General Concerns of a long time player:

thefabricant · December 2015

Here is my list of concerns as a long time player, please bear in mind that as these are my concerns, this thread is subjective, but I am trying to frame it with as much factual information as possible to support my concerns. Due to the fact that this is subjective however, it is also from the perspective of a PVE, not a PVP player. Finally, I have put my concerns in the order of importance as I see it. Also, take note I am not mentioning things that are complained about a lot already like rp and pricing, as I am sure cryptic has plenty of that feedback. I have written both the long and the short version for each section, while I definitely advise people to read through the long section, I understand not everyone has the time or the patience to, so I wrote a short version for them

1: Cryptic's team is spread too thin:

Long article

This concern stems from the fact that Cryptic has over time lost quite a bit of its development team and this shows up in the newly developed content. People today complain about old reused and recycled content, but if you actually think about it, the last time we got completely fresh content was mod 3, ever since then, it has just been a case of airbrushing old content. Mod 4 featured dragons all over old zones, the "new" dungeon lostmauth is so short that it is essentially a skirmish. It was the mod where the reuse was the most subtle. Mod 5 featured a zone that had reused old music from spellplague caverns and castle never, with the quests like "thayan magical shelter" being a rehash of a dread ring lair and that alchemist quest I can't even remember the name of being a rehash of the level 60 class quest that used to reward the cloak of etherealness (which was removed from the game for no reason). From mod 6 onwards, the reuse of old content is no longer subtle, its glaringly obvious, with whole zones being reused. To be honest, I don't think the reuse of zones is intended to come across like a slap in the face, but its a case of you, Cryptic as a company, taking on more then you can chew. You are setting very ambitious goals that simply cannot be met without compromising quality. This leads to essentially enforced reuse of old content, which is what is causing the disappointment present in current mods. My advice here is to close doors. It is human nature to keep as many doors open as possible, unfortunately, it is also irrational. Instead of trying to do everything at once and doing it poorly, try to do smaller things and pulling them off spectacularly.

tl:dr form:
The team you have now is not the same team you had in mod 3, you cannot expect them to produce the same quantity of content with the same quality and attempting to do so is I am sure not just upsetting to us players who get lower quality content, but also to you as developers. I am sure there is nothing more frustrating then being forced to cut corners due to goals that you simply cannot meet.

2: The Power Curve

Long article

What I am referring to by "the power curve" is how powerful characters are on average. Power creep occurs when you add something to the game which falls above the average level of power. The issue is in this game, at no stage has difficulty scaled on a 1:1 basis with power. That is to say, you will give us new and more powerful gear, but you don't give us content which is difficult enough to warrant that gear. The correct way to do this would be to introduce new content which is at a level of difficulty such that it feels like the new content, with the new gear, is as hard as the old content, with the old gear. True, the old content, with the new gear will be a lot easier, but the game will, with a 1:1 power to difficulty scaling never feel too easy, because the newest content will always feel like the old content if you wearing the new gear and will feel substantially harder if you wearing the old gear. With the current system, where power scales faster then difficulty, there is a huge issue because eventually, the game gets to a point where all content is trivial (example, mod 5) and every class can solo every 5 man dungeon. When this happen, substantial changes are required in order to fix the game (example, level increase to 70) and with a team as small as Cryptic's, such a major overhaul cannot be feasibly done without there being a lot of negative consequences. True, it is hard to gauge if new content with new gear is as hard as old content with old gear, but that is what the preview shard is for. Those of us who go to the effort of testing stuff in advance, are probably also the people who can most accurately gauge if the power curve has remained the same between modules and by asking us on the preview forums about things like that, we will probably be happy to test it out and give you an answer. With the current power curve, mod 10 will equal mod 5 in terms of difficulty (I am assuming the devs intend for the game to continue to mod 10) and then mod 11 will essentially have to be mod 6 all over again, a level raise to 80, or an across the board deflation of the stat curve (which is what the level raise to 70 did) and the reason why deflating the power curve is bad is it creates discrepancies. People who were used to and enjoy easy content and see mod 5 as normal, suddenly get a splash of cold water in their face.

