I don't know why low-level skirmishes are still limited to such a small level range. Cryptic clearly has the tech to make everything scale (even if the results are questionable) and definitely did the right thing by applying this tech to all the levelling dungeons. Why not skirmishes too?
Trying to run all the levelling skirmishes on my baby cleric has been hard work simply because you out-level them quite quickly and the "dead zone" I observed three years ago is still a thing. I did miss one skirmish entirely simply because despite of hours of queuing I just couldn't get it to pop, and the alternative to skipping it would have been to stop doing things that give XP and just stay logged in, waiting in the queue for who knows how many more hours.
Showing posts with label skirmishes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skirmishes. Show all posts
27/07/2019
09/07/2019
Scaling Strangeness
I knew that Cryptic was going to change the way scaling works in Undermountain, and I actually welcomed the idea as I thought that the existing system was pretty poor. After running a couple of Cloak Towers though, things didn't seem much different from before: Downscaled max-level characters were still rushing through, pulling and killing everything on their own while lowbies lagged behind - I guess things just went marginally more slowly, as it took more than one hit to kill an enemy now.
But then I ran into the strangeness in Illusionist's Gambit, and I soon got another taste of it in the Storming the Keep skirmish. Three years ago, I ridiculed this one for scaling players up to 60 while leaving the mobs in their twenties, making the whole thing a complete joke. Well, when I ran it this time, this was still happening... but our group of 60ies really struggled to kill those twenties! We barely made it through to the end, with me desperately spamming my one heal as much as it would let me and people still ended up getting downed repeatedly.
I found several reports of the new scaling being utterly broken (e.g. people being one-shot while doing normal Demogorgon) but that was more than two months ago, and supposedly there's been a patch to fix things since then? All I can say is that I'm very confused.
But then I ran into the strangeness in Illusionist's Gambit, and I soon got another taste of it in the Storming the Keep skirmish. Three years ago, I ridiculed this one for scaling players up to 60 while leaving the mobs in their twenties, making the whole thing a complete joke. Well, when I ran it this time, this was still happening... but our group of 60ies really struggled to kill those twenties! We barely made it through to the end, with me desperately spamming my one heal as much as it would let me and people still ended up getting downed repeatedly.
I found several reports of the new scaling being utterly broken (e.g. people being one-shot while doing normal Demogorgon) but that was more than two months ago, and supposedly there's been a patch to fix things since then? All I can say is that I'm very confused.
07/07/2019
Truly Mad Wizard's Lair
I've now gotten the Illusionist's Gambit skirmish from the random queue twice on my baby cleric, and both times we wiped on the very first wave of mobs. I have no idea what's going on there, is it an issue with the new level scaling?
On the plus side, while failing like that causes the skirmish to end prematurely, it still counts towards random completion, so it's probably the fastest way to earn 8k rough astral diamonds currently in the game.
And to think people used to argue about the voting system at the end of each round of that skirmish, and how players rarely wanted to stay past gaining a bronze medal to earn silver or gold rewards... I'd like to even get that far again!
On the plus side, while failing like that causes the skirmish to end prematurely, it still counts towards random completion, so it's probably the fastest way to earn 8k rough astral diamonds currently in the game.
And to think people used to argue about the voting system at the end of each round of that skirmish, and how players rarely wanted to stay past gaining a bronze medal to earn silver or gold rewards... I'd like to even get that far again!
12/03/2018
The Merchant Prince's Folly
This skirmish that came with the Swords of Chult module is possibly the best one Cryptic has created so far. My pet tank and I have been running it a lot to gain the associated campaign currency (called totems) and it's always good fun.
It lives up to the format's promise of short and fast action, but manages to not completely limit itself to combat. I'm always keen to be the first one to rouse the guards or repair the weapons in the courtyard, or to raise barricades outside, because it makes me feel so much more useful than my piddly cleric dps.
The only thing I'm ambivalent about is the giant T-Rex outside. Since it would take most groups a while to kill it, the common tactic seems to be for one person to lure the big dino away into a corner while the rest of the party completes the escort, thereby increasing the group's chances of finishing with a gold medal. The only problem with this is that if the T-Rex isn't far enough away, it likes to keep people in combat, and while in combat you can't click the portal to exit. I've previously gotten stuck inside with the dino blocking the portal to the point where I had to hit Alt+F4 to get out. If there is a better way of escaping, I don't know what it is.
