adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
edited April 2019
Is it just me, or are five of the destinations on the map now inaccessible? The names are in upper case and clicking on them does not send me anywhere. The other destinations work fine.
> @adinosii said: > Is it just me, or are five of the destinations on the map now inaccessible? The names are in upper case and clicking on them does not send me anywhere. The other destinations work fine.
Looks like they are the names of the levels, but you access them through the gate. Kind of odd to make them icons though instead of just layering the text on the image.
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Feats need more options. If a player doesnt want to use either ability that a feat tier affects, you have hindered that player unnecessarily. You need to have a generic option or something else for each feat tier.
Feats need more options. If a player doesnt want to use either ability that a feat tier affects, you have hindered that player unnecessarily. You need to have a generic option or something else for each feat tier.
They should just get rid of the binary choices and let use pick from a pool, Forcing bad choices or pointless choices is really bad design.
So it came up in the community stream with Julia and Chantelle that we should post in the forums as to why people feel that solos feel like they are being pushed out. Well i have been doing that constantly but let me reiterate so you don't have to read like 30 posts of me complaining and just the one here.
1. The class changes that remove build versatility and force people in a restrictive role that is focused on serving a party. Like how is that anything but? You makes us good at only one thing with no wiggle room to make a class work for us alone and you wonder why solos are annoyed? The spellbooks/powers were even divided in half forcing you into one of 2 roles that are not flexible enough to stand alone without help most of the time. These changes were not quality of life improvements for me in anyway they are the source of much my consternation.
2. Power output Nerfs. Since the encounter powers were put on such long cooldowns we are less able to output damage and must stand there taking a pounding to defeat a mob, mean that DPS classes that have been forced to rely on tanks more heavily in order to survive long enough to let off their impotent powers again in hope the 8 guys with sharp sticks already in your body fall down and stop poking you. Being an Arcane machine-gun was one of the few ways a single squishy wizard could deal being outnumbered.
3. It was decent then it got worse. The patch previous to march 29 2019 was more challenging but still fun and i was able to stand on my own well enough. Then the current patch comes along and i am going down to enemies that i had previously been able to deal with. Again it feels like you are making players progressively weaker until they have no choice but to group. Like i was fighting a giant glowing T-rex and holding my own maybe evenly matched or a little under on monday of last week, then Friday comes along and a few fish people are suddenly spraying me across the walls when they hadn't the day before.
4. Gear recommendations. Some of the gear being marked as recommended will give a little as 20-50 of something but you will lose like 35,000 of something else, usually hit points and armor. it is as if the tool tips are trying to make you further more delicate. I used to think this was just a bug but the pattern has been so persistent in Mod16 that i no longer am sure.
5.Stat removal. You have removed stats that helped people stay up on their own such as lifesteal and nixed recovery which helped us get powers back faster so we could deal with challenges further. A good offense being the best defense.
6. Strange companion AI that makes like harder. My Apprentice healer will run all over the place and will sometimes run off and aggro mobs of enemies and then bring them right back too me even when i am battle. I wish i knew how to record video because Saturday afternoon this happened in every encounter to the point it would have been funny had it not been irritating.
I mean i come on these forums that i had ignored for 5 years and give feedback because i don't want the game to become bad or unengaging for me and it feels like i am talking to the abyss most of the time. We get little to no feedback and the stuff we do get doesn't add up when you think about it for too long. I tried to be patient and optimistic but i am not anymore. I now dread the 23rd.
Honestly, i think it would be wisest for me to Furlough the game until mod17.
Part 2
7. Bullet sponges AKA The Division Syndrome: Many of the foes in undermountain are very bullet spongey (spell spongey?) and thus a single person has to spend so much time and effort dealing with a mob of foes that take so long to kill it comes of as an attempt to penalize those that go solo.
8. Weakness of healing items. The health items are so poor in their return on on investment and markedly less useful in the heat of battle that it seems designed a penalty for not grouping with a healer.
9. Breathing room, The very environment of undermountain is designed in such a way that it is harder to maneuver in combat without aggro-ing a new group of hostiles. This means fights are either contained in a smaller area and tanked, or the player must dodge around and draw more foes that are hard to kill and so you have to burn through resources in a long drawn out fight that has the potential to grow even longer when you accidentally dodge into aggro range of a new mob. This feels like another aspect that was Designed to punish non group players.
All these things, all of them seem very deliberate, intentional DESIGNED to make it harder for a solo player. Sure some of the elites with the thousands of dollars worth of gear might like it. They might find it a challenge but i am not an elite. I just solo because my friends left the game. It was fine in the old system as i could put points into things that alleviated my woes, i could tell where i was weak and plan accordingly. I no longer can.
