Leadership ADs and economy tweaks ARE NOT our biggest problems!!!

sylkrode

NOTE; This is a discussion on what I feel are the real problems in these latest AD changes. Comments regarding Leadership and re-pricing are EXPRESSLY UNDESIRED.

The main, official thread on AD changes has become nothing more than a lengthy diatribe on how many people have been robbed of a great deal of time and finance on the inevitably corrupt Leadership system. While I feel for these people, that single change was much needed and will certainly not be reversed. As such, I seek to re-focus the conversation on what I - and I must believe many, many others - see as the main problem with this adjustment; namely what the developers painfully and insultingly refer to as "rewarding honest players for their time." The problem is, that by removing the daily quests and hourly events, they have taken a tremendous chunk out of our ability to efficiently acquire AD in a satisfactory fashion and forced us into a hollow and unrewarding grind. Even if the pitiful rewards offered by the first two or three plays of dungeons and skirmishes were enough - WHICH THEY ABSOLUTELY ARE NOT - they have not sufficiently compensated for the other removals.

The undue focus on the rightly doomed Leadership AD nerf threatens to make the developers believe that this is the main concern of the mainstream player base. This is unacceptable. We must re-focus on the real problem at hand if we are to have any hope of them returning the tiniest semblance of playability back to what is otherwise an excellent, if modestly imperfect game.

All said, the crux is this: we we were told we would have more ways to earn AD - as it stands, we have much, much fewer, forcing us into a terrifying, painful, hideous grind. Put simply, the rewards we are awarded for playing a formerly rewarding game have become few and particularly unrewarding.

Furthermore, this move is in contrast to recent research on the neurochemistry of gaming. It's a risk-reward formula that, upon reward, creates a measurably endorphine 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.

santralafax

I am of the opinion that the dailies need to be returned AND Lord Neverember's Dailies as well. Those of us that did dailies and Leadership on ONE character, are now broke and see Neverwinter as a third world country.

As far as NOT REVERSING CHANGES: I assure you that the management team would tell you all of these changes were "much needed and cannot be reversed." Except they won't tell you that, they will let you talk to the hand.

I do agree with you that the regular dailies should be brought back as they were--there was no reason to tie that change to Leadership changes. I don't agree with you on much else.

sylkrode

santralafax said:

I don't agree with you on much else.

That I find highly disappointing, and am more doubtful that this concern will be addressed to any degree.

fantasycharacter

Zomg if I don't get some stuff soon I am going to, like, flip out!

tripsofthrymr

I'm mostly with you.

AD from Leadership should have been thoughtfully revised (not axed), and the ability to earn by actually playing the content should have been restored (anyone been here long enough to remember key split runs?).

You can't have a well-functioning economy with a handful of players. Axing leadership rather than thoughtfully revising it seems to be driving away vast amounts of players, at least in the short term. That is only an acceleration of a long-term trend. Only time will tell whether players will start to return.

Even if Module 8 rocks, so many players now distrust Cryptic that it probably wouldn't make a big difference.

nealbeat

As You said sylkrode we gotta focus in what can be done (as sad as it may sound) in order to overcome this problem. Then i will share my toughs in possible solutions for the ad gaining in game.

-Blind on Equip gear drop from bosses available again (this will not consider chest loot)
-Salvages give double rad worth (Premod 6, Purple gear gave more rad than elemental evil gear) or resemble Premod 6 system.
-Other campaign quest like Dread Ring daily rewards:
° Seldarine: Since this quest needs unlock and time should reward always a Greater Mark of Union, Power or Stability
° Well of Dragons lairs: in this case the system will be like DR cuz is almost a daily quest.
° Briggin: As a weekly quest and one of the hardest lairs to be done solo this will give instead a Greater Mark of Potency, Chances could be 50%, if u fail to get a Gmop then u will get a Greater Mark of Union, Power or Stability.

One of the main concerns is the ability to get marks for our upgrades so that could solve the problem that many players will face now, the ad from selling gear could also help the daily income from players and since bosses rarely drop something is okay. The salvage on the other hand could be used to easily cap that nasty 24k rad, so all concerns should be addressed with this changes.

silverkelt

Everyone wants a complex system, im for keeping it simple, REDUCE costing immedietly, save the game.

Its like the old hero's Save the cheer leader, save the world..

Reduce the costing, save the game is my motto.

It solves most of our issues.

sylkrode

All said, we we were told we would have more ways to earn AD - as it stands, we have much, much fewer, forcing us into a hideous grind.

eolee

So i will write here what got lost in the other thread.

