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Chris Whiteside his First year in review!
mynaam
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 937 Arc User
Before I start, I want to say I am writing this because I want this game to succeed and in my opinion 2020 was the worst year in this game’s history instead of taking the covid uptick (most games improved due to more players) the game actually managed to not slide down a hill but fall down a cliff! I really hope 2021 will be better!
THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE AN ATTACK ON CHRIS WHITESIDE! It is meant to be a review of the past year!
When Chris Whiteside was first announced he made promises like he will listen to all players. Let’s look back at his first year and see if he was earnest in that statement or just saying it because it sounded good!
These are some (not all) of the changes Chris Whiteside brought to Neverwinter:
- HIDING rewards from certain players
The decision was made to not reveal what rewards are available in game and also hide away where to obtain these rewards. A Good example of this is the recent hunt gear. Many people have no idea that hunts drop good gear and when they see people using these hunt gear have no CLUE where they can obtain it. With the RNG system making it even harder how is someone to know they must repeatedly do content especially after the got nothing for extremely hard work (like t3 hunt) and got nothing! - Less campaigns
Under Chris Whiteside the decision was made to reduce the campaigns from 3 per year to 2 per year. What does this mean for the players (from non bis perspective). Non-BIS Players have not had a new trial to play in more than 2 years. A Large percentage of the player base can barely play Lair of the mad mage at this time meaning they have to play a more than one-year old dungeon as their latest dungeon. Reducing the amount of Campaign means these players have even less to play than even before! - Shorter campaigns
Another of the bad decisions was the shortening of campaign by the removal of many of the many of the content that used to be in campaigns like hunts and weeklies. These contents have now simply been put into the supposed new content or episodes. For the same reason as less campaign this is a terrible thing for non bis players. Campaign can now be completed in 3-4 weeks of playing 20 min per week. That means campaigns now last 60-80 minutes! That is just crazy giving player 120-160 minutes of campaign playtime a YEAR! - Pay to receive content reward
A new concept was introduced instead of grinding for your content reward you now have to pay zen for it as well. Yes, the game has to make money but pay gating content after you are just putting content that used to be part of the now shortened campaigns is not the right way to do it! - 2 Versions of dungeons and trial
“We are talking about doing exactly this Joseph.
Let's have two versions of each dungeon/trial (at least the level 70 ones): the one we already have and a "story dungeon" instance.
Chris” – Chris Whiteside statement
They have only released a new trial with this version system but the new trail’s normal version is unplayable by 70-90% of the player base making it worthless! The dungeons and trials that need this have not been implemented. E.G. TOMM and IC. Trial like Demogorgon and Svarborg already had a master normal version and should really not take much resources to add back into the game! - ZAX record wait
Due to the bad decisions this year the ZAX have now reached a Record back log. In the past during the black Friday event the Zax backlog completely disappeared this year it is on a 2-month backlog. Yes, it is a player-based economy but this shows player that it is not worth investing in a game that is bleeding players and income is drying up (not saying they are in financial trouble just saying less people are buying zen)! - No new trial or dungeon added in 1 year to Randoms
WE used to get all 3 mod old dungeons and trials added into the random. But due to the “not meant for everyone” mentality this has made it impossible to add unplayable content to randoms. Players are now stuck to repeat the same content they have been doing for 2 YEARS!!!!! - No new playable dungeon or trial for non bis players
Let me start by saying I understand IC can be played by a larger % of the player base but I would say that is about 30% of the level 80 players and IC was released on January 21st. that means there will be no new dungeon release when this dungeon is 1 year old and still unplayable by 70+% of the players! Also need to be stated of the 30% that can play it about half don’t bother because it takes to long to get a team that can do it and tanking is not enjoyable anymore meaning tanks that can do it is like looking for chicken teeth! - Episodes (or whatever they call it this week)
Episodes are nothing but content that sued to be in dungeons and now are taunted as extra content. This latest series of episode also Pointed out the pro BIS mentality. Favor farm was done best doing hunts, yet a non bis team have near 0% chance to do the t3 version of it. If the gave all players including non-party members rewards it would be easy to form a 20-man party to do these but not giving non-party members rewards mean NON BIS players are again punished. This ends up that these players that are not in good favor with the dev team need to farm the most hated mechanic in the game Heroic encounters for a mind-numbing eternity! I was really optimistic about these episodes but it flopped first we got a bug ridden he farm called Rage of BEL that ROBbed you of your sanity then another HE farm for 4 more months! - Mobile phone style limited time sales
I said this before and am saying it again. This game has to make money I understand that. However, make “flash sales” to try and force impulse buying of items that may or may not be good is not the way to do it. YES do flash sale with non-critical items like fashion, preservation wards, coal wards, Regents, insignia’s or etc that I find nothing wrong with but FLASH SALE that I have seen talked a bout in many mobile seminars as a good way to trick players into spending money they really do not need to spend is not a good idea on game critical items! - Re- use old code with bugs and all.
