I'm gonna be blunt here: please Cryptic do not sell us this change as needed to fix ingame economy, be honest and say that you just need more incomes so you are going to try to milk players some more.
It's sooooo obvious that this change is to push players to the zen store, that I feel that the reasons geiven by the dev as an insult to our intelligence.
In fact, not only you are nerfing the main source of incomes of many players (like me), that bought alts slots for this only purpose, that invested tons of time to level the toons professions, and that get the AD in a legit way by connecting every day, your are also not providing a reliable source of incomes that doesnt take hours of boring grinding to compensate.
This change IMO will remove the last wall that will turn this game from a "Free to play" to a "Pay to Win" model, especially seing the stupidly huge prices of items in the AH (that I cannot afford even with my leadership army unless I save AD for months...).
For me the moment this change sees light (without any compensation), the moment I'll quit. Dunno but with the latest changes since mod 6, it seems to me that you want players to stop playing this game...
How much AD is still around, that was gained through bugs and exploits in the past? Or what about any bugs and exploits used to generate AD right now? I doubt, that that AD will ever be cleaned out properly...
Setting an account limit of 240k AD per day would have been a start, in order to get the bigger leadership armies under control. Then replacing the AD from those rare quests with something usefull and more important really rewarding. And also work on the other Leadership regular missions, adjusting the AD gain per hour, and also removing the junk from all the chest.
What about tracking the flow of AD from all those 2 character slots accounts, to actually nail all the real botters main accounts? Or what about actually banning those players, that buy AD from botters?
There're a lot of ways to work something out, something boths sides can actually keep on playing with. But no, we can't start with some small reasonable changes...
So let's do this, next changes on the list to push through: - Making any purchase from the auction house bound to account. - Making any reward from other professions bound to account. - Making any loot drop bound to account.
That should fix the problem with those botters for sure. And hey, that's what this is all about, right?
Not going to quit, even with those stupid changes... i still have over 320 days left on my VIP clock. But i won't be spending any more money here either.
grind grind grind grind u bots this isnt meant to be fun grind grinf flesh bots grind. wont stop bots they make 1/2 there cash out of rank 5s, how about a new aproach remove the market for bots cause thats the only way youll get rid of bots. this isnt a bot measure this is a attempt to generate more income, guess noone told the finance departement that gfc mk2 is slowly unfolding and people are going to be looking to shrink their entertainemnt budget not grow it, not the first time a game company has shot its self in the foot wont be the last time either
cant even conect to the login server they probably wont have it fixed even before the 15th no double ad weekend for me and realy i think im going to go find enuther game been playing since open beta and sto and CO before that, CO is the only one they havnt totaly ruined with grind or HAMSTER like puting in gfx glitches ecer second to slow down my gfx card because "its to fast" at 2 yrs old for this game since the latest updates to gfx
> @ironzerg79 said: > After 10 months of game time I only have a smattering of green Leadership assets and find it very presumptuous to assume that everyone who has leadership factories is cranking out an insane amount of AD for the time they have put into that profession. > > > > Actually, it is extremely easy. Buy your character slots for 500 Zen (or 250k AD). Or cheaper if you waited for the sales. Buy the T3 white assets so you don't have to waste time making higher tier guys. Last time I added 4 toons to my leadership army, they were 8k each. I did six because that's the easiest number of slots you can unlock. So that's another 48000 AD per toon. So that's an upfront investment of 173k AD. > > Now, Assuming you go all in on experience, in order to rush to level 25 Leadership the fastest, I think you're looking at 60 days-ish (checking it twice a day on average) to get to level 25. After that, a level 25 toon can easily generate 12k AD/day if only checked one. Or 84k a week. > > So last time I added to my farm it was only 4 more Leadership toons, and that was in December. So I invested about 700k AD into those toons. After 60 days, we're cranking out about 500k AD/week with those new toons. And they've been working for 8.5 months, or 30 weeks. So 34 times 500k is 17 million AD. From an upfront investment of 700k. And that's in about 10 months. > > All together, I have 25 leadership toons at level 25. So over 2 million AD/week. Took me about 20 minutes a day to check all those toons. So about 2.5 hours a week...or earning over 800k AD/hr AD. > > And you're talking about NOT being able to crank out insane amounts of AD? > > I think you're wrong. Very, very wrong. > > Which is why, despite losing that income (but gaining my sanity back), I can clearly see how Leadership farms, even run legitimately, are a huge problem for the economy.
The reason I think you are wrong is that you are presuming everyone with leadership "farms" are power-leveling the profession just because you did. I clearly have not, and am sure that are others who have not as well. You, and the other supporters, are failing to see the larger picture.
