Honest negative feedback about m16. Without raging or trolling.

dolrey · May 2019

Hello. In this thread I would like to give some negative feedback about m16 to address possible misunderstanding between developers and players.

1.1 Was class balance needed?
Yes. Because healers should heal. Tanks should do tanking. While dds should deal damage. And class mechanics of m15 were just nonsense.
1.2 Was class balance successful?
Finally class roles became to normal. There are different bugs exactly in different skills but they are not critical and overall class balance is still sucesfull (not m16 overall, here I talk only about class balance). And raging about class changes is mostly caused by the fact that players forgot true roles of their classes and they forgot easy rules of battle process in mmos.

2.1 Was scaling needed?
Yes. Because having 99% of content easy as abc is not good. If you think that it is normal to easy faceroll all dungeons in 10 mins then probably you can find yourself in mobile games with autocombat. Content for new players should exist but overall game should give some challenge after all.
2.2 Was scaling successful?
No. Too many things are broken and not thought out anough. Too much stats in low lvl dungeons again. High rank stones are useless. Etc etc.. But it does not mean that scaling should be deleted from the game. It should exist because of previously described reasons but only after fix.

3. And yes. Bugs. Lags. And again bugs. OVERALL IDEAS OF DEVELOPERS ARE RIGHT. But their realisation is.. well.. awful

This is 90% of that why players call NWO broken. Game just need better quality in technical things etc. Cryptics you finally started to do right things. Just do them right (not as always). And everyone will love your game because it has very high potential which is unfortunately nullified by low quality of technical things.

So thank you for your attention and sorry for my english. Hope this thread can give to developers more info about reasons of negative feedback.

honestabe73 · May 2019

I can only agree with 2.2 and 3. Classes and content needed tweaking, a light refreshing, not a sledge hammer. Been a player since launch and I just can't log in anymore, this is a shell of its former self.

kreatyve · May 2019

There are still a LOT of bugs that need to be fixed, ASAP.

Once they fix as many of those as possible, then they need to take another look at the scaling and do SOMETHING with it because it's not fun in it's current state.

kemnimtarkas · May 2019

kreatyve said:
There are still a LOT of bugs that need to be fixed, ASAP. Once they fix as many of those as possible, then they need to take another look at the scaling and do SOMETHING with it because it's not fun in it's current state.

That's my main concern. The main draw of NWO for me is the fun associated with the combat animations and mechanics when fighting trash mobs and bosses. And right now, NWO's strongest selling point has been nerfed into a pale ghost of its former glory.

eolee · May 2019

kreatyve said:
There are still a LOT of bugs that need to be fixed, ASAP. Once they fix as many of those as possible, then they need to take another look at the scaling and do SOMETHING with it because it's not fun in it's current state.

Yet they made the decision to add a 30s logout everywhere, i even had it in runic corruption. They decided to nerf the Temple boon from SH. They broke even more things like tenebrous or the workshop or HE rewards not claimable, or dungeons in an attempt to fix.
They decided to do that instead of fixing a list of bugs long like my arm. No wait, long like my 2 arms. No wait... Problem is the list is long but its like the Barrel of Danaïdes: remove one bug at the bottom of the barrel but an other one adds up on the top. You can never empty it.

darthpotater · May 2019

You forgot REWARDS. If you want to scale things, you need to scale rewards.

And rewards make people more patient while they fix this sea of bugs. My mind still implodes if they think players will run scaled content for a peridot and a blue armor.

How a basic thing like rewards is not adressed in a game revamp like this? how do you change 90% of the game and you dont think in the rewards?

robai · May 2019

Here is how I see it:

1.1 Was class balance needed?
It depends.
if we are talking about dungeons or endgame locations then yes.
Rogues should do traps (and traps should be dangerous) and should be able to unlock chests.
Wizards should CC.
Healers should heal.
Tanks should tank.

If we are talking about the rest of the game then class balance doesn't really matter, I mean role playing isn't important at all, because it's mostly for for solo play, i.e. for relax playing while preparing your toons for endgame stuff.

1.2 Was class balance successful?
No, because this game doesn't have Rogue or CC roles yet.
My healer still fails to heal (well, I wasn't good healer even before U16, because I can't select target for healing as I could in DDO, but after U16 my healer can't even survive, let alone healing others, where is Astral Shield?).
Before U16 I've had one very good tank (GF) and a good tank (Paladin). Now they both suck (the main reason is that companions no longer heal - this should be top priority to fix, I'll never tank anymore because of this). Even with a good healer in the party companions helped a lot, because in tough fights healer has to heal 5 members (not to mention that after U16 all timers of powers were increased), so some self sufficiency is needed even from tanks (pots have too big timers, and it's annoying to watch the potion timer since mobs now move very fast and cast very fast, so you are standing in red circles most of the time).

