Please take note that I have liked this original post and have reviewed it positively on our guild website.
I am stunned at this post. THIS kind of outreach was exactly what was needed, back in 2012-2019. It takes consistent outreach though, to start earning the respect of the cash paying playerbase.
I have been around since alpha. This is an interesting post, and I hope it will not be the last of it's kind. Listening to your play testers and PR have not been your strong suit.
Exhibit A... this exchange on Reddit between a forum moderator and another alliance is just not right. That type of thinking and "talking" will destroy this playerbase from the inside out. I hope Mr Foss (@mimicking#6533) and other Cryptic brass doesn't think this way.
I am Commodore in the post below:
Guilds built this game and guilds and alliances keep it going today. Bless all you guild leaders and alliance leaders out there -- it's not easy -- it takes time and people management skill and organizational skill and good fortune and most importantly GOOD PEOPLE.
People around and leveling zones busy? Did you ever think that's because people have been resetting up their toons spending an hour or two each at least? And some said screw it and either took a break from playing or rolled a new character because they are hanging on by a thread from leaving the game??
Fighting with the community in Reddit can not be good for the game at all. As a volunteer mod I understand you are only given so much leeway to spread good vibes and to get critical info or ideas back to the designer folks in an orderly fashion. CRYPTIC.. you need to get this piece right.
Mr Foss, many of these challenge and gating decisions needed to be made in 2012, not 2019. Still we are on board, but I do not see how you fix this at this point to the satisfaction of your customers, especially those "OLD PEOPLE" that have been playing this game FOR YEARS. You need to educate yourself on WHAT KEPT THEM logging in each day. For THAT is where the soul lies in this genre.
We are FOR the extra challenge. We are scratching our heads on the "HOW it was done" and "WHEN it was released" pieces.
Will we get banned for asking inconvienient questions like on gamepedia stream?
Jokes aside. I don't think this apology and stream will bring anything good and suddenly change you giving us monologue into a dialogue between players and Cryptic.
My guild basically disbanded, people playing other mmos now. Many of them were here since beta. Unless there will be some critical changes, no one's coming back. And let's be real. This will be an informative stream where Thomas will smile, say some things like "we will bring this and that in mod21" just to buy some time. It was the same after mod10 and so far none of the promises were fulfilled.
I have to say that for a Mimic without legs/arms you have a pretty big pair for accepting to do this stream on tuesday, no matter what people are saying about the answers you're gonna be giving, just the fact of standing in front of a screen knowing all the rage bowling behind there, is something i wouldnt have done personally.
That being said, im not the one person that ran away from the game, im a beta player,im here since closed beta when a friend gave me a key that was in her founder pack. And i never left. Mainly because i do love this game really. I wasnt a DnD player, DnD was from me an unknown world. I just loved this game. And still love it. So i am trying to put up with all those changes you decided to do. But boy its hard sometimes.
Been more than a week im debating if my ranger is still worth playing, i loved trapper and now its just dead, if my healing cleric can make a difference in a group. Been a week im frustrated that i cant just pug with a couple of friends a RAQ because there's tong in there, and CR in there, and i wont repeat the bugs those dungeons have, its all over the forum. Been a week that im scratching my head because of the scaling. What a terrible boss fight this scaling is. My toons need to be more powerful at lvl 70 than they are at lvl 80 now. It doesnt make any sense to me. Been a week im like "why did I spend 6 years upgrading enchants on my 7 toons to r14 for them to be scaled down to dust". Been a bad week for my gaming time.
Granted i understand your game needs fresh blood. But look at all the leveling quests bugged or poorly scaled. For a team that wants to encourage new players to join and make their life easier, do you really think you are entitled to a feeling of accomplishment? How many of them are going to leave before they even reach the disaster of lvl 80?
I wont spit hate or disdain or anything. But if you truly mean what you wrote in your thread about loving the game, then maybe open your ears more and get your eyes wide open for some part of the community that dont love it anymore? Im not part of those, i still love it. Really im giving it a chance. I keep playing my toons everyday that i can. But frankly, i have the feeling of being punished for staying here with all the bugs and obstacles i have in front of me. And all the fun im losing because i cant run dungeons without the fear of a pug group not willing to try, or some of my friends gone, or some whatever boss deciding to charge in the opposite direction of what is showing on my screen, or whatever boss that has more defense than my arpen will ever reach at lvl 70.
While i want to wish you good luck for the stream coming, i am also really having little hope now in the capacity of your team into fixing the game. But like one famous halfling Youtuber HR from my guild told me few hours ago, "patience and loyalty".
Hi who asked for all these changes ?, after 4 years of playing and paying quite a bit of your wages i cant play 90% of the game and don't want now, my pally is useless everyone in our guild is so sad, the leaders who are playing all the time are so upset you have taken away individuality of the classes i suspect to make it easier for you, not us. This game should not be about you, I fear unless you make major changes back you will continue to lose more and more invested loyal players, the last mod was a joke, i thought 10 year olds had come up with the concept and no one could imagine it could get worse but here we are.
Some changes with the game are bad some good but ya most bad. You all wish to force the healer must be needed and you missed 1 very big thing. On my SW soulweaver spec I noticed how hard it really is to target and heal the tank using the at will given to heal. Often times this targets a dps or targets a pet or even targets me and thats not a good thing. If you guys put a method in the game allowing these type at wills to focus on 1 person in a party like the tank then it would work wonders. I could just press the at will and bingo mr tank gets his heals and dont have to worry about trying to get into an aoe that heals. I would not have to worry about trying hard to target mr tank trying to use this at will. really in some fights it gets really hard trying to target a tank. The idea behind it is nice and what not but ya unless you make it easier for a healer to heal the tank I really dont see it working 100% great. I also have to agree with what another said. I enjoy most things in the game but I really enjoy going into a dungeon I have ran many many times in over 2 years and taking 2 to 3 hours just to get done with it. Pressing buttons and mouse keys for 30 mins to kill 1 boss really come on now. Mechanics of a boss fight hasnt changed all you guys did was make it take longer then it sure to actually kill a boss.
I'd like to applaud the bravery it took to risk a full system balance pass after all this time. That said, I can't say I'm happy with the contents of this balance attempt. So much went wrong here and many of the decisions made simply weren't good decisions.
I'd also like to point out to @mimicking#6533 that his post is giving folks the impression that the devs still see the systems they came up with in an overly rosy light and that its only the bugs that are causing so much discontent. Its not just the bugs people are unhappy with. There are a lot of system flaws thrown into the mix too and it will also be necessary to fix these moving fowards.
Here is my take on the good and bad of some of these system changes:
My take on Cooldown Adjustments/ Recovery/AP Gain Nerf:
I support the decision to remove recovery from the game and reduce AP gain (though the AP nerf was excessive). Runaway recovery/AP gain was intimately involved in a laundry list of major balance concerns thoughout the game, be it PVE or PVP. Older modules had a lot less recovery and people still fell in love with Neverwinter's uniquely fast paced combat flow.
The parts of the cooldown adjustments I DON'T support was directly increasing the cooldown time of powers on TOP of removing recovery/reducing AP gain. That was too much and this is part of the reason why combat flow is so HAMSTER up now. As an example, imagine having one power with negative 40k recovery and another with positive 8k recovery, the differences between power cooldowns are too extreme and rotations feel awkward and disjointed now.
Another similar issue is how many of your powers don't match eachother's cooldowns now. On a rogue for example, you ideally want 2 encounter powers to have the same cooldown as eachother and 1 power to have a different cooldown. Now most good synergies don't allow for this. Even just a 1 or 2 second difference between all 3 encounters slotted doesn't feel good.
