For me your key change is a push too far. I'm happy to pay a subscription (I'll be leaving you 5 months of a 6 month VIP) but I don't see it is possible to progress in this game without either paying stupid amounts of money for zen to purchase all the HAMSTER you need to make a viable end game character or grinding pointless events and instances for very little in game gain.
I'm off to either try my luck with Warcraft again, or possibly ESO. Wherever I end up will be a world where the developers charge to play and cease chiselling after that point.
This game may be free to enter but its probably the most expensive MMO to make a viable character in.
Enjoyed the run from 1-70 and even had fun in some of the end-game content but after a couple of runs the only reason to keep trying most of the low level end-game content was the very remote possibility that that second chest may contain something worthwhile. Now you want us to grind away to make the resources to get a key every day. Somewhat lacking in this is fun. Grinding at anything just to break even is not fun and even at 250Z I don't want to buy keys.
so its been fun and if you ever decide to quit chiselling and just charge up front then maybe some of us who just want a free time filler that isn't a bank balance emptier will return.
Some ppl argue that using a key to open a chest is correct....however i dont buy new door keys everyday so i can get in my house. Consumable keys is a creation of fantasy so dont argue that the decline is a bug as its far more logical.
No doubt magical keys consume themselves in one go, just wonder why noone ever developed a non magical consuming key in D&D...
Oh wait for 50k Zen per month sun you can have a super skeleton key...open all chests....
Come on Dev's, this is complete HAMSTER. At least we could save our keys before for the right rewards to come along, now we have to use up a paid key just to get a HAMSTER Orcus ring +1 or a ring of impenetrabality... +1 Every player will hate this "BUG" fix - only way this will work is if you change the rewards in the chests from day 1 and remove all the HAMSTER +3's and under and keep the +4's and increase the drop rate of r8's and artis from the chests - otherwise you can get rrrrekt you HAMSTER
Perhaps that even my six year old son understands the difference between truth and falsehood. When you're being outdone in the integrity department by a six year old child, there is something seriously amiss. I thought (foolish i know) that the company would have learnt lessons from the communication debacle that was Elemental Evil, but it appears not. It seems you're still incapable of having the courage of your convictions in some of these mechanic changes and are resorting to outright dishonesty. Whilst it's obvious that you need to meet the $ bottom line, but deceit will not help you achieve this and will undoubtedly have the opposite effect.
Your RNG in the loot tables is diabolical beyond compare, so do you really think that I'd want to spend money on keys in it's current guise? No, I'd rather get a prostate exam from Captain Hook!
I never thought we would see another Coalgate type uproar again, just shows how wrong you can be. Firstly let me commend all the mods for their handling of this thread, they get a lot of flak (I include myself in this) some of it deserved but most of it not. This time folks you have played a blinder.
On the subject of the community manager and having sympathy (same was suggested during coalgate), dont agree they are paid employees and are the pinnacle of the marketing effort to their client base (us). In any industry sales has to take the pain as well as the kudos. Well here he has to take the pain, sorry mods but there it is.
As for the decision its very short sighted thats for sure, worse getting heavy hitters to run some of the contents with levellers is going to be near impossible now, why? Because there is now nothing in it for them. More and more content will become deserted, this will flag it for removal as the data wont show enough activity to justify server space.
We all know the rewards suck now, the grind is endless (yes MMO some grind is to be expected, but this is getting beyond a joke.)
To see how the character of the game has changed dramatically, re run the lower level quests on those alts you power levelled in the elemental evil campaign, it reminds you why we fell in love with this game, its sad to see what it has become with dungeon deletions stronghold grinding, daily grinding etc. The game was funny enjoyable and a blast up till mod 6 now it seems increasingly like a chore and a daily lottery fest.
This decision just reinforces those views, how many more core players do we have to lose before the decision makers wake up?
Without your hardcore how do you expect the new players to progress?
They are where the expertise lies, not with Mods, Community Managers etc. Its with your hardcore gamers who run this stuff all day every day.
For crying out loud stop pissing them off and wake up!
