About Battle Premium Pass for Echoes of Prophecy

erevel09

I understand this would work similar to the Redeemed Citadel and as such unlock additional rewards during campaign. I also understand price in zen (2500), but there is one thing that I'm concerned about. It's the possiblility to unlock it for f2p players, since zax takes about 7 months to process orders and as such not everyone will have zen available when it's needed.

I'd like to propose an option to buy Battle Premium Pass for AD for double price available on Wonderous Bazaar.

2500 zen equals 1.875.000 AD. With zen coupon it drops price even further to 2000 zen which is 1.500.000 AD.
Of course with zen to AD ratio 1:750.

Now, if that option would be added for say, 4.000.000 (3.000.000 for vip rank12) AD it would help those players while also creating AD sink that could also help zax a bit.

Please, consider adding that option. Thank you.

greywynd

Please consider buying zen with cash.

Sincerely, Cryptic.

erevel09

Yeah, that's probably the response that might come. Nonetheless I think it's worth the try.

plasticbat

I assume you should know by now Cryptic set up the situation that it takes a long time to get Zen from Zax. They also set up situations that certain Zen items can only be purchased in limited time. One would think the reason is they want to push people to use money to Zen. Why would they allow you to get another way out?

fritz

plasticbat said:

I assume you should know by now Cryptic set up the situation that it takes a long time to get Zen from Zax. They also set up situations that certain Zen items can only be purchased in limited time. One would think the reason is they want to push people to use money to Zen. Why would they allow you to get another way out?

I wouldn't say they set it up, but they for sure haven't tried too hard to find a solution for free-to-play players since this mess started.

My conspiracy: They realized how much more $$ they can make without the ability to mass exchange ingame for premium currency. So I would assume they're working on a system behind the scenes that will rework or entirely replace the current ZAX. Somethin like a cap of how much Astral Diamonds you can exchange for ZEN per day. They had a similar approach with Magic: Legends.

plasticbat

fritz#8093 said:

plasticbat said:

I assume you should know by now Cryptic set up the situation that it takes a long time to get Zen from Zax. They also set up situations that certain Zen items can only be purchased in limited time. One would think the reason is they want to push people to use money to Zen. Why would they allow you to get another way out?

I wouldn't say they set it up, but they for sure haven't tried too hard to find a solution for free-to-play players since this mess started.

My conspiracy: They realized how much more $$ they can make without the ability to mass exchange ingame for premium currency. So I would assume they're working on a system behind the scenes that will rework or entirely replace the current ZAX. Somethin like a cap of how much Astral Diamonds you can exchange for ZEN per day. They had a similar approach with Magic: Legends.

I would say they set that up because since summer last year (if not earlier), they kept on pumping AD (not just rough AD but refined AD) to the game. They never pump refined AD to economy except may be first month or two when the game was released. Basically, most veteran players would get at least few millions refined AD (if not tens of million) in that period.

greywynd

I'm still refining the AD I got from M21 going live.

callumf

greywynd said:

Please consider buying zen with cash.

Sincerely, Cryptic.

Again - NW is a business.

Cryptic don't care about the Zax lag, they want money coming in. And seeing as in this game you really can play for free nearly all content with grind, why would they bother about Zax and extending the time to buy stuff with AD?

If you want the goodies you either grind liek mad, or buy the buyout pack

erevel09

I know, I know. Just wanted to have a bit of hope, that's all.

There is plenty of time for this event and to buy this premium pass, but still there are people who just can't for whatever reason pay or get their zen in time either way. I know game needs to make money, but there is also zax problem which everyone know about.

It was only a suggestion, I expected nothing to be honest

fritz

> @callumf#9018 said:
> Again - NW is a business.
>
> Cryptic don't care about the Zax lag, they want money coming in. And seeing as in this game you really can play for free nearly all content with grind, why would they bother about Zax and extending the time to buy stuff with AD?
>
> If you want the goodies you either grind liek mad, or buy the buyout pack

I tend to disagree. A non-functional ZAX breaks the f2p spirit of the game. It would be much better to improve the system in a way so that you can reliably exchange and Cryptic sees the same amount of money coming in. They have to overhaul quite a lot, but it's possible.

We know however that changes usually take longer around here when it only affects players negatively.

greywynd

The ZAX is fully functional.

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plasticbat

arkhadiam#2543 said:

erevel09 said:

.... but there is one thing that I'm concerned about. It's the possiblility to unlock it for f2p players, since zax takes about 7 months to process orders and as such not everyone will have zen available when it's needed....

Maybe what you should ask yourself is if NW is still an F2P on PC with that ZAX

For some, it is. For me, it is.

fritz

greywynd said:

The ZAX is fully functional.

A car with only two wheels can still drive I guess.

Neverwinter is no longer a true F2P title. VIP is the best, although not the only, example. You can buy six months, but might not be able to exchange ZEN within these six month to resub. Meaning you cannot achieve 100% VIP uptime with playing the game only.

erevel09

What do you mean by "true" F2P?

