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.
--
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.
--
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.
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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..
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".
It's been a very long time, but prior to Mod 6 there were at least two "secret" mini dungeons with bonus bosses in different dungeons. I know one was in Cragmire Crypts and I can't remember where the other was, you had to break through a wall into a sewer-style maze. Both have been removed.
PS also why on earth does this forum filter HAMSTER?!?! Content blockers need to be seriously addressed across this forum and the game, not being able to type in inoffensive words is ridiculous.
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".
It's been a very long time, but prior to Mod 6 there were at least two "secret" mini dungeons with bonus bosses in different dungeons. I know one was in Cragmire Crypts and I can't remember where the other was, you had to break through a wall into a sewer-style maze. Both have been removed.
PS also why on earth does this forum filter HAMSTER?!?! Content blockers need to be seriously addressed across this forum and the game, not being able to type in inoffensive words is ridiculous.
They actually haven't been removed (the one you're thinking of is in Temple of the Spider, and it was an **awesome** area with some really diabolical enemy placement. It was brilliant in that respect). They're still there, but artificially blocked off ***for no good reason***.
I can't stress this enough. At no time have the devs EVER cited a valid reason for blocking them off, and I've harangued them nonstop about it for five years straight. If someone was to ask me to cite a reason why I might be dissatisfied with communication from the devs, this is what I would point to.
And now they've blocked off the loop in Malabog's Castle. Consider it adding insult to injury. If something adds variety to a dungeon, rest assured, they will artificially block it off with no announcement and absolutely no justification.
A TR with Shadowy Disappearance can (with a great deal of effort, in the case of Cragmire Crypts) get to them. The areas in CC are seriously difficult to reach. The sewer area in ToS is devoid of enemies, but there is still a functioning lore scroll on the floor. I believe there's also a functioning lore scroll in a separate side area in CC that is reachable, also with a great deal of effort. The miniboss in CC is a spider called the Daughter of Lolth. It's still there, waiting to be killed. I last visited all of the blocked side areas in Mod 15 and took LOTS of screen shots. Lots.
There's also a really cool torch puzzle room in Grey Wolf Den that still exists and the puzzle still functions. It's quite easy for said TR to reach. Both CC and GwD have many side areas that are artificially blocked, in addition to the ones cited here. I distinctly remember the enemies in one CC area having dialogue that was a Yellowbeard reference (something like, "Cragmires are never more dangerous than when we're dead!"). I really miss that room. Sadly, it's devoid of enemies now.
@cwhitesidedev#9752 would you be able to look into these side areas? We have never been given an explanation as to why these were blocked off and why they cannot be restored. The only answer I have ever gotten from a dev was a (frankly insulting) question, "why would you want them? there's no loot in them". We shouldn't have to justify their restoration; the devs should have to justify their *removal*. I doubt the reason is technical since they actually still exist and merely have some form of blocking asset (wall, rock, etc.) placed in the way. If I sound bitter about this it's precisely because of how this was handled. Nonetheless, my answer would be, "because the variety they added to the dungeons made them *fun*". To me, this should be more than enough reason to have them.
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
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.
I must admit that I don't think that I understand horizontal vs vertical progression. Is it possible for someone to clarify what these things mean?
I'm sort of understanding it as the difference between variations in abilities and power of those abilities?
If that is the case, then I'm greedy and like the idea of both. Vertical progression by way of horizontal mastery, for example. One of the horizontal progressions could be time spent actually engaging mobs within seven levels of your ability in a certain way (like using a particular attack), for example. When you meet a certain time goal, then some vertical options become available.
It seems like many of us want unbound RP and BTA rather than BTC.
I'm not sure that I'd challenge anything here, as I'm seeing a lot of interesting ideas that fit various playstyles. It is super useful to hear how other people are playing the game. I hope that whatever we do, it isn't at the cost of enjoyment for anyone else. I have zero interest in getting in the way of a good time for other players.
