12b is one of the worst mods to have ever came.

joemangan · October 2017

So i log in to run some TONG as a 14k GWF who could usually run it with a good group in around 25-35 mins, to see that the bondings have been nerfed (Yes i know that this was going to happen, just not this bad). I went into TONG with a 14k group and, we spent about 30 minutes alone just on Orcus and we had 2 GWFS the same item level! We did 1:1 damage so it wasn't like one of us was a poorly played GWF either.

How are the overall majority meant to run TONG now? Only a select bunch of people will be able to run TONG if they're like 16.5k+ item level, and that's only if they actually know how to play their classes properly. I'm doing the same damage that i used to do at around 12k item level if not lower. Surely i'm not the only one outraged by this and contemplating not playing this game anymore? I can't even picture how excluded TRs and SWs feel after these changes to any group, as they're now useless in terms of dps. It doesn't even end there, MSVA will be near impossible as most public groups struggled before the changes.

Not all of the changes are bad, e.g. the refinement is an awesome change. However the nerf to bondings outweighs these pros leaving me at a cross roads to whether i should invest anymore of time in this game, knowing now that the developers are so reckless and show a complete lack of understanding to their very own game, doing critical decisions that leave most of us questioning what is even going on in their studio? And if they're evening playing the same game as us?

Please tell me how you feel about this change to bondings.

mat44444 · October 2017

Hi

Well Since my main is a SW - which basically as far as I can work out has just been ground into the dust, yes I would tend to agree with you. Example I play with a CW who has lower ranked bonding than I do. Before patch my DPS would have been a lot more than the CW; which was fair since I was a lot higher in terms of IL etc. After patch I am doing 20% less damage than CW - only changes are from the MOD dropping.

So yeah - what's the point of continuing

joemangan · October 2017

mat44444 said:
Hi

Well Since my main is a SW - which basically as far as I can work out has just been ground into the dust, yes I would tend to agree with you. Example I play with a CW who has lower ranked bonding than I do. Before patch my DPS would have been a lot more than the CW; which was fair since I was a lot higher in terms of IL etc. After patch I am doing 20% less damage than CW - only changes are from the MOD dropping.

So yeah - what's the point of continuing

I doubt i will be playing this game again until something has been done about the bondings. I had to already leave my warlock behind initially because of the nerf a few mods back, and now it looks like i will just leave the game entirely.

oldbaldyone · October 2017

Its been a couple hours. When TONG first came out, it was deemed impossible. When Tiamat came out, it was deemed impossible. When Dragonflights were introduced, it was deemed impossible to complete more than 2.

Give it time. The dungeon is not intended for casuals..its end game content. People will now have to learn to play without 20% of their stats, but that is a fact of life.

I don't like the idea of nerfing something just to sell it back, but I don't really see this as the end all be all, doom of all Neverwinter. They hit a wall challenge wise, so they had to do something.

joemangan · October 2017

oldbaldyone said:
Its been a couple hours. When TONG first came out, it was deemed impossible. When Tiamat came out, it was deemed impossible. When Dragonflights were introduced, it was deemed impossible to complete more than 2.

Give it time. The dungeon is not intended for casuals..its end game content. People will now have to learn to play without 20% of their stats, but that is a fact of life.

I don't like the idea of nerfing something just to sell it back, but I don't really see this as the end all be all, doom of all Neverwinter. They hit a wall challenge wise, so they had to do something.

I know you didn't call me it but i'm far from a casual, over 100 days played.

Players practically being reset back 2k item level isn't just a "Fact of life" it's just straight up robbery. To change something that had never been touched since the day it came out just makes no sense if it wasn't broken. If they wanted a solution to make players use other things instead of bondings, why not just balance the augments around bondings, and not the other way round. As we now have average runestones all round. The money I've lost because of this controversy is almost in game equivalent of bankruptcy .

