But you aren't ill, this is a GAME, nobody's life or health is in danger if you don't kill 10 dragons a day.
You made it deliberately more annoying for yourself by choosing to kill so many dragons. Killing 1 or 2 a day? Not so bad. Killing 10? That is your own fault.
He has to kill those dragons eventually. Dailies and heroic encounters are not fun for a lot of people. It is not his fault for having painful mechanics and dailies. It is not his fault for gating boons behind RNG and these dailies.
He either kills 10 a day and has an awful time for a month or he has to consistently log in more days and kill the same amount of dragons. Either way, it is a painful experience that a lot of players prefer not to go through in module 5.
People level to 60 to play endgame. Distinct PVP modes, varied PVP maps, rewarding dungeons, rewarding skirmishes, raiding, farming random stuff that pays out decently etc.....
They do not get to 60 to continually grind dailies. If Cryptic wants to keep making dailies because "players find it fun" then do not gate boons behind it, just gate some fashion reward, how about about gate an exclusive title behind it "Master of Dailies" or something to that effect.
Then we'll see how many players will waste their time torturing themselves with it.
This whole attitude, however, treats the game like it is some sort of chore. It isn't. It's a GAME.
If you are torturing yourself with killing 10 dragons a day when you don't want to, then I have to question whether or not you really consider Neverwinter to be a *game* or not.
I suppose you think that when a new module comes out, that you shouldn't have to do any dailies at all?
Then how would you gate new content? Because an answer of "content shouldn't be gated at all, just let me consume it all in 1 day" is not a reasonable answer.
The game itself isn't a chore, the dailies are the chores due to them being repetitive and unrewarding.
Again, powerful boons that affect dungeons, any PVE and PVP being gated behind these boring dailies are the problem.
I will make the suggestion again that they gate fashion content or how about a title if they are going to make dailies this tedious.
Why are the goals of the PVP campaign only hold a fashion set, a title and PVP-exclusive boons? Because lots of people don't like it. Because lots of people don't play this game for PVP. Well guess what, lots of people don't play this game for dailies. If that's the case, dailies should only also hold boons that affect dailies (such as getting 2x cult secrets per mission boon).
You can use the dread ring campaign as the template for future modules if you HAD to gate endgame. It was reasonable, it was more fun and it was less taxing.
Most of the content they offer is about doing chores; run to Sharandar or Dread Ring, and every day they have three different tasks for you. Chores, that need to be repeated endlessly. Some of the quest givers even lampshade this fact; one guy in Sharandar points out he's long given up hope of exterminating the fomorians, but if you "slay a couple today," he'll reward you.
More seriously, you need to stop blaming the victims, as you keep doing in thread after thread. The players aren't responsible for putting the content together in this way. The problem isn't that the content can't be fun, the problem is that they've put it together in a way that makes players repeat the same content over and over for far too little reward compared to the time spent. It's game design bent on exploiting addiction and the time players have already invested in the game.
One of the key components of a game, as most people perceive it, is that they're supposed to be a fun, rewarding experience. The overwhelming feedback so far this module has been that it doesn't meet those standards. Of course, there could be a vast, silent majority out there happily enjoying themselves. Or there could be a vast, silent majority that left the game without a word.
It wouldn't really take much effort on their part to fix most of the issues that players have either. That they don't is likely at least somewhat tied to their economic model.
I think you were able to articulate a better response than I did so I'll just agree with this and go with your post
I'm only blaming the "victims" who CHOOSE to make more work for themselves than absolutely necessary.
I'm sorry, but at no time is it required for game progression to kill five dragons a day, let alone TEN.
I have little sympathy for anyone who complains that they "MUST" kill 5 dragons a day. They don't. Nobody does. If you don't want to kill five dragons a day, THEN DON'T KILL FIVE DRAGONS A DAY.
I think there are several issues at play here:
1. How should new content be gated? I asked this question previously, in another thread, but all I got was complaints like "no more dailies!" Okay, fine, you don't like dailies. But Cryptic is not going to spend 3 months developing new content and have it all released at once so that the hardcore players can consume it all in 1 day and then spend the next 3 months bored, and/or eventually leave the game. Having NO gate on new content AT ALL, I think, is an unreasonable request. Someone else (I forget who) suggested that new content might be gated similarly to how the PVP campaign is structured, in terms of tasks completed rather than mandatory daily quests. I think that is a good way to approach it in the future, but there still has to be some sort of structure in place to prevent the hardcore players from burning through it all in 1 day.
2. If content is going to be gated by dailies, how should the dailies be structured? The Cryptic formula has been (a) simple repetitive quests, and more recently, (b) heroic encounters.
2a. One complaint has been that the simple repetitive quests are boring and dull. I agree. They are boring and dull. I suppose, instead of having just 2 or 3 options for daily quests in a zone, there could be 20 or 30 options. That would spice things up a bit, I suppose. A larger question might be if these quests ought to be so simple in the first place. Maybe a daily quest should be a truly hard encounter requiring teamwork. I can see how this would be fun, but it would not be so great for casual players who have to find a quality team in their limited playtime every day.