It lives up to the format's promise of short and fast action, but manages to not completely limit itself to combat. I'm always keen to be the first one to rouse the guards or repair the weapons in the courtyard, or to raise barricades outside, because it makes me feel so much more useful than my piddly cleric dps.
The only thing I'm ambivalent about is the giant T-Rex outside. Since it would take most groups a while to kill it, the common tactic seems to be for one person to lure the big dino away into a corner while the rest of the party completes the escort, thereby increasing the group's chances of finishing with a gold medal. The only problem with this is that if the T-Rex isn't far enough away, it likes to keep people in combat, and while in combat you can't click the portal to exit. I've previously gotten stuck inside with the dino blocking the portal to the point where I had to hit Alt+F4 to get out. If there is a better way of escaping, I don't know what it is.
16/06/2016
Happy 3rd Birthday, Neverwinter!
Has this on-and-off relationship really been going on for three years already? Congratulations on holding my attention for that long, game!
We found our stronghold decked out in celebratory banners, with confetti raining from the sky absolutely everywhere. There's also a new repeatable escort quest in the stronghold just for the jubilee event, which follows all the bad tropes of an escort quest to a T... well, except for the one where your escortee attacks everything, cause the foreign merchant actually just cowers.
My favourite skirmish, the Protector's Speech, is also back! I just wish they'd actually give him a new speech every year. I have to be careful not to fall down the rabbit hole of grinding it over and over again just because it's easy, fun and rewarding, simply because I do need to get sleep at some point. I do think I would like to get the horse for my control wizard though.
I'm a bit torn on how much to involve my lowbie hunter ranger. On the one hand I want to get her a key to the Protector's Garden because all my other alts have it, on the other hand this risks throwing her levelling journey seriously off course, considering that a single run of the skirmish was enough to net me nearly two levels. I'll probably go ahead with it anyway.
Also, don't forget to claim your free goodie from the Zen store every day for the next week! If nothing else, Cryptic sure knows how to celebrate.
We found our stronghold decked out in celebratory banners, with confetti raining from the sky absolutely everywhere. There's also a new repeatable escort quest in the stronghold just for the jubilee event, which follows all the bad tropes of an escort quest to a T... well, except for the one where your escortee attacks everything, cause the foreign merchant actually just cowers.
My favourite skirmish, the Protector's Speech, is also back! I just wish they'd actually give him a new speech every year. I have to be careful not to fall down the rabbit hole of grinding it over and over again just because it's easy, fun and rewarding, simply because I do need to get sleep at some point. I do think I would like to get the horse for my control wizard though.
I'm a bit torn on how much to involve my lowbie hunter ranger. On the one hand I want to get her a key to the Protector's Garden because all my other alts have it, on the other hand this risks throwing her levelling journey seriously off course, considering that a single run of the skirmish was enough to net me nearly two levels. I'll probably go ahead with it anyway.
Also, don't forget to claim your free goodie from the Zen store every day for the next week! If nothing else, Cryptic sure knows how to celebrate.
11/05/2016
Buggy Skirmish
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.
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.
10/09/2015
No More AD From Leadership
General chat caught my eye today because people were arguing about a change that had been announced on the forums but nowhere else so far: the removal of astral diamond rewards from the leadership profession (and the foundry).
The driving force behind this is an unbalanced economy caused by "AFK-playing" and botting. Leadership rewards astral diamonds just for logging in and pressing some buttons, and Cryptic wants to stop that. In fairness, some players have taken this to pretty insane levels, farming leadership on fifty alts or even multiple accounts. Cryptic wants people to gain AD by actually playing the game, and I can't blame them for that.
However, I still think that the proposed changes are terrible, because after this the only ways of gaining astral diamonds will be dungeons, skirmishes and PvP (plus the pittance you get from invoking these days). But that's only a small part of the content! In practice this means that a lot of players will effectively have no source of AD anymore.
Take me as an example. I've found dungeons and skirmishes at max level to either be extremely dull or unforgivingly hard to the point that they are a pain to do in pugs. And PvP in this game is terrible in my opinion. Nonetheless I rack up a considerable amount of hours playing each week: I do dailies in the campaign areas and work on my guild's stronghold. None of this awards astral diamonds. If anything, things like unlocking campaign boons and upgrading your stronghold cost AD. Where is that currency supposed to come from in the future?
This seems like another one of those changes that hasn't really been thought through at all, or is simply driven by blind greed. ("If we minimise the ways of gaining currency in game, people will spend more money, right?")
