I am pretty sure that if toon slots were intended just for AD farming, there would not be a toon linked to them. They are meant for creating characters and Playing in-game content. Leadership farms are why we are in this mess.
No, no it is not. I'm fairly sure caturday and the MONTHS of resonator AD had a little more to do with it. But you still get people who blame it on keys so... The economy was pretty stable before those 2 instances.
Tons of 50+ character slot accounts botting Leadership has the exactly same effect like resonator exploit back in the days.
Leadership is actually also part of the problem we're facing since some time. Not to say so has 2 reasons.
1. You either have tons of AD slaves yourself
2. Or you are stupid or lying because of point 1.
It's not even remotely close to the resonator bug. Even an army of 1000 leadership toons can't generate the same AD that one player was able to do in a couple of hours. Not to mention, you needed months to get those leadership toons up to a proper level. AD Resonator was doable by pretty much anyone. Zax was backlogged to over 14M at one point.....
As has been pointed out, the bots doing leadership are now doing it ingame. The only ones hurt are the players that needed to set up their leadership while at work or on the train or otherwise away from their PC.
Be prepared for the population to drop to the point that the only thing seen in zone or lfg chat is bot advertisements.
They sold you character slots and you still have them, or did they take you away slots?! No? So why are you complaining?
Read it again. Character slots were purchased with the sole purpose of farming leadership AD using a browser wherever and whenever I wanted to do it. That's what was 'on the shelf', that's what was 'purchased'.
Applying your line of argument to my hypothetical mount example:
me: I paid 25 bucks for that damn mount, now they change it?
xsay: They sold you a mount and you still have it right? Did they take the mount away from you? So why are you complaining?
No, I wouldn't answer this way! If they sell you a mount with 110% speed they have no right (in theory they have ) to change this 110% to 80%. That's btw a very bad example which is also different from your complains.
What you don't get is: they don't sell character slots for the solely purpose to make AD slaves. They sell them for creating a new character which you play ingame to discover a new adventure!
Where did you read that character slots are advertised as Leadership AD grind machine?!
There is completely no connection between the change to Leadership & character slots bought.
It was your decision to buy character slots for the solely purpose of Leadership, they didn't advertise it the way you bought it for. If they change one part of the game and another part gets affected, then, well, shiet happens!
Looks like they have started deleting some of my posts in this discussion... so is there any point in replying here?
(EDIT: (can't resist) the conclusion was: if f2p sells x in a cash-shop, they should NOT later do away with it, and then expect people to keep buying from them. and to respond to you: correct! they did not 'advertise' that character-slots were for leadership-ad-farming. They also did not advertise that it was for 'ingame discovery and new adventure'. It just says 'character-slots'. If they create a game, it's my joyful task to figure out how to play any way I can. I figure it out, then they 'fix' it and negate my purchase. So i'm pissed. You didn't chose to play that way, so you don't care, I'm stupid and was conned, it's my fault, I know. Eventually they will get around to negating something you've purchased... and when that happens, I will not get on the forums and blame you. good luck. (I figure this will get deleted too))
I said it in my prior post, time vs reward is plain bad in this game. That an army of Leadershipchars can create a whole lot more ad in a very short timeframe than a player who actually play the game several hours per day is just sad. If this doesn`t get any attention soon, i will start using every means to get ad. This excludes Zen. I spent money on every game i play. i spent over 2k on poe over 2 years. Do i had to pay anything there? No poe is a truly f2p game and not a p2w like here, all u get are cosmetics stuff. I spent some money at the beginning to get a mount and some little stuff. Thats all u get from me until u give some response to your time vs reward "system". If not either i exploit the hell out of everything i find or i am gone sooner or later, so is my money
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I would think players logging in is only a good thing for Cryptic if it drives more zen sales.
Otherwise, it's just more load on the server, meaning it costs more to maintain.
Last night for example I did a dragon run, so that's about 30 mins including the time finding an instance in time. I got no resonance stones at all, 3 pieces of level 69 blue gear (worthless, they never sell) and five enchantments (worth about 100AD each). So I need around, what, 100 million AD, to get my artifacts up to to something decent and in 30 mins end game grind I made 500. Is it a wonder people run bots or buy from gold sellers.
