@mordeka, well said! I'm curious to see how his has played out on PC so far.
I play on PC. Before the change, I was earning about 105k per day using 8 characters in Random Dungeons. I didn't do Random Skirmishes because I didn't have time for that. My wife was earning about half that since she was running only four characters. We both hated Random Dungeons. After the change, we run only two characters through the RQ: one in Leveling, and one in Intermediate. We have characters that qualify for Advanced, but it's usually a losing proposition because the party is normally not powerful enough to actually succeed. So we have long since stopped even attempting that queue.
We still hate the Random Leveling Queue because you too often end up in Dread Legion, Master of the Hunt, or Illusionist's Gambit. Dread Legion and Master of the Hunt are boring and not interesting to play. Dread Legion is at least short. (Not that Master of the Hunt is long; it's just longer than Dread Legion.) Illusionist's Gambit is the truly terrible one because if you don't feel like running for gold, then that's the day you're coerced into it because you're in the minority. If you feel like running for gold, then that's the day you're going to end up coercing someone who decides they're entitled to go afk because they voted to leave. So you're forced to carry that person to a gold completion, if you want it, or you're stuck settling for silver. The thing I've noticed about that dungeon is that it isn't long, but it feels long.
Since we're only running two characters through queues every day, we've switched to running two or three epic dungeons every day. Typically, we run Castle Never because there is more opportunity for drops and we're trying to get the Shard of Orcus' Wand. We are now both refining 100k astral diamonds per day. The amount of unrefined astral diamonds that I have has gone from zero to about two million right now.
My wife started out after the update with unrefined astral diamonds because the characters she has that hardly get played had 100k in astral diamond bonus. So those characters were able to salvage everything they were given for a while. Her unrefined astral diamonds is now up over 300k, after dropping to zero, because she created three additional characters for invoking and salvage. (She had five when the update came out and now has eight.) I had eight characters before the update and now have nine.
So if you have the time to run epic dungeons for salvage, then it seems like eight or nine characters (maybe as many as 10) is the sweet spot for the number of alts to have. I have two characters that I run regularly and those characters are the ones I work on campaigns on. My other characters just do the weekly quests that are available to them and otherwise do invoking and salvage. I have a rotation now for refining astral diamonds and I'm able to refine 100k on one character each day. They no longer go under 100k rough astral diamonds on any character. Some days my paladin and warlock (my two main characters) get over 300k and so I'll refine on them two days in a row. Otherwise, it's just one day per character each week.
EDIT: I should add that we do not salvage beyond what our AD bonus from invoking allows. If the character doesn't have an AD bonus to cover the full value of the salvage item, then salvage stops on that character.
That's the opportunity... OK, that's a neat soundbite, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny when you sit down and think it through.
The only people with an increased cap will be those who only have one or two characters. Earning more than 30-35k per day on the acct will be harder now due to the acct bound cap on daily rAD rewards from Dungeons and Skirmishes. A two toon only player hitting 100k per day with only two days worth of invoke bonus and two toons worth of weeklies will require a lot more salvage than it does now. A LOT more. If you see "casual " players farming EToS to earn that much salvage every day, I'm not sure we have the same idea of what constitutes a "casual" player. There is no logic to support the notion that people who weren't already maxing their daily cap when rAD acquisition was easier will earn more when it is harder. As I mentioned before, the only people who will see real, genuine, benefit are one toon, no alt players who earn more every day than they can convert. Casual gamers by the nature of being casual will find it harder to earn rAD.
People who spent money or Zen on character slots are being penalised on a sliding scale... the more they invested in the game the more they lose out.
Taking away from customers who invest time and money in your business to reward those with a casual relationship with something most can't even accommodate is what is known in business as "Stupid".
But, since it's not you that's going to be affected, as you say in the OP... "So what".........
Cos, obviously, it's all about you.
Agreed. Not caring is always easier when something doesn't affect you. Makes me wonder the real reason this thread was started.
@mordeka, well said! I'm curious to see how his has played out on PC so far.
I play on PC. Before the change, I was earning about 105k per day using 8 characters in Random Dungeons. I didn't do Random Skirmishes because I didn't have time for that. My wife was earning about half that since she was running only four characters. We both hated Random Dungeons. After the change, we run only two characters through the RQ: one in Leveling, and one in Intermediate. We have characters that qualify for Advanced, but it's usually a losing proposition because the party is normally not powerful enough to actually succeed. So we have long since stopped even attempting that queue.
We still hate the Random Leveling Queue because you too often end up in Dread Legion, Master of the Hunt, or Illusionist's Gambit. Dread Legion and Master of the Hunt are boring and not interesting to play. Dread Legion is at least short. (Not that Master of the Hunt is long; it's just longer than Dread Legion.) Illusionist's Gambit is the truly terrible one because if you don't feel like running for gold, then that's the day you're coerced into it because you're in the minority. If you feel like running for gold, then that's the day you're going to end up coercing someone who decides they're entitled to go afk because they voted to leave. So you're forced to carry that person to a gold completion, if you want it, or you're stuck settling for silver. The thing I've noticed about that dungeon is that it isn't long, but it feels long.
Since we're only running two characters through queues every day, we've switched to running two or three epic dungeons every day. Typically, we run Castle Never because there is more opportunity for drops and we're trying to get the Shard of Orcus' Wand. We are now both refining 100k astral diamonds per day. The amount of unrefined astral diamonds that I have has gone from zero to about two million right now.
My wife started out after the update with unrefined astral diamonds because the characters she has that hardly get played had 100k in astral diamond bonus. So those characters were able to salvage everything they were given for a while. Her unrefined astral diamonds is now up over 300k, after dropping to zero, because she created three additional characters for invoking and salvage. (She had five when the update came out and now has eight.) I had eight characters before the update and now have nine.
So if you have the time to run epic dungeons for salvage, then it seems like eight or nine characters (maybe as many as 10) is the sweet spot for the number of alts to have. I have two characters that I run regularly and those characters are the ones I work on campaigns on. My other characters just do the weekly quests that are available to them and otherwise do invoking and salvage. I have a rotation now for refining astral diamonds and I'm able to refine 100k on one character each day. They no longer go under 100k rough astral diamonds on any character. Some days my paladin and warlock (my two main characters) get over 300k and so I'll refine on them two days in a row. Otherwise, it's just one day per character each week.
EDIT: I should add that we do not salvage beyond what our AD bonus from invoking allows. If the character doesn't have an AD bonus to cover the full value of the salvage item, then salvage stops on that character.
Under the old system 105K on 8 toons was 1 RLQ each per day on one days worth of invoke bonus. You weren't doing skirmishes or epics because you hated them... But you have to do them now to earn 100k per day... Everyone's a winner eh?
I don't know how geared you 8 toons are, or what camapigns they've unlocked. But it sounds like you're running enough salvage runs per day to be spending more than a casual hour or two to be able to now hit 100k.
The method I use on my 8 is simple. Every day I run a different toon through RLQ and RIQ, then through their six weeklies. With VIP this lands about 50k... since that toon has 8 days worth of invoke bonus rAD that leaps to 75k with 8k bonus leftover (remember under new rAD earnings cap you will never be able to use more than 33'334 bonus rAD a day). That means I need circa 17k of salvage... since I drop most of this from RIQ, Ichor, Seals, and HE drops I usually need to run AT MOST 2 more epic dungeons. This sounds like a lot... But its actually pretty quick, and you're not stuck doing more than 1 RLQ or RIQ, and even if you get a long RIQ like Tiamat or CN, you get some of the extra salvage saving more time.
When I explained this to someone else their response was... "But The Tyranny Hoard weekly... it takes too long..." And you probably know this, but just in case... The trick is, to park your unused toons in the Well of Dragons, claim the Weekly on all of them first thing Monday, and then whenever you run through an invoke cycle, have each toon just go kill a group of Thayans/Cult. It will take only a couple of days to cover the 120 coffers, and most of the targets will be dead so just kill the last couple, go donate, talk to Elminster and go do something else with 4'500AD in your pocket.
I used to run 1 Random Dungeon and 1 Random Skirmish per day on all my toons and aim to get 25k per day on each for a total of 200k per day. But this is now frowned upon... so I had to come up a quick way to get 100k per day. Because I'd be damned if I was going to work just as hard for half the coin... bollocks to that! The system I use is, obviously less lucrative, but vastly quicker.
