test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Disheartened Voice in the Wilderness
hustin1
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,464 Arc User
A few minutes ago I made the following post in the Feedback section on the Neverwinter Discord. I had to spread it across four parts, so I'm reposting it here in its entirety so it will be easier to read and digest.
---
First let me preface this by saying that I've been playing Neverwinter since January, 2014 and Mod 2. I've pretty much seen all of the ups and downs of the game as time has gone on. What I'm about to write pains me but I can only hope that someone, somewhere, listens. Normally I would post this on the forums (where I've posted often), but I no longer have any confidence that anyone there reads the forums. Interaction from the devs on the forums has been all but nonexistent for the better part of a year.
I've completed every campaign, on many, MANY alts. While every single one is over 80k, I wouldn't consider myself an endgame player. I'm not a dungeon fanatic and I can't call myself experienced in the newer dungeons and trials. The only point here is that I've experienced the vast majority of the game's content, even content that's no longer available. I've even experienced a great deal of the Foundry and participated to the point of achieving Dungeon Master rank 4.
I haven't seen *everything*, but I've seen *most* of everything.
To me this game is moving in the wrong direction. Badly. Only cryptic knows the true player population, but I have enough experience in NW to know that it's crashed since launch. When Storm King's Thunder launched, it was commonplace to see well over 100 full instances running. It was the same with Chult. Now compare that to what we typically see today. The population has cratered, no bones about it.
Earlier tonight I searched extensively and read a good dozen articles about the "best MMO's to play in 2024", or some variation of that. Of those, only TWO mentioned Neverwinter, and one had their information so out of date that they still thought the Foundry was alive. So I can't even count that one.
I read what the authors wrote about other games and thought about what seemingly made them so compelling. I paid especially close attention to those games that were most like Neverwinter both in genre and in feel. I came to several glaring and sad conclusions:
1. WE DO NOT HAVE NEARLY ENOUGH QUESTS
We should have three, four, even five times as many UNIQUE quests as we have. Think carefully. Over the course of a campaign, how many quests must we run to complete it from start to finish? Now, HOW MANY OF THOSE QUESTS ARE UNIQUE, and how many are mindless, repeated, busy-work? It's pretty dismal. I'd wager that 85 to 90 percent of the quests we run are repeated.
While campaigns should be loaded with many more quests than they currently have, quests should not be limited to campaigns. We have campaigns, and we have adventures. Adventures need not be limited to defunct campaigns. Dungeons and Dragons is an ADVENTURE game. You should have writers churning out quests for adventures night and day. If they don't fit into a campaign, they should fit into coherent adventures that get released far more frequently. Adventures need not require entirely new locales. The game has adequate locales already for such content that don't rise to the level of campaigns.
2. WE DON'T GET STORY, WE GET TEDIUM
Over and over again writers extolled other games about the deep storylines they offered. And you know what? They're right. The stories in our campaigns have no depth, no complexity whatsoever. A six-year-old can understand them, and that's not a good thing. They're only the slightest veneer of a story. Where is the character development? Where are storylines that feature unintended consequences that we have to deal with in further quests? Where are the complex issues that arise and cause story arcs to branch into other storylines? Where are the conflicts that arise from other sources that send storylines into unexpected directions? They're nonexistent, and the result is one thing: DULL.
3. THE CAMPAIGNS TAKE TOO LONG AND THERE IS FAR TOO MUCH TIME-GATING
We went from modules that took a month to complete to modules that take two-and-a-half months. So right off the bat, any interest that any story arc might generate is immediately lost. You can't make a story arc compelling and interesting if you feed it to us in such tiny bites over such a long time. How on earth is this supposed to be enjoyable? It isn't! It's boring at best and frustrating at worst.
It also leads to other distressing problems. It makes it impossible to play alts without burning us out, and it makes it impossible to catch up later with alts. The campaigns simply take too long. There aren't enough weeks before the NEXT expansion is upon us and we have to drop everything and switch back to our main, so we can keep up with the power creep. The only other course is to run the campaign concurrently with many alts at once, and risk burnout. And THAT is exactly why I'm totally sitting Mod 28 out: I'm utterly burned out. And now that I've mentioned power creep, let's segue:
4. THERE IS TOO MUCH POWER CREEP HAPPENING TOO QUICKLY
Stop the madness. Stop it now. You don't need to increase item level requirements by 5k every single mod. You've placed us in the impossible situation where we're FORCED to run the newest campaign as soon as it launches so we can keep up with the rest of the server population. Take a close look at the population running older campaigns. Look HARD. They're ghost towns. The player base has shrunk to such a critical level that it can no longer support viable populations running multiple campaigns at once. Just ask anyone trying to get Stormforged weapons today. They'll tell you. Instead, like a cloud of locusts, the meager population we have consumes the latest campaign and moves on, leaving hardly anyone to play with or assist anyone stuck in older content.
Stop it. There aren't enough players to support it and continue a healthy game. Introduce newer modules with different equipment, with different bonuses, that offer us more choices in build customization. LEAVE THE ITEM LEVELS OF NEW GEAR AND ENEMIES THE SAME FOR A WHILE. Let us catch our breath after a power increase! Give us quest lines and story arcs that make us feel like we're actually accomplishing something. Dungeons and Dragons is a heroic fantasy game where the players are the heroes. It is NOT Farmville. You appear to have completely forgotten that.
