Interesting post here... Well I actually think this is a healthy move for he game as a whole, while many players and many of my guildies are frustrated about the lack of ability to earn AD now, I think this HOPEFULLY will be something we look back on and say it was the right call.
Now, as someone posted something does need to be done to address the fixed prices of things because while supply/demand can meet so many things in game, it cant overcome the HUGE costs that are fixed: mainly GMOPs and Coal Wards.
I had a thought while chewing on this. Rather than looking at all the prices. Here are TWO changes that I would propose you (DEVs) consider.
1) Make artifacts and artifact equipment account bound. - The costs for making these things are astronomical. While players can eventually get these things leveled up on a main character, the thought of having an alt just makes me shudder. I remember the days of module 0 and module 1. The game was MUCH more alt friendly. I remember logging online and my guild needed HAMSTER class for a run. Well, that wasnt my main, but I did have an alt. I swapped over my enchants and off we go! It was only until modules 2 and 3 that it became too expensive for me to play more than one character and NOW its even worse with 4 pieces of artifact equipment and FOUR artifacts?!
Making artifact gear and artifacts bound to account would allow players to have more options in playing. Think about it, weapons wouldnt xfer since most likely its a different class. So its only the neck/belt and artifacts. But you still have gear and boons which are massively important for the player. We can already swap enchants over for gold, but allowing us to swap artifacts and artifact equipment would allow many players to have much more fun playing the game and not feel so stuck on ONE character.
With the reduction of AD earned, this would be a VERY nice benefit to the players and make investing in these things much more worthwhile.
2) Revisit the cost of enchants. For this I only mean ONE small "change". Currently say you have a rank 7 and are trying to get a rank 8. Well you need RP, 1x Greater Mark of Potency (fixed) and then ANOTHER rank 7 to have a CHANCE to upgrade to rank 8. Then once rank 8, you need ANOTHER rank 8, RP, 2xGMOPs(fixed) and wards for a CHANCE at rank 9!
So what I propose as a result of this AD change, rather than needing 2x an enchant. Make it require the enchant BELOW the current one.
So for a rank 7 -> rank 8 you would use RP into the rank 7, get a rank SIX(6) enchant + a GMOP and have a chance to upgrade. For a rank 8 -> rank 9 you would take your current rank 8, use RP, and then rather than needing a duplicate rank8, you would now only need a rank 7 as a "requirement" for the next rank.
Then fast forward to rank 10. To get a rank 10 you would need a rank 9 fully refined, and then a rank 8 enchant along with 2 GMOPs for the chance to upgrade.
This doesnt completely remove the costs, but it does lessen some of the expenses for enchants and upgrading.
These are the two changes I would suggest you visit. In the end it reduces the "fixed costs" for players in the key areas of progression without making it too "free" #1 doesnt make it cheaper, but it does make it "cheaper" to play multiple characters - which would promote your system of earning AD in game. #2 does decrease costs of enchants
Please consider these two changes
Why the need for another of the same enchant or a downgraded one? Just the GMoP and whatever other marks are needed just as R11/12 is now. The fact that there are two very different methods is bloody ridiculous and poorly thought out.
Our pain is self chosen.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
I wake up to this.... This is lols some monkey is just spamming random code. I really want to know who is the genius that came up with this. I am starting to believe you are purposely trying to kill this game.
This was caused by allowing unlimited alts to the game. Fix this issue by allowing only a limited number of the alts in an account to earn AD, what is reasonable? Say 2 per account. Is it perfect? No, it does allow actual players a way to still play the game FTP.
ok, here what u guys changed and removed from the game since mod 5
1. Removed most of good and entertaining dungeons and give us few dungeons that are boring and unpleasant. 2. Removed set bonus gear, there were three different types of set gear for both t1 and t2 even we did have tiamat's set bonus gear now we stick with this no set bonus gear and useless dragonflight set gear (for most classes) 3. Made t1 and t2 gear bound nice job guys, now please remove the "Equipment" tab from AH coz there is no use of it anymore. You can make a new one tht says "Artifact only no Equipment trolled ya" tab. 4. Killed the storyline with neverending quest at 60 to 70 area like spinward and other howling maw kindda area. I dont know how to thank you for ur much hard work on those areas. Really guys u nailed it. 5. Did i forget to mention neverending laag at wod, and the long conversation with the npcs at dread ring those are awesome its get more awesome when u use teleport scroll to go to protector enclave coz the exit gate of dread ring is not appearing for 5 mins. 6. Players gets hatred msg from other players when they use astral seal or dailys with pally's while having the prism feat OMG now its so bad tht an innocent player have to take heat for ur mistakes nailed it again guys nailed it again. 7. And the lucky no 7 goes to the leadership well i wanted to keep going but my finger is hurting already.