* This will crush the small guilds who will have no hope of raising their Strongholds to a competitive level. This only exacerbates the disparity between the large and small guilds. No wonder the spam, blind invites are on the rise again as some of the smaller guild are trying to 'zerg up.
* This crushes the ability of the solo, and/or, casual player to remain/obtain the ability to be somewhat competitive at the "end game" unless they begin playing 30+ hrs per week.
* This obliterates the hope of any new players coming close to becoming competitive at the end game unless the choose the route of paying RL cash for AD.
* This plays into the hands of those who sell in-game currency and only strengthens their grip on the economy.
* This change will cause the amount of money that the game was taking in from players to crash and become a shadow of what it could have remained.
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
@bilitheaxe66 What you're really upset about is not the leadership changes, but the crazy amount of high level grind that it seemingly takes to make progress. And I agree with you on that.
But just saying "Oh well, make 30 alts and cookie clicker Leadership" isn't a solution. You can't possibly expect new players to feel good about needing to do something crazy like that to feel like they're advancing, can you?
Do you feel good when you tell your friends that "all" they need to do to advance is to farm a silly profession on dozens of different toons for hours each week, then use what extra time they have left over to actually play the game?
The honest truth is the current state of the economy WITH leadership isn't and never was sustainable.
The game needs to be fun and fulfilling through gameplay, not grindplay. And we're not there. But trying to figure that out WITH Leadership in the state it is won't help.
People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with systems that are more fun. A few players have already put out a lot of good ideas, like:
1) Reducing the cost of items in the Wondrous Bazaar, including Marks of Potency, Cubes of Augmentation, and Dungeon Keys
2) Removing the need for duplicate enchantments when refining ALL enchantments, including weapons and armor
3) Significantly reducing the cost to upgrade mounts and companions
4) Significantly reducing transmutation costs
5) Adding Stronghold vouchers back to Leadership to keep some value to the profession, including AD vouchers
6) Removing pure AD costs from Profession tasks, like reinforcement kits
7) Adding BoE gear drops back to dungeons
Those are just a few of the great ideas I've seen getting buried in these threads.
And so I ask you, would you prefer to have the current state of the game, with all the crazy high costs and insane AD requirements, and then play cookie clicker with Leadership?
Or would you be happy to see Leadership (like the rest of the professions) as something optional and those pain points of grind removed?
Which path is better for the long term future of the game?
I 100% agree with ironzerg. Leadership was just an awful way to get over the insane amounts of AD needed to progress. now with that out of the way we can finally hope for a way to earn enough means to progress that doesn't require to make 10 alts only to farm LS and AD. I like all your suggestions, but I really really have to add a foundry option to earn AD too. I know foundry can be exploited with those short quests, so just let it be so daily qualified quests earn AD (that means 15 minutes long quests, the same as a regular dungeon or a skirmish). that would really really also help the foundry.
Right now, all that is showing is AD being removed from Leadership, and that they will patch that next week. How about sticking to that fact, and talk about some future pipe dream changes, when those actual happen?
I enjoy professions, I spent a lot of time, thought and planning to get 6 toons to 25 in leadership by honest grind. We (sometimes) get respecs with major character changes, where is my ability to move those 5 ranks into another profession now this has been nerfed? Too hard to code obviously, so what other compensation is being offered for all my time and effort because the devs can't properly detect, prevent or punish those with bots without hurting all the rest of us? They know this will cause frustration? Understatement. Don't punish honest players along with the wicked.
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feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with systems that are more fun. A few players have already put out a lot of good ideas, like:
[...]
Or would you be happy to see Leadership (like the rest of the professions) as something optional and those pain points of grind removed?
Which path is better for the long term future of the game?
If anyone "needs" to do something, the dev team and PWE need to start taking seriously the opinions and grievances of the player base. They show no sign of doing so. They need to start doing their jobs and when they take action to "fix" the economy they need to not merely destroy the main source of AD but take action to remove the real problem, which is insane grinds for refinement, the ludicrous cost of making high level enchantments and enormous AD sinks everywhere (oh, and constantly taking up our bag space for no reason). Players do not "need" to stop expressing themselves over an ill-considered and insulting decision which contains not the least positive change nor hope for any in the future.
The reason the dev team and PWE need to do these things is that, presumably, they would like to continue having jobs.
A responsible and sensible way of making this change would have been to announce it months in advance ALONG WITH a comprehensive plan to restructure the game economy to make it workable for single-character players. All the suggestion made in this and other threads were obvious. They are not new, either. Players have been suggesting them for months if not years.
But the dev team has offered no plan at all to re-scale the game economy, nor any indication that they are willing to even consider it.
