Significantly lower costs to upgrading a companion at the lower qualities: White to Green: was 300,000 AD, now 50,000 AD Green to Blue: was 500,000 AD, now 250,000 AD Blue to Purple: was 750,000 AD, now 500,000 AD Purple to Orange is staying the same (1,000,000 AD).
so our 1st companion now costs 800k to upgrade to purple. there arent very many purple pets that cost that much. a WB blue pet will cost 900k to have at purple. again not very many purple pets at that price. still 50 days of capped refining to upgrade a white pet to orange and 22 days to upgrade it to purple assuming i never spend ad on anything else like those boons/stronghold upgrades you're still evaluating. or repeccing. or a stack of potions.....
so aside from a very few select pets noone will upgrade pets still. lets take the air archon for example. i can buy it at purple for 550k. or i can buy it at green for 25k, then spend 750k to upgrade it. oh and lets not forget those archons will be much easier to get in the new tbar store so even less incentive to upgrade.
still nothing about mount training (1.4 M to go from rank 2 to 3). i can buy a purple mount for well under a million
t2 purple gear still salvages for the same amount as t1 blue gear. no incentive to do more than 1 per day for the big bag of prot seals. it still costs more to purchase a key for a dungeon chest than you will make from a dungeon chest. at best you will break even with a chest peice drop most bosses still drop peridot as they common loot or nothing at all. but t1 bosses will drop artis every now and again. and t2 bosses drop nothing. incentive to complete harder dungeons, none.
still 50k PER ATTEMPT at changing your artificact weapons powers/stats. meaning up to 1.3 million to unlock the powers and many more attempts to get the stats ( on 7 chars i have yet to get one that gave a bonus to the paragon tree im using).
still massive ad sinks in professions.
i mean seriously 2 months and this is all you can manage. and still missing 9 dungeons and their epic versions. oh i forgot you cut and pasted parts of an old dungeon for the new skirmishes, and made a bunch more HEs. that explains about 2 weeks since stronghold launched.
There are some new weekly quests for the demonic HEs in WoD, IWD and DR that award campaign currency and rAD.
And all of the weekly quests added together would not be enough to fill up old daily refine limit. I don't even consider it enough to think of it as even a good start.
Technically they will let us hit the old refinement cap. You can get 21600 just from skirmishes and dungeon every day. Each of the weeklies will give 4500 after the increase. Still a drop in the bucket.
And how much time did that take?
Two dungeons, two skirmishes and 3 HEs? So maybe 60-90 minutes?
You managed to get 3 HEs, 2 skirmishes, and a pair of t1/t2s done in 90 minutes?
T1s ~15-20 minutes each, 10-15 minutes for each of the new skirmishes, and 3 HEs which everyone is going to be farming the **** out of? (keep in mind you're getting Seal of the Elements from each of the HEs so every 10 HEs or so you'll get some salvage too). Sure. It'll be pz. Might take a bit longer for dungeons because everyone will be queuing for new content though.
Okay, so you're either a hyper-optimized individual who has a high IL and/or is part of a guild of such, if you're pulling off times like that. Gotcha.
Guess what happens to those of us that don't have such luxuries? Whose guilds are *just* getting their first campaign boons and who have on average, maybe 7-12 members on at any one point in time? Do you know how long it takes for just a main, let alone my two alts that are fast gathering dust?
2k ilvl is all you need for all of that : | That'll be easy to hit given that rank 7s will be dirt cheap post Underdark.
elol is the hardest part there and you can just do ToS if you're having trouble with that. Skirmishes were supposed to be pretty easy from what I've heard. HEs are easy and you can get carried anyways.
I'm still not in a guild and I'm only 2.8k ilvl which I've gotten by solo'ing for five months.
Okay, TOS is not a T1 dungeon. Its a "trainer" dungeon (even though as a three man, it does absolutely nothing to prepare you for your respective role when you actually get to ETOS, or as most people call it, TOS 2: Everything One Shots You Boogaloo...) And if you're slaughtering Lausty in 10-15 minutes at a 2k Item level... yeah. Streaming or it didn't happen.
And the HEs that give seals...no. You cannot get 'carried' if you don't have enough guild members on. I love the guild that I'm a part of, but we're composed of older individuals with these annoying things called "Children", "Families" and "Full time jobs at varying hours." meaning there's rarely more than seven or eight of us on at any one point in time. Which means that the big HEs that give seals and other goodies are just not practical.
I guess you just want to get mad at your inability to try to find a way to progress in a video game? I'm guessing it's something like "THOSE DURN KIDS PLAYIN' THEM VIDEAH GAMEZ. WHERE'S MAH BEER WOMAN?" in your house.
I mean the whole discussion you butted in on was about hitting the old refinement cap which ToS does anyways. And I said 15-20 minutes for elol. It's more about staying alive than having uber DPS anyways. You just need a DC and a tank. If you get an OP it's easy mode.
You shouldn't need to run eToS because you can earn 135 ilvl gear from the Underdark campaign. Also, shouldn't be getting oneshot in eToS outside of the last boss or sitting on red circles. Have you even played this game since the DR bug was fixed?
And yes, you can get carried in the new HEs and you do get seals. You don't need guild members for HEs because everyone is going to be running the HEs. You will be able to walk into DR and run an HE because everyone is going to be working on the Underdark campaign.
There are some new weekly quests for the demonic HEs in WoD, IWD and DR that award campaign currency and rAD.
And all of the weekly quests added together would not be enough to fill up old daily refine limit. I don't even consider it enough to think of it as even a good start.
Technically they will let us hit the old refinement cap. You can get 21600 just from skirmishes and dungeon every day. Each of the weeklies will give 4500 after the increase. Still a drop in the bucket.
And how much time did that take?
Two dungeons, two skirmishes and 3 HEs? So maybe 60-90 minutes?
You managed to get 3 HEs, 2 skirmishes, and a pair of t1/t2s done in 90 minutes?
T1s ~15-20 minutes each, 10-15 minutes for each of the new skirmishes, and 3 HEs which everyone is going to be farming the **** out of? (keep in mind you're getting Seal of the Elements from each of the HEs so every 10 HEs or so you'll get some salvage too). Sure. It'll be pz. Might take a bit longer for dungeons because everyone will be queuing for new content though.
Okay, so you're either a hyper-optimized individual who has a high IL and/or is part of a guild of such, if you're pulling off times like that. Gotcha.
Guess what happens to those of us that don't have such luxuries? Whose guilds are *just* getting their first campaign boons and who have on average, maybe 7-12 members on at any one point in time? Do you know how long it takes for just a main, let alone my two alts that are fast gathering dust?
2k ilvl is all you need for all of that : | That'll be easy to hit given that rank 7s will be dirt cheap post Underdark.
elol is the hardest part there and you can just do ToS if you're having trouble with that. Skirmishes were supposed to be pretty easy from what I've heard. HEs are easy and you can get carried anyways.
I'm still not in a guild and I'm only 2.8k ilvl which I've gotten by solo'ing for five months.
Okay, TOS is not a T1 dungeon. Its a "trainer" dungeon (even though as a three man, it does absolutely nothing to prepare you for your respective role when you actually get to ETOS, or as most people call it, TOS 2: Everything One Shots You Boogaloo...) And if you're slaughtering Lausty in 10-15 minutes at a 2k Item level... yeah. Streaming or it didn't happen.
And the HEs that give seals...no. You cannot get 'carried' if you don't have enough guild members on. I love the guild that I'm a part of, but we're composed of older individuals with these annoying things called "Children", "Families" and "Full time jobs at varying hours." meaning there's rarely more than seven or eight of us on at any one point in time. Which means that the big HEs that give seals and other goodies are just not practical.
I guess you just want to get mad at your inability to try to find a way to progress in a video game? I'm guessing it's something like "THOSE DURN KIDS PLAYIN' THEM VIDEAH GAMEZ. WHERE'S MAH BEER WOMAN?" in your house.
I mean the whole discussion you butted in on was about hitting the old refinement cap which ToS does anyways. And I said 15-20 minutes for elol. It's more about staying alive than having uber DPS anyways. You just need a DC and a tank. If you get an OP it's easy mode.
You shouldn't need to run eToS because you can earn 135 ilvl gear from the Underdark campaign. Also, shouldn't be getting oneshot in eToS outside of the last boss or sitting on red circles. Have you even played this game since the DR bug was fixed?
And yes, you can get carried in the new HEs and you do get seals. You don't need guild members for HEs because everyone is going to be running the HEs. You will be able to walk into DR and run an HE because everyone is going to be working on the Underdark campaign.
Nice ad hominim, but dated and lacking in context. The all caps hurts you as well. I give you a 6 out of 10.
