I read all of the comments, both positive and negative. My read is that generally those of you who are more on the hard core gamer side like a lot of the changes in Mod 16, but those that are more casual players are not so happy.
I think almost everyone dislikes the scaling.
Idk if I'm "harcore", but I played a lot, got my main maxed out, with 3 leg mounts for different aspects, one mount power for pvp, another for stats for pvp, and another for pve. But I really don't like the changes to mechanics (too simple, not interesting), and I really really don't like the changed to feat and power model, not enough build variation possible.
If they simply left powers like before (w/o power points), and feats with 3-4 rows, with one row changes based on paragon path, and the others are available to both paragon paths, without adding or removing any feats that m16 currently has. (Hope that makes sense) there would be much more build customization than there currently is. I think a picture would do better to show what I mean, I'll work on that.
I guess that leaves me with two questions:
1. How much build diversity was there really at end game? The vast majority of MMOs where this really mattered have had "You must be this tall to ride this ride" builds. If you weren't running x on y class, you weren't welcome in endgame content. Since a lot of what the endgame crowd considered hard content wasn't done via pugs, hence the existence and use of the LFG channel, it's safe to assume that there were criteria for what was "acceptable".
2. How would not adequately addressing the power creep address the power creep? Reading through the forums, and actual gameplay experiences have demonstrated to me that this was a very real problem. Granted that, for me, a lot of it was readily ignored, but when a prominent complaint now is "I can't solo group content that I used to be able to solo", I'd say it's a step in the right direction to put an end to that issue.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
0
feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
so okay, real talk. how were any of you happy with the state of the game pre mod 16? how is a less than 15 min run of ToNG fun? how is killing everything with out the risk of getting killed fun? (and at that point its becomes the lowest grade of grinding) I liked the feat/boon selection and how you could tailor your class to your liking but...looking back I always picked the same skills over and over again with my alts and never touching certain moves and skills and min/maxed everything else...
and what would have happened if they didn't do this and kept chugging along with the same old method? bad enough pre 16 dungeons (aside from the k-team) were garbage and the devs had to boost the mobs attack just so there's an "challenge" (which made it "either full health or not")
The game was stale in mod 15 because the devs had ignored issues like class balance (particularly for HR/Ranger, which has needed a real rework since mod 6 and still hasn't gotten it, just a long list of uncalled for nerfs and the one time we got piercing damage because they were too lazy to do the job), pvp was a toxic mess, IL gates for the public queues above intermediate were much too low, boss encounter design since mod 6 has been awful, and the new things introduced with mod 15 (k-team, tales of old, professions that failed to integrate +1 items properly) were all either bad ideas or badly executed.
Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space.
In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d.
so okay, real talk. how were any of you happy with the state of the game pre mod 16? how is a less than 15 min run of ToNG fun? how is killing everything with out the risk of getting killed fun? (and at that point its becomes the lowest grade of grinding) I liked the feat/boon selection and how you could tailor your class to your liking but...looking back I always picked the same skills over and over again with my alts and never touching certain moves and skills and min/maxed everything else...
and what would have happened if they didn't do this and kept chugging along with the same old method? bad enough pre 16 dungeons (aside from the k-team) were garbage and the devs had to boost the mobs attack just so there's an "challenge" (which made it "either full health or not")
The game was stale in mod 15 because the devs had ignored issues like class balance (particularly for HR/Ranger, which has needed a real rework since mod 6 and still hasn't gotten it, just a long list of uncalled for nerfs and the one time we got piercing damage because they were too lazy to do the job), pvp was a toxic mess, IL gates for the public queues above intermediate were much too low, boss encounter design since mod 6 has been awful, and the new things introduced with mod 15 (k-team, tales of old, professions that failed to integrate +1 items properly) were all either bad ideas or badly executed.
Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space.
In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d.
The game was stale 5 years ago, because of the lack of difficulty at the time. It was so stale, for me, that I left. Now I wasn't in a huge guild, but to my surprise, upon returning, only one player from that guild, who's on my friend's list, has logged in since my return, and that only once, while I was online. They knew why I left, because I told them. So Cryptic lost out on 5 years worth of potential income from me.
I played Aion from the 2nd closed beta, and my sub was active when it went F2P. I played DDO for 9 years, and as of the date of this post, my two subs have been inactive for 1 year, or so, due to differences with their community manager. I played, and kept two accounts with VIP status until then, whether I was playing or not. I kept a sub active on swtor for 4 years or so. These are listed to demonstrate that, if I'm having fun with a game, I'll commit to it long term, and pay to stay playing, whether it's a sub based game, as Aion was, or not. So this explains what I mean by Cryptic losing out. If I hadn't found the game play to be over the top easy to the point of boredom, I'd have stuck around, because it's not like it's not fun in short bursts, but when I could play it in my sleep, it was time to move on. My sub is currently active on ESO, even though it's not required, because I find plenty of interesting things to do, when I'm not burnt out on doing them, anyway.
There's a delicate balance between keeping casual players and keeping the more hardcore players engaged, and frankly, in the opening months, Neverwinter didn't meet that criteria for me. This update may well change that. From my own experiences over the last two days, there seem to be a lot more people actually playing the game, based on zone populations outside of PE, although to be fair, there are some things you have to do in PE. But I can't remember being in an empty zone, contrary to what the forums would have me believe, or those that worship at the altar of Steam would have me believe. So far, all this update has done, as far as I can tell, is separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat are the players that are too busy actually playing the game to come here and claim that it's irredeemably broken.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
0
feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
so okay, real talk. how were any of you happy with the state of the game pre mod 16? how is a less than 15 min run of ToNG fun? how is killing everything with out the risk of getting killed fun? (and at that point its becomes the lowest grade of grinding) I liked the feat/boon selection and how you could tailor your class to your liking but...looking back I always picked the same skills over and over again with my alts and never touching certain moves and skills and min/maxed everything else...
and what would have happened if they didn't do this and kept chugging along with the same old method? bad enough pre 16 dungeons (aside from the k-team) were garbage and the devs had to boost the mobs attack just so there's an "challenge" (which made it "either full health or not")
The game was stale in mod 15 because the devs had ignored issues like class balance (particularly for HR/Ranger, which has needed a real rework since mod 6 and still hasn't gotten it, just a long list of uncalled for nerfs and the one time we got piercing damage because they were too lazy to do the job), pvp was a toxic mess, IL gates for the public queues above intermediate were much too low, boss encounter design since mod 6 has been awful, and the new things introduced with mod 15 (k-team, tales of old, professions that failed to integrate +1 items properly) were all either bad ideas or badly executed.
Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space.
In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d.
The game was stale 5 years ago, because of the lack of difficulty at the time. It was so stale, for me, that I left. Now I wasn't in a huge guild, but to my surprise, upon returning, only one player from that guild, who's on my friend's list, has logged in since my return, and that only once, while I was online. They knew why I left, because I told them. So Cryptic lost out on 5 years worth of potential income from me.
I played Aion from the 2nd closed beta, and my sub was active when it went F2P. I played DDO for 9 years, and as of the date of this post, my two subs have been inactive for 1 year, or so, due to differences with their community manager. I played, and kept two accounts with VIP status until then, whether I was playing or not. I kept a sub active on swtor for 4 years or so. These are listed to demonstrate that, if I'm having fun with a game, I'll commit to it long term, and pay to stay playing, whether it's a sub based game, as Aion was, or not. So this explains what I mean by Cryptic losing out. If I hadn't found the game play to be over the top easy to the point of boredom, I'd have stuck around, because it's not like it's not fun in short bursts, but when I could play it in my sleep, it was time to move on. My sub is currently active on ESO, even though it's not required, because I find plenty of interesting things to do, when I'm not burnt out on doing them, anyway.
There's a delicate balance between keeping casual players and keeping the more hardcore players engaged, and frankly, in the opening months, Neverwinter didn't meet that criteria for me. This update may well change that. From my own experiences over the last two days, there seem to be a lot more people actually playing the game, based on zone populations outside of PE, although to be fair, there are some things you have to do in PE. But I can't remember being in an empty zone, contrary to what the forums would have me believe, or those that worship at the altar of Steam would have me believe. So far, all this update has done, as far as I can tell, is separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat are the players that are too busy actually playing the game to come here and claim that it's irredeemably broken.
So you're mistaking the inevitable surge in players that comes with all the advertising for a new mod for a real surge in interest. You don't care that professions are useless. You don't care that dungeons are unplayable due to scaling. You don't care that it's basically impossible to earn your daily AD. You don't care that combat is a complete mess (particularly for ranger, the lack of immunity frames/mechanics and tiny dodge are a real problem when players can't do enough damage to clear mobs around them). You don't care that the character sheet no longer tells you what your stats do. You don't care that in order to upgrade 15 epic mount insignia you'll need to find bag space for as many as 45 stacks of or individual items. And that makes you the wheat? That makes you a glutton for punishment.
If you hate the game now for reason 3 just be patient, they will fix the bugs just give them some time. The Undermountain campaign seems to work fairly well and with little bugs/problems, so play Undermountain content while the rest of the world is brought back from insanity.
And I'm going to say this as I said in the other thread: Yeah. Because expecting Devs to release a product that isn't a broken piece of fluffy rodent excrement is apparently asking for the moon and the stars these days.
"They'll fix it! Give it time! It'll be good, we swear!"
Tell you what, let's ask Bethesda and Bioware how that's working out for them, shall we?
so okay, real talk. how were any of you happy with the state of the game pre mod 16? how is a less than 15 min run of ToNG fun? how is killing everything with out the risk of getting killed fun? (and at that point its becomes the lowest grade of grinding) I liked the feat/boon selection and how you could tailor your class to your liking but...looking back I always picked the same skills over and over again with my alts and never touching certain moves and skills and min/maxed everything else...
and what would have happened if they didn't do this and kept chugging along with the same old method? bad enough pre 16 dungeons (aside from the k-team) were garbage and the devs had to boost the mobs attack just so there's an "challenge" (which made it "either full health or not")
The game was stale in mod 15 because the devs had ignored issues like class balance (particularly for HR/Ranger, which has needed a real rework since mod 6 and still hasn't gotten it, just a long list of uncalled for nerfs and the one time we got piercing damage because they were too lazy to do the job), pvp was a toxic mess, IL gates for the public queues above intermediate were much too low, boss encounter design since mod 6 has been awful, and the new things introduced with mod 15 (k-team, tales of old, professions that failed to integrate +1 items properly) were all either bad ideas or badly executed.
Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space.
In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d.
The game was stale 5 years ago, because of the lack of difficulty at the time. It was so stale, for me, that I left. Now I wasn't in a huge guild, but to my surprise, upon returning, only one player from that guild, who's on my friend's list, has logged in since my return, and that only once, while I was online. They knew why I left, because I told them. So Cryptic lost out on 5 years worth of potential income from me.
I played Aion from the 2nd closed beta, and my sub was active when it went F2P. I played DDO for 9 years, and as of the date of this post, my two subs have been inactive for 1 year, or so, due to differences with their community manager. I played, and kept two accounts with VIP status until then, whether I was playing or not. I kept a sub active on swtor for 4 years or so. These are listed to demonstrate that, if I'm having fun with a game, I'll commit to it long term, and pay to stay playing, whether it's a sub based game, as Aion was, or not. So this explains what I mean by Cryptic losing out. If I hadn't found the game play to be over the top easy to the point of boredom, I'd have stuck around, because it's not like it's not fun in short bursts, but when I could play it in my sleep, it was time to move on. My sub is currently active on ESO, even though it's not required, because I find plenty of interesting things to do, when I'm not burnt out on doing them, anyway.
There's a delicate balance between keeping casual players and keeping the more hardcore players engaged, and frankly, in the opening months, Neverwinter didn't meet that criteria for me. This update may well change that. From my own experiences over the last two days, there seem to be a lot more people actually playing the game, based on zone populations outside of PE, although to be fair, there are some things you have to do in PE. But I can't remember being in an empty zone, contrary to what the forums would have me believe, or those that worship at the altar of Steam would have me believe. So far, all this update has done, as far as I can tell, is separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat are the players that are too busy actually playing the game to come here and claim that it's irredeemably broken.
So you're mistaking the inevitable surge in players that comes with all the advertising for a new mod for a real surge in interest. You don't care that professions are useless. You don't care that dungeons are unplayable due to scaling. You don't care that it's basically impossible to earn your daily AD. You don't care that combat is a complete mess (particularly for ranger, the lack of immunity frames/mechanics and tiny dodge are a real problem when players can't do enough damage to clear mobs around them). You don't care that the character sheet no longer tells you what your stats do. You don't care that in order to upgrade 15 epic mount insignia you'll need to find bag space for as many as 45 stacks of or individual items. And that makes you the wheat? That makes you a glutton for punishment.
