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If you aren't having fun, why are you still playing?

I am not asking this to be a troll. I just genuinely would like to know. If you perceive that there are a ton of problems and it's frustrating to you, then why not play a different game? The purpose of video games is to have fun. If you aren't having fun, then there's something wrong. I just don't understand all the whining and complaining on all the forums all the time. Yes, there is room for improvement, but I see a lot of posts that complain that the game is broken or unplayable in some way (which I don't really get, I think it's really fun). But I guess what I'm trying to ask here, is that if you aren't having fun, why are you still playing?
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  • thefiresidecatthefiresidecat Member Posts: 4,486 Arc User
    edited May 2018
    no better games out there atm. I quit last fall. came back this winter because nuffin else to do.
  • minotaur2857minotaur2857 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,141 Arc User
    Yup, I really enjoyed this game for a long time, recent direction has very much alienated me, but I can't find anything better and have enough invested here I keep playing. Will change towards the end of the year when I hope something better will arrive.
  • pteriaspterias Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 661 Arc User
    Sunk cost fallacy and D&D, mostly.

    I also try to avoid the things in the game that I find boring and unfun, I don't chase BIS, and I just realized I approach the game almost exactly like Plasticbat, to a disturbing degree!! I'm kinda relieved to find out I'm not the only that hoards lockbox keys!
  • callumf#9018 callumf Member Posts: 1,710 Arc User
    1 - if you've invested a lot of time and/or money its hard to walk away [someone said that above]
    2 - generally speaking for a FTP this is pretty much the best D&D type game out there
    3 - optimism, players are always hoping for a massive improvement in their class type or game balance
    4 - optimism [part two] due to RNG I guess plenty of players are hoping to hit the jackpot on a lockbox or skirmish run or whatever and so they play "just one more day"
    5 - actually forums don't really reflect general player happiness, there are many many thousands [millions?] of Neverwinter players, and how many moaners here? Fifty? One hundred?
    6 - because I can play Neverwinter how I want, when I want and it is pretty much fun for an hour or so, so it suits me. But that doesn't mean I won't moan occasionally about badly implemented parts of the game such as:

    Random Epic Dungeon Queue

    Peace :smile:
  • jade1280jade1280 Member Posts: 174 Arc User
    Aside from the bots and ridiculous nonsense that passes for a "difficulty curve" (nosedive) in the endgame content queues from stormkings thunder onward this place aint that bad.
  • demonmongerdemonmonger Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,350 Arc User

    I am not asking this to be a troll. I just genuinely would like to know. If you perceive that there are a ton of problems and it's frustrating to you, then why not play a different game? The purpose of video games is to have fun. If you aren't having fun, then there's something wrong. I just don't understand all the whining and complaining on all the forums all the time. Yes, there is room for improvement, but I see a lot of posts that complain that the game is broken or unplayable in some way (which I don't really get, I think it's really fun). But I guess what I'm trying to ask here, is that if you aren't having fun, why are you still playing?

    because i spent more than $3000.00 to make my character, and i don't want to sell it to make my money back...
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    I hate paying taxes! Why must I pay thousands of dollars in taxes when everything I buy is taxed anyways!
  • shadrakt2shadrakt2 Member Posts: 151 Arc User
    I agree with moogiebear. Every now and then I check back into this forum to see what people are talking about, see if I can answer any questions... but then I get frustrated with all the negativity and all the people threatening to quit the game and saying that this game is finished. Then I leave and don’t return to the forum for months.

    Seriously guys, we’ve heard aaaaaall the complaints. Everyone should know by now that the devs are gonna keep tweaking and nerfing a bunch of things, and some of those are gonna frustrate you. That’s just the way it is, and how it’s gonna remain. Either accept that or move on to another game. And please, don’t give me the argument that there is nothing else out there, I don’t buy that for a second.

    If you absolutely can’t move on and you can’t be content either, then please try to contain your negativity and don’t spread it around the forum like a disease.
  • spidey#3367 spidey Member Posts: 400 Arc User

    When I report back on how the community is doing, I call it "community sentiment", not happiness.

    Mmmmhhh...but how can you tell how the comm is doing?
  • manufracturemanufracture Member Posts: 92 Arc User
    One word - Addiction.
  • lukejones77lukejones77 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 282 Arc User

    1 - if you've invested a lot of time and/or money its hard to walk away [someone said that above]5 - actually forums don't really reflect general player happiness, there are many many thousands [millions?] of Neverwinter players, and how many moaners here? Fifty? One hundred?

    Millions of players? I suspect that the forums are a reasonable reflection of the PC landscape, which is the oldest community and the lead indicator.