2b. I do think that the heroic encounters need a lot of work, in terms of a functioning loot table that drops more than just dragon coins all the time, encounter participation guidelines that aren't so vague and that don't encourage pathological and selfish behavior among the participants, and better HE timing so people don't stand around bored all the time.
3. Finally, once all of the content has been unlocked in one way or another, what should be the capstone experience of that module of content? A lot of people here seem to want hardcore 10/20/30-person raids. I wouldn't support that, I think there are games that already cater to such an audience who want that type of raiding experience. A lot of people also want to be a dungeon with good farmable BoE loot, with the understanding that a really tough dungeon would offer high-end loot. I think that would be an excellent addition, as long as the new loot isn't so ridiculously OP that it creates a gigantic imbalance between the upper-end players who can successfully complete this dungeon, and all of the other players who aren't yet at that stage of character development.
Most of the content they offer is about doing chores; run to Sharandar or Dread Ring, and every day they have three different tasks for you. Chores, that need to be repeated endlessly. Some of the quest givers even lampshade this fact; one guy in Sharandar points out he's long given up hope of exterminating the fomorians, but if you "slay a couple today," he'll reward you.
You are right, when you are first gearing up and starting to get your first set of boons, they are very chore-like. I think they could be spiced up a bit and not turned into such monotonous tasks. HOWEVER, in the case of Sharandar, once all three zones are unlocked, you don't need to do all three sets of quests in each of the three zones every day. At that point you only need the sparks, and a few of the other blade/seedling things which one can easily pick up over the weekend or something. It's not a daily task needed.
Could the quests be made more enjoyable? Yes.
Do players who complain when doing more work than necessary be listened to? No.
More seriously, you need to stop blaming the victims, as you keep doing in thread after thread. The players aren't responsible for putting the content together in this way. The problem isn't that the content can't be fun, the problem is that they've put it together in a way that makes players repeat the same content over and over for far too little reward compared to the time spent. It's game design bent on exploiting addiction and the time players have already invested in the game.
One of the key components of a game, as most people perceive it, is that they're supposed to be a fun, rewarding experience. The overwhelming feedback so far this module has been that it doesn't meet those standards. Of course, there could be a vast, silent majority out there happily enjoying themselves. Or there could be a vast, silent majority that left the game without a word.
Right now, the problem with the dailies is that if you do them, they consume too much time that could be devoted to doing things you enjoy more in the game. At the same time, they've reduced the enjoyability of some of those activities too, like PvP. And if you don't do your dailies in a timely manner, new content with more grind is likely to appear before you finish, which means you'll be getting a growing backlog of unfinished content. It also prevents you from reasonably doing the content on more than one or two characters, which kills off the ability to have additional characters somewhat follow along the game progression. I played more characters in the past than I do now, because the grind to keep them up to date was less onerous.
See my other post on this matter.
My CW has long since finished getting the boons from Sharandar, Dread Ring and IWD, and I might take my CW back to those zones maybe once or twice a week. That means I'm missing out on sparks, Fey blessings, blink dogs, Eye artifacts, black ice and Yeti companions, but that's my choice. I'm choosing to do what I perceive to be more fun, even though I have unfinished dailies in these zones that I pass up on every single day. Do you do every single daily in every single Level 60 zone on every single character? Or do you make choices? Why can't others see that it's the same thing with the ToD quests? If you choose to kill 5 dragons a day, great! If not, great! You are deciding what is more important for you. The only downside is that you won't get your 4th and 5th boons as rapidly as everyone else.
But I think there are two larger complaints: one, that people just don't like the dailies at all, period; and two, that the 4th and 5th boons shouldn't be gated by such an enormous number of dailies.
In response to the first complaint, then I would ask how you think new content ought to be gated, if not by dailies. I'm totally open to suggestions too, because yeah, a lot of the dailies *are* dull and boring.
In response to the second complaint, then I agree, it's a bit excessive. But I also think that perhaps the Dread Ring model of boon acquisition (which everyone NOW praises, but didn't at the time), in which players only had to complete one mini-lair per day for a relatively short number of days in order to achieve some really powerful boons, was perhaps too easy and has led at least in part to the current state where people have been able to get too powerful too quickly and make the content too easy.
It wouldn't really take much effort on their part to fix most of the issues that players have either. That they don't is likely at least somewhat tied to their economic model. Let SoT and LoL drop a few cult secrets and dragon sigils with each run (increase the cost of some other campaign paraphernalia like Dragon's Hoard enchants a bit to compensate). Shorten the timers between dragon HEs to like 5-10 minutes. Increase the drop rates of certain other items in the new dungeon and skirmish to make them feel more rewarding to run. Make items like the black ice gloves and main hand BoE, so people with bad luck with the RNG can get the pieces on the AH. Make more refining items drop from boss encounters and chests in dungeons. A few small touches like that would help a lot.
