Rough Astral Diamond Refinement cap has been raised to 100,000 a day and is now an account wide limit. You can refine 100,000 on a single character or across multiple characters.
The first run bonuses are now account gated meaning that only one character can earn those first run bonuses per day.
The end goal of these changes, and future changes, is to get the AD markets into a better state for the players, allow the ZAX to work better and to make AD more meaningful and useful all around. We know these are big changes and all feedback and questions are welcome.
M14 Pros
I love the AD banking idea. Honestly, one should not have to transfer via the exchange. And explaining that system to new players is getting old.
I also like that you are moving greens to the WB instead of keeping them Zen items.
RP boosts for use during events? GENIUS!!! *** I do understand that these are AD sinks, but I approve. ***
M14 Cons
Nerfing AD gains fort he whole account.
On an average day, without much effort, I can get 100k RAD on one toon... If I'm really grinding hard, I can get WAY more than 100k in salvage, and being able to convert it on alts helped. I bought extra slots... I love my main, so the extra slots were ONLY for AD. When I really need AD, I use the alts...
Now don't get me wrong, I like that I can convert 100k on my main without transferring salvage to alts. But lets think about how removing the FTB for alts is going to affect the state of affairs for dungeons. You made the random queue so people could get fast queue's on dungeons they needed for quests. Lets be honest, no one wants to beg for an hour+ to do spellplague caverns, etc.. Right now, if you need a dungeon for a quest, it's easy. Just queue up and BAM! No problem. Without the alt armies running dungeons for AD? You might have a much longer wait.
Will this nerf lower prices in the AH? Maybe. Knowing that people will have access to less AD MIGHT get people to lower their prices... eventually. After all, when your item doesn't sell for what you want, you tend to lower the price. If people can't afford the item now, you will be stuck with it longer.
BUT WAIT!!!! You mentioned something else.... The ZAX... You claim you are hoping to stabilize the exchange, and reduce the backlog. But lets think about this...
If someone can't get the AD they need via alt grinding, or salvage, where can they turn? The ZAX! If someone is "forced" to spend some cash to get the AD they need for something, do you honestly think they will want to post it for 300 per? Or even 400 per? Nope... They are going to want the most bang for their buck. They will WANT 500 per. Sure, with the influx of people selling Zen, it might become impossible to get those rates, but it IS what the sellers will want.
Now, who truly benefits from the new system?
People that have hours to spend grinding on alts they paid for? No... They may even quit.
People with less time and no money to spend? Oddly, these people will make out just fine. This new system helps them. They went from 72k per day to 100k, and they don't have to spend a dime!
People with surplus cash? No... "But they have the money, they can afford to spend it to buy the AD they need!" BUT, they are spending more than they would normally spend... That is NOT benefiting them.
That brings me to who is really benefitting from this arrangement. Cryptic/PWE That's right, if we need the AD, and don't want to wait, we need to spend more money, so the game company wins... But is that a bad thing?
"What do you mean "is that a bad thing" you ask?" "I have to spend more money" you complain? Let's be honest, this is NOT a free to play game. C/PWE has overhead that must be paid for, and without people paying for the extra's, they can't keep the game running. There are soooo many people that say "I ain't paying for this s***."
I'm old, I remember a time when there was no such thing as free to play... OK, there were MUDs, but those were more of a message board than games =P If you wanted something with quality graphics, and fun to play for more than 20 minutes at a time... You were going to pay through the nose. And since you could complete these games in a couple weeks or so, you would have to buy 1-2 games a month. Currently that's 60-120 bucks a month!!!
Sure, this isn't CoD, GTA, NfS, etc... But you have NO upfront costs, and NO requirement to EVER pay for anything! And yet, people have been playing this for YEARS, not just a couple of weeks.... Clearly, this is worth spending a little money on. If everyone was actually spending a little money on it, maybe they wouldn't need to try to up their tactics to get you to pry open your wallets.
I asked if that was a bad thing... and actually, even though this new system might force some people to open their wallets which results in the game staying online... in the long run this is a TERRIBLE thing.
The cheapskates will just make more accounts, and the really cheap players probably already have them. The end result there is you still didn't make any more money.
People that spent money on character slots may quit because those extra slots are useless. If people want to play other classes, they can always make a new account for free. Extra slots means extra means of getting AD WITHOUT having to pay AH premiums to transfer it. These changes mean extra work, on multiple accounts, for less reward for those that are trying to save up for big ticket items... End result? You start losing some of the people that were actually WILLING to pay you. You actually start LOSING money.
You want to make more money? Try selling bag upgrades! THE WORST thing you guys ever did was bind bags to character! At least if it was bound to account you could transfer the bag to an alt when you got a bigger bag for your main. I have bags that will NEVER be replaced, because I refuse to buy a better bag to replace one I already PAID for, and CAN'T USE!!!! Option? The bags cost 6, 10, and 16 dollars. Sell a flat $6 dollar bag upgrade token that raises your bag to the next type. What would that mean for the standard bags you get? Nothing, they are not upgradeable. What about the odd bags?
The Embroidered BoH (12 slot), I say count it! It comes with things you have to pay for, so why not? (If you got this from the Hero of the North pack, I still say yes even though it's available to every toon you make. Why? You paid $200 bucks! That's why! Also, it's the same size as the green BoH, so it already fits into the $6 bucks for 12 slots paradigm)
Dragon Cult Pack? (20 slots) No, because you can get it "free."