I've loved some of the posts on using Masterwork crafting to somehow upgrade/tear apart/rework old gear. I'm still thoroughly in love with the idea one of the developers had about displaying collections, and I'd love to hear more about it. I also loved the idea about making older dungeons more viable by improving drops of dungeon specific companions. I was grinding forever for the Repentant Cultist cage key, and it never dropped. After hundreds of runs, it seemed like I should be able to get a companion that was older and less desirable to many through the experience of the dungeon. I gave up and bought him on the AH though.
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
I apologize for the offtopic'ish, but due to the post about moving to phase 2, and drilling down into horizontal and vertical, is it possible to open a new thread for that purpose of phase2? It becomes harder and harder to track (especially if I want to skim read).
And second thing, if possible to define horizontal and vertical progress a bit.
My assumption is that the general meaning is that horizontal will add choice, of a skill, feat, or something, which will be suitable in some situation, or content, but come at a price of not choosing something else, thus not increasing the overall efectivness of the char in the long term.
Vertical will be adding some permanent reward without the need to choose one or the other, stacking them over time.
Will this be correct, or others mean something else?
I apologize for the offtopic'ish, but due to the post about moving to phase 2, and drilling down into horizontal and vertical, is it possible to open a new thread for that purpose of phase2? It becomes harder and harder to track (especially if I want to skim read).
And second thing, if possible to define horizontal and vertical progress a bit.
My assumption is that the general meaning is that horizontal will add choice, of a skill, feat, or something, which will be suitable in some situation, or content, but come at a price of not choosing something else, thus not increasing the overall efectivness of the char in the long term.
Vertical will be adding some permanent reward without the need to choose one or the other, stacking them over time.
Will this be correct, or others mean something else?
Basically correct as I've heard it used. Horizontal progression doesn't increase the characters overall power per se, but can optimize it in some ways. For instance changing out boots with IL 1250 that give +1250 Combat Advantage for boots with IL 1250 that give +1250 Deflect would be a horizontal progression - you've progressed the character without significantly altering the level. A more abstract way to think of it would be a power curve with a slope of 0.01X.
Whereas vertical is replace those IL 1000 boots with IL 1250 boots. More stats, better gear, overall power increased, but plateaus faster or creates serious issues with the game balance. Or a level increase. Abstract would be a power curve of slope 3x.
Commonly games grant alternating periods of horizontal and vertical progression.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
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
I won't be commenting in this post so much on other players ideas (because up to this point, everything I want or consider a good idea it still covered in my revised post). Other players posts are touching on the same topics and I see no reason to repeat myself as I tend to write an immense amount and because I have already written about those topics I don't want to waste everyone's time. But I will add a bit on horizontal vs vertical progression by talking about the different systems.
In Neverwinter, your power comes from the following sources:
Items.
Enchantments.
Companions.
Boons.
Mounts.
Insignias.
Player skills.
Race.
Some of these can be horizontal and others, by nature, will have to be vertical. However when talking about horizontal vs vertical, I will be a bit more specific and break it down as follows:
Long Term Horizontal - Systems that won't change for years, if possible, the entire game.
Short Term Horizontal - Systems that won't change for about 1 year and are intended to have alternate choices that are expanded on over that period.
Vertical - Systems that by nature, need to add something new or powerful frequently.
Where Horizontal refers to systems where there are many choices of roughly equal strength which are all viable and present the player with the ability to make interesting decisions and Vertical refers to systems where items become quickly obsolete.
Now, if we take the above list of power sources and classify them as they are in the game at the moment, they look like this:
Items - Vertical.
Enchantments - Short Term Horizontal, with an internal vertical component (the enchantment ranks).
Companions - Vertical, but leaning towards short term Horizontal.
Boons - Vertical.
Mounts - Short Term Horizontal, leaning towards long term horizontal.
Insignias - Long Term Horizontal.
Player skills and feats - Long Term Horizontal.
Race - Long Term Horizontal.
Now, I feel that it would be better for the game if we changed the following:
Items - Short Term Horizontal.
Boons - Long Term Horizontal.
