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Driftwood Tavern Questions Follow-up - April 16
nitocris83
Member, Cryptic Developer, Administrator Posts: 4,498Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
Greetings Adventurers! A couple specific questions were brought up during today's stream:
How long will the enchant exchange duration last?
The exact duration is still TBD but likely 1.5-2 months.
How is scaling looking?
While we understand some players have concerns over scaling, we believe it is in an overall pretty good place. We do expect there to be some post-launch tweaks to scaling as the content gets played more frequently and we receive more specific feedback.
Will Preview be updated this week?
Yes. Preview was updated last Friday and will receive another update this Friday, April 19. Preview Patch Notes will be posted on Friday.
How long will the enchant exchange duration last?
The exact duration is still TBD but likely 1.5-2 months.
How is scaling looking?
While we understand some players have concerns over scaling, we believe it is in an overall pretty good place. We do expect there to be some post-launch tweaks to scaling as the content gets played more frequently and we receive more specific feedback.
Will Preview be updated this week?
Yes. Preview was updated last Friday and will receive another update this Friday, April 19. Preview Patch Notes will be posted on Friday.
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Comments
Scaling in ToNG Wither Fight is WAAAAAY off.
Run it 4 times with 4 separate 19k+ experienced testers.
All the red circles hitting for >500k.
1 shotting 350k Vanguard with 175K shield up and... "Dig-In"... every time.
Unplayable.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
It is not normal that a level 80 zone is easier than a level 70'. It is not tolerable that your level 70 toon with say; 50k power, 20k crit, 20k defense, once they have leveled passed 70 and enter a level 70 dungeon, the scaling system, scales them down o a greater degree, when their level 70 ratings were superior.
If I am at level 78 with 60k power, 40k crit, 30k defense and I queue for a Tong run, which is level 70, system must scale my ratings down to 50k power, 20k crit and 20k defense and not 25k power, 10k crit and 10k defense, that is their failure in the scaling/ rating system. Furthermore, it is not fun to play when enemies are hitting for 200-300k HP when your hit points barely reached 200k or a bit over that.
Currently you improve your character just to become less powerful on scaled zones than you were previously
I'm quite shocked to see that commentary about the scaling. In an "overall pretty good place"? Well I hope you're talking about the last patch that we players haven't see yet, because otherwise...
The scaling is reported continuously on the feedback threads as broken, when as a lvl 80 20k+ you're less effective in a lvl 70 zone than you were at lvl 70 with your let's say 16k gear.
That is not scaling, you actually become LESS effective on scaled zone as your level and gear/stats increase. How in Earth is that a "pretty good scaling"? This is broken, and game-breaking. Not as an exploit or a bug, but simply on game-design.
One patch to go, only one. And if scaling isn't changed because "it's in an overall pretty good place", you're not even ready to see the storm coming on the forum.
No room for changes.
Just some examples of wonky scaling: Tong - both withers and Ras have unavoidable one hit death mechanics, Castle Never first group of mobs still one hit and the portal and zombie phases are ridiculously overtuned. It looks like you have put hard caps in place which means no matter how we develop our character it is pointless in 98% of the games content as unless you are in a level 80 zone character progression is pointless.
I along with a lot of the community are fed up banging our head against a brick wall you obviously for some reason want players to struggle through all content in the game. It is an RPG game and we play to build our character and feel powerful yet there are no occurrences in the game in mod 16 where we feel anything other than a schoolboy shooting spitty bits of paper through a pen
How much more specific does "the very low hard cap on stats in many areas is such that you cannot get better at that content because hitting the cap happens about 15 minutes after reaching level 70, so the fresh 70 in the Barovian Catchup Set and the maxed-out toon with R14s are experiencing the same difficulty" have to be?
