Aside from random q's no one in their right minds will q for a old dungeon, unless they are feeling nostalgic, showing someone or are a new player themselves, why you ask? well spending 15+ mins (in some cases more others less) just to get 6k ad, 1 mod 6 piece of gear and 200/300 refinement points its really not worth it.
It used to be worth it when you could salvage gear into ad and refine that ad on different characters now its just a waste of time (who remembers 5 min etos farming, oh good old days!!) (and for @cwhitesidedev#9752 who wasn't here before the conversion from rough to normal astral diamonds wasn't account capped like it is now, it was character capped so if you had 100+ chars you could refine 35k per day on each of them)
People in the thread gave the idea of making a certain dungeon drop a certain piece of gear, well a year ago i gave the idea of giving exclusive companions/mounts or transmutes to old dungeons to incentive players, even said the latest dungeon/trial should have a small chance of a leg mount like day of the dungeon master has (i ran Artificers Workshop more than 1000 times at least over the years for that and will still run it)
*and yes there shouldn't be a chest re-roll option in my opinion but who cares
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Campaigns
The only sense of progression they have is the fact that in some you need to complete them to unlock the dungeon or the rank 14 enchant in acquisition incorporated because boons post mod 16 suck... a lot...
People already gave good ideas about a boon rework in the thread no point in giving more.
(I saw someone talking about campaigns and alts well easy fix for that, remove daily/weekly caps if you have at least 1 lvl 80 toon with all campaigns completed or even a crazier idea remove the caps of the 3 oldest campaigns to everyone including new players and every time a new one comes out, another loses the caps.)
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Good old post mod 16 scaling Scaling
The current scaling doesn't make sense in terms of progression . You spend a lot of time and money upgrading your enchants/character and then you have all of that them scaled down in 90% of the game
Either revert/remove or rework current scaling
(side note i really don't understand the fixation of reducing all content to lvl 70 every couple mods but that's for another thread...)
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I agree on all points. Thanks for taking the time to post.
I mentioned this in the VIP CDP, but it could very easily translate into rewards progression as well.
Trade-in and Upgrade Vendors or Professions
When mod17 launched we were given upwards of 300+ pieces of companion equipment, most of which got turned into Gold or RP, and around 40 pieces of new shirts and pants. The only "guaranteed' piece of companion equipment we wanted was after completing the Stardock quest line to unlock Tower of the Mad Mage, but event that was only sort of what was wanted as we were only able to choose between the single-stat pieces instead of all available IL 1010 pieces.
Personally I spent months going after 1 particular piece of companion equipment with no success. 4 toons running daily ME's along with Stardock WE's and FE's, with each having a rune placed to get an Etching upon completion. Do the math and that's about 30 Etchings per week per toon, over about 3 months. We're talking well over 1000 Zok Boxes and didn't get the 1 piece of companion gear I was chasing. Got multiples of many IL 1010 pieces, but never the Critical Strike + Critical Avoidance piece.
Same goes for the Fragment Expeditions, so many Shirts and Pants, but only one chance a week and 4 levels of each type.
I'd suggest one of these options:
After you complete the Teachings of Zermithon or whatever the Stardock quest line is called in which you get the box containing your choice of companion equipment, make it a repeatable quest line. At completion you get a choice of a double stat companion gear piece or clothing of your choice. It keeps people invested in running the content while at the same time knowing that they're making progress towards the item(s) they're chasing.
In Professions add new tasks to that would allow you to change and upgrade gear. For example, if you wanted to change a piece of companion gear into a different piece, you'd need whatever the required reagents would be, along with 2 pieces of same IL companion gear. Again, it keeps people invested in running the content while at the same time knowing that they're making progress towards the item(s) they're chasing.
Lets discuss this more in Phase 2 please:
In Professions add new tasks to that would allow you to change and upgrade gear. For example, if you wanted to change a piece of companion gear into a different piece, you'd need whatever the required reagents would be, along with 2 pieces of same IL companion gear. Again, it keeps people invested in running the content while at the same time knowing that they're making progress towards the item(s) they're chasing.
Hello. Here is something like a wish list for content improvements and constructive feedback for future changes in m19. Probably it will be a wall of text (a lot of should be said for better understanding and because all these things interact between themselves) but I'll try to divide it into logical paragraphs. There will be not so many of concrete details and this feedback is addressed mostly to content designers. Well.. take your cup of coffee or tea and have a nice 10-min break. So let's get started.
ADVANTAGES OF NEVERWINTER ONLINE
NWO is unique mmorpg which has its game community already for more than 6 years. Why do we love this game?
It has great D&D lore and storytelling.
Pretty nice graphics, sound and atmospheric locations.
Very good non target combat (probably even the best I ever seen).
Adequate donate system what is important for many users of mmorpg.
Finally all classes are in playable state when each of them do what it is supposed to do (in m19 probably we'll see even more improvements).
The essence of this paragraph is that NWO has very high potential to be good and popular mmorpg but players will agree with me that something is still missing.
DISADVANTAGES OF NEVERWINTER ONLINE
Many of you now thought about game bugs. But to be honest most part of them is not that critical at all and usually is fixed in few weeks after new module release. So right now NWO has enough bugs of course but this is not the most important problem which makes game process worser.
The most important problem is the fact that content is not adapted to different groups of players. Let me explain this. NWO is relatively old game so evidently there are players who just started to play (beginners), who play it for not so long (usual players with mid item level characters) and who play this game for many years (veterans with bis characters). The boundaries between them are quite blurred but these 3 conditional groups of players still exist.
With beginners everything is fine. They have nice locations for them with interesting quests. They explore new game with new interesting for them class mechanics.
The problem comes when other 2 groups get same content (dungeons or campaigns with quests). And because of usual difference in stats same content can be too hard for usual players while at the same time it can be too trivial for experienced players. So if usual players can improve their build/equipment/stats to decide this problem (what is absolutely normal for every game) then what experienced players should do when again and again they get trivial and not interesting content for them?
Fighting process is 90% of each game of same genre. And when these 90% are bad to play and boring then all game is bad and not interesting.
DECISION
Evidently it is impossible to make same content interesting for all item level groups of players just because for example 50k of monster's damage (before damage resistance) is too much for some characters and just a joke for others (it is not about player's skill it is just usual math). This is why idea of difficulty levels became very popular in game community.
Really making content with different levels of difficulty and rewards where monsters have different offensive and defensive stats is logical to calibrate content to each group of characters. So all players can get right difficulty for them if content will be divided into 3 groups:
Easy version. As the name suggests this is version of dungeon with lowest stats and rewards for characters with low item level to players should be able to learn mechanics of monsters and how to play in this dungeon.
Normal version. Probably the version of each dungeon as it is supposed to be and with current rewards for players with mid item level characters.
Hard version. The hardest version of each dungeon for endgame top characters. Yes even top 700-900khp tanks with healing of top healers should tryhard doing tanking there and top dps should do their best to don't let to tank fall under attacks of monsters with crazy stats. It should be kind a "dark souls" difficulty level with absolutely no mercy to players. And please NO STUPID DPS CHECK PHASES (it's not what we want also because tanks and healers should be focused on their main job instead of using damage buffs from artifacts)!!
And to make all these difficulty levels useful and demanded rewards should be tuned very well:
For example if normal version in N times longer (in terms of time) than easy version then rewards in normal version should be higher more than in N times than in easy version. This will prevent abuse of speedruns of easy versions just because it has more profit.
What about hard version it should 100% have really tasty rewards. Because difficulty of this type of dungeons will be not about "you have to complete it 100 times wasting many hours to have chance to get something" (it will be about to complete it at least once). As good rewards I can suggest 100-150k AD (exactly astral diamonds, not just astral brilliants because they have daily cap wich can be reached on usual content) plus some random unique for each dungeon expensive loot.
This can give to experienced players challenging content which they were asking for. And what is more important this content will be demanded thank to good loot what will give reason to players to improve their characters. Also thank to the fact that expensive loot will be different in different dungeons all hard versions of dungeons will be demanded.
REALISATION AND INTERACTION WITH PLAYERS
Here we go to more technical details. And of course comes logical question: how many stats and damage monsters should have in hard version of dungeon? I would like to suggest to ask players about this and make unique interaction with community.
You can make special arena on live server with waves of monsters or training pupets for few weeks (or forever for future tests and observations for grouth of character's strenghts) where system will check some important for each class role values. Such as:
How many damage per second tank can absorb.
How many healing per second healer can create.
How many damage per second damage dealer can do.
Each player will have his unique best result in one or two of categories depending on his class role. And you can divide them into 3 groups:
Lowest 1/3 (of damage absorption, healing and damage dealt).
Middle 1/3.
Highest 1/3.
Using these average values you can create monsters with right stats for each difficulty level of dungeons. Also you can show best values in character list of all characters as alternative or addition to item level. So players will have more information about their group members for better group creation (and also this will prevent tries to intentionally lowering these numbers to mislead developers).
Thanks for your post. Others have also raised many of your points. Your format and reasoning is very good.
We are currently working on content that has different difficulty ranging from normal to hard with rewards that reflect this. We also want to not scale players down where possible and where we do (if we do) then the scaled player will receive rewards pertinent top their level.
I hope that everyone can start to see a trend here in terms of the direction we are moving in. Where possible I am going to talk more about our intent and direction at a more detailed level know that we have a better idea of direction. Once we share the roadmap this will be easier. All of our focus should be on refinement and streamlining in every area of the game. Boiling everything down to its core and building on solid ground with everything that is fun in NW and more as we move forward.
Here is my (updated) list of consolidated suggestions. https://guides.jannenw.info/2020/02/07/how-i-would-go-about-redesigning-neverwinter/ I apologize in advance, I don't expect anyone to read through all of this, but for anyone who does, I genuinely did try to come up with solutions to many of what are in my mind, problems in this game.
Thank you for taking the time to write this all out. I agree with all of the problems you have identified and also many of the solutions you suggest. I hope the developers are able to take the time to visit Janne's site to read it.
Create a seperate version of the dungeons and trials as a quest requirement before players can queue for random queues.
Feedback Goal
Many of the random queue dungeons or trials fail due to some players lacking experience.
Help new players gain experience without causing failures to the "standard" random queues.
Feedback Functionality
Make quest requirement to complete every dungeon and trial on the list.
Each dungeon or trial will need to be ran 2 or 3 times each.
These training queues are dialed down in difficulty.
These training queues provide no reward (to prevent veteran players from speed running for easy rewards)
Allow veterans to join these training queues to help their friends or guildmates. (which is why not to give rewards)
Risks & Concerns
Training dungeon should not give rewards or else experienced and strong players will farm these training runs for easy rewards.
Need to make the requirement greater than just ONE run per dungeon because a player might not have learned the actual mechanics which is the point of this training quest requirement.
Feedback Overview: I am mostly a solo player that is very motivated by story and collection of things, so when I think of "rewards" I am thinking about what makes my personal experience feel engaging and fun. I will give feedback about each of the categories we were asked to consider from that personal perspective alone. I am reading and appreciating the other experiences expressed. Thank you.
Feedback Goal: Offering a non-technical viewpoint from a casual solo player.
Feedback Functionality: This is where I'll break this down into the requested feedback areas.
Reward Quality/Time Spent - I love all the game areas and stories, and enjoy going through the campaigns at first. The problem is that I hit some things like time gating, massive repetition, and required items that are hard to get as a solo person running through old content. The end result of such efforts can feel great on a story level, or even on the level of having a new transmute that shows that I've finished something. It can feel rather flat on the level of the functionality of the item really only being a transmute, small amount of RP, or small amount of currency. To make matters worse, I can't pay to expand the amount of transmutes that I can store in my library. I would like to be able to pay for more transmute space. I don't mind grinding or buying completion tokens for old campaigns, but would love to see some of those group-dependent drops removed from the items necessary to progress.
Existing and New Reward Categories- I like boons, and I enjoy earning them through campaigns. I love interesting items that can work as transmutes, but feel some of the obsolete equipment takes too much grinding for the result. (Collecting motes for the Elemental Evil campaign stuff, for example.) I feel pretty marginal about the lockboxes lately, as they have RP (which is useful) but not much else. One minor tweak that would make them feel better is to make RP account bound, as folks have suggested earlier. I run a lot of alts, and that would be a big bonus.
Rewards Through Progress Leveling- I sort of felt a major dropoff in fun as my characters failed to move their class and race story arcs forward. Dropped equipment starts out fun and relevant, but then ends up feeling weirdly trivial over time. I do appreciate equipment that has small flavor text, and items that mark encounters (as long as those piece of equipment have something distinct about them). I love all the rewards related to having finished story arcs, and crave those the most.
Endgame Crafting- I want my workshops to mean something, beyond a potential economic boost. I like that a story is being told with the current workshops, but it costs way too much to level them and see all the story. I like that the crafters have bios and personalities. I'd love for the way that I run the workshops to matter, but that would probably be a coding nightmare. I'd love to be able to achieve Master Crafting with less of a resource sink at the very end, as throwing tons of high end leather away only to be asked to do it all again and then more (for example) is tedious. Most of the folks you ask about crafting will give a two word answer, "Don't bother." The way the quests are written also feel a bit misleading. I think that I'll be getting the next Masterwork level, but instead I'm just roped into more senseless and expensive grinding for no more story and no new items that are engaging. I'd seriously love it if crafting could involve improving and modifying old pieces of equipment of a related type, and the amount of modification possible was related to the level of the character, workshop, and craftsperson.
Summation: Expandable transmute libraries Drop group-dependent drops as necessary elements in legacy campaigns Drop repetition required to achieve upgradable equipment Make RP account bound Expand class and race story arcs into later game play Lower cost to upgrade workshops. Make professions linked to upgrading old equipment
Risks and Concerns: Obviously, this is just based on my personal experience which is far from universal. I imagine it would take some massive work to create more class and race storyline. It would probably be tricky sorting out the right way to have professions upgrade old equipment, and most likely no matter how you managed it someone would feel you did it wrong.
Additional note: I found the ideas mentioned earlier by the developer who talked about being able to display collections and such super exciting! I'd have so much fun doing that, and have chatted with guildies about how great it would be to do it.
Hi Shrine,
Your experience is very similar to mine and I am in agreement to everything you said. This said I would say i lost compulsion in the story-line around level 45. Good post.
> @cwhitesidedev#9752 said: > Morning All, > > Happy Monday. I will be continuing to comment as necessary. Meanwhile if you all can move onto phase 2 then that would be great. Specifically it is time to drill into the areas and ideas you like, what you want to know more about, collaborate on, challenge (in a valuable way) and evolve. > > At the moment we are interested to know more of your thoughts in regard to Horizontal progression, evolution of vertical progression, what variation of current types of rewards you would like to see? This will do for now and of course this is on top of what you all would like to drill into as well. > > Looking forward to seeing the next phase of this CDP. > > Chris
My thoughts after following this CDP closely :
1. Vertical progression should be kept for the players jurney from 1-80. The itemlevel/stat chase that begins at lvl 80 should slowed down by the introduction of horizontal progression. This would open up for introduction of new builds/playstyles instead of having the non-hardcore players feel that they are trapped in a hamster wheel chasing stat caps they never will reach to enter latest content. Horizontal progression would be an awesome way of introducing the D&D class specializations to the game.
2. Introduce gear that is build defining. Currently there is a select few items that are considered best in slot for everyone, simple math tells us that alternatives are simply not worth using. Introduce class/role (or even race) spesific gear to open up for player customization and diversity. Better itemization is imho the best way to open up for build diversity and moving away from the current 1 item is 100% best in slot situation. Make gear with meaningful bonuses like @thefabricant suggests. Class/Role/Race spesific gear is a very good way to reuse old zones/dungeons for reward hunting (Dwarf gear drops in Dwarven King questline, Hunter gear drops in Chult questline and so on).