I know that I have put my opinion in on a few things here and there and that I have not been playing long, long enough to see things change mostly for the worst. However i think this idea of calling a 'FEATURE' a bug is a messed up idea of a way to 'Cryptic Hide' their ideals. I understand that they want to make money and the company needs to feel that it needs to be self sufficient or what not to keep going but this sadly is stupid with the rng they have. The drops are so bad that the rare drops are never for the class I am playing and they are always for a different class. A CW getting a GF armor and the GF getting a SW armor and each one are BtC. If they want to impress me they would add a key ring feature that would remove them from our bags put them on our character sheet that allows us to hover over it to see what ones we have but sadly I do not see this happening just like I do not see many of the massive bugs being fixed anytime soon. Instead they are to consumed with removing features, calling them bugs or blaming bots, or adding new content like a or a certain software company that kept building their main product on the same base till it sadly became a joke.......think that company still does it to an extent to but the pictures of the villagers with torches and pitchforks should say it all this is a really bad idea
Just my two cents here ;p and yes its a vent cause as said i do not see them stopping the decision they do want to gouge us as much as possible to buy zen afterall
I wasn't going to post, since there's nothing much to add, but then I realized I have to make a post. At least by having everyone who is offended by this announcement, declare so, someone MIGHT see that this is a lot of backlash. I don't expect that anyone associated with making this decision will actually read any of the posts, but at least we are giving Andy something to point to if he really is able to bring our concerns to the decision makers.
Like @blackjackwidow said above this is also my reason for making a post.
First of all with this post the intellect of NW's player base is being disrespected and mocked in a grand manner!
Second, I really don't know what to say about how bad the situation of the game is from mod 6 up until now! Since mod 6 it's obvious that there were many decisions made based on how to increase the amount of Zen purchased by players which is understandable since it's common sense that money are needed to run the game but most of them were made in a way that was harmful to the player base (for example removal of coal/preservation wards from tradebar store, go and see the comments at that post...) and that resulted in many players leaving the game. Why not keep the game as it was until mod 5 without such dramatic changes with so much negative impact on player base and ultimately your product, try to hear the community, keep the player base from diminishing and even make it bigger. More players will also bring more Zen purchases. The way things are going I wouldn't be surprised to see more BUG FEATURES being FIXED and things added that will require for people to spend Zen in order to acquire them which they will simply not do and ignore it because the trust in this product is already long gone. Also after all of these things happen the game will probably just keep dying slowly with a sad and frustrated community and in the end it might even be dumped to another company when the profit that can be made won't suffice, but these are just speculations so... .
Something else I 'd like to point out is that recently at the fishing blog there were some posts by a Dev answering to the players. Why none has appeared here to offer further explanations and discuss with the players since this change has become a fairly large matter that will affect the game's number of players and economy (in a bad way if you see the posts) much more than fishing! Makes someone wonder eh...
Now that 's a good picture but I don't think it's even worth it at this point...
On another note this will not have a huge impact in my gaming hours/life there are many other games to play if NW will stop providing me the good hours/fun I want when I play a game but I still decided to make this post because of the people that love and supported this game, one of the greatest communities I've seen in an mmorpg for a long time (by no means I claim this is anyone's opinion just my personal thoughts and opinion) and because I don't want a game with one of my favorite concepts which is dungeon crawling die out slowly. Sadly (for the game) I 'm glad I didn't spend a single cent on NW since I always had a bad feeling about this product (guess I've played my fair bit of games and saw the sighns ), STAY FREE !
I suggest letting Wizards of the Coast know how poorly Cryptic treats customers and how poorly they are running this game. Cryptic (despite what they say), don't pay attention to players concerns. They pay us lip service, then make every decision based purely on squeezing more money out of the game and nothing else.
Contact WotC, and let them know. Perhaps Cryptic will get the message in a way they'll pay attention to:
This is what happens, if someone really stupid sees numbers without context.
They introduced this HAMSTER mechanic, where you cant see the (relevant) loot in the 2nd FBI chest and sold a shitload of keys.
A slow minded numbers cruncher went, 'WHOA, look at this, we can make more money. WTF lets do this with all chests'.
Here are some 'fun facts' you should have considered.
1. In the beginning some of the loot sold for 100k+, making the key a worthwhile investment. 2. The guys really farming FBI and buying keys have BIS or near BIS gear. Their chars equipment is worth 50 kk+ most of the times and guess what. Most of them have a few million ADs as 'spare change'. Someone who spends millions to exchange a companion or an artifact can shrug of 25k easily. 3. Many of the players able to run FBI ignored it. You could blame the crappy loot, their bad skills or the moon for all I care, but I had two reasons. Bad time invested/ loot ratio and the unwillingness to spent AD for a chest without knowing, if the loot at last has the same value as the key.
That being said, the change makes sense, if you are an idiot. If you want to make a decision based on the real facts, can this changes.
