CDP Topic: Rewards & Progression

nitocris83 · January 2020

For our new CDP topic we would like to hear feedback on Rewards & Progression in Neverwinter. Some great discussions related to this came up in previous CDP topics but we are now looking to focus on:

Reward quality and time spent to obtain
Existing and new reward categories
Rewards throughout the progression of the game (leveling) vs. endgame rewards
Rewards via crafting (especially Masterwork)

While some of the topics above may spawn their own individual CDPs, we wanted to provide a broader scope for rewards and refine the topic as needed in the future.

For information on the purpose of CDP discussions, please go here.

Note: Using the feedback format below allows us to better identify commonalities/differences and generate summaries and proposals more efficiently. As a reminder, the format is for feedback proposals, not for discussions/replies to another user’s proposal.

NOTE: All off-topic posts will be removed. Due to the increase in off-topic comments, we will be more stringent about this.

Feedback Format
Feedback Overview (short description of the proposed feedback)
Feedback Goal (what this feedback would target and accomplish)
Feedback Functionality (how would your feedback work in relation to the current design of Neverwinter)
Risks & Concerns (what problems can you foresee with implementing your feedback that you would like input on from members of this subforum)

Estimated Topic Discussion End Date: February 25, 2020

Reminders

We will not disclose information regarding unreleased or in-development content. This includes specific business-related metrics, dates or timelines, or licensing agreements.
Game development is the primary focus of the team - developer presence on these subforums cannot realistically be as frequent as the community would like. This does not mean the team is not invested in this initiative; it is taken very seriously. Thread summaries and actions plans developed once a topic has concluded its run are extremely valuable in maintaining the development team aware of the focused feedback, discussions, and community sentiment.
These subforums are meant to be a collaborative discussion where we all learn from each other, share perspectives, and come to the table with ideas for the improvement of Neverwinter. This does not mean that we will take action on every proposal or that positive comments from the development team are to be construed as promises.
Keep comments and discussions on topic and follow the CDP Conduct and Expectations.

tanais58crane · February 2020

Ah now, this is one broad choice to cover. Could I get a clarification on something?

Are we also going to cover individual character rewards against multi-character account rewards as its own topic?

Or would it be the preference for that to be left for another future thread and only be broached in the extent that it affects rewards themselves?

thefabricant · February 2020

Apologies for the (extremely) long post. This is a subject I have a very strong opinion on, so I am breaking up my feedback into a general overview and then each sub section for readability purposes.

Table of Contents.

In order to quickly access any parts of my post, you can Control F and search for the following, just copy paste this text in to get that section.

✪ Part 1 – New Progression and Reward Paradigm.
✪ Part 2 – Boons Rework.
✪ Part 3 – Campaigns as optional content.
✪ Part 4 – Itemization Philosophy.
✪ Part 5 – Crafting.
✪ Part 6 – Chase Items.
✪ Part 7 – Slots in Items.
✪ Part 8 – Potential Implementation and Conclusion.

✪ Part 1 – New Progression and Reward Paradigm.

Feedback Overview.

Reworking the way character progression and rewards are structured internally, to have a consistent paradigm going forward both for item design and the rate at which player power progresses relative to content.

Feedback Goal.

Prevent unnecessary clashes between systems to prevent early forced obsolescence.
Allow for items to remain in a useable state for longer.
Allow for more interesting item design, whilst at the same time retaining a balanced endgame.
Allow for meaningful player choices in terms of item use.
Prevent unnecessary player frustration due to poor risk/reward ratios.
Allow for more horizontal rather than vertical progression.

Feedback Functionality.

Changing multiple systems in order to align them to a single progression/reward paradigm. This will be covered more in depth in each of the different areas my feedback addresses.

Risks and concerns.

Likely cannot be done in the short term, although small changes can be made to some systems to facilitate moving towards this later.
It makes item/reward design more predictable to the player. Depending on the developers aims, that may not be what you want.

thefabricant · February 2020

✪ Part 2 – Boons Rework.

Feedback Overview.

Boons are the only long term reward a player obtains from campaigns. They play a role in character progression and are currently extremely lacklustre, while at the same time acting as a major chore for older players wanting to level up a new character. They also add up over time, leading to eventual power creep due to the way they are structured and the longer the game goes on, the more “catch up” a new player must do as a result of them.

Feedback Goal.

Change boons progression to horizontal rather than vertical, to help curb future power creep.
Make boons more meaningful and feel more impactful. Currently they are extremely lacklustre.
Bring back an element of player choice in character customization, by pitting meaningful boon choices against each other.
Make “alting” less of a chore, due to the reworked boon functionality.
Reduce the amount of catch up a new player must do.

Feedback Functionality.

Change the way campaign boons work, to make them similar to stronghold boons. Instead of allowing you to allocate additional points for every campaign you complete, you will always only be allowed to switch between 6 campaign boons. Two offensive, two defensive and two utility. Completing a campaign would then allow you to allocate points into that campaign’s boons and each campaign would add 1 new boon for each category. As the game goes on, there would be more and more choices to pick between, but the number of boons you could use would always be the same. This does the following:

Allows for more impactful boon choices. As the amount of power from boons is never intended to increase, you could aim for the overall impact of boons on a player to be, for example a 30% improvement so a player will really feel the impact of choosing a boon.
Allows for more innovative boon design. More powerful boons can do more interesting things.
Make campaigns less of a chore for older players. You only need to run through the campaigns for boons that you want. Also reduces the amount of catch up a new player needs to do.
Curbs power creep.

Risks and Concerns.

This type of horizontal progression necessitates that new boons not only be interesting, but also be situational, otherwise some campaigns will never be completed if their boons are considered to be a poor choice.
It is more difficult and time consuming to make powerful boons than make flat stat increases.
It necessitates recycling older mechanics, in order to provide incentive to sometimes switch between boons.
Many campaigns may never be ran as a result of this change if not implemented correctly.

thefabricant · February 2020

✪ Part 3 – Campaigns as optional content.

Feedback Overview.

Old campaigns have the problem that, for the most part, once you have the boons you have no reason to go back to them. In addition to that however, they also have the problem that until you do have the boons you feel compelled to run them.

Feedback Goal.

Provide a reason to run old campaigns after obtaining the boons, without feeling compelled to do so.
Provide a reason for new players to run campaigns.
Make campaigns feel optional and fun, rather than compulsory activities.

Feedback Functionality.

The way I would resolve this issue is by adding new rewards to campaign daily quests after a player has completed the campaign. These rewards would either be in the form of RP, RAD or materials used for guild upgrades. The purpose of this is twofold, one to incentivize a player to run through this content and keep it relevant post its sell by date and the second is to provide an upgrade path to new players.

In addition to this, with the changes to itemization proposed in the next post, campaign specific items like hunt items should remain useful for much longer, so players may have a reason to want to farm them long after the campaign’s lifetime.

Risks and Concerns.

Campaigns become too rewarding if not balanced properly.

thefabricant · February 2020

✪ Part 4 – Itemization Philosophy.

Feedback Overview.

Clearly delineate the purposes of crafted gear vs gear with unique effects vs gear with a set bonus, as well as target the general intended power level of gear vs content. Currently whenever a new piece of gear is added, it either automatically invalidates every other item on that gear slot, or it is already invalidated itself. For meaningful itemization this needs to change.

Feedback Goal.

Make both crafted items and dropped items useable in the long term.
Make chase items more interesting and in some cases more expensive.
Add back an element of choice to itemization.
Structure rewards better, to make planning future rewards relative to content easier.