3. Boons need rethinking. I think the current system is dividing players building their toons and endgame players in an unfair way. All of my toons are very high itemlevel, and able to cap all stats without thinking about the boons. This means boons is only used to get more Power, Hitpoints and +dmg dealt to mobs. Players striving to achieve stat caps are stuck with spending boon points on stats that dont feel very rewarding at all. Boons can also open up for build diversity if done properly.
4. Make different players/playstyles able to achieve the same goals. PvPers, Dungeon speedrunners, crafters, story nerds/collectors should all be able to progress independent of the way they choose to play the game. Make players time spent on what they enjoy in the game feel rewarding for all. This is not the same as the points made about all gear being available to all players, as I think the players that excel at what they do absolutely deserve rewards for their endurance.
My suggestion consists of two points, which should be connected for better functionality. The first point is to introduce a auction house for guilds. Guilds can sell and buy guild ressources (like influence) there. The second point is a guild trader where guilds (in this regard guild leaders) can buy items with the astral diamant chests (from the guild ressources) to help player at their progression (e.g. companion upgrade tokens, mounts (even legendary)).
Feedback Goal
The suggestion aims to help small guilds as they can buy ressources cheaper at the auction house for guilds (first point). It aims to help big, old guilds as they have a option to get rid of ressources (which they do not need nowadays anyway if they are at level 20) and get currency that way. It aims as well (second point) to let guilds help new, unexperienced players as well and it gives the possibility to finance guild events with good rewards. Feedback Functionality For the first point a guild auction house NPC would have to be introduced with the suggested guild auction house where resources can be traded (sold and bought). It works with supply and demand, similiar to the normal auction house.
50 astral diamant chests for 2000 influence
For the second point a guild trader NPC would have to be introduced with items to be bought with guild ressources (astral diamant chests) depending on the level of the guild.
30 000 astral diamant chests for a legendary mount (2 or 3 available, perhaps one with stat bonus of hit points) 500 astral diamant chests for 50 preservation wards 1000 astral diamant chests for 1 coalescent ward 1000 astral diamant chests for 120 companion upgrade tokens
Risks & Concerns
There is the risk that guilds will not donate to other guilds of their alliance after implementation of the first point. There is the risk that the guild leaders leave guilds after buying items with the guild ressources (second point). This could be prevented that everything bought with guild ressources gets transfered to the guild bank and is account bound after taking it to personal storage (bags, ...).
Hi Saibot,
Thanks for your post. Guild (Rewards/Progression) is another area I would like us to drill a little more in phase 2. And then at some point in the near future there will be a dedicated CDP for it.
Here is my (updated) list of consolidated suggestions. https://guides.jannenw.info/2020/02/07/how-i-would-go-about-redesigning-neverwinter/ I apologize in advance, I don't expect anyone to read through all of this, but for anyone who does, I genuinely did try to come up with solutions to many of what are in my mind, problems in this game.
Thank you for taking the time to write this all out. I agree with all of the problems you have identified and also many of the solutions you suggest. I hope the developers take the time to read it.
Question @oremonger#9999 : Isn't it obvious we are reading it and collaborating? What assumptions are you having that would make you question that? Lots of people are putting in a lot of time on both sides of this initiative and I don't want either sides of their work devalued. What can I/we do better to alleviate this concern?
Feedback Goal: Allow old gear to be upgraded and retain some level of viability
Feedback Functionality: With each module, new gear is released and new content is introduced. But as many, many others have pointed out, there's a large swath of us who either do not have the means to complete the content due to player restrictions (lots and lots of scrolls) or IL requirements that are much greater than what Cryptic has envisioned.
In order to help curb this and potentially introduce a facet into the game that you guys may or may not have considered is allowing older items, whether they be artifacts, weapons, neck or belt pieces the opportunity to upgrade to a higher tier, such as mythical or mythical +.
This raises the item level of the gear, it's base stats and it's unique effectiveness. For instance, lets say that the newest campaign has released item level 1250 (which they just did) piece, which is great but the effects of the item are not desirable or you simply cannot acquire the item due to whatever circumstances hinder you.
Allow for an older item, let's use the weapons from River District/Cloaked Ascendancy for example, to be upgraded to mythical and be shy of the best weapons currently in the game, the Lionheart set. Maybe even have them be a smidge behind Alabaster and the others introduced in mod 16. I'll provide a quick example.
When you use an encounter power, you will become Far-Influenced, which increases your Outgoing Damage by 4% and grants you a random buff for 10 seconds.
Relentless — Increases your Critical Strike by 2500.
Tainted Attack — Enemies you attack will take additional damage over time.
Impeding Death — Enemies you attack will explode on death, doing damage to other foes.
You can only be Far-Influenced once every 30 seconds.
The current stats of the Lionheart Greatsword is as follows:
Item Level: 1,010
3,643-4,452 Damage
+808 Combined Rating +9,696 Power +2,020 Armor Penetration +2,020 Accuracy
Increases damage dealt and outgoing healing by up to 10% whenever your Stamina is full. Effect decreases as Stamina decreases. Decreases damage received by up to 10% whenever your Stamina is empty. Effect decreases as Stamina is increases.
Now, there's a rather healthy gap presented here and while this may be a bit of a stretch as an example, it should still serve to state the intent. If you guys introduced a legacy quest that had the player revisit old campaigns, to whatever reasonable extent you guys deem necessary for whatever piece of equipment they hope to do this with, they can raise the Aboleth Greatsword in this example, to mythical levels.
The end result of this will be (super rough example basing it off of the current Alabaster set with some modifications)
When you use an encounter power, you will become Far-Influenced, which increases your Outgoing Damage by 5% and grants you a random buff for 15 seconds.
Relentless — Increases your Critical Strike by 2500 and Critical Severity by 3%.
Tainted Attack — Enemies you attack will take 20/30/40 magnitude weapon damage over time from your attacks.
Impeding Death — Enemies you attack will explode on death, doing damage to other foes. The damage lingers and burns surrounding foes for 120% weapon damage over 3 seconds.
You can only be Far-Influenced once every 15 seconds.
Yes, I know that I have it's duration and it's activation on the same timer of 15 seconds. Consider it to be a rotating buff that will keep itself going so long as encounters can flow with a 15 second rotation. Akin to the old Feytouched enchantment. Now, with this, the old Aboleth Greatsword is still viable but may not be as desirable as the current weapons. It's still doing less peak damage than both the Alabaster and Lionheart set yet, it has features that might make it desirable for players to continue to use without feeling left behind or no longer using the items they like. Also, I raised it's base damage but reduced it's peak damage. So average damage won't be impacted as hard. But huge single hits will not be able to reach the levels of Alabaster or Lionheart.
With each mod introduction that brings about new items that would make the old obsolete, introduce a new legacy quest in the old module that would allow for another incremental increase. You could literally have it look something like this.
The further back the item was introduced, the more work will be involved in bringing said item up to it's max potential based upon the current meta.
So long as it's continually getting small but meaningful upgrades that the player needs to work for. And please don't bring into the foray something like Black Ice or Voninblod charging. No one liked that. Literally no one.
Folks may be more inclined to go through older content if they know they can keep certain pieces of their equipment viable for longer. Keep a really close eye on items that may cause an imbalance on your design and goals, such as the recently nerfed Demogorgon set.
Nonetheless, I don't think anyone would be opposed to this idea. I also HIGHLY encourage you guys to consider doing something similar to this for gear. Use seals, use whatever currency you like but, allow there to be legendary helms, chest, arms and leg pieces already. Utilizing this same technique, you can appease a whole swath of players who are livid that the gear that they worked so hard for is now obsolete and allows for a much greater variance than the current cookie cutter gear sets you see all over the place today. If you guys don't want to do that, that's fine but, the upgradable artifacts absolutely should be able to be upgraded in such a fashion.
Risks & Concerns: This could reduce the desirability of newly introduced items to a marginal degree. The sense of rush needed to push through the new content may not be as prevalent and may in turn allow the module more dwell time. The new items should always be of a higher item level and higher base stats than the old items fully upgraded. Obviously the above is just an example and I leave you guys to determine the formula necessary to pull this off without hindering your design intentions going forward. Someone in the latest and greatest gear will still be technically capable of more but, it'll help close the gap; even if it's just marginal.
Again let's drill into this idea in Phase 2. I really like it and many CDP members have also shared similar ideas. Let's talk about how this would be implemented and more examples of the types of rewards. Also how this experience could hook into events and other systems in the game. Should you be bale to do this to a mount for example or a companion?
2. Introduce gear that is build defining. Currently there is a select few items that are considered best in slot for everyone, simple math tells us that alternatives are simply not worth using. Introduce class/role (or even race) spesific gear to open up for player customization and diversity. Better itemization is imho the best way to open up for build diversity and moving away from the current 1 item is 100% best in slot situation. Make gear with meaningful bonuses like @thefabricant suggests. Class/Role/Race spesific gear is a very good way to reuse old zones/dungeons for reward hunting (Dwarf gear drops in Dwarven King questline, Hunter gear drops in Chult questline and so on).
3. Boons need rethinking. I think the current system is dividing players building their toons and endgame players in an unfair way. All of my toons are very high itemlevel, and able to cap all stats without thinking about the boons. This means boons is only used to get more Power, Hitpoints and +dmg dealt to mobs. Players striving to achieve stat caps are stuck with spending boon points on stats that dont feel very rewarding at all. Boons can also open up for build diversity if done properly.
4. Make different players/playstyles able to achieve the same goals. PvPers, Dungeon speedrunners, crafters, story nerds/collectors should all be able to progress independent of the way they choose to play the game. Make players time spent on what they enjoy in the game feel rewarding for all. This is not the same as the points made about all gear being available to all players, as I think the players that excel at what they do absolutely deserve rewards for their endurance.
This is the solution and the root of the evil in my opinion: If we want customization of items, more and less valuable options, choices, diversity, a better itemization like @wilbur626 stated here (and I agree with gear that should not be BIS in all situations) with meaningful bonuses (that are to some extent also punishing) then we need: .) A reason to customize it: To move away from what only just introduced in M16 where, more than ever before, we were reduced in build diversity, meaningful paragon paths (dps) and, yeah: options. If all dps excel in the same way, they all wear the same gear. There is no reason to introduce gear for cc, when cc is no valid option. The dilemma is: We want to run the most current/most profitable piece of content, and we want equal changes to beat it. We use the fastest/most straightforward way to beat it. We want balance and think when we are balanced on one piece of content it will do us good. (Not talking about very underperforming classes.) In the end there should be a different strategy to CW and HR. They should not excel at the same thing, but thats only affordable if we can offer everybody options to excel at something at all. For me it would be more exciting to work with curses/bleed/elemental dmg and the likes if it actually reflects something in my build and I can tinker with it. There is a reason we have next to no guides right now - why would you need one.
.) The possibilty to customize according to the content we want to run: That means the options to slot/unslot/save or remember slots on gear without having to buy enchants twice or switching them around constantly. Loadouts are useful as long as I don't want to switch around enchants on the second campfire in a dungeon while everybody is already waiting for me... Slotting/Unslotting Gear/Enchants/Runestones is a problem right now. We have to be able to Save a Loadout with everything slotted once, and as soon as we switch loadout, the Enchants/Runestones automatically switch to the assigned gear pieces on a different loadout. It is already expensive enough to put armor kits on several pieces of gear. (On second thought, this is something that others probably brought to light already, I have yet to read many posts, I apologize)
The game is complicated for new players in so many aspects (currencies, campaign progression, btc/bta, account unlocks, companions, ZAX/ZEN/AH/economy issues, but we are way to straight forward on gear. The only "confusing" thing is IL recommendation and why seemingly outdated gear in practice is better than new gear, but thats also the case in so many other games that I don't think this really counts as a point of accessibility. If we were only to meet stats (not talking IC stats, but a minimum stat requirement for red/rtq), I am pretty sure people would understand how to choose the best perks without having to do a guild intern "do no pick trash"-pep talk.
Hi Chris, you have mentioned the roadmap and questions about horizontal vs vertical progression, are what we discussing influencing that, or should we be more focused on 'this is what we are leaning towards, how do you see rewards in it"?
I have seen some trends that say shorten the 0-80 experience, and others that say lengthen it, with good arguments either side (I am more horizontal rather than vertical in preference myself). The biggest outcries are when we have invested time and money into achieving certain items or companions, only to have that value ripped away.
If we are on the vertical path, you need to make items cheap and easy (like removing augments from artifact weapons and lowering upgrade costs). That way I have not 'invested' in my equipment for example, and happy-ish to exchange or upgrade it for the next. I would say move those effects either into stones or modifications (kits - crafting) - again, cheap to apply/change, but we can use them with the next gear we get or if it changes - meh, it was cheap(ish). In-game boosts (potions, scrolls, artifact effects) then become more influential. Get rid of grinding, next content will be out in 3 months with other stuff to do. Craft/Unbound item grab and sell, sell, sell!
If we are mooting a horizontal path, then complexity of choice is what is needed - we know the top end is stable, so we seek how to be different and flesh out our gear - keeping it, putting in cubes, slowly building 'our' character. Changes like R15 to R16 stones are greeted with a groan, but we know another investment, rather than a complete destruction of what we had. We need viable ways to farm to either grow what we have, or make it worthwhile to change to something else. Bound to Account is OK, and RP and stones to take us on that long journey, and when we have reached that pinnacle, there is another facet to polish... Variety of grind is needed to know that we are progressing, and to feel the difference as we take an item up a notch or change its stats via cubes.
Yes there will always be a mix, but how the game rewards fall is vastly different, and to contribute meaningfully, we need to know are we arguing for one over the other, or how to best achieve rewards in a given framework?
Might is not always right - the powerful sometimes forget that.
Feedback Overview: A range of proposals on Masterwork Rewards
Feedback Goals: -To keep players interested and engaged in masterwork crafting and reducing the current 'feast or famine' approach. - To improve the sustainability of Masterwork as an element of Neverwinter - To improve 'quality of life' in masterwork tasks
Feedback functionality
Create distinction for Mastercrafted items; Make rewards that have distinct bonuses, set bonuses or allow the maker to create with distinct stats. These would make armour of interest to classes and distinguish them from each mods armour. An example could be to use 'off hand' weapon bonus options such as outgoing or incoming healing or stamina gain.
Increase the range of item rewards; consider new items such as companion gear, or jewels that increase one powers magnitude.
Allow for upgrades of masterwork items; others have already mentioned, make contingent on lengthy masterwork tasks. The benefit of this approach would be that masterwork remains relevant even when a new module doesnt have new masterwork recipes
Consider other rewards; consider masterwork tasks that allow for 'crafting chase items', for example 'legendary artisans, the ability to name your workshop or gain famous 'neverwinter/Faerun' NPC patrons (that could give small bonuses in crafting).
Create a range of Masterwork crafting options - from the basic levels to advanced and then legendary, mythic. Allow crafters to really focus on this aspect of the game. For example create chase crafting tasks that require tons of crafted materials or daily tending and have high risks of failure -but provide high rewards in terms of chase items.
Quality of life for mastercrafters; - Please increase the astral diamond limit to rush tasks - very tedious to keep going back to retainer - Please increase bag space for supplies or if this is not possible merge supplies with tools tab. - Please review tools so tool progression makes sense post mod 16 - example mythic forgehammer vs mod 16 tool.
Risks
Expense of masterwork may limit access or interest from new players Need to balance mod rewards with masterwork items and keep mod rewards important.
Some Archers are Imaginary...
Good post thanks Grey. Again what I am about to say has been said before but Masterworking could play a pivotal role in augmenting, progressing non crafted items as well and could be a factor in horizontal progression. Lets think about that paradigm in Phase 2 as well please.
First of all thank you very much for all the time you invested here and also for the formatting.
I actually agree with every single goal with the caveat of (and i am sure you are thinking this) still including vertical progression but in wider intervals.
Could you give an example in regard to this point please? 'Allow for meaningful player choices in terms of item use.'
On to your next sections (-:
Chris
With regards to this, it has to do with the way itemization currently works in Neverwinter where there are very clear obvious choices in terms of what items a player at end game should be using. A lot of the choices that exist are "non choices" in the sense that yes you could use them, but you would be consciously deciding to use something worse in favour of a better option.
