I haven't yet run into the scaling buzzsaw simply because I've avoided any areas where I would be scaled until this all gets straightened out. I imagine I would be in ragequit mode if I was experiencing what everyone else is describing, so I've opted to just not put myself through it (what have I been doing, you might ask? Playing other games, to be honest, until things here get better). All that said, my major gripe at present has to do with decimation of build flexibility. I ran my CC-build CW through the Undermountain campaign and it felt just awful. No recovery and no control bonus from companions makes controlling enemies nigh impossible. The fact that none of her Insignia of Mastery were boosting her control strength only compounded the problem. I honestly felt like persona non grata.
I'm sure there will be people who say, "go for full DPS -- no one wants a CC-build in their group". I don't take her to dungeons. I solo with her, and up until Mod 16 the Oppressor build was perfectly viable for solo play. I couldn't care less what groups want from a CW when it comes to mine and the way I play her. Removing a perfectly viable build to satisfy the group meta rubs me the wrong way, especially since the whole point of all these changes was supposed to be to kill metas in the first place.
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
“Two places where scaling is not making players happy”
Still not getting it.
There is one thing that players don’t like about scaling; scaling makes them less effective in old content than in new content, invalidating progress.
It’s not hard.
The bugs and problems with mobs are secondary, so very secondary, to taking a character with 70k in stats at level 80 into scaled content and having 40k stats, 17k below the cap.
It’s that simple.
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
8
greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
Said it before elsewhere, at no point should content we've leveled past be more difficult than content we are at level for.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
I really don't know if I should continue to play the game due to the scaling and elimination of running dungeons solo. I say this because my pre-mod16 routine looked something like this...
Step 1. Run end-game content with the boy band (Guild mates), get butt kicked. Step 2. Grind AD to buy/upgrade enchantments/artifacts/etc... Grinding AD consisting of Random Queues, running dungeons with the boy band, solo dungeons, and buy low/sell high on AH, and sprinkle in some professions. Step 3. Do online research.... Youtube, Twitch, Reddit... Step 4, go to Step 1.
(Step 2 was fun because I would mix things up. I rarely capped my daily AD, but I made progress. Progress was often seen as more dps done and damage taken, solo a dungeon like SoT, then faster solo runs. Faster boy band dungeon runs. The point is I had a lot of options so I could change things up when I grew tied of something. I saw progression regardless of what content I ran.)
Post-mod16 routine Step 1. Run MEs, maybe do challenge campaign. Step 2, go to Step 1.
Why the change to the routine? -(Run end-game content) Can't run end-game content as I don't have high enough IL. Let's say I get my 19.5k toon to 20k as it shouldn't take to much work. Am I to only run LOMM until M17 drops? How will I progress as I get my butt kicked running LOMM? (See Grinding AD and Online research below) -(Grinding AD) Random Queues... no thank you. -(Grinding AD) running dungeons with the boy band... can't as the band is on a break. Some may never return. Let's pretend we all still played NW. Why would we want to spend the time to run the old dungeons? For the challenge? No... We did it to grind AD and get loot drops, so we could improve our characters. The fun is in the progression. -(Grinding AD) Solo dungeons... no longer possible. Why run solo? Sometimes nobody is on, sometimes I want to play for 30 minutes. Sometimes I just want to be alone. Sometimes it's a chore to get everyone grouped up. -(Grinding AD) AH and Professions... pretty difficult to do when you've lost the energy to play the game. -Online research... The NW online content creators (PC) have been virtually wiped out. Only a few remain and don't appear to get any support from the company.
Side note... From this day forward, progression seems only visible in the current mod or 2 (as of today that's M16 and M14). As you you'll see the fruits of your effort by unlocking the dungeon, finishing, then faster runs. If you can't complete the content before it starts to get scaled, not sure if you'll ever be able to complete it. I say this because the stats are capped and if you're not that good a player, stats can't bridge the gap.
Side note 2.... All the stat caps increased significantly with mod16, but the enchantments didn't. So they now provide only a small % of what they did pre-mod 16. Why rank up 13 enchantment to rank 15, so little stat gain compared to new caps. Seems like I should put the effort into upgrading all my mount insignias to legendary..... oh wait.... they will all be hard capped when I run old content.
Side note 3... better not as I think I have 15 to 20 more. Just so frustrated at the current state of the game and the apparent direction.
With scaling, people are extremely frustrated because it is too heavy handed. This seems to be reaching emergency levels of frustration, hence the stream and this thread. I don't think tweaking things as they are is a safe approach anymore. In an effort to stop the bleeding, the degree of the scaling should be momentarily relaxed a decent amount across the board. From there, you can tweak and turn the dials to tighten things back up a bit, but everyone can at least breath during the process instead of suffocating like they are now.
