Invoke changes on preview

plasticbat

ribbs1 said:

The changes will be a great boost for people with a lot of characters. It's players who don't have a bunch of alts or only have a limited amount of time to play that will suffer from the changes. Casual players and those who will be just starting out after the changes go into effect will be at a severe disadvantage. The game will only stay alive and healthy if these casual players feel like they have a place and can make progress in a reasonable amount of time.

This change will not affect casual player much because in the current situation, casual player will not last long anyway. For those who actually invoke 6 times daily, I won't say they are casual players. Even if they do that, a level 70 character without VIP only yields 21K per week. What can 21K give you?

What I am trying to day is: this is indifferent for casual player.

virsalus

calicobill said:

I normally invoke each of my toons (9) at least once daily. Invokes on the toon I'm currently playing until I reach max for the day or a switch toons. I have a main (CW) and two others (DC, OP) that I play regularly. If I run dungeons I get 2-4 pieces of salvage, demo 2 per run, 3 demon HE's in DR, IWD, ToD 1-3 pieces of salvage that should be about 11 pieces of salvage at an average of 3.5k is over the daily limit of 35k. This takes me about an hour to do.

So now I will just mail pieces of salvage to myself and let my other toons get more AD for the same salvage. Plus the toon I'm one will be able to get even more bonuses meaning I need less salvage to hi the daily barrier.

Which means I can get more of my toons to the daily max AD refinement faster and I still get to play the game the way I want.

What is the total amount of AD you can get just from invoking 6 times? Maybe 6K? I can make that amount with one demo run in 15 minutes. I don't understand why people would complain about 6k when you can easily make more quicker than invoking however many toons you have x6. I just do it once a day to get Ardent Coin, Celestial Coin from the first one.

Invoking is a good way to get a bit more AD "inbetween". What if you don't have much time to play? Or what if you don't like doing demo runs, maybe because you don't like PUGs and don't have a guild or don't want to play in a guild? There are many different reasons. The point is that this change makes the system unnecessarily more restrictive for people playing the game legitimately, supposedly to get at the botters. But botters will always find ways to get stuff, for example via PvP, skirmishes and dungeons and how are they going to stop that by messing up the invocation system for everyone else? It's nonsensical.

plasticbat

The current invocation system is the product of battling the bot already. The invocation system was not as painful as the current one. We got used to this and think it is a "good" thing after we bashed it thousands times when they introduced the current implementation.

I am not saying changing it is good.
What I am trying to say: it does not matter anymore because people will get used to it.

This has been happening. Get used to it -> change it -> bash the decision -> get used to it -> change it -> bash the decision -> get used to it -> ....

calicobill

virsalus#4183 said:

Invoking is a good way to get a bit more AD "inbetween". What if you don't have much time to play? Or what if you don't like doing demo runs, maybe because you don't like PUGs and don't have a guild or don't want to play in a guild? There are many different reasons. The point is that this change makes the system unnecessarily more restrictive for people playing the game legitimately, supposedly to get at the botters. But botters will always find ways to get stuff, for example via PvP, skirmishes and dungeons and how are they going to stop that by messing up the invocation system for everyone else? It's nonsensical.

My point is with the amount of time you have to invoke 6 times is 4 hours. If you can't sell two rings for 6k in that amount of time then you have other issues.

zibadawa

calicobill said:

My point is with the amount of time you have to invoke 6 times is 4 hours. If you can't sell two rings for 6k in that amount of time then you have other issues.

You don't have to *play* that entire 4 hours, though. You only need to do a few minutes. You invoke, then do something else for 15 minutes; invoke again, then do something else for 30 minutes; etc. If you're actually playing all 4 hours, then you're probably the one that has issues.

playersnoopy

Casual players would not be at a disadvantage; if anything they would benefit more from a slight bonus AD on salvage.

All this does is encourage the casual players who login maybe 1 or 2 hours for some dungeons and a daily or 2, to begin botting for invokes so that when they do login for a dungeon they get the most AD out of it.

As for 3rd party botters it affects them slightly as they lose out on the AD and only forces them to bot better. This affects the current casual players with 50 character accounts for AD the most. The gamers with no life just have to farm for all 50+ characters per account x.X

greywynd

Casual players don't have 50 character accounts.

playersnoopy

There are those with and those without. I meant Casual players with 50 characters will be affected negatively as they counted on free 100-250k AD per day using invoke bots; those w/o many characters will will benefit from this change.

virsalus

playersnoopy said:

There are those with and those without. I meant Casual players with 50 characters will be affected negatively as they counted on free 100-250k AD per day using invoke bots; those w/o many characters will will benefit from this change.