Feedback Functionality.

Currently, crafted gear and dropped gear compete for the same slots. Crafters are faced with the frustration that often anything they create does not persist for longer than a single module and they spend more time than not being unable to craft anything meaningful. To resolve this, I propose that items come in 3 categories, Stat sticks, Unique bonuses and set pieces.

Stat sticks are exactly what the name describes. They are items that exist for the purposes of filling out your stats. I propose that while levelling, some basic stat sticks drop and that vendors sell some for gold when your character begins campaigns and then endgame stat sticks are crafted gear. They will provide much higher combined rating than they currently do, to help combat my proposed change to items with unique bonuses. They also will not come with any bonuses in addition to stats. Pet gear is the only item which will always be a stat stick and is the notable exception to the rule, competing with nothing for its item slot.

Items with unique bonuses are there to help players customize their character. Currently they come in the form of items like enduring boots, which have small bonuses which are not particularly interesting and come on statted items. I propose that all items with unique bonuses come without a combined rating at all and potentially, do not have any stats on them either aside from HP and Power, which will remain unchanged from current values. What they will have however, is extremely potent bonuses, instead of the small bonuses we currently have. They drop from challenging open world content, for example hunts. The bonuses on unique items should be a horizontal progression system and new bonuses as well as old ones should aim for a certain power level then stay there.

As a base line I recommend each item’s bonus is intended to be roughly a 5% damage increase, so at most you are using 5 of them for a 25% increase. This makes them impactful to the point a player can feel the difference between using one and not using one but maintains the same level of improvement of adding together the bonuses on all current existing pieces of gear a player may have slotted.

Set pieces are things like the artefact weapon sets we have currently, or the artefact neck/belt/artefact set. I propose expanding this to allow for body armour sets as well, but not making them a prerequisite for the slots they currently exist on (so you can have unique weapon pieces, or stat stick weapons). The bonuses they provide should in general be stronger than a unique item bonus, with the downside that it occupies more slots. They should specialize a character in a certain direction (potentially towards that type of content), and they are only obtained from dungeons/raids.

How I see these systems engaging with each other:

Game content is designed with the idea that when considering all the possible gear, the hardest content in the game available to you at any given time is completable with 70-90/95% of the obtainable stat pool. The final 5/10% should be chase items and should not be factored in to content design, as it is more for bragging rights then content completion. A very skilled player should be able to complete the content with 70% of the obtainable stats, where as a less skilled player then has some cushion room in the remaining 20/25%. This means that the first dungeon a player encounters, will require them to at minimum reach 70% of the required gear level, before being able to enter it.
Some of the counter stats for dungeons should be intended to be capped, for example a DpS should always cap their offensive counter stats if they are prepared for a dungeon. With the best available crafted gear, this should be possible with 5 open item slots. A player with less good items could then use more item slots to cap the ratings, in exchange for having less unique slots.
Once the player has capped their stats, since there is no further benefit to investing in statted items, they then choose which unique bonuses or set bonuses they want on their remaining item slots.
The result of this change to itemization should be the following:
You always want to have some crafted gear and crafted gear for every spot will hold value, since it is the best obtainable statted gear and the only deciding factor for which statted piece you use is which unique bonuses you want (in other words, you pick the statted pieces that complement your other gear choices).
You always want some items with unique bonuses, or some items with set bonuses as once you have capped your stats with the best available stat sticks, there is no point to equipping more of them and the only remaining way to improve your character is through investing into unique bonuses.
You can introduce new gear to a single item category without automatically invalidating gear in every category. For example, adding new crafted items will only potentially invalidate old crafted items. Adding new unique items should not invalidate any older unique items and the same is true for set items.
Item bonuses can be more meaningful, due to lower overall stat pools and only using a limited number of items with bonuses.
Crafting becomes a much more effective currency sink, as the gear it creates always has some demand.

Examples of the types of bonuses I would like to see on unique or set items:

3 Set bonus Neck/Belt/Artefact for a set which has no stats - Gain an additional encounter power slot.
Gloves or Helmet Bonus - Overloads decay twice as fast but give twice the bonus.
Helmet Bonus - Your encounter powers have half their current cooldowns. You cannot change your encounter powers. After using an encounter power, it is switched out with another encounter power at random.
Helmet Bonus - You cannot see further than 20' from your character. Deal 10% increased damage to enemies within 10'.
Gloves Bonus - Gain Sequence of Skill. For the First 5 seconds of combat, your At-Wills do 10% increased damage. For second 5 seconds of combat, your Encounters deal 10% increased damage. For the third 5 seconds of combat, your daily powers gain 10% increased damage. For the next 5 seconds of combat all 3 power types gain 10% increased damage. The cycle restarts after reaching the final part of the sequence. Powers currently boosted have a sparkling UI panel like when the OP Divine Barrier has critical touch active.
Gloves Bonus - After using 5 altering power types (for example, encounter, at will, encounter, at will, encounter) your next used power will deal double damage. Dealing double damage or breaking the sequence resets the counter.
Boots Bonus - All feats are allocated but grant 55% of their full value.
Gloves Bonus - Your at wills no longer generate Action Points. Your dailies have their Action Point cost cut in half.

As you can see, these bonuses are much more impactful, both to performance and to character gameplay than current item bonuses.

Risks and Concerns.

Cannot be done in a single change, it modifies too many aspects off itemization at once.
Necessitates that all older items become obsolete.
Necessitates that players properly understand the counter stats system, otherwise it is very easy for them to equip too many items with unique bonuses and end up with a character that is not functional.
Requires that items with unique bonuses are balanced very carefully, to prevent players from all using the same items.
Requires rebalancing the amount of Counter stats on all items and rebalancing the number of counter stats all enemies have.

thefabricant · February 2020

✪ Part 5 – Crafting.

Feedback Overview.

Make crafting a more satisfying process long term, which both rewards players who craft and players who collect resources.

Feedback Goal.

Make gathering of resources rewarding to both new players and endgame players.
Make crafting rewarding long term.
Hopefully, make farming resources unreasonable to do for bots.
Make the gathering of resources more interesting and less of a chore.

Feedback Functionality.

I have linked this before, so I won’t write it all out again, just link to it again.

https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1252116/pve-suggestion-infinite-dungeon-progression-system

Risks and Concerns.

Development resource requirements are high.
Needs to be carefully balanced so that players have incentive to push for harder content, whilst still being rewarding enough for those who cannot progress there.

thefabricant · February 2020

✪ Part 6 – Chase Items.

Feedback Overview.

Improve the design for chase items, both through crafting which currently has no chase items and through item drops.

Feedback Goal.

Ensure that the hunting of chase items is a fun process and not a frustrating one.
Provide incentive to go after chase items.
In some areas, add an element of risk and reward for the creation of chase items.
Allow for the revitalization of old items.

Feedback Functionality.

Whilst the M17 implementation of chase items is good, it is possible to do it better, especially in the implementation of crafted chase items which Neverwinter has never really had. Here are (in my opinion) some important rules.

Chase items should not be gated behind drop RNG unless they are also unbound. Going after items like Shadowstalker rings is frustrating, not fun. ToMM rings are an excellent implementation.
Chase items should not be rewarded from levelling content and should be adequately challenging in contrast to the reward. A bad example of a Chase item is the new pet gear, which should in my opinion have the +4/+5 variant added to the watcher bosses loot tables because currently there is no challenge in farming it, just frustration.
Content should not be balanced around chase items, that is not their purpose. They exist as, “the item to have” and should be difficult to obtain and good enough to justify bragging about.
Chase items can be gated behind crafting RNG in some cases, provided it is done well.