The driving force behind this is an unbalanced economy caused by "AFK-playing" and botting. Leadership rewards astral diamonds just for logging in and pressing some buttons, and Cryptic wants to stop that. In fairness, some players have taken this to pretty insane levels, farming leadership on fifty alts or even multiple accounts. Cryptic wants people to gain AD by actually playing the game, and I can't blame them for that.
However, I still think that the proposed changes are terrible, because after this the only ways of gaining astral diamonds will be dungeons, skirmishes and PvP (plus the pittance you get from invoking these days). But that's only a small part of the content! In practice this means that a lot of players will effectively have no source of AD anymore.
Take me as an example. I've found dungeons and skirmishes at max level to either be extremely dull or unforgivingly hard to the point that they are a pain to do in pugs. And PvP in this game is terrible in my opinion. Nonetheless I rack up a considerable amount of hours playing each week: I do dailies in the campaign areas and work on my guild's stronghold. None of this awards astral diamonds. If anything, things like unlocking campaign boons and upgrading your stronghold cost AD. Where is that currency supposed to come from in the future?
This seems like another one of those changes that hasn't really been thought through at all, or is simply driven by blind greed. ("If we minimise the ways of gaining currency in game, people will spend more money, right?")
27/06/2015
Shores of Tuern
My pet tank and I have slowly been working our way through the Tyranny of Dragons campaign. We've reached a point where, in order to unlock the next character boon, we both need an item that, according to the campaign window, comes from the Shores of Tuern skirmish.
Our first problem was that we couldn't figure out how to get there. According to the wiki it's unlocked through the campaign window, which is blatantly not true anymore, and our skirmish queue only displayed the epic version. Since we were supposedly sufficiently geared for epic anyway, we decided to give that a go, though not without trepidation.
We got into a group relatively quickly, and seemed to do okay on the trash, even though people were getting downed on almost every pull. Then we got to the boss, a fire-breathing dragonborn with two rage drake adds. There was a lore entry that suggested that killing the adds first would cause him to enrage. It didn't seem to matter either way, as we were wiped out within seconds.
We tried again, with the same result, and people started dropping group, with replacements getting rotated in almost instantly. What was bewildering to me was that everybody else appeared to be massively overgeared for the place, yet they quickly died all the same, and nobody seemed to want to offer up any advice on what was going wrong.
Eventually a rogue spoke up that he had "an idea", which turned out to be what you could call an exploit. Apparently it's possible to wall-jump up to where the entrance to the area with the boss is located, and if one person is willing to sacrifice themselves, the two rage drakes can be pulled up to that door where the boss won't follow. People who die can then respawn outside and even though they are separated from the rest of the group by a blue "magic wall", it is apparently possible to attack through it so that you can help with killing the drakes from outside.
After a couple of failed attempts we managed to kill the drakes, with three people stuck outside and only the rogue and a scourge warlock left inside the area. I believe that the plan had been to get the boss to evade so that he could then be fought without the adds, however the scourge warlock's companion pet had a different idea and decided to face the boss on its own. Funnily enough, for all the one-shotting he had done to the players, he seemed to be incapable of killing the pet, so after a couple of minutes of everyone waiting for it to die, the rogue and warlock decided to join in instead (as the pet was holding aggro very effectively by that point) and slowly took the boss down.
I'm very much against exploiting but had a hard time feeling too bad about this one as the fight just seemed so impossibly hard and was still a handful even while using the rogue's "trick". That aside, I told myself that we were only doing it this one time to get our campaign item anyway.
As it turns out, it's actually a rare drop, and neither my pet tank nor I actually got one. On the plus side, we also found out that it's possible to purchase it from a vendor instead if you grind out lots and lots of campaign currency via dailies. I can't help but feel that epic skirmishes and dungeons are simply too tough for us.
Our first problem was that we couldn't figure out how to get there. According to the wiki it's unlocked through the campaign window, which is blatantly not true anymore, and our skirmish queue only displayed the epic version. Since we were supposedly sufficiently geared for epic anyway, we decided to give that a go, though not without trepidation.
We got into a group relatively quickly, and seemed to do okay on the trash, even though people were getting downed on almost every pull. Then we got to the boss, a fire-breathing dragonborn with two rage drake adds. There was a lore entry that suggested that killing the adds first would cause him to enrage. It didn't seem to matter either way, as we were wiped out within seconds.