Actually, I find a lot of this quite amusing. I just logged out of the game, and PE was being flooded, again, with the "tears of the fallen", I guess? A healer that's complaining about having to actually heal was the top of the list. In ezmode, he didn't have to do much, if anything, just leech along for the xp/rewards. Now that he's required to fulfill his role, it's all tears in PE. Also, I'm not "mistaking" anything. I keep hearing "dungeons are unplayable", but from the video that was posted in these forums regarding that, I could see why: "Let's all stand in both of these AoEs at the same time from the boss, it's not like it can kill us". Sorry, if that's the creme de la creme of the playerbase, they should have started working on a pass like this a long time ago. What that shows me is that, over the years, players got used to ignoring mechanics, coupled with the healer I referenced above that doesn't understand what his job is in a group, and I can see exactly why it's unplayable for some; they don't know how to play.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
Healer... That class needs a speedbuff actually if they dare to step into random queue as healing class, same as they need to build as a tank, to stay aggro from incoming mob attacks. Only way to interpret some of those posts above - > they are written by some cryptic PE whiteknights, who did not even check anything under the surface actually.
> @robertthebard said: > so okay, real talk. how were any of you happy with the state of the game pre mod 16? how is a less than 15 min run of ToNG fun? how is killing everything with out the risk of getting killed fun? (and at that point its becomes the lowest grade of grinding) I liked the feat/boon selection and how you could tailor your class to your liking but...looking back I always picked the same skills over and over again with my alts and never touching certain moves and skills and min/maxed everything else... > > and what would have happened if they didn't do this and kept chugging along with the same old method? bad enough pre 16 dungeons (aside from the k-team) were garbage and the devs had to boost the mobs attack just so there's an "challenge" (which made it "either full health or not") > > > > The game was stale in mod 15 because the devs had ignored issues like class balance (particularly for HR/Ranger, which has needed a real rework since mod 6 and still hasn't gotten it, just a long list of uncalled for nerfs and the one time we got piercing damage because they were too lazy to do the job), pvp was a toxic mess, IL gates for the public queues above intermediate were much too low, boss encounter design since mod 6 has been awful, and the new things introduced with mod 15 (k-team, tales of old, professions that failed to integrate +1 items properly) were all either bad ideas or badly executed. > > Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space. > > In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d. > > > The game was stale 5 years ago, because of the lack of difficulty at the time. It was so stale, for me, that I left. Now I wasn't in a huge guild, but to my surprise, upon returning, only one player from that guild, who's on my friend's list, has logged in since my return, and that only once, while I was online. They knew why I left, because I told them. So Cryptic lost out on 5 years worth of potential income from me. > > I played Aion from the 2nd closed beta, and my sub was active when it went F2P. I played DDO for 9 years, and as of the date of this post, my two subs have been inactive for 1 year, or so, due to differences with their community manager. I played, and kept two accounts with VIP status until then, whether I was playing or not. I kept a sub active on swtor for 4 years or so. These are listed to demonstrate that, if I'm having fun with a game, I'll commit to it long term, and pay to stay playing, whether it's a sub based game, as Aion was, or not. So this explains what I mean by Cryptic losing out. If I hadn't found the game play to be over the top easy to the point of boredom, I'd have stuck around, because it's not like it's not fun in short bursts, but when I could play it in my sleep, it was time to move on. My sub is currently active on ESO, even though it's not required, because I find plenty of interesting things to do, when I'm not burnt out on doing them, anyway. > > There's a delicate balance between keeping casual players and keeping the more hardcore players engaged, and frankly, in the opening months, Neverwinter didn't meet that criteria for me. This update may well change that. From my own experiences over the last two days, there seem to be a lot more people actually playing the game, based on zone populations outside of PE, although to be fair, there are some things you have to do in PE. But I can't remember being in an empty zone, contrary to what the forums would have me believe, or those that worship at the altar of Steam would have me believe. So far, all this update has done, as far as I can tell, is separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat are the players that are too busy actually playing the game to come here and claim that it's irredeemably broken. > > So you're mistaking the inevitable surge in players that comes with all the advertising for a new mod for a real surge in interest. You don't care that professions are useless. You don't care that dungeons are unplayable due to scaling. You don't care that it's basically impossible to earn your daily AD. You don't care that combat is a complete mess (particularly for ranger, the lack of immunity frames/mechanics and tiny dodge are a real problem when players can't do enough damage to clear mobs around them). You don't care that the character sheet no longer tells you what your stats do. You don't care that in order to upgrade 15 epic mount insignia you'll need to find bag space for as many as 45 stacks of or individual items. And that makes you the wheat? That makes you a glutton for punishment. > > > Actually, I find a lot of this quite amusing. I just logged out of the game, and PE was being flooded, again, with the "tears of the fallen", I guess? A healer that's complaining about having to actually heal was the top of the list. In ezmode, he didn't have to do much, if anything, just leech along for the xp/rewards. Now that he's required to fulfill his role, it's all tears in PE. Also, I'm not "mistaking" anything. I keep hearing "dungeons are unplayable", but from the video that was posted in these forums regarding that, I could see why: "Let's all stand in both of these AoEs at the same time from the boss, it's not like it can kill us". Sorry, if that's the creme de la creme of the playerbase, they should have started working on a pass like this a long time ago. What that shows me is that, over the years, players got used to ignoring mechanics, coupled with the healer I referenced above that doesn't understand what his job is in a group, and I can see exactly why it's unplayable for some; they don't know how to play.
Yes, continue to blame the players, and not the devs that put out this broken mess. I love when white knights defend the indefensible.
2
lantern22Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,111Arc User
Combat is less than it was before but I can live with that (playing fighter). But the insignia's taking up bag space is horrendous and my first impressions of the down scaling is that it needs to be adjusted. Since when has levelling up been a negative thing in a D&D game?
The game was stale in mod 15 because the devs had ignored issues like class balance (particularly for HR/Ranger, which has needed a real rework since mod 6 and still hasn't gotten it, just a long list of uncalled for nerfs and the one time we got piercing damage because they were too lazy to do the job), pvp was a toxic mess, IL gates for the public queues above intermediate were much too low, boss encounter design since mod 6 has been awful, and the new things introduced with mod 15 (k-team, tales of old, professions that failed to integrate +1 items properly) were all either bad ideas or badly executed.
Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space.
In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d.
The game was stale 5 years ago, because of the lack of difficulty at the time. It was so stale, for me, that I left. Now I wasn't in a huge guild, but to my surprise, upon returning, only one player from that guild, who's on my friend's list, has logged in since my return, and that only once, while I was online. They knew why I left, because I told them. So Cryptic lost out on 5 years worth of potential income from me.
I played Aion from the 2nd closed beta, and my sub was active when it went F2P. I played DDO for 9 years, and as of the date of this post, my two subs have been inactive for 1 year, or so, due to differences with their community manager. I played, and kept two accounts with VIP status until then, whether I was playing or not. I kept a sub active on swtor for 4 years or so. These are listed to demonstrate that, if I'm having fun with a game, I'll commit to it long term, and pay to stay playing, whether it's a sub based game, as Aion was, or not. So this explains what I mean by Cryptic losing out. If I hadn't found the game play to be over the top easy to the point of boredom, I'd have stuck around, because it's not like it's not fun in short bursts, but when I could play it in my sleep, it was time to move on. My sub is currently active on ESO, even though it's not required, because I find plenty of interesting things to do, when I'm not burnt out on doing them, anyway.
There's a delicate balance between keeping casual players and keeping the more hardcore players engaged, and frankly, in the opening months, Neverwinter didn't meet that criteria for me. This update may well change that. From my own experiences over the last two days, there seem to be a lot more people actually playing the game, based on zone populations outside of PE, although to be fair, there are some things you have to do in PE. But I can't remember being in an empty zone, contrary to what the forums would have me believe, or those that worship at the altar of Steam would have me believe. So far, all this update has done, as far as I can tell, is separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat are the players that are too busy actually playing the game to come here and claim that it's irredeemably broken.
The issue is that the reason you think the game is easy is that you didn't get far enough along into the game to get to the hard parts of the game. The early part of the game they made really easy to hook the casual players into the game. That part of the game wasn't meant for hard core players that wanted difficult content. Access into the hard parts of the game takes 6 months of game time or $2,000+ at least of investment into the character to get into the difficult parts. This is where you would be about 15k to 16k and enter into the dungeons of FBI/MSP/ToNG/CR/CoDG. The problem is that after you started to pass 16k item level the difficulty started to wane since they tried to make those pieces of content available to the casual gamers who came to the game for Ravenloft and did some grinding to get to that area before a good portion of them threw in the towel. Now, you just have to get to level 80 and then it is just working on mechanics of the game and a grind for gear that is mainly nerfed in lower level content. The people in here that don't like it feel that parts of the game have just been taken away from them and they haven't gone through the end game campaign which more or less puts them much closer to what those end game players are at. Right now I see about 1/2 of the old content as being too hard to finish due to mobs that one shot players. The rest of the content is able to be completed but at the cost of taking 2x or more time to finish. The drops in the end of dungeons after completing several (not a large sample size) seems to be similar to what I used to get going through them. Since these players know that they will need thousands of completions on that content they see the light at the end of the tunnel being moved away. This will cause some players to leave the game as some have already publicly stated that specific thing. I could get behind longer runs and harder all around content if done well... Right now the inconsistencies of the content are the issue as there is too much variance in the content.
Post edited by cherryman1 on
Guild Leader: Under the Influence Yule (Barb): 72k : Siren (TR): 78k : Torun (DC): 73k : Siren OP (OP): 76k : Siren SW (SW): 78k : Modern (F): 80k : Cherry1 (CW) : 68k Siren HR (HR): 78k
> so okay, real talk. how were any of you happy with the state of the game pre mod 16? how is a less than 15 min run of ToNG fun? how is killing everything with out the risk of getting killed fun? (and at that point its becomes the lowest grade of grinding) I liked the feat/boon selection and how you could tailor your class to your liking but...looking back I always picked the same skills over and over again with my alts and never touching certain moves and skills and min/maxed everything else...
>
> and what would have happened if they didn't do this and kept chugging along with the same old method? bad enough pre 16 dungeons (aside from the k-team) were garbage and the devs had to boost the mobs attack just so there's an "challenge" (which made it "either full health or not")
>
>
>
> The game was stale in mod 15 because the devs had ignored issues like class balance (particularly for HR/Ranger, which has needed a real rework since mod 6 and still hasn't gotten it, just a long list of uncalled for nerfs and the one time we got piercing damage because they were too lazy to do the job), pvp was a toxic mess, IL gates for the public queues above intermediate were much too low, boss encounter design since mod 6 has been awful, and the new things introduced with mod 15 (k-team, tales of old, professions that failed to integrate +1 items properly) were all either bad ideas or badly executed.
>
> Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space.
>
> In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d.
>
>
> The game was stale 5 years ago, because of the lack of difficulty at the time. It was so stale, for me, that I left. Now I wasn't in a huge guild, but to my surprise, upon returning, only one player from that guild, who's on my friend's list, has logged in since my return, and that only once, while I was online. They knew why I left, because I told them. So Cryptic lost out on 5 years worth of potential income from me.
>
> I played Aion from the 2nd closed beta, and my sub was active when it went F2P. I played DDO for 9 years, and as of the date of this post, my two subs have been inactive for 1 year, or so, due to differences with their community manager. I played, and kept two accounts with VIP status until then, whether I was playing or not. I kept a sub active on swtor for 4 years or so. These are listed to demonstrate that, if I'm having fun with a game, I'll commit to it long term, and pay to stay playing, whether it's a sub based game, as Aion was, or not. So this explains what I mean by Cryptic losing out. If I hadn't found the game play to be over the top easy to the point of boredom, I'd have stuck around, because it's not like it's not fun in short bursts, but when I could play it in my sleep, it was time to move on. My sub is currently active on ESO, even though it's not required, because I find plenty of interesting things to do, when I'm not burnt out on doing them, anyway.
>
> There's a delicate balance between keeping casual players and keeping the more hardcore players engaged, and frankly, in the opening months, Neverwinter didn't meet that criteria for me. This update may well change that. From my own experiences over the last two days, there seem to be a lot more people actually playing the game, based on zone populations outside of PE, although to be fair, there are some things you have to do in PE. But I can't remember being in an empty zone, contrary to what the forums would have me believe, or those that worship at the altar of Steam would have me believe. So far, all this update has done, as far as I can tell, is separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat are the players that are too busy actually playing the game to come here and claim that it's irredeemably broken.
