darthpotaterMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,259Arc User
edited May 2019
Because simple is better:
- I feel good in Master expeditions. The only content that is right in this moment. There is progress here. Teamplay, tank, healings, etc. I want the whole game like this. - I feel bad in scaled content. Nothing works. Is like a time travel. We like challenge. But we like rewards also. Long runs in old dungeons that we have mastered 1000 times, to get a peridot? A big NO. And alevieate scaling in normal content. - Is very important to make progress. To feel that progress. To have goals that make you stronger, and feel that strong in old content. If you invest in items like end game enchants you should feel that power. - Is important to have character customization. I want that feat choices give you different game stiles. Like companions or items. I want FOR THE LOVE OF GOD customizable initial stats. And not stats like INT in paladins needed to make dmg. - Bugs. Is acceptable to have bugs. Its unnaceptable to have game crashes 100% in some dungeons like CR and push that to live. - Interesting QoL sells. Giving that you cant sell power because of scaling and you shot your feet with the changes making every item worthless, sell QoL things, like bag spaces, Bank slots (yes more slots, much more), items to make something BtC to BtA, etc.
There are other things, but those are my bigger concerns.
adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
edited May 2019
To be fair, I have to note that there are some good things about Mod 16 - it isn't all bad.
The graphics guys did a really good job - the areas and new mobs look absolutely great.
The storyline is a bit silly in places (dragon+sword? kuo-toa sandcastle building, really?) but that's OK - it's not over the top like Mod 15, so overall a good job.
The Master Expeditions are good. Feel just right - controllable difficulty, so you can make them easily soloable or proper group content. Unfortunatly they are limited to 3/day, and if the game crashes in the middle of one, it counts as one of your 3 attempts for the day. Right now, they are the only content worth doing, so I log in, do my 3/ MEs (maybe a bit of rune farming) and that's it. Until LoMM gets released, the rest of my playtime will be spent on other games.
Removal of Lifesteal/excessive recovery and buff stacking. Overall, I consider this change good.
Insignia upgrades. Just good, except for the added inventory space required. Would like to see BtC insignia replaced by BtA.
Companion changes. Mostly good (except that regular fighting companions are next to useless and healing companions are not much better). Sure, I'm a bit unhappy that only 2 of my 6 Legendary companions are really usable now, but overall the changes are good, and I love how gear was decoupled from the actual companion. I feel a bit cheated after discovering that the "Bolster" bonus is utterly useless when you are using an augment, though.
So, there are some positives, but unfortunately, at the moment, the negatives outweigh them. We did warn you this might happen - just see the "General" thread on the closed playtest forum - page 1, 9th post from the top from January 24th. (I cannot quote it here because of the NDA)
If you want this game to survive, you need to fix this those things, fast.
And yes, another thing. Many PC players survived the Mod 6 disaster and are still here - we know that badly broken things can be fixed. Console players do not have that experience. If Mod 16 is released on consoles in anything resembling its current form, I am going to predict at least a 30% drop in player numbers there.
Post edited by adinosii on
Hoping for improvements...
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silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
I remember spending a few hours on preview.. thinking, well some of it is ok, but they have to fix scaling, as its a major pita.. I was thinking to myself.. no way they will release it in this state (I was more afraid of them releasing comps that were massively broken atm)
But they fixed all the comps.. in fact, probably overcorrected them, as they literally do nothing now. Healing damage.. are all worthless on all of them, so its just basically stats that matter on them and a good augment. Im ok with this.. as most comps were stupid anyways.. at least augments stay close to you.
and for me I find insignia increase annoying, because we cant just do them one at a time, I still think you should just make it like that, as now its a bit frustrating.
,but they left scaling issues.
No one wants to progress to feel like they they didnt progress? Ya know?
In addition as many have stated, you already removed lifesteal, recovery, buff/debuff stacking, powersharing, over the top power damage cycles (aoc) .. so all of that was gone already. For some reason you also felt the need to do this scaling thing.
BTW.. who decided on r6 and r8 values.. we could get as far as r10 values back at the start of the game. Seems a bit odd to me.
But really the biggest issue is simply, its so unrewarding to progress and the content is so very limited where progression is even needed .
If your going to keep scaling my suggestion is simply this.
1. Remove scaling in open world and regular instance content.. its just plain stupid, no one wants to go back to do ancient content and spend 50% more time doing it.. jeepers. 2. if you absolutely feel the need for scaling in dungeons and trials.. then a level 80 with more stats HAS to be somehow a % more powerful then a lvl 70. Otherwise whats the point fellows?
Somehow you stymied the core of all mmos.. that as you grow and level, you are more powerful. While Ive seen scaling in other games, I HAVE never not felt more powerful at max level with good gear on .. so yes, your version of scaling is broken in my opinion and should be worked on.
Do I think they are fixing scaling where the vast majority of players will be happy again? Not really, they seem stuck on the notion that its needed in the variation they have chosen to implement it in. They truly believe a few tweaks here and there will work.
Well whatever at this point.
Im not really mad or angry. Just whatever at this point.
Too start thank you for apology. putting the game play into perspective. I use to take my main ranger in tiamat do 100 mill damage on a 1 round kill. I go in a dung [ leveling] , and now a cleric with rank8and 9's on does more damage than I do. why would anyone want to spend money to refine just to have it counted against you . and that has been like that in most dung I been in clerics barbarians seem to be top 2 dps with rouges right behind. this maybe different for some but this has been my observation. hope u can address these issues but i think they will take longer than few weeks to get these bugs out of game. Good luck on it hope you do make it all better=}
There are important issues in game: 1. Scaling. This is problem makes it unnecessary upgrade your character, because stats it be equaled with scaling. Decision - scaling is need be rework or remove from 80 level content. Rework scale means 50 percent crit chance equal 50 percent crit chance with scaling with another stats. This also applies to other stats. 2. Usseless legendary mount, stones and other. It's component do not give significant succession for it upgrade. Decision - upgrade states on stones and legendary mounts. 3. Reward in dungeon. Сomplexity is more, but reward unchanged. Decision - upgrade reward in the end dungeon. Rewards may be next: upgrade astral diamonds, unique gear with rare chance(1-2 %). Other problems are not so significant, but the above need fix soon.
I know this have already being said but If most stats have a % hard cap, why do you scale those stats ? wouldnt be much easyer to scale only the uncapped stats power and hp ? btw doing this pls remmeber that if a player is abouve the limit level for a dungeons he should be scaled down ABOUVE the players on the required level... Also theres no needof scalling on zones, people only work there for boons, and i dont think slowing down boon farms is the point here, btw to speed up this process you only need to remove the daily limit on campaings and then tweek a bit the currency needed cutting the ammount you feel thats right for a 10 mods back content...
I will say it again you should had dropped this version and started a Neverwinter 2 from scratch... the bugs we got here look like a alpha on a new game anyway...
