1) please remove AD from leadership and invoke, add that amount to encounters, dungeons, pvp, quests or other activities that is actually in game and present some challenge to do 2) remove cool-downs for dragon hoard and fey enchants (leave all stones that drop bound to account) 3) remove all chests and loot-able objects from open maps 4) dungeon chests and loot-able objects should give trade-able goods, except items like armor 5) dungeon boss should drop at least something, and no one period is not good enough 6) Stronghold encounters bigger than small should give resonance stones as 100% drop, quality my change
PvE -- I think there should be a clear indicator on the world map and title of where the merchant's sell consumable items, such as hp potions, and injury kits, I had quite a time trying to find these, especially in Protector's Enclave.
For me, these the things that really bugs me about NW.
1 - Poor character editor. CO and STO have it better (in super and stellar levels) and since theyre Cryptic Studios games too, how come the editor of our characters gets worse/restricted, instead of improved? I dont mean being capable of creating some of the toons/creatures we see around Millennium City or faction Starbases, but more options would be good, like hairs (which instead of adding, they started to remove...).
2 - Lack of character customization/identity. Its not enough to have our characters looking exactly like the next toon or NPC in PE. The clothes/armors have to be the same, like a true clone army. One truly struggle to make a character with unique appearance, especially now, that theyre started removing 'armor skins' from the game. Sets like Iliyanbruen, Fomorian, Profound, Dread Legion, classic T1/T2 (like Archmage, Timeless Hero, Titan and Grand Templar, just to name a few), Unicorn/Drake, Draconic (incl. Templar) and Infernal are some examples of armor skins that were removed from the game altogether, and that includes weapon skins (like the ones from Castle Never, which were pretty rad, if u ask me). Ok, I get it, it was part of the new itemization, so they had to cut some. But instead of completely removing em, why not make em available as skins in the campaign vendors? We now some of the skins (Iliyanbruen and Thayan Servitor) were used like that, but what about the others? They could even be sold in the Zen Store as free transmutables.
BY THE WAY, speaking of Zen Store transmutables, yeah, we have some there. Pretty nice. But its been some time since the last cool addition (Im sorry, but those Vestments of the Wind, the lastest addition(?) are laughable, IMO). We have the Bahamuts Champion/HR/SW/OBP Booster Packs transmutables, but guess what? there are FIVE other classes that deserves a Booster Pack with themed free transmutes (CW/DC/GF/GWF/TR). Its cool to promote the newly released class, but the first 5 were the ones to settled the game community and should have the same treatment.
3 - I cant think about anything else, other than few character animations that look really clunky/awkward, like GFs Crushing Surge (my favorite; the 'satisfying' part of the descriptor makes total sense) and SWs Essence Defiler. They could use an update, for better ones. Ooh! Ooh! I got another! The ever present clipping issue GWFs have with their Greatswords going thru their thighs. And the missing sprint animation, that nobody seems to care if the GWF is actually just moving his legs faster, instead of charging...
Leanan Sidhe(not "The Dresde Files" fairy!)- NW Legit Channel Moderator
1. Removing AD from Leadership without any reasonable way to get the same amount of AD in the same amount of time by just playing the game.
2. The game is still crashing/freezing at least once or twice in every game session without any report about the reason why.
3. XP gain and XP needed to level and fill the overflow is still ridiculous.
4. Difficulty in Dread Ring and Sharandar still needs some work done.
5. Based on 1. you should come up with a real plan on how to get more real players back into the game. Right now you're only working hard and successful on driving more and more real players away.
How about u guys bring back this package Hammerstone Gear Pack rather than doing 1000 heroics to get the gloves from IWD Pass , and god only know if they will ever drop .
1) Foundry - relevance to players (rewards) and bug fixes 2) PvP - Better system overall with goal to eliminate campfire sitting and then everyone waiting idly while the clock slowly ticks down. PvP below lvl 70 is a lot more fun than Lvl 70 PvP. Player match ups are better because the differences in gear is held to within 10 levels of each other. Lvl 70 does not feel any where near as close together as the lower level matches. 3) More realistic AD/RP requirements for leveling gear. Corollary, make more interesting day to day content that we can do while we are leveling our gear. Current things to do not integrate enough or there's not enough diversity. Sharandar and Dread Ring quest rewards are a step in the right direction. We need more of this. Bring back the other dungeons. Give us more daily skirmishes. Give us more PvP maps.
