For me, i'm torn. It's cool if i just want to play for a bit with my main, where i can easily fill to the cap within 1-2 hours of playtime. But when i want to play my alts after i've reached that cap, it kind of sucks as you can no longer grind for extra AD.
It's a pro for newer players and a con for older players i think. It is nice to not have to transfer all that salvage to my alts, but at the same it stings because now those alts will just collect dust. Maybe sell them for some AD? That'd be nice.
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for me, and players like me, it renders AD boost from invoking obsolete, as getting to the 100k per day is too easy, so much so that I stopped passing salvage to alts and am already 300k backlogged in unrefined AD. I also think this change makes any 2X AD events that may be scheduled in the future pointless as people will just be in massive backlog.
their claim that this won't impact most players is downright wrong in my opinion and I think they knew this from the very start when they tried to mislead everyone. the only people I can think who won't be affected by these changes, are new players with maybe only one or two characters.
Yesterday i've seen another botter or "multiboxer" running Small Heroic Encounters with a whole bunch of similar characters.
But the Devs and some players still dream, that this new restriction will change everything for good...
and the same was said about removing rAD from Leadership.
and the same was said about removing rAD from Invoking.
Do you start seeing a pattern here?
And before you break out the Champagne and start celebrating, that the ZAX backlog has dropped below the 10m AD mark, keep in mind that they have a ZEN charge promotion running at the moment, and that this promotion will end in a while.
Anyway, as mentioned in the official feedback thread, i never paid much attention to the refining limit before, but the last few days i made sure to reach the limit every. single. day., and i doubt that i'm the only one doing that from now on.
Now, at 100K a day, takes 5 days to get enough for a month of VIP, so, 2 months to get a year (yes, still takes weeks to exchange), and at that time, still be completely AD broke. Meanwhile, the wealthy are still ridiculously wealthy, have decades of VIP, tons of Zen, etc. The only thing this did was push new players to want to buy Zen even more, to try and get across that gap faster than years of playing, which, since it takes all of a week to get to 70, and a few months to finish every campaign, is really a drag to see that you’re still a year away from being anywhere near ‘on the level’ with those truly wealthy players, no matter how much you play, because there is now a major throttle on earning potential.
If, like me, you had 5 characters, and only had time to run them through one dungeon per day (and not always that), then even with the invoking bonus you were refining a maximum of 55k AD per day (11k per char, dungeon bonus plus invoking bonus).
To put that in perspective, if I wanted to do the basic move of 'buy 3 rank 7 bonding runestones for companions', for each of my characters, that was essentially all my AD output for 10 days to put the basics on my characters. And that's one of the cheaper upgrade steps.
For anyone newer/more casual, who isn't packed with boons and gear and upgrades, 55k AD per wasn't breaking any economies. The new system, however, means I am lucky to process 18k per day - 1st run gives me 12k (with invoke bonus), 4 repeat runs gives me 1.5k each. Now if I want to put 3 rank 7 bonding runestones on a single companion, it takes me 5-6 days to earn the AD to do so, playing 5 chars an hour and half a day.
From what I can see even going VIP doesn't help with this, as the limits and the earning amounts stay the same whether I am VIP or not.
Tl;dr:
- The system may limit some AD farmers, but for newer/casual players it literally cripples their AD earning potential
- It does nothing to encourage VIP purchase
- It discourages players from playing past the minimum amount required
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
I generally don't focus on random queues at all, but get most of my rAD from salvage. As I mostly play on weekends, I may not reach 100K on weekdays, but I easily exceed that on weekends and then refine the backlog over the week.
My main source of income is the AH, though.
Now, I have noticed one improvement - on the rare occasions when I do a random queue I am seeing better geared people than before. I guess many people are now only sending their (well-geared) main characters through the RQ.
So, overall....a slight positive. I like it that the game basically now encourages you to focus on a single character, instead of managing an army of alts.
You do want to run different capable toon to earn rAD because of AD bonus.
I said I wouldn't like this change and I don't like it. 100k per day as of now is nothing, considering the prices in the AH. It literally takes you months to make small progress now. (sorry new players)
Also personally, once I made my daily 100k rough AD I just don't see a reason to keep playing.
