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adders79
Member Posts: 72 Arc User
Appreciate you guys taking the time and effort, but you totally missed the main points of what the majority of people are trying to say and that is as follows:
SCALING - We do not mind scaling, in fact we have no problem being scaled back a bit to be closer to new players, but it should never be the case that your brand new content is way easier than any of the scaled content or Intermediate dungeons. That is where we are as master expeditions can be soloed pretty easily with a rune active, but soloing a HE in Icewind dale takes an age and is much harder. At the moment no experienced players are touching the queues or older content, which means all your new players are going into dungeons and failing! They will not hang around when there are lots of better games to play
You are wasting so much time constantly tweaking the scaling and bringing the item level and caps up, but no matter how much you do this people are still going to be up in arms. The point we are ALL trying to make is that applying hard caps to any stats makes progress irrelevant for 95% of your game content. It does not matter whether this is 15k or 20k. When we hit whatever point the cap is any progress we make on our toon is 100% pointless. Yes we could level up for the new dungeon but if it is as easy as master expeditions why bother! All the 80 content so far is a breeze compared to the older content
My main characters are on console, but I have a warlock that I started levelling the day preview dropped. Just by picking up the odd boon and completing the under mountain campaign and joining a guild my character is 18k. I consider myself a new player on PC and to experience a scaling cap after a few months playing is insane and it 100% is putting me off doing any of the campaign content outside of a few handpicked challenge campaigns.
The main issue we have had since day 1 and I have harped on about since preview is that if we work our character into a position where we hit ArP, Accuracy and DR cap in 80 content then when we are scaled we should hit the those caps for the level we are playing as a minimum. This is not the case though and in some cases I am 20k-30k below accuracy and ArP caps which means 30% of my attacks are getting deflected and I am doing 30% less damage than I should. Such Fun!
Fair scaling all round would be to take the difference between the enemy caps at our current level (80) and the scaled zone (70) and reduce these from our overall stats (AFTER BONDINGS). This will ensure that we do not need to balance our character differently and also ensures that the more we level up our character the better they become in all content
You must understand a massive part of MMORPG is player choice. Not all players are born equal and some players are comfortable tackling over levelled content, but some players may struggle with tackling content equal to their level. The great thing about an MMORPG is that you can go away and build up your character to become stronger then go back to this zone you struggled with and conquer it with a sense of Joy. This has been completely removed from the game and takes away the heart of what makes RPG's feel great (Player Choice!)
It is up to you how you address scaling but if you stick to this silly cap system all your higher levelled, knowledgable and experienced players are not going to touch random queues and will live in level 80 content. This leaves a lot of new players, with no knowledge of the game, left to fend for themselves in random queues of which 90%+ of these will be failures. That is an awful player experience and is a surefire way to lose any new players you may manage to gather up from the launch of mod 16. It is also a massive waste of all the great content you have built up and that we do enjoy playing if it was either fun OR rewarding, but it is now neither of these.
TLDR - DO NOT KEEP CAP METHOD OF SCALING. WE NEED TO SEE CHARACTER PROGRESS EVEN IN OLDER CONTENT. SIMPLE OPTION IS TO REDUCE OUR STATS BY THE DIFFERENCE IN ENEMY STATS FROM OUR LEVEL (80) TO CURRENT ENEMY LEVEL. THIS MEANS THAT WE WILL ALWAYS SEE IMPROVEMENTS IN OUR CHARACTER IN ALL CONTENT.
Moderator edited title to be in line with the topic and no SHOUTY caps.
SCALING - We do not mind scaling, in fact we have no problem being scaled back a bit to be closer to new players, but it should never be the case that your brand new content is way easier than any of the scaled content or Intermediate dungeons. That is where we are as master expeditions can be soloed pretty easily with a rune active, but soloing a HE in Icewind dale takes an age and is much harder. At the moment no experienced players are touching the queues or older content, which means all your new players are going into dungeons and failing! They will not hang around when there are lots of better games to play
You are wasting so much time constantly tweaking the scaling and bringing the item level and caps up, but no matter how much you do this people are still going to be up in arms. The point we are ALL trying to make is that applying hard caps to any stats makes progress irrelevant for 95% of your game content. It does not matter whether this is 15k or 20k. When we hit whatever point the cap is any progress we make on our toon is 100% pointless. Yes we could level up for the new dungeon but if it is as easy as master expeditions why bother! All the 80 content so far is a breeze compared to the older content
My main characters are on console, but I have a warlock that I started levelling the day preview dropped. Just by picking up the odd boon and completing the under mountain campaign and joining a guild my character is 18k. I consider myself a new player on PC and to experience a scaling cap after a few months playing is insane and it 100% is putting me off doing any of the campaign content outside of a few handpicked challenge campaigns.
