test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Future modules' zones
dracory1
Member Posts: 128 Arc User
Well, it's been on my mind for a while now and I hope this gets noticed. @nitocris83
I just wanted to present my opinion about how future zones should look like, based on zones we already have and some of my own ideas.
1. Named monsters with unique loot for each as well as universal loot.
We had that one in both Descent into Avernus as well as Dragonbone Vale campaigns. I love both ideas. Unique gear that might not be the best but is unique is good as it is an incentive for players to hunt specific monsters. Universal loot makes other, less desirable monsters due to their unique equipment being less than useful also a better target.
They all should give something extra in my opinion. A blue insignia, refinement gems, something for players to want to hunt that will not get outdated. All with randomized spawn locations but set paths to make sure they can't be just spawn-camped.
2. Day/night cycle like in Barovia.
I'll be honest with that one, making other monsters appear during one cycle as opposed to the other where yet another set of enemies can be spotted is just perfect. If Masterwork were to be continued past current state and dropped materials or even new artifacts requiring reagents from unique monsters from both cycles, that'd make the zone look all the more lively.
3. Hunts like in Chult/Avernus.
Do I even need to explain that? During both modules' times' and even a little past when both had high demand and were best in slot, both Chultan and Avernus zones were the most populated. Please do continue with such mechanics. Just with a little better RNG than in Avernus, it is truly painful at the moment.
4. Grapple mechanics.
This is probably the best mechanic that came into Neverwinter. Continue on using it, making a map look so much more 3D and giving alternative options to get to various places felt very refreshing.
5. Boats and fishing.
Why was this not continued? Sure, it was slow in Sea of Moving Ice and we had it in Soshenstar River... I'd love to see a zone with half on-foot/mount and half boat travel. And fishing was indeed fun.
6. Barovia hunts/Undermountain Expeditions (Warden-Fragment-Watcher)/Dig Sites in River District.
To be honest, if overworld hunts were made as "simple" hunts while separate instance hunts were made as "advanced" hunts with even better rewards - or simply instances where we look for treasure to fight a boss or waves of enemies, then both would fit right into the game and provide content to players - which we desperately need.
7. River District's interactive zones/Devil/Demon domination in Avernus
River District's sites that we could protect and build up to unlock zones and campfires as well as progress or halt certain event progress was the perfect example of a zone that demanded player attention. Please, do revive such mechanics.
8. Time-based BHEs, mechanics that affect trials/dungeons (Well of Dragons)
Dragon runs are probably the most memorable events for players. With how treasure worked and how it was the players' team work that gave them buffs for Tiamat trial was one of the most fun BHE experiences. Don't just make heroics a mindless slaughter for the weeklies, make it interact with game.
I just wanted to present my opinion about how future zones should look like, based on zones we already have and some of my own ideas.
1. Named monsters with unique loot for each as well as universal loot.
We had that one in both Descent into Avernus as well as Dragonbone Vale campaigns. I love both ideas. Unique gear that might not be the best but is unique is good as it is an incentive for players to hunt specific monsters. Universal loot makes other, less desirable monsters due to their unique equipment being less than useful also a better target.
They all should give something extra in my opinion. A blue insignia, refinement gems, something for players to want to hunt that will not get outdated. All with randomized spawn locations but set paths to make sure they can't be just spawn-camped.
2. Day/night cycle like in Barovia.
I'll be honest with that one, making other monsters appear during one cycle as opposed to the other where yet another set of enemies can be spotted is just perfect. If Masterwork were to be continued past current state and dropped materials or even new artifacts requiring reagents from unique monsters from both cycles, that'd make the zone look all the more lively.
3. Hunts like in Chult/Avernus.
Do I even need to explain that? During both modules' times' and even a little past when both had high demand and were best in slot, both Chultan and Avernus zones were the most populated. Please do continue with such mechanics. Just with a little better RNG than in Avernus, it is truly painful at the moment.
4. Grapple mechanics.
This is probably the best mechanic that came into Neverwinter. Continue on using it, making a map look so much more 3D and giving alternative options to get to various places felt very refreshing.
5. Boats and fishing.
Why was this not continued? Sure, it was slow in Sea of Moving Ice and we had it in Soshenstar River... I'd love to see a zone with half on-foot/mount and half boat travel. And fishing was indeed fun.
