ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
If they were so worried about burnout, then why did they make SKT so punishing? You HAVE to grind out the HEs to get the currency to progress in the campaign. No other campaign does that. Even IWD is merciful.
0
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
You HAVE to grind out the HEs to get the currency to progress in the campaign. No other campaign does that.
You do? I didn't. I didn't get the final boons either, but I did unlock basically everything else on my DC. I think I'm missing a couple of the shop discount ones. Figure if I'd pursued it, maps would have covered the v-blod.
I did snipe this quote but it is not out of context. With how MSVA is set up, you will have to buy keys to get the marks before a new mod comes out.
Now we have both the RNG of getting the items we want plus the AD cost to have the opportunity to do so. Dungeons are now lockboxes...
Yes, I found that particular sentence interesting, not 100% sure how to take it. Sometimes I wish the powers to be here would be more straight forward and less cryptic
We believe this was bad for the game, and by that I mean the gameplay, regardless of whether you are a free player or you buy keys regularly. Sitting on a cache of keys—whether they were purchased or farmed—and running the same dungeon over and over very easily leads to burnout.
I was interested in this paragraph and wondered whether by game play Asterdahl was referring to the need for ppl to rush through dungeons so they could get 30 CNs done in a day (made up number) and the effect that has on party formation requests (i.e. 3.5K + requests or now 4K +) and therefore ppl being excluded because of Ilevel or sometimes class . . . . . . ???
0
ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
You HAVE to grind out the HEs to get the currency to progress in the campaign. No other campaign does that.
You do? I didn't. I didn't get the final boons either, but I did unlock basically everything else on my DC. I think I'm missing a couple of the shop discount ones. Figure if I'd pursued it, maps would have covered the v-blod.
> @beckylunatic said: > You HAVE to grind out the HEs to get the currency to progress in the campaign. No other campaign does that. > > You do? I didn't. I didn't get the final boons either, but I did unlock basically everything else on my DC. I think I'm missing a couple of the shop discount ones. Figure if I'd pursued it, maps would have covered the v-blod.
In all honesty I hated SKT+Somi and I was finding myself looking for excuses not to play in those maps. I even started revisiting years old alts just to keep my limited game time occupied outside the current module. And with all that being said I managed to get the first 4 boons of the campaign on my main. Without really pushing myself, earning maybe 2000-3000 blood per day tops from digging up relics and finishing few daily quests. The boons at least can be done fairly easily without subjecting yourself to insane grind.
But when I look at the rep and blood requirement for the final boons.. I see another campaign joining the Tyranny of Dragons
2
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
You HAVE to grind out the HEs to get the currency to progress in the campaign. No other campaign does that.
You do? I didn't. I didn't get the final boons either, but I did unlock basically everything else on my DC. I think I'm missing a couple of the shop discount ones. Figure if I'd pursued it, maps would have covered the v-blod.
You don't get enough from the dailies.....
Not the same as having to do HEs. There were other ways of farming. (Whether you like any of them is irrelevant, only that avenues besides HEs were created.)
Monetizing keys has got to be the worst way for you to increase income. I've already spent hundreds of dollars in this game and there is no chance at all that I will constantly buy keys just to run dungeons.
It's completely fine that you won't be constantly buying keys to run dungeons. As you can imagine based on the volume of feedback, the team spent a lot of time discussing how to approach the actual overall economic payout of a chest vs. the cost of the key.
In the end, we opted for an approach that does not involve attempting to maintain an economy where it is economically profitable to purchase keys and run dungeons ad infinitum. In this world there's an opportunity cost to running a dungeon without a key that we actually don't want.
The place we see for keys is in progression and in hunting a specific bound item. If you want to buy extra keys to advance your character or for an extra chance at a specific item, by all means, please do. However, we're not aiming for there to be a pressure to continually buy keys.
You realize that if the loot was good enough to take, we wouldn't have been peeking, right?
Herein lies the complexity of the issue, technically we have done much to increase the value of any given chest, however, we are aware that the old peeking system allowed you to save your keys and thus, a return on investment could be achieved, albeit possibly only through dozens or even hundreds of dungeon runs.
We believe this was bad for the game, and by that I mean the gameplay, regardless of whether you are a free player or you buy keys regularly. Sitting on a cache of keys—whether they were purchased or farmed—and running the same dungeon over and over very easily leads to burnout.
I apologize that this system festered in this manner for so long. As a result, due to the changes, there are a number of sharp edges that we can now begin to sand down. We will continue to keep our eyes on the cost of obtaining campaign keys as well as drop rates of items that were based on the fact that one could peek, and some of those changes have already been made, as announced.
Additionally, we will continue to look for new and exciting reward opportunities moving forward. For example, things like unbound materials, which will allow for periods of time when a new dungeon is released where using keys with regularity will be a profitable venture while the number of adventurers running that dungeon is much smaller than the market for those items.
I'd be interested to know if there's been a proper analysis of the following:
the amount of dungeons run by players once they are restricted to the number of times they can open chests
While I cannot provide any analysis for you at this time, I would like to touch on this subject. I'd like to unpack it into two topics. First, the idea that players are now limited to running the number of dungeons their daily key allotment provides for. (With the assumption that running without a key is not worthwhile.) This is something we are aware of, and there are both good and bad components to this. On the one hand, we like that the system encourages running a variety of dungeons (based on the different keys) and we actually do want to leave everyone time to do other activities without feeling a huge opportunity cost.
The second topic is that we know there are a lot of you that love running dungeons and would like to run dungeons all day. We are aware that we are now in a situation where after running your daily keys, it feels like dungeons may just not be worth it. Although I can't promise any immediate changes on this front, it's somewhere we're watching carefully and we'll be attempting to strike a happy balance as we move forward.