2.1 Was scaling needed?
No.
Endgame players should play end game content when they want a challenge. If high tier dungeons are too easy then the difficulty should be increased there (i.e. not in the whole game), or there should be an option to choose even harder mode (I don't mind better rewards for those who do harder difficulties).
Low lvl content should be easy to play with powerful toons (why that could possibly be problem?). No scaling is needed there.
You don't have to do those low lvl dungeons if it's boring to you, feel free to get your daily AD from doing harder dungeons on harder difficulties.

2.2 Was scaling successful?
No, because it wasn't needed in the first place.

karvare · May 2019

Ok, mod 15 we did have some scaling. Let us examine how that scaling worked shall we? Did that scaling make legendary heroes perform worse than or on par with at level players? Did your level 70 character perform worse than or equal to, in say the Grave Yard near the dragon, a level appropriate?

Does Conan climb the mountain to slay Crom, only to succumb to mountain goats on the way down?

regenerde · May 2019

kreatyve said:
There are still a LOT of bugs that need to be fixed, ASAP. Once they fix as many of those as possible, then they need to take another look at the scaling and do SOMETHING with it because it's not fun in it's current state.

Well, the problem is, that it feels like they're either allready working on the next module, or that not enough Devs are left for Neverwinter to actually fix the major bugs and scaling... or that they have their priorities on what should be fixed first, second and so on really kind of backwards.

I mean, companions are broken in general since Undermountain and the last official word on only the healing ones was "We will look into it!", and while enemies can swarm our characters within seconds and drown us in either crowd controling or damaging abilities our companions just stand around enjoy the view and do little to nothing to assist or heal us!

The same goes for enchantments, they either don't work at all (i think i saw someone mentioning that some of them are also broken since Undermountain), or so little that they're hardly noticeable at all. They should increase the damage of for example weapon enchantments to 1% per enchantment rank, and do something similar to armor enchantments as well.

Last but not least, the person in charge should really be forced to play the game on the life server with a fresh level 80 for a while, to see for themself how mucked up the game is right now.

kreatyve · May 2019

regenerde said:

kreatyve said:
There are still a LOT of bugs that need to be fixed, ASAP. Once they fix as many of those as possible, then they need to take another look at the scaling and do SOMETHING with it because it's not fun in it's current state.
Well, the problem is, that it feels like they're either allready working on the next module, or that not enough Devs are left for Neverwinter to actually fix the major bugs and scaling... or that they have their priorities on what should be fixed first, second and so on really kind of backwards.

I mean, companions are broken in general since Undermountain and the last official word on only the healing ones was "We will look into it!", and while enemies can swarm our characters within seconds and drown us in either crowd controling or damaging abilities our companions just stand around enjoy the view and do little to nothing to assist or heal us!

The same goes for enchantments, they either don't work at all (i think i saw someone mentioning that some of them are also broken since Undermountain), or so little that they're hardly noticeable at all. They should increase the damage of for example weapon enchantments to 1% per enchantment rank, and do something similar to armor enchantments as well.

Last but not least, the person in charge should really be forced to play the game on the life server with a fresh level 80 for a while, to see for themself how mucked up the game is right now.

The size of the team hasn't changed. As others have left, they brought in new people. This is extremely normal for the industry as a whole.

And they do play. Some of them play daily. I have a couple on my friends list that I see online pretty much every day. I don't share their identities because I was asked not to. They don't reveal themselves either, and the reasons why should be pretty obvious.

photeus · May 2019

The main, overwhelming problem the community goes back to is the scaling and how end game characters feel weak in low level content.

The level 80 content is overall easy. ME are easy and the best part of Undermountain. ME are getting boring because of limited tile sets.

Mid range 70 content is absurd. Epic Cragmire boss does crazy damage, fire everywhere, takes 10-15 minutes of beating on him. Our speed was taken away while enemies were given 200-300% more. Our combat was slowed to a crawl while enemies CC is so prevalent that some fights have us locked.

nathanjm · May 2019

Already posted my feedback about the high "friction" of starting mod16 in another thread here.

robai · May 2019

darthpotater said:
You forgot REWARDS. If you want to scale things, you need to scale rewards.

And rewards make people more patient while they fix this sea of bugs. My mind still implodes if they think players will run scaled content for a peridot and a blue armor.

How a basic thing like rewards is not adressed in a game revamp like this? how do you change 90% of the game and you dont think in the rewards?

Yeah, better rewards is better than nothing, but it won't really be a good reason to run low lvl content (unless really good rewards, but don't think it would be a good idea, because then nobody would do endgame content), because for new players (or your alts) it slows down the process working on boons (and thus no fun to play the game).

It looks like Devs thinking about endgame players only, so that those players could have more fun to enter low lvl areas too (like Dread Ring, etc.), but that's just wrong thinking, because after U16 there is no reason to start playing this game, because Devs making the game for endgame players only (even I was starting to look for other games, already installed one yesterday).

leonidrex · May 2019

robai#6206 said:
Here is how I see it:

1.1 Was class balance needed?
It depends.
if we are talking about dungeons or endgame locations then yes.
Rogues should do traps (and traps should be dangerous) and should be able to unlock chests.
Wizards should CC.
Healers should heal.
Tanks should tank.