Chars: CW, DC, GF, GWF, HR and TR.
0
icyphishMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,255Arc User
30K AD for a key... u would be lucky to even get 10k worth of items... normally not even 5k worth...
With a change this major, at the very least Mr. I Care What Players Say @mimicking#6533 should have made this announcement himself rather then have a random CM we don't even know and (no offense meant here, but facts are facts) clearly doesn't have full mastery over English, which is the official (and required) language on this forum, or, given that, internal support to edit the post first to polish it up first.
Just further shows the complete disregard Cryptic feels for customers.
This is one of the most HAMSTER news Ive ever read on these forums.
Haha. I keep coming here so that I maybe one day can see some news that will make me come back to this game. But instead it just pushes me further away.
WOW really didn't think you could sink any lower! I think it's really high time we all packed up and went to another game. that will show you what we think of your "fixing"!
0
frozenfirevrMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,475Community Moderator
5k?! Pfft... More like 2.5k...
Anyways, wanted to add... what you were doing with the keys was already disastrous, one key for one campaign?! A better design would have been one single campaign key (along with the epic chest key) that can be made through different campaigns using their currency. For example Epic Campaign Chest Key, Cost: 10 Sparks, 15 Crescents in Sharandar, 25 Scrips in Dread Ring, 10 Coins in IWD and so on. But no, you had to make money with a Legendary Dragon Key, we agreed, and now this?!
or you plan on giving VIP one of each of those keys everyday for having dumped actual money into the game, because it sure ain't from the game with the ZAX where it is.
Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.
WOW really didn't think you could sink any lower! I think it's really high time we all packed up and went to another game. that will show you what we think of your "fixing"!
I bet this has crossed many of the players minds, including my own, and to think I was actually contemplating dropping real money into the game again soon, probably not going to happen now since this BS changes have been announced
The grind of this game is killing it for me. Now this keys change is going to be R.I.P time for another game.
I got home from work, first time on mod 10. Couldn't find the will to grind, did a few sh heroics then logged out to watch a movie.
What's the point in playing if you can't loot, hundreds of chests previewed in Shores of Tuern and Castle Never, each. 0 drops.
RNG is already completely <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> up the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, now they want to charge us zen for more miserable loot.
Whoever made this decision needs to be removed from there position of authority, put someone else in charge who listens to the community. More happy customers will bring more profits. Stay the course you're on now and you're going to lose both customers and profit.
0
kreatyveMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 10,545Community Moderator
edited October 2016
A little basic math. On PC, the exchange rate AD to Zen is currently backlogged at 500 AD per Zen. So they are basically selling the Legendary keys for 25000 AD each - given the 500 AD to Zen exchange rate at 250 for 5 keys (which - you have to buy 5, you can't just buy 1). Nobody wants to pay 25000 for a freaking peridot. The rewards are not worth it. I will not be buying any keys. Probably won't be running any dungeons. This is my 2 AD on the matter. I probably won't say much else about it, as I am doing my best to be polite, though I very much dislike being called an exploiter.
My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official. Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
0
torontodaveMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 992Arc User
edited October 2016
I read all 16 pages of this thread. Lots of vitriol. Things unsaid:
1. In the beginning, we never had the option to '2. DECLINE' a chest. Keys were used, we got loot. Sometimes good loot, sometimes bad loot.
2. @xeltey is a player as well. He might even be in your guild. Be civil.
3. Loot in chests should be increased. +6 rings anyone?
4. With those 16? key types, we should have a new inventory tab called 'Keyring' where they all go. Add in a daily FOUNDRY key that gives good rewards (including the +6 rings. ;D).
5. Don't listen to me, I already gave up VIP and only login once a week. I'm already a lost cause. I have an FBI-capable character but I've never even attempted it because I heard the loot blows.
6. Give good rewards to some HE's that never get attempted. (WOD's "Cover of Night" anyone?)
NW-DSQ39N5SJ - 'To Infinity, and BEYOND!' - Spelljammer Quest. Skyships, Indiana Jones moments NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
The post is bogus - you're no exploiter K, because this wasn't a bug. They're spinning it like it was so they don't have to admit this was a pure money grab. This time it's "bug" only because they couldn't come up a way to blame bots for their failures.
Comments
I'm off to either try my luck with Warcraft again, or possibly ESO. Wherever I end up will be a world where the developers charge to play and cease chiselling after that point.
This game may be free to enter but its probably the most expensive MMO to make a viable character in.
