There is supposed to be SOME amount of feeling that you don't have enough Voninblod
And, as the entire community told you when you introduced Black Ice, is a horrible way of forcing players to grind. And as with BI in the past, players just won't do it.
Except players did do it. A lot. What some people say and what we see players do are not always the same. Again, though I'm not saying its tuned right, but its probably not grossly off from my feelings of personal gameplay.
I'm sorry @panderus but you seem to be obstinately refusing to see the point that is being made here over and over again. Players may well be 'doing it' in significant quantities but they are almost universally hating doing it. The point being: mining/farming Voninblod is in no way, shape or form an enjoyable or fun way to spend time in the game. Clearly, the data you keep looking at is only telling you part of the story, but are you honestly going to try and convince people that 'they really were/are enjoying' mining Black Ice or farming for relics and Voninblod to empower their almost completely useless new pieces of gear when they keep telling you they aren't ?
Come at the issue from the developers side and think about these questions:
How do you know it is universally hated? If so many people hate it, why would they keep doing it (admittedly, some subset of players will do whatever is hated if it gains them power)? How do you measure how many people are doing it despite hating it?
What I keep asking myself is what type of player is actually able to fully benefit from the gear. Relic Armor is really hard to acquire. You need to run tons of HEs for the restoration and need to continuously farm Voninblod to keep your set empowered. Especially if you're thinking of keeping it on full-time. Such a player has to reliably be able to beat FBI. So you're talking the endgame elite. Which is able to beat FBI without Everfrost gear. Which has always been able to beat any other content without Everfrost gear. Would they switch just for a few more stats and being technically "BIS" ?
Then you have players that can't complete FBI anyway, are probably not even close to the required skill and/or item level. But those still want to do the new campaign. Let's forget Trade Bars for a second, because not every players has access to them. So they need to master the new zones without the Everfrost resist of any armor set. If they can't they also can't acquire the new gear. And if they can they obviously don't need the new gear to complete the campaign.
So for what kind of player is Frostborn or Relic a sufficient enough upgrade to go for it as next step within character progression?
There is supposed to be SOME amount of feeling that you don't have enough Voninblod
And, as the entire community told you when you introduced Black Ice, is a horrible way of forcing players to grind. And as with BI in the past, players just won't do it.
Except players did do it. A lot. What some people say and what we see players do are not always the same. Again, though I'm not saying its tuned right, but its probably not grossly off from my feelings of personal gameplay.
I'm sorry @panderus but you seem to be obstinately refusing to see the point that is being made here over and over again. Players may well be 'doing it' in significant quantities but they are almost universally hating doing it. The point being: mining/farming Voninblod is in no way, shape or form an enjoyable or fun way to spend time in the game. Clearly, the data you keep looking at is only telling you part of the story, but are you honestly going to try and convince people that 'they really were/are enjoying' mining Black Ice or farming for relics and Voninblod to empower their almost completely useless new pieces of gear when they keep telling you they aren't ?
Come at the issue from the developers side and think about these questions:
How do you know it is universally hated? If so many people hate it, why would they keep doing it (admittedly, some subset of players will do whatever is hated if it gains them power)? How do you measure how many people are doing it despite hating it?
Is there a clear answer to any of those?
I think the best numbers to take a look at would be how many of the people that have empowered armor use it regularly, how many pieces they use, and how often do they empower it. From anecdotal evidence I've seen that most people don't use it outside of FBI, a lot of players use it merely to get into FBI, and even some players with full sets of relic gear don't use their full set in FBI. The way it's implemented just actively discourages players from using it and makes it a lot easier to justify skipping the mod.
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
I have characters wearing two pieces of 100%-depleted Frostborn gear because I am too frazzled to bother sorting out a different setup again and it's not like they're unplayable in their current condition.
I'm not really in any condition to be attempting Fangbreaker.
I never hear anythign good about voinblood. The forums are almost 100% anti-voinblood. The forum poll I put up on the subject was over 90% against voinblood. Are you claiming that it is well loved addition to the game?
*snip*
On a seperate note have you ever considered some type of player base survey?
The forums are largely only the enfranchised players and only some of them. Most players do not visit the forums let alone even post anything. Not saying those voices are wrong at all, just that it is not the whole iceberg if you will.
Player surveys are hard. A small small fraction of players ever respond to these sorts of things and it is not all player types, the results are skewed to some degree.
