- Remove that Level Boosting and downgrading from the game, It's just confusing for many players -
<::::::[]==0 GwF 0==[]::::::> ● Still waiting for the promised Improvement ●
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mzkittyleeMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 3
edited April 2015
A lot of people are looking at you to fix the bugs in items and character classes and I agree that this needs to be addressed. I also agree with others who say that it won’t be enough.
Mod6… what a slap in the face for those of us who put countless hours and real money into this game only to have the proverbial rug yanked out from under our feet.
Set the game back to Mod5 and actually add new content/character classes without removing/destroying the old. If you are at a loss for new content, take a page from the original game and let the users do the work. Fix the foundry. It was a ground breaking innovation in 2002. Let it be a utility for your team as well as for us.
BoE bags? I get it, every company needs money to continue to make more content, but please stop trying to turn this game into another money sucking, nickel-and-diming game like Elsword. Seriously, stop. I played that game for less than a week before uninstalling it, but I played long enough to recognize where Neverwinter was headed. Don’t.
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bensansMember, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 6Arc User
edited April 2015
When I first stated Mod 6, I had decent gear (Icewind Dale Corrupted Black Ice full set with bling, Well of Dragon artifact weapon and offhand, level 8 enchantments/runes on everything, all max-level purple companions with max bling themselves). I went about going through the Elemental storyline, I thought it was a bit more though than expected but enjoyable, I died a bit but never overwhelmed, simply that I need to play more tactically than usual and tailgate other players now & then. All in all a success as far as I was concerned.
Just for fun, halfway into it (level 65), I went back to IwD to harvest Black Ice for the new Elemental Black Ice set and hopefully to pop a new set of gloves (wish I had done that the last few months). Got insta-killed by 2 wolves before I even saw what was happening. I griped in the chat box and was recommended to get better gear (really? really?) and come back at level 70 (ok, I can understand that). Went to WoD and bought the Eternal full set (thankfully I had grinded through that campaign enough that I could afford it and soon noticed I preferred the look of it too) which my understanding is the best I could do outside of PvP (which I loathe and I have no talent for) and Epic Dungeons (I do not have time and opportunity to team up). Also, upgraded my Black Dragon Ioun Stone to level 40 for good measure. Grinded through the Elemental campaign a bit longer to reach level 70.
Went back to IwD with my new equipment and proud level 70 and got insta-killed by 2 yetis. For context I used to be able to solo everything but the biggest HE and soloed through all the other campaigns with decent challenge but never being insta-trashed. As my equipment got better, things went from tense to average difficulty (IwD more specifically which always was a bit challenging without being deadly).
A though fight is fun, trailing other players to team up on big HE encourages light socialization & collaboration without creating obligations (I make a point of risking my own skin to revive other payers that are downed).
Insta-kill by 2 minions is just plain insulting, considering I'm max level and with decent gear (not ultra-optimal, but quite decent).
To repeat, insulting.
It is not a measure of my talent (medium) or even my gear (thankfully I can afford decent stuff).
Why should I be locked out of 4 great zones and most dungeons? Don't I pay for full content? (I do buy Zen, but even if I didn't, the question remains)
I have played the game almost since it came out, I have put good money into it (many hundreds, bought most expensions, then some playing money for cool stuff) and was planning to put some more to speed me through acquiring "unified elements" to get new/better black ice gear through professions and was eyeing some new mount (the crab is adorable). I will not do so, I will not give money to a game that insults me on purpose. I'll do something else for a few weeks and try again. If I am still insulted, I will delete my account.
Thanks for listening to my personal rant
P.S. The elemental zones I found interesting, challenging and fun though the loot drop is a bit disappointing and I am not sure why I am doing it (except to get to level 70), there seems to be no overarching goal. I like to 10 new levels and the new profession levels.
Barkshield is currently absolutely useless, it doesn't help against Mobs or Players.
In PvP every player is doing over ~20k+ Dmg normal Hits,
A single DoT do more Dmg than Barkshield can absorb,
That 3k-Absorbs it's simply not enough just for 1-hit down and to 2k absorb,
The armor absorbs doesn't match the level 70 content against enemy mobs or Players
" Whenever someone attempts to deal damage to you one charge of Bolstered Bark is consumed"
This need to be Changed!, a single At-will destroy barkshields Bolstered Bark.
One Single "Boon" Can absorb 10,000k DMG,
How is it possible that this is better than Transcendent Barkshield Enchantment, it's simply absurd.
This would Barkshield help to make it usable again:
- At-Will Powers should NOT be able to consume a Charge of Bolstered Bark!
- Higher "Armor absorbs" is needed.
For the fourth Bolstered Bark:
Transcendent - 10k absorb
Pure - 9k Absorb
Perfect - 8k Absorb
<::::::[]==0 GwF 0==[]::::::> ● Still waiting for the promised Improvement ●
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
edited April 2015
I'll start playing again when the dragon horde resets. What's up with that??
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
edited April 2015
Does everything since Mod6 have to be a PIA. This is my leisure time, and I'm about to walk. I've been patient, and I've tried levelling up and buying new gear. I've got other things to do....
Mage doesn't use sword or staff (unfortunately). Instead they run with silly orb floating around, like training remote and Luke Skywalker.
Clerics also don't use hammer or mace, they raise their symbol and pray, like some vampire hunter.
I don't really post that often, I know. I'm simply some random user who no one really knows, and I'm not one of those people with some overly popular opinion (to the forums) about 'regressing everything back to mod 5 standards except make this a proper campaign with boons n other stuff and let us play with our power fantasy'. No. I'm not going to be that guy. Because that's pretty boring. I'm mostly going to put in my thoughts here on some of the things that I found... odd or confusing, I suppose.
1: Potions.
Okay. I understand where the 10,000 HP heal comes from. That would be the next logical step in your potion curve, so good on you for keeping that... but the problem is the HP curve we have. I'm actually fine with the HP curve, too, it's just that the potions do not keep up with the HP curve. Now, I wish I had some magic number that'd keep it from being OP for lower HP'd people, and still useful for higher HP people, but I don't. I'm not that smart, or that good at game design, and I admit that. But 10,000 still seems a bit low to me.
2: Vigilance Quests.
When I first got onto the preview shard, I loved these things. I really did. I still like the idea of them, even! Keep them in, seriously. However, there is a bit of balancing problems with it that makes them unfun to go through with. I understand why each area has 16. To play all of the missions AND to make sure that you get the most experience, not to mention to hold people back from shooting to 70 in 5 hours of game time, but with how long it goes, it's... well... kind of disheartening. It puts up an illusion of a horrible grind, even when it'd honestly not be too bad otherwise.
But Zeta, why would you like these if they're unfun and unbalanced? Because on the preview shard, the amounts were different, and the EXP you got was different, too. They played around with the number, but honestly, I thought it was fine at 'Take 5 missions, you need 10 to move on to the next area'. You could probably play around with the numbers a bit, but if we're expected to take only 4 missions, then perhaps only two or three rotations instead of four. If only because we have three of those mini-areas to go through, and it might give a nice surprise to our next character if we get different vigilance quests, since we're not expected to go through them all to get to the next area. Of course, you have to balance the EXP around these, too, but honestly, I still think making an overall less amount of required quests can salvage these vigilance quests at least a little bit.
Oh, and maybe some of the hunt things down quests need to be tuned down some. Galeb Dhur are not the most common thing in the Rock to be hunting 40 of.
3: Drowned Shores.
This area is the first area that you worked on and it shows. It's probably the worst of the four, and no, I'm not going to be one of those people who are like "Oh. It's just Blackdagger Ruins flipped around." No. I actually like the fact that you're reusing zones. Because we get to see what it's like AFTER we saved it the first time. For me, at least, it actually makes a sense of progression throughout time. But I digress.
The mines areas is the worst part. I can handle it, personally, but a good chunk of my friends have been turned off by these areas. I'm not sure how to change them, though, is the thing. I'm just giving general feedback that I remember my friends and I coming up with. But the mines areas. From the lack of being able to mount up, to people having already cut through them. The latter is impossible to fix, unless respawn rates would be insane, and that's dumb for a different reason. They're just slow and boring, I suppose. Especially with how many quests end up overlapping in them. Overall, after the mines area, the zone gets a lot better. Not the best of the four, but better.
4: Heroic Encounters.
Now. Most heroic encounters are small, I know this. This isn't really talking about the small ones. This is more talking about the large ones, and in a way, some medium ones, (Emberclaw for example). The thing is, despite these being pretty decent heroic encounters, there isn't really much for completing them. There are the elemental boxes, but are they really enough? I'll admit that I didn't do them much, but there's not much point for trying out something like the Battle for Mistral Point if there's nothing you can get from them. No one really does many of these heroic encounters from my observation. Maybe I'm wrong and I'm always in that one instance where no one tries, but... well... I never see it.
I'm not sure what you could give, but you might want to give something worthwhile from it. The elemental containers are nice, but I guess just not enough for a lot of people.
5: Progression through the other Lv. 60+ areas.
Now. This is such a minor point, but I'm mostly going through these as I think of them. I liked one thing in Drowned Shores a lot, and that's the fact that you didn't get to fight the boss of that area until after the vigilance quests of that specific area was defeated. It was a little bit better in terms of immersion, I suppose. And while we went into their lairs before we fought the bosses in most cases, we didn't fight them themselves. A lot of people probably wouldn't like this way of doing things, but it's not like I've agreed with a lot of things people mentioned on here, and this really is such a minor point.
