that we’re thinking about when we make loot and decide how and when to drop it.
Tried to shorten the quote but *shrug*
@rgutscheradev, please take a couple minutes to read this, understand, if possible reply, and pass it on.
We'd gladly farm for the rarest of the rare stuff, as we have been. Our issue though is paying for the same, over and above our time and effort. If I have to run something a 100 times so be it, but I have to pay for those 100 runs? That's where things get ugly. You're asking us to both work and pay for working. If there MUST be an openable chest, make the key available from within the dungeon... Cloak Tower (addl. chest) is the perfect example. Now RNG within RNG. After a 1000 runs I finally get a legendary ring, and it turns out to be the worst possible and is immediately salvaged or fed. That's not supposed to be how rare stuff work. I had to work very VERY hard for it, and also had to be incredibly lucky. We should be able to choose our rare rewards.
About unbound stuff and value. This was never an issue during pre-mod days. All gear was unbound, and all gear was sellable for a decent price. People enjoyed it. The loot gave a good income to farmers and unlucky people got their gear. It was perfectly fine and worked.
By reading every comment on this thread, a solution comes to my mind. It's actually a mix of what has been said.
First of all, I understand you don't want to change the loot you can get from the basic chest. Every player with vip doesn't pay his keys anymore and you want to sell vip. I'm completely okay with that.
Now, the problem is with the optional chest. Opening it with a key that took 20 hours to craft and get nothing from it feels unrewarding (and buying legendary dragon keys for that, completely dumb).
You added some random loots, which is really nice imo. But the main problem stays still : people won't feel rewarded each time they run.
So I suggest to add some legendary dragon keys to the vip (like it has been said) or don't change anything but make automatically drop a shard when opening optional chest. (Shards would be a new money)
There would be 3 types of shards : - One for the tier 1 dungeons - One for the demonic content - One for the Storm king content (and more to come)
With a certain amount of shards, you would be able to buy some kind of items to the ancient seal vendors in seven sun's market that are now unused.
- For 100 demonic shards, you could buy a legendary +5 ring of your choice - For 250 storm king shards, you could buy a legendary greater ring of your choice (more expensive because sva would give a shard in each chest) - And with tier 1 shards, you could buy old transmute item that aren't in the game anymore.
Rings would be BoC and transmutes would be BoE. Finally, Storm king rings dropped directly in chests should be BoA (like it always should have been).
This doesn't change anything to the game's economy and would always force people to run content if they want to get their stuff ! Moreover, if you craft all the keys, it will take you 100 days to get a ring and if you want to buy them, you'll have to pay A LOT but you still would have to run dungeons !
These changes will make acquiring legendary runic weapons a very long grind, even longer than it is now. I think that is very unfair for people who couldn't farm it for various reasons before.
The sad part is that the eSVA chest was mentioned to already have some implementation of the new loot system. Now add a key being used up everytime. And add that you can't even grind the Arcane Brotherhood chest key. That one is 1/day.
...Iand one piece that gets rolled on (because for better or worse, winning a loot roll is still exciting)...
NO. That's N and an O next to it. If YOU like to need/greed something it's not something the rest of us like or think is exciting. These insignia rolls are annoying as it is.
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For those of us who were here since the beginning, we remember when the key to getting loot (no pun intended) had NOTHING to do with keys. You went into a dungeon, killed the bosses, and the bosses dropped loot.
And if you ran dungeons during the Dungeon Delve event, you got even more loot, which was fantastic. The only ROI people consider was their time. I don't want to feel like I'm at working, plugging numbers into a spreadsheet to determine the ROI of my choices in a video game.
I want to go into a dungeon, kill monsters and get loot.
So @rgutscheradev @mimicking#6533 why can't we get back to the days where the monsters dropped good loot, and the dungeon chests were extra. My biggest piece of feedback is this...
Let every boss drop some sort of loot for everyone, and one piece that gets rolled on (because for better or worse, winning a loot roll is still exciting).