    I've just about completed my "conscious uncoupling" from my NW addiction, but I was keeping a close eye on several factors, and made the following observations:

    - The two primary/current runs of the game, Cradle and TONG, have surprisingly few parties. I only play the beleaguered CW class, and used to check frequently on how included they were in TONG/Cradle runs. At this very moment there are a grand total of 21 and 20 players in those 2 runs, and (no certainty after 100) it appears that the busiest times have a few 100 at most.

    - Numbers like this are very significantly down compared to going back, say 7 modules.

    - Check the class forums activity for classes that got left behind with the introduction of 12, where content got tough, but DEVs left big balance issues unattended, leading to a meta that has had many players either leaving directly, feeling forced into playing other classes before leaving anyway, or toning down play severely.

    - There's been a grand total of 1 new thread in the barren wasteland that is the CW class forum this month. Historically the forum is full of questions about "best DPS", but it seems CWs have finally accepted that they are a 3rd rate DPS and 2nd rate Support class - and just given up. TRs and SWs fared pretty badly too.

    - Check the activity in the Preview forum, that used to buzz with feedback and suggestions. A few active threads since the announcement of mod 14, and near to barren prior to that. Generally, I'd suggest that players have given up on being heard.

    - Check the activity of this particular forum. The number of posts and post reads are very significantly down on what used to be an active NW.

    - Check this forum for a post entitled "CAN A DEV/MANAGER PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT A BALANCED, WORKING AS INTENDED NEVERWINTER WOULD LOOK LIKE?". It was politely worded, including 3 pages worth of responses from players who were very tempered and polite - yet got zero response from Cryptic. Multiple classes have fared very badly with the rise of "the meta" since mod 12, and Cryptic won't even give any indication on what, if any, plans they have for that.

    - Guilds everywhere (on PC) are struggling for active players. It's a very real, very undeniable issue.

    So, those are the visible indicators of how the game is travelling (PC, at least).
    Aside from that, I'd suggest that current play is characterized by the following:
    - 2 mods worth of a "Hunt" mechanic, that many see as a boring and frustrating RNG pyramid.
    - TONG, which alienated multiple classes
    - Cradle, which many felt was spoiled by a push/pull insta-kill mechanic.
    - Amazingly, sadly, little reaction to mod14/Ravenloft. I expected forum buzz over this, but the response has been under-whelming. Maybe those outside of the unbalanced meta have realized that the gaps only widen as the power creeps and the bosses surge to 100% Resistance. It's one thing to discover how underdone and unwanted your class is when they introduce tough content with mod 12, another to realize nothing's going to change for you mod 13, but then also rock up for more without any assurances for mod 14?

    My personal take is that I've poured 1000s of hours into this game since the beginning, and I've waited a very long time for Cryptic to show a little love for the only class I'm interested in playing - 3 years since mod 6.
    Between that, and what seems to be a set of module mechanics that seemed designed to kill fun, I finally accept that they've given enough me reason to give up.

  • kreatyvekreatyve Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 10,545 Community Moderator


    - Check the class forums activity for classes that got left behind with the introduction of 12, where content got tough, but DEVs left big balance issues unattended, leading to a meta that has had many players either leaving directly, feeling forced into playing other classes before leaving anyway, or toning down play severely.

    - There's been a grand total of 1 new thread in the barren wasteland that is the CW class forum this month. Historically the forum is full of questions about "best DPS", but it seems CWs have finally accepted that they are a 3rd rate DPS and 2nd rate Support class - and just given up. TRs and SWs fared pretty badly too.

    - Check the activity in the Preview forum, that used to buzz with feedback and suggestions. A few active threads since the announcement of mod 14, and near to barren prior to that. Generally, I'd suggest that players have given up on being heard.

    - Check the activity of this particular forum. The number of posts and post reads are very significantly down on what used to be an active NW.

    - Check this forum for a post entitled "CAN A DEV/MANAGER PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT A BALANCED, WORKING AS INTENDED NEVERWINTER WOULD LOOK LIKE?". It was politely worded, including 3 pages worth of responses from players who were very tempered and polite - yet got zero response from Cryptic. Multiple classes have fared very badly with the rise of "the meta" since mod 12, and Cryptic won't even give any indication on what, if any, plans they have for that.

    Statistically speaking in very general terms, usually only about 10% of a gaming community posts on a forums with any sort of regularity, with only 1% posting extremely often.

    Over the past 3 years since I've became a moderator, we still seem to have the same amount of people posting, if not more. Yes, people leave or get banned for various reasons, but there are always new people coming in. Some stick around, and some don't. That is not unusual for any MMO.

    As for the thread you mentioned, I can't speak for any of the dev team, but if I were a dev, I wouldn't have responded either, as there was no way to respond without inciting the players, or getting words twisted around. It was a very baited topic in my opinion, polite or not. Those types of threads usually are, and are usually best to be avoided.

