RIQ - apart from Tiamat and ndemo (especially Tia) no difficulty issue seen so far, all are way more challenging but feels good. Throne of Dwarven God hulks charge is bugged.
RAQ - TONG 2nd boss very hard, have not seen last boss. MSP first boss Kabal is bugged (ball doesnt make him non-immune to dmg) dont know for other bosses. FBI and eDemo no issue
As it is, minimum iL requirement should be way higher for both queues imo.
For public q demogorgon maybe to switch team requirements 2tank-3heals-5dps can help?
No particular problem with river district BHE despite someone else said.
(ex 14k item level player point of view - now 19k with mostly same gear, lvl 80)
I ran CN after the patch today. While the zombies in the 'death sphere' room do now seem to have the correct amount of health, they are hitting way too hard. They are nearly 1 shotting me as a 21.5k DPS with 60k defense (un-scaled). Now while i understand that i'm a dps and should not be invincible, i expect to be able to survive at least 6 hits from trash mobs like these. The first boss has alot of HP, while this isn't game breaking, it would be nice to have it reduced by roughly 20% so lower level players can actually feel like they are doing SOME damage. We had a 20k OP tank for the run, he was able to hold aggro most of the time which is as it should be imo. Critter damage overall seemed fine (excluding the death sphere zombies).
I'm guessing this is the kind of feedback you were looking for?
As a guild leader in a relatively well populated Alliance I can tell you this mod has been a handful. And that's after having spent a considerable amount of time on pre-view, and having made getting started builds and advise for our members. A lot of our members are still in a stat of building up towards end game, and many campaigns that they were working on, have now become impossible for them to do dailies on, let alone HE's (Chult, Barovia, etc) My advise has been to concentrate on finishing the new campaign (which seems to be mostly bug free), get to lvl 80, grind expeditions for new better gear, and leave the rest for when you are much better geared, or the scaling gets fixed.
The good news is that hopefully this finally kills off the plague of AD farming bots in the random leveling queue.
I am also a guild leader, but in a relatively low populated alliance. I fear what all this is going to do to my guild/alliance. I have already had lower level players speak in alliance chat saying that they are quitting due to not being able to do the content they were going through before the mod dropped... I already struggle to get active, vocal players into the guild without all of this. My 'They will fix the issues soon' line will only be listened to so much before it starts to fall on deaf ears and more players quit. I am terrified as to what will happen to the guild/alliance if the handful of vocal/helpful endgame players decide to leave...
I am lucky enough to have a handful of pre-mod 6 players in my alliance who were (as they put it) 'too stubborn to leave' during the mod 6 fiasco. I admit that i almost scoffed at their warnings and 'doom and gloom' chat when speaking with them on discord... How foolish do I feel now... Infact, I was talking to one of these player about an hour ago and he said, and i quote 'I'm having Mod 6 PTSD. What annoys me most is that the problems they are having now, they had with mod 6, you would think they would have learned from their mistakes'. He also explained that due to the severe population dip, alot of guilds just died... I'm not sure what i'd do if my guild/alliance died tbh, what would be the point of playing if my friends stopped?
Add to that the following to look into: Malabog Castle Many Coin Bank Heist Demogorgon
yep valindras/malabogs/demo/ edemo/ CN/ manycoins/ kessels/lostmauth/shores of tueren/tiamate/ ....pretty much any dungeon from before mod 16 that is RIQ is undoable even with def/crit avoid cap over 60k i still get 1-3 hit killed from basic mobs and cannot even get to a boss (in groups of all 18K itl or higher) have not been able to do 1 riq and the rlq is very hard but atleast you can complete it if you have enough heal stones/ scrolls of life. which is crazy
I'm in love in this game now. Difficulty is right there where it should be (no trolling). Finally players should respect mechanics of bosses and dodge red zones. Please don't nerf difficulty. It is fine. Players just need some time to remember how they played this content before it had became easy as abc in mod 4.
Probably you just can increase rewards (or amount of astral diamonds gained from dungeons by about 20%) to let players accommodate easier and to make players interested in tryhard.
Really no trolling. You made this game live again. Thank you.
either you are joking or insane having a challenge is ok but the idea is to bring it inline with DND basics of group play and i love most of what they have done but nowhere EVER in any dnd book or board game system did you get a penalty for doing areas lower then you..... so ig your party was lvl 18 and you went to a lvl 12-14 dungeon the rewards may not be as useful to you but it was a fairly easy run because it was lower then you period. making lower lvl content harder then lvl 80 zone is simply stupid scaling ppl who bust their but and grind out good gear then wish to go farm some AD shouldn't be penalized for it.
and seriously the rewards from these chests are garbage anyway most ppl just do riq to make their RAD quota's not because we want to run lower lvl areas. and now we cannot even do that. so if we cannot grind RAD/and we hit lvl 80 but cannot afford to upgrade gear to max lvl then why should we bother playing ? see cryptic thinks ppl are going to start spending tons of cash to get better gear and upgrades but guess what they wont they will just leave because why lvl stuff up if when you go to lvl 70 area (say barovia) all your r14-15 enchants are only equal to r9 anyway. so if they dont fix it so ppl can enjoy the game soon VERY SOON then the loss of players and revenue will be huge. then next step is shut it down because no profit to be made i give it a year tops if it stays this way!!!!
Just did elol on 20k IL CW with decent enough pug party and we couldn't pass scorpions. People dieing left and right, taking ages to get health down. Personally I won't be playing any more scaled down dungeons unless scaling is adjusted so things are easier at higher IL, its just not fun or enjoyable any more. I like challenging content when its the endgame stuff, but I also like a choice to play older & easier stuff when I have less time or am in the mood for less challenge. If that option is gone then I guess I will be, or at least from that part of the game. And weirdly I might stay to play the endgame dungeons as it seems they'll be the easier ones...
Apologies in advance for the length of this, I looked for areas to trim down but it all seemed needed for the conversation at hand.
We will continue to tune balance and scaling, but I think it is important to state that we continue to not have any plans to remove it. From the beginning we knew there would be some issues that made it to live due to the scope of the changes. We continue, and will continue, to make fixes that will show up in future patches.
