1. Since you hate grinding like I do, pvp will probably eventually interest you. [...]
And in which way would someone averse to running the same thing hundreds of times, over and over again, be attracted to the currently available Neverwinter _PvP_?????
1. Since you hate grinding like I do, pvp will probably eventually interest you.
2. To do pvp without HAMSTER the team, you will need to grind.
3. I implore you to never que for pvp once you reach 60.
-1 since pvp in unbalanced, frustrating, and doesn't gate teams based on gear lvl, you will probably rage quit for another game with pvp designed to be balanced and fun.
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imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
If you really don't care about gear, then a decent set of blues and moderate enchantments should let you see all of the storylines in all of the post-60 content (mod 6 changes notwithstanding). That level of equipment won't let you complete most epic dungeons beyond T1, but if you care more about storyline then you aren't missing much. It's a shame that there aren't non-epic versions of MC and VT so that people can experience them without the need for first attaining ridiculous levels of gear, but then I play NWO for the chance to explore and experience unique storylines. It's only too bad that the Foundry doesn't receive more love.
If you're really into Foundries, I humbly invite you to try mine. You might not "get" the story since you haven't been to Sharandar yet, though (hint: redcaps are normally your enemies).
Harper Chronicles: Cap Snatchers (RELEASED) - NW-DPUTABC6X Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Black Ice is the hallmark of Icewind Dale, so you're alluding to Linu's Favor. Those are earned in Tiamat raids, or, very slowly, by gathering Dragon Hoard Coffers in Well of Dragons. Also, though you might be able to get there, level 60 stuff, and I'd recommend some better gear for WoD, and for Tiamat... ...well, long and sad story.
Anyway, all those Items sold there are level 60 (and soon Level 70) gear.
After reaching 60, and playing through Dread Ring (10 days without green invoke chests) or Sharandar (a month) to the third boon, and reaching a Gear Score of 10k, you can travel to Icewind Dale. There you'll get a pick on you first day's questline.
One profession booster pack is given out as a quest reward in Neverdeath at ca. Lvl 30. End of story as far as free packs are concerned.
Currently, but not necessarily also after Mod 6 hits, the proceeding would've been the following:
Proceed to Level 60, do Dread Ring and Sharandar. Find a Guild to join and play Gauntlgrym, to get some feel for the opposition there and for what the other classes' members of parties can and will do. Do Skirmishes (e.g. Dread legion) during Skirmish Hour for 1000AD per run. Get your Leadership Profession going. All the while you'll find some gear and get some AD. Buy yourself an Armor Set for low 5-digit AD sums, go out to find a better one in Dungeouns or by buing it from AD made, too. Start running with the zerg mob in the Dragon Herald rounds. Then start with Tiamat runs when you are tough enough to carry your own weight through boss fights.
We'll, however, see Mod 6 coming in like 10 days, that might or might not change the rules quite a bit here. So basically: Get to Level 60. Start Dread ring and Sharandar ASAP and as proceed far as possible before the patch hits on 17th - this might well become harder.
As long as you said I have read the dev blog the level cap raise and it's maybe change ruleset for entering campaigns. I hope I could do some epic dungeons and get gears but it seems until march 17th I could only get players plucked at in dungeons!
If you really don't care about gear, then a decent set of blues and moderate enchantments should let you see all of the storylines in all of the post-60 content (mod 6 changes notwithstanding). That level of equipment won't let you complete most epic dungeons beyond T1, but if you care more about storyline then you aren't missing much. It's a shame that there aren't non-epic versions of MC and VT so that people can experience them without the need for first attaining ridiculous levels of gear, but then I play NWO for the chance to explore and experience unique storylines. It's only too bad that the Foundry doesn't receive more love.
If you're really into Foundries, I humbly invite you to try mine. You might not "get" the story since you haven't been to Sharandar yet, though (hint: redcaps are normally your enemies).
So there is stuff to do at 60? That's good to hear. O_O
I'm currently lvl 40 and I've been able to solo my way through everything so far wothout spending any real money. I've joined dungeon queues for the dungeons so far.