    While I don't have access to much more info on traffic on these forums than any other player does, I do have access to the information on the traffic on the Neverwinter subreddit, and those numbers are still following the same patterns as always, and have steadily gone up, rather than down, over the years.
    My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox
    Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
    Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
    kuI2v8l.png
  • minotaur2857minotaur2857 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,141 Arc User
    edited May 2018


    5 - actually forums don't really reflect general player happiness, there are many many thousands [millions?] of Neverwinter players, and how many moaners here? Fifty? One hundred?

    The first part of this is a known truth, kreatyve quotes figures similar to the ones I would BUT:

    The real problem is that the forum population DOESN'T represent the general playing population, it overrepresents the people at the high gear end of the game for example.

    I probably potentially interact via alliances, chat channels etc with about 10K accounts on a regular basis. When about 3 are happy with a particular mechanic and the devs can't see that on the forums, that is an issue.

    Pretty much everybody hates the AD changes upcoming, and most REALLY dislike the RQ changes (they'd prefer to see them removed, but feel these changes make things worse), RQs have been a complete disaster for mid gear DPS who can't get on teams and we see this angst in the channels, but because it's a group that's not as prevalent on the forums as the 17Ks who don't have an issue, you see it less here.

    The weekend warriors who used to do little more than gather quests from the cleric during the week and run them at weekends without doing the tough dungeons have had their AD and dungeon shard output massively reduced for example, but they are a group who I suspect are underrepresented here so you don't see that issue brought up.


    Post edited by minotaur2857 on
  • lukejones77lukejones77 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 282 Arc User
    edited May 2018
    kreatyve said:



    As for the thread you mentioned, I can't speak for any of the dev team, but if I were a dev, I wouldn't have responded either, as there was no way to respond without inciting the players, or getting words twisted around. It was a very baited topic in my opinion, polite or not. Those types of threads usually are, and are usually best to be avoided.

    That may be, but surely you'd agree that there is clearly an issue here, important to the community.
    The point for me isn't so much that Cryptic didn't respond to *that* thread, but that they have completely avoided the elephant in the room, and not taken any opportunity to provide any kind of community guidance, anywhere.

    Seriously, this has been a really big issue. Relevant game direction guidance was missing in the twitch "State of the game", it's missing in announcements, it's missing in News announcements. It's just plain missing.

    Maybe i'm still missing your point. Are you suggesting that the state of the game, or it's future direction, is something that Cryptic can't talk about anywhere, without inciting the players? Affected players should just continue showing up mod after mod, hoping that slowly, over time, it'll get better?

    If so, maybe that's the answer that OP was looking for:
    "We keep playing, even when we aren't having fun, because we have faith that "One Day Cryptic Will Bring Balance to the Force"! :)
    ... and we're scared of being left too far behind to catch up.

    Hopefully that'll include a little balance between grind and fun too.
    Good Luck!
  • shadrakt2shadrakt2 Member Posts: 151 Arc User
    > @kreatyve said:

    > As for the thread you mentioned, I can't speak for any of the dev team, but if I were a dev, I wouldn't have responded either, as there was no way to respond without inciting the players, or getting words twisted around. It was a very baited topic in my opinion, polite or not. Those types of threads usually are, and are usually best to be avoided.

    I agree. Take a look at our responses when devs post on controversial/rant/polite criticism threads. We’re irrational, foaming at the mouth jerks to them. Frankly, if I were a dev, I wouldn’t respond either.
  • kreatyvekreatyve Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 10,545 Community Moderator
    edited May 2018

    kreatyve said:



    As for the thread you mentioned, I can't speak for any of the dev team, but if I were a dev, I wouldn't have responded either, as there was no way to respond without inciting the players, or getting words twisted around. It was a very baited topic in my opinion, polite or not. Those types of threads usually are, and are usually best to be avoided.

    That may be, but surely you'd agree that there is clearly an issue here, important to the community.
    The point for me isn't so much that Cryptic didn't respond to *that* thread, but that they have completely avoided the elephant in the room, and not taken any opportunity to provide any kind of community guidance, anywhere.

    Seriously, this has been a really big issue. Relevant game direction guidance was missing in the twitch "State of the game", it's missing in announcements, it's missing in News announcements. It's just plain missing.

    Maybe i'm still missing your point. Are you suggesting that the state of the game, or it's future direction, is something that Cryptic can't talk about anywhere, without inciting the players? Affected players should just continue showing up mod after mod, hoping that slowly, over time, it'll get better?

    If so, maybe that's the answer that OP was looking for:
    "We keep playing, even when we aren't having fun, because we have faith that "One Day Cryptic Will Bring Balance to the Force"! :)
    ... and we're scared of being left too far behind to catch up.