6: Lag.
The lag in some of these new areas is horrendous. Fix it. There's not much more I can say. But I do have one thing to ask: Why is Spinward Rise's cap 30? Why not 20 like the other areas? I can kind of understand the thinking for, like, the main heroic encounter, but it does still not help out with the lag in the area.
7: Spinward Rise.
Speaking of Spinward Rise, there are a couple of comments I have about this area in general. The area is beautiful. By far the most beautiful thing in Neverwinter. My god you guys outdid yourselves with this area. And my criticisms aren't really all that big. Really, just three things. A bug, and two criticisms.
Let's start with the bug. The Elemental Air Devices just drop randomly even if you don't have the quest. This has probably been reported, but whatever. I might as well bring it up here, too. The criticisms are... actually these might be bugs, too. But generally getting messages off of cultists in Thunderhead Reach is a painful process. As are the Slaadi control gems. They don't really drop that often. Oh, and as I'm typing this, I recall another bug. There's a quest where you have to kill 40 Slaadi. To get this done in any reasonable time, you have to drag them into the pools of Chaos to be able to get them.
And for the second criticism. And I'm not expecting anything to be done about this because this is some amount of effort that could be used fixing other things, but... the lairs in this area. The other areas reuse lairs, yes, but they are repeat areas, and as such, can get away with it. This place kind of blatantly steals from other areas: Air cult Barracks being the Orc Barracks, the Slaadi instance being the final Chasm instance, and most blatantly, Nimbus Tower being Celadaine's Tower. I'd almost like to see people come up with alternate instances for these to make them feel more unique to Spinward Rise, but that's just a dream of mine.
8: Dungeons and Skirmishes. Not Difficulty-Related. That's Point 9.
Honestly, I really shouldn't bring this up at this point since it really doesn't matter. But it's kind of disappointing how we couldn't go into the towers themselves, considering that they're the fortresses of these cultists. They would be a decent amount of dungeons to be able to go into between 61 and 70.
For example:
Dread Vault (Only here for a comparison): 60-70
Tower of Delights: 63-70
Reclamation Rock: 65-70
Whatever the dungeon in Firey Pit would be named: 67-70
Stratos Tower: 70
Maybe have these drop some gear better than the gear you might get from just questing through or something to make it worth going through. HOWEVER, I do understand this would be a lot of work, and wouldn't be surprised if you decided against this, especially in light of the many fixes you have to do for the game as it is now, as well as the other dungeons that are being reworked.
Really, this one is more of a selfish point that I'm not expecting anything to be done with. But hell, I might as well get all of my ideas out. Even if it turns out it was impossible to enter these towers because something that would keep you out or something. I'll admit, I didn't pay the most attention to the lore surrounding the towers.
9: Dungeon Difficulty.
I'm going to tackle this in a different way, though sheer damage numbers is also a problem. But first, I must ask this question:
Why are the module dungeons the Tier 1s? No seriously. I'm curious. Why is something like Lostmauth and his 3-4 things going on at once the introduction to dungeons? Now, I could be wrong and the Tier 2 bosses could be worse in terms of 'stuff going on', but still. It seems a bit harsh to just throw people into Valindra and Lostmauth in the beginning of their Epic Dungeoning careers. Unless you're going to introduce Epic Valindra's Tower as a Tier 3 dungeon or something, this seems a bit awkward to me.
Base game to Module 5 had a pretty good way to introduce people to Epic Dungeons: Cloak Tower. Really, that and Cragmire Crypts. They weren't too hard and they were a nice introduction to being able to start on gear. Again, I'm not saying all dungeons have to be as easy as Cloak Tower. That's just stupid. But I feel an introductory dungeon to Epic Levels might not be a bad idea.
10: Level Scaling and Modules 1-5 Campaigns.
It doesn't seem to scale right, and this is what's causing a lot of problems for campaigns. If you're anything but 70, then you're screwed when it comes to the campaigns. And even then it can be a bit rough. I know you wanted this to be an alternate leveling path, as well as content you can still do at 70 still. But I'm unsure if that could be possible. It probably is, but you'd need to work on the level scaling method.
Otherwise, if you wish the campaigns to be alternate leveling paths and can't do that, then I guess you'd just have to make them kind of into other adventure zones, albeit different, I suppose, with a possible change to Whispering Caverns. If only because you just can't do it very well solo at Lv. 60.
However. This would simply remove ALL Lv. 70 content outside of Well of Dragons, and it would be awkward with the campaign format of the areas. Not to mention how the quests would take forever to do due to them being dailies. So this in itself probably wouldn't work either. Honestly, just work on the level scaling, really.
11. Rank 4 abilities.
Seriously. A bunch of these are bugged. Please fix them. Pleeeease. I'm not entirely sure which ones are, but I'm certain people have logged them.
In conclusion, I don't really know how to design a game, so a lot of what I mentioned likely isn't very helpful. I'm just a single voice in a sea of voices, so I'll be drowned out. I accept this fact. I'm hardly expecting many of my points to be answered, but I am just going to say this. These are some of what I think might help. I accept that I'm not very good at this, but if I didn't put this out there, then I'd have no real say in trying to help out. Even a little bit.
I like Neverwinter a lot. It's a nice MMO. I've spent likely thousands of hours on this game, even if most of them aren't logged on my Arc profile. I've only been here since a week or so after the game was formally launched. And you know what? I'm going to go so far as to say I love the idea of Mod 6.
A reset from the power creep that infested Mod 5 and made it unfun (for me) to play. To make a new base for the game to progress, to temporarily hit us and better allow our growth in the future. I love this idea, it's what I think the game desparately needed. But there are a lot of problems in Module 6, too. Even what I mentioned probably isn't really all of them. Just the ones I noticed.
But I'm also just a single player. And that is just my experience and feelings. If you actually read this list, even with all of the other lists out there, then thank you. My time wasn't entirely wasted in writing this.
I don't really post that often, I know. I'm simply some random user who no one really knows, and I'm not one of those people with some overly popular opinion (to the forums) about 'regressing everything back to mod 5 standards except make this a proper campaign with boons n other stuff and let us play with our power fantasy'. No. I'm not going to be that guy. Because that's pretty boring. I'm mostly going to put in my thoughts here on some of the things that I found... odd or confusing, I suppose.
. . .
I don't usually read a wall-o-text post but you have some very valid points. I hope the devs see this and address at least some of the issues, especially lag.
Nicely done.
I aim to misbehave
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kaiserschmarrnMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 390
edited April 2015
Best way for the new lead designer to experience the current problems would be to start a new game, roll a class (not a CW though) and play through the game from 1-70 with 5k Zen as starting aid.
And at 70 start gearing into T1 and then T2 using only the automatic group finder.
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vampirecavyMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 55Arc User
edited April 2015
Most of the problems people have seem to boil down to two catagories: difficulty and bugs. The former, I don't really have a fair standpoint to comment on for the most part and while I got things I could say about it, I'm not going to waste anyone's time with my possibly unsubstantiated/unreasonable half-assed ideas on them.
Bugs, however, are a big thing.
What I think a lot of people are waiting to see is how the devs decide to tackle the numerous bugs present in the game - the bugs that got changed in the patch being two (admittedly ridiculously so) 'buffing' bugs, while all the ones that actively weaken us being ignored, has me personally a bit miffed. As a rogue player, the current unreliability of Shadow of Demise has me quite annoyed - it certainly does NOT do what it says in the tooltip. I'm honestly not sure what causes it to activate at this point. I'm quite certain that there are other issues along the lines of this problem, but I don't know what they are. On top of that, it's quite known that a lot of rank 4 powers are simply nonfunctional -at best-. In addition, the Hastening Light bug that got patched shows that there may be some lingering issues with artifact offhand feature boosts.
Here's the three major things that need to be done:
-Go through all the feats - yes, ALL of them - and make sure they work as they're supposed to. Most importantly, make sure they do what the tooltip says they do. If you want them to do something other than what the tooltip says, then change the tooltip to what you want it to do. Obviously after doing this there may be some bugged interactions between some feats, but getting them all to work individually has to come before anything else.
-Go through the rank 4 powers, and make sure all of those work as intended. It's pretty clear just from looking at Rogue's Courage Breaker that not every power even had much attention paid to it - going by the tooltip, rank 4 courage breaker causes an affected target to deal 120% less damage... which doesn't make any sense. HR 'aspect' abilities actually subtract a level at rank 4, making them effectively rank 2s. GWF's Weapon Master becomes unable to gain stacks at all at rank 4. The consistant issue seems to be that a lot of these powers just weren't looked at to make sure they work, and they need to be gone over. And again, yes, all of them.
-After doing the second one, the artifact offhand abilities need to be tested. Everybody knows about the Hastening Light interaction, but did you know that Invisible Infiltrator's offhand power doesn't function at all? Once the rank 4 powers are working, these need to be gone over as well. Once again, I do mean all of them.
I have a few minor graphical complaints as well (mostly relating to shields), but honestly, those issues take a complete backseat to the gameplay bugs. Please fix them, or at least acknowledge that they're known and you're working on them. We can't reasonably expect you to deal with all of them in just a couple of patches, but the major ones people have been mentioning don't seem like they'd be that difficult to fix. Please, I desperately want this game to succeed, but as it is right now, it's so badly bugged that I can't blame people for just not playing anymore.
