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General Concerns of a long time player:
thefabricant
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
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
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
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.
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.
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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:
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
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
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.
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.
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.
The hue and cry about that would be epic.. almost worth seeing.. =P.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.