Maybe I'm wrong but when game is F2P you don't need to pay anything to just play. VIP makes game a bit easier but it's not like you must have it in order to play the game. You pay only to get things faster or have more comfortable gameplay with additional bonuses (with VIP signpost for example). ZAX is a problem but that thing is made for players to trade zen bought with real money for ingame AD with other players. Not a single person is obligated to actually put anything there, as far as I know at least.

fritz

erevel09 said:

What do you mean by "true" F2P?

Maybe I'm wrong but when game is F2P you don't need to pay anything to just play. VIP makes game a bit easier but it's not like you must have it in order to play the game. You pay only to get things faster or have more comfortable gameplay with additional bonuses (with VIP signpost for example). ZAX is a problem but that thing is made for players to trade zen bought with real money for ingame AD with other players. Not a single person is obligated to actually put anything there, as far as I know at least.

This is the most common definition of F2P, but not the one I use. For me true F2P means being able to obtain any existing item without spending a single dollar. And since there are time-limited ZEN exclusives (EOP Battle Pass being the next prominent example) that you most likely can't get with the current exchange times, the ZAX breaks the F2P model.

It wouldn't be an issue if the ZEN market would be purely cosmetic, but there is enough gameplay value attached to the items that it's hard to dodge entirely. The "don't need anything to just play" notion is just a clever marketing strategy.

fritz

By the way: There always has been this issue with Preservation Wards. There is still no reliable free-2-play method to obtain enough Wards to upgrade your stuff in any reasonable amount of time. That's why they sell for twice as much as their actual ZEN value on the Auction House.

tchefi

fritz#8093 said:

This is the most common definition of F2P, but not the one I use. For me true F2P means being able to obtain any existing item without spending a single dollar.

Personnally, i also love to live in a country, France, where people have universal free healthcare . Even though i pay a lot of taxes for that ^^, and even though i barely have to go to the doctor once in every 3 or 4 years.

Should Neverwinter be somewhat kind of socialist ?

You must realize you can play freely because some players (and in fact the fewer part) are paying the cost for you.
If you compare to "subscription" business model, maybe we could say each and every player should pay 60€/year to cover game's various costs (immovable, salaries, energy, etc) and invests (new modules).

Cryptic certainly has his own (evolutive) definition of his Neverwinter f2p business model.

I don't have any real opinion about how "f2p" should be defined, so this is just for the debate.
Question : if i can have nothing (at all) special/more/temporarily exclusive /etc as a paying player compared to someone who doesn't at all support the game financially, why would I want to pay ?

I have droped a total of 240€ in Neverwinter, since 2016. That represents something like 25k-30k Zen over 5 years and i am someone who plays longterm plans. I'm questionning myself each year since 2018 (after i had managed to "plunder" all what i see as good for my account in the Zen Market) : should I give the game my annual 60€ ? After all these years, I really doesn't need anything on the Zen Market.
I guess the battlepass would be a nice occasion and justification to drop those annual 60€, and just because i still like Neverwinter and have fun on it, it feels absolutely normal to pay my part for a game that has entertain me each year after year.
Even though i can already afford it with the Zen that came from the Zax since last january...

plasticbat

fritz#8093 said:

greywynd said:

The ZAX is fully functional.

A car with only two wheels can still drive I guess.

Neverwinter is no longer a true F2P title. VIP is the best, although not the only, example. You can buy six months, but might not be able to exchange ZEN within these six month to resub. Meaning you cannot achieve 100% VIP uptime with playing the game only.

Since mod 3, my expectation of Zax to get through has been one year. I planned accordingly. I have not spent a cent and I have been 100% VIP uptime since the introduction of VIP.

I don't spend my Zen for anything that I don't consider necessary. I always keep enough reserve fund to buy 6 month to one year during annual Zen store sales + whatever time limited expenditure.

I don't act when there is something is announced. I plan ahead.

plasticbat

fritz#8093 said:

By the way: There always has been this issue with Preservation Wards. There is still no reliable free-2-play method to obtain enough Wards to upgrade your stuff in any reasonable amount of time. That's why they sell for twice as much as their actual ZEN value on the Auction House.

I did not buy any P ward or C ward from AH or Zen store for years. I have enough account bound P ward and C ward to support 7 characters I play equally. These days I found I use ward less because (1) there is now a cap, (2) r15 is dirt cheap comparing with the past.

Last time I checked, I have about 200 account bound p ward and 100 account bound c ward.

greywynd

fritz#8093 said:

By the way: There always has been this issue with Preservation Wards. There is still no reliable free-2-play method to obtain enough Wards to upgrade your stuff in any reasonable amount of time. That's why they sell for twice as much as their actual ZEN value on the Auction House.

What you may consider reasonable may not be what the company considers reasonable.