The reason I want to call out that it isn't planned on being removed is so that feedback can be more focused on the different issues/bugs that need to get fixed.
What is Scaling
There are 3 things that are being wrapped up in the term scaling in my view.
First is scaling itself. This is where the stats on the player change due to a scaling setting in the map they are on.
There are technically two types of this. The first is Item Level Scaling, the map has a set item level, there is a chart of adjustments to different objects item levels (gear and enchants are two examples) to bring the player close to the target item level. All of the Epic dungeon queues are setup this way.
The second is level scaling. This is where the map says players should be scaled down to Level X. From there it goes to a chart that gives the target item level for that player level, and then it goes into item level scaling. This exists mainly because the old scaling system was level scaled only and it was all setup that way so we tied into it. This is the situation where a player at level could be stronger than a scaled down player because it looks at your level to decide if it should scale you, not your item level. This type is most likely to be found in older pre-70 zones. However, Runic Encounters were setup with level scaling, but we are currently looking into if we are going to change that over to item level scaling.
The next thing that gets lumped in with scaling is the enemies stats themselves. This isn't actually scaling as it is how the critters are built and that applies to them anywhere they are. This is typically most notable by having a dungeon where parts of it were fine and then suddenly a given encounter kills everyone. Castle Never's issues are in this category.
The last thing is the change in how the game/class is played. It will take time for players to adjust to the changes and figure out all of the ways to maximize their character's abilities. By itself this makes a game more challenging for a period of time. But factor that in with any issues in scaling or critters and it multiplies that out. It also makes it more difficult for us to narrow in on the exact issues that need adjustments or fixes.
How that relates to what is live
When I have said "Scaling overall is in a pretty good place" I am referring to the first part. The pure scaling itself. Some things are a bit harder than we'd like, some things are a bit easier than we had planned, but overall it is close.
The second issue, critters, is pretty much always a bug. On that level bugs can never be called "in a pretty good place". We want to find all of those and fix them so that they don't ruin the fun of the dungeons. Specific reports are always very very helpful in this regard.
There are fixes ready to go for upcoming patches already. These include adjustments to Castle Never and Demogorgon (I believe we have some fixes in for Tiamat already as well but am not 100% sure as of writing this), and raising both the minimum required item level and the scaled item level of the 9000 IL Epic Dungeons by 1000. Fixes combined with those types of scaling adjustments will help in getting the difficulty feeling dialed in.
Summary of goals/current scaling
Our goal is that scaling will be a thing, but that it is at a place that a random group of people who know the boss mechanics and work together can get through a dungeon successfully and without a lot of issues. On top of that is that there is a range of difficulty from leveling content, to intermediate max level content, to true endgame content.
The intermediate queue is getting a lot of focus right now, and that probably isn't too surprising given 3 of the dungeons with significant critter issues listed in the OP are all in the intermediate queue. On top of that as mentioned above we adjust the item levels on some of the intermediate queue dungeons. We will continue to both monitor and play ourselves (yes we do play, and yes we have been playing and doing queues on live) and make the adjustments over time to dial in the difficulty to a comfortable spot.
Our goal is that scaling will be a thing, but that it is at a place that a random group of people who know the boss mechanics and work together can get through a dungeon successfully and without a lot of issues. On top of that is that there is a range of difficulty from leveling content, to intermediate max level content, to true endgame content.
The bolded part is the problem. See, I am a casual player. I have a day job and actual family responsibilities. My game time is NOT going to be tied up in watching YouTube videos and reading guides just to do a random pug. A person playing a game shouldn't have to do advanced research on boss mechanics to run a standard dungeon. The game should be designed to be able to experience it in game without "spoiling" anything for yourself by doing homework.
I like lore. I like those in-game "WOW" moments where something happens that I didn't expect. Expecting me to have to research how a boss mechanic works in advance because OMG THE BOSS PULLS SOME RIDICULOUS AOE DAMAGE OUT OF ITS BUTT AT THE 4:22 MARK THAT DOESN'T APPEAR ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE GAME AND IF YOU ARE NOT STANDING IN A VERY SPECIFIC AREA OF THE FLOOR YOU WILL DIE isn't "Challenging." That is bad game design.
This is why I stopped playing WOW. Because you can't experience instances and enjoy the moment. You have to treat it like a work assignment and everyone is expected to have just watched a video of where to stand and when to move and which specific "build" you MUST have to be successful, because the boss fights are designed that you must do a very specific set of things to succeed. Which is completely counter to true Dungeons & Dragons which is all about the players thinking on their feet and coming up with ingenuous ways of dealing with events.
Any situation in which a gamer has to go OUTSIDE the game to get information needed to succeed IN the game is bad design. Everything I need to know to succeed should be presented to the gamer IN game, not "Go watch a video on how to do it."
@noworries#8859 Hello Can i ask u why Pep with "end-game-gear" and R15 in all slots etc have equal stats to someone with R8 in all slots and with old gear from barovia etc bcs with this caps u made u kill any sense of progress in this game.
Thanks Cryptic. You have ruined my fave toon. Guess I will just resort to one of my others. I like new content, I don't mind more difficulty, but when I have to use my health stone to say alive as a TANK...that is just stupid. The scaling is also broken IMO. I went from being 70 to being what??? Level 20? YOu all need to seriously listen to those who are complaining and fix some stuff.
Since you've deemed that we shall have an IL no higher than "x" in scaled (read: capped) content, you should just gray out all of our stats and assign us all the same phantom stats behind the scenes. It amounts to the same thing.
Somehow the notion of making the game fun has escaped you. An inseparable part of the fun in any RPG (MMO or otherwise) is the ability to progress: the ability to make the same content easier on oneself by improving gear, stats, or both. This capping scheme negates it.
It simply isn't fun having an equal outcome forced on us instead of allowing us to progress and enjoy the benefits of said progression. But, by all means keep twiddling the little "dials". I'll be sitting capped content out, thank you very much.
Harper Chronicles: Cap Snatchers (RELEASED) - NW-DPUTABC6X Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Noworries has explained two types of skaling. Item Level and Level based. What if in a dungeon BOTH are set up?
