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Why Neverwinter is unequivocally P2W
jkaplan92
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 111 Bounty Hunter
This is obviously a subject of much debate, and I'd like to shed some light on it as a player with a lot of time spent in the game, and probably one of the furthest progressed characters.
I'm going to start this off by trying to define pay to win, or at least give the term some parameters.
For many players, however, PvE is also competitive although obviously not directly, so many people would consider purchaseable advantages that make PvE content easier pay to win. Many MMOs have serious competitive raiding where guilds compete to clear new content first. Whether you think this is rellevant or not, a lot of players enjoy it and the drive it creates in players, and if a game allows for purchaseable advantages that effect PvE progression, to these players it would be P2W.
Getting to the point. What I want to talk about here is enchantments, something that is hugely important in both PvE and PvP. For those who aren't aware, enchantments are items that can be attached to gear to give stat bonuses to the wearer. There are 9 tiers of enchantments, the higher the tier, the more stats you get. A tier 9 enchant gives 280 stats, tier 7, 180, tier 4, 90 and so on. You may combine 4 enchantments into one of a great teir, that is to say, 4 tier 5 enchantments become 1 tier 6 enchantment. Only up to tier 4 enchantments drop in any content in the game including castle never. Tier 5,6, and 7 enchantments come from chests and lockboxes which can only be obtained via crafting, celestial coints, and lockboxes (to my knowledge)
Expressed in the number of rank 4 enchantments required followed by the tier being expressed:
4 rank 4's = rank 5 = 120 stat points
16 rank 4's = rank 6 = 150 stat points
64 rank 4's = rank = 185 stat points
256 rank 4's = rank 8 = 220 stat points
1024 rank 4's = rank 9 = 280 stat points
To give you an idea of how long it would take to loot 1024 rank 4 runes, I have roughly 6 and 1/2 days played since release and have looted no more than 60 of any given enchantment type. Multiplying this by the number of runes required for a rank 9 enchantment yields 111 days or 2664 hours played. However, a player has slots for 12 of these rank 9 enchantments on their gear and a further 6 on their companion for a total of 18 rank 9's required for optimal play. Multiply the hours required for a single rank 9 by 18 and you get 47,952 hours played to optimally enchant your gear. I'm trying to illustrate the issue here and realize that this is by no means scientific, but it should at least be clear that by strictly playing the game and looting you simply will never be able to reach a point where your gear is optimal.
If we include alternative ways to earn enchantments for free, a player who prays once a day for 7 consecutive chests will receive a reward of 1 rank 5 enchantment, 1 rank, 4 and 1 rank 3. If my math is correct, by this method t a player will need to pray for 195 of these 7 day consecutive periods, or for 1365 days or for 3.7 years for 1 rank 9 enchantment. Again, you get the point. Even when you couple the method with that of looting, you still have an absolutely absurd amount of required time commitment such that it seems safe to say it will be impossible for a player to obtain even a few rank 9's without paying money.
Lastly, players can earn AD for free via dailies and praying. To my knowledge the combination of AD from praying and completing all dailies totals roughly 24,000. The current price of a rank 7 azure enchantment is hovering between 600,000 and 700,000 AD on the Dragon server. By this logic the cost of a rank 9 enchantment excluding coalescent wards is 9.6 million astral diamonds. In order to obtain this amount of AD a player must complete all dailies and pray for 400 days. In order to purchase all 18 rank 9's a player would need to finish their dailies for 19. 7 years.
In conclusion, I think it is hard to argue that even the combination of these 3 methods could feasibly lead to a player earning more than 1-3 rank 9 enchantments. Thus the only realistic means of acquiring more than a few of these enchantments is to either earn massive quantities of astral diamonds via trade and the sale of goods, or to pay money for zen which can be sold for the required amount of AD. I don't think that either of these requirements are appealing to the overall playerbase, and when you consider how insanely steep these costs are, its absolutely ridiculous. With a rank 9 enchant currently totally 9.6 million AD, a full set of 18 will cost 172.8 million AD, divide this by 500, the highest possible AD to zen exchange rate, and this will cost $3456 worth of zen. Even if you cut the AD cost in half because you think AD is inflated right now, you're still lookign at $1728 in zen ASSUMING a maximum 500 exchange rate which will probably never exist again. If you use the current exchange rate of around 380 on dragon you get $4547 worth of zen.