What about the Dragon Hoard (30 slot)? No. While it is part of a pack you pay for, you do get one for every toon you make... forever... It's hard to throw away a 30 slot bag, especially if you have to pay 16 dollars for only 6 extra slots. Unlike the E BoH, it's a rather large bag for a much smaller price tag. It also does not fit the paradigm, so it's harder to justify paying $6 for 6....
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
The number of people the 100k rAD will effect is "very small?" Are you trolling or just oblivious to the situation?
It actually seems quite credible. Most people simple do not refine anywhere near 100K per day across their characters on the average. Sure, if you have an army of alts that you run through dungeon, then you may exceed that number regularly, but your average player just does not do that. My rough guess is that 90% of players will not be affected by the limit at all.
Of those that will be affected, well...consider someone like myself - I primarily play just a single character, and I can easily exceed 100K in rAD income on weekends (mostly from salvage from ToNG and CoDG runs). However, I play a lot less on weekdays, so that's when I will refine the excess rAD I make on weekends - I see this as a 700K refine limit per week, which is just fine for me, and I assume quite a few others.
So, who will really be affected? Typically people that play multiple alts, and average more than 100K rAD per day in total. I have no idea how many they are, but my guess, just from what I hear from people in my guild/alliance is maybe 5% of players.
It is a higher percentage of active/BiS players, of course, but overall....nah, not so many.
Actually I think that the changes to "first time" bonuses will have a bigger effect than the rAD limit.
Hoping for improvements...
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plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,421Arc User
You want to make more money? Try selling bag upgrades!
About bag, for us, players (not Cryptic), the bag we should buy is "character slot" and not the real bag unless it is virtually free. Character slot was not 'salvager' or AD bonus carrier in the early day. It was the "bag". Character slot is dirt cheap for storage. Without discount, the cost of one blue bag can cover 4 character slots. Character slot had the deepest discount of anything in Zen store except free stuff. It had 90% off discount. It is hard to justify to buy bag, period. To take full advantage of that, use the money for bag to buy shared bank slots and character slots.
If they want to push bag sales, they don't need bag upgrade as an item. They can just add bag slot like they have done many times. I think that was just 4 or 5 bag slots when I started.
Post edited by plasticbat on
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
what do you call nerfing classes multiple times that people have spent months/years on and or money on to the point where certain people won't even invite you anymore?
every MMO has needed to do class balancing. you could make a complaint that they're not doing a good job - making mistakes, getting it wrong, taking too long to fix those mistakes, etc. (I hope you don't think it is something simple to do though). But abusive?
You want to make more money? Try selling bag upgrades!
About bag, for us, players (not Cryptic), the bag we should buy is "character slot" and not the real bag unless it is virtually free. Character slot was not 'salvager' or AD bonus carrier in the early day. It was the "bag". Character slot is dirt cheap for storage. Without discount, the cost of one blue bag can cover 4 character slots. Character slot had the deepest discount of anything in Zen store except free stuff. It had 90% off discount. It is hard to justify to buy bag, period. To take full advantage of that, use the money for bag to buy shared bank slots and character slots.
If they want to push bag sales, they don't need bag upgrade as an item. They can just add bag slot like they have done many times. I think that was just 4 or 5 bag slots when I started.
Interesting. Can you tell me how you get things to go into these other characters' inventories while you're questing? My experience has been that once my inventory is full, then I cannot pick anything else up. If you have some way that your drops get put into an inactive character's inventory without having to drop stuff into the bank, then log out of your questing character, log in on your mule, pull the stuff out the bank, log off your mule, then log back in on your questing character, then I would absolutely love to hear about this!
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plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,421Arc User
You want to make more money? Try selling bag upgrades!
About bag, for us, players (not Cryptic), the bag we should buy is "character slot" and not the real bag unless it is virtually free. Character slot was not 'salvager' or AD bonus carrier in the early day. It was the "bag". Character slot is dirt cheap for storage. Without discount, the cost of one blue bag can cover 4 character slots. Character slot had the deepest discount of anything in Zen store except free stuff. It had 90% off discount. It is hard to justify to buy bag, period. To take full advantage of that, use the money for bag to buy shared bank slots and character slots.
If they want to push bag sales, they don't need bag upgrade as an item. They can just add bag slot like they have done many times. I think that was just 4 or 5 bag slots when I started.
Interesting. Can you tell me how you get things to go into these other characters' inventories while you're questing? My experience has been that once my inventory is full, then I cannot pick anything else up. If you have some way that your drops get put into an inactive character's inventory without having to drop stuff into the bank, then log out of your questing character, log in on your mule, pull the stuff out the bank, log off your mule, then log back in on your questing character, then I would absolutely love to hear about this!
I have the max shared bank. I play 6 characters daily. I picked up everything from the ground and I mean everything (including lockbox that I have no plan to open). Yes, I am a hoarder. When the inventory is filled, I convert them to RP (such as green gears) and VIP the bank and move the stuff to shared bank and stack them up.
When I do my routine invocation or profession for different toon, I move stuff to the proper storage toon. I have toon dedicate for potion, I have toon dedicate for gem. I have toon for artifact, for companion, for mount, for transmute, for ......
For the time I run out of shared bank slot (the worst case), I can use mail to move stuff. Not often but once a long while.
