Lead Designer - Is responsible for the teams under him, and gives them general direction or accept/deny suggested ideas in general, or in this case systems designers team in particular. He is the Overall direction of NW Boss.
The question was understandable for everyone who understands the core issue with how scaling is implemented. Via Caps.
I'm in full agreement. He may not be directly working on systems but he must have some involvement if only working through the idea.
The question regarding capped stats was easily understandable. The response he gave was not one you want to see coming from the man in charge.
To me he came across like "Does not compute. I don't know what the main component behind this new system does. I've never heard of stat capping before in my life. I just work here. Move along. Double AD people we love you!"
12
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited May 2019
ME: "Will there be any changes to how things done to prevent the same mistakes? Like Play-through of QA before release"
On stream: "No, we think we have the skeleton right"
2 days later, LOMM released, same HAMSTER like bats in CR, no one knows if it's WAI or bugged or what, hug like hypothermia, line of sight, spread, dance on one foot, and then people wonder why some resort to use some special 'features' and just skip it.
Well, stuff happens, when there are 10+ dungeons released per patch, things are missed, it's not like it's the only dungeon in a mod that took half year, was delayed two weeks and two weeks is not enough to find 15minutes to reach the first boss..
Oh wait...
And issues with RQ/Demo again? Can't be. I'm sure there is a system in place to check that part every time anything added or removed from queue.. Or again, not..?
What is the point anymore? Why tell us anything? Why bother even reading feedback? Why even have these Live Streams? You had one job, fix what was broken. What did you do? More nerfs, and you actually managed to break EVEN more things and not do what you told us you did in your live stream. Just stop. There is no point anymore just leave the game the mess it is and save everyone the heartache.
At this point the only question left I guess is when you plan on taking down the servers?
I'd like to give this an lol but it's actually a salient point. they seem to have no idea how to fix their mess and they just keep digging it deeper. and a reward of 2x astral diamonds when too many astral diamonds is part of the ongoing problem? who is in charge? LOL
Hey folks! The written-up responses extracted from the chat log will be made available next week (parsing through chat manually!) but Thomas wanted to follow up on the last question that was asked during the stream. He asked me to pass along this answer:
*** From "sootynukkels": Are we just not supposed to be able to reach our stat caps in Scaled content? How is this in live with your own words of Player Progression?
Ahoy sootynukkels and thanks again for attending the Q&A session and for your question. As I stated in the stream, I didn’t quite understand your question, but I’ve had time to parse it a bit, and I think I have answers for you. For scaled content players equipped items, companions, and boons are all scaled to a level to create an appropriate challenge in the content. In unscaled content areas you will still hit your ratings caps. Being at ratings caps in unscaled areas doesn’t mean that you be hitting them in scaled content.
Going forward we intend to have the expert queue dungeons unscaled as well as the two newest campaigns. With the launch of M16 the two newest campaigns were Undermountain and Acqinc, which is a special campaign. With that in mind, and players having a more limited selection of unscaled content, we are patching Barovia to be unscaled until we have newer campaigns that can fill that role. And very soon the Lair of the Mad Mage dungeon will open up to test the full potential of your character. Thanks again for the questions.
Hey folks! The written-up responses extracted from the chat log will be made available next week (parsing through chat manually!) but Thomas wanted to follow up on the last question that was asked during the stream. He asked me to pass along this answer:
*** From "sootynukkels": Are we just not supposed to be able to reach our stat caps in Scaled content? How is this in live with your own words of Player Progression?
Ahoy sootynukkels and thanks again for attending the Q&A session and for your question. As I stated in the stream, I didn’t quite understand your question, but I’ve had time to parse it a bit, and I think I have answers for you. For scaled content players equipped items, companions, and boons are all scaled to a level to create an appropriate challenge in the content. In unscaled content areas you will still hit your ratings caps. Being at ratings caps in unscaled areas doesn’t mean that you be hitting them in scaled content.
Going forward we intend to have the expert queue dungeons unscaled as well as the two newest campaigns. With the launch of M16 the two newest campaigns were Undermountain and Acqinc, which is a special campaign. With that in mind, and players having a more limited selection of unscaled content, we are patching Barovia to be unscaled until we have newer campaigns that can fill that role. And very soon the Lair of the Mad Mage dungeon will open up to test the full potential of your character. Thanks again for the questions.
Thomas “M.K.” Foss
Follow up for Mr. Foss: To clarify, is it intended by design that players NOT meet the stat caps (in particular for armor penetration and accuracy) in all scaled content?
Some context: A result of the current implementation is that an optimal set of gear for scaled areas is different than an optimal set of gear for unscaled areas. This is because it's optimal to reach caps for armor penetration and accuracy in any content, and it's possible to do so in scaled content by choosing lower level gear (strange?) and/or overstacking those two stats in general. To be most effective in all content, you have to keep 2 sets of gear. Is that intended?