I also think it would have been much better if cooldowns were all based on having 4k through 6k recovery instead of 0 recovery, huge cooldown increases, or cooldown decreases.
My Take on At Will Power Damage:
At will power damage still is in a terrible place, they still feel too weak and this adds to the combat flow feeling like HAMSTER. I get that charts say they make up a lot of the damage pie, but that's not what the community cares about, they care about the combat actually being enjoyable. I will also point out that in D&D, at will powers often weren't weaker than encounter powers, a good example is how melee ranger's at wills were better than their encounter powers in 4E. While I also understand that you want combat to be more similar to 5E now, I will also point out that 5E doesn't even have powers other than spells, weapon attacks are a simplified damage dice roll and you just describe your attack to the DM. Obviously that doesn't translate into an MMO setting.
My Take on Boons:
I liked that boons no longer have as much impact on your character's performance. The layout looks nice and less/weaker boons is good for helping new players catch up and also makes balancing the PVP scene much easier. That said, the boons provided are soulsuckingly boring and this system needs more interesting mechanics than this. I also don't like how the 2 top boon tiers work, its very restrictive and doesn't look like it will age well.
My take on feats/paragons:
I mostly dislike the new feats and paragons system. I would much rather have seen more diversity in the form of more feat trees and paragons to choose from instead of less. Having just 2 options to pick from is very restrictive and feels like a punch in the face to anyone who grew fond of a specific tree or paragon path over the years.
I do understand why this was done though, the devs have struggled for years to balance 3 feat trees and 2 paragon paths but they seldom succeed and it doesn't last when they do. Most of the time, 2 trees or less would overshadow the 3rd. Having only 2 tiny feat trees instead of lots and lots of feats also reduced their workload when it comes to balance passes and other tweaks.
At the very least, I would like to see more interesting/enjoyable feat trees than what we were provided, they are objectively worse than the old ones in terms of both power and fun. Feats and paragons sadly aren't balanced in mod 16 either with one option clearly dominating the other in a lot of cases.
I did like a select few of the feats, one example is scullcracker on my rogue assassin, its got a good mechanic that goes well with assassin and its useful to both PVE players and PVP players.
My take on power distribution between the paragon paths:
I am only bringing up power distribution here instead of trying to cover powers as a whole, the reason being is its a more complicated mix of hits and misses and would require me to list too many specific examples to paint a short picture.
My take on powers is more positive than my take on feats, I can't speak for all classes but I can speak for my rogue.
I liked most of the power distributions between the rogue paragon paths with only a few exceptions. However, those exceptions are very significant, a good example is how most rogues aren't happy with lurker's assault's placement in whisperknife and would rather see this in the assassin path.
My take on scaling and issues with progression not being rewarding enough:
If the game improves drastically as a result of losing the items I worked for or changing how they work, I'm ok with losing my items or having them changed. Unfortunately, the game seems to have gotten worse overall and thus I don't feel content with losing so much progress.
I'm ok with harder content and making older zones a little more difficult. I don't think the scaling system did a good job balancing this with people's motivation to progress though. Its a mess and the stats don't scale in a sensable way, you pretty much need multiple loadouts just to milk the most out of your character as you go into differently scaled zones. Characters wearing weaker gear often get scaled to be stronger than a maxed out character that has been scaled down.
Also, if you were capped on your stats at higher levels, the scaling system shouldn't bring your stats automatically to half of what you needed to cap at that level. You should still be capped out for that area and if that makes things too easy, tackle that by making the monsters stronger or giving them more challenging mechanics.
Post edited by trgluestickz on
-- PVP Rogue, --[----- "Your friendly neighborhood spawn of Satan." -----]-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Main Character: Hurricane Marigolds (Rogue WK & Assassin) Ingame Handle: trgluestickz Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563 Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud Platform: PC
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited May 2019
This is not really useful without any practical conclusions, not to use players, not to the company.
So, will there be any conclusions and systematic changes from this? What actual improvements? Or next mod it will be all the same just smaller scale with smaller mod, until the next large mod.
QA - We, those who preview, are not free QA and replacement for actual play-through. It looks every time that the things that are changed (patch notes) and the things that checked by the QA have nothing in common. It's nice that QA have their checklists, but will there come a time that that checklist will have addons that relate to the actual changed per the build? Build patch notes say A, actual build does B or crashes, it's not possible to miss this if it was actually checked. Want help from the community, get someone here to acknowledge bugs, with simple 4-5 sentences: "Added to Jira" "Needs reproduction" / "Can't reproduce" "Fixed Internally" "Closed" I'm sure you can add a forum link into the Jira tracker, so someone can take the whole 10 seconds and post about it in the proper thread. Software companies from small startups and open source projects to large cooperation learned to do public facing bug tracking (examples range from github, and forums w/ issues to large scale programs like Microsoft insider), you are a software company, act like one.. learn from others that did it before..
Feedback (Technical) - From the game inception the feedback system doesn't work, open preview, close preview, everything just leaves a bad taste to both parties. In no form or way I'm saying that a company should do whatever someone posts. I'm saying that there should be 'protocol' how this handled. And if this is not a charade to placate the involved players, then it should be improved, and time allocated to it. Can't be that for 6 years nothing improved in the feedback process, and it seems less and less efficient as a process.
Feedback (subjective and reception) - When reading sanitized reddit, forums, and a discord then we get "Overly positive" / "cautiously positive" is just misleading, wrong, and leads to a worse game. The entire process became a sad joke, and a meme. The community in it's majority (mostly everyone except new players who just don't know better) is spread elsewhere, multiple other discords, facebook groups, in-game channels, and guilds, teamspeaks etc.. And the tone in all those avenues, where majority of players are, is not the same as in the above sanitized places.
Code merge and branch control - This is not the first time old bugs resurface, that were fixed previous mods. This is CN doors all over again. Account RAD from RQ, Guild Roster logs used to escape " correctly, now again it doesn't. I can't name from memory other regressions, but there are.
Too long iterations, too heave handed fixes - Some issues are left for far too long, then the fix is too heavy handed. From external buffs that could have been made additive with diminishing returns (e.g. debuffs) to ZAX Backlog. We wouldn't be in the current mess, if those things were more actively prioritized. Is there a long term plan?
Bottom line, with all the meetings all the leads are always at, that prevent them from their actual responsibilities, are there meetings with the title
"What we did wrong? And how we prevent repeating the same mistakes."
Are there even meting summaries with responsibilities, like in every company? You know: "Topic, due date, responsibility" "Pitch solutions for ZAX Backlog solutions, meeting in 2 weeks, Systems lead" "Report about unresolved support issues with players redirected to the forums , weekly status meeting, CM" etc..
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
This is a core mistake both in the community and Cryptic, analyzing and deducting conclusions from telemetry or various statistical information like polls, is not something that just "Oh I see more posts" It's a science and an art.
People study this for years, how to draw conclusions from the data they have, and with what confidence. Somehow the need for this qualification or what it means just ignored around here, by everyone. People mistakes trend indicators for absolute numbers, or expected trends vs actual.. You want to know how a mod successful, compare to a similar mod release with similar exposure, or extrapolate. What is the bounce rate? How many logged in and will disappear in a week, or two weeks? What is the trend with similar promotion campaigns? Simple "there are more people" just doesn't say much.
I've posted a talk by Chris Wilson at GDC, look how he talks about the data there.
This applies to Cryptic, as they are obviously either not gathering telemetry and statistical data, or do not know how to analyze it. Examples range from dungeon damage, and run times, to classes balance, and simple facts as how much AD is created by what means. How can a 'resonator feature' remain unnoticed for months without red-flags...
