I am aware of that. I'm just surprised they made that choice. DnD has a huge following who would be willing to pay well for a good DnD MMO. Nothing good has been around since NWN2, BG2, Torment and Icewind Dale. A few tried afterwards, but were somehow never as.. satisfying. People are dieing for a good game in the world they love and know.
Oh they probably tried. See the foundry, it was supposed to be the big feature of the game. And now there are no update because almost no one uses it. That's not what a large majority of the players here are looking for. Heck the most successful quests are aoe zerg loot farms. Instead the gameplay brought them more traditional gamers looking for a good mmo with interesting mechanics (see the poll). You can't deny the fact that the game was really that at launch. It was hard, you could spend 1h30 in some instances, and it required gaming skills. Well the current results of the poll shouldn't be a surprise.
Don't get me started on the foundry. When I first read what that was, I almost wet my pants from joy. It's a dam shame it's being neglected by both players and publisher.
As for the difference between launch and now.. well that has only 3 reasons really.
The first mistake was to release all power at once. If we go by the difficulty of the game, we shouldn't have anything beyond rank 7 enchantments.
Second, the introduction of artifacts. More power creep, even more bored players since they can just spend money on the CS to level them. Both these mistakes lay the foundation for problem 3:
Lastly, and this was probably the least of their mistakes, but it still had a major impact, the refusal to acknowledge the bot problem and the inability to fight them. People didn't even have to spend money anymore to gain BiS. A few leadership characters was all it took to get enough power for the next 3 years at the very least.
Unfortunately the damage is done. And nothing short of a full wipe of enchantments and installing restrictions on them will turn the game back on track. Since that's not a serious option (although I'd consider it seriously as a publisher with a game in this state) and they don't have the manpower to make content 2 years ahead of schedule, all they can do is let the BiS people die out and proceed according to plan with a few mods here and there like Tenacity and stuff to keep things bearable till the BiS are gone and the playerbase is more or less back to the level it's supposed to be.
Ok I'm going to be slightly off-topic for the majority of this post but the conclusion will definitely be on topic. Beware!
Let me tell you about some of my activities. I have two "main" characters. I try to level them the best I can when I have time to play. I'm a really skilled player, and even if I don't call myself hardcore (because sometimes I have to take a break completely off the game for RL stuff like friends and work), I'm definitely a passionnate player. I used to be able to do the Grand T2 Tour (SP, ToS, karru, FH and EDV) during one DD event a few weeks after module 2 was released with some in-game friends, I also farmed CN for some time and it made me a quite impressive amount of ADs. When I came back a few weeks ago I still had 6M ADs and a few millions in assets, and now that I'm broke I can tell you what you may buy with 6-8M ADs: almost nothing. A purple pet, I've been able to upgrade two artifacts to lvl 99 (can't afford legendary) during the double RP event, and that's it. Ultimately my two characters are 15.1k and 15.9k. That's quite low. Ok i have two pvorps but whatever.
6-8M ADs is several months of leadership farming even with 20 characters. There is no way in hell someone can get several BiS characters with leadership farms. And it buys you almost nothing interesting in the current environment. Actually, since I enjoy the open pvp maps a lot, I've had the opportunity to interact with a large variety of BiS/legendary players and it turns out to be split in two populations:
* During the week, especially on monday evenings: the other passionnate players, who are just like me. They play as soon as their RL gives them the opportunity to. When you inspect them they either have 15-16k characters like mines or they have the best possible gear and will ultimately admit that they spent 5, 600 USD on the game, sometimes more, to get the character they play with. They're usually polite and you can talk to them.
* On Friday and Saturday evenings, you have weekend warriors. It's a lot harder to interact with them, usually, it's 20 kills/ 1 death in an hour score for me and all I get is various insults and comments about my "poor gear" compared to them. And indeed they have BiS chars with purple pets but will use a dungeon spell layout in pvp...
