Tons and tons of hardcore players have left this game because of the lack of endgame. Dozens and dozens of once prominent (ie: hardcore and highend) guilds are now dead. Heck, even the PVP guilds which are the last bastion of the hardcore community are dying rapidly.
Based on the modules they've been releasing, it is clear they cater to a casual audience and will accept the benefits/consequences of focusing more on 1 group while ignoring the other.
There is a principle like 80-20 distribution and a whole theory behind the choices. Mind that hardcore players= people with a lot of free time (i wonder how many of them can pay or do pay).
To be fair, this has been and still is a fairly big problem for hardcore players in this game.
Tons and tons of hardcore players have left this game because of the lack of endgame. Dozens and dozens of once prominent (ie: hardcore and highend) guilds are now dead. Heck, even the PVP guilds which are the last bastion of the hardcore community are dying rapidly.
In your previous post, you stated what you think this game is all about: a buffet that doesn't really satisfy the hardcore players and it has suffered in some aspects because of that.
I don't know if Cryptic wants to correct that because they can just aim on inviting new casuals who might spend money and just have a revolving door of new players coming in and hardcores quitting the game due to a lack of endgame. This pattern might actually be what they intended it to be.
Based on the modules they've been releasing, it is clear they cater to a casual audience and will accept the benefits/consequences of focusing more on 1 group while ignoring the other.
Harder content is also a good way to have casuals spend money on the game. They buy zen they transform into ADs and buy gear from better players. It's good for trade and these guys get the gear they need to overgear the dungeon from the last module and kill the boss mindlessly spamming random powers. The skilled player can get his zen to buy the most game-breaking companions (oddly enough none of them are free) or ADs for enchantments and everyone is happy. Harder content can also be seen as a win-win situation. But harder content must have rare BoE gear.
There is a principle like 80-20 distribution and a whole theory behind the choices. Mind that hardcore players= people with a lot of free time (i wonder how many of them can pay or do pay).
You'd be surprised. Usually being able to afford a gaming computer/console and having free time doesn't mean unemployed guys, it just means being a member of the upper class, with a good disposable income and not many working hours. See : http://kotaku.com/who-are-the-whales-driving-free-to-play-gaming-youd-1197333118 for a further reference. I could tell you more about my own life but meh, suffice to say that I have a great income for few working hours, I can play games and I'm not ashamed to spend quite a lot of money on games I want or enjoy and have an economic model I like (= not this one).
reading this thread got me remember the times in Neverwinter long ago at my first start in this game. Maybe you have a little time to join me in my personal trip back to the past...
After I was 60 back in May 2013 everthing was exiting. There were so many things to explore. So I looked out for a guild and ran the first T1 Dungeons. The AH was not flooded with so good and cheap purple equipment like today so I started in green/blues like so many others. No boons, artifacts pushed my stats and a stone was far out of reach, cause I tried to play without RL money. But it was a fantastic feeling. Idris, Mad Dragon and Greywolve Den where really challenging and every time we finished successfully, opening the chest and receiving loot was an honor of the time, wipes and efforts we spend defeating the boss. I can also remember the first times in PK, where the boss was not so easy and a real tactic (!) was neccessary. T2 dungeons were even harder and the wipe rate was greater. Of course I also remember the bad things that time (exploiting nearly every dungeon, kicking the adds over the fences in CN...) that a lot of people used which were not playing legit as my guild. So seeing those well equipped exploiters was a pain in the ***, but a lot of people were not able to finish T2 content the legit way. But for me I had goals (defeat this next boss, get better equip) to strife for and having success even with a lot of failed attempts was a great motivation.
With Sharandar the fiirst slight stat improvements happened with the boons and the crafting weapons. Malabog was a hard Dungeon for that time and it made fun. The boons also helped to lever some discrepancies between gear and content. Sharandar itself was a pain due to the boring dailies for me and I remember that I shortly stopped playing them every day cause dungeons were far more exciting.
Looking back I would say, this was the best time in the game! Challenging content, goals, no uber characters, team play !
Ring was also something fresh with VT and it's mechanics, but the dailies were same pain, BUT a lot shorter to get all boons than Sharandar before. Artifacts were new and having one was at the beginning a good feeling. On the other side, the content was outgeared and the challenge was gone...
I tested shortly IWD and saw no new challenge and no new gear to even strife for. RNG was now the limiting factor for each and everything. The "older" players more and more outgeared the content and soloing and zerging was the new way runs/HE worked. 3-man draco for personal satisfaction and so on ... Teamplay in a new dimension but WAI??? It was not the game I loved before, so I took a real break.
Around the announcement of ToD I restarted in July freshly from 0, cause I loved the combat mechanics and hoped to experience this great feeling again of having to try hard to beat the content. It was at the end of Mod3 with CW's been pushed in damage. Getting once to 60 it was easy and cheap to buy some purples for nearly nothing. But I remind myself to play for the loot not to buy it to avoid destroying the experience I looked for. BUT ... the content felt now so easy. Even with low gear it felt wrong, overpowered. Running with PUGs on low gear was ok. With guildies even T2 was like a walk in the park slightly above min requirement for the dungeon. My stats increased sooo fast with all the boons artifacts and the steadily incoming purple drops... Quite disappointing and only the 4 week chest bug prevented me from getting my T2 set farmed in fast time. I'm sitting for some now on 1.200 ZEN for a stone, waiting for a promo. But even without the stone I manage to beat every boss except LoL, cause I was 3 weeks on vacation so I haen't finished the new stupid dailies.
Long story short: You can even as a casual as I am outgear the content in roughly 2 month and with no money spent for any goodies (bad business model IMHO)
My wish... give us back the old experience of Challenge, goals and neccessary teamplay !