After asking my guild (La Hermandad Inmortal), here you have some insights:
1. Our percepcion is that new classes (now paladin, before HR, etc.) are always better at the beginning, and they get slowly nerfed. It looks a way to have people to spend money in new powerful toons and then change.
2. There is no way to farm dungeons, money or Ads. Not even paying money makes a diference.
3. Space in bad is running sort, we need more bags space or more bags slots. There are so many enchantments, potions, quest objects, etc
4. PvP sis really boring. We need new maps with new challenges
5. It would be nice to tie armor sets to a single key, so you can change fast. Maybe it can have a cool down
6. New potions are nice but it would be nice to get them more powerful. As the enemies are now we are clearly undegeared
7. It would be nice to have an armor what have sskills as the main hand and off hand set has.
8. GF shield should cover 180º as they do in Icewind
9. Get a clear difference between the Devoted Cleric (DC), The Oathbound Paladin (OP) and the Guardian Fighter (GF), because the new OP can make the work of the GF and the DC too, leaving them aside in terms of tanking and healing...
- The Overload Enchantments should be stacked in 99 like normal Enchantments
- New level 70 armor sets should give a set bonus like the old level 60 ones did
- Fix the crappy way that pvp matches are done and find a new way to balance it.
10. I consider myself as a pvp player, is the thing i like to play, and as a pvp player i fell very mistreated.
Ill try to point which problems pvp has, not talking about balance or bugs ( there are some issues with this) but problems surrounding pvp.
1º Only 1 pvp kind. All pvp is based on getting bases standing on them... there are plenty known kinds of pvp please consider implementing few more.
2º Pvp players forced to wear pve gear. We cant get full gear playing pvp, in fact we just can get 4/12 gear slots filled, last module we were able to wear 12/12 pvp gear but some of them where not BiS (for pvp), why are we going backwards? i just cant understand this.
3º Imposible to earn enough AD through PvP. Pve players can go to dungeon, skirmirmish or whatever, if they are lucky enough they can get some gear to sell and earn AD for their own character, pvp players just cant get any AD from any source. Gear is always bound, and drops after a match are just ridicoulus. Why is gear bound? do you consider farming 19k glory is easy or a thing you can do in just 1 afternoon?
4º PvP campaing items not updated to level 70. Why adding pvp shirt/pants/rings etc if we are not going to use them? why arent them updated? this feels like devs just dont care about pvp.
You need to focus also in pvp, most of your competitors have a strong pvp (and a big pvp community), there are entire games based on pvp! neverwinter has great combat mechanics but pvp overall is terrible. I would love to play just pvp and get full experience from the game.
11. Foundry are abandoned. It was a promising feature, but nowadays are useless. Only used for exploiting.
12. Some kind of in-game game would be nice in order to bet diamonds.
13. Shadow demise seems bug. It only affects one player/monster
14. It is impossible to collect all the refine points that are required to progress. Even paying money for zen it is over hundreds and thousands of euros.
15. Having combos would be nice for combat. Not just hit the keys in order. Real combos.
You can, without doing any of the new quests, get both the offhand and mainhand at 70. Even before you are 70. The MH ToD campaign task and the Linu vendor. Technically a new player could buy it all. Dragon coffers for linu and mats for the task. (youd still have to have campaign done up to that point though which I a new player wouldnt have)
Out of curiosity - how would a new player get the Linus needed for this?
Certainly not by beating Tiamat, which is currently near-impossible.
I agree with Dorondor, and a $16 bag, that is going to give you 1 or 2 (6 to 12) more slots is not the answer. I've already paid you for space. I've maxed out both personal and shared bank slots, and have already bought the best bags available at the time. This is my part of my point. So why would I pay $16 for six slots. It might be worth it, if you increase our bag limit, so that I was purchasing a full 36 slots, however even then it would be expensive.
I guess now I'm penalized for buying smaller bags. Since to increase now, I have the cost of the smaller bag that I've already bought and paid for, and the cost of the new bag, which is not going to give me that much additional space. At the very least you need to give some kind of credit on old purchased bags, when buying new bags. Maybe you could at least increase the bag limit by one or two, and increase the 5 row bag that everybody earns to six.
Is +147 Power of the Deathsong Ring (Level 36 blue) really less powerful than +127 Piercing Ring (Level 37 green)?
In any case the Seal Vendor equipment while leveling needs some work at least for the Paladin. I think one Seal of the Lion item was useful and it lasted maybe one level past when I could use it. The Seal of the Manticore looks a little better, but I have a Cruel Mace of Restoration (Level 38) which is quite a bit better than the Longsword of Doom (Level 38).
I think the prices or ease of getting seals and the quality of the seal vendor equipment needs to be adjusted a little. Seal equipment seems like the kind of thing a player should work for and keep for several levels before being obsoleted by greens of the appropriate level. Double XP weeks are not really my thing because I actually enjoy the content created for leveling and like to have the various blue items I have acquired via daily dungeon keys, boss drops, or seals feel like good equipment that I worked for and holds up for several levels.
No rebalancing effort, no effort to make it easier for folks to dungeon delve together, what-so-ever, is worth the loss of over half of the game's dungeon content. (And no, contrary to rumors, the dungeons do not come back at level 70).
Removing the dungeons entrances from the world also breaks quest flow (never mind the frustration of following quests to dead ends - think you fixed that, but it just confirmed our fears that the dungeons were gone forever, and you still can't manually enter on those few dungeons that do still exist, even with a proper party).
The requirement of 3 players, would be a boon, if not for the fact you don't have the option of bringing in the standard party of 5. Three players should be what you get with a standard cue, but if your party has 5 players, for the love of Helm, let them all go in! Otherwise you're just discouraging social play, which becomes a real issue later, largely due to the next problem.
The Difficulty Curve be Broken
When solo'ing...
1-60 is pretty much cruise control now. (Indeed, having a party will cause you to fall asleep.)
61-69 is the grind from hell.
70 is slit-your-wrists impossible.
With my all-blue+ gear 70 Paladin, I *might* be able to get through the Ashen Battlefield and reach Dread Ring in an hour, but I generally give up about halfway through. Suppose I'll have to wait for the day when I have enough level 70's together to do a party and raid the place, but that's going to be awhile. (And it'd just have to be among the buddies I have now, as there's no place for 70's to constructively solo - thus I'm not going to be meeting more people.)
There's nothing more frustrating than having to hit a non-dungeon adjusted minion, several dozen times, to kill them. It kills combat flow entirely and ends all excitement - making every combat a chore.
Combat should be swift and exciting, and over fairly quickly, unless there's a boss around, or one is otherwise dealing with an epic event designed for a swarm of players.
Having open general areas require multiple players, just to be completed in a reasonable timeframe, when you have no solo areas, is just a horribly bad idea. You cannot force social interaction, especially while providing no constructive mingling areas. Folks shouldn't be forced to gather in teams simply to able to play. The traditional structure is: You have your solo'able open world area, where people may gather up, and you have some nasty generated areas, that require you to do so. The way you balanced out the level 70 campaign world areas, you've basically destroyed the award winning formula you kept throughout the rest of the game, and expect people to suddenly adapt, with no real incentive to do so, given the meager rewards, and how often these areas have to be repeated to get anything at all.
I've kinda dropped this game since I hit 70, save once a week, realizing there's nothing I can do to improve myself in preparation for when I have a party available. Basically, there's no playing save for when your buddies are around on a pre-scheduled basis. Something that, without that solo area access, never would have happened to begin with, so people who are new to this game are pretty much boned.
Companions: The one real problem
While boosting pets was nice and all, you didn't address the real problem, and in epic dungeons, I still see people being kicked because you failed to do so: Out of combat, pets draw agro. This gets people into battles they do not wish to be dragged into, and said battles are enormously time consuming now.
Basically, for all the new nastiness that companions are, we're still in a world that if you don't use an Ioun stone (or worse, are a Damnation Warlock), you stand a good chance of being booted from an epic dungeon party - and justifiably so, as every battle is now a major resource drain, both in time and health stones (since healing potions don't do anything), and an unexpected encounter risks a full party kill.
Leaving the companions as the weaklings they were, and fixing this one issue, would have been preferable to boosting them like this and leaving it, as the team decided to do. They would have still been all but worthless, but they would have finally stopped being an outright BANE.
Companions need not to draw agro, nor attack, until the player enters combat, period. End of so many problems... And *maybe* then people will like to have Companions in their epic dungeons, and they will no longer be vote-kick bait... and then, of course, people might actually then want to BUY companions.
