This is the xxth time I'm made to say this, Cryptic makes the worst 'improvement' decisions near every time to drive players away. And what for? To historically show players who remain that those decisions addresses mere symptoms and never the real issue, and have negligible impact other than make players' lives miserable.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
edited July 2015
I'm part of the chorus of people who thinks it's ridiculous to say the economy is ruined, when the most expensive things are the ones whose price has been fixed on the astral diamond merchant.
I just bought character slots because I thought "Eh, I can make up the cost of the slots by performing leadership tasks." Ha ha NOPE!
That being said, I will confess the zen exchange is functionally broken. I for one have taken advantage of the fact that there (used to be) a backlog on zen purchases for AD, to purchase zen items with zen, sell them on the AH for a markup, and then use the AD generated to buy more zen to repeat the process. This is only possible due to the max AD price in terms of zen.
If this is because of Ten Trillion Botters or whatever, well, that's a problem. I don't really know how they think this change is going to solve the problem, because now it'll take people weeks just to get a greater mark of power, and we all know how many millions of those everyone needs. Oiy vey.
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bioshrikeMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,729Arc User
ok call me ignorant but what the hell is botting anyway?
Basically, it is using software to automate the process of setting up leadership tasks, collecting them when they're done, then repeating the process - all without a person needing to be present.
<::::::::::::::)xxxo <::::::::::::::)xxxo <::::::::::::)xxxxxxxx(:::::::::::> oxxx(::::::::::::::> oxxx(::::::::::::::> "Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
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balthezar2Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 151Arc User
I've been trying to do my professions as they want, in game, for almost an hour now, because of lag, server not responding, taking forever to log in..right now I'm stuck in the launcher, "Loading, please wait..." screen.
They could have eased this with some simple measures to make the game easier on legit players who are sick of trying to earn the several million of AD required to actually make any progress at 70. e.g. weekly quests that provide a guaranteed GMOP (bind on acquire of course) and preservation wards, more bound refinement stones added to various daily things, all stuff that would encourage people to play and actually get something out of the game other than endless grinding for RP that gets you pretty much nowhere while the bots rake in 10m AD a week on AH.
You can still make RAD from ingame activities.
3000 RAD (Dungeon Daily)
4000 - 5000 RAD (Free Key Chest Drop Item)
3000 RAD (Skirmish Daily)
9000 RAD (Free Items from skirmish chest)
=19,000 RAD
Furthermore, if you have lvl 25 Leadership, lvl 1 assets, and log in once per day you will get from tasks:
3x2000ad = 6000
3x500ad = 1500
3x1600ad = 4800
That's 12,300 ad minimum a day. If you have the right Leadership resources and get the right random hourly task, that total increases. If you invest in Heroes and Adventurers and can log in twice a day, you can still make the 24k just from Leadership tasks alone.
Once again, people seem to be blowing this well out of proportion; because the sky is always falling in Neverwinter...
Wow yeah.. this would be totally true... if you actually knew how much effort it takes to GET to 25. A person I talked to used the gateway bot thing and told me it took him 3 months of running the thing non stop to get to max leadership... Sorry but if a person using a bot can't get their <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> account to 25 in a timely manner, this little tid bit you just threw out doesn't mean <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> to us normal players... because we don't have half a year to spend non stop logging in and put in professions every day to get to level 25... for the ABILITY to earn 12k ad a day... you don't think before you speak do you.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
edited July 2015
Let's just throw out astral diamonds as a shared currency entirely.
Change the auction house to work on gold. All significant purchases from the AD vendor are still based on AD. Your AD amount can be whatever, who cares, everything is bind on pickup. So what's the AH for? Selling dropped and/or created gear, I guess.
Vastly modify prices. Remove the AD<->Zen exchange (yeah, I know, that one hurts a lot, probably find some way to work around it?)
Of course, this'll make gold prices on the AH ridiculously large because gold is useless outside of the AH. oh well, there's no perfect solution~
In all seriousness, this is mostly tongue-in-cheek and spitballing here.
all the people in this game that I know sees this as a monstrous action that punishes the genuine players more than anyone else, and I have seen it expedite the rate at which they quit.
it's all very well making it harder for bots to make AD, but you have to strike a balance. what you are taking away from legit players at one end, you have to give back at the other, or this comes across as another way to squeeze players out of the game.