It´s part of the concept to make players grind and that has to hurt a little for obvious reasons. But it´s better to:
a. give grinding players a steady sense of progression (without re-gression)- while not making this so hard it becomes ludicrous or b. give them the feeling of being treasure hunters -while not setting the drop-rates so far in the nether regions it´s heart-crushing
but big no-no is: c. punishing players the same way poor tragic Sisyphos was; the gods punished him for his misbehavior by making him roll a stone up a mountain but every time it almost reached the top it would roll down again; what did we ever do to you to deserve it?:'(
So to my thinking it´s not even a question of how hard you make it to recharge; the psychology behind this variation of grind is BAD; that´s how you can KNOW players hate it (even those that do it though I'd be surprised and mystified if the majority of players will actually use this armor as their primary set) . You can make it less bad but it will still be bad nonetheless...and of course it feels -especially- bad if it is piled on top of the other kinds of grinds that are already there. I would expect that a sense of progression or a sense of excitement is what makes players grind (that´s the -only- fun part about it!) but if the progress bar teases you by continually going backwards or the rng makes you want to despair....well...I dunno how else to explain this...
It´s kind of unfortunate that the reward of the hardest dungeon feels more like a punishment. It should have rather rare, but awesome and tradable rewards - also because it would be good to occupy highly geared toons with this content that is more appropriate for them (and more of it) so that they haunt the (for them) baby dungeons less thus maybe slightly improving the experience for newer players with toons who have the appropriate IL for those dungeons but are perfectly superfluous when toons that qualify for FI bulldozer the whole place.
Still looking forward to FI...don´t qualify yet because my progress had snailed down since I lost purpose before...:P But I´m not interested in the relic gear.
I'm wearing 3 relic pieces at the moment and it's absolute hell, when I get my fourth I'm gonna lose my mind. I don't even run much content anymore cause the game bores me, so for someone who runs 10x dungeons than me a day that would be even worse. The empowerment cost is ridiculously high, not only that, when you guys invented the BI system, there used to be a potion that reduced BI consumption by 30% for x minutes, that was huge help. Here's a way to tackle the problem and attract more players into the dungeon and the gear. Either:
a. Make the uptime of the gear 8 hours instead of 2. b. Reduce the cost of empowerment into sane ones. c. do one of the above and add a x% less consumption potion like BI used to have. d. Remove the empowerment altogether.
Please, please, please and thank you from 1 player and the 300 other people in her guild community (here, no need for a survey, 85% of them never post on the forums and never will and they ALL, absolutely ALL of them hate it.)
I don't know why every1 is worried about this. Except the initial empowerement to enter FBI I'm not even using this gear. The benefits of it are...not that great. Compared to the grind for it.
There is supposed to be SOME amount of feeling that you don't have enough Voninblod
And, as the entire community told you when you introduced Black Ice, is a horrible way of forcing players to grind. And as with BI in the past, players just won't do it.
Except players did do it. A lot. What some people say and what we see players do are not always the same. Again, though I'm not saying its tuned right, but its probably not grossly off from my feelings of personal gameplay.
I'm sorry @panderus but you seem to be obstinately refusing to see the point that is being made here over and over again. Players may well be 'doing it' in significant quantities but they are almost universally hating doing it. The point being: mining/farming Voninblod is in no way, shape or form an enjoyable or fun way to spend time in the game. Clearly, the data you keep looking at is only telling you part of the story, but are you honestly going to try and convince people that 'they really were/are enjoying' mining Black Ice or farming for relics and Voninblod to empower their almost completely useless new pieces of gear when they keep telling you they aren't ?
Come at the issue from the developers side and think about these questions:
How do you know it is universally hated? If so many people hate it, why would they keep doing it (admittedly, some subset of players will do whatever is hated if it gains them power)? How do you measure how many people are doing it despite hating it?
Is there a clear answer to any of those?
Well, mind releasing the number of players at the beginning of mod 3 vs the end of mod 3?
I mean when you put this topic in the preview forum it was met universally with a sour reception. Then we tested and grew even more negative. Now on live everyone else is experiencing the same thing and giving ...surprise the same exact feedback. Or are you implying that the 99.99% of negative feedback you are receiving on this mechanic in the forums is some sort of skewed data from a non-representative subset of your player base?
Then why put any feedback threads up at all?
This is a no brainer and shouldn't have been implemented to start with and now you are going to have to divert resources to fix the poor design/decision that you moved forward with. Even the users on here that drink the koolaid are expressing how garbage this mechanic is. Spoiler: our guildies and friends who dont come to the forums aren't quietly loving empowerment on live and singing its praises in teamspeak
You guys obviously did alot of hard work to come up with 3 new zones that are good and a great new dungeon. Then you added this to ruin the reception... Just admit the mistake, fix it and lets move on.
Players may well be 'doing it' in significant quantities but they are ALMOST universally hating doing it.
I capitalised the word 'almost' to make my point about what you omitted in your reply. To answer your question, I know it is almost universally hated because I have yet to hear anyone in game or on these forums who has said anything else.
What I keep asking myself is what type of player is actually able to fully benefit from the gear.
