Devs that listen

dagambit · February 2018

I have been looking around the forums and I hear a lot of complaining about this game and the way the developers are handling things. I have said it before and I will say it again Cryptic developers do not listen. They hear the community but they do not listen. Since this game inception onto XB I was following the game and community on PC. All I have seen since I have been playing is the Devs removing stuff from the game, taking their time fixing bugs, and continuous nerfing of players and gear. You will never have balance in a game where PVE gear is used as PVP it just will not happen both PVEer and PVPer will complain about the changes. I am not sure if Cryptic is trying to make players leave the game and go else where or trying to kept players so they bring new in.

From where I sit it is the latter of the 2. Making changes to a live game is difficult already, but when you make changes that negatively affect the players experience the game starts to suffer. I am not sure how many players have seen Married with Children (now I am telling my age). To make a long story short Al Bundy never returned a book to his school library in over like 25 plus years or so, then he tried to return it. In the episode there was a kid trying to steal a book. And another kid said to him "hey you don't you Bundy that book." What am I trying to say is Cryptic don't you Bungie this game. Bungie did everything they could possibly to make players leave Destiny 2. You guys are heading down that path, you started to detour and make the game FUN again at a point but then you stopped.
fo
A fantasy MMO the player is suppose to feel powerful. As a player a times we don't whether is nerfs to gear, stats or player powers I don't know. What happen to making the player feel strong? What happen to making it fun for the player to go grind for gear? In m opinion and most of the community Neverwinter has lost that feeling. Also in my own opinion I actually feel you are not listening to the Neverwinter community you hear us but NOT listening. Listening is a skilled that must be learned, hearing is an involuntary action. You "hear" but you don't "listen".

Case and point there are 2 Heroic Encounters in The Elemental Evil Campaign that are broken Drowned Shore Help the Sea Elves and Reclamation Rock Protect the merchants, in 2018 have yet to be fixed. Nerfing bondings enchantments, recent CW nerf, the SH weapon set mistake again IMO why SH Weapon Set have the same set bonus as I and II. Aren't we in the 3rd installment of these weapon set? Yet it's the same bonus with slight increased stats, slightly increased. So why would anyone want to use a them? just for the slightly increased stats.

Your guys are very stingy with stats, drop rates on anything in this game. I know the drop rates are catered to the hardcore players that have time to farm and grind. I will not get into the Ultimate Enchanting Stones drop rates the fact that PC players on preview talked about the drop rates, then when it went live they spoke and complain about the drop rates, then it's release on XB and PS4 with the same horrible drop rates. All those months of maintenance past no one thought it would be wise to increase the drop rates on UESs. That's how I know you are not listening you only hear us. These are some of the things off the top of my head at the moment but the list is long and you read the forums like we do so you know what issues we as players are having with your game.

Now not to just sit hear and bash the Devs there are a lot of things that I like about the game. The graphics are beautiful, how you brought a table top card game to life is amazing. The mechanics are good when they work right, the lighting is beautiful. As an artist in both traditional and CG I appreciate things like this. The gear is beautiful designed from weapons and equipment all look and feel unique. I love it I wish that I was on the level design team because my background is on asset design. But I am in the Navy so my time is limited during the day but I still enjoy playing NW.

I know it sounds like I am complaining and not making any sense, but I'm underway right now(out to sea) with limited internet capabilities. I just wanted to get my thought down in the forum.

Here is a link to a video where a small development team about the size of Cryptic or maybe smaller that actually "LISTENS" to their player community. Digital Extremes makes another game MMORPG that I love to play and they listen, they actually do what most game developers don't do they listen. And that's why Warframe has gotten so much better over the years. I will be the 1st t admit when I 1st played it I put it down after about 1 hour. I did not do that with NW I played it for about 5 hours straight.

You can skip right to time 10:20 to hear the Devs actually speaking. It amazes me to hear Devs asking the community for feedback on how to better the game, so that their experience with the game is improved.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vAUHSLcqhrk&t=795s

Sorry about the rambling. I just wish Cryptic would listen to us, instead of only hearing us.

minotaur2857 · February 2018

I empathise with a lot of what you say, but I think it's in the culture.

I came here from a dead game that was originally made by Cryptic (City of Heroes). When it was in Cryptic, a lot of the same issues NW has manifested there and can be best summed up as "You will play the game OUR way". Anything that was fun but outside of the vision of the devs was stamped on with nerfs. The game got into trouble, Cryptic sold it to NCSoft, NCSoft let the devs get on with it, the devs listened more to the players and it flourished for many more years and is still loved by its former players 5 years after its closure.

