the bigest problem for me is MOST of the complaints about this and that being broken WERE reported on preview this update was still broken on preview and being patched att least 1 per week to try to get it to work and it still didnt that was without however many players there are on live stressing the server this should have been sorted out on preview completely before pushing it to live i dont care if time was running out to get mod 20 out better to push stuff back then release it broken
the bigest problem for me is MOST of the complaints about this and that being broken WERE reported on preview this update was still broken on preview and being patched att least 1 per week to try to get it to work and it still didnt that was without however many players there are on live stressing the server this should have been sorted out on preview completely before pushing it to live i dont care if time was running out to get mod 20 out better to push stuff back then release it broken
That is what makes me angry. It was pointed out , by players, who volonteered to go to preview and help out to make the transition easier.
A lot of people from my guild did this as well. For what?
What was the point of players literally wasting hours of their days to see the bug and bad scaling, just to be ignored when written on forum?
And that in turn can make people stop doing it all together. Cos why bother if it is seen and ignored?
It doesn't help much, if i'm lucky it drops my red bar by 75% for a few seconds. The problem i'd say is the severe amounts of damage people take means healers need to do a severe amount of healing... And i doubt the DEVs have considered that in the slightest at all. I'd think maybe the tank build was awful, but i doubt it a level 75 shouldn't lose to heal agro like it was. They could give me a literal full scale threat wipe and it will not help as soon as heals and big numbers show tank struggles, i'v seen plenty complain about tank agro too, so mix those 2 together and you have a wild dungeon guaranteed. I'm talking like instant i could wait run in heal once get agro threat wipe 1 tap a fireball and they be on me again. I was effectively an offtank more than i was a healer, i was just too squishy to OT the full thing cos mob strength.
Man, you're giving me flashbacks to the early days when being a cleric meant running like a madman around the area while your teammates desperately try to pull aggro off of you so you can stop to heal the team a little bit more. Healtanking was a very real problem --> and it sounds like IT'S BAAAAAAACK!
HAMSTER. I was really hoping DG would help.
And as for the guys complaining about this going live when it should have been worked on a LOT more before release: yup. Tell me when this HASN'T happened. And yeah, the fact that they seemed to ignore you guys playtesting for them on preview didn't help one bit. Nobody from the dev team has popped in on my bug reports to acknowledge that they are looking into it. I kinda don't expect them to.... hopefully they're too busy working!
On a different note, there is a thread started by hypnotorious in the feedback section that IMO captures the heart of why the scaling system might be failing higher level characters with specialized gear.
Basically, what he noted is that characters with a lot of TIL from what he calls "out of ratio" sources like mount powers and weapon enchants and so on are going to be mathematically crippled by the current scaling system compared to characters that don't have a lot of "out of ratio" sources of TIL. Go check it out that link. He makes a really good case.
Update: just ran a Cragmire in the random Q as healer with my cleric. About 1 minute wait until Q pop. We had an 80 GWF, the tank was a 66 GF, a 42 TR, a 20 Wizard, and me at 60 Cleric. The run went off FAST and perfectly. No deaths. Not really even hard to heal. I took no aggro at all from the GWF or GF. The boss took about 30 secs. Only close call we had was early on the TR got stuck inside some red areas being a daredevil so I watched him pretty close after that and made sure he didn't bite it if he was gonna play risky.
Tank went first, but the GWF kinda also shouldered the aggro. They traded back and forth from what I could tell. We mostly stuck together as a group, nobody tried to be a lone ranger. It was as smooth as any other Cragmire I've ever been in.
This doesn't invalidate what other people have said when they had problems. I'm just reporting what happened to me and my group of randoms today.
Edit: RDQ'd again, instant pop. Cloak Tower this time. Tank was 16 GF, also had 16 warlock, 16 GWF, 32 cleric DPS and me cleric healer 60. We were doing fine and speedy enough until Vansi at the end. Barely got her after an almost complete wipe. I tried to focus the add swarms but nobody was helping me and it was hard to keep healing the team while they all bunched up on the boss and unwittingly made the add swarm bigger and bigger LOL. If we ended up back at the campfire for round 2 I knew what to tell everybody... they just didn't realize we made it harder than it had to be by kamikaze-ing the boss like that. Maybe I should have just unloaded on her too if I knew we were going to do that, but then they would have just been eaten alive by the adds that I somewhat kept off of them.
Well, another Cloak Tower run suffered through to the end... it began with waiting close to half an hour with my Vanguard, run started but the level 30 something healer just left after the first boss, took a while to get a replacement, level 80 healer joined and it went more smoothly from there on. As before the minions in this dungeon and spawning around Vansi Bloodscare are still a problem, and i can't see a regular group of level 15-20 players finishing this dungeon successfully atm., which shows clearly enough that those "one dot mobs" are far away from "being in a good place".
Rewards are still HAMSTER too.
