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Suggestions for NW from an mmo veteran
skilllcapped
Member Posts: 4 Arc User
So far I have been impressed with the quality of the game in general, as for me it has already out-shined other attempts at capitalizing the mmo consumer base. However there are many key features that have not been included in the 'release' of the game which I, and many other players would agree, would benefit the game immensely.
1. Dueling System
At the moment there is no reliable way to test your skills and settle 'who's the best' disputes with your friends. It is a pretty major feature which I and many others were surprised is not already in the game.
2. Variety in gametypes/maps in PVP
I understand that this has been mentioned before, but the longer it is postponed, the more likely NW is to appear 'stagnant' to players. Gametypes such as Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Siege the Enemy Base, and Deathmatch would add a lot of depth to battlegrounds and add a huge amount of replayability. Needless to say, more maps definitely need to be added to accompany this.
3. An Arena System
1v1/2v2/3v3 arenas would fulfill a huge element of NW that is currently missing. Many players do not have 5 people needed to create a full team in domination, but would still rather play a full-premade than with randoms. An arena system allows them to run with a full group of friends with complete communication, making for a much more intense experience.
4. A Rating System in PVP
This is SORELY MISSED! It gives players an incentive to play PVP, because at the moment it is only done to farm glory or pass the time. Add rewards of high-quality gear/mounts for achieving a high rating. IMPORTANT: Base it off MMR. Do not attempt to divide it into 'leagues' or 'divisions'. MMR is the best system, in my experience, to create fair matchups based entirely on skill, throughout progression. Make MMR visible. It gives players security that they are improving, and allow them to see their opponents skill level. Offer one social, unranked playlist, and one competitive ranked playlist, as there are some who would not want to constantly play ranked.
5. Balance Glory Rewards with PVE gear
Currently, glory rewards are entry-level 60 gear. They are outshined immediately by most drops in dungeons. Defense was added to them (I believe) to mimic the role of resilience, however it does not scale nearly as well. This has left the glory gear being near worthless in PVP, and forced people who love BGs to farm dungeons to compete in domination. Either buff the glory gear itself, or add another tier to allow it to compete with at least T2 in battlegrounds.
6. Fix the Dungeon Queue System
One feature of this system that I despise is getting put into a dungeon without a full group. It would improve the quality-of-life of many PVE players to not be marooned into an incomplete group for no reason, it is just a massive inconvenience and waste of time.
Also, if one of your party members does leave, it would be nice to have some indication of whether the dungeon finder is searching for a replacement in the UI, and if it isn't searching then it would be nice for it to explain why in a tooltip.
7. Have Epics Drop From Trash
At the moment the favored method of clearing trash in dungeons is to use CWs to push them off cliffs. This sacrifices the pittance of copper and identification scrolls that drops from them in order to get a faster clear - a worthy trade in the eyes of many. As the developers probably did not intend for this to be the case, there are two possible solutions to prevent it.
--A. block off all cliffs/drops to make mob-pushing impossible (dont do this)
this would be the 'ruling with an iron fist' approach, as if to say 'bwahaha, good luck finding innovative ways to progess through dungeons now, foolish players!' This isn't ideal. It creates a divide between the player and the developer, and if there's one thing that neither party would benefit from, it's that.
--B. have epics have a 1% drop rate from trash (do this)
this gives players a choice, which is always the better option. They can sacrifice the speed of the clear slightly but allowing a possibility for more loot. Mobs which automatically respawn, like those crappy zombie things from the vents in spellplague caverns, should not have this drop rate to avoid exploits.
8. More Interesting/Useful Items from Professions
At the moment professions are easy and responsive to level up, but there are not enough high-end rewards for investing the time and materials to get max rank. If you could craft gear which competed with the current PVE tier it would increase the value of leveling a profession immensely, and make more people want to do it instead of the current 'just do leadership all the time' meta.
9. Allow Trading of Astral Diamonds
Why can't you do this? There are unavoidable exploits around it through junk-trading on the auction house anyway, it just seems like an unnecessary restriction solely to inconvenience players. Lets say your friend just hit max level and you want to help him starting out - but you can't give him any currency! Playing together with friends and being able to support them inside the game makes people want to play, and they will play for longer. I'm sure that's not something any company would want to discourage.
If anyone disagrees with any of these points, please post why in the comments! thanks for reading.
TL;DR: FIX YO' **** GAME
1. Dueling System
At the moment there is no reliable way to test your skills and settle 'who's the best' disputes with your friends. It is a pretty major feature which I and many others were surprised is not already in the game.
2. Variety in gametypes/maps in PVP
I understand that this has been mentioned before, but the longer it is postponed, the more likely NW is to appear 'stagnant' to players. Gametypes such as Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Siege the Enemy Base, and Deathmatch would add a lot of depth to battlegrounds and add a huge amount of replayability. Needless to say, more maps definitely need to be added to accompany this.