- Take your current chest loot table and have each minor boss drop 25% of that on the ground for each party member.
- Add on roll from the top half of the chest loot table that is a random drop everyone rolls on.
- Take your current chest loot table and have each end boss drop 50% of that on the ground for each party member.
- Add two rolls from the top half of the chest loot table that is a random drop everyone rolls on.
- Allow people with a key to open up the end "dungeon loot" chest for a chance at 100% of your current chest loot drop
What this does is make the entire dungeon exciting and worth running. Every boss has a chance to drop something cool, but the last boss (and possibly the end dungeon chest) has the best loot, so it's still worth running until the end.For players who have extra keys (or want to buy more), they can keep farming dungeons and getting bonus loot from the chest. For those who are trying to make more AD and don't want to invest in keys, they can keep getting loot from the dungeon without needing a key. Essentially, what the above does is make a majority of the loot (25%+25%+50% chest loot, plus a shot at 4 random "high quality" items) is earned without a key. With a key, you essentially get double your core boss loot guaranteed.
I think it's fair. It allows those who want to grind dungeons all day long the feeling that their game time is not tied to keys. It allows people who aren't rich enough to constantly invest in keys the chance at still getting a meaningful pile of loot. And it doesn't change much for those who are already sitting on a stack of keys.
But I implore you. I'm on my knees here, begging for relief. Let's get back to the roots of D&D. Go to dungeon. Kill monsters. Get loot.
Please!
I feel adding some of these special companions is an insult to the people who already have them.
Take the Cambion Magus for example. It was originally offered as a charge reward for spending $300. This feels like a slap in the face to those who spent $300 specifically to get one, and those who spent multiple millions to buy one on the AH from someone who spent $300.
What is the point of a charge reward, when you don't need to charge to get the reward? Spending money to get what you think is a unique item is not actually what happens.
I see now that spending money specifically for a charge reward is foolish, and not rewarding at all.
Why not just bring back the original charge reward program that offered it in the first place. Then people can either spend $300 to buy the Cambion Magus, or buy one from the Auction House from someone who spent $300 in order to get one.
I have the Cambion Magus and I feel highly insulted by this.
If this is how you thank those for charging, I WILL NOT participate in any future charge reward programs.
1st thing I would like to see added would be a Seal Vendor with things like + 5 rings and +4 rings, Various other items as well.
What can now happen is when we use a key, that chest has a guaranteed seal anywhere from 1-5 seals in the chest... Now we can save up these seals and buy items to progress our character... The items we buy from the Vendor can be BOA with a few being BOE... Everyone wins, but it allows us to progress. You can also still have that .00001% chance that you have now to get something valuable.
I do really believe that a change like this will kill this game...
I only want to point out two things.
1) As a player of 3 years experience, I need say, the rare loot is not what I want. What I want is to complete the build in my mind. For instance, lets say I want a support HR, damager GF or a healer OP. The problem is, I didnt even manage to complete my main over 3 years after running all these contents for hundreds of time. The problem is not only the rings. I, as a player want to progres by running the dungeons doing the campaigns etc. But tell me why we are getting greater mark of power from Dread Ring dungeons instead of Etos or CN or Msva?
2) This is only a bit of suggestion, can you please think about making rough AD to be used for things like companion upgrade?
Thanks for reading.
Now, admittedly, some of that may hold true simply because the game skews hard towards 'annoyance into paying' rather than 'convenience'. But that's hardly something I would risk bringing up in discussion.
It is slightly less painful to fashion keys for Underdark content, because the content gives you faezress. 20 hours between is still annoying for players who want to spam the content, but at least you don't so much need to grind outside of the content you're interested in running.
I haven't run Fangbreaker, so I'm not sure how sustainable the key model is there. I *think* the key cost was sufficiently reduced that the time to craft it is the big limiting factor, not the currency.