I understand the importance of reusable code I understand inheritance, Polymorphism, etc. However in the latest mod we had a simple copy and past of the bout system from mod
This copy and pasted one of the most irritating bugs from that mod that was never bothered to fix. When in a boat or car and you enter a dungeon/skirmish/trial YOUR PET IS UNSUMMONED when you copy and past code PLEASE take the time to fix the old bugs - Larger BIS NON bis divide
One of the biggest reason’s players abandon this game is the BIS – NON-BIS divide! Before I get into this problem let me say I know there needs to be a BIS and they need to get content. I also know there need to be a divide.
The problem however this divide has grown to big and are now near impossible to catch up with. This past year cause the BIS players to demand more demanding content. This means content that 90-98% of players cannot play. (They need content that fit their play style yes). The NON-BIS players are getting frustrated and leaving since the can’t play 2-year-old content and will never be able to play new content. Before someone say they just needed to farm gear. They can’t! ALL BIS content now DEMAND “EXP ONLY” With every “not meant for everyone” content release the disastrous gap increase. In mod 16 I think they tried to adres this gap in it seemed to allow players to catch up but in the past year und Chris Whiteside this gap has increased as if it is on steroids!
IF this is not addressed soon you will only have BIS players left and that will not be good for the game at ALL!!!
1 - Content not release with as many bugs
This was one of the Best things Chris Whiteside promised when he first arrived at the game. However, we soon got his first “episode” Rage of BEL and it was a Bug infested mess after that it never got better ending in the car in Avernus that was released with a mod 10 bug! - Mount changes
This is one of those things that really was not needed and only achieved 1 thing increased the BIS non-BIS divide. Resources that could have been used in more important aspects was just used on this and it really hurt the player base! - Companion changes
Another on of those NOT NEEDED changes! We have no ide what the changes will be like when on final release we do know private beta players have been given and unfair advantage AGAIN! They can buy pets and gear on the cheap now and make millions out of exploiting non-PRIVATE BETA players AGAIN! These changes send mixed message again the last 2 mods (worst in games history IMO) have been punishing players for playing multiple toons and now they do a alt friendly change? Yes I stan to make insane amount of ad out of this but is it a good thing I don’t think so!
- But Should Non-BIS not be striving to get to BIS?
YES they should but if you make it impossible for them to make it to bis without being carried by bis players (let’s face it they only care about themself and rarely help other. there are exceptions) they will not make it there and the game will continue to BLEED players! - But what about Covid lockdown limiting changes?
This is something that many try to justify the Disastrous year this game had and I have a simple answer for that. They had time and resources to make un asked for and un needed Mount and Companion changes! NO EXCUSE!
There are more than BIS players in this game
RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)
RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)
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Comments
What I dont agree is the need of New dungeons for new players. New players have tons of content to play and gear up, and they are bussy enough with their leveling and playing all the content / dungeons /skimirshes already in the game to gear up to play the hardest content. They dont need new dungeons or trials when they dont even know how to play their class most of the time.
If you dont mean new players but very casual players that dont play much and are undergeared well... I dont know the numbers but I think the effort is not worth it.