They could have eased this with some simple measures to make the game easier on legit players who are sick of trying to earn the several million of AD required to actually make any progress at 70. e.g. weekly quests that provide a guaranteed GMOP (bind on acquire of course) and preservation wards, more bound refinement stones added to various daily things, all stuff that would encourage people to play and actually get something out of the game other than endless grinding for RP that gets you pretty much nowhere while the bots rake in 10m AD a week on AH.
I don't know about you but I do not want more <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> dailies. I want to run dungeons that are FUN. And by fun I don't mean the only way to complete them is by exploiting them, or getting 1 shot by <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> trash when I'm a tank. It can't be this hard for these "developers" to understand.
As a new player I was happy when I started making my leadership army because it meant all my hard work would soon pay off and I would be able to play the game and end game but now the rug just gets pulled out from under me.
Ditto... I thought that if I spend all that time and AD to build up 20+ characters with level 20-25 leadership I should be able to get the AD that was coming. Guess now I have to clumsily switch from character to character all day trying to time things just right... but more realistically, my investment just got shafted, and my returns from all that time are going to just be mediocre (10 months of gearing and leveling alts; costing millions of AD, some of it I even bought with Zen). It was the smart move, in order to support the extreme costs of gearing up multiple characters, because of course I want to play more than just my CW on endgame content... but now... whatever.
They could have eased this with some simple measures to make the game easier on legit players who are sick of trying to earn the several million of AD required to actually make any progress at 70. e.g. weekly quests that provide a guaranteed GMOP (bind on acquire of course) and preservation wards, more bound refinement stones added to various daily things, all stuff that would encourage people to play and actually get something out of the game other than endless grinding for RP that gets you pretty much nowhere while the bots rake in 10m AD a week on AH.
I don't know about you but I do not want more <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> dailies. I want to run dungeons that are FUN. And by fun I don't mean the only way to complete them is by exploiting them, or getting 1 shot by <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> trash when I'm a tank. It can't be this hard for these "developers" to understand.
I'm talking about short term, some balancing so that legit players do not suffer as much losing leadership on gateway. Not more dailies or more grind, but better RP rewards on existing stuff so that people have to grind less. The weekly 'kill a dragon' quest could give a bound GMOP for instance. Obviously more content, balanced and unlaggy dungeons, etc. are needed longer term to make the game fun again at end game.
If all the Gateway bots move to in-game bots, what does that do to the server load?
Not much, since I imagine most of the gateway bots, specifically the gold farmers, already run in-game bots also. And the non-gold farmer bot users either won't have easy access to bot software that could be effectively used in-game or were also in-game at least some of the time their gateway bots were running anyway.
A bunch of people are saying we're punishing players, but let's put things into perspective about the game as a whole instead of what each individual player sees. We have information you guys may not be aware of in that the amount of people botting in Leadership on Gateway is astounding! I understand your frustrations, but again, look at the bigger picture. I'll be the first to acknowledge when a decision is questionable like the XP changes and whatnot, but this one is not questionable; it's just not obvious at first.
Many people say we never act on anything the community wants. Here we are acting on it - getting rid of a major source for botting, which will result in a more balanced economy.
This is my honest opinion and I am speaking for myself, not anyone else.
Sorry but you are completely wrong. Professional botters have and will use in game scripts. They don't need or care about the gateway. I'm sure they will use it if it's faster or easier, but make no mistake, they can bot in game.
Players on the other hand, can't always log into the game. I use the gateway when I'm on the train or at work. I can't use the game itself then. Also, the gateway interface for doing professions, was much quicker and easier to use, such that even when I was logged in I found myself using the gateway instead of the game.
Just how do you see this stopping botters? I guarantee, this will not stop them one bit. Only the players are getting hurt by this.
Just go all the way and remove all professions from the gateway, then fill the gateway with more little things to do, that reward the players with something extra for playing around in there.
Also, instead of nerfing the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> out of any- and everything, upgrade all professions and bring them more into line with a real crafting system.
And last but not least, don't "balance" anything on "best in slot" and maxed out characters...
Personally, I would prefer if the profession gateway went away entirely. Log into the game to do that kind of thing. If they could make the gateway more mobile oriented and put in place some little tasks, mini-games, or other things that are not related to in game professions or character progression (but like SCA - perhaps a little simpler), and earn RP, cosmetic stuff, and other rewards similar to the SCA, then it could be a good companion to NW when you are on the road, but unable to log into the game.