The new campaign is fun, and it can keep us entertained for a while but...
If you are so interested in new players, simple things will do:
Start a new character. No cheat. No god mode. No top of the line gear for a level 1 character. Starting as a new player would do. Level this character. Feel the actual gameplay. Ask yourselves: "why the heck I can't solo a friggin STORYLINE mission without 10 deaths while my companion is aggroing every single mob on the whole room and then staying still, not healing me at all, while I deal with this whole mess?" New players surely do, and they quietly would leave the game and never come back after facing so much frustration. My niece did so when I made the huge mistake of trying to show the gameplay to her. Her exact words? "You actually play THIS?"
Now, a few things about keeping old players:
When you finally reached endgame, start asking. Why is so damn grindy to grab some endgame stuff now? Why getting AD to buy my stuff is so much harder and, at the same time, so devalued? We do love some grinding, not gonna lie, but the limitations are stacking up and the rewards just, well, are on the floor. Why one would seriously run a quest/dungeon/whatever for a whole hour for a peridot? Really? Where's the fun on that? That's no longer a game, it's becoming a sweatshop. You've axed the limit on AD and seals, but what we got in that exchange? More grinding, only more sweating.
You pretty much imposed a necessity for healing items but now essential items like potions have stupidly long cooldowns and are way too expensive, not to mention the lower level ones aren't even close to useful right now with their pitifully low numbers. Getting gold became relevant again because of this kind of stuff, but a lot of players are burning gold just to buy healing potions, some of them are doing so to the point they can't buy potions anymore, because their gold is gone and they have to resort to run lower level stuff just to keep playing. A whole LOT of players can't burn AD just to buy potions. I had to abandon crafting/professions altogether just to keep up with my potion consumption. I don't have a 21k character. If you do, great for you, but tons of players are still working to get there and can't breeze through the game content. This IS an issue.
Now we can reach level 80. Nice, right? Grab all that powerful gear, right? And we get our asses destroyed even with fairly old content. Scaling issues, mobs wrongly scaled, you name it. Bug report forums are filled with complaints about wrongly scaled mob levels on stuff we actually need to run to have a smoother endgame experience.
Then the gear scaling... A level 80 utterly destroys some content. A lot of dragons on open world settings are being killed so fast that some players trying to finish their missions can't even get credit for the kill because they couldn't hit said dragons in time. Other dragons, like the ones on The Well of the Dragon are so damn powerful that a whole group of fully geared level 80s can get killed nonstop and NEVER kill the dragon before it vanishes. Low level dungeons are still getting steamrolled for well geared players that will rush ahead and leave the lower leveled/geared players behind. And a actual leveling player can barely solo their OWN STORYLINE MISSIONS??? Who the heck tested this, we ask?
Obvious, downright GLARING bugs getting to the final released patch aren't helping either. Health boons are doing NOTHING. Some feats aren't working at all. Some at-wills can't even hit some mobs. Again, mobs scaled to level 80 while you're scaled to level 60. Stamina randomly stop regenerating for paladins. Warlocks getting stuck on combat animations or their dailies using up action points, showing the proper animations but doing no damage, at all. Stuff reported again, and again, and again. And you won't do a thing about this kind of important things but will promptly fix a bug that benefited players, and throw a "nice" threat in your patch notes. "Not gonna ban players that profited by this bug because we're magnanimous even if tons of players didn't even KNOW that stuff was a bug". Are. you. SERIOUSLY. doing. this. to. PAYING. CUSTOMMERS?!
I have some Vip time remaining and I'll play for that time I payed, I think, but you burnt yourselves in my book, with the glaring issues, with the outrageous threat in your patch notes, with your apology lacking sincerity. I usually return to online games after some time away, but I've serious doubts about returning to Neverwinter after this whole mess. Not hopeful at all. Not the first time you completely ignored your gaming community.
English isn't my first language. Please be patient.
Acknowledging the problem is the first step in fixing it. Now that you've opened a dialogue on this subject, don't allow it to go another 2 or 3 weeks without reply or rely on one live stream to be the sum of this conversation. You've pulled back a lot of good will with this post, don't waste that by making it a one-off.
My only issue remains the fact that in the known issues you mention, it is only isolated, specific, instances of scaling you are looking at.
In case I can't get to the live stream to post a question, (Time zones are a HAMSTER) may I ask one up front?
"Can you please let us know if the current standard for scaling as it applies to lower level zones and queue content is "As Intended" with regard to the severity of scaling as a whole?" Essentially; are you looking to deal with the general issue of scaling being far too extreme, or just looking to patch fix individual elements of imbalance?
Again, thanks for doing this. It's much needed and sincerely appreciated.
Well, that took me by surprise - somebody labelled as a developer actually admitted this game is a mess. Wow. You know, I appreciate that. It is the first step to solve any problem - admiting you have one.
On the other hand it is sad to blatantly announce that you will never fix it - I know you did not use such words, but flaunting minor tweaks in your post, those tweaks, that came in tandem with more bugs... You clearly have no idea where the problems lie, so you obviously cannot fix anything. You see, if after a car crash a badly broken body comes to the hospital, they do not apply make-up... because that is not the way to save a life.
OK, so you have an idea something is amiss, but you are not able to pinpoint what... Well, you surely could read for example the forums, but lets state here the two most obvious weirdnesses: The thing is you made a scaling system which - for other than lvl 80 instances - creates from a capped end game char the less then capped one. That is simply wrong - and no matter how many tweaks to critters you make, it will stay wrong unless you touch this major issue. What is more: unless you touch the scaling, in this patchwork state of game, you are bound to create more issues. For both now and for the future. (hint 1: it should be easier to be capped in the less demanding content, hint 2: the end game should be the most challenging content)
You wanted to make the game challenging? Good notion, but... MOD15 - you should have the statistics from k-team challenge. I do not have those, but from what I saw in the guild, there were 3 types of people: some called it too difficult for them, another did it once a week per char to claim weekly reward, the last ones did it more than once - just to help guildies that needed the valued weekly currency. I did not see anyone, not even once, to organise a hardcore run just for the gigs of it. You see, if the reward is not there, making the content harder usually is not the player's choice.
But all in all, you made a progress - you admitted something is wrong. May be, in a couple of years... you surely have some hope to make the necessary step and move away form a malicious psychological experiment designed to figure out how much are the people prone to voluntarily suffer. And may be you will end up in game design... of a game that players actually want to play. Who knows. May be.
The old saying is that you can shear a sheep many times but skin it only once. With all the nerfs to AD generation via longer random q's and drops that still have no value. I think you have skinned this sheep.
As long as the scaling system implements a hard cap, there is nothing you can do to fix it. Punishing players for being a higher level than the zone they're in is not the way to go. I'm been playing an alt the last few days - trying to progress through the Chult campaign, and I can feel the character getting progressively weaker every level I gain over 70. This is ridiculous. The first step to regaining the playerbases' trust is to SCRAP this new scaling system, it simply doesn't work.
I appreciate your acknowledgement of the mess you created. And it's a big step in the right direction to face the community.
But at the same time you announce the console release of this, simply ignoring the amount of bug fixing, testing, adjustment to be done. If you want some improvement, you should start listening to your developers and testers(?).
This applies to Cryptic, as they are obviously either not gathering telemetry and statistical data, or do not know how to analyze it. Examples range from dungeon damage, and run times, to classes balance, and simple facts as how much AD is created by what means. How can a 'resonator feature' remain unnoticed for months without red-flags...
Without question you are hot on the trail.
