How to stop the mass exodus of players? - listen to your playerbase please

dangerousdqq

This is a message for Cryptic studios. Hope you are listening. The player base in the game is getting ridiculously low. Trying to get into random ques if you are a dps is annoying slow. Even playing support roles mid-week it can still take a while. Do you care that people are leaving the game in droves. To me it seems like you are actively encouraging mass migration by your constant tinkering. Well if you do implement the latest round of nerfs to Paladin and Cleric then it just shows you really dont care. Its been really nice playing this game. So nice I even spent real money, and not a small amount either. Most AAA titles cost around £60-£70 mark (UK Pound btw). I know ive spent at least 4 times that in the 2-3 years Ive been playing. As soon as my VIP expires Im outta here. Considering that the latest and greatest AAA title that's ripping up the sales charts costs less than the last amount of Zen I bought I really dont see any incentive to play a game that hates its player base so much. Try to actually fix things that are broken not nerf things that WORK.

jana

I am not at all disagreeing with you, though I haven't noticed so many people leaving, but what is wrong with the Paladin nerfs? When Aragon was talking about how the Paladin was going to be improved I was thinking about maybe trying that just to get more people to play with me in the end games. They always need a justicar or tank right? I know nothing about being a tank or cleric because I have only played dps as a sunelf thatamaturge or however you spell it? What is it you don't like?

greywynd

Most players use pre-made groups from guild/alliance/friends.

darthpotater

Can I have your stuff?

mentinmindmaker

dangerousdqq said:

Trying to get into random ques if you are a dps is annoying slow.

This is not much related to the total volume of players, but the percentage of people playing tanks.

Looking at steamcharts, the amount of people in game is slowly increasing until recently.

It seems the game has received a hard hit the last week or so however.. probably because a lot of people are busy with BG3. At least some of those will come back.

hustin1

I can tell you, what's got me burned out is the 10-week campaign length. For the last three weeks all I could bring myself to do was collect my key and get my daily Summer Festival blessing. I can't bring myself to do any more. I mean, you know it's bad when you'd rather do influence runs than the quests for the new campaign. Ravenloft this is not. Please, devs, make the next campaign shorter.

plasticbat

hustin1 said:

I can tell you, what's got me burned out is the 10-week campaign length. For the last three weeks all I could bring myself to do was collect my key and get my daily Summer Festival blessing. I can't bring myself to do any more. I mean, you know it's bad when you'd rather do influence runs than the quests for the new campaign. Ravenloft this is not. Please, devs, make the next campaign shorter.

The campaign may be long in terms of week but there is nothing much for play time every week. Each of my toon spend less than half a hour per week to get the 100 quota. I basically do other stuff first each week and use the new campaign quest to fill the gaps and I play 9 characters. What I am trying to say is the campaign is so 'short' (nothing much to do every week) that it can't burn anything off me.

autumnwitch

hustin1 said:

I can tell you, what's got me burned out is the 10-week campaign length. For the last three weeks all I could bring myself to do was collect my key and get my daily Summer Festival blessing. I can't bring myself to do any more. I mean, you know it's bad when you'd rather do influence runs than the quests for the new campaign. Ravenloft this is not. Please, devs, make the next campaign shorter.

This so much. Tho, to me, it's not that the campaign is too long it's just not interesting. There is no RP aspect in the game at all now or hardly at all. There is no reason to run 90% of the content in each campaigns as most of it is fetch quests or that one and only one HE everyone is doing while ignoring all the others.

I was just thinking that there is also no green/blue gear dropping that isn't from like 5+ campaigns ago and isn't totally worthless. There also isn't anything but rings, shirts and pants dropping in the campaign now either (not counting group stuff with the rare artefact). I remember with UM, Ravenloft and Avernus you could get decent gear to drop while doing the SP campaigns. It wasn't best in slot but it made the grind much more inviting because at least you had a sense of reward. I still use some of that stuff on my alts and it's fun stuff esp when you are not just doing end game material.

