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Shroud of Souls Preview Patch Notes: NW.80.20170417a.1
terramak
Member, Cryptic Developer Cryptic Developer › Posts: 991 Cryptic Developer
Sorry for the lateness on these! These patch notes are for the build that went live around 6:00 PM PDT on 2017-04-20.
Loadouts
Shroud of Souls
Stronghold
Sword Coast Chronicle
Content and Environment
General
Enemies and Allies
General
Items and Economy
General
User Interface
General
Visual Effects, Animation, and Character Art
General
Graphics
General
Loadouts
- A sound now plays when choosing a new loadout.
Shroud of Souls
- Dukathis' death animation is now more visible.
- Shadows no longer cast Consume Life immediately after being interrupted.
- Shadows no longer try to stand on top of the player, but instead stand at proper melee range.
- Shadows now properly re-stealth after exiting combat.
Stronghold
- Loot Defense event: The supply cache location indicator no longer Z-fights with actual supply cache geo.
- Guild Hall: Paintings are no longer cleft by wooden beams.
- Guild Hall: Placing furniture and decorations should be a little more responsive.
- Guild Hall: The placement process is now better at detecting when something else is happening to the same object, for less confusion as to whether the placement is working.
- Temporary Structures: Prices and return on investment for certain profession resources has been significantly adjusted, and in many cases, heavily lowered to prevent potential infinite-gain loops.
- Temporary Structures: Requirements for items should be more consistently denoted in their tooltips.
- Temporary Structures: Specialty Materials should more consistently require a tome to purchase.
- Temporary Structures: The Mysterious Merchant's more mysteriously non-sequitur-ific dialog options have been removed.
- Temporary Structures: The Recruiter's store contents are now on the Atelier, as the Recruiter has decided to move on from the Stronghold.
- Temporary Structures: Vitriol and other Alchemy ingredients are now properly on the Atelier, rather than the Gem Cutter, Assayer, and others.
Sword Coast Chronicle
- The filter and sort settings are now saved between play sessions.
Content and Environment
General
- River District: A few more issues introduced on NeverwinterPreview have been addressed. (Examples: Missing or inaccurate mid-quest NPC dialogs.)
- River District: Dig site chests now only allow one player at a time to interact, in order to prevent loot collision issues.
- Spellplague Caverns: Nostura no longer pops "damage received" floating text after she vanishes and teleports away.
- Protector's Jubilee: Anniversary Ham now shows ham as a buff icon, rather than a green potion.
- Protector's Jubilee: Elminster's Lunchbox no longer claims to give out foods that don't actually exist.
- Protector's Jubilee: Protector's Bounty now more clearly encourages the player to escort the merchant via its objective text.
- Protector's Jubilee: Renown is more noticeable when it's on the ground as loot.
- Protector's Jubilee: The Protector's Hospitality animation now properly places a cup in the player's hand even if they're below level 30.
- Siege of Neverwinter: A wounded soldier no longer stumbles in place.
- Summer Festival: The primary Sahha store will be available from the Last Chance vendor once the festival is over - but it's better not to wait for that, as some purchases will still only be available while the event is active!
- Various: Typos have been fixed in various events, as well as some text and voice inconsistencies.
Enemies and Allies
General
- The Black Ice Beholder no longer sits halfway through the floor.
Items and Economy
General
- Fangbreaker Island and Spellplague Caverns now have slightly increased refinement stone rewards.
- Forgehammer of Gond now properly ignores cooldown reduction and other boosts to recharge speed.
- Legacy versions of mounts can now be stabled even if the player has a newer version, so a player with the legacy versions can claim the higher active bonus.
- New Masterwork Profession resources now consistently have non-placeholder icons.
- Professions: The Fabric Dye tasks are now properly named according to their rewards.
- Professions: The Fireplace tasks no longer have blank icons.
- Professions: Enamel and Dye now have distinct icons.
User Interface
General
- Auction House: Searches by Gem Slot count now properly return items with the selected number of slots.
- Choice Packs: Players may now right-click to inspect individual entries in packs that allow the player to make a choice between their entries.
- Mail: When trying to take items from mail, it no longer silently fails when the player has items in the Overflow Bag.
- Options: Some gameplay options no longer inexplicably revert to default when clicking Apply after changing them.
- Power Selection: After purchasing a power or increasing a power's rank, the player must now wait one second before purchasing / ranking-up another.
- We're looking into ways to improve the user experience of this window, but that is not likely to happen with this release. For now, it should make the power purchasing flow experience more consistent.
- Queues: When clicking a link to a collection from a Queue while the Collections UI is still open, the link will now properly bring you to the correct page.
- The /stuck command no longer causes immense error spam when used shortly before combat.
- The Invocation indicator now properly grays out upon invoking for the final time in a given day.
Visual Effects, Animation, and Character Art
General
- Lifesilk Spinneret once again has a skirt.