I keep being told that if i want to Solo then make a cleric, well i don't feel like loosing all my progress on the class i feel most attached to which is Wizard. I don't want there to be a "Class for solos" i want to be able to have fun with every class.
Ego etiam cupo recrari et amari diu post mortem meam I too wish to be recreated, and to be loved long after my death.
In order to get rid of people telling you how to play, the devs tell you how to play by forcing you to play one thing. In order to reduce wrong choices on character start they reduce choices period but none of them are the right choice. In order to more concisely explain damage they change to a system that is not explained and adds further math to even figure out what you are doing and if it is working. Do you see why we have such a hard time figuring out what the infested hamstering meat crack is really going on or where you are taking the game?
And mod16 straight up destroys much of the interest that was to be found in the old system. On live sure things are complicated and a bit of a mess but the ability to learn and experiment and i liked that. Mod16, you have no meaningful options. To quote Shammy (a youtuber): " I Guess i have been told to be myself one too many times so naturally i am going to put a lot of stock into being able to express myself." On live you choose a class to play WITH, while in mod16 you pick a class to play AS.
I could understand if you are doing this because you are struggling so you need to use resources more efficiently, but i keep being told you aren't being de-prioritized so you aren't killing my fun because you need to, you just want to.
i am not adverse to class re-balancing but this is a little too much. We are so restricted into one thing that isn't crafted to be played on its own. We no longer get play with our 'favorite class lore/flavor wise' the most the solos get is maybe the Cleric.
When am i going to stop talking about this? When you get the Halflings to throw the ring into a volcano, you put a hit out on me or i get discouraged enough to De-invest my interest that i have been cultivating for 5years.
You're being disingenuous. The goal is to make all choices viable. That requires, at the very least, pruning out the nonviable choices (although they're still struggling with that with some feats on some classes, evidence of their commitment to the goal is all over the place).
Would I love to see each feat do more, and restrict you less? Sure. Would I love to see a third choice on each row? Absolutely. But don't malign their intentions when it's clear the problem is execution.
'disingenuous' implies that i am being deceptive. I am telling the truth as i see it. If you think i am being inaccurate that is another thing. Also i did not Malign their intentions, i am pointing out how abstruse and seemingly contradictory their decisions are. I am criticizing their actions not their intent. There would be eaiser ways to sink the game then building a whole new campaign. I don't think they are deliberately trying to sink the game. I am just arguing that that their actions are hard to understand because of their counter intuitive reasoning.
I haven't called anyone the devil or threatened to nuke anyone's cat. I am just questioning their actions.
I grant the distinction, withdraw the accusation, and will leave it at "they're not 'killing fun' because they 'want to.'"
In the current meta, the power creep of specific builds led to a very, very narrow "viable" composition; fighters were pruned almost completely out of the tank pool because encounters had to challenge paladins with colossal amounts of temp HP; the powershare mechanics of two healing classes made them more efficient for damage output than two additional dps, warlock healing and gwf tanking technically had build options but were completely unsupported by the actual meta... the problems were manifold and fixes were necessary. They HAD to make changes.
I think we can agree that many of these changes are suboptimal, however.
The changes to attribute functionality has led to some vary tabletop-counterintuitive builds; not gamebreaking, but frustrating for people enamored of the IP.
The changes to feats have narrowed them too aggressively, and have failed to capture player interest by feeling genuinely good to take, or in other words, "worth their opportunity cost" in the way they are felt to restrict power usage.
Many of use will miss mechanics that have been removed, due to their multiplicative interaction with other mechanics.
Many powers have had functionality stripped, removing a lot of the feeling of variety between different options.
I grant the distinction, withdraw the accusation, and will leave it at "they're not 'killing fun' because they 'want to.'"
In the current meta, the power creep of specific builds led to a very, very narrow "viable" composition; fighters were pruned almost completely out of the tank pool because encounters had to challenge paladins with colossal amounts of temp HP; the powershare mechanics of two healing classes made them more efficient for damage output than two additional dps, warlock healing and gwf tanking technically had build options but were completely unsupported by the actual meta... the problems were manifold and fixes were necessary. They HAD to make changes.
I think we can agree that many of these changes are suboptimal, however.
The changes to attribute functionality has led to some vary tabletop-counterintuitive builds; not gamebreaking, but frustrating for people enamored of the IP.
The changes to feats have narrowed them too aggressively, and have failed to capture player interest by feeling genuinely good to take, or in other words, "worth their opportunity cost" in the way they are felt to restrict power usage.
Many of use will miss mechanics that have been removed, due to their multiplicative interaction with other mechanics.
Many powers have had functionality stripped, removing a lot of the feeling of variety between different options.
