CDP Topic: Game Content Accessibility

tempus86

Slightly off topic but it does relate to accessibility loosely

Its been mentioned before, many times but please please please, go over the tooltips with a fine tooth comb and make sure they are accurate. Many of them are either miss leading, dont have enough information, have basic grammar mistakes or just dont really describe what the item/ability companion/etc really does.

This is highly frustrating for new players ( accessibilty part ) when trying to select what powers or mounts or bonus's to use, and basically everyone. It makes testing harder, since how are we to accurately test for bugs when even the tooltip doesnt really know how things are supposed to work correctly.

Sure a big paragraph of text for a tooltip isnt great to hover over, but how about an option for. brief tooltip, and enhanced tooltip, which can be toggled on/off in the options menu that gives a full explanation.

hustin1

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

sobi#1980 said:

What is the purpose of CDP limiting threads to specific topics when less than 10% of the playerbase actually answers the question asked? The accessibility topic is closely linked to class balance and i am having to read through comments that have no relevance to it, so i just gave up on reading this CDP.

Hi Sobi,

When I have done this type of initiative in the past and over time it goes from being '10%'of the community to a much larger and diverse slice of player types and player base. Some folks will be reading and scared to post at the moment but that will change. The reason for having focused topics is so we can have focused discussion and a focused proposal.

Chris

One thing that's been scaring me off from posting is the rigid reply format. That said, if and when you have one for the Foundry, I'll be posting quite feverishly (see my sig for a hint). Anyway, this is my thought with respect to accessibility:

I'm concerned about there being a potential need to grind dungeons to acquire the gear to progress from one campaign to the next. This hasn't been an issue in the past, but the 20k IL recommendation/requirement for Mod 18 has me concerned. If you take a new player with the free Undermountain gear, let him progress through the campaign, and let him grind ME's for a little while, I'm not sure that said player will be at or even close to 20k at the end of that process. I suspect that it will be closer to 18k. Jumping that gap will require upgrading lots of enchantments to R11 or R12 and lots of purple insignia. This is true even if all previous campaigns were completed and all boons earned. We cant expect said player to grind LOMM to reach 20k because they can't even enter it if they're below 20k, and the gear from ME's is as good as gear from LOMM or even better. My personal opinion is that players should be able to progress from one campaign to the next without having to grind a new dungeon, especially if it's a dungeon that they cannot even qualify to enter.

thefiresidecat

hustin1 said:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

sobi#1980 said:

What is the purpose of CDP limiting threads to specific topics when less than 10% of the playerbase actually answers the question asked? The accessibility topic is closely linked to class balance and i am having to read through comments that have no relevance to it, so i just gave up on reading this CDP.

Hi Sobi,

When I have done this type of initiative in the past and over time it goes from being '10%'of the community to a much larger and diverse slice of player types and player base. Some folks will be reading and scared to post at the moment but that will change. The reason for having focused topics is so we can have focused discussion and a focused proposal.

Chris

One thing that's been scaring me off from posting is the rigid reply format. That said, if and when you have one for the Foundry, I'll be posting quite feverishly (see my sig for a hint). Anyway, this is my thought with respect to accessibility:

I'm concerned about there being a potential need to grind dungeons to acquire the gear to progress from one campaign to the next. This hasn't been an issue in the past, but the 20k IL recommendation/requirement for Mod 18 has me concerned. If you take a new player with the free Undermountain gear, let him progress through the campaign, and let him grind ME's for a little while, I'm not sure that said player will be at or even close to 20k at the end of that process. I suspect that it will be closer to 18k. Jumping that gap will require upgrading lots of enchantments to R11 or R12 and lots of purple insignia. This is true even if all previous campaigns were completed and all boons earned. We cant expect said player to grind LOMM to reach 20k because they can't even enter it if they're below 20k, and the gear from ME's is as good as gear from LOMM or even better. My personal opinion is that players should be able to progress from one campaign to the next without having to grind a new dungeon, especially if it's a dungeon that they cannot even qualify to enter.

meh someone says you must reply this way I say yeah make me, personally I thought the format was a bit silly. asking someone to delineate the negatives to their suggestion, of course they're going to come up with something minor or have no idea of what the actual negatives are. that's something the devs need to think of with their well rounded experience. So I ignored it. I think they read it anyway don't let something like that turn you off from replying to this thread if you have some thoughts on the matter. I look at something like that and think: why are they asking for such rigid formating? The answer is because they're trying to keep it on topic and make you focus on what your point is so the real formatting required is to be clear in what your thought process is and what it relates to, imo.

I personally think the 20k entrance is good for the newer player, In theory anyway.... rushing ahead to the end before you're geared up means failure and frustration. a lot of people at the level you are talking about have not finished all the prior content and have no reason to gear up further. This requires they grind to gear up further. Whether they do or not or just move on to something more impelling is yet to be seen.

However I still think scaling and gating so much content at level 70 when there are no level 70's anymore that stay at that level for more than a day, is at the core what the problem is, it needs to be gotten rid of and give people a reason to gear up again. they've lost their way as a MMO. there is zero reason to grind for better gear. that's what keeps people playing. grinding for Ilvl. with scaling there is no reason to level up. It is honestly game killing. imo getting rid of level all together might be good and just have the level be gear score. new players tend to get trapped into thinking the level is their base level and they're good enough because they made it to 80 and then get confused and bewildered that everything is stomping on them. there is absolutely zero tutorial on gearing up and it's importance for the newer player. guilds help to some degree on learning but i think a lot of people probably quit before they get that far. They have all that gear handed to them at ravenloft or yawning and think great! I'm there. but it's still base starter gear. I remember when I started it took me like 4 months to figure out how to work the auction house. let alone gear stats and what it meant and how to balance. I spent that time just doing well of dragons because I was terrified of the dungeons. The dragon runs were profitable and fun.

cwhitesidedev

thefiresidecat said:

TOMM:

I can't speak for the pc side but the reason that it was fail on console was because someone from pc was allowed to come over on xbox on someone elses account, and give a certain guild the "win" of being first to complete it instead of letting the consoles battle it out fairly for 1st to complete.
It took the wind out of everyone's sails and many just stopped trying. I'd have had no beef with this if they had waited until someone had got the first completion honestly... and even if they had done it on their own account.. but no..

Also the type of gamer on console is different from pc. Pc mmorpg gamers expect to have to play with the holy trinity, we've been trained not to on console. The whole idea of equipping defense and having heals that JUST heal and tanks that JUST tank and not being glass cannon dps.. is kind of alien, and people seem to have been strongly rejecting it in their builds.

No one wanted to put some of their dps aside for defense and debuff.

For the most part exclusive 10 man parties are hard to get and this trial needed that. Most guilds/alliances are used to being able to do a swinging door of players: Which is more inclusive and better and healthy imo, but this trial pretty much demands a team you play with exclusively for the learning curve. It would have been better and more doable if it had been a 5 man party imo. I personally would love to see difficult content like this more often that requires insane gear and proper use of stats but I would like to see it done in a fashion that was more swinging door inclusive.

I spent millions building up for it and then it was like a party that didn't happen. it made a panda sad and discouraged.

NORMAL AND MASTER VERSIONS OF CONTENT:

I second the normal and master version of all dungeons and trials. In the past we've had some mechanics that were very punishing to learn. Many never mastered these and people that came to the party late didn't get a chance because training runs were done and no one was willing to take the days needed AGAIN for people who are just coming on board.

in example, the push pull mechanics of CODG. All it needed for a normal (IE Learning version) was a campfire that people could restart from when the party failed the push pull (although the push pull was a terrible unrewarding mechanic) instead of having to start from the very beginning again. in the earlier days of this game normal and master versions were done and they were very successful, The game was thriving on all levels. It was a golden age in many regards.

imo things should not be equal on all levels. This game has two classes of players the casuals and the end gamers and never the twain shall meet. The N dungeons should be for the casuals and the M should be no holds barred for the end gamers requiring extensive gear and or skill with high rewards. and the N with good rewards.
Some casuals will graduate to being end game. Some are happy remaining casual. The casuals are about story line generally and actual role playing. The end gamers are about the newest and shiniest toys and amassing wealth and competing in difficult content.

Having more playable story in the N dungeons would probably make that side very happy. Maybe some choose your own adventure type gameplay.


CASUALS VS END GAME: and retention of casuals to become endgame

Enticing casuals to become end game means giving them something to work for. Gear must matter. Gear must be at least a little challenging to obtain and it must make the user feel Good.. Feel POWERFUL. being able to go back and do some stomping thru old grounds that were once difficult is a very important part of this equation. Why bother building towards R 15 enchantments if your enchantments will never be worth more than R11 for most content??

SCALING:

The other thing that isn't helping ANYONE is scaling. All content should be level 80 other than a few levelling dungeons. Even the casuals race to the very final level (even though real level isn't base level it's ILvl). Scaling makes it too easy for the end gamers and punishing for the casuals. If things were just level 80 for the dungeons it would find it's own balance as it used to pre mod 16.
Not to mention, if you spend millions of time and or ad or real life money you want the perks of the things you've earned to always be in effect. If I have all level 15 enchants do you expect me to be pleased to have it scaled down for most of the content in the game? My build becomes unreliable. Yes, unscaled some content may become trivial but as it is now ALL content other than Tomm is trivial for the end gamer. When things were across the board one level with no scaling to speak of there was a lot of content that was rewarding to complete AND there was an actual point to levelling up your gear to the highest level. It was never irrelevant.


not to mention it seems to just be making things buggy and unbalanced. more events have been wonked because of scaling than I can ever remember.

please please please remove it.



MASTERCRAFT

Mastercrafting: This used to be a thing that was a whole ecosystem in the game. the end gamers and the casuals who focused all their energy on mastercrafting (endgamers as far as mc but casuals in build) supplied the game with the best or at least the best niche gear. the lower levels could make good ad by supplying the end of the line master crafters with supplies thus becoming more powerful in other parts of the game. Some gear for mastercraft (forgehammer) was important and powerful for MC. this has all been done away with and not replaced with something else to grind for. mastercrafting is pretty much dead at this point. it was an important point that kept A LOT Of people engaged in the game.


My personal feedback:

My feedback as a player is that at this point in the game there isn't much to engage me anymore. In fact, there is nothing to keep me engaged. I've been slowly moving away from this game. Everything that encouraged engagement has been either nerfed into the ground or just entirely obsoleted. Even the winterfest event that everyone used to grind for forgehammers is not worth spending the time on anymore base level tools are more powerful now.