3. An Arena System
1v1/2v2/3v3 arenas would fulfill a huge element of NW that is currently missing. Many players do not have 5 people needed to create a full team in domination, but would still rather play a full-premade than with randoms. An arena system allows them to run with a full group of friends with complete communication, making for a much more intense experience.
4. A Rating System in PVP
This is SORELY MISSED! It gives players an incentive to play PVP, because at the moment it is only done to farm glory or pass the time. Add rewards of high-quality gear/mounts for achieving a high rating. IMPORTANT: Base it off MMR. Do not attempt to divide it into 'leagues' or 'divisions'. MMR is the best system, in my experience, to create fair matchups based entirely on skill, throughout progression. Make MMR visible. It gives players security that they are improving, and allow them to see their opponents skill level. Offer one social, unranked playlist, and one competitive ranked playlist, as there are some who would not want to constantly play ranked.
5. Balance Glory Rewards with PVE gear
Currently, glory rewards are entry-level 60 gear. They are outshined immediately by most drops in dungeons. Defense was added to them (I believe) to mimic the role of resilience, however it does not scale nearly as well. This has left the glory gear being near worthless in PVP, and forced people who love BGs to farm dungeons to compete in domination. Either buff the glory gear itself, or add another tier to allow it to compete with at least T2 in battlegrounds.
6. Fix the Dungeon Queue System
One feature of this system that I despise is getting put into a dungeon without a full group. It would improve the quality-of-life of many PVE players to not be marooned into an incomplete group for no reason, it is just a massive inconvenience and waste of time.
Also, if one of your party members does leave, it would be nice to have some indication of whether the dungeon finder is searching for a replacement in the UI, and if it isn't searching then it would be nice for it to explain why in a tooltip.
7. Have Epics Drop From Trash
At the moment the favored method of clearing trash in dungeons is to use CWs to push them off cliffs. This sacrifices the pittance of copper and identification scrolls that drops from them in order to get a faster clear - a worthy trade in the eyes of many. As the developers probably did not intend for this to be the case, there are two possible solutions to prevent it.
--A. block off all cliffs/drops to make mob-pushing impossible (dont do this)
this would be the 'ruling with an iron fist' approach, as if to say 'bwahaha, good luck finding innovative ways to progess through dungeons now, foolish players!' This isn't ideal. It creates a divide between the player and the developer, and if there's one thing that neither party would benefit from, it's that.
--B. have epics have a 1% drop rate from trash (do this)
this gives players a choice, which is always the better option. They can sacrifice the speed of the clear slightly but allowing a possibility for more loot. Mobs which automatically respawn, like those crappy zombie things from the vents in spellplague caverns, should not have this drop rate to avoid exploits.
8. More Interesting/Useful Items from Professions
At the moment professions are easy and responsive to level up, but there are not enough high-end rewards for investing the time and materials to get max rank. If you could craft gear which competed with the current PVE tier it would increase the value of leveling a profession immensely, and make more people want to do it instead of the current 'just do leadership all the time' meta.
9. Allow Trading of Astral Diamonds
Why can't you do this? There are unavoidable exploits around it through junk-trading on the auction house anyway, it just seems like an unnecessary restriction solely to inconvenience players. Lets say your friend just hit max level and you want to help him starting out - but you can't give him any currency! Playing together with friends and being able to support them inside the game makes people want to play, and they will play for longer. I'm sure that's not something any company would want to discourage.
If anyone disagrees with any of these points, please post why in the comments! thanks for reading.
TL;DR: FIX YO' **** GAME
They used to laugh when I told them I'd be a comedian. Well they're not laughing now!
Post edited by skilllcapped on
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Comments
Other than that, I agree.
Depends on whether the devs are primarily interested in creating a massively multiplayer online experience in the Neverwinter setting or primarily interested in creating a game with classic MMORPG mechanics.
What audience are the hoping to support - causal gamers who love to be immersed in the Neverwinter setting or hardcore gamers who want a classic MMORPG in a D&D setting.
D&D has never really been balanced around 1v1 player combat.
I wouldn't expect to see much of that in an MMO based on D&D.
But... we'll see what happens.
6) The queue system is a queue, so it mostly should be used by groups of at least 2-3 people to just fill a group and start a dungeon. The problem is LFG system sucks horribly. It should have many parameters, filter by GS/instance preferences/experience/class/role/language so that you aren't required to create a party spamming in /zone and should be divided into solo/levelling/quests/foundry and party/dungeon[/pvp].