I'm back helping our guild and alliance, paying close attention to the community, to see how we can best function in this environment and beyond.
I truly feel posts like this can go a long way IF they are followed up. I'm hoping that they turn a new leaf with communication with the community AND public relations --- and kick it into gear NOW, like NEVER before. Cryptic actually has an opportunity here but the portal will not remain open forever.
I am looking for a REAL GOOD SIGN from Cryptic brass that older players, whether they are F2P or VIP.... are NOT being replaced/forced out, for a mass of new players who may or may not have staying power.
Any good guild leader or alliance leader knows that new players are GOLD, but keeping your regulars happy will make the NEW BLOOD HAPPY and feel welcome. WE need both and YOU need both Mr Foss. REPLAY-ABILITY is the key all us leaders hope for.
I feel there is a real disconnect in that reasoning at the highest levels of PW and Cryptic.
Mr Foss (@mimicking#6533), it's opportunity time. What are you going to do about it? And when?
You thank Rainer for his contribution, that's great, I guess he deserves it.
But what about the rest of us who posted dozens of bugs in the preview feedback threads only to see them left unchanged in the live version?
Scaling is bad enough no doubt but that's a big one to tackle. Most of the bugs we repeatedly reported would take 10 mins to solve but none of you would take the time to fix them.
You want some examples? Just track my comments and look for red text. Or do the same with the feedback threads.
You apologize that's great, I am more than willing to accept you apologies, but first I want to see facts.
adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
edited May 2019
I have said everything I need to say.... multiple times before. Go back to the closed alpha section, see in the general feedback the warning I posted there back in January - where I was talking about comparisons to Mod 6 - I believe I specifically mentioned the quality issues and lack of testing of that mod, and the need to be more careful this time.
We now know how that went - and although I can now say "I told you so", that does not make me happy.
I didn't realize back then that one of the main issues with mod 16 would be different - not bugs and such, which can be easily fixed, but more basic problems, related to fundamental flaws in the design.
Removing stat rolling and assigning people inappropriate bonuses.
Feat and boon changes (granted, they are not as bad as the first version was, but still not "great" in any sense.
Reduction of flexibility in general.
And, worst of all, implementing scaling via capping in a way that actually punishes people for progressing and discourages people from improving their gear.
The problem, the big problem is that for many players the game is just not fun any more....and that is not something you can remedy just by fixing some bugs.
Northside too deserve is place on the tanks lol he really help lot player ty to yutube video there are so many other streamer did same.but no worry theyll know all iithink. and i think they will say tnx on streaming to every1 so we are all fine. They promise to listen read and fix all as soon possible so let them work without pressure for a while and see where we go. We all love d&d and theyll know this.they make the game but who make great a game and memorable are the player the sinergy with who make game and who play. Nvw is legendary and we all want be at the top again as soon possible. Cheerrr!!! Sry for bad english.lol
Some changes with the game are bad some good but ya most bad. You all wish to force the healer must be needed and you missed 1 very big thing. On my SW soulweaver spec I noticed how hard it really is to target and heal the tank using the at will given to heal. Often times this targets a dps or targets a pet or even targets me and thats not a good thing. If you guys put a method in the game allowing these type at wills to focus on 1 person in a party like the tank then it would work wonders. I could just press the at will and bingo mr tank gets his heals and dont have to worry about trying to get into an aoe that heals. I would not have to worry about trying hard to target mr tank trying to use this at will. really in some fights it gets really hard trying to target a tank. The idea behind it is nice and what not but ya unless you make it easier for a healer to heal the tank I really dont see it working 100% great. I also have to agree with what another said. I enjoy most things in the game but I really enjoy going into a dungeon I have ran many many times in over 2 years and taking 2 to 3 hours just to get done with it. Pressing buttons and mouse keys for 30 mins to kill 1 boss really come on now. Mechanics of a boss fight hasnt changed all you guys did was make it take longer then it sure to actually kill a boss.
There are bind commands for this, you can bind a power to a specific target to a button, and the same power to a different target on another button, though it's all a little 'cryptic' (pun intended) with little or no documentation, and can take a minute to 5 to set up depending on how you initially set it up.
Hey. English is not my native language but the german forum seems really dead by now so i have to try to send you my message in english. first of all.. the addon isn't that bad. i like the new gameplay of the warlock and i feel quite more powerfull than before. but.. i loved one part of your game: the smoothness in fight. there where little lags, yeah.. but you could fight for hours without getting annoyed by something. and now?! ... it's a mess. i wanted to grind the new events in undermountain and i'm stucking between stunlocks, lags, time delayed castings and onehits out of the blue. please, get back to the core and fix it! this isn't fun at all because you're wasting the half of the time just running trough lags and invisible red deads.... i reduced my graphic settings from the highest level to the lowest level and getting less fps and a higher ping than before the update. so.. you can change everything.. but please.. if you don't fix the laggs, we can't play, and then it's not important if you add more content ..
This is a complete DISASTER. Paladin is useless, cant fight (little damage), Divinity Pool depletes within 1 minute, Block is useless I die in 3 hits from ANY Demon on DEMO, too slow to run away, you took away Temporary HP and did not add a speed burst like all other characters have, I play Solo A LOT, now this is impossible, Tiamat is unsurvivable, almost ALL RIQ's are impossible to complete. I have been here since 2013, I spent the last 6 Months creating and building my Paladin up to 13k item level (spent appx. $500 in the process, only to have it destroyed by devs who OBVIOUSLY have never tried to play the game. I have 10 days left on my VIP, if no improvement to the first 15 Mods, you will NEVER get another dime from me. Cryptic, Wizards of the Coast and anyone associated with this Train Wreck should be ASHAMED.
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mamalion1234Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,415Arc User
Greetings Adventurers, Thomas Foss, aka the Mimic King, here to talk with you about Neverwinter’s latest launch, Undermountain. With Undermountain, our core goals were to raise the level cap, provide exciting new adventures, and cleanup some longstanding class balance issues. At the same time, we hoped our improvements would pave the way for creating new classes and content in the future. We also wanted a way for players to progress faster through existing campaigns, while also giving us new ways to provide campaign rewards. With so many impactful changes being made, we felt it was important to invite players to participate in a closed beta test and then in the open beta/preview. You came in like gangbusters and gave us fantastic feedback. Whether it was on the forums, or on Reddit, the team here really appreciated the dialogue. I would like to give a shout out to Rainer whose spreadsheet was a great resource and window into the player’s perspective. Because of the feedback we received directly from our community, we were able to address hundreds of bugs and assorted feedback. Thank you!
But, we’re disappointed that we didn’t get to all the reported issues. We received great feedback from players like krsbaws, who told us back in March that Tomb of the Nine Gods was broken, but we did not fully address it. For that, we are sorry, and the Neverwinter team is working hard to review all the issues. We’re even more disappointed in our response to you since launch. It’s pretty clear we could have done a much better job of really listening. There was a lot of excitement at Cryptic about the new content and updates we had made, and we were quite hopeful you too would enjoy them. We fully understand now that some pretty critical bugs made it impossible for you to do just that. It was never our intention to make our most invested and important players feel alienated, but that’s just what we did.
Neverwinter is as dear to my heart as it is to yours, and I don’t like having a broken game, or even the perception of a broken game. We clearly missed some broken critters and levelling. We have been working to fix these as well as levelling and combat balance. Over the last week, the team has been triaging the issues being reported, fixing as many of them as we can, and discussing ways to better incorporate your feedback to make the game more enjoyable. Examples of steps we have already taken are:
• A reduction in specific dungeon difficulties (Demogorgon) • A decrease in damage dealt from some problematic monsters (Malabog’s Castle Redcaps, Tiamat’s Devils) • Fixing core class bugs (Paladin’s Base Dexterity Score) • Fixed scaling issues with Encounters in certain zones and instances • And many more! Check out the patch notes from our last few patches for more details!