So this is not an opportunity to start a conversation. The dev team aren't even in the conversation. When they join and indicate that they are, for once, not only taking our concerns seriously but intend to IMMEDIATELY make serious, drastic changes to the game economy to make gameplay rewarding and character progression possible, only then will bemoaning this decision be a waste of energy.
Shicoff's initial post on taking over was a ray of hope. He then waited months to make fixes whose necessity was obvious to anyone who had played Mod 6 for even a few minutes. What reason do we have to expect any better this time?
ironzerg79 wrote: > People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over > the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more > suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with > systems that are more fun. A few players have already put > out a lot of good ideas [...]
Isn't that supposed to be the designers job? Or the PWE execs job, for that matter?
> @ironzerg79 said: > bilitheaxe66 What you're really upset about is not the leadership changes, but the crazy amount of high level grind that it seemingly takes to make progress. And I agree with you on that. > > But just saying "Oh well, make 30 alts and cookie clicker Leadership" isn't a solution. You can't possibly expect new players to feel good about needing to do something crazy like that to feel like they're advancing, can you? > > Do you feel good when you tell your friends that "all" they need to do to advance is to farm a silly profession on dozens of different toons for hours each week, then use what extra time they have left over to actually play the game? > > The honest truth is the current state of the economy WITH leadership isn't and never was sustainable. > > The game needs to be fun and fulfilling through gameplay, not grindplay. And we're not there. But trying to figure that out WITH Leadership in the state it is won't help. > > People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with systems that are more fun. A few players have already put out a lot of good ideas, like: > > 1) Reducing the cost of items in the Wondrous Bazaar, including Marks of Potency, Cubes of Augmentation, and Dungeon Keys > > 2) Removing the need for duplicate enchantments when refining ALL enchantments, including weapons and armor > > 3) Significantly reducing the cost to upgrade mounts and companions > > 4) Significantly reducing transmutation costs > > 5) Adding Stronghold vouchers back to Leadership to keep some value to the profession, including AD vouchers > > 6) Removing pure AD costs from Profession tasks, like reinforcement kits > > 7) Adding BoE gear drops back to dungeons > > Those are just a few of the great ideas I've seen getting buried in these threads. > > And so I ask you, would you prefer to have the current state of the game, with all the crazy high costs and insane AD requirements, and then play cookie clicker with Leadership? > > Or would you be happy to see Leadership (like the rest of the professions) as something optional and those pain points of grind removed? > > Which path is better for the long term future of the game?
The problem you are failing to see is that this will kill the game and no hypothetical solution that is months down the line, before it even has a chance of occurring, is going to save the game once the Leadership nerf hits the live server. Already seeing an increase in frame rate as the in game population is already dropping before this "game improving" change occurs.
If this change had actually been well thought out and planned for it would have actually had better/more substitute methods of earning AD, a corresponding reduction in AD sinks, a clear explanation of what the new leadership rewards will be, and the reduction of prices for items on the Wondrous Bazaar ready to go at its implementation. There would have been no misinformation that this is an attempt to control bots and reduce the black market AD in the economy. I, and believe many others, would have been much more accepting of this game changing situation if that were the case.
I, and believe the majority of the player-base, would agree there needs to be a major change in how the economy works. This is very poor method of achieving that end and is going to alienate far too many of the players to keep NeverWinter as a viable game in the long run. My greatest fear of this drastic change is that it will be the straw that breaks the camel's back if the Leadership change hits the live server as it is. Please hold off until you can implement all of the other necessary changes to make it work as intended.
Reading about this change is what finally motivated me to actually activate my forum account instead of being a simple lurker trying to glean information on improving my game play. Would hate to see an end to this game and appreciate being able to freely express my thoughts on this topic. While we may disagree on how to achieve a similar end, I think we both have the game's best interest in our hearts.
each day that goes by without them telling us a reasonable way to progress our characters is another day where more people are getting angrier and many are leaving. I really hope they have the rest of their plan ready and inform us soon. Or they're the only ones that will finally lose.
Except that bots have nothing to do with this. If they have reliable analytics on bot activity then they should use that data to remove the bots, not penalize a year+ investment of time and resources training and equipping alts to do leadership.
No, the not stuff is pure propaganda. This is about removing ingame income to push people to buy Zen. That's all it's about. Don't believe a word about bots, that's absolutely not what this is about.
Finaly sameone on forun other than me that think! that's rare over here
I don't care about what they do to fix the economy, what is really my concern is about the content and about that i can see a total lack of new decent pve content since the the begining of module 6.
Well, as allready mentioned, some people here, Devs included, might get it, when they take a look at the player numbers next week, and that might be the wake up call they need to actually start listening to the community...