I miss having things to do, events that mattered. Refinement events used to be a thing you'd save up for and grind all weekend for every available amount of time you had. You'd have to do the professions event to make money to afford the refinement events. the other events had things that were worth the time and effort to grind for and felt really good when you finally did get that rare drop. that's all gone. things aren't being updated. none of the vendors or zen store ever get updates. I want to love this game. I want to stay. I want to have things to do. I want some complexity.

Also the unending stream of nerfs. we play to feel powerful and good about the game but all we are met with is a never ending stream of nerfs. We complain about a bug in our class.. what is the result? We get nerfed further... give us the good news not the hammer.

Hi thefiresidecat,

Engagement and Shared Experiences
We are going to be working together to achieve this through the CDP whilst also ensuring that other types of players can also take part in the 'experiences' that generate engagement (rewards, progression etc) that is relevant to them.

Normal and Master Content
We are working towards this and we will provide more details shortly.

Casual vs Endgame
We are currently discussing ways to get new and more casual players into the 'Endgames' various tiers of progression. We need to have a little bit more internal discussion before going into more detail here but that detail will be part of this CDP thread.

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?

Mastercrafting
Discussing this topic currently for the reasons you mention and others. More to follow in this thread.

Thanks for taking the time to raise these concerns and potential evolution's.

Chris

cwhitesidedev

hustin1 said:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

sobi#1980 said:

What is the purpose of CDP limiting threads to specific topics when less than 10% of the playerbase actually answers the question asked? The accessibility topic is closely linked to class balance and i am having to read through comments that have no relevance to it, so i just gave up on reading this CDP.

Hi Sobi,

When I have done this type of initiative in the past and over time it goes from being '10%'of the community to a much larger and diverse slice of player types and player base. Some folks will be reading and scared to post at the moment but that will change. The reason for having focused topics is so we can have focused discussion and a focused proposal.

Chris

One thing that's been scaring me off from posting is the rigid reply format. That said, if and when you have one for the Foundry, I'll be posting quite feverishly (see my sig for a hint). Anyway, this is my thought with respect to accessibility:

I'm concerned about there being a potential need to grind dungeons to acquire the gear to progress from one campaign to the next. This hasn't been an issue in the past, but the 20k IL recommendation/requirement for Mod 18 has me concerned. If you take a new player with the free Undermountain gear, let him progress through the campaign, and let him grind ME's for a little while, I'm not sure that said player will be at or even close to 20k at the end of that process. I suspect that it will be closer to 18k. Jumping that gap will require upgrading lots of enchantments to R11 or R12 and lots of purple insignia. This is true even if all previous campaigns were completed and all boons earned. We cant expect said player to grind LOMM to reach 20k because they can't even enter it if they're below 20k, and the gear from ME's is as good as gear from LOMM or even better. My personal opinion is that players should be able to progress from one campaign to the next without having to grind a new dungeon, especially if it's a dungeon that they cannot even qualify to enter.

Hi hustin1,

Just wanted to talk to your concern regarding format before heading home. The format is for putting ideas forward not replies or discussion. The reason for the format is for consistency in category of info and details as well as readability. For replies and discussion there is no format requirement.

I will talk to your accessibility point tomorrow hustin. Thanks for contributing to the CDP.

Chris

thefiresidecat

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

thefiresidecat said:

TOMM:

I can't speak for the pc side but the reason that it was fail on console was because someone from pc was allowed to come over on xbox on someone elses account, and give a certain guild the "win" of being first to complete it instead of letting the consoles battle it out fairly for 1st to complete.
It took the wind out of everyone's sails and many just stopped trying. I'd have had no beef with this if they had waited until someone had got the first completion honestly... and even if they had done it on their own account.. but no..

Also the type of gamer on console is different from pc. Pc mmorpg gamers expect to have to play with the holy trinity, we've been trained not to on console. The whole idea of equipping defense and having heals that JUST heal and tanks that JUST tank and not being glass cannon dps.. is kind of alien, and people seem to have been strongly rejecting it in their builds.

No one wanted to put some of their dps aside for defense and debuff.

For the most part exclusive 10 man parties are hard to get and this trial needed that. Most guilds/alliances are used to being able to do a swinging door of players: Which is more inclusive and better and healthy imo, but this trial pretty much demands a team you play with exclusively for the learning curve. It would have been better and more doable if it had been a 5 man party imo. I personally would love to see difficult content like this more often that requires insane gear and proper use of stats but I would like to see it done in a fashion that was more swinging door inclusive.

I spent millions building up for it and then it was like a party that didn't happen. it made a panda sad and discouraged.

NORMAL AND MASTER VERSIONS OF CONTENT:

I second the normal and master version of all dungeons and trials. In the past we've had some mechanics that were very punishing to learn. Many never mastered these and people that came to the party late didn't get a chance because training runs were done and no one was willing to take the days needed AGAIN for people who are just coming on board.

in example, the push pull mechanics of CODG. All it needed for a normal (IE Learning version) was a campfire that people could restart from when the party failed the push pull (although the push pull was a terrible unrewarding mechanic) instead of having to start from the very beginning again. in the earlier days of this game normal and master versions were done and they were very successful, The game was thriving on all levels. It was a golden age in many regards.

imo things should not be equal on all levels. This game has two classes of players the casuals and the end gamers and never the twain shall meet. The N dungeons should be for the casuals and the M should be no holds barred for the end gamers requiring extensive gear and or skill with high rewards. and the N with good rewards.
Some casuals will graduate to being end game. Some are happy remaining casual. The casuals are about story line generally and actual role playing. The end gamers are about the newest and shiniest toys and amassing wealth and competing in difficult content.

Having more playable story in the N dungeons would probably make that side very happy. Maybe some choose your own adventure type gameplay.


CASUALS VS END GAME: and retention of casuals to become endgame

Enticing casuals to become end game means giving them something to work for. Gear must matter. Gear must be at least a little challenging to obtain and it must make the user feel Good.. Feel POWERFUL. being able to go back and do some stomping thru old grounds that were once difficult is a very important part of this equation. Why bother building towards R 15 enchantments if your enchantments will never be worth more than R11 for most content??

SCALING:

The other thing that isn't helping ANYONE is scaling. All content should be level 80 other than a few levelling dungeons. Even the casuals race to the very final level (even though real level isn't base level it's ILvl). Scaling makes it too easy for the end gamers and punishing for the casuals. If things were just level 80 for the dungeons it would find it's own balance as it used to pre mod 16.
Not to mention, if you spend millions of time and or ad or real life money you want the perks of the things you've earned to always be in effect. If I have all level 15 enchants do you expect me to be pleased to have it scaled down for most of the content in the game? My build becomes unreliable. Yes, unscaled some content may become trivial but as it is now ALL content other than Tomm is trivial for the end gamer. When things were across the board one level with no scaling to speak of there was a lot of content that was rewarding to complete AND there was an actual point to levelling up your gear to the highest level. It was never irrelevant.


not to mention it seems to just be making things buggy and unbalanced. more events have been wonked because of scaling than I can ever remember.

please please please remove it.



MASTERCRAFT

Mastercrafting: This used to be a thing that was a whole ecosystem in the game. the end gamers and the casuals who focused all their energy on mastercrafting (endgamers as far as mc but casuals in build) supplied the game with the best or at least the best niche gear. the lower levels could make good ad by supplying the end of the line master crafters with supplies thus becoming more powerful in other parts of the game. Some gear for mastercraft (forgehammer) was important and powerful for MC. this has all been done away with and not replaced with something else to grind for. mastercrafting is pretty much dead at this point. it was an important point that kept A LOT Of people engaged in the game.


My personal feedback:

My feedback as a player is that at this point in the game there isn't much to engage me anymore. In fact, there is nothing to keep me engaged. I've been slowly moving away from this game. Everything that encouraged engagement has been either nerfed into the ground or just entirely obsoleted. Even the winterfest event that everyone used to grind for forgehammers is not worth spending the time on anymore base level tools are more powerful now.

I miss having things to do, events that mattered. Refinement events used to be a thing you'd save up for and grind all weekend for every available amount of time you had. You'd have to do the professions event to make money to afford the refinement events. the other events had things that were worth the time and effort to grind for and felt really good when you finally did get that rare drop. that's all gone. things aren't being updated. none of the vendors or zen store ever get updates. I want to love this game. I want to stay. I want to have things to do. I want some complexity.

Also the unending stream of nerfs. we play to feel powerful and good about the game but all we are met with is a never ending stream of nerfs. We complain about a bug in our class.. what is the result? We get nerfed further... give us the good news not the hammer.

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?

there was some minor scaling in the game before mod 16 and it was fine. basically low level players could be scaled up for special content and for the most part the higher levels weren't touched going down. this was fine because while scaling players up also didn't honestly do a lot, the high level players in the content could easily carry the new players. it wasn't a problem before. I am not sure why the devs thought it was. No one was complaining about it. When we heard scaling was going to be introduced there was a huge outcry but we were ignored. Scaling as it is right now, has pretty much single handedly killed this game imo. I am not sure why the concern has been making the player as Not powerful as possible in all circumstances. that's not what D and D or MMOs are about. We level up to BE GODS. because that feels good. the new player wants to gear up to be a god too. I still remember my experience with this as a new player. there was a high level cleric in a dragon fight. a bunch of noobs and this one god. and I was like OMG. I want to be her... and from there I was hooked.

It doesn't feel good to level everything up only to have it slashed in almost all content.

arazith07

Many of the newer players were complaining that they were being left behind and not being able to participate in a meaningful way, or most often, the higher geared players would just run past all the mobs, forcing the newer players to become swarmed and end up dying. There does need to be a way to prevent both situations from happening, but I also do agree that there should be some way of progression that isn't only felt when you are at endgame levels.

My suggestion would be to leave the current scaling in leveling dungeons for level 70-80 characters, and to bring all level 70 dungeons up to level 80 but with less or equal enemy ratings in comparison with LoMM.

cwhitesidedev

thefiresidecat said:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?

there was some minor scaling in the game before mod 16 and it was fine. basically low level players could be scaled up for special content and for the most part the higher levels weren't touched going down. this was fine because while scaling players up also didn't honestly do a lot, the high level players in the content could easily carry the new players. it wasn't a problem before. I am not sure why the devs thought it was. No one was complaining about it. When we heard scaling was going to be introduced there was a huge outcry but we were ignored. Scaling as it is right now, has pretty much single handedly killed this game imo. I am not sure why the concern has been making the player as Not powerful as possible in all circumstances. that's not what D and D or MMOs are about. We level up to BE GODS. because that feels good. the new player wants to gear up to be a god too. I still remember my experience with this as a new player. there was a high level cleric in a dragon fight. a bunch of noobs and this one god. and I was like OMG. I want to be her... and from there I was hooked.

