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CODG...wait for it
jantogsf
Member Posts: 121 Arc User
Before update:
The people: "CODG is too hard!" "It is not worth doing!" "The mechanics make no sense."
After the update:
Wait for it...
"CODG is too easy. It gets boring after 5 runs."
The people: "CODG is too hard!" "It is not worth doing!" "The mechanics make no sense."
After the update:
Wait for it...
"CODG is too easy. It gets boring after 5 runs."
1
Comments
No one in their right mind advocated for removing perma death or one shots from ANY piece of content, yet here we are - with only 1 method of perma death in the entire game and no one shots. Splendid.
The removal of the fall-off-instadeaths is an example of this, and also the excessive use of scaling everywhere. Much of the content is scaled down so the well-geared get no or little advantage any more. Newbie-friendly, but the reason to struggle to get good gear to access harder content is very diminished.
This probably is a reaction from Cryptic on falling revenues in the game. By making it more newbie-friendly they hope to attract more of the volatile crowd that plays 3-4 month in each game before moving on, leaving a small amount of money behind.
It is not a policy that attempts to attract the veterans. I would guess that veterans have little reason to spend money on game, so they are money lost.
Chicken and egg question:
Did Cryptic decide to focus on the newbie players after the revenue had already fallen?
Or did the revenue fall because Cryptic decided to focus on the newbie players?
/end sarcasm
Players just bypassed 95% of the content.
Meaning that a lot of players have little or no idea how something works.
Is it a smart move? Only time will really tell.
I cant see anyone currently paying to staying in the game after a few months after investing so little time in developing their toon. I am only still here because of all the time I spent getting to this point.
The people that advocated for the changes will still be dying on pretty much every single push pull - the only difference is instead of just respawning and leeching their way through the final fight they will now spam * Help * on the platform and annoy everybody else. When they stop sucking to the point of actually being able to stay on the platform they will realise what a pointless yet destructive change this was.
Look at the history. After MOD 6 failure game was in a bad condition. Few following MODs were lets say average at best. SKT/SOMI was a questionable MOD - it was great - technicly - but due to repeat of BlackIce/voninblod mechanics it was not welcomed as devs were expecting, but since that point game was rising again with Chult being realy awesome campaign with great story, awesome maps and hunting.
Now the devs were aware that game is slowly restoring, but also have its flaws like economy or mechanical mostly power sharing issues.
On top of that game was not - from developers perspective - new player/new spender friendly.
Or to be more precise - there was no effective "smoke screen" of any kind to cover amounts of time/money a new player needs to enter higher levels of content not to mention to reach a youtube "latest boss one rotation" level.
I belive back then - again form devs perspective - it looked like they have game in far better place then after MOD 6 while its population is composed with mostly veteran - so not paying customers.
So game was getting better, but paying population was growing to slow, and power sharing issue making entire efforts of new content almost already obsolete was still in place.
So there come a RAVENLOFT - very popular D&D setup. First so newbie friendly. With a great story...
Ravenloft WAS a great success... look at the steam charts - Neverwinter were rised to pre MOD 6 level.
Devs made a great job - and then they made few, sometimes mutually exlusive, decisons witch ruined all those efforts.
To name a few:
1. Influx of new players were so big, that devs decided to make use of barovian hunts exploit and banhammer part of game populations. Most of banned was already wealthy, veteran (so mostly not paying) players.
Real goal was to remove substanial amounts of ADs from the game.
It worked out BUT it also removed a lot of dedicated players who were filling this game.
TO BE CLEAR - I am not supporting exploiters - but I belive that it was a reason to release a banhammer so late.
Devs simply decided to do that when they new they got enugh of new comers to replenish plyers ranks....
2. They started to limit the amounts of AD a player can earn through playing. It was greatly discouraging a new players - all the needs they had remined in place while amounts of avilable ADs dropped. That in fact led to a point of decision - play more/start paying/quit. Thats never a good choice for new, not already dedicated player
3.
4. About 7 months of no content - AI campaign - was not serious content, and in fact was not a proper gap filler
I belive Ravenloft was in fact a testing field. It proved that with a use of very popular D&D setup and proper marketing you can bring new players to the game. I bet that it also increased a game profits. So I belive that it was main reason to release a MOD 16 as a big game changer. If one properly made change bringed us closer to designatd target - lets make a solid push - so they pushed MOD 16..... but this time they simply aimed a bridge too far.....
Promoted streams, and streamers, who even stream things like Fortnite brought an influx of young players, who left as fast as they came.
Looking at it, over longer period of time, I think the "bounce" rate of new players was the highest at Barovia. Mainly due to wrongly targeted marketing. Players who do not fit into the games overall more older population, and setting and spirit.
Those turnover numbers, added to earlier high priority of leveling experience (random queues that meant to fix lack of leveling queue times, reducing number of player in a dungeon, and so on) IMO, led to a even high conclusion and perhaps wrong priority. "We have a problem with retaining new players"
And as such, m15 was born, and later a remake of the tutorial part, and some other low level zones. And the whole concept of moving most of the content to "Legacy Campaign" adding catch up gear, and a very narrow and short progress path of 2 latest campaigns.
Changes which some I don't think are bad, some I think are overdone and some are horrible, but my point that the prioritization of those changes came from wrong interpretation of data, and earlier wrongly targeted promotion of the game.
We got a combination of:
"Look how many new players the marketing campaign brought in"
"It's the game fault we can't retain them"
"Lets update the game"
Where the new players were not a good fit to begin with, like promoting and giving away free doughnuts at a used car lot to underage children who can't have drivers license and wonder why the cars do not sell. (sorry for the bad example)
Though obviously I can only guess.