As for @magenubbie, tl:dr; it is very insightful, but I wouldn't touch the 'solutions' with a 10ft gnoll vaulting stick until the old dungeon content is returned, Refining mini-game is murdered like a first-born male drow heir to a prominent clan, difficulty is addressed, newer areas are improved, and interesting story driven content is returned.
Oh I agree. A lot of problems are connected. No content=people do leadership. Leadership armies are a present to bots and so forth. I just tried to stay on topic of bots.
But you're right. There are more changes required to bring back the fun in the game. I just opened the door with the first steps that need to be taken. Let them make those steps before trying to walk and address the rest of the problems. 1 thing at the time. I don't trust them to do everything at once and do it well.
Bots are problem no1, along with various bugs and abuse/exploit options that still exist and are well-known to the devs. Even if they decide to truly put effort into cleaning up this game, they're going to have to do that first. I can wait for new content if what I have turns fun and meaningful again.
I just foresee Cryptic ruining all sources before they even consider making the game fun again. A good case would be Strongholds coming up, they are putting a lot of emphasis on it addressing... say the XP concerns and the gear chasing revolving door... but past experiences point to them oversimplifying or overcompensating way to the left instead of being more central leaning.
The idea is that if they make it harder for casual players, the ones that need to spend money to keep up with the game, to make the AD in order to actually do the content that they want to do, then they will have to actually spend real money in order to get what they need because they can not get it through the legitimate ways.
Of course the problem is that I could go to a gold seller and get 10X the value for my buck than I could ever get from cryptic. Oh yeah for 200 bucks I can get 2k zen...hooray!
But of course I could just hit a gold seller pay 50 bucks for 5 million AD, then exchange it out at 500/zen getting me 10k zen.
Not that I would, just saying. From a "we need to earn money" standpoint this is about as stupid a decision as you could make to "limit botters"...a made up reason if ever I heard one since it does nothing to them as they just all switch to in game.
How hard would it be to implement CAPTCHA in game and on the gateway? I have some code for it if your devs are overworked...
I really don't know how this affects anything but legit players....
All the Gateway Bots did... was ensure people didn't have any wasted time between rotating their profession tasks... the reason this was an effective way to make AD was because.. people could buy 50 character slots... per account.... or create an unlimited number of 2 character slot accounts.. That's why it generated a large amount of AD for some people.
Free Accounts = Create as many as you want.... they have no value... since there is no purchase price... no subscription to lose money on...
Why FTP games = Botter Heaven... but hey... NWO launch FTP.. so they should have accepted this long ago.
Botters... almost 100% also use in game bots... or at least the people who are botting to fuel 3rd party sites. Leadership available ingame = in game leadership botting... still.
I (finally...) activated my forum account just to complain about this...
This is a bad solution. If you want to hurt the cheaters, then target the cheaters, not all players! This is a brute way of dealing with the problem that hurts legit players more than it hurts cheaters, who will always find ways to exploit.
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myles08807Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 409Arc User
When a game developer tells its players stopping gold spammers is very hard, their lies fall apart obviously when smart players quickly point out why there are no gold spammers in other zones other than the starting one?.
You need to get out of PE more if you've seriously never seen goldspam or gotten a spam PM in other zones.
On a related note: We can still collect our gains via the Gateway for Leadership, which will speed up my nightly reconciliation when I get home from work in three hours. I'm on track to come close to the refining limit with those of my toons lucky enough to get access to high value rare tasks at 9 AM today. My lower level toons will take far longer to gain xp, but I'll live. Consider reallocating Heroes, if you have them, to double up on your longest time tasks to maximize the chances of restarting when you can get to a computer.
A bunch of people are saying we're punishing players, but let's put things into perspective about the game as a whole instead of what each individual player sees. We have information you guys may not be aware of in that the amount of people botting in Leadership on Gateway is astounding! They're actually ruining the economy by having so much AD that it hikes everything up, but many aren't aware of this. By removing it, the economy will be more balanced as "illegal" currency would take a hit - yes, we know there are other ways, but one step at a time.
