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Member Posts: 16 Arc User
Dear Julia and the Development Team,
Hello, my name is Jenna and I am known to the community as Enna Backpetal, a cleric in Blackcloaks and Enna F Backpetal, the Leader of and Fighter in Spiritcloaks, both within the Cloaks Alliance. I have been playing for about 3 years now. I am a fairly new content creator on Twitch, starting on June 8, 2019, with Neverwinter being my top game to stream accounting for about 99% of my content. I became apart of the content creator community in November 2018 co-hosting with GreyHastur.
I am writing this rather lengthy letter to voice my concerns about the state of the game as I see it through my eyes and through the eyes of viewers of my channel and members within the Neverwinter community in-game.
The changes to the game over the last few months have been many and for many of us, most welcome. Mod 16 was buggy, but exciting, only to have those changes that made it fun again, taken away from us within days. We cried the day that the mob health decreased while doubling our enchantment values – it should have been one or the other (or none), but not both. It was said Mod 16 was about class balancing and making things more challenging and then in the next breath took the challenge away, catering to the loudest voices who from my experience represent a minority of the playerbase. That on top of the fact that class balancing still needs major work - was, and still is, a source of major disappointment.
Random dungeon queues have changed and it is a source of great frustration for many new players. It may have overlooked but: New Players have 1 loadout and that player is going to choose the DPS path every time. Granted they get a second loadout at level 30, but for all players 30 and under in the levelling queue are going to be dps. Now the trifecta (1 Tank, 1 Heal, 3 DPS) is forced onto the levelling queue and what's happening now is the wait times are atrocious because everyone is looking for that healer that will never proc unless a higher level person queues into it as a healer. As a lvl 80 Devout I can sit and proc the levelling queue, one after the other, all day long, but as an Arbiter, I wait and wait and wait. My suggestion is to remove the requirements for the levelling queues, even if it requires some additional programming to separate the two skirmishes that are in the levelling queue (because I'm guessing that's the problem).
Uprising created an amazing, challenging dungeon. However I am super upset by many things and because of them I lack the ambition to try. I am not the only one that feels this way, and while reading this, you should know that many many people feel the same way.
My first and biggest issue is, the Trial requires a double trifecta but then there is a lack of freedom over which classes can be used. Let me explain. You can have 6 Wizards (or insert any of the same class of DPS here) on DPS or 2 Fighters (or 2 Paladins) for tanks, but you cannot viably have 2 Healing Clerics or 2 Healing Paladins or 2 Healing Warlocks. The trial MUST have those temporary hit points with the Paladin heals because a healing Cleric or a healing Warlock cannot heal through a hit from Halastar that has more damage than the tank has hitpoints. It's ridiculous, disappointing and unfair.
Second, the small group of 10 people who do not play the game regularly, and are clearly only in it for a profit, have dictated how the trial was even developed and created. Testers in BETA didn't even get to really test the trial – the whole community relied on people from the elite player base community to test it. Those same people now have the trial on farm mode and have since left the game because no one is buying their loot, which feels like their agenda for testing in the first place. Most only came back after 2 weeks of not playing because Lassor wanted to do the trial with them while it was streamed live.
Third, The trial dropped on us without balancing the classes needed to keep all classes viable. Rangers are no longer relevant as ranged (and there are players that want to, and do, play ranged despite being told they can't) and are barely relevant as melee. Warlocks aren't wanted either because their damage is somewhere around 15% less than others. They are being taken to trial practice, yes, but they are being carried and it's no fun for the person playing the ranger/warlock just as it's no fun for the group carrying the person.
Fourth, because of all of the attention given to the loudest voices who I do not believe represent the majority, many good players have left the game. Since Ravenloft, it feels like the changes are pushing people to leave a game they love. I'm sure it's in the numbers. People might have come back for Mod 16, but it feels like numbers have fallen a great deal lately. Please stop pandering to the loudest voices. Just remember for every person you hear complaining, think of the number of people that are keeping quiet because they love the game as it is.