If we are talking about the rest of the game then class balance doesn't really matter, I mean role playing isn't important at all, because it's mostly for for solo play, i.e. for relax playing while preparing your toons for endgame stuff.

1.2 Was class balance successful?
No, because this game doesn't have Rogue or CC roles yet.
My healer still fails to heal (well, I wasn't good healer even before U16, because I can't select target for healing as I could in DDO, but after U16 my healer can't even survive, let alone healing others, where is Astral Shield?).
Before U16 I've had one very good tank (GF) and a good tank (Paladin). Now they both suck (the main reason is that companions no longer heal - this should be top priority to fix, I'll never tank anymore because of this). Even with a good healer in the party companions helped a lot, because in tough fights healer has to heal 5 members (not to mention that after U16 all timers of powers were increased), so some self sufficiency is needed even from tanks (pots have too big timers, and it's annoying to watch the potion timer since mobs now move very fast and cast very fast, so you are standing in red circles most of the time).

2.1 Was scaling needed?
No.
Endgame players should play end game content when they want a challenge. If high tier dungeons are too easy then the difficulty should be increased there (i.e. not in the whole game), or there should be an option to choose even harder mode (I don't mind better rewards for those who do harder difficulties).
Low lvl content should be easy to play with powerful toons (why that could possibly be problem?). No scaling is needed there.
You don't have to do those low lvl dungeons if it's boring to you, feel free to get your daily AD from doing harder dungeons on harder difficulties.

2.2 Was scaling successful?
No, because it wasn't needed in the first place.

rogues dont HAVE to do with traps, there are different ways of handling things.
bosses could have mobs that heal, and rogues could have healing reduction powers, or long cast spells, that can be stopped by specific CC. something could be done to make TR capable of revealing a hidden path, CW to teleport to different platform to skip something, or use something arcane to give buff during boss fight. paladin/dc to have a prayer and reduce effectiveness of the demons etc.

adinosii · May 2019

kreatyve said:
There are still a LOT of bugs that need to be fixed, ASAP. Once they fix as many of those as possible, then they need to take another look at the scaling and do SOMETHING with it because it's not fun in it's current state.

What I just don't understand is why they did not implement simple proportional scaling - meaning that if you are at X% of "maximum efficiency" for an area your own level, you will be at %X in any other area. This is not flawless - there is a problem when people outlevel content and do not upgrade their gear, but it has the big advantage of maintaining relative standings - and does keep gear progression meaningful. As second "should do" thing would be to revise rewards - with lower-level content being harder, but the rewards kept the same, the reward/effort ratio has dropped below the point where it is worthwhile.

Now, I am personally boycotting any lower-level content, as it does not feel sufficiently entertaining or rewarding to be worth my time, LoMM is barely worth doing - except just for the seals to buy pants/shirts/rings - the armour is so badly designed that chasing it is a waste of time.

That leaves MEs as the only thing I really do these days (OK, I did some CTAs to get the 3 purple drops but that's it). I was getting bored in M15 - it was too easy, but I'm even more bored now.

I'll probably take a break for a few weeks and see if things improve.

robai · May 2019

leonidrex said:
rogues dont HAVE to do with traps, there are different ways of handling things.

Before I've started to play this game, it was is heavily advertised as being DnD type of game (in many places).

Here are DnD rules:
http://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/DnD_BasicRules_2018.pdf

On page 28 you can see this:
Many rogues focus on stealth and deception, while others refine the skills that help them in a dungeon environment, such as climbing, finding and disarming traps, and opening locks.

In DDO my main character was Rogue and I really enjoyed playing him (traps are deadly there, and you need to build a Rogue properly in order to able to disarm traps in end game content, a trapper is always welcome in such dungeons, sometimes even mandatory).
Several years later I came to Neverwinter and created a Rogue (btw, under character creation disarming traps was advertised as an awesome feature of Rogue).
After couple months I realized that Neverwinter has no actual traps, it was such a big disappointment.
Unlocking chests is another skill missing, it was such a fun to get more loot when someone in party can unlock chest (either by Wiz/Sorc spell, or by unlock skill of Rogue/Artificer), especially useful when farming new items.

Speaking of roles, Neverwinter also missing a Crowd Control class. In DDO I've had a Wizard, who can control mobs for 50 secs. At endgame mobs hit very hard, that's why having a CC in party is so important there. Sadly no class can do CC in Neverwinter (the control time is just a joke).

