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Suggestions to ease the Tyranny of Artifacts
darkstarcrash
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,382 Arc User
I think we must all accept that artifact gear is here to stay, and is our new gear progression. Following are some suggestions to ease the pain of leveling all those artifacts:
1) RNG -- this is actually being ameliorated in Mod 5, but I'm including it here for those who do not follow the Preview forums. In Mod 5, when you create an artifact weapon from the ToD campaign, you will also get a Shard of Dragon-Forged Steel, and if you get the wrong artifact weapon you can salvage it for another shard. 6 of these shards can be turned in for the weapon of your choice. This means a max of 3 tries to get the exact weapon you want.
2) RP value of artifact gear -- Some people with Mod 4 belts and weapons will want to get the new gear being introduced in Mod 5. Having to start over after just a few months is very daunting, especially for those who leveled their gear to legendary.
Currently refining artifact gear into new artifact gear gives a return of less than 50%. Some people have suggested a 1:1 RP value for the old gear, but you should have to do some grinding to reach the new BIS gear. I suggest 75 - 85% RP value.
3) Sources of RP -- One of the reasons the ToD campaign grind is so unrewarding, besides the time spent waiting for dragon timers, is the lack of rewards when completing the daily lair.
Sharandar gave players guaranteed enchantment shards as well as rare (or rarely) epic gear, even a very nice companion. Dread Ring gave players rare or (about 10% chance) very useable epic gear, refinement or enchantments, a guaranteed epic Mark 5 days a week, and even an artifact. These are in addition to campaign currencies. ToD chests give only 1 page and 1 dragon sigil (doubled for WC).
I suggest that the daily lairs also give resonance stones, something like an 75% chance for 2 minor resonance stones, 22% chance for a lesser resonance stone, and 3% chance for a resonance stone. This will make the lairs rewarding in themselves -- as it stands, if you have alts it is more efficient to just skip the "Common Cause" quest and the daily lair.
1) RNG -- this is actually being ameliorated in Mod 5, but I'm including it here for those who do not follow the Preview forums. In Mod 5, when you create an artifact weapon from the ToD campaign, you will also get a Shard of Dragon-Forged Steel, and if you get the wrong artifact weapon you can salvage it for another shard. 6 of these shards can be turned in for the weapon of your choice. This means a max of 3 tries to get the exact weapon you want.
2) RP value of artifact gear -- Some people with Mod 4 belts and weapons will want to get the new gear being introduced in Mod 5. Having to start over after just a few months is very daunting, especially for those who leveled their gear to legendary.
Currently refining artifact gear into new artifact gear gives a return of less than 50%. Some people have suggested a 1:1 RP value for the old gear, but you should have to do some grinding to reach the new BIS gear. I suggest 75 - 85% RP value.
3) Sources of RP -- One of the reasons the ToD campaign grind is so unrewarding, besides the time spent waiting for dragon timers, is the lack of rewards when completing the daily lair.
Sharandar gave players guaranteed enchantment shards as well as rare (or rarely) epic gear, even a very nice companion. Dread Ring gave players rare or (about 10% chance) very useable epic gear, refinement or enchantments, a guaranteed epic Mark 5 days a week, and even an artifact. These are in addition to campaign currencies. ToD chests give only 1 page and 1 dragon sigil (doubled for WC).
I suggest that the daily lairs also give resonance stones, something like an 75% chance for 2 minor resonance stones, 22% chance for a lesser resonance stone, and 3% chance for a resonance stone. This will make the lairs rewarding in themselves -- as it stands, if you have alts it is more efficient to just skip the "Common Cause" quest and the daily lair.
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Since Dread Ring all there has been is less reward and/or more grind.
The game is less fun now then it was, the double module release in a matter of a few months was ridiculous as well, I started the game about a month or so before module 2 and I got 4 toons through that and then IWD, now I cant even finish one toon through ToD, because of how ridiculous over the top horrendous the grind is for anyone more then 1 or 2 toons.
Ive found DAYS where I cant even log in anymore and even dont care about loosing the coins any longer.
That is what ToD has done to us.
Asked significantly lessen this RNG/Grind for players, the response has been extremely disappointing to say the least.
None of what you have posted, solves the basic problem, logging in to sit around and wait for dragons, is stupid, the curve to finish them is way over the top. You want me to kill 1 dragon a day for 60 days.. Ill do that, killing 5, with all the other dailies just finish them in that time frame is shame on me, If I do them.
I will not reward this company by playing that any longer.
Design something worth doing, games are meant to be fun, not this outwardly unrewarding.
You get more reward for sitting around doing nothing waiting for dragons , then if you actually run the group content.
