The Devs keep saying that the new system is easier to understand but it seems more obtuse than ever now.
There is a lot less that you need to know for the new system. For one, it directly tells you what your stats are, as opposed to you having a number with no reference and one needs to know where to look to even know what that number means. As far as how to improve a stat, you can see what comes from your ratings and what comes from everything else. AND, it's the same % no matter where you are.
^ That just is not factual at all. And is M16 wishful thinking Deja Vu. You're repeating stuff that were said during the M16's introduction.
"GuIsE!! It Is NeEdEd"
Well, obviously it wasn't needed at all. And neither is this. You can't prove that this is needed. You can't even sum it up in a single, solitary sentence that these changes are needed and to explain, in the most common and ordinary way immaginable, why these changes are necessary or needed, unless there is only one motive - money for the company, or an artificially imposed forced AD Sink that affects everyone, even those who do not want to spent any AD or similar.
If M16 didn't work nor made system easier, this WON'T make it easier either. That is factual. All the content creators were struggling to figure it out, and you mention here how it is easy. No, it is not easy, it is ridiculously convoluted because it is a drastic change from one system to another, forfeiting the previous system without any ease-in possibility for the players. it is lelearning the numbers, again. Once this hits live people will feel like they are lost in traffic, and when they see the mathematical problems they need to face after being so depressed after 2020. Do you honestly think they will stay to sort it out or leave the game?
So many people have already left. Guilds are emptying. Alliances are emptying, too. Even with the current lag and presents, people are fed up and tired.
To build a toon now you need to know this game inside-out as a prerequisite, rather than go with what seems like a good idea to build.
M16 did a mechanics overhaul for the sake of making things easier to understand, whilst the new update makes it obsolete after people finally got around understanding it from the point of duality and percent to reach caps.
The mechanics, although not perfect in M16, were far easier to digest than the current convoluted system that doesn't give you options to choose from, but forces you into making a very specific, AND HIGH RISK, build that possibly won't stand the test of time once the new content comes out, or a new pet, or something similar, forcing you to change more stuff in order to remain viable, rather than to change just a few things here or there. And the consensus was that we needn't more of those mechanics changes down the road, but here were are and with you defending the system without acknowledging that we just did have that with M16.
THE GINORMOUS PROBLEM
Given how quickly the gear gets obsolete in Neverwinter, and given the variety of the items and their bonuses being used, with each new iteration comes the mathematical hell for casual players who can't even escape the Red Circle, let alone figure out things like ACT or CombatLog. If the new gear changes from giving Combat Advantage to something like Critical Strike, and if this makes you to relocate 5-10% or an entire build, you will quickly realize why this system is counter-intuitive for the players.
It is best for people who have
a) A lot of time to do min - max with each new iteration. b) Possibly all important companions fully upgraded.
THE GARGANTUAN PROBLEM
There is no guarantee that this system will remain intact after people finally get used to it months and even years from now. All your investments now will be obsolete if they decide to do so. Just wake up one day and see no more Companions, no more Mounts, instead you get stuff like a takeaway milkshake fast food tokens and cards like in Tarokka that will be the new "easier" system.
So, the only question is why do you PERSONALLY like these new changes so much that you take on yourself to defend them even though we're all detesting them. You're far too kind to these changes, welcoming them with open hands, even though they are horrible, and a repetition of same mistakes by the company that stated they WON'T continue down that path.
True Neutral
Left the Game due to heavy Damage Control & Missing Spanish Language
I would agree with you on dungeons, however, outside of a few builds, solo survivability in dungeons is pretty much out the window. The scaling changes have made it so you actually need a party there.
Which is a good thing imo. Dungeons are for party play, not for soloing.
I would agree with you on dungeons, however, outside of a few builds, solo survivability in dungeons is pretty much out the window. The scaling changes have made it so you actually need a party there.
Which is a good thing imo. Dungeons are for party play, not for soloing.
I don't agree. Dungeons should be for a party (kind of default) AND for any other combination down to soloing. This gives more experienced, progressed or just curious players some additional challenge and the different showcases of how different classes solve the content creates more depth and inspiration. Just limiting it to a certain party configuration limits options - makes the game more static and boring. There is no advantage in that ...
My main concern aside from needing to rank up 10-12 new r15 enchants and 4-5 new r15 runestones, is soloing quests on my paladin. While I totally understand that the chicken and xuna are a problem on live, the chicken has been the only thing that makes solo questing on my paladin endurable. Sometimes I wish paladins had tank/dps paragon paths instead of tank/heals like the fighter class. I haven't transferred my paladin to preview to test, but I'm very concerned solo questing is going to be a huge pia. I've switched to paladin mostly because I'm fed up with Wizard class, it's not engaging to play at all, but tanking at least is.
