As far as I understand the discussion, most casual and semi-casual players (including players that have been bis at some point, but don't have the time to remain bis currently) are ok with the fact, that they cannot obtain the best endgame gear due to time constraints. What they would like, though, and I think that is a respectable opinion as well: - Have alternative ways to get gear that is not bis, but close enough to bis, so that they can play through all except the hardest content the way they like (e.g. with less challenge, e.g. "dumbed down and borring in your polite words)
Correct me if I'm missing something here but I'm going to oversimplify this.
• Group BiS can beat ToMM and get Lionheart • Group NotBiS can't beat ToMM but wish they could get gear that was close to BiS gear through alternative means.
So we're, in this case, talking about Lionheart weapons and ToMM rings.
One can easily argue the clear alternative to BiS Lionheart weapons are the Burnished/Alabaster/Watcher weapons. All attainable through means that don't involve ToMM. All the next step down.
People don't want weapons that are the next step down because they're already there. They're arguing for weapons that are almost identical to BiS options without being challenged.
And as far as the rings go.
Legendary rings are BiS. If you can't run ToMM the alternatives include: • buy them from the AH for a hefty fee (depending on which you want). • buy the epic version for a much cheaper and very affordable price • use the next step down, ebonized, etc, available through grinding
So again, there are multiple alternatives to the BiS legendary rings that are almost as good.
It seems to me that the game already caters to this: "Have alternative ways to get gear that is not bis, but close enough to bis, so that they can play through all except the hardest content the way they like"
A lot of people don't really understand that weapon damage is a major factor here, alabaster/burnished are not alternatives to Lionheart, they are alternatives to each other. I could care less about the rings, leave those in ToMM, the epic ones are cheap enough and damn near as good as the legendary ones (bragging rights).
The only reason I could see in defending a stance in keeping the hardest content in the game available for fewer people is to maintain current status quo, and I doubt that is good for the game moving forward, as the current status quo is part of what got us to start discussing how to make the game better in the first place.
One would think the actual point of keeping the hardest content in the game hard is so people have something to work towards.
I guess the devs didn't realize how many players would have an issue trying to improve and work towards a goal in a game where everyone could just walk through new content the first weekend.
We've talked about the current status quo in this and the previous cdp, they control the markets, and who gains access to group content by setting certain constraints on who they will invite; There are very few people doing "training" runs. It benefits the current status quo to limit the number of people running the latest content so they can further control the market.
Having alternatives to Lionheart weapons wouldn't mean players could steam roll new content, there are a lot of other factors in being effective. I'm not saying to make ToMM easier at all, I'm saying to give us alternatives to the BiS weapon set that is comparable. They could have new MW weaps, not easy or cheap to attain, and maybe something that's like the pioneer weaps, that is a little cheaper and easier to obtain. The thing is that these weapons would for most, be stepping stones to getting whatever current BiS weapons are. They've done this many times in the past, I don't know why people are so adamant about not doing this for lionheart weapons, except like I said, to keep the status quo as it is.
Except they are an alternative, because anyone can do the maths on it and the difference in weapon damage is 2%...
It's 3% on TR's. I'm sure there is more to the story then just 2%-3% more weapon damage = 2%-3% more dps, there is a whole formula, you know this. Also the statement that the buff is about 5% difference is misleading, 5% more power doesn't equal 5% more dps, and not to mention I think it's based on unbuffed power, but I haven't bothered checking it out other than glancing at my character sheet when the burnished buff procs. In my experience, with the same class, and power levels, a TR with Lionheart weapons can consistently do ~20% more damage than me with burnished weapons.
If your main concern is that alternatives would mean people wouldn't run ToMM, past experience has proved otherwise with different sets and dungeons.
Even if there isn't a significant difference in dps between Lionheart and Burnished, perception matters, especially with the way people invite others into difficult group content.
The difference in damage between the 2 weapons is negligible, when I first acquired the weapons on live I made a thread complaining about it. Anyone who takes the time to do the maths will realize that. You cannot notice the difference between someone who is using them and someone who is using burnished.
You know what perception issue exists? The perception issue right now, where there is someone in this thread arguing a gap of at at most 7% should be closed, which is smaller than the variance on weapons.
I think you're intentionally being misleading on the difference the weapons and weapon damage makes, my experience has been different.
First of all, you're coming from the perspective of a Wizard in M17, which was overperforming for various reason, and there very well may be other factors involved in what you experience.
Secondly if we follow you're logic on how much weapon damage and buffs matter, remember MW III +1 Weapons VS. Exalted Primal? The difference in Weapon Damage was that primal had about 6% less weapon damage than MW III +1 weapons, but had a 10% buff, MW III had a 2% buff. So Primal should have been BiS by 2% right? Nope, that's not the way reality worked due to other factors, and I'm sure you're well aware.
We've talked about the current status quo in this and the previous cdp, they [ToMM runners] control the markets, and who gains access to group content by setting certain constraints on who they will invite; There are very few people doing "training" runs. It benefits the current status quo to limit the number of people running the latest content so they can further control the market.
I think what you describe is a side-effect of the rather bad decision, to make a mod with a dungeon that can only be completed by a very small percentage of the playerbase.
How I would like to see this resolved (already proposed by other players): make three tiers of the dungeon: Mortal, Ascending, Immortal (with the pun, that most deaths would occur in the immortal tier)
This has several advantages: - players that love a challenge can have it - casual players can run the less challenging version, but will learn the basic mechanics so that they have a path towards the higher difficulty levels (and if they are up to a real challenge, they can have it)
Rewards will have to be tier'ed as well. One can argue about the percentages. If we want a comparably large gap between bis and casuals it could be 80% -> 90% ->100% If we want more convergence, 90% -> 95% -> 100% Having the lowest tier less than 80% probably would not be a good idea, because then the dungeon of the last mod would provide better rewards, which is not really intended for a new mod.
2
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
As far as I understand the discussion, most casual and semi-casual players (including players that have been bis at some point, but don't have the time to remain bis currently) are ok with the fact, that they cannot obtain the best endgame gear due to time constraints. What they would like, though, and I think that is a respectable opinion as well: - Have alternative ways to get gear that is not bis, but close enough to bis, so that they can play through all except the hardest content the way they like (e.g. with less challenge, e.g. "dumbed down and borring in your polite words)
Correct me if I'm missing something here but I'm going to oversimplify this.
• Group BiS can beat ToMM and get Lionheart • Group NotBiS can't beat ToMM but wish they could get gear that was close to BiS gear through alternative means.
So we're, in this case, talking about Lionheart weapons and ToMM rings.
One can easily argue the clear alternative to BiS Lionheart weapons are the Burnished/Alabaster/Watcher weapons. All attainable through means that don't involve ToMM. All the next step down.
People don't want weapons that are the next step down because they're already there. They're arguing for weapons that are almost identical to BiS options without being challenged.
And as far as the rings go.
Legendary rings are BiS. If you can't run ToMM the alternatives include: • buy them from the AH for a hefty fee (depending on which you want). • buy the epic version for a much cheaper and very affordable price • use the next step down, ebonized, etc, available through grinding
So again, there are multiple alternatives to the BiS legendary rings that are almost as good.
It seems to me that the game already caters to this: "Have alternative ways to get gear that is not bis, but close enough to bis, so that they can play through all except the hardest content the way they like"
A lot of people don't really understand that weapon damage is a major factor here, alabaster/burnished are not alternatives to Lionheart, they are alternatives to each other. I could care less about the rings, leave those in ToMM, the epic ones are cheap enough and damn near as good as the legendary ones (bragging rights).
The only reason I could see in defending a stance in keeping the hardest content in the game available for fewer people is to maintain current status quo, and I doubt that is good for the game moving forward, as the current status quo is part of what got us to start discussing how to make the game better in the first place.
One would think the actual point of keeping the hardest content in the game hard is so people have something to work towards.
I guess the devs didn't realize how many players would have an issue trying to improve and work towards a goal in a game where everyone could just walk through new content the first weekend.
We've talked about the current status quo in this and the previous cdp, they control the markets, and who gains access to group content by setting certain constraints on who they will invite; There are very few people doing "training" runs. It benefits the current status quo to limit the number of people running the latest content so they can further control the market.
Having alternatives to Lionheart weapons wouldn't mean players could steam roll new content, there are a lot of other factors in being effective. I'm not saying to make ToMM easier at all, I'm saying to give us alternatives to the BiS weapon set that is comparable. They could have new MW weaps, not easy or cheap to attain, and maybe something that's like the pioneer weaps, that is a little cheaper and easier to obtain. The thing is that these weapons would for most, be stepping stones to getting whatever current BiS weapons are. They've done this many times in the past, I don't know why people are so adamant about not doing this for lionheart weapons, except like I said, to keep the status quo as it is.
Except they are an alternative, because anyone can do the maths on it and the difference in weapon damage is 2%...
It's 3% on TR's. I'm sure there is more to the story then just 2%-3% more weapon damage = 2%-3% more dps, there is a whole formula, you know this. Also the statement that the buff is about 5% difference is misleading, 5% more power doesn't equal 5% more dps, and not to mention I think it's based on unbuffed power, but I haven't bothered checking it out other than glancing at my character sheet when the burnished buff procs. In my experience, with the same class, and power levels, a TR with Lionheart weapons can consistently do ~20% more damage than me with burnished weapons.
If your main concern is that alternatives would mean people wouldn't run ToMM, past experience has proved otherwise with different sets and dungeons.
Even if there isn't a significant difference in dps between Lionheart and Burnished, perception matters, especially with the way people invite others into difficult group content.
The difference in damage between the 2 weapons is negligible, when I first acquired the weapons on live I made a thread complaining about it. Anyone who takes the time to do the maths will realize that. You cannot notice the difference between someone who is using them and someone who is using burnished.
You know what perception issue exists? The perception issue right now, where there is someone in this thread arguing a gap of at at most 7% should be closed, which is smaller than the variance on weapons.
I think you're intentionally being misleading on the difference the weapons and weapon damage makes, my experience has been different.
The weapon has a 2% difference in weapon damage, that is a direct 2% increase in damage. 2% is 2%, it doesn't magically gain more from this.
It has lower power than the burnished set due to the set bonus, I am not going to try and quantify this, but it reduces the gap between the 2 of them by some amount, lets say 2%, because its a small enough figure for it to be reasonable. So that leaves them more or less as even and the only thing remaining to consider is the set bonus of the burnished set.
If you assume you are on maximum stamina all the time, you get a 10% damage increase, that adds with all the other buffs you have, I will assume you have 70% other buffs, so 1.8/1.7 and that is a 5.8% difference.
You can believe what you like, maths doesn't lie. The difference is tiny.