I think these are all reasonable suggestions. I don't agree with all of them (the 5-10 minute dragon timer is a bit problematic because it means that a party of lowbie players will almost certainly fail any dragon HE) but I would agree that having cult secrets or dragon sigils drop from Dragon HE's or Skirmish/Dungeon chests would be a step in the right direction.
But at least you are offering something constructive. Most of what I see around here is "I HATE DAILIES". I guess it is just human nature to complain a lot without offering much in the way of something constructive. But it's made the forums darn near unreadable for me nowadays.
I have little sympathy for anyone who complains that they "MUST" kill 5 dragons a day. They don't. Nobody does. If you don't want to kill five dragons a day, THEN DON'T KILL FIVE DRAGONS A DAY.
I get this might sound like a good solution for you, but it's not. We have build up big accounts over the months and want a fair chance to get our ALTs through the campaign before the next content hits. Should we do way more than you on your single CW? Absolutely. Should we not be able to get our chars through the campaign in a reasonable time? Absolutely not.
Someone else said it best: I don't need to kill five dragons a day, but I have to kill X dragons eventually to get X chars through ToD. So I'm doing dailies all day any day because I hope at some point I'll be having time for something else...
Btw.: This is exactly how Mod 3 unfolded for me. In the first weeks I literally couldn't do anything else, but it didn't feel as grindy. It was one daily HE/300 BI on every char. Nice and smooth. I don't even mind not having BI gear for every character, because If the build warrants it, I know eventually I'll get them.
ToD is not smooth and I'm absolutely positive that it'll take like forever to get the artifact stuff and everything refined...
That Sharandar comparison illustrates what is exactly the issue here. Once you're working the final two boons there, your workload is relatively light by comparison to ToD. The game didn't make you run the daily mini-dungeon and each quest in each zone each day to get full progression (which would be nine different quests each day, plus the sparks).
Of course, you can *choose* not to progress as far as you can -- but then that just goes to show that there's something wrong with the content. Why *shouldn't* people be able to make a full day's worth of progress each day?
Okay, stop right there for a moment.
I see "a full day's worth of progression" as (1) the Common Cause quest (2) killing 1 dragon (3) doing the 1 other non-dragon quest. Everything else is optional extra.
For example, suppose Sharandar quest progression had been set up such that you could turn in 3 crystals for 10 sparks, just like now, but you ALSO had the OPTION of turning in 3 seeds/charms/blades for 10 sparks as well.
Would you see this as "OMG I have to do 10 quests per day"? Or would you see this as "I only have to do the 1 quest per day (crystals for sparks) but I may do an additional 9 *if I so choose* if I want to advance faster"?
That is what is happening with Mod 4. It is like Sharandar, except you can advance faster if you choose by killing more dragons in a day.
Now, should it require so many sigils and secrets to get the last two boons? No, I don't think so. Should the sigils/secrets be available in other ways? Yeah I think so.
But everybody is treating this *option* to advance further as some sort of de facto requirement. It's not.
Should the ability to do so be limited only to those with a lot of time? Not very friendly to casual players or people who'd like to do other things. If the intention was that the boons should take longer to unlock, the right way to handle that would be to require more pages of arcane lore (i.e. spark equivalents) and fewer dragon sigils/cult secrets. Or design it in such a way that taking a longer time to complete it reduces the *total* amount of work required to do so (as opposed to the total amount of work being a fixed quantity).
Not if you wanted to give people the OPTION to unlock the boons sooner.
They should *absolutely* be listened to, because that feedback does have real value for the producers.
Mindless complaints about optional work have no value.
The difference is that stuff like Fey Blessing enchantments is gear and highly optional. Boons represent real and tangible progress for a character. You can slot different types of gear. Boons are a permanent addition once acquired (you can respec the chosen boons, of course, but you keep the "slot" forever). Why should people be able to get their boons in a timely manner? Because they represent a timely sense of progress.
We do get our boons in a timely manner. And if you want to rush the process, you have the option to do so.
And THE POINT IS, we are not chained to dailies. Do you do every single Level 60 daily every single day? Even before you had unlocked all the Mod 1-3 boons, did you faithfully do every single Sharandar/Dread Ring/IWD daily *every single day*? I know I didn't. Some days I chose to do other things that I deemed more fun than that.
More seriously, the current required pace obviously kills off the ability to progress on more than one character, which probably doesn't help people enjoy the game more. Previous modules let people progress their alts at a reasonable pace too. Module 4 took alts behind a shed and gave them a collective headshot.
I think this is one of the few legitimate complaints in the sea of mindless whining on the forums. No, it is not very alt-friendly. I think there is a lot that could be done about that, like making secrets/sigils account bound and having each quest drop more of them.
You can also look at the matter of "choice" from a different perspective. What exactly is it people are choosing?