6. Barovia hunts/Undermountain Expeditions (Warden-Fragment-Watcher)/Dig Sites in River District.
To be honest, if overworld hunts were made as "simple" hunts while separate instance hunts were made as "advanced" hunts with even better rewards - or simply instances where we look for treasure to fight a boss or waves of enemies, then both would fit right into the game and provide content to players - which we desperately need.
7. River District's interactive zones/Devil/Demon domination in Avernus
River District's sites that we could protect and build up to unlock zones and campfires as well as progress or halt certain event progress was the perfect example of a zone that demanded player attention. Please, do revive such mechanics.
8. Time-based BHEs, mechanics that affect trials/dungeons (Well of Dragons)
Dragon runs are probably the most memorable events for players. With how treasure worked and how it was the players' team work that gave them buffs for Tiamat trial was one of the most fun BHE experiences. Don't just make heroics a mindless slaughter for the weeklies, make it interact with game.
Post edited by dracory1#6808 on
Tagged:
9
Comments
▂▃▄▅▆▇█▓▒░ Drac ░▒▓█▇▆▅▄▃▂
There is supposed to be an image here, but the hamsters took it.
<div align="center">AKA Draconis of Luskan</div>
Take a backseat boy. Cause now I'm driving. ~ Give it up - Elizabeth Gilies ft. Ariana Grande
RIP Foundry: On that day, when the sky fell away, our world came to an end. ~Lifelight
We've got a rehash of the Dread Ring.
Next up, a rehash of Tyranny of Dragons.
I figure Icewind Dale/the Frozen North is coming after Rage.
The heralds of the Evil Elemental Princes are still out there since they retconned their deaths in, what? Mod 16?
Oh, and they left Stardock hanging, too.
But...the story or themes are not the topic of this thread, it's zone mechanics and gameplay. For which I tend to agree with OP's opinions.
Yeah, it's like arazith said. It's not a place to discuss current/past zones, but mechanics in any zone. But I'm going to throw in my D&D knowledge.
1. Acarerak - the BBEG of Chult. He lost all of his plans and returned to who knows what plane. And since he's immortal... well, best way for him to defeat his current enemies is to wait until most if not all of them die.
2. Cult of the Dragon, Valindra - killing Valindra doesn't do anything. The cult we defeated was the cult that wanted to bring Tiamat back, which is different than the current cult, which is following the prophecy of Sammaster. Which is in line with plans of Valindra to have an army of liches.
3. Well, Stardock was merely a part of Toril where the Gith had their base of operation. Most of stuff happened in Undermountain, which we did have a closure on.
4. Elemental Cult - remember that in story we still dealt major blows to all cults plus their infighting is making it near impossible for them to reform. Each elemental cult hates the other, as we have seen in the story.
5. DeVir - honestly, this guy isn't much of a BBEG. He just wanted revenge on Menzoberranzan and that plan was ruined with destruction of Maze Engine.
If DeVir's plan was ruined, why did we see him after talking to Vanifer about the Elemental Eye?
World building? Then build. Add. Don't rehash.
2) Day and Night cycle in Barovia was rather pointless. It led to timegating of quests (bad) and the Night Terror was maybe interesting the first time but is either tedious or frustrating after that.
3) Chult hunts were fine, Avernus hunts were not. The former had the rare mobs spawn in place of the normals where the hunter could easily find them. The latter has the rares spawning all over the place were a rando is more likely to get the kill.
5) On the one hand I liked the boats and apart from the SVA key 1000wt of fish thing, didn't mind fishing. However, the boats since mod 16 drain your AP (like the war machines that were probably based on the same code). Unless they change that... I don't want to see that ever again.
7) The River District guardposts were a neat idea but in practice were a mess. The originals need to be cleaned up and fixed (no more absent guards) before even considering recycling it. Like the campfires in Barovia, having respawn points that mobs can get to is a major major design flaw.
8) Heroics need a reason to do them beyond the existence of a weekly quest, certainly. Try to run an alt through Sharandar or Avernus now and most weeks you may not complete that weekly. Vallenhas on the other hand... always has activity on the small and big heroics... because of Juma. I guess he was just too appreciated by the players or something. Mod 19 followed with almost no use for the secondary currency at all. I think all I ever bought was some reagents to restore gear.
