Is the Zen to AD trade dead?

jetsmillion

I've noticed that the price of various zen items in the Auction House, like wards, has exceeded the Zen/AD trade max of 500 AD per 1 Zen. Unless people stop buying these more expensive items from the Auction House, I don't see Zen sellers trading for AD any more.

Will the AD to Zen max trade value be increased or will the only way to get Zen be to purchase it from now on?

aradyn

Some new players are foolish enough to trade zen instead of buying items to pass along and get AD off of still, but yeah zen trade is pretty much dead.

stevedudeman

Those "foolish" people are the ones actually supporting the game you play...As for the OP, I don't think you'll get a reliable answer here...I agree that something must be done. I sure hope they don't cancel the 2x AD event, but I'd understand if they did...

kreatyve

I believe a lot of the backlog is in anticipation of the possible 50% off sale that they have had the past couple years for Black Friday. I think things should come down after that, or at least right after Christmas.

guille23mx

Black Friday Sale
10.5 New Mod
Chirstmas Sale
all of these events are keeping people from spending zen atm.

aradyn

stevedudeman said:

Those "foolish" people are the ones actually supporting the game you play...

When I look at how many members of my guild are VIP & the whales (1k spenders) those are the true support of the game. People who simply put their AD into zen market and convert it to lesser wards are simply hijacking the zen market, and actually make a lot of those people not want to play because it also hijacks high end items in the AD market.

And those talking about black friday/xmas sales/10.5 I partially agree. I think this is contributing to this issue, but it seems like the issue started well before, when they messed with steam. The question is what was lost with the loss of steam.

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xxmantaraxx

defiantone99 said:

Mod 2-HR, Mod 4-SW, Mod 6-OP, Mod 8-nada, Mod 10-nada. You need new classes to drive the economy.

I would prefer 1 new class a year so they can actually focus on class balance and have a decent scope of time to review and tweek a new class than the scramble to put out new classes we saw. It only ended up in more bugs, broken mechanics, unintended interactions and content minimization. Class ballances and powers/encounter/paragon path fixes first, then we can talk about druids, monks or evokers. (bards can stay in oblivion for all i care, unless they want to rez Deekon.)

arcanjo86

it takes like 10+ days for the exchange to happen

emilemo

No idea if its dead but it sure is slowed to a crawl. As it should be, after their latest changes they deserve to lose money

rangerbow

So i cant buy zen for ad?

regenerde

Sure, you just have to get in line, and wait for your listing to get through, and as mentioned above, that can take 10+ days now.

rangerbow

I understood, i can buy but it will take a while, yes?

regenerde

Yes.

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zerappus

As I've mentioned in the "I-don't-want-a-50%-sale-off-thread", I suspect a subset of players have discovered a way to make huge amount of AD by just spamming Key/ViP alt accounts. To the point that they reject a 50% off sale in favor of a continuously accessible AD exchange.

This is what's probably happening:
1) Trade AD for Zen on the exchange:
2) Buy Key bundles/ViP on alt accounts:
3) Open lockboxes using the keys.
4) Sell proceeds on the Auction House or to players.
5) Make profit from initial AD investment.
6) Repeat step 1.

How else can anyone explain a rejection of a 50% off sale, just to get rid of the backlog?

I'm talking about this dubious thread: http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/comment/12893609

sm0ld3r

It is self perpetuating at this point.

When the exchange rate is below 500, there is risk and no need to sit on a ton of Zen.

Now that there is a 10M backlog, there is 0 risk is sitting on Zen. Thus anyone with AD is just converting 100% of their AD to Zen and sitting on Zen. If you need AD, you can convert it back instantly or just sell some Zen items for a profit.

okeephe

"How else can anyone explain a rejection of a 50% off sale, just to get rid of the backlog?"

The steps you stated have been happening since day1 and have never caused a backlog.

The backlog has also not been there for '2 mods'. it started a little over a month ago.

Backlogs like this have been happening, on and off for the last 3 yrs. It is an indication that the whales, who have the zen, have nothing they need to use AD on, so they don't need to sell zen.