So you have two categories of BiS players: the passionnate ones who spend a lot of cash because they love the game and want to stomp content and other players in pvp, but ultimately when you talk to them they're very sociable and nice people, and the ones that will buy BiS gear to show off and then insult you because you killed them with your "s**t gear", and they will buy whatever is available to them because they have to stay on top of the competition.
I'm not sure what kind of content can make the latter group excited, it's pretty hard to interact with them and they will probably just buy whatever they read is OP on the forums to have the feeling they're at the top of the food chain, but I do know what the passionate "whale" players like because I'm just like them, with a lot less cash spent on the game. The truth is that they can't get rid off BiS players because they're the ones buying all the things from the cash shop, even if they're overpriced, because it's more powerful than what they used to have. IMO the leadership guy is more or less an urban legend ; sure there are some but they can't be as high as people who spent (or spend) craploads of cash on the game.
So, yes, to keep at least some of the people who spent money on the game, because they sell power in the cash shop, the game has to be fixed in a way or another. My opinion (and it's just mine) is that the issue is rather being able to make the content for the whales being playable by non cash spenders so that the whales still have populated servers. I won't make another poll but i'm pretty sure that a large majority of the people posting about the game being either hard or just fine don't spend any cash and little time playing the game. The challenge for the devs is IMO rather making sure they can provide content or enjoyment to people spending cash and to non spenders, and to do that both groups have to be able to queue for the same instances. Well it must be a nightmare to sort this out and I'm glad I'm not a game designer working for a F2P selling power in the cash shop.
I voted "other". My main problem I have is there are gates and cooldown timers and timers to get keys everywhere especially in the campaign areas. They are really annoying and caused me to put off doing them for awhile. Stop gating and restricting so much stuff, its not fun. Stop locking dungeons and skirmishes behind gates, let people play.
I voted "other". My main problem I have is there are gates and cooldown timers and timers to get keys everywhere especially in the campaign areas. They are really annoying and caused me to put off doing them for awhile. Stop gating and restricting so much stuff, its not fun. Stop locking dungeons and skirmishes behind gates, let people play.
Agree, as I said on the original post, I don't like gated content, for me the very difficulty of a dungeon, skirmish or a map should discriminates the player who can go, instead of a daily quest...
If they lock a map, a dungeon or a skirmish behind 3 weeks of daily quest it become tedious to unlock, and worse, if the content isn't epic it becomes boring fast... at least if Devs want to hide content behind a quest, don't make it a daily quest, try to make a challenging and very long quest from Sgt. Knox with a little story behind... not just a "go to 'x' place and press 'f'".
Since this is a D&D I think the content should have more immersion & epicness (apart from the more challenge that I thing could be good).
I'm so tired of whining players whotthink games should be more than a casual experience. Yes you choose to do what you want and should not be dictated to how you spend your time, however I think you will be disappointed and depressed as the world is turning all around you. It's a persistent world after all.
Well, games should be fun, and fun for many players is: being challenged. And not being able to finish dungeons facerolling your keyboard, which is pretty much the case in most dungeons right now. No wonder, we outgeared the content long ago.
And to the mentioned problems that new players won't be able to do anything for a long time: I levelled some chars, and it's not a big problem to get your T1 set and then do T2. It may take some dungeons. If you do only 1 DD every day, you should have your T2 set completed within not more than 2 months. Personally, it took me 1-2 weeks to get my fresh lvl 60s to full T2 gear. I don't see this as a problem, boons take longer.
I am aware of that. I'm just surprised they made that choice. DnD has a huge following who would be willing to pay well for a good DnD MMO. Nothing good has been around since NWN2, BG2, Torment and Icewind Dale. A few tried afterwards, but were somehow never as.. satisfying as the real Bioware games before them. People are dieing for a good game in the world they love and know. WotC is well aware of that fact. So the step to a F2P MMO -for what that's worth in NW- surprises me. I would have gone (semi)sub or popf if I was to release a DnD MMO. Saves a lot of trouble, and the license does the attracting. All you have to do is make a good adventure out of it. Here the adventure turns into an everlasting grind, which totally against DnD form, but required to keep people playing, since the adventure ends after the first week of each campaign.
ever hear of Dungeons and Dragons Online? It's quite good, much more like the D&D than Neverwinter will ever be.