In terms of adding crafted chase items, I recommend doing this in 2 ways. The first is adding a new crafting process which allows you to craft extra bonuses onto an item, but with the drawback of incredible risks involved and opportunity costs. The resource cost to do so would be low (about 100k AD), but the outcomes would not be guaranteed and would work as follows:

The outcome of crafting would outright delete the item 25% of the time.
The outcome of crafting would lock disable enchantment slots for this item.
Nothing happens 25% of the time (the item remains the same).
A random bonus is picked from a table of bonuses available on that item slot 25% of the time.

After attempting to craft an item in this manner, you may not attempt to craft on that item again. It is a once off attempt. After attempting such a craft, the item will be bound as well. This has the advantage that it allows you to cheaply try and craft one of these bonuses onto an item which has no value if you want the bonus, but there is a massive opportunity cost on trying to craft it onto BiS gear. As a result of this it can easily revitalize old pieces of gear if a player gets a bonus, they want on it and because this is random, creates some diversity in gear usage. It also gives the players with lots of currency a currency sink, as they chase after the perfect bonus on the perfect item.

Additionally, every item should have an extra set of unlockable stats on them, using cubes of augmentation. The base value would be 1000 with a max value of 3000 on each piece, allowing players to roll on them. This acts as a significant AD sink for players who want to min max but, provided is not accounted for in general content design (assume the minimum value of 1000), has no impact on endgame.

The second method is through adding very long recipe chains which require hard to obtain items, to craft chase pieces of gear. This would be equivalent to a harder version of masterwork.

Risks and Concerns.

If the crafting system is not explained adequately, players may delete items that are valuable to them without intending to. Huge potential for backlash.
Items need to be balanced very carefully. The same is true for the mods in the random table.
There needs to be enough mods to make getting the bonus you want a difficult process.
There needs to be chase items appealing to every class.

thefabricant · February 2020

✪ Part 7 – Slots in Items.

Feedback Overview.

This is not directly related to rewards and progression, but it goes hand in hand with streamlining by making it more convenient to use multiple items, thus actually promoting item choice. The current slot system for enchantments is antiquated and can be greatly improved.

Feedback Goal.

Make it easier to swap between items.
Make the user interface for changing enchantments more friendly.
Make the user interface helpful for colour blind people.

Feedback Functionality.

Remove slots from items, instead embed them into the UI. Changing items changes the type of slots available or enables/disables slots. For example, if you have a radiant enchantment slotted in an offensive slot and you switch to an item with a defensive slot in that area, it swaps the effect from offensive to defensive.
If an item is not slotted, the slots are disabled for that piece.
Its recommended with this system, to remove the gold cost from unsocketing enchantments, however, if keeping the gold cost is considered important, then it is recommended to add the ability to “consume gold in advance” for moving enchantments around so that it can be done with loadouts so long as the gold has already been spent.
Add symbols for the slots indicating what they are, so people who are colour blind can tell at a glance.
Reduce the number of clicks involved in unsocketing and resocketing enchantments.

Here is an example of how I think it should work:

Note, this is my mockup attempt at designing something like this and I expect a proper UI artist could make something much better. The point is to illustrate that it can be done better.

Risks and Concerns.

Removing the gold cost for swapping enchantments may remove an important gold sink.
If the new system is not immediately intuitive, it could confuse people.

Note, there are additional risks present specifically in how I designed it, for example, if you want to design items with variable socket numbers (more than 3) the design gets in the way of that. I am sure someone who knows more about UI design can come up with a better design to overcome these kinds of issues though.

✪ Part 8 – Potential Implementation and Conclusion.

Bringing the above walls of text back into grounded reality, I thought I would conclude by ranking this feedback in terms of what I consider to be my personal priority for it.

Boons – A Priority, since it is one of the easiest systems to overhaul and likely has one of the bigger impacts out of the changes I suggested.
Itemization – A priority. It has the largest potential positive impact going forward, but it is also one of the hardest changes to implement.
Professions changes – B priority. Whilst a system overhaul as I proposed would be nice to have, it is not necessary, and the current system is functional. Furthermore, the investment required to achieve this is colossal compared to the reward.
Chase Items – B Priority. These items only impact a small portion of the player base and whilst important, improving itemization for the entire player base is a far larger concern.
Enchantment Slot Redesign – C priority. Although it is a huge QoL improvement, I don’t feel it is immediately required to improve rewards.

The boons issue is likely the one which could be tackled first and likely could be entirely implemented in a single module, so I won’t mention how I would potentially consider implementing that. The itemization change however, is huge and would probably have to be planned for across several modules. The easiest way to go about it would likely to start introducing new hunt items with these kinds of bonuses and then with the next professions overhaul, introduce a set of levelling gear as well as endgame professions gear to support them better. The hunt items would see very limited use at first before the professions update, due to requiring extreme stat bloat to fit them into your build, but some people would still be able to make use of them.

Anyhow, essay over. Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings.

theraxin · February 2020

Okay, my first suggestion is: Separate this discussion into more parts and give it more time. As @thefabricant shown above, this is easily can be separated into more than 6, but in my opinion, into almost a dozen full discussions with the significant importance and weight. Which, if we only give any single aspect 3 days, just cannot reasonably fit into the deadline, but now even into this month.

Also, because everything is discussed structureless the same time it quickly becomes just a mesh of things that cannot be untangled.

carloswartune · February 2020

I'd like to focus on a very important point raised by @thefabricant on part 6: bound items should absolutely not depend entirely on RNG.

Feedback Overview:
Important Bound on Pickup items/gear should always have at least one way to be obtained deterministically (i.e. not depending luck)

Feedback Goal:
Reduce frustration caused by bad luck, always rewarding players with some progress after they complete some piece of content

Feedback Functionality:
All content that has a chance to drop bound gear or other useful bound items should also have a system tied to it where players can get the same items deterministically. Many different approaches can be taken to create such a system, like:

- Currency/store approach: completing the content will always grant players a certain currency and, if you didn't get your desired item by luck, you can use your collected currency to buy it. This approach already exists in-game for the Lionheart (ToMM) Weapons.

- Quest approach: completing the content will always grant players progress in a repeatable quest that can be taken at will. After completing the content a certain number of times, you'll complete the quest and will receive a choice pack where you can choose the item you desire. This approach already exists in a limited way in-game in the Stardock yellow quest "The Teachings of Zerthimon", where you can select a piece of companion gear after completing a certain number of Fragment Expeditions. This implementation is not ideal because it does not include every item and can only be done once.

- Restoration approach: completing the content will always grant players a specific "restoration material". If players don't get the desired item by luck, they will be able to buy a "broken" version of it by a small amount of gold, AD or another existing currency. The desired item will then be obtained by "restoring" the broken version with a certain amount of the "restoration material". Restoring gear is a very common system in this game, but I don't think it was ever used for this purpose.

Other approaches may be used as well, as long as the result stays the same: a clear, guaranteed way to farm for a desired item.

Why does this matter? It's extremely frustrating to do the same thing over and over, hoping for a lucky drop, and feeling like no progress was made at all when RNG doesn't favor you. With systems like this in place, players always get some progress done and won't feel their efforts were completely wasted.