This time around I have done over 100 hunts and dozens of Proto and have got no drops. So, I just stopped doing them. I don't mind grinding but there has to be some rewards and not just 1000s of campaign currency that there is nothing worthwhile to spend it on.

hadestemplar

Well I can't stand these one day long campaigns.. LIterally you complete quest for the week, then do repeatable quest and wait.. Once weekly cap reset, you complete them and boom, You are done for next week.. More less 0 need to log in to game...


And to be fair, I miss legacy Tyrany of Dragons campaign.. While it was annoyingly long, but it other hand at that moment I there was even purpose to log in game.. No it's just nothing... Done campaign and for weeks you are off game.. Next expansion,, few days long gameplay, and again off game for weeks.

plasticbat

hadestemplar#9918 said:

Well I can't stand these one day long campaigns.. LIterally you complete quest for the week, then do repeatable quest and wait.. Once weekly cap reset, you complete them and boom, You are done for next week.. More less 0 need to log in to game...


And to be fair, I miss legacy Tyrany of Dragons campaign.. While it was annoyingly long, but it other hand at that moment I there was even purpose to log in game.. No it's just nothing... Done campaign and for weeks you are off game.. Next expansion,, few days long gameplay, and again off game for weeks.

You give them too much credit. It is hardly an one day long campaign. It is a half an hour per week per toon campaign.

hadestemplar

plasticbat said:

You give them too much credit. It is hardly an one day long campaign. It is a half an hour per week per toon campaign.

I sum up a whole campaign as one day long. And by day I do not mean 24h.. I would say 8~9h at best..

Now to the threads topic.. Why players leave?? Ohh boy... There are a lot of reasons why players leave this game and very little reason why players comes and stay here. And usually they don't last long.

I could write list of reason why, also why players never stayed for long. But am not sure that Cryptic staff would handle such criticims which I woud put in that post...

But one thing is clear, that staff is out of touch whats happening in market. Even technology aspect alone, smarphone games in these days like lineage2m. support more players than Neverwinter, have better visuals and larger world and all runs on smarphone, ipad/tablets..

So while a lot of payers tend to ask devs, do you even play own game... I personally would suggest staff for one day get away from Neverwinter online and play any other games in market. Just to understand what's going on in market.



Just like how Yoshi-p ( Naoki Yoshida) credited with the revival of the original Final Fantasy XIV.
When he assumed role as leading team, he spent 6 months playing other games. Study mmo market, current trends, what players prefer and what they don't like..

Then he compiled list of changes what needed to be done. And staff within year reworked game from being terrible, to that which overtaken World of Warcraft.

I put link here to documentary if anyone interest, there is properly explained history how game which were terrible and latter become best one. And also overtake World of Warcraft.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0yQKI7Yw4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoOI5R-6u8k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONT6fxiu9cw

hustin1

The game has lost a lot of its spice. A ***LOT***. Just look at all the content that's been taken away:

Blacklake District
Blackdagger Ruins
Tower District
Pirates' Skyhold
Helm's Hold
Mount Hotenow

Gauntylgrym (original)
Dread Vault
Castle Never (original)

Leveling skirmishes
Call To Arms

PE quests
Linkletter Saga

Foundry (literally dozens of quests we could run at any time)

Fantasy games need ***SPICE***. They need to inspire the imagination, like a good fantasy book does. This is the only game I've ever heard of that regularly takes content away (and locks it away for years). It's asinine. I almost wonder if the devs are running into some sort of arbitrary hard-drive limitation on console or something. It makes no sense. In the name of "simplification" the game has become dull and uninspiring. It's sad to see and I'd like to see the devs change course.

As for this mod, the universal sentiment I've gotten is that everyone is sick to death of drow and of the Underdark. IMO creating a third Underdark mod was a mistake. There should have been a complete change of location to something fresh. Add to that the fact that it's yet another ten-week campaign and everyone I've talked to is triply burned out.

rockster

I'm still waiting for the next layer of hell. Isn't that supposed to be what came after Avernus? Layers of hell in continuing mods?

hustin1

[NPC]Adventure:I'm thinking about going to the Tower District, lots of problems there.