Items by nature, need to be made obsolete every now and again, you need to give players something new to grind for. At the same time, if items have interesting enough bonuses, even if they are more or less as strong as another piece in general, players are likely to grind for them. There is the problem though that you can only add interesting bonuses for so long before it becomes difficult to design new ones. I feel that there is benefit to slowing down the rate of forced obsolescence and focusing more on item choice, whilst retaining the ability to force items out of use when necessary (which my proposed system does, see Item Design).
Boons, there is no reason for them to be vertical. In fact, I believe it is actually harmful for the game for them to be vertical, as it means that over time you either see a sharp increase in power, or you make boons progressively worse to retain the same level of power. It also means players feel compelled to acquire all of them and this should not be the case. In a game as old as Neverwinter, you start to see, "content bloat" where there is so much content for a new player to get through, that it overwhelms them to the point they feel like they cannot catch up and as a result they feel like they should rather play a different game. Boons contribute towards this content bloat.
The newest campaign, by virtue of being the thing you have just taken the time to make, should be something that players feel compelled to do. The rest of them, you should feel rewarded for doing, but not like you have to do them otherwise your character is not good enough.
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
Yet, without vertical progress, after 6 years of playing I do want something to show for, as compared to someone who started last week. (Exaggeration to convey the point)
A plethora of choices is nice, but if I end up using the same one as someone who just finished as there isn't a clear advantage then there is no perceptional progress for me, and I'll quit.
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
Taking the list from @thefabricant as a reference, this is what I'd like to see
Items: - scores should be vertical - set bonuses should be horizontal and should be selectable from a list like titles. You get a set bonus when you collect all pieces from that set exactly like you get a title when you complete certain tasks. You can only have one set bonus for armor and one for neck/belt/artifact active at any time. In this way grinding a set expands your options even if you don't like the stats.
Enchantments: - fine as they are for offense/defense ones. - I'll maybe like a bit more impact of armor and weapon enchantments than they have today due to the investment in making them.
Companions : - fine when it comes to companion bonuses - augments are way overpowered at the moment as summoned companions. Rebalancing of augments vs. other types will bring more variety to playstiles and increase horizontal progression.
Boons: - as proposed by @thefabricant make them horizontal. Having 1k power, arpen, crit, def, whatever is so dull and doesn't change your life. I've seen many people avoiding certain boons and even full campaigns due to the reward/time ratio being bad (say last STK boon and all Acquisition Inc.). Boons should be the bread and butter of customization together with feats and powers.
Mounts: - fine as they are
Insignias: - fine as they are
Player skills and feats: - this is more the reign of balance than that of progression as of today. You easily reach level 80 and get the full array. - It would be nice to have boons unlocking special skills and feats (maybe with class-related quests). By the way a class/race related module would be awesome. - In D&D 4e who's loosely the base for this game (and my favourite edition to date) you had Epic destinies. Where are they?
Race: - today this is probably the choice with the lowest influence on the game. - D&D 4e had racial powers, racial Paragon Paths, racial Epic Destines and racial feats. This would be another great area for horizontal progression.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
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?
Sounds good. But I may have missed where or how Phase 2 will be conducted. Either way I will respond to your direct inquiries as best as I can.
Whether or not this can be implemented for a mount or a companion will really depend on the goals you guys have for the game. I, for one, would welcome any aspect where the player can advance his or her own progress through equipment, mounts or companions at their own behest but not at the expense of exceedingly rare, cost prohibitive or RNG success.
Hitting equipment first and considering the wide swath of items the player base is asking for this to be available to, it only makes sense to have the materials and reagents needed available in the zone where the requirement originated. Going back to the original suggestion where a campaign quest giver begins your journey towards ranking items up, if the initial step is in Sharandar (as it should be if the item was introduced during phase of the game), have Sgt Knox initiate a quest that sends you there to a Mysterious Merchant-type character. This merchant will upgrade whatever item you desire (whatever you guys allow to be upgraded) one time and then direct you to Dread Ring for continued upgrading. All of the required items for this upgrade should be reasonably obtainable through quests or mob drops within that campaign. However, if an item was released in say, mod 11, you can only go back to mod 11 to initiate your upgrading process.