5
tassedethe13Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 806Arc User
I have said it many times before, but many of the design philosophies that came with mod 16 are inherently hostile to the solo player. I am not just talking scaling or things that needed to be adjusted, i am talking directed, designed choices meant to ruin the solo's day. Weakend healing companion, weakened healing items, increased cost of healing items, decreased gold and gear drops that can be sold for gold, nerfed powers and long cool-downs against bullet spongy enemies, mobs that have mutiple controllers that fling you around and stun lock, tight spaces that cause you to aggro multiple mobs. I get a "group up, pay up or get out" Vibe the whole time i was on preveiw. I have been playing since 2014 so i am rather attached and if i seem bitter, it is because i am.
The game feels like it has got its foot to my face as it tries to push me out the door. So forgive my skepticism but it seems like you are indeed trying to Alienate some of your players, so i am taking this with a grain or 5 of salt.
That is how most of the player I talk to feel. Those that quit feel as if all of the money and time they put into a character has been stripped away from them. To get their character to be even reasonable with mod 16 they will have reinvest again in their character and that is something many players don't want to do, so they quit.
Cost vs benefit is big and many are saying the benefit we get with the cost of the items are so small that most are simply giving up because it is annoying, time consuming or costly or all three.
My biggest gripe is that the original announcement mentioned players would have more choices. I want to know where that is. As someone that mains a wizard my choices in mod 16 are significantly less than they were in prior mods. Mod 16 Wizards are a DPS. Feats matter little in my builds and what does matter is the gear IL and nothing else really if you go look at how the game is built. Instead of feeling like there are choices I am pigeonhole as a damage dealer that has limited functionality and the only way to really play now is get best and highest level gear as that drives our stats. That to me shows limitation or no choice in how I play or build my character.
The other thing is why was there so a focus on increasing our cool downs of encounters. I liked that I had an option on how to make my encounters faster so I can produce more damage using them or I could go for more power for more damage, etc. There were more options, choices, with the older setup. Now my encounters take a while to get off cooldown. This makes the use of at wills needed to actually do damage. Needing to constantly use my at wills makes the game slower, more tedious to take out enemies and reduces the FUN and ENGAGEMENT I have with the game. Making the game BORING. The combat design reminds me of a slower Destiny than an actual RPGMMO.
I am going to wait and see how the devs plan to address cool downs on encounters, address the scaling, cost associated with fixing our characters again, and any other bugs and issues. It shouldn't take more than 3 to 6 months to fix most of these issues.
1) Scaling is definitely a big issue. It has made many group content unplayable at this time. When four IL 18000 toon's and one IL 13000 toon cannot finish Malberg's Castle, it's bad. We wiped at the end. I can understand scaling the Normal Dungeons for beginner players. I know many complaints from them, was one person would run thru quest and leave them behind. I believe there should be more intermediate random queues. Break them down more, normal dungeons in one queue. Normal Skirmish's in another queue.
2)I don't like when my artifacts after one MOD release become obsolete based on IL. New Artifacts are now 300 IL versus 150 IL. Old Artifacts, Weapon's, Waist/Neck Special Items should be able to be updated beyond original levels, so they aren't wasted effort. Every single time new content comes out. Or give back Stones, etc during breakdown. Or give free Coal for new item based on the old item level.
3)Over simplification of the Character build stats and beginning stats re-rolls. Especially on existing toon's. Every existing toon should have free Race Re-Roll. Biggest issue is how stats characteristics are exactly the same for all Characters. I don't like that a Pally now needs to worry about Intelligence when it should be Wisdom and Charisma. No toon should have Primary and Secondary Stats then, All toon's should be optional. This is a big issue for D&D Folks.
4)Character Play Style: So far DPS versions of Barbarian and Fighter are very similar to before, which I like but miss Temp HP from Barb. Warden Ranger is fun so far. Pally's seem too different, I don't like that Tank cannot have LAY on HANDs. This is what makes a Pally. Another issue is removing Temp HPs from Templar's Wrath. I don't like Divinity. Should be cool down only. Or give Caster type's MANA pool based on Wisdom, Int or Charisma of TOON Type. I don't like that Pally seems more Caster than actual Fighter. You don't get that feeling with Rangers at least Warden. D&D Pally's and Rangers are Fighter based with spell abilities. Now they feel like Casters. Not Happy with Pally's. And I primarily play them.
Only played beginning of Undermountain, But so far seems good. But I'm sure it'll eventually feel like all the other Campaigns, TOO MUCH GRINDING!!!
To be fair, I have to note that there are some good things about Mod 16 - it isn't all bad.
The graphics guys did a really good job - the areas and new mobs look absolutely great.
The storyline is a bit silly in places (dragon+sword? kuo-toa sandcastle building, really?) but that's OK - it's not over the top like Mod 15, so overall a good job.
The Master Expeditions are good. Feel just right - controllable difficulty, so you can make them easily soloable or proper group content. Unfortunatly they are limited to 3/day, and if the game crashes in the middle of one, it counts as one of your 3 attempts for the day. Right now, they are the only content worth doing, so I log in, do my 3/ MEs (maybe a bit of rune farming) and that's it. Until LoMM gets released, the rest of my playtime will be spent on other games.
Removal of Lifesteal/excessive recovery and buff stacking. Overall, I consider this change good.
Insignia upgrades. Just good, except for the added inventory space required. Would like to see BtC insignia replaced by BtA.
Companion changes. Mostly good (except that regular fighting companions are next to useless and healing companions are not much better). Sure, I'm a bit unhappy that only 2 of my 6 Legendary companions are really usable now, but overall the changes are good, and I love how gear was decoupled from the actual companion. I feel a bit cheated after discovering that the "Bolster" bonus is utterly useless when you are using an augment, though.
So, there are some positives, but unfortunately, at the moment, the negatives outweigh them. We did warn you this might happen - just see the "General" thread on the closed playtest forum - page 1, 9th post from the top from January 24th. (I cannot quote it here because of the NDA)
If you want this game to survive, you need to fix this those things, fast.
And yes, another thing. Many PC players survived the Mod 6 disaster and are still here - we know that badly broken things can be fixed. Console players do not have that experience. If Mod 16 is released on consoles in anything resembling its current form, I am going to predict at least a 30% drop in player numbers there.
30% is generous. It will be higher.
3
adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
I don't like when my artifacts after one MOD release become obsolete based on IL. New Artifacts are now 300 IL versus 150 IL. Old Artifacts, Weapon's, Waist/Neck Special Items should be able to be updated beyond original levels, so they aren't wasted effort.
One of the suggested solutions for this was to add crafting tasks that would for example take two old mythic artifacts, and craft a new (green) artifact, which would have higher stats than the old ones once it was refined to mythic.
I am not hoprful they will listen to that suggestion, though.
Over simplification of the Character build stats and beginning stats re-rolls. Especially on existing toon's. Every existing toon should have free Race Re-Roll. Biggest issue is how stats characteristics are exactly the same for all Characters. I don't like that a Pally now needs to worry about Intelligence when it should be Wisdom and Charisma. No toon should have Primary and Secondary Stats then, All toon's should be optional. This is a big issue for D&D Folks.
