I've been investing time and REAL MONEY into these Bonding Stones. For you to make such an enormous change in these items after so much of my time and money have gone into buying Coalescent Stones from the Zen market to get to where I am with them currently, I'm seriously thinking I need to find a new game. I can understand a minor shift for balancing reasons but there isn't even that in this change. You are going to break this game.
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jumpingmorksMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 876Arc User
From an initial perspective, am guessing Eldritch and Augments will pretty much return as the new meta. HDPS/Debuffers will still probably be better off with bondings + maybe Eldritch mixed together. For those classes that rely heavily on stable stats it'll be a return to augments.
I'll probably just go back to augments completely. I'm tired of playing this game of always trying to play catch up. It takes a long time to gear a character and when you pull the rug from under my feet I just feel my energy is better focused on other things.
It will probably be better for me overall, Augments + eToS farming will provide a stable salvage income. You cannot blame people for wanting to faceroll content in under 10 minutes when you walk away with 10k AD in slavage per run and your next upgrade is a 2m AD enchantment.
Even if bonding stones are given back some of their glamor back, augments are just a safer bet. Right now, knowing roughly how fast I can grind AD this change alone is going to set all my plans back 6 months. I'll let the rich continue to endlessly chase the new meta and just run what I can run comfortably and the rest only with friends.
It's nice being top of your game, I just don't have the energy, time or willpower to stay there. I also don't care at this point if that means I get sidelined for content you spend half a year creating. If people would rather someone else in my place because they can run a dungeon 5 or 30 minutes faster, I'll just stick to the content I can run.
I don't like the uptime nerf because that makes all companion gear with armor penetration useless unless they fit some augment. We need the right amount of armor penetration consistently to pierce through the enemy's defenses, not just for the first 15 seconds and then again half a minute later.
Also, I remember how it was in this game before Bonding Runestones were added. Everyone was using the same 1-2 augments and Eldritch Runestones. And why not? The augment is unlikely to fall off from platforms in FBI, ToNG, or mSP, and at least it gives the buff consistently. The pets meanwhile get stuck in the terrain, gravitate towards ledges, and like to position themselves for maximum punishment from bosses.
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mamalion1234Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,415Arc User
With the new Eldritch Runestones and an Augment you get roughly 175% of your Augments stats all the time, if I'm reading your table correctly. 195% half the time is not better by a long shot, though I could live with it matching an Augment w/Eldritch at 175% with a 100% uptime to truly give players a choice about how they want to play, and with what companions. As is you're just going to see people brush off their old Augments and shelf their comps.
This of course assumes you fix the power sharing issue with companions with bondings transferring power from DC/OPs back to the owner for a 4x buff.
eldritch 75% you need augment with 3 defence slots.
Is there anything being done for the Anointed Champion DC with these changes? With a 50% up-time it will nerf Anointed Champion's power sharing (their main benefit) by 30 to 40%, not to mention making it inconsistent.
You can time your daily to correspond to bonding being up (more skill involved, less button mashing). I realize today that end-game toons spam dailies and waiting to time use of the daily will reduce average effectiveness. The devs also said (last livestream) that there's a plan to rework dailies to make them feel more like, well, a daily (once a day) skill.
I remember a time when two or more players would coordinate the timing of their dailies because that was the best way to defeat content. For me at least, that was more fun. You "win" the game in its current state by having the best gear, not by having the best skill or the best teamwork. "Get max rank bondings and spam AA" is a rather skill-less game play experience.
I'm not saying that no adjustment to AC is warranted. However, when the utility of a class(/paragon) hinges around spamming a single power, there's room for improvement in that class.
I'm sorry, but some of you sound like you're willing to compromise on the bonding stones with reduced stats, etc. ANY reduction in their abilities would be a complete insult!
Actually I think they need to be toned down. A lot. Having your companion's gear be the most important thing to your character is an insult. I care about the character, I've built up the character, why the hell should I play second fiddle to something I buy with AD and change when the mood strikes me? Bondings and augments are a cool idea, but they are completely out of balance.
Beyond that, the stupid amounts of power share being transferred back by bonding comps means something's got to go, they just nerfed a TR power for allowing the TR to stack gobs and gobs of power on itself, what made you think this issue would also not be addressed?