I see a lot of threads here about refining and whatnot. Refining is something I've just been doing to free up inv slots. I'm replacing gear when it gets 'recommended'.
Grinding the same content over and over is massively boring to me. I like to do the content once, maybe two or three times more if it's a dungeon.
When I get to level 60 (or 70 when mod6 cones out) and 've finished all the zone content, can I just keep doing foundry quests? Is it possible for me to do all the content once without grinding for weeks of inanity?
And in which way would someone averse to running the same thing hundreds of times, over and over again, be attracted to the currently available Neverwinter _PvP_?????
Because in pvp you are not facing static enemies which are all built the same way and act according to scripted behavior but instead are fighting a very wide variety of builds which are played with an equally wide variety of styles. You are playing against people who are using creative problem solving instead of scripted mobs using exceptionally limited ai.
PvP is much more challenging and much more different from fight to fight at level 60 than pve.
Fighting the same class-of-the-day over and over in the same couple of maps isn't grinding?
Could have fooled me.
I get the nerd rage over the fotm builds, I really do. But playing pvp you will face every class and every build in 10 matches, not just tr or a one of two tr builds.
Because in pvp you are not facing static enemies which are all built the same way and act according to scripted behavior but instead are fighting a very wide variety of builds which are played with an equally wide variety of styles. You are playing against people who are using creative problem solving instead of scripted mobs using exceptionally limited ai.
PvP is much more challenging and much more different from fight to fight at level 60 than pve.
While this is true, it's still the same two Domination maps, GG, and IwD over and over again. Domination is more often than not completely unbalanced, and hence monotonous waiting for the timer to tick down, oon either side of either side's camp exit.
GG is half an hour of gorgeous fun about half the time, the other half is being on either one side of the steamroller front, and limited to solitary matches during narrow time windows. Also it'll be nerfed to 10vs10 as I hear / read on the test server forums - bad move IMHO, as the map size will stay the same, and the 20 teams made the chance of the match being completely dominated by the one preformed guild team less probable.
And IwD had somewhat degenerated into kill-shuffling and training ground for PvP guilds last time I checked... ...or hopeless and mostly futile OSK tries by desperate solitary non-guild TRs trying to advance their campaign task completion by sneaking up on daily-/weekly-task-completing people in Icewind Pass. Dwarven Valley sometimes can be interesting, but more often than not the Cockatrice users taint the experience and/or spoil the fun.
Actually the current presence of the test server, and it's hoovering off many of the high-end-fully-geared players has somewhat revitalized PvP for me - temporarily. It'll probably be back to getting ROFLstomped by 7-orange-geared premades 2/3 to 3/4 of matches, and being the fifth wheel on an incomplete premade lie 10% of the time. And this doesn't even feature in the kicking / AFKing matches (which I haven't had for a while, and which probably will be history with the advent of Mod 6)...
So, TL;DR: There are some - ever dwindling - chances that you get some exciting experience from PvP, but the most of it is IMHO fairly repetitive...
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imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
I get the nerd rage over the fotm builds, I really do. But playing pvp you will face every class and every build in 10 matches, not just tr or a one of two tr builds.
It's not the fight that makes it a grind. It's doing the same thing over and over.
Sure, the tactics will change, but the map's the same, and all you're doing is fighting.
That to me is what makes the pvp a grind.
Add in to that the exploiting and fotms and broken matchmaking, and you end up with me entirely avoiding pvp. It's just not worth my time.
I'd much rather spend an hour running a well-written foundry with beautiful, unique, creative maps and customized mobs than spend even a few minutes in a pvp hackfest or grinding more dailies. I just wish there were some in-game rewards for doing so, other than an enjoyably-spent hour.
I don't think I'm making myself very clear lol (my fault totally, thank you for the responses).