The above criteria is becoming harder and harder for me to find in a lot of games nowadays.
I understand the RQs bonuses/system was not around before I re-joined the game, but for me it was all I knew as a returning/new player. I used that system within the rules to progress my characters with the aim of seeing Neverwinter and all it's content and catching up so I could enjoy it with others.
That system has been ripped out from beneath the feet and gutted to oblivion. Not just one adjustment but a myriad of targeted reductions in the guise of being beneficial imo. I know that might sound harsh but I used to play STO waaay back too and saw the same things happen in that game, literally the same things.
So I am not surprised, I am actually happy this happened sooner rather then later, before I threw my money at this game because I do enjoy it very much but the progression will become terrible unless future Mods/patches rectify it.
As it stands I have 8 characters and I only now play 2. The others are gaining BRAD every day for pretty much nothing. This is not a system that encourages me personally to play more or spend more, just the opposite. It is sad really because I find these kind of things prevalent in high profile IP games with dedicated player base and the majority get treated like just a number while expecting the customers to remain loyal. On many forums people will say something like:
"In order for the lights to stay on........" or "The devs have families to feed......" or "The devs need salaries" etc etc.
This is all well and nice but you cant humanise something like that when punched in the face or nuts and then be told "Well they are a business". Yes they are and they want our hard earned money. To me its like blackmail, in order to have a decent experience you have to x,y,z. Well I don't give in to black mail so to speak, exercise a bit of self control and restraint or find something that isn't detrimental to my experience and time put in to play. You just gotta have a bit of self respect.
"We want to discourage the playing style where people mindlessly run dozens of characters through the same content over and over, and encourage people to play a smaller number of characters in more varied and more challenging content. The "army of alts" approach is mind-numbing - it is not good for the players and not good for the game's economy"
That's what this is really about, from my perspective.
an idea i had for an ad sink would be that a player could donate unrefined Rad to a guild coffer instead of ad giving players guild marks and guilds a boost, or exchange Rad for rp & or gold as a lot of new players need rp and gold
Selling lockbox drops, masterwork items, enchants etc...etc...
You just have to be a bit smart and then you can make millions per week.
The AD changes will take time to make an impact, though. The dam is - hopefully - fixed, but there is still a lot of floodwater to be drained off before things are back to anything resembling normal.
This has not made people play varied content, or even challenging content, as the hunts are easy-mode, even with cards, most of the time, as it is almost always a 5-person group, and at least 2 of them are 16K+ IL. So, no... players are logging in, maxing the cap, and either doing hunts, or logging out. At least having a higher cap, or caps on multiple characters, kept players involved and doing various runs for salvage. I saw tons of CN, etc before... now, I almost fell out of my chair yesterday because my alliance decided to do Tia/EDemo!! (instead of mindlessly hunting)
Each main character does one random queue. All salvage is sent to my 3 alts.
All 6 characters are invoked to maximum every day.
With VIP rank 12 + invoke bonus + DC bonus (for playing DC on advanced queue),
I earn 100k per day in less time than before.
Overall, I prefer the new system because I spend less time doing random queue's,
and more time doing other things.
100k rad/day is enough for me, but If Cryptic were to increase the refine limit to 150k/day or 200k/day,
then that would be perfect for me. 100k/day is enough, but a slightly higher limit would be appreciated.
And i agree with this comment:
Results in basically the same income for less effort, salvage farming is easy with no need to run dungeons that are all time wasting for little reward.
Overall it's just a terrible system that keeps the wealthy, wealthy and the poor, poor. We need to institute some kind of Tax on those overly wealthy players, forcing them to spend while preventing them from earning until they fall in line.
Not those players just doing alright for themselves, just the obscenely wealthy.
I swap loot to for the best AD/refine-ration between chars.
If the wanted to improve things they should have changed invoking-bonus account wide, or simply scip that bonus, to release me from that urge to swap stuff between chars.
Prices will go down I guess, but that´s also no big improvement in the long run. Maybe there is less daily AD in the game but supply and demand will balance out once again. You earn less for sold stuff, you pay less for stuff.