    Hopefully that'll include a little balance between grind and fun too.
    Good Luck!
    Balance is something that they are constantly looking into, but to be perfectly honest, unless you are basically going to have every class the same, or only 3 classes (1 tank, 1 heal, 1 DPS), it's impossible to achieve. There are always going to be classes that are better at certain at things than other classes. Can they get things a bit better balanced than they are right now? Certainly. But they are a small studio with limited resources. They have other things that they have to work on too. Bug fixes, new content, etc. Every major patch they do has balancing changes though. If you read the patch notes for all the modules, you will see major changes for at least 1 class, minimum. Maybe if they had all the resources that one of the much larger studios, like Blizzard, they could get things done a lot faster and easier, but as it stands, that is not the case.

    Another thing they have to take into consideration is the lore related to their classes. As they do not own the IP, they can not just add in whatever powers they want. They can't just say well, we are going to make this power do this instead of that. They have things that they are able to change, but Wizards has a LOT of pull and say in certain things that they can or can not do.

    At the end of the day, the game is free and other than VIP, there is no reason you can't take a break for a bit if you aren't happy with the current state of things. You can always check in or come back to it later to see if things have changed enough for you to have fun again.
    Post edited by kreatyve on
    My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox
    Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
    Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
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  • sandukutupusandukutupu Member Posts: 2,285 Arc User
    @moogiebear#5401 Wow! They actually forced that 5401 on the end, how many moogiebears can there be on this game?

    I have been telling the players boo-hooing this same thing. I do have "fun" and play for fun and not for profit. I remember long ago before Brian and I got married we were playing D&D at the kitchen table and Brian was the DM. He always hated two kinds of players at the table; Team killers and Looters. Team killers are those morons who sneak around (just because can) and kill off their own team. Brian tried his best to deal with the team killer even went to the trouble of splitting the group in half, giving him a separate "rival party" to work with. He continued to team kill his "evil party". The looters weren't as bad once they figured out Brian placed a lot of worthless magic items with the good. One looter got stuck with the cursed ring of carrot protection. He lost a finger getting it off his hand. My point is, there have been and always will be players who gripe about the way things work in any game. It is better than to complain than to just react. Sometimes you find out the system works to your advantage other times it looks much better on paper.

    I posted my fair share of complaints knowing the developers and CEO don't bother reading this stuff. I complain to voice my opinion, you can agree or disagree with my opinion. I have been here since alpha testing. I will be here until the game shuts down or I do. :) I try to make things better for players; keeping the official wiki up to date, my Foundry contest in June, and I role play as my characters in public. I don't lurk in Moonstone Mask. As I said many times before, play the game and have fun!
    wb-cenders.gif
  • lukejones77lukejones77 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 282 Arc User
    kreatyve said:


    Balance is something that they are constantly looking into, but to be perfectly honest, unless you are basically going to have every class the same, or only 3 classes (1 tank, 1 heal, 1 DPS), it's impossible to achieve. There are always going to be classes that are better at certain at things than other classes. Can they get things a bit better balanced than they are right now? Certainly. But they are a small studio with limited resources. They have other things that they have to work on too. Bug fixes, new content, etc. Every major patch they do has balancing changes though. If you read the patch notes for all the modules, you will see major changes for at least 1 class, minimum. Maybe if they had all the resources that one of the much larger studios, like Blizzard, they could get things done a lot faster and easier, but as it stands, that is not the case.

    Another thing they have to take into consideration is the lore related to their classes. As they do not own the IP, they can not just add in whatever powers they want. They can't just say well, we are going to make this power do this instead of that. They have things that they are able to change, but Wizards has a LOT of pull and say in certain things that they can or can not do.

    At the end of the day, the game is free and other than VIP, there is no reason you can't take a break for a bit if you aren't happy with the current state of things. You can always check in or come back to it later to see if things have changed enough for you to have fun again.

    I totally get what you're saying, where they're busy with other things, but the idea that the current state of the game is what you get even when "balance is something they are constantly looking into", is really worrying.

    Firstly, the constraints: Check out the twitch with Lead Systems Designer Robert Gutschera. There are a large "number of levers" available to tweak and make adjustments. There's no way that class lore and WotC IP is responsible for the relative strength and viability of classes. That ship sailed even before you needed to roll damage dice over 1,000,000 times to kill a boss. There's no way that ability to do 500,000+ damage with your at-wills is remotely a part of D&D IP, and an example of how NW is constrained by how WotC declare powers should work. One such very simple lever is an almost linear adjustment to class DPS by tweaking the base weapon damages - as suggested by SharpEdge. They're not doing anything remotely like that. What they did do, when they killed off entity procs and cast CW DPS deeper in the ditch, was make a SpellStorm improvement, and then nerf that improvement, to ensure that they left the CW exactly where they were before, as a 3rd rate DPS class. After almost 3 years of Cryptic not touching the class since great Nerf Exodus of module 6, I finally understand that the deplorable state of the class is very deliberate.