An easy example I can use, from a DPS players perspective is the Ebony Chest body armour, which increases your power by 10%. Sure, I could use something else as a DPS, but I would be choosing to use something which I know is worse. There isn't a real choice on that slot, I am "forced" into using 1 item.
Then in the cases where they are choices, they do not feel very meaningful. An example of this in module 17, there were boots and a shirt which had the same bonus (3% damage while above 75% stamina) and it did not stack, so these 2 items were mutually exclusive. You wanted this bonus on 1 of the items, but it did not matter which of the 2 it was on, so the choice existed did you pick the boots or did you pick the shirt. Now the problem here is, all the other boots and all the other shirts had poor effects, so you weren't forced into making an interesting decision here, you just picked whichever one's stats worked out right for you and that was it.
These problems are compounded by the fact that many of these bonuses are not interesting. Choosing to use a ring that increases the damage of your encounters by 3% or the damage of your at wills by 3% is not an interesting choice. It does not change the way you play the game, you will not even functionally notice the difference and the only way you will be able to tell you are performing 3% better is by sitting down and testing it.
To me, meaningful item choice means that there needs to be a moment of indecision when you are deciding what you want to use and right now, that indecision does not exist. I am not torn between picking item 1 and item 2. Part of the problem here is that item bonuses cannot, by the nature of how the system is currently designed, be particularly powerful, which limits you in terms of how interesting you can make the bonus. It is very difficult to do something interesting with a bonus which is supposed to improve your performance by at most 3%.
Anyhow, I am working on a (revised) version of my essay at the moment which I will share when I am done which covers a lot of the issues with my current essay, as well as I think explains my view a bit better, but its very long (over 13,000 words at the moment) so it is taking time to proof read and it covers more than just the scope of this CDP. I will link it when I am done.
Thanks for your reply Fabricant. I appreciate it. I agree.
> @jules#6770 said: > (Quote) > .) The possibilty to customize according to the content we want to run: That means the options to slot/unslot/save or remember slots on gear without having to buy enchants twice or switching them around constantly. Loadouts are useful as long as I don't want to switch around enchants on the second campfire in a dungeon while everybody is already waiting for me... Slotting/Unslotting Gear/Enchants/Runestones is a problem right now. > We have to be able to Save a Loadout with everything slotted once, and as soon as we switch loadout, the Enchants/Runestones automatically switch to the assigned gear pieces on a different loadout. It is already expensive enough to put armor kits on several pieces of gear.
In the current loadout system, insignia slotted in mounts are automatically swapped if changing to a loadout using the same mount with a different insignia bonus. Transferring this system to gear enchantments ( @thefabricant mentioned this in his feedback aswell ) should be doable by removing the enchantment slots on gear and having enchants equipped directly to character in slots tied to the different gear slots.
Here is my (updated) list of consolidated suggestions. https://guides.jannenw.info/2020/02/07/how-i-would-go-about-redesigning-neverwinter/ I apologize in advance, I don't expect anyone to read through all of this, but for anyone who does, I genuinely did try to come up with solutions to many of what are in my mind, problems in this game.
Thank you for taking the time to write this all out. I agree with all of the problems you have identified and also many of the solutions you suggest. I hope the developers take the time to read it.
Question @oremonger#9999 : Isn't it obvious we are reading it and collaborating? What assumptions are you having that would make you question that? Lots of people are putting in a lot of time on both sides of this initiative and I don't want either sides of their work devalued. What can I/we do better to alleviate this concern?
Chris
Chris the particular post I am referencing here is not on these forums, thus the "hope" is that you guys would have the time to read it on those forums. In it @thefabricant goes into deeper detail and talks about things that are not yet discussed in a CDP. This comment was in no way a dig at you or your team's efforts (which I have said multiple times are appreciated) I am sorry if it came off that way. It is a very long post about many topics not yet included in CDPs so it would take "time" away from the CDP to read and think about.
I have already commented on the parts of this CDP that I feel are important and obtainable and like you I have read them all. I did not comment or discuss @thefabricant's because I read your responses to the version he posted here.
I have not seen a response to my concerns about reward gating as discussed in my last post. That leads to another concern, after reading this CDP I see that it can be a bit overwhelming to try and digest the sheer amount of feedback. I do not envy you in your efforts to reply to as many of us as you have. That in itself is a monumental task and greatly appreciated. Even though everyone was on topic for the most part there are so many ideas and details that will inevitably be drowned out by the sheer volume of feedback. I tried my best to find just three or four main topics but I can't. I hope someone is able to do so. At this rate this CDP will be more than 20 pages before the closing date on the 25th. It is very confusing and hard to follow as it is now. I hope that CDP on CDPs is soon.
I'll try to do a better job of posting in the future. No offense was intended.
I went back and edited my earlier post to better express what I meant.
Feedback Overview (short description of the proposed feedback) change all dungeon keys to be universal except for the most current one
Feedback Goal (what this feedback would target and accomplish) Right now keys are required from old campaigns. many of these campaigns are not things that people want to revisit. the rewards in the chest are also not worth buying a legendary key for. a classic example is MSVA. to get the chests to open requires very time consuming efforts in a dead zone to get the currency to open the chest. when you do open the chest it's old marks for the most part. If I get this trial in daily random I do not get to open a chest making it less desirable. if all the other currencies made a universal chest key it would be no big deal to use the low value key on whatever you run that day. the newest hardest dungeons always have the biggest pay out and it's what you'd grind and want to use legendary keys for once you get past your limit of made keys from campaign.
Feedback Functionality (how would your feedback work in relation to the current design of Neverwinter) it would consolidate old currencies into one universal campaign currency.
Risks & Concerns (what problems can you foresee with implementing your feedback that you would like input on from members of this subforum) people would be sad that there weren't so many currencies to keep track of. they'd be all like, but I like having 1000 different currencies. the grues will bite my ankles if i have no zorkmids..
I feel the need to point out that the entire ongoing battle around dungeon scaling is slightly misdirected. Scaling is a "behind the curtain" mechanic, used to mitigate the "Goldilock zone" problem that arises from the nature of vertical progression. When implemented correctly, scaling works invisibly to players to widen and re-position the "Goldilock zone", making the challenge more appropriate for players who would otherwise be left out.
Proposing changes to how scaling should or shouldn't work is an attempt to treat the symptoms. We should be focusing on the underlying question first - how vertical and horizontal progression should be used to properly express characters Hero's Journey in the game world. Proper design of scaling will emerge naturally from those results.
The following feedback regarding items is going to use today's examples however it can be used for future content releases so don't really look into specific examples and more into how it can be remodeled into a frame to be used in a long term future.
Feedback Goal
Right now the problem is, If content is added players are not rewarded as much as doing something else, why would they want to continue running it? It has been stated that the Trial (Tower of the Mad Mage) will reward with best in slot items for a long time, so this means anything that follows should be under its power level. So as a player who can farm the Trial, why would I bother running the brand new dungeon (The Infernal Citadel) as its rewards would not exceed the rewards from the Trial? I understand that for a player who wants something new to do, who cannot do ToMM and has only been farming LoMM, this will be a fresh change. But after a while, with the added difficulty and increased counter stats, why would a player want to continue farming the dungeon, as all it provides are a new gear set and a new artifact set. For some people this might be good enough, however for the min-maxers where they are trying to get the best performance out of their class this gear is not best in slot.
The issues with rewards in the new dungeon with the current state of the game is that the new artifact set is somewhat niche applying half of the effects to the new zone. In the past players have gone into a mod and 3-6 months later they are in a brand new zone, so using past experiences this is a major negative in using specific gear. If like suggested, the game will have more of a narrative for a 12 month period, then a zone specific bonus might have more merits if it will be “bis” for a year as people won't feel like they might be wasting resources for only a short term benefit.
Another thing in regards to rewards from the dungeon is that the gear you get from weeks of farming is somewhat average. Right now for a dps you are using old level 70 gear as it gave 3% bonus damage. This mostly outweighs the stats given by gear from the level 80 dungeons. In module 18 most people are excited about getting boots which come from a HE, than rewards from the dungeon, which to me doesn't make sense, having a sought after item from a novelty task instead of getting it from a harder (yet achievable) place.
Feedback Functionality
My idea to make dungeon loot more interesting is to make it more meaningful. It would be cool to see an item added which gave you a “15% bonus damage to X mob type” (whichever is used for that narrative) however it gave you 0 stats. This way the player will lose stats on whichever item they previously was using, in order to gain other effects, and it's up to the player to see what they can work with and how they can best use it to optimise their character. If the player wanted to play other content and wanted to be best in slot for it, they would need to change their character around, always giving a need to change and adapt a character to maintain being the best possible ability. This could also be used as a catchup, and give a significant bonus to dealing bonus damage to only that yearly trial boss, instead of that narratives mob type.
Another way to give incentives to run dungeons are, like in the past, when masterwork crafting materials would drop from different dungeons. Making it drop from all content, from hardest to easiest endgame dungeons. This makes a fair balance of every level being able to get items, the easier dungeons will be easier to farm but more populated and thus make an item cheaper then an item obtained from a harder dungeon, but there will be less people able to obtain it so it would be worth slightly more. This way all levels of the game have a somewhat fair and even way to achieve items which are desired by players wanting to get the best items.
The final way I would go about changing loot, and this could work over a years narrative quite well, is if a very hard trial was released at the start of the narrative which dropped the new best weapons and they give you a 2 set bonus, similar to what we have now. Then when the next mod would normally drop (around 3-5 months later), this would give a dungeon with a new gear set. This would be okish but an upgrade to the year before, giving a reason for players to want to get it. However if I use current examples and apply this in today's game, the current gear does not outweigh older gear.
An idea I have would be where the gear compared 1:1 is not better than we are currently using, however acquiring all 4 items would give a 4 set bonus (hypothetically 4 set would give 10% bonus, and currently no set gives around 15%). This can for example help in the narrative specifically, giving an X% damage increase in that area. Making it better then using the old items due to increases in natural stats and combined ratings, and a reason to replace old gear. How this can help full circle, is this increase would make people better at beating the very hard trial released earlier and making it more accessible. This I thought would encourage more people into playing the harder content and not be put off by it, however I wasn't sure how to give an incentive, as if a player could already beat the hard trial, what do they get out of it? So my idea would be to get a 6 set bonus. Currently in the game you have 2 set lionheart weapons and 4 items of lion guard gear. It would be really cool if you could use all 6 and feel very powerful and have a special 6 set bonus, so all your hard work over the year really felt worth it. The bonus would have to feel strong enough, but not too strong to where power creep kicks in. This then gives everyone a reason to want to do it, even if it's short term, and it's not a direct upgrade to the character, but over a longer term, you would get the benefits of it. An example of 6 set could be: Whenever you use an encounter power, there is a 25% chance to lower all current powers cooldown by 1 second
Risks & Concerns
The biggest issue with this would be power creep, either in terms of developers thinking this is too powerful and out of the question due to strength, or some players might not like other players having them feeling like they cannot compete against them.
I don't really know of many issues with this, but if other people can find them, I would like to hear what you think.
(Sorry if anything is incorrectly formatted #blamesharp)
...if you all can move onto phase 2 then that would be great. Specifically it is time to drill into the areas and ideas you like, what you want to know more about, collaborate on, challenge (in a valuable way) and evolve.
At the moment we are interested to know more of your thoughts in regard to Horizontal progression, evolution of vertical progression, what variation of current types of rewards you would like to see? This will do for now and of course this is on top of what you all would like to drill into as well.
PHASE 2 (which really should be in its own focused thread Chris, but here we go)
In an attempt to pretend I'm less narcissistic than what I am, I decided to go through the whole thread ignoring my own posts to find the one idea that most resonates with me and which I would very much like to shine a spotlight on. While there were a few contenders this is the one that wins for me:
Boons should be rewarding and offer significance given the time invested in completing content to achieve them. Also they should also offer some additional reward tied to actually playing the game versus outright purchasing them.
The first level of this boon should be rewarded upon completion or purchase of the campaign. For example, upon completion or purchase of Sharandar you receive a 5% increase to damage/healing/defense in all Sharandar related content. The second level would be tied to achievements, meaning after killing so many of a particular type of enemy you now gain 5% damage against them in any area. So to continue the example, facing Trolls in Sharandar or say Malabog's Castle you would have 10% damage against them if you had completed both levels of the Sharandar boon, but if you faced the same Troll SpellPlague you would only have a 5% advantage against.
This makes so much sense D&D wise (you get better at fighting familiar enemies)! I would be happy for the entire boon system to be reworked into this, and to have to work for all of them again. In addition, boons are such great rewards because it makes your character better - not the stuff your character wears. It is a perfect example of the Evolution of Vertical Progression. I love it.
As for those other points:
Variation of Current Rewards:
Grenades, Hirelings (temporary mounts/companions), more emotes (dance ones a plenty), expand the Vault of Piety with stronghold building materials/vouchers. Basically stuff I mentioned in previous posts. Horizontal Progression:
Your reward for getting better is not getting better? That sounds like scaling. Yuck. What's the point in going for stronger / working to better your character if it will be undone anyway? Sure this could mean "unlocking choices" but let's go through what those could be:
a) Unlock new skills: Given NWO's track record of balancing abilities and classes and the frequency that they "tweak" stuff - this is more a curse than a reward. One second you are the most desired DPS class on the planet, the next you are collecting cobwebs for 3 mods in a row. If you don't keep up with the change log you are in for a surprise when some of your skills do completely different things than last time.
b) Unlock item sets with different stats but not more power: Sorry, because of the way the combat system works there is only one "BiS" set per role. The opportunity to create meaningful varieties of builds went out the window around the time NWO "flattened" everyone's stat points to "make everyone the same". "Maybe armor that protects against specific things then?" you might ask yourself. Go look up NWO's Black Ice and Everfrost protection and see how popular those two turds were. "Or... or maybe armor that you need to power up?" See the vomit that is relic gear.
c) Unlock powerful consumables / decorative gear and / or player housing: Perhaps the only valid option, but it won't cater to everyone. Would people really want to murder Acererack's godling fetus for the chance of getting a pot plant? Kinda goes against the whole "don't put garbage in end game chests" sort of vibe many others have been posting about.
d) Unlock campaign / more missions: It would be highly desirable, but also leaves everyone unable to "win" it locked out from content.
As firesidecat pointed out much earlier in the thread, maybe what I think Horizontal Progression is is wrong so please feel free to clarify what it means. I'm always happy to be corrected.
Here is my (updated) list of consolidated suggestions. https://guides.jannenw.info/2020/02/07/how-i-would-go-about-redesigning-neverwinter/ I apologize in advance, I don't expect anyone to read through all of this, but for anyone who does, I genuinely did try to come up with solutions to many of what are in my mind, problems in this game.
Thank you for taking the time to write this all out. I agree with all of the problems you have identified and also many of the solutions you suggest. I hope the developers take the time to read it.
Question @oremonger#9999 : Isn't it obvious we are reading it and collaborating? What assumptions are you having that would make you question that? Lots of people are putting in a lot of time on both sides of this initiative and I don't want either sides of their work devalued. What can I/we do better to alleviate this concern?
Chris
Chris the particular post I am referencing here is not on these forums, thus the "hope" is that you guys would have the time to read it on those forums. In it @thefabricant goes into deeper detail and talks about things that are not yet discussed in a CDP. This comment was in no way a dig at you or your team's efforts (which I have said multiple times are appreciated) I am sorry if it came off that way. It is a very long post about many topics not yet included in CDPs so it would take "time" away from the CDP to read and think about.
I have already commented on the parts of this CDP that I feel are important and obtainable and like you I have read them all. I did not comment or discuss @thefabricant's because I read your responses to the version he posted here.
