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Dungeons: Neverwinter's OTHER big issue
therumancer23
Member Posts: 75 Arc User
Plenty has been said already about the economy and that problem so I wanted to bring up what I see as Neverwinter's other big issue, which is the dungeons/endgame and how they are balanced and designed. I know many people won't agree with this, but I figured I'd make some constructive criticism in hopes it will be noticed and take some attention away from the other issues for the time being. This will be a pretty long post, which many people might not care to read, but some might find it interesting.
Right now as I see it the endgame in Neverwinter has two (almost three) problems.
1. The cost of healing supplies is insane compared to the amount of coin dropped from monsters. At 20 silver per major injury kit, and 7.5 silver or so per potion this makes dungeon delving crazy expensive, especially in a game where even high level mobs tend to at best drop a few copper pieces at a time. Unless you want to spend hours grinding this represents a problem. Especially if your expected to learn difficult fights by wiping a bunch of times (some are not super skilled, or new to MMORPGs).
2. There are SERIOUS design problems, many of which seem to come down to the desician fairly late into alpha/beta to root players while they are attacking. The arguement at the time being that it was "difficult to create a sense of jeopardy when players can run around in combat", I believe PVP was also an issue in terms of melee vs. ranged and keeping that "fair". A big problem I see with a lot of the fights is that while doable (do not make the mistake of me saying people cannot win them, and haven't done so hundreds of times, nor do I need "you suck" messages from the peanut gallery since I have myself won a number of these fights) is that they were designed with the idea of players being able to move as they were attacking. The basic boss fight in Neverwinter right now seems to be a situation where the boss itself isn't anything paticularly special, but spawns absolutly insane numbers of adds, with dealing with the adds which constantly pour into the right being the actual challenge of the fight. Many of these fights seemingly being designed with the assumption that players could run around and kite, as opposed to pretty much stick their face into the attacks of the mobs. The need for constant damage output combined with constant movement to dodge red target areas doesn't seem to work especially well. Right now it seems most boss strats are coming down to exploiting the maps, using a texture to climb up on a wall in "Elite: Pirate King", shoveling mobs off cliffs (or using arcane singularity to lift them over walls seemingly placed to prevent this and THEN shoveling them over), and other assorted problems. I personally suspect this is why the game launched in "open beta" because some of the changes late into the process hadn't been tested.
As a conditional "3" I will also say that Neverwinter seemed to be planned as a friendly, approachable, MMORPG, launching with tools like group finders and the like to allow people to pick up and play the game at any level for a while without much frustration. Right now however the endgame is in a place where it's become dependant on very tight party balance and oftentimes exploits (fighting broken and unbalanced encounters by say exploiting two clerics with overlapping circles). This is a problem when there aren't huge numbers of all classes in circulation and finding clerics and such which are REQUIRED can be very difficult. What's more the group finder will do things like fill up groups with nothing but DPS for a dungeon they have no chance of completing. Leading to such wonderful things like a group sitting there at the entrance kicking everyone who comes through the queue hoping for a cleric, or whatever class they need (I've been on both ends of this).
Right now I think the placeholder solution for the "main" game should be to un-root all of the characters in PVE and make is so they can attack while moving. In PVP arenas the current "rooted while attacking" system should be in force, probably something integral to the maps. Not a perfect solution, but I think it would solve a lot of problems in the short term, while a "Tribble" like test server can be established towards fixing the various problems, balancing the encounters, etc... to match the developer's vision of how the game should work.
I also think that there should be SOME temporary nerfing in the epic dungeons as far as mob hit points and damage infliction. Largely in order to make it so that less than ideal groups can complete these dungeons and you don't have to have at least one cleric in every group to have any chance of doing an epic. I suppose those who are buddies with lots of clerics or have them in their guild won't find it a problem, but my guild doesn't even have one (lol) and it's a serious pain in the HAMSTER to do anything. Simply put if we're all max level, have beaten the tar out of the lower dungeons, and want to play things that can advance our characters, there is no reason why a control wizard, GWF, guardian, and two rogues shouldn't have a chance of bumping off a dragon or whatever. Making it somewhat worse is that if we ever did recruit a cleric there is the question of who gets left behind if none of us want to play one at the moment (which would also require leveling and gearing one).
-
I also wanted to say in closing that while everyone is talking about the economy, I've been kind of irritated by walking through Protector's Enclave listening to everyone screaming for clerics, basically stuck moping around until they find one. I'm annoyed by the problem, but it's also kind of painful to hear so much of this especially when Dungeon Delve time rolls around. What's more the sheer cost involved in running these dungeons compared to the amount of money you can earn has lead to a degree of unhealthy elitism I've only previously run into in a few other games like "The Secret World" (which has it's own issues). Simply put people recruiting by increasingly high gear scores, intended to keep the newer and less experienced people out of the loop. The basic idea is that those who mastered the dungeons and such would prefer not to deal with anyone who needs to learn, they just want to whizz through, grab as much lewt as possible, and not have to deal with any complications. I can sort of relate to the mentality from when I played WoW, but this game isn't even a month old and we're dealing with the first
dungeons the game even has. I suppose in theory you can find new people to group with and learn what to do, but again see the whole issue with the group finder and of course the clerics. Honestly, some people have been quite
blunt about not wanting to basically pay 20 silver a wipe/injury as a big part of the motivation for not being tolerant of other players.