    Then the results: I, and many others, have pointed out the super obvious bias in TONG party composition since the start of mod 12. For months TONG parties were flooded with GWFs, DCs and OPs - with good reason. These are players getting the latest gear, with ultimate enchant drop rates at their highest, and AH prices at their highest. It's a big deal. We all know that the GWF is the massively preferred class for DPS, and that the DCs and OPs are the massively preferred support. There are many posts across the forums counting the actual numbers of classeses in TONG runs, and there's no way that Cryptic isn't highly aware. It's really obvious to anyone that there are very large gaps between the DPS classes, backed up with highly skewed statistics for party compositions. This is not about slight differences between classes and perfect balance being hard to achieve. This is about very signifcant, long term gaps between classes - either by design, or by neglect.

    Once you start talking about actual evidence and results, nobody is going to try and claim that the current state of class balance is a reflection of Cryptic's constant tweaking of the many levers available to them, and a desire to achieve fair relevance of classes.
    Going into mod 14, Cryptic are still advertising a game design with 5 member party Ravenloft Castle queuing as 3 DPS, 1 Healer and 1 Tank. There's no communication from them on any game direction, so we should expect a 3rd module in a row where the latest content is dominated by private queues composed of the meta. Once the drop rates on the latest big thing have dropped off, along with it's AH price, and the GWFs are getting bored, the dominant support will presumably start putting other DPS classes at the front of slower runs.

    I absolutely agree that the game is free and you can leave, or take a break. Is this the answer? With a major dungeon-run based MMO about to release?

    If you think that Cryptic are constantly tweaking to achieve their desired effect, I'd love to know what you think that desired effect is. The evidence that it's not about balance across DPS classes (remember: 3 DPS, 1 healer, 1 tank), is overwhelming.

  • thefiresidecatthefiresidecat Member Posts: 4,486 Arc User


    5 - actually forums don't really reflect general player happiness, there are many many thousands [millions?] of Neverwinter players, and how many moaners here? Fifty? One hundred?

    Just wanted to chime in on this and say that is a very accurate point. When I report back on how the community is doing, I call it "community sentiment", not happiness.

    just because people aren't coming to the forums doesn't mean the people here do not represent the people in game over all. from people I've met in game who dont come here (most) I've found their sentiments to pretty much echo popular opinion on the forums.
  • thefiresidecatthefiresidecat Member Posts: 4,486 Arc User


    5 - actually forums don't really reflect general player happiness, there are many many thousands [millions?] of Neverwinter players, and how many moaners here? Fifty? One hundred?

    The first part of this is a known truth, kreatyve quotes figures similar to the ones I would BUT:

    The real problem is that the forum population DOESN'T represent the general playing population, it overrepresents the people at the high gear end of the game for example.

    I probably potentially interact via alliances, chat channels etc with about 10K accounts on a regular basis. When about 3 are happy with a particular mechanic and the devs can't see that on the forums, that is an issue.

    Pretty much everybody hates the AD changes upcoming, and most REALLY dislike the RQ changes (they'd prefer to see them removed, but feel these changes make things worse), RQs have been a complete disaster for mid gear DPS who can't get on teams and we see this angst in the channels, but because it's a group that's not as prevalent on the forums as the 17Ks who don't have an issue, you see it less here.

    The weekend warriors who used to do little more than gather quests from the cleric during the week and run them at weekends without doing the tough dungeons have had their AD and dungeon shard output massively reduced for example, but they are a group who I suspect are underrepresented here so you don't see that issue brought up.


    you are wrong. look at the preview thread for ad changes and for rq changes. both are pretty much universally hated.
  • wintersmokewintersmoke Member Posts: 1,641 Arc User
    shadrakt2 said:

    > @kreatyve said:



    > As for the thread you mentioned, I can't speak for any of the dev team, but if I were a dev, I wouldn't have responded either, as there was no way to respond without inciting the players, or getting words twisted around. It was a very baited topic in my opinion, polite or not. Those types of threads usually are, and are usually best to be avoided.



    I agree. Take a look at our responses when devs post on controversial/rant/polite criticism threads. We’re irrational, foaming at the mouth jerks to them. Frankly, if I were a dev, I wouldn’t respond either.

    That's not true. I once gave Julia a :cookie:
  • kreatyvekreatyve Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 10,545 Community Moderator

    @moogiebear#5401 Wow! They actually forced that 5401 on the end, how many moogiebears can there be on this game?

