Dungeon Key Changes

lyaise · October 2016

tripsofthrymr said:
Most of us have had a chance to vent by now. If you're just joining the discussion, feel free to do your venting. For the rest of us, let's try and focus the discussion on productive ways forward.

I'm not trying to close down the discussion with this statement. On the contrary. Cryptic is spending time reading this thread, looking for a way forward that meets their design objectives and also the needs of their customers. It's an opportunity to focus the discussion on helping Cryptic know what players think would be a balanced approach. Let's use it wisely.

Well......venting......

Rather than a seemingly blasé attitude to people's venting, step back and ask yourself the question of why there is so much anger on here about this change.
And please, do not treat the playerbase as imbeciles with this 'we spotted a bug' - after years of play across many modules and dungeons/raids that anyone who has ever played the game will have seen. There are literally scores of dungeon/raid clear videos on youtube that show this.

An obvious pop-up window in the middle of the screen detailing the items, including their icon pictures, is pretty hard to ignore don't you think?

So please, do not treat myself or any other people who play this game as gullible fools.
Personally I have played mmo's for many years, been raid leader in several guilds in upper tier raiding in WoW, Rift, Aion, SWTOR, FFXIV. Class leader in more. This is not a bug, it is a scripted feature, a long standing core mechanic of the group rewards.

This key change reasoning is so transparent as to be laughable - until players realize this is the company that repeatedly says it listens to their playerbase, and more worryingly is managing the game they have supported for years into a desperate condition.

We talk about the needs of the customers and looking for a way forward. Honestly this comes across like a cut and paste from Marketing Spiel for Beginners. It translates into nothing meaningful, a smokescreen of intangibles.

The way forward is the way back. It is simple:
1. Don't do this change.
2. Man up and apologize for the transparently dire reasoning that resulted in this 'it's a bug' ridiculousness.

There is nothing wrong in sometimes saying 'We made a big mistake guys'. Often this level of honesty brings rewards, in future trust, in future loyalty.
But the opposite is also true. Continue attempting to smokescreen a negative action - and no amount of Marketing phraseology will save you from customers ending their relationship.

I would ask you a question. You quote design objectives. In this case: What are they?
I can think of only one:- The company wants players to waste keys on useless rewards.

There is no balanced approach based on this objective. There is no halfway house with an intentional change of this nature.
It is a removal of critical information at the end of the group run.

Cryptic over the years has not had a glowing history with this game. Various modules have not be received well, some disastrous in terms of player retention.
Instead of a perception of wanting to do the most for it's customers, it has over time unfortunately portrayed the approach of how little they can do whilst still maintaining a viable commercial situation.

I have only one balance statement that I can give:
Reverse this change - and I will reinstall your game.

And honestly, that is more than this transparent and misleading key change reasoning deserves.

silverkelt · October 2016

zebular said:
Just to update for those not watching the Preview Forums. There is another discussion of this change going on there
about the actual testing of this change. Where-in Terramak stated the following:

terramak said:
Dungeon Key Chest Changes
The changes announced in the Dungeon Key Changes thread are now on the Preview shard. Instead of being able to preview the rewards without spending a key, the player will now receive the rewards immediately upon opening the chest, consuming the key in the process.

While the change has succeeded in initial testing, it'd be appreciated for players on Preview who use this system to keep an eye out and give feedback on the experience - for instance, whether opening it while the inventory is full works as one would expect, whether there are rare cases where the player doesn't receive the items shown in the chest reward UI, or if the rewards from certain locations have unexpectedly changed.

terramak said:
Thanks for the feedback, folks. Most of the changes in this Preview update are from closer to the beginning of this week (as suggested by the build version), and we'll continue to keep an eye on the comments and questions.

As a general comment: As always, please treat your fellow players - your fellow people - with respect. While a significant bug (the dungeon key chest issue) is being addressed this update, as mentioned in the original post, we understand that some players have come to rely on this bug, and the nature of it caused some to perceive it as standard functionality.

I do not expect to pursue use of this functionality as an exploit. We understand that players are still putting time and energy into this content, whether or not they choose to use a key, and some may choose to do so until the moment the live servers go down for the module release.

Personally, I just hope folks don't burn themselves out from the feeling that they have to make optimal use of this bug before the module update.

I tried to ignore this..

just lol, shakes head.

How can anyone, anyone continue to justify their actions is beyond me.

I actually change my mind, I do now think the devs are a big part of the problem.

Clueless company. I really dont think we can continue doing this, feedback has been given, it will be ignored, some players will go, some will stay, they will capture every penny, by delivering a massive sub par game, with little to no actual content anymore.

What they call content, is about 80% smaller then most year releases by most other mmos, lets not fool ourselves.