I'd like to see the end game dungeons be a challenge, not a stompfest. If current end game dungeons (i.e. leaving alone the T1-T2 dungeons for newbies) become more difficult to run then better gear can be added to drop tables. Either they can do it with an overall balancing pass, or they can gate the endgame (like most other MMO's do) so you can only earn one drop per boss per week, and it takes 5-6 hours to complete, and if you don't play well you don't get invited. I'd rather it be farmable, but much more difficult to teams that choose to ignore all the mechanics by overstacking stats and melting their way through encounters like a hot knife through butter.
1. Mr. Sears, thank you for your contribution to an enjoyable Mod 12. Thank you also for posting this information. 2. Julia, as you deem necessary, please step in and ensure Mr. Sears has customer feedback and sentiment as he continues to make decisions regarding these changes. I would hate for Mr. Sears, a relatively new systems designer to Neverwinter, to alienate his customer base so early in his tenure with Neverwinter by not legitimately considering, and responding to, the concerns and sentiment voiced by the community. You have helped the community navigate such difficult changes in the past and I thank you for your continued advocacy on our behalf. 3. Changes intended to simplify the refinement system are welcome. Thank you. 4. If you insist on moving forward with the changes to bonding runestones, please tell us what changes in the near future (i.e. before year end 2017) will address the concerns raised in this thread. For example, if dungeons like Tomb of the Nine Gods were designed using an assumption that bonding runestones function as they currently operate, please explain your intended outcome of these changes related to that design assumption or if near term future changes will address that design assumption. 5. Please realize that your insistence moving forward with these changes without modification supporting a clear customer sentiment will negatively impact customer satisfaction. I, for example, do not feel the changes to the Lostmauth set, another game element in which every customer dedicated a significant investment, left me with a positive customer satisfaction experience. I know that Cryptic believes every customer is important and existing customers are not disposable for future customers. The acquisition of new customers is often more costly than retaining existing customers, in my opinion. 6. To the customer satisfaction sentiment highlighted in #5, Mr. Sears I would highlight Mr. Gutschera's interaction with the customer base on proposed weapon enchantment changes as a standard to be met in regards to customer interaction in regards to these proposed changes. 7. Thank you for your commitment to transparency with your customers and your consideration of our concerns as legitimate and actionable, as opposed to viewing your customers as mindless cattle who do not have a passion for the success of Neverwinter.
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tripsofthrymrMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,624Community Moderator
I'm sorry, but some of you sound like you're willing to compromise on the bonding stones with reduced stats, etc. ANY reduction in their abilities would be a complete insult!
The meta of MMOs always shift. When there are multiple variants of a mechanism that accomplish similar goals but 99% of the end-game population picks only one of the variants, something's out of balance.
There used to be a trade-off between companions (they can die) and augments (they don't), and between eldrich runestones (always provide a modest benefit) and bonding runestones (sometimes provide a great benefit). That trade-off disappeared with various reworks of bonding runestones to the point where their buff is effectively always available even if your companion dies. Suddenly, companions with bonding runestones were the One True Path.
I have R12 bondings. I'm glad to see the change. MMOs thrive when there is choice and when thought goes into a build and stagnate when the only viable choice is what everyone else is doing.
Bondings won't suddenly suck. They'll just be less overwhelmingly good than they have been for a while now.
Seriously. This would be the WORST decision you could make. These stones are expensive real money wise, and obviously in game currency as well. You're basically taking all of our hard earned monies and just shredding them. Not to mention the time it tskes us to make these stones at current max level r12. I have been playing and putting real money into this game for 5 years now. If these changes go live, I'll go play a game from another developer that actually cares about its players investments. Not only are you depeleting our stats that are needed to complete the ridiculous end game content you've created by constantly debuffing players and overly buffing enemies and npcs alike. 50% of the time for lower stats.. You're seriously gonna nerf the stats from them AND the uptime???? T9G just became basically unplayable. Devoted clerics (a.c. mainly) might as well go dig a hole and just die, you've just murdered them. "Oh, we're adding 2 levels to runestones but we're taking 50% of the stats and uptime with it..". Way to go guys, I think youve finally found the plug to pull on your already dwindling fanbase of support. On a side note, 5 years of playing and opening your lockboxes and running dungeons and not ONE single legendary item from a box and the best dungeon drop is a lifesilk spinnerette... Seriously not liking the devs or the game at this point thousands of dollars later... Make this change and im taking my money back to SWTOR or Aion.