When people complained about this during alpha playtest, it was made clear that this was WAI and not going to change. I consider it a huge mistake and am very unhappy with it - the only sensible thing to do is to revert this change completely.
But I'm sure it'll eventually feel like all the other Campaigns, TOO MUCH GRINDING!!!
Well, actually, no. There is very little grinding in the actual campaign itself....and you can easily finish in over just a few days of normal play. AT that point you can do the HEs, until you have everything they can give. That may take a while. Also, you can really grind the runic HEs, but that is really only necessary if you want to restore the Runic Apprentice armor - however, that seems mostly pointless.
Long time player, one toon of each class capable of running any content in mod 15, and all have now completed the undermountain campaign.
Plus points would be that the undermountain campaign itself is really well done and enjoyable, and i do completely understand that there was a need to address class imbalance and run away buffing, lifesteal and recovery.
However, despite how well intentioned the changes to the game were, the implementation is an absolute train wreck.
Negative points, i hate scaling. Set aside for the moment its broken beyond belief, even if you got it working, i dont want to struggle through content i cleared years ago. Especially as the only reason im in that content is because you force me there to get my rad, because you need me there to make it look like you have a bigger player base than you do to new players. So you need me to run that content but you want to make it as difficult as possible for me to run it, with lousy rewards? My No. 1 ask is you remove scaling from the game.
You set out to achieve class balance. Having now got 8 level 80 toons, i can tell you you failed. There is as big a difference in class capability now as there ever was.
You took a game that was fast paced and fun to play, and slowed it right down. One of the biggest complaints we used to see on the forums was how grindy the game was, and your response is to make it even more so?
You devalued hard earn or paid for gear, companions, masterwork, enchants, boons all took hours to earn or good money and youve either made them next to useless (enchants and boons) or completely changed the ones that have value (companions) this just feels like a bonkers business plan, youre telling your player base its not worth grinding or spending money as rewards are not worth it, so both reducing the lifespan and income of the game in one fell swoop.
My final gripe is paladin specific, you already slowed the game down, without a dps loadout the paladin is painfully slow and boring to play. Also its not a paladin, its a fighter youve shoehorned a divinity mechanism onto to claim its a paladin. And its not a decent divinity mechanism like the DC's its an ill conceived mess that just punishes people playing this class even further.
I wont be able to make the stream due to time differences, but i hope, with extremly little faith, that the concerns from all the players on this thread are addressed.
RIQs are ridiculously overtuned for random groups. View as healer:
Spent 25 minutes doing the first part of Castle Malabog yesterday and we abandoned after about 4-5 complete wipes. Trash mobs basically hit for 50% of your health with one swing. Healing spec is putting out incredibly high amounts of threat to mobs attracting aggro of everything.
Tried RIQ today twice - got Manycoins Bank Heist twice. Failed twice and abandoned. DPS cannot dish out enough damage, mobs spawn from both sides, players split to deal with both, healer can't heal both sides. And the amount of CCing by the mobs is ridiculous.
Obviously the scaling is an issue. But there's also a wider design problem here. All group content that has been created since whenever has been on the basis of the game as it was. You've implemented a massive amount of changes to players and have made very marginal (if any) changes to the overall design of the dungeons. So players now lack the toolkit to be able to deal with dungeons as they were.
You need to decide what is required for skirmishes. Does Manycoins Bank Heist need a healer and a tank? I've popped in it with 5 dps and 3dps + 2 healers. Until you decide what the composition should be for it and enforce it through the queueing system, how on earth do you expect to balance it?
It's just staggering the lack of thought that went into making these changes. All of the development focus was on Mod 16 areas, none of it appears to have been on the effects of the wholesale class and other changes on the existing content. It's as though the dev team designed a whole system without ever running it through the existing content.
Not wasting my time doing any more queues until there's proper changes. I'll just log in to collect my key and see if I can get my Alabaster weapon in expeditions.
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.
@fenrir4life I think part of the reason is that dps is still just dps, tanking changes were drastic so asterdahl had a much more challenging task handling all three tank classes, and two of the three healer classes.
Well lost another master expedition daily because mob seems to be under the floor.... Wonderful losing chances at the alabaster weapon sets and one of the largest single source of campaign currency in the game via the quest turn in which is 30 usually..... This is not the first time either... so much time and resources complete wasted for me since this mod went live due to bugs and glitches and when gms do give a response it is just we can not do anything to help thanks for the understanding and sorry for the inconvenience,,,, sorry is not enough you really should show some good will and at the very least compensate people being screwed at no fault of their own over and over because of bugs and HAMSTER.
I'm not going to quote the numerous opinions already stated that I agree with since that would be a long, repetitive post. Responding to your message alone will be long enough.
With Undermountain, our core goals were to raise the level cap, provide exciting new adventures, and cleanup some longstanding class balance issues.
Well, you managed to raise the level cap. You gave....limited adventures. And the class balance? Well, you used the right words that's for sure. Because they have issues....still.
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.
I feel like the new class & content carrot has just gotten old by now. It's been YEARS and still this gets dangled in front of us every time there's major changes. Class balance reworks over and over again for years with the "this will make it easier to add new classes since everything will be balanced" tease thrust at us every time. How often will you reach into this bag to placate players?
And the method for players to advance through existing campaigns faster was to.....reduce their effectiveness in older content? Please explain the logic there?
I would like to give a shout out to Rainer whose spreadsheet was a great resource and window into the player’s perspective.
This is just about the only thing I can 100% get behind from your entire post. And guess what? It has nothing to do with your company but with a content creator that seems to put in more work and THOUGHT into NW in his spare time than some of the brainpower behind the game right now...that should say volumes.
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.
On one hand you acknowledge you need to listen better. On the other you state that critical bugs made it impossible for us to enjoy the new mod. If you were listening you would hear that the main issue isn't so much a bug a poorly designed scaling system. Are there bugs? Yes, without a doubt. Could those bugs have been more tolerable if not for the way the scaling was implemented. Without a doubt. We've endured bugs in the past.
And to be fair, scaling in itself is not the issue. Your teams method of implementing scaling however is horrendous. But no one wants to go back to Sharandar/Chult/any old area and feel like they're half as effective there as they are in new content. If you hit caps in current content than that should translate down to lower content. And this system is designed to punish players consistently with future mods. That's just as big an offense since in 2 mods the current content will have you capped. It's just bad all around and feels like a system designed through limitations of either the current systems in place, the people that devised it or the time allotted to get the mod to market.
Over the last week, the team has been triaging the issues being reported
I'm not even going to touch upon the list of "achievements" the team accomplished by fixing what they broke. But you sum it well enough for me right here. Triage. Your players have, for weeks now that include going back to the beta test and an extensive preview session, been telling you that major surgery is still needed on this patient...but you're still slapping band aids and stitches on her.
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.