Because, and this is pretty obvious if you take 5 seconds to do the maths, thats a 6.8% difference in weapon damage, not a 2% difference in weapon damage. Not only that, but there is a 3k difference in power. Its pretty impressive, if the difference is big enough between 2 items, then 1 item is more desirable than the other.
dude, you are trying hard to not understand this right? 1 item is better then the other even if its only better by 0.0000001%. If the difference is really small tough, they are "comparable". So, do you really need to get some easy to aquire weapons that arent 2% worse then lionhearth, but only 1% worse? Does that 1% more dmg help u in any way when doing something ingame? Could it be that this is all only based on some gutfeeling of yours? Let me break the news for you. If you suck atm, the lionhearth weapons wont fix that. You wont notice any difference at all.
Given the content and specific of Neverwinter , to have a full game experience and build an adaptable character, from the start to endgame should be a medium of 2 years progression time. That is my assessment- 2 years. Some will get sooner, some later but 2 years is an appropriate progression time. . P.S. If their business cycle does not fit 2 years, that plan is a sure fail. .
Not quite sure what this remark refers to and what the message is, you wish to convey. If it is my proposal for rewards in RQs and you think having RQs giving out gear with 70-90% stats of bis gear is too fast progression for the casuals, because 2 years should be the norm, then consider this:
- items (boots, rings, necklaces) only contribute so much to the total effectiveness - having these items at 70-90% of the respective bis-items as rewards in RQs will not make players even close to bis
Players still need to - acquire epic/leg mounts and comps (more than a year for the free ones from festivals, lots of AD otherwise) - acquire epic/leg insignias (lots of AD) - upgrade their enchantments from the cheap rank9 to rank15 (tons of AD) - upgrade boons from campaigns (not that much significant, but time-consuming) - upgrade artifacts to mythic - get companion gear from MEs - etc. etc.
In particular upgrading enchants takes time (or money). And high level enchants are definitely required to get "close" to bis! They are a significant contribution to the required stats (in particular power)
Don't know exactly how many enchants slots there are in total. I think 28 (including weapon and armor, no overloads). Lets assume 30
r15 radiant (for power, still very much required) costs ~2.5 million AD bonding stones, empowered runestones, weapon and armor enchant usually cost more than that.
In total: ~75 million AD just for enchants
Casual player might make 50k AD per day on average (half the daily cap) Will take her 1500 days. That's ~5 years
I aplogize in advance for my huge wall of text, these are my suggestions/what I feel need to be looked into and thats about it. Cheers.
Dungeon Rewards:
The rewards in dungeons are lackluster, how many times have players struggled through one of the top tier dungeons only to get rewarded with a black opal and an outdated piece of gear from 10 mods ago? While the seals always provide a reason to keep running dungeons, there needs to be more incentives to run and keep running all content.
- Enchanting/mark of potency stones would be a good substitute for a lot of things that drop in the chests, back in the day you were happy when a mark dropped in dungeons and these days we have to resort to farm Dread Ring lairs mostly if we want to get those epic marks.
- Alliance gear is an eyesore at this point, it needs to be taken out and only return as transmutes at this point. Replace them with old transmutes (fey for Malabogs Castle, thayan/dread for Valindras Tower, black ice for Kessels Retreat, draconic for Shores of Tuern/Lair of Lostmauth). I believe that giving specific drops for specific content is something that players would enjoy, of course still have a chance of getting other goodies such as we have at the moment in the loot tables, but the dungeon chest rewards lack a sure thing as rewards and you often either get nothing worth while or in a rare instance you get something good you can sell.
- Adding a currency that always drops in chests that can be spent on either small rewards for a low cost or great rewards at a higher cost (so that even if you have bad rng you actually can get something good just from running qued content) is another suggestion. This circles back to getting a sure thing in the dungeon rewards, make the currency per character meaning you would want to run your alts through dungeons as well in order to get more things.
Reward modifiers?
Instead of tiered dungeons that keep being floated around as a suggestion, there could be an implementation of reward modifiers. Having a base area/hub before entering a dungeon where you select reward modifiers, much like Barovian hunts, could be an interesting concept incorporating the K-team challenge's essence but adding better rewards to it. The K-team idea was a good but sadly the rewards were terrible, players wanted at best one piece of gear from that store and once they got it they had no reason to keep doing the challenges.
Dragonflight/stronghold
Stronghold events and its rewards should have been updated a long time ago, there are a few guilds/alliances that still run Dragonflights but the rewards are still rather lackluster and theres no real point in doing them; especially if the guild are at max rank.
- New rewards for doing dragonflight, more specifically, only have the Fang of the Dragonflight drop and change the vendor and its rewards there. Have a choice of either buying stronghold supplies, to give to the coffer in order to level up the stronghold, or purchasing personal rewards such as refinement, transmutes of the old Dragonflight gear/weapons, marks, companion upgrade tokens and bags.
Collection points/completion rewards
Completing collections gives at best a title, but if there was more incentives with different rewards for completing them, more players would go back to certain zones and dungeons to try and complete as many as they could; thus adding more content.
- The rewards could be: exclusive titles, transmutes/dye, mounts/companions and vanity pets. A good template of this is Elder Scrolls Online, there are exclusive skins, mounts, gear, weapons and dye to be gained for completing questlines, hardcore difficulty mode in qued content and much more.
Vault of Piety (Invokation/Ardent Store)
The Ardent store also needs a little makeover, its not a huge pressing matter and not many players use it for more than buying potions I would assume, although it could always be improved upon. I would suggest adding useful things such as healthstones and updated healing potions (they dont provide much healing currently now that our overall HP has signicicantly been raised). Another fun thing to be purchased, does not need to be through the ardent store and could be some place else, would be improved stat modifiers. These would not go on anything else other than the artifacts pre module 16, lets call them Legacy Artifacts. The old artifacts' stats cant quite compete with the newer artifacts, well what if you could purchase a modifier to add +1000 more power to an old artifact? It would make older artifacts more desirable and less of a throwaway.
Event rewards
- MORE TALES OF OLD. Seriously, it was one of the best events we have had and everyone wanted those artifacts and were so sad if they were too late to get them.
Adding more things in general, the same transmutes and companions have been in the rewards for loot tables for years and we need new exciting things. the Hell Pit event, although quite boring with a one-room challenge, had great rewards such as the marks, wards, legendary insignia box, character slots, runic bag and of course the alluring legendary mount (which i hope will be abtainable this year...). More of those kinds of rewards would be great and something players would be lining up to farm/participate in.
@motu999 [snip] You are interested in equivalent damage output as 80-90 % from endgame. That can not be and should not be because you steal the game away from them. Most of the stealing part was already done with Mod 16. And destroy the game for everybody else along with the new players.
ad hominem attacks, is it that now? You are wrong in your false accusations. Was this really necessary?
Not everyone wants to be a leader. If there weren't players like me looking to join groups, no groups would form because everyone would be a leader.
Completely valid. Most don't want to lead a Q. I didn't want to lead a Q. But I still have done it when I wanted to accomplish something. Wanting and doing are not the same thing.
Not everyone is lucky enough to be in a guild or an alliance that has enough player that are ready to run ToMM
Absolutely true. Our guild didn't have enough members ready. We must have stopped trying right? Oh wait, no we didnt. We went outside our guild. We got alliance people. We grabbed randoms from Yawning/Protectors/Port/etc. We let people in with no experience under the hopes that getting experience would help them help us. We made it work.
not to mention that I live on the other side of the world from most of my alliance members, timing never works out.
Another 100% valid point. We actually have people in our core group from multiple continents so I understand the troubles of filling a group consistently. Even those of us in the states are spread across all 4 time zones. When we can't line up the schedules, we grab randoms and....make it work even if it turns into practice runs. Again, the thinking being this person could come back and experience gained now is a win win later. I, personally, have gone so far as to spread many of my toons across a few guilds to meet new people in the hopes of expanding the amount of people available to run ToMM with.
@motu999 We both know that everyone able to open a pc got - 1.free Barovia gear, 2.free Undermoutain gear, 3. free as hard carry Zok box gear, 4. free LoMM gear by currency in ME, 5. free Avernus gear by hanging on the edges of Ape, 6. Plenty of free RAD as hard carry in Randoms.
So lets not pretend that is about gear , everybody has BiS everything just by log in. You are interested in equivalent damage output as 80-90 % from endgame. . That can not be and should not be because you steal the game away from them. Most of the stealing part was already done with Mod 16. And destroy the game for everybody else along with the new players. . If you could help a child become an adult in 1 day= would you do it? No. Do not do it in a game. . Your calculations are wrong too.
Hi Magdalena,
I appreciate you coming into the CDP and your comments but please do try to be a little bit less terse. Try to think more broadly and if you disagree with someone in terms of their idea or calculations then please give the CDP member the courtesy of explaining why. This is a working group and not a normal forum thread.
Very busy today. I should have some time at lunch to respond to page 2. I will be engaging over the weekend as well. Keep the ideas coming please and Monday we will move to phase 2 and drill more deeply into some of them. Note its ok to still put ideas in phase 2 but where possible the focus should be on working together discuss and refine ideas from phase 1.
You can look at https://jannenw.info/pages/mechanics16/formulas Edit: I didn't do this right, I went back over it and I must of fat fingered a button on my calculator somewhere the first time. Anyways, if you average the weapon damages like in janne's formula it's a 3.05% difference instead of just looking at the difference between the maximums between the two. I tried adjusting numbers for other factors and the end result was always 3.05% difference in damage. Again, assuming I did it right, I'm no math wiz, obviously. But I'll leave my mistake there for all to see.
to see why 2% more weap damage will equate to more than a 2% increase in DPS, and why I said sharp was being intentionally misleading in his statements, as I know he's smarter than that. If I did this right, ignoring set bonuses and counter stats assuming they're capp'd, and a power with 100 magnitude, 200k power, 100% crit severity, 100% CA Severity and Uptime, 30% buffs, and 30% debuffs (none of which is hard to do in end game), a 2% increase in weapon damage from burnished to lionheart results in a4% 3.05% increase to damage, not 2%. It becomes easy to see how lionheart can lead to 10-20% increase in damage (class matters) if you also consider its set bonus. A 5% increase in power (which like I said, I think isn't based on buffed power, and may not even account for bonding/augment buffs, I need to look more closely at that), isn't a 5% increase in damage due to relative increase and the way other factors multiply into the equation.
Math can lie, when your theory is flawed or intentionally or otherwise leave out factors. Edit: Or have fat fingers.
Anyways all that aside, I would assume that having alternatives to lionheart that were situationally bis, or interesting in some way, would actually be something sharp would agree with, as he's been campaigning for that sort of stuff himself. I don't understand why anyone would be against that. I don't understand how having one item that's supposed be bis for everyone being locked behind a dungeon very few people can run/complete is a good thing, without having some sort of alternatives. I apologize if I invoked strong emotions in anyone, these are just my opinions on what would be good for the game and a larger set of the playerbase. How exactly alternatives would be acquired and what bonuses they would have, would require further discussion, if the decision was made to introduce some, and at the end of the day, is entirely in the hands of the developers.