Yalaia
Hope you enjoyed the trip to the past even if your's was a little difference in speed, feelings or experience. And please excuse my bad english
You'd be surprised. I can play games and I'm not ashamed to spend quite a lot of money on games I want or enjoy and have an economic model I like (= not this one).
i am not as you dont pay. I have no clue about the cash income for them, i was only saying that the paying segment has a larger base than only hardcore gamers and if they choose to add content like they do it means is the best choice for them.
I don't know if Cryptic wants to correct that because they can just aim on inviting new casuals who might spend money and just have a revolving door of new players coming in and hardcores quitting the game due to a lack of endgame. This pattern might actually be what they intended it to be.
If the content is too easy - the hardcore min/maxers, seeing that there is no challenge remaining in the game, have no incentive to stay.
If the content is too hard - the casuals, seeing that they have no chance to progress further, have no incentive to stay.
Nobody says make the 100% of the content hard or make the 100% of the content easy, just have the 90% of the content available for casuals and 10% for the more dedicated players, OMG, just play a normal MMORPG and stop with the nonsense comments.
A MMORPG should be a place where you can progress, and progression means that you can defeat harder and harder content everytime you get better gear, boons, etc... Why should a casual player leave if there is a 5% of the game content that will actually be a challenge?, seriously, I don't see why they should leave, they would still play the 95% of the game and when they want to play a little more consistent and dedicated they will have that 5% of the content to defeat when they get good gear and a good team with communicatio and organization.
If there is only Easy content and dailies -> No porpuse of progression for anyone, boring and some ppl will leave because of it.
If there is Easy, Normal and Hard content (Like in every other game on the universe) -> Good feel of progression for everyone, challenge and harded content waiting for you, not boring...
Why should a casual player leave if there is a 5% of the game content that will actually be a challenge?,
If by "content that will actually be a challenge", you mean "content that *ONLY* the hardcore players can ever possibly complete, and that casual players will never ever be able to complete", then yeah I can see why casual players would not want to stick around in a game where there is no possibility ever that they themselves will be able to progress, even if that super-hard content is only 5% of the content. They'll be stuck in the lower strata of the playerbase forever.
Now you and others are probably going to say "that is where they belong because they are casual players, they deserve to be in the bottom rung of the game's society". I just fundamentally disagree with that.
You say that MMOs are all about progression with gear and content. Isn't that true of casual players as well, not just hardcore players? Why should you get to advance but others not?
Harder content is also a good way to have casuals spend money on the game. They buy zen they transform into ADs and buy gear from better players. It's good for trade and these guys get the gear they need to overgear the dungeon from the last module and kill the boss mindlessly spamming random powers. The skilled player can get his zen to buy the most game-breaking companions (oddly enough none of them are free) or ADs for enchantments and everyone is happy. Harder content can also be seen as a win-win situation. But harder content must have rare BoE gear.
outside of the new draconic gear, almost everything is BOP
To be fair, this has been and still is a fairly big problem for hardcore players in this game.
Tons and tons of hardcore players have left this game because of the lack of endgame. Dozens and dozens of once prominent (ie: hardcore and highend) guilds are now dead. Heck, even the PVP guilds which are the last bastion of the hardcore community are dying rapidly.
In your previous post, you stated what you think this game is all about: a buffet that doesn't really satisfy the hardcore players and it has suffered in some aspects because of that.
I don't know if Cryptic wants to correct that because they can just aim on inviting new casuals who might spend money and just have a revolving door of new players coming in and hardcores quitting the game due to a lack of endgame. This pattern might actually be what they intended it to be.
Based on the modules they've been releasing, it is clear they cater to a casual audience and will accept the benefits/consequences of focusing more on 1 group while ignoring the other.
Define tons and tons, 100 000 would not be that bad if 1 000 000 causal players are not quitting because they see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hardcore players are at the end of the tunnel already and it's just a big empty well lit room, ok, but don't push the room further and further away down the tunnel you'll loose a lot more valuable players to the games life cycle.
@pointsman, maybe understand it more the way it is written
"content that will ACTUALLY be a challenge", and not as you said "only hardcore players can EVER and that casual players can NEVER EVER ...". At the beginning the game was challenging for everybody and nobody quit due to this, it was motivation I would say for nearly everybody. But today you outgear the content so fast and with every module new more powerful things for the playerbase were added but the content remained stable.
Why not a new content that is ACTUALLY challenging, but giving the COMPLETE playerbase a new goal, one earlier the other one later? From my point of view 5% content with new challenge is even to less (as it would only be 1-2 new dungeons/skirms). 4/8 new challenging Dungeons for Gear and 1/2 for rings/necks. Making really well equipped people wipe again while trying to get it ... upps a feeling that a lot of us might remember from long ago, but was it negative or the opposite after we had beaten the boss...
And some casual players will maybe buy stuff to catch up faster...
At the moment it's like in a sportsevent. Your team get's more and more good players (= gear, artifacts, boons) but your opponents team (dungeon / Skirms) stays the same. So now it's not the question if you beat them, the only unsure thing is if it will be 12-0 or 14-0... It's like a soccer match Brazil against Faroe Islands or maybe in terms of casuals Austria vs. Faroe, in both cases there is no question who wins...
Time for an EXPANSION with new challenging content and not only a module.
If by "content that will actually be a challenge", you mean "content that *ONLY* the hardcore players can ever possibly complete, and that casual players will never ever be able to complete", then yeah I can see why casual players would not want to stick around in a game where there is no possibility ever that they themselves will be able to progress, even if that super-hard content is only 5% of the content. They'll be stuck in the lower strata of the playerbase forever.
Now you and others are probably going to say "that is where they belong because they are casual players, they deserve to be in the bottom rung of the game's society". I just fundamentally disagree with that.
You say that MMOs are all about progression with gear and content. Isn't that true of casual players as well, not just hardcore players? Why should you get to advance but others not?
Casuals should see ALL content.
If a raid is introduced, it should have an Easy mode available, so casuals can get some purples and experience the lore in a relaxed way.