Scaling has been broken for years in one direction, now you've broken it in the other. When a character in maxed-out gear has no advantage and no gameplay experience difference over a brand new character wearing starter stuff, that's a problem, even if the previous issue of "the maxed-out guy one-shots everything" was ALSO a problem.
being a legendary hero that revisited all existing content several times over and over again,slain the toughest monsters,demons and dragons we shouldnt run into a wall when being scaled down in the first place.
generally as mentioned in posts above scaling is a penalise.
experiencing new challenges in old content by getting one shot with all defensive mechanics up is not an enjoyable challenge for ppl,its broken.
i do see the point in trying to make older content more appealing for ppl to revisit.this current scaling system just surely wont make me queue for lower then 80 content considering fun/time/value.
tales of old is designed for revisiting the old dungeons that where removed mod6 with a new difficulty.including most of the existing lvl70 dungeons longterms with updated rewards would possibly make me want to revisit and queue up.
its the first time devs having far more time then usually to pull off something really good due to small accinc mod.
we get a couple hours lvling,class balance (can never be finished but...comparing amounts of patches for all the other classes to poor have noworries and be fine tr...gotta do better!),the opportunity to run old content agaaaaain with broken scaling (sry wai) and first part of lotm.
hoping for tweaks to scaling,but knowing there is such an awful long list of things needed to be done im not sure if that would be my priority.im not seeing a mostly polished new mod and neverwinter going live next week.
Ah, you mean like in the TV show "The Good Place"? Right, yes.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
The first is that current live players have been at endgame for years at level 70. Those players are far above what a fresh 70 would be as they are leveling up. The scaling of lower content is based around where players are likely to be gear wise in those levels. A current endgame 70 is going to see the biggest changes when scaled, but that will be a very rare case going forward with new level 70s.
Yes, scaling is implemented as a cap system. This means a cap is put in place on what the item level for a piece of gear can be in a given piece of scaled content. This does mean a level 70 and level 80 can be experiencing the same difficulty in a piece of scaled content.
The scaled campaigns are called Challenge Campaigns for the very reason that they are meant to be a given challenge to participate in even as you level up to other content. Dungeon Queues also have a set scale for each dungeon to maintain those at a given challenge level as well.
It is not entirely true that a fresh 70 in Vistani (or Undermountain) gear will be just as good as a higher level player in content. In Barovia the scaling is set to a higher level than what the fresh 70 has (enchants are scaled to rank 9 and gear is scaled down to an item level higher than either of those sets).
The scaling is setup so that a player exactly where they should be to do a piece of content for the first time, and a more leveled up player returning back are not at the same point (with the higher geared player being more powerful). However, if two players who have leveled up far enough past the scaling go back to a scaled zone, they have a high chance of ending up very comparable to each other.
The plan is that the most recent campaigns and the current hardest dungeons are not scaled. If we look at where we are now, the current plan is the next two campaigns (let's call them A and
There will always be a selection of the newest content that is unscaled and players can become as overgeared for as they wish. But the older content will be scaled to retain the challenge.
All of that said, scaling will likely have tweaks as we move forward to dial in the best place for the content, but the majority of the scaling is currently close to where we want it and won't be seeing large/drastic changes. And of course we will continue to fix any individual critters that are too powerful compared to where they should be, such as how the first encounters in Castle Never were when we first went to preview.
Community: "Scaling broken af and penalizing higher IL players too much when they go back into L70 areas"
Them: "It's not too bad you just can't tell because you've been L70 too long"
Basically what you're alluding to is that in the future, after whoever is left playing has gotten to the point where the current content is easy for them, that content will drop down into scaled content making it harder to complete, again.
Progress = Dead
But 99% of fresh 70s open Barovia, get the Vistani set, and then *leave Barovia* to go do Sharandar, Dread Ring, Well Of Dragons, Icewind Dale, The River District, Underdark, The Maze Engine, or even Elemental Evil. Because now that they have the catchup set, it's much easier to catch up. And they're already at or over the cap in every one of those zones.
Meanwhile, people who've been at level 70 for a while are getting a severe nerf in the latest and greatest, hardest content available before the most recent mod. They're being scaled so hard, in fact, that they're going to be running around with R9s to the dude in Vistani gear's R8s. And Bob forbid they go back to run some Underdark or Stronghold or Icewind Dale stuff, because they *and* the dude in Vistani gear who started playing three days ago are both going to be way over the cap, in effective R5s.
(When I say latest endgame content: I'm discounting Mod15 entirely for this, because it had no endgame content. The only "endgame-ish" part was Bank Heist, and Bank Heist is way, way easier than Merchant Prince's Folly, let alone TONG or Cradle or Castle Ravenloft. But even Bank Heist is going to be scaled to R9s, I suppose?) "Far enough past the scaling" is *R9s*. Literally one level above the free stuff that every brand new player has in every single gem slot as soon as he hits level 70. So, uh, why aren't Mod14 and Mod13, the most recent endgame campaigns, unscaled? Or even "less scaled" since they're a special case of being L70 campaigns with the level cap upgrade?
