santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
edited April 2015
"Let me use myself as an example, but I should stress that this only an example: placing oneself in the players' shoes has a broad scope and will really require some thinking outside the box.
Mod 5 introduced Draconic Templar armor and artifact weapons. Like a lot of other players, I proceeded to acquire them. When mod 6 went live, six of my characters had DT and three had artifact weapons. Three also had all seven ToD boons. Putting refinement levels aside, just acquiring all of that gear and boons took a lot of effort to the tune of about 400 Tiamat raids. This bears repeating: not four, not forty, but four-hundred.
Now, imagine having someone tell you that all of that effort to acquire gear that had only just been introduced was wasted."
In my case, it was a mix of Black Ice and Draconic Gear. Spent months on it. Spent money on it, buying Runeforge kits and such. Now its like a big joke.
There is the Mod 6 with its maps and grinds, but everyone needs to separate out the fact that there was a separate world paradigm shift foisted on us. One didn't require the other. I could live with my stuff being rendered trash, but I can't tolerate that every wolf and zombie has been given fairy steroids.
I hate the paradigm shift that people call Mod 6. It's a creation of developers who have other plans than their customers. I wonder what those are?
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
Scott Shicoff - Thank you for your recent apology regarding the many issues the game is currently facing. This is a rare thing to see from a game team, admitting things were not done correctly. I applaud this honesty and look forward to any and all improvements. This goes a long way toward restoring my faith and patience with the powers that be. I'm sure the many things I could list that might need worked on have been mentioned already, or submitted by myself in bug reports and crash reports. Just wanted to say thank you.
What I heard was that it would take weeks or longer for them to sort out what they feel like repairing. He said it very nicely, mind you.
What I heard was that it would take weeks or longer for them to sort out what they feel like repairing. He said it very nicely, mind you.
I got that message as well, though they also mention that they intend to make a change for the next patch. I'm hoping that we'll get a general indication of what they consider high-priority, at least.
Keep the communication coming, Scott. This is welcome stuff.
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
TL;DR
I like mod 6 overall.
You need to attend to communication a lot.
The grind at 70 is boring and not fun.
Now the long version:
I overall like Mod 6. I like the increase in difficulty because it made the end game interesting to play rather than just a thoughtless grind.
Things I'd like to see changed: 1) Communication.
This thread is a great example of where its going wrong. You started it. You posted in it 1x...
The "issues" with Mod 6 is another example, people just don't know that you changed things at level 60-70 a lot. The changes are actually good, the communication around them is bad. For those of us who went onto preview and tried the changes nothing unexpected on live, for those who didn't and thus don't really grasp the changes its horrible.
This also includes in game communication such as accurate information in tool-tips. Powers should tell you how they work accurately, not hedge and force you to guess. (This also would allow us to better understand WAI vs Bug.)
2) The Grind.
You get to the end game, then you start this endless grind. There is nothing new to do after a point, you just grind it over and over and over again until you have BiS in everything and then you start all over again with a new character. This is a big thing that needs to be addressed, the end game is boring. Its also impossibly long for people without the money or unrestricted time to spend on the game, which creates further problems when the goal posts get moved.
BTW I think Elemental Evil, Ice Wind Dale and Well of Dragons are steps in the right direction, they just need more variety in both quests and areas. Going to the same areas 100 times or more to do slightly different things (kill 10 A vs kill 10 is not actually interesting.
3) Playtest Feedback Cycle
The playtest feedback cycle here is broken. Everything that was wrong with the Paladin is pretty much still wrong with it. Everything that caused complaints about mod 6 is still pretty much unchanged. This is despite a lot of feedback about that stuff. You took extra time and fixed very little from the player's perspective. This is because the feedback cycle is broken. You put something out for feedback and then there is no acknowledgement of the feedback. For playtest to actually be a really productive thing you need to clarify Working as Intended vs Bug for the playtesters. Different discussions are generated then by those things. A bug once reported and acknowledged can be ignored unless it isn't fixed. Something that is WAI that players find to not be conducive to their fun has a whole different conversation. This comes back to communication, but there is a very specific communication involved in playtesting that is important for the playtest cycle to work; right now you are simply starting the cycle and then appear to forget the rest. This is different from generating information for players to understand things in live.
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Please DON'T CHANGE THE GRIND TO HIT LEVEL 70!!!!!!!
Leveling to 60 was a simple task, WAY TO SIMPLE. It was so simple, that I myself could have 2 Level 60's in three days, While maintaining an extracurricular career, and an educational career. I found it such a wonderful surprise to have an amazing, long, and fun grind to level 70. Sure, I complained the whole way through it but that was half the fun!! I don't find maxing a character in less then two days fun.
Please DON'T CHANGE THE GRIND TO HIT LEVEL 70!!!!!!!
Leveling to 60 was a simple task, WAY TO SIMPLE. It was so simple, that I myself could have 2 Level 60's in three days, While maintaining an extracurricular career, and an educational career. I found it such a wonderful surprise to have an amazing, long, and fun grind to level 70. Sure, I complained the whole way through it but that was half the fun!! I don't find maxing a character in less then two days fun.
They already tripled the XP from quests in the new zones.... yea don't change the grind :rolleyes:
They already tripled the XP from quests in the new zones.... yea don't change the grind :rolleyes:
A big part of the increase is that there's a double XP week going on right now. Next week it'll go down by half of what you're seeing right now.
I thought the experience seemed higher, too. But I don't think it was doubled, and it definitely wasn't tripled if you take into account that it will normally be half of what is currently displayed.
What would really help at this stage, is a date - a date when you detail the timing of first recovery actions.
These first recovery actions really don't have to be much, they would be a signal of intent, of direction. More than just talk.
Think about introducing a staged recovery plan, give dates against the various stages - and stick to them. Don't try to tackle everything at once, it's too much. This would only swap one set of bugs for others as major changes, rushed through, hit the player base.
Smaller, but continual, corrective action stages - thoroughly tested.
Imagine the difference. No massive fire fighting exercises, no pages of reported massive exploits. A positive reaction, a feeling that things are changing for the better.
And of course, it removes the obvious question of how can you start on the next stage if all you're doing is fire fighting the previous one?
Introduce rushed larger content as you have been doing, with major bugs and exploits - and all you will likely see is a player exodus.
So when do you finish this corrective action plan? - that's nowhere near as important as when you start. The simple answer is it never really finishes. It is a different, better, approach to what has gone before.
So a date for a date? Doesn't seem much in light of what's going on, but it's importance far outweighs it's size.
Introduce a first stage, thoroughly quality tested, and the overwhelming welcome may well surprise you.
Carry on doing this with subsequent stages, and you will be heroes on here.
...............vote for your favourite expansion.......... "Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity". ..............not this one then.............
To me it seems I have to level up to 70 to play the same content I was playing, and enjoying at level 60
This has been a real disappointment to me as well. I loved Icewind Dale, the Dread Ring and the Well Of Dragons (Sharandar, not so much...) Now, it'll be weeks before I can again play competitively in any of them.
P.S: I took my new Paladin from level 20 to level 60 without being able to play one leveling dungeon. The Cloak Tower is still unusable as of yesterday.
:cool: Shadowspawn :cool: "Don't hate the game, hate the playa"
Right, I was holding back on posting properly till I actually finished the new content with my two characters. I'm probably just going to be echoing what many others before me have already stated but just so you get a +1 on your count here is my feedback for module 6.
What I liked:
-Traps Injure. Excellent idea, a good in-between of being inconsequential to being fatal.
-Jumping Puzzles. YAY! I was overjoyed to find these added in game. Spinward Rise gets a thumbs up in the decor department too.
-"Open world" dungeons. As someone who dislikes instances, I found Silverdrip and Glimmerstone being "open" to everyone pretty cool. Wouldn't mind seeing more. Feel free to throw HEs in there too.
-Reused Maps. This might be a surprise but I didn't mind the "reused" / slightly modified maps at all, in fact I thought it was nice to be revisiting them in their altered state.
What I Question:
-Vigilance Quest Design. I actually like that you have a choice of what to do but what led to the decision of 16 repetitions per area and only letting players carry 4 of said quests at any one time? Content "Padding" by increasing travel time? Doesn't that actually say something about your Content if you need to resort to that? On the plus side, your metrics (I assume you have metrics for this) should be able to easily point out which quests in each area are the ...least popular... as they would have the lowest number of completions.
