fusedmassMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 252Bounty Hunter
edited June 2013
I think its that, there's not much to do. The bots have already undercutting profits in the AH. Its impossible to compare with amount of stuff they sell for low price, leaving many to have less diamonds on hand. Works in games favor, since more people then purchase the zen.
I believe its a combo of things.
1. Zen Prices- When you charge 5 dollars to respec, every time. You realize what a huge money sink that is. I'm all for supporting the game. I paid 200 on the Hero of the North and least 40 dollars in Zen in its first month of official launch. Yet they're not open to option leaving some things for free like respect. Things players in some other games are used getting for free.
2. Lack of communication- Its been the weekend since GG went down. We haven't had an update yet and its Tuesday. I think it discourages those, who haven't signed in it, checking for updates. Discouraged despite the vast amount we spent on the time. Its equal not being appreciation.
I do love this game. I like the combat, it works for me. The entire system runs fine on my PC while other games made my graphics card run hot. Yet that doesn't simply excuse the rest of it.
Its gotten more crowded in my opinion(mindflayer server)
Same for me. I’ve been playing on Mindflayer since day 2 and haven’t noticed a drop.
Last week, I did speak with a guy who said his guild was dead. My guess is that for every high level leaving, a new person enters at the lower level.
I think Cryptic is focusing their efforts (like Gauntlgrym) on increasing the retention of hardcore groupers. I believe this is the subset that blows through MMOs the quickest and then gets bored. Of course, Gaunt isn’t doing the job at the moment but I’m sure they will make it better.
oh please... you know darn well that after summer people return to school or their children do and when this happens whatever they played during the summer they no longer have time for, summer should have ample players cause if they dwindle then that means when schools start there is going to be no one left
I play more during winter then in summer, Summer is for going outside. Which I do a lot of. Winter kinda sucks going out so I spend more time infront of this thing.
But I don't know why people would care if population is dropping or raising. This doesn't seem to effect the game at all. Only serves to spread fear and gloom to other players or potential players.
oh please... you know darn well that after summer people return to school or their children do and when this happens whatever they played during the summer they no longer have time for, summer should have ample players cause if they dwindle then that means when schools start there is going to be no one left
So you are operating under the assumption that 90% if not all the players are school kids or college students that don't have anything better to do then sit around and play during the summer. That's a severe misconception. This will end up as a niche game like DDO has been. People of the older generation that played DnD as kids will more than likely continue playing. It isn't the DnD we grew up with, but it will do for now. BTW, those kids aren't gonna matter much to the devs or PW because they aren't the ones that are going to be throwing money out on a regular basis. The bottom line from their point of view is the profit margin. Now, unless child labor is still in effect somewhere else in the world, how many kids are actually gonna get their parents to fork over money each month for them to play this? Thats the good thing about being older, we have more money.
Foundry Designs: Once a Dungeon Master, always a Dungeon Master.
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troziMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2013
Yea ppl left. Why ? Because if you want best items u need only exploit ways and other stuff. I see ppl who cannot normaly obtain items in 2-3 days to get best. ( I see TR in pvp with green/blue stuff and other day he has max Ancient and lvl 7 enchants and why ? because his guild exploiting CN ). Yea its joke, u need only exploit in this game to be best or pay real money.
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tang56Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2013
I'm not actively playing, but that has more to do with the ping from the EU getting significantly worse over the last week.
So you are operating under the assumption that 90% if not all the players are school kids or college students that don't have anything better to do then sit around and play during the summer. That's a severe misconception. This will end up as a niche game like DDO has been. People of the older generation that played DnD as kids will more than likely continue playing. It isn't the DnD we grew up with, but it will do for now. BTW, those kids aren't gonna matter much to the devs or PW because they aren't the ones that are going to be throwing money out on a regular basis. The bottom line from their point of view is the profit margin. Now, unless child labor is still in effect somewhere else in the world, how many kids are actually gonna get their parents to fork over money each month for them to play this? Thats the good thing about being older, we have more money.
