Today I did a lowbie skirmish for the first time in ages.
First thing that happened: the queue bugged. It displayed that 5 out of 5 players had accepted and then timed out! On my next pop I found out why: a single player can count more than once for some reason. I clicked accept, talked to a vendor, and when I exited the vendor screen I was prompted to accept again! The skirmish eventually popped when the counter had reached 7 out of 5, heh.
Then I found out that the skirmish scaled everyone in the group to level 60 even though the mobs inside were only in their low twenties, which turned the whole thing into a ridiculous faceroll.
Never change, Cryptic. Never change.
11/05/2016
17/04/2016
Annoying Time-Gating
I've been working my way through the Maze Engine story/campaign and it's getting slower and slower. After the first three "chapters" you are asked to complete a daily quest for five days before the next chapter is unlocked. Then, after the next two chapters, you are asked to do ten days of the campaign daily quest to unlock the next bit of the story... and so on and so forth.
It's an obvious, annoying ploy to stretch out the amount of time for which the module will keep people busy, and yet I can't entirely blame Cryptic for choosing this route. In Underdark, they allowed us to play through the whole story in one go - and we did. Then I at least saw that the rest of the campaign consisted of grinding annoying heroic encounters and decided not to bother.
Inserting the grind in slightly smaller chunks between story chapters seems more palpable, but at the same time I can't help but think that there must be a better way...
It's an obvious, annoying ploy to stretch out the amount of time for which the module will keep people busy, and yet I can't entirely blame Cryptic for choosing this route. In Underdark, they allowed us to play through the whole story in one go - and we did. Then I at least saw that the rest of the campaign consisted of grinding annoying heroic encounters and decided not to bother.
Inserting the grind in slightly smaller chunks between story chapters seems more palpable, but at the same time I can't help but think that there must be a better way...
03/04/2016
Day of the Dungeon Master
This former April Fools' Day event was so popular that they decided to extend it to a whole month this time around. I never actually participated myself before, so this was my first time doing more than reading about it.
The whole set-up of everyone being turned into little mini figures that are being roleplayed by the NPCs is fun and has obviously been crafted with lots of love - from little jokes like dice standing in for orcs and kobolds to the fact that every NPC has a fully filled out character sheet in front of them. (Who'd have thought that Drizzt would want to play a paladin?)
Sadly the actual activities aren't really anything to write home about and the associated new campaign seems pointlessly grindy. Still, I'm happy to have seen it at least.
The whole set-up of everyone being turned into little mini figures that are being roleplayed by the NPCs is fun and has obviously been crafted with lots of love - from little jokes like dice standing in for orcs and kobolds to the fact that every NPC has a fully filled out character sheet in front of them. (Who'd have thought that Drizzt would want to play a paladin?)
Sadly the actual activities aren't really anything to write home about and the associated new campaign seems pointlessly grindy. Still, I'm happy to have seen it at least.
27/03/2016
1 Month of VIP
When Neverwinter's VIP programme came out, I figured right away that it wasn't really for me. However, since my pet tank has been very fond of VIP status and I had some Zen as well as a coupon lying around, I decided to buy one month just to see what it was like. The results were as follows:
1) The daily character reward of ten Scrolls of Identification was useful. Even while playing casually, I should be finding a use for all of them eventually.
2) The daily character reward of one Epic Dungeon Chest Key feels highly silly as a casual player, because after a single month all of my alts have more keys than I'm likely to need for the rest of my life.
3) The daily account reward of one lockbox key per day was interesting in so far as I had never bothered with Neverwinter's lockboxes before. I got a pair of boots out of one of them that was actually an upgrade, which was a nice surprise as I didn't even know that high-level gear was something that you could get from these. I also got a couple of marginally useful profession assets, but everything else was pretty useless. So many cheap enchantments and runestones! That's as if SWTOR's crates gave you nothing but a couple of blue companion gifts ninety percent of the time. If I had paid for keys specifically to open these I would have felt ripped off.
1) The daily character reward of ten Scrolls of Identification was useful. Even while playing casually, I should be finding a use for all of them eventually.
2) The daily character reward of one Epic Dungeon Chest Key feels highly silly as a casual player, because after a single month all of my alts have more keys than I'm likely to need for the rest of my life.
3) The daily account reward of one lockbox key per day was interesting in so far as I had never bothered with Neverwinter's lockboxes before. I got a pair of boots out of one of them that was actually an upgrade, which was a nice surprise as I didn't even know that high-level gear was something that you could get from these. I also got a couple of marginally useful profession assets, but everything else was pretty useless. So many cheap enchantments and runestones! That's as if SWTOR's crates gave you nothing but a couple of blue companion gifts ninety percent of the time. If I had paid for keys specifically to open these I would have felt ripped off.
16/03/2016
Stabled
Neverwinter's ninth module, The Maze Engine, launched yesterday, and while I have no opinion on the new content yet there was one gameplay feature that immediately caught my attention: the revamped mount system.
Cryptic had got caught in a weird spot with mounts. They are one of the most expensive and coveted items in the game, yet there was little incentive to own more than one. Mounts came in multiple different speeds, and only the fastest one was really interesting for everyday use. While it was theoretically possible to upgrade any mount to the highest speed, it was ridiculously expensive and usually not worth the bother. Also, since they took up bag space, you really didn't want to have too many of the things.
