Do you want to make more money? Sure, we all do....
the thing I ask myself when looking at something like a rewards topic is what do we really want? do we want different things in the chest or do we just want the chest to provide a value commiserate with our time? the problem with adding new things is they will lose value immediately just like all the other things have lost value.
If value were added back to things already in the chest we wouldn't mind so much would we? Right now there isn't much value in artifacts and rp and enchants which are the most likely things to see in a chest.. but if there were value it would be better right?
Mastercrafting should remain high investment imo and high rewards. but if you had more drops in dungeons that could be sold to master crafters that would be a nice in pocket win for everyone.
but crafting shouldn't be the domain of the rich only so there should also be things accessible and worthwhile to everyone to craft. if not for profit than for their own use. this is where you could add in crafting that uses a ton of rp artifacts and enchants to upgrade various items. I'd keep it at a fairly low upgrade per rank on things maybe you could add lift to artifacts of like 100 stats per rank and a ton of investment required. it would allow the market to dry up a bit with those items and start to add value from the drops in dungeons.
mastercrafting could also have some base gear that just gets better every mod. but always about the same as the most recent dungeon drops but different but also valuable. things that are better for some than others. it would require no major updates to keep up to date and as a result they stay valuable. the base items from the various nodes also stay valuable since the base recipe stays the same but the upgrades require newer things. the upgrades each mod could be a valuable upgrade kit the mastercrafters make.
Part 1 of 2 I've read all the posts up to this point to keep up to date. For myself I will limit my posting to attempting to present my ideas and a broad overview. Its not useful in an idea gathering mode to debate the nth detail of proposals, market responses to them, etc. I realize this may still be a bit broad, but this is the first chance I've had to write these thoughts out.
The conversations have been fairly tightly bound by what we have already experienced in this game with very few proposals for anything different. Much of the debate has been around whether old NW was better or if we should keep on the current track. To me it seems self evident that if the current development of the game, its content, player feedback, and overall income were all that great, we wouldn't be having this discussion with a new E.P. in the first place. So it has to be a given that stretching out to new systems and ways of handling what were familiar with is necessary here.
The overall CDP is about rewards. This is a very broad topic of course, and the conversation has often wandered into systems for achieving rewards rather than just the rewards themselves. So I may do some of that myself since it pertains .
For myself in this and other games I divide rewards up roughly as follows: Rewards that can: 1. be bought – Zen store or the equivalent 2. be achieved through skill – hopefully dungeons and puzzles 3. be worked for through grinding – RP, AD, 4. be devised – playing the market, crafting in complex games (not NW),organization of players,knowledge of systems and trends, decorations (things I make and weren't directly planned by the devs but I find rewarding.)
To keep the lights on of course #1 has to be somewhat pre-eminant and offer a benefit to at least 1 or more of the others. Oddly over time NW has only had a few levers they've made for themselves to throw for #1. This has gotten worse in recent times as items in the zen store have been largely devalued. Purple mounts, character slots, refinement, mod specific companions that are obsolete in weeks, etc were all once kinda neat, but now all but worthless.
So there are different types of reward in each of these categories. There is something that has to be addressed however which affects all 4, and that is complexity. Without complexity to the game, some of which we have lost recently with the mod 16 changes, the rest becomes moot. Differences in Horizontal or vertical progression plays in here.
1 example of lost complexity.. weapon/armor enchants Chris may have no way of knowing some of this history. To me as a long time vet I'm used to the market around enchants and their relative values. These are high – value items and always have been. To a new player these can seem like unobtainium, with vets promoting only the highest levels of them, and prices beyond what they can conceive of.
So for quite a long while enchants were very stagnant. They would vary slightly.. then about 3 years ago there was a widespread effort to revamp them. Considerable dev time was spent on the forums with feedback being given by the community.
This was greatly successful in freeing up some enchants. It didn't take us to having all BIS at all, but there was at least some amount of variation between classes and enchant use even occasionally changing with content like PVP, need to avoid CC, or enhance support capabilities.
Then we get to mod 16.. Once again its Vorpal or nothing. Barkshield is the goto, and really nothing else matter though you can try something else if you're bored. So there we have a loss of complexity AND a loss of work that was put in by Cryptic to solve just that problem.
So that lack of complexity effects #1 above. There is no need to open diverse lockboxes. The only ones that count have the few pertinent pieces of BIS gear.
Looking at #2. Content is a reward as well. Especially for BIS end gamers. Thats really the only reward that matters, along with the fun of juggling new equipment and finding the different interactions that they can bring to the table. Here again, complexity is key. With the simplification of powers and roles we've lost some variability, something that made the hundreds of pieces of gear that came out in mod 14 particularly fun and popular was taking time mixing and matching according to different needs. With mod 18 we have lots of gear, but how much of it is really worth looking at? The gross majority of it wasn't worth the time put into making the new graphics for them.
Here we can look at vertical progression. Go back to the before the release of twisted weapons with mod 9. People BACK THEN were saying they didn't want/need to see new weapons, they just wanted new places to play. Yet without pause in almost every mod since there has been a new weapon set or multiple released, often shockingly more powerful than the previous. Then that power creep is used as an excuse for smashing the old systems, and an endless loop of nerf balancing. All this when we just wanted new and old dungeons released that we could run through with our friends, not new weapons every time. There was plenty of room for vertical progression, if it was to be separated from making a new world of EQ every time.
part 2 0f 2 Ok enough history... I can say I'm thoroughly for largely horizontal improvement with a regular high quality vertical step that is far less frequent than we have today. How can I say that? Didn't I just say I wanted more content? They aren't mutually exclusive, in fact that way of thinking is part of the problem.
NW is actually quite large. There are many dungeons and areas galore. However low/middle level players rush through them on the way to max level. Max level players never return to them if they ever set foot in them in the first place. So the new player experience of NW is that of a very small game. We essentially play the recent 2 mods worth of content, with an occasional trip to mod 13 stuff when we need U.E.s (enchanting stone rank 6). The rest of the game could go dark (and by the number of instances essentially has) and most of the playerbase wouldn't notice other than those trying to build up strongholds still.
So make use of old content when mixing in the new. New mods are created as if there isn't a whole world to play in outside that mod. Underdark was one of few exceptions, spreading a mod out to older content areas. (look at the idea here not specific implementation).
More specifics ideas: Lore/collections – as has been mentioned previously.. add value to these. Let crafters make transmutes based on items they have in their collections, or according to themes found there. Open up new sections when you fill out entire categories of a collection. Want to make chultan furniture? Go collect one of each of these pieces in your collections.. Somewhat like the MW quests, cheaper, but also more difficult and time consuming.
Strongholds Room key expansions to strongholds: Make new rooms available for strongholds that can be opened up with keys that are achieved in various ways. Perhaps a new temp vendor is created that is a contractor that allows building of new rooms, and where these keys can be purchased by trading in certain currencies or objects. One could open up a trophy room.. a portal room to specific areas, an apartment block where people buy keys for their own apartment.
There you have a geographical and thematic support for player housing. With that you open up the possibility for MW crafting of furniture, art, personal menageries, snapshot picture frames of different in game environments for decore.
On to Professions: The expansion of professions seemed like it had a lot of promise, but it was given very little love post mod 15. The workshop was an interesting idea, that caused the creation of a player specific room but without much added benefit or 'game' to play with it.
Expand the professions to have workshops in diverse locations. Put magical enhancement labs at the end of hard dungeons. So if you want to specially craft a mod 17 weapon, or add a new detail to it you would have to gather the ingredients and then win TOMM to have access to that work station. Same with other locations. Place a puzzle at the end of a trial like Tiamat where your team opens it with a ME shade like operation, and you get an opening to another piece of content. Win your way through that and you gain access to that workstation. It would be pointless for PUGs to do it, but would be a challenge and something to accomplish for those who wanted it.
ADD damage type effects .. this alone would make certain enchants valuable in different areas. It could add effectiveness and complexity to armor types and different spells.
New rewarding situations: Make content a reward for doing dailies and then reward THAT as well. Instead of just having 1 layer to getting RAD make it so you can organize yourself and accomplish something bigger when you have the time for it. Maybe you want to have a nice gaming weekend day so you have time to put into an extended session. You should be able to be rewarded for it instead of just being done when you've gone through your normal queues. Maybe if you do x queus and y weeklies it opens up some Stories of Old type dungeons with even more reward for you.
People have asked repeatedly for multi difficulty dungeons, making them easy, medium, hard. There is already technology in the game to make this happen and it should be used and expanded. Tales of Old and K-team were good ideas, they just got the life sucked out of them when they were steamrolled by the mod 16 changes.
My entire alliance and guilds from our former alliance were working with us through K-team when it was still valid. It was hard.. it was frustrating.. but it also had some great times that required playing the same content in different ways and with different strategies. and it was voluntary. ..with some unique gear at the end! Thats the ideal. K-team alone kept hundreds of us engaged for many many hours from my alliance.
Challenge of the Gods thats coming up even has a flavor of this. Though the rewards are underwhelming and obsolete nowadays, the idea isn't bad.
I propose self nerfing like this be expanded: Groups could gear up and when in private queues opt for various self nerfs. Each of them with a known bonus to the end prize. Not a guarantee of course but a known boost towards a high end item, time limited damage booster 1 hour 5% damage boost, transmute, massive stronghold voucher, nifty titles, crafting materials for MW items, etc. Expand these ideas out instead of staying in old silos that we've becomes used to.
Reward different solutions to the same content, the way d&d traditionally would. Example: ECC .. for ages had various endings, one of which was mentioned earlier on in this conversation. Another solution was available as well, and was used for years.
Here we had a deep dark dungeon with a baddie that was hard for a long time for any PUG group to handle. There were traditions however passed on from group to group over the ages that allowed those who couldn't facetank it to still win the content. Often this group had been there for an hour by this time and desperately wanted the win. There was also a pit outside with huge spikes that would kill anyone that fell into it. So.. in grand RPG style we learned to 'pit the boss', taking him to the content that would win the day. This usually didn't save time. It took an intimate knowledge of the content, and familiarity with the different classes abilities that could get the desired result. Of course since this wasn't the pre-conceived face tanking method that was written the devs spent untold resources quelling these alternate solutions. When it should have been rewarded for learning the game and its environments.
I propose when its detected that alternate solutions are being used like this that another approach be taken. Write a new loot table for that solution. If you pit the boss in ECC you get an achievement maybe a pirate hat with a hole in it. Manage to kill Kalos Tam with poison arrows? Different drops than if you are in the normal area.
Nicely here this can be as specilized as you like. Eventually some of them could actually be planned instead of being 'user created'. Items like transmutes, hair color dyes, banners, unique consumables could be dropped that make different solutions preferable for different groups. Perhaps Kalos has a special charm that wards off demons that could be used in mod 18. … drop that in as part of the addition of mod 18 to spread out the expansion of the world and refamiliarize everyone with how big this world really is.
Now sorry if this has gotten too long.. but there are so many possibilities!
Really a d&d themed game should be about getting to those possibilities and seeing how we can mix and match all this content thats already there to get more out of it, instead of always using it as an excuse for how limited we need to be.
