zebularMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 15,270Community Moderator
edited February 2015
All I can say on the matter beyond what I've said already, is that the Devs and other Game Staff are quite active in reading the forums. I can also assure you all that this thread and the overall dissatisfaction of the Refinement System is once again making an appearance in the weekly feedback we sent off each week.
All I can say on the matter beyond what I've said already, is that the Devs and other Game Staff are quite active in reading the forums. I can also assure you all that this thread and the overall dissatisfaction of the Refinement System is once again making an appearance in the weekly feedback we sent off each week.
Well hopefully the dev's will acknowledge in words or actions that there is a plan to do something soon™. I say that because from talking to people it seems that more and more people are viewing the hope for a better system as quixotic. This is leading to many that I talk to starting to not care what content gets released in mod 6 or beyond. It's a bad situation.
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silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
edited February 2015
1. Dragon Enchants should be a bonus, not a primary way to earn RP for artifact gear, just like similar enchants for regular refining in enchantments and artifacts.
2. Without increased refining points , amount of refining into gear seems ludicrously high, with many people playing on average 2-4 hours a day, this is highly discouraging. This has already had effect on guilds, guild membership. It doesnt encourage people to play, it encourages them to leave. There is already alot of daily grinding for boons, this added secondary grind isnt helping, it needs to be near the same level of achievement for regular enchantments/artifacts.
3. PVP power balance is already a massive concern in today's game (mod 5) it has been a issue around mod 4 going forward, It appears to be a even wider gap for mod 6. Due to the inherent bad design of the refining process/achievement level, you are basically gating people out of PVP.
4. There is a difference between acceptable grind (3 months for avg of 2 hours a day, so at least we can play , MAYBE, more then one toon between mods) and the current rate. There is no real reason as suggest to contain artifact gear in the manner they have proscribed, eventually (and yes any mmo veteran knows this) It will be replaced in a mod going forward. It might be a year, but it will be replaced.
5. Failure of communication from the devs back to the playerbase, in what many of us see as the BIGGEST issue in the game. This has made some of us question why they cannot simply answer us one way or another. Past experience on feedback is thus "If you dont get any attention to a issue, then its simply going to be ignored". We the player-base are asking for some attention to this issue.
Disappointed that we've gotten no real feedback, but not wholly unexpected. Likely they aren't commenting since they have nothing to offer. Either nothing will change (most likely scenario) or the change has too much work to be discussed. Here's to hoping it's the latter.
1. Dragon Enchants should be a bonus, not a primary way to earn RP for artifact gear, just like similar enchants for regular refining in enchantments and artifacts.
2. Without increased refining points , amount of refining into gear seems ludicrously high, with many people playing on average 2-4 hours a day, this is highly discouraging. This has already had effect on guilds, guild membership. It doesnt encourage people to play, it encourages them to leave. There is already alot of daily grinding for boons, this added secondary grind isnt helping, it needs to be near the same level of achievement for regular enchantments/artifacts.
3. PVP power balance is already a massive concern in today's game (mod 5) it has been a issue around mod 4 going forward, It appears to be a even wider gap for mod 6. Due to the inherent bad design of the refining process/achievement level, you are basically gating people out of PVP.
4. There is a difference between acceptable grind (3 months for avg of 2 hours a day, so at least we can play , MAYBE, more then one toon between mods) and the current rate. There is no real reason as suggest to contain artifact gear in the manner they have proscribed, eventually (and yes any mmo veteran knows this) It will be replaced in a mod going forward. It might be a year, but it will be replaced.
5. Failure of communication from the devs back to the playerbase, in what many of us see as the BIGGEST issue in the game. This has made some of us question why they cannot simply answer us one way or another. Past experience on feedback is thus "If you dont get any attention to a issue, then its simply going to be ignored". We the player-base are asking for some attention to this issue.
Completely agree. Honestly Im a little disappointed in the direction they are going. Adding yet another artifact slot so now we have 4?! That just seems SO ludicrus.
What they should have done was removed ALL the artifact slots except the primary one. THEN you can increase the costs massively for that ONE piece.
This makes you forced to use the class artifact and the bonus very carefully and invest more into that one item rather than havin to invest in a TON of items that you cant even transfer to an alternative character.
This actually REDUCES the power of artifacts such as DC, because the stats are sub par to an artifact like the GWF one... Or Lathanders set which has very poor stats compared to others as well but has a great bonus....
THEN you can make the item costly to upgrade because that one item means alot.
But overall I agree:
1) Dragon Hoard should be a bonus - not the PRIMARY way to earn RP
2) I know our guild has seen a drop off in players due to the tremendous cost of BIS items. Competitive players want better items, everyone wants to be BIS. For some its attainable others it isnt, but when you make it FAR too hard/costly to get BIS, you put that "carrot" too far away to reach, players just give up instead of keep trying.
3) PVP balance gets harder and harder the more stats and items you offer with immense power. The gap between an artifact item and a regular one is MASSIVE. Just look at the new lvl 25 JC belts, even with 2 slots (like the artifact belt) the artifact ones come with +4 to stats. Thats MASSIVE. 4% more crit from Dex? Thats equivalent to 1600 more in stats... Do the math on that!
4) Its only been the "RP" system that has been found unacceptable. Previously modules 1,2 and 3 things were ok as far as grinding items for BIS status. BlackIce Gear required a long grind but was doable with an hour a day. Even artifacts were/are "ok" but mostly due to bots keeping prices low.... But now its just going to be madness... There will be a very small handful of BIS players - most of which are probably not playing the game legitly... Just sayin.
5) This is a BIG one. ZERO response officially..... They dont even acknowledge they see an issue which makes me wonder what they are even looking at.... IF they are looking at the % of players who have items versus those that dont this is going to give you a metric that means absolutely nothing.
Why?