So far I've met sort of two kinds of content (apart from the minigames like professions, collecting magic mushrooms and catching spies etc):
One type (Type A), for example, there was this woman who turned into a sort of mutant, and her husband was freaking out, so me and my girlfriend went off trying to help her etc. And eventually we got to this huge tower thing with a magically exploded top bit, and her husband had caught the magical mutant disease too, so he transformed and we had to fight him. Then eventually at the top og the tower we met a wizard called Ragehard or something, and he was in this purple bubble and anyway, we gave him a kicking and then Seargent Knox was all 'well done, dude!' and we were like 'high-five!'.
Another type like that was in a zone full of orcs and it eventually led to some sort of steampunk tower where we had to arrange clockwork gears or something. That was much harder, but we managed to duo it so yay us.
That type of content is what I like the best - a series of geezers asks me to go help with doing something and there's like a story involved, and X number of quests in a linear sequence culminating in some kind of 'epic' instance with a big boss or whatever.
Then there's another type of content (type , which I access sometimes to collect astrals (I don't really know what these are for tbh, I originally wanted them so I could buy my gf a unicorn but I don't think that's feasible), and an example of this type is this big fight in a pit. Can't recall what it's called now but basically you go into a little arena and fight waves of mobs finishing with a werewolf guy. There's no story as such.
Now so far, I have been able to do both types of content without really bothering much on my build. I don't know if I can just keep doing what I've been doing, or even if the 'endgame' content follows which type of content I described above. I see there are 'campaigns'. Are they type A or type B? If I need purple things just so I can do a glorified pit fight over and over and over without being one-shotted immediately then I'll just skip it, if that's all the end game is.
I see a few threads about mod 6 here, but all they talk about is loot and lvl caps and refines and never mention what the expansion is apart from in those terms. I gather its something to do with elementals? Will there be new zones, with quest lines, or is it just pit fights? Does anyone above lvl 59 notice narrative?
EDIT:
Incidentally, I do really like NW. It's the most fun I've had in an MMO since NCSOft killed CoH, and I've tried a LOT lol. I'm just worried about running out of narrative content and being left with grinding the same dungeon/s over and over.
So here is the deal custom fit for you and your lady. Once you hit level 60 the story line runs dry. At this point in the game you basically have 30 seconds of dialog and 15-30 minutes of farming/grinding per area daily to get an item only to find that you need to invest 4.5million Refining Points into it to power it up fully. The motivation behind this part of the game is money. Get the best gear, kill more people in pvp, farm the same dungeons. Content at the high levels is not really Neverwinter's forte. Mod6 is supposed to "fix" all that but seriously it will be the same as Mod 2 through 5. Grind grind grind and RNG (Random Number Generator).
Now I am not trying to be negative to the game or depress you but this is an accurate statement of how this game operates. As for Astral Diamonds. They are your shortcut and your only shortcut through much of the GRIND to get to the golden egg so to speak. Most items, but not all, can be purchased in the auction house for Astral's. If you have 20,000 Atral's and you need let's say a weapon. You could grind a dungeon for that weapon for 2 days,(it's gets boring) or just go buy it.
Not to sound like a broken record but once you have the items you are happy with whether they are purple/ blue or orange or whatever color then you're done. The only variety you will see is in foundry and we authors make new content daily. **** man you can make your own quest. Why not? If you like the Role playing / Story side of the game then make your own story. I guarantee you will have fun doing it and you can make Astral's from tips doing something you like instead of grinding. This is what I do and this is how I see the game.
The Foundry is your best bet for story driven content if you don't mind grammar / spelling mistakes now and then.
Off-topic, not meant to hijack, just a direct (elaborate) reply...
While this is true, it's still the same two Domination maps, GG, and IwD over and over again. Domination is more often than not completely unbalanced, and hence monotonous waiting for the timer to tick down, oon either side of either side's camp exit.
GG is half an hour of gorgeous fun about half the time, the other half is being on either one side of the steamroller front, and limited to solitary matches during narrow time windows. Also it'll be nerfed to 10vs10 as I hear / read on the test server forums - bad move IMHO, as the map size will stay the same, and the 20 teams made the chance of the match being completely dominated by the one preformed guild team less probable.
