Questions-Réponses avec les Systems Designer (20/02/2018)

percemer · février 2018

Salutations !

Voici, en anglais, le résumé des questions-réponses organisées le 20 février 2018 avec Jared "noworries" Sears, Lead Systems Designer, et Tony "balanced" Marasco, Systems Designer, pour Neverwinter !

Nous n'avons pas modifié les messages ;
Cette couleur --> question d'un joueur
Cette couleur --> réponse d'un développeur

What is a typical day at work like for a Systems Designer? Can you share a little bit about that and life at Cryptic?

A typical day depends on the time frame of a schedule.

In the early phases of a module there are a lot of planning meetings and discussions about the features we want to consider for our next release, which ones take priority, and how we want to approach implementing them.

After we get through those meetings and have a plan, the weeks of implementation begins. Through out those weeks it is looking at spreadsheets, unglamorious tools windows, and a lot of iterative work/checks/adjustments and back to more work.

Nearer the end of a module, and at the end of a given feature, we go through reviews to see how the features we worked on feel, what we should adjust and of course bug fixing.

Throughout all of a module there are playtests where we play features in progress or pvp or run dungeons etc. for feedback/testing/and simply keeping up to date with the game changes.

PvP: When we go on the Summer Sahaa field all of our powers change to fit the setting, why can’t you do that with PvP? Why can’t all of our powers have different effects in the PvP arena than in the PvE areas? That way you don’t have to manipulate our PvE powers to fit both PvE and PvP criterias.

The Sahha powers set was built in a very specific way that wouldn’t exactly work for player powers in PvP. That said, we can technically do a couple of different things that would either change out your powers, or the effects they have, in PvP. There are a couple of reasons as to why we don’t make PvP specific effects or powers, or why we do it very rarely.

A large reason is that it can create confusion on what a power actually does. For an example, if Shadow Strike fills your stealth bar in PvE and you go into PvP most people would expect it to work the same. However, if Shadow Strike instead increases Stealth regen for 5 seconds, you’re going to have a moment of confusion as to why your stealth bar didn’t fill.

The main issue is that balancing two separate powersets requires a large amount of work, both to maintain and to set up. We would effectively have to create a new version of a power that was a PvP only power, or add PvP specific effects on normal powers that change the way they work. This also means that tooltips need to be updated, changes need to be made, and interactions between other powers need to be accounted for.

When designing new content what level of player are you designing for? For the solo content do you use a model player that has played through all or most of the previous campaigns? How do you balance making solo content that is interesting for DPS characters but not too challenging and time consuming for support characters. Is that same player model used for the multi-player content or do you have a more powerful player in mind? How do you decide on the requirements to enter the new multi-player content?

There is no one set way we design new content. Sometimes it is designed to be a bit ahead of the majority of the population to give them a new challenge and new rewards/progression to work towards. Other times it is designed to fill in an area/section of the game that could use a boost or some additional options of play.

When deciding where new higher challenge content should be at, we use a combination of metrics and design goals. We can pull data to see what the ranges of the highest item levels per account are which gives a good feel of where different groups of our players are at. We also have our goals for how we want a new zone to feel and what we want it to achieve. From there we work to combine the two into a good experience for a large number of players. Then there are times we design a new trial which is meant to challenge the higher item level players and give them something to work towards as well. There really isn't just one design method/approach to cover the many areas of the game and the wide variety of players.

Dungeons are designed with the role requirements in mind and making that experience one where players working together can find their way to victory. For requirements we again look at where our players are and find a good item level requirement to fit that. We also don't want to be raising the item level requirements for the hardest content every update, which can make players feel like they are forever trying to catch up, so we take that into consideration as well.

Why was the +5 gear from Illusionist’s Gambit given one offense and one overload slot? There is no possible scenario, given the current overloads in the game, where +5 Illusionist’s Gambit gear can outperform +4 Illusionist’s Gambit gear. Are new overloads coming? Were they originally supposed to have two offense slots and an overload? Also, why isn't +5 Illusionist's Gambit gear legendary?

We are certainly in a situation where we have +4 companion gear that is more highly sought after over the +5 versions due to the overload slots. There have been a few conversations as to the best way to address that. I can't guarantee what will happen with them, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that overload slot switch to an offensive slot at some point in the future.

Is there a reason why certain cutscenes could be skipped while others could not?

Cutscenes are used for multiple reasons. Some are to inform the players of a given situation or an area, others are to tell stories, and some are even to highlight an achievement such as finding a scrying orb.

As for why some can't be skipped it is either because 1) that cutscene is actually used to allow important elements of the environment to load in and get setup or 2) because it is once only to showcase a new area and we don't want players accidentally closing it since there is no way to view it again.

