Once you hit 70 you should enjoy working all the campaigns, doing various HE's in all the level 70 areas, leveling your guilds stronghold, Dragonflight is pretty good also. All of the available queues for level 70's are also useful as well. This game absolutely is not built for raids. The games engine just breaks down so badly when more than 10 people are in an area in heavy combat. Unless they rework the game engine you won't see larger groups than Edemo. They learned with Tiamat and dragon runs. Why else did they purposely make all the DHE's scale. To prevent people cherry picking the high level encounters causing crazy 40 man parties showing up and lagging out zones.
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tundrrabloomMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 297Arc User
Personally I would love to see more Raid content, sure 5man dungeons are fun and fast. However working together with your guild to take down multiple Dragons in the StrongHold or having a full guild group do eDemo has a rewarding feeling and requires more organization and team work.
Personally I would love to see more Raid content, sure 5man dungeons are fun and fast. However working together with your guild to take down multiple Dragons in the StrongHold or having a full guild group do eDemo has a rewarding feeling and requires more organization and team work.
Yes i agree with you on that feeling, but as the content is atm i dont think i will would ever enjoy a real raid instance in the game. Ofcourse that could change and become possible, but as it stands now i can't see it. Maybe after an overhaul of all or most classes and maybe a look at most armor/weapon enchants.
I hope they one day make a real raid dungeon with 6 - 8 bosses in it and that it takes about 2 - 3 hours to clear it.
I'll preface this by saying I'm a day 1 XBox player who dabbled on the PC for a couple months after the Xbox version was announced. prior to EE being released on the PC, I'll guestimate I have about 15 months of "experience" with this game.
That said, the way I see it is as follows...
One of, if not the biggest, flaws with Neverwinter as it stands today is the way new mods starting with Elemental Evil have been handled. (a chunk of what follows is conjecture due to when I started playing, sorry if I miss anything, I'll let you know when the conjecture ends).
June 2013 game (Mod 0, Vanilla, whatever) is released. Core game featured several dungeons, 4 classes (CW, DC, GF, GWF, and TR), 7 races (Human, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Halfing, Wood Elf, Dwarf, Tiefling) w/ 1 "bonus" race available for purchase (Menzo Ren). Core game was put in place.
2 months (August 2013) later Feywild was released as the 1st Expansion (Mod 1). Feywild introduced the campaign system, the boon system, added 3 races (Drow, Moon Elf, Sun Elf), a new dungeon, a new skirmish, new gear, and anew zone - lots of shiny new things were added.
4 months after that (December 2013) Shadowmantle was released (expansion 2, Mod 2). Shadowmantle introduced a new class (HR), a new campaign, a new dungeon, a new skirmish, a new zone, new gear, added new paragon paths, introduced artifacts, and introduced companion active bonuses - again, lots of shiny new things.
6 months later (May 2014) Icewind Dale was released (expansion 3, mod 3). IWD introduced a new profession (Black Ice), a new hub city, 2 new zones, 2 new campaigns, a new skirmish, Heroic Encounters, a new paragon path for HR, Overflow Experience (and I'm assuming power points), new gear, and Overload enchantments - again, lots of shiny new things.
3 months later (August 2014) ToD was released (expansion 4, mod 4). ToD introduced a new Class (SW), a new race (Dragonborn), a new "dungeon" ("" beacuse it is much closer to a skirmish than dungeon), another skirmish, artifact equipment was introduced, a new campaign was added, new gear, and new Heroic Encounters - again lots of stuff, I also believe this is when NW paired with WotC, the ToD release was directly tied with WotC's current campaign.
3 months later (November 2014), Rise of Tiamat was released (expansion 5, mod 5). Unlike previous releases, RoT was a direct extension of ToD, a continuation of mod 4. RoT added a new paragon path for SW, Artifact cloaks, artifact off-hands, a new profession, a new zone, and after approximately a 1 month delay - the Temple of Tiamat raid - true (and arguably the only) End Game raiding content, composed of 25 players and available once an hour. Again, lots of shiny new stuff.
From here on out, there is no conjecture.
All is relatively healthy in the world of Neverwinter, each expansion thus far has added something to the mix, something new (and in many cases, many things new) have been added with each expansion. The game is moving in the right direction and in January of 2015, roughly 2 months after the release of RoT, Elemental Evil was announced...
Sweet, a new level cap, a new class, and the biggest module yet! This is going to be awesome....
Then E Day came...
Scheduled for release in March of 2015, but delayed until April, EE (expansion 6, mod 6) came, and instead of the "largest one yet", ripped the game to pieces, all but 3 of the original 12 dungeons were removed, Gauntlgrym was gutted (never got to experience this), zones that had been available we're reworked and no longer accessible, experience curve from 60-70 went crazy, difficulty went berserk, "new zones" were simply recycled old zones with a mechanic (vigilance quests) that make them insane boring, tedious, and grindy, etc & so on... basically all that had gone into making this game what it was was thrown out and rewritten over night.