So I work to get my character stat capped and feeling good to play. Then through no fault of my own my stats are drastically cut in old content so that no matter what I do I could never make my character feel good again. That is what the devs think is ok. A stat capped player having BS artificial difficulty thrust upon them by having most of their attacks deflect, not penetrate defenses, get crushed by enemy crits with absolutely nothing I can do to make myself stronger. That's what they think players want...It's no wonder the game is in the HAMSTER state it is. The devs don't have a clue... Reading that this change is intentional and what they were aiming for just makes me want to quit. This game is circling the drain.
I've been here since beta, and NEVER in any of the mods were the PREVIOUS campaigns HARDER to do than the CURRENT campaign. I'm emphasizing four words for my point. I will admit, Mod 6 was, temporarily. But it got fixed, took a while to do so.
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.
Go into your guild Stronghold area with a fresh level 70 character - feel like a demigod. Go into your guild Stronghold area with a well equiped level 80 character - feel like a "critter".
There's no balance between cooldowns on player or companion abilities and cds on enemy abilities. It seems like they've cds that are around 1-3s while we've to deal with cds that are between 10 to 30s. While it also feels like they can chain "control" us, it looks like at least some of them have either complete or at least partial immunity to some controlling effects from our side.
This makes no sense, and neither does what we're "rewarded" with when running dungeons/skirmishes or even MEs. When fighting through dungeons/skirmishes with a level 80, we should at the very least see rewards for that level and not level 70 or even lower. When fighting through a ME and collecting all 9 relics we should at the very least get one usefull drop at the end.
Btw. taking away lifesteal from players, but leaving it with enemies that allready have more then enough other very annoying abilities feels just... wrong.
For a concept of scaling that works, look at the Borderlands or Diablo franchises. It may not be entirely suitable for NW and Diablo is kinda exreme scaling but it works. That's the key part, it WORKS. The concept used in those games could be translated across to NW without destroying anyone's brain either. And BONUS: You would have challenge for endgame players in lower level dungeons. Of course it's only an idea. But I noticed it because I've gone back to both and realised how awesome their scaling is compared to Neverwinter's.
i knew this mod wasn't going to be ready and if there not going to fix it and do it right than yes i think mod15 should come back tell they sort everything out cause i really hate the scaling and how mobs and bosses should not go through you in just two hits and how companions should not just stand around you as well and do nothing when your in a fight cause this game might help you through stuff faster but it isn't the best mod i have ever seen so why make us all rage quit
The concept and goals of challenge campaigns was reviewed and signed off by me- with the ideas that players after hitting level 80 may not have completed or even started some of the previous campaigns, and that the risk reward of the scaling was sound. Some of the bugs that we found at launch clearly got past us, and we have made great strides to addressing them- and based upon player feedback we are still adjusting the scaling, and looking at the risk/reward loop and our original ideas for this system.
...
I don't think there is any "may not have" about it. There's no way a player can run a toon through Dread Ring, IWD, etc... through to Barovia without hitting L80.
In all likelihood they will hit 71 before finishing Sharandar. At which point they will HAVE to skip to Undermountain to level up to 80, in order to survive the Scaling down they will otherwise experience in any zone other than UM.
They will then have to decide whether or not to face the scaling down in the basic L70 zones in some sort of order or skip straight to the most recent campaign (the one that isn't scaled down) in order to try and get a few extra Boons in order to... (and I can't believe I'm saying this)... SURVIVE THE OLD CONTENT WITH THEIR NEW LEVEL 80 CHARACTER because it so much harder than the new content.
And believe me when I say this... When, in two mods time, Undermountain itself gets tarred with the down scaling brush, the way people are losing their HAMSTER NOW over scaling will be put to shame. This rolling "We won't scale down the most recent old content" is going to make leveling up from 70 to 80 in Undermountain an absolute farce the minute it becomes the second most recent content and the different zones become subject to scaling.
The impact that scaling in Undermountain will have, will make the complaints on Mod 16 look like a hearty slap on the back for a job well done.
As far as I can see, there are 2 solutions to this. Either rescale all the zones and dungeons after say Dread Ring, to L80 and don;t apply scaling, or keep content at L70 and drop scaling so that it only impacts stuff like HP, Damage and Power and allows players to cap ratings they otherwise have capped at L80 in contemporary L80 content.
Simply suck it up, accept it's a mess and just let people be better than the old content, like they earned.