Being mainly a console player I can say without a doubt that there had better be massive changes made to the scaling system before this hits us. The one thing you don't have going for you on console is there is no element of surprise. We've already seen how badly this turned out on PC. Some of us even play on PC and have shared the experience within our alliances, etc.
If scaling remains the way it is you are going to see an even larger reduction in your console players. We've already had more than the usual amount of people leave and a large remainder of the community seems to on the fence with one leg already over it.
Cant tell you what to do exacly, there are so many areas of bugs in Mod16. But the very most thing you must change instantly is to get rid off the scaling system. - till mod 15 we got many buffs to make content easier, no buffs in mod16 - till mod 15 we have enchants that define ~60% of our stats, now we have barely 20% (max), cutted down in scaling areas to ~8%. - till mod 15 we had a fluid combat system, with recovery build to personal needs, now we have mostly longer or doubled cooldowns and no real option to make it shorter cooldowns. - till mod 15 we had boons that define or complete our stats for the role we want to play (build another ~20% of our stats), now we got boons that do 1,25% max for our stats and most of them dont function (look at hp boons). You see there are many things cutted down plus the unvolved scaling system makes it not fun to play.
Discard scaling now. Build a plan for a better system and implement this with mod17. till mod 15 Enchants where 3% stat value, now they are only 1,2% and that is unscaled.
if you want improve new players, then dont hurt them with scaling (you do it too fast, now you cant made it ever to lvl 80), instead make campaign booster tokens(dont know the english name of them) tradeable.
Look at the talents, some didnt do something or so less usefull for our roles.
Combat advantage isnt relyable to our position. If you are behind critter you dont get combat advantage in all cases (why?)
And there are many bugs to clear, dont stop doing fixes for broken powers, broken talents, broken features, broken companions.
Thank you just please balance the dps at end game.im a end game gwf/barbarian I dont want to be irrelevant or not needed.i dont got a PC ive played since the start ish of ps4.
oh, another note. you really need to explain why, despite, according to you, having worked on mod16 for OVER A YEAR, this is what was released. why the quality is so low despite the extra time given to this mod. and this isn't a small thing, either. the question of why the dev team has managed to perform even worse than normal, despite being given way more time to work on the mod than normal, is an important one for you to answer.
@hitchslapped My guess is they probably have about half the staff they need to properly run this game, maybe less. Total guess as I have no insider information and I don't know even how many people it takes to run this game. My opinion is based on how many team members they've lost over the past couple years and the overall quantity of new content and quality of the the game.
Others have stated they seem to lack at least some of the best practices and procedures that other software/game developers use. Again I have no specific info or knowledge but @micky1p00 made a lot of good points earlier in this thread that make sense (regression of previous fixes, etc.).
I am sick of hearing contributors on twitch and youtube complain about cryptic. I think it's funny how you complain cryptic doesn't "take care of it's contributors" ..... first off most of the contributors do nothing but show how to make the game truly free to play with solo grinding, meaning not having to put real money on the game......that's a problem ..A BIG PROBLEM...first off folks free to play means no subscription the end game content can be reached with real money which then goes into the game to make it free to play for all...if you take away the real money aspect of this game is gonna fail end of story which is where it's headed now. The reason why things get nerfed is because they need pay, not grind for ad to exchange to zen. Basically you are all complaining about the situation you put yourselves in and what entirely comical is your trying to say that this is all based off of broken content....well friends lets see you eat steak and lobster with no money. Use some common sense folks seriously. As far as i'm concerned mod 16 is great sure there are broken things but what game doesn't have its issues and those issues get addressed I think for the most part its the grinders who are pissed off not the players, think about it they grind an already grindy game to avoid putting real money on the game, then they complain when you take away their ability to grind so they don't have to pay. Honestly in my opinion just fix the bugs and scaling in certain areas and let the bums find another bridge to hide under.
Okay everybody needs to just realise this wasnt an apology, it was more like damage control and there is no reason to think anything will change, it never does..
Ive lost faith, i dont believe a single word they say. if this was an apology they would revert things back the way they were, they would make changes that the people actually want. they would take action to back up the ''apology'' . but you are mistaken if you think they will do anything of the sort, they have been working on this mod for over a year, so if you think we will get anything but some sporatic minor bug fixes and patches, you are living in a dream world.
Personaly i have given my heart and soul to this game, ive made hundreds of videos, ive praised neverwinter for years, made guides, and did what i could to help, thats free advertising.. for all my efforts i wastt even considered for beta testing, never invited.. but i get it, i'm too honest and speak the truth, and that doesnt bode well with cryptic..
thats why they hired gamepedia to stream mod 16, a person who has nothing to do with neverwinter? and not one of the already existing content creators /streamers ? i can tell you why, cause we would tell everyone how horrible this mod is, and that my friends is not the kind of advertising they want..
A message to foss.
Sir, i use to be on your side, you were the only one i had some faith in, and you angered not only me but all the nw community in general.. my advice to you is dont just type words, we dont need messages or apologies, we need actions, we need you to reverse this joke of mod back to the way it was.. us end gamers/veterans have invested so much, and now all pregression has been dismantled beyond belief.. the best way to get more players playing neverwinter is by taking care of the people who have always been here.. we know better than you do, we do the math, the tests, everything.. so if you refuse to listen, we refuse to play..
i havent played in over a month. and im sure you see your own numbers dwindling and are freaking out..
Coming a bit late to the party it seems. The NWO community has been very vocal about the changes to game that mod 16 did. And yet little communication and the lack of information sharing has really hurt the trust between Cryptic and its NWO customers. Players like myself who backed your product with our purchases seem to be upset and annoyed that our purchases towards this game have loss quite a bit of value. This includes enchantments, mounts, companions, loadouts, campaign token purchases, etc... this update stripped quite a bit from us as customers who have supported this game and enjoyed it with our friends for a while.
What I want to know if feats will be expanded in the very near future, by mod 18, to allow us to actually have choices with our characters. As my previous post in this thread stated, I do not see more choices for my wizard in mod 16. I see less choices and that is not what was originally mentioned with the mod 16 announcement. I want to be able to customize my wizard, something similar to what mod 15 offered. I had choices and now with mod 16 I don't.
As I stated with scaling it should not be like it is. I stated that the game should have gone with stat clamping instead; this would be a better solution. Stat clamping basically means that instead of scaling players back you only touch stats and any player that is higher than the specific stat gets scaled down and players who are below it don't have anything adjusted. This way won't feel cheated or as gimp as they are now when going into lower zones. If you do scale only scale the gear and allow players to keep their stats from enchantments this would make enchantments worth upgrading. Right now no one really needs anything higher than a R8 enchantment unless you go into L80 content or zone.
As someone who start this game the day it landed on PS4 I went straight for a AC DC build. I got my DC up to over 18K IL and once I got info on mod 16 I killed off my DC and sold everything on my GF as well to only play my wizard. I had 3 characters that were all over 17.5K IL. I now only play one character and that is all do to mod 16.
