People have put hundrets of dollar and hundrets of hours into this profession.
It takes at least 3 MONTHs without bots to level it to a profitable level.
Its not about changing the mechanics or tweaking the game here and there.
People are getting ripped of their money and time. And we speak about A LOT of people. And 99% are not botters.
Granted. However it destroyed the economy. What is your solution? Turn a blind eye to the specific thing that is killing the game?
PS I would like to see your spreadsheet that led you to claim that 99% are not botters.
They turned a blind eye to AD from bugs and exploits in the past... nothing was done against those, and most of them still have millions upon millions of AD just sitting around. Not to mention, those cheaters probably made even more AD with playing the ZAX for the past few days... and during all this, the botters are still running wild through NWO.
And it might not be 99%, but you can bet that it still was a lot more then 1% playing the Leadership game well within the rules.
And there are several better solutions for Leadership in this thread here. - adding Stronghold vouchers into the slots of rAD - improving the rewards from chests - adding some of the loyal xyz items as random reward to the 1 day tasks and so on.
Last but not least, i would like to see the spredsheet showing that this change actually made a dent into the botting happening all over the game...
Turning a blind eye justifies turning a blind eye then? Nowhere did I claim that this impacted botting. No spreadsheet required.
I'm just stating the facts. Besides, are you to blind to see, that i suggested several options to replace AD with something else in return? This is about giving them options to repair the damage they have done.
And no, you can't call it an exploit "at best" -- it wasn't against any stated or assumed rules of the game to do it.
I can call it an exploit as much as I desire. I do not make the rules. People (including botters) were exploiting leadership to amass the gigantic sums.
ex·ploit verb ikˈsploit/ 1. make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource). "500 companies sprang up to exploit this new technology" synonyms: utilize, harness, use, make use of, turn/put to good use, make the most of, capitalize on, benefit from; informalcash in on "we should exploit this new technology"
You're ignoring that, in the gaming community, exploit implies the usage of taking advantage of a flaw in the code to extract something from the game that wasn't intended, eg the AD exploit in the AH on the Gateway. I certainly agree that by standard english definitions, leadership armies are an exploit, but the emotional attachment to the term carries weight, and if you use words because of their "technical" definition without considering context, you're just deliberately being bad at communication.
Exploits in games are things that aren't explicitly allowed by the devs/publisher of that game. Afaik leadership armies weren't considered an exploit by the devs/PWE. The only time they banned for them was when someone was transferring AD between accounts.
You're ignoring that, in the gaming community, exploit implies the usage of taking advantage of a flaw in the code to extract something from the game that wasn't intended, eg the AD exploit in the AH on the Gateway. I certainly agree that by standard english definitions, leadership armies are an exploit, but the emotional attachment to the term carries weight, and if you use words because of their "technical" definition without considering context, you're just deliberately being bad at communication.
I am using and will continue to use the standard definition. Especially when confronted with the "well, we were not breaking rules" argument. You, others and botters were exploiting a weakness in the game. Period, full stop. The fact that the developers were too shortsighted does not excuse it.
That weakness was plugged. If people with leadership armies honestly thought since it was not against the rules that it was acceptable, they are being insultingly dishonest.
Perhaps changing the leadership rewards to make it a side alley for making AD rather the huge interstate highway it was would have been wiser than axing it and implementing the other changes. rather than taking that, they rather reversed the idea - but destroyed the highway, as well.
If you want robofarming, go play farmville or something.
To our forum mod....I respect you commenting and trying to do what you can to defuse the current situation but will all due respect you are a forum moderator with little to no pull on developer/upper management decisions. You have stated a number of times at the level of toxicity here in the responses and that being the primary reason none of the dev team bothered to respond....that is quite frankly bunk.
TBH less than 25% of the work involved on this change was done...taking ad from leadership and removing daily ad quests is easy. The hard part is coming up with fixes for leadership to make it still worth while to actually level it up...granted the few rp pouches at max levels was a start but considering the time and limits on missions and the rewards or lack of realistic rewards now on the majority after ad was removed from them simply makes this near useless. AD sinks still kept in game (BTW there was no way they were put in to penalise botters, currency sinks primary goal is to drain legit players AD supply no other reason anyone who willfully tries to say it's otherwise is a fool of the highest order).
