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My feedback on the current direction of Neverwinter.
thefabricant
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
It is a bit long and wouldn't really fit into a single post. If you are curious you can read it all here.
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Just go and read this, OK.....(yes, I know it is a bit long, but it is worth it).
It is *SLEIGHT* of hand, not slight. I tried to find the part where you made that reference going back and couldn't, but I am pretty sure it was somewhere early.
Anyway, I want to focus on these:
Higher frequency of content releases - These do not necessarily contain more bugs by default. Fewer, larger releases could be just as buggy in comparison.
It does seem like there have been a lot more patches to fix the most recent patch, but they could slow these 'more frequent releases' down just a bit to try and catch more bugs.
Removal of long term chase items - This I agree with. While I am not going to argue against a big reward as a very occasional big prize, this should be done with caution. Example: Log in every day during an annual event and earn tokens that you could use to buy such a thing, but even then not a BiS type of thing, but instead more of a utility enhancement of some sort.
As stated, actual content takes time. The refinement of a character should fill in those gaps between content.
Loss of item value retention - This is, to me, all downside. The potential to add more players is more than offset by the type of players that would be drawn in by being able to get the best stuff easily. Those are not players that would be invested in the game, they would just play it to play it, run through, get bored, and then leave to go play with the next shiny object without investing any money into the game.
I also, however, understand that making everything as good as the best new stuff would present its own obstacles.
After all, the new content is meant to take time. People are meant to spend time getting the best new stuff.
However invested they may be in their 'Sword of Smiting' and all the time they spent upgrading it, unless they install a system of further improving that weapon that will take as much time and effort as it will to get the new and more-powerful 'Sword of Stabbiness' that they just added, then it's time to start putting the time and effort into improving the latter while appreciating that the game will allow you to display the appearance of the former.
Compressing the progression gap - I just posted something about this in another thread earlier today.
As a game ages, this just seems like a natural progression.
More and more players are spending more and more time in the higher level areas doing higher level things.
As new players join, they may benefit from finding some veterans running some alts or other new players that are in those same level ranges and/or doing that same content, but event hen people will level at different rates.
And the veterans that are running alts? Many of them aren't interested in it taking a long time to level up their new toon. They may often feel that they have already been there and done that, and even though this is a different character it is the same player and they aren't that interested in having to do so many of the same things twice.
So the answer? Try to get those newer players to the point that they can start running some of the same stuff those higher level players have been doing and let those higher level players enjoy their alts and maybe spend some money on improving them once they get to cap.
Sure, sure... The new players still have a lot to learn about playing their classes and filling their roles in the more challenging content, even the veterans to an extent, but they are now at a place where they can start being taught by those with the benefit of experience, or at the very least be able to find some similarly new high-level toons and learn together.
It's not how I would have things in a perfect world, no pun intended, but this is not a perfect world.
Gaps in the learning curve - Anything that adds more content along the way is okay by me, but I think that this is mostly just moving those brick walls around again, to use your reference.
A lot of mechanics are seen in a lot of places. The small details might change, or the penalty for missing might be more severe, but there are a lot of "block or be stunned" or "don't stand in stupid" mechanics in even the most basic fights.
Without specifically designing 'pre-dungeons' to train someone in any specific mechanics/fights in the "real" dungeons I am not sure how you actually achieve this.
Rewards and Challenges - I am not sure where you are going with this. Early on you seem to lament the 'loss' of TOMM, but later on you seem to be fully accepting of it (I have been having trouble sleeping and am growing tired again, so that may be a factor, too).
I am in the latter camp.
I am so far behind in dungeon running that it's not funny, but the gear treadmill is the easy constant in MMOs like this.
They could make multiple "end game" dungeons, each containing only certain things (one dungeon containing foot and hand slot gear, another containing main and off-hand items, a third containing rings, a fourth for belts and neck items, and then finally one for armor and head slot gear), but even then they will eventually be 'played out' by most people and then what have you got for them?
So the next release has to give those players something else to strive towards and some new challenges to overcome. There has to be 'better' stuff or they risk players not playing the new content, and that not only doesn't serve to bring the "seasonal" players back (you know they type... The ones that show up for new stuff, play, play, play, get their toons set up, and then disappear until the next release), it risks turning more regular players into seasonal players and giving the game the appearance of being empty.
In the context of the game, while AFAIK Cryptic use the Agile methodology, the Devs scope what they plan to do and what they think they can include per mod / episode, and then aim to deliver it. The difference becomes in the case when reality deviates from the plans. In the case of larger mods it is easier to re-prioritze, cut things out (like was done multiple times before) and focus on delivering fewer things on time, with acceptable quality.
In smaller content packages there is just nothing to cut out in terms of whole parts, so either you cut corners at the expense of quality or delay the release, which in a tight schedule of monthly releases is an issue on it's own and will propagate forward.
Also, in the same spirit, in a very short release times there is not much time to fix and improve after release, due to the next deadline already looming ahead.
Bottom line, it's not the smaller content releases that the issue, those actually help with quality, it's the shorter and more rigid deadlines that can negate the benefits.
"Challenges" of this type encourage players to chose proper skills for the fight (in this case strong single target heal), and reinforce the need for, lets call it strategic awareness, where the healer encouraged to keep track of all the players in the group, their position and their health. There are a lot helpers, like the player thrown to the middle and such, but in general we encourage 3 traits:
Class knowledge - situational picking the right class build and adapting per need (creating loadout with more feeting classfeats for example).
Overall game skill - keeping track of the group, positioning, communication, and so on, all learnable and there is a minor demand for those.
Gear - raw healing capability in this case.