Well, as allready mentioned, some people here, Devs included, might get it, when they take a look at the player numbers next week, and that might be the wake up call they need to actually start listening to the community...
Yeah, right.....Caterday happened. We got a badge out of it.
They will ride this ship into the ground without second guessing any decisions being made. No matter what the player numbers of the game say.
Worse comes to worse they'll just close the game down and move on elsewhere.
The only real way you will see change is if there is some sort of lawsuit posted against Cryptic/PWE. And I don't see that happening. The people here just don't have it in them to fight for this game. And honestly, I wouldn't think it would be worth it.
@bilitheaxe66 What you're really upset about is not the leadership changes, but the crazy amount of high level grind that it seemingly takes to make progress. And I agree with you on that.
But just saying "Oh well, make 30 alts and cookie clicker Leadership" isn't a solution. You can't possibly expect new players to feel good about needing to do something crazy like that to feel like they're advancing, can you?
Do you feel good when you tell your friends that "all" they need to do to advance is to farm a silly profession on dozens of different toons for hours each week, then use what extra time they have left over to actually play the game?
The honest truth is the current state of the economy WITH leadership isn't and never was sustainable.
The game needs to be fun and fulfilling through gameplay, not grindplay. And we're not there. But trying to figure that out WITH Leadership in the state it is won't help.
People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with systems that are more fun. A few players have already put out a lot of good ideas, like:
1) Reducing the cost of items in the Wondrous Bazaar, including Marks of Potency, Cubes of Augmentation, and Dungeon Keys
2) Removing the need for duplicate enchantments when refining ALL enchantments, including weapons and armor
3) Significantly reducing the cost to upgrade mounts and companions
4) Significantly reducing transmutation costs
5) Adding Stronghold vouchers back to Leadership to keep some value to the profession, including AD vouchers
6) Removing pure AD costs from Profession tasks, like reinforcement kits
7) Adding BoE gear drops back to dungeons
Those are just a few of the great ideas I've seen getting buried in these threads.
And so I ask you, would you prefer to have the current state of the game, with all the crazy high costs and insane AD requirements, and then play cookie clicker with Leadership?
Or would you be happy to see Leadership (like the rest of the professions) as something optional and those pain points of grind removed?
Which path is better for the long term future of the game?
This comes across to me , and many of my quicly dwindling friends as...."you are getting screwed, what is more important , complaining about the pain of getting screwed, or trying to suggest ways to mitigate the pain."
Well, as allready mentioned, some people here, Devs included, might get it, when they take a look at the player numbers next week, and that might be the wake up call they need to actually start listening to the community...
Yeah, right.....Caterday happened. We got a badge out of it.
They will ride this ship into the ground without second guessing any decisions being made. No matter what the player numbers of the game say.
Worse comes to worse they'll just close the game down and move on elsewhere.
The only real way you will see change is if there is some sort of lawsuit posted against Cryptic/PWE. And I don't see that happening. The people here just don't have it in them to fight for this game. And honestly, I wouldn't think it would be worth it.
We have to wait and see, but i also doubt that they will alter their course. They just remove the AD from Leadership, and then start or continue working on Underdark.
From then, all we will see is blogging and streaming about how great Underdark will be. And the threads about the change will be closed or moved out of sight...
Mod Edit: Nothing is getting closed or removed unless it violates the forum rules...like the quote appended to this post. Let's keep it civil, please
1) Reducing the cost of items in the Wondrous Bazaar, including Marks of Potency, Cubes of Augmentation, and Dungeon Keys
2) Removing the need for duplicate enchantments when refining ALL enchantments, including weapons and armor
3) Significantly reducing the cost to upgrade mounts and companions
4) Significantly reducing transmutation costs
5) Adding Stronghold vouchers back to Leadership to keep some value to the profession, including AD vouchers
6) Removing pure AD costs from Profession tasks, like reinforcement kits
7) Adding BoE gear drops back to dungeons
Those are just a few of the great ideas I've seen getting buried in these threads.
Agree wholeheartedly. Now I'd add removing the bogus 150 account limit and a better currency to negate forced PvE/PvP in order to max Stronghold and you can tie this puppy up and deliver to Dev Team
The quote was from "The X Files", and it discribed the current situation just perfect.
This change is just another hit aimed towards regular players, and not against botters. Botters will continue to farm, whatever they farm, and sell it for AD. If any Mod or Dev has a problem with that statement, i don't have a problem with proving it... just meet me at Neverdeath Graveyard, at the entrance to "Ghost Stories"...
Unless there are updates to the preview server or we see the official patch notes, i can only point to the fact, that AD is being removed from Leadership, without any compensation at all, or even any change to the whole AD price system.
