test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
PvE not challanging enough?
lfish
Member Posts: 25 Arc User
Hello everyone,
Recently I have started to play other RPG games like "Neverwinter Nights 2" and by chance I compared the gameplay with Neverwinter Online and built up some thoughts.
I would like to discuss about the challanging level of PvE in this game (sorry if similar threads exist but at a first glance I did not find any thread that considers my thoughts). Everything what I say in the following is based on my opinion and does not need to be the truth for everyone of course
There are some good parts which make PvE exciting and an action experience, for example ...
- Dodging
- Aiming (even though it is aimbotted, even for ranged)
- Controlling many enemies
- Combining different classes and their powers
The stronger your own character and each of your other teammates' character gets the better you get in doing the same dungeon again and the easier the dungeon will be. This leads to farming dungeons (which is nothing bad).
What I noticed after playing many months that I and also most of all others in the team were more and more only concentrating on how fast we can "clean" the dungeon - especially with CW's "Arcane Singularity" which really feels like a vacuum cleaner. The focus on that is one of the reasons for DPS builds. (Btw: A good step since Module 4 was reducing the power of the vacuum cleaner )
After some time I also noticed some things about the enemies and this leads to the topic title:
Actions of enemies (not bosses!):
In my opinion most of all enemies a single enemy will not challange you at all for the most time. I will note some exceptional enemies later. Of course the difficulty varies by the characters equipment/powers but the most reasons are the following:
- Too few attacks: The most enemies just attack you once and then stand around looking at you for some time,
- Slow AoE: Very few enemies have a fast AoE power which cause trouble for you. But most of all enemies have a slow AoE you can easily dodge.
- Few special maneuvers: Very few enemies do something special like "teleporting behind you and then attack you" or "spring attacks". But even if they do many of them do them also too slow.
- Few burst/control attacks: Most enemies do high damage or control like slow/stun/daze by AoE. Means that a red area appears and then you should dodge it. As mentioned before, mostly you can dodge it easily. But almost no enemy uses burst/control on a single target so that the enemy alone gets a real threat.
Now the only way I experienced challange was confronting these sort of enemies in the mass. In other words, the more enemies there are, the more you dodge and then you have to do more.
But after a while, facing the mass was no problem if your team knows how to control them. Now what do we actually control?
We only control the damage flow that the enemies are causing
I emphasize this because after you control the enemies there will mostly not be any serendipity.
What I am missing are enemies which alone demand more skill of you and which do faster direct burst on a single character or do more single control like pushing/stunning/immobilizing/proning/slowing/dazing/confusing/blinding/fearing you instead of some slow AoE. I would also prefer more dodging/hiding/surprising movements for more enemies so that they do not just stand around like puppets - in a nutshell, more enemies should be more agile.
So maybe one basic improvement could be made by increasing the attack and control frequency and lowering the damage output.
I also noticed that I mostly remember the names of enemies that were exceptional like the following ones:
- "Trappers": They jump away from you, throw out a net in your area with giving you very short time to dodge. If it hits you, it grabs you and immobilizes you for a second.
- "Legion Devil" (in "Lair of the mad Dragon"-dungeon): They can be tough because they stay compact and heal each other with AoE healing. Thus, you have to tear them apart from each other to defeat them more easily.
- "Hulk" (in "Dread Vault"-dungeon): These ones are awesome. Even though it is AoE it has a similar effect to "Arcane Singularity" but much faster and for the most characters it can kill you in one shot.
- "Phase Spiders": They are very agile and doing decent damage (even though their attack is quite slow)
Furthermore, the potential of almost all enemies gets lost if you have CW's in your party using "Arcane Singularity" because then everyone can focus his AoE damage on a single spot and the challange is reduced a lot. As already mentioned, after some time going into a dungeon feels too much like cleaning instead of fighting it.
Bosses:
I will not go through every single boss now but for example Valindra is certainly a good challange because even if you play with a very good party things can still go wrong by RNG (unless your whole team has way over 16k GS with too much DPS so it is overkilling). But I see a problem with some other bosses:
Considering the new dragons in Module 4 it is really great that these dragons can spawn in certain areas and that you can defeat them with other random people. But after a certain amount of players attempting to defeat the dragon it just gets a matter of time. Everything most of all players do is just standing near the dragon and doing damage, maybe healing themselves sometime. Sometimes people get killed but still the chances that the dragon will fall is 100%. Similar things count for bosses which spawn in Icewind Dale areas. This is rather unfortunate because it does not imply any tactics or combos.
