To the administration of Neverwinter!

lobo · June 2021

Me and my friends started to play Neverwinter October, last year. And I have never seen a game that has so many major reworks in such a short time! We were still getting our equipment, when you changed itemization system! We just finished Sharandar campaign, and then you changed it completely and everything we did was for nothing! Now you want to rework entire game... And my only true question is: is it REALLY for the best of the players?
There is many bugs in the game, there is many items that don't work (like you can get Tesla, or painting of Mad Mage, but you can't put it in your Stronghold) and yet, you don't do anything about them for many years... But you rework everything else.
Me and my friends have one big problem with your voice communication system: we like to talk a lot to each other, but when we join a dungeon queue, everyone can hear us. Why? Many people have a problem with that, especially that we speak another language, they are rude to us and tell us to shut up, even though there is a big mute button, by every single one of us... We don't want to be heard by strangers, but still we want to be able to communicate, so maybe in this new patch you should consider better voice communication system? Like a special one for the guild or group of friends. That would be something that would keep us in this game, cause at this rate you gonna loose us and many other players, I'm afraid. Do something useful, do something for the people. Please.
And my question to some players who played this game longer than us is: was it always this crazy here with major changes happening few times a year??? Never seen anything like it...
Regards!

sagakaiyume · June 2021

Every few mods there has been game breaking changes, ones that remove a lot from people. Remove dungeons, remove skirmishes, remove the foundry, remove build diversity ect, ect. This is why the "vets" have gotten extremely tired of it, each time they devalue everything you've done and spent and bring you down to average, bring new players to average to make them spend, while not caring what players actually want.

For example, mod 16 I went from a noob that had nothing to a player that had over 10m in value over night because of the combat rework, while others who played many years went from being rich to having nothing of value since all that mattered was power now.

Mod 16/17 removed skirmishes from the game and they've kept promising to return them, someone recently mentioned mod 6 dungeons were removed and deleted and though they said it'd be reworked and brought back. Foundry got at mod 16 which the majority of the community took off.

Vouchers from jubilee were just removed now which was only reason people like myself were coming back.

Its nothing new with them.

sagakaiyume · June 2021

Oh, and they removed movement speed from enchants in mod 16 and its back now, on different runes of course.

armadeonx · June 2021

sagakaiyume#0847 said:
Oh, and they removed movement speed from enchants in mod 16 and its back now, on different runes of course.

They did what now..?

Movement speed has been returned but on (companion) runes..? Did they re-add any of the other secondary stats?

autumnwitch · June 2021

armadeonx said:

sagakaiyume#0847 said:
Oh, and they removed movement speed from enchants in mod 16 and its back now, on different runes of course.
They did what now..?

Movement speed has been returned but on (companion) runes..? Did they re-add any of the other secondary stats?

Movement will replace XP on enchants or any other item that gave XP as they are eliminating XP.

armadeonx · June 2021

autumnwitch said:

armadeonx said:

sagakaiyume#0847 said:
Oh, and they removed movement speed from enchants in mod 16 and its back now, on different runes of course.
They did what now..?

Movement speed has been returned but on (companion) runes..? Did they re-add any of the other secondary stats?
Movement will replace XP on enchants or any other item that gave XP as they are eliminating XP.

Ah ok thanks. Do you by any chance know if that includes the xp guild boon?

sagakaiyume · June 2021

Guild xp boon at max level will be 10% move speed. So something that changes your statistics that matter in combat, so now people will have to build that guild structure or risk losing many members.