If scaling in lower level content exists because there is some code related issue that breaks things if the disparity between opposing stats is too high, FIX THAT instead of imposing punitive levels of down scaling.
But whatever the reason... Any solution that doesn't deliver on characters having AT LEAST the same ratings/percentage chances on opposing rolls as they have in level appropriate content, when scaled down in any situation is NOT going to be acceptable to the majority of players. Stop dancing around this and sort it out. Quit the short term quick fix strategy and mend it!
6
darthpotaterMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,261Arc User
I am sorry that it came across that way. I am sure there are many times during the work day when I look like a deer in the head lights. I was honestly trying at first to parse if the question meant that adjusting stat caps was being asked as an option for players to be able to choose, and how that would then affect progression, as in, would it also scale rewards. The goal of level scaling is that you're scaled to a given challenge which includes scale ratings, aka not letting them stay capped.
What that question did do, is reinforced to me as lead designer two places where level scaling is not making players happy. After I had a chance to think about these things more, I started to wonder that since we are adjusting stats on the player end, did we look deep enough into the balance of critter ratings- as this can really make a difference on how even level scaled stats can feel ineffective and frankly not powerful. The concept and goals of challenge campaigns was reviewed and signed off by me- with the ideas that players after hitting level 80 may not have completed or even started some of the previous campaigns, and that the risk reward of the scaling was sound. Some of the bugs that we found at launch clearly got past us, and we have made great strides to addressing them- and based upon player feedback we are still adjusting the scaling, and looking at the risk/reward loop and our original ideas for this system.
This is not a done deal, but an ongoing conversation. Thanks again for this dialogue. M.K.
Even if your goals of scaling are not players goals, you can still make players happy. Use a scaling method like Tales of old. More debuffs as the campaign is older. But keep everything else, so if you have a rank 15 or a rank 14 weapon enchantment, you still feel the difference.
And the most important thing: I as an end game player with all the campaings done, I am fine doing CN in 20 minutes instead of 5, or other older dungeons with a challenge. But give me a carrot. Give me SOMETHING as a reward. You have lots of options, here are some examples:
Binded preservation / coal wards
Enchanting stones in various levels (4-5-6)
Masterwork materials (even if they are useless now they will be usefull in the future)
Companion upgrade tokens
Mount upgrade tokens (yes this doesnt exist but well you could implement it)
I agree that experienced players with top equipment should be stronger after scaling than beginers because they invested a lot of their time and probably moneys into all that. And.. Exactly this thing was said by lead designer at last Q&A stream. So I don't see reason for worries here because cryptics know about this point and probably they just need some time to tune it up.
They had months before launch. We are almost 1 month after launch. They don't need time. They need to understand why it's bad.
I've been here since beta, and NEVER in any of the mods were the PREVIOUS campaigns HARDER to do than the CURRENT campaign. I'm emphasizing four words for my point. I will admit, Mod 6 was, temporarily. But it got fixed, took a while to do so.
mod 6 was actually not as bad as this mod imo. at no other point in game history did they actively kill progression.
I am a developper myself, and yes bugs are part of the release process. Correcting them is the following step, to keep customer trust and satisfaction. Saying "We are aware of the bug and will correct it as soon as possible", and actually doing it is called professionalism. There is like 80% of the current bugs who were reported months ago on the preview. And on a big part of them, no answer, no acknowledgement of them as bug. We got the famous "Scaling is in a good place now" and "Works as intented" when tons of players report than something is wrong. That's not what I call professionalism, and I won't name it to stay polite.
Thomas Foss said it himself on the post. Scaling is meant to make you loose your cap, which is plain wrong, and utterly punishing progression. That's why I said "They need to understand".
That's nothing personnal dolrey, we are all on the same broken boat, do not forget to wear your safety jacket
9
greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
> Why? Thats not progression, and why people want content to be easy, i understand wanting rewards.. but the content old and new should be HARD. Thatd what neverwinter is about! Neverwinter was the best from mod 0 till mod 3, we need difficult Dungeons and rewards, as for stats i dont really care if u dont hit the caps or not, like seriously its a small problem.
How is gearing up, upgrading your stuff so you can survive in L80 content, and then going back to a zone 10 levels beneath you and you getting your HAMSTER kicked "progression"?
