We want more content like ToMM. Its great. Makes players have a goal to upgrade their characters. We also want easier versions of hardest content with lesser rewards for other players so they can enjoy and learn the mechanics.
We want variety of ways to play each class. That means more relevant feats and class features. Now 90% of them are so bad that its embarassing. Also class bugfixes should be a priority.
We want that some items behind RNG are also obtainable grinding. No matter if the grind is hard but putting some very important class items only available for RNG makes you feel so bad when you have bad luck. (For example companion gear and armor from ZOK boxes or alabaster weapons)
Thank you and good luck
Hi Darthpotater,
Again thanks for taking the time to be part of the CDP. Looking forward to evolve the game with your and and the communities help.
When you say 'we' it comes across as though you are speaking for everyone who plays. So my question is to you: what about players who want to experience ToMM but who can't gain entry and obviously can't get close to completing any of therelated content. Note i am not looking for thoughts in regard to normalization. Instead how do we make all of our content more inclusive to our players. What are the benefits for all the players of this?
We want that some items behind RNG are also obtainable grinding. No matter if the grind is hard but putting some very important class items only available for RNG makes you feel so bad when you have bad luck. (For example companion gear and armor from ZOK boxes or alabaster weapons)
I believe our systems team have plans for just this that relates to players of all levels globally. I will follow up.
Chris
Hi Neighbour (thee is from Stoke-On-Trent),
Chris, I feel as if you want everyone to be able to participate in every content in the game. If that is your set goal, i am afraid, this game would need a complete Overhaul.
Let me give you an example. In the forums, you'll commonly find players referring to TOMM for the 1% of players. I beg to differ; it is but for everyone, until such time that you meet the requirements. This sense of progression is an incentive for players to upgrade and face a challenge. This isn't alien to MMO's out there, many content in other vastly populated MMO's are only completed by a very small percentage of their population and those are the big daddies I am talking about.
The reason why this kind of progression makes sense in NW than most other MMO's is because of it's reliance on upgrading gear. That's also where scaling falls short off.
If you strip off gear upgrading, you'll effectively will strip off a huge part of your revenue and probably the sense of progression for the end gamers.
In short, i am trying to get across the point is that there is no overlap between a casual player and an end game player. They are two sides of the same coin. That is also why you see many suggestions that are actually segregating the players i.e. tier based system and etc and I have previously mentioned that you would need to strike a balance between catering for both of these population.
Fabricant's response on creating a similar system to Path of Exile with an endless dungeon can easily sate the end gamers for a long time. Perhaps the same kind of system allows story based implementation for casuals? You basically get to choose if you want to run the story version (where you will have to wait for cutscenes to end) and a version where you are there to grind and progress deeper to get better rewards. This would mean that there would really be no need for campaigns and those "fetch", "sit", "jump" training kind of quests. The latter only gets on your nerves and many MMO's never learn and still waste time on vastly outdated method of making content.
Hey Sobi,
Thanks for your reply. I was born in Macclesfield but spent a lot of my early dev days in Leamington with Codemasters and BigBig Studios.
Some great insight in your post and it allows me to reinforce the goal (at least as it pertains to this thread):
'I feel as if you want everyone to be able to participate in every content in the game'
I would like us to think about (which we have been thanks all) the goal being to be able to have everyone participate (where appropriate) in the 'Experience' and the systems, mechanics and progression that make the game compelling and fun so we have a more focused community. The goal is not normalisation in any way shape or form. So the idea would be to have a hardcore trial with an easier version with nearly identical mechanics. Rewards for both sets of players would be aspirational and for the less progressed group there would still be the compulsion to do the Trial in hardcore mode as they increase their viability through progression and related rewards to be able to do so. Effectively allowing the community to enjoy the experiences we create and to properly align players in terms of progression goals.
Great conversation. Lets keep it going!
Chris
Hi Chris,
A bit about myself. Studied Pharmacy and now a trainee solicitor.
I see, you have a nice and simple goal set out in front of you and now you want suggestions to make it come to realization. I like the idea.
From my perspective, you would need to keep a close eye on:
If there is enough content to sate the players? Right now, NW is in the negative of this and i really mean NEGATIVE. If there are enough players to be able to segregate them into difficulty tiers? As it stands, the queue times are very long. Securing some kind of benefit to those who have spend resources into the game. So as for now, TOMM is a very good reason to spend resources to earn good rewards. That's why i called it a success.
I feel like campaigns would have to disappear in some form. The best way to achieve the above goal with NW's current manpower would be as you have stated, content has to be graded so that the same content can sate both types of players. But, the third thing to keep a note of is as I have mentioned before, does it provide enough content? So therefore there must be rewards that players can grind without any daily cap. Grinding is a form of progression, but currently NW is doing it all wrong with having daily caps. My friend recently said to me, "I got nothing to grind, what kind of MMO has nothing to grind?", he cracked a nut with a sledgehammer here.
So I advice that story based, endless dungeons is the next big thing. Create a one big campaign like Undermountain, but instead of having solo quests, let parties have quests which are story based and force players to follow cut scenes. Then, have a hard version of the same campaign, where story can be turned off and players basically try to go as deep as possible. I believe it should sate them easily for few months until your next module. Of course, give them incentive to upgrade to go deeper, and at the same time grind grind grind whenever they want to. To keep the money flow healthy, keep some items in ZEN that will be necessary to progress deeper into the dungeon but cheap.
So in a way, the story version will sate the completely D&D lore lovers. The no story mode will gate less geared players until they are unable to progress. Give them reasons to grind at the same time as these are usually young players who wouldn't want to spend but would rather play for hours to upgrade gear. Then, those who are casual in a sense that they would rather spend to progress, they will soon realise that money can't buy skill as they progress deeper into the dungeon. This sates the hardcore players.
Conclusion
The goal is to sate both newcomers and end gamers with the same content, that reflects NW's manpower. At the same time, the lore lovers get to enjoy the pure version of the story with their friends and the grinders get a non-stop grinding missions. The hardcore players get to test their mettle as they delve deeper into the dungeon/campaign. All of this, while keeping a constant and healthy supply into the game for the survival of the business. Just remember the the 3 important things, grind, lore and endless progression. I hope you can now fix the rest of the puzzle with the community's support.
Feedback Overview Boons, We all have and need Boons they an important part of the game, but after 6-7 years of 2-3 campaigns per year that were designed for a minimum of 4 weeks doing the same quests daily, we get the point that a new player get lv80 and have no boons facing weeks and weeks of dailies in several different maps.
Lets see, lets say we need 15min to do the daily on 1 campaign: 1-Tyranny of dragon 2-The Maze Engine 3-Sharandar 4-Underdark 5-Dread Ring 6-Storm King’s Thunder + Somi 7-IceWind Dale 8-The cloacked Ascendery 9-Jungles of Chult 10-Ravenloft 15min x10 = 150min = 2 and half hours (not including new campaigns)
Those 2 almost 3 hours of play time daily for 4-5 weeks are not fun. And lets face it we all have a Life, 8 hrs of sleep 8 hrs at work, most of us don’t even have 3 hrs to play each day even less to do all those boons/campaigns. We all have suffer with this but we did it bit by bit since when a new module came out we were done with the previous. This gets tedious and a lot of player quit cuz they don't see progress.
Feedback Goal Reduce the time needed to finish old campaigns.
Feedback Functionality Double or triple the currency each quest gives.
Risks & Concerns The problem/Risk I can see happening are old player, like myself, complaining about all the time they spent there and new player now have it easy, but at same time they complain that most player they find don’t even have all boons.
Feedback Overview Lv 80 dungeons, after Mod 16 we got 1 lv 80 dungeon and 1 trial (Lomm/Tomm), I think we all agree when I say 2 of the best dungeons in game with a good design and Boss Mechanic. But those 2 are what we can Call Endgame Dungeon/Trial. All other are Lv70 and useless to help my New Guild members gearing. We miss a Middle game Dungeon or Dungeons. I Used to love getting new guild member getting lv70 and then have 3-4-5 dungeons were I could take them to help gearing. Now that impossible, lets say we get 3 27ilv member from the guild all very experienced and get 2 new player with 20-21ilv and go do Lomm its impossible to pass 1st boss. All other dungeons in game, all lv70 were I can take them are useless giving lv70 gear, and artifacts that are so useless that a rare drop in a chest is sold in AH for 100ad and there’s piles of them even the filler artifacts u get free from Barovia or Under Mountain are better status wise and no need to refine.
Feedback Goal Have a place/dungeons where I can go with a party of 2 new player and 3 veterans where we all can have fun and end-up helping gearing the new lv80 players.
Feedback Functionality Bring more Lv80 dungeons/Skirmishes not totally endGame.
Risks & Concerns Old Player with not like having new easier lv80 Dungeons and will complain, veteran player may use this as a place to farm something (bound to acc/char loot).
Feedback Overview In terms of accessibility of neverwinter, what I often observe in neverwinter is that new inexperienced players are having difficulty progressing beyond much of the initial content simply because they are often expecting a more linear storyline in the game but quickly become overwhelmed by several different stories all happening simultaneously, much of which by the time a player completes one ongoing story, they have considerably out-leveled both the maps and the rewards of the other storylines, as well as being presented by a dozen more new stories all at once. Many of which, although are great stories, are otherwise unnecessary for the player to even complete, yet many players don't realize this and compulsively try to complete all the ongoing quests chronologically. Eventually becoming mired in the dregs and walking away feeling resentful that they did all that for nothing that substantially benefitted their character. Given neverwinter's dungeons & dragons theme, much of the demographic this game appeals to, come to the table expecting some good storytelling, and in this regard neverwinter does provide, but considering that neverwinter is also an mmorpg, a totally linear story cannot be possible, and that's to be expected to some degree. Meanwhile, when the experienced neverwinter player starts a new character, they already know they can systematically simply play through the first 2 or 3 maps. Personally I like to stop after neverdeath graveyard because I enjoy the clockwork tomb dungeon at the end. Also then start AI campaign, and grind random queues until lvl.60, at which point start Elemental Evil, Maze Engine, and Sharandar. Afterwards its 10 more lvls of that until Well of Dragons, Dread Ring, Caer Konig, Chult and others campaigns a player can grind simultaneously until lvl.80 when they can begin the Undermountain content, and then backtrack and complete the old campaigns afterwards. What seems to be occurring for new players is that they are being confronted with a great deal of content which is not particularly rewarding during the lvling phase for the amount of effort invested in it, but until someone actually tells them otherwise they have no idea they could be directing their efforts more efficiently.
Feedback Goal While Both the AI campaign, and legacy system was a great step forward to streamlining this process for all players, (new & vet) it still leaves those first time players often feeling confused and frustrated about what to prioritize and where to focus their efforts. What it seems we need to overcome is the steep character progression curve, but all the while maintaining a fast paced and compelling storytelling experience. Also players expect that their efforts are appropriately rewarded with items or currency which is relatively to them.
Feedback Functionality How do we resolve this without just deleting all the great old content that many players are still looking for, but at the same time maintaining an efficient player experience? Well of course in a perfect world (no pun intended), we would simply do both, give players an entirely new low level story arc, with a really strong story that is both compelling but also fast-paced enough that they aren't finding themselves doing too much repetitive grinding before progressing the story. Possibly even offer players a variety of dialog, selectable rewards or even quests during their story arc based on choices made in conversations with npc's. Although going at it this route is a massive undertaking, it's also a massive opportunity to maybe replace some of the old with new and perhaps even more significant locations, there are many notable places in Faerun such as Waterdeep which is an integral location to both Lord Neverember's origins and Undermountain's history (which I think many of our story loving players would love to indulge in and would help construct a more linear story arc from beginning to end), not to mention places like Nalanther Ilses, the ghost city of Velen, the orc stronghold of Murann, etc...
Risks & Concerns Removing many of the obsolete maps and quests could simplify things, but that also means reworking portions of the games current storyline as well as backtracking through neverwinter's web of interdependent quests that will either reference obsolete locations, npc's or physically run a player back through many of those low level maps (such as the EE quests take player back into ebon downs, a map that could otherwise be skipped completely, or the tyranny of dragons maps which take players back through several different maps to battle the dragons, as well as the maze engine repeatable daily quests, and likely many more). But there's no reason to completely remove the old maps, they can be left in-game and invisible from map unless a player has a quest there, make them optional maps where players can do quests for gold or other selectable rewards. Nor am I suggesting we 'nerf' the ability for experienced players to power through the first 60 levels or so quickly, I'm suggesting we streamline the process offering a less overwhelming experience to the new players.
@oremonger#9999 a guy that was in a guild I was in had Als. I have no idea how he was getting around in the game. I think he mostly was here for the social aspect. he did a lot of master crafting for the guild. games like this can be a lifeline for the severely disabled. if there is anything that can done to make this kind of content at least a little user friendly for people in situations like this, i'd consider it a great charity. it isn't something that going that extra mile for will necessarily pay back in the expense for the studio (although it might. from what I understand they can be whales because it's such a godsend to have something they can do so they buy) but it's one of the few instances where a gaming studio can truly make a difference on someone's actual quality of life.
I think something needs to be done for those who just aren't any good at video games, but enjoy the game (and if they felt they could make progress would spend money on it, too). I think someone posted about different difficulty levels for the same content... I like this idea. With different rewards, perhaps you can still get the highest rewards but you have to complete it more times for example, but at least people who are terrible at games like this can build a fun powerful endgame character. I've never been good at video games, I can't multitask and I've never had the finger speed/typing ability despite much effort an practice. I don't have any handicaps, I am just terrible at, and have been my whole life. Plus some people aren't into really difficult games, but they might really enjoy the stories and really enjoy playing the game. Being able to adjust the difficulty allows those who want really hard/nearly impossible challenges, can do so and reap immediate high rewards for doing so. Those who can't/don't can still enjoy the game and the stories and the content, and can achieve high rewards for more times doing it, for putting in the time.