In the bug section, I dont think we had more bugs than in the past, my feeling is that the content has more quality (bug wise) than before. There are bugs ofc but I think overall we are a bit (only) better in this aspect. Need more work indeed.
Caturday Survivor
Elemental Evil Survivor
Undermontain Survivor
Mod20 Combat rework Survivor
Mod22 Refinement rework Survivor
Heck I would love to see some new content. There were a few things I played 3/4 years ago when I was a brand new player that I would love to revisit now
never played the classic version would love to try it
Now for the OPs points:
1. I agree with the point about hiding gear in the collection's tab. Many players are completionist and not knowing that an item exists can cause a degree of stress to players. I actually think the RNG is fine, but then I also come from games that have worse drop rates.
2. While we are seeing less module releases now, we are actually getting more content through episodes. We no longer have to wait for a full module release to get major updates as we saw with the mounts. Now I would have liked more changes with the episodes so it wasn't the same grind each time, but I will reserve my full opinion until the CDP comes out for the episodic content.
Trial/Dungeon release pacing: I don't understand why players themselves claim are not endgame are complaining about not having content. If you aren't endgame, why do you feel the need to be able to do everything? You have however many modules worth of content that still needs to be done. Often times new modules have new ways of getting gear to get to the endgame as well. M19 for example, just run over manes for treasure maps and get weapons and armor that were way better than what was available for LoMM when it was brand new. Same with IC. Baby Zariel trial is also meant for non-BIS players, or as a learning tool for the real Zariel. Most players are actually capable of running this newer content, but just don't put in the effort to either form the group, learn the content, or whatnot. This is more to do with player behavior than with content release pacing.
3. I don't actually follow your point here. I know personally I have spent more time completing the M19 campaign than any other campaign, there were 5 separate releases for it, plenty of hunts and weeklies. M18 was the same length as other campaigns not including the added Bel stuff.
4. The content is not gated behind Zen. You did not have to pay anything to be able to participate in the event. You only paid extra for fashion, race, or anything else that can normally be bought in the Zen store.
5. Most of the players did not want an easy mode dungeon or trial, they wanted something that would teach the mechanics. Having something in which you can just ignore mechanics is only teaching that a mechanic can be ignored. Where is your data that 70-90% can't complete Baby Zariel? Remember that NW is bigger than what you observe in your corner of the game. Often times you do not see guild or alliance runs.
6. A large part of this problem is actually the fact that you can put Zen items on the AH. If a player wants AD and have the RL cash to spend, it is a better investment for them to buy coal/pres wards and sell to the AH than to use the ZAX. The AD cap was intended to normalize prices with the AH and ZAX, however due to the massive inflation (also see lack of AD sinks), the ZAX reached cap again and I would hope that the devs have learned that was not the ideal solution.
7. We are at the end of M19, LoMM which was in M16 was added to Randoms with M19, which is 3 modules old.
8. This goes with my earlier statement, if you aren't at the level to complete IC, there is a whole game that hasn't been completed yet. Grind the gear until you can. Now I will say the rewards are not worth running the dungeon, which is honestly the main reason why it can take a while to form a group, not that people can't run it.
9. Completing the episodic content (name hasn't changed at all seriously) could actually be done by a wide variety of players, both solo and group oriented ones. If you were more the solo type, you could just grind quests (6-10 quests a day to complete the milestone in the 28 days given). Groups farmed T1 hunts. T2 and T3 hunts were not really done until the end of M4 and just for the drops they have. You didn't need crazy gear to complete either the quests or the T1 hunts (or BHE before hunts became popular).
10. You'll have to be a bit more specific by what you don't want to see in sales. Mostly it IS just what you listed were ok to do.