6
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Also, I wanted to call out the last... We as users need to be very cautious in thinking about "sunk cost" yes it sucks to have an investment devalued, but I would argue that for the most part our current investments are already devalued, with us waiting for a change to make those investment pay off... of course the reality here is that in the past when new things came into crafting we had to make whole new investments anyway... so in reality our current expenditures are not investments at all but sunk costs... to steal from Investopedia: "A sunk cost is a cost that cannot be recovered or changed and is independent of any future costs a business may incur. Since decision-making only affects the future course of business, sunk costs should be irrelevant in the decision-making process. Instead, decision-makers should base strategies on how to proceed with business or investment activities on future costs." I had to tell myself this repeatedly with the devaluing of legendary tools
Good argument.
For my part, I somewhat agree with @thefabricant 's statement that crafting has failed. It never should have been about making gear in the first place. As others have stated, it directly conflicts with the loot system.
My feeling is that crafting should be a system for augmenting the base-line gear in the game and perhaps a few other things. If it does make gear pieces, it's for personal use and not the economy as a whole.
I'm thinking you can craft materials and trade those with other players. (not super-profitable, but you're welcome to do it)
If crafting does make armor, jewelry, etc. are meant for personal use and doesn't enter the economy at all. (account-bound)
The general economy, auction house, would be fueled by gear drops from dungeons, etc. That way the loot system and professions are not competing.
Professions CAN upgrade baseline gear from the economy, provided it's not a rare purple/orange. Via reinforcement kits and the like.
Crafters can sell reinforcement kits and other augments to other players whom don't want to bother with crafting. This will never be super-profitable. As you've already made clear, it's somewhat pointless to try and make it a money maker.
The main 'profitability' of the crafting system, and using multiple toons, would be trading to the South Seas Trading Company for resources. ... So far I haven't figured out what the rewards would be. They should be valuable, but not so valuable that they destablize other systems.
My thoughts anyway.
I don't think there is any reason crafting should not make gear, it just needs to fill a different niche to that filled by items that drop. That is what my proposal for items focused on. Creating multiple categories of items, broadly defining what they do to ensure that both are required and then forcing crafting into 1 category and drops into the other.
Just realized I haven't commented on thefabricant's epic posts at the start so I'm going to rectify that now, at least on the ones I can add anything to.
Allow for items to remain in a useable state for longer.
While I like this idea since I just wear whatever trash I get my hands on, I just want to check: if you attain the current BiS gear and said gear is still BiS after 3+ mods / a year, would you still be playing? You won't have any shineys to chase.
Reworking the way character progression and rewards[...] to have a consistent paradigm going forward both for item design and the rate at which player power progresses relative to content.
[Also]
Make campaigns feel optional and fun, rather than compulsory activities.
These two clash. Technically campaigns are already optional, which makes the power rate loopy when if people skip then return to content.
For players to feel a consistent power gradient, campaigns must be made mandatory and in sequence, which is not going to happen since the marketing department always wants new bloods to try out the latest release.
The "fun" part totally comes from design and player perspective. Personally I love Ravenloft. AI and SKT (especially SoMI) not so much. F*** fishing.
Make boons horizontal, more meaningful, more impactful and pit meaningful boon choices against each other.
Hells yeah! Slayer boons (see Hastur's cool suggestion) are probably an easy one for starters as there are already counters that track those for titles. I'd like boons that improve my CC and/or affect elites and bosses.
Make both crafted items and dropped items useable in the long term.
[Also]
[crafted gear] just needs to fill a different niche to that filled by items that drop. That is what my proposal for items focused on. Creating multiple categories of items, broadly defining what they do to ensure that both are required and then forcing crafting into 1 category and drops into the other.
Doesn't need to be as complicated as you have here. Simply let crafters make gear of exactly the same caliber to what drops. It's not like they'll be able to just mass produce BiS gear if the resources/time/risk of failure to make them is adjusted accordingly. Lousy example: takes a gazillion resources for a month or two with 10% chance to succeed at the end. Also your entire workshop will focus on this one item. Failure results in 100% lost resources. Don't like it? Just run the dungeon then.
If a BiS helm comes from the dungeon or is crafted, there should be no difference to the end product.
Make crafting a more satisfying process long term, which both rewards players who craft and players who collect resources [by means of an "infinite dungeon" to prevent botting]
Uh, can't they just shove the resources at the end of Master Expeditions and advanced queue dungeons and call it a day?
Add new rewards to campaign daily quests after a player has completed the campaign. These rewards would either be in the form of RP, RAD or materials used for guild upgrades.
Yes please. What would even be better is if you let the players decide what extra thing they earn like in Legacy Campaigns, because that's almost literally the same system.
Remove slots from items, instead embed them into the UI
So... you want to make having extra loadouts cheaper right? Instead of two hats with two gems each you get two hats that share the same two gems? Yeah sure that works for me.
Also, I wanted to call out the last... We as users need to be very cautious in thinking about "sunk cost" yes it sucks to have an investment devalued, but I would argue that for the most part our current investments are already devalued, with us waiting for a change to make those investment pay off... of course the reality here is that in the past when new things came into crafting we had to make whole new investments anyway... so in reality our current expenditures are not investments at all but sunk costs... to steal from Investopedia: "A sunk cost is a cost that cannot be recovered or changed and is independent of any future costs a business may incur. Since decision-making only affects the future course of business, sunk costs should be irrelevant in the decision-making process. Instead, decision-makers should base strategies on how to proceed with business or investment activities on future costs." I had to tell myself this repeatedly with the devaluing of legendary tools
Good argument.
For my part, I somewhat agree with @thefabricant 's statement that crafting has failed. It never should have been about making gear in the first place. As others have stated, it directly conflicts with the loot system.
My feeling is that crafting should be a system for augmenting the base-line gear in the game and perhaps a few other things. If it does make gear pieces, it's for personal use and not the economy as a whole.
I'm thinking you can craft materials and trade those with other players. (not super-profitable, but you're welcome to do it)
If crafting does make armor, jewelry, etc. are meant for personal use and doesn't enter the economy at all. (account-bound)
The general economy, auction house, would be fueled by gear drops from dungeons, etc. That way the loot system and professions are not competing.
Professions CAN upgrade baseline gear from the economy, provided it's not a rare purple/orange. Via reinforcement kits and the like.
Crafters can sell reinforcement kits and other augments to other players whom don't want to bother with crafting. This will never be super-profitable. As you've already made clear, it's somewhat pointless to try and make it a money maker.
The main 'profitability' of the crafting system, and using multiple toons, would be trading to the South Seas Trading Company for resources. ... So far I haven't figured out what the rewards would be. They should be valuable, but not so valuable that they destablize other systems.
My thoughts anyway.
I don't think there is any reason crafting should not make gear, it just needs to fill a different niche to that filled by items that drop. That is what my proposal for items focused on. Creating multiple categories of items, broadly defining what they do to ensure that both are required and then forcing crafting into 1 category and drops into the other.
I feel differently.
1. Crafting by nature is easy to exploit, especially on the pc. It should not be able to sway the economy and other systems in the game. It should be maintainable separately. ... Attaching BiS gear to such a system will continue to fail and be ripe for abuse. 2. You're assuming the team will be able to update gear every mod, which is clearly not happening.
I think a more sustainable system is to have regular professions benefit the individual player, mainly through buffs and augments.
Mastercrafting should have more to do with benefiting the guild, not the individual player. It is a massive investment, but it should have more influence on the guild and how that system operates.
Overall, the systems in the game need to be easier to maintain, not harder to maintain.
1. Crafting by nature is easy to exploit, especially on the pc. It should not be able to sway the economy and other systems in the game. It should be maintainable separately. ... Attaching BiS gear to such a system will continue to fail and be ripe for abuse.
2. You're assuming the team will be able to update gear every mod, which is clearly not happening.
I think a more sustainable system is to have regular professions benefit the individual player, mainly through buffs and augments.
Mastercrafting should have more to do with benefiting the guild, not the individual player. It is a massive investment, but it should have more influence on the guild and how that system operates.
Overall, the systems in the game need to be easier to maintain, not harder to maintain.
1. For BiS or other high end craftables make it account bound. Also, what do you mean that "crafting by nature is easy to exploit, especially on the pc"? Care to share with the class?
2. Yep, but the whole idea of the CDP is to stimulate change. Otherwise what's the point of this exercise?
3. Mastercrafting should have more to do with benefiting the guild, not the individual player.
While I disagree that the mastercrafts should not benefit the individual, I do quite like the notion about it benefiting guilds (especially if you need the Explorer's Guild for it anyway). Why not let it do both?
Don't make MW gear account bound. Selling it and making it for guildies is part of the reward for spending months to years of effort and resources to do. The whole point of a Profession is to profit, they're not called "Hobbies"
Don't make MW gear account bound. Selling it and making it for guildies is part of the reward for spending months to years of effort and resources to do. The whole point of a Profession is to profit, they're not called "Hobbies"
Crafted items should *not* be account bound, and there's no reason to make them bound. I'm sure the devs are capable of determining appropriate crafting costs for each item. If anything the problem has been that crafting hasn't been worth the cost.
On a side note, just in case people might think I was lying earlier:
Cragmire Crypts blocked room #1 (The Library) The **only** reason we can't get to this is because someone placed a stone wall in the way. You normally get to this room from the room where you fight Kallos Tam. I don't remember what enemies used to be in here. Maybe this was Kallos Tam's quarters? It would make sense since he's a Red Wizard. I also don't remember if there's lore in here. I'd have to level up a fresh TR to find out.
Room #2 blocked by wall (The Crypt). This is what I mean by "artificially" blocked off: a dev did this for no reason and simply jammed an asset in the way. This room is at the top of the stairs by the two phase spiders with the treasure chest. Hulks are supposed to pop out of the caskets but nothing does now. I think this is where there is supposed to be a Deathlock Wight with the Yellowbeard reference dialogue ("Cragmires are never more dangerous than when we're dead!")
Wall blocking the way to the Daughter of Lolth miniboss: This is at the campfire just after the two phase spiders. You can see this section on the main map. The corridor with the traps is supposed to be loaded with spiderlings (the kind that *don't* all send you flying ). The main chamber is also supposed to have some spiderlings, deathjump spiders, and blade spiders before you reach the miniboss at the other end of the room. In the epic version of the dungeon, I believe there is also supposed to be a mimic. The room with the miniboss has an extra spurious ceiling square that needs to be removed. It's only visible from above. There is a spot where if a Ranger walks by, a popup appears explaining how the spiders got in (I have a long memory and my main is a Ranger).
The final room. The only reason we can't enter is because the devs prevent us from opening the doors to it This room lies between the shadow portal and the first extendable platform. Note the glowing red eyes in the sarcophagus and the lore book (I got this lore entry before Mod 6, hence no sparklies). There is supposed to be a hulk, a number of zombies, and a deathlock wight, if memory serves. The wight is giving the zombies a hard time because they are clumsy and are in danger of setting themselves on fire.
There used to be yet another side room very early on in the dungeon down a long corridor, but that entire section was deleted. We'll never see that room again
I don't know why the devs' position has been that they'll fight to the death before ever letting us access these rooms again, but I want to see it remedied.
