Chris Whiteside?

groo · May 2021

I realise this may be the elephant in the room for this forum, but I've caught the odd rumour here and there that Chris is either no longer working on Neverwinter or at Cryptic. I wondered if there is any official word from Cryptic or Chris on the subject?

Please note: This post isn't about spreading rumour of speculating on reasons why. I am only interested if there is any official word one way or the other.

Apologies if this is has already been asked and answered.

wilbur626 · May 2021

According to his Linkedin profile his last day as an employee at Cryptic Studios was April 30. He is currently a Director at Tencent.

groo · May 2021

Ah, ok thanks. Sad things didn't work out. I'm guessing if Cryptic hasn't formally given an announcement, we don't know who has or will take his place yet?

darthpotater · May 2021

I dont know his reasons, but he started very passionate and active with the community, streams, etc. and that was remarkable IMO. I will miss him.

The sad thing is that this game is eating directors like potatoes, and that is very bad for the game, not having a clear route or ideas.

greywynd · May 2021

Not to mention, bad ideas and bad implementations.

groo · May 2021

darthpotater said:
I dont know his reasons, but he started very passionate and active with the community, streams, etc. and that was remarkable IMO. I will miss him.

The sad thing is that this game is eating directors like potatoes, and that is very bad for the game, not having a clear route or ideas.

I assume it is a difficult position for director to take on. At the end of the day, this is essentially an old game and with other projects taking a precedence and squeezing resources, I can't see it likely that Neverwinter will ever receive the love and attention that the player base would like. That doesn't mean I think Neverwinter is dying or is any less fun to play than it ever was. Only that I think player expectation will always be higher than can realistically be achieved where things are now, whether that be with introducing new innovative content or even simply fixing long term outstanding bugs.

Having said that, D&D is good brand to have on your side, so I can't see Cryptic or Perfect World wanting to give that up easily, hence, I don't think Neverwinter is going to go away for a while yet.

To be fair though, the issues facing Neverwinter seem to be common throughout the MMO genre. A company comes up with an idea for a new game. A lot of focus and resource goes into creating that first release (which is essentially the levelling experience). Of course, you want to pace the levelling experience to appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers and also, you have a road map for updates that you want to be available to everyone as and when they are available (to allow the marketing team to go to work). That basically means a levelling experience that is not just engaging but also, is not to long or difficult to work through (to give the player the feeling of being successful and invested in the game). The downside is that you end up with your player base very quickly at end game with nothing more to do. In an attempt to keep players on board, you commit to short term releases, but that means not having the time to produce anything as broad and engaging as the initial release. Plus, players are all now max level, and as a lot of the initial engagement revolved around that feeling of progression, how do you follow that up in any kind of meaningful and acheivable way? As we see with pretty much all MMO's, the current solution is the dreaded end game grind. Using mindless repetition to give players something to do in a relatively small zone with rewards that buy minimal benefits, but that keeps things ticking over until the next update. To me, that is not a fault of Neverwinter, but of an industry that is mainly money focused and doesn't think outside of the box (if it works, why change it?).

Sorry, gone off topic a little there.

armadeonx · May 2021

All I know for sure about his time at Cryptic was that he made a lot of promises and none of them bore fruit. I've heard that it was a similar story at Arenanet.

groo · May 2021

armadeonx said:
All I know for sure about his time at Cryptic was that he made a lot of promises and none of them bore fruit. I've heard that it was a similar story at Arenanet.

Yes, I remember his first stream. I guess we'll never know if those were just bold aspirations or if he was held back due to internal company limitations. Hopefully both sides (Chris and Cryptic) have learned lessons going forwards.

nooneatza · May 2021

He already ruined two games i was playing (gw2 and nw) with his living worlds and "good premium store deals" ideas. The sad thing is that people like him keep failing upwards for some reason.

hotfrostworm · May 2021

nooneatza said:
He already ruined two games i was playing (gw2 and nw) with his living worlds and "good premium store deals" ideas. The sad thing is that people like him keep failing upwards for some reason.

It is called a "springboard position", Scott Shicoff was in charge of NW module 6 bounced up to Blizzard. This is on his resume at his personal webpage so it is not a rumor, it is a fact made public by Scott. He states that he was Lead Game Designer (Neverwinter, all platforms), from March 2015 - July 2016.