There is thousands of ways to change up the difficulty instead of just nerfing the single most best damage multiplier in the game, for example take a look at illusionists.. Why not add debuffs into dungeons like that? Or gives the mobs random buffs like increased DR or more EHP, even if it's just that you may move slower i can guarantee it'll be much better than to just deter every new player from investing money and time into your game for a chance for it to be made to have no value.

minotaur2857 · October 2017

Sorry, this module is killing the game, if you're not 16K forget it. People who were already taking ages to do dungeons now won't bother. We've already lost 2 previously very enthusiastic guildies over this module and more are on the way out. As somebody who won't commit to one main as he's had several nerfed out of existence before, so has a lot of chars 13-14.5K, there is just no future for me here.

joemangan · October 2017

minotaur2857 said:
Sorry, this module is killing the game, if you're not 16K forget it. People who were already taking ages to do dungeons now won't bother. We've already lost 2 previously very enthusiastic guildies over this module and more are on the way out. As somebody who won't commit to one main as he's had several nerfed out of existence before, so has a lot of chars 13-14.5K, there is just no future for me here.

I guess you're just going to have to get used to losing players the way this game is heading. If you're lucky to be at the end game and set up shop already then you shouldn't have much of a problem.

However only 10% of the community (or lower) is at that point and are still gearing up their companions, and this mod has only made the gap between end game and emerging players significantly wider in terms of their overall effectiveness of their chars. E.g. dps/buffing.

ase · October 2017

That mod is just HAMSTER up... What did they had in mind ? "let's nerf everybody so they will have to grind their HAMSTER off to get to the level they were before the new mod"... really...
Shame... really shame.
Nothing new for us except a 10 minutyes skirmish ???
Ooooh and we have random Q... seriously ???
That mod is a joke. What i feel is almost like somebody spat in my face.
I understand why people leave the game.

btairborne · October 2017

OP, sounds to me all they have to do is make TONG a little bit easier and you will be placated and have no reason to be upset. A lot more of these kind of rants and they might just do that.
I like this mod actually, except for the Bonding robbery.

armadeonx · October 2017

It is what it is, it's well past the point of anything being done about it as the devs are of the opinion that even though we'll lose some players, the enchantments etc will be more appropriately balanced and they are ok with that.

They did say they were going to monitor things over the first few weeks and see if changes needed to be made to dungeons so I'm hoping the note the excessive drop in successful T9G runs and do something about the amount of damage required for the 1st & 3rd bosses.

rapo973 · October 2017

Tong is the end-game dungeon at the moment and it's expected to be hard. Many players complained about some mechanics that trivialize the game and they were heard. I'm not here to discuss the devs decisions: take them or leave them, regardless I like them or not.
I was very curious about the new changes and how they impact the game.
I run Tong with my guildies, 3 support and 2 dps. I'm a 16.2k DC, but the other players are in the 13-15k range.
We completed Tong in 35 minutes: reasonable imo.
On the other hand I run Tong with my 14.4 SW using the new random queue. It was an epic fail, mainly because some players didn't know how to do it and because th party was undergeared: tank that doesn't tank, an inexperienced DC casting random powers without understanding the context, the SW class that doesn't perform by design if you are forced to play as the main dps. I quit at Orcus, penalty included.
My conclusions are simple and not so innovative:
- more than before, your party must be well geared
- The party members must know what to do.

I like the random queues because they give a chance to my SW, but the results are clearly unpredictable. This is why I think that, on the long run, they will be used to run the minor contents and farm AD. Interestingly, the best AD gain is given by the normal 3-members dungeon: 9k AD.
I like some ideas behind the new refining system, but I want to see how it performs in few months when more items are available on the AH. The upgrading process from 12 to 14 requires a big effort.

At the moment, my assessment is neutral: something is good, something is bad (refinement money grab in particular) but overall acceptable to some extent.
My advice is to take your time, improve your toon when possible and wait a bit more when the landscape is more stable: we're at the beginning and other changes are just behind the corner (bug fix, weapon enchantments mechanic, etc)

thefiresidecat · October 2017

joemangan#9373 said:

mat44444 said:
Hi

Well Since my main is a SW - which basically as far as I can work out has just been ground into the dust, yes I would tend to agree with you. Example I play with a CW who has lower ranked bonding than I do. Before patch my DPS would have been a lot more than the CW; which was fair since I was a lot higher in terms of IL etc. After patch I am doing 20% less damage than CW - only changes are from the MOD dropping.

So yeah - what's the point of continuing
I doubt i will be playing this game again until something has been done about the bondings. I had to already leave my warlock behind initially because of the nerf a few mods back, and now it looks like i will just leave the game entirely.