Enjoyed the run from 1-70 and even had fun in some of the end-game content but after a couple of runs the only reason to keep trying most of the low level end-game content was the very remote possibility that that second chest may contain something worthwhile. Now you want us to grind away to make the resources to get a key every day. Somewhat lacking in this is fun. Grinding at anything just to break even is not fun and even at 250Z I don't want to buy keys.
so its been fun and if you ever decide to quit chiselling and just charge up front then maybe some of us who just want a free time filler that isn't a bank balance emptier will return.
Until then
So long and thanks for all the fish
No doubt magical keys consume themselves in one go, just wonder why noone ever developed a non magical consuming key in D&D...
Oh wait for 50k Zen per month sun you can have a super skeleton key...open all chests....
At least we could save our keys before for the right rewards to come along, now we have to use up a paid key just to get a HAMSTER Orcus ring +1
or a ring of impenetrabality... +1
Every player will hate this "BUG" fix -
only way this will work is if you change the rewards in the chests from day 1 and remove all the HAMSTER +3's and under and keep the +4's and increase the drop rate of r8's and artis from the chests - otherwise you can get rrrrekt you HAMSTER
However if I was forced to use the keys I paid for without choice, then I would be quite unhappy.
Surely its possible to make it work that Zen keys allow a decline while made keys do not?
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Not good, not good at all. Only two reasons I'm still here are 1) The people I know here, and 2) All the alternatives are worse
Perhaps that even my six year old son understands the difference between truth and falsehood.
When you're being outdone in the integrity department by a six year old child, there is something seriously amiss.
I thought (foolish i know) that the company would have learnt lessons from the communication debacle that was Elemental Evil, but it appears not.
It seems you're still incapable of having the courage of your convictions in some of these mechanic changes and are resorting to outright dishonesty.
Whilst it's obvious that you need to meet the $ bottom line, but deceit will not help you achieve this and will undoubtedly have the opposite effect.
Your RNG in the loot tables is diabolical beyond compare, so do you really think that I'd want to spend money on keys in it's current guise?
No, I'd rather get a prostate exam from Captain Hook!
Firstly let me commend all the mods for their handling of this thread, they get a lot of flak (I include myself in this) some of it deserved but most of it not.
This time folks you have played a blinder.
On the subject of the community manager and having sympathy (same was suggested during coalgate), dont agree they are paid employees and are the pinnacle of the marketing effort to their client base (us). In any industry sales has to take the pain as well as the kudos. Well here he has to take the pain, sorry mods but there it is.
As for the decision its very short sighted thats for sure, worse getting heavy hitters to run some of the contents with levellers is going to be near impossible now, why? Because there is now nothing in it for them. More and more content will become deserted, this will flag it for removal as the data wont show enough activity to justify server space.
We all know the rewards suck now, the grind is endless (yes MMO some grind is to be expected, but this is getting beyond a joke.)
To see how the character of the game has changed dramatically, re run the lower level quests on those alts you power levelled in the elemental evil campaign, it reminds you why we fell in love with this game, its sad to see what it has become with dungeon deletions stronghold grinding, daily grinding etc. The game was funny enjoyable and a blast up till mod 6 now it seems increasingly like a chore and a daily lottery fest.
This decision just reinforces those views, how many more core players do we have to lose before the decision makers wake up?
Without your hardcore how do you expect the new players to progress?
They are where the expertise lies, not with Mods, Community Managers etc. Its with your hardcore gamers who run this stuff all day every day.
For crying out loud stop pissing them off and wake up!
Just my two cents here ;p and yes its a vent cause as said i do not see them stopping the decision they do want to gouge us as much as possible to buy zen afterall
Like @blackjackwidow said above this is also my reason for making a post.
First of all with this post the intellect of NW's player base is being disrespected and mocked in a grand manner!
Second, I really don't know what to say about how bad the situation of the game is from mod 6 up until now! Since mod 6 it's obvious that there were many decisions made based on how to increase the amount of Zen purchased by players which is understandable since it's common sense that money are needed to run the game but most of them were made in a way that was harmful to the player base (for example removal of coal/preservation wards from tradebar store, go and see the comments at that post...) and that resulted in many players leaving the game. Why not keep the game as it was until mod 5 without such dramatic changes with so much negative impact on player base and ultimately your product, try to hear the community, keep the player base from diminishing and even make it bigger. More players will also bring more Zen purchases. The way things are going I wouldn't be surprised to see more
BUG FEATURESbeingFIXEDand things added that will require for people to spend Zen in order to acquire them which they will simply not do and ignore it because the trust in this product is already long gone. Also after all of these things happen the game will probably just keep dying slowly with a sad and frustrated community and in the end it might even be dumped to another company when the profit that can be made won't suffice, but these are just speculations so...Something else I 'd like to point out is that recently at the fishing blog there were some posts by a Dev answering to the players. Why none has appeared here to offer further explanations and discuss with the players since this change has become a fairly large matter that will affect the game's number of players and economy (in a bad way if you see the posts) much more than fishing! Makes someone wonder eh...
