You still dont make the game more challenging

eolee · April 2016

Im sorry but the only thing those nerfs are gonna bring to game is that it will teach the people that have an ****** to maybe start dodging red instead of thinking "i dont care i have a bubble". Those players dont even know how to make a party working for a dungeon. They dont know about the support, debuffs,buffs some classes can bring. All they needed was a bubble. They dont know the wonders some righteous DC can do "omg you dont heal?", or how a faithful can save their lazy person , they dont know they could run CN so easily and so fast with GF's too "omg you have no bubble sorry we want an OP", and the list could continue.
By the way, OP can do wonders with dps, its called "Aura of courage and burning light". CN is still doable, T2 contents same, bubble or no bubble, for what we care. Perma Bubble in pve was only nice for two things: speed runs and keeping alive noobs that can't find their way out of a *** **** ***

I wont give up my OP, i will try to adapt. Some classes need love, some classes need some nerf, but not a single class needs to be butchered. If you're supposedly making some balancing, with all the nerfs you did to OP, you might want to think about boosting some of their other powers to make up for the loss or at least change the 6s of DP to 10s.

People with more ******* will still be bored by the lack of challenge and by the overall unbalance among classes in this game. They will probably be busy the first weeks of this change trying to make up for the Lostmauth loss, but hey, im pretty sure most of them already figured it out. Why? Because those people know how their class works. Simply as that. At the end of the day, you're just making the game more difficult for *******players that google a build picture and click to give points and feats . You might want to start thinking about the other ones

(and please, dont post any comment about iL, because it has be proven many times that all the pve content supposedly endgame can be done with 2-2.5k iL as long as Mother Nature provided you some braincells)

kvet · April 2016

You'll probably find a more receptive audience by toning down the vitriol. Nevertheless, what you're saying - these changes make it harder for newer, less geared and less skilled players while not really posing any problem for more experienced, better geared players is only marginally valid. All players will need to adapt and change their tactics. You're right that these changes are not going to ruin the game, and you're right that less experienced players will have a harder time adapting to the changes than more experienced players.

But that's the case with all changes, in all games, anywhere... so you're really just stating the obvious in a really unpleasant way. If you personally prefer only playing content with experienced players, you should do so - your guild is large, I'm sure you can find such players easily. I have no problem running content and helping newer players improve - it's what my guild is all about really, so I have no problem learning to adapt and then helping others who are struggling more than I will also learn to adapt.

Survival has nothing to do with being "fit" - it has to do with being able to adapt after all, and it makes for a much better game when we help each other improve rather than just rant and spit at the "noobs" who "can't find their way out of a wet paper bag"

Edit: Received boon of improved spelling +2

Unknown · April 2016

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deceondarkblade · April 2016

I find it a little comical, this trend of people complaining about the lack of difficulty in the game. After the deservedly maligned Mod 6 released, the game was difficult. All my gear had become obsolete, and as templock SW, my build had even become obsolete. I had to very slowly and methodically work my way through the new EE zone as well, as the old (now level 70) zones like Sharandar, DR, and IWD. All the while people were screaming bloody murder about how hard the game had become. By the time I got back to IWD (which I had completed when Mod 6 dropped), I had to be VERY strategic to complete dailies. Get help from guildies, latch on to roving groups to complete my quests, etc. At this point I'd avoided the reworked dungeons, because with my squishy toon...forget it. When I'd almost, finally got to the point where my IL was high enough that I could almost solo, the whiners finally won and the mega-nerf hammer dropped. Boom, over night I was running epic dungeons and easily soloing in IWD. So before you whine about the lack of difficulty (and lack of response from devs), know a bit of game history, and realize that we(the players) very much brought this on ourselves. As for the lack of Endgame material, when I consider that a separate issue, I think a good place to start would be mythic level dungeons (with slightly adjusted rewards) and a better stratified PVP (Dom and GG at least, for PvPers with ILs or tenacity over a certain level)....of course after watching some of Icydrakes videos I realize that PvP is pretty much broken (how is it even fun being pretty much invincible in PvP?)

wimpazoid · April 2016

I've recently got back into the game after a 8-9 month absence. I left after the level cap raise and new dungeons and before stronghold (because that mod wasn't appealing to me). At that time, many of the new changes were because everyone was steamrolling end game content. The new T2 dungeons finally needed well geared, well played classes and good teamwork. Fast forward to now (in my case), first thing I've noticed is everything is pretty much back to level 60 steamroll content era, even with my 2/3 of a year ago character status.

