Neverwinter’s executive producer answers questions about professions, PUG content, and the roadmap

Neverwinter players had questions and Executive Producer Brett Norton had answers: A Q&A livestream that was live last week has now been uploaded to YouTube in full, granting players about an hour with the EP to discuss various game-related matters as well as be surprised by a dog that managed to break through Norton’s green screen filter.

• Professions are going to be worked on in the future but there’s no timetable to share. “We’re not currently in the midst of any massive profession overhaul. […] Unfortunately, I think it would be unlikely, given where things are at right now, to expect to see any significant profession updates with the next module,” he says.
• Strongholds have “a two-part plan” for changes, with a refresh of Stronghold currency shop items planned in the near term, and a fundamental change to Strongholds being considered later down the line, though that will probably take the better part of a year.
• The team is aware of public queuing problems, with clear rates being extremely varied for some of the more advanced instances, which in turn has led to more private queues instead. New instanced content is being designed with “public-facing” or “private-facing” – i.e. normal mode trials and hard mode trials – to help alleviate pain points, while existing instances will see adjustments or reward changes.

• The chance for getting rewards are due for some adjustment, as current reward odds are not at a point that Norton wants to see. Potential plans include the ability to buy desired rewards after a certain number of failures, though action on these adjustments hasn’t been followed through on due to time constraints.
• “We’re very much gonna try to avoid any big systems whiplash in terms of reworking combat systems or anything along those lines.”
• The upcoming module will have a new feature similar to the hunt system in Barovia. Norton was mum here so as not to draw the ire of the marketing team.
• Classic events like Call to Arms and Day of the Dungeon Master are due to come back at some point soon.
• Release cadence moving forward is hoping to stick to a pace of two to four major releases a year, on top of smaller updates and future season passes in-between. Incidentally, episodic content releases are probably not going to happen as often. All of this is ultimately variable due to complexity: “I’d personally like to see three [releases].”