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
Mr Foss I see a reluctance in your response to recognise the problem that you have created. It is not scaling per se that the player base is objecting to it is the hard cap whereby level 71 - 80 fully optimised players are placed at a disadvantage in comparison to level 70 just basic item players in old content. Why would anyone level 71 - 80 in their right mind run that old content even if the rewards are made better. I played to make things easier. If in a low level dungeon you give me a level 15 enchantment it has no value, except in very limited areas, because it will not make me stronger in that content. This will be my last attempt in this thread at trying to show you why the scaling system you have introduced is so bad for player retention. Other forum contributors have posted far better explanations than me and I will continue to support what they say but I am too despondent at your response to say anything further. I feel that it is a lost cause
I understand the want to cater to newer players all games need that. When that new player hits level 80 and then wants to do a random q to get AD they will leave. So at most you are looking at maybe a month of gameplay for a casual player. Are you hoping they spend money within that time? If they dont its done. You wont receive any money from that player.
Comments
I'm sure there will be people who say, "go for full DPS -- no one wants a CC-build in their group". I don't take her to dungeons. I solo with her, and up until Mod 16 the Oppressor build was perfectly viable for solo play. I couldn't care less what groups want from a CW when it comes to mine and the way I play her. Removing a perfectly viable build to satisfy the group meta rubs me the wrong way, especially since the whole point of all these changes was supposed to be to kill metas in the first place.
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
“In scaled content you will not hit cap”
“Two places where scaling is not making players happy”
Still not getting it.
There is one thing that players don’t like about scaling; scaling makes them less effective in old content than in new content, invalidating progress.
It’s not hard.
The bugs and problems with mobs are secondary, so very secondary, to taking a character with 70k in stats at level 80 into scaled content and having 40k stats, 17k below the cap.
It’s that simple.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
I really don't know if I should continue to play the game due to the scaling and elimination of running dungeons solo. I say this because my pre-mod16 routine looked something like this...
Step 1. Run end-game content with the boy band (Guild mates), get butt kicked.
Step 2. Grind AD to buy/upgrade enchantments/artifacts/etc...
Grinding AD consisting of Random Queues, running dungeons with the boy band, solo dungeons, and buy low/sell high on AH, and sprinkle in some professions.
Step 3. Do online research.... Youtube, Twitch, Reddit...
Step 4, go to Step 1.
(Step 2 was fun because I would mix things up. I rarely capped my daily AD, but I made progress. Progress was often seen as more dps done and damage taken, solo a dungeon like SoT, then faster solo runs. Faster boy band dungeon runs. The point is I had a lot of options so I could change things up when I grew tied of something. I saw progression regardless of what content I ran.)
Post-mod16 routine
Step 1. Run MEs, maybe do challenge campaign.
Step 2, go to Step 1.
Why the change to the routine?
-(Run end-game content) Can't run end-game content as I don't have high enough IL. Let's say I get my 19.5k toon to 20k as it shouldn't take to much work. Am I to only run LOMM until M17 drops? How will I progress as I get my butt kicked running LOMM? (See Grinding AD and Online research below)
-(Grinding AD) Random Queues... no thank you.
-(Grinding AD) running dungeons with the boy band... can't as the band is on a break. Some may never return. Let's pretend we all still played NW. Why would we want to spend the time to run the old dungeons? For the challenge? No... We did it to grind AD and get loot drops, so we could improve our characters. The fun is in the progression.
-(Grinding AD) Solo dungeons... no longer possible. Why run solo? Sometimes nobody is on, sometimes I want to play for 30 minutes. Sometimes I just want to be alone. Sometimes it's a chore to get everyone grouped up.
-(Grinding AD) AH and Professions... pretty difficult to do when you've lost the energy to play the game.
-Online research... The NW online content creators (PC) have been virtually wiped out. Only a few remain and don't appear to get any support from the company.
Side note... From this day forward, progression seems only visible in the current mod or 2 (as of today that's M16 and M14). As you you'll see the fruits of your effort by unlocking the dungeon, finishing, then faster runs. If you can't complete the content before it starts to get scaled, not sure if you'll ever be able to complete it. I say this because the stats are capped and if you're not that good a player, stats can't bridge the gap.
Side note 2.... All the stat caps increased significantly with mod16, but the enchantments didn't. So they now provide only a small % of what they did pre-mod 16. Why rank up 13 enchantment to rank 15, so little stat gain compared to new caps. Seems like I should put the effort into upgrading all my mount insignias to legendary..... oh wait.... they will all be hard capped when I run old content.
Side note 3... better not as I think I have 15 to 20 more. Just so frustrated at the current state of the game and the apparent direction.
Thank you for taking the time to read these comments.
I know there is a lot of vitriol and anger here, so hats off to you for suffering through it all to get a better picture of what we are upset about.
Original Serenity Mostly Retired DC
Tokarek Bearded Dwarven OP Tankadin
JuiceHead Goofy Human GWF
Member of H3llzWarriors and Limitless.