Fifth, There are issues with the test server, not everyone wants to go on the test server and run the new content. There are a ton of us who have avoided anything on preview, avoided watching anything on preview, because we wanted to – and will always want to – experience content organically – when it goes live. So many of us were not even aware of what was going on with the preview server and this elite group of people and now that it is on the live server, we have to take what they came up with for you. That is a hard pill to swallow. I feel more players would play the test server if it wasn't the identical content to the next release, but maybe an arena style fight with the mechanics in there but individually rather than a boss fight with all mechanics in one.
Finally, the trial dropped on us as a very exciting challenge and then later it was called an experiment. There are so many things wrong with this. It was obvious this wasn't intended as an experiment, but as a new state of the game and it was exciting! To now say it's an experiment just feels like a cop out for anything that doesn't work. Cryptic should be proud of what they have created and own this as an intended challenging dungeon and then set about fixing what is making it all go wrong.
In conclusion, please make the content challenging again. We all feel like we are right back at Mod 15. Please make the levelling queue have no class requirement. Please fix the classes and/or trial so 2 of the same healing class can be viable. Please stop pandering to the loudest voices. Please understand content needs testing, not the top tier players.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss issues I have raise, you can reply to me here or alternatively My channel can be found at www.twitch.tv/backpetal.
Hello, my name is Jenna and I am known to the community as Enna Backpetal, a cleric in Blackcloaks and Enna F Backpetal, the Leader of and Fighter in Spiritcloaks, both within the Cloaks Alliance. I have been playing for about 3 years now. I am a fairly new content creator on Twitch, starting on June 8, 2019, with Neverwinter being my top game to stream accounting for about 99% of my content. I became apart of the content creator community in November 2018 co-hosting with GreyHastur.
I am writing this rather lengthy letter to voice my concerns about the state of the game as I see it through my eyes and through the eyes of viewers of my channel and members within the Neverwinter community in-game.
The changes to the game over the last few months have been many and for many of us, most welcome. Mod 16 was buggy, but exciting, only to have those changes that made it fun again, taken away from us within days. We cried the day that the mob health decreased while doubling our enchantment values – it should have been one or the other (or none), but not both. It was said Mod 16 was about class balancing and making things more challenging and then in the next breath took the challenge away, catering to the loudest voices who from my experience represent a minority of the playerbase. That on top of the fact that class balancing still needs major work - was, and still is, a source of major disappointment.
Random dungeon queues have changed and it is a source of great frustration for many new players. It may have overlooked but: New Players have 1 loadout and that player is going to choose the DPS path every time. Granted they get a second loadout at level 30, but for all players 30 and under in the levelling queue are going to be dps. Now the trifecta (1 Tank, 1 Heal, 3 DPS) is forced onto the levelling queue and what's happening now is the wait times are atrocious because everyone is looking for that healer that will never proc unless a higher level person queues into it as a healer. As a lvl 80 Devout I can sit and proc the levelling queue, one after the other, all day long, but as an Arbiter, I wait and wait and wait. My suggestion is to remove the requirements for the levelling queues, even if it requires some additional programming to separate the two skirmishes that are in the levelling queue (because I'm guessing that's the problem).
Uprising created an amazing, challenging dungeon. However I am super upset by many things and because of them I lack the ambition to try. I am not the only one that feels this way, and while reading this, you should know that many many people feel the same way.
My first and biggest issue is, the Trial requires a double trifecta but then there is a lack of freedom over which classes can be used. Let me explain. You can have 6 Wizards (or insert any of the same class of DPS here) on DPS or 2 Fighters (or 2 Paladins) for tanks, but you cannot viably have 2 Healing Clerics or 2 Healing Paladins or 2 Healing Warlocks. The trial MUST have those temporary hit points with the Paladin heals because a healing Cleric or a healing Warlock cannot heal through a hit from Halastar that has more damage than the tank has hitpoints. It's ridiculous, disappointing and unfair.
Second, the small group of 10 people who do not play the game regularly, and are clearly only in it for a profit, have dictated how the trial was even developed and created. Testers in BETA didn't even get to really test the trial – the whole community relied on people from the elite player base community to test it. Those same people now have the trial on farm mode and have since left the game because no one is buying their loot, which feels like their agenda for testing in the first place. Most only came back after 2 weeks of not playing because Lassor wanted to do the trial with them while it was streamed live.
Third, The trial dropped on us without balancing the classes needed to keep all classes viable. Rangers are no longer relevant as ranged (and there are players that want to, and do, play ranged despite being told they can't) and are barely relevant as melee. Warlocks aren't wanted either because their damage is somewhere around 15% less than others. They are being taken to trial practice, yes, but they are being carried and it's no fun for the person playing the ranger/warlock just as it's no fun for the group carrying the person.
Fourth, because of all of the attention given to the loudest voices who I do not believe represent the majority, many good players have left the game. Since Ravenloft, it feels like the changes are pushing people to leave a game they love. I'm sure it's in the numbers. People might have come back for Mod 16, but it feels like numbers have fallen a great deal lately. Please stop pandering to the loudest voices. Just remember for every person you hear complaining, think of the number of people that are keeping quiet because they love the game as it is.
Fifth, There are issues with the test server, not everyone wants to go on the test server and run the new content. There are a ton of us who have avoided anything on preview, avoided watching anything on preview, because we wanted to – and will always want to – experience content organically – when it goes live. So many of us were not even aware of what was going on with the preview server and this elite group of people and now that it is on the live server, we have to take what they came up with for you. That is a hard pill to swallow. I feel more players would play the test server if it wasn't the identical content to the next release, but maybe an arena style fight with the mechanics in there but individually rather than a boss fight with all mechanics in one.
Finally, the trial dropped on us as a very exciting challenge and then later it was called an experiment. There are so many things wrong with this. It was obvious this wasn't intended as an experiment, but as a new state of the game and it was exciting! To now say it's an experiment just feels like a cop out for anything that doesn't work. Cryptic should be proud of what they have created and own this as an intended challenging dungeon and then set about fixing what is making it all go wrong.
In conclusion, please make the content challenging again. We all feel like we are right back at Mod 15. Please make the levelling queue have no class requirement. Please fix the classes and/or trial so 2 of the same healing class can be viable. Please stop pandering to the loudest voices. Please understand content needs testing, not the top tier players.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss issues I have raise, you can reply to me here or alternatively My channel can be found at www.twitch.tv/backpetal.
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Comments
I for one would like to thank Jenna for putting her thoughts together and trying to initiate (again!) a conversation. It is too easy to say nothing and just slowly give up on the game. I know I've been doing that.
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That could either be class and/or content changes or perhaps re-looking at the incentives as it seems to me the incentives are just not all in place to attract the next waves of hard-working teams to move up the learning curves and help each other up the mountain slopes. The incentives for the "first movers" were very strong and they deserve everything they received. Now, what's next?
Regardless of whether this mod met its objectives which I heard was broader adoption/participation after a month, I think something else needs to be done. The community also needs to step up to follow in the footsteps of the hard working first waves. Coordination is needed!
There are interesting points here, but they are drowned out by the many words used that essentially boil down to "I think the devs are choosing the wrong people to work with and listen to, and I do not like that situation nor those people"
The issue with the enchants and why it was a good thing that the stats were doubled is the investment per stat point. Enchantments cost X to make, a rather hefty investment either for new players or players who already have invested. Keeping the old stats while changing the ratio to 1:1000 would make old that investment invalid, a huge loss for veteran players, and as ROI a player will benefit more from not making and gearing enchants at all. This is not a healthy from multiple aspects, in terms of game progress, economy, and so on.
This issue does still exist, while each mod gear will have more and more stats, and enemies will have more and more counter stats, boons and enchantments will loose value over time. Why to invest 2 mil for 1k stats when a new catch up gear piece gives 50k... And a farmed one 75k (just random numbers for the example)
So this change is more related to retention, economic insensitive, and AD sinks. I believe that the HP reduction was not related to this adjustment, which perhaps was not needed. I would say that the scaling issue through away the correct difficulty balancing out of the window. Which is a shame, if the scaling was dealt with earlier, a lot of the other issues wouldn't be an issue to begin with. Those that asked for easier content said that the devs only listening to the vocal minority and the same vice versa. The player base is heterogeneous, so everyone at some point are part of some minority and their opinion will not be implemented.