It doesn't feel good to level everything up only to have it slashed in almost all content.

Hey,

I think MMOs mean different things to different people. For you it is clearly to feel like a God but for others that might not be their primary driver. How many times when playing D and D do you do a module that is vastly lower level than your character? Isn't D and D as much about the experience of playing with others in immersive and challenging (Not just power but also problem solving) worlds and situations as it is about leveling up and being all powerful?

So in short (Hard to determine because you didn't tackle my questions) you feel that scaling up is fine but scaling down is a no no? So what is your suggestion in regard to an event where we want all players to share the 'experience' and feel relevant if certain players experience is dramatically reduced because the content is trivial to a % of players?

I have no bias here at this stage. I want to observe and learn. And note the goal is inclusivity not normalization.

Chris

carloswartune

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?

I (personally) think that scaling, as a concept, is very interesting. For old players, it opens the possibility to keep old content relevant, and this is very important to Neverwinter since just 1 dungeon or trial or skirmish is released per mod. Upscaling, if done right, could open the possibility for new players to help their guilds right away by doing stronghold activities.

However, I think that scaling was implemented poorly. For instance, players that have the caps for level 80 content may not have caps for those old dungeons when scaled down. This completely invalidates the effort that went in getting those stats. And even worse: the main advantage that scaling could provide (keep old content relevant) is not there. Most old dungeons aren't worth the time you spend running them. Fortunately, noworries said that changes to scaling are planned so the stat cap problem can be solved, but that doesn't solve the rewards issue.

A promising idea with scaling was proposed in Mod 15, the K-Team Dungeon challenge: completing a dungeon while being scaled down to the minimum item level and without any deaths. Once again, an interesting idea that was plagued by lackluster rewards. If you plan on doing master versions for dungeons, I think having modifiers to change the difficulty of those master versions, like the ones imposed by the K-Team challenge, would be a good thing. Just make sure the challenge is actually rewarding this time.

thefiresidecat

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

thefiresidecat said:

"Hi thefiresidecat,



Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?"



Chris

1st of all sorry for the lack of html quote above. I am not sure how to get it back after the drastic clip of content. so I put your reply in quotes old fashioned style.

there was some minor scaling in the game before mod 16 and it was fine. basically low level players could be scaled up for special content and for the most part the higher levels weren't touched going down. this was fine because while scaling players up also didn't honestly do a lot, the high level players in the content could easily carry the new players. it wasn't a problem before. I am not sure why the devs thought it was. No one was complaining about it. When we heard scaling was going to be introduced there was a huge outcry but we were ignored. Scaling as it is right now, has pretty much single handedly killed this game imo. I am not sure why the concern has been making the player as Not powerful as possible in all circumstances. that's not what D and D or MMOs are about. We level up to BE GODS. because that feels good. the new player wants to gear up to be a god too. I still remember my experience with this as a new player. there was a high level cleric in a dragon fight. a bunch of noobs and this one god. and I was like OMG. I want to be her... and from there I was hooked.

It doesn't feel good to level everything up only to have it slashed in almost all content.

Hey,

I think MMOs mean different things to different people. For you it is clearly to feel like a God but for others that might not be their primary driver. How many times when playing D and D do you do a module that is vastly lower level than your character? Isn't D and D as much about the experience of playing with others in immersive and challenging (Not just power but also problem solving) worlds and situations as it is about leveling up and being all powerful?

So in short (Hard to determine because you didn't tackle my questions) you feel that scaling up is fine but scaling down is a no no? So what is your suggestion in regard to an event where we want all players to share the 'experience' and feel relevant if certain players experience is dramatically reduced because the content is trivial to a % of players?

I have no bias here at this stage. I want to observe and learn. And note the goal is inclusivity not normalization.

Chris

More importantly than feeling like a god is just not having your progress devalued. I think it is a huge no no to devalue the players progress. For Events like TOO it can be fun to start powerful and then have it get harder and harder. (but rewards need to be good) but for regular dungeons and things I think it makes it so the drive to upgrade go poof..

The drive to upgrade is what keeps a game like this rolling.

scaling goes hand in hand with having most of the dungeons at level 70 instead of level 80. If the dungeons were just at level 8o instead of level 70 and scaled down, to me and I think most of the player base this would be a non issue overall.

if some dungeons were levelling dungeons and kept scaling but most dungeons were level 80 with varying difficulty levels. I don't think it would have the impact it has now.

I do think it has very negatively effected events though. The events like cta require something like 10 runs a day to get the rewards. before the current style of scaling these were guaranteed 3 minute runs. now they aren't. Now if you're on a lower level char and don't get lucky with an all bis group it is most likely a 7 to 10 minute run each. that's too much and they aren't fun. I actually had one run that I got thrown into with one of my bis toons. the ppl there had been in a cta for half an hour and most of them had just quit and been replaced. we finished it because the replacement were all high level but that should never happen. and it didn't happen before.

I'm not mathy. There are a lot of mathy people here who can explain better than me why that was. but scaling as it is now just isn't working. the best you're going to get from me on this is WAHHHHH IT DOESN"T FEEL GOOD. but there are better arguments against it than I can produce.

@micky1p00

*Edit, Janne, I know we don't agree on everything and I'm not asking for your validation, but as I recall you had some very good level headed ideas on scaling and the maths, that were perhaps more cognizant than mine


*edit @cwhitesidedev#9752 and If I failed to answer your question it wasn't intentional. I think maybe I just missed what it was you were asking for precisely*

mentinmindmaker

Reposting this for visibility. Original thread
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1253443/the-game-is-just-not-fun-anymore/p1

Something is not right in the kingdom of Neverwinter.

I am having a bit hard time to pinpoint what the actual problem is. It is not really the nerfs, the nerfs would make some disgruntled players leave, but if they were successful the rest of the players would be happy. It also is not the grinding, grinding is and will always be part of an MMORPG, if you cannot stomach the grind, find another game type. It is just not possible for the devs to produce content fast enough to avoid grinding.. but it must be grinding with a reward and a purpose.

Some thoughts on what is missing now:
* Lack of progression - you get your kit from UM and bang, you are more or less good good to go for everything in game but LoMM and ToMM. There is not much to work towards, and for instance the progression ladder that is boons is completely sidelined. And that progression must be enforced in the sense that you need a certain IL to be admitted to zones so it is not other players that kicks you out(that creates bad feelings). Most admission IL requirements today are way too low.
* Lack of interdependency - since most buffs went away, players to a very little extent depends on each other. This is most noticeable for tanks and healers.. tanks dont get to play their roles since people run ahead, and healers are really not that much needed. The defenses for the dps classes should probably be bumped down significantly to make the group dynamics work better. It will be interesting to see how the rating bump for 18k to 35k will work out. Maybe introduce a few -20k defense +10k power items
* Tomm was a disaster. It obviously is a big hit for the most hardcore small group, but for most players it is beyond reach. And that means there is a small group of players that enjoys a 20% dps advantage that the rest never can catch up to. I was expecting weapons with mod 18 that would match the base damage of ToMM weapons but with less effects, lessening the gap somewhat. As it is, the progress-to-BiS game is meaningless for all but the few hardcore ToMM runners, as the weapons will always mean you are far behind no matter how well geared you are otherwise. ToMM has placed the goalpost too far out and turned off and away a far bigger almost-BiS playermass than the relatively small group that is running it.
* Lack of challenge - there really is not much challenge progression in game: You go Completely trivial -> Lomm(that is not that hard) -> ToMM(beyond reach for most, because it needs a regular group, voice, and very high gear requirements)

The 'feeling' in the old game and with the old areas was completely wrecked up with mod 16 and the failed experiments with scaling. They failed to understand that yes, people want challenging content, but they also want content they are done with to be easy and done with.

The big fundamental problem seems to be that NWs dev team has been seriously reduced, so they have a very reduced ability to make things now. Mod 18 was disappointingly small even if they spent 2 months extra on making it.

mentinmindmaker

Repost of a follow-up post to the post before.

I will actually sum up my thoughts by giving Cryptic a few free suggestions indicated above:
* Make the boons progression worthwhile again by at least doubling the IL gained from boons.
* Increase the admission IL requirement for dungeons by much more than what the IL increase from boons indicate, create a progression ladder of dungeon access. Most dungeons can have a 2-3k requirement IL increase as they are. You can also increase the rating of a few dungeons to make a more defined progression ladder.
* Make roles more defined to establish more interdependency in dungeons. Take away some dps class defenses, dps class defenses are too high in the dungeons today so tanks and healers are less needed.
* Make roles more defined by making classes chose between dps and survivability. Introduce -20k defense + 10k power items, so people can chose if they want to hit hard or survive(or rely on the tank/healer...).
* Mitigate some of the damage from ToMM by making weapons with ToMM base damage available outside ToMM, but with lesser effects.

And this really needs to come with mod 18, I don't think you have time to wait for mod 19...

gabrieldourden

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?


Thanks for taking the time to raise these concerns and potential evolution's.

Chris

There are two main issues with scaling that I currently see:

1) Scaling doesn't keep the right proportions between stats and caps. Let me explain with an example: during Mod 16 I had my main at caps for Lomm and then I went to play the Bridge CTA. It was really hard to damage any mob because my arpen was too low. A good way to scale down characters would be to keep the efficiency they have. For example let's say that I'm a level 80 character and I am currently at cap for Arpen for the highest content available at level 80 (Tomm). Whenever I get scaled down I should still be at cap for arpen. If I'm not at cap for Tomm and for example the boss there resists 5% of my damage, then when I get scaled down, bosses should resist 5% of my damage. In this way I don't feel a change in efficiency and don't have to change items/loadouts everytime.
When it comes to HP and Power my suggestion would be to use have two or three tiers of the same dungeon and use power and HP scaling to modulate the experience.

2) Older content has no meaningful rewards. This is the real killer. Higher level/IL character hate scaling because it increases the time needed for the run and they get no real reward for the time they lose. Introducing different tiers of the same dungeon could help as you could give better rewards fo higher tiers.