So, the conclusion is that Neverwinter has nothing to do with DnD at all (it's not even similar in any way, there is no difficulty class at all). It's just a hack and slash game, without much roles (just dps, healer, tanks, meh).

leonidrex · May 2019

robai#6206 said:

leonidrex said:
rogues dont HAVE to do with traps, there are different ways of handling things.
Before I've started to play this game, it was is heavily advertised as being DnD type of game (in many places).

Here are DnD rules:
http://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/DnD_BasicRules_2018.pdf

On page 28 you can see this:
Many rogues focus on stealth and deception, while others refine the skills that help them in a dungeon environment, such as climbing, finding and disarming traps, and opening locks.

In DDO my main character was Rogue and I really enjoyed playing him (traps are deadly there, and you need to build a Rogue properly in order to able to disarm traps in end game content, a trapper is always welcome in such dungeons, sometimes even mandatory).
Several years later I came to Neverwinter and created a Rogue (btw, under character creation disarming traps was advertised as an awesome feature of Rogue).
After couple months I realized that Neverwinter has no actual traps, it was such a big disappointment.
Unlocking chests is another skill missing, it was such a fun to get more loot when someone in party can unlock chest (either by Wiz/Sorc spell, or by unlock skill of Rogue/Artificer), especially useful when farming new items.

Speaking of roles, Neverwinter also missing a Crowd Control class. In DDO I've had a Wizard, who can control mobs for 50 secs. At endgame mobs hit very hard, that's why having a CC in party is so important there. Sadly no class can do CC in Neverwinter (the control time is just a joke).

So, the conclusion is that Neverwinter has nothing to do with DnD at all (it's not even similar in any way, there is no difficulty class at all). It's just a hack and slash game, without much roles (just dps, healer, tanks, meh).

the thing is, its almost impossible to code traps in a mmo like this, best you can do is memorise, walk up and press F.
in DnD there are different types of rogues, some use magic. help themself with illusions. or more assassin like rogues, that could use poisons to weaken foes. or mb certain gadgets ( smoke bombs flash bombs ) to disorient oponents.

nitocris83 · May 2019

Thank you @dolrey for your feedback; I will share it with the rest of the team.

mebengalsfan · May 2019

dolrey said:
Hello. In this thread I would like to give some negative feedback about m16 to address possible misunderstanding between developers and players.

1.1 Was class balance needed?
Yes. Because healers should heal. Tanks should do tanking. While dds should deal damage. And class mechanics of m15 were just nonsense.
1.2 Was class balance successful?
Finally class roles became to normal. There are different bugs exactly in different skills but they are not critical and overall class balance is still sucesfull (not m16 overall, here I talk only about class balance). And raging about class changes is mostly caused by the fact that players forgot true roles of their classes and they forgot easy rules of battle process in mmos.

2.1 Was scaling needed?
Yes. Because having 99% of content easy as abc is not good. If you think that it is normal to easy faceroll all dungeons in 10 mins then probably you can find yourself in mobile games with autocombat. Content for new players should exist but overall game should give some challenge after all.
2.2 Was scaling successful?
No. Too many things are broken and not thought out anough. Too much stats in low lvl dungeons again. High rank stones are useless. Etc etc.. But it does not mean that scaling should be deleted from the game. It should exist because of previously described reasons but only after fix.

3. And yes. Bugs. Lags. And again bugs. OVERALL IDEAS OF DEVELOPERS ARE RIGHT. But their realisation is.. well.. awful This is 90% of that why players call NWO broken. Game just need better quality in technical things etc. Cryptics you finally started to do right things. Just do them right (not as always). And everyone will love your game because it has very high potential which is unfortunately nullified by low quality of technical things.

So thank you for your attention and sorry for my english. Hope this thread can give to developers more info about reasons of negative feedback.

I keep hearing how roles needed to be better defined than they were in prior mods such as healers needed to heal and tanks needed to tank. As someone that main a cleric I healed every time I played my cleric. As someone that played a fighter also regularly up to mod 15 I tanked. Stating that roles were not being used in the game is horse HAMSTER. Without tanks damage dealer would be dead quicker and without a healer again death was more likely to happen. Unlike mod 15 and prior it is now easier to die do to removal of life steal stat, which was a bigger problem than the actual role of healer or tank.

The other issue with prior mods was how much power was getting shared especially through bondings, buffing, and debuffing. The development team needed to tackle those areas and the game would have been better. The power we use to get from a DC is now in our gear and basically balancing out what we already got from a DC or OP. As for buffing and debuffing it has basially been removed. However, prior to mod 16 I'vs been asking for the devs to create a unique role (like healer or tank) and make this role be the sole source for buffs in a group and yet we get mod 16 without this role. There is still a probably of this unique role being added down the line.

Scaling vs progression - this is a problem within MMOs and developers have tried and tried to tackle this so that players get scaled but still see progression. NWO completely failed in this regards. Stat clamping, scaling, diminishing returns, etc... are way to reduce players effectiveness in lower content but still allow them to see progression if implemented correctly. Cryptic seems focused fixing critter and not the actual core problem around scaling in the game. It will take quite a while to fix the critters but scaling will continue to be an issue and player that reach level 80 will find older content harder than it should be do to how scaling is working ATM.

