Dungeon Key Changes Rage and Reactions

The dungeon key changes remains THE topic in the Neverwinterverse this week. The thread on the official forum has blown up to over 1,000 posts and the corresponding one on the official subreddit was equally heated. I already wrote about the change on Wednesday, but want to dive into the rage and reactions a little bit further today.

Players are disheartened

Make no mistake, this one is ugly. We’ve been through a lot of nerfs and challenges over the years, but even I am surprised by the amount of hostility currently thrown at the devs. Gladly the Community Moderators have apparently agreed to let the rage stand for now and do very little editing, although some of the posts surely cross the lines. The reason might be that they themselves are a little disheartened.

Some long-time players have announced or considered their retirement or at least taking a break from the game. The overall sentiment across many threads is that this was “one time too many”. What I personally find interesting is that only a minority of players should be majorly impacted. The rage however goes through all tiers of players. It shows that the anger might include displeasure with the overall state of the game and te most recent change just a reason to let it out.

No more nerfs without solutions

I already did write on Wednesday that the approach of nerf now and adjust later is just amazingly annoying. In fact, it might no longer work. Players have gone through too many nerfs with promises of “monitoring and adjusting”. Leadership, Professions, Salvage Changes, Gateway, Invoking. You name it. All of these changes came with a hefty nerf and players never felt appropriately compensated for it afterwards. At this point it doesn’t even matter whether a change is actually justified. Players do not care any longer, they just start to throw all kinds of shit.

That’s why the devs have to accompany nerfs with a global solution. No promises, no monitoring, just facts and changes. If they feel the current system of previewing chests is no longer working for them fine, but then change the whole loot system and not just one variable that only penalizes players. Of course “they only have so much time”, but they will have that much more time in the future if players are actually leaving the game because of their actions.

Message to the devs: Your loot sucks!

Several posters within the community rightfully pointed out that this change only blatantly uncovers the underlying lacking system. The chest loot does just suck.

[su_quote cite=”ironzerg79″ url=”http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/comment/12896585/#Comment_12896585″]Exactly.

The root cause is NOT the peeking. It’s the fact that we HAD to peek because the loot SUCKED. That’s the bottom line.

If 95% of the time people actually USED the key to TAKE the loot, this would be a non-issue.[/su_quote]

After the change the loot still sucks, but the workaround is gone. Well isn’t that just great? I severely hope the devs take the feedback and introduce some sort of hotfix to at least majorly enhance chest loot until they are able to completely revise the system. If they’re not sure what that will do to the economy, I don’t care. They messed up, so they should bite the bullet. Not the players.

Players lost their trust

The whole reaction additionally clearly shows how the community has lost their trust and faith. The amount of conspiracy and accusations thrown around is just insane. But who can really blame the players with all the bullshit that’s communicated? Can you really believe this was just a bugfix? The current system might simply not align with future plans or their profit. The devs didn’t care for seven modules and there might be a definite reason they care now. I also believe this most likely was a targeted fix, not a random one that somehow happened to get ready for Sea of Moving Ice. Even if that’s not true, nobody is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. The devs sadly lost a lot of their credit over time.

To resolve an inequity between the minority of players who knew about it and the majority who did not? My ass! That this major change is only published on the forum and not the news/launcher? An “oversight”? Why was Lead Designer Thomas Foss not able to deliver this personally? Questions that are probably never going to be answered.

[su_quote cite=”beckylunatic” url=”https://nwo-uncensored.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=11231#p11231″]I will say, we almost never heard from Shicoff, but things like the recognition of EE as a colossal clusterfuck and the announcement that AD would be stripped from Leadership came straight from him, not fobbed off on a middleman.[/su_quote]


Even with the colossal amount of justified blame, I would be very surprised if they reversed the decision. All we can hope for is some short-term fix to chest loot, if at all. Next week I’ll be also be looking at ways to overhaul the chest loot system so it makes more sense for both the devs and the player. Until then, keep the rage coming. The devs surely deserve it.

j0Shi

j0Shi plays the Neverwinter MMORPG since the open BETA in 2013 and is a regular contributor to the blog and the whole UN:Project. Originally a Guardian Fighter, he has built up ALTs of all classes and plays on BIS/near-BIS level.

8 thoughts on “Dungeon Key Changes Rage and Reactions

  • October 21, 2016 at 10:29 am
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    the damage is already done, many players will leave the game, for us have only nerf and nerf, the loot is only a lot of crap, the endgame content is only FBI, but the reward ? Nothing. I think this game is dying slowly

  • October 21, 2016 at 1:22 pm
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    Slowly? I think it just shot its self in the head! The end is definitely near…..

  • October 24, 2016 at 1:18 am
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    FBI unrewarded ? simply the best amor set in the game, upgradable to lvl 160 with new module arrival…

    • October 24, 2016 at 8:15 am
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      Too bad it must be maintained by cutting off a piece of your soul and offering it to the ice gods.

  • October 24, 2016 at 8:23 am
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    I cant believe any player buys into the empowered garbage, buying into it, is the sole reason they are allowed to continue this garbage. The only way to force them to change is to stop doing it.

    How can anyone possible justify empowerment.. especially at the crap cost they think we should upkeep it at.

    Ah those I level chasers.. always afraid to be down 20-30 points.

    • October 24, 2016 at 10:59 pm
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      I am not bying anything… but this set is much cheaper than the Strongholds Set and better, so… however for the ones who cannot buy Lanolin the grind is horrible.
      i cannot be more agreed with that.
      But as it is this end game armor set, i dont want Cryptic to give it away…

      Cold run HE’s is a good way to get Lanolin and make some decent ADs aswell.
      The shard is selling good, making the grind less painfull.

      Voninblod is quite easy and fast to farm at Gryn.

  • October 25, 2016 at 2:29 am
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    Nerfing without offering solutions – check
    Insulting players – check
    Disrespectful replies to insulted players – check

    What a mess.

  • October 26, 2016 at 11:43 am
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    This is just outright badly done, that on top of a recent Gateway shutdown pretty much pissed a lot of people, not counting the track record of Leadership, Invoke etc “changes”. Me included of course, I loved gateway for bidding and other functions that it offered without having to log in game, and mandatory key usage plus removing my old T1 Set bonus is just plain horrible to deal with in a single module (I’m counting 10 and 10.5 as one).

    On the bright side, no more compulsion to waste that 5 secs every run to check the extra chest! (Sarcasm fully intended) I bet though, there will be some special-chest-only stuff coming long very, very soon to prompt the players to buy those “discounted” keys 😉

    Guess my break from NW is going to be extended heh.

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