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tripsofthrymrMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,624Community Moderator
I've been investing time and REAL MONEY into these Bonding Stones. For you to make such an enormous change in these items after so much of my time and money have gone into buying Coalescent Stones from the Zen market to get to where I am with them currently, I'm seriously thinking I need to find a new game. I can understand a minor shift for balancing reasons but there isn't even that in this change. You are going to break this game.
That argument boils down to, "You can never change the meta of a MMO because people invest in that meta."
They're not breaking the game, they're fixing an imbalance between similar-yet-different game mechanisms. Your investment in bondings won't suddenly be wasted money. They will be more in balance with other, similar options.
1. Mr. Sears, thank you for your contribution to an enjoyable Mod 12. Thank you also for posting this information. 2. Julia, as you deem necessary, please step in and ensure Mr. Sears has customer feedback and sentiment as he continues to make decisions regarding these changes. I would hate for Mr. Sears, a relatively new systems designer to Neverwinter, to alienate his customer base so early in his tenure with Neverwinter by not legitimately considering, and responding to, the concerns and sentiment voiced by the community. You have helped the community navigate such difficult changes in the past and I thank you for your continued advocacy on our behalf. 3. Changes intended to simplify the refinement system are welcome. Thank you. 4. If you insist on moving forward with the changes to bonding runestones, please tell us what changes in the near future (i.e. before year end 2017) will address the concerns raised in this thread. For example, if dungeons like Tomb of the Nine Gods were designed using an assumption that bonding runestones function as they currently operate, please explain your intended outcome of these changes related to that design assumption or if near term future changes will address that design assumption. 5. Please realize that your insistence moving forward with these changes without modification supporting a clear customer sentiment will negatively impact customer satisfaction. I, for example, do not feel the changes to the Lostmauth set, another game element in which every customer dedicated a significant investment, left me with a positive customer satisfaction experience. I know that Cryptic believes every customer is important and existing customers are not disposable for future customers. The acquisition of new customers is often more costly than retaining existing customers, in my opinion. 6. To the customer satisfaction sentiment highlighted in #5, Mr. Sears I would highlight Mr. Gutschera's interaction with the customer base on proposed weapon enchantment changes as a standard to be met in regards to customer interaction in regards to these proposed changes. 7. Thank you for your commitment to transparency with your customers and your consideration of our concerns as legitimate and actionable, as opposed to viewing your customers as mindless cattle who do not have a passion for the success of Neverwinter.
I appreciate your constructive and well written post and can assure you that I am reading the feedback in all of the threads on refinement including this one.
We are very aware of the impact this type of change will have which is why we wanted to be direct with all of the information and make it possible for this discussion to occur.
They're not breaking the game, they're fixing an imbalance between similar-yet-different game mechanisms.
Wrong.
We have dungeons that are currently the few places being played by experienced players, that require the amount of power provided by bondings and other equipment. Lets not forget that the current high power bonding system is itself a relatively new development.
Your argument would only be true if balance were restored by a reworking of every other piece of content from old to new so that a challenge could be had in all level 70 areas. Yet there is no indication that any such change is to be made. No this is simply a nerf to kill an investment and force us to put work into their new level 14 system. The ill will that this type of move generates is completely unnecessary.
Lets have them generate some content without amping player power for a while. We've had several mods in a row now where the new eq is vastly better than the previous set. Its unnecessary.. people have been chomping at the bit for the return of dungeons that have been out of comisison for what 3-4 years now? They have mothballed content that they could release, rebalanced for the new power level and 0 new eq and many people would be happy.
This proposal and the progression of the eq leading up to it is a complete ripoff.
Don't make this change. At this point bondings have been operating as they are for long enough that there's no plausible way to claim you've suddenly noticed that they are overpowered.
By making these changes, all you are doing is make your customers resent you and become wary of spending money on the game. And as other people have pointed out, the effects of these changes will not be as simple for us as changing one companion; it has a ripple effect with expensive consequences for the rest of our gearing too.
You have other balancing tools available, like improving augments and adjusting the difficulty of upper level content. Greatly reducing the effectiveness of bondings should be a last resort because of the huge amounts of time/money people have invested in them. It's very hard to believe this is about game balance when you've just started selling us more power from companions through the bonus for having multiple ones at legendary rank.