The quote was from "The X Files", and it discribed the current situation just perfect.
This change is just another hit aimed towards regular players, and not against botters. Botters will continue to farm, whatever they farm, and sell it for AD. If any Mod or Dev has a problem with that statement, i don't have a problem with proving it... just meet me at Neverdeath Graveyard, at the entrance to "Ghost Stories"...
Unless there are updates to the preview server or we see the official patch notes, i can only point to the fact, that AD is being removed from Leadership, without any compensation at all, or even any change to the whole AD price system.
Agreed 100%.
Have yet to recover from mod 6 without spending any rl $.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
PnP Red Box DM & Player (74 - ?). NWN + SoU + HotU (4-03),
NWN Diamond Edition, Neverwinter Nights Complete (NWN + NWN2).
Ah, I remember when I got my first toon's leadership to 20. Took me a long while. Main reason i got it to 20 was to get the 'General' title, kuz I thought it looked cool. The extra professions task for rad was just a nice bonus. Knew there were bots out there to farm leadership on several toons at the same time, but dear lawd I did not have the time for that. Just wanted to play the game and get cool gear with my friends.
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
They nerfed the time it takes to grind ADs ingame. That move after leadership makes zero sense. Does PWE simply just want to milk money out of a couple more players before the game dies out? Kill it off, move on to the next cash cow.....
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kreatyveMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 10,545Community Moderator
I would like to remind everyone that "I quit" comments are prohibited on the forums, as is dev bashing (for more obvious reasons). The "I quit" comments are considered spam and have been removed. Sorry.
My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official. Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
So my question is this. Was leadership a fun aspect of the game for people? Did people honestly enjoy the "cookie clicker" aspect of leadership? Or was it the results that made people happy?
In other words, do you feel the game would be more fun for people if:
A) Players were essentially required to run 20-30 or more Leadership toons to be able to play the game
or
b) Playing the game was more rewarding, and provided a more clear path to advancement
Because A is the status quo. If the planned leadership changes were reverted, it would essentially require players to continue to play "cookie clicker" for most of their time, in the hopes that what little slivers of time they had not managing a leadership army was more fun. As well as maintain a very easily exploitable profession for bots and AD farmers.
Or we can go do the path of B, and while it's filled with uncertainty, hope that the benefit to the overall "fun" of Neverwinter, as in just playing the actual game, becomes more rewarding.
Biased polls aside, that's the real choice we're looking at here.
Not all but a large majority of a MMORPG is all about learning the mechanics of the game and finding the most efficient way to increase your characters skills/power. Fun is something to be attained after you spend your time grinding your gear/levels out. When you consistently blow people up in PvP, thats fun. It makes the grind worth while.
Personally I took A because I could see the benefit of leadership months down the road. Picking B is null and void because you can't get to end game choosing that route. How do you expect to get 500k AD's to buy a coalescent ward, by dungeon runs? When your limited to 24k AD per day? Just one takes 21 days and you need a hundred of them. Unless they come up with alternate ways to ear AD and increase the limit of what you can get in a day, and also lower prices I would just stick with option A. For people who don't like it they can go the B route. No one is force to making a leadership army it is done by choice.
The changes, as written by Goatshark, will affect bots for about a week. They will quickly overcome the limits and adapt as usual. The changes, as written by Goatshark, will affect players for much longer.
you need to look at the reason Bots are in the game and approach the fix from that angle.
bots are in the game to make the following main bottleneck easier to overcome.
The current artifact system is broken. the amount of RP needed to get to BiS is too much given the ways we have to generate it.
Dragon hoard Enchants were a fantastic way for a LOT of us to get our equipment upgraded. but they were botted and RP was selling for WAY too cheap on the AH. to fix that you did something silly. you nerfed the DHE into the dirt. They are so bad i have removed mine and sold them the very next day on the AH. i've even gotten emails from the guy that bought them asking if i sold him a lemon. I'm glad neverwinter doesn't have lemon laws. The proper fix would have been to make all RP generated by the DHE BoA.
by making the RP scarce for the average player but still available in quantity by the masses of botters you put money in their pocket. what you should have done is make sure it was available to players with not too much effort which would have hindered the ability of botters to make money.
This one thing would have done more to hurt botters than all the other silly stuff you have done.
but, it gets better. lets do two things.
one of the reason people farm AD from professions is to buy RP from the botters.
so, lets hit them with a 1-2 punch.
1: make DHEs drop like before. but make them BoA 2: remove AD from professions and let it drop RP stuff thats also BoA.
but hold on, with less AD its still expensive to upgrade the stuff because of the upgrade process and the cost of GMoPs and Coals. So players will still buy AD from third party sites because its cheaper and it will remove money from you guys. So lets go for the knockout punch.