1. They choose to do what they can to progress at the maximum possible rate, or;
2. They choose to spend a lot of time doing repetitive tasks over and over.
No I don't think that is an adequate way of framing the choice. The choice is:
1. Do I spend 1.5 hours each day killing five dragons, foregoing doing things that I would enjoy more?
or
2. Do I spend 20-30 minutes each day killing 1 dragon, and then spend the other 60-70 minutes doing things that I enjoy more?
The choice people are making is the former; the latter is a consequence of design that increases the cost of pursuing the former choice. The ideal design from a player perspective would be one where they'd offer maximum daily progression at a much lower time investment, while giving people the option to pursue the content further for additional rewards. The HEs sort of fill that function, but their drop rates are abysmal enough for people to give up attempting to farm them, and five of them are required each day to achieve a maximum rate of progression anyway.
But that's what they are doing. If you kill 1 dragon per day, you make progress. If you CHOOSE to do more, you make EXTRA progress. And with that EXTRA progress comes more chances to get gems/belts/gear. Now the drop rate in the HE's for anything other than enchants is stupidly low. I agree with that. It ought to be at least a little higher.
People don't choose to waste their time. They choose to progress. The excessive time required for progression is the issue.
It is a separate issue:
- Should new content be gated by dailies?
- If so, how should the dailies be structured?
Getting too powerful isn't a problem; the problem is that there has been a paucity of significant new content, or upgrading of existing content to keep pace. If the option to upgrade to a certain level exists, many people will pursue it. And others will follow to keep pace.
Well yeah it is a problem in a way, since Mod 2 created the expectation that powerful boons should be relatively easy to obtain, without any real use for those boons.
The dragons could still expire in 20 minutes; the point is that after a dragon is slain or its timer expires, the timer until it reappears should be greatly shortened.
Sure, that sounds like a splendid idea.
The solution to that certainly isn't to somehow fight back against all the people complaining. Most of the complaints are legitimate on some level, even if you feel that people should adopt a different approach to their gaming style; the content has serious issues regardless. What you're saying does have merit in the sense that people make choices of their own; the issue is that the game took a very strong, sudden shift towards invalidating the type of choices that were possible in prior modules (i.e. the choice to make maximum campaign progress each day became far more of a burden than it used to be, while the content frequently requires people to sit idle and wait for stuff to happen, or to spend very significant chunks of time in transit between areas).
You make some good and valid complaints about how ToD is structured. I agree that the dragon timers should be adjusted. I agree that progress is not very alt-friendly. Where I fundamentally disagree is the expectation that a character's "minimum progression" should correspond to "maximum possible progression" of killing 5 dragons per day.
If you WANT to kill 5 dragons a day, go knock yourself out. But it's not required to do so.
Why can't people take it more slowly? Because the game format requires people to occasionally be rewarded. That's what this ultimately boils down to, I think. If boons took a minimum of 80 days to complete, but not too much time each day, and people got adequate rewards along the way, that would probably receive fewer complaints.
Oh I don't think so. People STILL complain about Sharandar, even though it behaves exactly as you describe - it takes a long time to get all the boons, and people are rewarded along the way.
Currently, you can make hundreds of runs in the skirmishes and dungeons and heroic encounters without ever seeing an artifact belt or anything else that's actually a desirable drop. Meanwhile, the game embraces several tedious and time-consuming activities. Even if you don't pursue them at maximum speed, they're still tedious and excessively time-consuming.
I agree, drop rates are pretty bad and ought to be adjusted. But that's a separate issue than "killing 5 dragons a day is a requirement".
And ultimately, the complaints will continue until people either quit the game (not good for the publisher at all), until they are answered or addressed in some way that's satisfying or at least not entirely dissatisfying, or until the moderators silence all the complaints (which certainly won't stop word of mouth elsewhere or foster the sense of having an open community). One guy telling people to play the game in a different way than they want (making full progress) to isn't going to do anything but add more fuel to the fire. The people that have a bucket of water are the developers.
I'm not telling you to play the game in a different way. Go ahead and kill 20 dragons a day on 4 different characters if you want. Or kill none at all. It doesn't bother me in the slightest.
My complaint is the misrepresentation of "killing 5 dragons a day" as a MINIMUM requirement. It is not.
Pointsman, your whole argument amounts to "Don't do 5 dragons a day for 17 days for each boon. Do 1 dragon and daily a day for 80+ days for one boon."
Nobody that I know wants to go 80 days without GAME PROGRESSION.
"Mindless complaints about optional work" is your opinion. But I would risk to say you are in the minority when it comes to MMO players in that respect as most like to see some progress for work done........especially if it happens to be doing the same thing repeatedly for months on end long after it has lost its aspect of enjoyment.
After all... people play games for fun, and if they aren't enjoying the same dragon fight day in and day out, and aren't getting any enjoyment through progression, then why would they continue to play the game? You can say these are mindless complaints, but that does nothing to make someone play a game that they find too tedious to progress through.