Btw. getting into the event skirmish with my level 80 Justicar takes now nearly as much time as getting my low level Vanguard into a RDQ. And worst part about this, DPS that switch to a Healer loadout for instant invites, but can't or won't do the job - during the last run my tank healed around 4m hitpoints and so did the "healer"...
I'm not the best tank around, but i do the best i can to keep "my" group safe, i just play the role i queued for and i expect the same from anyone else in that group.
And worst part about this, DPS that switch to a Healer loadout for instant invites, but can't or won't do the job - during the last run my tank healed around 4m hitpoints and so did the "healer"...
People do not care if they mess it up for others. People are egoistic and often with little empathy and little feeling of responsibility and little care for other peoples time. Which is a good description of the group of human beings generally known as 'kids'.
And if I point it out in for instance a CoDG run that the team is WAY undergeared for this, everyone get SO insulted. Yes, we are all heroes in our own minds.. but maybe add a small touch of self understanding and realism?
Well, that's a reason why i stick to the event and the RDQs/RSQs with my characters, i mean i have the IL to join those other queues too, but i know that i won't be of much help in there.
Best advice for all players, regarless old or new ones.. Is to open eys and observe whats happening in your pc/laptop/tv screen. Welcome to real action combat, where you as player are center of your gameplay. And it's unlike previous system where your (player) presence was least if not even requried. Now you have to make decisions what powers/abilities use and when and in which way.
No more blind power rotation without thinking. Also no more only heavy hitting powers. Now you think which abilities use to balance dps and survivability. When in party you also have thin how adjust your gameplay to improve your whole group performance. There is no more selfish dps, or compete who hit highest paingiver score. All who keep in this way, may lead to dungeon/trial failures.
You may use cc or debuff abilities, which may lead lesser your dealt dmg, but that improve your group/party over all performance.
In other words, welcome to Acion Combat mmorpg.
As for complainers,, most of them complain that they no longer can clear dungeon without need to look whats happening in your Laptops/pc screen. No longer nail group of enemies just by looking at them. No longer can watch movie/youtube while doing content..
======================================================================== “The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. Gustave Le Bon. ==================================================
Well, that's a reason why i stick to the event and the RDQs/RSQs with my characters, i mean i have the IL to join those other queues too, but i know that i won't be of much help in there.
Man, I kinda wanna Q up with you on some stuff just so you can have a good run for once! LOL You have like the worst luck bro.
I'm having a really good time with RDQ's right now. Just finished Temple of Spider (normal) and it went really well. No pickups. People helped me with adds. No lone ranger risk takers. We had 2 rangers 62 and 55 (iirc), a GWF 80, a GF 65 tank, and me cleric 63 healer. The bosses in here seemed to take quite a bit longer to burn down than other dungs I've been in, which was fine because that just meant I had more Hallowed Grounds to lay down for everybody.
Cloak Tower adds at the end seem to be on the ouchy side -- I have to agree. So far, all the CT's I've run (it's been 3 now since yesterday) I've had one run where nobody died but damn it was close. People just need to burn the adds and completely ignore Vansi for a second and I think it would help. The other adds in other dungeons don't seem so dangerous that I've been able to tell. Maybe it's that there are SO MANY if you ignore them? ToS doesn't have huge swarms of enemies. A couple of drow and a couple of spitting spiders every 20% of the boss or so.
Well, had no time for running another RDQ on my low level character today, since i got 2 Master of the Hunt healing each other over and over again in the last round of the event skirmish... It took us a while to separate them into different corners of the area, and then burn one down after the other. Those npc healing spells need some serious cooldown, and for the love of everything, add a solid cooldown to any push back abilities, nothing like fighting two dragons as tank at the same time to give you a good case of motion sickness.
Well, little update, reached level 45 with my Vanguard, got 2x Gray Wolf Den and 1x Frozen Heart RDQ runs this far, and the overall difficulty remains pretty much the same - minions or "trash mobs" hit harder then bosses.
I also did a Throne of the Dwarven Gods skirmish today for some more testing... one player left before the skirmish started, it took a while to get reinforcements and the fights were rather tough, but we still managed to get 3x gold in the end.
Anyway, i still think that low and mid level dungeons and skirmishes need to be toned down, most of the time playing through them is more frustrating then "challenging", and the rewards are still a kick in the nether regions too.
Best advice for all players, regarless old or new ones.. Is to open eys and observe whats happening in your pc/laptop/tv screen. Welcome to real action combat, where you as player are center of your gameplay. And it's unlike previous system where your (player) presence was least if not even requried. Now you have to make decisions what powers/abilities use and when and in which way.
No more blind power rotation without thinking. Also no more only heavy hitting powers. Now you think which abilities use to balance dps and survivability. When in party you also have thin how adjust your gameplay to improve your whole group performance. There is no more selfish dps, or compete who hit highest paingiver score. All who keep in this way, may lead to dungeon/trial failures.