How would you get 250k daily out of invoking? Even on 50 characters at level 70 and with the VIP bonus that would only amount to 165k.

rebb

playersnoopy said:

There are those with and those without. I meant Casual players with 50 characters will be affected negatively as they counted on free 100-250k AD per day using invoke bots; those w/o many characters will will benefit from this change.

Your definition of casual is a bit off... casual players dont have 50 characters or run bot programs

araneax

playersnoopy said:

There are those with and those without. I meant Casual players with 50 characters will be affected negatively as they counted on free 100-250k AD per day using invoke bots; those w/o many characters will will benefit from this change.

A casual player is a player who can not or will not play for more than 2 - 4 hours in a row.
They do not have 50 characters. They do not have multi accounts and in general are here more for the company and a few dungeons in a day, then anything else.
Since they have commitments in real life that can not be avoided. Like 2 to 3 jobs, wife, kids and pets.

If what you say can be taken as correct then casual players will actually benefit from this change.
Duo the fact they have up to 5 chars and that is far stretched as well.

They are not hardcore gamers since there is really no time to invest into grinding and leveling multitoons just for the fun of it.

virsalus

What about semi ambitious players who simply don't have much time? Say you can't really play more than a few minutes here and there over the weekdays? You could use those to do a daily/weekly here and there, set up professions and invoke (maybe on some alts as well) to get _some_ income which will help you for example on the weekends when you have more time. And those days would be the only ones when you could to more time consuming contents like epic dungeons that would give salvage.

I think it really depends on how high the bonus will stack and how long it will last. If by the end of the week our semi ambitious not so casual player is able to reap full benefits with the little salvage they collect, then I guess it's not so bad.

wylonus

They promised to change/adjust the price/cost of upgrading the companions and other stuffs, and THEY HAVE NOT DONE ANYTHING.
i still see same cost.

talking about casual players, most just play until they hit 70 levels and leave, some dont bother with dungeons for tier 2 upgrades.

armadeonx

This sounds like a precursor to completely removing the 2 x AD event altogether.

regenerde

wylonus said:

They promised to change/adjust the price/cost of upgrading the companions and other stuffs, and THEY HAVE NOT DONE ANYTHING.
i still see same cost.

talking about casual players, most just play until they hit 70 levels and leave, some dont bother with dungeons for tier 2 upgrades.

Well, they did change the AD costs for upgrading companions a bit after they removed the raw AD from Leadership, but it's hardly noticable.
And most events or even campaigns feature green companions...

I also did gather tokens from companion packs through lockboxes, and i really needed the full 45 packs to get to the 90 tokens for one single "epic" upgrade.
45x40k=1.8m AD loss for a 500k AD upgrade.
And that was the last time i did bother with any of those companion packs, now i just sell them directly through the AH.

Anyway, every time they cut away another source of AD, the horrible AD costs have to be brought up again, until they actually start doing something about it.

virsalus

Yeah, companion upgrade costs are really ridiculous. And it's not just them. You work your butt off to get an artifact weapon set and then they throw the next insult in your face. Wished for a particular artifact power, one that actually fits your build and playstyle? Well, you get some random power and in order to get the one you want you get to unlock new ones for 25k AD each until you finally get lucky. GG 10/10 design

sm0ld3r

They might as well make this a ptp game already as that is the direction they are going in anyway. The current costs make it impossible for even a serious player that doesn't have 20+ character slots to actually get ahead in the game by just playing the game. Just upgrading companions costs a fortune, forget about upgrading to R12s.

Personally, I think the best days of this game are far far behind. It's gone downhill ever since they removed BoE rewards from dungeons and got rid of DK. They need things in this game you can actually farm to sell.

playersnoopy

There are at least 2 types of casual players; those with 50+ chars and those without. Those with 50+ chars don't play 50 chars; they bought char slots asap, get them to 15 and just invoke away and play their main character. Then there are those that play budget chars or only a couple chars and did not spend anything on char slots. Just because you bought char slots immediately and invoke away doesn't make you a hardcore gamer. But most of them do use an invoke bot while asleep or at work; come home and invokes done with AD in their main; and play for a little bit.

greyhawk

Wait. There's a way to automate the invoking of many characters, on PC? A 'bot program?? So some lazy asses* on PC are the reason they're doing this and <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> over the players that actually sit through two minute loading screens to invoke and run professions on alts?