I can't see how these boon books are a good thing, its really poorly designed. you progress normally then bam they expect you to grind out alot of dailies for 40 days to get the last 2.
That gap is just jarring, the books drop too rarely and the progression becomes a chore.
Pointman's argument is you don't have to make it a chore, so instead of waiting for 40 days you can wait 80 days (thats still doing 2-3 dragons per day). I would have much preferred if they increased the drop rate to 5%-10% from boss only but made it BoP, so you had to do the dungeon/skirmishes to get it, but not such a bad drop rate that you had to do 100 of them.
These dailies are just far too time consuming, when i get this done for one of my characters, theres no way in hell im going to do it again for another char, my alts will just be turned into mules unless they changed this system.
Well everyone is jumping down my throat because I pointed out that minimum campaign progression in ToD is only killing 1 dragon a day, and that everyone will be able to progress if everyone only does this minimum amount. Killing 5 dragons per day is by no means mandatory. This is a fact. I'm sorry if you are uncomfortable with this, but that is the truth.
Nowhere did I say that you *shouldn't* kill more than 1 dragon per day, or try to dictate what your playstyle ought to be. Play the way you want to, and do what you feel like. But IMO don't feel *obligated* to kill all 5 in a day. (Actually, it's a bit of the reverse - people are yelling at me because I want to take my time and not feel pressured to do all 5 in a day, because - if I killed all 5 dragons per day then I'd be on the Hate Cryptic bandwagon as well? I don't know.)
Nowhere did I say that I thought requiring 100 secrets/sigils per boon, acquired *only* through dragon kills, was the best method for campaign progression. It is a bit of a chore. I would be okay with either lowering the amount, or making secrets/sigils available in other ways (boss loot or chest loot in skirmish/dungeon, for instance).
I think it is obvious why Cryptic decided to go with this whole "boon book" idea. They're going to put the books on sale in the Zen store in a few weeks or so.
Personally - that means speaking for me, and me alone, and not speaking for you, or for anyone else - I am not in a big hurry to get the 4th or 5th boons. It's not like I *need* them right away. So I will probably take my time and kill 1 or 2 dragons per day, and maybe on the weekends kill all 5 dragons in a day. Plus I just leveled up a new DC over the 2xXP weekend so that is going to occupy my time as well. And I'm not going to buy the boon books, either from AH or from Zen store. So that means, unless I get super lucky with boon book drop, it will be a month or two before my main CW has all 5 boons. I'm okay with that. I can see how others are not okay with that. I understand that.
And as far as I can see, all useful discussion on this matter ceased a few days ago. So there really isn't any more to be said, it seems.
I can't see how these boon books are a good thing, its really poorly designed. you progress normally then bam they expect you to grind out alot of dailies for 40 days to get the last 2.
That gap is just jarring, the books drop too rarely and the progression becomes a chore.
Pointman's argument is you don't have to make it a chore, so instead of waiting for 40 days you can wait 80 days (thats still doing 2-3 dragons per day). I would have much preferred if they increased the drop rate to 5%-10% from boss only but made it BoP, so you had to do the dungeon/skirmishes to get it, but not such a bad drop rate that you had to do 100 of them.
These dailies are just far too time consuming, when i get this done for one of my characters, theres no way in hell im going to do it again for another char, my alts will just be turned into mules unless they changed this system.
whish it was just a hundred of them...... if have the boons by now, the drop rate is even more HAMSTER than that.... i think there was a guy who recorded his loot in 500 runs and nada.
Actually the idea about the books is not that bad, the problem is simply the absordly low drop rate of them. If they were dropping like Dragon gems we would all be happy as if even if u were so unlucky to not have gotten one by now, ud be able to easily afford it in the ah.
With a decent drop rate book boon system would be way faster and less grindier and actually more fun too as u have to grind a skirmish or a dungeon to get it. It just needs something like a 5% drop chance and we would all be set.
Great news guys , there are two new boons in module five and a new boon book , the first new boon costs one copy of the new book , the second new boon costs both old books and the new book xD better get down to doing those dailies XD
I'm going in with pointsman on this. There is no requirement to perform dailies. There is the main-line story plus 5 campaigns, 7 classes and their mechanics and their paragon paths and trees and feats, each with 10+ armor/weapon sets, 15(?) dungeons, 15(?) skirmishes, PVP, regular events, 20(?) adventure zones, 10+ professions, the Auction House, ~100 companions, mounts.
Once you get that 5th ToD boon, are you really done improving your character? Is that really when the fun starts? Guess who is not buying it and who has two thumbs? This guy.
I'd bet for 99% of forum readers that after a week (for that matter, a couple of evenings) of careful study, rather than merely grinding the dailies, you would improve your play style in a way which would far eclipse the value of that last boon.
Comments
So your solution was... to make it *more* horrific by rushing through at double the pace?
Yes. The same reason I went to see the doctor first when i was in school and had to take w/e shots I was afraid of.
Do the most annoying things that you have to do as fast as possible, to get them out of the way.