Hope I've not been too confused in my explanation.

micky1p00

thefiresidecat said:

....
*Edit, Janne, I know we don't agree on everything and I'm not asking for your validation, but as I recall you had some very good level headed ideas on scaling and the maths, that were perhaps more cognizant than mine
...

I didn't have the time to follow the details of the conversation, but in general (and I'll try to be short, though yeah.. low chance for that ) about scaling:

While I'm sure some would like bash and smash everything, and it is a valid point, how a person who slayed some dragon gods, immortal liches, undead dragons and what not, suddenly takes several minutes to kill some ogre, I think that the issue is that the current scaling is actually hard coded caps.

It doesn't bring a player relative to a target IL and gear, but it caps to that target. A player who enters such content with rank 10 enchantment, will benefit from it as rank 10 enchantment. Then spend half year (or more) upgrading their gear, upgrading all the enchantments and repeating the same content will be scaled back to rank 10 enchantment

The difference from caps is in both actual progress (power creep) and perception of progress.

Power creep:
The cap has the obvious benefit of set and forget, once the devs set those caps, there is no need to touch the difficulty and balance of said content. The players will just get adjusted to it.
The problem and down side is that the player-base is not homogeneous, some are better and some are worse, given a cap, for some it will be too easy and for others it will be too hard.
Power creep, alleviates the too hard part, a person who finds some content difficult keeps doing whatever content they can, upgrade what they can until they can complete the new stuff, and repeat. Allowing linear progress for layers of all skill levels.

This is not only relevant to scaling, but the entire stat system that currently uses hard caps on all but few stats.
As it is now, after all the changes, a lot of the content was adjusted to the stat caps and overall difficulty and ended up more or less as easy as in the great power creep era. If not easier. 3 people can finish Codg a 10 people trial.

So what was the benefit of the system? Not so clear.

Perception of progress:
Like with the example above, a player who worked hard for their gear (or spent $) expect to see some benefit even if marginal. If pre scaled player A is 'stronger' than player B, then a good system will maintain this order, scale it, yes, but still Player A will remain > player B.
This is fundamental to the larger concept of MMO, the eternal hamster wheel where players gear up, become stronger, and get harder enemies. The important part of it, is that if Player A put a year of game time, then they expect it to reflect as compared to player B who didn't.
This is the mentioned devaluation of progress, but in any scaling system devaluation expected, the problem is that in the current one it's annulled.

This is not the same as smash and bash godhood style, if we compare to cars, this is not the expectance to drive a Ferrari, but if replaced my 15 years old Hyundai for a 5 years old Honda I expect to feel at least some difference.

How to implement?
Here is one suggestion (my post there):
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/comment/13102810
And I'm sure there are other ways.

The main point is that we have content aimed at Item Level X, a player of item level X + 1k will be scaled to near X, Lets call the new point Y and X + 10k will be also moved towards X, but above Y.

Side note:
A major issue in the current system is also the lack of uniformity in the scaling system, it doesn't scale the entire char like in the proposal above, but scales by parts, enchants become parallel to some ranks, and so on. Still a lot of HP on players, but weapon damage and other factors scaled more. This creates 'interesting' situations where scaled healing is practically useless and all the above issues become very emphasized on healer.


And now after all this, comes the question, do we even need scaling. It is clear that scaling aimed to allow content to remain relevant. But does it really?

From systems perspective:
The stat caps (crit 50%, CA 100%, Deflect 50%, etc) if I have enough stats to cap any 'current' content, this should translate into caps in the old one, so why to 'scale' it to begin with. It's just useless stat gymnastic that ends up in 0 effect. There are only few stats that are not hard capped in the overall system, weapon damage, power, hp, crit severity (capped by maximum slottables), outgoing healing (capped by maximum slotabbles), incoming healing, etc..
Out of those, lets say 3 are the most relevant to scale, power, hp, weapons. So the current scaling system fights the current cap system to just adjust 3 stats, and after that content difficulty is adjusted further to make it even easier.

From overall design perspective:
The current overall concept gives new players catch up gear that will be already scaled, in all except the only ~2-3 mods of 'current' content.
The content is not part of the player direct progression path, it's a side quest with no reward, except 1 exception.
I don't see anyone doing some Temple of the Spider for the challenge, for any rewards, or any reason at all, except the couple of time for curiosity and the encouraged random queue (Which are a topic on their own).

Scaling system meant (as I see it) to keep old content relevant, maybe it did it part in terms of player stat adjustment, but still the content is not really relevant, so is it the best way?

Maybe moving it all to level 80, and making linear tiered progress? I don't see why a new player should immediately get catch up gear and what not just from a chest, while at the same time there is a lot of content that not utilized.

Or use them as alternative to gear that comes from various HEs, that I for example rather not come close too (I'm here only for the group content).

Or maybe, make it part of the progress for new players in terms of campaigns, and "Sybella Legacy campaigns", add into the old dungeons drops of the same campaign (less viable for new players as they unlock the dungeon at the end only) or the following campaign (do dungeon X to help unlock next dungeon in the next campaign) currency, so players can speed up their progress there, and veteran players can benefit via the legacy campaign system.

But that already offtopic.

rafaelda

cilginordek said:

Feedback Overview:

Decrease the portion of total stats that are recieved from companions/bondings.



Feedback Goal:

Allowing easier catch up for new players and simplifying the gearing process.



Feedback Functionality:

Currenty the catch up gear available from the campaigns don't serve their purpose because a large majority of stats needed for content come from companions. If the stats from the companions were reduced to 10% of a players total stats, that would not only make catch up gear more useful but also make balancing stats for the content a lot less frustrating of an experience.

If that is achieved trough reduction in total stats, the content would have to be balanced accordingly.



Risks & Concerns:

This would be a fairly big change in regards to companions and usually there is some well placed lashback when that's done without enough testing.

Just ot add to:

Feedback goal
This would make armor/ gear more important in game and show more progression as the gear is upgraded

Risk & Concerns:
Would be a massive work, need to be done changing the stats given from all gear in the game, maybe changes in enchants as well.

alquimistgg

carloswartune#5709 said:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?

I (personally) think that scaling, as a concept, is very interesting. For old players, it opens the possibility to keep old content relevant, and this is very important to Neverwinter since just 1 dungeon or trial or skirmish is released per mod. Upscaling, if done right, could open the possibility for new players to help their guilds right away by doing stronghold activities.

However, I think that scaling was implemented poorly. For instance, players that have the caps for level 80 content may not have caps for those old dungeons when scaled down. This completely invalidates the effort that went in getting those stats. And even worse: the main advantage that scaling could provide (keep old content relevant) is not there. Most old dungeons aren't worth the time you spend running them. Fortunately, noworries said that changes to scaling are planned so the stat cap problem can be solved, but that doesn't solve the rewards issue.

A promising idea with scaling was proposed in Mod 15, the K-Team Dungeon challenge: completing a dungeon while being scaled down to the minimum item level and without any deaths. Once again, an interesting idea that was plagued by lackluster rewards. If you plan on doing master versions for dungeons, I think having modifiers to change the difficulty of those master versions, like the ones imposed by the K-Team challenge, would be a good thing. Just make sure the challenge is actually rewarding this time.

carloswartune#5709 said:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?

I (personally) think that scaling, as a concept, is very interesting. For old players, it opens the possibility to keep old content relevant, and this is very important to Neverwinter since just 1 dungeon or trial or skirmish is released per mod. Upscaling, if done right, could open the possibility for new players to help their guilds right away by doing stronghold activities.

However, I think that scaling was implemented poorly. For instance, players that have the caps for level 80 content may not have caps for those old dungeons when scaled down. This completely invalidates the effort that went in getting those stats. And even worse: the main advantage that scaling could provide (keep old content relevant) is not there. Most old dungeons aren't worth the time you spend running them. Fortunately, noworries said that changes to scaling are planned so the stat cap problem can be solved, but that doesn't solve the rewards issue.

A promising idea with scaling was proposed in Mod 15, the K-Team Dungeon challenge: completing a dungeon while being scaled down to the minimum item level and without any deaths. Once again, an interesting idea that was plagued by lackluster rewards. If you plan on doing master versions for dungeons, I think having modifiers to change the difficulty of those master versions, like the ones imposed by the K-Team challenge, would be a good thing. Just make sure the challenge is actually rewarding this time.

This is very true, I also super support the scaling system, but well done, whether for climbing higher or lower, I even suggested an implementation here at CDP that would work the esclagem system to let the veterans "weaker" in old campaigns causing them to activate a new bar in campaigns with nice rewards. The point is the reward! I remember that before mod 16, we had Demogorgon and Master Demogoron, nobody in perfect judgment did the master version because in pre mod 16 the prizes of both were the same, only the difficulty increasing. So we need appropriate incentives for specific content, a DG where you take 40 minutes on average to complete has to have rewards greater than one that lasts 20 minutes, otherwise no one will do 40 minutes. I would not particularly mind if a leveled DG came in at level 1 and without any equipment lasting 2 hours as long as this DG gave me more awards than doing 6 rounds of any other DG lasting an average of 20 minutes. Everything can be justified with the proper reward. K-Team was a really promising idea that no one sets out to do for lack of rewards.

lordaeolos

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?

Honestly, I don't feel that scaling has provided any benefits to the player community as it was implemented, all it did was slow down content and create frustrations for some people, while leaving most people scratching their heads as to why it was implemented the way it was. It is certainly not a vehicle that has provided a means to grow in the game.

To be effective, scaling would need to be done in such a way that it would be logical and easy for the community to calculate.

** edit Scaling as implemented made content MUCH harder for mid tier and lower player groups, while only slightly slowing down top tier groups. I know many will disagree, but I think all the current lvl 70 dungeons should be shifted to lvl 80 dungeons, remove scaling, and set max stats for power and hit points. There are already enemy stat ratings which sort of serve as a cap already. This means those under the max values have room to grow as they work their way up the dungeon ladder, and players that have clearly grown past that same content can't ruin the experience for those trying to learn the mechanics.

thefiresidecat

alquimistgg#0914 said:

carloswartune#5709 said:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?

I (personally) think that scaling, as a concept, is very interesting. For old players, it opens the possibility to keep old content relevant, and this is very important to Neverwinter since just 1 dungeon or trial or skirmish is released per mod. Upscaling, if done right, could open the possibility for new players to help their guilds right away by doing stronghold activities.

