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Many Issues within NW:
thefabricant
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
This thread is a bit long for a feedback thread, I know and I apologize in advance. It addresses many issues that exist within the game (in my opinion), suggests a solution and where possible, lists an example of a similar system that exists within this game (or another) which is done correctly.
Section 1: General Game Design.
This section deals with very broad issues, entire systems and not specific to any narrow part of the game.
Statistics in Neverwinter:
Since module 6, the game has had no diminishing returns. The reasoning behind this (as I understand it) is to avoid the need for a situation like mod 6 happening again. The issue in mod 5 was, too many statistics were available from gear and boons and so players were hitting very hard diminishing returns on every single rating. As a result of this, pve content that could reasonably be created by the devs, could never be challenging, because if it was challenging, it would not be possible for it to become easier over time as all statistics were already capped, without introducing new statistics that did not exist, or adjusting the formula for each statistic. The net result was that to address the problem, they raised the level cap and changed the stat curves.
The issue with the current system is that many powers, feats and items are made obsolete because they were designed in an era where diminishing returns did exist and the bonus provided could be useful, or in an era were the statistic did something different. For example, the bonus provided by chaotic nexus, before mod 6, was really, really good, even at endgame because you could not possibly reach 100% critical strike chance. Now, unless an overcrit mechanic is added, feats like this just lose purpose once you acquire gear. Alternatively, class features like the hunter class feature battlehoned exist, which provides regeneration in combat, which is a statistic which provides the majority of its non existant bonus outside of combat. The real hidden issue though, is that the underlying problem that existed before mod 6, has not gone away, it is just that those stat "caps" have moved from values which are specifically chosen by the developers to enforce some kind of balance, to absolute values which represent the maximum benefit you can obtain from that statistic. The only statistic which does not have a "hard limit" to usefulness in pve is power and we are already in a situation (and have been for a long time) where you can cap every stat and then just stack power.
I don't really have a good solution to this, but clearly, the current solution is not working and something needs to be done.
Some more specific Statistics Issues:
Damage Buffs:
The issue that currently exists is how much of a major role these play in the game, to the point where the majority of classes picked in a group are picked solely because of how much they buff. This is both a blessing and a curse, a blessing because it encourages picking a varied number of classes and a curse because it locks specific classes into a group, In my opinion, the best way to deal with this is to give a 20% instance wide buff for each different class in a group, to then remove all buffs that currently exist and then to modify 1 capstone for every class that should have a "buffer" role to provide a buff, equal to whatever percentage you think buffs should increase your damage by. For example, if you think a buffer should increase the damage of the party by 30%, you could have say the capstone of a dc make HG buff 20% when active and FF buff 10% when active. Notice I suggest the capstone gives buffs to specific skills and not just passively applied buffs, as it makes for more interesting and defined specializations.
Defense Buffs:
Defense buffs are also an issue, simply because of how "big" they are. For example, Astral Shield will buff your damage reduction by 40% and Circle of Power by 25%, with very little effort, if support classes try they can cap everyone's damage reduction, rendering the defense statistic in optimized groups worthless. This is compounded by the fact that some powers that provide defense buffs also provide damage buffs and so the support does not have to "sacrifice" anything in order to buff your defenses. The issue here is simply that dedicated tanks, builds that actively build defensively, are useless because every class can cap defensive stats purely through buffs. Tied in with the fact that every class has roughly the same hitpoints, the only thing that makes a tank different from a dps is either 10 million temporary hitpoints (another design flaw) or a shield which provides an 80% layer of separate mitigation, neither of which prevent you from investing in dps as a tank and the former which actually rewards you for it. There are 2 solutions for this that I can see, either giving monsters excessive amounts of armour penetration, or reducing the values for defense buffs and moving them onto skills that do not buff damage. I find the latter more appealing as it makes for more interesting gameplay.
Damage Debuffs and Defense Debuffs:
For the most part, these are ok. With diminishing returns on debuffs, debuffs are not a major concern and and considering how most of the values for damage debuffs are so small, they are not a major issue either.
Ratings Buffs:
These fall into 2 categories, the first is the, "increase your allies ratings by a certain percentage", which is almost always completely useless and the second is, "share a percentage of your ratings with an ally" which is actually good. The problem with the second category is that it is difficult to balance. A dps with very poor gear but rank 14 bondings and legendary pets, would receive a massive buff from aura gifts or a dc (provided the dc has a lot of power), but a dps with very good gear on their character and an augment, would get a small buff. Alternatively, no matter how bad or good the gear of the dps is, if the dc or op has low power, they don't buff much at all. I am of 2 minds on this, on the 1 hand, I like these kinds of buffs because it gives supports a goal to aim for, but on the other hand, the difficulty in balancing it makes it something which probably shouldn't exist in Neverwinter as the dev team struggles already.