1: make DHEs drop like before. but make them BoA 2: remove AD from professions and let it drop RP stuff thats also BoA. 3: drop the cost of Coals and GMoPs and also maybe even remove the requirement to have 1 enchant of similar value to raise the effectiveness of an enchant.
Now what do players need botters for. the AD we generate will go further, we have the stuff we need to upgrade our stuff. its still takes a LOT of RP so people will still spend money to get there fast. and since they are progressing in the game they might spend money on stuff like dyes/costumes/companions and other zen store stuff (because they aren't giving it all to the botters for AD.
you win, the players win, the botters lose. Its always better to look at the underlying reason behind an action and fix that than to keep trying, and failing, to fix a bunch of symptoms.
Sorry for the long quote but OMG THIS !!! I've voted for:
1: make DHEs drop like before. but make them BoA 2: remove AD from professions and let it drop RP stuff thats also BoA.
for soo long. If only we would be able to get the BoA DH drops
Nancy - Dragonborn, SM Guardian Fighter A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"
1). Is SW more dps or tank based? 2). Yes. I am panzer! 3). Get ACT if you want to celebrate your epeen. 4). Horniness will not stand between me and what I believe - "MM"
Comments
It's sooooo obvious that this change is to push players to the zen store, that I feel that the reasons geiven by the dev as an insult to our intelligence.
In fact, not only you are nerfing the main source of incomes of many players (like me), that bought alts slots for this only purpose, that invested tons of time to level the toons professions, and that get the AD in a legit way by connecting every day, your are also not providing a reliable source of incomes that doesnt take hours of boring grinding to compensate.
This change IMO will remove the last wall that will turn this game from a "Free to play" to a "Pay to Win" model, especially seing the stupidly huge prices of items in the AH (that I cannot afford even with my leadership army unless I save AD for months...).
For me the moment this change sees light (without any compensation), the moment I'll quit. Dunno but with the latest changes since mod 6, it seems to me that you want players to stop playing this game...
Or what about any bugs and exploits used to generate AD right now?
I doubt, that that AD will ever be cleaned out properly...
Setting an account limit of 240k AD per day would have been a start, in order to get the bigger leadership armies under control.
Then replacing the AD from those rare quests with something usefull and more important really rewarding.
And also work on the other Leadership regular missions, adjusting the AD gain per hour, and also removing the junk from all the chest.
What about tracking the flow of AD from all those 2 character slots accounts, to actually nail all the real botters main accounts?
Or what about actually banning those players, that buy AD from botters?
There're a lot of ways to work something out, something boths sides can actually keep on playing with.
But no, we can't start with some small reasonable changes...
So let's do this, next changes on the list to push through:
- Making any purchase from the auction house bound to account.
- Making any reward from other professions bound to account.
- Making any loot drop bound to account.
That should fix the problem with those botters for sure.
And hey, that's what this is all about, right?
Not going to quit, even with those stupid changes... i still have over 320 days left on my VIP clock.
But i won't be spending any more money here either.
> After 10 months of game time I only have a smattering of green Leadership assets and find it very presumptuous to assume that everyone who has leadership factories is cranking out an insane amount of AD for the time they have put into that profession.
>
>
>
> Actually, it is extremely easy. Buy your character slots for 500 Zen (or 250k AD). Or cheaper if you waited for the sales. Buy the T3 white assets so you don't have to waste time making higher tier guys. Last time I added 4 toons to my leadership army, they were 8k each. I did six because that's the easiest number of slots you can unlock. So that's another 48000 AD per toon. So that's an upfront investment of 173k AD.
>
> Now, Assuming you go all in on experience, in order to rush to level 25 Leadership the fastest, I think you're looking at 60 days-ish (checking it twice a day on average) to get to level 25. After that, a level 25 toon can easily generate 12k AD/day if only checked one. Or 84k a week.
>
> So last time I added to my farm it was only 4 more Leadership toons, and that was in December. So I invested about 700k AD into those toons. After 60 days, we're cranking out about 500k AD/week with those new toons. And they've been working for 8.5 months, or 30 weeks. So 34 times 500k is 17 million AD. From an upfront investment of 700k. And that's in about 10 months.
>
> All together, I have 25 leadership toons at level 25. So over 2 million AD/week. Took me about 20 minutes a day to check all those toons. So about 2.5 hours a week...or earning over 800k AD/hr AD.
>
> And you're talking about NOT being able to crank out insane amounts of AD?
>
> I think you're wrong. Very, very wrong.