Control used to be a large part of a dungeon run. These days everything in the dungeon is simply immune to control effects. Does control no longer have a place in the game, or have you just not found a good way to prevent CC locked enemies from trivializing content?

There are a couple of major pain points when it comes to allowing CC in dungeons and end-game content. One of the big ones in our game is that CC is almost always readily available for certain builds, Trapper HR and Oppressor CW to name a couple. This allows those builds to infinitely CC lock enemies because either their cooldowns are low enough, or their CC lasts long enough. While there can be some interesting gameplay in having a player dedicated to controlling enemies, in Neverwinter it currently just creates fights that are trivial and you generally don’t even need a build dedicated to controlling for enemies to be locked down.

This leads into another problem which is that control powers are too plentiful and aren’t tuned for control. There are a large amount of powers that are fairly competitive damage-wise (looking at you smoke bomb) that are ALSO incredible control powers. I don’t think we’ve balanced control against power well and that creates situations where you’re getting control “for free.” It also means that taking a control effect over something else, when it is a choice, generally feels like a loss rather than a gain.

There isn’t a major CC rework planned for the future, but we have discussed various different solutions internally. Some of things discussed were putting CC diminishing returns on enemies, adjusting the control resistance of elite enemies, and adding new systems altogether. It’s something we’re keeping an eye on, but we definitely don’t want control to feel useless. In the short-term, there’s definitely things that we can do to improve the feel of crowd control, and we’ll be seeing if we can touch on those things in the future.

Can you please explain how the Wanderer's Fortune bonus works? Why do we sometimes see the text pop up when we do not get a stone?

I'd have to look at the power to see, but I suspect it is because the part of the power where the text comes from is not checking the cooldown which determines if you can get a reward in that moment.

À suivre ci-dessous !

percemer · février 2018

In M13, you removed CWs ability to multiproc weapon enchantments. You let Storm Spell crit, which just about made up for the nerf we suffered. Then you did an unecessary nerf to Storm Spell reducing its base damage by 30%. You also fixed the offhand bonus which causes Storm Spell to proc way less. Since you have no other plans to change anyhing else on the wizard in M13, can this nerf to Storm Spells damge be undone and the chance to proc the offhand bonus be upped to 20%?
Wizards weren't over powered in the first place. Sure some of or class features are super good. But our feats aren't. We're in the middle of the damage dealers. These changes that have been suggested here will make CWs happy and will allow them to continue to perform the same as they have been in M12b.
The balancing of Storm Spell and CW can be addresed in a future mod when it can be planned and be done properly.

One of the things we saw requested quite often in our rocktober threads, and on Control Wizard threads in general, was to allow Storm Spell to critically strike (as it did in the past). The problem with this was that Storm Spell would always critically strike if this was enabled. Because of some tweaks, we were able give Storm Spell its own chance to critically strike, which was great, but we did not make any adjustments until later in the development cycle, which is why you’re seeing the damage reduction now.

This meant that Storm Spell became incredibly powerful on high-end crit builds. Which is okay, but it had the potential to be 25-35% of your total damage, which is incredibly high for a class feature, especially one that was tied to a paragon path. We did not mean for the Storm Spell change to directly compensate for the Weapon Enchantment changes, if CWs are hit especially hard by that then we'll make adjustments in the future.

The 30% damage nerf that we applied to it was compensation for it being allowed to critically strike. While low-end / fresh 70 builds will see a decrease in effectiveness for Storm Spell, mid-high geared players should see an increase. If you were curious to see what the breakpoints are like, with rank 4 of Storm Spell, a character who has 60% Critical Strike Chance and 75% Critical Severity should see a small increase in damage. A character who has 45% Critical Strike Chance and 100% Critical Severity should see a very similar increase in damage. If you get more Critical Strike Chance, or Critical Severity, from either of these points then the changes to Storm Spell are a buff.

One thing you mentioned was that the Off-hand bonus now causes it to proc less. This shouldn't be the case (it should be the same), so if you have any other information on that I'd be happy to know!

So how is CW supposed to deal the same amount of damage with Storm Spell not being compensated for the multi proc nerf? CWs with T Lightning are missing lots of AOE damage.
As for the Offhand Bonus it has a 5% chance to proc off of a Storm Spell Strike now that it is fixed. Before this (in12b) it would have a separate 5% chance to proc off of all damages. The fix is a nerf to CW. It has a 1.5% chance to proc the offhand bonus (30% for SS, 5% for the additional Strike) which is really underpowered compared to the other options.