On fishing, I think it's great to have in the game and would like to see more mini-game/past times show up, just not have them be an integral part of the campaign or weapon grinding like it was with SOMI. I like how it was integrated with Sosenstar River, where it had it's own collection, you could even pick up some hunt trophies, but could also be avoided if it's not your 'thing', I also liked how you could improve your boat from stuff that you fished up.
One thing i will mention of the many that i can add to this is they should consider intergrating the bosses from a dungeon or trial into the zone just like the river district had nostura and all the bosses from spellplague . That way players will learn the mechanics through the zones and the Queues won't suffer from failures due to lack of knowledge. Never did understand why this great idea was not utilized more.
Regards G.U
2. Quest timegating, yeah no. But unique monsters with unique drops would still be neat to have.
3. A mix of both could work to be honest. Without them being too spread out so that when you farm what you want then it will most likely spawn in the area.
5. AP drain doesn't really affect people anymore, unless you are going into a trial. But I agree that this part should be somewhat fixed, if they could make it work for bard then they can make it work for anything. Or make it an optional part like with Soshenstar, so players who want to bother with fishing can.
7. Well, this part would need slight improvements, but it was still neat thing to make a zone more lively.
8. We get simply too little Sharandar currency at this point in Heroics. In DBV they are only valuable for reputation farm. I have a whole idea for gear progression rework, were the devs to listen, which would include every aspect of every campaign. From zone quests to trials. Fishing should not be forced for progression, I agree to that, but I think it should still be an option - be it exchanging fish for currency, buff food, maybe something unique but not relevant to gameplay.
The Elemental Eye is an Elder God and ultimately the force behind the Elemental Cults. De Vir states that he is its Harbinger and Vanifer's master in the Maze Engine final cutscene. This comes directly from the tabletop book which also details that De Vir created the four weapons/symbols of their power and secretly guided the four to the weapons and their roles as prophets. (Princes of the Apocalypse book) While Elemental Evil in NW deviates completely in the cult plans, the backstory appears unchanged from tabletop. De Vir is only in the backstory of PotA he does appear in Out of the Abyss from which NW got both Underdark and Maze Engine. He fulfills a similar role in assisting the players defeat the demons (not just Baphomet) differing mostly that he is not set up to betray the players at the end - assuming they don't provoke it. I feel it is safe to asssume that the Maze Engine finale was intended to continue the story using his association with the creation of the cults but the story dev of the time found other employment and the thread was dropped.
9. Treasure hunts.
I don't know why, but initially I loved doing them. Would be best if we got an instanced quest leading to a reward in form of map - as in Chult, or maybe something to unlock something like Dragonsight. Each area in a zone would have one and in each zone there'd be unique loot to gather.
So example: Player A picks up a Patrol quest and a "Map" quest, which requires Patrol quest to be finished.
The player finishes the Patrol quest and receives his rewards as well as a reagent to activate Dragonsight-like item in specific zone.
The player looks up collections/Masterwork materials and sees that the fashion/item/profession reagent is in South zone.
The player uses the tool in South zone and the treasure is randomly chosen to lit up. The rest is history, player goes and receives variety of loot.
The variety of loot also means not something that will be used to a certain point only. Refinement, insignia, maybe a new source for Rank 5 enchanting stones.
NO FISHING
Fun ? Not in this game , rotflmao . Please do not even try to add fishing in future mods
> SEASON CLOSED !!
>
> NO FISHING
>
> Fun ? Not in this game , rotflmao . Please do not even try to add fishing in future mods
Alright, my fault for not fully explaining to make it an optional thing at first. Again, bonus thing to do. There's not much else past hunting mobs or grinding quests... and I'd rather fish than AFK in Port/Enclave.
> > @johnnystranger#5900 said:
> > SEASON CLOSED !!
> >
> > NO FISHING
> >
> > Fun ? Not in this game , rotflmao . Please do not even try to add fishing in future mods
>
> Alright, my fault for not fully explaining to make it an optional thing at first. Again, bonus thing to do. There's not much else past hunting mobs or grinding quests... and I'd rather fish than AFK in Port/Enclave.
Lol , well I’ll tell you if they had fishing like they do in red dead redemption two I’d be all for it but this game definitely doesn’t have anything comparable
> I hope they do fishing like in Chult, but have a bigger area and collection like SOMI. It's there for those who enjoy it, but those against can avoid it.
Finally someone who understands lol.