Stronhold is a waste of time.

clonkyo1 · August 2015

After i have spend some time playing this mod (both alone and with a newformed guild 12 players on it) i just found that this mod is, basically, a waste of time:

- Stronholds are really hard to improve/upgrade for both "requeriments/grinding" AND "limits".
- Some content is impossible for low-population guilds.
- Most gear will be outdated on "Underdark" almost for sure... but even so, some pieces are really "hard" to get from SH.
- Continous grinding on this zone during "events".

So, basically, i just stopped doing/testing everything on this mod due the reasons i just typed. The "basic" idea is pretty good and i like it. The problem is, that this mod is just for "fun" (notice quotes)... hope devs are working really hard on Underdark, otherwise, this game will die for sure.

silverkelt · August 2015

I think there are some good things and there are flaws, its AT least alot less broken then previous mod releases.

I doubt everything will be outdated, it appears this is a long term investement and they will just make it that new buildings ect will be needed in the future.

That said, running all 4 dragons in a guild run is pretty fun .

plasticbat · August 2015

For a small guild, it is waste of time because you can't go anywhere.

For my guild, this is very good. The community bond is getting stronger and stronger. More and more guildees are involving. People are kind of commit to come back to do the dragon fight every 2 hours. More chatting and talking. More dungeon runs. Different variety of dungeon runs since many people will "meet" at dragon run time (i.e. every 2 hours).

Mod 6 was bad. SH revitalized the guild.

hustin1 · August 2015

SH is a long, slow grind for tiny guilds. For much of the past couple of nights I was the only one on. By spending lots of AD on the AH, I managed to get our Surplus Equipment over the top by buying up lots of greens and blues (and donating a handful of old purples, but only a handful). I did much the same for gems by buying up stacks of R3 and R4 here and there. Now we're down to Adventurer's Shards of Power -- we need another 1100 or so until we can finally build the Farm. The grind is extremely long, slow, and boring, but we're inching forward as well as we can. That said, I have no idea how we will ever build the marketplace.

I would recommend a simple change for small guilds: increase the rewards if you solo the smallest HE's (since those are the only ones that are soloable anyway). It sure would be nice if we could get one or two Adventurer's Shards of Power every time we solo one.

Another recommendation: let the guild leader designate a weekly "meeting time". For an hour, the stronghold could spawn a few assets from the Summer Festival: picnic tables, a small band, a vendor, and maybe a pinata once every few minutes. It's not game-breaking, but it gives members a point of reference for when they could decide to meet. Oh, and have it show up on the event list next to the minimap.

zekethesinner · August 2015

hustin1 wrote: »

I would recommend a simple change for small guilds: increase the rewards if you solo the smallest HE's (since those are the only ones that are soloable anyway). It sure would be nice if we could get one or two Adventurer's Shards of Power every time we solo one.

<showing off>
Did all big HEs solo on his 3k GWF beside giants
</showing off>

Thats being said, if u r bunch of ppl who knows each other, as that bunch join any other bigger guild or merge with couple smaller. It will be rly hard for ppl who can manage 5 player per day. I know i know, its our guild we love it. etc. Existing like that u will slowly extinct due to no progress and no motivation. I asure u.

Said that, Darkness is recruting.

(Sin)cerely
Kain

regenerde · August 2015

There is no point in sticking around for Strongholds or even Underdark, unless you're in a big guild.
There is no point in joining a guild, unless that guild allready has a good market up and running.

Even if the Devs change something between now and Underdark to make it reasonable for small and medium guilds, a lot of players will be gone by then, and i doubt that those will bother to return.

As mentioned before, it's go big, or go home...

blazious11 · August 2015

Another issue is, that small guilds is out of resources soon. Why the hell have I to go back to sharandar, dread ring etc, I have already finished it, thanks god. Doing dailies again and again is not fun at all! Also grinding for influence over 1-2 hour with my alts not fun at all.
There are some good improvements, some equipment form epic HE-s are fun (not alwasy usable, but fun), but this repetating gameplay will be the end of Neverwinter.
At least, give us back the dungeons. put some vouchers (green to Skirmish, blue to T1, purple quality to t2) into the chests, also to minor, middle and epic HE-s, Then you have a chance to play some instead of doing dailies.
It will come soon, that even the most dedicated players will get tired of this.

luisand · August 2015

Dedicated players wont get tired of this soon, they allready are

.
It's the same all over again,
- New insane grind.
- Blocking a part of player base from ever seing most of Mod7 ( big guild required).
- No items, rp stones etc. All that drop is rank 5's and green useless gear.