The weapon enchantment nerf did hit CW fairly hard, and while we want to compensate them for it, we didn't want Storm Spell to be the sole taker of what that compensation is.
For the off-hand bonus, I think it's still just a 5% separate chance to proc, but it's possible that something is messed up. I'll take a look when I get back to my desk, but the intent for the off-hand bonus was to keep it the same as it was (power-wise).

Will the professions system in Neverwinter see a complete overhaul sometime this year? The entire system seems to be very outdated and needs improvements. If there are any plans, can you share on how it would go?

We have had several discussions on the need to update professions. That said, I do not have any timeline or a plan to share at this time. It is on our radar.

When can we expect a rebuild of the transmute system? I would like to see a “skin” system in place where once we acquire a certain transmute, we can freely switch back and forth similar to fashion or mounts. Thank you.

This falls more under the situation of there are so many things we'd like to change and improve but only so much time. The transmute/fashion system as a whole could work better for players but at the moment of typing this there is no definitive plan on when/how to make changes to the system. It isn't a small task to adjust that system.

This game has a "Kingdom of Loathing" level of grind to it. Did you guys play KoL?

I have played it in the past, but it is not where we "draw" our inspirations from

.

Are there any plans to change the Bonus RP event.Being a direct placement for 2x RP the gap in quality between the two is quite staggering.

To start with, Bonus RP is not meant to recreate what the 2x RP event was. Any event that requires playing during the event to gain rewards can not match the level of rewards from an event that allowed months of saving up to double up all bonuses. The changes to the refinement system as a whole were meant to compensate for 2x RP going away.
We have looked at the Bonus RP event and have some improvements we are working on for it, however those won't go live until M14 due to where our schedules are at which is why we haven't talked about them yet. In short the rewards will be higher, the rate will be faster, and players will be able to gain bonus RP from more activities. Stay tuned for more information in the future.

How much of the design that you do is inspired by things you see in other games? If any, which games do you take inspiration from?

There is no particular game that we sit down and take inspiration from. Like all developers we play a lot of other video games, of all genres, and we have discussions from time to time about interesting mechanics we've seen and what we felt worked well in other games and what worked poorly in other games. Many of those conversations are more academic in nature as many things you see work well in other genres wouldn't fit into Neverwinter. Our changes are mainly driven by what we feel is working or not working within our own game.

How would you summarize the development process of a module? Like how do you go about choosing which content to create and which not to create?

We usually go into a module with a ton of awesome ideas for what we could add to the game and what would make players happy. After getting all of our ideas out there, we condense them into what's possible in our time-frame and what has the highest importance.
Other than that, we usually have a list of things that we need to get done, such as the critters in a new zone, or the rewards that come from new content. We generally have a list of things that we try to add in every module (such as a Zone / Campaign / Rewards / Critters) and once we finish those things we can get into the more unique features, such as the refinement changes.

Hello! First off thank you very much for taking the time to answer questions. NWO has brought me a lot of joy and I thank you and the team for that, my question as follows. From my humble view, we are once again moving towards a situation like module 5. With the new hunt gear % boni by passing stat limitations, higher weapon damages and co we find ourselves as players probably quite strongly overpowering the content. While this is not true for the average (low to mid geared lvl 70 player) or the masses of non-70 players, the high end is very much taking apart the game. To add here with more gear choices it becomes more aviable, while I really love the changes to +4 rings having 2 offensive/defensive slots this is another big contribution to player power. While M5 had issues like the old lifesteal which made tanks unvaluable, party buffs in M12 make parties still unkillable so tanks are just there to buff/debuff and deal with very specific one shot mechanics (Ras'Nis fire sword namely in Tomb of the Nine Gods). In M12 and moving forward to M13 Damage Dealers aren't actually very overpowering, in fact I would argue they are quite poor and it is the overwhelming strenght of support classes that make it even possible to deal with the content. Sadly analyses shows that while there is less incentive the best way to go even in Module 13 is with 2 Devoted Clerics etc.
Is the team aware of that and are we gonna cycle into a big reset like Module 6 or will there be changes to address that class balance/player vs content issue otherwise?

We are aware of the high-end playerbase as well as a lot of the support / power share / 2 DC meta groups. We want to move away from having 2 Devoted clerics in a group, and it definitely shouldn't be a requirement. Unfortunately, DCs grant a huge amount of damage and damage resistance which makes them incredibly powerful in a group setting.
We're going to be tweaking classes in the future but to really remove the 2DC meta, we'll have to look at the buffs and debuffs that they apply, as well as the buffs and debuffs that other classes apply. It's likely going to need a medium-large overhaul, but it's something that we want to do.
For power creep and the highly geared players, they are getting quite powerful with all of those item level increases, so we'll be keeping an eye on that and making sure nothing gets too out of hand.

