Now please explain what the fix is to go with this HUGE GIANT NERF to items we paid real money for. (while you are at it where is our companion gear from the gateway nerf).
Legendary junk is not acceptable. Legendary keys need to continue to function as previously or chest loot in those chests needs to be worth using them.
If they would just give 1 free legendary key per day at rank 13 VIP.. I would be happy enough. This gives a ability to play the game again.. you might have to wait a few days or a week or two.. but you can save up enough keys to run new raids, without paying PER key. It also gives value back to VIP.. which has been ripped apart over and over.
I still wouldn;t use a free legendary key to open trash rewards.
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jumpingmorksMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 876Arc User
Pack it in guys, they're not going to do a thing about the key change. 51 pages and where are the devs? Where's Strumslinger or Mimic? They're all MIA on this front. They clearly don't give a HAMSTER about our concerns. I've never seen a company ignore so many problems with their own game and community. I'm going to Final Fantasy 14, come join me.
Anyone who posted here expecting the rage to change the peeking "nerf" clearly doesn't know Cryptic very well. Once they announce it, it's going to happen. We're still waiting for the dungeons they removed so they can rework them for the level cap increase in mod 6. I figure if we see them again by mod 16 we'll be lucky, they'll probably get around to reworking the loot tables by mod 20.
They just pump out content/lockboxes and the bug list gets longer and longer. Every mod they introduce brings yet more bugs, some like Unstoppable they've been unable to debug at all, we got a minor "fix" when they changed how temp hit points work.
And now a wonderful new bug, triple stat enchants bug your armor enchant.
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checkmatein3Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 525Arc User
edited October 2016
As it is against forum rules to post 'I quit' and 'you devs are all a bunch of hamster idiots,' I will say:
I am parking my Neverwinter account. I intentionally will play less through mod 10b/11 through the end of my current VIP.
There comes a time in the evaluation of a game when all the pros and cons for playing the game must be balanced, and a decision as to its value vs cost determined.
Here are the reasons I have continued to play Neverwinter (my PROs): 1) Long time player in this game (its becoming more rare to say...I have been here since open beta). 2) Good friends who are fun to chat with 3) Love of DnD lore and art concepts 4) Fantasy/Medieval-concepts of MMO (not into anime or mech/tech). 5) Investment of time and money (yes, real money) over 3.5 years that is difficult to swallow 6) The combat system UI 7) The essentially free-to-play nature of the game MIMICS a DnD experience**** (This was my biggest draw to the game)
However, my CON list is much more serious: 1) Fewer and fewer players who have time to goof around without being unable to do content 2) Grind wall 3) And now a Pay Wall (this is what the key change is). 4) Reliance on RNG for progression rather than focused game play 5) The free-to-play open concept (foundry anyone) has been squeezed in a vice of marketing and pay elements so that very little freedom is left (trade bar store, wondrous bazaar, daily events, AD generation, zax exchange, inventory space, bind to account and character...etc etc). 6) Lack of inventiveness in integration of lore into game play other than kill X and gather Y. Lore is marketing-based...period. 7) Linear questing that has a definitive end with no clear results for finishing, other than to hit another gate. 8) Unbalanced and mismanaged classes in PvE and PvP (yes, I am a GF who can outdps most of you out there, and still this is after multiple 'fixes'), which causes nothing more than players abandoning classes and rapidly paying to advance another only to have it 'fixed' and they switch again (I call this the 'bait-and-switch' fix, which is dishonest on the part of Neverwinter). 9) Lack of the 1% progression rule. If a mod is supposed to last 3 months, then on average, you want you players to achieve 1% progression every day, and have the mod give benefits to that player for completing it that helps in content everywhere. This is not the setup of Neverwinter. With a reliance on RNG, the slow progression is replaced by long periods of nothing until the RNG hits and then you scramble to use it or sell it, hoping someone else wants it. RNG produces a gambling mindset, which does not satisfy me in the long term. I want to see my character progress through my efforts, not through unskilled opening of boxes. 10) Accumulation of grind effect: If there was one element to grind (like strongholds only), I would not have a complaint. But, there are so many elements to grind that these heap on top of each other so that what must be done to try and achieve a progression is dispersed across multiple grinds. Every aspect of the game with regards to TIME of play has been extended: Invoking (from 3 to 6), Gateway (no easy management), Number of Currencies, Bind to Character rewards, lower AD rewards, expansion and growth of specific dungeon keys that are campaign specific (or else Zen bought). In the end, I have played Neverwinter upwards of 5 hours a day for 3 years, have a BiS GF, but, I only see a huge grind ahead with no way to be satisfied with progression in the normal way of playing. I can just as easily get 1 key per day, hit a big RNG with a daily VIP key and get much more rewards. 11) Loss of close friends: This one hits me the most. When my friends list is 'offline,' almost all the time, I start to think that the biggest reason for me to invest is no longer there.
There is nothing in the next mod that is satisfactory with regards to changing the direction of Neverwinter to be an MMO that mimics a DnD gaming experience. I will pop in from time to time just to say hi, but it is time I find a different outlet that will satisfy my gaming pleasure.
