I absolutely loved this game up until this point. I finished all the adventures, and most of the campaigns. I got all my enchantments to mythic, got 79 boons, got over 10 mythic companions and mounts, mythic mount insigs, pretty much everything I can do solo. I got into a very nice guild, not extremely active but nice people. I made my way through dragonbone vale, did a bunch of random Q's for the new seals, got all the gear from this mod. Then I find out that most of it is complete HAMSTER, because it gives you such high item level and very poor stats, so when you get scaled down, (very dumb idea), all your shiny new gear sucks badly.
So I learn that i need to do Avernus hunts for the ribcage. Then i research this, and find out that you can make the extremely tedious and competitive crawl to get the final boss, and he might not even drop your item so then you must do it all again from the start, over and over, no freakin way im doing this HAMSTER. Ive spent 2 weeks farming lures, and I have 1 tier 2 and a few tier 1 lures in all this time. At that rate, it will take me months to even get a single shot at the ribcage, and I may very well have to go through the whole process multiple times, no thanks.
Moving on to VoS. I get a fun farm group for the 1st mini boss. Got the ring piece right away, and i'm excited! No good gear drops from him though, after 10 or so kills. No big deal, this is fun! My next group wanted to finish the whole mission. No big deal, i have watched many videos on youtube, and I feel that I play pretty darn good. We get to the first boss fight, displacer beast chooses me to pounce on, I am helpless and die. Next go round, same thing...pounces on me, i sit there and die. 3rd time, we beat him, walked through the dark part with the light, and as soon as we zone into the next part, 500 adds instantly kill me before the loading screen is even done. I get a private message that "You sure die a lot lol"
Now I know people have done this 1000 times by now. I also know that they hate doing it, and only go there because of necessity for the Band of Air ring. But I feel like the healer wasn't healing me right when I was helpless, the tank wasnt intercepting the damage link that the boss had on me, and the tank wasn't getting aggro fast enough. Maybe it WAS my fault, since i'm very new, but maybe that is too generous to take blame like that all on myself. Either way I'm done with that HAMSTER.
I played Everquest for 17 years prior to trying out Neverwinter. The secret to the 23 years success of that game is that the newest expac always has BiS gear. That way people aren't forced to run older content, ad naseum, from over a year ago, to get their stuff. There is no need for scaling, because who cares if you can steam-roll past older content, the gear is worthless except for helping people catch up with current content. And last mod's gear in a few slots is fine to run current content, so you don't HAVE to be on an A-team with all BiS gear, to beat the entire expansion. They actually listen to the player base, they don't totally screw you over changing combat and enchantment systems or nerfing everything they can get their hands on.
I guess I am just sad. I found this new game and it was super fun, for a while. Now I hit the dead end, so I'm going back to old EQ. At least there, I can work on things to make my toons better and progress to something worthwhile, with many choices and nothing so miserable as horribly designed rng+rng+rng+rng+rng+rng hunts, or upgrades locked behind content that everyone is sick to death of because it was designed terribly in the first place and the stupid rng requires many many many runs through this misery.
I know that nobody from the design team will ever see this, I guess it's just a vent or rant. Horribly designed game from a new player perspective, I can't imagine older players feel much better about it but oh well...
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Comments
So in the end how much did you have to spend in Zen $ to become best in slot (that maybe 1-3% of the population is at )
and how many thousands of hours "fun" did you have in the journey getting there ?
or did you gets 3 months of enjoyment for free minus your hard earned "precious" time ..
here they care if you steam role "limited" content cause then you cant play with your friends at level that you bring in that are new to the game and then they cant balance the loot
at cryptic they like to cycle the player base every few months get people to buy a few store zen mounts play the current flavor of the month module in tandem with wizards of the coast release and quit/ take a break for a few months then come back
eventually something better then the rib cage will be in newer content to pad your item level
at is also not Bis for every class .so you cant say people are "forced" to go and get it
\you said
"I played Everquest for 17 years prior to trying out Neverwinter. The secret to the 23 years success of that game is that the newest expantion . always has BiS gear"
omg lol the new neverwinter content DOES have dozens of items that ARE 1400 -1600 item level top gear
so new playesr can catch up
the higher your item level/ gear score the more weapon damage/ healing you ultimately do and that number is reflected on the character sheet that is true endgame balancing all stats and companions/ mounts and having the highest gear score possible with main stats capped...if you cant do that you are not at end game regardless if you have the ribcage or not .. someone who has not fully unlocked how scaling "really" works is not at true end game..
you said
"so when you get scaled down, (very dumb idea), all your shiny new gear sucks badly."
omg LOL LOL this comment shows that you dont know how to build your character / loadouts properly LOL
this concept is "universal" to Everquest(which you claim to have 17 years of experience ) / never winter/ mm0 fantasy HAMSTER 2000, world of warcraft etc
but next mod there's a new version of it, getting the bis gear can take a lot of time in nw but some of it can stick around for a long time, like the mirrage weapons.