From reading many of the forum posts & in-game chat, I would say the assumption that many players are younger is spot on.
From reading many of the forum posts & in-game chat, I would say the assumption that many players are younger is spot on.
Sounds reasonable to me. The group I joined with stopped playing after a few days due to the lack of DnD basics. Many folks I suspect have went back to DDO or NWN2.
Theres a difference between core player base and fly thru ones..;)
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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brutikusivMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 25Arc User
edited June 2013
Talked a lot of guild members into joining Open Beta. All of them left before that even ended. Quite a few left solely based on the fact that each and every alts bag space and each and ever alts bank space had to be paid with cash to upgrade. Should have made it account wide IMO. But I guess mostly most of them thought the lack of depth of the game didn't warrant spending $400 on just solely for inventory space. *just my 2 cents*
In a word... the game gets boring really fast.... none of those in my first guild even play anymore. GG was the best they could do on ...LAUNCH? And that was a disaster.Toons are more of the same feel, almost like carbon copies, dungeons are horrible with spawning adds, and all you can do is run them around until you boot them odd the edge, DD is to long between. NW should have been a good game, but like many have stated above, to much lacking ingame, just dumb GS calls to even run..must have exp etc.. hows that going to work out for a newbie 60? IMO the game is gasping and will soon fade out if PWE doesnt make some changes, to classes and end game D's. Nerfin the clerics was the worst thing they could have done, but then they nerfed alot of us and we didnt even realize it till after. Not much left to say, either they address the issues that almost everyoen has brought to them, or they lose their money base and fade into the dark.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Sir, were now surrounded"!
Thats great news son, now we can attack from ALL sides"!
Sadly..I believe their business model is not to keep players past three months. I think their business model is designed to do exactly what it has done. Bring in noobs..dazzle them with shinies..they'll pay for Zen for approx 2 months til they find out like we did that this is a 3 month game and they'll move on to0 in order to make room for the next busload.
Working as intended.
This is what most F2P games are about. Impulse buying and pay walls. Doesnt take long to figure out after the fact, by then, PWE is happy.
I'm seeing more, I think they might be new players. I cant speak for people who hit 60 im guessing they stopped playing as there isnt much to do, and doing all the same quest again might be boring. But im only 35 and I know there are more people about then before open beta closed.
Pretty much every MMO, ever, has a massive deflation after the first month or so.
This is normal.
Now if it KEEPS dwindling for the next few months, there's a problem.
*squints* I'm seeing less activity in game than there was during THE FIRST CLOSED BETA WEEKEND. activity is SOOO low, I'm seeing multiple listings of instances that have ZERO people in them, simply because there's a minimum # of instances available. (that minimum, being what the designers thought would be "low time" but this is ON A WEEKEND, where you would expect many more instances being made to support the players online. ( a majority of players ether quit, or are now only logging in to invoke and que proffesions )
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goldentulipMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2013
Mindflayer shard here, and its getting more crowded...not sure about other shards...
Yea ppl left. Why ? Because if you want best items u need only exploit ways and other stuff. I see ppl who cannot normaly obtain items in 2-3 days to get best. ( I see TR in pvp with green/blue stuff and other day he has max Ancient and lvl 7 enchants and why ? because his guild exploiting CN ). Yea its joke, u need only exploit in this game to be best or pay real money.
Totally agree the exploiters are ruining a lot of the fun in game. I also see a lot of replies when anyone moans about exploiters advertising for groups during DD saying they don't see exploiters or they are in a minority (this was a reply from a mod in these forums), well I am sorry try coming to Beholder and picking up a random group from zone chat almost all are glitching, exploiting etc. It is so bad I don't even bother with pick up groups anymore, I wait till there are enough guild members on (which is getting less and less, not cos they leave the guild but cos they stop playing for many of the reasons mentioned in this thread) and go with them.
The PW cash grab for enchants is also a major annoyance along with many other of their item shop hidden agendas.
For the moment I continue to play, however between the boring repetative dungeon boss add fest, exploits, bugs, bots, elitism and the PW shop games I am not sure for how much longer, which is a shame cos I bought both founder packs and have been in game since CBT1 and have spent about 200euro in zen store for keys, bag and bank space plus couple companions, so I have invested a lot in this game and am now beginning to feel cheated.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
edited June 2013
I'm on Mindflayer as well, and I'm not seeing a population drop when I look around....however...keep in mind that the number of instances can change, so if there is indeed a population drop, it can be hidden by reducing the number of instances, so you get more players in each remaining one.
For any realistic numbers, someone would have to count the total number of players online in all instances..
I'm not sure population dropped, maybe many people went on strike cause there is no end-game. Personally I play for end game ,a nd doing dungeons is just a way to gear up to beat harder content.. but there isn't harder content so you basically farm for gear you don't need if not to farm more.
I don't agree that this game is ruined by exploits. I hate them, but I perfectly understand why people don't bother to do the content the way it's intended. I'm the kind of player that prefers to wipe a day or 2 against a hard boss in a hard dungeon than somebody who repeatedly does the same things over and over to accumulate e-wealth.
So after doing once or twice an instance I can't say I welcome exploit, but surely the legitimate shortcuts or strats that "sink the time-sinks", especially when they are totally worthless.
I always saw gear as a mean for progression and I've always been against gear difference in pvp, but I understand that greed is what game companies are exploiting, because many many people prefer to win thanks to better gear than lose having fair opportunites, and prefer to show their shiny purple epics to brag about their gs rather than understanding that it's totally worthless to outgear the content you play in, or it gets much less funny and much less rewarding (and boring sums both of those).
So here we are, with /zone full of people asking for 11k+ experienced people to go in a dungeon beaten to death hundreds of times an that is rather easy as soon as you realize the optimal strat, which is group up adds, avoid red things on the ground (be it a circle or a cone) and possibly throw everything in the lava unless there is an invisible wall.
Surely this doesn't apply to everyone... the kind of single-player who likes to do foundries and has no time to play, or prefer to level up alts is surely going to love this game. Exploits seems to hurt much less than some people say here in this thread, after all it just restricted the number of times you have to farm an instance for gear. Unfortunately the best gear you can have is worth nothing because we have no idea what's coming after and the game is getting stale.
However if the target audience is the solo/rpg/grinder I don't understand the choice of having an action-like interface. It's totally detrimental for players without strong experience with fps or hardcore mmos.
The communication also is totally absent, which is the biggest problem if they plan to have a stable community. I would really like to know what are the expectations from devs and their plans for future content release. But.. there nothing on the horizon for what I can tell by reading around.
This could be due to so many technical issues with the game now too. During the beta i was actually able to play the game. Now I can't even get into the game with my characters because they are somehow stuck and the loading fails every time i try. But I can create a new character and enter the world just fine. Issues like that are beyond frustrating for players. When you feel as if at some point you will progress only to be stuck due to technical issues with the game, you aren't going to invest much time, let alone any money into it.
I think we have to take into account a few things:
1) Someone mentioned MMO Nomads earlier. the MMO Nomad is the person who jumps into new MMO's with a frenzy, consumes content at a pace that is 10x higher then most dev's will predict, and they hit level cap and gripe about how boring the game is a month into release, then leave it for the next latest and greatest. they rarely spend more then a few months in an MMO. just about every MMO since I've been playing has experienced this trend (since 2002 to be precise), so seeing a large group of people leave initially isn't surprising...it's quite natural actually.
2) the nature of a Micro-transaction game (no subs....all MT's for their income) mean that no one playing has initial vested interest (unless you forked over the insane prices for their founders packs). no vested interest = no need to "stick" around in hope that it gets better. people leave, knowing that their characters will be here when they get back. so attendance will be more cyclical in this game then in others, especially the sub based games (or sub optional games, like SWtOR or LotRO).
3) this game didn't really release on the 20th. their lack of a reset really means that they had a "soft-rollout" that started quite a bit ago. many of the people leaving now are those that have already capped, and have nothing to do. while a reset may be bad in some peoples eyes, it creates a fresh point for all to get involved in. It certainly doesn't help new players coming into a game barely half a week after "Launch", and see 3/4 of the populace at level cap with gear a few tiers above your entry level blues. There is an artificial cap created there that most games don't even have to deal with for the first 3-6 months, and it started day one. so while people leaving a week after launch may seem horrible...it really isn't just a week after launch. they should have reset.
Overall, when I hop into game, I still see tons of people saturating sanctuary. The game has it's issues, but I've been playing MMO's long enough to know the cycle...an MMO doesn't mature for 6 months to a year after it's release. does it have issues? yes. but it also has time. 6 mos to a year from now is when we should really look back and see what has happened. If it doesn't survive that long, then it will be obvious that it was a bad game. but current populations tell a different story. Being in a guild that has seen populations drop it can seem like things are dying, but overall this MMO has been busier then many I've played lately. But only time will tell.
As expected the population will drop. Peoplee give up too easily when they have nothing to do after speending tons of money in a game to get all endgame gear and enchants. What else should they do now? I personally started to play on open beta weekend 2 back in march. I enjoyed it alot and still do. But I may drop it cause of lack of balance. Its like why I never tried GW2 or left Diablo 3 after I bought it and waited for it for 12 years, lack of balance, no variety. Someone mentioned endless grindfest above. That reminded me of a game called Mu Online 12 years ago. I played that game for long time, after that I played Cabal Online for nearly 3 years, after that another 2 and a half years in Aion but had to quit cause I couldnt afford it anymore cause I had to quit my job. I played GW1 for a couple of months and left cause of no variety again. Never played WoW cause for me its a huge waste of time (if you are asian, go for the grind fest). But I expected more from Neverwinter. Since I love D&D systems and I have played all Neverwinter-based games (Cryptic games) /Neverwinter Knights 1,2,3, Baldur's Gate, Dungeon Siege 1,2, ets./ buut when I reached lvl55 in just 2 days in Neverwinter, I didnt expect to last more. I am still interested in the game thow cause I wanna complete my build at least. Lets see what will come up for the next couple of weeks. Just a little side note: Aion Online started with 4 basic classes that can excede in 2 different sub classes in 2009, they just now introduced 2 new classes 4 years later. But there the sub classes use the same equipment /except weapons/ of the core class. Do you think its that easy to make a new class? Even after you have the 5 core classes that use all 5 types of armor sets? Well, as a seniour programmer, I can tell you that its not. Ive worked in game developing company and I know it takes alot of efforts to make it happen.
Patching up exploits and making it hard to get the 1337 700t5 to get invited into every instance where not having a 10k+ GS gets you kicked then selling your 1337 5p701t 700t5 to raise your GS to max when it would take a person that isn't cheating a few years to get that powerful and wealthy tends to give them nothing else to do but farm stuff the hard way which takes a modest amount of effort and is redundant because you're already maxed out and have nothing to do. A lot of people cheated themselves out of the game by taking advantage of beta. They also ruined the economy and caused people to stop playing the game. Congraturation. A winner is you.
I'm not saying it was humans, but it was humans.
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elfosagMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 11Arc User
edited June 2013
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azahronMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 2Arc User
Same here, my guild had 120 active players at start of OB. At this moment in time we are down to about 8 and a few of these have stated they are getting bored. The trouble is its not just with end game but also the lack of ideas for dungeon bosses, the majority of the time it is all about try to kill the boss and kite the endless mob spawns before for lower spec PCs game just becomes a lag fest or screen freezes. Other mechanics involve try to keep down the endless spawn of mobs and kill boss before they overwhelm you. I am sorry but how little thought did the devs actually bother to put into these encounters?? It seems their only answer to making things harder is increase number of boss aoe red circles and increase number and rate of spawning adds, then towards the last 25% of boss life spawn really big nasty adds plus loads more of the other adds, come on this is boring rubbish.
I've had the exact same conversation with my best friend, who also played Neverwinter - compare it to other MMOs, like WoW and SWTOR where almost every instance boss has different mechanics and where the fights feel different and this one gets boring very quickly.
Neverwinter boss mechanics follow these rules for pretty much every dungeon and skirmish boss:
1) Give them ridiculous amounts of health.
2) Make sure they have a ton of high dmg AoE's.
3) Lets add some adds. And some more adds. And then some more adds! OMG guys, add more adds!!!
Hopefully this will improve with future content, but currently it gets stale very quickly.
I want to play this game. I love so many aspects of it. However I stopped playing a few weeks ago for 1 main reason. This was meant to be a beta, hence the response from people whenever we complained about bugs. "It's a beta ****, get over it".
So, being a seasoned beta tester, I took it as an opportunity to investigate the classes, abilities and stats. However, having to PAY FOR A RESPEC was dumb. It ruined any chance for a true beta test.
I developed a very bad taste in my mouth as it dawned on me the greedy tactics this business was using.
Rift became FTP and I left.
BTW, I spent $$$ on NW. I really tried to get past the greedy <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> of paying for respecs.
So...bye bye. I wont let the door hit me on the *** as I leave. I won't be missed....and all that other <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
There is really no way we can know what the population health is. The way I judge is my queues. The longer a queue takes to pop, the more impact the population is having on my gameplay experience. I normally play a game until this ratio get to a point where I am waiting too long to do what I like.
Neverwinter boss mechanics follow these rules for pretty much every dungeon and skirmish boss:
1) Give them ridiculous amounts of health.
2) Make sure they have a ton of high dmg AoE's.
3) Lets add some adds. And some more adds. And then some more adds! OMG guys, add more adds!!!
Which is a shame. I think the dungeons are really well designed when it comes to the visuals and the landscape, optional rooms, and more or less secret additions. I enjoy exploring them. But there are way too many identical mob packs between bosses, which makes me start yawning before half-way. And as you say, the actual boss design was done in an incredibly lazy way by Cryptic. It's pretty much the same pattern over and over again. If there is one thing they should change, it's this.
Comments
I believe its a combo of things.
1. Zen Prices- When you charge 5 dollars to respec, every time. You realize what a huge money sink that is. I'm all for supporting the game. I paid 200 on the Hero of the North and least 40 dollars in Zen in its first month of official launch. Yet they're not open to option leaving some things for free like respect. Things players in some other games are used getting for free.
2. Lack of communication- Its been the weekend since GG went down. We haven't had an update yet and its Tuesday. I think it discourages those, who haven't signed in it, checking for updates. Discouraged despite the vast amount we spent on the time. Its equal not being appreciation.
I do love this game. I like the combat, it works for me. The entire system runs fine on my PC while other games made my graphics card run hot. Yet that doesn't simply excuse the rest of it.
Same for me. I’ve been playing on Mindflayer since day 2 and haven’t noticed a drop.
Last week, I did speak with a guy who said his guild was dead. My guess is that for every high level leaving, a new person enters at the lower level.
I think Cryptic is focusing their efforts (like Gauntlgrym) on increasing the retention of hardcore groupers. I believe this is the subset that blows through MMOs the quickest and then gets bored. Of course, Gaunt isn’t doing the job at the moment but I’m sure they will make it better.
I play more during winter then in summer, Summer is for going outside. Which I do a lot of. Winter kinda sucks going out so I spend more time infront of this thing.
But I don't know why people would care if population is dropping or raising. This doesn't seem to effect the game at all. Only serves to spread fear and gloom to other players or potential players.
So you are operating under the assumption that 90% if not all the players are school kids or college students that don't have anything better to do then sit around and play during the summer. That's a severe misconception. This will end up as a niche game like DDO has been. People of the older generation that played DnD as kids will more than likely continue playing. It isn't the DnD we grew up with, but it will do for now. BTW, those kids aren't gonna matter much to the devs or PW because they aren't the ones that are going to be throwing money out on a regular basis. The bottom line from their point of view is the profit margin. Now, unless child labor is still in effect somewhere else in the world, how many kids are actually gonna get their parents to fork over money each month for them to play this? Thats the good thing about being older, we have more money.
From reading many of the forum posts & in-game chat, I would say the assumption that many players are younger is spot on.
Sounds reasonable to me. The group I joined with stopped playing after a few days due to the lack of DnD basics. Many folks I suspect have went back to DDO or NWN2.
"Sir, were now surrounded"!
Thats great news son, now we can attack from ALL sides"!
Working as intended.
This is what most F2P games are about. Impulse buying and pay walls. Doesnt take long to figure out after the fact, by then, PWE is happy.
This is normal.
Now if it KEEPS dwindling for the next few months, there's a problem.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
*squints* I'm seeing less activity in game than there was during THE FIRST CLOSED BETA WEEKEND. activity is SOOO low, I'm seeing multiple listings of instances that have ZERO people in them, simply because there's a minimum # of instances available. (that minimum, being what the designers thought would be "low time" but this is ON A WEEKEND, where you would expect many more instances being made to support the players online. ( a majority of players ether quit, or are now only logging in to invoke and que proffesions )
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Totally agree the exploiters are ruining a lot of the fun in game. I also see a lot of replies when anyone moans about exploiters advertising for groups during DD saying they don't see exploiters or they are in a minority (this was a reply from a mod in these forums), well I am sorry try coming to Beholder and picking up a random group from zone chat almost all are glitching, exploiting etc. It is so bad I don't even bother with pick up groups anymore, I wait till there are enough guild members on (which is getting less and less, not cos they leave the guild but cos they stop playing for many of the reasons mentioned in this thread) and go with them.
The PW cash grab for enchants is also a major annoyance along with many other of their item shop hidden agendas.
For the moment I continue to play, however between the boring repetative dungeon boss add fest, exploits, bugs, bots, elitism and the PW shop games I am not sure for how much longer, which is a shame cos I bought both founder packs and have been in game since CBT1 and have spent about 200euro in zen store for keys, bag and bank space plus couple companions, so I have invested a lot in this game and am now beginning to feel cheated.
For any realistic numbers, someone would have to count the total number of players online in all instances..
I don't agree that this game is ruined by exploits. I hate them, but I perfectly understand why people don't bother to do the content the way it's intended. I'm the kind of player that prefers to wipe a day or 2 against a hard boss in a hard dungeon than somebody who repeatedly does the same things over and over to accumulate e-wealth.
So after doing once or twice an instance I can't say I welcome exploit, but surely the legitimate shortcuts or strats that "sink the time-sinks", especially when they are totally worthless.
I always saw gear as a mean for progression and I've always been against gear difference in pvp, but I understand that greed is what game companies are exploiting, because many many people prefer to win thanks to better gear than lose having fair opportunites, and prefer to show their shiny purple epics to brag about their gs rather than understanding that it's totally worthless to outgear the content you play in, or it gets much less funny and much less rewarding (and boring sums both of those).
So here we are, with /zone full of people asking for 11k+ experienced people to go in a dungeon beaten to death hundreds of times an that is rather easy as soon as you realize the optimal strat, which is group up adds, avoid red things on the ground (be it a circle or a cone) and possibly throw everything in the lava unless there is an invisible wall.
Surely this doesn't apply to everyone... the kind of single-player who likes to do foundries and has no time to play, or prefer to level up alts is surely going to love this game. Exploits seems to hurt much less than some people say here in this thread, after all it just restricted the number of times you have to farm an instance for gear. Unfortunately the best gear you can have is worth nothing because we have no idea what's coming after and the game is getting stale.
However if the target audience is the solo/rpg/grinder I don't understand the choice of having an action-like interface. It's totally detrimental for players without strong experience with fps or hardcore mmos.
The communication also is totally absent, which is the biggest problem if they plan to have a stable community. I would really like to know what are the expectations from devs and their plans for future content release. But.. there nothing on the horizon for what I can tell by reading around.
1) Someone mentioned MMO Nomads earlier. the MMO Nomad is the person who jumps into new MMO's with a frenzy, consumes content at a pace that is 10x higher then most dev's will predict, and they hit level cap and gripe about how boring the game is a month into release, then leave it for the next latest and greatest. they rarely spend more then a few months in an MMO. just about every MMO since I've been playing has experienced this trend (since 2002 to be precise), so seeing a large group of people leave initially isn't surprising...it's quite natural actually.
2) the nature of a Micro-transaction game (no subs....all MT's for their income) mean that no one playing has initial vested interest (unless you forked over the insane prices for their founders packs). no vested interest = no need to "stick" around in hope that it gets better. people leave, knowing that their characters will be here when they get back. so attendance will be more cyclical in this game then in others, especially the sub based games (or sub optional games, like SWtOR or LotRO).
3) this game didn't really release on the 20th. their lack of a reset really means that they had a "soft-rollout" that started quite a bit ago. many of the people leaving now are those that have already capped, and have nothing to do. while a reset may be bad in some peoples eyes, it creates a fresh point for all to get involved in. It certainly doesn't help new players coming into a game barely half a week after "Launch", and see 3/4 of the populace at level cap with gear a few tiers above your entry level blues. There is an artificial cap created there that most games don't even have to deal with for the first 3-6 months, and it started day one. so while people leaving a week after launch may seem horrible...it really isn't just a week after launch. they should have reset.
Overall, when I hop into game, I still see tons of people saturating sanctuary. The game has it's issues, but I've been playing MMO's long enough to know the cycle...an MMO doesn't mature for 6 months to a year after it's release. does it have issues? yes. but it also has time. 6 mos to a year from now is when we should really look back and see what has happened. If it doesn't survive that long, then it will be obvious that it was a bad game. but current populations tell a different story. Being in a guild that has seen populations drop it can seem like things are dying, but overall this MMO has been busier then many I've played lately. But only time will tell.
Thats BS WoW had 12million at highest piont this game highest piont might of been 300k
I've had the exact same conversation with my best friend, who also played Neverwinter - compare it to other MMOs, like WoW and SWTOR where almost every instance boss has different mechanics and where the fights feel different and this one gets boring very quickly.
Neverwinter boss mechanics follow these rules for pretty much every dungeon and skirmish boss:
1) Give them ridiculous amounts of health.
2) Make sure they have a ton of high dmg AoE's.
3) Lets add some adds. And some more adds. And then some more adds! OMG guys, add more adds!!!
Hopefully this will improve with future content, but currently it gets stale very quickly.
So, being a seasoned beta tester, I took it as an opportunity to investigate the classes, abilities and stats. However, having to PAY FOR A RESPEC was dumb. It ruined any chance for a true beta test.
I developed a very bad taste in my mouth as it dawned on me the greedy tactics this business was using.
Rift became FTP and I left.
BTW, I spent $$$ on NW. I really tried to get past the greedy <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> of paying for respecs.
So...bye bye. I wont let the door hit me on the *** as I leave. I won't be missed....and all that other <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
This game has not reached that point.
Which is a shame. I think the dungeons are really well designed when it comes to the visuals and the landscape, optional rooms, and more or less secret additions. I enjoy exploring them. But there are way too many identical mob packs between bosses, which makes me start yawning before half-way. And as you say, the actual boss design was done in an incredibly lazy way by Cryptic. It's pretty much the same pattern over and over again. If there is one thing they should change, it's this.