tl:dr Form
It is easy to take the power curve up, but it hurts to take the power curve down and to not upset people, it is better to keep a consistent power curve, rather then inflating power and shifting the curve to make people stronger, which is a sure way to lose players when you essentially have to drop the curve down again. In a nutshell, it is a bad idea to mess with the power curve too much as it is a surefire way to upset players, try to keep it in the same place, or as close to it as possible, between every single mod. The issue is in NWO, power inflates faster then difficulty in every mod.

thefabricant · December 2015

3: Class Balance:
Take note PVP players, I am referring to both PVE and PVP class balance here from a PVE perspective. So yes, call me uneducated, I am taking my best shot at keeping this factual though but feel free to shoot me or call me short at any point you like, just so long as you do it without trolling, flaming, or getting my thread locked (I spent a long time working on this write up, so please, don't

)

Long Article:

The issue of class balance is an extension of the power curve, but is a broad topic and so deserves a write up of its own. There are 2 types of class balance in PVP, the first is a situation of perfect balance, where all classes are equally balanced and have an equal chance against each other. This is the type of balance which exists in chess, where both players are equal. This however is a type of balance that is unforgiving of newcomers, because when everything is perfectly balanced, complex strategies evolve which a new player has to learn in order to compete. The longer the game continues, the more complex it becomes. This is ultimately the harder type of balance to achieve because it is very hard to consistently keep all classes equal at all times. The second situation arises when not all classes are balanced, but every class is countered by at least 1 class and all classes have the same number of counters. This means that when you look at each class individually, there isn't balance, but when you look at the system as a whole, it is balanced as if too much of 1 class gets played, it encourages people to play the counter. This is an easier type of balance to achieve and it is also more new player friendly, because of the constantly shifting meta the complex strategies that develop in perfectly balanced games don't occur to such a degree here. The issue in neverwinter is that at the moment, you have classes and mechanics which either fall way above the power curve or way below it. I will not mention things I only know from second hand info (like SW in pvp) but I will mention from the 20 odd times I took my paladin into pvp (for information gathering purposes) that the class is far too tanky. I am a rubbish PVP player, I won't hide that and yet my pally with no pvp gear and a complete pvp nub at the helm can still stand around and take many hits from properly built pvp characters. Class balance is not only out of whack in PVP though, but it is the place it is complained about the most because when the player on the class that falls below the power curve runs into the player that is sitting high above the power curve, they complain. In PVE, this is visible by comparing class performance. Obviously all classes are different and where 1 class is strong, another class is weak, however over all the average power level of classes should fall roughly around the power curve. If you look at the paladin though for example, this is clearly not the case as they can make a party completely invulnerable, or if devotion, they can mitigate damage to the point where only if the stars align and a player is in all the wrong places at the wrong times and the attack hits so hard that its a 1 shot will the player die. In either case, this is clearly above the power curve and even if the paladin only had exactly 1 damage per second, the fact that they can make a party of 5 immune would still be over powered. Paladin is not the only class that is above the power curve, but I will talk about the class that I play a lot so that people don't accuse me of bashing other classes. The issue with classes like the paladin is they cause power creep and dumb down the game.

tl:dr Form:
When it comes to class balance over all, it is important to keep the over all power of all classes roughly equal. When introducing new classes, the new class needs to fall into the same power bracket as the old ones as by introducing a new class that is above the others, it simply raises the power curve and creates a situation where you have to upset someone. You either upset the people playing the class, when you reduce its power to match the old classes or you upset the people not playing the class, who feel hard done by because there is a class clearly above them.

4: Some General suggestions
It would help the pvp community a lot if you normalized pvp. You can do this by firstly separating pvp and pve. The way to do this is to allow 2 options on character creation, 1 of which would be to create a pvp character and the other would be to create a pve character. This does not prevent pve characters for queueing for pvp, but for the purposes of ranking, only a character specially created for pvp gains ranking and a pure pvp char is unable to play in pve. All characters then marked as pvp chars gain access to normalized gear that they can then choose between. This means that for all intents and purposes the playing field is level, with the exception of which class players choose to play. It creates a form of balance. I will probably be hanged, drawn and quartered for suggesting this but anyhow, ill bite the bullet.