"they're not 'killing fun' because they 'want to.'" Yeah that was probably a little Harsh on my part. It was a HAMSTER thing to say and yeah i was out of line. You were right to call me on it.
Ego etiam cupo recrari et amari diu post mortem meam I too wish to be recreated, and to be loved long after my death.
1
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I mean, the bottom line is that they're trying to rebuild the game from the ground up without having to actually rebuild it from the ground up.
What they "should" (not really) do is shut down the server, and develop an actual Neverwinter 2, without all the balance problems from the current game, because it wouldn't *have* to reference all of the elements of the current game. Design classes from the ground up, without having to narrowly fit yourself into the powers, gear, companions, boons, etc that already exist. Instead, the game is kept with that straight jacket.
I put should in quote marks because that would require actually BUILDING a new game, not to mention that many of the existing player base would flat-out revolt. Someone more familiar with Everquest 2 can say whether that project was successful, but I'm guessing it would be an issue.
You can't fix a broken foundation, but that's what they're trying to do. It'll be playable, and people who have a lot of time (like me) and money invested in it won't entirely lose all of that, so there's definitely a lot of reasons it's preferable (outside of the obvious expense of building a new game). But it'll never click the same way an outright Neverwinter 2 would if it existed, and the game's just going to get progressively wonkier as time goes on.
The commission of task seems to be fixed by the task level, but some tasks are not so.
Gathering level 63 order Woodlily's commission is 47 silver 81 copper instead of 44 silver 24 copper. Alchemy level 30 task Potion of Healing's commission is 3 silver 16 copper instead of 5 silver 21 copper. Alchemy level 38 task Flask of Potency's commission is 7 silver 10 copper instead of 7 silver 45 copper. Alchemy level 62 task Major Flask of Potency's commission is 44 silver 24 copper instead of 40 silver 90 copper. Alchemy level 65 task Potion of Grand Healing's commission is 75 silver instead of 51 silver 65 copper. Alchemy level 69 task Potion of Exalted Healing's commission is 1 gold 40 silver instead of 69 silver 81 copper (Too expensive !!). Armorsmithing level 31 task Steel Armguards' commission is 6 silver 77 copper instead of 5 silver 44 copper. Armorsmithing level 31 task Steel Bracers' commission is 6 silver 77 copper instead of 5 silver 44 copper. Armorsmithing level 32 task Steel Greaves' commission is 7 silver 10 copper instead of 5 silver 68 copper. Armorsmithing level 33 task Steel Sollerets' commission is 7 silver 10 copper instead of 5 silver 93 copper. Armorsmithing level 34 task Steel Scale Harness' commission is 7 silver 84 copper instead of 6 silver 19 copper. Blacksmithing level 42 task Mithral Raising Hammer's commission is 11 silver 15 copper instead of 9 silver 25 copper.
Iron Nails required in following task, but cannot craft.
Armorsmithing level 70 task Oak Trunk Armorsmithing level 70 task Pair of Oak Trunks Artificing level 70 task Simple Dining Table Masterwork Artificing II task Ebony Dining Table Masterwork Artificing II task Oak Dining Table
And, Some Profession resources are not replaced or cannot exchange by retainer. Basic Alchemical Knowledge, Residuum, Scroll of Mass Protection from Dragons, Primordial Goo, resources of Summer Provisioning and resources of Black Ice Shaping.
Masterwork Accessories III Fanged Restoration Ring is shown as Beaded Restoration Ring.
Current Masterwork Accessories III include Beaded Assault Ring, Beaded Restoration Ring, Bronzewood Raid Ring and Lichstone Ward Ring. Not exist Fanged Ring. Masterwork Waist Sets III include Beaded Sash, Bronzewood Sash, Fanged Sash and Lichstone Sash. Comparing the above two, Masterwork Accessories III is heterogeneous.
Masterwork Neck Sets III Fanged Amulet is shown as Fanged Beaded Amulet. Other names are Beaded Amulet, Bronzewood Amulet and Lichstone Amulet.
Masterwork Waist Sets II Name of Silverspruce Sash below rank 15 (uncommon) is "Silverspruce Belt".
Ranger's Masterwork Armor III Those name's prefixes are still "leather". Warlock and Rogue's Armor changed from "leather" to "dinohide". Is this unhcnaged?
Wizard's Masterwork Armor III Prefixes for these names are various. Bronzewood, Feathered, Jute and Silk. Prefixes of other classes are unified, Wizard's set is not-unified and heterogeneous.
Paladin's Huntsman Armor Huntsman Restoration Poleyns is shown as Huntsman Restoration Gaiters. Gaiters is Ranger's Footwear and Huntsman Ward Poleyns is not wrong.
