You had never the chance to be BIS equipped as freeplayer. You must spend money. It is simple as that. And even if you could reach it there is a gurante for it that comes another elemental evil update and destroy 50% of your progress that you did in a year or two.
It is only an Illusion that you can earn everything in the game with time investment. On top of that, the game is buggy and laggy. The last 3-6 month it lacks of content. I heard that Cryptic will only develope 10-12 modules and then the game is done.
I'm near BIS, and would be BIS if I actually did dungeons, without spending money. No, the main thing is you need 4 purple tools, which is only likely if you started early on.
By the way: this is going to make RP even cheaper AD wise, not more expensive. Because now, market manipulators and bots will just spam leadership tasks that drop enchants/peridots, as opposed to tasks that give AD. Of course, your income is going to drop by a greater value.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I understand PVP players not using leadership that applaud the removal of leadership AD.
I don't understand PVE players not using leadership applauding. At the moment you progress your toon because of leadership farmers. You can farm elol - win the artifact - sell it for 1.6mio AD - buy 16 gmops and progress your toon. In the future - you farm elol - win the artifact - but the prize will drop to about 160k-300k AD - you can only buy 1-3 gmops.
The only reason some people sell profession stuff for high prizes in AH is because of leadership farmers, who don't care because they earn large amounts of AD per day.
People hoping for a decrease of fixed prizes in near future will probably be disappointed. Cryptic will be monitoring the amount of AD in game and will decrease the fixed prizes, when they see a steady decrease in the global amount of AD - BUT all people with millions of AD will immediately stop spending ADs resulting in a deadlock - Cryptic waiting for people spending AD and players waiting for Cryptic to announce a decrease in fixed prices.
If people stop spending AD because they're expecting prices to drop ... prices drop, because no one is willing to spend AD. It's called a deflationary spiral.
Why doesnt really matter. The facts are that a new player cannot get what the rest of us have already. New players are not going to enjoy PVP because it is inevitable that they will meet up with a group of BiS PVPers that have zero chance of challenging. Sure, you can completely avoid PVP but is that really a reasonable response?
They are not going to enjoy ECC either. You need serious gear including enchants to have a shot at doing it legit!
eGWD isn't much easier, either. The T1 dungeons are more reasonable now for lower geared people, but now 2 of the 3 T2's require a level of gear to complete legit that's going to be tough for anyone new to get. They'd need to get carried and unless they've got a helpful guild then their chances are nil.
Which is why so many people are still exploiting the last boss in eCC (why bother with eTOS, the easiest of the 3, when eCC can be farmed?) and who knows if that'll get fixed tomorrow or any time soon since I doubt it'd even be listed as a fix. But as long as it isn't, it's going to be maybe the only way for new players and characters to get the best PvE gear available to them.
Off topic, but could we get some account bound Elven gear for other classes from the element/protector seal vendor at some point?
nope just a pali being fed AP from a dc and some dps, same with the other t2s. takes a while but doable ( just ignore everything (except the eGWD wolf) and bang on the boss) . cleared everything with a 2.3 pali, 2.1 dc, and some mixed 2.2-2.5dps . whats really sad is everything is 3 total dungeons.
BIS should be an ideal, not really possible to reach, most of the actual bis should have been banned long ago, but cryptic let then get away with it.
a small video about it:
Pay attention in reason 8 and the game show in the image meanwhile.
Except....there are alot of people who are already BIS. Matter of fact, they have so much stored up AD and zen that when the next wave of stuff comes out, they'll be BIS then too. And the time after that, and the time after that, and etc. etc. etc.
All this does is hurt the people who are attempting to catch up to those people. Leadership farmers still spend money on the game, at least some of em do.
If they really wanted to make AD something people get through playing and enjoying the game. They would attach AD on to general missions, stuff that people can solo. But you will not be seeing that. Because it's not about making things right or stopping the people "Abusing the system" Because this does nothing to the people that are still using the system with exploits. It just is a attempt to try and get those who aren't paying close attention to spend real money to buy zen for AD.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Well, as zen prices go down, you'll actually have LESS incentive to spend money on zen, not more, because the ZAX rate declines. Before, 1 dollar bought 1/2 a GMOP. If it falls to a rate of 250 instead of 500 for instance, 1 dollay buys 1/4 a GMOP.
A party that is formed with the intention of PVPing. Get 5 ppl together with really good gear and queue for Domination. Its hard to beat them.
Why would you poopoo on premades? Teamwork should be something everyone playing should aspire to.
To some "Teamwork" means being able to find one you can stand to play with let alone work together. So yes premades are unfair. I should be a BOT class gen and you work with what you are given all the same grear all the came stats everything. Lets see if you still have that cocky attitude when someone out games you with the same toon.
Personally, I'm reserving judgement until after the changes. Maybe things won't be as bad as everyone thinks. Maybe the devs will decide that the changes are too extreme and add in other ways of earning AD. I don't know, but I don't want to quit a game that I still totally love just because of something like this. It's not like they are targeting just a few people with this. Everyone will be in the same boat. It should even the playing field between the people who have 50 characters and the people who only have 1 or 2.
Why? Why do you need to even the playing field between people who have 50 characters, and people who have 1 or 2?
I dont understand this logic? Why are you punishing people that have invested more into the game then you have? What about the cost of character slots, the cost of resources to speed up leadership? Are you telling me the amount of money put in on 50 toons is the same as 1 or 2? Because, guess what? It's not.
I have 1 level 60 to 70 toon for every class that is in game. It's the way I play. If my leadership is max'd out on those characters I should not be equal to somebody who plays with 1 or 2 characters. Nor should I be equal to somebody who has 50 characters. That is just foolish thinking.
Why does the playing field need to be even. If you want the income that people with 50 leadership toons have, get your HAMSTER busy in game and get it.
Next thing we'll be punishing people with legendary and mythic gear for having legendary and mythic gear. That gear should be taken away or nerfed so that it's on par with people who only have common to epic gear!
The more I think about these changes, the more stupid I find them.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
it was never the intention to make people have the incentive to have 50 characters. In any other game, if you tried to manage 50 characters, it would make each of them weaker, not stronger. But in NWO, having 50 characters means your one character can be way stronger than if you only had the one character.
Conceptually removing Leadership is a good idea-they just need to add better ways for solo players to get AD, and/or cut costs dramatically.
it was never the intention to make people have the incentive to have 50 characters. In any other game, if you tried to manage 50 characters, it would make each of them weaker, not stronger. But in NWO, having 50 characters means your one character can be way stronger than if you only had the one character.
Conceptually removing Leadership is a good idea-they just need to add better ways for solo players to get AD, and/or cut costs dramatically.
Not true. In City of Heroes I had 54 characters, 22 of them were pretty much BIS (though gear was handed alot differently there) I had a character for basicly any need that anyone ever had in game.
If you needed a ice/ice blaster to help in a fight, I had it, A scrapper or controller to help you get through any of the incarnate content. I had it. And it was fun. I loved all the characters I had in that game, and having them was a show of how much I enjoyed that game.
Here, it's a crime and you should should be punished for it. I am still shaking my head over that line of thinking.
And I still dont understand how you can say removing a way to play the game is a good idea, even conceptually...
That's like saying them removing dungeons from the game is a good idea bec...oh wait, they've done that too.
Let me ask you a question. Can you name any other company with any other MMO that has removed content from a game and had it end well? I cant.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Please listen to what I said.
I didn't say "having alts so you can do different things when called for is a bad thing." No, I said "having alts that exist only to make your main stronger is a bad thing." Because then it means that the people who don't have alts are disadvantaged.
Characters should not, in and of themselves, provide a benefit outside of the character itself. You have an ice guy and a fire guy, great! But your fire guy shouldn't be stronger just because you have an ice guy; rather, you just have the ability to choose between the two.
Now, I can understand "well you should make alts easy to maintain" and sure, I'm fine with that. But the guy who focuses entirely on one character shouldn't be weaker with that one character than the guy who has 10 characters.
Personally, I'm reserving judgement until after the changes. Maybe things won't be as bad as everyone thinks. Maybe the devs will decide that the changes are too extreme and add in other ways of earning AD. I don't know, but I don't want to quit a game that I still totally love just because of something like this. It's not like they are targeting just a few people with this. Everyone will be in the same boat. It should even the playing field between the people who have 50 characters and the people who only have 1 or 2.
While I can respect your statement I also have to note that anyone whos been playing since release has already seen just how bad cryptic is at making these decisions. Lets take a trip down memory lane.
Enchanted keys. Ah what a wonderful time it was when the enchanted keys were flowing like water, easy and cheap to get, often selling for around 10K AD on the AH. Not only were people selling keys left and right but hey were also selling zen like there was no tomorrow, I remember buying zen on the exchange for under 300AD each. Then for whatever reason Cryptic decided to make the keys BoP. And that's was the beginning of the great AD craze.
Players just about stopped selling zen in favor of opening boxes and selling the box items for far more since they are now harder to get. And who can blame them? Earning more AD while having to spend less zen. This change has never been fixed in anyway shape or form.
Coalescent Wards. Yet another decision cryptic made "for the players benefit" that has benefitted us in no way. Now, admittedly back then all we had to level was the 14 enchantment slots and honestly, no one really needed all R12s unless they just wanted to solo everything in like 2 seconds.
So to fight the "bot" army of invokers first thing they did was make all coalescent wards from coffers BoP. That single change was more then enough to stop the bots by making it so they cant sell or trade them. No more cheap and bountiful coalescent wards for the players. But why stop there they said, so they also reduced the drop rate of the wards from coffer and then on top of that they also added more items to the coffer which basically makes a drop even more less likely.
Now we can have up to 16 enchantment slots plus we now have 4 gear items plus 4 artifacts to level up and all while never increasing the availability of coalescent wards. And while the new refining system did decrease the need for coalescent ward it increased the need for reagents that they have also had theirs drops reduced for some odd reason making them harder to find and thus driving up the cost of those too.
Mod 6. OK, im not even going to try and cover all the things they did wrong there but lets focus on the mob damage. During testing they were told the damage was too high. After it went live they were told the damage was too high. After they made the "reduced damage/more HP" fix they were told the damage was too high.
It took them until like 2 weeks into mod 7 to finally agree with the player base and admit that the damage was still too high. And while the fix was more then welcomed that real damage had already been done. How many players both free and paying did they lose while they "reviewed the data"? I mean over 3 months over the player base telling them that the damage was too high and they just didn't want to listen.
Changes to ADs Now they're making changes to how we can get AD that everyone is already telling them is a bad idea. And as the past has shown, if and that's a big IF, they decide they made a mistake, the damage will already be done. We don't need another mass exodus from the game.
So far the only thing I've seen in terms of making ADs with the new changes is trying to force us to run quests that scott himself called inconvenient. How does that make any sense when the players have already been yelling for less repetitive content?
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
Conceptually removing Leadership is a good idea-they just need to add better ways for solo players to get AD, and/or cut costs dramatically.
AND is the correct word there. AND they should do both when rolling out the changes. But that is not Cryptic's way. I'll be very surprised if they do either of those things before Underdark. Probably even later.
Enchanted keys. Ah what a wonderful time it was when the enchanted keys were flowing like water, easy and cheap to get, often selling for around 10K AD on the AH. Not only were people selling keys left and right but hey were also selling zen like there was no tomorrow, I remember buying zen on the exchange for under 300AD each. Then for whatever reason Cryptic decided to make the keys BoP. And that's was the beginning of the great AD craze.
Not that it really matters, but keys weren't made BoP until after the ZAX pegged at 500 AD per Zen. At that point the keys were selling for more on the auction house than the equivalent price in the Zen shop. So there was a strong incentive to use AD to buy Zen (after a long wait due to the backlog), buy a key with the Zen, and then sell the key for a profit on the AH. And that really was a bad thing.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
that, incidentally, was historically true for Preservation Wards as well.
Before the double RP weekend, pres wards were still one way to make a profit, but the best was to just use invocation to farm coupons, and then buy Ioun Stones of Allure for -20% off. You could sell them on the AH for about baseline cost, reap the profits, and also sell the Lesser Bonding Runestones.
With the price of zen depreciating due to the leadership changes, I doubt that will be profitable any longer.
A party that is formed with the intention of PVPing. Get 5 ppl together with really good gear and queue for Domination. Its hard to beat them.
Why would you poopoo on premades? Teamwork should be something everyone playing should aspire to.
To some "Teamwork" means being able to find one you can stand to play with let alone work together. So yes premades are unfair. I should be a BOT class gen and you work with what you are given all the same grear all the came stats everything. Lets see if you still have that cocky attitude when someone out games you with the same toon.
Let me see if I understand that babbling: are you saying that because some cannot rise above being antisocial idiots, the ones who can do so are doing something "unfair"?
I tell you, the majority of this playerbase really makes me weep for the future.
The playing field doesnt need to be even, it wont ever be. But achieving the best gear should be possible. It shouldnt be so impossible that cheating is the only way to get it. Botting, scripting, exploiting, whatever you want to call it. It should be possible to achieve legitimately and in a reasonable time with reasonable effort before another patch comes out and replaces it with even harder to achieve gears.
The playing field doesnt need to be even, it wont ever be. But achieving the best gear should be possible.
An even playing field means that everyone has an equal route to the endzone. It doesn't mean that everyone should get the same rewards for different levels of effort and time as the game was designed to be played.
No game has ever been played "as it was designed to be played". That isnt how games work. Even simple games have versions of rules and are driven by the communities that play them. If you want the game to be played the way you want it played, making the game unplayable isnt the best method.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Sophistry. The game has various incentive structures for given behavior and the dev team works to balance those incentive structures.
Ultimately, the game gets changed when the "outcomes" don't match the desired outcomes. That's just how systems management works.
No game has ever been played "as it was designed to be played". That isnt how games work. Even simple games have versions of rules and are driven by the communities that play them. If you want the game to be played the way you want it played, making the game unplayable isnt the best method.
They might get that, when a lot of players are playing something else at the end of this month.
I do believe in killing the messenger...
Want to know why?
Because it sends a message!
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
Can anyone tell me what BDO is? I'm curous to find out!
Personally, I'm reserving judgement until after the changes. Maybe things won't be as bad as everyone thinks. Maybe the devs will decide that the changes are too extreme and add in other ways of earning AD. I don't know, but I don't want to quit a game that I still totally love just because of something like this. It's not like they are targeting just a few people with this. Everyone will be in the same boat. It should even the playing field between the people who have 50 characters and the people who only have 1 or 2.
Girl, they wont, they never did what was good for the player, never.
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
Comments
By the way: this is going to make RP even cheaper AD wise, not more expensive. Because now, market manipulators and bots will just spam leadership tasks that drop enchants/peridots, as opposed to tasks that give AD. Of course, your income is going to drop by a greater value.
whats really sad is everything is 3 total dungeons.
All this does is hurt the people who are attempting to catch up to those people. Leadership farmers still spend money on the game, at least some of em do.
If they really wanted to make AD something people get through playing and enjoying the game. They would attach AD on to general missions, stuff that people can solo. But you will not be seeing that. Because it's not about making things right or stopping the people "Abusing the system" Because this does nothing to the people that are still using the system with exploits. It just is a attempt to try and get those who aren't paying close attention to spend real money to buy zen for AD.
Why? Why do you need to even the playing field between people who have 50 characters, and people who have 1 or 2?
I dont understand this logic? Why are you punishing people that have invested more into the game then you have? What about the cost of character slots, the cost of resources to speed up leadership? Are you telling me the amount of money put in on 50 toons is the same as 1 or 2? Because, guess what? It's not.
I have 1 level 60 to 70 toon for every class that is in game. It's the way I play. If my leadership is max'd out on those characters I should not be equal to somebody who plays with 1 or 2 characters. Nor should I be equal to somebody who has 50 characters. That is just foolish thinking.
Why does the playing field need to be even. If you want the income that people with 50 leadership toons have, get your HAMSTER busy in game and get it.
Next thing we'll be punishing people with legendary and mythic gear for having legendary and mythic gear. That gear should be taken away or nerfed so that it's on par with people who only have common to epic gear!
The more I think about these changes, the more stupid I find them.
Conceptually removing Leadership is a good idea-they just need to add better ways for solo players to get AD, and/or cut costs dramatically.
