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rayrdan
Member Posts: 5,410 Arc User
So we are finally getting loadouts which is awesome.
The game features a lot of classes and i hope the game is going well enough to give the birth to new ones in the future.
However since Tiamat release, the campaign are getting longer and longer and its definitely killing ours alts ( secondary characters).
In the end we are more often than not forced to play and keep updated one toon only which is quite the opposite goal you wanted to achieve making longer campaign: you want me to play a lot but i drop playing different toons.
one probably remembers me as an avid TR player....well is there...4k and all nice stuffs ...still i cant and dont want play it because i would be forced again to major pain campaign grinding (mod 10 and mod 10.5 fully succeed in making me take the first and quite long break from this game in 3+ years).
Its finally time to make campaigns progression (boons and story progression) account shared.
i used to play a lot more, now i start to sweat at the log in window.
the most successful games nowadays allow you to play multiple classes on a single character. Lets create a hybrid system, shall we?
PROS:
->> More players playing more classes
->> More players willing to play the new classes coming
->> More returning players able to catch up
->> More players willing to pay for campaign unlock from the zen store
@nitocris83
The game features a lot of classes and i hope the game is going well enough to give the birth to new ones in the future.
However since Tiamat release, the campaign are getting longer and longer and its definitely killing ours alts ( secondary characters).
In the end we are more often than not forced to play and keep updated one toon only which is quite the opposite goal you wanted to achieve making longer campaign: you want me to play a lot but i drop playing different toons.
one probably remembers me as an avid TR player....well is there...4k and all nice stuffs ...still i cant and dont want play it because i would be forced again to major pain campaign grinding (mod 10 and mod 10.5 fully succeed in making me take the first and quite long break from this game in 3+ years).
Its finally time to make campaigns progression (boons and story progression) account shared.
i used to play a lot more, now i start to sweat at the log in window.
the most successful games nowadays allow you to play multiple classes on a single character. Lets create a hybrid system, shall we?
PROS:
->> More players playing more classes
->> More players willing to play the new classes coming
->> More returning players able to catch up
->> More players willing to pay for campaign unlock from the zen store
@nitocris83
5
Comments
me and manyEVERYONE.A great deal of it is that the game is structured so that there are far too many activities that feel mandatory but are also incompatible with each other, which leaves no time for non-mandatory activities.
Stronghold Influence? Probably no other rewards, though good for utility enchant procs for farming refinement. If you don't do this, you may find yourself constantly racked with guilt, or nagged by your guild leader... whichever is the more effective motivator in your case.
Trying to earn some decent AD? There is a very strictly regimented set of activities you are allowed to earn AD from, and you may not deviate from these. If you are reluctant to partake of queued group content for any reason, you're not allowed to have a steady income. Tough.
Thought you were done with the old campaigns? Just kidding, your guild still needs you to go back and farm all of them. If you don't do this, you are letting everyone down, because it should be possible to do it all.
Event? You probably have to drop all your normal stuff and do the event exclusively, or skip the event. For your convenience, we now run between 2 and 4 events all at the same time, and you will never get a weekend off, unless we decide to run nothing but 2xGlory and you don't PvP. Hooray!
Foundry? Uhhh, when was I supposed to have time for that? Particularly now that it has no rewards aside from novelty and the warm fuzziness that comes from feeling like you're doing your part to support a dying industry?
Older campaigns had a structure where once you got a routine down, you could literally spend 10-20 minutes per day per character and be done with them in a month or two, along with a few runs of quest batches as needed. Weekly quests offered a large quantity of currency so that they could be used to compensate for missed days along the way. And all of us had fewer activities competing for our NW playtime back then as well, so the impact of more time-consuming campaign dailies is even greater.
In newer campaigns, once you are actually allowed to start their daily grind, the only shortcuts are available by spending long periods of time in preparation. For example, you can pre-complete quests to hand in for several days of SKT, but will still have had to spend as much as a few hours running the quests, and you need to keep any associated items until turn-in. The fastest completion of Mercantile Missions uses more resources than you earn from it, so you have to make them up at some point. Every day of progress you miss in these campaigns is a day tacked on to the end, rather than needing to run the compensating weekly an extra time or two. Weekly quests only offer small quantities of the currencies you earn daily, and larger quantities of yet another currency, so progress ends up badly hampered if you don't do it all, instead of being designed with tools to allow more casual/weekend players to catch up.