You may use cc or debuff abilities, which may lead lesser your dealt dmg, but that improve your group/party over all performance.
In other words, welcome to Acion Combat mmorpg.
As for complainers,, most of them complain that they no longer can clear dungeon without need to look whats happening in your Laptops/pc screen. No longer nail group of enemies just by looking at them. No longer can watch movie/youtube while doing content..
Are we here to get away from RL and play and game have fun and chill? Or run NASA? That might be perfect for some of us, which is the minority ALWAYS the minority. But won't be for most. "MMORPG" You say... while referring to an MMORPG with 0 progression in it with stagnated gameplay from start to finish.
The thing is that its not suddenly "difficult" no.. its suddenly boring. Its not like I cannot do what I could do before. It is that I suddenly feel absolutely no motivation to do anything because everything takes forever, stuns me, isn't rewarding or is borked. If you are bored, go and check some other sources of NW-information and see how broken dungeons are. Thats just the icing on a boring game.
If fights take forever, you are prone to make mistakes of course. People seem to think that when new players struggle it is because they suddenly face a better suited learning curve, but imo it's just... taking forever, paired with ca/awareness struggles. Before, you started the game naked, you fought some lvling boss with the gear you found on the way - and then he was dead. Now he has plenty of time to kick your HAMSTER because you can't just beat him down. He did not suddenly find a new game with more engaging mechanics (in lvling content) on his way to NW. If you really need a difficult game, there are plenty. NW has a big big pool of casual players. Deeming their "player presence" was previously not required is just not true for starters, and if you need something that is challenging you - make your own challenge.
But, its a good example on how players receive the sudden change in game dynamics from "player presence not needed" to exhausting. Its quite easy to see everywhere. *spam filter won't get me this time
I read and read and I cannot understand the reason for scaling. Maybe I am not very smart in this sense, but I still consider scaling should be removed (or at least minimized). Why do I have to be weaker if I want to do previous content? If I have worked hard to increase my character, I want my character to be strong not only in open zones, but also in ALL places. If I am strong, I dont want to struggle doing Master of the Hunt (for instance). Of course I can do it, but it is slower and it makes no sense to have my item level reduced to half in different places. This is a game and it should be fun... Scaling should be removed and players have the same strength no matter where or when. If your character is not strong to do some content, work on it and you will be stronger and rewarded in the future...
I read and read and I cannot understand the reason for scaling. Maybe I am not very smart in this sense, but I still consider scaling should be removed (or at least minimized). Why do I have to be weaker if I want to do previous content? If I have worked hard to increase my character, I want my character to be strong not only in open zones, but also in ALL places. If I am strong, I dont want to struggle doing Master of the Hunt (for instance). Of course I can do it, but it is slower and it makes no sense to have my item level reduced to half in different places. This is a game and it should be fun... Scaling should be removed and players have the same strength no matter where or when. If your character is not strong to do some content, work on it and you will be stronger and rewarded in the future...
It is all about the New Coke formula, blind testing told the developers that the formula needed to be changed. The company spent a lot of money making the new and improved formula. When so few of us liked the new formula, the old classic is brought back, but later they needed to rebrand the old new formula for another attempt. All the money was spent creating the new formula, it must be put to use. This is round two. To me pop is pop, I can drink RC, Coke, or Pepsi, it don't matter to me.
I am also bored. And i started thinking... why even bother gearing up more when i know scaling means i am fully capable of the content, i just can't access it and if i know i can do it anyway then what really is the point? I don't even need to make a build or others to do the content when whatever i role up with can.... Gear = useless, players builds = useless for me doing that is the fun.
Please remove codg from rtq. It's not fun to tank x6 failed codg in random games. Soon, no one will tank/heal in pubgames. People(dps) are struggling even with cords. Scalling is bad/broken there.
Guys, thank you for posting your negative (and somewhat personal) comments. It's obvious a lot of people are frustrated. I have seen this kind of backlash happen this exact way, with this exact game, at many separate times in the past. In every single other instance of this happening, things got tweaked a little bit, most people calmed down, and then life went on. Some people ragequit, some people made entire websites devoted to bashing Neverwinter -- heck, some people still are upset on the forums about the loss of the Foundry and that was a long time ago.
The hard truth of all this is: nobody is forcing you to play this game right now as it is. If you are having mental health issues, do something else for a while. Come back in a month. Or don't. They are obviously not done tweaking this thing yet. Obviously. If playing "the beta" here is freaking you out, make the healthy choice and put it down until it's fixed. For example, I am parking trashGWF until they fix Hotenow because it's messed up and I can't manage it yet.
The posts in the Bug Report section are made. Have you guys actually posted relevant and constructive and specific feedback in the bug report section about things that the developers might want to look at? Specific feedback might be helpful. Maybe just chime in on my bug reports and confirm stuff to add your voice, or maybe even add more stuff that you have noticed that I didn't mention.
