+1
But you guys totally overlook one of the number1 defining features that every game review has talked about with Neverwinter - the Foundry.
You know it doesn't take much time to grab the best rated foundry quests and integrate them into the main game. Dead Ring, Sharandar, IWD getting stale? Well then try out some of these equivalent foundry quests. But they gotta give the same rewards as the normal dailies. You can still have a max of 3 quests per day for rewards or whatever.
When I start a new character I basically only do 3 main quest arcs.
That's it. Then I basically PvP, Skirmish, and invocation for xp to get to 60. The Tyranny of Dragons stuff is a nice little extra to get me to do some quests before 60.
The other zones should have some kind of neat reward at the end of the questline. A unique companion, boots of swiftness, a trinket pet, etc....
I've quit twice for like 3-6 months periods because bots were in PvP and Skirmishes.
Also I turn off almost all chat options due to spammers.
3 great points.
Foundry needs more love.
Giving title/trinket rewards to completionists is a great idea.
Bots are hella annoying.
NW-DSQ39N5SJ - 'To Infinity, and BEYOND!' - Spelljammer Quest. Skyships, Indiana Jones moments NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
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charonofssiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 18Arc User
edited April 2015
Here are a couple things I think would help Neverwinter.
1. The chat window - Change this so we can have multiple chat windows open. One for guild, one for zone, one of trade, etc.. It is easier to read and your windows does not scroll faster then you can see what is going on. Let us set up the windows with what we want to be displayed in each open chat window.
2. Enough with the story line... One of the most boring parts of this game is the fact that you have to follow a story, complete the same ol quests in the same zones over and over again (depending on how many toons you have). give us 15-20 zones where each zone's level vary so we have different places to level. It truly does get old repeating the same quest for the same gear. EX: Everquest has 50+ zones to level in. 4-5 zones for level 1-6, same for all other levels. You do not get bored as easy as on NW.
3. PVP - This really bites me hard. I want to PVP but when you have people playing that can kill you before you can even try to hit them, I just do not even want to try it. WHY bother dying nonstop. There should be 2 type of PVP so everyone is happy. First type is Nerfed PVP everyone entering the PVP area/QUE will be nerf to equal stats and damage (Yes, have dodge and damage vary a little so you might get lucky and hit someone a little harder or block a little better). This will make the PVP more fun knowing everyone has an equal chance.
Second type is NO HOLDS BAR. Nothing is capped or nerfed. If you want to purchase PVP gear to be the best tweaked PVP this is the area/QUE you will want to go to. IF that means a level 1 enters the area with no gear that tweaked level 70 can own him or 2 tweaked can go at it.
These 2 types of PVP will satisfy everyone who wishes to PVP.
4. Online GM's - This is so helpful in other games that I do not know why it isn't in NW. NW players that know the game could volunteer to be online player GM's. They can help with issues and answer small online related problems. If someone's quest did failed or they are stuck because of a bug; an online gm could help by resetting the quest or fixing the problem. Online GM's can also talk to the players who summited a problem and they can get better detail to forward to the official ARC/PWE GM's. Less work for PWE. You can pay the volunteer GM's with AD's, special GM mount or GM companion. Mounts and Companions could be rewards for helping out X amount of users or even being a GM for X amount of time. Just takes giving the player one extra Toon Slot and making it a GM toon slot. They can receive User summited tickets on all toons (or toggle off if they just wish to play at that time).
I have a long list of ideas that would improve Neverwinter, but I think these are the major ones I have issues with.
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.
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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!!!
Comments
3 great points.
Foundry needs more love.
Giving title/trinket rewards to completionists is a great idea.
Bots are hella annoying.
NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
1. The chat window - Change this so we can have multiple chat windows open. One for guild, one for zone, one of trade, etc.. It is easier to read and your windows does not scroll faster then you can see what is going on. Let us set up the windows with what we want to be displayed in each open chat window.
2. Enough with the story line... One of the most boring parts of this game is the fact that you have to follow a story, complete the same ol quests in the same zones over and over again (depending on how many toons you have). give us 15-20 zones where each zone's level vary so we have different places to level. It truly does get old repeating the same quest for the same gear. EX: Everquest has 50+ zones to level in. 4-5 zones for level 1-6, same for all other levels. You do not get bored as easy as on NW.
3. PVP - This really bites me hard. I want to PVP but when you have people playing that can kill you before you can even try to hit them, I just do not even want to try it. WHY bother dying nonstop. There should be 2 type of PVP so everyone is happy. First type is Nerfed PVP everyone entering the PVP area/QUE will be nerf to equal stats and damage (Yes, have dodge and damage vary a little so you might get lucky and hit someone a little harder or block a little better). This will make the PVP more fun knowing everyone has an equal chance.
Second type is NO HOLDS BAR. Nothing is capped or nerfed. If you want to purchase PVP gear to be the best tweaked PVP this is the area/QUE you will want to go to. IF that means a level 1 enters the area with no gear that tweaked level 70 can own him or 2 tweaked can go at it.
These 2 types of PVP will satisfy everyone who wishes to PVP.
4. Online GM's - This is so helpful in other games that I do not know why it isn't in NW. NW players that know the game could volunteer to be online player GM's. They can help with issues and answer small online related problems. If someone's quest did failed or they are stuck because of a bug; an online gm could help by resetting the quest or fixing the problem. Online GM's can also talk to the players who summited a problem and they can get better detail to forward to the official ARC/PWE GM's. Less work for PWE. You can pay the volunteer GM's with AD's, special GM mount or GM companion. Mounts and Companions could be rewards for helping out X amount of users or even being a GM for X amount of time. Just takes giving the player one extra Toon Slot and making it a GM toon slot. They can receive User summited tickets on all toons (or toggle off if they just wish to play at that time).
I have a long list of ideas that would improve Neverwinter, but I think these are the major ones I have issues with.
Charonofssi
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!!!