Thanks to the guild I am in and all my friends who have put up with me for all these years, to the moderators on the forums, and even to my GWF nemeses with whom I have battled against for GF builds. I am gonna miss you all!
I want to particularly give thanks to the following: Jaks, Dekonia Moone, and Putzboy of Myrmidons, peace bros! To Janne, Morks, Isaac, Tooth, NameExpired, Mel and all my other imaginary friends, you are the best! To the alliance Tuxedo T-Shirt, it has been a pleasure being a go-to tank or whatever I am when you needed it!
I dunno but i feel alot of things are not well thought enough since mod 6. I started out end of mod 3 and played throughout mod 4 & 5. I find the old NWO is more thought out than the current game. What post mod 6 problem is they remove something without really fix the hole they dug out. For example the current issue. IF they remove this so called bug and made key to be consume despite it being accepted or decline, they could introduce a new key which open any chest ingame with +50% (example) drop rate advantage in zen market and that will definitely sells and lessen the rage among player. At least the content is some what playable.
I sometime feel that they are just lazy to think. Just look at the que menu. They actually categorize shore of tuern and kessel as epic dungeon. Also, due to some bad design, they made RAD can be so easily made by afking & stroll in the park that 3rd party program could easily accomplish. And yet they spending resources to kick gold seller from their game when the problem lies in the design itself. They are wasting resources by muting low lvl chat. Not that its a very bad move but it could be hacked or overcome ( bots farm so lvling is easy for them) and still does not cut the source of AD for the gold seller. Another thing is the appearance change store for maze engine. Its a good idea to put up rare appearance change that could only get once from the quest and also from old content. But do they actually know that, for example, the high sentry set is not necessary because it look exactly the same with the green lvl 70 gear? They should put up set like the sharandar ancestral set which does not exist anymore since mod 6. I know its not the real big issue but at least let us see some quality in the game. Not trying to discredit or flame but just pointing out. There are alot more out there. They just need to look and think more careful.
As it is against forum rules to post 'I quit' and 'you devs are all a bunch of hamster idiots,' I will say:
I am parking my Neverwinter account. I intentionally will play less through mod 10b/11 through the end of my current VIP.
There comes a time in the evaluation of a game when all the pros and cons for playing the game must be balanced, and a decision as to its value vs cost determined.
Here are the reasons I have continued to play Neverwinter (my PROs): 1) Long time player in this game (its becoming more rare to say...I have been here since open beta). 2) Good friends who are fun to chat with 3) Love of DnD lore and art concepts 4) Fantasy/Medieval-concepts of MMO (not into anime or mech/tech). 5) Investment of time and money (yes, real money) over 3.5 years that is difficult to swallow 6) The combat system UI 7) The essentially free-to-play nature of the game MIMICS a DnD experience**** (This was my biggest draw to the game)
However, my CON list is much more serious: 1) Fewer and fewer players who have time to goof around without being unable to do content 2) Grind wall 3) And now a Pay Wall (this is what the key change is). 4) Reliance on RNG for progression rather than focused game play 5) The free-to-play open concept (foundry anyone) has been squeezed in a vice of marketing and pay elements so that very little freedom is left (trade bar store, wondrous bazaar, daily events, AD generation, zax exchange, inventory space, bind to account and character...etc etc). 6) Lack of inventiveness in integration of lore into game play other than kill X and gather Y. Lore is marketing-based...period. 7) Linear questing that has a definitive end with no clear results for finishing, other than to hit another gate. 8) Unbalanced and mismanaged classes in PvE and PvP (yes, I am a GF who can outdps most of you out there, and still this is after multiple 'fixes'), which causes nothing more than players abandoning classes and rapidly paying to advance another only to have it 'fixed' and they switch again (I call this the 'bait-and-switch' fix, which is dishonest on the part of Neverwinter). 9) Lack of the 1% progression rule. If a mod is supposed to last 3 months, then on average, you want you players to achieve 1% progression every day, and have the mod give benefits to that player for completing it that helps in content everywhere. This is not the setup of Neverwinter. With a reliance on RNG, the slow progression is replaced by long periods of nothing until the RNG hits and then you scramble to use it or sell it, hoping someone else wants it. RNG produces a gambling mindset, which does not satisfy me in the long term. I want to see my character progress through my efforts, not through unskilled opening of boxes. 10) Accumulation of grind effect: If there was one element to grind (like strongholds only), I would not have a complaint. But, there are so many elements to grind that these heap on top of each other so that what must be done to try and achieve a progression is dispersed across multiple grinds. Every aspect of the game with regards to TIME of play has been extended: Invoking (from 3 to 6), Gateway (no easy management), Number of Currencies, Bind to Character rewards, lower AD rewards, expansion and growth of specific dungeon keys that are campaign specific (or else Zen bought). In the end, I have played Neverwinter upwards of 5 hours a day for 3 years, have a BiS GF, but, I only see a huge grind ahead with no way to be satisfied with progression in the normal way of playing. I can just as easily get 1 key per day, hit a big RNG with a daily VIP key and get much more rewards. 11) Loss of close friends: This one hits me the most. When my friends list is 'offline,' almost all the time, I start to think that the biggest reason for me to invest is no longer there.
