First Announcement of Dungeon Key Changes Leaves a lot to be Desired

Yesterday the devs patched the preview server with their rework of loot tables and the Dungeon Key Changes. Originally they had announced a fix to dungeon chests for the launch of Sea of Moving Ice. Players can unintentionally peak into chests and decide whether or not to spend their keys. The community however claimed they would only peak because the loot is so bad and in the end the major shitstorm made them reverse the decision and rework the whole system. Players can now review the result of this two-month process.

Useful Items Inventory Tab

Let’s start with some good news. Players are getting a bit help in the space department with a new inventory tab. This “Useful Items” area holds keys and other goods you need to carry with you but not use too often. It’s a great quality of life improvement. On logging in on preview the tab contains all Keys, Fishing Poles and Picks for example. Often referred to as “Keyring”, the devs fill a request from the community with this one.

More rewards

There will also be more rewards! The chances of getting one of the major rewards in dungeons has been increased and a set of new dungeon-specific items added.

[su_quote cite=”mimicking” url=”http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/1226923″]There’s also a chance to get a random artifact, artifact equipment, companion, mount, or miscellaneous item taken from an extremely large list of existing items from throughout the history of Neverwinter. [/su_quote]

The new items don’t look spectacular, but some of them offer cool transmutes and others nice utility and stat allocations that might find a niche. Overall this all adds to the incentive to run dungeons, but I’m not sure the underlying problem has been completely solved.

Dungeon loot vs. key investment

When I was doing my own proposal for the chest loot system, I lined out how the rewards you get do not match the cost of the key invested. The devs sure upped the rewards, but the system remains intransparent because it’s still solely based on randomness. Players want returns on a daily basis and not on average. With these changes you can still run a dungeon and get away with virtually no reward. That’s an issue and the main reason why players started to exploit the peaking that led to this rework.

Even if the new rewards cover the key cost, which I’m skeptical about, it’s hard to sell that without players seeing rewards on any given run. I think it would have been a much better system to hand out guaranteed loot from bosses and chests. It’s beyond me why you can pile up stacks of Black Opals by fishing, but net little to no RPs in the hardest dungeons.

The effect will wear off

It doesn’t help that the changes will wear off over time. The added loot is bound, so whenever players will have farmed what they need and want, we’re back at square one. You still have the increased chances of the very rarest rewards, but I doubt it’ll be enough. In the end the problem has never been the upper tier, but the sum of the little rewards that were just not satisfactory on your everyday runs.

I would have preferred a more static system with guaranteed rewards, so I’m a little bit disappointed to be honest. This is no final opinion however. To really see how the changes actually feel you need to test them over an extended period of time.


What’s your impression of the new Dungeon Key system? Share it in the comments below or visit the corresponding thread on our message board!

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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 “First Announcement of Dungeon Key Changes Leaves a lot to be Desired

  • January 5, 2017 at 7:30 am
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    just more stuff not to sell..

    dont even need rp.. sick of new rp, no more rp lol.

    I make enough on leadership and wanderers alone..

    I do not like that this stuff is bound to account and basiclaly negate farming.

    Where is the effing stuff to farm in this game? Every other mmo has stuff to farm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Apparently again, its not IN Dungeons , just in things like HES and fishing..

  • January 5, 2017 at 7:58 am
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    Well, first things first. The new tab looks promising.

    Now, the loot however, they clearly need someone with a brain in that company.
    We don’t need more trash gear that’s bound, nor fake item level items. Don’t need 4K newbies who have no clue what they r doing just because they picked up some shit gear with 150 item level. Rp for the amount of the would have been a start or spending their time on actually fixing the collection cause some of the stuff and where to obtain it isn’t even accurate.

    They clearly misunderstood that we wanted a simpler and more rewarding system for example gear our companion up decently.

    I don’t see the point of having to still farm and then if u do pick up an artifact don’t even break even. I’m fully geared almost at max item level, I don’t need any artifacts if they don’t make a profit or bound companions for that matter, I have all the stuff I want except of a legendary mount.

    The solution should’ve been a rewards system that u can progress through or get a guaranteed reward after a certain time. When I see someone on YouTube opening 1000 lock boxes and they don’t get anything out of it that is roughly 1000 dollars spent on the game without a reward.

    Anyway, long story short, it’s plain stupid and the changes will just make me run less dungeons and definitely no more than two a day.

    • January 7, 2017 at 9:22 pm
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      was that my 1000 lockbox video? hehehehehe.. <3

      • January 8, 2017 at 2:02 am
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        Yeah, I think so.

  • January 5, 2017 at 10:00 am
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    The new tab should also store quest items, not just keys. I’m not wild about managing inventory and an overly disciplined approach to questing because, well, this is a game.

  • January 5, 2017 at 2:06 pm
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    Yeah so little to gain and you spend the time to run a dungeon and end reward will be the same bound item you already have. if they made it so bound companions from rewards could be traded for training tokens. Or all other stuff could all least be BoA salvaged goods. Yet Bound is the problem yet when there is no control over botters what can you expect.

  • January 6, 2017 at 5:46 am
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    Extra tab for keys and such. Manageable. More chances at negligible rewards because simply it might be account bound at the least? That’s poor planning when you figure on the cost and that’s a seriously reduced cost to salvage. The lack of ways to make astral diamonds, unless you enjoy selling every bit of trash you get. Might as well take AD out of the game and just have the Zen market. No use for gold either once hit VIP 7 I think when you no longer get injured. Except to remove enchants and such.

  • January 9, 2017 at 12:28 am
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    Basically this update sucks. The key thing would have been nice, say last year. Now they are giving us more room for stacks of keys while implementing changes that mean we won’t have those stacks again in the first place if we run any content. It seems disorganized at best.

    ..as for the tradeoff in improved drop rates? Sure, that’ll last what a few weeks? Even if it is the rumored 10x rate (really 5x since that includes 2x from a while back). 10 x 0 is still 0, and thats a lot of whats been gotten through these dungeons. The tested rates have been so appallingly low that 10x simple makes it less bad, not good, inspiring, or even entertaining.

    Its a bad change.

    Lets get this straight:
    “Players can -unintentionally- peak into chests and decide whether or not to spend their keys.” (emphasis mine)
    ..is in no way true, and it should stop being promoted as an idea. The proof is encoded into the game we play everyday. That cancel button didn’t just happen to appear on those chests. It didn’t just happen NOT to appear on chests like the arcane coffer in dread ring towers. Both that coffer and the chest beside it have something very close to the new functionality. You blow a key, items go into your inventory and you have no choice. That shows a non-peeking implementation has always existed in that game and that they chose which chests were peekable.

    Whats funny is that its as I predicted, even as I wrote in comments on your coverage of their backing down. All they would do is wait a short period of time for the backlash to die down, then implement it anyway.

    What has occurred? They waited barely a few monthes, and they are making the changes almost exactly as before, with a few extra items thrown in. Before it was terrible, game breaking, breaking of promises, ..now its a good change? No.

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