I could go on and on, but I've about given up on this game.

ghosty2a · August 2015

Just Have to ask, How do yal define "large" or "big" guild?

aandrethegiant · August 2015

I knew this was going to happen, from the minute the 150 account limit governor was placed on every guild in the game.

Small guilds have no incentive to grind to the level they would need to grind in order to build their stronghold, and or revitalize their guild.

Many Medium AND large guilds are now segmented, separated from each other just because Cryptic feels it needs to play the gating game again. In this case it's for a quick profit. More guilds = more resource transactions in the store.

However, by gating guilds in this fashion, so many small, and up and coming guilds (that would have supported and kept this content churning) will simply give up. Not because they dont like the game, or because "they are whining", but because the gating mechanic devised makes it unfun (or the cost too high) for those guild members.

aandrethegiant · August 2015

ghosty2a said:
Just Have to ask, How do yal define "large" or "big" guild?

Actually a great question Ghosty!

Here's my math. The numbers are not set in stone. Just my interpretation as it refers to Neverwinter.

Large guilds are those mega multi-game guilds that boast thousands of members. We have a few of those guilds here in Neverwinter, such as Old Timers Guild and Grievance.

We have small guilds, 20 accounts and under. Many of these guilds have stated they can not see value in the Stronghold system. An unintended result of course is this segment needs to be strong for the future of the content. Are you a new guild starting up? Starting at one or two members? How LONG will it take to get big enough to be able to play the content. Another unintended byproduct: Family guilds. This is D&D. Mom or Dad should be able to play Neverwinter with their kids. There is zero incentive in this segment.

Medium sized guilds. Everyone in between. Well, not exactly anymore. If you have quite a few less accounts than 150, you may be ok. However if you have surpassed the 150 account mark, you are really in a pickle. you must break apart your guild into sections.

Medium and larged sized guilds are in many cases the reward for much hard work over many years. There ARE NO GOOD OPTIONS for medium to larged sized guilds keeping your group you PUT TOGETHER, together.

bushman1414 · August 2015

blazious11 said:
Another issue is, that small guilds is out of resources soon. Why the hell have I to go back to sharandar, dread ring etc, I have already finished it, thanks god. Doing dailies again and again is not fun at all! Also grinding for influence over 1-2 hour with my alts not fun at all.
There are some good improvements, some equipment form epic HE-s are fun (not alwasy usable, but fun), but this repetating gameplay will be the end of Neverwinter.
At least, give us back the dungeons. put some vouchers (green to Skirmish, blue to T1, purple quality to t2) into the chests, also to minor, middle and epic HE-s, Then you have a chance to play some instead of doing dailies.
It will come soon, that even the most dedicated players will get tired of this.

THIS, +1

I was waiting this mod to see new interesting grind... and @blazious11 say it pretty well,

blazious11 said:
Why the hell have I to go back to sharandar, dread ring etc, I have already finished it, thanks god.

I go back... few more days... my small guild grind hard and we get nothing, few big guilds just do daily grind and smash easy pvp, they get all stuff easier, fairplay/fairuse?

Loyal players not abandon guild and smaller guilds must have RIGHT to prosper in this game, but it is now clear that devs want small guild die.

Give back 500 account or even 1000 account limit per guild, I want see how good game come after that, it must super good because bigger guild are now soo much better position to compared small.

blazious11 · August 2015

Also, we are a guild, for members from a certain little nation. Some of us dont speak english. We can send recruiting messages, but there's only so many people from our country, that play NWO. Some of us could go to big guilds, we have IL and experience since Mod1, but we wont abandon our friends. I can't complain yet, we are doing moderately good, but when campaign resources and some stuff will run out, then we get stuck, then we might just abandon the whole grinding thingy, because it's not fun after a time.

silverkelt · September 2015

If you want to complain about something.. make it that , other then some pvp purposes, there was NO reason to have a medium to large guild in this game.. ZERO.. they tried to make a reason for GG, but there was none really, any random guild WOULD allow you access, so who cared.

THEY had the perfect, PERFECT opportunity in TIAMAT to start making a reason for larger guilds and they blew it.

aandrethegiant · September 2015

silverkelt said:
If you want to complain about something.. make it that , other then some pvp purposes, there was NO reason to have a medium to large guild in this game.. ZERO.. they tried to make a reason for GG, but there was none really, any random guild WOULD allow you access, so who cared.

THEY had the perfect, PERFECT opportunity in TIAMAT to start making a reason for larger guilds and they blew it.