It would help if you trusted those of us on the preview server more and provided us with more tools for testing. Think of it as free labor, myself and the other players who use the preview server are going to test stuff anyhow, make it easier for us and it gives you better community feedback. It is a win/win.

Anyhow, thanks all for reading these posts, I know they are long, but I put a lot of effort into stringing them together

Note, I also have concerns about strongholds in general, but I will not be including those in this thread.

kreatyve · December 2015

Well thought out and well spoken. I like these suggestions.

suicidalgodot · December 2015

I fundamentally agree here. I'd add more and other things, and might do that maybe later...

What I do support fully are points 1 and 3, without any reservation.

Re. Point 2 - The Power Curve:

IMHO abolishing the diminishing returns stat-effect curves was a wrong move... ...this current stomping through everything once you got your core stats sky-high, mixed up with that L set, that makes high-crit and high-dmg or crit-side-effect classes/builds nigh invincible only adds to the base damage the linear returns curves have done to the game's power balance.

thefabricant · December 2015

suicidalgodot said:
I fundamentally agree here. I'd add more and other things, and might do that maybe later...

What I do support fully are points 1 and 3, without any reservation.

Re. Point 2 - The Power Curve:

IMHO abolishing the diminishing returns stat-effect curves was a wrong move... ...this current stomping through everything once you got your core stats sky-high, mixed up with that L set, that makes high-crit and high-dmg or crit-side-effect classes/builds nigh invincible only adds to the base damage the linear returns curves have done to the game's power balance.

I agree, but this can still be rectified without completely changing the stat curves by giving monsters the ability to reduce your stats, thus stacking more becomes necessary.

urabask · December 2015

thefabricant said:
It would help the pvp community a lot if you normalized pvp. You can do this by firstly separating pvp and pve. The way to do this is to allow 2 options on character creation, 1 of which would be to create a pvp character and the other would be to create a pve character. This does not prevent pve characters for queueing for pvp, but for the purposes of ranking, only a character specially created for pvp gains ranking and a pure pvp char is unable to play in pve. All characters then marked as pvp chars gain access to normalized gear that they can then choose between. This means that for all intents and purposes the playing field is level, with the exception of which class players choose to play. It creates a form of balance. I will probably be hanged, drawn and quartered for suggesting this but anyhow, ill bite the bullet.

Eh. Just normalizing PvP and separating it from PvE makes it exactly what it is; a mediocre third person competitive multiplayer game. PvP in Neverwinter will never be a good enough game to stand on its own, it needs PvE players to keep it going. It's already dead as it is because the vast majority of the player base is completely apathetic towards PvP. Cryptic needs to try to make PvP an alternative to PvE when PvE players are bored. Basically the only way to do that would be to allow them to play competitively with their PvE character. Ideally this would mean a separate character sheet for PvP and rewards that are relevant to PvE in addition to some sort of normalization of gear.

arabatur · December 2015

A lot of valid premises here, but the sad fact is it will fall on deaf ears. Cryptic, especially with NW, have shown a consistent failure to successfully engage with the playerbase. Reduced manpower, new modules which inevitably turn about to only be reskinned old content and the proliferation of newspeak only exacerbates the malaise that is found on the forums. I still see the potential of the game, but I have serious misgivings whether the current Cryptic management are the ones to deliver it.

subnocte · December 2015

The gear gap in PVP is currently beyond absurd. While in PVE, there's nothing really that benefits much from more than about 2.5k ilvl, Cryptic's insistence of adding more and more boons and more and more gear grind has meant that level 70 covers an absolutely ridiculously wide gear gap for PVP where everyone is all thrown in together. It's also resulted in making PVP inaccessible to anyone new to the game, as even people at 2.5k ilvl with PVP gear are being stomped by the ultra-geared PVP guild people in full sets of R12s and legendary mounts.

This latest mod suffered from Cryptic making such a fuss of Salvatore's involvement and how exciting it'd all be, when it was a mod with barely any new content at all (even if you include re-used maps as new content). Even without all the hype Cryptic added to it, it'd have been a disappointing mod content-wise, but it just seems stupid to raise expectations when they knew it'd essentially be a couple of lair quests in re-used maps, and instanced heroic encounters.