I don't believe anyone playing the game would be happy if they'd have to repeat the dreadfull avernus hunt system every mod to get the bis gear, or repeat the hc vos grind every time a new dungeons comes out to get the new version of the Band of Air.
If you don't want to grind Bis gear, don't. They already mentioned creating streak-breakers for BoA and considering other places to add them.
We already knew about a new Ribcage coming over for nearly a year now so you can wait until that drops and farm that instead of going backwards. I know many people who farm 1 t3 a day, sure it takes them all day, but you can if you really wanted to bother doing so.
I never understand why people rush to 'endgame' just to be mad that endgame is padded out so that they can use that padding as development time. Every game does so. The rng in this game is really bad, but you don't have to engage with bad rng if you don't want to, its a choice.
My warlock has 75,000 IL, 84.5% power, 60ish CA/crit strike/severity, 34% accuracy. Yes of course I spent tons of cash to buy genie's gifts and various items to max out in 3 months...hundreds of $$$. That should have been obvious. What I am getting at, other than answering the above questions, is that sure I dont HAVE to do anything. Nobody is MAKING me run the hunts, or horrible dungeons. But what else is there? In what meaningful way can I continue to get my character into top tier status, without a band of air or ribcage? Some would say I screwed myself by rushing through and buying coal motes, buying mount insig packs, etc. I should have spent 3 years farming skill nodes and opening coffers I guess. I tried to skip that impossibly long grind.
Perhapse my view would have been different had I joined a much more active and helpful guild. Not sure. But at the end of the day, end game seems to only be about amassing useless atm riches(AD/motes/powders/etc.). No thanks, im back on EQ and really appreciate the simple things that I took for granted before. If you all still believe that BiS weapons from mod 11, or BiS armor from mod 19 when your on mod 22, or running dungeons for 600IL gear every day is fun, then awesome!
Did you know that when you kill a named in EQ, it has a chance to drop a gear piece that is craftable for your particular class? 1 bracer with no stats, combined with a reagent, makes a bracer for whatever you are, with the stats you need! If you all are still enjoying Neverwinter, Im very happy for you, and I wish you all good luck and have fun!
But you need the gear to do content. At least to do it easier.
Since DPS are mostly cookie cutter as all diversity is gone.
Hunts are draining and frustrating for an end result that is all RNG. That’s if Nightspine doesn’t disappear on you.
What harm would that do? Then, you wouldn't have to constantly work backwards, which is extremely frustrating. Still keep the rng on Nightspine and his loot table if you want to make this a time consuming thing, and It would still be fun actually.
Same thing with the Band of Air components. If someone is good enough to finish HCVoS, then they deserve the ring, not an RNG punishment. Some people were saying they have counted over 450 runs through that nightmare and still no 3rd component. That is just ludacris. What would that person say to me if I was in their guild and asked them for help on some runs?
At the end of the day, the takeaway I got from all of this is that such gear pieces really aren't all that great anyways. Just compared to all the other absolute HAMSTER options you have, it's best. That isn't very compelling for me. I mean all the developers do is copy/paste anyways. Why not do it 3 times, having DPS, healer, and tank gear? They would most likely drop the ball on that too, and the same horrid content would just need to be farmed 3 times longer due to 3 times as many possible drops lol.
I really like the Seal Trader idea. I wish that was used for EVERYTHING. No more wasted time, no more rng nightmares!
where did i say that scaling was universal ???..dont try to selectively parse my argument which was in response to a quote
and pull one word "universal" out of context to suit and formulate yours ..you are inferring something that i did not imply
good for you on your "first hand knowledge"
lets reverse this argument so you get it ..
dont tell me you only have one set of gear loadouts / weapons etc .for end game/ pvp . pve dungeons / all situations and nothing else
for everquest end game either for reason "because it does not have scaling "
you can get everyone in the forum to agree that with you including me that (neverwinter/everquest ) are not alike to artificially make your comment look good ..that not devaluate my point however .. I was talking about how they were similar ..two sides of the same coin ...