Try to think about this from my perspective, if you can: I have watched people freak out and say stuff like "this is the death of this game, i am never playing again, the devs are idiots, etc." and then the game went on just fine for years afterwards, with every new change bringing THE EXACT SAME BACKLASH every single time. It is exactly what is happening now. So after seeing this multiple times, I already know how this ends. So do you.
So you are left with a choice. I already made mine even before this patch because I already knew that the forums were going to be on fire, because they ALWAYS ARE after this kind of thing happens. I knew my thread would get flamed at least a little bit, because... DUH... but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth it to do it.
I know I've helped some people with pointers to get through the bugged leveling areas. Some of you hollered at me for not being mad, and then proceeded to be very helpful right here by posting the results of bugged dungeon runs and things that you felt were missing or not tweaked correctly. Hey, if you have to call me a shill in order to offer constructive feedback afterwards then call me a shill! You're not hurting MY feelings. And... what if... what if the devs really ARE reading this thread? Maybe? Probably not, but... you never know. I still think that posting feedback in the bug section about bugs might be more visible to whoever, but there it is.
So let's address what you are putting out.
The hard truth is... the majority of players are casual. They are not TOMM, Zariel, or IC ready. They are the ones that don't have 1 of everything. They are quitting. We're are losing players from our guilds - and this just dropped.
I've sent a number of tickets in over the last few years. Exactly 2 have been resolved. The rest - bugs - have not been resolved to date.
Death of the game comes when people get constant crashes, feel like they are being robbed, and cannot figure out how a game is suppose to work. How many people quit with Mod 16? I lost 3 players in 15 minutes because they were so made they just said f-it. When we cannot add players to the guilds, when no one is playing, that IS WHEN game is dead.
No one says anyone has to be mad or not. People have every right to be angry right now though. Real world money was spent on items - that got nerfed. The Devs are listing to a few PC dudes that have every toon and all the stuff in the game. The game's crashes are pissing everyone off. The fact that the game is so hard to figure out and doesn't have some kind of guide - is abysmal.
I don't call anyone a shill. It's silly. But, stop apologizing for their mistakes. Games need to be fun. Games have rules, information, and it needs to be consistent. This one does not have those written anywhere to help people out. There's no information for this. So people are angry, justifiably so. It's not your place to tell someone to leave.
I read and read and I cannot understand the reason for scaling. Maybe I am not very smart in this sense, but I still consider scaling should be removed (or at least minimized). Why do I have to be weaker if I want to do previous content? If I have worked hard to increase my character, I want my character to be strong not only in open zones, but also in ALL places. If I am strong, I dont want to struggle doing Master of the Hunt (for instance). Of course I can do it, but it is slower and it makes no sense to have my item level reduced to half in different places. This is a game and it should be fun... Scaling should be removed and players have the same strength no matter where or when. If your character is not strong to do some content, work on it and you will be stronger and rewarded in the future...
There are good reasons for scaling (note: not necessarily the way Cryptic has implemented it) * Cryptic content production is very low, so to avoid a situation where you have 2 properly tuned dungeons and 20 trivial ones, scaling must be used. If a dungeon is trivial it will after some time both be boring, AND you cannot give out good rewards for doing it since there needs to be some reasonable effort vs reward ratio. * For players new to game, it is not very fun to do dungeons when massively overpowered veterans are just one-hitting everything. And new players probably is where the income is, not the old players. So to keep the combat power levels in the dungeons somewhat on the same scale, scaling must be used.
However, contrary to this is the players desire for progress and reward. One of the major rewards and reasons for building up your character is to be able to do older content easily. Scaling obviously makes progressing a bit pointless when it comes to dungeons. Overland zones are not scaled, so you get the progress feeling there, but the most challenging content is in the dungeons.
I do share a feeling that it is pointless to progress in Neverwinter now. Overland zones you usually can manage even with low gear, and in dungeons good gear has very little effect.
However, the feeling of progress typically is something of value to old-time veterans. Those might not be important for Neverwinter, income-wise. I assume veterans spend way less on game than newcomers since they are mostly done with basic gearing. And you will note that those people participating on the boards to a large extent *are* the veterans. So the sentiment on the board could be skewed, with newcomer voices not being heard.
I completely disagree mentinmindmaker... I am a "veteran" as is a LOT of my guild. We were spending money right up to the changes, and had planned on spending more...but, due to scaling, we realized that there is no need, and sure, some new players will spend some coin, until they realize that regardless of how much they spend, they will be forever an "average" hero. Epic or God like heroes are gone. Now, in ToMM and ZCM you do reap the rewards of having BiS, but seriously, are you going to spend $100's just so you can run 2 dungeons???