As for the enchants, after I did in m16, I now refuse to trade in unbound enchants for bound ones, getting stuck with a couple r13 armor/weap enchants bta was a huge mistake on my part. I think the Radiant/Empowered exchange should either:
a) Have an option to trade for ad like the bondings. b) Give bound/unbound choice pack based on the bound status of the traded in enchantment, meaning the store should differentiate between enchantments that are unbound, account bound, character bound, and give enchantments matching that bound status. Idk how much work this would be for the devs, but I suspect the inability to do this (easily), is probably why they default to bound-to-account.
I think it's completely unacceptable to even think it's ok that players should be expected to trade in a large number of expensive tradable items for bound variants. This is by far my biggest grievance with the current upcoming changes.
My main concern aside from needing to rank up 10-12 new r15 enchants and 4-5 new r15 runestones, is soloing quests on my paladin. While I totally understand that the chicken and xuna are a problem on live, the chicken has been the only thing that makes solo questing on my paladin endurable. Sometimes I wish paladins had tank/dps paragon paths instead of tank/heals like the fighter class. I haven't transferred my paladin to preview to test, but I'm very concerned solo questing is going to be a huge pia. I've switched to paladin mostly because I'm fed up with Wizard class, it's not engaging to play at all, but tanking at least is.
I've made a few posts about this elsewhere but it takes even longer as a paladin to kill things in preview compared to live. It take every class longer to kill things. That's why I have retired my paladin and moved to rogue. But then again I pretty much stopped playing once the Avernus 4 milestone thing started since I had no desire to do it so my build is not fully end game anymore. Best of luck with your paladin mate.
0
adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
edited January 2021
I am assuming that what we are seeing today will be more or less what we will get on live, and that quite frankly makes me sad.
Sad, because I have played this game since the first day of open beta, and it is slowly changing into something that just feels less and less enjoyable.
I am spending less time (and less money) on this game than I used to, as you keep taking away the things I enjoy (like meaningful crafting, character flexibility and RP support), and now you are taking away one of the last things still remaining. that is "a rewarding sense of progression".
I belive that your "new" system is fundamentally broken, when you can for example remove a piece of gear and your stats actually go up. Case in point - mount collars, If I remove a mount collar, my IL goes down, but my ratings are not affected, so my percentages go up. In fact, by removing 4 out of my 5 collars, I could improve all the percentages significantly. Where is the motivation to get new gear, when the best thing you can do is to not use it ?
This feels just wrong - fundamentally wrong and sad.
I have a few more issues with Mod 20. I fundamentally disagree with the decision to remove the old Sharandar areas....yes, you know you want to make this a "Living" world, but that's not what motivates me, or, I think, many of your remaining players - you are just going to lose even more of them.
I also disagree with many of the little details, like your choices for equipment bonuses. That fact that you are always using the same boring bonuses as before makes it utterly unrewarding to go after the items...you gain a tiny increase in IL, but it is just boring....
Making a boring game is a cardinal sin.
Now, according to the collection pages there are some rewarding items in Mod 20 - the artifacts look interesting, and I expect there will be something in a new lockbox I expect to see, but where are the interesting items for people who like to play solo? Not everyone is into always running just the hardest dungeon, and many of your remaining players like NWO because it is one of the more solo-friendly MMOs out there.
It is not the only one, though....so stop taking away stuff, alienating one player group after another or you will lose more and more players to games whose developers actually listen to theiir playerbase.
Now, I expect you to ignore me - I have tried to provide useful feedback here, in the CDP and elsewhere, but quite frankly, I am losing my interest and motivation. You clearly have your plans for what you want the game to evolve into, and I have my opinion on what I enjoy, and those two are overlapping less and less.
1) accuracy and critical avoidance, if you cap them, completely negate 4 enemy stats... stats that are underpowered to begin with. This makes the game feel less interesting, and I think it will destroy PvP completely.
2) weapons - I don't think there is motivation to go after the campaign weapons as player's progress through the game. No thought went into them... only into the Celestial and Lionheart. It seems to me... that this is because the devs are listening to the elite dungeon running teams, and ignoring the fact that solo players and 'progressing' players are the larger part of the Neverwinter audience.
3) progression - new players & new characters are given access to powerful gear and given gifts for free that should take lots of exploration to find and obtain in a real game. This is being given out as if it's a gift... and yes, many players are screaming for it and more more more. The problem is, while some new players want a fast-pass to the end so they can get on discord and do team dungeons and feel part of an elite team, other players want to experience the real game from beginning to end, in it's originally intended state. They don't want hand outs, they want to find good stuff from playing. They want challenging play, and they want to feel true progression. I feel like the "full game" players are being completely left out. Again we are listening to the voices of a few expert players who suggest that the old content is horrible and that players should be allowed and encouraged to skip past it.