I just saw this a minute ago in PE. This encapsulates what's wrong so well.

Oh, and by the way, PE chat is dead. That's the worst sign that I can point to. It used to *never* be dead. It used to be so full that I'm still in the habit of having zone chat off. But today it's dead. Devs, you need to do something drastic.

darthpotater

hustin1 said:

Oh, and by the way, PE chat is dead. That's the worst sign that I can point to. It used to *never* be dead. It used to be so full that I'm still in the habit of having zone chat off. But today it's dead. Devs, you need to do something drastic.

I think that is a good sign. People is doing stuff instead of talking. I dont think we have less players than mod 25 or 24, and I have to say this mod 26 is the best we had since mod 1.

We asked for years, for different levels of new dungeons, so everyone can do it, and even better, farm it. Masterwork items are farmed 24/7 from ADWP and MDWP, other people farm heroic encounters and hunts, other people recolect Masterwork materials with maps. Crafters craft. So everyone can participate and grow his characters.

Also, the AH and Mastercrafting are draining AD from the game, the zax is going down slowly.

There are things that must be improved but overall, the mod is a big success for the players.

rockster

I agree with @hustin1 , when PE zone chat is dead there is a problem with player numbers. It's been consistently busy since the start of the game, when it dies-off it's a sign the player base is dwindling too low. There are always two things I use to get a rough idea of how healthy the game is 1. How many PE instances there are running and how many people are in each one and 2. How active PE zone chat is. People of course go and do other things elsewhere, but PE zone chat is the general indicator or the health of the game population overall.

darthpotater

I can tell you one more. The Auction House.

I am an active buyer / seller / AH observer, and I can tell you that the AH has more movement than ever in years. Just give it an eye. That is much more significative for me than PE instances or people talking.

rockster

Are you sure they're not just taking things down and putting them back up again?

darthpotater

I am talking about the items I am selling every day.

johnalansimmons

darthpotater said:

I am talking about the items I am selling every day.

same here, business better than usual

mintmark

Well, I think the auction house is still settling back after the Summer festival when (I suppose) many crafters were producing petals instead of their normal items. There was certainly a boom in reinforcement kits as supply dried up.

xxsuperheroxx

Dooo deee doooo "MASS EXODUS OF PLAYERS" hummm What I do notice is that there is 8,000,000,000 people on the planet and yet there is less then 20 people in NorthDark or any of the older section. 46 people in Narbonellyn 34 in Mezberranzan. Sure reset Monday has an inflex of really bad players with their 36 alt's trying to do their weekly's on all of them at the expense of the other players.

Our Aliance is going to break up and the few active players in the mostly dead guilds are going into a conglomerate mass group thinking thats going to "fix" the issues of no one wanting to play. Even though the leadership is AWOL. No recruiting no active guild events to many members with 35 alt's. I mean it is hard enough to make one really good toon but to have 35 really bad ones?

The game does have issues repetitive grind with extremely limits content. Content so far out of reach from the players with the 35 bad alts. only .0001% of active player's even make it to 85K ilvl. Super complicated time-consuming advancement of gear mounts collars insignia. people burn out and give up. World of WarCraft is way easier to play and advance in.

Don't get me wrong the game is free and for free its good is it worth the subscription price of World of WarCraft? No it is second rate nickel and dime broke and boring game, same tasks just a never-ending grind.

A disturbing fact someone told me in our guild she has accumulated over one year and a half of time on getting her one toon to 85K ilvl. 13,140 hours of her life to get her toon to 85K ilvl to play a masters dungeon. and that is just the one toon.

people leave because they do not want to spend 13,140 hours of their lives playing Neverwinter.

we have maybe 100 active members in our alliance and those are moving to the mass group on the 22.

There is no fixing this, there is just the long wait for it to die.

Sunshine and rainbows for every one. =/

arazith07

xxsuperheroxx#8731 said:

Dooo deee doooo "MASS EXODUS OF PLAYERS" hummm What I do notice is that there is 8,000,000,000 people on the planet and yet there is less then 20 people in NorthDark or any of the older section. 46 people in Narbonellyn 34 in Mezberranzan. Sure reset Monday has an inflex of really bad players with their 36 alt's trying to do their weekly's on all of them at the expense of the other players.