We tried again, with the same result, and people started dropping group, with replacements getting rotated in almost instantly. What was bewildering to me was that everybody else appeared to be massively overgeared for the place, yet they quickly died all the same, and nobody seemed to want to offer up any advice on what was going wrong.
Eventually a rogue spoke up that he had "an idea", which turned out to be what you could call an exploit. Apparently it's possible to wall-jump up to where the entrance to the area with the boss is located, and if one person is willing to sacrifice themselves, the two rage drakes can be pulled up to that door where the boss won't follow. People who die can then respawn outside and even though they are separated from the rest of the group by a blue "magic wall", it is apparently possible to attack through it so that you can help with killing the drakes from outside.
After a couple of failed attempts we managed to kill the drakes, with three people stuck outside and only the rogue and a scourge warlock left inside the area. I believe that the plan had been to get the boss to evade so that he could then be fought without the adds, however the scourge warlock's companion pet had a different idea and decided to face the boss on its own. Funnily enough, for all the one-shotting he had done to the players, he seemed to be incapable of killing the pet, so after a couple of minutes of everyone waiting for it to die, the rogue and warlock decided to join in instead (as the pet was holding aggro very effectively by that point) and slowly took the boss down.
I'm very much against exploiting but had a hard time feeling too bad about this one as the fight just seemed so impossibly hard and was still a handful even while using the rogue's "trick". That aside, I told myself that we were only doing it this one time to get our campaign item anyway.
As it turns out, it's actually a rare drop, and neither my pet tank nor I actually got one. On the plus side, we also found out that it's possible to purchase it from a vendor instead if you grind out lots and lots of campaign currency via dailies. I can't help but feel that epic skirmishes and dungeons are simply too tough for us.
23/06/2015
The Protector's Speech
I wrote about the Protector's Speech skirmish last year. I've been running it on all of my alts again this year, not because I particularly care about any of the rewards, but because it's fun.
Most runs are smooth and very quick. I don't know if Cryptic's matchmaking is actually that good or whether it's just luck, but almost every run I get into has at least one guy in amazing gear who smashes everything in seconds while everyone else can more or less tag along. It's even more pronounced this year since they didn't level the skirmish up to 70 but are instead scaling max-level players down to 60, which makes them seriously overpowered compared to the mobs.
I only had one run that didn't go so well, where my great weapon fighter in her paltry greens had to slowly solo most enemies because the rest of the group seemed to spend most of its time milling about it confusion on the other end of the map. We missed all the bonuses by a mile. When we left the instance, I noticed that two of the other group members were level 11 and 13 respectively, which explained a lot.
For fun, I recorded one of my runs with all sounds turned off except for the NPC voices, so you can actually listen and pay attention to Lord Neverember's speech. Enjoy!
Most runs are smooth and very quick. I don't know if Cryptic's matchmaking is actually that good or whether it's just luck, but almost every run I get into has at least one guy in amazing gear who smashes everything in seconds while everyone else can more or less tag along. It's even more pronounced this year since they didn't level the skirmish up to 70 but are instead scaling max-level players down to 60, which makes them seriously overpowered compared to the mobs.
I only had one run that didn't go so well, where my great weapon fighter in her paltry greens had to slowly solo most enemies because the rest of the group seemed to spend most of its time milling about it confusion on the other end of the map. We missed all the bonuses by a mile. When we left the instance, I noticed that two of the other group members were level 11 and 13 respectively, which explained a lot.
For fun, I recorded one of my runs with all sounds turned off except for the NPC voices, so you can actually listen and pay attention to Lord Neverember's speech. Enjoy!
13/04/2015
Level Scaling
I think that Neverwinter has had level scaling of some sort pretty much since launch, seeing how event skirmishes always threw you into groups of characters of a very wide level range, but it was a complete mystery to me how it worked because the UI gave no indication of what was happening. (Everything appeared to be level "skull" but somehow I wasn't being one-shotted.)
While trying to slowly catch up with the new content, I took my great weapon fighter to Neverdeath Graveyard tonight to fight some dragon cultists from the Tyranny of Dragons module. I was surprised by how poorly I fared as a level 60 facing off against level 28 mobs... until I noticed a new UI indicator that told me that I was being down-levelled to 30 in this area.