4) The money thing - Veterans feel like they are being exploited when they spend a year of gameplay and money to bring a couple of their characters up to near-maximum capability, and then the game is changed to make the stuff they own worthless. Devs need to work harder at appearances... they matter. New opportunities bring excitement because they are opportunities to progress. Players 'freak out' if you take their power away and then create a grind or even worse... a pay requirement to get it back. Whether real or not... the appearance of this makes more players leave, than any other reason. New players need a more friendly pay environment in my opinion. Imagine starting a game... and the developer pop-up encourages you to buy 'XYZ' for real money. "XYZ" looks pretty good, and you think your gonna stick around for a while, so you buy it. You have great fun and a week later you buy another "XYZ", then another. You feel great about your character and the game itself and think you may have finally found the game for you. Then something happens. You discover that you could have obtained "XYZ" for half price on some other market or through a different method and most of the players know about it. This is confidence shaking. You feel robbed and exploited. We need to do a better job preventing this experience for our new players. I bet this is something we have all felt here and it does not create good feelings or inspire us to leave positive posts.
4
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
About the gear, and specifically mount collars. Yes you lose some ratings as your item level goes up, but in return, you gain quite a bit of damage and HP. Ratings is not the end all be all that it used to be. And guess what, you can over come lacking ratings by having more sources of whatever stat you want. The 'other' portion of the contribution to totals of a stat can exceed 40%.
I've tried everything I can to balance my stats on preview and simply am unable. Since I'm not made of money, I can't buy my way up in IL. With everything being tied to Item Level, making progression feel non-existent, coupled with the overly complicated mechanics of most endgame dungeons and trials, I've lost all sense of fun while playing Neverwinter.
Training for a new dungeon or trial is basically an excercise in memorization. You must know all the mechanics and timing precisely. This is not "challenging", it's rehearsal for a performance. And that doesn't even begin to address the underwhelming rewards given for completing dungeons or trials.
Now, the devs think removing older content is somehow a good idea?
I made the decision tonight to delete this game from my PC. It's become less enjoyable, and more frustrating with every mod. I only wish I had never wasted any money, even the small amount that I had, on this game. Neverwinter had the potential to be so much better.
This going to be a summary of some of the issues I have with the upcoming changes. I'd like to say first, I appreciate the developers for all their hard work, any negative criticism isn't a jab and anyone personally, I understand that you guys and gals have deadlines and such to meet and sometimes we forget or overlook things. Also, I may be wrong about some things, anyone feel free to correct me if I am, maths are not my strong suit.
1) Bondings: Removing Bondings at first sounded cool, but then I realized, that basically bondings were removed and replaced with 100% Bolster. The problem here is that Bondings can be put in the bank and shared with alts while Bolster can not. The upcoming changes are going to make maintaining alts much much more expensive. Getting 100% Bolster is at least twice as expensive as ranking up 3x Bondings to rank 15. As for making the game easier to understand, replacing Bondings with Bolster doesn't accomplish this anyways, it's just another face for basically the same thing.
Mount Bolster also suffers from being very un-alt-friendly in the same way. Atm, and for the foreseeable future, there aren't 10x different Mythic Account Reclaimable Mounts to "share" the bolster with our alts, so we have to rank up mounts on each of our alts, which is very expensive.
One solution that would make the new system with regards to bolster more alt-friendly is to put Mounts and Companions into an Account-Wide "Stable" of sorts, such that all mounts and companions on the account are available to all toons without needing to "claim" them, and if you rank one up on one toon, it is ranked up on all toons (much like the account shareable bank slots for example).
2) Stat System: (when I say Stat System, I don't mean Damage Formula) The upcoming Stat System is not sustainable. Increasing Total Item Level slowly nerfs your Base Stats until it becomes difficult to reach caps. For example, while at 50k and say 88% of Item Level as Combined Rating, a player gets all Base Stats to start off around 44k, or 44%., because 50,000 * 0.88 = 44,000. As Item Level go up into the future things get darker, for example, at 100,000 Total Item Level and 88% as Combined Ratings, a player gets all Base Stats to start off at 88,000, which is 38% because 88k is 12k less than 100k, so 50% - 12% = 38%. This keeps going into the future until Combined Ratings no longer even cover what I call "Item Level Debt". This problem is also exacerbated by sources of Item Level that do not contribute to Base Stats. This problem is inherent in the Stat System and puts a cap on Item Level progression such that at some point in the future, another rework of how stats are calculated will need to be done again (how long this system can be stretched out for, I don't know). While this might be great for job security, it costs time and money that could be used to developing content and actually making the game more interesting.
One solution, as I've posted elsewhere, is to combine the Base stats and "Other Contributions" into one Stat Percentage and have gear, bonuses, buffs, insignias, etc, etc add a flat Percentage Value to that. Totally get rid of the idea of stats being some number in whatever range of thousands or hundreds, and replace it with a simple number from 0 to 1, or a percentage value (%). Item Level would still be used to Scale HP and Base Damage, and this actually makes Scaling dead simple, just scale one number, Item Level, up or down. The amount of Stats a source would give would depend on it's Quality, Common to Mythic. A Maximum Stat Pool would be set such as when a player has All sources at Mythic, and a Minimum Stat Pool would be set such as when a player has all sources at Common. Just for the sake of example, a ring might have Item Level 1000, and Quality of Epic, and give 4% Crit, 2% Accuracy, and 0.25% Combined Ratings. A Ring of Item Level 500 and Quality of Mythic might give, 8% Crit, 4% Accuracy, and 0.5% Combined Ratings. Again, numbers are just for the sake of example. A player can then mix and match sources to tune their character. This is still more Horizontally "friendly" in the sense that a player can choose to sacrifice some Item Level for a piece that may be of higher Quality, or have a good Bonus, while also making increasing Item Level less complicated and more attractive. This system would scale into the future indefinitely, it also gets rid of power creep, and item level is easy to scale where item level creep is unwanted. It also opens the door for more chase items of higher Quality, for example releasing legendary armor piece, mythic rings and artifact gear, etc.