Players feel annoyed when they have to keep multiple sets of gear (you've seen this before) and frustrated if they are pushed to run content with suboptimal builds. It's just discouraging.
Solution: Either fix the scaling so that if you reach arpen and accuracy caps unscaled, you are guaranteed to meet them when you're scaled. Or find some other way that ensures an optimal set of gear in unscaled content is also the optimal set of gear in scaled content. There are a couple good suggestions that have been posted on the forums.
"Being at ratings caps in unscaled areas doesn’t mean that you be hitting them in scaled content."
Thomas “M.K.” Foss
This is the exact problem with your scaling. Why should anyone have to have an entirely different set up of gear and enchants just to hit caps in scaled (read: OLD) content? Considering that deflect and defense have hard caps of 50%, that overstacking armor pen (with the exception of the feat: Overpenetration) gives no additional increase in damage, does it not make sense to do a simple check instead of all of this scaling?
For example: Defense cap for the area= 60k. Player stat= 70k. Scaled defense= 60k. There would literally be no difference in having 70k or 60k anyway.
The only things that SHOULD scale are: Power, HP, weapon damage and (for those classes that have the feat) armor penetration. Even THEN, the stats should be scaled to a percentage of what the player has, so there is always progression.
I understand and LIKE that building my character is a big part of the game. However, I really disagree that I would need to gear completely differently for old content. This is especially true when it seems that you've made an overly-complicated, overly-punishing system.
Hey folks! The written-up responses extracted from the chat log will be made available next week (parsing through chat manually!) but Thomas wanted to follow up on the last question that was asked during the stream. He asked me to pass along this answer:
*** From "sootynukkels": Are we just not supposed to be able to reach our stat caps in Scaled content? How is this in live with your own words of Player Progression?
Ahoy sootynukkels and thanks again for attending the Q&A session and for your question. As I stated in the stream, I didn’t quite understand your question, but I’ve had time to parse it a bit, and I think I have answers for you. For scaled content players equipped items, companions, and boons are all scaled to a level to create an appropriate challenge in the content. In unscaled content areas you will still hit your ratings caps. Being at ratings caps in unscaled areas doesn’t mean that you be hitting them in scaled content.
Going forward we intend to have the expert queue dungeons unscaled as well as the two newest campaigns. With the launch of M16 the two newest campaigns were Undermountain and Acqinc, which is a special campaign. With that in mind, and players having a more limited selection of unscaled content, we are patching Barovia to be unscaled until we have newer campaigns that can fill that role. And very soon the Lair of the Mad Mage dungeon will open up to test the full potential of your character. Thanks again for the questions.
Thomas “M.K.” Foss
Except you released LOTMM in a broken state as well. After having it in a good place the last week of preview.
Scaling in old content really accomplishes nothing positive. You will have either experienced players like me play unscaled content as scaled content is old, un-rewarding and with the scaling system, more difficult. And you will have new players struggle through the scaled content and either give up or quit. I already mentioned what happens with scaling in old areas in the PVE discussion and how it is much too aggressive.
Varric the Cursed Dwarven cursed to be Tiefling CW Original Serenity Mostly Retired DC Tokarek Bearded Dwarven OP Tankadin JuiceHead Goofy Human GWF Member of H3llzWarriors and Limitless.
> @nitocris83 said: > Hey folks! The written-up responses extracted from the chat log will be made available next week (parsing through chat manually!) but Thomas wanted to follow up on the last question that was asked during the stream. He asked me to pass along this answer: > > *** > From "sootynukkels": Are we just not supposed to be able to reach our stat caps in Scaled content? How is this in live with your own words of Player Progression? > > Ahoy sootynukkels and thanks again for attending the Q&A session and for your question. As I stated in the stream, I didn’t quite understand your question, but I’ve had time to parse it a bit, and I think I have answers for you. For scaled content players equipped items, companions, and boons are all scaled to a level to create an appropriate challenge in the content. In unscaled content areas you will still hit your ratings caps. Being at ratings caps in unscaled areas doesn’t mean that you be hitting them in scaled content. > > Going forward we intend to have the expert queue dungeons unscaled as well as the two newest campaigns. With the launch of M16 the two newest campaigns were Undermountain and Acqinc, which is a special campaign. With that in mind, and players having a more limited selection of unscaled content, we are patching Barovia to be unscaled until we have newer campaigns that can fill that role. And very soon the Lair of the Mad Mage dungeon will open up to test the full potential of your character. > Thanks again for the questions. > > Thomas “M.K.” Foss
Sorry this sounds like a preplanned response that you had already written up, as LOMM has been released and pretty much broken ( though kudos to those few that have beaten it even broken).