-The Difficulty. It's been awhile since I've created a new character but I seem to recall Sgt. Knox or someone telling me that all content out side dungeons is completable by one player and their companion. Obviously the HEs changed that but at least they clearly mark how many players are recommended for them. My rogue and ranger, now level 70 with both elemental artifact weapons and with all boons other than the last three of tyranny of dragons, struggle to take down cloud giants. Imagine the *joy* (sarcasm) I felt when finding the frost giants and polar bears of Icewind Dale being 3 levels HIGHER than them. Didn't stop me from trying and dying. Did beat a pair of polar bears though, after a five minute fight that used a lot of my potions.
Definitely not worth questing there especially with the XP discrepancies, which you said you are looking into. That's good because fighting level 73 frost giants to collect their axes nets under 3k XP for the quest. I can do a jumping puzzle and get 5k XP, or kill say... Blackfeather, a pretty easy Kenku mini boss for almost 4K.
Not sure why you thought the old areas needed to be "harder" but ok, I'm not going to just blatantly call out to make things easier for me. After a quick poll on the NW_Legit_Community channel I found that my two characters, were on the lower scale of Item Level. TR 26.6k HP, iLevel 1807. HR. 36.1k HP, iLevel 1690. If you are keeping the current difficulty, can you please put a recommended item level for each area so I know what to aim for? Again, I trust your metrics should be keeping tabs on the average iLevel and such.
-Enemies over level 70. I find it a little sad that the heroes of Neverwinter can never be as skilled as a frost barbarian (73), a polar bear (73), any random dragon cultist goon (73) or even a little powrie (71). If you intend to keep them at that level, can you change the number to a skull or crown or some other symbol to know that they are of the unfair, unattainable caliber? I still believe they should also only show up in epic level content / hardcore instances if you want your game to be the most inclusive.
-"Forced" Grouping. This ties in with the difficulty bit above. To do anything effectively in the zones with level 71+ bad dudes almost forces people to group. Personally there's nothing that makes me feel -less- heroic than requiring say... twenty four other "heroes" +x number of NPCs to do something but fine, Tiamat is a god and whatever. Do I really need to party up just to win against Biggrin? Or to defeat some nameless cloud giants? It's your game so you can decide on the direction it takes, but you might want to look at how other games that cater only to "hardcore" difficulty are faring in the player population department. SOE's Wizardry Online and Wildstar are two that come to mind.
-Invocation. I know you mentioned you were looking into this, but I'll just put up my hand now as someone who liked the "old" way better than how it is now.
-Ignoring Foundry. The foundry is one of your unique tools in this MMO and shouldn't be a sideshow attraction. Better still, you have a bunch of dedicated people willing to make content for you for free. Find a way to make it more important that it currently is and to give those creators better tools. You like using tons of currency, why not have a foundry coin or something with which people can then spend at one of the Protectors Enclave vendors? This isn't even an original idea, someone on the foundry thread came up with it long ago, but it's worth bringing up again.
Another easy place to start is to hold more contests where YOU DECIDE the winner (as opposed to public vote which is easily skewered). As an example you could have even done something like "Hey foundry authors! Module 6 is coming out soon and we need four zones, one linking to each element to be designed. Don't worry about putting quests or monsters, we'll handle that when we find the four entries we like. Winners receive Gold or AD or Zen or Companion or Bag or Pizza or a picture of a Pizza..." *WHATEVER*. Bam. New zones generated. No more complaints about "reused maps".
Anyways that's it from me for now. Thanks for reading. And for the double XP week. ^_^
Sorry but even a double xp week wont entice me back .I'm not wasting my weekend Playing a game where I am board to tears doing the same repeatable quests, getting my butt handed to me because I chose to play solo and thinking "just get through it, just get through it get your head down ,do the work, get to 70" looks like my char will be staying on lvl 65 until you release some enjoyable content to play.
I'm not getting my hopes up, last one out switch the light off.
[Feedback] Scourge Warlock needs a complete rework that incorporates the 'old lifesteal' into their kit. Also, I'd personally suggest that Temptation turn curse into a groupwide utility and that the healing capstone be converted into a class feature (passive/yellow slot) for the Hellbringer Warlock- fire damage only, to prevent maximizing it by stacking on Fury.
A <Friendly Dragon>!
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kaiserschmarrnMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 390
edited April 2015
My personal priority list:
Fix all broken skills/feats
Fix broken enchants
Fix broken rewards, or sets which cannot be completed, see Feywild set - the bracers no longer drop
Difficulty balance pass - look at the possible spike damage from monster single hit crits
Well, I play a HR. I only have 2 artifacts, can't afford any at the AH, and only had 1 drop all the time I played and I couldn't equip it because I already had 1 of the same equipped. Neither have been upgraded as I have yet to acquire the regents needed to upgrade them. Those also never drop for me. All enchantments I have are only level 5 because I also do not have the regents needed to level them up. To much AD for the average gamer such as myself. Only blue armor that I can afford at the AH since no blue armor items has dropped for me since M6 came out. Not to mention I can no longer do anything I did at level 60 and most likely will not be able to do them at level 70 either with what I will be able to afford to be equipped with. Only gaining about 2000 to 2500 AD a day at the moment since I can't do any content to gain any more than that. Which I could do prior to M6. Even when I get to level 70, I most likely won't be able to do the same content I did as others with much better gear, artifacts, and enchantments than I are having difficulty where does that leave me and anyone like me.
Even worse: we are left in the dark when the next paradigm shift comes and what of the stuff we strife for a the moment will be rendered trash the next month.
Why should we continue to spend efford on our characters, when everything can be moot from on day to the next?
Here the community needs clear and reliable communication from the project lead and game designer, and the lead game designer must backed by the management.
Similar holds in the case of the abyss custumer support / bug reporting.
Most modern bug reporting / issue tracking tools allow you to export states and progress to a website or in a database with can be queried by the customer; you could even publish you burndown charts or whatever you use to a site open for registered customers, active forum members or even only paying supporters (Heros of the North, etc.).
Your mission, if you accept it, is to regain the trust and confidence of your customers.
This is the scary part. I do not think much thought was put into the kind of damage Mod6 would do to players trust in the game, that their current efforts would not be entirely flushed in the future as their past efforts are flushed in mod 6. Mod 6 is all about punishing players for playing and spending money here. I am sure that was not the intent, but it is the reality anways.
Here is a list of things that absolutely kill the players desire to put any further effort or resources into this game, because each of these game breaking issues is a case where a player has to go through quite a lot for no reward at all, and instead are penalized for their commitment to the tasks and the game in general:
1. The absolute devaluation of previously fully refined artifacts and gear. (worked hard and paid for something and it is taken away)
2. The fourth rank of powers being bugged to the point where putting points in that fourth rank ruins the power for the character altogether. (punishment for putting the effort into getting to level 70)
3. The refining bug where you throw stacks into the slots and and on a crit the stack is consumed but does not count towards and refinement points (punishment for working/paying to refine gear)
4. Dungeon chests locked during dungeon delves (punishment for having done the work to complete the dungeon)
5. All previous major level 60 areas being made level 70+ areas (punishment for putting the effort into leveling to 60 in mod5).
and more.
The feeling of reward or gratification in Neverwinter is entirely broken. It feels more like a system of punishing players for their effort and patronage of the game, than any kind of reward for their loyal patronage of the game. That is not just a breaking of the customers trust in the game, it is a flat out point blank execution of it.
Will need a ton of work and communication FAST to fix this.
I was excited about the upcoming mod 6 and I still have hope that all major flaws will be fixed. For now, my biggest issues are graphic performance and game difficulty.
Even though I have a high-end PC which runs pretty much any video game set to max graphic settings without any problem, I find it kind of annoying to deal with unbearable lags in Well of Dragons. That was always a problem in this zone (particularly in Tiamat's Temple when killing the heads) but after mod 6 the lag in WOD, when doing Heralds, got even worse - can't even understand what's happening and I end up dead during the "slideshow" that I must watch without being able to control my character. So, I just stay out of WOD for now.
Another issue is game difficulty. Game difficulty was fine as it was before mod 6 imo. Now it's just a ridiculous death-fest. To me game didn't get more challenging - it got ridiculously hard and not interesting to play. Where is the fun when you enter epic Cragmire Crypts and whole team keeps dying to two mobs met in the first 5 minutes of the dungeon? Then people start leaving, new come in, and when you somehow manage to kill those two mobs after multiple tries with different people coming in, you get stuck right at a couple next mobs... I have all the newest gear, but I still feel very weak. Since I can't go to any of epic dungeons, I have no good means in earning reasonable ad (compared to the old ad farming by doing ePK dungeon). When I can't earn any ad, I feel like I'm making zero progress, which just makes me want to quit this game.