Maybe customer is not always right, but most of the time they are, if you cannot satisfy ur customer even when they are in love with product, ur product will die soon dont need to be a marketing genius to figure that out
It's hard to swallow that a group of small time botters working from their mother's basement have such a huge company on their knees to the extent that they feel the need to completely destroy any incentive players had to log in and play.
Still I didn't get my 600 IL back and with that im busy for two months now, another thing is that if I get punished because there are people that buy astral diamonds from other sites and the case with my IL, why should I spend money in this game ? Every other game can follow buyers from sites that are not allowed and they get a permanent ban, why can't this happen in this game ? You can monitor the botters so you can follow the buyers also and give them a permanent ban.
I was going to write a 5 page wall of text on this, but then I realized that the people who are upset about the issue don't want to read sound logic and the people who aren't upset don't need it explained anyhow. So, to sum it up in a much shorter post:
1) Devs have decreased the amount of AD in the economy, this will in turn increase the value of AD, or to put it in a better way, the prices of items (including RP) will drop to account for the new value of AD. This is due to the law of supply and demand, the supply of stuff is the same, but the demand for it at that price has decreased. As these items are virtual and there is no loss at selling it cheaper, the price will therefore drop.
2) The big issue is not RP, its items with fixed value like GMoP's, upgrades for mounts, the crafting of items like AP gain jewels, the stronghold mimic etc. This is because these items are not influenced by supply and demand and the price of them will always remain the same. To upgrade your gear, you will always need GMoP's, to get GMoP's, you always need the same amount of AD. I could write down the massive amounts of AD needed for both the strongholds and for GMoP's, but its irrelevant, other people have done it before and I am sure everyone knows and understands how much they cost, especially the devs.
3) The 2nd issue is that people who are botting now, will still want to profit off of bots. They can no longer bot leadership for AD, so what can they bot for? Well, RP of coarse. Other bots have been doing this already, which is why there is so much RP on the AH, we all know its botted, I seriously doubt that any human is dedicated enough to farm 200 stacks of r5's to post them on auction. What this change will do is move bots from leadership AD to RP, which of coarse will drop the price of RP to make it more affordable, but these botters will still be getting all the currency.
4) The easy way to identify who the botters are in mod 9 (not mod 8) if no changes are made, will be from gear. The people with BiS gear in mod 9 will probably be the people who are botting RP. This is because everyone else will be buying RP from them with AD, so all the AD will flow in 1 direction. This means that they will have the currency to afford to get their perfect gear and it means that likely everyone else will be in a worse spot. Whilst there will be a few non botters with BiS gear, the clever traders and the people who are mega rich now, by and large, the majority of BiS players in mod 9 will be botters.
5) The solution? Well, either drop the price on things with fixed value, or get rid of artifact gear and go back to the old gear system. I prefer the second option, get rid of all the artifact waffle, this significantly cuts down on the earnings of botters as it murders the demand for RP and at the same time it means the economy will be better equipped to cope with a much smaller pool of global AD. There are probably lots of other solutions, but I am not going to stretch my response into 5 pages like I originally intended.
If this were a closed system , you may have a point, but anyone can go buy ad outside the system , and the botting companies have enough to last a very very long time.
I do not usually comment on these forums, but I have to say this is a horrible decision.
The only way I and many others are making AD in this game is through profession farming on multiple characters. So now we will only be able to make 24K AD on one character per day, and that's if we have enough time to run everything. Where as with professions we are able to make 12K AD on 10 characters per day, that's 120K with much less time needed to do so.
So basically this change will make all the time that was needed to level professions a waste, like it seems this whole game is becoming.
You forgot to account for something: if everybody earns less then the value of AD goes up.
As Scott said Cryptic wants a more standardized level of income based on how much time you are playing instead of how many alts you have and how much play time you sacrifice to farm AD on them. Yes you will gain less, but so will everybody else and some more so than others. Many more so than others in truth.
But this will mean increase in value of AD as well as more gain for the time you do spend playing the game. You might not get 100K AD...but you likely will get more than the current 100K AD is worth in true value with the amount of AD you do gain.
I didn't forget that. What I said was that without fixing/scaling the cost of items that Cryptic controls this change will make the game frustrating for everyone. It doesn't matter how much players value AD if the GMoP still costs 100k AD to purchase from the Bazaar.