>
> Which is why, despite losing that income (but gaining my sanity back), I can clearly see how Leadership farms, even run legitimately, are a huge problem for the economy.
The reason I think you are wrong is that you are presuming everyone with leadership "farms" are power-leveling the profession just because you did. I clearly have not, and am sure that are others who have not as well. You, and the other supporters, are failing to see the larger picture.
* This will crush the small guilds who will have no hope of raising their Strongholds to a competitive level. This only exacerbates the disparity between the large and small guilds. No wonder the spam, blind invites are on the rise again as some of the smaller guild are trying to 'zerg up.
* This crushes the ability of the solo, and/or, casual player to remain/obtain the ability to be somewhat competitive at the "end game" unless they begin playing 30+ hrs per week.
* This obliterates the hope of any new players coming close to becoming competitive at the end game unless the choose the route of paying RL cash for AD.
* This plays into the hands of those who sell in-game currency and only strengthens their grip on the economy.
* This change will cause the amount of money that the game was taking in from players to crash and become a shadow of what it could have remained.
But just saying "Oh well, make 30 alts and cookie clicker Leadership" isn't a solution. You can't possibly expect new players to feel good about needing to do something crazy like that to feel like they're advancing, can you?
Do you feel good when you tell your friends that "all" they need to do to advance is to farm a silly profession on dozens of different toons for hours each week, then use what extra time they have left over to actually play the game?
The honest truth is the current state of the economy WITH leadership isn't and never was sustainable.
The game needs to be fun and fulfilling through gameplay, not grindplay. And we're not there. But trying to figure that out WITH Leadership in the state it is won't help.
People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with systems that are more fun. A few players have already put out a lot of good ideas, like:
1) Reducing the cost of items in the Wondrous Bazaar, including Marks of Potency, Cubes of Augmentation, and Dungeon Keys
2) Removing the need for duplicate enchantments when refining ALL enchantments, including weapons and armor
3) Significantly reducing the cost to upgrade mounts and companions
4) Significantly reducing transmutation costs
5) Adding Stronghold vouchers back to Leadership to keep some value to the profession, including AD vouchers
6) Removing pure AD costs from Profession tasks, like reinforcement kits
7) Adding BoE gear drops back to dungeons
Those are just a few of the great ideas I've seen getting buried in these threads.
And so I ask you, would you prefer to have the current state of the game, with all the crazy high costs and insane AD requirements, and then play cookie clicker with Leadership?
Or would you be happy to see Leadership (like the rest of the professions) as something optional and those pain points of grind removed?
Which path is better for the long term future of the game?
now with that out of the way we can finally hope for a way to earn enough means to progress that doesn't require to make 10 alts only to farm LS and AD.
I like all your suggestions, but I really really have to add a foundry option to earn AD too. I know foundry can be exploited with those short quests, so just let it be so daily qualified quests earn AD (that means 15 minutes long quests, the same as a regular dungeon or a skirmish). that would really really also help the foundry.
How about sticking to that fact, and talk about some future pipe dream changes, when those actual happen?
The reason the dev team and PWE need to do these things is that, presumably, they would like to continue having jobs.
A responsible and sensible way of making this change would have been to announce it months in advance ALONG WITH a comprehensive plan to restructure the game economy to make it workable for single-character players. All the suggestion made in this and other threads were obvious. They are not new, either. Players have been suggesting them for months if not years.
But the dev team has offered no plan at all to re-scale the game economy, nor any indication that they are willing to even consider it.
So this is not an opportunity to start a conversation. The dev team aren't even in the conversation. When they join and indicate that they are, for once, not only taking our concerns seriously but intend to IMMEDIATELY make serious, drastic changes to the game economy to make gameplay rewarding and character progression possible, only then will bemoaning this decision be a waste of energy.
Shicoff's initial post on taking over was a ray of hope. He then waited months to make fixes whose necessity was obvious to anyone who had played Mod 6 for even a few minutes. What reason do we have to expect any better this time?
> People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over
> the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more
> suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with
> systems that are more fun. A few players have already put
> out a lot of good ideas [...]
Isn't that supposed to be the designers job?
Or the PWE execs job, for that matter?
> bilitheaxe66 What you're really upset about is not the leadership changes, but the crazy amount of high level grind that it seemingly takes to make progress. And I agree with you on that.
>
> But just saying "Oh well, make 30 alts and cookie clicker Leadership" isn't a solution. You can't possibly expect new players to feel good about needing to do something crazy like that to feel like they're advancing, can you?
>
> Do you feel good when you tell your friends that "all" they need to do to advance is to farm a silly profession on dozens of different toons for hours each week, then use what extra time they have left over to actually play the game?