Risks & Concerns:
The "currency/store" approach will make the "Neverwinter has too many currencies" problem worse and must be used with moderation.

krumple01 · February 2020

This topic I have been waiting for and I have a lot to say on this topic but I don't know where to start. I also just want to say, there are no bullet points this time because I want to express my experience to make my points on these topics. So if I sound salty, or attacking, it is just the frustration I have behind these experiences.

A1. First I suppose I want to get this idea out of the way. Why should a character that has spent a lot of time, astral diamonds or even money on progression, to have all that effort and success taken a way?

My main character is a Cleric and if I run Lomm on my Devout build, I can actually do significant damage to the monsters. Even though technically the Devout build isn't meant to deal damage, it can. But if I run Cragmire Crypts, my damage goes to basically nothing even thought this dungeon is so old, I shouldn't be reduced to nothing. You have stripped the fun out of progression or any progression by stripping the character running older content. It becomes frustrating because show me a point where scaling isn't being drastically used? Pretty much anything that isn't the new mod is being scaled. Why? Bring back progression and remove scaling, its not fun to be artificially nerfed in content that doesn't give any reward other than some rough AD.

A2. To go along the same lines, during mod 16 and 17 running Lomm I collected a few pieces of gear and ran it over 200 times, so I know it well. But now in mod 18 my character is scaled in Lomm. Why? What was the point in making the effort to obtain items to only be reduced and capped out now? The dungeons when they are scaled become convoluted, so you remove all the stats that make the character feel strong in favor of the player running content that is harder for less reward. Because it is less reward now but its harder to actually run it now. How does that make any sense?

B. And then rewards. First I think refinement point gems should be removed from all the end chests. We get so much refinement points, 90% of the current rewards are nothing other than refinement points. I have so many refinement points I have over 5 million backlog of refinement points. Yet get so much tossed at me, its no longer a reward. It just seems like a cheap way to make the player feel like they are being given something. So many items from end chests just go straight to refinement points, armor pieces that I don't want or need. Put something more meaningful in the reward chests in the dungeons.

On a side note I also think refinement gems should be removed from Lock boxes. I think its also just filler and since I already get thousands of refinement point in game, why would I want to open a lock box that is going to give me 99 times out of 100 nothing more than refinement points.

I don't think I am alone in these thoughts and perhaps they aren't well thought out and mostly wanted to use personal experience to make my points. I am frustrated by these things and yet I feel like I am the type of player to put up with a lot of stuff, I can only imagine how the rest of the player base feels about these things.

But as far as rewards go, I think the idea for me comes from the idea that 90% of the items in the game are obsolete, outdated or there is a better alternative. Yet the only thing we can do with these items we don't want is to turn them into refinement points.

1. One idea is to convert all these unwanted items into the current mods seals. They don't need to be a lot, maybe 5 newest seals per item sacrificed.

2. Another idea is to allow all the outdated or obsolete items to be brought up to the current mods range. So you can introduce some way of infusing power into these items which bring them up to be relevant. There can be multiple stages to this process which require a simi rare drop. Similar to how we exalted weapons from the Chult campaign, but instead of just making them upgraded once, they can be brought up to compete with current mod items.

So any artifact weapon of the past and any armor sets from campaigns in the past can all be brought up to current stats. Something like this would actually give older outdated items have some value or worth obtaining.

3. Also when using rerolls in reward chests, some times or actually many times I have this experience where I press the button to reroll but nothing actually changes. It makes me think for a second that I'm lagging. But after 4 more rerolls I realize nope, I wasn't lagging. I wouldn't even bring this up if it only happened to me once or twice but its pretty much every time I go into a dungeon it will happen. I honestly can't believe that the loot table is so limited that my odds of rerolling the same exact reward as previous would happen that often. I think this is either a bug, or there is some metric behind the scene where it's used to spend up rerolls without actually providing any actual "chance" at better rewards.

cwhitesidedev · February 2020

tanais58crane said:
Ah now, this is one broad choice to cover. Could I get a clarification on something?

Are we also going to cover individual character rewards against multi-character account rewards as its own topic?

Or would it be the preference for that to be left for another future thread and only be broached in the extent that it affects rewards themselves?

Yes we can absolutely discuss account bound and character bound.

Chris

theraxin · February 2020

Also, I try for the first time to push my comment into the feedback format, but it's feels chopping as it does not even allow to explain the problem that I would like to fix, It went into the feedback functionality:

Feedback Overview: "Planned obsolescence" instead of "Random obsolescence"

Feedback Goal: More structured and purposeful introduction and use of items.

Feedback Functionality:

The problem: Currently the game seems to introduce new gear for almost only the sake of doing so, while significant parts of the game lacks purpose as it cannot give rewards (or more specifically, gear) to worth doing. We get a new pant and shirt every mod, while there are professions to be had to make shirts that needs more effort to be made, but filled a vast array of obsolete gear. Same with rings, we have jewelcrafting, but jewelcrafting is obsolete because almost every single piece of good ring designed to come from ToMM and even when it's not, like the Basilisk one, it feels like a huge mistake as it does not even come from MC. Also, the Mastercraft. It meant to compete with all other gear rewards, but sometimes the gear is just worse by the time it comes out and we only can dig up the nichest reasons why it's not full obsolete. When someone said that the manticore armor can be sold because it's a reagent for the next MC level... so basically a piece of gear is used as a token item to upgrade your MC and as a skin. I could rant about this for the next 2 page, but the point is, it's a mess.

The solution: It's only really needs some thought and the game currently has the solution, for some aspects. Like, the weapons are clearly separated by the "catch-up" one to adjust into mod16, the slighly better for those who did LoMM and the new tier for the next layer of difficulty after the trial. While I have concerns about how often should new tiers be introduced, at least I can reasonably tell people that the lionheart is expected to be the BiS until a new trial is introduced.

It only needs the same thought and separation: Why the catch-up pants from the new seal is just the best one? Why neither the profession and any other content cannot give my class a better shirt than the Ebony stained one that comes from an RNG roll 2 mods ago? I guess there is a mathematical formula that just spit out that the gears need X% of increase to fit into something, but is that serves it's purpose correctly?

Risks & Concerns: Because I did not specifically mention things like "make the BiS pants come from MC professions" or any other things, it's can be flexibly used enough to not have any specific risks. Maybe that it needs rethinking the whole reward structure as what content should be responsible and locked into which role and place huge attention when a piece of content wants to reward something that is not necessarily in it's specific role.

cwhitesidedev · February 2020

theraxin#5169 said:
Okay, my first suggestion is: Separate this discussion into more parts and give it more time. As @thefabricant shown above, this is easily can be separated into more than 6, but in my opinion, into almost a dozen full discussions with the significant importance and weight. Which, if we only give any single aspect 3 days, just cannot reasonably fit into the deadline, but now even into this month.

Also, because everything is discussed structureless the same time it quickly becomes just a mesh of things that cannot be untangled.

Hi Theraxin,

If you get the time please do read the OP in full.

While some of the topics above may spawn their own individual CDPs, we wanted to provide a broader scope for rewards and refine the topic as needed in the future.

Chris

rjc9000 · February 2020

thefabricant said:
✪ Part 3 – Campaigns as optional content.

Feedback Overview.

Old campaigns have the problem that, for the most part, once you have the boons you have no reason to go back to them. In addition to that however, they also have the problem that until you do have the boons you feel compelled to run them.

Feedback Goal.