If you needed a ice/ice blaster to help in a fight, I had it, A scrapper or controller to help you get through any of the incarnate content. I had it. And it was fun. I loved all the characters I had in that game, and having them was a show of how much I enjoyed that game.
Here, it's a crime and you should should be punished for it. I am still shaking my head over that line of thinking.
And I still dont understand how you can say removing a way to play the game is a good idea, even conceptually...
That's like saying them removing dungeons from the game is a good idea bec...oh wait, they've done that too.
Let me ask you a question. Can you name any other company with any other MMO that has removed content from a game and had it end well? I cant.
I didn't say "having alts so you can do different things when called for is a bad thing." No, I said "having alts that exist only to make your main stronger is a bad thing." Because then it means that the people who don't have alts are disadvantaged.
Characters should not, in and of themselves, provide a benefit outside of the character itself. You have an ice guy and a fire guy, great! But your fire guy shouldn't be stronger just because you have an ice guy; rather, you just have the ability to choose between the two.
Now, I can understand "well you should make alts easy to maintain" and sure, I'm fine with that. But the guy who focuses entirely on one character shouldn't be weaker with that one character than the guy who has 10 characters.
Enchanted keys.
Ah what a wonderful time it was when the enchanted keys were flowing like water, easy and cheap to get, often selling for around 10K AD on the AH. Not only were people selling keys left and right but hey were also selling zen like there was no tomorrow, I remember buying zen on the exchange for under 300AD each. Then for whatever reason Cryptic decided to make the keys BoP. And that's was the beginning of the great AD craze.
Players just about stopped selling zen in favor of opening boxes and selling the box items for far more since they are now harder to get. And who can blame them? Earning more AD while having to spend less zen. This change has never been fixed in anyway shape or form.
Coalescent Wards.
Yet another decision cryptic made "for the players benefit" that has benefitted us in no way. Now, admittedly back then all we had to level was the 14 enchantment slots and honestly, no one really needed all R12s unless they just wanted to solo everything in like 2 seconds.
So to fight the "bot" army of invokers first thing they did was make all coalescent wards from coffers BoP. That single change was more then enough to stop the bots by making it so they cant sell or trade them. No more cheap and bountiful coalescent wards for the players. But why stop there they said, so they also reduced the drop rate of the wards from coffer and then on top of that they also added more items to the coffer which basically makes a drop even more less likely.
Now we can have up to 16 enchantment slots plus we now have 4 gear items plus 4 artifacts to level up and all while never increasing the availability of coalescent wards. And while the new refining system did decrease the need for coalescent ward it increased the need for reagents that they have also had theirs drops reduced for some odd reason making them harder to find and thus driving up the cost of those too.
Mod 6.
OK, im not even going to try and cover all the things they did wrong there but lets focus on the mob damage. During testing they were told the damage was too high. After it went live they were told the damage was too high. After they made the "reduced damage/more HP" fix they were told the damage was too high.
It took them until like 2 weeks into mod 7 to finally agree with the player base and admit that the damage was still too high. And while the fix was more then welcomed that real damage had already been done. How many players both free and paying did they lose while they "reviewed the data"? I mean over 3 months over the player base telling them that the damage was too high and they just didn't want to listen.
Changes to ADs
Now they're making changes to how we can get AD that everyone is already telling them is a bad idea. And as the past has shown, if and that's a big IF, they decide they made a mistake, the damage will already be done. We don't need another mass exodus from the game.
So far the only thing I've seen in terms of making ADs with the new changes is trying to force us to run quests that scott himself called inconvenient. How does that make any sense when the players have already been yelling for less repetitive content?
Before the double RP weekend, pres wards were still one way to make a profit, but the best was to just use invocation to farm coupons, and then buy Ioun Stones of Allure for -20% off. You could sell them on the AH for about baseline cost, reap the profits, and also sell the Lesser Bonding Runestones.
With the price of zen depreciating due to the leadership changes, I doubt that will be profitable any longer.
I tell you, the majority of this playerbase really makes me weep for the future. Case in point. This guy has the most seriously warped point of view I've seen in ages.
Ultimately, the game gets changed when the "outcomes" don't match the desired outcomes. That's just how systems management works.