Unknown · April 2016

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eolee · April 2016

Perma Bubble OP made people lazy and we can find so many polite ways to say it.
Im just tired of reading everywhere "oh yay no more OP, finally some challenge" or "oh my god no, no more bubble, how we gonna run CN now?"
Its like removing the bubble is the end of the game.

deathbeez · April 2016

deceondarkblade said:
I find it a little comical...

Oh, you're not the only one. I warned early on be careful what you wish for...

lewstelamon01 · April 2016

eolee said:

Its like removing the bubble is the end of the game.

To some, it is. To others....they will overcome, adapt, and move forward.

wylonus · April 2016

people will find ways to cheat and exploits after the nerf hits.
and then other folks who doesnt cheat, they will say, game is too hard to play or cost too much.

mmm1001 · April 2016

The purpose of game is to be enjoyable. Being challenging is not always same as being fun.
If you played long enough you would remember how game was really challenging after mod 5 release and every single mob in every single dungeon was able to single-shoot every player. That was difficult to play and really frustrating, at least not fun for sure. What people did? They left, and those who stayed found exploits and used them ... that was more fun that trying to play game.
Now we will see how new changes will affect game play, but making some of end-game content like CN and Demogorgon unavailable for not BIS players is not something we would like to see.

kemi1984 · April 2016

I don't see anything wrong with the insane DPS being toned down. At least the boss fight will last longer than few minutes.
I agree with @grimah, that when VT was first introduced it was one of the coolest dungeons out there - even though ti was a short one.

The Val boss fight needed strategy to complete, now ? that's a strat? Many fo actual players do not understand what a debuff is.

Long time ago when I actually ran stuff with pugs I never got a response when trying to establish who's using what powers and what enchants (back than I had terror an plague which were used depending on party composition).

LOL set is now where it should be from day one, nothing to add here.

wentris · April 2016

I just hope they'll look carefully on OPs performance now. I have been playing an bubbleless OP for quite some time for the challenge and I can tell you - he is a terrible tank without it, compared to GF. Some major flaws of OP tanking, that were invisible, because of bubble will see a daylight now. Long story short - without bubble an OP can still survive in dungeon pretty easily, but can no longer protect his team, at least not even remotely as well as GF does.

kemi1984 · April 2016

wentris said:
I just hope they'll look carefully on OPs performance now. I have been playing an bubbleless OP for quite some time for the challenge and I can tell you - he is a terrible tank without it, compared to GF. Some major flaws of OP tanking, that were invisible, because of bubble will see a daylight now. Long story short - without bubble an OP can still survive in dungeon pretty easily, but can no longer protect his team, at least not even remotely as well as GF does.

So much for OP being better than GF and all those trash talk saying KV is a weak encounter...

I don't care who says this kind of nonsense, but the thing stands - OP was designed around Divine Protector and now it's being changed so things must be adjusted more from the players perspective I would say.

adinosii · April 2016

This is not the first time a bad design decision has been made and then later reversed, to the annoyance of some of the affected players.

There was a very similar situation back in 2013 with the change to the DC Astral shield. Just look at

https://m.reddit.com/r/Neverwinter/comments/1gbxd2/opinions_about_cleric_excessively_nerfed/

But you know what...DC players adjusted, some other things got changed and today that class is in a good position.

wimpazoid · April 2016

Even without lostmauth bonus and permabubble, the dungeon meta is still back to running door to door and burn down bosses before boss fight mechanic kicks in. In order to add grind, the previous efforts to increase challenge gradually diminishes. It's just an mmo cycle but it happened too quickly as players build and gear to capitalize on the aforementioned.

Too bad I'm going to feel the impact since I just start to farm for 40 twisted ichors in eDemo being late back into the game, but I'm not complaining, game balance has always been out of whack with gear and classes.

lirithiel · April 2016

deceondarkblade said:
I find it a little comical, this trend of people complaining about the lack of difficulty in the game. After the deservedly maligned Mod 6 released, the game was difficult. All my gear had become obsolete, and as templock SW, my build had even become obsolete. I had to very slowly and methodically work my way through the new EE zone as well, as the old (now level 70) zones like Sharandar, DR, and IWD. All the while people were screaming bloody murder about how hard the game had become. By the time I got back to IWD (which I had completed when Mod 6 dropped), I had to be VERY strategic to complete dailies. Get help from guildies, latch on to roving groups to complete my quests, etc. At this point I'd avoided the reworked dungeons, because with my squishy toon...forget it. When I'd almost, finally got to the point where my IL was high enough that I could almost solo, the whiners finally won and the mega-nerf hammer dropped. Boom, over night I was running epic dungeons and easily soloing in IWD. So before you whine about the lack of difficulty (and lack of response from devs), know a bit of game history, and realize that we(the players) very much brought this on ourselves. As for the lack of Endgame material, when I consider that a separate issue, I think a good place to start would be mythic level dungeons (with slightly adjusted rewards) and a better stratified PVP (Dom and GG at least, for PvPers with ILs or tenacity over a certain level)....of course after watching some of Icydrakes videos I realize that PvP is pretty much broken (how is it even fun being pretty much invincible in PvP?)