Our Aliance is going to break up and the few active players in the mostly dead guilds are going into a conglomerate mass group thinking thats going to "fix" the issues of no one wanting to play. Even though the leadership is AWOL. No recruiting no active guild events to many members with 35 alt's. I mean it is hard enough to make one really good toon but to have 35 really bad ones?

The game does have issues repetitive grind with extremely limits content. Content so far out of reach from the players with the 35 bad alts. only .0001% of active player's even make it to 85K ilvl. Super complicated time-consuming advancement of gear mounts collars insignia. people burn out and give up. World of WarCraft is way easier to play and advance in.

Don't get me wrong the game is free and for free its good is it worth the subscription price of World of WarCraft? No it is second rate nickel and dime broke and boring game, same tasks just a never-ending grind.

A disturbing fact someone told me in our guild she has accumulated over one year and a half of time on getting her one toon to 85K ilvl. 13,140 hours of her life to get her toon to 85K ilvl to play a masters dungeon. and that is just the one toon.

people leave because they do not want to spend 13,140 hours of their lives playing Neverwinter.

we have maybe 100 active members in our alliance and those are moving to the mass group on the 22.

There is no fixing this, there is just the long wait for it to die.

Sunshine and rainbows for every one. =/

The population is currently lower due to several reasons. Some of it is just people giving up on the game. However, a lot of NW players come and go with new expansions. We are at the mid point of the latest expansion...many have already completed the new content and are just getting daily log in rewards. Baldur's Gate 3 (same universe as NW) has drawn a lot of players...they will return. Summer is ending, people are returning to school and work.

jana

I have been frustrated and angry and dumfounded sometimes but I love this game and I am not leaving in any conceivable future. Yearly events like the hell pit show me how much better I have gotten in the last 3 years.

rockster

jana#2651 said:

I have been frustrated and angry and dumfounded sometimes but I love this game and I am not leaving in any conceivable future. Yearly events like the hell pit show me how much better I have gotten in the last 3 years.

How are your issues with the moving around going?

hustin1

The last two ten-week campaigns really burned me out with trying to run them on all of my alts and I just can't bring myself to play that much nowadays. I'm also working on a book, and that's taking up a lot of my time. Everyone's situation is different.

fortheswordplay

Gonna be the adult in the room for a little bit and ask the serious question. Hey, staff: Are you guys okay? Like, seriously okay? There's apparently, according to IGN, a big sale headed at Gearbox and, as a result, this direction after half a year of Embracer group bleeding out massive value and closing several other companies. So game on the shelf for a little bit: do y'all have parachutes set?

mentinmindmaker

fortheswordplay#9533 said:

Gonna be the adult in the room for a little bit and ask the serious question. Hey, staff: Are you guys okay? Like, seriously okay? There's apparently, according to IGN, a big sale headed at Gearbox and, as a result, this direction after half a year of Embracer group bleeding out massive value and closing several other companies. So game on the shelf for a little bit: do y'all have parachutes set?

I am afraid that question could be very serious at this time. And to mention the elephant in the room: How long will NW exist?

Looking at steamcharts, NW currently is heading for a 25% loss of average players online, meaning played hours. That does not map directly to number of active players nor income, but there of course IS a connection. This is very noticeable in game too, it seems there are way less veterans around now so for instance PUG RTQ is failing and failing due to lack of tactical skills and low dps with too few veterans around to carry the runs.

I see three reasons for this dramatic drop in activity in game:
* We are end of mod, so some drop was to be expected anyways. Nothing as dramatic as 25% though.
* Starfield
* Baldurs Gate 3

Cryptic got a huge challenge trying to make next mod something that can compete with the last two.

I am however fairly certain Cryptic is a good bit into developing the Next Big Thing. That could be what will save Cryptic from the axe - if the development of the not-yet-announced likely-to-exist game is well progressed, the money gods might consider it worthwhile to bet on that game being good and making a lot of money.

