Not enjoying Mod 3

chrcore

So far, I'm finding this module to be far less fun than even Sharandar (which was a major grind).

It seems you spend tons of time waiting around for epic encounters to spawn (which seem to be far and few between) and end up with tons of raw black ice which you can't refine unless you spend millions on the AH.

Am I missing something or is this as good as it gets?

degraafination

Millions on the AH? Really? You can craft about 3000 Black Ice a day free of charge.

jintortle

I am loving it.

You only need to do 1 encounter for the daily reward.

The encounters are fun and a welcome reward.

Even though you are limited in refining by gauntlets. it still is 3000 a day you can do which is a good amount since it is something like 20 days till you can get to rank 2 in the profession via the Campaign rewards.

Although just doing the dailies sometimes can be a bit time consuming!

bioshrike

Well, if you can hook up with some other roving players, you can move from HE to HE and take part - you gotta be willing to move around a lot to keep them going, though.

frishter

You actually get 2700 a day for a t1 reward. But I have to agree. The one free pair of gauntlets and then charging a truckload for one green one seems cheap to me. The whole pricing of new stuff really disappointed me a lot. However the epic encounters are new and much more enjoyable than any of the other campaigns. The spawn rates on the epics and then having arms drop can be annoying if you stick to one instance though.

The prices downplayed my enjoyment for the new module since it seems like they don't actually care about the players at all, at least the marketing people. My other issue is that like the other 2 modules, everyone will be done after 1.5 months and then we're done. Mostly because of BoP drops which are not fun. Not sure how many of the older players will stay around after then. At least until then it's a nice distraction. Just unfortunately short lived and a seemingly forced cash grab.

loboguild

In terms of the AH prizes: They will settle. Right now is *not* a good time to buy, so be patient. Also the amount of Black Ice you can refine with one Gauntlet is sufficient for all your PVE needs. Not sure about PVP.

loboguild

frishter wrote: »

The prices downplayed my enjoyment for the new module since it seems like they don't actually care about the players at all, at least the marketing people. My other issue is that like the other 2 modules, everyone will be done after 1.5 months and then we're done. Mostly because of BoP drops which are not fun. Not sure how many of the older players will stay around after then. At least until then it's a nice distraction. Just unfortunately short lived and a seemingly forced cash grab.

This game desperately needs (challenging) raid content. You have CN and a big bag of dungeons that drop BoP and/or are generally unprofitable because of the drop chances of BoE stuff.

silverquick

chrcore wrote: »

So far, I'm finding this module to be far less fun than even Sharandar (which was a major grind).

It seems you spend tons of time waiting around for epic encounters to spawn (which seem to be far and few between) and end up with tons of raw black ice which you can't refine unless you spend millions on the AH.

Am I missing something or is this as good as it gets?

Well I wouldn't judge it right now,

Honestly you're only experiencing a little taste of it since the medium level encounters keep breaking.

Trust me... once they are finally running without being broken you're in for a rush.

And they do need to spawn more often.

iambecks1

Pretty much agree with silverquick up there ^ once the mid level HE's are up and running it'll be a lot more fun , I don't get how the issue has been allowed to run so long when they had ample warning of them being buggy and no longer spawning well before live release , just hope they get their act together soon .

chrcore

degraafination wrote: »

Millions on the AH? Really? You can craft about 3000 Black Ice a day free of charge.

Not exactly. You can craft 1350 every 12 hours. So for me that is 1350 a day.

chrcore

silverquick wrote: »

Well I wouldn't judge it right now,

Honestly you're only experiencing a little taste of it since the medium level encounters keep breaking.

Trust me... once they are finally running without being broken you're in for a rush.

And they do need to spawn more often.

You may be right, but this is my experience as things stand today. First impressions are important and perhaps they should have waited another few weeks before releasing it.

hamletswords

I think they could do some tweaking to the spawning of the HEs and the number of people allowed in a zone (and FIX THE DOMINATION HE PLEASE), but overall I really like HEs and think they're a great addition.

Compare it to Sharandar or Dread Ring. Obviously this mod has more going for it.