Control as a Mechanic:
Control is inherently flawed currently. The purpose of control is to fill the same role as a tank, whereby a tank "controls" enemies by absorbing damage and a controller deals with them by preventing them from being able to deal damage. Currently, there is nothing in the game that is important that can be controlled and so the role is dead. In order for the role to become meaningful again, some controllable dangerous enemies would have to be added, for example, adds in a boss fight which cannot be damaged and only controlled.
Section 1: General Game Design.
This section deals with very broad issues, entire systems and not specific to any narrow part of the game.
Statistics in Neverwinter:
Since module 6, the game has had no diminishing returns. The reasoning behind this (as I understand it) is to avoid the need for a situation like mod 6 happening again. The issue in mod 5 was, too many statistics were available from gear and boons and so players were hitting very hard diminishing returns on every single rating. As a result of this, pve content that could reasonably be created by the devs, could never be challenging, because if it was challenging, it would not be possible for it to become easier over time as all statistics were already capped, without introducing new statistics that did not exist, or adjusting the formula for each statistic. The net result was that to address the problem, they raised the level cap and changed the stat curves.
The issue with the current system is that many powers, feats and items are made obsolete because they were designed in an era where diminishing returns did exist and the bonus provided could be useful, or in an era were the statistic did something different. For example, the bonus provided by chaotic nexus, before mod 6, was really, really good, even at endgame because you could not possibly reach 100% critical strike chance. Now, unless an overcrit mechanic is added, feats like this just lose purpose once you acquire gear. Alternatively, class features like the hunter class feature battlehoned exist, which provides regeneration in combat, which is a statistic which provides the majority of its non existant bonus outside of combat. The real hidden issue though, is that the underlying problem that existed before mod 6, has not gone away, it is just that those stat "caps" have moved from values which are specifically chosen by the developers to enforce some kind of balance, to absolute values which represent the maximum benefit you can obtain from that statistic. The only statistic which does not have a "hard limit" to usefulness in pve is power and we are already in a situation (and have been for a long time) where you can cap every stat and then just stack power.
I don't really have a good solution to this, but clearly, the current solution is not working and something needs to be done.
Some more specific Statistics Issues:
- Defensive and offensive stat distributions. In my opinion, gear should not provide both offensive and defensive stats, but should instead provide 1 or the other. Hitpoints should be removed from all armour pieces (head, chest, gloves, boots) and should be on the same pool of stats as power or defense. The reason for this is quite simply because there should be more of a difference between a tank and a non tank character than whether or not they are wearing a shield. To take this further, the SH offense and defense boon category should be condensed, allowing you to only choose 1 boon out of all of them, and not 1 from both. Furthermore, the ability score constitution only provides additional hp based off of your hp without gear, not your hp with gear on, which is something that should be looked into. Yes, I am aware that mobs currently deal damage based off of the current hp thresholds, but numbers can be adjusted (although I acknowledge it is a lot of work).
- Lifesteal. Healing will never exist so long as this statistic exists in its current form. In my opinion lifesteal should be a heal over time, that heals for up to a max of 10% of your hp per second, over 10 seconds. When you reach full life, the heal over time ends and will need to be reapplied. Dealing additional damage while a lifesteal HoT is active, will add the HoT's together, up to the cap of 10%. Lifesteal chance goes back to 100% (like in mod 5) and the lifesteal stat would increase lifesteal severity, with a base value of 0% and increasing as you increase the stat, you can lifesteal for a larger percentage of your damage, but you would never exceed the 10% of your maximum hp per second. This makes it a useful stat for doing dailies or soloing, whilst limiting its usefulness in harder content and reintroducing the role of a healer.
- Action Point gain. In the earlier modules, this was not an issue. Currently, the issue is how easy it is to spam dailies, to the point they are like a 4th or 5th encounter. Early on in the game (not counting the singularity shield pulse days), daily powers were something which you rarely used, often strategically, to turn the tide in combat. Since then however, many additional sources of AP gain have been added to the game (cloaks, dc sigil, snail, overloads, the list goes on) which leaves us in a situation where dailies can almost be used without any consideration or skill. In my opinion this is a bad thing as it removes an element of player skill, knowing when to use a daily in the fight. I cannot really think of any nice solutions to this, but it is a problem that exists within the game as is.