For crying out loud, minibosses and side areas are perfect opportunities for chasing secondary goals for horizontal progression. Maybe a group of adventurers isn't interested in the main big, bad, boss, but some other ancillary danger. Dungeons are dangerous areas that *should* sprawl at least a little and lead to other dangers. The way dungeons are laid out now, you could stretch them out and form a perfectly straight one-dimensional line. That is *boring*. There is *so* much unexplored potential here -- quests you might pick up from exploring these side areas that unlock paths for horizontal progression, or quests you encounter *while* following a horizontal progression path that *lead* you to these areas. Instead the devs just block them all off. So much potential...wasted.
Post edited by hustin1 on
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Yeah, I'm going be mercurial and hop the fence to go with *not* account bound actually. My previous posting was getting way to colored in the way of "BiS gear for BiS players only", which is ridiculous since it doesn't help me personally.
Let crafters build equivalent or exact gear as whatever drops, including BiS. As long as the time/cost/fail rate ratio is steep enough (months/millions/less chance of success than opening the dungeon chest), they should be able to sell their work. Everyone can then get / buy the BiS stuff eventually, while the top tier guys who dungeon delve get to show it off earlier.
Only difference is dungeoned gear is bound, crafted gear is not.
Just realized I haven't commented on thefabricant's epic posts at the start so I'm going to rectify that now, at least on the ones I can add anything to.
Allow for items to remain in a useable state for longer.
While I like this idea since I just wear whatever trash I get my hands on, I just want to check: if you attain the current BiS gear and said gear is still BiS after 3+ mods / a year, would you still be playing? You won't have any shineys to chase.
The point is to also make BiS gear harder to obtain (so it takes longer to get) and to make varying pieces of gear BiS for different pieces of content. Say you had one piece of gear that doubled your damage when fighting 3 to 5 enemies but halved it if you fought less than 3 or more than 5. This piece of gear is BiS in very specific circumstances, but there can exist other pieces of gear which is better in other circumstances. People who want to, "Be BiS" would have to acquire a lot more items which are situational and use them in those circumstances.
These two clash. Technically campaigns are already optional, which makes the power rate loopy when if people skip then return to content.
For players to feel a consistent power gradient, campaigns must be made mandatory and in sequence, which is not going to happen since the marketing department always wants new bloods to try out the latest release.
The "fun" part totally comes from design and player perspective. Personally I love Ravenloft. AI and SKT (especially SoMI) not so much. F*** fishing.
Its quite possible to normalize the difficulty of all old campaigns down to the easiest campaign level. I agree that fun also comes down to player perspective, which is why which campaigns people run should be optional.
Doesn't need to be as complicated as you have here. Simply let crafters make gear of exactly the same caliber to what drops. It's not like they'll be able to just mass produce BiS gear if the resources/time/risk of failure to make them is adjusted accordingly. Lousy example: takes a gazillion resources for a month or two with 10% chance to succeed at the end. Also your entire workshop will focus on this one item. Failure results in 100% lost resources. Don't like it? Just run the dungeon then.
If a BiS helm comes from the dungeon or is crafted, there should be no difference to the end product.
It doesn't need to be, sure. But then the difficulty needs to be roughly equivalent from both sources. Crafting something equivalent to the weapons in ToMM will need to take about as much effort and the crafting system isn't developed enough for that. That makes the 2 difficult to balance in terms of rate of acquisition and more than likely 1 method will be preferred over the other. My solution does deal with that possibility.
I don't know whether this is on-topic, but I will post it. It would really nice, if items (including artifacts) would not be bound on charakter. The same goes for companions. Because there is nothing like a 'class change token'. And if I want to change my class I have to create a new char and rebuy all that stuff. And all the time and effort on the old char is wastet. I understand that there should be a bound. But bound on account would be enough in my opinion.
1
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Also, I wanted to call out the last... We as users need to be very cautious in thinking about "sunk cost" yes it sucks to have an investment devalued, but I would argue that for the most part our current investments are already devalued, with us waiting for a change to make those investment pay off... of course the reality here is that in the past when new things came into crafting we had to make whole new investments anyway... so in reality our current expenditures are not investments at all but sunk costs... to steal from Investopedia: "A sunk cost is a cost that cannot be recovered or changed and is independent of any future costs a business may incur. Since decision-making only affects the future course of business, sunk costs should be irrelevant in the decision-making process. Instead, decision-makers should base strategies on how to proceed with business or investment activities on future costs." I had to tell myself this repeatedly with the devaluing of legendary tools
Good argument.
For my part, I somewhat agree with @thefabricant 's statement that crafting has failed. It never should have been about making gear in the first place. As others have stated, it directly conflicts with the loot system.
My feeling is that crafting should be a system for augmenting the base-line gear in the game and perhaps a few other things. If it does make gear pieces, it's for personal use and not the economy as a whole.
I'm thinking you can craft materials and trade those with other players. (not super-profitable, but you're welcome to do it)
If crafting does make armor, jewelry, etc. are meant for personal use and doesn't enter the economy at all. (account-bound)
The general economy, auction house, would be fueled by gear drops from dungeons, etc. That way the loot system and professions are not competing.
Professions CAN upgrade baseline gear from the economy, provided it's not a rare purple/orange. Via reinforcement kits and the like.
Crafters can sell reinforcement kits and other augments to other players whom don't want to bother with crafting. This will never be super-profitable. As you've already made clear, it's somewhat pointless to try and make it a money maker.
The main 'profitability' of the crafting system, and using multiple toons, would be trading to the South Seas Trading Company for resources. ... So far I haven't figured out what the rewards would be. They should be valuable, but not so valuable that they destablize other systems.
My thoughts anyway.
I don't think there is any reason crafting should not make gear, it just needs to fill a different niche to that filled by items that drop. That is what my proposal for items focused on. Creating multiple categories of items, broadly defining what they do to ensure that both are required and then forcing crafting into 1 category and drops into the other.
I feel differently.
1. Crafting by nature is easy to exploit, especially on the pc. It should not be able to sway the economy and other systems in the game. It should be maintainable separately. ... Attaching BiS gear to such a system will continue to fail and be ripe for abuse. 2. You're assuming the team will be able to update gear every mod, which is clearly not happening.
I think a more sustainable system is to have regular professions benefit the individual player, mainly through buffs and augments.
Mastercrafting should have more to do with benefiting the guild, not the individual player. It is a massive investment, but it should have more influence on the guild and how that system operates.
Overall, the systems in the game need to be easier to maintain, not harder to maintain.
Unless you literally remove the auction house and the ability to trade from the game, there are going to be players who are able to manipulate the economy, that is just the way things work. The people who enjoy crafting also overlap with the people who play the economy game, I see no harm in letting the people that find that aspect of the game fun have their fun.
As for 2, my proposed system would completely invalidate that point. In my system, if they did not update crafted gear for 5 or even 10 years it would still be bis, because the gear with bonuses would still have less stats than it. at the same time however, you would still want gear with bonuses, so the problem you have highlighted there does not exist.
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
Coming back to crafting I would agree with those who say that crafting should be orthogonal to items you can drop.
It works well for adding something to existing items, like kits do, but putting it in competition with items you can drop will always lead to issues, especially when the droppable item is better than the Masterwork like we have today. On the other hand if masterwork items are better then people will start to forego the content where items drop, to focus on farming what they need to craft.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Coming back to crafting I would agree with those who say that crafting should be orthogonal to items you can drop.
It works well for adding something to existing items, like kits do, but putting it in competition with items you can drop will always lead to issues, especially when the droppable item is better than the Masterwork like we have today. On the other hand if masterwork items are better then people will start to forego the content where items drop, to focus on farming what they need to craft.
That hasn't been true before tho. The newest content always has stuff worth grinding. And the majority of players don't have the patience for mc. There is enough room for gear in dungeons and mc to coexist
Part 1 of 2 Feedback Overview (short description of the proposed feedback) Address and normalize the value proposition of purchased items especially zen purchases Feedback Goal (what this feedback would target and accomplish) Increase consumer confidence, reinvigorate zen purchases, improve customer satisfaction long term, and encourage steady spending in support of the game. Feedback Functionality (how would your feedback work in relation to the current design of Neverwinter) Should I buy a small zen item like a key? Story time. I remember within days of starting NW one of the first lessons I learned in this game. Never buy keys. How did I learn this? The game taught me first, and then the vets reinforced that lesson. How did I learn it? Early on I was playing and happy enough with my progression. Thoughts of meta and BIS were still long in the future, but still the big shiny's were tempting. Back then seeing someone with a big glowing negation enchant was super impressive, I didn't even know what they were called but I know I wanted one.
So looking around I see I have lockboxes. This seems accessible, and I don't have to survive those super dungeons the big guys are in. Look at the preview and its got all sorts of tempting things in there. Cool! Whats a key... 100 zen. Oh thats not bad. Spend $1 and get something neat, maybe not the best or most desirable thing, but something neat.
I go through the punishing process of purchasing zen. I bought it through steam because I didn't know any better at the time. That took AGES. (Note to Chris.. might want to revisit NWs relationship with steam to revamp sales there. That has been discouraged, punishes the customer, and is 1/2 broken for years now.) I didn't have to go through the customer service and painful runaround that it became later, but for a digital purchase it was painfully long. I just wanted to get my neat shiny thing!
I get my zen. I nervously make my key purchase. I open my lockbox! woo! ok what did I get. 10 Tarmalune bars. Neat... I guess sounds like something that would have some possibilities. Look into it, and I cant do anything with those. Id need to open 10s of lockboxes to get something cool. Even a coal ward which I didn't fully grasp the system behind yet but seemed cool, was out of reach. (This is before VIP keys, and there were some high end things in the tarm store back then.) ..and I got a runestone box that had a blue runestone in it. This is before our current system of bondings.. and guaranteed stats or all that. Blue runestones on a pet were commonplace even for me, and underwhelming.
In conversations after that every vets forever after warn me .. 'Dont EVER buy keys. It takes hundreds or thousands of keys to win something good. Leave that to the whales who do it for a living maybe when your high end you'll be able to buy the keys for free then you can consider it'. Now Ive carried on with that warning on forums, chats, and reddit. Thats not good for business, but its the truth.
So the first lesson I learn from the most accessible neat and shiny thing low end purchase I have access to in the zen store, is never to buy from the zen store. Thats not a good customer experience. Partially this can be helped by managing expectations. Partially this could be addressed by a system that they have in ESO, whereby you can trade with the game discard worthy items you receive from lockboxes for store credit on something you do want. see ESO gem extraction That leads you to less feelings of disappointment and waste, and adds to feelings that you have hope of getting a desirable item even if RNG doesn't smile on you.
Should there be alternative 'horizontal' means to achieving high end gear like professions, loot drops, or lockboxes that can be aided through zen purchase? Here in this CDP you have been receiving a lot of advice from some people whose point of view taints the potential new customers experience. There have been posts about how the old guard leading much of the 'rewards' discussion are sitting on 100s of millions of AD. They don't HAVE to buy anything, and in fact actively avoid playing large parts of the game that aren't profitible for them, for that reason. At the same time they would like to protect their market position by ensuring that high value items remain so that only they have primary access to them AND they would like to exclude others from having alternative means to achieve them. Right there you have f2p income working to punish potential customers simply to maintain the status quo, which doesn't result in new purchases or provide a reasonable path for a low end player to do anything other than.. grind f2p AD and purchase f2p items from the AH with no consideration of zen anywhere.