I feel that they're relying on the addictive nature of refining just for the sake of refining. Add more grind to refine gear, and more gear, let people grind the same content from mods 1-3 to improve gear that doesn't need improving. A game with new gear and campaign boons should be getting more T2 dungeons -- we should have had T3 dungeons by now. Instead we've got everyone tediously grinding eTOS every day, the same they have since launch.

santralafax · December 2015

subnocte said:

I feel that they're relying on the addictive nature of refining just for the sake of refining. Add more grind to refine gear, and more gear, let people grind the same content from mods 1-3 to improve gear that doesn't need improving.

Refining is not that addictive. Until Mod 6 I regularly tossed "artifact" refining engines. Now that is almost all there is. So many good crafting pieces and older sets have been made obsolete by "monster" arty weapons/noserings and other drivel.

solbergx · December 2015

I dont like the idea of separating pvp from pve, how would you level a pvp character?

urabask · December 2015

solbergx said:
I dont like the idea of separating pvp from pve, how would you level a pvp character?

I'd guess that in his scenario PvP players level their character by playing PvP? Still think the larger problem with his suggestion is that PvP players should want to play PvE and vice versa because crossover like that is good for the game.

santralafax · December 2015

urabask said:

solbergx said:
I dont like the idea of separating pvp from pve, how would you level a pvp character?
I'd guess that in his scenario PvP players level their character by playing PvP? Still think the larger problem with his suggestion is that PvP players should want to play PvE and vice versa because crossover like that is good for the game.

I never would have done PVP if I had to build a special character for it. As it is, it took 3 mods before I bothered to separate PVE and PVP gear. Burning Executioner worked just fine for all. A little stat loss in PVE due to Tenacity, but not crippling.

mrvincent1959 · December 2015

The "Power Curve" that came with Mod 6 almost put the game out of business. They have adjusted it correctly for all but the most geared. Sorry, I have to be blunt here: I dont want to see any more posts about the game being too easy. If you want it to be really really challenging, then que up for pvp all day long.

thefabricant · December 2015

mrvincent1959 said:
The "Power Curve" that came with Mod 6 almost put the game out of business. They have adjusted it correctly for all but the most geared. Sorry, I have to be blunt here: I dont want to see any more posts about the game being too easy. If you want it to be really really challenging, then que up for pvp all day long.

I am not the most geared, my chars all sit around about 2.4k and I do dungeons with similar geared chars most of the time and I find the content too easy. Why should the only challenge in the game be pvp? Why should there not be challenging pve content for those of us who like pve and dislike all the negativity that comes with pvp? You say that its challenging for all but the most geared and yet I am not the most geared and I find the current content is too easy for premade teams.

subnocte · December 2015

Once you get to 2.5k there's no challenge left in the game. Obviously you can join pug groups who go afk, have no boons, or just generally troll, but I'm not sure that counts as challenge. The devs are just adding more and more gear/boons to the game while leaving the content as it is. From that I can only assume they're using people's desire to reach goals and get the shiny orange stuff as a substitution for an actual game, and it works to a degree, it's what most people generally do at end game.

suicidalgodot · December 2015

mrvincent1959 said:
The "Power Curve" that came with Mod 6 almost put the game out of business. They have adjusted it correctly for all but the most geared. Sorry, I have to be blunt here: I dont want to see any more posts about the game being too easy. If you want it to be really really challenging, then que up for pvp all day long.

...that's been the reason for those diminishing returns. Curves used to give reduced effect per stat the higher the stat went, or content would have to be adapted, otherwise you'll either lock out the mid-geared or make it easy for the too-well-geared. In pre-Mod-6 NW this worked OK, e.g. 10k Crit would only give you twice as much Crit-chance as 3k Crit.

With Mod 6, I suspect, the attempt had been made to force players to invest into Def in order to maintain survivability.

This didn't work out, though, partially to flawed design (e.g. Mob ArPen), partially due to bugs (Mob ArPen again...), and the PvE war-of-numbers got rebalanced. So we're currently sitting in this game with a stat and effect system that is completely down the drain in terms of Power inflation, and hence the top-geared can, once they've fulfilled the minimum requirements in core stats like ArPen, just stack sky high and recieve sky-high yields, which is even more exacerbated by the need to constantly add new gear with even more power.