    I have been telling the players boo-hooing this same thing. I do have "fun" and play for fun and not for profit. I remember long ago before Brian and I got married we were playing D&D at the kitchen table and Brian was the DM. He always hated two kinds of players at the table; Team killers and Looters. Team killers are those morons who sneak around (just because can) and kill off their own team. Brian tried his best to deal with the team killer even went to the trouble of splitting the group in half, giving him a separate "rival party" to work with. He continued to team kill his "evil party". The looters weren't as bad once they figured out Brian placed a lot of worthless magic items with the good. One looter got stuck with the cursed ring of carrot protection. He lost a finger getting it off his hand. My point is, there have been and always will be players who gripe about the way things work in any game. It is better than to complain than to just react. Sometimes you find out the system works to your advantage other times it looks much better on paper.

    I posted my fair share of complaints knowing the developers and CEO don't bother reading this stuff. I complain to voice my opinion, you can agree or disagree with my opinion. I have been here since alpha testing. I will be here until the game shuts down or I do. :) I try to make things better for players; keeping the official wiki up to date, my Foundry contest in June, and I role play as my characters in public. I don't lurk in Moonstone Mask. As I said many times before, play the game and have fun!

    Just wanted to let you know that the LOL on your comment was cause of that Cursed Ring of Carrot Protection. That really did make me LOL.

    As for the rest of your comment - the devs to read! They read a lot! They obviously can't read every single thing on the forums, (even us moderators don't have time for all that!), but they read as much as they can. They just don't comment on every single thing that they read, as that would just take way too much time out of their already busy work schedule. If you pay attention, a few of the devs even read in the middle of the night or on weekends, and comment during those hours.

    It drives me crazy when I hear statements like "The devs are lazy." or "The devs don't care." Neither one of those statements are even remotely true. (Not saying that anyone here said that, by the way.) Most of them work well over 40 hours a week, and put a lot of time and effort into their jobs. The studio just isn't large enough to keep up with demands.



    I totally get what you're saying, where they're busy with other things, but the idea that the current state of the game is what you get even when "balance is something they are constantly looking into", is really worrying.

    Firstly, the constraints: Check out the twitch with Lead Systems Designer Robert Gutschera. There are a large "number of levers" available to tweak and make adjustments. There's no way that class lore and WotC IP is responsible for the relative strength and viability of classes. That ship sailed even before you needed to roll damage dice over 1,000,000 times to kill a boss. There's no way that ability to do 500,000+ damage with your at-wills is remotely a part of D&D IP, and an example of how NW is constrained by how WotC declare powers should work. One such very simple lever is an almost linear adjustment to class DPS by tweaking the base weapon damages - as suggested by SharpEdge. They're not doing anything remotely like that. What they did do, when they killed off entity procs and cast CW DPS deeper in the ditch, was make a SpellStorm improvement, and then nerf that improvement, to ensure that they left the CW exactly where they were before, as a 3rd rate DPS class. After almost 3 years of Cryptic not touching the class since great Nerf Exodus of module 6, I finally understand that the deplorable state of the class is very deliberate.

    Then the results: I, and many others, have pointed out the super obvious bias in TONG party composition since the start of mod 12. For months TONG parties were flooded with GWFs, DCs and OPs - with good reason. These are players getting the latest gear, with ultimate enchant drop rates at their highest, and AH prices at their highest. It's a big deal. We all know that the GWF is the massively preferred class for DPS, and that the DCs and OPs are the massively preferred support. There are many posts across the forums counting the actual numbers of classeses in TONG runs, and there's no way that Cryptic isn't highly aware. It's really obvious to anyone that there are very large gaps between the DPS classes, backed up with highly skewed statistics for party compositions. This is not about slight differences between classes and perfect balance being hard to achieve. This is about very signifcant, long term gaps between classes - either by design, or by neglect.

    Once you start talking about actual evidence and results, nobody is going to try and claim that the current state of class balance is a reflection of Cryptic's constant tweaking of the many levers available to them, and a desire to achieve fair relevance of classes.
    Going into mod 14, Cryptic are still advertising a game design with 5 member party Ravenloft Castle queuing as 3 DPS, 1 Healer and 1 Tank. There's no communication from them on any game direction, so we should expect a 3rd module in a row where the latest content is dominated by private queues composed of the meta. Once the drop rates on the latest big thing have dropped off, along with it's AH price, and the GWFs are getting bored, the dominant support will presumably start putting other DPS classes at the front of slower runs.

    I absolutely agree that the game is free and you can leave, or take a break. Is this the answer? With a major dungeon-run based MMO about to release?