I haven't made it through all the posts to concur with anyone else, so I'll post my own views from a multi-main player. I am still playing, so don't assume i'm just a QQer, but I do have serious concerns, hopefully you'll listen and believe that silent majority is just resolved to take the unsatisfying and ultimately destructive nature of the game:
you've destroyed multi character players. I used to play a main, and have alts that were able to be switched to better balance a group composition. the only way to level currently is to solo zerg your way towards 70 in old zones (i fear that telling you that normal Whispering Caverns and previous "story" content is much better to level through, even after you are past L60. your thought that "repeatable quests should not have as much XP as the one-time quests" doesn't make any sense: Sharandar, DR, IWD, WoD all have quests that can only be done once a day - they offer the same XP as 1 vigilance set of 4 offers, which is still 1/4 the value of the whispering caverns quests *per quest*! i don't understand how you advance through the 50s, then hit a literal wall of XP (it's 1.5 times the XP from 60-70 as it was from 1-60, but you're doing a minimum of 16x12 vigilance tasks to get 1/2 way to 70. this is all with 2X XP, too! it's even worse when you haven't doubled the XP. i don't have a problem with the amount of XP, but the rewards for super repetitive content is too repetitive for the value of the quests.
the loss of weapon/armor enchantments until you get all the way to L70 due to such a drastic change in the gear requiring a character that has become BiS over a year of grinding the same content having to update gear from epic to rare almost instantly upon passing L60.
Perfect World’s profits fell for 3Q, due in part to the performance of its operations in the US. In the latest financial report, during the three-month period ended Sep 30 2014, Perfect World reported ¥60.7 billion ($9.9 million) in net income for the quarter, 50% of the ¥120.9 million it earned in the same period last year.
lets stop this from happening - your players are leaving because you feel you need to "make up" for financial mistakes, but your view of it is to increase profits, not increase playerbase - it's the wrong thought to have.
It was mentioned that the sluggish North American result is due to the falling number of players.
A very important aspect of this is your choice to begin further binding items that have no reason to be bound to character - I believe a majority of your player base would have been fine with bags binding to account - not allowing them to be sold once equipped - alts would still need new bags, but to straight up force players to begin buying bags because you've now added more inventory spam (how many refinement items do we *really* need here?! there's now 40+ items that get picked up that are not gear - you can only really use one potion, but you cannot filter out all the gear you *don't* want. please look at all other F2P games - there is seldom, if ever, the amount of "per character" purchases that you have. bind to account is how many of your items need to be - i will concede that you can probably get away with companions as bind to character (you have to make money locking some things, i get that, but inventory space? weapons? artifacts?) as they are very particularly for a certain character. the feeling that you don't want me to play more than 1 character is apparent - but I have a choice to make: abandon those characters (losing all the effort I have put into them, making me want to give on the game entirely), or play more than one character, but never get any of them to a point where they can do content, at least with the current way it's going, i'll not be able to set foot in a dungeon for 6 months. that's a ridiculous amount of time to spend above 60 but working on getting to a point where i'm not destroyed for average gameplay - i don't have the money to pour into the game (not that I haven't already spent close to $1000 on the game over the last 1.5 years) but something has to change - and your "message" about EE isn't exactly offering any reassurances further than "we know it's bad, but we'll fix it" but offer very little to actually show you know what the problem is, nor what your ideas for a solution are (like when you said M6 was going to be revolutionary...for WHO?)
I propose you alter your way of locking things down - you've made sigils non-refinement, so basically if you put any refinement in them, you're wasting it. if you have multiple characters, it's not worth it to add anything to them, just leave them naked and use them to farm AD - it's not enjoyable - no one *wants* to make alt armies, but we're doing this because everything binds, making everything in the game inflated.
you could make an AD sink to turn items that are bind to character bound to account (still cannot profit off of it/sell it/gift it/etc) so that you can at least combine the efforts of your crew to characters - you could add an AD sink by allowing skins to be removed from items. skinning an epic means you pay 50 AD to re-skin a new item (that's fine) but YOU LOSE THE ITEM to be use for salvage, backup, etc. i have a number of artifacts I have played plenty to earn them legitimately, but i either lose all the refinement of a currently equipped sigil if I remove it from my bar - after a certain point in a sigil's refinement, the "non-refinement" tag should be removed, the "bound to character" should be removed, or the RP into a sigil should be like a 10X multiplier. the point is, acquiring artifacts is appropriately possible, but the cost of refinement is outrageous to say you cannot use that refinement elsewhere - if everything is bound to character, and you lose refinement value in the process, then why are you locking so much down?
I don't have a problem with the content being harder, but the level at which it is done is pretty unforgiving - if it takes longer to kill, fine, if they hit harder, fine, but a 2.1k SW is at least 1/2 as viable as a 900 OP, seriously, the glass cannon classes are no longer viable (this is a issue more of the SW being eliminated from any possibility to play in endgame- i have mine at 70, but i cannot imagine anyone being remotely receptive of allowing me to join a dungeon - i'm a liability to others right now.)
the issue, as mentioned on at least one of the first responses here, is the abysmal stat distribution of gear - yes, it's simplified, where all gear has very similar names and standard stats - but adding more life to gear and no proportional increase in the other stats has made high HP, low mitigation options for most all classes.
So... his first act is to nerf the XP from the ToD dailies?
Really?
ofcourse hes a dev. 1 fix the respec token bug give those that used it and were unable to place r4 powers after usign it a fresh one(every char i used token on experienced issue none that i didnt use it on did)
2 reduce the horific grind of the new zones 1/2 the number of vigilances double there exp, remove there timers its realy crapy to not only have to grind the same flavourless missions over and over but also have to wait for the pleasure if you grind to fast
3 fix the broken CW sheild negation +30% tenacity gear +25% sheild on tab 80-25% mitigation leads to CW having perma 80%+ unmitigatable mitigation in pvp totaly breaks pvp havign a bunch of invincible wizards (chaotic growth ren spec) slapign each other and never going below 90% life
4 remove items like tymoras enchants and others that have 0 effect on combat from effecting gear rating score
5 put blue item drops back in to open world criters items not just enchants
6 put the minstral fight on a seperate shard so it dosnt lag the entire 20-50 instances of spinward out everytime a group atempts it, making it take aslong as timer or fixing timer would be nice(it currently ends at 5 min remaining mark)
7 fix negation enchant it curently offers a gwf more mitigation then all there armour combined and as mentioned above on a CW or a DC for that mater it can create a almost unbreakable tank, pvp used to be fast paced now its like watching paint dry if its a geared fight or if one person dosnt have negation they moeswell just go home.
8 put gear drops in chests rather then just marks all your encouraging is the single most exploitable dungeon get run repeatedly and no other content played
9 dont respond by making game grindyer because ppl complained the new areas are 2 grindy and go to older more flavoured content. i realy like the new maps i hate the missions and the lag from having a large open world encounter being tryed basicly 24/7 on some shard of map is just horible at least in well of dragons it was on a timer and you could have low lag times to get stuff done in.
10 if this game is realy meant to be free to play and casual friendly dont put in gear that requires 10s of millions of AD worth of refinement to upgrade one character. if you joined today and wanted to pvp your looking at close to $1000 us to be similarly geared to legacy pvpers and for pve still like $500 to get enchants and artys to close to max rank, if you buy when its cheap and wait for double refine and discounts on coal wards.
11 give people who didnt get to use the mod 6 code before you disabled it acess to the items, 1000s of bot acounts got to aquire those items over and over and most of the real players ive talked to didnt see the email till youd disabled code cataday 2.0
love the combat system but this steady trend to korean style missions and gear aquisition is not casual or free to play friendly in the least. put yourself in the 1 hr a day gamers shoes they log in they do 8 vigilance misisons next day they log in do the same 8 vigilance missions, next day they log in and do the same 8 vigilance missions, all the while it has no decernable effect on the environment, the next day they get to do 8 very similar vigilance missions in s slightly differnt area of the map.... how many days are they going to find that interesting for?
ps i have no issue with the dificulty rating all the pugs ive made that didnt get laged out finished Elol kessels ect and only one of my chars took off there old gear so i did that with 30k hps and almost no mitigation on 2 of them my cw has sheild on tab so she tanks like a beast but tr and gwf have pretty much no mitigation. its the mind numbing grind thats dificult and lag, without lag the fights are fun chalenging but quite easly defeatable with 2kgr. and for the record ive stoped even bothering to refine gear i dont buy coal wards or zen to buy AD to buy refinement items off AH, i dont have $1000 dollars to spend on each of my 15 chars and i dont feel like picking a main, i did have a main but the new gear puts all chars at same level, what i have refined i swap from char to char that can be swaped. if you want me to invest more money you need to make it look less like a bottomless pit that im tossing it into.
i used to buy ever pack founders fey ect to support the game because i love the combat system and i tend to play mostly cryptic games ever since city of heroes. im just lucky i made soem greaters(weapon enchants) in first few months still the only greaters i have and i would of easly invested $1000 dollars over the years few 100$ in champions $1000 or more into startrek
I know perfect worlds profit margins have halved since 2013 but making the most profitable f2p game into a korean grind pay to win game is not the answer D&D fans require more mental stimulation then that, most have familys and not unlimited time also
anyways thats my 2 cents i may be wrong its posible everyone was just waiting for more mindless grind but i think at least some were looking for some new content or at least not having all the stuff they had grinded rendered useless due to rebalancing stat curve.
ps having to wait for the pleasure to grind is also anoying whenever i do spinward i have to go spend 1/2 a hr at a camp fire after i finish the first cycle of vigilances. please please make them 8 of 8 and double the exp people would still do most of the asociated "content" they would just feel it was a little less mind numbing and repeditive.;)
you only have to do spinward rise to get the arty mainhand, i dont bother with any of the other zones anymore i did them all atleast once on one char or enuther once was enuff was 2 repeditive reminded me of silk road. with double exp it will take you from 66-70
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
edited April 2015
Does anybody know why they closed the Tiamat treasure in Mod v6. Claimes it's 100 per cent full until next reset. Never seen that before....