It should also have a hard mode, where you need great gear, great spec, good skills&experience and communication to overcome it.
The difference, besides difficulty, should be rewards. The casual mode should get almost the same gear but with less stats. The hardmode should get better stats gear (but not by much) and a few vanity items so one can show off, such as some legendary mount, or unique outfits/titles.
I have met casuals in such a system and they were as happy as the ones here, and quite content. I didn't manage to convince a single casual friend I had to come raid with me besides the ezy-mode LFR. They didn't want to and didn't care about it. They also didn't care about my shiny gear either, although they sometimes manifested interest for my title or mount. They got bored real fast when I explained that some drake took me 3 months of raiding before it dropped and I won the roll.
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chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited September 2014
For clarification - i don't think that EVERYTHING should be made harder, rather there should be content for players at all levels.
Right now, if you are super casual, you can enjoy the leveling to 60, the four campaigns of dailies (which require little gear to complete) and make a good amount of progression.
For at team that even knows a little about team work, in greens and blues, T1 dungeons aren't that hard in general. The only place i see people die is Wolf Den because they can't dodge (for some reason, i can't figure out why). But t1 weapons are nothing special, so it's not important to go there. Some T1 armor sets (high prophet, knights captain, scrappers, archmage) are actually pretty good and perfom well.
T2s are a bit harder with an undergeared party, but hopefully those casuals have met some more experinced players by then, and can get one of their friends to run them through. Personally, on my CW, I have carried a team of new players through spellplague (outdamaged second place 4:1, outdamaged third place 8:1). I don't mind doing it once in a while for a friend, but in general there is no incentive for me to do so - a 1:10 chance at a 1:5 roll of half decent loot isn't much of anything.
The endgame dungeons, CN, MC, VT, LoL - these are not meant for casual players! Yes, i have seen people run them with a 10-11k GS and complete them fine, but these were players of exceptional skill and talent, which is not average. If you want to try these harder dungeons, you need to put in the time to develop your skills and farm your gear!
The issue is that now, players were clearing CN, MC, VT, etc... with ease six months ago. I took a five month break and i come back and I am still _massively_ overpowered for the content. So the idea that these are "upper tier" dungeons is a bit silly.
I have yet to unlock LoL (few more days) but all i hear is "it's not that bad" and "i can solo the last boss" and i'm thinking, seriously? give me a break? Harder content should be HARD, but for those of us with gear and skill, it simply isn't.
So we have content for the super causual (logs in once every few days), he makes progress with dailies and whatnot
Moderate casual (not a lot of time, but works on playing better) can do T1s and maybe T2s,
Average players (logs in frequently, but is not efficent with time, doesn't study the game much) can do T2s and maybe T 2.5
Good players (can farm CN/MC/VT/LoL)
but there is nothing for Excellent players. We don't have a tier of content that is challenging and rewarding enough for us. It's time to put a higher level on the content, rather than just swarming us with easy dailies.
If you make even 1 map hard as f2p, i wonder just how fast the forums will fill with OMG that is sooo P2W?! For a game of real challenge i suggest you guys chess, for an ultimate challenge i suggest banging your head into a wall till it gets on the other side via quantum tunneling.
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shyataoMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 4Arc User
edited September 2014
I read a lot of constructive comments here.
For those who say Neverwinter is for casuals I have but one question: Have you ever played a game, MMO, Grinder., etc you really liked and became bored, because there were no new challenges? Have you ever wished there was more of a challenge? Yes? If so, maybe you can try to understand why people want more difficult content and new challenges. At least try to understand it please.
We are close to the developers by taking part in this forum and they still do care about new content, so why not ask and discuss about things like this keeping in mind a longer perspective?
This whole discussion is about seeing how the players and those new to the game think and so on.
And to maybe give the developers and GMs reading this some idea what the community wants.
You people are right, there are a lot of casual players out there. But eventually they start loving this game like I do and even if taking breaks come back in hope for more challenge. I paused for half a year and I like the new content (paused before dread ring), but now after a month the only challenge I see is running the dragon skirmish and dungeon on epic, running lowequipped, minimal, speed and soloruns or start a new toon, but even they get through the game way more easy than half a year ago.
And I absolutely know there are a lot of players who want to have more challenge and think of leaving because there isn't much.
You say, by saying this I just am not able to see the challenge in what already is? Sorry but thats incorrect.
I play in a newcomer friendly gild and we play even with little twinks. Sometimes even run dungeons and can't beat them.
We take people with us who just barely fulfill the dungeon requirements and it's fun.
But the aim can't be to just play with our twinks and to let our mains rot in piece.
Thats why the main argument here is progression!
To be able to progress just a little further and still be challenged. Cryptic did a good job with the new gear and the skirmish and dungeons - I hope this is just the beginning. Thats why I started this thread.
There is a lot of players who play the game from the start or at least longer than 3 months and it's necessary to be able to feel challenged even after gearing up completely. Like I said, I did a lot to make the game more challenging for myself, but I also want to feel helpless sometimes with my main character fully equipped - thats why I like the new content. I want more content like that.
So to sum it up:
- new harder content
- a remake of the dungeons, maybe also skirmishes so far, being set in a new higher and more challenging difficulty
- more raid content - the IWD encounters and the dragons are a nice start, but also bring us some raid dungeons and encounters, where we need 10-20 people and each character has to work together with the others to make the runs a success. Teamplay is the critical word here.
This is still open for discussion I don't want to shut anybody up, just set a good base for discussions
You obviously missed the live stream yesterday. They actually answered a question about difficulty. And their response said their goal was to make each new dungeon harder then the last one. Their own belief is epic LoL is their hardest dungeon to date. It is as difficult as they know how to make it. So how do you expect them to suddenly ramp things up another several notches?