If you guys were to allow mounts and companions to be upgraded in such a fashion, you'd have to take a good hard look at companion upgrade tokens and how they're distributed in the game and how this impacts your vision. Mounts currently do not have the means to be upgraded but, once upon a time, you were able to buy mount training for your mounts. These "upgraded" mounts but, only their running speed. If this is something you're willing to do, then great. I don't think anyone is going to argue with faster mounts. The rest, I can't help you guys with.
As far as companions are concerned, I think this would be fantastic for all non-meta companions and unfortunately, really imbalancing for meta companions. As I'm sure you guys are aware, power has been the hot commodity for a while now and everything else, so long as it meets the cap requirements, is largely irrelevant. I think the concept of upgrading companions to a + status is alright, so long as you release caps on other areas (make them soft caps instead of hard caps) or allow interactions that you didn't previously allow for. For instance, and admittedly this goes way beyond what I initially brought up but, allowing for certain companion abilities to be triggered in higher frequency, with more effectiveness or a broader spectrum of what can trigger the companion ability in the first place.
I'll provide a rough example of what I mean--
Black Death Scorpion:
Enhancement Power: Chance on hit to increase your accuracy by up to 2,000 and your companion's critical avoidance by up to 4% for 15 seconds when your companion is near. The value of the buff depends on the quality of your summoned pet.
Player Bonus Power: On attack you have a chance to poison your target for 40% weapon damage.
I do feel like this particular companion is not only supremely vague in its description, I also feel like it is misleading with the poison as it's just direct damage and not a damage over time. But, there's potential to not only expound upon this description a bit better but also to offer it better abilities. Admittedly, I'm in love with anything that can proc and cause damage. I find that far more interesting and valuable to me than some +stat but, the way the game is designed at the moment, the +stats rule.
With that in mind, you could offer up a + version of this (with a cleaned up description) with something like this;
Empowered Black Death Scorpion:
Enhancement Power: Chance on hit to increase your accuracy and power by up to 2,500 and your companion's critical avoidance by up to 4% for 15 seconds when your companion is near. Chance on hit to reduce your enemies accuracy and power by up to 2,500 for 15 seconds. The value of the buff depends on the quality of your summoned pet.
Player Bonus Power: At-will, encounter and daily powers have a 50% chance to deal toxic damage to your enemy for 50% weapon damage.
Oh and while I'm at it, please take a look at how weapon damage is calculated for dual wielding classes and companion effects. I notice a disparity in damage between my rogue and barbarian when weapon damage stuff is being calculated.
For me, the trigger on this effect should be allowed by any source of damage provided by the player, even if it's a DoT. This, in my opinion, will offer more versatility and variance in builds than all the folks who just want more and more and more power. This is also just an example but, you guys have a bunch of companions you could do this for and many ways to supplement your current companion lineup. It's just a matter of what system you want to put into place for it. Again, if it's the incredibly frustrating and rare to get companion tokens, please consider how they're currently distributed in the game and how that'll impact any further upgrades.
On a side note, I also think that companions should just simply offer abilities and shouldn't be locked, per class, as to which you can and cannot have. I think this will also allow you guys to offer a much wider variety of companions. Similar to how it was done before but, just simply have five available slots and one summoned companion with the same abilities and sets you have currently but, offer additional +stats to make the choices more interesting.
Comments
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..
PS also why on earth does this forum filter HAMSTER?!?! Content blockers need to be seriously addressed across this forum and the game, not being able to type in inoffensive words is ridiculous.
I can't stress this enough. At no time have the devs EVER cited a valid reason for blocking them off, and I've harangued them nonstop about it for five years straight. If someone was to ask me to cite a reason why I might be dissatisfied with communication from the devs, this is what I would point to.
And now they've blocked off the loop in Malabog's Castle. Consider it adding insult to injury. If something adds variety to a dungeon, rest assured, they will artificially block it off with no announcement and absolutely no justification.
