Last week Cryptic announced that the next module will be called Avernus. They haven't really said much more about it other than that it will come out "soon" (™) and that we'll continue our adventures in the first circle of hell under the guidance of Makos.
All I keep thinking is that "Avernus" seems like a very confusing name for a module that is the second one to take place there. That's kind of as if Underdark had been called "Going down" and then Maze Engine had been called "Underdark", when in fact both of them (mostly) took place in the Underdark.
Showing posts with label underdark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label underdark. Show all posts
01/06/2020
28/05/2018
A Touch Of Madness
Another long-neglected goal achieved: Underdark campaign completion.
The reason I had stayed away from this one for so long was that I perceived it as extremely grindy, and looking at the raw numbers, having to acquire 7000 Faerzress at 18-50 units a pop certainly does add up to quite a slog. Thankfully I got a lot of mileage out of a recent double Underdark currency event.
I did realise though that all things considered, the grind wasn't really that much worse than for most campaigns; what made the difference for me were the heroic encounters. I liked them well enough as something sprinkled in among the regular quests like in Icewind Dale, but a whole campaign of nothing but grinding heroic encounters (or skirmishes I guess) was just super boring to me. I like the classic questing model. I don't think I would have much fun in Guild Wars 2.
The reason I had stayed away from this one for so long was that I perceived it as extremely grindy, and looking at the raw numbers, having to acquire 7000 Faerzress at 18-50 units a pop certainly does add up to quite a slog. Thankfully I got a lot of mileage out of a recent double Underdark currency event.
I did realise though that all things considered, the grind wasn't really that much worse than for most campaigns; what made the difference for me were the heroic encounters. I liked them well enough as something sprinkled in among the regular quests like in Icewind Dale, but a whole campaign of nothing but grinding heroic encounters (or skirmishes I guess) was just super boring to me. I like the classic questing model. I don't think I would have much fun in Guild Wars 2.
17/03/2018
Iteration
One thing I've found fascinating over time is watching the way Cryptic iterates on its modules. If you look at the first three "expansions" for example, you can clearly see them refining the daily area concept with each release - Icewind Dale remains one of my favourite maps to play around on to this day.
However, every time they tried something very different, it didn't go down too well. I mean, I liked Tyranny of Dragons and the idea of a campaign that you can do while levelling (even if the associated level scaling was screwy), but based on them never repeating the experiment, I suspect it wasn't too well received. Elemental Evil with its level cap increase was a disaster for all kinds of reasons, and Underdark deciding to completely decouple the game's grind from its story... let's just say I probably wasn't the only one who noped right out of that one after playing through the whole story in a single evening.
Lately we've returned to a more traditional "daily area" model, however with the exception of Chult's "six times weekly" patrol missions, there's been a general move away from traditional daily quests coupled with a strong push towards forcing players to log in and play every single day by making it impossible to pick up several days worth of dailies just to "binge complete" them all at once on the weekend. This is a shame because that's exactly how I like to play through the old areas. It's no coincidence that I have yet to complete any campaign after Elemental Evil on any of my alts.
However, every time they tried something very different, it didn't go down too well. I mean, I liked Tyranny of Dragons and the idea of a campaign that you can do while levelling (even if the associated level scaling was screwy), but based on them never repeating the experiment, I suspect it wasn't too well received. Elemental Evil with its level cap increase was a disaster for all kinds of reasons, and Underdark deciding to completely decouple the game's grind from its story... let's just say I probably wasn't the only one who noped right out of that one after playing through the whole story in a single evening.
Lately we've returned to a more traditional "daily area" model, however with the exception of Chult's "six times weekly" patrol missions, there's been a general move away from traditional daily quests coupled with a strong push towards forcing players to log in and play every single day by making it impossible to pick up several days worth of dailies just to "binge complete" them all at once on the weekend. This is a shame because that's exactly how I like to play through the old areas. It's no coincidence that I have yet to complete any campaign after Elemental Evil on any of my alts.
05/11/2016
Demonic Encounters
Even though I enjoyed module eight's story arc, I didn't actually do the associated campaign on any of my characters, not even my main. Why? Because it was tied to farming heroic encounters which I thought were absolutely horrible.
The problem was that Underdark introduced demonic encounters to existing maps which came in three different flavours, two of which required actual tactics to be completed successfully instead of just blindly zerging the mobs. In one scenario you had to prevent demons that spawned around the edge of the area from running towards the shiny circle in the middle... but people would frequently confuse the fact that the demons disappeared when they hit the circle for a sign of success and actively pull or knock them into it, causing the encounter to fail. The other problematic scenario required you to protect an NPC while they channelled a protective spell, and if they were hit more than once or twice, you were pretty much guaranteed to fail... but you'd try to finish it anyway, just to run out of time with a smidgeon of the progress bar not completed. After repeatedly wasting half an hour or more rotating among events that just kept failing like this I got fed up with it and refused to let my pet tank drag me along to any more of them, boons be damned.
It was only last week that I finally decided to give them another go, and things seem to have improved in so far as more people know what to do now and the NPCs that need protecting appear to have received a significant buff, as I've seen that particular encounter complete with ease even after the Harper got smacked out of his or her trance every other spawn. The circle scenario still fails quite a bit, probably because it's the most sensitive to movement and precision, but people just don't bother with it anymore or even start and fail it intentionally just to get another one to spawn more quickly.
The problem was that Underdark introduced demonic encounters to existing maps which came in three different flavours, two of which required actual tactics to be completed successfully instead of just blindly zerging the mobs. In one scenario you had to prevent demons that spawned around the edge of the area from running towards the shiny circle in the middle... but people would frequently confuse the fact that the demons disappeared when they hit the circle for a sign of success and actively pull or knock them into it, causing the encounter to fail. The other problematic scenario required you to protect an NPC while they channelled a protective spell, and if they were hit more than once or twice, you were pretty much guaranteed to fail... but you'd try to finish it anyway, just to run out of time with a smidgeon of the progress bar not completed. After repeatedly wasting half an hour or more rotating among events that just kept failing like this I got fed up with it and refused to let my pet tank drag me along to any more of them, boons be damned.
It was only last week that I finally decided to give them another go, and things seem to have improved in so far as more people know what to do now and the NPCs that need protecting appear to have received a significant buff, as I've seen that particular encounter complete with ease even after the Harper got smacked out of his or her trance every other spawn. The circle scenario still fails quite a bit, probably because it's the most sensitive to movement and precision, but people just don't bother with it anymore or even start and fail it intentionally just to get another one to spawn more quickly.
30/10/2016
60-70
... is still a very tedious level range, and as observed previously, the update to the Elemental Evil campaign hasn't actually made it more fun (in my opinion). I was however pleased to find that there are more alternative XP sources in that level bracket now than ever before.
For example you can start the Underdark story as early as 60 and it actually scales the content to your level instead of scaling your character - though my pet tank and I had issues with that in at least one chapter where we walked in and found that all the mobs were level 70, so I'm guessing that tech still has some kinks that need working out.
Also, Sharandar is genuine levelling content now! I was wary of going there since I still remembered the early Elemental Evil days, where the game would prompt you to go there at 60 even though everything was level 70 and you'd just get trounced because the scaling was pretty ineffective. The in-game map also still told me not to go there at level 69, warning me that the enemies were too high level. However, while looking over my pet tank's shoulder I noticed that the first area in Sharandar is now genuinely level 64, the second one 66 and the third one 68. So you can get a head start on those boons now and the dailies give great XP to boot.
For example you can start the Underdark story as early as 60 and it actually scales the content to your level instead of scaling your character - though my pet tank and I had issues with that in at least one chapter where we walked in and found that all the mobs were level 70, so I'm guessing that tech still has some kinks that need working out.
Also, Sharandar is genuine levelling content now! I was wary of going there since I still remembered the early Elemental Evil days, where the game would prompt you to go there at 60 even though everything was level 70 and you'd just get trounced because the scaling was pretty ineffective. The in-game map also still told me not to go there at level 69, warning me that the enemies were too high level. However, while looking over my pet tank's shoulder I noticed that the first area in Sharandar is now genuinely level 64, the second one 66 and the third one 68. So you can get a head start on those boons now and the dailies give great XP to boot.
26/05/2016
Underdark
I realised that I never actually gave my opinion on the Underdark module, even though my pet tank and I actually played through its story shortly after it was released, so here goes:
Cryptic made a big deal out of the fact that they had managed to get R. A. Salvatore to write a storyline for them, and even though I've never read any of his books, I thought it was immediately obvious that the Underdark story was very different from their usual fare. Aspects of D&D were referenced that had never been mentioned in Neverwinter before, and there were some interesting twists and turns. Even the voice acting seemed a bit better than usual, though dwarf accents seem to be doomed to be terrible no matter what.