Things to fix what the dev team and upper management too a hammer and anvil to in game are as follows:
Remove any and all AD sinks in the game from any and all compaigns now and in the future. If the dev team has a problem with not having someway to siphon off legit players AD's then reduce the sinks by 80% of current and future amounts. It's either or there is no discussion now after this disaster.
Return all of the removed dungeons you removed for whatever unknown reason and bring back zone drop epic gear that can be sold or salvaged...the occasional drop of an artifact thats not bind on pickup/account that drops is simply not cutting it and has not for some time.
Change the amount of refined per day from per toon to per account and increase it to 200k (Aeroyx (sp?) suggested as much during the gateway change to leadership feedback...it was smart than and smart now.
Add in 250 - 500 AD (rough number suggestion) rewarded to all campaign dailies/weeklies now and in the future in addition to their current rewards not in lieu of.
For Leadership changes, add in bags that reward pearls, peri's, aqua's, saphires, opals accross all levels (doesnt make sense to have practically nothering worth a spit at the low to mid levels of that profession and do not make them bind on pickup or account (players still need to make AD to upgrade their main let alone all their alts. In addition, add in rewards that can be used for Strongholds such as minor, moderate and major vouchers for everything we need to use to level SH up (surplus equipment/AD vouchers (if you still keep this sink in)/labor/stolen treasures/gems. Maybe also add GMOP and Preservation and coal wards into the mix (these I could see at least being bind to account) as maybe rare mission rewards.
Stronghold's desperately needs a fix accross the board. Increasing the amount of all shards of powers rewarded per quest might be a start. Increasing the amount of quests granted per day would also help especially for small/tiny/medium guilds to get their foot in the door...the materials needed to get even level 1 mill and market place up and running are seriously out of whack. A weekly quest awards alot of vouchers and shards of power might be one avenue to help do this.
A serious revamp of the refining process and professions is so long overdue it's not even funny. The success rate on even making a lesser weapon/armor enchant is so out of line it's not even funny. Same goes for the other enchants/runestones accross the board. Remove the need to the same enchant to up grade to next tier.
Adjust the darm prices on the Wonderous Bizzar...players can barely affort the 5 GMOP's needed to upgrade artifacts as it is the nerf to AD from leadership places the majority of players at such a disadvantage now its left a bad taste in our mouths.
Finally pardon me for saying this but sack up and respond to the community. The dev team got alot of good will with some long overdue fixs (armor pen stacking anyone as well as a host of others). The change not only evaporated what good will you made damm near within an hour but you are killing your own population faster than the latest MMO to be released would. Stop punishing the legit players for what botters and exploiters have done (AD duping anyone). Players with 50 alts does not automatically make them a botter or an exploiter...it makes them self sufficient in a game where the ecconomy is borked by serious missteps.
Thats all I got but doubt any dev will respond or anything will change for the better.
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damnaciousMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 354Arc User
I really appreciate you having the courage and the consideration to put forth your perspective on this and I know that many other players do too. Thank you.
Some points i've read that i'd like to quote just to reiterate how important they are:
The implementation as previously mentioned was carried out with a dull axe when what was needed was a scalpel and input from the player. As others have noted, many alternatives were offered by players... all were met by silence. To me and probably many, silence equates to one thing.. that the company does not care about to players (and or the game enough) to ask for constructive comments from the players and a way forward for the betterment of the game's health.
Would it have been so hard to have a post stating that 'Here is a problem we see in the game, what our your thoughts to help the game improve for its long term health'.
...the past way of being able to afford to advance our characters is no more and will not be coming back... but so to is the trust and confidence of many of the player base.
It would certainly be nice to see an apology for the absolutely insulting hogwash about "botters," or the atrocious attempt to spin it in a positive way with "most players making significantly more AD."
