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ToNG: Good - CoDG: Bad (Or, how to fix the Cradle)
adinosii
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,294 Arc User
I like ToNG. In my opinion it is the best content added to the game since, well....the old CN (before it was reworked).
ToNG takes around 20 minutes to run with a good group, 30 minutes for an average group and is a real challenge for an undergeared/underskilled group. To me that is an indication that they got the difficulty just right.
I have lost track of how many times I have run ToNG, but it is well over 100 times - enough to gear most of my alts in full Primal gear. I have also gotten 10 UES from my runs - I would like a slightly higher drop rate - If am to upgrade all my R13s to R14s, it would take me a few years. I also get enough salvage to actually need one or two alts to refine for my main.
The various tricks and mechanisms are not that hard to learn, and when everyone has mastered them, the run is smooth.
So, yea -ToNG is challenging, but fun, with just the right reward/effort ratio. Sure, it had a few bugs, but they mostly got fixed - one remains - the hanging "rockfall" trap, but there is a workaround for that.
So, when I first heard of CoDG, I was optimistic - hoped it would be like ToNG in that respect.
But what a disappointment...
CoDG got just about everything wrong....well, except maybe the visuals - the graphics team did a pretty good job. Some of the problems are issues that players raised originally on Preview, but the complaints were partially ignored. Well, guess what - the problems did not go away.
So, how can CoDG be fixed? Here are a few suggestions:
ToNG takes around 20 minutes to run with a good group, 30 minutes for an average group and is a real challenge for an undergeared/underskilled group. To me that is an indication that they got the difficulty just right.
I have lost track of how many times I have run ToNG, but it is well over 100 times - enough to gear most of my alts in full Primal gear. I have also gotten 10 UES from my runs - I would like a slightly higher drop rate - If am to upgrade all my R13s to R14s, it would take me a few years. I also get enough salvage to actually need one or two alts to refine for my main.
The various tricks and mechanisms are not that hard to learn, and when everyone has mastered them, the run is smooth.
So, yea -ToNG is challenging, but fun, with just the right reward/effort ratio. Sure, it had a few bugs, but they mostly got fixed - one remains - the hanging "rockfall" trap, but there is a workaround for that.
So, when I first heard of CoDG, I was optimistic - hoped it would be like ToNG in that respect.
But what a disappointment...
CoDG got just about everything wrong....well, except maybe the visuals - the graphics team did a pretty good job. Some of the problems are issues that players raised originally on Preview, but the complaints were partially ignored. Well, guess what - the problems did not go away.
- The first phases are just too easy - the skull and gelatinous cube phases take no real skills, and the trash mobs are...well, just trash that dies easily, no skill or coordination needed.
- Cutting the ropes - again - easy, and while there are mobs that spawn and you would think you need some strategy to kill them as well, that's just not the case - just run in a circle, cut the ropes and ignore everything else. This is not a challenge - most certainly not an "end-game quality challenge". In fact, the first phases are just boring.
- The last part, now - that's the real issue. While the first parts are really too easy, the last part is really a bit too hard - specifically, the big issue is that your chance of success is too heavily determined by the lag you have. I have a strong suspicion the developers are located close to the game servers - well, at least they are on the same continent as the servers, and they did not consider what gameplay would be like for players elsewhere - in Europe or Australia. The fact is simply that if your lag is too heavy, you will have a much, much harder time surviving the push/pull phase, and it is really unforgiving - there is no second chance - you are just dead.
- If half of the group falls and dies, the rest can just as well wipe and start over - and that means you have to go through the initial, utterly boring phases all over again.
So, how can CoDG be fixed? Here are a few suggestions:
- If the group wipes but had reaced the last bart, allow them to go back there, instead of having to go through the elevator part again. Sure, this would not make the final part any easier, but it would make players less likely to rage quit in frustration. Frustrated and irritated players are not good customers.
- CoDG really does not feel like it is a part of a RPG game - the last part relies on player reflexes and hand-eye coordination. That's not what I want the game to be about - if I wanted my chance of success to be determined by that, I would be playing a different game. One thing you can do is to add a better visual indicator showing when the push/pull is in effect - yes, I know it is a pull for 4 seconds and a push for one second, but really - I don't want to be spending my time counting seconds.