Because HOW players got their gear is not a direct correlation to how players SHOULD get their gear. A perfect example is un-bound RP USED to be dirt cheap because of bots. I know ALOT of players (including myself) that used the AH tp buy a TON of stacks of peridots. You cant do that anymore though.
So you cant look at how many players have the gear, you have to look at how long to you expect players to have to farm to get that gear. This is what is failing right now. I DONT think the solution is to make RP unbound again, but players need to be able to earn RP on their own at a reasonable rate.
Rather than continue to increase the RP needed for gear, they need to either DECREASE the RP need or give us ALOT more ways to farm RP.
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silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
edited February 2015
I pointed to another thread, will I mentioned I DO NOT bot, I do not buy 6000 peridots from some 3rd party vendor.
I want to give a game company money for returned entertainment, but when in reality that investment of entertainment is so far out of proportion to received value, there is simply NO reason to buy anything.
They have overpriced them out of the niche market they once held.
This game WAS perfect in mod 1-3, it was a casual affair with a fun little pvp on the side, where anyone could join, roll a toon in 60 days give or take and compete.
That niche is gone, of course, if you paid loads of money, you can compete in pvp, but there is no pve content even worth doing anymore.
They dont WANT us to run pve group content, if they did, they would GIVE us group content worth running. You can run 500 sots/esots/elols and maybe see 1 or 2 books dropped. The drop rate of the only VALUED non bound item at the highest PVE content, doesnt even allow you to sell anything. Its ludicrous. So hence, ya, you get your few things and dont run them anymore. I barely consider Tiamat a group item, its a HE and should be 100% doable if it wasnt for morons, who cant build their toons right or bug encounters.
I am not trying to rant, or be disrespectful. My goal was to stay here until Everquest 3 was released, I still would like to do that.
So I will try to do this without breaking any rules, Please listen to this panel of Neverwinter veterens (you can see any the start dates are all over a year, give or take) who are bringing what they consider to be the #1 issue in neverwinter online today.
The RP grind in this game was ridiculous, and the additions on test are even worse. The only real in game way to get the RP needed previously was by using portal foundries, and even then it could take you work weeks of time to get to legendary. Portals have been removed, so now the only way to really pull the full upgrades is to buy with cash.
^^Regarding group content, there was a reason why people ran the daylights out of CN before GS & KV turned the dungeon to easy mode.
It was challenging, and IT HAD A GOOD PAYOFF. When you won rolls, you could actually use it or sell it to finance your character or alts.
None of the dungeons added since beta provide any real form of reward for players after they have the specific item they want from the dungeon. Basically, they remove all rewarding farm content from the game.
I'm waiting to see the 70 dungeon content, maybe there will be a level 70 CN with rewarding drops that groups can't just grab a GF and roll thier face on the keyboard all the way through.
5. Failure of communication from the devs back to the playerbase, in what many of us see as the BIGGEST issue in the game. This has made some of us question why they cannot simply answer us one way or another. Past experience on feedback is thus "If you dont get any attention to a issue, then its simply going to be ignored". We the player-base are asking for some attention to this issue.
This. This is exactly the thing that would make me happy. I'd at least like to have some communication with the devs. Half the time, it feels like they aren't even here. Yeah, I know they "read" the threads. But if they actually posted in more than one thread a week, it might actually inspire some confidence in the fact that there's a chance they are listening to what the players have to say
I DONT think the solution is to make RP unbound again, but players need to be able to earn RP on their own at a reasonable rate.
Rather than continue to increase the RP needed for gear, they need to either DECREASE the RP need or give us ALOT more ways to farm RP.
Totally agreed. They cannot simply increase drastically the RP necessary to get even average stats compared with the top rank items.
Or they give far way of farming or, they give up average players.
Totally agreed. They cannot simply increase drastically the RP necessary to get even average stats compared with the top rank items.
Or they give far way of farming or, they give up average players.
This is also why its so silly we can now have FOUR artifacts.... They should have gone the OTHER way and gotten rid of the extra secondary slots and allowed us only ONE artifact.
Then they can truly increase the cost of that ONE artifact alot, since its only ONE. Now players look at the FOUR they need and the cost is overwhelming. Artifacts should be rare. Make them Bound to Account but only enable use to equip ONE at a time. Then make that ONE drastically more expensive to lvl up to 140.
This REDUCES the power creep AND reduces the gear divide between BIS and not BIS players.
People will STILL spend on artifacts, and maybe MORE people will end up spending to get their ONE item upgraded, but people switch builds all the time, so each time they switch it makes other artifacts more and more powerful. It makes choosing a ONE to be much more meaningful.
Artifacts should be rare. Make them Bound to Account but only enable use to equip ONE at a time. Then make that ONE drastically more expensive to lvl up to 140.
This REDUCES the power creep AND reduces the gear divide between BIS and not BIS players.
If they're rare then why should they also be more practical to pay more to level them up? Yes you're suggesting making it account bound which should be the minimum they should be anyway, but the cost to upgrade them is just too out of whack. That's why I've been selling res stone stacks for over 1m a stack.
I'm also unsure we have to worry about power creep as much, the stat curves were nerfed hard and the content is getting rebalanced anyway. That's not to say I'm confident in their balancing skills or pvp will be balanced.
I paid about 5% of the current artifact prices to upgrade my artifacts. Current prices would be too much, let alone your suggestion of more, even if it would just be for 1 of them. That just makes it even more cost inefficient.
This is also why its so silly we can now have FOUR artifacts.... They should have gone the OTHER way and gotten rid of the extra secondary slots and allowed us only ONE artifact.
Then they can truly increase the cost of that ONE artifact alot, since its only ONE. Now players look at the FOUR they need and the cost is overwhelming. Artifacts should be rare. Make them Bound to Account but only enable use to equip ONE at a time. Then make that ONE drastically more expensive to lvl up to 140.