You have told that critters do no more "one shot" (carfully) players, but all we see is death, death and death one shot (max 2shot) from before "easy" critters. The Itemlevel Point of 9K was never elibable to enter any dungeon, so why now? It is irrelevant what gear i wear, with this il scaling system. i will never be good enough to play well in a dungeon.
i am gf tank, and mostly one shotted (with Shield up) cause of lack of defense (scaled 45k, unscaled 86k). Yes i know very too much unscaled, but i want to test if has any positive effect in dungeons. NO.
IMHO old IL level for dungeons was 11k, 12k and 13k, so that is the MINIMUM scaling IL target (better more, cause of changes in mod 16 and new fight system and the very very very looooooooong cooldowns and minimal AP gains).
Scaling affecting all your stat points makes it extremely confusing... especially since your stats for lvl 80 target caps when scaled take you well below the level 70 target cap stats.. if i am at arpen cap for lvl 80 (66k) why, when i am scaled for lvl 70 dungeon does it take me down to 40k arpen? if your scaling was sensible it would have me hit 57k (lvl 70 arpen target cap)???
do you expect players to set stat target figures above lvl 80 LOTMM to run your old lvl 70 content?! that seems counter intuitive.. why not just affect power and hp? or just apply a % reduction debuff to damage/hp
Dont get me wrong - im not QQing to return to mod15 run through everything as fast as possible ignoring mechanics..
But If im at lvl 80 and 22k ilvl I should be finding things easier than at lvl 70 and 9k ilvl. this is not the case.
Lvl 80 content is fine. everything else thats being 'scaled' feels broken.
I don't understand the thinking here. Level 80's reporting major problems with those dungeons you are raising the min IL by 1000 on. Those level 80s are several thousand above the min IL already. So how is this going to make that content more likely to be done? The only explanation as to why you think raising the IL is that level 70s with low IL are the ones having the problems who shouldn't even be scaled at all in level 70+ content IMO
You should at the very least be showing us exactly what is being scaled and how much. Would really be nice to see what my scaled IL is but nooooooo
3
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Scaling takes you from your current iL to that of the recommended or target (11k for DR for example). Item level of gear is based on number of stats on that piece. So let's say you are 22k iL and you go into DR...you will see all your stats get halved (not perfect but close to it). As a result, if you are doing level 70 content, you should be overstacking armor penetration so you can hit harder, same goes with whatever other stats you are built around. I have had little issues with older content taking this approach. Excluding any bugged critters or mechanics as stated by the devs already.
Apologies in advance for the length of this, I looked for areas to trim down but it all seemed needed for the conversation at hand.
We will continue to tune balance and scaling, but I think it is important to state that we continue to not have any plans to remove it. From the beginning we knew there would be some issues that made it to live due to the scope of the changes. We continue, and will continue, to make fixes that will show up in future patches.
The reason I want to call out that it isn't planned on being removed is so that feedback can be more focused on the different issues/bugs that need to get fixed.
What is Scaling
There are 3 things that are being wrapped up in the term scaling in my view.
First is scaling itself. This is where the stats on the player change due to a scaling setting in the map they are on.
There are technically two types of this. The first is Item Level Scaling, the map has a set item level, there is a chart of adjustments to different objects item levels (gear and enchants are two examples) to bring the player close to the target item level. All of the Epic dungeon queues are setup this way.
The second is level scaling. This is where the map says players should be scaled down to Level X. From there it goes to a chart that gives the target item level for that player level, and then it goes into item level scaling. This exists mainly because the old scaling system was level scaled only and it was all setup that way so we tied into it. This is the situation where a player at level could be stronger than a scaled down player because it looks at your level to decide if it should scale you, not your item level. This type is most likely to be found in older pre-70 zones. However, Runic Encounters were setup with level scaling, but we are currently looking into if we are going to change that over to item level scaling.
The next thing that gets lumped in with scaling is the enemies stats themselves. This isn't actually scaling as it is how the critters are built and that applies to them anywhere they are. This is typically most notable by having a dungeon where parts of it were fine and then suddenly a given encounter kills everyone. Castle Never's issues are in this category.
The last thing is the change in how the game/class is played. It will take time for players to adjust to the changes and figure out all of the ways to maximize their character's abilities. By itself this makes a game more challenging for a period of time. But factor that in with any issues in scaling or critters and it multiplies that out. It also makes it more difficult for us to narrow in on the exact issues that need adjustments or fixes.
How that relates to what is live
When I have said "Scaling overall is in a pretty good place" I am referring to the first part. The pure scaling itself. Some things are a bit harder than we'd like, some things are a bit easier than we had planned, but overall it is close.
The second issue, critters, is pretty much always a bug. On that level bugs can never be called "in a pretty good place". We want to find all of those and fix them so that they don't ruin the fun of the dungeons. Specific reports are always very very helpful in this regard.
There are fixes ready to go for upcoming patches already. These include adjustments to Castle Never and Demogorgon (I believe we have some fixes in for Tiamat already as well but am not 100% sure as of writing this), and raising both the minimum required item level and the scaled item level of the 9000 IL Epic Dungeons by 1000. Fixes combined with those types of scaling adjustments will help in getting the difficulty feeling dialed in.
Summary of goals/current scaling
Our goal is that scaling will be a thing, but that it is at a place that a random group of people who know the boss mechanics and work together can get through a dungeon successfully and without a lot of issues. On top of that is that there is a range of difficulty from leveling content, to intermediate max level content, to true endgame content.
The intermediate queue is getting a lot of focus right now, and that probably isn't too surprising given 3 of the dungeons with significant critter issues listed in the OP are all in the intermediate queue. On top of that as mentioned above we adjust the item levels on some of the intermediate queue dungeons. We will continue to both monitor and play ourselves (yes we do play, and yes we have been playing and doing queues on live) and make the adjustments over time to dial in the difficulty to a comfortable spot.
