That was amusing, you both appear to be saying kind of the same thing but not sure if you both realized it at the time
yeah. that was my fault, not his. I apologized. This whole Mod 16 preview experience is raising tension and causing divisions among the player base... even those of us who usually agree.
My point, which I failed to make, was... 1) giving constructive criticism is good for the game. 2) Telling people "the game is dead. Walk away" is bad for the game. 3) Telling people to "shut up and deal with the changes" is also bad for the game.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
If anyone is going to quit the game - pls send me your stuff first. Thx and bye!
I learned from Mod 6 to never assume the game is in an inevitable downward death spiral, regardless of how bad a given mod release is.
If M16 is an M6 redux (or worse) I'll pull out the plastic furniture covers, turn off the gas to the water heater, lock the front door and take a solid 3 - 4 month vacay from my NW account.
I'll probably check back in late summer - maybe around Labor Day (about when M17 should release) to see how the NW landscape has changed.
Original poster here. I have now playtested and analyzed the new system. I actually love it a lot, except for one thing, and its a big one that WILL drive everyone to leave slowly if not fixed. Dozens of posters have pointed out their frustration with a stat threshold.
Stat points in any stat other than power or health, have ZERO effect until they reach a threshold. This will lead to players stacking all points into a few categories and attempting to "Zero OUT" their other stats. This is un-natural and will break the game.
Luckily, the solution is both simple and mandatory:
Give each named monster type a value of 0 to 20 potency in each statistic, with an average of 10. The game will multiply: 25 point packets X level of the area X stat potency
This will give some creatures some low stats and some high stats, maintaining the same average amount. This will be huge because then a player in a zone with a 16,000 average enemy stat number, will actually benefit from having less than 16,000 of a stat. It will add strategy and teamwork because each player will have certain enemies it excels against or has a harder time against.
Power needs 10 - 30 packets to ensure it has 'some' damage. All other stats should be 0-20. Health can be handled any way the developers want. Keep it the same or give it whatever packet range suits their need for difficulty and pacing. The universal packet size I used is 25, but 20 would be fine too. The 'correct' amount is in the 20-25 range.
SO... looking at Ravenloft... lets create a sample packet template for a creature:
As you can see.. it now has the same average base stats, but one (crit resist) is as low as 1,750... which means it is susceptible to critical hits. Even a Paladin with a meager 4,250 Critical points now has a 5% chance to critical hit this enemy. Whalah!... the 4,250 points were never wasted now, were they?
Since speed is of the essence, the programmers should simply randomize the packets for now, and maybe hand adjust a few. They will need to adjust the balance to make sense later. For instance.. it would make little sense to have a "Dread Knight" opponent with low Defense so it might need adjustment, but just getting the variation for now should be priority.
It is not the stat changes that are going to kill the game. They will be killing the game with the new implementation of each character class and paragon path. Many people are quite attached to there characters, and may just walk away when they see how that character plays in mod 16.
Hell yes, that will end up with a lot of unhappy people. Unfortunately, this had to come. The classes are so out of whack in terms of balance nothing short of a massive overhaul is required. Otherwise they'd lose all these people anyways, in drips and drabs as each mod would kill a small part of the population.
Except we can already see the outline of what mod 16 will be and among others it's a blatant flip off of anyone who primarily runs solo content. Second, this goes live in two months max, there simply isn't enough time to even remotely address even half of what would need addressing and in several cases what's wrong is actually wai and isn't getting changed. Not to mention we saw just one mod ago, back in October, precisely how much the devs listen to player input. Which was really just, when it's basically irrelevant to the subject at hand or create no meaningful change. And utterly destroying people's playstyles, wrecking equipment, giving no compensation for rendering several hundred millions worth of investments useless overnight is not something that is encouraging me or most of my guildies to stay. My guild and frankly most of my alliance went semi dead after mod 15, most still around or hanging on the fringes have been eyeing mod 16 to see if the game is still worth it. But considering that they're stripping away most of what makes us all enjoy playing, completely altering our classes into something none of us signed up for and few of us would ever want to play, well I doubt there'll be much alliance left after mod 16 launch and probably it'd be dead sooner. Seeing everything you've worked for destroyed and being condescendingly told "be patient, you can just start over like everyone else" is not something that will keep player retention high with this mod.
Tottaly agree with your post. Game is now completly diferent and millions and millions of Ad went down the pipe. You dont do that to paying customers and expect people to be happy.
The industry and the player base wont forget what have been done. Next time im gonna buy Zen for $20 ill think twice like; "Do i want to give cash to this company that did what they did wihtout care for their costumers or not?"
I had a look on preview and while I can't describe what I saw, I personally see it as one more giant nerf. Some things are changing which will only serve to nerf existing builds with no upside to it and I see that as a bad thing. I have been playing for 5 years but this has stopped me wanting to continue. I will try and deal with the changes because I have a guild to run, but it looks like we are being nerfed badly and I am pretty much over this happening so I will have to reconsider whether I actively play anymore seeing I always solo content and this is going to be negatively affected. Some things in the game are changing for what seems just one more grab by the devs at trying to force players to play a certain way. I'm pretty much over this. From memory it started around the time they got rid of Rhyx because 'not enough people were remembering to see him', and has continued on ever since in one form or another, trying to force players to play this way or that way and taking away our choices. The best part of Neverwinter was always how you could play it many ways but this is being shrunk slowly away. My advice is for everyone to head over to the preview server if you haven't already and check it out and make up your own mind.
