More challenging? Why not, but when you have to kill five daily dragons in five places every day for 55 days just to get a boon, a challenge is quite unwanted. What would be nice: a choice. Either you complete a 55-day grind of separate weak dragons, or you complete a 55-day grind of epic battle with all the five dragons at the same time.
The new dungeon has nothing challenging, it's either being killed in one hit or monsters are a passive piece of meat with legs just begging to be killed.
Why is it not a challenge to have to watch your stamina meter and time your dodges in order to avoid being one-shot by adds and/or being chain proned by environmental hazards? I don't understand why you don't consider that "challenging". I certainly do, anyway.
More challenging? Why not, but when you have to kill five daily dragons in five places every day for 55 days just to get a boon, a challenge is quite unwanted. What would be nice: a choice. Either you complete a 55-day grind of separate weak dragons, or you complete a 55-day grind of epic battle with all the five dragons at the same time.
I'd be in for that. SCALE the content. It seems 100% of the content being put out now are ignoring the hardcore or upper tier players
Castle Never was historically your most successful dungeon. Why do you think that is?
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bajornorbertMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 272Arc User
Why is it not a challenge to have to watch your stamina meter and time your dodges in order to avoid being one-shot by adds and/or being chain proned by environmental hazards? I don't understand why you don't consider that "challenging". I certainly do, anyway.
Mobs that hit for an insane amount of damage, against which the only real defense is to have 95% DR and a lot of HP, is not challenging. Being CCd by an invisible force is not challenging. Being chain CC'd to death, raised by soulforged, just to be chain CCd to death again, w/o even having time to react, is not challenging. Challenging content makes you think, makes you find solutions to solve the problem, not pray to the RNG god, that you won't run out of stamina when the Fire Scorpion hits you for almost 1m damage, or to avoid the invisible forces that CC you to death.
For eg. back in the days CWs used to actually control the mobs and used the terrain / dungeon design to their advantage, but some said that's cheating (because repel should not be used to push mobs over ledges, it should instead be used to push mobs away messing up everyone's rotation), devs listened, added a bunch of invisible walls to every dungeon, and turned the CW into the DPS Wizard we see now.
Mobs that hit for an insane amount of damage, against which the only real defense is to have 95% DR and a lot of HP, is not challenging. Being CCd by an invisible force is not challenging. Being chain CC'd to death, raised by soulforged, just to be chain CCd to death again, w/o even having time to react, is not challenging. Challenging content makes you think, makes you find solutions to solve the problem, not pray to the RNG god, that you won't run out of stamina when the Fire Scorpion hits you for almost 1m damage, or to avoid the invisible forces that CC you to death.
But stamina drain is not subject to RNG. You get to decide whether to use stamina to dodge or not.
What I like about Lostmauth, is that EVEN THOUGH the boss AOE follows a predictable pattern, and EVEN THOUGH you know what is coming next, there is just so much of it going on that you cannot possibly dodge it all, and so you have to decide what to take and what you have to avoid. In my mind THAT is the challenge. Your gear won't save you because pretty much no one has 95% DR and zillions of HP to be able to just tank ALL that damage.
For eg. back in the days CWs used to actually control the mobs and used the terrain / dungeon design to their advantage, but some said that's cheating (because repel should not be used to push mobs over ledges, it should instead be used to push mobs away messing up everyone's rotation), devs listened, added a bunch of invisible walls to every dungeon, and turned the CW into the DPS Wizard we see now.
Really? You actually liked it when CWs were expected to repel mobs off ledges all the time? As a CW I hated it. First there was hardly ever any prior expectation on what the CW was expected to do - repel, or not repel? So you suffer a 50/50 chance of being yelled at by your group (and possibly get kicked/have someone ragequit) if you decided to start gathering mobs to repel them when the other team members didn't want to do that. Second, while I didn't think it was cheating to push mobs off ledges, I just thought it was dumb. I'm happy as a CW to serve in a support role and NOT be a DPS Wizard, and gather up mobs and put them all in one place for the rest of my party to kill. But I'd much rather that the party just kill them instead of asking me to push them around and risk that they get stuck in the terrain where they can possibly bug out and prevent the party from opening the next door, or in a place like Spellplague, we can't kill the last Gatekeeper to enable the door to be opened because the pushing left him on an inaccessible spot that nobody can get to or target. I was always relieved when the party decided to not push mobs.