As for the limit on black ice refining unless you spend lots of AD or real money- I'm not sure you need more than you can make without an extra gauntlet. The equipment is gated by reputation, and by the time you get to level 3 black ice shaping, I think anyone that plays regularly is going to have even more refined black ice then they need.

silverquick

You may be right, but this is my experience as things stand today. First impressions are important and perhaps they should have waited another few weeks before releasing it.

I'm not going to disagree with that.

But trust me... once they have this thing up and running, you're going to love it.

frishter

loboguild wrote: »

This game desperately needs (challenging) raid content. You have CN and a big bag of dungeons that drop BoP and/or are generally unprofitable because of the drop chances of BoE stuff.

Yep I used to enjoy this game a lot with farming CN a lot and it felt good to earn some AD to spend on getting better gear. Then MC came and I detested it. Every boss dropped blue stuff and the rare times it did drop something good, it's mostly BoP. There's nothing really wrong with the dungeon itself, but being completely unrewarding destroyed it for me. The VT came and some decent stuff dropped the first few times and it felt ok, also luckily managed to get a share on 2 crowns, but I now figure I was lucky on the rng and it's also unrewarding. Now is kessels retreat which is both easy and has bop stuff too.

rashylewizz

Spending millions on the AH? Man, you should be my private customer and buy all my stuff if that's how you price stuff.

Check your math and come back again.

hustin1

chrcore wrote: »

So far, I'm finding this module to be far less fun than even Sharandar (which was a major grind).

It seems you spend tons of time waiting around for epic encounters to spawn (which seem to be far and few between) and end up with tons of raw black ice which you can't refine unless you spend millions on the AH.

Am I missing something or is this as good as it gets?

I'll *attempt* to be positive here...(sigh)

My enjoyment of Module 3 would be greatly improved with a few changes:

- Fix to life stones not working anywhere in Icewind Pass (I never PvP, so the PvP flag isn't an issue here). Thank Chauntea for my distilled healing potions, but even those aren't enough sometimes.

- Something, anything, to alleviate the encounter when you try to light the second-to-last beacon. It's guarded to the Abyss and gone! My HR has a crazy-high 18.3k GS, 2 legendary artifacts, and 16-20 rank 30 companions to choose from for assistance (out of 58 or so, I'm losing count). The fight is *brutal*. Please help!

- Some enhancements to the video settings. I don't know if it's the redesign, but now I get awful texture-loading lag in places like Protector's Enclave and Caer-Konig (and after a few hours I always eventually wind up with a DirectX out-of-memory error). A way (or a clearer way) to limit texture sizes would really help!

That's all for now; with a reputation of only 40 I've only scratched the surface, of course. As far as atmosphere goes, I still enjoy the Wyldwood area of Sharandar the most, but that's an aesthetic thing.

zomd

I'm having fun, but I think I'll have to adjust my expectations and realize I'll be running around with T1 Corrupted on my main (not empowered because refining only produces so much as a free player). And that's OK, given that community expectations stay in check as well (No Kessel's Fully Empowered Only! or PK GREED 20K FULLY EMPOWERED ONLY!).

Once I accept that then my refining bottleneck becomes just a time-gate and there's lots of good stuff in this mod:

New Fashion items - They are reasonable priced btw!
Better Designed Zones - They are more fun to explore and more open too.
Several New Gear Sets - Black Ice, Corrupted, Purified, Hammerstone...
New companion/mount - Unlockable, drops?
Multi-Stage Events and open quests
New PvP Goals and Rewards
New Skirmishes
Class Based Artifact Quest - This is really helpful to fill our artifacts slots and rewards alts.
Plus the Bonus QoL new shared bank account options.

Looking at it as a whole and bugs and the lack of a new dungeon not withstanding, this is a very well realized module and better than both Sharandar and Dread Ring. It's just paired with the monetization of a facebook game. That's effective, but kinda stinks up the place like yeti poo.