I have played plenty of MMOs in my time. What has always killed me was the grind to level, the grind to achieve gear, PvP trolls (in those that were open world PvP), and the live to play dedication some games required. The leveling grind here is nothing compared to one that had 1-100 - Veteran status - 1-100 again - and finally Expert status (probably had plans for another 1-100 and then Master status). That doesn't make it a non-issue, just a bit of perspective needed.
The problem with grind is the constant repeat of the same old thing, over and over again. Boredom kills it. In this game, though, it really isn't that much of an issue. It is adaptable. The issue with the 60-70 leveling, if you don't have sub-60 areas left to complete (Hotenow to Whispering Caverns will only get you to around 66 if you do all quests and fight all mobs between you and the objectives), is that the new area Vigilance quests can only be taken 4 at a time, repetitively over-and-over again in the same areas. It is such a boring activity that I switched to alts this weekend and completed the old story line quests from Hotenow to Whispering Caverns on two characters back to back. Without getting bored. The new leveling areas need to take on a quest system similar to the old 1-60 leveling areas.
The difficulty should not be an issue, really it should be a welcome thing. The problem I seem to see in reading others' comments is that the scale is way too high. Low-end minions (trash mobs) should not be hitting as hard as they do, it feels like some of my characters are now the same as the scripted to die civilian NPCs you see across your leveling experience. I thought we were supposed to be the favored heroes of a fantasy game, not extras in a horror movie. Really though, all this talk of needing the new gear with all its added HP to level out that damage so build and strategy is now more viable is actually wrong. It should not need all this HP from items to survive.
Tymora's Lucky Coin broken too. If there is an AP bugged DC, the affects of the coin get cancelled. The timer on the coin simply resets in a few seconds and the bonus to any stat is instantly zero.
Please scale the difficulty back, PUG runs are a nightmare, i keep getting head aches. Most people can't do even VT. I was there about 20+ times yesterday, had no luck with PUG team mates. Most died on the spawn point or couldn't advance from the first campfire. Not that hard, but as it seems hard enough for 90+% of the people and this shouldn't be so, since other more skilled players have to rely on team too.
IWD still useless, 1 shot trash Mobs, as a solo player you can't gather the required Black Ice to forge the PVE gear. Solo game is nearly dead, holding each other hand doesn't work.
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
Comments
Mod6… what a slap in the face for those of us who put countless hours and real money into this game only to have the proverbial rug yanked out from under our feet.
Set the game back to Mod5 and actually add new content/character classes without removing/destroying the old. If you are at a loss for new content, take a page from the original game and let the users do the work. Fix the foundry. It was a ground breaking innovation in 2002. Let it be a utility for your team as well as for us.
BoE bags? I get it, every company needs money to continue to make more content, but please stop trying to turn this game into another money sucking, nickel-and-diming game like Elsword. Seriously, stop. I played that game for less than a week before uninstalling it, but I played long enough to recognize where Neverwinter was headed. Don’t.
Just for fun, halfway into it (level 65), I went back to IwD to harvest Black Ice for the new Elemental Black Ice set and hopefully to pop a new set of gloves (wish I had done that the last few months). Got insta-killed by 2 wolves before I even saw what was happening. I griped in the chat box and was recommended to get better gear (really? really?) and come back at level 70 (ok, I can understand that). Went to WoD and bought the Eternal full set (thankfully I had grinded through that campaign enough that I could afford it and soon noticed I preferred the look of it too) which my understanding is the best I could do outside of PvP (which I loathe and I have no talent for) and Epic Dungeons (I do not have time and opportunity to team up). Also, upgraded my Black Dragon Ioun Stone to level 40 for good measure. Grinded through the Elemental campaign a bit longer to reach level 70.
Went back to IwD with my new equipment and proud level 70 and got insta-killed by 2 yetis. For context I used to be able to solo everything but the biggest HE and soloed through all the other campaigns with decent challenge but never being insta-trashed. As my equipment got better, things went from tense to average difficulty (IwD more specifically which always was a bit challenging without being deadly).
A though fight is fun, trailing other players to team up on big HE encourages light socialization & collaboration without creating obligations (I make a point of risking my own skin to revive other payers that are downed).
Insta-kill by 2 minions is just plain insulting, considering I'm max level and with decent gear (not ultra-optimal, but quite decent).
To repeat, insulting.
It is not a measure of my talent (medium) or even my gear (thankfully I can afford decent stuff).
Why should I be locked out of 4 great zones and most dungeons? Don't I pay for full content? (I do buy Zen, but even if I didn't, the question remains)
I have played the game almost since it came out, I have put good money into it (many hundreds, bought most expensions, then some playing money for cool stuff) and was planning to put some more to speed me through acquiring "unified elements" to get new/better black ice gear through professions and was eyeing some new mount (the crab is adorable). I will not do so, I will not give money to a game that insults me on purpose. I'll do something else for a few weeks and try again. If I am still insulted, I will delete my account.
Thanks for listening to my personal rant
P.S. The elemental zones I found interesting, challenging and fun though the loot drop is a bit disappointing and I am not sure why I am doing it (except to get to level 70), there seems to be no overarching goal. I like to 10 new levels and the new profession levels.
Barkshield is currently absolutely useless, it doesn't help against Mobs or Players.
In PvP every player is doing over ~20k+ Dmg normal Hits,
A single DoT do more Dmg than Barkshield can absorb,
That 3k-Absorbs it's simply not enough just for 1-hit down and to 2k absorb,
The armor absorbs doesn't match the level 70 content against enemy mobs or Players
" Whenever someone attempts to deal damage to you one charge of Bolstered Bark is consumed"
This need to be Changed!, a single At-will destroy barkshields Bolstered Bark.
One Single "Boon" Can absorb 10,000k DMG,
How is it possible that this is better than Transcendent Barkshield Enchantment, it's simply absurd.
This would Barkshield help to make it usable again:
- At-Will Powers should NOT be able to consume a Charge of Bolstered Bark!
- Higher "Armor absorbs" is needed.
For the fourth Bolstered Bark:
Transcendent - 10k absorb
Pure - 9k Absorb
Perfect - 8k Absorb
No.........
Not in Mod 6, would be my guess.
how the called this class?
If you are a member of a guild, or have people in your friends list direct them to this thread to post constructive feedback as well.
Feedback leads to change.
Silence means "I like everything so leave it as it is."
"Why is it dragons only use ketchup? I'd like a little wasabi please. Us silvers like a variety of condiments."
"Don't call them foolish mortals. One, they don't learn from it. Two, It just ticks them off." - An Ancient Red Dragon
and warlock?
1: Potions.
Okay. I understand where the 10,000 HP heal comes from. That would be the next logical step in your potion curve, so good on you for keeping that... but the problem is the HP curve we have. I'm actually fine with the HP curve, too, it's just that the potions do not keep up with the HP curve. Now, I wish I had some magic number that'd keep it from being OP for lower HP'd people, and still useful for higher HP people, but I don't. I'm not that smart, or that good at game design, and I admit that. But 10,000 still seems a bit low to me.
2: Vigilance Quests.
When I first got onto the preview shard, I loved these things. I really did. I still like the idea of them, even! Keep them in, seriously. However, there is a bit of balancing problems with it that makes them unfun to go through with. I understand why each area has 16. To play all of the missions AND to make sure that you get the most experience, not to mention to hold people back from shooting to 70 in 5 hours of game time, but with how long it goes, it's... well... kind of disheartening. It puts up an illusion of a horrible grind, even when it'd honestly not be too bad otherwise.
But Zeta, why would you like these if they're unfun and unbalanced? Because on the preview shard, the amounts were different, and the EXP you got was different, too. They played around with the number, but honestly, I thought it was fine at 'Take 5 missions, you need 10 to move on to the next area'. You could probably play around with the numbers a bit, but if we're expected to take only 4 missions, then perhaps only two or three rotations instead of four. If only because we have three of those mini-areas to go through, and it might give a nice surprise to our next character if we get different vigilance quests, since we're not expected to go through them all to get to the next area. Of course, you have to balance the EXP around these, too, but honestly, I still think making an overall less amount of required quests can salvage these vigilance quests at least a little bit.
Oh, and maybe some of the hunt things down quests need to be tuned down some. Galeb Dhur are not the most common thing in the Rock to be hunting 40 of.
3: Drowned Shores.
This area is the first area that you worked on and it shows. It's probably the worst of the four, and no, I'm not going to be one of those people who are like "Oh. It's just Blackdagger Ruins flipped around." No. I actually like the fact that you're reusing zones. Because we get to see what it's like AFTER we saved it the first time. For me, at least, it actually makes a sense of progression throughout time. But I digress.
The mines areas is the worst part. I can handle it, personally, but a good chunk of my friends have been turned off by these areas. I'm not sure how to change them, though, is the thing. I'm just giving general feedback that I remember my friends and I coming up with. But the mines areas. From the lack of being able to mount up, to people having already cut through them. The latter is impossible to fix, unless respawn rates would be insane, and that's dumb for a different reason. They're just slow and boring, I suppose. Especially with how many quests end up overlapping in them. Overall, after the mines area, the zone gets a lot better. Not the best of the four, but better.
4: Heroic Encounters.