I cant thing of too many MMOs that would trumpet that has a "COME play this , because of this"
Im calling it as I see it, I had a blast in this game up to mod 3, even in mod 3, it was still "ok" (the only thing was the grind for bracers, which is still stupid)
No, I will not invite you into my instance nor call out the time on the dragon to increase the number of people who are attacking it just to make your life easier and my chance at a drop lessened.
You should invite/call out dragon times. It makes the dragon die much more quickly this way and we can all get on with other "less grindy" affairs in the game.
If you are worried bout missing out on a good drop because of not getting "great success," don't even bother. I have gotten great success at least 40 times and the only "extra" item I ever got was ONE piece of cosmetic clothing - woo hoo! Not!
Helping others finish the grind called ToD is what kind and helpful players do. The rest are mostly selfish, lazy, greedy, or just haven't figured out the harsh reality of "great success" yet.
My opinion.
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
This has nothing to do with immediate gratification. People play games for fun. Not all of us are children with no responsibility that can spend their whole day grinding out things. Yes I want to make my character better, but I don't have to have it all at one time. But people with families can't sit down and wait for 15 mins per 5 dragons just for 1 sigil. You claim that you can map hop to switch instance but since when did "instance hopping" become fun game play?
I seriously doubt anybody in their right mind would consider map hopping to be an intended focus of the game. Nobody is asking to have everything given to them right then right there. But there should be a reasonable progression based off your work. Dreadring and even Sharandar were good examples of the way it should work. You go in do your work and get out.
The current state of ToD just isn't fun. I am only a 3 month old player and I just choose not to grind out anymore ToD stuff. I WANT to play the game and I WANT to enjoy it. There is clearly a flaw in the design of the new content and hopefully they will realize it.
Over 800 great success on my SW and no artifact of any type has dropped for me.
I do not want the encounter to be over in 30 seconds it takes the fun out of. So no I do not invite to an already full instance. That does not make SELFISH, LAZY, GREEDY OR JUST HAVEN"T FIGURED OUT THE HARSH REALITY OF "GREAT SUCCESS" YET'" It means I want to enjoy the encounters when I can for how they are intended to be played.
And that is why Dread Ring is considered by most as the best Module so far... you can actually obtain something useful by running the daily mini-dungeon and that helps cooperation as players are rewarded go back there and help friends.
Also Dread Ring gives us the Greater Mark of Power/Stability/Union and that should be the standard for all future Modules as they are not only needed to upgrade artifacts but also a good source of Refinement Points.
No, Dread Ring is considered the best module because the reward to effort ratio is so high. Because you didn't even have to really do the dailies even, you could just run straight to the short mini-dungeon and be done with the whole thing in like 10-15 minutes, WHILE STILL advancing through the campaign. IMO it is too little work for too great of reward, and it set the wrong standard for the amount of effort that ought to be required.
Basically, people complain so bitterly about ToD because they think they are entitled to get awesome boons and great loots for basically doing nothing every day, like in Dread Ring.
I guarantee that if Dread Ring had the same rewards but 6 mandatory dailies instead, you wouldn't find nearly so many people praising it.
Not sure where you are going with that. You got the best/second-best thing that dragon drops out of 40 tries? And? According to the info (zone rewards & collections) the three dragons that drop cosmetic gear can't drop artifacts or epic gear. I never understood why anyone would get upset over people calling times for those dragons. The scaling blues and cosmetic gear is nice, but most of it is on the AH pretty cheap.
As for the great success issue itself... imo its less of one now. Since they upped the health on the Dragons in Rothe and WC its easy to get a great success. I know for me, as long as I am there the whole time I can get it even on my worst geared alts.
I certainly understand the frustration of the grindfest. The only drops I've received from the dragons were two blue weapons that were useless to me. I also get "Great Success" more often than not, yet no drop, so I fully understand the drop rate is very low, but it's ridiculous to think that I'm going to lower that chance even further by inviting other people into already full instances just to save them a few minutes.
I'm a casual player who only has time to play an hour or two each day, if that. The grind is bad enough (although not nearly as bad as people make it out to be) but I'm looking to achieve something with my time and the more people around that dragon while I'm there, the less chance I'm going to do something. The folks who have the time to play for 8 hours or more per day are the last ones who should also be begging for invites and dragon timers. What are they going to do with all those extra minutes saved because of the "kind and helpful" players shooting themselves in the foot by filling up instances, creating lagfests? When did people get so lazy and impatient that they can't find dragons on their own or just hang out for a few minutes? I don't have the time to sit around for 15 minutes for a dragon either, so I don't, and it may be bad mechanics for the encounter, but that's the hand we're dealt.
I AGREE that this method is not optimal and that prior campaigns were superior in some ways. However, your solution is that other players fix it for you? Heroic Encounters are a great concept, one that does foster kind and helpful players when participating in them. However, it's not kind and helpful to anyone to give into this childish obsession with completing them as fast as humanly possible and expecting other people do cooperate with that. I really don't care if it's selfish but there are plenty of ways to interact with other humanoids in this game other than being a timekeeper for an entire instance. That's a waste of my limited time.