There is nothing in the next mod that is satisfactory with regards to changing the direction of Neverwinter to be an MMO that mimics a DnD gaming experience. I will pop in from time to time just to say hi, but it is time I find a different outlet that will satisfy my gaming pleasure.
Thanks to the guild I am in and all my friends who have put up with me for all these years, to the moderators on the forums, and even to my GWF nemeses with whom I have battled against for GF builds. I am gonna miss you all!
I want to particularly give thanks to the following: Jaks, Dekonia Moone, and Putzboy of Myrmidons, peace bros! To Janne, Morks, Isaac, Tooth, NameExpired, Mel and all my other imaginary friends, you are the best! To the alliance Tuxedo T-Shirt, it has been a pleasure being a go-to tank or whatever I am when you needed it!
Peace all!
+1
You must have read my mind, this hits on a majority of reasons Pro and Con for me also. Well thought out and presented @checkmatein3 !
OK, let's do the math! It's been said that the Drop rate of a Legendary Ring in CN is 0.03%. It means if you run it 3,333 times, you might get it once. Now, Cryptic wants us to use keys on every chest. A Legendary Dragon Key is worth 60 Zen. With current Xbox1 zen prices (400 AD for 1 Zen) it means it is worth 24,000 AD to open each chest. Now, assume that every time you open the chest, you get 30% of the value of the key you used on average (yes, it is a generous number). That means every time you open a chest you lose 16,800 AD. Now, you need to open 3,333 chests to get a +5 ring which will cost you around 55,440,000 AD ($1,386). YES, you are reading that right! And that's just one +5 ring. You will need 4 of them for every character, and you actually might get a +5 ring that is not what you wanted (as most of them are not good).
Even if you get three Orcus Shards in the process (which you won't, cause its drop rate is even worse than +5 rings), it will not cover 25% of the cost of ONE ring! So, what does this change mean? It means you only run CN once a day using the campaign key. You have to run more Underdark stuff everyday to get the key though (more grind). So the only other Epic dungeon that you will run is eTos. Also, we are forced to run Cloak Tower (because you can make more AD out of it)!
Now my question is "why now?" What has happened that they decided to do this change. They claim it was a bug from the very beginning and if it was actually a bug, it is really a big bug! Why didn't they change it before. Is this because of the new customers they got from PS4? Are they earning enough money from all three platforms that they afford to screw their old players over and over again?
I am sure this is going to kill dng running as there will be no point to it. As @arashjam said 1 dng a day then what it seems to me this is a game killer I mean if ppl not running things what will they do?
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jumpingmorksMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 876Arc User
It won't change dungeon running for me, I have a BiS GF as my main but plenty of 2.5k alts to run elol with and each with stacks of ViP epic keys. The second chest is worthless anyway, I've never seen an artifact drop in the right chest of elol and I've run that dungeon a ton.
If they want to waste their time, money and resources on content we do not run or utilise then they are doing something wrong.
Take FBI, I hardly run it, when they nerfed the old pre mod 6 sets which is coming new mod, they said the lifespan of any gear should be a year tops. The grind is so horrible that you can only really do it on one character. If my 2.5k alts can run content then am pretty sure my GF main can.
If they pull empowerment gear on every successive mod I'll just skip it like I am mod 10/10.5 gear until something with a more reasonable grind appears. Otherwise, relic gear as far as I am concerned is a waste of my time and effort.
I am an xbone player. I honestly took an extended break from this game about a month ago. My reasoning was that I have never ever ever gotten a good drop. The few decent drops I got was after the value of said item had tanked. Rng rng rng how I hate thee. I have played since the 2nd month of this hitting Xbone. I have friends who have played for 5 months. In that 5 months they have had more drops than me in every way. More from boxes more from dungeons. More from events. I am retired and I was playing no less than 12 hours a day 7 days a week.( I know no life). These people had jobs and maybe played 4 hours a day. This games rng is not rng. I don't give a flying HAMSTER what you say. I was considering buying 12 months of VIP and trying the game again after the next 50% off sale. But now I have to waste a key on every HAMSTER box? Let me tell you again, in over a year of playing, spending over 500 dollars, opening thousands of lock boxes, I have never ever gotten HAMSTER. No legendary rings, no legendary mounts, no epic mounts, no epic companions, no adorable bites gear, nada nothing zilch. So now you want me to pay money just to get nothing? Are you HAMSTER kidding me? Pretty sure I won't be returning if this hits live.
As it is against forum rules to post 'I quit' and 'you devs are all a bunch of hamster idiots,' I will say:
I am parking my Neverwinter account. I intentionally will play less through mod 10b/11 through the end of my current VIP.
There comes a time in the evaluation of a game when all the pros and cons for playing the game must be balanced, and a decision as to its value vs cost determined. [...] Peace all!
Well spoken! Nevertheless, curse you for making me cry, forcing me to read the truth that is out there!
You should have put a warning out there "Danger - reading this text might hurt more than a bit"
I'll stick around a bit longer, not interested in grinding mod 10 and 10.5, getting a few of the old boons I did not do so far and then shelving my toons as well.
Imaginary Friends are the best friends you can have!