At any rate that's my assessment and comments, and honestly I think this is the biggest issue Cryptic will need to work on once the current "Astral Diamond" crisis is over. An MMO lives and dies by it's endgame, like many newly launched games this one has some serious problems.
Right now as I see it the endgame in Neverwinter has two (almost three) problems.
1. The cost of healing supplies is insane compared to the amount of coin dropped from monsters. At 20 silver per major injury kit, and 7.5 silver or so per potion this makes dungeon delving crazy expensive, especially in a game where even high level mobs tend to at best drop a few copper pieces at a time. Unless you want to spend hours grinding this represents a problem. Especially if your expected to learn difficult fights by wiping a bunch of times (some are not super skilled, or new to MMORPGs).
2. There are SERIOUS design problems, many of which seem to come down to the desician fairly late into alpha/beta to root players while they are attacking. The arguement at the time being that it was "difficult to create a sense of jeopardy when players can run around in combat", I believe PVP was also an issue in terms of melee vs. ranged and keeping that "fair". A big problem I see with a lot of the fights is that while doable (do not make the mistake of me saying people cannot win them, and haven't done so hundreds of times, nor do I need "you suck" messages from the peanut gallery since I have myself won a number of these fights) is that they were designed with the idea of players being able to move as they were attacking. The basic boss fight in Neverwinter right now seems to be a situation where the boss itself isn't anything paticularly special, but spawns absolutly insane numbers of adds, with dealing with the adds which constantly pour into the right being the actual challenge of the fight. Many of these fights seemingly being designed with the assumption that players could run around and kite, as opposed to pretty much stick their face into the attacks of the mobs. The need for constant damage output combined with constant movement to dodge red target areas doesn't seem to work especially well. Right now it seems most boss strats are coming down to exploiting the maps, using a texture to climb up on a wall in "Elite: Pirate King", shoveling mobs off cliffs (or using arcane singularity to lift them over walls seemingly placed to prevent this and THEN shoveling them over), and other assorted problems. I personally suspect this is why the game launched in "open beta" because some of the changes late into the process hadn't been tested.
As a conditional "3" I will also say that Neverwinter seemed to be planned as a friendly, approachable, MMORPG, launching with tools like group finders and the like to allow people to pick up and play the game at any level for a while without much frustration. Right now however the endgame is in a place where it's become dependant on very tight party balance and oftentimes exploits (fighting broken and unbalanced encounters by say exploiting two clerics with overlapping circles). This is a problem when there aren't huge numbers of all classes in circulation and finding clerics and such which are REQUIRED can be very difficult. What's more the group finder will do things like fill up groups with nothing but DPS for a dungeon they have no chance of completing. Leading to such wonderful things like a group sitting there at the entrance kicking everyone who comes through the queue hoping for a cleric, or whatever class they need (I've been on both ends of this).
Right now I think the placeholder solution for the "main" game should be to un-root all of the characters in PVE and make is so they can attack while moving. In PVP arenas the current "rooted while attacking" system should be in force, probably something integral to the maps. Not a perfect solution, but I think it would solve a lot of problems in the short term, while a "Tribble" like test server can be established towards fixing the various problems, balancing the encounters, etc... to match the developer's vision of how the game should work.
I also think that there should be SOME temporary nerfing in the epic dungeons as far as mob hit points and damage infliction. Largely in order to make it so that less than ideal groups can complete these dungeons and you don't have to have at least one cleric in every group to have any chance of doing an epic. I suppose those who are buddies with lots of clerics or have them in their guild won't find it a problem, but my guild doesn't even have one (lol) and it's a serious pain in the HAMSTER to do anything. Simply put if we're all max level, have beaten the tar out of the lower dungeons, and want to play things that can advance our characters, there is no reason why a control wizard, GWF, guardian, and two rogues shouldn't have a chance of bumping off a dragon or whatever. Making it somewhat worse is that if we ever did recruit a cleric there is the question of who gets left behind if none of us want to play one at the moment (which would also require leveling and gearing one).
-
I also wanted to say in closing that while everyone is talking about the economy, I've been kind of irritated by walking through Protector's Enclave listening to everyone screaming for clerics, basically stuck moping around until they find one. I'm annoyed by the problem, but it's also kind of painful to hear so much of this especially when Dungeon Delve time rolls around. What's more the sheer cost involved in running these dungeons compared to the amount of money you can earn has lead to a degree of unhealthy elitism I've only previously run into in a few other games like "The Secret World" (which has it's own issues). Simply put people recruiting by increasingly high gear scores, intended to keep the newer and less experienced people out of the loop. The basic idea is that those who mastered the dungeons and such would prefer not to deal with anyone who needs to learn, they just want to whizz through, grab as much lewt as possible, and not have to deal with any complications. I can sort of relate to the mentality from when I played WoW, but this game isn't even a month old and we're dealing with the first
dungeons the game even has. I suppose in theory you can find new people to group with and learn what to do, but again see the whole issue with the group finder and of course the clerics. Honestly, some people have been quite
blunt about not wanting to basically pay 20 silver a wipe/injury as a big part of the motivation for not being tolerant of other players.
At any rate that's my assessment and comments, and honestly I think this is the biggest issue Cryptic will need to work on once the current "Astral Diamond" crisis is over. An MMO lives and dies by it's endgame, like many newly launched games this one has some serious problems.
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