Now that 's a good picture but I don't think it's even worth it at this point...
On another note this will not have a huge impact in my gaming hours/life there are many other games to play if NW will stop providing me the good hours/fun I want when I play a game but I still decided to make this post because of the people that love and supported this game, one of the greatest communities I've seen in an mmorpg for a long time (by no means I claim this is anyone's opinion just my personal thoughts and opinion) and because I don't want a game with one of my favorite concepts which is dungeon crawling die out slowly. Sadly (for the game) I 'm glad I didn't spend a single cent on NW since I always had a bad feeling about this product (guess I've played my fair bit of games and saw the sighns
Contact WotC, and let them know. Perhaps Cryptic will get the message in a way they'll pay attention to:
http://wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2303
Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance
They introduced this HAMSTER mechanic, where you cant see the (relevant) loot in the 2nd FBI chest and sold a shitload of keys.
A slow minded numbers cruncher went, 'WHOA, look at this, we can make more money. WTF lets do this with all chests'.
Here are some 'fun facts' you should have considered.
1. In the beginning some of the loot sold for 100k+, making the key a worthwhile investment.
2. The guys really farming FBI and buying keys have BIS or near BIS gear. Their chars equipment is worth 50 kk+ most of the times and guess what. Most of them have a few million ADs as 'spare change'. Someone who spends millions to exchange a companion or an artifact can shrug of 25k easily.
3. Many of the players able to run FBI ignored it. You could blame the crappy loot, their bad skills or the moon for all I care, but I had two reasons. Bad time invested/ loot ratio and the unwillingness to spent AD for a chest without knowing, if the loot at last has the same value as the key.
That being said, the change makes sense, if you are an idiot. If you want to make a decision based on the real facts, can this changes.
Author of GWF Speed Demon PvP Build (Mod 11) <- Click to reveal the Speedy Beast! >:)
Just further shows the complete disregard Cryptic feels for customers.
Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance
Haha. I keep coming here so that I maybe one day can see some news that will make me come back to this game. But instead it just pushes me further away.
/ Former player
▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ Gankdalf The Icehole █ ▇ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁
Anyways, wanted to add... what you were doing with the keys was already disastrous, one key for one campaign?! A better design would have been one single campaign key (along with the epic chest key) that can be made through different campaigns using their currency. For example Epic Campaign Chest Key, Cost: 10 Sparks, 15 Crescents in Sharandar, 25 Scrips in Dread Ring, 10 Coins in IWD and so on. But no, you had to make money with a Legendary Dragon Key, we agreed, and now this?!
If this happens you might earn some of my money again..
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.
So clueless on how to Run a game.
I got home from work, first time on mod 10. Couldn't find the will to grind, did a few sh heroics then logged out to watch a movie.
What's the point in playing if you can't loot, hundreds of chests previewed in Shores of Tuern and Castle Never, each. 0 drops.
RNG is already completely <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> up the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, now they want to charge us zen for more miserable loot.
Whoever made this decision needs to be removed from there position of authority, put someone else in charge who listens to the community. More happy customers will bring more profits. Stay the course you're on now and you're going to lose both customers and profit.
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
1. In the beginning, we never had the option to '2. DECLINE' a chest. Keys were used, we got loot. Sometimes good loot, sometimes bad loot.
2. @xeltey is a player as well. He might even be in your guild. Be civil.
3. Loot in chests should be increased. +6 rings anyone?
4. With those 16? key types, we should have a new inventory tab called 'Keyring' where they all go. Add in a daily FOUNDRY key that gives good rewards (including the +6 rings. ;D).
5. Don't listen to me, I already gave up VIP and only login once a week. I'm already a lost cause. I have an FBI-capable character but I've never even attempted it because I heard the loot blows.
6. Give good rewards to some HE's that never get attempted. (WOD's "Cover of Night" anyone?)
NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance