Zax

tripsofthrymr

Just before the servers came down for emergency maintenance the AD backlog on the ZAX it was at about 6 million.

Right after the servers were back up, it was at 12.3 million.

Now it is at 12.6 million.

Based on that metric, it seems there is still a whole lot of counterfeit AD in the system and a whole lot of cheaters still at large.

I would love to be wrong about that. I don't care to hear what happened to any specific person, but it would be very reassuring to hear some numbers from Cryptic about how many accounts were permanently and temporarily banned and how much AD was removed from the system.

The AH prices and ZAX backlog are the only metrics the player base has to go on, and they do not exactly inspire the confidence of the honest players.

shunterino

You must have a terrible memory. it hasn't been at 6 million for weeks. Before the maintenance it was at just over 12.

myowmyow

tripsofthrymr wrote: »

The AH prices and ZAX backlog are the only metrics the player base has to go on, and they do not exactly inspire the confidence of the honest players.

Yep, agreed.

qutsemnie

shunterino wrote: »

You must have a terrible memory. it hasn't been at 6 million for weeks. Before the maintenance it was at just over 12.

This is what I remember.

iambecks1

@OP look at the AH , the economy is in pure hyperinflation mode , they should have done a rollback when they had the chance , now the game is nigh on unplayable for anybody who doesn't have access to insane quantities of AD but wants to remain competitive . Even converting zen to AD some of the items are just insanely priced , cryptic done gone and messed up maaa

twilightwatchman

tripsofthrymr wrote: »

Just before the servers came down for emergency maintenance the AD backlog on the ZAX it was at about 6 million.

Wrong. It's been North of 10 million for days and had hit 12 million before the emergency maintenance.

ghoulz66

It was nearing 11m at the end of Sunday before I logged off...

beckylunatic

Yep, there might have been a last-minute spike, but it's been steadily climbing for ages. Lately it's seemed like about a million additional requests per day.

captfrancis

Pretty sure it was 12.something in the morning when I was doing the last of my grommet-slaughtering, so dropping to 6 between then and maintenance time would have been a miracle.

vader6139

Look, I'll spend Zen to AD but I want a better rate than the stupid cap allows. 500:1 is a joke and a bad one at that. I am willing to bet there are a lot of other players who are sitting on Zen who would also convert if the rate cap was removed or set on a sliding scale bound to what the ZAX is experiencing. Right now ZAX needs zen. Not going to happen at this rate.

ghoulz66

We desperately need retraining tokens and such in a physical form that takes inventory space and can be sold on the AH. Don't care if they're double the normal Zen price in ADs, just need em accessible!

ambisinisterr

The ZAX was at 12M when I went to bed Monday morning. Gond caused about 4M additional backlog minimum. It was not at 6M for over a week.

In fact I was surprised to see all this hoopla and yet the ZAX was absolutely not effected. Really makes it seem like you all are blowing the effects way out of proportion.

iambecks1

ambisinisterr wrote: »

The ZAX was at 12M when I went to bed Monday morning. Gond caused about 4M additional backlog minimum. It was not at 6M for over a week.

In fact I was surprised to see all this hoopla and yet the ZAX was absolutely not effected. Really makes it seem like you all are blowing the effects way out of proportion.

Check the prices on stuff in the AH , they are all laundering their AD first apparently.

anharmon

Yeah, I was surprised to see that the ZAX was unaffected ... though high-priced items in the AH did a flip.

angrysprite

vader6139 wrote: »

Look, I'll spend Zen to AD but I want a better rate than the stupid cap allows. 500:1 is a joke and a bad one at that. I am willing to bet there are a lot of other players who are sitting on Zen who would also convert if the rate cap was removed or set on a sliding scale bound to what the ZAX is experiencing. Right now ZAX needs zen. Not going to happen at this rate.

Not a good answer. The cap is in place as a protection and needs to stay at 500/1.

Now I ask you to indulge me for a moment when I tell you that what you want isn't an increase in the cap, but better value for your Zen.

