2 Economic Changes that NEED to happen in wake of this AD Change for a better economy

ayroux

To Start, I think these changes are positive ones for the game. Leadership was flooding a HUGE amount of AD into the economy each day. So this change WILL be good, but I think it will take some time for the positive effects to be felt and I do think there is a condition on it being a positive change: the reduction of AD sinks.

Before I explain the changes, I want to take us back to the module 6 release. Prior to module 6, the "BIS" gear was perfects and rank 10s. The cost for these things was big, but not MASSIVE. Also the gear difference at that point between a new player or a casual player (say in rank 8s and a greater versus rank 10s and a perfect) really wasnt ALL that much.

With the introduction of module 6, they obviously added rank 12s and trans enchants. Now normally this is a good thing when they make older stuff "obsolete" but usually that also comes with making the older stuff "cheaper" - something we did not see in this game.

So, with that increased AD sink, what inevitably happened? Players were looking for ways to make massive amounts of AD in the game in order to support the higher cost of these enchants as well as the Mythic artifacts which again introduced a massive AD sink.

THIS is the reason players started flocking to leadership. While leadership may have been a problem pre-module 6, module 6 nearly FORCED players to leadership.. which is now why players are SO mad about this change, because they adapted to the module, adapted to the increase in AD sinks, and now you are removing the ability for us to adapt without reducing the reason we were FORCED to adapt.

So now, with that perspective in mind. Here are TWO small changes that would be an appropriate response in removing leadership AD income.

#1 First and foremost, artifacts and artifact-equipment NEED to be bound to account.

WHY: This is crucial now more than ever. It doesnt actually reduce the costs of artifacts or arti-equipment. I dont think you necessarily need to at this time, there are several ways to farm RP in game and with enough time and if a player only has to farm 1 "set" of these items (minus weapons mind you since those are not universal to classes) it allows a player to use all their resources into the same artifacts and use them on multiple characters.

This will actually promote sales since players will be much more likely to pay to upgrade 1 set of artifacts to the max or near the max rather than currently for alts they just "try their best" to upgrade those things, most do not actually pay for artifacts on more than one character.

This also promotes playing alt characters - something this game as move against since module 2 with the introduction of guess what? ARTIFACTS! I used to play alts until it became too expensive. Why? Artifacts and Artifact Equipment. It still doesnt remove the need to get gear, unlock boons, and get weapons for those alt classes but the ability to swap enchants over combined with the ability to swap artifacts and a "neck/belt" as well would be HUGE and I GUARANTEE promote this game like you have never seen before. Players will spent a ton of time and Money getting these items up since they are universal and help their account. You will also see things like PVP Que times drop since players can much more easily swap to alternate characters depending on party needs etc.

Look at other successful games, this is something players FLOCK towards since it allows players to work towards "1 set" on ALL their characters, which is more and more the norm, less "character specific" stuff and more "account wide" stuff promoting diversity and promoting alternate characters... and a HUGE improvement in the wake of this AD change especially.

#2 The removal (or at LEAST reduction) of "duplicate enchant requirements" for ranks 7-10.

WHY: What I mean by this is when upgrading a rank 7 to a rank 8, currently you actually need TWO rank 7s. The first to refine, the second as a "material requirement" to upgrade. The removal of this for ranks 7-10 STILL has a "bottleneck" of Greater Mark of Potency as well as the RP as WELL AS wards... So its not as if they are free by any means.

This makes sense since rank 10s were lvl 60 "BIS" with the introduction of lvl 70 and rank 12s, it SHOULD HAVE MADE rank 10s cheaper and easier to get. Currently a casual who can get rank 8s or 9s, the difference between rank 12s is HUGE (literally double) the stat bonus. Removing the duplicate requirement will actually only drop the TOTAL price of a rank 12 by about 35%.

This makes sense since it would actually set the rank 12 price NEAR what a rank 10 used to cost in module 5. So the "cost of BIS" for these enchants only would remain about the same. It would allow casual players (even in the wake of this AD change) to get more in the range of rank 9-10 enchants which would lessen the "gear gap" between the "old school players" like myself who have been able to farm AD for a long time and get BIS gear. Without this change, you will PERMANENTLY create a "wall" of gear that new players will never be able to overcome. Old school players who already have 12s, mythics, transcendants will forever have a massive advantage.

Doing this change again still doesnt tackle the cost of artifacts, artifact gear, boons, gear etc. But it does make a "decent" level of enchant actually attainable. It would reduce the cost of weapon and armor enchants about 40-50% as well, which they still have fixed costs of Wards as well as GMOPs. If you REALLY want, you can even add additional GMOP requirements but I dont think it necessary TBH.

I really think this would create an appropriate price adjustment that this module SHOULD have introduced with the release of module 6. The "old" BIS gear becomes obsolete, but also becomes cheaper, the NEW gear/enchants/etc are adjusted to the same relative cost as previous "bis".


Please consider these two small changes in the wake of this BIG AD CHANGE. I think if you really consider it, you will see this position comes from a reasonable one that is only looking out for the longevity and success of the game.

Thanks!

reiwulf

I think that progression neccesary fixed price items need to have their cost reduced too. The problem is that the need to probably wait till AD becomes more scarce first and that period will be harsh for players.

locksanpockets

#1 would be a big help.

lwedar

positive changes. I would very much prefer they add loot back to dungeons though.

drkbodhi

I agree 100% with this... and if it was added to my suggestion of updating the enchantment drops from a max of r5s to scale them based on the location the player is in.

R5 enchants should not drop from a dead mob in eCC, eLol or even VT. T2s should drop r6 and r7 and t1 should be changed to drop r5 and r6. Chests in certain zones and rewards from HEs in those zones should mirror the difficulty of the zone... i.e.- IWD drops r7s, WoD drops r6s. The SH HEs should drop based on difficulty also... r5 for soloable HEs, r6 for the level 2 HEs and r7 for the Hard HEs.

That work in perfect synergy with these suggestions and the your future plans with AD.​​

nannhy

IMO character bound is killing the game and i see nothing wrong with AD at the current time.. just play the game and enjoy it, else move on.

kvet

Great suggestions. I'll post a photo of myself in a cow costume if they're taken. The problem here is that this change has nothing to do, at all, with botting or even the in-game economy. That's a smoke screen. This is entirely about removing excess AD from the economy so that players are forced to pay $$ to have the ability to acquire higher end stuff OR grind the same content 10 or 15 times a day for several months in order to get one high end enchantment - which forces any player who wants that in a reasonable amount of time either buy Zen or buy AD from third parties (which is, sadly for PWE, much cheaper). The problem of bots and 3rd party sellers will be unaffected by the change. They'll still bot whatever they were botting. This just takes the extra AD they got while botting by *also* doing Leadership away.

I've said it before: If Cryptic has data that shows anything about what bots are doing, it means they have some way to see bots. If they can see bots, why are the bots in game at all. Why do anything to penalize players to "prevent bots" if you have a way to track and analyze their behavior? Likely, they're looking at aggragate data, which includes also real players and is therefore totally unreliable since a large number of "bots" that vanish are actually players quitting the game.

The fact is, the whole Leadership thing - gateway and this - is pure propaganda. They're welcome to make whatever changes they want, it's their game. I just wish they'd be upfront and honest about why they're doing it. The rationale they've presented heretofore is illogical and borderline dishonest.

dfnce

AD is not true equivalent of money. In this game it is like gasoline, electricity or oxygen. 24k AD cap won't get far anyone. Single 500k AD won't get you anywhere, 20 days of "playing game". On my mains my current unrefined cap is permanently 150-200k AD, and i stack already salvageable gear on other alts in anticipation of next double AD event.

