Neverwinter has been on a downward spiral since mod 6 Mod 16 seems to have at least made a sincere step toward balancing the classes in pve and expanding play style options for a few classes, but it also took away play style options from others, broke a lot of synergy between gear, feats and daily abilities, made the awful decision to expand scaling throughout the game and rewrote some old content in such a way as to make it unplayable or barely playable (10 person Tiamat, idiotic perma stun ice in FBI, even VT is difficult without an endgame level player since newer players won't know the final boss mechanics, which by the way don't work anymore since even I can barely scratch a soul casket or whatever they're called).
PVP has been pointless for years. There has never been a sincere attempt at class balance in pvp and all we seem to get is overpowered control, boring one-shot and one-rotation kills, and from a ranger's point of view eternal neglect of basic problems with our class (slow movement, long animations, animations that break stealth abilities, the ever-irritating small dodge combined with lack of stamina regeneration, endless nerfing of control and escape abilities, and so on).
Loot tables for old content reward pointless, useless old items.
Loot tables for newer content aren't much better.
Professions were redone in mod 15 then made completely irrelevant one mod later. It's hugely tedious to log in with all of one's characters just to make RP. I'm tired of having the rug pulled out from under me after redoing my build, obtaining new gear, or in that case retooling for professions and getting up to MW III in all professions just in time to have them made pointless. I'm glad at least that I didn't invest, i.e. waste - the time and resources to go farther than that.
The random queues have been poisoned with content that newer players simply cannot understand and/or cannot handle. Entry gates are too low or difficulty is too high. This means increasing reliance on custom channels to form a group even for random queues, since the queues no longer serve their basic purpose of providing easy AD and loot for everyone who gets in line.
The RAQ should not include CR and CODG. They need to be moved back to REQ.
Endgame level player population is a small fraction of what it was before mod 16, making it yet more difficult to do higher-end content. No one likes sitting around spamming chat channels for 45 minutes just to put a group together. I'd rather go without that part of my AD for the day than waste that much of my life doing nothing in a video game.
The do-an-expedition-and-hope-for-the-best-from-Zok model is boring. I've thought for a long time that the game should just let us set a goal, be it a certain piece of gear, epic insignia, mount, artifact, or companion, and earn it by playing content. No one likes the RNG and it certainly doesn't like us.
Having to grind a few runic corruptions a day to maintain my supply of runes is boring.
Having to sort through all the loot I picked up to sell it or refine it piece by piece because refining equipment is now broken is boring.
Constantly discovering new bugs or new bad design ideas in old content just makes me not want to bother.
Tales of Old is full of bad ideas and bugs, and I don't even bother with it.
All the new environment designs are terrific. Unfortunately the game hasn't gotten much else right these last few years.
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The most telling quote was from a dev when Mod 16 was still on preview: basically "don't worry about your stats as the gear will ensure that you're in a good place". In other words, put everyone near the cap such that everyone's abilities are roughly the same. Forget about specializing your character by sacrificing one stat to chase another: you'll just smash against the arbitrary cap that ensures that you cannot deviate from the norm for everyone else. Well, sorry, but a world where you cannot improve no matter how hard you try or how imaginative you are just isn't one that's all that appealing.
So, I level up alts and progress through campaigns. Dungeons, however, have lost their appeal for me. TOMM is the first dungeon where I'm not even curious enough to see it.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Believer in SMASH
Fairplay,no bots , no bugs, and play well
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnN0Yofs-Scv1nd8U_bSYLA/featured
"even VT is difficult without an endgame level player since newer players won't know the final boss mechanics, which by the way don't work anymore since even I can barely scratch a soul casket or whatever they're called). "
Are you talking about the things that "hatch" the large skeletons that appear during the Valindra battle? Unless something changed at some point you dont actually attack those. all you have do is activate (default f key) them and they will get destroyed.