If you are going to insist with a cap. you may aswel consider creating dummy characters with fix stats for lvl80 players to use in lower content cos i repeat, i dont want to grind off my asz, just to go to etos and spend an hour in there, its not rewarding enough. That being said, gonna take a few weeks break and see what fixes you guys have required neccesary. Also you just stated you play, you may have realised that encounters on cw dont give ap? i spent time doing 30 encounters on a dummy and wasn't even half bar on AP, encounter was supposed to feel more rewarding and justify the rediculously high cds in the game. You also wanted it to be fun? how about you set up a poll and see how many people are having fun with this rigid gameplay.
Lardeson CW not Mage. Where's my fireball and my thunderbolt?
5
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
I don't understand the thinking here. Level 80's reporting major problems with those dungeons you are raising the min IL by 1000 on. Those level 80s are several thousand above the min IL already. So how is this going to make that content more likely to be done? The only explanation as to why you think raising the IL is that level 70s with low IL are the ones having the problems who shouldn't even be scaled at all in level 70+ content IMO
You should at the very least be showing us exactly what is being scaled and how much. Would really be nice to see what my scaled IL is but nooooooo
Them raising the iL by 1000 gives those who are over the iL 20,000 more stats (1iL =20 stats)
We will continue to tune balance and scaling, but I think it is important to state that we continue to not have any plans to remove it. From the beginning we knew there would be some issues that made it to live due to the scope of the changes. We continue, and will continue, to make fixes that will show up in future patches.
This will take a looong time, and huge parts of the game will keep being frustrating. It's interesting to read why scaling calculations fail; being based on character level and then item level is adjusted based on that badly (since item level also no longer means the same, with steal health and many other useful or OP stats being replaced with things that doesn't help sustain and damage the same way or not at all if under a threshold value), while some mobs are also custom designed and need to be custom scaled, one by one.
If things are so, scaling shouldn't be implemented at all -- at this stage, because clearly couldn't bring anything useful; just a huge randomness. Devs and game owners, including the community, can't expect players to face this huge mess that is scaling at moment and be able to detect correctly every custom broken instance, and keep playing a broken game for months or more, until most of these cases will be reported and custom fixed, one by one.
It's just a source of huge frustration for everyone, both devs and players. The longer this will go on, the worse will be. I created a new character, same class, just to get away from this, it's really not fun what is happening.
The reason I want to call out that it isn't planned on being removed is so that feedback can be more focused on the different issues/bugs that need to get fixed.
Can you please understand that this is BIG GAME BREAKING ISSUE, that it should have ALL THE PRIORITY ? Why would we waster time/money upgrading anything if is gonna be USELESS because of scaling? why would we get better gear if it will go down to a set number? THIS IS WRONG, THERE IS NO PROGRESSION, this right here will kill your game and no, I'm not exaggerating, there are 0 reasons for you guys to be even discussing mod 17 and 18, because everyone will drop your game.
And before you quote me and say that nonsense of the 2 newer campaigns will not have downscale until it is considered old, that is also ANOTHER GAME BREAKING ISSUE, our progression SHOULD BE TO THE WHOLE GAME NOT JUST 2 NEWER CAMPAGINS
The biggest issue I see with scaling is it hurts the players with less knowledge and skill. I base this on my belief, generally speaking, item level and stats bridges the gap between high skill/low item level and low skill/high item level. So the lower the knowledge/skill, the higher item level needed to run content.
I remember when TONG was first released. The Devs said "oh good group of 12k players can finish TONG in a reasonable amount of time". Well, my 13k to 15k friends and I couldn't get past Orcus... we must really suck. We didn't start to consistently finish until we were all between 15k to 17k.
How is scaling going to impact my group of friends?
Maybe I'll chime in later on out of favor classes, such as 2nd tier dps.
With all due respect to the Devs for improving contents, making it harder and challenging.
This scaling goal for random queue is a tremendous challenge and hardship for us players when you want us all to "know the boss mechanics and work together can get through a dungeon successfully and without a lot of issues." Since these are your goals for random queue, will private queue be excluded from scaling? We often run 1st timers and inexperienced players through end game via private queue, it sometimes can take 2-4hrs, with this scaling it could be 2-4hrs+++.
We all may speak different languages, range of age, some may have disabilities, lag/internet connectivity, time limitations, and others obstacles. Hopefully you factor this in and improve/rework the scaling to be accommodating.
As a Guild/Alliance leader, I am also concern with the significant amount of time members have to spend in randoms/dungeons to get their daily ADs. This will impact their participation in Alliance events (Stronghold Marauders, Dragonflights, BHEs, SH quests), negatively affecting Stronghold upgrades.
I tried to be optimistic, but the current scaling is very discouraging. RIQ is way harder than RAQ, skirmishes are taking longer than dungeons.
More discouraging is the dismissive nature of the comments from @nitocris83 and @noworries#8859. They could have admitted that the situation requires work, but they instead insult the players by saying “no it’s ok we are just making small tweaks now that everything is live”
The quality communication has really suffered since some of the other devs left. There is no imagination for how the player base will perceive messaging. Utter failure despite significant constructive feedback. This is mod6 all over again.
I just started the game again from lvl 1 and the very first real quest the Theft of the Crown is twisted. I've played it with Paladin and there is no thrill, your encounter guarantees to kill everything in vicinity and the daily just instantly kills the final boss Guardian of the nine. There is no sense of danger or risk, you just rip through the quest. I remember when I played first time years ago, I had to run back to campfires to heal, yesterday it needed no effort at all. It seems as the scaling trouble goes quite deep when he normal content is so easy and then skirmishes and dungeons are insanely difficult.
Just went to do the Defending the Sword Coast, specifically the one in Pirate's Skyhold.
I got scaled down to 60, but the enemies were 81. Not a fair fight.
The issue was that in some instanced lower-level content I got scaled down, but the mobs did not. Guess what....6 weeks, and this issue went live. People are still reporting this.
There is no excuse for this. My advice would be to fire whoever is in charge of QC and hire someone competent instead.
The apologies should be about the whole Mod 16. It's a failure, it is all wrong and I am sure you know it. You do ask for dungeons, for areas with problems. Well the whole Mod is the Problem. I am running 2 main characters: 1. a Paladin which is all messed up and 2. a Hunter / Ranger. While i will stop playing the OP, which means no more money to spend, I do try at least to keep my Ranger.