The problem isn't even that there's too much AD in the game. The problem is that prices in the Auction House are too high. What used to cost 500,000 now sells for 3 or 4 million (I am using gear as an example, not enchantments or artifacts - but regular armor gear). When it sold for 500k, that meant the value of the AD was good, and thus AD was selling at 300/350 to 1 Zen, meaning the value of the Zen was good - 1000 Zen could get you a good amount of AD at 350/1 to buy what you want in the AH.

Now the same gear at 3 Million AD means it costs more AD, but yet the Zen carries the same value (it cannot change: 100 Zen will always equal $1 U.S. - it's a permanent value) - so even if you were to raise the cap to 5000/1 AD/Zen conversion it does not matter - the Zen is still worth less because the AD is worth less.

Because of the crazy high prices in the AH the Zen market is a better value: bigger bang for the Zen (on anything) - and there are those who will circumvent ZAX to buy, then sell Zen Market items on the AH.

The real problem is the inflation of AD and how items sell in the AH. 30 Million for a Tenser's Disc? Really? I don't think so. The only people buying those things are those accounts who are more likely then not banned right now. They are buying and selling to themselves, but whatever - my point being it will take the AH pricing to stabilize better before AD value starts coming back in-line with Zen Value.

Only then, when the value of AD does not lower the value of Zen (by purchasing it) will the backlog of the ZAX start to fade away. Economics are a really complicated machine with far too many moving parts to be so easily identifiable the way so many people think.

This isn't a study of economics, this is an explanation by someone with 30,000+ Zen sitting in his account, unwilling to convert 1 single Zen into AD for the lack of AD value, and would rather grind AD in-game than throw away Zen on it. When pricing starts getting better in AH then I will buy AD with Zen. I am sure I speak for a lot of other genuine cash-spending-Zen-buyers in this game.

vader6139

angrysprite wrote: »

Not a good answer. The cap is in place as a protection and needs to stay at 500/1.

Now I ask you to indulge me for a moment when I tell you that what you want isn't an increase in the cap, but better value for your Zen.

The problem isn't even that there's too much AD in the game. The problem is that prices in the Auction House are too high. What used to cost 500,000 now sells for 3 or 4 million (I am using gear as an example, not enchantments or artifacts - but regular armor gear). When it sold for 500k, that meant the value of the AD was good, and thus AD was selling at 300/350 to 1 Zen, meaning the value of the Zen was good - 1000 Zen could get you a good amount of AD at 350/1 to buy what you want in the AH.

Now the same gear at 3 Million AD means it costs more AD, but yet the Zen carries the same value (it cannot change: 100 Zen will always equal $1 U.S. - it's a permanent value) - so even if you were to raise the cap to 5000/1 AD/Zen conversion it does not matter - the Zen is still worth less because the AD is worth less.

Because of the crazy high prices in the AH the Zen market is a better value: bigger bang for the Zen (on anything) - and there are those who will circumvent ZAX to buy, then sell Zen Market items on the AH.

The real problem is the inflation of AD and how items sell in the AH. 30 Million for a Tenser's Disc? Really? I don't think so. The only people buying those things are those accounts who are more likely then not banned right now. They are buying and selling to themselves, but whatever - my point being it will take the AH pricing to stabilize better before AD value starts coming back in-line with Zen Value.

Only then, when the value of AD does not lower the value of Zen (by purchasing it) will the backlog of the ZAX start to fade away. Economics are a really complicated machine with far too many moving parts to be so easily identifiable the way so many people think.

This isn't a study of economics, this is an explanation by someone with 30,000+ Zen sitting in his account, unwilling to convert 1 single Zen into AD for the lack of AD value, and would rather grind AD in-game than throw away Zen on it. When pricing starts getting better in AH then I will buy AD with Zen. I am sure I speak for a lot of other genuine cash-spending-Zen-buyers in this game.

I agree with you to a point. That point ends when people are still buying overpriced items with their inflated AD prices. If people STOP buying anything at those prices then the market would naturally settle back to more realistic numbers. Unfortunately that will take a while, months even for prices to slowly go down. As a new player I just might assume that is what stuff should be priced at. With the broken chest problem, I might have to buy a piece of equipment to finish my set so price is a steep hurdle but not a barrier.