Creating massive and boring busy work, then try to get us to pay to skip it.. isnt a game design, its just montezation schemes.

talon1970 · October 2016

Just think about that:

Even if they increase the lootchance for Losthorn, Orcusshard, +5 rings, Rank 8 entchants and so on....

What if they put the "good" loot in the chests for campaignkeys, zenkeys and so on, and the loot with daily dungeon, VIP key(s) are still "not so good" (friendly spoken).
So the devs can always say if we still complaining about HAMSTER loot: "We don't know what you people are talkin bout, you have just to open the other chest, maybe you have luck."

Remember Dread Ring?
I am trying, if i can afford the time, running every day with 1, 2 or 3 of my 7 chars (Yes i have still no leadership/something else army) one Dread Ring Ini for the chance dropping an gmop or smop.....what should i say, zero since months....i was able to got some when the change was new, but as so often i had the feeling the droprate is more or less ok, but after 1-2 weeks after patchday....it's over, it is if some mythical Hamster stole them all and hamstering it for (Never)Winter.

I bet that was the same thing with +5 Rings in demo, edemo, CN aswell. If you are too late, you will never get anything good, if you are not able to get things on your list, that you want.

But maybe i have on of these "cursed" Accounts, never be able to get things "for free", by just playing the game, so i have to buy things i want to have for sometimes a enormous AD price from AH...

silverkelt · October 2016

If the argument was, that we ALL super benefited from the system as it is now, then I would understand.. I mean its a mmo, no one was ever meant to get everything on day 1.

But the frustrating part, is even with the (EXPLOIT (=P) gawd how I ate them for even saying this) we could run CN 2-3000 times and only really get good loot 2-5% of the time on average)

ITs ludicrous.. there is no exploit, when no on really benefits from it..

THEY are making a HARD stance on PAY to PLAY.

its not even about P2W.. I understand that.. marketing to those who are willing to pay thousands.. ok. But now there is no middle ground WHATSOEVER.

There is no way for anyone , other then to spend hundreds if not thousands monthly to progress in game.

But they have the AUDACITY .. the SHEER insolence of them calling this a bug and/or a exploit..

Wow.

lirithiel · October 2016

lyaise said:
The way forward is the way back. It is simple:

2. Man up and apologize for the transparently dire reasoning that resulted in this 'it's a bug' ridiculousness.

There is nothing wrong in sometimes saying 'We made a big mistake guys'. Often this level of honesty brings rewards, in future trust, in future loyalty.
But the opposite is also true. Continue attempting to smokescreen a negative action - and no amount of Marketing phraseology will save you from customers ending their relationship.

It only took them, what over a year to admit they HAMSTER up in Mod 6. I doubt the admission placated the playerbase much at the time and certainly didn't foster any trust or loyalty with me. I doubt we'll see any sort of apology in the near future, maybe if the game makes it to Mod 12, maybe.

cdminyan · October 2016

if this goes through completely on pc im uninstalling on ps4. i dont need this <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. its an easy fix. make the chest rewarding no matter what. put plenty of account bound refinement points on each chest so its not a slap in the face to get another useless rank 5 and overload.

silverkelt · October 2016

I dont want more RP..

I dont even want them to tinker with loot, game as it is now stands "ok.

They COULD however fix the other FEEDBACK items we have been asking them about for the last 2-3 months. (grinding/gating/inventory)

They should be so ashamed of themselves, but Im sure they are sitting around telling them how terrible their customers are instead. That is the nature of the beast.

Just lol.

any other mmo should use this as a example of what not to do in your game..

krasensilver · October 2016

dont waste your time and money you can drop this game now or they can make you drop in few months by the time they will milk every one of you and the clueless new players. They know this game is condemned to die and now most of us know that too thats why they force us to spend more with that desperate changes. They already losing money and I'm %100 sure there wont be next 2 mods and thats why they even dont do small player advantage changes coz no future for this game

hanniballa · October 2016

silverkelt said:
I dont want more RP..

I dont even want them to tinker with loot, game as it is now stands "ok.

They COULD however fix the other FEEDBACK items we have been asking them about for the last 2-3 months. (grinding/gating/inventory)

They should be so ashamed of themselves, but Im sure they are sitting around telling them how terrible their customers are instead. That is the nature of the beast.

Just lol.

any other mmo should use this as a example of what not to do in your game..

You don't want more peridots for beating a T2 boss? The nerve of you. 50 RP is an amazing reward for taking down a boss. And the fact that you have an unknown % chance of getting an artifact in some chests, these rewards are amazing. Especially on console where there are no botters.

lirithiel · October 2016

silverkelt said:
any other mmo should use this as a example of what not to do in your game.