The main issue we have had since day 1 and I have harped on about since preview is that if we work our character into a position where we hit ArP, Accuracy and DR cap in 80 content then when we are scaled we should hit the those caps for the level we are playing as a minimum. This is not the case though and in some cases I am 20k-30k below accuracy and ArP caps which means 30% of my attacks are getting deflected and I am doing 30% less damage than I should. Such Fun!
Fair scaling all round would be to take the difference between the enemy caps at our current level (80) and the scaled zone (70) and reduce these from our overall stats (AFTER BONDINGS). This will ensure that we do not need to balance our character differently and also ensures that the more we level up our character the better they become in all content
You must understand a massive part of MMORPG is player choice. Not all players are born equal and some players are comfortable tackling over levelled content, but some players may struggle with tackling content equal to their level. The great thing about an MMORPG is that you can go away and build up your character to become stronger then go back to this zone you struggled with and conquer it with a sense of Joy. This has been completely removed from the game and takes away the heart of what makes RPG's feel great (Player Choice!)
It is up to you how you address scaling but if you stick to this silly cap system all your higher levelled, knowledgable and experienced players are not going to touch random queues and will live in level 80 content. This leaves a lot of new players, with no knowledge of the game, left to fend for themselves in random queues of which 90%+ of these will be failures. That is an awful player experience and is a surefire way to lose any new players you may manage to gather up from the launch of mod 16. It is also a massive waste of all the great content you have built up and that we do enjoy playing if it was either fun OR rewarding, but it is now neither of these.
TLDR - DO NOT KEEP CAP METHOD OF SCALING. WE NEED TO SEE CHARACTER PROGRESS EVEN IN OLDER CONTENT. SIMPLE OPTION IS TO REDUCE OUR STATS BY THE DIFFERENCE IN ENEMY STATS FROM OUR LEVEL (80) TO CURRENT ENEMY LEVEL. THIS MEANS THAT WE WILL ALWAYS SEE IMPROVEMENTS IN OUR CHARACTER IN ALL CONTENT.
Moderator edited title to be in line with the topic and no SHOUTY caps.
Post edited by kreatyve on
10
Comments
Actually pretty sure they threw in that new companion because no one showed any real interest in actually paying for it...since it does nothing players want unlike the lockbox companion which when it works as it says it should will be quite nice.
I saw a console player upset saying the expects to get the free stuff pc players are getting when they get the mod..... I say give it to them. They can just not give it to me and give it to someone there instead since it seems it would make them happier..... want me to be happy fix the dungeons you ruined and make sure LOMM is bug free since you decided not to have it at the launch of mod 16 because apparently you did not think people would do the expeditions enough if it was....
Lol I saw this too on Facebook except it was about 2x AD PC is getting. Like, ok I'd rather be able to actually play the game and get AD the normal way than get a consolation prize for not being able to AD cap for the past few weeks 😂 Of all the things to be upset about really? PC really does take one for the team every launch.
But for NOW cap scaling is the wrong direction, use level based scaling alone for dungeons cause we are not at the point soloing lvl 70 content.
This is why scaling as implemented is fundamentally wrong. It’s not doing anything but punishing player’s for progress, because it is unnecessary.
Unless the game mechanics we have been told exist do not actually work as we have been told they do.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Why not implement simple proportional scaling. For example, if I am at 90% of cap for a stat when I am unscaled, doing content at the same level as I am, I would be 90% of cap at any other level. That would be simple, fair, and (mostly) non-controversial.
(In reality there is a bit of a problem with it, as the difference between L70 and L80 stats is too small, 57K vs 60K - L80 content should really be 75K or something like that - it is currently far, far too easy to reach "maximum efficiency" for most stats in L80.
RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)
Here is a compare between level 80 zone and Nerf zone:
AS you can see the defence is OK not great for level 80 but nerfing a dps's defence when scaling is suicidal move if you ask me. and this image clearly show that defence is worst than wearing paper armour
Even going over certain stats does not help (like i did here)
RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)
I can kite either encounter, which gives me more time to drink healing potions, but this wasn't needed before the patch. So not sure if upgrading my gear is at fault, or the patch, or maybe just the delays caused by the massive lag I've been getting in some zones since the patch dropped.