And yes I ran ETOS earlier today. I got one shot six times by spiderlings hitting me for 95K+ It's almost like they nerfed the HAMSTER out of defense and anyone not running a GWF or an OP has the defense of "ye olde mythical stamina bar" because once I can no longer teleport I die the moment that something looks at me funny. (Heck, I swear that bug resurfaces from time to time, given I've watched Paladins with their guard raised get dropped by spiderlings and half the time our guild's primary GF has his Steel Defense ignored twice this week alone).
Believe me, I want this game to get better. It's been a part of my life for two and a half years now, but its immensely frustrating to watch things develop along this route of bandaid v. compound fractured femur for seven months now and no real sign of a solution because the Devs borked up module six so badly that more than half a year later, 75% of the end-game content is still missing.
The thing is, I have a full time job (and a part time one once one factors in that I belong to a profession that results in family members expecting free service/advice/etc. and I'm not in a position where I can tell them to buzz off and see the Senior partner). I want to play a game to have fun and enjoy myself, not to make it part time job number two. I want to earn my gear, but I don't want to have to slave away for seven hours a day to do it.
Now, perhaps you'll wind up being right, believe me, I'll be happier if that's true. I want this game to succeed. But I've watched them all but destroy it through ineptitude, short-sighted idiocy, and a seemingly pathological disconnect from the reality of their own game (responding to the utter embarrassment of not being able to beat Tiamat post mod six with godmode on by raising the IL necessary to fight her...rather than...you know, actually making the difficulty a tadge more reasonable) that I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Companion Upgrades Mount Upgrades Transmute Guild Bank reduction SH AD requirement Profession AD requirements Artifact Weapon skill change Salvage adjustments Campaign Progress
Lets see what happens.
I second this. Mounts for instance.... No one can afford to buy the upgrade now.
There are some new weekly quests for the demonic HEs in WoD, IWD and DR that award campaign currency and rAD.
And all of the weekly quests added together would not be enough to fill up old daily refine limit. I don't even consider it enough to think of it as even a good start.
Technically they will let us hit the old refinement cap. You can get 21600 just from skirmishes and dungeon every day. Each of the weeklies will give 4500 after the increase. Still a drop in the bucket.
And how much time did that take?
Two dungeons, two skirmishes and 3 HEs? So maybe 60-90 minutes?
You managed to get 3 HEs, 2 skirmishes, and a pair of t1/t2s done in 90 minutes?
T1s ~15-20 minutes each, 10-15 minutes for each of the new skirmishes, and 3 HEs which everyone is going to be farming the **** out of? (keep in mind you're getting Seal of the Elements from each of the HEs so every 10 HEs or so you'll get some salvage too). Sure. It'll be pz. Might take a bit longer for dungeons because everyone will be queuing for new content though.
Okay, so you're either a hyper-optimized individual who has a high IL and/or is part of a guild of such, if you're pulling off times like that. Gotcha.
Guess what happens to those of us that don't have such luxuries? Whose guilds are *just* getting their first campaign boons and who have on average, maybe 7-12 members on at any one point in time? Do you know how long it takes for just a main, let alone my two alts that are fast gathering dust?
2k ilvl is all you need for all of that : | That'll be easy to hit given that rank 7s will be dirt cheap post Underdark.
elol is the hardest part there and you can just do ToS if you're having trouble with that. Skirmishes were supposed to be pretty easy from what I've heard. HEs are easy and you can get carried anyways.
I'm still not in a guild and I'm only 2.8k ilvl which I've gotten by solo'ing for five months.
Okay, TOS is not a T1 dungeon. Its a "trainer" dungeon (even though as a three man, it does absolutely nothing to prepare you for your respective role when you actually get to ETOS, or as most people call it, TOS 2: Everything One Shots You Boogaloo...) And if you're slaughtering Lausty in 10-15 minutes at a 2k Item level... yeah. Streaming or it didn't happen.
And the HEs that give seals...no. You cannot get 'carried' if you don't have enough guild members on. I love the guild that I'm a part of, but we're composed of older individuals with these annoying things called "Children", "Families" and "Full time jobs at varying hours." meaning there's rarely more than seven or eight of us on at any one point in time. Which means that the big HEs that give seals and other goodies are just not practical.
I guess you just want to get mad at your inability to try to find a way to progress in a video game? I'm guessing it's something like "THOSE DURN KIDS PLAYIN' THEM VIDEAH GAMEZ. WHERE'S MAH BEER WOMAN?" in your house.
I mean the whole discussion you butted in on was about hitting the old refinement cap which ToS does anyways. And I said 15-20 minutes for elol. It's more about staying alive than having uber DPS anyways. You just need a DC and a tank. If you get an OP it's easy mode.
You shouldn't need to run eToS because you can earn 135 ilvl gear from the Underdark campaign. Also, shouldn't be getting oneshot in eToS outside of the last boss or sitting on red circles. Have you even played this game since the DR bug was fixed?
And yes, you can get carried in the new HEs and you do get seals. You don't need guild members for HEs because everyone is going to be running the HEs. You will be able to walk into DR and run an HE because everyone is going to be working on the Underdark campaign.
Nice ad hominim, but dated and lacking in context. The all caps hurts you as well. I give you a 6 out of 10.
And yes I ran ETOS earlier today. I got one shot six times by spiderlings hitting me for 95K+ It's almost like they nerfed the HAMSTER out of defense and anyone not running a GWF or an OP has the defense of "ye olde mythical stamina bar" because once I can no longer teleport I die the moment that something looks at me funny. (Heck, I swear that bug resurfaces from time to time, given I've watched Paladins with their guard raised get dropped by spiderlings and half the time our guild's primary GF has his Steel Defense ignored twice this week alone).
Believe me, I want this game to get better. It's been a part of my life for two and a half years now, but its immensely frustrating to watch things develop along this route of bandaid v. compound fractured femur for seven months now and no real sign of a solution because the Devs borked up module six so badly that more than half a year later, 75% of the end-game content is still missing.
The thing is, I have a full time job (and a part time one once one factors in that I belong to a profession that results in family members expecting free service/advice/etc. and I'm not in a position where I can tell them to buzz off and see the Senior partner). I want to play a game to have fun and enjoy myself, not to make it part time job number two. I want to earn my gear, but I don't want to have to slave away for seven hours a day to do it.
Now, perhaps you'll wind up being right, believe me, I'll be happier if that's true. I want this game to succeed. But I've watched them all but destroy it through ineptitude, short-sighted idiocy, and a seemingly pathological disconnect from the reality of their own game (responding to the utter embarrassment of not being able to beat Tiamat post mod six with godmode on by raising the IL necessary to fight her...rather than...you know, actually making the difficulty a tadge more reasonable) that I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I'm clearly the first one in this thread to throw ad hominems around : |
You're also the only one with a full time job that plays video games. I've worked 80 hour work weeks and if you really want to find an hour or two for a game you will. If you can't it just means that you don't want to.
If the problem is the grind then you're going to need to find another game because nothing they ever do with be sufficient for you.
And with 10% DR on my CW I get hit for 38k by spiders in on eToS.
The companion upgrades are still brutally expensive considering a player has 5 companions to look after.
Also, what about mount upgrades? those are very very expensive as well. You have a lot of green and blue mounts in the zen store, why are you not making it more accessible to upgrade them to a usable stat of purple? And why have we not seen a mount upgrade to orange put in place yet? I'd pay for that right now, probably for a couple different mounts
And yeah, boon costs still have not been reduced and Strongholds still costs billions of AD
The Stronghold cost is a real problem, and it's intertwined with AD availability. As a small guild, we had serious problems losing players to larger guilds simply because we couldn't keep pace with SH progression. For a while (way too long a while!!!) I was spending $100 a day buying up whatever SH resources I could get on the AH or in the Zen store to accelerate our progress. I can't do that anymore, though, and the issue of having our members leave or poached will eventually return.
It will only get worse as we advance our SH since the costs increase as we go (but our membership isn't keeping pace with it). This is a major problem for us and every other small, friendly, non-zerg guild out there.
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Significantly lower costs to upgrading a companion at the lower qualities: White to Green: was 300,000 AD, now 50,000 AD Green to Blue: was 500,000 AD, now 250,000 AD Blue to Purple: was 750,000 AD, now 500,000 AD Purple to Orange is staying the same (1,000,000 AD).
so our 1st companion now costs 800k to upgrade to purple. there arent very many purple pets that cost that much. a WB blue pet will cost 900k to have at purple. again not very many purple pets at that price. still 50 days of capped refining to upgrade a white pet to orange and 22 days to upgrade it to purple assuming i never spend ad on anything else like those boons/stronghold upgrades you're still evaluating. or repeccing. or a stack of potions.....
so aside from a very few select pets noone will upgrade pets still. lets take the air archon for example. i can buy it at purple for 550k. or i can buy it at green for 25k, then spend 750k to upgrade it. oh and lets not forget those archons will be much easier to get in the new tbar store so even less incentive to upgrade.
still nothing about mount training (1.4 M to go from rank 2 to 3). i can buy a purple mount for well under a million
I strongly agree.
