noamineo wrote on Apr 27
th, 2023 at 3:07pm:
Wanna give me the TL;DR version?
Whew... I dunno if there's enough space for even a tl;dr. I'll just give a couple of highlights:
1) Not enough new content. Content drips out at a terrible pace.
2) Adopting the idea that "grind == content." No, replaying the same content over and over and over does not count as new content.
3) They did something similar to epic dungeons in DDO, but didn't actually do any mechanics changes - they just added annoying things like puddles that harm you or limitations on how many times you can dodge (in addition to the standard HP/dmg upscaling). And, again, this was just repeating the same content we'd been playing forever, but now with acid puddles!
4) Lack of separation of PvP and PvE. PvP players tend to be a very vocal group of whiners, always wanting everything but their preferred weapon/mode of play to be nerfed. But when there is no separation between PvP and PvE, nerfing with an eye towards PvP can have very bad effects on PvE, and vice versa.
5) Lack of care regarding QoL. This game doesn't allow for alts - you get one character per server, that's it. But, it's a "classless" game, where every character can be every class. So, that's cool, but it means your character needs a full set of gear for every class you play. Okay, that makes sense... but it gets worse. You need specific gear for each dungeon. You're familiar with monster bane effects, but here they also have monster ward effects (the same as bane, but in reverse - take x% less damage from monster type X). So you need a full set of gear for every dungeon x every class. Plus a full set of gear for each type of crafting. And each type of gathering. And for PvP for each class.
It's nothing short of insane. We're talking something like 30 sets of gear, and that's if you're only playing one class. But I didn't even get to the best part: gearsets didn't exist. At all. You had to search through your inventory (or the 30 different bank inventories) to find every single piece of gear in your set and apply them individually.
Then they introduced dungeons with mixed mob types. So halfway through a dungeon, everyone has to comb their inventory, swap out all gear, and respec. Both are things that you really can't do on the fly - all windows like inventory and char stats (even the map!) take up the whole screen, and there's no way to change that.
Now, just this month they introduced gearsets. But you only get four. You can buy more - $5 apiece, up to a total of 8 gearsets. Buuuut... as I mentioned, you need something like 30 sets of gear just for one class... and you have one character, so you're very likely going to have multiple classes.
(Disclaimer: you can get by with fewer sets of gear. I'm assuming that, like me, many people have variances within the sets, for example, I had varying mixes of heavy, medium, and light armor for varying classes).
6) Stupid decisions. A while back, a vocal group of idiots on the forum started calling for "fresh start" servers, saying they or their friends really wanted to play NW but were turned off by reports of past exploits and duping. They wanted new servers that could not be transferred into. Which kinda sounded like a good idea, except it would have the effect of further splintering a dwindling player population (that was already a critical issue, because of the next bullet).
7) Server population. This game is incredibly dependent on having just the right population on a server. Too much population results in severe resource competition, making it difficult to play large portions of the game. Not enough population and a large portion of the content (PvE and PvP) became unplayable/unattainable. And this window was pretty small - 500-1500 active daily players seemed to be the good range.
8) Poor balancing. Some metas have stuck around for a long time, mostly because their advantage was so far ahead of the nearest alternate option that there really was no option at all. For example, armor. Heavy armor would absorb more damage, but light armor gave you 20% more dps and the ability to dodge out of harm's way. Then there were damage mitigation effects related to dodging that were better than heavy armor in their own right.
In other words, light armor had better damage, armor, and mobility. For more than a year. They recently nerfed it pretty hard, but it's
still the meta.
Meta will happen. But it should never be that far ahead of alternate options... and certainly not for that long.
9) Poor random grouping. "Outpost Rush", or OPR, is a 20-30 vs 20-30 PvP match. You can sign up as a group or solo. The problem is that OPR basically comes down to "whomever has a pocket healer wins." And premade groups tend to have a healer in their group.
Maybe it's just a (common) (mis-)perception, but it seems premade groups always end up on the same side. Even if that's just a feeling and not real, it is definitely the case that there is often severe imbalance between healers on either side. The long and short of it is that if you are joining as a solo player (or a group without a healer), you will most likely lose.
Same goes for their 3v3 random arenas. Any group without a healer automatically loses, and premades almost always win over solo queuers.
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