I agree to a degree. There are PLENTY of reasons in the game for all sized guilds. There should never have been a focus on PvP, and instead that time should have been spent making the Foundry the coolest quest/dungeon creation system there ever was.

regenerde · September 2015

The Devs could ease the grind by a lot for at least the lower ranks of all structures, and it wouldn't hurt any one.
Small guilds would at least get some small boons and access to the market from this.
And medium or big guilds would still be the only ones to reach the big boons...

aandrethegiant · September 2015

Yeah it just shows a stubbornness and an ignorance to what is necessary to build an all inclusive game with REPLAY VALUE. Its that PURE STUBBORNNESS and INABILITY to listen to the playerbase even when they make perfect sense. It is #1 reason why I stepped down from forum moderation and #1 reason why I play the game as little as I do nowadays.

Playerbase has asked for years:

Build up FOUNDRY and add incentive to play - NOTHING.
REAL LOOKING FOR GROUP FEATURE - NOTHING
ADD CHALLENGE SO GROUPS CAN PLAY - NOTHING
ADD DEEPER CHARACTER BUILDING - NOTHING (minor updates)
BARD CLASS ("Sooner than you think - Andy Velasquez 2012-3. Hehe OK OK This one's my PERSONAL gripe!) - NOTHING

I can list 20+ more things based on my own Hot Topics polls from years ago...

But finally they did a good thing with Strongholds but then lock it up so tightly that small medium and large sized guilds have issues. How many times does ONE DEVELOPER have to hear that Strongholds either becomes too costly for small guilds or too divided for many medium/large guilds???

So many people are fed up with the game Cryptic. People who LIKE the game are leaving, because they are so angry with the game's direction.

We as a guild are here, we'll always be here. We have a BLAST when we play together. We are building a heck of a Stronghold. But SOMEONE needs to stand up for the ones who are NOT GETTING HEARD! Also we have lost guildies as well, for no other reason than Cryptic purely NOT LISTENING. So even in a guild thats "working it" there is MUCH AGGRAVATION with Cryptic.

bitt3rnightmar3 · September 2015

What if the members of the guild could earn points or boons somehow to increase the guild size? Kind of like paying fealty to the castle? The problem appears to be that the guilds who are big enough to be full are cutting themselves apart. If there was some way that the membership that was already in the guild could work to make the guild bigger than 150 accounts by earning marks of some kind through participation it seems like things would be better overall. Then the larger guilds would work toward getting bigger while the smaller guilds who choose to stay that way would still have that option.
I don't know. Just a thought I had.

dsn1118 · September 2015

This mod is built for the long run from what I have seen so far.It wont be done in 3 months or maybe a year for smaller guilds.It seems boon stats make time spent on SH worth it if they dont raise the level cap again and make these boons worthless.

gromme12 · September 2015

This mod needs really large guild and active players who can repeat same dull grind over years. It is not all humans what can do this kind grind so only few individuals stay ingame and rotate multiple characters through to feed guild bigger.

So small guild can grow if each player use 4 - 12 character for grind and bigger guilds will grow faster if can do same ... but it is all same,

REPEAT REPEATS and again repeat.... with stronghold I take few more weeks repeat 5 - 6x HE´s and then it is done... and OLD content IWD/Sharandra/Dread... no words why I again grind them.

regenerde · September 2015

Like i said, it would be a start to adjust the resources needed for the first few ranks of the Stronghold structures and upgrades.
Big guilds will get those faster anyway, but small and medium guilds will at least get some small benefits from their Stronghold and might even be able to buy something usefull from the market then.

dsn1118 · September 2015

Sorry but why is the whine about being in a small guild.Strongholds didnt appear from thin air.This was coming from months away.We were 10-15 online player guild.We knew we have to merge other guilds to be successful in this mod when we saw the mod in preview.We were 90+ players when Stronghold hit the Dragon server and now we have a guild with 140+ player and nearly 45 online any given time.

You might not like the big guilds or their requirements.Actually even I dont like it that much myself.But this is the way the devs took us so either you can try to enjoy this mod or can pass this mod entirely and find something better to do until Underdark comes along

regenerde · September 2015

There is no passing with Stronghold, the difficulty of Underdark will probably be based on the Stronghold boons.

And the Devs made huge mistakes with the difficulty in the past, it cost them a lot of players, the same is happening with Stronghold right now and it will happen with Underdark too.

Therefore they should rethink their actions right now, and change their course, since i do prefer a game with a healthy and increasing playerbase, what about you?

Check the Steam Charts for some numbers, and see how the player numbers went down the drain from the release of Elemental Evil, a small up with the release of Strongholds, but guess what?
It will probably go back to it's downwards trend until Underdark is released.

http://steamcharts.com/app/109600
let's see what happens, when those numbers fall below 2k again, perhaps that will get some Devs to care about solo players and small guilds again.

Do you get that, or do you need a crayon picture to understand this?