Your company also loss any future purchases I would have made for my alts; I was planning to bring back my SW and HR but you killed those off with mod 16 for me as well. I was going to buy a legendary mount for my GF but that got killed off. Instead I'm simply going to let my VIP run out and than probably call it quits unless you are able to find the EASY button and get NWO fixed.
99% OF THE WORK WAS PROVIDED FOR YOU VIA THE PODCASTS I ARRANGED WITH MOST OF THE CONTENT CREATORS. we gave you the answer, the tools and everything you needed to fix this.
and i get it if you dont look at my youtube content, but around everybody taking part in teh podcasts also uploaded the videos.. so im sure you know what we said..
we even showed you/told you of ways to fix the zax , even the foundry.. thats the extent of the info provided in the podcasts..
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.
@fenrir4life I think part of the reason is that dps is still just dps, tanking changes were drastic so asterdahl had a much more challenging task handling all three tank classes, and two of the three healer classes.
You might think so, but it's worth noting that even the non-tanking trees for those classes are just lackluster and restrictive compared to the other classes, with a dearth of well-designed feats that don't fixate on a single power. Rangers don't have that problem. Rogues don't have that problem. Wizards definitely don't have that problem.
I'm not one of those screeching imps clamoring for devs to be fired. @asterdahl seems like a really nice guy, and his systemic change to how tanking works is full of good choices. It's literally just the feats that seem lackluster, and to make matters worse, early in beta, there were better-designed, less restrictive feats on these classes that were scrapped when unrelated bugs artificially inflated the classes' performance (pi damage buff for barbarian, ITF massive AP gain for Dreadnaught)
> @rammdozer said: > I am sick of hearing contributors on twitch and youtube complain about cryptic. I think it's funny how you complain cryptic doesn't "take care of it's contributors" ..... first off most of the contributors do nothing but show how to make the game truly free to play with solo grinding, meaning not having to put real money on the game......that's a problem ..A BIG PROBLEM...first off folks free to play means no subscription the end game content can be reached with real money which then goes into the game to make it free to play for all...if you take away the real money aspect of this game is gonna fail end of story which is where it's headed now. The reason why things get nerfed is because they need pay, not grind for ad to exchange to zen. Basically you are all complaining about the situation you put yourselves in and what entirely comical is your trying to say that this is all based off of broken content....well friends lets see you eat steak and lobster with no money. Use some common sense folks seriously. As far as i'm concerned mod 16 is great sure there are broken things but what game doesn't have its issues and those issues get addressed I think for the most part its the grinders who are pissed off not the players, think about it they grind an already grindy game to avoid putting real money on the game, then they complain when you take away their ability to grind so they don't have to pay. Honestly in my opinion just fix the bugs and scaling in certain areas and let the bums find another bridge to hide under.
Couldnt disagree more, ive spent 000s on the game. The problems we are seeing are completely irrelavent to spend though, scaling is a complete mess and the new play style is boring, doesnt matter how much i spend it wont change either of those two points. Worse still thanks to scaling, someone like me who would usually spend a couple of hundred £ a month, now wont spend anything as there is zero value or benefit in improving my enchants, pets etc as they will only get scaled down anyway. In my oppinion mod 16 will kill the revenue stream.
lol at this recent stream of "content creator" jive. they deserve no more special treatment than anyone else. it's all a load of self important tripe imo. narcissism=content creator..
I appreciate those who do testing and create guides, (recently Rainers guide to mod 16 really has been indispensable for instance) those people are awesome. but this steady stream of opinion on youtube as some kind of omg stop the presses thing, everyone stop and listen you don't need to think any further!!!! is laughable at best. those people are welcome to their opinion and it's fine to express it. but those opinions are no more or less valuable than anyone elses opinion expressed here or reddit or facebook or elsewhere.
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kreatyveMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 10,545Community Moderator
lol at this recent stream of "content creator" jive. they deserve no more special treatment than anyone else. it's all a load of self important tripe imo. narcissism=content creator..
I appreciate those who do testing and create guides, (recently Rainers guide to mod 16 really has been indispensable for instance) those people are awesome. but this steady stream of opinion on youtube as some kind of omg stop the presses thing, everyone stop and listen you don't need to think any further!!!! is laughable at best. those people are welcome to their opinion and it's fine to express it. but those opinions are no more or less valuable than anyone elses opinion expressed here or reddit or facebook or elsewhere.
I agree. And when they start bad mouthing the game and/or the devs, and then in the same video, ask the devs why they don't listen to them, I find that especially laughable. It should be obvious why the devs don't even bother watching certain people, when all those people do anymore is bash on the game, the players, or staff.
My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official. Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
Thank you for mod 16. I really like it. I enjoy the Undermountain a lot. My favourite scene: the Alchemist who turns out as a Slaad. Keep up the good work!
Comments
- I feel good in Master expeditions. The only content that is right in this moment. There is progress here. Teamplay, tank, healings, etc. I want the whole game like this.
- I feel bad in scaled content. Nothing works. Is like a time travel. We like challenge. But we like rewards also. Long runs in old dungeons that we have mastered 1000 times, to get a peridot? A big NO. And alevieate scaling in normal content.
- Is very important to make progress. To feel that progress. To have goals that make you stronger, and feel that strong in old content. If you invest in items like end game enchants you should feel that power.
- Is important to have character customization. I want that feat choices give you different game stiles. Like companions or items. I want FOR THE LOVE OF GOD customizable initial stats. And not stats like INT in paladins needed to make dmg.
- Bugs. Is acceptable to have bugs. Its unnaceptable to have game crashes 100% in some dungeons like CR and push that to live.
- Interesting QoL sells. Giving that you cant sell power because of scaling and you shot your feet with the changes making every item worthless, sell QoL things, like bag spaces, Bank slots (yes more slots, much more), items to make something BtC to BtA, etc.
There are other things, but those are my bigger concerns.
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- The graphics guys did a really good job - the areas and new mobs look absolutely great.
- The storyline is a bit silly in places (dragon+sword? kuo-toa sandcastle building, really?) but that's OK - it's not over the top like Mod 15, so overall a good job.
- The Master Expeditions are good. Feel just right - controllable difficulty, so you can make them easily soloable or proper group content. Unfortunatly they are limited to 3/day, and if the game crashes in the middle of one, it counts as one of your 3 attempts for the day. Right now, they are the only content worth doing, so I log in, do my 3/ MEs (maybe a bit of rune farming) and that's it. Until LoMM gets released, the rest of my playtime will be spent on other games.
- Removal of Lifesteal/excessive recovery and buff stacking. Overall, I consider this change good.
- Insignia upgrades. Just good, except for the added inventory space required. Would like to see BtC insignia replaced by BtA.
- Companion changes. Mostly good (except that regular fighting companions are next to useless and healing companions are not much better). Sure, I'm a bit unhappy that only 2 of my 6 Legendary companions are really usable now, but overall the changes are good, and I love how gear was decoupled from the actual companion. I feel a bit cheated after discovering that the "Bolster" bonus is utterly useless when you are using an augment, though.