The problem was that the devs did things completely backwards during Mod 6. They nerfed mob damage and HP and then fixed the ArP bug when it should have been the other way around. They still haven't reverted those initial changes which would make it slightly more challenging (read: longer) again.

blinxon · April 2016

lirithiel said:

The problem was that the devs did things completely backwards during Mod 6. They nerfed mob damage and HP and then fixed the ArP bug when it should have been the other way around. They still haven't reverted those initial changes which would make it slightly more challenging (read: longer) again.

Absolutley true. 100% agree

kemi1984 · April 2016

Exactly, there were many terrible decisions made along the years in Neverwinter.

TR were OP, GF's had their moment with Stalwart Bulwark (spelling?), HV CW's, Deep Gash GWF's...the list goes on.
Players will adapt, the thing is game needs those OP builds and items to lure players feeding on power creep.

More or less we've all been pulled in so, we also need to adapt and make the dust fall and settle down.

lirithiel · April 2016

deathbeez said:

deceondarkblade said:
I find it a little comical...
Oh, you're not the only one. I warned early on be careful what you wish for...

The returning dungeons as lvling ones only is proof of that. Everyone who had that dungeon gif in their sig only asked for dungeons to return and didn't specify epic

rapo973 · April 2016

I think that the OP is not good or bad as such, but indeed it has created the mislead perceptions that hit mainly the new players (by new player I mean whoever has started this game 1 year ago). And please..."perception" is the keyword.
The two main consequence are:
- perception of the overall difficulty of the game: the OP bubble made the game flat. The problem was not if I can complete a dungeon or not, but how much time it takes. AP DC + OP bubble, a decent dps and it's done
- perception about the progression: it's linked to the above, but progression is (was?) related to "get the lostmouth set", refine the artifact stuff as fast as possible, get the boons as fast as possible, refine the enchantments, find a good stronghold. Completing a T2 dungeon has never been perceived as an achievement, trivialized both by the OP bubble and by the low level of the rewards. In old days, completing CN was a real achievement: it was not for everybody, it was rewarding, when you completed it, it gave you the feeling that your progress were in the right direction and for this reason you wanted to do it again and again because it was a benchmark. Dread vault was another extremely difficult dungeon: it was challenging! eToS, even without perma bobble and ap gain, is not challenging, eGWD is not challenging anymore and so on.

The result is that many players don't have the feeling of what difficulty is and how it should be related to progression: they don't know what dodge-a-red-area means, they will fell the pain of dps scoreboard because they cannot stand in the same place forever boosted by whatever IL you have and protected by a perma bubble.

Imo the nerfs will increase the difficulty but untill the rewards are not adjusted, the overall sentiment will be bad.."It's too hard and at the end I get trash reward. I quit".
The nerf hits hard low IL players and even more low IL players with low experience.
High IL players will adapt, high IL players with experience will adapt faster -> High IL doesn't mean experience.

And now cryptic's deficiencies:
- They have increased the difficulty, but not the rewards, ie. no real incentive to progression -> "I'm playing a difficult game that gives me nothing valuable. The real progression is gated by expensive $$$ and by an insane refining process".
- They took too much time to fix it. One year is too long: many players have invested time/money in the features that are going to be removed. The players will think twice before opening the wallet again in the best case scenario. The worst case is that players quit.
- lack of communication. They opened the Pandora's box, announcing the FIRST of a sequence of changes. We know nothing about the next changes: I don't need the details but at least where we're going. I'm not going to spend any $ if so many uncertainties are not solved.
- lack of design. Nerfs should come together with a class design review. They've killed the OP, they've destroyed the DC virtuous path, they've killed the CW dps path. They have enhanced dramatically the GF. My 2 cent guess: there are so few GF in game that they decide to make it attractive so that players now move to GF and keep on spending $ on it. Six months later, it will be nerfed saying it's too OP (wow! So big buff, so big dps...). I hope this doesn't happen. Furthermore if they had a design review plan, they could communicate a bit better. My impression is that there is no plan and the next changes will spread step-by-step with limited knowledge of the consequences.

Finally I agree with the OP of this post, but from a different perspective.

rapo973 · April 2016

The nerfs are not even live, but here we go...
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1214584/time-to-tune-down-insane-damage-of-some-bosses

ashnvf · April 2016

I have to agree. They need to address rewards at the same time they address difficulty and add nerfs.

You still dont make the game more challenging

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