If Eternity Should Fail

[Danyen]

Sitting here waiting for Mod 16 patch to DL. I've been listening to a lot of Youtubers. Most of them have been positive up til the last week or two.
Steam logins are at a low right now, Hasn't been this low since Mod 10 according to everything I can find out.

Mod 14 had endgame dungeon (Castle Ravenloft) ,released bugged and to this day is still bugged.
Mod 15 was really nothing more than an over sized patch. (no new areas, dungeons)
Mod 16 good campaign line, still full of bags. According to them scaling just needs to be "tweeked". It actually needs removed.

....is this the beginning of the End?

things that point to it:
Player base is has been dropping and continues to drop WAY DOWN.
Media Supporters are badmouthing game instead of promoting it. (game depends heavily on word of mouth, youtubers, forum sites for Promoting game)
Totally rebuilding game.

This game is based totally on progression, they are totally destroying that. As I said before, scaling is broken. if this is a progression based game why would I spend all kinds of money/zen/AD to get the "best stuff", only to be scaled down if i want to go back and see old content. Maybe because I skipped it, or need to finish boons. It will be even harder to do now, example: why should I go back to Ravenloft if enchants are going to be capped at 9 there.

I know this is still a business and they are there to make money. New players are the ones that spend the most cash. Older power players are selling AD and no spending real cash.

....BUT YOU NEED THE OLDER ESTABLISHED PLAYERS TOO!

they are the ones that make to guides ,builds, training vids, promote game..etc.
they bring in the new players and help learn the game so they don't run away in a week and stick around awhile and spend cash.

I'm far from the longest player of NW in NOR, but been here about a year and have have been play MMORG is the 90s, I've seen signs like this before and it doesn't look good unless they change their ways.

I'm not going anywhere yet, but have been testing out a few other games. Summer is coming and will be spending less time in front of this little screen. Population drops in summer and comes back in fall. I think that if they don't get remove their heads out of their backsides, people will stop back and head out to find new games to play.

/rant over!

[nmates]

I'm not a fan of mod16 as implemented. Needed months more in development, or a separation of the new content from the crappy new combat

As a professional game developer (but never worked for Cryptic or any other MMO maker), I do see that the old combat system was far too complicated to 1) understand 2) balance 3) optimize performance when there's a zillion procs going off, and 4) continue in the direction it was going. However, they've thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Instead of million ways to build a character, 90% of those are sub-optimal, there's now 8. And 90% still stink. The design for mod16 needed to be "make it fun, then make it fast." They've chosen to do things the other way, and chose poorly.

As a CW, my rotation of conduit of ice (tab), icy terrain, steal time & sudden storm are gone. That was my rotation since mod4 when I started playing. Now, some of those are on completely different paragon paths. I don't care that it's now "more like 5e." The game I was having fun with is no more.

[Phelaia]

Alright, now I feel compelled to say something...

I've played this game since beta, and I haven't taken much of a break even during Storm King Thunder. About those "established players," I've actually run with them a few times, and really, they've been hiding behind some very very large wallets. I've done Tales of Old with people who try to copy these Youtubers but couldn't afford as much gear, and the runs were very frustrating for them. Those guides you see out there? It would take several thousand dollars to achieve. As far as I know, none of us in NOR has that kind of money to put into this game. How do I know it takes several thousand dollars? I've met one of them and his dad in real life, and the dad has a lot of fun money to spend. This is why I've written guides on this forum on "how to get away with less gear than you can afford." There's a method to the madness, and for starters, consider questing and queing with your guildies. That's why we're in a guild, right?

While it is true that enchants are capped at Lvl 9, NW has been kind of unique that your effectiveness in your role does not have a one to one relationship to the stuff on your character sheet. Outside of the weapon and armor, Ziek actually runs around with Rank 8s, and his SW has been NOR's top DPS for quite some time now. In my own random advanced ques, I've seen 15k GWFs beat out 18k SWs on Paingiver, and you bet that while my OP started out the run by buffing that 18k SW, I've had to switch my focus to buffing that 15k GWF. All this is to say that before you assume so-and-so would totally take Paingiver, keep in mind that knowing what makes your class tick usually beats out buying your way to greatness.

NOR has always had a small group of people who've been dedicated in beating the dungeons, and none of us was above 17k in item level by the old scale (I was 15001 on the day we beat Tomb of the Nine Gods). Yet NOR has beaten every dungeon except for Ravenloft. We did it when the cap was 60, and we did it again when it was raised 70. We did it because of the kind of teamwork and trust in each other that is usually not seen in other guilds. This is why we're in this guild and not in another guild, right?

That said, I've so far taken two mains and a mule into Undermountain with the starter set of gear from Neverember. Even my mule Archery HR was questing just fine with only half the boons and some blue gear from the AH. So I would encourage you to try new things, maybe even dust off a mule. Don't be afraid of dying in the wild. I mean, it doesn't even cost you anything.