I think this is balanced and fair and can bring in more people who will get to enjoy all the aspects of the game, the stories, the adventures, the battles. If there would be a way for any player ant any time to alter the difficulty of the challenges they face, that would be great... I don't think you can mix tiers of difficulty for a group of players, but they could be grouped by their chosen tier for queued content. Non-queued content perhaps there is more flexibility there... You can still have people achieve access to certain things with item level, or certain missions completed and things like that, so that the story/game still progresses for the player the way it's intended to... Maybe those ideas can be a starting point...
This has been on my mind for a very long time. There are things I will likely never get to play and experience in this game otherwise, and I'm sure there are others that feel similarly. I can also say this much, I am much more likely to spend money on a game that I really enjoy getting into and exploring. I haven't renewed my vip and I don't really know if/when I will. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
if you read thru Chris did mention that story dungeons were something they were considering.
3
lantern22Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,111Arc User
Do you and other members of the CDP feel that scaling has any value at all?
For me personally, the way that scaling works at the moment is horrible. For starters it doesn't seem to make content any more challenging, it just makes it take longer. The only time it seems to add to a challenge is when you are racing against a clock (so maybe sometimes in Tiamat). It also takes away from the sense of achievement when you build up your toon.
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.
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'm happy enough for a challenge, but I don't really want stuff that is old, that I've done 1000's of times and should have "outleveled" long ago, taking a long time - that's like rubbing salt into a wound. MSP (spell plague caverns) is a classic example - making that dungeon take 3x longer in no way makes it more enjoyable, it just makes if god awful and everytime it comes up I have to fight off the strong desire to just abandon it on the spot.
How many times when playing D and D do you do a module that is vastly lower level than your character?
Not very often. But that is why I want new modules to be challenging. However, this doesn't equate to wanting old modules to be artificially inflated in difficulty. If I'm going back, it is to grind stuff, don't want that taking longer than it should and hammering away at something with at wills is super boring (to me anyway).
Challenging should be incorporate things like needing fast reflexes / pay attention to boss "tells", good timing, having to incorporate dungeon mechanics, perhaps coordination within the group. Examples of this would be VT back when you had to pick quadrants to disable the caskets, CoDG push pull, FBI everfrost etc.
In CN there was a time that if you mistimed a block of Orcu's attacks, you got one shot (if you were my GF anyway) and it was a wipe - that was challenging & fun to me and you had a sense of satisfaction afterwards.
I don't like how Tong, CoDG, FBI, MSP etc. got gimped. The dragon turtle now in FBI is just sooooo boring, Orcus - boring.
Finally, I wanted to elaborate on my previous request for tiered dungeon difficulties. If epic and normal versions of the Dungeons existed then this would give players a chance to learn mechanics. For CoDG you could have the epic version where if you fell off the platform, you didn't come back (i.e. like it used to be) and the normal / easy version could be how it is now, the easy version could have a reduced push / pull intensity and the Epic version could have it more intense like it was when CoDG first got released. Players could train on the easy version and then have a crack at the Epic.
Same thing for MSP at the second boss.
The Epic version of FBI could still have the turtle gaining rage stacks, so you had to use the mechanics to stop it from slamming
Chris, I must say that this discussion has given me hope that the game that I have enjoyed for the last 5+ years might have some chance of recovering to be as enjoyable as it was. If you back this up with some action and its not just empty words, I'll go back to supporting this game financially. It was a very good game and still has a lot of potential. It's just an OK game at the moment that has been gimped.
Post edited by lantern22 on
6
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
We want more content like ToMM. Its great. Makes players have a goal to upgrade their characters. We also want easier versions of hardest content with lesser rewards for other players so they can enjoy and learn the mechanics.
We want variety of ways to play each class. That means more relevant feats and class features. Now 90% of them are so bad that its embarassing. Also class bugfixes should be a priority.
We want that some items behind RNG are also obtainable grinding. No matter if the grind is hard but putting some very important class items only available for RNG makes you feel so bad when you have bad luck. (For example companion gear and armor from ZOK boxes or alabaster weapons)
Thank you and good luck
Hi Darthpotater,
Again thanks for taking the time to be part of the CDP. Looking forward to evolve the game with your and and the communities help.
When you say 'we' it comes across as though you are speaking for everyone who plays. So my question is to you: what about players who want to experience ToMM but who can't gain entry and obviously can't get close to completing any of therelated content. Note i am not looking for thoughts in regard to normalization. Instead how do we make all of our content more inclusive to our players. What are the benefits for all the players of this?
We want that some items behind RNG are also obtainable grinding. No matter if the grind is hard but putting some very important class items only available for RNG makes you feel so bad when you have bad luck. (For example companion gear and armor from ZOK boxes or alabaster weapons)
I believe our systems team have plans for just this that relates to players of all levels globally. I will follow up.
Chris
Hi Neighbour (thee is from Stoke-On-Trent),
Chris, I feel as if you want everyone to be able to participate in every content in the game. If that is your set goal, i am afraid, this game would need a complete Overhaul.
Let me give you an example. In the forums, you'll commonly find players referring to TOMM for the 1% of players. I beg to differ; it is but for everyone, until such time that you meet the requirements. This sense of progression is an incentive for players to upgrade and face a challenge. This isn't alien to MMO's out there, many content in other vastly populated MMO's are only completed by a very small percentage of their population and those are the big daddies I am talking about.
The reason why this kind of progression makes sense in NW than most other MMO's is because of it's reliance on upgrading gear. That's also where scaling falls short off.
If you strip off gear upgrading, you'll effectively will strip off a huge part of your revenue and probably the sense of progression for the end gamers.
In short, i am trying to get across the point is that there is no overlap between a casual player and an end game player. They are two sides of the same coin. That is also why you see many suggestions that are actually segregating the players i.e. tier based system and etc and I have previously mentioned that you would need to strike a balance between catering for both of these population.
Fabricant's response on creating a similar system to Path of Exile with an endless dungeon can easily sate the end gamers for a long time. Perhaps the same kind of system allows story based implementation for casuals? You basically get to choose if you want to run the story version (where you will have to wait for cutscenes to end) and a version where you are there to grind and progress deeper to get better rewards. This would mean that there would really be no need for campaigns and those "fetch", "sit", "jump" training kind of quests. The latter only gets on your nerves and many MMO's never learn and still waste time on vastly outdated method of making content.
Hey Sobi,
Thanks for your reply. I was born in Macclesfield but spent a lot of my early dev days in Leamington with Codemasters and BigBig Studios.
Some great insight in your post and it allows me to reinforce the goal (at least as it pertains to this thread):
'I feel as if you want everyone to be able to participate in every content in the game'
I would like us to think about (which we have been thanks all) the goal being to be able to have everyone participate (where appropriate) in the 'Experience' and the systems, mechanics and progression that make the game compelling and fun so we have a more focused community. The goal is not normalisation in any way shape or form. So the idea would be to have a hardcore trial with an easier version with nearly identical mechanics. Rewards for both sets of players would be aspirational and for the less progressed group there would still be the compulsion to do the Trial in hardcore mode as they increase their viability through progression and related rewards to be able to do so. Effectively allowing the community to enjoy the experiences we create and to properly align players in terms of progression goals.
Great conversation. Lets keep it going!
Chris
Hi Chris,
A bit about myself. Studied Pharmacy and now a trainee solicitor.
I see, you have a nice and simple goal set out in front of you and now you want suggestions to make it come to realization. I like the idea.
From my perspective, you would need to keep a close eye on:
If there is enough content to sate the players? Right now, NW is in the negative of this and i really mean NEGATIVE. If there are enough players to be able to segregate them into difficulty tiers? As it stands, the queue times are very long. Securing some kind of benefit to those who have spend resources into the game. So as for now, TOMM is a very good reason to spend resources to earn good rewards. That's why i called it a success.
I feel like campaigns would have to disappear in some form. The best way to achieve the above goal with NW's current manpower would be as you have stated, content has to be graded so that the same content can sate both types of players. But, the third thing to keep a note of is as I have mentioned before, does it provide enough content? So therefore there must be rewards that players can grind without any daily cap. Grinding is a form of progression, but currently NW is doing it all wrong with having daily caps. My friend recently said to me, "I got nothing to grind, what kind of MMO has nothing to grind?", he cracked a nut with a sledgehammer here.
So I advice that story based, endless dungeons is the next big thing. Create a one big campaign like Undermountain, but instead of having solo quests, let parties have quests which are story based and force players to follow cut scenes. Then, have a hard version of the same campaign, where story can be turned off and players basically try to go as deep as possible. I believe it should sate them easily for few months until your next module. Of course, give them incentive to upgrade to go deeper, and at the same time grind grind grind whenever they want to. To keep the money flow healthy, keep some items in ZEN that will be necessary to progress deeper into the dungeon but cheap.
So in a way, the story version will sate the completely D&D lore lovers. The no story mode will gate less geared players until they are unable to progress. Give them reasons to grind at the same time as these are usually young players who wouldn't want to spend but would rather play for hours to upgrade gear. Then, those who are casual in a sense that they would rather spend to progress, they will soon realise that money can't buy skill as they progress deeper into the dungeon. This sates the hardcore players.
Conclusion
The goal is to sate both newcomers and end gamers with the same content, that reflects NW's manpower. At the same time, the lore lovers get to enjoy the pure version of the story with their friends and the grinders get a non-stop grinding missions. The hardcore players get to test their mettle as they delve deeper into the dungeon/campaign. All of this, while keeping a constant and healthy supply into the game for the survival of the business. Just remember the the 3 important things, grind, lore and endless progression. I hope you can now fix the rest of the puzzle with the community's support.
Personally I don't like this idea. A large part of the players I see around like doing solo stuff. Building the campaign inside a dungeon will take that part away. Dungeons put pressure on people. There should also be a place for a more relaxed style.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
We want more content like ToMM. Its great. Makes players have a goal to upgrade their characters. We also want easier versions of hardest content with lesser rewards for other players so they can enjoy and learn the mechanics.
We want variety of ways to play each class. That means more relevant feats and class features. Now 90% of them are so bad that its embarassing. Also class bugfixes should be a priority.
We want that some items behind RNG are also obtainable grinding. No matter if the grind is hard but putting some very important class items only available for RNG makes you feel so bad when you have bad luck. (For example companion gear and armor from ZOK boxes or alabaster weapons)
Thank you and good luck
Hi Darthpotater,
Again thanks for taking the time to be part of the CDP. Looking forward to evolve the game with your and and the communities help.
When you say 'we' it comes across as though you are speaking for everyone who plays. So my question is to you: what about players who want to experience ToMM but who can't gain entry and obviously can't get close to completing any of therelated content. Note i am not looking for thoughts in regard to normalization. Instead how do we make all of our content more inclusive to our players. What are the benefits for all the players of this?
We want that some items behind RNG are also obtainable grinding. No matter if the grind is hard but putting some very important class items only available for RNG makes you feel so bad when you have bad luck. (For example companion gear and armor from ZOK boxes or alabaster weapons)
I believe our systems team have plans for just this that relates to players of all levels globally. I will follow up.
Chris
Hi Neighbour (thee is from Stoke-On-Trent),
Chris, I feel as if you want everyone to be able to participate in every content in the game. If that is your set goal, i am afraid, this game would need a complete Overhaul.
Let me give you an example. In the forums, you'll commonly find players referring to TOMM for the 1% of players. I beg to differ; it is but for everyone, until such time that you meet the requirements. This sense of progression is an incentive for players to upgrade and face a challenge. This isn't alien to MMO's out there, many content in other vastly populated MMO's are only completed by a very small percentage of their population and those are the big daddies I am talking about.
The reason why this kind of progression makes sense in NW than most other MMO's is because of it's reliance on upgrading gear. That's also where scaling falls short off.
If you strip off gear upgrading, you'll effectively will strip off a huge part of your revenue and probably the sense of progression for the end gamers.
In short, i am trying to get across the point is that there is no overlap between a casual player and an end game player. They are two sides of the same coin. That is also why you see many suggestions that are actually segregating the players i.e. tier based system and etc and I have previously mentioned that you would need to strike a balance between catering for both of these population.
Fabricant's response on creating a similar system to Path of Exile with an endless dungeon can easily sate the end gamers for a long time. Perhaps the same kind of system allows story based implementation for casuals? You basically get to choose if you want to run the story version (where you will have to wait for cutscenes to end) and a version where you are there to grind and progress deeper to get better rewards. This would mean that there would really be no need for campaigns and those "fetch", "sit", "jump" training kind of quests. The latter only gets on your nerves and many MMO's never learn and still waste time on vastly outdated method of making content.
Hey Sobi,
Thanks for your reply. I was born in Macclesfield but spent a lot of my early dev days in Leamington with Codemasters and BigBig Studios.
Some great insight in your post and it allows me to reinforce the goal (at least as it pertains to this thread):
'I feel as if you want everyone to be able to participate in every content in the game'
I would like us to think about (which we have been thanks all) the goal being to be able to have everyone participate (where appropriate) in the 'Experience' and the systems, mechanics and progression that make the game compelling and fun so we have a more focused community. The goal is not normalisation in any way shape or form. So the idea would be to have a hardcore trial with an easier version with nearly identical mechanics. Rewards for both sets of players would be aspirational and for the less progressed group there would still be the compulsion to do the Trial in hardcore mode as they increase their viability through progression and related rewards to be able to do so. Effectively allowing the community to enjoy the experiences we create and to properly align players in terms of progression goals.