^^ Edit: Still believe this.
Post edited by quickfoot#7851 on
7
lordaeolosMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 167Arc User
Comprehensively revamp the entire rewards and progression system in game
Goal: Create a streamlined, simplified, and rewarding system for 0 to End Game, which is rich in choice, and contains appropriate currency sinks.
Functionality: Each Section of this is integrated to the next section, and it builds towards a complete system. Some details are left purposely vague to keep from descending into minutia, but are detailed enough to allow a reader to follow each concept through to a logical conclusion.
1. 0-80 leveling process Process needs to be about learning your class, getting connected to guilds / "player mentors", and learning how to advance. As veteran players we can only speak to this from a pain point perspective (helping newer players), as many new players do not know what they need to do when they hit level 80, and most have no idea of the importance of companions, bonding stones, equipment they should pursue, why they may want to do campaigns or how to navigate the economy.
Suggestions for player progression 0 to 80
Do not allow XP scrolls/ “speed leveling” for brand new players. Force new players to do each zone one at a time. Once campaigns have been completed on a character in account, then allow “speed leveling” for followup characters (along with skipping any other tutorial).
Create a new volunteer moderated in game chat channel, and tutorial for using in game chat to sponsor networking, and guild recruiting in game.
Level numbers are for example only:
Do not allow AD purchases or sales prior to level 70 (right now this creates more confusion than benefits for the majority of players)
Level 10 introduce invoking and super store
Level 12 gives player 3 companions (healer, tank, augment), and a piece of companion equipment. Do tutorials that explain the benefits of each type? Can be skipped if completed on another character in account
Level 14 enchanting (by unlocking one enchanting slot), unlock additional slots with every other level, along with “giving” the players an enchantment to slot in those. This includes low quality weapon and armor enchantments.
Level 15 “equip Bonus kit/ enchantment”. Supply bonus kit to slot, along with tutorial on deconstructing equipment, and a crafting tutorial? Open new slots on alternating levels until all pieces of equipment have slots available?
These changes should result in lowered player confusion from the leveling process, while also providing teaching moments to new players, improving player networking, while building towards a community based MMO experience..
2. Create "Super Store" the "Super Store" (Knox's Armory?) would have all the items available on the Wondrous Bazaar, Tarmalune Trade Bar Store, Invoking Stores (getting rid of the RNG boxes from invoking in favor of currency), legacy campaign store, legacy seals stores, some items you can only get currently from lock boxes, and of course keys for the gamblers.
Currency would be acquired by: VIP daily claim Invoking Tarmalune Trade Bars Zen Market Direct buy with AD Drop from legacy queued content / PvP (weekly max) Drop from Heroic Encounters (weekly max) Legacy campaigns (weekly max)
The “Super store” is a key factor to simplifying the current plethora of “stores” in game, while giving players more flexibility in how they want to grind for rewards.
3. Redesign Character Equipment/ Load-out / Companion Functionality
Split enchantments from gear, replace the removing enchantments gold sink with a gold cost for upgrading enchantments.
Equalize “benefit” areas? 1/5 from equipment, 1/5 from enchants / artifacts, 1/5 from companion, 1/5 from boons, ⅕ from mount + mount insignia? Thoughts? For example.. Say you “could” have 200k max power.. A total of 40k could come from each “section”
Rework Campaign Boons to Balance the “Cost” and benefits.
Remove Bonding Runestones from the game entirely. Instead give the same bonuses as bondings, but based on the summoned companion level and bolster group. Companion bonus would be greatly reduced in effectiveness from where it is currently, but should still be worth the investment. Also Augments and Actives should pass the same amount of stats to the player, but actives should come with a much higher risk profile.
Rework Enchantment/ Artifact Stat Value. Right now the value-add to upgrading enchantments/ artifacts is one of the lowest return on investments in the game (after boons). These need to be re-balanced to give a greater percentage of value.Doing this would be by itself an increase to the value of RP, which increases the perceived value of RP in loot tables
Equip bonuses should be in the form of equip bonus reinforcement enchantments. meaning If a kit is acquired, it could be applied to any piece of gear for the category it's made for. Reinforcement kits should be restricted so certain bonuses/ kits can only be applied to certain gear piece slots (head,arms, etc). Equip bonuses would probably need to be re-worked somewhat to give some interesting choices here, and make sure the best in slot is a little “fuzzy”
Bonuses could be overridden for any piece of gear. “Pairings” kits could be achieved with extra RNG effort. This would create a “chase” for the newest gear, or gear with the stats you want/ need for your character, as well as a chase for the Equipment bonuses you want as a player. Reinforcements would be a separate UI slot, like an enchantment (grouped with them?), with the ability to upgrade with RP and materials.
Gear or kits can be "deconstructed" to get kit recipe, and recover materials to create new reinforcement kits, RNG the amount of “materials” recovered, deconstruction would cost gold - see crafting section
This would incentivize players to spend time in a balanced manner, keep people better informed to what they want to run, while also opening up a lot more player choice. This would also Make the newest high IL gear all chase items, while keeping older gear/ kits as chase items. As well as create whole new sinks for RP, Gold and refining materials.
4. Rework Queued content loot tables
If a dungeon/ skirmish/trial drops a unique item like a companion, list that on the queue selection
Replace seals for any content (current mod -1) with "Super Store" Currency, set weekly max for super store currency by character/ account
Add Bonus Kits and Kit recipe materials to loot tables for all queued content, and Heroic encounters. Some "bonuses" should be tied to specific campaigns, meaning some Bonus Kits and key ingredients for certain kits could only be acquired in those zones. I would also tie each kit type to another additional campaign zone. For example any time you wanted to craft a kit for a head slot, it might require running dread ring content.
5. Rework Profession Systems
Add Equip bonus reinforcement kit recipes. Most kits should have multiple qualities with "scaled" recipes (each kit of varying quality could use the same ingredients, but use scaled quantities for quality). Lowest quality kits to be constructed at level 0-10 crafting, highest in Masterworks (max level could only be achieved with RP +mats +wards?).
Kits would be craft-able in ranks 1 -10, ranks 11-15 would only be obtainable through refining processes (cost similar to weapon/.armor enchantment + campaign mats), but earlier ranks could also be upgraded via refining at cost.
As a hypothetical example: Step 1: +3% melee damage (feet only) kit from Barovia Hunt Step 2: Deconstruct +3% melee damage kit, which gives 8 (10 if you are a max master works) +x% melee damage recipes in leatherworking, as well as some “recovered materials”, which would be subject to RNG for how much is recovered Step 3: Farm the materials you need to construct this kit, since this is a barovia item, required drops would come from Gathering profession as well as loots items from Castle Ravenloft, and Heroic encounters in the campaign zone, as well as one other zone that would be the base zone for “feet kits”. Step 4: Craft the kit with master works. Cost would be materials + Ad +Gold. Rank 10 Kit with +2.5% melee damage would be unbound and ready for use or Sale.
To help control the supply/ ratio, remove character level crafting, and put crafting at account level. greatly expand the inventory space for crafting materials, make crafting inventory unlimited for VIP (like ESO) as an added benefit for VIP?
This would slow down the supply side in the crafting economy, create a system of near perpetual value for crafting (with less need for massive recipe updates), while also adding a substantial currency sink to the game, give players more options for acquisition of sought after gear bonuses, while leaving the top Stat gear as drops to be obtained by playing.
Risks/ Concerns
1. Scale of changes creates a challenge to complete work with attention to detail required 2. Achieving proper balance would take a great deal of planning and detailed analytics. 3. The kits will require a rework of equip bonuses to ensure each is viable, and creates a choice for the player. 4. This would need to be done in small steps, with crafting being the last piece of the puzzle
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
4
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
I think I know what I am talking about when I say a 2% increase in weapon damage is a 2% increase in damage. I also think you have read what is on that page incorrectly, otherwise you would have come to the same conclusion.
to see why 2% more weap damage will equate to more than a 2% increase in DPS, and why I said sharp was being intentionally misleading in his statements, as I know he's smarter than that.
If I did this right, ignoring set bonuses and counter stats assuming they're capp'd, and a power with 100 magnitude, 200k power, 100% crit severity, 100% CA Severity and Uptime, 30% buffs, and 30% debuffs (none of which is hard to do in end game), a 2% increase in weapon damage from burnished to lionheart results in a 4% increase to damage, not 2%. It becomes easy to see how lionheart can lead to 10-20% increase in damage (class matters) if you also consider its set bonus. A 5% increase in power (which like I said, I think isn't based on buffed power, and may not even account for bonding/augment buffs, I need to look more closely at that), isn't a 5% increase in damage due to relative increase and the way other factors multiply into the equation.
That doesn't sound correct. Before Mod16 the dps increase will be less than a weapon damage increase because of the level based constant added there. After M16, it should be exactly that. If you have 100 weapon damage and now have 102, your damage increased by 2%
I don't wish to spam this thread, PM me if you want and I can look over where the issue is.
Feedback Overview: Bring back class feature, encounter and daily bonuses to equipment.
Feedback Goal: Allow for more variance in builds and enhance gameplay beyond stat chasing.
Feedback Functionality: Back in mod 5 (I think it stopped in mod 6 if I remember correctly), epic pieces of equipment for classes would drop and they'd contain bonuses to certain feats and abilities, making them that much more versatile or frankly, making them relevant in the first place.
Let's be honest, someone, somewhere has to be looking at all of the class feats, encounter powers and at-wills knowingly placing them into the game understanding that no one in their right mind would use all of these abilities in the game due to blatantly obvious game design. With that being said, back in that mod, if you got an item that was meant for your class, it could have a range of augments placed on it that would impact class feats, encounters or dailies (maybe it was just class feats and encounters, I don't recall specifically).
Two and four set piece bonuses for your class could be an outstanding way to bring some variance back to equipment these days. Lets be honest, the gear as far as their stats and what bonuses you're getting, are frankly lazy. The dev's at the time really wanted to get away from these types of bonuses for some reason but, it could allow for build enhancements or it could make a previously useless feat/encounter/daily actually valid.
Let's use a Rogue for this example under the Assassin paragon. Let's take a quick look at Assassin's Target and Toxic Blades:
Assassin's Target: Your attacks apply a stack of "targeted" to the first enemy hit. This effect stack up to 10 times and increases the damage of your next Encounter power that strikes the target by 1% per stack.
Toxic Blades: You coat your weapons with a deadly toxin causing Encounter and Daily attacks to apply a DoT. This DoT deals 30 magnitude weapon damage once every 3 seconds, for 9 seconds, and stacks up to 5 times.
Now, I've been playing a TR for over six years now and he's been my main for pretty much this entire time. I don't know any self respecting rogue that would choose Assassin's Target over Toxic Blades (this again emphasizes my point earlier about useless abilities).
