Over the last 2 years on PC, the net amount of refined AD in the game (all characters of all players) has increased 75%. The overall AD in the game has been increasing at a good pace since the game launched, and this is true of all platforms. Some transmute and other sinks added aren't going to be able to curb that alone. I won't go into too much detail on the numbers, but on average players as a whole, just on PC, are generating 1 billion brand new refined AD every 3 days. Each console on average is 4 days to generate 1 billion AD. That number already factors in all of the AD spent during that time as well. This is why there needs to be better generation limits in conjunction with AD sinks.
We did pull data on how much of our player base earns over 100k RAD on any given day before implementing this change, and that percentage is lower single digits. That number goes even lower when looking at how many accounts earn over 100k RAD every single day. A player can always log in on days they aren't grinding out AD to refine extra RAD on their characters.
So from the above we can draw some conclusions.
If the "percentage that is lower single digits" (shall we say 3%) makes more than 100k that means the change will affect that 3% only. Which also means that 97% will not be affected by the change.
Since your change in rough AD is targeting to reduce the "generating 1 billion brand new refined AD every 3 days" amount and the other 97% of the player base will not be affected in anyway and the AD generation from them will continue undisturbed, that also means that the "percentage that is lower single digits" generates the larger portion of those "1 billion brand new refined AD every 3 days"
So, and just to see that I get ti right, The 3% of players, that generates more than 100k per day, is responsible for the situation we have now and help into generating a big portion, if not the larger part, of the 1 billion AD per 3 days, because as per your data, the other 97% since it wont be affected it wont change and will keep generating the same amount of AD if not more.
I hope you see the logical fallacy in those statements above.
PS Even if that was happening (which I doubt) we can easily speculate that, to do mass farm you need at BEST 20m per char (1X 3 man about 7-9m and a skimrish another 10m) which would take 17 hours at least, to 20 hours NON STOP farming per 24 hour day every day. Isn't it simpler to see who is logged 17-20 hours everyday, investigate and act? Cause I'm sure its not human... I think we all know the answer though.
Don't get me wrong, some of the changes like leavers penalty and the right scaling %, are a very good steps, but its not enough to have good intentions but to also have the right implementation when ti comes to AD.
You are wrong about one thing. The 97% will not "not be affected in any way". Those players will see, between the cap increase ant the boost in rAD rewards, a positive effect.
Assuming that all players will see an increase is also wrong. Some will but even that percentage will not change the outcome as per dev words is not the "target group". What you probably didn't understand is that by the word "not affected" it means negatively which means the 97% is not a part of the problem and if they are not part of the problem the rest 3% is.
The change is not here to make us produce more AD but to limit the overall AD generation and so even a big portion of the 97% will see a reduction per account unless you disagree on that too and the dev is wrong.
The point of my post was that there is an inconsistency with numbers and /or the explanation as it's quoted in the devs post. At least that's what I see.
The rAD rewards are being increased from 6,600 - 8,000 for first runs, and 600 - 1,000 for following runs. All players will see this increase, even though players that only have time for one or two runs will benefit most from that extra 1,800 AD per day. Those benefits, at least to my admittedly overly-literal mind, does mean the opposite of no effect. But even if only the bottom 3% of players will see real, noticeable gains the planned changes will still produce the desired effect: reducing the 1.8 billion rAD entering the economy (and not really going anywhere) every 3-5 days.
Again you don't get it.
The dev said (and not me), that more than 95% of they players don't refine more than 100k AD per day and so with the new change, they will not see a negative effect. If you are refining 50k/day now, you can still refine 50k/day in the next module.
Since any change in any system, has the main goal to target and solve a "problem", that means that the rest 2-5% are the problem. Cause if they are not and then the majority will not get affected.... why the change?
Also the rad reward being increased, doesn't mean our income will. Now I (and others) can do 3 x 3 man and get 3 x 13.5 k = 40.5k AD. In new mod I will get 1 X 15k AD = ...15kad . Same applies for all queues. Where is the increase per account?. What if I do the same with 5 chars? Notice that I'm still below the 100k threshold.
I'm sure there are some players that may benefit, but the changes will affect the majority of the players and it's not as the Developer is presenting it, that most of us... will not.
Point is, there are better solutions and they should examine them first. A player housing with some personal boons like increased "luck" and maybe a bit more stats or assisting /accessing mastercrafting or other professions ,at a cost of a rent per week/month, is all you need to remove a big portion of the excess AD from the system as an example. Decoration can be another way as well as fashion. I'm sure there are better ideas out there.
After all the reason they made the change in RQs, was for us to make more AD... and now we are making too much?. Who's fault is for not anticipating that to begin with?
If the latter is indeed correct, we can infer a couple of things:
1) An economy that is growing by ~830M AD/day (across all three platforms) means that on a per player basis, the economy is growing by an average rate of ~55AD/player every day. (Not 5500 or 55K...Fifty Five AD/player per day.)
2) If the percentage of people who are refining over 100K rAD/day is in the low single digits, these changes are still affecting a *lot* of people; one number bandied about is that ~3% of the player base are "serial refiners." If you extrapolate that 3% to a 15M player base, you're looking at close to a half million players being affected.
I know the devs have already made up their mind regarding these changes, but it seems to me that a *creative* development team could come up with, you know, *creative* ways for the game to absorb that surplus 55 astral diamonds per player per day that didn't involve punishing (and lets face it, a lot of folks are calling a spade a spade on this one) half a million players.
I'd like to highlight a few suggestions, some of which have already been mentioned by previous posters:
If you are dead set on implementing a rAD refining cap, at least make it a soft cap. An earlier suggestion was to have a 100K cap that could be increased by 2K for each alt up to the account limit of 50 alts totaling 200K rAD refining cap; it gives people who've paid for alts still derive benefit from their monetary investment.
Quit making so many drops account bound. If people are able to sell their possessions on the AH (the choice-and ability- to keep or sell your personal possessions is a hallmark of a healthy and stable (free market) economy. Refining possessions you don't need does not reduce the number of AD entering into the economy; it increases it. One man's trash is another man's treasure, and being able to sell items that are currently account bound in the AH results in a net reduction in the number of AD in the economy; no AD are created, they are only transferred from one player to another, and 10% of that transfer is removed from the economy. Remember: if the devs are being legit with the numbers they've shared, we only need to remove an average of 55 AD/player per day for the economy to reach stasis; anything more than that, on average, and you start to reign in an inflationary economy.
Get rid of the Glorious Resurgence lockboxes (and other past lockboxes). Once a lock box expires, put the mount du jour up for sale in the Zen store--and charge a decent amount for it. If you took the legendary mounts from the glorious resurgence lock box and put them in the Zen store for 10,000 Zen each, they would sell like hotcakes. I know I would buy at least three, easy--one for the look I want, one for the stats I want, and one for the combat power I want. Keys wouldn't be worthless, you could still use them on the current lockbox to get a chance at the latest, greatest mount. Once people start to understand the drop rates in lockboxes, they stop paying cash to buy Zen to purchase keys. The folks that are opening thousands of lock boxes aren't paying cash for those keys; they are the whales who play the laws of large numbers and are purchasing Zen from the AD they made from opening tons of lockboxes. The devs know this; that is why they included the Adventurer Pack in both the most recent iteration of the Mod lockbox and GR lockbox. The Adventurer Pack significantly lowers the average AD value per lockbox over large numbers. The intent, I assume, wasn't to help lower level adventurers so much as to reduce the overall net value of the lockbox so that the lockboxes no longer paid for themselves over time.
If you account limit the RQ bonuses, at least make Epic Dungeon Chest keys account bound instead of character bound. That way, you can have your favorite toon run the (unlimited) dungeons you want with your friends rather than relying on the bot-filled RQ. Trust me when I tell you it is a lot more fun to run a dungeon when you are having a nice conversation with someone you like spending time with; that social experience leads to more player engagement.
*Create* cool stuff for us to purchase with AD. In fact, get rid of the Tarmalune Trade Bar Store, and just let us purchase stuff in there with AD. Most trade bars are used for either purchasing legacy weapons to salvage (again, increasing the number of AD in the economy rather than reducing), fashion items, or dyes. Instead of giving us trade bars, just give us store credit that can be used like AD. I mean, this is supposed to be based on D&D; you know, a character with a story. (You even have a section for character history on the character creation panel! Have you completely forgotten that?) Give us the opportunity to purchase items to make our personal "stories" more real.
These are just a few, and by no means comprehensive, suggestions on how to "moderate" the market without hurting or alienating the player base.
Going forward, you might ask the player base for solutions to some of your problems before making decisions that obviously make people mad and look elsewhere for entertainment. This might surprise you, but as players, who spend time and money on this game, we have just as vested of an interest to ensure the longterm success of this game as you, the developers, do....
You are wrong about one thing. The 97% will not "not be affected in any way". Those players will see, between the cap increase ant the boost in rAD rewards, a positive effect.
There is no "cap increase", only a Cap Restriction. Since there was no cap restriction PER ACCOUNT before this .
There is a cap on refining rough AD, 36k. This mod will see that cap... wait for it... increased!
The cap your are refering to is per character. There IS NO CAP per account. They are creating it. Stop trolling.
The rAD rewards are being increased from 6,600 - 8,000 for first runs, and 600 - 1,000 for following runs. All players will see this increase, even though players that only have time for one or two runs will benefit most from that extra 1,800 AD per day. Those benefits, at least to my admittedly overly-literal mind, does mean the opposite of no effect. But even if only the bottom 3% of players will see real, noticeable gains the planned changes will still produce the desired effect: reducing the 1.8 billion rAD entering the economy (and not really going anywhere) every 3-5 days.
What you're not seeing is that the prices for the items people are wanting to buy with this AD: Wards, Keys, Runestone, Companions, Comapnion Upgrades: ARE NOT DROPPING. They will cost the same. The drop rates for Ultimates are not increasing, so why would their prices decrease? You arguments aren't amking any sense.
Wow. This game has had five years and that's how you're going to kill it? Amazing. Maybe not the first line you want to see, but whomever came up with the idea should be looking for another job before everyone else does because that's just where to start from. I hail from champions online then your beta from pc who migrated to ps4 console. I used to stream your game, but seriously after this? Not going to happen.