We’re not done, and we’re still listening. We are working on additional updates and will roll those out as quickly as possible, and are communicating out the changes as we do.
As we get ready for our console release of Undermountain, we are striving to make sure the concerns of our players have been addressed in all versions of the game. For us, this is an ongoing conversation, where we all work towards making Neverwinter the best game possible. To that effect, I will be holding a Q&A during the May 7 Community Livestream at 11am PT to further discuss the state of Neverwinter and player concerns.
We don’t think we’ll make everything all right by just fixing the known issues, so we’re going to go the extra mile for everything you’ve done for us. Tune in on the stream on Tuesday and I’ll tell you all about it. Thank you! Thomas “Mimic King” Foss
BAD scaling to level 70 content is the biggest mistake and need fix asap.
For me, the feedback issues were a major thorn in my side and I'm happy to see an apology for that. Here is my feedback on the dialog between devs and players during preview, I spent most of my forum time in the class threads so my feedback in this post is centered around that:
There was one part of the feedback I did like this mod and that was the massive amount of quality feedback left by asterdahl. The community definitely took note of this and we really appreciated the dialog between him and the players. It felt respectful and like this dev really cares about his work. Even though we didn't agree with many of the decisions made, this went a long way to improving relations with the community.
The downside to this was only 4 class threads out of a total of 8 got this TLC treatment while the other 4 got barely any dev feedback.
After the first month of mod 16 being on preview, the feedback threads for paladin, cleric, barbarian, and fighter had gotten close to or over 100 dev responses each and continued to get showered with dev responses for the second month.
The other 4 classes, rogue, ranger, wizard, and warlock each got drastically fewer dev responses and this left a ton of players boiling and feeling like their feedback was falling on def ears. We're talking fewer than 10 dev responses per thread and most of those were to small things. Some of the dev responses to these threads angered people even more by coming across as dismissive to our concerns or making excuses instead of fixing the problems we pointed out. The end result of these 4 thread's neglect is that a lot of players including several knowledgeable testers that normally post a lot of feedback didn't bother posting their findings at all because they felt like it would be a waste of time. Their lack of motivation to post was only reinforced when the players that did post quality feedback didn't seem to have much impact on the dev's decisions.
The cruel irony here is that asterdahl was much more engaged with the players, but noworries' classes came out with drastically better-designed feats. I have a fighter, a paladin, a barbarian, and a ranger, and the difference between the first three and the fourth is like night and day. Almost none of the ranger feats are locked to specific powers, and none of them slap a punishing 3 minute cooldown on one of your dailies.
My biggest concern is that this is just a PR stunt to calm the masses. You realize you messed up and you need to do something to stop the bleeding.
But seeing your comments here I still don't believe you understand the true problems. It looks like you believe that the BUGS are the only main issues and if they were fixed everything would be rosy. That is not the case.
Numerous people have told the fundamental flaws: Scaling was a bad idea, and poorly implemnented. Removing any ability to reroll stats, combat system is now a slog in mud.
I have a feeeling we are going to get the sugarcoated response of : if we get the bugs fixed you will like the new direction the game has went. Guess what: We WON'T.
I would like to give my feedback, while I did spend a little time of preview, I did not explore a lot as I wanted to enjoy the live version. I love the new mod. Having played since almost week one of this game, the progression to level 80 has been fun and unique and no way laborious like the level 70 cap. The quests are interesting, the graphics are amazing and loved of the 'F' bombing (especially making them into fish). Job well done.
It has been easy to get gear and I realised how much work we had already done acquiring increased armour pen and tales artifacts are now benefitting us as mod 16 has hit. Here you have nothing to apologise for, so what I have to get more gear, enchants and artifacts etc, it gives me a sense of achievement when I acquire them. (Still waiting to win a legendary mount out of a lock box btw). I love the new pet system and being able to refine up insignias. It certainly is/will be a challenge re-learning my characters new moves - all 8 of them but learning is always a good thing. Where is the hand book on the new moves?
The things I would love to see on the fix list. The continuous lag and rubber banding, seems worse again today especially Barovia and Yawning Portal and other areas that heroics are in. My Warlock keeps going backwards in the master expeditions. I wish there was some new QOL in rewards for dungeons and skirmishes. I wish I never saw restoring gear again (yes still have black ice nightmares). Imperfect downscaling (why some areas downscale differently is a mystery). Some areas needed for campaigns are still have enemies to fight 10-20 levels higher after downscaling.
I have faith these jobs will be done and I will patiently wait, I enjoy playing this game and its something my Fiancé and I both share.
I like to see a Dev thread where all the bugs and other things you work on with the actual status (Reported/In progress/Solved/Verified by test). This will help us knowing if we need to report a bug or if it is already known.
Comments
I am stunned at this post. THIS kind of outreach was exactly what was needed, back in 2012-2019. It takes consistent outreach though, to start earning the respect of the cash paying playerbase.
I have been around since alpha. This is an interesting post, and I hope it will not be the last of it's kind. Listening to your play testers and PR have not been your strong suit.
Exhibit A... this exchange on Reddit between a forum moderator and another alliance is just not right. That type of thinking and "talking" will destroy this playerbase from the inside out. I hope Mr Foss (@mimicking#6533) and other Cryptic brass doesn't think this way.
I am Commodore in the post below:
Guilds built this game and guilds and alliances keep it going today. Bless all you guild leaders and alliance leaders out there -- it's not easy -- it takes time and people management skill and organizational skill and good fortune and most importantly GOOD PEOPLE.
People around and leveling zones busy? Did you ever think that's because people have been resetting up their toons spending an hour or two each at least? And some said screw it and either took a break from playing or rolled a new character because they are hanging on by a thread from leaving the game??
Fighting with the community in Reddit can not be good for the game at all. As a volunteer mod I understand you are only given so much leeway to spread good vibes and to get critical info or ideas back to the designer folks in an orderly fashion. CRYPTIC.. you need to get this piece right.
Mr Foss, many of these challenge and gating decisions needed to be made in 2012, not 2019. Still we are on board, but I do not see how you fix this at this point to the satisfaction of your customers, especially those "OLD PEOPLE" that have been playing this game FOR YEARS. You need to educate yourself on WHAT KEPT THEM logging in each day. For THAT is where the soul lies in this genre.
We are FOR the extra challenge. We are scratching our heads on the "HOW it was done" and "WHEN it was released" pieces.
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Jokes aside. I don't think this apology and stream will bring anything good and suddenly change you giving us monologue into a dialogue between players and Cryptic.
My guild basically disbanded, people playing other mmos now. Many of them were here since beta. Unless there will be some critical changes, no one's coming back. And let's be real. This will be an informative stream where Thomas will smile, say some things like "we will bring this and that in mod21" just to buy some time. It was the same after mod10 and so far none of the promises were fulfilled.
So yeah, not trusting you anymore.
I have to say that for a Mimic without legs/arms you have a pretty big pair for accepting to do this stream on tuesday, no matter what people are saying about the answers you're gonna be giving, just the fact of standing in front of a screen knowing all the rage bowling behind there, is something i wouldnt have done personally.
That being said, im not the one person that ran away from the game, im a beta player,im here since closed beta when a friend gave me a key that was in her founder pack. And i never left. Mainly because i do love this game really. I wasnt a DnD player, DnD was from me an unknown world. I just loved this game. And still love it. So i am trying to put up with all those changes you decided to do. But boy its hard sometimes.