---
First let me preface this by saying that I've been playing Neverwinter since January, 2014 and Mod 2. I've pretty much seen all of the ups and downs of the game as time has gone on. What I'm about to write pains me but I can only hope that someone, somewhere, listens. Normally I would post this on the forums (where I've posted often), but I no longer have any confidence that anyone there reads the forums. Interaction from the devs on the forums has been all but nonexistent for the better part of a year.
I've completed every campaign, on many, MANY alts. While every single one is over 80k, I wouldn't consider myself an endgame player. I'm not a dungeon fanatic and I can't call myself experienced in the newer dungeons and trials. The only point here is that I've experienced the vast majority of the game's content, even content that's no longer available. I've even experienced a great deal of the Foundry and participated to the point of achieving Dungeon Master rank 4.
I haven't seen *everything*, but I've seen *most* of everything.
To me this game is moving in the wrong direction. Badly. Only cryptic knows the true player population, but I have enough experience in NW to know that it's crashed since launch. When Storm King's Thunder launched, it was commonplace to see well over 100 full instances running. It was the same with Chult. Now compare that to what we typically see today. The population has cratered, no bones about it.
Earlier tonight I searched extensively and read a good dozen articles about the "best MMO's to play in 2024", or some variation of that. Of those, only TWO mentioned Neverwinter, and one had their information so out of date that they still thought the Foundry was alive. So I can't even count that one.
I read what the authors wrote about other games and thought about what seemingly made them so compelling. I paid especially close attention to those games that were most like Neverwinter both in genre and in feel. I came to several glaring and sad conclusions:
1. WE DO NOT HAVE NEARLY ENOUGH QUESTS
We should have three, four, even five times as many UNIQUE quests as we have. Think carefully. Over the course of a campaign, how many quests must we run to complete it from start to finish? Now, HOW MANY OF THOSE QUESTS ARE UNIQUE, and how many are mindless, repeated, busy-work? It's pretty dismal. I'd wager that 85 to 90 percent of the quests we run are repeated.
While campaigns should be loaded with many more quests than they currently have, quests should not be limited to campaigns. We have campaigns, and we have adventures. Adventures need not be limited to defunct campaigns. Dungeons and Dragons is an ADVENTURE game. You should have writers churning out quests for adventures night and day. If they don't fit into a campaign, they should fit into coherent adventures that get released far more frequently. Adventures need not require entirely new locales. The game has adequate locales already for such content that don't rise to the level of campaigns.
2. WE DON'T GET STORY, WE GET TEDIUM
Over and over again writers extolled other games about the deep storylines they offered. And you know what? They're right. The stories in our campaigns have no depth, no complexity whatsoever. A six-year-old can understand them, and that's not a good thing. They're only the slightest veneer of a story. Where is the character development? Where are storylines that feature unintended consequences that we have to deal with in further quests? Where are the complex issues that arise and cause story arcs to branch into other storylines? Where are the conflicts that arise from other sources that send storylines into unexpected directions? They're nonexistent, and the result is one thing: DULL.
3. THE CAMPAIGNS TAKE TOO LONG AND THERE IS FAR TOO MUCH TIME-GATING
We went from modules that took a month to complete to modules that take two-and-a-half months. So right off the bat, any interest that any story arc might generate is immediately lost. You can't make a story arc compelling and interesting if you feed it to us in such tiny bites over such a long time. How on earth is this supposed to be enjoyable? It isn't! It's boring at best and frustrating at worst.
It also leads to other distressing problems. It makes it impossible to play alts without burning us out, and it makes it impossible to catch up later with alts. The campaigns simply take too long. There aren't enough weeks before the NEXT expansion is upon us and we have to drop everything and switch back to our main, so we can keep up with the power creep. The only other course is to run the campaign concurrently with many alts at once, and risk burnout. And THAT is exactly why I'm totally sitting Mod 28 out: I'm utterly burned out. And now that I've mentioned power creep, let's segue:
4. THERE IS TOO MUCH POWER CREEP HAPPENING TOO QUICKLY
Stop the madness. Stop it now. You don't need to increase item level requirements by 5k every single mod. You've placed us in the impossible situation where we're FORCED to run the newest campaign as soon as it launches so we can keep up with the rest of the server population. Take a close look at the population running older campaigns. Look HARD. They're ghost towns. The player base has shrunk to such a critical level that it can no longer support viable populations running multiple campaigns at once. Just ask anyone trying to get Stormforged weapons today. They'll tell you. Instead, like a cloud of locusts, the meager population we have consumes the latest campaign and moves on, leaving hardly anyone to play with or assist anyone stuck in older content.
Stop it. There aren't enough players to support it and continue a healthy game. Introduce newer modules with different equipment, with different bonuses, that offer us more choices in build customization. LEAVE THE ITEM LEVELS OF NEW GEAR AND ENEMIES THE SAME FOR A WHILE. Let us catch our breath after a power increase! Give us quest lines and story arcs that make us feel like we're actually accomplishing something. Dungeons and Dragons is a heroic fantasy game where the players are the heroes. It is NOT Farmville. You appear to have completely forgotten that.
Harper Chronicles: Cap Snatchers (RELEASED) - NW-DPUTABC6X
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
2
Comments