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Module 10.5: the good, the bad, the ugly
diogene0
Member Posts: 2,894 Arc User
Since it's maintenance time, I have some time to finally provide some thoughts on the new content.
The good:
Surprisingly enough, Assault on Svardborg fits very well in that category. The new instance offers decent rewards, at least for this mod, even if long-term replayability is far from guaranteed due to the fact that the RP dropping in this instance is somehow designed to be used during this mod only, on the new weapons. The instance design itself is quite good and offers some new challenges, even if it could be improved. Most of the mechanics, sadly, can be ignored, due to the fact that the damage the said mechanics do can be dodged, resisted or mitigated. IMO, damage from mechanics such as call of winter or the AoE circle we carry around our characters should be unresistible and go through all immunities so that they can't be ignored. Damage from the said mechanics should also mean a one shot if they're ignored, because it's supposed to be a raid, right?
Getting a weapon to epic level with this instance is also very easy, and that's really a nice change.
Then, let's talk about the new items: The Valhalla set and the new weapon set. The progression is happening at an appropriate time, and the items themselves (not how they are obtained, I'll get into that later) aren't game breaking but still provide incentives to get them.
However, on that matter, I'd like to underline the fact that there is very little incentive for support characters such as tanks and clerics to obtain these new weapons. First, because of how strong lifesteal is and anointed army, clerics haven't been healing since mod 8 and stronghold boons, so weapon damage is useless, then most tank players don't really care about their damage, so they're not really interested in more weapon damage either.
So here is the issue: a lot of players want these sets for their dps characters, but support character players don't care at all about the new sets, which dramatically increases the current imbalances in the distribution of players willing to acquire the new items (ie, no tanks or clerics). So, somehow, making weapon damage relevant for support classes would be a nice idea, as the other solution, which is making set bonuses desirable for every characters of every class, is rarely a good idea. I have no idea for tanks, but bringing back healing for clerics would be a fine idea.
The daily quests are also "good". I'm not saying I like the amount of solo content this game has, because I don't, but it is what it is, and we've seen far worse. It doesn't take too long to do all three daily quests, so at least I can tolerate them.
The bad.
The overall layout of the new map is really bad. First, the zone is quite difficult to navigate in (no pun intended) as most of the landscape is very boring and lacking distinctive elements to help us find our way there. A good zone needs big landmarks so that we don't have to use the map and map markers all the time, as this makes the daily grind a bit tedious when we don't know where we should be going.
The new map. Let's face it, it's really ugly. It's probably the ugliest zone there is currently in Neverwinter. I don't play this game for its shiny graphics, because there is no such thing, but there are minimal standards no 2016 games should go below. The skybox is downright awful, and the water shader looks like some stolen asset from a 1998 game, chosen for its remarkable ugliness. somehow, we're expected to stare at this horror for hours (fishing).
"Heroic" encounters. First, this is heroic in name only, so that's extremely tedious and boring to play. Then, can we finally have a break from this kind of content? Because you don't want to make this challenging, you're providing pathetic rewards, which is frustrating for us, players, and gets you, Cryptic designers, a lot of probably well deserved flak. I mean, WTF am I supposed to do with a rank 5 enchantment? Is that worth 5 minutes of game time? The point is, I get better rewards killing random monsters, so there's really something wrong with that kind of content. If you don't want to provide appropriate rewards, then fine, don't do it, but stop making that kind of content altogether, and make some more skirmishes and dungeons instead.
Fishing, in its current iteration. I mean, I'm fine with fishing. Some people like it, but the fact that fishing gives far more RP than playing endgame content feels really wrong, and the fact that raid rewards are locked behind fishing is extremely frustrating. You've got to realize that this is an action game you're developing, not a freaking facebook app people are going to play from work, so at the very least, make it either entirely optional or provide a solid AFK fishing tool, such as a new profession.
The ugly.
The weapons restoration process. Ugly is clearly an understatement. I wish I'd say I would smack the person who came up with such a messed up, overly complicated design, but that wouldn't be a good enough punishment. Instead, I just wish he was forced to grind his new weapon set manually, by himself, without using zen or any other cheating tool.
Asking to grind for additional voninblood in such large quantities is sadistic at best. Grinding for 40 more lanolin is a ticket for hours of misery. But grinding for the frigging dragon turtle moults that NEVER drop from any of the heroic encounters, big or small, clearly falls in the infuriating category. If there was one good reason to uninstall the game, it would be that one. It's not even difficult, it's just awful design, extremely long for absolutely no valid reason except artificially extending the grind to the point many are completely burnt out on the new content already.
I have never gotten any dragon turtle moult from heroic encounters, and I know many players in that situation. Frankly, that's unacceptable to provide new desirable items with such a convoluted way to get them, and to add a crazy long grind at every single step of the crafting process.
That's really sad, because if there wasn't this, this module would actually be not so bad, but sadly, all of our pleas about the crazy amount of grind the designers added in the last module seem to have fallen on deaf ears, as this is a new milestone on the insanity ladder.