0
aulduronMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,351Arc User
edited September 2014
Longer, harder dungeons deserve better rewards. I don't think they're going to give this to us. Sharandar and Dread Rings each gave us a dungeon with Bosses that mainly drop blue gear. IWD gave us no dungeon at all. Just a Skirmish with nothing worth picking up except for RP. ToD gave us a dungeon that drops mainly green gear, if anything.
The people who spend 4 hours in Spellplague, only to eventually get stuck at the final boss waiting for a GF replacement to queue in (and hoping it won't be one from a ninja guild)... those are casual players.
The people you see running around in IWD with no guild and using a highly questionable power loadout... casual players.
The people you see in Dread Ring zone chat looking for help with a lair, not because it's faster in a group but because they have actually said that they can't beat the boss... casual players.
By which I don't mean to denigrate the casual player, but being here on these forums as a regular presence indicates you are predisposed to trying to optimize your gameplay performance. You might still not qualify as a hardcore gamer, but you seek out information to better yourself rather than just sort of fumbling along and hoping you'll be ok.
Regular forum personalities are more informed, which gives them a strong advantage in coordinated play. They are capable of blowing through content that less informed players struggle with. And it isn't in the developers' interest to not cater to the casual playerbase because the majority of the time, a frustrated player will go find a friendlier game rather than launch into research mode.
Majority of the posters in this thread don't realize this
Venril Sathir- CW
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
Man i have been waiting for that poll forever just to make clear what the voices in the Forum are. Well casual players wont nessecerarily come to the Forums but well - they have some advocates here
Majority of the posters in this thread don't realize this
The thing you and the person you quoted don't realize though is that without the "hardcore" and I'm using this fairly loosely, the game loses community.
How often have you heard "guilds are pointless in Neverwinter" chances are you've probably heard that at least once a week. The reason behind this is the lack of "hardcore" content. When you don't have challenging content (especially raids as it brings more people together at once) you drive off the more group oriented players. These are the players that set up raids/dungeon runs, casual players don't want to lead them. They are the ones that help new members of their guilds gear, casual players still need the help themselves. They are the ones that set up teaching runs and help educate new players, casual players are still learning themselves and can't teach.
What does this mean? It means all the 14k+gs exp only pk runs you see in lfg are a direct result of not having hardcore content that can keep these players. By not having that content, it hurts the casuals and the hardcore and cryptic's wallet.
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figgeMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited September 2014
I only wish that instances would scale up difficulty when you are on a team, to make things more interesting. There is a bug that keeps popping up that will make instances scale up in difficulty, and whenever that bug is in effect things are so much fun. Naturally with increased difficulty should come greater rewards so people would actually want to play instances on a team. The biggest problem with PvE that I see it is that if you're not running dungeons you don't ever have a reason to team up. Teaming in itself is a chore; more waiting around, unsynched missions means that someone might miss out on rewards, even more waiting around. Make it worth the trouble of finding a team and playing with them.
The thing you and the person you quoted don't realize though is that without the "hardcore" and I'm using this fairly loosely, the game loses community.
How often have you heard "guilds are pointless in Neverwinter" chances are you've probably heard that at least once a week. The reason behind this is the lack of "hardcore" content. When you don't have challenging content (especially raids as it brings more people together at once) you drive off the more group oriented players. These are the players that set up raids/dungeon runs, casual players don't want to lead them. They are the ones that help new members of their guilds gear, casual players still need the help themselves. They are the ones that set up teaching runs and help educate new players, casual players are still learning themselves and can't teach.
What does this mean? It means all the 14k+gs exp only pk runs you see in lfg are a direct result of not having hardcore content that can keep these players. By not having that content, it hurts the casuals and the hardcore and cryptic's wallet.
And what you don't realize is that while I actually agree with all your points and being a "hardcore" player myself, that doesn't change the fact that the majority of the playerbase is not represented in this thread.