Bugs - Cryptic is known for releasing content with bugs, fixing some but not all of them and that is that.

I'm already hearing about mod 17 and items that will be coming in it. This means to me as a player is that we may see at most two more patch fixes, with one probably being more ideal given Cryptic history. With that said, would many on here continue to play knowing that the fixes will be pushed into mod 17 or even mod 18? I look at the history of this game and how things are handled; the only time Cryptic seems to get a fix out rather quickly is if it negatively impacts them financially.

I'm just waiting to see if Cryptic will remove scaling after mod 16 lands on consoles.

silverkelt · May 2019

adinosii said:

kreatyve said:
There are still a LOT of bugs that need to be fixed, ASAP. Once they fix as many of those as possible, then they need to take another look at the scaling and do SOMETHING with it because it's not fun in it's current state.
What I just don't understand is why they did not implement simple proportional scaling - meaning that if you are at X% of "maximum efficiency" for an area your own level, you will be at %X in any other area. This is not flawless - there is a problem when people outlevel content and do not upgrade their gear, but it has the big advantage of maintaining relative standings - and does keep gear progression meaningful. As second "should do" thing would be to revise rewards - with lower-level content being harder, but the rewards kept the same, the reward/effort ratio has dropped below the point where it is worthwhile.

Now, I am personally boycotting any lower-level content, as it does not feel sufficiently entertaining or rewarding to be worth my time, LoMM is barely worth doing - except just for the seals to buy pants/shirts/rings - the armour is so badly designed that chasing it is a waste of time.

That leaves MEs as the only thing I really do these days (OK, I did some CTAs to get the 3 purple drops but that's it). I was getting bored in M15 - it was too easy, but I'm even more bored now.

I'll probably take a break for a few weeks and see if things improve.

That is my feeling, as far as mod 15 concerned.. it was a mess, but it was less of a mess, then this mess is to be honest.. at least I didnt have to do 4 year old content , wiped away years of progression ect just to make a skirmish harder..

While I think many of us would agree that out of control power looping, debuff/buff synergy, insane damage loops needed to scale back or be removed.. as it was a bit out of control.. all of those things couldve been done , without per se making all progression seem meaningless overnight.

They just didnt implement right.

Again this is the start I would state,

A. Remove all scaling in pve open world and instances.. its just burdsome and annoying there.. all it does is make things x times slower..

B. implement a better scaling system that is proportional rated ..or at least capped , so AT the very least you will always do the maximum damage in that content.. instead of making progression a negative in almost every case.

To be honest.. I dont care .. im taking another break, my limited budget for entertainment is going elsewhere. My vip today is expired and I will maybe check in at jubilee to see if they have relented a bit on this stuff.

Everything seems slow.. and boring.

ananxiousnoob · May 2019

@dolrey Perhaps you don’t have a problem with the changes to your class but as an OP main I certainly do. Had the class mechanics been originally as they are under Mod 16 I would never have invested the time, effort and lots and lots of real money getting my OP to the level they are. I DO NOT CARE what the normal is in other MMOs If I did I would have played those MMOs not NW. I DO NOT WANT to be the tank as envisaged by the Devs nor the healer, it’s not what I signed up for and paid for with my real money for all years and years that I have played. I have not even been given an opportunity of changing to a DPS class on a like for like basis so WHY on earth should I be happy after having been slapped in the face by the devs. Cryptic will never get another penny of my money

zimxero · May 2019

REWARDS:

Would it destroy the economy if there was a small chance to find a lockbox key in an end dungeon chest?

1% leveling dungeon/skirmishes, or an ME with 2 runes.
2% intermediate dungeon/skirmishes, or an ME with 3 runes.
3% advanced dungeons
4% expert dungeons

To prevent exploitation: Limit (1) Key per day from chests. Also, limit the RNG to only count the first 5 dungeons run by an account per day. After 5 dungeons, there would be a 0% chance to get a lockbox key. So, the maximum reward chance is if a player runs 5x LoMM dungeons per day. This would give a 20% chance to receive a lockbox key bonus reward.

leonidrex · May 2019

zimxero#8085 said:
REWARDS:

Would it destroy the economy if there was a small chance to find a lockbox key in an end dungeon chest?