The good:
Surprisingly enough, Assault on Svardborg fits very well in that category. The new instance offers decent rewards, at least for this mod, even if long-term replayability is far from guaranteed due to the fact that the RP dropping in this instance is somehow designed to be used during this mod only, on the new weapons. The instance design itself is quite good and offers some new challenges, even if it could be improved. Most of the mechanics, sadly, can be ignored, due to the fact that the damage the said mechanics do can be dodged, resisted or mitigated. IMO, damage from mechanics such as call of winter or the AoE circle we carry around our characters should be unresistible and go through all immunities so that they can't be ignored. Damage from the said mechanics should also mean a one shot if they're ignored, because it's supposed to be a raid, right?
Getting a weapon to epic level with this instance is also very easy, and that's really a nice change.
Then, let's talk about the new items: The Valhalla set and the new weapon set. The progression is happening at an appropriate time, and the items themselves (not how they are obtained, I'll get into that later) aren't game breaking but still provide incentives to get them.
However, on that matter, I'd like to underline the fact that there is very little incentive for support characters such as tanks and clerics to obtain these new weapons. First, because of how strong lifesteal is and anointed army, clerics haven't been healing since mod 8 and stronghold boons, so weapon damage is useless, then most tank players don't really care about their damage, so they're not really interested in more weapon damage either.
So here is the issue: a lot of players want these sets for their dps characters, but support character players don't care at all about the new sets, which dramatically increases the current imbalances in the distribution of players willing to acquire the new items (ie, no tanks or clerics). So, somehow, making weapon damage relevant for support classes would be a nice idea, as the other solution, which is making set bonuses desirable for every characters of every class, is rarely a good idea. I have no idea for tanks, but bringing back healing for clerics would be a fine idea.
The daily quests are also "good". I'm not saying I like the amount of solo content this game has, because I don't, but it is what it is, and we've seen far worse. It doesn't take too long to do all three daily quests, so at least I can tolerate them.
The bad.
The overall layout of the new map is really bad. First, the zone is quite difficult to navigate in (no pun intended) as most of the landscape is very boring and lacking distinctive elements to help us find our way there. A good zone needs big landmarks so that we don't have to use the map and map markers all the time, as this makes the daily grind a bit tedious when we don't know where we should be going.
The new map. Let's face it, it's really ugly. It's probably the ugliest zone there is currently in Neverwinter. I don't play this game for its shiny graphics, because there is no such thing, but there are minimal standards no 2016 games should go below. The skybox is downright awful, and the water shader looks like some stolen asset from a 1998 game, chosen for its remarkable ugliness. somehow, we're expected to stare at this horror for hours (fishing).
"Heroic" encounters. First, this is heroic in name only, so that's extremely tedious and boring to play. Then, can we finally have a break from this kind of content? Because you don't want to make this challenging, you're providing pathetic rewards, which is frustrating for us, players, and gets you, Cryptic designers, a lot of probably well deserved flak. I mean, WTF am I supposed to do with a rank 5 enchantment? Is that worth 5 minutes of game time? The point is, I get better rewards killing random monsters, so there's really something wrong with that kind of content. If you don't want to provide appropriate rewards, then fine, don't do it, but stop making that kind of content altogether, and make some more skirmishes and dungeons instead.
Fishing, in its current iteration. I mean, I'm fine with fishing. Some people like it, but the fact that fishing gives far more RP than playing endgame content feels really wrong, and the fact that raid rewards are locked behind fishing is extremely frustrating. You've got to realize that this is an action game you're developing, not a freaking facebook app people are going to play from work, so at the very least, make it either entirely optional or provide a solid AFK fishing tool, such as a new profession.
The ugly.
The weapons restoration process. Ugly is clearly an understatement. I wish I'd say I would smack the person who came up with such a messed up, overly complicated design, but that wouldn't be a good enough punishment. Instead, I just wish he was forced to grind his new weapon set manually, by himself, without using zen or any other cheating tool.
Asking to grind for additional voninblood in such large quantities is sadistic at best. Grinding for 40 more lanolin is a ticket for hours of misery. But grinding for the frigging dragon turtle moults that NEVER drop from any of the heroic encounters, big or small, clearly falls in the infuriating category. If there was one good reason to uninstall the game, it would be that one. It's not even difficult, it's just awful design, extremely long for absolutely no valid reason except artificially extending the grind to the point many are completely burnt out on the new content already.
I have never gotten any dragon turtle moult from heroic encounters, and I know many players in that situation. Frankly, that's unacceptable to provide new desirable items with such a convoluted way to get them, and to add a crazy long grind at every single step of the crafting process.
That's really sad, because if there wasn't this, this module would actually be not so bad, but sadly, all of our pleas about the crazy amount of grind the designers added in the last module seem to have fallen on deaf ears, as this is a new milestone on the insanity ladder.
4
Comments
But hoo boy do I ever agree with you about navigation. It is so easy to go winging off and overshoot where you were trying to get to (and I am still in an 80%-speed boat so every added bit of travel time hurts even more). I can't see a lot of ice floes until I'm right next to them, or not in sufficient detail to use them as landmarks, and while this might be due to keeping some of my settings low, I need them like that to play. The minimap doesn't show most features at all, so I am just traversing a black expanse much of the time, constantly opening the main map to try to figure out if I'm close to where I need to be yet.