The thing these guys know about companies, they toss resumes and headhunters will not come read forums or check much about their background other than they use to work here. Chris bounced up even higher grabbing the rung on that ladder to Tencent, possibly the largest Chinese conglomerate holding company in the world today. Tencent has their fingers in everyone's pie. They own Riot Games here in the US and large shares in Epic Games, Ubisoft, Blizzard, and Discord. When he got the job offer, I imagine he hit the James Bond ejector chair to blast off to his new gig.

These people come and go, it is an ethereal thing, of course the game will continue. I don't know, if he had help on the inside to get him posted to NW, doesn't matter, they start the fires and it is up to those left behind to put the fire out. I send my best wishes and condolence to those who have to clean up after. Meanwhile the scramble is on to find another person to catapult himself to fame at the cost of your enjoyment.

kemnimtarkas · May 2021

Whatever happened to the last guy - the one who preceded CW?

Also, if CW is gone does that mean the roadmap I snipped last August is toast too?

greywynd · May 2021

Foss was before Whiteside. I heard he had moved over to Magic Legends.

pitshade · May 2021

Foss was lead designer and Whiteside was Executive Producer. IIRC the previous Executive Producer was Gordon Fong who never took a public role. Whiteside was apparently hired to change the direction of the game but he didn't replace Foss. The person in that position is the person that did the recent interview about mod 20 episode 2 with the 'fun' heroic encounters line.

blargskull · May 2021

kemnimtarkas said:
Whatever happened to the last guy - the one who preceded CW?

Also, if CW is gone does that mean the roadmap I snipped last August is toast too?

The "last guy(s)" are still working at Cryptic, they are just not working on Neverwinter. The professionals all moved to the new Magic: Legends project due to be released this summer.

Chris Whiteside left Cryptic and hitched a ride up to Tencent. Tencent owns a lot of companies. You can look that information up yourself. Chris won't be suffering working for them. Meanwhile, the roadmap will stay the course, there might be some production delays.

Someone more paranoid than myself, might think this was a plan to make the game less desirable, for vast amounts of players to shift into the new game later this summer. I am not that paranoid. Meanwhile I openly invite everyone to join me in Champions Online the other Cryptic Studios game with true flight, lairs, vehicles, magic, and science. We are a small population but we manage to have fun with our content.

empalas · May 2021

pitshade said:
Foss was lead designer and Whiteside was Executive Producer. IIRC the previous Executive Producer was Gordon Fong who never took a public role. Whiteside was apparently hired to change the direction of the game but he didn't replace Foss. The person in that position is the person that did the recent interview about mod 20 episode 2 with the 'fun' heroic encounters line.

Glad to know that persons word seems to be worthless(ie. Seals of The Wild not given with new HEs). Gives you all the warm and fuzzies.

greywynd · May 2021

blargskull said:

The "last guy(s)" are still working at Cryptic, they are just not working on Neverwinter. The professionals all moved to the new Magic: Legends project due to be released this summer.

Chris Whiteside left Cryptic and hitched a ride up to Tencent. Tencent owns a lot of companies. You can look that information up yourself. Chris won't be suffering working for them. Meanwhile, the roadmap will stay the course, there might be some production delays.

Someone more paranoid than myself, might think this was a plan to make the game less desirable, for vast amounts of players to shift into the new game later this summer. I am not that paranoid. Meanwhile I openly invite everyone to join me in Champions Online the other Cryptic Studios game with true flight, lairs, vehicles, magic, and science. We are a small population but we manage to have fun with our content.

I started with Champions. The game has changed too much for me from when it started.

Unknown · May 2021

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Unknown · May 2021

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micky1p00 · May 2021

armadeonx said:
All I know for sure about his time at Cryptic was that he made a lot of promises and none of them bore fruit. I've heard that it was a similar story at Arenanet.

When he arrived with the CDP, I went to GW forums and read a lot of their CDI. Their CDI about CDI was almost word for word the same as our CDP about CDP, just 7 years prior. It was very informative to see how not a single conclusion was made from identical process 7 years ago.

A lot of buzz words, and just worse economy at the end of it. Less content per year. And IMO worse content.

Oh and now we have a positive spin on the same content removal that was done at m6, 16, etc.. Now it's just called "Living worlds" and now it's a good thing....

The public roadmap idea is nice, if only it was updated..

adinosii · May 2021

After the CDP fiasco and the following post...

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:
FYI I am carving out time next week to finish the QOL CDP and start a new one.

Sorry for the delay.