This is all a guess on my part since I have no way of tracking sales in the AH based on completion. Unlike Ebay, for instance, I cannot look up to see what an item has SOLD for, only what someone is ASKING for. So If I list an item, where am I going to price it? At where I remember it being or around what it is now? No one is going risk losing AD on a sale if they can make more. It would be great for someone to buck the trend and price things at what they were even a few weeks ago but that is realistically not possible.

Granted my solution does not solve the problem but at least it makes influx of Zen much more likely. I thought that would help alleviate the pressure on Zax. As of now I will sit on my load of Zen until something changes.

charononus

ambisinisterr wrote: »

The ZAX was at 12M when I went to bed Monday morning. Gond caused about 4M additional backlog minimum. It was not at 6M for over a week.

In fact I was surprised to see all this hoopla and yet the ZAX was absolutely not effected. Really makes it seem like you all are blowing the effects way out of proportion.

It depends. Some people are saying they've seen evidence of 4 month old dated pictures of this exploit. If that is true. It would be very unlikely for this not to have been effecting the ZAX backlog from the start.

qutsemnie

I am always suspicious of this game and its zen cap for one reason.

This is a fact: running 1 hour of t2 a day will net your 25k of AD trivially. That is 50 zen at the cap. That isn't even exclusive or uber geared or end game best in slot. That is just having a few friends and farming t2s for giggles. 15 bucks of store value a month without even being good.

I have played these games for 12 years. You know what I have never seen? I have never seen play time valued that highly for the rank and file average joe. I have never seen a game where you could earn half a dollar of value in an hour. ~Never~. At best it might be a dime, and realistically it is usually under a dime by a lot unless you are a very good farmer with access to very good camps. If it was a dime, that would put zen at 2500 AD. That would be consistent with other games I have played, but here its a 5th of that, and that has always confused me.

You all keep imagining there is a magic way to get zen to below 500, but at the same time you are imagining that the value of human time is worth more than 50 cents an hour. Which sounds right on paper, but this is the only game on the planet where it works that way.

I remember when my friends and I first started farming T2, and the AD started flowing in, and meanwhile zen was at or below 350, I thought, "how does make any sense? This never happens! No game values middle of the road human effort this highly."

Now you might say, "but it was that way for so long..." Yeah I know. I told you I am confused. I don't understand how it was so easy to generate that large of cash equivalence so easily for so long. I never got it, and it was, as I pointed out, abnormal for gaming.

discriminating

qutsemnie wrote: »

I am always suspicious of this game and its zen cap for one reason.

This is a fact: running 1 hour of t2 a day will net your 25k of AD trivially. That is 50 zen at the cap. That isn't even exclusive or uber geared or end game best in slot. That is just having a few friends and farming t2s for giggles. 15 bucks of store value a month without even being good.

I have played these games for 12 years. You know what I have never seen? I have never seen play time valued that highly for the rank and file average joe. I have never seen a game where you could earn half a dollar of value in an hour. ~Never~. At best it might be a dime, and realistically it is usually under a dime by a lot unless you are a very good farmer with access to very good camps. If it was a dime, that would put zen at 2500 AD. That would be consistent with other games I have played, but here its a 5th of that, and that has always confused me.

You all keep imagining there is a magic way to get zen to below 500, but at the same time you are imagining that the value of human time is worth more than 50 cents an hour. Which sounds right on paper, but this is the only game on the planet where it works that way.

I remember when my friends and I first started farming T2, and the AD started flowing in, and meanwhile zen was at or below 350, I thought, "how does make any sense? This never happens! No game values middle of the road human effort this highly."

Now you might say, "but it was that way for so long..." Yeah I know. I told you I am confused. I don't understand how it was so easy to generate that large of cash equivalence so easily for so long. I never got it, and it was, as I pointed out, abnormal for gaming.