You made it deliberately more annoying for yourself by choosing to kill so many dragons. Killing 1 or 2 a day? Not so bad. Killing 10? That is your own fault.
He has to kill those dragons eventually. Dailies and heroic encounters are not fun for a lot of people. It is not his fault for having painful mechanics and dailies. It is not his fault for gating boons behind RNG and these dailies.
He either kills 10 a day and has an awful time for a month or he has to consistently log in more days and kill the same amount of dragons. Either way, it is a painful experience that a lot of players prefer not to go through in module 5.
People level to 60 to play endgame. Distinct PVP modes, varied PVP maps, rewarding dungeons, rewarding skirmishes, raiding, farming random stuff that pays out decently etc.....
They do not get to 60 to continually grind dailies. If Cryptic wants to keep making dailies because "players find it fun" then do not gate boons behind it, just gate some fashion reward, how about about gate an exclusive title behind it "Master of Dailies" or something to that effect.
Then we'll see how many players will waste their time torturing themselves with it.
If you are torturing yourself with killing 10 dragons a day when you don't want to, then I have to question whether or not you really consider Neverwinter to be a *game* or not.
I suppose you think that when a new module comes out, that you shouldn't have to do any dailies at all?
Then how would you gate new content? Because an answer of "content shouldn't be gated at all, just let me consume it all in 1 day" is not a reasonable answer.
Again, powerful boons that affect dungeons, any PVE and PVP being gated behind these boring dailies are the problem.
I will make the suggestion again that they gate fashion content or how about a title if they are going to make dailies this tedious.
Why are the goals of the PVP campaign only hold a fashion set, a title and PVP-exclusive boons? Because lots of people don't like it. Because lots of people don't play this game for PVP. Well guess what, lots of people don't play this game for dailies. If that's the case, dailies should only also hold boons that affect dailies (such as getting 2x cult secrets per mission boon).
You can use the dread ring campaign as the template for future modules if you HAD to gate endgame. It was reasonable, it was more fun and it was less taxing.
I think you were able to articulate a better response than I did so I'll just agree with this and go with your post
I'm sorry, but at no time is it required for game progression to kill five dragons a day, let alone TEN.
I have little sympathy for anyone who complains that they "MUST" kill 5 dragons a day. They don't. Nobody does. If you don't want to kill five dragons a day, THEN DON'T KILL FIVE DRAGONS A DAY.
I think there are several issues at play here:
1. How should new content be gated? I asked this question previously, in another thread, but all I got was complaints like "no more dailies!" Okay, fine, you don't like dailies. But Cryptic is not going to spend 3 months developing new content and have it all released at once so that the hardcore players can consume it all in 1 day and then spend the next 3 months bored, and/or eventually leave the game. Having NO gate on new content AT ALL, I think, is an unreasonable request. Someone else (I forget who) suggested that new content might be gated similarly to how the PVP campaign is structured, in terms of tasks completed rather than mandatory daily quests. I think that is a good way to approach it in the future, but there still has to be some sort of structure in place to prevent the hardcore players from burning through it all in 1 day.
2. If content is going to be gated by dailies, how should the dailies be structured? The Cryptic formula has been (a) simple repetitive quests, and more recently, (b) heroic encounters.
2a. One complaint has been that the simple repetitive quests are boring and dull. I agree. They are boring and dull. I suppose, instead of having just 2 or 3 options for daily quests in a zone, there could be 20 or 30 options. That would spice things up a bit, I suppose. A larger question might be if these quests ought to be so simple in the first place. Maybe a daily quest should be a truly hard encounter requiring teamwork. I can see how this would be fun, but it would not be so great for casual players who have to find a quality team in their limited playtime every day.
2b. I do think that the heroic encounters need a lot of work, in terms of a functioning loot table that drops more than just dragon coins all the time, encounter participation guidelines that aren't so vague and that don't encourage pathological and selfish behavior among the participants, and better HE timing so people don't stand around bored all the time.
3. Finally, once all of the content has been unlocked in one way or another, what should be the capstone experience of that module of content? A lot of people here seem to want hardcore 10/20/30-person raids. I wouldn't support that, I think there are games that already cater to such an audience who want that type of raiding experience. A lot of people also want to be a dungeon with good farmable BoE loot, with the understanding that a really tough dungeon would offer high-end loot. I think that would be an excellent addition, as long as the new loot isn't so ridiculously OP that it creates a gigantic imbalance between the upper-end players who can successfully complete this dungeon, and all of the other players who aren't yet at that stage of character development.
You are right, when you are first gearing up and starting to get your first set of boons, they are very chore-like. I think they could be spiced up a bit and not turned into such monotonous tasks. HOWEVER, in the case of Sharandar, once all three zones are unlocked, you don't need to do all three sets of quests in each of the three zones every day. At that point you only need the sparks, and a few of the other blade/seedling things which one can easily pick up over the weekend or something. It's not a daily task needed.