Edit: So my advice, plan around your refining limitations and ignore the build up of raw black ice. Play the HE's to have fun and to get components for crafting gear if you want and stop when it stops being fun. At least the black ice is not filling up our inventories like lockboxes haha. ^_^

chrcore

rashylewizz wrote: »

Spending millions on the AH? Man, you should be my private customer and buy all my stuff if that's how you price stuff.

Check your math and come back again.

Have you checked the price on gauntlets?

tang56

It's a laggy mess, can't change instance in IWD, massive lag if there's ever more than 10 people doing open world PvP. utterly broken IWD Domination. Not very impressed with the state of mod 3 atm.

Pathetic launch of what should've been a much better tested module. Pretty much what I've come to expect, sadly.

loboguild

tang56 wrote: »

It's a laggy mess, can't change instance in IWD, massive lag if there's ever more than 10 people doing open world PvP. utterly broken IWD Domination. Not very impressed with the state of mod 3 atm.

Pathetic launch of what should've been a much better tested module. Pretty much what I've come to expect, sadly.

Yeah, Neverwinter has always been content before bugfixes.

iambecks1

tang56 wrote: »

Pathetic launch of what should've been a much better tested module. Pretty much what I've come to expect, sadly.

The few of us who tested it didn't do a bad job , the problem is that the issues and bugs we reported were all ignored and not fixed , almost every major problem with the patch that has been brought up in general discussion over the past few days were reported during testing apart from the huge lag issues and obviously due to the tiny number of players on the preview server that wasn't an issue during testing.

postagepaid

Campaign tree rewards are pretty bland with the potions that I'll likely not bother unlocking at all and the boons strike me as bland compared to the previous sets.

Gear sets from the vendor are incomplete and there's no obvious information in-game about how or where other stuff drops.

There's apparently a new skirmish as it's mentioned in the daily quest however it doesnt appear to be listed in the queue. If it's gated in some way again there's no information in game about what the reqs are.

I'm not a pvper but it strikes me as strange that quests labled as pvp are in fact pve quests finding runes or killing more npc's, only difference is it's in a pvp zone.

Heroic encounters so far are hit and miss as the larger ones, that according to some on the forums here give gear as loot, have this idiotic graphics thing going on where the game fades everything out, mobs and players alike, if they're more that 5 feet from you making targetting stuff impossible even though they can still hit you. It was my understanding that the whole multiple instance mechanic was there to prevent that kind of rubbish from being needed. I've swapped my settings from quality to performance and it's exactly the same thing that happens.

The chat could do with getting split into the factions for areas outwith the town to make it easier to find groups and to avoid the toxic drivel spouted all to often. Swapping instances for biggins tomb is a hassle so thankfully thats only up once a week.

Artifact quest dungeon is very long winded with no apparent reason why you go from fighting drow to undead and onto lizards. It's a shame that three of the prof nodes looked to have been placed in the last room making it look like they were an after thought compared to the chest via hidden bridge and nature node nearby.

Looked at the gear and again it seems to be minor upgrades with pvp stats to coax people to go into that a bit more, won't work for me.

The gating by rep over tokens has negated the need for anyone to bother looking for the lockbox tokens as those don't boost rep.

Blackice prof is an interesting idea but to apply zen based gating to speeding the process up stinks.

Oh and the lag for some skills means if someone does decide to jump in for a cheap kill you're screwed and will have to take the injury penalty. A enalty that doesnt apply to pvp elsewhere so why does the pvp flag allow it to happen here.

Overall the new module comes across as a poor copy of GW2 or ff14's zones with a splash of tsw for faction wear thrown in just for the hell of it. The only problem is there's not been much done to get things working well before shoving it out the door into the inevitable 4 or 5 patches by a week later.

epclipseingmoon

I think mod 3 is fun just wish we had more different types of heroic encounters and more of the super heroic encounters other than the giant worm.

hustin1

epclipseingmoon wrote: »

I think mod 3 is fun just wish we had more different types of heroic encounters and more of the super heroic encounters other than the giant worm.

I was thinking that it would be neat if the heroic encounters were somewhat dynamic. Right now it's always the same encounter at a certain set of fixed locations. A good first step would be to have different encounters spawn at those fixed locations.