Venril Sathir- CW
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
The people you see in Dread Ring zone chat looking for help with a lair, not because it's faster in a group but because they have actually said that they can't beat the boss... casual players.
Well, I don't mean to denigrate anyone too, but here is my question, if there are people not able to do the Dread Ring lairs... Do you think they will care if Castle Never, Lair of Lostmouth (or maybe another dungeon that actually ask for organization and communication) is the hardest dungeon in the game?, if someone is not able to solo a Dread Ring lair I can only think it's because he is 7~8K, he is using the touchpad to play, have like 0.5 seconds delay with the server, never read the forum, guides nor tutorial, doesn't care how to min/max his character and he doesn't even question himself what could be the right powers to use... That kind of player won't be able to go to a T2, we can't even think about Castle Never or LoL, so why should they determine if a consistent and dedicated player should or shouldn't have fun?.
I'm not asking a player like that to complete all the dungeons in the game nor should he, if we add a harder dungeon than LoL that player will keep doing what he always does and we could have more fun...
So it's a win win situation, he keep doing casual things, we have more challenge...
What this game is missing is the option to play more difficult content. Why don't all instances have a difficulty setting which also adjusts the rewards that drop? Casual player = casual difficulty = casual rewards.
That kind of player won't be able to go to a T2, we can't even think about Castle Never or LoL, so why should they determine if a consistent and dedicated player should or shouldn't have fun?.
Well, if hardcore players outnumbered casual players 9 to one he shouldn't, but it's the opposite. There's tough content in game now, have you tried Dread Vault Epic lately? Boss is tougher than LOL, VT, and Draco combined. Before you dismiss it, just try it before you post.
Venril Sathir- CW
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
The thing you and the person you quoted don't realize though is that without the "hardcore" and I'm using this fairly loosely, the game loses community.
Cryptic might disagree. CoH didn't have hardcore raids, it still maintained a community until its end. CO, still has a loyal community. And STO is doing very well for itself without any raids or catering to the hardcore crowd. The simple fact is, the lack of hardcore or raid options has yet to kill a single Cryptic game.
Well, if hardcore players outnumbered casual players 9 to one he shouldn't, but it's the opposite. There's tough content in game now, have you tried Dread Vault Epic lately? Boss is tougher than LOL, VT, and Draco combined. Before you dismiss it, just try it before you post.
They changed that boss?, cause I did it like a month ago.
They changed that boss?, cause I did it like a month ago.
Ttry it tonight. Point is, you can't just faceroll that boss with a high DPS group like you can with the others, it takes strategy and coordination.
VT-high dps groups do runs without coffins now, Draco, no more CC on that fight either. Lostmauth-supereasy from inception. Dread Vault-non stop adds the whole fight that HAVE to be dealt with.
Venril Sathir- CW
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
Ttry it tonight. Point is, you can't just faceroll that boss with a high DPS group like you can with the others, it takes strategy and coordination.
VT-high dps groups do runs without coffins now, Draco, no more CC on that fight either. Lostmauth-supereasy from inception. Dread Vault-non stop adds the whole fight that HAVE to be dealt with.
Sure, if it's still the same you only have to:
1- Stand on the plataform to despawn the big adds.
2- Attack.
3- Repeat 1 and 2 until he is dead.
DCs and GFs focus on the adds (throwing them down), Heal and support and HRs focus on bring boss down, CWs can focus on adds and boss, but mostly adds.
I did it with my GF with a normal 14K pug like a month ago, but I don't have time now to go and test if they changed it... so... I don't know where you wanna go...
If you wana know my opinion, I like the fight... They should have added more bosses like that, but harder, because we are getting more GS, Boons, Artifacts and Overload Enchants... each mod.
Sure, if it's still the same you only have to:
1- Stand on the plataform to despawn the big adds.
2- Attack.
3- Repeat 1 and 2 until he is dead.
DCs and GFs focus on the adds, Heal and support and HRs focus on bring boss down, CWs focus on adds and boss.