I will be happy to do Spellplague or Pirate King with you the pre-mod1 "old way" when CW had Repel on tab and pushed mobs off ledges. (Once or twice, anyway.) And then you can tell me whether you think that is fun or not. I'm willing to bet that you would just find it frustrating instead.
I watched your video and I didn't get the references to the other games so I don't understand the examples that the narrator used when referring to challenging vs. punishing content. What would it mean in the context of this game? Others have offered scenarios like "oh put a bunch of deadly traps that a TR has to disarm" or "bosses that are immune to physical damage that CWs must defeat". This sounds like an interesting idea but I don't know if I would classify it as "challenging"; instead it sounds more like requiring different classes in dungeons just for the sake of requiring different classes. I don't see what is "challenging" about that if parties *must* carry along TRs or CWs (or any class, really) into dungeons. Personally I think a dungeon should have some non-negligible probability of successful completion if attempted by a party of any composition. That doesn't mean that every party should have the *same* probability of completion, just that it is *doable* by any party. So if we go with the "deadly traps" idea, then maybe something like "the party can either wander through the minefield of deadly traps that would be really handy for a TR to disarm, OR the party can wander through the corridor of 10,000,000 adds that they have to defeat instead". So parties with no TR can try to kill the million adds or take their chances in the minefield. But in neither case is a TR *required* for completion.
Mobs that hit for an insane amount of damage, against which the only real defense is to have 95% DR and a lot of HP, is not challenging. Being CCd by an invisible force is not challenging. Being chain CC'd to death, raised by soulforged, just to be chain CCd to death again, w/o even having time to react, is not challenging. Challenging content makes you think, makes you find solutions to solve the problem, not pray to the RNG god, that you won't run out of stamina when the Fire Scorpion hits you for almost 1m damage, or to avoid the invisible forces that CC you to death.
For eg. back in the days CWs used to actually control the mobs and used the terrain / dungeon design to their advantage, but some said that's cheating (because repel should not be used to push mobs over ledges, it should instead be used to push mobs away messing up everyone's rotation), devs listened, added a bunch of invisible walls to every dungeon, and turned the CW into the DPS Wizard we see now.
Nice video!, I agree about everthing he says, I will post that on the Original Post so more people can see this.
1. Make currency tab in inventory shared between all characters on account. You can already transfer a lot of the currencies from one character to another. This change would affect things like seals and campaign currencies, so if I want to grind IWD rep on my HR and buy boons for my DC, I could do that.
2. Combine currencies. It's bad to force people to do content that they may not like, before they can get to the content that they like. Dungeons, campaigns, PVP should have some common currencies. You know, nobody likes getting some PVP guy in their PVE party, or vice versa.
3. Increase the experience point gain from dungeons and skirmishes, so those who want to level doing that content have that option. More options for leveling equals more fun.
4. Introduce a PVE survival challenge. Have a party face wave after wave of progressively more difficult enemies, until they hit some death limit or fail some time limit. This guarantees that every player, however well-geared, can face challenging content.
5. Improve resource nodes. Give each player a cooldown for using each node type, and make it so that nodes do not despawn when used.
6. Improve the Foundry. Allow players to earn more currencies (as in Suggestion #2, above) from foundries. Allow foundry designers to increase the difficulty level or add boss monsters. Allow designers to place resource nodes (after changes in Suggestion #5).
7. Limit which dungeons 60's can queue for each day. Fewer dungeons to choose from should mean shorter queues.
8. Get rid of quests. Campaigns should work like the Siege of Neverwinter zone, where players bounce from one heroic encounter to the next. And no daily limit on campaign progress. If you want to spend all day in Sharandar or IWD, you should be able to do that.
I watched your video and I didn't get the references to the other games so I don't understand the examples that the narrator used when referring to challenging vs. punishing content. What would it mean in the context of this game?
