Peak players for June was down to 3,300. 2,900 for the last 30 days. I'm predicting a drop below 2K after this change goes live.
At least the devs are good at something.... continually reducing the player population.
Out of curiosity what is your source?
http://steamcharts.com/app/109600 probably the Steam Charts, which only counts players that log into NWO through Steam, but it still is an interesting data source, when you compare the charts of other games too.
I still don't see how this is going to hit botters harder than legit players. They'll just set up their bots to finish the invocation chains on all their chars first, then let them run dungeons and skirmishes.
Making a bot behave well in a normal combat situation is fairly hard, so I don't think they can just 'let them run dungeons and skirmishes'. Bots depend on a predictive environment and are less suited to handle the randomness of a group dungeon.
So the invoke change probably will have a good effect at stopping the invoke bots, if for no other reason that it will be more productive to use the bots in other farming situations.
So they took the ability to gain astral diamonds away from the foundry quests a while ago, I don't do dungeons, skirmishs, or PVP so that left me with invoking. If I am reading these changes correctly, I have no way to gain astral diamonds other than to buy them with Zen now, is this correct? I also wonder, considering the above activities I don't do, would I really need astral diamonds for anything? I don't seem to use them for anything now except buying refinement stones off the action house, if I am not engaging in what most would consider end game content do I need any of this stuff?
0
ichimaruginxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 230Arc User
So they took the ability to gain astral diamonds away from the foundry quests a while ago, I don't do dungeons, skirmishs, or PVP so that left me with invoking. If I am reading these changes correctly, I have no way to gain astral diamonds other than to buy them with Zen now, is this correct? I also wonder, considering the above activities I don't do, would I really need astral diamonds for anything? I don't seem to use them for anything now except buying refinement stones off the action house, if I am not engaging in what most would consider end game content do I need any of this stuff?
Do 2 normal Temple of Spider Dungeon. Takes like 5mins at lvl 70 and doable with your invoking chars most of the time with blue gears. Nets you your daily dungeon RAD.
ichimaruginxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 230Arc User
edited August 2016
For those who are wondering how they should do with having to play for X amount of time before having the pray RAD 50% bonus - Pray 1 day in advance. The RAD bonus will be used for the next day and so on - and everything continues as before.
Day 1: Pray only. Gets the RAD bonus. Day 2: Pray and Play. Gets RAD bonus for Day 3 and use up the RAD bonus from Day 2. Day 3: Pray and Play. Gets RAD bonus for Day 4 and use up the RAD bonus from Day 3. (Continue with the same format as above...)
The result? You lose utilizing 1 day of bonus but you are free from waiting X hour to maximize your RAD gained long term. You can even log in and pray while you are busy for that day, and spend the weekend that you're free using those RAD bonus you've stacked up.
I still don't see how this is going to hit botters harder than legit players. They'll just set up their bots to finish the invocation chains on all their chars first, then let them run dungeons and skirmishes.
Making a bot behave well in a normal combat situation is fairly hard, so I don't think they can just 'let them run dungeons and skirmishes'. Bots depend on a predictive environment and are less suited to handle the randomness of a group dungeon.
So the invoke change probably will have a good effect at stopping the invoke bots, if for no other reason that it will be more productive to use the bots in other farming situations.
I don't know how bots work exactly, but I have seen them being used before, mainly in some other MMOs and especially in PvP there. There is even a video of whole bot "armies" fighting each other. If they can do that, they can do something as simple as Cloak Tower. Have you run Cloak Tower at 70? It's a cakewalk.
I for 1 will still invoke my chars for the boxes in hopes for Coal Wards.
... until the Devs remove them from the boxes, since bots can get those too.
At this point, pretty much any decent reward left in game might become another target for bots, and then might get the axe from the Devs in the future.
And this far all the changes "against" bots have changed very little in this on going fight "Devs vs. bots". The spam is still going on strong in PE, and bots are still running around in massive numbers all over the game too.
I for 1 will still invoke my chars for the boxes in hopes for Coal Wards.
... until the Devs remove them from the boxes, since bots can get those too.
At this point, pretty much any decent reward left in game might become another target for bots, and then might get the axe from the Devs in the future.
And this far all the changes "against" bots have changed very little in this on going fight "Devs vs. bots". The spam is still going on strong in PE, and bots are still running around in massive numbers all over the game too.
Those c-wards are account bound. Although bot can use it to make something they can sell, they can't sell the c-ward directly.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
I for 1 will still invoke my chars for the boxes in hopes for Coal Wards.