Before I get to the matter on hand you might remember me on ps4 as being one of the only ones crazy enough to run 50 characters in sept 2017's seige to get 50 siegebreaker gryphons. a feat nearly repeated just the past month ago in flabbergast racing madness to getting that many their apocalypse daggers for the portobello campaign in the same manner. So before anyone starts spewing that many of the people who do farm AD simply do it for 1 character. No some of us like the game so much that we actually put into all the characters either all at once or gradually day by day. Some days we may do very little runs and farming when we're out of steam or we may go hardcore and rake in running dungeons 200k+ simply so i can use even a sliver of that per character. Then we turn around and use those funds to cosmetically make the characters how we want them, or buy our gear. All 50 of mine have their own names and look and boons. I'm on ps4 go ahead and look. We take that AD and contribute to the NWO economy not just buy zen, but interact with the community to keep it thriving across all platforms.
It's understandable that developers of games that are F2p need outlets to revamp ways to making money, but this certainly is not the way. Balance the ZAX you say? Now why was it out of place at all?
A game focusing on lockboxes (lootboxes) over more offerings in content over a fresh paint of a new campaign, a few shinnies of weapon sets. Locking campaign required items like hunts out of the auction house, effectively decreasing sellable items someone would want to purchase with ad over refinement? ONE new dungeon or skirmish over the span of every six months or so would go well when competitors that make whole worlds sells better? hmm....
Before I get into that what I've seen from the conversation is the only ones truly benefiting from the change aren't the majority who play. It's the 10% or less who only worked on one character to 12k+ and chose to do so on their own instead of really branching out to see all of what the game has to offer, let alone stuck to a single guild and not much of the community, except to fix the market and screw others over platform to platform. To those that did, I'm sure there was plenty of times there was someone carrying them on a healer or pally that wasn't their main. Just remember for those of you having only one or two while others may have 5+ many of them leveled their characters most likely in a similar fashion. Maybe not as high, but contribute their time to a secondary, third or to an eighth playstyle. I can successively play all character classes, and if I were 17k on one of each, would probably crush 60% of you pvp. Fact. The other 40%? Like me who were there to carry and work with others day to day dungeon to dungeon where we might not ever see 17k but we damn well made sure your new players and vets alike survived wave after wave of mobs to the end even for the junk we got and for the nerfs to our AD wallets just so your other players had any AD to begin with. I don't have a legendary but I can tell you that most of us like me made your players were on their way there day by day BECAUSE of us. Devs remember that when you see queues become non existant.
You don't want people running just normal dungeons? I'm sorry but the epics suck. Being a steady player since the ps4 reintroduction two julys ago, they really show just how garbage they are aside a few worthwhile to even visit. Kessel and lostmauth come to mind as actually worthwhile to dive into that i wanted to finish, but again lengthwise just was garbage. Because of the time to complete and HAMSTER drops, I have nearly 1k epic keys stocked on every character I have. So that's over 50k epic keys never to be used right now. Time is money so when I can enjoy a fast paced dungeon to boss rush in ten minutes or less to get some ad for my characters and actually enjoy the content that each deserve to shine on their own as by the way your game IS set up since they all can't share legendaries, achievements other than dungeon and race unlocks and zen store mounts, I fail to see why this should be attacked. It's how I play and most likely 40% do. I'm PS4 there's no botting there and if they did, a person does it by making multiple accounts as stated NOT multiple characters.
The problem in the economy stems from the inadequacy of the developers to understand their own economy in levels.
1. Epics take far too long and reward too little. Very low drop rates. The meat of the game to which you spend a plethora of your time preparing for literally has trash for drops 99.8% of the time, but you require them to progress if you can actually get them. Should we really look at loot tables? The ever changing price and requirement of which keys. 2. Campaigns that lack story and circle jerk the notion to daily missions for progression to earn currency for said campaign to earn boons that are LOWER than what a guild offers. Underdark is your peak campaign and everything after it has been just utter HAMSTER. It's the pinnacle in content to wrap everything up nicely and forces you to return all around to every area to protect and facing demo has always been so satisfying that it feels so good to play. SKT was the beginning of chore campaigns that dragged on with little to no story, but story is what drove this game from the start. Chult furthered this and Ravenloft is going beyond. What's the point to do campaigns for boons if a guild can pump out four 450 gs each boons to compensate? If I'm supposed to run the content, why's my single character boons worth only 30 each? It far takes out an individual's meaning to simply join a guild then play the actual game. 4. Refinement system's ever chasing the plateau of greatness just to be one shotted to mediocrity on the next module. Why bother if the cycle comes to this: New weapons & gear to refine -> "excitement" to fetch and level up gear with repetitive quests and refinement -> next module -> repeat = lose interest = no new $
Now if you compare the chult gear to the tyrant gear that can be exhaulted, there's really a fraction of difference to even bother upgrading, but some CHOOSE to do so for that edge to be on top because that's how they play. It's fine, but you can see it's an endless cycle, and the running around catches up sooner than later, and most of the player base is exhausted from it and the routine. Console just got 13 which should be 12 c since it's still chult and next month pc is getting 14, yet more items sets with a 20 point increase for millions more AD to get? Maybe a few diehards, but the rest of us will just let it trickle down because we're too busy getting nerfed to oblivion so you can serve the "whales".
Forcing these changes shows that the game really is in the end of its lifecycle when it's attacking the player base on so many levels of "bending over".
Examples - Coal Wards only in zen store Treasure Box Locking so no peeking of items within. Shows proof of great bad drops The ever shifting ways to make AD Dailies for AD to refinement caps Queues and then Private Queues removed and returned in place of random queues The cheapening of lockbox rewards that now they even have adventure packs (lowest of low and high prob of getting) Account daily limit to 100k and dungeon runs only reward first daily run bonus, rest trash runs (ex 8k 1st run, 3k every run after per character So after the first dungeon run? It makes it hardly worth the trouble to get any AD at ALL. This is how you empty your queue and force people to not run your content. Why run dungeons at all if it's one and done a day? Great for people with one character but many of us love to run content with what we PAID for. Not everyone uses just one character and if they did again it's about 10% or less. Those with one character would hardly ever run a dungeon for AD in the first place. 4. The lack of content not of lootbox variety. It speaks for itself, when you focus on cash shop gambling the rest of the game suffers. Why on earth should I care on getting garbage based on your rng from boxes for a "chance" at a legend mount the game will never give me nor ever use and if I ever got to use it there's not many places to do so?
In short, there are far too many overused mechanics that you simply burned out the player base, and in the constant cycle to see new content. You are killing what's left, and this will do it simply by making the returns far outweigh any rewards. You need a balance between free players and those that pay. Whales want people to buy their goods, well free people will leave if they can't afford them. Simple as that. A majority will never spend another cent over their initial entry. I am such a person. I paid my entry fee in the psn to you. I take into the fact anything obtainable as per how things are done in the game like mounts, anything, can be obtained by getting AD to Zen and vice versa. I don't want to gamble to progress in a game. Attacking players first is not how you innovate, but rather destroy what you built that makes players leave and not come back. So the dev saying it will stay the course after this you won't. Other games fell to the same greed. This one will too on this course, but there are ways to steer it right but I'll save that for another post.
My mistake but similar concept. Set up alt accounts to fast run the salvage just like main. Transfer ADs back to main. more prep time, but the "3 percent" that supposedly control the AD economy ( or however Cryptic wants to put it ) in RAD would probably be determined to keep their control. They will find a way.
This does not work well.
1. there is no "quality" salvageable you can mail to an alt account because the "quality" salvageable are account bound. There is nothing else you can use for this 'similar concept' which is about moving stuff from one account to another to overcome rAD daily account cap limit. The only stuff you can use this trick is blue salvageable which gives tiny amount of rAD. 2. There is no good way to transfer AD between account. The good old fashion way is through AH but there is a 10% cut and also taking a risk of being banned.
Moving stuff between account is not something new. Using that for overcome rAD limit is not effective.
Delay the change until you have other AD sinks in place. Or publish a clear date when revamps are coming in (hope, yes??) ...
Lower the cost of companion upgrades - the average casual player cannot afford 500K from blue to purple never mind the 1m to Legendary.
Companion upgrades are one of the only few AD sinks in the game.
The other are AH cut (10% traded goods), transmutation costs, Wondrous Bazaar items, Stronghold AD donation, banning of accounts and player attrition. When players stop playing, the AD on that account is 'frozen', however if it is sold to a 3rd party, or that player resumes playing, the AD is freed up again.
2. There is no good way to transfer AD between account. The good old fashion way is through AH but there is a 10% cut and also taking a risk of being banned.
There is also trading goods with inherent value that is not diminished by transferring. These include items which are commonly used in the bartering system : Marks of Potency (e.g. that used in hunts, which conveniently bypass the AH 10% 'AD sink'). Using these items, value can be transferred between VIIP 12 accounts with no loss (this will require VIP 12 to be effective).
The more than Cryptic encourages the use of the AH to transfer items, the more that AD can be removed from the economy. Interestingly, making items bound is counterproductive to this, but is productive in other ways by 'tying up' AD to characters/accounts.
after 5 years of playing, why control the AD generation of hardcore players NOW? and why making first runs on an ACCOUNT (not per character) the only beneficial run? IF you want players to use their earned AD why not add something good on the BAZAAR SHOP and ZEN SHOP that is sensible to buy like something that would help players to upgrade their gear OR a BUFF POTION that is beneficial for PVP or PVE content.
I hope you are making the right path for this 5 year long Game. Good luck on your team for coming up with this strategy
buying zen should ALSO be an ad sink. but the zen should actually be spent. (I don't have the numbers but I'd love to see them) I'd bet far more zen is NOT being spent but just being hoarded. and then spit back out into ad when the user wants ad for something.
the real problem is there isn't enough to spend ad on. be it zen or ad. because at the end of the day they are hte same. two currencies that equal the same thing. if more is in the zen store that is relevant and attractive the very fact that the zax is backed up is going to cause more people to spend real money. if they balance that with more to buy with ad in game then you're going to get a much healthier exchange.
Purchase of Zen is the only way the company makes money. Whether Zen is actually spent or not is irrelevant - the company already was paid. But you do make an interesting point here. The hoarding of Zen adds to ZAX speculation, which is not healthy for seasonal backlogs. Speculation in itself is destructive, and really only profits the wealthy. Hence, it would be prudent for the developers to reduce the speculation on the ZAX (e.g. sales, coupons).