So, opening the gates to overpowering by linearizing the stat curves has IMHO led to an even faster death spiral than the longterm Power drain had. After all, the base system before had lasted ca. 1.5 years, thanks to overstacking being less efficient.

And re. PvP:

...currently, this is either more like chess (competent preformed vs. competent preformed - all unkillables, bashing each other for hours, but with a cool light show), or like Eagerton Earthworms vs. Strongmanshire Steamrollers (PUG vs. Preform), or Russian Roulette (many duds, and the loaded chambers always happen to land on the same side...).

Which is why I'd happily go with a gear-and/or PvP-history-bracketed PvP - where you'd get put into that gear you Queued with, blocked for the duration of the match. Feel free to change in between, if the Q takes longer, but on launch you'll find yourself wearing that stuff that you wore when you clicked the "Join Queue"-button. And that would probably mean the gear would have to be made undiscardable/-salvageable for that time...

The standardized version might work, too, when you'd offer different brackets. And the PvP-only model would work, too, but it'd call for a rework of gear rewards in PvP.

silverkelt · December 2015

They could also put hardcaps into place.. IE you cannot achieve more then a base of 50% crit chance and 100 severity.

The hue and cry about that would be epic.. almost worth seeing.. =P.

alannanorthstar · December 2015

magenubbie said:
While I found this an excellent read (Yes, I even read the spoilers) I do wish to reply on a few of the topics you touched:

2: "It would help the pvp community a lot if you normalized pvp. You can do this by firstly separating pvp and pve. "
True to the first, the second is not required. Not in the way you describe. All you have to do is disable (or limit the effective rank of) enchantments, only allow 1 artifact (effective level 60 max) and change artifact gear to an effective level of 35 max during PvP and you have a levelled playing field. The only technical separation should be made in how skills are affected by tenacity. That's what the bleeding stat is for. Use it. PWE can tell them how to do it. They've done it in both PW and FW. It's just a matter of overpowered skills needing a tenacity penalty. Add 0.5% (or whatever value required) tenacity bonus to the target when using certain skills. The other way around is fine too if that's easier to code. Not exactly rocket science.

The separating should be done by choice, not by force, and it's easier the other way around. Grant everyone a free (or easy to get) T1 PvP set (use the old T2 GG sets if you can't afford the time to make new ones) upon reaching lvl70. T2 and T3 (the current T1 and 2) can be earned by glory. Create brackets based on the gear tier people own using the collection page instead of their inventory. More than half of T2 gear puts you in T2, more than half of your gear in T3 moves you to the next bracket. Then you can play with it, host tournaments, events and whatnot. Voilla, fun PvP for the entire world to enjoy. Make money by selling what people want to buy. Not what people need to buy. I think that point has been stressed more than once as well.

I've only briefly played the PvP content - the level of imbalance there was so frustrating that it was not an experience I was eager to repeat. However, I do have some observations.

First off, I'm going to spell this out. I'm strongly in favor of the "same game, different systems" approach to PVP. PvE is by necessity class imbalanced, sometimes extraordinarily so - tanks tank, healers heal, DPS does damage and tries not to die. The content is balanced on stressing the "holy trinity" of tank/heal/dps in new and interesting ways, and that can';t happen if classes are equal or homogenous in PvE.

PvP on the other hand, needs to be methodically and constantly balanced according to some tight formula that strives to achieve the holy grail of gaming - "fairness". These two goals are, and always will be entirely at odds. As this is set in the D&D universe, there's no question that PvE should come first - PvP fixes should *never* come at the expense of PvE, therefore separate systems are an absolute necessity.

