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Official Feedback Thread: Astral Diamonds

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  • draconislupusdraconislupus Member Posts: 205 Arc User
    edited May 2018
    This will cause all profession based items to go up in price. That is profession assets, tools, resources, and products. Why?

    Because this will become the main source of producing AD after Mod 14 and thus the cost for the main way of making AD will skyrocket. You have to spend AD to make AD.
  • thefiresidecatthefiresidecat Member Posts: 4,486 Arc User

    > @thefiresidecat said:

    > Additional AD sinks is also an area we are looking into and have some future plans already, but continue to investigate fun/rewarding ways to spend AD.

    >

    > I think the important part of sharps suggestion is that it effects only the most wealthy of the citizens of neverwinter. I think it's important that the sinks are things that don't affect the new to mid level players who only have a small to moderate amount of wealth to begin with.



    No it effects the AD poor more than anyone. We can only get 100k per account now so why have more than 1 toon? And if there's no point in having more than one toon why even play the game? I smell death in the air and it's name is mod 14. Instead of making this change they should just have double ad refinement weekends every few months. It will give the economy the AD boost it needs but not completely screw over everyone in the process.

    sharps suggestion was that they use mastercraft items as an ad sink. I was pointing out that what makes his suggestion especially viable is that it only affects the wealthy. future ad sinks really need to affect the wealthy not the lower players. my point was not invalid
  • draconislupusdraconislupus Member Posts: 205 Arc User
    The question to ask is why does Cryptic care about the amount of AD in the game?

    Because AD can be converted to Zen.
  • tripsofthrymrtripsofthrymr Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,624 Community Moderator
    All opinions are welcome. Please keep it civil.
    Caritas Guild Founder (Greycloak Alliance)

    Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
  • viperwitch23viperwitch23 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 205 Arc User
    1. People run content to get RAD
    2. People refine RAD
    3. People put refined AD into exchange to buy ZEN
    4. People with little time to play and a lot of cash buy ZEN for real money and put it into exchange
    5. People who get RAD and refine it buy that ZEN and use it
    6. People with little time sell their zen and get Astrals to use on AH

    No Astrals to exchange for ZEN? No ZEN sales. People with little time stop buying ZEN to sell it but we could have then another back log.
    This time it could be back wards.
    Now back log stands at 18459188 @ 500 Each
    Excluding some a few hundred thousands who want it for 499 etc
    Then we could see the back log going back wards of 1-3mill of ZEN sitting here with no one buying.

  • viperwitch23viperwitch23 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 205 Arc User
    Rise cap to 200-300k
    100k is nothing.
    Hundreds might go broke before prices adjust and people might just refuse to sell at lower prices.

    Wards are through the roof.
    No wards no upgrades.
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  • draconislupusdraconislupus Member Posts: 205 Arc User
    edited May 2018
    Does the change directly effect me? Not normally. But it does take away an ability to do some serious farming for something that I want now. Which is the point. The banked on idea here is if you want it now you are going to have to buy Zen and selling for AD instead of doing a few days of extra farming to be the quick AD boost.
  • mentinmindmakermentinmindmaker Member Posts: 1,492 Arc User
    The 100k account cap change will only affect the most active players. I rarely cross 100k RAD a day even with 8 alts of which 3 are geared.

    I think the RQ change will have more effect, currently I can run 3 characters through RQs and easily cap them all at 36k AD. That is going to be a lot harder now.

    Also: Looking at PTS, the 3rd level RQ consists of the 12-people events and FBI, MSP etc. Winning that with a PUG will be nontrivial. So very likely the number of reliably doable RQs is now dropping from 3 to 2.

    Income from RQ bonuses will drop sharply, forcing us to make more RAD by salvage runs which likely give less AD per hour than farming RQ bonuses. More salvage runs also makes epic chest keys an issue, 3 keys per day from VIP does not go that far.
    (This probably is a good reason to have several playable alts...)

    I think the RQ changes will cut a lot harder into the AD income than the 100k AD refining cap change for most of us.
  • tictac#8128 tictac Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    > @"demolitioninc#2453" said:
    > 100K per account, that's a huge blow to all botters. Love it.