It's not good karma to sell us this stuff then take it away, especially when it's been part of how the game works for such a long time. All this looks like to me is that you're looking for ways to get us to spend more money, not that you are really concerned about game balance. My advice is make changes that offer us something new and good, not take things away that we already have and try to force us to spend more just to get back to where we were.
If you are going to make changes like this, you need to take the following things into account. If something is OP, nerf it quickly or not at all. Look at what other balancing tools you can use to address the imbalance, like adjusting alternative playstyles/gear, first. Only make large changes to things people have spent an enormous amount of time/money obtaining as an absolute last resort, as in, it's the only way to save the game.
This is a really bad idea and it will come back to bite you. Please save yourselves and us an awful lot of grief by looking at alternative solutions instead. Periodically taking away progress we've made and then trying to sell it back to us in another form will be seen for what it is and is not a good business model.
I'm sorry, but some of you sound like you're willing to compromise on the bonding stones with reduced stats, etc. ANY reduction in their abilities would be a complete insult!
The meta of MMOs always shift. When there are multiple variants of a mechanism that accomplish similar goals but 99% of the end-game population picks only one of the variants, something's out of balance.
There used to be a trade-off between companions (they can die) and augments (they don't), and between eldrich runestones (always provide a modest benefit) and bonding runestones (sometimes provide a great benefit). That trade-off disappeared with various reworks of bonding runestones to the point where their buff is effectively always available even if your companion dies. Suddenly, companions with bonding runestones were the One True Path.
I have R12 bondings. I'm glad to see the change. MMOs thrive when there is choice and when thought goes into a build and stagnate when the only viable choice is what everyone else is doing.
Bondings won't suddenly suck. They'll just be less overwhelmingly good than they have been for a while now.
I'm 100% in agreement. Bonding stones were bad for the game because they made all alternative items pointless, there's a reason why you can't find a current build guide that doesn't include some variant of "get your bonding stones up first because it will provide the biggest benefit" instruction.
The gist of the complaints in this thread seems to be "I already got them to R12 you can't take that power from me" which is a terrible argument, you cannot balance a game by only always adjusting upwards, you end up with (even more) power inflation and ruin existing content (though maybe some of the people complaining would enjoy being able to run even more of the content blind and with all but one finger tied together >:) ) I'm more than happy to take a nerf to my bonding runestones if it means I can start experimenting with other options again, and I say this as someone who literally just these days spent the AD to prepare everything to get 3 more bonding runestones to R12 during the upcoming event.
1. Mr. Sears, thank you for your contribution to an enjoyable Mod 12. Thank you also for posting this information. 2. Julia, as you deem necessary, please step in and ensure Mr. Sears has customer feedback and sentiment as he continues to make decisions regarding these changes. I would hate for Mr. Sears, a relatively new systems designer to Neverwinter, to alienate his customer base so early in his tenure with Neverwinter by not legitimately considering, and responding to, the concerns and sentiment voiced by the community. You have helped the community navigate such difficult changes in the past and I thank you for your continued advocacy on our behalf. 3. Changes intended to simplify the refinement system are welcome. Thank you. 4. If you insist on moving forward with the changes to bonding runestones, please tell us what changes in the near future (i.e. before year end 2017) will address the concerns raised in this thread. For example, if dungeons like Tomb of the Nine Gods were designed using an assumption that bonding runestones function as they currently operate, please explain your intended outcome of these changes related to that design assumption or if near term future changes will address that design assumption. 5. Please realize that your insistence moving forward with these changes without modification supporting a clear customer sentiment will negatively impact customer satisfaction. I, for example, do not feel the changes to the Lostmauth set, another game element in which every customer dedicated a significant investment, left me with a positive customer satisfaction experience. I know that Cryptic believes every customer is important and existing customers are not disposable for future customers. The acquisition of new customers is often more costly than retaining existing customers, in my opinion. 6. To the customer satisfaction sentiment highlighted in #5, Mr. Sears I would highlight Mr. Gutschera's interaction with the customer base on proposed weapon enchantment changes as a standard to be met in regards to customer interaction in regards to these proposed changes. 7. Thank you for your commitment to transparency with your customers and your consideration of our concerns as legitimate and actionable, as opposed to viewing your customers as mindless cattle who do not have a passion for the success of Neverwinter.