This REDUCES the power creep AND reduces the gear divide between BIS and not BIS players.
People will STILL spend on artifacts, and maybe MORE people will end up spending to get their ONE item upgraded, but people switch builds all the time, so each time they switch it makes other artifacts more and more powerful. It makes choosing a ONE to be much more meaningful.
^^This.
Power Creep flew through the roof when they upped the artifact to 3 & added passive companion bonuses.
How can they even design end game PVE content when the vast majority of the player base will never go above rank 7 enchants/blue artifacts (maybe a purple one in the mix), and a minute few running rank 10-12 enchants with legendary+ everything.
I truly think this was a better game before artifacts/passives were added. The enchant ranks alone provide an absolutely massive stat difference between characters. On live there is such a massive dps/survival difference between a 16k player, a 18k player, & a 20k player that they are each in completely different ballparks. Adding another 1000+ GS for another artifact & adding another level to companions (even though that bonus is broken on test currently) just makes it far worse.
Add to that the entire refinement process which is an act of misery, that literally takes hours of repetitive mouse clicks after you have acquired the insane amount of RP that can no longer be farmed in game.
With all possible changes we do see following picture
- upcoming next artifact levels alone with refinement rank 12 - overwhelming grind for RP
- current Tiamat and mod 5 boons grind - boring very long grind for just 1 top pve armor
-current new artifact belts and cloaks with bop artifacts for set - RND based grind for drop of artifact and then grind for RP after
All this now leads to only one case - you have time to play on 1 toon. Im of those people that like to reach goals in game and get stuff to best. Sometimes I can spend cash, as I did for dragonborn pack, for stuff that I assume is good investment for long. Yet it turns out to be waste of zen and very short living investment.
Result - one char is only possible way to play. Nobody will make me spend that money for RP even on one char nor Ill spend a penny even to double that on alt.
Add to it
- upcoming changes in leadership and no XP (possible - yet still in work) on invoke.
Game is becoming alt unfriendly without solid or even low income of RP or AD(24k cap per char).
- upcoming changes to professions that just neglect time and efforts that are spent on current "make" gear.
If this changes happen to be alive - I have only 2 question really
- Why do we have a new class (alt) for? Gap to get pal to top is crazy.Making him alt for leadership and rare "weak fun GS" play does not really appeal to me due to still big amount of time requested to spent. Time that will be needed to raise main char be needed.
- New content, at least zones, is not really finished yet but is still same stupid formula - boring daily sht- repeat 1m times to get best. And then we will make something that nerf all your accomplishments. What for do you want me to raise my main?
Possible ways of getting out of this HAMSTER hole are listed earlier all over forum. I like following
- make stuff BoA - artifacts, stones, RP, companions, boons and achievements
. So that player is more a person that can play different alt rather then force to play one hoping that it won't get nerfed reworked next patch.
- make XP to RP system - want to level play alt or play capped one - still make some RP if you want too. It does not have to be big, still valuable enough to close that hole you call RP grind game.
- lower prices on RP in zen. So that they could be comparable to AH. People buy with AD - get % or from zen- 100% profit.
- Earn money on required to upgrade stuff like wards or coal.
- Make AD cap bigger per char. Or Make it account wide AD cap. And by that I mean not 50k AD sht that you can do. It has to be reasonable to even worth working on earning raw AD. ~ 500k ~ 1000 zen.
- MAKE REFINEMENT window easier to use!
- Make earning AD or RP as fun not daily grind that you need to repeat over 1 million times to even see some result.
And my personal favorite - remove that RND HAMSTER. Don't make excuse of not being able of just balancing your own game by introducing more random in it. It is your worst mistake so far and it will never take you to right way. It is random. I somebody want to play random he will play card. This is game based on rules. D&D.
PS atm dungeons can be done no sweat with current gear. just on lvl 70.
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
It is random. I somebody want to play random he will play card. This is game based on rules. D&D.
Actually, randomness is one of the foundations of D&D. My D&D books are full of random loot tables, random magic item tables, and randomly generated treasure.
Don't give them any more ideas on randomness.
I don't want to see an "improvement" on the system be something like Peridots are now worth 5d100+100 RP, randomly determined when you refine them.
"Meanwhile in the moderator's lounge..."
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
Totally agreed. They cannot simply increase drastically the RP necessary to get even average stats compared with the top rank items.
Or they give far way of farming or, they give up average players.
They already seem to have given up on the people playing 2-4 hours a day and spending (or were spending 20 bucks a month give or take)
If it wasnt the case then they wouldn't have shown the negative impact of their decisions on their recent earnings.
Ive been in several businesses, sometimes scaling back operations made sense if you could lower overhead, labor, operational cost and cater to a core business customer base instead.
However, I cant believe for a second this game can support itself on benefiting only the fringe spenders and the exploiters.
Most games PANDER to the average gamer, not drive them away. EVERYTHING they did for RP screamed the opposite (run away , RUN away you average people, we dont want you.)
The supposed reasoning, was they cant make content fast enough for gamers (who can?) so instead they made un-achievable in game goals (or limited to one toon per person), we said it was too much and needed to be scaled back!
This was voiced as a concern quite awhile ago, now its basically at a boiling point and they STILL REFUSE to deign a answer to us.
WE are all plebeians apparently, who ragamuffin sort of way, are to be ignored.
If this is removed, I hope Zeb at least you enjoyed the last episode of Walking Dead I did. It was quite entertaining and leads up to something it appears!
This game is NOT a "hardcore MMO" its a casual MMO, log in for 1-2 hours a day, maybe drop some $ here and there. The issue is the RP system is not designed for that.
Ideally you would earn between 3-5% of RP for ONE artifact item every ~2-4 hour play session. However this isnt the case otherwise we would be earning: 4,500,000 * .05 = 225,000 RP each play session.
