test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Official Feedback Thread: Faster Campaign Progression for Alts
rgutscheradev
Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 188Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
Hello fellow altaholics! We’ve known for a while it’s harder to run alts in Neverwinter than it should be. As some of you may know, we recently lowered the cost of the Campaign Completions in the Zen Market, but we wanted to do more.
With this next release, we are introducing “Signets of Patronage”: account-bound tokens, one for each campaign, that your main can make and hand to one of your alts. That alt can turn in the Signet to progress in the campaign at double speed!
Here are the details:
* If a character has finished a campaign, they can make a Signet of Patronage for that campaign.
* “Finished” doesn’t mean 100%; it varies by campaign, but basically means “has done all the important unlocks and has earned all the boons”.
* Making a Signet costs some campaign currency (typically about as much as an end-stage campaign task) plus 50,000 Astral Diamonds.
* The Signet is account-bound, so it can be given to any character on that account.
* The character you give it to can turn the Signet in, consuming it, but enabling that character to complete most campaign tasks at 1/2 price (and earning rep at x2 normal rate, if the campaign has rep).
* The exception to the 1/2 price is that those campaign tasks whose main purpose is to create items, like the Dragon Hoard Enchantments task in Tyranny of Dragons, are not discounted. That’s because we didn’t want to decrease the value of those items, and we didn’t want people to feel they had to make an alt with a Signet of Patronage just to create those items efficiently. Only a few tasks fall into this category, and they are generally not requirements for other tasks, so this exception won’t slow down alts who want to use a Signet of Patronage to progress more quickly through a campaign.
* On preview, you can see more details on each campaign: there are 2 new buttons in each campaign window, “Create” (which creates a Signet of Patronage) and “Use” (which consumes it).
* Note that (like campaign buyouts) the most recent campaigns (right now, we’re thinking the two most recent ones) won’t have this accelerator. As new campaigns come on line, older ones will get the Signets of Patronage.
Right now (on preview), the campaigns that have Signets of Patronage are:
The Maze Engine
Sharandar
Underdark
Dread Ring
Tyranny of Dragons
Storm King’s Thunder
Icewind Dale
The Cloaked Ascendancy (strictly speaking, this one shouldn’t be out yet under the “two most recent” policy, but we’re giving it to you early!)
Sorry for not including Elemental Evil, but it’s structured very differently from the other campaigns -- it’s not about repeating tasks (at least, not since its revamp), but instead you do each task once and then you’ve completed it. Since it’s built that way, accelerating it didn’t really make much sense. Also, it’s part of the process of getting to level 70, so most characters are going to need to do it anyway. If there’s a lot of demand for an EE Signet of Patronage we might be able to figure out some custom thing for EE, but for now it’s not part of the Patronage system.
We hope that Signets of Patronage will make it easier and more fun to have alts in Neverwinter!
Known Issues:
Signets of Patronage for Maze Engine, Underdark, and Cloaked Ascendancy can't be created.
Consuming a Dread Ring Signet of Patronage fails to give the proper discounts.
With this next release, we are introducing “Signets of Patronage”: account-bound tokens, one for each campaign, that your main can make and hand to one of your alts. That alt can turn in the Signet to progress in the campaign at double speed!
Here are the details:
* If a character has finished a campaign, they can make a Signet of Patronage for that campaign.
* “Finished” doesn’t mean 100%; it varies by campaign, but basically means “has done all the important unlocks and has earned all the boons”.
* Making a Signet costs some campaign currency (typically about as much as an end-stage campaign task) plus 50,000 Astral Diamonds.
* The Signet is account-bound, so it can be given to any character on that account.
* The character you give it to can turn the Signet in, consuming it, but enabling that character to complete most campaign tasks at 1/2 price (and earning rep at x2 normal rate, if the campaign has rep).
* The exception to the 1/2 price is that those campaign tasks whose main purpose is to create items, like the Dragon Hoard Enchantments task in Tyranny of Dragons, are not discounted. That’s because we didn’t want to decrease the value of those items, and we didn’t want people to feel they had to make an alt with a Signet of Patronage just to create those items efficiently. Only a few tasks fall into this category, and they are generally not requirements for other tasks, so this exception won’t slow down alts who want to use a Signet of Patronage to progress more quickly through a campaign.
* On preview, you can see more details on each campaign: there are 2 new buttons in each campaign window, “Create” (which creates a Signet of Patronage) and “Use” (which consumes it).
* Note that (like campaign buyouts) the most recent campaigns (right now, we’re thinking the two most recent ones) won’t have this accelerator. As new campaigns come on line, older ones will get the Signets of Patronage.
