zebularMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 15,270Community Moderator
edited September 2016
Lead Producer Thomas Foss did touch on the reasons for Gateway being taken down in the livestream a few days ago. You can read the full transcript here, but here is a snippet of the Gateway part:
Thomas: Oh, we were talking about Gateway.
Andy: Yes, Gateway!
Thomas: *jokingly* Ahhh, I tried to get out of that.
Andy: And the companions... Yeah I know, I'm like, "Nope, not getting out of this one!"
Thomas: Nope, the hard questions. That's fine. Uh, yeah we had to close Gateway down. You know, sometimes guys, it's about financial. Gateway was actually costing us a lot of money and man-power just to keep alive. I love it, I played it a lot. And we had the heavy botting stuff, and the botting on it wasn't just affecting Gateway, it was actually affecting live server. Right. Really affecting live server! That was the big reason, right. It wasn't just keeping to itself, it was actually affecting our server base and that was it, we didn't want you guys to have to deal with that live on the game. Especially when some of you aren't even playing the SCA. Right and repercussions for that. So, it was a hard call but we had to close it down. Now, that being said, let's talk about the...
Andy: Companion Gear...
Thomas: The Companion Gear and stuff, yeah?
Andy: And SCA, yeah.
Thomas: We are hoping to roll some of the Companion Gear back in. I know I want the Halfling, because my Great Weapon Fighter's a Halfling. I want the Halfling Companion! But, when it was designed, the designer that built it wasn't really in-line with Neverwinter, some of the stuff is really OP.
Andy: Yeah.
Thomas: It's really OP. It we bring it back in, we're going to tune it. Right, I'll be honest with ya, some nerfing will happen. Some tuning, but I wanna get that gear back in. We'll make it in-line for what it should be and still make it cool. I wanted, here's my dream... I actually to take Sword Coast Adventures, the game part of it, and roll it into Professions and that was my big pitch. Wrote a big pitch and idea for it. So, like you know, instead of going to do my profession thing, I can have my guys play the dungeon and speed up the time and have fun doing it in that mini-game. Unfortunately, because it was written for like bonuses and stuff, it was actually written for a different code script, it was written in java script... it doesn't port over. Much to my sadness. In order to do that, we'd have to rebuild the whole thing. Believe me, that was a black day for me. Because that was like, "Oh you know we're doing this.. BUT I've got this cool thing that we can..." Yeah, it didn't happen. But, all the critters and pets and stuff... we are doing them now, looking at what's cool with them. Some of the stuff, you guys have kind of outgrown, but I still think there's a lot of great ideas and pieces there and as we go through them and kind of, you know, make sure they're safe... *laughs* "User Safe," and are fun! Then, we'll get them back into the game.
Andy: And we'll make announcements about them too, on like forums and... OH FORUMS!
Thomas: *jokingly* No No...
Andy: *laughs* Oh no, no yeah we're not going to we're just going to put...
Thomas: Sneak them in!
Andy: *laughs* Yeah!
Thomas: We'll hide them in Mimics!
Andy: That would be pretty cool actually... *makes claw-hand gesture* ...awrrr...
Man zebular that excerpt makes it look like the developers were looking for an excuse to take down gateway because it cost too much manpower to operate and used botters as the excuse
It's a pitty closing down the Gateway. I really enjoyed playing. How about opening the Gateway again, without or without such big rewards or functions - so botting makes no sense any more. Just for enjoying to rollnthe dice with your Favoriten companions?
They saw the game works (attracts) new players even without the gateway on XBox and PS4. Why should they keep it for the PC? The "old" players who used the gateway are most probably not where money comes from in large quantities. I understand the decision from a business perspective, but I hate it from my perspective. I am still around, though. For now.
Imaginary Friends are the best friends you can have!
@panderus can we atleast get 3days versions tasks for the leadership ?
because i have alot of toons with leadership and it takes alot of time to cycle through all of them , more than 3-4 hours per cycle (which is kinda too much , since i also have to do dailies for the new campaign and my gamin time is limited.
for example a 3 days version of the Wizard snatchel will give as a reward 6 bags of resonance bags. But atleast i wont have to cycle everyday , any thoughts about this?