Ahoy sootynukkels and thanks again for attending the Q&A session and for your question. As I stated in the stream, I didn’t quite understand your question, but I’ve had time to parse it a bit, and I think I have answers for you. For scaled content players equipped items, companions, and boons are all scaled to a level to create an appropriate challenge in the content. In unscaled content areas you will still hit your ratings caps. Being at ratings caps in unscaled areas doesn’t mean that you be hitting them in scaled content.
Soooo.... leaving aside that old dungeons have no real relevant rewards.... assuming I still, for what ever reason, want to or have to play downscaled content... I'm SUPPOSED to gear aiming for lvl 70 caps and not for lvl 80 caps?!? It feels like downscaled content is the true end-game content It's not even that I don't appreciate the challenge, its just the sheer counterintuitiveness of the underlying (HAMSTER) principle here....
Scaling in the cap form of not having cap point reached in scaled dungeons but in unscaled dungeons is the hole problem. It makes progress useless, it makes leveling for new players more stressful till quit the game. You cant help new players, cause ist harder to do downscaled then for them unscaled (if they are unscaled and have not done it too fast which is normal, so they need help and cant get).
A lot less new players = less money for cryptic.
Seems we have to wait a little more till someone at cryptic sees that.
Maybe the solution just remove underscaling for armor pen and accuracy.let us have ap and accuracy will be a good starter point for every1. Easy think are always the better way lol
What on earth is the design intent between clamping ArP and Acc lower than their practical cap for scaling content?
What are you looking to accomplish with that particular choice? Why is it so bad that players actually be able to do full damage to mobs in scaled content?
Hey folks! The written-up responses extracted from the chat log will be made available next week (parsing through chat manually!) but Thomas wanted to follow up on the last question that was asked during the stream. He asked me to pass along this answer:
*** From "sootynukkels": Are we just not supposed to be able to reach our stat caps in Scaled content? How is this in live with your own words of Player Progression?
Ahoy sootynukkels and thanks again for attending the Q&A session and for your question. As I stated in the stream, I didn’t quite understand your question, but I’ve had time to parse it a bit, and I think I have answers for you. For scaled content players equipped items, companions, and boons are all scaled to a level to create an appropriate challenge in the content. In unscaled content areas you will still hit your ratings caps. Being at ratings caps in unscaled areas doesn’t mean that you be hitting them in scaled content.
Going forward we intend to have the expert queue dungeons unscaled as well as the two newest campaigns. With the launch of M16 the two newest campaigns were Undermountain and Acqinc, which is a special campaign. With that in mind, and players having a more limited selection of unscaled content, we are patching Barovia to be unscaled until we have newer campaigns that can fill that role. And very soon the Lair of the Mad Mage dungeon will open up to test the full potential of your character. Thanks again for the questions.
Thomas “M.K.” Foss
I think this is a bad decision, your scaling system is not going to be the "easy button" that you are hoping it will be to help you keep old content relevant.
Two big reasons why: 1. Not enough new un-scaled content for those that want to avoid scaling and losing all their hard-earned progression 2. Too many bugs that are never fixed, even on the new dungeons. Since you mention Castle Ravenloft, I hate running it because of all the bugs that were never fixed, and that dungeon was released almost a year ago.
Well, the stream did manage to solidify some of my thoughts about the scaling. It is intended to be punitive because they intentionally and specifically do not want us to have any max stats and percentages in old content. This reads to me exactly the way it did months ago: get out of low level stuff. This is clearly why they chose capping instead of scaling. If they scaled us, we would still get to choose our stat allocation and cap our appropriate stats. With capping they get to choose. That's really what a lot of this mod is about. Taking away our choices because we keep figuring out how to play the way we enjoy instead of what they want us to do.
We tell all the solution just remove cap for armor pen and accuracy.for the rest try with cap but let us have ap and accuracy will be a good starter point for every1. Easy think are always the better way lol
Wait...your fix for scaling making content too difficult is to make content *more* difficult?! You do know, right, that the "cap" is actually just the top difficulty level of mobs? (Except crit chance, which was whatever was needed for the 100% mark, and is now the 50% mark)
The problem with the scaling having caps is that you have clearly not assigned the same method to bonding runestones. If enchants are scaled to 8 or 9, so should bondings. You are scaling us to rank 6 bondings which is absolutely ridiculous considering every player will have at least 9s as these are dirt cheap. You could increase our gear and enchants all you want but it will still not get us anywhere near a respectable level because most our stats we need to balance come from our comps.
I am not even high level but my comp has about 120k stats. If I had Rank 15 bondings that would give me about 250k stats. With your silly "I think the average level 70 player has rank 6 bondings" I lose about 160k in stats which is ludicrous.
Honestly if you put our bondings to a more respectable level it will make all the queues playable
The scaling as it is now is lazy and IMO incompetent. But for the sake of argument lets say that somewhere out there some manager type really wants it this way. So, I have two questions.