The other huge problem with navigation is a complete lack of logic as to where you can sail between two obstacles and where you'll get hung up and have to painstakingly back out or turn around and find a different route. It has nothing to do with the width of your outriggers. The boat turns awkwardly and it's easy to miss your mark when trying to hit a small object like climbing into a ship. Last night, I got most of the way through a channel that looked ok, got wedged, and actually couldn't get back out through the passage I came in even after turning 180 degrees. I finally resorted to defeating myself to escape. Sometimes I'll just make a full L to go around all the small ice floes rather than try to go through them diagonally because I suspect it'll be faster than risking getting stuck. And it sucks.
And then you have to find places on the ice floes where you're actually permitted to land and don't just flail up against an edge that's a little bit too high. Sometimes you can find the exact right pixel to fling yourself onto to jump a bit, but mostly you have to sail around until you find the "ramp". A lot of this design with being allowed to disembark over there but oh no, most certainly not right here, that's impossible and entirely a silly idea, what were you thinking pulling up here just seems like it's meant to waste our time and make things more annoying than they had to be.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I also like the look of the new zone (and the previous 3 excepting the blizzard effect) but also agree with Becky's observations about navigation and disembarking boats. One tip I have found helps in navigating the big expanses is to hit autorun (T) and the activate the full map, switching back as needed for course corrections.
The transitions between boat and normal are bad though. Sometimes I bump land and the game tries to shift me to foot, other times I slide all the way up the beach. Worse is climbing up into a longship and still being in the boat, perched on the upper deck. It is hilarious l, however, to jump off a cliff, dodge the water, run for a bit before the boat suddenly surfaces around my character.
Outside of SoMI's intro content and the Runestead instance, I've found that there is never any reason to fight a giant solo. They can all be avoided, as their aggro radius is dinky and they tend to be facing away from everything important....
I pick and choose fights based on the relative difficulty of mob packs, trying to select anything with a high proportion of minions for all the genocide-type quests. I think all the alarm spell sets can be completed without fighting (mind any patrols). I know the lodestones can be completed while fighting nothing but one group of Ice Hunters. There's a farther-away boat where you might not have to fight anything as well, but I've not checked all the way over that way.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
The trolls and Ice Hunter packs are full of ranged mobs and thus not practical to dodge. The giants dangerous attacks are telegraphed and easy to avoid. Brand if the Sun is almost as good as Disheartening Strike, my favorite at will in the game.Tag the giant with that and the use encounters while its stuck doing its ponderous animations.
*Currently DO Righteous
I haven't run into many places in SoMI where I have to get close enough to mobs that the ranged attackers aggro unless I meant to kill them anyway. Happens in Cold Run just because the orcs at the camps respawn with a quickness. The ranged attackers are soft and will usually die from one tag with BotS (yes, it is v.nice).
I want loadouts for easy switching between AoE and single target... this can't happen fast enough. Cold Run giants, ease is about equal between CW and DC if I set up for single-target first, but if the DC gets hit with a prone and boulder because I blew a dodge, she can probably ride it out and recover. The CW will pop her soulforged for sure.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Sounds like the kind of problem meant to be mitigated by @weaver936 's SKT channel... if he can get his own problems worked out.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
The only workarround i see for players that dont get invited is to build their own groups.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I'm having some issues with harrassment leading to chat bans... so... I've been really selective in how we recruit now.. but we are doing fine.
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
FOUNDER and OWNER of the SKT3K Channel: SKT Only Content 3k+. http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1228278/skt-content-for-the-non-elite-video-links-provided
I can get a bottle in 10 minutes and get 1 scintillating ruby of blablabla for 250k rp + bloody ruby, or even 2 moults/2 lanolins.
I fish everyday because I can get more ad and rewards from maps than from anywhere else.
I'm not complaining about fishing rewards, I think they are awesome, but I just think dungeons should have the same or better rewards than treasure maps. Why didn't they put these 250k rp stones in SVA? Why didn't they put moults and lanolins in SVA and FBI?
Man, it kills me when I open an ostorian chest and I get an ancient sword of my HAMSTER for 6.6k ad in salvage. Really? 20-30 minutes for 6k ad? Even worse, if you get a single blue ostorian relic from a map (and you almost always do) you get 200 voninblood...from a single treasure map. And what happens when you kill Drufi? You get 300 voninblood.
Now we have 3 categories in neverwinter: PVE, PVP and PVF (player vs. fish), and PVF is what rewards you the most even though its the most boring between the other 2 categories.
I'm a new player to be honest, I'm not here for even one year, but in the little time I've been playing I realized some wrong things in neverwinter:
- Rewards are totally useless besides new gear from FBI and legendary rings from SVA.
- Classes keep getting boosts in a month just to get a nerf 30 days later.
- For cryptic, running a dungeon 567,987 times to get a single item is the idea of fun and challenge
The new map, yes, is totally ugly with terrible graphic elements.
Hælja, Swordmaster Conqueror Guardian Fighter of Thieves World