A TR with Shadowy Disappearance can (with a great deal of effort, in the case of Cragmire Crypts) get to them. The areas in CC are seriously difficult to reach. The sewer area in ToS is devoid of enemies, but there is still a functioning lore scroll on the floor. I believe there's also a functioning lore scroll in a separate side area in CC that is reachable, also with a great deal of effort. The miniboss in CC is a spider called the Daughter of Lolth. It's still there, waiting to be killed. I last visited all of the blocked side areas in Mod 15 and took LOTS of screen shots. Lots.
There's also a really cool torch puzzle room in Grey Wolf Den that still exists and the puzzle still functions. It's quite easy for said TR to reach. Both CC and GwD have many side areas that are artificially blocked, in addition to the ones cited here. I distinctly remember the enemies in one CC area having dialogue that was a Yellowbeard reference (something like, "Cragmires are never more dangerous than when we're dead!"). I really miss that room. Sadly, it's devoid of enemies now.
@cwhitesidedev#9752 would you be able to look into these side areas? We have never been given an explanation as to why these were blocked off and why they cannot be restored. The only answer I have ever gotten from a dev was a (frankly insulting) question, "why would you want them? there's no loot in them". We shouldn't have to justify their restoration; the devs should have to justify their *removal*. I doubt the reason is technical since they actually still exist and merely have some form of blocking asset (wall, rock, etc.) placed in the way. If I sound bitter about this it's precisely because of how this was handled. Nonetheless, my answer would be, "because the variety they added to the dungeons made them *fun*". To me, this should be more than enough reason to have them.
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
I'm sort of understanding it as the difference between variations in abilities and power of those abilities?
If that is the case, then I'm greedy and like the idea of both. Vertical progression by way of horizontal mastery, for example. One of the horizontal progressions could be time spent actually engaging mobs within seven levels of your ability in a certain way (like using a particular attack), for example. When you meet a certain time goal, then some vertical options become available.
It seems like many of us want unbound RP and BTA rather than BTC.
I'm not sure that I'd challenge anything here, as I'm seeing a lot of interesting ideas that fit various playstyles. It is super useful to hear how other people are playing the game. I hope that whatever we do, it isn't at the cost of enjoyment for anyone else. I have zero interest in getting in the way of a good time for other players.
I've loved some of the posts on using Masterwork crafting to somehow upgrade/tear apart/rework old gear. I'm still thoroughly in love with the idea one of the developers had about displaying collections, and I'd love to hear more about it. I also loved the idea about making older dungeons more viable by improving drops of dungeon specific companions. I was grinding forever for the Repentant Cultist cage key, and it never dropped. After hundreds of runs, it seemed like I should be able to get a companion that was older and less desirable to many through the experience of the dungeon. I gave up and bought him on the AH though.
It becomes harder and harder to track (especially if I want to skim read).
And second thing, if possible to define horizontal and vertical progress a bit.
My assumption is that the general meaning is that horizontal will add choice, of a skill, feat, or something, which will be suitable in some situation, or content, but come at a price of not choosing something else, thus not increasing the overall efectivness of the char in the long term.
Vertical will be adding some permanent reward without the need to choose one or the other, stacking them over time.
Will this be correct, or others mean something else?
Whereas vertical is replace those IL 1000 boots with IL 1250 boots. More stats, better gear, overall power increased, but plateaus faster or creates serious issues with the game balance. Or a level increase. Abstract would be a power curve of slope 3x.
Commonly games grant alternating periods of horizontal and vertical progression.
In Neverwinter, your power comes from the following sources:
- Items.
- Enchantments.
- Companions.
- Boons.
- Mounts.
- Insignias.
- Player skills.
- Race.
Some of these can be horizontal and others, by nature, will have to be vertical. However when talking about horizontal vs vertical, I will be a bit more specific and break it down as follows:- Long Term Horizontal - Systems that won't change for years, if possible, the entire game.
- Short Term Horizontal - Systems that won't change for about 1 year and are intended to have alternate choices that are expanded on over that period.
- Vertical - Systems that by nature, need to add something new or powerful frequently.