Under the old system 105K on 8 toons was 1 RLQ each per day on one days worth of invoke bonus. You weren't doing skirmishes or epics because you hated them... But you have to do them now to earn 100k per day... Everyone's a winner eh?
I wasn't doing skirmishes or epics because I didn't have the time. I probably would have hated RQ Skirmishes, too, I'll grant. However, if I had had the time, I would have run them. I like the changes to the RQ system because it encouraged me to go run epics instead. Those I really enjoy and my wife and I try to get two or three Castle Never runs in every night, with more runs on Saturday and Sunday when I have more time. I don't really mind the skirmishes I have to run now, except the three I mentioned and only because I end up running those so much of the time in the RLQ.
I have three characters that are 12k+ and those are the ones I enjoy the most. My two main characters are a paladin and a warlock, and I have one character of every class except warlock where I have two. The new warlock has no gear, while the rest of my sub-12k characters are 8k to 10k. I haven't advanced any of them far enough through ToD or Maze Engine campaigns in order to do those weeklies on them. They're also not powerful enough to solo Biggrin's and I don't have the patience to wait for someone to help with that. I *could* run the WoD weekly on them because they can mostly survive (to varying degrees) the fights out there, but I don't enjoy that zone much and I don't enjoy it enough to collect 120 coffers per week.
When it comes to the coffers for the WoD weekly, you can collect them very quickly by doing dragon runs. My wife finds those highly enjoyable and has made friends with the people who regularly run those. So I leave the coffer collection to her and leach coffers from her from time to time. I do make sure to run all of my characters (except the new warlock right now) through Sharandar and the Dread ring. You are right that running weeklies really doesn't take that long, even though it sounds like a lot of stuff to do.
As for collecting salvageable gear, I don't find that all that onerous. However, you are right that I'm not what could reasonably be called a casual player. Week nights I only have about 90 minutes to play. On the weekends, I can easily spend 8+ hours online each day. In fact, my wife was out of town last weekend and I spent most of Saturday running epics for salvage. I've got 30 pieces of salvage on each of 6 characters and I still have five more in the shared bank. I enjoyed every minute of running all those epics.
To be fair, i am finding it a bit annoying. My issue is that sometimes when buying something on the auction house and i’m 4k short of ad, i can’t quickly run some random dungeon on an alt and get the 4k ad quickly as I’ve already refined 100k ad account wide. Instead, I have to wait a day or sell like 5 zen or sell something in the ah. That’s a slight annoyance. Workable, but annoying.
But the status of AD remains the same. It is less desirable than Zen.
and X Box maintains a healthy rate of exchange. Zen is up today because a new lockbox drops tomorrow and people want keys... not because there are too many AD in the XB economy. The problem is on PC, and since the profit margins on PC are higher than console, if PC sneezes... consoles catch a cold.
Even those running only two toons will suddenly find it a lot harder to hit 72k than before.
AD sinks should have come first. There are all sorts of ways players could be encouraged to burn AD rather than recycling it at 10% tax through the AH or at 0% tax through the ZADX.
But, as usual, the first, most punitive, measure that came to mind was. "nerf it... nerf it hard".
Its frustrating that a creative industry seems to lack imagination and creativity. And saying that there will be cool new AD sinks coming later is the opposite of what they should have done. "We're taking a major source of AD away... but good news! We're giving you more things to spend what little you have left on!"
If you have been stockpiling AD and have 99'000'000 taking up space on a toon or two you'll be rewarded with the chance to buy a limited edition companion on the AH. Cos hoarding is a problem... that needs rewarding.... I'll figure the logic on that one some day.
And no, the OP might not be "the only one" who doesn't care, but if "it doesn't affect me... so it doesn't matter" is the argument for why its not a bad thing, then there's probably little logic can do to persuade otherwise. People only "care" if their own little bubble is pierced.
But I'd like to disavow the misinformed notion that seems to be going around, that the only people this change affects negatively are rich, greedy, people with armies of alts who play 24/7 and have no life.
There are those of us who play smart, and with limited resources found ways to make a good income.
The change doesn't matter to me because most of my AD doesn't come from salvage. I'm also willing to bet on more casual players having more AD to spend. That's the opportunity in this change.
That's the opportunity... OK, that's a neat soundbite, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny when you sit down and think it through.
The only people with an increased cap will be those who only have one or two characters. Earning more than 30-35k per day on the acct will be harder now due to the acct bound cap on daily rAD rewards from Dungeons and Skirmishes.
A two toon only player hitting 100k per day with only two days worth of invoke bonus and two toons worth of weeklies will require a lot more salvage than it does now. A LOT more.
If you see "casual " players farming EToS to earn that much salvage every day, I'm not sure we have the same idea of what constitutes a "casual" player.
There is no logic to support the notion that people who weren't already maxing their daily cap when rAD acquisition was easier will earn more when it is harder.
As I mentioned before, the only people who will see real, genuine, benefit are one toon, no alt players who earn more every day than they can convert.
Casual gamers by the nature of being casual will find it harder to earn rAD.
People who spent money or Zen on character slots are being penalised on a sliding scale... the more they invested in the game the more they lose out.
But, since it's not you that's going to be affected, as you say in the OP... "So what".........
Taking away from customers who invest time and money in your business to reward those with a casual relationship with something most can't even accommodate is what is known in business as "Stupid".
^ Pay attention... ^
Putting everyone on the same level irregardless of how long they play is quite the cheap stunt to pull.
If you don't care about the 100k RAD cap arguably you weren't refining/playing "considerable" amounts anyway compared to those that were, and or were spending money...
Just because a change(s) don't affect you as it may others doesn't mean that the change(s) are good overall.
For those who bought Zen to trade pre-Mod 14, who do you think was buying the bulk of that Zen that funded your progression? Casual players or those that farmed AD? Who do you think provided the bulk of those items on the AH for you to buy? CP's or farmers?...
A F2P player that invests their time/efforts in a decent manner can essentially/eventually get whatever they are seeking off the Zen market/AH.
The console markets are healthy, Zen is readily available for trade in considerable amounts for the most part. On PS4 the once 700k+ MC rings and UES's are around 200k and 140k over the course of a few months. When Swords of Chult was released and UES's were close to 1kk a player could have sold every one they got as drops and could currently be buying them back at about a 5:1 ratio. 2 UES's sold back then could afford about 5 MC rings now and still have AD leftover.
When the update to Mod 14 on PS4 went live yesterday there was over 800k Zen being trading and in about an hour and a half it dropped to ZERO with players buying lock box keys which are on sale, etc. and periodically more Zen popping up. Have been monitoring the ADX quite closely for the most part since Tuesday and over a 1.7kk (million) Zen passed through it the first day and doesn't include any Zen that went through between the window updating. With no/few, forced/artificial influences the market/economy on console arguably has been ebbing and flowing decently since launch for the most part...
as there is still a lot of RAD entering the economy each day and only so much leaving. Our changes are intended to both help bring the prices in the AH, and the ZAX down, as well as help newer players and those with less playtime earn a bit more AD to help them out.
We did pull data on how much of our player base earns over 100k RAD on any given day before implementing this change, and that percentage is lower single digits. That number goes even lower when looking at how many accounts earn over 100k RAD every single day.
For those who feel that a lower single digit percentage of players can upset an entire market, the question is how?... Not that it can't happen.
At 5% and out of 10k players about 500 would be making over 100k, at 3% of that amount about 15 would be making over 100k daily, again, how can so few influence the market so drastically?...
The 100k cap simply gives players that ran 1-2 characters pre-Mod 14 the capacity to generate more AD: - Pre-Mod 14 > 36k x 2 = 72k - Post Mod 14 > 100k
though not necessarily the means to do so meaning that the statement about helping new/casual players earn more AD can be quite misleading. If the intent was to help new/casual players earn more AD the daily bonus would essentially still be per character instead of once per day, that would have allowed them to get about 24k from the LQ's in a decent amount of time and be able to also do other things in-game instead of 12k + any higher queues they run + whatever salvage they can get... The players that run multiple characters would hit the cap in a decent amount of time and have more time to do other things in-game...