8) Professions atm are worthless until you cap and you can build gemmed shirt/pants. The system is nice and isn't a chore, but its biggest limitation is that you basically can't ever use your own skills to craft items you wear during the levelling-up part of the game. You basically outscale the rate at which you can raise your skill mostly cause you are kind of forced to level up Leadership and you end up 60 when your primary crafting skill is not even level 4 (unless you started playing 2 months ago and you are now lvl 50, so if you just have about half an hour of playtime every 2 days).
9) You can buy things for your friends if you want. I personally helped most friends by buying them drake rings/necks or some ah gear and I don't see a big need of making diamonds tradeable. On a sidenote I'd make diamonds account-wide, without having to use the zen trade to move your ad from one character to another. Having AD non tradeable makes gold worth something more than just for repair kits, since if you could exchange ad nobody would sell anything for gold. I'd probably ADD SOME OTHER CURRENCY to the auction house, so that you aren't forced to use ad-only and reduce the spam in /zone.
and last but not least, having a /trade and /lfg worldwide chanel would help immensely. Zone chat in enclave is totally spammed and if you are looking for group you are forced to stay in the city or you miss every request.
I don't really agree with you. Casual players can be pvp or pve oriented. The game has near-nothing hardcore atm, since end-game is farm a 5-men instance over and over, no raid, no instance lock-out, no "hard" stuff that you need gear to beat after CN, no hard stuff in the foundry.
Anything you add won't remove the immersion of Neverwinter a casual player will see, pvp is separated from the world (you queue up and go to a different map). D&D has never really been balanced to be an MMO, every adventure is a one-time experience and the fact you don't play against other players is a matter of game design for a pen & paper game. If this game was just like D&D you probably would never plaay more than twice an instance.
The only thing I am not too sure about is number 7, the devs have even stated that it was intended for mobs to be thrown off cliffs by good CWs / DCs, so I doubt they will change anything to that.
Join Essence of Aggression: PVP-ing Hard Since Beta!
I use casual player in the original sense of "not interested in being elite or competitive, especially regarding pvp.
The term has drifted in the last decade to also mean "players who don't spend a lot of time playing". That's not what I'm referring to.
The raid is Gauntlgrym.
The game has near-nothing hardcore. It's a casual game. And more cooperative than compettive.
I don't think I said anything about immersion that a casual player would see. That is not a concern of mine.
My point is that the game isn't "broken" simply due to a lack of PvP. That's just the design vision of the devs.
I didn't say the devs shouldn't add PvP - rather I stated that it's clearly not a priority in the design.
I disagree that in D&D, every adventure is a one-time experience. But that is really beside the point.
D&D is balanced to be a cooperative game rather than a PvP game. That is the primary issue.
"Just like D&D" is a rather straw man argument.
It's generally not worth the time it would take to coordinate multiple playthroughs of the same p&p adventure.
Though it's not unusual to bring a party of alts through an old adventure.
The point remains that D&D isn't balanced for pvp. The fundamental design is cooperative pve.
So, again, while MMORPG players might perceive a game to be "broken" without robust PvP, that is likely to be low on the totem pole for designers focused on presenting a D&D setting to masses playing their game together online.
Neverwinter doesn't need to be "fixed" by adding more PvP. D&D classes aren't designed to be balanced against each other in PvP.
D&D classes are designed to support and complement each other in pve.
Thank you very much for your response.
You make an interesting point, to put it on a bumper sticker, you're saying that 'D&D doesn't synergize with traditional MMO structure'. The more I thought about it, the more I agreed that the old D&D games were about cooperating with your friends to create an adventure that you could traverse through as a group, to achieve your goal.
Unfortunately, when put into the context of an MMO, that idealism ends up being lackluster. It reflects their focus on 5-man dungeons thus far, which is exactly like the D&D that old die-hards know and love, however they are now swimming in a whole different ballpark. They have attracted at least the attention, if not the time, of a large fraction of MMO players, possibly looking for a substitute for WoW as it starts to decline.
Neverwinter keeping this influx of players depends on one thing: How far they are willing to stray from the current parameters of the Dungeons and Dragons universe. The more rigidly they stick to it, the more they narrow-down their player base. If they focus almost entirely on casual PvE content like the current dungeons with a handful of PvP maps as a sidenote, people are going to feel unfulfilled.
I think that in order for this game to become huge, it needs to make some hard choices. I think a good balance would be to keep all of the existing, casual content and feel of the game intact, because many players enjoy it, but add more 'hardcore' elements for the players who want to stay. Which brings me back to my original post
High health damage mitigation means low damage. Oh no just slot tenes and stomp everything in you path.
Unfortunately, balancing PVP perfectly is a very difficult thing to do when compared to developing new content. With Aion looming on the horizon, Neverwinter needs a solution quickly. We can make do with PvP balance as it is for now, not perfect but playable, while they sort out the bigger issues facing them.