This character, I changed no gear, no enchants, no nothing. Level 80 ranger with Vistani/Undermountain gear on, rank 6-8 enchants, epic/purple Alchemist Experimenter pet.
Split shot, before today's patch, would overkill a pack of 4 kobolds. About 70% charge on a split shot was enough to one-shot the pack.
After today's patch, it takes three, fully charged Split shots, to kill the same pack.
That is a massive, massive nerf.
Not sure if it is something that applies to just Rangers, or just Split Shot, or just Neverdeath, Kobolds, or even fighting in gloomy shadow. Who knows?
Cryptic has once again pulled off their famous "We changed some things at random, called it a fix, tossed it on live. We don't need to actually think of real fixes, because we have thousands of free, unpaid testers to do our job for us. We'll just keep changing things at random until they get tired of complaining."
This is really unacceptably bad coding/quality control/understanding of your own game mechanics.
"Scaling
Scaling players down has traditionally not truly changed a players ability compared to the content they were scaled to. Along with our fixes to item level, we added in item level scaling which should provide a better version of scaling going forward.
Now we will scale a player down to a target item level. This won’t be exact as it will scale different items to different values (Enchantments will have a different scaled item level than equipment due to their different magnitudes) and because of this a player can end up a bit above or a bit below the target value. But overall it should bring the players closer to each other and closer to the content.
This does mean that players who are put in lower difficulty dungeons will find more challenge than in the past, but that challenge will still be less than an endgame dungeon would be.
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.
Jared Sears
Lead Systems Designer"
https://arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/11093133-developer-blog%3A-item-level-%26-scaling
Clearly, you are not even close to matching your own statements here. Stronger players end up weaker than lower players, lower dungeons are not easier than endgame dungeons, you obviously are not finding it 'easy to tune' since even with well over a month of clear, posted, reports and screenshot data, you haven't got it right.
You even did a dev stream saying 'we're aware, and we're putting in a fix', and then made it worse!
Also, the horrendous lag in many zones is probably at least partially caused by re-calculating a new scaled IL for every item and every enchantment on every character, every time they zone or cross a 'level scaling' boundary.
Reports such as this one: https://reddit.com/r/Neverwinter/comments/bfoa09/mod_16_scaling_data/
have been out for weeks and months... and you still have no idea what you are doing. The entire system, the way you are implementing it, doesn't even make sense... why should a super-powered, level 80, geared up IL20k character have a hard time fighting in low level zones, for crappy rewards?
Yes, I can see that you would want an adjustment, so that the truly high powered do not simply steamroll all content except the most recent endgame. However keep in mind that wrecking the game for 85% of your players in order to scale back the top 15% is pretty much cutting your leg off to cure athlete's foot. There are better ways.
I could easily outline at least 3 ways to do scaling better, faster, game-wide, with a couple simple lookup tables and a few numbers per character. However the method characters seem to keep coming back to as 'makes most sense' is "% of cap scaling".
Since you have now implemented a boring and relatively pointless system where character ability scores are next to meaningless, and entire zones have stats set to roughly equivalent values, and where the 'cap points' for characters are known and predicttable - then it is possible to calculate what percentage of 'capped' a characters stat is at for content of his own level.
Thus, if a level 70 character has managed to get to 80% of cap for Crit Strike, 90% for Armor Pen, 65% for Defense, etc... then when he is scaled to 60 or 50 or 40, you simply set his Crit/AP/Defense to 80% / 90% / 65% of the cap for that zone/level. That way characters are scaled to the level of the content they are in, but they are not unduly penalized for having good gear. Their progression is respected.
This method only involves, whenever a player changes his stats or level, calculating one number per stat - his "% of cap" for a theoretical content matching his own level. Store that number in the character data (it doesn't need to be visible in the UI) and have a lookup table for 'Cap Values' for each zone, and poof, you can remove all the ridiculous item-by-item/enchant-by-enchant calculations that have screwy results (my characters with lower values in at-level content end up with higher values in scaled content than my chars who start out 20% higher).
This will at least not penalize players for progressing, although it does lead one to wonder why anyone bothers to level up or improve gear or run older content. Since you will always be in a simple state of 'at par' for the content you are in, the only content worth running becomes whatever currently pays out the best.
I did an experiment yesterday just to test 'scaling' in various areas. I have no bonding stones installed, so I have no companion influence in these numbers. I haven't invoked in weeks so there is no bonus there either. I'll group the stats in three 'families' just to simplify things (no good table mechanic in the forums), Hit Points, Fixed Stats, and Percentage Stats.