No keys = less dungeon runs = less playtime = less players = less profit for the company
Right? I cant believe that your aim is that the players should run less dungeons.
The market has already crashed. Even if you get an artifact or whatever, you still LOOSE because the key cost is higher. You made a terrible mistake here.
Ive bought and used about 30-40 zen keys since this change (about 1.2m AD spent) and if you dont win like Shard of Orcus' Wand, you would have lost lots of AD. The value on this specific item dropped 50% since the key change. Getting a Valindra now feels like "meh" because its only worth 80k and the keys you spent to get it, well its way more than that.
The average player would go bankrupt playing the game like this. And to be clear: If I dont have the keys, Im not running the content. How can this be your business model? What am i missing?
You seem to believe there is other things to do in the game that is fun? I can burst that bubble right now. There isn't. PvP could be fun, but its not because of the non-existing match making that matches BiS against green players.
The biggest issue is that a return on your investment meant exactly that. Most players it seemed simply didnt want to be gouged to spend real money (at least, not ENDLESSLY spend money). That imo meant that there was items of value (refinement mostly; though I like the companion addition as well). But instead you've saturated the market with gear that now no longer has any "wow" factor. It used to be a cause for celebration within our alliance when someone got something "good" from a dungeon. Now it's just annoying the amount of links that are created seemingly every minute. The excitement of the "hunt" for gear is basically over imo; especially if you are looking for something specific.
If I am just randomly equipping anything thats better than what I currently have (kinda like the road from 1-60), then this change would be palatable. But once you are "refining" your character, looking for that certain piece, it used to be time to farm a certain dungeon. The frustration of never getting that item to drop, followed by the elation of finally getting it is the rollercoaster of most mmos. The rarity of certain things was likely too low in this game, but now farming for that certain item just isnt feasible without a potentially large rl cash investment. And for most items it's basically pointless to farm now since the thing you are searching for is getting cheaper by the minute. Why even bother running a dungeon?
Even if it was a slight loss (say if a key costs 25k and I typically "earned" 20k) I would have considered that a win; hoping for that big drop that would make up the slow loss and a profit on top. But instead this change has devalued almost everything, both in a gamers excitement over getting it, and in the ah.
"n the end, we opted for an approach that does not involve attempting to maintain an economy where it is economically profitable to purchase keys and run dungeons ad infinitum. In this world there's an opportunity cost to running a dungeon without a key that we actually don't want." - Asterdahl
I agree. There is no ROI..keys should be for progression and hunting rare items. Not a method of unlimited AD income due to ROI being greater than cost of key.
Monetizing keys has got to be the worst way for you to increase income. I've already spent hundreds of dollars in this game and there is no chance at all that I will constantly buy keys just to run dungeons.
It's completely fine that you won't be constantly buying keys to run dungeons. As you can imagine based on the volume of feedback, the team spent a lot of time discussing how to approach the actual overall economic payout of a chest vs. the cost of the key.
In the end, we opted for an approach that does not involve attempting to maintain an economy where it is economically profitable to purchase keys and run dungeons ad infinitum. In this world there's an opportunity cost to running a dungeon without a key that we actually don't want.
The place we see for keys is in progression and in hunting a specific bound item. If you want to buy extra keys to advance your character or for an extra chance at a specific item, by all means, please do. However, we're not aiming for there to be a pressure to continually buy keys.
You realize that if the loot was good enough to take, we wouldn't have been peeking, right?
Herein lies the complexity of the issue, technically we have done much to increase the value of any given chest, however, we are aware that the old peeking system allowed you to save your keys and thus, a return on investment could be achieved, albeit possibly only through dozens or even hundreds of dungeon runs.
We believe this was bad for the game, and by that I mean the gameplay, regardless of whether you are a free player or you buy keys regularly. Sitting on a cache of keys—whether they were purchased or farmed—and running the same dungeon over and over very easily leads to burnout.
I apologize that this system festered in this manner for so long. As a result, due to the changes, there are a number of sharp edges that we can now begin to sand down. We will continue to keep our eyes on the cost of obtaining campaign keys as well as drop rates of items that were based on the fact that one could peek, and some of those changes have already been made, as announced.
Additionally, we will continue to look for new and exciting reward opportunities moving forward. For example, things like unbound materials, which will allow for periods of time when a new dungeon is released where using keys with regularity will be a profitable venture while the number of adventurers running that dungeon is much smaller than the market for those items.
I'd be interested to know if there's been a proper analysis of the following:
the amount of dungeons run by players once they are restricted to the number of times they can open chests
While I cannot provide any analysis for you at this time, I would like to touch on this subject. I'd like to unpack it into two topics. First, the idea that players are now limited to running the number of dungeons their daily key allotment provides for. (With the assumption that running without a key is not worthwhile.) This is something we are aware of, and there are both good and bad components to this. On the one hand, we like that the system encourages running a variety of dungeons (based on the different keys) and we actually do want to leave everyone time to do other activities without feeling a huge opportunity cost.
The second topic is that we know there are a lot of you that love running dungeons and would like to run dungeons all day. We are aware that we are now in a situation where after running your daily keys, it feels like dungeons may just not be worth it. Although I can't promise any immediate changes on this front, it's somewhere we're watching carefully and we'll be attempting to strike a happy balance as we move forward.
No keys = less dungeon runs = less playtime = less players = less profit for the company
Right? I cant believe that your aim is that the players should run less dungeons.
The market has already crashed. Even if you get an artifact or whatever, you still LOOSE because the key cost is higher. You made a terrible mistake here.