We will continue to tune balance and scaling, but I think it is important to state that we continue to not have any plans to remove it. From the beginning we knew there would be some issues that made it to live due to the scope of the changes. We continue, and will continue, to make fixes that will show up in future patches.
Issues, are you kidding me? You guys had tons and tons of feedback from the Preview Server! A lot people made suggestions, looked deep into the issues and reported even more. What did you do about it? You allowed a broken module to go live and now set up the players for Beta testing it. Testing what? One shots at low level dungeons?
The reason I want to call out that it isn't planned on being removed is so that feedback can be more focused on the different issues/bugs that need to get fixed.
Translated: "We need the players to find and report the mistakes we did."
Scaling: What you call scaling is the worst thing I have ever seen. While you made your point, let me do mine. I had a somehow good equipped L 70 OP and a even better equipped L 70 Ranger. I wasn't "High End" but quite good in my playing. I was able to do solo quests at each area. Now moving to Barovia will end in endless virtual deads for both classes. I did try for weeks at the preview and each week you guys made it worse.
The last thing is the change in how the game/class is played. It will take time for players to adjust to the changes and figure out all of the ways to maximize their character's abilities. By itself this makes a game more challenging for a period of time. But factor that in with any issues in scaling or critters and it multiplies that out. It also makes it more difficult for us to narrow in on the exact issues that need adjustments or fixes.
While some players will take this time, others will just leave this messed up game. If this was the plan, it worked really well. As I mentioned to asterdahl once: Scaling is taking the powerful engine of a Porsche Turbo away and putting some really weak engine instead. It stil looks like the Porsche Turbo we have "payed" for, but with some weak engine. Do this to any car owner and you find yourself in front of a judge. In this case the community is the judges.
I will not do math all the time and look at my gear, stats and companions. Everything worked well, now it doesn't. There was no logical need to change the game into this mess. A few minor changes would have done it. Honestly, what is a Ranger supposed to do without having self heal or life steal? Buying Health Stones for ZEN? No way! If you give us back regeneration during combat, some issues would be fixed. But will you? I don't think so. But surprise me maybe. Do I need to have Cleric with me? I won't! Do I need to put a healing companion? I did and it wouldn't heal me enough.
When I have said "Scaling overall is in a pretty good place" I am referring to the first part. The pure scaling itself. Some things are a bit harder than we'd like, some things are a bit easier than we had planned, but overall it is close.
No it is not. I get your point, but do you get mine? What I am reading from your lines: "We will force you into the new gameplay and we won't change anything back to the old system." That's fine. If you keep doing this, you and your fellow devs will have a lot of free time to play the game all by yourself, since there is no player base left.
But you want feedback, right? Here wo go: Me and some people did try to run Castle Never and failed. The mobs behind the rifts did their red circles and my Ranger was dead in a second for several times. So was my Rogue friend, the GWF, GF and the OP-Cleric. We did try the Manycoin Bank and failed as well. I don't even have an idea what or who killed me all the time. The OP-Cleric did try the best he could to keep us alive, but couldn't with his messed up class.
We went to some low level dungeons: Master of the Hunt and Dread Legion. MotH felt like years ago, when we first reached this dungeon. The MotH did hit so hard, I was the only survivor. But just because using my health stones all the time and running away. While moving to Dread Legion, the whole party was one shot by the first group of mobs. We got up and fought back, just to die and die and die again. Yes I did my math at the guild and everything - powers etc. - was set up well. Just that i still would have my L 70 gear and stats. The golems which are supposed to walk very slow, did run like Speedy Gonzales, the fastest mouse of Mexico all over the place. This needs to be fixed!
The second issue, critters, is pretty much always a bug. On that level bugs can never be called "in a pretty good place". We want to find all of those and fix them so that they don't ruin the fun of the dungeons. Specific reports are always very very helpful in this regard.
You have / had a community full of enthusiastic and helpful players. You had! youtubers doing great content and helping others. Some did get banned last year, now most have left the game. I have never seen Northside or Garlaanx so mad. But so am I! Talk to us! Call us for help! Work with us! But if you don't or just not listen to what we have to say, why would we even bother to play this game? There is others, even the old WoW.
There are fixes ready to go for upcoming patches already. These include adjustments to Castle Never and Demogorgon (I believe we have some fixes in for Tiamat already as well but am not 100% sure as of writing this), and raising both the minimum required item level and the scaled item level of the 9000 IL Epic Dungeons by 1000. Fixes combined with those types of scaling adjustments will help in getting the difficulty feeling dialed in.
Instead of calling out this "fixes", a well working module would have done the trick.
Summary: Mod 16 at the current state is a failure. It wasn't necessary to do all this changes at once. I will stop playing and paying for my OP. No one wants a dumb OP-Tank with "Paper Gear." I might play, at least for some time, my Ranger. But if there is no significant changes soon, this account will shut down at the end of the year, when my VIP runs out.
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therealprotexMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 526Arc User
We went to some low level dungeons: Master of the Hunt and Dread Legion. MotH felt like years ago, when we first reached this dungeon. The MotH did hit so hard, I was the only survivor. But just because using my health stones all the time and running away. While moving to Dread Legion, the whole party was one shot by the first group of mobs. We got up and fought back, just to die and die and die again. Yes I did my math at the guild and everything - powers etc. - was set up well. Just that i still would have my L 70 gear and stats. The golems which are supposed to walk very slow, did run like Speedy Gonzales, the fastest mouse of Mexico all over the place. This needs to be fixed!
I ran Dread Legion yesterday as well, only with a PUG group. Two barbies, my wizard, a paladin and a cleric. We had no losses at all, noone was even close to die. Not even when it came to the boss fight. And the golems were moving at their usual speed.
Yes, it took a little longer, but it was more fun than the M15 version of this skirmish, since everyone now has to watch out for enemies attacks. My guess - at least for Dread Legion and MotH: watch the enemies attacks, avoid them as much as possible. Not only red areas, but all attacks. A DPS build is not a tank or a self-healer anymore and that's a good thing.
