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When will u fix that HUGE difficulty gap between epic dungeons?

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  • manipulosmanipulos Member Posts: 235 Arc User
    micky1p00 said:


    Some forget that all the "evil geared" people, started at exactly the same place as everyone else, at the beach talking with private
    Wilfred, with nothing.

    Ah poor Private Wilfred, at least I can set him free when I run the Death Forge mini-dungeon...and if you hang out for a few more seconds he'll even drop you some loot! He was a giver to the very end.
  • chemjeffchemjeff Member Posts: 544 Arc User
    @micky1poo Look, I am not complaining about my own ability to finish these dungeons. I can finish them all just fine with my own circle of friends and guildies.
    micky1p00 said:

    chemjeff said:

    I would ask that before you condemn a good chunk of the playerbase as "bad players" that you first try to walk a mile in their shoes. Try public solo queueing for FBI a few times and see what happens. I will tell you what I find, that most teams will not get past the first boss.

    Why would anyone will do this?
    To get a group of people who can't communicate? That were hoping for quick AD on unguarded alts in RQ? In which half will change char to another to avoid this.
    Maybe to get 'great players' who will leave on first wipe, or others who are whiny and toxic.

    So please do tell, why would anyone solo public queue for the more 'end-game' stuff. Anyone with any measurement of expiriance avoid it like a plague unless they want some random challenge or if do public queue, it's not solo.
    It's kinda telling that you immediately jump to solo public queue as full of "whiny and toxic" players just wanting cheap fast AD. I don't immediately assume bad motives on the part of fellow players. Why do you? That is just jaded cynicism talking.

    I'm willing to bet I have solo queued into RED far more than you have, and my experience is that I have only seen "whiny and toxic" players a small minority of the time. I have seen support classes who didn't seem to know what they were doing, but in the vast majority of cases, at least they give the dungeon a shot.
  • chemjeffchemjeff Member Posts: 544 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    micky1p00 said:


    Why one doesn't form groups? Not with guild? Not with alliance? Not with custom channels?

    Because I enjoy trying to help newer people who are struggling.

    Not everyone who plays this game is just in it only for me me me at all times in all ways.
  • sundance777sundance777 Member Posts: 1,097 Arc User
    Wait that was Wilford on the beach?

    I too think there is a major gap in the difficulty between CN and FBI, but I think it is mostly because of the frost resist mechanic. I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing, but maybe it would be nice to have a dungeon in between...maybe a future mod can have a T2.4 and an uber legendary T4 version of the dungeon, sort like the way the leveling dungeons have epic versions...just a thought.

    Anyway, there are many ways to gear up your character to make the FBI content very playable in a moderately geared group, or even in the public Q. You are correct that the public Q does have its share of failed runs, and I too wish I could have more success in the public Q when I am not in the mood to manually find 4 others. You certainly however do not need 2 DC's to do FBI or MSP, but as stated before the players and builds need to be decent and patient to figure out the dungeon.

    On some level I think it is intentional that the game allows you in a dungeon at a potentially lower than realistic IL (my opinion) to see how hard it is to motivate you to work on your character more. In the end there are rewards based on RNG, the journey should be fun and challenging (whatever that means to each of us) and not simply an easy button for success. If it was too easy it would not be worth playing for many of us.

    I assume you are after AD from the random Q which started this post. If that is the case, I would suggest you either find a few friends or guildies to drag with you or just skip that random Q if it is causing you too much grief. You can max your AD in many other combinations in less time, especially if the Q is taking 45 minutes to pop.
    TR - Sun: 16000 IL
    OP - Sunshine: 16000 IL

    Casual Dailies
  • micky1p00micky1p00 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,594 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    chemjeff said:

    micky1p00 said:


    Why one doesn't form groups? Not with guild? Not with alliance? Not with custom channels?

    Because I enjoy trying to help newer people who are struggling.

    Not everyone who plays this game is just in it only for me me me at all times in all ways.
    And how that helps them ?

    How about introduce them to proper channels when they can get actual help, and not fail with you?
    How about queue with the minimal team to complete the dungeon, like most people do, for example a good DC and tank can usually carry most pugs in FBI, so you have DC, why not actually help...

    Or how about help on a large scale, form a channel to help people, or be active in the one your ex-guild leader made, in which ironically I was participating more than you.. until it died.

    Failing together with others and giving new players the impression that even geared veteran player can't complete content X, with IL Y while blaming those evil people that do, how dare they, they must use 'undocumented features' because it can't be otherwise, is not help.

    BTW, one of those people you complain about, usually does most of the runs as DC together with an OP and carry/help public queued FBIs.
    But as I've said, it's easier to throw blame and HAMSTER-umptions.
  • micky1p00micky1p00 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,594 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    chemjeff said:


    It's kinda telling that you immediately jump to solo public queue as full of "whiny and toxic" players just wanting cheap fast AD. I don't immediately assume bad motives on the part of fellow players. Why do you? That is just jaded cynicism talking.

    1. I've solo queued at mod0, experienced the fun of pug queue, and with it the joys of /lfg, almost quit the game, found custom channels, still playing (unfortunately in some ways).
    2. You do assume, not only assume, you blame, please read your own posts, especially those that not here.
    3.I read those mentioned posts, and expiriance.
    chemjeff said:


    I'm willing to bet I have solo queued into RED far more than you have, and my experience is that I have only seen "whiny and toxic" players a small minority of the time. I have seen support classes who didn't seem to know what they were doing, but in the vast majority of cases, at least they give the dungeon a shot.

    You are 100% correct. I don't solo queue anything if I can avoid it, unless i'm really bored, and usually I can avoid it and I'm not that bored to entertain myself with self inflicted pain.

    On the other hand, those that not solo I've queued and could have been done were quit by everyone except by my duo+ on the first wipe.
    You know how many ask for explanation of how to finish something ? 0
    How many ask for help? Or say that this is they first run and they do want to complete it? Minority.
    One attempt a player pretended to not know English just to avoid to do RQ MSP.

    So no, new players in custom channels and guilds "give dungeons a shot". PubQ is for people to quit when RQ doesn't give them what they want for easy AD (and the blame here is on the great design, it was foreseen, it was foretold, and the devs still made it so). So, again, no, I don't want to help people who quit dungeons on first failure, nor I want to bang my head over no-communication.

    A bit back to topic, you speak of walking a mile, 'bad-player' can't finish content X or Y usually not specifically because they don't mesh their face on the keyboard correctly, but usually those that pug just don't know better, they don't know that there are forums, reddit, discord, custom channels, where they can ask for help, builds, guilds, people who can run with them, etc.. Some just don't know, like we all didn't know before we found out, others just wont communicate. The first can be helped, the second, not so much.
    So how about instead of keeping them in the dark, and trying to adjust the content to be easier and easier and easier until any random key press can finish it all at minimal gear, lets try to actually help people to discover better ways that are not solo pugQ.


  • chemjeffchemjeff Member Posts: 544 Arc User
    micky1p00 said:

    chemjeff said:

    micky1p00 said:


    Why one doesn't form groups? Not with guild? Not with alliance? Not with custom channels?

    Because I enjoy trying to help newer people who are struggling.

    Not everyone who plays this game is just in it only for me me me at all times in all ways.
    And how that helps them ?

    How about introduce them to proper channels when they can get actual help, and not fail with you?
    How about queue with the minimal team to complete the dungeon, like most people do, for example a good DC and tank can usually carry most pugs in FBI, so you have DC, why not actually help...