"As the good archmage often admonishes me, I ought not to let my mind wander, as it's too small to go off by itself." -Danilo Thann[/quote]
Yup, so we legit players were "botters and exploiters". I have 10 character slots, with 9 characters (1 of ea type), I used to exploit a game dynamic that they said was legit. I paid for those slots, not just the character slot for zen way but the expansion pack way, 2 ea for xpacs. That is 3 xpacs and one character/zen buy.Those xpacs cost $50+ ea, but you know, I wasn't legit I was an exploiter.
I do kind have to take issue with being called a "botter" though. Since I was a then defined "legit" player, I actually logged on and set professions (of which I also spent lots of cash/AD to get assets and level ups) and also did invokes etc. While it's true I could actually only "play" 1 character at a time during gaming time, I was then defined as legit having my professions ticking on those other characters. I played and I got rewarded, a tad more for an "investment" in professions. I never resorted to having a machine play for me, I didn't, so never call me a botter.
So you claim you are "monitoring" the AD economy and your new and notimproved method is still rewarding, now legit "players" and in some cases, better. I have to dispute that however. You once again gloss over what the solo player gets.....a stick up the posterior, without any lubricant to boot. If we don't grind your dungeons "legit" or your skirmishes "legit or your pvp "legit" we are now defined not "legit".
You once again hype what you are going to do for everyone else but the questers, just ramming that stick a little higher up or tailpipes as you hype on by. Let's highlight how a questing player get's their AD now...they invoke and they umm invoke. That's it, unless they join your hamster wheel of dungeons/skirmishes/pvp to get some AD they invoke. That's what 1k a day AD? Wow at that rate they can afford your new and improved companion upgrade from white to green in 50 days...impressive!
Can I make a humble suggestion? Take a stroll or a cab or a plane, whatever you have to do, to meet your STO counter parts in the Cryptic organization. Go there and find out how they handled the "AD exploiter" (not) problem. See how they handled it is, that missions (quests) all give a trickle of dilithum (AD). Their skirmishes and pvp and dungeons (all called high tech things but the same actions over there) all reward a trickle of D(AD). So everyone get's rewarded for playing, not just a set group of players. They handle the invoke phenom with a 1/day dilithium mining mission, you get approx. 300-1k D for it....once again..playing.
I know it's all in vogue to cater to end gamer's with the weekly/daily AD content, and now adding +50% I'm sure they will enjoy. But what about the not L70 players? What about the not dungeon/skirm/pvper's?
I got to tell you, I've been in a holding pattern since you made all the changes, still making that meager 1k/day AD from invokes. Been getting more and more depressed about what I've been seeing in AD regards, and with the other blows to solo players like the mastercraft being locked behind SH (despite promises) and more and more. It's getting harder and harder to have anything positive to say about NW. I used to be one of your biggest cheerleaders, getting my family and friends to all join, but one by one they have been dropping off for other games. I'm being honest here when I tell you, I'm really kicking myself for all the cash I poured into this game, I'm getting this nasty feeling that I've been sold a lemon
Can you please.......PLEASE get someone on quest/AD rewards? Like I say, go see what STO did..it works pretty good in the play-for-time-for-reward department, if you don't get on it pretty soon, I too, will be departing, and that will be really a sad day
That was a very interesting post - after reviewing your numbers I understand the poor cost structure in game.
"In October, after the exploits were addressed, and the new AD sources were in place, the average was 60,000 AD per player"
There is a big difference between "average AD per player" and "AD of average player". In a low population game with a few players earning millions (aka bots playing the AH) per day the average is quite meaningless - perhaps a median of ALL active players would be more meaningfull.
I'm quite sure a player for Cryptic is a "hardcore player" playing > 3hr per day. I was under the impression most players in neverwinter are casual players (not every day and < 2hrs) and a casual player earns at most ~25k during ~2hr gameplay per day if he/she fully concentrates on earning AD (1x eLoL: 6.8k, 2x KR: 3.6k, Salvage: 9k or as an alternative running normal tos with alts), but nothing near 60k.
=> cost structure in neverwinter is based on hardcore players and not the average player because of the way they're generating their numbers.
As long as Cryptic is making their decisions based on these numbers the costs will not change drastically - small guilds (20 active players) having problems in SH, impossible in their eyes - everyone should dump 1/2 AD income in mimic => 20 players * 30k AD = 600k/day - where is your problem small guilds?
The Trade bar store changes that are coming are overall really good, imo, and more along the lines of what I'd like to see w/ regards to pricing in other areas of the economy (namely AD).
This blog gives me as a newer player a bad feeling. I understand long-time players having some legacy advantages over newcomers, but should one of those advantages be dictating changes to the entire AD economy so heavily- esp when a number of those "exploiters" of old are not invested in the game anymore? The devs seem to think that solo players should queue for repetitive content w/ randos to get most of their in-game AD, and that is troubling. What ever happened to getting rewarded for playing the game? Are campaigns, foundry, solo dailies, lairs, leveling quests, etc. not the actual game? Have I been playing an imposter Neverwinter this whole time?
See, the nice thing about making more general quests give small/minor AD rewards is that most of the players engaging in these are either alts or newer players. Vets w/ long-time mains are well passed doing this sort of stuff for them, and the AD refine cap puts an effective limit on trying to hoard AD via playing various content as is. As long as ya make group content more rewarding for AD vs. time spent, then there shouldn't be much of a 'rich getting richer' concern for implementing more raw AD sources into the game.
And if you guys aren't going to consider revamping most quest rewards for AD, then could you at least axe most/all of the AD sinks in Campaigns?
So a white to green is now 270,000 diamonds cheaper than the Zen store bought one, and and the blue one is 230,000 diamonds cheaper, and upgrading to a purple is 500,000 diamonds cheaper. I dunno, sounds more like Cryptic is being quite fair in their pricing of the upgrading at this point. But that's my personal take
Epic companions on the Zen store are 2500 to 3000 Zen or 1 million to 1.2 million AD.
So going from white to purple is still cheaper (50,000 + 250,000 + 500,000 = 800,000).
Of course that begs the question of "Are companion prices still too high?" Or should companions being like Zen mounts and be account bound on purchase?
Most of the zen store companions are overpriced, imo. Maybe if they were account-bound like the Zen mounts, but they aren't. If you buy one then imo you are getting ripped off- even for the 'good' ones like the augments.
One of the biggest problems I have with the game is the awful COSTS for changing the way our characters look. I get that they want to make the items themselves change the way our characters look. But seriously let us do transmutes (change how our gear looks) without paying for it. We have already paid for the items we want to use for the transmutations. Same goes for removing enhancements and recoloring clothes and armor. We should also be able to change our hair or make our characters ger a beer belly or get emancipated if we want, without it costing us an arm and a leg. After all, hair grows for free and body fitness is based on consumption and physical activity. We should also be allowed to make them look older by giving them wrincles, scars and grey hair or a beard or change the length and style of the beard. I get that some things can't be changed without paying. Like species, gender, height, facial features that is outside the family of faces tied to ageing (although with magic pretty much everything could be changed).
As for the companion upgrades, I agree they are still way to expensive.
We should also be able to name our mounts and upgrade them at an obtainable price for those of us that can't pay through our nose for zen every day and not play 24/7 to farm AD.
The low level dungeons need to return yesterday already.
But I'm happy that you are at least aware that there's a problem.
zebularMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 15,270Community Moderator
edited November 2015
On Companion Pricing:
While I do appreciate the effort and seeing reductions, I regret and loathe saying it, but companion upgrade costs are still far too expensive. Those reduced prices, all of them, need to be reduced by 75% in my opinion. Alas, I shall continue waiting to upgrade my companions for even at the reduced prices, I would have to forgo buying anything else at all for quite some time to upgrade my companions. There is not enough ways to make AD now to account for these insane prices. Don't even get me started on mount upgrades. Sadly, I do not feel casual players and companion collectors are being properly considered in this round of price reductions.
We think it’s OK for it to be a little more expensive to upgrade a specific companion.
I strongly disagree. The price should be reasonably affordable for everyone, thus not only making it an enjoyable experience but also an effective AD sink. If you want an effective AD Sink, less equates more, not the other way around.
But it shouldn’t be ridiculously more expensive than buying a brand-new companion (of the upgraded color).
At these reduced prices, it is still better to buy a companion straight out of the bat at Epic and then on top of that you have that enormous legendary upgrade fee. I fail to see how these prices reflect them not being "ridiculously more expensive than buying a brand-new companion."
So, lets break things down using a currently generous rate of lets say 375 AD per Zen (rounding down). Do keep in mind, this is a generous ZAX rate I'm using in these examples. The current rate at the time of this post is approximately 50 more AD, fluctuating around 425 AD per Zen.