By changing the game to be unfriendly to single players like myself who really have no interest in playing with a Guild and making it necessary to play with a minimum group of 5 to attain any decent gear, plus with the changes to collecting AD from invoking.... This game has lost another player!
my biggest gripe is that who ever force/implimented this change to AD/Leadership, still has a job there? WTF!!!!!!!nerdrage nerdrage!!!!!. How did this get approved who thought this was a good idea. If this were RL issues with a company there would be class action lawsuits abound. Luckily you ToS covers you for that kinda of F"up. Change without compensations is a punishment, not only for the offenders, but for the innocent as well. Please Do not bother with any new content, until things in this game get fixed.
In no particular order, but all equally valid . . . .
1. Communication - for all the vaulted post Mod 6 Dev talk, it died off really quick. Regular, ideally weekly updates from at least the Lead Designer/Producer, that show an understanding of player concerns and that there is a cogent plan to address/assuage major game failings/designs.
2. Say NO - to any unrealistic goals given to the company. Mod 6 proved to be a profound failure that still has so many things wrong with it. If you know you cannot deliver a product that you as Devs would be proud of, then say so . . . which leads on to
3. Test Server - do not ask players for their feedback if most of it is ignored. A lot of the failings of Mod 6 were quite succinctly explained and blatantly ignored. The Paladin class for example, still has flaws noted from day one of it's release to Mimic.
While the necessity to add new content is necessary and welcome, but it should not be at the expense of already released modules. I hope strong leadership can help steer the game to a brighter future, but hope only lasts for so long.
Nice to see someone actually has stated these things, as on a whole it appears to us that nobody listens to any of the feed back, all we ever see is more way to suck money out of players pockets with no real rewards, I will never understand why they go forward with new mods when old mods are so defective. This game could have a excellent future but the fact that fixes never come for so many things that actually cost money etc.
By changing the game to be unfriendly to single players like myself who really have no interest in playing with a Guild and making it necessary to play with a minimum group of 5 to attain any decent gear, plus with the changes to collecting AD from invoking.... This game has lost another player!
Actually change affects all, not just single players. Let's face it, there's no way I'm taking someone with less than 2.5k ilvl to an epic dungeon. Chances of wiping is significantly higher when one player is not strong enough. So for that poor guy that still needs to save up some 2-5M AD just to get this character to the required ilvl, what are his options now? I really hope they think about that now, and implement changes right away. Some of the new players in my guild complained earlier today and have not logged in anymore since. My guild is down to just having me online instead of the usually 5-10 players.
"As the good archmage often admonishes me, I ought not to let my mind wander, as it's too small to go off by itself." -Danilo Thann[/quote]
Ok My feed back is 1 Bring back the Raw AD gotten from the leadership jobs. 2 Drop the PVp into a black hole some place otuside the Galaxy. 3 I have 6 lvl 70 characters and 1 lvl 61 character and now I can't get enough aD to even buy the Equipment he needs Because you removed one of the Best Ways to get AD Even though you did Raise the Amounts on the Dungeons the Skirmishes and the PVP (which i hate) And the Forge (another piece of HAMSTER i dislike).
OK first of all I strongly believe Neverwinter needs more game content specifically geared to the casual player who doesn't have hours upon hours to spend in the game. Elemental Evil wasn't too bad, most players could quest in most areas without having to spend hours grinding for gear or spending a great deal of real world currency for game items.
Secondly and most importantly in my opinion; Quit giving people reasons to regret spending their hard earned real world money for game items so often.
I spent real world currency to purchase zen which allowed me to obtain a greater bag of holding that I could trade among the characters in my account -
Then someone decided to make it "bound to character", and I found myself regretting spending my money for that purchase.
Secondly upon reaching level 60 (pre-Tiamat I believe) I again spent real world currency for zen that I could convert to astral diamonds, which would give me the opportunity to purchase level 60 "EPIC" level armor, weapons and better enchantments from the Auction House, which would allow me to solo in Sharandar and the Dread Ring -
Then someone decides to significantly increase the difficulty in those areas and essentially making the level 60 "EPIC" level armor and gear I purchased almost worthless, and again I found myself regretting spending my money on Neverwinter.
Finely since I don't have a lot of time to spend "grinding" for game currency or items, one last time I spent real world currency for zen which allowed me to obtained character slots to to do leadership professions which would earn me Astral Diamonds, thus allowing me the means purchase better armor, weapons and enchantments since it seems to be an ongoing theme with Neverwinter to make a players current armor, weapons and other gear obsolete in areas where it was previously sufficient.