rockster · June 2021

lobo#0863 said:
Me and my friends started to play Neverwinter October, last year. And I have never seen a game that has so many major reworks in such a short time! We were still getting our equipment, when you changed itemization system! We just finished Sharandar campaign, and then you changed it completely and everything we did was for nothing! Now you want to rework entire game... And my only true question is: is it REALLY for the best of the players?
There is many bugs in the game, there is many items that don't work (like you can get Tesla, or painting of Mad Mage, but you can't put it in your Stronghold) and yet, you don't do anything about them for many years... But you rework everything else.
Me and my friends have one big problem with your voice communication system: we like to talk a lot to each other, but when we join a dungeon queue, everyone can hear us. Why? Many people have a problem with that, especially that we speak another language, they are rude to us and tell us to shut up, even though there is a big mute button, by every single one of us... We don't want to be heard by strangers, but still we want to be able to communicate, so maybe in this new patch you should consider better voice communication system? Like a special one for the guild or group of friends. That would be something that would keep us in this game, cause at this rate you gonna loose us and many other players, I'm afraid. Do something useful, do something for the people. Please.
And my question to some players who played this game longer than us is: was it always this crazy here with major changes happening few times a year??? Never seen anything like it...
Regards!

It was never this bad, it's getting worse lately with more and more drastic changes to fundamentals happening closer together. If I remember right we had major changes which upset many players a couple of years apart, mod6 when it went from max level 60 up to 70 and I forget the other one, probably mod16 but don't quote me on it. Content has been deleted before this is not the first time, nor was Sharandar, there were various dungeons which people loved removed (Dread Vault was my favourite and it came back for the 'Tales of Old' event but shorter and changed as did a couple of others which had also been deleted - they used old content to make a new event, sound familiar? - Cryptic is a master at recycling, everything from skins, to particle effects, to textures to content), also the foundry was deleted which was a place where players would create their own Neverwinter maps and adventures in an editor and put them in the game for other players to run and you used to get AD for doing one every day picked from a noticeboard where the stables are located now. It was something which set apart Neverwinter from other games and gave it a good selling point and yea, deleted. There was also a regular event called Gauntlgrym which ran I think it was every 2 or 3 hours on one huge permanent map, the entry part of the map was permanently accessible all day and you would just go there close to the time, if I remember right it started on the hour and when it did the gate would open to allow access to the rest of the massive map and off you would all go. In those days there were no strongholds and the only reason to be in a guild was to be in a faction, either the Luskan Corsairs or the Delzoun Explorers, all guilds had to align with one of those groups. Each team would be in their own instance of the map and you would have to run around collecting items and killing things in stages, there were indicators on your screen as to how well each team was doing and it was very competitive and a lot of fun. At the end of the event there were two dungeons open, one had the best gear in the game at the time, the other dungeon was still good gear but lesser, the team who won the event got to enter the best dungeon and the lesser one as well, the team who lost only got the lesser of the two. Luskans used to win most of the time. It took place every day multiple times a day for anyone who felt like doing it, and yea, that all got deleted. ( I found this really in-depth guide on it just before in case you're interested in having a read of what it was like and what it entailed. https://neverwinter.fandom.com/wiki/Gauntlgrym )

But I remember when it all started... Right next to the Wondrous Bazaar is an NPC called Rhix. He does nothing now, when you click him he just shows some info and nothing else. But that is where you used to get your daily AD quests from. All you had to do was go up to him every day and speak to him and accept the dailies. That's why he says "there are things to be done", because he was giving you things to do. But then one day they announced that they were getting rid of Rhix because apparently some players were forgetting to go to him and pick up the quests manually and 'missing out' on their daily AD. They thought it was unfair on players (!?!). So they thought it was a splendid idea to automate the daily AD system and remove Rhix from the game. I thought at the time it was really stupid that just because some players weren't playing the game properly and too lazy to remember to go to see him, other players were losing something which worked fine and was a regular part of their day. And so began the process of Cryptic trying to micromanage how players played the game by making changes designed to force players in a certain direction and this is what they have done ever since. Rhix was the first change of many to come just to push players in this or that direction when they were happy already. But it was more sporadic in the past with major changes and 're-works' (cough - butchering - cough) happening less often. Now it's happening so fast I can't keep up.