If all of our gear/enchants/runes/mounts/companions do not benefit us to upgrade as we progress than why do so at all? We have already seen that all of the above have been nurfed so bad in MOD16 it's there is little difference in what you have. If I am a new player and have the means (aka money to buy Zen) to get all these upgrades but they are scaled to be worth the same on whatever level I am on, then why spend the money to do so? Lower gear items make running lower content easier as a new player so WTF would I spend money on a new epic mount or a coal to upgrade my gear/enchants if its useless or even prohibitive to do so? On one hand Cryptic wants us to spend more Zen but you (devs) make it nearly worthless to do so, why should we? I dare you to answer this. Why?
Also, from a simple consumer and legal perspective you better change every tool tip in the Zen store on ANYTHING that gives us stats (mounts, companions) because as of now, they don't indicate "+2000 power unless you are running lower level stuff where you will receive considerably less". If I pay for something to boost my damn stats/gear it better do what it says or you are going to owe thousands of people refunds and run the risk of horrible press in age where the government is already looking to clamp down on games like NW who use loot boxes anyway.
Hi @nitocris83 , I know you're passing along @mimicking#6533 's message but if I mark the quote as his it makes the forum confusing, so I'll quote "you" quoting him.
For scaled content players equipped items, companions, and boons are all scaled to a level to create an appropriate challenge in the content. In unscaled content areas you will still hit your ratings caps. Being at ratings caps in unscaled areas doesn’t mean that you be hitting them in scaled content.
So, to be clear, a player who has the gear to hit the hard stat cap in the current endgame (presumably, the hardest content in the game) is *intended* to be unable to reach the hard stat cap in content from as far back as 2013?
Going forward we intend to have the expert queue dungeons unscaled as well as the two newest campaigns. With the launch of M16 the two newest campaigns were Undermountain and Acqinc, which is a special campaign. With that in mind, and players having a more limited selection of unscaled content, we are patching Barovia to be unscaled until we have newer campaigns that can fill that role.
QUESTION 1: The two newest campaigns are Ravenloft and Chult, what with AI being a "special" campaign (excellent description, by the way) and Underdark being a "permanently unscaled" levelling campaign according to @noworries#8859 on the preview forums.
Should we expect Chult to be unscaled in a later patch, or should we just wait for Mod17 and expect Barovia + Mod17 to be unscaled, and then Barovia+Mod17 when Mod18 is released, then Barovia to join the scaled campaign list with Mod19, leaving 18 and 17 as the two most recent unscaled campaigns?
QUESTION 2: The expert queue will be unscaled. The Advanced queue will be scaled. You've said you intend people to not be able to reach the stat caps regardless of advancement in scaled content.
... am I the only person who reads that and thinks you've designed this in a way that Expert queues will be EASIER for late-game players than Advanced and Intermediate queues, by design?
(Barring unfixed bugs, of course, which are the current killer in all late-game content and have been the killer in Castle Ravenloft for one full mod and one "special" mod so far.)
@mimicking#6533 Mr.Foss @nitocris83 Given that you have trained 80% of the player base not to use the forums anymore by just not replying or even acknowledging our feedback there are still LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF POSTS ABOUT HOW MUCH THIS ASPECT OF SCALING DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO ANYONE BUT YOU AND YOUR TEAM. I wonder why on earth so many people would post about this one thing? They post even knowing it will not be acknowledged or read. I wonder why they do it?
Your TWO most recent patches prove that we can not trust a thing you said in your Live Stream. Let me try to get through to you one more time. I want to make sure you understand. This is all about the players perception of progression in your game and my perception of you and your company.
Let me try to help you understand. You are killing any sense of progression and nerfing EVERY SINGLE THING we have worked for in this game with your current approach to scaling.
From my point of view: Why bother suffering through the BUGGED Lair of the Mad Mage Dungeon to earn new gear and items, when that gear and those items will be scaled down in all other content? Do you really think someone is going to spend months to upgrade any of the new equipment only to use it in one dungeon? You know the very dungeon they had to be able to complete 100s of times to get the seals needed to buy that new gear to begin with?
Hmmm.. If I can complete the dungeon at my current item level with the gear i currently have then why do I need the new gear? Progression? More content?
Why rank up anything at all? I have the gear score and stats needed to run LotMM already, why do anything else? You don't want us doing speed runs, you don't want us teaching others how to complete older content. So what exactly is the point?
Why even bother to earn AD, it is pointless. Guess there is no need to even do your Random Queues. REQ bugged again by the way. Way to go guys and girls! SMH
Why spend anything on this game? Also pointless. I mean if I do buy something you are only going to nerf it into the ground next MOD right? VIP? Might want to look into the changes there to Mr. Foss. Borderline false advertising. You guys still have not updated your own site. Might want to get someone on that. Neverwinter VIP program page
Why bother even looking at or trying to balance or maximize my stats? Pointless. I'm maxed for endgame why bother doing anything else. Why bother having two sets of gear just to complete old content for useless rewards?
Why bother getting more boons. Pointless. I mean the HP boons STILL do not work.