However, I think that scaling was implemented poorly. For instance, players that have the caps for level 80 content may not have caps for those old dungeons when scaled down. This completely invalidates the effort that went in getting those stats. And even worse: the main advantage that scaling could provide (keep old content relevant) is not there. Most old dungeons aren't worth the time you spend running them. Fortunately, noworries said that changes to scaling are planned so the stat cap problem can be solved, but that doesn't solve the rewards issue.

A promising idea with scaling was proposed in Mod 15, the K-Team Dungeon challenge: completing a dungeon while being scaled down to the minimum item level and without any deaths. Once again, an interesting idea that was plagued by lackluster rewards. If you plan on doing master versions for dungeons, I think having modifiers to change the difficulty of those master versions, like the ones imposed by the K-Team challenge, would be a good thing. Just make sure the challenge is actually rewarding this time.

carloswartune#5709 said:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?

I (personally) think that scaling, as a concept, is very interesting. For old players, it opens the possibility to keep old content relevant, and this is very important to Neverwinter since just 1 dungeon or trial or skirmish is released per mod. Upscaling, if done right, could open the possibility for new players to help their guilds right away by doing stronghold activities.

However, I think that scaling was implemented poorly. For instance, players that have the caps for level 80 content may not have caps for those old dungeons when scaled down. This completely invalidates the effort that went in getting those stats. And even worse: the main advantage that scaling could provide (keep old content relevant) is not there. Most old dungeons aren't worth the time you spend running them. Fortunately, noworries said that changes to scaling are planned so the stat cap problem can be solved, but that doesn't solve the rewards issue.

A promising idea with scaling was proposed in Mod 15, the K-Team Dungeon challenge: completing a dungeon while being scaled down to the minimum item level and without any deaths. Once again, an interesting idea that was plagued by lackluster rewards. If you plan on doing master versions for dungeons, I think having modifiers to change the difficulty of those master versions, like the ones imposed by the K-Team challenge, would be a good thing. Just make sure the challenge is actually rewarding this time.

This is very true, I also super support the scaling system, but well done, whether for climbing higher or lower, I even suggested an implementation here at CDP that would work the esclagem system to let the veterans "weaker" in old campaigns causing them to activate a new bar in campaigns with nice rewards. The point is the reward! I remember that before mod 16, we had Demogorgon and Master Demogoron, nobody in perfect judgment did the master version because in pre mod 16 the prizes of both were the same, only the difficulty increasing. So we need appropriate incentives for specific content, a DG where you take 40 minutes on average to complete has to have rewards greater than one that lasts 20 minutes, otherwise no one will do 40 minutes. I would not particularly mind if a leveled DG came in at level 1 and without any equipment lasting 2 hours as long as this DG gave me more awards than doing 6 rounds of any other DG lasting an average of 20 minutes. Everything can be justified with the proper reward. K-Team was a really promising idea that no one sets out to do for lack of rewards.

this is not true. when this content was first released if you wanted to earn twisted weapons (And you did) or if you wanted leggy rings (you really really did) you would grind the heck out of master. people who couldn't do master yet (And there were many) did normal to learn how. imo this was a really good point in this game. I really liked msva too but the rewards were always kind of rank. it had a short lived life span. although everyone had a reason to do both. there was some good gear that were unique to both as I recall.

thefiresidecat

lordaeolos said:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint. We all want players to be enticed toward the same high level goals and pillars (which we need to do a better job of defining, guiding and bolstering) and part of that is to play the same experiences that aspirational players are playing never-mind wanting to enjoy content that much of the player base is focused on at any given time. What if scaling delivered both this opportunity and maintained the sense of empowerment earned through progression and catered in a meaningful way to the different types of players goals in terms of rewards, progression and so on?

Honestly, I don't feel that scaling has provided any benefits to the player community as it was implemented, all it did was slow down content and create frustrations for some people, while leaving most people scratching their heads as to why it was implemented the way it was. It is certainly not a vehicle that has provided a means to grow in the game.

To be effective, scaling would need to be done in such a way that it would be logical and easy for the community to calculate.

** edit Scaling as implemented made content MUCH harder for mid tier and lower player groups, while only slightly slowing down top tier groups. I know many will disagree, but I think all the current lvl 70 dungeons should be shifted to lvl 80 dungeons, remove scaling, and set max stats for power and hit points. There are already enemy stat ratings which sort of serve as a cap already. This means those under the max values have room to grow as they work their way up the dungeon ladder, and players that have clearly grown past that same content can't ruin the experience for those trying to learn the mechanics.

just block the high end players from doing entry level dungeons if it's really that big of a deal that some murderize a low level dungeon (although I always appreciate the murderous higher levels when I'm levelling a toon). I honestly think they should just get rid of all the levelling stuff and just start the player out at level 80 and make it clear that levelling in this game is il. get them going on getting their boons and learning how to play doing the campaigns. or if they really want the system to stay with level 70 stuff. start them at level 70 and dont let them start levelling to 80, until they've done all their campaigns. that way they are pretty much guaranteed to know their class and they've been focusing their first few weeks on learning about stats and ilvl. move the dungeons from Castle never plus to level 80 increase their difficulty and rewards.

having people do level 1 thru 80 just sets the expectation that once they hit the highest level they're near bis. and that's just not true. there is no good tutorials out there explaining that they are really still rank noob at fresh 80.

jules

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Hey,

I think MMOs mean different things to different people. For you it is clearly to feel like a God but for others that might not be their primary driver. How many times when playing D and D do you do a module that is vastly lower level than your character? Isn't D and D as much about the experience of playing with others in immersive and challenging (Not just power but also problem solving) worlds and situations as it is about leveling up and being all powerful?

So in short (Hard to determine because you didn't tackle my questions) you feel that scaling up is fine but scaling down is a no no? So what is your suggestion in regard to an event where we want all players to share the 'experience' and feel relevant if certain players experience is dramatically reduced because the content is trivial to a % of players?

I have no bias here at this stage. I want to observe and learn. And note the goal is inclusivity not normalization.

Chris

I think it is hard to be inclusive of all player types without at the same time dimnishing either a vet players effort and invested time and proving too difficult for new players.
In my opinion the question is: Do you even want that?
Why would I want to be reduced to a newer players effort lvls, for example: bonding runestones / companions / enchant?

I agree with pretty much everything the smart ppl already said, @micky1p00 or @gabrieldourden or a lot of others who I didn't read yet (sorry) :

micky1p00 said:

While I'm sure some would like bash and smash everything, and it is a valid point, how a person who slayed some dragon gods, immortal liches, undead dragons and what not, suddenly takes several minutes to kill some ogre, I think that the issue is that the current scaling is actually hard coded caps.

So let's consider new vs veteran player first, why would anybody want to have the same experience as a new player when playing a toon that:
- was taken through all content, even put the effort in to actually finish boons in dreaded campaigns (no names needed)
- is in the (minimum) millions of AD spent you can't get back (BTC equipment, companions, companion upgrades, whatever)
- has played the latest content or some of it

I don't want to be sound mean, I'm curious. If I could usually carry my own weight in an endgame party, why would I want to have a hard time hitting redcaps? Isn't it already enough of an issue that everything in Sharandar stuns or kicks me, sends my flying, drains my AP?

Yes. I want to feel like a god: when I blink at a redcap, I expect it to run away, to be honest. At this point, enduring all of Neverembers talk, resucing his hide, scratching Lakkars private parts, yes: I expect to be well known in the world of Neverwinter, so yes, please, I don't wanna have to wait for my encounters to be up again to slay some spiders before they kick me into another MMO. (Try the Stronghold Spiders. Its wonderful.)

If I would consider veteran casual vs veteran bis, you can just read the posts here. We don't always see eye to eye, not even in my alliance, but I know that we would (mostly) agree on one thing:
If there is an event for 18k IL I can live with scaling only if it scales me to the appropriate stat cap if I have already reached it for content designed for my IL. (So, if I cap Tomm Stats atm, then I expect to cap stats anywhere else, anytime.) I don't want anything else touched. I want to slay that event, not like a godmode experience, but not like I actually have to pack some scrolls.
If there is an event for 14k IL I expect to slay it. I do. I don't want to hit maze engine mobs for half an hour because there is a confusion between the difficulty of mechanics vs a huge HP.

Sometimes a new guildie wants help in Hotenow lvling quests, or some RLQ dungeon, I don't know, all I know is that I ask them to invite me and I head to the dot on the map and slay whatever we run into. I can see, theoretically, that one could argue "but thats not teamplay! You don't even have to put any effort in!" Yeah, I shouldn't have to. I'm helping them. Thats what matters, thats what gets new player to interact with vets that have all that shiny stuff they think they'll never have: They ask, and we help them.
Now, if I had to actually stay in there forever because I cannot just godmode mobs in cloak tower, I would be out of this game fast.

It is already unsatisfying being "pretty done" with your main or your alts, because: I started my main (HR) by playing all quests (yeah... really) doing all content, working from the bottom up. That took time. If I wouldn't have been invited my guild a year after I started I would've never gotten anywhere, but I always had stuff to do. I spent more time on NW than I should have, considering the sleep-work-freetime-rota. I spent hundreds of hours on one toon (and some on all the others), only to get M16 - trying it out on preview, setting all my alts up again, investing a lot just to make them kinda ok again. And suddenly, after all of it, I was supposed to enjoy running bugged ndemos and dungeons that I ran hundred of times before only to see how they took twice as long and the only thing, really the only thing that stayed the same in the game was the rewards for it.

So, I actually reached out to play with new guildmates, no harm in trying stuff from the bottom up again to figure out how to get the former glory back, only to realise that new players, even tho I really enjoy them, are supposed to have the same experience after just getting here as me? They did one campaign and had access to everything I had access to. Free gear, free companion gear, even some enchants, I mean: yeah, I had access to it too. Years too late, tho.

(I forgot about boons: Yes, what @mentinmindmaker said, + I'm sick of running the same content as ppl that don't know what Omu is.)

TL;DR: Yes, I wanna feel like god. I wanna come home from work and life and kick HAMSTER in the game I played for so many hours.

sundancewanderingwolf

sobi#1980 said:

Jumping onto end end game content. I believe part of the reason why TOMM was disliked was because of it being a niche trial i.e. only for very hardcore gamers. Only you guys would know how much revenue TOMM brought but the matter of fact still remains that TOMM is actually a huge success. The reason i think it is disliked was because it introduced the holy trinity system into the game where players actually test their mettle.