Anyway, I know developers are going to look into the game difficulty matter and, hopefully, enemies will get toned down at least to a bearable level. I will stick around for another month - I will keep invoking and stay out of any real gameplay since low levels are boring and not-rewarding and high levels are just unplayable. Would really hate to leave this game now, but as an average gamer who has just an hour or two after a work day, I can't afford spending my time playing a game that I do not enjoy.
Nevertheless, thanks for all the work you do, developers. Best of luck in optimizing this game, as I imagine how hard that must be
For all those who say that Levels 1 though 60, were to easy I bet you were not playing as Clerics. It takes forever to level a cleric. I have to agree with the person previously who stated that now their cleric is dead before they even have a chance to start to fight.
I really think that you need to look to the commercial video game model, and that is that yes new harder mods are releases, but you don't go back and change the base game, and you don't go back and change previous modes. We may not have actually paid to play, or paid for the mods, but in effect we did when we purchase items from the Zen Market (with actual cash that we deposited) You are going to alienate several of the people who have already put their hard earned money into this game. I haven't paid you a few hundred dollars, (more than what I would have paid) if I had actually purchased a game, just to wake up and find that my character must have come down with a devastating disease overnight, because now she is barely capable of standing on her own two feet.
Also, once something is part of an epic collection, it should remain so. And the ability to complete the set should remain available as well. At the very least let us know 3 to 6 months a head of time, that the PVP set that you've been working on for the last 3 to 6 months is going to disappear, so that we have to time to completed it. And not be stuck with sets that have 3 of 4 items, etc. Especially when the 4th item gives you added bonuses.
Drops are terrible, I used to occasionally get items from fighting dragons in Tyranny of Dragons. My character has never been able to complete real well in WoD, However' that is/was okay, because I figured that I would eventually get my character there, and be able to complete. Anyway I haven't seen anything but dragon coins, and draconic enchantments drop in months. Of course base on what I'm hearing, and what I've seen happen with the Basic Epic sets, not sure how much benefit they would be to me anyway. And if all drops are down, and all the items have been devalued don't even see any reason to go to WOD. I can't even survive in Sharandar now.
It's almost like somebody said what can we do to totally ruin this game.
PS. Do not get rid of the story line. I like the storylines. There are plenty of other games out there where I can just go fight. Come on people it's called Dungeons and Dragons for a reason.
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
edited April 2015
I don't find it enjoyable taking over a month just to acquire new gear. By the time I'm geared up again the next mod will be out and probably render all that effort useless anyway. Besides, why turn gearing into a grind fest when you die in 1 second anyway. Spending a month for pvp set or the epic PVE set from seals won't make you live any longer. The effort in the dread ring is more, the rewards are worst now. The DEVs call that a change in the right direction? How does making it harder and more frustrating draw in new players for their $$$?
I just want to gear up to actually enjoy playing again. This stupid grind isn't helping PWE get more $$$. Who wants to work harder for less anyway? Would you like to work twice as long at work, but earn only a quarter of what you used to make!?
Firstly, I'll begin with a hello and welcome! STO in all its awesomeness is certainly a feather in any cap, as it's proven to be quite an enjoyable, well-balanced game. While no game is without room for improvement, I'd go so far as to say it's one of the better ones out there. A resume like that gets a gold star in my book!
Now for some feedback regarding Neverwinter:
I won't pretend it doesn't beg a lot of work; it does. Sorting out what's a legitimate concern and what's a personal gripe isn't going to be an easy feat, much less finding a way to balance and repair the serious issues. I don't even slightly envy you the task. I hope you have a ready supply of stress-balls on hand.
Many of the concerns brought up don't have clear happy mediums, however, I notice two overall issues that an overwhelmingly large portion of the community seems to agree are in dire need of addressing.
1. The grind. The awful, terrible, soul-eroding grind. The journey from levels 1-60 prior to the newer modules was fun, a progression of story and zones and enemies and dialogue that felt very D&D-like. You could adventure solo, you could pair with friends, you could meet new people and team up for the occasional difficult quest, and very early in the leveling experience you could be inducted into the basic mechanics of dungeons (I miss Cloak Tower.) In fact, my slew of "alts" was not in effort to create an AD-farm of any kind, but because I rather enjoyed the journey.
Once 60, however, we were introduced to the mechanical, tedious realm of dailies. While virtually every game has some manner of grind - and Sharandar, Dread Ring, and Icewind Dale were certainly repetitive - we did see a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel in completing the campaigns, assuming each could kiss our happy heinies as we exited with our final boons, never to see those places again. With this most recent module, we're now doomed to repetition of those places, in addition to finding the promise offered by new levels and (well, one) new zone destroyed, the "adventure" comprised of quests to be repeated every hour. Three of the four "new" zones are reconstituted maps from elsewhere. This "leveling dungeon" change narrowed the variety of dungeons and skirmishes available to players. We have fewer of those, no more Gauntlgrym of old (less the PvP event.) Shouldn't a new module/content expansion... well, shouldn't it expand content?
Personally, I miss returning to old "normal version" dungeons for fun and nostalgia, sometimes for unique (even if under-leveled) items for transmutation purposes. I miss seeing new environments as a reward for my level-ups. Grind is a necessary evil of a game like this, but by no means should it be the basis for it. That grind is alienating a great many players, including those like me who'd love to see the game succeed.
2. There is an unhealthy over-emphasis on spending money in order to be marketable and accepted by the general community for the more difficult group content, and a rather insulting dismissal of the money or farming efforts of folks who've worked to invest in a satisfyingly statted character. Our artifact weapons (level 60) from Tiamat-grind are moot upon reaching level 70, superior ones simply handed to us once we've hit our level cap. Our artifact belts and necklaces (level 60) are laughable, even in the purple-or-better range (which - and it cannot be stressed enough - are testament to a huge investment of time and resources.) Refinement is not cheap, even more so for those who haven't thousands of dollars to invest in a single avenue of entertainment, and glean most of their rp from luck or many hours of the day invested in an AD-producing alt army. We're essentially being told that all this investment is for naught. Gear itself can (and should!) be ever-changing as the game moves forward and upward, but to negate such a long-term investment is, as I see it, another alienating move on behalf of the module.
Our basic artifacts now have an additional 40 levels, our regular enchant stones more levels, and our artifact equipment gained prior to Mod 6 might as well be discarded. Most of the player base is simply not of the means to keep up with such a money- or time-sink. The idea itself needn't be scrapped, but there's an enormous need of a rework that real-world monetary input doesn't limit a portion of the game to a tiny percent of its player base. No game should ever be so exclusive, nor should gameplay revolve so single-mindedly around the "gear grind" at the expense of adventuring in an MMORPG.
As it's been mentioned in other posts on this lengthy thread, a game is meant to be FUN! Some easier content for the casual player, challenging stuff for the more intense player, even a little super-challenging stuff for the 'core ones. We need more of that three-letter "f-word!" Perhaps a little less Zen Shop and a little more content.
Again, welcome... and I wish you good luck. Lots of us would love to see this game flourish and become worthy of being that "main entertainment," but it needs some work, and a bit of overhaul. You'll definitely be earning your cookies here. *Hands a stress ball care package.*
I have the ability to heal you. A shield to protect you. Blades to slay your foes. Magic! So I'm a tiefling, so what? We have a common enemy, and a common goal. Here, you can put ornaments on my horns if it'll put you at ease.
After the excruciating slow progress past 70 even with the double Exp I can not imagine the mind numbing monotony that is in the future, especially since one of the few places you could get some experience and feel you were making progress is being nerfed. Things that used to work fine are now malfunctioning (no greater marks from the Dread Ring chests on the weekend for example). It seems to me that it would have made a lot more sense to leave things as they were in Mod 5 and then make the four new areas 70+, but that would be too simple an idea and would have left all those areas we liked (but which probably were no longer profitable to the powers that be). I think that there has been long enough to get a flavor of what changes need to be made to keep a happy and consuming crowd in neverwinter. Maybe a rough sketch of what is in store so we can make our decisions on what to do, or at the very least a post by the new head honcho just saying "We hear you" would be very welcome.
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smitscoMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
I was excited about the upcoming mod 6 and I still have hope that all major flaws will be fixed. For now, my biggest issues are graphic performance and game difficulty.