Now. Most heroic encounters are small, I know this. This isn't really talking about the small ones. This is more talking about the large ones, and in a way, some medium ones, (Emberclaw for example). The thing is, despite these being pretty decent heroic encounters, there isn't really much for completing them. There are the elemental boxes, but are they really enough? I'll admit that I didn't do them much, but there's not much point for trying out something like the Battle for Mistral Point if there's nothing you can get from them. No one really does many of these heroic encounters from my observation. Maybe I'm wrong and I'm always in that one instance where no one tries, but... well... I never see it.
I'm not sure what you could give, but you might want to give something worthwhile from it. The elemental containers are nice, but I guess just not enough for a lot of people.
5: Progression through the other Lv. 60+ areas.
Now. This is such a minor point, but I'm mostly going through these as I think of them. I liked one thing in Drowned Shores a lot, and that's the fact that you didn't get to fight the boss of that area until after the vigilance quests of that specific area was defeated. It was a little bit better in terms of immersion, I suppose. And while we went into their lairs before we fought the bosses in most cases, we didn't fight them themselves. A lot of people probably wouldn't like this way of doing things, but it's not like I've agreed with a lot of things people mentioned on here, and this really is such a minor point.
6: Lag.
The lag in some of these new areas is horrendous. Fix it. There's not much more I can say. But I do have one thing to ask: Why is Spinward Rise's cap 30? Why not 20 like the other areas? I can kind of understand the thinking for, like, the main heroic encounter, but it does still not help out with the lag in the area.
7: Spinward Rise.
Speaking of Spinward Rise, there are a couple of comments I have about this area in general. The area is beautiful. By far the most beautiful thing in Neverwinter. My god you guys outdid yourselves with this area. And my criticisms aren't really all that big. Really, just three things. A bug, and two criticisms.
Let's start with the bug. The Elemental Air Devices just drop randomly even if you don't have the quest. This has probably been reported, but whatever. I might as well bring it up here, too. The criticisms are... actually these might be bugs, too. But generally getting messages off of cultists in Thunderhead Reach is a painful process. As are the Slaadi control gems. They don't really drop that often. Oh, and as I'm typing this, I recall another bug. There's a quest where you have to kill 40 Slaadi. To get this done in any reasonable time, you have to drag them into the pools of Chaos to be able to get them.
And for the second criticism. And I'm not expecting anything to be done about this because this is some amount of effort that could be used fixing other things, but... the lairs in this area. The other areas reuse lairs, yes, but they are repeat areas, and as such, can get away with it. This place kind of blatantly steals from other areas: Air cult Barracks being the Orc Barracks, the Slaadi instance being the final Chasm instance, and most blatantly, Nimbus Tower being Celadaine's Tower. I'd almost like to see people come up with alternate instances for these to make them feel more unique to Spinward Rise, but that's just a dream of mine.
8: Dungeons and Skirmishes. Not Difficulty-Related. That's Point 9.
Honestly, I really shouldn't bring this up at this point since it really doesn't matter. But it's kind of disappointing how we couldn't go into the towers themselves, considering that they're the fortresses of these cultists. They would be a decent amount of dungeons to be able to go into between 61 and 70.
For example:
Dread Vault (Only here for a comparison): 60-70
Tower of Delights: 63-70
Reclamation Rock: 65-70
Whatever the dungeon in Firey Pit would be named: 67-70
Stratos Tower: 70
Maybe have these drop some gear better than the gear you might get from just questing through or something to make it worth going through. HOWEVER, I do understand this would be a lot of work, and wouldn't be surprised if you decided against this, especially in light of the many fixes you have to do for the game as it is now, as well as the other dungeons that are being reworked.
Really, this one is more of a selfish point that I'm not expecting anything to be done with. But hell, I might as well get all of my ideas out. Even if it turns out it was impossible to enter these towers because something that would keep you out or something. I'll admit, I didn't pay the most attention to the lore surrounding the towers.
9: Dungeon Difficulty.
I'm going to tackle this in a different way, though sheer damage numbers is also a problem. But first, I must ask this question:
Why are the module dungeons the Tier 1s? No seriously. I'm curious. Why is something like Lostmauth and his 3-4 things going on at once the introduction to dungeons? Now, I could be wrong and the Tier 2 bosses could be worse in terms of 'stuff going on', but still. It seems a bit harsh to just throw people into Valindra and Lostmauth in the beginning of their Epic Dungeoning careers. Unless you're going to introduce Epic Valindra's Tower as a Tier 3 dungeon or something, this seems a bit awkward to me.
Base game to Module 5 had a pretty good way to introduce people to Epic Dungeons: Cloak Tower. Really, that and Cragmire Crypts. They weren't too hard and they were a nice introduction to being able to start on gear. Again, I'm not saying all dungeons have to be as easy as Cloak Tower. That's just stupid. But I feel an introductory dungeon to Epic Levels might not be a bad idea.
10: Level Scaling and Modules 1-5 Campaigns.
It doesn't seem to scale right, and this is what's causing a lot of problems for campaigns. If you're anything but 70, then you're screwed when it comes to the campaigns. And even then it can be a bit rough. I know you wanted this to be an alternate leveling path, as well as content you can still do at 70 still. But I'm unsure if that could be possible. It probably is, but you'd need to work on the level scaling method.
Otherwise, if you wish the campaigns to be alternate leveling paths and can't do that, then I guess you'd just have to make them kind of into other adventure zones, albeit different, I suppose, with a possible change to Whispering Caverns. If only because you just can't do it very well solo at Lv. 60.
However. This would simply remove ALL Lv. 70 content outside of Well of Dragons, and it would be awkward with the campaign format of the areas. Not to mention how the quests would take forever to do due to them being dailies. So this in itself probably wouldn't work either. Honestly, just work on the level scaling, really.
11. Rank 4 abilities.
Seriously. A bunch of these are bugged. Please fix them. Pleeeease. I'm not entirely sure which ones are, but I'm certain people have logged them.
In conclusion, I don't really know how to design a game, so a lot of what I mentioned likely isn't very helpful. I'm just a single voice in a sea of voices, so I'll be drowned out. I accept this fact. I'm hardly expecting many of my points to be answered, but I am just going to say this. These are some of what I think might help. I accept that I'm not very good at this, but if I didn't put this out there, then I'd have no real say in trying to help out. Even a little bit.
I like Neverwinter a lot. It's a nice MMO. I've spent likely thousands of hours on this game, even if most of them aren't logged on my Arc profile. I've only been here since a week or so after the game was formally launched. And you know what? I'm going to go so far as to say I love the idea of Mod 6.
A reset from the power creep that infested Mod 5 and made it unfun (for me) to play. To make a new base for the game to progress, to temporarily hit us and better allow our growth in the future. I love this idea, it's what I think the game desparately needed. But there are a lot of problems in Module 6, too. Even what I mentioned probably isn't really all of them. Just the ones I noticed.
But I'm also just a single player. And that is just my experience and feelings. If you actually read this list, even with all of the other lists out there, then thank you. My time wasn't entirely wasted in writing this.
warlock use a blade with power equal to that of a butter knife
I don't usually read a wall-o-text post but you have some very valid points. I hope the devs see this and address at least some of the issues, especially lag.
Nicely done.
And at 70 start gearing into T1 and then T2 using only the automatic group finder.
Bugs, however, are a big thing.
What I think a lot of people are waiting to see is how the devs decide to tackle the numerous bugs present in the game - the bugs that got changed in the patch being two (admittedly ridiculously so) 'buffing' bugs, while all the ones that actively weaken us being ignored, has me personally a bit miffed. As a rogue player, the current unreliability of Shadow of Demise has me quite annoyed - it certainly does NOT do what it says in the tooltip. I'm honestly not sure what causes it to activate at this point. I'm quite certain that there are other issues along the lines of this problem, but I don't know what they are. On top of that, it's quite known that a lot of rank 4 powers are simply nonfunctional -at best-. In addition, the Hastening Light bug that got patched shows that there may be some lingering issues with artifact offhand feature boosts.
Here's the three major things that need to be done:
-Go through all the feats - yes, ALL of them - and make sure they work as they're supposed to. Most importantly, make sure they do what the tooltip says they do. If you want them to do something other than what the tooltip says, then change the tooltip to what you want it to do. Obviously after doing this there may be some bugged interactions between some feats, but getting them all to work individually has to come before anything else.
-Go through the rank 4 powers, and make sure all of those work as intended. It's pretty clear just from looking at Rogue's Courage Breaker that not every power even had much attention paid to it - going by the tooltip, rank 4 courage breaker causes an affected target to deal 120% less damage... which doesn't make any sense. HR 'aspect' abilities actually subtract a level at rank 4, making them effectively rank 2s. GWF's Weapon Master becomes unable to gain stacks at all at rank 4. The consistant issue seems to be that a lot of these powers just weren't looked at to make sure they work, and they need to be gone over. And again, yes, all of them.
-After doing the second one, the artifact offhand abilities need to be tested. Everybody knows about the Hastening Light interaction, but did you know that Invisible Infiltrator's offhand power doesn't function at all? Once the rank 4 powers are working, these need to be gone over as well. Once again, I do mean all of them.