For the uninformed or ignorant, in Everquest pvp is on special servers so yea, the gear is different (very slightly). Group game gear, which is to be ran in 6 man teams, is different gear than raid gear, which is usually a 54 person 6 hours 3 nights a week deal. But I digress, say whatever you want I wont be back on this garbage forum, about a garbage game so I wont ever see if you respond hahaha
Its not a new issue talking about the horrible RNG Systems this game has but i think players wouldnt be that upset once there were more goals to achieve/obtain good gear with crafting and refining armor pieces in a special way like gather reagencies from all over the dungeons - i mean from everywhere in the game. Why not??? etc. etc..... Not just 1 ring and 1 breastplate which may define your dmg as long as you re a "smart player". Look...im a long time player with BIS Stuff etc. etc. etc....and my last action was too apply the Ribcage for guildmates which could use it as a benefit for their character improvement more than for my own wallet... so we managed to acquire like 35-40x T3 (Current lure value like 130 MIL of ADs) Hunt and guess what? Not a single Ribcage Drop hahahaha. Just blown into oblivion. BOOOM!
I mean what is this?
But thats all you can do once you re in this "BIS Section" or even trying to help people lmfao. I have almost 3 BOA completed (Still missing 3rd MB Piece) but i dont care anymore. Neither do i when it comes to the game. If people still defending this game and pushing money into it -> go visit a psychotherapy and talk about your gambling addiction (not joking). Horrible Lockboxes with horrible content. Guild Wars 2 offering so many vendors where you can exchange stuff etc. etc. etc.....would be nice to see that kind of stuff in Neverwinter!
It always will be the same RNG cycle over and over and over again. Instead of forcing people to run several stuff to obtain pieces which can be craft as an awesome end result its such a lousy and cheap system. Give them something to do (Like Forgerbox for example - but im talking on having a bigger picture in mind)
Dont get me wrong...when i come back to the game (I need to take breaks cause it sometimes sucks too hard - having a break now again) i got my 1st BOA very quickly. At some point (VOS HC) i started to get angry cause of my/other peoples ridiculous deaths...and thats what happens when you re brain is stuck in this "I neeeeed it" Mode. (Cause there s just nothing else to do xD) As a guild leader im always trying to encourage people and play with guildmates. Helping them and work together...lost the motivation to do so tho. Im more temptered to say and ive stated "Guys..check this game out check that game out" Took me close to half a year....to convince 2 good friends to check out Guild Wars 2 for example. Heck what the HAMSTER...and the most told reason not to leave is "I ve invested so much money" - yeah, cause you re suffering from HAMSTER stockholm syndrom and cant accept, that a lot has changed and what you think is fun is just an absolute illusion by doing the same HAMSTER over and over again. For what? So that they can strip all of your hard works crafting enchantments etc...again and again and again and again? That by the way was the final cut for a lot of guild mates and former leaders....i totally understand that. Like 12 awesome players from my guild just stopped and headed over to other games due to this horrible game design decisions.
Thats how you drive players successfully away!
Its a very similiar thing when it comes to RADQ/RTQ - why people running this piece of trash when they re stocked with like 30 Million ROUGH ADS? Except lower geared and not monetary healthy people need to gather Rough ADs. Ah right...you dont have much choice when it comes to "Content" - (and im not opening the dirty window of >> in general absolute ridiculous "Loot Table"<< with Undermountain Gear Pieces which drops in Vault of Stars and so on)..... not even talking about the dungeon chests...holy jesus... PREMIUM LOOT - PREMIUM LOOT MY <font color="orange">HAMSTER!
- or youre a HAMSTER and like to play Tiamat/Ravenloft 4 times a week. Moste of the people are just dellusional and cant stand the fact that they hang on to something which is just an illusion of fun. Sure people may design their own value of fun and i know people who just play for "fun" when they come home from having a hard day work but in the end...if you dont miss the bigger picture...the game is everything but a nice experience (at least when you re open minded and check out other games and their decisions how to adress some sections and listening to their own community in a very nice way and reckognzie how bad Neverwinter really is. I wish those kind of changes wouldn be based on some "Hardliner decisions" rather to finally encourage players to play good content for meaningful loot but i think the game is stuck in its fastfood mentality and overall poorly design. So is the majority of the players. Rinse n repeat, rinse n repeat....masochists.
in regard to my response to your quote
the connotation and my point was character building not scaling that is universal ..that you did not know what you are doing with !!dont play mock confused .dumb
.if i know( and most people do ) thats not all mmo have scaling (and some sucufully implement it ) then clearly i was not suggesting that as a reason for your failure now was i ?(you were suggesting scaling ) I clearly said character loadouts and build/ gear !!
as long as i made you respond my mission was accomplished :d if not your thread would have been dead if i did not offer opposing view points to spice it up ..think about that ..:D
cryptic already has the hundred of dollars you spent in zen rushing end game so i would say mission accomplished for them thanks for your support
cya in a few months due to sunk cost fallacy
"The Sunk Cost Fallacy describes our tendency to follow through on an endeavor if we have already invested time, effort, or money into it, whether or not the current costs outweigh the benefits."