Even though I have a high-end PC which runs pretty much any video game set to max graphic settings without any problem, I find it kind of annoying to deal with unbearable lags in Well of Dragons. That was always a problem in this zone (particularly in Tiamat's Temple when killing the heads) but after mod 6 the lag in WOD, when doing Heralds, got even worse - can't even understand what's happening and I end up dead during the "slideshow" that I must watch without being able to control my character. So, I just stay out of WOD for now.
Another issue is game difficulty. Game difficulty was fine as it was before mod 6 imo. Now it's just a ridiculous death-fest. To me game didn't get more challenging - it got ridiculously hard and not interesting to play. Where is the fun when you enter epic Cragmire Crypts and whole team keeps dying to two mobs met in the first 5 minutes of the dungeon? Then people start leaving, new come in, and when you somehow manage to kill those two mobs after multiple tries with different people coming in, you get stuck right at a couple next mobs... I have all the newest gear, but I still feel very weak. Since I can't go to any of epic dungeons, I have no good means in earning reasonable ad (compared to the old ad farming by doing ePK dungeon). When I can't earn any ad, I feel like I'm making zero progress, which just makes me want to quit this game.
Anyway, I know developers are going to look into the game difficulty matter and, hopefully, enemies will get toned down at least to a bearable level. I will stick around for another month - I will keep invoking and stay out of any real gameplay since low levels are boring and not-rewarding and high levels are just unplayable. Would really hate to leave this game now, but as an average gamer who has just an hour or two after a work day, I can't afford spending my time playing a game that I do not enjoy.
Nevertheless, thanks for all the work you do, developers. Best of luck in optimizing this game, as I imagine how hard that must be
I completely agree with sscorpionn08's comments. My best character goes from being able to survive in Dread Ring, Icewind Dale and Well of Dragons to dying within two to three hits from the lowest mobs. Dread Ring, Icewind Dale and Well of Dragons is now unplayable for me. Only character I can survive with in Dread Ring (and then only rarely) is my Guardian Fighter. And for some reason recently my guardian fighter lost the mechanical item that functioned similar to a hand grenade (forgot the name).
Next thing I have noticed, I am leveling a Cleric and have a companion (Apprentice Healer) who is able to deal more damage to the mobs than I can. I finish one batch of mobs and turn to help my companion and blam all his attackers are dead before I can react. Very demoralizing, seems like I am the companion to him.
I used to enjoy and look forward to playing this game, now am disappointed and am seriously considering switching to WoW.
Make changes quickly if you want to keep your loyal gamers!!!
0
feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
edited April 2015
Greetings, Mr. Shicoff.
Your message here has been the first bit of good news since the release of Mod 6. I'm hoping to see it bear fruit soon. because the 4/23 patch was a disaster that broke more things than it fixed, rather like mod 6 in general. There will be unavoidably a great deal of duplication here because it would take hours for me to sort out the things players have already said in this thread and because it bears repeating. A short (no, really this is the short version) list of things that need to be fixed:
1) In general, the feeling that the dev team tested almost nothing about the new mod or the patches that have come out since. The mod was nowhere near ready for release and the 'fixes' since have been embarrassing failures.
2) The feeling that the desires and concerns of the player base have been and continue to be largely ignored.
3) The feeling that there is an insulting disregard for the intelligence of the player base, for instance dishonestly promising that we'd get 80% of RP value for our old artifact equipment when in fact we get 40, and everyone who bothered to check in in preview saw through the lie as soon as we were told it.
4) Bad class balancing. In dungeons we are almost back to the stultifying mod 3 state where CWs and GWFs do all the damage, though TRs do too now, and everyone else is a utility class at best. Some of this is due to the ongoing ability of DCs to constantly refill the party's AP, and this doesn't help HRs since their dailies are relatively puny. However, my experience continues to be that my relatively well-geared trapper HR does about 1/2 to 1/3 the damage it should be doing relative to the rest of the party.
4) Plant Growth should apply Strong Grasping Roots. They are roots, they grasp strongly, and the appropriate feat bonuses should apply. It makes no sense whatever that they are some new, third kind of roots that avoid trapper feats.
5) The damage, HP and sometimes speed of epic mobs and bosses in mod 6 is absurd and needs to be hugely reduced. Not 10% or 15% but 60% or 80%. There aren't enough DCs and tanks to go around in order to facilitate dungeon runs for everyone and there never will be. Just give up on the idea that we should always need a healer (and frankly this could and should be taken care of by re-scaling the healing abilities of HRs and SWs). Currently dungeons take far too long and are not fun. The caches of the elements and of the protector were a nice touch, though, and at least make them rewarding once a day.
6) Give us back our defense, life steal, regeneration and deflect.
7) Re-scale healing potions to be meaningful at level 70. Right now their total uselessness is an obvious money grab to make players buy health stones. We see it and we aren't impressed.
8) Put a real spam filter on chat. We're sick to death of spammers and tired of having to play whack-a-mole with right click to get rid of them so we can find a dungeon party.
9) Fix the bug with major jewels and kits that requires us to apply them in inventory bags.
10) Give us a way to craft bags at high level leatherworking and tailoring. Exactly how does it make sense that we employ 9 leatherworkers or tailors and not one knows how to put a backpack together?
11) Just make Tiamat playable again. Come on.
12) Give us back our missing dungeons. While you're at it, give us a way to get to that one hidden chest in Pirate King that you can't even reach by wall-climbing.
13) If this whole mod is about elemental things, give us more drops for elemental aggregates and unified elements.
14) Stop recycling lair interiors and bosses, the way that the tower in Spinward Rise is just the Tower of Celadaine or the giant crab is just the Master Of The Hunt.
15) Walk back the level 60 zones. No one likes the changes to them and they serve no purpose but to frustrate new players and/or characters.
16) The new TR abilities are basically not being used by anyone and should be replaced.
17) Same with the new DC abilities other than Geas from what I gather.
18) Already covered in 5), but stop it with the constant, pointless, frustrating one-shot kills. No amount of player tactics or teamwork stops them. Lostmauth is nearly unplayable, so we're all wandering around with empty glyph slots - especially since you (for no obvious reason) nerfed the drop rate for glyphs.
19) And while we're at it, most of the glyph bonuses were rendered meaningless by stat inflation in the new mod, so glyphs should be updated.
20) Give us something useful to buy with shadowmantle seals, seals of the dark fey and Kessel's sigils.
21) A preview tooltip for VT, MC and KR keys so we know what they get us.
22) The fourth Sharandar and Dread Ring feats NEED to be recalculated so that they actually proc with useful frequency. Right now they are and always have been an utter disappointment, having no effect on the game despite the huge amount of time it takes to obtain them.
23) In feat and boon trees, instead of telling us there's 'a chance' for something to proc, tell us what the amount of that chance is so we can make an informed decision.
24) Speaking of chance, the RNG has never lived up to the stated odds in any respect from opening skill nodes to refinement. Fix it.
25) Tell us the amount of the internal cooldowns on all enchantments/enhancements.
26) Dragon's hoard enchantments are STILL NOT FIXED. After a couple of hours of playing on any given day, there almost always comes a time at which I log back in, do a quest or a zone and find that I get no drops at all. This is unacceptable and insulting. If you need an anti-botting measure, get rid of the auto-pickup feature and make drops disappear after a minute of non-combat in the immediate area. I haven't believed for some time that the fault in these enchantments is unintentional and I am sick of it. It has probably cost me millions in refining points by now.
27) Re-scale soulforged enchantments to give players meaningful starting health and regeneration on resurrection at level 70.
29) Animations for gushing wound, rain of arrows, cordon of arrows and so on should be faster given that standing still for any length of time is now so much more of a risk to players.
30) Fix Bloodbath so it doesn't proc if a player activates it and there aren't targets close enough. The little cackle when a TR presses 1 to use it when there's an enemy RIGHT NEXT TO HIM and he ends up dead with no AP and not having used the daily he just spent is not amusing.
31) If you want to rework GWFs, get rid of Sprint (a heavily armored class should not be able to run like it's on rocket skates) and all their ranged attacks. They're a melee class and they should have to fight like one. In fact, their melee attacks often need to come nowhere near a target to do damage, so fix that too. Especially if you're planning on giving them yet more annoying control time in pvp.
32) Bring HRs' archery and combat trees up to par with trappers. Archery is better with the new encounter powers but few people are playing combat anymore. Also, give HRs a big damage daily (for both Stormwarden and Pathfinder) like EVERY OTHER CLASS has and get rid of Cold Steel Hurricane and other powers that absolutely no one ever uses.