Great conversation. Lets keep it going!
Chris
Hi Chris,
A bit about myself. Studied Pharmacy and now a trainee solicitor.
I see, you have a nice and simple goal set out in front of you and now you want suggestions to make it come to realization. I like the idea.
From my perspective, you would need to keep a close eye on:
If there is enough content to sate the players? Right now, NW is in the negative of this and i really mean NEGATIVE. If there are enough players to be able to segregate them into difficulty tiers? As it stands, the queue times are very long. Securing some kind of benefit to those who have spend resources into the game. So as for now, TOMM is a very good reason to spend resources to earn good rewards. That's why i called it a success.
I feel like campaigns would have to disappear in some form. The best way to achieve the above goal with NW's current manpower would be as you have stated, content has to be graded so that the same content can sate both types of players. But, the third thing to keep a note of is as I have mentioned before, does it provide enough content? So therefore there must be rewards that players can grind without any daily cap. Grinding is a form of progression, but currently NW is doing it all wrong with having daily caps. My friend recently said to me, "I got nothing to grind, what kind of MMO has nothing to grind?", he cracked a nut with a sledgehammer here.
So I advice that story based, endless dungeons is the next big thing. Create a one big campaign like Undermountain, but instead of having solo quests, let parties have quests which are story based and force players to follow cut scenes. Then, have a hard version of the same campaign, where story can be turned off and players basically try to go as deep as possible. I believe it should sate them easily for few months until your next module. Of course, give them incentive to upgrade to go deeper, and at the same time grind grind grind whenever they want to. To keep the money flow healthy, keep some items in ZEN that will be necessary to progress deeper into the dungeon but cheap.
So in a way, the story version will sate the completely D&D lore lovers. The no story mode will gate less geared players until they are unable to progress. Give them reasons to grind at the same time as these are usually young players who wouldn't want to spend but would rather play for hours to upgrade gear. Then, those who are casual in a sense that they would rather spend to progress, they will soon realise that money can't buy skill as they progress deeper into the dungeon. This sates the hardcore players.
Conclusion
The goal is to sate both newcomers and end gamers with the same content, that reflects NW's manpower. At the same time, the lore lovers get to enjoy the pure version of the story with their friends and the grinders get a non-stop grinding missions. The hardcore players get to test their mettle as they delve deeper into the dungeon/campaign. All of this, while keeping a constant and healthy supply into the game for the survival of the business. Just remember the the 3 important things, grind, lore and endless progression. I hope you can now fix the rest of the puzzle with the community's support.
Personally I don't like this idea. A large part of the players I see around like doing solo stuff. Building the campaign inside a dungeon will take that part away. Dungeons put pressure on people. There should also be a place for a more relaxed style.
Oh, i apologise, dungeons do put pressure even if cutscenes were made mandatory. They could leave the story based dungeon and give players the option to run it as solo or in party. The party doesn't have to be the holy trinity i.e. 1 healer, tank and 3 dps but for the no story version, i would advice the holy trinity is preserved. The goal really doesn't change at all, which is that NW doesn't has to make a separate content for each of the playerbase and that all types of players get to enjoy it in their own way. The only people missing in the above equation to me are pvp players.
@sobi#1980 responding to the post directly above mine
I'm probably alone on this one in the forums but I think maybe there are a lot that do agree with me in game, but i HATE the holy trinity. I prefered the way it was with lifesteal, buff/debuff before personally. but a HUGE margin. I don't want to be a healer. I don't want the hate they get if they're doing their job or not. I don't want to be a tank because of the hate they get, whether they are doing their job or not. and I think a lot of people are with me there. it was one of the things that made this particular mmo stick out from the rest in a very good way. now not so much for just so many reasons. it's the reason that heals and tanks are a little harder to come by. like 3% actually LIKE playing those classes. many people actually liked being buff debuff. and as a dps I really dislike depending on heals to heal me. I like playing with other people but I dislike my health being reliant on them.
6
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
@sobi#1980 responding to the post directly above mine
I'm probably alone on this one in the forums but I think maybe there are a lot that do agree with me in game, but i HATE the holy trinity. I prefered the way it was with lifesteal, buff/debuff before personally. but a HUGE margin. I don't want to be a healer. I don't want the hate they get if they're doing their job or not. I don't want to be a tank because of the hate they get, whether they are doing their job or not. and I think a lot of people are with me there. it was one of the things that made this particular mmo stick out from the rest in a very good way. now not so much for just so many reasons. it's the reason that heals and tanks are a little harder to come by. like 3% actually LIKE playing those classes. many people actually liked being buff debuff. and as a dps I really dislike depending on heals to heal me. I like playing with other people but I dislike my health being reliant on them.
I'm with you to a certain extent. In the early stages of this game damage was not that heavy compared to the overall hit points of a typical DPS or tank. As a DPS I could rely on potions for my healing most if the time. The healer had less focus on healing and could do other things like pushing enemies or buffing with ease (healer meant Cleric at the time).
Then lifesteal took over and that was bad. I remember groups of 5 DPS steamrolling dungeons because they were able to outheal any damage while dealing massive damage at the same time. And they were even able to do door-to-door pulls. That's the main reason why mod 6 had to do a complete rehaul of the system.
Personally I'd like to go back to the first system, with less damage, less healing and more use of potions. Nowadays only a tank can get a hit from a boss. This means that the strategy in combat is always the same: tank has to get boss' agro. My suggestion to the dev team would be to go back to mod1-mod2 and play the old epic dungeons. That was Neverwinter at its best.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
@sobi#1980 responding to the post directly above mine
I'm probably alone on this one in the forums but I think maybe there are a lot that do agree with me in game, but i HATE the holy trinity. I prefered the way it was with lifesteal, buff/debuff before personally. but a HUGE margin. I don't want to be a healer. I don't want the hate they get if they're doing their job or not. I don't want to be a tank because of the hate they get, whether they are doing their job or not. and I think a lot of people are with me there. it was one of the things that made this particular mmo stick out from the rest in a very good way. now not so much for just so many reasons. it's the reason that heals and tanks are a little harder to come by. like 3% actually LIKE playing those classes. many people actually liked being buff debuff. and as a dps I really dislike depending on heals to heal me. I like playing with other people but I dislike my health being reliant on them.
Issue is that without a holy trinity system in place, it becomes really difficult to balance dungeons. Take TOMM for example, the dev's had in mind that there will be a certain number of healers, tanks and dps. Yes, you can solo heal and solo tank TOMM with the right gear and good players but it is mandatory to have at least one of the roles. This way, the dev's could balance out the dmg halaster could deal and input mechanics that otherwise would make TOMM impossible. For example, any dps that takes annihilation would get one shot but not a tank, so the damage was scaled appropriately to make Tank a necessary role in the dungeon. If all went dps, then what are tanks suppose to do in the dungeon? If anything, the holy trinity system makes sure that every role has something to do and contribute to and makes designing dungeons ever so easy for the dev's.
That's why i said that there is no need of holy trinity in dungeons where story is predominant. In my opinion, the holy trininty encourages team work, i.e. healer has to do a set task and dps have to avoid danger. With no holy trinity in place, you'll only see dps's stream roll everything and at which point, tanks and healers may as well be deleted. You would know perfectly well that dps are the hardest class to baby sit; if a dungeon can be run with all dps's, no one is going to follow orders or mechanics, and it'll just be spam your head on the keyboard until the trash dies. I for once am completely in contrary to it.
blackmagidMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 111Arc User
Feedback Overview I would like to propose having a “barracks” of shared companions available on an account for both existing and future characters.
Feedback goal I believe this will reduce redundancy of companions across an account and open the possibility of quickly being able to slot any companion from the shared barracks. If a new or existing player decided they had not found the right class for them during levelling, any companions they had acquired from any source would be available for another character on that account.
Feedback Functionality Using the existing UI, a player would be able to choose any companion to assign to the appropriate slot type available on that class from the shared barracks. Companions would still be able to be upgraded in the same fashion and those companions would be accessible on the account.
Risks & Concerns As a consumer of the product none, in fact – I think I would probably look to upgrade other companions.
History I recently had in it mind to create a fighter as I actually enjoy tanking and wanted to see how it felt using another class. It quickly became apparent that I would need to be levelling up another set of companions. This felt a little bit disheartening as I already have several legendary companions on my Paladin. Of course, then I realised why I wouldn’t be using the Paladin for anything other than a tank as I am already in the process of upgrading outgoing healing companions for my Warlock!
Feedback Overview Make the Cleric Healer viable in new qued content, such as TOMM & Citadel.
Feedback Goal The goal is to allow cleric healers to be able to join the new qued content and enjoy the game likewise. Currently, OP healers are a preferred choice in groups because of the temporary shield that they grant to the team, allowing the party members to fight without fear of losing HP and stay at one place fighting, and therefore, making the most of "combat advantage" stat. Also, players prefer to "lose temporary HP than their actual HP." Hence, allowing them to play with less stress and more effectively.
Feedback Functionality Clerics could once again become part of the new content by significantly improving the effectiveness of Healing Word, which basically restores HP once it goes down. It has its similarity to the OP shield, except that it only works once the actual HP starts decreasing. So, if Healing Word is effective enough to deal with once-shots, AOE, and other damages then, I think, people would pick clerics in their teams instead of looking for OPs only.
Healing Word could also provide some shield once the players' HP drop to 50%. This would, at least, let the players know that they will not die fast so as to waste revive scrolls and would also allow the cleric in team to heal back. I know I have only focused on Healing WOrd here, but what other choice do the clerics (and other classes) have considering the post16 class skill limitations?
Risks & Concerns <> Warlock healers may feel left out because the ops and dcs will be needed, but not them. Currently, they share the same position with Cleric healers. So they are not alone.
Disagree. Before I start on cleric - I used to main warlock, parked him for two last mods due to nerf hammer and absolutely ridiculous lack of synergy and lack of damage due to heavy nerfs. Only few days ago, reading dps path will finally get a buff and after testing it on preview, I started playing warlock again, got him r15 bondings and all good stuff as I really love the class and refuse to stop playing it, more, it wil be my main again once devs show it some love. When my warlock was resting I made wizard and cleric and cleric is absolutely fine in every content including ToMM. No idea where did you find out that clerics are unwanted in ToMM, actually ppl ask for both Oathkeeper and Devout for their runs. They have diffirent functions, paladin provides shields but cleric provides burst heals and this awesome "oh ***" skill (Intercession). In my last ToMM run I had cleric (me) and paladin and we were cooperating in a way I really would like to see more in game (but that also depends on player's will to cooperate and understand their class role in a content) - whenever his shields were gone and HP started dropping, I was popping burst heal followed immediately by his shields to keep HP full. I had no issues with divinity but that's the way I play, I learned the class and even survived latest nerf healers received. I don't use Healing Word. Waste of divinity honestly. For regenerating HP when below 50% you have Anointed Army, again this needs skill to use it in proper moment, you need to predict when players can risk big HP loss and you need your AP gain as high as possible to use it often. And clerics have the best burst heals in game, take Bastion of Health, main spammable. I can easily get 600k+ crit with it, having proper power/crit stats following specific healers crit chance formula. So it's not about cleric being not viable or not wanted in ToMM, it is the skill it needs to play ALONG with pally as these two healing classes work together very well. The problem is warlock Soulweaver that needs more resources to build, more skill to heal efficiently and generally the class is so broken I truly hope someone actually playing warlock will take a look into this to find out why the class is so badly treated. Neither dps path nor heal path are wanted in ToMM and this makes me wonder if the trial was really done only for wizards/rangers/pallys/clerics. Warlocks already feel left out.
The Tomm meta is 1 tank 1 OPheal rest DPS. That is the problem lets look at it from this perspective....
Can you run Tomm without a Soulweaver or a Devout? Yes Can you run Tomm without a Healadin? No the shield is too important to survival
what is the most requested Tomm classes when people are putting together runs? Cw (cuz they want 6) Tank (cuz there just arent that many around another reason to only bring 1) and pally heal
Yes you can finish the Trial with 2 tanks and 2 healers but you will face much more of the mechanics which gives you less room for error
or you can take the pally heal the 1 tank and add in 2 more HDPS and melt him so fast that you bypass a bunch of the mechanics making it easier
this is why in my opinion Tomm is bad for the game, it alienated classes tremendously not because of difficulty blah blah blah
is the content really that good when it calls for 6+ CW? everyone that played any other class were forced to roll a wizard switch out there enchants and bonding or just not do that content
I've gotten to the point where i could care less if i complete it or not and this is coming from a long time 25k+ cleric that meets all the criteria
i'm torn on this issue because i do think something needs to be done but i also dont want to see yet another class get nerfed i also dont want every healer class to be the same with all having shields etc there needs to be some variety but the end game healer right now is the pally by a landslide simply because of their shield
4
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
@sobi#1980 responding to the post directly above mine
I'm probably alone on this one in the forums but I think maybe there are a lot that do agree with me in game, but i HATE the holy trinity. I prefered the way it was with lifesteal, buff/debuff before personally. but a HUGE margin. I don't want to be a healer. I don't want the hate they get if they're doing their job or not. I don't want to be a tank because of the hate they get, whether they are doing their job or not. and I think a lot of people are with me there. it was one of the things that made this particular mmo stick out from the rest in a very good way. now not so much for just so many reasons. it's the reason that heals and tanks are a little harder to come by. like 3% actually LIKE playing those classes. many people actually liked being buff debuff. and as a dps I really dislike depending on heals to heal me. I like playing with other people but I dislike my health being reliant on them.