I appreciate your constructive and well written post and can assure you that I am reading the feedback in all of the threads on refinement including this one.
We are very aware of the impact this type of change will have which is why we wanted to be direct with all of the information and make it possible for this discussion to occur.
discussion? yeah we are discussing the issue, but will what we say even matter? or is this change 100% happening? i don't mind balance, but this is too much..90% of the players in neverwinter are very unhappy with this change, 50% uptime is way too low.
Whoa! I have some money invested in these bondings, you guys made this a huge part of our builds! Why would you nerf an awesome feature like this? Please reconsider this decision!
I would be fine with reducing duration of Bondings if they left the stats the way they are. I am not sympathetic to making it so we get slightly more than an augment with Eldritch runestones, half the time. Personally, I just want them to remove the interaction between Bondings and DC power sharing, so they can keep the stat multiplier how it is, and not have to nerf DC's directly at all anymore.
Some of you seem to think that this change is somehow good because the bondings have become the only way to make an end game character. I appreciate your concern. The fix to this problem, however, is not to make them worthless, and force them to be replaced with Eldritch Runestones, that will just become the next bondings. It is to provide a reasonable alternative to the bondings in their current form. The changes that are being proposed will not create a more balanced meta. It will simply substitute a different meta for the one currently in place.
It is possible to accomplish the goal you have defined without making every thing that people have worked long and hard for without destroying what is already in place. Reduce the share percentage. If your Augment is going to provide 176.5% bonus with Rank 14 Eldritch Runestones, then reduce the bondings to 195%-215% to account for the fact that companions do die and augments do not. You could also increase the viability of the augments by increasing the bonus of the Eldritch Runestones to bring them more into line with the current bonding effects. You should also provide more options for augments (there really are only a few) if you decide on this course of action. Just don't turn the bondings into something that is absolutely unplayable due to limited uptime.
Look into my account and you will see the money I purchased on this game. This will not happen again. All these purchases were to push my toon up because of how unbalanced your classes are. A pure hunter has no chance without bondings to make a dent in the game. I am very disappointed in this decision. If you was going to mess with anything, you company should adjust the classes instead and leave the bondings alone until you get a balance better with the classes. For not and until I see improvement with the game, I will no longer purchase zen.
You had said in the stream you wanted bonding to be adjusted because of people's dependency on it as best in slot.
Now you say it will still be the best choice and here's a nerf.
Now all you have done is wasted end game players time and money to benefit newer players to spend more money.
I get it, it's business. Couldn't you have found a better way? Maybe make all companions including augments give stats(bond) based on their level and remove bonding stones altogether and just give an AD or Zen credit to holders of bondings?
You could have done this and raised the stats of augments to mirror regular companions then with all of them sharing stats would increase the use of mixed runestones like profane and arcane.
This would have had people new and old spending money in the Zen market for companions as well as buying AD to get different stones for their pets.
Instead you neutered current endgame best in slot players and made them angry and messed up the trade house even before the mod is out with people raising costs on eldritch and bullette pups.
So now instead of sellswords and bondings it's pups and eldritch. All you did is make negative waves not beneficial changes.
If you need more money their are better ways to get it.
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kieranmtornMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 382Arc User
based on the numbers bandied about so far by the dev's I plan on transitioning back to an augment with an adjustment to my insignia's to compensate for my no longer using bondings stones on an active companion (arp and no longer needing protectors comradrie). It also means, I can do what I what after mod 6, close my wallet for 15 months.
I really hope those changes never go through, but I'd be fine if they slightly reduced the stats it gives like from 95 to 80%. Make every bonding proc like every 8 seconds? and make them have 100% uptime but with reduced time to be procced.
So your taking us to half the duration AND reduced stats AND harder content. I really don't mind the reduced stats but to give us reduced stats and only 50% up-time is just really a slap in the face. We spent a ton of AD on something that noone's going to want to use anymore. Also we have to spend a ton of more AD to get them to 14 and they're going to be worse than they are now? Or switch to something different that completely needs upgraded? It really and truly does look like Cryptic is doing nothing more than trying to get more money. Not to mention that dungeons are going to take longer and drops are still basically in the toilet. So now it's going to take longer to run FBI and all we're going to get is a peridot?