I did it with my GF with a normal 14K pug like a month ago, but I don't have time now to go and test if they changed it... so... I don't know where you wanna go...
So basically you are saying its hard...until you figure out the trick. Like despawing the mobs.
By that logic, wouldn't any content quickly become dull to you, once you find out each trick? Because clearly, EDV would be much harder for any group if you actually engage the Thoon hulks, rather then gimmicking them into despawning.
Sure, if it's still the same you only have to:
1- Stand on the plataform to despawn the big adds.
2- Attack.
3- Repeat 1 and 2 until he is dead.
DCs and GFs focus on the adds, Heal and support and HRs focus on bring boss down, CWs focus on adds and boss.
I did it with my GF with a normal 14K pug like a month ago, but I don't have time now to go and test if they changed it... so... I don't know where you wanna go...
Nothing despawns now. Makes a big diff. try it tomorrow......or next week. No rush. But try it.
Venril Sathir- CW
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
So basically you are saying its hard...until you figure out the trick. Like despawing the mobs.
By that logic, wouldn't any content quickly become dull to you, once you find out each trick? Because clearly, EDV would be much harder for any group if you actually engage the Thoon hulks, rather then gimmicking them into despawning.
Well, if the trick make it become easy yes, if we have a uber super duper hard dungeon that becomes an only super hard dungeon (with the trick) it wouldn't become a dull easy...
(Obviously a boss fight that need some sort of strategy would make things easier if you follow the strategy rather than if everyone run like a headless chicken, on any game, but I dont want it so easy too, so there becomes the part were we need a boss that could 1 shot us, or few but stronger adds, rather than what do we have now).
I guess you haven't been in a party with a warlock who knows what he's doing
I have checked around 15 dragon fight combat logs and not even once have I seen a warlock do most damage. And CWs are always ahead by at least 40% compared to the next non-CW (and 50%+ of their damage is from Storm Spell and Assailant alone which requires doing nothing except mashing buttons).
So yeah, please tell me about this amazing warlock damage.
I have checked around 15 dragon fight combat logs and not even once have I seen a warlock do most damage. And CWs are always ahead by at least 40% compared to the next non-CW (and 50%+ of their damage is from Storm Spell and Assailant alone which requires doing nothing except mashing buttons).
So yeah, please tell me about this amazing warlock damage.
I have both a CW and a SW. My Temptation warlock tops damage probably 60% of the Tyranny dungeons, but he has a GS of almost 20k with legendary artefact weapon, so not a good example. Also Tyranny dungeons has a lot fewer adds than the older dungeons, so SW will keep pace with a CW in LOL and SOT. Much harder to do damage with a SW than a CW because 90% of the damage comes from channelled dread theft/TT and if you get knocked back you can end up wasting your daily. I do about 10k+ damage in LOL with both of them but CW is pretty automatic damage that you can do while brain dead. VT, MC, CN, CW is going to destroy any other class by almost double at least, so when comparing the two classes the dungeon plays a big part in who comes out on top.
Venril Sathir- CW
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
I have checked around 15 dragon fight combat logs and not even once have I seen a warlock do most damage. And CWs are always ahead by at least 40% compared to the next non-CW (and 50%+ of their damage is from Storm Spell and Assailant alone which requires doing nothing except mashing buttons).
So yeah, please tell me about this amazing warlock damage.
Go to LFG and party up with a high GS warlock. Don't measure it using these casual heroic encounters that only casual players farm seriously.
Cryptic might disagree. CoH didn't have hardcore raids, it still maintained a community until its end. CO, still has a loyal community. And STO is doing very well for itself without any raids or catering to the hardcore crowd. The simple fact is, the lack of hardcore or raid options has yet to kill a single Cryptic game.
I'd say that both aren't what they could be though, and from my experience in STO, there is no community to help draw in players there either.