I've always made my AD's by playing content (which is dungeon/skirmish, i dont like pvp) since Beta. And those on different toons. I play all classes. I have all boons. I was, prior to Mod 6, able to get enough AD to gear up my toons. I am so sorry for not being able to chose a class, and I am so sorry for the future people in this thread that will tell me the game isnt made to play multiple toons.

While gaining AD by running pve contents during PVE events hours and getting the Kobold's quests, i was also spending money here and there.
Mod 6 came out. I had to run normal dungeons to make up with the loss of AD's the difficulty of content at the beginning, and the loss of all my guildmates created. I've found now another guild and it's better.

Now, there's no way for me to make AD by playing the same way, which is playing content and not clicking stuffs on gateway. I'd have to spend twice the time i was spending before this change.

I have to chose which toon i will play dungeons on today because i also want to help the SH and i have to do same dailies and farm HE's that got nerfed to the ground with the rewards. Oh and yea, i can't no longer offer all my toons many dungeons keys anyways... So that means less salvageables aswell. Because all mini bosses before final one dont drop a loot each time.

So i focus on my main, my healer. But hey, this new system isn't rewarding at all, im sorry.

So what do I get to legitimately beating the 5 adventurers in eCC? Nothing, not even a seal.
What do I get to legitimately beating Traven in eCC with my guild? Nothing but 20 seals... 1/20 of a purple gear i could salvage. So finally this legit eCC run gave me the satisfaction of beating it legit way so many times, but I dont see what Cryptic did there to reward me...Oh nevermind, i see 750 AD on the floor. Thank you Cryptic.


So, yea, i feel like this "rewarding honest players for their time'' is just a lie. I don't feel rewarded at all.

alyrissa

Instead of axing Leadership it sounds like putting a realistic daily cap on AD would have been a much more tolerable way to manage bot abuse

plasticbat

As I said many times, watch out what you wish for. You wish for something, they interpret another way to give you something else. They have been doing that time over time. Yes, people were talking to Crypt's hand and they use the hand as their brain.

nealbeat

silverkelt said:

Everyone wants a complex system, im for keeping it simple, REDUCE costing immedietly, save the game.

Its like the old hero's Save the cheer leader, save the world..

Reduce the costing, save the game is my motto.

It solves most of our issues.

Problem with that is really unlikely, better ways already used like boe gear, greater marks drops like premod 6 are more reasonable or easy to get. You know how much time it takes for devs to code new stuff, more easy if they just take something already used.

sylkrode

alyrissa said:

Instead of axing Leadership it sounds like putting a realistic daily cap on AD would have been a much more tolerable way to manage bot abuse

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 that axing it and implementing the other changes. Rather than taking that, the rather reversed the idea - but destroyed the highway, as well. But, I digress; I don't want this feed to become another endless Leadership rant. There are other issues, and Leadership is getting plenty of airtime on the official feed.

darkstarcrash

My main concern is that the new "right way to play" is completely contradictory to the latest mod.

Building your stronghold requires running SH quests and quests in campaign zones, and has high AD costs. The boon structures each require 2.5 million AD at level one.

The "good guild member" who is running Ranger/Builder/Master of Coin quests gets no AD for his efforts, so he actually will lose AD if he contributes towards the boon structures.

For a short while, larger guilds will have people with deep pockets from their leadership armies who can subsidize those who run quests -- but at some point, the system will collapse. And smaller guilds are just screwed.

Daily quests need to reward AD. Devs will have to think how to do this to avoid inflating AD or over-rewarding botters, but without AD sources from non-group gameplay, strongholds just aren't tenable.

plasticbat

Well, how can a solo player earn AD? I guess solo player does not deserve to play this game without money. Solo players want to get boon from various places (Dread Ring, Sharandar, IWD, WoD, etc). They cannot earn any AD doing those task. Those are time consuming and time restricted task (you can only advance that much everyday). That can easily be 2 hours play time for one character. There is no AD earning in that.

The motto was "you get AD by playing". No, you don't get AD by playing. You get AD by playing something that does not help you to advance.

santralafax

tripsofthrymr said:

I'm mostly with you.

AD from Leadership should have been thoughtfully revised (not axed), and the ability to earn by actually playing the content should have been restored (anyone been here long enough to remember key split runs?).

You can't have a well-functioning economy with a handful of players. Axing leadership rather than thoughtfully revising it seems to be driving away vast amounts of players, at least in the short term. That is only an acceleration of a long-term trend. Only time will tell whether players will start to return.

Even if Module 8 rocks, so many players now distrust Cryptic that it probably wouldn't make a big difference.