I also seen a decline in players with mod 17 coming on console and I'm sure it will impact Q time for end game even more than mod 16 has. There are some players coming up through the ranks but they lack mechanical knowledge of content and typically I spend more time doing pick ups than I do actually being a damage dealer.
I do agree with your points and it is why I'm mostly excited about Greedfall coming out next week. It will give me a much needed break from NWO and if that game provides a few play through, I think I might not come back.
Devs, I'm going to be blunt. Between removing the Foundry, removing the old dungeons, and inflicting Mod 16 upon us, you've burned up just about every last bit of goodwill I've had for this game. You took a game that was fun and turned it into a bland, unrewarding struggle. There are exactly two things keeping me here: the people in my alliance and the lack of a Foundry-like alternative MMO. That's it. I'm that close to jumping ship.
Wow. I just checked out Greedfall. Decided to preorder it.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
I too have been playing less. Mod 17 does not have much for me. As a guild-less player, it is nearly impossible to get the 24K iLvl to get into ToMM. And I am not interested in the Zok slot machine because of my aversion to purely RNG-gated rewards. I spend most days just invoking, doing RLQ/RIQ (at least while I still get only skirmishes), and checking REQ with my OP to see if it pops immediately.
> Well, people leave games for one reason or another. Don't think you can put all the blame on changes that happened. While I miss the buffing days of pre-mod16, I am fine with the changes. It certainly is a different game. While the game lost some players, it probably gained some new players. There will always be turnover.
>
> I too have been playing less. Mod 17 does not have much for me. As a guild-less player, it is nearly impossible to get the 24K iLvl to get into ToMM. And I am not interested in the Zok slot machine because of my aversion to purely RNG-gated rewards. I spend most days just invoking, doing RLQ/RIQ (at least while I still get only skirmishes), and checking REQ with my OP to see if it pops immediately.
Given the statistically significant figures from Neverwinter Steam charts, even after accounting for the the recent 10-11% uptick, this game appears to have lost at least 20 (31+% left before the uptick,) of its population since the details surrounding Mod 16 began to leak out from preview.
Bear in mind that this is in addition to the loss of around 1/3rd of the player base back when Cryptic screwed its player base with Mod 6. It may be a different team this time, yet history repeated itself. They come across as tone-deaf, stubborn, and incompetent. Sometimes truth hurts.
right now, the must crushing thing for me is pugging RAQ (and to some extent REQ)...
notes about RAQ
- it sucks, REALLY SUCKS, to sit in RAQueue for 10-30 minutes (or longer), only to get CR/CODG and no one knows what to do, rarely if ever is anyone geared correctly for it, and there is nothing "exciting" to look forward to for completing this painful dungeon
- please move on from relying on IL as an entry requirement for random queues, IL is not at all a valuable indicator of a character's ability to finish content...you yourselves know this, especially with how gear and stats are designed, you yourselves know the offensive caps (arp, acc, crit etc.) and that power stacking is the name of endgame...so, why rely on IL? when you know how easy it is to get 18K IL and still have terrible stats (where players will provide almost no value to dungeons like TONG/CR, where DPS is very important)
- for TONG/CR/CODG, you should implement some kind of POWER, off stat requirement (min 90k out of instance power, capped off stats)
- look at your stats, i'm sure you'll see how often players drop or fail instances in RAQ because someone is geared well and the other players are just there trying to get carried, managed to "cheat" their IL to be able to queue for it
notes about REQ
- although it has been fairly easier to get a quick group to finish REQ, queing for it with a pug brings me back to the IL dilemma again, ppl can easily reach the IL with badly optimized stats, you honestly shouldn't be able to queue for this with less than 100-110K power (and other off stats capped)
honestly though, a lot of the times, to complete some of these dungeons, you need to spend quite a bit of AD/grind to get up to speed, stats-wise
tl:dr - please rework how you let players into RAQ/REQ, and please retire CR already, no one likes it, everyone always leaves when this pops up...