Difficulty in MMO group content comes from requirements such as flawless coordination between team members; learning the phases of an encounter and what exactly your char is supposed to do, what the boss abilities are and how exactly you are supposed to deal with them; performing during clutch moments such as a boss ability that leaves you with 5% HP, and you need to survive from there on etc.; improving personal performance such as DPS/HPS for example to the point where it is considered competitive.
There needs to be "punishment" for failure, but in MMOs it doesn't mean much, mostly just some loss of time and repeating the fight, nothing more. So basically the harshest penalty is "I cannot complete raid/kill the boss", and it's not supposed to be incredibly hard and depending only on YOU.
As the video puts it remarkably well, a good design means the developer gives you the tools to beat the content. You just need to learn to use them properly and exercise until you become skilled.
However, since this is an MMO, the biggest challenge should come from using these tools together, as a team, and failing as a whole because individuals are unable to perform.
6. Improve the Foundry. Allow players to earn more currencies (as in Suggestion #2, above) from foundries. Allow foundry designers to increase the difficulty level or add boss monsters. Allow designers to place resource nodes (after changes in Suggestion #5).
Yes please. Foundry tokens have been suggested already and would be nice, and we all especially want bosses in the Foundry. Increasing the difficulty can be done by simply adding more mobs, but I understand what you mean. I would really like it if Traps could be made a viable threat in addition to monsters, and if we could make individual mobs/encounters more or less threatening that the standard versions.
8. Get rid of quests. Campaigns should work like the Siege of Neverwinter zone, where players bounce from one heroic encounter to the next. And no daily limit on campaign progress. If you want to spend all day in Sharandar or IWD, you should be able to do that.
I agree with no daily limit, but not to getting rid of quests. Getting rid of the CURRENT quests maybe, but only because I want them to be replaced with more interesting quests that are actually worth my time. Quests that have involve a goal more complex than "kill 50 Cultists" or "Bring back 10 Cult documents." No repeated daily quests, unless they are open-ended, like "complete 2 quests/objectives" or something like that.
I want my quests to be more like "Infiltrate the Cult and stop their Sacrificial Rites." First you have to use stealth to follow some cult members to their base, then overpower them and steal their uniforms. Or else realize it is too well guarded, so you have to find a secret entrance. Then fight your way through the map. Before the boss is a magical barrier with a riddle or puzzle you must solve (maybe set randomly from a few possibilities on entrance), maybe by piecing together clues found throughout the map. Then you have to fight the boss, before the innocent victims are killed in the cult's blood ritual (and actually have a chance of failing).
I want something like this to be the norm, not just the culminating end dungeon.
Difficulty in MMO group content comes from requirements such as flawless coordination between team members; learning the phases of an encounter and what exactly your char is supposed to do, what the boss abilities are and how exactly you are supposed to deal with them; performing during clutch moments such as a boss ability that leaves you with 5% HP, and you need to survive from there on etc.; improving personal performance such as DPS/HPS for example to the point where it is considered competitive.
There needs to be "punishment" for failure, but in MMOs it doesn't mean much, mostly just some loss of time and repeating the fight, nothing more. So basically the harshest penalty is "I cannot complete raid/kill the boss", and it's not supposed to be incredibly hard and depending only on YOU.
As the video puts it remarkably well, a good design means the developer gives you the tools to beat the content. You just need to learn to use them properly and exercise until you become skilled.
However, since this is an MMO, the biggest challenge should come from using these tools together, as a team, and failing as a whole because individuals are unable to perform.
No he's right to some extent (and you're right too when you say the game shouldn't reward suckers for being bad too). In lair of lostmauth you litteraly have npcs killing you fron range in one hit. No tell. No mercy. You're suddenly dead. That's not a challenge, that's bad design. It's one of the ranged npc and i still have to figure out which one it is.
The real issue with this dungeon is also that we never feel threatened. We don't have the feeling we can fail at any moment and have to start over. It's a ghost town. It's EMPTY. There are few npcs but even when there's one killing you in one hit you know your team won't wipe. And bosses have so little hit points that starting over doesn't feel like a penalty. When i do CN without a scourge warlock and their bugged TT cleaning the room in a second, I still feel threatened, in the shadowfell, during the dracolich. That's a felling we don't have in the new content.