And IwD had somewhat degenerated into kill-shuffling and training ground for PvP guilds last time I checked... ...or hopeless and mostly futile OSK tries by desperate solitary non-guild TRs trying to advance their campaign task completion by sneaking up on daily-/weekly-task-completing people in Icewind Pass. Dwarven Valley sometimes can be interesting, but more often than not the Cockatrice users taint the experience and/or spoil the fun.
Actually the current presence of the test server, and it's hoovering off many of the high-end-fully-geared players has somewhat revitalized PvP for me - temporarily. It'll probably be back to getting ROFLstomped by 7-orange-geared premades 2/3 to 3/4 of matches, and being the fifth wheel on an incomplete premade lie 10% of the time. And this doesn't even feature in the kicking / AFKing matches (which I haven't had for a while, and which probably will be history with the advent of Mod 6)...
So, TL;DR: There are some - ever dwindling - chances that you get some exciting experience from PvP, but the most of it is IMHO fairly repetitive...
Look at me defending Nevewrinter pvp lol...
I say what I do as an advocate in comparison to pve. I played gg for glory period, iwd for iwd campaign, quests so on. Domination I played for fun. Less and less and not because it dims in comparison to nwo pve but just because I am playing the game less, because it is less fun (exponentially less fun in the long run) to me than other alternatives. Minecraft even is far more rewarding in terms of character development- you know you aren't going to put months MONTHS in building up your experience, enchants, crafting materials, treasures and so on only for mojang to gut absolutely everything and ruin all of your work. If they did that, well they would ruin their business and their game would be about as popular as uh...this one.
BUT..occasionally yes NWO pvp has its moments of brilliance between evenly matched teams where tactical creativity pays off in a close close win. That is the kind of thrill you never get from pve, at least I don't.
[...4 paragraphs of text...]
So, TL;DR: There are some - ever dwindling - chances that you get some exciting experience from PvP, but the most of it is IMHO fairly repetitive...
[...]
BUT..occasionally yes NWO pvp has its moments of brilliance between evenly matched teams where tactical creativity pays off in a close close win. That is the kind of thrill you never get from pve, at least I don't.
That's problematic when you trash all your old gear for new gear constantly. In actual D&D, you would not only hang on to precious magic items far longer, but when you got a new one you could sell off your old gear for high currency OR give it to another character.
Get the best gear, kill more people in pvp, farm the same dungeons. Content at the high levels is not really Neverwinter's forte. Mod6 is supposed to "fix" all that but seriously it will be the same as Mod 2 through 5. Grind grind grind and RNG (Random Number Generator).
It really is the same in all mmorpg's. At max level it is way too expensive to supply fresh and new content for the players most of the time, so all games resort to either grinding(aka repetitive gameplay) or PvP to give people something to do at max level.
It really is the same in all mmorpg's. At max level it is way too expensive to supply fresh and new content for the players most of the time, so all games resort to either grinding(aka repetitive gameplay) or PvP to give people something to do at max level.
This is why Neverwinter Nights by Bioware was such a massively smashing success and is a legendary D&D multiplayer video game. The toolkit was essentially the foundry without restriction. People made their own servers, complete modded versions of the game. The game was released in 2002 and people are still buying it, thirteen years later. Putting endgame content in the hands of the community to create, means endless solid endgame content. They won't do that here, but it is always a little surprising how proven successful methods are just ignored.
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imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
D&D is all about the play. Story, character interaction, having fun with your friends. Treasure is not the goal.
If treasure is the goal in your games, odds are your group never got out of the Monty Haul phase.
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imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
...
Putting endgame content in the hands of the community to create, means endless solid endgame content.
...
I absolutely 100% agree.
If they want a game with serious longevity and amazing content, they couldn't do better than focusing on Foundry.
Give the authors all the tools they need to make the content, including pvp maps. Add a viable reward system. Improve the search tool. Actively weed out the exploits and farms. Do that, and people will play for years.
If they don't care about longevity, and just want some quick cash before moving on to something else, they should pretty much ignore Foundry and go for the big sales.
If they want a game with serious longevity and amazing content, they couldn't do better than focusing on Foundry.