This system was designed so that it will be easy to tune to make sure that we can end up with ideal scaling moving forward. We look forward to players getting to experience this new scaling, along with the new item level accuracy, we look forward to your feedback as this gets to preview.
I am starting to see the wisdom in rolling it out a bit over everyone's capabilities and easing it back to something a bit more manageable for everyone.
I am hoping they can ease back the stronghold enemy a little more , so the lower level members can go back to practising on the their 3 heroics a day
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
However, Runic Encounters were setup with level scaling, but we are currently looking into if we are going to change that over to item level scaling.
Seriously? Consider that there is no reason to do runic encounters or even venture into them until you hit L80 and are ready for Master expeditions, why didn't you just make the Runic encounters L80 content to begin with?
Anyhow, I am sorry, but the scaling design is just fundamentally flawed and the current fixes do nothing to solve the underlying issues.
Players may get punished for leveling up (for example, if you are leveling up during a 2xExperience weekend, you will outlevel content pretty easily, and when you do, you may receive a 20% punishment to your stats when you level up. Is there any other game that punishes people for progressing?
Kicking everyone down to the same "level" by, for example by reducing R9 and R15 enchants to the same value really hurts motivation and the enjoyment that many players get from improving their character though "gearing up". It also reduces the motivation to buy wards to rank up your enchants.
Scaling a BiS player down to the point where he underperforms a "level-appropriate" player with mediocre gear is just outright insulting.
Implementing scaling that makes combat take longer while at the same time leaving rewards unchanged just reduces the reward/effort ratio - in some cases below what is needed to make players willing to bother with the content.
Sorry, but the scaling design needs to be taken back to the drawing board - otherwise I am fairly certain you will get a rude shock when you look at player numbers and Zen sales a couple of months from now.
Comments
I'm guessing this is the kind of feedback you were looking for?
On a side note: I am also a guild leader, but in a relatively low populated alliance. I fear what all this is going to do to my guild/alliance. I have already had lower level players speak in alliance chat saying that they are quitting due to not being able to do the content they were going through before the mod dropped... I already struggle to get active, vocal players into the guild without all of this. My 'They will fix the issues soon' line will only be listened to so much before it starts to fall on deaf ears and more players quit. I am terrified as to what will happen to the guild/alliance if the handful of vocal/helpful endgame players decide to leave...
I am lucky enough to have a handful of pre-mod 6 players in my alliance who were (as they put it) 'too stubborn to leave' during the mod 6 fiasco. I admit that i almost scoffed at their warnings and 'doom and gloom' chat when speaking with them on discord... How foolish do I feel now... Infact, I was talking to one of these player about an hour ago and he said, and i quote 'I'm having Mod 6 PTSD. What annoys me most is that the problems they are having now, they had with mod 6, you would think they would have learned from their mistakes'. He also explained that due to the severe population dip, alot of guilds just died... I'm not sure what i'd do if my guild/alliance died tbh, what would be the point of playing if my friends stopped?
and seriously the rewards from these chests are garbage anyway most ppl just do riq to make their RAD quota's not because we want to run lower lvl areas. and now we cannot even do that. so if we cannot grind RAD/and we hit lvl 80 but cannot afford to upgrade gear to max lvl then why should we bother playing ? see cryptic thinks ppl are going to start spending tons of cash to get better gear and upgrades but guess what they wont they will just leave because why lvl stuff up if when you go to lvl 70 area (say barovia) all your r14-15 enchants are only equal to r9 anyway. so if they dont fix it so ppl can enjoy the game soon VERY SOON then the loss of players and revenue will be huge. then next step is shut it down because no profit to be made i give it a year tops if it stays this way!!!!
We will continue to tune balance and scaling, but I think it is important to state that we continue to not have any plans to remove it. From the beginning we knew there would be some issues that made it to live due to the scope of the changes. We continue, and will continue, to make fixes that will show up in future patches.
The reason I want to call out that it isn't planned on being removed is so that feedback can be more focused on the different issues/bugs that need to get fixed.
What is Scaling
There are 3 things that are being wrapped up in the term scaling in my view.First is scaling itself. This is where the stats on the player change due to a scaling setting in the map they are on.
- The second is level scaling. This is where the map says players should be scaled down to Level X. From there it goes to a chart that gives the target item level for that player level, and then it goes into item level scaling. This exists mainly because the old scaling system was level scaled only and it was all setup that way so we tied into it. This is the situation where a player at level could be stronger than a scaled down player because it looks at your level to decide if it should scale you, not your item level. This type is most likely to be found in older pre-70 zones. However, Runic Encounters were setup with level scaling, but we are currently looking into if we are going to change that over to item level scaling.
The next thing that gets lumped in with scaling is the enemies stats themselves. This isn't actually scaling as it is how the critters are built and that applies to them anywhere they are. This is typically most notable by having a dungeon where parts of it were fine and then suddenly a given encounter kills everyone. Castle Never's issues are in this category.The last thing is the change in how the game/class is played. It will take time for players to adjust to the changes and figure out all of the ways to maximize their character's abilities. By itself this makes a game more challenging for a period of time. But factor that in with any issues in scaling or critters and it multiplies that out. It also makes it more difficult for us to narrow in on the exact issues that need adjustments or fixes.
How that relates to what is live
When I have said "Scaling overall is in a pretty good place" I am referring to the first part. The pure scaling itself. Some things are a bit harder than we'd like, some things are a bit easier than we had planned, but overall it is close.The second issue, critters, is pretty much always a bug. On that level bugs can never be called "in a pretty good place". We want to find all of those and fix them so that they don't ruin the fun of the dungeons. Specific reports are always very very helpful in this regard.
There are fixes ready to go for upcoming patches already. These include adjustments to Castle Never and Demogorgon (I believe we have some fixes in for Tiamat already as well but am not 100% sure as of writing this), and raising both the minimum required item level and the scaled item level of the 9000 IL Epic Dungeons by 1000. Fixes combined with those types of scaling adjustments will help in getting the difficulty feeling dialed in.