Ive bought and used about 30-40 zen keys since this change (about 1.2m AD spent) and if you dont win like Shard of Orcus' Wand, you would have lost lots of AD. The value on this specific item dropped 50% since the key change. Getting a Valindra now feels like "meh" because its only worth 80k and the keys you spent to get it, well its way more than that.
The average player would go bankrupt playing the game like this. And to be clear: If I dont have the keys, Im not running the content. How can this be your business model? What am i missing?
You seem to believe there is other things to do in the game that is fun? I can burst that bubble right now. There isn't. PvP could be fun, but its not because of the non-existing match making that matches BiS against green players.
Did you even read what he wrote???? Here..try again.
"the second topic is that we know there are a lot of you that love running dungeons and would like to run dungeons all day. We are aware that we are now in a situation where after running your daily keys, it feels like dungeons may just not be worth it. Although I can't promise any immediate changes on this front, it's somewhere we're watching carefully and we'll be attempting to strike a happy balance as we move forward"
I've done a bunch of CN runs since the update and I've just run out of greater demonic keys. It appears now if I want to run a few, I now have a daily fee of (currently) 75k AD for 5 keys (xbox).
As someone who's played mmo's for a couple of decades, I've never experienced one that charged me a fee for running a dungeon.
The rewards from the chests that I've opened so far have been very slightly better than previous ones. I've had a couple of (unhelpful) +4 rings and a couple of extra bits of random salvage but combined they do not total the cost of buying 5 more keys.
In all honesty this will probably be the reason I stop playing this game.
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
0
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
So... they say they *don't* want you to feel obligated to buy keys. The dungeon is meant to feel reasonable to run without accessing the 2nd chest, and if it still doesn't, then they need to keep adjusting.
Herein lies the complexity of the issue, technically we have done much to increase the value of any given chest, however, we are aware that the old peeking system allowed you to save your keys and thus, a return on investment could be achieved, albeit possibly only through dozens or even hundreds of dungeon runs.
We believe this was bad for the game, and by that I mean the gameplay, regardless of whether you are a free player or you buy keys regularly. Sitting on a cache of keys—whether they were purchased or farmed—and running the same dungeon over and over very easily leads to burnout.
here's the thing, @asterdahl (and first of all, kudos on actually engaging). The system as it stands still leads to burnout. while i am not sick of running the dungeons, right about now i *am* sick to death of going through the dread Spire to do the same 5 quests to wait a day to run a dungeon to kill Valindra to leave with the 4-6k AD in salvage that's so absolutely prevalent. And being sick to death of that vicious circle is killing whatever sense of reward* I get out of running the dungeons. if i feel this process is tedious and unrewarding on tier 1s where I can simply take my chances with my VIP key, you can guess why i'm not looking forward to the SVA key grind. Also, being brutally honest here, the endgame content is thoroughly designed to be a time consuming sink in a somewhat obvious attempt to disguise just how barren the endgame is. In other words, if it was designed with fun in mind, well, you failed, as it doesn't hold up the interest past a couple of days. And it certainly doesn't hold a candle to the wealth of content seen on the path to leveling up.
I understand why you don't want the keys to be consumed only when the players want. But that situation arose from a system developed by you. The loot system is so abysmal (and yes, it has improved quite a bit, at least for tier 1 2k to 3k players, but it's still not at all smoothed out) that I prefer not to take my chances on spending a resource that is actually shared with my boons and the hungry mimic in my guild just to make a key that odds tell me will be worthless. The zen/real cash involved in buying legendary dragon keys is also not worth it. I'll never, *ever*, pay for a virtual raffle ticket. I will pay for a good direct transaction, like a money only version of an epic mount that gives a boost to refinement or tokens that allow me to actually choose what ay wills and feats my artifact weapons enhance. I will even pay to buy zen to buy that owlbear cub on the market. But, again, I will not pay for a lottery ticket, and the more you base your business model around that, the less willing i will be to pay and to play.
As for saying that the place you see keys is in progression, it oes create a problem if keys are the only way to progress. Players should be able to progress faster if the pay/spend zen, but in the recent campaign at least, what you offer is a paywall. and it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
So, like I said elsewhere, if you are going to impose this change, rushed and unfair though it was to all of us console players, you'll need to consider a few things:
-First is the fact that people simply don't want to run the new content, especially with this key system. Sure, fishing is cute and the map is not half bad to look at, but that only takes you so far when the hardest, top of the line content is not seen as a rewarding adventure but as a monumental chore. i for one have my eyes set on whatever gear you'll be bringing in mod 11 (and keeping fingers crossed that the positive feedback does materialize into a good module), and not even the fact that it won't be Best in Slot will dissuade me from giving the whole of icewind dale a pass. None of that rechargeable armour for me, none of the inane repetition and submission to rng to farm out legendary marks for a set of weapons. It's just terrible design and creafting the best weapon to usability should not rely on RNG. - The content for those in 2 to 3k still going through the regular epics does offer more return, so those in that range are somewhat benefitted. However, all of those would gain from a streamlining of the key creation process. I don't make more than enough for one or two skirmishes and/or demogorgon a day, but at least I get the crafting material make keys for that content out of running that content. The system is already in place, so make it universal. And make it a single unified currency; another unintended consequence of this baffling decision was splitting the dungeon delving population. And waiting for an hour (!) as a dps to run a dungeon to kill a boss to leave with the 4-6k AD in salvage that is the common reward after running the same 5 quests on the same tire old map to wait a day to run a dungeon... - Revisit the already existing endgame content. Make it less boring than it is right now. Make it rewarding and worth revisiting. - Items need to be unbound. Getting an epic item that I don't need turns it into junk, even if it's the rarest item to ever grave the face of Faerun. And we don't want junk. - New artifacts should be introduced to balance the fact that the older "best in slots" are now slightly more commonplace.