And yes, that we have things like the statue of halaster sitting there and unable to use it is extremely frustrating considering it would take minimal time to just make the effing slot for it. Every time I do LoMM and see the statue there and run right past it it makes me feel sad when I should be feeling happy at doing the run, but I'm thinking of that statue I have in my bank which I can't use and which I paid a lot for and really wanted to put in my stronghold and still have the space empty for it. There are too many old outstanding things which just never get fixed because they apparently are too busy to do them, but they do apparently have enough time to endlessly change the way the game functions.

callumf · June 2021

Agree.

I have played many many MMOs over the last 20+ years.

Never have I witnessed such incompetence, stupidity, arrogance and downright ugly changes to a game so often.

To call them "mistakes" is too easy - feedback was given about all the changes, yet they steam-rollered them through regardless.

Tbh I'm only here for the lolz these days, one day I hope to do be bothered to play more content, but at the moment its RTQ only, occasional RSQ or REDQ. But other than that, nothing is fun here other than the players.

hotfrostworm · June 2021

My wife played this game far too much, just my opinion. I use this game as a litmus test for Linux OS. If this game runs, I am fairly sure everything else will.

My wife started playing Neverwinter nonstop 8 years ago. Then about 2 years ago, she went into a severe depression over the loss of a key feature used in this game. She has been coping with mental stress, anxiety, and depression. At first the game seemed to help, but the last 2 years it has been a real disappointment. I recently got her 2 new games, Assassin Creed: Odyssey and Black Desert, and she is focused more on those for now. She is still planning an event here this October, but she seems less than enthusiastic about it.

I would say there has been a lot more change in the last 2 years here than ever before. While bugs and glitches are inevitable in all software, I have no opinion about the changes or how they concern the future for more changes. I strongly recommend playing something you enjoy and avoiding games that cause you stress.

greywynd · June 2021

I've got 2 weeks left on my VIP. Not seeing anything currently in the game or forthcoming that inspires me to put any more money into this mess.

Existing issues don't get fixed and get compounded by what is, imho, bad decisions about the game and its direction.

pspoon · June 2021

I started playing in February, dumped a bunch of money into the game, mostly for convenience, a couple race packs, VIP and a couple account bound mounts. All good and set to grind out what I need, finished grinding out the Mirage weapons about a week ago and bam! nerfed. They are still pretty good, but the grind was obscene and doing the same thing over and over and over and over again. Trying to get my main over 40K IL and I realize that I have to do that through insignias, and mount collars which are probably the worst most grindy thing I have ever seen in an MMO, of course I could buy them with Zen or spend years making AD and get them on the AH.... Sharandar is all grind, for really poor rewards. It seems like the focus of the developers is developing Zen store sales, not fun content, not new items, not fixing serious issues. Getting to 25K IL is pretty easy, but once you hit around 32K you hit a major wall that pushed Zen store sales to climb....

rockster · June 2021

greywynd said:
I've got 2 weeks left on my VIP. Not seeing anything currently in the game or forthcoming that inspires me to put any more money into this mess.

Existing issues don't get fixed and get compounded by what is, imho, bad decisions about the game and its direction.

I used to see players frequently using portable travel gates, everywhere I looked, haven't seen much of that lately, I think only once in the last week and that tells me all I need to know about VIP engagement atm. Also I can't recall seeing 'the power of VIP' icon in the pug groups I do anymore either. At all. Decisions like they are making now and butchering our game and characters is why I stopped doing VIP myself quite a while back. I'm always happy to spend on games as a way to show support for that game and used to do this for Neverwinter, I must have spent a few thousand over the years at least on this and that, but at some point I just felt like it was some kind of tormented abusive relationship between me and the game where I was paying money to it and it was punishing me for it by repeatedly wrecking my character and saying here's a free respec token aren't we generous for not making you pay for one. I mean who is an@l enough to write down all their boons and feat point choices on the feat tree each time they put a new point on over a long period of time, you do it (at least I did) intuitively at that moment and your character is built into a unique thing organically which ends up sort of like a car you are so used to driving around and know all the little quirks of it and are really happy with how it turned out, but FFS they suddenly reset the whole thing with no notice and say here's a token aren't we nice to you and you have a blank character you have to allocate everything back to again and have no idea where all the points are supposed to go to make it exactly the same and you know no matter how hard you try to do it, it will always feel off and not be the same. Some things are now slightly more powered, others feel less, purely because the point allocation is now off and you don't know how to put it back.