One of the lessons from CoH that the NW devs REALLY should take, is that the forum views are from a very skewed small minority of players. Many players almost never post and don't get their views heard. You would think from the forums that everybody is either new and keen or 17K+ and finding the game not difficult enough.

CoH published the fact that (translating to NW terms, and doing it from memory so figures could be out by a bit but the sense is right) only 5% of accounts even had a level 70 (slightly different model, levelling was very much part of the fun, and alting much more worthwhile, I had 250+ chars on my main account, 85 max level), and 0.0(0)1 of accounts had a 17K+. Once the players understood this, it was accepted that endgame content was not the total focus of the devs.

I'd love to see a similar stats profile for NW, but my strong suspicion is that there aren't a vast number of bleeding edge characters, but their views are being disproportionately heard. Trying to keep the game balanced and challenging for the 17-18Ks is RUINING it for everybody else, and I've seen a lot of people with 13-15K mains particularly DPS playing a lot less, refusing to spend any more real money or giving up entirely.

gromovnipljesak · February 2018

We all get pissed off because of the bs the devs do, sure, but if this game was player managed, it would die quicker than Stephen Hawking in Chernobyl exclusion zone.

Unknown · February 2018

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dagambit · February 2018

minotaur2857 said:
"You will play the game OUR way".

I think this is the approach they are taking with NW. That's why the 2 DC meta was hit as hard as it was. They want 3 DPS, 1 Tank, and 1 DC to run dungeons. I understand the change and understand why it was done. A lot of DPS class get left out or kicked out of groups. I main a TR and I have been kicked out of T9 groups because we need more DPS always comes about. I had to tweak my build last week to get more armor pen and critical strike. But I have also finished T9 with my previous build because groups actually knew how to defeat the last boss by stay out of the red and killing the mobs quickly. But forcing people to play with 3 DPS when they don't want to is another version of "you will play the game OUR way." just like RQ's. Support classes make the dungeon runs quicker and that's what players are looking for speed and efficiency. Efficiency is something Cryptic uses a lot but their changes some of the time are always less efficient for the player.

If Massive can turn The Division around I am sure Cryptic can turn Neverwinter around if they listen to feedback.

pitshade · February 2018

dagambit said:
That's why the 2 DC meta was hit as hard as it was.

Erm, what? The changes they made are as close to meaningless as they can be.

Unknown · February 2018

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pitshade · February 2018

There is no fight. Devs nerfed DC but not in any meaningful way. TI, AA, HG, FF, BtS, PoD and Exaltation will still play a role in the meta group.

zanaspus1 · February 2018

Everyone always blames the devs, but it is always the suits that are at fault.

Let's say you stamp out widgets for a living. Are you more likely to listen to the widget users or the guy who signs your paycheck? Even if you know how to improve the widgets you make, the boss always wants them done how the boss wants them done.

In the minds of suits, new content is always more important than bug fixes. In their minds any change to the game that improves their (admittedly short-term in most instances) bottom line is good. Most suits don't play online games. They are far too busy and "important" to dally in such garbage.

Instead of writing forum posts to the devs, write letters to the suits describing how their bottom line could be improved. If enough folks did this, change would happen. However, I fear that in a world of growing rampant apathy and illiteracy, this will not happen.

Just my two cents.

minotaur2857 · February 2018

zanaspus1 said:
Everyone always blames the devs, but it is always the suits that are at fault.

Let's say you stamp out widgets for a living. Are you more likely to listen to the widget users or the guy who signs your paycheck? Even if you know how to improve the widgets you make, the boss always wants them done how the boss wants them done.

In the minds of suits, new content is always more important than bug fixes. In their minds any change to the game that improves their (admittedly short-term in most instances) bottom line is good. Most suits don't play online games. They are far too busy and "important" to dally in such garbage.

Instead of writing forum posts to the devs, write letters to the suits describing how their bottom line could be improved. If enough folks did this, change would happen. However, I fear that in a world of growing rampant apathy and illiteracy, this will not happen.

Just my two cents.

There is a large element of truth in this, but it's quite difficult to get at the suits, so forum posts get written in the hope the customer facing forum people pass the sentiment on. For CoH, the problem initially we KNOW was not a suit at the publisher, it was the head of the developer who had the vision of how the game should be played, and nobody was allowed to enjoy it any other way.