We already have a "tenacity" attribute meant to differentiate PVP gear from PVE gear. Rework it into it a quick and dirty solution that can be used for rapid, iterative balance changes - a straightforward but flexibile cap.
- The primary goal of tenacity should be to force players serious about PvP into PvP-balanced gear. The second goal should be to provide a way to balance classes on as frequently as a day to day basis without affecting PvE at all.
- All survivability effects and attributes should become capped by developer configurable class-specific multiples of tenacity - each class has its own table of how tenacity effects healing given, healing received, regeneration, life steal, and various forms of damage mitigations. Every single thing that effects survivability in PVP becomes tenacity capped.
- By giving each class its own "schedule" of tenacity-based caps, if there is a blatant imbalance, the devs can basically handicap overpowered classes in *seconds* to hotfix any imbalances, based on an evidence-based approach of looking at their relative performance in PvP - depending on the implementation, this could even be done in real-time without so much as a server restart.
- These caps should be made extremely granular by class and effect so that tuning can be specific to whatever is currently making a class broken: (1000 tenacity grants a wizard a 100 regen cap. 1000 tenacity grants a cleric a 10 regen cap. 1000 tenacity grants a rogue a 50 life steal cap. )
- These effects should basically be on top of whatever other class balancing is being done, so that the serve as a way to correct the imbalances that remain between balance passes.
- This can be either a hard cap, or a bell curve of diminishing returns.
- The effects could be made more granular by level brackets, so as to curb in the lower level twinks somewhat.
- Tenacity becomes so important that total tenacity can be used as a primary matchmaking factor.

maegmaag · December 2015

I wont write a novel, nor explain, all over again for nth time, what i think the game should or could be, how the game mechanics/classes/mobs/dungeons/skills/whatever should or could work et cetera, for i gave up already and dont care much (as i c no changes nor improvements ever happening), regardless of being still relatively active and that there were times i had lots of fun, when the game was at relatively good starting point years back, or when i still thought things may be better one day.

Ill just express, that i for one do not only disagree, but utterly hate and despise any kind of PvE-PvP separation (any other than making "another game"), same as i am disgusted by the "holy trinity" poison, which, not only infected this game but, already made the game rotting parody of any players skill or tactics, along with all the matters of dungeons/content/mechanic or foundry quality or improvements leaving but a bare stinking carcass of DnD soon.

@magenubbie pretty much expressed my opinion as well about Cryptic and CMs, the behavior and communication. Ill just take a bottle or two, try to take the game for what it is instead of what i expected or wanted in 2013 and burn a dungeon or two, an HE, open a lockbox eventually.

kievitz · December 2015

Good post, yes more of these please. What to say, yes. Two things PVP and devs.

First PVP, keep both PVE and PVP together but make them separate by gear and stats, and what is needed is a dual spec, i know, i know. But 1 toon for PVE and PVP would require just that. Cos if ya gonna make them separate PVP dies and some whales with it, like it or not we need them also. Different gears, stats and builds in one toon, yes please. If PWE was to separate PVE and PVP this game would propably die, even with balanced gameplay, period. But yes overall balance should be found quickly, please.

Of devs, i know that some of the people in the game put quite alot of pressure on the devs by them making unbalanced gameplay and for them pulling this game to the pit in just a few months (even i made a post putting "NWO crew" down). But what i have read in the web and other sources rather than these forums the actual problem seems to lie in the management of those devs, so these problems ARE much higher than on the developer level. If yer boss says u are gonna do this our way or the high way, not much choice, even if it pains to know the results before hand and u as a dev are gonna be fixing them. So id get to the head of this thing and would call out PWE and their management to answer some questions for the playerbase.

Hopefully we see more of these posts like this by thefabricant, TY.

PS. my posts are usually just ideas to mull over, so bare with em

PSS. u can find material about NWO crew in the web, google is your friend.

ayroux · December 2015

thefabricant said:

1: Cryptic's team is spread too thin:

tl:dr form:
The team you have now is not the same team you had in mod 3, you cannot expect them to produce the same quantity of content with the same quality and attempting to do so is I am sure not just upsetting to us players who get lower quality content, but also to you as developers. I am sure there is nothing more frustrating then being forced to cut corners due to goals that you simply cannot meet.

I completely agree with this, and this problem is DOUBLED with the tenacity STAT on gear. Because now you have to create 2x the content - stuff for PVP with tenacity gear, and stuff for PVE with non tenacity gear.

Thus each and every module, players feel like they are now only getting HALF a module rather than a full module.