This happened too many times for me to handle. I was not logging in to feel violated and angry, I was supposed to be enjoying myself. I left and vowed never to come back I think it was the third time I had left but once again I missed it too much and finally admitted to myself I was kidding myself that I could stay away, I love it there too much, it's been almost 8 years now. I'm used to the place. Well what's left of it. So I made a decision. I decided I would come back and just play for free and build using what the game enabled me to earn by playing it, on a totally fresh character. I am not a m@sochist who likes to be constantly cr@pped on and also pay regularly for the privilege of having it happen, so I now just go in for fun and play for free and treat it completely differently with a fresh perspective. I did relent recently and bought 20 bucks of zen a couple of times, but it was because I couldn't be ars3d waiting to refine the several million raw I have sitting there from grinding and I was in one of those moods where I wanted something there and then but that doesn't mean I'm going to keep spending, despite those two small purchases I am still sticking to my decision not to spend to progress or participate in things like lockboxes and VIP. This latest ripping apart of the game and moving the goalposts once again only confirms to me I made the right decision. If you have no confidence that what you're investing money in is going to be there for very long, you should just stop investing.

jules · June 2021

lobo#0863 said:
And I have never seen a game that has so many major reworks in such a short time!!

Same. I got here somewhere around Chult and it was all fine until M14 huntgate. Ah if only the new people could've seen that time.

What you can do, is consider if this is really worth your time

greywynd · June 2021

hitchslapped said:
the reworks aren't for the sake of the players, and they never have been. some of the removed content was removed because the devs were being pushed to do things with the game that neither they nor the players wanted, so the devs.... left, and had to be replaced with new devs that didn't know the codebase, which led to inability to maintain, which led to removal, eventually that all led to the reworks - to replace code people didn't know properly, with code they did, which were used as excuses to do other things, some of which were good, most of which were not.

don't expect a voice-comms rework. it isn't going to happen unless they can figure out how to monetise it. if you want comms for just you and your mates...honestly, just use discord, or teamspeak/ventrilo/mumble or somesuch.

on the subject of movement speed..... remember how it wasn't that long ago that they were telling us they *couldn't bring it back because it was too much for consoles to handle without major performance impact* ?

I remember doing coding in high school and college. The one rule we had to abide by was that everything gets documented regardless of the language used, so that people coming after you can go through it if they need to, at the very least to understand what and how you did it, and so that they can change what needs to be changed if necessary.

I guess the gaming industry doesn't follow such logical processes.

rockster · June 2021

I get the feeling that at least some of it is also people just justifying their jobs and inventing unnecessary new things to do to keep themselves needed and employed longer and maybe a bit of ego thrown in as well trying to put their own mark on something by changing it just for the sake of it. It kind of reminds me of someone who's an artist working in an art gallery, seeing a Rembrandt and thinking it looks out of date and needs freshening-up to be more modern and won't I look talented when I do it. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's cr@p or needs changing. Art is art and once done should not really be changed if for nothing else than respect for the artist who made it. No-one cares if it's old and hasn't changed, if it gorgeous it's gorgeous and always will be and new people will still marvel at it the same way as did the original people. No changes needed. I remember a fair while back they announced proudly that they were re-doing all the lighting effects in existing places, and when I went through one of them (Tower of Celadine I think it was) some of it made no sense anymore. It looked lovely but the lights weren't coming from any real source if you took notice. I was in the undercity the other day in Omu and went through this small room section on the way to somewhere else and it was all golden and glowy on the walls like light was streaming in from somewhere, but when you looked around there was just flat walls and a flat ceiling no holes or any way light could come from anything, not even a lamp. Just lights looking like they were streaming into the space from outside with no way for them to do that. Sometimes newer is not better and people re-working existing assets aren't actually as talented as they think they are.

shugensha · June 2021

Dear Lobo, is what they say.
Changes happens A LOT in here. One day you are progressing like a boss, and the next one they change something and either take you back or make you improve (improves usually comes for new player).
The game has it charms, charms that i can't find in other mmos and that's why i always get back to this game.
It's really sad that you and your friends joined in a bad moment and had the really bad luck of running with toxic players.. But hey, if there are toxics, there are also friendly ones.
About the voice chat, i would recomend you download discord. Not only to avoid xenophobic ppl, but cuz if you and your friends plan on joining a guild, there are high chances they will ask you to have a discord account.