@panderus why not makin a auto profession feature?
Make professions player friendly so that everyone can do them, therefor there will be a constant ammount of supply, i would be fine with the RP being bound to account, but atleast make it easier for players to use it, create a UI Control panel for Professions, it is needed... There are alot of games that have a auto pilot nowadays for certain things in the respective game, so i dont see why NW cant have it too.
Longer tasks might help in the short term but the real issue is making game progression without actually having to play the game. A certain amount of it is great so the players who don't play every day don;t have to feel like they are behind the ones who play more often. Too much and the economy only inflates and inflates and it starts to become a burden for the players who haven't been around as long.
That is probably just as bad if not worse. It would certainly invite botters even more into the game.
All that said, I do think we need to rexamine how professions are meant to reward players. They should probably act as some sort of catchup mechanism, they should ALL have relevant end game tasks and the tasks that make real progress should probably require some amount of gameplay to earn them (ie, Do a quest/dungeon/etc for a doohicky to make it into a thingamabob).
The one over-arching trend in this game I feel exists, at least for as long as I've been playing it, is that NW's economy polarizes into a bimodal too much. You typically have a buncha really cheap, low-end options that only newcomers or alt/mule characters stick to, and then a substantial amount of high-end optimal stuff that is very highly valued and/or hard to get and thus also very expensive or grindy. Kinda like an analogy for game budgeting in the games industry in general- ie. indie vs. AAA: Lotsa stuff at either end and much separation between, but not that much in the middle to work with in comparison. If you'd agree w/ that interpretation, then Professions could help bridge that more?
And where does Loyal and Adorable gear fall into this? As those are our only companion-specific (instead of non-specific) gear options atm, and they both are rather high-end in their stats.
...the ONLY reason i play this game is my love for D&D....that won't apply for younger players...they never knew D&D!!!!
Tottaly supported. It's really nice to see things I imagined for years, but unfortunately company's decisions and the excessive money appel are killing this sensation...
oh and you know what makes botters???? RUNIC DAMN LOCKBOXES!!!! the thinks they drop are sold at 22m ADs...the ONLY way someone can get that much ADs is either paying you guys 300$ and turn it into ADs or...ummm..BOTTING!! or paying to a botting site which is much worst than the botting itself...and BTW not many users will ever pay 300$ for a single legendary mount...actually i dont think anyone will pay that much...
It's because the ridiculous drop rate in the game; and I'm not talking about just lockboxes, wich I have opened 300+ and didn't drop anything cool, but the whole game has an infamous drop rate, i.e celestial coin coffers, wich I have opened hundreds and only dropped a coal once; after all I sold some zen to buy a transcendent enchantment, because I thought it would be cheaper than buying coals and enchantments to refine.
...the ONLY reason i play this game is my love for D&D....that won't apply for younger players...they never knew D&D!!!!
Tottaly supported. It's really nice to see things I imagined for years, but unfortunately company's decisions and the excessive money appel are killing this sensation...
oh and you know what makes botters???? RUNIC DAMN LOCKBOXES!!!! the thinks they drop are sold at 22m ADs...the ONLY way someone can get that much ADs is either paying you guys 300$ and turn it into ADs or...ummm..BOTTING!! or paying to a botting site which is much worst than the botting itself...and BTW not many users will ever pay 300$ for a single legendary mount...actually i dont think anyone will pay that much...
It's because the ridiculous drop rate in the game; and I'm not talking about just lockboxes, wich I have opened 300+ and didn't drop anything cool, but the whole game has an infamous drop rate, i.e celestial coin coffers, wich I have opened hundreds and only dropped a coal once; after all I sold some zen to buy a transcendent enchantment, because I thought it would be cheaper than buying coals and enchantments to refine.
1. Totally agree...coals cost so much...500k ADs...10$...add the refining costs, it means the 1st lesser will cost you around 100k, now 2 more...than you need 1 more normal, than 1 more greater etc etc...making it transcendent will cost you around 6.5-10 mil ADs (don't forget you need 40$ only for coals...)...now buying it in AH costs around 3.5-5 mil....makes much more sense to me
2. It has nothing to do with the fact that lockbox drops are overpriced....but sometimes economy doesn't make any sense..seriously...no sense in the fact a single mount cost 22mil but enchantments that will actually makes you thrice as effective (try a pure DPS build SW with dread and you will feel it...i feel super powered since the day i fetched it, i was switching between vorpal and plague fire before, now using only dread) will cost you only 2.5-4 mil.
3. As far as i care for number 2. it can stay like that, hardcore players benefit from the fact that actual effective items are sold in reasonable prices and we don't care too much for having 140% speed instead of 110%...think about it...we DPSs care only for one thing...DAMAGE, healers care about one thing...HEALS etc. and for both reasons investing your ADs on dread/holy avenger/whatever helps your build is wiser than buying a stupid mount for the same price of giving trans enchants to main and 3 alt characters so if you ask me...the only problem is that 22+mil single worthless item sales attracts botters...they need ADs to sell to players, and we all know that any player buying outside of the game ruins it a little bit for all of us, the only thing we can do is lower the demand...buy more enchants/artifacts/Ioun stones/ZEN items...spending money in game is good and fun but buy what you need and what you want not what somebody else have just to say i got it.
The whole thing sounds a bit better than standalone GW piece which doesn't make me any happier about the lattest.
In transcript lead designer says that they are working on professions and I've seen a number of good ideas on professions in this topic. Here are couple more:
1. Useless resourses. there is a bunch of resources occupying the slots in Inventory (if you bother collecting them). Most of them are useless. Meanwhile during most of events some valuable event related items can be crafted in professions and they require specific resources which for some reason normally located in low level zonez. My suggestion is to add kind of TRANSMUTATION ability to Alchemistry (or distribute it among professions) which allows to convert some useless resources to some useful resources of the same or lower quality. For example I need leather and wood in massive quantities to craft items for Gond event. High level players don't have it because these resources are located in low level zonez. Instead they have say black wood and exotic leather. Currently these are useless. Transmutation brings some sense to all this useless stuff.
2. Master recipies. I've tried doing master recipies in leather and this is just embarrassing. When one submits a completed quest some reward is expected. Not even close to that.... Imply that other profs are similar. My suggestion is to add green and blue tools and rework a quest line to be more smooth and rewarding. This will allow to gradually advance and be rewarded on each step, first with white, then green, blue and finally with pink tool. It is also more consistent in terms of tools.
I didn't get the companion they say they were gonna give to the people that played Gateway...what happened? This is the least you needed to do...but just checked and no companion on the mail.
They said they'll give it in the next update - "next updated" just installed, no companion. Not that I need it, but boy, Cryptic is doing an awesome job in turning their faces into asses.
I am pissed but not surprised they didn't deliver on the promise of a pet for gateway closure.This is sadly par of the course concerning promises made.I would love and welcome a response from a member of Cryptic about when this will be delivered and why it was not delivered on time.
I played SCA and enjoyed the dice game a lot. I haven't seen these companions show up yet. Then again I haven't looked in the rewards thing in the city yet either.
I didn't get the companion they say they were gonna give to the people that played Gateway. P.S.: Would be much more happy if they returned SCA, not some companion without possibility to gear up it.
both my wife and i have also not received the new companion and we used the gate way everyday for over a year. my 3 year old daughter loved to play sword coast adventures and watch the dice role . are we not getting the companion or any compensation? My wife and i have both played for a long time and payed way to much for this "free to Play game" because our guild members and alliance make it fun but i must admit. i'm getting tired of getting that kicked around feeling.
-Cova, leader and founder of Wraithguard
0
kreatyveMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 10,545Community Moderator
The companions didn't get mailed out yet. Not sure what the holdup is.
My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official. Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
I'm a fan of gateway! When away from the game, on a working day, it was very useful for managing the auction store and professions. Why not come up with something that offsets the impact...like say a "collect all" and "repeat last" button in profession tasks on live game?! And having a tool that allows us to keep track on our auction bid items on the auction store?! That would be something very useful and would remove the need that most of the botters have to collect and restart the profession slots. I play Neverwinter for nearly 2/3 years and I'm against this closure. I hope you can reconsider or, at least, make the proposed chages on the live game. Thanks
I understand their reasoning, but I find it stupid.
1) If 'cost' was such a big issue, then why put the manpower and effort into porting the game to console? Because you already had money and wanted a new revenue stream. So the first argument about closing it down is false.
2) The second argument about botting? That's invalid too because you can task employees to solve that. Instead, again, you found it more important to do the console port (and see the first part of this for why that was invalid reasoning too).
Cryptic seems to think that players are stupid and will just accept anything they say, but the fact is that many game players know how game design works.
Here's the facts. The game has many players that cannot spend every day getting online. We have families, jobs, lives. We travel. We want to spend time with our kids. The Gateway gave us the ability to still take care of things when those situations came up.
And in my opinion, the game is starting to show signs that this decision may actually be hurting the game. The price of zen on the astral diamond exchange has hovered around the max price for a long time, but since the decision people are just not selling as often. I can only guess that zen sales have gone down or that people are holding on to the ones they have purchased. That has the unfortunate side effect of causing those who do not wish to purchase zen with real money to not be able to acquire them. This will drive people away from what is supposed to be a 'free-to-play' game.
I'll buy into the "too many bots" argument, I've seen the stacks of marks. I don't think it's about the ZAX either. ZAX has pretty much been constantly at 500 AD per ZEN on PC ever since I started playing only dropping below that a few times. The thing that I am really having trouble with right now is this: "We are thankful for all of you that have participated in Gateway and Sword Coast Adventures, and we don’t want to leave you empty handed, so in the next build release planned for next week we are giving all player accounts that have recently used Gateway a Mini Apparatus of Gond companion that will be claimable in their mailbox." Gateway has been down for over 4 weeks, this message was posted over 2 weeks ago, and the last build release was now almost 3 full days ago. Can the community at least get an update here?
Lead Producer Thomas Foss did touch on the reasons for Gateway being taken down in the livestream a few days ago. You can read the full transcript here, but here is a snippet of the Gateway part:
Thomas: Oh, we were talking about Gateway.
Andy: Yes, Gateway!
Thomas: *jokingly* Ahhh, I tried to get out of that.
Andy: And the companions... Yeah I know, I'm like, "Nope, not getting out of this one!"
Thomas: Nope, the hard questions. That's fine. Uh, yeah we had to close Gateway down. You know, sometimes guys, it's about financial. Gateway was actually costing us a lot of money and man-power just to keep alive. I love it, I played it a lot. And we had the heavy botting stuff, and the botting on it wasn't just affecting Gateway, it was actually affecting live server. Right. Really affecting live server! That was the big reason, right. It wasn't just keeping to itself, it was actually affecting our server base and that was it, we didn't want you guys to have to deal with that live on the game. Especially when some of you aren't even playing the SCA. Right and repercussions for that. So, it was a hard call but we had to close it down. Now, that being said, let's talk about the...
Andy: Companion Gear...
Thomas: The Companion Gear and stuff, yeah?
Andy: And SCA, yeah.
Thomas: We are hoping to roll some of the Companion Gear back in. I know I want the Halfling, because my Great Weapon Fighter's a Halfling. I want the Halfling Companion! But, when it was designed, the designer that built it wasn't really in-line with Neverwinter, some of the stuff is really OP.
Andy: Yeah.
Thomas: It's really OP. It we bring it back in, we're going to tune it. Right, I'll be honest with ya, some nerfing will happen. Some tuning, but I wanna get that gear back in. We'll make it in-line for what it should be and still make it cool. I wanted, here's my dream... I actually to take Sword Coast Adventures, the game part of it, and roll it into Professions and that was my big pitch. Wrote a big pitch and idea for it. So, like you know, instead of going to do my profession thing, I can have my guys play the dungeon and speed up the time and have fun doing it in that mini-game. Unfortunately, because it was written for like bonuses and stuff, it was actually written for a different code script, it was written in java script... it doesn't port over. Much to my sadness. In order to do that, we'd have to rebuild the whole thing. Believe me, that was a black day for me. Because that was like, "Oh you know we're doing this.. BUT I've got this cool thing that we can..." Yeah, it didn't happen. But, all the critters and pets and stuff... we are doing them now, looking at what's cool with them. Some of the stuff, you guys have kind of outgrown, but I still think there's a lot of great ideas and pieces there and as we go through them and kind of, you know, make sure they're safe... *laughs* "User Safe," and are fun! Then, we'll get them back into the game.
Andy: And we'll make announcements about them too, on like forums and... OH FORUMS!
Thomas: *jokingly* No No...
Andy: *laughs* Oh no, no yeah we're not going to we're just going to put...
Thomas: Sneak them in!
Andy: *laughs* Yeah!
Thomas: We'll hide them in Mimics!
Andy: That would be pretty cool actually... *makes claw-hand gesture* ...awrrr...
This is a bit unclear and I'd still appreciate some sort of clarification, but I'm able to read into it what I want to hear, and there are some good acknowledgements. Indeed, part of the problem is that companion gear is OP, it's really OP, the stat boosts you can get with the right combination of bonding runestones and loyal companion gear are massive. This is what makes it a problem that now the source of the good stuff is gone and it's all 1 mil + and that will be bound and gone from the AH sooner or later. What about new players who will never see that stuff otherwise and be forced to have worse gear?
It could be brought back or nerfed. Or both, sounds like both and I like that.
Also the whole stream is encouraging, the dungeon experience and more pvp in particular. Like it.
Well, the prices for companion equipment are going ... crazy... to put it mildly. How long do we have to wait now, until we get a new source for that companion equipment?
And since that "compensation" companion is probably not an account-wide feature, that we can reclaim for all characters through the NPC in PE, i would rather like to hear more concrete informations about the companion equipment issue instead.
Nice...arc just made sure that there will be no new player...how could there be new players when they make such a move?? AT LEAST BE SMART AND REMOVE ALL OF THE COMPANION ITEMS FROM THE GAME UNTILL YOU SOLVE THAT!!!! Now it just made sone payers super strong, and anyone else 10 times weaker...if you punish some at least punish everyone...
BTW; The new imaginary companion makes us so strong...maybe it will even balance everything...wait..no...it won't...1st because it doesn't exist...and 2nd because you guys never made a single balancing move...old players are OP and new players are completely UP even if they buy allthe ZEN cash can buy...
But when i say on the forum that i demand that they teat me like the actual 400$/month costumer that i am,,,that's "trolling" and it's "offending the staff"...has arc benn sold to a bunch of 14yo???
And last but definitly not least, promising something to a person and not delivering it after he paid so much...that's actually feels like somebody stole from me....:/
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Why should they keep it for the PC? The "old" players who used the gateway are most probably not where money comes from in large quantities.
I understand the decision from a business perspective, but I hate it from my perspective. I am still around, though. For now.
And where does Loyal and Adorable gear fall into this? As those are our only companion-specific (instead of non-specific) gear options atm, and they both are rather high-end in their stats.
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2. It has nothing to do with the fact that lockbox drops are overpriced....but sometimes economy doesn't make any sense..seriously...no sense in the fact a single mount cost 22mil but enchantments that will actually makes you thrice as effective (try a pure DPS build SW with dread and you will feel it...i feel super powered since the day i fetched it, i was switching between vorpal and plague fire before, now using only dread) will cost you only 2.5-4 mil.
3. As far as i care for number 2. it can stay like that, hardcore players benefit from the fact that actual effective items are sold in reasonable prices and we don't care too much for having 140% speed instead of 110%...think about it...we DPSs care only for one thing...DAMAGE, healers care about one thing...HEALS etc. and for both reasons investing your ADs on dread/holy avenger/whatever helps your build is wiser than buying a stupid mount for the same price of giving trans enchants to main and 3 alt characters
The whole thing sounds a bit better than standalone GW piece which doesn't make me any happier about the lattest.