Honestly, if the items that Cryptic controls the AD cost of get scaled appropriately (putting them in reasonable range of people who earn AD by actively playing under this new system) then I'm actually fine with these changes. The leadership alt-army stuff that people are upset about is, frankly, something that shouldn't have ever been around.
People got USED to needing this alt army to survive the game. If the game becomes playable (as in, making progression actually possible) without the alt army then it's an all-in-all positive change. The problem is this announcement doesn't make it sound like this is going to be the case, sadly.
Peak usage is already dropping and Strongholds hadn't brought back many folks as it was.
The problem I see with these changes is they haven't introduced new sources of AD that can even remotely compensate for the extreme in game AD costs. Take GMOPs for example. At 100K a pop and not much to sell, no one will be able to afford them by "just playing" the game.
Leadership took months and months to get to level 25. It was a reward to players who stuck with the game. I guess Cryptic hates their players more than they hate botters. Botters will just keep doing what they always did. Once again the real players are the ones that get burned the most.
By the time they really see those player numbers, and react on them, it might be too late...
I do believe in killing the messenger...
Want to know why?
Because it sends a message!
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
No. In fact you were wrong about everything in that but let's just stick with supply and demand.
After World War I the world decided it was all Germany's fault. They demanded money for repairs...Germany had no money....so they printed a ton to pay the debts and thus made the currency worthless. So worthless that people burned their money instead of firewood because it was cheaper.
All economies run on the supply and demand of their currency to be worth value. If you print money more money (gaining AD was akin to printing money) then the value of that currency goes down. If you print less money the value of the currency goes up.
That is basic supply and demand and it applies to currency. Please feel free to ask any economist, they'll be happy to explain it to you in larger words.
What happened during the great depression was actually very similar to what happened in Germany. People bought on credit until everybody owed everybody something and nobody could collect. However instead of the government printing money in excess it was people buying on credit so although the value of money existed people bought items with money that didn't exist until the bubble burst. But that's a story for another day and another thread.
silvergryphMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 740Arc User
For solo players, the game is more about Quests and Campaigns. Make those a primary source of AD for the solo player.
Campaigns: Replace every daily Campaign task reward that is currently in gold with a rough AD reward equal to 1 RAD per copper. For example, Blighted Beasts in Sharandar rewards 16 silver, 56 copper. It would instead reward 1,656 RAD.
Quests: For each regular quest that sends a character to a new area and each quest that sends you back to Knox because the area is "completed", replace the gold reward with 100 RAD x the Quest level. So, completing the Sleeping Dragon Bridge tutorial quest sends you to Knox when the tutorial is finished. It's level 1, so you get 100 RAD. Grave News sends you to Neverdeath Graveyard and is a level 26 quest. You get 2600 RAD. Graveyard at Rest sends you back to Knox at 30. So, you get 3000 RAD. A lot of work went into each of the game's environments. Give player's a reason to visit them all.
Leadership: If AD is being removed, I would rather see it replaced with account-bound RP than with XP. Either increase the total amount of RP that comes out of all the Leadership chests or replace the AD rewards with RP in the form of account-bound White Pearls, Peridots and Aquamarines. If Leadership becomes all about XP, then it will be abandonded after reaching max level.
If you do not replace the AD with something of comparable value like RP, then the time required for many of the tasks should be reduced significantly.
Without the AD, the crafting experience awarded for Leadership tasks should be increased. It doesn't have to be as high as the other professions since it also rewards some player XP, but it should be higher.
I would also like to suggest some rare tasks to offset some AD sinks in a way that thematically fits Leadership.
Create a "Companion Training Drill" task that awards character-bound Companion Upgrade Tokens.
Create a "Mounted Combat Training" task that awards character-bound Mount Training Tokens (a new item that would work just like the Companion Tokens, but for mounts).
Create a "War Games" task that has you drill with the troops to earn Training Certificates (This would be a new item that can be spent for retraining Feats, Boons, Power Points or Stats. Different costs based on character level would apply to each type of retraining.)
Foundries: These need some differentiation from the other gameplay types. Have the first three fifteen minute Foundry missions completed each day reward 500 refined AD, not rough. 100 refined AD for each of the next three fifteen minute Foundries, and 25 refined AD per fifteen minute Foundry aftwerwards. Cap it at 2000 refined AD per character per day from Foundries.
Realy? Now how the actualy HAMSTER should i be able to aford rings costing 300k each when i stil get complete HAMSTER from PVE/PVP, RP is droping in price? What the actual hell do i have to do to get AD now?! run 100 dungeons/skirmishe for 500AD EACH?! MAX?! like you guys are geting dummer every week.