• Provide a reason to run old campaigns after obtaining the boons, without feeling compelled to do so.
• Provide a reason for new players to run campaigns.
• Make campaigns feel optional and fun, rather than compulsory activities.

Feedback Functionality.

The way I would resolve this issue is by adding new rewards to campaign daily quests after a player has completed the campaign. These rewards would either be in the form of RP, RAD or materials used for guild upgrades. The purpose of this is twofold, one to incentivize a player to run through this content and keep it relevant post its sell by date and the second is to provide an upgrade path to new players.
In addition to this, with the changes to itemization proposed in the next post, campaign specific items like hunt items should remain useful for much longer, so players may have a reason to want to farm them long after the campaign’s lifetime.

Risks and Concerns.

• Campaigns become too rewarding if not balanced properly.

To piggyback off Sharp's idea of overhauling campaign rewards: what if classes could unlocked a third paragon path by completing a campaign task for it and said paragon path is based around that campaign's theme?

Overview

Old campaigns are generally not "that" impactful, and there is a sentiment that boons are generally there as "something for more stat points" and not something that decides your character. A new subclass could add these game defining attributes, such as a DPS path for Paladin.

So I was thinking: why not add in some more paragon paths to campaigns?

Goals

To provide a reason to run old campaign content, even if you dislike the boons offered.
To expand extra subclass options/playstyles that some people have been clamoring for.

Functionality

Essentially, take a 5e subclass (or any prior edition subclass/class) and make its access only available through completing a campaign task from a themed campaign. Some concessions will have to be made translating the subclass to NW, such as the subclass not quite matching the 5e/original edition class.

One example would be an upcoming pirate/Zorro themed module that might be set to release. A Rogue Tank path based around timing parries and finesse could be christened as the Swashbuckler and its access be given as a campaign task in this pirate/Zorro flavored campaign.

Another example could be giving the Fighter a magic/melee paragon spec, the Eldritch Knight, from doing Stardock. The reasoning for this would be because the gith have the famous "gish" term that denotes a warrior that has decent proficiency in magic. For the people who want to be immersed in the story, the idea is that the Fighter characters learn the secrets of the paragon path from the gith in story, which is why it's locked to Stardock.

The goal behind adding these paths would be to expand options for classes (ex: Paladin DPS paragon tied to Sybella/3rd Eye campaign) or add in new playstyles (ex: a magic Barbarian spec based around magic runes, the Rune Knight, tied to Storm King's Thunder) that attempts to balance new ideas with reusing code to help cut down on programming time.

Risks and Concerns

The biggest one: time used to develop these new paragon paths/reuse assets or animations takes away development time from doing more important things like solving game breaking issues, or developing new module content.
The game's programming flat out won't allow you to add an extra paragon path.
The paragon path being a case of a "if you have this reward, you've proven you don't need it" for your average NW player that doesn't grind all day.

An example would be giving a Paladin DPS paragon, but if the campaign task is tied to is Avernus rather than an easier campaign like the 3rd Eye intro Campaign. The reason this is a problem is because Avernus is supposed to be a difficult campaign that isn't intended to be done immediately, whereas giving Paladin players a DPS spec should be done in an early campaign so Paladins can use that DPS spec for easier soloing in other campaigns.
Class balance/imbalance issues (you guys really should consider a CDP on this one ...)
The issue of "why should I bother running this campaign if the boons suck and if the subclass isn't for my current class" still remains.
Some fans are mad that their favorite subclass wasn't represented "properly" from the tabletop game to NW.

theraxin · February 2020

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

theraxin#5169 said:
Okay, my first suggestion is: Separate this discussion into more parts and give it more time. As @thefabricant shown above, this is easily can be separated into more than 6, but in my opinion, into almost a dozen full discussions with the significant importance and weight. Which, if we only give any single aspect 3 days, just cannot reasonably fit into the deadline, but now even into this month.

Also, because everything is discussed structureless the same time it quickly becomes just a mesh of things that cannot be untangled.
Hi Theraxin,

If you get the time please do read the OP in full.

While some of the topics above may spawn their own individual CDPs, we wanted to provide a broader scope for rewards and refine the topic as needed in the future.

Chris

I read that part, but as I said, if there's no time to discuss or even bring up some less important, but significant points, because the discussion is so broad that I need to cut down to like 3 things, they won't come up again as no one could have voiced it's significance. Also, because as seen, very specific things can hog up days or a week to discuss by the community, it can easily end up just talking about a few thing and just not even touching important, but less popularly known parts of the topic, like mastercraft that does not really affect that much player.

But if I were just spamming out everything to fill into the time, I couldn't respond to other player's ideas or their own point as after it gets buried under 20 pages, no one will respond to correct me out or I would just not see it.

Edit: In short, I feel the 15 days pretty short even for a broader discussion, especially for those who probably couldn't just jumped in the first day on a few day basis as I can.

cwhitesidedev · February 2020

theraxin#5169 said:

cwhitesidedev#9752 said:

theraxin#5169 said:
Okay, my first suggestion is: Separate this discussion into more parts and give it more time. As @thefabricant shown above, this is easily can be separated into more than 6, but in my opinion, into almost a dozen full discussions with the significant importance and weight. Which, if we only give any single aspect 3 days, just cannot reasonably fit into the deadline, but now even into this month.

Also, because everything is discussed structureless the same time it quickly becomes just a mesh of things that cannot be untangled.
Hi Theraxin,

If you get the time please do read the OP in full.

While some of the topics above may spawn their own individual CDPs, we wanted to provide a broader scope for rewards and refine the topic as needed in the future.

Chris
I read that part, but as I said, if there's no time to discuss or even bring up some less important, but significant points, because the discussion is so broad that I need to cut down to like 3 things, they won't come up again as no one could have voiced it's significance. Also, because as seen, very specific things can hog up days or a week to discuss by the community, it can easily end up just talking about a few thing and just not even touching important, but less popularly known parts of the topic, like mastercraft that does not really affect that much player.

But if I were just spamming out everything to fill into the time, I couldn't respond to other player's ideas or their own point as after it gets buried under 20 pages, no one will respond to correct me out or I would just not see it.

Edit: In short, I feel the 15 days pretty short even for a broader discussion, especially for those who probably couldn't just jumped in the first day on a few day basis as I can.

Yes i think we should increase the time to 3 weeks and adapt as necessary. Setting a fixed time on most CDP topics is not great for the reasons you mention. So we will change it to 3 weeks and I will help with the flow of work and phases as necessary (sometimes it is clear when to move to a new phase, sometimes it is clear that a phase needs more time)./

Thanks Theraxin.

Chris

cwhitesidedev · February 2020

Hi All and welcome to the new CDP (thanks for joining us).

I am probably not going to get properly involved for a couple of days. I will stay up to date but I/we do need some downtime from the last CDP (The CDP is great but it is extremely time consuming and takes a lot of energy).

I suggest discussing your thoughts and ideas at a high level to begin, then we will drill into a variety of them as necessary and then in the final phase we will list top 3 ideas.

And at some point we will do a CDP on the CDP (-:

Thanks

Chris

thefabricant · February 2020

theraxin#5169 said:

Also, because everything is discussed structureless the same time it quickly becomes just a mesh of things that cannot be untangled.