Personally, I have stacks of pres wards on all but my latest 3 characters. Have for a while.

erevel09

fritz#8093 said:

By the way: There always has been this issue with Preservation Wards. There is still no reliable free-2-play method to obtain enough Wards to upgrade your stuff in any reasonable amount of time. That's why they sell for twice as much as their actual ZEN value on the Auction House.

That can be a problem, however there are events such as winter festiwal where you can get quite a lot of them. There are also invoking boxes if someone has a lot of alts. Whenever I open around 50 of them I get close to 6-13 wards and 2-4 coals which is not bad. Juma's boxes can drop them, dungeon chests can drop them.
Although I personally would not mind if they brought them back to buy at Wonderous Bazaar with some limitations like 5-10 acc-bound wards to buy per week or Sybella store for legacy campaigns. That or give a guy in PE - which used to give free dungeon key per day - one bound ward per day. This also works

fritz

I think we're mixing too much experience of seasoned players and how they experience the game into the discussion. I personally have no issues with Wards as well because I always have a buttload of Trade Bars to spend whenever I need Enchantments. I can't remember when I had to manually upgrade something using PWards either.

BUT: This is not the experience of newer players that bring up their first toon. Maybe the game becomes more free-2-play as you move up the chain. But there are definite issues in the 20-30k item level range.

erevel09 said:

That can be a problem, however there are events such as winter festiwal where you can get quite a lot of them. There are also invoking boxes if someone has a lot of alts. Whenever I open around 50 of them I get close to 6-13 wards and 2-4 coals which is not bad. Juma's boxes can drop them, dungeon chests can drop them.

Many alts that just do invoking is a nice way to get Wards, but again: This is not something a new player has access to,

greywynd said:

What you may consider reasonable may not be what the company considers reasonable.

I mean, Wards are definitely designed to be a ZEN exclusive. Astral Lockboxes did help here though.

greywynd

fritz#8093 said:

I mean, Wards are definitely designed to be a ZEN exclusive. Astral Lockboxes did help here though.

Wards were in the Trade Bar merchant for the longest time. It wasn't until after VIP was introduced that they were removed from there.

fritz

greywynd said:

fritz#8093 said:

I mean, Wards are definitely designed to be a ZEN exclusive. Astral Lockboxes did help here though.

Wards were in the Trade Bar merchant for the longest time. It wasn't until after VIP was introduced that they were removed from there.

Removed because items appearing in both the Bazaar and ZEN market was "unintentional". But might be time to agree to disagree anyway.

greywynd

fritz#8093 said:

Removed because items appearing in both the Bazaar and ZEN market was "unintentional". But might be time to agree to disagree anyway.

When three months prior to them being removed from the merchant we were told on this board by a dev that they weren't going anywhere, "unintentional" was a lie. And removing them made the dev's statement also a lie.

plasticbat

greywynd said:

fritz#8093 said:

Removed because items appearing in both the Bazaar and ZEN market was "unintentional". But might be time to agree to disagree anyway.

When three months prior to them being removed from the merchant we were told on this board by a dev that they weren't going anywhere, "unintentional" was a lie. And removing them made the dev's statement also a lie.

To make it worse, some got insider information, got the wind of it and 'earned' a lot.

tchefi

fritz#8093 said:

BUT: This is not the experience of newer players that bring up their first toon. Maybe the game becomes more free-2-play as you move up the chain. But there are definite issues in the 20-30k item level range.

I think that's an interesting point.
Do a newplayer should move up "the chain" quickly, or not. I have a mixed opinion about that.

On one hand, i'm an oldschool player : for me in a MMORPG the path to endgame shouldn't be straight and fast. I never expected, when i was myself a new player on Neverwinter, to be efficient at endgame content (= not being carry) before i had spent an entire full year in the game, planned my economy and build up my character(s).

On the other hand, we are in Neverwinter, the lack of "dungeonning" content in quantity, in diversity, in difficulty, despite those are kind of the core content, can be felt...
It seems Cryptic wants to allow players to approach/touch endgame (and in fact all the queue content) much quicker than they should. Throwing these new players in content that they can't be prepared for at their IL/knowledge/experience. Consequences are they just take a beating and see how large of a gap there is between them and even moderately seasonned players (and are sometimes bullied).
This situation creates for a newplayer frustration, impatience, envy, social pressure, etc. Those are powerfull feelings and you can make your cash shop works around that (in kind of a predatory fashion).


All that being said : patience and longterm planning is always winning. I'm pretty sure if I was a newplayer today, i would be doing quite well in 1 year.
But the current generation of players aren't really known for being patient at all. They want everything, and right now. And have to pay for that :P.

Edit : patience can only be acquired through patience. :P

forumaccount

You can buy the premium pass until march 31st so most people who regularly put orders on the zen exchange should be able to get it from the zen they get with the exchange.

Also it's only 2.5k zen or 2k with a 20% off any item coupon. And for the rewards you get that's a pretty good deal in my opinion.

But more AD sinks are alwas nice so It would ne bice if it was also sold for AD.