... until the Devs remove them from the boxes, since bots can get those too.
At this point, pretty much any decent reward left in game might become another target for bots, and then might get the axe from the Devs in the future.
And this far all the changes "against" bots have changed very little in this on going fight "Devs vs. bots". The spam is still going on strong in PE, and bots are still running around in massive numbers all over the game too.
It probably is impossible to eliminate botting completely without actions that will be very negative for the legit players.
It however is a matter of controlling the impact on game and increasing the expenses for the botters. In particular the professional botters will be vulnerable to actions that lessens their income per hour spent.
At the bottom of this is a massive initial design flaw in the game that made it so dependent on the exchange of goods through the AH.
A friend of mine is playing ESO, and he says there is not much commercial botting in ESO for the very simple reason that there is not that much of value to buy/sell. Fundamentally sound design choice.
And as NW is fighting botters, reducing the flow of goods through the AH is exactly what is happening. Things are being made BtA or removed.
The most obvious easily bottable AH goods in game now is the RP from Leadership. That going BtA next?
i just read devs' recent post jew few mins ago, not that bad, it is not a serious nerf. i see 27 days and then capped unless if you played all the alts to avoid cap lockouts. if any alt just invoke and not played, they will face lockouts after 27 days of invokings, and then resume 3 days later for fresh invokings. if you played all the alts, no cap.
seem devs made it harder for those with +10 or more alts they will get less AD if not played when they use invokes, so you have to play them to bypass the capped invoking rule.
I´ve read and this not change much for me i have 5 toons and hardly play all of them in a week, but wille playing i only invoke once when i change my Proffessional tasks i can also send a few salvageable loot to them whn the b onus get hight
Just as a warning, i have litlle hope that the changes in RP from Proffessions is to bound it on Account, they could have done it to skillnodes and they choose to remove, so is probably what will happen to RP from gateway...
Or they change it to a bonus for RP, as they are doing to AD from invoking...
I´ve read and this not change much for me i have 5 toons and hardly play all of them in a week, but wille playing i only invoke once when i change my Proffessional tasks i can also send a few salvageable loot to them whn the b onus get hight
Just as a warning, i have litlle hope that the changes in RP from Proffessions is to bound it on Account, they could have done it to skillnodes and they choose to remove, so is probably what will happen to RP from gateway...
Or they change it to a bonus for RP, as they are doing to AD from invoking...
While I understand your warning, I hope that you are incorrect. It is possible to outfit a high level toon with RP from Dragon Herald runs, the occasional Tiamat RP reward, Dragon enchantments and the now nerfed salvage (Wrong enchantment??) enchantment. But that definitely means running those events almost continuously. And it seems that while running DH or Tiamat, your drops from the enchantments are minimal because you don't kill many mobs. As a casual player, I count on the RP from Leadership--I wouldn't mind making it BTA--that's fine for me personally. I am certain others would not take kindly to it.
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.
So instead of playing the game you just log in 6 seperate times over 4 hours just to invoke? Why?
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.
So instead of playing the game you just log in 6 seperate times over 4 hours just to invoke? Why?
Because it doesn't take as much time as actually playing the game for hours? You NEED to secure some sort of AD income because at some point you won't get any further with dungeon chest drops alone. So unless F2P is just a catchphrase to sucker people into actually putting money in the game to really enjoy the endgame content, there has to be some way of getting those AD even when you can't play the game 24/7.
Because it doesn't take as much time as actually playing the game for hours? You NEED to secure some sort of AD income because at some point you won't get any further with dungeon chest drops alone. So unless F2P is just a catchphrase to sucker people into actually putting money in the game to really enjoy the endgame content, there has to be some way of getting those AD even when you can't play the game 24/7.
Ok so if nobody is "sucker people into actually putting money in the game" how will they pay for the servers? Or the devs? The reason F2P play game die is they can't make enough money to support the game. So some micro transactions are necessary for the game to survive. I understand that, and I don't play 24/7. I play an hour or two daily during the week and a little more on the weekends. I can fill my daily quota of rAD for one or two toons in that amount of time.
If I spent time logging in, invoke, logout for each toon (8) that takes about 10 minutes. Then cycle back through since the first invoke is like 5 minutes. So now I have spent about 20 minutes not playing the game but invoking so when I do play the game I will have AD available. To me seems pointless when I would rather play the game for those 20 minutes.
20 minutes of invocation on multiple characters currently offer more value than 20 minutes of actual ingame playtime. And of course they need to make money somehow. But other games manage to do so as well and they're not this blatantly trying to force people to buy into them.
I read this post when it was much younger and thought to myself, yep that is going to cause turmoil with a lot of players... but not me.
Anytime a game (not just this one) makes sudden discrete changes, that affect the way a player makes currency in the game, there will be fallout. Even if Cryptic paid to run TV spots on CNN to announce their changes, people are still going to get upset. Most of the time, I don't invoke or forget to invoke. Even if they removed invoking and all the rewards of it; I wouldn't get my 0.04% chance to get a coalescent ward. I tend to get these at events or I have to buy them with Zen. Other than that there is the XP which is pathetic to a level 70 character, blessings, and the 3K RAD less than what I earn in 1 Temple run. If I invoke daily for 50 days I can get a white horse and sell it in the AH for 20K which comes to 400 AD per day. Invoking is already pointless unless you are running an army of scripted bots.
Sometimes invoking just gets in my way to have fun. A lady in my guild I run quests with on the weekends, was doing the Dread Ring and said, "BRB" and left the party. When she returned she told me, "Sorry had to invoke my characters.". I was ok with this until we were inside the Arcane Reservoir and she says, "Let's hurry this up, my invoke timer is getting low.". Invoking is not having to go to the bathroom or having a roast in the oven. I think a great many players will put more into this change than it actually is going to affect their ability to make AD.
As for the cost of Free to Play; I play a lot more MMOs than any one person should. I am not going to list them all, but many are Free to Play and some are Buy to Play but none are subscriptions. ALL these games have issues, just as all users and players have personal issues too. What I am going to like or dislike about a game, is not something the next player is going to have a problem to overcome. As players, it is not our responsibility to keep a game alive by funding it. It is their responsibility to keep a majority of the players interested in playing the game and wanting to fund it. Many Free to Play games have about as much player turnover as employees at the local self service gas station. This is not always due to cost or changes. One of my friends quit playing Neverwinter since he killed Valindra. He told me on the phone "I beat the game.", and in his mind he as killed the boss in the opening cut scene, so therefore he has won. I cannot convince him to continue because to him the game is over at that point. This has nothing to do with him being upset with the game as he enjoyed it.
I continue to play the game because I enjoy doing what I do.
Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion. ~ Mark Twain
> @tousseau said: > "we will just farm 10x etos per day, no biggie. " > _________________ > If that's your idea of fun and engaging gameplay... Have at it.
All well and good it you have the gear item level and enchantments to farm ETOS or any of those other places, but if a player doesn't that pretty much leaves them, out in the cold doesn't it?
> @joe123thewayward said: > I am not sure how much AD is produced in the game on a daily basis. I suspect that a lot more AD comes from other sources like dungeons, pvp, weeklies, salvage, etc. than invoking, never the less removing the AD from invoking will everything else equal produce a deflationary result on the AH.
Speaking of "other sources", evenutally these people are going to keep taking away enought players ability to earn AD's that players who haven't even considered goling to one of those 3rd party vendors who keep spamming Protector's Enclave to visit their site and buy Astral Diamonds, will be seriously considering doing just that.
I started playing Neverwinter three years ago and I started, and continue to sign on because I want to play - not grind through dungeons all day, farming Astral Diamonds.
Yeah it has a very good possibility of deflating the costs of items in the Auction House, but what good does it do if no one has a way to purchase anything on the AH because they can't earn AD's like they used to.
So far there have been a half a dozen "fixes" in the attempt to fight inflation of the costs for items in the AH and to reduce the number of people abusing the system, all well and good but it is putting a serious hurt on those of us who are casual players and depend on invoking to earn the AD's necessary to purchase the equipment necessary just to survive in the game - forget about being able to get the equipment to survive a dungeon.
And None Of Them Have Worked -
After over three years of loyalty to PWE and Neverwinter I have to say this is the first time I find myself wondering if it is really worth it anymore.
> "we will just farm 10x etos per day, no biggie. "
> _________________
> If that's your idea of fun and engaging gameplay... Have at it.
All well and good it you have the gear item level and enchantments to farm ETOS or any of those other places, but if a player doesn't that pretty much leaves them, out in the cold doesn't it?
> I am not sure how much AD is produced in the game on a daily basis. I suspect that a lot more AD comes from other sources like dungeons, pvp, weeklies, salvage, etc. than invoking, never the less removing the AD from invoking will everything else equal produce a deflationary result on the AH.
Speaking of "other sources", evenutally these people are going to keep taking away enought players ability to earn AD's that players who haven't even considered goling to one of those 3rd party vendors who keep spamming Protector's Enclave to visit their site and buy Astral Diamonds, will be seriously considering doing just that.