Besides that, I'd also say both are in a slightly different genre. CO is more of the superhero type thing for which there isn't much competition, dcuo is the only current one I can think of. (not counting marvel heroes as that's more of an action rpg). And STO is the only star trek game, but even if you broaden it to a space mmo the other ones I can think of from the top of my head are swtor and eve. So in both cases there are only 1 or 2 competitors. NW has competition not only from another dnd licensed mmo (even if I don't care for that one) and every single other magic and swords fantasy mmo on the planet, of which there are myriad. NW is keeping up ok at the moment but there is far far more churn than I'm used to seeing in titles. This level of churn works at the moment but I don't see it as being sustainable. The game will continue for a while, but looking at the say five year mark, I see major problems ahead without some major changes. It doesn't have to be raids, they're just an easy method to accomplish a big part of it.
Comments
Oh they probably tried. See the foundry, it was supposed to be the big feature of the game. And now there are no update because almost no one uses it. That's not what a large majority of the players here are looking for. Heck the most successful quests are aoe zerg loot farms. Instead the gameplay brought them more traditional gamers looking for a good mmo with interesting mechanics (see the poll). You can't deny the fact that the game was really that at launch. It was hard, you could spend 1h30 in some instances, and it required gaming skills. Well the current results of the poll shouldn't be a surprise.
Ok I'm going to be slightly off-topic for the majority of this post but the conclusion will definitely be on topic. Beware!
Let me tell you about some of my activities. I have two "main" characters. I try to level them the best I can when I have time to play. I'm a really skilled player, and even if I don't call myself hardcore (because sometimes I have to take a break completely off the game for RL stuff like friends and work), I'm definitely a passionnate player. I used to be able to do the Grand T2 Tour (SP, ToS, karru, FH and EDV) during one DD event a few weeks after module 2 was released with some in-game friends, I also farmed CN for some time and it made me a quite impressive amount of ADs. When I came back a few weeks ago I still had 6M ADs and a few millions in assets, and now that I'm broke I can tell you what you may buy with 6-8M ADs: almost nothing. A purple pet, I've been able to upgrade two artifacts to lvl 99 (can't afford legendary) during the double RP event, and that's it. Ultimately my two characters are 15.1k and 15.9k. That's quite low. Ok i have two pvorps but whatever.
6-8M ADs is several months of leadership farming even with 20 characters. There is no way in hell someone can get several BiS characters with leadership farms. And it buys you almost nothing interesting in the current environment. Actually, since I enjoy the open pvp maps a lot, I've had the opportunity to interact with a large variety of BiS/legendary players and it turns out to be split in two populations:
* During the week, especially on monday evenings: the other passionnate players, who are just like me. They play as soon as their RL gives them the opportunity to. When you inspect them they either have 15-16k characters like mines or they have the best possible gear and will ultimately admit that they spent 5, 600 USD on the game, sometimes more, to get the character they play with. They're usually polite and you can talk to them.
* On Friday and Saturday evenings, you have weekend warriors. It's a lot harder to interact with them, usually, it's 20 kills/ 1 death in an hour score for me and all I get is various insults and comments about my "poor gear" compared to them. And indeed they have BiS chars with purple pets but will use a dungeon spell layout in pvp...
So you have two categories of BiS players: the passionnate ones who spend a lot of cash because they love the game and want to stomp content and other players in pvp, but ultimately when you talk to them they're very sociable and nice people, and the ones that will buy BiS gear to show off and then insult you because you killed them with your "s**t gear", and they will buy whatever is available to them because they have to stay on top of the competition.
I'm not sure what kind of content can make the latter group excited, it's pretty hard to interact with them and they will probably just buy whatever they read is OP on the forums to have the feeling they're at the top of the food chain, but I do know what the passionate "whale" players like because I'm just like them, with a lot less cash spent on the game. The truth is that they can't get rid off BiS players because they're the ones buying all the things from the cash shop, even if they're overpriced, because it's more powerful than what they used to have. IMO the leadership guy is more or less an urban legend ; sure there are some but they can't be as high as people who spent (or spend) craploads of cash on the game.