Right now (on preview), the campaigns that have Signets of Patronage are:
The Maze Engine
Sharandar
Underdark
Dread Ring
Tyranny of Dragons
Storm King’s Thunder
Icewind Dale
The Cloaked Ascendancy (strictly speaking, this one shouldn’t be out yet under the “two most recent” policy, but we’re giving it to you early!)
Sorry for not including Elemental Evil, but it’s structured very differently from the other campaigns -- it’s not about repeating tasks (at least, not since its revamp), but instead you do each task once and then you’ve completed it. Since it’s built that way, accelerating it didn’t really make much sense. Also, it’s part of the process of getting to level 70, so most characters are going to need to do it anyway. If there’s a lot of demand for an EE Signet of Patronage we might be able to figure out some custom thing for EE, but for now it’s not part of the Patronage system.
We hope that Signets of Patronage will make it easier and more fun to have alts in Neverwinter!
Known Issues:
Signets of Patronage for Maze Engine, Underdark, and Cloaked Ascendancy can't be created.
Consuming a Dread Ring Signet of Patronage fails to give the proper discounts.
6
Comments
nice job posting this after hours bro shows you care and are working late.. players were really looking forward to these changes
the keys that alts / mains making/ doing the accelerated campaigns i assume are character bound ? or account
bound which people would love so they can make keys and hand them to which ever alt needs them ...also more alt friendly
even to pass non bound purchased zen keys at the moment between alts is cumbersome due to how it auto goes into the usefull items bag and does not want to come out lol except with some mailing tricks ..can we maybe get a shared key ring or something in the banks to pass keys ?
Lucky you, you pulled the lucky straw ! Of all the feedback thread up now, yours is the only one unlikely to end up with a pitchforks bearing mobs !
Joke aside, I really like this. One thing I'd like to clarify tho : can a main character create more than one Signet ?
@rgutscheradev -
Can the alt that used the campaign accelerator create a token for another alt when she finishes the campaign?
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
The campaign currency costs scale just as badly as the expectations for just how long it should take to slog through some of the more recent campaigns, because of just how much currency is required for tasks.
A token for Sharandar or Dread Ring is nothing to make, but these campaigns are also honestly a breeze to just do (15 minutes a day of questing or less, for a mere month? sign me up), plus you get other rewards that contribute to character progression in the form of RP items. So what if Maze Engine takes an entire month (the horror) to do when you get a nice chuck of RP and some AD every day, plus all that delicious quest XP (and again, for a mere investment of minutes of your day)?
But a token for SKT/SoMI requires the main character to spend so much more time in those zones, while provided with little incentive to have kept playing in that zone (none if not trying to maintain Sva chest unlocks), it doesn't really look like it results in any time savings at all. It just looks painful. Worse and worse the more alts you have.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
And if I have the ability to run on more classes, good chance I'll run more dungeons, incentive to pug those, and the queue pop faster.
I would have considered a token* as such if it would have enabled the campaign currency to drop from said dungeons (account wide - complete once, invest in this thing, and progress slowly on alts). Again this will encourage me to do the group content on the alts, with a pug queue incentive that can help said queue problem (incentive, not kill regular, and make only random). Help SH buildup for smaller guilds. And encourage more play time instead of repeatable dailies.
Or a different approach, again dungeons are account unlock, and the added incentive for public queue (or for example random among what I have unlocked - with tiered choice or ban choice) is the campaign currency.
Edit: *With 1 token needed for account and reasonable price.
Overall, I love the basis for the system. For me, I would want to see it shave off 50% of the time needed to complete a campaign. Due to the campaign currency cost (especially SKT) it does not get close to this.
The 50k AD per token is not bad if I just wanted one token and this was the only cost. But Neverwinter has many campaigns.
I would need a significant number of tokens and 50k is way too much. 10k would be more in line, given the number of campaigns you must complete.
Unfortunately, I am in a growing guild, so I have not hoarded campaign resources. I give the resources to my SH coffer. So I would have to grind a lot to get the campaign resources to buy these tokens.
As it stands on test, the reward is not worth the effort.
**I would love to know what the developer's intent is? Did they intend this to lower the time by 50%? 30%? 10%? If their intention was to lower the time by 10%, then this is a home run. If their intention was 30% or 50%, they missed the mark, IMHO.
Dead🔪[The Legendary Outlaws] (Guildhall 20)
I have 8 characters, all over 12k and they all completed all boons up to mod 9, only 1 completed 10 and now 5 have completed or near completed mod 11. I don't have the time or inclination to create 7 signets for STK...