Could the quests be made more enjoyable? Yes.
Do players who complain when doing more work than necessary be listened to? No.
See my other post on this matter.
My CW has long since finished getting the boons from Sharandar, Dread Ring and IWD, and I might take my CW back to those zones maybe once or twice a week. That means I'm missing out on sparks, Fey blessings, blink dogs, Eye artifacts, black ice and Yeti companions, but that's my choice. I'm choosing to do what I perceive to be more fun, even though I have unfinished dailies in these zones that I pass up on every single day. Do you do every single daily in every single Level 60 zone on every single character? Or do you make choices? Why can't others see that it's the same thing with the ToD quests? If you choose to kill 5 dragons a day, great! If not, great! You are deciding what is more important for you. The only downside is that you won't get your 4th and 5th boons as rapidly as everyone else.
But I think there are two larger complaints: one, that people just don't like the dailies at all, period; and two, that the 4th and 5th boons shouldn't be gated by such an enormous number of dailies.
In response to the first complaint, then I would ask how you think new content ought to be gated, if not by dailies. I'm totally open to suggestions too, because yeah, a lot of the dailies *are* dull and boring.
In response to the second complaint, then I agree, it's a bit excessive. But I also think that perhaps the Dread Ring model of boon acquisition (which everyone NOW praises, but didn't at the time), in which players only had to complete one mini-lair per day for a relatively short number of days in order to achieve some really powerful boons, was perhaps too easy and has led at least in part to the current state where people have been able to get too powerful too quickly and make the content too easy.
I think these are all reasonable suggestions. I don't agree with all of them (the 5-10 minute dragon timer is a bit problematic because it means that a party of lowbie players will almost certainly fail any dragon HE) but I would agree that having cult secrets or dragon sigils drop from Dragon HE's or Skirmish/Dungeon chests would be a step in the right direction.
But at least you are offering something constructive. Most of what I see around here is "I HATE DAILIES". I guess it is just human nature to complain a lot without offering much in the way of something constructive. But it's made the forums darn near unreadable for me nowadays.
I get this might sound like a good solution for you, but it's not. We have build up big accounts over the months and want a fair chance to get our ALTs through the campaign before the next content hits. Should we do way more than you on your single CW? Absolutely. Should we not be able to get our chars through the campaign in a reasonable time? Absolutely not.
Someone else said it best: I don't need to kill five dragons a day, but I have to kill X dragons eventually to get X chars through ToD. So I'm doing dailies all day any day because I hope at some point I'll be having time for something else...
Btw.: This is exactly how Mod 3 unfolded for me. In the first weeks I literally couldn't do anything else, but it didn't feel as grindy. It was one daily HE/300 BI on every char. Nice and smooth. I don't even mind not having BI gear for every character, because If the build warrants it, I know eventually I'll get them.
ToD is not smooth and I'm absolutely positive that it'll take like forever to get the artifact stuff and everything refined...
Okay, stop right there for a moment.
I see "a full day's worth of progression" as (1) the Common Cause quest (2) killing 1 dragon (3) doing the 1 other non-dragon quest. Everything else is optional extra.
For example, suppose Sharandar quest progression had been set up such that you could turn in 3 crystals for 10 sparks, just like now, but you ALSO had the OPTION of turning in 3 seeds/charms/blades for 10 sparks as well.
Would you see this as "OMG I have to do 10 quests per day"? Or would you see this as "I only have to do the 1 quest per day (crystals for sparks) but I may do an additional 9 *if I so choose* if I want to advance faster"?
That is what is happening with Mod 4. It is like Sharandar, except you can advance faster if you choose by killing more dragons in a day.
Now, should it require so many sigils and secrets to get the last two boons? No, I don't think so. Should the sigils/secrets be available in other ways? Yeah I think so.
But everybody is treating this *option* to advance further as some sort of de facto requirement. It's not.
Not if you wanted to give people the OPTION to unlock the boons sooner.
Mindless complaints about optional work have no value.
We do get our boons in a timely manner. And if you want to rush the process, you have the option to do so.
And THE POINT IS, we are not chained to dailies. Do you do every single Level 60 daily every single day? Even before you had unlocked all the Mod 1-3 boons, did you faithfully do every single Sharandar/Dread Ring/IWD daily *every single day*? I know I didn't. Some days I chose to do other things that I deemed more fun than that.
I think this is one of the few legitimate complaints in the sea of mindless whining on the forums. No, it is not very alt-friendly. I think there is a lot that could be done about that, like making secrets/sigils account bound and having each quest drop more of them.
No I don't think that is an adequate way of framing the choice. The choice is:
1. Do I spend 1.5 hours each day killing five dragons, foregoing doing things that I would enjoy more?
or
2. Do I spend 20-30 minutes each day killing 1 dragon, and then spend the other 60-70 minutes doing things that I enjoy more?