As to why TOMM was a failure even among veterans. It was because the whole concept of the trial was gated behind few compulsory classes. I believe that the developer team failed to predict that such a trial would bring the pure holy trinity concept into the game for the first time in its history. In dungeons where hardcore veterans players clash, all that matters is skill. But when you bring in classes that are basically "who can spam faster" and still do crazy more dps, throws any sign of skill out of the window. You could have made TOMM a much bigger success had you balanced classes before its release and even to this day, you are completely ignoring the statistics.

Hi Chris, I agree 100% with what was said here.
I also have information that I learned from running with the very small % who can do this trial. They tested it and pleaded with the team to not base the trial off of them. They were ignored. Some of them also suggested there be 2 versions like demogorgon so that everyone could do it and not be left out. Allow for the legendary stuff to drop from the epic version and allow epic loot from the toned down version. The 1% of the players maybe 3% now, are like the current billionaires in the world today. They farm and hoard and sell leaving the rest of us feeling like "why do I even bother?". Nothing feels achievable right now for so many. The atmosphere that has been created is not a fun one... in fact it's very toxic. Most of us play games to escape the real world troubles and yet we find ourselves staring it right in the face in game now because of trials like this. Some of the best gear in the game drops here and these players are making millions off of it while so many will never see it, not until it's out of date years in the future. The people who work hard but can't invest a lot of money or time are put further and further in the distance. This makes the game no longer fun for them.
I've seen so many people and guilds leave the game... including close friends in my own guild and Alliance. It saddens me that things have come to this. As an Alliance leader, I've had a very difficult time helping people with end game. Things are constantly changing, bugs rarely get fixed and keep resurfacing, and players lose heart and stop playing. It's very sad to see. What can I say? I miss those people very much *gets sentimental* and that's where most of my anger comes from. These amazing people have left because of poor decisions by whoever has been calling the shots. I want my friends to have a reason to come back!
I'm really happy you're here and I hope you are able to turn things around because right now things are more broken than they have ever been. Sent you a message as well through the forums. Thank you for spending time with us!!!

micky1p00

jules#6770 said:

.. snip...

It is indeed absurd that (with some exaggeration) a new player and a player that is already years into the game find themselves almost at the same spot.

I'm against catch up gear, and while it is understandable that a new player is not expected to grind 6 years to get to end-game, there are better ways IMO, to shorten their path, one of those, like I've suggested, to create linear progress with gear and campaign currencies. To expedite new players completions, allow veterans to bring up alts if they wish, and overall incentive to play older dungeon via the Sybella quests (which group content should be added into)


To the scaling, I believe it is a compromise and a solution to a different problem, born long ago with the introduction of random queues.
Something like this:

Dwindling player population + long unresolved balance issues, bugs, and exploits ->
toxicity and balkanism with exorbitant lfg demands ->
Players mostly do not use the public queue system, using private channels, guilds, or zerg channels, each to their own ->
New players queue into dungeons which do not pop ->
New players think the game is dying, and leave ->
Devs see bounce numbers and queue pop numbers and panic ->
Random Queue solution was born trying to fix the symptom and the cause ->
Everyone predict that RQ will have severe issues with leveling players, especially with farmers. Forcing a clash of interests of new players who wish to explore and geared players who only need to get it done as fast as possible* ->
As expected, well geared players farm leveling dungeon and new players get worse experience than ever before ->
Devs figure it many moths after everyone already said it will happen, and panic again ->
The great idea of rework scaling is born ->
Attempt #1 failed ->
Attempt #2 failed->
Attempt #3 needed the whole stat system rework to get us where we are.

(* Interesting to note, that before the RQ AD reward in leveling dungeons, most players didn't step into those and focused on the higher dungeons with higher reward e.g. Farming ToS and higher)

As I see it, scaling was not meant to give veteran players any benefit at all, it was part of a solution meant to create an impression of vibrant active population (via random queues) for new players without HAMSTER up their dungeon experience by the geared players who are forced into those leveling and forgotten dungeons (scaling).

So the above and with the focus on the 2-3 most recent mods as the players main path, creates a semi abandoned content with a semi attempt to not throw it away or at least to not get backlash from either removing it (e.g mod6 dungeon removal) because it hurts new players experience, or backlash from keeping it and having veteran players ruining new players experience.

I don't know how other games solve the "older content" issue, but here it's an obvious bone in the throat for the dev team that they struggle with.

So is that scaling is a good thing? To us players, not so much. Is it perhaps necessarily evil that allows to keep old content and give a better experience for new players? Probably, and in the realm of something the current mini dev team can do, then we will have to live with it, though as I've wrote extensively, scaling can be still scaling, and not caps, veteran players do not need to be brought to the same level as redcap after slaying gods.
The distance can be shortened between almighty destroyer of worlds and a total pleb, so the pleb doesn't get trampled, but still a difference must be apparent.


PS:
I've asked in the other thread, with stream questions, what direction and where resources will be put, players that reached the level cap (end-game or in the way there) or new players.
What seems to me is that every time a new Dev (I generalize here the title) they level up a character, and try to fix minor issues in the leveling process. Reworking first zones, and leveling quests and some long forgotten zones, but the problem is while some changes are really nice, is that the leveling process is very short, what will set the tone of the game, the press, and the bitter posts on social media, is not leveling, but end-game.
To the devs, I can only say. Please for the love of the game, use Dev magic, and what not, and play on various stages, repeatedly leveling different characters to 80 and moving to the next is not playing the content you yourself create, nor we play.

sundancewanderingwolf

P.S. On a positive note, husband (who also plays) says:
"whoever designed and implemented the Sybella quests (Legacy) needs a raise! That's about the most positive thing I've seen lately, thank you!!!"

thefiresidecat

@micky1p00 good points! you forgot to add attempt three reworking the entire system, Failed.. because everyone started leaving the game.


I think everyone got so caught up in the process and what they could do to make new players happy they forgot the number one consideration.

IS IT FUN?

Do the players have any real reason to utilize it? Is there progression? Are the rewards commiserate with the expenditure? Will this retain players by giving them something compelling to grind for?

the answers to all these questions is currently, no.

adding a mentor system might be something that would work for new players though. if they gave incentive to take along a new player or two (not just the 6k bonus that means absolutely nothing to end gamers) but some extra reward that had an RNG chance of being very good indeed you'd probably see many partially formed parties que for it.

sobi

I do feel for you, to have to read all of this. Though, it seems as if you're enjoying it and i think i might me too . Let me briefly outline my insight into the core topics discussed in this forum, whilst highlighting epic responses from the playerbase, and hopefully that would give you a good insight into these topics.


SCALING:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

"Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all? What about events that all players would like to take part in but can't for example from an experiential standpoint".

What you call Scaling is making value for newcomers at the detriment of end gamers. First of all, let us clarify that all end gamers have been newcomers but vice versa, not so true. Then lets acknowledge that all end gamers have spend more time and effort in the game than newcomers. Finally, on average, end gamers have spent a lot more resources/money than newcomers. Why then are you sacrificing the latter for the former? Why even sacrifice anyone?

micky1p00 said:
Perception of progress:

"A player who has worked hard for their gear (or spent $) expect to see some benefit even if marginal. If pre scaled player A is 'stronger' than player B, then a good system will maintain this order, scale it, yes, but still Player A will remain > player B.
This is fundamental to the larger concept of MMO, the eternal hamster wheel where players gear up, become stronger, and get harder enemies. The important part of it, is that if Player A put a year of game time, then they expect it to reflect as compared to player B who didn't. This is the mentioned devaluation of progress, but in any scaling system devaluation expected, the problem is that in the current one it's annulled".

Bullseye! Is she right or is she right? But it isn't a huge problem for end gamers, that have skill which newcomers haven't yet encompassed. There are actually 2 issues, one is the way in which primary stats like armpen and critical strike and etc are scaled; so effectively making your hard earned power less effective (the most expensive stat in the game per 1k value). The 2nd is described well by gabriel below.

gabrieldourden said:
"Older content has no meaningful rewards. This is the real killer. Higher level/IL character hate scaling because it increases the time needed for the run and they get no real reward for the time they lose. Introducing different tiers of the same dungeon could help as you could give better rewards fo higher tiers".

Other than rAD, there are no rewards in older dungeons that are to be sought. So first, players are forced to play content that they do not want to, and then they are scaled on top. Bad news. Another issue is that hard earned gear usually has to be replaced with gear that focuses on armpen/critstrike, which is counter intuitive for a progression based game.

carloswartune#5709 said:
"I (personally) think that scaling, as a concept, is very interesting. For old players, it opens the possibility to keep old content relevant, and this is very important to Neverwinter since just 1 dungeon or trial or skirmish is released per mod. "

There has to be an incentive to run old content. Giving tiers to each dungeon would more or less may solve this but it will definitely segregate the community and queue times will shoot up.

My two cents

Make older content downscaled and upscaled i.e. all players are scaled to a benchmark. Meaning some will upscale and some will downscale. Give good rewards to provide incentive to end gamers. Then, give them the excuse that if you truly are skilled players, why do you need gear? ;P

Make newer content non-scaled and introduce rare rewards. Let the end gamers grind those rewards for a sense of progression. My previous suggestion in this forum about introducing benchmark timings that increase the chance of the loot the faster the dungeon/trial is completed could really make PUG really hyped in NW.



cwhitesidedev#9752 said:
"I think MMOs mean different things to different people. For you it is clearly to feel like a God but for others that might not be their primary driver."


MMO's mean progress, be it that you are into collection, gearing up to become the best or just enjoying the lore (which obviously has a sense of progression). MMO's need this progression and NW is probably one of the few MMO's out there that is extensively reliant on upgrading gear to progress. The whole game would contradict itself if it suddenly jumps from progression from gearing up to lets say a game like GW2 that have a progression in the sense of fashion items.



ACCESSIBILITY

josephskyrim said:Feedback Overview

"Let's have two versions of each dungeon/trial (at least the level 70 ones): the one we already have and a "story dungeon" instance."

This might solve the above issue.

thefabricant

Part 1:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Hey,

I think MMOs mean different things to different people. For you it is clearly to feel like a God but for others that might not be their primary driver. How many times when playing D and D do you do a module that is vastly lower level than your character? Isn't D and D as much about the experience of playing with others in immersive and challenging (Not just power but also problem solving) worlds and situations as it is about leveling up and being all powerful?

So in short (Hard to determine because you didn't tackle my questions) you feel that scaling up is fine but scaling down is a no no? So what is your suggestion in regard to an event where we want all players to share the 'experience' and feel relevant if certain players experience is dramatically reduced because the content is trivial to a % of players?

