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I need to ask, why do they make these changes that make players feel worse?
aljaz18
Member Posts: 2 Arc User
I really don't get it.. i just came back to the game, i haven't played since mod16, i left because i didn't like any of the changes. I've been playing for about a month now and it seems just as i was about to figure things out, it'll all go to nothing again. I really have never understood unnecessary changes like:
- Caping a certain stat to 50% , i would rather let player express his own individual playstyle, if they want to go crit/power/lifesteal(rip)/recovery(RIP) then they are free to do so. If someone wants to focus on certain stat example defense, why would discouraging them by putting up a limit do any good? If they feed all ''resources'' into defense they're gonna lose on other important ratings like deflection, max hp, critical avoidance, so there's something for player to learn from, you don't need to micro manage their choice by those caps saying that i do understand cap on 90%... but why can't a paladin for example go for higher crit chance if they want's to do so for their build used for solo content, it just doesn't make sense to me....
- Combined rating, I don't want my stats go to random ratings, i want to be the one to decide what stat i want to build whether it be power/def/crit/deflection... This is basicaly mutilating player's choice to develop or express a sense of their own unique playstyle... how is this any good?
BTW i need to say that i'm not hating here, i would not be posting this if i wouldn't have love for the game despite these IMHO closed minded changes. What i'm asking is for someone to enlighten me, point out that i'm missing on how any of these changes are improvement in any way.
- Removing stats : recovery, lifesteal This one goes way back but still i'd like to understand, why is removing players choice to have self sustain ( lifesteal) or build on recovery ( to use encounter powers more often) a good thing? I do remember the point of how players were either full health or died instantly... So you have to remove stat? can't you just nerf the vaule of it? Cause they did make a valid point healers weren't actually healers atleast not most of the time.. They were buffers, and that's absolutely a good point, healing is now appreciated and again it would be appreciated still if lifesteal was just nerfed, not removed...
- Removing power points , again i'm aware that most of these changes were long ago but i never expressed my opinion and i'd really like to do it now so, yeah why is that good? I'd like my Icy Terrain to be superior power over Repel for example and it gives me great satisfaction to put that fourth point on powers i love when i reach max level, it was another thing to look forward to at max level.. now this satisfaction is gone.
There are a lot of other smaller changes that make me see this void, like Neverwinter is having better qualities of it taken away not added and improved... I know many other players have similar opinions and i do wonder if their voices ever got heard though i doubt it.
- Caping a certain stat to 50% , i would rather let player express his own individual playstyle, if they want to go crit/power/lifesteal(rip)/recovery(RIP) then they are free to do so. If someone wants to focus on certain stat example defense, why would discouraging them by putting up a limit do any good? If they feed all ''resources'' into defense they're gonna lose on other important ratings like deflection, max hp, critical avoidance, so there's something for player to learn from, you don't need to micro manage their choice by those caps saying that i do understand cap on 90%... but why can't a paladin for example go for higher crit chance if they want's to do so for their build used for solo content, it just doesn't make sense to me....
- Combined rating, I don't want my stats go to random ratings, i want to be the one to decide what stat i want to build whether it be power/def/crit/deflection... This is basicaly mutilating player's choice to develop or express a sense of their own unique playstyle... how is this any good?
BTW i need to say that i'm not hating here, i would not be posting this if i wouldn't have love for the game despite these IMHO closed minded changes. What i'm asking is for someone to enlighten me, point out that i'm missing on how any of these changes are improvement in any way.
- Removing stats : recovery, lifesteal This one goes way back but still i'd like to understand, why is removing players choice to have self sustain ( lifesteal) or build on recovery ( to use encounter powers more often) a good thing? I do remember the point of how players were either full health or died instantly... So you have to remove stat? can't you just nerf the vaule of it? Cause they did make a valid point healers weren't actually healers atleast not most of the time.. They were buffers, and that's absolutely a good point, healing is now appreciated and again it would be appreciated still if lifesteal was just nerfed, not removed...
- Removing power points , again i'm aware that most of these changes were long ago but i never expressed my opinion and i'd really like to do it now so, yeah why is that good? I'd like my Icy Terrain to be superior power over Repel for example and it gives me great satisfaction to put that fourth point on powers i love when i reach max level, it was another thing to look forward to at max level.. now this satisfaction is gone.
There are a lot of other smaller changes that make me see this void, like Neverwinter is having better qualities of it taken away not added and improved... I know many other players have similar opinions and i do wonder if their voices ever got heard though i doubt it.
5
Comments
Power points you talked has been gone for years. Most do not even know what it is including some dev.
No more Shepherd's Devotion giving you 150,000 Defense, your Defense is now capped at 50%
No more 100% Critical Chance and defeating the point of critical hits being lucky, your Critical Chance maximizes at 50% so you still have to fish for Critical hits.
No more stacking Deflect for 100% Deflect chance (even though it was an inefficient defensive stat for the longest time in pre Mod 16), you maximize at 50% Deflect Chance.
So on and so forth.
With the new stats system from Mod 20, I don't know why they kept the ratings at a maximum of 50%. The only way I can understand it is that the 50% from ratings is supposed to be something everyone can do, while the 40% from the percentages are supposed to be your area of specialization.
Seems as if the guy in charge confused "depth" with "complication" when designing this new system. Combined Rating isn't random, it's "+(number) to all non Power and HP ratings" (so +500 Combined Rating is +500 Critical Chance, Critical Severity, Accuracy, Combat Advantage, Defense, Awareness, Critical Avoid, Deflect Chance, Deflect Severity, Outgoing Healing, Incoming Healing, Control Bonus, and Control Resist).
The purpose of Combined Rating is to make new players less likely to fail.