Chris

...followed by no action, messages or anything, I totally, completely lost any respect for him. Quite frankly, I am glad he is gone, and I hope they really scrap his "vision" for where the game should go.

hotfrostworm · May 2021

adinosii said:
After the CDP fiasco and the following post...

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:
FYI I am carving out time next week to finish the QOL CDP and start a new one.

Sorry for the delay.

Chris
...followed by no action, messages or anything, I totally, completely lost any respect for him. Quite frankly, I am glad he is gone, and I hope they really scrap his "vision" for where the game should go.

Unfortunately at this point, the best you could expect is a last minute rework. The rework may prove more disastrous than allowing part 3 and module 21 to proceed as planned. I can only imagine, they are discussing what should be done for those two aspects. Also they must have their hands full planning module 22 at this time as well. As anyone can tell by the old roadmap they plan this game out over the course of a fiscal year.

I have been in the mix of enough corporate drama to know, no one from Cryptic Studios will comment publicly here, unless they plan to follow Chris to Tencent. Since Chris Whiteside is now a director there, maybe I should hit him up for a position?

mentinmindmaker · May 2021

hotfrostworm said:

adinosii said:
After the CDP fiasco and the following post...

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:
FYI I am carving out time next week to finish the QOL CDP and start a new one.

Sorry for the delay.

Chris
...followed by no action, messages or anything, I totally, completely lost any respect for him. Quite frankly, I am glad he is gone, and I hope they really scrap his "vision" for where the game should go.
Unfortunately at this point, the best you could expect is a last minute rework. The rework may prove more disastrous than allowing part 3 and module 21 to proceed as planned. I can only imagine, they are discussing what should be done for those two aspects. Also they must have their hands full planning module 22 at this time as well. As anyone can tell by the old roadmap they plan this game out over the course of a fiscal year.

I have been in the mix of enough corporate drama to know, no one from Cryptic Studios will comment publicly here, unless they plan to follow Chris to Tencent. Since Chris Whiteside is now a director there, maybe I should hit him up for a position?

They will not do any dramatic changes between mods.

And the Combat Rework system is working very well from the point of the newcomer, the path to be fully competitive is very short. It sucks for the veterans, there is very little point to be a veteran in NW now: there is no rewarding progression once you have crossed 30k IL or so.

Most likely that is what Cryptic wants. Probably not that much money to make off the veterans, the money comes from the constant rotation of new people through game.

callumf · May 2021

mentinmindmaker said:

hotfrostworm said:

adinosii said:
After the CDP fiasco and the following post...

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:
FYI I am carving out time next week to finish the QOL CDP and start a new one.

Sorry for the delay.

Chris
...followed by no action, messages or anything, I totally, completely lost any respect for him. Quite frankly, I am glad he is gone, and I hope they really scrap his "vision" for where the game should go.
Unfortunately at this point, the best you could expect is a last minute rework. The rework may prove more disastrous than allowing part 3 and module 21 to proceed as planned. I can only imagine, they are discussing what should be done for those two aspects. Also they must have their hands full planning module 22 at this time as well. As anyone can tell by the old roadmap they plan this game out over the course of a fiscal year.

I have been in the mix of enough corporate drama to know, no one from Cryptic Studios will comment publicly here, unless they plan to follow Chris to Tencent. Since Chris Whiteside is now a director there, maybe I should hit him up for a position?
They will not do any dramatic changes between mods.

And the Combat Rework system is working very well from the point of the newcomer, the path to be fully competitive is very short. It sucks for the veterans, there is very little point to be a veteran in NW now: there is no rewarding progression once you have crossed 30k IL or so.

Most likely that is what Cryptic wants. Probably not that much money to make off the veterans, the money comes from the constant rotation of new people through game.

Very interesting point there about where the money comes from, coupled with the fact that a newcomer can become "fully competitive" very quickly, negating the need for grind and further progression [and spending cash].

My guess is that [lets say] 50% of their income comes from VIP and 50% from random purchases.

How many Veterans pay for VIP? How many newcomers would invest in VIP?

How many Veterans buy random stuff? How many newcomers buy random stuff?

I guess that maybe the money is flowing in more these days?

blargskull · May 2021

If PWE doesn't track the Zen sales and all they care about is collecting, Cryptic Studios has nothing to care about from cash flow in this one game or the next. I am certain the plan is to jumpstart the new game to create another Zen conduit at some time this summer. Cryptic Studios has 3 games bringing cash into PWE about to be four.

