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[FEEDBACK] State of PvE (much more detailed than in CDP)

dolreydolrey Member Posts: 741 Arc User
edited September 2020 in Player Feedback (PC)
Hello. CDP format is good but due to the fact that we are told to minimize size of our posts there I can't give there detailed feedback. So, in this thread I'll try to describe the main reason why many players call NWO too casual and at the same time main problem wich affect all PvE content (solo/group/dungeons/even PvP).


It is good when game is friendly to beginners. But it is bad when you make absolutely no effort to fight mobs, to do quests etc. This turn the game into claim rewards button and this is very boring. It makes games interesting when you have to think and do right actions. And game become very very boring without any challenge when you fail after doing some amount of mistakes in combat. So this is global problem wich I would like to to analyze in more depth.

Before continue I must say that it becomes impossible to fail only after reaching some amount of stats and gaining some sources of healing. It is not many-million equipment with full rank 15 enchantments or something like that. I mean in many threads where players say that game is too trivial there are always people who say different. And both of them are right because first already have some amount of stats and those sources of healing while second ones does not have.


Some theory first.

Evidently each character has limited resource named "health". But better let's talk about "effective health".

Effective health is your health including your resistances. For example when your character has 100k health and tanken damage is reduced by 50% (by all sources together such as defence, damage mitigation, damage debuffs on foes etc) then you have 200k of effective health. In other words effective health is amount of damage which enemy need to create to kill your character.

In combat from the point of view of survivability there are two opposing forces: incoming damage per second and incoming (or your own) healing per second. Imagine barrel of water (your character's health). And enemy damage tries to draw out water while your healing tries to pour water into this barrel.

In long combat (when we talk about "sustained damage") if your healing per second is higher than enemy's damage per second then your character don't die. And evidently if your healing per second is lower than foe's damage your character will slowly lose health till death.

In cause when your healing depends on your max health (such as all healing insignia bonuses) all your defensive stats increase max size of that barrel (it is already effective health). And evidently increase your healing per second because it is based on max size of that barrel.

All written here mean that upon reaching some amount of stats (health and resistances) in couple with having all healing insignia bonuses can make healing per second of your character higher than incoming damage per second.

Here is the video showing this:

Yes my character is tank with high defensive stats even in my dd build for quests. But dd characters still can heal most part of incoming damage.

Thank to this fact game process becomes too trivial and boring when your character has enough stats and healing insignia bonuses.


If you will take a look at 5-7 last dungeons they all have oneshot mechanics of bosses when your character just become annihilated in some conditions.

When incoming sustained damage is very high relative to max health of your character then it is already "burst damage". And in the past instead of reworking healing developers just started to stamp dungeons with dps check phases with following oneshot if dps of your team was not high enough. This caused bad consequences.

The main bad thing in this approach is that in practice you just stay afk during all fight with boss (because your healing is higher than his damage per second). And in one moment your dds have to burst something to avoid oneshot an that is all. If your team has enough offensive stats then you complete dungeon otherwise you don't complete dungeon. So you see that nothing really depends on your actions. What makes game process boring or frustrating (when you play right but just don't have enough offensive stats to don't be annihilated).


As we see adding more and more dps check phases (or better to say stat check phases) does not lead to anything good. And that is why there is need to solve this problem from other direction of fixing overpowered healing mechanics. This is the answer why developers decided to nerf healers as half of this problem. Yes, yes. But other half of this problem as I said are sources of self healing which make sustained damage not effective.

In game with right mechanics healing and incoming damage should have the following proportions:

K*[A+B]+C = K*[(a1+a2)+B]+C = D

A) Damage per second that tank can absorb by himself (including a1=self heal, a2=damage absorption of shield per second).
B ) Healing from healer per second.
K) Coefficient of how effective tank use max potential of his survivability A and incoming healing of healer B.
C) Dodging some percent of incoming attacks /red zones.

D) Incoming damage.

In other words sum of damage per second that tank can absorb by himself (including self heal and damage absorption of shield) and healing of healer should be less than incoming damage of for example boss.

But then tank will die!! You'll say. Yes. And exactly coefficient k and variable C forces tank to play right and avoid mechanics of boss such as red zones, strong hits, summon of crowds of monsters etc.