Can you use the zax and burn some ZEN to get enough AD to equip yourself. Sure! ..and that should be encouraged for those that can afford it. I have had guildies that did just that, expressly in part to help support the game, and partly to save themselves RL time. That is only worth considering when that purchase has a known lifespan though. (Which Ill get to later).
I am not suggesting tanking the market for them. ..or that high end players shouldn't have their sandboxes too. But the idea that I have my dragon hoard, you can't play in my sandbox, and that my f2p income should make your experience worse so I can maintain virtual profitability? Thats silly. Worse thats hurting the relationship with the people that actually would be willing to help keep the lights on through real money purchases for fun and engaging systems.
Finally, value for money should be addressed at a minimum for high end purchases. Final story. I had a set of guildies that were a couple I knew and played with for years. While I was a casual spender and a devoted detail NW gamer, they were casual NW gamers and devoted spenders. I would spend some birthday money or christmas money. They would decide whether to go out to the casino and blow their bonus money or stay in and spend it on NW and playing with us their guildies.
We had a christmas party with a raffle for our guildies.. she wanted to spice it up so traded zen for AD to buy a legendary mount, just to spice up the prizes. When moon elves came out with a pack she bought the pack. She wanted the blue hair to match the style of a new character she wanted. She also bought character slots to put it in, traded zen to ad to get fashion to match. She disappeared for about an hour and game back with all rank 12 enchants (best at the time). She had again traded zen to AD to purchase the necessities to rank up all the enchants without taking from her main. Because she 'didnt want to be seen in rags'. She did all this TO GET BLUE HAIR. These are the customers you want, and that other games cater to (sometimes too much I know).
I haven't seen them in most of a year. why? Bad value for money. People who go to a casino, feel they get better value for money there than here in the game. Think about that. Sure they get drinks, entertainment, and luxury for a few hours, but its still not a real high bar to set.
When we talked about it I learned what one of the final straws on the camels back was. This was right before mod 16. From mod 12-15 there was a series of changes that moved high end enchants for DCs at least one time every mod. This is a major purchase, like buying high end electronics in real life, with only a legendary mount besting it for one time spending in game. So here we were right before mod 16 and word came down that virtually everyone was going to vorpal and that everything else was going to be meh. So once again.. on top of all the changes, she was being told that in order to be a performer she would have to buy a top end piece within a month. That was too much of an ask. That was too far.
Does change and progression need to occur? Is it fun when high end things shift and respond in new ways sometimes? Absolutely. Is it fun when that change is relentless and devalues everything that came before? No. It was literally depressing for many people, and thats not what people come to a game to experience.
Proposal for high end items. The important part here is not the specifics of implementaion. Its to show a possible atmosphere to openly deal with this.
Directly address value for money. Potentially offer a zen only purchase that is 'purchase insurance' for certain high end items like weapon enchants, mounts, rare companions etc. This could be time limited, and added to items using a UI like the armor kits. And then be traded out at a exchange vendor while the insurance timer still ran. Renewal? Maybe. But at a minimum provide insurance to a high end customer that their purcahse wont be devalued tomorrow, and if it is that they have recourse.
Dont have cynical sales. I have experience in the past, and narrowly avoided a few times purchasing a high end item that was up for sale. Then those very items, that were even promoted on the Cryptic website in at least 1 example was either nerfed to the ground or put in a lockbox the next week thereby devaluing it. In the case that I bit I could have waited 1 week and purchased the same item for 1/10 the cost. 1x ..sure bad timing happens. Doing it on a consistant basis begins to look like attempting to con the consumer into bad faith purchases in the knowledge that you are ripping them off. Intention or not, that is what begins to be communicated over time.
Communicate. With the purchase insurance system in place.. or even before that be open (as Chris has indicated is his intention) about plans for content changes. Going to be changing the entire enchant system for mod 19? Tell us. Then its OK and I know to hold off on my high end purchase and grinding for monthes to get something high end or blowing this monthes coffee fund on a mount thats good today but maybe not after this month. Help ME to be the judge of what value a purchase is going to have instead of tricking me into it only to feel bitter soon thereafter.
Yes theres an entertainment fee to be expected even in a game like this. But when I pay netflix I know Im getting a month of service, amazon a year of prime, rent, car leases, and so on. We need to be able to guage for ourselves the amount of entertainment value we're going to get out of our game dollar, and then see that expectation met consistently.
Risks & Concerns (what problems can you foresee with implementing your feedback that you would like input on from members of this subforum) I have always felt that the legacy a player builds should have some support within a game. Encouraging vets and their little empires is good for a game, in balance. Too much and it feels exclusionary, like a game is only there for the rich, and no reasonable thing that I can do will address that. Thats where the economy of NW is right now. TOMM and the orange rings there with no other engaging content or EQ for lesser players is the showcase for it.
This is a balance however. ..and its only as bad as it is now in absence of content for other levels of player and other engagement styles. The BIS, meta only, change happens mantra of the current TOMM users is good for that group, but needs to have other systems available to people that don't play THAT game, the crafters, the stylists, the dungeon delvers, etc.
Ok. this wall of text is it for me. Hopefully you get some use out of it. I'm off to work.
Since we're drilling down into specifics I want to go on the record regarding a few ideas that have been mooted.
1. The notion of making Professions/MW gear "Account Bound". I believe it has been mentioned above, but the whole purpose of making things professionally is to generally sell them to earn profit. If either loot or crafted goods need to be account bound, make it the stuff you found in a box.
2. I believe a couple of people have suggested something along the lines of removing enchants from items and sticking them... somewhere... on the character. So that if you swap out an item you don't have to struggle with the enormity of removing and replacing the enchantments, or something like that. Hate this. Really hate this... I know I'm in the minority over load outs, but I hate that in a D&D game a character can just morph into another character to suit the situation. Different base stats, paragons, boons... I really hate it. So, apart from my Cleric, I don't use them. When my Rogue switches from open/AoE zone to single target, I swap his weapons and three encounters. It takes about 30 seconds, (and I can do it mid fight if I forget at a camp fire) his weapons have specific enchantments... Lightning for mobs, Vorpal for single target. "Simplifying" something that is already simple is redundant and lowest common denominator manipulation of the character into even more of a spreadsheet ready system than it currently is. (Though the notion of swapping the gold cost from removing the enchants from their slots to refining them is a cool way to save the rich players with fully refined enchants a few quid and putting the burden of sinking gold on those with less... )
I didn't get to reading or posting the previous topics but as I believe good content is the best reward, I find that some of the content (ie. accessibility) is actually so dumbed down as to be insulting, whereas some content is imaginative and creative, and I'm confused how there can be such a vast difference included in the same game.
I found Neverwinter around Mod 5 (but not sure atm) and I was only vaguely aware there was a game called D&D before that. I searched out resources to possibly shed some light on what I find in Neverwinter and why:
What I see in these handbooks is a game with a lot more variety for character creation and gameplay than what Neverwinter incorporated. Purely imaginative P&P gameplay will of course trump anything that could be made into a video game but I still wish that Neverwinter became more like what I find in those Handbooks. Complexity and nuanced content to explore and engage is the best reward.
I have no idea how often an adventurer plays D&D without a party, but there's so much content that is soloable in Neverwinter I'm confused. Most zones don't feel threatening at all. Critters (and cultists?) don't react to my presence until I'm within spitting distance. Ravenloft introduced variable threat range so it's clear detection distances can be significantly increased but if there's a concern about what range to set the detection at, would it be possible to implement a toggle for players to choose their difficulty settings before launching the game and then have dedicated instances for difficulty levels? And then have increased rewards for playing in more difficult instances?
I don't know how scaling works yet but I'm confused by it as it seems awkward and inconsistent. I'm also confused why private queued content has an Item Level requirement instead of just a Character Level requirement.
I don't get why a player needs to spend gold to remove Enchantments from their gear. If there was a mechanism in place requiring a player to interact with a professional to do the delicate job of removing Enchantments, I could perhaps get a sense of who I'm paying, but as is I'm just confused because it seems like I'm the one doing the work but I lose Gold in the process. Maybe there could be a learnable Skill attached to Enchantment removal enabling a player to remove their own Enchantments and not just click a button and lose gold to the ether?
I don't get how every critter (or there might be exceptions) drops Gold whatever their species type. I noticed that defeated/killed Demons never give Experience points and whether this is by design or not it's too cryptic for me. I would like to see critter appropriate loot that can be used in crafting.
I also would hope Masterwork crafters eventually are able to craft Enchantments and other resources used in the refinement process, including Marks of Potency, Enchanting Stones and Wards.
Workshop Gathering employees would be able to gather a greater variety of materials (possibly even Mounts and Companions in addition to a variety of crafting materials, including Mastercraft materials) and Moral can be given to them to instantly gather in addition to the crafters. (Also, how can Gond's Forgehammer be used to craft any item but not used for gathering?)
Teleportation is introduced early in Neverwinter. Valindra disappears on the bridge and when the Crown is stolen from the vault, the culprits use a portal to vamoose. Regarding a possible VIP perk (though it doesn't have to be only for VIP) I've been hoping for is the option to teleport within an instance to other party members. It could be a learnable skill, or purchaseable/craftable/lootable item or a ranked VIP perk if you intend to keep ranks of VIP.
Scoreboards become a source of reward for a variety of categories, content and classes, and become a publicly viewable resource similar to PVP rank.
Everyone gets an unhideable advertisement for Lockbox Legendary Looters but having a searchable log for Lockbox winners would be interesting also, whether it be seasonal/Mod # based, or other metric.
Tired, ending post here.
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
Coming back to crafting I would agree with those who say that crafting should be orthogonal to items you can drop.
It works well for adding something to existing items, like kits do, but putting it in competition with items you can drop will always lead to issues, especially when the droppable item is better than the Masterwork like we have today. On the other hand if masterwork items are better then people will start to forego the content where items drop, to focus on farming what they need to craft.
That hasn't been true before tho. The newest content always has stuff worth grinding. And the majority of players don't have the patience for mc. There is enough room for gear in dungeons and mc to coexist
Ehm, this is actually the reason why crafting is pretty much dead.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Also, what do you mean that "crafting by nature is easy to exploit, especially on the pc"? Care to share with the class?
If I have 50 characters, would I sit for hours doing mundane crafting tasks? It's pretty easy to set up a macro program to do the repetition for me. Against TOS, but I highly doubt everyone who does it gets caught. Looking at the difference between PC and console economies, my guess is that automation is at least partially to blame.
I could also have multiple accounts, each with 50 more characters.
Add to that, if one was looking to make money outside the game, craftable BiS items would be a prime target.
... and making temp Guilds to farm guild marks has always been a bit of a loophole.
From a systems and game health standpoint, attaching the economy to crafting in a major way has serious pitfalls.
But this is all way off-topic. Mastercrafting is like the end-game of the end-game, so I'll avoid touching it further until we have a specific CDP on it.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Also, what do you mean that "crafting by nature is easy to exploit, especially on the pc"? Care to share with the class?
If I have 50 characters, would I sit for hours doing mundane crafting tasks? It's pretty easy to set up a macro program to do the repetition for me. Against TOS, but I highly doubt everyone who does it gets caught. Looking at the difference between PC and console economies, my guess is that automation is at least partially to blame.