>
> So you're mistaking the inevitable surge in players that comes with all the advertising for a new mod for a real surge in interest. You don't care that professions are useless. You don't care that dungeons are unplayable due to scaling. You don't care that it's basically impossible to earn your daily AD. You don't care that combat is a complete mess (particularly for ranger, the lack of immunity frames/mechanics and tiny dodge are a real problem when players can't do enough damage to clear mobs around them). You don't care that the character sheet no longer tells you what your stats do. You don't care that in order to upgrade 15 epic mount insignia you'll need to find bag space for as many as 45 stacks of or individual items. And that makes you the wheat? That makes you a glutton for punishment.
>
>
> Actually, I find a lot of this quite amusing. I just logged out of the game, and PE was being flooded, again, with the "tears of the fallen", I guess? A healer that's complaining about having to actually heal was the top of the list. In ezmode, he didn't have to do much, if anything, just leech along for the xp/rewards. Now that he's required to fulfill his role, it's all tears in PE. Also, I'm not "mistaking" anything. I keep hearing "dungeons are unplayable", but from the video that was posted in these forums regarding that, I could see why: "Let's all stand in both of these AoEs at the same time from the boss, it's not like it can kill us". Sorry, if that's the creme de la creme of the playerbase, they should have started working on a pass like this a long time ago. What that shows me is that, over the years, players got used to ignoring mechanics, coupled with the healer I referenced above that doesn't understand what his job is in a group, and I can see exactly why it's unplayable for some; they don't know how to play.
Yes, continue to blame the players, and not the devs that put out this broken mess. I love when white knights defend the indefensible.
Yes, making bosses do anything but stand there to be killed is a poor design choice. Also, why did they ever think that a healing class should actually have to use healing skills, the design choices in this game, I'll tell you, if they did this in any other MMO it would be /sarcasm working as intended.
So, to be clear here, the developers are now responsible to spawn in at every boss fight and yell, "Get out of those AoEs morons"? Given the listed examples, that's the only possible way I can get to White Knight. Sorry, were you in that video? Did it offend you that I am calling people out for "standing in stupid"? I don't know what to tell you, other than maybe figure out what white knight means. The only issue I've come across, so far, is that cooldowns could be reduced by about 15% or so, and the need to start selling canoes in PE, so that people just trying to play the game aren't drowned in the tears of the fallen.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
I've tried a few of my classes and they are just not fun anymore. The game play doesn't feel satisfying or rewarding anymore. Even though the content drop is good, combat is a total mess. Unfortunately it looks like I'm moving back to ESO again! Although it has its own issues...
This is the first and probably last time I've commented on these forums. I too have tried playing with the new mods and I hate it. I didn't think the game was broken and didn't ask anyone to take away one game I enjoyed and replace it with another completely different one. I feel that I have wasted my time invested in Neverwinter. I'm not sure what game will absorb my existence next but it won't be this one. Bye everyone.
> @robertthebard said: > > @robertthebard said: > > > so okay, real talk. how were any of you happy with the state of the game pre mod 16? how is a less than 15 min run of ToNG fun? how is killing everything with out the risk of getting killed fun? (and at that point its becomes the lowest grade of grinding) I liked the feat/boon selection and how you could tailor your class to your liking but...looking back I always picked the same skills over and over again with my alts and never touching certain moves and skills and min/maxed everything else... > > > > > > and what would have happened if they didn't do this and kept chugging along with the same old method? bad enough pre 16 dungeons (aside from the k-team) were garbage and the devs had to boost the mobs attack just so there's an "challenge" (which made it "either full health or not") > > > > > > > > > > > > The game was stale in mod 15 because the devs had ignored issues like class balance (particularly for HR/Ranger, which has needed a real rework since mod 6 and still hasn't gotten it, just a long list of uncalled for nerfs and the one time we got piercing damage because they were too lazy to do the job), pvp was a toxic mess, IL gates for the public queues above intermediate were much too low, boss encounter design since mod 6 has been awful, and the new things introduced with mod 15 (k-team, tales of old, professions that failed to integrate +1 items properly) were all either bad ideas or badly executed. > > > > > > Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space. > > > > > > In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d. > > > > > > > > > The game was stale 5 years ago, because of the lack of difficulty at the time. It was so stale, for me, that I left. Now I wasn't in a huge guild, but to my surprise, upon returning, only one player from that guild, who's on my friend's list, has logged in since my return, and that only once, while I was online. They knew why I left, because I told them. So Cryptic lost out on 5 years worth of potential income from me. > > > > > > I played Aion from the 2nd closed beta, and my sub was active when it went F2P. I played DDO for 9 years, and as of the date of this post, my two subs have been inactive for 1 year, or so, due to differences with their community manager. I played, and kept two accounts with VIP status until then, whether I was playing or not. I kept a sub active on swtor for 4 years or so. These are listed to demonstrate that, if I'm having fun with a game, I'll commit to it long term, and pay to stay playing, whether it's a sub based game, as Aion was, or not. So this explains what I mean by Cryptic losing out. If I hadn't found the game play to be over the top easy to the point of boredom, I'd have stuck around, because it's not like it's not fun in short bursts, but when I could play it in my sleep, it was time to move on. My sub is currently active on ESO, even though it's not required, because I find plenty of interesting things to do, when I'm not burnt out on doing them, anyway. > > > > > > There's a delicate balance between keeping casual players and keeping the more hardcore players engaged, and frankly, in the opening months, Neverwinter didn't meet that criteria for me. This update may well change that. From my own experiences over the last two days, there seem to be a lot more people actually playing the game, based on zone populations outside of PE, although to be fair, there are some things you have to do in PE. But I can't remember being in an empty zone, contrary to what the forums would have me believe, or those that worship at the altar of Steam would have me believe. So far, all this update has done, as far as I can tell, is separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat are the players that are too busy actually playing the game to come here and claim that it's irredeemably broken. > > > > > > So you're mistaking the inevitable surge in players that comes with all the advertising for a new mod for a real surge in interest. You don't care that professions are useless. You don't care that dungeons are unplayable due to scaling. You don't care that it's basically impossible to earn your daily AD. You don't care that combat is a complete mess (particularly for ranger, the lack of immunity frames/mechanics and tiny dodge are a real problem when players can't do enough damage to clear mobs around them). You don't care that the character sheet no longer tells you what your stats do. You don't care that in order to upgrade 15 epic mount insignia you'll need to find bag space for as many as 45 stacks of or individual items. And that makes you the wheat? That makes you a glutton for punishment. > > > > > > > > > Actually, I find a lot of this quite amusing. I just logged out of the game, and PE was being flooded, again, with the "tears of the fallen", I guess? A healer that's complaining about having to actually heal was the top of the list. In ezmode, he didn't have to do much, if anything, just leech along for the xp/rewards. Now that he's required to fulfill his role, it's all tears in PE. Also, I'm not "mistaking" anything. I keep hearing "dungeons are unplayable", but from the video that was posted in these forums regarding that, I could see why: "Let's all stand in both of these AoEs at the same time from the boss, it's not like it can kill us". Sorry, if that's the creme de la creme of the playerbase, they should have started working on a pass like this a long time ago. What that shows me is that, over the years, players got used to ignoring mechanics, coupled with the healer I referenced above that doesn't understand what his job is in a group, and I can see exactly why it's unplayable for some; they don't know how to play. > > > > Yes, continue to blame the players, and not the devs that put out this broken mess. I love when white knights defend the indefensible. > > Yes, making bosses do anything but stand there to be killed is a poor design choice. Also, why did they ever think that a healing class should actually have to use healing skills, the design choices in this game, I'll tell you, if they did this in any other MMO it would be /sarcasm working as intended. > > So, to be clear here, the developers are now responsible to spawn in at every boss fight and yell, "Get out of those AoEs morons"? Given the listed examples, that's the only possible way I can get to White Knight. Sorry, were you in that video? Did it offend you that I am calling people out for "standing in stupid"? I don't know what to tell you, other than maybe figure out what white knight means. The only issue I've come across, so far, is that cooldowns could be reduced by about 15% or so, and the need to start selling canoes in PE, so that people just trying to play the game aren't drowned in the tears of the fallen.
So you believe only issue is cooldowns? No issues with scaling? Being one shot in demo and tiamat? Let me guess again, that is all on the players right? As for white knight: someone who is running to the defense of the devs, stating everything is great.
It isn't, scaling is broke, and as long as you defend it right now as wai then yeah, white knight.
As for the video, i didn't watch it. Could care less, see how many people are stating scaling is not wai.
If they're playing as is shown in the video, then yes, it is on them. There's a reason that mobs have tells, it's supposed to tell you to move out of the way. Over the years, as players got more and better geared, they forgot about mechanics. They don't go around traps in a dungeon any more, they just zerg right over them. They don't pay attention to tells, because it's not going to kill them anyway. They don't heal, or some don't, because it's not been needed, and then, when these things start to matter, as they should have from the start, it's broken. I'm not defending a single developer statement, and I'm not trying to claim they can't do any wrong, but frankly, reading the forums, and chat in PE, there's a whole lotta learn to play that needs to happen. Feel free to dismiss this if you will, but it's not going to change anything. I'm only amazed that there aren't more people calling it out, but I guess after four years of ez mode, they'd rather have it back than point out obvious flaws in reasoning.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
I have been playing MMOs since WOW vanilla. I played Guild Wars, Star Wars the Old Republic, and ESO. I am well versed in adjusting to new game mechanics, toons getting nerfed (I still occasionally lament the first time they nerfed my Death Knight), powers being changed, etc. etc. etc. So none of this is NEW or a shock to my system. Change can be good.
What IS a shock to my system is really how poorly this is done. I have been reading comments for a few weeks about what a train wreck Mod 16 was going to be, and I just chalked it up to the typical "sky is falling" haters. But then I started trying to function after the Mod dropped.
The scaling is fundamentally broken. In Well of Dragons, it takes forever to kill the elite demons that emerge from the portals during events. Which isn't necessarily bad per se, but meanwhile, I was able to solo Charthraxis even with scaling. There is no version of proper scaling where that should happen. I went to do a quest to free the drow slaves and got scaled to level 60. Okay, no problem. But the mobs I was expected to fight were level 73.
Huh?
That isn't a "learn to play your toon you idiot" problem. That is a "WTF is going on with the code?" problem. Because assuming the developers actually understand their own game mechanics, it seems to me that there is something wrong in the code itself that is not calculating the algorithms correctly, resulting in the horrible display of scaling fails that are being reported all over the place. There are currently dozens of quests for campaigns that CANNOT be accomplished, because you get scaled to one level but the mobs are ten (or more) levels higher than you. That has absolutely ZERO to do with people knowing how to play their characters and everything to do with poor scaling.
You can be the greatest archer in the world. If you don't have a bowstring, you aren't hitting anything. And telling the archer to just practice more doesn't change the fact that they STILL NEED A BOWSTRING to actually use the bow.
Well, that would explain why the green meanie dies so fast. The cutscene is literally longer than the actual fight. I've done it about 4 times where I was lucky to get a hit in before it was over. That should be looked at, along with spawning +12ish mobs in scaled quests. It's going to make some people unhappy too, because I bet rolling that dragon is tons of fun for the ones that are doing it.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
The game was stale in mod 15 because the devs had ignored issues like class balance (particularly for HR/Ranger, which has needed a real rework since mod 6 and still hasn't gotten it, just a long list of uncalled for nerfs and the one time we got piercing damage because they were too lazy to do the job), pvp was a toxic mess, IL gates for the public queues above intermediate were much too low, boss encounter design since mod 6 has been awful, and the new things introduced with mod 15 (k-team, tales of old, professions that failed to integrate +1 items properly) were all either bad ideas or badly executed.
Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space.
In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d.
The game was stale 5 years ago, because of the lack of difficulty at the time. It was so stale, for me, that I left. Now I wasn't in a huge guild, but to my surprise, upon returning, only one player from that guild, who's on my friend's list, has logged in since my return, and that only once, while I was online. They knew why I left, because I told them. So Cryptic lost out on 5 years worth of potential income from me.
I played Aion from the 2nd closed beta, and my sub was active when it went F2P. I played DDO for 9 years, and as of the date of this post, my two subs have been inactive for 1 year, or so, due to differences with their community manager. I played, and kept two accounts with VIP status until then, whether I was playing or not. I kept a sub active on swtor for 4 years or so. These are listed to demonstrate that, if I'm having fun with a game, I'll commit to it long term, and pay to stay playing, whether it's a sub based game, as Aion was, or not. So this explains what I mean by Cryptic losing out. If I hadn't found the game play to be over the top easy to the point of boredom, I'd have stuck around, because it's not like it's not fun in short bursts, but when I could play it in my sleep, it was time to move on. My sub is currently active on ESO, even though it's not required, because I find plenty of interesting things to do, when I'm not burnt out on doing them, anyway.