And as far as the issues of casuals not leaving. Are you kidding? They have been leaving and having difficulty with the game from day one. Look at the number of bosses and dungeons that have had to be nerfed and toned down. Mad dragon, The Rime hound, Scalefather. You don't have to search the forums too hard to see the complaints and the reasons for making them easier. In fact having to make things easier is almost unheard of in a Cryptic game. The fact is, Neverwinter is debatably, the most difficult Cryptic game to date. And Cryptic made it perfectly clear who their audience is by reducing the difficulty when complaints got loud. Yet continues to ignore complaints about lack of difficulty.
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chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
If you make even 1 map hard as f2p, i wonder just how fast the forums will fill with OMG that is sooo P2W?! For a game of real challenge i suggest you guys chess, for an ultimate challenge i suggest banging your head into a wall till it gets on the other side via quantum tunneling.
I play go (围棋), relatively seriously, attaining a 3d rank on a US server, 2d Tygem, 2d China, 1d Korea. That game is even harder than chess
You obviously missed the live stream yesterday. They actually answered a question about difficulty. And their response said their goal was to make each new dungeon harder then the last one. Their own belief is epic LoL is their hardest dungeon to date. It is as difficult as they know how to make it. So how do you expect them to suddenly ramp things up another several notches?
And as far as the issues of casuals not leaving. Are you kidding? They have been leaving and having difficulty with the game from day one. Look at the number of bosses and dungeons that have had to be nerfed and toned down. Mad dragon, The Rime hound, Scalefather. You don't have to search the forums too hard to see the complaints and the reasons for making them easier. In fact having to make things easier is almost unheard of in a Cryptic game. The fact is, Neverwinter is debatably, the most difficult Cryptic game to date. And Cryptic made it perfectly clear who their audience is by reducing the difficulty when complaints got loud. Yet continues to ignore complaints about lack of difficulty.
Mad Dragon used to be fun, and actually hard (too hard, ok) but i loved that place.
I never understood what was hard about the Rime Hound or Scalefeather. Even when I was on my first character, a TR back in Open Beta, I don't remember having difficulty. All i did was hit the boss and dodge the red stuff? I don't understand what's hard about it?
If by "content that will actually be a challenge", you mean "content that *ONLY* the hardcore players can ever possibly complete, and that casual players will never ever be able to complete", then yeah I can see why casual players would not want to stick around in a game where there is no possibility ever that they themselves will be able to progress, even if that super-hard content is only 5% of the content. They'll be stuck in the lower strata of the playerbase forever.
Now you and others are probably going to say "that is where they belong because they are casual players, they deserve to be in the bottom rung of the game's society". I just fundamentally disagree with that.
You say that MMOs are all about progression with gear and content. Isn't that true of casual players as well, not just hardcore players? Why should you get to advance but others not?
Lol, you don't understand, everyone can have progression, he never said only hardcore player need progression, everyone can advance, but if a hardcore player play 8 hours a day for a month he should be able to do things that a casual player which play 3 hours 2 days a week shouldn't do, but it's obvius that even if the casual player spent 3 months then he could do defeat harder and harder dungeons...
reading this thread got me remember the times in Neverwinter long ago at my first start in this game. Maybe you have a little time to join me in my personal trip back to the past...
After I was 60 back in May 2013 everthing was exiting. There were so many things to explore. So I looked out for a guild and ran the first T1 Dungeons. The AH was not flooded with so good and cheap purple equipment like today so I started in green/blues like so many others. No boons, artifacts pushed my stats and a stone was far out of reach, cause I tried to play without RL money. But it was a fantastic feeling. Idris, Mad Dragon and Greywolve Den where really challenging and every time we finished successfully, opening the chest and receiving loot was an honor of the time, wipes and efforts we spend defeating the boss. I can also remember the first times in PK, where the boss was not so easy and a real tactic (!) was neccessary. T2 dungeons were even harder and the wipe rate was greater. Of course I also remember the bad things that time (exploiting nearly every dungeon, kicking the adds over the fences in CN...) that a lot of people used which were not playing legit as my guild. So seeing those well equipped exploiters was a pain in the ***, but a lot of people were not able to finish T2 content the legit way. But for me I had goals (defeat this next boss, get better equip) to strife for and having success even with a lot of failed attempts was a great motivation.
With Sharandar the fiirst slight stat improvements happened with the boons and the crafting weapons. Malabog was a hard Dungeon for that time and it made fun. The boons also helped to lever some discrepancies between gear and content. Sharandar itself was a pain due to the boring dailies for me and I remember that I shortly stopped playing them every day cause dungeons were far more exciting.
Looking back I would say, this was the best time in the game! Challenging content, goals, no uber characters, team play !
Ring was also something fresh with VT and it's mechanics, but the dailies were same pain, BUT a lot shorter to get all boons than Sharandar before. Artifacts were new and having one was at the beginning a good feeling. On the other side, the content was outgeared and the challenge was gone...
I tested shortly IWD and saw no new challenge and no new gear to even strife for. RNG was now the limiting factor for each and everything. The "older" players more and more outgeared the content and soloing and zerging was the new way runs/HE worked. 3-man draco for personal satisfaction and so on ... Teamplay in a new dimension but WAI??? It was not the game I loved before, so I took a real break.
Around the announcement of ToD I restarted in July freshly from 0, cause I loved the combat mechanics and hoped to experience this great feeling again of having to try hard to beat the content. It was at the end of Mod3 with CW's been pushed in damage. Getting once to 60 it was easy and cheap to buy some purples for nearly nothing. But I remind myself to play for the loot not to buy it to avoid destroying the experience I looked for. BUT ... the content felt now so easy. Even with low gear it felt wrong, overpowered. Running with PUGs on low gear was ok. With guildies even T2 was like a walk in the park slightly above min requirement for the dungeon. My stats increased sooo fast with all the boons artifacts and the steadily incoming purple drops... Quite disappointing and only the 4 week chest bug prevented me from getting my T2 set farmed in fast time. I'm sitting for some now on 1.200 ZEN for a stone, waiting for a promo. But even without the stone I manage to beat every boss except LoL, cause I was 3 weeks on vacation so I haen't finished the new stupid dailies.