Just remember, the game is always changing every 2-3 months (for who knows how long).

anjicat · June 2021

lobo#0863 said:

Me and my friends have one big problem with your voice communication system: we like to talk a lot to each other, but when we join a dungeon queue, everyone can hear us. Why? Many people have a problem with that, especially that we speak another language, they are rude to us and tell us to shut up, even though there is a big mute button, by every single one of us... We don't want to be heard by strangers, but still we want to be able to communicate, so maybe in this new patch you should consider better voice communication system? Like a special one for the guild or group of friends. That would be something that would keep us in this game, cause at this rate you gonna loose us and many other players, I'm afraid. Do something useful, do something for the people. Please!

Many people use Discord for their voice chat, an easy to find app designed for gamers. I use on both my pc and phone, my guild and my alliance have servers there for members to use. It's easy, versatile, private and Free. You can also use it while not in game to socialise and share info

lobo · July 2021

We have discord, but it lags the game more, cause some of us have older computers and laptops, so we stick to in game voice communication system.
Pity that they removed map editor (foundry), that was one of the things we wanted to test this game for and we were wondering where it is

It seems like they are taking all the fun out of the game, just to make more money...
Sad.

johnkeats888 · July 2021

Hello, I am a new player. Does the new campaign Sharandor saves my games automatically in the cloud? As I have few NW files installed, so I figured the save games are online. Thanks.

kreatyve · July 2021

johnkeats888#2147 said:
Hello, I am a new player. Does the new campaign Sharandor saves my games automatically in the cloud? As I have few NW files installed, so I figured the save games are online. Thanks.

MMOs save player information on their end, not the clients end.

rockster · July 2021

johnkeats888#2147 said:
Hello, I am a new player. Does the new campaign Sharandor saves my games automatically in the cloud? As I have few NW files installed, so I figured the save games are online. Thanks.

You can completely delete the Neverwinter folder/game and re-install later it if you want to, your character(s) all their belongings and all their progress are still all there on the server. You computer has files to run the game but your game progress is stored elsewhere. It is all still there waiting for you even if you decide to delete the game from your computer and put it back later.

lantern22 · July 2021

greywynd said:
I've got 2 weeks left on my VIP. Not seeing anything currently in the game or forthcoming that inspires me to put any more money into this mess.

Existing issues don't get fixed and get compounded by what is, imho, bad decisions about the game and its direction.

This pretty much sums me up as well and also sums up probably 60-80% of the veteran players in our guild. I am intending to log back in and check out the next Mod with the bard but tbh I'm not expecting the game experience of mindless boring grind grind grind to change. After playing this game exclusively for 7-8 years, I think deep down I know that it is now dead to me

Wonder when I'll stop coming in here and posting on the forums ??? a bit weird really - posting in a game forum for a game I no longer play ;/

rockster#6227 said:

johnkeats888#2147 said:
Hello, I am a new player. Does the new campaign Sharandor saves my games automatically in the cloud? As I have few NW files installed, so I figured the save games are online. Thanks.
You can completely delete the Neverwinter folder/game and re-install later it if you want to, your character(s) all their belongings and all their progress are still all there on the server. You computer has files to run the game but your game progress is stored elsewhere. It is all still there waiting for you even if you decide to delete the game from your computer and put it back later.

Good, Because I am starting to need some space on my SSD for other games and once VIP runs out I think this game is getting wiped until the next Mod.

mentinmindmaker · July 2021

lobo#0863 said:

It seems like they are taking all the fun out of the game, just to make more money...
Sad.

I think the actual problem is that the income from Neverwinter has shrunk a lot, leading to an ever decreasing staff and limited ability to maintain all kinds of functionality.

So the Foundry had to go, the Gateway had to go, they reduced the number of overland zones with mod 21, maybe PvP is the next thing to go.

Neverwinter IS a business. Their expenses need to be balanced with their income, and some expenses like network bandwidth , servers, operations staff cannot be reduced. So basically as game income goes down, developers are laid off, game becomes less dynamic and more buggy, leading to more players leaving and even less income. It is an evil circle towards the end.

tag · July 2021

Will favor ever be fixed so the entire hunt group gets favor again?

greywynd · July 2021

tag#9755 said:
Will favor ever be fixed so the entire hunt group gets favor again?

Just assume that any bugs fall under the umbrella "old code" which the current devs can't fix.

blargskull · July 2021

lobo#0863 said:
Me and my friends started to play Neverwinter October, last year. And I have never seen a game that has so many major reworks in such a short time! We were still getting our equipment, when you changed itemization system! We just finished Sharandar campaign, and then you changed it completely and everything we did was for nothing! Now you want to rework entire game... And my only true question is: is it REALLY for the best of the players?

Friends? Who needs them? This is an action MMO! Friends are here today and gone tomorrow. Socialize in Protector's Enclave with hundreds of faceless people who will sway the conversation into politics, religion, and other agenda's... I miss the flat Earthers. Is this best for the players? No. Since when has ANY game company cared deeply about the players? Most of them remind me of the credit card commercial asking me, What's in your wallet?

lobo#0863 said:
There is many bugs in the game, there is many items that don't work (like you can get Tesla, or painting of Mad Mage, but you can't put it in your Stronghold) and yet, you don't do anything about them for many years... But you rework everything else.

This is very typical, I have been playing Champions forever, but I joined Neverwinter during module 5, then they released module 6 that shutdown all the dungeons. Module 6 was full of glitches, nobody wanted to play. They introduced the new class oathbound paladins and it was seriously over powered. How OP was the OP? You could beat PvP all the time. They ignored it far too long, players owning it got use to it being OP and complained when they nerfed it. Balance, PvP, glitches, and the economy all has been broken, since before my arrival. Players have begged the developers to STOP making mods and just FIX what is broken. Theory is they can't fix the broken game, they need to invest into a new game engine, but we all know that is not going to happen.

lobo#0863 said:
Me and my friends have one big problem with your voice communication system: we like to talk a lot to each other, but when we join a dungeon queue, everyone can hear us. Why? Many people have a problem with that, especially that we speak another language, they are rude to us and tell us to shut up, even though there is a big mute button, by every single one of us... We don't want to be heard by strangers, but still we want to be able to communicate, so maybe in this new patch you should consider better voice communication system? Like a special one for the guild or group of friends. That would be something that would keep us in this game, cause at this rate you gonna loose us and many other players, I'm afraid. Do something useful, do something for the people. Please.
And my question to some players who played this game longer than us is: was it always this crazy here with major changes happening few times a year??? Never seen anything like it...
Regards!

Yes, people in these games are generally rude to non English speakers. Be rude back, tell them where to get off, and they might think you are Americans. Other than that I tend to use Discord app a lot and I mute people with the buttons. Sometimes they will be screaming at their kids and not even realize the mic is open. In those rare cases, I listen for the gunshots.

theelusiveone · July 2021

tag#9755 said:
Will favor ever be fixed so the entire hunt group gets favor again?

Patch notes for today suggests it has been fixed:
"Avernus Hunts once again properly drop Zariel’s Favor."

Will wait for player confirmation, before cheering.

trillbuffet · July 2021

After the unfortunate changes with GW2 I had hoped this game would be doing okay but I logged in after 7 years and it just looked so depressing. I'm just figuring the only thing that keeps it going right now are the console players because I don't even think there were enough people online in the PC server to even make a full team.

To the administration of Neverwinter!

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