I believe this would adresss some of the most grievous concerns of the playerbase while keeping the gatekeeping you clearly intend on endless runs intact. Cryptic clearly mishandled both this transition and its communication by rushing these changes into going live with only a week of testing and by forcing console players to put up with a terrible rng system on top of a very poor module. Both the company and the community manager ( looking at you, @nitocris83 ) also did a dreadful job at communicating the changes and assuaging the fears of the community; these changes are neither transparent nor coherent (i've seen the weirdest drops from the weirdest places, and whether or not those drops are bound is a total roll of the dice) and your communication was not straightforward or honest. Worse, it was actually quite derisive in places. Understand that goodwill also subject to burnout.
*Edit: just to clarify, by sense of reward does not necessarily mean return of investment. If all I wanted was profit, I'd make an army of alts to run Cloak dagger in 5 minutes for the exact same reward as a eLoL
So... they say they *don't* want you to feel obligated to buy keys. The dungeon is meant to feel reasonable to run without accessing the 2nd chest, and if it still doesn't, then they need to keep adjusting.
I'd say that for tier 1s it actually is. I stopped caring completely about the second key and have gotten an unbound Heavy Inferno Nightmare mount from the regular VIP chest. Also found a Medium adventurer's horse which was bound (don't have much use for that one, but don't look a gift horse in the mount and all that) and a +5 rising power during this week and a half. I'd say the bound nature of some of the loot is the biggest bugbear at that tier, along with the fact that RNG is RNG and my good fortune is not universal in any way, shape or form. And here it must be added that the way they rushed the changes through preview an then shafted the console community with very little communication or clarification on how the loot system works was abysmal. More than a few people still think that only the "premium" chest offers extra drops, and this is the fault of Cryptic's poor communication.
The mileage of people running CN and above may vary considerably, though.
Herein lies the complexity of the issue, technically we have done much to increase the value of any given chest, however, we are aware that the old peeking system allowed you to save your keys and thus, a return on investment could be achieved, albeit possibly only through dozens or even hundreds of dungeon runs.
We believe this was bad for the game, and by that I mean the gameplay, regardless of whether you are a free player or you buy keys regularly. Sitting on a cache of keys—whether they were purchased or farmed—and running the same dungeon over and over very easily leads to burnout.
here's the thing, @asterdahl (and first of all, kudos on actually engaging). The system as it stands still leads to burnout. while i am not sick of running the dungeons, right about now i *am* sick to death of going through the dread Spire to do the same 5 quests to wait a day to run a dungeon to kill Valindra to leave with the 4-6k AD in salvage that's so absolutely prevalent. And being sick to death of that vicious circle is killing whatever sense of reward* I get out of running the dungeons. if i feel this process is tedious and unrewarding on tier 1s where I can simply take my chances with my VIP key, you can guess why i'm not looking forward to the SVA key grind. Also, being brutally honest here, the endgame content is thoroughly designed to be a time consuming sink in a somewhat obvious attempt to disguise just how barren the endgame is. In other words, if it was designed with fun in mind, well, you failed, as it doesn't hold up the interest past a couple of days. And it certainly doesn't hold a candle to the wealth of content seen on the path to leveling up.
Erm ... once you've finished the dread ring campaign you only need to run a lair once a day, convert your Thayan Cypher into scrips and make a key. Eventually you get to the point where you can just run the lair and make the key at the same time. You should never have to do the quests at that point.
Erm ... once you've finished the dread ring campaign you only need to run a lair once a day, convert your Thayan Cypher into scrips and make a key. Eventually you get to the point where you can just run the lair and make the key at the same time. You should never have to do the quests at that point.
"Eventually" being the operative word here. Consider the fact that (and I'm going to go ahead and take an educated guess that you're a long time player by your post count alone) many in the PS4 community haven't finished the campaigns and are therefore spreading their resources thin over the boons they still lack, stronghold requirements and key crafting. Multiply the same problem for the sharandar and Tyranny campaign (which could be argued to be harder to farm for when it comes to key crafting: Sharandar's particularly egregious) and it becomes apparent that the crafting of the keys themselves has an elevated cost both in time and resources. Compound all that with the fact that new players are put at a clear disadvantage. Whereas you (and even me) have benefitted from being able to only walk around with one key and focus on boon and guild advancement up until the key change, only spending it if the chest justified its use, the new players won't have that luxury and will face an even bigger wall of grind.
Which is why to me an unified currency that allows the keys to be crafted from a currency that drops from the dungeons is a good compromise solution. Let's even say it caps at more or less the required value for one key and gives severe diminishing returns after you run three tier 1 epics, much like what happens with AD already. You can theoetically run as many dungeons as you want, but after the third run the drop rate of this resource drops by 90%, making it effectively unviable to grind. But in the meantime, you'd have one guaranteed (but locked behind a timewall) daily "legendary" obtained from running those dungeons.
"Eventually" being the operative word here. Consider the fact that (and I'm going to go ahead and take an educated guess that you're a long time player by your post count alone) many in the PS4 community haven't finished the campaigns and are therefore spreading their resources thin over the boons they still lack, stronghold requirements and key crafting. Multiply the same problem for the sharandar and Tyranny campaign (which could be argued to be harder to farm for when it comes to key crafting: Sharandar's particularly egregious) and it becomes apparent that the crafting of the keys themselves has an elevated cost both in time and resources. Compound all that with the fact that new players are put at a clear disadvantage. Whereas you (and even me) have benefitted from being able to only walk around with one key and focus on boon and guild advancement up until the key change, only spending it if the chest justified its use, the new players won't have that luxury and will face an even bigger wall of grind.