I could also have multiple accounts, each with 50 more characters.
Add to that, if one was looking to make money outside the game, craftable BiS items would be a prime target.
... and making temp Guilds to farm guild marks has always been a bit of a loophole.
From a systems and game health standpoint, attaching the economy to crafting in a major way has serious pitfalls.
But this is all way off-topic. Mastercrafting is like the end-game of the end-game, so I'll avoid touching it further until we have a specific CDP on it.
No, you would not. I will tell you exactly how you would go about masterwork. You would unlock it on a single character, you would buy ingredients in bulk from other players, because your time is valuable and you could do better things with it. You would craft intermediate steps in bulk during gms discounted using the gm vendors and lastly, you would rush every single craft.
People who think the big time crafters craft on many characters are fooling themselves, its inefficient to unlock mw on many characters, it costs a fair amount and there isn't any real benefit to do so. The people listing every mw item on the ah, crafted all those items on a single character and just soaked up the rush costs. Been there, done that. Just going through all the steps takes quite a bit of time, even if you have an efficient production line.
In some cases, you would even pay other people AD to craft intermediate steps for you, because you simply do not have enough time.
People who think the big time crafters craft on many characters are fooling themselves, its inefficient to unlock mw on many characters, it costs a fair amount and there isn't any real benefit to do so. The people listing every mw item on the ah, crafted all those items on a single character and just soaked up the rush costs. Been there, done that. Just going through all the steps takes quite a bit of time, even if you have an efficient production line.
In some cases, you would even pay other people AD to craft intermediate steps for you, because you simply do not have enough time.
This is what I mean. While my MW-ing is abysmal compared to people like you, probably, I know several people that have indeed done what you deem inefficient and found it not so. Of course, you don't know me, how would I know what others really do... or those are the 2% players (idiots?) that do it in a way you would never do it.
However, whether I am completely wrong or just a bit, you can argue whatever you like. That is your right, and I should not try to cut in just because I do not like your somewhat condescending tone. For that, I apologize and I swear that I'm already trying to just ignore whatever I do not like.
Also, we have all (or at least most of us here) already talked about exploiting ... its a mute point atm. I would prefer real alternatives like tong puzzles over anything that anybody can point the finger at at the en
Post edited by frozenfirevr on
- bye bye -
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
This is what I mean. While my MW-ing is abysmal compared to people like you, probably, I know several people that have indeed done what you deem inefficient and found it not so. Of course, you don't know me, how would I know what others really do... or those are the 2% players (idiots?) that do it in a way you would never do it.
However, whether I am completely wrong or just a bit, you can argue whatever you like. That is your right, and I should not try to cut in just because I do not like your somewhat condescending tone. For that, I apologize and I swear that I'm already trying to just ignore whatever I do not like.
Also, we have all (or at least most of us here) already talked about exploiting ... its a mute point atm. I would prefer real alternatives like tong puzzles over anything that anybody can point the finger at at the en
What I mean is, you can do MW on a lot of characters if you want, but you are not maximizing your profits by doing so. People could be botting it that way, I don't deny it, but I don't think those are the people who are influencing the economy, its a huge cost to sink in for not much benefit and this is 1 of the cases where the argument, "but botting" I don't think is a very good one. Bots very likely hugely influence the supply side of farming nodes, but I don't see them spending much time botting mw crafts.
This is what I mean. While my MW-ing is abysmal compared to people like you, probably, I know several people that have indeed done what you deem inefficient and found it not so. Of course, you don't know me, how would I know what others really do... or those are the 2% players (idiots?) that do it in a way you would never do it.
However, whether I am completely wrong or just a bit, you can argue whatever you like. That is your right, and I should not try to cut in just because I do not like your somewhat condescending tone. For that, I apologize and I swear that I'm already trying to just ignore whatever I do not like.
Also, we have all (or at least most of us here) already talked about exploiting ... its a mute point atm. I would prefer real alternatives like tong puzzles over anything that anybody can point the finger at at the en
What I mean is, you can do MW on a lot of characters if you want, but you are not maximizing your profits by doing so. People could be botting it that way, I don't deny it, but I don't think those are the people who are influencing the economy, its a huge cost to sink in for not much benefit and this is 1 of the cases where the argument, "but botting" I don't think is a very good one. Bots very likely hugely influence the supply side of farming nodes, but I don't see them spending much time botting mw crafts.
I do MW 1-3 on 8 characters (not all professions on every character), and use use that to maximize output of some base materials to cut some minor costs and leverage the RNG that is good crafting assets, but I only do max level crafting on a single character... Sharp is right in saying the MW really is not impacted by having multiple characters capable of MW, the cost to benefit ratio just isn't there for it to be economically viable, or impactful to the economy... now regular crafting? that is heavily impacted by the throughput someone like me can have on 50 characters with lvl 80 gathering and crafting.
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
This is what I mean. While my MW-ing is abysmal compared to people like you, probably, I know several people that have indeed done what you deem inefficient and found it not so. Of course, you don't know me, how would I know what others really do... or those are the 2% players (idiots?) that do it in a way you would never do it.
However, whether I am completely wrong or just a bit, you can argue whatever you like. That is your right, and I should not try to cut in just because I do not like your somewhat condescending tone. For that, I apologize and I swear that I'm already trying to just ignore whatever I do not like.
Also, we have all (or at least most of us here) already talked about exploiting ... its a mute point atm. I would prefer real alternatives like tong puzzles over anything that anybody can point the finger at at the en
What I mean is, you can do MW on a lot of characters if you want, but you are not maximizing your profits by doing so. People could be botting it that way, I don't deny it, but I don't think those are the people who are influencing the economy, its a huge cost to sink in for not much benefit and this is 1 of the cases where the argument, "but botting" I don't think is a very good one. Bots very likely hugely influence the supply side of farming nodes, but I don't see them spending much time botting mw crafts.
I do MW 1-3 on 8 characters (not all professions on every character), and use use that to maximize output of some base materials to cut some minor costs and leverage the RNG that is good crafting assets, but I only do max level crafting on a single character... Sharp is right in saying the MW really is not impacted by having multiple characters capable of MW, the cost to benefit ratio just isn't there for it to be economically viable, or impactful to the economy... now regular crafting? that is heavily impacted by the throughput someone like me can have on 50 characters with lvl 80 gathering and crafting.
Exactly this and if you are mass producing stuff (as in, actually going through 1000's of each material a week), then having those 1-8 characters doesn't make much of a difference either, you may as well only craft on 1. At some point, your largest enemy becomes time. Yes, you are making less profit per individual item, but your absolute profit is larger because of the sheer volume of stuff you are selling.
MW crafting does not really benefit from botting it.
What I mean is, you can do MW on a lot of characters if you want, but you are not maximizing your profits by doing so. People could be botting it that way, I don't deny it, but I don't think those are the people who are influencing the economy, its a huge cost to sink in for not much benefit and this is 1 of the cases where the argument, "but botting" I don't think is a very good one. Bots very likely hugely influence the supply side of farming nodes, but I don't see them spending much time botting mw crafts.
I was thinking more "don't put BiS items out there and bad elements won't have a target." ... but, I bow to your greater knowledge.
Per your item proposals: ---
"You can only have 5 item bonuses active at once. There is a meter in the character UI which shows how many bonuses you have active, so it is very clear that once you hit 5, putting on an additional item will provide no additional bonus."
We have a lot more than 5 gear slots. How would the top 5 get chosen? It would be odd if we had to equip our gear in such a way as to get the 5 bonuses as we want.
Also, on console the bonus/buff UI is greatly reduced. Very difficult to see what buffs are active. Maybe there should be a specific window for gear bonuses to be selectable?
---
"Set bonuses count as bonuses that occupy multiple slots. As a result of this, if a set includes 3 pieces, the bonus should be a 15% increase + make up the lost stats, but it would also occupy 3 of the 5 available item bonuses. The draw of using a set over 3 individual items is that it is possible to design much more build defining bonuses with the increased available “bonus pool”".
I think this is difficult to explain to a player. Even if the UI shows before/after stats, there will be confusion. It would be important that the UI window communicates that the set bonus is taking three spots. Same questions about which bonuses get selected as the active ones.
---
Generally I liked a lot of your other proposals, which is why I didn't comment on them earlier.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
What I mean is, you can do MW on a lot of characters if you want, but you are not maximizing your profits by doing so. People could be botting it that way, I don't deny it, but I don't think those are the people who are influencing the economy, its a huge cost to sink in for not much benefit and this is 1 of the cases where the argument, "but botting" I don't think is a very good one. Bots very likely hugely influence the supply side of farming nodes, but I don't see them spending much time botting mw crafts.
I was thinking more "don't put BiS items out there and bad elements won't have a target." ... but, I bow to your greater knowledge.
Per your item proposals: ---
"You can only have 5 item bonuses active at once. There is a meter in the character UI which shows how many bonuses you have active, so it is very clear that once you hit 5, putting on an additional item will provide no additional bonus."
We have a lot more than 5 gear slots. How would the top 5 get chosen? It would be odd if we had to equip our gear in such a way as to get the 5 bonuses as we want.
Also, on console the bonus/buff UI is greatly reduced. Very difficult to see what buffs are active. Maybe there should be a specific window for gear bonuses to be selectable?
---
"Set bonuses count as bonuses that occupy multiple slots. As a result of this, if a set includes 3 pieces, the bonus should be a 15% increase + make up the lost stats, but it would also occupy 3 of the 5 available item bonuses. The draw of using a set over 3 individual items is that it is possible to design much more build defining bonuses with the increased available “bonus pool”".
I think this is difficult to explain to a player. Even if the UI shows before/after stats, there will be confusion. It would be important that the UI window communicates that the set bonus is taking three spots. Same questions about which bonuses get selected as the active ones.
---
Generally I liked a lot of your other proposals, which is why I didn't comment on them earlier.
Not all items would have buffs and items that don't have buffs on them would have significantly more stats than items that provide buffs. The result would be, you would probably only equip 5 items that have the buffs you want and then all remaining items would just be items without buffs. I do agree though, that on the offhand chance someone does equip more than 5 items that have buffs, there should be a UI that lets you choose.
I also agree that this is difficult to communicate to players, there is a learning curve involved. It was 1 of the downsides I identified in the system I proposed. Aside from having a very good UI, I don't see away around that, but it should hopefully be something that can be overcome and explained.
On the subject of botting professions, the (non) mw professions are probably heavily botted, as well as the resource gathering for mw. The reason why they are botted is because there is a very low barrier for entry, where as if you are unlocking mw, you need to spend a lot on each character and it would take a long time to recoup that. If you just spammed rushing crafts on a single character you would recoup it much quicker, but if you are rushing crafts, then why bot it in the first place?
On the subject of botting professions, the (non) mw professions are probably heavily botted, as well as the resource gathering for mw. The reason why they are botted is because there is a very low barrier for entry, where as if you are unlocking mw, you need to spend a lot on each character and it would take a long time to recoup that. If you just spammed rushing crafts on a single character you would recoup it much quicker, but if you are rushing crafts, then why bot it in the first place?