As previously mentioned here and in other threads the ADX backlog persistently exists on PC, not Xbox nor PS4. The economy is healthy on console. Players on console can't bot like on PC to generate AD many times over what even an exceptionally capable human could do in the same time frame nor had Arc quests for years that provided free Zen from little to no effort which could have been distributed by third party means for straight profit. Take down the bots, kill the 3rd party Zen/AD sellers and incline more legitimate Zen sales to supply the economy. As previously stated in another thread:
With the RQ (Mod 14)/AD changes, instead of taking down the bots/negative players, etc. to preserve those systems/reduce the amount of AD generated by those means and or making those changes on PC since that market is essentially "warped", those systems were changed on ALL versions to the point where the positive players suffer and buying Zen is essentially the only way to get Zen market items (VIP, etc.) being that cheaper Zen will mean less quantities of it being available at any given time (especially during events) which is quite different from Zen being readily available on the console markets. In other words cheaper Zen will essentially introduce ADX queues on the console markets...
They are rolling the dice with trying to artificially influence the market, if the ADX rates go down Zen items may seem cheaper though if the AH prices don't come down to match... yea, about that...
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I love the change more ad per day for the only character i use 30k ad was too small the new amount makes me want to do dungeons and hunts more.
I run less random dungeons. Why should I waste my time only to get no rewards.
I think this was one of the goals of the change. I can't remember the last time I saw a bot in a dungeon on PC, where I used to see them at least once daily. I actually had it happen a few times where, of the three characters in the dungeon, mine was the only character actually being played by a human.
I love the change more ad per day for the only character i use 30k ad was too small the new amount makes me want to do dungeons and hunts more.
I run less random dungeons. Why should I waste my time only to get no rewards.
I think this was one of the goals of the change. I can't remember the last time I saw a bot in a dungeon on PC, where I used to see them at least once daily. I actually had it happen a few times where, of the three characters in the dungeon, mine was the only character actually being played by a human.
I don't bot. I ran the full dungeon on one character, completed it, then switched to the next character. I don't pull the AFK/Disconnect HAMSTER. I just am not going to waste time running randoms with randoms on multiple characters for a 1000 AD.
I don't seem to be able to find the post by @noworries as quoted by @trinity.
I'd like to address the individual points contained within but don't want to misinterpret any comments in someone else's quote without seeing the full context of the entire post.
Is it from another thread?
So, I apologise if any of the following is incorrect as I'm only working from the following comments.
as there is still a lot of RAD entering the economy each day and only so much leaving. Our changes are intended to both help bring the prices in the AH, and the ZAX down, as well as help newer players and those with less playtime earn a bit more AD to help them out.
We did pull data on how much of our player base earns over 100k RAD on any given day before implementing this change, and that percentage is lower single digits. That number goes even lower when looking at how many accounts earn over 100k RAD every single day
So my first point is this. If the intent is to help anyone earn a bit more rAD how does this new system help achieve that? Anyone could earn 72k per day previously. If they chose not to spawn a second toon, that was their choice. Earning more than 72 on two toons is far harder now than it ever was. So any suggestion that this makes anything "easier" is disingenuous.
Is this entire system aimed at a group of players who were earning more than 36k rAD per day and were frustrated at their lack of opportunity to refine more while not having the good sense God gave little chickens and simply use their FREE second character? Is that what you're saying, cos that's what it sounds like?
Now... "Player base..." I'll tell you about my Guild's current player base. The number of players earning ANY rAD is almost in the single digits. Because nearly 90% drifted away after Random Queues first landed and they had to farm leveling queues for rAD. Of the ACTIVE player base however, we mostly earn close to the new cap. About 70% I'd say...
So if you're talking total player base I'm not surprised that only a small percentage of the "player base" do ANYTHING with any regularity.
Finally... Lets assume you DID mean active players... The idea was to hobble a couple of percent of players while increasing the capacity of a larger number and you expect Zen and AH prices to drop, (ignoring the fact that many AD expenses are fixed price...)?
Before I address that I'll first refer back to my comment about penalising long term investors in favour of rewarding casual, less invested, and new players as a bad idea.
Here's a real world example of how that plays out...
In the UK it became common practise for banks and utility companies to offer favourable rates to new customers. They knew long term customers wouldn't care because they couldn't be bothered to switch. But they were wrong... It took a while but those long term "loyal" customers started to realise that they were subsidising some new customers cheap mortgage, or car insurance, or gas supply, or phone bill, and started to grumble about it. At that point, someone in the UK was statistically more likely to get divorced than switch their bank account. Not any more... Now those "Sign up to our new customer bonus saving deal" companies don't tend to do that any more, not without giving existing... LOYAL customers the chance to take the same "you'll be better off too" deal. Because for every new customer they get they lose 2-3 old customers, because people like their loyalty and long term investment to be valued by the companies they deal with.
People don't like to think that the stuff they've spent years building up can be just disregarded because, "newer players and those with less playtime" suddenly need an incentive. (And of all the bitching, moaning, and general carping I've read on these boards, "I'm new and its not fair that I can't earn exactly the same as that guy with ten toons and a three year head start on me... so I'm off to play ESO" is not one I ever recall reading.)
So if you boost one groups income you shouldn't be surprised if a longer term customer with more invested is not happy that you don't boost theirs. And you should flat out EXPECT them to be Royally pissed off if that newbie boost comes from their income being slashed. Anyone who can't see that has the EQ of a toaster.
But common sense aside, let's address those costs and exchange rates. Taking what I assume must be vast sums from a handful of players will not impact prices the way you suggest because they are such a small sample. (Again, I'm taking you at your word that its low single digits...) If anything increasing the spending power of the majority (if that even happens... But, you say it will so lets imagine it does) will increase the cost of the things those players are likely to want. In other words, new and casual players won't be waiting to see if the price of UES shed ten pecent, or hope the new Swarm drops by a million).
If you increase income at the lower end the price of bread and milk will increase. If you tax the rich to pay for it, Betsy DeVoss will still be able to afford a new yacht because its price will have dropped while the guy seeing bread go up in price won't have the spare cash he hoped he would have to put towards his dream of sailing the seven seas on "Slice of Life" (he's a Dexter fan in this story...) because now everyone at his level has more, the cost of basics rises accordingly swallowing most of that extra income.
Likewise Zen. Unless only those low single digit percent of players quoted are buying the vast majority of Zen, the alleged increase in majority spending power will have a negligible effect on the price. (How much is Zen on PC right now?")
If more people have more...
I'm going to stop there otherwise its going to start sounding really patronising.
ETA. P.S More and BETTER AD sinks should have been the FIRST priority in addressing this issue. Had that been addressed properly a reduction in rAD acquisition may have still been needed but would have also been less draconian.
I love the change more ad per day for the only character i use 30k ad was too small the new amount makes me want to do dungeons and hunts more.
But... Its actually harder to earn more than that now, and even if it weren't all you had to do was activate your other FREE character slot and refine the extra on that character. If you didn't have the sense to do that, you're not earning more now than you could before... you were earning less then than you could have done if you'd done one simple thing.
Yay the devs for solving that nightmare conundrum...
The only way you are earning more now than before is if you are actively undertaking more content than before at a lower rate of return. Which, I'm sorry to say, you could have been doing before... but for an easier return on time invested.
Putting hands in to the lower earning brackets tends to put the money back into the economy rapidly simply due to the fact that the lower brackets need things(for one reason or another)..as a group they will spend faster and more.. Whereas the upper brackets have no such pressure to spend, they get things when they want, not need, which is a significantly different dynamic..and frankly, from an economic perspective much less useful..
I don't bot. I ran the full dungeon on one character, completed it, then switched to the next character. I don't pull the AFK/Disconnect HAMSTER. I just am not going to waste time running randoms with randoms on multiple characters for a 1000 AD.
That was my point. I think that was part of the unstated goals of the change. I used to run 8 characters (and my wife ran 4) per day through randoms to earn rAD. Now, we each run two and move on to epics and other things we find fun. Ironically, I just commented in this thread yesterday how I hadn't seen any bots since this change took effect and then we ended up running with one last night in Cragmire Crypts. We vote kicked it once it became obvious that it was a bot, and I was surprised we were able to do so since we hadn't been in the dungeon for anything even remotely approaching 15 minutes. That was a refreshing change!
My main gripe would be that if I work on my boons, I'm not earning AD anywhere near as easily. If I aim to earn AD, I'm spending a lot more time on it and not working on my boons.
AD used to be as easy as running random dungeons and skirmish on two toons. Now I run randoms on one toon, earning less AD. Then if I want to do an activity to try an get salvage, it takes way longer to earn a similar amount of AD.
I think that even with the free gear hand-out of mod 14, it's realistically going to take a lot longer to get anywhere near end game content because boons are taking WAY longer to make progress on unless I ignore AD.