Issue is that without a holy trinity system in place, it becomes really difficult to balance dungeons. Take TOMM for example, the dev's had in mind that there will be a certain number of healers, tanks and dps. Yes, you can solo heal and solo tank TOMM with the right gear and good players but it is mandatory to have at least one of the roles. This way, the dev's could balance out the dmg halaster could deal and input mechanics that otherwise would make TOMM impossible. For example, any dps that takes annihilation would get one shot but not a tank, so the damage was scaled appropriately to make Tank a necessary role in the dungeon. If all went dps, then what are tanks suppose to do in the dungeon? If anything, the holy trinity system makes sure that every role has something to do and contribute to and makes designing dungeons ever so easy for the dev's.
That's why i said that there is no need of holy trinity in dungeons where story is predominant. In my opinion, the holy trininty encourages team work, i.e. healer has to do a set task and dps have to avoid danger. With no holy trinity in place, you'll only see dps's stream roll everything and at which point, tanks and healers may as well be deleted. You would know perfectly well that dps are the hardest class to baby sit; if a dungeon can be run with all dps's, no one is going to follow orders or mechanics, and it'll just be spam your head on the keyboard until the trash dies. I for once am completely in contrary to it.
I agree with you here. I really wish you had been in the game before, especially in the first mods. At the time first of all it was not a trinity but a "quaternity" (does this word exist?) with control being the fourth leg of the system and you needed pretty much all the stuff, but there was more freedom in strategy. Bosses were not hitting so hard and every boss attack could be dodged, so letting DPS tank the boss was sometimes a viable strategy, while only Guardian Fighters could really tank adds. DPS could deal with adds without a tank support but only with heavy control.
The difficulty raised from the combination of monsters abilities and there were not special unavoidable mechanics or "must-do-this" things, so you could really adjust the strategy in different ways. The game now has too many checks (cocoon healing check in Lomm, DPS checks in TOMM, DPS checks in ToNG,....=) and that seriously impacts the possibility to get out of the one-and-all strategy for that specific dungeon.
I also hate the kind of trump-card mechanics you have in TOMM (split-up when this happens, get close when that happens, ...), or all the when-the-boss-gets-to-X%-life- this-happens conditions. They feel artificial too. It may be because I come more from D&D tabletop and less from MMOs, but I always feel a disconnect when they show up.
I ran TOMM once so far just for the sake of having it completed and do not plan to run it anymore. It's an horrible experience, with one single target feeling like a dummy, DPS checks at fixed times, trump-card mechanics, all the worst stuff in games put in one single place. Compare it with the Dread Vault, or Lair of the Mad Dragon (with Succubi healing the boss) and it really pales.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
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.
This, so much this. I remember being annihilated on the bridge to Castle Never yeas ago. When I got to run with players who could do it easily, I aspired to be like them. When I made my Cleric during the 2 Cleric meta it was easy to make a Divine Oracle loadout, but not so much to be effective as Anointed Champion. I would study how the AC operated, their gear, encounters, timing, etc. From this I learned how to play, I had something to work toward. Eventually I could be the Cleric people wanted to play with. Scaling had made players unimpressive, or seem downright bad. I put a thread over in the Xbox bug reports about Malabog's Castle related to my scaling experience, check it out if you have a chance.
p.s. I don't how to work the forums, sorry for the odd quote.
Froger - Barbarian - Original Main - The Freak Core - Xbone Jade - Cleric - Healer Main - The Freak Core - Xbone Magnus - Fighter - Tank for queues - The Freak Core - Xbone Loverboy - Ranger - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone Nomnomnommm - Wizard - Alt - Droppin Crits on Fools - Xbone I Am The Wall - Paladin - Alt - Droppin Crits on Fools - Xbone Xeros - Rogue - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone RIP bad name - Warlock - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone Bardholomew - Bard - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone Sirona - Cleric - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
@sobi#1980 responding to the post directly above mine
I'm probably alone on this one in the forums but I think maybe there are a lot that do agree with me in game, but i HATE the holy trinity. I prefered the way it was with lifesteal, buff/debuff before personally. but a HUGE margin. I don't want to be a healer. I don't want the hate they get if they're doing their job or not. I don't want to be a tank because of the hate they get, whether they are doing their job or not. and I think a lot of people are with me there. it was one of the things that made this particular mmo stick out from the rest in a very good way. now not so much for just so many reasons. it's the reason that heals and tanks are a little harder to come by. like 3% actually LIKE playing those classes. many people actually liked being buff debuff. and as a dps I really dislike depending on heals to heal me. I like playing with other people but I dislike my health being reliant on them.
Issue is that without a holy trinity system in place, it becomes really difficult to balance dungeons. Take TOMM for example, the dev's had in mind that there will be a certain number of healers, tanks and dps. Yes, you can solo heal and solo tank TOMM with the right gear and good players but it is mandatory to have at least one of the roles. This way, the dev's could balance out the dmg halaster could deal and input mechanics that otherwise would make TOMM impossible. For example, any dps that takes annihilation would get one shot but not a tank, so the damage was scaled appropriately to make Tank a necessary role in the dungeon. If all went dps, then what are tanks suppose to do in the dungeon? If anything, the holy trinity system makes sure that every role has something to do and contribute to and makes designing dungeons ever so easy for the dev's.
That's why i said that there is no need of holy trinity in dungeons where story is predominant. In my opinion, the holy trininty encourages team work, i.e. healer has to do a set task and dps have to avoid danger. With no holy trinity in place, you'll only see dps's stream roll everything and at which point, tanks and healers may as well be deleted. You would know perfectly well that dps are the hardest class to baby sit; if a dungeon can be run with all dps's, no one is going to follow orders or mechanics, and it'll just be spam your head on the keyboard until the trash dies. I for once am completely in contrary to it.
I agree with you here. I really wish you had been in the game before, especially in the first mods. At the time first of all it was not a trinity but a "quaternity" (does this word exist?) with control being the fourth leg of the system and you needed pretty much all the stuff, but there was more freedom in strategy. Bosses were not hitting so hard and every boss attack could be dodged, so letting DPS tank the boss was sometimes a viable strategy, while only Guardian Fighters could really tank adds. DPS could deal with adds without a tank support but only with heavy control.
The difficulty raised from the combination of monsters abilities and there were not special unavoidable mechanics or "must-do-this" things, so you could really adjust the strategy in different ways. The game now has too many checks (cocoon healing check in Lomm, DPS checks in TOMM, DPS checks in ToNG,....=) and that seriously impacts the possibility to get out of the one-and-all strategy for that specific dungeon.
I also hate the kind of trump-card mechanics you have in TOMM (split-up when this happens, get close when that happens, ...), or all the when-the-boss-gets-to-X%-life- this-happens conditions. They feel artificial too. It may be because I come more from D&D tabletop and less from MMOs, but I always feel a disconnect when they show up.
I ran TOMM once so far just for the sake of having it completed and do not plan to run it anymore. It's an horrible experience, with one single target feeling like a dummy, DPS checks at fixed times, trump-card mechanics, all the worst stuff in games put in one single place. Compare it with the Dread Vault, or Lair of the Mad Dragon (with Succubi healing the boss) and it really pales.
Yes, I also think that one-way strategies are not as good as multiple strategies for the same mechanic. Such as, during aoe attack, the paladin has to shield you or the fact that tank has to take aggro at all times. Bringing control into the game would make the system more complicated but much more enjoyable. The only downside i would see is that the gap between a good and bad player would significantly increase. But from my perspective, a "Quaternary" system (doesn't exist yet) would take too much resources at this point and time but it definitely is something that the dev's should consider in the future. I have already advised on forums to make DC's buffers and SW's debuffers (matches their lore) and that should bring more strategy into play. For example, SW's would be great at de-buffing boss' damage so that even dps at certain key points could take aggro and survive a hit. DC's could buff allies with movement speed to dodge mechanics or even buff them with damage at dps check.
TOMM is also not the best way to give players a sense of challenge but it definitely was a step forward from all the previous content that was just too simple and easy. The checks are rather pale as you say, like dps check is basically standing still and spamming and healing check is standing close together and shielding/healing. But many games out there have different mechanics that are coordinated with the boss's remaining health so elemental phases that trigger at certain %health is not very uncommon. However, tanks would tell you that they love TOMM because they have the toughest job.
Holy trinity or Quaternary system, whichever we end up sticking with, it is definitely mandatory to balance classes and dungeons. That is just my opinion but i do ultimately agree with you that mechanics in this game are very simple. That's also something the game can look into and introduce difficult mechanics as you go deeper into a dungeon which end gamers would love to. I am fairly certain that most lore lovers or just casual players wouldn't want the game to get harder.
I saw the devstream a couple of days ago, it was a breath of fresh air and it really motivated me to give my 2 cents. Its bad english, its way off topic and its a massive undertaking but you can always choose to ignore it right
Feedback Overview I want to see diversity in the game. Not the illusion of diversity pre mod 16 and not the mind-numbing dumbed down version in current game but real diversity where different classes acctually have different roles/abilities/stats etc. There are basically 3 (or 2 and 1/2) different characters in the game, dps, tank, and healer. They have different skins (races, classes and gear) but statwise they are really just same same with a different name. All the players have same stats (the stat cap for all the stats) and even more dumb is that the critters have the same stats no matter what. Its 35k (or whatever) for everything. Talk about lack of diversity...
Feedback Goal Stop focus on class balance and making every class able to do exactly the same dps as the next one. Its never going to happen and I couldnt care less if a wizard is doing 5, 10 or 15% more damage than a fighter (more or less every class have at least one self buff so it would be really easy to balance by just fine tuning this one feat). Start making the different classes interesting instead. Make the barbarion tank with massive hp, light armour that makes for high deflection and rage to ignore pain. Make the fighter tank by wearing a massive heavy armour and a big shield to hide behind when the dragon fire becomes to hot around the ears. Make the paladin tank with divinity and magic shields, raising barriers and generating temp hitpoints for the next heavy blow (think bubble, and templars wrath but less op). 3 different tanks that can do the job but with way different stats to focus on and most of all different play styles to master. The same reasoning can be used for all the classes and Im not going to waste time on that. I think you get my point and if not please go back to the second sentence in the first part of the text
Feedback Functionality Reintroduce the feat (and power) trees but make them viable. Make it impossible to cap all the stats(remove the massive stat gain from companions) but to where you have to choose and focus on the ones relevant for your class and play style. Make different critters have different stats. Make the feats and powers to something you invest in as you go along adventuring and not something that is capped the same moment you reach lvl 80 (move some of the progress in gears to progression in the character stats/abilities/feats/powers).
Risks & Concerns The risk is obvious and massive. By looking in the rear view mirror we can see several problems with classes that have been way overpowered and why wouldnt it happen again?! It probably will happen again but to me its worth the risk. I had way more fun running in the bubble of a pally than I have now when everything is just same, same and more of the same.
We want more content like ToMM. Its great. Makes players have a goal to upgrade their characters. We also want easier versions of hardest content with lesser rewards for other players so they can enjoy and learn the mechanics.
We want variety of ways to play each class. That means more relevant feats and class features. Now 90% of them are so bad that its embarassing. Also class bugfixes should be a priority.
We want that some items behind RNG are also obtainable grinding. No matter if the grind is hard but putting some very important class items only available for RNG makes you feel so bad when you have bad luck. (For example companion gear and armor from ZOK boxes or alabaster weapons)
Thank you and good luck
Hi Darthpotater,
Again thanks for taking the time to be part of the CDP. Looking forward to evolve the game with your and and the communities help.
When you say 'we' it comes across as though you are speaking for everyone who plays. So my question is to you: what about players who want to experience ToMM but who can't gain entry and obviously can't get close to completing any of therelated content. Note i am not looking for thoughts in regard to normalization. Instead how do we make all of our content more inclusive to our players. What are the benefits for all the players of this?
We want that some items behind RNG are also obtainable grinding. No matter if the grind is hard but putting some very important class items only available for RNG makes you feel so bad when you have bad luck. (For example companion gear and armor from ZOK boxes or alabaster weapons)
I believe our systems team have plans for just this that relates to players of all levels globally. I will follow up.
Chris
Hi Neighbour (thee is from Stoke-On-Trent),
Chris, I feel as if you want everyone to be able to participate in every content in the game. If that is your set goal, i am afraid, this game would need a complete Overhaul.
Let me give you an example. In the forums, you'll commonly find players referring to TOMM for the 1% of players. I beg to differ; it is but for everyone, until such time that you meet the requirements. This sense of progression is an incentive for players to upgrade and face a challenge. This isn't alien to MMO's out there, many content in other vastly populated MMO's are only completed by a very small percentage of their population and those are the big daddies I am talking about.
The reason why this kind of progression makes sense in NW than most other MMO's is because of it's reliance on upgrading gear. That's also where scaling falls short off.
If you strip off gear upgrading, you'll effectively will strip off a huge part of your revenue and probably the sense of progression for the end gamers.
In short, i am trying to get across the point is that there is no overlap between a casual player and an end game player. They are two sides of the same coin. That is also why you see many suggestions that are actually segregating the players i.e. tier based system and etc and I have previously mentioned that you would need to strike a balance between catering for both of these population.