I play a TR so I'm used to being nerf. TR used to be THE class in NW. Hasn't been that way in a long time since most people who play it have just given up on being heard ( which is why on preview when every other class has 9 pages on the forum TR has 3) On mod 16 you can learn to play it. Yes it's different and encounters have a longer cool down ( the problem with that is when I look at live it just seems like they picked what to put them at instead of going with what the original cool down are with a small bit of recovery to make it universal so it would be a little bit easier for people to get used to.) Change isn't always bad and can sometimes be good. Even dumbing down the game can work in their favor ( though not ours). I started playing NW because I played PWI (yes that piece of garbage. Though it wasn't when it first came out.) It had a great crafting end, Had to keep and eye on your gear,it had a lot going for it. That is until they started dumbing it down. So there was no thinking needed. auto path, auto pick up, auto grind, there are a lot of games like that under PWI. That is what worries me. That NW will go the route of these other games under PWI where you don't have to think to play it. Other then that I will stick around and continue to play. If it becomes like the other's then I will find a new game that will engage me more.
stealth is survival skills (and not tanking skills, that is really different)
stealth is damage
stealth is mobility
stealth is everything
everything is stealth
Stealth make TR OP, but lack of stealth make TR useless.
Comments
This whole Mod 16 preview experience is raising tension and causing divisions among the player base...
even those of us who usually agree.
My point, which I failed to make, was...
1) giving constructive criticism is good for the game.
2) Telling people "the game is dead. Walk away" is bad for the game.
3) Telling people to "shut up and deal with the changes" is also bad for the game.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
If M16 is an M6 redux (or worse) I'll pull out the plastic furniture covers, turn off the gas to the water heater, lock the front door and take a solid 3 - 4 month vacay from my NW account.
I'll probably check back in late summer - maybe around Labor Day (about when M17 should release) to see how the NW landscape has changed.
Original poster here. I have now playtested and analyzed the new system. I actually love it a lot, except for one thing, and its a big one that WILL drive everyone to leave slowly if not fixed. Dozens of posters have pointed out their frustration with a stat threshold.
Luckily, the solution is both simple and mandatory:
Give each named monster type a value of 0 to 20 potency in each statistic, with an average of 10.
The game will multiply: 25 point packets X level of the area X stat potency
This will give some creatures some low stats and some high stats, maintaining the same average amount. This will be huge because then a player in a zone with a 16,000 average enemy stat number, will actually benefit from having less than 16,000 of a stat. It will add strategy and teamwork because each player will have certain enemies it excels against or has a harder time against.
Power needs 10 - 30 packets to ensure it has 'some' damage. All other stats should be 0-20. Health can be handled any way the developers want. Keep it the same or give it whatever packet range suits their need for difficulty and pacing. The universal packet size I used is 25, but 20 would be fine too. The 'correct' amount is in the 20-25 range.
SO... looking at Ravenloft... lets create a sample packet template for a creature:
Name: Undead Rider
Health: 100
Power: 25
Critical: 15
Combat Advantage: 19
Accuracy: 3
Armor Penetration: 12
Defense: 8
Deflect: 13
Crit Resist: 1
Awareness: 9
Since Barovia is level 70 and universal packet size is 25, we mulitiple the numbers by 1,750 (70 x 25) to get:
Name: Undead Rider
Health: 175,000
Power: 43,750
Critical: 26,250 (52.5%)
Combat Advantage: 33,250 (66.5%)
Accuracy: 5,250 (10.5%)
Armor Penetration: 21,000 (42%)
Defense: 14,000 (28%)
Deflect: 22,750 (45.5%)
Crit Resist: 1,750 (3.5%)
Awareness: 15,750 (31.5%)
As you can see.. it now has the same average base stats, but one (crit resist) is as low as 1,750... which means it is susceptible to critical hits. Even a Paladin with a meager 4,250 Critical points now has a 5% chance to critical hit this enemy. Whalah!... the 4,250 points were never wasted now, were they?
Since speed is of the essence, the programmers should simply randomize the packets for now, and maybe hand adjust a few. They will need to adjust the balance to make sense later. For instance.. it would make little sense to have a "Dread Knight" opponent with low Defense so it might need adjustment, but just getting the variation for now should be priority.
Game is now completly diferent and millions and millions of Ad went down the pipe.
You dont do that to paying customers and expect people to be happy.
The industry and the player base wont forget what have been done.
Next time im gonna buy Zen for $20 ill think twice like;
"Do i want to give cash to this company that did what they did wihtout care for their costumers or not?"
It had a great crafting end, Had to keep and eye on your gear,it had a lot going for it. That is until they started dumbing it down. So there was no thinking needed. auto path, auto pick up, auto grind, there are a lot of games like that under PWI. That is what worries me. That NW will go the route of these other games under PWI where you don't have to think to play it. Other then that I will stick around and continue to play. If it becomes like the other's then I will find a new game that will engage me more.
stealth is damage
stealth is mobility
stealth is everything
everything is stealth
Stealth make TR OP, but lack of stealth make TR useless.