This would take 20 play sessions between 2-4 hours to get ONE orange item (if you did RP farming) and would take 80 play sessions of RP farming to get 4 items to orange. This also doesnt factor in OTHER things like artifacts or enchants.
This seams resonable to me since you FIRST have to EARN the artifact equipment. The MH comes AFTER doing a full module campaign. The OH and the Neck come from doing Tiamat 15 times each. The best (I dunno I got mine off the AH).
This also doesnt factor in the GEAR/ENCHANTS/ARTIFACTS as well so I see no problem with allowing players to earn 200k+ each play session of ARTIFACT EQUIPMENT RP.
Since 200k+ RP per day would be FAR too much for the regular enchant system (3 days to upgrade from Perfect to Pure?!) This HAS To come in the form of GEAR since GEAR is limited to Artifact Equipment.
So shoot for 200k per play session. Break that into Purple Blue greens etc.
Lets say you get 2 Purple items 10 Blues and 30 greens in a session.
Actually, randomness is one of the foundations of D&D. My D&D books are full of random loot tables, random magic item tables, and randomly generated treasure.
Don't give them any more ideas on randomness.
you are correct. But in you look at that randomness - it is in limit of rules. And that should be enough. Basicly you can still win even with bad luck. Not here really. Just remember BI gloves grind. I had to buy. over 1k majors and 500 epics.
So obviously this has been a hot topic since more Artifacts and Artifact Equipment was announced for Module 5. Over a month ago, I suggested a system where earned Experience could be used as a resource to help grow Artifacts and Artifact Equipment. The goal of such a system would allow people more freedom to build and advance their characters simply by playing the game. Right now there is an enormously high level of frustration as to how expensive and tedious it is to level your Artifacts and Artifact Equip.
Here is the new system I propose. First, Experience becomes a resource that is tracked on your Riches tab. Collecting Experience begins from day one. You don't need to be 60 to start collecting Artifacts, so you shouldn't have to be 60 to start collecting Experience. A simple mock up is here:
You can see at the bottom the Experience resource is neatly added to the bottom. The currency tab is already being revamped for Module 5, so I don't believe this is a major technical hurdle. Next to the Experience count is the "Use" button, exactly identical to the Black Ice resource.
When a player hits the Use button, another interface is brought up:
The Item Empowerment screen, again identical in function to the existing Black Ice Empowerment. The screen lists your available Experience points you can allocate, and lists all your equipped Artifacts and Artifact Equipment. If something is already at maximum rank, the equipment will be listed, but you will be unable to add more experience.
Now all you do is simply use the slider (or 100% to allocate it all) to decide how much experience you wish to add to the Artifact. If enough experience is added to enable the Artifact to "Rank Up", after the experience is allocated, the 100% button turns to the "Rank Up!" button, and you cannot allocate more experience until the Artifact is refined to the next level. Pressing the "Rank Up!" button brings up the traditional refining interface for this.
Now what's the ROI that justifies the change?
First, it allows players to focus on just playing the game, while still feeling like they have control over advancing their Artifacts and Artifact Equipment. Since nearly everything in this game gives experience, players can chose how they want to play and still make progress. They're not forced to feel like they have to "grind" a particular path in order to keep advancing.
And happy players are satisfied players. And satisfied players are you best customers, and advocates to new or potential customers. Bottom line: Happy players spend money.
Secondly, the current experience boosters become more relevant to post-60 play, meaning more players have more reasons to purchase these from the Zen shop. If you want to rank up an Artifact more quickly, you might purchase a large or huge experience booster to double the rate at which you receive experience to help speed up the process.
Third, it turns content that might otherwise be viewed as boring or repetitive into opportunities to earn more experience for your artifacts. Doing existing Campaign dailies even after you finished the Campaign could potentially become a lucrative way to earn experience for your artifacts, as well as running dungeon or skirmish content with friends or new players, even though you don't need any of the drops. However, the experience earned will go a long way towards improving your existing equipment.
Fourth, it's not something that 3rd party farmers and bots can produce and sell back to players. The experience you earned is earned via your own play. There's no way for farmers to monetize this, which takes away from Cryptic, as well as generally leads to less happy experience (via attempts to exploit) for players.
And Fifth, it's more satisfying to know that your power level is directly related to how much you continue to play. And as new Artifacts and Artifact Equipment is released, it's not as stressful to start to replace other gear by simply playing the game...and it also gives you an incentive to keep playing and building and experience pool in anticipation of new equipment.
I even think it's reasonable to make this experience pool account-wide to help (and encourage) people to grow their alts, and not make starting a second, third or tenth character seem like such a mountain to climb
Anyway, I'm sure the rest of the community can continue to come up with ways this alternate path to leveling Artifacts and Artifact Equipment would be a much welcome addition.
Please keep in mind I'm not advocating changing anything about the current Refinement system. Using equipment, stones and enchants is still a valid path to ranking up your Artifacts or Artifact Equipment. If you feel like you'd rather farm stones, or purchases stacks off the AH, that's totally cool. But multiple paths to advancement to help supplement is never a bad thing.
Why do u ppl from cryptic keep talking about RP system's development and skipping this idea? this is the best idea atm.
So obviously this has been a hot topic since more Artifacts and Artifact Equipment was announced for Module 5. Over a month ago, I suggested a system where earned Experience could be used as a resource to help grow Artifacts and Artifact Equipment. The goal of such a system would allow people more freedom to build and advance their characters simply by playing the game. Right now there is an enormously high level of frustration as to how expensive and tedious it is to level your Artifacts and Artifact Equip.
Here is the new system I propose. First, Experience becomes a resource that is tracked on your Riches tab. Collecting Experience begins from day one. You don't need to be 60 to start collecting Artifacts, so you shouldn't have to be 60 to start collecting Experience. A simple mock up is here:
You can see at the bottom the Experience resource is neatly added to the bottom. The currency tab is already being revamped for Module 5, so I don't believe this is a major technical hurdle. Next to the Experience count is the "Use" button, exactly identical to the Black Ice resource.