They tried to encourage players to buy more mounts by making them bestow stat increases and combat powers, but I think even that particular pay-to-win model was only a mixed success as people didn't want to keep chasing the newest, most powerful mount all the time, especially if they already liked the look of what they had.
Under the new system, mounts can finally be "stabled" so you can have more than one without them taking up any bag space, and mount skins and abilities can be mixed and matched as you please. This kills several birds with one stone:
1) Freed up bag slots mean that people will be more willing to own more than one mount.
2) Since you can give any mount max speed once you've unlocked it, previously under-appreciated, slower mounts can become attractive for their looks.
3) They can keep adding mounts with new powers and people can keep buying them without losing the look of their old favourites.
I'm still not sold on the pay-to-win aspect of mount powers and will likely ignore them for the most part, but otherwise I really have to say: well done, Cryptic. I already had both the unicorn and the armoured horse unlocked account-wide, so all my alts could travel fast, but now they can also do so in a variety of styles.
Cryptic had got caught in a weird spot with mounts. They are one of the most expensive and coveted items in the game, yet there was little incentive to own more than one. Mounts came in multiple different speeds, and only the fastest one was really interesting for everyday use. While it was theoretically possible to upgrade any mount to the highest speed, it was ridiculously expensive and usually not worth the bother. Also, since they took up bag space, you really didn't want to have too many of the things.
They tried to encourage players to buy more mounts by making them bestow stat increases and combat powers, but I think even that particular pay-to-win model was only a mixed success as people didn't want to keep chasing the newest, most powerful mount all the time, especially if they already liked the look of what they had.
Under the new system, mounts can finally be "stabled" so you can have more than one without them taking up any bag space, and mount skins and abilities can be mixed and matched as you please. This kills several birds with one stone:
1) Freed up bag slots mean that people will be more willing to own more than one mount.
2) Since you can give any mount max speed once you've unlocked it, previously under-appreciated, slower mounts can become attractive for their looks.
3) They can keep adding mounts with new powers and people can keep buying them without losing the look of their old favourites.
I'm still not sold on the pay-to-win aspect of mount powers and will likely ignore them for the most part, but otherwise I really have to say: well done, Cryptic. I already had both the unicorn and the armoured horse unlocked account-wide, so all my alts could travel fast, but now they can also do so in a variety of styles.
04/03/2016
State of the Game
A few days ago, Neverwinter's Executive Producer Rob Overmeyer released a developer letter about the State of the Game. A lot of it was PR talk about all the amazing things they feel they achieved in the past year, but there was also an honest admission that they screwed up with Elemental Evil.
More than anything though, it's over 4000 (!) words about what they've been doing, what they are planning on doing, and why. This is one area where I wish Bioware would take a page out of Cryptic's book and be a bit more open about their thoughts and plans. It's often frustratingly opaque what's going on behind the scenes in SWTOR.
More than anything though, it's over 4000 (!) words about what they've been doing, what they are planning on doing, and why. This is one area where I wish Bioware would take a page out of Cryptic's book and be a bit more open about their thoughts and plans. It's often frustratingly opaque what's going on behind the scenes in SWTOR.
12/02/2016
Happy Valentine's Day!
I have to admit this ad made me laugh. If you think that Valentine's Day is just a capitalist ploy as it is, you haven't seen Cryptic wanting you to love their virtual currency.
And yeah, it did make me buy some Zen - it was about time I gave them at least a little bit of money again anyway.
04/01/2016
Winter Warrior
The Winter Festival gave me a reason to grind towards a specific goal for once: the icy weapon skin for great weapon fighters (called Sparkling Long Sword of Winter). I tend to not care about cosmetics that much unless I'm trying to get rid of a particular look that I don't like, and this was the case here as well - I hated that axe. It's not that it's hideous by itself, but I just couldn't stand fighting - flourishing, stabbing - with a great-axe all the time. It looked silly.
So this was a great opportunity to get something more stabby and yet still sparkly. Plus, you know... scarves. Finally I can show my "cape" without it getting in the way all the time.
So this was a great opportunity to get something more stabby and yet still sparkly. Plus, you know... scarves. Finally I can show my "cape" without it getting in the way all the time.
28/12/2015
Market Day
After a prolonged period of inactivity, our mini guild also finally unlocked the market for its stronghold.
It's really nice to finally have vendors in there, though also a bit frustrating to see that they won't sell gear to us until we've upgraded the market to level two, and who knows when that will happen.
It's really nice to finally have vendors in there, though also a bit frustrating to see that they won't sell gear to us until we've upgraded the market to level two, and who knows when that will happen.
27/12/2015
Winter Festival
I decided to check out the currently running Winter Festival event, since - like the Summer Festival - I had never really looked at it before. Like the Summer Festival, it has its own map with dailies and contests that include several non-combat activities which are pretty fun.
My favourite is the race down the icy mountain. I always thought that sliding across that slippery patch of ice in Icewind Pass was funny and that they should do something else with the physics involved in that - turns out that they did! The ice fishing is pretty enjoyable too.
My favourite is the race down the icy mountain. I always thought that sliding across that slippery patch of ice in Icewind Pass was funny and that they should do something else with the physics involved in that - turns out that they did! The ice fishing is pretty enjoyable too.
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