Give the authors all the tools they need to make the content, including pvp maps. Add a viable reward system. Improve the search tool. Actively weed out the exploits and farms. Do that, and people will play for years.
If they don't care about longevity, and just want some quick cash before moving on to something else, they should pretty much ignore Foundry and go for the big sales.
Hmm... which one do they seem to be doing?
They are doing the latter. It is tough to say if the foundry is blatant bait and switch or if its inclusion in the game was originally sincere. I originally came to NWO in the hope that the foundry would equal the nwn toolkit. Repeating myself but if they truly unleashed the foundry, the player-authors would launch this game to legendary status on their own. It would blow away anything the current dev team did, is doing, or could possibly do because hundreds of skilled player-authors (out of many thousands most of whom are less skilled) would be able to devote many many thousands of man hours to community projects on a scale that is exponentially larger than anything that could possibly fit into cryptics operating budget. It has been done before. Just look: http://neverwintervault.org/ ALL of that being player developed.
ahhh to dream lol
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eco66Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 4Arc User
They are doing the latter. It is tough to say if the foundry is blatant bait and switch or if its inclusion in the game was originally sincere. I originally came to NWO in the hope that the foundry would equal the nwn toolkit. Repeating myself but if they truly unleashed the foundry, the player-authors would launch this game to legendary status on their own. It would blow away anything the current dev team did, is doing, or could possibly do because hundreds of skilled player-authors (out of many thousands most of whom are less skilled) would be able to devote many many thousands of man hours to community projects on a scale that is exponentially larger than anything that could possibly fit into cryptics operating budget. It has been done before. Just look: http://neverwintervault.org/ ALL of that being player developed.
ahhh to dream lol
It must be down to money. Like McDonald's vs 'good food' restaurants, it must be cheaper to produce grindy HAMSTER knowing that a huge proportion of players are happy to play whack-a-mole and do microtransactions to get new shinies, whereas the number of players who's pay for cool foundry stuff or high level narrative stuff is too small to be competingly viable.
MMO firms aren't stupid and they don't have anything against story. It's just about the money. If there was more money in long complex PvE quest chains at lvl 60 then they'd produce that.
It must be down to money. Like McDonald's vs 'good food' restaurants, it must be cheaper to produce grindy HAMSTER knowing that a huge proportion of players are happy to play whack-a-mole and do microtransactions to get new shinies, whereas the number of players who's pay for cool foundry stuff or high level narrative stuff is too small to be competingly viable.
MMO firms aren't stupid and they don't have anything against story. It's just about the money. If there was more money in long complex PvE quest chains at lvl 60 then they'd produce that.
Eco
Very true, but one would think there would be a way to really monetize unrestricted player-made content through microtransactions. Tokens or something that each give you x amount of time on your choice of player made persistent worlds or some such.
[...]MMO firms aren't stupid and they don't have anything against story. It's just about the money. If there was more money in long complex PvE quest chains at lvl 60 then they'd produce that.
Eco
There are some that do, but yeah, most seemingly are more after the high-frequency easy and low-risk buck...
...which still doesn't explain why this game sees such little love on the PvP side, though. Shoudn't that be the super-easy route to fast cash? Meh...
im a returning tr after one year i did not play have only sharandar and dread boons no weapon belt or neck artifacts grim pvp gear battle skulker weapons and im having a blast in pve and pvp i really dont feel the need to upgrade my self with more boons artifact etc this rat race after gs ruined the game . instead of been mmo with challenging adventures its a rat race for best gear artifacts etc , so sad.
Comments
And in which way would someone averse to running the same thing hundreds of times, over and over again, be attracted to the currently available Neverwinter _PvP_?????
-1 since pvp in unbalanced, frustrating, and doesn't gate teams based on gear lvl, you will probably rage quit for another game with pvp designed to be balanced and fun.
Fighting the same class-of-the-day over and over in the same couple of maps isn't grinding?
Could have fooled me.
If you're really into Foundries, I humbly invite you to try mine. You might not "get" the story since you haven't been to Sharandar yet, though (hint: redcaps are normally your enemies).