Summary of goals/current scaling
Our goal is that scaling will be a thing, but that it is at a place that a random group of people who know the boss mechanics and work together can get through a dungeon successfully and without a lot of issues. On top of that is that there is a range of difficulty from leveling content, to intermediate max level content, to true endgame content.The intermediate queue is getting a lot of focus right now, and that probably isn't too surprising given 3 of the dungeons with significant critter issues listed in the OP are all in the intermediate queue. On top of that as mentioned above we adjust the item levels on some of the intermediate queue dungeons. We will continue to both monitor and play ourselves (yes we do play, and yes we have been playing and doing queues on live) and make the adjustments over time to dial in the difficulty to a comfortable spot.
I like lore. I like those in-game "WOW" moments where something happens that I didn't expect. Expecting me to have to research how a boss mechanic works in advance because OMG THE BOSS PULLS SOME RIDICULOUS AOE DAMAGE OUT OF ITS BUTT AT THE 4:22 MARK THAT DOESN'T APPEAR ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE GAME AND IF YOU ARE NOT STANDING IN A VERY SPECIFIC AREA OF THE FLOOR YOU WILL DIE isn't "Challenging." That is bad game design.
This is why I stopped playing WOW. Because you can't experience instances and enjoy the moment. You have to treat it like a work assignment and everyone is expected to have just watched a video of where to stand and when to move and which specific "build" you MUST have to be successful, because the boss fights are designed that you must do a very specific set of things to succeed. Which is completely counter to true Dungeons & Dragons which is all about the players thinking on their feet and coming up with ingenuous ways of dealing with events.
Any situation in which a gamer has to go OUTSIDE the game to get information needed to succeed IN the game is bad design. Everything I need to know to succeed should be presented to the gamer IN game, not "Go watch a video on how to do it."
Hello
Can i ask u why Pep with "end-game-gear" and R15 in all slots etc have equal stats to someone with R8 in all slots and with old gear from barovia etc bcs with this caps u made u kill any sense of progress in this game.
Somehow the notion of making the game fun has escaped you. An inseparable part of the fun in any RPG (MMO or otherwise) is the ability to progress: the ability to make the same content easier on oneself by improving gear, stats, or both. This capping scheme negates it.
It simply isn't fun having an equal outcome forced on us instead of allowing us to progress and enjoy the benefits of said progression. But, by all means keep twiddling the little "dials". I'll be sitting capped content out, thank you very much.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
What if in a dungeon BOTH are set up?
You have told that critters do no more "one shot" (carfully) players, but all we see is death, death and death one shot (max 2shot) from before "easy" critters.
The Itemlevel Point of 9K was never elibable to enter any dungeon, so why now?
It is irrelevant what gear i wear, with this il scaling system. i will never be good enough to play well in a dungeon.
i am gf tank, and mostly one shotted (with Shield up) cause of lack of defense (scaled 45k, unscaled 86k). Yes i know very too much unscaled, but i want to test if has any positive effect in dungeons. NO.
IMHO old IL level for dungeons was 11k, 12k and 13k, so that is the MINIMUM scaling IL target (better more, cause of changes in mod 16 and new fight system and the very very very looooooooong cooldowns and minimal AP gains).
do you expect players to set stat target figures above lvl 80 LOTMM to run your old lvl 70 content?! that seems counter intuitive.. why not just affect power and hp? or just apply a % reduction debuff to damage/hp
Dont get me wrong - im not QQing to return to mod15 run through everything as fast as possible ignoring mechanics..
But If im at lvl 80 and 22k ilvl I should be finding things easier than at lvl 70 and 9k ilvl. this is not the case.
Lvl 80 content is fine. everything else thats being 'scaled' feels broken.
You should at the very least be showing us exactly what is being scaled and how much. Would really be nice to see what my scaled IL is but nooooooo
It's interesting to read why scaling calculations fail; being based on character level and then item level is adjusted based on that badly (since item level also no longer means the same, with steal health and many other useful or OP stats being replaced with things that doesn't help sustain and damage the same way or not at all if under a threshold value), while some mobs are also custom designed and need to be custom scaled, one by one.
If things are so, scaling shouldn't be implemented at all -- at this stage, because clearly couldn't bring anything useful; just a huge randomness. Devs and game owners, including the community, can't expect players to face this huge mess that is scaling at moment and be able to detect correctly every custom broken instance, and keep playing a broken game for months or more, until most of these cases will be reported and custom fixed, one by one.
It's just a source of huge frustration for everyone, both devs and players. The longer this will go on, the worse will be. I created a new character, same class, just to get away from this, it's really not fun what is happening.
Why would we waster time/money upgrading anything if is gonna be USELESS because of scaling? why would we get better gear if it will go down to a set number? THIS IS WRONG, THERE IS NO PROGRESSION, this right here will kill your game and no, I'm not exaggerating, there are 0 reasons for you guys to be even discussing mod 17 and 18, because everyone will drop your game.
And before you quote me and say that nonsense of the 2 newer campaigns will not have downscale until it is considered old, that is also ANOTHER GAME BREAKING ISSUE, our progression SHOULD BE TO THE WHOLE GAME NOT JUST 2 NEWER CAMPAGINS
I remember when TONG was first released. The Devs said "oh good group of 12k players can finish TONG in a reasonable amount of time". Well, my 13k to 15k friends and I couldn't get past Orcus... we must really suck. We didn't start to consistently finish until we were all between 15k to 17k.
How is scaling going to impact my group of friends?
Maybe I'll chime in later on out of favor classes, such as 2nd tier dps.
This scaling goal for random queue is a tremendous challenge and hardship for us players when you want us all to "know the boss mechanics and work together can get through a dungeon successfully and without a lot of issues." Since these are your goals for random queue, will private queue be excluded from scaling? We often run 1st timers and inexperienced players through end game via private queue, it sometimes can take 2-4hrs, with this scaling it could be 2-4hrs+++.
We all may speak different languages, range of age, some may have disabilities, lag/internet connectivity, time limitations, and others obstacles. Hopefully you factor this in and improve/rework the scaling to be accommodating.