Been more than a week im debating if my ranger is still worth playing, i loved trapper and now its just dead, if my healing cleric can make a difference in a group. Been a week im frustrated that i cant just pug with a couple of friends a RAQ because there's tong in there, and CR in there, and i wont repeat the bugs those dungeons have, its all over the forum. Been a week that im scratching my head because of the scaling. What a terrible boss fight this scaling is. My toons need to be more powerful at lvl 70 than they are at lvl 80 now. It doesnt make any sense to me. Been a week im like "why did I spend 6 years upgrading enchants on my 7 toons to r14 for them to be scaled down to dust". Been a bad week for my gaming time.
Granted i understand your game needs fresh blood. But look at all the leveling quests bugged or poorly scaled. For a team that wants to encourage new players to join and make their life easier, do you really think you are entitled to a feeling of accomplishment? How many of them are going to leave before they even reach the disaster of lvl 80?
I wont spit hate or disdain or anything. But if you truly mean what you wrote in your thread about loving the game, then maybe open your ears more and get your eyes wide open for some part of the community that dont love it anymore? Im not part of those, i still love it. Really im giving it a chance. I keep playing my toons everyday that i can. But frankly, i have the feeling of being punished for staying here with all the bugs and obstacles i have in front of me. And all the fun im losing because i cant run dungeons without the fear of a pug group not willing to try, or some of my friends gone, or some whatever boss deciding to charge in the opposite direction of what is showing on my screen, or whatever boss that has more defense than my arpen will ever reach at lvl 70.
While i want to wish you good luck for the stream coming, i am also really having little hope now in the capacity of your team into fixing the game. But like one famous halfling Youtuber HR from my guild told me few hours ago, "patience and loyalty".
On my SW soulweaver spec I noticed how hard it really is to target and heal the tank using the at will given to heal. Often times this targets a dps or targets a pet or even targets me and thats not a good thing.
If you guys put a method in the game allowing these type at wills to focus on 1 person in a party like the tank then it would work wonders. I could just press the at will and bingo mr tank gets his heals and dont have to worry about trying to get into an aoe that heals.
I would not have to worry about trying hard to target mr tank trying to use this at will.
really in some fights it gets really hard trying to target a tank.
The idea behind it is nice and what not but ya unless you make it easier for a healer to heal the tank I really dont see it working 100% great.
I also have to agree with what another said. I enjoy most things in the game but I really enjoy going into a dungeon I have ran many many times in over 2 years and taking 2 to 3 hours just to get done with it.
Pressing buttons and mouse keys for 30 mins to kill 1 boss really come on now.
Mechanics of a boss fight hasnt changed all you guys did was make it take longer then it sure to actually kill a boss.
I'd like to applaud the bravery it took to risk a full system balance pass after all this time. That said, I can't say I'm happy with the contents of this balance attempt. So much went wrong here and many of the decisions made simply weren't good decisions.
I'd also like to point out to @mimicking#6533 that his post is giving folks the impression that the devs still see the systems they came up with in an overly rosy light and that its only the bugs that are causing so much discontent. Its not just the bugs people are unhappy with. There are a lot of system flaws thrown into the mix too and it will also be necessary to fix these moving fowards.
Here is my take on the good and bad of some of these system changes:
My take on Cooldown Adjustments/ Recovery/AP Gain Nerf:
I support the decision to remove recovery from the game and reduce AP gain (though the AP nerf was excessive). Runaway recovery/AP gain was intimately involved in a laundry list of major balance concerns thoughout the game, be it PVE or PVP. Older modules had a lot less recovery and people still fell in love with Neverwinter's uniquely fast paced combat flow.
The parts of the cooldown adjustments I DON'T support was directly increasing the cooldown time of powers on TOP of removing recovery/reducing AP gain. That was too much and this is part of the reason why combat flow is so HAMSTER up now. As an example, imagine having one power with negative 40k recovery and another with positive 8k recovery, the differences between power cooldowns are too extreme and rotations feel awkward and disjointed now.
Another similar issue is how many of your powers don't match eachother's cooldowns now. On a rogue for example, you ideally want 2 encounter powers to have the same cooldown as eachother and 1 power to have a different cooldown. Now most good synergies don't allow for this. Even just a 1 or 2 second difference between all 3 encounters slotted doesn't feel good.
I also think it would have been much better if cooldowns were all based on having 4k through 6k recovery instead of 0 recovery, huge cooldown increases, or cooldown decreases.
My Take on At Will Power Damage:
At will power damage still is in a terrible place, they still feel too weak and this adds to the combat flow feeling like HAMSTER.
I get that charts say they make up a lot of the damage pie, but that's not what the community cares about, they care about the combat actually being enjoyable.
I will also point out that in D&D, at will powers often weren't weaker than encounter powers, a good example is how melee ranger's at wills were better than their encounter powers in 4E.
While I also understand that you want combat to be more similar to 5E now, I will also point out that 5E doesn't even have powers other than spells, weapon attacks are a simplified damage dice roll and you just describe your attack to the DM. Obviously that doesn't translate into an MMO setting.
My Take on Boons:
I liked that boons no longer have as much impact on your character's performance. The layout looks nice and less/weaker boons is good for helping new players catch up and also makes balancing the PVP scene much easier.
That said, the boons provided are soulsuckingly boring and this system needs more interesting mechanics than this. I also don't like how the 2 top boon tiers work, its very restrictive and doesn't look like it will age well.
My take on feats/paragons:
I mostly dislike the new feats and paragons system. I would much rather have seen more diversity in the form of more feat trees and paragons to choose from instead of less. Having just 2 options to pick from is very restrictive and feels like a punch in the face to anyone who grew fond of a specific tree or paragon path over the years.
I do understand why this was done though, the devs have struggled for years to balance 3 feat trees and 2 paragon paths but they seldom succeed and it doesn't last when they do. Most of the time, 2 trees or less would overshadow the 3rd. Having only 2 tiny feat trees instead of lots and lots of feats also reduced their workload when it comes to balance passes and other tweaks.
At the very least, I would like to see more interesting/enjoyable feat trees than what we were provided, they are objectively worse than the old ones in terms of both power and fun. Feats and paragons sadly aren't balanced in mod 16 either with one option clearly dominating the other in a lot of cases.
I did like a select few of the feats, one example is scullcracker on my rogue assassin, its got a good mechanic that goes well with assassin and its useful to both PVE players and PVP players.
My take on power distribution between the paragon paths:
I am only bringing up power distribution here instead of trying to cover powers as a whole, the reason being is its a more complicated mix of hits and misses and would require me to list too many specific examples to paint a short picture.
My take on powers is more positive than my take on feats, I can't speak for all classes but I can speak for my rogue.
I liked most of the power distributions between the rogue paragon paths with only a few exceptions. However, those exceptions are very significant, a good example is how most rogues aren't happy with lurker's assault's placement in whisperknife and would rather see this in the assassin path.
My take on scaling and issues with progression not being rewarding enough:
If the game improves drastically as a result of losing the items I worked for or changing how they work, I'm ok with losing my items or having them changed.
Unfortunately, the game seems to have gotten worse overall and thus I don't feel content with losing so much progress.
I'm ok with harder content and making older zones a little more difficult. I don't think the scaling system did a good job balancing this with people's motivation to progress though. Its a mess and the stats don't scale in a sensable way, you pretty much need multiple loadouts just to milk the most out of your character as you go into differently scaled zones. Characters wearing weaker gear often get scaled to be stronger than a maxed out character that has been scaled down.
