Scott Shicoff – MMO Fallout

Scott Shicoff, lead designer on Neverwinter, has posted a set of patch notes on the official website detailing further changes to the MMO’s leveling curve. The new level cap of 70 has seen intense scrutiny since its launch earlier this year alongside Elemental Evil, with players complaints ranging from the length of time required to level to the heavy difficulty of the new higher level mobs. Following launch, Perfect World has promised to go back and fix issues related to progression and difficulty.

Hey folks, I’ve got an update on some changes we’re making to Neverwinter, specifically regarding leveling from 60 to 70. Before I get started, I’d like to thank you all again for your patience as I investigated and reviewed the state of the game since the release of Elemental Evil. We went through a massive amount of feedback and analysis before making a decision.

Most of the updates in the latest patch are focused on reducing health buffs on NPCs above level 60, along with a buff to experience from quests in the Elemental Evil zones that should result in a “noticeably faster” progression from 60 to 70. It isn’t the last of the updates to fix the community’s grievances with Elemental Evil, so expect more patches in the coming weeks/months. For now however players should notice themselves being killed by mobs in a single shot, far less.

Other ongoing complaints from the forums include bringing back disabled dungeons.

(Source: Neverwinter)

Neverwinter has a new lead designer, one Scott Shicoff, previously content lead on Star Trek Online and creator of the Sword Coast Adventures. As part of his new duties, Shicoff is looking at Neverwinter’s latest update, Module 6, to see what hasn’t quite worked out.

In the coming weeks and months, our team will use this to shift Neverwinter from where it is now into what we feel is a far better place. Most of our goals are to make the game better by improving the aspects noted below, while others will bring the game closer to matching the growth of our players and our original vision for Neverwinter.

The team will be performing surgery on multiple areas of Neverwinter from invocation, xp rewards, dungeons removed, and more. The first change, set for release in the next update, is to bring experience rewards for campaign areas to a more consistent level.

We are only reducing XP given by repeatable quests in the Tyranny campaign areas. Other quests are unaffected. I know this isn’t an ideal scenario, but to help compensate for this change we will be running our double XP event for an entire week, starting Thursday, April 23 and ending Thursday, April 30.

You can read the entire letter at the link below.

(Source: Neverwinter)