- I don't know how many CoDG runs end in failure, but many players have only a few (or no) successful runs per week - and with the low drop rate for the Carvings, it means that many players will not be able to get one carving per week, again meaning it will take them many, many months of work to get enough Carvings to upgrade their gear. I am sure you have the data - maybe you should look at this.
Hoping for improvements...
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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)
For the push/pull, if latency or bad luck isn't an issue, then the remaining issue is the initial learning curve which is frustrating because you have to start from the beginning and you feel bad for being the person to hold the group back. However, once you get the hang of it, it isn't bad at all. In a good group, cradle is a quick run.
> The game has always required varying amounts of player reflexes and hand-eye coordination.
>
Disagree with the fact that the game has always required reflexes before this. Yes, there are the platform in the boss fight in Tong, but it is very forgiving. The platform is huge, there is a giant ghost head, there is very loud audio cue from the ghost head, all telling you to run to the other side. And you just need to get to the middle. So no, I don't think that really require reflex or hand-eye coordination. Unless you suggest being able to hear and see are reflex and hand-eye coordination.
Codg at least has the redeeming feature that it is quick to reach failure, Tong does not even grant that.
Cradle is blocked for some people and there is nothing they can do to get around it:
* Laggy connection
* Imprecise hand/eye coordination
Blocking out part of the customer base with no way around it is bad.
Also Cradle creates friction in the customer base: Everyone is asking for experienced players ONLY(how are people supposed to learn?), and people are feeling bad when they are repeatedly dying and messing up for team. Kicks ensue, creating bad feeling etc.
The pull/push mechanism was a bad choice, in particular when combined with an unrecoverable death.
Best thing would be to replace pull/push with something else.
If that is not doable, one solution could be to put a 'field of instant death' along the inner edge of the arena, that kills everyone that comes close but leaves them recoverable. It is the unrecoverable death at end of pull/push that is the big problem, having to spend ress scrolls is acceptable.
Or a solution could be to handle the pull/push deaths like in IG.
If this method trasform cradle in a too easy task is possible to limit the respown to a finite number.
MSVA - this was a really good trial design with a lategame potential. It also had two tiers which made it playable to more variety of players. The reason why it failed was that Cryptic is making content that is only viable on this current mod. When people got their weapons - they gave up on MSVA since (even though it's pretty cool) rewards there are utter hamster.
No one will run Craddle after they get their gear. People will go back to CN, Etos and Tiamat, FBI, MSP, cause they enjoy running it. Not to mention that lag issue and push-pull mechanics. It's a slap in the face to players who are building their characters to be stronger. They are not building their characters (and they are not able to) to be better platformers. I can't stress enough of how lazy is Craddle design. Seriously.
And to tell you how lazy they are, they had a READY TO IMPLEMENT trial in the rulebook of Tomb of Aninhilation D&D Adventure. There is a Craddle of the Dead God dungeon level in Tomb of Annihilation: there were 3 night hags there, secret key mechanics, five rooms with different challenges. Yet, the only thing they took was the Atropal fight. You guys had it ready to steal it from there. I'm currently running ToA adventure with my group and when I was reading the rulebook I saw how cool it would be to play through this in Neverwinter. Well guess what - you guys took nothing from it.
Lazy and boring, that's all I have to say about Craddle. I'm not interested in playing it, never will be. I'll pass on exalting my weapons or vivifying my armor - it's not like I need it.
EDIT: This post may sound like Atropal's babyrage but I'm really disappointed in the content we got. I may have been previously disappointed with bonding changes or any other things, but I always were very happy with the dungeons we got. I really loved them and I thought that this is the place that this game shines the most. This is the reason I should grind campaign - to get this new shiny and cool dungeon! Now I realised I was grinding for nothing and after getting my boons, I'll just go back to CN, FBI, MSP and TONG.
> Tong is broken, it is meant to be run with "the Meta" and nothing else, add in the awful lag (which hardly makes it smooth) it produces and the endless kicking, and this easily makes it the worst dungeon ever produced. I really cannot believe this is considered the best content since CN.