That's irrelevant when aligned with purchasing power. Yes, you can earn that much real world equivalent in that period of time, but what does that real world equivalent actually buy you. I see your point but I think it's more frightening that if you were to calculate the price of getting say a perfect vorpal. Let's use the current AH prices as an example. If I were to make a perfect vorpal from scratch, I would need the following:

32 vorpal shards (current price about 16,500AD each)
15 coalescent wards (current price about 800,000AD each)
990(ish) rank 5 enchants (current price about 5,000AD each)
10 greater marks of potency (current price 100,000AD each)

So, add that all up and you get a grand total of 18,478,000AD for a perfect vorpal. Using the currently capped exchange rate of 500AD to 1 Zen, that's 36,956 zen. At $.01 Zen on the dollar, that's $370. You can bring that down a tad by buying the best Zen package, but not much. I'm going to let that sink in. It's $370 for one enchantment in the current market. At your 50 zen a day, it would take you two years just to buy that one enchantment if you saved ever bit of that zen. Even if you factored out everything else and just used coalescent wards bought directly for Zen, that's 15 * $10 or $150 bucks.

The closest game equivalent I have ever played to this where you have a way of directly exchanging real world money for in game currency is EvE. For $150 in EvE I could outfit and entire fleet of ships not just one very important module for one ship. It's insane.

ayroux

angrysprite wrote: »

Not a good answer. The cap is in place as a protection and needs to stay at 500/1.

Now I ask you to indulge me for a moment when I tell you that what you want isn't an increase in the cap, but better value for your Zen.

The problem isn't even that there's too much AD in the game. The problem is that prices in the Auction House are too high. What used to cost 500,000 now sells for 3 or 4 million (I am using gear as an example, not enchantments or artifacts - but regular armor gear). When it sold for 500k, that meant the value of the AD was good, and thus AD was selling at 300/350 to 1 Zen, meaning the value of the Zen was good - 1000 Zen could get you a good amount of AD at 350/1 to buy what you want in the AH.

Now the same gear at 3 Million AD means it costs more AD, but yet the Zen carries the same value (it cannot change: 100 Zen will always equal $1 U.S. - it's a permanent value) - so even if you were to raise the cap to 5000/1 AD/Zen conversion it does not matter - the Zen is still worth less because the AD is worth less.

Because of the crazy high prices in the AH the Zen market is a better value: bigger bang for the Zen (on anything) - and there are those who will circumvent ZAX to buy, then sell Zen Market items on the AH.

The real problem is the inflation of AD and how items sell in the AH. 30 Million for a Tenser's Disc? Really? I don't think so. The only people buying those things are those accounts who are more likely then not banned right now. They are buying and selling to themselves, but whatever - my point being it will take the AH pricing to stabilize better before AD value starts coming back in-line with Zen Value.

Only then, when the value of AD does not lower the value of Zen (by purchasing it) will the backlog of the ZAX start to fade away. Economics are a really complicated machine with far too many moving parts to be so easily identifiable the way so many people think.

This isn't a study of economics, this is an explanation by someone with 30,000+ Zen sitting in his account, unwilling to convert 1 single Zen into AD for the lack of AD value, and would rather grind AD in-game than throw away Zen on it. When pricing starts getting better in AH then I will buy AD with Zen. I am sure I speak for a lot of other genuine cash-spending-Zen-buyers in this game.

You know I have to respectfully disagree with you... Inflation is a part of any game. And introducing "economy exploits" makes it even worse! Raising the cap actually allows zen prices to adjust to what the market values it at, when you force the market to value things a certain way, inefficiencies happen and players find those and exploit them.

An example of this was keys... Valued more than 500:1 players bought keys and sold them as a way to get more "bang for your buck". The fact that you hold 30,000 zen and you refuse to sell that for AD to me means you dont value the (30,000*500) 15 million MAX you can get... What if it was 30 Mil? 50mil? that can ONLY happen via the cap rising.