There's a delicate balance between keeping casual players and keeping the more hardcore players engaged, and frankly, in the opening months, Neverwinter didn't meet that criteria for me. This update may well change that. From my own experiences over the last two days, there seem to be a lot more people actually playing the game, based on zone populations outside of PE, although to be fair, there are some things you have to do in PE. But I can't remember being in an empty zone, contrary to what the forums would have me believe, or those that worship at the altar of Steam would have me believe. So far, all this update has done, as far as I can tell, is separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat are the players that are too busy actually playing the game to come here and claim that it's irredeemably broken.
The issue is that the reason you think the game is easy is that you didn't get far enough along into the game to get to the hard parts of the game. The early part of the game they made really easy to hook the casual players into the game. That part of the game wasn't meant for hard core players that wanted difficult content. Access into the hard parts of the game takes 6 months of game time or $2,000+ at least of investment into the character to get into the difficult parts. This is where you would be about 15k to 16k and enter into the dungeons of FBI/MSP/ToNG/CR/CoDG. The problem is that after you started to pass 16k item level the difficulty started to wane since they tried to make those pieces of content available to the casual gamers who came to the game for Ravenloft and did some grinding to get to that area before a good portion of them threw in the towel. Now, you just have to get to level 80 and then it is just working on mechanics of the game and a grind for gear that is mainly nerfed in lower level content. The people in here that don't like it feel that parts of the game have just been taken away from them and they haven't gone through the end game campaign which more or less puts them much closer to what those end game players are at. Right now I see about 1/2 of the old content as being too hard to finish due to mobs that one shot players. The rest of the content is able to be completed but at the cost of taking 2x or more time to finish. The drops in the end of dungeons after completing several (not a large sample size) seems to be similar to what I used to get going through them. Since these players know that they will need thousands of completions on that content they see the light at the end of the tunnel being moved away. This will cause some players to leave the game as some have already publicly stated that specific thing. I could get behind longer runs and harder all around content if done well... Right now the inconsistencies of the content are the issue as there is too much variance in the content.
There was no game to go further with when I left, and from what I've read on the forums, it didn't happen for another year after I left, and that's a long time to expect someone who's thinking things are way too easy to wait for something that isn't, and, reading here, they didn't exactly do a bang up job introducing that.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
All any one does now-a-days is hate on every new game or big update in any game. Mod16 is freakin awesome. Ill admit the warlock needs a little buff, but the rest is simply great. Every thing feels better.
How you explain that we can not fight and kill some mobs that previously was a peace of cake?????
honestly? they still are..at least for my HR and DC (haven't played my other alts yet) only difference is that it takes a few second longer now
I'm even seeing other player killing things faster than me and actually "playing" rather than running up and smashing the HAMSTER out of mobs and moving on to the next batch
all in all this change was / had to happen at the rate this game was going with its gear /stat cap
but I won't lie, certain....group content needs to be reworked for this new system
If all it did was "take a few seconds longer", I doubt anyone would have a problem with the Mod16 changes... but clearly a lot of people appear to have a big problem with the changes, and we're not just talking about it taking a few more seconds to complete a run.
I'd settle for not getting my HAMSTER repeatedly handed to me in content I used to be able to survive (Mod6 flashback), then having to spend more gold than I collected during runs - to buy healing potions and injury kits - that no longer drop during those runs by the way - to replace the ones I used leaving me little extra for enhancement potions, skill kits, professions or removing enchantments and runestones if/when needed.
"Awesome"? ...Not hardly.
A lot of people tend to post from their own personal perspective with their own characters while completely trying to ignore any other perspective...
Character changes in Mod16 are "freakin awesome' and only "takes a few second longer now"???
Not from where I sit with a level 70 character, item level a little over 11K with the gear I got from Lord Neverember in the Moonstone Mast before starting Undermountain and only Epic companions and two Epic and one Rare Bonding Runestons.
What's your character level? - your item level? - what rank are your companions? - enchantments? - runestones? - artifact weapon and off hand? - what kind of boons are you running with?
Now do away with your guild boons since not everyone has them... Run Undermountain with just the gear (and enchantments) we got from Lord Neverember in the Moonstone mask and at best EPIC companions and runestones for their gear...
Then come back and tell us how "awesome" Undermountain is and how it only "takes a few more seconds", or don't try to convince the majority of players that we're is just "hating" on the new Mod or how it only "takes a few second{s} longer now".
A lot of us can't even use most of our characters yet because we're still trying to sort out our inventories, find enough gold to remove enchantments from no longer viable gear before we can even play - or invoke - or collect VIP and for some players - it's just too much time, trouble (and expense) to even try...
I've been here since mod 1 so have seen most of the changes over the years. Every time Cryptic did something that seemed egregious, people would voice their dismay, but the same theme remained: "The combat here is what is so good about this game". A bunch of us revolted after mod 6, tried a few games like Skyforge etc, but we were back for the combat. Friendships in game also are a strong anchor for sticking around, but slowly friends disappear with every round of nerfs, affront to playstyles etc. etc.
The hot topic at the moment is the scaling issue, that seems to be drawing the most ire among players. That will definitely be smoothed out over time. Fast or slow is up to Cryptic. What happens once that's addressed? The anemic combat system they have left us with remains. I can live with two paragon choices that are devoid of the three feat trees, but locking out powers depending on which you take was a mistake imo. As many have said, they've stripped it down to an over simplified set of skills and powers. The combat feels less satisfying to me.
Players can make up their own minds. They don't need a forum post to sway them on what they like or dislike. The developers however, need to listen to negative feedback. That feedback need not be inflamatory, but if they don't, they will surely have driven more people away by the time the dust settles on this mod. Hell a little part of me wants them to feel punished for this after I gave my main a fair trial through a reasonable amount of content.
My two cents:
Campaign - really well done Scaling - Fail, needs a serious rethink, perhaps even scrapped until they can come up with something better. Companions - On the fence, seems fair across the board but does not make me feel any better about huge investment lost in gear, enchants, upgrades etc. Cryptic clearly has shown they don't give a HAMSTER about anyone's past investments. Their choice I spose, but not a great business strategy imo. Enchantments - Fail. Quit moving the bloody goal posts on these. Changes occasionally are fine, but this has gotten stupid. Alt play - Fail unless you are trying to kill it, could be a success from Cryptic's perspective if that was the goal. Class reworks - Too early to say, I prefer the holy trinity, dungeon crawls instead of rofl stomping everything via buff stacking, but they probably could have achieved that without gimping so much stuff, like combat. Combat - Epic Fail here. Just my experience after two days, but the combat as I said was the real gem about Neverwinter. It feels severely limiting and overly simplified with fewer choices. It is not as fun as the old system. Scrapping the hard lock on power choices between the two paths would be my preference.
Campaign - really well done Scaling - Fail, needs a serious rethink, perhaps even scrapped until they can come up with something better. Companions - On the fence, seems fair across the board but does not make me feel any better about huge investment lost in gear, enchants, upgrades etc. Cryptic clearly has shown they don't give a HAMSTER about anyone's past investments. Their choice I spose, but not a great business strategy imo. Enchantments - Fail. Quit moving the bloody goal posts on these. Changes occasionally are fine, but this has gotten stupid. Alt play - Fail unless you are trying to kill it, could be a success from Cryptic's perspective if that was the goal. Class reworks - Too early to say, I prefer the holy trinity, dungeon crawls instead of rofl stomping everything via buff stacking, but they probably could have achieved that without gimping so much stuff, like combat. Combat - Epic Fail here. Just my experience after two days, but the combat as I said was the real gem about Neverwinter. It feels severely limiting and overly simplified with fewer choices. It is not as fun as the old system. Scrapping the hard lock on power choices between the two paths would be my preference.
You see it too. The combat system was the biggest turnoff for me as well. Scaling is obviously off the rails crazy and needs fixing. Its the combat system.....the core aspect of how you interact with the game (90% of gametime for me) is what really drove me off. It will be the same after the scaling debacle and after many mods coming it will be the same system. oh well
All any one does now-a-days is hate on every new game or big update in any game. Mod16 is freakin awesome. Ill admit the warlock needs a little buff, but the rest is simply great. Every thing feels better.
Moderator edited title to be less aggressive.
Have you run Tiamat?
The lvl 80 stuff is good and fun, but there is such little of it. The 70 campaigns are alright for the most part but I had them done and really no reason for me to do them anymore other than to get guild quest done. The problem is the scaling in the dungeons you do through the queues, that is the part of the game that is broken. People will complain when they do not like something. So yeah you can ignore some of it if the complaints are few or just from a tiny portion of the players, because the people enjoying the game are unlikely to say much because they are playing. But when a good chunk of the player base has the same complaint chances are there is a very real problem. Such as why would my stats that are far above the cap for 80 content be scaled down to the point where in 70 dungeons I can only crit about 15% of the time versus the 50% in 80 stuff, and the same problem exist for armor pen and accuracy., you have rank 15 bondings that give 70 each being scaled down to 20% in that content which is basically shaving 10-11 ranks off... and then you got some places like tiamat where all 25 players can no even protect a single cleric because the devils/demons just take 1 hit to kill anyone. These are very real game breaking problems, especially since we do not have a single real dungeon to play that does not scale you since for some reason the promised new dungeon is not in the game nor has a time frame been given us, of course the seal vendor for it is in even though you can not get the seals so they gave us stuff we can not even get. It is all obvious signs of a complete rush job to get the mod out sooner rather than properly testing it. Seems they want live players to test the game as well...
Many of the complaints are not stuff like Hey my favorite class or skill got nerfed or changed. Hey it takes me 5 hits to kill something instead of 1 or 2 now... Most people have complaints about stuff being made nearly impossible and in some cases flat out impossible and for the most part the dev team when they decided to respond condescend the players basically saying you have to learn the class or you just need to get better at the game. Sorry but a lvl 80 player with the stats all capped at 80 going into a 70 dungeon just to be killed over and over and over by basic mobs with a single hit is not the player sucking or not knowing the class and that is basically Tiamat right now. some dungeons are not as bad as that but are still silly. like Malabog taking a group of 80's again stats all capped for 80 having to spend almost 2 hours in to finish it when the dungeon is designed to take 30 minutes. And I am a player that in other games happy spend hours to complete one dungeon but the difference is those were designed to take that time these dungeons were designed to be 15-30 minutes spending 2 hours to do something that was originally designed to take 15-30 minutes is not fun, especially in some dungeons where you spend and hour or so just to find out oh that 2nd boss or final boss was made impossible by the scaling because now you are basically a piece of plastic wrap trying to fight a forest fire.
Campaign - really well done Scaling - Fail, needs a serious rethink, perhaps even scrapped until they can come up with something better. Companions - On the fence, seems fair across the board but does not make me feel any better about huge investment lost in gear, enchants, upgrades etc. Cryptic clearly has shown they don't give a HAMSTER about anyone's past investments. Their choice I spose, but not a great business strategy imo. Enchantments - Fail. Quit moving the bloody goal posts on these. Changes occasionally are fine, but this has gotten stupid. Alt play - Fail unless you are trying to kill it, could be a success from Cryptic's perspective if that was the goal. Class reworks - Too early to say, I prefer the holy trinity, dungeon crawls instead of rofl stomping everything via buff stacking, but they probably could have achieved that without gimping so much stuff, like combat. Combat - Epic Fail here. Just my experience after two days, but the combat as I said was the real gem about Neverwinter. It feels severely limiting and overly simplified with fewer choices. It is not as fun as the old system. Scrapping the hard lock on power choices between the two paths would be my preference.
I might add:
Refinement Either I'm imagining things or level 70 gear had received a serious nerf where as rare (blue) level 70 gear that used to give us 150 Refinement Ponts now only gives us 60 refinement points...
So instead of taking post Mod16 gear and modestly adding value to the 150 RP value rare level 70 gear used to give the players, once again Neverwinter had decided to take something away from players, just so they can (maybe) get back what they took away from us at a higher level.
Mod 16 (ie the 71-80 content) is pretty good. There are bugs in it but it feels ok for the most part except the problem with finding mobs as is normal with new mods. However any content that scales you is bad. It doesn't matter if you are lvl 30 being scaled to 20. The lvl 20 mobs hit harder in some cases then the lvl 30 mobs. If you just stay in the lvl 80 content then you will have no worries and lets face it most of the end game players don't need to leave it. It's the rest of us and the up and coming that are going to have the problems.
I really want to buy into the hype, I really do, but to use your exact example:
Neverdeath Cemetary heroic dragon, dead in three seconds. I literally got one shot on it before it was over. It would seem that this myth of "scaling is going to kill the newbies is just that, a myth. Before the update, the dragon took 2-3 minutes to kill, on the outside.
You don't think "newbies" are going to get disgusted and disheartened because some high level player was able to one-shot the dragon and they didn't even get credit for it... even after multiple attempts?