Wizard's Thayan Servitor Armor Gloves of the Thayan Servitor is shown as Gloves of the Thayan Zealot. Names of other pieces in Collection are Cowl of the Thayan Servitor, Boots of the Thayan Servitor and Robes of the Thayan Servitor. And, Gloves of the Thayan Zealot is one of a piece of Thayan Zealot Equipment Collection (it's a removed collection).
So it came up in the community stream with Julia and Chantelle that we should post in the forums as to why people feel that solos feel like they are being pushed out. Well i have been doing that constantly but let me reiterate so you don't have to read like 30 posts of me complaining and just the one here.
1. The class changes that remove build versatility and force people in a restrictive role that is focused on serving a party. Like how is that anything but? You makes us good at only one thing with no wiggle room to make a class work for us alone and you wonder why solos are annoyed? The spellbooks/powers were even divided in half forcing you into one of 2 roles that are not flexible enough to stand alone without help most of the time. These changes were not quality of life improvements for me in anyway they are the source of much my consternation.
2. Power output Nerfs. Since the encounter powers were put on such long cooldowns we are less able to output damage and must stand there taking a pounding to defeat a mob, mean that DPS classes that have been forced to rely on tanks more heavily in order to survive long enough to let off their impotent powers again in hope the 8 guys with sharp sticks already in your body fall down and stop poking you. Being an Arcane machine-gun was one of the few ways a single squishy wizard could deal being outnumbered.
3. It was decent then it got worse. The patch previous to march 29 2019 was more challenging but still fun and i was able to stand on my own well enough. Then the current patch comes along and i am going down to enemies that i had previously been able to deal with. Again it feels like you are making players progressively weaker until they have no choice but to group. Like i was fighting a giant glowing T-rex and holding my own maybe evenly matched or a little under on monday of last week, then Friday comes along and a few fish people are suddenly spraying me across the walls when they hadn't the day before.
4. Gear recommendations. Some of the gear being marked as recommended will give a little as 20-50 of something but you will lose like 35,000 of something else, usually hit points and armor. it is as if the tool tips are trying to make you further more delicate. I used to think this was just a bug but the pattern has been so persistent in Mod16 that i no longer am sure.
5.Stat removal. You have removed stats that helped people stay up on their own such as lifesteal and nixed recovery which helped us get powers back faster so we could deal with challenges further. A good offense being the best defense.
6. Strange companion AI that makes like harder. My Apprentice healer will run all over the place and will sometimes run off and aggro mobs of enemies and then bring them right back too me even when i am battle. I wish i knew how to record video because Saturday afternoon this happened in every encounter to the point it would have been funny had it not been irritating.
I mean i come on these forums that i had ignored for 5 years and give feedback because i don't want the game to become bad or unengaging for me and it feels like i am talking to the abyss most of the time. We get little to no feedback and the stuff we do get doesn't add up when you think about it for too long. I tried to be patient and optimistic but i am not anymore. I now dread the 23rd.
Honestly, i think it would be wisest for me to Furlough the game until mod17.
Part 2
7. Bullet sponges AKA The Division Syndrome: Many of the foes in undermountain are very bullet spongey (spell spongey?) and thus a single person has to spend so much time and effort dealing with a mob of foes that take so long to kill it comes of as an attempt to penalize those that go solo.
8. Weakness of healing items. The health items are so poor in their return on on investment and markedly less useful in the heat of battle that it seems designed a penalty for not grouping with a healer.
9. Breathing room, The very environment of undermountain is designed in such a way that it is harder to maneuver in combat without aggro-ing a new group of hostiles. This means fights are either contained in a smaller area and tanked, or the player must dodge around and draw more foes that are hard to kill and so you have to burn through resources in a long drawn out fight that has the potential to grow even longer when you accidentally dodge into aggro range of a new mob. This feels like another aspect that was Designed to punish non group players.
All these things, all of them seem very deliberate, intentional DESIGNED to make it harder for a solo player. Sure some of the elites with the thousands of dollars worth of gear might like it. They might find it a challenge but i am not an elite. I just solo because my friends left the game. It was fine in the old system as i could put points into things that alleviated my woes, i could tell where i was weak and plan accordingly. I no longer can.
I keep being told that if i want to Solo then make a cleric, well i don't feel like loosing all my progress on the class i feel most attached to which is Wizard. I don't want there to be a "Class for solos" i want to be able to have fun with every class.
Spongey mobs are no fun; it's a balancing act getting them to where you feel a material benefit when your dps stats go up, but they're not insufferable to grind through at lower ILs, but it sounds like that balance isn't quite there yet.
Even if you have a tank, you have to maneuver a lot, because mob AI swarms around you and flanks every couple of seconds, so a block button is no true protection against butt-pulling.