I dont mind the "rehash" as long as it is FUN to play. The current "skirmishes" that we have now are just a 5:00 minute grind fest for 1 of the "phases". This is NOT fun. The Elemental weapons? Do an HE 100 times?! Are you kidding? What happened to "replayability versus repeatability"?

Now I think the 1: Cryptic's team is spread too thin: SOLUTION! is:
1) Bring back old dungeons 1 at a time.
2) Copy the current skirmish "rewaard tier" system AND the "ring tier" system but with GEAR instead.
- Explained: Lets say each class gets 1 new armor set called the "Ancient Set" (CN tribute). The "Ancient Set" comes common in a GREEN form, Blue form, Epic form and Legendary Form (no Mythic). So now, depending on the tier of reward you get for the dungeon (either in segments like skirmish or taken as a WHOLE based on clear time) you have a CHANCE to get a piece of item that will be randomly rolled into better "tiers".
- My ONLY caution here, DONT have higher tiers 'unlock' more enchant slots ETC. The BEST way to make it a higher tier is just simply with higher stats (Keep Is Simple Stupid - K.I.S.S.) Then people (PVE players) will farm ALL DAY LONG running these dungeons (or dungeon) to farm the best quality they can but they WONT feel like they are "missing out" much with having not the full BIS gear.

Now THIS is the best way to create content that people WANT to play that they feel REWARDED at playing. Heck, maybe even create a new feature to the "salvage" system in that you have a % chance upon salvaging lower "tier" versions of the armor that would provide better "keys" for opening the chest which have a higher chance to drop a better item + the tier system.
- Explained: So you run Dungeon X. Get a BLUE "Ancient Chestpiece" you salvage it for 3k Raw AD and get a blue "key" to open the chest. The blue key has a higher chance of dropping maybe a blue or epic Chestpiece. Say you get the epic, salvage THAT, get 5k Raw AD and a chance at an EPIC key which has a "fair" chance (maybe 10%) to drop the Legendary one. So its a "progressive" system that combined "reward tier" with a "progression" system. - Just an idea.

ALL of this, would not take a TON of man power but would create an adequate "carrot" on the end of the stick - which is ALL you really want!

ayroux · December 2015

thefabricant said:
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4: Some General suggestions
It would help the pvp community a lot if you normalized pvp. You can do this by firstly separating pvp and pve. The way to do this is to allow 2 options on character creation, 1 of which would be to create a pvp character and the other would be to create a pve character. This does not prevent pve characters for queueing for pvp, but for the purposes of ranking, only a character specially created for pvp gains ranking and a pure pvp char is unable to play in pve. All characters then marked as pvp chars gain access to normalized gear that they can then choose between. This means that for all intents and purposes the playing field is level, with the exception of which class players choose to play. It creates a form of balance. I will probably be hanged, drawn and quartered for suggesting this but anyhow, ill bite the bullet.

It would help if you trusted those of us on the preview server more and provided us with more tools for testing. Think of it as free labor, myself and the other players who use the preview server are going to test stuff anyhow, make it easier for us and it gives you better community feedback. It is a win/win.

I would disagree here, I think there is a MUCH MUCH easier solution to ALL of this.

1) RE-adjust previous modules for <70 gameplay. I have wrote on this before a good "example" would be:
- Module 1 Sharandar: NPC lvls 61-63.
- Module 2 Dread Ring: NPC lvls 64-66.
- Module 3 IceWind/Dwarven: NPC lvls 67-69.
- Modules 4-7: NPC lvls 70+ (or scaling depending on content).

2) Shorten the campaigns for these modules OR an easier version would be to "reset" the daily tasks/dungeons every 12 hours rather than every 24, allowing players to run these 2x as fast (Modules 1-3). Now you have an alternative to leveling for players in the 60-70 grind that allow them to get a jump start on boon options as well as take a break from the other quest zones. Its a more enjoyable experience.

3) Allow a player to choose only ONE "active" set of boons - Similar to Strongholds. So a player can have ALL of them unlocked but only 1 "set" is the "active bonus" all the others are dormant. Now - this may require a bit of monitoring to make boons more balanced as a whole but this will address power creep. Players will STILL want to do previous modules since they will be a means of leveling WHILE also furthering their characters progression as well (making them stronger) so the "gear gap" when they hit max level wont be so bad if they already have 2/3rds of modules 1-3 done with access to the boon layout for those modules. Contrast to NOW where a player who has all the boon structures has a HUGE advantage over new players.