LASTLY: To sum this all up, why does this matter? In PvP a player with all rank 9 enchants has 720 more stat points than a player with all rank 8's, this is the equivalent of about half of the stats of an end game main armor piece. A rank 9 geared player has 1140 stats over a rank 7 geared player, this is basically having an extra main armor piece. In PvE this discrepancies is even more drastic due to the additional 6 sockets on pets. These are large stat discrepancies that will be very difficult to overcome in PvP without massive skill differences, and in PvE players without full rank 9's will have virtually no chance of competing for early content kills. These advantages are far too much IN BOTH PvP and PvE, for this reason it seems really clear to me that the current enchant system is pay to win, no way around it.
I'm going to start this off by trying to define pay to win, or at least give the term some parameters.
For many players, however, PvE is also competitive although obviously not directly, so many people would consider purchaseable advantages that make PvE content easier pay to win. Many MMOs have serious competitive raiding where guilds compete to clear new content first. Whether you think this is rellevant or not, a lot of players enjoy it and the drive it creates in players, and if a game allows for purchaseable advantages that effect PvE progression, to these players it would be P2W.
Getting to the point. What I want to talk about here is enchantments, something that is hugely important in both PvE and PvP. For those who aren't aware, enchantments are items that can be attached to gear to give stat bonuses to the wearer. There are 9 tiers of enchantments, the higher the tier, the more stats you get. A tier 9 enchant gives 280 stats, tier 7, 180, tier 4, 90 and so on. You may combine 4 enchantments into one of a great teir, that is to say, 4 tier 5 enchantments become 1 tier 6 enchantment. Only up to tier 4 enchantments drop in any content in the game including castle never. Tier 5,6, and 7 enchantments come from chests and lockboxes which can only be obtained via crafting, celestial coints, and lockboxes (to my knowledge)
Expressed in the number of rank 4 enchantments required followed by the tier being expressed:
4 rank 4's = rank 5 = 120 stat points
16 rank 4's = rank 6 = 150 stat points
64 rank 4's = rank = 185 stat points
256 rank 4's = rank 8 = 220 stat points
1024 rank 4's = rank 9 = 280 stat points
To give you an idea of how long it would take to loot 1024 rank 4 runes, I have roughly 6 and 1/2 days played since release and have looted no more than 60 of any given enchantment type. Multiplying this by the number of runes required for a rank 9 enchantment yields 111 days or 2664 hours played. However, a player has slots for 12 of these rank 9 enchantments on their gear and a further 6 on their companion for a total of 18 rank 9's required for optimal play. Multiply the hours required for a single rank 9 by 18 and you get 47,952 hours played to optimally enchant your gear. I'm trying to illustrate the issue here and realize that this is by no means scientific, but it should at least be clear that by strictly playing the game and looting you simply will never be able to reach a point where your gear is optimal.
If we include alternative ways to earn enchantments for free, a player who prays once a day for 7 consecutive chests will receive a reward of 1 rank 5 enchantment, 1 rank, 4 and 1 rank 3. If my math is correct, by this method t a player will need to pray for 195 of these 7 day consecutive periods, or for 1365 days or for 3.7 years for 1 rank 9 enchantment. Again, you get the point. Even when you couple the method with that of looting, you still have an absolutely absurd amount of required time commitment such that it seems safe to say it will be impossible for a player to obtain even a few rank 9's without paying money.
Lastly, players can earn AD for free via dailies and praying. To my knowledge the combination of AD from praying and completing all dailies totals roughly 24,000. The current price of a rank 7 azure enchantment is hovering between 600,000 and 700,000 AD on the Dragon server. By this logic the cost of a rank 9 enchantment excluding coalescent wards is 9.6 million astral diamonds. In order to obtain this amount of AD a player must complete all dailies and pray for 400 days. In order to purchase all 18 rank 9's a player would need to finish their dailies for 19. 7 years.
In conclusion, I think it is hard to argue that even the combination of these 3 methods could feasibly lead to a player earning more than 1-3 rank 9 enchantments. Thus the only realistic means of acquiring more than a few of these enchantments is to either earn massive quantities of astral diamonds via trade and the sale of goods, or to pay money for zen which can be sold for the required amount of AD. I don't think that either of these requirements are appealing to the overall playerbase, and when you consider how insanely steep these costs are, its absolutely ridiculous. With a rank 9 enchant currently totally 9.6 million AD, a full set of 18 will cost 172.8 million AD, divide this by 500, the highest possible AD to zen exchange rate, and this will cost $3456 worth of zen. Even if you cut the AD cost in half because you think AD is inflated right now, you're still lookign at $1728 in zen ASSUMING a maximum 500 exchange rate which will probably never exist again. If you use the current exchange rate of around 380 on dragon you get $4547 worth of zen.