And I don't think the underlying demand is necessarily for Leadership to be restored. The underlying demand is for people to be properly rewarded for their time and efforts and to have the ability to progress, while not having their significant investments suddenly overturned in massive, sweeping changes like this.
...it's obvious that trust in their promises to address stuff at a later date or "monitor the situation/look at the data/investigate" is practically non-existent or negative.
If they'd issued the Leadership changes in a different way, along with a better plan that shows some light at the end of the tunnel, it might not have been so bad. Instead, after continuously squandering the trust of the player base, they slam this down on everyone.
More in general, they've ruined people's trust by never fixing what they break and not doing anything to add interesting content. At the moment: - In general, the game is full of bugs and little issues that they make no efforts to fix. - They've removed most of their old dungeons, and not added anything new. - PvP balance is terrible. - Most recently, the Foundry is broken. - Nearly all new "content" for the last several modules has been rehashed or based around redoing older content.
While the game is in a terrible state, rather than fix that, they make a point of breaking the one thing that made actual progression bearable and possible while not offering anything in return for this.
The core problem here is this: Lots of players have a lot of AD. They will sit on that. If they remove or reduce the sinks, that makes it even easier for those players to advance. So they need to drain some AD from the economy first. However, for the ones with the biggest hoards, they can wait that out -- and essentially get even richer. There are many ways that this currency issue could have been more deftly circumvented to redistribute income and wealth in favor of playing rather than Leadership. They chose to do it in a stupid way that makes it harder for them to mitigate the damage they inflict to player incomes immediately, while offending players to the greatest possible degree.
Is it good for the game in the long run? Sure, if enough players stick around.
Is it fair to the many players (judging by the walls of protest on the forums and in /zone) who made the huge investment? Not in the slightest.
The issues that i see with this change are:
A decision was made to drastically affect players.
No communication with players and no input sought. This demolished all recent prior attempts made to increase communication.
Changes were made & implemented that demonstrated little to no consideration for players, its effects on players & was ill-considered, poorly designed & poorly implemented. For example:
Leadership is broken, unbalanced and almost completely useless with illogical tasks at different levels with stupid rewards.
No communicating all of the changes such as the removal of the Seals of Triumph daily &, only now has that been re-implemented when it SHOULD have been implemented at the same time.
There were obviously many other options available for designing and implementing this change &, even if any of these changes are implemented in the future, it clearly demonstrates this was an ad-hoc decision with little to no forethought.
These changes do not negatively affect players who have exploited & gained ACCOUNTS fully capped with AD. These players are able to 'weather' these changes with no effect upon them except to propel them into a greater financial position.
No thought given to 'combat' these exploiting players with capped accounts &, as one player stated 'it makes little difference as (they) can make even more AD now'.
Extremely large numbers of players have left & will not return. This is a mortal blow from which the game is continuing to hemorrhage &, it will not stop. Because, even though the idea might have been good, the implementation was not & no facility to stop the increasing numbers of players leaving.
No consideration on how the game will address & rectify the ongoing hemorrhaging of players from its player base. This should have been considered & planned for before implementation.
The changes are unrealistic in how players obtain AD. No forethought was given to how much time it would take a player to achieve a reasonable amount of AD/day in comparison to the costs of the game.
The person(s) who were responsible for making the decision to implement such a change SHOULD have been the staff member(s) who had the courage, decency, respect & consideration for the player base to communicate with them.
The game should not think it is reasonable to implement wide ranging changes affecting all players without sufficient & reasonable prior communication & input. Implementing them in a back-handed manner with no warning simply demonstrates those people making decisions don't care about players.
If you continue to take without giving back, people will tell you to go jump & ignore you.
Expecting players to repeatedly 'grind' the same few dungeons & skirmishes, particularly after reducing the number of dungeons & introducing very minimal new content, means players will get easily sick of it & go elsewhere. I can not believe that anyone was so stupid as to think that players will be content & happy to 'grind' the same content daily (as a requirement) that they have been for the last number of years.
With the patch today, they just missed a chance to at least adjust the Leadership tasks to some reasonable level. They were so fast with removing the AD from LS, but how long will it take them to make some improvements now?