Also, if you were capped on your stats at higher levels, the scaling system shouldn't bring your stats automatically to half of what you needed to cap at that level. You should still be capped out for that area and if that makes things too easy, tackle that by making the monsters stronger or giving them more challenging mechanics.
PVP Rogue,
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Ingame Handle: trgluestickz
Discord Name: Hurricane🌀Marigolds#2563
Guilds: She Looked LVL 18 & Essence of Aggression
Alliances: Imperium & Order of the Silent Shroud
Platform: PC
So, will there be any conclusions and systematic changes from this? What actual improvements? Or next mod it will be all the same just smaller scale with smaller mod, until the next large mod.
QA - We, those who preview, are not free QA and replacement for actual play-through. It looks every time that the things that are changed (patch notes) and the things that checked by the QA have nothing in common. It's nice that QA have their checklists, but will there come a time that that checklist will have addons that relate to the actual changed per the build?
Build patch notes say A, actual build does B or crashes, it's not possible to miss this if it was actually checked.
Want help from the community, get someone here to acknowledge bugs, with simple 4-5 sentences:
"Added to Jira"
"Needs reproduction" / "Can't reproduce"
"Fixed Internally"
"Closed"
I'm sure you can add a forum link into the Jira tracker, so someone can take the whole 10 seconds and post about it in the proper thread. Software companies from small startups and open source projects to large cooperation learned to do public facing bug tracking (examples range from github, and forums w/ issues to large scale programs like Microsoft insider), you are a software company, act like one.. learn from others that did it before..
Feedback (Technical) - From the game inception the feedback system doesn't work, open preview, close preview, everything just leaves a bad taste to both parties. In no form or way I'm saying that a company should do whatever someone posts. I'm saying that there should be 'protocol' how this handled. And if this is not a charade to placate the involved players, then it should be improved, and time allocated to it. Can't be that for 6 years nothing improved in the feedback process, and it seems less and less efficient as a process.
Feedback (subjective and reception) - When reading sanitized reddit, forums, and a discord then we get "Overly positive" / "cautiously positive" is just misleading, wrong, and leads to a worse game. The entire process became a sad joke, and a meme. The community in it's majority (mostly everyone except new players who just don't know better) is spread elsewhere, multiple other discords, facebook groups, in-game channels, and guilds, teamspeaks etc.. And the tone in all those avenues, where majority of players are, is not the same as in the above sanitized places.
Code merge and branch control - This is not the first time old bugs resurface, that were fixed previous mods. This is CN doors all over again. Account RAD from RQ, Guild Roster logs used to escape " correctly, now again it doesn't. I can't name from memory other regressions, but there are.
Too long iterations, too heave handed fixes - Some issues are left for far too long, then the fix is too heavy handed. From external buffs that could have been made additive with diminishing returns (e.g. debuffs) to ZAX Backlog. We wouldn't be in the current mess, if those things were more actively prioritized. Is there a long term plan?
Bottom line, with all the meetings all the leads are always at, that prevent them from their actual responsibilities, are there meetings with the title
"What we did wrong? And how we prevent repeating the same mistakes."
Are there even meting summaries with responsibilities, like in every company?
You know: "Topic, due date, responsibility"
"Pitch solutions for ZAX Backlog solutions, meeting in 2 weeks, Systems lead"
"Report about unresolved support issues with players redirected to the forums , weekly status meeting, CM"
etc..
It's a science and an art.
People study this for years, how to draw conclusions from the data they have, and with what confidence. Somehow the need for this qualification or what it means just ignored around here, by everyone. People mistakes trend indicators for absolute numbers, or expected trends vs actual..
You want to know how a mod successful, compare to a similar mod release with similar exposure, or extrapolate. What is the bounce rate? How many logged in and will disappear in a week, or two weeks? What is the trend with similar promotion campaigns? Simple "there are more people" just doesn't say much.
I've posted a talk by Chris Wilson at GDC, look how he talks about the data there.
This applies to Cryptic, as they are obviously either not gathering telemetry and statistical data, or do not know how to analyze it. Examples range from dungeon damage, and run times, to classes balance, and simple facts as how much AD is created by what means. How can a 'resonator feature' remain unnoticed for months without red-flags...
The new campaign is fun, and it can keep us entertained for a while but...
If you are so interested in new players, simple things will do:
Start a new character. No cheat. No god mode. No top of the line gear for a level 1 character. Starting as a new player would do. Level this character. Feel the actual gameplay. Ask yourselves: "why the heck I can't solo a friggin STORYLINE mission without 10 deaths while my companion is aggroing every single mob on the whole room and then staying still, not healing me at all, while I deal with this whole mess?" New players surely do, and they quietly would leave the game and never come back after facing so much frustration. My niece did so when I made the huge mistake of trying to show the gameplay to her. Her exact words? "You actually play THIS?"
Now, a few things about keeping old players:
When you finally reached endgame, start asking. Why is so damn grindy to grab some endgame stuff now? Why getting AD to buy my stuff is so much harder and, at the same time, so devalued? We do love some grinding, not gonna lie, but the limitations are stacking up and the rewards just, well, are on the floor. Why one would seriously run a quest/dungeon/whatever for a whole hour for a peridot? Really? Where's the fun on that? That's no longer a game, it's becoming a sweatshop. You've axed the limit on AD and seals, but what we got in that exchange? More grinding, only more sweating.
You pretty much imposed a necessity for healing items but now essential items like potions have stupidly long cooldowns and are way too expensive, not to mention the lower level ones aren't even close to useful right now with their pitifully low numbers. Getting gold became relevant again because of this kind of stuff, but a lot of players are burning gold just to buy healing potions, some of them are doing so to the point they can't buy potions anymore, because their gold is gone and they have to resort to run lower level stuff just to keep playing. A whole LOT of players can't burn AD just to buy potions. I had to abandon crafting/professions altogether just to keep up with my potion consumption. I don't have a 21k character. If you do, great for you, but tons of players are still working to get there and can't breeze through the game content. This IS an issue.
Now we can reach level 80. Nice, right? Grab all that powerful gear, right? And we get our asses destroyed even with fairly old content. Scaling issues, mobs wrongly scaled, you name it. Bug report forums are filled with complaints about wrongly scaled mob levels on stuff we actually need to run to have a smoother endgame experience.
Then the gear scaling... A level 80 utterly destroys some content. A lot of dragons on open world settings are being killed so fast that some players trying to finish their missions can't even get credit for the kill because they couldn't hit said dragons in time. Other dragons, like the ones on The Well of the Dragon are so damn powerful that a whole group of fully geared level 80s can get killed nonstop and NEVER kill the dragon before it vanishes. Low level dungeons are still getting steamrolled for well geared players that will rush ahead and leave the lower leveled/geared players behind. And a actual leveling player can barely solo their OWN STORYLINE MISSIONS??? Who the heck tested this, we ask?
Obvious, downright GLARING bugs getting to the final released patch aren't helping either. Health boons are doing NOTHING. Some feats aren't working at all. Some at-wills can't even hit some mobs. Again, mobs scaled to level 80 while you're scaled to level 60. Stamina randomly stop regenerating for paladins. Warlocks getting stuck on combat animations or their dailies using up action points, showing the proper animations but doing no damage, at all. Stuff reported again, and again, and again. And you won't do a thing about this kind of important things but will promptly fix a bug that benefited players, and throw a "nice" threat in your patch notes. "Not gonna ban players that profited by this bug because we're magnanimous even if tons of players didn't even KNOW that stuff was a bug". Are. you. SERIOUSLY. doing. this. to. PAYING. CUSTOMMERS?!