Yes, there is not enough to spend AD on. Only when AD is spent does AD get removed from the economy - this is the only true 'AD sink'.
Zen and AD are not the same, but they are currently equivalent with the ZAX being at 500:1. If the currencies were unpegged, then you would see true market forces, but that is not what is happening here.
Conversion of AD to ZEN is not an AD sink, because the person who purchased the AD with ZEN now has exactly the same amount of AD that was sold (@plasticbat is right about this) and thus the AD is still within the economy. The only true AD sinks are when AD is returned to the program or lost (AH cut, companion upgrades, transmute costs, banned accounts etc), and not when traded between players.
Making people want to spend Zen in the Zen store will be profitable for the company only when people purchase Zen with RL money, however it will not cause AD to diminish if purchased on ZAX, as AD is never 'used up' only passed between hands.
Quality of Life REAL IMPROVEMENTS needed for the game (because your space is too small to squeeze it in from the other post) It's not that hard and really if the developers paid attention to feedback and played more of their game or watch streams, you can see what a player does and doesn't enjoy about this game. Put yourselves into our shoes. Yes you need to make money, but you make it here or there in how people will actually spend the AD instead of just using them on zen. We shouldn't be beta testing this at this point for a need to start tossing this up for means of keeping the game profitable. Then again, some people think the game is fine, but at the current rate mod 14 is, that's your last mod for sure.
And I call hamster on those numbers if they are claiming 95% aren't refining that much. It might be because that is how many players left the pc platform for the others. You got three platforms, and many of us branched off first to xbox and then the ps4, or play both of that over the pc. There's also the factor that some of us burst refine. Do it sometimes over that amount and then for time on end don't do so to compensate the burnout.
Another note is I have VIP why the heck are my daily key bags not stackable? This also goes for invoke bags. At the very least the key bags I get should be because I'm PAYING (keyword there) for your service beyond the regular base game. Just a small rant but seriously VIP key bags should be stackable.
1. ALLOW ALL mounts to be upgraded to legendary, offer mount class powers based on type of mount - seriously in beta you had manuals for mounts to do this. Somewhere along the line you removed this and went the route of adding powers and speed that any mount can use as long as one had it. Which is great. If you want us to enjoy this on other characters, why does this area not get a revamp to sink AD into? Seriously this didn't come to mind first BEFORE hitting AD cap? With your rng that some of us will NEVER hit that legendary drop. Now the devs can get creative and make different powers for horses, cubes, bears, etc. Each mount class can have a different power and maybe even earn newer powers by mastering the mount.
2. Hunts need their items allowable in the auction house - players need with every new module new items to sell. River district, SKT's stones, etc should either have bind to account versions but also non bound and buyable ones on the exchange. Many of this is blocked by dev means that unlike SKT which had items needed for weapons that allowed this, it made things worthwhile for new content of other means to play the game as intended and not worry on dungeons to get AD. It was a nice break. I think like many the dungeons became priority AFTER river district came into play and wrecked that economy. Chult only furthered the blow by making hunt objects ONLY tradeable between players. Again, not everyone likes to do that, and in some ways prefer the safety of the Auction House to not getting ripped off by another player. So in turn you REMOVED a means for those to spend AD on to actually get things they could before.
3. Allow AD to be used in campaign stores to buy reagents. SKT comes to mind to upgrade that weapon set I like. Stones are not easy to get if I can't get to the dungeon, let alone a good group. Let me get bind to account versions atleast. Call back to number two there where there needs to be more items in exchange. Not rocket science.
4. Allow old sets to be relevant and be upgraded by extension to 520 with a masterwork of their own of refinement. If I like a set for example elemental ALLOW me the choice to make it more powerful beyond its original intent. Not only can it stay relevant, but also more ad to sink.
Elemental evil sets, demo sets, skt sets, river district, chult. Those sets and any further down the line for each mod, allow them the chance to get upgraded. It's costly more than going for new gear, BUT again if people favor different equipment also lets them keep it.
5. If there needs to be a daily cap, let it be done by normal player and VIP rank - 100k with no vip daily, 200k up to rank 6 and at rank 12 300k. Then people are having to pay zen in order to get more out of it.
In fact VIP daily keys should be given the same boost with every 4 ranks an extra key so: rank 1 -4 = 1 key 5-8 = 2 and 9 -12 = 3 considering the drop rates it's more than fair if again I can't get much from them along with most everyone else.
6. Each zone should have had its own dungeon and in the case of new content should get several up to atleast 3 or more. While this is starting to improve, an example of this is the story driven first act of the game to 60 and then to elemental evil's four zones. Why was there never a dungeon for each one and then a fifth for players to take on together to get to 70? Yet every update for sure there's a new lockbox and more random garbage to fill my inventory. It's usually just 1 dungeon or one skirmish for each update, there should be more than that.
So many people claiming it will be impossible to generate income in order to advance, but forgetting/ignoring that there are two sources of AD: 1. New AD through refining rAD 2. Finding/creating stuff desired by other players, and selling it to them, using the auction house or otherwise.
I think it will be good for the game if ppl will do more of 2. and less of 1.
Agreed. The only way AD is actually created is through 1.
2. nets AD for the individual selling the item, and anything that is traded through the AH is an AD sink, because of the AH -10% cut. AD is never 'created' here. But there are still other ways to generate income than via refining rAD - these ways require a bit more thought, set-up, but sometimes through luck (i.e. expensive drops via dungeons, however this is RNG gated).
If Cryptic created ways in which lower level players could sell items through the AH (e.g. professions is a possible avenue), thus receiving refined AD from other players and channeling it through the AH to act as an AD sink, then this would help the economy and also allow lower level players to advance their character as well.
How about a scroll in the Wondrous Bazaar that would grant a +10% of the base chance of hunt item drops? Not an over all +10% but +10% of the base chance. So if an item has a 10% drop chance it would have an 11% drop chance for say 24 hours. If it had a 50% chance it would have a 55% chance. And have the scroll cost say 100k AD. Maybe even a +20% and +30% version costing 200k and 300k respectively. The beauty of this is the hunt items are bound on pick up so they can't be sold or traded. A true AD sink.
I would say have the same thing for dungeons but that would cause more salvage and thus more net AD. But I bet people would buy them for a better chance to get the top gear. Maybe have dungeon versions cost twice as much per version and not last nearly as long. Maybe 1 or 2 hours at most.
If these Devs truly cared about the AD vaule, they could end this all in a few weeks. Increase drops rates on all valuabe drops, like Ulitmates. Include Gem Drops up to R12 istead of R9. Sell Orange Mounts on the Zen Store. Cut all Bazaar prices and upgrade Runestone requirements by half. That would end it quickly.
If you put legendary mounts on Zen Store, then the Zax will be backlogging more than ever. I fail to see what is your point here. Making R12 drop, cut refinement requirements by half, etc, in what way exactly this is going to be a good idea? First, if you make everything way easier to get, everyone will become 18k in few months, and then what? If you don't have any progression to do, you won't play. But more importantly, your sentence suggests cutting AD sinks. Well isn't that the exact opposite point of view of someone who disagree with the original 100k/account idea?
Hello, well I've just come back from xbox after a year and half break and hearing all this makes me never want to come back, do they just want kill the game or something because they are doing a bloody good job at it. I don't even no what else to say really was pointless me downloading this again tbh shame really, Back too tera I go then.
I understand the need to limit AD influx in this game.
Limit of 100k/p.d refined AD per account ? I don´t really think this will impact botting in this game in any way, except cryptic limits the ammount of accounts per player, not sure if your terms of conditions actually limit that option? Botters generate their AD via multiple accounts allways, they will addapt for sure. If you want to punish them you need to punish all low level player in this game also by simply kill those leveling dungeon and the 10000k reward. As long as you can earn 10k AD in 3-5 minutes with a lev 20 char you open the gates for abusive behaviour. Solution? Hard to find. Honestly I don´t know how much time it takes from level 1 to 70 same that I can´t tell about the experiences a new player got. Maybe reward new player at lvel 30 and 50 with character-bound weapon- and armor-enchants on greater/perfect level not to upgrade. They will throw them away if the want to advance but have less issues to level.
The restriction of 100k AD/p.d will punish active player more than anyone else and that´s a bad idea, since this game needs active player more than anything else. And by "active player" I talk about those player that run relevant content and not random Dungeons with their "alt-armada" all time (Cloak Tower the 20.th) The workarround for this change will look like this: Some player ("alt-armada-player") will create multiple accounts to compensate and run leveling dungeons on low level alts hand in hand with the "Happy-Bot-Family" (until they vomit and quit this game maybe). We will have less player runnning content. That´s not the way you want this game to look like, do you?
Maybe a better solution or a compromise would be to find a way to burn AD and lift that AD-limit a bit from 100k to maybe 150-200K AD, to give new player without a bot army the option to build up their toon. Those player can´t run endcontent effectively and sell items same as they need a lot of AD to build up.
I also think you should focus more on "How to burn AD" more than" "How to spoil active players experience" Some hints where given allready like professions or upgrades to legendary mounts. I was told some player earn huge ammounts of AD doing professions, I am fine with it. Honestly I have no interest in professions at all and even if I´d earn 10mio AD per day (some do) I won´t play this game like an economic simulator. Maybe find a way for those player to burn their AD without getting mad about it. I´d burn my AD for mount upgrades honestly - like 3-5 mio AD to get my mount to legend level. Atm I burn AD for coalescentwards and mop´s to upgrade my enchants to rank14. I can´t say that I am rich but I can afford the costs step by step by running dungeons and selling items, some do invoking consequently and/or run leveling dungeons all time.
So effectively, after the change, if I ran the same number of dungeons and skirmishes (10), I will earn only 32K per day for the same amount of time.
Yes. This is true, and was mentioned by a previous poster. The way to generate AD just from completing RQ will be much less effective due to suffering significant diminishing returns after the first run. Plus, you can't just run a dungeon and a skirmish, as all level content in a RQ includes both.