Do you realize yet why I think this is all pointless? If I am a level 80 with balanced and maxed out stats there is NOTHING for me to do except the Lair of the Mad Mage and Master expeditions. Why would I want to do anything else? I worked to get the stats, gear, items, companions, mounts, bondings and enchants that I have. You have in one stroke made all of that work POINTLESS because if I participate in ANY other content I am scaled down to below the required stats to be efficient at anything even though in level 80 content I am over cap on almost every single stat.
So we have to ask ourselves, Why do we play? I had several endgame characters. You nerfed one into the dirt, I stripped him and retired him. You made another so boring to play I stripped and retired him also. Between the two I had 3 Legendary mounts, several legendary companions and the best of the best gear, enchants and artifacts. I feel a loss and I am upset that it is no longer fun to play those characters that I put so much time, resources and real money into. Do you see why I am upset?
I now play a cleric (heal bot) and a broken rogue. Yep both endgame. Not really much fun playing either. I do the ME to help out friends. We do your Lair of the Mad Mage. It's broken, we told you this in preview. I'm really glad you held it back from release with the rest of MOD 16. I mean you needed to fix it right? Test it? Play it? Yeah it's still broken.
We (your customers) never agree on ANYTHING! We agree on this! Scaling in its current form KILLS the perception of progression. There are many other ways you could do it but you insist on doing it in a way that WE perceive as punishment for progressing. Punishment for using the very things you give us as rewards in chests and sell to us in your Zen market. See the problem here? EVEN IF WE ARE WRONG IN OUR PERCEPTION IN YOUR OPINION this is what we think and how we feel. You have done nothing to change this perception.
Yes some of us did ask for more difficult content. Scaling could be a good solution. BUT We did not ask you to remove all sense of progression from the game.
We stood by when you killed class synergy. (doubt you guys even knew it was in the game anyway) Group synergy guide Reddit thread We stood by when you decided to TOTALLY change every single class in the game.
We put up with the nerfs to earning AD.
We put up with Random Queues both as new players and then as veterans.
We put up with the nerfs to VIP.
We put up with BROKEN CONTENT FOR FREAKING YEARS!
We put up with you using us as beta testers in LIVE content.
You told us you were listening. You told us you had fixed your game. It seems to me that you are not listening and once again MISSING the point. You are still pushing BUGGED content to live. Did you guys not even test your patch?
So are you listening or not? Are you fixing the game or not? Do you want us to stay and play your game or not?
You pretend like you don't understand this persons question. Here is a tip, how about you go to the Scaling feedback section of the preview forums and study up. If you can't understand after this post and reading that thread then there is no hope for you or your game. That's right, your game. You took our game away a long time ago.
You know how you guys try to condition people to want to buy your loot boxes? You have now successfully conditioned many of us to not want to play your game. NO PROGRESSION = NO FUN. NO FUN = NO MONEY. Simple enough? Maybe if enough of us say it we can condition you.
You game in its current form Mr. Foss IS NOT FUN. If the game is not fun then I guess playing is pointless.
Don't take my word for it, go read the hundreds of posts in this thread. Go read the Hundreds of posts in the preview threads.
I know you didn't bother reading this, but now I feel better and I know for a fact that I have done my very best to help try and save this mess of a game. Your game, you took mine away a while back.
How can you justify not allowing level 80s to hit 70 stat caps? How can you justify level 80s getting outhealed and out dps'ed by level 70s? In 15 years of gaming, I have never seen players GET WORSE for having better gear.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Yeah we survived mod 6. We stayed. We survived bugs and glitches and trash end game content (looking at you CR). We survived whatever mod 15 was. I'm not sure how many people will continue this cycle of "do 3 dailies and run 1 dungeon", especially now that there's really no point.
what precisely is the role of the level 70 dungeons now? no one will be at level 70 for more than a blink of the eye so no one will be able to run this content unscaled/capped.
The traditional role of the t2s has been to help lower levels level up. get gear and stuff and junk. now what is their (t2) role?
The better geared players aren't going to go back for content that takes longer for worse rewards and that they aren't geared to play because arpen can't even hit cap.. the lower geared players have no chance at all of completing it if the better geared 80's can barely do it.
So the lower il levels have no content really. the higher il levels have the most recent dungeon and that's about it.
so with the scaling cap that keeps us far below where we need to be for level 70 or the dungeons not being level 80.. you've basically made all content without point except for the newest one. and it's only good for your best geared players.
so you've alienated the majority of the players with nothing to do..
so again I ask, what is the point of the current level 70 dungeons? what purpose are they supposed to be serving in this game? and what are you doing to make the reality line up with the goal?
Comments
The question regarding capped stats was easily understandable. The response he gave was not one you want to see coming from the man in charge.
To me he came across like "Does not compute. I don't know what the main component behind this new system does. I've never heard of stat capping before in my life. I just work here. Move along. Double AD people we love you!"