Mainly, it's a normal behaviour. I experienced that on every single MMORPG i had played and been hooked by since the mid/end 90s (yeah, my first experiences in MMO were Ultima Online and Everquest).
I tend to divide in 6 phases (length of each phase and playtime in each depend on my personnal life at that moment and the game itself, the numbers below are for NW, i play since mod10.5)
=> "newbie" phase : playing ~1h/day, ~1month, discorvering the game
=> "catching up with the endgame" phase : playing ~2-4h/day, ~1year, campaigning, gearing up, improving personnal knowledge, mid/long term strategies regarding the ingame economy, socialization (guild, friendlist, forums, vocal, etc)
=> "marathon to BiS" phase : playing ~3-5h/day, ~6months+~6months enjoying being BiS, get wealthy/rich ingame, wide knowledge about mechanics/meta/lore/stuff/builds/etc, farming/grinding "ad nauseam". Can lead to a burn-out
=> "I did everything" phase : playing ~1h/day (or 0 if burn-out), ~9months, lack of mid/long term goals, login mainly by habit and for chatting with guildies/friends, adopting a more conservative stance/grouchy smurf behaviour.
=> "the end" phase : 0h/day, i'm done with this game, usually it comes with being hooked by an other one (not the case yet today).
=> "the comeback" phase : usually doesn't last long, but i tend to always coming back at one point in the old MMORPGs I used to love in order to see how they had evolved.
Honestly, Neverwinter did a great job keeping me entertained, and was more successfull on me than many others. It may now be in my top 3 MMO in term of number of years i was playing in.
But for the most part it was not because of NW itself, it was because we started and were playing together a video game with my little brother for the first time since the end of our childhood 25y ago...
Overall, the road between mod10.5 to mod14 was enjoyable : every new module was overall nice (if you forget about the usual wagon of bugs). It felt like NW was growing slowly (both in content and number of players) and that his heart was beating (weakly) again after the long coma caused by the mod6 heart-attack we heard about. Mod14 was looking like the first step to a full recovery though then mod15 was kind of mehhh.
Then again, as if mistakes weren't learnt from the past, mod16 happened with not a wagon of bugs but a whole train of issues, literally pushing out half of the pissed playerbase.
What can we learn about that ? as if it wasn't experienced before in the gaming industry.....
Big picture.
First, the trust. When gamers trust the devs, when the mod released are technically (code) more or less adequate in quality, when the devs are able to listen, debate and try to bring some of what seem to be wanted in addition to what themselves want to bring in, or explain why not (aka : not toying the hope), then the core of the pool of players (including streamers/content creators) will stay faithfull to the game.
The important words here are "listen", "talk", "try", "explain".
But obviously you can't meet everyone's expectations, and players should be aware of that : some are unrealistic (be it by gamedesign, or technologically), some cost too much money/time, some would destroy the business model, and sometime (manytimes) devs make mistakes (bugs).
Is it the case in NW ? mmmhh.
A lot of players feel decieved, not listened and cannot figure out what's cryptic is up to because communication is seen as badly handled (in reality they communicate quite often and it's not as bad as it is perceived or depicted, but rather distorted because of low quality/plenty of bugs every time a mod is released).
A lot of theorycrafters (rainer, sharpedge, janne, etc) seem to analize and understand way much more the core mechanics of the game/gameplay and the different interactions/layers than the devs.
The game goes time to time down to an unplayble state, with no compensation at all (giving back 1 day of VIP to every VIP after last week issues would have been somewhat a good commercial gesture for exemple).
Trust the devs ? seems hard...
Then, a game can't really counter the eventual boredom felt by quite a lot of players after years of playing it (usually the youngers, as old people tend to love habits :P), but can slow it down with new content + compensate the ones who quit the pool of players by newbies if some good advertising/ear to mouth is in the air.