There is the low barrier.. but spending 12+ hours in one shot going in circles collecting that entire time doing the same thing over and over, and some people will lesser constitutions would start to get tempted to bot that stuff.
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
Comments
Do you want to make more money? Sure, we all do....
the thing I ask myself when looking at something like a rewards topic is what do we really want? do we want different things in the chest or do we just want the chest to provide a value commiserate with our time? the problem with adding new things is they will lose value immediately just like all the other things have lost value.
If value were added back to things already in the chest we wouldn't mind so much would we? Right now there isn't much value in artifacts and rp and enchants which are the most likely things to see in a chest.. but if there were value it would be better right?
Mastercrafting should remain high investment imo and high rewards. but if you had more drops in dungeons that could be sold to master crafters that would be a nice in pocket win for everyone.
but crafting shouldn't be the domain of the rich only so there should also be things accessible and worthwhile to everyone to craft. if not for profit than for their own use. this is where you could add in crafting that uses a ton of rp artifacts and enchants to upgrade various items. I'd keep it at a fairly low upgrade per rank on things maybe you could add lift to artifacts of like 100 stats per rank and a ton of investment required. it would allow the market to dry up a bit with those items and start to add value from the drops in dungeons.
mastercrafting could also have some base gear that just gets better every mod. but always about the same as the most recent dungeon drops but different but also valuable. things that are better for some than others. it would require no major updates to keep up to date and as a result they stay valuable. the base items from the various nodes also stay valuable since the base recipe stays the same but the upgrades require newer things. the upgrades each mod could be a valuable upgrade kit the mastercrafters make.
I've read all the posts up to this point to keep up to date. For myself I will limit my posting to attempting to present my ideas and a broad overview. Its not useful in an idea gathering mode to debate the nth detail of proposals, market responses to them, etc. I realize this may still be a bit broad, but this is the first chance I've had to write these thoughts out.
The conversations have been fairly tightly bound by what we have already experienced in this game with very few proposals for anything different. Much of the debate has been around whether old NW was better or if we should keep on the current track. To me it seems self evident that if the current development of the game, its content, player feedback, and overall income were all that great, we wouldn't be having this discussion with a new E.P. in the first place. So it has to be a given that stretching out to new systems and ways of handling what were familiar with is necessary here.
The overall CDP is about rewards. This is a very broad topic of course, and the conversation has often wandered into systems for achieving rewards rather than just the rewards themselves. So I may do some of that myself since it pertains .
For myself in this and other games I divide rewards up roughly as follows:
Rewards that can:
1. be bought – Zen store or the equivalent
2. be achieved through skill – hopefully dungeons and puzzles
3. be worked for through grinding – RP, AD,
4. be devised – playing the market, crafting in complex games (not NW),organization of players,knowledge of systems and trends, decorations (things I make and weren't directly planned by the devs but I find rewarding.)
To keep the lights on of course #1 has to be somewhat pre-eminant and offer a benefit to at least 1 or more of the others. Oddly over time NW has only had a few levers they've made for themselves to throw for #1. This has gotten worse in recent times as items in the zen store have been largely devalued. Purple mounts, character slots, refinement, mod specific companions that are obsolete in weeks, etc were all once kinda neat, but now all but worthless.
So there are different types of reward in each of these categories. There is something that has to be addressed however which affects all 4, and that is complexity. Without complexity to the game, some of which we have lost recently with the mod 16 changes, the rest becomes moot. Differences in Horizontal or vertical progression plays in here.
1 example of lost complexity.. weapon/armor enchants
Chris may have no way of knowing some of this history. To me as a long time vet I'm used to the market around enchants and their relative values. These are high – value items and always have been. To a new player these can seem like unobtainium, with vets promoting only the highest levels of them, and prices beyond what they can conceive of.
So for quite a long while enchants were very stagnant. They would vary slightly.. then about 3 years ago there was a widespread effort to revamp them. Considerable dev time was spent on the forums with feedback being given by the community.
https://arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1227227
(too long to bother reading Im sure, just showing that there was considerable discussion)
This was greatly successful in freeing up some enchants. It didn't take us to having all BIS at all, but there was at least some amount of variation between classes and enchant use even occasionally changing with content like PVP, need to avoid CC, or enhance support capabilities.
Then we get to mod 16.. Once again its Vorpal or nothing. Barkshield is the goto, and really nothing else matter though you can try something else if you're bored. So there we have a loss of complexity AND a loss of work that was put in by Cryptic to solve just that problem.
So that lack of complexity effects #1 above. There is no need to open diverse lockboxes. The only ones that count have the few pertinent pieces of BIS gear.
Looking at #2. Content is a reward as well. Especially for BIS end gamers. Thats really the only reward that matters, along with the fun of juggling new equipment and finding the different interactions that they can bring to the table. Here again, complexity is key. With the simplification of powers and roles we've lost some variability, something that made the hundreds of pieces of gear that came out in mod 14 particularly fun and popular was taking time mixing and matching according to different needs. With mod 18 we have lots of gear, but how much of it is really worth looking at? The gross majority of it wasn't worth the time put into making the new graphics for them.
Here we can look at vertical progression. Go back to the before the release of twisted weapons with mod 9. People BACK THEN were saying they didn't want/need to see new weapons, they just wanted new places to play. Yet without pause in almost every mod since there has been a new weapon set or multiple released, often shockingly more powerful than the previous. Then that power creep is used as an excuse for smashing the old systems, and an endless loop of nerf balancing. All this when we just wanted new and old dungeons released that we could run through with our friends, not new weapons every time. There was plenty of room for vertical progression, if it was to be separated from making a new world of EQ every time.
Ok enough history...
I can say I'm thoroughly for largely horizontal improvement with a regular high quality vertical step that is far less frequent than we have today. How can I say that? Didn't I just say I wanted more content? They aren't mutually exclusive, in fact that way of thinking is part of the problem.
NW is actually quite large. There are many dungeons and areas galore. However low/middle level players rush through them on the way to max level. Max level players never return to them if they ever set foot in them in the first place. So the new player experience of NW is that of a very small game. We essentially play the recent 2 mods worth of content, with an occasional trip to mod 13 stuff when we need U.E.s (enchanting stone rank 6). The rest of the game could go dark (and by the number of instances essentially has) and most of the playerbase wouldn't notice other than those trying to build up strongholds still.
So make use of old content when mixing in the new. New mods are created as if there isn't a whole world to play in outside that mod. Underdark was one of few exceptions, spreading a mod out to older content areas. (look at the idea here not specific implementation).
More specifics ideas:
Lore/collections – as has been mentioned previously.. add value to these.
Let crafters make transmutes based on items they have in their collections, or according to themes found there. Open up new sections when you fill out entire categories of a collection. Want to make chultan furniture? Go collect one of each of these pieces in your collections.. Somewhat like the MW quests, cheaper, but also more difficult and time consuming.
Strongholds
Room key expansions to strongholds:
Make new rooms available for strongholds that can be opened up with keys that are achieved in various ways. Perhaps a new temp vendor is created that is a contractor that allows building of new rooms, and where these keys can be purchased by trading in certain currencies or objects. One could open up a trophy room.. a portal room to specific areas, an apartment block where people buy keys for their own apartment.
There you have a geographical and thematic support for player housing. With that you open up the possibility for MW crafting of furniture, art, personal menageries, snapshot picture frames of different in game environments for decore.
On to Professions:
The expansion of professions seemed like it had a lot of promise, but it was given very little love post mod 15. The workshop was an interesting idea, that caused the creation of a player specific room but without much added benefit or 'game' to play with it.
Expand the professions to have workshops in diverse locations. Put magical enhancement labs at the end of hard dungeons. So if you want to specially craft a mod 17 weapon, or add a new detail to it you would have to gather the ingredients and then win TOMM to have access to that work station. Same with other locations. Place a puzzle at the end of a trial like Tiamat where your team opens it with a ME shade like operation, and you get an opening to another piece of content. Win your way through that and you gain access to that workstation. It would be pointless for PUGs to do it, but would be a challenge and something to accomplish for those who wanted it.
ADD damage type effects .. this alone would make certain enchants valuable in different areas. It could add effectiveness and complexity to armor types and different spells.
New rewarding situations:
Make content a reward for doing dailies and then reward THAT as well. Instead of just having 1 layer to getting RAD make it so you can organize yourself and accomplish something bigger when you have the time for it. Maybe you want to have a nice gaming weekend day so you have time to put into an extended session. You should be able to be rewarded for it instead of just being done when you've gone through your normal queues. Maybe if you do x queus and y weeklies it opens up some Stories of Old type dungeons with even more reward for you.
People have asked repeatedly for multi difficulty dungeons, making them easy, medium, hard. There is already technology in the game to make this happen and it should be used and expanded. Tales of Old and K-team were good ideas, they just got the life sucked out of them when they were steamrolled by the mod 16 changes.
My entire alliance and guilds from our former alliance were working with us through K-team when it was still valid. It was hard.. it was frustrating.. but it also had some great times that required playing the same content in different ways and with different strategies. and it was voluntary. ..with some unique gear at the end! Thats the ideal. K-team alone kept hundreds of us engaged for many many hours from my alliance.
Challenge of the Gods thats coming up even has a flavor of this. Though the rewards are underwhelming and obsolete nowadays, the idea isn't bad.
I propose self nerfing like this be expanded: Groups could gear up and when in private queues opt for various self nerfs. Each of them with a known bonus to the end prize. Not a guarantee of course but a known boost towards a high end item, time limited damage booster 1 hour 5% damage boost, transmute, massive stronghold voucher, nifty titles, crafting materials for MW items, etc. Expand these ideas out instead of staying in old silos that we've becomes used to.
Reward different solutions to the same content, the way d&d traditionally would. Example: ECC .. for ages had various endings, one of which was mentioned earlier on in this conversation. Another solution was available as well, and was used for years.
Here we had a deep dark dungeon with a baddie that was hard for a long time for any PUG group to handle. There were traditions however passed on from group to group over the ages that allowed those who couldn't facetank it to still win the content. Often this group had been there for an hour by this time and desperately wanted the win. There was also a pit outside with huge spikes that would kill anyone that fell into it. So.. in grand RPG style we learned to 'pit the boss', taking him to the content that would win the day. This usually didn't save time. It took an intimate knowledge of the content, and familiarity with the different classes abilities that could get the desired result. Of course since this wasn't the pre-conceived face tanking method that was written the devs spent untold resources quelling these alternate solutions. When it should have been rewarded for learning the game and its environments.
I propose when its detected that alternate solutions are being used like this that another approach be taken. Write a new loot table for that solution. If you pit the boss in ECC you get an achievement maybe a pirate hat with a hole in it. Manage to kill Kalos Tam with poison arrows? Different drops than if you are in the normal area.
Nicely here this can be as specilized as you like. Eventually some of them could actually be planned instead of being 'user created'. Items like transmutes, hair color dyes, banners, unique consumables could be dropped that make different solutions preferable for different groups. Perhaps Kalos has a special charm that wards off demons that could be used in mod 18. … drop that in as part of the addition of mod 18 to spread out the expansion of the world and refamiliarize everyone with how big this world really is.
Now sorry if this has gotten too long.. but there are so many possibilities!