Long story short: You can even as a casual as I am outgear the content in roughly 2 month and with no money spent for any goodies (bad business model IMHO)
My wish... give us back the old experience of Challenge, goals and neccessary teamplay !
Yalaia
Hope you enjoyed the trip to the past even if your's was a little difference in speed, feelings or experience. And please excuse my bad english
Thanks for the story, you understad how fun can be challenge content... I would have love to play this game by then, should have be fun.
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
edited September 2014
It depends on your class I guess. Anyway I had some difficulties with my TR, steamrolled the Rime Hound with my HR and had some difficulties again with my Temptation SW. I think most of my problems come from the fact that I always play with some delay, i.e. winter wolves bite me and throw me into the air when I still see them away from me. Same for dodging red. Countless time I've been blown up by area attacks that didn't even appear on the ground.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
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chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited September 2014
You gotta fix that lag, man. If you are lagging this bad, the game will always be hard for you.
It depends on your class I guess. Anyway I had some difficulties with my TR, steamrolled the Rime Hound with my HR and had some difficulties again with my Temptation SW. I think most of my problems come from the fact that I always play with some delay, i.e. winter wolves bite me and throw me into the air when I still see them away from me. Same for dodging red. Countless time I've been blown up by area attacks that didn't even appear on the ground.
Lol, that sound like a second delay or more, that sucks, you can see your ping by /netGraph 1.
A ping that bad will make anything hard for you...
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!" pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all." looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
Mad Dragon used to be fun, and actually hard (too hard, ok) but i loved that place.
I never understood what was hard about the Rime Hound or Scalefeather. Even when I was on my first character, a TR back in Open Beta, I don't remember having difficulty. All i did was hit the boss and dodge the red stuff? I don't understand what's hard about it?
It honestly doesn't matter if it was easy or not for you. It was hard enough for enough players that Cryptic was motivated to change it. They made changes to please a segment of the population in order to make things easier. That is a pretty significant statement.
Amen to that - so much truth in your comment - reality check for the top 5%.
Well, how do you know it's a 5%?, reallity is that there "are" 2 millions players in this game (and it was since a lot of time, now we should be a lot more) and this game is very new, but i dunno if there are more than 50K players play often, i would say we not even surpass the 30K unique players per day... we also know that entire guilds of veteran players are empty, and most of them only play PvP or foundries, only few people out of hundreds old players are still playing and doing the same dailies (everybody hate doing dailies), completing the same dungeons since they were released, etc...
This does not tell us something about the content?.
It's not the 5% now, and if we count the people that leaved the game I could say that maybe more than the 20% or 30% would love harder content, just see the forum and read the responses, we have here something like a 50/50.
Well, how do you know it's a 5%?, reallity is that there "are" 2 millions players in this game (and it was since a lot of time, now we should be a lot more) and this game is very new, but i dunno if there are more than 50K players play often, i would say we not even surpass the 30K unique players per day... we also know that entire guilds of veteran players are empty, and most of them only play PvP or foundries, only few people out of hundreds old players are still playing and doing the same dailies (everybody hate doing dailies), completing the same dungeons since they were released, etc...
This does not tell us something about the content?.
It's not the 5% now, and if we count the people that leaved the game I could say that maybe more than the 20% or 30% would love harder content, just see the forum and read the responses, we have here something like a 50/50.
Exactly I know more people that left the game due to lack of hard content than people that have stayed. (That I talk to on a regular basis)
I'm sure it's been said before in this thread but it's a rather long one.
Instead of asking for a harder hard mode on T2 content why not demand more content that is also harder? One new dungeon and one new skirmish per module is simply not enough for most long-time players. It takes longer to unlock the content than it does to get what you want out of the content.
Also, yes, this game and every other Cryptic title is very casual friendly. This is far from a 'hardcore' game and with only four or so encounters for most classes that is unlikely to change. How hard can you really make a game that has such a small amount of active powers? Give the add's more resistance, more CC, and more one-shot abilities?
Since everyone that's likely asking for this clearly already knows enemy rotations and dodge timing I seriously don't think it will make one iota of difference to the 'hardcore' crowd at all. It will take slightly longer to run content you already have memorized. That will be entertaining for one week tops.
Essentially what people are asking for are more profitable items to sell on the AH from T2 content. Only my opinion, but that's how it looks to me.
MoF/Thaum CWSS/Thaum CWIV/Protector GFSW/Combat HRSM/Destroyer GWFWK/Executioner TRDO/Faithful DC
Define tons and tons, 100 000 would not be that bad if 1 000 000 causal players are not quitting because they see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hardcore players are at the end of the tunnel already and it's just a big empty well lit room, ok, but don't push the room further and further away down the tunnel you'll loose a lot more valuable players to the games life cycle.
Casuals are casuals. They will quit the game because they aren't that invested in it to begin with. They might drop $10, play the game for 2 months and never touch it again.
The thing is, after Neverwinter's big splash to the Steam scene, I don't see any way of them gaining tons of new players on the PC game. Hardcores are quitting by the waves, but they aren't replaced by casuals (or at least it doesn't seem to be anymore).
If there was some way to integrate the playerbase between the PC audience and the console audience, I think that could save the Dragon server.
Otherwise, with this game still having no endgame (PVE or PVP), I do not like the future of Dragon server. I am not Cryptic/PWE though. They love runnings tons and tons of MMOs at a low cost and just reap the dough from some casual players coming in.
You all keep making statements about population and who is staying or leaving. Fact is, Cryptic made changes to make things easier. They have not made changes to make things harder. So either the population is not migrating away in droves like you believe. Or they are, and Cryptic doesn't care, or isn't concerned by it.