I have no bias here at this stage. I want to observe and learn. And note the goal is inclusivity not normalization.

Chris

I have thought long and hard about scaling and when I do like it in games, vs when I do not. These are my thoughts. The main advantage of scaling is that it keeps old content relevant long after its sell by date, which has the potential to make it easier for new players to run that content under the assumption that old players will want to run it as it isn't trivial and that it won't ruin the experience for new players if they run it with old players since it won't just be stormed through. It does however pose the following problems.

1. It kills immersion if you are scaled too hard. A universe where you put on new, better gear but end up no stronger than you were before has mechanics which breaks the world's verisimilitude.
   
2. It removes the fun part of getting stronger and seeing old content that was challenging becoming easier over time. Character progression is an important part of RPGs.
   
3. If new gear doesn't yield you any tangible improvements over old gear, then why put on the new gear.
   
4. Why run old content if its rewards aren't meaningful to you.
   

With that being said, I have seen scaling implemented in games before in a way which solves all of these problems, funnily enough, the way to do it is the counter stats system. As @micky1p00 pointed out, the counter stats system is basically a scaling system, where you scale the enemy but not the player. However, you cannot just stick the system onto enemies and expect it to work, content needs to be designed from the ground up with scaling in mind, you don't design content and then make it scale. The best example of scaling I have seen is the Delves mechanic in Path of Exile. How it works is as follows.

1. Delves is a mine generated in a procedural manner. It goes both across horizontally and down vertically and has multiple biomes.
   
2. The objective is to go down. The deeper the get, the more rewarding it becomes but the stronger the enemies become. They are scaled as you go down.
   
3. Rewards scale in 3 ways. Firstly, the chances good things drop increases the deeper you get, the quantity of good drops increase and there are some drops that are only obtained by reaching certain depths.
   
4. Occasionally, bosses are generated which are also scaled by the depth modifiers, which drop unique rewards.
   
5. Most of the rewards come in the form of crafting materials which are used to craft gear/
   
6. While you are going down, you need to move a cart that is lit up. Entering the darkness causes you to take damage rapidly until you die.
   
7. In order to move the cart, it costs a resource called Sulphite. The deeper you get, the more it costs.
   
8. In the delves, there is a resource called Azurite which you obtain, which is used to improve 3 statistics. The light radius of the cart, how much sulphite you can carry and your resistance to damage caused by the darkness. In addition to that, you can also use it for some consumables.
   
9. When you move the cart, it moves between specific checkpoints. Dying while the cart is moving places it at its previous checkpoint and does not refund the sulphite spent to move it.
   

What this system results in in practice, is that players go deeper and deeper until it becomes too difficult for them to progress as they keep dying. At this point, they then start pathing horizontally or upgrade their character. Furthermore, you can go back up the delves as far as you like, if you want to fight easier monsters. They will be less rewarding as the quantity of currency drops will be lower and some boss rewards will not be available to you, but the system deals with all of the problems highlighted above with scaling. You are encouraged to go deeper, because it becomes more rewarding the deeper you go, but at the same time the cost to go deeper also increases. Your character strength is preserved, yes, you are fighting scaled versions of the older enemies going further down, but if you go back up again, you will faceroll everything. If you want to help a friend further up the mines, you can do so. Furthermore it preserves the reason to improve your character, because if you do not, you will not be able to continue further down. From the ground up, this system is designed around scaling, it is not taking a zone with static enemies and then trying to scale the player and that is why it works.

I would like a system similar to this implemented in Neverwinter, complete with the additional resists that you must pay to improve in order to continue and the crafting materials. It would need to be modified of coarse, in order to make it designed around party play rather than solo play, but the point is, this is a system that makes scaling fun, rather than something to be disliked. The delves system was the singular most successful system in Path of Exile in terms of how well it was received, there is a part of the player base which would like to only play delves, who would be perfectly happy if it was the only feature the devs expanded on for the rest of the game. The only complains you see people make about it is that they want more of delves and all it really is, is a well designed scaling system.

rjc9000

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Hey,

I think MMOs mean different things to different people. For you it is clearly to feel like a God but for others that might not be their primary driver. How many times when playing D and D do you do a module that is vastly lower level than your character? Isn't D and D as much about the experience of playing with others in immersive and challenging (Not just power but also problem solving) worlds and situations as it is about leveling up and being all powerful?

For all the bluster and gusto of the startup screen proudly displaying "DnD" ... I think this game is more accurately described as "an action game with RPG elements that features DnD names and settings," rather than "a true DnD experience as close as you can get in a MMORPG."

I don't have much experience with the actual tabletop game, but what I have glanced at from player handbooks, online recounts, and meme laden homebrew (see: Chicken Infested Commoner), the reason story/immersion works in the tabletop game is because gameplay is directly integrated in the story.

If I want to talk things out rather than fight, I can do that with some diplomacy rolls.
If I want to scam everyone with tricks, illusion, or really hilarious persuasion, I can do that with the right application of magic.
If I want to mouth off to some NPC I don't like, I can do that, but I have to face the consequences of doing so.

Whereas NW, the gameplay is practically all combat. Sure, there are times where the player is doing non-combat stuff in universe, like infiltrating a party, except that the quest eventually devolves into forcing players to kill enemies.

Additionally, there are other aspects of the gameplay that attempt to trick me into thinking it's DnD based, but fail under closer inspection. For example, ability scores barely impact your overall build with bonuses clocking in at half a percent or a quarter of a percent per each point., or the fact that there is only one situation in the game that actually asks you to make a ability roll check.

And for all the gusto about story and setting, NW is not exactly very good at investing players in the story that aren't already fans of the setting.

Take for example, the reveal of Drizzt.

• To longtime fans of the book's, there's that "oh ****, it's Drizzt!" moment.
  
• As someone who hasn't read the books, I scratch my head and wonder why there's a million clones of this guy.
  All he does is that he shows up, tickles enemy HP bars, and makes me do all the work.
  

So why is this guy one of the most popular DnD characters? I'm sure the books are better written, but the portrayal in NW isn't exactly a great sell on making me want to figure out Drizzt's backstory.

Same goes for the characters and plots themselves.

• Why should I care that some warlock guy and this cleric have some disagreement like some soap opera?
  
• Why should I care about the Lord guy who runs Protectors Enclave, aside from "plot demands me to do so?" Not like Lord whatshisface was very thankful for my assistance, other than "here's a cape or two and starter gear for your efforts."
  
• The plots themselves and most of the promotional material are all about being some "epic hero" who saves the day from "evil cult/group/spies/insert bad guy of the week here". Not exactly setups that are great to explore character relationships.
  

I wouldn't be surprised there's a fairly large subset of NW players that came to be an "awesome epic hero" and don't really care about the story, because the game isn't exactly great at making the story a standout.
---------

I don't speak for everyone, but for the subset of players that @thefiresidecat /myself/a decent many others, we didn't come because we were die hard fans of the Forgotten Realms.

We came because the MMO was a action based MMORPG with fast combat and a combat system that attempted to do something different from the MMORPG formula.
Or because it might have been a console MMORPG that happened to be fun and fast paced to hold interest.
Or because our friends/family/significant others/etc tried it out and we wanted to join them.
Or because we liked the gameplay and stayed because of the people we met along the way.

The main appeal was its fast paced nature: I could use one of my abilities every few seconds instead of "do a cool thing, then spend the next 15 seconds being boring and just basic attacking". The system also had feats/passives/etc in place that would make it so you were stringing together your abilities for a good reason, rather than some passive 5% thing that runs in the background.

Some classes could never touch their At-wills, but required players to have faster fingers to string together the attacks under a time limit of a buff. Some classes dealt most of their damage with encounters, but you had to use your At-wills to make them more powerful or take the encounters off cooldown. Even the classes based around At-wills have more skills, buffs, debuffs, and feats that gave a good incentive to not just blindly hold down the At-will button all day.

Right now, most of the classes play like the one thing most of us wanted to avoid, use your cool ability and then spend many seconds holding down At-wills because there's nothing else to do.

As for not following the "MMO trinity", initially, NW set itself with crowd control, to follow the Striker/Leader/Defender/Controller thing of the 4e DnD.

Adds couldn't be instantly nuked like they could now, so now you had to have someone managed their position/keep them stunlocked while the rest of your team had to focus on other stuff. But, nowadays, all the enemies worth CC'ing are all immune to crowd control, or CCs have such a low duration that you may have well accidentally tripped them. Or adds are so pathetic that you instantly nuke them and move on.

There are more problems with NW's gameplay other than "slow cooldowns" or "not being a holy trinity based game" that could make it into a lengthy Word document detailing issues or feedback/areas for improvement, but I'd think you'd want a few separate threads for that.

thefabricant

Part 2:

I proposed such a system in a post I made earlier, here:

thefabricant said:

The current progression system has a number of issues, namely the following:

1) New gear always renders the entire previous system obsolete.
2) New dungeons render the old dungeons obsolete.
3) Each new module doesn't add "much" content for everyone, so there is always someone left dissatisfied.

Now, 1 and 2 would not be a problem, provided there was a significant amount of content at each module update, so everyone has something to do. However, as a result of logistics, there are not enough people making enough content to satisfy everyone and this leads to a situation where there is always somebody with nothing to do. My solution to this is an alternative dungeon mode added to the game, lets call it the "Journey into the Nine Hells" and it would function differently to the core game and have an alternative method of gearing to support it. The way it would work is as follows:

1) The mode would be a 5 man instance.
2) The majority of each instance within the dungeon is procedurally generated. Reaching the end of the instance will allow you to go on to a deeper level. Every 20 levels down you go, there is a handcrafted boss encounter.
3) As you go deeper, enemies have larger and larger multipliers to their damage and HP. To counter this, players can invest AD or Guild Marks into 2 additional stats, which would exist on their stat sheets and counter these inflated values, but would have no function outside of this mode.
4) Each zone would have the staircase up to the previous zone, the staircase down to the next level and then a branching corridor on the same level, the purpose of this will be outlined in the rewards section.
5) Every 50 floors will feature a new biome, with different aesthetics. Some biomes will only occur after specific depths are achieved. Once you get deep enough, some of the biomes would stop occurring.
6) After a group decides to stop progressing together, it "saves" your progress as the furthest zone your group reaches. If any member of that group then decides to continue later with another group of 5, the next group can start from the furthest point reached by any 1 person. This comes with the downside that those players may not have sufficient resistances and penetrations to progress at that level.