Thoughtful removal of AD from Leadership, or an announced and gradual movement of AD away from Leadership would have been perfectly okay. Especially combined with thoughtful and gradual changes to the economy. But it was all about "bots" and had to be done post-haste--details be damned.

sylkrode

So much for moving the conversation on from Leadership. Resistance is futile.

santralafax

silverkelt said:

Everyone wants a complex system, im for keeping it simple, REDUCE costing immedietly, save the game.

Its like the old hero's Save the cheer leader, save the world..

Reduce the costing, save the game is my motto.

It solves most of our issues.

+1 I don't see it happening, though.

dragonsbloods

I logged in specifically to add to a thread which hopefully will be read and taken note of ... since it has the manner of being proactive rather than a groan thread ...

my observation of the current scenario matches most others, in that means of acquiring AD is VERY NARROW, which doesnt really match the presented objective of rewards by 'playing the game'. Playing the same dungeons etc over and over will make the sharandar grind seem like a picnic

Hence, campaigns, levelling, since new accounts need AD too, Stronghold activities, let all these acquire the AD silently just like the dungeons, pvp, skirmishes etc, so that an income can be achieved which is representative for active players of that before the leadership nerf, oops apologies I mentioned the forbidden topic, hope I am forgiven

just a quiet regular player here, seen it all since beta, and share mindsets with most, sadly I dont have the magic wand

jcharais01

Well I finally got to try the new changes last night and to my surprise they aren't as awful as I thought they would be. My goal for myself for a while has been to generate 1 GMoP per day in AD. If I do this, I can at least update 1 or 2 rank 8 enchantments per week. I normally have 2-3 hours to game late at night. I have eleven characters that used to invoke and do leadership and then I run my main GWF for PvP. For actually gaming, normal dungeon runs are the best way to earn AD and you can easily run them on your main or your alts and now you don't have to wait for that good one hour out of 4 to get a decent return. 1 run is essentially 3-4k AD and it takes 15 minutes on a alt, less on a main. Main difference is you have actively place to get AD and not do it as passively as before. My AD generation did go down, but not as drastic as I thought. Being able to run the dungeons whenever I want turns out to be quite a bit of savings for me. The bad part is it will be a very repetitive grind running the same dungeons all the time to get that 3-4k AD. I wish they would bring back the daily PvP victory. That was a bad choice to remove.

archanarchist

this wasnt planed out by the way or they wouldnt of removed the seals of triumph mission the day they launched a new form of pvp that needed seals to purchase gear, nor dose it award AD.
leadership was the whole basis of there rational for how much stuff in game costed thats why they gave you up to 50 char slots.

i never realy bothered with profesions, at first i could keep up well enuff by dumping 40$ a month or so in which is pretty high sub price still, that long ago became far to little to keep up with any more then 1 or 2 chars that already had there weapon enchants ect built up.

NW was billed as a casual friendly game but it long ago became grindyer then games like archeage i actualy tryed that out a bit back when they inflated the price of coal wards in a similar fashion to this leadership and dailys change and before that it was making dungeon chests take keys.

they have sweezed the sounge from every angle but i dont think they have ever calculated just how much it costs now in real world dollars at the prices they offer items to get fully geared(about us$4000 half or a third of that if you buy off botts)

which is were the crux of the issue lays you cant get rid of bots by giving them such a exchange rate advantage, with that kind of margin so long as anyones still paying you can pay someone to build you a new bot to deal with any changes if your a botting company.

well see how the longevity of the game goes with it still billing itself as casual but expecting 4+hrs a days work for 2+ years to gear up a character.

its a interesting business stratergy ill give them that. i do wonder if they are about to go into receivership or something though, seems very much like they are gutting game and running over last few mods.

theres definately no one crunching numbers and saying this isnt sustainable or if they are they arnt being listened to

angrysprite

sylkrode said:

So much for moving the conversation on from Leadership. Resistance is futile.

LOL - THIS. (edit to clarify: I *agree* with the statement in the quote)

Any discussion of AD at this point shall always, either directly or innuendo, refer to AD NERF/LEADERSHIP/DAILIES-LOSS.

FACT: if you're happy about the AD nerf to professions then be happy about the nerf to dailies. Because guess what: they are both essentially the same thing: *farming AD*. I am so laughing (like - literally) as arguments such as what the O/P is making (basically: I want my cake and I want to eat it, too).

To all those who called for "stop Leadership AD farming!!!" and yet still complain about the removal all all dailies: L.O.L.