Think again...
I'm not by any means a new player but I did roll a new character just to start Mod16 from something a little closer to a newbie perspective and had the quest from Harper Boward in PE to go to Neverdeath and kill Charthraxis.
Three times I was standing on the field ready to confront the dragon and three times before I could make it from the point where most players were standing to within striking distance of the dragon someone rushed in and killed him with one shot. Three times I attempted the quest and three times I wasn't able to complete it... just because someone quickly kills the dragon doesn't mean everyone there gets credit for the kill, even if a player has been standing on the side lines for 5-minutes waiting for the dragon and as soon as they were released from the stun effect attempted to immediately attack the dragon, if they don't get in a shot or two before the dragon goes down - they don't get credit for it.
There is something seriously wrong with scaling... In some cases due to some players having their abilities so drastically nerfed as to make some content much more difficult and occasionally impossible - in some cases due to some players having their abilities so enhanced as to making some content too easy for them but by the same token all but impossible for other players.
The more things change, the more they stay the same it seems.
Many of the complaints are not stuff like Hey my favorite class or skill got nerfed or changed. Hey it takes me 5 hits to kill something instead of 1 or 2 now...
Well that's your opinion on complain like this isn't important. Many player had their fun from playing their favourite class. When classes like this are no longer fun, there is no reason to play anymore does it?
Anyway, how stat behaves in this game is another factor. Barely scratching 2% of a trash mob hp after 5-6hits is a big turn off even for an unoptimized stat. Its not a type of gameplay any new player would appreciate. The penalty from an unoptimized stat should not be so harsh that it deal ridiculously low damage. It just leaves an impression of a HAMSTER game on new players. Cryptic need to consider their new customer experience. Just imagine what a group of friends with unoptimized stat will experience. If there are no optimized stat player to carry them, they wont be finishing the dungeon. Dungeon in neverwinter already has no difficulty level to pick from unlike dungeon in DDO. In DDO, new player could still play the content with normal difficulty. In neverwinter, there need to have something that makes dungeon playable for lowbies because dealing 2% of target hit point in 5-6hit shouldn't be happening when their ilevel requirement is met for that dungeon.
One of the developments with how Mod 16 has emerged is down to LOTS of negative comments being listened to by the Devs. Not everything, but a LOT. When it first hit Preview much of it was, to quote George Conway, "A HAMSTER show in a dumpster fire". Lots of negative comments were made, and lots of things changed. What we see now is actually very different to how it first landed on Preview and while a lot of the feedback, particularly early o was very positive in it's negativity, (if that makes sense) it was, nevertheless, highly critical.
-snip-
The thing to remember about commentary from players from the preview shard is most of the people who run new content in the preview shard are veteran players, end-game players, for the most part higher level players.
You aren't going to find a great many low level players and probably no new players in preview so most of the passed along insight regarding game mechanics from the preview shard is going to be from those veteran, higher level and end-game players and of course they're going to be primarily focused on what would make the game better for them and the characters they are playing.. Suggested changes based on the perspectives from mostly high level players.
Something that Cryptic and Neverwinter seems to not be aware of, ignore or think is fine for some reason...
Admittedly being able to take advantage of a host of unpaid volunteer play testers is a boon for Cryptic and Neverwinter - but not necessarilyfor new players, new-ish players or low level players who don't even have preview access.
All any one does now-a-days is hate on every new game or big update in any game. Mod16 is freakin awesome. Ill admit the warlock needs a little buff, but the rest is simply great. Every thing feels better.
How you explain that we can not fight and kill some mobs that previously was a peace of cake?????
honestly? they still are..at least for my HR and DC (haven't played my other alts yet) only difference is that it takes a few second longer now
I'm even seeing other player killing things faster than me and actually "playing" rather than running up and smashing the HAMSTER out of mobs and moving on to the next batch
all in all this change was / had to happen at the rate this game was going with its gear /stat cap
but I won't lie, certain....group content needs to be reworked for this new system
If all it did was "take a few seconds longer", I doubt anyone would have a problem with the Mod16 changes... but clearly a lot of people appear to have a big problem with the changes, and we're not just talking about it taking a few more seconds to complete a run.
I'd settle for not getting my HAMSTER repeatedly handed to me in content I used to be able to survive (Mod6 flashback), then having to spend more gold than I collected during runs - to buy healing potions and injury kits - that no longer drop during those runs by the way - to replace the ones I used leaving me little extra for enhancement potions, skill kits, professions or removing enchantments and runestones if/when needed.
"Awesome"? ...Not hardly.
A lot of people tend to post from their own personal perspective with their own characters while completely trying to ignore any other perspective...
Character changes in Mod16 are "freakin awesome' and only "takes a few second longer now"???
Not from where I sit with a level 70 character, item level a little over 11K with the gear I got from Lord Neverember in the Moonstone Mast before starting Undermountain and only Epic companions and two Epic and one Rare Bonding Runestons.
What's your character level? - your item level? - what rank are your companions? - enchantments? - runestones? - artifact weapon and off hand? - what kind of boons are you running with?
Now do away with your guild boons since not everyone has them... Run Undermountain with just the gear (and enchantments) we got from Lord Neverember in the Moonstone mask and at best EPIC companions and runestones for their gear...
Then come back and tell us how "awesome" Undermountain is and how it only "takes a few more seconds", or don't try to convince the majority of players that we're is just "hating" on the new Mod or how it only "takes a few second{s} longer now".
A lot of us can't even use most of our characters yet because we're still trying to sort out our inventories, find enough gold to remove enchantments from no longer viable gear before we can even play - or invoke - or collect VIP and for some players - it's just too much time, trouble (and expense) to even try...
(not sure if my comment was deleted or whatever by a mod but whatever..)
first off, stop making excuses for yourself because there is no reason AT ALL to be using anything the game gives you (thought most people would have learned this since Ravenloft) and crowns are now a basic reward and if you don't want to farm that well not sure what you've been playing because it isn;t neverwinter
2nd I only have 2 toons in undermontain right now, my 16k IL DC and my 13k IL HR both are using their enchantments from pre-16 (shocking since one was a powershare DC and the other was a high crit /pen archer) basically I just went straight into the Undermontain with the stuff I left on pre-16 my DC which is in a healer spec is blasting through this, most of his single targets one shots just about everything my HR is doing fine as well but not as fast since I haven't unlocked all the boons on him yet but I never get in a fight for no more than 20-30 seconds
but don't get me wrong I don't love neverwinter, honestly this was the bottom feeders of mmos pre-mod 16 its just a little more bearable now, and yes mod 16 isn't perfect (which mod was on release honestly) and I fully expect them to tweak almost everything before they claim themselves its perfect
Actually if you read my comment I'm not at all making "excuses" for myself, I'm giving reasons why players who don't have a "16K or 13K item levels", possibly level 14-15 enchantments and rune stones, legendary companions, mounts or a plethora of guild boons at their disposal - not just me, might not find Mod16 "awesome" or simply a matter of taking a "few second longer".
Yes I remember Ravenloft and the gear we were provided and almost mentioned it but didn't want to get too far afield...
Cryptic/Neverwinter provided players with gear and accessories with specific usefulness in Barovia that for all practical purposes was basically worthless when it came to the opponents in Barovia... We got Ravenloft specific gear to help play pre-Ravenloft content a bit easier.
Now we seem to be getting Undermountain specific gear to help play pre-Undermountain content a bit easier... it just make no sense to me. Not at all like the gear we were able to acquire by actually running the content after Mod6, that actually made being able to play new Mod6 content a bit easier.
Of course players who already had some kicking gear, not to mention better runestones, enchantment stones, guild boons, higher level companions and mounts found Ravenloft much less of a challenge, just like it looks like players who already have some kicking gear and higher level enhancements will no doubt find Undermountain easier to run.
But what about new players and the rest of us?
If players have the time and inclination to spend hours upon hours to grind for stuff more power to em'... if Neverwinter only wants players inclined to spend the time to grind for stuff, more power to them - but honestly I tend to believe those willing and able to spend the time and effort to grind for stuff are a minority of Neverwinter's player base.
Most players much like myself are casual players who don't find hours upon hours of grinding for stuff enjoyable, we occasionally do it out of necessity just to be able to better play the game but our enjoyment comes from actually playing the game not spending hours grinding for AD's or whatever to be able to play the game... We're just doing what we have to do to be able to play and at some point all of us ask ourselves: "is it actually worth it?".
The same way with spending RL cash to purchase things to allow us to play and actually help finance the game...
But after spending our cash to see the items we bought with it made obsolete in what I consider to be a short period of time and what little (if any) compensation we receive for our past purchased gear not even close to what it cost us.
Players like myself will ultimately become much less inclined to make future purchases and will again find ourselves asking: "is it worth it?".
Apparently contrary to your feelings of Neverwinter it can be said I "loved", or at least greatly enjoyed playing Neverwinter for many years, which is why I stuck with it and had no plans of leaving any time soon... I've always planned on giving Mod16 a chance hoping for just a few modifications to bring a bit more equilibrium to player -vs- opponent confrontations...
I've bought Zen when I felt the additional bonus with the Zen purchase was beneficial, but after feeling I got burnt a few times spending Zen on services like character slots and other things I'm less inclined to do so, I've purchased player packs when I felt they would enhance my characters sufficiently, I've run for AD's despite preferring to being able to actually play the game out of necessity, but fortunately haven't spent them all on gear or items that will be now considered borderline (if not entirely) obsolete.
Spending RL cash or simply repetitively running for AD's is an endless cycle which for me holds no sense of accomplishment... being able to run and clear content without spending hours grinding for AD, being able to purchase things with my RL money that isn't going to be bottom shelf, superfluous, nerfed or made obsolete way soon, to me that's actual accomplishment.
I hope you're right about Neverwinter no longer being among the "bottom feeders of mmos" with the roll out of Mod 16, of course I never thought it was... and I hope that the game survives and thrives as as a result. As to whether I or many casual players are still on-board or whether Neverwinter is able to attract enough new players to see if it turns out that way remains to be seen but I suspect some modifications (if any) we will see in the upcoming months will tell the tale.
All any one does now-a-days is hate on every new game or big update in any game. Mod16 is freakin awesome. Ill admit the warlock needs a little buff, but the rest is simply great. Every thing feels better.
How you explain that we can not fight and kill some mobs that previously was a peace of cake?????
honestly? they still are..at least for my HR and DC (haven't played my other alts yet) only difference is that it takes a few second longer now
I'm even seeing other player killing things faster than me and actually "playing" rather than running up and smashing the HAMSTER out of mobs and moving on to the next batch
all in all this change was / had to happen at the rate this game was going with its gear /stat cap
but I won't lie, certain....group content needs to be reworked for this new system
If all it did was "take a few seconds longer", I doubt anyone would have a problem with the Mod16 changes... but clearly a lot of people appear to have a big problem with the changes, and we're not just talking about it taking a few more seconds to complete a run.
I'd settle for not getting my HAMSTER repeatedly handed to me in content I used to be able to survive (Mod6 flashback), then having to spend more gold than I collected during runs - to buy healing potions and injury kits - that no longer drop during those runs by the way - to replace the ones I used leaving me little extra for enhancement potions, skill kits, professions or removing enchantments and runestones if/when needed.
"Awesome"? ...Not hardly.
A lot of people tend to post from their own personal perspective with their own characters while completely trying to ignore any other perspective...
Character changes in Mod16 are "freakin awesome' and only "takes a few second longer now"???
Not from where I sit with a level 70 character, item level a little over 11K with the gear I got from Lord Neverember in the Moonstone Mast before starting Undermountain and only Epic companions and two Epic and one Rare Bonding Runestons.
What's your character level? - your item level? - what rank are your companions? - enchantments? - runestones? - artifact weapon and off hand? - what kind of boons are you running with?
Now do away with your guild boons since not everyone has them... Run Undermountain with just the gear (and enchantments) we got from Lord Neverember in the Moonstone mask and at best EPIC companions and runestones for their gear...
Then come back and tell us how "awesome" Undermountain is and how it only "takes a few more seconds", or don't try to convince the majority of players that we're is just "hating" on the new Mod or how it only "takes a few second{s} longer now".
A lot of us can't even use most of our characters yet because we're still trying to sort out our inventories, find enough gold to remove enchantments from no longer viable gear before we can even play - or invoke - or collect VIP and for some players - it's just too much time, trouble (and expense) to even try...