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
As long as you said I have read the dev blog the level cap raise and it's maybe change ruleset for entering campaigns. I hope I could do some epic dungeons and get gears but it seems until march 17th I could only get players plucked at in dungeons!
So there is stuff to do at 60? That's good to hear. O_O
That's the right approach bro.
Because in pvp you are not facing static enemies which are all built the same way and act according to scripted behavior but instead are fighting a very wide variety of builds which are played with an equally wide variety of styles. You are playing against people who are using creative problem solving instead of scripted mobs using exceptionally limited ai.
PvP is much more challenging and much more different from fight to fight at level 60 than pve.
I get the nerd rage over the fotm builds, I really do. But playing pvp you will face every class and every build in 10 matches, not just tr or a one of two tr builds.
While this is true, it's still the same two Domination maps, GG, and IwD over and over again. Domination is more often than not completely unbalanced, and hence monotonous waiting for the timer to tick down, oon either side of either side's camp exit.
GG is half an hour of gorgeous fun about half the time, the other half is being on either one side of the steamroller front, and limited to solitary matches during narrow time windows. Also it'll be nerfed to 10vs10 as I hear / read on the test server forums - bad move IMHO, as the map size will stay the same, and the 20 teams made the chance of the match being completely dominated by the one preformed guild team less probable.
And IwD had somewhat degenerated into kill-shuffling and training ground for PvP guilds last time I checked... ...or hopeless and mostly futile OSK tries by desperate solitary non-guild TRs trying to advance their campaign task completion by sneaking up on daily-/weekly-task-completing people in Icewind Pass. Dwarven Valley sometimes can be interesting, but more often than not the Cockatrice users taint the experience and/or spoil the fun.
Actually the current presence of the test server, and it's hoovering off many of the high-end-fully-geared players has somewhat revitalized PvP for me - temporarily. It'll probably be back to getting ROFLstomped by 7-orange-geared premades 2/3 to 3/4 of matches, and being the fifth wheel on an incomplete premade lie 10% of the time. And this doesn't even feature in the kicking / AFKing matches (which I haven't had for a while, and which probably will be history with the advent of Mod 6)...
So, TL;DR: There are some - ever dwindling - chances that you get some exciting experience from PvP, but the most of it is IMHO fairly repetitive...
It's not the fight that makes it a grind. It's doing the same thing over and over.
Sure, the tactics will change, but the map's the same, and all you're doing is fighting.
That to me is what makes the pvp a grind.
Add in to that the exploiting and fotms and broken matchmaking, and you end up with me entirely avoiding pvp. It's just not worth my time.
I'd much rather spend an hour running a well-written foundry with beautiful, unique, creative maps and customized mobs than spend even a few minutes in a pvp hackfest or grinding more dailies. I just wish there were some in-game rewards for doing so, other than an enjoyably-spent hour.
So here is the deal custom fit for you and your lady. Once you hit level 60 the story line runs dry. At this point in the game you basically have 30 seconds of dialog and 15-30 minutes of farming/grinding per area daily to get an item only to find that you need to invest 4.5million Refining Points into it to power it up fully. The motivation behind this part of the game is money. Get the best gear, kill more people in pvp, farm the same dungeons. Content at the high levels is not really Neverwinter's forte. Mod6 is supposed to "fix" all that but seriously it will be the same as Mod 2 through 5. Grind grind grind and RNG (Random Number Generator).
Now I am not trying to be negative to the game or depress you but this is an accurate statement of how this game operates. As for Astral Diamonds. They are your shortcut and your only shortcut through much of the GRIND to get to the golden egg so to speak. Most items, but not all, can be purchased in the auction house for Astral's. If you have 20,000 Atral's and you need let's say a weapon. You could grind a dungeon for that weapon for 2 days,(it's gets boring) or just go buy it.
Not to sound like a broken record but once you have the items you are happy with whether they are purple/ blue or orange or whatever color then you're done. The only variety you will see is in foundry and we authors make new content daily. **** man you can make your own quest. Why not? If you like the Role playing / Story side of the game then make your own story. I guarantee you will have fun doing it and you can make Astral's from tips doing something you like instead of grinding. This is what I do and this is how I see the game.