Btw. what's all about ranting about small guilds...
Are you afraid of losing your worker bees?

Big guilds get big benefits, and that should be more then enough motivation to get into a big guild...
BUT small guilds should have a realistic chance on getting solid small benefits as well!

luisand · September 2015

dsn1118 said:
You might not like the big guilds or their requirements.Actually even I dont like it that much myself.But this is the way the devs took us so either you can try to enjoy this mod or can pass this mod entirely and find something better to do until Underdark comes along

And you just accept this ?. They make Mod7 , and the the best option for alot of people is to leave and wait for next one ?.
This is not a metro

zemnod · September 2015

This mod sucks. I'm so done.. Endless farming, doing nothing but repetitive quests, where is the fun in that? I wasn't looking for a job, I wanted to have some fun...

klangeddin · September 2015

Something tells me they kept the stronghold costs insanely high so that the most competitive players will splash lots of cash to get the stronghold maxed as soon as possible. When the metrics will show that the splashed cash on stronghold goodies has dropped big time, they'll nerf these requirements and make them accessible to small/medium sized guilds as well. And then they'll introduce another new insane grind to repeat the process described above. :P

gromm1 · September 2015

klangeddin said:
Something tells me they kept the stronghold costs insanely high so that the most competitive players will splash lots of cash to get the stronghold maxed as soon as possible. When the metrics will show that the splashed cash on stronghold goodies has dropped big time, they'll nerf these requirements and make them accessible to small/medium sized guilds as well. And then they'll introduce another new insane grind to repeat the process described above. :P

I really wish this above will became true. Stronghold cost are astronomical for singel player, cost are hard for 50 players and pretty dull grind for 150 player
..Average guild size seems to be 5 - 15 actives(count out each big guild)...

There is allready "pay me and get Stronghold gear" messages so Guild shopping has began.

ps. taking break to other game untill mod8, just need change our guild policy to allow ½ year break when game became too dull grind or you just add "gone fishing, time unknow" to your personal info

regenerde · September 2015

Well, i was pretty "optimistic" with getting 50 building resources for the lumberyard, and then gathering the same amount of building resources for the other open structure plots, in the end having at least those small benefits for my guild.

But it turns out, that was just a dream... that turned into a nightmare.

Showing only 50 building resources as requirement for all the other possible structures was just a visual bug.
The building resources stopped dropping the moment i finished the lumberyard.
And it took a few days, before the other open plots started showing the real requirements... grrreat.

I mean, i would understand something like asking for 1k wood plus 25g for the farm, and 1k woods plus 1k food plus 50g for the next RANK 1 production building, and so on.
That would be logical, but the Devs just went berserk with the requirements right from the start...

Let us not give small guilds a realistic chance to build up something, seems to be their new motto.

And if you think about taking a break until Underdark is here, you better start saving money...
You're going to need it to buy your way into a successful guild by then, to gain access to the Stronghold benefits to even have a fighting chance in Underdark.

muuli01 · September 2015

regenerde said:
Well, i was pretty "optimistic" with getting 50 building resources for the lumberyard, and then gathering the same amount of building resources for the other open structure plots, in the end having at least those small benefits for my guild.

But it turns out, that was just a dream... that turned into a nightmare.

Showing only 50 building resources as requirement for all the other possible structures was just a visual bug.
The building resources stopped dropping the moment i finished the lumberyard.
And it took a few days, before the other open plots started showing the real requirements... grrreat.

I mean, i would understand something like asking for 1k wood plus 25g for the farm, and 1k woods plus 1k food plus 50g for the next RANK 1 production building, and so on.
That would be logical, but the Devs just went berserk with the requirements right from the start...

Let us not give small guilds a realistic chance to build up something, seems to be their new motto.

And if you think about taking a break until Underdark is here, you better start saving money...
You're going to need it to buy your way into a successful guild by then, to gain access to the Stronghold benefits to even have a fighting chance in Underdark.

Yeah, first week were cool... then we did reality check. END

ps. most of us do only influence grind per day, but back to old content NO, other REPEATS no, park game and wait "Underdark" YES.

sher0013 · September 2015

Can't say SH is worth nothing because of boons and HE that drop resonance stones, but in general the mod is pretty boring for both PvP players (for now - because they have to PvE a lot to upgrade the strongold) and PvE (since they have to do the least favorite thing in the game: A LOT of daily quests. Srsly. Influence, companies, strohghold quests... and you'd better do it by all your characters). It is... not... very.... interesting.

urlord283 · September 2015

I think this is a good Mod...

The only problem is "limits" on vital upgrade components like influence and unavailability of"Spare" gear.

Fix that and we have something great.... IMO

Stronhold is a waste of time.

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