(not sure if my comment was deleted or whatever by a mod but whatever..)
first off, stop making excuses for yourself because there is no reason AT ALL to be using anything the game gives you (thought most people would have learned this since Ravenloft) and crowns are now a basic reward and if you don't want to farm that well not sure what you've been playing because it isn;t neverwinter
2nd I only have 2 toons in undermontain right now, my 16k IL DC and my 13k IL HR both are using their enchantments from pre-16 (shocking since one was a powershare DC and the other was a high crit /pen archer) basically I just went straight into the Undermontain with the stuff I left on pre-16 my DC which is in a healer spec is blasting through this, most of his single targets one shots just about everything my HR is doing fine as well but not as fast since I haven't unlocked all the boons on him yet but I never get in a fight for no more than 20-30 seconds
but don't get me wrong I don't love neverwinter, honestly this was the bottom feeders of mmos pre-mod 16 its just a little more bearable now, and yes mod 16 isn't perfect (which mod was on release honestly) and I fully expect them to tweak almost everything before they claim themselves its perfect
Actually if you read my comment I'm not at all making "excuses" for myself, I'm giving reasons why players who don't have a "16K or 13K item levels", possibly level 14-15 enchantments and rune stones, legendary companions, mounts or a plethora of guild boons at their disposal - not just me, might not find Mod16 "awesome" or simply a matter of taking a "few second longer".
Yes I remember Ravenloft and the gear we were provided and almost mentioned it but didn't want to get too far afield...
Cryptic/Neverwinter provided players with gear and accessories with specific usefulness in Barovia that for all practical purposes was basically worthless when it came to the opponents in Barovia... We got Ravenloft specific gear to help play pre-Ravenloft content a bit easier.
Now we seem to be getting Undermountain specific gear to help play pre-Undermountain content a bit easier... it just make no sense to me. Not at all like the gear we were able to acquire by actually running the content after Mod6, that actually made being able to play new Mod6 content a bit easier.
Of course players who already had some kicking gear, not to mention better runestones, enchantment stones, guild boons, higher level companions and mounts found Ravenloft much less of a challenge, just like it looks like players who already have some kicking gear and higher level enhancements will no doubt find Undermountain easier to run.
But what about new players and the rest of us?
If players have the time and inclination to spend hours upon hours to grind for stuff more power to em'... if Neverwinter only wants players inclined to spend the time to grind for stuff, more power to them - but honestly I tend to believe those willing and able to spend the time and effort to grind for stuff are a minority of Neverwinter's player base.
Most players much like myself are casual players who don't find hours upon hours of grinding for stuff enjoyable, we occasionally do it out of necessity just to be able to better play the game but our enjoyment comes from actually playing the game not spending hours grinding for AD's or whatever to be able to play the game... We're just doing what we have to do to be able to play and at some point all of us ask ourselves: "is it actually worth it?".
The same way with spending RL cash to purchase things to allow us to play and actually help finance the game...
But after spending our cash to see the items we bought with it made obsolete in what I consider to be a short period of time and what little (if any) compensation we receive for our past purchased gear not even close to what it cost us.
Players like myself will ultimately become much less inclined to make future purchases and will again find ourselves asking: "is it worth it?".
Apparently contrary to your feelings of Neverwinter it can be said I "loved", or at least greatly enjoyed playing Neverwinter for many years, which is why I stuck with it and had no plans of leaving any time soon... I've always planned on giving Mod16 a chance hoping for just a few modifications to bring a bit more equilibrium to player -vs- opponent confrontations...
I hope you're right about Neverwinter no longer being among the "bottom feeders of mmos" with the roll out of Mod 16, of course I never thought it was... and I hope that the game survives and thrives as as a result. As to whether I or many casual players are still on-board or whether Neverwinter is able to attract enough new players to see if it turns out that way remains to be seen but I suspect some modifications (if any) we will see in the upcoming months will tell the tale.
ok so I can't have a discussion if you're going to say thing like "Not from where *I* sit with a level 70 character, item level a little over 11K with the gear *I* got from Lord Neverember in the Moonstone Mast before starting Undermountain and only Epic companions and two Epic and one Rare Bonding Runestons." and then say "oh its just an example"
and btw my dc doesn't have legendary mounts nor any rank 15 enchantments (I think its 10-12 and a few 9 utilities and two companions are leg but thats due to Anniversary event and from saving up AD) and Id rather think of myself as a casual player who only stuck around because he bought the founder pack (but I guess I'll have to start over from scratch and do undermountain at 30 or whatever lvl it unlocks to prove my point at this rate.)
but top pretending this grind wasn't here before mod 16 nor act like its some giant wall that only hardcore players can climb. also please stop pretending that players are NOW having an epiphany on spending, you know whats the biggest deterrent in making players spend money? showing that all your content is nothing more than reparable daily quests that offer no challenge at the required IL that does more than deter spending....that makes people leave.
so who knows whats going to happen, I seen a few new players and returning ones that like the new combat as well, so hopefully they may find its "worth it" and stick around
1
adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
Campaign - really well done Scaling - Fail, needs a serious rethink, perhaps even scrapped until they can come up with something better. Companions - On the fence, seems fair across the board but does not make me feel any better about huge investment lost in gear, enchants, upgrades etc. Cryptic clearly has shown they don't give a HAMSTER about anyone's past investments. Their choice I spose, but not a great business strategy imo. Enchantments - Fail. Quit moving the bloody goal posts on these. Changes occasionally are fine, but this has gotten stupid. Alt play - Fail unless you are trying to kill it, could be a success from Cryptic's perspective if that was the goal. Class reworks - Too early to say, I prefer the holy trinity, dungeon crawls instead of rofl stomping everything via buff stacking, but they probably could have achieved that without gimping so much stuff, like combat. Combat - Epic Fail here. Just my experience after two days, but the combat as I said was the real gem about Neverwinter. It feels severely limiting and overly simplified with fewer choices. It is not as fun as the old system. Scrapping the hard lock on power choices between the two paths would be my preference.
Well, from my perspective: Campaign - Agree. Looks great. Some minor flaws, like companion gear in initial chest making some quest rewards useless, but overall a really good job done there. Scaling - Completely flawed design. Scaling in priinciple is fine, but this particular implementation is just too badly designed. Whoever designed this should not be allowed near game design. Companions - Not happy that only 2 of my 6 Legendary companions are still usable, but overall, meh.... not too bad. Enchantments - Total fail, both because of scaling, which devalues progress, and because of the 500->1000 change which devalues getting high-end enchants in the first place. Why spend a lot on boosting a runestone from R14 to R15 for a measly 80 additional points ? It is worthwhile to upgrade bondings, but that's all. Alt play - I completely shelved all of my alts...'nuff said. Class reworks - I kind of miss being useful as a buffer, but the current system sort-of works.....but the implementation is not perfect. Combat - as a Cleric, it took me a while to adjust, but I now have a build and playstyle combo that actually makes combat better than it was in solo play. Playing a healer sucks big-time, though.
I'll add: Insignia - Love being able to upgrade....hate all the bag slots I now need to use for those.
ok so I can't have a discussion if you're going to say thing like "Not from where *I* sit with a level 70 character, item level a little over 11K with the gear *I* got from Lord Neverember in the Moonstone Mast before starting Undermountain and only Epic companions and two Epic and one Rare Bonding Runestons." and then say "oh its just an example"
and btw my dc doesn't have legendary mounts nor any rank 15 enchantments (I think its 10-12 and a few 9 utilities and two companions are leg but thats due to Anniversary event and from saving up AD) and Id rather think of myself as a casual player who only stuck around because he bought the founder pack (but I guess I'll have to start over from scratch and do undermountain at 30 or whatever lvl it unlocks to prove my point at this rate.)
but top pretending this grind wasn't here before mod 16 nor act like its some giant wall that only hardcore players can climb. also please stop pretending that players are NOW having an epiphany on spending, you know whats the biggest deterrent in making players spend money? showing that all your content is nothing more than reparable daily quests that offer no challenge at the required IL that does more than deter spending....that makes people leave.
so who knows whats going to happen, I seen a few new players and returning ones that like the new combat as well, so hopefully they may find its "worth it" and stick around
Discussion is fine...
You offered your opinion - I offered mine, this conversation has been the very textbook definition of a discussion..
You appeared to speaking from the perspective of a player with characters of 13K+ item level, higher level enchantments and a couple of legendary companions. I was speaking from the perspective someone with less than 13K+ characters, lower enchantments and at best epic level companions.
You seem to be speaking from a player who doesn't mind the repetitive grind with the release of each new event, change or modification. I'm speaking from the perspective of a player who would rather be actually playing than doing the same things over and over and mentioned with the release of Mod16 we are presented with yet another grind because the stuff we had, that worked perfectly well for us is suddenly not good enough even for the content we used to successfully run.
But then I'm beginning to get the impression you might be the type that just likes to argue, for the sake of arguing by tossing out confrontational phrases like: "I can't have a discussion" and "top{sic} pretending"...
In addition to the never ending game grind that's something else I don't enjoy or care to do too much, so I'll just end my part by saying I'm glad you seem to be for the most part contented with the changes in Mod16, but I hope you realize not everyone feels the same way you appear to.
Comments
1. How much build diversity was there really at end game? The vast majority of MMOs where this really mattered have had "You must be this tall to ride this ride" builds. If you weren't running x on y class, you weren't welcome in endgame content. Since a lot of what the endgame crowd considered hard content wasn't done via pugs, hence the existence and use of the LFG channel, it's safe to assume that there were criteria for what was "acceptable".
2. How would not adequately addressing the power creep address the power creep? Reading through the forums, and actual gameplay experiences have demonstrated to me that this was a very real problem. Granted that, for me, a lot of it was readily ignored, but when a prominent complaint now is "I can't solo group content that I used to be able to solo", I'd say it's a step in the right direction to put an end to that issue.
Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space.
In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d.
I played Aion from the 2nd closed beta, and my sub was active when it went F2P. I played DDO for 9 years, and as of the date of this post, my two subs have been inactive for 1 year, or so, due to differences with their community manager. I played, and kept two accounts with VIP status until then, whether I was playing or not. I kept a sub active on swtor for 4 years or so. These are listed to demonstrate that, if I'm having fun with a game, I'll commit to it long term, and pay to stay playing, whether it's a sub based game, as Aion was, or not. So this explains what I mean by Cryptic losing out. If I hadn't found the game play to be over the top easy to the point of boredom, I'd have stuck around, because it's not like it's not fun in short bursts, but when I could play it in my sleep, it was time to move on. My sub is currently active on ESO, even though it's not required, because I find plenty of interesting things to do, when I'm not burnt out on doing them, anyway.
There's a delicate balance between keeping casual players and keeping the more hardcore players engaged, and frankly, in the opening months, Neverwinter didn't meet that criteria for me. This update may well change that. From my own experiences over the last two days, there seem to be a lot more people actually playing the game, based on zone populations outside of PE, although to be fair, there are some things you have to do in PE. But I can't remember being in an empty zone, contrary to what the forums would have me believe, or those that worship at the altar of Steam would have me believe. So far, all this update has done, as far as I can tell, is separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat are the players that are too busy actually playing the game to come here and claim that it's irredeemably broken.
"They'll fix it! Give it time! It'll be good, we swear!"
Tell you what, let's ask Bethesda and Bioware how that's working out for them, shall we?
> so okay, real talk. how were any of you happy with the state of the game pre mod 16? how is a less than 15 min run of ToNG fun? how is killing everything with out the risk of getting killed fun? (and at that point its becomes the lowest grade of grinding) I liked the feat/boon selection and how you could tailor your class to your liking but...looking back I always picked the same skills over and over again with my alts and never touching certain moves and skills and min/maxed everything else...
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> and what would have happened if they didn't do this and kept chugging along with the same old method? bad enough pre 16 dungeons (aside from the k-team) were garbage and the devs had to boost the mobs attack just so there's an "challenge" (which made it "either full health or not")
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> The game was stale in mod 15 because the devs had ignored issues like class balance (particularly for HR/Ranger, which has needed a real rework since mod 6 and still hasn't gotten it, just a long list of uncalled for nerfs and the one time we got piercing damage because they were too lazy to do the job), pvp was a toxic mess, IL gates for the public queues above intermediate were much too low, boss encounter design since mod 6 has been awful, and the new things introduced with mod 15 (k-team, tales of old, professions that failed to integrate +1 items properly) were all either bad ideas or badly executed.
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> Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space.
>
> In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d.
>
>
> The game was stale 5 years ago, because of the lack of difficulty at the time. It was so stale, for me, that I left. Now I wasn't in a huge guild, but to my surprise, upon returning, only one player from that guild, who's on my friend's list, has logged in since my return, and that only once, while I was online. They knew why I left, because I told them. So Cryptic lost out on 5 years worth of potential income from me.