And now Neverwinter developers say they are "improving the game" by taking away a players ability to earn Astral Diamonds in the leadership profession.
Believe me, if I knew before what I know now, I would not have spent a half-penny to purchase zen, not only for myself but for friends and relatives who also play Neverwinter as every reason I had for making those purchases was later to my regret.
You asked for "constructive criticism", this is the best I can do without having my post turn into a rant bemoaning all the money I've sent only to have every single reason for spending that money negated under the guise of "making improvements".
As simply as possible, quit giving people reason to regret playing and financially contributing to Neverwinter.
Speaking as someone who has a wife, a child, and a full-time job, I'm extremely disappointed by recent changes that make it increasingly harder and harder to earn astral diamonds. I can play maybe 30 minutes on any given day; with weekends, probably about 5 hours a week total. I will literally never have the time to do dailies, dungeons, or skirmishes for AD, and still do any actual progression content whatsoever.
The inversion of the invoke to favor the long-haul players (instead of acting as a way for the rest of us to not fall quite as woefully far behind) was bad enough, but removing AD from leadership means that I will never be able to buy... anything. Leadership was my main source of income. And that was typically only 1 round of tasks per day (or at least per day that I was able to log in). So, now I will go from earning about 2000AD per day, to earning about 200 from the first 1-2 invocations. Meanwhile, the kids who have 5 hours a day to spend in-game will continue to earn AD at 50x the rate that I ever did. After about a year of playing, my cumulative earnings (not my highest total, I mean EVERYTHING I've ever earned) are still less than the multi-million asking prices for high-end items on the auction house. I'd guess maybe ~1.5 mil, probably less. Considering that the refinement limit is--what, 24k per day?--the devs must have that in mind as an achievable high-end income. My "new normal" of 200 a day means that it would take me months to be able to afford a single blue-level refinement stone (25k AD!) from the Wondrous Bazaar. And I now have absolutely no reason whatsoever to bother with Leadership at all.
I'm now suffering some real buyer's remorse after having just spent another bit of real-world cash this past weekend, since lately the game feels like it's actively trying to exclude people like me.
All I see is PVP for the Upcoming Events Domination Gauntlgrym Domination Gauntlgrym Domination ECT all day long nothing for dungeons or Skirmishes any more. WHAT IS WITH THAT!!! Makes me think that you are shoving PVP down our throats and not going anywhere else!!!! Really Seriously thinking of going back to Nexon and Mabinogi. At least they listened most of the time to the player base.
If we define casual players as people who play your game (not bot) an average of 30-90 minutes per day, what % of your player base is casual?
How many characters do they have on their accounts?
How many AD were they able to produce per week on those accounts before this change?
After you answer those questions, how can you say that your recent AD changes will allow your average player to accumulate just as much or more AD than before the changes?
I have 60-90 minutes a day to play. I'm now able to generate less than 10k AD per day since the change. Two or three invokes, a couple skirmishes and a dungeon - that's what a player can realistically expect to complete in that amount of time. I used to make twice that on one character, and have 7 characters (because I purchased extra slots with Zen). So here I am, a casual player, telling you that I went from approx 120k AD per day to less than 10k AD per day. That is actual, hard data, not a formula or computer model. Tell me again how this change didn't hurt my ability to make AD, please - your reality is better than mine.
Right now you have a game that demands hundreds of thousands (or millions) of AD to make a single advance on a character - upgrade a companion, upgrade artifacts or artifact equipment, upgrade mounts... the list goes on. You can't realistically survive a dungeon without an ilvl of 2.2k+, which requires time and a lot of AD. AND THEN it costs 10-20k AD for a dungeon key that, more often than not, will get you a non-tradable item that you can salvage for 3k AD.
My #1 item for you to fix is YOUR IN-GAME ECONOMY. At present, there is no reason for a player to believe that his leveling/building character will ever be able to become anything but fodder in NWO. If you aren't already in the 3k+ ilvl area, you never will be.
#2 - Fix your rewards. Especially dungeons, so they aren't worth less than the resources expended to earn them.
#3 - Fix crafting! I enjoy crafting in games, but not in yours. Not anymore. Since mod 6, there is no reason what-so-ever for Weaponsmithing, and the only real reasons for Platesmithing, Mailsmithing, Leatherworking and Tailoring are pants and shirts. And the max 60% success rate for a rank 3 result is utter garbage - when it costs 100k in resources to craft pants or shirts and you get the sub-optimal result that, at best, you can sell for 15-20k 40% of the time AFTER spending several 100k for the assets to even have a 60% chance of getting rank 3, that's not crafting, that's spending a lot of money at the slot machine.