When a player hits the Use button, another interface is brought up:
The Item Empowerment screen, again identical in function to the existing Black Ice Empowerment. The screen lists your available Experience points you can allocate, and lists all your equipped Artifacts and Artifact Equipment. If something is already at maximum rank, the equipment will be listed, but you will be unable to add more experience.
Now all you do is simply use the slider (or 100% to allocate it all) to decide how much experience you wish to add to the Artifact. If enough experience is added to enable the Artifact to "Rank Up", after the experience is allocated, the 100% button turns to the "Rank Up!" button, and you cannot allocate more experience until the Artifact is refined to the next level. Pressing the "Rank Up!" button brings up the traditional refining interface for this.
Now what's the ROI that justifies the change?
First, it allows players to focus on just playing the game, while still feeling like they have control over advancing their Artifacts and Artifact Equipment. Since nearly everything in this game gives experience, players can chose how they want to play and still make progress. They're not forced to feel like they have to "grind" a particular path in order to keep advancing.
And happy players are satisfied players. And satisfied players are you best customers, and advocates to new or potential customers. Bottom line: Happy players spend money.
Secondly, the current experience boosters become more relevant to post-60 play, meaning more players have more reasons to purchase these from the Zen shop. If you want to rank up an Artifact more quickly, you might purchase a large or huge experience booster to double the rate at which you receive experience to help speed up the process.
Third, it turns content that might otherwise be viewed as boring or repetitive into opportunities to earn more experience for your artifacts. Doing existing Campaign dailies even after you finished the Campaign could potentially become a lucrative way to earn experience for your artifacts, as well as running dungeon or skirmish content with friends or new players, even though you don't need any of the drops. However, the experience earned will go a long way towards improving your existing equipment.
Fourth, it's not something that 3rd party farmers and bots can produce and sell back to players. The experience you earned is earned via your own play. There's no way for farmers to monetize this, which takes away from Cryptic, as well as generally leads to less happy experience (via attempts to exploit) for players.
And Fifth, it's more satisfying to know that your power level is directly related to how much you continue to play. And as new Artifacts and Artifact Equipment is released, it's not as stressful to start to replace other gear by simply playing the game...and it also gives you an incentive to keep playing and building and experience pool in anticipation of new equipment.
I even think it's reasonable to make this experience pool account-wide to help (and encourage) people to grow their alts, and not make starting a second, third or tenth character seem like such a mountain to climb
Anyway, I'm sure the rest of the community can continue to come up with ways this alternate path to leveling Artifacts and Artifact Equipment would be a much welcome addition.
Please keep in mind I'm not advocating changing anything about the current Refinement system. Using equipment, stones and enchants is still a valid path to ranking up your Artifacts or Artifact Equipment. If you feel like you'd rather farm stones, or purchases stacks off the AH, that's totally cool. But multiple paths to advancement to help supplement is never a bad thing.
Challenge pre-mod 6. Mod 6 launches on March 17th. My weapon is currently at rank 45.
Let's see what happens first: My weapon makes legendary or mod 6 launches. Every other piece of artifact gear I have is epic (finally, after three or so months of work).
ROLL TIDE ROLL
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
I have completed my boons on my warlock 2 months ago, ever since I've been at 17k GS and I have had absolutely no character progression ever since. And I play this character very regularly.
I ranked up my artifact main hand from 35 to 37.. and that's it, I do have 76 power points now though..
If I had played during those two months with the experience system, granted that power points have around 50% chance to appear I'd have around 7.5mil RP in my artifacts, which means my rank 64 DC artifact and GWF artifact would be yellow. That is some character progress.
I think the exp -> rp system is great, I also think that you *cryptic* could monetize it by selling your exp boosters. Want more RP? Buy the linen shirts and pants for 20% more exp, or the experience booster, or coal wards to create that rank 12 azure enchantment you wanted so much
So yeah... I think this idea is full of potential without breaking the game and making it easy. This method would take so long that those who want their stuff now would still buy RP from the store but it would help 99% of the rest of the population to 'Feel rewarded' for playing the game.
It's not about needing those yellow pieces of gear for completing content, it's about feeling rewarded for playing, and artifact wise my character has been completely static for 2 months, I've achieved every other goal in the game now, what's next? I have nothing to do now, goals are out of my reach, it takes me ages to get a single rank up on my artifact weapon so I don't feel progress - reward for playing the game.
And if we look at it, if the system had been implemented, over the course of months I would have completed only two artifacts out of 7, so that's not broken, it's just progress and progress is satisfying. No progress is frustrating.
I am the monk, martial skill transcends the battlefield
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Challenge pre-mod 6. Mod 6 launches on March 17th. My weapon is currently at rank 45.
Let's see what happens first: My weapon makes legendary or mod 6 launches. Every other piece of artifact gear I have is epic (finally, after three or so months of work).
Unless you bust out the credit card. My money is on module will launch before you even hit lvl 55 on your weapon.
Unless you bust out the credit card. My money is on module will launch before you even hit lvl 55 on your weapon.
Good Luck.
Credit card? Ha ha ha....man, all I'll have at that point is pocket lint. MAYBE ten bucks to spend on the game, if that. Next month is the wife's birthday AND my anniversary.
Also, to those who complain that the devs haven't responded in this thread: Enough already. I made it clear from the opening post of this thread that I DID NOT expect a dev response. Although of course such a response is welcomed, the main purpose of this thread was to bring visibility to the issue and to have a place to collect feedback which was then given to Akro to submit to the devs. As I have seen in the preview forum, the devs have chosen to speak through actions rather than a posted response (the addition of new coffers to the invocation system and increasing the quality of the items contained therein to AT LEAST lesser resonance stones and increases in RP drops for at least artifacts). While this does cover some of the points I made in the OP of this thread, it's just one step in the right direction. IMO, it still falls short of completely alleviating the issue altogether.