I have not seen a response to my concerns about reward gating as discussed in my last post. That leads to another concern, after reading this CDP I see that it can be a bit overwhelming to try and digest the sheer amount of feedback. I do not envy you in your efforts to reply to as many of us as you have. That in itself is a monumental task and greatly appreciated. Even though everyone was on topic for the most part there are so many ideas and details that will inevitably be drowned out by the sheer volume of feedback. I tried my best to find just three or four main topics but I can't. I hope someone is able to do so. At this rate this CDP will be more than 20 pages before the closing date on the 25th. It is very confusing and hard to follow as it is now. I hope that CDP on CDPs is soon.
I'll try to do a better job of posting in the future. No offense was intended.
I went back and edited my earlier post to better express what I meant.
No offence at all @oremonger#9999 I was literally trying to see if these was something we could do better. Clearly there is an funnily enough I was thinking about it when I was commenting earlier today and it is to do with tech or post response options.
Basically I read through everything at least once before I comment. I think and we discuss or not and then I go and look at each post again. Some posts we learn from, some we use as an example for implementation, some we just aim to implement. These posts tend to get an agree or like, insightful means we/I have read it and need more time to think and posts I reply to tend to be to find more info, challenge, or call out for more discussion (or in some cases because the format is well done or the approach is useful. Consideration of more than one player type for example). The other issue is that i am on page 5 in terms of replies but sometimes I jump ahead which really no doubt confuses people. With all of this said and like you say, i think we should do our first CDP CDP next (super important).
Sorry I haven't taken more time to explain the approach. I have just been ultra focused on getting the info, learning and brainstorming together. We will have more time soon.
...if you all can move onto phase 2 then that would be great. Specifically it is time to drill into the areas and ideas you like, what you want to know more about, collaborate on, challenge (in a valuable way) and evolve.
At the moment we are interested to know more of your thoughts in regard to Horizontal progression, evolution of vertical progression, what variation of current types of rewards you would like to see? This will do for now and of course this is on top of what you all would like to drill into as well.
PHASE 2 (which really should be in its own focused thread Chris, but here we go)
In an attempt to pretend I'm less narcissistic than what I am, I decided to go through the whole thread ignoring my own posts to find the one idea that most resonates with me and which I would very much like to shine a spotlight on. While there were a few contenders this is the one that wins for me:
Boons should be rewarding and offer significance given the time invested in completing content to achieve them. Also they should also offer some additional reward tied to actually playing the game versus outright purchasing them.
The first level of this boon should be rewarded upon completion or purchase of the campaign. For example, upon completion or purchase of Sharandar you receive a 5% increase to damage/healing/defense in all Sharandar related content. The second level would be tied to achievements, meaning after killing so many of a particular type of enemy you now gain 5% damage against them in any area. So to continue the example, facing Trolls in Sharandar or say Malabog's Castle you would have 10% damage against them if you had completed both levels of the Sharandar boon, but if you faced the same Troll SpellPlague you would only have a 5% advantage against.
This makes so much sense D&D wise (you get better at fighting familiar enemies)! I would be happy for the entire boon system to be reworked into this, and to have to work for all of them again. In addition, boons are such great rewards because it makes your character better - not the stuff your character wears. It is a perfect example of the Evolution of Vertical Progression. I love it.
As for those other points:
Variation of Current Rewards:
Grenades, Hirelings (temporary mounts/companions), more emotes (dance ones a plenty), expand the Vault of Piety with stronghold building materials/vouchers. Basically stuff I mentioned in previous posts. Horizontal Progression:
Your reward for getting better is not getting better? That sounds like scaling. Yuck. What's the point in going for stronger / working to better your character if it will be undone anyway? Sure this could mean "unlocking choices" but let's go through what those could be:
a) Unlock new skills: Given NWO's track record of balancing abilities and classes and the frequency that they "tweak" stuff - this is more a curse than a reward. One second you are the most desired DPS class on the planet, the next you are collecting cobwebs for 3 mods in a row. If you don't keep up with the change log you are in for a surprise when some of your skills do completely different things than last time.
b) Unlock item sets with different stats but not more power: Sorry, because of the way the combat system works there is only one "BiS" set per role. The opportunity to create meaningful varieties of builds went out the window around the time NWO "flattened" everyone's stat points to "make everyone the same". "Maybe armor that protects against specific things then?" you might ask yourself. Go look up NWO's Black Ice and Everfrost protection and see how popular those two turds were. "Or... or maybe armor that you need to power up?" See the vomit that is relic gear.
c) Unlock powerful consumables / decorative gear and / or player housing: Perhaps the only valid option, but it won't cater to everyone. Would people really want to murder Acererack's godling fetus for the chance of getting a pot plant? Kinda goes against the whole "don't put garbage in end game chests" sort of vibe many others have been posting about.
d) Unlock campaign / more missions: It would be highly desirable, but also leaves everyone unable to "win" it locked out from content.
As firesidecat pointed out much earlier in the thread, maybe what I think Horizontal Progression is is wrong so please feel free to clarify what it means. I'm always happy to be corrected.
I started to point that out, but then I stopped writing it. because I wasn't sure It was wrong. but then because of the way the forum is when you next try to quote the thing you were ruminating gets tagged on and I dont necessarily notice it's there because heavy quoting. lol. I thought I edited that out... but maybe I didn't.
In regards to Horizontal Progression, I think it's an appropriate approach for post level 80 game play. For one, it would put a halt on power creep. Secondly, in D&D once a character reaches level 20, there isn't much vertical progression at all, you might get a little bit better gear, but there is a limit on much better items can get, mostly they are unique, not necessarily "better" or more powerful. I think having more unique items that are situationally bis, or affect build styles is good way to go.
I think going forward, critters should have unique stat sets that reflect their collective personality as races of monsters, see the Monster Manual for ideas. For example, undead should have incredibly high Critical Avoidance to reflect their immunity to critical hits as they have no "vital organs", an enemy drow should have high Crit and Deflect while having low defense hp, or something like that. This would also open the door for easy to implement situationally bis items, simply based on what their stat distributions are, and what content the player is running. You could also implement an in-game Monster Manual that tracks a characters knowledge of various enemy types and what their stats are in a general sense, "Very high", "high", "medium", "low", etc... for each stat, and as you fight more and more of these, you unlock more information on each monster type with a little bit lore. From here you can have a base level for each monster type and scale the monsters up for "hardcore" modes of dungeons.
One problem I can see with horizontal progression is that once a player has his or her "perfect" gear set up, it becomes hard to release new gear they would want to chase for. However that puts more pressure on the devs to create content that is interesting and fun on it's own, and not just add critters with more hp, hit harder, and have higher stats, just to grind for gear with higher stats, otherwise if it's not interesting on it's own, why run it? I suppose if it had chase items that could be traded/sold to others then sure, but again, why gain more ad, if you're already built the way you want? A horizontal progression puts a lot of pressure to create more interesting things that affect build styles, and build styles that should be better in X, but not in Y. However, with as gutted as classes have become post m16, how many build styles can there really be? I think we would need a sort of hybrid of what we had pre-m16 and post-m16 in regards to class design/progression as well.
In short Vertical progression up to 80 and Horizontal progression after 80 (with some vertical improvements here and there) more closely resembles D&D. Perhaps a hybrid of Vertical/Horizontal progression would be adding a way to upgrade old gear to new ilvls. If a way to upgrade old gear to new ilvl was implemented, I think it should involve professions, materials that drop from old dungeons, and allow for its own economy (i.e. mats and products being unbound).
*sorry if it's kinda jumbled together, just thoughts flowing for the most part.
This is an example on how I would like to see skill trees reworked. Example uses a DPS Barbarian because it's my main character and the one I know the most about. Also, I'm on xbone so my values are still Mod17.
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Overview/Goal:
The goal will be to provide players with more options within the current character skill structure.
The intention is to:
Have synergies for all or most skills.
Replace skills/feats that have no purpose with usable replacements.
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Functionality:
I'm not going to outline every skill. The main focus will be on areas of greatest benefit. Those will be Class Features and Feats.
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Class Features:
Traditionally Class Features are passives that provide class benefits. The problem I see with the current structure is that at least half of the options are useless.
For Example: I pick Blademaster as my Paragon. This is a dps role. Yet I have Class Features available for a tank role. To a player, these choices are useless because that's not my function. My chosen role is as a damage dealer.
Proposal:
Replace Class Features and call them Passives.
Replace useless Passives with usable ones for my role/function.
Retain options so no one/two passive combo is clearly best.
Players can only select two Class Features. We'll keep that limitation, but give them better options.
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So For DPS Barbarion we have:
Bravery - While in combat increases movement speed and deflect by 10%. ^ Deflect is pointless on a dps build and the values are too low to be compelling verse the other options.
Replace with: While in combat, damage done is increased by 10%. Take 10% more damage when hit. --
Steady Rage - Increase Rage over time while in combat. ^ Feats make this function pointless. This is obviously meant for a tank role.
Replace with: Rage never falls below 25%. --
Mighty Vitality - Increases hit points by 10%. Decreases power by 5%. ^ Again, this is for tanks. Does not add to my function.
Replace with: Mighty Strength - Power and hit points increased by 5%. --
Trample the Fallen - whenever you use a power with a control effect, damage is increased by 5% for 10 seconds. Deal additional 5% damage to controlled enemies. ^ This is one of our best passives. I'm reducing it slightly because it's perhaps a little too strong. --
Steel Blitz - Your at-will attacks now have a 20% chance to strike a target twice. ^ This is one of our best passives, so I'm leaving it alone. --
Barbed Strikes - increases crit severity by 25%. ^ This is our best passive. I'm actually going to recommend reducing it to 20%. The reason being that players should have to make decisions and this passive is a little too clearly the best choice. --
Raging Strikes - Rage increases damage done by up to 5%. ^ This one is both unclear and underpowered. How much does rage have to increase to get the full 5%? Other options are giving up to 10%.
Replace with: Cooldowns reduced by 15% as long as rage is over 50%. --
Impatience - Generate Rage during combat up to 5 per second. Attacking resets effect. ^ Obviously a tank skill. Worthless to a damage dealer. Benefit is tiny.
Replace with: When an attack is a critical hit, gain 3% more Action points for 10 seconds. Effect does not stack.
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To recap, we've replaced the useless passives with options that are closer in value. 8 passives might be too many. We could pick the best 5 and make the player pick 2.
The Tank Paragon for a Barbarion will use a completely different set of passives that enhance the function of a tank role.
Dps and Tank passives do not overlap.
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Feats:
The purpose of Feats is to create synergies between skills. Again, no choice should be clearly the best.
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Relentless Speed - Relentless Slash gains 5% chance to make Not So Fast become immediately available. OR Mightier Leap - When Mighty Leap hits no enemies, it becomes 600 magnitude on the next leap. ^ This Feat is pretty good because there are situations where each of them is a little more appropriate. However, I'm going to break this up because there are other feats that need a lot more help. Relentless Speed will stay, but I want to revise it to include more options. Mighty Leap will move.
Change Relentless Speed: Relentless Slash and Sure Strike gain a 5% chance to make Not So Fast become immediately available. I would also give Sure Strike an effect like stun or knockback. This means Relentless Slash is no longer the only at-will to synergize with Trample of the Fallen.
Replace Mighty Leap with: Sucker Punch - Bounding Slam and Brash Strike have 5% chance to cause 25 magnitude damage to nearby enemies and make Hidden Daggers come off cooldown. ^ This gives the other at-wills a synergy of their own.
--
Blood Spiller - Increase the magnitude of Bloodletter by 400 and cause Bloodletter to deal damage to you. OR Indomitable Rage - increase Indomitable Battle Strike by up to 300 magnitude as your Rage increases. ^ This ones doesn't work because Bloodletter becomes 1200 magnitude and deals damage to you, but IBS becomes UP TO 800 magnitude. Not only is IBS less, but it's not even guaranteed damage.
Replace with: Indomitable Rage - Indomitable Battle Strike by 700, but your run speed is reduced 20% for 10 seconds. ^ So they are equal output, but have different downsides. The downside for IBS is actually a little harsher, but the skill has a smaller cooldown, so I think it's appropriate.
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Overpenetration - it's a long description, but basically more damage for overcapping your armor pen stat. OR Brutal Critical - Whenever your attacks crit, gain 2 Rage. ^ Both of these are lackluster. Overpenetration is obviously better because you have an opportunity to do more damage. However, neather one really affects the synergy of your skills. I'm going to replace them to create more synergies.
Replace: Mightier Leap - When Mighty Leap hits no enemies, it becomes 600 magnitude on the next leap. ^ I'm moving Mightly leap here because I want to match it up with another encounter.
Charge Harder - Punishing Charge gains 150 magnitude and has a 10% chance to halve it's cooldown time. ^ I'm adding an effect for Punishing Charge, which is an underused encounter that has the potential to create cool gameplay.
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Steel Slam - Avalanche of Steel deals aoe damage and slows mobs around the hit. OR Unstoppable Spin - Spinning Strike activates battlerage and gains duration. ^ I don't like either of these choices because they affect dailies. Dailies no longer have a real effect on how your character plays because they're cool down is so long. I would much rather replace both of these options with things that change encounters because those skills are what will make the character feel different to play.
I feel strongly that dailies should be balanced separately, and not require Feat expenditures to become viable options. They should stand on their own.
Replace both with: Manic Frenzy - Frenzy does an additional 200 magnitude damage to Stunned enemies. OR Whirling Storm - Axe Storm slows enemies does an additional 50 magnitude damage to Stunned enemies. ^ This feat adds a potential combo with Roar, and perhaps Trample of the Fallen. It's another option as the basis for a new build.
--
Relentless Battlerage - build twice as much rage, but Rage mode only deals 10% more damage. OR Escalating Rage - long description, but basically makes Rage mode longer with the chance that you could get incapasitated for 3 seconds. ^ This is the most unbalanced feat. Synergies with Relentless Battlerage allow you to maintain rage mode almost indefinitely. However, Escalating Rage is useless because it has a massive down side.
Replace Escalating Rage: Burning Rage - Rage mode does 25% damage, but rage burns out twice as fast.
^ Neither of these options adds skill synergy, but they force the player to choose the one they think is better for their build.
--
That's the end. I mostly just changed passives, but by adding more usable options players have more paths to take.
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Conclusion:
This is just an example. You would repeat the process for the Tank paragon, as well as other classes. No skills should be useless. All skills/feats should allow the player to explore their character.
As a side note, Feats should not be locked. You should be able to reasign them without having to use a reroll token. It's an aggrivation to run out of tokens and get stuck realizing you picked the wrong feats. Yes, the game does provide some free tokens, but you can still blow through them easily. A new player should never be stuck in that situation. They should be encouraged to mess with their character and try different combinations.
Hi Chris, you have mentioned the roadmap and questions about horizontal vs vertical progression, are what we discussing influencing that, or should we be more focused on 'this is what we are leaning towards, how do you see rewards in it"?
I have seen some trends that say shorten the 0-80 experience, and others that say lengthen it, with good arguments either side (I am more horizontal rather than vertical in preference myself). The biggest outcries are when we have invested time and money into achieving certain items or companions, only to have that value ripped away.
If we are on the vertical path, you need to make items cheap and easy (like removing augments from artifact weapons and lowering upgrade costs). That way I have not 'invested' in my equipment for example, and happy-ish to exchange or upgrade it for the next. I would say move those effects either into stones or modifications (kits - crafting) - again, cheap to apply/change, but we can use them with the next gear we get or if it changes - meh, it was cheap(ish). In-game boosts (potions, scrolls, artifact effects) then become more influential. Get rid of grinding, next content will be out in 3 months with other stuff to do. Craft/Unbound item grab and sell, sell, sell!
If we are mooting a horizontal path, then complexity of choice is what is needed - we know the top end is stable, so we seek how to be different and flesh out our gear - keeping it, putting in cubes, slowly building 'our' character. Changes like R15 to R16 stones are greeted with a groan, but we know another investment, rather than a complete destruction of what we had. We need viable ways to farm to either grow what we have, or make it worthwhile to change to something else. Bound to Account is OK, and RP and stones to take us on that long journey, and when we have reached that pinnacle, there is another facet to polish... Variety of grind is needed to know that we are progressing, and to feel the difference as we take an item up a notch or change its stats via cubes.