No, I never log off in the middle of the quest to move the stuff to another character. I just keep on stacking stuff from what my 6 characters pick up. The shared bank is the hub that stores stuff before they are moved to the proper 'warehouse'.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
I have a question regarding auto AD refinement and alts. If and when that function gets fixed, will be able to turn the auto refine off, so we can decide which character's refinement goes to the limit?
I am perfectly, absolutely fine with the 100K limit, and hope it will result in a somewhat healthier economy.
I expect some items to drop in price - unbound dungeon drops and masterwork items for example, but the price of other items that originate in the Zen store like coalescent wards should not change much.
The main reason I support this, though, is that it discourages people from running multiple alts through the various dungeons - alts that are frequently undergeared and rely on others carrying them. I hope more people will actually be running the content because they enjoy it - and not just for the rAD.
You realise that this change comes hand in hand with a major change in how the cap can be reached? That only one toon per day can achieve the first time RAD reward for dungeons, and the random queue with all the Epic Dungeons (up to CN) can be run by 9k characters?
The best model to run on this new system involves running a different toon every day so that you can take advantage of, first run bonuses as well as weeklies and, more importantly enough Invoke RAD bonus to boost everything earned by 50%.
Running a "main" every day means you only get one day's worth of invoke bonus, meaning that they would STILL need to use alts on salvage runs to hit anywhere near the 100k.
1 9k toon needs to do one each of the two lowest tier RQs for a (pre VIP) total of 20'000 RAD. six weeklies for 24'000 then whatever they deem the most efficient way to hit 22k in salvage. (a lot less if VIP is involved) to hit roughly 66.66k RAD. Since that toon does nothing else the rest of the week, they have a full 7 day's Invoke bonus, so they hit the 100k cap. If they can also run the 15k RAD queue its even less salvage, or salvage they can pass on to tomorrows toon.
Hope is a wonderful thing, but hoping this is going to see alts not running dungeons as often is likely to lead to disappointment.
I for one will be running a lot more alts on RQ dungeon runs than my "main". Some of whom currently can't get in via Random Epic Queues.
What i would do is this: i'd change the system to make it so that higher iLvL on characters= higher RAD cap. For the main toon, i'd say start with a 100k RAD cap, raise by 10k every 1k iLvl points past 13k. So, a toon with a 15k main and all 4k alts, will get only 120k RAD cap, a player with a 14k main will get 110k and a player with a 13k main (easy to reach). will get the 100k RAD limit. After that, for each alt that gets iLvL of, say, 12k, the account cap is raised by 20k with more difficult but more rewarding ways to earn those RADs and reach the cap. Every 1k iLvL past 13k, similar to what happens to mains, the limit is increased by 10k (so an alt at 14k will increase the daily RAD limit by 30k). Developing alts is expensive in both time and ADs, so it's an AD sink. If the devs want people to not just "create" alts to farm stuff, but also play them, they must give some sort of "reward" for those who spend time and ADs to develop multiple alts. Else, people will just keep focusing on 1 toon and create undergeared alts to get carried and farm RQs. This way, a player who spent time and ADs developing a main at, say, 14k, and then 2 alts at 12k, will in return earn more daily ADs (110k+20k+20k= 150k).
You get rid of the bot, reward people sinking ADs and time in alts development, and ensure that players won't create armies of undergeared alts to run content and farm RADs.
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plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,421Arc User
I am perfectly, absolutely fine with the 100K limit, and hope it will result in a somewhat healthier economy.
I expect some items to drop in price - unbound dungeon drops and masterwork items for example, but the price of other items that originate in the Zen store like coalescent wards should not change much.
The main reason I support this, though, is that it discourages people from running multiple alts through the various dungeons - alts that are frequently undergeared and rely on others carrying them. I hope more people will actually be running the content because they enjoy it - and not just for the rAD.
You realise that this change comes hand in hand with a major change in how the cap can be reached? That only one toon per day can achieve the first time RAD reward for dungeons, and the random queue with all the Epic Dungeons (up to CN) can be run by 9k characters?
The best model to run on this new system involves running a different toon every day so that you can take advantage of, first run bonuses as well as weeklies and, more importantly enough Invoke RAD bonus to boost everything earned by 50%.
Running a "main" every day means you only get one day's worth of invoke bonus, meaning that they would STILL need to use alts on salvage runs to hit anywhere near the 100k.
1 9k toon needs to do one each of the two lowest tier RQs for a (pre VIP) total of 20'000 RAD. six weeklies for 24'000 then whatever they deem the most efficient way to hit 22k in salvage. (a lot less if VIP is involved) to hit roughly 66.66k RAD. Since that toon does nothing else the rest of the week, they have a full 7 day's Invoke bonus, so they hit the 100k cap. If they can also run the 15k RAD queue its even less salvage, or salvage they can pass on to tomorrows toon.
Hope is a wonderful thing, but hoping this is going to see alts not running dungeons as often is likely to lead to disappointment.
I for one will be running a lot more alts on RQ dungeon runs than my "main". Some of whom currently can't get in via Random Epic Queues.