Which is why to me an unified currency that allows the keys to be crafted from a currency that drops from the dungeons is a good compromise solution. Let's even say it caps at more or less the required value for one key and gives severe diminishing returns after you run three tier 1 epics, much like what happens with AD already. You can theoetically run as many dungeons as you want, but after the third run the drop rate of this resource drops by 90%, making it effectively unviable to grind. But in the meantime, you'd have one guaranteed (but locked behind a timewall) daily "legendary" obtained from running those dungeons.
DR takes two weeks to complete. You don't even need to do any of the quests after you've finished the intro. Then you only need to do the lair and HEs. After that it's the best return on time spent for any of the campaigns bar none.
And again, people act as if it matters that you could walk around with one key. I didn't make any of the campaign keys aside from CN because they were a waste of time before the key change. Now VT is the only other one worth making. Whoopdeedoo.
Compared to the grind right after mod 6 with 100k AD gmops and no leadership AD the situation in the game is all sunshine, rainbows and unicorns.
"Herein lies the complexity of the issue, technically we have done much to increase the value of any given chest, however, we are aware that the old peeking system allowed you to save your keys and thus, a return on investment could be achieved, albeit possibly only through dozens or even hundreds of dungeon runs.
We believe this was bad for the game, and by that I mean the gameplay, regardless of whether you are a free player or you buy keys regularly. Sitting on a cache of keys—whether they were purchased or farmed—and running the same dungeon over and over very easily leads to burnout."
Asterdahl...Who are you YOU to say what leads to burnout and what doesn't. I don't care if you're an employee and one of the devs...I'm the customer...I DECIDE what burns me out.
And truthfully - what's burning me out is having to run dailies/weeklies to keep up campaign currencies so I can constantly produce keys for dungeons so that in case I decide I want to go on a run I don't have to worry about running out and can make "the rounds" as I used to before the change. Problem is - ever since this change dropped - its been harder to find a queue for a lot of dungeons that used to take mere seconds. Even Kessels takes a bit to queue randomly. Makes sense since its key so tied to IceWind and those dailies are PAINSTAKINGLY TIME CONSUMING - like all new content (SKT)!!! At least the "old" content like Sharandar or Dread - has dailies you can fire off quicker.
What's worse is that we still have to wait to produce keys. In the cases of TOD - POM - Demo/MDemo skirmishes - where Faerzness is easy to get (even get them through doing those) and Im constantly maxed at 18000 - Im still yoked to 2 keys a day. And given how short these are - you can burn through a stock of 10-15 keys made through the week easily on Sat or Sunday.
So what Im burnt out on is having to grind dailies I thought I was done with to produce a stock of keys so that I can run dungeons continuously (because that's what I WANT to do) and that you're still making us wait before we get the key.
This has nothing to do with concern for player burnout and everything with forcing players to spend Zen on Legendary Keys...which given what I've seen of the supposed "improved" drop rates...are still GLORIFIED LOTTERY TICKETS!!!!!
Do something with your life other than getting on NWO and running the same dungeons every day and the keys start to build up.
1
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
You do not need to open the second chest. This is an outrageous concept, I know, but... just don't. See if you feel like your time is being rewarded without it.
A couple of weeks later and I've still not had anything from a chest that was worth a key - and yes I bought some for zen.
I'm now bearing in mind that mod 11 introduces a nerf on underdark rings (no proc via companion) which will render all underdark content obsolete (apart from edemo for twisted ichor). As such there's no point in running CN and I've actually started pugging ETOS and Shores again. These dungeons are so simple now that my pally can fight the bosses just holding down one at-will attack...
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Fast cash is always the most important thing in the universe.
It does not matter how many years you are grinding something. At the end of the day, your hard work means nothing. It is an illusion.
I guess that is the most important thing they are trying to show us. When talking about online games, fun is hidden behind massive dice roles.
And just to add, i do not understand the main point of what the dev was trying to say.
We do not want people to run dungeons ? We want people to run dungeons only if they grind for keys ?
We want to make people focus on grinding the campaigns much more ? Since we are low on the material to offer to level 70s ? That is not true...so i do not see why that would be..
We want only people with massive wallets, to be able to get legendary weapons, since they deserve it ..for paying a lot of money, while other people do not ?
I do not get , what the reply should mean.. What exactly means " burning out on dungeons "... ? This game is called : " Dungeons and Dragons . " Unless i missed the change of the title somewhere in there..?
Monetizing keys has got to be the worst way for you to increase income. I've already spent hundreds of dollars in this game and there is no chance at all that I will constantly buy keys just to run dungeons.
It's completely fine that you won't be constantly buying keys to run dungeons. As you can imagine based on the volume of feedback, the team spent a lot of time discussing how to approach the actual overall economic payout of a chest vs. the cost of the key.
In the end, we opted for an approach that does not involve attempting to maintain an economy where it is economically profitable to purchase keys and run dungeons ad infinitum. In this world there's an opportunity cost to running a dungeon without a key that we actually don't want.
The place we see for keys is in progression and in hunting a specific bound item. If you want to buy extra keys to advance your character or for an extra chance at a specific item, by all means, please do. However, we're not aiming for there to be a pressure to continually buy keys.
You realize that if the loot was good enough to take, we wouldn't have been peeking, right?
Herein lies the complexity of the issue, technically we have done much to increase the value of any given chest, however, we are aware that the old peeking system allowed you to save your keys and thus, a return on investment could be achieved, albeit possibly only through dozens or even hundreds of dungeon runs.
We believe this was bad for the game, and by that I mean the gameplay, regardless of whether you are a free player or you buy keys regularly. Sitting on a cache of keys—whether they were purchased or farmed—and running the same dungeon over and over very easily leads to burnout.