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Yeah, it takes me like 5 to 10 minutes just to log in and run tasks on 2 characters (with just invoking on two others).
It may be a regional thing.
Has anyone considered that maybe Cryptic WANTS to alienate heavy Gateway users though? If they're doing nothing but using the Gateway, then they're not contributing to their market share. They want people to leave, because they're using up system resources. Distorting the market and whatnot is, well, largely irrelevant for them I would think.
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
To be fair regarding artifact equipment, if you wait for a double refining weekend and refine your legendary artifact weapon into a level 60 version, you'll get to rank 57 or so, so it's not like your RP expenditures have been wasted; you just need-::checks the chart:
929,000 more RP than you already have.
It's why I, despite being a FILTHY CASUAL! who never does anything but leadership (historically on two characters), selling shirt/pants/rings, and invoking, actually has a legendary level 70 artifact weapon.
In fact, the artifacts are one instance where your gear becomes invalidated at a less frequent rate than everything else. Since the new artifact weapon has better stats than the old one, you basically have your old artifact weapon but to max it out (and get better stats) you need that extra RP.
It is true that your mounts are being invalidated though. I'd generally encourage something I saw on here, about "Horseshoes of the Zephyr" to give mounts w/o the +4000 movement rate the +4000 movement rate. Obviously a zen shop item.
I'm not defending the RP system as currently implemented, and I'll concede that it's nonsense that you basically have to wait for double RP weekend to not be severely gimped (they should just make double RP permanent IMO, and never offer double double RP weekends), but I do think that at least re: artifact gear, concerns about irrelevancy due to newer mods are misplaced.
Another fun fact is: on Xbox One are already way too many spammers for AD selling and we don't even have the gateway available as of now. So actually arc games should already be aware, that taking leadership off the gateway won't change a thing, but they are doing it anyway. That makes me wonder, why they still going through with it ... because in the end only the real player base will suffer from it. And on Xbox the market is already crashed. Nothing to worth to sell, but the rest to expensive to afford.
It just looks like another change, that this will just punish new players a lot more then any vet. player.
Same with the XP grind.
Same with the boons grind.
Same with nearly any change, that has hit the game this far.
Maybe the think of it as fair, since they bore the vet players with their moronic quest in recycled maps more than the new ones, who still enjoy the leveling < 60 and have high hopes for the "endgame"?
I doubt that even a new player will have any high hopes for the endgame, as soon as they see the grind required for even leveling one character to 70.
And then the grind to fill the overflow for a random chance on a single power point.
I also doubt that Strongholds will make it all better... the new module will just add more to the grind mountain.
I do believe in killing the messenger...
Want to know why?
Because it sends a message!
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I fiddled with Strongholds on the preview server and wasn't particularly impressed.
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myles08807Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 409Arc User
Who are you people who define "botting" as "having a number of alts and collecting Leadership rewards manually from each regularly"? WHO ARE YOU, that I may find you and teach you each an individual lesson?
Who are you people who define "botting" as "having a number of alts and collecting Leadership rewards manually from each regularly"? WHO ARE YOU, that I may find you and teach you each an individual lesson?
There are loads of 'em. Too many to do individually. You'd probably have to write some sort of script... ;p
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I don't think it's wrong of Cryptic to try and discourage the usage of a multitude of alts, TBQH.
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Yep! I mean, don't get me wrong, it's definitely a bait and switch. But the HAMSTER move was them allowing you to purchase up to 50 character slots in the first place, not trying to discourage having 50 characters.
I suppose the "Right Thing To Do™" would be to have a character buyback program or something.
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Yep, all mistakes. But that doesn't mean they should double down. It means they should apologize for their foolishness.
Most people don't have the time to run 50 characters. if you're going to give advantages for having 50 characters, then the people who don't have 50 characters are effectively at a disadvantage. The solution is to not give people advantages for having 50 characters.
The trick is figuring out how to do so in a way that doesn't severely HAMSTER those who have 50 characters off.