Most rich country in world is based on living on borrowed money or printing them (indirectly through government debt paper emission). So speaking of healthy economy model, get real. There are only effective models making limited groups more rich at expense of others.

rustlord

Compared to the extremist ideas of another thread, these are more the kind of changes I can fully support. You cut down the AD sinks to be more in line with the AD changes, not drop rank 7 enchantment all over the place! Plus the timely necroing of the old forgotten BoA Artifacts subject.

ayroux

rustlord said:

Compared to the extremist ideas of another thread, these are more the kind of changes I can fully support. You cut down the AD sinks to be more in line with the AD changes, not drop rank 7 enchantment all over the place! Plus the timely necroing of the old forgotten BoA Artifacts subject.

Yeah I really think these two changes would actually result in a very good change overall here... AD cant be "botted" by leadership accounts who could make stupid AD per day. On the flip side, enchants would cost a little less and you only need to work on 1 "set" of artifact gear for all your characters (minus weapons).

It would make the investment into that gear worthwhile, and make it easier to get decent rank enchants in your gear without having to have massive AD investment to do so.

daniloslv

Also Bound to Account Companions. Companions are very expensive to have different sets for each character.

zacazu

ayroux said:

rustlord said:

Compared to the extremist ideas of another thread, these are more the kind of changes I can fully support. You cut down the AD sinks to be more in line with the AD changes, not drop rank 7 enchantment all over the place! Plus the timely necroing of the old forgotten BoA Artifacts subject.

Yeah I really think these two changes would actually result in a very good change overall here... AD cant be "botted" by leadership accounts who could make stupid AD per day. On the flip side, enchants would cost a little less and you only need to work on 1 "set" of artifact gear for all your characters (minus weapons).

It would make the investment into that gear worthwhile, and make it easier to get decent rank enchants in your gear without having to have massive AD investment to do so.

why not give to the guild some enchant like the overloard one? the good thing about guild is create a lot of small transitions that a "vip player" can have some profit.

blackjackwidow

kvet said:

Great suggestions. I'll post a photo of myself in a cow costume if they're taken.

First time I've ACTUALLY LOL'ed over anything to do with this whole mess.

kvet said:

The problem here is that this change has nothing to do, at all, with botting or even the in-game economy. That's a smoke screen.

Unfortunately, everything you said is so true. Even more unfortunately, it will work. As you stated, it's their game, they can do what they want. Just would rather that they own it.

skalt112

That was a whole lot of words for a little bit of idea.

ayroux

skalt112 said:

That was a whole lot of words for a little bit of idea.

TLDR: Stuff costs too much.

That better?

I wanted to flush out the entire issue and why these 2 things specifically make sense, rather than just QQing like everyone else and saying "fixed costs are too high" so that when they go into their little "discussion room" to review feedback on this issue, they can flush out these two ideas. Next time ill put a TLDR....

silverkelt

I agree wholeheartedly with the second one.

This will allow alot of players and alts to progress much quicker without SO MUCH required AD.

ironzerg79

ayroux said:

#1 First and foremost, artifacts and artifact-equipment NEED to be bound to account.

#2 The removal (or at LEAST reduction) of "duplicate enchant requirements" for ranks 7-10.

Yes and yes.

rickcase276

Wouldn't it be much simpler to just remove the requirements for AD completely? Just allow things like artifacts and artifact equipment, heck even all equipment, to level and get better the more you use them. It would solve the AD problem and the incessant grind issues. Yes you could still use the RP to speed up the process of leveling the equipment, but you could still do it through gameplay too.

reiwulf

it would be indeed much better and has been proposed before many times. I don't think cryptic wants it though or they would have implemented it ages ago already.

ayroux

rickcase276 said:

Wouldn't it be much simpler to just remove the requirements for AD completely? Just allow things like artifacts and artifact equipment, heck even all equipment, to level and get better the more you use them. It would solve the AD problem and the incessant grind issues. Yes you could still use the RP to speed up the process of leveling the equipment, but you could still do it through gameplay too.

Yeah this was brought up adnausium before... That EXP would count towards RP. They didnt want to do that though as it would eliminate any sales for RP...

I think the proposition here though wouldnt eliminate it, because players still have to grind it via RP but it would make playing alts much more enjoyable!