You forgot to account for something: if everybody earns less then the value of AD goes up.
As Scott said Cryptic wants a more standardized level of income based on how much time you are playing instead of how many alts you have and how much play time you sacrifice to farm AD on them. Yes you will gain less, but so will everybody else and some more so than others. Many more so than others in truth.
But this will mean increase in value of AD as well as more gain for the time you do spend playing the game. You might not get 100K AD...but you likely will get more than the current 100K AD is worth in true value with the amount of AD you do gain.
The only problem with this is the costs of items that are more or less bottle necked or fixed on "fixed" prices such as GMOPs and Wards.
So take it to the extreme, lets say you can only make 100 ad per day, well yeah the value of 5,000 AD shoots through the roof but it doesnt matter when a GMOP is fixed at 100k....
The big difference between Xbox and here is that players have been able to do these things and earn ALOT of AD over the course of the game, so all these changes will do is create a near permanent divide between "new" generation players and "old" generation players.
Something that SHOULD have been done at the release of module 6 is adjust the cost of items/enchants on the level 60 "BIS" gear.
Instead they just added ontop of rank 10s and Perfects without reducing the cost of rank 10s and perfects which is what created a massive massive AD demand for the game without increasing its supply. So players FLOCKED to doing things like leadership.
So now Cryptic removes leadership. GOOD! They have squashed MOST if not ALL of the ways to make AD in the game aside from a tiny amount you can get per day from playing. Im not against these changes IF!!!!! they look at reducing the costs of other things.
Most notably in the TWO biggest "sink" areas: 1) Enchants 2) Artifacts and artifact gear.
I made this post earlier and I will make it again. I have run the numbers on this and this is what I honestly believe needs to happen for the economic survival of this game. Atleast to get rid of that "wall" I spoke of earlier with the new versus old generation players.
1) Remove the "double" requirement of upgrading enchants. This will reduce enchants (radiant/silvery/dark etc) prices by ABOUT 35% and will reduce the cost of weapon enchants (V0rpal/Fey/Lightning etc) by about 40-50%.
Why this works perfectly is this actually puts the current "BIS" costs at about the same level of "cost" as the lvl 60 "bis gear" was.... Meaning it would still take about the same amount of AD as it did back when perfects and 10s were the best. Almost ANY game I have seen, when they do a release like mod 6, they make the old stuff cheaper since its obsolete, we didnt really see that here, only an add on to the current prices which is why Trans enchants are over 10 mil and rank 12s cost 3-4 million.... MOST of that is based on fixed costs like Coal Wards and GMOPS.
2) Make artifacts bound to account. This doesnt even make them cheaper. ALL it does is make them a BETTER investment of AD. Currently when you play alts, you need every character to try and get up 4 artifacts. Its ridiculous! Noone is going to do that in their sane mind especially now with AD income slashed. Allowing these (and artifact equipment) to be bound to account just makes it worthwhile for players to upgrade 1 "Set" of artifacts.
I guarantee this will lead to an increase of sales because now players might actually be willing to drop $100 into the game to get a primary up to Mythic, knowing he can use it on his 3 characters... Its more universal.
Those 2 things would reduce prices in the biggest cost sink areas of the game, which I think is NEEDED with this change, as well as make artifacts and arti-equipment a much better investment for your account.
Without these changes, you will never see balance in the game. "Old" generation players will have and retain such and advantage over the average or "new" player you are basically giving old schoolers like myself a permanent advantage in this game.... Its not fun and not fair and wont promote this game.
You wont lose sales I promise. If anything players will spend more money.
So...let's have a little Pindaric flight into what this "fixing the economy" is bound to do...
Here's what is going to happen. Or rather, a logical prediction of the consequences of such an update.
-Leadership becomes basically unused, making not only all Leadership resources and assets worthless, but also slowing severely the inflow of materials from Leadership rewards -With a long-term source of diamonds gone, "casual" players who can only dedicate a couple hours to the game per day are left with few ways of making them. -Diamonds become scarcer, and with that the price of certain items starts to fall...but diamond sinks like Strongholds, GMOPs, and such hold strong, actually making diamonds LOSE trading value in spite of there being a higher demand. This happens because people will be less likely to buy stuff with diamonds since they'll have less to spend on the Auction House with the sinks eating everything they can make -With the demand on diamonds being high, Zen will in turn lose value, but since the exchange rate is capped at 1 zen per 500 diamonds, nobody will sell their Zen anymore since the buying power of diamonds has collapsed. -Likewise, Zen purchases will also go down for crates since there is a VERY high chance of not getting what you're looking for, and selling them becomes a much less profitable option. This from a maneuver that, like most others, was meant to constrict non-paying players even more, and ends up also constricting paying players forcing them to pay more to get a sensible boost in the game.