It's a shame they don't respond to such a huge number of genuine complaints. Most MMO companies do once they realise they've upset the player base.
They've lost half their playerbase over Mod 6 as witnessed by Steamcharts - party line is "a slight loss of players over time is perfectly normal in an MMO". Though some nominal, official reaction had been visible - change of Lead Dev, akromatik => Strumslinger (though that ofc also was a completely unrelated life choice...) - the current changes alienate even more players.
What shall one make of this? I don't know any more...
Comments
It's not even remotely close to the resonator bug. Even an army of 1000 leadership toons can't generate the same AD that one player was able to do in a couple of hours. Not to mention, you needed months to get those leadership toons up to a proper level. AD Resonator was doable by pretty much anyone. Zax was backlogged to over 14M at one point.....
As has been pointed out, the bots doing leadership are now doing it ingame. The only ones hurt are the players that needed to set up their leadership while at work or on the train or otherwise away from their PC.
Be prepared for the population to drop to the point that the only thing seen in zone or lfg chat is bot advertisements.
Looks like they have started deleting some of my posts in this discussion... so is there any point in replying here?
(EDIT: (can't resist) the conclusion was: if f2p sells x in a cash-shop, they should NOT later do away with it, and then expect people to keep buying from them. and to respond to you: correct! they did not 'advertise' that character-slots were for leadership-ad-farming. They also did not advertise that it was for 'ingame discovery and new adventure'. It just says 'character-slots'. If they create a game, it's my joyful task to figure out how to play any way I can. I figure it out, then they 'fix' it and negate my purchase. So i'm pissed. You didn't chose to play that way, so you don't care, I'm stupid and was conned, it's my fault, I know. Eventually they will get around to negating something you've purchased... and when that happens, I will not get on the forums and blame you. good luck. (I figure this will get deleted too))
Otherwise, it's just more load on the server, meaning it costs more to maintain.
It may be a regional thing.
Has anyone considered that maybe Cryptic WANTS to alienate heavy Gateway users though? If they're doing nothing but using the Gateway, then they're not contributing to their market share. They want people to leave, because they're using up system resources. Distorting the market and whatnot is, well, largely irrelevant for them I would think.
929,000 more RP than you already have.
It's why I, despite being a FILTHY CASUAL! who never does anything but leadership (historically on two characters), selling shirt/pants/rings, and invoking, actually has a legendary level 70 artifact weapon.
In fact, the artifacts are one instance where your gear becomes invalidated at a less frequent rate than everything else. Since the new artifact weapon has better stats than the old one, you basically have your old artifact weapon but to max it out (and get better stats) you need that extra RP.
It is true that your mounts are being invalidated though. I'd generally encourage something I saw on here, about "Horseshoes of the Zephyr" to give mounts w/o the +4000 movement rate the +4000 movement rate. Obviously a zen shop item.
I'm not defending the RP system as currently implemented, and I'll concede that it's nonsense that you basically have to wait for double RP weekend to not be severely gimped (they should just make double RP permanent IMO, and never offer double double RP weekends), but I do think that at least re: artifact gear, concerns about irrelevancy due to newer mods are misplaced.
And then the grind to fill the overflow for a random chance on a single power point.
I also doubt that Strongholds will make it all better... the new module will just add more to the grind mountain.
There are loads of 'em. Too many to do individually. You'd probably have to write some sort of script... ;p
I suppose the "Right Thing To Do™" would be to have a character buyback program or something.
Most people don't have the time to run 50 characters. if you're going to give advantages for having 50 characters, then the people who don't have 50 characters are effectively at a disadvantage. The solution is to not give people advantages for having 50 characters.
The trick is figuring out how to do so in a way that doesn't severely HAMSTER those who have 50 characters off.
They've lost half their playerbase over Mod 6 as witnessed by Steamcharts - party line is "a slight loss of players over time is perfectly normal in an MMO". Though some nominal, official reaction had been visible - change of Lead Dev, akromatik => Strumslinger (though that ofc also was a completely unrelated life choice...) - the current changes alienate even more players.
What shall one make of this? I don't know any more...