I think the complexity of the current and upcoming Stat Systems highlight a fundamental misunderstanding or misinterpretation of what the players want when it comes to brain work. The complexity of the game should not come from how e.g. Critical Strike value is calculated, but rather it should come from the interaction of Feats, Bonuses, Combat Abilities, and so on. This is why I liked Pre-M16, we had to think about how powers, feats, and builds interacted with each other and how they would interact with our teammates', we didn't need to worry about what our Crit Value was, it was value we could throw more stats at to get as close to 100% as possible, and that's it. While there may have been problems with stats in Pre-M16, the complexity of Customization points was at a sweet spot such that a player could if they looked for it, find interesting combinations of feats that lead to power looping TR's for example, which ofc needed to nerfed, but at least the complexity was there. I remember several years back when I was heavy into Magic the Gathering, the excitement I felt when I found an infinite Mana combo that allowed to infinitely cast all my spells and my turn to last forever until all opponents were utterly obliterated. I believe the combo was later banned in tournaments, but again, the complexity of MtG was teetering on that balance of complexity, the sweet spot.
As an aid in developing more structure into the game, you can use graph and category theory to, at a high level, analyze and visualize the complexity in the game, more structure (edges), more complexity.
3) Enchantment Exchange: Again, we at least need an option to exchange our enchantments for AD like the Bondings, or for the exchange to give enchantments with the same bound status as the one we turned in. This is only fair.
Those are my 3 main concerns, thanks for reading, peace out.
Could you bring back primal gear or a method to obtain this gear? as the boots and very strong, best in slot for majority of dps classes in the new dungeon. BIS gear shouldnt be unobtainable. Or just add new boots that have the same bonus as primal boots if you wanna stick to having only the 2 newest seal gear in the seal store.
Could you bring back primal gear or a method to obtain this gear? as the boots and very strong, best in slot for majority of dps classes in the new dungeon. BIS gear shouldnt be unobtainable. Or just add new boots that have the same bonus as primal boots if you wanna stick to having only the 2 newest seal gear in the seal store.
BIS? You mean for the AP gain? Definitely not for ranger. Perhaps for some classes though hmmm. This is an interesting idea actually. Yes all gear should be obtainable. I'm surprised they are no longer in the seals store.
> @jman3l#5579 said: > BIS? You mean for the AP gain? Definitely not for ranger. Perhaps for some classes though hmmm. This is an interesting idea actually. Yes all gear should be obtainable. I'm surprised they are no longer in the seals store.
Low item lvl means low base dmg, and yea primal shoos not will be bis becose of wat.
> BIS? You mean for the AP gain? Definitely not for ranger. Perhaps for some classes though hmmm. This is an interesting idea actually. Yes all gear should be obtainable. I'm surprised they are no longer in the seals store.
Low item lvl means low base dmg, and yea primal shoos not will be bis becose of wat.
For a long time those boot have been good for AoE builds, used in mob clearing. BiS? Idk that's much more complex to prove/disprove, but they are and have been very good for trash clearing on Wizards.
> BIS? You mean for the AP gain? Definitely not for ranger. Perhaps for some classes though hmmm. This is an interesting idea actually. Yes all gear should be obtainable. I'm surprised they are no longer in the seals store.
Low item lvl means low base dmg, and yea primal shoos not will be bis becose of wat.
For a long time those boot have been good for AoE builds, used in mob clearing. BiS? Idk that's much more complex to prove/disprove, but they are and have been very good for trash clearing on Wizards.
True, I still think rusted iron leggings are unbeatable in any content at the moment. If you don't have power capped, Lightguard / Fallen Angel a close 2nd / 3rd.
Why are we scaled down in the newest dungeon to 51k =/ ? Gained ~1% stats just taking stuff off since I was above that...kind of silly..
@noworries#8859 can't you scale the damage value down instead of the item level? It is quite silly that we lose stats like then when we are downscaled. Like scale the damage value down based on the item level maximum of that dungeon, but like let the stat distribution remain the same, otherwise its very strange to be incentivized to lower your IL by removing stuff.
For the class feat over penetration on the barbarian it was changed to where you have to cap out power and accuracy in order to receive a 5% damage boost. Is the cap meaning if you cap to 50% rating for both power/accuracy or the 90%. If it’s 90% then that feat is completely useless and is a nerf to barbarians.