So, there are some positives, but unfortunately, at the moment, the negatives outweigh them. We did warn you this might happen - just see the "General" thread on the closed playtest forum - page 1, 9th post from the top from January 24th. (I cannot quote it here because of the NDA)If you want this game to survive, you need to fix this those things, fast.
And yes, another thing. Many PC players survived the Mod 6 disaster and are still here - we know that badly broken things can be fixed. Console players do not have that experience. If Mod 16 is released on consoles in anything resembling its current form, I am going to predict at least a 30% drop in player numbers there.
But they fixed all the comps.. in fact, probably overcorrected them, as they literally do nothing now. Healing damage.. are all worthless on all of them, so its just basically stats that matter on them and a good augment. Im ok with this.. as most comps were stupid anyways.. at least augments stay close to you.
and for me I find insignia increase annoying, because we cant just do them one at a time, I still think you should just make it like that, as now its a bit frustrating.
,but they left scaling issues.
No one wants to progress to feel like they they didnt progress? Ya know?
In addition as many have stated, you already removed lifesteal, recovery, buff/debuff stacking, powersharing, over the top power damage cycles (aoc) .. so all of that was gone already. For some reason you also felt the need to do this scaling thing.
BTW.. who decided on r6 and r8 values.. we could get as far as r10 values back at the start of the game. Seems a bit odd to me.
But really the biggest issue is simply, its so unrewarding to progress and the content is so very limited where progression is even needed .
If your going to keep scaling my suggestion is simply this.
1. Remove scaling in open world and regular instance content.. its just plain stupid, no one wants to go back to do ancient content and spend 50% more time doing it.. jeepers.
2. if you absolutely feel the need for scaling in dungeons and trials.. then a level 80 with more stats HAS to be somehow a % more powerful then a lvl 70. Otherwise whats the point fellows?
Somehow you stymied the core of all mmos.. that as you grow and level, you are more powerful. While Ive seen scaling in other games, I HAVE never not felt more powerful at max level with good gear on .. so yes, your version of scaling is broken in my opinion and should be worked on.
Do I think they are fixing scaling where the vast majority of players will be happy again? Not really, they seem stuck on the notion that its needed in the variation they have chosen to implement it in. They truly believe a few tweaks here and there will work.
Well whatever at this point.
Im not really mad or angry. Just whatever at this point.
1. Scaling. This is problem makes it unnecessary upgrade your character, because stats it be equaled with scaling.
Decision - scaling is need be rework or remove from 80 level content. Rework scale means 50 percent crit chance equal 50 percent crit chance with scaling with another stats. This also applies to other stats.
2. Usseless legendary mount, stones and other. It's component do not give significant succession for it upgrade.
Decision - upgrade states on stones and legendary mounts.
3. Reward in dungeon. Сomplexity is more, but reward unchanged.
Decision - upgrade reward in the end dungeon. Rewards may be next: upgrade astral diamonds, unique gear with rare chance(1-2 %).
Other problems are not so significant, but the above need fix soon.
Also theres no needof scalling on zones, people only work there for boons, and i dont think slowing down boon farms is the point here, btw to speed up this process you only need to remove the daily limit on campaings and then tweek a bit the currency needed cutting the ammount you feel thats right for a 10 mods back content...
I will say it again you should had dropped this version and started a Neverwinter 2 from scratch... the bugs we got here look like a alpha on a new game anyway...
Cost vs benefit is big and many are saying the benefit we get with the cost of the items are so small that most are simply giving up because it is annoying, time consuming or costly or all three.
My biggest gripe is that the original announcement mentioned players would have more choices. I want to know where that is. As someone that mains a wizard my choices in mod 16 are significantly less than they were in prior mods. Mod 16 Wizards are a DPS. Feats matter little in my builds and what does matter is the gear IL and nothing else really if you go look at how the game is built. Instead of feeling like there are choices I am pigeonhole as a damage dealer that has limited functionality and the only way to really play now is get best and highest level gear as that drives our stats. That to me shows limitation or no choice in how I play or build my character.
The other thing is why was there so a focus on increasing our cool downs of encounters. I liked that I had an option on how to make my encounters faster so I can produce more damage using them or I could go for more power for more damage, etc. There were more options, choices, with the older setup. Now my encounters take a while to get off cooldown. This makes the use of at wills needed to actually do damage. Needing to constantly use my at wills makes the game slower, more tedious to take out enemies and reduces the FUN and ENGAGEMENT I have with the game. Making the game BORING. The combat design reminds me of a slower Destiny than an actual RPGMMO.
I am going to wait and see how the devs plan to address cool downs on encounters, address the scaling, cost associated with fixing our characters again, and any other bugs and issues. It shouldn't take more than 3 to 6 months to fix most of these issues.
and one IL 13000 toon cannot finish Malberg's Castle, it's bad. We wiped at the end.
I can understand scaling the Normal Dungeons for beginner players. I know many complaints from them, was one person
would run thru quest and leave them behind.
I believe there should be more intermediate random queues. Break them down more, normal dungeons in one queue.
Normal Skirmish's in another queue.
2)I don't like when my artifacts after one MOD release become obsolete based on IL. New Artifacts are now 300 IL versus 150 IL. Old Artifacts, Weapon's, Waist/Neck Special Items should be able to be updated beyond original levels, so they aren't wasted effort. Every single time new content comes out. Or give back Stones, etc during breakdown. Or give free Coal
for new item based on the old item level.
3)Over simplification of the Character build stats and beginning stats re-rolls. Especially on existing toon's. Every existing
toon should have free Race Re-Roll. Biggest issue is how stats characteristics are exactly the same for all Characters.
I don't like that a Pally now needs to worry about Intelligence when it should be Wisdom and Charisma. No toon should
have Primary and Secondary Stats then, All toon's should be optional. This is a big issue for D&D Folks.
4)Character Play Style: So far DPS versions of Barbarian and Fighter are very similar to before, which I like
but miss Temp HP from Barb. Warden Ranger is fun so far.
Pally's seem too different, I don't like that Tank cannot have LAY on HANDs. This is what makes a Pally.
Another issue is removing Temp HPs from Templar's Wrath. I don't like Divinity. Should be cool down only.
Or give Caster type's MANA pool based on Wisdom, Int or Charisma of TOON Type. I don't like that Pally seems
more Caster than actual Fighter. You don't get that feeling with Rangers at least Warden. D&D Pally's and Rangers
are Fighter based with spell abilities. Now they feel like Casters. Not Happy with Pally's. And I primarily play them.
Only played beginning of Undermountain, But so far seems good. But I'm sure it'll eventually feel like all the other
Campaigns, TOO MUCH GRINDING!!!
I am not hoprful they will listen to that suggestion, though. When people complained about this during alpha playtest, it was made clear that this was WAI and not going to change. I consider it a huge mistake and am very unhappy with it - the only sensible thing to do is to revert this change completely. Well, actually, no. There is very little grinding in the actual campaign itself....and you can easily finish in over just a few days of normal play. AT that point you can do the HEs, until you have everything they can give. That may take a while. Also, you can really grind the runic HEs, but that is really only necessary if you want to restore the Runic Apprentice armor - however, that seems mostly pointless.