You could, for instance, have a 2 or 4 set bonus that impacts either one of these but, lets focus on the one that virtually no one will pick. Let's say the bonus impacts it's viability in a way that makes it remotely competitive with Toxic Blades...
4 of 4 set: Assassin's Target will now target up to five enemies and reduce their damage resistance by 1% per stack.
I think this would still make Assassin's Target subpar to Toxic Blades but, without fundamentally changing it's characteristics, it'll never compete in the first place but, this is just to serve as an example.
Let's look at a couple of feats from the Whisperknife paragon path, another path virtually no one uses.
Razor Action: When you activate a daily power you fling daggers up to 30' doing 200 magnitude damage and increasing your speed by 2% per target hit to a maximum of 10%.
With the incredible nerf to action point gain, feats like this are relics of a time long past and even when it was a thing, no one still used it because there were better options. If you really want to make Whisperknife more viable, consider something like this.
A four piece set bonus for this could have something great loaded into it. Perhaps something along the lines of...
4 of 4 set: Razor Action will now return 10% of your action points per enemy hit with your daggers, up to a maximum of 50%. (no cooldown).
Action points still take an eternity to build either way.
Dagger Threat: Your ranged attacks deal up to 7.5% more damage based on how close you are to your target. You gain the maximum benefit from this class feature when within 15' of your target.
I think I know what you guys were trying to do with the Whisperknife build but, it just doesn't work and it's gotta be one of the most awkward class paragons in the game.
4 of 4 set: Dagger Threat will now increase the rate of all ranged at-will's by 50%.
Before someone freaks out about that idea, consider how worthless the current rogue ranged at-wills are and then come back to me.
Lastly, let me highlight a poor class that has gotten the short end of the stick for a long, long time, the Warlock. They are riddled with worthless abilities, cumbersome mechanics and supremely lackluster damage.
Creeping Death: When you deal damage with your At-Will, Encounter, or Daily powers to enemies they are afflicted with Creeping Death. Creeping Death deals 10% additional damage as Necrotic damage over 5 seconds.
While I get that this unlocks at level 70 and is supposed to do damage (I think?), it does an abysmal amount of dps.
4 of 4 set: Creeping Death now deals 50/100/150/200 magnitude weapon damage per second for 10 seconds. Stacks 4 times.
You guys should make them the DoT masters they were meant to be. With this little change, you might not even have to rewrite the entire class. Again, just serving as an example.
Risks & Concerns: There will be work to be done to make this work and to not have it spiral out of control, sure. But, it'll also offer the ability to toss in small increments of class balancing to the game in a way that doesn't require a fundamental rewrite of the class.
Legendary mounts are rare and expensive enough that combat powers should be meaningful on every single one of them. You press the up button to activate the combat power once every minute, but there are currently only a few worth using and they are only good in specific situations.
Feedback overview: Removal of Tokens of re-rolls and the benefit of this for economy, gameplay and for new players.
Feedback Goal: Get players back to dungeon and trial; valuing items on the market; alternative characters with some more importance; Appreciation of Legendary Dragon Keys.
Feedback Functionality: Removing Tokens of re-rolls will make players perform the content more often, rather than one with up to a maximum of 10 chances. Bring back the Old Man of the day. Today there is already a free chest in all content (except in Tiamat), a player could very well earn a vip bonus key and a bonus key from the Old Man of the key. These keys would be the same as the Legendary Dragon key's, they would open all the chest that need campaign keys.
Ex: If a VIP wanted to farm R6 enchanting stone in CoDG for example, he would already leave with 2 keys to the second chest without using the campaign keys.
This week I had to do ECC and EToS at REDQ, and I felt sad about making this content, I knew that I didn't have campaign keys to be able to open the second chest of the dungeons and that discouraged me. Players like me, do not usually use re rolls in these chests and much less make campaign coins to create their keys. It would be something that I could use the key of the day, since the end of game content is easier to have resources to create their keys. This would also help the youngest player, who is still running the campaign, since when creating the key he spends campaign resources. If you do ToMM and do not need to REDQ eg you would have the campaign key (which is also daily) ), the VIP day key and the old man key. You would have 6 chances, but for that you would have to execute 3x the content.
Risks & Concerns: Most of you like the current system. Players with little time in play or who are more active only on weekends would be the most affected.
As Natsu pointed out, there is already a decent alternative. There is a 2% difference in weapon damage and a ~5% difference in the set bonus between the weapons from ToMM and the weapons outside of ToMM. Basically, during the course of a run, you cannot tell the difference between someone using it or using burnished because the variance in weapon damage on weapons makes a larger difference than the weapon upgrade. And we know this as a fact, because when we first acquired the weapons, some people in our group had them and some people did not and there was no perceptible difference in how players performed in the dungeon, comparing those who had to those who did not.
If you think that the weapons make that big of a difference, you are deluding yourself. Making the gap any closer than it already is and the weapons may as well be identical, at which point there is no reason to run ToMM.
It's not about difference (in my opinion 2 - 10% is enough of a worthy upgrade see for example the new iron boots which are 5% and only 2% more then the melee boots) it's about REWARDS from Mod 18+ content as well as having something to work towards upgrading your character. Everyone got Mod 16 weapons already - Alabaster mainhand can be gotten the day you reach level 80 from one of the first 3 Master Expeditions with a bit of luck.
Honestly, I think the timing on difficult content couldn't have been worse, when most of the veteran players have left.
Again, another valid point. There has been a drought on endgamers to run with. But there are ways around this.
Not only that, veterans who farmed ToMM 9 months ago are also leaving. If they had something to work towards and for example LoMM would have gotten a minor update to its loot table (new bis helmet and chest for example) we would have had 3 dungeons / trials that are worth farming, playing or to meet new people right now. To me this looks like something the game should try to approach. ToMM would still be relevant in that case if that's something people worry about. And even if Mod 19+ were to add new weapons that dwarf Lionheart set then ToMM for example could also be updated of course.
@quickfoot#7851@thefabricant : My only comment on this discussion is that both of you are missing an important point.
And also @thefabricant: @cwhitesidedev#9752''s note for magdalena applies to you as well and it's on the same page as your refusal to reason. You can't just say that you are credited and others should just deal with. Even the gap is definitely over 7% just by the 2 weapon effect because you can't equate situationally 5% base power with upmost 10% damage as 10-5 just because. You're not just seem arrogant, but very incorrect. Unless you have the data to prove otherwise. A thing that you have to provide, not ask others to look up for you wherever you mentioned it half a year ago.
But to the topic: Most players would not need a new tier weapon to close the gap, they need it to have anything to do. Mod18 is pretty barren of rewards worth to get as DPS. People would just take a new tier weapon set that gives 5% power, because at least they can upgrade their character. Mod16 was 10 months ago and people are running with the same weapons and disregarding the long needed demo nerf, the same artifact sets as well.
Giving a bare new tier weapon set would not decrease the value of the lionheart, not would make ToMM significantly easier as the problem is not the DPS, but the coordination, the skills needed and the huge difference between how ToMM is played and how every other content is played. I would not like to get a better set than Lionheart, because ToMM is harder than IC, even if IC requires more stats. But at least a sellable weapon set would be a great reward to run it after a month.
2
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
@quickfoot#7851@thefabricant : My only comment on this discussion is that both of you are missing an important point.
And also @thefabricant: @cwhitesidedev#9752''s note for magdalena applies to you as well and it's on the same page as your refusal to reason. You can't just say that you are credited and others should just deal with. Even the gap is definitely over 7% just by the 2 weapon effect because you can't equate situationally 5% base power with upmost 10% damage as 10-5 just because. You're not just seem arrogant, but very incorrect. Unless you have the data to prove otherwise. A thing that you have to provide, not ask others to look up for you wherever you mentioned it half a year ago.
But to the topic: Most players would not need a new tier weapon to close the gap, they need it to have anything to do. Mod18 is pretty barren of rewards worth to get as DPS. People would just take a new tier weapon set that gives 5% power, because at least they can upgrade their character. Mod16 was 10 months ago and people are running with the same weapons and disregarding the long needed demo nerf, the same artifact sets as well.
Giving a bare new tier weapon set would not decrease the value of the lionheart, not would make ToMM significantly easier as the problem is not the DPS, but the coordination, the skills needed and the huge difference between how ToMM is played and how every other content is played. I would not like to get a better set than Lionheart, because ToMM is harder than IC, even if IC requires more stats. But at least a sellable weapon set would be a great reward to run it after a month.
I see reading comprehension is hard. AT NO POINT DID I EQUATE 5% BASE POWER TO THE SET BONUS
The comparison I made was: +5% base power
vs:
+2% weapon damage +10% "increased" damage (which is not really 10% unless you never dodge)
The 2% weapon damage is "roughly" equal to the 5% base power (we can argue backwards and forwards about that, but the point is, its somewhere in that range).
How many buffs do you have without the weapon buffs? Probably ~70%. so you are going from 70% to 80%
1.8/1.7 = 1.05882352941 ~5.89%
This is assuming you never dodge and always have max stamina, which is a false assumption to begin with.
Rewards: Master Crafting Fail! The grind to master crafting to max lvl. was brutal to say the least, but for me the worst was the fail on resources; where if you failed (which happened most of the time), you would lose enormously expensive ingredients and have to start again. (BTW mastercrafting armorer is still broken with adamant plates failing +80% of the time with the highest possible resources used). The use of a forge hammer, focus potions, +1 ingredients and high lvl artisans didn't matter. If I wasn't committed to getting to master craft 5, (now made worthless by bringing in lvl 80 items) there would be no incentive whatsoever. If Cryptic were to bring in new recipes, would they make them lvl 80, bypassing all the master crafting lvl 5? Omu had the Wootz gear, craftable, with low fail rates, they were second only to master craft stronghold weapons, popular with new toons, and inexpensive. (Also tied into CODG with the exalting ampoules). The subsequent mods have gear you grind dungeons for, only the elites were able to obtain these, or epic "grinders". (Looking at you Watcher set!) Other than +10 potions why bother crafting anything? Master crafting has lost relevance. If you truly want players to craft again, make a new tier of re-enforcements, possibly pet gear, and a craftable enchantment or two. Remove the rediculus commision cost on upgrading the workshop, why give Ms. whatshername huge masses of black ink, for the weak chance of getting a purple craftsman? Impact: Add recipes that enhanse gear, make gear, or upgrade gear. Add new goodies as well, or scrap master crafting all together, we the crafting community have paid the price! We demand that you stop adding new layers to the poo-pie you have now, and fix what's broken or accept the complete inevitable abandonment of the system.
@quickfoot#7851@thefabricant : My only comment on this discussion is that both of you are missing an important point.