Fabricant's response on creating a similar system to Path of Exile with an endless dungeon can easily sate the end gamers for a long time. Perhaps the same kind of system allows story based implementation for casuals? You basically get to choose if you want to run the story version (where you will have to wait for cutscenes to end) and a version where you are there to grind and progress deeper to get better rewards. This would mean that there would really be no need for campaigns and those "fetch", "sit", "jump" training kind of quests. The latter only gets on your nerves and many MMO's never learn and still waste time on vastly outdated method of making content.
Hey Sobi,
Thanks for your reply. I was born in Macclesfield but spent a lot of my early dev days in Leamington with Codemasters and BigBig Studios.
Some great insight in your post and it allows me to reinforce the goal (at least as it pertains to this thread):
'I feel as if you want everyone to be able to participate in every content in the game'
I would like us to think about (which we have been thanks all) the goal being to be able to have everyone participate (where appropriate) in the 'Experience' and the systems, mechanics and progression that make the game compelling and fun so we have a more focused community. The goal is not normalisation in any way shape or form. So the idea would be to have a hardcore trial with an easier version with nearly identical mechanics. Rewards for both sets of players would be aspirational and for the less progressed group there would still be the compulsion to do the Trial in hardcore mode as they increase their viability through progression and related rewards to be able to do so. Effectively allowing the community to enjoy the experiences we create and to properly align players in terms of progression goals.
Great conversation. Lets keep it going!
Chris
Hi Chris,
A bit about myself. Studied Pharmacy and now a trainee solicitor.
I see, you have a nice and simple goal set out in front of you and now you want suggestions to make it come to realization. I like the idea.
From my perspective, you would need to keep a close eye on:
If there is enough content to sate the players? Right now, NW is in the negative of this and i really mean NEGATIVE. If there are enough players to be able to segregate them into difficulty tiers? As it stands, the queue times are very long. Securing some kind of benefit to those who have spend resources into the game. So as for now, TOMM is a very good reason to spend resources to earn good rewards. That's why i called it a success.
I feel like campaigns would have to disappear in some form. The best way to achieve the above goal with NW's current manpower would be as you have stated, content has to be graded so that the same content can sate both types of players. But, the third thing to keep a note of is as I have mentioned before, does it provide enough content? So therefore there must be rewards that players can grind without any daily cap. Grinding is a form of progression, but currently NW is doing it all wrong with having daily caps. My friend recently said to me, "I got nothing to grind, what kind of MMO has nothing to grind?", he cracked a nut with a sledgehammer here.
So I advice that story based, endless dungeons is the next big thing. Create a one big campaign like Undermountain, but instead of having solo quests, let parties have quests which are story based and force players to follow cut scenes. Then, have a hard version of the same campaign, where story can be turned off and players basically try to go as deep as possible. I believe it should sate them easily for few months until your next module. Of course, give them incentive to upgrade to go deeper, and at the same time grind grind grind whenever they want to. To keep the money flow healthy, keep some items in ZEN that will be necessary to progress deeper into the dungeon but cheap.
So in a way, the story version will sate the completely D&D lore lovers. The no story mode will gate less geared players until they are unable to progress. Give them reasons to grind at the same time as these are usually young players who wouldn't want to spend but would rather play for hours to upgrade gear. Then, those who are casual in a sense that they would rather spend to progress, they will soon realise that money can't buy skill as they progress deeper into the dungeon. This sates the hardcore players.
Conclusion
The goal is to sate both newcomers and end gamers with the same content, that reflects NW's manpower. At the same time, the lore lovers get to enjoy the pure version of the story with their friends and the grinders get a non-stop grinding missions. The hardcore players get to test their mettle as they delve deeper into the dungeon/campaign. All of this, while keeping a constant and healthy supply into the game for the survival of the business. Just remember the the 3 important things, grind, lore and endless progression. I hope you can now fix the rest of the puzzle with the community's support.
Please no. Everything other than queues and the final dungeon should be soloable. Most casual players don't have time to find a group for general questing.
I saw the devstream a couple of days ago, it was a breath of fresh air and it really motivated me to give my 2 cents. Its bad english, its way off topic and its a massive undertaking but you can always choose to ignore it right
Feedback Overview I want to see diversity in the game. Not the illusion of diversity post mod 16 and not the mind-numbing dumbed down version in current game but real diversity where different classes acctually have different roles/abilities/stats etc. There are basically 3 (or 2 and 1/2) different characters in the game, dps, tank, and healer. They have different skins (races, classes and gear) but statwise they are really just same same with a different name. All the players have same stats (the stat cap for all the stats) and even more dumb is that the critters have the same stats no matter what. Its 35k (or whatever) for everything. Talk about lack of diversity...
Feedback Goal Stop focus on class balance and making every class able to do exactly the same dps as the next one. Its never going to happen and I couldnt care less if a wizard is doing 5, 10 or 15% more damage than a fighter (more or less every class have at least one self buff so it would be really easy to balance by just fine tuning this one feat). Start making the different classes interesting instead. Make the barbarion tank with massive hp, light armour that makes for high deflection and rage to ignore pain. Make the fighter tank by wearing a massive heavy armour and a big shield to hide behind when the dragon fire becomes to hot around the ears. Make the paladin tank with divinity and magic shields, raising barriers and generating temp hitpoints for the next heavy blow (think bubble, and templars wrath but less op). 3 different tanks that can do the job but with way different stats to focus on and most of all different play styles to master. The same reasoning can be used for all the classes and Im not going to waste time on that. I think you get my point and if not please go back to the second sentence in the first part of the text
Feedback Functionality Reintroduce the feat (and power) trees but make them viable. Make it impossible to cap all the stats(remove the massive stat gain from companions) but to where you have to choose and focus on the ones relevant for your class and play style. Make different critters have different stats. Make the feats and powers to something you invest in as you go along adventuring and not something that is capped the same moment you reach lvl 80 (move some of the progress in gears to progression in the character stats/abilities/feats/powers).
Risks & Concerns The risk is obvious and massive. By looking in the rear view mirror we can see several problems with classes that have been way overpowered and why wouldnt it happen again?! It probably will happen again but to me its worth the risk. I had way more fun running in the bubble of a pally than I have now when everything is just same, same and more of the same.
Thank you for your time!
/Vandelay
Don't forget all the people that have spent tons of time or real money on those comps post mod 16 to get the stats for ToMM. I think nerfing the comps is a bad idea. Better to buff up character stats. I do agree though on bring back the feat trees and such. I had really great hybrid paladin that was designed for dps/heals/tanking in mod 15. He was in a good place then, but now just boring as all he does is stand there and get hammered by the boss. Leading up to boss it's basically either try to outrun everyone else and grab aggro for 2 seconds, or just keep up with them enough to not get too far behind.
3
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
Well, TOMM has horrible design...
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
I do agree though on bring back the feat trees and such. I had really great hybrid paladin that was designed for dps/heals/tanking in mod 15. He was in a good place then, but now just boring as all he does is stand there and get hammered by the boss. Leading up to boss it's basically either try to outrun everyone else and grab aggro for 2 seconds, or just keep up with them enough to not get too far behind.
There were a lot wrong with the old feat trees. It could be a lengthy document nitpicking, but I'd argue that the main issues were that there were a lot of ... "fake" choices:
a decent amount of times, you had to pick between two equally bad options that never really expended your build
there were choices that presented a great feat versus a laughably useless one, which meant that the only choice ended up being "pick the non terrible feat or waste your points"
feats that asked players to use powers that sucked or had their usefulness overestimated (huh, why does this sound familiar...?)
lots of stuff that ran in the background but didn't actually differentiate the role that much (not necessarily as bad as the above issues, just not as interesting to put points in)
The main exceptions to these trends were the feats that actually made builds, the capstones, and the few feats that upgraded powers players were planning to use.
So, I understand why the amount of feats was reduced to 10, and picking 5. Instead of confusing new players with paralysis of what to pick when there were a lot of poor choices, make a smaller amount of choices but with much greater effects.
The main issue I can think of was that instead of getting 10 capstone like feats with a choice of 5, the feat choices presented now usually end up forcing players to use terrible powers, or have overly flashy effects with 0 substance, or barely change how players approach combat.
Again, this issue could be explained in further depth, but I'd think the more in depth explanations on "how class feats/passives/progression/powers should be reworked" would be better in its own CDP topic.
Ideally, this CDP topic that would be really useful to have before putting out the DPS Cleric/DPS Fighter reworks so there could be a state set for how to rework all other classes when the time comes, like, say, how to rework the poor Hellbringer Warlock, or Hunter Ranger, or Whisperknife Rogue...
No Mr. Whitside, I'm "not" suggesting anything at all while responding to another person, why do you ask?
Hey Chris, my name is Sham. I have been playing Neverwinter since PS4 launch in 2016. Currently, a 3 year guild/alliance leader and PSN community owner of The Legends of Neverwinter. I think this program is amazing. Thank you for giving us a place to have a voice.
Difficulty and Ease of Content as it pertains to hardcore vs. casual players, veterans vs. beginners
The current leveling system has players gaining experience levels from 1 - 80 through zones and campaigns. Where the difficulty is very SITUATIONAL can be challenging for new players and very simple for veterans. After level 80, players focus shift away from gaining experience in the game to gaining stats, and gear.
Feedback Overview: A system were players can gain Dungeon Levels from dungeon experience that only comes from running dungeons. Different dungeon types that cater to different playstyles; example - Speed Dungeons (Completing the dungeon as fast as possible yields awesome REWARDS and Dungeon XP), Story Dungeons (Completing all dungeon objectives and puzzles yields awesome REWARDS and Dungeon XP), Endless Dungeons (Surviving Waves of Enemies or Clearing as many areas in the dungeon as possible yields awesome REWARDS and Dungeon XP). Dungeon levels and Dungeon Difficulty Tier should determine the possible loot drops and RARITY of REWARDS.
Feedback Goal: The goal is to foster player choice in dungeon selection and dungeon replay-ability.
Feedback Functionality: This system would live in the Match Options when selecting a dungeon. Currently, the choices are hardcore and reduce Item levels to minimum. The new Match Options would prompt players to select Speed, Story, or Endless. Afterwards, players have to indicate the level of difficulty ranging Normal (Green REWARDS), Epic (Blue REWARDS), Master (Purple REWARDS), or Hardcore (Legendary REWARDS).
Risks & Concerns: The biggest concern I have with this system and any suggestions made so far is the Rewards and Loot for completing a dungeon. The current reward/loot system is not satisfying. Most players go to the Auction House after farming AD just to get a satisfactory reward. This is a harsh reality for veterans, and hardcore players than new players. The Rewards and Loot system should be aligned with dungeon bosses and difficulty. Rewards and loot is definitely its own topic lol. Rewards should be USEFUL and MEANINGFUL.
Hey Chris, my name is Sham. I have been playing Neverwinter since PS4 launch in 2016. Currently, a 3 year guild/alliance leader and PSN community owner of The Legends of Neverwinter. I think this program is amazing. Thank you for giving us a place to have a voice.
Difficulty and Ease of Content as it pertains to hardcore vs. casual players, veterans vs. beginners
The current leveling system has players gaining experience levels from 1 - 80 through zones and campaigns. Where the difficulty is very SITUATIONAL can be challenging for new players and very simple for veterans. After level 80, players focus shift away from gaining experience in the game to gaining stats, and gear.
Feedback Overview: A system were players can gain Dungeon Levels from dungeon experience that only comes from running dungeons. Different dungeon types that cater to different playstyles; example - Speed Dungeons (Completing the dungeon as fast as possible yields awesome REWARDS and Dungeon XP), Story Dungeons (Completing all dungeon objectives and puzzles yields awesome REWARDS and Dungeon XP), Endless Dungeons (Surviving Waves of Enemies or Clearing as many areas in the dungeon as possible yields awesome REWARDS and Dungeon XP). Dungeon levels and Dungeon Difficulty Tier should determine the possible loot drops and RARITY of REWARDS.
Feedback Goal: The goal is to foster player choice in dungeon selection and dungeon replay-ability.
Feedback Functionality: This system would live in the Match Options when selecting a dungeon. Currently, the choices are hardcore and reduce Item levels to minimum. The new Match Options would prompt players to select Speed, Story, or Endless. Afterwards, players have to indicate the level of difficulty ranging Normal (Green REWARDS), Epic (Blue REWARDS), Master (Purple REWARDS), or Hardcore (Legendary REWARDS).
Risks & Concerns: The biggest concern I have with this system and any suggestions made so far is the Rewards and Loot for completing a dungeon. The current reward/loot system is not satisfying. Most players go to the Auction House after farming AD just to get a satisfactory reward. This is a harsh reality for veterans, and hardcore players than new players. The Rewards and Loot system should be aligned with dungeon bosses and difficulty. Rewards and loot is definitely its own topic lol. Rewards should be USEFUL and MEANINGFUL.
I love how you merged all of the different and interesting ideas into one. But the biggest drawback i see is that queue times will significantly shoot up and the only viable way of doing content, especially to grind high tier loot, would have to be through PUG.
As it stands, on average you are waiting for 20mins for random queues. If we then tier each dungeon into so many categories, you might as well not queue. Maybe they can just limit each campaign/dungeon to story mode and endless dungeon mode? They can combine speed runs within the endless dungeon part. The story mode could simply be made solo for those lore lovers and reduce critter ratings so they don't have a hard time killing trash. Other than that, endless dungeons yield more rewards the deeper you go and by the end of the module, the party/guild that reached the deepest with the fastest time could be rewarded. It would be worth increasing guild importance like they did with through TOMM.