Really a d&d themed game should be about getting to those possibilities and seeing how we can mix and match all this content thats already there to get more out of it, instead of always using it as an excuse for how limited we need to be.
For players to feel a consistent power gradient, campaigns must be made mandatory and in sequence, which is not going to happen since the marketing department always wants new bloods to try out the latest release.
The "fun" part totally comes from design and player perspective. Personally I love Ravenloft. AI and SKT (especially SoMI) not so much. F*** fishing. Hells yeah! Slayer boons (see Hastur's cool suggestion) are probably an easy one for starters as there are already counters that track those for titles. I'd like boons that improve my CC and/or affect elites and bosses. Doesn't need to be as complicated as you have here. Simply let crafters make gear of exactly the same caliber to what drops. It's not like they'll be able to just mass produce BiS gear if the resources/time/risk of failure to make them is adjusted accordingly. Lousy example: takes a gazillion resources for a month or two with 10% chance to succeed at the end. Also your entire workshop will focus on this one item. Failure results in 100% lost resources. Don't like it? Just run the dungeon then.
If a BiS helm comes from the dungeon or is crafted, there should be no difference to the end product. Uh, can't they just shove the resources at the end of Master Expeditions and advanced queue dungeons and call it a day? Yes please. What would even be better is if you let the players decide what extra thing they earn like in Legacy Campaigns, because that's almost literally the same system. So... you want to make having extra loadouts cheaper right? Instead of two hats with two gems each you get two hats that share the same two gems? Yeah sure that works for me.
I feel differently.
1. Crafting by nature is easy to exploit, especially on the pc. It should not be able to sway the economy and other systems in the game. It should be maintainable separately. ... Attaching BiS gear to such a system will continue to fail and be ripe for abuse.
2. You're assuming the team will be able to update gear every mod, which is clearly not happening.
I think a more sustainable system is to have regular professions benefit the individual player, mainly through buffs and augments.
Mastercrafting should have more to do with benefiting the guild, not the individual player.
It is a massive investment, but it should have more influence on the guild and how that system operates.
Overall, the systems in the game need to be easier to maintain, not harder to maintain.
2. Yep, but the whole idea of the CDP is to stimulate change. Otherwise what's the point of this exercise?
3. Mastercrafting should have more to do with benefiting the guild, not the individual player.
While I disagree that the mastercrafts should not benefit the individual, I do quite like the notion about it benefiting guilds (especially if you need the Explorer's Guild for it anyway). Why not let it do both?
On a side note, just in case people might think I was lying earlier:
Cragmire Crypts blocked room #1 (The Library)
The **only** reason we can't get to this is because someone placed a stone wall in the way. You normally get to this room from the room where you fight Kallos Tam. I don't remember what enemies used to be in here. Maybe this was Kallos Tam's quarters? It would make sense since he's a Red Wizard. I also don't remember if there's lore in here. I'd have to level up a fresh TR to find out.
Room #2 blocked by wall (The Crypt). This is what I mean by "artificially" blocked off: a dev did this for no reason and simply jammed an asset in the way. This room is at the top of the stairs by the two phase spiders with the treasure chest. Hulks are supposed to pop out of the caskets but nothing does now. I think this is where there is supposed to be a Deathlock Wight with the Yellowbeard reference dialogue ("Cragmires are never more dangerous than when we're dead!")
Wall blocking the way to the Daughter of Lolth miniboss:
This is at the campfire just after the two phase spiders. You can see this section on the main map. The corridor with the traps is supposed to be loaded with spiderlings (the kind that *don't* all send you flying
The room with the miniboss has an extra spurious ceiling square that needs to be removed. It's only visible from above.
There is a spot where if a Ranger walks by, a popup appears explaining how the spiders got in (I have a long memory and my main is a Ranger).
The final room. The only reason we can't enter is because the devs prevent us from opening the doors to it
This room lies between the shadow portal and the first extendable platform. Note the glowing red eyes in the sarcophagus and the lore book (I got this lore entry before Mod 6, hence no sparklies). There is supposed to be a hulk, a number of zombies, and a deathlock wight, if memory serves. The wight is giving the zombies a hard time because they are clumsy and are in danger of setting themselves on fire.
There used to be yet another side room very early on in the dungeon down a long corridor, but that entire section was deleted. We'll never see that room again
I don't know why the devs' position has been that they'll fight to the death before ever letting us access these rooms again, but I want to see it remedied.
For crying out loud, minibosses and side areas are perfect opportunities for chasing secondary goals for horizontal progression. Maybe a group of adventurers isn't interested in the main big, bad, boss, but some other ancillary danger. Dungeons are dangerous areas that *should* sprawl at least a little and lead to other dangers. The way dungeons are laid out now, you could stretch them out and form a perfectly straight one-dimensional line. That is *boring*. There is *so* much unexplored potential here -- quests you might pick up from exploring these side areas that unlock paths for horizontal progression, or quests you encounter *while* following a horizontal progression path that *lead* you to these areas. Instead the devs just block them all off. So much potential...wasted.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Let crafters build equivalent or exact gear as whatever drops, including BiS. As long as the time/cost/fail rate ratio is steep enough (months/millions/less chance of success than opening the dungeon chest), they should be able to sell their work. Everyone can then get / buy the BiS stuff eventually, while the top tier guys who dungeon delve get to show it off earlier.
Only difference is dungeoned gear is bound, crafted gear is not.
As for 2, my proposed system would completely invalidate that point. In my system, if they did not update crafted gear for 5 or even 10 years it would still be bis, because the gear with bonuses would still have less stats than it. at the same time however, you would still want gear with bonuses, so the problem you have highlighted there does not exist.
It works well for adding something to existing items, like kits do, but putting it in competition with items you can drop will always lead to issues, especially when the droppable item is better than the Masterwork like we have today. On the other hand if masterwork items are better then people will start to forego the content where items drop, to focus on farming what they need to craft.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Feedback Overview (short description of the proposed feedback)
Address and normalize the value proposition of purchased items especially zen purchases
Feedback Goal (what this feedback would target and accomplish)
Increase consumer confidence, reinvigorate zen purchases, improve customer satisfaction long term, and encourage steady spending in support of the game.
Feedback Functionality (how would your feedback work in relation to the current design of Neverwinter)
Should I buy a small zen item like a key?
Story time.
I remember within days of starting NW one of the first lessons I learned in this game. Never buy keys. How did I learn this? The game taught me first, and then the vets reinforced that lesson. How did I learn it? Early on I was playing and happy enough with my progression. Thoughts of meta and BIS were still long in the future, but still the big shiny's were tempting. Back then seeing someone with a big glowing negation enchant was super impressive, I didn't even know what they were called but I know I wanted one.
So looking around I see I have lockboxes. This seems accessible, and I don't have to survive those super dungeons the big guys are in. Look at the preview and its got all sorts of tempting things in there. Cool! Whats a key... 100 zen. Oh thats not bad. Spend $1 and get something neat, maybe not the best or most desirable thing, but something neat.
I go through the punishing process of purchasing zen. I bought it through steam because I didn't know any better at the time. That took AGES. (Note to Chris.. might want to revisit NWs relationship with steam to revamp sales there. That has been discouraged, punishes the customer, and is 1/2 broken for years now.) I didn't have to go through the customer service and painful runaround that it became later, but for a digital purchase it was painfully long. I just wanted to get my neat shiny thing!
I get my zen. I nervously make my key purchase. I open my lockbox! woo! ok what did I get. 10 Tarmalune bars.
Neat...I guess sounds like something that would have some possibilities. Look into it, and I cant do anything with those. Id need to open 10s of lockboxes to get something cool. Even a coal ward which I didn't fully grasp the system behind yet but seemed cool, was out of reach. (This is before VIP keys, and there were some high end things in the tarm store back then.)..and I got a runestone box that had a blue runestone in it.
In conversations after that every vets forever after warn me .. 'Dont EVER buy keys. It takes hundreds or thousands of keys to win something good. Leave that to the whales who do it for a living maybe when your high end you'll be able to buy the keys for free then you can consider it'. Now Ive carried on with that warning on forums, chats, and reddit. Thats not good for business, but its the truth.
So the first lesson I learn from the most accessible neat and shiny thing low end purchase I have access to in the zen store, is never to buy from the zen store. Thats not a good customer experience. Partially this can be helped by managing expectations. Partially this could be addressed by a system that they have in ESO, whereby you can trade with the game discard worthy items you receive from lockboxes for store credit on something you do want.
see ESO gem extraction That leads you to less feelings of disappointment and waste, and adds to feelings that you have hope of getting a desirable item even if RNG doesn't smile on you.
Here in this CDP you have been receiving a lot of advice from some people whose point of view taints the potential new customers experience. There have been posts about how the old guard leading much of the 'rewards' discussion are sitting on 100s of millions of AD. They don't HAVE to buy anything, and in fact actively avoid playing large parts of the game that aren't profitible for them, for that reason. At the same time they would like to protect their market position by ensuring that high value items remain so that only they have primary access to them AND they would like to exclude others from having alternative means to achieve them. Right there you have f2p income working to punish potential customers simply to maintain the status quo, which doesn't result in new purchases or provide a reasonable path for a low end player to do anything other than.. grind f2p AD and purchase f2p items from the AH with no consideration of zen anywhere.
Can you use the zax and burn some ZEN to get enough AD to equip yourself. Sure! ..and that should be encouraged for those that can afford it. I have had guildies that did just that, expressly in part to help support the game, and partly to save themselves RL time. That is only worth considering when that purchase has a known lifespan though. (Which Ill get to later).
I am not suggesting tanking the market for them. ..or that high end players shouldn't have their sandboxes too. But the idea that I have my dragon hoard, you can't play in my sandbox, and that my f2p income should make your experience worse so I can maintain virtual profitability? Thats silly. Worse thats hurting the relationship with the people that actually would be willing to help keep the lights on through real money purchases for fun and engaging systems.
Finally, value for money should be addressed at a minimum for high end purchases.
Final story.
I had a set of guildies that were a couple I knew and played with for years. While I was a casual spender and a devoted detail NW gamer, they were casual NW gamers and devoted spenders. I would spend some birthday money or christmas money. They would decide whether to go out to the casino and blow their bonus money or stay in and spend it on NW and playing with us their guildies.
We had a christmas party with a raffle for our guildies.. she wanted to spice it up so traded zen for AD to buy a legendary mount, just to spice up the prizes. When moon elves came out with a pack she bought the pack. She wanted the blue hair to match the style of a new character she wanted. She also bought character slots to put it in, traded zen to ad to get fashion to match. She disappeared for about an hour and game back with all rank 12 enchants (best at the time). She had again traded zen to AD to purchase the necessities to rank up all the enchants without taking from her main. Because she 'didnt want to be seen in rags'. She did all this TO GET BLUE HAIR. These are the customers you want, and that other games cater to (sometimes too much I know).
I haven't seen them in most of a year. why? Bad value for money. People who go to a casino, feel they get better value for money there than here in the game. Think about that. Sure they get drinks, entertainment, and luxury for a few hours, but its still not a real high bar to set.