1% leveling dungeon/skirmishes, or an ME with 2 runes.
2% intermediate dungeon/skirmishes, or an ME with 3 runes.
3% advanced dungeons
4% expert dungeons

To prevent exploitation: Limit (1) Key per day from chests. Also, limit the RNG to only count the first 5 dungeons run by an account per day. After 5 dungeons, there would be a 0% chance to get a lockbox key. So, the maximum reward chance is if a player runs 5x LoMM dungeons per day. This would give a 20% chance to receive a lockbox key bonus reward.

they make good % of their money from keys, wouldnt be suprised if that was most of their income. as a company they have no incentive to do that. something else has to be done to make loot worthwile.

caldochaud · May 2019

Questions:

- Why take away mobility and make everybody as slow as snails while hostile npcs can easily outrun players or just insta-warp to players?
- Why take away Life-Steal when this is something in D&D that was available to all classes and could even be imparted to weapons, and since when is a carefully crafted vampiric character build a bad thing?
- Why nerf Artifact Gear, Companions, Insignia and Mounts people already paid money for without at the very least offering a ZEN refund for?

(One suggestion I would offer is that just as enchantments can be traded in to the Exchange Vendor at the Protectors' Enclave, let players trade in their Artifact Gear, Companions and Mounts for a box of replacements to chose from as well because it would at the very least lessen the sting of losing stats and features they paid actual money for.)

- Why should I waste my time refining Artifacts, Artifact Gear, Runes and Enchantments if the scaling mechanic is going to cap everything regardless of what I do?
- Why should I waste my time leveling any of my characters to 80 and still have a level 10 mob kill me with one shot?
- How is it that my level 70 characters are being killed with one shot by mobs, but my level 14 character is effortlessly killing mobs with just one shot?

Fact: This so-called scaling and balancing is a slap in the face of every single player of Neverwinter who invested SIX YEARS of their time and money to play your game. All you have done is completely erase that SIX YEARS of progress and actively undermine all of the benefits to being level 80.

Fact: Removing the power-points, skill trees and boons was never about balance but was in response to players simply being too good at playing your game and instead of using existing game mechanics to create new challenges, it was easier just to nerf everybody. That's called "being lazy." Technically, just giving each and every mob a designated healer would increase the challenge game-wide.

When I played this game prior to Mod 16, I appreciated the progress I had made and grew in confidence to try new things in the game. However, after Mod 16, the game is genuinely unplayable. The game is broken.

Clearly, the fate of Star Wars Galaxies and WildStar have not been a learning experience for you. Perhaps, the loss of player-generated revenue will be.

quickfoot · May 2019

leonidrex said:

zimxero#8085 said:
REWARDS:

Would it destroy the economy if there was a small chance to find a lockbox key in an end dungeon chest?

1% leveling dungeon/skirmishes, or an ME with 2 runes.
2% intermediate dungeon/skirmishes, or an ME with 3 runes.
3% advanced dungeons
4% expert dungeons

To prevent exploitation: Limit (1) Key per day from chests. Also, limit the RNG to only count the first 5 dungeons run by an account per day. After 5 dungeons, there would be a 0% chance to get a lockbox key. So, the maximum reward chance is if a player runs 5x LoMM dungeons per day. This would give a 20% chance to receive a lockbox key bonus reward.
they make good % of their money from keys, wouldn't be surprised if that was most of their income. as a company they have no incentive to do that. something else has to be done to make loot worthwhile.

Personally, I would really want a means to upgrade old artifacts and artifact gear to the same ilvl as the current mod, whatever that may be. It might be something like a combination of restoring/exalting gear and upgrading an enchantment, and the reagents would be unique to the dungeon they drop from, so they could implement it in a way, that if we want to upgrade our demogorgon sets, we would have to run Underdark content, and maybe ToNG as an Orcus drop. Same thing with Twisted set, man, imagine if that were back today

Or the CA weapons, or EE weaps, and all kinds of sets could remain relevant, _but_ you'd have to work for it if you really want that set. I wouldn't even care if it was bound to character, but they could leave the reagent unbound and that would create a new economy in the game.

Honestly, I don't know what else they could do besides adding more rad (devaluing ad even further), or better loot drop rates ( that would be worthless since the difference in ilvl is so vast, and would devalue that stuff on the ah).

rev · May 2019

dolrey said:
Hello. In this thread I would like to give some negative feedback about m16 to address possible misunderstanding between developers and players.

1.1 Was class balance needed?
Yes. Because healers should heal. Tanks should do tanking. While dds should deal damage. And class mechanics of m15 were just nonsense.

-Remove powershare, tweak paladins/clerics , nerf gwf a bit and buff all the other dps's and done! there you go game is not broken anymore
-Still think warlocks shouldn't be healers...

1.2 Was class balance successful?
Finally class roles became to normal. There are different bugs exactly in different skills but they are not critical and overall class balance is still sucesfull (not m16 overall, here I talk only about class balance). And raging about class changes is mostly caused by the fact that players forgot true roles of their classes and they forgot easy rules of battle process in mmos.

-Hell no, true roles?? have you play any sort of healer?? i have to heal, dodge, tank, and gain divinity all at the same time on my cleric...
And sometimes it is because the tanks are bad, but most of the times they don't have the stats at 70 to actually TANK ...
I still say healers get way to much agro...