In fact, both novice and advanced players are right to complain. I been playing Neverwinter for almost 6 years and reached a very high level in mod 16, after that I just play casually and stopped investing in my 8 characters. I have two more characters and I play with them from level 1 to 80, and then I start again. I have millions of AD and I don't even know what to do with them as it is not worth updating the equipment to be leveled up to the level of a novice player. But speaking of beginners, it is not fair that players cannot finish a low level dungeon and cannot collect AD. It is also not fair that none of them can play the normal game content without continuing to die. I have helped many novice players to finish several maps that are now impossible to play solo. It gives me the feeling that the developers don't realize that they are shooting themselves in the foot. With all these changes they are not only pushing away advanced players but also new players. For the sake of Neverwinter, a game that I loved but that I can only tolerate now, I hope that all this mess will change quickly.
I have played quite a bit since the update and made several adjustments to my setup trying to tweak it to be better balanced. all I can say is in general after all that and trying to give a little credit that this update is broken as hell. Scaling is stupid and extra broken. Several areas are either way out of whack or have certain creatures that are just laughably broken.
I played around in Icewind Dale for a while still it is just overpowered for what it is. Taking on a small group of barbarians can be an adventure. So I went to Chult to see how that was. Much harder but it seemed overall manageable, at least until I ran into those little shamans. After killing off their compatriots it would take three or four rounds of every skill I have to kill them...unless of course they healed themselves then add two or three more on. Forget doing an HE encounter powers barely even register that I hit them. For comparison I went to Vallenhas and ran some of the glyph works quests. After getting to the main demon at the glyph works it took one round of powers plus two at will hits to take them out. Something is seriously wrong with that.
Running low level randoms is a joke. I'm wailing away on everything because encounter powers are fairly useless even on the trash. Do we win? Sure. Is it worth spending all the extra time for what you get? NO. I can the skirmish and trial in the same time frame and its actually easier. Epics are challenging but similar to how they were if you get a decent group.
I know I'm not saying anything new here but one update and what four patches later its still pretty much a train wreck. Glad they pushed off add new content. Get this fixed first!
Well, still downloading the latest big patch, can't say if it's better or worse then before right now... but as mentioned in another thread, Avernus is actually challenging but still manageable on a fresh level 80 character with some basic equipment/R9 enchantments from the Auction House and nearly 0 boons.
On the other hand my level 40+ decently equipped Vanguard is having a hard time doing content created for his level - so yeah, something is still not right with scaling in the low and mid level areas.
To sum it up, up-scaling is doing a great job in helping new or returning players getting into the latest content, while down scaling is wrecking havoc in pretty much most lower level content.
Level 80 wizard in the Whispering caverns is nearly impossible to complete. The Mind-Flayer dogs will hit for a quarter of your hp each and you will fight packs of them. Even with a team of 4, all level 80, we get destroyed. This game has destroyed itself. I destroy the drow, druegar and driders without even trying, but the mind flayer area is unfair. I went through 25 injury kits just trying to find the trick for the Mastermind guarding the pool you have to poison. I killed every roaming party of mind flayers with their dogs around the pool, but every time I approach it, I get swarmed by more dogs and mind flayers and can survive long enough to use a potion, then get killed long before the cool down resets. It is bad enough to make me uninstall the game.
It's fine that tactics matters, it is not fine that tactic matters in areas in which my character should be much stronger than the mobs around, since it is way below my level. I could play with some challenge in Avernus and I never complained that mobs could kill me if I wasn't careful, but that was par for my level, now I die in areas where someone about 30 level lower should be able to play, how are they going to do that?
EXACTLY!!!! I can say this enough. Do completely away with scaling across the board!!!! It should've never been in the game in the first place. I remember leveling through the initial storyline when Mod 2 was new and if I shouldn't have been in an area I died quickly and painfully. Of course back then, you couldn't max level a toon in a few hours. The game was more fun then also. I remember running Valindra and we were happy as a pig in slop the first time we completed it because we had figured out to not let the mobs build and improved our gear to allow that not to happen. It took us a month to better our gear and enchantments and runestones enough to be able to finish it. The work meant something though and we all did it. Now I can lower my Item level and have an easier time in the areas, dungeons, trials, etc. Please don't say anything about stats being better balance in do so. The concept as applied is enough to make a person hurl. Besides that, I have enough tradebars and AD's, pets and mounts to match the percentages on a lower item level. It's scaling plain and simple. Denial doesn't make it not true.
The game is also soulless with no storyline, and everything is cut and paste from previous work. Many didn't like Avernus, but at least it was new and different and had a plot and story to it. I would rather have better thought out content with little or no bugs then multiple mods every year that have no story, rehashed areas, and so many bugs it would take an army of programmers/devs months to find and fix working 24/7. I've defended this game consistently for 8 years, but I do have to say that it hasn't been this bad in a very long time.
This should not be happening, either what you are facing does need to be scaled down (things get missed, there are a lot of areas in the game), or something is bugged with your character. Most people are actually liking the changes, PE, forums, and discord noise is just the loud minority.