So, yes, to keep at least some of the people who spent money on the game, because they sell power in the cash shop, the game has to be fixed in a way or another. My opinion (and it's just mine) is that the issue is rather being able to make the content for the whales being playable by non cash spenders so that the whales still have populated servers. I won't make another poll but i'm pretty sure that a large majority of the people posting about the game being either hard or just fine don't spend any cash and little time playing the game. The challenge for the devs is IMO rather making sure they can provide content or enjoyment to people spending cash and to non spenders, and to do that both groups have to be able to queue for the same instances. Well it must be a nightmare to sort this out and I'm glad I'm not a game designer working for a F2P selling power in the cash shop.
Agree, as I said on the original post, I don't like gated content, for me the very difficulty of a dungeon, skirmish or a map should discriminates the player who can go, instead of a daily quest...
If they lock a map, a dungeon or a skirmish behind 3 weeks of daily quest it become tedious to unlock, and worse, if the content isn't epic it becomes boring fast... at least if Devs want to hide content behind a quest, don't make it a daily quest, try to make a challenging and very long quest from Sgt. Knox with a little story behind... not just a "go to 'x' place and press 'f'".
Since this is a D&D I think the content should have more immersion & epicness (apart from the more challenge that I thing could be good).
Well, games should be fun, and fun for many players is: being challenged. And not being able to finish dungeons facerolling your keyboard, which is pretty much the case in most dungeons right now. No wonder, we outgeared the content long ago.
And to the mentioned problems that new players won't be able to do anything for a long time: I levelled some chars, and it's not a big problem to get your T1 set and then do T2. It may take some dungeons. If you do only 1 DD every day, you should have your T2 set completed within not more than 2 months. Personally, it took me 1-2 weeks to get my fresh lvl 60s to full T2 gear. I don't see this as a problem, boons take longer.
ever hear of Dungeons and Dragons Online? It's quite good, much more like the D&D than Neverwinter will ever be.
Majority of the posters in this thread don't realize this
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
The thing you and the person you quoted don't realize though is that without the "hardcore" and I'm using this fairly loosely, the game loses community.
How often have you heard "guilds are pointless in Neverwinter" chances are you've probably heard that at least once a week. The reason behind this is the lack of "hardcore" content. When you don't have challenging content (especially raids as it brings more people together at once) you drive off the more group oriented players. These are the players that set up raids/dungeon runs, casual players don't want to lead them. They are the ones that help new members of their guilds gear, casual players still need the help themselves. They are the ones that set up teaching runs and help educate new players, casual players are still learning themselves and can't teach.
What does this mean? It means all the 14k+gs exp only pk runs you see in lfg are a direct result of not having hardcore content that can keep these players. By not having that content, it hurts the casuals and the hardcore and cryptic's wallet.
And what you don't realize is that while I actually agree with all your points and being a "hardcore" player myself, that doesn't change the fact that the majority of the playerbase is not represented in this thread.
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
Well, I don't mean to denigrate anyone too, but here is my question, if there are people not able to do the Dread Ring lairs... Do you think they will care if Castle Never, Lair of Lostmouth (or maybe another dungeon that actually ask for organization and communication) is the hardest dungeon in the game?, if someone is not able to solo a Dread Ring lair I can only think it's because he is 7~8K, he is using the touchpad to play, have like 0.5 seconds delay with the server, never read the forum, guides nor tutorial, doesn't care how to min/max his character and he doesn't even question himself what could be the right powers to use... That kind of player won't be able to go to a T2, we can't even think about Castle Never or LoL, so why should they determine if a consistent and dedicated player should or shouldn't have fun?.
I'm not asking a player like that to complete all the dungeons in the game nor should he, if we add a harder dungeon than LoL that player will keep doing what he always does and we could have more fun...
So it's a win win situation, he keep doing casual things, we have more challenge...
Well, if hardcore players outnumbered casual players 9 to one he shouldn't, but it's the opposite. There's tough content in game now, have you tried Dread Vault Epic lately? Boss is tougher than LOL, VT, and Draco combined. Before you dismiss it, just try it before you post.