@theraxin#5169 I take issue with this, my post has structure, even a table of contents! :P

theraxin · February 2020

thefabricant said:

theraxin#5169 said:

Also, because everything is discussed structureless the same time it quickly becomes just a mesh of things that cannot be untangled.
@theraxin#5169 I take issue with this, my post has structure, even a table of contents! :P

Well, yes, posts by their own credit will be (hopefully) highly structured, but now imagine 18 people reacting for 6 of your topic on 3 different page with unrelated posts by the dozen between. Would you read every comment that does not mention you while also trying to discuss everything correctly and in a formulated way? I personally don't want to take 3 weeks off to just do that

hoverist · February 2020

Masterwork Profession

First of all, I would like to Express my desire to see things for companions in the new crafting. Things must be either analogous to things from expeditions(1010 level) or better quality. Different variations of things with different stats and slots for stones.

The range of crafting can be expanded, for example, with consumables of all types. You can list them, starting with leaflets from the Tower of the Mad Mage, ending with signs for improving things. About tablets: make a likeness of omuan tale carving, but for crafting things. For example, there was a major update, where new armor was introduced. And with the help of these tale carving, you can raise the level of a thing to the actual one.

Also very concerned about the relevance of crafting - will it become useless again in a short period of time?

Very important, as for me, is the relevance of resources collected from maps. For example, in all previous crafts, we encountered the fact that Gold Ore was needed everywhere in large quantities, while Molybdenum was almost never used in subsequent crafts. I would like to see the absence of "unnecessary" resources when collecting from maps.

Moving away from the theme of crafting, but closely related to it - is guild marks. 30k is a very small limit for full-fledged crafting, sometimes this amount may not be enough for even one thing, not to mention a set. This restriction does not give someone a great advantage, but it brings great inconvenience. This is also caused by the fact that players from high-level guilds have nowhere to put resources to convert them to guild marks. I propose to put some merchant who could exchange one campaign currency(for example, the tyranny of dragons) for coupons for gems for the Guild(with the preservation of proporia marks). You can also enter some Guild buildings that would allow high-level guilds to get rid of the limit in Mimic, but were also useful for the entire Guild as a whole.

dontez1 · February 2020

thefabricant said:
✪ Part 4 – Itemization Philosophy.
Feedback Overview.

Clearly delineate the purposes of crafted gear vs gear with unique effects vs gear with a set bonus, as well as target the general intended power level of gear vs content. Currently whenever a new piece of gear is added, it either automatically invalidates every other item on that gear slot, or it is already invalidated itself. For meaningful itemization this needs to change.

Feedback Goal.
Make both crafted items and dropped items useable in the long term.
Make chase items more interesting and in some cases more expensive.
Add back an element of choice to itemization.
Structure rewards better, to make planning future rewards relative to content easier.
Feedback Functionality.

Currently, crafted gear and dropped gear compete for the same slots. Crafters are faced with the frustration that often anything they create does not persist for longer than a single module and they spend more time than not being unable to craft anything meaningful. To resolve this, I propose that items come in 3 categories, Stat sticks, Unique bonuses and set pieces.

Stat sticks are exactly what the name describes. They are items that exist for the purposes of filling out your stats. I propose that while levelling, some basic stat sticks drop and that vendors sell some for gold when your character begins campaigns and then endgame stat sticks are crafted gear. They will provide much higher combined rating than they currently do, to help combat my proposed change to items with unique bonuses. They also will not come with any bonuses in addition to stats. Pet gear is the only item which will always be a stat stick and is the notable exception to the rule, competing with nothing for its item slot.

Items with unique bonuses are there to help players customize their character. Currently they come in the form of items like enduring boots, which have small bonuses which are not particularly interesting and come on statted items. I propose that all items with unique bonuses come without a combined rating at all and potentially, do not have any stats on them either aside from HP and Power, which will remain unchanged from current values. What they will have however, is extremely potent bonuses, instead of the small bonuses we currently have. They drop from challenging open world content, for example hunts. The bonuses on unique items should be a horizontal progression system and new bonuses as well as old ones should aim for a certain power level then stay there.

As a base line I recommend each item’s bonus is intended to be roughly a 5% damage increase, so at most you are using 5 of them for a 25% increase. This makes them impactful to the point a player can feel the difference between using one and not using one but maintains the same level of improvement of adding together the bonuses on all current existing pieces of gear a player may have slotted.

Set pieces are things like the artefact weapon sets we have currently, or the artefact neck/belt/artefact set. I propose expanding this to allow for body armour sets as well, but not making them a prerequisite for the slots they currently exist on (so you can have unique weapon pieces, or stat stick weapons). The bonuses they provide should in general be stronger than a unique item bonus, with the downside that it occupies more slots. They should specialize a character in a certain direction (potentially towards that type of content), and they are only obtained from dungeons/raids.

How I see these systems engaging with each other:
Game content is designed with the idea that when considering all the possible gear, the hardest content in the game available to you at any given time is completable with 70-90/95% of the obtainable stat pool. The final 5/10% should be chase items and should not be factored in to content design, as it is more for bragging rights then content completion. A very skilled player should be able to complete the content with 70% of the obtainable stats, where as a less skilled player then has some cushion room in the remaining 20/25%. This means that the first dungeon a player encounters, will require them to at minimum reach 70% of the required gear level, before being able to enter it.
Some of the counter stats for dungeons should be intended to be capped, for example a DpS should always cap their offensive counter stats if they are prepared for a dungeon. With the best available crafted gear, this should be possible with 5 open item slots. A player with less good items could then use more item slots to cap the ratings, in exchange for having less unique slots.
Once the player has capped their stats, since there is no further benefit to investing in statted items, they then choose which unique bonuses or set bonuses they want on their remaining item slots.
The result of this change to itemization should be the following:
You always want to have some crafted gear and crafted gear for every spot will hold value, since it is the best obtainable statted gear and the only deciding factor for which statted piece you use is which unique bonuses you want (in other words, you pick the statted pieces that complement your other gear choices).
You always want some items with unique bonuses, or some items with set bonuses as once you have capped your stats with the best available stat sticks, there is no point to equipping more of them and the only remaining way to improve your character is through investing into unique bonuses.
You can introduce new gear to a single item category without automatically invalidating gear in every category. For example, adding new crafted items will only potentially invalidate old crafted items. Adding new unique items should not invalidate any older unique items and the same is true for set items.
Item bonuses can be more meaningful, due to lower overall stat pools and only using a limited number of items with bonuses.
Crafting becomes a much more effective currency sink, as the gear it creates always has some demand.

This has to be the best post I've seen on what gear progression should look like.
✪ Part 2 – Boons Rework. Is also really good.

Fantastic job @thefabricant

theraxin · February 2020

thefabricant said:
✪ Part 3 – Campaigns as optional content.
Feedback Overview.

Old campaigns have the problem that, for the most part, once you have the boons you have no reason to go back to them. In addition to that however, they also have the problem that until you do have the boons you feel compelled to run them.

Feedback Goal.
Provide a reason to run old campaigns after obtaining the boons, without feeling compelled to do so.
Provide a reason for new players to run campaigns.
Make campaigns feel optional and fun, rather than compulsory activities.
Feedback Functionality.

The way I would resolve this issue is by adding new rewards to campaign daily quests after a player has completed the campaign. These rewards would either be in the form of RP, RAD or materials used for guild upgrades. The purpose of this is twofold, one to incentivize a player to run through this content and keep it relevant post its sell by date and the second is to provide an upgrade path to new players.

In addition to this, with the changes to itemization proposed in the next post, campaign specific items like hunt items should remain useful for much longer, so players may have a reason to want to farm them long after the campaign’s lifetime.