33) HRs should be able to choose both halves of their powers, i.e. slotting Boar Charge instead of Steel Breeze as the other half of Constricting Shot, for instance, or in the case of archery slotting Constricting Shot as the other half of, say, Commanding Shot, or for combat slotting Hindering Strike opposite Gushing Wound.
34) A better set bonus for the Lathander set than immunity to injury. The solution to overspending gold on injury kits is to walk back some of the terrible changes made in mod 6 that result in players dying all the time.
35) The grind currently called for to upgrade the black ice forge - 10 Unified Elements - is ridiculous. Everyone will have their purple gear before they have 10 UEs if they aren't buying them. I have no objection to the amount of black ice involved.
36) Fix whatever it is that causes Astral Seal, Knight's Valor and so on to cause crippling lag in 25-and-more-player raid situations. This has been going on for months and should never have been a problem in the fist place. It constantly allows new players, or those who can't read English, or who just don't listen, to screw things up for dozens of others at a time.
That's all for now. I'm sure I'll edit and add to this as I keep playing. Thanks for your presumed attention.
Well on my main which was super geared before mod 6 i had a bit of issues with the 60-70 grind i didnt die every second but i did die often which is fine i like a challenge but i just got an alt to 60 and can not afford to get it perfectly geared out and its in 55-60 blues and dies every other second. I also do not like all the dungeons being moved to 70 and zones as well. This is a problems. But still the biggest problem is see is for new players trying to get to 70 and just dying over and over and over unless they find groups willing to carry them or even join... its just to much of a grind and i think the super hard mobs should stay at 70 not 60-69
Ok, those who know me by now from the forums know all, that i am always on the side of the little man, but this day was even for me the top and i have to say i am a bit of sick of people now, my entire neck and arms hurt and i got a nice head ache from the long hours of stress.
My ultimate reason, why i'm asking the Devs to turn back the difficulty slider is, that it's simply unbearable for a PUG player (guilds ruined by Mod 6), like me to collect those seals, the majority of the game's population is simply- and i am very polite now- not so bright up there and way too casual.
The Mod is utterly broken, still people are sometimes too childish or show no responsibility towards the team members.
Let me tell you a little story.
Played in VT for long hours tonight, wasted over 60 injury kits and had only 1 team, that could do that fairly easy place. Not so easy as it was, but compared to other dungeons now, it is really simple to do.
I had teams, where most of the players were teenagers and they simply didn't know, how an analogue clock is working. Today's generation...
Had teams, where CWs came in in mostly green gear. Ouch.
Had teams, where most people ran backwards, counterclockwise, like they would want to commit suicide with the ghosts.
Sadly in most cases, if you try to tell people, how it should be done, they kick you.
Kicking is now on such a high level, that people come and go with every minute, they kick without even looking. Boy i had the highest DPS with my TR and got insta kicked many many times.
OK, now we have zero content now, other than grinding these few places, that can be done. This Mod gave us nothing, only took away some of the good old dungeons and turned everything that was working upside down. We only have those few dungeons left and even there it will be a lifetime until one collects the seals.
So for God's sake dear Devs in next patch-hopefully during Thursday's maintenance- scale a bit the difficulty back or introduce some sort of requirements for the current dungeons, cause the majority of the players is simply too causal and can't communicate a word with each other.
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Oh yes and i have to repeat again and again, the potions are not updated to Mod 6.
The little gadgets, like the Champion's Horn or Pocket Pet are not working or they even cancel out other healing artifacts.
The current double XP is fine, but by the time a new toon reaches lvl 60 with it's current gear, it gets nowhere with that under performing low standard gear and continuing leveling towards 70 is a constant pain.
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Well I get my TR to 70, still have 16 quest's to finish from the 3rd area Fiery Pit and..... well, right now I cant bring my self to go anywhere near the place. So .. whilst leveling the TR I did remember to do the invoking on my DC, so poor little blighter goes up a level to 65 from 64 in 3rd misery shores area.. gets auto sent back to 64, fine EXCEPT she now does less damage and takes heaps more..... for the love of....(fades to muttering once again) so figure I would try a few Harpers quests from reading the forums, kill a dragon fine, kill the cultist fine, (lets not mention that I cant do these ones for another 7 hours) disrupt the cultist camp. what the ?????? its a 70 zone!!! I am left with no where to go thats any fun, how the hell can anybody think leveling equals worse performance in the same area/level , and you couldnt leave the dragon quests alone either so there was somewhere else we could level..... *snap sound of straw on camels back breaking*
Dragon hoard enchants still not working properly. Eldritch runestone still not working properly. Game unbalanced as all get out. Dungeons virtually impossible and/or broken/bugged. Still haven't been able to finish eSoT. Tiamat? (haven't even tried). But then again, I'm only 2.44K IL with all purple artifacts/artifact gear. Some fun we're having...
You upgraded old areas to level 70, but left the loot we get to level 60... Full T3 gf with 2.4k item level score (my main) who died rarely got into dread ring instances/kessel skirmish and died (single shot) many times.... Its ok for the game to be difficult, give us a way to gather gear for it and be competitive!
Fix the leveling system from 60-70! You had a wonderful leveling system and ruined it.... But I don't see this possible without redesigning the whole expansion...
Comments
Mod 5 introduced Draconic Templar armor and artifact weapons. Like a lot of other players, I proceeded to acquire them. When mod 6 went live, six of my characters had DT and three had artifact weapons. Three also had all seven ToD boons. Putting refinement levels aside, just acquiring all of that gear and boons took a lot of effort to the tune of about 400 Tiamat raids. This bears repeating: not four, not forty, but four-hundred.
Now, imagine having someone tell you that all of that effort to acquire gear that had only just been introduced was wasted."
In my case, it was a mix of Black Ice and Draconic Gear. Spent months on it. Spent money on it, buying Runeforge kits and such. Now its like a big joke.
There is the Mod 6 with its maps and grinds, but everyone needs to separate out the fact that there was a separate world paradigm shift foisted on us. One didn't require the other. I could live with my stuff being rendered trash, but I can't tolerate that every wolf and zombie has been given fairy steroids.
I hate the paradigm shift that people call Mod 6. It's a creation of developers who have other plans than their customers. I wonder what those are?
What I heard was that it would take weeks or longer for them to sort out what they feel like repairing. He said it very nicely, mind you.
I got that message as well, though they also mention that they intend to make a change for the next patch. I'm hoping that we'll get a general indication of what they consider high-priority, at least.
Keep the communication coming, Scott. This is welcome stuff.
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
I like mod 6 overall.
You need to attend to communication a lot.
The grind at 70 is boring and not fun.
Now the long version:
I overall like Mod 6. I like the increase in difficulty because it made the end game interesting to play rather than just a thoughtless grind.
Things I'd like to see changed:
1) Communication.
This thread is a great example of where its going wrong. You started it. You posted in it 1x...
The "issues" with Mod 6 is another example, people just don't know that you changed things at level 60-70 a lot. The changes are actually good, the communication around them is bad. For those of us who went onto preview and tried the changes nothing unexpected on live, for those who didn't and thus don't really grasp the changes its horrible.
This also includes in game communication such as accurate information in tool-tips. Powers should tell you how they work accurately, not hedge and force you to guess. (This also would allow us to better understand WAI vs Bug.)
2) The Grind.
You get to the end game, then you start this endless grind. There is nothing new to do after a point, you just grind it over and over and over again until you have BiS in everything and then you start all over again with a new character. This is a big thing that needs to be addressed, the end game is boring. Its also impossibly long for people without the money or unrestricted time to spend on the game, which creates further problems when the goal posts get moved.
BTW I think Elemental Evil, Ice Wind Dale and Well of Dragons are steps in the right direction, they just need more variety in both quests and areas. Going to the same areas 100 times or more to do slightly different things (kill 10 A vs kill 10
3) Playtest Feedback Cycle
The playtest feedback cycle here is broken. Everything that was wrong with the Paladin is pretty much still wrong with it. Everything that caused complaints about mod 6 is still pretty much unchanged. This is despite a lot of feedback about that stuff. You took extra time and fixed very little from the player's perspective. This is because the feedback cycle is broken. You put something out for feedback and then there is no acknowledgement of the feedback. For playtest to actually be a really productive thing you need to clarify Working as Intended vs Bug for the playtesters. Different discussions are generated then by those things. A bug once reported and acknowledged can be ignored unless it isn't fixed. Something that is WAI that players find to not be conducive to their fun has a whole different conversation. This comes back to communication, but there is a very specific communication involved in playtesting that is important for the playtest cycle to work; right now you are simply starting the cycle and then appear to forget the rest. This is different from generating information for players to understand things in live.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Leveling to 60 was a simple task, WAY TO SIMPLE. It was so simple, that I myself could have 2 Level 60's in three days, While maintaining an extracurricular career, and an educational career. I found it such a wonderful surprise to have an amazing, long, and fun grind to level 70. Sure, I complained the whole way through it but that was half the fun!! I don't find maxing a character in less then two days fun.