    If you think that Cryptic are constantly tweaking to achieve their desired effect, I'd love to know what you think that desired effect is. The evidence that it's not about balance across DPS classes (remember: 3 DPS, 1 healer, 1 tank), is overwhelming.

    I had totally forgotten about that statement about the sliders, to be perfectly honest. I'm not sure why they haven't been messing with them. Perhaps it's something they would like to put into the game engine but haven't yet, for whatever reason, or there are other factors interfering with their use of them.
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  • vordaynvordayn Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,283 Arc User
    edited May 2018


    Firstly, the constraints: Check out the twitch with Lead Systems Designer Robert Gutschera. There are a large "number of levers" available to tweak and make adjustments. There's no way that class lore and WotC IP is responsible for the relative strength and viability of classes. That ship sailed even before you needed to roll damage dice over 1,000,000 times to kill a boss. There's no way that ability to do 500,000+ damage with your at-wills is remotely a part of D&D IP, and an example of how NW is constrained by how WotC declare powers should work. One such very simple lever is an almost linear adjustment to class DPS by tweaking the base weapon damages - as suggested by SharpEdge. They're not doing anything remotely like that. What they did do, when they killed off entity procs and cast CW DPS deeper in the ditch, was make a SpellStorm improvement, and then nerf that improvement, to ensure that they left the CW exactly where they were before, as a 3rd rate DPS class. After almost 3 years of Cryptic not touching the class since great Nerf Exodus of module 6, I finally understand that the deplorable state of the class is very deliberate.

    Then the results: I, and many others, have pointed out the super obvious bias in TONG party composition since the start of mod 12. For months TONG parties were flooded with GWFs, DCs and OPs - with good reason. These are players getting the latest gear, with ultimate enchant drop rates at their highest, and AH prices at their highest. It's a big deal. We all know that the GWF is the massively preferred class for DPS, and that the DCs and OPs are the massively preferred support. There are many posts across the forums counting the actual numbers of classeses in TONG runs, and there's no way that Cryptic isn't highly aware. It's really obvious to anyone that there are very large gaps between the DPS classes, backed up with highly skewed statistics for party compositions. This is not about slight differences between classes and perfect balance being hard to achieve. This is about very signifcant, long term gaps between classes - either by design, or by neglect.

    Once you start talking about actual evidence and results, nobody is going to try and claim that the current state of class balance is a reflection of Cryptic's constant tweaking of the many levers available to them, and a desire to achieve fair relevance of classes.

    Going into mod 14, Cryptic are still advertising a game design with 5 member party Ravenloft Castle queuing as 3 DPS, 1 Healer and 1 Tank. There's no communication from them on any game direction, so we should expect a 3rd module in a row where the latest content is dominated by private queues composed of the meta. Once the drop rates on the latest big thing have dropped off, along with it's AH price, and the GWFs are getting bored, the dominant support will presumably start putting other DPS classes at the front of slower runs.

    I absolutely agree that the game is free and you can leave, or take a break. Is this the answer? With a major dungeon-run based MMO about to release?

    If you think that Cryptic are constantly tweaking to achieve their desired effect, I'd love to know what you think that desired effect is. The evidence that it's not about balance across DPS classes (remember: 3 DPS, 1 healer, 1 tank), is overwhelming.

    I agree with a lot of your points here.

    I'm just concerned that perhaps the developers do not directly see how the meta is unfolding, and how toxic it can be against classes which do not fit this mould. I mean, do the devs play min-maxed characters, with each class playing their niche role, and time everything just right to achieve, say, 750mil hits on Orcus at TONG? There was a recent video showing just that with the new SoD changes in preview.

    The design is something to be worried about too. If the DPS buff ('Curse Bleed') at Orcus in TONG rewards only one player with a significant buff (is it 300% to 400%??) then it will encourage the 1 DPS + 4 support meta because that is the most efficient. It punishes players who do not fit this meta by literally smacking them with one-shot balls of all things once temp HP runs out due to poor overall team DPS! Yet the Random Queue 'Hero's Accord' forces the ineffective 3DPS + tank + healer combo. It just doesn't make sense!

    If Castle Ravenloft has a similar feature with the 'Sun Sword' (I haven't been able to test it out myself), then the Devs are continuing on this destructive path of making their content trivial for those who play the meta, and punishing those who do not. It has become especially rewarding to classes with high base damage and high-self buffing capabilities to be the preferred primary DPS, due to the way multiplicative buffs are handled.

    Other players begin to expect certain things from 'support' characters, and if you don't fit their expectation of what you are supposed to do, then you are either not invited to the party, or kicked because they want to shave that extra 1-2 minutes from a TONG run, or they kick you anyway because the team keeps dying and they want to blame their perceived weakest link. Right now, the SW and CW are probably the most expendable in a party. Granted, one shouldn't be running with such toxic players in the first place, but then this only encourages playing with a few people instead of running with new (but untested) players, limiting community interaction.