I have a few minor graphical complaints as well (mostly relating to shields), but honestly, those issues take a complete backseat to the gameplay bugs. Please fix them, or at least acknowledge that they're known and you're working on them. We can't reasonably expect you to deal with all of them in just a couple of patches, but the major ones people have been mentioning don't seem like they'd be that difficult to fix. Please, I desperately want this game to succeed, but as it is right now, it's so badly bugged that I can't blame people for just not playing anymore.
1. Our percepcion is that new classes (now paladin, before HR, etc.) are always better at the beginning, and they get slowly nerfed. It looks a way to have people to spend money in new powerful toons and then change.
2. There is no way to farm dungeons, money or Ads. Not even paying money makes a diference.
3. Space in bad is running sort, we need more bags space or more bags slots. There are so many enchantments, potions, quest objects, etc
4. PvP sis really boring. We need new maps with new challenges
5. It would be nice to tie armor sets to a single key, so you can change fast. Maybe it can have a cool down
6. New potions are nice but it would be nice to get them more powerful. As the enemies are now we are clearly undegeared
7. It would be nice to have an armor what have sskills as the main hand and off hand set has.
8. GF shield should cover 180º as they do in Icewind
9. Get a clear difference between the Devoted Cleric (DC), The Oathbound Paladin (OP) and the Guardian Fighter (GF), because the new OP can make the work of the GF and the DC too, leaving them aside in terms of tanking and healing...
- The Overload Enchantments should be stacked in 99 like normal Enchantments
- New level 70 armor sets should give a set bonus like the old level 60 ones did
- Fix the crappy way that pvp matches are done and find a new way to balance it.
10. I consider myself as a pvp player, is the thing i like to play, and as a pvp player i fell very mistreated.
Ill try to point which problems pvp has, not talking about balance or bugs ( there are some issues with this) but problems surrounding pvp.
1º Only 1 pvp kind. All pvp is based on getting bases standing on them... there are plenty known kinds of pvp please consider implementing few more.
2º Pvp players forced to wear pve gear. We cant get full gear playing pvp, in fact we just can get 4/12 gear slots filled, last module we were able to wear 12/12 pvp gear but some of them where not BiS (for pvp), why are we going backwards? i just cant understand this.
3º Imposible to earn enough AD through PvP. Pve players can go to dungeon, skirmirmish or whatever, if they are lucky enough they can get some gear to sell and earn AD for their own character, pvp players just cant get any AD from any source. Gear is always bound, and drops after a match are just ridicoulus. Why is gear bound? do you consider farming 19k glory is easy or a thing you can do in just 1 afternoon?
4º PvP campaing items not updated to level 70. Why adding pvp shirt/pants/rings etc if we are not going to use them? why arent them updated? this feels like devs just dont care about pvp.
You need to focus also in pvp, most of your competitors have a strong pvp (and a big pvp community), there are entire games based on pvp! neverwinter has great combat mechanics but pvp overall is terrible. I would love to play just pvp and get full experience from the game.
11. Foundry are abandoned. It was a promising feature, but nowadays are useless. Only used for exploiting.
12. Some kind of in-game game would be nice in order to bet diamonds.
13. Shadow demise seems bug. It only affects one player/monster
14. It is impossible to collect all the refine points that are required to progress. Even paying money for zen it is over hundreds and thousands of euros.
15. Having combos would be nice for combat. Not just hit the keys in order. Real combos.
Out of curiosity - how would a new player get the Linus needed for this?
Certainly not by beating Tiamat, which is currently near-impossible.
I guess now I'm penalized for buying smaller bags. Since to increase now, I have the cost of the smaller bag that I've already bought and paid for, and the cost of the new bag, which is not going to give me that much additional space. At the very least you need to give some kind of credit on old purchased bags, when buying new bags. Maybe you could at least increase the bag limit by one or two, and increase the 5 row bag that everybody earns to six.
'
In any case the Seal Vendor equipment while leveling needs some work at least for the Paladin. I think one Seal of the Lion item was useful and it lasted maybe one level past when I could use it. The Seal of the Manticore looks a little better, but I have a Cruel Mace of Restoration (Level 38) which is quite a bit better than the Longsword of Doom (Level 38).
I think the prices or ease of getting seals and the quality of the seal vendor equipment needs to be adjusted a little. Seal equipment seems like the kind of thing a player should work for and keep for several levels before being obsoleted by greens of the appropriate level. Double XP weeks are not really my thing because I actually enjoy the content created for leveling and like to have the various blue items I have acquired via daily dungeon keys, boss drops, or seals feel like good equipment that I worked for and holds up for several levels.
Over Half the Dungeon Content Vanished
No rebalancing effort, no effort to make it easier for folks to dungeon delve together, what-so-ever, is worth the loss of over half of the game's dungeon content. (And no, contrary to rumors, the dungeons do not come back at level 70).
Removing the dungeons entrances from the world also breaks quest flow (never mind the frustration of following quests to dead ends - think you fixed that, but it just confirmed our fears that the dungeons were gone forever, and you still can't manually enter on those few dungeons that do still exist, even with a proper party).
The requirement of 3 players, would be a boon, if not for the fact you don't have the option of bringing in the standard party of 5. Three players should be what you get with a standard cue, but if your party has 5 players, for the love of Helm, let them all go in! Otherwise you're just discouraging social play, which becomes a real issue later, largely due to the next problem.
The Difficulty Curve be Broken
When solo'ing...
1-60 is pretty much cruise control now. (Indeed, having a party will cause you to fall asleep.)
61-69 is the grind from hell.
70 is slit-your-wrists impossible.
With my all-blue+ gear 70 Paladin, I *might* be able to get through the Ashen Battlefield and reach Dread Ring in an hour, but I generally give up about halfway through. Suppose I'll have to wait for the day when I have enough level 70's together to do a party and raid the place, but that's going to be awhile. (And it'd just have to be among the buddies I have now, as there's no place for 70's to constructively solo - thus I'm not going to be meeting more people.)
There's nothing more frustrating than having to hit a non-dungeon adjusted minion, several dozen times, to kill them. It kills combat flow entirely and ends all excitement - making every combat a chore.
Combat should be swift and exciting, and over fairly quickly, unless there's a boss around, or one is otherwise dealing with an epic event designed for a swarm of players.
Having open general areas require multiple players, just to be completed in a reasonable timeframe, when you have no solo areas, is just a horribly bad idea. You cannot force social interaction, especially while providing no constructive mingling areas. Folks shouldn't be forced to gather in teams simply to able to play. The traditional structure is: You have your solo'able open world area, where people may gather up, and you have some nasty generated areas, that require you to do so. The way you balanced out the level 70 campaign world areas, you've basically destroyed the award winning formula you kept throughout the rest of the game, and expect people to suddenly adapt, with no real incentive to do so, given the meager rewards, and how often these areas have to be repeated to get anything at all.
I've kinda dropped this game since I hit 70, save once a week, realizing there's nothing I can do to improve myself in preparation for when I have a party available. Basically, there's no playing save for when your buddies are around on a pre-scheduled basis. Something that, without that solo area access, never would have happened to begin with, so people who are new to this game are pretty much boned.
Companions: The one real problem
While boosting pets was nice and all, you didn't address the real problem, and in epic dungeons, I still see people being kicked because you failed to do so: Out of combat, pets draw agro. This gets people into battles they do not wish to be dragged into, and said battles are enormously time consuming now.
Basically, for all the new nastiness that companions are, we're still in a world that if you don't use an Ioun stone (or worse, are a Damnation Warlock), you stand a good chance of being booted from an epic dungeon party - and justifiably so, as every battle is now a major resource drain, both in time and health stones (since healing potions don't do anything), and an unexpected encounter risks a full party kill.
Leaving the companions as the weaklings they were, and fixing this one issue, would have been preferable to boosting them like this and leaving it, as the team decided to do. They would have still been all but worthless, but they would have finally stopped being an outright BANE.
Companions need not to draw agro, nor attack, until the player enters combat, period. End of so many problems... And *maybe* then people will like to have Companions in their epic dungeons, and they will no longer be vote-kick bait... and then, of course, people might actually then want to BUY companions.
you've destroyed multi character players. I used to play a main, and have alts that were able to be switched to better balance a group composition. the only way to level currently is to solo zerg your way towards 70 in old zones (i fear that telling you that normal Whispering Caverns and previous "story" content is much better to level through, even after you are past L60. your thought that "repeatable quests should not have as much XP as the one-time quests" doesn't make any sense: Sharandar, DR, IWD, WoD all have quests that can only be done once a day - they offer the same XP as 1 vigilance set of 4 offers, which is still 1/4 the value of the whispering caverns quests *per quest*! i don't understand how you advance through the 50s, then hit a literal wall of XP (it's 1.5 times the XP from 60-70 as it was from 1-60, but you're doing a minimum of 16x12 vigilance tasks to get 1/2 way to 70. this is all with 2X XP, too! it's even worse when you haven't doubled the XP. i don't have a problem with the amount of XP, but the rewards for super repetitive content is too repetitive for the value of the quests.
the loss of weapon/armor enchantments until you get all the way to L70 due to such a drastic change in the gear requiring a character that has become BiS over a year of grinding the same content having to update gear from epic to rare almost instantly upon passing L60.
lets stop this from happening - your players are leaving because you feel you need to "make up" for financial mistakes, but your view of it is to increase profits, not increase playerbase - it's the wrong thought to have.