And also @thefabricant: @cwhitesidedev#9752''s note for magdalena applies to you as well and it's on the same page as your refusal to reason. You can't just say that you are credited and others should just deal with. Even the gap is definitely over 7% just by the 2 weapon effect because you can't equate situationally 5% base power with upmost 10% damage as 10-5 just because. You're not just seem arrogant, but very incorrect. Unless you have the data to prove otherwise. A thing that you have to provide, not ask others to look up for you wherever you mentioned it half a year ago.
But to the topic: Most players would not need a new tier weapon to close the gap, they need it to have anything to do. Mod18 is pretty barren of rewards worth to get as DPS. People would just take a new tier weapon set that gives 5% power, because at least they can upgrade their character. Mod16 was 10 months ago and people are running with the same weapons and disregarding the long needed demo nerf, the same artifact sets as well.
Giving a bare new tier weapon set would not decrease the value of the lionheart, not would make ToMM significantly easier as the problem is not the DPS, but the coordination, the skills needed and the huge difference between how ToMM is played and how every other content is played. I would not like to get a better set than Lionheart, because ToMM is harder than IC, even if IC requires more stats. But at least a sellable weapon set would be a great reward to run it after a month.
I see reading comprehension is hard. AT NO POINT DID I EQUATE 5% BASE POWER TO THE SET BONUS
The comparison I made was: +5% base power
vs:
+2% weapon damage +10% "increased" damage (which is not really 10% unless you never dodge)
The 2% weapon damage is "roughly" equal to the 5% base power (we can argue backwards and forwards about that, but the point is, its somewhere in that range).
How many buffs do you have without the weapon buffs? Probably ~70%. so you are going from 70% to 80%
1.8/1.7 = 1.05882352941 ~5.89%
This is assuming you never dodge and always have max stamina, which is a false assumption to begin with.
That is my point. It is negligible.
The gap is nowhere near 7%.
IF YOU REFUSE TO REASON PEOPLE WILL GO FOR THEIR OWN CONCLUSIONS
The average damage of Lionheart is more than 3% more than the burnished: 4047,5 ÷ 3927,5 = 1,03055... and expecting the Burnished weapon set bonus to be always active is less likely, because it relies on an other character. The Lionheart's effect only diminishes, the Burnished just does not work.
Also, even -6% DPS is hardly negligible. People will notice it and if your class already underperforms, so you are less likely to be called in for ToMM, that's just an other multiplier on it.
Alsoalso, if it does not matter, then what is the exact problem by giving a new tiered set with "negligible" bonus? Because the majority of the playerbase getting bored out of the game because they can't gear up in any significant way is more on the problem than how easier or less respectable it would make ToMM. Because it doesn't. Players fail, because they die, so tightening the damage gap with ~2% by increasing a tier only pushes in people on the edge.
@quickfoot#7851@thefabricant : My only comment on this discussion is that both of you are missing an important point.
And also @thefabricant: @cwhitesidedev#9752''s note for magdalena applies to you as well and it's on the same page as your refusal to reason. You can't just say that you are credited and others should just deal with. Even the gap is definitely over 7% just by the 2 weapon effect because you can't equate situationally 5% base power with upmost 10% damage as 10-5 just because. You're not just seem arrogant, but very incorrect. Unless you have the data to prove otherwise. A thing that you have to provide, not ask others to look up for you wherever you mentioned it half a year ago.
But to the topic: Most players would not need a new tier weapon to close the gap, they need it to have anything to do. Mod18 is pretty barren of rewards worth to get as DPS. People would just take a new tier weapon set that gives 5% power, because at least they can upgrade their character. Mod16 was 10 months ago and people are running with the same weapons and disregarding the long needed demo nerf, the same artifact sets as well.
Giving a bare new tier weapon set would not decrease the value of the lionheart, not would make ToMM significantly easier as the problem is not the DPS, but the coordination, the skills needed and the huge difference between how ToMM is played and how every other content is played. I would not like to get a better set than Lionheart, because ToMM is harder than IC, even if IC requires more stats. But at least a sellable weapon set would be a great reward to run it after a month.
I see reading comprehension is hard. AT NO POINT DID I EQUATE 5% BASE POWER TO THE SET BONUS
The comparison I made was: +5% base power
vs:
+2% weapon damage +10% "increased" damage (which is not really 10% unless you never dodge)
The 2% weapon damage is "roughly" equal to the 5% base power (we can argue backwards and forwards about that, but the point is, its somewhere in that range).
How many buffs do you have without the weapon buffs? Probably ~70%. so you are going from 70% to 80%
1.8/1.7 = 1.05882352941 ~5.89%
This is assuming you never dodge and always have max stamina, which is a false assumption to begin with.
That is my point. It is negligible.
The gap is nowhere near 7%.
IF YOU REFUSE TO REASON PEOPLE WILL GO FOR THEIR OWN CONCLUSIONS
The average damage of Lionheart is more than 3% more than the burnished: 4047,5 ÷ 3927,5 = 1,03055... and expecting the Burnished weapon set bonus to be always active is less likely, because it relies on an other character. The Lionheart's effect only diminishes, the Burnished just does not work.
Also, even -6% DPS is hardly negligible. People will notice it and if your class already underperforms, so you are less likely to be called in for ToMM, that's just an other multiplier on it.
Alsoalso, if it does not matter, then what is the exact problem by giving a new tiered set with "negligible" bonus? Because the majority of the playerbase getting bored out of the game because they can't gear up in any significant way is more on the problem than how easier or less respectable it would make ToMM. Because it doesn't. Players fail, because they die, so tightening the damage gap with ~2% by increasing a tier only pushes in people on the edge.
you quote him reasoning and then claim the problem is he doesnt reason... lol And no, you wont notice the difference between lionhearth and burnished. I would have no problem with giving the IC weapon set 1000 IL instead of 980, but this discussion was about if there should be an easier way to get BIS weapons besides dungeons.
0
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
and expecting the Burnished weapon set bonus to be always active is less likely, because it relies on an other character. The Lionheart's effect only diminishes, the Burnished just does not work.
Speak for yourself, I trust the OPs I run with to keep it up 100% of the time.
Also, even -6% DPS is hardly negligible. People will notice it and if your class already underperforms, so you are less likely to be called in for ToMM, that's just an other multiplier on it.
Alsoalso, if it does not matter, then what is the exact problem by giving a new tiered set with "negligible" bonus? Because the majority of the playerbase getting bored out of the game because they can't gear up in any significant way is more on the problem than how easier or less respectable it would make ToMM. Because it doesn't. Players fail, because they die, so tightening the damage gap with ~2% by increasing a tier only pushes in people on the edge.
You just proved what I said, its less than 7%. Incidentally, the difference between the minimum and maximum weapon damage is more than 6%, by quite a lot actually. Players who do not have the set can do more damage than players who do have it simply because they may get lucky on weapon damage rolls. The difference is not noticeable in gameplay.
I bet you if I showed you 10 paingivers+act logs with the same people involved and only 1 of them didn't have the lionheart set where everyone is trying their hardest, you wouldn't be able to figure out who it was.
At the end of the day, the point was, the difference is already minor. If you make the reason 0, you are taking away a chase item = devaluing the effort of the people who went and beat tomm. You want a reward? Fine, add something that does NOT undermine their effort.
I'm touching content because Content, Rewards, and Player Progression are the trifecta that make up any mmo. They're directly related and you can't affect the structure of one without talking about the others.
Neverwinter is a Funnel.
New players enter, have tons of options and upgrades that need to be addressed to make their character stronger. There's 13 campaigns to grind through and lots of AD that needs to be earned. As they get stronger they take on tougher content until they are grinding whatever the newest dungeon is. — However, once they've gotten the new gear they want and played the new dungeon 40+ times, their available progression is stumped. They're not going to go back and play content they've already beat. They're now near the point of the funnel and looking for the next mod. At this point any upgrades they can make are minor and extremely expensive.
Pros: The Funnel keeps your playerbase waiting for the next mod pack. It keeps the end-dungeon queues full.
Cons: Retention A lot of players leave after they've finished the last mod. There isn't much to do, so they go play other games until the next mod comes out. Maybe they don't come back for a long time.
Content drop-off The value of a campaign falls steeply about 2 months after release. Once new gear is acquired, gear from old campaigns becomes worthless. Stat increases dictate new gear for the next mod. Gear you were grinding for 4 months ago is now being turned into an appearance item.
^ This is the main structure of Neverwinter. You can argue details and sticking points, but this is the overall player flow in the game.
----
A few things have accelerated the Funnel: XP is extremely easy to get in Neverwinter. It takes no time at all to get from 70-80. There are 2X events, an XP Guild boon, Enchantments, Invoking, and many other ways to boost XP.
Gear Packs — both Ravenloft and the Undermountain campaigns give players intro gear that is far better than anything in the 13 campaigns that come before.
^ The problem with these accelerants is that they nullify the rewards in 80% of the content and bring players to the tip of the Funnel very quickly. A new player is looking at 10+ campaigns that are essentially a waste of time except for 4 boon points. Only the last 2-3 mods are important for a player looking to improve their character.
----
Solutions
First I'm going to assume the devs want to keep the Funnel considering they've put so much effort in designing Neverwinter this way. However, I do propose widening the options for end-game gameplay so that the Funnel doesn't have such a narrow point.
Rewards General:
Generally, I think Neverwinter needs more rewards that are intangible. The game is far too materialistic and when anyone says 'rewards', people immediately think "I want stuff I can sell for millions of AD."
Exclusivity and bragging rights are rewards. Leaderboards, personal completion stats, exclusive titles, exclusive vanity pets, 1 of a kind appearance items, exclusive vanity mounts, etc, etc.
1. Leaderboards: Completion Times
Who are the players that completed TOMM in the shortest time? There should be a listing for them somewhere. These players should be famous in-game and we should be trying to beat their time. Your position on the leaderboard IS the reward.
Leaderboards could be added to any dungeon in the game. That dungeon, no matter how tired it is, immediately becomes more valuable to players. It's no longer just something to grind but something to excel at.
Pro: No new content to make. Dungeons are already in-game. Cons: You need to make a Leader board system. Probably in the Que tab, have a button in the dungeon info area that pulls up the leaderboard table. Somehow you'd have to display up to 10 people's names for raids. ---
2. Scaling Dungeons
There should be at least 2 difficulty levels for every dungeon in the game. Mobs stats scaled up, boss stats scaled up, and rewards scaled up. It should also be something that's easy for your content team to do. Change the drop table, change the stat caps, save the new version. The teams spent all that time making the content, it should be usable at more than one level. Content that stays relevant at end-game widens the end of the funnel.