What i would do is this: i'd change the system to make it so that higher iLvL on characters= higher RAD cap. For the main toon, i'd say start with a 100k RAD cap, raise by 10k every 1k iLvl points past 13k. So, a toon with a 15k main and all 4k alts, will get only 120k RAD cap, a player with a 14k main will get 110k and a player with a 13k main (easy to reach). will get the 100k RAD limit. After that, for each alt that gets iLvL of, say, 12k, the account cap is raised by 20k with more difficult but more rewarding ways to earn those RADs and reach the cap. Every 1k iLvL past 13k, similar to what happens to mains, the limit is increased by 10k (so an alt at 14k will increase the daily RAD limit by 30k). Developing alts is expensive in both time and ADs, so it's an AD sink. If the devs want people to not just "create" alts to farm stuff, but also play them, they must give some sort of "reward" for those who spend time and ADs to develop multiple alts. Else, people will just keep focusing on 1 toon and create undergeared alts to get carried and farm RQs. This way, a player who spent time and ADs developing a main at, say, 14k, and then 2 alts at 12k, will in return earn more daily ADs (110k+20k+20k= 150k).
You get rid of the bot, reward people sinking ADs and time in alts development, and ensure that players won't create armies of undergeared alts to run content and farm RADs.
The questions are: Can you build a character 14K without having any campaign boon but with SH boon? Can you equip a toon you have no intention to play to have all 500 ilevel gear (from seal), all the cheap but high ranking enchantment/runestone, etc just to make it 14K without really playing the toon at all?
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
How many new players, after creating their first character, immediately create another character, and then as soon as they earn enough AD, convert AD to zen, in order to buy more character slots?
In my opinion, such "new players" are not normal players, and Cryptic should not cater to such "new players". After I started playing Neverwinter in 2013, I played one character for approximately 3 months, and then created a second character. My third character was created only after the Hunger-Ranger class was introduced.
Creating an alt army is something hardcore players do, or AD farmers do. There is nothing wrong about making an alt army, but normal new players do not do make alt armies.
I love the AD banking idea. Honestly, one should not have to transfer via the exchange. And explaining that system to new players is getting old.
I also like that you are moving greens to the WB instead of keeping them Zen items.
RP boosts for use during events? GENIUS!!! *** I do understand that these are AD sinks, but I approve. ***
Preservation wards are moving to the Wonderous Bazaar? When and where was this announced? Do you have a link to this?
Thanks
You must have misunderstood what sierrebrarc said. They are moving green mounts and companions to the Bazaar, not wards.
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!
You are going to go with the *free* game argument? You will either pay with money or lots of your time and nobody wants either wasted. A lot of people enjoy the game and have invested money/time into both so its only natural they will stick around even through "suffering" nerfs to classes, nerfs to making ad, not fixing year old bugs, etc, in the hope things will get better but it rarely does.
Abusive practices happen even in "free" games, what do you call nerfing classes multiple times that people have spent months/years on and or money on to the point where certain people won't even invite you anymore? This isn't Street Fighter where you can simply pick a new character and move on. Especially nerfing classes that were already out performed by other classes and leaving other classes broken, its insulting.
Pfft. Neverwinter was live for 4 years, 4 months, and 4 days before the advent of Random Queues--which apparently led to recent explosion of rAD ingame. So they are making a change to how they implement something that didn't exist for the vast majority of the game, and somehow that is "abusive" when, in fact, it is a net boon for the vast majority of players.
By your logic, Neverwinter was "abusive" the vast majority of its existence.
There is absolutely nothing "abusive" about a *free* game. Abuse occurs when you have no choice. You always have a choice with a game-free, paid, or otherwise. No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play Neverwinter. If you feel you are "suffering" or "abused" then you have no one to blame but yourself.
I just find it rather incredulous that someone who claims to get their eye poked with a stick wouldn't just walk away from getting their eye poked with a stick rather than coming back to said stick time and again and then cry about it.
The questions are: Can you build a character 14K without having any campaign boon but with SH boon? Can you equip a toon you have no intention to play to have all 500 ilevel gear (from seal), all the cheap but high ranking enchantment/runestone, etc just to make it 14K without really playing the toon at all?
From my experience, no. You can't bring them at 14k without campaign boons. I have a toon with SH 20 boons, 480-460 iLvL gear, rank 7s, moderate briartwine for armor, and T.Fey from main toon, plus all DR,Sharandar, Underdark and almost ToD boons, blue companions, rings on companion with rank 7s, rank 12 bondings from main toon, and it does not reach 12k. Consider that iLvLs for the RAD cap cannot be achieved moving all the enchants from one toon to another, cause you must have the said iLvLs together at the same time to get the increase in RAD cap. See it as an overall account iLvL. You can't share too much stuff, not all the enchants at least. BTW, to answer you question, you need all the boons/ almost all the boons to reach 14k, plus companions, for example. Legendary companions increase iLvL a lot, and you can't have the required iLvLs just moving enchants from toon to toon. You must have a geared companion too, and purple companions in active slots, for example.
It means that even reaching a high iLvL on an alt without playing it, you need to sink a lot of ADs in said alt. Plus you still need the boons.
Rich players can also buy campaign completion tokens and avoid playing a toon completely, RAD cap or not. But it means spending a ton of ADs.
I think it's fair. Reaching those iLvLs on multiple toons means you spent time, ADs or both. Deserves some sort of compensation.
I have a question regarding auto AD refinement and alts. If and when that function gets fixed, will be able to turn the auto refine off, so we can decide which character's refinement goes to the limit?
Why would this even matter? You're not getting bonus rough astral diamonds at the point where you refine them. You get them at the point where you earn them, and that's something that's already completely within a player's control.