You'll need to complete a levelling (pre-level 70 content) and intermediate (level 70, IL <=9k) random queue now. Say you complete one leveling and intermediate RQ - from running these you will get base 20k AD (8k + 12k) or 30k with 50% invocation bonus, and if you have VIP you will get 22k base (33k with invocation bonus).
To make up the rest of the 67-70k AD difference to reach the 100k AD/day cap efficiently, the rest of the AD will have to be attained via salvage.
Say each Intermediate queue drops a blue or purple (2-6kAD). On average lets make it a 4k salvage drop. Each subsequent IRQ gives 2k AD, thus 6k AD base with salvage (9k with invocation bonus, or 9.9kAD with VIP). Realistically, you will need to do about 6-8 more IRQs to get the 100k AD/day cap.
You will get a small contribution via seals, which is approximately 16.7 AD per seal (4000AD for ring, 300 seals), not including invocation/VIP bonus. This isn't much, as the first run of the Leveling + Intermediate queues nets only about 160 seals, which can be converted to about 2.1k AD base only.
It won't be having to run content 82 times, but it will require queuing up for Intermediate queues for salvage, and I would think the levelling dungeons would be less populated by real players (but more likely more populated by bots running multi-accounts).
So many people claiming it will be impossible to generate income in order to advance, but forgetting/ignoring that there are two sources of AD: 1. New AD through refining rAD 2. Finding/creating stuff desired by other players, and selling it to them, using the auction house or otherwise.
I think it will be good for the game if ppl will do more of 2. and less of 1.
If we could sell thing that drop from dungeon chest that would be ok, but...we CANT because 90% of things are BtA so that's pretty stupid and about "creating" better not even talk about masterwork professions
I am partially talking about masterwork professions, but definitly not about the finished top tier product. Unlocking mastercrafts consumes sick amounts of guild marks, and some of the required ingrediants can be bought with marks and traded without having a masterwork profession unlocked yourself. Atm thats a lot more profitable than salvaging the gear available for guild marks.
You need to be in a guild for a that, and your guild needs to be in an Alliance with likely a few Level 20 guilds that have the merchants up (not necessarily, but increases the chances that a guild has a merchant at any given time). So this is conditional.
I've read some of the replies here and I see one major issue.
Most seem to not address the fact that first run bonuses are now account gated.
I'm ignoring the issue of account capping the amount of ad you can refine, but the second change effectively kills any use for alts except for support/dps variety. I'm left with running the daily randoms on my main only and then what? I don't see anyone bothering with the random queue for the pitiful repeat ad bonus.
And at this point I'll need to either run dungeons for salvage in which case I'll queue specifically for those I know are fast or I'm done for the day. And then the 100k cap is unnecessary. I though you made added the random queues because you wanted people to run a variety of content and not just non stop etos. Well congratulations, with this change I'll go back to running etos only and those of us who can run the end game content will run only that. And again, while doing this why should I bother with my alts if they are less well geared? The only use to the is invoking with the hope of one day getting a coal ward.
You want to cap the ad? Alright, though I think there are better options it's not that big of a deal. But the second change is really making me consider my future in the game. It seem like in an attempt to entice more people to spend their money on ZEN with better options in the store, you've decided to do so by making ad gain frustrating in any other way.
Interesting. Yes I do see both the leveling and intermediate queues popping up much less frequently, because etos. Don't give them more ideas about salvage! Good gracious.
It will seem you will have to run your alt on the levelling queue, to not use up your invocation bonus from your main. But still, a typical 'daily dungeon run' may look like this:
1) Alt runs Levelling RQ 2) Alt/Main/Support Buffer runs Intermediate RQ (support for AD role bonus, if you have one) 3) Main runs repeat eTOS/Advanced RQ (if you're feeling lucky) 4) Main runs about 5-8 more eTOS then reaches the AD cap from salvage (via alts)
Is it doable? I guess. Is it fun? No, but it's probably no more fun than repeat levelling RQ with alts. Are they doing enough to really address the AD inflation and the ability of bots to multi-account levelling RQ? Hell no. Will other dungeons suffer a drop in popping due to less incentive from running RQ? Hell yes.
I believe your statistical numbers are skewed. Perhaps only 3-5% of players refine over 100K a day because only 8% of your total player source numbers actually play the game with any reasonable sense of regularity. Perhaps this 3-5% turns out to be 50,000 acutal players, and the other 95-97% represent any Character that was EVER created in this game since Beta.
^ This. I believe the numbers given by @noworries#8859 without any sort of qualification of the types of accounts is not very effective. It can be taken any number of ways. For all we know, 90% of those 'numbers' are not active accounts. SMH.
You are wrong about one thing. The 97% will not "not be affected in any way". Those players will see, between the cap increase ant the boost in rAD rewards, a positive effect.
There is no "cap increase", only a Cap Restriction. Since there was no cap restriction PER ACCOUNT before this .
No, currently, the account daily AD refinement cap restriction is = [number of character slots] x 36k. In Mod 14, the 100k AD account refinement cap will only affect players with =>3 more character slots (i.e. basically anyone who bought a character slot or pack which granted one).
Is our jump in ad earnings placing a serious hurt on 3rd parry ad sellers the real issue ? Makes one wonder.
This cap is ONLY increased for those with 2 character slots, because 3 character slots in Mod 13 have an Account AD refinement cap of 108k AD/day already (hence a 100k AD account cap reduces it for anyone with 3 or more character slots for that account).
Free accounts come with 2 character slots. Bots can make free accounts. Account cap increased for them! LOL. These accounts are the only accounts which benefit from the increased cap! Just like Oprah would say, "More AD for you! And more AD for you!"
You are wrong about one thing. The 97% will not "not be affected in any way". Those players will see, between the cap increase ant the boost in rAD rewards, a positive effect.
There is no "cap increase", only a Cap Restriction. Since there was no cap restriction PER ACCOUNT before this .
No, currently, the account daily AD refinement cap restriction is = [number of character slots] x 36k. In Mod 14, the 100k AD account refinement cap will only affect players with >3 more character slots.
Is our jump in ad earnings placing a serious hurt on 3rd parry ad sellers the real issue ? Makes one wonder.
This cap is ONLY increased for those with 2 character slots, because 3 character slots in Mod 13 have a Account AD refinement cap of 108k AD/day.
It does make me wonder about free accountst though which come with 2 character slots. Bots can make free accounts. LOL. Account cap increased for them! Just like Oprah woud say, "More AD for you! And more AD for you!"
Not true most players will only be able to make 20k ad per day (8000 +12000)and a little from salvage that is a massive nerf. The Botters and the cheaters will love this change(100k X 20 accounts =2mil) since all they will do is have multiple accounts and get same ad they are now (maybe more). They will have a lot of ad and have more power to manipulate ah and prices.
DONOT forget to add the income of ad zerg too. there is a reason those two is separated in this forum
There are more than BIS players in this game RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ???? FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)
I have given some thought to all of this and there are few things to address here and there which are important AD-wise.
- Astral Diamonds generating through the years.
NWO is a Free to Play video-game in the vein of MMORPGs. At first items were tradable between the people and could be sold on AH. They were dropping from Chests and final Bosses (random loot). The items were sought after by the new players who would use ZAX in order to get AD and actually purchase items from players who already beat the content. The prices on items were exclusive-based and this is a constant in NWO. Exclusivity will always play a major role. First-serve, highest price. This is basics of the economy. So each new MOD and especially when a new class becomes available the items for the class would cost between 1 and 2 millions of AD. It was a good way for the veteran players to earn some quick money. All of this just went into crafting rings and exclusivity still plays a major role whenever a new MOD becomes available. Recently it was the Bronzewood stuff. Getting items from bosses and whatnot, over the time, became bound to character or bound to account. Rarely anything is sellable. Why? Make things sellable again, at least for a brief period of time, so that people can actually trade some AD between themselves. And this would also help the ZEN store since the players would sometimes buy AD in order to get a specific item from the AH. All AH bought items for AD, which are good, are the Guild Exclusive and to craft them you also need a bunch of other extremely hard things to get. A new player does not even stand a chance getting everything in order on one character, let alone 5 new characters. This way only a handful of people actually get all the benefits and of course that they will be the ones generating the most AD on they characters. Currently, there are no real ways to generate AD other than running the daily dungeon, skirmish and heroics. It is easy, which is why people do it on multiple characters. Although it is easy, it is also very time consuming and it is a major chore. I was doing so on 10+ characters and by the time I finished everything, selling everything I got and salvaging items I'd get up to 500.000 AD a day. But it is extremely time consuming and it is a major chore to do so for me on 10+ characters. There are people that do this on 50 characters. It is mind boggling. It is an investment that pays of to them in some time, but they are bound to the PC entire day to achieve things. Granted, achieving AD on a daily basis by doing an extremely boring thing is easy. And it is not appealing. And of course that the prices for things will also go high both for mounts and other things alike.
If there should be a RESTRICTION on the daily limit of refining RAD, there should also be an option to earn AD by other means while playing the game and not just by offering craftable items which only the selected few can maintain manufacturing and actually getting some AD in return.
Currently there is no real possibility to earn AD by doing anything in the game other than playing on multiple characters same dungeons over and over again.
Proposition : Make AD as a prize for each Heroic event at various places. 1 Event = 1000 AD If there are 10 people present at the place. This method makes people who actually play earn a bit extra and could also promote some guild events. It also negates the gear limit and makes people to work together towards a goal of doing something. It could also be a quest like "finish 10 heroics". It could also be a repeatable quest, but players would actually earn AD instead of RAD.
True Neutral
Left the Game due to heavy Damage Control & Missing Spanish Language
The thing that's hard for me to wrap my head around though, yet it's an essential point - is that with these changes, 8,000 RAD will be worth a lot more than it is right now... or at least, that's the hope.
Anybody have an idea of how much of the current AD it would take to be equivalent to 8,000 future AD?
That is the (misguided) hope.
But as stated by previous posters, the cost of Zen Store and Wondrous Bazaar items (e.g. wards, marks) will be unaffected. Thus the value of AD relative to these items will not be improved (i.e. you won't be able to buy more of them).
It will be more difficult to obtain AD overall, thus:
1. The cost in our time to attain Zen Store/WB items via AD will be increased. 2. The value of Zen will be increased, as it will purchase the same number of AD, which will require greater time to attain. 3. Thus, the value of our time is lessened, while the value of our money is increased.