White to Green: 50,000 AD = 133 Zen Green to Blue: 250,000 AD = 666 Zen Blue to Purple: 500,000 AD = 1,333 Zen Purple to Orange: 1,000,000 AD = 2,666 Zen
Blue Companions in the Wondrous Bazaar: 400,000 AD = 1,066 Zen
So, to upgrade a Blue Companion from the Wondrous Bazaar to Epic, it would cost a total of 900,000 AD or 2400 Zen, which is approximately 400 Zen more than an Epic Companion right out of the Zen store.
Now let's say a player wanted to upgrade a Green Companion that they bought in the Zen store for 800 Zen or 300,000 AD. It would cost them a total of 1,200,000 AD or 3,200 Zen to do this.
Okay, so the green companion was a freebie from a promotion? It would still cost them 900,000 AD or 2,400 Zen to do this, making buying an Epic companion the better option.
Let's not forget to go to legendary, that's yet another whopping 1,000,000 AD or 2,666 Zen.
If you really want to encourage people to buy common, uncommon, rare, and epic companions and then upgrade them, you should make the cost to upgrade them be enjoyable and reasonable. Not nominal. Making the fee affordable even by the most casual of players will not only entice them to upgrade, but will also entice hard core players and companion collectors to upgrade their plethora of companions.
What do I feel are more reasonable and encouraging prices for more wide-spread sinks?
White to Green: 12,500-20,000 AD Green to Blue: 62,500-75,000 AD Blue to Purple: 125,000-150,000 AD Purple to Orange: 250,000-325,000 AD
-----
Now, with that out of the way:
+50% Astral Diamonds earned for gameplay-focused activities: dungeons, skirmishes, PvP, and the weekly quests mentioned in a prior post. • This includes the base activity, the daily rewards, and the daily limits to what you can earn for these activities (the stuff that Rhix talks about).
I do like the sound of this, however I don't feel casual players are being considered too well. This is the problem with intertwining your RTM currency with Progression Currency. AD needs removed from the player auction market, just like STO. Then, and only then will all these changes be beneficial and stabilizing in the long-run.
I think that instead of increasing AD from these sources, adding different sources would be far better for the majority of players. Daily quests and leveling quests should award AD. The foundry should award AD.
An increase to the daily AD refinement cap from 24,000 to 36,000.
As stated above, this will only drive the ZAX market to inflate. The rich minority will control the market as long as the Auction House is tied to the Zen market through Astral Diamonds. Please do consider following the economic model of STO.
Exploit fix: There was a severe AD-farming exploit involving Planar Idols and Astral Resonators (items that appear in certain older lockboxes). Earlier attempts to fix them did not work. So we’ve changed how they work completely — they still give the same amount of AD to anyone using them without the exploit, but the exploit should no longer be possible.
Absolutely gorgeous. Huzzah! Grats and thanks!
Further on down the line, we hope to be taking a look at AD prices in the Campaigns and in Strongholds to make sure they are healthy.
With these changes and our plan to continue to evaluate AD and its place in Neverwinter, we would like to reiterate that our team is continuously looking at feedback from our players. Please keep the feedback coming through our forums, Twitter, Reddit, etc. When looking at the AD system as a whole we’ll always want to have some cheap things and some expensive things, but we want to do it in a way that makes sense, a way that feels fair, and a way that always gives you something fun to aim for, something that’s within reach.
In addition to Campaign and Stronghold, probably even more-so, the Transmutation Costs, Mount Upgrade Costs, and Feat Respecs need major price reductions. Companion and Profession rushing costs also needs evaluated and renaming a companion needs to be changed to a gold cost instead, in my opinion.
ryoshinetteMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 488Arc User
A lot of good news. What is missing in my opinion: - lag fixing, especially in SH (unplayable area for many) - balance changes - still perma states of OP/TR/HR will present (sucha a blance was promised) - enchants rework - and in my humble opinion - it's a sentence for a small guild. They will have completelly no chance in pvp.
And the only I'm afraid of - that new module = new exploits ;/ As usual.
Ryoshin GF (4.2k) .Suicide Squad.
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vinceent1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,264Arc User
few more points
PC ad economy is bot controlled economy. Cryptic your numbers are messed because they include players and bots together. Players are much poorer than you think.
where are adjustings to leadership profession? if you look at tasks, is a big shame for your company that shorter are much more rewarded than longer. any serious cash spender must be concerned by this and rethink his spendings, because company look very unprofessional in this case.
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vaporwalkerMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 19Arc User
the 24k refinement cap i hit in little over an hour. if fast AD is what you are looking for you dont run t1 or t2.
2x regular ToS = 20 min total then spam Kessels kessel runs take 10-15 min each, can usually do 3-4 in 1 hour
been doing this everyday. a little over an hour is all its been taking me to reach refinement cap.
/shrug
you can say that a t1 or t2 gives more AD (including salvage) than a kessels, but i can blast out 3 kessels runs in the time it takes for a normal pug group to complete an epic dungeon.
its just way more efficient.
that being said, i wish there was alot more new content.
Putting all players using Leadership into the "expoliters" tab is not cool. First of all Leadership farming was not an exploit, it was a thing designed and coded from day 1. But we're not kids right? we know who used the automated way and who didn't so let's not get angry about word selection.
I say that giving some more AD for running stuff is a good way to make things better. Also I'm really happy that AD was taken off the campaign tasks that give keys for the 2nd dungeon chest - this one seems to be a bit lost in the community feedback - it's GREAT!
Making LS half decent again will surely take time, let's hope it will happen sooner than later.
Raising the refinement cap is something that majority of us wanted from a long time, so this should also be a good thing.
My biggest gripe is not halving the cost of transmutation. I was so hoping it will be made cheaper...why can't we use gold for this? This will at least give the resource some use, yes?
And for the feedback. We've given you guys so many ideas over the past few weeks that it's quite clear what we would like to see being implemented. Every one and than another thread pops up but most of the things were already said.
All in all I like the changes.
Certainly not the HUGE thing we all wanted, but it looks better, thank you.
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"
A step in the right direction but lowering prices needs to proceed much more quickly because
'At its peak, on PC, Leadership was accounting for more than 80% of the daily earned AD. This is a whole lot of AD earned by botters and exploiters!'
means legitimate players who relied mostly on Leadership to provide their AD also had their income reduced by 80%. I know mine is.
Mine too, I shelled out a lot of money for this game over the years, Hero of the north, Guardian of Neverwinter, Knight of the Feywild, Plus the dragonborn pack. I play this game for the Fun of D&D. You may think the AD changes wouldn't affect me but, basically, they're a slap in the face to someone who has been a loyal customer since Beta. Leadership was a legitimate way to get AD, but you had no Idea how your economy worked so you cut AD from Leadership, without reducing the associated prices of the AD sinks, now you're wondering "What Went Wrong?" but you just can't figure it out, many people have made good suggestions, including hiring an actual economist to work on the issue. I suggest gathering all the suggestions that have been made, giving them to an economist and letting them sort out the massive cluster**** you've created.
You see 4k players running TOS, farming ESOT/ Kessel. Alts with bad gear running TOS, hoping for a decent player to kill the mobs for them.
Best way to make AD is grinding not playing. They should look at the RAD/ average time spent ratio and make changes according to that. Make epic equip salvage for higher prices, so there is a choice, to run ECC or ETOS for AD gain and not just TOS etc.
It would still be the same content again and again, but you could at last farm by running a few different dungeons/ skirmishes and not just the easiest ones.
I quote from the web page https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/9656413==> "We realize the Leadership changes were rough on some players, but they really did help: •In July, PC players were earning 171,000 AD per player. But if you take out the Leadership exploits, it was only 34,000 AD per player! •In October, after the exploits were addressed, and the new AD sources were in place, the average was 60,000 AD per player. So most players were making a lot more. •On Xbox One (where the botting was not an issue), AD per player went up from 32,000 to 39,000 from July to October. •On PC, the Zen/AD Exchange in July continued to be capped out at its maximum of 500. This means many trades did not go through for weeks or even months. But by October, the Exchange was working smoothly again, and the people who wanted to use it could."
I don't know whether to cry or laugh. Some points to ponder.
1) something is NOT an EXPLOIT if it is built into the game system. Period. People were ABUSING and MANIPULATING the system by having 20 or more toons, each w/ maxed out Leadership. THOSE people were, and most LIKELY still ARE, the problem. Since I doubt that any of their accounts was investigated or analyzed.
2) In WHAT mathematical world is 60k AD's MORE than 171k? This sort of statement is beyond... well, beyond.
3) I don't know how players COULD be earning 60k... not w/o hours of play daily. Four to six at a minimum by my calcualtions. Vice the Leadership system, when built up and the proper Assets PURCHASED, earning 60K a day w/ 6 toons was EASY. Say an hour invested a day.
4) My trades would go thru every week or two... and I was saving up and buying 1000 or 2000 Zen at a time.
5) Having the AD's capped out means that Cash players get the most bang for their buck. Wow, what a concept... people getting a good deal and good value for their dollar.