A big part of the increase is that there's a double XP week going on right now. Next week it'll go down by half of what you're seeing right now.
I thought the experience seemed higher, too. But I don't think it was doubled, and it definitely wasn't tripled if you take into account that it will normally be half of what is currently displayed.
These first recovery actions really don't have to be much, they would be a signal of intent, of direction. More than just talk.
Think about introducing a staged recovery plan, give dates against the various stages - and stick to them. Don't try to tackle everything at once, it's too much. This would only swap one set of bugs for others as major changes, rushed through, hit the player base.
Smaller, but continual, corrective action stages - thoroughly tested.
Imagine the difference. No massive fire fighting exercises, no pages of reported massive exploits. A positive reaction, a feeling that things are changing for the better.
And of course, it removes the obvious question of how can you start on the next stage if all you're doing is fire fighting the previous one?
Introduce rushed larger content as you have been doing, with major bugs and exploits - and all you will likely see is a player exodus.
So when do you finish this corrective action plan? - that's nowhere near as important as when you start. The simple answer is it never really finishes. It is a different, better, approach to what has gone before.
So a date for a date? Doesn't seem much in light of what's going on, but it's importance far outweighs it's size.
Introduce a first stage, thoroughly quality tested, and the overwhelming welcome may well surprise you.
Carry on doing this with subsequent stages, and you will be heroes on here.
"Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity".
..............not this one then.............
This has been a real disappointment to me as well. I loved Icewind Dale, the Dread Ring and the Well Of Dragons (Sharandar, not so much...) Now, it'll be weeks before I can again play competitively in any of them.
P.S: I took my new Paladin from level 20 to level 60 without being able to play one leveling dungeon. The Cloak Tower is still unusable as of yesterday.
:cool: Shadowspawn :cool:
"Don't hate the game, hate the playa"
Right, I was holding back on posting properly till I actually finished the new content with my two characters. I'm probably just going to be echoing what many others before me have already stated but just so you get a +1 on your count here is my feedback for module 6.
What I liked:
-Traps Injure. Excellent idea, a good in-between of being inconsequential to being fatal.
-Jumping Puzzles. YAY! I was overjoyed to find these added in game. Spinward Rise gets a thumbs up in the decor department too.
-"Open world" dungeons. As someone who dislikes instances, I found Silverdrip and Glimmerstone being "open" to everyone pretty cool. Wouldn't mind seeing more. Feel free to throw HEs in there too.
-Reused Maps. This might be a surprise but I didn't mind the "reused" / slightly modified maps at all, in fact I thought it was nice to be revisiting them in their altered state.
What I Question:
-Vigilance Quest Design. I actually like that you have a choice of what to do but what led to the decision of 16 repetitions per area and only letting players carry 4 of said quests at any one time? Content "Padding" by increasing travel time? Doesn't that actually say something about your Content if you need to resort to that? On the plus side, your metrics (I assume you have metrics for this) should be able to easily point out which quests in each area are the ...least popular... as they would have the lowest number of completions.
-The Difficulty. It's been awhile since I've created a new character but I seem to recall Sgt. Knox or someone telling me that all content out side dungeons is completable by one player and their companion. Obviously the HEs changed that but at least they clearly mark how many players are recommended for them. My rogue and ranger, now level 70 with both elemental artifact weapons and with all boons other than the last three of tyranny of dragons, struggle to take down cloud giants. Imagine the *joy* (sarcasm) I felt when finding the frost giants and polar bears of Icewind Dale being 3 levels HIGHER than them. Didn't stop me from trying and dying. Did beat a pair of polar bears though, after a five minute fight that used a lot of my potions.
Definitely not worth questing there especially with the XP discrepancies, which you said you are looking into. That's good because fighting level 73 frost giants to collect their axes nets under 3k XP for the quest. I can do a jumping puzzle and get 5k XP, or kill say... Blackfeather, a pretty easy Kenku mini boss for almost 4K.
Not sure why you thought the old areas needed to be "harder" but ok, I'm not going to just blatantly call out to make things easier for me. After a quick poll on the NW_Legit_Community channel I found that my two characters, were on the lower scale of Item Level. TR 26.6k HP, iLevel 1807. HR. 36.1k HP, iLevel 1690. If you are keeping the current difficulty, can you please put a recommended item level for each area so I know what to aim for? Again, I trust your metrics should be keeping tabs on the average iLevel and such.
-Enemies over level 70. I find it a little sad that the heroes of Neverwinter can never be as skilled as a frost barbarian (73), a polar bear (73), any random dragon cultist goon (73) or even a little powrie (71). If you intend to keep them at that level, can you change the number to a skull or crown or some other symbol to know that they are of the unfair, unattainable caliber? I still believe they should also only show up in epic level content / hardcore instances if you want your game to be the most inclusive.
-"Forced" Grouping. This ties in with the difficulty bit above. To do anything effectively in the zones with level 71+ bad dudes almost forces people to group. Personally there's nothing that makes me feel -less- heroic than requiring say... twenty four other "heroes" +x number of NPCs to do something but fine, Tiamat is a god and whatever. Do I really need to party up just to win against Biggrin? Or to defeat some nameless cloud giants? It's your game so you can decide on the direction it takes, but you might want to look at how other games that cater only to "hardcore" difficulty are faring in the player population department. SOE's Wizardry Online and Wildstar are two that come to mind.
-Invocation. I know you mentioned you were looking into this, but I'll just put up my hand now as someone who liked the "old" way better than how it is now.
-Ignoring Foundry. The foundry is one of your unique tools in this MMO and shouldn't be a sideshow attraction. Better still, you have a bunch of dedicated people willing to make content for you for free. Find a way to make it more important that it currently is and to give those creators better tools. You like using tons of currency, why not have a foundry coin or something with which people can then spend at one of the Protectors Enclave vendors? This isn't even an original idea, someone on the foundry thread came up with it long ago, but it's worth bringing up again.
Another easy place to start is to hold more contests where YOU DECIDE the winner (as opposed to public vote which is easily skewered). As an example you could have even done something like "Hey foundry authors! Module 6 is coming out soon and we need four zones, one linking to each element to be designed. Don't worry about putting quests or monsters, we'll handle that when we find the four entries we like. Winners receive Gold or AD or Zen or Companion or Bag or Pizza or a picture of a Pizza..." *WHATEVER*. Bam. New zones generated. No more complaints about "reused maps".
Anyways that's it from me for now. Thanks for reading. And for the double XP week. ^_^
I'm not getting my hopes up, last one out switch the light off.
This is the scary part. I do not think much thought was put into the kind of damage Mod6 would do to players trust in the game, that their current efforts would not be entirely flushed in the future as their past efforts are flushed in mod 6. Mod 6 is all about punishing players for playing and spending money here. I am sure that was not the intent, but it is the reality anways.
Here is a list of things that absolutely kill the players desire to put any further effort or resources into this game, because each of these game breaking issues is a case where a player has to go through quite a lot for no reward at all, and instead are penalized for their commitment to the tasks and the game in general:
1. The absolute devaluation of previously fully refined artifacts and gear. (worked hard and paid for something and it is taken away)
2. The fourth rank of powers being bugged to the point where putting points in that fourth rank ruins the power for the character altogether. (punishment for putting the effort into getting to level 70)
3. The refining bug where you throw stacks into the slots and and on a crit the stack is consumed but does not count towards and refinement points (punishment for working/paying to refine gear)
4. Dungeon chests locked during dungeon delves (punishment for having done the work to complete the dungeon)
5. All previous major level 60 areas being made level 70+ areas (punishment for putting the effort into leveling to 60 in mod5).
and more.
The feeling of reward or gratification in Neverwinter is entirely broken. It feels more like a system of punishing players for their effort and patronage of the game, than any kind of reward for their loyal patronage of the game. That is not just a breaking of the customers trust in the game, it is a flat out point blank execution of it.
Will need a ton of work and communication FAST to fix this.