Fact is, Cryptic made changes to make things easier. They have not made changes to make things harder. So either the population is not migrating away in droves like you believe. Or they are, and Cryptic doesn't care, or isn't concerned by it.
These two statements are correct. Cryptic has made a huge shift to cater to casuals. More heroic encounters with RNG loot. Whether you have a brain or not, you will probably get the same reward. Still no 10-man raids. Still no new PVP modes.
Comments
There is a principle like 80-20 distribution and a whole theory behind the choices. Mind that hardcore players= people with a lot of free time (i wonder how many of them can pay or do pay).
Harder content is also a good way to have casuals spend money on the game. They buy zen they transform into ADs and buy gear from better players. It's good for trade and these guys get the gear they need to overgear the dungeon from the last module and kill the boss mindlessly spamming random powers. The skilled player can get his zen to buy the most game-breaking companions (oddly enough none of them are free) or ADs for enchantments and everyone is happy. Harder content can also be seen as a win-win situation. But harder content must have rare BoE gear.
You'd be surprised. Usually being able to afford a gaming computer/console and having free time doesn't mean unemployed guys, it just means being a member of the upper class, with a good disposable income and not many working hours. See : http://kotaku.com/who-are-the-whales-driving-free-to-play-gaming-youd-1197333118 for a further reference. I could tell you more about my own life but meh, suffice to say that I have a great income for few working hours, I can play games and I'm not ashamed to spend quite a lot of money on games I want or enjoy and have an economic model I like (= not this one).
After I was 60 back in May 2013 everthing was exiting. There were so many things to explore. So I looked out for a guild and ran the first T1 Dungeons. The AH was not flooded with so good and cheap purple equipment like today so I started in green/blues like so many others. No boons, artifacts pushed my stats and a stone was far out of reach, cause I tried to play without RL money. But it was a fantastic feeling. Idris, Mad Dragon and Greywolve Den where really challenging and every time we finished successfully, opening the chest and receiving loot was an honor of the time, wipes and efforts we spend defeating the boss. I can also remember the first times in PK, where the boss was not so easy and a real tactic (!) was neccessary. T2 dungeons were even harder and the wipe rate was greater. Of course I also remember the bad things that time (exploiting nearly every dungeon, kicking the adds over the fences in CN...) that a lot of people used which were not playing legit as my guild. So seeing those well equipped exploiters was a pain in the ***, but a lot of people were not able to finish T2 content the legit way. But for me I had goals (defeat this next boss, get better equip) to strife for and having success even with a lot of failed attempts was a great motivation.
With Sharandar the fiirst slight stat improvements happened with the boons and the crafting weapons. Malabog was a hard Dungeon for that time and it made fun. The boons also helped to lever some discrepancies between gear and content. Sharandar itself was a pain due to the boring dailies for me and I remember that I shortly stopped playing them every day cause dungeons were far more exciting.
Looking back I would say, this was the best time in the game! Challenging content, goals, no uber characters, team play !
Ring was also something fresh with VT and it's mechanics, but the dailies were same pain, BUT a lot shorter to get all boons than Sharandar before. Artifacts were new and having one was at the beginning a good feeling. On the other side, the content was outgeared and the challenge was gone...
I tested shortly IWD and saw no new challenge and no new gear to even strife for. RNG was now the limiting factor for each and everything. The "older" players more and more outgeared the content and soloing and zerging was the new way runs/HE worked. 3-man draco for personal satisfaction and so on ... Teamplay in a new dimension but WAI??? It was not the game I loved before, so I took a real break.
Around the announcement of ToD I restarted in July freshly from 0, cause I loved the combat mechanics and hoped to experience this great feeling again of having to try hard to beat the content. It was at the end of Mod3 with CW's been pushed in damage. Getting once to 60 it was easy and cheap to buy some purples for nearly nothing. But I remind myself to play for the loot not to buy it to avoid destroying the experience I looked for. BUT ... the content felt now so easy. Even with low gear it felt wrong, overpowered. Running with PUGs on low gear was ok. With guildies even T2 was like a walk in the park slightly above min requirement for the dungeon. My stats increased sooo fast with all the boons artifacts and the steadily incoming purple drops... Quite disappointing and only the 4 week chest bug prevented me from getting my T2 set farmed in fast time. I'm sitting for some now on 1.200 ZEN for a stone, waiting for a promo. But even without the stone I manage to beat every boss except LoL, cause I was 3 weeks on vacation so I haen't finished the new stupid dailies.
Long story short: You can even as a casual as I am outgear the content in roughly 2 month and with no money spent for any goodies (bad business model IMHO)
My wish... give us back the old experience of Challenge, goals and neccessary teamplay !
Yalaia
Hope you enjoyed the trip to the past even if your's was a little difference in speed, feelings or experience. And please excuse my bad english
i am not as you dont pay. I have no clue about the cash income for them, i was only saying that the paying segment has a larger base than only hardcore gamers and if they choose to add content like they do it means is the best choice for them.
/thread
Aelar Hawkwind - Archer
Karrin Feywinter - Mistress of Flame
Errin Duskwalker - Executioner
Darquess - Soulbinder
Nobody says make the 100% of the content hard or make the 100% of the content easy, just have the 90% of the content available for casuals and 10% for the more dedicated players, OMG, just play a normal MMORPG and stop with the nonsense comments.
A MMORPG should be a place where you can progress, and progression means that you can defeat harder and harder content everytime you get better gear, boons, etc... Why should a casual player leave if there is a 5% of the game content that will actually be a challenge?, seriously, I don't see why they should leave, they would still play the 95% of the game and when they want to play a little more consistent and dedicated they will have that 5% of the content to defeat when they get good gear and a good team with communicatio and organization.
If there is only Easy content and dailies -> No porpuse of progression for anyone, boring and some ppl will leave because of it.