Risks and Concerns.
Campaigns become too rewarding if not balanced properly.

By the way, on this topic, I need to mention the Dread Ring campaign that pretty consistently is able to provide reason for significance over years and still does. But the most important part that it did not need some artificial tweak, but was ergonomically integrated into the campaign.

Also, a more important risk is missing: Requiring the players to daily engage with 10+ different campaign can easily be hostile or overwhelming to newer players, so even moderately rewarding daily grind can stack up harshly and alienate them. Alsoalso, the Dread Ring solved this by requiring very minimal effort and letting you stack the keys and to be prepared for the double stones event. Or how the black ice overload enchantments always good enough, but it's tied to Heroic Encounters, not quests, so people can engage them when and how much they want.

demarw2 · February 2020

FEEDBACK CONTENT: dungeon loot rewards
FEEDBACK GOAL: dungeon and item system of neverwinter

Me and my mates/friends don't admire the loot/reward system of neverwinter. Let's start with the standing of a "DUNGEON" (or trial, skirmish,...):

Usually dungeons are a very specific thing. They are hard challenges and some highlights of the game. So it should be like "I am doing the whole week my dailys and prepare my equip to run at the weekend a dungeon with my friends". But in Neverwinter dungeons are the daily content. To get the main currency to improve the equipment we have to run dungeons (in random queues) every day. So they are nothing special anymore. And they are pretty easy. So what to do after the daily dungeons? Nothing. Because the old dungeons are easy and boring (because of running them every day). Why should I run FBI after my daily routine? There are no rewards and no fun.

So let's come back to the topic (rewards). There should be hard mode versions of dungeons. Different levels. Like "epic" or "mythic". These should be as hard as the new contents normal mode. And finishing them should bring some nice rewards. So that new items are not only available in the new map. So I could say "Let's run FBI mythic because the boots I want can drop there" (boss Loot or chest Loot). So that the Bis items should be farmed in different dungeons. Buying them with seals or running expeditions to get them is pretty boring compared to pretty hard dungeons. And I like the "system" of the Shadowstalker Rings (example). There are different rarities. +1, +2,..., +5. Introducing that for all items would be a nice way. Each version of a gear piece can be found in a different location. For example: the "blabla Boots" +1 can be optained in the new campaigns hunts (like Barovia hunts - they were quite funny). +2 I can get in the new dungeon (normal mode). +3 can drop in epic FBI. +4 in epic LoMM and +5 in mythic LOL. So I can get these boots pretty easy. But getting them in a better version will force me to run old dungeons in epic or mythic version, which are pretty hard. If my guild or group is not strong enough to finish mythic LOL, we try epic FBI to get these boots.

I hope you understand what I wanted to say, because my English is not that great for long texts. That's why I worked with so many examples.

thefabricant · February 2020

theraxin#5169 said:

thefabricant said:
✪ Part 3 – Campaigns as optional content.
Feedback Overview.

Old campaigns have the problem that, for the most part, once you have the boons you have no reason to go back to them. In addition to that however, they also have the problem that until you do have the boons you feel compelled to run them.

Feedback Goal.
Provide a reason to run old campaigns after obtaining the boons, without feeling compelled to do so.
Provide a reason for new players to run campaigns.
Make campaigns feel optional and fun, rather than compulsory activities.
Feedback Functionality.

The way I would resolve this issue is by adding new rewards to campaign daily quests after a player has completed the campaign. These rewards would either be in the form of RP, RAD or materials used for guild upgrades. The purpose of this is twofold, one to incentivize a player to run through this content and keep it relevant post its sell by date and the second is to provide an upgrade path to new players.

In addition to this, with the changes to itemization proposed in the next post, campaign specific items like hunt items should remain useful for much longer, so players may have a reason to want to farm them long after the campaign’s lifetime.

Risks and Concerns.
Campaigns become too rewarding if not balanced properly.
By the way, on this topic, I need to mention the Dread Ring campaign that pretty consistently is able to provide reason for significance over years and still does. But the most important part that it did not need some artificial tweak, but was ergonomically integrated into the campaign.

Also, a more important risk is missing: Requiring the players to daily engage with 10+ different campaign can easily be hostile or overwhelming to newer players, so even moderately rewarding daily grind can stack up harshly and alienate them. Alsoalso, the Dread Ring solved this by requiring very minimal effort and letting you stack the keys and to be prepared for the double stones event. Or how the black ice overload enchantments always good enough, but it's tied to Heroic Encounters, not quests, so people can engage them when and how much they want.

That is a good point, there are some ways you could mitigate this though. For example, if you only gained rewards for the first 2 campaigns you did the dailies for of your choice. The dailies would provide a large bonus so there would be immediate benefit. This would have the following advantages:

Players would not suffer from fatigue from being forced to run many campaigns.
Players can choose which campaigns they want to run to get their rewards.
The reward amounts do not grow disproportionately out of control as the amount of campaigns increase.
The rewards could be more immediate and be bigger as they are fewer, thus feel more rewarding when you do them.

However, there are also the following downsides:

Players cannot binge run a campaign in the style of dread ring for rewards, if they wish to as this fixes how rewarding campaigns are in general.
Players will probably run only 2 specific campaigns which are the most time efficient and many campaigns will be ignored.

An alternate way to solve the problem is that instead of immediately getting dailies, each day you get a token for each campaign provided you at least log in. These tokens stack up over time and have no upper stack limit. When you want to run the dailies, you redeem them at a vendor for that merchant which will then give you that campaign's dailies. Those dailies will then give you the rewards.

This has the following advantages:

It allows players to choose when they want to run campaigns.
Players do not feel like they are "losing out" or that they are leaving money on the table if they do not run dailies on that day, since they can redeem that token to run them later.
It allows people to binge run campaigns, dread ring style like now.

However, it has the following downsides:

Still has the potential for campaign burnout, but this is heavily mitigated by the fact that you can choose when you want to run campaigns.
It still has the "reward creep" which exists in a system where every campaign is rewarding but you keep adding more campaigns.

josephskyrim · February 2020

Feedback Overview

Ditch lousy rewards and systems that give lousy or non-rewards. Here are some examples:

-Lunar coins of the Rat. Ok, so if you don't get to 12 to buy the pet you need to wait 12 years for the next one? I thought Hellpit's "Legendary Mount" advertisment was bad.
-Open a skill node, find a 1' pole. Funny, until its not.
-Run a dungeon and only get items that you can already get outside a dungeon.
-Relic gear that needs to be "unlocked to be made usable through more grinding" is not a reward.
-The Vault of Piety could use more options.
-Neverember's IOU's from Cloaked Ascendancy (the main reward of the campaign). Is he ever going to pay those?

Feedback Goal

Encourage people to play and replay content through positive reinforcement.

Feedback Functionality

-Events fix: Always have a minor reward that you can spend a currency of 1 on. Also, stop making event specific currency. Condense them into "event currency" and let people use them on whatever event arrives. Let people grind the summer festival to use rewards on the winter festival or dragon siege etc. Holding onto "dead money" is really quite depressing.

-Skill node fix: the junk items were introduced to stop botting. The real solution is to simply put skill nodes where multiple hard enemy spawns are (and far away from campfires) instead of "cleverly hidden until the internet finds it".

-Dungeon fix: the first time a character completes any instanced content (dungeon/skirmish/trial), they should get an item from the best tier in the loot table (100%, no fail). At least that way the community can learn what drops from where, and gets the "hey that was worth it, I should do it again" feeling. Subsequent runs can go back to your usual odds though. Note: Given there's a bonus AD for running content the first time, there's already a flag in place that tracks that.