QFFT!

b3llist0r · October 2016

I dont need RP too. I need some more fun playing this ... game. The +5 rings are a good thing. Best in Slot... a reason to grind. But this is not Diablo! Grinding a Grandfather or Windforce in D2 was easier than getting a +5 Brutality ring. WTF? And now they reduce the droprate by 50%... because for an eDEMO run this is what it is. Fuuuuu.

Maybe Cryptic can add some droprate enhancers to the ZEN store. Increasing the Droprate by 1000 for 30 min. 4 pieces for 4000 ZEN. No p-to-w... yeah u can grind it too. Nothing special. Eaaaasy. And a companion... the "Fellowshipper of the Ring" in a 4500 Zen bundle with some of the droprate enhancers. The active bonus could increase ring droprates by 100/300/500%. Very nice. Later +5 rings can be bought for 6000 Tradebars.

This would make the game better. Even better than it is.

hanniballa · October 2016

b3llist0r said:
I dont need RP too. I need some more fun playing this ... game. The +5 rings are a good thing. Best in Slot... a reason to grind. But this is not Diablo! Grinding a Grandfather or Windforce in D2 was easier than getting a +5 Brutality ring. WTF? And now they reduce the droprate by 50%... because for an eDEMO run this is what it is. Fuuuuu.

Maybe Cryptic can add some droprate enhancers to the ZEN store. Increasing the Droprate by 1000 for 30 min. 4 pieces for 4000 ZEN. No p-to-w... yeah u can grind it too. Nothing special. Eaaaasy. And a companion... the "Fellowshipper of the Ring" in a 4500 Zen bundle with some of the droprate enhancers. The active bonus could increase ring droprates by 100/300/500%. Very nice. Later +5 rings can be bought for 6000 Tradebars.

This would make the game better. Even better than it is.

We don't even know what the drop rates are statistically. We all know they're bad, but in other MMOs like WOW, you could learn percentage chance. Here, who knows.

kangkeok · October 2016

I think what makes a MMO success beside content is option. Option to choose ur loot. Option to do dungeon solo or party at preferred difficulty. Option to do any dungeon with equal worth of loot. At the moment the loot balance between dungeon is so imbalance that people find less interest in doing new content like FBI. This is the result of making an item BIS above all other item. If items were made more equally good, u will find a more spread out population in all content. If we are forced to so little option is like limiting the content. For example the only dungeon people are dong is CN for orcus shard. So the content is limited to CN. Why do eGWD? or eCC? when the loot is just some purple gear? Now that the loot option is remove, that makes all other dungeon even not worth to do. The design is already bad since mod 6. Now its gonna be worse. Except the developer gonna create new things worth to get in all dungeon, people arent gonna spend a key in those dungeon eventually making those dungeon empty and wasted. We will feel all cramp up in one content and eventualy feel there are less content in this game. When i play MMO, i like variety. Today i feel like to do this and tomorrow to do that. Not like today i can only do this and tomorrow the same thing and the day after. It get bored.

lirithiel · October 2016

Spot-on @kangkeok. If only we had more dungeons at epic level, you know, the ones they removed and brought back as LEVELING DUNGEONS FFS. Currently I only run eToS and the odd ECC (and very rarely eGWD) because they have the best chance to give the highest salvage value. Now if I had more choice I'd likely run a different dungeon every day of the week but as things stand, our choices are very limited.

kangkeok · October 2016

lirithiel said:
Spot-on @kangkeok. If only we had more dungeons at epic level, you know, the ones they removed and brought back as LEVELING DUNGEONS FFS. Currently I only run eToS and the odd ECC (and very rarely eGWD) because they have the best chance to give the highest salvage value. Now if I had more choice I'd likely run a different dungeon every day of the week but as things stand, our choices are very limited.

Yup. If only we could do what we feel like doing everyday.

verminus · October 2016

As a new an excited customer that came from a different game, this change actually made me renew my sub on the other game. Instead of cancelling and putting the money into neverwinter. Now I'm still playing neverwinter and not the other gamethat I'm paying for...I don't mind paying to get enjoyment out of something. But the way this happened and the blowout from the community then crickets from the Dev's makes me rethink my plan of paying here.

I thought the preview of loot was 1 of the greatest things ever after the rngesus <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> the other game had.

I think this should be added as a VIP perk, and would love to see a company give things instead of always taking.

gbcrosson · October 2016

As a fairly new player all that I have read is very discouraging. Starting to regret my investments into this game. I am only at 2kil but already seeing the chests have horrible drops and not worth it. I play a lot of F2P games and this by far has been the most expensive to try and gear a character that will be accepted in these high end Dungeon requirements. Fun game but seems a bit excessive on all the pay walls. I am use to the mystery/gamble boxes as all The games have those, but never played one like this. It just seems like excessive greed for a game clearly already making tons of money on the gamble boxes.

luks707 · October 2016

Guys - this thread is dead.
I am impressed in their ability to ignore things. Let's see what happens when they wake up and notice their revenue's been hit. Even before they changed a thing.

mentinmindmaker · October 2016

One thing I notice about this thread is there seems to be no-one positive about this change. On most other changes there usually was a minority that understood that the proposed change was for the better of the game. Not so on this issue.