>
> The honest truth is the current state of the economy WITH leadership isn't and never was sustainable.
>
> The game needs to be fun and fulfilling through gameplay, not grindplay. And we're not there. But trying to figure that out WITH Leadership in the state it is won't help.
>
> People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with systems that are more fun. A few players have already put out a lot of good ideas, like:
>
> 1) Reducing the cost of items in the Wondrous Bazaar, including Marks of Potency, Cubes of Augmentation, and Dungeon Keys
>
> 2) Removing the need for duplicate enchantments when refining ALL enchantments, including weapons and armor
>
> 3) Significantly reducing the cost to upgrade mounts and companions
>
> 4) Significantly reducing transmutation costs
>
> 5) Adding Stronghold vouchers back to Leadership to keep some value to the profession, including AD vouchers
>
> 6) Removing pure AD costs from Profession tasks, like reinforcement kits
>
> 7) Adding BoE gear drops back to dungeons
>
> Those are just a few of the great ideas I've seen getting buried in these threads.
>
> And so I ask you, would you prefer to have the current state of the game, with all the crazy high costs and insane AD requirements, and then play cookie clicker with Leadership?
>
> Or would you be happy to see Leadership (like the rest of the professions) as something optional and those pain points of grind removed?
>
> Which path is better for the long term future of the game?
The problem you are failing to see is that this will kill the game and no hypothetical solution that is months down the line, before it even has a chance of occurring, is going to save the game once the Leadership nerf hits the live server. Already seeing an increase in frame rate as the in game population is already dropping before this "game improving" change occurs.
If this change had actually been well thought out and planned for it would have actually had better/more substitute methods of earning AD, a corresponding reduction in AD sinks, a clear explanation of what the new leadership rewards will be, and the reduction of prices for items on the Wondrous Bazaar ready to go at its implementation. There would have been no misinformation that this is an attempt to control bots and reduce the black market AD in the economy. I, and believe many others, would have been much more accepting of this game changing situation if that were the case.
I, and believe the majority of the player-base, would agree there needs to be a major change in how the economy works. This is very poor method of achieving that end and is going to alienate far too many of the players to keep NeverWinter as a viable game in the long run. My greatest fear of this drastic change is that it will be the straw that breaks the camel's back if the Leadership change hits the live server as it is. Please hold off until you can implement all of the other necessary changes to make it work as intended.
Reading about this change is what finally motivated me to actually activate my forum account instead of being a simple lurker trying to glean information on improving my game play. Would hate to see an end to this game and appreciate being able to freely express my thoughts on this topic. While we may disagree on how to achieve a similar end, I think we both have the game's best interest in our hearts.
They will ride this ship into the ground without second guessing any decisions being made. No matter what the player numbers of the game say.
Worse comes to worse they'll just close the game down and move on elsewhere.
The only real way you will see change is if there is some sort of lawsuit posted against Cryptic/PWE. And I don't see that happening. The people here just don't have it in them to fight for this game. And honestly, I wouldn't think it would be worth it.
In the end , you are still getting screwed.
They just remove the AD from Leadership, and then start or continue working on Underdark.
From then, all we will see is blogging and streaming about how great Underdark will be.
And the threads about the change will be closed or moved out of sight...
Mod Edit: Nothing is getting closed or removed unless it violates the forum rules...like the quote appended to this post. Let's keep it civil, please
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This change is just another hit aimed towards regular players, and not against botters.
Botters will continue to farm, whatever they farm, and sell it for AD.
If any Mod or Dev has a problem with that statement, i don't have a problem with proving it... just meet me at Neverdeath Graveyard, at the entrance to "Ghost Stories"...
Unless there are updates to the preview server or we see the official patch notes, i can only point to the fact, that AD is being removed from Leadership, without any compensation at all, or even any change to the whole AD price system.
Besides
http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/1191873/bonus-companions-not-account-wide
was also closed, and since then nothing new about that issue.
It's not that far fetched, that something similar will happen to this topic, when AD is removed from Leadership...
Have yet to recover from mod 6 without spending any rl $.
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Personally I took A because I could see the benefit of leadership months down the road. Picking B is null and void because you can't get to end game choosing that route. How do you expect to get 500k AD's to buy a coalescent ward, by dungeon runs? When your limited to 24k AD per day? Just one takes 21 days and you need a hundred of them. Unless they come up with alternate ways to ear AD and increase the limit of what you can get in a day, and also lower prices I would just stick with option A. For people who don't like it they can go the B route. No one is force to making a leadership army it is done by choice.
1: make DHEs drop like before. but make them BoA
2: remove AD from professions and let it drop RP stuff thats also BoA.
for soo long. If only we would be able to get the BoA DH drops
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