So why is there even a place to flag spam bot AD sellers (which I do every time I am in PE) if you are not going to take action against them? I guess it is easier to take action against the actual players!
So why is there even a place to flag spam bot AD sellers (which I do every time I am in PE) if you are not going to take action against them? I guess it is easier to take action against the actual players!
They are banned on a daily basis by the thousands.
And seriously...anybody who thinks gold farmers are kids in their mothers' basements haven't been paying attention for the last five to ten years.
the best hint is: forget all the feedback of this thread. the best that you will read here is based in doctrinal conceptions of people that MAYBE DONT KNOW why some changes are made. you guys dont need call Peter Schiff, but call some profissional to put order in the house.
the simple idea to put a lot more effort to have FAR LESS REWARD because maybe, MAYBE sometime in the future that will fix the economy (HAHA) is absurd.
the single thing that i igree is: you need work for your money.
Players base is low now - it is fact. And developers have to know that.
Not productive discussion.
You are like Angry Birds.
Fly away.
This. Such a change would probably be justified if there was a large playerbase and thus there was enough freedom and money in the player-run economy that the change would be gradual and eventually be absorbed into the game. But right now Arc needs to appeal to its players...so many are leaving and so few of the new players are sticking around, most because all they have left is the hope the game will get better eventually.
The devs should make the game interesting enough to get the player to spread the word and get friends into it. I've seen so many people who reinstalled the game after months (and had level 60 endgame gear from the previous mods) who got a look around, got informed on the changes, and simply left after learning the devs moved the goalposts and basically made them the bottom of the endgame food chain.
The game right now is unfriendly to pretty much everyone: veterans who know how good it was and have seen it waste away, returning players who can't bear the shock, new players who find a mediocre game with slow grind and a very steep progression, and even players who started just near the end of mod 6 and are starting to see how the game can basically turn the tables on them and make all their efforts moot overnight.
And what is really funny about all of this... there is still no word about how they will remove all the AD gained through bugs, exploits or even botters from the game.
Not to mention, that some players will take the time to collect/create as much AD as they can from now until this change goes live...
Beside, there are many other MMOs out there, where you can send some "minions" out to do some work for you, and you get rewarded with something after a certain amount of time. Sounds familiar? So, when this can work in other MMOs, why can't this work here as well?
From the very release there were problems quite possibly caused by poor security, design work and programming. Case in point the trillions (?) of AD exploited from the server in May of 2013. This had nothing to do with bots for those unaware of the incident.
After that bots did become a serious issue to the in game play and we are repeatedly told economy. We should also not forget the bugs and exploits that remained unresolved for multiple mods. None of these helped the honest in game population and led to many loyal followers leaving the game. Oh did I forget that the best game content was deleted as well? Or offending players were rarely if ever expelled from the game?
Now we find ourselves with the last legitimate way to gain the AD necessary to play this game and remain competitive being removed. Unless you want to take out a mortgage to subsidize your game play.
The lead developer places the blame on bots, once again. Perhaps the finger should be pointed at them? Are the bots so much more talented and innovative that the developers cannot stop them?!?
Personally I suspect it is someone's desire to kill off the PC version of this game and force all of us to go Xbox. My recommendation to all players who invested time and energy in this game. Move on!!!! But, remember the names of all contributors to this platform. Both companies and individuals and ask yourself if you truly wish to invest any further time in any venture they are associated with.
Better yet spend less time in game and more time posting your experiences about the game and its evolution on the Internet. Who knows maybe you will find your time is more rewarding and less frustrating?
To all friends and competitors thanks for the good times! Be well and happy. Hopefully we will meet again on another platform that is better managed.
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darkstarcrashMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,382Arc User
I know I'm repeating what many others have said, but ...
-- Lower fixed costs like GMoPs, or increase chances to get them in other ways. Also look at cost of campaign tasks.
-- Leadership tasks can't just have the AD removed with no compensation; add account-bound RP in rough equivalence to the time the tasks take (Battle Elemental Cultists: 2 aquamarines, Fight Off Spellplagued: 1 peridot).
-- You need to give AD for non-group content. My characters are focused on SH dailies and doing the daily campaign areas for Adventurer's shards and items for the mimic, and I have a fresh 70 OP who is currently running 5 campaign zones (ToD, Shar, DR, IWD, WoD) for boons. He will make no AD beyond maybe one dungeon, because all his time is spent on quests.