Yes there will always be a mix, but how the game rewards fall is vastly different, and to contribute meaningfully, we need to know are we arguing for one over the other, or how to best achieve rewards in a given framework?
Good question thanks Krail,
I am thinking as others are in the CDP that horizontal would not in any way replace vertical and would be complimentary to existing rewards and progression at level 80. This is a healthy way for players to invest in diversifying their characters and mitigates issues with vertical progression gazumping itself.
I am thinking out loud as a member of the CDP. Nothing is agreed upon. We are listening, learning, collaborating as members of the CDP.
1. Feedback Overview: a) Exploration rewards, b) More exploration secrets. c) 'Secret campaign' - something like watcher hunt should be. d) Updating few items to endgame level as reward from exploration. e) Masterwork professions - opinion for future tiers and resource hunting. f) Current food and drinks rewards should have their type (elixir, event food, guild food, ...) description in unified way (for example add to all of them line: "Food type: " under item name. 2. Feedback Goal: a) Reward players with good items for exploring maps, even during leveling b) Add more fun to map exploration. c) Add more causes to explore maps.
Feedback Functionality:
a) Currently game doesn't care so much about exploring (except hunts cases) and it is a part of adventuring. Risks & Concerns: a) partially rebuilding maps in few cases b) more work with creating maps c) maybe angry whales people for 1.e d) create temporary equipment change engine
Ad. 1.a Rewards suggestion examples: - Unique profession workers. - Ad. 1.d Marks and Enchanting stones of Speciality - items for refining special enchanting stones (AI, Anniversary) - New service item for ZEN store/exploration reward: Card of the Wardrobe - magic item that allow to instantly change your clothing. (+1 Loadout only for appearance). - Profession items for new masterworks tiers. - Alternate entrance keys - they allow to change slightly some dungeons and non-queue private maps to obtain new items (for example Key of Jumping Spell - if used on last Githyanki Fragment Expedition portal it takes your party to hard jumping area instead of boss with slightly different rewards (looks only or updated to next campaign ilvl)) - with only a small tip to where use them. - Ad. 1.d For leveling maps: Supreme class sigil parts - dropped once from each hidden reward chest and some other secrets like after finding all orbs on map. Those parts allows to unlock higher ilvl artifact supreme sigil with debuff for user set bonus (2+ sigils) to prevent for using only sigils artifacts. - HAMSTER items with alternate looks items for existing items (simple look changes with removing/adding metalic/star/shadows pattern which is impossible to change with paints). Maybe with community vote for chosen items and their modifications. - Magical effects paint - allows to change color of the special effects on items. Ad. 1.b - Alternate entrance keys ^^. - Challenge mini dungeons - solo or group mini dungeons with predefined levels, boons and equipment for adventurers with different ways to enter (for example talk to hidden character on map, open a chest on correct hour to spawn a portal, jump into well/lake, gather the full party near sign) and different difficult (as you play on predefined stats - only by player skill/skill setup). - Mini bosses/hunts for public leveling areas and old campaigns or new rewards it they exist (drops only for players with correct level xor correct ilvl). - Mini challenges - like sumo game on big tenser disc using sahha ball 'foul skill animation' to throw enemy (player or mob) outside of flying disc, find the Boo. - Memory of the adventure in - elixir that decreases your stats, levels and gives your predefined equipment when you are in named map, which allows you to obtain exploration rewards here. - Imprisoned workers for professions - in some maps (private, dungeons or public) in secret areas add a chance to find workers to recruit them or earn rewards in professions resources. - Add hidden chests/hidden mini quests/mini jumping test areas near edge on the map in m18 public map with three tiers of rewards: Once per account/character for first time (Juma bag like with bumped chances for good items), time gated (daily/weekly) for quests/jumping (Juma bag), and normal HAMSTER for opening chests/hidden sacks again. - Add some available to part of the classes locations in dungeons/expeditions where they can trigger an event/chest for bonus rewards, big trap disarm or shortcut for whole party. - Update hidden chests rewards from leveling areas (with once per find good reward).
Ad.1.c Secret campaign - quest line, without its steps written into journal. With steps like: - Do not inform players (by not in game tip) about campaign existence unless they don't find it for a month. - Find lore note to journal. - Check what NPC is doing. - Be in correct place in correct time. - Basing on previous unlock possibility to find item in drop/chest. - Basing on previous unlock possibility to interact with object. - Unlock invisible before NPC/Object/Conversation line. - Basing on previous alter repeatable quest dungeon/heroic event. - Allow to take part in some event only with correct costume/armor. - Make tips and parts of campaign into older content. - Have group players in correct placement - example (1. lore: star sign 2. hidden sky temple with star pattern floor. 3. players must create sign from 1. from themselves 4. sign depends on the month and unlocks new campaign depending on it) - Global campaign progress update, for example - new campaign progress related BHE on the map after X players finish some campaign step. - Unique titles for first adventurer who completes campaign and for each of its main steps. I wrote example of secret campaign but post is a wall of text anyway, so i removed it from here.
Ad.1.d For me new 'tiers' for Masterwork professions should be independent or partially independent from old Masterworks so: - Each player should have an option to get any future Masterwork without need to have previous (unless they are from same campaign modules tiers like Chult->Omu). - Each future Masterwork should have good rewards available only with using items without needing others Masterworks, but it it should have other goods rewards that requires others Masterworks. - Each future Masterwork shouldn't need to use resources from all others Masterworks - requirements should rotate between mods. - If there is limited amount of good items available in Masterwork to divide it for self-sourced resources and other Masterworks sourced resources, those items should be divided by category (rings, artifact sets, weapons, ...) and/or class role (heal, tank, ranged, melee) then rotate resource needs between them in different mods with Masterworks. - Current model of obtaining resources for Masterwork from nodes is too boring - move it more to exploration.
c) 'Secret campaign' - something like watcher hunt should be. - Challenge mini dungeons - solo or group mini dungeons with predefined levels, boons and equipment for adventurers with different ways to enter (for example talk to hidden character on map, open a chest on correct hour to spawn a portal, jump into well/lake, gather the full party near sign) and different difficult (as you play on predefined stats - only by player skill/skill setup). - Mini bosses/hunts for public leveling areas and old campaigns or new rewards it they exist (drops only for players with correct level xor correct ilvl). - Mini challenges - like sumo game on big tenser disc using sahha ball 'foul skill animation' to throw enemy (player or mob) outside of flying disc, find the Boo.
Ad.1.c Secret campaign - quest line, without its steps written into journal. With steps like: [example of secret campaign steps] I wrote example of secret campaign but post is a wall of text anyway, so i removed it from here.
While I was never able to keep up with the crazy alternate reality game/easter egg stuff in other games (Ex: CoD HAMSTER Zombies), I think some hidden dungeons or secret bosses would be a cool way to keep dungeons fresh. And it's not like it's a foreign concept: the game has done it in the form of the Mimicking in remade Spellplague Caverns.
As for placing the secret easter eggs/secret boss in dungeons: I'd suggest making them only unlockable on hard mode (or whatever difficulty equivalent will be), or add them as an "extra stage" that unlocks after completing the easter egg steps (whether it's as simple as "complete the dungeon with no downs" or "complete some crazy alternate reality game and solve some puzzles").
I don't know if the engine will allow it, but I'd also suggest not spawning in the easter egg dungeon/boss/etc. until players have completed all the steps. Otherwise, you might get an enterprising data miner that will just find the area and ruin part of the ARG stuff.
Of course, there's always the concern of implementing the easter egg taking much more development time away from modules/bugfixing/or class "balancing".
Thanks for your reply Fabricant. I appreciate it. I agree. Chris
@thefabricant 's reply got me thinking and I'd like to expand on it a little. To me, one problem with certain rewards is that they don't lead (or don't lead *enough*) to different viable playstyles. In a word, what I'm looking for is a path toward *specialization*. I'll try my best to elaborate on what I mean.
Example #1: companion as damage-dealer, player as bait
This is a playstyle I often did with my tank alts. Let's say I spend most of my time soloing -- doing the various dailies and weeklies, working through the quests on the various campaigns, etc. But for whatever reason I enjoy having my companion be something more than a mere decoration. So I might give my companion healthy amounts of power, armor penetration, and accuracy. And I've equipped plenty of dark enchantments in my utility slots to boost companion influence.
NB: I don't want to let this turn into a discussion of what players think is "optimal" for dungeon play. The point here is what I might consider ***FUN*** to play. I don't build my characters based on what dungeon players think since I rarely do dungeons (and, to not put too fine a point on it, I consider being pigeon-holed into a meta to be distinctly UN-fun).
Anyway, getting back on point, the problem with this scenario is that none of this is anything special, and doesn't lead to the desired playstyle. It's something that anyone would do just to build their DPS in general. As an example of an extra step specifically for this playstyle, I can add an Indomitable runestone, which when maxed at rank 15 lets my companion do 13% more damage (and I have a couple of these in the bank). Even so it just isn't adequate. There is no other reward that we can equip that boosts companion combat effectiveness, and an R15 indomitable (which is ungodly expensive to make) just isn't anywhere near adequate, moreso when you consider that adding an Indomitable represents an opportunity cost of something else, some other runestone that would otherwise take its place. This is an example where some sort of horizontal progression could come into play.
Example #2: Wizard as controller over DPS
This is a playstyle that has gone through a couple of step-down phases. I'll take a moment here to put things in historical perspective since you're new to the game.
Prior to Mod 6, the nature of many dungeon boss fights was very different than today. They weren't nearly as mechanic-heavy as today, though some mechanics were present. Instead, dungeon boss fights typically had lots (in some cases, LOTS) of adds. Having robust CC (crowd control) in a party was important, and perhaps half of all wizards were controllers instead of pure DPS machines. Put simply, wizards and warlocks had different, yet equally important, roles. Wizards, warlocks, and barbarians (GWF's) could all do crazy damage, but only wizards could keep the oncoming hordes under control so the others could *stay alive* to do that damage.
After Mod 6, wizards were just as effective at CC, but the nature of dungeon boss fights changed. All of the (epic) dungeons that had CC-heavy boss fights were removed. Of those that remained, boss HP was inflated to such an enormous degree that having robust CC quickly came to be seen as unnecessary at best, and a severe opportunity cost at worst. Wizards understandably shifted to DPS over all other concerns, even though their CC abilities were just as strong as before. As someone once mentioned in these forums, the design philosophy was, "if it's dangerous, it's CC immune". CC wizards were all dressed up and had nowhere to go. As a wizard, you either had the supercharged enchantments and runestones, the mythic artifacts, the best gear, and that necessary crazy DPS, or you didn't. The role of a wizard was now to just be a friendlier, no-diabolical-pact version of a warlock. In that sense, wizards, warlocks, and barbarians all became interchangeable, but combat became vastly more bland as a result.
The answer to wanting more players to be able to participate in dungeons should not have been to remove the need for CC. It should have been to figure out a way for another class to take on the Controller role in addition to wizards. With all the emphasis on grasping roots, one method might have been to give all Rangers serious CC powers on par with the CC powers that all wizards enjoyed.
Over time, new epic dungeons were added that fit the new paradigm of DPS checks and few to no adds. Two old epic dungeons returned in reworked form that did away with any need for CC and required lots of DPS instead. The remaining old epic dungeons have never returned.
Mod 16 finally (in my opinion) killed CC by severely nerfing wizards' CC abilities. Trust me, I know, as I still have an old-school CC-to-the-max wizard with 71% control bonus. Her utility in something as tame as Stronghold Marauders is nonexistent, which wasn't the case during Mod 15.
All of this history brings me to my point about horizontal progression. Let's say I want to play my wizard as a real controller. At present, we're talking about the Valindra set, a Ring of the Curse Bringer, *ten* legendary Insignia of Mastery, 5/5 boons that boost control bonus, and that's it. The scaling on the Control Bonus stat just isn't enough to make a 71% bonus useful and there are no other rewards that let a wizard specialize into a controller. And then, there needs to be a place where such a controller can shine. In Mod 15 Stronghold Marauders was one such place, but that is most definitely not the case today. Even so, I don't see anyone going down this route just for that one event.
Example #3: Ranger who could buy time
One of the most fun playstyles that I used to have involved my main. To put things in perspective, there were two dungeons that first set the impetus for this playstyle decision:
Epic Caverns of Karrundax (which hasn't been in the game since Mod 6) Epic Cragmire Crypts soon after Mod 6 launched.
I'll tackle them in order. During the second boss of Epic Karrundax, it was pretty common for party members to wipe. There were so many adds that it was a hard fight. There was no gate preventing running back into the fight after respawning, so there was often a footrace to get back before everyone wiped and the fight reset. At that time, one thing I did was equip my ranger with all manner of "run-fast" gear -- gear that jacked up my movement stat so I could dodge and stay ahead of adds for just those extra few seconds until the others could get in and get aggro from something. It saved the fight on more than one occasion. Not all enemies moved at the speed of light to instantly reach your position in those days, so jacking up your Movement stat was actually a usable option.
When Mod 6 first launched, enemies in dungeons did **crazy** damage. The lowliest peon bandit archer in epic Cragmire Crypts could one-shot you for 100k damage. My response was to stop chasing Movement and chase Defense instead. I chased Defense like you wouldn't believe. The cap was 80% damage resistance and I did my very best to get it capped and keep it capped. When enemies had armor penetration I pushed the stat even higher. It wasn't until Mod 13 that I started backing off on it because our HP had grown over time such that crazy amounts of defense was no longer necessary.
Now, make no mistake, I took a **severe** hit to DPS, but I could off-tank for a few seconds in a pinch -- enough time, say, for a tank to be revived (and if the tank was down for the count, if the boss was almost dead I could dodge like hell and hope a cleric could keep me alive long enough to take that last percent or two off it). I can't count the number of times guildies would say, "Thia! Help us in this dungeon! We keep dying!". They knew I had pitiful DPS, but I could give them that extra little bit of breathing space when something went wrong so they could get the wheels back on the cart. My main became the alt who could go where angels feared to tread -- not because she was a killer, but because she was hard to kill.
It wasn't "optimal", as others might claim. It was, however, fun.
This is now impossible with the new 50% defense cap and there is no other means to choose to specialize into a playstyle like this even if I'm willing to forego a bunch of DPS for the time being.
In summary, I see horizontal progression as an opportunity for specialization. Mod 16 badly pigeonholed us into specific playstyles and to me it really chafes. In the interest of making all classes interchangeable, we can no longer specialize. We used to be controllers, buffers, and off-tanks in addition to just damage-dealers. How we built our companions used to have meaning if we wanted it to. Providing a means for specialization and areas where specialized roles are useful is no sin and makes the game worth playing.
Post edited by hustin1 on
Harper Chronicles: Cap Snatchers (RELEASED) - NW-DPUTABC6X Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Ester eggs are only part of my idea, and maybe this was too shattered: using all those mini dungeons, challenges, hunts in old areas with temporary deleveling potion is mainly an idea to replace boring mining nodes (or take a big bite from them) for Masterwork expansion plus add few end-game like gear not so hard to get (without buying it) for new and weaker players (sigils, updating AI 14 rank enchant to rank 15).
And yes, for secret campaign partially unlocking steps should be necessary something to prevent data mining - for others eggs depending on egg, as most of them would be quickly found after launch. As for engine - there something probably is, as sometimes game downloads new data during play.
For dungeons i always have hope to see some platform sequences like in Tomb Rider with loot hidden content (including rewards) and some platform sequences, crossed with cooperative - class dependable way finding, with final dungeon reward splitted in different areas: with one party composition you never can get all rewards, skill requiring boss fights (to slightly lesser extent than TOMM) and some of them skip able by correct party route, with few randomized content (trap locations, some rewards and hidden rooms locations). For example we can have moving platforms sequence over deep guarded by heavy magical cannons with lot hp and knockback attack where: ranger can detects way hidden in brushes to divine device that moves platforms, cleric can activate device to stop platforms in one place, rogue can make long jump with to second side of the deep, but too lower platform where he can turn off one of the turrets in trapped maintenance tunel, class with dungeonering can find secret passage with bonus reward, class with shield can block single shot knockback missile which allow to activate on platform magicial ward barrier by arcane caster) .
Happy Monday. I will be continuing to comment as necessary. Meanwhile if you all can move onto phase 2 then that would be great. Specifically it is time to drill into the areas and ideas you like, what you want to know more about, collaborate on, challenge (in a valuable way) and evolve.
At the moment we are interested to know more of your thoughts in regard to Horizontal progression, evolution of vertical progression, what variation of current types of rewards you would like to see? This will do for now and of course this is on top of what you all would like to drill into as well.
Looking forward to seeing the next phase of this CDP.
Chris
Horizontal Progression
First, I am generally a big fan of horizontal progression. However ever since Mod 6 all horizontal progression has been stripped out of the game. No set bonuses (mod 6), introduction of unalterable item bonuses (Chult? Can't quite remember for sure), low stat caps (mod 16), boon rework (mod 16), feat reduction (mod 16) have all completely wrecked meaningful character customization and there is no meaningful horizontal progress without being able to customize your character in interesting ways.
If you want across the board horizontal progression all of these will need to be reworked. Again.
If we're talking about individual areas I think two easy ways to reintroduce horizontal progression would be a boon rework and an item bonus rework. Boons, as I stated on page 2, should have some more interesting choices that function similarly to feats (not every boon point, but I believe the campaigns used to offer 1-3 of these choices each). You should have data on the old boon system, take a look there for examples.
As for item bonuses, introducing rerolls and increasing the variety/utility would be a good start. Unfortunately the %damage ones and %power increase ones are probably always going to be king, but short of removing them the only way to change that is to offer alternatives that are compelling.
Evolution of Vertical Progression
Honestly my favorite vertical progression path is yearly level cap increases. However, this is not practical without a version of scaling that works since it creates a lot of extra dev maintenance work for no real benefit to the player.
Best way to implement vertical progression for NWO in my opinion would be to increase IL levels once a year and use the rest of the updates in that year to introduce new gear with varying stat mixes. This would work well for tying into re-roll-able item bonuses and give us options. Additionally every few months you can release progressively harder dungeons/trials/etc that require higher item levels, perhaps lagging yearly IL increases by 3-4 months for a natural progression rhythm. This would allow endgame players to have a challenge, midgame players to have a goalpost and new players to be able to complete the content as it ages naturally.
Variation of Current Rewards
I'm not completely sure what you are asking about in terms of variation of current rewards. Short list is more unbound, less RP and more useful. Throw in guild vouchers instead of RP maybe? I ran a dungeon and a skirmish tonight, dungeon "rewarded" me with a blue Alliance chest piece (bound vendor/RP trash, cant even sell it to someone who wants the transmute) and 5k RAD. Skirmish was actually more exciting by rewarding me with a bow transmute I had not yet collected. If I were running the queues for the chest rewards I wouldn't bother, but since I'm currently collecting transmutes across toons I've been running many more than usual lately, and the best reward I've gotten recently was a Staldorf companion that sells for so little I posted it for the AH suggested price..
Comments
Chris
In Professions add new tasks to that would allow you to change and upgrade gear. For example, if you wanted to change a piece of companion gear into a different piece, you'd need whatever the required reagents would be, along with 2 pieces of same IL companion gear. Again, it keeps people invested in running the content while at the same time knowing that they're making progress towards the item(s) they're chasing.
Thanks JMiller
Chris
Thanks for your post. Others have also raised many of your points. Your format and reasoning is very good.
We are currently working on content that has different difficulty ranging from normal to hard with rewards that reflect this. We also want to not scale players down where possible and where we do (if we do) then the scaled player will receive rewards pertinent top their level.
I hope that everyone can start to see a trend here in terms of the direction we are moving in. Where possible I am going to talk more about our intent and direction at a more detailed level know that we have a better idea of direction. Once we share the roadmap this will be easier. All of our focus should be on refinement and streamlining in every area of the game. Boiling everything down to its core and building on solid ground with everything that is fun in NW and more as we move forward.
Thanks
Chris
- This response does fall into progression.
- Create a seperate version of the dungeons and trials as a quest requirement before players can queue for random queues.
Feedback Goal- Many of the random queue dungeons or trials fail due to some players lacking experience.
- Help new players gain experience without causing failures to the "standard" random queues.
Feedback Functionality- Make quest requirement to complete every dungeon and trial on the list.
- Each dungeon or trial will need to be ran 2 or 3 times each.
- These training queues are dialed down in difficulty.
- These training queues provide no reward (to prevent veteran players from speed running for easy rewards)
- Allow veterans to join these training queues to help their friends or guildmates. (which is why not to give rewards)
Risks & ConcernsYour experience is very similar to mine and I am in agreement to everything you said. This said I would say i lost compulsion in the story-line around level 45. Good post.
Thanks
Chris
> Morning All,
>
> Happy Monday. I will be continuing to comment as necessary. Meanwhile if you all can move onto phase 2 then that would be great. Specifically it is time to drill into the areas and ideas you like, what you want to know more about, collaborate on, challenge (in a valuable way) and evolve.
>
> At the moment we are interested to know more of your thoughts in regard to Horizontal progression, evolution of vertical progression, what variation of current types of rewards you would like to see? This will do for now and of course this is on top of what you all would like to drill into as well.
>
> Looking forward to seeing the next phase of this CDP.
>
> Chris
My thoughts after following this CDP closely :
1. Vertical progression should be kept for the players jurney from 1-80. The itemlevel/stat chase that begins at lvl 80 should slowed down by the introduction of horizontal progression. This would open up for introduction of new builds/playstyles instead of having the non-hardcore players feel that they are trapped in a hamster wheel chasing stat caps they never will reach to enter latest content. Horizontal progression would be an awesome way of introducing the D&D class specializations to the game.
2. Introduce gear that is build defining. Currently there is a select few items that are considered best in slot for everyone, simple math tells us that alternatives are simply not worth using. Introduce class/role (or even race) spesific gear to open up for player customization and diversity. Better itemization is imho the best way to open up for build diversity and moving away from the current 1 item is 100% best in slot situation. Make gear with meaningful bonuses like @thefabricant suggests. Class/Role/Race spesific gear is a very good way to reuse old zones/dungeons for reward hunting (Dwarf gear drops in Dwarven King questline, Hunter gear drops in Chult questline and so on).
3. Boons need rethinking. I think the current system is dividing players building their toons and endgame players in an unfair way. All of my toons are very high itemlevel, and able to cap all stats without thinking about the boons. This means boons is only used to get more Power, Hitpoints and +dmg dealt to mobs. Players striving to achieve stat caps are stuck with spending boon points on stats that dont feel very rewarding at all. Boons can also open up for build diversity if done properly.
4. Make different players/playstyles able to achieve the same goals. PvPers, Dungeon speedrunners, crafters, story nerds/collectors should all be able to progress independent of the way they choose to play the game. Make players time spent on what they enjoy in the game feel rewarding for all. This is not the same as the points made about all gear being available to all players, as I think the players that excel at what they do absolutely deserve rewards for their endurance.
Thanks for your post. Guild (Rewards/Progression) is another area I would like us to drill a little more in phase 2. And then at some point in the near future there will be a dedicated CDP for it.
Chris
Chris
Thanks
Chris
If we want customization of items, more and less valuable options, choices, diversity, a better itemization like @wilbur626 stated here (and I agree with gear that should not be BIS in all situations) with meaningful bonuses (that are to some extent also punishing) then we need:
.) A reason to customize it: To move away from what only just introduced in M16 where, more than ever before, we were reduced in build diversity, meaningful paragon paths (dps) and, yeah: options. If all dps excel in the same way, they all wear the same gear. There is no reason to introduce gear for cc, when cc is no valid option. The dilemma is: We want to run the most current/most profitable piece of content, and we want equal changes to beat it. We use the fastest/most straightforward way to beat it. We want balance and think when we are balanced on one piece of content it will do us good. (Not talking about very underperforming classes.) In the end there should be a different strategy to CW and HR. They should not excel at the same thing, but thats only affordable if we can offer everybody options to excel at something at all. For me it would be more exciting to work with curses/bleed/elemental dmg and the likes if it actually reflects something in my build and I can tinker with it. There is a reason we have next to no guides right now - why would you need one.
.) The possibilty to customize according to the content we want to run: That means the options to slot/unslot/save or remember slots on gear without having to buy enchants twice or switching them around constantly. Loadouts are useful as long as I don't want to switch around enchants on the second campfire in a dungeon while everybody is already waiting for me... Slotting/Unslotting Gear/Enchants/Runestones is a problem right now.
We have to be able to Save a Loadout with everything slotted once, and as soon as we switch loadout, the Enchants/Runestones automatically switch to the assigned gear pieces on a different loadout. It is already expensive enough to put armor kits on several pieces of gear.
(On second thought, this is something that others probably brought to light already, I have yet to read many posts, I apologize)
The game is complicated for new players in so many aspects (currencies, campaign progression, btc/bta, account unlocks, companions, ZAX/ZEN/AH/economy issues, but we are way to straight forward on gear. The only "confusing" thing is IL recommendation and why seemingly outdated gear in practice is better than new gear, but thats also the case in so many other games that I don't think this really counts as a point of accessibility. If we were only to meet stats (not talking IC stats, but a minimum stat requirement for red/rtq), I am pretty sure people would understand how to choose the best perks without having to do a guild intern "do no pick trash"-pep talk.
I have seen some trends that say shorten the 0-80 experience, and others that say lengthen it, with good arguments either side (I am more horizontal rather than vertical in preference myself). The biggest outcries are when we have invested time and money into achieving certain items or companions, only to have that value ripped away.
If we are on the vertical path, you need to make items cheap and easy (like removing augments from artifact weapons and lowering upgrade costs). That way I have not 'invested' in my equipment for example, and happy-ish to exchange or upgrade it for the next. I would say move those effects either into stones or modifications (kits - crafting) - again, cheap to apply/change, but we can use them with the next gear we get or if it changes - meh, it was cheap(ish). In-game boosts (potions, scrolls, artifact effects) then become more influential. Get rid of grinding, next content will be out in 3 months with other stuff to do. Craft/Unbound item grab and sell, sell, sell!
If we are mooting a horizontal path, then complexity of choice is what is needed - we know the top end is stable, so we seek how to be different and flesh out our gear - keeping it, putting in cubes, slowly building 'our' character. Changes like R15 to R16 stones are greeted with a groan, but we know another investment, rather than a complete destruction of what we had. We need viable ways to farm to either grow what we have, or make it worthwhile to change to something else. Bound to Account is OK, and RP and stones to take us on that long journey, and when we have reached that pinnacle, there is another facet to polish... Variety of grind is needed to know that we are progressing, and to feel the difference as we take an item up a notch or change its stats via cubes.
Yes there will always be a mix, but how the game rewards fall is vastly different, and to contribute meaningfully, we need to know are we arguing for one over the other, or how to best achieve rewards in a given framework?
Might is not always right - the powerful sometimes forget that.
The Small BandChris
Chris
> (Quote)
> .) The possibilty to customize according to the content we want to run: That means the options to slot/unslot/save or remember slots on gear without having to buy enchants twice or switching them around constantly. Loadouts are useful as long as I don't want to switch around enchants on the second campfire in a dungeon while everybody is already waiting for me... Slotting/Unslotting Gear/Enchants/Runestones is a problem right now.
> We have to be able to Save a Loadout with everything slotted once, and as soon as we switch loadout, the Enchants/Runestones automatically switch to the assigned gear pieces on a different loadout. It is already expensive enough to put armor kits on several pieces of gear.
In the current loadout system, insignia slotted in mounts are automatically swapped if changing to a loadout using the same mount with a different insignia bonus. Transferring this system to gear enchantments ( @thefabricant mentioned this in his feedback aswell ) should be doable by removing the enchantment slots on gear and having enchants equipped directly to character in slots tied to the different gear slots.
I have already commented on the parts of this CDP that I feel are important and obtainable and like you I have read them all. I did not comment or discuss @thefabricant's because I read your responses to the version he posted here.
I have not seen a response to my concerns about reward gating as discussed in my last post. That leads to another concern, after reading this CDP I see that it can be a bit overwhelming to try and digest the sheer amount of feedback. I do not envy you in your efforts to reply to as many of us as you have. That in itself is a monumental task and greatly appreciated. Even though everyone was on topic for the most part there are so many ideas and details that will inevitably be drowned out by the sheer volume of feedback. I tried my best to find just three or four main topics but I can't. I hope someone is able to do so. At this rate this CDP will be more than 20 pages before the closing date on the 25th. It is very confusing and hard to follow as it is now. I hope that CDP on CDPs is soon.
I'll try to do a better job of posting in the future. No offense was intended.
I went back and edited my earlier post to better express what I meant.
change all dungeon keys to be universal except for the most current one
Feedback Goal (what this feedback would target and accomplish)
Right now keys are required from old campaigns. many of these campaigns are not things that people want to revisit. the rewards in the chest are also not worth buying a legendary key for. a classic example is MSVA. to get the chests to open requires very time consuming efforts in a dead zone to get the currency to open the chest. when you do open the chest it's old marks for the most part. If I get this trial in daily random I do not get to open a chest making it less desirable. if all the other currencies made a universal chest key it would be no big deal to use the low value key on whatever you run that day. the newest hardest dungeons always have the biggest pay out and it's what you'd grind and want to use legendary keys for once you get past your limit of made keys from campaign.
Feedback Functionality (how would your feedback work in relation to the current design of Neverwinter)
it would consolidate old currencies into one universal campaign currency.
Risks & Concerns (what problems can you foresee with implementing your feedback that you would like input on from members of this subforum) people would be sad that there weren't so many currencies to keep track of. they'd be all like, but I like having 1000 different currencies. the grues will bite my ankles if i have no zorkmids..
Proposing changes to how scaling should or shouldn't work is an attempt to treat the symptoms. We should be focusing on the underlying question first - how vertical and horizontal progression should be used to properly express characters Hero's Journey in the game world. Proper design of scaling will emerge naturally from those results.
The following feedback regarding items is going to use today's examples however it can be used for future content releases so don't really look into specific examples and more into how it can be remodeled into a frame to be used in a long term future.
Feedback Goal
Right now the problem is, If content is added players are not rewarded as much as doing something else, why would they want to continue running it? It has been stated that the Trial (Tower of the Mad Mage) will reward with best in slot items for a long time, so this means anything that follows should be under its power level. So as a player who can farm the Trial, why would I bother running the brand new dungeon (The Infernal Citadel) as its rewards would not exceed the rewards from the Trial? I understand that for a player who wants something new to do, who cannot do ToMM and has only been farming LoMM, this will be a fresh change. But after a while, with the added difficulty and increased counter stats, why would a player want to continue farming the dungeon, as all it provides are a new gear set and a new artifact set. For some people this might be good enough, however for the min-maxers where they are trying to get the best performance out of their class this gear is not best in slot.
The issues with rewards in the new dungeon with the current state of the game is that the new artifact set is somewhat niche applying half of the effects to the new zone. In the past players have gone into a mod and 3-6 months later they are in a brand new zone, so using past experiences this is a major negative in using specific gear. If like suggested, the game will have more of a narrative for a 12 month period, then a zone specific bonus might have more merits if it will be “bis” for a year as people won't feel like they might be wasting resources for only a short term benefit.
Another thing in regards to rewards from the dungeon is that the gear you get from weeks of farming is somewhat average. Right now for a dps you are using old level 70 gear as it gave 3% bonus damage. This mostly outweighs the stats given by gear from the level 80 dungeons. In module 18 most people are excited about getting boots which come from a HE, than rewards from the dungeon, which to me doesn't make sense, having a sought after item from a novelty task instead of getting it from a harder (yet achievable) place.