Also, dungeons should drop things you can't get outside/elsewhere. If your loot list is too small to populate all your dungeons, make more loot. Ideally powerful but consumable loot. For example: Potion of Power (60mins, persists through death) - gives +1000 power and is stackable. So what if this eventually lets someone solo Tiamat? THEY EARNED IT. LET THEM DO IT.

-Relic Gear fix: easy. Don't ever put more of this horribly designed HAMSTER back in the game. This goes double for putting some mandatory stat on gear that has no purpose outside single campaign zones (everfrost resistance).

-Vault of Piety fix: Add stuff. Easiest things from the top of my head are +AD boosts, health stones, current campaign seals, temporary mounts / companions / hirelings. Note: temporary mounts already existed previously for the mount tutorial. Not sure if they're still around.

-Neverember's IOU's fix: Pay them out as they're eating up inventory space for many mods now. If he just gave +EXP and +GOLD like every other quest, this wouldn't even be an issue. The actual real fix is just to be mindful of how your players will receive whatever rewards you decide.

Risks & Concerns

The only three with concerns I foresee with the above:

1 - A global events currency would require some good pricing mechanics from the dev team.
2 - Handing out good gear from a dungeon might scare devs into thinking people won't return if they already "got what they want"
3 - Players who discarded Neverember's IOU's will feel bad if he pays them out suddenly. Easily fixed by him "not forgetting them" and paying out anyone who has completed the Cloaked Ascendancy campaign equally. Even something from the claims agent will suffice. Like a legendary mount or companion. *cough cough*

thefiresidecat · February 2020

We should get rid of the scaled dungeons and make them all level 80 (other than levelling dungeons). They should be progressively more difficult from their release date to now. They should drop gear in each dungeon that makes the next dungeon more realistic to complete for the newer player with some transmutes for the older players to have a reason to come back to it.
The current design that scales all of the relevant content except for 1 dungeon and skirmish, kills motivation for the newer player to actually level up. What is the point if your enchantments actually lose relevance for most content? There would still be scaling. it would just be predetermined static scaling in the dungeons themselves rather than in the players.

If a player wants to go back and god stomp a first level dungeon then why not. The rewards will be meh for them and if a newer player takes on that same dungeon it will be more difficult for them but the rewards should be meaningful for helping them level up to be able to take on the next dungeon. Dungeons that still have relevant rewards for the end gamer should be difficult but progressively easier the closer you are to bis, and they should be nearly impossible for the newer player. this gives the newer player incentive to level up their gear better. This has the added effect of giving them reason to be in the game, instead of bored: now what?

Right now the end game player doesn't have much to do. dungeon crawls are more or less pointless except for the newest dungeon which gives them very little reason to play.

The newer dungeon players are like why go further? We are in a good place. We don't need high enchantments or gear to do any of the content except the newest dungeon, but the rewards aren't that great anyway and Tomm is a pipe dream. Newer players also are challenged on HOW to level up. they expect the dungeons to help them here and currently they do not. An example with a lower level dungeon helping gear up a lower ranking player is maybe to have a chance of a drop of R10 bound to account bonding stones and empowered rune stones with a blurb on why this is important. Valindras could drop a blue pet and have a chance at dropping a bag of companion tokens to level up that companion wtih a blurb as to how that system works. and one of the early dungeons could drop a mount and some insignias explaining their importance with a focus on wanderers fortune, etc. giving the new player direction to go in to actually be better.

the newest dungeons can drop important things in the game as they do now with some rare chase items tossed in.

potential negatives?
I see no negatives towards reverting back to this older system with modernized adjustments. only positives.

josephskyrim · February 2020

Feedback Overview

Hunt bait-stuff drops shouldn't be RNG (I suppose it's classed as a "reward").

Feedback Goal

Make hunts easier to access.

Feedback Functionality

While I appreciate that RNG is required to limit the "good loot (is it really?)" that drops from hunts, any bait-type item should drop 100% of the time. This was previously done on the T-Rexes in Chult so that they reliably drop teeth (lol, doesn't that sound ridiculous), and the same change should apply to the rest of them: those current, and any similarly future "tiered" ones.

Risks & Concerns

None really. Chult is pretty old content now, so why increase player frustration when they're trying to enjoy that part of the game? Especially when it's just a numerical tweak that was already done once previously?

rurex · February 2020

Feedback Overview: Queue difficulty selectable by player
Feedback Goal: Better replayability of queues
Feedback Functionality:

Instead of "minimum item level" mode I would love to see a slider bar of difficulty. The bar would have several difficulty levels to choose from, for example 10 levels with +10k enemy ratings each. Every level of course would have to increase the rewards in some way. This would allow infinite replayability of all dungeons (easy and hard), for both strong and weak players.

We already have a shadow of this functionality in game, with minimum item level mode and hardcore mode as options for private queues. The problem is that there is no point in running dungeons in those modes. Together with the increased difficulty I would expect increased rewards. For example more chests, additional RAD bonuses, more enchanting stones, marks of potency, wards and so on.

Hardcore mode is a cool idea but lacks those additional rewards.

josephskyrim · February 2020

Feedback Overview

Gold is a common yet underused quest reward. Give us non-crafters something other than med-death-kits to spend it on (new reward category).

Feedback Goal

Let gold purchase more things (have more gold sinks) with these new rewards. I have a few ideas:

Feedback Functionality

1 - Hirelings: temporary companions and / or mounts (24 hrs). You can use any/all of the available stable at any level with prices varying in ranges based on quality (rares are cheaper to hire than legendaries). They perform exactly as their non-temporary counterparts but gain no exp and vanish (along with their boons) once the timer expires.

2 - Stonghold Kitchen food: Not everyone has a level 20 stronghold to buy food from, so why not put it here? Any speed-boost consumable will probably also be a big hit.

3 - Stronghold supplies: When you have too much gold but not enough stronghold currency to build stuff.

4 - Grenades. Quickslot item. Like Avernus holywater I suppose?

5 - Temporary Costumes (24 hrs or whatever, similar to temporary halloween masks). I'm guessing the Moonstone Mask RP crowd might like this. Buy any apparel (just for looks). Would be cool to include class based things in the appearance tab - so a wizard could "wear" things like "Great weapon fighter - Heroic Duelist (pants)" with the "Ranger - Alliance Assault Armor (top)". For whatever reason.

As mentioned in one of my earlier posts in this thread, those same items can probably fill out some of the Vault of Piety too.

Risks & Concerns

While I tried to stick to systems already available, this obviously comes down to what the dev team is willing/able to do. Even if none of the above are used, I hope I at least gave you an idea of how vast your additional reward options can be - with stuff mostly already in game.

CDP Topic: Rewards & Progression

Comments

Table of Contents.

✪ Part 1 – New Progression and Reward Paradigm.

✪ Part 2 – Boons Rework.

✪ Part 3 – Campaigns as optional content.

✪ Part 4 – Itemization Philosophy.

✪ Part 5 – Crafting.

✪ Part 6 – Chase Items.

✪ Part 7 – Slots in Items.

✪ Part 8 – Potential Implementation and Conclusion.

Overview

Goals

Functionality

Risks and Concerns

✪ Part 4 – Itemization Philosophy.

✪ Part 3 – Campaigns as optional content.

✪ Part 3 – Campaigns as optional content.