Why are we scaled down in the newest dungeon to 51k =/ ? Gained ~1% stats just taking stuff off since I was above that...kind of silly..
@noworries#8859 can't you scale the damage value down instead of the item level? It is quite silly that we lose stats like then when we are downscaled. Like scale the damage value down based on the item level maximum of that dungeon, but like let the stat distribution remain the same, otherwise its very strange to be incentivized to lower your IL by removing stuff.
Stats are not scaled down, they always work off of the unscaled item level. Only base damage and base maximum hit points go off of scaled item level.
That person is saying since they can't use the extra item level to gain more HP/Damage they are taking off item level, and depending on what you take off can make stats you care about most go up. But that same thing will happen in any scaled or unscaled area.
You're scaling us down in the -newest- dungeon. This isn't about lomm, tomm, IC or even zariel. Why, in the newest, 'hardest' content, are we better off taking gear off to cap our stats with no wep/hp loss than being fully geared. Its plain insanity.
Developers, here you are probably working on a new class, but there will be no desire to play and pump 10 mounts and 10 companions to a new character. Even now, I have no desire to play. Please make it possible to transfer satellites by account!
I think the scaling should provide some sort of benefit for progression. As I understand it, it's currently more of a cap on TIL, and baring extra features (gear, feats, etc), a cap on damage and hp.
What I would suggest is something like: MIN(TIL, Cap) + [MAX(0, TIL - CAP) * MOD]
Basically:
if TIL > CAP; then
Cap + ((TIL - CAP) * 0.1)
else
TIL
where MOD is something like 0.03, 0.05, 0.1, etc.
For example: Say the current TIL cap is 20k and a player has 54k TIL, and the MOD is 0.1. In the dungeon the player's item level would be scaled to: 23.4k
34k = MAX(0, 54k - 20k) 23.4k = 20k + [34k * 0.1]
It's not much better, but I think you can see my point, there will be benefit to being stronger and progressing, but not so much as to be totally unbalanced.
The MOD would have to be determined based on CAP because a very low Item Level dungeon would provide more benefit to being stronger. For example using the same numbers as above except in a 6k dungeon, the player would be scaled to 10.8k, which might be ok, but idk, that's subjective.
Something like that would be nice. If we could keep 10% of our 'overage', peeps wouldn't feel the need to dump gear when down-sizing to a lower IL. On the other hand, 10% of 50,000 IL going into a starter dungeon would still be insanely overpowered.... so i think that while it would work, it might be best to cap it at no more than 125% of the IL that one is down-scaling to. So, if a 50,000 IL downscales to a 2,000 IL dungeon... they don't get 4,800 bonus IL cause the bonus IL would be capped at 500 maximum, bringing their character to 2,500 IL.
@noworries#8859 said Stats are not scaled down, they always work off of the unscaled item level. Only base damage and base maximum hit points go off of scaled item level.
That person is saying since they can't use the extra item level to gain more HP/Damage they are taking off item level, and depending on what you take off can make stats you care about most go up. But that same thing will happen in any scaled or unscaled area.
@noworries#8859 Don't you understand that this is an inherent problem
Stats always working off of the unscaled item level gives lower level players a huge advantage in lower level dungeons as it is much easier to bring up your Stats at lower item level.
Simply scaling base damage and HP breaks low level dungeons.
As you are also planning on allowing players to scale up to run Sharandar, this will also inherently break the damage low item level players can do in the new area.
I would seriously reconsider releasing this broken system on Thursday.
Push back the patch - it is NOT ready.
Fix the scaling - make player stats reflect the max item level of the dungeon. Granted, this will give high level players an advantage by boosting most stats up to their maximum of 50% in many low level dungeons, but this should be the reward for leveling and grinding gear.
If this is not done, you will continue to have barren low level dungeons - content will simply not be played because your new and improved system is still a broken system.
@noworries#8859 I agree^. It is not ready to come to live. There are too many problems with the system.
3
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Stats are not scaled down, they always work off of the unscaled item level. Only base damage and base maximum hit points go off of scaled item level.
That person is saying since they can't use the extra item level to gain more HP/Damage they are taking off item level, and depending on what you take off can make stats you care about most go up. But that same thing will happen in any scaled or unscaled area.
@noworries#8859 Don't you understand that this is an inherent problem
Stats always working off of the unscaled item level gives lower level players a huge advantage in lower level dungeons as it is much easier to bring up your Stats at lower item level.
Simply scaling base damage and HP breaks low level dungeons.
As you are also planning on allowing players to scale up to run Sharandar, this will also inherently break the damage low item level players can do in the new area.
I would seriously reconsider releasing this broken system on Thursday.
Push back the patch - it is NOT ready.
Fix the scaling - make player stats reflect the max item level of the dungeon. Granted, this will give high level players an advantage by boosting most stats up to their maximum of 50% in many low level dungeons, but this should be the reward for leveling and grinding gear.
If this is not done, you will continue to have barren low level dungeons - content will simply not be played because your new and improved system is still a broken system.
