Reduce the friction of MOD16 for existing players, please

nathanjm

With the advent of MOD16, my biggest feedback is that it has a lot of "friction" -- not fun stuff that you have to put up with -- on starting to play. Mod15's professions were a similar high-friction and barrier to entry. However, it was not part of the core NW gameplay -- an "action combat MMO" killing monsters on quests, dungeons/skirmishes, or just for fun. MOD16 -- as launched and still exists -- contains a whole lot of busywork before you can meaningfully play. Here are some examples of the friction I see, and some possible mitigations.

1. Initial inventory explosion - can't even invoke. A mod15 player will have companion runestones, companion gear dumped into their inventory on 1st login to mod16. After that, a number of players can't even invoke until they do inventory management. That's the simplest thing people can do when logged in for 5 minutes, and if they can't invoke, they probably won't do more. Possible fix: Let my active pet's runestones stay on. There's still 3 runestone slots in mod16, and making the user put the bondings back on (1-3 inventory slots) is just plain busywork. Too late for everyone who's logged in already, but could be fixed for console.
   
2. Some mount insignia (e.g. * of leeching) and runestones were deprecated and need to be replaced. If you don't mouseover the insignia, you won't know they're deprecated. Yes, there's a trade-in vendor in PE. But, that vendor's window is far too narrow and it's a pain to click thru the tabs without really knowing how many more tabs there are. Possible fix: 1) Make the mount icon up top glow when there's deprecated insignia, and inside the mount screen, glow out deprecated items. 2) Same with main inventory - glow or other eyecatch to note that work is needed. 3) Trade-in vendor in PE's window needs to be reorganized and tabs more obvious. Vendor should remember which tab you were on between things.
   
3. New companion gear, which requires runestones. A whole lot of busywork needed here to get back to ilevel. Yes, some gear's handed out on the mod16 intro quests, but if someone doesn't immediately do that quest, they're off scrambling for gear & runestones. Possible fix: Not sure. This change felt like it could have happened some other time, rather than the "change everything!" of mod16
   
4. Reset of at-will, encounter, daily powers. On 1st login to mod16, we were changed to the starter set of these. Possible fix: Like pet runestones, try and figure out the closest match for a player's mod15 items, and default to as many of those as possible. Bonus for keeping the key (tab,qer) intact as well.
   
5. Breaking of old encounter power sets. As a CW from mod4-15, I ran with conduit of ice (tab), icy terrain, steal time & sudden storm. Now, I can't pick those 4 because they're locked off in Arcanist vs Thaumaturge trees. Once again, this ought to have not changed.
   
6. Character stats were reset. Possible fix: keep my selections of what stats (str, dex, etc) intact on 1st login, and hand out a free respec so that people can do the respec when they want.
   
7. Boons: the wall of UI. Yes, this is simplified a lot, and you can see almost all at once. But, it's pretty darn overwhelming to see a giant set of options that have to be 1) understood, and 2) picked before you get your ilevel back.
   
8. 'Optimal' but hidden stats. Items like arpen, crit, awareness, deflect, defense, etc now have an optimal level with balanced numbers for all of them. Yes, you can go seek those numbers on the forums, but then you still have to do the math. (My mod15 16K CW was at ~30-45% of those optimal numbers - for each and every stat!) Possible fix: how to build a character with the new system needs to be more transparent. Maybe have Knox/Sybella/etc have a dialog option to assess your build, and have some responses like "work on boosting arpen, but defense is too high" or some other guide. Don't necessarily have to show the exact numbers to the user, but throw some hints to the user.
   

Cryptic may think that many of the above changes are necessary. Yes, some claim that "mod16 is a brand new game." However, it feels like a "eat your vegetables" for hour(s) before you can go out and play. Rebuilding one toon is hard enough, let alone a handfull. If you want older players to *play*, that friction needs to be reduced.

acelandow

nathanjm said:

With the advent of MOD16, my biggest feedback is that it has a lot of "friction" -- not fun stuff that you have to put up with -- on starting to play. Mod15's professions were a similar high-friction and barrier to entry. However, it was not part of the core NW gameplay -- an "action combat MMO" killing monsters on quests, dungeons/skirmishes, or just for fun. MOD16 -- as launched and still exists -- contains a whole lot of busywork before you can meaningfully play. Here are some examples of the friction I see, and some possible mitigations.

1. Initial inventory explosion - can't even invoke. A mod15 player will have companion runestones, companion gear dumped into their inventory on 1st login to mod16. After that, a number of players can't even invoke until they do inventory management. That's the simplest thing people can do when logged in for 5 minutes, and if they can't invoke, they probably won't do more. Possible fix: Let my active pet's runestones stay on. There's still 3 runestone slots in mod16, and making the user put the bondings back on (1-3 inventory slots) is just plain busywork. Too late for everyone who's logged in already, but could be fixed for console.
   
   Cryptic may think that many of the above changes are necessary. Yes, some claim that "mod16 is a brand new game." However, it feels like a "eat your vegetables" for hour(s) before you can go out and play. Rebuilding one toon is hard enough, let alone a handfull. If you want older players to *play*, that friction needs to be reduced.

I agree, but even worse, it left all the Enchantments in the gear that my Companions had. If there was no enchantment attached, I could at least sell the items. But the cost to remove enchantments without breaking them is WAY too high. The cost is based on the item it is being removed from, not the enchantment. So it costs 2.5G to remove a Rank3 enchantment or a Rank 7 Enchantment. And I have spent all my gold working on the MOD15 professions.