When you are the drug dealer taking the bag of cash back to your distributor, I doubt they ask you about who paid you the most. All they care about is the weight of the bag.

hadestemplar · May 2021

mentinmindmaker said:
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They will not do any dramatic changes between mods.

And the Combat Rework system is working very well from the point of the newcomer, the path to be fully competitive is very short. It sucks for the veterans, there is very little point to be a veteran in NW now: there is no rewarding progression once you have crossed 30k IL or so.

Most likely that is what Cryptic wants. Probably not that much money to make off the veterans, the money comes from the constant rotation of new people through game.

Here is thing what most Veteran NWO players missunderstand.

First of all Neverwinter online is action combat mmorpg game, a theme park which based by D&D lore.

The reason why we have new players increase is rather simple. Latest( current) combat brough back Action based gameplay back to Neverwinter. The gameplay which where missed since mod 7.

If you played game like Guild wars 2, you have very little problems to adapt to Neverwinter. Same can be said about Tera online. Cuz most action based mmorpg games have very similar gameplay.

If you played arcade games like Prince of persia line, or Chaos Legion or Devils may cry.. You will have no issues with mmo games like Black Desert or Vindictus..

So combat changes brough NWO closer that what other mmo where using too. So more players are willing to try out new game, in this case Neverwinter.. But, while combat in better shape, it's still need lot of polishing..
But thats not what is biggest problem. The problem is what Neverwinter is actually missing, and it is MMO elements.

Any mmo game up to day stand on 3 founding pillars. And this apply to all mmo games, mmorpg, mmofps, mmoRTS, MOBA.

1) Cooperation - teaming up for x content, either it's party, guild or alliance. Which require multiple players combined efforts to complete task or clear dungeon or defeat x enemy or enemies.

2) Compettition - Pvp is one of forms, but there are others.. First boss kill, speed runs, highest x stuffs gathering, deathless content runs for x rouns and so one..
The drive to outplay others create content itself.

3) Community and market - Friends, guild/allaince/faction members, enemies from different guild/alliance or factions, even market itself, trading and etc it's part of game.. This is what others call Social Elements..

This is very core, the center what makes games mmo.. Players log in game to spend time with friends, either together participate in massive pvp, or large sacle pve, or do fight against other players in arena(Moba) or explorer unknown areas in the games( Elite Dangerous) Or simply together build massive space empire( EVE online) and list keep going.

Without these 3 pillars you can't have mmo. And what the point to play Single player Online?? It make no sense.
So storylines and campaings are nice, but there are way better offline games in market. Which offer way better visuals, better story lines and also you can play when you want. You are not required be log in x server whos issues cause your game crash or lag.

So only way to keep Neverwinter worth to play is add more mmo stuffs..

Unknown · May 2021

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rheylinsark · May 2021

I have no way of confirming, but two long-time NW streamers reported yesterday that dev Astradahl is also gone.

It would be nice to know who is running this ship and where they are steering it, other than dropping $140 packs into the Zen store.

hadestemplar · May 2021

lordmanshoon said:
let's face it, Chris was only hired to implement game changes higher ups wanted. the fall guy, the scapegoat, the patsy

Higher ups always want improvement in $$$$$ gains. No need genius to unerstand that..

But there is problem with it.. You can do in two ways..

1) Fast $$$$ milking, but in the end sinking game to point no one want to play.
2) Making game more interesting, and gaining $$$$ more yet in slower speed..

You can make money only when game is in healthy shape..

rheylinsark#1888 said:
I have no way of confirming, but two long-time NW streamers reported yesterday that dev Astradahl is also gone.

It would be nice to know who is running this ship and where they are steering it, other than dropping $140 packs into the Zen store.

Well thats a very big loose, to put in comparison, Astradahl loose is like 200x time greater than CW.

micky1p00 · May 2021

It's very easy to confirm, and he left a month before Chris.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/designerdougm/

hadestemplar · May 2021

I have bad feeling that there are more who went in same path as asterdahl..

Even if game will not get closed, obviously it will cause big delays.

kreatyve · May 2021

hadestemplar#9918 said:
I have bad feeling that there are more who went in same path as asterdahl..

Even if game will not get closed, obviously it will cause big delays.

I'm fairly certain (though have not gotten official confirmation) that they were able to backfill those positions internally. Their careers page only has 1 position listed for Neverwinter currently, and 1 for the core team, both for engineers.

Chris Whiteside?

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