So, no....no real need to grind anything.
Plus points would be that the undermountain campaign itself is really well done and enjoyable, and i do completely understand that there was a need to address class imbalance and run away buffing, lifesteal and recovery.
However, despite how well intentioned the changes to the game were, the implementation is an absolute train wreck.
Negative points, i hate scaling. Set aside for the moment its broken beyond belief, even if you got it working, i dont want to struggle through content i cleared years ago. Especially as the only reason im in that content is because you force me there to get my rad, because you need me there to make it look like you have a bigger player base than you do to new players. So you need me to run that content but you want to make it as difficult as possible for me to run it, with lousy rewards? My No. 1 ask is you remove scaling from the game.
You set out to achieve class balance. Having now got 8 level 80 toons, i can tell you you failed. There is as big a difference in class capability now as there ever was.
You took a game that was fast paced and fun to play, and slowed it right down. One of the biggest complaints we used to see on the forums was how grindy the game was, and your response is to make it even more so?
You devalued hard earn or paid for gear, companions, masterwork, enchants, boons all took hours to earn or good money and youve either made them next to useless (enchants and boons) or completely changed the ones that have value (companions) this just feels like a bonkers business plan, youre telling your player base its not worth grinding or spending money as rewards are not worth it, so both reducing the lifespan and income of the game in one fell swoop.
My final gripe is paladin specific, you already slowed the game down, without a dps loadout the paladin is painfully slow and boring to play. Also its not a paladin, its a fighter youve shoehorned a divinity mechanism onto to claim its a paladin. And its not a decent divinity mechanism like the DC's its an ill conceived mess that just punishes people playing this class even further.
I wont be able to make the stream due to time differences, but i hope, with extremly little faith, that the concerns from all the players on this thread are addressed.
RIQs are ridiculously overtuned for random groups. View as healer:
Spent 25 minutes doing the first part of Castle Malabog yesterday and we abandoned after about 4-5 complete wipes. Trash mobs basically hit for 50% of your health with one swing. Healing spec is putting out incredibly high amounts of threat to mobs attracting aggro of everything.
Tried RIQ today twice - got Manycoins Bank Heist twice. Failed twice and abandoned. DPS cannot dish out enough damage, mobs spawn from both sides, players split to deal with both, healer can't heal both sides. And the amount of CCing by the mobs is ridiculous.
Obviously the scaling is an issue. But there's also a wider design problem here. All group content that has been created since whenever has been on the basis of the game as it was. You've implemented a massive amount of changes to players and have made very marginal (if any) changes to the overall design of the dungeons. So players now lack the toolkit to be able to deal with dungeons as they were.
You need to decide what is required for skirmishes. Does Manycoins Bank Heist need a healer and a tank? I've popped in it with 5 dps and 3dps + 2 healers. Until you decide what the composition should be for it and enforce it through the queueing system, how on earth do you expect to balance it?
It's just staggering the lack of thought that went into making these changes. All of the development focus was on Mod 16 areas, none of it appears to have been on the effects of the wholesale class and other changes on the existing content. It's as though the dev team designed a whole system without ever running it through the existing content.
Not wasting my time doing any more queues until there's proper changes. I'll just log in to collect my key and see if I can get my Alabaster weapon in expeditions.
I think part of the reason is that dps is still just dps, tanking changes were drastic so asterdahl had a much more challenging task handling all three tank classes, and two of the three healer classes.
I feel like the new class & content carrot has just gotten old by now. It's been YEARS and still this gets dangled in front of us every time there's major changes. Class balance reworks over and over again for years with the "this will make it easier to add new classes since everything will be balanced" tease thrust at us every time. How often will you reach into this bag to placate players?
And the method for players to advance through existing campaigns faster was to.....reduce their effectiveness in older content? Please explain the logic there?
This is just about the only thing I can 100% get behind from your entire post. And guess what? It has nothing to do with your company but with a content creator that seems to put in more work and THOUGHT into NW in his spare time than some of the brainpower behind the game right now...that should say volumes.
On one hand you acknowledge you need to listen better. On the other you state that critical bugs made it impossible for us to enjoy the new mod. If you were listening you would hear that the main issue isn't so much a bug a poorly designed scaling system. Are there bugs? Yes, without a doubt. Could those bugs have been more tolerable if not for the way the scaling was implemented. Without a doubt. We've endured bugs in the past.
And to be fair, scaling in itself is not the issue. Your teams method of implementing scaling however is horrendous. But no one wants to go back to Sharandar/Chult/any old area and feel like they're half as effective there as they are in new content. If you hit caps in current content than that should translate down to lower content. And this system is designed to punish players consistently with future mods. That's just as big an offense since in 2 mods the current content will have you capped. It's just bad all around and feels like a system designed through limitations of either the current systems in place, the people that devised it or the time allotted to get the mod to market.
I'm not even going to touch upon the list of "achievements" the team accomplished by fixing what they broke. But you sum it well enough for me right here. Triage. Your players have, for weeks now that include going back to the beta test and an extensive preview session, been telling you that major surgery is still needed on this patient...but you're still slapping band aids and stitches on her.
Being mainly a console player I can say without a doubt that there had better be massive changes made to the scaling system before this hits us. The one thing you don't have going for you on console is there is no element of surprise. We've already seen how badly this turned out on PC. Some of us even play on PC and have shared the experience within our alliances, etc.
If scaling remains the way it is you are going to see an even larger reduction in your console players. We've already had more than the usual amount of people leave and a large remainder of the community seems to on the fence with one leg already over it.
This just comes off as more lip service so I guess Tuesday we'll see whether you're going the extra mile or sputtering right out of the gate.
But the very most thing you must change instantly is to get rid off the scaling system.
- till mod 15 we got many buffs to make content easier, no buffs in mod16
- till mod 15 we have enchants that define ~60% of our stats, now we have barely 20% (max), cutted down in scaling areas to ~8%.
- till mod 15 we had a fluid combat system, with recovery build to personal needs, now we have mostly longer or doubled cooldowns and no real option to make it shorter cooldowns.
- till mod 15 we had boons that define or complete our stats for the role we want to play (build another ~20% of our stats), now we got boons that do 1,25% max for our stats and most of them dont function (look at hp boons).
You see there are many things cutted down plus the unvolved scaling system makes it not fun to play.
Discard scaling now. Build a plan for a better system and implement this with mod17.
till mod 15 Enchants where 3% stat value, now they are only 1,2% and that is unscaled.
if you want improve new players, then dont hurt them with scaling (you do it too fast, now you cant made it ever to lvl 80), instead make campaign booster tokens(dont know the english name of them) tradeable.
Look at the talents, some didnt do something or so less usefull for our roles.
Combat advantage isnt relyable to our position. If you are behind critter you dont get combat advantage in all cases (why?)