The only benefit I see is that I can use seals to get Primal Gear ... which I find a little odd. My toon is nowhere near end-game ready, but I've got end-game armor.
Putting hands in to the lower earning brackets tends to put the money back into the economy rapidly simply due to the fact that the lower brackets need things(for one reason or another)..as a group they will spend faster and more..
Whereas the upper brackets have no such pressure to spend, they get things when they want, not need, which is a significantly different dynamic..and frankly, from an economic perspective much less useful..
Which is exactly what causes the prices of lower end commodities to rise. Its called supply and demand. The more money people have the more they spend, (Demand) this means suppliers aren't in a position to cut each others' throats to get the sale... When demand increases and supply remains, prices increase.
It's the self same logic as the alleged reason for broad reduction of rAD. "Fewer AD... lower price" But if that fewer AD doesn't apply to the lower end of the economic model and, in fact works the other way so that they earn MORE the inverse happens. The big ticket items might see some small reduction, but since more people will (allegedly... and based on how much more effort it takes to increase daily rAD by anything approaching a significant number I don't believe it will...) have the capacity to buy the lower ticket items those items will see an increase in demand which is the blue touch paper for increased prices.
Plus smart vendors won't sell cheap if they know what they're doing.
Look at UEs on XB. Up till last week, with the old lockbox, supply went through the roof because UEs dropped in Professions packs and the unit price dropped to below 17500 for the time that I've ever seen. Supply suddenly dropped when the new lock box appeared and no Professions pack and they were back in the hands of people who farm them with Alchemy... What's that? Oh... UEs are double the price they were two weeks ago? Who'd have guessed that the fundamental fiscal rule of Supply and Demand outweighs slight variations in income?
My main gripe would be that if I work on my boons, I'm not earning AD anywhere near as easily. If I aim to earn AD, I'm spending a lot more time on it and not working on my boons.
AD used to be as easy as running random dungeons and skirmish on two toons. Now I run randoms on one toon, earning less AD. Then if I want to do an activity to try an get salvage, it takes way longer to earn a similar amount of AD.
I think that even with the free gear hand-out of mod 14, it's realistically going to take a lot longer to get anywhere near end game content because boons are taking WAY longer to make progress on unless I ignore AD.
The only benefit I see is that I can use seals to get Primal Gear ... which I find a little odd. My toon is nowhere near end-game ready, but I've got end-game armor.
The thing is that earning AD gets easier as you get higher item level. I would say just earn the AD you can in the time you have and work through your campaigns to get the boons. If you can get into epic dungeons, most groups (in my experience) don't mind helping out one (or even two) lesser geared characters as long as the run is otherwise completable.
I've run Castle Never with a 7400 IL rogue (just earlier this week) in a public group where they had somehow gotten their IL up to 8400 in order to queue. (I'm not sure how they did this and I still do not really care.) The run went fine, even though that rogue spent a good deal of time dying and running to catch up. They learned some things about running Castle Never and I noticed they were changing tactics along the way. If they'd asked any questions about the dungeon, I'd have been happy to answer them. (I don't really bother to ask if anyone is new to the dungeon anymore. I find no one tends to answer, even if they are new.)
If you do start running epics for salvage, I would funnel the salvage to your other character that, apparently, you do not run random dungeons on anymore. Use their astral diamond bonus (from invoking) to boost your AD income. The only problem with this is you can (with varying degrees of ease) gather enough salvage to outstrip the amount of astral diamond bonus you have on your other character. If you have the ability to purchase more character slots, I would recommend that if only to use those characters for invoking and salvage. If you have a character that can run the Intermediate queue, I would run that character through the Intermediate queue and run the other one through the Leveling queue. That'll use up all the astral diamond bonus on those two characters every day and, if you aren't doing that already, it'll give you more rAD than you're currently getting using one character in both queues.
The thing is that earning AD gets easier as you get higher item level. I would say just earn the AD you can in the time you have and work through your campaigns to get the boons. If you can get into epic dungeons, most groups (in my experience) don't mind helping out one (or even two) lesser geared characters as long as the run is otherwise completable.
I've run Castle Never with a 7400 IL rogue (just earlier this week) in a public group where they had somehow gotten their IL up to 8400 in order to queue. (I'm not sure how they did this and I still do not really care.) The run went fine, even though that rogue spent a good deal of time dying and running to catch up. They learned some things about running Castle Never and I noticed they were changing tactics along the way. If they'd asked any questions about the dungeon, I'd have been happy to answer them. (I don't really bother to ask if anyone is new to the dungeon anymore. I find no one tends to answer, even if they are new.)
If you do start running epics for salvage, I would funnel the salvage to your other character that, apparently, you do not run random dungeons on anymore. Use their astral diamond bonus (from invoking) to boost your AD income. The only problem with this is you can (with varying degrees of ease) gather enough salvage to outstrip the amount of astral diamond bonus you have on your other character. If you have the ability to purchase more character slots, I would recommend that if only to use those characters for invoking and salvage. If you have a character that can run the Intermediate queue, I would run that character through the Intermediate queue and run the other one through the Leveling queue. That'll use up all the astral diamond bonus on those two characters every day and, if you aren't doing that already, it'll give you more rAD than you're currently getting using one character in both queues.
Thanks for the tips.
Both toons are over 10k IL. I have the free Barovia gear and have been saving seals to fill up on Primal gear.
I usually only get to invoke a couple times unless it's on the weekend and playing for hours.
I do one random leveling and one intermediate que for the AD, but I don't bother doing any more as I generally don't have the extra keys for a lot of the maps that come up.
I do weeklies, but so far I only have the Sharandar and Well of the Dragons ones unlocked. If I can, I try to do Malabog's Castle for salvage, as keys for that are easy to make.
Otherwise I'm just trying to make progress on the campaigns and boons, which is extremely slow going. __
As I see it, a new player is at this weird place where we have high-level armor and weapons, .... but boons, companions/companion upgrades, runes, enchants, and item refinement are all years away as they require so much AD and campaign grinding.
The AD system as it is is almost a waste of time as the return is so small and meaningless. If I need a lot of AD, it's been far more profitable to wait for the next 2X guild mark event.
@jihalla#0769 You should unlock Dread Ring as soon as you can, as well. That's an easy weekly (kill three red wizards). You shouldn't have any problem unlocking Dread Ring, either. Basically, help Celeste, then talk to her, then run like the wind to Makos, talk to him, then run until you hit the cutscene, fight, and you're there. Knox will then have a quest for you, and you'll pick up three quests from other people, run them, then Knox will have you talk to Rath Modar and complete a dungeon. After that, you have to wait a day and then can do the weekly. The dungeon's not hard and you should be able to do it solo at your IL. The demonic heroic encounters here, in Well of Dragons, in IceWind Dale, in the Stronghold, and wherever else there are demonic HE's give you faerzress, which let you progress in the Underdark campaign.
Also, work on the Maze Engine campaign. Takes about 30 days, but the weekly you get at the end isn't too tough (and there are always people running it). The campaign is set up where you do three or four quests, then you have five days of one quest a day, then three or four quests, then 10 days of one/day, then three or four quests, then 15 days of one/day, then the final three or four quests.
I play regularly but not hardcore (do a raq + req) and I'm way over cap right now. I don't see it as much of a problem for casual and lower geared players but it does have an impact on activity for better geared ones. Most are multi-millions in raw AD, and I'm worried this cap will reduce player activity, it is very dead even at peak times some days.... barely any people on the whole server/s that are doing any dungeons.
I'd be interested to know when the devs first noticed that there was this big disparity in the economy.
The reason I'd like to know that goes back just over a year ago to the announcement of Random Queues. One of the stated main goals of RQs was to get Dungeons firing faster and more often and a large part of the incentive to do this was a serious increase in earned RAD from Random Queues.
Some of us pointed out, and were... frankly... quite happy, that we would be earning far more than before, while still decrying Random Queues for the negative impact it would have on other players.
And we did... tens even hundreds of thousands of extra RAD per day for running a few extra low level Dungeons...
So, were they aware prior to RQs that AD was dangerously high? If so, why pump millions more into the system? If not... has the correlation between the advent of RQs with its windfall methodology not been made with the realisation that in the past year there have been too many new AD in the system?
I was quite happy with my earning potential before RQ. Very happy with it afterwards. But somehow, something seriously weird happened and after more than doubling rewards in a bid to drive up participation, lots of AD dropped into the system...