For some pvp builds one piece is useful. For my crit-based combat HR, 3 prestige, relic raid chest, and two rose gold medic rings are best. The chest has the highest power/crit combo on any armor in the game, and offsets the pretty useless stats on the rest of the PvP gear. I'd wear the relic feet as well, but the loss of the 3 piece prestige set bonus and tenacity makes me too squishy.
No idea what my toon is now.
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
I'm wearing 3 relic pieces at the moment and it's absolute hell, when I get my fourth I'm gonna lose my mind. I don't even run much content anymore cause the game bores me, so for someone who runs 10x dungeons than me a day that would be even worse. The empowerment cost is ridiculously high, not only that, when you guys invented the BI system, there used to be a potion that reduced BI consumption by 30% for x minutes, that was huge help. Here's a way to tackle the problem and attract more players into the dungeon and the gear. Either:
a. Make the uptime of the gear 8 hours instead of 2. b. Reduce the cost of empowerment into sane ones. c. do one of the above and add a x% less consumption potion like BI used to have. d. Remove the empowerment altogether.
Please, please, please and thank you from 1 player and the 300 other people in her guild community (here, no need for a survey, 85% of them never post on the forums and never will and they ALL, absolutely ALL of them hate it.)
Survey says... Like Lia said, we ALL hate it and we are almost 300 accounts between 2 guilds.
santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
Currently just farming boons and hating Voninblod. Not even worried about the armor.
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kieranmtornMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 382Arc User
Voninblod empowermeant, the worst features of Black Ice with an even shorter timer... My plan hasn't changed. Don't use it for any actual play, just for getting Relic's & accessing gated content.
I'm +1 for all of ironzerg's posts in this thread. I don't want to bother running FBI much because the reward is useless armor. The armor is useless because the Voninblood costs are far too high. FYI I say this as a mastercrafter, where if the empowerment costs get substantially reduced or removed, I lose out on a lot of income.
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matiagronxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 251Arc User
edited September 2016
Panderus you (and Cryptic ofc) clearly have a certain agenda behind this voninblood scheme which we will not find out soon i guess. If there is no agenda/future use/anything interesting beyond this Black Ice re-enactment then it will be another very sad day for this game, we are used to it but the coffin is almost closed, a few nails are left after all.
For now though, people are still "doing" the new campaign and old players/BiS naggers have FBI to blow some steam and awfull CN to farm for some petty AD. I myself find much more interesting to run around Bryn Shander like a mindless chicken and gather relics than playing ANY dungeon for the millionth time just to get a friggin salvage ring for 2.2k Raw AD, so in that perspective farming voninblood seems legit cause anything else in this game is already burned out beyond recognition, at least for all of us who are more than 1 year in this game. What is MORE than clear though is that Cryptic has a financial problem maintaining this game and the demise it brings to this game is now evident more than ever. You want people to spend money, GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT, not what you want. You did that the first year, it was awfully handled and since then you are trying to save the ship by throwing out the passengers...smart move indeed.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
You know, if you want player input that's non-biased (not just those of us invested enough to use the forums),
Have an in-game advertisement for a survey where, if they take the survey, they get 100 zen or something like that.
You still get self-selection bias (you're only looking at the people who care enough about the game to think X amount of zen is worth their time to take a survey-you can refine the rewards of course, something like preservation wards or even a coalescent ward that's bound to account), but at least you don't get people who are just complaining for the sake of complaining.
I'm very much a solo player, and only have one character, so I recognize my experience is atypical; I don't bother getting relic gear because I don't like group content (including HEs). But I also don't have time to play much, so I'm looking at the Vorinblood requirement *just for the boons* and wondering how long it's going to take. But I'll also note I have the tradebar frostburn armor and I just don't bother empowering it, because it'd be far too much work to bother for the marginal bonus it gets.
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jaysun1977Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 177Arc User
Come at the issue from the developers side and think about these questions:
How do you know it is universally hated? If so many people hate it, why would they keep doing it (admittedly, some subset of players will do whatever is hated if it gains them power)? How do you measure how many people are doing it despite hating it?
Comments
How do you know it is universally hated? If so many people hate it, why would they keep doing it (admittedly, some subset of players will do whatever is hated if it gains them power)? How do you measure how many people are doing it despite hating it?
Is there a clear answer to any of those?
Then you have players that can't complete FBI anyway, are probably not even close to the required skill and/or item level. But those still want to do the new campaign. Let's forget Trade Bars for a second, because not every players has access to them. So they need to master the new zones without the Everfrost resist of any armor set. If they can't they also can't acquire the new gear. And if they can they obviously don't need the new gear to complete the campaign.
So for what kind of player is Frostborn or Relic a sufficient enough upgrade to go for it as next step within character progression?
I'm not really in any condition to be attempting Fangbreaker.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Player surveys are hard. A small small fraction of players ever respond to these sorts of things and it is not all player types, the results are skewed to some degree.