11. I agree, you could never have enough QA though.
12. There has been more non-BIS content than BIS content. In the past 3 modules (17-19) there has been 2 pieces of content for BIS. ToMM and Zariel Trials. THAT IS IT. Everything else is aimed at getting players towards those endgame trials. M17 had more ways to gear up, including much needed companion gear. M18 gave a lot of armors, Bel, LoMM became more accessible with power creep, IC was only slightly harder than LoMM (easier than CR imo). M19 had new weapons which makes the barrier to getting ToMM completed a lot easier, loads of new gear, Hunts, fashions, plenty of stuff to grind for. Keep in mind, that I haven't actually set foot in Zariel's Challenge and I am waiting for more of my alliance to be willing to learn ToMM. With M19, I've actually been logging in more regularly because there is more to do.
13. Bel was pretty bad, however a lot of it was just that the developers hadn't fined tuned what was needed as far how quickly the server would do something. First time stuff is expected to need that sort of tuning. They clearly had learned from it too as the server wide stuff got cleaner and cleaner by the time M19 Milestones were introduced.
14. This change affected everyone. Most 'BIS' players only had 1 or 2 legendary mounts. I know as a higher end player, I only had one legendary that I was lucky enough to get before. With the update though, I was quickly able to get 4 Mythic Mounts and a few legendary without having to spend any ZEN. If anything, this change only benefitted those who have played for a long period of time.
15. We don't know if there are even Closed Beta testers for this, I know the usual players picked have no idea what the full changes are (even the devs didn't know the full details when the blog came out as they were still changing things). But they DID say why the changes needed to happen. Bondings were HAMSTER up scaling, so they are changing to a system that can more accurately scale players and hopefully actually get us to a point where the players feel good about scaling.
OP keeps mentioning how the last two mods were the worst in history...I have to vehemently disagree, Module 6 was by far the worst. It was so much so, that most of the dev team left/got fired, the player base actually did leave in droves. The population now has been healthy, there will always be people who leave with changes, but they are just as quickly replaced with new or returning players.
Being a player of over 3 years, its nice to feel like someone is finally listening to us. Which is something that was lacking for a long long time.
If you want to complain i would complain about their customer support, it is absolutly horrible and at times makes me not want to play this game.
The customer support is only good at ignoring players, asking for information they have already provided, giving players the run-around to waste time with their tickets, or finding nice ways to tell them to f-off.
If you want the game to do better you should fire the entire customer support team. For real
1. To save money.
2. To increase revenue
These calls are not made by Chris but higher up in the feeding chain. (Management and by proxy the owners.)
We need to keep in mind that NW is winding down. They have admitted there will be no more large investments in the game. The goal now is to make due with what little budget they have until they are forced to put the game basically into maintenance mode.
Everything they are doing to "dumb down the game" is to make it easier for them to run and maintain while still having a steady intake of cash.
This is something all we have to live with now.
From my point of view(someone who until Neverwinter on xbox has never done MMOs, and even avoided them like the plague) this last year hasn't really been that bad. I do feel like the mount changes caught me off guard insofar as being "required" to get my bolster bonus up to 76% before my War Triceratops gave me the same benefit as before the changes. This was on my tank. My other 4 toons really didn't notice any difference. This I found displeasing to say the least. If they can make the comp changes in such a way as to leave me at the same level of stats as before the changes I'll be happy. Yes I know they need to make money, and I'm happy to put a few quarters in the game- when there is something I want to spend for. I admit I did buy the Reforgers blessing. In large part because i knew as a weekend warrior(sunday is my big gaming day, and sometimes I can snag a few minutes here and there during the week), I wouldn't be able to complete the milestones before the server did.
However, as a near BiS player that does spend actual money on the game from time to time, I take issue with the fact that no matter what I have done, how many hours I have spent respecing my tank, I still can't find a group to help me learn ToMM, let alone do even one completion. I've tried building groups, takes too long, not gonna spend all of my time in game spamming lfg, only to have to leave 5 min after I create the group cuz my time is up. Now that the blessed weapons are out(honestly after I got Legion Guards) I gave up on ToMM. As for Zariels Challenge, I've done the easy one, and really it doesn't do squat for teaching the mechs of master, and to get only comp gear from mod 16 is really not worth the time and effort to put groups together. I guess what I'm saying is that as a near BiS player that spends money, I expect to be able to complete the BiS content within a reasonable amount of time after I meet the requirements( 1 month is not unreasonable IMHO). I'm not opposed to a few training runs, but to spend 10-20hrs just doing training runs makes it feel like work. I play the game(any game really) to get away from work, and wind down. I've done a few master Zariels Challenges, and honestly I don't see my tank ever finishing it. The mechs come way too fast for my old carcass, and I miss too many cues(off tanking is horrible), or the groups I've been in with just aren't good enough when I do hit my cues as main tank.