Based on PC taking into account the number of daily active players, the 3 % contributing to the mass amount of AD created by alt farmers, churning weekly players that don't contribute and the players that don't put posts in zax we will end up with 8 AD to every 1 zen if this is done.
This would be great if there were good items in the zen store. You cant buy rank 14s in the zen store and they will still cost 1.9 million AD to make. Sure the person posting can no longer expect people to pay a 200% mark up so it will go down a bit in price so that's good. But with 8 to 1 the whales the ones who spend actually money will have to pay $1,800 real world dollars to buy enough zen to buy that 14 on the trade house. Right now they only pay $35 with 500 AD to 1 Zen .
So this change will make players less likely to post items we need due to lower profit margins. It will kill of the whales that wont spend insane prices to buy AD. It will extend a grind for just getting items to make a tank 14 from 4 days on 10 alts to 16 days of continuous play. Legendary mounts will still be sold at a premium price due to rarity, cost of keys and bad RNG and with limited ability to gain AD no one will be able to buy them.
Congratulations you will be creating the equivalent to the great depression. I do have to say from a business stand point aside from chasing the whales away this will allow you to make bank on new and casual players. I see all the profitable angles in this move. I just hope you do. To do something like this it better be worth it.
Sorry I was off in my calculations it's an 85% decrease meaning 75 AD to 1 zen. Still that makes the items needed to make a rank 14 cost $200 dollars instead of the current $35.
I have no idea of what you are trying to say here other than you disagree with the changes. lol
you'll be back. (this honestly won't create the wasteland people are imagining)
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Um...LOL... ESL? Are you laughing at how you weren't able to comprehend what was clearly stated due to your mental hoping this wasteland wont arrive? It was clearly stated that players have and will more so now going fwd just play the game in such a way that huge investments of their time and resources are no longer applied.
what do you call nerfing classes multiple times that people have spent months/years on and or money on to the point where certain people won't even invite you anymore?
every MMO has needed to do class balancing. you could make a complaint that they're not doing a good job - making mistakes, getting it wrong, taking too long to fix those mistakes, etc. (I hope you don't think it is something simple to do though). But abusive?
You do have a point, and perhaps the abuse was self abuse in not applying this awareness. But, many will awaken and no longer invest resources here. As I mentioned earlier, there are many players that have read the writing on the nw walls and focused on just playing without even mild $ investments and they are the ones patting themselves on the backs and for good reason.
what do you call nerfing classes multiple times that people have spent months/years on and or money on to the point where certain people won't even invite you anymore?
every MMO has needed to do class balancing. you could make a complaint that they're not doing a good job - making mistakes, getting it wrong, taking too long to fix those mistakes, etc. (I hope you don't think it is something simple to do though). But abusive?
You do have a point, and perhaps the abuse was self abuse in not applying this awareness. But, many will awaken and no longer invest resources here. As I mentioned earlier, there are many players that have read the writing on the nw walls and focused on just playing without even mild $ investments and they are the ones patting themselves on the backs and for good reason.
A tip of my hat to them!
Meh. I disagree, particularly about people patting themselves on the backs. All my disagreement comes down to this: Are people having fun playing this game? If they are, then some of those people will still decide that money spent on this form of entertainment is worthwhile for them. Some of those people will decide it is no longer (or is still not) a worthwhile expense. There will always be people whose meta-game is focused on getting as much for as little money as possible. Similarly, there will always be people who are willing to spend gobs of money on games. None of the changes coming in mod 14 are going to change the balance amongst those groups.
The number of people the 100k rAD will effect is "very small?" Are you trolling or just oblivious to the situation?
It actually seems quite credible. Most people simple do not refine anywhere near 100K per day across their characters on the average. Sure, if you have an army of alts that you run through dungeon, then you may exceed that number regularly, but your average player just does not do that. My rough guess is that 90% of players will not be affected by the limit at all.
@noworries#8859 said the number of accounts who currently refine over 100k/day is "low single digits percentage"
I have a question regarding auto AD refinement and alts. If and when that function gets fixed, will be able to turn the auto refine off, so we can decide which character's refinement goes to the limit?
Why would this even matter? You're not getting bonus rough astral diamonds at the point where you refine them. You get them at the point where you earn them, and that's something that's already completely within a player's control.
Bonus rough astral diamonds? Where did I ask about bonus rough astral diamonds? What I asked about was will I have control of which character's Rough Astral Diamonds will be refined. Will it happen automatically on the first character I login in with, possibly taking up the whole 100,000 allotment? Or, will I get to decide which character's Rough Astral Diamonds are used to that allotment.
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plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,421Arc User
I have a question regarding auto AD refinement and alts. If and when that function gets fixed, will be able to turn the auto refine off, so we can decide which character's refinement goes to the limit?
Why would this even matter? You're not getting bonus rough astral diamonds at the point where you refine them. You get them at the point where you earn them, and that's something that's already completely within a player's control.
Bonus rough astral diamonds? Where did I ask about bonus rough astral diamonds? What I asked about was will I have control of which character's Rough Astral Diamonds will be refined. Will it happen automatically on the first character I login in with, possibly taking up the whole 100,000 allotment? Or, will I get to decide which character's Rough Astral Diamonds are used to that allotment.
I don't know if that is the case but those go to preview can confirm. Will there be a separate AD wallet for each character anymore? Or, all will go to one big wallet.