I've played IWD quite a lot lately and I've discovered some truly good challenging content, unfortunately it's either zerged by 3 times the required numbers of players or not played at all but when you can do raid the raiders or the beholder with 4 other players these things are fun. It's really sad they didn't make any dungeon off IWD because some npcs are amazing: bolters, arcanists, a lot of small melee minions hitting hard, shamans, even bears and yetis are interesting. You take a lot of sustained damage, they do a lot of damage but there's no way they kill you in one hit. You'll just die to your own inability to use the right spells at the right time or dodge when it's required. That's good design! If only we could have such npcs hitting as hard and having as many HPs as the encounters one in a lvl 65 5 players instance (I'm not talking about the Kessell's joke which falls under the pathetic and unchallenging side compared to some HEs) that would be amazing.
Also if you add videos from extra credits you better add this one too, it's far more on topic than "the game is punishing right now" because it's wrong, the game isn't punishing it's rewarding everyone, good and bad players, equally, with no incentive to get better.
bajornorbertMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 272Arc User
edited September 2014
What made CN so good, that it was challenging, but at the same time rewarding. If you managed to do CN 4/4 you've got some epic loot, but if you wasn't able to do it, you could still do CN 1/4 or 2/4 and get rewarded with useful and sellable loot. That's were the new content fails. It doesn't matter if you're a good player, a bad player or a newbie, you'll be rewarded with the same thing ... nothing. Why? Because instead of continuing to provide challenging content for everyone, they switched to providing shorter & less challenging dungeons, and to avoid overwhelming the market with goods, they switched to a punishing RNG. As of now, it's probably easier to find a good PvE HR, than get a boon book from SoT or LoL.
Module 4, imo, is the worst module so far. I understand that they had a deadline to hold, but i hope both them and WotC sees now, that rushing content will just drive players away from this game.
Please start to make CN-like dungeons once again. I'm not asking for the same amount of mobs, cause that benefits only CWs, i'm asking for content that is challenging, takes longer than 10 mins, and is rewarding. Let Neverwinter have a dungeon, once again, that can't be completed by the average casual, yet would still reward them for doing partial runs. And no, T1 equipment is not a reward.
I would like if the made a CN-like dungeon (obviously, it should be a lot harder and challenging that the actuall CN) with 1 campfire on the begining, so you would actually want to organize to complete the dungeon, like: "Ok, please, be behind the GF, cleric watch out for his HP", etc... not the thing that we have now that is basically: "Ok, run until the boss and wipe" or CWs and HRs running a marathon cause the trash mobs are just trash.
I would like if the made a CN-like dungeon (obviously, it should be a lot harder and challenging that the actuall CN) with 1 campfire on the begining, so you would actually want to organize to complete the dungeon, like: "Ok, please, be behind the GF, cleric watch out for his HP", etc... not the thing that we have now that is basically: "Ok, run until the boss and wipe" or CWs and HRs running a marathon cause the trash mobs are just trash.
Comments
Why is it not a challenge to have to watch your stamina meter and time your dodges in order to avoid being one-shot by adds and/or being chain proned by environmental hazards? I don't understand why you don't consider that "challenging". I certainly do, anyway.
I'd be in for that. SCALE the content. It seems 100% of the content being put out now are ignoring the hardcore or upper tier players
Castle Never was historically your most successful dungeon. Why do you think that is?
Mobs that hit for an insane amount of damage, against which the only real defense is to have 95% DR and a lot of HP, is not challenging. Being CCd by an invisible force is not challenging. Being chain CC'd to death, raised by soulforged, just to be chain CCd to death again, w/o even having time to react, is not challenging. Challenging content makes you think, makes you find solutions to solve the problem, not pray to the RNG god, that you won't run out of stamina when the Fire Scorpion hits you for almost 1m damage, or to avoid the invisible forces that CC you to death.
I highly recommend the following video to everyone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs. Sadly, Neverwinter fails in every aspect.
For eg. back in the days CWs used to actually control the mobs and used the terrain / dungeon design to their advantage, but some said that's cheating (because repel should not be used to push mobs over ledges, it should instead be used to push mobs away messing up everyone's rotation), devs listened, added a bunch of invisible walls to every dungeon, and turned the CW into the DPS Wizard we see now.