2.1 Was scaling needed?
Yes. Because having 99% of content easy as abc is not good. If you think that it is normal to easy faceroll all dungeons in 10 mins then probably you can find yourself in mobile games with autocombat. Content for new players should exist but overall game should give some challenge after all.

No, in mod 15 if you were a new/mid game player you would struggle bit in certain classses/zones especially if you didn't have armpen capped., (i tried many times without the stuff/boons for the challenge/lols).
As a end gamer that put his time into the game, you shouldn't have to struggle or underperform in old content...

Also remember people were asking for a higher difficulty in dungeons not campaign areas...
And the complains about rushing leveling dungeons... well its simple don't make lvling q available for lvl 70+.

2.2 Was scaling successful?
No. Too many things are broken and not thought out anough. Too much stats in low lvl dungeons again. High rank stones are useless. Etc etc.. But it does not mean that scaling should be deleted from the game. It should exist because of previously described reasons but only after fix.

why not just, uhm, add a new tier of dungeons just for lvl 80? or leave dread ring at lvl 74 and put river district/stormkings/chult/ravenloft at 80, or stormkings at lvl 78 and the rest at 80

People are used to broken stuff and bugs... and if you aren't you must be new to the game
Tbh the most complains i've seen lately are because combat became boring, leveling became tedious and the same old scalling..

rjc9000 · May 2019

eolee said:

Yet they made the decision to add a 30s logout everywhere, i even had it in runic corruption. They decided to nerf the Temple boon from SH. They broke even more things like tenebrous or the workshop or HE rewards not claimable, or dungeons in an attempt to fix.

lardeson · May 2019

dolrey said:
Hello. In this thread I would like to give some negative feedback about m16 to address possible misunderstanding between developers and players.

1.1 Was class balance needed?
Yes. Because healers should heal. Tanks should do tanking. While dds should deal damage. And class mechanics of m15 were just nonsense.
1.2 Was class balance successful?
Finally class roles became to normal. There are different bugs exactly in different skills but they are not critical and overall class balance is still sucesfull (not m16 overall, here I talk only about class balance). And raging about class changes is mostly caused by the fact that players forgot true roles of their classes and they forgot easy rules of battle process in mmos.

2.1 Was scaling needed?
Yes. Because having 99% of content easy as abc is not good. If you think that it is normal to easy faceroll all dungeons in 10 mins then probably you can find yourself in mobile games with autocombat. Content for new players should exist but overall game should give some challenge after all.
2.2 Was scaling successful?
No. Too many things are broken and not thought out anough. Too much stats in low lvl dungeons again. High rank stones are useless. Etc etc.. But it does not mean that scaling should be deleted from the game. It should exist because of previously described reasons but only after fix.

3. And yes. Bugs. Lags. And again bugs. OVERALL IDEAS OF DEVELOPERS ARE RIGHT. But their realisation is.. well.. awful This is 90% of that why players call NWO broken. Game just need better quality in technical things etc. Cryptics you finally started to do right things. Just do them right (not as always). And everyone will love your game because it has very high potential which is unfortunately nullified by low quality of technical things.

So thank you for your attention and sorry for my english. Hope this thread can give to developers more info about reasons of negative feedback.

Ah, the same dude that called out that 90% of players to be haters and crybabies. Lemme tell you one thing, there is a huge difference between someone who is angry and a hater, that being the fact that you can be angry at something you love cos you feel they are not doing the right thing or they are repeating the same mistakes you have corrected them about and your anger is only for them to improve. A hater on the other hand, is just there to see you fall and doesn't really care what happens to you, they dont try to fix anything, they just hate and are only happy when you fail. So if the 90% are angry, its because the love the game "neverwinter" itself, not because they hate it. they want the devs to listen to players and do the right things, thats why till today, we still play, look for bugs and give feedbacks on those bugs, regardless of me getting mad 20x a day while playing the game cos of the amount of bugs, yet i dont hate the game, i hate the bugs and ofc i'll complain about bugs, report them and eventually hope for them to be fixed. Again, we are not haters, we want the game to be better, thats all.

wintersmoke · May 2019

karvare said:
Ok, mod 15 we did have some scaling. Let us examine how that scaling worked shall we? Did that scaling make legendary heroes perform worse than or on par with at level players? Did your level 70 character perform worse than or equal to, in say the Grave Yard near the dragon, a level appropriate?

Does Conan climb the mountain to slay Crom, only to succumb to mountain goats on the way down?

Naaaaaah!!

dionchi · May 2019

I did the Dread Legion - or rather make that tried to do the Dread Legion tonight with at least one new player, we made it all the way to Varkoss the Unliving and things went seriously downhill. I died 28 times, I don’t know how many times the other players died but they each died multiple times.

I used 28 Intense injury kits 14 of which I had on my character before queuing. I have no idea how many healing potions I used but I’m guessing 80 or 90 since I usually have a pretty fair surplus of those.