Also there are people BUYING AD which is another reason for it being at 500:1 - people who want zen buy AD and convert to zen instead of buying zen...

anharmon

For the most part, I think it's about time the 500:1 cap was raised. As it is, nobody is selling Zen and AD is simply not worth that much ... it's too common (I can't seem to find the post in which somebody describes the time to $$$ conversion ... something like $.50/hour, which is definitely too high).

The only thing is, I worry about the new players to the game. As things are, getting started is difficult enough, but raising the cap may make things impossible for them (more impossible, that is).

fantasycharacter

anharmon wrote: »

The only thing is, I worry about the new players to the game. As things are, getting started is difficult enough, but raising the cap may make things impossible for them (more impossible, that is).

Don't worry, I am sure some half-baked solution is incoming. These games are based on the churn.

rashylewizz

shunterino wrote: »

You must have a terrible memory. it hasn't been at 6 million for weeks. Before the maintenance it was at just over 12.

I agree with this. OP, I think you better rethink your thoughts because the ZAX was not at 6mil before the maintenance.

rollingonit

ambisinisterr wrote: »

The ZAX was at 12M when I went to bed Monday morning. Gond caused about 4M additional backlog minimum. It was not at 6M for over a week.

In fact I was surprised to see all this hoopla and yet the ZAX was absolutely not effected. Really makes it seem like you all are blowing the effects way out of proportion.

Yes unless you can say for certainty that this is recent, which would be reassuring to many legitimate players. Reports are, this has been going on for awhile, even if just by a small group. They could of been adding to the backlog over a longer period of time to not raise suspicion.

Im just very surprised it happened again after Caturday at all. But should I be? probably not since the stat stacking was present in RaiderZ (a diff PWE title) a year and half ago at the least and somehow migrated over here.

hiukulimus

anharmon wrote: »

Yeah, I was surprised to see that the ZAX was unaffected ... though high-priced items in the AH did a flip.

iambecks1 wrote: »

Check the prices on stuff in the AH , they are all laundering their AD first apparently.

Exactly... ppl laundering and ppl creating new guild (today so many odd inceasing request of creating guild has been made ) to stock items in new fresh guild bank.

and again ppl blamin the cap of zax and the amount of backlog... when you know from where all those ad comes from...

gerbilhurdler

Ppl saying raise the cap on zen above 500-1 would be fairly lonely in a few months.
Think its hard to make it as a beginner now? How about when its 700-1 ad or 1000-1 ad.
That 24 k a day will look even smaller then.

vasdamas

What kind of reroll are you talking about? 4 months? Nevermind people that wasted their time farming items and other stuff they had.

All what was needed is to track down the people who abused the exploit and I can't believe that developers don't have the tools for that.

degraafination

If you think the backlog is bad now, wait until the Race Respec tokens are introduced.

hudman21

I would wager some of the armor inflation prices are due to chests being bugged at the moment.

adernath

angrysprite wrote: »

This isn't a study of economics, this is an explanation by someone with 30,000+ Zen sitting in his account, unwilling to convert 1 single Zen into AD for the lack of AD value, and would rather grind AD in-game than throw away Zen on it. When pricing starts getting better in AH then I will buy AD with Zen. I am sure I speak for a lot of other genuine cash-spending-Zen-buyers in this game.

Strange... If I would have that amount of ZEN, I'd buy coals in the ZEN shop and make AD by selling them on the AH, then buy ZEN with this AD back again, i.e. making profit out of nothing, only using the backlog waiting time. Apparently you are rich but dont understand the problem with the backlog.

Many others are doing this right now, and the backlog wont decrease without action from the devs.

sugarlies

qutsemnie wrote: »

This is a fact: running 1 hour of t2 a day will net your 25k of AD trivially. That is 50 zen at the cap. That isn't even exclusive or uber geared or end game best in slot. That is just having a few friends and farming t2s for giggles. 15 bucks of store value a month without even being good.

I have played these games for 12 years. You know what I have never seen? I have never seen play time valued that highly for the rank and file average joe.

In ~10 months I've capped AD in a day I think 3 times in all. I think you really overestimate the 'average joe'.