You're ignoring that, in the gaming community, exploit implies the usage of taking advantage of a flaw in the code to extract something from the game that wasn't intended, eg the AD exploit in the AH on the Gateway. I certainly agree that by standard english definitions, leadership armies are an exploit, but the emotional attachment to the term carries weight, and if you use words because of their "technical" definition without considering context, you're just deliberately being bad at communication.
I am using and will continue to use the standard definition. Especially when confronted with the "well, we were not breaking rules" argument. You, others and botters were exploiting a weakness in the game. Period, full stop. The fact that the developers were too shortsighted does not excuse it.
That weakness was plugged. If people with leadership armies honestly thought since it was not against the rules that it was acceptable, they are being insultingly dishonest.
This should have never been an issue, allowing unlimited slots and then allowing those slots to produce the so called AD Leadership Army was shortsighted by Cryptic. I do not think that the average player with 2 slots or even 4 slots that were doing Leadership for AD was an exploit, it was a designed way to get AD. The exploits came in many way, do you remember the complete wipe that was done in May or June of 2013? I don't recall the entire details, but somehow there was an exploit that allowed unlimited AD to be gained (noticed I didn't say earned) by some people.
Were there BOTs and people taking advantage of the Leadership profession, of course, but by and all they were very few of the total people playing the game and until they are banned they will find other ways to cheat.
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damnaciousMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 354Arc User
No. What destroyed the economy were the large number of exploiters that were provided with minimal temporary bans and allowed to continue playing with ACCOUNTS capped at max AD.
People have put hundrets of dollar and hundrets of hours into this profession.
It takes at least 3 MONTHs without bots to level it to a profitable level.
Its not about changing the mechanics or tweaking the game here and there.
People are getting ripped of their money and time. And we speak about A LOT of people. And 99% are not botters.
Granted. However it destroyed the economy. What is your solution? Turn a blind eye to the specific thing that is killing the game?
PS I would like to see your spreadsheet that led you to claim that 99% are not botters.
The economy was broken long before that. From your own words you are new and have not realized how much real world money AND grinding you will have to do just to play at the higher levels. The key elements you need to advance are at very high FIXED AD prices. SOLO play has been utterly destroyed. There ARE ways to ID botters and take care of them BUT that would take work on their part which they are not willing to do so they took the easiest route and quite frankly have NOT shown even the slightest bit of concern how it effected a significant amount of their legitimate players. Balancing the economy is going to be a HUGE undertaking worth a MOD in itself and it should be tested before implementation. You don't start taking apart the engine of an aircraft while it is in flight no matter how bad it is flying. No one was dying from LS problems and it could have waited until a COMPLETE solution that would not shoulder the burden onto a significant number of legitimate players was developed, commented on and TESTED.This WILL and IS effecting their player base, it will hurt them in less sales of extra slots, companions ect which will become unaffordable and kill the concept of the Strongholds since it will be hard enough to make ends meet for a single toon without considering donating to a guild. The promised fixes will never come given their history and I hope you see NO solid plans have been presented by them so I highly doubt they have any BUT they went and did this anyway. To really think now any significant portion of the gaming population will start to buy zen to get AD is foolish in the extreme, many have or will simply quit. They have callously burned through a lot of the patience and good graces their customers have given them over the numerous goof ups they have done and this tops them all.
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silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
I had 15 slots, 11 or so were leadership slots, I played every single one up to mod 4 or into 5. one of every class, I had the best PVE armour t2 for each one (somtimes top 2-3 for each one + draconic and templar)
My top 3 have all the boons, my next 5!!!! have all boons up to WoD #3.
Ive gotten at times past profound armour, then BI for at least 5-6 of these.
Everyone has a normal enchant or better..
I USED MY LEADERSHIP to progress MY own toons.
Thats what I used mine for!
Done TELL me I exploited, thats hogwash and insulting.
I paid REAL life cash, out of pocket for these slots. CRYPTIC made money off from me (also some packs+ mount+ other small items (a few hundred key purchases ect)
Do not come on here and flame legit players, who PLAYED the game the company set up.
