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QoL and Exposure to negative feedback
rikitaki
Member Posts: 926 Arc User
The last Q&A was surprisingly lively and it seems like you really want to keep Neverwinter afloat. If that is the case, you should reconsider the mandatory exposure of the new guys to the "complains" of the... a bit more experienced players... about the incompetent devs. ATM I am once again talking mostly about what regularly happens in Barovia, Chult or Icewind Dale in the week a Sibella quest sends there players to do a BHE.
The thing is, forced by design, people doing those quests have, for about an hour, nothing to do except to complain. And complaining is what they do.
If you are a new guy just doing some quests there, it must be quite a shock. I do realize that you have some statistics and if a player stays in the game for an additional hour, it looks like a good thing, but 20 people in the opening areas noting one over another how badly designed and buggy this game is... is not what you should aim for.
Adding a countdown timer to the next BHE would be a huge QoL improvement and while it might reduce the time people spend in the game, it would be the time they complain about how bad this game is. Furthermore, it would make doing those BHE outside the Sibella quest week a bit more accessible.
Another occasion when everyone affected agrees about a bad design is when the system splits the party members to various instances. (mostly happens when people leave ME/Bel mission - and the party leader was not the first to do so) Being in a party should mean something... and splitting members between instances annoys people a lot, because they have to manually correct this issue.
Which brings me to switching between instances: It is set to be difficult enough to often sabotage your attempt to do so. This again is mostly about doing heroic encounters and your ability to move yourself to the correct instance to participate.
I would suggest two changes: When you enter the map, first transfer should not be affected by a timer. Overfilling the map should not require a party invite.
I would like to highlight that my points are aimed towards issues that "should not be a thing" in the first place and have nothing to do with monetization.
The thing is, forced by design, people doing those quests have, for about an hour, nothing to do except to complain. And complaining is what they do.
If you are a new guy just doing some quests there, it must be quite a shock. I do realize that you have some statistics and if a player stays in the game for an additional hour, it looks like a good thing, but 20 people in the opening areas noting one over another how badly designed and buggy this game is... is not what you should aim for.
Adding a countdown timer to the next BHE would be a huge QoL improvement and while it might reduce the time people spend in the game, it would be the time they complain about how bad this game is. Furthermore, it would make doing those BHE outside the Sibella quest week a bit more accessible.
Another occasion when everyone affected agrees about a bad design is when the system splits the party members to various instances. (mostly happens when people leave ME/Bel mission - and the party leader was not the first to do so) Being in a party should mean something... and splitting members between instances annoys people a lot, because they have to manually correct this issue.
Which brings me to switching between instances: It is set to be difficult enough to often sabotage your attempt to do so. This again is mostly about doing heroic encounters and your ability to move yourself to the correct instance to participate.
I would suggest two changes: When you enter the map, first transfer should not be affected by a timer. Overfilling the map should not require a party invite.
I would like to highlight that my points are aimed towards issues that "should not be a thing" in the first place and have nothing to do with monetization.
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Comments
These events shouldn't have more than 30 mins and more like 15-20 mins waits. Let people do what they need, so they move on to what they want.
Waiting is not "playing".
Not that timers are a bad solution, those would be nice as well. But the actual need for the timers is caused by waits that are too long for a "game".
I remember when NeverWinter was fun, running to Neverdeath to see how long it would be until Charthraxis showed up, and then running to Icespire to check the timer for Merothrax, and then going to Ebon Downs to check on Vartilingorix, and Vilithrax at Whispering Caverns...it made the game so MUCH MORE ENJOYABLE because we could use our time well instead of just sit around doing literally nothing because we didn't want to miss the one thing we needed to do.
The fact that I remember all those dragons' names should also say something.
That encounter design was top-notch, and the timers were a big part of the anticipation.
What we have now, especially in Omu, is not anticipation. It's soul-deadening boredom. A timer would be respectful of players' time, and would return an element of actual fun to the Sybella quest that is sorely lacking now.
You need to (or by design you at least should) accumulate a certain number of people before engaging a BHE - and if the map is not populated enough, people need to know when to gather. It is useless to have a BHE 3x per hour if every time just 3 participants turn up and the BHE fails. Once per hour means you have 3xbigger company.
On the other note: The Well of the Dragons has a different, but still a very effective approach: BHE always at the same time. Once you know it, you never have a problem to group up. (this could be applied elsewhere too, but the timings should probably not be the same though)
The ones in SKT are another example of a working way. There is simply always one up. Shortly after one ends, the next one in line starts.
But by the same token if they made it 15 minutes you could fail the first time and wait again for the second time for more people and still be done in half the amount of time as waiting for an hour. You could potentially have 4 attempts per hour.
And I would wager that if you shortened the time, more people would be willing to engage with an event knowing that it will likely happen in an amount of time that fits in their schedule. Or in the amount of time they stay in a zone doing other tasks like weeklies.
For example, I can think of many times when I blazed through Barovia doing weeklies and Yester Hill didn't pop in any instance before I finished. So I just left to do other things to progress my character rather than sitting and wasting time.
I don't think that having longer waits equals more completions, even in older content. I think if you shorten the timers, more people over all would get completions.
P.S. I still think countdown timers are a good idea.
I think it would be really good for the game if a different zone had a unique HE up every quarter of an hour. Leave the Tyranny dragons at a quarter to. Then have Soshenstar/Omu, IWD and Barovia, evenly spaced out, for example. I can see this becoming a guild/alliance call and should help pull people in, generate fun and good value for players. Low hanging fruit, I think.