I have some Vip time remaining and I'll play for that time I payed, I think, but you burnt yourselves in my book, with the glaring issues, with the outrageous threat in your patch notes, with your apology lacking sincerity. I usually return to online games after some time away, but I've serious doubts about returning to Neverwinter after this whole mess. Not hopeful at all. Not the first time you completely ignored your gaming community.
Thank you.
Acknowledging the problem is the first step in fixing it.
Now that you've opened a dialogue on this subject, don't allow it to go another 2 or 3 weeks without reply or rely on one live stream to be the sum of this conversation. You've pulled back a lot of good will with this post, don't waste that by making it a one-off.
My only issue remains the fact that in the known issues you mention, it is only isolated, specific, instances of scaling you are looking at.
In case I can't get to the live stream to post a question, (Time zones are a HAMSTER) may I ask one up front?
"Can you please let us know if the current standard for scaling as it applies to lower level zones and queue content is "As Intended" with regard to the severity of scaling as a whole?"
Essentially; are you looking to deal with the general issue of scaling being far too extreme, or just looking to patch fix individual elements of imbalance?
Again, thanks for doing this. It's much needed and sincerely appreciated.
You know, I appreciate that. It is the first step to solve any problem - admiting you have one.
On the other hand it is sad to blatantly announce that you will never fix it - I know you did not use such words, but flaunting minor tweaks in your post, those tweaks, that came in tandem with more bugs... You clearly have no idea where the problems lie, so you obviously cannot fix anything.
You see, if after a car crash a badly broken body comes to the hospital, they do not apply make-up... because that is not the way to save a life.
OK, so you have an idea something is amiss, but you are not able to pinpoint what... Well, you surely could read for example the forums, but lets state here the two most obvious weirdnesses:
The thing is you made a scaling system which - for other than lvl 80 instances - creates from a capped end game char the less then capped one. That is simply wrong - and no matter how many tweaks to critters you make, it will stay wrong unless you touch this major issue. What is more: unless you touch the scaling, in this patchwork state of game, you are bound to create more issues. For both now and for the future.
(hint 1: it should be easier to be capped in the less demanding content, hint 2: the end game should be the most challenging content)
You wanted to make the game challenging? Good notion, but... MOD15 - you should have the statistics from k-team challenge. I do not have those, but from what I saw in the guild, there were 3 types of people: some called it too difficult for them, another did it once a week per char to claim weekly reward, the last ones did it more than once - just to help guildies that needed the valued weekly currency.
I did not see anyone, not even once, to organise a hardcore run just for the gigs of it.
You see, if the reward is not there, making the content harder usually is not the player's choice.
But all in all, you made a progress - you admitted something is wrong. May be, in a couple of years... you surely have some hope to make the necessary step and move away form a malicious psychological experiment designed to figure out how much are the people prone to voluntarily suffer. And may be you will end up in game design... of a game that players actually want to play. Who knows. May be.
The first step to regaining the playerbases' trust is to SCRAP this new scaling system, it simply doesn't work.
But at the same time you announce the console release of this, simply ignoring the amount of bug fixing, testing, adjustment to be done. If you want some improvement, you should start listening to your developers and testers(?).
Oh, I just wanted to quote the screenshot from reddit but using smartphone and my whole plan went south. Sorry.
I'm back helping our guild and alliance, paying close attention to the community, to see how we can best function in this environment and beyond.
I truly feel posts like this can go a long way IF they are followed up. I'm hoping that they turn a new leaf with communication with the community AND public relations --- and kick it into gear NOW, like NEVER before. Cryptic actually has an opportunity here but the portal will not remain open forever.
I am looking for a REAL GOOD SIGN from Cryptic brass that older players, whether they are F2P or VIP.... are NOT being replaced/forced out, for a mass of new players who may or may not have staying power.
Any good guild leader or alliance leader knows that new players are GOLD, but keeping your regulars happy will make the NEW BLOOD HAPPY and feel welcome. WE need both and YOU need both Mr Foss. REPLAY-ABILITY is the key all us leaders hope for.
I feel there is a real disconnect in that reasoning at the highest levels of PW and Cryptic.
Mr Foss (@mimicking#6533), it's opportunity time. What are you going to do about it? And when?
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But what about the rest of us who posted dozens of bugs in the preview feedback threads only to see them left unchanged in the live version?
Scaling is bad enough no doubt but that's a big one to tackle. Most of the bugs we repeatedly reported would take 10 mins to solve but none of you would take the time to fix them.
You want some examples? Just track my comments and look for red text. Or do the same with the feedback threads.
You apologize that's great, I am more than willing to accept you apologies, but first I want to see facts.
We now know how that went - and although I can now say "I told you so", that does not make me happy.
I didn't realize back then that one of the main issues with mod 16 would be different - not bugs and such, which can be easily fixed, but more basic problems, related to fundamental flaws in the design.
- Removing stat rolling and assigning people inappropriate bonuses.
- Feat and boon changes (granted, they are not as bad as the first version was, but still not "great" in any sense.
- Reduction of flexibility in general.
- And, worst of all, implementing scaling via capping in a way that actually punishes people for progressing and discourages people from improving their gear.
The problem, the big problem is that for many players the game is just not fun any more....and that is not something you can remedy just by fixing some bugs.No, we are not "in a good place".
first of all.. the addon isn't that bad. i like the new gameplay of the warlock and i feel quite more powerfull than before.
but.. i loved one part of your game: the smoothness in fight. there where little lags, yeah.. but you could fight for hours without getting annoyed by something.
and now?! ... it's a mess. i wanted to grind the new events in undermountain and i'm stucking between stunlocks, lags, time delayed castings and onehits out of the blue.
please, get back to the core and fix it! this isn't fun at all because you're wasting the half of the time just running trough lags and invisible red deads....
i reduced my graphic settings from the highest level to the lowest level and getting less fps and a higher ping than before the update. so.. you can change everything.. but please.. if you don't fix the laggs, we can't play, and then it's not important if you add more content ..
But seeing your comments here I still don't believe you understand the true problems. It looks like you believe that the BUGS are the only main issues and if they were fixed everything would be rosy. That is not the case.
Numerous people have told the fundamental flaws: Scaling was a bad idea, and poorly implemnented. Removing any ability to reroll stats, combat system is now a slog in mud.
I have a feeeling we are going to get the sugarcoated response of : if we get the bugs fixed you will like the new direction the game has went. Guess what: We WON'T.
It has been easy to get gear and I realised how much work we had already done acquiring increased armour pen and tales artifacts are now benefitting us as mod 16 has hit. Here you have nothing to apologise for, so what I have to get more gear, enchants and artifacts etc, it gives me a sense of achievement when I acquire them. (Still waiting to win a legendary mount out of a lock box btw). I love the new pet system and being able to refine up insignias. It certainly is/will be a challenge re-learning my characters new moves - all 8 of them but learning is always a good thing. Where is the hand book on the new moves?
The things I would love to see on the fix list. The continuous lag and rubber banding, seems worse again today especially Barovia and Yawning Portal and other areas that heroics are in. My Warlock keeps going backwards in the master expeditions. I wish there was some new QOL in rewards for dungeons and skirmishes. I wish I never saw restoring gear again (yes still have black ice nightmares). Imperfect downscaling (why some areas downscale differently is a mystery). Some areas needed for campaigns are still have enemies to fight 10-20 levels higher after downscaling.
I have faith these jobs will be done and I will patiently wait, I enjoy playing this game and its something my Fiancé and I both share.
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