It's interesting to me how all of a sudden we dedicated and paying customers that have been playing since beta by the rules are now be called exploiters. I smell a rat!
You're ignoring that, in the gaming community, exploit implies the usage of taking advantage of a flaw in the code to extract something from the game that wasn't intended, eg the AD exploit in the AH on the Gateway. I certainly agree that by standard english definitions, leadership armies are an exploit, but the emotional attachment to the term carries weight, and if you use words because of their "technical" definition without considering context, you're just deliberately being bad at communication.
I am using and will continue to use the standard definition. Especially when confronted with the "well, we were not breaking rules" argument. You, others and botters were exploiting a weakness in the game. Period, full stop. The fact that the developers were too shortsighted does not excuse it.
That weakness was plugged. If people with leadership armies honestly thought since it was not against the rules that it was acceptable, they are being insultingly dishonest.
sorry not realy leadership was put in as a time gated advancement method as were the 50 char slots, you were meant to be able to build it up to generate ad. this isnt about bots or exploits this is about trying to get the us$4000 for a geared char out of people via the threat of 3 years of grinding for it. but thats way to much for 1 char in a casual game so people are going to look for cheaper alternatives. either botting themselves or buying off botters at 1/2 or 1/3 the price cryptic sets if they are insane enough to spend $2000 on a single character who may well get nerfed at any given moment into being useless like what happened to SW or HR before it ") not to long till bard and druid come out and if they follow there standard MO that will mean 2 new classes much more powerfull then the otehrs and OP geting a nerf as its the freshest char on block.
on a brighter note champions 6yr aniversary is on so while i wait for something that has a combat system like NW without the korean grind MMO aspect i can fly about in tights and remember a different cryptic
I understand the intent of these changes is to reward players for playing the content but so far I have spent far more time in queues waiting to play than actually playing. In the course of an hours game time I am generally lucky if I get a single epic dungeon completed or maybe 4 skirmishes or 1-2 pvp matches and the rewards are absolutely dismal. I understand the intent to squeeze the ad a little but this effectively means I will be lucky to make one gmop per week. All character progress has come to a grinding halt. How does this make it better for genuine botless players to catch up and make meaningful characters without giving thousands of real dollars to the game. I have been here since beta and it is really sad to see the game I enjoyed for so long come to a whimpering, thoughtless death. I'm off to go look for something better, it won't be hard given the fact that the game is currently unplayable for me.
I am wondering if some of the intent of this is to FORCE more people into the queues so that the people that play the queued content stop whining about the time spent waiting, especially in the PvP since I get the feeling that the PvPers at least consider themselves to be the big spenders.
You're ignoring that, in the gaming community, exploit implies the usage of taking advantage of a flaw in the code to extract something from the game that wasn't intended, eg the AD exploit in the AH on the Gateway. I certainly agree that by standard english definitions, leadership armies are an exploit, but the emotional attachment to the term carries weight, and if you use words because of their "technical" definition without considering context, you're just deliberately being bad at communication.
I am using and will continue to use the standard definition. Especially when confronted with the "well, we were not breaking rules" argument. You, others and botters were exploiting a weakness in the game. Period, full stop. The fact that the developers were too shortsighted does not excuse it.
That weakness was plugged. If people with leadership armies honestly thought since it was not against the rules that it was acceptable, they are being insultingly dishonest.
This should have never been an issue, allowing unlimited slots and then allowing those slots to produce the so called AD Leadership Army was shortsighted by Cryptic.
Again, see the bolded part. Though they were shortsighted before does not mean that present action was not needed.
I understand the intent of these changes is to reward players for playing the content but so far I have spent far more time in queues waiting to play than actually playing. In the course of an hours game time I am generally lucky if I get a single epic dungeon completed or maybe 4 skirmishes or 1-2 pvp matches and the rewards are absolutely dismal. I understand the intent to squeeze the ad a little but this effectively means I will be lucky to make one gmop per week. All character progress has come to a grinding halt. How does this make it better for genuine botless players to catch up and make meaningful characters without giving thousands of real dollars to the game. I have been here since beta and it is really sad to see the game I enjoyed for so long come to a whimpering, thoughtless death. I'm off to go look for something better, it won't be hard given the fact that the game is currently unplayable for me.
I am wondering if some of the intent of this is to FORCE more people into the queues so that the people that play the queued content stop whining about the time spent waiting, especially in the PvP since I get the feeling that the PvPers at least consider themselves to be the big spenders.
Well, if that is the case, it won't be long before the numbers show it won't have worked. Sadly, I don't think they'll quite grasp why.
If you want robofarming, go play farmville or something.
People have put hundrets of dollar and hundrets of hours into this profession.
It takes at least 3 MONTHs without bots to level it to a profitable level.
Its not about changing the mechanics or tweaking the game here and there.
People are getting ripped of their money and time. And we speak about A LOT of people. And 99% are not botters.
Granted. However it destroyed the economy. What is your solution? Turn a blind eye to the specific thing that is killing the game?
PS I would like to see your spreadsheet that led you to claim that 99% are not botters.
The economy was broken long before that. From your own words you are new and have not realized how much real world money AND grinding you will have to do just to play at the higher levels.
Correct, I am new. And therefore have a fresher perspective. It's quite clear to me that leadership as it was allowing a flow of huge sums was a Bad Thing. I am new to NW, but I did not just flop off of the MMO bus.
The old ones got killed with the introduction of artifact equipement, the others were already badly designed and now LS is useless too.
It is really a bad design approach and it can't be certified with any excuse, not that the bot issue would have to do even 1% with current decision, only naive people believe that and actually it is a disgrace to tell us it, better be a man and come out and say, we need more money.
I feel so bad for my formerly beloved game, that with each Mod it loses a part, like cutting of a limb each time from the poor body.
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
It's interesting to me how all of a sudden we dedicated and paying customers that have been playing since beta by the rules are now be called exploiters. I smell a rat!
Yes, you are all so very innocent and believed what you did was completely honorable. You are indeed martyrs.
Not even the company says it was an exploit. The company says BOTS were using it as an exploit. And legit players are not bots.
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silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
Not even the company says it was an exploit. The company says BOTS were using it as an exploit. And legit players are not bots.
Ah, I see. Let me see if I understand you correctly: "Legit Players" doing "X": Fair Play "Botters" doing "X": Exploit
Very compelling argument you have there. /sarcasm off
Legit players are not bots, because bots doing something is an exploit while legit players doing the same thing is not. Go on.
Read this. Leadership As you may remember, we recently disabled the ability to use the Leadership profession on Gateway. This was due to an extreme number of bots generating far too much AD, and creating havoc with the AD economy. By disabling the profession on Gateway, we were able to reduce this artificially inflated number. Unfortunately, botters found a way around this fix. As we looked into the data, and as we analyzed what we could do to fix this exploit, we came to the conclusion that the way to stop the botters was to remove AD from the Leadership profession. There will still be a few sources in there, but nothing that botters can use to continue breaking the economy.
An interesting point to be made: this move is in contrast to recent research on the neurochemistry of gaming. It's a risk-reward formula that, upon reward, creates a measurable endorphin high - similar to that from narcotics, actually. What they've done is significantly cut the reward experienced. What we're left with is a very high-risk (i.e. stressful and difficult) end-game experience, and very little rewards across the board. It robs players of the psychological incentive to play. It's all pain and almost no gain.
If you want robofarming, go play farmville or something.
Read this. Leadership As you may remember, we recently disabled the ability to use the Leadership profession on Gateway. This was due to an extreme number of bots generating far too much AD, and creating havoc with the AD economy. By disabling the profession on Gateway, we were able to reduce this artificially inflated number. Unfortunately, botters found a way around this fix. As we looked into the data, and as we analyzed what we could do to fix this exploit, we came to the conclusion that the way to stop the botters was to remove AD from the Leadership profession. There will still be a few sources in there, but nothing that botters can use to continue breaking the economy.
The impact on the game is identical.
Implying that only those under the heading "botter" had a negative impact on the economy is disingenuous. Every account with a leadership army helped create the glut of AD.