Damage Buffs:
The issue that currently exists is how much of a major role these play in the game, to the point where the majority of classes picked in a group are picked solely because of how much they buff. This is both a blessing and a curse, a blessing because it encourages picking a varied number of classes and a curse because it locks specific classes into a group, In my opinion, the best way to deal with this is to give a 20% instance wide buff for each different class in a group, to then remove all buffs that currently exist and then to modify 1 capstone for every class that should have a "buffer" role to provide a buff, equal to whatever percentage you think buffs should increase your damage by. For example, if you think a buffer should increase the damage of the party by 30%, you could have say the capstone of a dc make HG buff 20% when active and FF buff 10% when active. Notice I suggest the capstone gives buffs to specific skills and not just passively applied buffs, as it makes for more interesting and defined specializations.
Defense Buffs:
Defense buffs are also an issue, simply because of how "big" they are. For example, Astral Shield will buff your damage reduction by 40% and Circle of Power by 25%, with very little effort, if support classes try they can cap everyone's damage reduction, rendering the defense statistic in optimized groups worthless. This is compounded by the fact that some powers that provide defense buffs also provide damage buffs and so the support does not have to "sacrifice" anything in order to buff your defenses. The issue here is simply that dedicated tanks, builds that actively build defensively, are useless because every class can cap defensive stats purely through buffs. Tied in with the fact that every class has roughly the same hitpoints, the only thing that makes a tank different from a dps is either 10 million temporary hitpoints (another design flaw) or a shield which provides an 80% layer of separate mitigation, neither of which prevent you from investing in dps as a tank and the former which actually rewards you for it. There are 2 solutions for this that I can see, either giving monsters excessive amounts of armour penetration, or reducing the values for defense buffs and moving them onto skills that do not buff damage. I find the latter more appealing as it makes for more interesting gameplay.
Damage Debuffs and Defense Debuffs:
For the most part, these are ok. With diminishing returns on debuffs, debuffs are not a major concern and and considering how most of the values for damage debuffs are so small, they are not a major issue either.
Ratings Buffs:
These fall into 2 categories, the first is the, "increase your allies ratings by a certain percentage", which is almost always completely useless and the second is, "share a percentage of your ratings with an ally" which is actually good. The problem with the second category is that it is difficult to balance. A dps with very poor gear but rank 14 bondings and legendary pets, would receive a massive buff from aura gifts or a dc (provided the dc has a lot of power), but a dps with very good gear on their character and an augment, would get a small buff. Alternatively, no matter how bad or good the gear of the dps is, if the dc or op has low power, they don't buff much at all. I am of 2 minds on this, on the 1 hand, I like these kinds of buffs because it gives supports a goal to aim for, but on the other hand, the difficulty in balancing it makes it something which probably shouldn't exist in Neverwinter as the dev team struggles already.
Control as a Mechanic:
Control is inherently flawed currently. The purpose of control is to fill the same role as a tank, whereby a tank "controls" enemies by absorbing damage and a controller deals with them by preventing them from being able to deal damage. Currently, there is nothing in the game that is important that can be controlled and so the role is dead. In order for the role to become meaningful again, some controllable dangerous enemies would have to be added, for example, adds in a boss fight which cannot be damaged and only controlled.
Post edited by thefabricant on
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This section deals with content like dungeons, as well as the rewards you get for running them.
Chase Items:
The problem with chase items in Neverwinter is the process of obtaining them is not fun. In most MMOs, chase items (items that are exceedingly rare and you have to go through a lot of work to obtain) exist and they are a good thing. The purpose of them is to give you something difficult to work towards, the "item to have" and give you a reason to keep playing when you have everything else. The issue is in Neverwinter, that instead of being gated behind "hard work" they are gated behind chance. This is not fun because it leads to some people getting lucky and obtaining what they want on the first try (or getting 3 copies of the damn ring, I am looking at you elvis) whilst others, may never obtain it at all in 1000's of attempts (have you even got a helig yet michela?). This is compounded by the fact that the chase rings of this module are obtained via daily and weekly quests, which you are hard limited on farming (barring you do not create multiple characters just to farm it) which is some of the least engaging content in Neverwinter.
The issue with this is made worse because the people these items are designed for, are not the type of players who want to be doing fane of the night serpent on 20 different characters, they are the types of players who want to lose their souls in the newest hardest content. A good example of a chase item system existing within Neverwinter (although it isn't much of a chase item) was the twisted set, where it could drop by chance, or, you could buy it with twisted ichor. Or, alternatively, masterwork crafting, which is a long chain of expensive quests to unlock the "endgame crafting". My suggestion is to either do something like the twisted set (where a 1000th of a ring drops every time, to retain the grind element of it, but multiple locations can be grinded, for example hunts or cradle), which you then turn in for the ring you want, or add a long difficult chain of quests like masterworks, which then culminates in the item you want.
Dungeon Mechanics:
This is a little bit more specific and deals with how mechanics in dungeons should be given more thought, for example, the elevator in Cradle. The reason being, what you are doing in the elevator is essentially designed for only 1 person (kite 1 mine or ooze) but cradle is an instance designed for 10 people. The net result is, the elevator phase is exceptionally easy and boring to do and makes up a significant portion of the time spent in the instance. In comparison, the first phase of msva is a lot better, as it actively involves the entire team. In future, I feel it is important to avoid situations like the elevator in cradle, where if you think about how many people it is designed for, it does not constitute a full team.
This just deals with some minor class balance stuff in PVE. Anything that is addressed in an earlier post (for example buffs, debuffs, ap gain etc) will not be mentioned again here, so lots of dc stuff is being left out.
Control Wizard:
- The capstone of Oppressor goes against the design philosophy of the path. Rather then addressing the issues with control in general, the path was given the purpose of the Thaumaturge path, which was intended to be the damaging path.
- The feat "controlled momentum" is stronger than any of the Control Wizard capstones.
- Chilling Presence is mandatory for any dps build, there is no option to unslot it. It should be toned down and a buff given to CW base damage to compensate, in order to bring some degree of choice to class features.
Devoted Cleric:- Break the Spirit is a strictly better version of Forgemaster's Flame, in every single way. The damage buff from bts should (probably) be removed and then the damage debuff effects all enemies in the area for the empowered effect, with the number of stacks increasing the area.
Great Weapon Fighter:- The destroyer path is mandatory, due to the 50% damage buff that is the capstone as well as the determination gain on dealing damage. The base damage of the class should be increased by 20 to 30% and the capstone should be halved, or reduced by 3 quarters.
- The damage buffs associated with hidden daggers and battlefury lock gwfs into a very small list of useable powers. On the one hand, it is good as it means the class has a higher skill cap (managing buffs) but on the other hand, it means that there is very little variation that can ever occur. It is probably for the best if the damage buffs were reduced a bit and the base damage of gwf powers increased to compensate, just to make it possible for other powers to be useable.
- Too many powers and feats are completely useless to list, lots of them need to be reworked.
Guardian Fighter:Hunter Ranger:
I do not know enough to comment.
Oathbound Paladin:
- Templar's Wrath. It doesn't really need an explanation, 2 million+ temp hp is an issue. The amount of hp it gives depending on how many enemies it hits should probably be fixed first, before further adjustments are made.
- All of the passive healing mechanics need to be reworked, otherwise a devotion paladin becomes the obvious first choice healer in any situation where healing becomes necessary. Bond of Virtue, Vow of Enmity, Prism, the works.
Scourge Warlock:I do not know enough to comment. The class could probably use some new class features though, the ones they have are pretty awful.
Trickster Rogue:
This is a short section dealing with the economy and power creep.
- Crossovers should not exist between the wondrous bazaar and the zen store. The wb exists as an ad sink, the zen store exists to consume zen. Anything that is provided on 1, should not be provided on the other as it makes both of them less effective at what they are supposed to do. Things like marks of potency as a result should not be in lockboxes, as it decreases the effectiveness of the wb as an ad sink. Enchanting stones however, are fine as they are not a wb item.
- Too many Astral Diamonds exist within the Neverwinter economy. This is no secret, the game needs more AD sinks. In my opinion, either add more mandatory items for upgrades (like marks of potency) to the wondrous bazaar, or add links to other systems within the game. For example, adding professions resources to the wondrous bazaar.
- The power creep in recent modules, particularly the addition of the new mount (bat swarm) and the new pet (groot) is something that should perhaps be reconsidered. The problem with both items is it sets a new level of power well above any of the existing items, which all of the existing pets and mounts will be judged by, rendering many old items obsolete. It is better, for the sake of diversity, to create alternative items, which are good in a different way, to ones which are clearly superior.