The hatred for this is radiating from here and Reddit. At least 90% of all posts are about how angry the player base is with this change. I wonder if all of the players actually hating this idea will have any effect on whether it happens or not. I doubt if from the past experience with the Coal wards on Xbox.
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scaredstraitMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 42Arc User
now i don't mind changes .... but cryptic waits too long to change / fix things ,,,,, ie lost set ...pretty much all dps used the set .. and the DEV'S new it was broken ..... but they waited how long to fix it 2-3 mods ? .... so now bondings are bis for like 6 mods and the DEV'S know this ... and i bet the majority of players use bondings and have spent much time / rp / money / making them ! ... will there be a npc in pe to exchange them for other runes if they are a better choice ? .... i dislike the long wait times to fix / nerf things ( i see this as a major problem ) with this game !
We went from a variety of companions into having just one BiS augment: the Bulette Pup. It is the only augment with three defensive slots. Or do the offensive slots now transfer some of the stats, too? Because they really should, if this awful change gets hammered through.
If your mobs are getting killed too fast, there's a simple solution: Boost the mobs.
If your Bonding stones are outperforming your Eldritch runestones, and you don't like that, for some reason (despite it opening far more pets than having everyone rely on Augments does), then boost the Eldritch stones. No need to nerf the Bonding Stones.
You can always boost something, or introduce something new, to counter anything in a PVE game like this. There is never a need to nerf anything on the player end, period - much less a strategy they've relied upon for years and invested hundreds of dollars in.
It just generates endless rage. As I've said elsewhere, it's like a young DM playing D&D for the first time, who magics away the Paladin's +5 Holy Avenger out of jealously, because he thinks its his job to "beat" the player, rather than make sure everyone has a good time.
Neverwinter really could become Nevernerf, and there'd be vastly less bile among the player base as a result, much as I've seen in other MMO's that have taken up this sensible policy.
Comments
I'll probably just go back to augments completely. I'm tired of playing this game of always trying to play catch up. It takes a long time to gear a character and when you pull the rug from under my feet I just feel my energy is better focused on other things.
It will probably be better for me overall, Augments + eToS farming will provide a stable salvage income. You cannot blame people for wanting to faceroll content in under 10 minutes when you walk away with 10k AD in slavage per run and your next upgrade is a 2m AD enchantment.
Even if bonding stones are given back some of their glamor back, augments are just a safer bet. Right now, knowing roughly how fast I can grind AD this change alone is going to set all my plans back 6 months. I'll let the rich continue to endlessly chase the new meta and just run what I can run comfortably and the rest only with friends.
It's nice being top of your game, I just don't have the energy, time or willpower to stay there. I also don't care at this point if that means I get sidelined for content you spend half a year creating. If people would rather someone else in my place because they can run a dungeon 5 or 30 minutes faster, I'll just stick to the content I can run.
Also, I remember how it was in this game before Bonding Runestones were added. Everyone was using the same 1-2 augments and Eldritch Runestones. And why not? The augment is unlikely to fall off from platforms in FBI, ToNG, or mSP, and at least it gives the buff consistently. The pets meanwhile get stuck in the terrain, gravitate towards ledges, and like to position themselves for maximum punishment from bosses.
I remember a time when two or more players would coordinate the timing of their dailies because that was the best way to defeat content. For me at least, that was more fun. You "win" the game in its current state by having the best gear, not by having the best skill or the best teamwork. "Get max rank bondings and spam AA" is a rather skill-less game play experience.
I'm not saying that no adjustment to AC is warranted. However, when the utility of a class(/paragon) hinges around spamming a single power, there's room for improvement in that class.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
Beyond that, the stupid amounts of power share being transferred back by bonding comps means something's got to go, they just nerfed a TR power for allowing the TR to stack gobs and gobs of power on itself, what made you think this issue would also not be addressed?
I'd like to see the end game dungeons be a challenge, not a stompfest. If current end game dungeons (i.e. leaving alone the T1-T2 dungeons for newbies) become more difficult to run then better gear can be added to drop tables. Either they can do it with an overall balancing pass, or they can gate the endgame (like most other MMO's do) so you can only earn one drop per boss per week, and it takes 5-6 hours to complete, and if you don't play well you don't get invited. I'd rather it be farmable, but much more difficult to teams that choose to ignore all the mechanics by overstacking stats and melting their way through encounters like a hot knife through butter.