On stream: "No, we think we have the skeleton right"
2 days later, LOMM released, same HAMSTER like bats in CR, no one knows if it's WAI or bugged or what, hug like hypothermia, line of sight, spread, dance on one foot, and then people wonder why some resort to use some special 'features' and just skip it.
Well, stuff happens, when there are 10+ dungeons released per patch, things are missed, it's not like it's the only dungeon in a mod that took half year, was delayed two weeks and two weeks is not enough to find 15minutes to reach the first boss..
Oh wait...
And issues with RQ/Demo again? Can't be. I'm sure there is a system in place to check that part every time anything added or removed from queue.. Or again, not..?
***
From "sootynukkels": Are we just not supposed to be able to reach our stat caps in Scaled content? How is this in live with your own words of Player Progression?
Ahoy sootynukkels and thanks again for attending the Q&A session and for your question. As I stated in the stream, I didn’t quite understand your question, but I’ve had time to parse it a bit, and I think I have answers for you. For scaled content players equipped items, companions, and boons are all scaled to a level to create an appropriate challenge in the content. In unscaled content areas you will still hit your ratings caps. Being at ratings caps in unscaled areas doesn’t mean that you be hitting them in scaled content.
Going forward we intend to have the expert queue dungeons unscaled as well as the two newest campaigns. With the launch of M16 the two newest campaigns were Undermountain and Acqinc, which is a special campaign. With that in mind, and players having a more limited selection of unscaled content, we are patching Barovia to be unscaled until we have newer campaigns that can fill that role. And very soon the Lair of the Mad Mage dungeon will open up to test the full potential of your character.
Thanks again for the questions.
Thomas “M.K.” Foss
To clarify, is it intended by design that players NOT meet the stat caps (in particular for armor penetration and accuracy) in all scaled content?
Some context:
A result of the current implementation is that an optimal set of gear for scaled areas is different than an optimal set of gear for unscaled areas. This is because it's optimal to reach caps for armor penetration and accuracy in any content, and it's possible to do so in scaled content by choosing lower level gear (strange?) and/or overstacking those two stats in general. To be most effective in all content, you have to keep 2 sets of gear. Is that intended?
Players feel annoyed when they have to keep multiple sets of gear (you've seen this before) and frustrated if they are pushed to run content with suboptimal builds. It's just discouraging.
Solution:
Either fix the scaling so that if you reach arpen and accuracy caps unscaled, you are guaranteed to meet them when you're scaled. Or find some other way that ensures an optimal set of gear in unscaled content is also the optimal set of gear in scaled content. There are a couple good suggestions that have been posted on the forums.
For example: Defense cap for the area= 60k. Player stat= 70k. Scaled defense= 60k. There would literally be no difference in having 70k or 60k anyway.
The only things that SHOULD scale are: Power, HP, weapon damage and (for those classes that have the feat) armor penetration. Even THEN, the stats should be scaled to a percentage of what the player has, so there is always progression.
I understand and LIKE that building my character is a big part of the game. However, I really disagree that I would need to gear completely differently for old content. This is especially true when it seems that you've made an overly-complicated, overly-punishing system.
Original Serenity Mostly Retired DC
Tokarek Bearded Dwarven OP Tankadin
JuiceHead Goofy Human GWF
Member of H3llzWarriors and Limitless.
> Hey folks! The written-up responses extracted from the chat log will be made available next week (parsing through chat manually!) but Thomas wanted to follow up on the last question that was asked during the stream. He asked me to pass along this answer:
>
> ***
> From "sootynukkels": Are we just not supposed to be able to reach our stat caps in Scaled content? How is this in live with your own words of Player Progression?
>
> Ahoy sootynukkels and thanks again for attending the Q&A session and for your question. As I stated in the stream, I didn’t quite understand your question, but I’ve had time to parse it a bit, and I think I have answers for you. For scaled content players equipped items, companions, and boons are all scaled to a level to create an appropriate challenge in the content. In unscaled content areas you will still hit your ratings caps. Being at ratings caps in unscaled areas doesn’t mean that you be hitting them in scaled content.
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> Going forward we intend to have the expert queue dungeons unscaled as well as the two newest campaigns. With the launch of M16 the two newest campaigns were Undermountain and Acqinc, which is a special campaign. With that in mind, and players having a more limited selection of unscaled content, we are patching Barovia to be unscaled until we have newer campaigns that can fill that role. And very soon the Lair of the Mad Mage dungeon will open up to test the full potential of your character.
> Thanks again for the questions.
>
> Thomas “M.K.” Foss
Sorry this sounds like a preplanned response that you had already written up, as LOMM has been released and pretty much broken ( though kudos to those few that have beaten it even broken).
It feels like downscaled content is the true end-game content
It's not even that I don't appreciate the challenge, its just the sheer counterintuitiveness of the underlying (HAMSTER) principle here....