Now I earn a fraction of what I earned before the initial changes and rather than 16+ dungeons in a day, since the introduction of the new queues and caps, I run fewer than 2 per day cos... why the hell would I if my rAD is already at over 100k?
I've often used the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." In this case its more like, "If it ain't broke don't break it, and then do something worse and claim to have fixed it by breaking it some more." I know that doesn't roll off the tongue the same way, but it's the best I can come up with without using bad language.
I love the change more ad per day for the only character i use 30k ad was too small the new amount makes me want to do dungeons and hunts more.
I run less random dungeons. Why should I waste my time only to get no rewards.
I think this was one of the goals of the change. I can't remember the last time I saw a bot in a dungeon on PC, where I used to see them at least once daily. I actually had it happen a few times where, of the three characters in the dungeon, mine was the only character actually being played by a human.
Can you explain the logic behind that?
Not being funny, but here are a few reasons that suggest the opposite will happen.
One bot acct can now earn 100k per day.
Bot accts would only run two (free) toons. (or 72k per day) Why pay for more character slots when a) the acct is likely to be found and closed and b) when...
New accts can be opened at will on PC meaning one bot accts can just keep running without the need to switch toons every 36k.
So, instead of bot accts being limited to 72k and require a switch, one acct can earn 100k without the need to switch.
So even if a bot acct can be identified, monitored, and closed down within 24 hours of activation, its earning about 39% more per day than before.
Anecdotal evidence aside, I doubt this new system will deter bots at all.
I love the change more ad per day for the only character i use 30k ad was too small the new amount makes me want to do dungeons and hunts more.
I run less random dungeons. Why should I waste my time only to get no rewards.
I think this was one of the goals of the change. I can't remember the last time I saw a bot in a dungeon on PC, where I used to see them at least once daily. I actually had it happen a few times where, of the three characters in the dungeon, mine was the only character actually being played by a human.
Can you explain the logic behind that?
Not being funny, but here are a few reasons that suggest the opposite will happen.
One bot acct can now earn 100k per day.
Bot accts would only run two (free) toons. (or 72k per day) Why pay for more character slots when a) the acct is likely to be found and closed and b) when...
New accts can be opened at will on PC meaning one bot accts can just keep running without the need to switch toons every 36k.
So, instead of bot accts being limited to 72k and require a switch, one acct can earn 100k without the need to switch.
So even if a bot acct can be identified, monitored, and closed down within 24 hours of activation, its earning about 39% more per day than before.
Anecdotal evidence aside, I doubt this new system will deter bots at all.
Do you really think botters are running two characters per account through enough random dungeons to actually earn 100k per day? Seriously? If you really think this, I think you're cracked.
Sure, they can make as many accounts as they want, and they already do this.
At best, they're running one character through the Leveling Queue and one through the Intermediate Queue and that's only if they take the time to gear that character sufficiently to hit a 9k item level. That means they're getting - at most - 40k per day per account, and that assumes they have the bot invoke 5x per day per character. If they aren't bothering with the invoking, and I can't see why they would since you're talking 2h 30m to get 3960 or 3980 extra AD, then they're only making a little over 21k per account per day.
I really can't see them taking the time to gear a character to run anything higher than the Leveling Queue specifically because of the likelihood that account will be banned for botting. Even if they are willing to gear the characters to run the Intermediate Queue, they certainly aren't going to bother equipping the characters to run the Advanced or Expert queues, where their scripted nature would almost certainly become so apparent and such a hindrance as to earn a kick from the group.
So they might still be earning as much as they were before, but they're going to have run a lot more accounts to do that now. There's no way they're getting anywhere near 100k per day per account using just random queues. It can't be worth the time and electricity they'd have to invest to do that.
If the intent is to help anyone earn a bit more rAD how does this new system help achieve that? Anyone could earn 72k per day previously. If they chose not to spawn a second toon, that was their choice. Earning more than 72 on two toons is far harder now than it ever was. So any suggestion that this makes anything "easier" is disingenuous.
Before I address that I'll first refer back to my comment about penalising long term investors in favour of rewarding casual, less invested, and new players as a bad idea.
And you should flat out EXPECT them to be Royally pissed off if that newbie boost comes from their income being slashed.
Hello somebody.
As previously stated a while back in another thread if casual/newer players were thought or found to could use boost, simply increasing THEIR earnings with a "new player" bonus that will completely deplete over time and a separate bonus for all that builds up as the account is logged off seemingly would have achieved that goal without penalizing those that have played longer and or more.
More and BETTER AD sinks should have been the FIRST priority in addressing this issue. Had that been addressed properly a reduction in rAD acquisition may have still been needed but would have also been less draconian.
I'd be interested to know when the devs first noticed that there was this big disparity in the economy.
The reason I'd like to know that goes back just over a year ago to the announcement of Random Queues. One of the stated main goals of RQs was to get Dungeons firing faster and more often and a large part of the incentive to do this was a serious increase in earned RAD from Random Queues.
Some of us pointed out, and were... frankly... quite happy, that we would be earning far more than before, while still decrying Random Queues for the negative impact it would have on other players.
And we did... tens even hundreds of thousands of extra RAD per day for running a few extra low level Dungeons...
So, were they aware prior to RQs that AD was dangerously high? If so, why pump millions more into the system? If not... has the correlation between the advent of RQs with its windfall methodology not been made with the realisation that in the past year there have been too many new AD in the system?
I was quite happy with my earning potential before RQ. Very happy with it afterwards. But somehow, something seriously weird happened and after more than doubling rewards in a bid to drive up participation, lots of AD dropped into the system...
Now I earn a fraction of what I earned before the initial changes and rather than 16+ dungeons in a day, since the introduction of the new queues and caps, I run fewer than 2 per day cos... why the hell would I if my rAD is already at over 100k?
I've often used the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." In this case its more like, "If it ain't broke don't break it, and then do something worse and claim to have fixed it by breaking it some more." I know that doesn't roll off the tongue the same way, but it's the best I can come up with without using bad language.
^ Again for those who aren't seeing the methodology going on. ^
Things were still pretty decent after RQ's were initially introduced though Mod 14 uppercut that right in the chops, "especially" with higher tier RQ's often enough placing you in a group with not even barely capable ilvl players such as 11k's in FBI/MSPC which give trouble to 13k+ players...
There's essentially no logical/reasonable way a company could not foresee more AD being generated with RQ's, hell it was even stated along the lines of increasing RAD yields via RQ's being a goal though now that dungeons are firing faster the increased RAD yields have been yanked out...
With Mod 14 higher amounts of RAD are locked behind ilvl in regard to RQ's and completion of AQ's/EQ's depend on group composition so that's another barrier which is beyond the control of the players unless they group with friends/Guilds...
About 8k (+ bonuses) can be made initially with the LQ About 12k (+b) is locked behind 9k ilvl for IQ. About 15k (+b) is locked behind 11k ilvl for AQ. About 20k (+b) is locked behind 13k ilvl for EQ.
After RQ's were introduced and pre-Mod 14 a player with a lvl 70 character and Dread ring/Sharandar unlocked could earn about 16k RAD from RQ's, double (around 32k) if they utilized 2 characters that had normal and skirmishes unlocked. With Mod 14 if a player doesn't have a character of at least 9k ilvl over 92% of the RAD available through RQ's is unavailable to them from the jump...
So again, how is this helping players, especially new ones earn more AD?...
New players/those with less play time are at a disadvantage compared to pre-Mod 14 because their RQ RAD generation has not only been cut but also ilvl gated and goes DIRECTLY against:
"as well as help newer players and those with less playtime earn a bit more AD to help them out."
ALL Rights Reserved for any and all suggestions, ideas, etc. from this user.
“There are changes that can be made that don’t require coding...” - TriNitY "No amount of coding will change human behavior" - TriNitY
Do you really think botters are running two characters per account through enough random dungeons to actually earn 100k per day? Seriously? If you really think this, I think you're cracked.
There's no way they're getting anywhere near 100k per day per account using just random queues. It can't be worth the time and electricity they'd have to invest to do that.
Bots essentially operate on their own meaning that things an actual person may find mundane or not worth it doesn't affect them, so what if it takes hours on end for a bot to generate "x" amount of AD? Whatever AD a bot can generate in a specific amount of time is multiplied by how many are being ran.