My take on the episodic content, Redeemed Citadel. We needed a much better way of earning favors other than repeating the same quests over and over again. I know the hunts are there, but T1s weren't worth running until after they started dropping t2 lures(not sure why this didn't happen in the first place). The gear form T1s IMHO was not worth going after even for alts, as I already had a ton of 1225 il gear for my alts(4 total) from running Descent to Avernus just once on one toon. IC wasn't bad, but my first completion was with a group from outside my guild(not the devs fault that my guild isn't what it was, or is it?). The first run was actually kinda fun for me to tank(we even had 2 tanks at one point due to being private q), but it didn't have the sense of "omg if we don't finish everyone is gonna be super cheesed off" that ToMM or ZC has. I personally think that the cost of items from Zaphael(the vendor in redeemed citadel) is a bit high, especially the hunt trophies, and the weapons and weapon refinement reagents. Also I was expecting the shirt and pants from the event to be better than what we could get from the M19 vendor, both in stats and bonuses, again my alts have all they need just from my one tank running thru m19, and then me farming, even on alts, then rando qs.
I think the reason that newbs, er I mean new players, want to run the latest content asap is it has the best drops. When I started playing I started going thru all the campaigns one by one. Then I realized that there was better stuff in the AH, or newer content. I realized I was wasting resource refining terrible gear(such as from SKT) when there was betterer stuff to be bought on AH. I think if the older content dropped items that were useful to new folks maybe the older content would be more tolerated by the newer players. I skipped a ton of story and such once I realized that boon points(which aren't worth much now) were the only reason to finish the older campaigns. In fact, on almost all my toons, I have not actually run thru all the story lines of Underdark campaign.
I personally loved the self paced m16 campaign. For me(again weekend warrior) it was nice to know that I could get it done in a few short weeks of only playing on the weekends, or when I could. I really hate the repeatable campaign style of the earlier ones(expcet EE, that one seems more self paced like m16 IIRC). The repetition is boring af, and I can't stand the steps being gated behind daily currency/quest limits, or there needing to be 2-4 currencies needed(looking at you Well of Dragons) to complete the steps. I feel like if I did leave for even a few weeks that I would never be able to catch up again.
I do hope the game can find new life, I do enjoy killing time, er i mean killing enemies in the Forgotten Realms, but if the next campaign has the exact same setup as the last 2, I just might have to hang up my sword, and shield for awhile and find another game. I hear BG3 is in pre-release...
Here is an article from summer that shows they are actually looking to invest a ton into the game. He is describing complete overhaul of the leveling process, bringing in new players, more story, etc. This shows that they are not going in "maintenance mode" https://bleedingcool.com/games/interview-chris-whiteside-for-neverwinter-avernus/
Until then, the devs that were switched to Magic are a decent argument.
Is the bleeding/redeemed citadel good for bringing in new players, adding more story etc etc for you? Cause for me that was a good example of budgeting (and smarter money making)
and as for why i would want them directly involved..its moot when they are already directly involved by maintaining the ability to make such changes.
Redeemed citadel is more an example of keeping players logging in over a longer period. Previous mods you would have players just logging in for the first month or two of a mod, however long it takes to complete the campaign and grind out whatever chase items there are, then just wait for the next mod. Redeemed citadel however saw more people log in throughout the module and are only now just going into waiting for the new mod.
I'm mixed on hunts to be honest. I get why they are reusing the concept, and I personally like fighting / summoning big HAMSTER monsters for rewards and currencies. The whole RNG for lures and tier system is something I don't like. There are whole games primarily focusing on hunting big monsters, so it's definitely something worthwhile to keep exploring in the future. Maybe test it with actual human input and not just spreadsheets of tiers, lures and drops. Tier 3 probably would have been better as a seperate instance of 10 - 20 players.
It's more, but it was all bad!
As you said the non-bis content all needed 6 months or so more in the oven. Of course understandably it released undercooked. The bis-content didn't really suffer this issue. Which is why leveraging content seems to be a good idea for me. Baby Zariel is kinda pointless since you can't learn mechanics if they can be ignored. People asking for multiple stages of trials since at least CoDG (at least in a dedicated version - fail restart at most recent phase)
15. We don't know if there are even Closed Beta testers for this, I know the usual players picked have no idea what the full changes are (even the devs didn't know the full details when the blog came out as they were still changing things). But they DID say why the changes needed to happen. Bondings were HAMSTER up scaling, so they are changing to a system that can more accurately scale players and hopefully actually get us to a point where the players feel good about scaling.
OP keeps mentioning how the last two mods were the worst in history...I have to vehemently disagree, Module 6 was by far the worst. It was so much so, that most of the dev team left/got fired, the player base actually did leave in droves. The population now has been healthy, there will always be people who leave with changes, but they are just as quickly replaced with new or returning players.
There something crucial you said about bounding being HAMSTER they are also SUPPER ANNOYING to transfer btw caracters just to get the stats you already have to pay alot of gold if you transfer enchants + runestones + space for insignas i am a healer main and I am starting tplay more and more on a toon tank so i have to transfer many times a day because i get asked all the time to heal... or sometimes to tank. Just the fact that bondings disapere I will be praising Cryptic
With dictating when a person gets their exchange, you're wanting more involvement than already exists.
Sometimes (way too often) the experienced player who could solo it if he wanted kicks the new player who is lagging behind becuase they are "too slow" and "wasting their time"
Dungeons need NOT allow this kind of speed running. Buff the rewards if you need to to justify a few minutes extra per dungeon, but players cannot expect to keep speed running lower dungeons at the expense of a new players experience.
Yes new players are more important than the salty vets, because new players are what keep the game treading water.
It just seems dishonest. I'm willing to bet 100$ that it aint his idea but some big wig that has an archaic definition of fun and thinks 20k$ can still buy you a damned mansion but someone needs to reel them in before its too late and too much of the old community leaves due to being too pissed by changes consistently HAMSTER them over.
Personally I think the only way I see being able to extend the life of the game (seems to be on life support now) is to completely get rid of the ZAX (convert AD's to Zen) feature... probably not a popular notion I know, but as long as no one has to spend money to financially support the game - why should anyone spend money to support the game?
Some players may be impatient and instead of grinding or earning their better gear, companion, mount, whatever they prefer to buy some of that stuff and willingly spend money to do so... but once they've got a lot of that stuff, it seems to be too easy to accumulate massive amounts of AD's convert those AD's to Zen and never have to spend another penny financially supporting the game.
Neverwinter touts itself as a "Free To Play" game and it is, but it's also Pay to Win and once a player has reached the 'win' level or BIS build, Neverwinter finds some way to either nerf current builds or inserts new content making the current BIS no longer the best possible because there's new and different BIS content. Some players have adequate builds where this is a minor disruption for them but a lot of players will refuse to try to reach a goal, when the game keeps moving the goal posts farther and farther away.
Neverwinter/Cryptic should walk away from their slight of hand "Free To Play" advertising and raise money by selling new content beyond what currently exist. Many times I've suggested leave existing content alone... as for player scaling slice high level players back when they go to low or old content and restrict low level players from entering higher level new content until they've earned the right to be there.
Offer major new game modifications as Pay to Play (have to buy this item to progress to and access Mod 88) but for those not yet wanting to access that new content allow them to become familiar with and remain in existing content - without modification until they are ready to pay to move to new content.
¢¢
I had a 6 year brake after Tiamat came out and the game hsa lost everything that made it unique before then.
RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)
A review should in my opinion try to also highlight the good things he has done.