If there is Easy, Normal and Hard content (Like in every other game on the universe) -> Good feel of progression for everyone, challenge and harded content waiting for you, not boring...
If by "content that will actually be a challenge", you mean "content that *ONLY* the hardcore players can ever possibly complete, and that casual players will never ever be able to complete", then yeah I can see why casual players would not want to stick around in a game where there is no possibility ever that they themselves will be able to progress, even if that super-hard content is only 5% of the content. They'll be stuck in the lower strata of the playerbase forever.
Now you and others are probably going to say "that is where they belong because they are casual players, they deserve to be in the bottom rung of the game's society". I just fundamentally disagree with that.
You say that MMOs are all about progression with gear and content. Isn't that true of casual players as well, not just hardcore players? Why should you get to advance but others not?
outside of the new draconic gear, almost everything is BOP
Define tons and tons, 100 000 would not be that bad if 1 000 000 causal players are not quitting because they see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hardcore players are at the end of the tunnel already and it's just a big empty well lit room, ok, but don't push the room further and further away down the tunnel you'll loose a lot more valuable players to the games life cycle.
"content that will ACTUALLY be a challenge", and not as you said "only hardcore players can EVER and that casual players can NEVER EVER ...". At the beginning the game was challenging for everybody and nobody quit due to this, it was motivation I would say for nearly everybody. But today you outgear the content so fast and with every module new more powerful things for the playerbase were added but the content remained stable.
Why not a new content that is ACTUALLY challenging, but giving the COMPLETE playerbase a new goal, one earlier the other one later? From my point of view 5% content with new challenge is even to less (as it would only be 1-2 new dungeons/skirms). 4/8 new challenging Dungeons for Gear and 1/2 for rings/necks. Making really well equipped people wipe again while trying to get it ... upps a feeling that a lot of us might remember from long ago, but was it negative or the opposite after we had beaten the boss...
And some casual players will maybe buy stuff to catch up faster...
At the moment it's like in a sportsevent. Your team get's more and more good players (= gear, artifacts, boons) but your opponents team (dungeon / Skirms) stays the same. So now it's not the question if you beat them, the only unsure thing is if it will be 12-0 or 14-0... It's like a soccer match Brazil against Faroe Islands or maybe in terms of casuals Austria vs. Faroe, in both cases there is no question who wins...
Time for an EXPANSION with new challenging content and not only a module.
Casuals should see ALL content.
If a raid is introduced, it should have an Easy mode available, so casuals can get some purples and experience the lore in a relaxed way.
It should also have a hard mode, where you need great gear, great spec, good skills&experience and communication to overcome it.
The difference, besides difficulty, should be rewards. The casual mode should get almost the same gear but with less stats. The hardmode should get better stats gear (but not by much) and a few vanity items so one can show off, such as some legendary mount, or unique outfits/titles.
I have met casuals in such a system and they were as happy as the ones here, and quite content. I didn't manage to convince a single casual friend I had to come raid with me besides the ezy-mode LFR. They didn't want to and didn't care about it. They also didn't care about my shiny gear either, although they sometimes manifested interest for my title or mount. They got bored real fast when I explained that some drake took me 3 months of raiding before it dropped and I won the roll.
Right now, if you are super casual, you can enjoy the leveling to 60, the four campaigns of dailies (which require little gear to complete) and make a good amount of progression.
For at team that even knows a little about team work, in greens and blues, T1 dungeons aren't that hard in general. The only place i see people die is Wolf Den because they can't dodge (for some reason, i can't figure out why). But t1 weapons are nothing special, so it's not important to go there. Some T1 armor sets (high prophet, knights captain, scrappers, archmage) are actually pretty good and perfom well.
T2s are a bit harder with an undergeared party, but hopefully those casuals have met some more experinced players by then, and can get one of their friends to run them through. Personally, on my CW, I have carried a team of new players through spellplague (outdamaged second place 4:1, outdamaged third place 8:1). I don't mind doing it once in a while for a friend, but in general there is no incentive for me to do so - a 1:10 chance at a 1:5 roll of half decent loot isn't much of anything.
The endgame dungeons, CN, MC, VT, LoL - these are not meant for casual players! Yes, i have seen people run them with a 10-11k GS and complete them fine, but these were players of exceptional skill and talent, which is not average. If you want to try these harder dungeons, you need to put in the time to develop your skills and farm your gear!
The issue is that now, players were clearing CN, MC, VT, etc... with ease six months ago. I took a five month break and i come back and I am still _massively_ overpowered for the content. So the idea that these are "upper tier" dungeons is a bit silly.
I have yet to unlock LoL (few more days) but all i hear is "it's not that bad" and "i can solo the last boss" and i'm thinking, seriously? give me a break? Harder content should be HARD, but for those of us with gear and skill, it simply isn't.
So we have content for the super causual (logs in once every few days), he makes progress with dailies and whatnot
Moderate casual (not a lot of time, but works on playing better) can do T1s and maybe T2s,
Average players (logs in frequently, but is not efficent with time, doesn't study the game much) can do T2s and maybe T 2.5
Good players (can farm CN/MC/VT/LoL)
but there is nothing for Excellent players. We don't have a tier of content that is challenging and rewarding enough for us. It's time to put a higher level on the content, rather than just swarming us with easy dailies.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
For those who say Neverwinter is for casuals I have but one question: Have you ever played a game, MMO, Grinder., etc you really liked and became bored, because there were no new challenges? Have you ever wished there was more of a challenge? Yes? If so, maybe you can try to understand why people want more difficult content and new challenges. At least try to understand it please.
We are close to the developers by taking part in this forum and they still do care about new content, so why not ask and discuss about things like this keeping in mind a longer perspective?
This whole discussion is about seeing how the players and those new to the game think and so on.
And to maybe give the developers and GMs reading this some idea what the community wants.