Let's not think about this in terms of individual and immediate problems. Just because it doesn't affect you directly, doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Manyyyyy people have asked us to take care of all the botters and their monopoly of AD, but when we do something to stop some of it, the same people berate us. I'm not sure about you, but this just doesn't sound right. So I'm asking you guys to look at the bigger picture instead of what's directly in front of you and ask yourself the same questions you're asking us.
I understand your frustrations, but again, look at the bigger picture. I'll be the first to acknowledge when a decision is questionable like the XP changes and whatnot, but this one is not questionable; it's just not obvious at first.
Many people say we never act on anything the community wants. Here we are acting on it - getting rid of a major source for botting, which will result in a more balanced economy.
This is my honest opinion and I am speaking for myself, not anyone else.
Where to start? Strum, you guys on the inside, who live in this game's guts every day have a VERY VERY different perspective than those of us who play. I would suggest that it's you guys who are (and frequently have) had a hard time seeing the forest for the trees.
You guys have a growing track record of well intentioned band-aide fixes that have disastrous results because you don't have the process or discipline to understand changes before you make them. I could spend quite a while re-hashing the mistakes, but let's focus on this particular mistake.
First. Botting through the gateway isn't the problem. What that does to your currency (namely causing hyper-inflation) IS the problem. And it is a REAL problem. Additionally, what you don't say, but we all understand, is that this problem affects zen sales potential, because the effective exchange rate for Zen to AD is SO much worse than either raising it on your own via the gateway (legitimately or using a bot) or buying it from another source.
The sudden and dramatic change you guys opted to introduce will have a large effect on available AD. It will lower prices, to some degree on the very high end items. Of course, since you opted to set a floor on key components such as Greater Marks of Potency, the prices can't drop too much, because of the inherent cost of making the highest level items.
Also, lets discuss who is most negatively impacted by this change. It's the vast majority of your "casual" player base. We relied on Leadership access via the gateway in order to make the AD needed for items to remain competitive. This move will certainly slow down AD sellers, but as so many have already pointed out, you will now see a dramatic increase in server traffic as REAL bots move in. And given your poor track record with server stability and performance, can you imagine what happens when the load increases with bots now logging in and out and in and out?
Now lets talk about sensible solutions. If your stated goal is to fix the economy, and you have determined that the source of the "problems" is the vast supply of liquidity in the market, you GRADUALLY decrease the flow. Reduce the reward from leadership by 10% or even 25%. Or increase the time it takes to complete the tasks again. Either way, you reduce the inflow of AD into the economy while not dramatically hurting your players.
But honestly, the AD situation is only part of the problem that you guys have with your in-game "economy." You should take your own advice and look at the bigger picture.
1) You have massive item inflation and keep introducing new chase sets. If your are introducing new sets every few months, then the methods and resources for leveling them up need to be MUCH more available then they currently are.
2) Trying to level up Artifact Equipment to the point that it's good is stupidly difficult...except for that time you guys did another poorly thought out plan and turned IWD into a racetrack of heroic spam. Which, once the players flocked to, you just as immediately over-nerfed. Consider leveling gear through use as opposed to refinement. As you gain experience, your artifact gear increases in power.
3) There are several useless currencies in game (seals, I'm looking at you.) Except for the highest rank ones, they have little to no perceived value once you level past them. There should be a seal exchange, allowing a player to buy higher rank seals with lower class ones or to trade them for AD.
4) GMoPs should not be available from the Wondrous Bazaar, they should drop WITH FREQUENCY from participating in events that you want more traffic in. The current system sets an artificial ceiling on their price and since they are needed to rank gear up, you keep that whole process from floating free in the market.
5) Gold is valueless. If should be removed. Aside from buying Injury Kits and de-slotting enchants, it has no real use. Changing up your enchants should have no cost associated with it. It's a valueless sink on a worthless currency and is no more than a pain in the butt for players.
6) AD is your real currency. AD should be the currency that drops from NPCs and as rewards for quests and events.
7) SPEND SOME OF THE MONEY I'VE GIVEN YOU ON INFRASTRUCTURE!!! The server lags to unplayability nearly every night at 10 pm Eastern US time. You want us on to play, gotta make the environment able to be played on during the heavy load periods.
8) New content is sexy, but FIX WHAT IS STILL BROKEN. How many of the DUNGEONS in this Dungeons & Dragons title are actually playable? I know that you guys are already working on the fall release that you are contractually obligated to produce to launch with the pen and paper campaign, the Sword Coast Legends launch and the new novel, but at least show us that you know there is broken stuff and you're working on it.