In transcript lead designer says that they are working on professions and I've seen a number of good ideas on professions in this topic. Here are couple more:
1. Useless resourses. there is a bunch of resources occupying the slots in Inventory (if you bother collecting them). Most of them are useless. Meanwhile during most of events some valuable event related items can be crafted in professions and they require specific resources which for some reason normally located in low level zonez. My suggestion is to add kind of TRANSMUTATION ability to Alchemistry (or distribute it among professions) which allows to convert some useless resources to some useful resources of the same or lower quality. For example I need leather and wood in massive quantities to craft items for Gond event. High level players don't have it because these resources are located in low level zonez. Instead they have say black wood and exotic leather. Currently these are useless. Transmutation brings some sense to all this useless stuff.
2. Master recipies. I've tried doing master recipies in leather and this is just embarrassing. When one submits a completed quest some reward is expected. Not even close to that.... Imply that other profs are similar. My suggestion is to add green and blue tools and rework a quest line to be more smooth and rewarding. This will allow to gradually advance and be rewarded on each step, first with white, then green, blue and finally with pink tool. It is also more consistent in terms of tools.
P.S.: Would be much more happy if they returned SCA, not some companion without possibility to gear up it.
-Cova, leader and founder of Wraithguard
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
-Cova, leader and founder of Wraithguard
Why not come up with something that offsets the impact...like say a "collect all" and "repeat last" button in profession tasks on live game?! And having a tool that allows us to keep track on our auction bid items on the auction store?! That would be something very useful and would remove the need that most of the botters have to collect and restart the profession slots.
I play Neverwinter for nearly 2/3 years and I'm against this closure. I hope you can reconsider or, at least, make the proposed chages on the live game.
Thanks
Alfredo
1) If 'cost' was such a big issue, then why put the manpower and effort into porting the game to console? Because you already had money and wanted a new revenue stream. So the first argument about closing it down is false.
2) The second argument about botting? That's invalid too because you can task employees to solve that. Instead, again, you found it more important to do the console port (and see the first part of this for why that was invalid reasoning too).
Cryptic seems to think that players are stupid and will just accept anything they say, but the fact is that many game players know how game design works.
Here's the facts. The game has many players that cannot spend every day getting online. We have families, jobs, lives. We travel. We want to spend time with our kids. The Gateway gave us the ability to still take care of things when those situations came up.
And in my opinion, the game is starting to show signs that this decision may actually be hurting the game. The price of zen on the astral diamond exchange has hovered around the max price for a long time, but since the decision people are just not selling as often. I can only guess that zen sales have gone down or that people are holding on to the ones they have purchased. That has the unfortunate side effect of causing those who do not wish to purchase zen with real money to not be able to acquire them. This will drive people away from what is supposed to be a 'free-to-play' game.
Gateway has been down for over 4 weeks, this message was posted over 2 weeks ago, and the last build release was now almost 3 full days ago. Can the community at least get an update here?
It could be brought back or nerfed. Or both, sounds like both and I like that.
Also the whole stream is encouraging, the dungeon experience and more pvp in particular. Like it.
.... and we still dont get promised augment companion....
How long do we have to wait now, until we get a new source for that companion equipment?
And since that "compensation" companion is probably not an account-wide feature, that we can reclaim for all characters through the NPC in PE, i would rather like to hear more concrete informations about the companion equipment issue instead.
AT LEAST BE SMART AND REMOVE ALL OF THE COMPANION ITEMS FROM THE GAME UNTILL YOU SOLVE THAT!!!!
Now it just made sone payers super strong, and anyone else 10 times weaker...if you punish some at least punish everyone...
BTW; The new imaginary companion makes us so strong...maybe it will even balance everything...wait..no...it won't...1st because it doesn't exist...and 2nd because you guys never made a single balancing move...old players are OP and new players are completely UP even if they buy allthe ZEN cash can buy...
But when i say on the forum that i demand that they teat me like the actual 400$/month costumer that i am,,,that's "trolling" and it's "offending the staff"...has arc benn sold to a bunch of 14yo???
And last but definitly not least, promising something to a person and not delivering it after he paid so much...that's actually feels like somebody stole from me....:/