Skirmishes were entirely removed for lower level players?

tagen

Hello, all. I had not been back to Neverwinter for a couple of months and returned when I had some free time to play (having the winter festival going on now helped with the motivation ).

One of the first things I noticed playing a new character was that I could not get the Blacklake skirmish. The NPC is there and explains how to get to it, but the queue page was completely empty for me.

Asking about this in chat I was told all skirmishes are only for level 64 and above now. Made no sense to me at all, so I started looking into it more and found this from October:
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/11275373-queue-changes

Ok, so I found when it happened and I suppose I can see part of the why, even if I don't completely understand it, but that post says "Low level skirmishes will currently be removed from the random queues" (emphasis mine). What about just being able to select it direct? That used to be an option, too. Did not have the daily reward, but that was not why I was playing them anyway. I just wanted to pick the content to play with my group as we reached those zones in the game.

Why was it removed in its entirety from leveling players? Has there been any news at all on a possible return?

Thanks.

greywynd

The only way to get into the skirmishes was by way of the queue.

tagen

greywynd said:

The only way to get into the skirmishes was by way of the queue.

Except I never picked them under the random queue, I always selected them directly. Maybe I am not understanding what "random queue" means here. I thought it was the one where, when selected, you would be put into any of the (at the time) dungeons or skirmishes available to your level. as opposed to selecting a specific (not random) dungeon or skirmish to run.

greywynd

Random queue can be different things. You don't know where you're going or you don't know who you will be partied with or both.

tagen

greywynd said:

Random queue can be different things. You don't know where you're going or you don't know who you will be partied with or both.

What about when I had a full party already grouped and selected the skirmish specifically? That is as far from random as it gets. And is what we did, so that is why the two are very different in my mind. The announcement was far from clear on what was going on.

Someone told me that the change is also permanent? So low levels won't ever get the skirmishes for those zones again? The whole of it is only for endgame? Removing content from leveling players is an interesting move.

pitshade

The blog post says only that they were removed from the Random Queue, but later, it was clarified by the CM that they were removed entirely.

What you are describing is 'manual queue' btw. That was the term used by the devs when they introduced the random queues.

tagen

pitshade said:

The blog post says only that they were removed from the Random Queue, but later, it was clarified by the CM that they were removed entirely.

What you are describing is 'manual queue' btw. That was the term used by the devs when they introduced the random queues.

Thank you. Yeah, I was not sure what to call it other than "not random".

Coming in to this a couple months later all I had to go on was that initial announcement.
Do you know whether it is also confirmed that there is no intention to bring skirmishes back to lower levels where they were? Or might they be back, if only in a manual queue?

Thanks again.

greywynd

Give them 4 years and they'll bring them back in a revamped "Tales of Old".

pitshade

tagen said:

Do you know whether it is also confirmed that there is no intention to bring skirmishes back to lower levels where they were? Or might they be back, if only in a manual queue?

Thanks again.

I think the patch notes or dev blog said they would be reworked in some fashion before coming back. No time frame has ever been given, however.

wintersmoke

tagen said:

Hello, all.

snip

Why was it removed in its entirety from leveling players? Has there been any news at all on a possible return?

Thanks.

You can get into the CTA's @ level 40.

tagen

wintersmoke said:

tagen said:

Hello, all.

snip

Why was it removed in its entirety from leveling players? Has there been any news at all on a possible return?

Thanks.

You can get into the CTA's @ level 40.

CTAs are events, so not always available. Plus, if anything is scaled, given how well the scaling is done for the Winter event, I think it is better for me to just accept that skirmishes are gone until endgame, possibly for good.

Apparently enough of the playerbase sees leveling only as something to endure and get past as quickly as possible so they can get to the "real" game. Maybe for those players the devs made the right move. I just don't happen to be one of them.

hustin1

Would it really be too much to ask for the devs to tell us WHY the skirmishes were removed beyond some nebulous "we're reworking them"? Why do they always HAVE to leave us totally in the dark?

rez090

I actually hate that since they removed the lower level zone skirmishes, all the in-game achievements that are awarded on completing those skirmishes are now unobtainable. Meaning, like with Blacklake, the title "Hero of Blacklake" can no longer be obtained. How can the developer's be actual idiots and break existing content without actually giving any reasons as to why they broke the content?

rev

they did say something about most of them being bugged like the storming the keep one that had a missing part of the bridge and players couldn't move forward unless they had shift mechanic like rogues, cw and because of that they were gonna remove them until further notice.

If you check the road map for the next year you can see some dungeon/skirmish/event reworks maybe they will come back or maybe not i wouldn't be surprised, most new players don't even know that from 1-60 there used to be a skirmish/dungeon on almost every area but that stuff was either turned into cta's, tales of old or just removed... sigh so much content wasted....


(Ps.: i would personally prefer most of the lower lvl skirmishes over the new ones, i could give up prophecy of the madness or bank heist any day of the week for a defend the village, defend temple or storming the keep)

hustin1

I have two low level alts who are in stasis because I don't want to outlevel the skirmishes.

tagen

hustin1 said:

I have two low level alts who are in stasis because I don't want to outlevel the skirmishes.

Problem solved, I guess. As far as I know, there has been no indication low levels will ever get skirmishes back. Not holding my breath on the events, given how April Fowls is being handled. Can't outlevel what doesn't exist.

hustin1

@nitocris83 , @cwhitesidedev#9752 , et. al. can we get an update on these skirmishes? We're in the dark here on what's going on. Do we wait for them so we don't outlevel them? Not wait for them? What's the scoop?

hustin1

No news from today's stream, though it wasn't for lack of asking. Would be nice if we could get a simple, "yes, they'll be coming back" or "no, they won't" so we can make a decision on whether to keep waiting. All we have is a post from @nitocris83 in December saying that they were temporarily removed when queue changes were made.

hustin1

The dev stream just finished and we got an answer (thanks Julia for bringing it up). It looks like they won't be coming back, largely due to the fact that upscaling wasn't working well enough for players to have a decent experience (players at the lower end of the level range would get destroyed and players at the higher end would find the skirmishes too easy). They *might* resurface as CTA's but there was no commitment to it.

rev

hustin1 said:

The dev stream just finished and we got an answer (thanks Julia for bringing it up). It looks like they won't be coming back, largely due to the fact that upscaling wasn't working well enough for players to have a decent experience (players at the lower end of the level range would get destroyed and players at the higher end would find the skirmishes too easy). They *might* resurface as CTA's but there was no commitment to it.

sigh it was to be expected... there were some good ones i would want at lvl 70/80, but oh well