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jumpingmorksMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 876Arc User
I am an xbone player. I honestly took an extended break from this game about a month ago. My reasoning was that I have never ever ever gotten a good drop. The few decent drops I got was after the value of said item had tanked. Rng rng rng how I hate thee. I have played since the 2nd month of this hitting Xbone. I have friends who have played for 5 months. In that 5 months they have had more drops than me in every way. More from boxes more from dungeons. More from events. I am retired and I was playing no less than 12 hours a day 7 days a week.( I know no life). These people had jobs and maybe played 4 hours a day. This games rng is not rng. I don't give a flying HAMSTER what you say. I was considering buying 12 months of VIP and trying the game again after the next 50% off sale. But now I have to waste a key on every HAMSTER box? Let me tell you again, in over a year of playing, spending over 500 dollars, opening thousands of lock boxes, I have never ever gotten HAMSTER. No legendary rings, no legendary mounts, no epic mounts, no epic companions, no adorable bites gear, nada nothing zilch. So now you want me to pay money just to get nothing? Are you HAMSTER kidding me? Pretty sure I won't be returning if this hits live.
I wouldn't be surprised if RNG hits harder if you play more, way to even the good loot scales between those that have the time to farm every item to those that don't.
/removes tinfoil hat
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feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
Here are some ideas on how to fix this unholy mess:
1) All endgame campaign currencies can be used to purchase - without crafting delays - BoP Legendary Dragon keys. 2) All top endgame rewards should be farmable. The player tells the campaign window which reward he/she wants, and every time that fails to drop, it adds 1% to the chance of it dropping the next time. 3) The paywall is completely unacceptable. There has to be a way for f2p players to have a chance at endgame rewards. 4) All endgame zone quests should reward RAD - about 3k per quest. 5) Realistic (i.e. more than 1% chance) in-game sources of coalescent and preservation wards from endgame zone lair chests. 6) Seriously reform the RNG. I have suggested this in many other places: make it possible to simply dump enough preservation wards, or a slightly higher than equivalent amount of AD, into an enchantment to guarantee an upgrade. The reward for putting over a million RP into an R11 enchant should not be a half-hour torture session with the RNG.
There have already been a lot of good points made in this thread about how this change is a mistake.
This decision is an extension of the same mistake they made with chests in the FBI dungeon. It's teaching us we don't need the latest and best loot to play and enjoy the game. And that is not a good lesson when the motivation for improvement is mainly acquisitiveness rather than actual need.
I have two characters who are over the ilevel requirements for FBI, but it's quite likely I'll never set foot in that dungeon because of the imbalance between the expense (time/AD) of entering it and the poor rewards for completing it.
And once I have 4/5 boons for those two characters there is literally no reason for me to go back to SK campaign areas ever. I'm not using the new armour because I don't want to buy into the Voninblod empowerment game and my old armour is fine. The quests in that area don't give any useful reward outside progression within the campaign itself, which is another serious failure.
So content is invalidated because the rewards are poor. Because the game can already be beaten without fully ranked up enchantments, artifacts and artifact equipment it's becoming increasingly clear there's no need to pursue that.
The developers are making the potentially fatal mistake of letting their players think 'why even bother with this?'. They don't seem to be aware of it, but their jobs revolve around making sure as few people as possible ever ask that question. The fact that it is now a major point of discussion and source of anger in the community is a colossal failure.
And from what I understand, although the new weapon sets will be better, they will also be so time-consuming and/or expensive to acquire there's very little incentive to do it. Why do I want to spend all that time/money to get new weapons? To beat content I can already beat easily with my existing gear? LOL, you are teaching people not to play your game.
So much of the incentive in the game to progress comes from player impatience and competitiveness, not because the content actually needs us to have the best items. It would be absolutely hilarious if this current misguided approach to making the game less rewarding turned the community into a bunch of people who run the game only as much as free keys allow them to and stop caring about maxing out their gear.
If the game did have multiple difficulties for dungeons, and the upper level ones were hard enough that you needed top tier gear to win this stupidity might just fly. But in this game making it even harder to get loot you don't need makes NO SENSE AT ALL.
The 2 post above me have good points and some great idea's.
But, is anybody listening??
Any developer feedback on any idea's in this post would be great.....
I can personally confirm that devs are reading. @Terramak has been posting more on the preview thread instead of this one.
My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox 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!
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lordseth1985Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 319Arc User
The 2 post above me have good points and some great idea's.
But, is anybody listening??
Any developer feedback on any idea's in this post would be great.....
I can personally confirm that devs are reading. @Terramak has been posting more on the preview thread instead of this one.
Good to know. Better show all that ideias there!
Avestruz.Q.T.Seduz - Rogue, natural born assassin.