I also liked the small hidden achievements in the various chapters, such as waking up a passed out, drunken orc by poking him. My favourite character was probably Captain Belgold, the guy that hands out all the different chapter quests, simply because his dry sense of humour cracked me up. The decision that one playthrough would also unlock the campaign for any alts also seemed very generous.
My only issue was that it was way too easy to burn through the whole thing in one night and then be left with nothing but a stupid grind for the rest of the campaign.
Cryptic made a big deal out of the fact that they had managed to get R. A. Salvatore to write a storyline for them, and even though I've never read any of his books, I thought it was immediately obvious that the Underdark story was very different from their usual fare. Aspects of D&D were referenced that had never been mentioned in Neverwinter before, and there were some interesting twists and turns. Even the voice acting seemed a bit better than usual, though dwarf accents seem to be doomed to be terrible no matter what.
I also liked the small hidden achievements in the various chapters, such as waking up a passed out, drunken orc by poking him. My favourite character was probably Captain Belgold, the guy that hands out all the different chapter quests, simply because his dry sense of humour cracked me up. The decision that one playthrough would also unlock the campaign for any alts also seemed very generous.
My only issue was that it was way too easy to burn through the whole thing in one night and then be left with nothing but a stupid grind for the rest of the campaign.
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...
17/11/2015
Chugging Along
I've been in "passive" mode again, only logging in to invoke and run professions. SWTOR is super appealing again and I've been feeling a bit burnt out on campaign grinding. The new module, Underdark, launches today, but since it just adds yet another campaign, I'm not really too keen on that at the moment either. I expect to check it out later.
Cryptic also posted an update on the State of Astral Diamonds last night. You have to hand it to them, even if I'm not too keen on their business model and feel that they are quite good at putting their foot in their mouth, they do try to communicate with their playerbase. Bioware keep their cards much closer to their chest when it comes to things like design decisions.
Another thing I found interesting about that post was the statement that in October, the average player earned 60,000 AD. I initially read that as the average earned per day and was baffled by how it could be so high. (I'm currently on 12,000 a day purely from invoking on four different max-level characters. Not to mention that the daily refinement cap per character is 24,000.) But if they meant "during the whole month", an average of 60,000 would be staggeringly low, as even my own monthly income purely from invoking adds up to 360,000 AD. So I remain confused.
Cryptic also posted an update on the State of Astral Diamonds last night. You have to hand it to them, even if I'm not too keen on their business model and feel that they are quite good at putting their foot in their mouth, they do try to communicate with their playerbase. Bioware keep their cards much closer to their chest when it comes to things like design decisions.
Another thing I found interesting about that post was the statement that in October, the average player earned 60,000 AD. I initially read that as the average earned per day and was baffled by how it could be so high. (I'm currently on 12,000 a day purely from invoking on four different max-level characters. Not to mention that the daily refinement cap per character is 24,000.) But if they meant "during the whole month", an average of 60,000 would be staggeringly low, as even my own monthly income purely from invoking adds up to 360,000 AD. So I remain confused.
14/05/2015
Underdark and Strongholds
A bit over a week ago, Cryptic announced that they are already working on Neverwinter's next module, called Underdark. All those Drizzt clones will finally be able to meet their long lost twin brother!
I can't blame Cryptic for wanting to look forward after how badly Elemental Evil seems to have fallen on its face (though they also emphasised that they are still working on fixing that). What I found funny was that they added - almost as a footnote! - that before Underdark, they were also going to release a module called Strongholds, which is supposed to introduce guild housing.
I mean: housing, pfft... who cares about that? Also, the name "Strongholds" amuses me greatly. Who would have thought that SWTOR would become a trendsetter?
I can't blame Cryptic for wanting to look forward after how badly Elemental Evil seems to have fallen on its face (though they also emphasised that they are still working on fixing that). What I found funny was that they added - almost as a footnote! - that before Underdark, they were also going to release a module called Strongholds, which is supposed to introduce guild housing.
I mean: housing, pfft... who cares about that? Also, the name "Strongholds" amuses me greatly. Who would have thought that SWTOR would become a trendsetter?
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