2. Julia, as you deem necessary, please step in and ensure Mr. Sears has customer feedback and sentiment as he continues to make decisions regarding these changes. I would hate for Mr. Sears, a relatively new systems designer to Neverwinter, to alienate his customer base so early in his tenure with Neverwinter by not legitimately considering, and responding to, the concerns and sentiment voiced by the community. You have helped the community navigate such difficult changes in the past and I thank you for your continued advocacy on our behalf.
3. Changes intended to simplify the refinement system are welcome. Thank you.
4. If you insist on moving forward with the changes to bonding runestones, please tell us what changes in the near future (i.e. before year end 2017) will address the concerns raised in this thread. For example, if dungeons like Tomb of the Nine Gods were designed using an assumption that bonding runestones function as they currently operate, please explain your intended outcome of these changes related to that design assumption or if near term future changes will address that design assumption.
5. Please realize that your insistence moving forward with these changes without modification supporting a clear customer sentiment will negatively impact customer satisfaction. I, for example, do not feel the changes to the Lostmauth set, another game element in which every customer dedicated a significant investment, left me with a positive customer satisfaction experience. I know that Cryptic believes every customer is important and existing customers are not disposable for future customers. The acquisition of new customers is often more costly than retaining existing customers, in my opinion.
6. To the customer satisfaction sentiment highlighted in #5, Mr. Sears I would highlight Mr. Gutschera's interaction with the customer base on proposed weapon enchantment changes as a standard to be met in regards to customer interaction in regards to these proposed changes.
7. Thank you for your commitment to transparency with your customers and your consideration of our concerns as legitimate and actionable, as opposed to viewing your customers as mindless cattle who do not have a passion for the success of Neverwinter.
There used to be a trade-off between companions (they can die) and augments (they don't), and between eldrich runestones (always provide a modest benefit) and bonding runestones (sometimes provide a great benefit). That trade-off disappeared with various reworks of bonding runestones to the point where their buff is effectively always available even if your companion dies. Suddenly, companions with bonding runestones were the One True Path.
I have R12 bondings. I'm glad to see the change. MMOs thrive when there is choice and when thought goes into a build and stagnate when the only viable choice is what everyone else is doing.
Bondings won't suddenly suck. They'll just be less overwhelmingly good than they have been for a while now.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
They're not breaking the game, they're fixing an imbalance between similar-yet-different game mechanisms. Your investment in bondings won't suddenly be wasted money. They will be more in balance with other, similar options.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
We are very aware of the impact this type of change will have which is why we wanted to be direct with all of the information and make it possible for this discussion to occur.
Wrong.
We have dungeons that are currently the few places being played by experienced players, that require the amount of power provided by bondings and other equipment. Lets not forget that the current high power bonding system is itself a relatively new development.
Your argument would only be true if balance were restored by a reworking of every other piece of content from old to new so that a challenge could be had in all level 70 areas. Yet there is no indication that any such change is to be made. No this is simply a nerf to kill an investment and force us to put work into their new level 14 system. The ill will that this type of move generates is completely unnecessary.
Lets have them generate some content without amping player power for a while. We've had several mods in a row now where the new eq is vastly better than the previous set. Its unnecessary.. people have been chomping at the bit for the return of dungeons that have been out of comisison for what 3-4 years now? They have mothballed content that they could release, rebalanced for the new power level and 0 new eq and many people would be happy.
This proposal and the progression of the eq leading up to it is a complete ripoff.
By making these changes, all you are doing is make your customers resent you and become wary of spending money on the game. And as other people have pointed out, the effects of these changes will not be as simple for us as changing one companion; it has a ripple effect with expensive consequences for the rest of our gearing too.
You have other balancing tools available, like improving augments and adjusting the difficulty of upper level content. Greatly reducing the effectiveness of bondings should be a last resort because of the huge amounts of time/money people have invested in them. It's very hard to believe this is about game balance when you've just started selling us more power from companions through the bonus for having multiple ones at legendary rank.