Actually there are quite a lot of people below lvl 80 complaining. I am sorry, but you will find threads in here about this, and if you ask people that just play this game casually or have mostly RP toons that did Shar/DR/you name it OR are still lvling are disappointed and ask what they can do to get back to where we've been before, which was stated WOULD NOT BE NECESSARY.
So I just did a DR lair on my level 70, 20k iL Thaumaturge with an augment where I just threw together random skills and feats because I haven't played that class since M15. Took about 15 minutes to do Phantasmal Fortress. Yes, mobs had more HP and they hurt a bit more, but it's not the OMG one shot killing that people are complaining about.
Why on God's green earth would I or anyone else even want to spend 15 mins in PF if we completed that area years ago? I can do it in about 5 mins BTW. There is still a noticeable difference though and my item level is around 52k. I do it for the lvl 5 enchantment and to get currency to make vouchers. If I'm going to be forced to grind an area that is 10's of thousands item level below me, I should be able to walk through it using at wills like Legolas in Helms Deep. That is why scaling should be abolished completely. For the newer content, it's actually easier with a lower Item Level. I've tested that myself. I can't however solo the HE's with a lower Item level and stats without using a stone of health charge or two, so at least that is working.
Well, it feels like when you participate in a HE with an "scaled up" character, everyfuckingthing aggros you from a mile away in an instant and you either start running and trying to finish one group at the time, or end up using Health Stones en mass.
And no, my character is not being "one shotted" there, but since i'm fighting whole groups of enemies most of the time, my character is being melted within seconds, which isn't exactly fun either, and one does wonder, if this wasn't made intentionally to boost Health Stone and Scroll of Life sales...
Sure, i still have stacks of Health Stones from promotions across several characters, but newer players might only have a few Health Potions on hand, which won't last them long, and then they might then be tempted into buying stones or scrolls for real money - or at least that's what i guess some bean counter is hoping for.
Only problem with it, some players might just leave the game for good instead, and those players won't be recommending this game or any other (new) game from this company to their friends either.
Comments
this update was still broken on preview and being patched att least 1 per week to try to get it to work and it still didnt
that was without however many players there are on live stressing the server
this should have been sorted out on preview completely before pushing it to live
i dont care if time was running out to get mod 20 out better to push stuff back then release it broken
It was pointed out , by players, who volonteered to go to preview and help out to make the transition easier.
A lot of people from my guild did this as well. For what?
What was the point of players literally wasting hours of their days to see the bug and bad scaling, just to be ignored when written on forum?
And that in turn can make people stop doing it all together. Cos why bother if it is seen and ignored?
HAMSTER. I was really hoping DG would help.
And as for the guys complaining about this going live when it should have been worked on a LOT more before release: yup. Tell me when this HASN'T happened. And yeah, the fact that they seemed to ignore you guys playtesting for them on preview didn't help one bit. Nobody from the dev team has popped in on my bug reports to acknowledge that they are looking into it. I kinda don't expect them to.... hopefully they're too busy working!
https://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/1259619/why-scaling-isnt-hitting-its-intended-goals#latest
Basically, what he noted is that characters with a lot of TIL from what he calls "out of ratio" sources like mount powers and weapon enchants and so on are going to be mathematically crippled by the current scaling system compared to characters that don't have a lot of "out of ratio" sources of TIL. Go check it out that link. He makes a really good case.
Tank went first, but the GWF kinda also shouldered the aggro. They traded back and forth from what I could tell. We mostly stuck together as a group, nobody tried to be a lone ranger. It was as smooth as any other Cragmire I've ever been in.
This doesn't invalidate what other people have said when they had problems. I'm just reporting what happened to me and my group of randoms today.
Edit: RDQ'd again, instant pop. Cloak Tower this time. Tank was 16 GF, also had 16 warlock, 16 GWF, 32 cleric DPS and me cleric healer 60. We were doing fine and speedy enough until Vansi at the end. Barely got her after an almost complete wipe. I tried to focus the add swarms but nobody was helping me and it was hard to keep healing the team while they all bunched up on the boss and unwittingly made the add swarm bigger and bigger LOL. If we ended up back at the campfire for round 2 I knew what to tell everybody... they just didn't realize we made it harder than it had to be by kamikaze-ing the boss like that. Maybe I should have just unloaded on her too if I knew we were going to do that, but then they would have just been eaten alive by the adds that I somewhat kept off of them.
As before the minions in this dungeon and spawning around Vansi Bloodscare are still a problem, and i can't see a regular group of level 15-20 players finishing this dungeon successfully atm., which shows clearly enough that those "one dot mobs" are far away from "being in a good place".
Rewards are still HAMSTER too.
Btw. getting into the event skirmish with my level 80 Justicar takes now nearly as much time as getting my low level Vanguard into a RDQ. And worst part about this, DPS that switch to a Healer loadout for instant invites, but can't or won't do the job - during the last run my tank healed around 4m hitpoints and so did the "healer"...
I'm not the best tank around, but i do the best i can to keep "my" group safe, i just play the role i queued for and i expect the same from anyone else in that group.