À suivre ci-dessous !

percemer · février 2018

Is Neverwinter going to be forgot about and left behind, when Magic The Gathering MMO comes out?

Neverwinter continues to grow and we have already started planning for beyond 2018 so we're definitely not leaving the Forgotten Realms behind!

Is there any plans to combat power creep before it creeps in in the future?
Bonding nerf was very frowned upon by players yet much needed. To prevent something similar happening in the future I think gear should be designed more carefully but nothing of the sorts seems to be in work. Instead we seem to be getting ever stronger gear every 6 months. I understand some sort of reward is necessary to make new content more attractive but the everturning wheel of grind for new gear gets tiring too.

We've been watching our power levels rise in Neverwinter over the past couple of modules and we definitely want to make sure that power creep doesn't get out of control. The bonding runestones nerf was something that did have to happen as there was just too much power from companions being put into players. That said, we understand that it feels bad to lose power from something that you've heavily invested in, which is something we're trying to be careful with.

Will there be a double Astral Diamond event something this year?

Running 2x AD event cannot be scheduled ahead of time due to the strong impact on the game economy. It's something we are very cautious about so there's no way to determine at this time if or when there will be another one.

Some people in the community say that it takes nothing more than the flip of a switch to get the old dungeons back in the game. Is this correct, can you elaborate on how and why the old dungeons can never return?

It is far more than a simple flip of a switch. The critters and bosses need to be reworked to fit into the modern version of the game, as well as the rewards and quest flow. It isn't that they can never return, it is simply a lot more work than players tend to realize.

Are there any considerations for dungeons to fill the gaps between CN to FBI/MSP to TONG? CN feels trivial for many, yet FBI for the same people FBI feels impossible.

There aren't any immediate plans for dungeons to go in-between those listed dungeons. I would say that is more an issue of balance, both with classes and the dungeons themselves, than with needing gap filling new dungeons. And we are always having discussions on how to improve the balance.

Why can't Ultimate enchanting stones be bought by seals of brave? Ppl doing 100 runs and not getting a drop and end up with useless seals cuz the drop rate is stupid low. It's not like it's gonna kill the economy since there is a cap on seals anyways. At least reward ppl for doing countless runs and not getting drops. Everyone needs 90 total for full set of r14s. If u make it 400 seals that's still 90 weeks of farming since it's 400 weekly cap.

Ultimate Enchanting Stones are intended to be a rare chase item. Rank 14 enchantments are not needed for any of our current content and as such is more of a stretch goal for players when they've accomplished everything else. As newer content is released there will be increasingly more ways to gain UES and due to that they will become more available and affordable to more and more players. Already the value of them on the auction house has dropped significantly from where it was at launch.
Anytime we release something new and rare we keep an eye on it. For right now they are going to remain in the end chests of the newest dungeons, but we will keep an eye on it.

In the past I heard that the TR and SW were getting some work done to them. Are the changes that are happening in Mod 13 those reworks or are they happening further down the road map?

We have plans for TR and SW changes further down the road. There were some changes, due to rocktober, that will be in M13 but nothing as big as a rework. (mostly bug fixes)
We also want to make sure that every class gets some changes in as they need it. So, while TR and SW may be the focus of the upcoming changes, we're going to try and get something in for everyone.

Tiamat is a 25-player fight. Unfortunately, "Zerg is the best strategy" ruins the need for communication and coordination originally envisioned. I would love to see a larger event that rewards teamwork over button mashing and slotting the right debuff.

There's really two factors at play here. The first is that our engine doesn't handle extremely large encounters well, especially when there are 20+ players on the screen. Even on console, Tiamat can be a struggle to run smoothly if there are tons of effects on the screen.
The other factor is that we don't really think a larger player count would make our fights that much more interesting. We've found that 10 man trials seem to work best for what we want.

There's a feat in the GWF Destroyer's feat tree called 'Deep Gash' that was able to crit but it was changed in the past just like other feats/features. Some of them are able to crit again like Storm Spell and Slam, why didn't you include Deep Gash too? It was also highly requested in the rocktober. I had a conversation with a couple of devs and they mentioned that they were going to forward it to the team in charge but we haven't seen any change yet.