And this is a thread I wrote a while back on ways I end up feeling like I have to micromanage my alts instead of just being able to play them:
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1223220/micromanagement-frustration-and-player-engagement-enjoyment/p1
One of the big questions I've seen asked about the 11b release is how much more grind it's going to add, and the fact that it probably won't have a substantial daily demand added to the average player is a really big deal. It's a chance to take some time to breathe. There isn't enough breathing space in NW. Grinds are designed, I guess, to keep bums in seats, but it's gone very badly out of control.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
And mind you even if progress was shared campaign currency is not. So while my old characters have a lifetime supply of dungeon-specific keys my new one never will.
Edit: And I forgot to mention, it will take about half a year to get the new alt's Leadership profession to level 25, which is the only point where it's kind of worth anything.
Totally off-topic but Becky reminds me: River District is TERRIBLE for trying to do queued content. HEs, dig sites, and demi planes all require you to give up all progress if a queue pops (or potential party-mates don't want to wait). And if you leave a demi plane you fail the quest and lose the portal stone.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
i mean if something like this happens we can virtually play every class.
Farming currencies will still be required for dungeons keys but at least dungeon unlock and boons will be a do it once thing.
While we're at it, can I have back all the diamonds I spent on campaign costs before they removed them? And all the diamonds I spent back when GMOPs were listed at the Wondrous Bazaar for the ultra-reasonable price of 100,000 Astral Diamonds?
Example: Demogorgon was unlocked account wide once you got it unlocked on your first character and then (i think) did some minor intro quests. after that if a group needed a DC or a tank or a DPS and you had an alt that could fill that slot and was geared enough to enter you were capable of playing. it made groups fast and easy to build as well as variable in what you played so the demogorgon fight didn't get boring as fast.
With mod 10/10.5/11 however the campaign dungeon is locked behind a month(ish) each of grinding away to gain access per character. So many people dislike the grind of mod 10/10.5 that they have only unlocked the campaign dungeons on their primary character, and maybe, maybe their favorite alt. So now the result is that finding groups to play these dungeons is a very time consuming process, especially given that the most consistent way to beat these dungeons involves more support characters and less DPS when the natural MMO range of DPS vs support heavily favors DPS at probably close to a 3:1 ratio (just look at how many more DPS classes there are in NW vs support) for characters that are frequently played.
long story short, I have alts capable of entering mod 10/10.5/11 campaign dungeons but I am not willing to endure the whole bloody grind again in order to unlock the dungeons just to play them rarely when my friends need an assist. Entry requirements are fine and are a good idea (in the form of ilv and stuff like everfrost resist (the Everfrost is stupid and shouldn't happened) but the dungeon itself should be an account unlock. It was done once before and there is no reason to not do it again except to force more grinding. I would spend more on my alts to keep them geared and capable of entering dungeons if I didn't have to waste so much time grinding to unlock dungeons.
I want to play. not grind for months to play. I took a break from NW and came back a month into mod 11 and this has been the most horrible thing about my return, that I can't do anything except on my main and I can't do anything on my main because it takes so long to find a party, even in a strong alliance and numerous private channels.
-edit- in the idea of being able to play without grinding... it would be nice to unlock the dungeon campaigns earlier in the campaign as well. i came back to NW and had to spend a month going through the campaigns and getting asked if i wanted to join groups and having to tell people i didn't have stuff unlocked. That is really an awful thing and it made me come close the quitting again. Again, mod 8 did this really well with demogorgon being unlocked account wide and early
We are searching for slave labor, will pay with food from our farm!
But once unlocked, it should be available account wide. This grind to unlock dungeon on alts is, and I'm trying to be very polite here, frustrating. If I want to play once in a blue moon on another class, you either force me to months of the same grind I've already done (not gonna happen) or just not play.