What I propose is that bags of campaign currency can be added to the guaranteed loot from their corresponding dungeons and skirmishes. This is the loot currently accessed via an epic/VIP dungeon key, or in the default chest in a skirmish. The bags should be unbound (like the dragon hoard coin pouches from Tiamat), so that players who do not need them for anything can sell them to players who do need them. This adds value to the basic chest and key; the lack of reliable value for these is one of our major complaints.
Sharandar - Master of the Hunt, Malabog's Castle
Dread Ring - Dread Legion, Valindra's Tower
IWD - Kessel's Retreat
ToD - Shores of Tuern, Lair of Lostmauth, possibly Tiamat
It's not quite the same as offering Genie's Gifts, since the proposed item would always be campaign-specific. If there's concern that skirmishes shouldn't reward the same as dungeons, give them their own bag with less currency value. But the main thing this accomplishes is to give players choices, building in alternatives for how to accomplish goals within the game. A huge problem in Neverwinter is having a ton of different things that you "have to" do in order to meet various objectives, while there is only one way to achieve each thing, adding up to an unreasonable demand on the free time of the average mortal. I have referred to these problems at various times as lack of self-direction and a snowball effect: campaign says I have to do this, Stronghold says I have to do that, gear progression says I have to do another thing, and I'm just plain exhausted and don't want to do any of it.
So here's what the addition of campaign currency to group content could do:
The currency can be used to craft a campaign key used for the same content again, without requiring grinding of dailies. Potentially provides a meaningful sink for gold, if players wish to keep chaining currency into a key for another run.
The currency can be used to feed our bottomless stronghold mimics. Feeding the mimic continues to be painful for small guilds, and especially guilds with players who are still working on boons. And grinding quests over and over again that you would otherwise have been happy to see the back of, because the stronghold demands it... that's a kick in the teeth. If you can get some Treasures of Tyranny from a couple of Lostmauth runs instead of please-just-kill-me dailies, oh joyous day.
The currency can be used towards campaign progression, providing alternate paths for players who would rather progress via group content, or prefer to focus on PvP (where PvE-earned boons aren't optional). I don't foresee this becoming a cheap alternative because the currency holds inherent value due to multiple ongoing uses. Many campaigns still have some form of time-gating. Boosts for completing them more easily without buying them out are already being implemented, but are mostly event-based and therefore not always available. If somebody wants to finish off Sharandar by running Master of the Hunt a bunch of times, at this stage of the game (literally), it's not going to hurt to let them.
Campaign Completion packages are still viable for instant gratification. So are Zen keys. And honestly, if this idea breaks your business model because it actually is that reliant on players paying to skip campaigns, or feeling pressured into a microtransaction every time they participate in group content, you do not deserve any of our business.
This idea adds nothing to ECC, EGWD, or EToS, but these are in better shape with the key model anyway due to higher salvage value and no "bonus" chest.
A few other things:
Drastically reduce the cost of a key for a normal dungeon and/or make VIP keys function like the daily dungeon key and work on the end chest from normal dungeons. Asking 2.5k AD is utterly appalling.
If the Renegade Evoker companion hasn't been fixed to drop from VT again, do so. As far as I know, this was broken in EE.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
STO gets away with it because there's a certain delightful honesty to Ship Masteries being just that much cooler with every new ship introduced, and, I can't stress this enough, they're ACTUALLY COOL.
CO gets away with it because, well, someone's gotta pay server costs somehow and Freeform is actually a pretty big power boost and worth it. Plus monthly fashion freebie for our electronic superhero barbie dolls.
But nickel and diming annoyances, going out of the way to make dailies and dungeons more annoying? Annoying players into paying eventually results in them just being annoyed.
Grind campaigns on more then 2-3 chars is impossible. Well many hours
I grinded Faezers on 2 DCs as they are my best sellers in dungeons
And on GF
And beyond that just not much point
I am really worried how this will affect dungeons tho many people say it be a peachy life with loads of sellable drops
Any idea when this patch will happen?