As for the dailies, I've decided that I'm simply not going to do the beacon quest until it's better balanced. If that means I advance more slowly or not at all, so be it. Right now, the fight at the second-to-last beacon is so imbalanced that it isn't even remotely fun--more like an encounter with a "killer DM" who just wants to be cruel. I'd rather spend my time in Sharandar leveling up companions. Wake me when it changes.

hustin1

loboguild wrote: »

Yeah, Neverwinter has always been content before bugfixes.

That's been the case for pretty much all PC software since about 1996. One of the negative side-effects of the Internet has been the rise of the mentality, "if there are bugs, we'll just post a patch online".

In the '80's, you had to get it right the first time.

zebular

. . . I've been having the most fun in IWD (PvE) out of either of the other two Mods. I love the open-world random encounters, very much so. I also love the more challenging nature of the mobs. Bugs aside, in my opinion, Module 3 is the best content added so far. Plus, PvPers got more places to PvP in, something they've been craving for a while now.

kiralyn

hustin1 wrote: »

As for the dailies, I've decided that I'm simply not going to do the beacon quest until it's better balanced. If that means I advance more slowly or not at all, so be it. Right now, the fight at the second-to-last beacon is so imbalanced that it isn't even remotely fun--more like an encounter with a "killer DM" who just wants to be cruel.

Yeah, I suspect that the wrong mobs were assigned there - you can see that they have the gold-border-and-dragon hp bars, that the enemies in heroic encounters do. If they were standard barbarians, it would still be a bit of a fight, but not suicide.

As it is, I've been managing to get that beacon lit... by waiting until the bear rider moves off a bit and edging my way around the beacon until I can reach the button. By the time the "use" bar is done, I've aggro'd the mobs but I've managed to run away from them quick enough to drop combat. (disclaimer - this has been on a TR and a GWF. Might be harder on, say, a GF)

---

edit: of course, we haven't seen everything yet - still have to unlock more quests & the dwarven area - but I think my favorite campaign area is Dread Ring. So far. /shrug The constant moaning & trash-talking of the pvpers in zone chat doesn't help. Couldn't the "open world" pvp area have been it's own zone?

(as for Heroics - I've only managed to try to participate in two that are above the smallest level. One was pointless due to the invisible remorrhaz, and the other was a bloodbath - Protect the Prospectors, with a random crowd of people with no black ice resistance. The undead casters kept slaughtering people left & right, and the mission was finally failed when the prospectors died. 99% of the time, though, the instance I'm in has just small encounters and the one large pvp one.)

lewstelamon01

hustin1 wrote: »

That's been the case for pretty much all PC software since about 1996. One of the negative side-effects of the Internet has been the rise of the mentality, "if there are bugs, we'll just post a patch online".

In the '80's, you had to get it right the first time.

I'll just quote this for truth. In console games (which was the majority of gaming because PC gaming wasn't as widespread as now), we called bugs "cheat codes" or "easter eggs"--because once it went to production, that was that. If there was a gamebreaking bug, it had to be quashed before the game went live/into production. Some companies didn't bother much with testing back then, either--remember ET for the Atari?

PC gaming...well yeah, the Internet did change the way that was done, but PC gaming really didn't hit its stride until right about the time the Internet picked up.

Now, consumer pressure does a lot to cause companies to rush out games and just throw out patch after patch.

silentraven72

IWD doesn't seem too bad, but I'm in the early stages. One thing I did NOT like was losing my reward. Had just finished helping defeat the Remorhaz when my internet decided to go funky (download dropped to 3!). When I finally was able to get back, my reward was gone It would be nice if they could figure out a way for the unclaimed reward to stay until it can be claimed. Hoping they get our internet fixed soon, too.

qutsemnie

I don't think IWD is the perfect game experience, but compared to Shanadar it is awesome sauce. The primary reason is that IWD rewards you for paying attention to your surroundings where as Shanadar can be played with your eyes closed almost.

antovaras

You realise you don't have to hang around for HEs right?