If there will still be separate wallet and it is 'auto', I don't think you can choose which wallet will be refined first. If you don't want 'auto', I guess you need to click the refine button yourself before the next day.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
I have a question regarding auto AD refinement and alts. If and when that function gets fixed, will be able to turn the auto refine off, so we can decide which character's refinement goes to the limit?
Why would this even matter? You're not getting bonus rough astral diamonds at the point where you refine them. You get them at the point where you earn them, and that's something that's already completely within a player's control.
Bonus rough astral diamonds? Where did I ask about bonus rough astral diamonds? What I asked about was will I have control of which character's Rough Astral Diamonds will be refined. Will it happen automatically on the first character I login in with, possibly taking up the whole 100,000 allotment? Or, will I get to decide which character's Rough Astral Diamonds are used to that allotment.
#1: You get to choose. #2: If you had leftover refinement yesterday, and you sign into a character with leftover RAD, such that it would normally refine yesterday for you right now on Live? It'll use yesterday's refinement up immediately. Not today's. #3: If you somehow accidentally refine on the "wrong" character, just put the AD in your bank and take it out on the right character.
I don't know if that is the case but those go to preview can confirm. Will there be a separate AD wallet for each character anymore? Or, all will go to one big wallet.
If there will still be separate wallet and it is 'auto', I don't think you can choose which wallet will be refined first. If you don't want 'auto', I guess you need to click the refine button yourself before the next day.
Every character still has their own wallet, and the auto-refinement uses *yesterday's* capacity, not today's.
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plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,421Arc User
I don't know if that is the case but those go to preview can confirm. Will there be a separate AD wallet for each character anymore? Or, all will go to one big wallet.
If there will still be separate wallet and it is 'auto', I don't think you can choose which wallet will be refined first. If you don't want 'auto', I guess you need to click the refine button yourself before the next day.
Every character still has their own wallet, and the auto-refinement uses *yesterday's* capacity, not today's.
My "today" is your yesterday. My "next day" is your today. If you click the refine button, it will use the refinement limit of today. If you use them all up, there will be nothing left to "auto" for tomorrow.
That was why I said: If you don't want 'auto', I guess you need to click the refine button yourself before the next day.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
I have a question regarding auto AD refinement and alts. If and when that function gets fixed, will be able to turn the auto refine off, so we can decide which character's refinement goes to the limit?
Why would this even matter? You're not getting bonus rough astral diamonds at the point where you refine them. You get them at the point where you earn them, and that's something that's already completely within a player's control.
Bonus rough astral diamonds? Where did I ask about bonus rough astral diamonds? What I asked about was will I have control of which character's Rough Astral Diamonds will be refined. Will it happen automatically on the first character I login in with, possibly taking up the whole 100,000 allotment? Or, will I get to decide which character's Rough Astral Diamonds are used to that allotment.
Hmmm. Maybe I'm not understanding how this will work, but I thought the rough astral diamonds are going to be in the bank, rather than on a specific character. If that's the case, then it wouldn't matter which character does the refining. If I'm not understanding this correctly, I apologize.
there are many players that have read the writing on the nw walls and focused on just playing without even mild $ investments and they are the ones patting themselves on the backs and for good reason.
Well, if they are disgruntled because "they nerfed my AD income", both leadership and RQ had given us the means to not have to spend real money anyways.
F2P MMOs have always depended significantly on the small percentage of those who want to be bis (or near) ASAP and can afford to do so. Sure, there are those that spend beyond their means, but there is a significant population that earn over 250k a year and throwing a couple of grand into a game isn't a big deal to them. if the game is no longer fun, they move on. they don't come onto the forums and spend time complaining.
As for the more casual players (the ones that don't feel the need to be bis), they're also not the ones that are currently whipped into a frenzy. So when we refer to those who are "patting themselves on the back", we have an idea of what type of people they are.
Most of those who have spent little and have not had to spend for a long time (myself included), it's because we haven't needed to. NW is relatively casual and relatively easy to make in game currency to pay for everything.
This whole "they knew this game was going down the tubes, chose not to spend and are now congratulating themselves after these latest changes were announced", is just sour grapes over these changes. Nothing more.
I've been watching the PS4 exchange too. It got up to 500, but nobody's been touching it at that rate of exchange. For a few days some Zen sporadically changed hands as high as 499, but now players are shying away from that too. Right now there's a bit over 250,000 zen sitting at 500 and another 150,000 or so scattered across 497-499 growing stale. Meanwhile the exchanges are mostly occurring in the low 90s - and those have been sluggish.
Those piles of Zen are mostly traders, I bet. Which is interesting since it could mean there are as few as 30-40 players routinely moving old Zen around the exchange. Currently that's at least 16 people crowding the top bracket (if they all dumped their full shares of Zen in there), but there are probably twice that number who have already made their profit and pulled their AD to wait and see where the exchange will linger before investing again.
Comments
M14 Pros
- I love the AD banking idea. Honestly, one should not have to transfer via the exchange. And explaining that system to new players is getting old.
- I also like that you are moving greens to the WB instead of keeping them Zen items.
- RP boosts for use during events? GENIUS!!! *** I do understand that these are AD sinks, but I approve. ***
M14 Cons- Nerfing AD gains fort he whole account.
On an average day, without much effort, I can get 100k RAD on one toon...If I'm really grinding hard, I can get WAY more than 100k in salvage, and being able to convert it on alts helped. I bought extra slots... I love my main, so the extra slots were ONLY for AD. When I really need AD, I use the alts...