>
> I played Aion from the 2nd closed beta, and my sub was active when it went F2P. I played DDO for 9 years, and as of the date of this post, my two subs have been inactive for 1 year, or so, due to differences with their community manager. I played, and kept two accounts with VIP status until then, whether I was playing or not. I kept a sub active on swtor for 4 years or so. These are listed to demonstrate that, if I'm having fun with a game, I'll commit to it long term, and pay to stay playing, whether it's a sub based game, as Aion was, or not. So this explains what I mean by Cryptic losing out. If I hadn't found the game play to be over the top easy to the point of boredom, I'd have stuck around, because it's not like it's not fun in short bursts, but when I could play it in my sleep, it was time to move on. My sub is currently active on ESO, even though it's not required, because I find plenty of interesting things to do, when I'm not burnt out on doing them, anyway.
>
> There's a delicate balance between keeping casual players and keeping the more hardcore players engaged, and frankly, in the opening months, Neverwinter didn't meet that criteria for me. This update may well change that. From my own experiences over the last two days, there seem to be a lot more people actually playing the game, based on zone populations outside of PE, although to be fair, there are some things you have to do in PE. But I can't remember being in an empty zone, contrary to what the forums would have me believe, or those that worship at the altar of Steam would have me believe. So far, all this update has done, as far as I can tell, is separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat are the players that are too busy actually playing the game to come here and claim that it's irredeemably broken.
>
> So you're mistaking the inevitable surge in players that comes with all the advertising for a new mod for a real surge in interest. You don't care that professions are useless. You don't care that dungeons are unplayable due to scaling. You don't care that it's basically impossible to earn your daily AD. You don't care that combat is a complete mess (particularly for ranger, the lack of immunity frames/mechanics and tiny dodge are a real problem when players can't do enough damage to clear mobs around them). You don't care that the character sheet no longer tells you what your stats do. You don't care that in order to upgrade 15 epic mount insignia you'll need to find bag space for as many as 45 stacks of or individual items. And that makes you the wheat? That makes you a glutton for punishment.
>
>
> Actually, I find a lot of this quite amusing. I just logged out of the game, and PE was being flooded, again, with the "tears of the fallen", I guess? A healer that's complaining about having to actually heal was the top of the list. In ezmode, he didn't have to do much, if anything, just leech along for the xp/rewards. Now that he's required to fulfill his role, it's all tears in PE. Also, I'm not "mistaking" anything. I keep hearing "dungeons are unplayable", but from the video that was posted in these forums regarding that, I could see why: "Let's all stand in both of these AoEs at the same time from the boss, it's not like it can kill us". Sorry, if that's the creme de la creme of the playerbase, they should have started working on a pass like this a long time ago. What that shows me is that, over the years, players got used to ignoring mechanics, coupled with the healer I referenced above that doesn't understand what his job is in a group, and I can see exactly why it's unplayable for some; they don't know how to play.
Yes, continue to blame the players, and not the devs that put out this broken mess. I love when white knights defend the indefensible.
Yule (Barb): 72k : Siren (TR): 78k : Torun (DC): 73k : Siren OP (OP): 76k : Siren SW (SW): 78k : Modern (F): 80k : Cherry1 (CW) : 68k Siren HR (HR): 78k
>... Since when has levelling up been a negative thing in a D&D game?
Since cryptic decided to implement a totally new interpretation of progress.
So, to be clear here, the developers are now responsible to spawn in at every boss fight and yell, "Get out of those AoEs morons"? Given the listed examples, that's the only possible way I can get to White Knight. Sorry, were you in that video? Did it offend you that I am calling people out for "standing in stupid"? I don't know what to tell you, other than maybe figure out what white knight means. The only issue I've come across, so far, is that cooldowns could be reduced by about 15% or so, and the need to start selling canoes in PE, so that people just trying to play the game aren't drowned in the tears of the fallen.
> > @robertthebard said:
>
> > so okay, real talk. how were any of you happy with the state of the game pre mod 16? how is a less than 15 min run of ToNG fun? how is killing everything with out the risk of getting killed fun? (and at that point its becomes the lowest grade of grinding) I liked the feat/boon selection and how you could tailor your class to your liking but...looking back I always picked the same skills over and over again with my alts and never touching certain moves and skills and min/maxed everything else...
>
> >
>
> > and what would have happened if they didn't do this and kept chugging along with the same old method? bad enough pre 16 dungeons (aside from the k-team) were garbage and the devs had to boost the mobs attack just so there's an "challenge" (which made it "either full health or not")
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > The game was stale in mod 15 because the devs had ignored issues like class balance (particularly for HR/Ranger, which has needed a real rework since mod 6 and still hasn't gotten it, just a long list of uncalled for nerfs and the one time we got piercing damage because they were too lazy to do the job), pvp was a toxic mess, IL gates for the public queues above intermediate were much too low, boss encounter design since mod 6 has been awful, and the new things introduced with mod 15 (k-team, tales of old, professions that failed to integrate +1 items properly) were all either bad ideas or badly executed.
>
> >
>
> > Mod 16 doesn't address any of that. It ignores all of it and just throws some stat and refinement creep at us while taking away some of our bag space.
>
> >
>
> > In other words, you're making a straw man argument, supposing that because we don't like one enormous t u r d we much prefer a different enormous t u r d. What we want is something other than a t u r d.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > The game was stale 5 years ago, because of the lack of difficulty at the time. It was so stale, for me, that I left. Now I wasn't in a huge guild, but to my surprise, upon returning, only one player from that guild, who's on my friend's list, has logged in since my return, and that only once, while I was online. They knew why I left, because I told them. So Cryptic lost out on 5 years worth of potential income from me.
>
> >
>
> > I played Aion from the 2nd closed beta, and my sub was active when it went F2P. I played DDO for 9 years, and as of the date of this post, my two subs have been inactive for 1 year, or so, due to differences with their community manager. I played, and kept two accounts with VIP status until then, whether I was playing or not. I kept a sub active on swtor for 4 years or so. These are listed to demonstrate that, if I'm having fun with a game, I'll commit to it long term, and pay to stay playing, whether it's a sub based game, as Aion was, or not. So this explains what I mean by Cryptic losing out. If I hadn't found the game play to be over the top easy to the point of boredom, I'd have stuck around, because it's not like it's not fun in short bursts, but when I could play it in my sleep, it was time to move on. My sub is currently active on ESO, even though it's not required, because I find plenty of interesting things to do, when I'm not burnt out on doing them, anyway.
>
> >
>
> > There's a delicate balance between keeping casual players and keeping the more hardcore players engaged, and frankly, in the opening months, Neverwinter didn't meet that criteria for me. This update may well change that. From my own experiences over the last two days, there seem to be a lot more people actually playing the game, based on zone populations outside of PE, although to be fair, there are some things you have to do in PE. But I can't remember being in an empty zone, contrary to what the forums would have me believe, or those that worship at the altar of Steam would have me believe. So far, all this update has done, as far as I can tell, is separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat are the players that are too busy actually playing the game to come here and claim that it's irredeemably broken.
>
> >
>
> > So you're mistaking the inevitable surge in players that comes with all the advertising for a new mod for a real surge in interest. You don't care that professions are useless. You don't care that dungeons are unplayable due to scaling. You don't care that it's basically impossible to earn your daily AD. You don't care that combat is a complete mess (particularly for ranger, the lack of immunity frames/mechanics and tiny dodge are a real problem when players can't do enough damage to clear mobs around them). You don't care that the character sheet no longer tells you what your stats do. You don't care that in order to upgrade 15 epic mount insignia you'll need to find bag space for as many as 45 stacks of or individual items. And that makes you the wheat? That makes you a glutton for punishment.
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > Actually, I find a lot of this quite amusing. I just logged out of the game, and PE was being flooded, again, with the "tears of the fallen", I guess? A healer that's complaining about having to actually heal was the top of the list. In ezmode, he didn't have to do much, if anything, just leech along for the xp/rewards. Now that he's required to fulfill his role, it's all tears in PE. Also, I'm not "mistaking" anything. I keep hearing "dungeons are unplayable", but from the video that was posted in these forums regarding that, I could see why: "Let's all stand in both of these AoEs at the same time from the boss, it's not like it can kill us". Sorry, if that's the creme de la creme of the playerbase, they should have started working on a pass like this a long time ago. What that shows me is that, over the years, players got used to ignoring mechanics, coupled with the healer I referenced above that doesn't understand what his job is in a group, and I can see exactly why it's unplayable for some; they don't know how to play.
>
>
>
> Yes, continue to blame the players, and not the devs that put out this broken mess. I love when white knights defend the indefensible.
>
> Yes, making bosses do anything but stand there to be killed is a poor design choice. Also, why did they ever think that a healing class should actually have to use healing skills, the design choices in this game, I'll tell you, if they did this in any other MMO it would be /sarcasm working as intended.
>
> So, to be clear here, the developers are now responsible to spawn in at every boss fight and yell, "Get out of those AoEs morons"? Given the listed examples, that's the only possible way I can get to White Knight. Sorry, were you in that video? Did it offend you that I am calling people out for "standing in stupid"? I don't know what to tell you, other than maybe figure out what white knight means. The only issue I've come across, so far, is that cooldowns could be reduced by about 15% or so, and the need to start selling canoes in PE, so that people just trying to play the game aren't drowned in the tears of the fallen.
So you believe only issue is cooldowns? No issues with scaling? Being one shot in demo and tiamat? Let me guess again, that is all on the players right? As for white knight: someone who is running to the defense of the devs, stating everything is great.
It isn't, scaling is broke, and as long as you defend it right now as wai then yeah, white knight.
As for the video, i didn't watch it. Could care less, see how many people are stating scaling is not wai.
What IS a shock to my system is really how poorly this is done. I have been reading comments for a few weeks about what a train wreck Mod 16 was going to be, and I just chalked it up to the typical "sky is falling" haters. But then I started trying to function after the Mod dropped.
The scaling is fundamentally broken. In Well of Dragons, it takes forever to kill the elite demons that emerge from the portals during events. Which isn't necessarily bad per se, but meanwhile, I was able to solo Charthraxis even with scaling. There is no version of proper scaling where that should happen. I went to do a quest to free the drow slaves and got scaled to level 60. Okay, no problem. But the mobs I was expected to fight were level 73.
Huh?
That isn't a "learn to play your toon you idiot" problem. That is a "WTF is going on with the code?" problem. Because assuming the developers actually understand their own game mechanics, it seems to me that there is something wrong in the code itself that is not calculating the algorithms correctly, resulting in the horrible display of scaling fails that are being reported all over the place. There are currently dozens of quests for campaigns that CANNOT be accomplished, because you get scaled to one level but the mobs are ten (or more) levels higher than you. That has absolutely ZERO to do with people knowing how to play their characters and everything to do with poor scaling.
You can be the greatest archer in the world. If you don't have a bowstring, you aren't hitting anything. And telling the archer to just practice more doesn't change the fact that they STILL NEED A BOWSTRING to actually use the bow.
I'd settle for not getting my HAMSTER repeatedly handed to me in content I used to be able to survive (Mod6 flashback), then having to spend more gold than I collected during runs - to buy healing potions and injury kits - that no longer drop during those runs by the way - to replace the ones I used leaving me little extra for enhancement potions, skill kits, professions or removing enchantments and runestones if/when needed.
"Awesome"? ...Not hardly.
A lot of people tend to post from their own personal perspective with their own characters while completely trying to ignore any other perspective...
Character changes in Mod16 are "freakin awesome' and only "takes a few second longer now"???
Not from where I sit with a level 70 character, item level a little over 11K with the gear I got from Lord Neverember in the Moonstone Mast before starting Undermountain and only Epic companions and two Epic and one Rare Bonding Runestons.
What's your character level? - your item level? - what rank are your companions? - enchantments? - runestones? - artifact weapon and off hand? - what kind of boons are you running with?
Now do away with your guild boons since not everyone has them... Run Undermountain with just the gear (and enchantments) we got from Lord Neverember in the Moonstone mask and at best EPIC companions and runestones for their gear...
Then come back and tell us how "awesome" Undermountain is and how it only "takes a few more seconds", or don't try to convince the majority of players that we're is just "hating" on the new Mod or how it only "takes a few second{s} longer now".
A lot of us can't even use most of our characters yet because we're still trying to sort out our inventories, find enough gold to remove enchantments from no longer viable gear before we can even play - or invoke - or collect VIP and for some players - it's just too much time, trouble (and expense) to even try...
The hot topic at the moment is the scaling issue, that seems to be drawing the most ire among players. That will definitely be smoothed out over time. Fast or slow is up to Cryptic. What happens once that's addressed? The anemic combat system they have left us with remains. I can live with two paragon choices that are devoid of the three feat trees, but locking out powers depending on which you take was a mistake imo. As many have said, they've stripped it down to an over simplified set of skills and powers. The combat feels less satisfying to me.