IMPORTANT NOTE: PVP Boons and SH boon selection would NOT be included in this. So a player will always have those boons active regardless of choice, but a player would be forced to choose between module 1 set of boons, versus module 2 set of boons. Maybe Endless Consumption is what they want, then they would NOT get access to "Avalanche (module 3)" or Fey Thistle (Module 1) and must weigh the options for their class.

4) REMOVE tenacity as a STAT on gear, give ALL players a BASE equal to a "desired amount". Currently players have (I think) a 10% base across the board correct? Why not just MAKE this be 42% for damage/crit/CC and 65% ARP resist. Just have this be the standard WITHOUT it being on gear. Now players can choose from ANY set of gear and a new player who hit 70 wont get 2 shot from not having tenacity.

5) For PVP purposes, ONLY allow the Primary Artifact stats + effect to be "active". Similar to companions, the stats of secondary artifacts should be "greyed" out and not impact your character. Now players will have to strategically choose between the STATS they want and the impact of the artifact. NOTE that this would NOT impact PVE at all as the stats, same with companions, would still impact PVE. So there is still a MASSIVE reason to get these, but it would not impact PVP.

NOW, take a step back and look at what you have done to adjust power creep. Look at the thousands of stats you have removed, the balance for new players compared to seasoned players. There is still a MAJOR advantage in terms of gear and stats a seasoned vet has over a newby, but a newby would have "similar" boon availability (if they leveled doing modules 1-3 to have MOST of those available for choosing) MAYBE joined a SH guild and has some SH boons, and doesnt have to worry about tenacity. It creates a MUCH Smaller gear divide and even when comparing an Epic artifact to Mythic - it would only be a factor of ONE artifact not FOUR they would compete against.

Overall its a much much better "progressive" system that is designed to "warm" the newer player into the game while STILL creating enough of a power divide where a seasoned player will be noticeable in PVP.

silverkelt · December 2015

I agree with tenacity .. since removal of stat bonuses (in terms of powers) new pvp armors are only useful for tenacity stat.

Its annoying as well.. back when they gave a different stat bonus, they were more useful, but now? its just more stat distributions + tenacity. + having to have secondary enchants and /or swapping out items.

In the end you could just have pvp items buy current in equivalent drow or sh armors, as long as you have other items needed (remove fang needs, add banners, remove ichor purchase , add glow+seals or something) or just have a trader turn it in for them.

So pvp people could still earn new armors without having to pvp, one of their singular complaints back when profound was released.

There is too much else to grind in game.. having the ability to just drop into a pvp match without all of this need, would be nice.

tantrumusmaximus · December 2015

The worst sign of the lack of dev staff is the kind of new content released. Grind 100 motes from OLD HEs. Grind HEs in old content. And guess what. Those zones now suck. All kinds of posts about lag in Dread Ring/IWD but they dont do anything whatsoever about it because they can't really they've already killed the zones with their design choices.

Show me a night doing IWD dailies without some rubberbanding. Show me a play session where Dread Ring with 10+ players in the same zone doing HEs now take a zone that already had terrible lag and makes it even far worse than it was.

I seriously HOPE and pray something changes because when this game runs well it's truly enjoyable. I come back because I love the game. And the more I love the game the more angry and frustrated I get that a company behind it doesn't really care about if WE love it anymore. I know some things get fixed. But things that are game breaking bugs for classes just stay broken. Servers that are proven to have issues (Look at the Xbox lag thread feedback page, no update for 2 months and it's a cryptic server pinging around 1000ms nightly no fix at all) I could list 100 things I cannot stand that they have not addressed or circled back to re-visit them.

But alas I love the game and keep coming back for more.

I personally refuse to do the mindless Mote grind insult that it is to the player. Not doing it. Thanks but no thanks (I did start it but then felt like a tool for even doing such a repetitive task in my free hours.) That is NOT content or progression. That is a smack in the face something that could be developed in somebody's lunch hour. Any foundry author will know this.

General Concerns of a long time player:

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