Strongholds - powercreep grind, very "meh" IMO. Strongholds can keep you busy considering the cost everything is, but it gets insanely repetitive, a mediocre PvP setting
Underdark - a new hub city, a new campaign, 3 skirmishes, no gear drops (other than too many variations of novelty rings for the most part, rare chance to land an artifact weapon, purchasable decent armor - very meh on the purchasable part, make stuff drop please, non BoE please...\
Maze engine (have not played, not out on XBox) - oh how you got people excited with the announcement that dungeons were coming back, but as leveling w/ the exception of CN.... meh, mount system and QUE system do seem nice.
Underdark/Maze Engine seem to me it should be a one mod that got spread apart.
Now, after this history lesson rant, and back to my original point - the order in which this has happened is obscene - there was more to do in this game at max level when the game was originally released than there is now.
Through Tiamat, things were on the up and up... each mod brought something new to the table.
EE happened and tore that all down, an increased level cap, with stripped down end game. Tiamat is still (mind you I haven't played any of the Maze engine) the biggest, baddest baddie out there - but it goes basically unused because loot tables are broken and suck. eDemo is a decent encounter, but a mod that centers around a skirmish?
I suppose you could blame the original (I'm assuming we are dealing with a different) dev team for being too ambitious, and the 1st 4-5 modules were unsustainable, but I'm not buying that...
As is (or as was) 1-60 is a cake walk (but fun cake walk), 60-70 is a mind numbing grind fest, get to 70 and horray... what is there to really do... the "end game zones" = IWD, Sharandar, WoD, DR... EToS/CC/GWD (why run any but the fastest - there is no loot diversity), LoL - hooray for speed runs for a .01% chance at a Horn? eDemo - grinding Twisted Ichor, other than that what's the point?
EE killed this game in many, many ways. EE happened a year ago.
Vanilla NW through Mod 5 = first 18 months of NW - 15 dungeons, 5 campaigns, 25 man raid, 2 new classes, 4 new races
Mod 6 through present = last 13 months of NW - down to 7 dungeons (similar to Grandpa Simpsons feelings toward Missouri, I do not recognize leveling dungeons), added 2 campaigns, a 10 man raid, and a class...
For a game that is approaching 3 years old, I find it extraordinarily odd that seemingly the amount of content is shrinking, not expanding.
There really is a lack of content for level 70 veterans. On my main all I do is farm demonic HEs in Well of Dragons with the occasional Dragon Run. This nets me a good amount of ad and rp and allows me to catch up on various TV series while I play. I just can't bring myself to keep running the same dungeons, skirmishes, & raids that I've run so many times before.
So end game for me is leveling alts to see how the various classes play and hoping that the next mod breathes new life into the game.
Part of the problem was and still is you get to 60 in days without much effort. Than its the grind fest from 60-70. This area is getting a bit of an overhaul so there is hope. I agree that the original release and following mods the game was great. Around the removal of dungeons I stopped playing until a couple months ago. From the announcements and what I have seen lately I have high hopes the dev team is back on track.
There should be some kind of randomizer to allow a determined piece of gear to drop with multiple stats combination. for example one can drop a regen-deflect ring with 301 regen and 302 deflect, someone else will drop the same version but with slightly higher stats (lets say 310-315) or a whole new different stat combination but in the end something has to drop always.
Dear gods, no. Spare us the wretched Diablo items. You really want to see a useful drop and then have to pray when you id it that you don't get low rolls and therefore a piece of garbage? Anything that isn't (near) maximum is automatically garbage tier. This just results in the painful, deceptive loot lottery that's riddled Diablo games from inception. And I hate that with a passion.
I think people would get a lot more enjoyment out of Neverwinter if they treated it as a D&D game rather than a minmax MMO.
That being said, there needs to be more endgame content, both solo and group. I don't mean churn it out as quickly as possible but looking at how DDO does their instancing with towns positively packed with stories and instances/dungeons - more to explore, should this be a goal?
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klangeddinMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 882Arc User
There should be a 5man epic version of Baphomet encounter. That would make a great boss fight imho. Of course another way to add lots of endgame content would be a complete foundry overhaul so that it's actually possible to make endgame content with it instead of lame solo quests without rewards.
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I hope they one day make a real raid dungeon with 6 - 8 bosses in it and that it takes about 2 - 3 hours to clear it.
So end game for me is leveling alts to see how the various classes play and hoping that the next mod breathes new life into the game.
That being said, there needs to be more endgame content, both solo and group. I don't mean churn it out as quickly as possible but looking at how DDO does their instancing with towns positively packed with stories and instances/dungeons - more to explore, should this be a goal?
That would make a great boss fight imho.
Of course another way to add lots of endgame content would be a complete foundry overhaul so that it's actually possible to make endgame content with it instead of lame solo quests without rewards.