It works upwards as well. Later I tried to do an instanced solo quest which told me that I was being up-levelled to 70 as soon as I entered. Sadly it didn't seem to be very effective as the first single level 71 mob I encountered took me several minutes (!) to kill and I nearly died several times. On death it then birthed three smaller mobs which killed me before I could even blink. Let's just say that I decided not to proceed with that particular quest for now.
While trying to slowly catch up with the new content, I took my great weapon fighter to Neverdeath Graveyard tonight to fight some dragon cultists from the Tyranny of Dragons module. I was surprised by how poorly I fared as a level 60 facing off against level 28 mobs... until I noticed a new UI indicator that told me that I was being down-levelled to 30 in this area.
It works upwards as well. Later I tried to do an instanced solo quest which told me that I was being up-levelled to 70 as soon as I entered. Sadly it didn't seem to be very effective as the first single level 71 mob I encountered took me several minutes (!) to kill and I nearly died several times. On death it then birthed three smaller mobs which killed me before I could even blink. Let's just say that I decided not to proceed with that particular quest for now.
21/07/2014
Buggy Skirmish Queue
There is a bug with the queue for skirmishes that I've experienced reasonably often now, most recently during the CTA event this past weekend. Basically what happens is that you'll be put into a group in a bugged version of the skirmish, which is stuck and unable to progress, either because some clicky thing you're supposed to interact with isn't clickable or a wave of mobs doesn't spawn as it should. (Nobody knows why these things bug out in the first place.)
Often there is also a disconnected person in the group whom you can't remove. So what happens is that people leave once they see that the event is bugged, but the group finder has the urge to keep refilling the DCed person's group, landing people in the same bugged skirmish over and over again.
When this happens it's best to just take a break from trying to queue for this content, because getting thrown into the same bugged event repeatedly is just annoying.
Often there is also a disconnected person in the group whom you can't remove. So what happens is that people leave once they see that the event is bugged, but the group finder has the urge to keep refilling the DCed person's group, landing people in the same bugged skirmish over and over again.
When this happens it's best to just take a break from trying to queue for this content, because getting thrown into the same bugged event repeatedly is just annoying.
10/07/2014
Voice Chat
Like World of Warcraft (and probably some other MMOs), Neverwinter has built-in voice chat. Like in World of Warcraft (and probably some other MMOs), its quality is poor compared to a dedicated third party program, not to mention that most people don't necessarily want to engage in conversation while rushing through dungeons with random strangers, so nobody really uses it as far as I can tell.
That is, until you end up grouped with someone who doesn't realise that their V key is set up to be the default push-to-talk key and douses the group in irregular random noises until you get annoyed enough to mute them.
And in my case of course there was also that one time during the Gate Crashers skirmish, when a delighted female voice with a heavy American accent kept giggling about how the Intellect Devourer mobs (brains on legs, basically) looked like "butt monsters". Thank you, anonymous voice. We really needed to hear that, repeatedly.
That is, until you end up grouped with someone who doesn't realise that their V key is set up to be the default push-to-talk key and douses the group in irregular random noises until you get annoyed enough to mute them.
And in my case of course there was also that one time during the Gate Crashers skirmish, when a delighted female voice with a heavy American accent kept giggling about how the Intellect Devourer mobs (brains on legs, basically) looked like "butt monsters". Thank you, anonymous voice. We really needed to hear that, repeatedly.
21/06/2014
Protector's Jubilee
Neverwinter currently celebrates its one-year anniversary with the Protector's Jubilee event. There is a skirmish associated with the event called "The Protector's Speech". Before running it for the first time with my pet tank, I joked that it was going to consist of us standing around for fifteen minutes just to listen to Lord Neverember talk. Of course this didn't turn out to be true; you actually have to repel a series of random attacks on Protector's Enclave. (It can't be very well protected with all these random baddies showing up at once...)
However, Lord Neverember does hold a speech throughout the whole thing, unperturbed by all the fighting behind him. It takes over ten minutes and is therefore probably the longest single piece of voice-acting I've encountered in an MMO yet. If you do the associated daily quest for the wizard Elminster, he quips that Lord Neverember tends to be quite long-winded. Too bad nobody is actually going to have much of a chance to listen...
However, Lord Neverember does hold a speech throughout the whole thing, unperturbed by all the fighting behind him. It takes over ten minutes and is therefore probably the longest single piece of voice-acting I've encountered in an MMO yet. If you do the associated daily quest for the wizard Elminster, he quips that Lord Neverember tends to be quite long-winded. Too bad nobody is actually going to have much of a chance to listen...
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