As a Guild/Alliance leader, I am also concern with the significant amount of time members have to spend in randoms/dungeons to get their daily ADs. This will impact their participation in Alliance events (Stronghold Marauders, Dragonflights, BHEs, SH quests), negatively affecting Stronghold upgrades.
Sincerly,
L.
More discouraging is the dismissive nature of the comments from @nitocris83 and @noworries#8859. They could have admitted that the situation requires work, but they instead insult the players by saying “no it’s ok we are just making small tweaks now that everything is live”
The quality communication has really suffered since some of the other devs left. There is no imagination for how the player base will perceive messaging. Utter failure despite significant constructive feedback. This is mod6 all over again.
The apologies should be about the whole Mod 16. It's a failure, it is all wrong and I am sure you know it. You do ask for dungeons, for areas with problems. Well the whole Mod is the Problem. I am running 2 main characters: 1. a Paladin which is all messed up and 2. a Hunter / Ranger. While i will stop playing the OP, which means no more money to spend, I do try at least to keep my Ranger.
Issues, are you kidding me? You guys had tons and tons of feedback from the Preview Server! A lot people made suggestions, looked deep into the issues and reported even more. What did you do about it? You allowed a broken module to go live and now set up the players for Beta testing it. Testing what? One shots at low level dungeons?
Translated: "We need the players to find and report the mistakes we did."
Scaling: What you call scaling is the worst thing I have ever seen. While you made your point, let me do mine. I had a somehow good equipped L 70 OP and a even better equipped L 70 Ranger. I wasn't "High End" but quite good in my playing. I was able to do solo quests at each area. Now moving to Barovia will end in endless virtual deads for both classes. I did try for weeks at the preview and each week you guys made it worse.
While some players will take this time, others will just leave this messed up game. If this was the plan, it worked really well. As I mentioned to asterdahl once: Scaling is taking the powerful engine of a Porsche Turbo away and putting some really weak engine instead. It stil looks like the Porsche Turbo we have "payed" for, but with some weak engine. Do this to any car owner and you find yourself in front of a judge. In this case the community is the judges.
I will not do math all the time and look at my gear, stats and companions. Everything worked well, now it doesn't. There was no logical need to change the game into this mess. A few minor changes would have done it. Honestly, what is a Ranger supposed to do without having self heal or life steal? Buying Health Stones for ZEN? No way! If you give us back regeneration during combat, some issues would be fixed. But will you? I don't think so. But surprise me maybe. Do I need to have Cleric with me? I won't! Do I need to put a healing companion? I did and it wouldn't heal me enough.
No it is not. I get your point, but do you get mine? What I am reading from your lines: "We will force you into the new gameplay and we won't change anything back to the old system." That's fine. If you keep doing this, you and your fellow devs will have a lot of free time to play the game all by yourself, since there is no player base left.
But you want feedback, right? Here wo go: Me and some people did try to run Castle Never and failed. The mobs behind the rifts did their red circles and my Ranger was dead in a second for several times. So was my Rogue friend, the GWF, GF and the OP-Cleric. We did try the Manycoin Bank and failed as well. I don't even have an idea what or who killed me all the time. The OP-Cleric did try the best he could to keep us alive, but couldn't with his messed up class.
We went to some low level dungeons: Master of the Hunt and Dread Legion. MotH felt like years ago, when we first reached this dungeon. The MotH did hit so hard, I was the only survivor. But just because using my health stones all the time and running away. While moving to Dread Legion, the whole party was one shot by the first group of mobs. We got up and fought back, just to die and die and die again. Yes I did my math at the guild and everything - powers etc. - was set up well. Just that i still would have my L 70 gear and stats. The golems which are supposed to walk very slow, did run like Speedy Gonzales, the fastest mouse of Mexico all over the place. This needs to be fixed!
You have / had a community full of enthusiastic and helpful players. You had! youtubers doing great content and helping others. Some did get banned last year, now most have left the game. I have never seen Northside or Garlaanx so mad. But so am I! Talk to us! Call us for help! Work with us! But if you don't or just not listen to what we have to say, why would we even bother to play this game? There is others, even the old WoW.
Instead of calling out this "fixes", a well working module would have done the trick.
Summary: Mod 16 at the current state is a failure. It wasn't necessary to do all this changes at once. I will stop playing and paying for my OP. No one wants a dumb OP-Tank with "Paper Gear." I might play, at least for some time, my Ranger. But if there is no significant changes soon, this account will shut down at the end of the year, when my VIP runs out.
Yes, it took a little longer, but it was more fun than the M15 version of this skirmish, since everyone now has to watch out for enemies attacks. My guess - at least for Dread Legion and MotH: watch the enemies attacks, avoid them as much as possible. Not only red areas, but all attacks. A DPS build is not a tank or a self-healer anymore and that's a good thing.
give it a month or two ...
I am starting to see the wisdom in rolling it out a bit over everyone's capabilities and easing it back to something a bit more manageable for everyone.
I am hoping they can ease back the stronghold enemy a little more , so the lower level members can go back to practising on the their 3 heroics a day
Anyhow, I am sorry, but the scaling design is just fundamentally flawed and the current fixes do nothing to solve the underlying issues.
- Players may get punished for leveling up (for example, if you are leveling up during a 2xExperience weekend, you will outlevel content pretty easily, and when you do, you may receive a 20% punishment to your stats when you level up. Is there any other game that punishes people for progressing?
- Kicking everyone down to the same "level" by, for example by reducing R9 and R15 enchants to the same value really hurts motivation and the enjoyment that many players get from improving their character though "gearing up". It also reduces the motivation to buy wards to rank up your enchants.
- Scaling a BiS player down to the point where he underperforms a "level-appropriate" player with mediocre gear is just outright insulting.
- Implementing scaling that makes combat take longer while at the same time leaving rewards unchanged just reduces the reward/effort ratio - in some cases below what is needed to make players willing to bother with the content.
Sorry, but the scaling design needs to be taken back to the drawing board - otherwise I am fairly certain you will get a rude shock when you look at player numbers and Zen sales a couple of months from now.