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silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
edited February 2015
The announcement of release today.
This has become hyper-critical.
Why cant we get a answer at this juncture? Do you think we at this point care if detailing work is being done on open world zones? Most of us could care less at this stage. The # 1 concern is right here and you keep putting dev blog posts up about a hamster or something..
Challenge pre-mod 6. Mod 6 launches on March 17th. My weapon is currently at rank 45.
Let's see what happens first: My weapon makes legendary or mod 6 launches. Every other piece of artifact gear I have is epic (finally, after three or so months of work).
I know you want the challenge Lew. But save your arti RP for double RP at least
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Well hopefully the dev's will acknowledge in words or actions that there is a plan to do something soon™. I say that because from talking to people it seems that more and more people are viewing the hope for a better system as quixotic. This is leading to many that I talk to starting to not care what content gets released in mod 6 or beyond. It's a bad situation.
2. Without increased refining points , amount of refining into gear seems ludicrously high, with many people playing on average 2-4 hours a day, this is highly discouraging. This has already had effect on guilds, guild membership. It doesnt encourage people to play, it encourages them to leave. There is already alot of daily grinding for boons, this added secondary grind isnt helping, it needs to be near the same level of achievement for regular enchantments/artifacts.
3. PVP power balance is already a massive concern in today's game (mod 5) it has been a issue around mod 4 going forward, It appears to be a even wider gap for mod 6. Due to the inherent bad design of the refining process/achievement level, you are basically gating people out of PVP.
4. There is a difference between acceptable grind (3 months for avg of 2 hours a day, so at least we can play , MAYBE, more then one toon between mods) and the current rate. There is no real reason as suggest to contain artifact gear in the manner they have proscribed, eventually (and yes any mmo veteran knows this) It will be replaced in a mod going forward. It might be a year, but it will be replaced.
5. Failure of communication from the devs back to the playerbase, in what many of us see as the BIGGEST issue in the game. This has made some of us question why they cannot simply answer us one way or another. Past experience on feedback is thus "If you dont get any attention to a issue, then its simply going to be ignored". We the player-base are asking for some attention to this issue.
Completely agree. Honestly Im a little disappointed in the direction they are going. Adding yet another artifact slot so now we have 4?! That just seems SO ludicrus.
What they should have done was removed ALL the artifact slots except the primary one. THEN you can increase the costs massively for that ONE piece.
This makes you forced to use the class artifact and the bonus very carefully and invest more into that one item rather than havin to invest in a TON of items that you cant even transfer to an alternative character.
This actually REDUCES the power of artifacts such as DC, because the stats are sub par to an artifact like the GWF one... Or Lathanders set which has very poor stats compared to others as well but has a great bonus....
THEN you can make the item costly to upgrade because that one item means alot.
But overall I agree:
1) Dragon Hoard should be a bonus - not the PRIMARY way to earn RP
2) I know our guild has seen a drop off in players due to the tremendous cost of BIS items. Competitive players want better items, everyone wants to be BIS. For some its attainable others it isnt, but when you make it FAR too hard/costly to get BIS, you put that "carrot" too far away to reach, players just give up instead of keep trying.
3) PVP balance gets harder and harder the more stats and items you offer with immense power. The gap between an artifact item and a regular one is MASSIVE. Just look at the new lvl 25 JC belts, even with 2 slots (like the artifact belt) the artifact ones come with +4 to stats. Thats MASSIVE. 4% more crit from Dex? Thats equivalent to 1600 more in stats... Do the math on that!
4) Its only been the "RP" system that has been found unacceptable. Previously modules 1,2 and 3 things were ok as far as grinding items for BIS status. BlackIce Gear required a long grind but was doable with an hour a day. Even artifacts were/are "ok" but mostly due to bots keeping prices low.... But now its just going to be madness... There will be a very small handful of BIS players - most of which are probably not playing the game legitly... Just sayin.
5) This is a BIG one. ZERO response officially..... They dont even acknowledge they see an issue which makes me wonder what they are even looking at.... IF they are looking at the % of players who have items versus those that dont this is going to give you a metric that means absolutely nothing.
Why?
Because HOW players got their gear is not a direct correlation to how players SHOULD get their gear. A perfect example is un-bound RP USED to be dirt cheap because of bots. I know ALOT of players (including myself) that used the AH tp buy a TON of stacks of peridots. You cant do that anymore though.
So you cant look at how many players have the gear, you have to look at how long to you expect players to have to farm to get that gear. This is what is failing right now. I DONT think the solution is to make RP unbound again, but players need to be able to earn RP on their own at a reasonable rate.
Rather than continue to increase the RP needed for gear, they need to either DECREASE the RP need or give us ALOT more ways to farm RP.
I want to give a game company money for returned entertainment, but when in reality that investment of entertainment is so far out of proportion to received value, there is simply NO reason to buy anything.
They have overpriced them out of the niche market they once held.
This game WAS perfect in mod 1-3, it was a casual affair with a fun little pvp on the side, where anyone could join, roll a toon in 60 days give or take and compete.
That niche is gone, of course, if you paid loads of money, you can compete in pvp, but there is no pve content even worth doing anymore.
They dont WANT us to run pve group content, if they did, they would GIVE us group content worth running. You can run 500 sots/esots/elols and maybe see 1 or 2 books dropped. The drop rate of the only VALUED non bound item at the highest PVE content, doesnt even allow you to sell anything. Its ludicrous. So hence, ya, you get your few things and dont run them anymore. I barely consider Tiamat a group item, its a HE and should be 100% doable if it wasnt for morons, who cant build their toons right or bug encounters.
I am not trying to rant, or be disrespectful. My goal was to stay here until Everquest 3 was released, I still would like to do that.