-- Cost of dungeon keys must be lowered, or salvage value has to go up.
You forgot to account for something: if everybody earns less then the value of AD goes up.
As Scott said Cryptic wants a more standardized level of income based on how much time you are playing instead of how many alts you have and how much play time you sacrifice to farm AD on them. Yes you will gain less, but so will everybody else and some more so than others. Many more so than others in truth.
But this will mean increase in value of AD as well as more gain for the time you do spend playing the game. You might not get 100K AD...but you likely will get more than the current 100K AD is worth in true value with the amount of AD you do gain.
You ignore one very, very important thing: The Fixed Costs. Everything in the game is monetized to AD: from refinement (GMOPS and Wards) to respecs and appearance changes to mount and companion upgrading. All of these costs were set up with the assumption that players would have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of AD to throw around. That is no longer going to be the case, unless a player saves up for months at a time for a single GMOP or the like.
And economic balance is a relative thing: sure the prices will drop but so will the buying power of the average player. The only people that will come out ahead on that one are those that already have a lot of AD, either hoarded up or backlogged.
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The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
1. Removed most of good and entertaining dungeons and give us few dungeons that are boring and unpleasant.
2. Removed set bonus gear, there were three different types of set gear for both t1 and t2 even we did have tiamat's set bonus gear now we stick with this no set bonus gear and useless dragonflight set gear (for most classes)
3. Made t1 and t2 gear bound nice job guys, now please remove the "Equipment" tab from AH coz there is no use of it anymore. You can make a new one tht says "Artifact only no Equipment trolled ya" tab.
4. Killed the storyline with neverending quest at 60 to 70 area like spinward and other howling maw kindda area. I dont know how to thank you for ur much hard work on those areas. Really guys u nailed it.
5. Did i forget to mention neverending laag at wod, and the long conversation with the npcs at dread ring those are awesome its get more awesome when u use teleport scroll to go to protector enclave coz the exit gate of dread ring is not appearing for 5 mins.
6. Players gets hatred msg from other players when they use astral seal or dailys with pally's while having the prism feat OMG now its so bad tht an innocent player have to take heat for ur mistakes nailed it again guys nailed it again.
7. And the lucky no 7 goes to the leadership well i wanted to keep going but my finger is hurting already.
Maybe customer is not always right, but most of the time they are, if you cannot satisfy ur customer even when they are in love with product, ur product will die soon dont need to be a marketing genius to figure that out
START CARING
Takes just few wipes and none has AD or maybe there is none in game or maybe there is few hundred players who spend like ten thousand in ZEN market...
The only way I and many others are making AD in this game is through profession farming on multiple characters. So now we will only be able to make 24K AD on one character per day, and that's if we have enough time to run everything. Where as with professions we are able to make 12K AD on 10 characters per day, that's 120K with much less time needed to do so.
So basically this change will make all the time that was needed to level professions a waste, like it seems this whole game is becoming.
RaFaust
Honestly, if the items that Cryptic controls the AD cost of get scaled appropriately (putting them in reasonable range of people who earn AD by actively playing under this new system) then I'm actually fine with these changes. The leadership alt-army stuff that people are upset about is, frankly, something that shouldn't have ever been around.
People got USED to needing this alt army to survive the game. If the game becomes playable (as in, making progression actually possible) without the alt army then it's an all-in-all positive change. The problem is this announcement doesn't make it sound like this is going to be the case, sadly.
After World War I the world decided it was all Germany's fault. They demanded money for repairs...Germany had no money....so they printed a ton to pay the debts and thus made the currency worthless.
So worthless that people burned their money instead of firewood because it was cheaper.
All economies run on the supply and demand of their currency to be worth value. If you print money more money (gaining AD was akin to printing money) then the value of that currency goes down. If you print less money the value of the currency goes up.
That is basic supply and demand and it applies to currency. Please feel free to ask any economist, they'll be happy to explain it to you in larger words.
What happened during the great depression was actually very similar to what happened in Germany. People bought on credit until everybody owed everybody something and nobody could collect. However instead of the government printing money in excess it was people buying on credit so although the value of money existed people bought items with money that didn't exist until the bubble burst. But that's a story for another day and another thread.
Campaigns: Replace every daily Campaign task reward that is currently in gold with a rough AD reward equal to 1 RAD per copper. For example, Blighted Beasts in Sharandar rewards 16 silver, 56 copper. It would instead reward 1,656 RAD.