And if I point it out in for instance a CoDG run that the team is WAY undergeared for this, everyone get SO insulted. Yes, we are all heroes in our own minds.. but maybe add a small touch of self understanding and realism?
Best advice for all players, regarless old or new ones.. Is to open eys and observe whats happening in your pc/laptop/tv screen.
Welcome to real action combat, where you as player are center of your gameplay.
And it's unlike previous system where your (player) presence was least if not even requried. Now you have to make decisions what powers/abilities use and when and in which way.
No more blind power rotation without thinking. Also no more only heavy hitting powers. Now you think which abilities use to balance dps and survivability.
When in party you also have thin how adjust your gameplay to improve your whole group performance. There is no more selfish dps, or compete who hit highest paingiver score. All who keep in this way, may lead to dungeon/trial failures.
You may use cc or debuff abilities, which may lead lesser your dealt dmg, but that improve your group/party over all performance.
In other words, welcome to Acion Combat mmorpg.
As for complainers,, most of them complain that they no longer can clear dungeon without need to look whats happening in your Laptops/pc screen. No longer nail group of enemies just by looking at them. No longer can watch movie/youtube while doing content..
The previous combat system in nutshell:
https://clips.twitch.tv/TangibleAntsyAlmondStrawBeary
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Gustave Le Bon.
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I'm having a really good time with RDQ's right now. Just finished Temple of Spider (normal) and it went really well. No pickups. People helped me with adds. No lone ranger risk takers. We had 2 rangers 62 and 55 (iirc), a GWF 80, a GF 65 tank, and me cleric 63 healer. The bosses in here seemed to take quite a bit longer to burn down than other dungs I've been in, which was fine because that just meant I had more Hallowed Grounds to lay down for everybody.
Cloak Tower adds at the end seem to be on the ouchy side -- I have to agree. So far, all the CT's I've run (it's been 3 now since yesterday) I've had one run where nobody died but damn it was close. People just need to burn the adds and completely ignore Vansi for a second and I think it would help. The other adds in other dungeons don't seem so dangerous that I've been able to tell. Maybe it's that there are SO MANY if you ignore them? ToS doesn't have huge swarms of enemies. A couple of drow and a couple of spitting spiders every 20% of the boss or so.
It took us a while to separate them into different corners of the area, and then burn one down after the other. Those npc healing spells need some serious cooldown, and for the love of everything, add a solid cooldown to any push back abilities, nothing like fighting two dragons as tank at the same time to give you a good case of motion sickness.
I also did a Throne of the Dwarven Gods skirmish today for some more testing... one player left before the skirmish started, it took a while to get reinforcements and the fights were rather tough, but we still managed to get 3x gold in the end.
Anyway, i still think that low and mid level dungeons and skirmishes need to be toned down, most of the time playing through them is more frustrating then "challenging", and the rewards are still a kick in the nether regions too.
Its not like I cannot do what I could do before. It is that I suddenly feel absolutely no motivation to do anything because everything takes forever, stuns me, isn't rewarding or is borked.
If you are bored, go and check some other sources of NW-information and see how broken dungeons are. Thats just the icing on a boring game.
If fights take forever, you are prone to make mistakes of course.
People seem to think that when new players struggle it is because they suddenly face a better suited learning curve, but imo it's just... taking forever, paired with ca/awareness struggles. Before, you started the game naked, you fought some lvling boss with the gear you found on the way - and then he was dead. Now he has plenty of time to kick your HAMSTER because you can't just beat him down. He did not suddenly find a new game with more engaging mechanics (in lvling content) on his way to NW.
If you really need a difficult game, there are plenty. NW has a big big pool of casual players. Deeming their "player presence" was previously not required is just not true for starters, and if you need something that is challenging you - make your own challenge.
But, its a good example on how players receive the sudden change in game dynamics from "player presence not needed" to exhausting. Its quite easy to see everywhere.
*spam filter won't get me this time
Just killing time...
I am also bored. And i started thinking... why even bother gearing up more when i know scaling means i am fully capable of the content, i just can't access it and if i know i can do it anyway then what really is the point? I don't even need to make a build or others to do the content when whatever i role up with can.... Gear = useless, players builds = useless for me doing that is the fun.
The hard truth is... the majority of players are casual. They are not TOMM, Zariel, or IC ready. They are the ones that don't have 1 of everything. They are quitting. We're are losing players from our guilds - and this just dropped.
I've sent a number of tickets in over the last few years. Exactly 2 have been resolved. The rest - bugs - have not been resolved to date.
Death of the game comes when people get constant crashes, feel like they are being robbed, and cannot figure out how a game is suppose to work. How many people quit with Mod 16? I lost 3 players in 15 minutes because they were so made they just said f-it. When we cannot add players to the guilds, when no one is playing, that IS WHEN game is dead.
No one says anyone has to be mad or not. People have every right to be angry right now though. Real world money was spent on items - that got nerfed. The Devs are listing to a few PC dudes that have every toon and all the stuff in the game. The game's crashes are pissing everyone off. The fact that the game is so hard to figure out and doesn't have some kind of guide - is abysmal.
I don't call anyone a shill. It's silly. But, stop apologizing for their mistakes. Games need to be fun. Games have rules, information, and it needs to be consistent. This one does not have those written anywhere to help people out. There's no information for this. So people are angry, justifiably so. It's not your place to tell someone to leave.
* Cryptic content production is very low, so to avoid a situation where you have 2 properly tuned dungeons and 20 trivial ones, scaling must be used. If a dungeon is trivial it will after some time both be boring, AND you cannot give out good rewards for doing it since there needs to be some reasonable effort vs reward ratio.
* For players new to game, it is not very fun to do dungeons when massively overpowered veterans are just one-hitting everything. And new players probably is where the income is, not the old players. So to keep the combat power levels in the dungeons somewhat on the same scale, scaling must be used.
However, contrary to this is the players desire for progress and reward.
One of the major rewards and reasons for building up your character is to be able to do older content easily. Scaling obviously makes progressing a bit pointless when it comes to dungeons. Overland zones are not scaled, so you get the progress feeling there, but the most challenging content is in the dungeons.
I do share a feeling that it is pointless to progress in Neverwinter now. Overland zones you usually can manage even with low gear, and in dungeons good gear has very little effect.
However, the feeling of progress typically is something of value to old-time veterans. Those might not be important for Neverwinter, income-wise. I assume veterans spend way less on game than newcomers since they are mostly done with basic gearing. And you will note that those people participating on the boards to a large extent *are* the veterans. So the sentiment on the board could be skewed, with newcomer voices not being heard.
I been playing Neverwinter for almost 6 years and reached a very high level in mod 16, after that I just play casually and stopped investing in my 8 characters. I have two more characters and I play with them from level 1 to 80, and then I start again. I have millions of AD and I don't even know what to do with them as it is not worth updating the equipment to be leveled up to the level of a novice player.
But speaking of beginners, it is not fair that players cannot finish a low level dungeon and cannot collect AD. It is also not fair that none of them can play the normal game content without continuing to die. I have helped many novice players to finish several maps that are now impossible to play solo.
It gives me the feeling that the developers don't realize that they are shooting themselves in the foot. With all these changes they are not only pushing away advanced players but also new players. For the sake of Neverwinter, a game that I loved but that I can only tolerate now, I hope that all this mess will change quickly.
Sorry for some english mistakes because it is not my native language, i am portuguese.
I played around in Icewind Dale for a while still it is just overpowered for what it is. Taking on a small group of barbarians can be an adventure. So I went to Chult to see how that was. Much harder but it seemed overall manageable, at least until I ran into those little shamans. After killing off their compatriots it would take three or four rounds of every skill I have to kill them...unless of course they healed themselves then add two or three more on. Forget doing an HE encounter powers barely even register that I hit them. For comparison I went to Vallenhas and ran some of the glyph works quests. After getting to the main demon at the glyph works it took one round of powers plus two at will hits to take them out. Something is seriously wrong with that.
Running low level randoms is a joke. I'm wailing away on everything because encounter powers are fairly useless even on the trash. Do we win? Sure. Is it worth spending all the extra time for what you get? NO. I can the skirmish and trial in the same time frame and its actually easier. Epics are challenging but similar to how they were if you get a decent group.
I know I'm not saying anything new here but one update and what four patches later its still pretty much a train wreck. Glad they pushed off add new content. Get this fixed first!
On the other hand my level 40+ decently equipped Vanguard is having a hard time doing content created for his level - so yeah, something is still not right with scaling in the low and mid level areas.
To sum it up, up-scaling is doing a great job in helping new or returning players getting into the latest content, while down scaling is wrecking havoc in pretty much most lower level content.
The game is also soulless with no storyline, and everything is cut and paste from previous work. Many didn't like Avernus, but at least it was new and different and had a plot and story to it. I would rather have better thought out content with little or no bugs then multiple mods every year that have no story, rehashed areas, and so many bugs it would take an army of programmers/devs months to find and fix working 24/7. I've defended this game consistently for 8 years, but I do have to say that it hasn't been this bad in a very long time.
And no, my character is not being "one shotted" there, but since i'm fighting whole groups of enemies most of the time, my character is being melted within seconds, which isn't exactly fun either, and one does wonder, if this wasn't made intentionally to boost Health Stone and Scroll of Life sales...
Sure, i still have stacks of Health Stones from promotions across several characters, but newer players might only have a few Health Potions on hand, which won't last them long, and then they might then be tempted into buying stones or scrolls for real money - or at least that's what i guess some bean counter is hoping for.
Only problem with it, some players might just leave the game for good instead, and those players won't be recommending this game or any other (new) game from this company to their friends either.