    I don't believe it will hurt bots, they will just create more accounts. It will hurt someone like me. An unemployed (retired) person looking for a fun way to pass my time. One character for each class (8), current max 288,000. I don't hit that every day. BUT, I often get close. 100,000 is too low. I don't know enough about the other stuff to comment. But if this happens, I will have to find some other game to fill my day. Who knows, I may just decide to stick with the other game.
  • luks707luks707 Member Posts: 230 Arc User

    First it is important to note this isn't a change due to botters as many people have suggested in this thread, it is a change to improve the value of Astral Diamonds.

    Can I just say how much I like that this reply was put. I think it is really important to understand what we are talking about.
    So here is my view on a few things
    1. Account wide AD access.
    I think this is a positive feature. It should have existed when the game first came out and I think it is extremely logical. I would like to see the account wide approach go hand in hand with ways of making it easier to run alts, e.g. the campaign boost tokens being made easier to get and areas like the need to farm voninblood looked at.

    2. Bots
    Even if you are not thinking about bots, most of us are and if you want to do something about AD inflation you may want to do the same thing. It smarts that there areas of the game that are very rewarding but that any sane person would prefer to run by bot. This is professions (ever since the drop of gateway all the clicking is a pure time sink and there are short activities that are more rewarding, all skewing things in favour of bots) and low level dungeons. Please improve these areas to level the playing field.

    3. Account wide AD cap.
    I think an account-wide AD cap is in principle a good thing. While we have all gotten used to shifting stuff around it is something you have to explain to every new player and that takes up unnecessary time you have to do it. Being able to just refine on whatever character is a great idea.
    What is more complicated is the daily refinement cap. It does sound like you are planning to restrict access to AD overall, so maybe it will be fairly hard to reach 100k AD a day. But on the whole it does sound like it perhaps a step too far in one direction. My advice, start the cap higher, say 200k AD a day, which any reasonable player would imho accept and that is near the current total for someone with a 6 character slots. If the other measures etc. don't bite you can then lower it at a later stage, but it is less of a crash and you end up with people who have bought character slots feeling less screwed (one of the worst things you can do imho).

    4. Bonus rough AD
    It is unclear what it is going to happen to the bonus AD characters get from invocations. Will this also be account wide? Will that remain capped at 100k per character slot? Please claritfy.

  • mordekai#1901 mordekai Member Posts: 1,598 Arc User
    edited May 2018
    Let me begin by saying that, first, I play on XB and second, I agree that the acquisition of RAD needs balancing.

    Now let me put a couple of things into perspective, points that a few people seem to be missing. (I will be using simile, metaphor, analogy, and a degree of sarcasm in so doing...)

    First, the notion that a 100'000 RAD:AD will somehow penalise botters.
    Well, yes... it will, but it will do exactly the same to non botters. When punitive measures are put in place to deal with the effect rather than cause, it will affect all means of the cause.
    For instance, I imagine that if John Maclaine had been a Cryptic Developer rather than an NYPD Detective, rather than picking off Hans Gruber's team one by one, he would have called in a tactical nuclear strike to vaporise Nakatomi Plaza thereby killing all the terrorists with one massive sweeping display of ill thought through brute force. Obviously, along with all the hostages, there would be thousands of unwitting civilian casualties, but hey... if the mission goal is simply "Stop the terrorists." then Job Done.

    Until some form of Captcha-esque verification of live interaction can be introduced for reward claims, any punitive measure will affect botters and proper players in equal measure. Please bear this in mind before applying scatter gun solutions.

    Second, the idea that this will only affect those greedy rich HAMSTER with millions of alts.
    No... just NO.
    This example uses actual mathematics.

    If you have never played more than your original first character, then this proposed change is Chocolate Christmas with a solid gold cherry on the top. Your capacity to convert RAD will be raised by 177% Congratulations.
    If you chose to run that first free alt, (but no more than that), then you too have an increase... only 38%, but still... CHEERS.

    However, if you have taken ANY amount of Zen and purchased any form of character slot... even if you are running a third character only.. then this change negatively impacts YOU.
    Three toons sees a reduction of roughly 7.5%
    Four toons is over 30% reduction.
    Five... 45%
    And if you have six its over 50%.
    By the time you hit 50 characters that reduction in potential RAD conversion capacity is roughly 95%

    So yes, of course it impacts players more, the more characters they have, because it is, quite literally, a penalty that corresponds DIRECTLY to how much you have spent purchasing character slots. But no one should kid themselves that it doesn't impact everyone who has three or more characters.

    Now, when we complained about how negatively the Random Queue would impact the game much of the argument was subjective and anecdotal.
    Not so with this.

    It is demonstrably biased toward negatively impacting those who have invested the most cash/time and effort into buying more character slots on a sliding scale. More spent. More Hurt.

    This is a punitive measure that you feel the need to implement, because no one thought "what will players DO with all those character slots we are selling them?" in the first instance.

    They would use those character slots as zombie farmers, and inert bankers....

    The Devs would have realised this had they ever read the book "Of Course Thats What They Would Do" by the famous author, "ANYONE who has ever participated in an MMORPG"

    So, sure, there's too much AD in the game, and something needs to be done...
    But please... have a think about that Cap. It should at the VERY LEAST not apply for the first two additional, (paid-for) character slots.

    Oh, and don't announce HAMSTER like this on the day you run a double Seals event on XBox. It makes you look like a bunch complete bloody amateurs.
    "Too much RAD in the game.... Here... have some free salvage."

    Its stuff like that, that often makes me wonder if the people behind this game could find their own HAMSTER with both hands and a map.

    It does NOT inspire confidence that you have a grip on the situation.
    Post edited by mordekai#1901 on
  • bluthbananabluthbanana Member Posts: 49 Arc User
    I remember when the random queues we announced the first time. People went crazy and thought their AD income was going to be cut significantly. In reality the amount of AD that could be earned through unchallenging alt grinds hugely went up. Taking that down a notch is fine with me.

    The random normal dungeons and the random T1/T2 dungeons are not enough of a challenge for higher IL characters to justify those payouts.


  • draconislupusdraconislupus Member Posts: 205 Arc User
    Fact is there are only 6 ways for player to make AD in this game. With number 1 being the only way to add AD to the game.

    1. Refining RAD into AD. How you get the RAD doesn't matter.

    2. Buying Zen and selling it for AD.

    3. Selling random drops from dungeons in the AH.

    4. Selling Profession products in the AH

    5. Selling items bought with Guild Marks on the AH.

    6. Selling items dropped from Lockboxes on the AH.

    The development team thinks that by neutering number 1 number 2 will move up to number 1. They think that the economy is static and that it won't adjust dynamically. (They must be students of modern government economics.) The idea is if number 1 is neutered then not only will number 2 move up but the prices will all just drop. But if you think that you have zero concept of how a true economy works. Truth is number 3 will move up to number 1. (People will always, always do the cheapest method 1st.) Granted number 2 will probably see a boost for a time but it will not last. In addition all aspects of number 3 will become more expensive because it is even less regulated than number 1 is now. But even with all aspect of number 3 becoming more expensive that expensive will be AD not real world money and thus people will still do that 1st.

    Is making AD refinement account wide a good idea? Probably.

    Is making the cap so low that you force those that have huge amounts to take over the professions even more than they are now a good idea? Not in the slightest.

    Will the cap effect most of the players on a day to day basis? No.

    Will the cap effect players from putting in extra time in the game to get that item that just came out that they want? Absolutely.

    Will the cap cause more players to quit or do nothing but professions and not play the game hoping that it is fixed down the road? Yes.
  • muminekm#3459 muminekm Member Posts: 248 Arc User
    Honestly when I read all posts I think most people fail to understand simple economics.

    It's good change for new players or someone with less time to play (casual). It mostly hurt that 1-5% of people who farmed 200-300k daily. Well even people who often reach 200k in single day have many "no income" days so it will even out. I know some people like that - playing all day but they didn't bought any zen yet. It's understable since it's f2p game but if one person generates around few $ currency worth a day or more.. it will break the economy. Right now it's broken since we're able to generate way more AD than before (at least for me - random queue generates a lot of AD plus just few Tong/Cradle runs get me a lot of AD from salvage). We see its effect in zen backlog.. (18 mil on PC). With that value of AD will increase (prices will drop too but slowly). Majority of playerbase will benefit from it.

    Increasing zen/ad limit from 500? It's stupid and I don't want to pay 1000 ad/zen (because if there will be 1000 limit it will reach that for sure..like on russian server).

    Increasing daily cap to 200k+? It will not change a thing then. 100k day is healthy amount doable in few hours or less. Mass grinding dungeons for 10 hours 7 days week like some do isn't good healthy thing to do imho. Of course there will be problem of people running multiple accounts but their AD influx is limited (no end game characters, no guild etc).