Sort of unusual to get 100% negative comments. That says something about how much Cryptic messed up on this one.

Going through with it would be an even bigger mistake.

Andy should be back now to see what mess Cryptic got themselves into while he was gone. Just one way to make people happy on this: Roll it back, forget it ever was proposed.

lirithiel · October 2016

What has been made can never be unmade. Seems to be one of Cryptic's moto's. There was at least one 'player' in favour of these changes but it's against policy to name them so I shan't.

ironzerg79 · October 2016

They're doing it wrong. There's nothing wrong with players wanting to have the statistically best items. That's what this is about.

Making those items so stupidly rare as to make them meaningless to most players is a bad move. It's the grind without a real carrot.

Cryptic can't be afraid to let people earn loot drops. They can't be afraid for people to have a character with "the best" items.

And if they really, really, really want to make things crazy rare, they can attach cosmetic options to them. What if the "legendary" rings had a 5 or 10% to drop...so they were indeed rare, but a dedicated person could still get them. Then what if you had cosmetic ring transmutes that dropped at the .05% that when used on your character, caused your eyes to grow red, or gave you a glowing aura, or some other sort of "show stopping" cosmetic that made people gather around your toon and ooh and ahh over it.

That would be awesome...and heck, I'm honestly more likely to grind for an amazing cosmetic reward that's somewhat eternal, rather than +5 gear that I know is going to ultimately be obsolete at some point.

greyhawk · October 2016

Not only are they NOT going to revert this mess the devs are even saying that they don't plan to treat this as the exploit they think it is and won't ban people AT THIS TIME'.

They're going all in on this, not rethinking the decision.

They're purposely and intentionally trying to get a lot of people to quit. It's hard to watch...

empalas · October 2016

grrouper said:

Was it ever alive ? Every comment anyone has made in this thread is player's NEGATIVE "feedback". Yet right from the start if anyone opened a new thread in "Player feedback" a mod would rerouted to here. If there even is anyone in charge of keeping an eye on players feedback.. I question if they even have a clue in looking for it here under news and announcements ?

One of the mods did put a sticky under the general discussion that linked here

uptondarkdiamond · October 2016

ironzerg79 said:
They're doing it wrong. There's nothing wrong with players wanting to have the statistically best items. That's what this is about.

Making those items so stupidly rare as to make them meaningless to most players is a bad move. It's the grind without a real carrot.

Cryptic can't be afraid to let people earn loot drops. They can't be afraid for people to have a character with "the best" items.

And if they really, really, really want to make things crazy rare, they can attach cosmetic options to them. What if the "legendary" rings had a 5 or 10% to drop...so they were indeed rare, but a dedicated person could still get them. Then what if you had cosmetic ring transmutes that dropped at the .05% that when used on your character, caused your eyes to grow red, or gave you a glowing aura, or some other sort of "show stopping" cosmetic that made people gather around your toon and ooh and ahh over it.

That would be awesome...and heck, I'm honestly more likely to grind for an amazing cosmetic reward that's somewhat eternal, rather than +5 gear that I know is going to ultimately be obsolete at some point.

Again, just one of the many good idea's that can be found in this thread.

fanguine · October 2016

I'm one of the fools that spent real money on this game, alot of money. I thought I'd found a new game where I would spend years playing with the awesome new friends found in my guild, Civil Anarchy. I "invested" in the ability to contribute to both my own progress as well as the guild. In retrospect, I was too quick in making this "investment". Not because I doubt the friends I play with daily, but the game and the developers running this circus. I trust my friends but I no longer trust the developers of NW.

All marketing and branding builds on trying to make your customers feel comfortable and secure when chosing a particular brand. You want to make sure the customer gets what (s)he expects to get. Every time. Companies spend bilions of dollars to ensure that we as customers gets that sence of security everytime we buy products from them.

To be honest, I don't care about the price of keys or if the loot is horrible. What I do care about is this reaction a large number of players are showing in this thread as well as the reduced activity in game. I simply don't trust Cryptic will be able to deliver a product I can feel comfortable and secure with anylonger. Cryptic, you got several thousads of euros from me. I thought I could trust you in making a playing ground I could enjoy with my friends, but no. I don't trust you anymore! You won't get a cent from me here after. I'm

in your way of dealing with you customers and I see no point in supporting you with my money any longer. Your move!

cdnbison · October 2016

A ring transmute that turns off armor enchant effects... BoE. Bidding would start north of 50 million AD, I think...

Dungeon Key Changes

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