LASTLY: To sum this all up, why does this matter? In PvP a player with all rank 9 enchants has 720 more stat points than a player with all rank 8's, this is the equivalent of about half of the stats of an end game main armor piece. A rank 9 geared player has 1140 stats over a rank 7 geared player, this is basically having an extra main armor piece. In PvE this discrepancies is even more drastic due to the additional 6 sockets on pets. These are large stat discrepancies that will be very difficult to overcome in PvP without massive skill differences, and in PvE players without full rank 9's will have virtually no chance of competing for early content kills. These advantages are far too much IN BOTH PvP and PvE, for this reason it seems really clear to me that the current enchant system is pay to win, no way around it.
Post edited by jkaplan92 on
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Comments
This is an open beta. Start treating it like one.
i think the 1% enchantment upgrade rate is ****ing ridiculous, but this doesn't do anything. you'll get two things out of this: 1) people agreeing with you and raging at PWE/Cryptic and 2) PWE/Cryptic customers defending the company and their game. it'll turn into a pure cluster**** and get closed eventually, as with all these threads do.
explains everything
This is an open beta. Start treating it like one.
what you havent taken into consideration is that once someone has farmed/afk'd enough glor to buy their gear they're more than likely not going to step foot in pvp again
So there's that.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
from all that you only read the rank 7. gg
If they're lying and making up numbers about one part of the game, I've no reason to believe they're not lying and making up numbers about everything else.
This is an open beta. Start treating it like one.
lol living in denial is no way to exist.
play the game some more then come back to this.
It's week two where's my stuff? They add a barrier to getting everything right away... if you are that freaked out, I feel sorry for you. I won't be playing when school starts again... By then ESO will get some attention. Enjoy. *smileyface
1. Cryptic/PW have no clues about about how to fix some of the issues that we raised during beta and are still,after weeks or months, trying to figure out how to deal with a pay to win player base.
2. Its all working as intended and outside server issues this game is meant to be played how it was delivered.
QQQQ
Seriously, the higher levels of enchantments add to the game's longetivity. I love how there are 9 levels, since lv7's are fairly easy to get even for non-paying users. It lets you have something to work for months after the game's release. You should suck it up and realize if it wasn't for things like these, you'd get bored after maxing out your entire gear set.
Its not p2w
Its w2w -> WORK TO WIN .
Long story short, no matter how many of these type of threads are made, it really isn't going to effect anyone's decision on wither to spend money, play the game, go somewhere else, or what have you. Talking to a friend of mine today who has been doom-crying on these forums since OB started, he ranted on everything from the evils of F2P to PWE being responsible for the Lindbergh baby's Kidnapping, and he would never ever ever spend one dime. He has since spent a shameful amount on Keys, Companions and character slots...but he still thinks Cryptic is evil, because "They enticed him" :rolleyes:
The real sad part about all of this is almost every person I know that called me names for buying a HoN pack has spent much more than I have on this game so far.
So people will continue to make their very detailed posts about P2W when they are not charging their Zen wallets just like they do over at STO, and Cryptic will keep giving us content and more cool things to buy....seems fair to me.
Did you even read my post? It's not work to win... It's play this game for 10 hours a day for 20 years straight to win... Even if it took a year to get 5 or 6 rank 9's thats still too long. Welcome to 2013, people don't like grinding anymore, if you do I'm sorry because games that appeal to you are just going to die.
You probably didnt see the glorious heros of the north eating pay to win ressurection scrolls and stroke their E-Peens over here informing us how great they were to burn end-game and farm purples to put them on the auction house.
Its all good they can farm it and trade it with others of their ilk if they want.
This is an open beta. Start treating it like one.
Yes because everything should be free.
Sorry but you're wrong...