In the old days, I vaguely remember some newbies getting frustrated at trying to join Ravenloft for the story/atmosphere/whatever. Excited to meet their vampire overlord, they then were not able to do any damage because their starter gear did not meet Ravenloft's 85% ArmorPen needed to deal normal damage.
Nowadays, those same newly joining players would theoretically be better equipped to handle new areas because the passive Combined Rating would handle everything stat related behind the scenes. You hit the nail on the head already.
Lifesteal invalidated healers and Recovery made it such that encounters and daily attacks effectively became at-wills.
But, instead of adjusting the stat's calculations or tuning the sources of both stats (like gutting Artificer's Persuasion as they eventually did, or making Lifesteal Severity only 1-3% in dungeons so players still had some desperation sustain in dungeons but not enough to invalidate healers), the devs decided to throw away those stats entirely so the game became easier for them to manage. This one I can understand why the devs removed, but I dislike the way they did it.
Power points were a great way to make it seem like every level was giving you more power, or that you were making an "important" choice by picking one power over another.
But if you actually go back and think about the old power points, the points were an illusion of specialization. The effect of ranking up a power to 3/4 generally were a static damage bonus, or (0.9+(0.1*Rank)). The powers points were an increase, albeit only to the power's numbers, not any new way to approach using a power. The allocation of points themselves stopped mattering after you hit maximum level/overflow levels, at which you had enough points to have 3 or 4 ranks in all powers anyways.
Realizing that the upgrades were just mostly numeric increases, the devs did away with power points.
And then turned around and redesigned most post Mod 16 powers to be different variations of "hits a single target versus hits in an AoE", leading to most players just picking what has the best numeric damage per second for single target/AoE situations.
Power Points could have been expanded in Mod 16 to differentiate powers beyond being "hits single target/hits in an AoE", like spending (x) number of Power Points between a Lashing Blade that resets cooldowns if it kills something versus a Lashing Blade that causes enemies to deal 15% less damage, or an Into the Fray that grants allies 10% more damage versus one that grants them 5% of max HP as Temporary HP and a 15% movespeed bonus.
For the current mod, as far as I know, it is not cap at 50%. e.g. My useless (and everything wrong being a Paladin) Paladin has 76.5% defense and 62.1% in critical strike in current mod.
''No more Shepherd's Devotion giving you 150,000 Defense, your Defense is now capped at 50%
No more 100% Critical Chance and defeating the point of critical hits being lucky, your Critical Chance maximizes at 50% so you still have to fish for Critical hits.
No more stacking Deflect for 100% Deflect chance (even though it was an inefficient defensive stat for the longest time in pre Mod 16), you maximize at 50% Deflect Chance.
So on and so forth.''
Players were overpowered and i kind of like that aspect because well it's a game i farm and grind to be powerful not to get nerfed every mod, not saying that i understand why some don't like the fact that for example those mechanics we're overpowered but there were actually easier solutions than just removing them outright like nerfing those high percentages.. i get it 100% crit chance is overpowered so now they made 90% but actually is 50% that you basically get for free anyway and every % or shoud i say every 0.#% since boons give so little compared to what they used to is only obtainable by choosing race u where u can get up tp 5% or getting those mythic mounts % companions which are ridiculously for most new players anyway.. because that's why the changes were made right? so new players would feel more powerful and those that grinded their heart out for looong time would be less so. It doesn't make sense because new players can't afford mythic mounts, companions and older players can get them easily so they didn't do much actually
To the OP, people voice opinions, but usually they get no response, or the complete opposite avenue is taken, or the game goes in a direction that has never been voiced. The new enchantment system coming is a good example. I don't think many in game were saying, let's redo all weapon/armor enchants, merge them into 6 total....or turn all types of enchants into 5 types. The game has made the "build" puzzle, go from multiple aspects and lots of small pieces to work with, to one that has larger values and less pieces IMO.
I was just pointing out why the devs wanted to make those changes as a whole: to make the game more "balanced", but less interesting.
- Be courteous.
- The Customer is always right.
- Never disrespect your customer.
I would add to this: "Don't bite the hand that feeds you."
Unfortunately, there is a growing trend in the business world today where the business treats their customer like HAMSTER and honestly expects that customer to still want to pay them. We see this highly toxic (and woke) business culture in the way customers are treated by Disney, Lucasfilm, Marvel, Warner Bros., DC Comics, CBS, BBC, Blizzard, Sony, and SquareEnix. And so, now we have Neverwinter Online to add to this list.
To be fair, I have not seen the degree of bile and bad-mouthing those aforementioned companies are guilty of, but I have seen the reset button being used against the player-base four times in a row now. Don't forget that Neverwinter Online has done something no other MMO has done: reduce the maximum player level from 80 to 20. Neverwinter Online has also gutted the progress of the entire player-base by first nerfing the enchantments we were already in posession of (regardless of refinement quality), then swapping them out for "new" enchantments that were exactly what we had before the nerf-hammer fell... and none of us can get a fair 1x1 trade-in for "reasons." We can't even count on maintaining the quality of those things bought in the ZEN store since all r15 enchantments purchased are worthless now.
So what is the answer?
To put it bluntly, there is no point in playing a video game where your progression is repeatedly reset on you; where you literally spend more time and resources in damage-control than in actual game-play. There is also no point in spending money on ZEN if you risk permanently losing what you have spent money on whenever a new mod is introduced.
Speaking for myself, while I am apprecative for having a game like Neverwinter Online to have gotten me through over two years of a non-stop Covid lockdown ~ although it is actually you good folks (my fellow players) who kept me company all this time, I can just as easily find companionship in other (more fair) MMOs. That said, I'm done here. I won't be doing any more post-mod damage control. My time and game-play is precious to me. I will be uninstalling Neverwinter Online and moving on.