I think I need a cup of tea...
It makes progress useless, it makes leveling for new players more stressful till quit the game.
You cant help new players, cause ist harder to do downscaled then for them unscaled (if they are unscaled and have not done it too fast which is normal, so they need help and cant get).
A lot less new players = less money for cryptic.
Seems we have to wait a little more till someone at cryptic sees that.
What are you looking to accomplish with that particular choice? Why is it so bad that players actually be able to do full damage to mobs in scaled content?
Two big reasons why:
1. Not enough new un-scaled content for those that want to avoid scaling and losing all their hard-earned progression
2. Too many bugs that are never fixed, even on the new dungeons. Since you mention Castle Ravenloft, I hate running it because of all the bugs that were never fixed, and that dungeon was released almost a year ago.
I am not even high level but my comp has about 120k stats. If I had Rank 15 bondings that would give me about 250k stats. With your silly "I think the average level 70 player has rank 6 bondings" I lose about 160k in stats which is ludicrous.
Honestly if you put our bondings to a more respectable level it will make all the queues playable
If all of our gear/enchants/runes/mounts/companions do not benefit us to upgrade as we progress than why do so at all? We have already seen that all of the above have been nurfed so bad in MOD16 it's there is little difference in what you have. If I am a new player and have the means (aka money to buy Zen) to get all these upgrades but they are scaled to be worth the same on whatever level I am on, then why spend the money to do so? Lower gear items make running lower content easier as a new player so WTF would I spend money on a new epic mount or a coal to upgrade my gear/enchants if its useless or even prohibitive to do so? On one hand Cryptic wants us to spend more Zen but you (devs) make it nearly worthless to do so, why should we? I dare you to answer this. Why?
Also, from a simple consumer and legal perspective you better change every tool tip in the Zen store on ANYTHING that gives us stats (mounts, companions) because as of now, they don't indicate "+2000 power unless you are running lower level stuff where you will receive considerably less". If I pay for something to boost my damn stats/gear it better do what it says or you are going to owe thousands of people refunds and run the risk of horrible press in age where the government is already looking to clamp down on games like NW who use loot boxes anyway.
SMDH
Should we expect Chult to be unscaled in a later patch, or should we just wait for Mod17 and expect Barovia + Mod17 to be unscaled, and then Barovia+Mod17 when Mod18 is released, then Barovia to join the scaled campaign list with Mod19, leaving 18 and 17 as the two most recent unscaled campaigns?
QUESTION 2: The expert queue will be unscaled. The Advanced queue will be scaled. You've said you intend people to not be able to reach the stat caps regardless of advancement in scaled content.
... am I the only person who reads that and thinks you've designed this in a way that Expert queues will be EASIER for late-game players than Advanced and Intermediate queues, by design?
(Barring unfixed bugs, of course, which are the current killer in all late-game content and have been the killer in Castle Ravenloft for one full mod and one "special" mod so far.) Any ETA on the bug fixes to make it consistently playable?
@nitocris83
Given that you have trained 80% of the player base not to use the forums anymore by just not replying or even acknowledging our feedback there are still LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF POSTS ABOUT HOW MUCH THIS ASPECT OF SCALING DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO ANYONE BUT YOU AND YOUR TEAM. I wonder why on earth so many people would post about this one thing? They post even knowing it will not be acknowledged or read. I wonder why they do it?
Your TWO most recent patches prove that we can not trust a thing you said in your Live Stream. Let me try to get through to you one more time. I want to make sure you understand. This is all about the players perception of progression in your game and my perception of you and your company.
Let me try to help you understand. You are killing any sense of progression and nerfing EVERY SINGLE THING we have worked for in this game with your current approach to scaling.
From my point of view:
Why bother suffering through the BUGGED Lair of the Mad Mage Dungeon to earn new gear and items, when that gear and those items will be scaled down in all other content? Do you really think someone is going to spend months to upgrade any of the new equipment only to use it in one dungeon? You know the very dungeon they had to be able to complete 100s of times to get the seals needed to buy that new gear to begin with?
Hmmm.. If I can complete the dungeon at my current item level with the gear i currently have then why do I need the new gear? Progression? More content?
Why rank up anything at all? I have the gear score and stats needed to run LotMM already, why do anything else? You don't want us doing speed runs, you don't want us teaching others how to complete older content. So what exactly is the point?
Why even bother to earn AD, it is pointless. Guess there is no need to even do your Random Queues. REQ bugged again by the way. Way to go guys and girls! SMH
Why spend anything on this game? Also pointless. I mean if I do buy something you are only going to nerf it into the ground next MOD right? VIP? Might want to look into the changes there to Mr. Foss. Borderline false advertising. You guys still have not updated your own site. Might want to get someone on that.