I don't mean to sound harsh (well, maybe a little), but given that the current dev team oversaw the death spiral of STO, I'm not super-convinced that you guys even understand the magnitude of the non-technical challenges that exist in this game. As I said in my earlier post, do something different that the other games. ASK YOUR PLAYERS FOR IDEAS. I would LOVE to be proven wrong in my doubt. Show us, and I will gladly sing your praises loudly and frequently. Just don't insult us with the same old "we have information you don't and we are responding to your demands" line.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I couldn't figure out how to donate gold while on the preview shard, but you actually DO use gold as a resource in strongholds, so there is that.
The problem with making AD drop from enemies is that then you have people farming enemies for AD. You get the same inflation problem you get in other MMOs. I mean, people complain about inflation, but ... have prices really gone up in NWO, compared to what they used to be? All the resources I use are about the same price they've always been. Equip's all bind on pickup anyway, so it's not like any of that's expensive. The price of enchantments is bounded by GMOPs more than anything.
Only thing that is inflated is zen items, and that's due to the price of zen. But there's a ceiling on the price of zen, so that also has a certain limit.
I find it hard to get upset over how the economy has been operating. I agree it'd be nice if players were rewarded for actually playing the game, but as someone who mostly plays the game as a merchant, I'm happy that I don't have to spend hours killing monsters in order to beef up myself modestly.
On the other hand, despite having like, 2700 iLevel, I still get murdered in IWD, so WTF do I know.
It is no secret that most of the money the botters&gold selling websites are from exploits or ingame bots/ reselling player's AD.
For those unaware the MAJORITY of bots running in neverwinter are in an instance called Ghost Stories.
You can literally see hundreds of 60 rogues with @asdjhdaszxhc67 from the same guild there 24/7 .
If Cryptic was really motivated to root out bots think about it - Is it really so hard to get an admin to login , press O , type Ghost Stories and start banning?I have personally and I know some of my guildies too did report this ALMOST A YEAR AGO.To this date they are still running.And they are ALL bots , there are no 'legit' players there that may get hurt.
Draw your own conclusions about WHY the gateway is shut down and legit players are targeted.
Draw your own conclusions about how hard it is for someone to bot leadership ingame.
Everyone has to decide whether he will be a sheep and lend support to a company that is scamming people out of legitly invested time/AD/money/nerve by pretending we asked for it.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I suspect that there's a lot of people in the NWO team that really don't know what to do. The game is probably performing poorly through various metrics (which may not actually even include profitable), and someone in top level management got embarrassed and now people think their jobs are on the line.
When people get scared, they get desperate. They tend to try and make "tough decisions" and decide that harsh = reasonable, because everyone knows the problem with the world is that people are too soft, and if we stopped trying to appeal to everyone we might be able to actually satisfy someone.
The way this thread was created ("Hey everyone put things into perspective") speaks that to me. To the team, this choice seems obvious-"we know it sucks, but that's the way it has to be!" It screams of that kind of desperation where they've been backed into a corner, and are trying everything they can because their options are quickly running out.
Of course, I'm probably full of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> and this isn't even remotely similar to what's happening. But that's just my two cents. Someone got scared, someone made a "tough decision" thinking that meant it's a "smart decision" and now everyone's angry about it, which reinforces their belief that it was simply a tough decision and, therefore, the right one.
Comments
I just bought character slots because I thought "Eh, I can make up the cost of the slots by performing leadership tasks." Ha ha NOPE!
That being said, I will confess the zen exchange is functionally broken. I for one have taken advantage of the fact that there (used to be) a backlog on zen purchases for AD, to purchase zen items with zen, sell them on the AH for a markup, and then use the AD generated to buy more zen to repeat the process. This is only possible due to the max AD price in terms of zen.
If this is because of Ten Trillion Botters or whatever, well, that's a problem. I don't really know how they think this change is going to solve the problem, because now it'll take people weeks just to get a greater mark of power, and we all know how many millions of those everyone needs. Oiy vey.
Basically, it is using software to automate the process of setting up leadership tasks, collecting them when they're done, then repeating the process - all without a person needing to be present.
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
Wow yeah.. this would be totally true... if you actually knew how much effort it takes to GET to 25. A person I talked to used the gateway bot thing and told me it took him 3 months of running the thing non stop to get to max leadership... Sorry but if a person using a bot can't get their <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> account to 25 in a timely manner, this little tid bit you just threw out doesn't mean <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> to us normal players... because we don't have half a year to spend non stop logging in and put in professions every day to get to level 25... for the ABILITY to earn 12k ad a day... you don't think before you speak do you.
Change the auction house to work on gold. All significant purchases from the AD vendor are still based on AD. Your AD amount can be whatever, who cares, everything is bind on pickup. So what's the AH for? Selling dropped and/or created gear, I guess.
Vastly modify prices. Remove the AD<->Zen exchange (yeah, I know, that one hurts a lot, probably find some way to work around it?)
Of course, this'll make gold prices on the AH ridiculously large because gold is useless outside of the AH. oh well, there's no perfect solution~
In all seriousness, this is mostly tongue-in-cheek and spitballing here.
it's all very well making it harder for bots to make AD, but you have to strike a balance. what you are taking away from legit players at one end, you have to give back at the other, or this comes across as another way to squeeze players out of the game.
at least give back what you're taking away!
I don't know about you but I do not want more <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> dailies. I want to run dungeons that are FUN. And by fun I don't mean the only way to complete them is by exploiting them, or getting 1 shot by <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> trash when I'm a tank. It can't be this hard for these "developers" to understand.
Ditto... I thought that if I spend all that time and AD to build up 20+ characters with level 20-25 leadership I should be able to get the AD that was coming. Guess now I have to clumsily switch from character to character all day trying to time things just right... but more realistically, my investment just got shafted, and my returns from all that time are going to just be mediocre (10 months of gearing and leveling alts; costing millions of AD, some of it I even bought with Zen). It was the smart move, in order to support the extreme costs of gearing up multiple characters, because of course I want to play more than just my CW on endgame content... but now... whatever.
loss of hope
loss of expectation
I'm talking about short term, some balancing so that legit players do not suffer as much losing leadership on gateway. Not more dailies or more grind, but better RP rewards on existing stuff so that people have to grind less. The weekly 'kill a dragon' quest could give a bound GMOP for instance. Obviously more content, balanced and unlaggy dungeons, etc. are needed longer term to make the game fun again at end game.
Not much, since I imagine most of the gateway bots, specifically the gold farmers, already run in-game bots also. And the non-gold farmer bot users either won't have easy access to bot software that could be effectively used in-game or were also in-game at least some of the time their gateway bots were running anyway.
Okay, Panic.
Sorry but you are completely wrong. Professional botters have and will use in game scripts. They don't need or care about the gateway. I'm sure they will use it if it's faster or easier, but make no mistake, they can bot in game.
Players on the other hand, can't always log into the game. I use the gateway when I'm on the train or at work. I can't use the game itself then. Also, the gateway interface for doing professions, was much quicker and easier to use, such that even when I was logged in I found myself using the gateway instead of the game.
Just how do you see this stopping botters? I guarantee, this will not stop them one bit. Only the players are getting hurt by this.
Also, instead of nerfing the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> out of any- and everything, upgrade all professions and bring them more into line with a real crafting system.
And last but not least, don't "balance" anything on "best in slot" and maxed out characters...
As for @magenubbie, tl:dr; it is very insightful, but I wouldn't touch the 'solutions' with a 10ft gnoll vaulting stick until the old dungeon content is returned, Refining mini-game is murdered like a first-born male drow heir to a prominent clan, difficulty is addressed, newer areas are improved, and interesting story driven content is returned.
glassdoor.com - Cryptic Studios Review
I just foresee Cryptic ruining all sources before they even consider making the game fun again. A good case would be Strongholds coming up, they are putting a lot of emphasis on it addressing... say the XP concerns and the gear chasing revolving door... but past experiences point to them oversimplifying or overcompensating way to the left instead of being more central leaning.
glassdoor.com - Cryptic Studios Review
True that. I'm just afraid they will take your advise or do something similar, but not give us anything back in return.
glassdoor.com - Cryptic Studios Review
The idea is that if they make it harder for casual players, the ones that need to spend money to keep up with the game, to make the AD in order to actually do the content that they want to do, then they will have to actually spend real money in order to get what they need because they can not get it through the legitimate ways.
Of course the problem is that I could go to a gold seller and get 10X the value for my buck than I could ever get from cryptic. Oh yeah for 200 bucks I can get 2k zen...hooray!
But of course I could just hit a gold seller pay 50 bucks for 5 million AD, then exchange it out at 500/zen getting me 10k zen.
Not that I would, just saying. From a "we need to earn money" standpoint this is about as stupid a decision as you could make to "limit botters"...a made up reason if ever I heard one since it does nothing to them as they just all switch to in game.
How hard would it be to implement CAPTCHA in game and on the gateway? I have some code for it if your devs are overworked...
All the Gateway Bots did... was ensure people didn't have any wasted time between rotating their profession tasks... the reason this was an effective way to make AD was because.. people could buy 50 character slots... per account.... or create an unlimited number of 2 character slot accounts.. That's why it generated a large amount of AD for some people.
Free Accounts = Create as many as you want.... they have no value... since there is no purchase price... no subscription to lose money on...
Why FTP games = Botter Heaven... but hey... NWO launch FTP.. so they should have accepted this long ago.
Botters... almost 100% also use in game bots... or at least the people who are botting to fuel 3rd party sites. Leadership available ingame = in game leadership botting... still.
This is a bad solution. If you want to hurt the cheaters, then target the cheaters, not all players! This is a brute way of dealing with the problem that hurts legit players more than it hurts cheaters, who will always find ways to exploit.
You need to get out of PE more if you've seriously never seen goldspam or gotten a spam PM in other zones.
On a related note: We can still collect our gains via the Gateway for Leadership, which will speed up my nightly reconciliation when I get home from work in three hours. I'm on track to come close to the refining limit with those of my toons lucky enough to get access to high value rare tasks at 9 AM today. My lower level toons will take far longer to gain xp, but I'll live. Consider reallocating Heroes, if you have them, to double up on your longest time tasks to maximize the chances of restarting when you can get to a computer.
Where to start? Strum, you guys on the inside, who live in this game's guts every day have a VERY VERY different perspective than those of us who play. I would suggest that it's you guys who are (and frequently have) had a hard time seeing the forest for the trees.
You guys have a growing track record of well intentioned band-aide fixes that have disastrous results because you don't have the process or discipline to understand changes before you make them. I could spend quite a while re-hashing the mistakes, but let's focus on this particular mistake.
First. Botting through the gateway isn't the problem. What that does to your currency (namely causing hyper-inflation) IS the problem. And it is a REAL problem. Additionally, what you don't say, but we all understand, is that this problem affects zen sales potential, because the effective exchange rate for Zen to AD is SO much worse than either raising it on your own via the gateway (legitimately or using a bot) or buying it from another source.
The sudden and dramatic change you guys opted to introduce will have a large effect on available AD. It will lower prices, to some degree on the very high end items. Of course, since you opted to set a floor on key components such as Greater Marks of Potency, the prices can't drop too much, because of the inherent cost of making the highest level items.
Also, lets discuss who is most negatively impacted by this change. It's the vast majority of your "casual" player base. We relied on Leadership access via the gateway in order to make the AD needed for items to remain competitive. This move will certainly slow down AD sellers, but as so many have already pointed out, you will now see a dramatic increase in server traffic as REAL bots move in. And given your poor track record with server stability and performance, can you imagine what happens when the load increases with bots now logging in and out and in and out?
Now lets talk about sensible solutions. If your stated goal is to fix the economy, and you have determined that the source of the "problems" is the vast supply of liquidity in the market, you GRADUALLY decrease the flow. Reduce the reward from leadership by 10% or even 25%. Or increase the time it takes to complete the tasks again. Either way, you reduce the inflow of AD into the economy while not dramatically hurting your players.
But honestly, the AD situation is only part of the problem that you guys have with your in-game "economy." You should take your own advice and look at the bigger picture.
1) You have massive item inflation and keep introducing new chase sets. If your are introducing new sets every few months, then the methods and resources for leveling them up need to be MUCH more available then they currently are.
2) Trying to level up Artifact Equipment to the point that it's good is stupidly difficult...except for that time you guys did another poorly thought out plan and turned IWD into a racetrack of heroic spam. Which, once the players flocked to, you just as immediately over-nerfed. Consider leveling gear through use as opposed to refinement. As you gain experience, your artifact gear increases in power.