I created this thread because I view this as a problem with the game... My issue is about 2/10 that I personally dislike the system, and 8/10s my fear that the system is just bad in general and will drive players away from the game thus making the game less enjoyable for me. This is an MMO... for lots of players the more people there are to interact and play with the better, and thats certainly the case for me. I don't want to see this game die overall, and I don't want to see it lose its more competitive-minded players, but the fact of the matter is that virtually nobody is going to dedicate the requisite amount of time or money required by the current system to optimize gear. For players who enjoy competitive PvP there is just no way to rationalize such a huge investment into an MMO. This is an industry where games come and go every year, games are hyped up and fail almost all the time. If you think a veteran of this genre is going to throw down over $1000 to get maximized stats in a game... its just not going to happen unless they're fabulously wealthy.
You shouldn't assume that everyone who has an issue with P2W has it simply because they don't want to pay, and don't try to argue that "if you pay 60 bucks you deserve to be better than someone who pays 0" That again is just simply false. This isn't the real world, this is a video game and fairness can be whatever the developer wants it to be. If you create a game where whoever invests the most money wins your game is going to die, plain and simple. I don't get why more companies aren't looking at league of legends' model for inspiration. The game's playerbase is absolutely massive and it has virtually no P2W elements at all. Everything can be earned with a REASONABLE time investment. Don't even try to tell me that the 10s of thousand of hours it would take to get 18 rank 9's is reasonable... please don't...
Just to single out that comment, because it's not true. Many F2P MMOs/games are P2W, but people still play them anyway. Example: Almost all Facebook games, Almost all asian based MMOs, etc.
This is an open beta. Start treating it like one.
Alright let me rephrase that. "Isn't going to sustain a substantial playerbase" theres a lot of mmos out there that are alive with niche playerbases, so I shouldn't have used dead in that sentence I guess. Asian mmos aren't really popular in the west (compared to western MMOs) so not sure what you're referring to there. I don't even want to talk about facebook games I don't think players of this genre really ever feel that the standard for facebook games are something that should apply to MMOs because god knows that would make for an awful game.
EDIT: my friend just dug through the game files. There are actualyl 10 enchantment tiers and an additional weapon/armor enchantment tier beyond greater. Go ahead and multiply all the numbers in my OP by 4 and keep telling me this game isn't P2W... thanks... tier 10's will probably be a 100 stat increase over tier 9's... Just think about that guys...
None of the players who did so had the best enchants.
There is no rated PvP, there is no PvP progression path (everyone has the same PvP gear after a few hours).
There is no P2W because of the above. Not to mention that the blue wards are dirt cheap in the AH.
Depends on your definition of substantial and niche...
1) The asian playerbase IS substantial.
2) Almost all MMOs are niche. The only MMO that is arguably not niche is WoW.
Also on an offnote: The professions are practically designed like facebook games.
This is an open beta. Start treating it like one.
Someone wants to get paid for their hard work making this game? No thanks, everyone should work for free and not get paid. So that kids like you could enjoy everything they can for free!
Might want to take a look at the off-topic section of these forums and see what champion online fans think about that company that you have an undying love for. Not sure why you have that unsatiable desire to go in every possible threads and try to repress anyone from having a bad opinion about the status of this game.
Some people are frustrated with the constent exploits that go unanswered, deal with it.
in your opinion
So....this is all about you?
Oh so it's about the min-maxers/pvpers.....I think those are the one's Cryptics is counting on because yeah they will pay, they will do almost anything short of grouping with a "Dirty Casual" to be the best.
You do get that PVP is more or less a mini game in Neverwinter, honestly playing NWO for it's PVP is akin to playing Darkfall or Shadowbane for it's "Epic and sprawling story-line".
I'm not fabulously wealthy, I gave up my WoW and my TOR subscriptions which cost me about $360.00 a year for both and spent 200.00 for a Hon pack, I haven't spent a dime since and am closing in on my second sixty doing everything the game offers, I have two 24 slots bags, a Firehawk, a Inferno Mount, most of the companions and some wicked enchants on my weapons. The other 160.00 is in a savings account, and since I'm doing well in the AH market I probably won't spend a penny on it for Zen, so I'm staring down at least two or more years of game play for less than I would have spent in one year.
LOL is a competitive based MMO, as much as you want it to be NWO isn't it is a Cooperative/solo based MMO, Two different target demographics, two different Business models. Finally, if you check the AH there aren't even any Rank 9 enchants available and most everyone (except the PVPers who are the main ones crying right now) is just fine without them, and as the market stabilizes the price will go down just like once insanely priced items in STO can be purchased for a song.
Sky's not falling, same outrage we see with every MMO, if it wasn't this there would be something else cry-worthy.
Finally some logic.