They should ban these botters and keep the system as is. Otherwise they're taking away a huge incentive for newer players to stick around. Personally I use the AD generated by my paltry 10 invoke alts to fund purchases of Aug packs, fashions etc. No longer having that income I'm seriously less inclined to play.

lhachmacar

It's a "feature" of the PC version of Neverwinter but it's not affecting XBox or PS players directly as they are each on a separate shard with its own economy. From a design perspective, it's obviously a universal concern.

Personally I have 12 characters, all over 50, the majority at 70 as of a couple of weeks ago. I don't typically max invoke any of them though I do invoke at least once a day on each for the coins. I have never used and will never use a bot or automated scripting program for any reason.

My take on these changes are that if they want to remove direct rAD rewards, they need to scale invoking back to a once a day activity (which is how it worked initially) and either greatly lower the cost of boxes with potential coal wards or increase their drop rate dramatically or simply make them directly purchasable - 30 coins per coalescent, for example, or 3 per preservation ward. Yeah, it's still rewarding multiple character accounts, but it makes the influx of wards predictable and would allow more liberal use.

virsalus

Yeah there are bots, but all MMORPGs have them and experience with those shows that they come in all varieties. Ruining the invocation system will NOT stop the botters. They will just concentrate on other areas of the game more.

And the Coalescent Wards from invocation? They have been more useful before Cryptic had the marvelous idea to make them BoA. Now I'll probably spend a few on artifact upgrading. But for Enchantments they are useless because I don't want to turn my Enchantments into BoA items. So another great step they took to get at the botters but all they really did was mess up the game more for people who do not use botting programs.

virsalus

defiantone99 said:

virsalus#4183 said:

Yeah there are bots, but all MMORPGs have them and experience with those shows that they come in all varieties. Ruining the invocation system will NOT stop the botters. They will just concentrate on other areas of the game more.

And the Coalescent Wards from invocation? They have been more useful before Cryptic had the marvelous idea to make them BoA. Now I'll probably spend a few on artifact upgrading. But for Enchantments they are useless because I don't want to turn my Enchantments into BoA items. So another great step they took to get at the botters but all they really did was mess up the game more for people who do not use botting programs.

Bound to account/character wards/RP/enchants do not make enchantments bound at all.

This is true for stuff you use to feed the item RP, wards however will render the item bound to account on a successful upgrade. The game even tells you so.

playersnoopy

virsalus#4183 said:

defiantone99 said:

virsalus#4183 said:

Yeah there are bots, but all MMORPGs have them and experience with those shows that they come in all varieties. Ruining the invocation system will NOT stop the botters. They will just concentrate on other areas of the game more.

And the Coalescent Wards from invocation? They have been more useful before Cryptic had the marvelous idea to make them BoA. Now I'll probably spend a few on artifact upgrading. But for Enchantments they are useless because I don't want to turn my Enchantments into BoA items. So another great step they took to get at the botters but all they really did was mess up the game more for people who do not use botting programs.

Bound to account/character wards/RP/enchants do not make enchantments bound at all.

This is true for stuff you use to feed the item RP, wards however will render the item bound to account on a successful upgrade. The game even tells you so.

Only if you're upgrading artifacts; but that's regardless of using wards from coffers or not. People use the wards from coffers which are account bound on upgrading enchantments ie. weapon/armor enchants which have 1% chance; and they do not become boa on upgrade.

sm0ld3r

virsalus#4183 said:

defiantone99 said:

virsalus#4183 said:

Yeah there are bots, but all MMORPGs have them and experience with those shows that they come in all varieties. Ruining the invocation system will NOT stop the botters. They will just concentrate on other areas of the game more.

And the Coalescent Wards from invocation? They have been more useful before Cryptic had the marvelous idea to make them BoA. Now I'll probably spend a few on artifact upgrading. But for Enchantments they are useless because I don't want to turn my Enchantments into BoA items. So another great step they took to get at the botters but all they really did was mess up the game more for people who do not use botting programs.

Bound to account/character wards/RP/enchants do not make enchantments bound at all.

This is true for stuff you use to feed the item RP, wards however will render the item bound to account on a successful upgrade. The game even tells you so.

Not true at all. I used BoA wards to upgrade enchants and they were not bound.

namelesshero347

Good. There should be less server lag when all those people don't log in 50 times for two seconds each to invoke