//Be careful what you ask for. To your dismay you might actually get it.

sylkrode

At least they can't hide behind thread toxicity; although, they can still hide behind topic toxicity.

sylkrode

angrysprite said:

sylkrode said:

So much for moving the conversation on from Leadership. Resistance is futile.

LOL - THIS. (edit to clarify: I *agree* with the statement in the quote)

Any discussion of AD at this point shall always, either directly or innuendo, refer to AD NERF/LEADERSHIP/DAILIES-LOSS.

FACT: if you're happy about the AD nerf to professions then be happy about the nerf to dailies. Because guess what: they are both essentially the same thing: *farming AD*. I am so laughing (like - literally) as arguments such as what the O/P is making (basically: I want my cake and I want to eat it, too).

To all those who called for "stop Leadership AD farming!!!" and yet still complain about the removal all all dailies: L.O.L.

//Be careful what you ask for. To your dismay you might actually get it.

Honestly, I don't see the comparison between daily rewards and leadership; one is active, the other is passive. One involves making an effort to go out and actually do stuff, the other involves clicking a few buttons and moving on.

tripsofthrymr

jcharais01 said:

1 run is essentially 3-4k AD and it takes 15 minutes on a alt, less on a main.

Use a stopwatch. Unless you are running 5xGWF, you can't even run from one end of a dungeon to the other in 15 minutes, let alone fight anything. Unless everyone is already geared (and some groups are), the boss fight alone can take 10+ minutes.

instynctive

angrysprite said:

//Be careful what you ask for. To your dismay you might actually get it.

It's like the old joke about the guy who got one wish from a Genie, and he wished that his HAMSTER touched the floor... so the Genie removed his legs. Instead, of course, of simply lengthening his member.

While *technically* the results are the same, it's certainly not in the spirit of what was wanted/needed.


I see a lot of similarities with what's going on in my beloved game.

sylkrode

instynctive said:

angrysprite said:

//Be careful what you ask for. To your dismay you might actually get it.

It's like the old joke about the guy who got one wish from a Genie, and he wished that his HAMSTER touched the floor... so the Genie removed his legs. Instead, of course, of simply lengthening his member.

While *technically* the results are the same, it's certainly not in the spirit of what was wanted/needed.


I see a lot of similarities with what's going on in my beloved game.

I would kindly warn against such colorful language; otherwise they will be able to hide behind thread toxicity.

jcharais01

tripsofthrymr said:

jcharais01 said:

1 run is essentially 3-4k AD and it takes 15 minutes on a alt, less on a main.

Use a stopwatch. Unless you are running 5xGWF, you can't even run from one end of a dungeon to the other in 15 minutes, let alone fight anything. Unless everyone is already geared (and some groups are), the boss fight alone can take 10+ minutes.

You get the same AD from running a normal CC as ECC so I always run CC to when generating ADs. I can do it in 8 minutes on my main 2.5k GWF, I can just about one shot everying, the guys I drag through never really fight. I can do it in 15 minutes easy with my 60 CW and 63 GF. My 56 HR takes 20 minutes if someone doesn't drag him through.

sylkrode

jcharais01 said:

tripsofthrymr said:

jcharais01 said:

1 run is essentially 3-4k AD and it takes 15 minutes on a alt, less on a main.

Use a stopwatch. Unless you are running 5xGWF, you can't even run from one end of a dungeon to the other in 15 minutes, let alone fight anything. Unless everyone is already geared (and some groups are), the boss fight alone can take 10+ minutes.

You get the same AD from running a normal CC as ECC so I always run CC to when generating ADs. I can do it in 8 minutes on my main 2.5k GWF, I can just about one shot everying, the guys I drag through never really fight. I can do it in 15 minutes easy with my 60 CW and 63 GF. My 56 HR takes 20 minutes if someone doesn't drag him through.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is this CC?

mynaam

Cragmire Crypts the dungeon and epic cragmire Crypts = ECC

rapo973

IMO you're missing the main point. They don't want you to get ADs at all. ADs are a way to enhance fast your toon without spending $$$.
They are forcing you to spend real $$ on this game and if you don't, you have to grind ADs for years.
You will not get any improvement.
It's not difficult to understand...all the decisions taken in the last 6 months go in this direction.
Petitions, complains and forum posts will not change anything.
You have just 1 chance: hit them where it hurts....keep on playing without spending any $. If all players do it, things may change at the next PWE financial report. But i don't think it will happen...
Or may be yes: a lot of players are quitting. Yesterday evening in Europe it was a desert: enclave empty and just 3 lfg to run dgn. Solo players are gone...