When the first boss was nerfed, the game essentially created a gap in those first two aspects. Since it's no longer a wipe / no wipe you can just let the person die, pick them up or scroll and be done with it.
The issue becomes that the next dungeon IC or ToMM do require it at the same previous level, creating a frustration gap.
IMO, When there is issue with completion rate or such, simply nerfing mechanics is sometimes like a bandaid to a larger problem, and just moves it from one place to another.
Now players who can finish LoMM with their eyes closed can get 'slapped' in IC / ToMM. While it's not that IC or ToMM are difficult, they are scripted, it's exactly the issue with the learning curve that creates a lot of frustrations. With the common dungeons are repeatedly nerfed (LoMM, CoDG, ToNG), but no intermediary content added to compensate.
Yes, the basics are not difficult, it's all the same red zones, but when you are not encouraged to react to the telegraphs and next you die, it's a gap.
but right now it seems like no one is really getting served. the high end have another trial that has basically no good rewards but has significant costs to gear up for a moderate dungeon that also isn't great in the reward dept.
the newer people to the game aren't being given content that is preparing them for the end game stuff they are itching to do, in both gear and being given at least moderately challenging dungeons.
and the end gamers who are in a more moderate bracket kind of have nothing atm. and I expect they are probably in the majority of the game.
pets and mounts aren't dropping. if you look at the thread where people are posting what they've gotten pets and mounts even green are rarer than the leg drops. the consumables that you used to see drop were better than the consumables now with the exception of the fairly rare stone of health that drops. you might get 3 pres wards instead of 1 and I think they were unbound iirc. occasionally 3 leg keys would drop. (it was pretty rare and trial only for me anyway don't know if it drops now or not) but now its just one of anything and just 2 tb if they drop. 5k unrefined (oh, freaking boy right?) basically they've replaced fun things that used to drop with the equivalent of socks for christmas and only 1 sock.
Bottom line is, I would not trust anyone's gut feeling here, not even my own, without a relevant sample size from before and after to do a proper null hypothesis test and then make a comparison. This is the underlying problem with an RNG based loot system. The human brain is terrible at understanding probability and short of actually doing a controlled test, unless the odds are so drastically different between case 1 and case 2, you would not be able to tell by gut feeling. Even if the chance of getting something good was 5% before and then got doubled to 10%, because the value is still relatively small, the human brain would likely still see the outcome as relatively the same.
Most people commenting (with a few exceptions) noted getting at least green pets and comps regularly before and now never. that's a change you feel and notice.
My personal sample size was based on playing regularly and the same amount from that you have an internal sample size that you can compare against. of course, having the odds would help determine how much it's been changed. but I do think it's a thing that is knowable and feelable even if humans do have a bad track record of feeling odds (As it were).
The fudging of numbers to make them more in line with what our brain thinks is correct rather than the actual stated chance is done by a lot of game developers, in a lot of games, not just RPGs. The chances are (ironically) that if you are complaining about RNG, than the RNG is more likely to be "random" than if you think the RNG is working properly, because of how bad we are at judging RNG by gut.
The point I am making is, the problem the developers are trying to solve is not poor rewards. The problem the developers are trying to solve is players perceiving rewards as bad, which is a harder problem to solve. If every single boss in dungeons always dropped a mythic mount choice pack, the price of mythic mounts would drop so much that they would be worth nothing and then that would also be seen as a "bad" reward.
In my opinion the solution people really want is something like the streak breaker on preservation wards, or something else to add an element of determinism to the system.
I'm saying it IS something in terms of end chest rewards something that is knowable and feelable by the player base. if you play thousands of dungeons/trials whatever and once a week you get something like a green comp or better and sometimes much more often than that (in the case of most people I know it was much more often than that). it's something that you've come to reliably know about the drop system. after doing many dungeons you have a base for what is normal and what is not. if that changes you know it. if you're talking about the odds of getting a specific thing than yes probably true but as a generality I do think it's something you can tell as a regular player.
take CODG I think it's something many of us have done 10 to 20 in a row on a regular basis in this game. do you not think you get a good feel doing that of what the reward odds are in the game?
back to my original question.
do you not think that if they were to take rp out of the pool and replace it with consumables and leave the rest of the rewards as they were that it would not "feel" significant and improved to the majority of the player base?
My example was not an example of improving rewards, my example was only there to illustrate that (in a very extreme sense) you could make the rewards much, much better, while still leaving people feel like they get nothing out of running a piece of content, thus the problem you are trying to solve is more players perception and less what is in the chest. An even more extreme example of the same thing is if the chest at the end of every dungeon opened a developer console and let you pick whatever items you wanted. Players would not feel rewarded running content, despite the fact that they could pick whatever items they liked.
As for whether or not replacing the RP with something else (for example consumables) would alleviate the problem, I don't really think so. For one, there are players that do actually want the RP who would then feel upset that their loot was "nerfed." For another, I would hazard a guess that most players do not use consumables. Keeping in mind, neither of us have any data to back up that point, but for it to feel like a reward it needs to be something that people want to use. I think the result of doing that would be the price of consumables gets driven into the ground as the market is flooded by them and because the people who do actually use consumables no longer need to buy them, the problem would only be doubled down on.
The random green and blue items which nobody (not even a new player) wants should definitely be removed though. Those are items which may as well not exist.
the way they have consumables now would not flood the market. and I don't think the majority would be sad about rp being taken out. the quantity and quality of rp is less than you get from other places and in almmost of the consumables are very low in quantity and bound to char and people DO use them. the green and blue items are sometimes good and sometimes not. you might get a quickling or you might get sprite. yea the sprite is useless but it's a lot more fun than a emerald.