Now don't get me wrong, I like that I can convert 100k on my main without transferring salvage to alts. But lets think about how removing the FTB for alts is going to affect the state of affairs for dungeons.
You made the random queue so people could get fast queue's on dungeons they needed for quests. Lets be honest, no one wants to beg for an hour+ to do spellplague caverns, etc..
Right now, if you need a dungeon for a quest, it's easy. Just queue up and BAM! No problem.
Without the alt armies running dungeons for AD? You might have a much longer wait.
Will this nerf lower prices in the AH? Maybe. Knowing that people will have access to less AD MIGHT get people to lower their prices... eventually. After all, when your item doesn't sell for what you want, you tend to lower the price. If people can't afford the item now, you will be stuck with it longer.
BUT WAIT!!!! You mentioned something else.... The ZAX... You claim you are hoping to stabilize the exchange, and reduce the backlog. But lets think about this...
If someone can't get the AD they need via alt grinding, or salvage, where can they turn? The ZAX! If someone is "forced" to spend some cash to get the AD they need for something, do you honestly think they will want to post it for 300 per? Or even 400 per? Nope... They are going to want the most bang for their buck. They will WANT 500 per. Sure, with the influx of people selling Zen, it might become impossible to get those rates, but it IS what the sellers will want.
Now, who truly benefits from the new system?
- People that have hours to spend grinding on alts they paid for? No... They may even quit.
- People with less time and no money to spend? Oddly, these people will make out just fine. This new system helps them. They went from 72k per day to 100k, and they don't have to spend a dime!
- People with surplus cash? No... "But they have the money, they can afford to spend it to buy the AD they need!" BUT, they are spending more than they would normally spend... That is NOT benefiting them.
That brings me to who is really benefitting from this arrangement. Cryptic/PWE That's right, if we need the AD, and don't want to wait, we need to spend more money, so the game company wins... But is that a bad thing?"What do you mean "is that a bad thing" you ask?" "I have to spend more money" you complain? Let's be honest, this is NOT a free to play game. C/PWE has overhead that must be paid for, and without people paying for the extra's, they can't keep the game running. There are soooo many people that say "I ain't paying for this s***."
I'm old, I remember a time when there was no such thing as free to play... OK, there were MUDs, but those were more of a message board than games =P If you wanted something with quality graphics, and fun to play for more than 20 minutes at a time... You were going to pay through the nose. And since you could complete these games in a couple weeks or so, you would have to buy 1-2 games a month. Currently that's 60-120 bucks a month!!!
Sure, this isn't CoD, GTA, NfS, etc... But you have NO upfront costs, and NO requirement to EVER pay for anything! And yet, people have been playing this for YEARS, not just a couple of weeks.... Clearly, this is worth spending a little money on. If everyone was actually spending a little money on it, maybe they wouldn't need to try to up their tactics to get you to pry open your wallets.
I asked if that was a bad thing... and actually, even though this new system might force some people to open their wallets which results in the game staying online... in the long run this is a TERRIBLE thing.
- The cheapskates will just make more accounts, and the really cheap players probably already have them. The end result there is you still didn't make any more money.
- People that spent money on character slots may quit because those extra slots are useless. If people want to play other classes, they can always make a new account for free. Extra slots means extra means of getting AD WITHOUT having to pay AH premiums to transfer it. These changes mean extra work, on multiple accounts, for less reward for those that are trying to save up for big ticket items... End result? You start losing some of the people that were actually WILLING to pay you. You actually start LOSING money.
You want to make more money? Try selling bag upgrades! THE WORST thing you guys ever did was bind bags to character! At least if it was bound to account you could transfer the bag to an alt when you got a bigger bag for your main. I have bags that will NEVER be replaced, because I refuse to buy a better bag to replace one I already PAID for, and CAN'T USE!!!!Option? The bags cost 6, 10, and 16 dollars. Sell a flat $6 dollar bag upgrade token that raises your bag to the next type.
What would that mean for the standard bags you get? Nothing, they are not upgradeable.
What about the odd bags?
Of those that will be affected, well...consider someone like myself - I primarily play just a single character, and I can easily exceed 100K in rAD income on weekends (mostly from salvage from ToNG and CoDG runs). However, I play a lot less on weekdays, so that's when I will refine the excess rAD I make on weekends - I see this as a 700K refine limit per week, which is just fine for me, and I assume quite a few others.
So, who will really be affected? Typically people that play multiple alts, and average more than 100K rAD per day in total. I have no idea how many they are, but my guess, just from what I hear from people in my guild/alliance is maybe 5% of players.
It is a higher percentage of active/BiS players, of course, but overall....nah, not so many.
Actually I think that the changes to "first time" bonuses will have a bigger effect than the rAD limit.
Character slot was not 'salvager' or AD bonus carrier in the early day. It was the "bag".
Character slot is dirt cheap for storage. Without discount, the cost of one blue bag can cover 4 character slots.
Character slot had the deepest discount of anything in Zen store except free stuff. It had 90% off discount.
It is hard to justify to buy bag, period.
To take full advantage of that, use the money for bag to buy shared bank slots and character slots.
If they want to push bag sales, they don't need bag upgrade as an item. They can just add bag slot like they have done many times. I think that was just 4 or 5 bag slots when I started.
When I do my routine invocation or profession for different toon, I move stuff to the proper storage toon. I have toon dedicate for potion, I have toon dedicate for gem. I have toon for artifact, for companion, for mount, for transmute, for ......