[nmates]

Punching above your weight/ilevel and beating dungeons are the things NOR is proud of?

What about the people (me) who grind a ton to get better ilevel to make up for only fair-to-middling playing skills? 4+ years of maining a CW and the whole building/spending stacks mechanic never was interesting or even chased after. Never finished FBI alive. Never even finished TONG/CODG/CR/etc. Blue was an decent OP, nothing special, but not one to chase after dungeon runs or being best in class.

What about the people who help others in the guild get going? Or grind a ton for the SH so the dungeon runners have better boons to help with that?

There's a lot of reasons to play *other* than maximizing your toon or competing difficult dungeons. I listed things that appeal more to me - a mid-core gamer. Or, *were* reasons to play.

[nmates]

I just posted this on the official forums. This is a list of many of the things I see that make mod16 busywork *before* you can get out and play.

Note: there is also this official post admitting that things aren't in a great place. More to come on Tuesday May 8th.

With the advent of MOD16, my biggest feedback is that it has a lot of "friction" -- not fun stuff that you have to put up with -- on starting to play. Mod15's professions were a similar high-friction and barrier to entry. However, it was not part of the core NW gameplay -- an "action combat MMO" killing monsters on quests, dungeons/skirmishes, or just for fun. MOD16 -- as launched and still exists -- contains a whole lot of busywork before you can meaningfully play. Here are some examples of the friction I see, and some possible mitigations.

• Initial inventory explosion - can't even invoke. A mod15 player will have companion runestones, companion gear dumped into their inventory on 1st login to mod16. After that, a number of players can't even invoke until they do inventory management. That's the simplest thing people can do when logged in for 5 minutes, and if they can't invoke, they probably won't do more. Possible fix: Let my active pet's runestones stay on. There's still 3 runestone slots in mod16, and making the user put the bondings back on (1-3 inventory slots) is just plain busywork. Too late for everyone who's logged in already, but could be fixed for console.
• Some mount insignia (e.g. * of leeching) and runestones were deprecated and need to be replaced. If you don't mouseover the insignia, you won't know they're deprecated. Yes, there's a trade-in vendor in PE. But, that vendor's window is far too narrow and it's a pain to click thru the tabs without really knowing how many more tabs there are. Possible fix: 1) Make the mount icon up top glow when there's deprecated insignia, and inside the mount screen, glow out deprecated items. 2) Same with main inventory - glow or other eyecatch to note that work is needed. 3) Trade-in vendor in PE's window needs to be reorganized and tabs more obvious. Vendor should remember which tab you were on between things.
• New companion gear, which requires runestones. A whole lot of busywork needed here to get back to ilevel. Yes, some gear's handed out on the mod16 intro quests, but if someone doesn't immediately do that quest, they're off scrambling for gear & runestones. Possible fix: Not sure. This change felt like it could have happened some other time, rather than the "change everything!" of mod16
• Reset of at-will, encounter, daily powers. On 1st login to mod16, we were changed to the starter set of these. Possible fix: Like pet runestones, try and figure out the closest match for a player's mod15 items, and default to as many of those as possible. Bonus for keeping the key (tab,qer) intact as well.
• Breaking of old encounter power sets. As a CW from mod4-15, I ran with conduit of ice (tab), icy terrain, steal time & sudden storm. Now, I can't pick those 4 because they're locked off in Arcanist vs Thaumaturge trees. Once again, this ought to have not changed.
• Character stats were reset. Possible fix: keep my selections of what stats (str, dex, etc) intact on 1st login, and hand out a free respec so that people can do the respec when they want.
• Boons: the wall of UI. Yes, this is simplified a lot, and you can see almost all at once. But, it's pretty darn overwhelming to see a giant set of options that have to be 1) understood, and 2) picked before you get your ilevel back.
• 'Optimal' but hidden stats. Items like arpen, crit, awareness, deflect, defense, etc now have an optimal level with balanced numbers for all of them. Yes, you can go seek those numbers on the forums, but then you still have to do the math. (My mod15 16K CW was at ~30-45% of those optimal numbers - for each and every stat!) Possible fix: how to build a character with the new system needs to be more transparent. Maybe have Knox/Sybella/etc have a dialog option to assess your build, and have some responses like "work on boosting arpen, but defense is too high" or some other guide. Don't necessarily have to show the exact numbers to the user, but throw some hints to the user.

Cryptic may think that many of the above changes are necessary. Yes, some claim that "mod16 is a brand new game." However, it feels like a "eat your vegetables" for hour(s) before you can go out and play. Rebuilding one toon is hard enough, let alone a handfull. If you want older players to *play*, that friction needs to be reduced.