6) I saw at LEAST 10 gold sellers today in Zone chat. And AD's jumped to 430 to One Zen today. Yep, that AD Nerf really was SO effective. Try checking out all the people that have over 20 toons instead. Might actually help instead of ruining the game for the common player. That is to say, those of us that only have 5 to 10 toons.
7) In another post, I outlined a calculation that showed that about EIGHT BILLION AD'S (At a minimum) were lost daily as a result of the nerf. And that's every day since mid September. And we're still over 300 Ad's to Zen? Hmmm. Something's amiss here...
8) Why wasn't there any kind of AD/Zen refund or reimbursement to the people whose Men-at Arms and Adventurers were rendered worthless? The only way you can get them is from profession packs... purchased on the Zen market... or dropped from Lockboxes. So people PAID lots of money to get their Leadership to the Point that it Really made AD's... and then it was summarily taken Away!
I say to all here... if a car manufacturer or hardware store or a supermarket had pulled the kinds of shenanigans that We have seen PW play here w/ NW, they most likely would be even now in court getting sued. IF they were lucky.
There are some new weekly quests for the demonic HEs in WoD, IWD and DR that award campaign currency and rAD.
And all of the weekly quests added together would not be enough to fill up old daily refine limit. I don't even consider it enough to think of it as even a good start.
Technically they will let us hit the old refinement cap. You can get 21600 just from skirmishes and dungeon every day. Each of the weeklies will give 4500 after the increase. Still a drop in the bucket.
And how much time did that take?
Two dungeons, two skirmishes and 3 HEs? So maybe 60-90 minutes?
You managed to get 3 HEs, 2 skirmishes, and a pair of t1/t2s done in 90 minutes?
T1s ~15-20 minutes each, 10-15 minutes for each of the new skirmishes, and 3 HEs which everyone is going to be farming the **** out of? (keep in mind you're getting Seal of the Elements from each of the HEs so every 10 HEs or so you'll get some salvage too). Sure. It'll be pz. Might take a bit longer for dungeons because everyone will be queuing for new content though.
Okay, so you're either a hyper-optimized individual who has a high IL and/or is part of a guild of such, if you're pulling off times like that. Gotcha.
Guess what happens to those of us that don't have such luxuries? Whose guilds are *just* getting their first campaign boons and who have on average, maybe 7-12 members on at any one point in time? Do you know how long it takes for just a main, let alone my two alts that are fast gathering dust?
2k ilvl is all you need for all of that : | That'll be easy to hit given that rank 7s will be dirt cheap post Underdark.
elol is the hardest part there and you can just do ToS if you're having trouble with that. Skirmishes were supposed to be pretty easy from what I've heard. HEs are easy and you can get carried anyways.
I'm still not in a guild and I'm only 2.8k ilvl which I've gotten by solo'ing for five months.
Okay, TOS is not a T1 dungeon. Its a "trainer" dungeon (even though as a three man, it does absolutely nothing to prepare you for your respective role when you actually get to ETOS, or as most people call it, TOS 2: Everything One Shots You Boogaloo...) And if you're slaughtering Lausty in 10-15 minutes at a 2k Item level... yeah. Streaming or it didn't happen.
And the HEs that give seals...no. You cannot get 'carried' if you don't have enough guild members on. I love the guild that I'm a part of, but we're composed of older individuals with these annoying things called "Children", "Families" and "Full time jobs at varying hours." meaning there's rarely more than seven or eight of us on at any one point in time. Which means that the big HEs that give seals and other goodies are just not practical.
I guess you just want to get mad at your inability to try to find a way to progress in a video game? I'm guessing it's something like "THOSE DURN KIDS PLAYIN' THEM VIDEAH GAMEZ. WHERE'S MAH BEER WOMAN?" in your house.
I mean the whole discussion you butted in on was about hitting the old refinement cap which ToS does anyways. And I said 15-20 minutes for elol. It's more about staying alive than having uber DPS anyways. You just need a DC and a tank. If you get an OP it's easy mode.
You shouldn't need to run eToS because you can earn 135 ilvl gear from the Underdark campaign. Also, shouldn't be getting oneshot in eToS outside of the last boss or sitting on red circles. Have you even played this game since the DR bug was fixed?
And yes, you can get carried in the new HEs and you do get seals. You don't need guild members for HEs because everyone is going to be running the HEs. You will be able to walk into DR and run an HE because everyone is going to be working on the Underdark campaign.
Nice ad hominim, but dated and lacking in context. The all caps hurts you as well. I give you a 6 out of 10.
And yes I ran ETOS earlier today. I got one shot six times by spiderlings hitting me for 95K+ It's almost like they nerfed the HAMSTER out of defense and anyone not running a GWF or an OP has the defense of "ye olde mythical stamina bar" because once I can no longer teleport I die the moment that something looks at me funny. (Heck, I swear that bug resurfaces from time to time, given I've watched Paladins with their guard raised get dropped by spiderlings and half the time our guild's primary GF has his Steel Defense ignored twice this week alone).
Believe me, I want this game to get better. It's been a part of my life for two and a half years now, but its immensely frustrating to watch things develop along this route of bandaid v. compound fractured femur for seven months now and no real sign of a solution because the Devs borked up module six so badly that more than half a year later, 75% of the end-game content is still missing.
The thing is, I have a full time job (and a part time one once one factors in that I belong to a profession that results in family members expecting free service/advice/etc. and I'm not in a position where I can tell them to buzz off and see the Senior partner). I want to play a game to have fun and enjoy myself, not to make it part time job number two. I want to earn my gear, but I don't want to have to slave away for seven hours a day to do it.
Now, perhaps you'll wind up being right, believe me, I'll be happier if that's true. I want this game to succeed. But I've watched them all but destroy it through ineptitude, short-sighted idiocy, and a seemingly pathological disconnect from the reality of their own game (responding to the utter embarrassment of not being able to beat Tiamat post mod six with godmode on by raising the IL necessary to fight her...rather than...you know, actually making the difficulty a tadge more reasonable) that I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I'm clearly the first one in this thread to throw ad hominems around : |
You're also the only one with a full time job that plays video games. I've worked 80 hour work weeks and if you really want to find an hour or two for a game you will. If you can't it just means that you don't want to.
If the problem is the grind then you're going to need to find another game because nothing they ever do with be sufficient for you.
And with 10% DR on my CW I get hit for 38k by spiders in on eToS.
Never claimed you were the first, or that I was the only one with a full time job. But you're welcome to keep putting words in my mouth.
As to the grind/time, I have other hobbies as well. I write. I have IRL friends, I debate, etc. Thus, the question is as follows: how will you make this game worth my time? Worth my money? Worth my recommendation? Because NWO hardly has a monopoly on the 'Tolkienesque High-Fantasy MMO' genre. I don't mind grind or a challenge. I play Dark Souls and genuinely enjoy it, and grind is the name of the game in many an RPG. The catch is the time/reward ratio. Let's take the companion upgrade system for example.
I have a Warlock companion. I really enjoy her. She's cool looking, attacks like mad, and is fairly unique. However, in exchange for getting 15% of her stats, augment style, I am expected to now drop 1.5 million AD on her, 42 days of maxed out refining under the new system, assuming I don't spend it on anything else. That's roughly the cost of a rank 12 enchant. That's insane.
Or how about the last two boons of TOD. Where I am expected to beat Tiamat, something completely dependent upon luck since you can't preform a party before going in after her, and whom the Devs themselves failed miserably against despite stacking the deck in their favor (or engage in a grind that is charitably described as 'somewhere between the twelve tasks of Heracles or Andy Dufresne's attempts at redecorating his prison wall') a minimum of 80 times in order to unlock a whopping 3% increased lifesteal chance or 10% increased healing. There's grind, and then there's NWO. And there's not even really a point it, since you cannot purchase Linu's favor with Zen, and thus no real reason to make it that difficult beyond driving a competitionist with OCD to the nearest psych ward. And let's not even get started on some of the SH requirements.
As to your DR, I play a CW, and while mine is only 7.3%, unless the Devs have once again screwed up the engine (something that is entirely possible, because it would hardly be the first time) I suspect there is something else going on. So while I congratulate you on actually finding instances of ETOS with a reasonable difficulty (note, not sarcasm), I continue to play the game of 'die if sneezed at' whenever I enter a T2.
ADs are just a mean to an end. To what end? Items, and by items I mean anything that helps a player succeed and that covers the best Enchantments, Mounts, Augments, Artifacts and last but not least Gears. You can adjust the drop rates no? The success rate of upgrading? The chance for a coal ward and pres ward? All these RNGs affect gameplay experience just as much if not more that ADs and has a direct impact on the need for ADs: less ADs needed if items are deem more readily available and vice versa more ADs needed if much rarer.
Adjust the RNG first.