Feedback Functionality
My idea to make dungeon loot more interesting is to make it more meaningful. It would be cool to see an item added which gave you a “15% bonus damage to X mob type” (whichever is used for that narrative) however it gave you 0 stats. This way the player will lose stats on whichever item they previously was using, in order to gain other effects, and it's up to the player to see what they can work with and how they can best use it to optimise their character. If the player wanted to play other content and wanted to be best in slot for it, they would need to change their character around, always giving a need to change and adapt a character to maintain being the best possible ability. This could also be used as a catchup, and give a significant bonus to dealing bonus damage to only that yearly trial boss, instead of that narratives mob type.
Another way to give incentives to run dungeons are, like in the past, when masterwork crafting materials would drop from different dungeons. Making it drop from all content, from hardest to easiest endgame dungeons. This makes a fair balance of every level being able to get items, the easier dungeons will be easier to farm but more populated and thus make an item cheaper then an item obtained from a harder dungeon, but there will be less people able to obtain it so it would be worth slightly more. This way all levels of the game have a somewhat fair and even way to achieve items which are desired by players wanting to get the best items.
The final way I would go about changing loot, and this could work over a years narrative quite well, is if a very hard trial was released at the start of the narrative which dropped the new best weapons and they give you a 2 set bonus, similar to what we have now. Then when the next mod would normally drop (around 3-5 months later), this would give a dungeon with a new gear set. This would be okish but an upgrade to the year before, giving a reason for players to want to get it. However if I use current examples and apply this in today's game, the current gear does not outweigh older gear.
An idea I have would be where the gear compared 1:1 is not better than we are currently using, however acquiring all 4 items would give a 4 set bonus (hypothetically 4 set would give 10% bonus, and currently no set gives around 15%). This can for example help in the narrative specifically, giving an X% damage increase in that area. Making it better then using the old items due to increases in natural stats and combined ratings, and a reason to replace old gear. How this can help full circle, is this increase would make people better at beating the very hard trial released earlier and making it more accessible.
This I thought would encourage more people into playing the harder content and not be put off by it, however I wasn't sure how to give an incentive, as if a player could already beat the hard trial, what do they get out of it? So my idea would be to get a 6 set bonus. Currently in the game you have 2 set lionheart weapons and 4 items of lion guard gear. It would be really cool if you could use all 6 and feel very powerful and have a special 6 set bonus, so all your hard work over the year really felt worth it. The bonus would have to feel strong enough, but not too strong to where power creep kicks in. This then gives everyone a reason to want to do it, even if it's short term, and it's not a direct upgrade to the character, but over a longer term, you would get the benefits of it.
An example of 6 set could be: Whenever you use an encounter power, there is a 25% chance to lower all current powers cooldown by 1 second
Risks & Concerns
The biggest issue with this would be power creep, either in terms of developers thinking this is too powerful and out of the question due to strength, or some players might not like other players having them feeling like they cannot compete against them.
I don't really know of many issues with this, but if other people can find them, I would like to hear what you think.
(Sorry if anything is incorrectly formatted #blamesharp)
In an attempt to pretend I'm less narcissistic than what I am, I decided to go through the whole thread ignoring my own posts to find the one idea that most resonates with me and which I would very much like to shine a spotlight on. While there were a few contenders this is the one that wins for me: This makes so much sense D&D wise (you get better at fighting familiar enemies)! I would be happy for the entire boon system to be reworked into this, and to have to work for all of them again. In addition, boons are such great rewards because it makes your character better - not the stuff your character wears. It is a perfect example of the Evolution of Vertical Progression. I love it.
As for those other points:
Variation of Current Rewards:
Grenades, Hirelings (temporary mounts/companions), more emotes (dance ones a plenty), expand the Vault of Piety with stronghold building materials/vouchers. Basically stuff I mentioned in previous posts.
Horizontal Progression:
Your reward for getting better is not getting better? That sounds like scaling. Yuck. What's the point in going for stronger / working to better your character if it will be undone anyway? Sure this could mean "unlocking choices" but let's go through what those could be:
a) Unlock new skills: Given NWO's track record of balancing abilities and classes and the frequency that they "tweak" stuff - this is more a curse than a reward. One second you are the most desired DPS class on the planet, the next you are collecting cobwebs for 3 mods in a row. If you don't keep up with the change log you are in for a surprise when some of your skills do completely different things than last time.
b) Unlock item sets with different stats but not more power: Sorry, because of the way the combat system works there is only one "BiS" set per role. The opportunity to create meaningful varieties of builds went out the window around the time NWO "flattened" everyone's stat points to "make everyone the same". "Maybe armor that protects against specific things then?" you might ask yourself. Go look up NWO's Black Ice and Everfrost protection and see how popular those two turds were. "Or... or maybe armor that you need to power up?" See the vomit that is relic gear.
c) Unlock powerful consumables / decorative gear and / or player housing: Perhaps the only valid option, but it won't cater to everyone. Would people really want to murder Acererack's godling fetus for the chance of getting a pot plant? Kinda goes against the whole "don't put garbage in end game chests" sort of vibe many others have been posting about.
d) Unlock campaign / more missions: It would be highly desirable, but also leaves everyone unable to "win" it locked out from content.
As firesidecat pointed out much earlier in the thread, maybe what I think Horizontal Progression is is wrong so please feel free to clarify what it means. I'm always happy to be corrected.
Basically I read through everything at least once before I comment. I think and we discuss or not and then I go and look at each post again. Some posts we learn from, some we use as an example for implementation, some we just aim to implement. These posts tend to get an agree or like, insightful means we/I have read it and need more time to think and posts I reply to tend to be to find more info, challenge, or call out for more discussion (or in some cases because the format is well done or the approach is useful. Consideration of more than one player type for example). The other issue is that i am on page 5 in terms of replies but sometimes I jump ahead which really no doubt confuses people. With all of this said and like you say, i think we should do our first CDP CDP next (super important).
Sorry I haven't taken more time to explain the approach. I have just been ultra focused on getting the info, learning and brainstorming together. We will have more time soon.
Thanks Ore as always,
Chris
I started to point that out, but then I stopped writing it. because I wasn't sure It was wrong. but then because of the way the forum is when you next try to quote the thing you were ruminating gets tagged on and I dont necessarily notice it's there because heavy quoting. lol. I thought I edited that out... but maybe I didn't.
I think going forward, critters should have unique stat sets that reflect their collective personality as races of monsters, see the Monster Manual for ideas. For example, undead should have incredibly high Critical Avoidance to reflect their immunity to critical hits as they have no "vital organs", an enemy drow should have high Crit and Deflect while having low defense hp, or something like that. This would also open the door for easy to implement situationally bis items, simply based on what their stat distributions are, and what content the player is running. You could also implement an in-game Monster Manual that tracks a characters knowledge of various enemy types and what their stats are in a general sense, "Very high", "high", "medium", "low", etc... for each stat, and as you fight more and more of these, you unlock more information on each monster type with a little bit lore. From here you can have a base level for each monster type and scale the monsters up for "hardcore" modes of dungeons.
One problem I can see with horizontal progression is that once a player has his or her "perfect" gear set up, it becomes hard to release new gear they would want to chase for. However that puts more pressure on the devs to create content that is interesting and fun on it's own, and not just add critters with more hp, hit harder, and have higher stats, just to grind for gear with higher stats, otherwise if it's not interesting on it's own, why run it? I suppose if it had chase items that could be traded/sold to others then sure, but again, why gain more ad, if you're already built the way you want? A horizontal progression puts a lot of pressure to create more interesting things that affect build styles, and build styles that should be better in X, but not in Y. However, with as gutted as classes have become post m16, how many build styles can there really be? I think we would need a sort of hybrid of what we had pre-m16 and post-m16 in regards to class design/progression as well.
In short Vertical progression up to 80 and Horizontal progression after 80 (with some vertical improvements here and there) more closely resembles D&D. Perhaps a hybrid of Vertical/Horizontal progression would be adding a way to upgrade old gear to new ilvls. If a way to upgrade old gear to new ilvl was implemented, I think it should involve professions, materials that drop from old dungeons, and allow for its own economy (i.e. mats and products being unbound).
*sorry if it's kinda jumbled together, just thoughts flowing for the most part.
Skill/Feat Rework Suggestion/Example
This is an example on how I would like to see skill trees reworked.Example uses a DPS Barbarian because it's my main character and the one I know the most about.
Also, I'm on xbone so my values are still Mod17.
---
Overview/Goal:
The goal will be to provide players with more options within the current character skill structure.The intention is to:
- Have synergies for all or most skills.
- Replace skills/feats that have no purpose with usable replacements.
---Functionality:
I'm not going to outline every skill. The main focus will be on areas of greatest benefit.Those will be Class Features and Feats.
--
Class Features:
Traditionally Class Features are passives that provide class benefits.The problem I see with the current structure is that at least half of the options are useless.
For Example: I pick Blademaster as my Paragon. This is a dps role. Yet I have Class Features available for a tank role.
To a player, these choices are useless because that's not my function. My chosen role is as a damage dealer.
Proposal:
- Replace Class Features and call them Passives.
- Replace useless Passives with usable ones for my role/function.
- Retain options so no one/two passive combo is clearly best.
Players can only select two Class Features. We'll keep that limitation, but give them better options.--
So For DPS Barbarion we have:
Bravery - While in combat increases movement speed and deflect by 10%.
^ Deflect is pointless on a dps build and the values are too low to be compelling verse the other options.
Replace with: While in combat, damage done is increased by 10%. Take 10% more damage when hit.
--
Steady Rage - Increase Rage over time while in combat.
^ Feats make this function pointless. This is obviously meant for a tank role.
Replace with: Rage never falls below 25%.
--
Mighty Vitality - Increases hit points by 10%. Decreases power by 5%.
^ Again, this is for tanks. Does not add to my function.
Replace with: Mighty Strength - Power and hit points increased by 5%.
--
Trample the Fallen - whenever you use a power with a control effect, damage is increased by 5% for 10 seconds. Deal additional 5% damage to controlled enemies.
^ This is one of our best passives. I'm reducing it slightly because it's perhaps a little too strong.
--
Steel Blitz - Your at-will attacks now have a 20% chance to strike a target twice.
^ This is one of our best passives, so I'm leaving it alone.
--
Barbed Strikes - increases crit severity by 25%.
^ This is our best passive. I'm actually going to recommend reducing it to 20%.
The reason being that players should have to make decisions and this passive is a little too clearly the best choice.
--
Raging Strikes - Rage increases damage done by up to 5%.
^ This one is both unclear and underpowered. How much does rage have to increase to get the full 5%? Other options are giving up to 10%.
Replace with: Cooldowns reduced by 15% as long as rage is over 50%.
--
Impatience - Generate Rage during combat up to 5 per second. Attacking resets effect.
^ Obviously a tank skill. Worthless to a damage dealer. Benefit is tiny.
Replace with: When an attack is a critical hit, gain 3% more Action points for 10 seconds. Effect does not stack.
----
To recap, we've replaced the useless passives with options that are closer in value.
8 passives might be too many. We could pick the best 5 and make the player pick 2.
The Tank Paragon for a Barbarion will use a completely different set of passives that enhance the function of a tank role.
Dps and Tank passives do not overlap.
----
Feats:
The purpose of Feats is to create synergies between skills.Again, no choice should be clearly the best.
--
Relentless Speed - Relentless Slash gains 5% chance to make Not So Fast become immediately available.
OR
Mightier Leap - When Mighty Leap hits no enemies, it becomes 600 magnitude on the next leap.
^ This Feat is pretty good because there are situations where each of them is a little more appropriate. However, I'm going to break this up because there are other feats that need a lot more help. Relentless Speed will stay, but I want to revise it to include more options. Mighty Leap will move.
Change Relentless Speed: Relentless Slash and Sure Strike gain a 5% chance to make Not So Fast become immediately available.
I would also give Sure Strike an effect like stun or knockback. This means Relentless Slash is no longer the only at-will to synergize with Trample of the Fallen.
Replace Mighty Leap with:
Sucker Punch - Bounding Slam and Brash Strike have 5% chance to cause 25 magnitude damage to nearby enemies and make Hidden Daggers come off cooldown.
^ This gives the other at-wills a synergy of their own.
--
Blood Spiller - Increase the magnitude of Bloodletter by 400 and cause Bloodletter to deal damage to you.
OR
Indomitable Rage - increase Indomitable Battle Strike by up to 300 magnitude as your Rage increases.
^ This ones doesn't work because Bloodletter becomes 1200 magnitude and deals damage to you, but IBS becomes UP TO 800 magnitude. Not only is IBS less, but it's not even guaranteed damage.
Replace with: Indomitable Rage - Indomitable Battle Strike by 700, but your run speed is reduced 20% for 10 seconds.
^ So they are equal output, but have different downsides. The downside for IBS is actually a little harsher, but the skill has a smaller cooldown, so I think it's appropriate.
--
Overpenetration - it's a long description, but basically more damage for overcapping your armor pen stat.
OR
Brutal Critical - Whenever your attacks crit, gain 2 Rage.
^ Both of these are lackluster. Overpenetration is obviously better because you have an opportunity to do more damage. However, neather one really affects the synergy of your skills. I'm going to replace them to create more synergies.
Replace:
Mightier Leap - When Mighty Leap hits no enemies, it becomes 600 magnitude on the next leap.
^ I'm moving Mightly leap here because I want to match it up with another encounter.
Charge Harder - Punishing Charge gains 150 magnitude and has a 10% chance to halve it's cooldown time.
^ I'm adding an effect for Punishing Charge, which is an underused encounter that has the potential to create cool gameplay.
--
Steel Slam - Avalanche of Steel deals aoe damage and slows mobs around the hit.
OR
Unstoppable Spin - Spinning Strike activates battlerage and gains duration.
^ I don't like either of these choices because they affect dailies. Dailies no longer have a real effect on how your character plays because they're cool down is so long. I would much rather replace both of these options with things that change encounters because those skills are what will make the character feel different to play.
I feel strongly that dailies should be balanced separately, and not require Feat expenditures to become viable options. They should stand on their own.
Replace both with:
Manic Frenzy - Frenzy does an additional 200 magnitude damage to Stunned enemies.
OR
Whirling Storm - Axe Storm slows enemies does an additional 50 magnitude damage to Stunned enemies.
^ This feat adds a potential combo with Roar, and perhaps Trample of the Fallen. It's another option as the basis for a new build.
--
Relentless Battlerage - build twice as much rage, but Rage mode only deals 10% more damage.
OR
Escalating Rage - long description, but basically makes Rage mode longer with the chance that you could get incapasitated for 3 seconds.
^ This is the most unbalanced feat. Synergies with Relentless Battlerage allow you to maintain rage mode almost indefinitely. However, Escalating Rage is useless because it has a massive down side.
Replace Escalating Rage: Burning Rage - Rage mode does 25% damage, but rage burns out twice as fast.
^ Neither of these options adds skill synergy, but they force the player to choose the one they think is better for their build.
--
That's the end.
I mostly just changed passives, but by adding more usable options players have more paths to take.
----
This is just an example. You would repeat the process for the Tank paragon, as well as other classes.Conclusion:
No skills should be useless. All skills/feats should allow the player to explore their character.
As a side note, Feats should not be locked.
You should be able to reasign them without having to use a reroll token. It's an aggrivation to run out of tokens and get stuck realizing you picked the wrong feats.
Yes, the game does provide some free tokens, but you can still blow through them easily.
A new player should never be stuck in that situation. They should be encouraged to mess with their character and try different combinations.
I am thinking as others are in the CDP that horizontal would not in any way replace vertical and would be complimentary to existing rewards and progression at level 80. This is a healthy way for players to invest in diversifying their characters and mitigates issues with vertical progression gazumping itself.
I am thinking out loud as a member of the CDP. Nothing is agreed upon. We are listening, learning, collaborating as members of the CDP.