And is here any chance for another change at this point?
AND SERIOUSLY, CAN WE GET A LEGENDARY MOUNT IN THE ZEN MARKET ALREADY! I WOULD PAY UP TO $100 TO GET ONE ACCOUNT WIDE! And no, I don't have a heart-on for the number 100...
Then people just do the dungeons like we used to do them
And all this screaming with keys will go away largely
You CAN do at last 3 edemo in 1h
Fair enough, you need to make revenue but if you make the game intrinsically "not fun" or frustrating and the only way for ppl to enjoy it is to is to pay $$, then most ppl will just leave. There has to be a better business model than that. It would need to be a minimum of 10x better loot, imo. For example - eDEMO. Once I got all the Twisted Ichor I needed, I would estimate that the chest holds loot worth me using the key in around 1 in 30 to 1 in 50 runs. Mostly it is trash with 2.5K (ish) of salvage and some minor RP. I can get the same salvage from running ESOT which takes 5-10 mins. If you are forced to use up the key (which takes 20 hours to make), then I would hope that the likelihood of the loot being worth while would be somewhere around 1 in 2. that doesn't mean something awesome in every second chest, but at least something that makes the chest worth opening.
Seems to me we are going to be right back in exactly the same spot that we were in causing this ruckus in the first place...
People are going to wind up with their bags full of items they consider; "useless", "worthless" because they don't need them;
can't use them
can't trade them
can't give them away
and can't auction them off
Does that about cover it?
@rgutscheradev, please take a couple minutes to read this, understand, if possible reply, and pass it on.
We'd gladly farm for the rarest of the rare stuff, as we have been. Our issue though is paying for the same, over and above our time and effort. If I have to run something a 100 times so be it, but I have to pay for those 100 runs? That's where things get ugly. You're asking us to both work and pay for working. If there MUST be an openable chest, make the key available from within the dungeon... Cloak Tower (addl. chest) is the perfect example.
Now RNG within RNG. After a 1000 runs I finally get a legendary ring, and it turns out to be the worst possible and is immediately salvaged or fed. That's not supposed to be how rare stuff work. I had to work very VERY hard for it, and also had to be incredibly lucky. We should be able to choose our rare rewards.
About unbound stuff and value. This was never an issue during pre-mod days. All gear was unbound, and all gear was sellable for a decent price. People enjoyed it. The loot gave a good income to farmers and unlucky people got their gear. It was perfectly fine and worked.
First of all, I understand you don't want to change the loot you can get from the basic chest. Every player with vip doesn't pay his keys anymore and you want to sell vip.
I'm completely okay with that.
Now, the problem is with the optional chest. Opening it with a key that took 20 hours to craft and get nothing from it feels unrewarding (and buying legendary dragon keys for that, completely dumb).
You added some random loots, which is really nice imo. But the main problem stays still : people won't feel rewarded each time they run.
So I suggest to add some legendary dragon keys to the vip (like it has been said) or don't change anything but make automatically drop a shard when opening optional chest.
(Shards would be a new money)
There would be 3 types of shards :
- One for the tier 1 dungeons
- One for the demonic content
- One for the Storm king content
(and more to come)
With a certain amount of shards, you would be able to buy some kind of items to the ancient seal vendors in seven sun's market that are now unused.
- For 100 demonic shards, you could buy a legendary +5 ring of your choice
- For 250 storm king shards, you could buy a legendary greater ring of your choice (more expensive because sva would give a shard in each chest)
- And with tier 1 shards, you could buy old transmute item that aren't in the game anymore.
Rings would be BoC and transmutes would be BoE.
Finally, Storm king rings dropped directly in chests should be BoA (like it always should have been).
This doesn't change anything to the game's economy and would always force people to run content if they want to get their stuff !
Moreover, if you craft all the keys, it will take you 100 days to get a ring and if you want to buy them, you'll have to pay A LOT but you still would have to run dungeons !