Even though I have a high-end PC which runs pretty much any video game set to max graphic settings without any problem, I find it kind of annoying to deal with unbearable lags in Well of Dragons. That was always a problem in this zone (particularly in Tiamat's Temple when killing the heads) but after mod 6 the lag in WOD, when doing Heralds, got even worse - can't even understand what's happening and I end up dead during the "slideshow" that I must watch without being able to control my character. So, I just stay out of WOD for now.
Another issue is game difficulty. Game difficulty was fine as it was before mod 6 imo. Now it's just a ridiculous death-fest. To me game didn't get more challenging - it got ridiculously hard and not interesting to play. Where is the fun when you enter epic Cragmire Crypts and whole team keeps dying to two mobs met in the first 5 minutes of the dungeon? Then people start leaving, new come in, and when you somehow manage to kill those two mobs after multiple tries with different people coming in, you get stuck right at a couple next mobs... I have all the newest gear, but I still feel very weak. Since I can't go to any of epic dungeons, I have no good means in earning reasonable ad (compared to the old ad farming by doing ePK dungeon). When I can't earn any ad, I feel like I'm making zero progress, which just makes me want to quit this game.
Anyway, I know developers are going to look into the game difficulty matter and, hopefully, enemies will get toned down at least to a bearable level. I will stick around for another month - I will keep invoking and stay out of any real gameplay since low levels are boring and not-rewarding and high levels are just unplayable. Would really hate to leave this game now, but as an average gamer who has just an hour or two after a work day, I can't afford spending my time playing a game that I do not enjoy.
Nevertheless, thanks for all the work you do, developers. Best of luck in optimizing this game, as I imagine how hard that must be
I really think that you need to look to the commercial video game model, and that is that yes new harder mods are releases, but you don't go back and change the base game, and you don't go back and change previous modes. We may not have actually paid to play, or paid for the mods, but in effect we did when we purchase items from the Zen Market (with actual cash that we deposited) You are going to alienate several of the people who have already put their hard earned money into this game. I haven't paid you a few hundred dollars, (more than what I would have paid) if I had actually purchased a game, just to wake up and find that my character must have come down with a devastating disease overnight, because now she is barely capable of standing on her own two feet.
Also, once something is part of an epic collection, it should remain so. And the ability to complete the set should remain available as well. At the very least let us know 3 to 6 months a head of time, that the PVP set that you've been working on for the last 3 to 6 months is going to disappear, so that we have to time to completed it. And not be stuck with sets that have 3 of 4 items, etc. Especially when the 4th item gives you added bonuses.
It's almost like somebody said what can we do to totally ruin this game.
PS. Do not get rid of the story line. I like the storylines. There are plenty of other games out there where I can just go fight. Come on people it's called Dungeons and Dragons for a reason.
I just want to gear up to actually enjoy playing again. This stupid grind isn't helping PWE get more $$$. Who wants to work harder for less anyway? Would you like to work twice as long at work, but earn only a quarter of what you used to make!?
Now for some feedback regarding Neverwinter:
I won't pretend it doesn't beg a lot of work; it does. Sorting out what's a legitimate concern and what's a personal gripe isn't going to be an easy feat, much less finding a way to balance and repair the serious issues. I don't even slightly envy you the task. I hope you have a ready supply of stress-balls on hand.
Many of the concerns brought up don't have clear happy mediums, however, I notice two overall issues that an overwhelmingly large portion of the community seems to agree are in dire need of addressing.
1. The grind. The awful, terrible, soul-eroding grind. The journey from levels 1-60 prior to the newer modules was fun, a progression of story and zones and enemies and dialogue that felt very D&D-like. You could adventure solo, you could pair with friends, you could meet new people and team up for the occasional difficult quest, and very early in the leveling experience you could be inducted into the basic mechanics of dungeons (I miss Cloak Tower.) In fact, my slew of "alts" was not in effort to create an AD-farm of any kind, but because I rather enjoyed the journey.
Once 60, however, we were introduced to the mechanical, tedious realm of dailies. While virtually every game has some manner of grind - and Sharandar, Dread Ring, and Icewind Dale were certainly repetitive - we did see a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel in completing the campaigns, assuming each could kiss our happy heinies as we exited with our final boons, never to see those places again. With this most recent module, we're now doomed to repetition of those places, in addition to finding the promise offered by new levels and (well, one) new zone destroyed, the "adventure" comprised of quests to be repeated every hour. Three of the four "new" zones are reconstituted maps from elsewhere. This "leveling dungeon" change narrowed the variety of dungeons and skirmishes available to players. We have fewer of those, no more Gauntlgrym of old (less the PvP event.) Shouldn't a new module/content expansion... well, shouldn't it expand content?
Personally, I miss returning to old "normal version" dungeons for fun and nostalgia, sometimes for unique (even if under-leveled) items for transmutation purposes. I miss seeing new environments as a reward for my level-ups. Grind is a necessary evil of a game like this, but by no means should it be the basis for it. That grind is alienating a great many players, including those like me who'd love to see the game succeed.
2. There is an unhealthy over-emphasis on spending money in order to be marketable and accepted by the general community for the more difficult group content, and a rather insulting dismissal of the money or farming efforts of folks who've worked to invest in a satisfyingly statted character. Our artifact weapons (level 60) from Tiamat-grind are moot upon reaching level 70, superior ones simply handed to us once we've hit our level cap. Our artifact belts and necklaces (level 60) are laughable, even in the purple-or-better range (which - and it cannot be stressed enough - are testament to a huge investment of time and resources.) Refinement is not cheap, even more so for those who haven't thousands of dollars to invest in a single avenue of entertainment, and glean most of their rp from luck or many hours of the day invested in an AD-producing alt army. We're essentially being told that all this investment is for naught. Gear itself can (and should!) be ever-changing as the game moves forward and upward, but to negate such a long-term investment is, as I see it, another alienating move on behalf of the module.
Our basic artifacts now have an additional 40 levels, our regular enchant stones more levels, and our artifact equipment gained prior to Mod 6 might as well be discarded. Most of the player base is simply not of the means to keep up with such a money- or time-sink. The idea itself needn't be scrapped, but there's an enormous need of a rework that real-world monetary input doesn't limit a portion of the game to a tiny percent of its player base. No game should ever be so exclusive, nor should gameplay revolve so single-mindedly around the "gear grind" at the expense of adventuring in an MMORPG.
As it's been mentioned in other posts on this lengthy thread, a game is meant to be FUN! Some easier content for the casual player, challenging stuff for the more intense player, even a little super-challenging stuff for the 'core ones. We need more of that three-letter "f-word!" Perhaps a little less Zen Shop and a little more content.
Again, welcome... and I wish you good luck. Lots of us would love to see this game flourish and become worthy of being that "main entertainment," but it needs some work, and a bit of overhaul. You'll definitely be earning your cookies here. *Hands a stress ball care package.*
I completely agree with sscorpionn08's comments. My best character goes from being able to survive in Dread Ring, Icewind Dale and Well of Dragons to dying within two to three hits from the lowest mobs. Dread Ring, Icewind Dale and Well of Dragons is now unplayable for me. Only character I can survive with in Dread Ring (and then only rarely) is my Guardian Fighter. And for some reason recently my guardian fighter lost the mechanical item that functioned similar to a hand grenade (forgot the name).
Next thing I have noticed, I am leveling a Cleric and have a companion (Apprentice Healer) who is able to deal more damage to the mobs than I can. I finish one batch of mobs and turn to help my companion and blam all his attackers are dead before I can react. Very demoralizing, seems like I am the companion to him.
I used to enjoy and look forward to playing this game, now am disappointed and am seriously considering switching to WoW.
Make changes quickly if you want to keep your loyal gamers!!!
Your message here has been the first bit of good news since the release of Mod 6. I'm hoping to see it bear fruit soon. because the 4/23 patch was a disaster that broke more things than it fixed, rather like mod 6 in general. There will be unavoidably a great deal of duplication here because it would take hours for me to sort out the things players have already said in this thread and because it bears repeating. A short (no, really this is the short version) list of things that need to be fixed:
1) In general, the feeling that the dev team tested almost nothing about the new mod or the patches that have come out since. The mod was nowhere near ready for release and the 'fixes' since have been embarrassing failures.
2) The feeling that the desires and concerns of the player base have been and continue to be largely ignored.
3) The feeling that there is an insulting disregard for the intelligence of the player base, for instance dishonestly promising that we'd get 80% of RP value for our old artifact equipment when in fact we get 40, and everyone who bothered to check in in preview saw through the lie as soon as we were told it.