Ultimately, your game is showing people Manhattan penthouse apartments and saying "this is what you need" - then offering them a fast-food income. How long can someone realistically pursue that dream? Not long before they leave the dream or they leave the job - both of which are bad for NWO, because it means a growing tide of people leaving your game.
Please, for the love of Tymora, pay attention to your players, the ones you have left. We have enough frustrations, challenges and disappointments in real life. We come to you for an escape. If you throw more frustrations, challenges and disappointments at us, we'll escape elsewhere - count on it.
As a player who can only get to log on a few hours a week, I can rapidly see myself going nowhere in Neverwinter. I don't have the time to hang around for hours, to get a dungeon invite, or scare up a skirmish party. I was perfectly happy to visit Rhix every day, for a nice reward, but he seems to be out of AD, and nearly out of a job. So...
1. PLEASE bring back the Foundry AD reward - and while you're at it - bring back the Foundry. As a mainly solo player, I liked visiting the imaginations of other players. Fix it, promote it, reward it. You say nobody bothered to play it, so the AD was dropped. Well, why didn't they - didn't know, couldn't find, couldn't be bothered ? Possibly some thought, '...did that one, don't wan't to do it again..' Do they realize it plays to level ? Same theme, different opponents. Maybe if it was tucked in along with the rotating events it might be noticed, and played.
2. Make an attempt to fix the current economy, without f-ing over legit players, who have worked hard for their monies, and find themselves staring longingly through the AH window, like a kid at Christmas, who knows she'll never get the toy she really wants. Not everybody wants (or can afford) to buy Zen, but at the rate of current AD rewards, I figure it'll take me a few YEARS to buy that fancy armor all the other kiddies have
3. Add, rework, or whatever it takes to make the game truely solo-friendly again. Yes, I can see where PvP is important to some, and dungeons, skirmishes and Guilds. Not everybody wants to run with the pack, and/or can't. Myself - I'm not much use to a Guild, only able to log in at random times. I can't be depended on to be there when needed . And as I mentioned above, I don't have the time to wait for an invite to party.
So, I do the quests, the Foundrys (even with the semi-poor loot drops) and hang around waiting to invoke a couple of times. Why ? Because it was fun - once upon a time. Now, I wonder why I'm still here.
Ok My feed back is 1 Bring back the Raw AD gotten from the leadership jobs. 2 Drop the PVp into a black hole some place otuside the Galaxy. 3 I have 6 lvl 70 characters and 1 lvl 61 character and now I can't get enough aD to even buy the Equipment he needs Because you removed one of the Best Ways to get AD Even though you did Raise the Amounts on the Dungeons the Skirmishes and the PVP (which i hate) And the Forge (another piece of HAMSTER i dislike).
This basically ruins my game.
I AGREE 100%!
I can only play like 1 hour each day, now without leadership I will never get enough AD to gear up my characters... Only grinding pvp and dungeons is rewarding, but even the usually I get another cloak belt or ring instead of greaves or helms...
Getting AD was fun, and now you took it away. I'm not playing just to grind the same dungeons (which can take 20-60 minutes) over and over for a piece of redundant treasure and very meager AD.
First of all, the most annoying thing in this game is when u balance PVP and ruin at the same time PVE. So, maybe finally u can separate PVE skills and abilities from PVP skills and abilities? It would be great to see two paths, one for PVP and second for PVE.
The dungeons are useless now. The old dungeon system was much better. We can sell items from bosses. Then again runs will make sense...
This 100000% Every OP I know hates how you nerfed their damage because now, instead of being badasses in dungeons and PVE in general they became only escorts to every other class. And in PVP they are way too hard to kill and often it takes at least half your team to kill one while the OP themselves aren't really that dangerous; they just walk around and take punishment. A secondary skillset (along with gear and enchants) just for PVP is the only logical way to truly balance PVP while not ruining PVE at the same time.
Aside from that, the following is the main change I'd like to see:
The points needed from Epic to Legendary in Refinement (most specifically on Artifact gear and weapons) are WAY too high; it took me three months to refine my Dragon Orb to Legendary and I hadn't had it for more than a week or two before Mod6 came out and it was useless. I spent a fair coin on RP stones in the meantime too and now I've gone through the same arduous process again with the Elemental Orb and still have four Artifacts and three other pieces of gear left which I've only managed to get to Epic so far. This is supposed to be a game, not a job on the side where you pay to work it and the Refinement process is simply not fun for anyone because the points are so incredibly high. I say slice them down by 50% and you'll hear overjoyous cheers from your entire playerbase and they'll forgive 90% of the screwups that have been done.