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vinceent1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,264Arc User
ADs are just a mean to an end. To what end? Items, and by items I mean anything that helps a player succeed and that covers the best Enchantments, Mounts, Augments, Artifacts and last but not least Gears. You can adjust the drop rates no? The success rate of upgrading? The chance for a coal ward and pres ward? All these RNGs affect gameplay experience just as much if not more that ADs and has a direct impact on the need for ADs: less ADs needed if items are deem more readily available and vice versa more ADs needed if much rarer.
Adjust the RNG first.
agree. price of preservation ward is joke in comparison with success rate of upgrading
ok so from what i read people who got ad from trainging up toons on leadership spending their time and money to level to 25 are a bunch of exploiters...the months of logging into the gateway to level leadership with no botting... little did i know i was exploiting the whole time.... who would have thought? thanks for calling me out for the filthy cheater i am Rob I needed that
look I like the change to leadership it helped the economy a lot. but don't call me exploiter for using a game mechanic that you put in ON PURPOSE to get AD I didn't bot. I did it all myself with the tools you gave me.
bottng was the exploit, leadership was YOUR mistake. us that legitimately used leadership did nothing wrong so you better watch who you call exploiter Robert
ok so from what i read people who got ad from trainging up toons on leadership spending their time and money to level to 25 are a bunch of exploiters...the months of logging into the gateway to level leadership with no botting... little did i know i was exploiting the whole time.... who would have thought? thanks for calling me out for the filthy cheater i am Rob I needed that
look I like the change to leadership it helped the economy a lot. but don't call me exploiter for using a game mechanic that you put in ON PURPOSE to get AD I didn't bot. I did it all myself with the tools you gave me.
bottng was the exploit, leadership was YOUR mistake. us that legitimately used leadership did nothing wrong so you better watch who you call exploiter Robert
It did not go as PW expected, so someone is to blame. It is either the company, who implemented leadeship, sold the assets, provided the character slots and allowed elaborated 'how to guides' in their monitored forums or the players.
You are surprised, that it is our fault, not thiers?
Lets keep this up, blame the loyal players for playing since beta and having better gear, then new players, ruining PvP and earning more AD, due to faster farmruns. Blame big guilds for having more members compared to small guilds, and progessing faster in SH.
OR make good gear obtainable in a reasonable way for new players and help smaller guilds, but this might include adressing your own problems and working on them.
Bold move insulting your own players, including your Mods (they used LS, too), to redirect the blame for your failures to others.
I fully support your efforts to fight botters and make a fair economy. I understand it must be really hard, and in general you guys are doing a great job.
Here's an idea, just in case nobody thought of it. I get that the point of AD and Zen is to give all kinds of players a chance to earn good rewards: AD is for players who have a lot of time, and Zen for those who have a lot of money. However, currently the only way to earn a significant amount of AD daily is by running daily dungeons and skirmishes. It gets pretty dull to run the same dungeons every day. I only have two characters, so I have to run Temple of the Spider 4 times every day. I've been doing that for months. The fact that there is a larger reward the first two times you do a daily dungeon forces people to do it twice with each character. I can't imagine how soul-crushing that must be for people who have 8+ characters! Can't you come up with a system where enemies in regular zones drop tokens every now and then that we can exchange for AD? That way, the longer you play the more AD you could get, but you don't have to run the same dungeons over and over and over and over...
I fully support your efforts to fight botters and make a fair economy. I understand it must be really hard, and in general you guys are doing a great job.
Here's an idea, just in case nobody thought of it. I get that the point of AD and Zen is to give all kinds of players a chance to earn good rewards: AD is for players who have a lot of time, and Zen for those who have a lot of money. However, currently the only way to earn a significant amount of AD daily is by running daily dungeons and skirmishes. It gets pretty dull to run the same dungeons every day. I only have two characters, so I have to run Temple of the Spider 4 times every day. I've been doing that for months. The fact that there is a larger reward the first two times you do a daily dungeon forces people to do it twice with each character. I can't imagine how soul-crushing that must be for people who have 8+ characters! Can't you come up with a system where enemies in regular zones drop tokens every now and then that we can exchange for AD? That way, the longer you play the more AD you could get, but you don't have to run the same dungeons over and over and over and over...
This would not work, bc it is botable. You would seem to help regular players, but the raise in AD income would get crushed by the inflation created by botters earning ADs for killing mobs 24/7 on multipe accounts.
Comments
White to Green: was 300,000 AD, now 50,000 AD
Green to Blue: was 500,000 AD, now 250,000 AD
Blue to Purple: was 750,000 AD, now 500,000 AD
Purple to Orange is staying the same (1,000,000 AD).
so our 1st companion now costs 800k to upgrade to purple. there arent very many purple pets that cost that much.
a WB blue pet will cost 900k to have at purple. again not very many purple pets at that price.
still 50 days of capped refining to upgrade a white pet to orange and 22 days to upgrade it to purple assuming i never spend ad on anything else like those boons/stronghold upgrades you're still evaluating. or repeccing. or a stack of potions.....
so aside from a very few select pets noone will upgrade pets still.
lets take the air archon for example.
i can buy it at purple for 550k.
or i can buy it at green for 25k, then spend 750k to upgrade it.
oh and lets not forget those archons will be much easier to get in the new tbar store so even less incentive to upgrade.
still nothing about mount training (1.4 M to go from rank 2 to 3). i can buy a purple mount for well under a million
t2 purple gear still salvages for the same amount as t1 blue gear. no incentive to do more than 1 per day for the big bag of prot seals. it still costs more to purchase a key for a dungeon chest than you will make from a dungeon chest. at best you will break even with a chest peice drop most bosses still drop peridot as they common loot or nothing at all. but t1 bosses will drop artis every now and again. and t2 bosses drop nothing. incentive to complete harder dungeons, none.
still 50k PER ATTEMPT at changing your artificact weapons powers/stats. meaning up to 1.3 million to unlock the powers and many more attempts to get the stats ( on 7 chars i have yet to get one that gave a bonus to the paragon tree im using).
still massive ad sinks in professions.
i mean seriously 2 months and this is all you can manage. and still missing 9 dungeons and their epic versions. oh i forgot you cut and pasted parts of an old dungeon for the new skirmishes, and made a bunch more HEs. that explains about 2 weeks since stronghold launched.
I'm guessing it's something like "THOSE DURN KIDS PLAYIN' THEM VIDEAH GAMEZ. WHERE'S MAH BEER WOMAN?" in your house.
I mean the whole discussion you butted in on was about hitting the old refinement cap which ToS does anyways. And I said 15-20 minutes for elol. It's more about staying alive than having uber DPS anyways. You just need a DC and a tank. If you get an OP it's easy mode.
You shouldn't need to run eToS because you can earn 135 ilvl gear from the Underdark campaign. Also, shouldn't be getting oneshot in eToS outside of the last boss or sitting on red circles. Have you even played this game since the DR bug was fixed?
And yes, you can get carried in the new HEs and you do get seals. You don't need guild members for HEs because everyone is going to be running the HEs. You will be able to walk into DR and run an HE because everyone is going to be working on the Underdark campaign.
And yes I ran ETOS earlier today. I got one shot six times by spiderlings hitting me for 95K+ It's almost like they nerfed the HAMSTER out of defense and anyone not running a GWF or an OP has the defense of "ye olde mythical stamina bar" because once I can no longer teleport I die the moment that something looks at me funny. (Heck, I swear that bug resurfaces from time to time, given I've watched Paladins with their guard raised get dropped by spiderlings and half the time our guild's primary GF has his Steel Defense ignored twice this week alone).
Believe me, I want this game to get better. It's been a part of my life for two and a half years now, but its immensely frustrating to watch things develop along this route of bandaid v. compound fractured femur for seven months now and no real sign of a solution because the Devs borked up module six so badly that more than half a year later, 75% of the end-game content is still missing.
The thing is, I have a full time job (and a part time one once one factors in that I belong to a profession that results in family members expecting free service/advice/etc. and I'm not in a position where I can tell them to buzz off and see the Senior partner). I want to play a game to have fun and enjoy myself, not to make it part time job number two. I want to earn my gear, but I don't want to have to slave away for seven hours a day to do it.
Now, perhaps you'll wind up being right, believe me, I'll be happier if that's true. I want this game to succeed. But I've watched them all but destroy it through ineptitude, short-sighted idiocy, and a seemingly pathological disconnect from the reality of their own game (responding to the utter embarrassment of not being able to beat Tiamat post mod six with godmode on by raising the IL necessary to fight her...rather than...you know, actually making the difficulty a tadge more reasonable) that I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I'm clearly the first one in this thread to throw ad hominems around : |
You're also the only one with a full time job that plays video games. I've worked 80 hour work weeks and if you really want to find an hour or two for a game you will. If you can't it just means that you don't want to.
If the problem is the grind then you're going to need to find another game because nothing they ever do with be sufficient for you.
And with 10% DR on my CW I get hit for 38k by spiders in on eToS.
It will only get worse as we advance our SH since the costs increase as we go (but our membership isn't keeping pace with it). This is a major problem for us and every other small, friendly, non-zerg guild out there.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
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I do kind have to take issue with being called a "botter" though. Since I was a then defined "legit" player, I actually logged on and set professions (of which I also spent lots of cash/AD to get assets and level ups) and also did invokes etc. While it's true I could actually only "play" 1 character at a time during gaming time, I was then defined as legit having my professions ticking on those other characters. I played and I got rewarded, a tad more for an "investment" in professions. I never resorted to having a machine play for me, I didn't, so never call me a botter.
So you claim you are "monitoring" the AD economy and your new and notimproved method is still rewarding, now legit "players" and in some cases, better. I have to dispute that however. You once again gloss over what the solo player gets.....a stick up the posterior, without any lubricant to boot. If we don't grind your dungeons "legit" or your skirmishes "legit or your pvp "legit" we are now defined not "legit".
You once again hype what you are going to do for everyone else but the questers, just ramming that stick a little higher up or tailpipes as you hype on by. Let's highlight how a questing player get's their AD now...they invoke and they umm invoke. That's it, unless they join your hamster wheel of dungeons/skirmishes/pvp to get some AD they invoke. That's what 1k a day AD? Wow at that rate they can afford your new and improved companion upgrade from white to green in 50 days...impressive!
Can I make a humble suggestion? Take a stroll or a cab or a plane, whatever you have to do, to meet your STO counter parts in the Cryptic organization. Go there and find out how they handled the "AD exploiter" (not) problem. See how they handled it is, that missions (quests) all give a trickle of dilithum (AD). Their skirmishes and pvp and dungeons (all called high tech things but the same actions over there) all reward a trickle of D(AD). So everyone get's rewarded for playing, not just a set group of players. They handle the invoke phenom with a 1/day dilithium mining mission, you get approx. 300-1k D for it....once again..playing.
I know it's all in vogue to cater to end gamer's with the weekly/daily AD content, and now adding +50% I'm sure they will enjoy. But what about the not L70 players? What about the not dungeon/skirm/pvper's?
I got to tell you, I've been in a holding pattern since you made all the changes, still making that meager 1k/day AD from invokes. Been getting more and more depressed about what I've been seeing in AD regards, and with the other blows to solo players like the mastercraft being locked behind SH (despite promises) and more and more. It's getting harder and harder to have anything positive to say about NW. I used to be one of your biggest cheerleaders, getting my family and friends to all join, but one by one they have been dropping off for other games. I'm being honest here when I tell you, I'm really kicking myself for all the cash I poured into this game, I'm getting this nasty feeling that I've been sold a lemon
Can you please.......PLEASE get someone on quest/AD rewards? Like I say, go see what STO did..it works pretty good in the play-for-time-for-reward department, if you don't get on it pretty soon, I too, will be departing, and that will be really a sad day
"In October, after the exploits were addressed, and the new AD sources were in place, the average was 60,000 AD per player"
There is a big difference between "average AD per player" and "AD of average player". In a low population game with a few players earning millions (aka bots playing the AH) per day the average is quite meaningless - perhaps a median of ALL active players would be more meaningfull.
I'm quite sure a player for Cryptic is a "hardcore player" playing > 3hr per day. I was under the impression most players in neverwinter are casual players (not every day and < 2hrs) and a casual player earns at most ~25k during ~2hr gameplay per day if he/she fully concentrates on earning AD (1x eLoL: 6.8k, 2x KR: 3.6k, Salvage: 9k or as an alternative running normal tos with alts), but nothing near 60k.
=> cost structure in neverwinter is based on hardcore players and not the average player because of the way they're generating their numbers.
As long as Cryptic is making their decisions based on these numbers the costs will not change drastically - small guilds (20 active players) having problems in SH, impossible in their eyes - everyone should dump 1/2 AD income in mimic => 20 players * 30k AD = 600k/day - where is your problem small guilds?
This blog gives me as a newer player a bad feeling. I understand long-time players having some legacy advantages over newcomers, but should one of those advantages be dictating changes to the entire AD economy so heavily- esp when a number of those "exploiters" of old are not invested in the game anymore? The devs seem to think that solo players should queue for repetitive content w/ randos to get most of their in-game AD, and that is troubling. What ever happened to getting rewarded for playing the game? Are campaigns, foundry, solo dailies, lairs, leveling quests, etc. not the actual game? Have I been playing an imposter Neverwinter this whole time?
See, the nice thing about making more general quests give small/minor AD rewards is that most of the players engaging in these are either alts or newer players. Vets w/ long-time mains are well passed doing this sort of stuff for them, and the AD refine cap puts an effective limit on trying to hoard AD via playing various content as is. As long as ya make group content more rewarding for AD vs. time spent, then there shouldn't be much of a 'rich getting richer' concern for implementing more raw AD sources into the game.
And if you guys aren't going to consider revamping most quest rewards for AD, then could you at least axe most/all of the AD sinks in Campaigns? Most of the zen store companions are overpriced, imo. Maybe if they were account-bound like the Zen mounts, but they aren't. If you buy one then imo you are getting ripped off- even for the 'good' ones like the augments.
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As for the companion upgrades, I agree they are still way to expensive.
We should also be able to name our mounts and upgrade them at an obtainable price for those of us that can't pay through our nose for zen every day and not play 24/7 to farm AD.
The low level dungeons need to return yesterday already.
But I'm happy that you are at least aware that there's a problem.
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While I do appreciate the effort and seeing reductions, I regret and loathe saying it, but companion upgrade costs are still far too expensive. Those reduced prices, all of them, need to be reduced by 75% in my opinion. Alas, I shall continue waiting to upgrade my companions for even at the reduced prices, I would have to forgo buying anything else at all for quite some time to upgrade my companions. There is not enough ways to make AD now to account for these insane prices. Don't even get me started on mount upgrades. Sadly, I do not feel casual players and companion collectors are being properly considered in this round of price reductions.I strongly disagree. The price should be reasonably affordable for everyone, thus not only making it an enjoyable experience but also an effective AD sink. If you want an effective AD Sink, less equates more, not the other way around. At these reduced prices, it is still better to buy a companion straight out of the bat at Epic and then on top of that you have that enormous legendary upgrade fee. I fail to see how these prices reflect them not being "ridiculously more expensive than buying a brand-new companion."
So, lets break things down using a currently generous rate of lets say 375 AD per Zen (rounding down). Do keep in mind, this is a generous ZAX rate I'm using in these examples. The current rate at the time of this post is approximately 50 more AD, fluctuating around 425 AD per Zen.
White to Green: 50,000 AD = 133 Zen
Green to Blue: 250,000 AD = 666 Zen
Blue to Purple: 500,000 AD = 1,333 Zen
Purple to Orange: 1,000,000 AD = 2,666 Zen
Blue Companions in the Wondrous Bazaar: 400,000 AD = 1,066 Zen
So, to upgrade a Blue Companion from the Wondrous Bazaar to Epic, it would cost a total of 900,000 AD or 2400 Zen, which is approximately 400 Zen more than an Epic Companion right out of the Zen store.
Now let's say a player wanted to upgrade a Green Companion that they bought in the Zen store for 800 Zen or 300,000 AD. It would cost them a total of 1,200,000 AD or 3,200 Zen to do this.
Okay, so the green companion was a freebie from a promotion? It would still cost them 900,000 AD or 2,400 Zen to do this, making buying an Epic companion the better option.
Let's not forget to go to legendary, that's yet another whopping 1,000,000 AD or 2,666 Zen.
If you really want to encourage people to buy common, uncommon, rare, and epic companions and then upgrade them, you should make the cost to upgrade them be enjoyable and reasonable. Not nominal. Making the fee affordable even by the most casual of players will not only entice them to upgrade, but will also entice hard core players and companion collectors to upgrade their plethora of companions.
What do I feel are more reasonable and encouraging prices for more wide-spread sinks?
White to Green: 12,500-20,000 AD
Green to Blue: 62,500-75,000 AD
Blue to Purple: 125,000-150,000 AD
Purple to Orange: 250,000-325,000 AD
-----
Now, with that out of the way: I do like the sound of this, however I don't feel casual players are being considered too well. This is the problem with intertwining your RTM currency with Progression Currency. AD needs removed from the player auction market, just like STO. Then, and only then will all these changes be beneficial and stabilizing in the long-run.
I think that instead of increasing AD from these sources, adding different sources would be far better for the majority of players. Daily quests and leveling quests should award AD. The foundry should award AD. As stated above, this will only drive the ZAX market to inflate. The rich minority will control the market as long as the Auction House is tied to the Zen market through Astral Diamonds. Please do consider following the economic model of STO. Absolutely gorgeous. Huzzah! Grats and thanks! In addition to Campaign and Stronghold, probably even more-so, the Transmutation Costs, Mount Upgrade Costs, and Feat Respecs need major price reductions. Companion and Profession rushing costs also needs evaluated and renaming a companion needs to be changed to a gold cost instead, in my opinion.