I apologize that this system festered in this manner for so long. As a result, due to the changes, there are a number of sharp edges that we can now begin to sand down. We will continue to keep our eyes on the cost of obtaining campaign keys as well as drop rates of items that were based on the fact that one could peek, and some of those changes have already been made, as announced.
Additionally, we will continue to look for new and exciting reward opportunities moving forward. For example, things like unbound materials, which will allow for periods of time when a new dungeon is released where using keys with regularity will be a profitable venture while the number of adventurers running that dungeon is much smaller than the market for those items.
I'd be interested to know if there's been a proper analysis of the following:
the amount of dungeons run by players once they are restricted to the number of times they can open chests
While I cannot provide any analysis for you at this time, I would like to touch on this subject. I'd like to unpack it into two topics. First, the idea that players are now limited to running the number of dungeons their daily key allotment provides for. (With the assumption that running without a key is not worthwhile.) This is something we are aware of, and there are both good and bad components to this. On the one hand, we like that the system encourages running a variety of dungeons (based on the different keys) and we actually do want to leave everyone time to do other activities without feeling a huge opportunity cost.
The second topic is that we know there are a lot of you that love running dungeons and would like to run dungeons all day. We are aware that we are now in a situation where after running your daily keys, it feels like dungeons may just not be worth it. Although I can't promise any immediate changes on this front, it's somewhere we're watching carefully and we'll be attempting to strike a happy balance as we move forward.
I understand that in order for the drop-rates to be significantly improved keys obviously need to be regulated and peeking shut off. And I don´t understand what´s not to like about this....running fewer dungeons with a vastly better drop-rate is preferable to speed-running dungeons and peeking into the chest with a ludicrously low drop-chance until burn-out. It´s actually beneficial to more casual players. Or players who´d rather fool around a little -> if you´re low on keys you might feel more inclined now to mix things up a little....do a 2-toon or solo-dungeon...or a five-toon half-naked dungeon etc. Might take as long as bulldozering the place 10 times before....but more fun and not even worse drop-rates. So...yay to that.
What´s bad is only this: players should not be required to feel any necessity in revisiting ancient campaigns to craft the campaign keys. Even if the epic chest has a good loot-table and it is not strictly necessary...it´s still bad and will cause resentment...linking a fun activity directly to a boring and pointless activity. Most dungeons might be ancient and outdone by powercreep but I guess most players still consider them to be the fun part...definitely more fun than dailies in ancient campaigns. It should be an option for the very eager to craft keys...but there should be a daily allotment.
Idea: one „key-bag“ per day/account that will on being opened grant 1 (or 2) random campaign keys (all minus the latest one). It will also prevent players running only dungeons with an easy-to-craft-key aside from those that have only one chest anyways. Also...while rare sellable items still can´t drop like candy without their value decreasing to a point where they´re junk (some dropping as bta with a certain %-chance is of course a good way to mitigate that a little) why not up the refinement rewards -considerably-? Refinement is still costly and prevents new players to catch up (or alts being equipped) within a reasonable time...
What would be absolutely horrifying however would be this: another mSVA in the future....where your progression depends on repeating the content countless times, keys are incredibly boring AND time-consuming to craft and bad luck/rng nullifies the effort again and again so that buying legendary keys (wasting ad or money on lottery tickets) is the only way if one doesn´t want to despair ….although completely opting out of the content is a very viable (the only) alternative (the one I chose). I hope it worked out so badly that you won´t do something like that again....ever. And if this isn´t your vision going forward you should do something about mSVA...it was horrible even before the key change but now....it sends a very negative message...every day this is going on as it is... There are so many possible awesome ideas for things to sell on the zen-shop...but trying to bully players into buying ludicrous amounts of keys (lottery tickets) like with FBI and far worse mSVA if they want to progress their gear....I really can´t figure out how that could possibly be a winning strategy...-.-
Comments
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
> You HAVE to grind out the HEs to get the currency to progress in the campaign. No other campaign does that.
>
> You do? I didn't. I didn't get the final boons either, but I did unlock basically everything else on my DC. I think I'm missing a couple of the shop discount ones. Figure if I'd pursued it, maps would have covered the v-blod.
In all honesty I hated SKT+Somi and I was finding myself looking for excuses not to play in those maps. I even started revisiting years old alts just to keep my limited game time occupied outside the current module. And with all that being said I managed to get the first 4 boons of the campaign on my main. Without really pushing myself, earning maybe 2000-3000 blood per day tops from digging up relics and finishing few daily quests. The boons at least can be done fairly easily without subjecting yourself to insane grind.
But when I look at the rep and blood requirement for the final boons.. I see another campaign joining the Tyranny of Dragons
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
No keys = less dungeon runs = less playtime = less players = less profit for the company
Right? I cant believe that your aim is that the players should run less dungeons.
The market has already crashed. Even if you get an artifact or whatever, you still LOOSE because the key cost is higher. You made a terrible mistake here.
Ive bought and used about 30-40 zen keys since this change (about 1.2m AD spent) and if you dont win like Shard of Orcus' Wand, you would have lost lots of AD. The value on this specific item dropped 50% since the key change. Getting a Valindra now feels like "meh" because its only worth 80k and the keys you spent to get it, well its way more than that.
The average player would go bankrupt playing the game like this. And to be clear: If I dont have the keys, Im not running the content. How can this be your business model? What am i missing?
You seem to believe there is other things to do in the game that is fun? I can burst that bubble right now. There isn't. PvP could be fun, but its not because of the non-existing match making that matches BiS against green players.
▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ Gankdalf The Icehole █ ▇ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁
If I am just randomly equipping anything thats better than what I currently have (kinda like the road from 1-60), then this change would be palatable. But once you are "refining" your character, looking for that certain piece, it used to be time to farm a certain dungeon. The frustration of never getting that item to drop, followed by the elation of finally getting it is the rollercoaster of most mmos. The rarity of certain things was likely too low in this game, but now farming for that certain item just isnt feasible without a potentially large rl cash investment. And for most items it's basically pointless to farm now since the thing you are searching for is getting cheaper by the minute. Why even bother running a dungeon?
Even if it was a slight loss (say if a key costs 25k and I typically "earned" 20k) I would have considered that a win; hoping for that big drop that would make up the slow loss and a profit on top. But instead this change has devalued almost everything, both in a gamers excitement over getting it, and in the ah.
- Asterdahl
I agree. There is no ROI..keys should be for progression and hunting rare items. Not a method of unlimited AD income due to ROI being greater than cost of key.
"the second topic is that we know there are a lot of you that love running dungeons and would like to run dungeons all day. We are aware that we are now in a situation where after running your daily keys, it feels like dungeons may just not be worth it. Although I can't promise any immediate changes on this front, it's somewhere we're watching carefully and we'll be attempting to strike a happy balance as we move forward"
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
As someone who's played mmo's for a couple of decades, I've never experienced one that charged me a fee for running a dungeon.
The rewards from the chests that I've opened so far have been very slightly better than previous ones. I've had a couple of (unhelpful) +4 rings and a couple of extra bits of random salvage but combined they do not total the cost of buying 5 more keys.
In all honesty this will probably be the reason I stop playing this game.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I understand why you don't want the keys to be consumed only when the players want. But that situation arose from a system developed by you. The loot system is so abysmal (and yes, it has improved quite a bit, at least for tier 1 2k to 3k players, but it's still not at all smoothed out) that I prefer not to take my chances on spending a resource that is actually shared with my boons and the hungry mimic in my guild just to make a key that odds tell me will be worthless. The zen/real cash involved in buying legendary dragon keys is also not worth it. I'll never, *ever*, pay for a virtual raffle ticket. I will pay for a good direct transaction, like a money only version of an epic mount that gives a boost to refinement or tokens that allow me to actually choose what ay wills and feats my artifact weapons enhance. I will even pay to buy zen to buy that owlbear cub on the market. But, again, I will not pay for a lottery ticket, and the more you base your business model around that, the less willing i will be to pay and to play.
As for saying that the place you see keys is in progression, it oes create a problem if keys are the only way to progress. Players should be able to progress faster if the pay/spend zen, but in the recent campaign at least, what you offer is a paywall. and it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
So, like I said elsewhere, if you are going to impose this change, rushed and unfair though it was to all of us console players, you'll need to consider a few things:
-First is the fact that people simply don't want to run the new content, especially with this key system. Sure, fishing is cute and the map is not half bad to look at, but that only takes you so far when the hardest, top of the line content is not seen as a rewarding adventure but as a monumental chore. i for one have my eyes set on whatever gear you'll be bringing in mod 11 (and keeping fingers crossed that the positive feedback does materialize into a good module), and not even the fact that it won't be Best in Slot will dissuade me from giving the whole of icewind dale a pass. None of that rechargeable armour for me, none of the inane repetition and submission to rng to farm out legendary marks for a set of weapons. It's just terrible design and creafting the best weapon to usability should not rely on RNG.
- The content for those in 2 to 3k still going through the regular epics does offer more return, so those in that range are somewhat benefitted. However, all of those would gain from a streamlining of the key creation process. I don't make more than enough for one or two skirmishes and/or demogorgon a day, but at least I get the crafting material make keys for that content out of running that content. The system is already in place, so make it universal. And make it a single unified currency; another unintended consequence of this baffling decision was splitting the dungeon delving population. And waiting for an hour (!) as a dps to run a dungeon to kill a boss to leave with the 4-6k AD in salvage that is the common reward after running the same 5 quests on the same tire old map to wait a day to run a dungeon...
- Revisit the already existing endgame content. Make it less boring than it is right now. Make it rewarding and worth revisiting.
- Items need to be unbound. Getting an epic item that I don't need turns it into junk, even if it's the rarest item to ever grave the face of Faerun. And we don't want junk.
- New artifacts should be introduced to balance the fact that the older "best in slots" are now slightly more commonplace.
I believe this would adresss some of the most grievous concerns of the playerbase while keeping the gatekeeping you clearly intend on endless runs intact. Cryptic clearly mishandled both this transition and its communication by rushing these changes into going live with only a week of testing and by forcing console players to put up with a terrible rng system on top of a very poor module. Both the company and the community manager ( looking at you, @nitocris83 ) also did a dreadful job at communicating the changes and assuaging the fears of the community; these changes are neither transparent nor coherent (i've seen the weirdest drops from the weirdest places, and whether or not those drops are bound is a total roll of the dice) and your communication was not straightforward or honest. Worse, it was actually quite derisive in places. Understand that goodwill also subject to burnout.
*Edit: just to clarify, by sense of reward does not necessarily mean return of investment. If all I wanted was profit, I'd make an army of alts to run Cloak dagger in 5 minutes for the exact same reward as a eLoL
The mileage of people running CN and above may vary considerably, though.
"Eventually" being the operative word here. Consider the fact that (and I'm going to go ahead and take an educated guess that you're a long time player by your post count alone) many in the PS4 community haven't finished the campaigns and are therefore spreading their resources thin over the boons they still lack, stronghold requirements and key crafting. Multiply the same problem for the sharandar and Tyranny campaign (which could be argued to be harder to farm for when it comes to key crafting: Sharandar's particularly egregious) and it becomes apparent that the crafting of the keys themselves has an elevated cost both in time and resources. Compound all that with the fact that new players are put at a clear disadvantage. Whereas you (and even me) have benefitted from being able to only walk around with one key and focus on boon and guild advancement up until the key change, only spending it if the chest justified its use, the new players won't have that luxury and will face an even bigger wall of grind.