What we REALLY need is a mind reading device.
a. give grinding players a steady sense of progression (without re-gression)- while not making this so hard it becomes ludicrous or
b. give them the feeling of being treasure hunters -while not setting the drop-rates so far in the nether regions it´s heart-crushing
but big no-no is:
c. punishing players the same way poor tragic Sisyphos was; the gods punished him for his misbehavior by making him roll a stone up a mountain but every time it almost reached the top it would roll down again; what did we ever do to you to deserve it?:'(
So to my thinking it´s not even a question of how hard you make it to recharge; the psychology behind this variation of grind is BAD; that´s how you can KNOW players hate it (even those that do it though I'd be surprised and mystified if the majority of players will actually use this armor as their primary set) . You can make it less bad but it will still be bad nonetheless...and of course it feels -especially- bad if it is piled on top of the other kinds of grinds that are already there.
I would expect that a sense of progression or a sense of excitement is what makes players grind (that´s the -only- fun part about it!) but if the progress bar teases you by continually going backwards or the rng makes you want to despair....well...I dunno how else to explain this...
It´s kind of unfortunate that the reward of the hardest dungeon feels more like a punishment. It should have rather rare, but awesome and tradable rewards - also because it would be good to occupy highly geared toons with this content that is more appropriate for them (and more of it) so that they haunt the (for them) baby dungeons less thus maybe slightly improving the experience for newer players with toons who have the appropriate IL for those dungeons but are perfectly superfluous when toons that qualify for FI bulldozer the whole place.
Still looking forward to FI...don´t qualify yet because my progress had snailed down since I lost purpose before...:P But I´m not interested in the relic gear.
a. Make the uptime of the gear 8 hours instead of 2.
b. Reduce the cost of empowerment into sane ones.
c. do one of the above and add a x% less consumption potion like BI used to have.
d. Remove the empowerment altogether.
Please, please, please and thank you from 1 player and the 300 other people in her guild community (here, no need for a survey, 85% of them never post on the forums and never will and they ALL, absolutely ALL of them hate it.)
The Holy Crusaders guild leader ♚ Mod 10 PVE Destroyer GWF guide ♚ Founding member of the Relentless Alliance
Well, mind releasing the number of players at the beginning of mod 3 vs the end of mod 3?
I mean when you put this topic in the preview forum it was met universally with a sour reception. Then we tested and grew even more negative. Now on live everyone else is experiencing the same thing and giving ...surprise the same exact feedback. Or are you implying that the 99.99% of negative feedback you are receiving on this mechanic in the forums is some sort of skewed data from a non-representative subset of your player base?
Then why put any feedback threads up at all?
This is a no brainer and shouldn't have been implemented to start with and now you are going to have to divert resources to fix the poor design/decision that you moved forward with. Even the users on here that drink the koolaid are expressing how garbage this mechanic is. Spoiler: our guildies and friends who dont come to the forums aren't quietly loving empowerment on live and singing its praises in teamspeak
You guys obviously did alot of hard work to come up with 3 new zones that are good and a great new dungeon. Then you added this to ruin the reception... Just admit the mistake, fix it and lets move on.
Like Lia said, we ALL hate it and we are almost 300 accounts between 2 guilds.
https://www.theholycrusaders.com/
For now though, people are still "doing" the new campaign and old players/BiS naggers have FBI to blow some steam and awfull CN to farm for some petty AD. I myself find much more interesting to run around Bryn Shander like a mindless chicken and gather relics than playing ANY dungeon for the millionth time just to get a friggin salvage ring for 2.2k Raw AD, so in that perspective farming voninblood seems legit cause anything else in this game is already burned out beyond recognition, at least for all of us who are more than 1 year in this game. What is MORE than clear though is that Cryptic has a financial problem maintaining this game and the demise it brings to this game is now evident more than ever. You want people to spend money, GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT, not what you want. You did that the first year, it was awfully handled and since then you are trying to save the ship by throwing out the passengers...smart move indeed.
Have an in-game advertisement for a survey where, if they take the survey, they get 100 zen or something like that.
You still get self-selection bias (you're only looking at the people who care enough about the game to think X amount of zen is worth their time to take a survey-you can refine the rewards of course, something like preservation wards or even a coalescent ward that's bound to account), but at least you don't get people who are just complaining for the sake of complaining.
I'm very much a solo player, and only have one character, so I recognize my experience is atypical; I don't bother getting relic gear because I don't like group content (including HEs). But I also don't have time to play much, so I'm looking at the Vorinblood requirement *just for the boons* and wondering how long it's going to take. But I'll also note I have the tradebar frostburn armor and I just don't bother empowering it, because it'd be far too much work to bother for the marginal bonus it gets.