You want to cut our wages but not our rent and utilities, fine. But don't lie to us and say its for our own benefit.
this is what still amazes me and i don't even play the damn thing anymore.
It would be amusing if it wasn't so preposterous. Back when the random queues were introduced, the justification was not only that it would improve dungeon population, but also that it would facilitate AD generation and would result in a net positive. Thomas Foss said as much in that trainwreck of a state of the game where he admitted the RQ's needed work (which is to say, everything the playerbase warned against effectively came to pass), but on one account they had gotten it right, which was players were making more AD.
So, if we take all this at their word, on one module they (supposedly) increase AD generation on purpose only to have it curtailed on the very next mod? Six months ago they were justifying that unpopular change with an increase in aD generation, now, on the very next patch that same increase suddenly has to go, but it'll be great for us, you'll see. it's like they can't even be consistent with their lying at this point; and by now, assuming they're bold faced liars is the most charitable assumption when compared to the alternative of thinking them to be utterly inept.
This when they simply go along with pretending the impact is positive, like in the key situation that would totally be offset by better loot drops which then were visibily shadow nerfed to pre key change levels.
It's a standard M.O. for cryptic at this point. They break the game beyond the point of no return, be it with sales that are so "telegraphed" that they actively encourage hoarding where the grind gives us very little in terms of other choices, be it with the totally out of control power creep. In most of these cases, their approach is to consistently and constantly shatter player choice and give them less.
I would like to believe that the devs did not have this malicious intent to begin with. We have the power of hindsight in seeing what is happening. The course of events do seem like a flip, so rather than this being premeditated, I would say it is rather inconsistent of them. However, decisions can be made which alter previous decisions, as the data they are receiving now shows that what they implemented a module ago isn't working. So they try something new. If they had previously stuck to their goal of increasing AD generation (when it was a bad idea in hindsight) then it would affect the AD economy in the future. I find it interesting that an MMO can have such a complex economy to begin with, but anything which ties with real life time and money will have market forces affecting it.
I don't think devs are directly (and only) responsible, thus when you reference "their word" it's probably also affected by decisions from management. Devs create the content, which I am grateful, management looks at the bottom line and probably tells the devs to improve it, even if the devs really just want to improve the game. Of course, the decisions that the parent company make can make us decide whether to stay or quit the game. They are not holding us ransom (but it should also make us aware of future titles released by the same parent company). They developers have the ability, however, of introducing this in a way which could have been better, but then again, that's my personal opinion. How? Creating more attractive AD sinks in tandem with this change, providing alternate paths for newer characters to level, and gradually making changes in conjunction with the playerbase providing some input.
First and foremost, this is a game. Find ways to enjoy it, or do something more worthwhile of your time, which I probably should do the same.
I must say I love this. However, as someone said before, I would recommned a cap on the AH buyouts as well until economy prices lower on their own. Some people have lots of alts to grind, others have a number like 3-4 they actually also play in and the AD was to help those alts get to end game level. Why not raise cap to something like 120k or 150k and see how it goes? That way, those with 4 toons can benefict and this is a better way for any player that actually plays on their alts nto only to do astral diamonds laundry.
The time has finally come to find a new game. With each update, they eliminate ways to make AD and it will continue until its so bad that spending money is the only way to get anything in the game.
This change will do nothing for the economy. People who have already invested in mastercrafting will continue to make millions each day while players who had to run RQ and salvage are going to be crippled to the point it will not be worth their time to play this game. Im so sick of the devs acting as if every player has 50 million at all times and punishing console players for all the past exploits/ bots on pc. Xbox ZAX has been around 400 for a few months but we still get treated as if we have botters and such. The devs are the ones who let the economy get this way vut once again, punish the players. This change is only good for your super casual 10k item level playing a few hours on the weekends.
I hear people saying "people always claim to quit but don't" and that is comical because you people quit this game each and everyday more than other games lose players. This is different for people saying their gonna quit due to bonding nerf or coalgate because this change to rAD and RQ will prevent players from doing anything in the game in a halfway decent time unless they open their wallets. I was excited for mod 14 but not so much now. I already had money saved for the jubilee event but im not spending a dime until we know if this change is actually going to happen. Its a shame such a fun game is being ruined with each passing update.
I also do not think that the developers which produce new content are the ones really in charge of this decision making process. It is probably from management, thus the anger that one should feel should not be relegated to the developers necessarily.
Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a Winner !!
Of course these decisons are NOT coming from Cryptic. Cryptic is the design studio/developers only. They are paid under contract to develop a game that the publisher pays them to develop. PWE USA is the subsidiary office operating under the corporate umbrella of the PWE Corporate center located in Bejing, China.
You buy Zen, PWE gets a check from Sony, Microsoft, etc. Crptic and it's employees who work on the game get a salary which is paid out based on whatever contract deals they have worked out with PWE.
I am sure that this whole fiasco originated in the corporate offices of PWE who more than likely are not seeing the sales/conversions they were expecting. In turn, they probably gave instructions to Cryptic to work out a way to generate more cash sales. Simple as that.
I don't fault the developers at Cryptic not one bit for the decision to cut the amount of free ad a player can earn. I'm sure they are not thrilled with it either.
I do hope they can work out a solution that keeps both publisher and players happy. In the end, their jobs depend on it.
Nobody really wins. The relative value of AD will be marginally increased to those 1 or 2 toon players trying to sell them, but unless Zen buyers have a damned good reason to buy them in the first place why on God's green Earth would they become enthused over buying AD at a higher price?
IF the figures quoted on the growth of the AD side of the economy are to be believed, there will remain hundreds of billions of stockpiled AD.
For that stockpile to diminish, to a point where the ZAX is deeply impacted to a major long term extent, all those hundreds of billions will need to be diminished.
The ZAX does not help as a sink, since there is a zero percent tax rate on transactions. Those AD simply change hands. And like I say, why would Zen sellers drop their price when those billions still exist if there's no additional incentive?
If the boat is already under water it needs lifting out. Simply plugging the leak is not going to help.
AD needs to not only have its intrinsic value increased by quantitative tightening, but also its relative value increased by having things people will genuinely want to spend them on, on a regular basis.
A flat account wide cap is so punitive because it cuts on a sliding scale. While keeping the cost of Zen unaffected by the main factor that impacts RAD conversion, namely, "how many characters have you bought?" Example... I convert about 200'000 per day across 8 characters. For my daily efforts to be equated across current model and proposed model, the ZAX would have to hit 200:1 (XB is currently circa 400:1) A guy doing the max on 10 toons (or 360'000) would need the ZAX to hit 108:1...
Neither of which is going to happen while I still have a hole in my HAMSTER.
Anyone who can't see the relative disparity caused by a flat 100k cap either doesn't understand the groundwork provided by time rich, cash poor players dumping items, mounts, etc, etc, etc, into the general economy as part of their daily RAD gathering, or is willfully ignoring it in the hope that yet another ill thought through knee jerk bulldozer solution might just work.
I also do not think that the developers which produce new content are the ones really in charge of this decision making process. It is probably from management, thus the anger that one should feel should not be relegated to the developers necessarily.
I don't fault the developers at Cryptic not one bit for the decision to cut the amount of free ad a player can earn. I'm sure they are not thrilled with it either.
Are you sure?
Even though this decision is likely run upon the imperative of income, the processes are still designed by the developers. So developers do have a say, and responsibility, in the matter. Maybe I wasn't that clear in my previous post. I did also say this could have been done in a better manner, and in tandem with a few other changes which improve gameplay and not hinder it.
Comments
Again you don't get it.
The dev said (and not me), that more than 95% of they players don't refine more than 100k AD per day and so with the new change, they will not see a negative effect. If you are refining 50k/day now, you can still refine 50k/day in the next module.
Since any change in any system, has the main goal to target and solve a "problem", that means that the rest 2-5% are the problem. Cause if they are not and then the majority will not get affected.... why the change?
Also the rad reward being increased, doesn't mean our income will. Now I (and others) can do 3 x 3 man and get 3 x 13.5 k = 40.5k AD. In new mod I will get 1 X 15k AD = ...15kad . Same applies for all queues. Where is the increase per account?. What if I do the same with 5 chars? Notice that I'm still below the 100k threshold.
I'm sure there are some players that may benefit, but the changes will affect the majority of the players and it's not as the Developer is presenting it, that most of us... will not.
Point is, there are better solutions and they should examine them first. A player housing with some personal boons like increased "luck" and maybe a bit more stats or assisting /accessing mastercrafting or other professions ,at a cost of a rent per week/month, is all you need to remove a big portion of the excess AD from the system as an example. Decoration can be another way as well as fashion. I'm sure there are better ideas out there.
After all the reason they made the change in RQs, was for us to make more AD... and now we are making too much?. Who's fault is for not anticipating that to begin with?
If the latter is indeed correct, we can infer a couple of things:
1) An economy that is growing by ~830M AD/day (across all three platforms) means that on a per player basis, the economy is growing by an average rate of ~55AD/player every day. (Not 5500 or 55K...Fifty Five AD/player per day.)
2) If the percentage of people who are refining over 100K rAD/day is in the low single digits, these changes are still affecting a *lot* of people; one number bandied about is that ~3% of the player base are "serial refiners." If you extrapolate that 3% to a 15M player base, you're looking at close to a half million players being affected.
I know the devs have already made up their mind regarding these changes, but it seems to me that a *creative* development team could come up with, you know, *creative* ways for the game to absorb that surplus 55 astral diamonds per player per day that didn't involve punishing (and lets face it, a lot of folks are calling a spade a spade on this one) half a million players.
I'd like to highlight a few suggestions, some of which have already been mentioned by previous posters:
- If you are dead set on implementing a rAD refining cap, at least make it a soft cap. An earlier suggestion was to have a 100K cap that could be increased by 2K for each alt up to the account limit of 50 alts totaling 200K rAD refining cap; it gives people who've paid for alts still derive benefit from their monetary investment.
- Quit making so many drops account bound. If people are able to sell their possessions on the AH (the choice-and ability- to keep or sell your personal possessions is a hallmark of a healthy and stable (free market) economy. Refining possessions you don't need does not reduce the number of AD entering into the economy; it increases it. One man's trash is another man's treasure, and being able to sell items that are currently account bound in the AH results in a net reduction in the number of AD in the economy; no AD are created, they are only transferred from one player to another, and 10% of that transfer is removed from the economy. Remember: if the devs are being legit with the numbers they've shared, we only need to remove an average of 55 AD/player per day for the economy to reach stasis; anything more than that, on average, and you start to reign in an inflationary economy.
- Get rid of the Glorious Resurgence lockboxes (and other past lockboxes). Once a lock box expires, put the mount du jour up for sale in the Zen store--and charge a decent amount for it. If you took the legendary mounts from the glorious resurgence lock box and put them in the Zen store for 10,000 Zen each, they would sell like hotcakes. I know I would buy at least three, easy--one for the look I want, one for the stats I want, and one for the combat power I want. Keys wouldn't be worthless, you could still use them on the current lockbox to get a chance at the latest, greatest mount. Once people start to understand the drop rates in lockboxes, they stop paying cash to buy Zen to purchase keys. The folks that are opening thousands of lock boxes aren't paying cash for those keys; they are the whales who play the laws of large numbers and are purchasing Zen from the AD they made from opening tons of lockboxes. The devs know this; that is why they included the Adventurer Pack in both the most recent iteration of the Mod lockbox and GR lockbox. The Adventurer Pack significantly lowers the average AD value per lockbox over large numbers. The intent, I assume, wasn't to help lower level adventurers so much as to reduce the overall net value of the lockbox so that the lockboxes no longer paid for themselves over time.
- If you account limit the RQ bonuses, at least make Epic Dungeon Chest keys account bound instead of character bound. That way, you can have your favorite toon run the (unlimited) dungeons you want with your friends rather than relying on the bot-filled RQ. Trust me when I tell you it is a lot more fun to run a dungeon when you are having a nice conversation with someone you like spending time with; that social experience leads to more player engagement.
- *Create* cool stuff for us to purchase with AD. In fact, get rid of the Tarmalune Trade Bar Store, and just let us purchase stuff in there with AD. Most trade bars are used for either purchasing legacy weapons to salvage (again, increasing the number of AD in the economy rather than reducing), fashion items, or dyes. Instead of giving us trade bars, just give us store credit that can be used like AD. I mean, this is supposed to be based on D&D; you know, a character with a story. (You even have a section for character history on the character creation panel! Have you completely forgotten that?) Give us the opportunity to purchase items to make our personal "stories" more real.
These are just a few, and by no means comprehensive, suggestions on how to "moderate" the market without hurting or alienating the player base.Going forward, you might ask the player base for solutions to some of your problems before making decisions that obviously make people mad and look elsewhere for entertainment. This might surprise you, but as players, who spend time and money on this game, we have just as vested of an interest to ensure the longterm success of this game as you, the developers, do....
There is a cap on refining rough AD, 36k. This mod will see that cap... wait for it... increased!
The cap your are refering to is per character. There IS NO CAP per account. They are creating it. Stop trolling.
The rAD rewards are being increased from 6,600 - 8,000 for first runs, and 600 - 1,000 for following runs. All players will see this increase, even though players that only have time for one or two runs will benefit most from that extra 1,800 AD per day. Those benefits, at least to my admittedly overly-literal mind, does mean the opposite of no effect. But even if only the bottom 3% of players will see real, noticeable gains the planned changes will still produce the desired effect: reducing the 1.8 billion rAD entering the economy (and not really going anywhere) every 3-5 days.
What you're not seeing is that the prices for the items people are wanting to buy with this AD: Wards, Keys, Runestone, Companions, Comapnion Upgrades: ARE NOT DROPPING. They will cost the same. The drop rates for Ultimates are not increasing, so why would their prices decrease? You arguments aren't amking any sense.
Before I get to the matter on hand you might remember me on ps4 as being one of the only ones crazy enough to run 50 characters in sept 2017's seige to get 50 siegebreaker gryphons. a feat nearly repeated just the past month ago in flabbergast racing madness to getting that many their apocalypse daggers for the portobello campaign in the same manner. So before anyone starts spewing that many of the people who do farm AD simply do it for 1 character. No some of us like the game so much that we actually put into all the characters either all at once or gradually day by day. Some days we may do very little runs and farming when we're out of steam or we may go hardcore and rake in running dungeons 200k+ simply so i can use even a sliver of that per character. Then we turn around and use those funds to cosmetically make the characters how we want them, or buy our gear. All 50 of mine have their own names and look and boons. I'm on ps4 go ahead and look. We take that AD and contribute to the NWO economy not just buy zen, but interact with the community to keep it thriving across all platforms.
It's understandable that developers of games that are F2p need outlets to revamp ways to making money, but this certainly is not the way. Balance the ZAX you say? Now why was it out of place at all?
A game focusing on lockboxes (lootboxes) over more offerings in content over a fresh paint of a new campaign, a few shinnies of weapon sets. Locking campaign required items like hunts out of the auction house, effectively decreasing sellable items someone would want to purchase with ad over refinement? ONE new dungeon or skirmish over the span of every six months or so would go well when competitors that make whole worlds sells better? hmm....
Before I get into that what I've seen from the conversation is the only ones truly benefiting from the change aren't the majority who play. It's the 10% or less who only worked on one character to 12k+ and chose to do so on their own instead of really branching out to see all of what the game has to offer, let alone stuck to a single guild and not much of the community, except to fix the market and screw others over platform to platform. To those that did, I'm sure there was plenty of times there was someone carrying them on a healer or pally that wasn't their main. Just remember for those of you having only one or two while others may have 5+ many of them leveled their characters most likely in a similar fashion. Maybe not as high, but contribute their time to a secondary, third or to an eighth playstyle. I can successively play all character classes, and if I were 17k on one of each, would probably crush 60% of you pvp. Fact. The other 40%? Like me who were there to carry and work with others day to day dungeon to dungeon where we might not ever see 17k but we damn well made sure your new players and vets alike survived wave after wave of mobs to the end even for the junk we got and for the nerfs to our AD wallets just so your other players had any AD to begin with. I don't have a legendary but I can tell you that most of us like me made your players were on their way there day by day BECAUSE of us. Devs remember that when you see queues become non existant.
You don't want people running just normal dungeons? I'm sorry but the epics suck. Being a steady player since the ps4 reintroduction two julys ago, they really show just how garbage they are aside a few worthwhile to even visit. Kessel and lostmauth come to mind as actually worthwhile to dive into that i wanted to finish, but again lengthwise just was garbage. Because of the time to complete and HAMSTER drops, I have nearly 1k epic keys stocked on every character I have. So that's over 50k epic keys never to be used right now. Time is money so when I can enjoy a fast paced dungeon to boss rush in ten minutes or less to get some ad for my characters and actually enjoy the content that each deserve to shine on their own as by the way your game IS set up since they all can't share legendaries, achievements other than dungeon and race unlocks and zen store mounts, I fail to see why this should be attacked. It's how I play and most likely 40% do. I'm PS4 there's no botting there and if they did, a person does it by making multiple accounts as stated NOT multiple characters.
The problem in the economy stems from the inadequacy of the developers to understand their own economy in levels.
1. Epics take far too long and reward too little. Very low drop rates. The meat of the game to which you spend a plethora of your time preparing for literally has trash for drops 99.8% of the time, but you require them to progress if you can actually get them. Should we really look at loot tables? The ever changing price and requirement of which keys.
2. Campaigns that lack story and circle jerk the notion to daily missions for progression to earn currency for said campaign to earn boons that are LOWER than what a guild offers. Underdark is your peak campaign and everything after it has been just utter HAMSTER. It's the pinnacle in content to wrap everything up nicely and forces you to return all around to every area to protect and facing demo has always been so satisfying that it feels so good to play. SKT was the beginning of chore campaigns that dragged on with little to no story, but story is what drove this game from the start. Chult furthered this and Ravenloft is going beyond.
What's the point to do campaigns for boons if a guild can pump out four 450 gs each boons to compensate? If I'm supposed to run the content, why's my single character boons worth only 30 each? It far takes out an individual's meaning to simply join a guild then play the actual game.
4. Refinement system's ever chasing the plateau of greatness just to be one shotted to mediocrity on the next module. Why bother if the cycle comes to this:
New weapons & gear to refine -> "excitement" to fetch and level up gear with repetitive quests and refinement -> next module -> repeat = lose interest = no new $
Now if you compare the chult gear to the tyrant gear that can be exhaulted, there's really a fraction of difference to even bother upgrading, but some CHOOSE to do so for that edge to be on top because that's how they play. It's fine, but you can see it's an endless cycle, and the running around catches up sooner than later, and most of the player base is exhausted from it and the routine. Console just got 13 which should be 12 c since it's still chult and next month pc is getting 14, yet more items sets with a 20 point increase for millions more AD to get? Maybe a few diehards, but the rest of us will just let it trickle down because we're too busy getting nerfed to oblivion so you can serve the "whales".
Forcing these changes shows that the game really is in the end of its lifecycle when it's attacking the player base on so many levels of "bending over".
Examples -
Coal Wards only in zen store
Treasure Box Locking so no peeking of items within. Shows proof of
greatbad dropsThe ever shifting ways to make AD
Dailies for AD to refinement caps
Queues and then Private Queues removed and returned in place of random queues
The cheapening of lockbox rewards that now they even have adventure packs (lowest of low and high prob of getting)
Account daily limit to 100k and dungeon runs only reward first daily run bonus, rest trash runs (ex 8k 1st run, 3k every run after per character So after the first dungeon run? It makes it hardly worth the trouble to get any AD at ALL. This is how you empty your queue and force people to not run your content. Why run dungeons at all if it's one and done a day? Great for people with one character but many of us love to run content with what we PAID for. Not everyone uses just one character and if they did again it's about 10% or less. Those with one character would hardly ever run a dungeon for AD in the first place.
4. The lack of content not of lootbox variety. It speaks for itself, when you focus on cash shop gambling the rest of the game suffers. Why on earth should I care on getting garbage based on your rng from boxes for a "chance" at a legend mount the game will never give me nor ever use and if I ever got to use it there's not many places to do so?
In short, there are far too many overused mechanics that you simply burned out the player base, and in the constant cycle to see new content. You are killing what's left, and this will do it simply by making the returns far outweigh any rewards. You need a balance between free players and those that pay. Whales want people to buy their goods, well free people will leave if they can't afford them. Simple as that. A majority will never spend another cent over their initial entry. I am such a person. I paid my entry fee in the psn to you. I take into the fact anything obtainable as per how things are done in the game like mounts, anything, can be obtained by getting AD to Zen and vice versa. I don't want to gamble to progress in a game. Attacking players first is not how you innovate, but rather destroy what you built that makes players leave and not come back. So the dev saying it will stay the course after this you won't. Other games fell to the same greed. This one will too on this course, but there are ways to steer it right but I'll save that for another post.
The other are AH cut (10% traded goods), transmutation costs, Wondrous Bazaar items, Stronghold AD donation, banning of accounts and player attrition. When players stop playing, the AD on that account is 'frozen', however if it is sold to a 3rd party, or that player resumes playing, the AD is freed up again.
The more than Cryptic encourages the use of the AH to transfer items, the more that AD can be removed from the economy. Interestingly, making items bound is counterproductive to this, but is productive in other ways by 'tying up' AD to characters/accounts.
I hope you are making the right path for this 5 year long Game. Good luck on your team for coming up with this strategy
Yes, there is not enough to spend AD on. Only when AD is spent does AD get removed from the economy - this is the only true 'AD sink'.
Zen and AD are not the same, but they are currently equivalent with the ZAX being at 500:1. If the currencies were unpegged, then you would see true market forces, but that is not what is happening here.
Conversion of AD to ZEN is not an AD sink, because the person who purchased the AD with ZEN now has exactly the same amount of AD that was sold (@plasticbat is right about this) and thus the AD is still within the economy. The only true AD sinks are when AD is returned to the program or lost (AH cut, companion upgrades, transmute costs, banned accounts etc), and not when traded between players.
Making people want to spend Zen in the Zen store will be profitable for the company only when people purchase Zen with RL money, however it will not cause AD to diminish if purchased on ZAX, as AD is never 'used up' only passed between hands.
(because your space is too small to squeeze it in from the other post)
It's not that hard and really if the developers paid attention to feedback and played more of their game or watch streams, you can see what a player does and doesn't enjoy about this game. Put yourselves into our shoes. Yes you need to make money, but you make it here or there in how people will actually spend the AD instead of just using them on zen. We shouldn't be beta testing this at this point for a need to start tossing this up for means of keeping the game profitable. Then again, some people think the game is fine, but at the current rate mod 14 is, that's your last mod for sure.
And I call hamster on those numbers if they are claiming 95% aren't refining that much. It might be because that is how many players left the pc platform for the others. You got three platforms, and many of us branched off first to xbox and then the ps4, or play both of that over the pc. There's also the factor that some of us burst refine. Do it sometimes over that amount and then for time on end don't do so to compensate the burnout.
Another note is I have VIP why the heck are my daily key bags not stackable? This also goes for invoke bags. At the very least the key bags I get should be because I'm PAYING (keyword there) for your service beyond the regular base game. Just a small rant but seriously VIP key bags should be stackable.
1. ALLOW ALL mounts to be upgraded to legendary, offer mount class powers based on type of mount - seriously in beta you had manuals for mounts to do this. Somewhere along the line you removed this and went the route of adding powers and speed that any mount can use as long as one had it. Which is great. If you want us to enjoy this on other characters, why does this area not get a revamp to sink AD into? Seriously this didn't come to mind first BEFORE hitting AD cap? With your rng that some of us will NEVER hit that legendary drop. Now the devs can get creative and make different powers for horses, cubes, bears, etc. Each mount class can have a different power and maybe even earn newer powers by mastering the mount.
2. Hunts need their items allowable in the auction house - players need with every new module new items to sell. River district, SKT's stones, etc should either have bind to account versions but also non bound and buyable ones on the exchange. Many of this is blocked by dev means that unlike SKT which had items needed for weapons that allowed this, it made things worthwhile for new content of other means to play the game as intended and not worry on dungeons to get AD. It was a nice break. I think like many the dungeons became priority AFTER river district came into play and wrecked that economy. Chult only furthered the blow by making hunt objects ONLY tradeable between players. Again, not everyone likes to do that, and in some ways prefer the safety of the Auction House to not getting ripped off by another player. So in turn you REMOVED a means for those to spend AD on to actually get things they could before.
3. Allow AD to be used in campaign stores to buy reagents. SKT comes to mind to upgrade that weapon set I like. Stones are not easy to get if I can't get to the dungeon, let alone a good group. Let me get bind to account versions atleast. Call back to number two there where there needs to be more items in exchange. Not rocket science.
4. Allow old sets to be relevant and be upgraded by extension to 520 with a masterwork of their own of refinement. If I like a set for example elemental ALLOW me the choice to make it more powerful beyond its original intent. Not only can it stay relevant, but also more ad to sink.
Elemental evil sets, demo sets, skt sets, river district, chult. Those sets and any further down the line for each mod, allow them the chance to get upgraded. It's costly more than going for new gear, BUT again if people favor different equipment also lets them keep it.
5. If there needs to be a daily cap, let it be done by normal player and VIP rank - 100k with no vip daily, 200k up to rank 6 and at rank 12 300k. Then people are having to pay zen in order to get more out of it.
In fact VIP daily keys should be given the same boost with every 4 ranks an extra key so: rank 1 -4 = 1 key 5-8 = 2 and 9 -12 = 3 considering the drop rates it's more than fair if again I can't get much from them along with most everyone else.
6. Each zone should have had its own dungeon and in the case of new content should get several up to atleast 3 or more. While this is starting to improve, an example of this is the story driven first act of the game to 60 and then to elemental evil's four zones. Why was there never a dungeon for each one and then a fifth for players to take on together to get to 70? Yet every update for sure there's a new lockbox and more random garbage to fill my inventory. It's usually just 1 dungeon or one skirmish for each update, there should be more than that.
2. nets AD for the individual selling the item, and anything that is traded through the AH is an AD sink, because of the AH -10% cut. AD is never 'created' here. But there are still other ways to generate income than via refining rAD - these ways require a bit more thought, set-up, but sometimes through luck (i.e. expensive drops via dungeons, however this is RNG gated).
If Cryptic created ways in which lower level players could sell items through the AH (e.g. professions is a possible avenue), thus receiving refined AD from other players and channeling it through the AH to act as an AD sink, then this would help the economy and also allow lower level players to advance their character as well.
How about a scroll in the Wondrous Bazaar that would grant a +10% of the base chance of hunt item drops? Not an over all +10% but +10% of the base chance. So if an item has a 10% drop chance it would have an 11% drop chance for say 24 hours. If it had a 50% chance it would have a 55% chance. And have the scroll cost say 100k AD. Maybe even a +20% and +30% version costing 200k and 300k respectively. The beauty of this is the hunt items are bound on pick up so they can't be sold or traded. A true AD sink.
I would say have the same thing for dungeons but that would cause more salvage and thus more net AD. But I bet people would buy them for a better chance to get the top gear. Maybe have dungeon versions cost twice as much per version and not last nearly as long. Maybe 1 or 2 hours at most.
I fail to see what is your point here. Making R12 drop, cut refinement requirements by half, etc, in what way exactly this is going to be a good idea?
First, if you make everything way easier to get, everyone will become 18k in few months, and then what? If you don't have any progression to do, you won't play.
But more importantly, your sentence suggests cutting AD sinks. Well isn't that the exact opposite point of view of someone who disagree with the original 100k/account idea?
Limit of 100k/p.d refined AD per account ?
I don´t really think this will impact botting in this game in any way, except cryptic limits the ammount of accounts per player, not sure if your terms of conditions actually limit that option?
Botters generate their AD via multiple accounts allways, they will addapt for sure.
If you want to punish them you need to punish all low level player in this game also by simply kill those leveling dungeon and the 10000k reward. As long as you can earn 10k AD in 3-5 minutes with a lev 20 char you open the gates for abusive behaviour.
Solution? Hard to find. Honestly I don´t know how much time it takes from level 1 to 70 same that I can´t tell about the experiences a new player got. Maybe reward new player at lvel 30 and 50 with character-bound weapon- and armor-enchants on greater/perfect level not to upgrade. They will throw them away if the want to advance but have less issues to level.
The restriction of 100k AD/p.d will punish active player more than anyone else and that´s a bad idea, since this game needs active player more than anything else. And by "active player" I talk about those player that run relevant content and not random Dungeons with their "alt-armada" all time (Cloak Tower the 20.th)
The workarround for this change will look like this: Some player ("alt-armada-player") will create multiple accounts to compensate and run leveling dungeons on low level alts hand in hand with the "Happy-Bot-Family" (until they vomit and quit this game maybe).
We will have less player runnning content. That´s not the way you want this game to look like, do you?
Maybe a better solution or a compromise would be to find a way to burn AD and lift that AD-limit a bit from 100k to maybe 150-200K AD, to give new player without a bot army the option to build up their toon.
Those player can´t run endcontent effectively and sell items same as they need a lot of AD to build up.
I also think you should focus more on "How to burn AD" more than" "How to spoil active players experience"
Some hints where given allready like professions or upgrades to legendary mounts.
I was told some player earn huge ammounts of AD doing professions, I am fine with it. Honestly I have no interest in professions at all and even if I´d earn 10mio AD per day (some do) I won´t play this game like an economic simulator. Maybe find a way for those player to burn their AD without getting mad about it.
I´d burn my AD for mount upgrades honestly - like 3-5 mio AD to get my mount to legend level.
Atm I burn AD for coalescentwards and mop´s to upgrade my enchants to rank14.
I can´t say that I am rich but I can afford the costs step by step by running dungeons and selling items, some do invoking consequently and/or run leveling dungeons all time.
You'll need to complete a levelling (pre-level 70 content) and intermediate (level 70, IL <=9k) random queue now. Say you complete one leveling and intermediate RQ - from running these you will get base 20k AD (8k + 12k) or 30k with 50% invocation bonus, and if you have VIP you will get 22k base (33k with invocation bonus).
To make up the rest of the 67-70k AD difference to reach the 100k AD/day cap efficiently, the rest of the AD will have to be attained via salvage.