It is expected that income from games decline over time. However keeping a game alive and pushing some low-ambition mods does not seem to take much, Everquest 1(the first fully 3D mmorpg) is still alive after 23 years and still get one expansion a year.

rockster

The mistake they made was to focus almost exclusively on new players and their experience and basically reworking the entire game to do that, while ignoring the experience of the permanent players who were mostly happy. New players join and stay briefly and have a look, but in most cases leave again, so you get constant influx but also a constant turnover, because many are fickle and don't last. (And similar with those who go and play other games and periodically come back for new mods then leave again.) It's player retention that matters. It's the loyal players who love the game and stay making it their main activity in online gaming who matter at the end of the day. You want to convert a portion of the new players into those permanent players to grow the playerbase, but not focus on them entirely like has unfortunately happened, because while you're doing that you're hemorrhaging players from the permanent group when they feel betrayed and over time the overall net playerbase goes down.

xxsuperheroxx

The game is deeply flawed in so many ways it is hard to point to all of it. Super complicated upgrades. I was given all my Insignias, collars, enchantments, mounts, companions from a jaded player who just logs in now to get her key and maybe do a season event.

I looked in to upgrading the insignias from epic to legendary and it well take years to farm that many insignias and buy all the parts needed to upgrade 15 now changing to 20 with mounts needed with 4 slots to reach 85 i am at my end game at just over 70 ilvl the game is no longer enjoyable if all i am doing is farming chests which 90% are empty. I skipped over the whole boat fishing ice deal can't play the fey parts people pay to bypass these section 2000 zen you can skip it and get the boons.

You invest so much in the game you can't bring yourself to leave it. yet you are no longer enjoying the game. it is the same content over and over. the new content is time released Monday you get to advance and in 4 hours your done for the week it only lasts 10 weeks then you are back to nothing again. people do come back and check out stuff but it is short lived as the remember why they quite playing. the hunts where fun in Narbonellyn and Menzoberrantan but now the currency is worthless as I have bought what was needed NorthDark is dead after Mondays there is only trains and farming going on people sell can use the Northern seals to buy gear they sell to the fools who have 35-40 alt's I sell a lot of pants and shirts they sell most for 249 AD which is pennies when mystic stuff is 35 million or the mats needed to upgrade cost more then the item selling on Auction house it is cheaper because paying players get discounts if they each the max leave.

It is an ok game for free and I am in it for nothing but time once it is no longer amusing or enjoyable I can go to other things. This game is not fixable it is set in nickel and dime sales to whales. It is entertaining to me to walk about killing stuff for now but it gets old quick and there is nothing of interest coming any time soon that is going to be accessible to my 70K ilvl toon, Narbonellyn was open ilvl for a reason there are very few 70k + ilvl toons active. Sit in Narbonellyn and look at the peoples toons in chat. I have been watching the guilds in our alliance we have 2000 toons yet there is never more then 20 on at any given time most times less than 10. You use to be able to walk across protectors Enclave and see 15-20 or more just in there.

It lasted 10 years I cannot see it lasting much longer though. That day when they block people for not having a supported graphics card is going to be the assassins blade in the heart of the game. It's the thing that I know is coming one day when I try to log in as it happened on World of WarCraft you know I spent money on an expanse and I never got to play it because the game would no longer let me log in the day it went live.

You are buying pixels that one day you well no longer be able to play with.

Sunshine and Rainbows for everyone. =/

rockster

xxsuperheroxx#8731 said:

I looked in to upgrading the insignias from epic to legendary and it well take years to farm that many insignias and buy all the parts needed to upgrade 15 now changing to 20 with mounts needed with 4 slots to reach 85 i am at my end game at just over 70 ilvl the game is no longer enjoyable if all i am doing is farming chests which 90% are empty.

I'm currently using Reapers to buy the leg insignia choice packs and I mulch them for 250 powder each and am using those to upgrade my leg insignias to mythic. Try doing Reapers every day if u can and every 5 days u can buy one of those leg packs.