It's not good karma to sell us this stuff then take it away, especially when it's been part of how the game works for such a long time. All this looks like to me is that you're looking for ways to get us to spend more money, not that you are really concerned about game balance. My advice is make changes that offer us something new and good, not take things away that we already have and try to force us to spend more just to get back to where we were.
If you are going to make changes like this, you need to take the following things into account. If something is OP, nerf it quickly or not at all. Look at what other balancing tools you can use to address the imbalance, like adjusting alternative playstyles/gear, first. Only make large changes to things people have spent an enormous amount of time/money obtaining as an absolute last resort, as in, it's the only way to save the game.
This is a really bad idea and it will come back to bite you. Please save yourselves and us an awful lot of grief by looking at alternative solutions instead. Periodically taking away progress we've made and then trying to sell it back to us in another form will be seen for what it is and is not a good business model.
The gist of the complaints in this thread seems to be "I already got them to R12 you can't take that power from me" which is a terrible argument, you cannot balance a game by only always adjusting upwards, you end up with (even more) power inflation and ruin existing content (though maybe some of the people complaining would enjoy being able to run even more of the content blind and with all but one finger tied together >:) ) I'm more than happy to take a nerf to my bonding runestones if it means I can start experimenting with other options again, and I say this as someone who literally just these days spent the AD to prepare everything to get 3 more bonding runestones to R12 during the upcoming event.
It is possible to accomplish the goal you have defined without making every thing that people have worked long and hard for without destroying what is already in place. Reduce the share percentage. If your Augment is going to provide 176.5% bonus with Rank 14 Eldritch Runestones, then reduce the bondings to 195%-215% to account for the fact that companions do die and augments do not. You could also increase the viability of the augments by increasing the bonus of the Eldritch Runestones to bring them more into line with the current bonding effects.
You should also provide more options for augments (there really are only a few) if you decide on this course of action. Just don't turn the bondings into something that is absolutely unplayable due to limited uptime.
Now you say it will still be the best choice and here's a nerf.
Now all you have done is wasted end game players time and money to benefit newer players to spend more money.
I get it, it's business. Couldn't you have found a better way? Maybe make all companions including augments give stats(bond) based on their level and remove bonding stones altogether and just give an AD or Zen credit to holders of bondings?
You could have done this and raised the stats of augments to mirror regular companions then with all of them sharing stats would increase the use of mixed runestones like profane and arcane.
This would have had people new and old spending money in the Zen market for companions as well as buying AD to get different stones for their pets.
Instead you neutered current endgame best in slot players and made them angry and messed up the trade house even before the mod is out with people raising costs on eldritch and bullette pups.
So now instead of sellswords and bondings it's pups and eldritch. All you did is make negative waves not beneficial changes.
If you need more money their are better ways to get it.
So your taking us to half the duration AND reduced stats AND harder content. I really don't mind the reduced stats but to give us reduced stats and only 50% up-time is just really a slap in the face. We spent a ton of AD on something that noone's going to want to use anymore. Also we have to spend a ton of more AD to get them to 14 and they're going to be worse than they are now? Or switch to something different that completely needs upgraded? It really and truly does look like Cryptic is doing nothing more than trying to get more money. Not to mention that dungeons are going to take longer and drops are still basically in the toilet. So now it's going to take longer to run FBI and all we're going to get is a peridot?
The hatred for this is radiating from here and Reddit. At least 90% of all posts are about how angry the player base is with this change. I wonder if all of the players actually hating this idea will have any effect on whether it happens or not. I doubt if from the past experience with the Coal wards on Xbox.
If your Bonding stones are outperforming your Eldritch runestones, and you don't like that, for some reason (despite it opening far more pets than having everyone rely on Augments does), then boost the Eldritch stones. No need to nerf the Bonding Stones.
You can always boost something, or introduce something new, to counter anything in a PVE game like this. There is never a need to nerf anything on the player end, period - much less a strategy they've relied upon for years and invested hundreds of dollars in.
It just generates endless rage. As I've said elsewhere, it's like a young DM playing D&D for the first time, who magics away the Paladin's +5 Holy Avenger out of jealously, because he thinks its his job to "beat" the player, rather than make sure everyone has a good time.
Neverwinter really could become Nevernerf, and there'd be vastly less bile among the player base as a result, much as I've seen in other MMO's that have taken up this sensible policy.