The top issues facing Neverwinter....things that need to be fixed? I can do that.
1) Content - There is some old content that has been taken out, that needs to come back. Mainly the major dungeons. Don't know or care what the reason for taking them out was, revamping them, changing rewards? Doesn't matter. Castle Never at least. Needs to come back in it's full and original form.
2) Astral Diamonds - I have posted this elsewhere. So I'm sure you've come across it. But the solo player, the person who may be max level, but is not high end. Needs Astral Diamonds. They need ways to earn them solo. Astral Diamond rewards need to be attached to solo player content that people who are not in top gear can do. People are getting kicked out of groups in dungeons and skirmishes now. Those people cannot earn AD, therefor they can never get better. It's getting more and more apparent to me that the have not's cannot even remotely catch up to the have's in this game.
3) Player Trust - I cant help you so much with this one. Otherwise of to tell you the players don't trust the people in charge of the game.
One of the biggest reasons why people don't do skirmishes is because they are too long, or too hard so people don't bother. This new system didn't change anything, people still aren't doing the skirmishes after storming the keep. I have been in que for half an hour and still couldn't get a team together for the helm's hold or defend the temple one. I'm a solo player and don't mind waiting for a bit but not that long.
I'm not a pvp player and would like to be if you would do the dominations by gear score and not level. You have level 9 players who have other alts/ accounts so they can gear up where no one can touch them. So to me not getting frustrated is why I won't do the pvp. I don't mind losing to a better player, I don't like losing to someone who has way too high a gearscore for me to even have any chance.
Leadership is fine that you removed the AD but put something useful in it instead or just get rid of it all together and the people who have leadership give them the option to where they want the level of profession to go - i.e. someone who has level 25 leadership can get level 25 artifacing or jewelery or something.
Dungeons should be done by gearscore, there are too many lvl 70 people who abuse craigmire crypts as a fast way to get the AD for the day which leaves the lower characters in the team to either run as fast as they can and miss all the loot or fall behind and get no chance to do any damage or get stuck at certain spots because the the higher level characters just ran through them and didn't bother to kill the bandits. I thought the whole reason for dungeons was for pillaging not to see how fast you can run through it. The other dungeons are either too hard or take too long to finish so people don't bother doing them.
Remove alot of the instances for the graveyard dragon there are way too many people scattered around and lots of people always asking to get invites because the instances are full when in fact there is only 1 or 2 people there for the dragon. I don't know if they count the whole graveyard or just around the dragon.
I can use the gameplay proxy and get at least a slow but more stable connection to the server, but i can't run any dungeons or skirmishes through it. Any bright ideas on how i can get some rAD?
Comments
2) remove cool-downs for dragon hoard and fey enchants (leave all stones that drop bound to account)
3) remove all chests and loot-able objects from open maps
4) dungeon chests and loot-able objects should give trade-able goods, except items like armor
5) dungeon boss should drop at least something, and no one period is not good enough
6) Stronghold encounters bigger than small should give resonance stones as 100% drop, quality my change
Case in point, GMs should find and destroy botters.
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1 - Poor character editor. CO and STO have it better (in super and stellar levels) and since theyre Cryptic Studios games too, how come the editor of our characters gets worse/restricted, instead of improved? I dont mean being capable of creating some of the toons/creatures we see around Millennium City or faction Starbases, but more options would be good, like hairs (which instead of adding, they started to remove...).
2 - Lack of character customization/identity. Its not enough to have our characters looking exactly like the next toon or NPC in PE. The clothes/armors have to be the same, like a true clone army. One truly struggle to make a character with unique appearance, especially now, that theyre started removing 'armor skins' from the game. Sets like Iliyanbruen, Fomorian, Profound, Dread Legion, classic T1/T2 (like Archmage, Timeless Hero, Titan and Grand Templar, just to name a few), Unicorn/Drake, Draconic (incl. Templar) and Infernal are some examples of armor skins that were removed from the game altogether, and that includes weapon skins (like the ones from Castle Never, which were pretty rad, if u ask me). Ok, I get it, it was part of the new itemization, so they had to cut some. But instead of completely removing em, why not make em available as skins in the campaign vendors? We now some of the skins (Iliyanbruen and Thayan Servitor) were used like that, but what about the others? They could even be sold in the Zen Store as free transmutables.