This is really due to the back-end of our powers engine. For the most part, powers that proc on critical strikes, such as Storm Spell, Deep Gash, Longshot, and many others, will always critically strike when procced.
Storm Spell was the first one of these powers that we gave the ability to critically strike, we wanted to make sure that it was tested and working well before we touched the others, but it's possible to see powers, like deep gash, change to this functionality in the future. As for Slam and Pillar of Power, both of those powers just didn't have the correct flag on them, so they were unable to crit (perhaps intentionally so in the past).
We want to make sure that stats are useful in most situations, like crit, and we understand that it makes crit less valuable if a portion of your powers cannot benefit from it. There are a few exceptions to this, such as Armor Pen and Piercing, but those are more intentional.

- Are we going to see a rework on dragonflight and Stronghold Marauders? Dragonflight obviously hasn't been that active and I think you can also agree that Stronghold Marauders was a big fail and the only reason people would do it was for the weekly influence it gives other than that, it's obsolete. I love the idea of the horde mode you could implement a chance after X waves to get epic or rare vouchers otherwise it won't be worth anyone's time.
- I'd love to see new more powerful dragons in a new variation of Dragonflight. Maybe new fangs that could be traded, if not directly for new gear, seals of the brave at a OK rate to get primal gear with. (Like maybe 20 seals per fang, 1 fang per dragon? Depending on difficulty ofc maybe 5 or 10 per fang would be better)
- Yea it's a shame because Marauders is a lot of fun but the rewards are nothing.

Rewards are always tricky between getting something that is worth running but not the only thing to run because the rewards are the best/the best way to farm something. Marauders needs to have the rewards looked at.

Why are you and other devs completely bound by a NDA? I understand not wanting to release info about the future of the game as it might cause your competition to make moves.. But while not being able to ever comment on the future of the game what's in the works, what's actually being developed.. It leaves players questioning if there are is actually sitting planned (dungeons, skirmishes, gear, content, anything).

NDAs have a variety of layers to them, typically involving protecting the ownership of technology, ideas, or assets. In the case of Neverwinter, we do not own the IP that our game is based off of so in order to do business with the IP owners (WotC/Hasbro), we have to abide by a certain amount of confidentiality that extends into the development. A secondary aspect that is less tied to NDA and more just a general good rule of development is that, because of the volatile and ever-changing needs in each sprint cycle, committing to a "we are working on X dungeon" could no longer be true a few days later. It would just look bad (and honestly be demoralizing) to have to say yay! and then nay! and then maybe! and then...you get the picture.

is there a way to stack the RNG in our favor? a place that's better luck? a dance to do before opening lockboxes? a prayer to give before trying to upgrade that 1% chance for the 150th time? Anything?

If you spin in a circle three times before walking backwards through the nearest door, it will double your luck. Or will it?

Julia: I only know tricks for physical items like dice. I make sure to load my dice so the crit hit is facing upwards and if one of the misbehaves I put them in time out in front of the other dice. If they do it a second time, it gets flung across the room. A third time? Fire.

percemer · février 2018

C'est fini ! Vous avez d'autres questions ? N'hésitez pas les poster ci-dessous

À bientôt en jeu !

crashcn · février 2018

percemer a écrit: »

C'est fini ! Vous avez d'autres questions ? N'hésitez pas les poster ci-dessous
À bientôt en jeu !

En français, c'est pour quand ?

percemer · février 2018

crashcn a écrit: »

En français, c'est pour quand ?

C'est trop long

Nous ne traduirons pas ces réponses, mais ça devrait tout de même être compréhensible en utilisant par exemple Google Traduction.

jlvdragon91 · février 2018

Bonjour à tous,

Je trouves dommage qu'avec la richesse du jeu Neverwinter (gamme solo), Il n'y a pas plus de différence entre les deux coté de chaque classe.
Exemple avec le magicien (magie du feu et les sort du feu ou magie du l'air et les sort de l'air).
Pourtant tout les sorts qui existant dans le monde Neverwinter gamme solo...
Pourquoi si peu de richesse ??

Vous faite des modules et des modules, et je le comprends, mais je pense qu'il serait temps de revoir les armes, armure et accessoires, selon votre principe de base :
(blanc =>ordinaire,
vert => Recherché,
bleu =>rare,
violet => épique,
orange => légendaire,
cyan => mythique)
Exemple, pour moi, l'armure chut aurait dû être en orange et non en violet, avec ses 500.
Est-ce que vous avez prévu une refont en profondeur ??

crashcn · février 2018

Tu maudiras le jours où il sortirons des set d'armure artefact de combat

jlvdragon91 · mars 2018

lol, justement, c'est ce que je veux dire.
Il faut refaire une refont et peut-être même supprimer des anciens sets.
Enfin, pas grave...

crashcn · mars 2018

Lol, la subli, la subli...

beduro#2752 · décembre 2018

anyone know gauntlgrym maza

Questions-Réponses avec les Systems Designer (20/02/2018)

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