Needless to say I ran out of gold to purchase new injury kits (10 injury kits cost 5 Gold) and by the time I ran out of gold I only had 1.7 Gold so it was either stand by the camp fire and heal or go back out to face the final boss crippled and with my stats seriously nerfed.

For some reason I was unable to pass along the message to primarily concentrate on Varkoss seems (I’m guessing by the “HELP! requests in other languages I saw) few of the other party members understood English…

Anyway the mobs just spawned and the Varkoss moved way too quickly and even when everyone eventually decided concentrate on the boss several party members (including myself) still died multiple times anyway.

More than 37-minutes from start to finish at a cost of more than 22 Gold to replace healing potions and injury kits and at the end only 7 Gold and change plus the contents of the chest to show for it.

... I can't speak for the other players but that was defiantly NOT my definition of "fun"

drumon88 · May 2019

1.1. Yes, class balance was needed. One tank was significantly better at tanking stuff than the other tank, and a third tank role was needed. Several DPS classes (not just specs, entire classes) were so inferior at actually being DPS they were relegated to a buff role. Character performance was so heavily tied to having the right gear, companions, and enchants that player SKILL was pretty irrelevant (a full-BIS GWF doing nothing but auto-attacking would significantly out-DPS a near-BIS SW playing perfectly). Buffs were out of control.

1.2. Not even remotely, at least not in any realized way. Sure, DPS is somewhat kinda-sorta close when comparing single target vs. target dummies, but I'm still seeing one class consistently doing twice as much damage as everyone else in the group among guildmates that I know are skilled, and the characters are fairly close in gear quality. The one tank that was always hands-down the best tank, continues to be hands-down the best tank in every metric: Threat, survivability, group utility, Paladin is still king by a wide margin. One of the healers can't cleanse itself, making it 100% invalid for 2 dungeons. And that's just PVE content, PVP continues to be a horribly unbalanced mess that basically devolves into who gets their daily off first.

2.1. Scaling was NOT needed, in any aspect of the game. What WAS needed was group content that bridged the gap between entry-level stuff (RLQ, RIQ) and endgame stuff (most of the instances in RAQ, and REQ), coupled with a realignment of incentivization that would keep the endgame players from wanting to steamroll old content. A realignment of which dungeon went into which queue would have helped as well, IMO TONG belonged in RAQ and MSPC belonged in REQ. There was a clear and relatively linear progression already in dungeons from the risk vs. reward, in both difficulty and time to complete. I still have no idea what they sought to accomplish with scaling solo content, having everything feel exactly the same (their stated intent) makes zero sense from a progression-based game, and having you actually get WEAKER as you level up and get "better" gear (their realized result) is even worse. Basically all they had to do was make RLQ and RIQ not worth the time of endgame players without removing all the rewards for their target audience. Couple that with ACTUAL class balance and reigning in buffs a bit (I still stand by my statement that they just could have hardcapped lifesteal severity at 50% and called it good) and they would have been where they wanted to be.

2.2. On top of scaling in general being a horrible idea, their implementation was absolute garbage. Difficulty is all over the place (this is discounting the big standout bugs like getting downscaled to 60 and being thrown against lvl 81 mobs for some quests), and any form of linear progression is completely gone as a result. Some instances in RIQ are so hard they require an endgame-geared premade and a group of the target ilvl has absolutely no chance of completion (looking at you Manycoins). The Skirmishes are an absolute joke now, they made it to where it's only reasonably completable with their vaunted holy trinity 3:1:1 composition, then throw you in with no tank or healer. Then you get to RAQ and it's a cakewalk despite the better rewards (assuming you get the ONE instance that isn't broken so badly it's non-completable and even the ones that are broken are quite easy until you get to the broken part), all because they don't know what they're doing on scaling.

3. I believe that even if they manage to iron out all the standout bugs and get all the items working the way they're supposed to that this mod will remain a total disaster. It's not unplayable, but it is absolutely a step backwards from mod15. They had SOME good ideas--the companion changes were good, the mercy successes on refining were good, trying to get back to the Holy Trinity was good. But everything else, EVERYTHING else, is a step backwards. The pace of combat is a radical departure from anything seen in Neverwinter since the latter days of Mod6 (which was also a disaster of a mod, and one that they undid many of the changes from). The even further nerfing of rewards in anything but endgame content (mainly rAD from end chests).
The butchering of skirmishes, which were alway supposed to be faster than full dungeons but now take as long or in some cases longer (and not just due to broken scaling). Whatever they did to induce such insane lag in every aspect of the game. And of course, bugs upon bugs upon bugs.

I understand they are willing to accept this, that they are taking a gamble to basically redo the foundation of their game, which they intend to continue building upon in upcoming mods. But I think they were overzealous, and I think that even if they didn't release a horribly broken and buggy game their big overarching changes to a mature game were a bad idea.

Honest negative feedback about m16. Without raging or trolling.

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