The Foundry is your best bet for story driven content if you don't mind grammar / spelling mistakes now and then.
Look at me defending Nevewrinter pvp lol...
I say what I do as an advocate in comparison to pve. I played gg for glory period, iwd for iwd campaign, quests so on. Domination I played for fun. Less and less and not because it dims in comparison to nwo pve but just because I am playing the game less, because it is less fun (exponentially less fun in the long run) to me than other alternatives. Minecraft even is far more rewarding in terms of character development- you know you aren't going to put months MONTHS in building up your experience, enchants, crafting materials, treasures and so on only for mojang to gut absolutely everything and ruin all of your work. If they did that, well they would ruin their business and their game would be about as popular as uh...this one.
BUT..occasionally yes NWO pvp has its moments of brilliance between evenly matched teams where tactical creativity pays off in a close close win. That is the kind of thrill you never get from pve, at least I don't.
...so, let's agree we agree?!? ;^)
This is D&D, it's all about the Treasure.
That's problematic when you trash all your old gear for new gear constantly. In actual D&D, you would not only hang on to precious magic items far longer, but when you got a new one you could sell off your old gear for high currency OR give it to another character.
In real D&D your hard work never vanishes.
It really is the same in all mmorpg's. At max level it is way too expensive to supply fresh and new content for the players most of the time, so all games resort to either grinding(aka repetitive gameplay) or PvP to give people something to do at max level.
This is why Neverwinter Nights by Bioware was such a massively smashing success and is a legendary D&D multiplayer video game. The toolkit was essentially the foundry without restriction. People made their own servers, complete modded versions of the game. The game was released in 2002 and people are still buying it, thirteen years later. Putting endgame content in the hands of the community to create, means endless solid endgame content. They won't do that here, but it is always a little surprising how proven successful methods are just ignored.
D&D is all about the play. Story, character interaction, having fun with your friends. Treasure is not the goal.
If treasure is the goal in your games, odds are your group never got out of the Monty Haul phase.
I absolutely 100% agree.
If they want a game with serious longevity and amazing content, they couldn't do better than focusing on Foundry.
Give the authors all the tools they need to make the content, including pvp maps. Add a viable reward system. Improve the search tool. Actively weed out the exploits and farms. Do that, and people will play for years.
If they don't care about longevity, and just want some quick cash before moving on to something else, they should pretty much ignore Foundry and go for the big sales.
Hmm... which one do they seem to be doing?
They are doing the latter. It is tough to say if the foundry is blatant bait and switch or if its inclusion in the game was originally sincere. I originally came to NWO in the hope that the foundry would equal the nwn toolkit. Repeating myself but if they truly unleashed the foundry, the player-authors would launch this game to legendary status on their own. It would blow away anything the current dev team did, is doing, or could possibly do because hundreds of skilled player-authors (out of many thousands most of whom are less skilled) would be able to devote many many thousands of man hours to community projects on a scale that is exponentially larger than anything that could possibly fit into cryptics operating budget. It has been done before. Just look: http://neverwintervault.org/ ALL of that being player developed.
ahhh to dream lol
It must be down to money. Like McDonald's vs 'good food' restaurants, it must be cheaper to produce grindy HAMSTER knowing that a huge proportion of players are happy to play whack-a-mole and do microtransactions to get new shinies, whereas the number of players who's pay for cool foundry stuff or high level narrative stuff is too small to be competingly viable.
MMO firms aren't stupid and they don't have anything against story. It's just about the money. If there was more money in long complex PvE quest chains at lvl 60 then they'd produce that.
Eco
Very true, but one would think there would be a way to really monetize unrestricted player-made content through microtransactions. Tokens or something that each give you x amount of time on your choice of player made persistent worlds or some such.
There are some that do, but yeah, most seemingly are more after the high-frequency easy and low-risk buck...
...which still doesn't explain why this game sees such little love on the PvP side, though. Shoudn't that be the super-easy route to fast cash? Meh...