This post mainly addresses the accessibility of PvP for newer players in terms of gear/general character power requirement. I will also touch on the viability of PvP as an alternate path through the game, reward incentives and history.
Feedback Goal
The goal of this feedback is to give suggestions that could improve the PvP experience for newcomers and thus lead to an increase in PvP population, which at the moment is rather low. Increase in population subsequently leads to improved matchmaking, better queue times and better competition. Additionally, there would be an improvement in the "economic" viability of PvP.
Feedback Functionality
Power gap
PvP right now has many issues. One of the biggest ones is the fact that if a new player joins a PvP match, the experience will be absolutely horrible for them (even without the inevitable kick coming their way). Knowledge and skill play some role in this, however, the majority comes down to power gap, i.e. worse gear, not enough boons, low level guild boons and so on. This is worsened by the current meta (I discuss this in a separate post in the PvP section of the forums), where those new players are unable to contribute in any way as BiS players easily outheal their damage and are able to kill in one or two shots. That is also something that should be prioritized.
Ignoring meta factors for now, the cause of this is power creep. We can easily see its effects throughout the history of PvP in the game. With every major "gear upgrade" (e.g. artifact gear, more artifact slots, mythic artifacts, higher level enchantments, guild boons, insignias, legendary mounts and their powers, or even just more boon points and higher level gear) PvP lost a part of its population. Note that some of those things are available exclusively via PvE, others can be bought with (often extremely high amounts of) AD.
There was once a time when a best in slot character had rank 10 enchantments, perfect weapon/armor enchantments and a legendary active artifact. That was a time where if you queued up for PvP with rank 7 enchantments and maybe greater weapon/armor enchantments, you could easily pull your weight, even beat BiS characters given enough skill. Those things that you really needed were reasonably easy to get and allowed you to compete. Today to be at a similar level relatively speaking, you have to be geared with rank 13 enchantments including weapon and armor, have all mythic artifacts, all legendary artifact gear, at least epic insignias and hopefully a good legendary mount for the active, perhaps an epic one for the passive power. Acquiring all of this is incomparably more difficult.
At least three solutions exist for this problem, each of which would probably work best alone; they cannot be combined too much. One of them is scaling in some form, the other is disabling parts of power creep (e.g. companions are and for the most part have been disabled in PvP), and finally there is PvP-specific gear (enchantments, insignias and so on to cover all areas).
Scaling
Scaling is a big topic in the game right now that has however been having severe issues. Some form could be implemented in PvP making it so that there is still difference between BiS and a lower geared player, but its much smaller to the point where the lower geared player can threaten the BiS one. Because of what we have seen with scaling in PvE, one would have to be extremely careful with its implementation in the very brittle PvP environment.
Disabling parts of power creep
A surely controversial move that would attempt to make PvP more similar to what it was in the past. Removing insignias and mount bonuses is a good start, along with guild boons that were so detrimental to PvP.
PvP-specific gear
Based on a mechanic that already exists in the game, the strategy here would be to introduce PvP-only items (e.g. enchantments) for sale at the PvP vendors for AD or glory. Those items would have an insignificant item level in PvE, but work at their full strength in PvP (right now, there is the Imperator gear with item level 40 in PvE, 960 in PvP, purchasable with AD). This could translate into something like an enchantment functioning like a rank 7 in PvE, but like a rank 14 in PvP, or an insignia working as rare in PvE, upgrading into epic or legendary in PvP.
Rewards and contribution to character progression
As mentioned above, most of the items used in PvP come from PvE. This doesn't seem very logical (or fair), though at least it somewhat lessens the amount of changes needed to adjust a PvE character for PvP. The major problem here comes from the fact that PvP itself doesn't offer almost anything in terms of character progression or rewards. In M17, this has been addressed with the addition of PvP Seasons, unfortunately the reward versus time invested ratio is woefully inadequate, especially taking into account that PvP is far more demanding of the player than any PvE content.
PvP should offer rewards per match separately from the seasonal rewards. Those should only be awarded for wins and should for example consist of RP, guild vouchers and campaign currency. Gear normally received from PvE content could also be included, with everything being account bound.
At various points, players had to grind PvE very hard to get the builds they needed – some examples of this are: black ice bracers in M3 gated by the horrible RNG of heroic encounters, resources for strongholds and the dreaded guild boons, the restoration based gear like trailblazer, primal and exalted weapons, and most recently TOMM weapons. As there was no way to (even partially) acquire those via PvP, PvP players often got frustrated and left the game. The worst moment was M7 with the aforementioned strongholds and their boons which had insane power – and required an insane amount of resources, even time gated ones like influence. This single handedly wiped out most of the PvP guilds (they were smallish with players that disliked PvE) and turned others to ghost towns.
Risks & Concerns
Some of these changes could initially be poorly received because they in fact take away some progress, diminish hard work put into characters. I doubt however that in the long term this would be an issue. Moreover, the implementation of some of these changes requires resources and investment from the developers. I do believe regardless that for the accessibility topic even with rewards, half of one module is enough to address everything.
Finally, I would like to point out how long PvP has survived in a fairly healthy state with almost no attention and no updates (or sometimes changes for the worse). PvP is a self-sustaining environment that if set up well, requires little maintenance (as we have seen in this game) and will continue to live on just through competition. For many, good PvP is the true endgame – after all, scripted encounters with mobs will never compare to fighting real, thinking players.
@gweddry This is so accurate. As a member of the pvp community since 2013, i would give up, myself, all my legendary mounts/ mythic artifacts, guild boons, etc for BALANCE. Gear gap is terrorizing players. Gear gap, boons etc, don't allow new players to compete the way they would like. They don't have a chance. Therefore, you got BiS players that refuse to premade , stomp undergeared newbies. There are 4 categories of people in pvp right now: 1. The BiS veterans , that seek GOOD competition and balance by trying to premade 2. The BiS people that hide their lack of skill behind their gear and enjoy stomping new players in solo queue 3. The solo queue players, that were always solo queuers 4. The new players/ low geared There is not much to do about No3. Some people just like to play alone. But for No1, No2 and No4 , your post imo is the ultimate solution. The veterans would actually, start enjoying pvp again, because pvp is competition of skill not competition of gear. The No2 people ( I call them No2 because the word I am looking is not allowed here I think) would try to learn 2 play and the MOST important, the NEW players would stand a chance, would form groups, would not be beaten and discouraged constantly. And that's how you build a healthy community. Thank you for taking the time to write this, representing the biggest amount of veteran pvpers and new players.
> @milehighxr#1299 said: > (Quote) > Don't forget all the people that have spent tons of time or real money on those comps post mod 16 to get the stats for ToMM. I think nerfing the comps is a bad idea. Better to buff up character stats. I do agree though on bring back the feat trees and such. I had really great hybrid paladin that was designed for dps/heals/tanking in mod 15. He was in a good place then, but now just boring as all he does is stand there and get hammered by the boss. Leading up to boss it's basically either try to outrun everyone else and grab aggro for 2 seconds, or just keep up with them enough to not get too far behind.
Yeah, of course. But I would argue that the investment would be worth more (companion powers, bolster etc) if the ridiculous op bonding runestones were corrected or “nerfed” if you wish. I don’t really care if they are kept as is though as long as the main issue with everyone capping every stat is addressed. I would also not like the old system back(even though I like it better than the current one) but a reworked system that is valid.
> @rjc9000 said: > (Quote) > There were a lot wrong with the old feat trees. It could be a lengthy document nitpicking, but I'd argue that the main issues were that there were a lot of ... "fake" choices:* a decent amount of times, you had to pick between two equally bad options that never really expended your build > > * there were choices that presented a great feat versus a laughably useless one, which meant that the only choice ended up being "pick the non terrible feat or waste your points" > > * feats that asked players to use powers that sucked or had their usefulness overestimated (huh, why does this sound familiar...?) > > * lots of stuff that ran in the background but didn't actually differentiate the role that much (not necessarily as bad as the above issues, just not as interesting to put points in) > > > The main exceptions to these trends were the feats that actually made builds, the capstones, and the few feats that upgraded powers players were planning to use. > > So, I understand why the amount of feats was reduced to 10, and picking 5. Instead of confusing new players with paralysis of what to pick when there were a lot of poor choices, make a smaller amount of choices but with much greater effects. > > The main issue I can think of was that instead of getting 10 capstone like feats with a choice of 5, the feat choices presented now usually end up forcing players to use terrible powers, or have overly flashy effects with 0 substance, or barely change how players approach combat. > > Again, this issue could be explained in further depth, but I'd think the more in depth explanations on "how class feats/passives/progression/powers should be reworked" would be better in its own CDP topic. > > Ideally, this CDP topic that would be really useful to have before putting out the DPS Cleric/DPS Fighter reworks so there could be a state set for how to rework all other classes when the time comes, like, say, how to rework the poor Hellbringer Warlock, or Hunter Ranger, or Whisperknife Rogue... > > No Mr. Whitside, I'm "not" suggesting anything at all while responding to another person, why do you ask?
Comments
A bit about myself. Studied Pharmacy and now a trainee solicitor.
I see, you have a nice and simple goal set out in front of you and now you want suggestions to make it come to realization. I like the idea.
From my perspective, you would need to keep a close eye on:
If there is enough content to sate the players? Right now, NW is in the negative of this and i really mean NEGATIVE.
If there are enough players to be able to segregate them into difficulty tiers? As it stands, the queue times are very long.
Securing some kind of benefit to those who have spend resources into the game. So as for now, TOMM is a very good reason to spend resources to earn good rewards. That's why i called it a success.
I feel like campaigns would have to disappear in some form. The best way to achieve the above goal with NW's current manpower would be as you have stated, content has to be graded so that the same content can sate both types of players. But, the third thing to keep a note of is as I have mentioned before, does it provide enough content? So therefore there must be rewards that players can grind without any daily cap. Grinding is a form of progression, but currently NW is doing it all wrong with having daily caps. My friend recently said to me, "I got nothing to grind, what kind of MMO has nothing to grind?", he cracked a nut with a sledgehammer here.
So I advice that story based, endless dungeons is the next big thing. Create a one big campaign like Undermountain, but instead of having solo quests, let parties have quests which are story based and force players to follow cut scenes. Then, have a hard version of the same campaign, where story can be turned off and players basically try to go as deep as possible. I believe it should sate them easily for few months until your next module. Of course, give them incentive to upgrade to go deeper, and at the same time grind grind grind whenever they want to. To keep the money flow healthy, keep some items in ZEN that will be necessary to progress deeper into the dungeon but cheap.
So in a way, the story version will sate the completely D&D lore lovers. The no story mode will gate less geared players until they are unable to progress. Give them reasons to grind at the same time as these are usually young players who wouldn't want to spend but would rather play for hours to upgrade gear. Then, those who are casual in a sense that they would rather spend to progress, they will soon realise that money can't buy skill as they progress deeper into the dungeon. This sates the hardcore players.
Conclusion
The goal is to sate both newcomers and end gamers with the same content, that reflects NW's manpower. At the same time, the lore lovers get to enjoy the pure version of the story with their friends and the grinders get a non-stop grinding missions. The hardcore players get to test their mettle as they delve deeper into the dungeon/campaign. All of this, while keeping a constant and healthy supply into the game for the survival of the business. Just remember the the 3 important things, grind, lore and endless progression. I hope you can now fix the rest of the puzzle with the community's support.
Boons, We all have and need Boons they an important part of the game, but after 6-7 years of 2-3 campaigns per year that were designed for a minimum of 4 weeks doing the same quests daily, we get the point that a new player get lv80 and have no boons facing weeks and weeks of dailies in several different maps.
Lets see, lets say we need 15min to do the daily on 1 campaign:
1-Tyranny of dragon
2-The Maze Engine
3-Sharandar
4-Underdark
5-Dread Ring
6-Storm King’s Thunder + Somi
7-IceWind Dale
8-The cloacked Ascendery
9-Jungles of Chult
10-Ravenloft
15min x10 = 150min = 2 and half hours (not including new campaigns)
Those 2 almost 3 hours of play time daily for 4-5 weeks are not fun. And lets face it we all have a Life, 8 hrs of sleep 8 hrs at work, most of us don’t even have 3 hrs to play each day even less to do all those boons/campaigns.
We all have suffer with this but we did it bit by bit since when a new module came out we were done with the previous.
This gets tedious and a lot of player quit cuz they don't see progress.
Feedback Goal
Reduce the time needed to finish old campaigns.
Feedback Functionality
Double or triple the currency each quest gives.
Risks & Concerns
The problem/Risk I can see happening are old player, like myself, complaining about all the time they spent there and new player now have it easy, but at same time they complain that most player they find don’t even have all boons.
Lv 80 dungeons, after Mod 16 we got 1 lv 80 dungeon and 1 trial (Lomm/Tomm), I think we all agree when I say 2 of the best dungeons in game with a good design and Boss Mechanic.
But those 2 are what we can Call Endgame Dungeon/Trial. All other are Lv70 and useless to help my New Guild members gearing. We miss a Middle game Dungeon or Dungeons.
I Used to love getting new guild member getting lv70 and then have 3-4-5 dungeons were I could take them to help gearing. Now that impossible, lets say we get 3 27ilv member from the guild all very experienced and get 2 new player with 20-21ilv and go do Lomm its impossible to pass 1st boss.
All other dungeons in game, all lv70 were I can take them are useless giving lv70 gear, and artifacts that are so useless that a rare drop in a chest is sold in AH for 100ad and there’s piles of them even the filler artifacts u get free from Barovia or Under Mountain are better status wise and no need to refine.