Where Horizontal refers to systems where there are many choices of roughly equal strength which are all viable and present the player with the ability to make interesting decisions and Vertical refers to systems where items become quickly obsolete.Now, if we take the above list of power sources and classify them as they are in the game at the moment, they look like this:
- Items - Vertical.
- Enchantments - Short Term Horizontal, with an internal vertical component (the enchantment ranks).
- Companions - Vertical, but leaning towards short term Horizontal.
- Boons - Vertical.
- Mounts - Short Term Horizontal, leaning towards long term horizontal.
- Insignias - Long Term Horizontal.
- Player skills and feats - Long Term Horizontal.
- Race - Long Term Horizontal.
Now, I feel that it would be better for the game if we changed the following:- Items - Short Term Horizontal.
- Boons - Long Term Horizontal.
Items by nature, need to be made obsolete every now and again, you need to give players something new to grind for. At the same time, if items have interesting enough bonuses, even if they are more or less as strong as another piece in general, players are likely to grind for them. There is the problem though that you can only add interesting bonuses for so long before it becomes difficult to design new ones. I feel that there is benefit to slowing down the rate of forced obsolescence and focusing more on item choice, whilst retaining the ability to force items out of use when necessary (which my proposed system does, see Item Design).Boons, there is no reason for them to be vertical. In fact, I believe it is actually harmful for the game for them to be vertical, as it means that over time you either see a sharp increase in power, or you make boons progressively worse to retain the same level of power. It also means players feel compelled to acquire all of them and this should not be the case. In a game as old as Neverwinter, you start to see, "content bloat" where there is so much content for a new player to get through, that it overwhelms them to the point they feel like they cannot catch up and as a result they feel like they should rather play a different game. Boons contribute towards this content bloat.
The newest campaign, by virtue of being the thing you have just taken the time to make, should be something that players feel compelled to do. The rest of them, you should feel rewarded for doing, but not like you have to do them otherwise your character is not good enough.
A plethora of choices is nice, but if I end up using the same one as someone who just finished as there isn't a clear advantage then there is no perceptional progress for me, and I'll quit.
Items:
- scores should be vertical
- set bonuses should be horizontal and should be selectable from a list like titles. You get a set bonus when you collect all pieces from that set exactly like you get a title when you complete certain tasks. You can only have one set bonus for armor and one for neck/belt/artifact active at any time. In this way grinding a set expands your options even if you don't like the stats.
Enchantments:
- fine as they are for offense/defense ones.
- I'll maybe like a bit more impact of armor and weapon enchantments than they have today due to the investment in making them.
Companions :
- fine when it comes to companion bonuses
- augments are way overpowered at the moment as summoned companions. Rebalancing of augments vs. other types will bring more variety to playstiles and increase horizontal progression.
Boons:
- as proposed by @thefabricant make them horizontal. Having 1k power, arpen, crit, def, whatever is so dull and doesn't change your life. I've seen many people avoiding certain boons and even full campaigns due to the reward/time ratio being bad (say last STK boon and all Acquisition Inc.). Boons should be the bread and butter of customization together with feats and powers.
Mounts:
- fine as they are
Insignias:
- fine as they are
Player skills and feats:
- this is more the reign of balance than that of progression as of today. You easily reach level 80 and get the full array.
- It would be nice to have boons unlocking special skills and feats (maybe with class-related quests). By the way a class/race related module would be awesome.
- In D&D 4e who's loosely the base for this game (and my favourite edition to date) you had Epic destinies. Where are they?
Race:
- today this is probably the choice with the lowest influence on the game.
- D&D 4e had racial powers, racial Paragon Paths, racial Epic Destines and racial feats. This would be another great area for horizontal progression.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Sounds good. But I may have missed where or how Phase 2 will be conducted. Either way I will respond to your direct inquiries as best as I can.
Whether or not this can be implemented for a mount or a companion will really depend on the goals you guys have for the game. I, for one, would welcome any aspect where the player can advance his or her own progress through equipment, mounts or companions at their own behest but not at the expense of exceedingly rare, cost prohibitive or RNG success.