Of course the game itself has a great look&feel which I really appreciate but after some time even if I played alone (not in dungeons which require a party) I almost never felt challanged by enemies and I miss certain aspects that I have experienced in other RPGs. The main concept of the game obviously seems to be the reward orientation and the faster I get the reward the better I feel. But after getting "enough rewards" I was learning more about the enemies itself and which parts I do not like in their behavior.
The reasons mentioned so far are also the reasons why I do not play foundry quests (except for the story maybe and despite that the rewards are useless). If they were more challanging then I would actually enjoy it more to play them (I must admit that I did not do many foundry quests and mostly only the fast ones).
Well, so far from my side. I have mentioned a lot now but I am interested about your thoughts.
Would you agree that PvE is not challanging enough?
If yes, where do you see problems?
Which enemies do you personally like/dislike in their behaviors?
Which improvements come up to your mind?
I am excited to see your opinions about this
Hint:
- Please do not relate anything to rewards/ADs - I would like to focus on the challange of PvE.
- Please do not see this as a "hate"-thread and if some people give unconstructive posts please just ignore them. Unfortunately, there are too many trolls/haters around.
Kind regards
Recently I have started to play other RPG games like "Neverwinter Nights 2" and by chance I compared the gameplay with Neverwinter Online and built up some thoughts.
I would like to discuss about the challanging level of PvE in this game (sorry if similar threads exist but at a first glance I did not find any thread that considers my thoughts). Everything what I say in the following is based on my opinion and does not need to be the truth for everyone of course
There are some good parts which make PvE exciting and an action experience, for example ...
- Dodging
- Aiming (even though it is aimbotted, even for ranged)
- Controlling many enemies
- Combining different classes and their powers
The stronger your own character and each of your other teammates' character gets the better you get in doing the same dungeon again and the easier the dungeon will be. This leads to farming dungeons (which is nothing bad).
What I noticed after playing many months that I and also most of all others in the team were more and more only concentrating on how fast we can "clean" the dungeon - especially with CW's "Arcane Singularity" which really feels like a vacuum cleaner. The focus on that is one of the reasons for DPS builds. (Btw: A good step since Module 4 was reducing the power of the vacuum cleaner
)After some time I also noticed some things about the enemies and this leads to the topic title:
Actions of enemies (not bosses!):
In my opinion most of all enemies a single enemy will not challange you at all for the most time. I will note some exceptional enemies later. Of course the difficulty varies by the characters equipment/powers but the most reasons are the following:
- Too few attacks: The most enemies just attack you once and then stand around looking at you for some time,
- Slow AoE: Very few enemies have a fast AoE power which cause trouble for you. But most of all enemies have a slow AoE you can easily dodge.
- Few special maneuvers: Very few enemies do something special like "teleporting behind you and then attack you" or "spring attacks". But even if they do many of them do them also too slow.
- Few burst/control attacks: Most enemies do high damage or control like slow/stun/daze by AoE. Means that a red area appears and then you should dodge it. As mentioned before, mostly you can dodge it easily. But almost no enemy uses burst/control on a single target so that the enemy alone gets a real threat.
Now the only way I experienced challange was confronting these sort of enemies in the mass. In other words, the more enemies there are, the more you dodge and then you have to do more.
But after a while, facing the mass was no problem if your team knows how to control them. Now what do we actually control?
We only control the damage flow that the enemies are causing
I emphasize this because after you control the enemies there will mostly not be any serendipity.
What I am missing are enemies which alone demand more skill of you and which do faster direct burst on a single character or do more single control like pushing/stunning/immobilizing/proning/slowing/dazing/confusing/blinding/fearing you instead of some slow AoE. I would also prefer more dodging/hiding/surprising movements for more enemies so that they do not just stand around like puppets - in a nutshell, more enemies should be more agile.
So maybe one basic improvement could be made by increasing the attack and control frequency and lowering the damage output.