The need of real fresh air is often stronger than any perfume you may add in an old atmosphere. So your game, even if it is old, has to smell good (concealing a bit what is rotting) for who is still in it, and smell like a good fresh scent for new players.
Updates that managed to keep the pool of players entertained were those bringing new content and concept while not really heavily changing the core of the gameplay, just tweaking here and there (even when it feels like a huge nerf for some part of the players), new stuff, new dungeon, new concept (as hunts, MEs) to feed the hungry players, give them new objectives or things to $$buy. Ex : mod10 to 13.
The most successful ones were those with nice novelties, good artistic direction, well worked scenaristic background/storytelling + advertising (& real trailer/cinematic not only done with the game engine). Ex : mod14
And the ones that critically failed... were those changing brutally core mechanics and gameplay, confusing and disappointing the not well prepared audience, bringing not a wagon but a freight train of bugs. Ex : mod6 & 16
Finally as i always said : you start a MMORPG because it looks like fun and pretty, you get hooked because the gameplay is nice, but you stick in mainly because of the community you meet and play with...
After mod16, a lot of people i was used to play with, at endgame level, gave up (my brother included).
When you have 3-5-8 decent toons + your endgame (or close to) 1-2-3 mains, going through rebuilding every characters, and relearning how to play them was just too painful (i'm not even talking about how it was unplayable outside UM content the 2-4 first weeks).
I'm still here because of guild responsabilities, waiting for some other incoming MMORPGs to be released, and when those I follow will be launched, it will be time to pack my bag and move away from NW.
I started playing during Mod 6. And here I still am...
It was certainly after the Elemental Evil initial release, and it only later was made into an actual Campaign around Mod 7-8. Elemental Evil was revamped slightly after Strongholds release in 7, I think was revamped into a Campaign between UnderDark and Maze in 8 or 9, when the two consoles editions were released.
https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Module
"Xbox One in 2015, and PlayStation 4 in 2016."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_(video_game)
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/9076493
Between new gears, new weapons, new enchantment caps, new artifacts, new companion, new mounts, new level cap and wasted investments on crafting that is easily obsoleted, it is far unsustainable to keep players on the boat.
What Neverwinter needs is stop wasting resources on for example, PvP ( there are a ton of PvP MMos out there that is 100% all-in on PvP aspect and people flock to them by the millions ) and come up with new horizontal progression.
As it is, players aren't sticking around to keep up with endless reupgrades.
Someone argued that my enchants are too low quality. I have rank 8 and 9 across my characters. I don't see it very beneficial to my character raising these from +0.92% to +2.4% (+1.48% total), since they already kill a lot of enemies way too easy. I also run a mixed bag of insignia on my mounts as well. Grinding out these items is not "fun" or "desirable" at this phase of the game. Builds are too generic to toy around, most everyone knows the limitations on these abilities. Professions was fun to a point and then they left it to rot.
As I see it, I need/want content, it is not about grinding out AD for VIP, or improving my characters to the status of uber gods. The game lost way too much quality content with the removal of the Foundry and the last campaign mod 17 or 16½ had none what-so-ever. Mods 14 and 16 were ok on content but 15 was akin to a small child telling me the same knock knock joke over and over again. Mod 18 better have some good quality content, or my average of 2½ hours per day will probably be closer to 2 hours a week.
I don't see anyone RP in the Moonstone Mask now, but I never RP in there. I had Nicholas and Morbius selling Gith meat in the lower levels of the Undermountain. Once in a while those two would venture topside to hand out free samples. Some players enjoyed that but others told me to knock it off because zone chat is all about politics and religion. I never take any conversation in game chat serious, so why would you promote your cause making it look like a big joke by a buffoon? It would be nice to do more RP but that is players and not Cryptic making their game fun. Should it come down to just being a huge 3D chatroom, I may as well go play Second Live or IMVU.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
A BIS only mod means Non Bis Players have nothing to do and is not wanted till next mod
RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)