I quit a month ago because I knew this was coming and I knew how bad it would be. just didn't see the point. i'm coming back to check if they've changed their minds yet. I'm honestly bored to death. I even went and dragged out my ps3 to replay some old games. but man. this change makes me feel like don quixote and I just can't do it.

thefiresidecat · October 2017

oldbaldyone said:
Its been a couple hours. When TONG first came out, it was deemed impossible. When Tiamat came out, it was deemed impossible. When Dragonflights were introduced, it was deemed impossible to complete more than 2.

Give it time. The dungeon is not intended for casuals..its end game content. People will now have to learn to play without 20% of their stats, but that is a fact of life.

I don't like the idea of nerfing something just to sell it back, but I don't really see this as the end all be all, doom of all Neverwinter. They hit a wall challenge wise, so they had to do something.

we WERE end game. we already HAD IT. and now we have to redo it and that's fine and expected.. nuh huh

ontheleftcoast · October 2017

wizardlvl80#5963 said:
Hamster you Cryptic.
I work in IT company and I assure you that penalising your customers for your own mistakes is the worst possible solution. And you guys will pay for it. You will see.

I don't think they will. Their business model isn't about supporting long term players who farmed enough AD and converted it to Zen that they can effectively play for free. No, this module was carefully constructed to suck as much stored value out of long time players as possible and to create ways to force newer players to buy products like campaign completion tokens. In fact, if they manage to get people to plop down $100 worth of Zen to start and get frustrated after a few months and call it quits then they've "won".

Look at the last couple of mods to see this plan in action. With Module 12 they "gave" us multiple legendary companions. Man, what an AD sink that was at a million AD (or the equivalent in companion packs to get tokens) a pop. The few players who worry about the 100 million AD limit don't notice the problem. But this sink wasn't mandatory, players could play end game content without spending AD. For example I still don't have a second legendary companion on any of my toons and I could do everything but TonG fairly easily.

So along comes update 12b and a new sink was created and this one is no longer optional. Just how much of an AD sink is this new mod? I tried to make some R13's bondings yesterday. I spent the nearly 280K AD for the 3 UMOPs and then watched 60 wards go up in smoke without getting a single one upgraded. Even if you get "lucky" and only burn 33 wards on average to upgrade all the R12 on one toon to R13 will take arpund 850 preservation wards and 26 UMOPS That's about 6,300,000 AD to upgrade one toon, the equivalent of 12,600 Zen, about $125. One toon. And that's not even getting that toon all the way back to where it was before the mod.

This module should be renamed "Murder on the Astral Diamond Exchange" or "Raiders of the Lost Zen"

c3rb3r3 · October 2017

Did you really expect it to be a good mod ? I mean, all these rank 13 and 14 thing are here to hide and match the bonding nerfs. In the end, it's just a mod where you get HAMSTER if you don't have a huge AD amount to upgrade to rank 13/14.

I thought it was known thing that these past mods have been a "delay game" where it's all about putting more and more restrictions in order to keep us playing the game.

I will survive this mod 12b, but I will not survive another mod where you need 5 more millions to match my current form because the devs decided to change something without thinking what it implies.

hastati96 · October 2017

The bondings nerf was truly needed. I think the game is a lot more balanced now. There are so many aspects that are affected by them that finally went normal instead of totally op (dc power sharing for example). It feels like the power creep went almost away lol

joemangan · October 2017

hastati96 said:
The bondings nerf was truly needed. I think the game is a lot more balanced now. There are so many aspects that are affected by them that finally went normal instead of totally op (dc power sharing for example). It feels like the power creep went almost away lol

How was the bonding nerf needed? If your excuse is because that augments where irrelevant compared to bondings, then that's not a very good one. They could of at least balanced augments around bondings and not the other way round like i've said, as now we have 'meh' runestones all round compared to what bondings was and what augments could of been.