Go into your guild Stronghold area with a well equiped level 80 character - feel like a "critter".
There's no balance between cooldowns on player or companion abilities and cds on enemy abilities. It seems like they've cds that are around 1-3s while we've to deal with cds that are between 10 to 30s. While it also feels like they can chain "control" us, it looks like at least some of them have either complete or at least partial immunity to some controlling effects from our side.
This makes no sense, and neither does what we're "rewarded" with when running dungeons/skirmishes or even MEs. When fighting through dungeons/skirmishes with a level 80, we should at the very least see rewards for that level and not level 70 or even lower. When fighting through a ME and collecting all 9 relics we should at the very least get one usefull drop at the end.
Btw. taking away lifesteal from players, but leaving it with enemies that allready have more then enough other very annoying abilities feels just... wrong.
Guild: Ruathym Corsairs
There's no way a player can run a toon through Dread Ring, IWD, etc... through to Barovia without hitting L80.
In all likelihood they will hit 71 before finishing Sharandar. At which point they will HAVE to skip to Undermountain to level up to 80, in order to survive the Scaling down they will otherwise experience in any zone other than UM.
They will then have to decide whether or not to face the scaling down in the basic L70 zones in some sort of order or skip straight to the most recent campaign (the one that isn't scaled down) in order to try and get a few extra Boons in order to... (and I can't believe I'm saying this)... SURVIVE THE OLD CONTENT WITH THEIR NEW LEVEL 80 CHARACTER because it so much harder than the new content.
And believe me when I say this... When, in two mods time, Undermountain itself gets tarred with the down scaling brush, the way people are losing their HAMSTER NOW over scaling will be put to shame. This rolling "We won't scale down the most recent old content" is going to make leveling up from 70 to 80 in Undermountain an absolute farce the minute it becomes the second most recent content and the different zones become subject to scaling.
The impact that scaling in Undermountain will have, will make the complaints on Mod 16 look like a hearty slap on the back for a job well done.
As far as I can see, there are 2 solutions to this. Either rescale all the zones and dungeons after say Dread Ring, to L80 and don;t apply scaling, or keep content at L70 and drop scaling so that it only impacts stuff like HP, Damage and Power and allows players to cap ratings they otherwise have capped at L80 in contemporary L80 content.
Simply suck it up, accept it's a mess and just let people be better than the old content, like they earned.
If scaling in lower level content exists because there is some code related issue that breaks things if the disparity between opposing stats is too high, FIX THAT instead of imposing punitive levels of down scaling.
But whatever the reason...
Any solution that doesn't deliver on characters having AT LEAST the same ratings/percentage chances on opposing rolls as they have in level appropriate content, when scaled down in any situation is NOT going to be acceptable to the majority of players.
Stop dancing around this and sort it out. Quit the short term quick fix strategy and mend it!
You can still fix this.
Even if your goals of scaling are not players goals, you can still make players happy.
Use a scaling method like Tales of old. More debuffs as the campaign is older. But keep everything else, so if you have a rank 15 or a rank 14 weapon enchantment, you still feel the difference.
And the most important thing: I as an end game player with all the campaings done, I am fine doing CN in 20 minutes instead of 5, or other older dungeons with a challenge. But give me a carrot. Give me SOMETHING as a reward. You have lots of options, here are some examples:
Caturday Survivor
Elemental Evil Survivor
Undermontain Survivor
Mod20 Combat rework Survivor
Mod22 Refinement rework Survivor
Hello, Easy one to understand for you:
lvl 80 critters, 68K base stat // lvl 70 critters 57K base stat ( A 9K stat difference )
lvl 80 player, X stat // lvl 80 scaled player X - 9K stats
A.K.A Progress is rewarded.
We are almost 1 month after launch.
They don't need time. They need to understand why it's bad.
I am a developper myself, and yes bugs are part of the release process. Correcting them is the following step, to keep customer trust and satisfaction. Saying "We are aware of the bug and will correct it as soon as possible", and actually doing it is called professionalism.
There is like 80% of the current bugs who were reported months ago on the preview. And on a big part of them, no answer, no acknowledgement of them as bug. We got the famous "Scaling is in a good place now" and "Works as intented" when tons of players report than something is wrong. That's not what I call professionalism, and I won't name it to stay polite.
Thomas Foss said it himself on the post. Scaling is meant to make you loose your cap, which is plain wrong, and utterly punishing progression. That's why I said "They need to understand".
That's nothing personnal dolrey, we are all on the same broken boat, do not forget to wear your safety jacket