No thanks. Complain to the developers about it. Don't expect me to play along and it'd be really great if there was actual conversations on chat instead of endless "dragon timers?" "inv for dragon" "any dragon < 5 min".
My problem with this is that there are 5 dragons to do this on a day. If there was 1 or 2, then I wouldn't mind a ten minute wait. But no one wants to spend an hour sitting around waiting for stuff to show up. Not playing - just waiting to play. That is what running all the dragons means for someone that isn't calling out for invites/times.
Pugs get upset when people call out timers because they might end up on the lower-end DPS if a bunch of powerful toons show up for a quick kill. In the end, it doesn't really matter how many great successes you get, odds are you will never get the artifacts (I know I won't lol). I've gotten 400+ great success on CW and SW (and hundreds more across the others) and never once has an artifact dropped after they nerfed the drop rates the first few days (sounds familiar.....).
The last two dragons have more than enough HP for even the puggiest pugs to get great success and those are the only ones that can drop gear/artifacts so all their whining is pretty much a waste.
I was deliberately not talking about the boon grind, wanting to focus on the refinement grind instead.
But now that the thread has shifted... Assuming you complete both weeklies, and Common Cause daily splits into 5 in lower 3 zones, 1 in Rothe Valley and 1 in Whispering Caverns per week:
Time to complete all dailies: 80-90 min per character
Campaign currency per week: 42 cult secrets/39 dragon sigils/42 pages
Time to complete only Common Cause: 20-30 min per character
Campaign currency per week: 10 secrets/15 sigils/42 pages
Time to complete only non-dragon dailies: 15-20 min per character
Campaign currency per week: 21 secrets/17 sigils/13 pages
So if you only do the non-dragon dailies, throwing in the dragon quest if it happens to spawn while you're in zone and running Common Cause maybe once a week, you will get enough currency for the upper boons in less than 5 weeks for less than 20 minutes a character -- compared to 2 1/2 weeks for 90 minutes a character.
If you have multiple alts, just forget about the dragons. Less stress, less than a quarter of the time daily while only stretching the grind out by double.
Thanks for this. People keep complaining about this endless grind, and it does get a bit tedious, but it doesn't have to take a lot of time. Compared to Dread Ring, it is longer but come on... Dread Ring dailies take like 15 minutes to do everything. I don't expect that to be the case in every campaign. I don't know about everyone else but I actually was running every daily for a while, and the only ones that paid out sigils for me are Rothe Valley and Whispering Caverns. I don't bother doing any of the others unless they're specifically given as quests. I don't do any that don't give sigils and I spend about an hour a day. It's not a huge time investment, so I really don't see why it's necessary to save 4 minutes on a dragon.
I don't play MMOs other than Neverwinter so I guess grind is just accepted as part of these games, but I agree that the Dread Ring model works better. The rewards are a much greater value for the time invested. You could get the gear and actually use it while you're doing the campaign instead of busting your butt for gear that never comes. Ironically, despite not seeing a single piece of useful gear during the campaign and playing instead solely to unlock the skirmish and dungeon, I actually got the only piece of gear from the skirmish. That just ain't right. Boons are fine, I expect to have to grind for permanent stat bonuses or effects. Those should be work. However, transmutes and enchants as rewards? Kinda lame. I can see people not wanting to slay dragons for that junk.
Ok. That is a good point. I stand corrected.
I personally just want the dragon encounters done quickly. The first several killings were fun, but killing the same dragons repeatedly day after day has just caused the battles to lose their luster with me now . . .
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
Less and less people will
Really? Every single artifact equipment will not be gated primarily by RNG?
Do you just make up random numbers to justify your point? If you only did the common cause to reach your "20 minutes per character" time frame then you get the 10 secrets/15 sigils. Seeing as it takes 100 of each to just one boon and you need two boons that is 20 weeks of farming. Adding in the weekly quest it is still way more than the 5 weeks you claim. Sitting around waiting for dragons isn't good game design and it makes people bored with the game. No matter how much you twist it, it isn't something people want to do on one character much less 2 or 3.
So we all know it can be done and alot of us hate the design and game play involved.
Really don't see this anymore. Early on I was in the same camp though. The last two dragons died to quick for most to get great success. Since the change even my 60s in blues can get great success just about every time. Even in overcrowded instances. So I just don't see the point in being angry at those that call out the times anymore.
As for whether or not Great Success matters. I have to assume it does. If it doesn't then its just another thing that needs to be fixed/changed.
Yeah i have been doing just the "fetch" quests for awhile.
If you don't waste the time waiting for dragons you can knock out the other quests in 10-15 minutes.
I think that the fact that you have to go to 5 different zones is also annoying.