    But of course it's still bandaid of sort and we actually need more AD sinks. Right now we can only buy marks/cubes/rush things or 10% cut on AH to delete our AD. We would need nice transmutes/comps in Bazar, some expensive items here (like Sharp idea - making some mw items buyable for AD directly).
  • muminekm#3459 muminekm Member Posts: 248 Arc User

    I remember when the random queues we announced the first time. People went crazy and thought their AD income was going to be cut significantly. In reality the amount of AD that could be earned through unchallenging alt grinds hugely went up. Taking that down a notch is fine with me.

    The random normal dungeons and the random T1/T2 dungeons are not enough of a challenge for higher IL characters to justify those payouts.


    it's one of the reason why our current economy is broken like this. I'm quite casual player most of the time but my income increased a lot with random dungeons. If I want I can just spam random leveling for whopping 8-10k day (with salvage but I can't remember exact numbers) on several alts for few mins each. Bah even epic dungeon lately dropped me mostly on in esot/kessel (well I like it isn't fbi all day like previously) that last even less for even bigger payouts. After introducing random queues our income increased a lot (for people who use it of course). This had hard impact on our economy.
  • polaris1986polaris1986 Member Posts: 320 Arc User
    oh, its a good enougn - 100rAd is about 1 evening of play) not 24 time running with bots.
    "sometimes the world doesn't need another hero, sometimes what it needs is a monster"

  • rikitakirikitaki Member Posts: 926 Arc User
    Interesting solution to the trap you dig yourself called high VIP rank. Many games pamper new and incoming players, but to make VIP interesting you cut the AD sinks for the part of players that earn the most of AD instead. Now, to counter that, you make for exactly those players a quite easily reached limit on the income...

    Anyway, I like the idea to widen the selection in Wondrous Bazaar.
  • peregr1nusperegr1nus Member Posts: 160 Arc User
    an account can refine up to 100,000 Astral Diamonds per day.

    You make it sound like if the AD from salvage was filling the backlog, funny.
  • draconislupusdraconislupus Member Posts: 205 Arc User
    edited May 2018
    > @luks707 said:
    >
    > 4. Bonus rough AD
    > It is unclear what it is going to happen to the bonus AD characters get from invocations. Will this also be account wide? Will that remain capped at 100k per character slot? Please claritfy.

    That is a very good question. What will become of the bonus RAD from invoking? I'm guessing that the extra RAD will be a total waste of time. You will get it for whatever 1 or few characters actually get to refine AD each day. All the rest will be at 100k forever.

    Also note that AD will not be account wide. You will be able to add it to the bank. "Astral Diamonds can now go into the shared bank." Not that they will be account shared. Which means RAD will be stuck on each character seperately. Personally I think that if you are going to cap AD refining account wide then AD should be stored account wide like Zen.

    Which begs the question how will the game determine which character(s) gets to refine AD each day?
  • brewaldbrewald Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 212 Arc User
    Comparing to the actual system, I see one positive thing:
    If you have between 1 or 2 characters you will win.

    If you have more than 3 characters, you are losing.

    What will happen?
    Peoples will stop playing a majority of their toons, and they will become pure banks.
    Only 3 toons will be used in game.
    For exemple, I have 10 toons, why will I continue to play with my little toons if I can't win ADs with them when I run a dungeon?

    About the ZAX?
    It won't resolv the problem.
    Peoples store AD during the year and trade them for the 2 events where we can have reductions in Zen Market.

    A solution will be to place a limitation to the Zen quantity per account.
    With a limitation to 25K Zen per account, you will have more chance to solve the ZAX problem than by nerfing AD.
    Brewald - GWF 18.3k
    Eleonore - CW Mof Renegade 17.5k
    Harlgard le Vieux - OP Prot 18.3k
    Valrik - DC AC 18.2k
    Furiela - SW Temp 18.1k
  • sociald#9983 sociald Member Posts: 8 Arc User
    Well this rewards those who already have a lot of AD. Capping those new and upcoming players who work hard to be able to compete only discourages people.
    It does not discourage the botters because as others have said they have multiple accounts. It will not slow down the influx of AD from them into the game.
    This will not help your average player at all. It will in fact make things worse.
  • arcanjo86arcanjo86 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,093 Arc User

    First it is important to note this isn't a change due to botters as many people have suggested in this thread, it is a change to improve the value of Astral Diamonds.