But stamina drain is not subject to RNG. You get to decide whether to use stamina to dodge or not.
What I like about Lostmauth, is that EVEN THOUGH the boss AOE follows a predictable pattern, and EVEN THOUGH you know what is coming next, there is just so much of it going on that you cannot possibly dodge it all, and so you have to decide what to take and what you have to avoid. In my mind THAT is the challenge. Your gear won't save you because pretty much no one has 95% DR and zillions of HP to be able to just tank ALL that damage.
Really? You actually liked it when CWs were expected to repel mobs off ledges all the time? As a CW I hated it. First there was hardly ever any prior expectation on what the CW was expected to do - repel, or not repel? So you suffer a 50/50 chance of being yelled at by your group (and possibly get kicked/have someone ragequit) if you decided to start gathering mobs to repel them when the other team members didn't want to do that. Second, while I didn't think it was cheating to push mobs off ledges, I just thought it was dumb. I'm happy as a CW to serve in a support role and NOT be a DPS Wizard, and gather up mobs and put them all in one place for the rest of my party to kill. But I'd much rather that the party just kill them instead of asking me to push them around and risk that they get stuck in the terrain where they can possibly bug out and prevent the party from opening the next door, or in a place like Spellplague, we can't kill the last Gatekeeper to enable the door to be opened because the pushing left him on an inaccessible spot that nobody can get to or target. I was always relieved when the party decided to not push mobs.
I will be happy to do Spellplague or Pirate King with you the pre-mod1 "old way" when CW had Repel on tab and pushed mobs off ledges. (Once or twice, anyway.) And then you can tell me whether you think that is fun or not. I'm willing to bet that you would just find it frustrating instead.
I watched your video and I didn't get the references to the other games so I don't understand the examples that the narrator used when referring to challenging vs. punishing content. What would it mean in the context of this game? Others have offered scenarios like "oh put a bunch of deadly traps that a TR has to disarm" or "bosses that are immune to physical damage that CWs must defeat". This sounds like an interesting idea but I don't know if I would classify it as "challenging"; instead it sounds more like requiring different classes in dungeons just for the sake of requiring different classes. I don't see what is "challenging" about that if parties *must* carry along TRs or CWs (or any class, really) into dungeons. Personally I think a dungeon should have some non-negligible probability of successful completion if attempted by a party of any composition. That doesn't mean that every party should have the *same* probability of completion, just that it is *doable* by any party. So if we go with the "deadly traps" idea, then maybe something like "the party can either wander through the minefield of deadly traps that would be really handy for a TR to disarm, OR the party can wander through the corridor of 10,000,000 adds that they have to defeat instead". So parties with no TR can try to kill the million adds or take their chances in the minefield. But in neither case is a TR *required* for completion.
Nice video!, I agree about everthing he says, I will post that on the Original Post so more people can see this.
1. Make currency tab in inventory shared between all characters on account. You can already transfer a lot of the currencies from one character to another. This change would affect things like seals and campaign currencies, so if I want to grind IWD rep on my HR and buy boons for my DC, I could do that.
2. Combine currencies. It's bad to force people to do content that they may not like, before they can get to the content that they like. Dungeons, campaigns, PVP should have some common currencies. You know, nobody likes getting some PVP guy in their PVE party, or vice versa.
3. Increase the experience point gain from dungeons and skirmishes, so those who want to level doing that content have that option. More options for leveling equals more fun.
4. Introduce a PVE survival challenge. Have a party face wave after wave of progressively more difficult enemies, until they hit some death limit or fail some time limit. This guarantees that every player, however well-geared, can face challenging content.
5. Improve resource nodes. Give each player a cooldown for using each node type, and make it so that nodes do not despawn when used.
6. Improve the Foundry. Allow players to earn more currencies (as in Suggestion #2, above) from foundries. Allow foundry designers to increase the difficulty level or add boss monsters. Allow designers to place resource nodes (after changes in Suggestion #5).
7. Limit which dungeons 60's can queue for each day. Fewer dungeons to choose from should mean shorter queues.
8. Get rid of quests. Campaigns should work like the Siege of Neverwinter zone, where players bounce from one heroic encounter to the next. And no daily limit on campaign progress. If you want to spend all day in Sharandar or IWD, you should be able to do that.