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feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
edited October 2016
It is time to look at firing the management team. Excruciatingly bad decisions like this change to keys are not the devs' fault, they are PWE management's. Research shows that managers spend about 80% of their time making busywork for other people or simply trying to justify their own existence. I think in this case the evidence since mod 6 has been that management has not only failed to add value to the game, they're been doing their best to destroy it. Every major change comes with an enormous way to anger and alienate players. Meanwhile, the players' major complaints have always been the same: Class balance, low rewards for playing, too much grind. In addition, now we are told that we not only have to accept garbage loot rewards but that we have to pay to get them. It's as if the person whose job is to play devil's advocate in every meeting always pushes the worst idea through. Why not get rid of delves and then delete the endgame dungeons? Why not refuse to bring them back scaled for new gear? Why not leave outrageous and game-breaking things like Courage Breaker and Shocking Execution untouched for years so that the pvp community dies? Why not refuse to make the pvp solo-only queue permanent after years of demand for it? Why not include utterly worthless rewards in lockboxes? Why not make +5 rings almost unattainable and then make 80% of them completely worthless? Why not make loot BtA or BoP so players can't spend AD to get what the RNG refuses them? Why not drive player frustration levels though the roof by simultaneously forcing them to pay for dungeon loot and accept garbage rewards?
Psychologists have a name for this: self-destructive behavior. The management team expressing its subconscious desire to fail by making indefensible decisions that are certain to hurt the company. Fire them. Replace them all with one ex-dev.
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
I want to particularly give thanks to the following: Jaks, Dekonia Moone, and Putzboy of Myrmidons, peace bros! To Janne, Morks, Isaac, Tooth, NameExpired, Mel and all my other imaginary friends, you are the best! To the alliance Tuxedo T-Shirt, it has been a pleasure being a go-to tank or whatever I am when you needed it!
First @thefabricant and now @checkmatein3, nice work PW but then again that is the agenda. Remove long-term players from the game and focus on transient players (those that return each new mod to drop $200 on the game to reach BIS again) and new players (those that come to the game to spend $100 to play for 3 months and leave). The real key of course is not to leave but to stay, keep using up the company resources by supporting players that don't give RL$ and forget their new content. Play the content we enjoy and sooner or later they may realize they have to add that type of content or the won't get our RL$.
I dunno but i feel alot of things are not well thought enough since mod 6. I started out end of mod 3 and played throughout mod 4 & 5. I find the old NWO is more thought out than the current game. What post mod 6 problem is they remove something without really fix the hole they dug out. For example the current issue. IF they remove this so called bug and made key to be consume despite it being accepted or decline, they could introduce a new key which open any chest ingame with +50% (example) drop rate advantage in zen market and that will definitely sells and lessen the rage among player. At least the content is some what playable.
That is the sign of not having a game developer managing the game. What you see is programers creating hot fixes to problems. In this case they our looking for a quick way to force more RL$ from daily play. Let's think about it though, in the end our chances of getting that ideal loot from a dungeon is only being cut 50% if you only use your daily key. The problem with that is the drop rate was already terrible. Don't bother with the second chests, its a gamble obviously not worth the investment.
I wouldn't be surprised if RNG hits harder if you play more, way to even the good loot scales between those that have the time to farm every item to those that don't.
/removes tinfoil hat
Actually I've always believed your RL$ contributions impact your RNG. My FTP friends are all mostly still using +4 rings and had to purchase their artifacts on the AH. My RL$ contributing friends have seen +5 much sooner and almost all have reported getting an lol artifact to drop in ELOL in their first few runs. There is most certainly additional logic that impacts RNG, why they aren't marketing/selling this wizardry is beyond my comprehension.
There have already been a lot of good points made in this thread about how this change is a mistake.
This decision is an extension of the same mistake they made with chests in the FBI dungeon. It's teaching us we don't need the latest and best loot to play and enjoy the game. And that is not a good lesson when the motivation for improvement is mainly acquisitiveness rather than actual need.
I have two characters who are over the ilevel requirements for FBI, but it's quite likely I'll never set foot in that dungeon because of the imbalance between the expense (time/AD) of entering it and the poor rewards for completing it.
And once I have 4/5 boons for those two characters there is literally no reason for me to go back to SK campaign areas ever. I'm not using the new armour because I don't want to buy into the Voninblod empowerment game and my old armour is fine. The quests in that area don't give any useful reward outside progression within the campaign itself, which is another serious failure.
So content is invalidated because the rewards are poor. Because the game can already be beaten without fully ranked up enchantments, artifacts and artifact equipment it's becoming increasingly clear there's no need to pursue that.
The developers are making the potentially fatal mistake of letting their players think 'why even bother with this?'. They don't seem to be aware of it, but their jobs revolve around making sure as few people as possible ever ask that question. The fact that it is now a major point of discussion and source of anger in the community is a colossal failure.
And from what I understand, although the new weapon sets will be better, they will also be so time-consuming and/or expensive to acquire there's very little incentive to do it. Why do I want to spend all that time/money to get new weapons? To beat content I can already beat easily with my existing gear? LOL, you are teaching people not to play your game.
So much of the incentive in the game to progress comes from player impatience and competitiveness, not because the content actually needs us to have the best items. It would be absolutely hilarious if this current misguided approach to making the game less rewarding turned the community into a bunch of people who run the game only as much as free keys allow them to and stop caring about maxing out their gear.
If the game did have multiple difficulties for dungeons, and the upper level ones were hard enough that you needed top tier gear to win this stupidity might just fly. But in this game making it even harder to get loot you don't need makes NO SENSE AT ALL.