And there are many bugs to clear, dont stop doing fixes for broken powers, broken talents, broken features, broken companions.
My guess is they probably have about half the staff they need to properly run this game, maybe less. Total guess as I have no insider information and I don't know even how many people it takes to run this game. My opinion is based on how many team members they've lost over the past couple years and the overall quantity of new content and quality of the the game.
Others have stated they seem to lack at least some of the best practices and procedures that other software/game developers use. Again I have no specific info or knowledge but @micky1p00 made a lot of good points earlier in this thread that make sense (regression of previous fixes, etc.).
Okay everybody needs to just realise this wasnt an apology, it was more like damage control and there is no reason to think anything will change, it never does..
Ive lost faith, i dont believe a single word they say.
if this was an apology they would revert things back the way they were, they would make changes that the people actually want. they would take action to back up the ''apology'' . but you are mistaken if you think they will do anything of the sort, they have been working on this mod for over a year, so if you think we will get anything but some sporatic minor bug fixes and patches, you are living in a dream world.
Personaly i have given my heart and soul to this game, ive made hundreds of videos, ive praised neverwinter for years, made guides, and did what i could to help, thats free advertising.. for all my efforts i wastt even considered for beta testing, never invited.. but i get it, i'm too honest and speak the truth, and that doesnt bode well with cryptic..
thats why they hired gamepedia to stream mod 16, a person who has nothing to do with neverwinter? and not one of the already existing content creators /streamers ? i can tell you why, cause we would tell everyone how horrible this mod is, and that my friends is not the kind of advertising they want..
A message to foss.
Sir, i use to be on your side, you were the only one i had some faith in, and you angered not only me but all the nw community in general.. my advice to you is dont just type words, we dont need messages or apologies, we need actions, we need you to reverse this joke of mod back to the way it was.. us end gamers/veterans have invested so much, and now all pregression has been dismantled beyond belief.. the best way to get more players playing neverwinter is by taking care of the people who have always been here.. we know better than you do, we do the math, the tests, everything.. so if you refuse to listen, we refuse to play..
i havent played in over a month. and im sure you see your own numbers dwindling and are freaking out..
You still have a chance o fix this..
anyways.
regards galactic. Peace!
Coming a bit late to the party it seems. The NWO community has been very vocal about the changes to game that mod 16 did. And yet little communication and the lack of information sharing has really hurt the trust between Cryptic and its NWO customers. Players like myself who backed your product with our purchases seem to be upset and annoyed that our purchases towards this game have loss quite a bit of value. This includes enchantments, mounts, companions, loadouts, campaign token purchases, etc... this update stripped quite a bit from us as customers who have supported this game and enjoyed it with our friends for a while.
What I want to know if feats will be expanded in the very near future, by mod 18, to allow us to actually have choices with our characters. As my previous post in this thread stated, I do not see more choices for my wizard in mod 16. I see less choices and that is not what was originally mentioned with the mod 16 announcement. I want to be able to customize my wizard, something similar to what mod 15 offered. I had choices and now with mod 16 I don't.
As I stated with scaling it should not be like it is. I stated that the game should have gone with stat clamping instead; this would be a better solution. Stat clamping basically means that instead of scaling players back you only touch stats and any player that is higher than the specific stat gets scaled down and players who are below it don't have anything adjusted. This way won't feel cheated or as gimp as they are now when going into lower zones. If you do scale only scale the gear and allow players to keep their stats from enchantments this would make enchantments worth upgrading. Right now no one really needs anything higher than a R8 enchantment unless you go into L80 content or zone.
As someone who start this game the day it landed on PS4 I went straight for a AC DC build. I got my DC up to over 18K IL and once I got info on mod 16 I killed off my DC and sold everything on my GF as well to only play my wizard. I had 3 characters that were all over 17.5K IL. I now only play one character and that is all do to mod 16.
Your company also loss any future purchases I would have made for my alts; I was planning to bring back my SW and HR but you killed those off with mod 16 for me as well. I was going to buy a legendary mount for my GF but that got killed off. Instead I'm simply going to let my VIP run out and than probably call it quits unless you are able to find the EASY button and get NWO fixed.
99% OF THE WORK WAS PROVIDED FOR YOU VIA THE PODCASTS I ARRANGED WITH MOST OF THE CONTENT CREATORS.
we gave you the answer, the tools and everything you needed to fix this.
and i get it if you dont look at my youtube content, but around everybody taking part in teh podcasts also uploaded the videos.. so im sure you know what we said..
we even showed you/told you of ways to fix the zax
, even the foundry.. thats the extent of the info provided in the podcasts..
shame you never listened.
I'm not one of those screeching imps clamoring for devs to be fired. @asterdahl seems like a really nice guy, and his systemic change to how tanking works is full of good choices. It's literally just the feats that seem lackluster, and to make matters worse, early in beta, there were better-designed, less restrictive feats on these classes that were scrapped when unrelated bugs artificially inflated the classes' performance (pi damage buff for barbarian, ITF massive AP gain for Dreadnaught)
> I am sick of hearing contributors on twitch and youtube complain about cryptic. I think it's funny how you complain cryptic doesn't "take care of it's contributors" ..... first off most of the contributors do nothing but show how to make the game truly free to play with solo grinding, meaning not having to put real money on the game......that's a problem ..A BIG PROBLEM...first off folks free to play means no subscription the end game content can be reached with real money which then goes into the game to make it free to play for all...if you take away the real money aspect of this game is gonna fail end of story which is where it's headed now. The reason why things get nerfed is because they need pay, not grind for ad to exchange to zen. Basically you are all complaining about the situation you put yourselves in and what entirely comical is your trying to say that this is all based off of broken content....well friends lets see you eat steak and lobster with no money. Use some common sense folks seriously. As far as i'm concerned mod 16 is great sure there are broken things but what game doesn't have its issues and those issues get addressed I think for the most part its the grinders who are pissed off not the players, think about it they grind an already grindy game to avoid putting real money on the game, then they complain when you take away their ability to grind so they don't have to pay. Honestly in my opinion just fix the bugs and scaling in certain areas and let the bums find another bridge to hide under.
Couldnt disagree more, ive spent 000s on the game. The problems we are seeing are completely irrelavent to spend though, scaling is a complete mess and the new play style is boring, doesnt matter how much i spend it wont change either of those two points. Worse still thanks to scaling, someone like me who would usually spend a couple of hundred £ a month, now wont spend anything as there is zero value or benefit in improving my enchants, pets etc as they will only get scaled down anyway. In my oppinion mod 16 will kill the revenue stream.
I appreciate those who do testing and create guides, (recently Rainers guide to mod 16 really has been indispensable for instance) those people are awesome. but this steady stream of opinion on youtube as some kind of omg stop the presses thing, everyone stop and listen you don't need to think any further!!!! is laughable at best. those people are welcome to their opinion and it's fine to express it. but those opinions are no more or less valuable than anyone elses opinion expressed here or reddit or facebook or elsewhere.
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!