Players can make up their own minds. They don't need a forum post to sway them on what they like or dislike. The developers however, need to listen to negative feedback. That feedback need not be inflamatory, but if they don't, they will surely have driven more people away by the time the dust settles on this mod. Hell a little part of me wants them to feel punished for this after I gave my main a fair trial through a reasonable amount of content.
My two cents:
Campaign - really well done
Scaling - Fail, needs a serious rethink, perhaps even scrapped until they can come up with something better.
Companions - On the fence, seems fair across the board but does not make me feel any better about huge investment lost in gear, enchants, upgrades etc. Cryptic clearly has shown they don't give a HAMSTER about anyone's past investments. Their choice I spose, but not a great business strategy imo.
Enchantments - Fail. Quit moving the bloody goal posts on these. Changes occasionally are fine, but this has gotten stupid.
Alt play - Fail unless you are trying to kill it, could be a success from Cryptic's perspective if that was the goal.
Class reworks - Too early to say, I prefer the holy trinity, dungeon crawls instead of rofl stomping everything via buff stacking, but they probably could have achieved that without gimping so much stuff, like combat.
Combat - Epic Fail here. Just my experience after two days, but the combat as I said was the real gem about Neverwinter. It feels severely limiting and overly simplified with fewer choices. It is not as fun as the old system. Scrapping the hard lock on power choices between the two paths would be my preference.
The lvl 80 stuff is good and fun, but there is such little of it. The 70 campaigns are alright for the most part but I had them done and really no reason for me to do them anymore other than to get guild quest done. The problem is the scaling in the dungeons you do through the queues, that is the part of the game that is broken. People will complain when they do not like something. So yeah you can ignore some of it if the complaints are few or just from a tiny portion of the players, because the people enjoying the game are unlikely to say much because they are playing. But when a good chunk of the player base has the same complaint chances are there is a very real problem. Such as why would my stats that are far above the cap for 80 content be scaled down to the point where in 70 dungeons I can only crit about 15% of the time versus the 50% in 80 stuff, and the same problem exist for armor pen and accuracy., you have rank 15 bondings that give 70 each being scaled down to 20% in that content which is basically shaving 10-11 ranks off... and then you got some places like tiamat where all 25 players can no even protect a single cleric because the devils/demons just take 1 hit to kill anyone. These are very real game breaking problems, especially since we do not have a single real dungeon to play that does not scale you since for some reason the promised new dungeon is not in the game nor has a time frame been given us, of course the seal vendor for it is in even though you can not get the seals so they gave us stuff we can not even get. It is all obvious signs of a complete rush job to get the mod out sooner rather than properly testing it. Seems they want live players to test the game as well...
Many of the complaints are not stuff like Hey my favorite class or skill got nerfed or changed. Hey it takes me 5 hits to kill something instead of 1 or 2 now... Most people have complaints about stuff being made nearly impossible and in some cases flat out impossible and for the most part the dev team when they decided to respond condescend the players basically saying you have to learn the class or you just need to get better at the game. Sorry but a lvl 80 player with the stats all capped at 80 going into a 70 dungeon just to be killed over and over and over by basic mobs with a single hit is not the player sucking or not knowing the class and that is basically Tiamat right now. some dungeons are not as bad as that but are still silly. like Malabog taking a group of 80's again stats all capped for 80 having to spend almost 2 hours in to finish it when the dungeon is designed to take 30 minutes. And I am a player that in other games happy spend hours to complete one dungeon but the difference is those were designed to take that time these dungeons were designed to be 15-30 minutes spending 2 hours to do something that was originally designed to take 15-30 minutes is not fun, especially in some dungeons where you spend and hour or so just to find out oh that 2nd boss or final boss was made impossible by the scaling because now you are basically a piece of plastic wrap trying to fight a forest fire.
Refinement
Either I'm imagining things or level 70 gear had received a serious nerf where as rare (blue) level 70 gear that used to give us 150 Refinement Ponts now only gives us 60 refinement points...
So instead of taking post Mod16 gear and modestly adding value to the 150 RP value rare level 70 gear used to give the players, once again Neverwinter had decided to take something away from players, just so they can (maybe) get back what they took away from us at a higher level.
I'm not pleased... not pleased at all
Think again...
I'm not by any means a new player but I did roll a new character just to start Mod16 from something a little closer to a newbie perspective and had the quest from Harper Boward in PE to go to Neverdeath and kill Charthraxis.
Three times I was standing on the field ready to confront the dragon and three times before I could make it from the point where most players were standing to within striking distance of the dragon someone rushed in and killed him with one shot. Three times I attempted the quest and three times I wasn't able to complete it... just because someone quickly kills the dragon doesn't mean everyone there gets credit for the kill, even if a player has been standing on the side lines for 5-minutes waiting for the dragon and as soon as they were released from the stun effect attempted to immediately attack the dragon, if they don't get in a shot or two before the dragon goes down - they don't get credit for it.
There is something seriously wrong with scaling... In some cases due to some players having their abilities so drastically nerfed as to make some content much more difficult and occasionally impossible - in some cases due to some players having their abilities so enhanced as to making some content too easy for them but by the same token all but impossible for other players.
The more things change, the more they stay the same it seems.
Anyway, how stat behaves in this game is another factor. Barely scratching 2% of a trash mob hp after 5-6hits is a big turn off even for an unoptimized stat. Its not a type of gameplay any new player would appreciate. The penalty from an unoptimized stat should not be so harsh that it deal ridiculously low damage. It just leaves an impression of a HAMSTER game on new players. Cryptic need to consider their new customer experience. Just imagine what a group of friends with unoptimized stat will experience. If there are no optimized stat player to carry them, they wont be finishing the dungeon. Dungeon in neverwinter already has no difficulty level to pick from unlike dungeon in DDO. In DDO, new player could still play the content with normal difficulty. In neverwinter, there need to have something that makes dungeon playable for lowbies because dealing 2% of target hit point in 5-6hit shouldn't be happening when their ilevel requirement is met for that dungeon.
You aren't going to find a great many low level players and probably no new players in preview so most of the passed along insight regarding game mechanics from the preview shard is going to be from those veteran, higher level and end-game players and of course they're going to be primarily focused on what would make the game better for them and the characters they are playing.. Suggested changes based on the perspectives from mostly high level players.
Something that Cryptic and Neverwinter seems to not be aware of, ignore or think is fine for some reason...
Admittedly being able to take advantage of a host of unpaid volunteer play testers is a boon for Cryptic and Neverwinter - but not necessarilyfor new players, new-ish players or low level players who don't even have preview access.
Yes I remember Ravenloft and the gear we were provided and almost mentioned it but didn't want to get too far afield...
Cryptic/Neverwinter provided players with gear and accessories with specific usefulness in Barovia that for all practical purposes was basically worthless when it came to the opponents in Barovia... We got Ravenloft specific gear to help play pre-Ravenloft content a bit easier.
Now we seem to be getting Undermountain specific gear to help play pre-Undermountain content a bit easier... it just make no sense to me. Not at all like the gear we were able to acquire by actually running the content after Mod6, that actually made being able to play new Mod6 content a bit easier.
Of course players who already had some kicking gear, not to mention better runestones, enchantment stones, guild boons, higher level companions and mounts found Ravenloft much less of a challenge, just like it looks like players who already have some kicking gear and higher level enhancements will no doubt find Undermountain easier to run.
But what about new players and the rest of us?
If players have the time and inclination to spend hours upon hours to grind for stuff more power to em'... if Neverwinter only wants players inclined to spend the time to grind for stuff, more power to them - but honestly I tend to believe those willing and able to spend the time and effort to grind for stuff are a minority of Neverwinter's player base.
Most players much like myself are casual players who don't find hours upon hours of grinding for stuff enjoyable, we occasionally do it out of necessity just to be able to better play the game but our enjoyment comes from actually playing the game not spending hours grinding for AD's or whatever to be able to play the game... We're just doing what we have to do to be able to play and at some point all of us ask ourselves: "is it actually worth it?".
The same way with spending RL cash to purchase things to allow us to play and actually help finance the game...
But after spending our cash to see the items we bought with it made obsolete in what I consider to be a short period of time and what little (if any) compensation we receive for our past purchased gear not even close to what it cost us.
Players like myself will ultimately become much less inclined to make future purchases and will again find ourselves asking: "is it worth it?".
Apparently contrary to your feelings of Neverwinter it can be said I "loved", or at least greatly enjoyed playing Neverwinter for many years, which is why I stuck with it and had no plans of leaving any time soon... I've always planned on giving Mod16 a chance hoping for just a few modifications to bring a bit more equilibrium to player -vs- opponent confrontations...
I've bought Zen when I felt the additional bonus with the Zen purchase was beneficial, but after feeling I got burnt a few times spending Zen on services like character slots and other things I'm less inclined to do so, I've purchased player packs when I felt they would enhance my characters sufficiently, I've run for AD's despite preferring to being able to actually play the game out of necessity, but fortunately haven't spent them all on gear or items that will be now considered borderline (if not entirely) obsolete.
Spending RL cash or simply repetitively running for AD's is an endless cycle which for me holds no sense of accomplishment... being able to run and clear content without spending hours grinding for AD, being able to purchase things with my RL money that isn't going to be bottom shelf, superfluous, nerfed or made obsolete way soon, to me that's actual accomplishment.
I hope you're right about Neverwinter no longer being among the "bottom feeders of mmos" with the roll out of Mod 16, of course I never thought it was... and I hope that the game survives and thrives as as a result. As to whether I or many casual players are still on-board or whether Neverwinter is able to attract enough new players to see if it turns out that way remains to be seen but I suspect some modifications (if any) we will see in the upcoming months will tell the tale.
ok so I can't have a discussion if you're going to say thing like "Not from where *I* sit with a level 70 character, item level a little over 11K with the gear *I* got from Lord Neverember in the Moonstone Mast before starting Undermountain and only Epic companions and two Epic and one Rare Bonding Runestons." and then say "oh its just an example"
and btw my dc doesn't have legendary mounts nor any rank 15 enchantments (I think its 10-12 and a few 9 utilities and two companions are leg but thats due to Anniversary event and from saving up AD) and Id rather think of myself as a casual player who only stuck around because he bought the founder pack (but I guess I'll have to start over from scratch and do undermountain at 30 or whatever lvl it unlocks to prove my point at this rate.)
but top pretending this grind wasn't here before mod 16 nor act like its some giant wall that only hardcore players can climb.
also please stop pretending that players are NOW having an epiphany on spending, you know whats the biggest deterrent in making players spend money? showing that all your content is nothing more than reparable daily quests that offer no challenge at the required IL that does more than deter spending....that makes people leave.
so who knows whats going to happen, I seen a few new players and returning ones that like the new combat as well, so hopefully they may find its "worth it" and stick around
Campaign - Agree. Looks great. Some minor flaws, like companion gear in initial chest making some quest rewards useless, but overall a really good job done there.
Scaling - Completely flawed design. Scaling in priinciple is fine, but this particular implementation is just too badly designed. Whoever designed this should not be allowed near game design.
Companions - Not happy that only 2 of my 6 Legendary companions are still usable, but overall, meh.... not too bad.
Enchantments - Total fail, both because of scaling, which devalues progress, and because of the 500->1000 change which devalues getting high-end enchants in the first place. Why spend a lot on boosting a runestone from R14 to R15 for a measly 80 additional points ? It is worthwhile to upgrade bondings, but that's all.
Alt play - I completely shelved all of my alts...'nuff said.
Class reworks - I kind of miss being useful as a buffer, but the current system sort-of works.....but the implementation is not perfect.
Combat - as a Cleric, it took me a while to adjust, but I now have a build and playstyle combo that actually makes combat better than it was in solo play. Playing a healer sucks big-time, though.
I'll add:
Insignia - Love being able to upgrade....hate all the bag slots I now need to use for those.
You offered your opinion - I offered mine, this conversation has been the very textbook definition of a discussion..
You appeared to speaking from the perspective of a player with characters of 13K+ item level, higher level enchantments and a couple of legendary companions. I was speaking from the perspective someone with less than 13K+ characters, lower enchantments and at best epic level companions.
You seem to be speaking from a player who doesn't mind the repetitive grind with the release of each new event, change or modification. I'm speaking from the perspective of a player who would rather be actually playing than doing the same things over and over and mentioned with the release of Mod16 we are presented with yet another grind because the stuff we had, that worked perfectly well for us is suddenly not good enough even for the content we used to successfully run.
But then I'm beginning to get the impression you might be the type that just likes to argue, for the sake of arguing by tossing out confrontational phrases like: "I can't have a discussion" and "top{sic} pretending"...
In addition to the never ending game grind that's something else I don't enjoy or care to do too much, so I'll just end my part by saying I'm glad you seem to be for the most part contented with the changes in Mod16, but I hope you realize not everyone feels the same way you appear to.
Happy hunting ~