Thanks.
+1, i Havne't entered FBI now will i chase these rediculous weapons. Wait 3 months and they will put them in a lockbox and we can buy them from the AH for 400k AD. Much better investment
Why not make +5 rings almost unattainable and then make 80% of them completely worthless?
A simple solution to that problem would have been to use one of their previous chest mechanics where you got to choose your version of a reward for the +5 rings. If it is a good enough mechanic for T1 dungeon rewards, you would think it would have been used for something so extremely rare.
I have been extremely lucky and won 3 of the better +5 rings (after countless runs of CN and eDemo), while over 95% of my guild has yet to even get 1. I can only imagine their feeling of disappointment and frustration if they were to get a +5 and it was worthless to them.
And I agree most of the rings are junk even if they are +5.
In regards to new players: I just don't see someone spending that much on keys when the payout is so bad. I get that players want progression. But I have to think a new player would say "that key cost me X and after using 5 keys i've earned 1/1000th of what I spent on the keys. f this". It's not easy coming up with AD to turn into Zen for new players and I think people are just not going to last as long as the old guard has.
I'll tell you what I'll do. I play their game. And I'll win.
The 2 post above me have good points and some great idea's.
But, is anybody listening??
Any developer feedback on any idea's in this post would be great.....
I can personally confirm that devs are reading. @Terramak has been posting more on the preview thread instead of this one.
And if you go to that page, not a single word about better drops or about much of anything related to the key changes. All he's said is, don't exhaust yourself declining keys in the mean time, he answered a question about the camera, and he told us the preview shard was unlocked. So you basically want us to go to another thread and get ignored there too!
Stop lying to us, get a dev in here now! We have a ton of feedback and we deserve an explanation and some answers!
dang you guys, so many well written and direct posts, i normally don't spend so much time reading the rant threads because its usually just hamster this hamster that hamster you, but this thread still has me entangled and reading it daily even after leaving the game. Id guess its partly due to missing game and being able to see what everyone is up to and feeling but I blame you all for keeping it neat and easy to read! So lets stop with the good posts so i can get on to my new game and forget this lousy change that finally ended my neverwinter adventure
dang you guys, so many well written and direct posts, i normally don't spend so much time reading the rant threads because its usually just hamster this hamster that hamster you, but this thread still has me entangled and reading it daily even after leaving the game.
Glad you're enjoying it, good to see some one is reading this because if the posts here have shown anything, the players and the unfortunate mod that are stuck with us, we're the only ones reading it.
Id guess its partly due to missing game and being able to see what everyone is up to and feeling but I blame you all for keeping it neat and easy to read! So lets stop with the good posts so i can get on to my new game and forget this lousy change that finally ended my neverwinter adventure
You're not the only one dude, but they don't care. They have a huge user base now that it's on three platforms. But this should've illustrated that they're pushing people away. Pretty soon they'll find out that you can't get blood from a stone.
I can personally confirm that devs are reading. @Terramak has been posting more on the preview thread instead of this one.
Why won't they engage in a discussion with us? Why won't they reply?
It's pretty obvious why strumslinger and mimicking and the rest are avoiding this, same reason they pawned the delivery of this off on some poor European mod, they couldn't stand up to the scrutiny of our questions. They already made their decision a long time ago, and they don't have any future plans to buff the drops of chests or to do anything with our feedback. They could easily come here and lie to us, but it's even easier to avoid us and have a mod try and direct the feedback to a go nowhere thread.
That's what's so interesting about this whole mess. In their short-sighted ignorance they really are blind to how badly this will affect their bottom line. How they can think forcing people to pay to run dungeons is mind blowing.
And it's not about the old content guys. It's ALL about FBI and the new raid. The box in a box, and the three chests in AoS are why they're doing this. They think that people won't see what a blatant cash grab this is. And by the time the newer players reach FBI and AoS there won't be anyone left to run it with them.
The older players, that they're completely alienating WILL NOT stand for this type of treatment for very long. There are a multitude of great games out there - on ALL platforms - but they just don't get it.
I've never, in 16 years of playing MMOs, seen this level of... I can't think of a word for it...
FYI people leaving the game due to this change isn't limited to just one platform. I am part of the number 1 guild/alliance on xbone and I have seen plenty of post about quiting.
Comments
Now please explain what the fix is to go with this HUGE GIANT NERF to items we paid real money for. (while you are at it where is our companion gear from the gateway nerf).
Legendary junk is not acceptable. Legendary keys need to continue to function as previously or chest loot in those chests needs to be worth using them.
https://www.theholycrusaders.com/
They just pump out content/lockboxes and the bug list gets longer and longer. Every mod they introduce brings yet more bugs, some like Unstoppable they've been unable to debug at all, we got a minor "fix" when they changed how temp hit points work.
And now a wonderful new bug, triple stat enchants bug your armor enchant.
I am parking my Neverwinter account. I intentionally will play less through mod 10b/11 through the end of my current VIP.
There comes a time in the evaluation of a game when all the pros and cons for playing the game must be balanced, and a decision as to its value vs cost determined.