Now that health regenerates pretty quickly out of combat(Yay! Good change! Thank you devs and please do not revert!), healing potions are more cemented in their role as a combat consumable, but their value and scaling need to make it worth carrying them around (I don't have a problem with a cooldown, since the potion-chugging was always the part I hated about Diablo 2; knowing when to pot can and should be a part of learning how your character relates to the content... it just needs to be meaningful when used)
If people are telling you to roll a specific class if you want to solo, they are bad and wrong. Every class definitely needs to be solo-viable; Heroic Encounters, Skirmishes, and Dungeons should be the only content that deliberately requires grouping. The fact that the playtesting community has identified one class as being the "solo class" tells us that at least some of the other classes are not self-sufficient enough. Party balance is important in group content, but open-world content must be accessible to all players that meet the item level for the zone.
Ahm why would you take a cleric to solo? It’s no better than any other class at doing solo content.
People are not telling @bpstuart to play a cleric, they are telling them to take a healer pet, and if they are telling bpstuart to play a cleric they are sadly misinforming him. (Yes I have played all the classes to varying degrees in the prior weeks, still re-leveling Pali this week.)
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
There's faster and slower soloing depending on class/path, but of the four that I've run through, solo is still doable. The faster and slower part is because of how roles are designed for the new holy trinity, and some people are going to complain about that, but everything I've tried has been totally doable. I mean, my devout isn't soloing dungeons, but neither is my AC on live so nothing lost there.
Most stuff I can solo on mod 15 I can't solo in mod 16 (or I can if I use Stone of Health), I can't tell if the problem is the gear downscale or just Barb been heavily under-powered, either way, its not fine, Trivial stuff like River district heroic events, Barovia weeklies or Chult weeklies dungeons (aka Fane) should all be possible for soloing without the use of stone of health, unless the whole point of mod 16 is forcing us to spend money to buy them. Edit: and of course everything is taking longer now, A boss that I can kill in 20 sec with no problem, now takes 2minutes and 1 charge of Stone of health.
Most stuff I can solo on mod 15 I can't solo in mod 16 (or I can if I use Stone of Health), I can't tell if the problem is the gear downscale or just Barb been heavily under-powered, either way, its not fine, Trivial stuff like River district heroic events, Barovia weeklies or Chult weeklies dungeons (aka Fane) should all be possible for soloing without the use of stone of health, unless the whole point of mod 16 is forcing us to spend money to buy them. Edit: and of course everything is taking longer now, A boss that I can kill in 20 sec with no problem, now takes 2minutes and 1 charge of Stone of health.
If it’s not a new zone, the instant you are level 71 scaling messes with your ability to do level 70 content.
It doesn’t even do it consistently. Take a look at my stats collected over the course of the day over in the Statistics thread.
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
I did a little bit of work on some of the runic areas. My general feedback:
1. The mobs themselves are scaled fairly well. The huge health regeneration of some mobs needs to be removed though - it simply wont work for low dps classes.
2. I do NOT appreciate the instances that have the multiple tornados. Being bounced around like a pinball, having a large percent of your health lost as a result, while simultaneously being attacked by mobs is going to irritate a lot of players. Change it to just one tornado please, or lose them altogether.
3. I got the first item on the quest list to drop. Nothing else would drop - it appears to be broken.
Boons are going to become the new meta. We aren't even going to be free from the Meta Megaminds calling everyone suboptimal but we are still hampered in our builds right off the bat. Sure the old feats were obtuse but we got to build through them as we go, now we have to grind till we get awarded points to start even thinking of customizing ourselves.
I really hope they start award Boon points in the old dungeons and quests so we can start custimizing our build before 70.
Ego etiam cupo recrari et amari diu post mortem meam I too wish to be recreated, and to be loved long after my death.
Who on the development team thinks that longer fights would be more rewarding or fun for players? I really enjoy the faster pace of battle that we have in mod 15, but I despise the longer and slower pace of battle in mod 16. It feels more like work than a game to pass time with for fun and relaxation. Please give us the quick pace of battle that many of us have come to love.
Boons are going to become the new meta. We aren't even going to be free from the Meta Megaminds calling everyone suboptimal but we are still hampered in our builds right off the bat. Sure the old feats were obtuse but we got to build through them as we go, now we have to grind till we get awarded points to start even thinking of customizing ourselves.
I really hope they start award Boon points in the old dungeons and quests so we can start custimizing our build before 70.
I have to strongly disagree. You can play without boons or feats and not really notice a difference (i have and reported it in feedback). One of the core issues I have is how everything we had to work for progression have been severely devalued; boons, enchants, comps, leg mounts. I am not really sure how you arrived at your conclusions. Explain if possible.