Pro: No new content to make. Dungeons are already in-game. Cons: You have to make a tool so you can scale things up easily. And, content needs to be structured in such a way that it can be scalable. ---
3. Single Player Dungeons: Ultimate/Completion Times
There are hundreds of mini-dungeons and zones already in Neverwinter. Scale the mob stats to end-game and call it 'Ultimate'. Scale up the rewards and add a Leaderboard. Encourage players to speed run these things. Maybe make it an event-type thing where the dungeon changes each month. As for rewards, how about an Exclusive Title for the top players on the leaderboard.
Pros: Plenty of content already in-game. If you want, string several mini-dungeons together to make it longer. A leaderboard should be easy to make.
Cons: Honestly can't think of any. ---
4. MEs, but Better
MEs weren't a bad idea. The rune system is great. The problem is that there wasn't enough variation and Mod16-17 relied on them too much.
What I'd like to see: An ME-like system where mini-dungeons that already exist in the game are reused and semi-randomized. Random mobs, semi-random bosses, different textures and environments. And you can scale the difficulty and rewards up the same way you can with runes. This system should be constructed so that it's scalable. Mob stats and rewards can be easily adjusted each mod so it stays relevant. Go through a portal, either solo or with your friends, and do a random Expedition.
Pros: Should be easy to keep relevant once it's set up. All the content already exists in-game. Endless replayability.
Cons: Initial dev investment. ME's already exist, but I'm guessing they weren't designed to be updated over many mods worth of stat increases and reward adjustments. ---
5. PVP
The truth is your true end-game players are doing PVP. It's not the guys running TOMM 100 times a month. It's the players that want to compete against other players. You already have a leaderboard. It would be nice if there was more variety in game mode rather than just Domination. Maybe give an exclusive reward to the top player each season.
Pros: You don't need to make new content every 2 months. PVP is interesting because people make it interesting. Cons: You need to fix broken items and skills that are obviously overpowered. ---
6. K-Team Challenge
A good idea, but it's stuck in Acquisition Incorporated which a lot of players hated. I suggest pulling K-Team challenge out of AI and making it a permanent part of end-game gameplay. Give it some relevant drops, and add a leaderboard for completion times.
Pros: K-Team Challenge is already made. Cons: Can't think of any.
----
Those are my thoughts. I also think there should be a branch cdp that discusses the economy and AD sinks. Those topics are also related to rewards, but cover more than I can fit into this post.
Hi Sheeho,
Good post and thanks for taking the time to contribute. Comments:
Regarding the funnel: We intend to do two mods a year with multiple 'episodes' in between mods that evolve the world as well as rewards and progression. Personally i think it would be cool for mods to focus on Vertical progression and 'Episodes' on horizontal (just my thoughts).
In regard to leader-boards i agree this is without a doubt a form of reward. The problem is what you measure and the message that sends to the player. For example if it is speed runs then this could cause friction in a group and create an unhealthy play experience. Of course it could be pre mades only. Anyway i am not saying we shouldn't do that but that we have to be very careful around player goals in the minutiae of the experience.
Scaled Dungeons: We are working towards this as per CDP 1.
Single player dungeons is interesting and modular dungeon construction and infinite dungeons are also interesting. Lets dig deeper in that in Phase 2.
Economy and AD sinks absolutely should be in this CDP and have been covered by some members already.
Comments
First of all, you're coming from the perspective of a Wizard in M17, which was overperforming for various reason, and there very well may be other factors involved in what you experience.
Secondly if we follow you're logic on how much weapon damage and buffs matter, remember MW III +1 Weapons VS. Exalted Primal? The difference in Weapon Damage was that primal had about 6% less weapon damage than MW III +1 weapons, but had a 10% buff, MW III had a 2% buff. So Primal should have been BiS by 2% right? Nope, that's not the way reality worked due to other factors, and I'm sure you're well aware.
How I would like to see this resolved (already proposed by other players):
make three tiers of the dungeon: Mortal, Ascending, Immortal (with the pun, that most deaths would occur in the immortal tier)
This has several advantages:
- players that love a challenge can have it
- casual players can run the less challenging version, but will learn the basic mechanics so that they have a path towards the higher difficulty levels (and if they are up to a real challenge, they can have it)
Rewards will have to be tier'ed as well.
One can argue about the percentages.
If we want a comparably large gap between bis and casuals it could be 80% -> 90% ->100%
If we want more convergence, 90% -> 95% -> 100%
Having the lowest tier less than 80% probably would not be a good idea, because then the dungeon of the last mod would provide better rewards, which is not really intended for a new mod.
It has lower power than the burnished set due to the set bonus, I am not going to try and quantify this, but it reduces the gap between the 2 of them by some amount, lets say 2%, because its a small enough figure for it to be reasonable. So that leaves them more or less as even and the only thing remaining to consider is the set bonus of the burnished set.
If you assume you are on maximum stamina all the time, you get a 10% damage increase, that adds with all the other buffs you have, I will assume you have 70% other buffs, so 1.8/1.7 and that is a 5.8% difference.
You can believe what you like, maths doesn't lie. The difference is tiny.
https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Bronzewood_Huitzauhqui
BiS over
https://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Exalted_Primal_Huitzauhqui
?
Could it be that this is all only based on some gutfeeling of yours?
Let me break the news for you. If you suck atm, the lionhearth weapons wont fix that. You wont notice any difference at all.
If it is my proposal for rewards in RQs and you think having RQs giving out gear with 70-90% stats of bis gear is too fast progression for the casuals, because 2 years should be the norm, then consider this:
- items (boots, rings, necklaces) only contribute so much to the total effectiveness
- having these items at 70-90% of the respective bis-items as rewards in RQs will not make players even close to bis
Players still need to
- acquire epic/leg mounts and comps (more than a year for the free ones from festivals, lots of AD otherwise)
- acquire epic/leg insignias (lots of AD)
- upgrade their enchantments from the cheap rank9 to rank15 (tons of AD)
- upgrade boons from campaigns (not that much significant, but time-consuming)
- upgrade artifacts to mythic
- get companion gear from MEs
- etc. etc.
In particular upgrading enchants takes time (or money).
And high level enchants are definitely required to get "close" to bis!
They are a significant contribution to the required stats (in particular power)
Don't know exactly how many enchants slots there are in total.
I think 28 (including weapon and armor, no overloads).
Lets assume 30
r15 radiant (for power, still very much required) costs ~2.5 million AD
bonding stones, empowered runestones, weapon and armor enchant usually cost more than that.
In total: ~75 million AD just for enchants
Casual player might make 50k AD per day on average (half the daily cap)
Will take her 1500 days.
That's ~5 years
So what is your concern?
Dungeon Rewards:
The rewards in dungeons are lackluster, how many times have players struggled through one of the top tier dungeons only to get rewarded with a black opal and an outdated piece of gear from 10 mods ago? While the seals always provide a reason to keep running dungeons, there needs to be more incentives to run and keep running all content.
- Enchanting/mark of potency stones would be a good substitute for a lot of things that drop in the chests, back in the day you were happy when a mark dropped in dungeons and these days we have to resort to farm Dread Ring lairs mostly if we want to get those epic marks.
- Alliance gear is an eyesore at this point, it needs to be taken out and only return as transmutes at this point. Replace them with old transmutes (fey for Malabogs Castle, thayan/dread for Valindras Tower, black ice for Kessels Retreat, draconic for Shores of Tuern/Lair of Lostmauth). I believe that giving specific drops for specific content is something that players would enjoy, of course still have a chance of getting other goodies such as we have at the moment in the loot tables, but the dungeon chest rewards lack a sure thing as rewards and you often either get nothing worth while or in a rare instance you get something good you can sell.
- Adding a currency that always drops in chests that can be spent on either small rewards for a low cost or great rewards at a higher cost (so that even if you have bad rng you actually can get something good just from running qued content) is another suggestion. This circles back to getting a sure thing in the dungeon rewards, make the currency per character meaning you would want to run your alts through dungeons as well in order to get more things.
Reward modifiers?
Instead of tiered dungeons that keep being floated around as a suggestion, there could be an implementation of reward modifiers. Having a base area/hub before entering a dungeon where you select reward modifiers, much like Barovian hunts, could be an interesting concept incorporating the K-team challenge's essence but adding better rewards to it. The K-team idea was a good but sadly the rewards were terrible, players wanted at best one piece of gear from that store and once they got it they had no reason to keep doing the challenges.
Dragonflight/stronghold
Stronghold events and its rewards should have been updated a long time ago, there are a few guilds/alliances that still run Dragonflights but the rewards are still rather lackluster and theres no real point in doing them; especially if the guild are at max rank.
- New rewards for doing dragonflight, more specifically, only have the Fang of the Dragonflight drop and change the vendor and its rewards there. Have a choice of either buying stronghold supplies, to give to the coffer in order to level up the stronghold, or purchasing personal rewards such as refinement, transmutes of the old Dragonflight gear/weapons, marks, companion upgrade tokens and bags.
Collection points/completion rewards
Completing collections gives at best a title, but if there was more incentives with different rewards for completing them, more players would go back to certain zones and dungeons to try and complete as many as they could; thus adding more content.
- The rewards could be: exclusive titles, transmutes/dye, mounts/companions and vanity pets. A good template of this is Elder Scrolls Online, there are exclusive skins, mounts, gear, weapons and dye to be gained for completing questlines, hardcore difficulty mode in qued content and much more.
Vault of Piety (Invokation/Ardent Store)
The Ardent store also needs a little makeover, its not a huge pressing matter and not many players use it for more than buying potions I would assume, although it could always be improved upon. I would suggest adding useful things such as healthstones and updated healing potions (they dont provide much healing currently now that our overall HP has signicicantly been raised).
Another fun thing to be purchased, does not need to be through the ardent store and could be some place else, would be improved stat modifiers. These would not go on anything else other than the artifacts pre module 16, lets call them Legacy Artifacts. The old artifacts' stats cant quite compete with the newer artifacts, well what if you could purchase a modifier to add +1000 more power to an old artifact? It would make older artifacts more desirable and less of a throwaway.
Event rewards
- MORE TALES OF OLD. Seriously, it was one of the best events we have had and everyone wanted those artifacts and were so sad if they were too late to get them.
Adding more things in general, the same transmutes and companions have been in the rewards for loot tables for years and we need new exciting things. the Hell Pit event, although quite boring with a one-room challenge, had great rewards such as the marks, wards, legendary insignia box, character slots, runic bag and of course the alluring legendary mount (which i hope will be abtainable this year...). More of those kinds of rewards would be great and something players would be lining up to farm/participate in.
You are wrong in your false accusations.
Was this really necessary?
Where there's a problem, there's a solution. Again, another valid point. There has been a drought on endgamers to run with. But there are ways around this.
I appreciate you coming into the CDP and your comments but please do try to be a little bit less terse. Try to think more broadly and if you disagree with someone in terms of their idea or calculations then please give the CDP member the courtesy of explaining why. This is a working group and not a normal forum thread.
Chris
Very busy today. I should have some time at lunch to respond to page 2. I will be engaging over the weekend as well. Keep the ideas coming please and Monday we will move to phase 2 and drill more deeply into some of them. Note its ok to still put ideas in phase 2 but where possible the focus should be on working together discuss and refine ideas from phase 1.
Thanks
Chris
Edit: I didn't do this right, I went back over it and I must of fat fingered a button on my calculator somewhere the first time. Anyways, if you average the weapon damages like in janne's formula it's a 3.05% difference instead of just looking at the difference between the maximums between the two. I tried adjusting numbers for other factors and the end result was always 3.05% difference in damage. Again, assuming I did it right, I'm no math wiz, obviously. But I'll leave my mistake there for all to see.
to see why 2% more weap damage will equate to more than a 2% increase in DPS, and why I said sharp was being intentionally misleading in his statements, as I know he's smarter than that.If I did this right, ignoring set bonuses and counter stats assuming they're capp'd, and a power with 100 magnitude, 200k power, 100% crit severity, 100% CA Severity and Uptime, 30% buffs, and 30% debuffs (none of which is hard to do in end game), a 2% increase in weapon damage from burnished to lionheart results in a
4%3.05%increase to damage, not 2%. It becomes easy to see how lionheart can lead to 10-20% increase in damage (class matters) if you also consider its set bonus. A 5% increase in power (which like I said, I think isn't based on buffed power, and may not even account for bonding/augment buffs, I need to look more closely at that), isn't a 5% increase in damage due to relative increase and the way other factors multiply into the equation.Math can lie, when your theory is flawed or intentionally or otherwise leave out factors. Edit: Or have fat fingers.
Anyways all that aside, I would assume that having alternatives to lionheart that were situationally bis, or interesting in some way, would actually be something sharp would agree with, as he's been campaigning for that sort of stuff himself. I don't understand why anyone would be against that. I don't understand how having one item that's supposed be bis for everyone being locked behind a dungeon very few people can run/complete is a good thing, without having some sort of alternatives. I apologize if I invoked strong emotions in anyone, these are just my opinions on what would be good for the game and a larger set of the playerbase. How exactly alternatives would be acquired and what bonuses they would have, would require further discussion, if the decision was made to introduce some, and at the end of the day, is entirely in the hands of the developers.
^^ Edit: Still believe this.
Special thanks to @greyhastur and @haden42ee for collaboration on this post
Overview:
Comprehensively revamp the entire rewards and progression system in game
Goal:
Create a streamlined, simplified, and rewarding system for 0 to End Game, which is rich in choice, and contains appropriate currency sinks.
Functionality:
Each Section of this is integrated to the next section, and it builds towards a complete system. Some details are left purposely vague to keep from descending into minutia, but are detailed enough to allow a reader to follow each concept through to a logical conclusion.
1. 0-80 leveling process
Process needs to be about learning your class, getting connected to guilds / "player mentors", and learning how to advance.
As veteran players we can only speak to this from a pain point perspective (helping newer players), as many new players do not know what they need to do when they hit level 80, and most have no idea of the importance of companions, bonding stones, equipment they should pursue, why they may want to do campaigns or how to navigate the economy.
Suggestions for player progression 0 to 80
Do not allow XP scrolls/ “speed leveling” for brand new players. Force new players to do each zone one at a time. Once campaigns have been completed on a character in account, then allow “speed leveling” for followup characters (along with skipping any other tutorial).
Create a new volunteer moderated in game chat channel, and tutorial for using in game chat to sponsor networking, and guild recruiting in game.
Level numbers are for example only:
Do not allow AD purchases or sales prior to level 70 (right now this creates more confusion than benefits for the majority of players)
Level 10 introduce invoking and super store
Level 12 gives player 3 companions (healer, tank, augment), and a piece of companion equipment. Do tutorials that explain the benefits of each type? Can be skipped if completed on another character in account
Level 14 enchanting (by unlocking one enchanting slot), unlock additional slots with every other level, along with “giving” the players an enchantment to slot in those. This includes low quality weapon and armor enchantments.
Level 15 “equip Bonus kit/ enchantment”. Supply bonus kit to slot, along with tutorial on deconstructing equipment, and a crafting tutorial? Open new slots on alternating levels until all pieces of equipment have slots available?
Level 30 do tutorial about Joining a guild?
Level 50 introduce lockboxes/ tarmalune trade bars
These changes should result in lowered player confusion from the leveling process, while also providing teaching moments to new players, improving player networking, while building towards a community based MMO experience..
2. Create "Super Store"
the "Super Store" (Knox's Armory?) would have all the items available on the Wondrous Bazaar, Tarmalune Trade Bar Store, Invoking Stores (getting rid of the RNG boxes from invoking in favor of currency), legacy campaign store, legacy seals stores, some items you can only get currently from lock boxes, and of course keys for the gamblers.
Currency would be acquired by:
VIP daily claim
Invoking
Tarmalune Trade Bars
Zen Market
Direct buy with AD
Drop from legacy queued content / PvP (weekly max)
Drop from Heroic Encounters (weekly max)
Legacy campaigns (weekly max)
The “Super store” is a key factor to simplifying the current plethora of “stores” in game, while giving players more flexibility in how they want to grind for rewards.
3. Redesign Character Equipment/ Load-out / Companion Functionality
Split enchantments from gear, replace the removing enchantments gold sink with a gold cost for upgrading enchantments.
Equalize “benefit” areas? 1/5 from equipment, 1/5 from enchants / artifacts, 1/5 from companion, 1/5 from boons, ⅕ from mount + mount insignia? Thoughts?
For example.. Say you “could” have 200k max power.. A total of 40k could come from each “section”
Rework Campaign Boons to Balance the “Cost” and benefits.
Remove Bonding Runestones from the game entirely. Instead give the same bonuses as bondings, but based on the summoned companion level and bolster group. Companion bonus would be greatly reduced in effectiveness from where it is currently, but should still be worth the investment. Also Augments and Actives should pass the same amount of stats to the player, but actives should come with a much higher risk profile.
Rework Enchantment/ Artifact Stat Value. Right now the value-add to upgrading enchantments/ artifacts is one of the lowest return on investments in the game (after boons). These need to be re-balanced to give a greater percentage of value.Doing this would be by itself an increase to the value of RP, which increases the perceived value of RP in loot tables
Equip bonuses should be in the form of equip bonus reinforcement enchantments. meaning If a kit is acquired, it could be applied to any piece of gear for the category it's made for. Reinforcement kits should be restricted so certain bonuses/ kits can only be applied to certain gear piece slots (head,arms, etc). Equip bonuses would probably need to be re-worked somewhat to give some interesting choices here, and make sure the best in slot is a little “fuzzy”
Bonuses could be overridden for any piece of gear. “Pairings” kits could be achieved with extra RNG effort. This would create a “chase” for the newest gear, or gear with the stats you want/ need for your character, as well as a chase for the Equipment bonuses you want as a player. Reinforcements would be a separate UI slot, like an enchantment (grouped with them?), with the ability to upgrade with RP and materials.
Gear or kits can be "deconstructed" to get kit recipe, and recover materials to create new reinforcement kits, RNG the amount of “materials” recovered, deconstruction would cost gold - see crafting section
This would incentivize players to spend time in a balanced manner, keep people better informed to what they want to run, while also opening up a lot more player choice. This would also Make the newest high IL gear all chase items, while keeping older gear/ kits as chase items. As well as create whole new sinks for RP, Gold and refining materials.
4. Rework Queued content loot tables
If a dungeon/ skirmish/trial drops a unique item like a companion, list that on the queue selection
Replace seals for any content (current mod -1) with "Super Store" Currency, set weekly max for super store currency by character/ account
Add Bonus Kits and Kit recipe materials to loot tables for all queued content, and Heroic encounters. Some "bonuses" should be tied to specific campaigns, meaning some Bonus Kits and key ingredients for certain kits could only be acquired in those zones. I would also tie each kit type to another additional campaign zone. For example any time you wanted to craft a kit for a head slot, it might require running dread ring content.
5. Rework Profession Systems
Add Equip bonus reinforcement kit recipes. Most kits should have multiple qualities with "scaled" recipes (each kit of varying quality could use the same ingredients, but use scaled quantities for quality). Lowest quality kits to be constructed at level 0-10 crafting, highest in Masterworks (max level could only be achieved with RP +mats +wards?).
Kits would be craft-able in ranks 1 -10, ranks 11-15 would only be obtainable through refining processes (cost similar to weapon/.armor enchantment + campaign mats), but earlier ranks could also be upgraded via refining at cost.
As a hypothetical example:
Step 1: +3% melee damage (feet only) kit from Barovia Hunt
Step 2: Deconstruct +3% melee damage kit, which gives 8 (10 if you are a max master works) +x% melee damage recipes in leatherworking, as well as some “recovered materials”, which would be subject to RNG for how much is recovered
Step 3: Farm the materials you need to construct this kit, since this is a barovia item, required drops would come from Gathering profession as well as loots items from Castle Ravenloft, and Heroic encounters in the campaign zone, as well as one other zone that would be the base zone for “feet kits”.
Step 4: Craft the kit with master works. Cost would be materials + Ad +Gold. Rank 10 Kit with +2.5% melee damage would be unbound and ready for use or Sale.
To help control the supply/ ratio, remove character level crafting, and put crafting at account level. greatly expand the inventory space for crafting materials, make crafting inventory unlimited for VIP (like ESO) as an added benefit for VIP?
This would slow down the supply side in the crafting economy, create a system of near perpetual value for crafting (with less need for massive recipe updates), while also adding a substantial currency sink to the game, give players more options for acquisition of sought after gear bonuses, while leaving the top Stat gear as drops to be obtained by playing.
Risks/ Concerns
1. Scale of changes creates a challenge to complete work with attention to detail required
2. Achieving proper balance would take a great deal of planning and detailed analytics.
3. The kits will require a rework of equip bonuses to ensure each is viable, and creates a choice for the player.
4. This would need to be done in small steps, with crafting being the last piece of the puzzle
Guild Leader: Mistaken Identity (formerly Midnight Express)
My Twitch Stream
See my Youtube Channel for guides and more
"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."
I don't wish to spam this thread, PM me if you want and I can look over where the issue is.
Feedback Goal: Allow for more variance in builds and enhance gameplay beyond stat chasing.
Feedback Functionality: Back in mod 5 (I think it stopped in mod 6 if I remember correctly), epic pieces of equipment for classes would drop and they'd contain bonuses to certain feats and abilities, making them that much more versatile or frankly, making them relevant in the first place.
Let's be honest, someone, somewhere has to be looking at all of the class feats, encounter powers and at-wills knowingly placing them into the game understanding that no one in their right mind would use all of these abilities in the game due to blatantly obvious game design. With that being said, back in that mod, if you got an item that was meant for your class, it could have a range of augments placed on it that would impact class feats, encounters or dailies (maybe it was just class feats and encounters, I don't recall specifically).