IMO the responsibility begins and ends with the devs. It's their job to understand the complaints, take them into context, their proportions, combine with their telemtry systems and make their decisions. We players can agree, or disagree on many topics, and voice concerns, as minority to one is a majority to another.
Though specifically here, I'm not sure which loud voices you mean, those that asked for easier content? I would say, and said, on multiple occasions, that more care should have been gives to the equality of the "classical" roles of some classes (the role a class was mainly played before mod 16), DPS barbie, DPS SW, etc..
Players shouldn't reinvest in a role they are not accustomed. I do not agree with this attitude, some people champion this, driving it some sort of self reinforcing anti-sentiment, and it's unfortunate. Yes, there are a lot of issues, some many will agree on, others less so, and some are just false but for some reason perceived as some fundamental truth. But the trial or any challenging content can be a driving force to get to gather and try, team work, planning, and so on. I saw several alliances revived just from organizing and trying. This is for the most part, factually not correct.
There is a widespread misconception between "easiest" or "most efficient" and "must have". The trial does not MUST have Paladin, it doesn't must have legendary mounts, two healers, or even two tanks, or only CWs and TRs.
Yes, some ways are easier, some are more expensive, some require more coordination, but there are alternatives, and the fact that one group, no matter how good they are do it in one way, doesn't mean other ways are not viable. This was a point of contention last time this was posted, and was replied in length, shame that this is the same as is here again.
I'll just write some points for consideration:
Do not play regularly - Do you know the players, and their played time? Their schedule?
Clearly only in it for a profit - Are they? I can say "Streamers are clearly only for the donations and subscriptions", will it be true in your opinion?
Testers in BETA didn't even get to really test the trial - Why not? There is no such restriction. If someone rely on other people and do not want to try and provide their opinion, it's their choice, but the option was there.
Those same people now have the trial on farm mode - This is what always happen once one masters a piece of content, I'm sure you or anyone how have been playing for a while have LoMM now on farm mode (for at least the REQ)
left the game because no one is buying their loot - Did they leave? All? For that reason? Are you sure? All this part is heavy on accusations and "clearly" and "truths". Even if someone has a perception of something, in real life, expressing it in this way can be slander or libel unless proven as truth and it is on the accuser to prove so. Here ofc, we don't talk about slander and so on, but in the extremely large community of NW wouldn't it be better to fact check, before posting and repeating this? Especially as it was addressed last time.
Not that everything is an utopia and paradise, but at the same time, this is accusing many people who invested a lot of time into one of the most interesting pieces of content recently in NW.
Worse they are far from the healer, or other party that can revive them if needed. This is the same issue for all ranged classes since the start. Wizards play at melee ranged for optimal output. Many class issue, Barbie DPS, SWs, DPS GF, all should have been addressed much faster. I've addressed that earlier, not sure what is the loudest voice in this case, there are so many, and most are contradicting each other. I will never do campaign on preview. On live is once too much. But this is a personal choice, the devs provided skip tokens, and other things so players can test specific things.
Even now, many do ToMM on preview, first it helps players who are not geared enough on live to join in, and I would say that doing stuff with your friends is more important that any reward the game can put. And it mitigates costs of scrolls and other consumables.
ToMM has been on live for a while now, there is no reason not to do there or here What is the pill here? That some where not part of the feedback? Does it make the content worse? Why players that do follow and do participate are at fault here. The preview process is the same since the start of the game 6 years ago.
Just for interest, wasn't hastur part of the closed beta for this? Can the devs allocate resources for doing this, separating the mechanics, inventing new parts, where they don't have the resources for crucial class balance?
And with the price that the combined end result will be a buggy mess, where in some cases even all parts as a whole are not corrected in time, aka Tales of Old. But isn't ToMM is exactly that? A challenge like no other? But at the same time, you are saying you don't want to do it, so as many from your community. Any challenging content will surface balance issue, trial or not. If content is supposed to be top the challenge, and aimed at top tier players, who is supposed to test it then?
I know for 100% certainty that it wasn't even considered or read.