Here are the reasons I have continued to play Neverwinter (my PROs):
1) Long time player in this game (its becoming more rare to say...I have been here since open beta).
2) Good friends who are fun to chat with
3) Love of DnD lore and art concepts
4) Fantasy/Medieval-concepts of MMO (not into anime or mech/tech).
5) Investment of time and money (yes, real money) over 3.5 years that is difficult to swallow
6) The combat system UI
7) The essentially free-to-play nature of the game MIMICS a DnD experience**** (This was my biggest draw to the game)
However, my CON list is much more serious:
1) Fewer and fewer players who have time to goof around without being unable to do content
2) Grind wall
3) And now a Pay Wall (this is what the key change is).
4) Reliance on RNG for progression rather than focused game play
5) The free-to-play open concept (foundry anyone) has been squeezed in a vice of marketing and pay elements so that very little freedom is left (trade bar store, wondrous bazaar, daily events, AD generation, zax exchange, inventory space, bind to account and character...etc etc).
6) Lack of inventiveness in integration of lore into game play other than kill X and gather Y. Lore is marketing-based...period.
7) Linear questing that has a definitive end with no clear results for finishing, other than to hit another gate.
8) Unbalanced and mismanaged classes in PvE and PvP (yes, I am a GF who can outdps most of you out there, and still this is after multiple 'fixes'), which causes nothing more than players abandoning classes and rapidly paying to advance another only to have it 'fixed' and they switch again (I call this the 'bait-and-switch' fix, which is dishonest on the part of Neverwinter).
9) Lack of the 1% progression rule. If a mod is supposed to last 3 months, then on average, you want you players to achieve 1% progression every day, and have the mod give benefits to that player for completing it that helps in content everywhere. This is not the setup of Neverwinter. With a reliance on RNG, the slow progression is replaced by long periods of nothing until the RNG hits and then you scramble to use it or sell it, hoping someone else wants it. RNG produces a gambling mindset, which does not satisfy me in the long term. I want to see my character progress through my efforts, not through unskilled opening of boxes.
10) Accumulation of grind effect: If there was one element to grind (like strongholds only), I would not have a complaint. But, there are so many elements to grind that these heap on top of each other so that what must be done to try and achieve a progression is dispersed across multiple grinds. Every aspect of the game with regards to TIME of play has been extended: Invoking (from 3 to 6), Gateway (no easy management), Number of Currencies, Bind to Character rewards, lower AD rewards, expansion and growth of specific dungeon keys that are campaign specific (or else Zen bought). In the end, I have played Neverwinter upwards of 5 hours a day for 3 years, have a BiS GF, but, I only see a huge grind ahead with no way to be satisfied with progression in the normal way of playing. I can just as easily get 1 key per day, hit a big RNG with a daily VIP key and get much more rewards.
11) Loss of close friends: This one hits me the most. When my friends list is 'offline,' almost all the time, I start to think that the biggest reason for me to invest is no longer there.
There is nothing in the next mod that is satisfactory with regards to changing the direction of Neverwinter to be an MMO that mimics a DnD gaming experience. I will pop in from time to time just to say hi, but it is time I find a different outlet that will satisfy my gaming pleasure.
Thanks to the guild I am in and all my friends who have put up with me for all these years, to the moderators on the forums, and even to my GWF nemeses with whom I have battled against for GF builds. I am gonna miss you all!
I want to particularly give thanks to the following: Jaks, Dekonia Moone, and Putzboy of Myrmidons, peace bros! To Janne, Morks, Isaac, Tooth, NameExpired, Mel and all my other imaginary friends, you are the best! To the alliance Tuxedo T-Shirt, it has been a pleasure being a go-to tank or whatever I am when you needed it!
Peace all!
Guild--And the Imaginary Friends
I sometime feel that they are just lazy to think. Just look at the que menu. They actually categorize shore of tuern and kessel as epic dungeon. Also, due to some bad design, they made RAD can be so easily made by afking & stroll in the park that 3rd party program could easily accomplish. And yet they spending resources to kick gold seller from their game when the problem lies in the design itself. They are wasting resources by muting low lvl chat. Not that its a very bad move but it could be hacked or overcome ( bots farm so lvling is easy for them) and still does not cut the source of AD for the gold seller. Another thing is the appearance change store for maze engine. Its a good idea to put up rare appearance change that could only get once from the quest and also from old content. But do they actually know that, for example, the high sentry set is not necessary because it look exactly the same with the green lvl 70 gear? They should put up set like the sharandar ancestral set which does not exist anymore since mod 6. I know its not the real big issue but at least let us see some quality in the game. Not trying to discredit or flame but just pointing out. There are alot more out there. They just need to look and think more careful.
You must have read my mind, this hits on a majority of reasons Pro and Con for me also. Well thought out and presented @checkmatein3 !
Even if you get three Orcus Shards in the process (which you won't, cause its drop rate is even worse than +5 rings), it will not cover 25% of the cost of ONE ring! So, what does this change mean? It means you only run CN once a day using the campaign key. You have to run more Underdark stuff everyday to get the key though (more grind). So the only other Epic dungeon that you will run is eTos. Also, we are forced to run Cloak Tower (because you can make more AD out of it)!