It's also an indication that few new whales are joining the game. It is usually new players that need to buy AD.

The anticipation of a 50% off sale is more than enough to cause the current backlog because the sale is for zen purchases, so people are keeping their zen, and 3 months is not that long, if you don't need anything from the AH.

As for huge numbers of people getting rich from opening boxes, I don't think so. When this game started, and for, at least, the first year, there were so many orange messages from people getting epic items from the boxes, on the screen, people were asking if those notices could be shut off. There were more epic notices than gold spammers.

Now you are lucky if you see one an hour.

Either few are opening lockboxes, not likely with VIP, or they boxes have been nerfed so bad, they are not worth opening anymore.

To the question, the people are asking for no more 50% off sales for 2 reasons.

1) They are not buying zen for cash. The need to buy it from the Zex, so the backlog is a PITA.

2) Even people who do buy Zen, for cash, don't want to do so all the time, and do not like the Zex to be 10 days behind for months at a time. The feeling being if there was no sale, there would be no backlog.

Basically, the 50% sale anticipation and consequent backlog are making more people stop playing,

namelesshero347

zerappus said:

This is what's probably happening:
1) Trade AD for Zen on the exchange:
2) Buy Key bundles/ViP on alt accounts:
3) Open lockboxes using the keys.
4) Sell proceeds on the Auction House or to players.
5) Make profit from initial AD investment.
6) Repeat step 1.

Sounds like normal game play to me. I pretty much sell everything I get from the lockboxes.

What doesn't make sense to me is why would someone open lockboxes on an alt account. What does that buy them.

IIRC last year, the backlog got much higher, like in the high teens. But the turnover was about one million a day. Now, the turnover seems more like 500K. We're looking at nearly a three week backlog now. Probably expected since no one wants to spend money on zen because mod 10 was designed for whales and the main player base is unhappy with it. Put your orders in now and you might get some zen in time for the sale.

sandukutupu

I am not sure what qualifies someone to be a "whale" (is there a dollar amount?) but to voice the opinion of someone who has paid cash money on Cryptic's games, I for one, don't see anything in the Zen market I desire to buy. For quite awhile now, I have discarded the invoke coupons I receive. If they had some good looking costumes, I might be interested. Teiflings mesh always clips through and make dresses and hats look too stupid to wear. However I can't get my clothing from the Zen store. I buy off the rack in the AH for anything I need, want, or desire. I even will contact VIPs I know to shoot it to me, so no need to use TBars or buy VIP.

I know many people may be looking at coalescent wards? I still get them from invoking but they are in the AH for less than I would spend converting AD to Zen. I don't need coalescent wards because I don't have anything to refine, pretty much done there. I guess there is a point at which, even a whale will stop feeding the machine.

namelesshero347

By whale, I mean someone who has already spent money and is BiS. They can use their play time to run the HE circuit for FBI entry materials. For the rest of us still dependent on AD, we can't afford that time. Even if you can do the SKT dailies and the weeklies, you still need to spend lots of time farming the relics because you need lots of it for the boons.

plasticbat

zerappus said:

As I've mentioned in the "I-don't-want-a-50%-sale-off-thread", I suspect a subset of players have discovered a way to make huge amount of AD by just spamming Key/ViP alt accounts. To the point that they reject a 50% off sale in favor of a continuously accessible AD exchange.

This is what's probably happening:
1) Trade AD for Zen on the exchange:
2) Buy Key bundles/ViP on alt accounts:
3) Open lockboxes using the keys.
4) Sell proceeds on the Auction House or to players.
5) Make profit from initial AD investment.
6) Repeat step 1.

How else can anyone explain a rejection of a 50% off sale, just to get rid of the backlog?

I'm talking about this dubious thread: http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/comment/12893609

If you trade AD for Zen, the Zen will stay in one account. You cannot transfer Zen to alt account to buy VIP/key.

plasticbat

namelesshero347 said:

What doesn't make sense to me is why would someone open lockboxes on an alt account. What does that buy them.