Via LQ's - One can generate about 58k in 10 hours - 29k in 5 hrs for two - 14.5k in 2.5 hrs for three. - etc.
Via LQ's + IQ's (9k ilvl) - One can generate about 20k in 30 mins - 40k for two 30 mins - 60k for three 30 mins - etc.
Essentially bot users don't have to run RQ's for longer periods of time, they can just run more for shorter periods of time or get a character to 9k ilvl and be able to generate more AD in far less time. With a combination of 540 equipment, low ranks enchantments and low/mid range Guild boons and or low tier campaign boons a character can be 9k fairly easily...
ALL Rights Reserved for any and all suggestions, ideas, etc. from this user.
“There are changes that can be made that don’t require coding...” - TriNitY "No amount of coding will change human behavior" - TriNitY
Comments
We still hate the Random Leveling Queue because you too often end up in Dread Legion, Master of the Hunt, or Illusionist's Gambit. Dread Legion and Master of the Hunt are boring and not interesting to play. Dread Legion is at least short. (Not that Master of the Hunt is long; it's just longer than Dread Legion.) Illusionist's Gambit is the truly terrible one because if you don't feel like running for gold, then that's the day you're coerced into it because you're in the minority. If you feel like running for gold, then that's the day you're going to end up coercing someone who decides they're entitled to go afk because they voted to leave. So you're forced to carry that person to a gold completion, if you want it, or you're stuck settling for silver. The thing I've noticed about that dungeon is that it isn't long, but it feels long.
Since we're only running two characters through queues every day, we've switched to running two or three epic dungeons every day. Typically, we run Castle Never because there is more opportunity for drops and we're trying to get the Shard of Orcus' Wand. We are now both refining 100k astral diamonds per day. The amount of unrefined astral diamonds that I have has gone from zero to about two million right now.
My wife started out after the update with unrefined astral diamonds because the characters she has that hardly get played had 100k in astral diamond bonus. So those characters were able to salvage everything they were given for a while. Her unrefined astral diamonds is now up over 300k, after dropping to zero, because she created three additional characters for invoking and salvage. (She had five when the update came out and now has eight.) I had eight characters before the update and now have nine.
So if you have the time to run epic dungeons for salvage, then it seems like eight or nine characters (maybe as many as 10) is the sweet spot for the number of alts to have. I have two characters that I run regularly and those characters are the ones I work on campaigns on. My other characters just do the weekly quests that are available to them and otherwise do invoking and salvage. I have a rotation now for refining astral diamonds and I'm able to refine 100k on one character each day. They no longer go under 100k rough astral diamonds on any character. Some days my paladin and warlock (my two main characters) get over 300k and so I'll refine on them two days in a row. Otherwise, it's just one day per character each week.
EDIT: I should add that we do not salvage beyond what our AD bonus from invoking allows. If the character doesn't have an AD bonus to cover the full value of the salvage item, then salvage stops on that character.
You weren't doing skirmishes or epics because you hated them...
But you have to do them now to earn 100k per day... Everyone's a winner eh?
I don't know how geared you 8 toons are, or what camapigns they've unlocked. But it sounds like you're running enough salvage runs per day to be spending more than a casual hour or two to be able to now hit 100k.
The method I use on my 8 is simple. Every day I run a different toon through RLQ and RIQ, then through their six weeklies.
With VIP this lands about 50k... since that toon has 8 days worth of invoke bonus rAD that leaps to 75k with 8k bonus leftover (remember under new rAD earnings cap you will never be able to use more than 33'334 bonus rAD a day).
That means I need circa 17k of salvage... since I drop most of this from RIQ, Ichor, Seals, and HE drops I usually need to run AT MOST 2 more epic dungeons.
This sounds like a lot...
But its actually pretty quick, and you're not stuck doing more than 1 RLQ or RIQ, and even if you get a long RIQ like Tiamat or CN, you get some of the extra salvage saving more time.
When I explained this to someone else their response was... "But The Tyranny Hoard weekly... it takes too long..."
And you probably know this, but just in case...
The trick is, to park your unused toons in the Well of Dragons, claim the Weekly on all of them first thing Monday, and then whenever you run through an invoke cycle, have each toon just go kill a group of Thayans/Cult. It will take only a couple of days to cover the 120 coffers, and most of the targets will be dead so just kill the last couple, go donate, talk to Elminster and go do something else with 4'500AD in your pocket.
I used to run 1 Random Dungeon and 1 Random Skirmish per day on all my toons and aim to get 25k per day on each for a total of 200k per day. But this is now frowned upon... so I had to come up a quick way to get 100k per day.
Because I'd be damned if I was going to work just as hard for half the coin... bollocks to that!
The system I use is, obviously less lucrative, but vastly quicker.
I have three characters that are 12k+ and those are the ones I enjoy the most. My two main characters are a paladin and a warlock, and I have one character of every class except warlock where I have two. The new warlock has no gear, while the rest of my sub-12k characters are 8k to 10k. I haven't advanced any of them far enough through ToD or Maze Engine campaigns in order to do those weeklies on them. They're also not powerful enough to solo Biggrin's and I don't have the patience to wait for someone to help with that. I *could* run the WoD weekly on them because they can mostly survive (to varying degrees) the fights out there, but I don't enjoy that zone much and I don't enjoy it enough to collect 120 coffers per week.
When it comes to the coffers for the WoD weekly, you can collect them very quickly by doing dragon runs. My wife finds those highly enjoyable and has made friends with the people who regularly run those. So I leave the coffer collection to her and leach coffers from her from time to time. I do make sure to run all of my characters (except the new warlock right now) through Sharandar and the Dread ring. You are right that running weeklies really doesn't take that long, even though it sounds like a lot of stuff to do.
As for collecting salvageable gear, I don't find that all that onerous. However, you are right that I'm not what could reasonably be called a casual player. Week nights I only have about 90 minutes to play. On the weekends, I can easily spend 8+ hours online each day. In fact, my wife was out of town last weekend and I spent most of Saturday running epics for salvage. I've got 30 pieces of salvage on each of 6 characters and I still have five more in the shared bank. I enjoyed every minute of running all those epics.
First world problem sure, but still annoying.
^ GOLD ^ ^ Pay attention... ^
Putting everyone on the same level irregardless of how long they play is quite the cheap stunt to pull.
If you don't care about the 100k RAD cap arguably you weren't refining/playing "considerable" amounts anyway compared to those that were, and or were spending money...
Just because a change(s) don't affect you as it may others doesn't mean that the change(s) are good overall.
For those who bought Zen to trade pre-Mod 14, who do you think was buying the bulk of that Zen that funded your progression? Casual players or those that farmed AD? Who do you think provided the bulk of those items on the AH for you to buy? CP's or farmers?...
A F2P player that invests their time/efforts in a decent manner can essentially/eventually get whatever they are seeking off the Zen market/AH.
The console markets are healthy, Zen is readily available for trade in considerable amounts for the most part. On PS4 the once 700k+ MC rings and UES's are around 200k and 140k over the course of a few months. When Swords of Chult was released and UES's were close to 1kk a player could have sold every one they got as drops and could currently be buying them back at about a 5:1 ratio. 2 UES's sold back then could afford about 5 MC rings now and still have AD leftover.
When the update to Mod 14 on PS4 went live yesterday there was over 800k Zen being trading and in about an hour and a half it dropped to ZERO with players buying lock box keys which are on sale, etc. and periodically more Zen popping up. Have been monitoring the ADX quite closely for the most part since Tuesday and over a 1.7kk (million) Zen passed through it the first day and doesn't include any Zen that went through between the window updating. With no/few, forced/artificial influences the market/economy on console arguably has been ebbing and flowing decently since launch for the most part... For those who feel that a lower single digit percentage of players can upset an entire market, the question is how?... Not that it can't happen.
At 5% and out of 10k players about 500 would be making over 100k, at 3% of that amount about 15 would be making over 100k daily, again, how can so few influence the market so drastically?...
The 100k cap simply gives players that ran 1-2 characters pre-Mod 14 the capacity to generate more AD:
- Pre-Mod 14 > 36k x 2 = 72k
- Post Mod 14 > 100k
though not necessarily the means to do so meaning that the statement about helping new/casual players earn more AD can be quite misleading. If the intent was to help new/casual players earn more AD the daily bonus would essentially still be per character instead of once per day, that would have allowed them to get about 24k from the LQ's in a decent amount of time and be able to also do other things in-game instead of 12k + any higher queues they run + whatever salvage they can get... The players that run multiple characters would hit the cap in a decent amount of time and have more time to do other things in-game...