1) Mod 16 class balancing needs major work, and there was a record backpedal on the challenge level.
Agreed. The continued existence of significant disparity between classes/roles is frustrating and annoying. The backpedal on challenge I find unsurprising. The impact of scaling and the increased difficulty on player numbers was seemingly significant and thus called for measures. No plan survives contact with the enemy
2) Random dungeon que times..
I understand why they did it they way they did. It was likely the easy/quick fix. Like you, I am not a fan. My personal preference would be of they would just introduce an option for the que where the trifecta can be ignored. Give players the choice to take their chances.
3.1)TOMM requires too many speficic combinations or classes/roles..
I agree that its not fair. I would be fine with there being a clear optimal setup, but there should be more room for going outside of of it without it becoming impossible. (there is room now, but too limited imho)
3.2) --jumping over this, not an issue I care to weigh in on--
3.3) Classes/Roles/Builds are not balanced enough to give everyone a fair shot at TOMM
See 1.. Classes/Roles/Builds need more balancing.. By now most everyone agrees save for some "hybrid" myths to be hashed outside
3.4) Stop listening to the vocal minority, remember there is a silent majority...
I am not convinced that silent majority exists, loves the game as it is, or agrees with you. Not now and not in early mod 16 (pre-backpedal). Think of the number of people that are keeping quiet because a lack of communication has made them give up hope for change... The squeaky wheels that are demanding and too often getting the oil may not represent "the community" but I do not think ANYONE posting here does either.
3.5) Running stuff on the test server spoils the surprise, but if I don't others decide the outcome.
As others have commented, that is simply a choice. You test and provide feedback, you might influence how things end up. Not wanting to is totally valid, but comes with concequences. I personally did not try to get "in" or influence things, I have to take what comes. I made that choice, I accept that part.
3.6) TOMM was first represented as a new state of the game and now its an "experiment"? This is a cop out!
It a great cop out though. It allows them to do whatever and still sell it. I don't see this as a real big issue, but I can understand where this would be annoying and frustrating.
.....
All in all, like I stated earlier, some fair and good points, but after reading it I see very little that has not already been brought up many times by many many others. Others that of course lack your vaulted "content creator" credentials, but then those should not really matter after all, we're not trying to create a new set of "loud" voices, are we?
Thats not to say I do not appreciate yet another person trying to bring attention to the many ongoing issues that are affecting this game. I do, and thank you for that part, but the path chosen towards the goal has some surperfluous detours..
some head scratchers for me:
1. You had ample opportunity to go on test yourself, or to hear M17 news, but as you stated at that time "you preferred to be surprised"
2. You want content to be challenging again, ToMM is the most challenging content to date... some of your reasons for being discouraged have been proven to be false assumptions... I guess i don't get it.
as for legit concerns surrounding M17 and the game as a whole:
1. QA needs to be improved before items go live, specific example include the drops on new expeditions, crafting, and the tales of old event
2. M17 was to light on content for the majority of players, out of an alliance of 1000+ members I know of 2 (including myself) people to have finished ToMM... that's less than .2%, and fewer than 2 dozen have even tried it once; which means most people are not actually engaged in new content.
3. Our alliance only had what 1 person return from break to do the trial this mod, 4-5 return for PvP (only to have left in the first week due to class balance) and had a couple dozen leave the game entirely?
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Trials usually isn't the content that's being asked for that's dungeons, raid (like many other MMOs got) and campaign / other group content, events (without having major bugs lol).
Her statement isn't a contradiction.
If "challenge" would be literally the only thing that matters we would be fawning over the recent Tales of Old.
"There aren't that many players left..."
Now that's my main issue, it's not like CoDG once was were you could pull in any player from any class (once the bases are covered), anyone from friendlist or alliance. The trial is from what I can judge okay, ideally for me every mod would release with a skirmish, a dungeon and a trial each with appropriate difficulty and rewards, it's the fact that's it's basically the only new content which is what raises a lot of concerns.