Neverwinter VIP program page
Why bother even looking at or trying to balance or maximize my stats? Pointless. I'm maxed for endgame why bother doing anything else. Why bother having two sets of gear just to complete old content for useless rewards?
Why bother getting more boons. Pointless. I mean the HP boons STILL do not work.
Do you realize yet why I think this is all pointless? If I am a level 80 with balanced and maxed out stats there is NOTHING for me to do except the Lair of the Mad Mage and Master expeditions. Why would I want to do anything else? I worked to get the stats, gear, items, companions, mounts, bondings and enchants that I have.
You have in one stroke made all of that work POINTLESS because if I participate in ANY other content I am scaled down to below the required stats to be efficient at anything even though in level 80 content I am over cap on almost every single stat.
So we have to ask ourselves, Why do we play? I had several endgame characters. You nerfed one into the dirt, I stripped him and retired him. You made another so boring to play I stripped and retired him also. Between the two I had 3 Legendary mounts, several legendary companions and the best of the best gear, enchants and artifacts. I feel a loss and I am upset that it is no longer fun to play those characters that I put so much time, resources and real money into. Do you see why I am upset?
I now play a cleric (heal bot) and a broken rogue. Yep both endgame. Not really much fun playing either. I do the ME to help out friends. We do your Lair of the Mad Mage. It's broken, we told you this in preview. I'm really glad you held it back from release with the rest of MOD 16. I mean you needed to fix it right? Test it? Play it? Yeah it's still broken.
We (your customers) never agree on ANYTHING! We agree on this! Scaling in its current form KILLS the perception of progression. There are many other ways you could do it but you insist on doing it in a way that WE perceive as punishment for progressing. Punishment for using the very things you give us as rewards in chests and sell to us in your Zen market. See the problem here? EVEN IF WE ARE WRONG IN OUR PERCEPTION IN YOUR OPINION this is what we think and how we feel. You have done nothing to change this perception.
Yes some of us did ask for more difficult content. Scaling could be a good solution. BUT We did not ask you to remove all sense of progression from the game.
We stood by when you killed class synergy. (doubt you guys even knew it was in the game anyway)
Group synergy guide
Reddit thread
We stood by when you decided to TOTALLY change every single class in the game.
We put up with the nerfs to earning AD.
We put up with Random Queues both as new players and then as veterans.
We put up with the nerfs to VIP.
We put up with BROKEN CONTENT FOR FREAKING YEARS!
We put up with you using us as beta testers in LIVE content.
You told us you were listening. You told us you had fixed your game. It seems to me that you are not listening and once again MISSING the point. You are still pushing BUGGED content to live. Did you guys not even test your patch?
So are you listening or not?
Are you fixing the game or not?
Do you want us to stay and play your game or not?
You pretend like you don't understand this persons question. Here is a tip, how about you go to the Scaling feedback section of the preview forums and study up. If you can't understand after this post and reading that thread then there is no hope for you or your game. That's right, your game. You took our game away a long time ago.
You know how you guys try to condition people to want to buy your loot boxes? You have now successfully conditioned many of us to not want to play your game. NO PROGRESSION = NO FUN. NO FUN = NO MONEY.
Simple enough? Maybe if enough of us say it we can condition you.
You game in its current form Mr. Foss IS NOT FUN. If the game is not fun then I guess playing is pointless.
Don't take my word for it, go read the hundreds of posts in this thread. Go read the Hundreds of posts in the preview threads.
I know you didn't bother reading this, but now I feel better and I know for a fact that I have done my very best to help try and save this mess of a game. Your game, you took mine away a while back.
Friday: we're totally penalizing progressing
How can you justify not allowing level 80s to hit 70 stat caps? How can you justify level 80s getting outhealed and out dps'ed by level 70s? In 15 years of gaming, I have never seen players GET WORSE for having better gear.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Yeah we survived mod 6. We stayed. We survived bugs and glitches and trash end game content (looking at you CR). We survived whatever mod 15 was. I'm not sure how many people will continue this cycle of "do 3 dailies and run 1 dungeon", especially now that there's really no point.
what precisely is the role of the level 70 dungeons now? no one will be at level 70 for more than a blink of the eye so no one will be able to run this content unscaled/capped.
The traditional role of the t2s has been to help lower levels level up. get gear and stuff and junk. now what is their (t2) role?
The better geared players aren't going to go back for content that takes longer for worse rewards and that they aren't geared to play because arpen can't even hit cap.. the lower geared players have no chance at all of completing it if the better geared 80's can barely do it.
So the lower il levels have no content really. the higher il levels have the most recent dungeon and that's about it.
so with the scaling cap that keeps us far below where we need to be for level 70 or the dungeons not being level 80.. you've basically made all content without point except for the newest one. and it's only good for your best geared players.
so you've alienated the majority of the players with nothing to do..
so again I ask, what is the point of the current level 70 dungeons? what purpose are they supposed to be serving in this game? and what are you doing to make the reality line up with the goal?