Most players will do this, no matter what the system. They will use to their advantage no matter what to min/max. The fact that it exists doesn't make the system broken. It's more to what extent. Aside from a few percentage points, and maybe more with mythic mount collars, this really isn't that big of an issue.
Comments
"GuIsE!! It Is NeEdEd"
Well, obviously it wasn't needed at all. And neither is this. You can't prove that this is needed. You can't even sum it up in a single, solitary sentence that these changes are needed and to explain, in the most common and ordinary way immaginable, why these changes are necessary or needed, unless there is only one motive - money for the company, or an artificially imposed forced AD Sink that affects everyone, even those who do not want to spent any AD or similar.
If M16 didn't work nor made system easier, this WON'T make it easier either. That is factual.
All the content creators were struggling to figure it out, and you mention here how it is easy. No, it is not easy, it is ridiculously convoluted because it is a drastic change from one system to another, forfeiting the previous system without any ease-in possibility for the players. it is lelearning the numbers, again.
Once this hits live people will feel like they are lost in traffic, and when they see the mathematical problems they need to face after being so depressed after 2020. Do you honestly think they will stay to sort it out or leave the game?
So many people have already left. Guilds are emptying. Alliances are emptying, too. Even with the current lag and presents, people are fed up and tired.
To build a toon now you need to know this game inside-out as a prerequisite, rather than go with what seems like a good idea to build.
M16 did a mechanics overhaul for the sake of making things easier to understand, whilst the new update makes it obsolete after people finally got around understanding it from the point of duality and percent to reach caps.
The mechanics, although not perfect in M16, were far easier to digest than the current convoluted system that doesn't give you options to choose from, but forces you into making a very specific, AND HIGH RISK, build that possibly won't stand the test of time once the new content comes out, or a new pet, or something similar, forcing you to change more stuff in order to remain viable, rather than to change just a few things here or there. And the consensus was that we needn't more of those mechanics changes down the road, but here were are and with you defending the system without acknowledging that we just did have that with M16.
THE GINORMOUS PROBLEM
Given how quickly the gear gets obsolete in Neverwinter, and given the variety of the items and their bonuses being used, with each new iteration comes the mathematical hell for casual players who can't even escape the Red Circle, let alone figure out things like ACT or CombatLog. If the new gear changes from giving Combat Advantage to something like Critical Strike, and if this makes you to relocate 5-10% or an entire build, you will quickly realize why this system is counter-intuitive for the players.
It is best for people who have
a) A lot of time to do min - max with each new iteration.
b) Possibly all important companions fully upgraded.
THE GARGANTUAN PROBLEM
There is no guarantee that this system will remain intact after people finally get used to it months and even years from now. All your investments now will be obsolete if they decide to do so. Just wake up one day and see no more Companions, no more Mounts, instead you get stuff like a takeaway milkshake fast food tokens and cards like in Tarokka that will be the new "easier" system.
So, the only question is why do you PERSONALLY like these new changes so much that you take on yourself to defend them even though we're all detesting them. You're far too kind to these changes, welcoming them with open hands, even though they are horrible, and a repetition of same mistakes by the company that stated they WON'T continue down that path.
As for the enchants, after I did in m16, I now refuse to trade in unbound enchants for bound ones, getting stuck with a couple r13 armor/weap enchants bta was a huge mistake on my part. I think the Radiant/Empowered exchange should either:
a) Have an option to trade for ad like the bondings.
b) Give bound/unbound choice pack based on the bound status of the traded in enchantment, meaning the store should differentiate between enchantments that are unbound, account bound, character bound, and give enchantments matching that bound status. Idk how much work this would be for the devs, but I suspect the inability to do this (easily), is probably why they default to bound-to-account.
I think it's completely unacceptable to even think it's ok that players should be expected to trade in a large number of expensive tradable items for bound variants. This is by far my biggest grievance with the current upcoming changes.
Sad, because I have played this game since the first day of open beta, and it is slowly changing into something that just feels less and less enjoyable.
I am spending less time (and less money) on this game than I used to, as you keep taking away the things I enjoy (like meaningful crafting, character flexibility and RP support), and now you are taking away one of the last things still remaining. that is "a rewarding sense of progression".
I belive that your "new" system is fundamentally broken, when you can for example remove a piece of gear and your stats actually go up. Case in point - mount collars, If I remove a mount collar, my IL goes down, but my ratings are not affected, so my percentages go up. In fact, by removing 4 out of my 5 collars, I could improve all the percentages significantly. Where is the motivation to get new gear, when the best thing you can do is to not use it ?
This feels just wrong - fundamentally wrong and sad.
I have a few more issues with Mod 20. I fundamentally disagree with the decision to remove the old Sharandar areas....yes, you know you want to make this a "Living" world, but that's not what motivates me, or, I think, many of your remaining players - you are just going to lose even more of them.
I also disagree with many of the little details, like your choices for equipment bonuses. That fact that you are always using the same boring bonuses as before makes it utterly unrewarding to go after the items...you gain a tiny increase in IL, but it is just boring....