But that's what they are doing. If you kill 1 dragon per day, you make progress. If you CHOOSE to do more, you make EXTRA progress. And with that EXTRA progress comes more chances to get gems/belts/gear. Now the drop rate in the HE's for anything other than enchants is stupidly low. I agree with that. It ought to be at least a little higher.
It is a separate issue:
- Should new content be gated by dailies?
- If so, how should the dailies be structured?
Well yeah it is a problem in a way, since Mod 2 created the expectation that powerful boons should be relatively easy to obtain, without any real use for those boons.
Sure, that sounds like a splendid idea.
If you WANT to kill 5 dragons a day, go knock yourself out. But it's not required to do so.
Oh I don't think so. People STILL complain about Sharandar, even though it behaves exactly as you describe - it takes a long time to get all the boons, and people are rewarded along the way.
I agree, drop rates are pretty bad and ought to be adjusted. But that's a separate issue than "killing 5 dragons a day is a requirement".
I'm not telling you to play the game in a different way. Go ahead and kill 20 dragons a day on 4 different characters if you want. Or kill none at all. It doesn't bother me in the slightest.
My complaint is the misrepresentation of "killing 5 dragons a day" as a MINIMUM requirement. It is not.
Nobody that I know wants to go 80 days without GAME PROGRESSION.
"Mindless complaints about optional work" is your opinion. But I would risk to say you are in the minority when it comes to MMO players in that respect as most like to see some progress for work done........especially if it happens to be doing the same thing repeatedly for months on end long after it has lost its aspect of enjoyment.
After all... people play games for fun, and if they aren't enjoying the same dragon fight day in and day out, and aren't getting any enjoyment through progression, then why would they continue to play the game? You can say these are mindless complaints, but that does nothing to make someone play a game that they find too tedious to progress through.
I can't see how these boon books are a good thing, its really poorly designed. you progress normally then bam they expect you to grind out alot of dailies for 40 days to get the last 2.
That gap is just jarring, the books drop too rarely and the progression becomes a chore.
Pointman's argument is you don't have to make it a chore, so instead of waiting for 40 days you can wait 80 days (thats still doing 2-3 dragons per day). I would have much preferred if they increased the drop rate to 5%-10% from boss only but made it BoP, so you had to do the dungeon/skirmishes to get it, but not such a bad drop rate that you had to do 100 of them.
These dailies are just far too time consuming, when i get this done for one of my characters, theres no way in hell im going to do it again for another char, my alts will just be turned into mules unless they changed this system.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Without noticing that not killing five dragons (or whatever) creates other issues that can't be ignored.
Nowhere did I say that you *shouldn't* kill more than 1 dragon per day, or try to dictate what your playstyle ought to be. Play the way you want to, and do what you feel like. But IMO don't feel *obligated* to kill all 5 in a day. (Actually, it's a bit of the reverse - people are yelling at me because I want to take my time and not feel pressured to do all 5 in a day, because - if I killed all 5 dragons per day then I'd be on the Hate Cryptic bandwagon as well? I don't know.)
Nowhere did I say that I thought requiring 100 secrets/sigils per boon, acquired *only* through dragon kills, was the best method for campaign progression. It is a bit of a chore. I would be okay with either lowering the amount, or making secrets/sigils available in other ways (boss loot or chest loot in skirmish/dungeon, for instance).
I think it is obvious why Cryptic decided to go with this whole "boon book" idea. They're going to put the books on sale in the Zen store in a few weeks or so.
Personally - that means speaking for me, and me alone, and not speaking for you, or for anyone else - I am not in a big hurry to get the 4th or 5th boons. It's not like I *need* them right away. So I will probably take my time and kill 1 or 2 dragons per day, and maybe on the weekends kill all 5 dragons in a day. Plus I just leveled up a new DC over the 2xXP weekend so that is going to occupy my time as well. And I'm not going to buy the boon books, either from AH or from Zen store. So that means, unless I get super lucky with boon book drop, it will be a month or two before my main CW has all 5 boons. I'm okay with that. I can see how others are not okay with that. I understand that.
And as far as I can see, all useful discussion on this matter ceased a few days ago. So there really isn't any more to be said, it seems.
whish it was just a hundred of them...... if have the boons by now, the drop rate is even more HAMSTER than that.... i think there was a guy who recorded his loot in 500 runs and nada.
Actually the idea about the books is not that bad, the problem is simply the absordly low drop rate of them. If they were dropping like Dragon gems we would all be happy as if even if u were so unlucky to not have gotten one by now, ud be able to easily afford it in the ah.
With a decent drop rate book boon system would be way faster and less grindier and actually more fun too as u have to grind a skirmish or a dungeon to get it. It just needs something like a 5% drop chance and we would all be set.
Once you get that 5th ToD boon, are you really done improving your character? Is that really when the fun starts? Guess who is not buying it and who has two thumbs? This guy.
I'd bet for 99% of forum readers that after a week (for that matter, a couple of evenings) of careful study, rather than merely grinding the dailies, you would improve your play style in a way which would far eclipse the value of that last boon.