- Many gear rewards from Dungeon Chests have gone back to showing their full sleeves and hiding the player's worn arm pieces, as they did prior to the Cloaked Ascendancy release.
Graphics
General
- The player character once again properly appears in the Appearance Alteration UI.
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Comments
One of the main issues is the requirement to sit and wait 100+ seconds to input all of your power points, when if you have maximum power points there isn't even a choice involved.
Some very nice bug fixes here too that I want to just say thanks for
Signature [WIP] - tyvm John
Ah, thanks for this. I remember it being that way in the past, but at the moment the only way to tell is if the keybind shown below the indicator is gray. Not the easiest thing to notice.
We're looking into ways to improve the user experience of this window, but that is not likely to happen with this release. For now, it should make the power purchasing flow experience more consistent.
WHY?!?!!?! I never ever had a problem with this, couldnt this change wait until you had a better solution? Also maybe let us not respect powers if we dont want too, its hardly ever needed when you played a long time like me for example. I have powerpoints to pretty much take all.
▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ Gankdalf The Icehole █ ▇ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁
(invisible footnote: except shocking execution)
lol
Sopi SW Youtube channel pvp brickabrack
One question, though Recruiter gone? But, uh...we were just told that So....uhm...I'm confused now. Is this a case of the left tentacle not knowing what the right one is doing?
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Signature [WIP] - tyvm John
Recruiter: This may have indeed been as @adinosii and @beckylunatic said - Note-writing confusion on my part. I was admittedly finishing these up after most others had gone for the day. (In addition, the reductions in cost aren't yet in this build.)
Patch timing: I expect to get at least one more build out this week before we release. Also, props to @adinosii for correctly predicting the release date in a previous thread, hahah.
Cryptic would have to change their tells... but since faking us out with the calendar would be cruel, I hope they're ok with being obvious.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Either way, well done to both of you, and sorry @beckylunatic for the misattribution!
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I got 2 questions if you don't mind.
1) Can we change Loadouts by dropping down an Altar (non-battle phase with long 5 minute cooldown, of course). There aren't many Fireplaces out there. The option is very cumbersome and awkward for many situations and maps in-game. It will make the Altar useful again.
2) Now that we have loadouts, is Cryptic still resistant of Class Change Tokens? I still have my first 2 non-Ranger characters, both Caturday Survivor Trickster Rogues with the cool, old character models, that I want to change to Rangers since they weren't available during launch.
Please don't update live with a hole in the guild hall stairs ! Lol
@rjc9000 - An extra refining stone of semi-random quality will drop from each run, and while the RP value can be great on occasion, I'd rather undersell it in the notes than risk disappointing people with the words "moderately" or "significantly."
@sniffa - Sorry, haven't confirmed yet.
@zerappus - Loadouts: Currently the design specifically avoids including altars. We want to avoid making the player feel like they *have* to switch loadouts between every pull, and it protects the player from us designing content around everyone having multiple tailored builds that they can swap to at any time. (It's not something I'd expect we'd do, but the possibility being there is enough.)
Class change tokens: I can't imagine class changes being a thing, if only because of the number of moving parts involved. I've learned to never say "never" when it comes to game design, but from my perspective it doesn't look likely. (I haven't consulted mimicking on this comment, though.)
@etelgrin - We're aware that Scourge Warlocks are hurting for balance love. I don't know enough to hint at when we'll be able to get around to helping them out (and where they stack up in terms of which classes need love the most), but if we see some easier fixes to try to get them more in line with other classes (that don't risk breaking the game), we may be able to try 'em out before a full-scale balance pass. No promises here, though.
- Halve Gates of hell's cast time while making them more accurate.
- Double Accursed Souls damages and divide its healing component by 2 to compensate.
- You can also speed up Eldricht blast combo by ~ 25-30%.
- You can also halve Harrowstorm cast time while preventing it from being cancelled by other powers.
- You can boost Curse bite damages by 20%.
And some fixes :
- Make Parting Blasphemy working every time and not 50% of the time
- Make Murderous flames deal 30% of Killing flames damages and not ~18%
I think the main issue with dps SW is that he's too slow.
As a 4k+ fury sw, i don't have any issue dealing high single target dps.
I don't have any more on FBI giants where i can use Tyrannical Curse.
But on every other content... MSp, CN and others, i'm having hard times when running with others classes that are melting everything too fast for me.
For Temptation and Damnation... Yeah, it will need a lot more work.
You'd be awesome if you could relate these suggestions to the devs !
They are excellent dps or excellent buffers or excellent controllers. All 3 trees are playable and both paragons too.
Even after many nerfs, it's still the most balanced class in game.
I don't want to see any rework because they could only make it worse...
When we finish a dungeon, we want stuff which either powers up our characters or stuff which makes us AD.
So what that I get higher quality Resonance Stones or artifact stones from the chest/bosses? If I can beat some FBI/Spellplague bosses, then I already have some decent gear to begin with, which means adding more RP won't exactly power up my character as much as I'd like.