PE (I use this as a neutral base)
HP - 144014
Power - 31222
Control Bonus - 4%
Skyhold (any sub-70 area)
HP, fixed and percentage stats remain the same as in PE. There is no scaling being done in the sub-70 areas if you are level 70.
Well of Dragons/Caer-Konig
HP - 132210 (8% less)
Power - 27764 (11% less)
Control Bonus - 4%
Fiery Pit
HP - 115141 (20% less)
Power - 23800 (24% lower)
Control Bonus - 4%
Stronghold (now forced to level 80)
HP - 266541 (15% higher)
Power - 48700 (45% higher)
Control Bonus - 4.5%
Neverwinter - Cult Area (forced to level 30)
HP - 47408 (33% lower)
Power - 9160 (30% lower)
Control Bonus - 4%
So, my main question is: Why are the stats on a level 70 character being scaled lower in a level 70 area (M-D, C-K, WoD, Fiery Pit)? Shouldn't all this scaling of areas (ignoring Cult areas and SH) only affect a player when they are above level 70 (level 71)?? Why am I being Penalized for being at the correct level for an area?
I continue to not do anything that involves XP because I have no reason to be over level 70 for at least 9 months (the time needed to complete Maze Engine/Elemental Evil/Dread Ring/Sharandar/Tyranny/Underdark/Storm Kings Thunder/Cloaked Ascendancy areas). I have no reason or desire to go to Barovia, Chult or Undermountain until the necessary boons and quests are completed.
Fortunately you have removed XP from professions, so that is the only 'fun' left in the game.
I wanted to add a simple fix for this. Either remove the scaling or remove the score board. The scaling seems to be way way off and will cause players to start finger pointing and blaming others for things beyond their control like the forced scaled down stats. To be honest, I thought the run went smooth and felt I gave amazing support as we got gold, until I was pmed about "Get Gud".
What should be a "walk in the park" has been turned into torment.
The same goes for random dungeon/skirmish runs, and while the difficulty has increased considerably with each patch, the rewards remain on the same disappointing level. These changes simply make no sense...
Anyway, i'd love to see a stream for each class with the Devs playing through scaled content on the regular server with a regular new level 80 character in the quipment from the Undermountain intro quest. That should open their eyes and may be we'll finally get some patches that will actually fix this mess.
You - all the forum posters out there who feel the need to use the plural pronoun when referring to yourself - are not speaking for me. You didn't run a poll/vote asking permission to speak on behalf of all players.
Speak for yourself. Your opinion is valid and should be accepted on its own merits - you don't have to assume the "we" pronoun to get the devs attention.
If anything using that pronoun automatically devalues your opinion because as soon as you use it you are exposing a flaw in your argument, and making it easier for the devs to ignore everything you've written that comes after the word "we".
We does not mean everyone and does not mean a collective majority. You know what Plural means right...More than one. We means me and another or other people. If me and one other person thinks it then 'we' is perfectly acceptable to use so I will carry on using it
If anything I think 'I' devalues what I say as it makes out it is my opinion alone
> We do not mind scaling, in fact we have no problem being scaled back a bit to be closer to new players, but it should never be the case that your brand new content is way easier than any of the scaled content or Intermediate dungeons.
>
> Sorry OP - I'm not singling you out - but I just have seen this sooooooo many times in these forums I feel the need for a mini-rant here.
>
> You - all the forum posters out there who feel the need to use the plural pronoun when referring to yourself - are not speaking for me. You didn't run a poll/vote asking permission to speak on behalf of all players.
>
> Speak for yourself. Your opinion is valid and should be accepted on its own merits - you don't have to assume the "we" pronoun to get the devs attention.
>
> If anything using that pronoun automatically devalues your opinion because as soon as you use it you are exposing a flaw in your argument, and making it easier for the devs to ignore everything you've written that comes after the word "we".
>
>
>
> I am not referring to myself, my wording is perfectly fine. I have trawled through these forums for months since mod 16 dropped and have actively been trying to understand and give as much feedback as I can. My opinion is shared by a lot of people and I know this because they have posted it here, on reddit and in various discords.
>
> We does not mean everyone and does not mean a collective majority. You know what Plural means right...More than one. We means me and another or other people. If me and one other person thinks it then 'we' is perfectly acceptable to use so I will carry on using it
>
> If anything I think 'I' devalues what I say as it makes out it is my opinion alone
It's fine to use 'we' if there was some input of who the other people are that you are listed as 'we'. Example: I was speaking.with x,y,and z and 'we' think this. Using we without that does give impression of majority which is not the case.