Feedback Goal
Have a place/dungeons where I can go with a party of 2 new player and 3 veterans where we all can have fun and end-up helping gearing the new lv80 players.
Feedback Functionality
Bring more Lv80 dungeons/Skirmishes not totally endGame.
Risks & Concerns
Old Player with not like having new easier lv80 Dungeons and will complain, veteran player may use this as a place to farm something (bound to acc/char loot).
In terms of accessibility of neverwinter, what I often observe in neverwinter is that new inexperienced players are having difficulty progressing beyond much of the initial content simply because they are often expecting a more linear storyline in the game but quickly become overwhelmed by several different stories all happening simultaneously, much of which by the time a player completes one ongoing story, they have considerably out-leveled both the maps and the rewards of the other storylines, as well as being presented by a dozen more new stories all at once. Many of which, although are great stories, are otherwise unnecessary for the player to even complete, yet many players don't realize this and compulsively try to complete all the ongoing quests chronologically. Eventually becoming mired in the dregs and walking away feeling resentful that they did all that for nothing that substantially benefitted their character.
Given neverwinter's dungeons & dragons theme, much of the demographic this game appeals to, come to the table expecting some good storytelling, and in this regard neverwinter does provide, but considering that neverwinter is also an mmorpg, a totally linear story cannot be possible, and that's to be expected to some degree.
Meanwhile, when the experienced neverwinter player starts a new character, they already know they can systematically simply play through the first 2 or 3 maps. Personally I like to stop after neverdeath graveyard because I enjoy the clockwork tomb dungeon at the end. Also then start AI campaign, and grind random queues until lvl.60, at which point start Elemental Evil, Maze Engine, and Sharandar. Afterwards its 10 more lvls of that until Well of Dragons, Dread Ring, Caer Konig, Chult and others campaigns a player can grind simultaneously until lvl.80 when they can begin the Undermountain content, and then backtrack and complete the old campaigns afterwards.
What seems to be occurring for new players is that they are being confronted with a great deal of content which is not particularly rewarding during the lvling phase for the amount of effort invested in it, but until someone actually tells them otherwise they have no idea they could be directing their efforts more efficiently.
Feedback Goal
While Both the AI campaign, and legacy system was a great step forward to streamlining this process for all players, (new & vet) it still leaves those first time players often feeling confused and frustrated about what to prioritize and where to focus their efforts. What it seems we need to overcome is the steep character progression curve, but all the while maintaining a fast paced and compelling storytelling experience. Also players expect that their efforts are appropriately rewarded with items or currency which is relatively to them.
Feedback Functionality
How do we resolve this without just deleting all the great old content that many players are still looking for, but at the same time maintaining an efficient player experience? Well of course in a perfect world (no pun intended), we would simply do both, give players an entirely new low level story arc, with a really strong story that is both compelling but also fast-paced enough that they aren't finding themselves doing too much repetitive grinding before progressing the story. Possibly even offer players a variety of dialog, selectable rewards or even quests during their story arc based on choices made in conversations with npc's.
Although going at it this route is a massive undertaking, it's also a massive opportunity to maybe replace some of the old with new and perhaps even more significant locations, there are many notable places in Faerun such as Waterdeep which is an integral location to both Lord Neverember's origins and Undermountain's history (which I think many of our story loving players would love to indulge in and would help construct a more linear story arc from beginning to end), not to mention places like Nalanther Ilses, the ghost city of Velen, the orc stronghold of Murann, etc...
Risks & Concerns
Removing many of the obsolete maps and quests could simplify things, but that also means reworking portions of the games current storyline as well as backtracking through neverwinter's web of interdependent quests that will either reference obsolete locations, npc's or physically run a player back through many of those low level maps (such as the EE quests take player back into ebon downs, a map that could otherwise be skipped completely, or the tyranny of dragons maps which take players back through several different maps to battle the dragons, as well as the maze engine repeatable daily quests, and likely many more). But there's no reason to completely remove the old maps, they can be left in-game and invisible from map unless a player has a quest there, make them optional maps where players can do quests for gold or other selectable rewards. Nor am I suggesting we 'nerf' the ability for experienced players to power through the first 60 levels or so quickly, I'm suggesting we streamline the process offering a less overwhelming experience to the new players.
+1. I'm happy enough for a challenge, but I don't really want stuff that is old, that I've done 1000's of times and should have "outleveled" long ago, taking a long time - that's like rubbing salt into a wound. MSP (spell plague caverns) is a classic example - making that dungeon take 3x longer in no way makes it more enjoyable, it just makes if god awful and everytime it comes up I have to fight off the strong desire to just abandon it on the spot.
Not very often. But that is why I want new modules to be challenging. However, this doesn't equate to wanting old modules to be artificially inflated in difficulty. If I'm going back, it is to grind stuff, don't want that taking longer than it should and hammering away at something with at wills is super boring (to me anyway).
Challenging should be incorporate things like needing fast reflexes / pay attention to boss "tells", good timing, having to incorporate dungeon mechanics, perhaps coordination within the group. Examples of this would be VT back when you had to pick quadrants to disable the caskets, CoDG push pull, FBI everfrost etc.
In CN there was a time that if you mistimed a block of Orcu's attacks, you got one shot (if you were my GF anyway) and it was a wipe - that was challenging & fun to me and you had a sense of satisfaction afterwards.
I don't like how Tong, CoDG, FBI, MSP etc. got gimped. The dragon turtle now in FBI is just sooooo boring, Orcus - boring.
Finally, I wanted to elaborate on my previous request for tiered dungeon difficulties. If epic and normal versions of the Dungeons existed then this would give players a chance to learn mechanics. For CoDG you could have the epic version where if you fell off the platform, you didn't come back (i.e. like it used to be) and the normal / easy version could be how it is now, the easy version could have a reduced push / pull intensity and the Epic version could have it more intense like it was when CoDG first got released. Players could train on the easy version and then have a crack at the Epic.
Same thing for MSP at the second boss.
The Epic version of FBI could still have the turtle gaining rage stacks, so you had to use the mechanics to stop it from slamming
Chris, I must say that this discussion has given me hope that the game that I have enjoyed for the last 5+ years might have some chance of recovering to be as enjoyable as it was. If you back this up with some action and its not just empty words, I'll go back to supporting this game financially. It was a very good game and still has a lot of potential. It's just an OK game at the moment that has been gimped.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
I'm probably alone on this one in the forums but I think maybe there are a lot that do agree with me in game, but i HATE the holy trinity. I prefered the way it was with lifesteal, buff/debuff before personally. but a HUGE margin. I don't want to be a healer. I don't want the hate they get if they're doing their job or not. I don't want to be a tank because of the hate they get, whether they are doing their job or not. and I think a lot of people are with me there. it was one of the things that made this particular mmo stick out from the rest in a very good way. now not so much for just so many reasons. it's the reason that heals and tanks are a little harder to come by. like 3% actually LIKE playing those classes. many people actually liked being buff debuff. and as a dps I really dislike depending on heals to heal me. I like playing with other people but I dislike my health being reliant on them.
Then lifesteal took over and that was bad. I remember groups of 5 DPS steamrolling dungeons because they were able to outheal any damage while dealing massive damage at the same time. And they were even able to do door-to-door pulls. That's the main reason why mod 6 had to do a complete rehaul of the system.
Personally I'd like to go back to the first system, with less damage, less healing and more use of potions. Nowadays only a tank can get a hit from a boss. This means that the strategy in combat is always the same: tank has to get boss' agro. My suggestion to the dev team would be to go back to mod1-mod2 and play the old epic dungeons. That was Neverwinter at its best.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
That's why i said that there is no need of holy trinity in dungeons where story is predominant. In my opinion, the holy trininty encourages team work, i.e. healer has to do a set task and dps have to avoid danger. With no holy trinity in place, you'll only see dps's stream roll everything and at which point, tanks and healers may as well be deleted. You would know perfectly well that dps are the hardest class to baby sit; if a dungeon can be run with all dps's, no one is going to follow orders or mechanics, and it'll just be spam your head on the keyboard until the trash dies. I for once am completely in contrary to it.
Feedback Overview
I would like to propose having a “barracks” of shared companions available on an account for both existing and future characters.
Feedback goal
I believe this will reduce redundancy of companions across an account and open the possibility of quickly being able to slot any companion from the shared barracks. If a new or existing player decided they had not found the right class for them during levelling, any companions they had acquired from any source would be available for another character on that account.
Feedback Functionality
Using the existing UI, a player would be able to choose any companion to assign to the appropriate slot type available on that class from the shared barracks. Companions would still be able to be upgraded in the same fashion and those companions would be accessible on the account.
Risks & Concerns
As a consumer of the product none, in fact – I think I would probably look to upgrade other companions.
History
I recently had in it mind to create a fighter as I actually enjoy tanking and wanted to see how it felt using another class. It quickly became apparent that I would need to be levelling up another set of companions. This felt a little bit disheartening as I already have several legendary companions on my Paladin. Of course, then I realised why I wouldn’t be using the Paladin for anything other than a tank as I am already in the process of upgrading outgoing healing companions for my Warlock!
Thanks
Black
The Tomm meta is 1 tank 1 OPheal rest DPS. That is the problem lets look at it from this perspective....
Can you run Tomm without a Soulweaver or a Devout? Yes
Can you run Tomm without a Healadin? No the shield is too important to survival
what is the most requested Tomm classes when people are putting together runs? Cw (cuz they want 6) Tank (cuz there just arent that many around another reason to only bring 1) and pally heal
Yes you can finish the Trial with 2 tanks and 2 healers but you will face much more of the mechanics which gives you less room for error
or you can take the pally heal the 1 tank and add in 2 more HDPS and melt him so fast that you bypass a bunch of the mechanics making it easier
this is why in my opinion Tomm is bad for the game, it alienated classes tremendously
not because of difficulty blah blah blah
is the content really that good when it calls for 6+ CW?
everyone that played any other class were forced to roll a wizard switch out there enchants and bonding or just not do that content
I've gotten to the point where i could care less if i complete it or not
and this is coming from a long time 25k+ cleric that meets all the criteria
i'm torn on this issue because i do think something needs to be done but i also dont want to see yet another class get nerfed i also dont want every healer class to be the same with all having shields etc there needs to be some variety but the end game healer right now is the pally by a landslide simply because of their shield
The difficulty raised from the combination of monsters abilities and there were not special unavoidable mechanics or "must-do-this" things, so you could really adjust the strategy in different ways. The game now has too many checks (cocoon healing check in Lomm, DPS checks in TOMM, DPS checks in ToNG,....=) and that seriously impacts the possibility to get out of the one-and-all strategy for that specific dungeon.
I also hate the kind of trump-card mechanics you have in TOMM (split-up when this happens, get close when that happens, ...), or all the when-the-boss-gets-to-X%-life- this-happens conditions. They feel artificial too. It may be because I come more from D&D tabletop and less from MMOs, but I always feel a disconnect when they show up.
I ran TOMM once so far just for the sake of having it completed and do not plan to run it anymore. It's an horrible experience, with one single target feeling like a dummy, DPS checks at fixed times, trump-card mechanics, all the worst stuff in games put in one single place. Compare it with the Dread Vault, or Lair of the Mad Dragon (with Succubi healing the boss) and it really pales.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
p.s. I don't how to work the forums, sorry for the odd quote.
Jade - Cleric - Healer Main - The Freak Core - Xbone
Magnus - Fighter - Tank for queues - The Freak Core - Xbone
Loverboy - Ranger - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
Nomnomnommm - Wizard - Alt - Droppin Crits on Fools - Xbone
I Am The Wall - Paladin - Alt - Droppin Crits on Fools - Xbone
Xeros - Rogue - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
RIP bad name - Warlock - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
Bardholomew - Bard - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
Sirona - Cleric - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
Jade - DC - Shadows of Gauntlgrym - PC
TOMM is also not the best way to give players a sense of challenge but it definitely was a step forward from all the previous content that was just too simple and easy. The checks are rather pale as you say, like dps check is basically standing still and spamming and healing check is standing close together and shielding/healing. But many games out there have different mechanics that are coordinated with the boss's remaining health so elemental phases that trigger at certain %health is not very uncommon. However, tanks would tell you that they love TOMM because they have the toughest job.
Holy trinity or Quaternary system, whichever we end up sticking with, it is definitely mandatory to balance classes and dungeons. That is just my opinion but i do ultimately agree with you that mechanics in this game are very simple. That's also something the game can look into and introduce difficult mechanics as you go deeper into a dungeon which end gamers would love to. I am fairly certain that most lore lovers or just casual players wouldn't want the game to get harder.
Feedback Overview
I want to see diversity in the game. Not the illusion of diversity pre mod 16 and not the mind-numbing dumbed down version in current game but real diversity where different classes acctually have different roles/abilities/stats etc. There are basically 3 (or 2 and 1/2) different characters in the game, dps, tank, and healer. They have different skins (races, classes and gear) but statwise they are really just same same with a different name. All the players have same stats (the stat cap for all the stats) and even more dumb is that the critters have the same stats no matter what. Its 35k (or whatever) for everything. Talk about lack of diversity...
Feedback Goal
Stop focus on class balance and making every class able to do exactly the same dps as the next one. Its never going to happen and I couldnt care less if a wizard is doing 5, 10 or 15% more damage than a fighter (more or less every class have at least one self buff so it would be really easy to balance by just fine tuning this one feat). Start making the different classes interesting instead. Make the barbarion tank with massive hp, light armour that makes for high deflection and rage to ignore pain. Make the fighter tank by wearing a massive heavy armour and a big shield to hide behind when the dragon fire becomes to hot around the ears. Make the paladin tank with divinity and magic shields, raising barriers and generating temp hitpoints for the next heavy blow (think bubble, and templars wrath but less op). 3 different tanks that can do the job but with way different stats to focus on and most of all different play styles to master.