Hitting equipment first and considering the wide swath of items the player base is asking for this to be available to, it only makes sense to have the materials and reagents needed available in the zone where the requirement originated. Going back to the original suggestion where a campaign quest giver begins your journey towards ranking items up, if the initial step is in Sharandar (as it should be if the item was introduced during phase of the game), have Sgt Knox initiate a quest that sends you there to a Mysterious Merchant-type character. This merchant will upgrade whatever item you desire (whatever you guys allow to be upgraded) one time and then direct you to Dread Ring for continued upgrading. All of the required items for this upgrade should be reasonably obtainable through quests or mob drops within that campaign. However, if an item was released in say, mod 11, you can only go back to mod 11 to initiate your upgrading process.
If you guys were to allow mounts and companions to be upgraded in such a fashion, you'd have to take a good hard look at companion upgrade tokens and how they're distributed in the game and how this impacts your vision. Mounts currently do not have the means to be upgraded but, once upon a time, you were able to buy mount training for your mounts. These "upgraded" mounts but, only their running speed. If this is something you're willing to do, then great. I don't think anyone is going to argue with faster mounts. The rest, I can't help you guys with.
As far as companions are concerned, I think this would be fantastic for all non-meta companions and unfortunately, really imbalancing for meta companions. As I'm sure you guys are aware, power has been the hot commodity for a while now and everything else, so long as it meets the cap requirements, is largely irrelevant. I think the concept of upgrading companions to a + status is alright, so long as you release caps on other areas (make them soft caps instead of hard caps) or allow interactions that you didn't previously allow for. For instance, and admittedly this goes way beyond what I initially brought up but, allowing for certain companion abilities to be triggered in higher frequency, with more effectiveness or a broader spectrum of what can trigger the companion ability in the first place.
I'll provide a rough example of what I mean--
Black Death Scorpion:
Enhancement Power: Chance on hit to increase your accuracy by up to 2,000 and your companion's critical avoidance by up to 4% for 15 seconds when your companion is near. The value of the buff depends on the quality of your summoned pet.
Player Bonus Power: On attack you have a chance to poison your target for 40% weapon damage.
I do feel like this particular companion is not only supremely vague in its description, I also feel like it is misleading with the poison as it's just direct damage and not a damage over time. But, there's potential to not only expound upon this description a bit better but also to offer it better abilities. Admittedly, I'm in love with anything that can proc and cause damage. I find that far more interesting and valuable to me than some +stat but, the way the game is designed at the moment, the +stats rule.
With that in mind, you could offer up a + version of this (with a cleaned up description) with something like this;
Empowered Black Death Scorpion:
Enhancement Power: Chance on hit to increase your accuracy and power by up to 2,500 and your companion's critical avoidance by up to 4% for 15 seconds when your companion is near. Chance on hit to reduce your enemies accuracy and power by up to 2,500 for 15 seconds. The value of the buff depends on the quality of your summoned pet.
Player Bonus Power: At-will, encounter and daily powers have a 50% chance to deal toxic damage to your enemy for 50% weapon damage.
Oh and while I'm at it, please take a look at how weapon damage is calculated for dual wielding classes and companion effects. I notice a disparity in damage between my rogue and barbarian when weapon damage stuff is being calculated.
For me, the trigger on this effect should be allowed by any source of damage provided by the player, even if it's a DoT. This, in my opinion, will offer more versatility and variance in builds than all the folks who just want more and more and more power. This is also just an example but, you guys have a bunch of companions you could do this for and many ways to supplement your current companion lineup. It's just a matter of what system you want to put into place for it. Again, if it's the incredibly frustrating and rare to get companion tokens, please consider how they're currently distributed in the game and how that'll impact any further upgrades.
On a side note, I also think that companions should just simply offer abilities and shouldn't be locked, per class, as to which you can and cannot have. I think this will also allow you guys to offer a much wider variety of companions. Similar to how it was done before but, just simply have five available slots and one summoned companion with the same abilities and sets you have currently but, offer additional +stats to make the choices more interesting.
Chris
P.S: I will continue responses as necessary from page 5 later.