I started playing Neverwinter three years ago and I started, and continue to sign on because I want to play - not grind through dungeons all day, farming Astral Diamonds.
Yeah it has a very good possibility of deflating the costs of items in the Auction House, but what good does it do if no one has a way to purchase anything on the AH because they can't earn AD's like they used to.
So far there have been a half a dozen "fixes" in the attempt to fight inflation of the costs for items in the AH and to reduce the number of people abusing the system, all well and good but it is putting a serious hurt on those of us who are casual players and depend on invoking to earn the AD's necessary to purchase the equipment necessary just to survive in the game - forget about being able to get the equipment to survive a dungeon.
And None Of Them Have Worked -
After over three years of loyalty to PWE and Neverwinter I have to say this is the first time I find myself wondering if it is really worth it anymore.
Exactly.
Bots don't care. The botters can create 1000 accounts if they need to. The only ones getting hurt by any of their AD changes is the casual gamer. It is why they keep losing players. People want to play the game for fun, not grind till they are braindead.
greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
How is running dungeons, skirmishes and the weekly AD tasks "bound on luck"?
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
The ring drops are random enough as is. Some days when doing DHE for dailies I will get 2 or 3, some days I won't get a single one. And drops in epic dungeons are definitely quite random as well.
0
greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
2 dungeons per day. 2 skirmishes per day. Boom. There's your AD.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
2 dungeons per day. 2 skirmishes per day. Boom. There's your AD.
Invoking on several chars every now and then is still less time consuming and possibly provides even more AD (for 6+ chars).
No not really. Doing 2x T1 skirmishes 2x T1 dungeons will net you around 40-50k if you have keys for them all. And this takes ~30 minutes tops. Invoking six characters means you're babysitting timers for four hours.
Comments
probably the Steam Charts, which only counts players that log into NWO through Steam, but it still is an interesting data source, when you compare the charts of other games too.
So the invoke change probably will have a good effect at stopping the invoke bots, if for no other reason that it will be more productive to use the bots in other farming situations.
Join Now! - Infernal Paragons , The Infernal Alliance
Day 1: Pray only. Gets the RAD bonus.
Day 2: Pray and Play. Gets RAD bonus for Day 3 and use up the RAD bonus from Day 2.
Day 3: Pray and Play. Gets RAD bonus for Day 4 and use up the RAD bonus from Day 3.
(Continue with the same format as above...)
The result? You lose utilizing 1 day of bonus but you are free from waiting X hour to maximize your RAD gained long term. You can even log in and pray while you are busy for that day, and spend the weekend that you're free using those RAD bonus you've stacked up.
Join Now! - Infernal Paragons , The Infernal Alliance
At this point, pretty much any decent reward left in game might become another target for bots, and then might get the axe from the Devs in the future.
And this far all the changes "against" bots have changed very little in this on going fight "Devs vs. bots".
The spam is still going on strong in PE, and bots are still running around in massive numbers all over the game too.
Fox Stevenson - Sandblast
Oh Wonder - Without You
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas
It however is a matter of controlling the impact on game and increasing the expenses for the botters. In particular the professional botters will be vulnerable to actions that lessens their income per hour spent.
At the bottom of this is a massive initial design flaw in the game that made it so dependent on the exchange of goods through the AH.
A friend of mine is playing ESO, and he says there is not much commercial botting in ESO for the very simple reason that there is not that much of value to buy/sell. Fundamentally sound design choice.
And as NW is fighting botters, reducing the flow of goods through the AH is exactly what is happening. Things are being made BtA or removed.
The most obvious easily bottable AH goods in game now is the RP from Leadership. That going BtA next?
i see 27 days and then capped unless if you played all the alts to avoid cap lockouts.
if any alt just invoke and not played, they will face lockouts after 27 days of invokings, and then resume 3 days later for fresh invokings.
if you played all the alts, no cap.
seem devs made it harder for those with +10 or more alts they will get less AD if not played when they use invokes, so you have to play them to bypass the capped invoking rule.
Just as a warning, i have litlle hope that the changes in RP from Proffessions is to bound it on Account, they could have done it to skillnodes and they choose to remove, so is probably what will happen to RP from gateway...
Or they change it to a bonus for RP, as they are doing to AD from invoking...