So I will try to do this without breaking any rules, Please listen to this panel of Neverwinter veterens (you can see any the start dates are all over a year, give or take) who are bringing what they consider to be the #1 issue in neverwinter online today.
We need this addressed asap.
^^Regarding group content, there was a reason why people ran the daylights out of CN before GS & KV turned the dungeon to easy mode.
It was challenging, and IT HAD A GOOD PAYOFF. When you won rolls, you could actually use it or sell it to finance your character or alts.
None of the dungeons added since beta provide any real form of reward for players after they have the specific item they want from the dungeon. Basically, they remove all rewarding farm content from the game.
I'm waiting to see the 70 dungeon content, maybe there will be a level 70 CN with rewarding drops that groups can't just grab a GF and roll thier face on the keyboard all the way through.
This. This is exactly the thing that would make me happy. I'd at least like to have some communication with the devs. Half the time, it feels like they aren't even here. Yeah, I know they "read" the threads. But if they actually posted in more than one thread a week, it might actually inspire some confidence in the fact that there's a chance they are listening to what the players have to say
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Totally agreed. They cannot simply increase drastically the RP necessary to get even average stats compared with the top rank items.
Or they give far way of farming or, they give up average players.
This is also why its so silly we can now have FOUR artifacts.... They should have gone the OTHER way and gotten rid of the extra secondary slots and allowed us only ONE artifact.
Then they can truly increase the cost of that ONE artifact alot, since its only ONE. Now players look at the FOUR they need and the cost is overwhelming. Artifacts should be rare. Make them Bound to Account but only enable use to equip ONE at a time. Then make that ONE drastically more expensive to lvl up to 140.
This REDUCES the power creep AND reduces the gear divide between BIS and not BIS players.
People will STILL spend on artifacts, and maybe MORE people will end up spending to get their ONE item upgraded, but people switch builds all the time, so each time they switch it makes other artifacts more and more powerful. It makes choosing a ONE to be much more meaningful.
I'm also unsure we have to worry about power creep as much, the stat curves were nerfed hard and the content is getting rebalanced anyway. That's not to say I'm confident in their balancing skills or pvp will be balanced.
I paid about 5% of the current artifact prices to upgrade my artifacts. Current prices would be too much, let alone your suggestion of more, even if it would just be for 1 of them. That just makes it even more cost inefficient.
^^This.
Power Creep flew through the roof when they upped the artifact to 3 & added passive companion bonuses.
How can they even design end game PVE content when the vast majority of the player base will never go above rank 7 enchants/blue artifacts (maybe a purple one in the mix), and a minute few running rank 10-12 enchants with legendary+ everything.
I truly think this was a better game before artifacts/passives were added. The enchant ranks alone provide an absolutely massive stat difference between characters. On live there is such a massive dps/survival difference between a 16k player, a 18k player, & a 20k player that they are each in completely different ballparks. Adding another 1000+ GS for another artifact & adding another level to companions (even though that bonus is broken on test currently) just makes it far worse.
Add to that the entire refinement process which is an act of misery, that literally takes hours of repetitive mouse clicks after you have acquired the insane amount of RP that can no longer be farmed in game.
- upcoming next artifact levels alone with refinement rank 12 - overwhelming grind for RP
- current Tiamat and mod 5 boons grind - boring very long grind for just 1 top pve armor
-current new artifact belts and cloaks with bop artifacts for set - RND based grind for drop of artifact and then grind for RP after
All this now leads to only one case - you have time to play on 1 toon. Im of those people that like to reach goals in game and get stuff to best. Sometimes I can spend cash, as I did for dragonborn pack, for stuff that I assume is good investment for long. Yet it turns out to be waste of zen and very short living investment.
Result - one char is only possible way to play. Nobody will make me spend that money for RP even on one char nor Ill spend a penny even to double that on alt.
Add to it
- upcoming changes in leadership and no XP (possible - yet still in work) on invoke.
Game is becoming alt unfriendly without solid or even low income of RP or AD(24k cap per char).
- upcoming changes to professions that just neglect time and efforts that are spent on current "make" gear.
If this changes happen to be alive - I have only 2 question really
- Why do we have a new class (alt) for? Gap to get pal to top is crazy.Making him alt for leadership and rare "weak fun GS" play does not really appeal to me due to still big amount of time requested to spent. Time that will be needed to raise main char be needed.
- New content, at least zones, is not really finished yet but is still same stupid formula - boring daily sht- repeat 1m times to get best. And then we will make something that nerf all your accomplishments. What for do you want me to raise my main?
Possible ways of getting out of this HAMSTER hole are listed earlier all over forum. I like following
- make stuff BoA - artifacts, stones, RP, companions, boons and achievements
. So that player is more a person that can play different alt rather then force to play one hoping that it won't get nerfed reworked next patch.
- make XP to RP system - want to level play alt or play capped one - still make some RP if you want too. It does not have to be big, still valuable enough to close that hole you call RP grind game.
- lower prices on RP in zen. So that they could be comparable to AH. People buy with AD - get % or from zen- 100% profit.
- Earn money on required to upgrade stuff like wards or coal.
- Make AD cap bigger per char. Or Make it account wide AD cap. And by that I mean not 50k AD sht that you can do. It has to be reasonable to even worth working on earning raw AD. ~ 500k ~ 1000 zen.
- MAKE REFINEMENT window easier to use!
- Make earning AD or RP as fun not daily grind that you need to repeat over 1 million times to even see some result.
And my personal favorite - remove that RND HAMSTER. Don't make excuse of not being able of just balancing your own game by introducing more random in it. It is your worst mistake so far and it will never take you to right way. It is random. I somebody want to play random he will play card. This is game based on rules. D&D.
PS atm dungeons can be done no sweat with current gear. just on lvl 70.