Value of variable C will decide difficulty of dungeon. For example:
1) When tank have to dodge or avoid 0% of incoming red zones/mechanics then we will have easy dungeon (as it is right now in the game).
2) When tank have to dodge 40-60% (2-3 from 5) of incoming red zones/mechanics then we will have normal dungeon.
3) When tank have to dodge 80-100% of incoming red zones/mechanics (or incoming dps will be higher than hps of tank) then we will have hard dungeon.

Coefficient K is variable from 0% to 100% showing how effective tank use his base survivability A and incoming healing from healer B. If K is almost 100% then tank block and use all his defensive abilities perfect. If K is almost 0% then this player play tank bad. And different difficulty levels of dungeons should require different values of this coefficient K.

Here we looked at an example of tanking how right actions of players should have influence on result of combat.

So right actions = success, bad actions = fail. This is good.
Having enough stats = success, not having enough stats = fail. This is bad (and this is how it works now). Because stats should help you partly reducing requirements K and C for you but not just doing everything instead of you.


Going back to insignia bonuses they are not expensive. So first of all it will not be as much frustrating for players as for example nerf of expensive bonding runestones.

But just look at how nerf or deleting healing from insignia bonuses can help to bring back to game influence of right actions. Video with same experiment but already without broken self healing:

I still have some sources of self healing such as holy avenger stone or effect of my body armor or healing potions. But already my hps without that coefficient K and variable C is lower than incoming damage. This mean that without healing from insignia bonuses I have to play right.

If you want to learn more about healing insignias watch this good guide on youtube (not advertising etc):


In CDP threads there were hundreds of suggestion about different aspects of the game. At road map there are a lot of planned changes. 99% of them are right but at the same time they take a lot of resources to do.

While nerf of healing from insignias is very very simple. Just replace healing by other bonuses such as damage mitigation buffs or damage buffs up on same conditions. And you will simply fix 90% of the game (because battle process is 90% of each game of same genre) without spending tons of resources and frustrations from players (because insignia bonuses are cheap).

Ps: so great thank you for your attention and sorry for my english. I very very hope that community managers will guide this feedback to developers team and very soon we will have this simple but important fix.
Post edited by dolrey on


  • arazith07arazith07 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,220 Arc User
    I haven't yet read through the OP, as I am pretty sleepy atm. Though I do plan to give it a good thorough read later. But I do want to respond to the claim that this game is too casual. I would have to agree that it is. Or at the very least there needs to be open world content that is much closer to what endgame players can achieve with gear. Minimum recommended for Avernus is 21,000 and for Zariel's Challenge is 26,000 and endgame characters tend to be 27-28,000 item level. For the queued content, this is appropriate, but in open world endgamers are at least 6,000 iL overgeared and can solo almost anything (aside from the Fallen Angel hunt). To put things in a bit more perspective, 1,000 iL is about 15k-60k points of non-HP stats difference depending on if the change is on the pet or on your character. So endgame characters are 90k-360k points of non-HP stats above what would be considered challenging. I think a lot of better geared players would find the game more enjoyable and challenging if the lastest endgame content was actually aimed for their item level, or at least significantly closer, say if Avernus was 25k recommended.

    Now this isn't to say that all new content should be catered to endgame, after all, not everyone is there. Events and limited time stuff should be doable by a large audience for sure. And for things like M19 content, perhaps some scaling up so that more people can partake.
  • tchefi#6735 tchefi Member Posts: 308 Arc User
    rikitaki said:

    I would love a button "scale me down" for campaign purposes, but we do not have it.

    Would be a funny idea ^^

    An other idea would be some sort of an "anti-boon" category in the boons tab where you can at will choose and change them like for the fortress ones, so you can tweak how weaker you would get and in which category.
    I mean, the boon system is already there after all, it may not be so difficult to include some negative boons ^^.
    Select between 0% ; -10% ; -20% ; -30% ; -40% ; -50% for each anti-boon
    Overall anti-boon (all stats), Power anti-boon, Defense anti-boon, Critical strike anti-boon, HP anti-boon, weapon damages anti-boon, etc.
  • rikitakirikitaki Member Posts: 773 Arc User
    edited September 2020
    dolrey said:

    Avernus is the latest campaign zone with "hardest" solo content. Moreover in main post I've wrote not only about solo content.