Difficulty in MMO group content comes from requirements such as flawless coordination between team members; learning the phases of an encounter and what exactly your char is supposed to do, what the boss abilities are and how exactly you are supposed to deal with them; performing during clutch moments such as a boss ability that leaves you with 5% HP, and you need to survive from there on etc.; improving personal performance such as DPS/HPS for example to the point where it is considered competitive.
There needs to be "punishment" for failure, but in MMOs it doesn't mean much, mostly just some loss of time and repeating the fight, nothing more. So basically the harshest penalty is "I cannot complete raid/kill the boss", and it's not supposed to be incredibly hard and depending only on YOU.
As the video puts it remarkably well, a good design means the developer gives you the tools to beat the content. You just need to learn to use them properly and exercise until you become skilled.
However, since this is an MMO, the biggest challenge should come from using these tools together, as a team, and failing as a whole because individuals are unable to perform.
I agree with no daily limit, but not to getting rid of quests. Getting rid of the CURRENT quests maybe, but only because I want them to be replaced with more interesting quests that are actually worth my time. Quests that have involve a goal more complex than "kill 50 Cultists" or "Bring back 10 Cult documents." No repeated daily quests, unless they are open-ended, like "complete 2 quests/objectives" or something like that.
I want my quests to be more like "Infiltrate the Cult and stop their Sacrificial Rites." First you have to use stealth to follow some cult members to their base, then overpower them and steal their uniforms. Or else realize it is too well guarded, so you have to find a secret entrance. Then fight your way through the map. Before the boss is a magical barrier with a riddle or puzzle you must solve (maybe set randomly from a few possibilities on entrance), maybe by piecing together clues found throughout the map. Then you have to fight the boss, before the innocent victims are killed in the cult's blood ritual (and actually have a chance of failing).
I want something like this to be the norm, not just the culminating end dungeon.
No he's right to some extent (and you're right too when you say the game shouldn't reward suckers for being bad too). In lair of lostmauth you litteraly have npcs killing you fron range in one hit. No tell. No mercy. You're suddenly dead. That's not a challenge, that's bad design. It's one of the ranged npc and i still have to figure out which one it is.
The real issue with this dungeon is also that we never feel threatened. We don't have the feeling we can fail at any moment and have to start over. It's a ghost town. It's EMPTY. There are few npcs but even when there's one killing you in one hit you know your team won't wipe. And bosses have so little hit points that starting over doesn't feel like a penalty. When i do CN without a scourge warlock and their bugged TT cleaning the room in a second, I still feel threatened, in the shadowfell, during the dracolich. That's a felling we don't have in the new content.
I've played IWD quite a lot lately and I've discovered some truly good challenging content, unfortunately it's either zerged by 3 times the required numbers of players or not played at all but when you can do raid the raiders or the beholder with 4 other players these things are fun. It's really sad they didn't make any dungeon off IWD because some npcs are amazing: bolters, arcanists, a lot of small melee minions hitting hard, shamans, even bears and yetis are interesting. You take a lot of sustained damage, they do a lot of damage but there's no way they kill you in one hit. You'll just die to your own inability to use the right spells at the right time or dodge when it's required. That's good design! If only we could have such npcs hitting as hard and having as many HPs as the encounters one in a lvl 65 5 players instance (I'm not talking about the Kessell's joke which falls under the pathetic and unchallenging side compared to some HEs) that would be amazing.
Also if you add videos from extra credits you better add this one too, it's far more on topic than "the game is punishing right now" because it's wrong, the game isn't punishing it's rewarding everyone, good and bad players, equally, with no incentive to get better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFzFsHc75U
Module 4, imo, is the worst module so far. I understand that they had a deadline to hold, but i hope both them and WotC sees now, that rushing content will just drive players away from this game.
Please start to make CN-like dungeons once again. I'm not asking for the same amount of mobs, cause that benefits only CWs, i'm asking for content that is challenging, takes longer than 10 mins, and is rewarding. Let Neverwinter have a dungeon, once again, that can't be completed by the average casual, yet would still reward them for doing partial runs. And no, T1 equipment is not a reward.
I agree a 100%.