So, how is this system rewarding? Well I would do it like this:
1) Masterwork charts no longer send players questing in the overworld, and are removed from the game. Instead, rare professions nodes are found within this new system.
2) The deeper the depth you are at, the more likely you are to receive good rewards from nodes.
3) The node locations are not, "fixed," unlike they are currently. Instead they are procedurally generated within each biome. A zone could have anywhere between 0-10 nodes. .
4) The boss encounter zones every 20 levels would then provide access to boss drops used for crafting.

This additional system has the following advantages:
1) It gives players something to do outside of the core gameplay, without increasing their power level above the level of the core game.
2) It creates a new AD sink (increasing your offensive+defensive stat, in order to progress further within the mode).
3) It makes farming profession materials completely unbottable by any bots currently existing within Neverwinter.
4) It adds an element of gameplay to masterwork professions, aside from just repetitive tasks.
5) It gives players something to do during the low periods of mods, when there isn't much else to do.
6) It retains the current guild mark sink, while arguably making it even stronger than before for deep progression.

To add to this idea, I think that at some arbitrary depth (lets say 1000 for example) there would be a world boss. The boss would feature the following:

1) Quadrillions of HP (it needs enough to survive 1000's of people beating on it over multiple fight periods).
2) There would only be a single, shared HP bar for the boss, but it would exist in multiple instances.
3) Upon killing the boss, the entire dungeon mode will be reset and people will be rewarded both on how much they invested into boons etc and on how much they contributed to killing the boss. The reward for AD investment will be in the form of crafting reagents and the reward for killing the boss will range for new recipe unlocks/mounts to new crafting tools/artisans. The reset completely resets all progression, removing the boons payed for to make going deeper possible.
4) The zone would be accessible by groups of 20 at a time. Once a 21st person joins, they are put in a new instance.
5) The zone will not always be available and instead be available at the start of the hour, for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, the bosses hp is frozen and it "flees". The idea is a prolonged boss fight that takes several weeks and 1000's of people fighting it for it to die.
6) Each time the boss is defeated, a unique title for that specific generation of the boss is handed out, as well as a unique item.
7) If any group reaches the boss, a portal that leads directly to the boss is made available to everyone. This way the actual boss fight becomes accessible to all, even if they are not interested in farming materials on the trip down. The rewards from the boss fight would be different from the rewards from charts.

This adds a unique element to the progression of this system.

This system rewards all types of players. It rewards the new players because they can farm on the top, easier layers and sell materials to crafters. It rewards endgame players because they can progress deeply for better drop chances and it rewards guilds who are in the process of upgrading, by giving them an infinite guild mark sink with the chance of gaining profits. It also adds a unique boss to the game, for people who like boss killing.

Another design which could work is a PVE leaderboard system, with dungeons that allow you to gradually increase their difficulty. Each time you complete a harder version, it allows you to run another version which is even more scaled. At the end of the month, the team which gets the furthest is given a reward. At the start of a month, players have the option to "check in" with a team which they will compete in for that month. In addition to the reward for getting deeper, crafting materials can be awarded from monsters. Increasing the difficulty increases the quantity of drops. This incentivizes people more casual to involve themselves in the system, even if they have no interest in competing for number 1.

To close off my thoughts on scaling, the problem with it is definitely with the scaling of the players and not the scaling of enemies, which causes it to leave a bad taste in people's mouth. Furthermore, not everything should be scaled. Campaign zones have no reason to be.

ecrana

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Scaling
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all?

First, I want to say that I love the amount of interaction from both @""cwhitesidedev#9752" and @skingdev#1102

It's nice to have back and forth communication. It has been sorely lacking for a long time.

Regarding scaling, boy you opened that can up so you are indeed a brave man.

I would say that scaling in games is not something I hate in general. But the way the scaling was handled in Neverwinter, well, that I do hate.

I think for most mid to end gamers, the point of contention lies with a loss of progression when doing older content. We all improved toons to get through things faster/easier not to get stuck in something that takes 5x as long now. When scaling came out one of my guildies got out-dpsed by a player with crappier gear in Tiamat and almost fell over. Then he compared stats and realized that his BiS, almost fully rank 15'ed toon had WORSE stats then the guy running in there with rank 9s and 10s on. Talk about kicking your vets in the teeth.

There's also another impact on the overall community. There were times in the past when we would run lower levels through content to teach them how it was done. Or a buddy just wants to run on a newer toon he's building up. Or a returning player has fallen behind and we would help them catch up. With scaling, the desire to help people has gone down. I don't even run random Qs often anymore because it's the one-two punch of "scaling" and "will i get placed in something i don't like with a bad group that can't finish it". It was one thing in the past to carry people. Now we're expected to carry them and be handicapped?

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

So in short (Hard to determine because you didn't tackle my questions) you feel that scaling up is fine but scaling down is a no no? So what is your suggestion in regard to an event where we want all players to share the 'experience' and feel relevant if certain players experience is dramatically reduced because the content is trivial to a % of players?

I would say that if you're creating something along the lines of Tales of Old, and you want everyone to experience it within reason, then scaling up is good. I don't feel that players above the required level should be scaled down at all but can maybe there is a happy medium. Just not the current level of scaling. It's really nothing more than a punishment for someone having put more time & money into the game than someone that started a month ago.

Obviously I'm biased on my end. But I also don't feel like ALL content should be accessible to ALL players. Some things should be earned in some form which would naturally close the gap between lowest entrant to content and vet players.

And scaling has made events that were fun seem downright torturous now. CTA events for instance. 10 runs per day....that could have taken me 20-40 minutes pre-scaling depending on group. Now, it's at least an hour a day on just that one event.

I think there have been some good ideas that have come through over the last year from the team but the implementation of almost every single one of them has left a lot to be desired.

sobi

thefabricant said:

Part 1:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

Hey,

I think MMOs mean different things to different people. For you it is clearly to feel like a God but for others that might not be their primary driver. How many times when playing D and D do you do a module that is vastly lower level than your character? Isn't D and D as much about the experience of playing with others in immersive and challenging (Not just power but also problem solving) worlds and situations as it is about leveling up and being all powerful?

So in short (Hard to determine because you didn't tackle my questions) you feel that scaling up is fine but scaling down is a no no? So what is your suggestion in regard to an event where we want all players to share the 'experience' and feel relevant if certain players experience is dramatically reduced because the content is trivial to a % of players?

I have no bias here at this stage. I want to observe and learn. And note the goal is inclusivity not normalization.

Chris

I have thought long and hard about scaling and when I do like it in games, vs when I do not. These are my thoughts. The main advantage of scaling is that it keeps old content relevant long after its sell by date, which has the potential to make it easier for new players to run that content under the assumption that old players will want to run it as it isn't trivial and that it won't ruin the experience for new players if they run it with old players since it won't just be stormed through. It does however pose the following problems.

1. It kills immersion if you are scaled too hard. A universe where you put on new, better gear but end up no stronger than you were before has mechanics which breaks the world's verisimilitude.
   
2. It removes the fun part of getting stronger and seeing old content that was challenging becoming easier over time. Character progression is an important part of RPGs.
   
3. If new gear doesn't yield you any tangible improvements over old gear, then why put on the new gear.
   
4. Why run old content if its rewards aren't meaningful to you.
   

With that being said, I have seen scaling implemented in games before in a way which solves all of these problems, funnily enough, the way to do it is the counter stats system. As @micky1p00 pointed out, the counter stats system is basically a scaling system, where you scale the enemy but not the player. However, you cannot just stick the system onto enemies and expect it to work, content needs to be designed from the ground up with scaling in mind, you don't design content and then make it scale. The best example of scaling I have seen is the Delves mechanic in Path of Exile. How it works is as follows.

1. Delves is a mine generated in a procedural manner. It goes both across horizontally and down vertically and has multiple biomes.
   
2. The objective is to go down. The deeper the get, the more rewarding it becomes but the stronger the enemies become. They are scaled as you go down.
   
3. Rewards scale in 3 ways. Firstly, the chances good things drop increases the deeper you get, the quantity of good drops increase and there are some drops that are only obtained by reaching certain depths.
   
4. Occasionally, bosses are generated which are also scaled by the depth modifiers, which drop unique rewards.
   
5. Most of the rewards come in the form of crafting materials which are used to craft gear/
   
6. While you are going down, you need to move a cart that is lit up. Entering the darkness causes you to take damage rapidly until you die.
   
7. In order to move the cart, it costs a resource called Sulphite. The deeper you get, the more it costs.
   
8. In the delves, there is a resource called Azurite which you obtain, which is used to improve 3 statistics. The light radius of the cart, how much sulphite you can carry and your resistance to damage caused by the darkness. In addition to that, you can also use it for some consumables.
   
9. When you move the cart, it moves between specific checkpoints. Dying while the cart is moving places it at its previous checkpoint and does not refund the sulphite spent to move it.
   

What this system results in in practice, is that players go deeper and deeper until it becomes too difficult for them to progress as they keep dying. At this point, they then start pathing horizontally or upgrade their character. Furthermore, you can go back up the delves as far as you like, if you want to fight easier monsters. They will be less rewarding as the quantity of currency drops will be lower and some boss rewards will not be available to you, but the system deals with all of the problems highlighted above with scaling. You are encouraged to go deeper, because it becomes more rewarding the deeper you go, but at the same time the cost to go deeper also increases. Your character strength is preserved, yes, you are fighting scaled versions of the older enemies going further down, but if you go back up again, you will faceroll everything. If you want to help a friend further up the mines, you can do so. Furthermore it preserves the reason to improve your character, because if you do not, you will not be able to continue further down. From the ground up, this system is designed around scaling, it is not taking a zone with static enemies and then trying to scale the player and that is why it works.

I would like a system similar to this implemented in Neverwinter, complete with the additional resists that you must pay to improve in order to continue and the crafting materials. It would need to be modified of coarse, in order to make it designed around party play rather than solo play, but the point is, this is a system that makes scaling fun, rather than something to be disliked.

Path of Exile is known for its endless dungeons. With a game like Neverwinter, this can become the next big thing. I also thought of this before but i presumed the man power was lacking in NW. I wouldn't second anything that Fabricant mentioned, this system will suit neverwinter more than POE but it has to be made so that the holy trinity is preserved i.e. a party must be required.

This will sate end gamers infinitely. You can then focus more deeply in campaigns and story for casuals.