The nerf wasn't needed as now we can see the effect it's had on the community and how many people have left/leaving. They could of at least fixed the mobs and bosses to be scaled of the damage we currently do now, and not what we could do. As now we can't kill anything in TONG or MSVA.

c3rb3r3 · October 2017

hastati96 said:
The bondings nerf was truly needed. I think the game is a lot more balanced now. There are so many aspects that are affected by them that finally went normal instead of totally op (dc power sharing for example). It feels like the power creep went almost away lol

Yes but no. early to mid/mid-late game players will get HAMSTER because they don't have the amount of AD needed to match the nerfs.

tripsofthrymr · October 2017

I'm less worried about geared GWF/DC/GF/OP groups completing TONG. The developers were clear that they're closely watching how well groups do with the changes and will make adjustments as needed.

I am worried about classes not on that list. Balance issues have existed with some classes for a very long time. I thought it would be fun to dust off my module 5 HR because of the hunting theme in Chult. I gave him good gear, got some of the missing boons, took him into TONG. He was mostly useless. HR's fair better than some other classes.

When the game first launched, skill was king. If you couldn't play your class well, it brought your party down. The harder dungeons couldn't be completed if each party member didn't understand their class and their role in the boss fights. Fast forward to the recent past, gear is king. People do well by copying one of a tiny number of optimized builds and gearing up. The changes to bonding runestones are a small step toward reducing the dominance of gear. For those that learned, "To win at this game, rank up your bondings," I completely understand the frustration. In my view, the game was more enjoyable when superior skill could compensate for lacking gear.

I'm not implying that skill doesn't matter. Indeed, skilled players still shine. Gear, though, is a huge factor and can compensate for a lack of skill.

tripsofthrymr · October 2017

c3rb3r3 said:

I will survive this mod 12b, but I will not survive another mod where you need 5 more millions to match my current form because the devs decided to change something without thinking what it implies.

The vast majority of players don't have almost-unlimited funds to just rank up all their enchants. The developers have a vested interest in making sure the average player can enjoy most of the content, and that the average player with an established toon can play the hardest content.

In other words, most players are in the same boat you are. The developer's goal is not to sink that boat and cater to a tiny minority. They benefit when the broad player base is engaged with the game.

preechr · October 2017

joemangan#9373 said:

hastati96 said:
The bondings nerf was truly needed. I think the game is a lot more balanced now. There are so many aspects that are affected by them that finally went normal instead of totally op (dc power sharing for example). It feels like the power creep went almost away lol
How was the bonding nerf needed? If your excuse is because that augments where irrelevant compared to bondings, then that's not a very good one. They could of at least balanced augments around bondings and not the other way round like i've said, as now we have 'meh' runestones all round compared to what bondings was and what augments could of been.

The nerf wasn't needed as now we can see the effect it's had on the community and how many people have left/leaving. They could of at least fixed the mobs and bosses to be scaled of the damage we currently do now, and not what we could do. As now we can't kill anything in TONG or MSVA.

Really? Can't kill a single mob in T9G or MSVA? If so, I doubt the bonding nerf is really the problem

The changes to bonding power and the subsequent increase to r14 for everything is just a big AD sink, and it will likely go a long way to helping stabilize the game economy (probably)

The Random Que system was invented to make Storm King's Thunder appear to be a successful mod (probably)

There are currently 46 pages in the RQ Feedback Thread filled with player suggestions for very obvious fixes for the RQ plan in order to make it successful, yet we got what we got

The obvious fix for over-buffing due to bondings would have been to stop pets from re-sharing the power they received from DCs and OPs, which is the root cause of the "power-creep" problem (not "totally op dc power sharing," @hastati96 ) which would have been much more digestible by players, yet we got what we got

sengir0 · October 2017

only way to show your disapproval for this new mod is to not spend a dime. Black Friday is coming up and I'm expecting some zen sales again but will do my best to ignore any sales at NW.

titiope · October 2017

I love the mod, i would like r15 is a better number than r14 for a final level.

sorcha · October 2017

Bonding's Bonding's Bonding's.....other things where broken in 12b and this is all you care about....

schietindebux · October 2017

Idk care much about nerfs, ups and downs. Actually doing other stuff I gonna head back to my main (SW) and play the game...maybe leave at least if it bores me too much again.
What i ask myself: Who is expected to farm this ammount of gear to reach endcontent at all? Same counts for PVP (beside the fact that PVP is hard to enjoy.
If someone asked me to build up my charakter from zero I simply would leave.
All those boons, rank 14's, gear ?
Are there really new player willing to spend so much effort, time and money into this game?

Unknown · October 2017