Comments
Besides, are you to blind to see, that i suggested several options to replace AD with something else in return?
This is about giving them options to repair the damage they have done.
That weakness was plugged. If people with leadership armies honestly thought since it was not against the rules that it was acceptable, they are being insultingly dishonest.
Rage against the zeitgeist.
To our forum mod....I respect you commenting and trying to do what you can to defuse the current situation but will all due respect you are a forum moderator with little to no pull on developer/upper management decisions. You have stated a number of times at the level of toxicity here in the responses and that being the primary reason none of the dev team bothered to respond....that is quite frankly bunk.
TBH less than 25% of the work involved on this change was done...taking ad from leadership and removing daily ad quests is easy. The hard part is coming up with fixes for leadership to make it still worth while to actually level it up...granted the few rp pouches at max levels was a start but considering the time and limits on missions and the rewards or lack of realistic rewards now on the majority after ad was removed from them simply makes this near useless. AD sinks still kept in game (BTW there was no way they were put in to penalise botters, currency sinks primary goal is to drain legit players AD supply no other reason anyone who willfully tries to say it's otherwise is a fool of the highest order).
Things to fix what the dev team and upper management too a hammer and anvil to in game are as follows:
Finally pardon me for saying this but sack up and respond to the community. The dev team got alot of good will with some long overdue fixs (armor pen stacking anyone as well as a host of others). The change not only evaporated what good will you made damm near within an hour but you are killing your own population faster than the latest MMO to be released would. Stop punishing the legit players for what botters and exploiters have done (AD duping anyone). Players with 50 alts does not automatically make them a botter or an exploiter...it makes them self sufficient in a game where the ecconomy is borked by serious missteps.
Thats all I got but doubt any dev will respond or anything will change for the better.
Some points i've read that i'd like to quote just to reiterate how important they are: The issues that i see with this change are:
They were so fast with removing the AD from LS, but how long will it take them to make some improvements now?
Were there BOTs and people taking advantage of the Leadership profession, of course, but by and all they were very few of the total people playing the game and until they are banned they will find other ways to cheat.
My top 3 have all the boons, my next 5!!!! have all boons up to WoD #3.
Ive gotten at times past profound armour, then BI for at least 5-6 of these.
Everyone has a normal enchant or better..
I USED MY LEADERSHIP to progress MY own toons.
Thats what I used mine for!
Done TELL me I exploited, thats hogwash and insulting.
I paid REAL life cash, out of pocket for these slots. CRYPTIC made money off from me (also some packs+ mount+ other small items (a few hundred key purchases ect)
Do not come on here and flame legit players, who PLAYED the game the company set up.
on a brighter note champions 6yr aniversary is on so while i wait for something that has a combat system like NW without the korean grind MMO aspect i can fly about in tights and remember a different cryptic
Rage against the zeitgeist.
What are professions now good for?
The old ones got killed with the introduction of artifact equipement, the others were already badly designed and now LS is useless too.
It is really a bad design approach and it can't be certified with any excuse, not that the bot issue would have to do even 1% with current decision, only naive people believe that and actually it is a disgrace to tell us it, better be a man and come out and say, we need more money.
This came suddenly to my mind:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=gUhRKVIjJtw
I feel so bad for my formerly beloved game, that with each Mod it loses a part, like cutting of a limb each time from the poor body.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/1204417/the-final-solution
TOTALLY and 100% different.
Leadership
As you may remember, we recently disabled the ability to use the Leadership profession on Gateway. This was due to an extreme number of bots generating far too much AD, and creating havoc with the AD economy. By disabling the profession on Gateway, we were able to reduce this artificially inflated number. Unfortunately, botters found a way around this fix. As we looked into the data, and as we analyzed what we could do to fix this exploit, we came to the conclusion that the way to stop the botters was to remove AD from the Leadership profession. There will still be a few sources in there, but nothing that botters can use to continue breaking the economy.
Rage against the zeitgeist.
Implying that only those under the heading "botter" had a negative impact on the economy is disingenuous. Every account with a leadership army helped create the glut of AD.