Dread Ring is all on one map,not spread out across zones or in portals like sharandar.
Dragons should be able to be queued for like a Skirm or something but with larger parties.
I did not make up random numbers, you were the one who mixed up two different scenarios.
The 5 weeks was for doing just the non-dragon dailies, which get you 21 secrets/17 sigils, not the Common Cause daily -- as I clearly listed. And that's 5 weeks each for the last two boons, which I don't think I made clear.
That means the last two boons take twice as long as the last couple Sharandar boons, if you put in roughly the same time. Still longer than the other mods, but not quite as bad as forcing yourself to do every dragon and the unrewarding lairs.
Mara Angelbane - 22k Thaum CW, Vaya Con Dios 15.2k Dragon CW.
Mara Shadowskiss - 21.5k Destroyer GWF, Mara - 17.2k Sentinel GWF
Mara Duskwalker - 15.4k Healing DC
Mara Hawkeye -14.6k HR
Mara Spiritforge - 16.9k Tanky GF
Bad Religion - 14.7k Pew Pew DC
Mara Shadowstouch,Maara - TR's
Leaving aside the curiously mangled syntax of "too great of reward", it is unclear why it is a fundamental game balance flaw if the daily quests are sufficiently short that you can clear them, get your reward and have time to do other things in a normal evening's play. Not everyone can devote eight hours or more per day to the game, even if we do play far more than we should. If the balance is sufficiently skewed that all you have time for is the chores, then there is something amiss.
I guess WAITING in games is fun to you. I think you really have lost connection to normality. In all the games I've played, this was by far the worst thing ever to come across, seemed like it sucked the life out to wait for something to happen. Want me to grind for days upon days thousand of mobs? Fine, but don't make me sit around waiting - I want to PLAY. DO something. Whatever that is.
WAITING is the opposite of DOING, of PLAYING. This is a game. I wait in line at the shop. I wait for the paycheck day. I don't wait to play, this was badly designed no matter how you want to defend it.
Then don't wait. That was the point of the math.
If you don't wait on any dragon, it will take you about 5 weeks to get each boon.
If you wait on only the one dragon per day that you are assigned to, then it will take slightly less time.
See that's the problem with Dread Ring. It was TOO SHORT and TOO EASY for the rewards that we got (some pretty good boons and even an artifact), and it created this de facto standard of the MAXIMUM amount of time that we players ought to spend to advance in a campaign. Apparently asking players to spend more than 15 minutes a day to advance in a campaign is tantamount to "all we have time to do is the dailies!!!"
So no, asking players to spend perhaps 30-40 minutes a day to kill 1-2 dragons a day is not too much to ask.
I think you may be playing a different game to the rest of us, now it all makes sense.
Again the problem isn't that you spend 40 minutes doing the dailies. The problem is that if you are killing all the dragons you spend probably 40-60 minutes of the time sitting around waiting.
For the most part you shouldn't ever -want- to avoid doing stuff they put in the game. Don't get me wrong, there are exceptions. Some people hate pvp and will always want to avoid it. Look at me for example though. I love daily quests. I have all day to play and they help fill the void. And I still want to avoid these things. And that's really sad, because killing a dragon is awesome. Not something you should want to avoid.
The problem I see with this is they spread it out to far. 5 different quest areas to run through every day. 5 times waiting on the dragons. Even the much maligned Sharandar only had 3 areas. Here is a fix that needs no new content to be created:
Reduce it to two areas a day:
- 1. Have the Harper give you two versions of the common cause quest.
- 2. Have the area-specific quest givers only give you the daily quests if you have the common cause (or its double), but have them give you all the dailies for that area.
- 3. Adjust campaign specific currency rewards.
- 4. To avoid overcrowding in the two areas randomize the common cause quests for each character.
^This way you'd be running 2 lairs, killing 2 dragons, and doing 4 other daily quests. Instead of the current system of 1 lair, 5 dragons, and 5 daily quests. Probably not that much overall time difference, but replacing some of the dragons with another lair cuts out much of the idle wait time.
Just because you are offered to do 5 dragons does not mean you have to do all 5. Maybe you could again start to enjoy the game?
I have tried to argue this position before. It is hopeless. Because these are, by and large, the people who will first complain that they have to kill SO MANY DRAGONS EVERY DAY, in order to rush ahead and complete the content faster than anyone else; and then, when they are done rushing ahead, they will complain that they are bored and there is NOTHING TO DO. They just like to complain, frankly.
Edit: And, incidentally, you are right: there is absolutely nothing in this game that REQUIRES you to get the 4th and 5th boons RIGHT NOW, with the possible exception of tippy-top high-end PVP premades. But if you are going to do that high level of PVP anyway, you are already breaking out your wallet in the first place, so just buy the boon books and be done with it.
Then don't kill all the dragons every day. Problem solved.