It is possible to outfit a high level toon with RP from Dragon Herald runs, the occasional Tiamat RP reward, Dragon enchantments and the now nerfed salvage (Wrong enchantment??) enchantment. But that definitely means running those events almost continuously. And it seems that while running DH or Tiamat, your drops from the enchantments are minimal because you don't kill many mobs.
As a casual player, I count on the RP from Leadership--I wouldn't mind making it BTA--that's fine for me personally. I am certain others would not take kindly to it.
If I spent time logging in, invoke, logout for each toon (8) that takes about 10 minutes. Then cycle back through since the first invoke is like 5 minutes. So now I have spent about 20 minutes not playing the game but invoking so when I do play the game I will have AD available. To me seems pointless when I would rather play the game for those 20 minutes.
Anytime a game (not just this one) makes sudden discrete changes, that affect the way a player makes currency in the game, there will be fallout. Even if Cryptic paid to run TV spots on CNN to announce their changes, people are still going to get upset. Most of the time, I don't invoke or forget to invoke. Even if they removed invoking and all the rewards of it; I wouldn't get my 0.04% chance to get a coalescent ward. I tend to get these at events or I have to buy them with Zen. Other than that there is the XP which is pathetic to a level 70 character, blessings, and the 3K RAD less than what I earn in 1 Temple run. If I invoke daily for 50 days I can get a white horse and sell it in the AH for 20K which comes to 400 AD per day. Invoking is already pointless unless you are running an army of scripted bots.
Sometimes invoking just gets in my way to have fun. A lady in my guild I run quests with on the weekends, was doing the Dread Ring and said, "BRB" and left the party. When she returned she told me, "Sorry had to invoke my characters.". I was ok with this until we were inside the Arcane Reservoir and she says, "Let's hurry this up, my invoke timer is getting low.". Invoking is not having to go to the bathroom or having a roast in the oven. I think a great many players will put more into this change than it actually is going to affect their ability to make AD.
As for the cost of Free to Play; I play a lot more MMOs than any one person should. I am not going to list them all, but many are Free to Play and some are Buy to Play but none are subscriptions. ALL these games have issues, just as all users and players have personal issues too. What I am going to like or dislike about a game, is not something the next player is going to have a problem to overcome. As players, it is not our responsibility to keep a game alive by funding it. It is their responsibility to keep a majority of the players interested in playing the game and wanting to fund it. Many Free to Play games have about as much player turnover as employees at the local self service gas station. This is not always due to cost or changes. One of my friends quit playing Neverwinter since he killed Valindra. He told me on the phone "I beat the game.", and in his mind he as killed the boss in the opening cut scene, so therefore he has won. I cannot convince him to continue because to him the game is over at that point. This has nothing to do with him being upset with the game as he enjoyed it.
I continue to play the game because I enjoy doing what I do.
> "we will just farm 10x etos per day, no biggie. "
> _________________
> If that's your idea of fun and engaging gameplay... Have at it.
All well and good it you have the gear item level and enchantments to farm ETOS or any of those other places, but if a player doesn't that pretty much leaves them, out in the cold doesn't it?
> @joe123thewayward said:
> I am not sure how much AD is produced in the game on a daily basis. I suspect that a lot more AD comes from other sources like dungeons, pvp, weeklies, salvage, etc. than invoking, never the less removing the AD from invoking will everything else equal produce a deflationary result on the AH.
Speaking of "other sources", evenutally these people are going to keep taking away enought players ability to earn AD's that players who haven't even considered goling to one of those 3rd party vendors who keep spamming Protector's Enclave to visit their site and buy Astral Diamonds, will be seriously considering doing just that.
I started playing Neverwinter three years ago and I started, and continue to sign on because I want to play - not grind through dungeons all day, farming Astral Diamonds.
Yeah it has a very good possibility of deflating the costs of items in the Auction House, but what good does it do if no one has a way to purchase anything on the AH because they can't earn AD's like they used to.
So far there have been a half a dozen "fixes" in the attempt to fight inflation of the costs for items in the AH and to reduce the number of people abusing the system, all well and good but it is putting a serious hurt on those of us who are casual players and depend on invoking to earn the AD's necessary to purchase the equipment necessary just to survive in the game - forget about being able to get the equipment to survive a dungeon.
And None Of Them Have Worked -
After over three years of loyalty to PWE and Neverwinter I have to say this is the first time I find myself wondering if it is really worth it anymore.
Bots don't care. The botters can create 1000 accounts if they need to. The only ones getting hurt by any of their AD changes is the casual gamer. It is why they keep losing players. People want to play the game for fun, not grind till they are braindead.
Join a guild and get VIP. Problem solved.