One account can only have one VIP. i.e. 28 to 31 key every month, a good deal for key comparing with lone lockbox key or lockbox key package.
i.e. for 850Zen (assume one uses at least a 15% off coupon) or less (if buy months of VIP) to get 28 to 31 keys per account. One account is max out on 28 to 31 keys per month.
If one wants more keys, the cheapest way is to have another account to buy VIP.

playasinnombre

plasticbat said:

zerappus said:

As I've mentioned in the "I-don't-want-a-50%-sale-off-thread", I suspect a subset of players have discovered a way to make huge amount of AD by just spamming Key/ViP alt accounts. To the point that they reject a 50% off sale in favor of a continuously accessible AD exchange.

This is what's probably happening:
1) Trade AD for Zen on the exchange:
2) Buy Key bundles/ViP on alt accounts:
3) Open lockboxes using the keys.
4) Sell proceeds on the Auction House or to players.
5) Make profit from initial AD investment.
6) Repeat step 1.

How else can anyone explain a rejection of a 50% off sale, just to get rid of the backlog?

I'm talking about this dubious thread: http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/comment/12893609

.

If you trade AD for Zen, the Zen will stay in one account. You cannot transfer Zen to alt account to buy VIP/key.

Zen is account wide. Once bought, you can spend it on any toon

plasticbat

playasinnombre said:

plasticbat said:

zerappus said:

As I've mentioned in the "I-don't-want-a-50%-sale-off-thread", I suspect a subset of players have discovered a way to make huge amount of AD by just spamming Key/ViP alt accounts. To the point that they reject a 50% off sale in favor of a continuously accessible AD exchange.

This is what's probably happening:
1) Trade AD for Zen on the exchange:
2) Buy Key bundles/ViP on alt accounts:
3) Open lockboxes using the keys.
4) Sell proceeds on the Auction House or to players.
5) Make profit from initial AD investment.
6) Repeat step 1.

How else can anyone explain a rejection of a 50% off sale, just to get rid of the backlog?

I'm talking about this dubious thread: http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/comment/12893609

.

If you trade AD for Zen, the Zen will stay in one account. You cannot transfer Zen to alt account to buy VIP/key.

Zen is account wide. Once bought, you can spend it on any toon

Read again. I said alt account. Not alt toon. You cannot transfer Zen to another account. Another toon in the same account is not in another account.

divectore

playasinnombre said:

Zen is account wide. Once bought, you can spend it on any toon

He is talking about accounts, not toons.

teflons7

plasticbat said:

namelesshero347 said:

What doesn't make sense to me is why would someone open lockboxes on an alt account. What does that buy them.

One account can only have one VIP. i.e. 28 to 31 key every month, a good deal for key comparing with lone lockbox key or lockbox key package.
i.e. for 850Zen (assume one uses at least a 15% off coupon) or less (if buy months of VIP) to get 28 to 31 keys per account. One account is max out on 28 to 31 keys per month.
If one wants more keys, the cheapest way is to have another account to buy VIP.

VIP isn't 28-31 days; it's a flat 30 days per month purchased, no matter the package bought (1, 3, 6 month). Since you can purchase it any day of the month, it makes no difference how many days are in that month.

namelesshero347

plasticbat said:

If one wants more keys, the cheapest way is to have another account to buy VIP.

True. It is the cheapest way to acquire keys for the lottery system. Though don't think one would do it just to sell the consolation prizes for AD. Each lockbox gets worst. Nowadays, I can make maybe 15K selling the stuff out of them.

regenerde

Well, i can't complain about the Firemane lockbox or the one before it, made around 1m AD per month through selling stuff from it.
I mostly collect the daily lockbox key, and then open 20-30 lockboxes at once, depening on if i had enough time to collect the keys every day. And i haven't gotten any "epic" loot for a long time, but the regular blue loot (=chests/troves/whatever) from the lockbox was/is selling for a decent price.

Anyway, all we can do for the moment is place our AD listing, and then just wait for it to go through...