BY THE WAY, speaking of Zen Store transmutables, yeah, we have some there. Pretty nice. But its been some time since the last cool addition (Im sorry, but those Vestments of the Wind, the lastest addition(?) are laughable, IMO). We have the Bahamuts Champion/HR/SW/OBP Booster Packs transmutables, but guess what? there are FIVE other classes that deserves a Booster Pack with themed free transmutes (CW/DC/GF/GWF/TR). Its cool to promote the newly released class, but the first 5 were the ones to settled the game community and should have the same treatment.
3 - I cant think about anything else, other than few character animations that look really clunky/awkward, like GFs Crushing Surge (my favorite; the 'satisfying' part of the descriptor makes total sense) and SWs Essence Defiler. They could use an update, for better ones. Ooh! Ooh! I got another! The ever present clipping issue GWFs have with their Greatswords going thru their thighs. And the missing sprint animation, that nobody seems to care if the GWF is actually just moving his legs faster, instead of charging...
2. The game is still crashing/freezing at least once or twice in every game session without any report about the reason why.
3. XP gain and XP needed to level and fill the overflow is still ridiculous.
4. Difficulty in Dread Ring and Sharandar still needs some work done.
5. Based on 1. you should come up with a real plan on how to get more real players back into the game. Right now you're only working hard and successful on driving more and more real players away.
1) Foundry - relevance to players (rewards) and bug fixes
2) PvP - Better system overall with goal to eliminate campfire sitting and then everyone waiting idly while the clock slowly ticks down. PvP below lvl 70 is a lot more fun than Lvl 70 PvP. Player match ups are better because the differences in gear is held to within 10 levels of each other. Lvl 70 does not feel any where near as close together as the lower level matches.
3) More realistic AD/RP requirements for leveling gear. Corollary, make more interesting day to day content that we can do while we are leveling our gear. Current things to do not integrate enough or there's not enough diversity. Sharandar and Dread Ring quest rewards are a step in the right direction. We need more of this. Bring back the other dungeons. Give us more daily skirmishes. Give us more PvP maps.
1 Bring back the Raw AD gotten from the leadership jobs.
2 Drop the PVp into a black hole some place otuside the Galaxy.
3 I have 6 lvl 70 characters and 1 lvl 61 character and now I can't get enough aD to even buy the Equipment he needs Because you removed one of the Best Ways to get AD Even though you did Raise the Amounts on the Dungeons the Skirmishes and the PVP (which i hate) And the Forge (another piece of HAMSTER i dislike).
This basically ruins my game.
Secondly and most importantly in my opinion; Quit giving people reasons to regret spending their hard earned real world money for game items so often.
I spent real world currency to purchase zen which allowed me to obtain a greater bag of holding that I could trade among the characters in my account -
Then someone decided to make it "bound to character", and I found myself regretting spending my money for that purchase.
Secondly upon reaching level 60 (pre-Tiamat I believe) I again spent real world currency for zen that I could convert to astral diamonds, which would give me the opportunity to purchase level 60 "EPIC" level armor, weapons and better enchantments from the Auction House, which would allow me to solo in Sharandar and the Dread Ring -
Then someone decides to significantly increase the difficulty in those areas and essentially making the level 60 "EPIC" level armor and gear I purchased almost worthless, and again I found myself regretting spending my money on Neverwinter.
Finely since I don't have a lot of time to spend "grinding" for game currency or items, one last time I spent real world currency for zen which allowed me to obtained character slots to to do leadership professions which would earn me Astral Diamonds, thus allowing me the means purchase better armor, weapons and enchantments since it seems to be an ongoing theme with Neverwinter to make a players current armor, weapons and other gear obsolete in areas where it was previously sufficient.
And now Neverwinter developers say they are "improving the game" by taking away a players ability to earn Astral Diamonds in the leadership profession.
Believe me, if I knew before what I know now, I would not have spent a half-penny to purchase zen, not only for myself but for friends and relatives who also play Neverwinter as every reason I had for making those purchases was later to my regret.
You asked for "constructive criticism", this is the best I can do without having my post turn into a rant bemoaning all the money I've sent only to have every single reason for spending that money negated under the guise of "making improvements".
As simply as possible, quit giving people reason to regret playing and financially contributing to Neverwinter.