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
Cryptic might disagree. CoH didn't have hardcore raids, it still maintained a community until its end. CO, still has a loyal community. And STO is doing very well for itself without any raids or catering to the hardcore crowd. The simple fact is, the lack of hardcore or raid options has yet to kill a single Cryptic game.
They changed that boss?, cause I did it like a month ago.
Ttry it tonight. Point is, you can't just faceroll that boss with a high DPS group like you can with the others, it takes strategy and coordination.
VT-high dps groups do runs without coffins now, Draco, no more CC on that fight either. Lostmauth-supereasy from inception. Dread Vault-non stop adds the whole fight that HAVE to be dealt with.
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
Sure, if it's still the same you only have to:
1- Stand on the plataform to despawn the big adds.
2- Attack.
3- Repeat 1 and 2 until he is dead.
DCs and GFs focus on the adds (throwing them down), Heal and support and HRs focus on bring boss down, CWs can focus on adds and boss, but mostly adds.
I did it with my GF with a normal 14K pug like a month ago, but I don't have time now to go and test if they changed it... so... I don't know where you wanna go...
If you wana know my opinion, I like the fight... They should have added more bosses like that, but harder, because we are getting more GS, Boons, Artifacts and Overload Enchants... each mod.
So basically you are saying its hard...until you figure out the trick. Like despawing the mobs.
By that logic, wouldn't any content quickly become dull to you, once you find out each trick? Because clearly, EDV would be much harder for any group if you actually engage the Thoon hulks, rather then gimmicking them into despawning.
Nothing despawns now. Makes a big diff. try it tomorrow......or next week. No rush. But try it.
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
Well, if the trick make it become easy yes, if we have a uber super duper hard dungeon that becomes an only super hard dungeon (with the trick) it wouldn't become a dull easy...
(Obviously a boss fight that need some sort of strategy would make things easier if you follow the strategy rather than if everyone run like a headless chicken, on any game, but I dont want it so easy too, so there becomes the part were we need a boss that could 1 shot us, or few but stronger adds, rather than what do we have now).
Ok, I will.
So yeah, please tell me about this amazing warlock damage.
I have both a CW and a SW. My Temptation warlock tops damage probably 60% of the Tyranny dungeons, but he has a GS of almost 20k with legendary artefact weapon, so not a good example. Also Tyranny dungeons has a lot fewer adds than the older dungeons, so SW will keep pace with a CW in LOL and SOT. Much harder to do damage with a SW than a CW because 90% of the damage comes from channelled dread theft/TT and if you get knocked back you can end up wasting your daily. I do about 10k+ damage in LOL with both of them but CW is pretty automatic damage that you can do while brain dead. VT, MC, CN, CW is going to destroy any other class by almost double at least, so when comparing the two classes the dungeon plays a big part in who comes out on top.
Venril- SW
Lurch- GF
Mini Ven- DC
Go to LFG and party up with a high GS warlock. Don't measure it using these casual heroic encounters that only casual players farm seriously.
I'd say that both aren't what they could be though, and from my experience in STO, there is no community to help draw in players there either.
Besides that, I'd also say both are in a slightly different genre. CO is more of the superhero type thing for which there isn't much competition, dcuo is the only current one I can think of. (not counting marvel heroes as that's more of an action rpg). And STO is the only star trek game, but even if you broaden it to a space mmo the other ones I can think of from the top of my head are swtor and eve. So in both cases there are only 1 or 2 competitors. NW has competition not only from another dnd licensed mmo (even if I don't care for that one) and every single other magic and swords fantasy mmo on the planet, of which there are myriad. NW is keeping up ok at the moment but there is far far more churn than I'm used to seeing in titles. This level of churn works at the moment but I don't see it as being sustainable. The game will continue for a while, but looking at the say five year mark, I see major problems ahead without some major changes. It doesn't have to be raids, they're just an easy method to accomplish a big part of it.
Good HRs can outDPS CWs in single target quite easily as well, at equivalent gear levels.