Actually, randomness is one of the foundations of D&D. My D&D books are full of random loot tables, random magic item tables, and randomly generated treasure.
Don't give them any more ideas on randomness.
I don't want to see an "improvement" on the system be something like Peridots are now worth 5d100+100 RP, randomly determined when you refine them.
http://www.globalnerdy.com/2008/03/05/the-random-harlot-table-from-the-original-dungeon-masters-guide/
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They already seem to have given up on the people playing 2-4 hours a day and spending (or were spending 20 bucks a month give or take)
If it wasnt the case then they wouldn't have shown the negative impact of their decisions on their recent earnings.
Ive been in several businesses, sometimes scaling back operations made sense if you could lower overhead, labor, operational cost and cater to a core business customer base instead.
However, I cant believe for a second this game can support itself on benefiting only the fringe spenders and the exploiters.
Most games PANDER to the average gamer, not drive them away. EVERYTHING they did for RP screamed the opposite (run away , RUN away you average people, we dont want you.)
The supposed reasoning, was they cant make content fast enough for gamers (who can?) so instead they made un-achievable in game goals (or limited to one toon per person), we said it was too much and needed to be scaled back!
This was voiced as a concern quite awhile ago, now its basically at a boiling point and they STILL REFUSE to deign a answer to us.
WE are all plebeians apparently, who ragamuffin sort of way, are to be ignored.
If this is removed, I hope Zeb at least you enjoyed the last episode of Walking Dead
Ideally you would earn between 3-5% of RP for ONE artifact item every ~2-4 hour play session. However this isnt the case otherwise we would be earning: 4,500,000 * .05 = 225,000 RP each play session.
This would take 20 play sessions between 2-4 hours to get ONE orange item (if you did RP farming) and would take 80 play sessions of RP farming to get 4 items to orange. This also doesnt factor in OTHER things like artifacts or enchants.
This seams resonable to me since you FIRST have to EARN the artifact equipment. The MH comes AFTER doing a full module campaign. The OH and the Neck come from doing Tiamat 15 times each. The best (I dunno I got mine off the AH).
This also doesnt factor in the GEAR/ENCHANTS/ARTIFACTS as well so I see no problem with allowing players to earn 200k+ each play session of ARTIFACT EQUIPMENT RP.
Since 200k+ RP per day would be FAR too much for the regular enchant system (3 days to upgrade from Perfect to Pure?!) This HAS To come in the form of GEAR since GEAR is limited to Artifact Equipment.
So shoot for 200k per play session. Break that into Purple Blue greens etc.
Lets say you get 2 Purple items 10 Blues and 30 greens in a session.
This means something LIKE:
Purple: 50k EACH
Blue: 5k Each
Greens: 1600 Each
This would give you 200k.
But what do we get?
Purple: 1200 each
BLue: 300 each
Green: 100 each.
Its just SO far from the mark.
you are correct. But in you look at that randomness - it is in limit of rules. And that should be enough. Basicly you can still win even with bad luck. Not here really. Just remember BI gloves grind. I had to buy. over 1k majors and 500 epics.
Why do u ppl from cryptic keep talking about RP system's development and skipping this idea? this is the best idea atm.
the 5 at-a-time system is really a poor design
Let's see what happens first: My weapon makes legendary or mod 6 launches. Every other piece of artifact gear I have is epic (finally, after three or so months of work).
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I ranked up my artifact main hand from 35 to 37.. and that's it, I do have 76 power points now though..
If I had played during those two months with the experience system, granted that power points have around 50% chance to appear I'd have around 7.5mil RP in my artifacts, which means my rank 64 DC artifact and GWF artifact would be yellow. That is some character progress.
I think the exp -> rp system is great, I also think that you *cryptic* could monetize it by selling your exp boosters. Want more RP? Buy the linen shirts and pants for 20% more exp, or the experience booster, or coal wards to create that rank 12 azure enchantment you wanted so much
So yeah... I think this idea is full of potential without breaking the game and making it easy. This method would take so long that those who want their stuff now would still buy RP from the store but it would help 99% of the rest of the population to 'Feel rewarded' for playing the game.
It's not about needing those yellow pieces of gear for completing content, it's about feeling rewarded for playing, and artifact wise my character has been completely static for 2 months, I've achieved every other goal in the game now, what's next? I have nothing to do now, goals are out of my reach, it takes me ages to get a single rank up on my artifact weapon so I don't feel progress - reward for playing the game.
And if we look at it, if the system had been implemented, over the course of months I would have completed only two artifacts out of 7, so that's not broken, it's just progress and progress is satisfying. No progress is frustrating.
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
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Unless you bust out the credit card. My money is on module will launch before you even hit lvl 55 on your weapon.
Good Luck.
Credit card? Ha ha ha....man, all I'll have at that point is pocket lint. MAYBE ten bucks to spend on the game, if that. Next month is the wife's birthday AND my anniversary.
Also, to those who complain that the devs haven't responded in this thread: Enough already. I made it clear from the opening post of this thread that I DID NOT expect a dev response. Although of course such a response is welcomed, the main purpose of this thread was to bring visibility to the issue and to have a place to collect feedback which was then given to Akro to submit to the devs. As I have seen in the preview forum, the devs have chosen to speak through actions rather than a posted response (the addition of new coffers to the invocation system and increasing the quality of the items contained therein to AT LEAST lesser resonance stones and increases in RP drops for at least artifacts). While this does cover some of the points I made in the OP of this thread, it's just one step in the right direction. IMO, it still falls short of completely alleviating the issue altogether.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
This has become hyper-critical.
Why cant we get a answer at this juncture? Do you think we at this point care if detailing work is being done on open world zones? Most of us could care less at this stage. The # 1 concern is right here and you keep putting dev blog posts up about a hamster or something..
For the love of..
FIX RP .
I know you want the challenge Lew. But save your arti RP for double RP at least
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