The same reasoning can be used for all the classes and Im not going to waste time on that. I think you get my point and if not please go back to the second sentence in the first part of the text
Feedback Functionality
Reintroduce the feat (and power) trees but make them viable. Make it impossible to cap all the stats(remove the massive stat gain from companions) but to where you have to choose and focus on the ones relevant for your class and play style. Make different critters have different stats. Make the feats and powers to something you invest in as you go along adventuring and not something that is capped the same moment you reach lvl 80 (move some of the progress in gears to progression in the character stats/abilities/feats/powers).
Risks & Concerns
The risk is obvious and massive. By looking in the rear view mirror we can see several problems with classes that have been way overpowered and why wouldnt it happen again?! It probably will happen again but to me its worth the risk. I had way more fun running in the bubble of a pally than I have now when everything is just same, same and more of the same.
Thank you for your time!
/Vandelay
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
- a decent amount of times, you had to pick between two equally bad options that never really expended your build
- there were choices that presented a great feat versus a laughably useless one, which meant that the only choice ended up being "pick the non terrible feat or waste your points"
- feats that asked players to use powers that sucked or had their usefulness overestimated (huh, why does this sound familiar...?)
- lots of stuff that ran in the background but didn't actually differentiate the role that much (not necessarily as bad as the above issues, just not as interesting to put points in)
The main exceptions to these trends were the feats that actually made builds, the capstones, and the few feats that upgraded powers players were planning to use.So, I understand why the amount of feats was reduced to 10, and picking 5. Instead of confusing new players with paralysis of what to pick when there were a lot of poor choices, make a smaller amount of choices but with much greater effects.
The main issue I can think of was that instead of getting 10 capstone like feats with a choice of 5, the feat choices presented now usually end up forcing players to use terrible powers, or have overly flashy effects with 0 substance, or barely change how players approach combat.
Again, this issue could be explained in further depth, but I'd think the more in depth explanations on "how class feats/passives/progression/powers should be reworked" would be better in its own CDP topic.
Ideally, this CDP topic that would be really useful to have before putting out the DPS Cleric/DPS Fighter reworks so there could be a state set for how to rework all other classes when the time comes, like, say, how to rework the poor Hellbringer Warlock, or Hunter Ranger, or Whisperknife Rogue...
No Mr. Whitside, I'm "not" suggesting anything at all while responding to another person, why do you ask?Difficulty and Ease of Content as it pertains to hardcore vs. casual players, veterans vs. beginners
The current leveling system has players gaining experience levels from 1 - 80 through zones and campaigns. Where the difficulty is very SITUATIONAL can be challenging for new players and very simple for veterans. After level 80, players focus shift away from gaining experience in the game to gaining stats, and gear.
Feedback Overview:
A system were players can gain Dungeon Levels from dungeon experience that only comes from running dungeons. Different dungeon types that cater to different playstyles; example - Speed Dungeons (Completing the dungeon as fast as possible yields awesome REWARDS and Dungeon XP), Story Dungeons (Completing all dungeon objectives and puzzles yields awesome REWARDS and Dungeon XP), Endless Dungeons (Surviving Waves of Enemies or Clearing as many areas in the dungeon as possible yields awesome REWARDS and Dungeon XP). Dungeon levels and Dungeon Difficulty Tier should determine the possible loot drops and RARITY of REWARDS.
Feedback Goal:
The goal is to foster player choice in dungeon selection and dungeon replay-ability.
Feedback Functionality:
This system would live in the Match Options when selecting a dungeon. Currently, the choices are hardcore and reduce Item levels to minimum. The new Match Options would prompt players to select Speed, Story, or Endless. Afterwards, players have to indicate the level of difficulty ranging Normal (Green REWARDS), Epic (Blue REWARDS), Master (Purple REWARDS), or Hardcore (Legendary REWARDS).
Risks & Concerns:
The biggest concern I have with this system and any suggestions made so far is the Rewards and Loot for completing a dungeon. The current reward/loot system is not satisfying. Most players go to the Auction House after farming AD just to get a satisfactory reward. This is a harsh reality for veterans, and hardcore players than new players. The Rewards and Loot system should be aligned with dungeon bosses and difficulty. Rewards and loot is definitely its own topic lol. Rewards should be USEFUL and MEANINGFUL.
As it stands, on average you are waiting for 20mins for random queues. If we then tier each dungeon into so many categories, you might as well not queue. Maybe they can just limit each campaign/dungeon to story mode and endless dungeon mode? They can combine speed runs within the endless dungeon part. The story mode could simply be made solo for those lore lovers and reduce critter ratings so they don't have a hard time killing trash. Other than that, endless dungeons yield more rewards the deeper you go and by the end of the module, the party/guild that reached the deepest with the fastest time could be rewarded. It would be worth increasing guild importance like they did with through TOMM.
Feedback Overview
This post mainly addresses the accessibility of PvP for newer players in terms of gear/general character power requirement. I will also touch on the viability of PvP as an alternate path through the game, reward incentives and history.Feedback Goal
The goal of this feedback is to give suggestions that could improve the PvP experience for newcomers and thus lead to an increase in PvP population, which at the moment is rather low. Increase in population subsequently leads to improved matchmaking, better queue times and better competition. Additionally, there would be an improvement in the "economic" viability of PvP.Feedback Functionality
Power gap
PvP right now has many issues. One of the biggest ones is the fact that if a new player joins a PvP match, the experience will be absolutely horrible for them (even without the inevitable kick coming their way). Knowledge and skill play some role in this, however, the majority comes down to power gap, i.e. worse gear, not enough boons, low level guild boons and so on. This is worsened by the current meta (I discuss this in a separate post in the PvP section of the forums), where those new players are unable to contribute in any way as BiS players easily outheal their damage and are able to kill in one or two shots. That is also something that should be prioritized.Ignoring meta factors for now, the cause of this is power creep. We can easily see its effects throughout the history of PvP in the game. With every major "gear upgrade" (e.g. artifact gear, more artifact slots, mythic artifacts, higher level enchantments, guild boons, insignias, legendary mounts and their powers, or even just more boon points and higher level gear) PvP lost a part of its population. Note that some of those things are available exclusively via PvE, others can be bought with (often extremely high amounts of) AD.
There was once a time when a best in slot character had rank 10 enchantments, perfect weapon/armor enchantments and a legendary active artifact. That was a time where if you queued up for PvP with rank 7 enchantments and maybe greater weapon/armor enchantments, you could easily pull your weight, even beat BiS characters given enough skill. Those things that you really needed were reasonably easy to get and allowed you to compete. Today to be at a similar level relatively speaking, you have to be geared with rank 13 enchantments including weapon and armor, have all mythic artifacts, all legendary artifact gear, at least epic insignias and hopefully a good legendary mount for the active, perhaps an epic one for the passive power. Acquiring all of this is incomparably more difficult.
At least three solutions exist for this problem, each of which would probably work best alone; they cannot be combined too much. One of them is scaling in some form, the other is disabling parts of power creep (e.g. companions are and for the most part have been disabled in PvP), and finally there is PvP-specific gear (enchantments, insignias and so on to cover all areas).
Scaling
Scaling is a big topic in the game right now that has however been having severe issues. Some form could be implemented in PvP making it so that there is still difference between BiS and a lower geared player, but its much smaller to the point where the lower geared player can threaten the BiS one. Because of what we have seen with scaling in PvE, one would have to be extremely careful with its implementation in the very brittle PvP environment.Disabling parts of power creep
A surely controversial move that would attempt to make PvP more similar to what it was in the past. Removing insignias and mount bonuses is a good start, along with guild boons that were so detrimental to PvP.PvP-specific gear
Based on a mechanic that already exists in the game, the strategy here would be to introduce PvP-only items (e.g. enchantments) for sale at the PvP vendors for AD or glory. Those items would have an insignificant item level in PvE, but work at their full strength in PvP (right now, there is the Imperator gear with item level 40 in PvE, 960 in PvP, purchasable with AD). This could translate into something like an enchantment functioning like a rank 7 in PvE, but like a rank 14 in PvP, or an insignia working as rare in PvE, upgrading into epic or legendary in PvP.Rewards and contribution to character progression
As mentioned above, most of the items used in PvP come from PvE. This doesn't seem very logical (or fair), though at least it somewhat lessens the amount of changes needed to adjust a PvE character for PvP. The major problem here comes from the fact that PvP itself doesn't offer almost anything in terms of character progression or rewards. In M17, this has been addressed with the addition of PvP Seasons, unfortunately the reward versus time invested ratio is woefully inadequate, especially taking into account that PvP is far more demanding of the player than any PvE content.PvP should offer rewards per match separately from the seasonal rewards. Those should only be awarded for wins and should for example consist of RP, guild vouchers and campaign currency. Gear normally received from PvE content could also be included, with everything being account bound.
At various points, players had to grind PvE very hard to get the builds they needed – some examples of this are: black ice bracers in M3 gated by the horrible RNG of heroic encounters, resources for strongholds and the dreaded guild boons, the restoration based gear like trailblazer, primal and exalted weapons, and most recently TOMM weapons. As there was no way to (even partially) acquire those via PvP, PvP players often got frustrated and left the game. The worst moment was M7 with the aforementioned strongholds and their boons which had insane power – and required an insane amount of resources, even time gated ones like influence. This single handedly wiped out most of the PvP guilds (they were smallish with players that disliked PvE) and turned others to ghost towns.
Risks & Concerns
Some of these changes could initially be poorly received because they in fact take away some progress, diminish hard work put into characters. I doubt however that in the long term this would be an issue. Moreover, the implementation of some of these changes requires resources and investment from the developers. I do believe regardless that for the accessibility topic even with rewards, half of one module is enough to address everything.Finally, I would like to point out how long PvP has survived in a fairly healthy state with almost no attention and no updates (or sometimes changes for the worse). PvP is a self-sustaining environment that if set up well, requires little maintenance (as we have seen in this game) and will continue to live on just through competition. For many, good PvP is the true endgame – after all, scripted encounters with mobs will never compare to fighting real, thinking players.
1. The BiS veterans , that seek GOOD competition and balance by trying to premade
2. The BiS people that hide their lack of skill behind their gear and enjoy stomping new players in solo queue
3. The solo queue players, that were always solo queuers
4. The new players/ low geared
There is not much to do about No3. Some people just like to play alone. But for No1, No2 and No4 , your post imo is the ultimate solution. The veterans would actually, start enjoying pvp again, because pvp is competition of skill not competition of gear. The No2 people ( I call them No2 because the word I am looking is not allowed here I think) would try to learn 2 play and the MOST important, the NEW players would stand a chance, would form groups, would not be beaten and discouraged constantly. And that's how you build a healthy community.
Thank you for taking the time to write this, representing the biggest amount of veteran pvpers and new players.
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> Don't forget all the people that have spent tons of time or real money on those comps post mod 16 to get the stats for ToMM. I think nerfing the comps is a bad idea. Better to buff up character stats. I do agree though on bring back the feat trees and such. I had really great hybrid paladin that was designed for dps/heals/tanking in mod 15. He was in a good place then, but now just boring as all he does is stand there and get hammered by the boss. Leading up to boss it's basically either try to outrun everyone else and grab aggro for 2 seconds, or just keep up with them enough to not get too far behind.
Yeah, of course. But I would argue that the investment would be worth more (companion powers, bolster etc) if the ridiculous op bonding runestones were corrected or “nerfed” if you wish. I don’t really care if they are kept as is though as long as the main issue with everyone capping every stat is addressed.
I would also not like the old system back(even though I like it better than the current one) but a reworked system that is valid.
> @rjc9000 said:
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> There were a lot wrong with the old feat trees. It could be a lengthy document nitpicking, but I'd argue that the main issues were that there were a lot of ... "fake" choices:* a decent amount of times, you had to pick between two equally bad options that never really expended your build
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> * there were choices that presented a great feat versus a laughably useless one, which meant that the only choice ended up being "pick the non terrible feat or waste your points"
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> * feats that asked players to use powers that sucked or had their usefulness overestimated (huh, why does this sound familiar...?)
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> * lots of stuff that ran in the background but didn't actually differentiate the role that much (not necessarily as bad as the above issues, just not as interesting to put points in)
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> The main exceptions to these trends were the feats that actually made builds, the capstones, and the few feats that upgraded powers players were planning to use.
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> So, I understand why the amount of feats was reduced to 10, and picking 5. Instead of confusing new players with paralysis of what to pick when there were a lot of poor choices, make a smaller amount of choices but with much greater effects.
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> The main issue I can think of was that instead of getting 10 capstone like feats with a choice of 5, the feat choices presented now usually end up forcing players to use terrible powers, or have overly flashy effects with 0 substance, or barely change how players approach combat.
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> Again, this issue could be explained in further depth, but I'd think the more in depth explanations on "how class feats/passives/progression/powers should be reworked" would be better in its own CDP topic.
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> Ideally, this CDP topic that would be really useful to have before putting out the DPS Cleric/DPS Fighter reworks so there could be a state set for how to rework all other classes when the time comes, like, say, how to rework the poor Hellbringer Warlock, or Hunter Ranger, or Whisperknife Rogue...
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> No Mr. Whitside, I'm "not" suggesting anything at all while responding to another person, why do you ask?
Well said, I couldn’t agree more.