4) Bad class balancing. In dungeons we are almost back to the stultifying mod 3 state where CWs and GWFs do all the damage, though TRs do too now, and everyone else is a utility class at best. Some of this is due to the ongoing ability of DCs to constantly refill the party's AP, and this doesn't help HRs since their dailies are relatively puny. However, my experience continues to be that my relatively well-geared trapper HR does about 1/2 to 1/3 the damage it should be doing relative to the rest of the party.
4) Plant Growth should apply Strong Grasping Roots. They are roots, they grasp strongly, and the appropriate feat bonuses should apply. It makes no sense whatever that they are some new, third kind of roots that avoid trapper feats.
5) The damage, HP and sometimes speed of epic mobs and bosses in mod 6 is absurd and needs to be hugely reduced. Not 10% or 15% but 60% or 80%. There aren't enough DCs and tanks to go around in order to facilitate dungeon runs for everyone and there never will be. Just give up on the idea that we should always need a healer (and frankly this could and should be taken care of by re-scaling the healing abilities of HRs and SWs). Currently dungeons take far too long and are not fun. The caches of the elements and of the protector were a nice touch, though, and at least make them rewarding once a day.
6) Give us back our defense, life steal, regeneration and deflect.
7) Re-scale healing potions to be meaningful at level 70. Right now their total uselessness is an obvious money grab to make players buy health stones. We see it and we aren't impressed.
8) Put a real spam filter on chat. We're sick to death of spammers and tired of having to play whack-a-mole with right click to get rid of them so we can find a dungeon party.
9) Fix the bug with major jewels and kits that requires us to apply them in inventory bags.
10) Give us a way to craft bags at high level leatherworking and tailoring. Exactly how does it make sense that we employ 9 leatherworkers or tailors and not one knows how to put a backpack together?
11) Just make Tiamat playable again. Come on.
12) Give us back our missing dungeons. While you're at it, give us a way to get to that one hidden chest in Pirate King that you can't even reach by wall-climbing.
13) If this whole mod is about elemental things, give us more drops for elemental aggregates and unified elements.
14) Stop recycling lair interiors and bosses, the way that the tower in Spinward Rise is just the Tower of Celadaine or the giant crab is just the Master Of The Hunt.
15) Walk back the level 60 zones. No one likes the changes to them and they serve no purpose but to frustrate new players and/or characters.
16) The new TR abilities are basically not being used by anyone and should be replaced.
17) Same with the new DC abilities other than Geas from what I gather.
18) Already covered in 5), but stop it with the constant, pointless, frustrating one-shot kills. No amount of player tactics or teamwork stops them. Lostmauth is nearly unplayable, so we're all wandering around with empty glyph slots - especially since you (for no obvious reason) nerfed the drop rate for glyphs.
19) And while we're at it, most of the glyph bonuses were rendered meaningless by stat inflation in the new mod, so glyphs should be updated.
20) Give us something useful to buy with shadowmantle seals, seals of the dark fey and Kessel's sigils.
21) A preview tooltip for VT, MC and KR keys so we know what they get us.
22) The fourth Sharandar and Dread Ring feats NEED to be recalculated so that they actually proc with useful frequency. Right now they are and always have been an utter disappointment, having no effect on the game despite the huge amount of time it takes to obtain them.
23) In feat and boon trees, instead of telling us there's 'a chance' for something to proc, tell us what the amount of that chance is so we can make an informed decision.
24) Speaking of chance, the RNG has never lived up to the stated odds in any respect from opening skill nodes to refinement. Fix it.
25) Tell us the amount of the internal cooldowns on all enchantments/enhancements.
26) Dragon's hoard enchantments are STILL NOT FIXED. After a couple of hours of playing on any given day, there almost always comes a time at which I log back in, do a quest or a zone and find that I get no drops at all. This is unacceptable and insulting. If you need an anti-botting measure, get rid of the auto-pickup feature and make drops disappear after a minute of non-combat in the immediate area. I haven't believed for some time that the fault in these enchantments is unintentional and I am sick of it. It has probably cost me millions in refining points by now.
27) Re-scale soulforged enchantments to give players meaningful starting health and regeneration on resurrection at level 70.
29) Animations for gushing wound, rain of arrows, cordon of arrows and so on should be faster given that standing still for any length of time is now so much more of a risk to players.
30) Fix Bloodbath so it doesn't proc if a player activates it and there aren't targets close enough. The little cackle when a TR presses 1 to use it when there's an enemy RIGHT NEXT TO HIM and he ends up dead with no AP and not having used the daily he just spent is not amusing.
31) If you want to rework GWFs, get rid of Sprint (a heavily armored class should not be able to run like it's on rocket skates) and all their ranged attacks. They're a melee class and they should have to fight like one. In fact, their melee attacks often need to come nowhere near a target to do damage, so fix that too. Especially if you're planning on giving them yet more annoying control time in pvp.
32) Bring HRs' archery and combat trees up to par with trappers. Archery is better with the new encounter powers but few people are playing combat anymore. Also, give HRs a big damage daily (for both Stormwarden and Pathfinder) like EVERY OTHER CLASS has and get rid of Cold Steel Hurricane and other powers that absolutely no one ever uses.
33) HRs should be able to choose both halves of their powers, i.e. slotting Boar Charge instead of Steel Breeze as the other half of Constricting Shot, for instance, or in the case of archery slotting Constricting Shot as the other half of, say, Commanding Shot, or for combat slotting Hindering Strike opposite Gushing Wound.
34) A better set bonus for the Lathander set than immunity to injury. The solution to overspending gold on injury kits is to walk back some of the terrible changes made in mod 6 that result in players dying all the time.
35) The grind currently called for to upgrade the black ice forge - 10 Unified Elements - is ridiculous. Everyone will have their purple gear before they have 10 UEs if they aren't buying them. I have no objection to the amount of black ice involved.
36) Fix whatever it is that causes Astral Seal, Knight's Valor and so on to cause crippling lag in 25-and-more-player raid situations. This has been going on for months and should never have been a problem in the fist place. It constantly allows new players, or those who can't read English, or who just don't listen, to screw things up for dozens of others at a time.
That's all for now. I'm sure I'll edit and add to this as I keep playing. Thanks for your presumed attention.
Well on my main which was super geared before mod 6 i had a bit of issues with the 60-70 grind i didnt die every second but i did die often which is fine i like a challenge but i just got an alt to 60 and can not afford to get it perfectly geared out and its in 55-60 blues and dies every other second. I also do not like all the dungeons being moved to 70 and zones as well. This is a problems. But still the biggest problem is see is for new players trying to get to 70 and just dying over and over and over unless they find groups willing to carry them or even join... its just to much of a grind and i think the super hard mobs should stay at 70 not 60-69
My ultimate reason, why i'm asking the Devs to turn back the difficulty slider is, that it's simply unbearable for a PUG player (guilds ruined by Mod 6), like me to collect those seals, the majority of the game's population is simply- and i am very polite now- not so bright up there and way too casual.
The Mod is utterly broken, still people are sometimes too childish or show no responsibility towards the team members.
Let me tell you a little story.
Played in VT for long hours tonight, wasted over 60 injury kits and had only 1 team, that could do that fairly easy place. Not so easy as it was, but compared to other dungeons now, it is really simple to do.
I had teams, where most of the players were teenagers and they simply didn't know, how an analogue clock is working. Today's generation...
Had teams, where CWs came in in mostly green gear. Ouch.
Had teams, where most people ran backwards, counterclockwise, like they would want to commit suicide with the ghosts.
Sadly in most cases, if you try to tell people, how it should be done, they kick you.
Kicking is now on such a high level, that people come and go with every minute, they kick without even looking. Boy i had the highest DPS with my TR and got insta kicked many many times.
OK, now we have zero content now, other than grinding these few places, that can be done. This Mod gave us nothing, only took away some of the good old dungeons and turned everything that was working upside down. We only have those few dungeons left and even there it will be a lifetime until one collects the seals.
So for God's sake dear Devs in next patch-hopefully during Thursday's maintenance- scale a bit the difficulty back or introduce some sort of requirements for the current dungeons, cause the majority of the players is simply too causal and can't communicate a word with each other.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
The little gadgets, like the Champion's Horn or Pocket Pet are not working or they even cancel out other healing artifacts.
The current double XP is fine, but by the time a new toon reaches lvl 60 with it's current gear, it gets nowhere with that under performing low standard gear and continuing leveling towards 70 is a constant pain.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Fix the leveling system from 60-70! You had a wonderful leveling system and ruined it.... But I don't see this possible without redesigning the whole expansion...
Norbir Hammerblow@Oathbound Paladin Level 70