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What is missing in my opinion:
- lag fixing, especially in SH (unplayable area for many)
- balance changes - still perma states of OP/TR/HR will present (sucha a blance was promised)
- enchants rework
- and in my humble opinion - it's a sentence for a small guild. They will have completelly no chance in pvp.
And the only I'm afraid of - that new module = new exploits ;/ As usual.
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PC ad economy is bot controlled economy. Cryptic your numbers are messed because they include players and bots together. Players are much poorer than you think.
where are adjustings to leadership profession? if you look at tasks, is a big shame for your company that shorter are much more rewarded than longer. any serious cash spender must be concerned by this and rethink his spendings, because company look very unprofessional in this case.
if fast AD is what you are looking for you dont run t1 or t2.
2x regular ToS = 20 min total
then spam Kessels
kessel runs take 10-15 min each, can usually do 3-4 in 1 hour
been doing this everyday. a little over an hour is all its been taking me to reach refinement cap.
/shrug
you can say that a t1 or t2 gives more AD (including salvage) than a kessels, but i can blast out 3 kessels runs in the time it takes for a normal pug group to complete an epic dungeon.
its just way more efficient.
that being said, i wish there was alot more new content.
'At its peak, on PC, Leadership was accounting for more than 80% of the daily earned AD. This is a whole lot of AD earned by botters and exploiters!'
means legitimate players who relied mostly on Leadership to provide their AD also had their income reduced by 80%. I know mine is.
But we're not kids right? we know who used the automated way and who didn't so let's not get angry about word selection.
I say that giving some more AD for running stuff is a good way to make things better. Also I'm really happy that AD was taken off the campaign tasks that give keys for the 2nd dungeon chest - this one seems to be a bit lost in the community feedback - it's GREAT!
Making LS half decent again will surely take time, let's hope it will happen sooner than later.
Raising the refinement cap is something that majority of us wanted from a long time, so this should also be a good thing.
My biggest gripe is not halving the cost of transmutation. I was so hoping it will be made cheaper...why can't we use gold for this? This will at least give the resource some use, yes?
And for the feedback. We've given you guys so many ideas over the past few weeks that it's quite clear what we would like to see being implemented. Every one and than another thread pops up but most of the things were already said.
All in all I like the changes.
Certainly not the HUGE thing we all wanted, but it looks better, thank you.
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Best way to make AD is grinding not playing. They should look at the RAD/ average time spent ratio and make changes according to that. Make epic equip salvage for higher prices, so there is a choice, to run ECC or ETOS for AD gain and not just TOS etc.
It would still be the same content again and again, but you could at last farm by running a few different dungeons/ skirmishes and not just the easiest ones.
"We realize the Leadership changes were rough on some players, but they really did help:
•In July, PC players were earning 171,000 AD per player. But if you take out the Leadership exploits, it was only 34,000 AD per player!
•In October, after the exploits were addressed, and the new AD sources were in place, the average was 60,000 AD per player. So most players were making a lot more.
•On Xbox One (where the botting was not an issue), AD per player went up from 32,000 to 39,000 from July to October.
•On PC, the Zen/AD Exchange in July continued to be capped out at its maximum of 500. This means many trades did not go through for weeks or even months. But by October, the Exchange was working smoothly again, and the people who wanted to use it could."
I don't know whether to cry or laugh. Some points to ponder.
1) something is NOT an EXPLOIT if it is built into the game system. Period. People were ABUSING and MANIPULATING the system by having 20 or more toons, each w/ maxed out Leadership. THOSE people were, and most LIKELY still ARE, the problem. Since I doubt that any of their accounts was investigated or analyzed.
2) In WHAT mathematical world is 60k AD's MORE than 171k? This sort of statement is beyond... well, beyond.
3) I don't know how players COULD be earning 60k... not w/o hours of play daily. Four to six at a minimum by my calcualtions. Vice the Leadership system, when built up and the proper Assets PURCHASED, earning 60K a day w/ 6 toons was EASY. Say an hour invested a day.
4) My trades would go thru every week or two... and I was saving up and buying 1000 or 2000 Zen at a time.
5) Having the AD's capped out means that Cash players get the most bang for their buck. Wow, what a concept... people getting a good deal and good value for their dollar.
6) I saw at LEAST 10 gold sellers today in Zone chat. And AD's jumped to 430 to One Zen today. Yep, that AD Nerf really was SO effective. Try checking out all the people that have over 20 toons instead. Might actually help instead of ruining the game for the common player. That is to say, those of us that only have 5 to 10 toons.
7) In another post, I outlined a calculation that showed that about EIGHT BILLION AD'S (At a minimum) were lost daily as a result of the nerf. And that's every day since mid September. And we're still over 300 Ad's to Zen? Hmmm. Something's amiss here...
8) Why wasn't there any kind of AD/Zen refund or reimbursement to the people whose Men-at Arms and Adventurers were rendered worthless? The only way you can get them is from profession packs... purchased on the Zen market... or dropped from Lockboxes. So people PAID lots of money to get their Leadership to the Point that it Really made AD's... and then it was summarily taken Away!
I say to all here... if a car manufacturer or hardware store or a supermarket had pulled the kinds of shenanigans that We have seen PW play here w/ NW, they most likely would be even now in court getting sued. IF they were lucky.
'Nuff said.
As to the grind/time, I have other hobbies as well. I write. I have IRL friends, I debate, etc. Thus, the question is as follows: how will you make this game worth my time? Worth my money? Worth my recommendation? Because NWO hardly has a monopoly on the 'Tolkienesque High-Fantasy MMO' genre. I don't mind grind or a challenge. I play Dark Souls and genuinely enjoy it, and grind is the name of the game in many an RPG. The catch is the time/reward ratio. Let's take the companion upgrade system for example.
I have a Warlock companion. I really enjoy her. She's cool looking, attacks like mad, and is fairly unique. However, in exchange for getting 15% of her stats, augment style, I am expected to now drop 1.5 million AD on her, 42 days of maxed out refining under the new system, assuming I don't spend it on anything else. That's roughly the cost of a rank 12 enchant. That's insane.
Or how about the last two boons of TOD. Where I am expected to beat Tiamat, something completely dependent upon luck since you can't preform a party before going in after her, and whom the Devs themselves failed miserably against despite stacking the deck in their favor (or engage in a grind that is charitably described as 'somewhere between the twelve tasks of Heracles or Andy Dufresne's attempts at redecorating his prison wall') a minimum of 80 times in order to unlock a whopping 3% increased lifesteal chance or 10% increased healing. There's grind, and then there's NWO. And there's not even really a point it, since you cannot purchase Linu's favor with Zen, and thus no real reason to make it that difficult beyond driving a competitionist with OCD to the nearest psych ward. And let's not even get started on some of the SH requirements.
As to your DR, I play a CW, and while mine is only 7.3%, unless the Devs have once again screwed up the engine (something that is entirely possible, because it would hardly be the first time) I suspect there is something else going on. So while I congratulate you on actually finding instances of ETOS with a reasonable difficulty (note, not sarcasm), I continue to play the game of 'die if sneezed at' whenever I enter a T2.
Adjust the RNG first.
look I like the change to leadership it helped the economy a lot. but don't call me exploiter for using a game mechanic that you put in ON PURPOSE to get AD I didn't bot. I did it all myself with the tools you gave me.
bottng was the exploit, leadership was YOUR mistake. us that legitimately used leadership did nothing wrong so you better watch who you call exploiter Robert
You are surprised, that it is our fault, not thiers?
Lets keep this up, blame the loyal players for playing since beta and having better gear, then new players, ruining PvP and earning more AD, due to faster farmruns. Blame big guilds for having more members compared to small guilds, and progessing faster in SH.
OR make good gear obtainable in a reasonable way for new players and help smaller guilds, but this might include adressing your own problems and working on them.
Bold move insulting your own players, including your Mods (they used LS, too), to redirect the blame for your failures to others.
Here's an idea, just in case nobody thought of it. I get that the point of AD and Zen is to give all kinds of players a chance to earn good rewards: AD is for players who have a lot of time, and Zen for those who have a lot of money. However, currently the only way to earn a significant amount of AD daily is by running daily dungeons and skirmishes. It gets pretty dull to run the same dungeons every day. I only have two characters, so I have to run Temple of the Spider 4 times every day. I've been doing that for months. The fact that there is a larger reward the first two times you do a daily dungeon forces people to do it twice with each character. I can't imagine how soul-crushing that must be for people who have 8+ characters! Can't you come up with a system where enemies in regular zones drop tokens every now and then that we can exchange for AD? That way, the longer you play the more AD you could get, but you don't have to run the same dungeons over and over and over and over...