Who on the development team thinks that longer fights would be more rewarding or fun for players? I really enjoy the faster pace of battle that we have in mod 15, but I despise the longer and slower pace of battle in mod 16. It feels more like work than a game to pass time with for fun and relaxation. Please give us the quick pace of battle that many of us have come to love.
I really don't mind if fights are going to take longer for levels that are above my current level but going back to places like Sharander and Dread Ring for dailies and having it take longer than is did when I was ten levels lower is pure bunk.
I'v been lurking in most topics (not in topics for classes I don't play) and maybe you guys should delay M16 by 1-2 months, there is a lot of work to be done in only two week.
7
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited April 2019
Each year there is a "Game Developers Conference" https://www.gdconf.com/ It is a almost a week of workshops, lectures, demonstrations, and many things.
This year GDC19 was at March 18-22, few weeks ago.
Recently some interesting videos released from the talks there.
Here is an interesting one, there are off course differences but there are a lot valid and good points that apply to NW, I reccomed to watch to the end, including the Questions Part, specifically about Item Validity and impact.
I don't see that. Boons, just like the primary stats (STR/DEX/etc) are being devalued to the point where it almost does not matter what you have. Yes, they may give a 1% boost or whatever, but they are not game-changing and you might not even notice if you have them or not.
Just get to 80, buy some R15 bonding runestones and a legendary augment and you are all set. No need to grind stuff any more.
Hoping for improvements...
5
adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
I really don't mind if fights are going to take longer for levels that are above my current level but going back to places like Sharander and Dread Ring for dailies and having it take longer than is did when I was ten levels lower is pure bunk.
I did some testing of things like Phantasmal Fortress and other solo stuff. The content as a whole takes about 50% longer than it used to, but because I spend a good chunk of the time running between fights, the main cause of the delay is that the actual fights take maybe twice as long as they used to do.
You can't fix a broken foundation, but that's what they're trying to do. It'll be playable, and people who have a lot of time (like me) and money invested in it won't entirely lose all of that...
I partially agree, in that I've now been playing this game for 5 years (jeez...that sounds so much longer when I write it out) and have no intention of completely walking away at this point.
BUT, if the difficulty in existing zones increases while the rewards remain stagnant (or get worse), and they maintain the same level of grind needed for all non-Undermountain zones (think STK, Cloaked, Chult, etc) I'm definitely taking another extended break. Maybe check back in for the Protector's Jubilee in June.
And if it still seems icky then, probably taking another longer break until maybe Halloween...assuming there's still a game to come back to at that point.
I don't see that. Boons, just like the primary stats (STR/DEX/etc) are being devalued to the point where it almost does not matter what you have. Yes, they may give a 1% boost or whatever, but they are not game-changing and you might not even notice if you have them or not.
Just get to 80, buy some R15 bonding runestones and a legendary augment and you are all set. No need to grind stuff any more.
Well i guess i am still laboring under the Deluded notion that my decisions mean anything.
Ego etiam cupo recrari et amari diu post mortem meam I too wish to be recreated, and to be loved long after my death.
Comments
> Is it just me, or are five of the destinations on the map now inaccessible? The names are in upper case and clicking on them does not send me anywhere. The other destinations work fine.
Looks like they are the names of the levels, but you access them through the gate. Kind of odd to make them icons though instead of just layering the text on the image.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
If a player doesnt want to use either ability that a feat tier affects, you have hindered that player unnecessarily.
You need to have a generic option or something else for each feat tier.
7. Bullet sponges AKA The Division Syndrome: Many of the foes in undermountain are very bullet spongey (spell spongey?) and thus a single person has to spend so much time and effort dealing with a mob of foes that take so long to kill it comes of as an attempt to penalize those that go solo.
8. Weakness of healing items. The health items are so poor in their return on on investment and markedly less useful in the heat of battle that it seems designed a penalty for not grouping with a healer.
9. Breathing room, The very environment of undermountain is designed in such a way that it is harder to maneuver in combat without aggro-ing a new group of hostiles. This means fights are either contained in a smaller area and tanked, or the player must dodge around and draw more foes that are hard to kill and so you have to burn through resources in a long drawn out fight that has the potential to grow even longer when you accidentally dodge into aggro range of a new mob. This feels like another aspect that was Designed to punish non group players.
All these things, all of them seem very deliberate, intentional DESIGNED to make it harder for a solo player. Sure some of the elites with the thousands of dollars worth of gear might like it. They might find it a challenge but i am not an elite. I just solo because my friends left the game. It was fine in the old system as i could put points into things that alleviated my woes, i could tell where i was weak and plan accordingly. I no longer can.