    It is a 21k content. You are not running it on 21k character - that is not happening on the videos. The point is that a player is expected to get in, struggle, get better gear - and be fine there. That is the so called progress. And you come here with an idea that the top geared players should struggle. Genius.
    You see, the damage formula translates your bonus stats into a kinda 9x multiplier to damage/survivability before HP an Power is counted in. And that is your problem - you are (at minimum) 10x tougher cookie than the players that the area is designed for.

    I get your point about a desire to have a single-player area adequate to the end game players - and that is why I would like the "scale me down" button. So people like you would not suggest to make single-player areas where 95% of players burn to death by standing near the camp-fire.

    It is not dismissing your experience. It is not trying to deny you having a good time. It is that you want to "rebalance" the game in favour of a really rare case - an end game character wanting to struggle in a single-player map.
  • arazith07arazith07 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,220 Arc User
    A lot more people have 25k+ iL than most people seem to think, I would estimate that 30-40% of the active population has at least one character that is endgame.
  • zimxero#8085 zimxero Member Posts: 876 Arc User
    edited September 2020
    dolrey said:

    dolrey said:


    Please stop with the 'speaking for many players' voice of authority.

    OP you are of course entitled to express YOUR opinion - but unless I missed the poll you held asking for group consensus, you don't speak for 'many players'.

    You absolutely are not speaking for me.
    Did you only triggered when I said "a lot of players"?
    Or are you going to say that NWO is not casual kindergarten and that NWO is well thought difficult game?

    1) I have been playing NWO for 6-7 years in one of strongest PvP guilds (wich also was able to farm all PvE as well). This guild (as and 90% of others) died because players were leaving the game. We all comunicate with each other relatively well so the main reson why A LOT of those players were leaving was: "This game is too casual. No challenging content. Tired from one-button trivial dungeons and broken PvP". So, friend, I know what I am talking about.

    Moreover why do you think that I speak for you and those 2 dudes who agreed with your post? If you disagree then evidently I don't speak for you. I speak for hundreds of really good players who gone in other projects (because this game is casual smartpfone slasher) and for those who like me still waiting the day when cryptics will fix the game.

    2) Do you really saying that NWO IS NOT casual game or what? I suppose you don't. Then what for your comment is?
    It sounds to me like your interests have grown beyond this game and now you would like to try a different game. Instead of giving a few suggestions and writing about your great experience here... you are making demands for this game to change to meet your new needs and trash-talking the game in general. It seems weird and hostile.
  • zagrim#6754 zagrim Member Posts: 144 Arc User
    Yes, nerf support classes more and ignore the fact that geared DPS can just one shot the pack that you can tank. Who cares if a tank can tank trash mobs in a campaign map? A lot of the issues is not tanks or healers. If you talk about dungeons you can ignore all mechanics due to DPS just wiping the floor with the boss in a lot of dungeons. Heck many dungeons you wouldnt even need a tank or healer for. Just get dps and annihilate everything. Especially tanks are not needed. If they wanna rebalance the classes they need to do them all at once.

    But if you just wanna balance/nerf (which people love when you do right?) healing insignias, then thats easy. You say they are cheap. Well just make the effect scale according to the rarity of the insignias used. There you go, not cheap anymore.
  • badnickname#3262 badnickname Member Posts: 23 Arc User
    If this mechanic would be removed, you just have to use stone of health from time to time doing campaign, just exactly as playing dps. Healing from insignias is not sufficient to survive in some harder content when you receiving big hits, so do you really want to nerf this?
  • nooneatzanooneatza Member Posts: 173 Arc User
    OP, regarding your post, the game itself being too casual is a consequence of the community being too casual. This may either be because neverwinter is *very* easily accessible and everyone can have bis gear save from a few pieces with only putting in time without having to put any effort into improving their skill, or because information is not easily accessible.
    There are people complaining about CR and Cradle still. And on any given day you can inspect random people in PE and see they are 28.5k item level without a single offensive stat capped on a dps character.

    If devs see the community wearing crazy amounts of gear(full r15s, all legendary comps etc) but having difficulties clearing stuff they hand out more free stuff or they nerf content, seems like the logical thing to do, right?

    As for the people who actually like being challenged and are willing to dummy hump and progress in their play, there is tomm and zariel(holding back comments on the latter).

    With the way it's going, it looks to me as if neverwinter wants to become an even more casual mmo, which is entirely ok, even if personally i dont agree with it.