When we talked about it I learned what one of the final straws on the camels back was. This was right before mod 16. From mod 12-15 there was a series of changes that moved high end enchants for DCs at least one time every mod. This is a major purchase, like buying high end electronics in real life, with only a legendary mount besting it for one time spending in game. So here we were right before mod 16 and word came down that virtually everyone was going to vorpal and that everything else was going to be meh. So once again.. on top of all the changes, she was being told that in order to be a performer she would have to buy a top end piece within a month. That was too much of an ask. That was too far.
Does change and progression need to occur? Is it fun when high end things shift and respond in new ways sometimes? Absolutely. Is it fun when that change is relentless and devalues everything that came before? No. It was literally depressing for many people, and thats not what people come to a game to experience.
Proposal for high end items.
The important part here is not the specifics of implementaion. Its to show a possible atmosphere to openly deal with this.
Directly address value for money. Potentially offer a zen only purchase that is 'purchase insurance' for certain high end items like weapon enchants, mounts, rare companions etc. This could be time limited, and added to items using a UI like the armor kits. And then be traded out at a exchange vendor while the insurance timer still ran. Renewal? Maybe. But at a minimum provide insurance to a high end customer that their purcahse wont be devalued tomorrow, and if it is that they have recourse.
Dont have cynical sales. I have experience in the past, and narrowly avoided a few times purchasing a high end item that was up for sale. Then those very items, that were even promoted on the Cryptic website in at least 1 example was either nerfed to the ground or put in a lockbox the next week thereby devaluing it. In the case that I bit I could have waited 1 week and purchased the same item for 1/10 the cost. 1x ..sure bad timing happens. Doing it on a consistant basis begins to look like attempting to con the consumer into bad faith purchases in the knowledge that you are ripping them off. Intention or not, that is what begins to be communicated over time.
Communicate. With the purchase insurance system in place.. or even before that be open (as Chris has indicated is his intention) about plans for content changes. Going to be changing the entire enchant system for mod 19? Tell us. Then its OK and I know to hold off on my high end purchase and grinding for monthes to get something high end or blowing this monthes coffee fund on a mount thats good today but maybe not after this month. Help ME to be the judge of what value a purchase is going to have instead of tricking me into it only to feel bitter soon thereafter.
Yes theres an entertainment fee to be expected even in a game like this. But when I pay netflix I know Im getting a month of service, amazon a year of prime, rent, car leases, and so on. We need to be able to guage for ourselves the amount of entertainment value we're going to get out of our game dollar, and then see that expectation met consistently.
Risks & Concerns (what problems can you foresee with implementing your feedback that you would like input on from members of this subforum)
I have always felt that the legacy a player builds should have some support within a game. Encouraging vets and their little empires is good for a game, in balance. Too much and it feels exclusionary, like a game is only there for the rich, and no reasonable thing that I can do will address that. Thats where the economy of NW is right now. TOMM and the orange rings there with no other engaging content or EQ for lesser players is the showcase for it.
This is a balance however. ..and its only as bad as it is now in absence of content for other levels of player and other engagement styles. The BIS, meta only, change happens mantra of the current TOMM users is good for that group, but needs to have other systems available to people that don't play THAT game, the crafters, the stylists, the dungeon delvers, etc.
Ok. this wall of text is it for me. Hopefully you get some use out of it. I'm off to work.
1. The notion of making Professions/MW gear "Account Bound". I believe it has been mentioned above, but the whole purpose of making things professionally is to generally sell them to earn profit. If either loot or crafted goods need to be account bound, make it the stuff you found in a box.
2. I believe a couple of people have suggested something along the lines of removing enchants from items and sticking them... somewhere... on the character. So that if you swap out an item you don't have to struggle with the enormity of removing and replacing the enchantments, or something like that. Hate this. Really hate this... I know I'm in the minority over load outs, but I hate that in a D&D game a character can just morph into another character to suit the situation. Different base stats, paragons, boons... I really hate it. So, apart from my Cleric, I don't use them. When my Rogue switches from open/AoE zone to single target, I swap his weapons and three encounters. It takes about 30 seconds, (and I can do it mid fight if I forget at a camp fire) his weapons have specific enchantments... Lightning for mobs, Vorpal for single target. "Simplifying" something that is already simple is redundant and lowest common denominator manipulation of the character into even more of a spreadsheet ready system than it currently is. (Though the notion of swapping the gold cost from removing the enchants from their slots to refining them is a cool way to save the rich players with fully refined enchants a few quid and putting the burden of sinking gold on those with less... )
(Mod removed offtopic reference)
I found Neverwinter around Mod 5 (but not sure atm) and I was only vaguely aware there was a game called D&D before that. I searched out resources to possibly shed some light on what I find in Neverwinter and why:
4E Player's Handbook.pdf
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8Blhc7UBgftLXhyTFQ5MkJxV0k/edit?pli=1
5E Player's Handbook
https://online.anyflip.com/ofsj/cxmj/mobile/index.html#p=1
What I see in these handbooks is a game with a lot more variety for character creation and gameplay than what Neverwinter incorporated. Purely imaginative P&P gameplay will of course trump anything that could be made into a video game but I still wish that Neverwinter became more like what I find in those Handbooks. Complexity and nuanced content to explore and engage is the best reward.
I have no idea how often an adventurer plays D&D without a party, but there's so much content that is soloable in Neverwinter I'm confused. Most zones don't feel threatening at all. Critters (and cultists?) don't react to my presence until I'm within spitting distance. Ravenloft introduced variable threat range so it's clear detection distances can be significantly increased but if there's a concern about what range to set the detection at, would it be possible to implement a toggle for players to choose their difficulty settings before launching the game and then have dedicated instances for difficulty levels? And then have increased rewards for playing in more difficult instances?
I don't know how scaling works yet but I'm confused by it as it seems awkward and inconsistent. I'm also confused why private queued content has an Item Level requirement instead of just a Character Level requirement.
I don't get why a player needs to spend gold to remove Enchantments from their gear. If there was a mechanism in place requiring a player to interact with a professional to do the delicate job of removing Enchantments, I could perhaps get a sense of who I'm paying, but as is I'm just confused because it seems like I'm the one doing the work but I lose Gold in the process. Maybe there could be a learnable Skill attached to Enchantment removal enabling a player to remove their own Enchantments and not just click a button and lose gold to the ether?
I don't get how every critter (or there might be exceptions) drops Gold whatever their species type. I noticed that defeated/killed Demons never give Experience points and whether this is by design or not it's too cryptic for me. I would like to see critter appropriate loot that can be used in crafting.
I also would hope Masterwork crafters eventually are able to craft Enchantments and other resources used in the refinement process, including Marks of Potency, Enchanting Stones and Wards.
Workshop Gathering employees would be able to gather a greater variety of materials (possibly even Mounts and Companions in addition to a variety of crafting materials, including Mastercraft materials) and Moral can be given to them to instantly gather in addition to the crafters. (Also, how can Gond's Forgehammer be used to craft any item but not used for gathering?)
Teleportation is introduced early in Neverwinter. Valindra disappears on the bridge and when the Crown is stolen from the vault, the culprits use a portal to vamoose. Regarding a possible VIP perk (though it doesn't have to be only for VIP) I've been hoping for is the option to teleport within an instance to other party members. It could be a learnable skill, or purchaseable/craftable/lootable item or a ranked VIP perk if you intend to keep ranks of VIP.
Scoreboards become a source of reward for a variety of categories, content and classes, and become a publicly viewable resource similar to PVP rank.
Everyone gets an unhideable advertisement for Lockbox Legendary Looters but having a searchable log for Lockbox winners would be interesting also, whether it be seasonal/Mod # based, or other metric.
Tired, ending post here.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
If I have 50 characters, would I sit for hours doing mundane crafting tasks?
It's pretty easy to set up a macro program to do the repetition for me. Against TOS, but I highly doubt everyone who does it gets caught. Looking at the difference between PC and console economies, my guess is that automation is at least partially to blame.
I could also have multiple accounts, each with 50 more characters.
Add to that, if one was looking to make money outside the game, craftable BiS items would be a prime target.
... and making temp Guilds to farm guild marks has always been a bit of a loophole.
From a systems and game health standpoint, attaching the economy to crafting in a major way has serious pitfalls.
But this is all way off-topic. Mastercrafting is like the end-game of the end-game, so I'll avoid touching it further until we have a specific CDP on it.
People who think the big time crafters craft on many characters are fooling themselves, its inefficient to unlock mw on many characters, it costs a fair amount and there isn't any real benefit to do so. The people listing every mw item on the ah, crafted all those items on a single character and just soaked up the rush costs. Been there, done that. Just going through all the steps takes quite a bit of time, even if you have an efficient production line.
In some cases, you would even pay other people AD to craft intermediate steps for you, because you simply do not have enough time.
(Mod removed offtopic reference) This is what I mean. While my MW-ing is abysmal compared to people like you, probably, I know several people that have indeed done what you deem inefficient and found it not so. Of course, you don't know me, how would I know what others really do... or those are the 2% players (idiots?) that do it in a way you would never do it.
However, whether I am completely wrong or just a bit, you can argue whatever you like. That is your right, and I should not try to cut in just because I do not like your somewhat condescending tone. For that, I apologize and I swear that I'm already trying to just ignore whatever I do not like.
Also, we have all (or at least most of us here) already talked about exploiting ... its a mute point atm. I would prefer real alternatives like tong puzzles over anything that anybody can point the finger at at the en
Guild Leader: Mistaken Identity (formerly Midnight Express)
My Twitch Stream
See my Youtube Channel for guides and more
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
MW crafting does not really benefit from botting it.
Per your item proposals:
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"You can only have 5 item bonuses active at once. There is a meter in the character UI which shows how many bonuses you have active, so it is very clear that once you hit 5, putting on an additional item will provide no additional bonus."
We have a lot more than 5 gear slots. How would the top 5 get chosen?
It would be odd if we had to equip our gear in such a way as to get the 5 bonuses as we want.
Also, on console the bonus/buff UI is greatly reduced. Very difficult to see what buffs are active.
Maybe there should be a specific window for gear bonuses to be selectable?
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"Set bonuses count as bonuses that occupy multiple slots. As a result of this, if a set includes 3 pieces, the bonus should be a 15% increase + make up the lost stats, but it would also occupy 3 of the 5 available item bonuses. The draw of using a set over 3 individual items is that it is possible to design much more build defining bonuses with the increased available “bonus pool”".
I think this is difficult to explain to a player. Even if the UI shows before/after stats, there will be confusion.
It would be important that the UI window communicates that the set bonus is taking three spots.
Same questions about which bonuses get selected as the active ones.
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Generally I liked a lot of your other proposals, which is why I didn't comment on them earlier.
I also agree that this is difficult to communicate to players, there is a learning curve involved. It was 1 of the downsides I identified in the system I proposed. Aside from having a very good UI, I don't see away around that, but it should hopefully be something that can be overcome and explained.
On the subject of botting professions, the (non) mw professions are probably heavily botted, as well as the resource gathering for mw. The reason why they are botted is because there is a very low barrier for entry, where as if you are unlocking mw, you need to spend a lot on each character and it would take a long time to recoup that. If you just spammed rushing crafts on a single character you would recoup it much quicker, but if you are rushing crafts, then why bot it in the first place?
Guild Leader: Mistaken Identity (formerly Midnight Express)
My Twitch Stream
See my Youtube Channel for guides and more
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."