If you are about to point out that the players can sell the RP, that doesn't work in practice as it does in theory, as in order for the increase in rarity to actually matter, we need to find buyers which are actually willing to buy our RP fuel. I can put something for a price on the AH, but if nobody is going to buy the good, then the item is effectively netting me 0 AD, making it worthless. If you're a veteran player with decent gear, I highly doubt you'll be buying Flawless Sapphires or blue Resonance Stones on the AH on a whim. If you're a newbie player, I seriously doubt that you have the budget to randomly drop 500,000 AD for a sum of random Artifact Stones/gemstones.
While we're on the subject, we can talk about the other FBI/Spellplague rewards. The R8 enchantment drops are actually worth some amount of money, as R8 enchants are useful for alts or creating spare enchants for mains. Since the enchants are not guaranteed drops, then players can counter these odds with pure brute force statistics (ie, running dungeons more times to see if they can get the odds to land in their favor). It's a shame that these enchants are also available in an easier dungeon (CN):why bother to grind out FBI/eSP when you can do it with less risk in CN?
The biggest appeals to the 3100 ilvl dungeon (Relic Armor, Greater Rings, and Key Artifact) are actually quite good for powering up your character, but suffer from being locked behind a large amount of RNG. Let's say I'm a GF and I'm looking for a Shieldbearer's Raid Breastplate. If I beat the dungeon, I then have to pray I get a Relic Armor drop, then need to pray it's the right Armor Piece, and then need to pray that it's a the Raid variation. That's quite a lot of conditionals that needs to be fulfilled, and more often than not, most players won't roll a natural 20 on all those conditions.
RNG is not totally a bad thing, as the dev team has pointed out multiple times, since the RNG is what keeps people coming back. It also adds to some degree of excitement of drops (I probably wouldn't have been as excited for my +5 Rising Precision if it wasn't so rare). But you need to include some degree of reliability, or, at least, reduce some of the RNG needed to get stuff.
Why are players always citing the Twisted Weapons or classic dungeon drops as the "best" examples of rewards?
Because there was some degree of reliability in making a profit or powering up your character.
Didn't get the Twisted mainhand from EDemo as a drop? No problem, simply win EDemo 10 times with a Gold Ranking, of which you can ensure by getting good teammates. No run ever felt like wasted progress, unless your team was HAMSTER up.
Didn't get your good ol' High Vizier chestpiece from classic Spellplague (was it classic SP?)? No problem, you could either try your luck again, or simply grind out enough AD to buy it off the AH from a luckier player. If you did get a High Vizier chestpiece, but you weren't a CW, that wasn't an issue, as you could pass the gear to a CW alt or sell the gear for a hefty sum to CWs with less fortunate luck. This system ensured that players would always be safe in gearing up their characters or netting a profit, meaning no piece of loot ever felt like a waste.
So, when the community wants real rewards, they want something that is actually worth the time, or at least, the knowledge that doing FBI or eSP over and over and over again will net them some guaranteed progress or make them some degree of money.
If the rewards are sellable, then then the rewards need to be actually meaningful to the players. As @vida44 put it, finishing the game's hardest dungeon, only to get a 5,000 AD gem is insulting.
If you replaced that Flawless Sapphire with, say, a normal Bonding Runestone or random R8 multi stat enchants out of FBI/Spellplague Chests (to borrow the idea of @tom#6998), then you have a different story. These items actually are worth something, because you can use them on your characters or alts, or sell to people (since these items are hard to get/refine up).
If the rewards are not sellable, but are used for powering up your character, then you need to ensure that the player always feels like they're working towards a goal. Or, at the very least, make the RNG less of a hassle to deal with.
The community has suggested this nearly 1000x over, but for the rings/armor, why not include a choice box or voucher system?
For the former system: now all I need to do is pray for the drop, which significantly improves the odds in which I can get what I want. It's makes the RNG system slightly more tolerable.
For the latter system, this creates a degree of reliability that players can count on. So what if I ran FBI 5 times and didn't get my Gauntlets? I can simply run over to a Relic merchant in Bryn Shander and exchange my FBI Tokens for a nice shiny piece of Armor. No run ever feels like wasted time, it feels like I'm making progress towards what I need to do.
I recall the devs stated a while back that they wanted armor to be a symbol of your achievements, ie, if you had Dragonflight Armor, you did Dragonflight events with your guild, if you had Relic Armor, you were a bad enough guy/gal to take on the hardest content, so on and so forth.
... So, if that's the case, Adamant/Masterwork II armor is going to be a symbol of being lucky or being extremely rich.But other than that, yeah, the classic drop system better in that it always ensured someone would be profiting from the drops.
But I'll still run edemo/CN whenever I see a call. It just makes you wonder if they even know what they did right in mod 8
Because their solution to improving rewards has been to stick RP into everything so the price has tanked. They should've been adding thaum stones and r7s instead because that market is just more resilient to an increase in supply.