Thanks
Chris
1. Feedback Overview:
a) Exploration rewards,
b) More exploration secrets.
c) 'Secret campaign' - something like watcher hunt should be.
d) Updating few items to endgame level as reward from exploration.
e) Masterwork professions - opinion for future tiers and resource hunting.
f) Current food and drinks rewards should have their type (elixir, event food, guild food, ...) description in unified way (for example add to all of them line: "Food type: " under item name.
2. Feedback Goal:
a) Reward players with good items for exploring maps, even during leveling
b) Add more fun to map exploration.
c) Add more causes to explore maps.
a) Currently game doesn't care so much about exploring (except hunts cases) and it is a part of adventuring.
Risks & Concerns:
a) partially rebuilding maps in few cases
b) more work with creating maps
c) maybe angry whales people for 1.e
d) create temporary equipment change engine
Ad. 1.a
Rewards suggestion examples:
- Unique profession workers.
- Ad. 1.d Marks and Enchanting stones of Speciality - items for refining special enchanting stones (AI, Anniversary)
- New service item for ZEN store/exploration reward: Card of the Wardrobe - magic item that allow to instantly change your clothing. (+1 Loadout only for appearance).
- Profession items for new masterworks tiers.
- Alternate entrance keys - they allow to change slightly some dungeons and non-queue private maps to obtain new items (for example Key of Jumping Spell - if used on last Githyanki Fragment Expedition portal it takes your party to hard jumping area instead of boss with slightly different rewards (looks only or updated to next campaign ilvl)) - with only a small tip to where use them.
- Ad. 1.d For leveling maps: Supreme class sigil parts - dropped once from each hidden reward chest and some other secrets like after finding all orbs on map. Those parts allows to unlock higher ilvl artifact supreme sigil with debuff for user set bonus (2+ sigils) to prevent for using only sigils artifacts.
- HAMSTER items with alternate looks items for existing items (simple look changes with removing/adding metalic/star/shadows pattern which is impossible to change with paints). Maybe with community vote for chosen items and their modifications.
- Magical effects paint - allows to change color of the special effects on items.
Ad. 1.b
- Alternate entrance keys ^^.
- Challenge mini dungeons - solo or group mini dungeons with predefined levels, boons and equipment for adventurers with different ways to enter (for example talk to hidden character on map, open a chest on correct hour to spawn a portal, jump into well/lake, gather the full party near sign) and different difficult (as you play on predefined stats - only by player skill/skill setup).
- Mini bosses/hunts for public leveling areas and old campaigns or new rewards it they exist (drops only for players with correct level xor correct ilvl).
- Mini challenges - like sumo game on big tenser disc using sahha ball 'foul skill animation' to throw enemy (player or mob) outside of flying disc, find the Boo.
- Memory of the adventure in - elixir that decreases your stats, levels and gives your predefined equipment when you are in named map, which allows you to obtain exploration rewards here.
- Imprisoned workers for professions - in some maps (private, dungeons or public) in secret areas add a chance to find workers to recruit them or earn rewards in professions resources.
- Add hidden chests/hidden mini quests/mini jumping test areas near edge on the map in m18 public map with three tiers of rewards: Once per account/character for first time (Juma bag like with bumped chances for good items), time gated (daily/weekly) for quests/jumping (Juma bag), and normal HAMSTER for opening chests/hidden sacks again.
- Add some available to part of the classes locations in dungeons/expeditions where they can trigger an event/chest for bonus rewards, big trap disarm or shortcut for whole party.
- Update hidden chests rewards from leveling areas (with once per find good reward).
Ad.1.c
Secret campaign - quest line, without its steps written into journal.
With steps like:
- Do not inform players (by not in game tip) about campaign existence unless they don't find it for a month.
- Find lore note to journal.
- Check what NPC is doing.
- Be in correct place in correct time.
- Basing on previous unlock possibility to find item in drop/chest.
- Basing on previous unlock possibility to interact with object.
- Unlock invisible before NPC/Object/Conversation line.
- Basing on previous alter repeatable quest dungeon/heroic event.
- Allow to take part in some event only with correct costume/armor.
- Make tips and parts of campaign into older content.
- Have group players in correct placement - example (1. lore: star sign 2. hidden sky temple with star pattern floor. 3. players must create sign from 1. from themselves 4. sign depends on the month and unlocks new campaign depending on it)
- Global campaign progress update, for example - new campaign progress related BHE on the map after X players finish some campaign step.
- Unique titles for first adventurer who completes campaign and for each of its main steps.
I wrote example of secret campaign but post is a wall of text anyway, so i removed it from here.
Ad.1.d
For me new 'tiers' for Masterwork professions should be independent or partially independent from old Masterworks so:
- Each player should have an option to get any future Masterwork without need to have previous (unless they are from same campaign modules tiers like Chult->Omu).
- Each future Masterwork should have good rewards available only with using items without needing others Masterworks, but it it should have other goods rewards that requires others Masterworks.
- Each future Masterwork shouldn't need to use resources from all others Masterworks - requirements should rotate between mods.
- If there is limited amount of good items available in Masterwork to divide it for self-sourced resources and other Masterworks sourced resources, those items should be divided by category (rings, artifact sets, weapons, ...) and/or class role (heal, tank, ranged, melee) then rotate resource needs between them in different mods with Masterworks.
- Current model of obtaining resources for Masterwork from nodes is too boring - move it more to exploration.
As for placing the secret easter eggs/secret boss in dungeons: I'd suggest making them only unlockable on hard mode (or whatever difficulty equivalent will be), or add them as an "extra stage" that unlocks after completing the easter egg steps (whether it's as simple as "complete the dungeon with no downs" or "complete some crazy alternate reality game and solve some puzzles").
I don't know if the engine will allow it, but I'd also suggest not spawning in the easter egg dungeon/boss/etc. until players have completed all the steps. Otherwise, you might get an enterprising data miner that will just find the area and ruin part of the ARG stuff.
Of course, there's always the concern of implementing the easter egg taking much more development time away from modules/bugfixing/or class "balancing".
Example #1: companion as damage-dealer, player as bait
This is a playstyle I often did with my tank alts. Let's say I spend most of my time soloing -- doing the various dailies and weeklies, working through the quests on the various campaigns, etc. But for whatever reason I enjoy having my companion be something more than a mere decoration. So I might give my companion healthy amounts of power, armor penetration, and accuracy. And I've equipped plenty of dark enchantments in my utility slots to boost companion influence.
NB: I don't want to let this turn into a discussion of what players think is "optimal" for dungeon play. The point here is what I might consider ***FUN*** to play. I don't build my characters based on what dungeon players think since I rarely do dungeons (and, to not put too fine a point on it, I consider being pigeon-holed into a meta to be distinctly UN-fun).
Anyway, getting back on point, the problem with this scenario is that none of this is anything special, and doesn't lead to the desired playstyle. It's something that anyone would do just to build their DPS in general. As an example of an extra step specifically for this playstyle, I can add an Indomitable runestone, which when maxed at rank 15 lets my companion do 13% more damage (and I have a couple of these in the bank). Even so it just isn't adequate. There is no other reward that we can equip that boosts companion combat effectiveness, and an R15 indomitable (which is ungodly expensive to make) just isn't anywhere near adequate, moreso when you consider that adding an Indomitable represents an opportunity cost of something else, some other runestone that would otherwise take its place. This is an example where some sort of horizontal progression could come into play.
Example #2: Wizard as controller over DPS
This is a playstyle that has gone through a couple of step-down phases. I'll take a moment here to put things in historical perspective since you're new to the game.
Prior to Mod 6, the nature of many dungeon boss fights was very different than today. They weren't nearly as mechanic-heavy as today, though some mechanics were present. Instead, dungeon boss fights typically had lots (in some cases, LOTS) of adds. Having robust CC (crowd control) in a party was important, and perhaps half of all wizards were controllers instead of pure DPS machines. Put simply, wizards and warlocks had different, yet equally important, roles. Wizards, warlocks, and barbarians (GWF's) could all do crazy damage, but only wizards could keep the oncoming hordes under control so the others could *stay alive* to do that damage.
After Mod 6, wizards were just as effective at CC, but the nature of dungeon boss fights changed. All of the (epic) dungeons that had CC-heavy boss fights were removed. Of those that remained, boss HP was inflated to such an enormous degree that having robust CC quickly came to be seen as unnecessary at best, and a severe opportunity cost at worst. Wizards understandably shifted to DPS over all other concerns, even though their CC abilities were just as strong as before. As someone once mentioned in these forums, the design philosophy was, "if it's dangerous, it's CC immune". CC wizards were all dressed up and had nowhere to go. As a wizard, you either had the supercharged enchantments and runestones, the mythic artifacts, the best gear, and that necessary crazy DPS, or you didn't. The role of a wizard was now to just be a friendlier, no-diabolical-pact version of a warlock. In that sense, wizards, warlocks, and barbarians all became interchangeable, but combat became vastly more bland as a result.
The answer to wanting more players to be able to participate in dungeons should not have been to remove the need for CC. It should have been to figure out a way for another class to take on the Controller role in addition to wizards. With all the emphasis on grasping roots, one method might have been to give all Rangers serious CC powers on par with the CC powers that all wizards enjoyed.
Over time, new epic dungeons were added that fit the new paradigm of DPS checks and few to no adds. Two old epic dungeons returned in reworked form that did away with any need for CC and required lots of DPS instead. The remaining old epic dungeons have never returned.
Mod 16 finally (in my opinion) killed CC by severely nerfing wizards' CC abilities. Trust me, I know, as I still have an old-school CC-to-the-max wizard with 71% control bonus. Her utility in something as tame as Stronghold Marauders is nonexistent, which wasn't the case during Mod 15.
All of this history brings me to my point about horizontal progression. Let's say I want to play my wizard as a real controller. At present, we're talking about the Valindra set, a Ring of the Curse Bringer, *ten* legendary Insignia of Mastery, 5/5 boons that boost control bonus, and that's it. The scaling on the Control Bonus stat just isn't enough to make a 71% bonus useful and there are no other rewards that let a wizard specialize into a controller. And then, there needs to be a place where such a controller can shine. In Mod 15 Stronghold Marauders was one such place, but that is most definitely not the case today. Even so, I don't see anyone going down this route just for that one event.
Example #3: Ranger who could buy time
One of the most fun playstyles that I used to have involved my main. To put things in perspective, there were two dungeons that first set the impetus for this playstyle decision:
Epic Caverns of Karrundax (which hasn't been in the game since Mod 6)
Epic Cragmire Crypts soon after Mod 6 launched.
I'll tackle them in order. During the second boss of Epic Karrundax, it was pretty common for party members to wipe. There were so many adds that it was a hard fight. There was no gate preventing running back into the fight after respawning, so there was often a footrace to get back before everyone wiped and the fight reset. At that time, one thing I did was equip my ranger with all manner of "run-fast" gear -- gear that jacked up my movement stat so I could dodge and stay ahead of adds for just those extra few seconds until the others could get in and get aggro from something. It saved the fight on more than one occasion. Not all enemies moved at the speed of light to instantly reach your position in those days, so jacking up your Movement stat was actually a usable option.
When Mod 6 first launched, enemies in dungeons did **crazy** damage. The lowliest peon bandit archer in epic Cragmire Crypts could one-shot you for 100k damage. My response was to stop chasing Movement and chase Defense instead. I chased Defense like you wouldn't believe. The cap was 80% damage resistance and I did my very best to get it capped and keep it capped. When enemies had armor penetration I pushed the stat even higher. It wasn't until Mod 13 that I started backing off on it because our HP had grown over time such that crazy amounts of defense was no longer necessary.
Now, make no mistake, I took a **severe** hit to DPS, but I could off-tank for a few seconds in a pinch -- enough time, say, for a tank to be revived (and if the tank was down for the count, if the boss was almost dead I could dodge like hell and hope a cleric could keep me alive long enough to take that last percent or two off it). I can't count the number of times guildies would say, "Thia! Help us in this dungeon! We keep dying!". They knew I had pitiful DPS, but I could give them that extra little bit of breathing space when something went wrong so they could get the wheels back on the cart. My main became the alt who could go where angels feared to tread -- not because she was a killer, but because she was hard to kill.
It wasn't "optimal", as others might claim. It was, however, fun.
This is now impossible with the new 50% defense cap and there is no other means to choose to specialize into a playstyle like this even if I'm willing to forego a bunch of DPS for the time being.
In summary, I see horizontal progression as an opportunity for specialization. Mod 16 badly pigeonholed us into specific playstyles and to me it really chafes. In the interest of making all classes interchangeable, we can no longer specialize. We used to be controllers, buffers, and off-tanks in addition to just damage-dealers. How we built our companions used to have meaning if we wanted it to. Providing a means for specialization and areas where specialized roles are useful is no sin and makes the game worth playing.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
And yes, for secret campaign partially unlocking steps should be necessary something to prevent data mining - for others eggs depending on egg, as most of them would be quickly found after launch. As for engine - there something probably is, as sometimes game downloads new data during play.
For dungeons i always have hope to see some platform sequences like in Tomb Rider with loot hidden content (including rewards) and some platform sequences, crossed with cooperative - class dependable way finding, with final dungeon reward splitted in different areas: with one party composition you never can get all rewards, skill requiring boss fights (to slightly lesser extent than TOMM) and some of them skip able by correct party route, with few randomized content (trap locations, some rewards and hidden rooms locations). For example we can have moving platforms sequence over deep guarded by heavy magical cannons with lot hp and knockback attack where: ranger can detects way hidden in brushes to divine device that moves platforms, cleric can activate device to stop platforms in one place, rogue can make long jump with to second side of the deep, but too lower platform where he can turn off one of the turrets in trapped maintenance tunel, class with dungeonering can find secret passage with bonus reward, class with shield can block single shot knockback missile which allow to activate on platform magicial ward barrier by arcane caster) .
First, I am generally a big fan of horizontal progression. However ever since Mod 6 all horizontal progression has been stripped out of the game. No set bonuses (mod 6), introduction of unalterable item bonuses (Chult? Can't quite remember for sure), low stat caps (mod 16), boon rework (mod 16), feat reduction (mod 16) have all completely wrecked meaningful character customization and there is no meaningful horizontal progress without being able to customize your character in interesting ways.
If you want across the board horizontal progression all of these will need to be reworked. Again.
If we're talking about individual areas I think two easy ways to reintroduce horizontal progression would be a boon rework and an item bonus rework. Boons, as I stated on page 2, should have some more interesting choices that function similarly to feats (not every boon point, but I believe the campaigns used to offer 1-3 of these choices each). You should have data on the old boon system, take a look there for examples.
As for item bonuses, introducing rerolls and increasing the variety/utility would be a good start. Unfortunately the %damage ones and %power increase ones are probably always going to be king, but short of removing them the only way to change that is to offer alternatives that are compelling.
Evolution of Vertical Progression
Honestly my favorite vertical progression path is yearly level cap increases. However, this is not practical without a version of scaling that works since it creates a lot of extra dev maintenance work for no real benefit to the player.
Best way to implement vertical progression for NWO in my opinion would be to increase IL levels once a year and use the rest of the updates in that year to introduce new gear with varying stat mixes. This would work well for tying into re-roll-able item bonuses and give us options. Additionally every few months you can release progressively harder dungeons/trials/etc that require higher item levels, perhaps lagging yearly IL increases by 3-4 months for a natural progression rhythm. This would allow endgame players to have a challenge, midgame players to have a goalpost and new players to be able to complete the content as it ages naturally.
Variation of Current Rewards
I'm not completely sure what you are asking about in terms of variation of current rewards. Short list is more unbound, less RP and more useful. Throw in guild vouchers instead of RP maybe? I ran a dungeon and a skirmish tonight, dungeon "rewarded" me with a blue Alliance chest piece (bound vendor/RP trash, cant even sell it to someone who wants the transmute) and 5k RAD. Skirmish was actually more exciting by rewarding me with a bow transmute I had not yet collected. If I were running the queues for the chest rewards I wouldn't bother, but since I'm currently collecting transmutes across toons I've been running many more than usual lately, and the best reward I've gotten recently was a Staldorf companion that sells for so little I posted it for the AH suggested price..