The exact words were "In conclusion, please make the content challenging again. " Tomm is the most challenging content ever released in this game. TOO doesn't count as it was a bug infested mess that could not be completed fully. It has been proven that every class can complete TOMM. Are there more optimal configurations for the team, yes but that will hopefully be evened out whenever we get the class changes in (which everyone is in agreement is needed)
You can go around complaining and asking for challenging content and ignore stating just a few paragraphs earlier "Uprising created an amazing, challenging dungeon. However I am super upset by many things and because of them I lack the ambition to try. I am not the only one that feels this way, and while reading this, you should know that many many people feel the same way."
The OP admitted there was new challenging content and then chose to completely ignore and refuse to run said content because of "unspecified reasons"
I dont know the OP at all but the tone of this entire section on "Challenging Content" sounds like it is give me something that might be hard but i can run without any difficulty.
As I said in the bottom paragraph for me difficulty, rewards and being able to play with most classes (without being terribly inefficient) is important to me, and in general a factor in MMOs. Currently the game also lacks group content that isn't as much of a challenge as ToMM but still fun and rewarding, things like when endgame dungeons dropped profession resources that actually had some value, running FBI felt like their is a point to it even when at some point it wasn't as challenging as at the start of Mod 9 anymore. Add a chance of such resource (assuming we need those in Mod 18 *cough*) or something after phase 2 like micky1p00 suggested and we suddenly had a failed ToMM attempt among the list of rewarding and fun content even after a failure in phase 3...
From code merge on mods, to the great example of ZEN promotions, every time there is a ZEN promo, either people do not get what they should get (so support manually adds it later), or things that bound arrive unbound, or the best combination of reclaimable things + unbound.
Ok, happens once, twice, add this to some QA check list for ZEN promotion. There is a ZEN promo, do the check list.
But nope, same things time after time after time.
Same thing with most things, you can look at the historical list of bugs and reliably guess what will be bugged when new things are added.
A feat or class power is changed? We already know what is most likely to no work..
New event? Yup the counters, your completion will be counted incorrectly, if at all.
Added new item? Yup it will be a copy of some other older item, and either the active power will not be adapted, or the internal id so it doesn't stack with the old or can't even slotted at the same time. And most likely, the tooltip... yeah...
Amazing.
Edit - Interesting side note, that ToMM is probably the most bug free content to date in the history of NW. I think that engagement should be counted not by completion, but by, well, engagement. Most of my guild didn't complete it (I think 2-3 did if I count also being carried as dead weight) but we are trying, every 1-2 days, login and die, sometimes it's more fun, sometimes more daunting, but it is engaging.
It would have been much much easier if it wouldn't take half hour or an hour to find last one / two people when we are 8 (which is common).
Some people do not want to participate for various reasons, that's not a problem, completely their right, but I would say that a lot of these false statements spread around, you need X or you need Y, and whatever, encourage people not even try and judge by themselves, instead they listen and follow some opinions too blindly.
And even if, or players lack gear, go preview, it's the same as live now, gear up, have fun. People forgot that this is a game, an MMO, as in Multiplayer, and the whole purpose is not earn AD, farm something, or whatever, but have fun with friends. People can say X or Y not viable.. so what.. we just go in and do our best, and so far we passed the dps check (p2), after soo many failure, with whoever comes, and whatever class they play. No Imaginary friend is left behind.
A group can't pass phase 2, so what, we were stuck there for ages, have fun, improve on the way, this is what challenge is, improving and overcoming it step by step.
Instead some people gave up before they even tried, because they heard claim X or claim Y, and drag everyone they know down with the negativity and undisclosed reasons. No one can accuse me for being overly positive towards NW / Cryptic and so on, but quitting after a couple of tries.. not in my books.
BTW, back to engagement, a great example will be Lillith from Relentless (THC) who busted his HAMSTER to organize training runs for whoever came, and now do it on live. If we talk engagement, his organization alone got dozens of people engaged every week. Kudos to him.
If only more alliance and guild leaders did a fraction and contacted / reached out, there would have been much more engagement and runs. Complaining is easy, doing something about it, is the harder part. (this is not directed to anyone specific, my middle name is lazy procrastinator too) I can only speak of what I see, and I think I've covered the underlying issue, for groups where people return and they get "come join we have Time X at day Y, doing ToMM", then they have something to join, or work for, to adjust the stats, get gear and so on. I saw more activity in Relentless recently than for a long time before this.