    We could, as an example, raise the ZAX exchange cap to 1,000 on PC. It would rise up significantly to at least 750, but likely higher. This wouldn't make auction house items more affordable for players as the value of AD just decreased significantly and would drive up the auction house prices. This would require players to grind even more AD to buy what they did previously.

    Limiting the ZAX to 500, helps give some stability to the value of AD, but not fully as there is still a lot of RAD entering the economy each day and only so much leaving. Our changes are intended to both help bring the prices in the AH, and the ZAX down, as well as help newer players and those with less playtime earn a bit more AD to help them out.

    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.

    Keeping the value in AD is an ongoing project for us and we will certainly be watching how this change impacts the ZAX and AH and can always make adjustments in the future to ease back the limits if that seems like the right choice.

    100k lol i can cap 8 chars in one day with the recent 36kx8=288k rad day, by spending all day farming(main char)+2 random queue on alts, and with vip 12 the wondorous bazaar prices are fine, you need to get players excited to get get vip to max rank because the discounts from it + some discount events makes the ad values shine, idk were you pulled that data from but someone is manipulating those values for sure, making items from zen store bound to account will stop bots from selling it on ah, this would make a huge difference on ah items and players decide if they want to use exchange or charge zen on account, the daily ad income for players to 100k/per account its a "kick in the balls".
  • zerappuszerappus Member Posts: 138 Arc User
    A 100k daily ad account cap is actually good except for one massive hindsight/downside: Bots can circumvent and benefit by making a ton of accounts and AD laundering. This system actually favors botting.

    What is needed is a new account/new character provisionary currency.

    Solution: In addition to the 100k daily ad account cap:
    - Create a NEW CURRENCY for new accounts/players (aside from Rough Astral Diamonds).
    - Currency can buy BOUND to account/character items only from Wondrous Bazaar ( or a new newbie store )
    - Unlockable access to Rough Astral Diamonds.

    Implementation:
    - New accounts with new characters can only earn this new currency ( instead of Rough Astral Diamonds ).
    - New players can use this new currency to buy Character BOUND items such as Rank 8 Enchants, Basic Gear, Purple Mount, Artifact, Marks, etc. ( every items essential to new player to progress, only character bound and cannot be salvaged/converted to RP).
    - Set a time-gated item level + character progression (campaign/storyline) threshold that will unlock access/graduate the character to earning Rough Astral Diamonds.
    - Every new character by the new account goes through same process.
    - After a 6 month probation period when the first character unlocks Rough Astral Diamond, every new character no longer have to unlock Rough Astral Diamond.
    - New players/accounts can still access Zen Exchange if they have Zen/ViP.
    - New players/accounts can still have access to regular Astral Diamonds from selling Lockbox items on AH.

    Example: Slew of requirements to Unlock access to Rough Astral Diamonds:
    + Finish Dread Ring + Sharandar + Elemental Evil Campaigns.
    + Have total 10k item level.
    + Have 3x purple artifacts.
    + Upgrade weapon + offhand to purple.

    That kills off account chaining bot hordes. They don't benefit from character bound items like new players. And there's no access to Rough Astral Diamonds until they progress their character in normal fashion. Plus the 6 month probation period adds extra hurdle from spamming new characters.



  • jasperfichtejasperfichte Member Posts: 5 Arc User


    The end goal of these changes, and future changes, is to get the AD markets into a better state for the players, allow the ZAX to work better and to make AD more meaningful and useful all around.


    So we should suppose that You know the meaning of the way to spend our AD, lfmao! That's ridiculous.

    At this time your goal seems just to spread panic and confusion with the announcement of Mod14. If there's a traffic problem in the ZAX, it's just for the knowledge of the Sale on Zen Market, so people usually go crazy on their requests of zen.
    BUT: it's not hitting our earnings the right way to solve the issue, imo.

    Against introducing this kind of limits, I say: introduce more contents and really cool items (not the stupid hunt's gear that when you look to the effort to obtain it, you think "why I should spend my time to get an item which doesn't really makes the difference in the game contents and which will be useless on the next month cuz a new mod with new gear is coming?") which make people thinking to buy that special mount or that special armor, for example.

    Variety should be the Key.

    And If your real goal is to make people buy more Zen with real money, I suggest the same approach: instead of reducing our ADs, try to make the game more appealing and avoid to "scare" us with restrictions ;)

    Hag of Many-Daggers
This discussion has been closed.