Two and four set piece bonuses for your class could be an outstanding way to bring some variance back to equipment these days. Lets be honest, the gear as far as their stats and what bonuses you're getting, are frankly lazy. The dev's at the time really wanted to get away from these types of bonuses for some reason but, it could allow for build enhancements or it could make a previously useless feat/encounter/daily actually valid.
Let's use a Rogue for this example under the Assassin paragon. Let's take a quick look at Assassin's Target and Toxic Blades:
Assassin's Target: Your attacks apply a stack of "targeted" to the first enemy hit. This effect stack up to 10 times and increases the damage of your next Encounter power that strikes the target by 1% per stack.
Toxic Blades: You coat your weapons with a deadly toxin causing Encounter and Daily attacks to apply a DoT. This DoT deals 30 magnitude weapon damage once every 3 seconds, for 9 seconds, and stacks up to 5 times.
Now, I've been playing a TR for over six years now and he's been my main for pretty much this entire time. I don't know any self respecting rogue that would choose Assassin's Target over Toxic Blades (this again emphasizes my point earlier about useless abilities).
You could, for instance, have a 2 or 4 set bonus that impacts either one of these but, lets focus on the one that virtually no one will pick. Let's say the bonus impacts it's viability in a way that makes it remotely competitive with Toxic Blades...
4 of 4 set: Assassin's Target will now target up to five enemies and reduce their damage resistance by 1% per stack.
I think this would still make Assassin's Target subpar to Toxic Blades but, without fundamentally changing it's characteristics, it'll never compete in the first place but, this is just to serve as an example.
Let's look at a couple of feats from the Whisperknife paragon path, another path virtually no one uses.
Razor Action: When you activate a daily power you fling daggers up to 30' doing 200 magnitude damage and increasing your speed by 2% per target hit to a maximum of 10%.
With the incredible nerf to action point gain, feats like this are relics of a time long past and even when it was a thing, no one still used it because there were better options. If you really want to make Whisperknife more viable, consider something like this.
A four piece set bonus for this could have something great loaded into it. Perhaps something along the lines of...
4 of 4 set: Razor Action will now return 10% of your action points per enemy hit with your daggers, up to a maximum of 50%. (no cooldown).
Action points still take an eternity to build either way.
Dagger Threat: Your ranged attacks deal up to 7.5% more damage based on how close you are to your target. You gain the maximum benefit from this class feature when within 15' of your target.
I think I know what you guys were trying to do with the Whisperknife build but, it just doesn't work and it's gotta be one of the most awkward class paragons in the game.
4 of 4 set: Dagger Threat will now increase the rate of all ranged at-will's by 50%.
Before someone freaks out about that idea, consider how worthless the current rogue ranged at-wills are and then come back to me.
Lastly, let me highlight a poor class that has gotten the short end of the stick for a long, long time, the Warlock. They are riddled with worthless abilities, cumbersome mechanics and supremely lackluster damage.
Creeping Death: When you deal damage with your At-Will, Encounter, or Daily powers to enemies they are afflicted with Creeping Death. Creeping Death deals 10% additional damage as Necrotic damage over 5 seconds.
While I get that this unlocks at level 70 and is supposed to do damage (I think?), it does an abysmal amount of dps.
4 of 4 set: Creeping Death now deals 50/100/150/200 magnitude weapon damage per second for 10 seconds. Stacks 4 times.
You guys should make them the DoT masters they were meant to be. With this little change, you might not even have to rewrite the entire class. Again, just serving as an example.
Risks & Concerns: There will be work to be done to make this work and to not have it spiral out of control, sure. But, it'll also offer the ability to toss in small increments of class balancing to the game in a way that doesn't require a fundamental rewrite of the class.
Feedback Goal: Get players back to dungeon and trial; valuing items on the market; alternative characters with some more importance; Appreciation of Legendary Dragon Keys.
Feedback Functionality: Removing Tokens of re-rolls will make players perform the content more often, rather than one with up to a maximum of 10 chances. Bring back the Old Man of the day. Today there is already a free chest in all content (except in Tiamat), a player could very well earn a vip bonus key and a bonus key from the Old Man of the key. These keys would be the same as the Legendary Dragon key's, they would open all the chest that need campaign keys.
Ex: If a VIP wanted to farm R6 enchanting stone in CoDG for example, he would already leave with 2 keys to the second chest without using the campaign keys.
This week I had to do ECC and EToS at REDQ, and I felt sad about making this content, I knew that I didn't have campaign keys to be able to open the second chest of the dungeons and that discouraged me. Players like me, do not usually use re rolls in these chests and much less make campaign coins to create their keys. It would be something that I could use the key of the day, since the end of game content is easier to have resources to create their keys. This would also help the youngest player, who is still running the campaign, since when creating the key he spends campaign resources. If you do ToMM and do not need to REDQ eg you would have the campaign key (which is also daily) ), the VIP day key and the old man key. You would have 6 chances, but for that you would have to execute 3x the content.
Risks & Concerns: Most of you like the current system. Players with little time in play or who are more active only on weekends would be the most affected.
And also @thefabricant: @cwhitesidedev#9752''s note for magdalena applies to you as well and it's on the same page as your refusal to reason. You can't just say that you are credited and others should just deal with. Even the gap is definitely over 7% just by the 2 weapon effect because you can't equate situationally 5% base power with upmost 10% damage as 10-5 just because. You're not just seem arrogant, but very incorrect. Unless you have the data to prove otherwise. A thing that you have to provide, not ask others to look up for you wherever you mentioned it half a year ago.
But to the topic: Most players would not need a new tier weapon to close the gap, they need it to have anything to do. Mod18 is pretty barren of rewards worth to get as DPS. People would just take a new tier weapon set that gives 5% power, because at least they can upgrade their character. Mod16 was 10 months ago and people are running with the same weapons and disregarding the long needed demo nerf, the same artifact sets as well.
Giving a bare new tier weapon set would not decrease the value of the lionheart, not would make ToMM significantly easier as the problem is not the DPS, but the coordination, the skills needed and the huge difference between how ToMM is played and how every other content is played. I would not like to get a better set than Lionheart, because ToMM is harder than IC, even if IC requires more stats. But at least a sellable weapon set would be a great reward to run it after a month.
AT
NO
POINT
DID
I
EQUATE
5%
BASE
POWER
TO
THE
SET
BONUS
The comparison I made was:
+5% base power
vs:
+2% weapon damage
+10% "increased" damage (which is not really 10% unless you never dodge)
The 2% weapon damage is "roughly" equal to the 5% base power (we can argue backwards and forwards about that, but the point is, its somewhere in that range).
How many buffs do you have without the weapon buffs? Probably ~70%. so you are going from 70% to 80%
1.8/1.7 = 1.05882352941
~5.89%
This is assuming you never dodge and always have max stamina, which is a false assumption to begin with.
That is my point. It is negligible.
The gap is nowhere near 7%.
The grind to master crafting to max lvl. was brutal to say the least, but for me the worst was the fail on resources; where if you failed (which happened most of the time), you would lose enormously expensive ingredients and have to start again. (BTW mastercrafting armorer is still broken with adamant plates failing +80% of the time with the highest possible resources used).
The use of a forge hammer, focus potions, +1 ingredients and high lvl artisans didn't matter.
If I wasn't committed to getting to master craft 5, (now made worthless by bringing in lvl 80 items) there would be no incentive whatsoever.
If Cryptic were to bring in new recipes, would they make them lvl 80, bypassing all the master crafting lvl 5?
Omu had the Wootz gear, craftable, with low fail rates, they were second only to master craft stronghold weapons, popular with new toons, and inexpensive. (Also tied into CODG with the exalting ampoules).
The subsequent mods have gear you grind dungeons for, only the elites were able to obtain these, or epic "grinders". (Looking at you Watcher set!) Other than +10 potions why bother crafting anything?
Master crafting has lost relevance.
If you truly want players to craft again, make a new tier of re-enforcements, possibly pet gear, and a craftable enchantment or two. Remove the rediculus commision cost on upgrading the workshop, why give Ms. whatshername huge masses of black ink, for the weak chance of getting a purple craftsman?
Impact: Add recipes that enhanse gear, make gear, or upgrade gear. Add new goodies as well, or scrap master crafting all together, we the crafting community have paid the price! We demand that you stop adding new layers to the poo-pie you have now, and fix what's broken or accept the complete inevitable abandonment of the system.
YOU
REFUSE
TO
REASON
PEOPLE
WILL
GO
FOR
THEIR
OWN
CONCLUSIONS
The average damage of Lionheart is more than 3% more than the burnished: 4047,5 ÷ 3927,5 = 1,03055... and expecting the Burnished weapon set bonus to be always active is less likely, because it relies on an other character. The Lionheart's effect only diminishes, the Burnished just does not work.
Also, even -6% DPS is hardly negligible. People will notice it and if your class already underperforms, so you are less likely to be called in for ToMM, that's just an other multiplier on it.
Alsoalso, if it does not matter, then what is the exact problem by giving a new tiered set with "negligible" bonus? Because the majority of the playerbase getting bored out of the game because they can't gear up in any significant way is more on the problem than how easier or less respectable it would make ToMM. Because it doesn't. Players fail, because they die, so tightening the damage gap with ~2% by increasing a tier only pushes in people on the edge.
And no, you wont notice the difference between lionhearth and burnished.
I would have no problem with giving the IC weapon set 1000 IL instead of 980, but this discussion was about if there should be an easier way to get BIS weapons besides dungeons.
I bet you if I showed you 10 paingivers+act logs with the same people involved and only 1 of them didn't have the lionheart set where everyone is trying their hardest, you wouldn't be able to figure out who it was.
At the end of the day, the point was, the difference is already minor. If you make the reason 0, you are taking away a chase item = devaluing the effort of the people who went and beat tomm. You want a reward? Fine, add something that does NOT undermine their effort.
Good post and thanks for taking the time to contribute. Comments:
Regarding the funnel: We intend to do two mods a year with multiple 'episodes' in between mods that evolve the world as well as rewards and progression. Personally i think it would be cool for mods to focus on Vertical progression and 'Episodes' on horizontal (just my thoughts).
In regard to leader-boards i agree this is without a doubt a form of reward. The problem is what you measure and the message that sends to the player. For example if it is speed runs then this could cause friction in a group and create an unhealthy play experience. Of course it could be pre mades only. Anyway i am not saying we shouldn't do that but that we have to be very careful around player goals in the minutiae of the experience.
Scaled Dungeons: We are working towards this as per CDP 1.
Single player dungeons is interesting and modular dungeon construction and infinite dungeons are also interesting. Lets dig deeper in that in Phase 2.
Economy and AD sinks absolutely should be in this CDP and have been covered by some members already.
Thanks
Chris