As previously mentioned here and in other threads the ADX backlog persistently exists on PC, not Xbox nor PS4. The economy is healthy on console. Players on console can't bot like on PC to generate AD many times over what even an exceptionally capable human could do in the same time frame nor had Arc quests for years that provided free Zen from little to no effort which could have been distributed by third party means for straight profit. Take down the bots, kill the 3rd party Zen/AD sellers and incline more legitimate Zen sales to supply the economy. As previously stated in another thread: They are rolling the dice with trying to artificially influence the market, if the ADX rates go down Zen items may seem cheaper though if the AH prices don't come down to match... yea, about that...
“There are changes that can be made that don’t require coding...” - TriNitY
"No amount of coding will change human behavior" - TriNitY
Ongoing Issue: Legitmate Players Banned for Botting (Console) and the Future for "Dedicated" Players
Suggestions: (Implemented) \/\/ Rearrange Character on character Select Screen
I'd like to address the individual points contained within but don't want to misinterpret any comments in someone else's quote without seeing the full context of the entire post.
Is it from another thread?
So, I apologise if any of the following is incorrect as I'm only working from the following comments.
as there is still a lot of RAD entering the economy each day and only so much leaving. Our changes are intended to both help bring the prices in the AH, and the ZAX down, as well as help newer players and those with less playtime earn a bit more AD to help them out.
We did pull data on how much of our player base earns over 100k RAD on any given day before implementing this change, and that percentage is lower single digits. That number goes even lower when looking at how many accounts earn over 100k RAD every single day
So my first point is this.
If the intent is to help anyone earn a bit more rAD how does this new system help achieve that?
Anyone could earn 72k per day previously. If they chose not to spawn a second toon, that was their choice.
Earning more than 72 on two toons is far harder now than it ever was.
So any suggestion that this makes anything "easier" is disingenuous.
Is this entire system aimed at a group of players who were earning more than 36k rAD per day and were frustrated at their lack of opportunity to refine more while not having the good sense God gave little chickens and simply use their FREE second character?
Is that what you're saying, cos that's what it sounds like?
Now... "Player base..."
I'll tell you about my Guild's current player base.
The number of players earning ANY rAD is almost in the single digits. Because nearly 90% drifted away after Random Queues first landed and they had to farm leveling queues for rAD.
Of the ACTIVE player base however, we mostly earn close to the new cap. About 70% I'd say...
So if you're talking total player base I'm not surprised that only a small percentage of the "player base" do ANYTHING with any regularity.
Finally...
Lets assume you DID mean active players...
The idea was to hobble a couple of percent of players while increasing the capacity of a larger number and you expect Zen and AH prices to drop, (ignoring the fact that many AD expenses are fixed price...)?
Before I address that I'll first refer back to my comment about penalising long term investors in favour of rewarding casual, less invested, and new players as a bad idea.
Here's a real world example of how that plays out...
In the UK it became common practise for banks and utility companies to offer favourable rates to new customers. They knew long term customers wouldn't care because they couldn't be bothered to switch.
But they were wrong...
It took a while but those long term "loyal" customers started to realise that they were subsidising some new customers cheap mortgage, or car insurance, or gas supply, or phone bill, and started to grumble about it.
At that point, someone in the UK was statistically more likely to get divorced than switch their bank account.
Not any more...
Now those "Sign up to our new customer bonus saving deal" companies don't tend to do that any more, not without giving existing... LOYAL customers the chance to take the same "you'll be better off too" deal. Because for every new customer they get they lose 2-3 old customers, because people like their loyalty and long term investment to be valued by the companies they deal with.
People don't like to think that the stuff they've spent years building up can be just disregarded because, "newer players and those with less playtime" suddenly need an incentive. (And of all the bitching, moaning, and general carping I've read on these boards, "I'm new and its not fair that I can't earn exactly the same as that guy with ten toons and a three year head start on me... so I'm off to play ESO" is not one I ever recall reading.)
So if you boost one groups income you shouldn't be surprised if a longer term customer with more invested is not happy that you don't boost theirs. And you should flat out EXPECT them to be Royally pissed off if that newbie boost comes from their income being slashed.
Anyone who can't see that has the EQ of a toaster.
But common sense aside, let's address those costs and exchange rates.
Taking what I assume must be vast sums from a handful of players will not impact prices the way you suggest because they are such a small sample. (Again, I'm taking you at your word that its low single digits...)
If anything increasing the spending power of the majority (if that even happens... But, you say it will so lets imagine it does) will increase the cost of the things those players are likely to want.
In other words, new and casual players won't be waiting to see if the price of UES shed ten pecent, or hope the new Swarm drops by a million).
If you increase income at the lower end the price of bread and milk will increase. If you tax the rich to pay for it, Betsy DeVoss will still be able to afford a new yacht because its price will have dropped while the guy seeing bread go up in price won't have the spare cash he hoped he would have to put towards his dream of sailing the seven seas on "Slice of Life" (he's a Dexter fan in this story...) because now everyone at his level has more, the cost of basics rises accordingly swallowing most of that extra income.
Likewise Zen.
Unless only those low single digit percent of players quoted are buying the vast majority of Zen, the alleged increase in majority spending power will have a negligible effect on the price.
(How much is Zen on PC right now?")
If more people have more...
I'm going to stop there otherwise its going to start sounding really patronising.
ETA.
P.S
More and BETTER AD sinks should have been the FIRST priority in addressing this issue.
Had that been addressed properly a reduction in rAD acquisition may have still been needed but would have also been less draconian.
Its actually harder to earn more than that now, and even if it weren't all you had to do was activate your other FREE character slot and refine the extra on that character. If you didn't have the sense to do that, you're not earning more now than you could before... you were earning less then than you could have done if you'd done one simple thing.
Yay the devs for solving that nightmare conundrum...
The only way you are earning more now than before is if you are actively undertaking more content than before at a lower rate of return. Which, I'm sorry to say, you could have been doing before... but for an easier return on time invested.
Actually..That’s false..
Putting hands in to the lower earning brackets tends to put the money back into the economy rapidly simply due to the fact that the lower brackets need things(for one reason or another)..as a group they will spend faster and more..
Whereas the upper brackets have no such pressure to spend, they get things when they want, not need, which is a significantly different dynamic..and frankly, from an economic perspective much less useful..
My main gripe would be that if I work on my boons, I'm not earning AD anywhere near as easily.
If I aim to earn AD, I'm spending a lot more time on it and not working on my boons.
AD used to be as easy as running random dungeons and skirmish on two toons.
Now I run randoms on one toon, earning less AD.
Then if I want to do an activity to try an get salvage, it takes way longer to earn a similar amount of AD.
I think that even with the free gear hand-out of mod 14, it's realistically going to take a lot longer to get anywhere near end game content because boons are taking WAY longer to make progress on unless I ignore AD.
The only benefit I see is that I can use seals to get Primal Gear ... which I find a little odd. My toon is nowhere near end-game ready, but I've got end-game armor.
Its called supply and demand. The more money people have the more they spend, (Demand) this means suppliers aren't in a position to cut each others' throats to get the sale... When demand increases and supply remains, prices increase.
It's the self same logic as the alleged reason for broad reduction of rAD.
"Fewer AD... lower price"
But if that fewer AD doesn't apply to the lower end of the economic model and, in fact works the other way so that they earn MORE the inverse happens.
The big ticket items might see some small reduction, but since more people will (allegedly... and based on how much more effort it takes to increase daily rAD by anything approaching a significant number I don't believe it will...) have the capacity to buy the lower ticket items those items will see an increase in demand which is the blue touch paper for increased prices.
Plus smart vendors won't sell cheap if they know what they're doing.
Look at UEs on XB.
Up till last week, with the old lockbox, supply went through the roof because UEs dropped in Professions packs and the unit price dropped to below 17500 for the time that I've ever seen.
Supply suddenly dropped when the new lock box appeared and no Professions pack and they were back in the hands of people who farm them with Alchemy...
What's that?
Oh... UEs are double the price they were two weeks ago?
Who'd have guessed that the fundamental fiscal rule of Supply and Demand outweighs slight variations in income?