I keep being told that if i want to Solo then make a cleric, well i don't feel like loosing all my progress on the class i feel most attached to which is Wizard. I don't want there to be a "Class for solos" i want to be able to have fun with every class.
I too wish to be recreated, and to be loved long after my death.
I too wish to be recreated, and to be loved long after my death.
In the current meta, the power creep of specific builds led to a very, very narrow "viable" composition; fighters were pruned almost completely out of the tank pool because encounters had to challenge paladins with colossal amounts of temp HP; the powershare mechanics of two healing classes made them more efficient for damage output than two additional dps, warlock healing and gwf tanking technically had build options but were completely unsupported by the actual meta... the problems were manifold and fixes were necessary. They HAD to make changes.
I think we can agree that many of these changes are suboptimal, however.
The changes to attribute functionality has led to some vary tabletop-counterintuitive builds; not gamebreaking, but frustrating for people enamored of the IP.
The changes to feats have narrowed them too aggressively, and have failed to capture player interest by feeling genuinely good to take, or in other words, "worth their opportunity cost" in the way they are felt to restrict power usage.
Many of use will miss mechanics that have been removed, due to their multiplicative interaction with other mechanics.
Many powers have had functionality stripped, removing a lot of the feeling of variety between different options.
I too wish to be recreated, and to be loved long after my death.
What they "should" (not really) do is shut down the server, and develop an actual Neverwinter 2, without all the balance problems from the current game, because it wouldn't *have* to reference all of the elements of the current game. Design classes from the ground up, without having to narrowly fit yourself into the powers, gear, companions, boons, etc that already exist. Instead, the game is kept with that straight jacket.
I put should in quote marks because that would require actually BUILDING a new game, not to mention that many of the existing player base would flat-out revolt. Someone more familiar with Everquest 2 can say whether that project was successful, but I'm guessing it would be an issue.
You can't fix a broken foundation, but that's what they're trying to do. It'll be playable, and people who have a lot of time (like me) and money invested in it won't entirely lose all of that, so there's definitely a lot of reasons it's preferable (outside of the obvious expense of building a new game). But it'll never click the same way an outright Neverwinter 2 would if it existed, and the game's just going to get progressively wonkier as time goes on.
The commission of task seems to be fixed by the task level, but some tasks are not so.
Gathering level 63 order Woodlily's commission is 47 silver 81 copper instead of 44 silver 24 copper.
Alchemy level 30 task Potion of Healing's commission is 3 silver 16 copper instead of 5 silver 21 copper.
Alchemy level 38 task Flask of Potency's commission is 7 silver 10 copper instead of 7 silver 45 copper.
Alchemy level 62 task Major Flask of Potency's commission is 44 silver 24 copper instead of 40 silver 90 copper.
Alchemy level 65 task Potion of Grand Healing's commission is 75 silver instead of 51 silver 65 copper.
Alchemy level 69 task Potion of Exalted Healing's commission is 1 gold 40 silver instead of 69 silver 81 copper (Too expensive !!).
Armorsmithing level 31 task Steel Armguards' commission is 6 silver 77 copper instead of 5 silver 44 copper.
Armorsmithing level 31 task Steel Bracers' commission is 6 silver 77 copper instead of 5 silver 44 copper.
Armorsmithing level 32 task Steel Greaves' commission is 7 silver 10 copper instead of 5 silver 68 copper.
Armorsmithing level 33 task Steel Sollerets' commission is 7 silver 10 copper instead of 5 silver 93 copper.
Armorsmithing level 34 task Steel Scale Harness' commission is 7 silver 84 copper instead of 6 silver 19 copper.
Blacksmithing level 42 task Mithral Raising Hammer's commission is 11 silver 15 copper instead of 9 silver 25 copper.
Iron Nails required in following task, but cannot craft.
Armorsmithing level 70 task Oak Trunk
Armorsmithing level 70 task Pair of Oak Trunks
Artificing level 70 task Simple Dining Table
Masterwork Artificing II task Ebony Dining Table
Masterwork Artificing II task Oak Dining Table
And, Some Profession resources are not replaced or cannot exchange by retainer.
Basic Alchemical Knowledge, Residuum, Scroll of Mass Protection from Dragons, Primordial Goo, resources of Summer Provisioning and resources of Black Ice Shaping.
Fanged Restoration Ring is shown as Beaded Restoration Ring.
Current Masterwork Accessories III include Beaded Assault Ring, Beaded Restoration Ring, Bronzewood Raid Ring and Lichstone Ward Ring. Not exist Fanged Ring.
Masterwork Waist Sets III include Beaded Sash, Bronzewood Sash, Fanged Sash and Lichstone Sash.