Making a boring game is a cardinal sin.
Now, according to the collection pages there are some rewarding items in Mod 20 - the artifacts look interesting, and I expect there will be something in a new lockbox I expect to see, but where are the interesting items for people who like to play solo? Not everyone is into always running just the hardest dungeon, and many of your remaining players like NWO because it is one of the more solo-friendly MMOs out there.
It is not the only one, though....so stop taking away stuff, alienating one player group after another or you will lose more and more players to games whose developers actually listen to theiir playerbase.
Now, I expect you to ignore me - I have tried to provide useful feedback here, in the CDP and elsewhere, but quite frankly, I am losing my interest and motivation. You clearly have your plans for what you want the game to evolve into, and I have my opinion on what I enjoy, and those two are overlapping less and less.
1) accuracy and critical avoidance, if you cap them, completely negate 4 enemy stats... stats that are underpowered to begin with. This makes the game feel less interesting, and I think it will destroy PvP completely.
2) weapons - I don't think there is motivation to go after the campaign weapons as player's progress through the game. No thought went into them... only into the Celestial and Lionheart. It seems to me... that this is because the devs are listening to the elite dungeon running teams, and ignoring the fact that solo players and 'progressing' players are the larger part of the Neverwinter audience.
3) progression - new players & new characters are given access to powerful gear and given gifts for free that should take lots of exploration to find and obtain in a real game. This is being given out as if it's a gift... and yes, many players are screaming for it and more more more. The problem is, while some new players want a fast-pass to the end so they can get on discord and do team dungeons and feel part of an elite team, other players want to experience the real game from beginning to end, in it's originally intended state. They don't want hand outs, they want to find good stuff from playing. They want challenging play, and they want to feel true progression. I feel like the "full game" players are being completely left out. Again we are listening to the voices of a few expert players who suggest that the old content is horrible and that players should be allowed and encouraged to skip past it.
4) The money thing - Veterans feel like they are being exploited when they spend a year of gameplay and money to bring a couple of their characters up to near-maximum capability, and then the game is changed to make the stuff they own worthless. Devs need to work harder at appearances... they matter. New opportunities bring excitement because they are opportunities to progress. Players 'freak out' if you take their power away and then create a grind or even worse... a pay requirement to get it back. Whether real or not... the appearance of this makes more players leave, than any other reason. New players need a more friendly pay environment in my opinion. Imagine starting a game... and the developer pop-up encourages you to buy 'XYZ' for real money. "XYZ" looks pretty good, and you think your gonna stick around for a while, so you buy it. You have great fun and a week later you buy another "XYZ", then another. You feel great about your character and the game itself and think you may have finally found the game for you. Then something happens. You discover that you could have obtained "XYZ" for half price on some other market or through a different method and most of the players know about it. This is confidence shaking. You feel robbed and exploited. We need to do a better job preventing this experience for our new players. I bet this is something we have all felt here and it does not create good feelings or inspire us to leave positive posts.
Training for a new dungeon or trial is basically an excercise in memorization. You must know all the mechanics and timing precisely. This is not "challenging", it's rehearsal for a performance. And that doesn't even begin to address the underwhelming rewards given for completing dungeons or trials.
Now, the devs think removing older content is somehow a good idea?
I made the decision tonight to delete this game from my PC. It's become less enjoyable, and more frustrating with every mod. I only wish I had never wasted any money, even the small amount that I had, on this game. Neverwinter had the potential to be so much better.
1) Bondings:
Removing Bondings at first sounded cool, but then I realized, that basically bondings were removed and replaced with 100% Bolster. The problem here is that Bondings can be put in the bank and shared with alts while Bolster can not. The upcoming changes are going to make maintaining alts much much more expensive. Getting 100% Bolster is at least twice as expensive as ranking up 3x Bondings to rank 15. As for making the game easier to understand, replacing Bondings with Bolster doesn't accomplish this anyways, it's just another face for basically the same thing.
Mount Bolster also suffers from being very un-alt-friendly in the same way. Atm, and for the foreseeable future, there aren't 10x different Mythic Account Reclaimable Mounts to "share" the bolster with our alts, so we have to rank up mounts on each of our alts, which is very expensive.
One solution that would make the new system with regards to bolster more alt-friendly is to put Mounts and Companions into an Account-Wide "Stable" of sorts, such that all mounts and companions on the account are available to all toons without needing to "claim" them, and if you rank one up on one toon, it is ranked up on all toons (much like the account shareable bank slots for example).