I also fully agree with the previous point about acct wide dungeon unlocks as we have with the Underdark campaign. That meta is far more user friendly than the new dungeons in 10+.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
Even on SKT you're saving what? two weeks? and for that you have to spend 50k on top?
@rgutscheradev you've almost got it right but the math doesn't add up - 3 weeks to make a token is not friendly to the end user.
If STK takes 8 weeks to fully complete and I save 4 with the token but spend 3 getting the token I have saved a grand total of one week - in essence it's a token that saves me 12.5% not 50% and I'd have to spend 50k to save that one week.
Seriously mate...
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
The refinement changes by themselves I think are excellent. Then they are tied to the bonding changes and a new ranks costing millions of AD, and requiring end game content. 1 step forward, 5 back.
This change would be awesome, but heaven forbid the cost be reasonable. 1 step forward, 2 back.
Strongholds....yay +. Guild membership cut way down and Strongholds extremely hard to level at first. ----
Raids...woot +. 25 man raid, random teams, once per hour, must be at entrance, no progression, just a dps race. ----
The token should be a reward for completing the campaign at no cost!!
The aim was to make subsequent progression for Alts achievable. There is no other benefit from the token other than making the game more alt friendly.
To be honest I don't even mind the alt-grind on most campaigns, I think it's part of the process, but STK definitely needs it.
As others have said though, the biggest assist would be account wide dungeon unlocks once a players main has opened it. The boons are really not the issue - it's the dungeons.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
Well...seriously though... what is probably happening is the following:
aka, another tab.
If its not going to be account wide, then you need to scale it way back..
frankly I dont really care.. as ive moved on, but jeepers. you guys.
* High campaign currency costs and AD
* Only for 1 alt at a time
* Doesn't save much time
Underdark eventually finishes itself if you run Demon HEs in other campaign zones any time it's convenient. If it takes even a whole year to get the final boon, so what? I know, I know, your item level will be marginally inferior if you don't get it ASAP. Suck it up. But if you want to unlock Demogorgon and you've done that before on another character, you can. It's amazing.
Maze Engine is completely reasonable. I've finished it ten times, and been stringing it out over 2xXP events on a few characters at a time.
Chult and Cloaked Ascendancy (without trying to get any weapon set) are pretty reasonable for progressing taking your sweet time, but that does mean you get the dungeon opened on your alts when you bloody well get to it and not sooner. That's the part players slam their heads against the most. I need to figure out if the CA token can be acquired gradually just by doing weeklies or close.
I find SKT/SoMI such an ordeal that I haven't even finished the last two boons on what you'd call my main. I unlocked Svardborg later than most, and then my brain went "how many more days?" with regard to the other campaign tasks and I left. If that math is right and you'd have to play three weeks on a character that's done in order to save one week on a character that's not done... you're not doing us any favours here. A lot of the issues with this campaign are embedded in the quest design and environments... pretty as they are, SoMI especially is horrible to get around in.
Generally speaking, demand for large quantities of campaign currency means less for the SH coffer and less for crafting keys, neither of which is likely to sit well with a lot of folks.
Edit: I also forgot to mention that older campaigns have bounty items you can exchange for currency, which I use a ton for accelerating progress on alts.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
The campaign currency portion could be the killer of this good feature.
Making a Signet costs some campaign currency (typically about as much as an end-stage campaign task) plus 50,000 Astral Diamonds.
This is why I say that recent campaigns are MASSIVELY out of line with the older ones in how much time you're expected to spend on them. Weekly quests are designed to maximize some different currency than you earn from dailies instead of more of the same. Inefficiency is built in by sending you haring all over "our biggest map yet", as though this were a positive point. Quests that have somewhat overlapping objectives are offered on different days instead of the same day.
If a campaign token costs roughly the same as any of the late stage campaign tasks, then it's very easy to earn for the campaigns that are a breeze anyway, and very demanding for the ones that need the most help.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Bad Idea: making it take just as long in a campaign we can't stand and have already suffered through to save time a tiny bit of time on a different character.
Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR
Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP
I have a "main" and 7 other ALTS (one for each class).
So main completes CA, for example, but doesn't have "spare" curency (evidence of evil comes to mind) laying around. In order to make *one* token, I have to grind to get like 121 evidence of evil? Make *one* token that "halves" the cost for *one* character. Repeat grind again on main for #2, so on, and so forth?
If so, then is that really "halving" the costs? (I've not done the math).
I can't imagine SKT (haven't gotten to Chult yet, to be honest). I mean, it's better than nothing, but I'd like to either see:
zero campaign currency required to make the token (leave the AD where it is or something)
or
If you're gonna make me grind some more, make it be account-wide token so it halves the cost for *that* campaign for all my characters.