Now my question is "why now?" What has happened that they decided to do this change. They claim it was a bug from the very beginning and if it was actually a bug, it is really a big bug! Why didn't they change it before. Is this because of the new customers they got from PS4? Are they earning enough money from all three platforms that they afford to screw their old players over and over again?
If they want to waste their time, money and resources on content we do not run or utilise then they are doing something wrong.
Take FBI, I hardly run it, when they nerfed the old pre mod 6 sets which is coming new mod, they said the lifespan of any gear should be a year tops. The grind is so horrible that you can only really do it on one character. If my 2.5k alts can run content then am pretty sure my GF main can.
If they pull empowerment gear on every successive mod I'll just skip it like I am mod 10/10.5 gear until something with a more reasonable grind appears. Otherwise, relic gear as far as I am concerned is a waste of my time and effort.
You should have put a warning out there "Danger - reading this text might hurt more than a bit"
I'll stick around a bit longer, not interested in grinding mod 10 and 10.5, getting a few of the old boons I did not do so far and then shelving my toons as well.
/removes tinfoil hat
1) All endgame campaign currencies can be used to purchase - without crafting delays - BoP Legendary Dragon keys.
2) All top endgame rewards should be farmable. The player tells the campaign window which reward he/she wants, and every time that fails to drop, it adds 1% to the chance of it dropping the next time.
3) The paywall is completely unacceptable. There has to be a way for f2p players to have a chance at endgame rewards.
4) All endgame zone quests should reward RAD - about 3k per quest.
5) Realistic (i.e. more than 1% chance) in-game sources of coalescent and preservation wards from endgame zone lair chests.
6) Seriously reform the RNG. I have suggested this in many other places: make it possible to simply dump enough preservation wards, or a slightly higher than equivalent amount of AD, into an enchantment to guarantee an upgrade. The reward for putting over a million RP into an R11 enchant should not be a half-hour torture session with the RNG.
This decision is an extension of the same mistake they made with chests in the FBI dungeon. It's teaching us we don't need the latest and best loot to play and enjoy the game. And that is not a good lesson when the motivation for improvement is mainly acquisitiveness rather than actual need.
I have two characters who are over the ilevel requirements for FBI, but it's quite likely I'll never set foot in that dungeon because of the imbalance between the expense (time/AD) of entering it and the poor rewards for completing it.
And once I have 4/5 boons for those two characters there is literally no reason for me to go back to SK campaign areas ever. I'm not using the new armour because I don't want to buy into the Voninblod empowerment game and my old armour is fine. The quests in that area don't give any useful reward outside progression within the campaign itself, which is another serious failure.
So content is invalidated because the rewards are poor. Because the game can already be beaten without fully ranked up enchantments, artifacts and artifact equipment it's becoming increasingly clear there's no need to pursue that.
The developers are making the potentially fatal mistake of letting their players think 'why even bother with this?'. They don't seem to be aware of it, but their jobs revolve around making sure as few people as possible ever ask that question. The fact that it is now a major point of discussion and source of anger in the community is a colossal failure.
And from what I understand, although the new weapon sets will be better, they will also be so time-consuming and/or expensive to acquire there's very little incentive to do it. Why do I want to spend all that time/money to get new weapons? To beat content I can already beat easily with my existing gear? LOL, you are teaching people not to play your game.
So much of the incentive in the game to progress comes from player impatience and competitiveness, not because the content actually needs us to have the best items. It would be absolutely hilarious if this current misguided approach to making the game less rewarding turned the community into a bunch of people who run the game only as much as free keys allow them to and stop caring about maxing out their gear.
If the game did have multiple difficulties for dungeons, and the upper level ones were hard enough that you needed top tier gear to win this stupidity might just fly. But in this game making it even harder to get loot you don't need makes NO SENSE AT ALL.
Thanks.
But, is anybody listening??
Any developer feedback on any idea's in this post would be great.....
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!
Psychologists have a name for this: self-destructive behavior. The management team expressing its subconscious desire to fail by making indefensible decisions that are certain to hurt the company. Fire them. Replace them all with one ex-dev.
+1, i Havne't entered FBI now will i chase these rediculous weapons. Wait 3 months and they will put them in a lockbox and we can buy them from the AH for 400k AD. Much better investment
I have been extremely lucky and won 3 of the better +5 rings (after countless runs of CN and eDemo), while over 95% of my guild has yet to even get 1. I can only imagine their feeling of disappointment and frustration if they were to get a +5 and it was worthless to them.
And I agree most of the rings are junk even if they are +5.
Stop lying to us, get a dev in here now! We have a ton of feedback and we deserve an explanation and some answers!
And it's not about the old content guys. It's ALL about FBI and the new raid. The box in a box, and the three chests in AoS are why they're doing this. They think that people won't see what a blatant cash grab this is. And by the time the newer players reach FBI and AoS there won't be anyone left to run it with them.
The older players, that they're completely alienating WILL NOT stand for this type of treatment for very long. There are a multitude of great games out there - on ALL platforms - but they just don't get it.
I've never, in 16 years of playing MMOs, seen this level of... I can't think of a word for it...
It's truly astonishing.