>
> Codg at least has the redeeming feature that it is quick to reach failure, Tong does not even grant that.
Im sorry but you have no idea what you are even complaining about. It sounds more as if you are complaining just to fit in.
T9G is a great dungeon and doesn't need the "meta" group you seem to think it does. Ive been helping a guildie through his first few T9GS and hes a 14.5 TR and the other DPS is my friend who is a SW and we have been averaging 20 min runs just fine. Two of the most nerfed classes isn't exactly "meta", is it? The only time T9G takes hours is if the whole group is clueless to the dungeon and or doesn't understand how to play their class.
Maybe they only want US players and the rest of us should go somewhere else. I had hoped CoDG would be a fun experience that I would enjoy playing over and over, like ToNG, but it's just painful. I have given up on the carvings - I'll do it once per week for the ampoules, and when that's done, it's goodbye to CoDG as far as I am concerned.
I just have to hope they learn from this fiasco - because if the game is moving in a direction where only players with no lag and top-notch hand-eye coordination have a chance of success, I will not be hanging around much longer.
How about just admitting that CoDG is a bit flawed and, well...fix some of those flaws? It wouldn't take that much to change it from a Trial that players hate, (but feel forced to play because of specific drops) into something that players actually enjoy.
Here are a few specific suggestions:
If that's not possible, then how about allowing people to bypass the elevator phase after the first failed attempt? If the group has survived the first phases once, allow them to go straight to the Atropal on subsequent attempts. Yes, people will die just as easily, but this will reduce the total time (and frustration) a lot.
I detest platformer games but would at least be less inclined to skip this entire trial if it didn't force such a great amount of tedium between attempts.
Also the push/pull mechanism, especially the fast, hard push that comes after the pull, requires very precise near perfect timing which is near impossible to do on a weaker/older computer like I have or if you are in a less geographically optimal area. It should be toned down just a bit, maybe make the platform slightly wider or make the push slightly weaker.
As it stands I feel my advancement is stalled based on the speed of my computer and not on my actual character development or even my hand-eye coordination or reaction time skill. As such I will not be making any more zen purchases and will instead be saving that money to buy a faster computer, since you don’t sell computers I don’t think that was your objective.
You might also want to look into improving some of the performance issues in the game. As a user with some small understanding of software development it is clear to me that in many instances the code is *far* from optimized. The game suffers from software aging that I believe is due to a video memory leak or some other kind of resource issue for example. After I have been playing for a some time a lag will develop and will not go away no matter what I do, except completely exiting the game then starting the game back up fixes it until some more time of playing builds it up again, heavy graphics effects such as lights and particles seem to make it happen sooner.
> Rather than a dropoff into a void, resulting in insta-death, it would probably be better to replace it with areas of acid and/or fire that you get pushed into. Not insta-death, but definitely death from DOT if you tarry too long.
Yeah, like elol. But I doubt they would expend any more resources to fix anything on this scale. The best hope is for them to not come to with this type of mechanics on future expansions.
CoDG is just too bad .... it is not enjoyable to farm it.
1)i agree that cradle is not accessible to most of playerbase but is also not hard for other half but i say for trial it's right difficulty
2)there is few things that could really be done to improve it: exemples:
a) add campfire if you fail last boss you can repeat from there because phase 1 and 2 are meh boring
b) add protection palces so classes like Hunter ranger / GWF/pally etc don't fall because of skills that make them move to target for exmeple if you use SS sometimes chach move forward if ur close to edge while atropal is there you ahve protection ward so u don't fall but if he goes off in that time u can fall off easy mostly annoying to HR class too
3) as one of the players with really bad net i managed to dodge mechanic at really high ping
a) Screen 1 : https://prnt.sc/j3h0dd over 3000 ping yet still dodged P-P ^^
b) screen 2 : https://prnt.sc/j3s2df over 3000 ping yet fell off because lagg and rubber was too strong
it leaves me with bad feeling that i was useless and all when it happens even if i know it's out of my hand other people can't see that so yes please keep player who live far away in mind sometimes