Here my suspicion is that some, possibly most of it is coming from PWE as almost every change seems to come with a backdrop of "how can we wring more money out of our players" rather than "how can we improve the experience so that the players want to spend more" approach that a developer led strategy team would use.

heraldfayez · February 2018

the current problem this game has is advancing from level 70 to end game

NWO is really good game has many good features one of best if not best combat system out there but no matter how many good things you have it will never be enough to keep players intrested if they are not satisfied i don't see why devs don't approach players and work with them toward improving the game i know recently there has been improvements in communication thnx to julia but the devs still do not about real problems with player publicly like the current queu system and how it's impossible to get 36K out of it even for 18K players because 1) you can never finish some dungeons like TONG with 3 DPS Tank / cleric and this was discussed so many times it just is not possible right now (it can be done but will take no less than an hour)
the trials can also never be done as for epic dungeon you gotta be very lucky to get low tier dung so the queu while is great designe it's just not good as it is right now let alone the bots using it and other things.

the point is currently new players that reach level 70 will have an extremly hard time reaching end game unless they use thier wallet so the devs need to look up this problem because without new players and old players keep leaving because of dissatisfaction we won't have a bright future awaiting us

Peace

preechr · February 2018

<blockquote class="Quote" rel="zanaspus1">Everyone always blames the devs, but it is always the suits that are at fault.

Let's say you stamp out widgets for a living. Are you more likely to listen to the widget users or the guy who signs your paycheck? Even if you know how to improve the widgets you make, the boss always wants them done how the boss wants them done.

In the minds of suits, new content is always more important than bug fixes. In their minds any change to the game that improves their (admittedly short-term in most instances) bottom line is good. Most suits don't play online games. They are far too busy and "important" to dally in such garbage.

Instead of writing forum posts to the devs, write letters to the suits describing how their bottom line could be improved. If enough folks did this, change would happen. However, I fear that in a world of growing rampant apathy and illiteracy, this will not happen.

Just my two cents.</blockquote>

You bring up a good point

The best case scenario for forum comments along the lines of “This or That Change/Bug has a negative effect on Cryptic’s bottom line” only ends in a conversation between an executive and a developer where the executive is thinking “Who does this code monkey think he is? He didn’t even go to business school!”

People that run technology and software companies are generally sociopaths in my experience, and I mean that in the nicest way

But that’s just what I’ve seen... I’m sure there’s none of those folks calling the shots at Cryptic, but I’m not sure going over the heads of those directly in our line of sight would accomplish anything

People in that line of work live on quarterly plans that are based on the graphs and charts they want to show to the board members at the next meeting, and unless you happen to be golfing with them there’s nothing you could say that wouldn’t just reinforce what they already feel about their ideas

Let’s say your “Frustrated Letter from an Angry Customer” found its way to the standing desk of the big wig that is convinced his tie choices make people respect him

First, why would he care what you think? You spend hours a day playing video games instead of running a software company

So you should probably sign your letter Jeff Bezos

Your next big problem is that the business concern your letter represents is already being taken care of, and that’s not going to be so easy to get around, Jeff

Frustrated and Angry Customers that write passionate letters are the ones that aren’t leaving the game, and I’m sure there’s data that shows that customers like you are the ones that are more likely to convert a portion of their Hot Pocket budget to zen

Even if you got a hundred players to send similar letters, that would only be a hundred pats on the back... Keep in mind the pretending to be Jeff Bezos idea doesn’t scale well

preechr · February 2018

not sure why my HTML isn't showing up... was trying to quote/respond to @zanaspus1

dagambit · February 2018

spunkmeier said:

dagambit said:
That's why the 2 DC meta was hit as hard as it was.

pitshade said:
Erm, what? The changes they made are as close to meaningless as they can be.
I sense a fight coming on here!

Nah no fight at all. I was trying to say that the Devs created the 2 DC meta, and now they are trying to eliminate it with just nerf powers a they normally do. Its not easy for most new players that want to run TONG to hit that 85% armor pen. without spending money because they want to play TONG. Basically they created the meta and they don't know how to adjust it without nerfing it. Its just another way for the devs to say play the game our way. We want 3 dps running in dungeons not 2 DC. And end game players want to run with 2DC. RQs is play the dungeons we want you to play for AD, not the dungeon you want to run for AD.

NWO went from a game that was play the way you want to play, to play the way the devs want you to play. I still enjoy the game but end game is totally boring, leveling up is a grindy grind. But I still enjoy the game when I have had a hard day at work.

Devs that listen

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