    And regarding insignia heal nerf, this goes back to the first point where i stated the community is very casual:
    There are people which need all the help they can get. Obviously the stereotypical 30min/day playtime 28k item level joe doesnt even know about those specific insignia bonuses, but maybe from a lucky coincidence he just so happens to have one on and it saves his life. Leave them as they are and just live with the fact neverwinter is not a difficult game.

    ***As always, if my comment is too vitriolic please remove it dear forum mods***
  • rikitakirikitaki Member Posts: 773 Arc User
    edited September 2020


    Well, the claim "it is cheap" is wrong in the first place. It keeps him alive because he has a lot of stats in defence, deflect, awareness a crit avoidance. He literally gets at least 5x less damage and much more than 2x the healing that would correspond to a build that struggles to get stats together. And that is the part that is "not cheap". Not cheap in terms of game currency, not cheap because you often have to sacrifice something else.

    @dolrey I see you shifted your gear to a claim "there is nothing to play". Yep, this is actually true. Not much new stuff is thrown at you once the campaigns are done. Everything repetitive. It is a small game... who would have guessed it.
    But... I am kind of surprised by a claim that such a big community would find the content not challenging? I don't know. There is an option in dungeon runs for four mods now: the "minimum item level". It is not over the top, you see, but it does remove your issue where players rely on gear and build. Go for it. There is the option - sadly, you cannot select it for campaigns, but the dungeons can be run in that mode. Go for it. But do not ask for it to be the only possibility for all of us.
    And you know why it would be bad to ask for such a thing? Because the option is there - and it is not popular. People do not choose it, because they do not like it. Making despised things mandatory does not bode well for the future of a... game.
  • micky1p00micky1p00 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,462 Arc User
    edited September 2020
    nooneatza said:


    It's a chicken or the egg problem, what came first, overly 'casual' playerbase or casual aimed content. What for sure is that currently it's self reinforcing, and snowballing. (Regardless if it is for better or worse)

    IMO it all comes from an issue in the learning curve. When players having issue with healing a cocoon in LoMM, throwing gear and nerfing the heal-check is like band-aid, just moving the issue to the next step until the next nerf.
    Encouraging players to pick the right feats / skills for the task (single target for this case), or adjust gear for specific fight (tank reducing HP in the case) is a long term, and healthy progress. But how this will happen if throughout the game mechanics is mostly ignored, nerfs are abundant and gear is given for free, until that slap in the face when a player just isn't accustomed to. So failure ensues,
  • arazith07arazith07 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,220 Arc User
    micky1p00 said:

    nooneatza said:



    I honestly think that this trend started in Beta when players figured out that you can just gather up mobs and push them over the cliff instead of honestly fighting them. Swarms used to be a threat, even in a five man party, each player had a specific role for boss fights. GF and TR where meant to tank and dps the boss, GWF and CW were meant to tank and deal with all the swarming adds, with the DC left to heal everyone. But this was quickly thrown out the window and tanks became obsolete before the game came out of beta due to the gather and sweep meta that just wasn't addressed soon enough. Player behavior has always sought out ways to ignore mechanics and just maximize dps.

    While we do not know the details yet, we have hints and teases of a new leveling experience, I hope this ends up teaching and encouraging behavior more healthy for the game and is an experience that doesn't leave the player hitting a wall unknowns like how today's players feel. There are plenty of players with the gear to be endgame, but lack knowledge of stat distribution and class mechanics to improve killing power or survival. Once that general knowledge base is up to par, I hope we see more open world content that is closer to the endgame capabilities and will actually initially be a challenge for the longtime players. I want to see more content like the Fallen Angel hunt in terms of difficulty.

    As far as healing sources, I don't think this is a root of any problems, just something that makes the current issue of content being too easy more pronounced. This source of healing would be fine if the content actually was endgame gear appropriate. Open world content shouldn't need a healer just to complete Mod 6 is a good example as to why that is a bad idea. But, it should be challenging enough to give players at the minimum recommended pause before engaging, to have them think of "ok, who do I kill first, how do I not die to this pack?" And for players who have already completed the content to be able to not worry about those questions, but still need those sources of healing, or to dodge certain attacks, and not one-shot the whole map.
  • mushellkamushellka Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 357 Arc User
    dolrey said:

    I only asking to delete these mechanics from the game.