That covers everything for now, I may add more later. It is all kind of pointless since it won't get read over anyhow.It currently feels like the game is on a "Sharp" decline with end game players. Most are leaving the game, and only logging in for the first month or two of the new modules and for daily VIP keys or big events, such as the Protectors Jubilee which we just had. I wish that past experiences, and tension that is still possibly there could be put aside for the betterment of a game that we either work on or love to play. Please listen to well constructed, and well thought out player feedback from the community developers.
Moderator removed moderation commentary.
Nothing about Archer HR?
No "why is a class encouraged to stand out of buff range"?
Or "why is the capstone a debuff when debuffs got nerfed"?
Stat curves: Maybe there can be a middle ground between hard caps vs. completely linear. It seems like a soft curve with no hard cap would still allow a lot more road before topping out, while still being able to somewhat compress the difference between decent stats and super stats. Also, RIP "Eye of the Storm"...
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Damage buffs: I'm not sure if locking buffs behind one capstone for each class is a good idea. It seems like that would just result in "support" classes being required to take that path. What would you think about changing damage buffs to additive instead of multiplicative? It would require quite a bit of rebalancing, but would finally stop runaway buffs from punching a hole in the space-time continuum.
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Stat sharing: This seems to be the cause of a lot of other stat management headaches like you mentioned with augments vs. Bondings, but also the Bonding power feedback loop. Wouldn't it be better to replace stat sharing with flat percent buffs, especially if buffs were changed to additive? They did that with Into the Fray and it seemed to work out rather well.
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Control: Mobs that can ONLY be controlled sounds intriguing, but then that REQUIRES a controller which I'm not sure is much better overall. I've wondered about introducing "defeatable immunity" to control immune targets, even most bosses. Any time a control power is used on them, there could be a 1-in-20 chance that it actually works. This would mimic rolling a '1' on a saving throw in the table top game, which always fails, at least in the old game. If it seems too much, there could a short "total immunity" timer to prevent CC chaining from multiple characters, or the ability to defeat immunity could be locked behind the Oppressor capstone for CWs, since we actually have Control in our name.
It seems like they subconsciously tried to emulate something like this with the whole "Oops! The T-Rex falls over" mechanic from Chult. It's like a self-inflicted failed save vs. CC.
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Chase items: The randomness of "the good stuff" can be extremely frustrating. I have 2 +5 Underdark rings now (both useless btw, even back when UD rings were relevant) and I obtained both of them pretty close together about a month ago. Really?!! It seems they occasionally flirt with good stuff that is directly earnable like a couple of the Eku/Makos items or when new seals are introduced, but it's mostly pray to the RNG gods and kiss your hamster goodbye.
I'm all for pity counters, pity currencies, and extra-grindy alternatives to RNG. I'm also all for not padding the high-end loot tables with useless gear you'll likely get instead of what you want. If something super-rare does drop, let us choose which one we want.
My favorite Neverwinter modules were three and six.
Module 3 because icewind dale was exciting and very difficult.
Module 6 because of the extreme difficulty. One random dungeon monster could kill players with only two hits.
I love "nightmare mode" but I don't know if this is a good idea, in general.
The important things being well though out encounters, not just adding more elites and capping the amount of damage players do versus mob HP. Apart from armor penetration, we are basically still fighting the same level (73) mobs.
The older parts of the game need to be overhauled and the obsolete parts as well as the quests and dialogue relating to them should be removed. New rewards could be added if the issues regarding power creep/stat returns and buffs were addressed. We have a past full of broken, obsolete content and yet each mod doesn't offer much to replace what we lose. For nearly a year, only 1 dungeon has been really worth running and that is a shame given how much material is available if only care were put into restoring it.
Players ought to have a vast array of equipment to choose between - and every one a valid choice, instead of a vast array of things to toss.
I always thought power sharing is the one which should be nerfed.
You cannot balance dungeons if you have 150-200k power instead of 30-50k.
I thought a fix amount of power sharing should be introduced instead of percentage. 10-20k tops.
But a hard cap on power would do the same trick.
Chase item.
The abysmal Rng drop rate from demogorgon/cn/msva/ig was indeed embarrassing.
I think various Mmos has some currency for legendary items instead of this.
It can be farmed from raids/dungeons etc. It's a hard work but can be done.
Mod13 masterwork rings and mod14 lockbox IG jewelry somewhat eased the pain but sooner or later the new items
had to be be introduced and they will be forced to do the same.
Unless they want to put everthing in MW/Lockboxes which isn't a great solution either.
In fact, I would like to see steps taken to make more different builds viable - I don't think that there is any class where all three feat trees (and capstones) are considered "viable"