Quests: For each regular quest that sends a character to a new area and each quest that sends you back to Knox because the area is "completed", replace the gold reward with 100 RAD x the Quest level. So, completing the Sleeping Dragon Bridge tutorial quest sends you to Knox when the tutorial is finished. It's level 1, so you get 100 RAD. Grave News sends you to Neverdeath Graveyard and is a level 26 quest. You get 2600 RAD. Graveyard at Rest sends you back to Knox at 30. So, you get 3000 RAD. A lot of work went into each of the game's environments. Give player's a reason to visit them all.
Leadership: If AD is being removed, I would rather see it replaced with account-bound RP than with XP. Either increase the total amount of RP that comes out of all the Leadership chests or replace the AD rewards with RP in the form of account-bound White Pearls, Peridots and Aquamarines. If Leadership becomes all about XP, then it will be abandonded after reaching max level.
If you do not replace the AD with something of comparable value like RP, then the time required for many of the tasks should be reduced significantly.
Without the AD, the crafting experience awarded for Leadership tasks should be increased. It doesn't have to be as high as the other professions since it also rewards some player XP, but it should be higher.
I would also like to suggest some rare tasks to offset some AD sinks in a way that thematically fits Leadership.
Foundries: These need some differentiation from the other gameplay types. Have the first three fifteen minute Foundry missions completed each day reward 500 refined AD, not rough. 100 refined AD for each of the next three fifteen minute Foundries, and 25 refined AD per fifteen minute Foundry aftwerwards. Cap it at 2000 refined AD per character per day from Foundries.
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So take it to the extreme, lets say you can only make 100 ad per day, well yeah the value of 5,000 AD shoots through the roof but it doesnt matter when a GMOP is fixed at 100k....
The big difference between Xbox and here is that players have been able to do these things and earn ALOT of AD over the course of the game, so all these changes will do is create a near permanent divide between "new" generation players and "old" generation players.
Something that SHOULD have been done at the release of module 6 is adjust the cost of items/enchants on the level 60 "BIS" gear.
Instead they just added ontop of rank 10s and Perfects without reducing the cost of rank 10s and perfects which is what created a massive massive AD demand for the game without increasing its supply. So players FLOCKED to doing things like leadership.
So now Cryptic removes leadership. GOOD! They have squashed MOST if not ALL of the ways to make AD in the game aside from a tiny amount you can get per day from playing. Im not against these changes IF!!!!! they look at reducing the costs of other things.
Most notably in the TWO biggest "sink" areas:
1) Enchants
2) Artifacts and artifact gear.
I made this post earlier and I will make it again. I have run the numbers on this and this is what I honestly believe needs to happen for the economic survival of this game. Atleast to get rid of that "wall" I spoke of earlier with the new versus old generation players.
1) Remove the "double" requirement of upgrading enchants. This will reduce enchants (radiant/silvery/dark etc) prices by ABOUT 35% and will reduce the cost of weapon enchants (V0rpal/Fey/Lightning etc) by about 40-50%.
Why this works perfectly is this actually puts the current "BIS" costs at about the same level of "cost" as the lvl 60 "bis gear" was.... Meaning it would still take about the same amount of AD as it did back when perfects and 10s were the best. Almost ANY game I have seen, when they do a release like mod 6, they make the old stuff cheaper since its obsolete, we didnt really see that here, only an add on to the current prices which is why Trans enchants are over 10 mil and rank 12s cost 3-4 million.... MOST of that is based on fixed costs like Coal Wards and GMOPS.
2) Make artifacts bound to account.
This doesnt even make them cheaper. ALL it does is make them a BETTER investment of AD. Currently when you play alts, you need every character to try and get up 4 artifacts. Its ridiculous! Noone is going to do that in their sane mind especially now with AD income slashed. Allowing these (and artifact equipment) to be bound to account just makes it worthwhile for players to upgrade 1 "Set" of artifacts.
I guarantee this will lead to an increase of sales because now players might actually be willing to drop $100 into the game to get a primary up to Mythic, knowing he can use it on his 3 characters... Its more universal.
Those 2 things would reduce prices in the biggest cost sink areas of the game, which I think is NEEDED with this change, as well as make artifacts and arti-equipment a much better investment for your account.
Without these changes, you will never see balance in the game. "Old" generation players will have and retain such and advantage over the average or "new" player you are basically giving old schoolers like myself a permanent advantage in this game.... Its not fun and not fair and wont promote this game.
You wont lose sales I promise. If anything players will spend more money.
Here's what is going to happen. Or rather, a logical prediction of the consequences of such an update.