    Potential solutions include looking at the sliders as you mentioned and adjusting base damages of classes, or looking at the way that buffs are multiplied by everything and with each other to prevent 'overtuning' of such content and only preferentially rewarding certain classes which can do this the best. I agree it would take Developers' time to do this, and take them away from other projects, but continually trying to cater dungeon content difficulty to such wildly varying party-DPS capabilities just makes it harder for themselves.

    But what is clear currently, is that there is a clear 'natural selection' taking place between the classes, and it is definitely frustrating that there is no acknowledgement that they might be doing something about it, or are even considering it. A little bit of communication goes a very long way with players who take the time and effort to post something so clearly and thoroughly on the state of the game from a player's perspective.
    Post edited by vordayn on
    Vordon CW        Vordayn DC        Axel Wolfric GWF        Logain SW        Gawyn GF        Galad OP        Aspen Darkfire HR        Min TR
  • vordaynvordayn Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,283 Arc User
    edited May 2018

    I am not asking this to be a troll. I just genuinely would like to know. If you perceive that there are a ton of problems and it's frustrating to you, then why not play a different game? The purpose of video games is to have fun. If you aren't having fun, then there's something wrong. I just don't understand all the whining and complaining on all the forums all the time. Yes, there is room for improvement, but I see a lot of posts that complain that the game is broken or unplayable in some way (which I don't really get, I think it's really fun). But I guess what I'm trying to ask here, is that if you aren't having fun, why are you still playing?

    Going back to your topic though, people complain generally because they are passionate about something - if they don't care about something, will they complain? Unless they really are trolling, but you can generally tell from the tone and content of their post (not always!).

    Also players can sometimes exaggerate things, but you can generally tell if this is exaggeration too. If you play the game enough, you will understand if what they are saying has a basis in truth, especially if you have experienced it first hand.

    Also people complain to try to rectify something they think is getting in the way of their fun, to try to make the game fun again, for themselves or for others.

    Complaining is also probably the last step before giving up, and after putting a lot of time and effort in building something you may be proud of (your character, your guild, your network of friends), you want to make sure that there is nothing else you can do before just moving on and quitting.
    Vordon CW        Vordayn DC        Axel Wolfric GWF        Logain SW        Gawyn GF        Galad OP        Aspen Darkfire HR        Min TR
  • greywyndgreywynd Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 7,083 Arc User
    While I may not particularly be having "fun" doing the daily grind, there are people that I know only through the game that I do enjoy interacting with.
    I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
  • sandukutupusandukutupu Member Posts: 2,285 Arc User
    kreatyve said:


    ....knowing the developers and CEO don't bother reading this stuff.

    As for the rest of your comment - the devs to read! They read a lot! They obviously can't read every single thing on the forums, (even us moderators don't have time for all that!), but they read as much as they can. They just don't comment on every single thing that they read, as that would just take way too much time out of their already busy work schedule. If you pay attention, a few of the devs even read in the middle of the night or on weekends, and comment during those hours.

    It drives me crazy when I hear statements like "The devs are lazy." or "The devs don't care." Neither one of those statements are even remotely true. (Not saying that anyone here said that, by the way.) Most of them work well over 40 hours a week, and put a lot of time and effort into their jobs. The studio just isn't large enough to keep up with demands.
    Not what I meant. Then to reword how I said it; ....knowing the developers and CEO are too busy to read this stuff. I think you can see where I have stated, in the past, they don't pay Thomas Foss enough (budget) to work on the Foundry. That is what he said, in a video interview with Andy, not that long ago. I don't expect Mr. Foss and his team (or anyone) to work for free. They are not paid to listen to us complain on the forums.

    Not all ideas are "perfect", and while I have fun playing the game, I sure don't believe capping AD, or anything I have read so far will be the instant fix. I don't think it will hurt but at the same time it won't help. I told them to put our AH on the gold standard long ago. Could you imagine the chaos it would cause now to change over? Too late!

    History lesson to all you players saying this plan will "destroy the game". They added RAD to invokes. Before invoking was just an hourly buff I ignored it for the first year or so. They removed and replaced the RAD with BAD (bonus astral diamonds) and players threw a hissy fit. They added AD to the Foundry and they removed AD from the Foundry. They created dungeons and they destroyed dungeons, I know I am still upset about Throne of Idris. But here we are again, voicing our mixed opinions about a plan in the works. The OP (moogiebear) asked why are we still here, if we don't have fun. I can't speak for everyone, but I think we can all agree; the game remains available, and these kind of debates will continue, when players feel the need to express an opinion about a change to the game.
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