A very important aspect of this is your choice to begin further binding items that have no reason to be bound to character - I believe a majority of your player base would have been fine with bags binding to account - not allowing them to be sold once equipped - alts would still need new bags, but to straight up force players to begin buying bags because you've now added more inventory spam (how many refinement items do we *really* need here?! there's now 40+ items that get picked up that are not gear - you can only really use one potion, but you cannot filter out all the gear you *don't* want. please look at all other F2P games - there is seldom, if ever, the amount of "per character" purchases that you have. bind to account is how many of your items need to be - i will concede that you can probably get away with companions as bind to character (you have to make money locking some things, i get that, but inventory space? weapons? artifacts?) as they are very particularly for a certain character. the feeling that you don't want me to play more than 1 character is apparent - but I have a choice to make: abandon those characters (losing all the effort I have put into them, making me want to give on the game entirely), or play more than one character, but never get any of them to a point where they can do content, at least with the current way it's going, i'll not be able to set foot in a dungeon for 6 months. that's a ridiculous amount of time to spend above 60 but working on getting to a point where i'm not destroyed for average gameplay - i don't have the money to pour into the game (not that I haven't already spent close to $1000 on the game over the last 1.5 years) but something has to change - and your "message" about EE isn't exactly offering any reassurances further than "we know it's bad, but we'll fix it" but offer very little to actually show you know what the problem is, nor what your ideas for a solution are (like when you said M6 was going to be revolutionary...for WHO?)
I propose you alter your way of locking things down - you've made sigils non-refinement, so basically if you put any refinement in them, you're wasting it. if you have multiple characters, it's not worth it to add anything to them, just leave them naked and use them to farm AD - it's not enjoyable - no one *wants* to make alt armies, but we're doing this because everything binds, making everything in the game inflated.
you could make an AD sink to turn items that are bind to character bound to account (still cannot profit off of it/sell it/gift it/etc) so that you can at least combine the efforts of your crew to characters - you could add an AD sink by allowing skins to be removed from items. skinning an epic means you pay 50 AD to re-skin a new item (that's fine) but YOU LOSE THE ITEM to be use for salvage, backup, etc. i have a number of artifacts I have played plenty to earn them legitimately, but i either lose all the refinement of a currently equipped sigil if I remove it from my bar - after a certain point in a sigil's refinement, the "non-refinement" tag should be removed, the "bound to character" should be removed, or the RP into a sigil should be like a 10X multiplier. the point is, acquiring artifacts is appropriately possible, but the cost of refinement is outrageous to say you cannot use that refinement elsewhere - if everything is bound to character, and you lose refinement value in the process, then why are you locking so much down?
I don't have a problem with the content being harder, but the level at which it is done is pretty unforgiving - if it takes longer to kill, fine, if they hit harder, fine, but a 2.1k SW is at least 1/2 as viable as a 900 OP, seriously, the glass cannon classes are no longer viable (this is a issue more of the SW being eliminated from any possibility to play in endgame- i have mine at 70, but i cannot imagine anyone being remotely receptive of allowing me to join a dungeon - i'm a liability to others right now.)
the issue, as mentioned on at least one of the first responses here, is the abysmal stat distribution of gear - yes, it's simplified, where all gear has very similar names and standard stats - but adding more life to gear and no proportional increase in the other stats has made high HP, low mitigation options for most all classes.
1 fix the respec token bug give those that used it and were unable to place r4 powers after usign it a fresh one(every char i used token on experienced issue none that i didnt use it on did)
2 reduce the horific grind of the new zones 1/2 the number of vigilances double there exp, remove there timers its realy crapy to not only have to grind the same flavourless missions over and over but also have to wait for the pleasure if you grind to fast
3 fix the broken CW sheild negation +30% tenacity gear +25% sheild on tab 80-25% mitigation leads to CW having perma 80%+ unmitigatable mitigation in pvp totaly breaks pvp havign a bunch of invincible wizards (chaotic growth ren spec) slapign each other and never going below 90% life
4 remove items like tymoras enchants and others that have 0 effect on combat from effecting gear rating score
5 put blue item drops back in to open world criters items not just enchants
6 put the minstral fight on a seperate shard so it dosnt lag the entire 20-50 instances of spinward out everytime a group atempts it, making it take aslong as timer or fixing timer would be nice(it currently ends at 5 min remaining mark)
7 fix negation enchant it curently offers a gwf more mitigation then all there armour combined and as mentioned above on a CW or a DC for that mater it can create a almost unbreakable tank, pvp used to be fast paced now its like watching paint dry if its a geared fight or if one person dosnt have negation they moeswell just go home.
8 put gear drops in chests rather then just marks all your encouraging is the single most exploitable dungeon get run repeatedly and no other content played
9 dont respond by making game grindyer because ppl complained the new areas are 2 grindy and go to older more flavoured content. i realy like the new maps i hate the missions and the lag from having a large open world encounter being tryed basicly 24/7 on some shard of map is just horible at least in well of dragons it was on a timer and you could have low lag times to get stuff done in.
10 if this game is realy meant to be free to play and casual friendly dont put in gear that requires 10s of millions of AD worth of refinement to upgrade one character. if you joined today and wanted to pvp your looking at close to $1000 us to be similarly geared to legacy pvpers and for pve still like $500 to get enchants and artys to close to max rank, if you buy when its cheap and wait for double refine and discounts on coal wards.
11 give people who didnt get to use the mod 6 code before you disabled it acess to the items, 1000s of bot acounts got to aquire those items over and over and most of the real players ive talked to didnt see the email till youd disabled code cataday 2.0
love the combat system but this steady trend to korean style missions and gear aquisition is not casual or free to play friendly in the least. put yourself in the 1 hr a day gamers shoes they log in they do 8 vigilance misisons
next day they log in do the same 8 vigilance missions, next day they log in and do the same 8 vigilance missions, all the while it has no decernable effect on the environment, the next day they get to do 8 very similar vigilance missions in s slightly differnt area of the map.... how many days are they going to find that interesting for?
ps i have no issue with the dificulty rating all the pugs ive made that didnt get laged out finished Elol kessels ect and only one of my chars took off there old gear so i did that with 30k hps and almost no mitigation on 2 of them my cw has sheild on tab so she tanks like a beast but tr and gwf have pretty much no mitigation. its the mind numbing grind thats dificult and lag, without lag the fights are fun chalenging but quite easly defeatable with 2kgr. and for the record ive stoped even bothering to refine gear i dont buy coal wards or zen to buy AD to buy refinement items off AH, i dont have $1000 dollars to spend on each of my 15 chars and i dont feel like picking a main, i did have a main but the new gear puts all chars at same level, what i have refined i swap from char to char that can be swaped. if you want me to invest more money you need to make it look less like a bottomless pit that im tossing it into.
i used to buy ever pack founders fey ect to support the game because i love the combat system and i tend to play mostly cryptic games ever since city of heroes. im just lucky i made soem greaters(weapon enchants) in first few months still the only greaters i have and i would of easly invested $1000 dollars over the years few 100$ in champions $1000 or more into startrek
I know perfect worlds profit margins have halved since 2013 but making the most profitable f2p game into a korean grind pay to win game is not the answer D&D fans require more mental stimulation then that, most have familys and not unlimited time also
anyways thats my 2 cents i may be wrong its posible everyone was just waiting for more mindless grind but i think at least some were looking for some new content or at least not having all the stuff they had grinded rendered useless due to rebalancing stat curve.
ps having to wait for the pleasure to grind is also anoying whenever i do spinward i have to go spend 1/2 a hr at a camp fire after i finish the first cycle of vigilances. please please make them 8 of 8 and double the exp people would still do most of the asociated "content" they would just feel it was a little less mind numbing and repeditive.;)
The problem with grind is the constant repeat of the same old thing, over and over again. Boredom kills it. In this game, though, it really isn't that much of an issue. It is adaptable. The issue with the 60-70 leveling, if you don't have sub-60 areas left to complete (Hotenow to Whispering Caverns will only get you to around 66 if you do all quests and fight all mobs between you and the objectives), is that the new area Vigilance quests can only be taken 4 at a time, repetitively over-and-over again in the same areas. It is such a boring activity that I switched to alts this weekend and completed the old story line quests from Hotenow to Whispering Caverns on two characters back to back. Without getting bored. The new leveling areas need to take on a quest system similar to the old 1-60 leveling areas.
The difficulty should not be an issue, really it should be a welcome thing. The problem I seem to see in reading others' comments is that the scale is way too high. Low-end minions (trash mobs) should not be hitting as hard as they do, it feels like some of my characters are now the same as the scripted to die civilian NPCs you see across your leveling experience. I thought we were supposed to be the favored heroes of a fantasy game, not extras in a horror movie. Really though, all this talk of needing the new gear with all its added HP to level out that damage so build and strategy is now more viable is actually wrong. It should not need all this HP from items to survive.
glassdoor.com - Cryptic Studios Review
Please scale the difficulty back, PUG runs are a nightmare, i keep getting head aches. Most people can't do even VT. I was there about 20+ times yesterday, had no luck with PUG team mates. Most died on the spawn point or couldn't advance from the first campfire. Not that hard, but as it seems hard enough for 90+% of the people and this shouldn't be so, since other more skilled players have to rely on team too.
IWD still useless, 1 shot trash Mobs, as a solo player you can't gather the required Black Ice to forge the PVE gear. Solo game is nearly dead, holding each other hand doesn't work.
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