-Leadership becomes basically unused, making not only all Leadership resources and assets worthless, but also slowing severely the inflow of materials from Leadership rewards
-With a long-term source of diamonds gone, "casual" players who can only dedicate a couple hours to the game per day are left with few ways of making them.
-Diamonds become scarcer, and with that the price of certain items starts to fall...but diamond sinks like Strongholds, GMOPs, and such hold strong, actually making diamonds LOSE trading value in spite of there being a higher demand. This happens because people will be less likely to buy stuff with diamonds since they'll have less to spend on the Auction House with the sinks eating everything they can make
-With the demand on diamonds being high, Zen will in turn lose value, but since the exchange rate is capped at 1 zen per 500 diamonds, nobody will sell their Zen anymore since the buying power of diamonds has collapsed.
-Likewise, Zen purchases will also go down for crates since there is a VERY high chance of not getting what you're looking for, and selling them becomes a much less profitable option. This from a maneuver that, like most others, was meant to constrict non-paying players even more, and ends up also constricting paying players forcing them to pay more to get a sensible boost in the game.
to take action against them? I guess it is easier to take action against the actual players!
LS removed from The Gateway -> botters moved ingame.
RAD removed from LS -> botters will run dungeons/skirmishes 24/7.
What's next on the list?
Removing AD from the game at all?
You're not going to stop the botters, you're just going to stop players from playing NWO.
And seriously...anybody who thinks gold farmers are kids in their mothers' basements haven't been paying attention for the last five to ten years.
the simple idea to put a lot more effort to have FAR LESS REWARD because maybe, MAYBE sometime in the future that will fix the economy (HAHA) is absurd.
the single thing that i igree is: you need work for your money.
The devs should make the game interesting enough to get the player to spread the word and get friends into it. I've seen so many people who reinstalled the game after months (and had level 60 endgame gear from the previous mods) who got a look around, got informed on the changes, and simply left after learning the devs moved the goalposts and basically made them the bottom of the endgame food chain.
The game right now is unfriendly to pretty much everyone: veterans who know how good it was and have seen it waste away, returning players who can't bear the shock, new players who find a mediocre game with slow grind and a very steep progression, and even players who started just near the end of mod 6 and are starting to see how the game can basically turn the tables on them and make all their efforts moot overnight.
Not to mention, that some players will take the time to collect/create as much AD as they can from now until this change goes live...
Beside, there are many other MMOs out there, where you can send some "minions" out to do some work for you, and you get rewarded with something after a certain amount of time.
Sounds familiar?
So, when this can work in other MMOs, why can't this work here as well?
After that bots did become a serious issue to the in game play and we are repeatedly told economy. We should also not forget the bugs and exploits that remained unresolved for multiple mods. None of these helped the honest in game population and led to many loyal followers leaving the game. Oh did I forget that the best game content was deleted as well? Or offending players were rarely if ever expelled from the game?
Now we find ourselves with the last legitimate way to gain the AD necessary to play this game and remain competitive being removed. Unless you want to take out a mortgage to subsidize your game play.
The lead developer places the blame on bots, once again. Perhaps the finger should be pointed at them? Are the bots so much more talented and innovative that the developers cannot stop them?!?
Personally I suspect it is someone's desire to kill off the PC version of this game and force all of us to go Xbox. My recommendation to all players who invested time and energy in this game. Move on!!!! But, remember the names of all contributors to this platform. Both companies and individuals and ask yourself if you truly wish to invest any further time in any venture they are associated with.
Better yet spend less time in game and more time posting your experiences about the game and its evolution on the Internet. Who knows maybe you will find your time is more rewarding and less frustrating?
To all friends and competitors thanks for the good times! Be well and happy. Hopefully we will meet again on another platform that is better managed.
-- Lower fixed costs like GMoPs, or increase chances to get them in other ways. Also look at cost of campaign tasks.
-- Leadership tasks can't just have the AD removed with no compensation; add account-bound RP in rough equivalence to the time the tasks take (Battle Elemental Cultists: 2 aquamarines, Fight Off Spellplagued: 1 peridot).
-- You need to give AD for non-group content. My characters are focused on SH dailies and doing the daily campaign areas for Adventurer's shards and items for the mimic, and I have a fresh 70 OP who is currently running 5 campaign zones (ToD, Shar, DR, IWD, WoD) for boons. He will make no AD beyond maybe one dungeon, because all his time is spent on quests.
-- Cost of dungeon keys must be lowered, or salvage value has to go up.
And economic balance is a relative thing: sure the prices will drop but so will the buying power of the average player. The only people that will come out ahead on that one are those that already have a lot of AD, either hoarded up or backlogged.