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This discussion was created from comments split from: Welcome to the Collaborative Development Program!.
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The Rewards CDP is closed, and this didn't fit the format of what you were looking for. So, I figure I'd put it here and hope someone reads it.
I was thinking how rewards and progression go wrong and how quickly content loses relevancy. I think a perfect example of this is the Watcher bosses and the 3 rune Master Expeditions.
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Watcher Bosses
The design of the watcher bosses is that if you run Master Expeditions with 3 runes active, you have a chance that a boss will appear. If you kill the boss, there's a chance he'll drop part of the Watcher weapon set.The bosses don't drop any other relevant reward. The whole point of going after them was to complete the Watcher set.
However, then TOMM came out. The Watcher set is no longer BiS.
The new established progression path is:
Alabaster set -> Burnished set -> Lionheart set.
Why does no one care about the Watcher Set?
The main reasons are:
- You need a party to go after them.
- The drops are rng-based.
- The bosses drop no other desireable reward.
- Burnished set is easier.
It can take 30-40 minutes to put a party together. Are we going to hunt watchers so one guy can maybe complete his set if rng is feeling generous, or are we going to do LOMM so everyone can get rewards?Of course we're doing LOMM. The Burnished set is a guaranteed buy from the seal vendor, and the rewards are miles better.
Is the Watcher Set ever going to be relevant again?
No.
There was about 3 months where it was BiS and that's the full lifetime of the watcher bosses.
New players are never going to go for it because it's too hard to put together a party to go after it.
Veteran players aren't interested because dungeons offer far better rewards.
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Three Rune Master Expeditions
Is anyone going to do 3 rune ME's in the future?No.
The added difficulty does not provide decent rewards, and there's a possibility a watcher boss will spawn and kill your run.
Adding extra runes to ME's gives you meager reward benefits.
You can get some low-end gear that you're probably going to convert to appearance items, a little bit of unrefined AD, and that's about it.
Players still run ME's, but it's 1 rune ME's.
For each run you get 5k AD and a Zok box for a chance at companion gear or an rare artifact.
Adding more runes does not give you more zok boxes. The bosses do not drop mops or any other rare reward.
Therefore, players run ME's with 1 rune as fast as they can and move onto other things.
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Conclusion:
The Watcher Bosses probably took a good amount of dev time to design. The ME's themselves were an experiment in scalable content. However, neither of them were designed from the standpoint of where they fall within the game long-term. They were designed entirely around the Watcher weapon set, which was BiS when the module was launched.Now that Watcher Set isn't really relevant, where does this content fall?
This is a perfect example of what's wrong with Neverwinter. Content designed for the moment of module release, with no regard to future relevancy. It was made, was relevant for 3 months, and now it's forgotten.
Will it ever get updated to be relevant?
Highly unlikely. The team moved onto Mod 17, 18, and and are no doubt working on 19. Neverwinter history says this will become 'legacy' and never get touched again.
How much dev time goes toward systems that end up being one-use?
I'm kinda hoping the 'episodic content' of the future will keep a larger view of the game as a whole in mind, rather than focusing entirely on modules with limited shelf life. Systems and content that stay relevant long-term rather than being spit out and dropped.
Anyway, Good luck with future endeavors. Wishing everyone the best.
The point is that the content itself was poorly designed at inception.
Do the Watcher Bosses offer the chance at getting more Zok box runes? — No.
Do the Watcher Bosses drop any other valuable resource? — No.
The content by design is useless to future players.
No one will ever do 3 rune ME's because the original design choices for this content were poorly thought out.