    Aren't you the one who asked for the removal of lifesteel and recovery?
    I'm sure most of the players are already thankful for that.
    Mod 16 was born precisely because of such HAMSTER ideas.

    Better to feed the troll than listen to the idiot .
  • rikitakirikitaki Member Posts: 773 Arc User
    I think it was probably M14 when I was in an alliance that organised naked CN runs. People felt overpowered, so they stripped off the gear and went in. For the gigs.

    And that is the difference in attitudes. OP claims that he represents a large group of people that spent large effort to tune their characters into shape they hate the most. Realising the errors of their ways, instead of spending literally 5 seconds to undo the problem (for example... removal of the bondings), they suggest to remove some things from the game. Things that others enjoy.
    Quite unreasonable. Does not make sense... unless the represented large group is a mental asylum.

    Options are important. In this case, you definitely have the tools to tune your character to your liking. So... do it.
  • rickcase276rickcase276 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,382 Arc User
    The biggest thing is, for every one person who thinks the game is too-casual friendly, there is one that thinks it is not casual-friendly enough. It probably boils down to 50% think the game is just right for difficulty, 25 % think it is too easy and 25% think it is too hard. Each of the group have options to make the game to their liking. if they choose to do so. No one person's ideas are going to make the game a better game for all people, or even a majority of the people. And for the record I am in the 50% that think the game's difficult is about right.
  • drago#9606 drago Member Posts: 20 Arc User
    I think this is a fascinating discussion on what amounts to the philosophy of the game and who it is targeting. It does sound like over the years it's become more beginner / casual-gamer friendly. As a new player back at the start of the year, I thought NW did a great job of immersing me in a story-driven environment, without having a crazy learning curve. It also did a decent job of hooking me in over time to want to focus on character progression, as well as content progression.

    I don't think that accessibility for new or casual gamers should be sacrificed. It's a definite selling point for NW. But I do think there are potential solutions to the problem that the OP points out. After a while, whether it takes you months or years, you get to a stage where you want more new content, and for it to challenge you in some way.

    A few thoughts, that don't represent anyone's opinions but my own:

    1.) There isn't enough new content - whilst I think the shift to episodic content will be a good one, there doesn't appear to have been enough investment into new content in the past couple of years and it shows. They have the whole DnD world to play with. The game should be second-to-none when it comes to regular story-driven content. It's also a great pity the foundry had to be shelved, because it's obvious how much it could contribute to a game with a (still relatively) large and engaged player-base. Hopefully they find a way to bring that back in the future (maybe tied to over-arching story arcs that content creators can help fill in - this would actually be the thing I'd like to see above anything else).

    2.) There aren't enough difficulty modes - because I think the game is and should continue to be story-driven, it would make no sense to limit new content to only high-level players. Whilst there is a nod to it with "epic" dungeons/trials, it would be nice to be able to select from multiple difficulty levels when playing any solo or group content. Of course you could de-gear yourself to achieve the same thing, but psychologically you want to be able to use the best stuff you've earned along the way. The Tales of Old event is a good example of how dungeon mechanics can be changed to enhance difficulty in different ways.

    3.) The rewards system could use refinement - obviously difficult and rewards are already linked in the sense higher IL content gets newer gear / items. But the relationship is actually quite limited when you go beyond the very latest gear in the newest dungeons / trials. Unless you get lucky with an artifact / companion / mount drop, most of the dungeons and campaigns give you little of value once you're at level 80. Legacy campaigns at least give you boon points, all of which contribute to character development. Perhaps that kind of reward mechanic could be interesting if used more widely (e.g. combined with re-vamped crafting, so you could enhance your gear with different stats/bonuses over time).
  • jimmypdtjimmypdt Member Posts: 121 Arc User
    I wish NWO would follow what SWTOR did for difficulty. You can change between story, veteran, and master mode. Story mode is for people who just want the story (easy enemies, hard for you to be killed). Veteran mode for people who want a bit of a challenge (Harder enemies, you can die sometimes). And Master mode for those who want a real challenge (Deadly enemies that are unforgiving, you will die often until you skill and gear really improves. And also take a few friends). These 3 mode can be changed at anytime for the story lines, dungeons, trials, heroics, basically everything (rewards are also adjusted depending on the difficulty of the mode). If they do this then it should solve most of these issues in the thread.

    I wish you the best,

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