For the time I run out of shared bank slot (the worst case), I can use mail to move stuff. Not often but once a long while.
No, I never log off in the middle of the quest to move the stuff to another character.
I just keep on stacking stuff from what my 6 characters pick up. The shared bank is the hub that stores stuff before they are moved to the proper 'warehouse'.
You get rid of the bot, reward people sinking ADs and time in alts development, and ensure that players won't create armies of undergeared alts to run content and farm RADs.
and then as soon as they earn enough AD, convert AD to zen, in order to buy more character slots?
In my opinion, such "new players" are not normal players, and Cryptic should not cater to such "new players".
After I started playing Neverwinter in 2013, I played one character for approximately 3 months,
and then created a second character. My third character was created only after the Hunger-Ranger class was introduced.
Creating an alt army is something hardcore players do, or AD farmers do.
There is nothing wrong about making an alt army, but normal new players do not do make alt armies.
Thanks
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!
By your logic, Neverwinter was "abusive" the vast majority of its existence.
There is absolutely nothing "abusive" about a *free* game. Abuse occurs when you have no choice. You always have a choice with a game-free, paid, or otherwise. No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to play Neverwinter. If you feel you are "suffering" or "abused" then you have no one to blame but yourself.
I just find it rather incredulous that someone who claims to get their eye poked with a stick wouldn't just walk away from getting their eye poked with a stick rather than coming back to said stick time and again and then cry about it.
BTW, to answer you question, you need all the boons/ almost all the boons to reach 14k, plus companions, for example. Legendary companions increase iLvL a lot, and you can't have the required iLvLs just moving enchants from toon to toon.
You must have a geared companion too, and purple companions in active slots, for example.
It means that even reaching a high iLvL on an alt without playing it, you need to sink a lot of ADs in said alt. Plus you still need the boons.
Rich players can also buy campaign completion tokens and avoid playing a toon completely, RAD cap or not. But it means spending a ton of ADs.
I think it's fair. Reaching those iLvLs on multiple toons means you spent time, ADs or both. Deserves some sort of compensation.
This would be great if there were good items in the zen store. You cant buy rank 14s in the zen store and they will still cost 1.9 million AD to make. Sure the person posting can no longer expect people to pay a 200% mark up so it will go down a bit in price so that's good. But with 8 to 1 the whales the ones who spend actually money will have to pay $1,800 real world dollars to buy enough zen to buy that 14 on the trade house. Right now they only pay $35 with 500 AD to 1 Zen .
So this change will make players less likely to post items we need due to lower profit margins. It will kill of the whales that wont spend insane prices to buy AD. It will extend a grind for just getting items to make a tank 14 from 4 days on 10 alts to 16 days of continuous play. Legendary mounts will still be sold at a premium price due to rarity, cost of keys and bad RNG and with limited ability to gain AD no one will be able to buy them.
Congratulations you will be creating the equivalent to the great depression. I do have to say from a business stand point aside from chasing the whales away this will allow you to make bank on new and casual players. I see all the profitable angles in this move. I just hope you do. To do something like this it better be worth it.
thefiresidecat stated
I have no idea of what you are trying to say here other than you disagree with the changes. lol
you'll be back. (this honestly won't create the wasteland people are imagining)
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Um...LOL... ESL? Are you laughing at how you weren't able to comprehend what was clearly stated due to your mental hoping this wasteland wont arrive?
It was clearly stated that players have and will more so now going fwd just play the game in such a way that huge investments of their time and resources are no longer applied.
A tip of my hat to them!
If there will still be separate wallet and it is 'auto', I don't think you can choose which wallet will be refined first.
If you don't want 'auto', I guess you need to click the refine button yourself before the next day.
#2: If you had leftover refinement yesterday, and you sign into a character with leftover RAD, such that it would normally refine yesterday for you right now on Live? It'll use yesterday's refinement up immediately. Not today's.
#3: If you somehow accidentally refine on the "wrong" character, just put the AD in your bank and take it out on the right character.
If you click the refine button, it will use the refinement limit of today. If you use them all up, there will be nothing left to "auto" for tomorrow.
That was why I said:
If you don't want 'auto', I guess you need to click the refine button yourself before the next day.
F2P MMOs have always depended significantly on the small percentage of those who want to be bis (or near) ASAP and can afford to do so. Sure, there are those that spend beyond their means, but there is a significant population that earn over 250k a year and throwing a couple of grand into a game isn't a big deal to them. if the game is no longer fun, they move on. they don't come onto the forums and spend time complaining.
As for the more casual players (the ones that don't feel the need to be bis), they're also not the ones that are currently whipped into a frenzy. So when we refer to those who are "patting themselves on the back", we have an idea of what type of people they are.
Most of those who have spent little and have not had to spend for a long time (myself included), it's because we haven't needed to. NW is relatively casual and relatively easy to make in game currency to pay for everything.
This whole "they knew this game was going down the tubes, chose not to spend and are now congratulating themselves
after these latest changes were announced", is just sour grapes over these changes. Nothing more.
Those piles of Zen are mostly traders, I bet. Which is interesting since it could mean there are as few as 30-40 players routinely moving old Zen around the exchange. Currently that's at least 16 people crowding the top bracket (if they all dumped their full shares of Zen in there), but there are probably twice that number who have already made their profit and pulled their AD to wait and see where the exchange will linger before investing again.