    Or how about help on a large scale, form a channel to help people, or be active in the one your ex-guild leader made, in which ironically I was participating more than you.. until it died.
    Those are all good suggestions. Maybe I will take them up some time. I do solo public queue on my DC as well as on my GWF, by the way. My ex-guild leader? You seem to know a lot about me for some reason.
    micky1p00 said:


    Failing together with others and giving new players the impression that even geared veteran player can't complete content X, with IL Y while blaming those evil people that do, how dare they, they must use 'undocumented features' because it can't be otherwise, is not help.

    I have never blamed geared players or called them evil just for finishing dungeons. I *do* blame some of them for purposefully trivializing the game by using undocumented features to speed-run through content, yes. But not for just finishing it, no.
    micky1p00 said:


    BTW, one of those people you complain about, usually does most of the runs as DC together with an OP and carry/help public queued FBIs.
    But as I've said, it's easier to throw blame and HAMSTER-umptions.

    Like you have about me?

    Look I have made some accusations about people, and I admit, some were in the heat of the moment and not entirely fair. That was wrong, I am sorry about that, and I will do a better job of calmly responding. But you have also made unfair judgments about me. You have assumed that I am only whining because I cannot finish these dungeons myself, which is wrong. You said I blame geared people and call them evil for just finishing dungeons, which is wrong. Perhaps both of us could stop and not throw around so much invective. I think we could both use a bit of humility on this subject. My overall point here is that it would be nice if everyone were to view the game in the shoes of others for a little while. As I mentioned in another discussion, it is as if all of us are playing different games. My experience is not the same as your experience. You say that this other person and his buddy can carry random teams through FBI on their DC and OP characters. That has not been my experience and frankly I would love to see a video of this, if for no other reason than just for the educational aspect of it.
  • dupeksdupeks Member Posts: 1,789 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    I don't play as much as I used to, but when I play during the week I'm often on during weird hours that aren't super conducive to running harder content with my old groups. All that is to say I quite often find myself LFM RED+skrim guild --> then alliance --> sometimes channels --> then just queue up and fill through the system.

    I usually do this with my DC and OP, as filling RED it takes too long with dps classes (skrims ok).

    If we have heals+tank, we could usually carry anything up to and including FBI. But we rarely do. Why? Because a majority of the time people leave before we even get through the first plateau on the hill climb and 3manning FBI is not a good use of our time.

    The problem is not the difficulty of FBI or MSP per se, it's that players want a little more control over what they sign up for. The reality is that there is a gap in player intent and RQ delivered result. FBI / MSP are run for resource / rare drops, or for fun when you have a group you want to run with. They are incompatible with AD-farming alts running doing a daily routine. If the world was different and player behaviors/habits were different then maybe it could work... but not with how things are in-game today.

    I think that restructuring the RQ system would benefit the game. Let players choose a little better what they want to sign up for. Shameless plug for my suggested rework.
  • chemjeffchemjeff Member Posts: 544 Arc User
    dupeks said:

    I don't play as much as I used to, but when I play during the week I'm often on during weird hours that aren't super conducive to running harder content with my old groups. All that is to say I quite often find myself LFM RED+skrim guild --> then alliance --> sometimes channels --> then just queue up and fill through the system.

    I usually do this with my DC and OP, as filling RED it takes too long with dps classes (skrims ok).

    If we have heals+tank, we could usually carry anything up to and including FBI. But we rarely do. Why? Because a majority of the time people leave before we even get through the first plateau on the hill climb and 3manning FBI is not a good use of our time.

    The problem is not the difficulty of FBI or MSP per se, it's that players want a little more control over what they sign up for. The reality is that there is a gap in player intent and RQ delivered result. FBI / MSP are run for resource / rare drops, or for fun when you have a group you want to run with. They are incompatible with AD-farming alts running doing a daily routine. If the world was different and player behaviors/habits were different then maybe it could work... but not with how things are in-game today.

    I think that restructuring the RQ system would benefit the game. Let players choose a little better what they want to sign up for. Shameless plug for my suggested rework.

    This is broadly consistent with my own experience as well. There is a big disconnect between the expectations for REQ and the reality, when it comes to FBI and MSP.

    In my experience, it's about 60% or so of the time that the team disbands even before getting to the first boss, because it is such a struggle to climb the hill that perhaps 15 minutes have already elapsed to kill just the few first set of giants. I don't think the dungeon should be made easier, but what would be wrong with, say, permitting another support character to fill one of the DPS spots for REQ for these two dungeons? That way, the expectations and the reality would fall closer in line for solo queuing random groups.
  • thefabricantthefabricant Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    chemjeff said:

    @micky1poo Look, I am not complaining about my own ability to finish these dungeons. I can finish them all just fine with my own circle of friends and guildies.

    micky1p00 said:

    chemjeff said:

    I would ask that before you condemn a good chunk of the playerbase as "bad players" that you first try to walk a mile in their shoes. Try public solo queueing for FBI a few times and see what happens. I will tell you what I find, that most teams will not get past the first boss.

    Why would anyone will do this?
    To get a group of people who can't communicate? That were hoping for quick AD on unguarded alts in RQ? In which half will change char to another to avoid this.
    Maybe to get 'great players' who will leave on first wipe, or others who are whiny and toxic.

    So please do tell, why would anyone solo public queue for the more 'end-game' stuff. Anyone with any measurement of expiriance avoid it like a plague unless they want some random challenge or if do public queue, it's not solo.
    It's kinda telling that you immediately jump to solo public queue as full of "whiny and toxic" players just wanting cheap fast AD. I don't immediately assume bad motives on the part of fellow players. Why do you? That is just jaded cynicism talking.

    You're right, most of the time, they don't communicate at all regardless of how much you try to engage conversation and most of them probably aren't doing it for AD either, they are doing it because they don't know any better. Then, most of the time, those that do respond, only respond with hostility and are the whiny players, that is assuming they can speak English at all, because you know, sometimes you do end up waiting for 30 minutes at the first boss in FBI because there is someone who can't speak English who doesn't understand that they need to leave the instance because, despite you warning them not to release if they died, they did so and they cannot rejoin the party due to the invisible wall that was there (this happened to me quite a few times in the past, such a great way to waste time). Chances are that person doesn't have VIP and so cannot teleport out and in and if they don't, you cannot vote kick them due to valuable green items on the ground.
    chemjeff said:

    You say that this other person and his buddy can carry random teams through FBI on their DC and OP characters. That has not been my experience and frankly I would love to see a video of this, if for no other reason than just for the educational aspect of it.

    Hi. Its the devil Sharpedge here, whose "coterie" keeps "ruining" Neverwinter for you. There are 2 reasons why I don't video it. The first is because there is no point, its exactly the same as 2 manning something, except that there are 3 other people there. Back in mod 5 when stuff was even easier, I would solo random queue and then it would be the same as soloing except with 4 other people. I don't see any reason to do video that except to show off and if you actually count the number of videos that I personally upload you will find that number to be quite small. The second reason is because, even if I wanted to, I live in South Africa and have a terrible upload speed and it would likely take me days to upload a video like that, a video which I wouldn't want to upload anyhow.

    My experience of random queues is that you accept when you queue that you are carrying x number of players, where x is the number of players who are not friends queuing with you. I could just private queue with 2 instead but I see that as selfish, so I don't. When I first started doing this many mods ago, I tried to engage the people I queued into, even if it was just things like saying hi. I quickly gave up on that because I was normally met with no response, or when I was met with a response it was outright hostility. Every time I have actually queued into a talkative person who was not hostile, it actually stuck in my memory, because it was so unexpected.

    There is also no point to trying to help players in random queues help themselves, because if you try to explain what they can do better, they either ignore you or tell you how awesome they are you and how you should shut up because you don't know their class better than they do, regardless of how politely you phrase what they should be doing. Your best bet? To quietly do your own thing, treat it as a solo/duo dungeon and after they all wipe and you complete the dungeon, maybe 1 of them will ask for help. Chances are, they won't, but the people who do want to improve probably will and this way you avoid talking to all the others who will just be an HAMSTER about it.

    And as for, "at least they try" what they do, can't really be counted as trying because for the most part, they will make no effort to try use different skills, or to think things through. I have random queued tong a total of 5 times, once I did it duo with a friend, the other 4 times alone and you know how much team work and co-ordination there was? Close to 0. When you random queue tong solo, you are literally hoping you get 1 dps who is semi competent, otherwise it is a guaranteed fail.
  • chemjeffchemjeff Member Posts: 544 Arc User


    I think one reason our experiences are different with solo public queueing is that I view it as a team effort, but you clearly don't.
    It's you and your buddy dragging everybody else through, and they might as well not even be there as far as you're concerned. I try not to treat my teammates that way. There are times when I do, admittedly, but most of the time I try not to. For instance I try to always let the tank go first into the mobs even if my GWF could just as well tank the mobs instead.

    There are two experiences that I had that were quite formative in how I view public queueing. The first was back in Mod 2 or so, during the old Dungeon Delves event, I went with a bunch of strangers into Epic Spellplague, back when it was still hard. We spent about four hours in that dungeon, we really gave it our best shot, but we couldn't quite beat it. We got close to beating the final boss many times, and we all finally gave up when we all ran out of healing potions (this was before VIP). But in trying to beat it, all of us, a bunch of strangers, really were working as a team. It truly was a great experience for me.

    The second was when I started a new character, back in Mod 8/9 or so, and I was trying to build my character up, so I would public queue for the easy stuff like KR. And time and again, the geared/advanced players would just run ahead without any consideration whatsoever for how I or the other weaker players were doing. I wasn't really a part of the team at all, I was just the "loot collector", running behind collecting the loot for everyone else to roll need/greed on. It was humiliating, and I do not want others to feel that way with my behavior now when my characters are much stronger. Even to this day, I don't run ahead in KR unless I already see everyone else doing it. I imagine the players that you are dragging through dungeons must feel similarly. No wonder they respond hostilely to you - you are humiliating them.

    I generally don't offer unsolicited advice to strangers on what they should do to improve, because (1) I don't know very much about other classes besides the two I play most frequently, so I can't give much advice, and (2) even if I did, I know that if some stranger started telling me how to play my character, I would get defensive about it too even if the advice was good advice, that is just a natural reaction. So I let people play their characters as they like, and I only ever think about offering advice if it's clear that we are all struggling and could use some change. Yes that means I occasionally see things that make me cringe, like a DO DC using Hammer of Fate instead of Hallowed Ground (just saw that today, actually) but I would rather have us finish as a team instead of everyone finish with the "optimal" powers that I dictate to all of them that they must use.

    And by the way, Sharp, I never called you a "devil" and I never said you are "ruining Neverwinter". I do think that your intentional trivialization of the game is directing the devs to bend the game in the direction that you want them to bend it, which is with more harder group content, which may or may not coincide with what the rest of us want. Frankly I don't think anything in this game that the devs would be willing to do could ever be challenging for you, so I personally would prefer if they would stop trying to give harder and harder challenges to players like you (which is a futile task) and instead make content that will more broadly challenge all of us in a more appropriate manner. I am actually glad that you took my suggestion, and advocate for the new trial that the 1st/2nd boss in the new trial should be farmable for those who can't finish the whole thing. I think that is how it should be for TONG actually, for the first boss anyway.

    So yeah, if you approach solo queueing as "I'm doing those lowly peons a favor by dragging them through", then you are likely to get poor response from your teammates. But if you approach it in the spirit of teamwork I think your response will be different.
  • thefabricantthefabricant Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    chemjeff said:


    I think one reason our experiences are different with solo public queueing is that I view it as a team effort, but you clearly don't.
    It's you and your buddy dragging everybody else through, and they might as well not even be there as far as you're concerned. I try not to treat my teammates that way. There are times when I do, admittedly, but most of the time I try not to. For instance I try to always let the tank go first into the mobs even if my GWF could just as well tank the mobs instead.

    There are two experiences that I had that were quite formative in how I view public queueing. The first was back in Mod 2 or so, during the old Dungeon Delves event, I went with a bunch of strangers into Epic Spellplague, back when it was still hard. We spent about four hours in that dungeon, we really gave it our best shot, but we couldn't quite beat it. We got close to beating the final boss many times, and we all finally gave up when we all ran out of healing potions (this was before VIP). But in trying to beat it, all of us, a bunch of strangers, really were working as a team. It truly was a great experience for me.

    The second was when I started a new character, back in Mod 8/9 or so, and I was trying to build my character up, so I would public queue for the easy stuff like KR. And time and again, the geared/advanced players would just run ahead without any consideration whatsoever for how I or the other weaker players were doing. I wasn't really a part of the team at all, I was just the "loot collector", running behind collecting the loot for everyone else to roll need/greed on. It was humiliating, and I do not want others to feel that way with my behavior now when my characters are much stronger. Even to this day, I don't run ahead in KR unless I already see everyone else doing it. I imagine the players that you are dragging through dungeons must feel similarly. No wonder they respond hostilely to you - you are humiliating them.

    I generally don't offer unsolicited advice to strangers on what they should do to improve, because (1) I don't know very much about other classes besides the two I play most frequently, so I can't give much advice, and (2) even if I did, I know that if some stranger started telling me how to play my character, I would get defensive about it too even if the advice was good advice, that is just a natural reaction. So I let people play their characters as they like, and I only ever think about offering advice if it's clear that we are all struggling and could use some change. Yes that means I occasionally see things that make me cringe, like a DO DC using Hammer of Fate instead of Hallowed Ground (just saw that today, actually) but I would rather have us finish as a team instead of everyone finish with the "optimal" powers that I dictate to all of them that they must use.

    And by the way, Sharp, I never called you a "devil" and I never said you are "ruining Neverwinter". I do think that your intentional trivialization of the game is directing the devs to bend the game in the direction that you want them to bend it, which is with more harder group content, which may or may not coincide with what the rest of us want. Frankly I don't think anything in this game that the devs would be willing to do could ever be challenging for you, so I personally would prefer if they would stop trying to give harder and harder challenges to players like you (which is a futile task) and instead make content that will more broadly challenge all of us in a more appropriate manner. I am actually glad that you took my suggestion, and advocate for the new trial that the 1st/2nd boss in the new trial should be farmable for those who can't finish the whole thing. I think that is how it should be for TONG actually, for the first boss anyway.

    So yeah, if you approach solo queueing as "I'm doing those lowly peons a favor by dragging them through", then you are likely to get poor response from your teammates. But if you approach it in the spirit of teamwork I think your response will be different.
    1) I don't run ahead of everyone else, I usually wait and they usually die anyway, but thanks for assuming how I play. I am not humiliating anyone, but if you want to twist my words and believe I am, good for you.

    2) I normally don't out of the blue tell people what to do unless they are continually failing. I've done runs with CWs using Ice Storm and Shield and standing at range and casting IT under their feat (when there are no mobs anywhere nearby) but never said a word. However, if I solo queue tong and we get to the 2nd boss and the group keeps failing, I will tell people what they could do to stop failing, because I know that they could do better if guess what, they stopped casting that ice storm and funnily enough, I can't quite solo tong yet.

    3)
    Sounds pretty much like you think I am the devil to me. Or when you blame me for the bonding nerfs in game, or the countless other times you have blamed me when something doesn't quite go the way you want it. Either you think I am the devil or the god of misfortune, pick 1. Just because I don't comment on everything I see you say, doesn't mean I don't read it in legit, or in other channels. Clearly you think I am blind and don't see your posts like this, but even though I will freely admit my eyesight is poor, I can still read.

    4) Just because I approach it with the attitude where I know I am carrying people, doesn't mean I tell them that, or act that way towards them. It is quite possible to mentally think 1 thing without portraying that to the group. When you say hi and the only person who responds is the only other person who queued with you, it can't be called a team effort, there is 0 communication even when you try. Random FBI and SP is not bad because the dungeons are hard, its solely due to the quality of players that queue for them. It is your responsibility as a player when you queue for something to decide whether or not you are capable of doing it and you should probably read up on the dungeon before you try it, because if you aren't capable, you are inconveniencing 4 other people. The problem in this game is, most of the people who random queue do not have this mindset and expect to be spoonfed. 9/10 groups that fail tong, fail it because the players in those groups refuse to use the right powers and go into the dungeon with stuff like 10% resistance ignored.

    5) There are lots of people who trivialize stuff in Neverwinter and most of them have nothing to do with me. Those Russian tong videos? I know maybe 1 or 2 russian players and I probably know none of the people in those videos. I don't know most of the players on PS4 either. I know some PC players and some Xbox players, but if you blame me for every group that trivializes tong, then it is just sad. You don't need to use any bugs or exploits for it either, you just need to use your brain and be in a group where 4 other people use their brain. You know why I random queue? Because I like doing fight mechanics and if I don't random queue I probably don't get to see them. Also because random queue players are less toxic than many channels or lfg. The problem is, the moment you get a group of people who know what they are doing in neverwinter, even if they run stuff with next to no gear, if they just look at monsters the monsters die, which is sad. And no, I don't want to deliberately play badly to make stuff harder.

    6) I never took your suggestion for anything, I just thought the design of the trial was bad.

    7) If you don't make stuff harder, players will never get better. Bad players won't magically go away by making easier content. Harder content means players need to get better to be able to do it, which results in players putting in more effort into learning how to play and thus better players over all. Make stuff easier and hardcore players quit. I have played a few games with a much higher skill cap than Neverwinter and guess what, the average random queue players in those games would laugh at the hardest dungeons in Neverwinter. 1 thing I would like to add however is that the hardest content is not intended to be finished by everyone, it is supposed to be exclusionary, because what is the point of "challenging content" if it only challenges the lowest common denominator.
    Post edited by thefabricant on
  • chemjeffchemjeff Member Posts: 544 Arc User
    1. I am genuinely surprised that you solo queue for anything because for a while now, you have come across as an arrogant jerk. And evidently also a thin-skinned one since comments on another forum have triggered you so badly. So, I apologize for the insinuation that you don't solo queue. But I still don't think you approach it from a spirit of teamwork. It is still with an attitude of "let me drag you unworthy peons through this easy content for you". Maybe you don't intentionally humiliate people. But patronizing people isn't much better.

    2. I never blamed you for every single trivialization in the game, that is simply incorrect. I do blame the speed-runners, which is a group that is larger than just yourself. Mostly, for publicly posting video after video of themselves trivializing content and thereby publicly humiliating the devs. I realize you alone don't post very many of these videos, but your buddies certainly do. How exactly do you expect devs to respond to that? They respond with nerfs and that is what we have seen. First it was the nerf to Pre-Mod6 sets, then it was nerfs to Bondings, with other nerfs along the way. Are these nerfs DIRECTLY and COMPLETELY attributable to the speed-runners? No, of course not. But I contend that there is a not-insignificant amount of reputation-saving going on. It's embarrassing to announce the release of a super-hard dungeon and then have speed runners posting videos basically saying "lol no it's not".

    3. Perhaps not everyone plays this game because they want to be super-awesome video game players beating super-hard content in super-fast amounts of time. I think this is an assumption that you have projected onto this game. This has always been a casual game with a mostly casual audience. No one has said that the game should cater only to the lowest common denominator, but I don't see why it should cater only to the top 1% either, since that seems like a futile effort. I guess your vision of the game is one that has endgame content that is very hard but barely doable for you in the top 1%, and therefore impossible for the bottom 99%, but that we in the 99% will all rise to the occasion and study the game as in-depth as you have and do detailed testing like you have and become just as skilled and proficient and experienced as you have? I'm sorry but this is a game, not a second job. I'm willing to work at being better, but there are limits to the amount of time I'm willing to invest. And if, at the end of the day, there is a dungeon that I just can't beat, then I will just skip it, and the devs' work in developing that dungeon will be largely wasted on me. Lack of super-hard content will drive away 1%ers, yes. But presence of super-frustrating content will drive away 99%ers. We do see that the devs certainly seem to be leaning more and more to your vision of the game so we will see what happens. As things stand right now, I do not plan on participating in the new trial.

    Now, back to the main subject of this thread, which became hijacked by personal nonsense:

    I would be thrilled if the public random queue were adjusted to compensate for the large difficulty gap between CN and FBI. Some thoughts:

    1. Separate the queues as @dupeks and others suggested. Although when this was (repeatedly) brought up on the preview forums, the devs seemed very resistant to this idea. So I doubt this would happen.

    2. Allow the option of another support character to fill one of the three DPS spots. That would ease the transition somewhat.

    3. Increase the rewards for FBI/MSP. That would give additional motivation for people to learn the mechanics of these dungeons.

    4. Give a type of "T2 buff" for random solo queueing into FBI/MSP, similar to the VIP buff that many of us have, or the dragon hoard donation buff for Tiamat. It wouldn't be necessarily gamebreakingly huge, but perhaps it could help a few marginal teams complete it.

    5. Perhaps allow players to re-enter boss fights if they die, similar to the difference between nSVA and mSVA.

    Any other thoughts?
  • thefabricantthefabricant Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
    chemjeff said:

    snip

    1) Who is judging who here? It is not me judging you, it is you judging me and for what? For telling people the truth? That the games content is not hard and that if they are doing it slow it is their own fault and not the games? For telling people that they could build their toons better? For telling people that it is more important to think about what they are doing then just blindly copying? You have no idea how much time I spend helping people who ask for it, as an example, there was someone who I spent 3 hours just trying to explain 1 concept that they didn't understand. Was it a simple concept? Yes. Did I ever tell them they were stupid or demean them in the process? No. Even if I found it very exasperating that they couldn't grasp something so simple, at least they were trying to understand and asking why they should do 1 thing over another rather than just blindly accepting it.

    Here is a thought experiment for you. This video here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-1p_gBQ4qk
    Instead of watching it and calling exploits, do what I did when I watched the first burn by the russian community that was like this. Because guess what, at that time, nobody on our server (that I know of) had done something like this. What did we do? We watched the video, we paused it at various time intervals, we looked at what everyone was using, skills, weapon enchantments, pets, skill timings and asked why. We tried to figure out why they were using what they used and why it was effective, we didn't just say, "this is an exploit." In the process of doing this, we learned stuff and eventually made our own improvements to it.

    I am never going to convince you of my motives, since you seem out to demonize me and no, I am not really thin skinned, I just posted that picture to show you that you are lying when you said you don't see me as evil incarnate in Neverwinter. I am pretty sure you assumed I was not there or reading it, simply because I chose not to respond. That is what you internally do every time you think about me, "oh no, that terrible person who makes everyone feel bad about themselves, who is ruining the game for people like me." So, a word of advice, instead of just always making assumptions of me, how about you ask people who actually know me what they think of me and my motives, instead of just assuming them because you know nothing of me.

    2) Allow me to quote you: "Sharpedge and his Coterie of Groupies," I think it is pretty clear who is the first and foremost problem in your mind, hint, it is the person separated from the group. I don't think the devs are humiliated at all by what we do, in fact, I think the only person at all who I think is humiliated here is you because you are the 1 using the word so much. I have watched content reviews by many developers in many games other than Neverwinter where they talk about their hardest content and they say, "this is hard for our best internal playtesters, but we know there is going to be a small subset of the playerbase that is going to find it trivially easy." Every development studio for every game out there knows this. They know there is a group of players in their game who is going to find no issue with the content at all and they have no problem with it. And yes, they do make some balance decisions around those players, just like they make balance decisions around all the different types of players (if they know what they are doing) because they need to cater for all the different types of players. Here is an article about it and whilst it does kind of oversimplify things and some of it isn't applicable here, it gives an overall explanation of the different types of players. There is nothing humiliating about there being people out there who are better than you. Another game I play, Path of Exile, which has a much more hardcore community than Neverwinter, has players who trivialize content that I struggle with and when I watch videos of them trivializing stuff do I feel humiliated? No, I just see it as something to learn from. They also make changes based on different player types, for example, in some expansions they drastically changed the leveling process while leaving the endgame untouched and now in the most recent expansion they are making changes basically just to the most absolute of endgame, some content that I probably won't get to play, at least, not for a long time.

    3) Not everyone wants to min max, sure, but the people who min max don't want to be forced to do stuff like *ahem* hunts either, or other trivially easy stuff which is designed for non min maxers. My vision for the game is 1 where the chase, min max items are obtained by doing stuff that is challenging for the min maxers and put in challenging, fun and rewarding dungeons. Things like hunts are a design flaw in this game, where BiS gear is obtained by doing something that every single min maxer hates doing, something which is easy, repetitive and uninteresting. I don't expect everyone to min max in the game, but I do expect the type of stuff that min maxers would want to be put where it belongs and then have gear which is less good, but allows you to run that content, be in the other areas. Believe it or not since the fix, the trial is probably easier than tong. Sure, you will spend like 4 hours learning not to be pushed off the platform, but once you got that figured out, there is no challenge to it.

    And on the subject of the thread, random queues were a mistake to begin with. Rather than forcing people to run stuff at random, they should say once every hour randomly select a dungeon from the table, give it some "extra loot" that drops on completion and then if you want that extra loot, you would have to run that dungeon to get it. In this way, you do not compromise player choice (which is what the random queue system does) and you still achieve a system where it is more profitable to run a variety of content rather than just 1 dungeon all the time. To ensure it really is more profitable, I would have it drop something unique which cannot be obtained elsewhere, for example, a loot table of reinforcement kits that give 2% damage type vs x mob (it selects the mob type at random) and have them be unbound, so players who want to can farm for these reinforcement kits and sell them to those who do not want to. They could have somewhat biased drop rates to make the better ones more expensive.
  • micky1p00micky1p00 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,594 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    chemjeff said:

    1. I am genuinely surprised that you solo queue for anything because for a while now, you have come across as an arrogant jerk. And evidently also a thin-skinned one since comments on another forum have triggered you so badly. So, I apologize for the insinuation that you don't solo queue. But I still don't think you approach it from a spirit of teamwork. It is still with an attitude of "let me drag you unworthy peons through this easy content for you". Maybe you don't intentionally humiliate people. But patronizing people isn't much better.

    Think really hard at how you come around as.
    chemjeff said:


    I do blame the speed-runners, which is a group that is larger than just yourself. Mostly, for publicly posting video after video of themselves trivializing content and thereby publicly humiliating the devs.

    What? Publicly humiliating the devs?
    I don't think it's appropriate that you project some issues onto the devs. Attesting to their skin thickness, state of mind, and what they want or not want.

    They should be proud that people rush to do content that they created, that people invest huge amount of time to be the best in the game they've made. What they achieved with a shorthanded team.
    And they should be also ashamed that there are such discrepancy in run times, largely because class balance, content balance and scaling, and bugs and interactions that are not fixed in adequate time.

    Perhaps you are right, we should have the single party communism mentality, where the truth is never allowed, everything is to praise the god sent leader, and the opposition is sent to the Gulags.
    Yes, you are right, posting videos of what happens is what hurts the devs and the game. Obviously not how quietly people duplicated resonators for over half year.
    chemjeff said:


    I realize you alone don't post very many of these videos, but your buddies certainly do. How exactly do you expect devs to respond to that? They respond with nerfs and that is what we have seen.

    Harder monsters. Harder dungeons.
    Or you forgot that MMOs are about progress. Everything will be trivialized, at some point due to power creep. How about the proper response that should happen called rework buffs?
    chemjeff said:


    But I contend that there is a not-insignificant amount of reputation-saving going on. It's embarrassing to announce the release of a super-hard dungeon and then have speed runners posting videos basically saying "lol no it's not".

    Do you actually read what you wrote?
    You just attributed a 5 years old child mentality to a grown professional. I don't know if this is a reasoning that you do in your profession. But from all the software developers I've met (and I've met quite a lot), most are over the childhood reasoning of "they hurt my feelings" and more into the making good product, and make money out of it.

    Again you attribute insults and some weird mentality, to the devs reaction to speed runs. I assume, and from what I saw, I assume correctly, that the devs are emotionally stable, and they know very well that there are issues with the content, and some issues are not easy to solve, and perhaps can't be solved under the constrains and resources they have.
    chemjeff said:


    3. Perhaps not everyone plays this game because they want to be super-awesome video game players beating super-hard content in super-fast amounts of time.

    Good, no one forces anyone to speed run. The fact that there are formula races doesn't mean I want to be or can be the next Michael Schumacher.
    No one prevents anyone from driving safely on their own lane.
    chemjeff said:


    I think this is an assumption that you have projected onto this game. This has always been a casual game with a mostly casual audience.

    This is an assumption that you project into the game.

    A healthy game should have a healthy mix of people, while NW is not a difficult game, it's on the same level as many other modern MMOs.

    When at late mod4 and mod5 most of the not-casual players quit, it hurt the game more than mod6 which came to late (in design) and was overly rushed (in implementation), hurting the population balance more.
    chemjeff said:


    No one has said that the game should cater only to the lowest common denominator, but I don't see why it should cater only to the top 1% either, since that seems like a futile effort.

    That's what you are saying. How is that everyone running tomb left and right, some indeed more and others less, but most end-game geared players run it. So on whom behalf you advocate things here?

    You in one paragraph complain about trivialization of content and in the other complain that content is not trivial enough ?
    chemjeff said:


    I guess your vision of the game is one that has endgame content that is very hard but barely doable for you in the top 1%, and therefore impossible for the bottom 99%, but that we in the 99% will all rise to the occasion and study the game as in-depth as you have and do detailed testing like you have and become just as skilled and proficient and experienced as you have?

    Or just read a guide or ask. I'm not as skilled and proficient so my tomb is about half hour and not 15 minutes. Does it mean want to run etos which I can solo forever? What is that you want?
    chemjeff said:


    I'm sorry but this is a game, not a second job. I'm willing to work at being better, but there are limits to the amount of time I'm willing to invest. And if, at the end of the day, there is a dungeon that I just can't beat, then I will just skip it, and the devs' work in developing that dungeon will be largely wasted on me.

    If you are so casual that you don't have anywhere to progress, nor willing to speed up your progress with real money, the game development is not aimed at you. In terms of revenue you are a loss.

    More so, you are simply wrong, because the hard content of today, is the easiest content of next month. This is how it always was, and all content that was hard at one point, became more and more accessible, some obsolete, other can be ran and ran until now.
    chemjeff said:


    Lack of super-hard content will drive away 1%ers, yes. But presence of super-frustrating content will drive away 99%ers.

    On what is that based on ? You personal feeling?
    Todays hard content for the 10% top is in a month the content for the 20%, and in another month for the 30%. This is how MMOs work.
    At mod0, eDV was unattainable to me, in mod5 it was a casual stroll for fun. At mod 3? CN was hard, we tried over and over and over and over and failed and failed and had fun trying as a group, as friends to get that done, at mod5 we did it at 25minutes.

    You play as solo player, how about walk that mile on other shoes, take your guild, make a group, arrange a time, and each day at the time you've arranged do or try to do the hardest content. Try again and again, look how you improve, until you improve enough and succeed and when you do, come back and tell me how it felt.
    chemjeff said:


    As things stand right now, I do not plan on participating in the new trial.

    Why is that? You've said above you don't have issues personally to finish content. Or in the other place where you wrote about begging to join groups?
    If you don't have issues, then your "I don't plan on participating" shows a 10 years old pouting mentality.

    You probably don't want to hear this, but I'll write anyway, my assumption, from the posts I've read, which include begging to join content, inadequacy in damage for GWF, fecal matter throwing at good players, that you are not good.
    You know what the issue is? Being bad at a video game is nothing to be ashamed off, most adults are bad at it. Compared to others I'm not good at either, my best button mashing times are 15 years ago (more like 20, but lets not feel older than necessary), and I have less and less time to keep up, as so many others.

    Am I ashamed of it? No. I'm more ashamed at the amount of hours I've spent in the game.
    I know people that are not great players either, but I'll rather fail with them any time, or it will take 10 minutes more, because MMOs are playing together, and with friends. Looks to me that you forgot that and more concerned how lackluster your pain-giver looks

    Being bad at something is only what a child will find as shameful, also only a child (or a child like person) will laugh at, grown ups, mostly, understand that some things we are better at and some worse. We are judged by how we deal with it.
    We have a choice, to try to improve, or perhaps to seek other things that better suited, or ask for help, because others good at X and i'm good at Y, they help with X and tomorrow I can help them with Y. Or we can not care, because it's not important. There are plenty of choices, slinging blame on those that are good, is not one of the better choices.

    If you want an easy solo expiriance, how about a single player game, they have better story, better graphics, and adjustable difficulty.

    If you want enjoy an MMO expiriance, my advice, is stop solo queuing perhaps to help the 'poor' pugs, or perhaps pat yourself on the back because compared to them your paingiver or buff or what ever is so good, and take the journey of progress and overcoming an adventure (challenge) with friends, in the spirit of how D&D is and how the P&P got it's fame for.
  • chemjeffchemjeff Member Posts: 544 Arc User
    Well I had a very pleasant conversation with Sharp in game. No he's not the devil. I was wrong to judge him so harshly. Where we seem to have a difference of opinion is that I believe "bad players" don't even make it to the endgame dungeon like TONG, so that just by being able to make it there, a player has demonstrated a certain level of proficiency which ought to be respected IMO. Sharp seems to disagree.


    And on the subject of the thread, random queues were a mistake to begin with. Rather than forcing people to run stuff at random, they should say once every hour randomly select a dungeon from the table, give it some "extra loot" that drops on completion and then if you want that extra loot, you would have to run that dungeon to get it. In this way, you do not compromise player choice (which is what the random queue system does) and you still achieve a system where it is more profitable to run a variety of content rather than just 1 dungeon all the time. To ensure it really is more profitable, I would have it drop something unique which cannot be obtained elsewhere, for example, a loot table of reinforcement kits that give 2% damage type vs x mob (it selects the mob type at random) and have them be unbound, so players who want to can farm for these reinforcement kits and sell them to those who do not want to. They could have somewhat biased drop rates to make the better ones more expensive.

    I think this is a good idea as well. But we are stuck for now with Random Queues.

  • asterotgasterotg Member Posts: 1,742 Arc User
    The first problem is, that you do have a large gear skill and knowledge gap between ppl able to run endgame dungeons.

    Other games use T1, T2 and HM versions of their dungeons, to give every group content, cryptic decided against it. There is no way, really, it is impossible, to create a dungeon, that can be completed by a 11k group and is challenging for BIS players at the same time, bc the difference in stats is so high, even if you ignore the difference of experience and skill (not saying, that BIS players are better players, but ppl using BIS gear, not max IL, tend to know what they are doing and why).

    Second fault is, that you get IL for gear, even if this gear does not suit your class. Most of the 11k players running RED pushed their chars above the edge by slotting useless (for their class and role) gear.

    Third fault is, imo, that you get to much IL from gear useless boons etc, so the min IL is to low, to complete the dungeons with a RANDOM group at min IL.

    One last word, running random que I see abusers in most of my runs (bad wifi my HAMSTER, to all you ppl reconnecting after 4 minutes and 45 seconds), min IL players on alts in it for RAD and maybe 10-20% legit players. I clear these dungeons alone or with a friend I usually run with (contribution of other players 10-20% most of the times). In a perfect world all players queing for MSP or RED could clear MSP, as it is, most groups cant and I dont feel bad, when I leave a 11k group in FBI, bc I dont want to waste my time.
    Chars: CW, DC, GF, GWF, HR and TR.
  • mynaammynaam Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 937 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    grrouper said:

    oxyma said:

    From what they said in the AMA yesterday, they know that there is a dungeon gap between FBI and CN

    Only the players with low item lvl and newbies are punished, as always.

    I'm not against challenge and difficulty in dungeons but,
    there is no challenge or difficulty for the party with 2 DC
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpShSB2cPBo

    When the party with 1 dc in public queue takes 10 mins to kill the 1st boss (if they can even remove 5% of his HP before they die)
    The party from private queue with 2 DC destroy that boss in less than 2 mins with no difficulty or challenge.
    Why do you think new players or ones that have not advanced in the game should be running end game dungeons rather than spending some time in well of the dragons, dread ring, icewind dale and sharardar to build up RP ,AD and getting boons or maybe learning how to use powers to make good rotations with your party. All this takes some time as most end gamers know. I see way to often 9/11 K player in chult and lost as to why they are getting killed and can only cry about it.
    You can take the same attetude as you did from he point of view of mid players:

    Why have there been no new content for mid level players say il 10k-14k since mod 9. . Even campaigns are being streamlined for players with many toons forgetting about those with just one. (i fall on the many side). REmember as you pointed out they should not be runing fbi/msp/tong so that is not content aimed at them.

    What they should be doing is have 1 mod for endgame and 1 mod for mid .. rotate it. same with campaigns 1 campaign like it is now 1 hour a week (this helps me alot since i have 15 toons at this moment at lvl 70 that i play actively) and 1 mod with real content that takes you at least 1 hour a day. this will give both types of players a chance.

    I noticed that endgamers are being critisised, and it does sometimes sound like i am critisisng them too. I do not mean to they should give feedback from tehir point of view. It is CRYPTIC's resposibility to make sure they get feedback from new players and mid level players too. Something hey silpy do not do.


    P.S. I must say that end gamers tend to discriminate to any mid level player that give coments from their point of view(with attacks on their person and their ability). Moderators then do not protect the opinions of the mid level and they get attacked causing other mid levels not to give opinion in the future.
    There are more than BIS players in this game
    RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
    FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
    Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)



  • preechr#2215 preechr Member Posts: 488 Arc User
    There is already sufficient content for mid level players

    After a player reaches level 60-63, the path should be very clear by following the Campaign Journal... just complete them in order and by the time you get to what is now considered "end-game" you will be ready for it

    Meanwhile, the end-game will have moved along to something else and those players that have finished all the content will be working on that, and it will necessarily be more difficult than previously released content as that is just the basic nature of progression in a game

    The game is not designed around players that do not progress... I can't think of any that are, in fact

    If they started making alternative Campaigns for the existing Campaigns, which is what it sounds like what you want, that would only be adding more of what we already have

    Are you asking for a Campaign that is designed for the same people that are working on Well of Dragons but that don't want to do Well of Dragons? You would only get the same kind of gear and rewards you get in Well of Dragons...

    Even if they spent a ton of time and effort to provide alternate progression paths for players, the idea would still be to progress, and there's no telling how fun or buggy these alternate Campaigns would be

    Maybe you are asking for more dungeons that are on the level of Castle Never, or that bridge the supposed gap between CN and FBI... I really don't know what you are asking for

    It has been said a thousand times that T9G does not require any specific party composition or even super high item levels to complete, but you will have to work hard at learning the mechanics and make some friends that will practice it with you

    Same thing goes for FBI and MSP

    The simple fact is that there are 8 classes to pick from and about twice that many builds that are proven to work well, with probably that number again of variations in builds that may not be optimal but are still viable, and all of them have tons of gear to choose from that's reasonably easy to get hands on

    The only other thing going on here is boons and months and months of grinding needed to grind AD and RP to buy and upgrade all the enchantments, pets and artifacts needed to get to what you are calling "end game" and that's not going anywhere

    If you would rather play a build that doesn't make sense or just don't want to bother with that, and if you don't want to grind like everyone else, there's not much left to say....

    If hearing how reality works makes you feel attacked, that's just another thing you'll have to learn to deal with I guess
  • nitocris83nitocris83 Member, Cryptic Developer, Administrator Posts: 4,495 Cryptic Developer
    Hey everyone! Chiming in to say to please keep things civil. This is a valuable discussion topic that provides more insight for the team but can be off-putting if having to navigate through negative personal comments.
  • c3rb3r3c3rb3r3 Member Posts: 277 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    I have to agree that by the long time a play gear himself to be accepted into FBI/MSP/TONG, the next highest dungeon is CN which is extremely easy and a player can easily be stuck. Imo upgrading epic dungeons into master dungeons to reduce the big hole between CN and FBI/MSP/T9G with some more mechanics would be the easiest solution.
  • tripsofthrymrtripsofthrymr Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,624 Community Moderator

    even if I wanted to, I live in South Africa and have a terrible upload speed and it would likely take me days to upload a video like that, a video which I wouldn't want to upload anyhow.

    I once worked on a project to connect MCA's call centers over the internet. It was... interesting.

    Caritas Guild Founder (Greycloak Alliance)

    Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
  • krzrsmskrzrsms Member Posts: 164 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    "There is already sufficient content for mid level players"
    No there isnt.
    0-69 is worthless to any part of the game afterward. There is exactly 5 objects worth keeping from pre-70 and that is 4 free bags and 1 free artifact if you choose the right one. Everything else is garbage.

    After 70 you** do just enough of campaigns now to start buying relic gear. Then jump straight into chult to grab some chult hunt gear to supplement. You join any guild that will have you and use their boons and food, and buy the SH cloak for easy access to near BIS but much easier to get neck belt set. Finally you hope someone in the alliance summons a MM for a few item upgrades. Farm rp for all time, till arty gear and set is ~orange.

    At that point you jump into Tong.. end game. You find a group willing to carry you through a few times. Then you have BIS gear.

    No 'mid level' areas are necessary, reading midlevel as areas done between reaching 70 and doing pure endgame. Ive won Tong with people that have never stepped foot in IWP or underdark.

    Worse than that, no mid-lev areas can help you in ANY eq related way. Once you farm through them for boons you're done with them permanently. No seals build up to anything of worth, no eq* is good for anything but salvage. The only dungeon run that matters is Tong after you get to 70.

    Mid lev content should be -somewhat- relevant. Should have some need to be run. As it sits currently there is essentially waste areas, and Tong. ..and for a game with so many different spots on the map thats just a sad waste of content.

    *yes there is a tiny chance on running CN that you get a shard of orcus. That 1 exception doesn't effect the overall observation that everything else is a complete waste of effort for someone trying to improve.

    **this is not MY path of progression. I have played up through the mods as they campaign and have full completion with several characters. This is however the path Ive seen taken by many people since 12b especially.
  • preechr#2215 preechr Member Posts: 488 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    krzrsms said:

    "There is already sufficient content for mid level players"
    No there isnt.
    0-69 is worthless to any part of the game afterward. There is exactly 5 objects worth keeping from pre-70 and that is 4 free bags and 1 free artifact if you choose the right one. Everything else is garbage.

    After 70 you** do just enough of campaigns now to start buying relic gear. Then jump straight into chult to grab some chult hunt gear to supplement. You join any guild that will have you and use their boons and food, and buy the SH cloak for easy access to near BIS but much easier to get neck belt set. Finally you hope someone in the alliance summons a MM for a few item upgrades. Farm rp for all time, till arty gear and set is ~orange.

    At that point you jump into Tong.. end game. You find a group willing to carry you through a few times. Then you have BIS gear.

    No 'mid level' areas are necessary, reading midlevel as areas done between reaching 70 and doing pure endgame. Ive won Tong with people that have never stepped foot in IWP or underdark.

    Worse than that, no mid-lev areas can help you in ANY eq related way. Once you farm through them for boons you're done with them permanently. No seals build up to anything of worth, no eq* is good for anything but salvage. The only dungeon run that matters is Tong after you get to 70.

    Mid lev content should be -somewhat- relevant. Should have some need to be run. As it sits currently there is essentially waste areas, and Tong. ..and for a game with so many different spots on the map thats just a sad waste of content.

    *yes there is a tiny chance on running CN that you get a shard of orcus. That 1 exception doesn't effect the overall observation that everything else is a complete waste of effort for someone trying to improve.

    **this is not MY path of progression. I have played up through the mods as they campaign and have full completion with several characters. This is however the path Ive seen taken by many people since 12b especially.

    Good job. This was high quality

    I think that it is important to stress that this is a grind based game

    Not for you in particular, but just to form an argument... When we are talking about item level appropriate content, which is not a good place to start for many reasons, it seems relevant that no matter your item level, once you have hit level cap your goal is to find the best thing you can do over and over to maximize your income so you can buy the things you need to progress further

    Sure, the most important thing for you is to get yourself into T9G and grind that for Primal Gear (right now) but even once we have mod 14-15 and Primal is basically junk it will still be important for players to grind T9G to get it (probably) so they can be powerful enough to kill the monsters a bit easier in order to progress just a little more efficiently

    If all some player can reasonably accomplish successfully is CN, then that guy should run CN until he has mastered it, and by that time he will probably have built up enough AD to have geared up a bit and be ready to start learning FBI

    Sure, so along the way that player has to work to get sub-BiS gear to advance to the next level only to replace that gear just a few more weeks later for a piece that's only slightly better but still not the BEST piece it could be seen as pointless, but that's also what progression is

    So to say that there is no content available for mid-level players is just not true... If you wanna say that grinding your butt off for minuscule stat improvements doesn't feel super rewarding, especially once you realize that's all this game is ever gonna give you, I wouldn't disagree

    I would also agree that a freshly 70 player with a mixed bag of EE gear that can find folks to run them through T9G until they have a full set of Primal Gear is technically winning the game for now, but the end game speed runners did not (generally) have people to carry them like that, and they (mostly) didn't get to "end game" by skipping the grind

    It seems to me that the type of complaint here is basically that this kind of game structure is not really fun, which may be totally true, but I still don't see a clearly stated solution other then something along the lines of "Make this game something other than what it is"
  • ragequittingdc#8599 ragequittingdc Member Posts: 229 Arc User
    nsva and pvp is the filler between cn and fbi :wink:
    im actually the gwf carry
  • mynaammynaam Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 937 Arc User
    edited February 2018

    There is already sufficient content for mid level players

    After a player reaches level 60-63, the path should be very clear by following the Campaign Journal... just complete them in order and by the time you get to what is now considered "end-game" you will be ready for it

    Meanwhile, the end-game will have moved along to something else and those players that have finished all the content will be working on that, and it will necessarily be more difficult than previously released content as that is just the basic nature of progression in a game

    The game is not designed around players that do not progress... I can't think of any that are, in fact

    If they started making alternative Campaigns for the existing Campaigns, which is what it sounds like what you want, that would only be adding more of what we already have

    Are you asking for a Campaign that is designed for the same people that are working on Well of Dragons but that don't want to do Well of Dragons? You would only get the same kind of gear and rewards you get in Well of Dragons...

    Even if they spent a ton of time and effort to provide alternate progression paths for players, the idea would still be to progress, and there's no telling how fun or buggy these alternate Campaigns would be

    Maybe you are asking for more dungeons that are on the level of Castle Never, or that bridge the supposed gap between CN and FBI... I really don't know what you are asking for

    It has been said a thousand times that T9G does not require any specific party composition or even super high item levels to complete, but you will have to work hard at learning the mechanics and make some friends that will practice it with you

    Same thing goes for FBI and MSP

    The simple fact is that there are 8 classes to pick from and about twice that many builds that are proven to work well, with probably that number again of variations in builds that may not be optimal but are still viable, and all of them have tons of gear to choose from that's reasonably easy to get hands on

    The only other thing going on here is boons and months and months of grinding needed to grind AD and RP to buy and upgrade all the enchantments, pets and artifacts needed to get to what you are calling "end game" and that's not going anywhere

    If you would rather play a build that doesn't make sense or just don't want to bother with that, and if you don't want to grind like everyone else, there's not much left to say....

    If hearing how reality works makes you feel attacked, that's just another thing you'll have to learn to deal with I guess


    There have been no new content since mod 9. That is not fair and it is impossible for many to get the jump from cn to fbi. that is not right

    EDIT: I have carried many low level teams through fbi.To anyone of the end gamers that complain dungeons are to easy i always say try and do a fbi/msp with the majority of the team being 10k-11k and tell me dungeons are easy. i always enjoy those carry games as the low il players are more apreciative of doing the dungeon and it is a nice challence spending 1hour in a dungeon Suffering the uphill for fbi for example. I have also atempted a carry of tong many times but sadly i have never been able to carry a team to a Win normally we fail at the final boss. a cary/training run of tong i normally ask for players to have 11k(min requirements) try that when dungeons are to easy :). i can asure you team mates will love you for it even if you just make the last boss. they get to experience tong where most can only experience it from youtube point of view
    There are more than BIS players in this game
    RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
    FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
    Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)



  • heraldfayez#8520 heraldfayez Member Posts: 227 Arc User
    i've seen many hate comments in this thread against @thefabricant and to be honest i don't see reason for it the guy released so many guides community tools and stuff that made player base advance to where it is now special thnx as well to Janne @rjc9000 @dupeks and so many others that i can't recall on back of my head rn but you keep on blaming wrong people for YOUR OWN failure
    ever asked yourself before posting this how people get good ? obv by playing the game and learning mechanics as i siad in preview comment here i run the public queu because of boredom and lack of content in the game i finished FBI / msp and even tong from public queu but only because team was willing to work together and communicate and we never had to use double DC either
    i don't want to drag this comment but before you blame people look at yourself and see what you are missing guys that you type hate comments about helped this community grow more than you or probably devs ever will and in a game for Massive multi player COMMUNICATION is the key even high end groups don't jsut trivialize content but they communicate so thier skills /buffs/debuffs are all on point

    peace out
  • asterotgasterotg Member Posts: 1,742 Arc User

    i've seen many hate comments in this thread against @thefabricant and to be honest i don't see reason for it the guy released so many guides community tools and stuff that made player base advance to where it is now special thnx as well to Janne @rjc9000 @dupeks and so many others that i can't recall on back of my head rn but you keep on blaming wrong people for YOUR OWN failure
    ever asked yourself before posting this how people get good ? obv by playing the game and learning mechanics as i siad in preview comment here i run the public queu because of boredom and lack of content in the game i finished FBI / msp and even tong from public queu but only because team was willing to work together and communicate and we never had to use double DC either
    i don't want to drag this comment but before you blame people look at yourself and see what you are missing guys that you type hate comments about helped this community grow more than you or probably devs ever will and in a game for Massive multi player COMMUNICATION is the key even high end groups don't jsut trivialize content but they communicate so thier skills /buffs/debuffs are all on point

    peace out

    I dont want to sound like a fanboy, but even if you dont share their opinion everyone who read some posts in this forum should appreciate the time these guys did spent, to understand the game and the mechanics (imo better then most of the Devs). Furthermore the fact, that they are willing to share their findings with the community and the Devs shows, that they are no elitists, but nice and helpful.

    I dont have the time, the skill or the nerve, to test new companions, spells or combos in depths. While my own 'creations' are (most of the times) pretty close to the recommended builds and skills, the tests of these guys and other like-minded players helped me improve my chars many times. These posts are no attempt to streamline players, but to educate them and let them form a decision based on facts and not hearsay. I did recommend other builds or powers to other players I met in dungeons, too. Imo this is not condescending, but an attempt, to be helpful to these players. I assume, that other players want to contribute to a run and if they have a build, that does not fit the content, their IL or their class a suggestion, to switch something should be appreciated and not seen as someone talking down on you.

    While I blame you for the SS nerf ;) I am grateful for all the valuable information I got from your posts guys and girls.
    Chars: CW, DC, GF, GWF, HR and TR.
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