Which is why to me an unified currency that allows the keys to be crafted from a currency that drops from the dungeons is a good compromise solution. Let's even say it caps at more or less the required value for one key and gives severe diminishing returns after you run three tier 1 epics, much like what happens with AD already. You can theoetically run as many dungeons as you want, but after the third run the drop rate of this resource drops by 90%, making it effectively unviable to grind. But in the meantime, you'd have one guaranteed (but locked behind a timewall) daily "legendary" obtained from running those dungeons.
And again, people act as if it matters that you could walk around with one key. I didn't make any of the campaign keys aside from CN because they were a waste of time before the key change. Now VT is the only other one worth making. Whoopdeedoo.
Compared to the grind right after mod 6 with 100k AD gmops and no leadership AD the situation in the game is all sunshine, rainbows and unicorns.
We believe this was bad for the game, and by that I mean the gameplay, regardless of whether you are a free player or you buy keys regularly. Sitting on a cache of keys—whether they were purchased or farmed—and running the same dungeon over and over very easily leads to burnout."
Asterdahl...Who are you YOU to say what leads to burnout and what doesn't. I don't care if you're an employee and one of the devs...I'm the customer...I DECIDE what burns me out.
And truthfully - what's burning me out is having to run dailies/weeklies to keep up campaign currencies so I can constantly produce keys for dungeons so that in case I decide I want to go on a run I don't have to worry about running out and can make "the rounds" as I used to before the change. Problem is - ever since this change dropped - its been harder to find a queue for a lot of dungeons that used to take mere seconds. Even Kessels takes a bit to queue randomly. Makes sense since its key so tied to IceWind and those dailies are PAINSTAKINGLY TIME CONSUMING - like all new content (SKT)!!! At least the "old" content like Sharandar or Dread - has dailies you can fire off quicker.
What's worse is that we still have to wait to produce keys. In the cases of TOD - POM - Demo/MDemo skirmishes - where Faerzness is easy to get (even get them through doing those) and Im constantly maxed at 18000 - Im still yoked to 2 keys a day. And given how short these are - you can burn through a stock of 10-15 keys made through the week easily on Sat or Sunday.
So what Im burnt out on is having to grind dailies I thought I was done with to produce a stock of keys so that I can run dungeons continuously (because that's what I WANT to do) and that you're still making us wait before we get the key.
This has nothing to do with concern for player burnout and everything with forcing players to spend Zen on Legendary Keys...which given what I've seen of the supposed "improved" drop rates...are still GLORIFIED LOTTERY TICKETS!!!!!
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I'm now bearing in mind that mod 11 introduces a nerf on underdark rings (no proc via companion) which will render all underdark content obsolete (apart from edemo for twisted ichor). As such there's no point in running CN and I've actually started pugging ETOS and Shores again. These dungeons are so simple now that my pally can fight the bosses just holding down one at-will attack...
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
Fast cash is always the most important thing in the universe.
It does not matter how many years you are grinding something.
At the end of the day, your hard work means nothing.
It is an illusion.
I guess that is the most important thing they are trying to show us.
When talking about online games, fun is hidden behind massive dice roles.
And just to add, i do not understand the main point of what the dev was trying to say.
We do not want people to run dungeons ? We want people to run dungeons only if they grind for keys ?
We want to make people focus on grinding the campaigns much more ? Since we are low on the material to offer to level 70s ? That is not true...so i do not see why that would be..
We want only people with massive wallets, to be able to get legendary weapons, since they deserve it ..for paying a lot of money, while other people do not ?
I do not get , what the reply should mean.. What exactly means " burning out on dungeons "... ?
This game is called : " Dungeons and Dragons . "
Unless i missed the change of the title somewhere in there..?
... well..... tough luck.
What´s bad is only this: players should not be required to feel any necessity in revisiting ancient campaigns to craft the campaign keys. Even if the epic chest has a good loot-table and it is not strictly necessary...it´s still bad and will cause resentment...linking a fun activity directly to a boring and pointless activity. Most dungeons might be ancient and outdone by powercreep but I guess most players still consider them to be the fun part...definitely more fun than dailies in ancient campaigns. It should be an option for the very eager to craft keys...but there should be a daily allotment.
Idea: one „key-bag“ per day/account that will on being opened grant 1 (or 2) random campaign keys (all minus the latest one). It will also prevent players running only dungeons with an easy-to-craft-key aside from those that have only one chest anyways.
Also...while rare sellable items still can´t drop like candy without their value decreasing to a point where they´re junk (some dropping as bta with a certain %-chance is of course a good way to mitigate that a little) why not up the refinement rewards -considerably-? Refinement is still costly and prevents new players to catch up (or alts being equipped) within a reasonable time...
What would be absolutely horrifying however would be this: another mSVA in the future....where your progression depends on repeating the content countless times, keys are incredibly boring AND time-consuming to craft and bad luck/rng nullifies the effort again and again so that buying legendary keys (wasting ad or money on lottery tickets) is the only way if one doesn´t want to despair ….although completely opting out of the content is a very viable (the only) alternative (the one I chose).
I hope it worked out so badly that you won´t do something like that again....ever.
And if this isn´t your vision going forward you should do something about mSVA...it was horrible even before the key change but now....it sends a very negative message...every day this is going on as it is...
There are so many possible awesome ideas for things to sell on the zen-shop...but trying to bully players into buying ludicrous amounts of keys (lottery tickets) like with FBI and far worse mSVA if they want to progress their gear....I really can´t figure out how that could possibly be a winning strategy...-.-