2) Stat System: (when I say Stat System, I don't mean Damage Formula)
The upcoming Stat System is not sustainable. Increasing Total Item Level slowly nerfs your Base Stats until it becomes difficult to reach caps. For example, while at 50k and say 88% of Item Level as Combined Rating, a player gets all Base Stats to start off around 44k, or 44%., because 50,000 * 0.88 = 44,000. As Item Level go up into the future things get darker, for example, at 100,000 Total Item Level and 88% as Combined Ratings, a player gets all Base Stats to start off at 88,000, which is 38% because 88k is 12k less than 100k, so 50% - 12% = 38%. This keeps going into the future until Combined Ratings no longer even cover what I call "Item Level Debt". This problem is also exacerbated by sources of Item Level that do not contribute to Base Stats. This problem is inherent in the Stat System and puts a cap on Item Level progression such that at some point in the future, another rework of how stats are calculated will need to be done again (how long this system can be stretched out for, I don't know). While this might be great for job security, it costs time and money that could be used to developing content and actually making the game more interesting.
One solution, as I've posted elsewhere, is to combine the Base stats and "Other Contributions" into one Stat Percentage and have gear, bonuses, buffs, insignias, etc, etc add a flat Percentage Value to that. Totally get rid of the idea of stats being some number in whatever range of thousands or hundreds, and replace it with a simple number from 0 to 1, or a percentage value (%). Item Level would still be used to Scale HP and Base Damage, and this actually makes Scaling dead simple, just scale one number, Item Level, up or down. The amount of Stats a source would give would depend on it's Quality, Common to Mythic. A Maximum Stat Pool would be set such as when a player has All sources at Mythic, and a Minimum Stat Pool would be set such as when a player has all sources at Common. Just for the sake of example, a ring might have Item Level 1000, and Quality of Epic, and give 4% Crit, 2% Accuracy, and 0.25% Combined Ratings. A Ring of Item Level 500 and Quality of Mythic might give, 8% Crit, 4% Accuracy, and 0.5% Combined Ratings. Again, numbers are just for the sake of example. A player can then mix and match sources to tune their character. This is still more Horizontally "friendly" in the sense that a player can choose to sacrifice some Item Level for a piece that may be of higher Quality, or have a good Bonus, while also making increasing Item Level less complicated and more attractive. This system would scale into the future indefinitely, it also gets rid of power creep, and item level is easy to scale where item level creep is unwanted. It also opens the door for more chase items of higher Quality, for example releasing legendary armor piece, mythic rings and artifact gear, etc.
I think the complexity of the current and upcoming Stat Systems highlight a fundamental misunderstanding or misinterpretation of what the players want when it comes to brain work. The complexity of the game should not come from how e.g. Critical Strike value is calculated, but rather it should come from the interaction of Feats, Bonuses, Combat Abilities, and so on. This is why I liked Pre-M16, we had to think about how powers, feats, and builds interacted with each other and how they would interact with our teammates', we didn't need to worry about what our Crit Value was, it was value we could throw more stats at to get as close to 100% as possible, and that's it. While there may have been problems with stats in Pre-M16, the complexity of Customization points was at a sweet spot such that a player could if they looked for it, find interesting combinations of feats that lead to power looping TR's for example, which ofc needed to nerfed, but at least the complexity was there. I remember several years back when I was heavy into Magic the Gathering, the excitement I felt when I found an infinite Mana combo that allowed to infinitely cast all my spells and my turn to last forever until all opponents were utterly obliterated. I believe the combo was later banned in tournaments, but again, the complexity of MtG was teetering on that balance of complexity, the sweet spot.
As an aid in developing more structure into the game, you can use graph and category theory to, at a high level, analyze and visualize the complexity in the game, more structure (edges), more complexity.
3) Enchantment Exchange:
Again, we at least need an option to exchange our enchantments for AD like the Bondings, or for the exchange to give enchantments with the same bound status as the one we turned in. This is only fair.
Those are my 3 main concerns, thanks for reading,
peace out.
@noworries#8859 @cwhitesidedev#9752
> BIS? You mean for the AP gain? Definitely not for ranger. Perhaps for some classes though hmmm. This is an interesting idea actually. Yes all gear should be obtainable. I'm surprised they are no longer in the seals store.
Low item lvl means low base dmg, and yea primal shoos not will be bis becose of wat.
That person is saying since they can't use the extra item level to gain more HP/Damage they are taking off item level, and depending on what you take off can make stats you care about most go up. But that same thing will happen in any scaled or unscaled area.
What I would suggest is something like:
MIN(TIL, Cap) + [MAX(0, TIL - CAP) * MOD]
Basically:
if TIL > CAP; then Cap + ((TIL - CAP) * 0.1) else TILwhere MOD is something like 0.03, 0.05, 0.1, etc.
For example:
Say the current TIL cap is 20k and a player has 54k TIL, and the MOD is 0.1.
In the dungeon the player's item level would be scaled to: 23.4k
34k = MAX(0, 54k - 20k)
23.4k = 20k + [34k * 0.1]
It's not much better, but I think you can see my point, there will be benefit to being stronger and progressing, but not so much as to be totally unbalanced.
The MOD would have to be determined based on CAP because a very low Item Level dungeon would provide more benefit to being stronger. For example using the same numbers as above except in a 6k dungeon, the player would be scaled to 10.8k, which might be ok, but idk, that's subjective.
48k = MAX(0, 54k - 6k)
10.8k = 6k + [48k * 0.1]
@noworries#8859