I've run Castle Never with a 7400 IL rogue (just earlier this week) in a public group where they had somehow gotten their IL up to 8400 in order to queue. (I'm not sure how they did this and I still do not really care.) The run went fine, even though that rogue spent a good deal of time dying and running to catch up. They learned some things about running Castle Never and I noticed they were changing tactics along the way. If they'd asked any questions about the dungeon, I'd have been happy to answer them. (I don't really bother to ask if anyone is new to the dungeon anymore. I find no one tends to answer, even if they are new.)
If you do start running epics for salvage, I would funnel the salvage to your other character that, apparently, you do not run random dungeons on anymore. Use their astral diamond bonus (from invoking) to boost your AD income. The only problem with this is you can (with varying degrees of ease) gather enough salvage to outstrip the amount of astral diamond bonus you have on your other character. If you have the ability to purchase more character slots, I would recommend that if only to use those characters for invoking and salvage. If you have a character that can run the Intermediate queue, I would run that character through the Intermediate queue and run the other one through the Leveling queue. That'll use up all the astral diamond bonus on those two characters every day and, if you aren't doing that already, it'll give you more rAD than you're currently getting using one character in both queues.
Thanks for the tips.
Both toons are over 10k IL.
I have the free Barovia gear and have been saving seals to fill up on Primal gear.
I usually only get to invoke a couple times unless it's on the weekend and playing for hours.
I do one random leveling and one intermediate que for the AD, but I don't bother doing any more as I generally don't have the extra keys for a lot of the maps that come up.
I do weeklies, but so far I only have the Sharandar and Well of the Dragons ones unlocked.
If I can, I try to do Malabog's Castle for salvage, as keys for that are easy to make.
Otherwise I'm just trying to make progress on the campaigns and boons, which is extremely slow going.
__
As I see it, a new player is at this weird place where we have high-level armor and weapons, .... but boons, companions/companion upgrades, runes, enchants, and item refinement are all years away as they require so much AD and campaign grinding.
The AD system as it is is almost a waste of time as the return is so small and meaningless.
If I need a lot of AD, it's been far more profitable to wait for the next 2X guild mark event.
Also, work on the Maze Engine campaign. Takes about 30 days, but the weekly you get at the end isn't too tough (and there are always people running it). The campaign is set up where you do three or four quests, then you have five days of one quest a day, then three or four quests, then 10 days of one/day, then three or four quests, then 15 days of one/day, then the final three or four quests.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
The reason I'd like to know that goes back just over a year ago to the announcement of Random Queues.
One of the stated main goals of RQs was to get Dungeons firing faster and more often and a large part of the incentive to do this was a serious increase in earned RAD from Random Queues.
Some of us pointed out, and were... frankly... quite happy, that we would be earning far more than before, while still decrying Random Queues for the negative impact it would have on other players.
And we did... tens even hundreds of thousands of extra RAD per day for running a few extra low level Dungeons...
So, were they aware prior to RQs that AD was dangerously high? If so, why pump millions more into the system?
If not... has the correlation between the advent of RQs with its windfall methodology not been made with the realisation that in the past year there have been too many new AD in the system?
I was quite happy with my earning potential before RQ. Very happy with it afterwards.
But somehow, something seriously weird happened and after more than doubling rewards in a bid to drive up participation, lots of AD dropped into the system...
Now I earn a fraction of what I earned before the initial changes and rather than 16+ dungeons in a day, since the introduction of the new queues and caps, I run fewer than 2 per day cos... why the hell would I if my rAD is already at over 100k?
I've often used the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
In this case its more like, "If it ain't broke don't break it, and then do something worse and claim to have fixed it by breaking it some more."
I know that doesn't roll off the tongue the same way, but it's the best I can come up with without using bad language.
Not being funny, but here are a few reasons that suggest the opposite will happen.
One bot acct can now earn 100k per day.
Bot accts would only run two (free) toons. (or 72k per day)
Why pay for more character slots when a) the acct is likely to be found and closed and b) when...
New accts can be opened at will on PC meaning one bot accts can just keep running without the need to switch toons every 36k.
So, instead of bot accts being limited to 72k and require a switch, one acct can earn 100k without the need to switch.
So even if a bot acct can be identified, monitored, and closed down within 24 hours of activation, its earning about 39% more per day than before.
Anecdotal evidence aside, I doubt this new system will deter bots at all.
Sure, they can make as many accounts as they want, and they already do this.
At best, they're running one character through the Leveling Queue and one through the Intermediate Queue and that's only if they take the time to gear that character sufficiently to hit a 9k item level. That means they're getting - at most - 40k per day per account, and that assumes they have the bot invoke 5x per day per character. If they aren't bothering with the invoking, and I can't see why they would since you're talking 2h 30m to get 3960 or 3980 extra AD, then they're only making a little over 21k per account per day.
I really can't see them taking the time to gear a character to run anything higher than the Leveling Queue specifically because of the likelihood that account will be banned for botting. Even if they are willing to gear the characters to run the Intermediate Queue, they certainly aren't going to bother equipping the characters to run the Advanced or Expert queues, where their scripted nature would almost certainly become so apparent and such a hindrance as to earn a kick from the group.
So they might still be earning as much as they were before, but they're going to have run a lot more accounts to do that now. There's no way they're getting anywhere near 100k per day per account using just random queues. It can't be worth the time and electricity they'd have to invest to do that.
Fourth post from the bottom is the one by noworries the quote came from, apologies for not making that evident initially. Hello somebody.
As previously stated a while back in another thread if casual/newer players were thought or found to could use boost, simply increasing THEIR earnings with a "new player" bonus that will completely deplete over time and a separate bonus for all that builds up as the account is logged off seemingly would have achieved that goal without penalizing those that have played longer and or more. Boom goes the dynamite...
^ Again for those who aren't seeing the methodology going on. ^
Things were still pretty decent after RQ's were initially introduced though Mod 14 uppercut that right in the chops, "especially" with higher tier RQ's often enough placing you in a group with not even barely capable ilvl players such as 11k's in FBI/MSPC which give trouble to 13k+ players...
There's essentially no logical/reasonable way a company could not foresee more AD being generated with RQ's, hell it was even stated along the lines of increasing RAD yields via RQ's being a goal though now that dungeons are firing faster the increased RAD yields have been yanked out...
With Mod 14 higher amounts of RAD are locked behind ilvl in regard to RQ's and completion of AQ's/EQ's depend on group composition so that's another barrier which is beyond the control of the players unless they group with friends/Guilds...
About 8k (+ bonuses) can be made initially with the LQ
About 12k (+b) is locked behind 9k ilvl for IQ.
About 15k (+b) is locked behind 11k ilvl for AQ.
About 20k (+b) is locked behind 13k ilvl for EQ.
After RQ's were introduced and pre-Mod 14 a player with a lvl 70 character and Dread ring/Sharandar unlocked could earn about 16k RAD from RQ's, double (around 32k) if they utilized 2 characters that had normal and skirmishes unlocked. With Mod 14 if a player doesn't have a character of at least 9k ilvl over 92% of the RAD available through RQ's is unavailable to them from the jump...
So again, how is this helping players, especially new ones earn more AD?...
New players/those with less play time are at a disadvantage compared to pre-Mod 14 because their RQ RAD generation has not only been cut but also ilvl gated and goes DIRECTLY against:
"as well as help newer players and those with less playtime earn a bit more AD to help them out."
“There are changes that can be made that don’t require coding...” - TriNitY
"No amount of coding will change human behavior" - TriNitY
Ongoing Issue: Legitmate Players Banned for Botting (Console) and the Future for "Dedicated" Players
Suggestions: (Implemented) \/\/ Rearrange Character on character Select Screen
Via LQ's
- One can generate about 58k in 10 hours
- 29k in 5 hrs for two
- 14.5k in 2.5 hrs for three.
- etc.
Via LQ's + IQ's (9k ilvl)
- One can generate about 20k in 30 mins
- 40k for two 30 mins
- 60k for three 30 mins
- etc.
Essentially bot users don't have to run RQ's for longer periods of time, they can just run more for shorter periods of time or get a character to 9k ilvl and be able to generate more AD in far less time. With a combination of 540 equipment, low ranks enchantments and low/mid range Guild boons and or low tier campaign boons a character can be 9k fairly easily...
“There are changes that can be made that don’t require coding...” - TriNitY
"No amount of coding will change human behavior" - TriNitY
Ongoing Issue: Legitmate Players Banned for Botting (Console) and the Future for "Dedicated" Players
Suggestions: (Implemented) \/\/ Rearrange Character on character Select Screen