I also noticed that I mostly remember the names of enemies that were exceptional like the following ones:
- "Trappers": They jump away from you, throw out a net in your area with giving you very short time to dodge. If it hits you, it grabs you and immobilizes you for a second.
- "Legion Devil" (in "Lair of the mad Dragon"-dungeon): They can be tough because they stay compact and heal each other with AoE healing. Thus, you have to tear them apart from each other to defeat them more easily.
- "Hulk" (in "Dread Vault"-dungeon): These ones are awesome. Even though it is AoE it has a similar effect to "Arcane Singularity" but much faster and for the most characters it can kill you in one shot.
- "Phase Spiders": They are very agile and doing decent damage (even though their attack is quite slow)
Furthermore, the potential of almost all enemies gets lost if you have CW's in your party using "Arcane Singularity" because then everyone can focus his AoE damage on a single spot and the challange is reduced a lot. As already mentioned, after some time going into a dungeon feels too much like cleaning instead of fighting it.
Bosses:
I will not go through every single boss now but for example Valindra is certainly a good challange because even if you play with a very good party things can still go wrong by RNG (unless your whole team has way over 16k GS with too much DPS so it is overkilling). But I see a problem with some other bosses:
Considering the new dragons in Module 4 it is really great that these dragons can spawn in certain areas and that you can defeat them with other random people. But after a certain amount of players attempting to defeat the dragon it just gets a matter of time. Everything most of all players do is just standing near the dragon and doing damage, maybe healing themselves sometime. Sometimes people get killed but still the chances that the dragon will fall is 100%. Similar things count for bosses which spawn in Icewind Dale areas. This is rather unfortunate because it does not imply any tactics or combos.
Of course the game itself has a great look&feel which I really appreciate but after some time even if I played alone (not in dungeons which require a party) I almost never felt challanged by enemies and I miss certain aspects that I have experienced in other RPGs. The main concept of the game obviously seems to be the reward orientation and the faster I get the reward the better I feel. But after getting "enough rewards" I was learning more about the enemies itself and which parts I do not like in their behavior.
The reasons mentioned so far are also the reasons why I do not play foundry quests (except for the story maybe and despite that the rewards are useless). If they were more challanging then I would actually enjoy it more to play them (I must admit that I did not do many foundry quests and mostly only the fast ones).
Well, so far from my side. I have mentioned a lot now but I am interested about your thoughts.
Would you agree that PvE is not challanging enough?
If yes, where do you see problems?
Which enemies do you personally like/dislike in their behaviors?
Which improvements come up to your mind?
I am excited to see your opinions about this
Hint:
- Please do not relate anything to rewards/ADs - I would like to focus on the challange of PvE.
- Please do not see this as a "hate"-thread and if some people give unconstructive posts please just ignore them. Unfortunately, there are too many trolls/haters around.
Kind regards
Post edited by lfish on
0
Comments
Seriously, though.. no problem with adding more challenging content. So long as that is not just....
...bigger or faster spawning mobs, HP, and immunities. Something a bit more imaginative...
Roland Mac Sheonin GF | Tarron Direheart SW |
To people saying dont bring this and this class, dont listen to them. Every class should be viable. And you are totally right, the only thing you are controlling is the masses of adds. Nothing else.
Difficulty in this game is only determined by the amount of adds thrown your way.
Right, the focus should be more on the behavior of the enemies - not their properties
Handicapping my team or myself should not be the only way to make it harder :P. But anyway I am not asking/demanding anything from the devs. They can continue the way they want but these are just my thoughts
Ugh, I hated when they fixed this. I never went back into MC after that change.
If you are a casual player coming in, I think it is a fun experience but don't expect too much as far as endgame farming is concerned.
You could always do those setups and many did. The difference is that it was a different mechanic from MOAR DEEEEPPPPSSS. Most things in Neverwinter are just dps races with no other real option for the the fight. Having something that wasn't a dps race was fun.
Right, that is what I am also seeking for and for myself in my initial post I kinda explained the reason why it ends up that people only go for dps.
A lot of other things is done very well in NW. Level design, narrative, D&D feeling and so on!
Oh yeah, for example the new enemies near the Dragon encounter spots are looking really cool but then you treat them like trees you can kill easily which is undignified for that creative looking foe.