And am I reading this correctly - Mod16, 17, and 18 will be unscaled until Mod19, at which point Mod16, which is the *only* L71-80 content, will take a massive jump *up* in difficulty?
Things are only working as intended in your reality, but then again this is YOUR new vision for the game. Well, when it goes live and people yell and scream about this and you have to go in and do parch work, please take 2 minutes of your time and come back here and post " We were wrong, we apologize."
I truly believe you guys are in for a wake-up call when this hits as is. Tone deaf doesn't even cover it.
*IF* what he means is "the scaling will be set to the maximum gear that you could get while Mod16 was unscaled, just not anything higher than that", then that's not dead progress. Mod16's cap will be "best of Mod18" and Mod19+ stuff will scale down to that, while remaining unscaled in Mod17, 18, and 19. Mod17's cap will be "Best of Mod19" when Mod20 is released, etc.
*IF* that's the goal, and *IF* the extreme scaling in the L70 content is just because of the level cap change making things difficult to accurately scale, then I actually think that's pretty reasonable and will get better as time goes on.
However, if he means "Mod 19 comes out and suddenly you're scaled to L70, 600IL, and R10 enchants in Mod 16 when you were L80 with IL900 gear and R15s the day before", like what's happening with Mod14 and earlier right now, that's a serious problem for me.
Anything I've learned about the game is worthless because there is no build difference. No real stat choice.
All my finished campaigns are meaningless - Anyone saw those boons, meaningless and will probably get scaled too.
My high rank enchants, not only devalued each couple of mods due to some decisions, now completely worthless, they scale to rank 8s.
Rotation? Hold mouse button, spam encounters of CD repeat. Oh wait, click that Tab button, to get CA, which I already should have anyway.
We warned years ago that solving the lack of people in leveling queues by forcing high level players into leveling RQ will only create issues and discontent. Now this looks like a fallout from that old mistake, and a 'cheap' solution for lack of challenging content - There is a conceptual mistake: Challenging content should come with progress, not at the expense of one.
The game became Carpentry simulator - The nails nailed into coffins so well...
The thing is that zones are where most players zone out of the content and don't pay attention to what they are doing. It allows them to multi task while doing what I call busy work or skip over work. If the quests weren't so redundant in those zones I might actually pay attention to what is said in them. Stuff you have to do for the stronghold to improve is in these zones. The problem is that your now applying your scaling formula from k team challenges to the rest of the games content which is where the casual players go in the game. Nobody wants that in the game, not casuals or veterans. It will just make the collection of stronghold supplies take much longer and will push players to purchase stuff on the zen store which is probably what you want and why your implementing it. This change is just a huge cash grab and most in the game will hate you for implementing this.
My first preference is no scaling at all in the old content. This is just insensitive to the player base and why I dislike this mod more than any of the other changes you made. Mod 15 is actually a good mod compared to this mod with this change in it.
Yule (Barb): 72k : Siren (TR): 78k : Torun (DC): 73k : Siren OP (OP): 76k : Siren SW (SW): 78k : Modern (F): 80k : Cherry1 (CW) : 68k Siren HR (HR): 78k
I am asking in all seriousness? Why would we do them if they are not either fun or meaningful?
I have busted my butt off to get my charatcers as high as I have and now you are punishing me for doing it by scaling me down to players who have put much less time, effort and money into the game. Tell me, how is this fair to me? How?
I am trying so hard to be positive about this but the closer we get more I feel a train wreck coming.
I can already see it coming. We're going back to the early days of EE when we had to group for solo content and guild leaders like me had to escort every new member through existing campaigns because enemies were stomping them into pudding. It sucked then, and it's going to suck now.
My advice: keep your Drowned set weapons handy. You're going to need them the second you set foot into solo scaled content.
Not only are things like enchantments being devalued but companions are as well. Just one example is the will o'wisp: that's a $25 item that people only bought for the control bonus. Now, just like that, BAM! useless. The devs might not think it's a slap in the face, but it absofreakinlutely IS.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Just like how EE didn't get put into the challenge campaigns, neither will Undermountain as it is considered part of the core leveling progress which doesn't get moved into the challenge campaigns.
I really hope I will not be able to say "I told you so".