Comparing the above two, Masterwork Accessories III is heterogeneous.
Fanged Amulet is shown as Fanged Beaded Amulet.
Other names are Beaded Amulet, Bronzewood Amulet and Lichstone Amulet.
Name of Silverspruce Sash below rank 15 (uncommon) is "Silverspruce Belt".
Those name's prefixes are still "leather". Warlock and Rogue's Armor changed from "leather" to "dinohide". Is this unhcnaged?
Prefixes for these names are various. Bronzewood, Feathered, Jute and Silk.
Prefixes of other classes are unified, Wizard's set is not-unified and heterogeneous.
Huntsman Restoration Poleyns is shown as Huntsman Restoration Gaiters.
Gaiters is Ranger's Footwear and Huntsman Ward Poleyns is not wrong.
Gloves of the Thayan Servitor is shown as Gloves of the Thayan Zealot.
Names of other pieces in Collection are Cowl of the Thayan Servitor, Boots of the Thayan Servitor and Robes of the Thayan Servitor.
And, Gloves of the Thayan Zealot is one of a piece of Thayan Zealot Equipment Collection (it's a removed collection).
Even if you have a tank, you have to maneuver a lot, because mob AI swarms around you and flanks every couple of seconds, so a block button is no true protection against butt-pulling.
Now that health regenerates pretty quickly out of combat(Yay! Good change! Thank you devs and please do not revert!), healing potions are more cemented in their role as a combat consumable, but their value and scaling need to make it worth carrying them around (I don't have a problem with a cooldown, since the potion-chugging was always the part I hated about Diablo 2; knowing when to pot can and should be a part of learning how your character relates to the content... it just needs to be meaningful when used)
If people are telling you to roll a specific class if you want to solo, they are bad and wrong. Every class definitely needs to be solo-viable; Heroic Encounters, Skirmishes, and Dungeons should be the only content that deliberately requires grouping.
The fact that the playtesting community has identified one class as being the "solo class" tells us that at least some of the other classes are not self-sufficient enough. Party balance is important in group content, but open-world content must be accessible to all players that meet the item level for the zone.
People are not telling @bpstuart to play a cleric, they are telling them to take a healer pet, and if they are telling bpstuart to play a cleric they are sadly misinforming him. (Yes I have played all the classes to varying degrees in the prior weeks, still re-leveling Pali this week.)
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Edit: and of course everything is taking longer now, A boss that I can kill in 20 sec with no problem, now takes 2minutes and 1 charge of Stone of health.
It doesn’t even do it consistently. Take a look at my stats collected over the course of the day over in the Statistics thread.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
1. The mobs themselves are scaled fairly well. The huge health regeneration of some mobs needs to be removed though - it simply wont work for low dps classes.
2. I do NOT appreciate the instances that have the multiple tornados. Being bounced around like a pinball, having a large percent of your health lost as a result, while simultaneously being attacked by mobs is going to irritate a lot of players. Change it to just one tornado please, or lose them altogether.
3. I got the first item on the quest list to drop. Nothing else would drop - it appears to be broken.
Sure the old feats were obtuse but we got to build through them as we go, now we have to grind till we get awarded points to start even thinking of customizing ourselves.
I really hope they start award Boon points in the old dungeons and quests so we can start custimizing our build before 70.
I too wish to be recreated, and to be loved long after my death.
(not in topics for classes I don't play)and maybe you guys should delay M16 by 1-2 months, there is a lot of work to be done in only two week.It is a almost a week of workshops, lectures, demonstrations, and many things.
For those interested to see what is going on there: https://schedule.gdconf.com/
This year GDC19 was at March 18-22, few weeks ago.
Recently some interesting videos released from the talks there.
Here is an interesting one, there are off course differences but there are a lot valid and good points that apply to NW, I reccomed to watch to the end, including the Questions Part, specifically about Item Validity and impact.
https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025784/Designing-Path-of-Exile-to
I don't see that. Boons, just like the primary stats (STR/DEX/etc) are being devalued to the point where it almost does not matter what you have. Yes, they may give a 1% boost or whatever, but they are not game-changing and you might not even notice if you have them or not.
Just get to 80, buy some R15 bonding runestones and a legendary augment and you are all set. No need to grind stuff any more.
BUT, if the difficulty in existing zones increases while the rewards remain stagnant (or get worse), and they maintain the same level of grind needed for all non-Undermountain zones (think STK, Cloaked, Chult, etc) I'm definitely taking another extended break. Maybe check back in for the Protector's Jubilee in June.
And if it still seems icky then, probably taking another longer break until maybe Halloween...assuming there's still a game to come back to at that point.
I too wish to be recreated, and to be loved long after my death.