3) There are several useless currencies in game (seals, I'm looking at you.) Except for the highest rank ones, they have little to no perceived value once you level past them. There should be a seal exchange, allowing a player to buy higher rank seals with lower class ones or to trade them for AD.
4) GMoPs should not be available from the Wondrous Bazaar, they should drop WITH FREQUENCY from participating in events that you want more traffic in. The current system sets an artificial ceiling on their price and since they are needed to rank gear up, you keep that whole process from floating free in the market.
5) Gold is valueless. If should be removed. Aside from buying Injury Kits and de-slotting enchants, it has no real use. Changing up your enchants should have no cost associated with it. It's a valueless sink on a worthless currency and is no more than a pain in the butt for players.
6) AD is your real currency. AD should be the currency that drops from NPCs and as rewards for quests and events.
7) SPEND SOME OF THE MONEY I'VE GIVEN YOU ON INFRASTRUCTURE!!! The server lags to unplayability nearly every night at 10 pm Eastern US time. You want us on to play, gotta make the environment able to be played on during the heavy load periods.
8) New content is sexy, but FIX WHAT IS STILL BROKEN. How many of the DUNGEONS in this Dungeons & Dragons title are actually playable? I know that you guys are already working on the fall release that you are contractually obligated to produce to launch with the pen and paper campaign, the Sword Coast Legends launch and the new novel, but at least show us that you know there is broken stuff and you're working on it.
I don't mean to sound harsh (well, maybe a little), but given that the current dev team oversaw the death spiral of STO, I'm not super-convinced that you guys even understand the magnitude of the non-technical challenges that exist in this game. As I said in my earlier post, do something different that the other games. ASK YOUR PLAYERS FOR IDEAS. I would LOVE to be proven wrong in my doubt. Show us, and I will gladly sing your praises loudly and frequently. Just don't insult us with the same old "we have information you don't and we are responding to your demands" line.
The problem with making AD drop from enemies is that then you have people farming enemies for AD. You get the same inflation problem you get in other MMOs. I mean, people complain about inflation, but ... have prices really gone up in NWO, compared to what they used to be? All the resources I use are about the same price they've always been. Equip's all bind on pickup anyway, so it's not like any of that's expensive. The price of enchantments is bounded by GMOPs more than anything.
Only thing that is inflated is zen items, and that's due to the price of zen. But there's a ceiling on the price of zen, so that also has a certain limit.
I find it hard to get upset over how the economy has been operating. I agree it'd be nice if players were rewarded for actually playing the game, but as someone who mostly plays the game as a merchant, I'm happy that I don't have to spend hours killing monsters in order to beef up myself modestly.
On the other hand, despite having like, 2700 iLevel, I still get murdered in IWD, so WTF do I know.
For those unaware the MAJORITY of bots running in neverwinter are in an instance called Ghost Stories.
You can literally see hundreds of 60 rogues with @asdjhdaszxhc67 from the same guild there 24/7 .
If Cryptic was really motivated to root out bots think about it - Is it really so hard to get an admin to login , press O , type Ghost Stories and start banning?I have personally and I know some of my guildies too did report this ALMOST A YEAR AGO.To this date they are still running.And they are ALL bots , there are no 'legit' players there that may get hurt.
Draw your own conclusions about WHY the gateway is shut down and legit players are targeted.
Draw your own conclusions about how hard it is for someone to bot leadership ingame.
Everyone has to decide whether he will be a sheep and lend support to a company that is scamming people out of legitly invested time/AD/money/nerve by pretending we asked for it.
When people get scared, they get desperate. They tend to try and make "tough decisions" and decide that harsh = reasonable, because everyone knows the problem with the world is that people are too soft, and if we stopped trying to appeal to everyone we might be able to actually satisfy someone.
The way this thread was created ("Hey everyone put things into perspective") speaks that to me. To the team, this choice seems obvious-"we know it sucks, but that's the way it has to be!" It screams of that kind of desperation where they've been backed into a corner, and are trying everything they can because their options are quickly running out.
Of course, I'm probably full of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> and this isn't even remotely similar to what's happening. But that's just my two cents. Someone got scared, someone made a "tough decision" thinking that meant it's a "smart decision" and now everyone's angry about it, which reinforces their belief that it was simply a tough decision and, therefore, the right one.