If a person logs in, all they can do is MEs, and no one even thinks about organizing, then they will leave.
More so, no need to take it to returning players, any other mod, at this stage, most people I know would have been in "gather key" mode. You unlock the group content, run it repeatedly until you can run it in your sleep, get bored, and this is it, out for a 'content break' (doing the minimal AD runs, or chat) until next mod and something new, event, or whatever.
Instead I and many others, login almost daily, and die repeatedly for an hour and hour and a half, not close to finishing, but it is engagement, where historically there wouldn't be at the same point in the mod lifecycle.
By challenging content I mean ALL content. I am speaking to the fact that top geared players are right back pre-Mod16 where all dungeons are a cake-walk (too easy). It was exciting for like a second before the mob health cut and enchantment increase.
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if it's level 70 it needs to be too easy. the problem is they shouldn't be scaled. at least the more modern dungeons like fbi up. Lomm wasn't meant to be a hard dungeon. it's meant to be one that can be inclusive for new people and a counter balance to the tomm release which is for the old hands. and Lomm is still challenging for many doing it. I don't think it was ever meant to be super difficult for the highly geared though.
In my guild alone there are three beta testers of ToMM, we are far from “elitists” and not currently running it for profits. As a casual gamer myself, who tested ToMM, I was impressed with it development and the feedbacks we were able to give the Devs.
As a fellow guild leader, i shared some of your sentiments and of course we want the game to meet the needs of our guild members to keep them happy and playing. However lately i’ve been advising my frustrated members to take short break and returned to Neverwinter when they find it fun again. Hopefully some will return and for the most important reasons, fun and friendship.
I rarely played these dungeons this mod but we also have to keep in mind that people in RIQ have like no armor penetration and Energon as summoned companion. I'd say it's too difficult (wasn't Malabog even sub-70?) for such group and a bit on the too easy (and unrewarding) side for an endgame group. Old issue that hasn't been solved by scaling at all. If they'd keep content relevant and being fun (and possibly challenging) other things probably would be much less of an issue.
now for part 2.. Scaling and dungeons. it was a bad idea. they have to make it easy.. super easy because new level 80s don't have stats to do it. they might almost be touching the stats at level 80 but then the scaling strips them of any bang they might have so they are too weak to do level 70 content. no one stays level 70 for more than a day or two now. there is no reason to have level 70 content. yesterday I qued solo for t9 to practice with my new healadin. the second group I got (who I immediately abandoned) had dps who were FAR below arpen caps. there was no way they were going to complete. I eagle eyed them because the first group I was with had one end game dps and two non end game dps. the two lower levels couldn't stay alive and were doing no damage. when we got to the end and no one was trying to kill souls but me (it seemed like the experienced player might have been too) the experienced dps quit. then one of the newer players quit too they were replaced by two even less geared players. I was going to kick the worst of the two and hope for another well geared player. before he was even eligible for a vote kick he initiated a abandon instance vote even though he could have just left.
Scaling has imo just made dungeons more toxic. over geared players are fine in older content. newer players who they were trying to cater too are now in a worse position than they were before. if they had left enchants and difficulty where it was before it would be even worse. Yes it's too easy for end game players. but it's way too hard for the randoms who still que for these dungeons. If anything if they really want scaling to remain and they really want the ils to be able to que for these dungeons that they've posted, they need to lower the difficulty even more.
they've just fubar'd it all around.
I've been saying this since day one. they just need to remove the freaking scaling on everything from cn or fbi up (making them all level 80). and just lower the difficulty on some of the older dungeons so a fresh 80 can do it. and make them gradually harder and harder til you get to the most recent content.
I just think you are maybe too self-centered to not be able to see where is the flaming paragraph, which is still in your letter. Let me help you.
I thought it had to with all the useless length-comparisons and "I told you so"'s in the answers, not in the OP.
if you think the trial looks unchallenging you're just on crack. it is not like old cn. are you on pc or console? have you even tried the trial? most people STILL have not completed it on pc.