Say each Intermediate queue drops a blue or purple (2-6kAD). On average lets make it a 4k salvage drop. Each subsequent IRQ gives 2k AD, thus 6k AD base with salvage (9k with invocation bonus, or 9.9kAD with VIP). Realistically, you will need to do about 6-8 more IRQs to get the 100k AD/day cap.
You will get a small contribution via seals, which is approximately 16.7 AD per seal (4000AD for ring, 300 seals), not including invocation/VIP bonus. This isn't much, as the first run of the Leveling + Intermediate queues nets only about 160 seals, which can be converted to about 2.1k AD base only.
It won't be having to run content 82 times, but it will require queuing up for Intermediate queues for salvage, and I would think the levelling dungeons would be less populated by real players (but more likely more populated by bots running multi-accounts).
It will seem you will have to run your alt on the levelling queue, to not use up your invocation bonus from your main. But still, a typical 'daily dungeon run' may look like this:
1) Alt runs Levelling RQ
2) Alt/Main/Support Buffer runs Intermediate RQ (support for AD role bonus, if you have one)
3) Main runs repeat eTOS/Advanced RQ (if you're feeling lucky)
4) Main runs about 5-8 more eTOS then reaches the AD cap from salvage (via alts)
Is it doable? I guess. Is it fun? No, but it's probably no more fun than repeat levelling RQ with alts. Are they doing enough to really address the AD inflation and the ability of bots to multi-account levelling RQ? Hell no. Will other dungeons suffer a drop in popping due to less incentive from running RQ? Hell yes.
In Mod 14, the 100k AD account refinement cap will only affect players with =>3 more character slots (i.e. basically anyone who bought a character slot or pack which granted one). This cap is ONLY increased for those with 2 character slots, because 3 character slots in Mod 13 have an Account AD refinement cap of 108k AD/day already (hence a 100k AD account cap reduces it for anyone with 3 or more character slots for that account).
Free accounts come with 2 character slots. Bots can make free accounts. Account cap increased for them! LOL. These accounts are the only accounts which benefit from the increased cap! Just like Oprah would say, "More AD for you! And more AD for you!"
DONOT forget to add the income of ad zerg too. there is a reason those two is separated in this forum
RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)
- Astral Diamonds generating through the years.
NWO is a Free to Play video-game in the vein of MMORPGs. At first items were tradable between the people and could be sold on AH. They were dropping from Chests and final Bosses (random loot). The items were sought after by the new players who would use ZAX in order to get AD and actually purchase items from players who already beat the content. The prices on items were exclusive-based and this is a constant in NWO. Exclusivity will always play a major role. First-serve, highest price. This is basics of the economy. So each new MOD and especially when a new class becomes available the items for the class would cost between 1 and 2 millions of AD. It was a good way for the veteran players to earn some quick money. All of this just went into crafting rings and exclusivity still plays a major role whenever a new MOD becomes available. Recently it was the Bronzewood stuff.
Getting items from bosses and whatnot, over the time, became bound to character or bound to account. Rarely anything is sellable. Why? Make things sellable again, at least for a brief period of time, so that people can actually trade some AD between themselves. And this would also help the ZEN store since the players would sometimes buy AD in order to get a specific item from the AH. All AH bought items for AD, which are good, are the Guild Exclusive and to craft them you also need a bunch of other extremely hard things to get. A new player does not even stand a chance getting everything in order on one character, let alone 5 new characters. This way only a handful of people actually get all the benefits and of course that they will be the ones generating the most AD on they characters.
Currently, there are no real ways to generate AD other than running the daily dungeon, skirmish and heroics. It is easy, which is why people do it on multiple characters. Although it is easy, it is also very time consuming and it is a major chore. I was doing so on 10+ characters and by the time I finished everything, selling everything I got and salvaging items I'd get up to 500.000 AD a day. But it is extremely time consuming and it is a major chore to do so for me on 10+ characters. There are people that do this on 50 characters. It is mind boggling. It is an investment that pays of to them in some time, but they are bound to the PC entire day to achieve things.
Granted, achieving AD on a daily basis by doing an extremely boring thing is easy. And it is not appealing. And of course that the prices for things will also go high both for mounts and other things alike.
If there should be a RESTRICTION on the daily limit of refining RAD, there should also be an option to earn AD by other means while playing the game and not just by offering craftable items which only the selected few can maintain manufacturing and actually getting some AD in return.
Currently there is no real possibility to earn AD by doing anything in the game other than playing on multiple characters same dungeons over and over again.
Proposition : Make AD as a prize for each Heroic event at various places. 1 Event = 1000 AD If there are 10 people present at the place. This method makes people who actually play earn a bit extra and could also promote some guild events. It also negates the gear limit and makes people to work together towards a goal of doing something.
It could also be a quest like "finish 10 heroics". It could also be a repeatable quest, but players would actually earn AD instead of RAD.
But as stated by previous posters, the cost of Zen Store and Wondrous Bazaar items (e.g. wards, marks) will be unaffected. Thus the value of AD relative to these items will not be improved (i.e. you won't be able to buy more of them).
It will be more difficult to obtain AD overall, thus:
1. The cost in our time to attain Zen Store/WB items via AD will be increased.
2. The value of Zen will be increased, as it will purchase the same number of AD, which will require greater time to attain.
3. Thus, the value of our time is lessened, while the value of our money is increased.
The winners are the Zen buyers.
I don't think devs are directly (and only) responsible, thus when you reference "their word" it's probably also affected by decisions from management. Devs create the content, which I am grateful, management looks at the bottom line and probably tells the devs to improve it, even if the devs really just want to improve the game. Of course, the decisions that the parent company make can make us decide whether to stay or quit the game. They are not holding us ransom (but it should also make us aware of future titles released by the same parent company). They developers have the ability, however, of introducing this in a way which could have been better, but then again, that's my personal opinion. How? Creating more attractive AD sinks in tandem with this change, providing alternate paths for newer characters to level, and gradually making changes in conjunction with the playerbase providing some input.
First and foremost, this is a game. Find ways to enjoy it, or do something more worthwhile of your time, which I probably should do the same.
However, as someone said before, I would recommned a cap on the AH buyouts as well until economy prices lower on their own. Some people have lots of alts to grind, others have a number like 3-4 they actually also play in and the AD was to help those alts get to end game level. Why not raise cap to something like 120k or 150k and see how it goes? That way, those with 4 toons can benefict and this is a better way for any player that actually plays on their alts nto only to do astral diamonds laundry.
The time has finally come to find a new game. With each update, they eliminate ways to make AD and it will continue until its so bad that spending money is the only way to get anything in the game.
This change will do nothing for the economy. People who have already invested in mastercrafting will continue to make millions each day while players who had to run RQ and salvage are going to be crippled to the point it will not be worth their time to play this game. Im so sick of the devs acting as if every player has 50 million at all times and punishing console players for all the past exploits/ bots on pc. Xbox ZAX has been around 400 for a few months but we still get treated as if we have botters and such. The devs are the ones who let the economy get this way vut once again, punish the players. This change is only good for your super casual 10k item level playing a few hours on the weekends.
I hear people saying "people always claim to quit but don't" and that is comical because you people quit this game each and everyday more than other games lose players. This is different for people saying their gonna quit due to bonding nerf or coalgate because this change to rAD and RQ will prevent players from doing anything in the game in a halfway decent time unless they open their wallets. I was excited for mod 14 but not so much now. I already had money saved for the jubilee event but im not spending a dime until we know if this change is actually going to happen. Its a shame such a fun game is being ruined with each passing update.
Of course these decisons are NOT coming from Cryptic. Cryptic is the design studio/developers only. They are paid under contract to develop a game that the publisher pays them to develop. PWE USA is the subsidiary office operating under the corporate umbrella of the PWE Corporate center located in Bejing, China.
You buy Zen, PWE gets a check from Sony, Microsoft, etc. Crptic and it's employees who work on the game get a salary which is paid out based on whatever contract deals they have worked out with PWE.
I am sure that this whole fiasco originated in the corporate offices of PWE who more than likely are not seeing the sales/conversions they were expecting. In turn, they probably gave instructions to Cryptic to work out a way to generate more cash sales. Simple as that.
I don't fault the developers at Cryptic not one bit for the decision to cut the amount of free ad a player can earn. I'm sure they are not thrilled with it either.
I do hope they can work out a solution that keeps both publisher and players happy. In the end, their jobs depend on it.
The relative value of AD will be marginally increased to those 1 or 2 toon players trying to sell them, but unless Zen buyers have a damned good reason to buy them in the first place why on God's green Earth would they become enthused over buying AD at a higher price?
IF the figures quoted on the growth of the AD side of the economy are to be believed, there will remain hundreds of billions of stockpiled AD.
For that stockpile to diminish, to a point where the ZAX is deeply impacted to a major long term extent, all those hundreds of billions will need to be diminished.
The ZAX does not help as a sink, since there is a zero percent tax rate on transactions. Those AD simply change hands.
And like I say, why would Zen sellers drop their price when those billions still exist if there's no additional incentive?
If the boat is already under water it needs lifting out. Simply plugging the leak is not going to help.
AD needs to not only have its intrinsic value increased by quantitative tightening, but also its relative value increased by having things people will genuinely want to spend them on, on a regular basis.
A flat account wide cap is so punitive because it cuts on a sliding scale. While keeping the cost of Zen unaffected by the main factor that impacts RAD conversion, namely, "how many characters have you bought?"
Example... I convert about 200'000 per day across 8 characters. For my daily efforts to be equated across current model and proposed model, the ZAX would have to hit 200:1 (XB is currently circa 400:1)
A guy doing the max on 10 toons (or 360'000) would need the ZAX to hit 108:1...
Neither of which is going to happen while I still have a hole in my HAMSTER.
Anyone who can't see the relative disparity caused by a flat 100k cap either doesn't understand the groundwork provided by time rich, cash poor players dumping items, mounts, etc, etc, etc, into the general economy as part of their daily RAD gathering, or is willfully ignoring it in the hope that yet another ill thought through knee jerk bulldozer solution might just work.
P.S... it won't.
Even though this decision is likely run upon the imperative of income, the processes are still designed by the developers. So developers do have a say, and responsibility, in the matter. Maybe I wasn't that clear in my previous post. I did also say this could have been done in a better manner, and in tandem with a few other changes which improve gameplay and not hinder it.