You people are right, there are a lot of casual players out there. But eventually they start loving this game like I do and even if taking breaks come back in hope for more challenge. I paused for half a year and I like the new content (paused before dread ring), but now after a month the only challenge I see is running the dragon skirmish and dungeon on epic, running lowequipped, minimal, speed and soloruns or start a new toon, but even they get through the game way more easy than half a year ago.
And I absolutely know there are a lot of players who want to have more challenge and think of leaving because there isn't much.
You say, by saying this I just am not able to see the challenge in what already is? Sorry but thats incorrect.
I play in a newcomer friendly gild and we play even with little twinks. Sometimes even run dungeons and can't beat them.
We take people with us who just barely fulfill the dungeon requirements and it's fun.
But the aim can't be to just play with our twinks and to let our mains rot in piece.
Thats why the main argument here is progression!
To be able to progress just a little further and still be challenged. Cryptic did a good job with the new gear and the skirmish and dungeons - I hope this is just the beginning. Thats why I started this thread.
There is a lot of players who play the game from the start or at least longer than 3 months and it's necessary to be able to feel challenged even after gearing up completely. Like I said, I did a lot to make the game more challenging for myself, but I also want to feel helpless sometimes with my main character fully equipped - thats why I like the new content. I want more content like that.
So to sum it up:
- new harder content
- a remake of the dungeons, maybe also skirmishes so far, being set in a new higher and more challenging difficulty
- more raid content - the IWD encounters and the dragons are a nice start, but also bring us some raid dungeons and encounters, where we need 10-20 people and each character has to work together with the others to make the runs a success. Teamplay is the critical word here.
This is still open for discussion
And as far as the issues of casuals not leaving. Are you kidding? They have been leaving and having difficulty with the game from day one. Look at the number of bosses and dungeons that have had to be nerfed and toned down. Mad dragon, The Rime hound, Scalefather. You don't have to search the forums too hard to see the complaints and the reasons for making them easier. In fact having to make things easier is almost unheard of in a Cryptic game. The fact is, Neverwinter is debatably, the most difficult Cryptic game to date. And Cryptic made it perfectly clear who their audience is by reducing the difficulty when complaints got loud. Yet continues to ignore complaints about lack of difficulty.
I play go (围棋), relatively seriously, attaining a 3d rank on a US server, 2d Tygem, 2d China, 1d Korea. That game is even harder than chess
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Mad Dragon used to be fun, and actually hard (too hard, ok) but i loved that place.
I never understood what was hard about the Rime Hound or Scalefeather. Even when I was on my first character, a TR back in Open Beta, I don't remember having difficulty. All i did was hit the boss and dodge the red stuff? I don't understand what's hard about it?
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Lol, you don't understand, everyone can have progression, he never said only hardcore player need progression, everyone can advance, but if a hardcore player play 8 hours a day for a month he should be able to do things that a casual player which play 3 hours 2 days a week shouldn't do, but it's obvius that even if the casual player spent 3 months then he could do defeat harder and harder dungeons...
Thanks for the story, you understad how fun can be challenge content... I would have love to play this game by then, should have be fun.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Lol, that sound like a second delay or more, that sucks, you can see your ping by /netGraph 1.
A ping that bad will make anything hard for you...
Amen to that - so much truth in your comment - reality check for the top 5%.
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
It honestly doesn't matter if it was easy or not for you. It was hard enough for enough players that Cryptic was motivated to change it. They made changes to please a segment of the population in order to make things easier. That is a pretty significant statement.
Well, how do you know it's a 5%?, reallity is that there "are" 2 millions players in this game (and it was since a lot of time, now we should be a lot more) and this game is very new, but i dunno if there are more than 50K players play often, i would say we not even surpass the 30K unique players per day... we also know that entire guilds of veteran players are empty, and most of them only play PvP or foundries, only few people out of hundreds old players are still playing and doing the same dailies (everybody hate doing dailies), completing the same dungeons since they were released, etc...
This does not tell us something about the content?.
It's not the 5% now, and if we count the people that leaved the game I could say that maybe more than the 20% or 30% would love harder content, just see the forum and read the responses, we have here something like a 50/50.
Exactly I know more people that left the game due to lack of hard content than people that have stayed. (That I talk to on a regular basis)
Instead of asking for a harder hard mode on T2 content why not demand more content that is also harder? One new dungeon and one new skirmish per module is simply not enough for most long-time players. It takes longer to unlock the content than it does to get what you want out of the content.
Also, yes, this game and every other Cryptic title is very casual friendly. This is far from a 'hardcore' game and with only four or so encounters for most classes that is unlikely to change. How hard can you really make a game that has such a small amount of active powers? Give the add's more resistance, more CC, and more one-shot abilities?
Since everyone that's likely asking for this clearly already knows enemy rotations and dodge timing I seriously don't think it will make one iota of difference to the 'hardcore' crowd at all. It will take slightly longer to run content you already have memorized. That will be entertaining for one week tops.
Essentially what people are asking for are more profitable items to sell on the AH from T2 content. Only my opinion, but that's how it looks to me.
Casuals are casuals. They will quit the game because they aren't that invested in it to begin with. They might drop $10, play the game for 2 months and never touch it again.
The thing is, after Neverwinter's big splash to the Steam scene, I don't see any way of them gaining tons of new players on the PC game. Hardcores are quitting by the waves, but they aren't replaced by casuals (or at least it doesn't seem to be anymore).
If there was some way to integrate the playerbase between the PC audience and the console audience, I think that could save the Dragon server.
Otherwise, with this game still having no endgame (PVE or PVP), I do not like the future of Dragon server. I am not Cryptic/PWE though. They love runnings tons and tons of MMOs at a low cost and just reap the dough from some casual players coming in.
These two statements are correct. Cryptic has made a huge shift to cater to casuals. More heroic encounters with RNG loot. Whether you have a brain or not, you will probably get the same reward. Still no 10-man raids. Still no new PVP modes.