The inversion of the invoke to favor the long-haul players (instead of acting as a way for the rest of us to not fall quite as woefully far behind) was bad enough, but removing AD from leadership means that I will never be able to buy... anything. Leadership was my main source of income. And that was typically only 1 round of tasks per day (or at least per day that I was able to log in). So, now I will go from earning about 2000AD per day, to earning about 200 from the first 1-2 invocations. Meanwhile, the kids who have 5 hours a day to spend in-game will continue to earn AD at 50x the rate that I ever did. After about a year of playing, my cumulative earnings (not my highest total, I mean EVERYTHING I've ever earned) are still less than the multi-million asking prices for high-end items on the auction house. I'd guess maybe ~1.5 mil, probably less.
Considering that the refinement limit is--what, 24k per day?--the devs must have that in mind as an achievable high-end income. My "new normal" of 200 a day means that it would take me months to be able to afford a single blue-level refinement stone (25k AD!) from the Wondrous Bazaar.
And I now have absolutely no reason whatsoever to bother with Leadership at all.
I'm now suffering some real buyer's remorse after having just spent another bit of real-world cash this past weekend, since lately the game feels like it's actively trying to exclude people like me.
WHAT IS WITH THAT!!!
Makes me think that you are shoving PVP down our throats and not going anywhere else!!!!
Really Seriously thinking of going back to Nexon and Mabinogi.
At least they listened most of the time to the player base.
If we define casual players as people who play your game (not bot) an average of 30-90 minutes per day, what % of your player base is casual?
How many characters do they have on their accounts?
How many AD were they able to produce per week on those accounts before this change?
After you answer those questions, how can you say that your recent AD changes will allow your average player to accumulate just as much or more AD than before the changes?
I have 60-90 minutes a day to play. I'm now able to generate less than 10k AD per day since the change. Two or three invokes, a couple skirmishes and a dungeon - that's what a player can realistically expect to complete in that amount of time. I used to make twice that on one character, and have 7 characters (because I purchased extra slots with Zen). So here I am, a casual player, telling you that I went from approx 120k AD per day to less than 10k AD per day. That is actual, hard data, not a formula or computer model. Tell me again how this change didn't hurt my ability to make AD, please - your reality is better than mine.
Right now you have a game that demands hundreds of thousands (or millions) of AD to make a single advance on a character - upgrade a companion, upgrade artifacts or artifact equipment, upgrade mounts... the list goes on. You can't realistically survive a dungeon without an ilvl of 2.2k+, which requires time and a lot of AD. AND THEN it costs 10-20k AD for a dungeon key that, more often than not, will get you a non-tradable item that you can salvage for 3k AD.
My #1 item for you to fix is YOUR IN-GAME ECONOMY. At present, there is no reason for a player to believe that his leveling/building character will ever be able to become anything but fodder in NWO. If you aren't already in the 3k+ ilvl area, you never will be.
#2 - Fix your rewards. Especially dungeons, so they aren't worth less than the resources expended to earn them.
#3 - Fix crafting! I enjoy crafting in games, but not in yours. Not anymore. Since mod 6, there is no reason what-so-ever for Weaponsmithing, and the only real reasons for Platesmithing, Mailsmithing, Leatherworking and Tailoring are pants and shirts. And the max 60% success rate for a rank 3 result is utter garbage - when it costs 100k in resources to craft pants or shirts and you get the sub-optimal result that, at best, you can sell for 15-20k 40% of the time AFTER spending several 100k for the assets to even have a 60% chance of getting rank 3, that's not crafting, that's spending a lot of money at the slot machine.
Ultimately, your game is showing people Manhattan penthouse apartments and saying "this is what you need" - then offering them a fast-food income. How long can someone realistically pursue that dream? Not long before they leave the dream or they leave the job - both of which are bad for NWO, because it means a growing tide of people leaving your game.
Please, for the love of Tymora, pay attention to your players, the ones you have left. We have enough frustrations, challenges and disappointments in real life. We come to you for an escape. If you throw more frustrations, challenges and disappointments at us, we'll escape elsewhere - count on it.
I don't have the time to hang around for hours, to get a dungeon invite, or scare up a skirmish party. I was perfectly happy to visit Rhix every day, for a nice reward, but he seems to be out of AD, and nearly out of a job. So...
1. PLEASE bring back the Foundry AD reward - and while you're at it - bring back the Foundry.
As a mainly solo player, I liked visiting the imaginations of other players. Fix it, promote it, reward it. You say nobody bothered to play it, so the AD was dropped. Well, why didn't they - didn't know, couldn't find, couldn't be bothered ?
Possibly some thought, '...did that one, don't wan't to do it again..' Do they realize it plays to level ? Same theme, different opponents. Maybe if it was tucked in along with the rotating events it might be noticed, and played.