A lot of us old-timers used to have a completely viable GF and DC as alts, even if we didn't play those classes as mains. And that meant that we could provide whatever support was necessary in a party with our friends any time we were called on to do so. But with new content being locked behind at least a month of daily grinding, which as I mentioned, there is no way to approach more casually, you must consciously choose to unlock that stuff on your support characters. Not only that, but you have to play through the hours of introductory quests before you can even start the dailies (100% optional, "play it when you want" in Underdark), and if you're playing a support build, then you're doing so with the disadvantage of lower DPS. That will only be modestly addressed by loadouts since a neglected support character with a DPS loadout still lacks boons and potentially equipment and other stuff representing gobs of player investment. This is a HUGE factor in there being shortages of support players available for all the newest trials and dungeons.
I didn't include the OP because the game was already heading in the direction of it being troublesome to catch up when that class was released. There are folks who have a decent OP as a support alt, but if they've done so, it's with a hefty investment (at least of time), and not because the game was particularly alt-friendly by then.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
(Goes along with the return of levelling dungeons as somehow satisfying the cries to provide more dungeons.)
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
We have the Campaign Completion Tokens (overpriced IMO, but...), and if some of you have been around since IWD first came out, you will see the inspiration.
First, you have to have 2 Toons at Level 70 complete the entire campaign, boons and everything. That also means in Tyranny of Dragons you complete the 5/5 Defeat Tiamat task that everyone did only once because we didn't know any better. Once you have 2 Toons that have completed a campaign, the claims merchant gains a coupon for 90% off that Campaign Completion Token to the account, redeamable per character. Now, there should be every Campaign Completion Token in the store, except the newest and the maybe previous campaign.
Cryptic still gains some money, and we get a campaign completed at a reasonable price, so long as we've put in SOME work already.
I do still want my diamonds back though. I had to pay a lot of diamonds to be able to make adamantine gauntlets in the Dread Ring at one time.
After 11 mods, i feel stupid in doing over and over again campaigns i already played just to unlock boons i already unlocked.
if feeling stupid was the only problem.....its one hour wasted everyday after 10 hours of work.
no thanks, i like playing, i will do campaigns or either something changes or i will stick to one character which is already time comsuming. fun but definitely time consuming.
your diamonds concerns are another topic you might want to argue in another thread.
Add these to the loot table with some frequency to drop often.
Vendor X in protectors enclave etc. only becomes available for each zone after you have unlocked it by completing a campaign progress. So no unlocking a campaign unless you have completed it with at least one char. Would not invalidate the campaign unlocks via zen those are for unlocking with out a completion.
This adds more loot to the loot table in all dungeons and even create a secondary market for these on the AH. Instead of always getting a refine stone these would be a nice bonus to either sell or use for your alts to save time.
I really think we need more loot chances / added to drops.
BTW I like the idea of making the campaign currency account bound.
Anyway, as far as freeloaders go, how do I know you really did any of the campaigns on any of your alts? Maybe you only did them on one character, while you have 12 other level 70s on your account just waiting (with baited breath) to get all those boons for free. On the other hand, some of us have already ran Sharandar, Dread Ring, and maybe even Icewind Dale on 2 or 3 characters or more. What will our alts get for all their hard work in the past if boons are suddenly unlocked account-wide? The answer? Probably absolutely nothing.
Since the ToS says that the online experience may change at any time, you paid those diamonds, they're gone, time to move on. No one is going to refund them, and no one is going to take that into account when they program new features.
Better to save your ire for things like, getting titles, or larger bags to keep your castles in.
If not an unlock, perhaps a discount for every additional alt that does the campaign (say 25-30% per toon). The more alts we play, the more enchants, bonding stones, pres wards coal wards etc that we need to gear them. Seems like a win-win to me.
BOONS FOR FREE, BOONS FOR FREE, BOONS FOR FREE!
If you do not immediately comply with our demands, we will be forced to chain ourselves to the building! More protestors are standing by!
*lowers bullhorn and finishes of the gin bottle*