2. Make an attempt to fix the current economy, without f-ing over legit players, who have worked hard for their monies, and find themselves staring longingly through the AH window, like a kid at Christmas, who knows she'll never get the toy she really wants. Not everybody wants (or can afford) to buy Zen, but at the rate of current AD rewards, I figure it'll take me a few YEARS to buy that fancy armor all the other kiddies have
3. Add, rework, or whatever it takes to make the game truely solo-friendly again. Yes, I can see where PvP is important to some, and dungeons, skirmishes and Guilds. Not everybody wants to run with the pack, and/or can't. Myself - I'm not much use to a Guild, only able to log in at random times. I can't be depended on to be there when needed . And as I mentioned above, I don't have the time to wait for an invite to party.
So, I do the quests, the Foundrys (even with the semi-poor loot drops) and hang around waiting to invoke a couple of times. Why ? Because it was fun - once upon a time. Now, I wonder why I'm still here.
I can only play like 1 hour each day, now without leadership I will never get enough AD to gear up my characters... Only grinding pvp and dungeons is rewarding, but even the usually I get another cloak belt or ring instead of greaves or helms...
Getting AD was fun, and now you took it away. I'm not playing just to grind the same dungeons (which can take 20-60 minutes) over and over for a piece of redundant treasure and very meager AD.
A secondary skillset (along with gear and enchants) just for PVP
is the only logical way to truly balance PVP while not ruining PVE at the same time.
Aside from that, the following is the main change I'd like to see:
The points needed from Epic to Legendary in Refinement (most specifically on Artifact gear and weapons) are WAY too high; it took me three months to refine my Dragon Orb to Legendary and I hadn't had it for more than a week or two before Mod6 came out and it was useless. I spent a fair coin on RP stones in the meantime too and now I've gone through the same arduous process again with the Elemental Orb and still have four Artifacts and three other pieces of gear left which I've only managed to get to Epic so far.
This is supposed to be a game, not a job on the side where you pay to work it and the Refinement process is simply not fun for anyone because the points are so incredibly high. I say slice them down by 50% and you'll hear overjoyous cheers from your entire playerbase and they'll forgive 90% of the screwups that have been done.
1) Content - There is some old content that has been taken out, that needs to come back. Mainly the major dungeons. Don't know or care what the reason for taking them out was, revamping them, changing rewards? Doesn't matter. Castle Never at least. Needs to come back in it's full and original form.
2) Astral Diamonds - I have posted this elsewhere. So I'm sure you've come across it. But the solo player, the person who may be max level, but is not high end. Needs Astral Diamonds. They need ways to earn them solo. Astral Diamond rewards need to be attached to solo player content that people who are not in top gear can do. People are getting kicked out of groups in dungeons and skirmishes now. Those people cannot earn AD, therefor they can never get better. It's getting more and more apparent to me that the have not's cannot even remotely catch up to the have's in this game.
3) Player Trust - I cant help you so much with this one. Otherwise of to tell you the players don't trust the people in charge of the game.
I'm not a pvp player and would like to be if you would do the dominations by gear score and not level. You have level 9 players who have other alts/ accounts so they can gear up where no one can touch them. So to me not getting frustrated is why I won't do the pvp. I don't mind losing to a better player, I don't like losing to someone who has way too high a gearscore for me to even have any chance.
Leadership is fine that you removed the AD but put something useful in it instead or just get rid of it all together and the people who have leadership give them the option to where they want the level of profession to go - i.e. someone who has level 25 leadership can get level 25 artifacing or jewelery or something.
Dungeons should be done by gearscore, there are too many lvl 70 people who abuse craigmire crypts as a fast way to get the AD for the day which leaves the lower characters in the team to either run as fast as they can and miss all the loot or fall behind and get no chance to do any damage or get stuck at certain spots because the the higher level characters just ran through them and didn't bother to kill the bandits. I thought the whole reason for dungeons was for pillaging not to see how fast you can run through it. The other dungeons are either too hard or take too long to finish so people don't bother doing them.
Remove alot of the instances for the graveyard dragon there are way too many people scattered around and lots of people always asking to get invites because the instances are full when in fact there is only 1 or 2 people there for the dragon. I don't know if they count the whole graveyard or just around the dragon.
I can use the gameplay proxy and get at least a slow but more stable connection to the server, but i can't run any dungeons or skirmishes through it. Any bright ideas on how i can get some rAD?