I wish we could trade in extra character slots, since this mod is making them completely useless by getting rid of salvage/leadership. Like for reals what is the point of getting epic cards from my 11 characters when i can' get salvage from em. Doesn't even have to be full value or for zen just something anything.
Do you really think that abuse "invoke" and "professions" is a kind of gameplay? - This is a botting.
LOL you just called everyone who spent money on alt slots and professions a botter. If you knew a little less and were a bit more high handed you too could be a cryptic developer.
Frankly put, I find the tendency to blame the economy's problems on botting really dumb. It's not bots, it's leadership armies. It's *always* been leadership armies. And other benefits characters provide just by existing, rather than players using them as playtime.
But no, that doesn't constitute botting, that much is true.
You are leaping to a conclusion without evidence to support it. This is just foolish, but thankfully easily refutable.
The first largeproblem with the economy , the one that caused the infamous Caturday rollback was caused by an exploit it had nothing to do with botting. The swordcoast adventures became problematic because of botting both of those are directly supported by developer statements for what that's worth.
Caturday was an isolated event, but people keep acting like the extra income from it lasted for five years.
As for the Gateway, it's not really possible to tell the difference between botting and and people just doing it repeatedly. Either way, there were a lot of actors engaging with it and getting resources; whether that was automated or not was really beside the point.
The problem has always been that there's an incentive to add more characters and just log in and do your clicks. You've presented zero evidence that suggests that's not the case.
Please learn to distinguish between evidence and your personal prejudices.
The latest "problem" with the economy is and was salvage from an exploit. Something you have pontificated on quite a bit but had absolutely nothing to do with botting or adding more characters.
As to the caturday exploit we have no direct measurement how big it was, but Zen to Diamonds hit 1 zen/500 diamonds then and pretty much hasn't moved since.
It's even sillier to blame the extra slots as being used by botters, seeing as they can just make endless free accounts and likely find them preferable. If for no other reason than eventual bans would cost them nothing.
Also, there was a good period of time after the reset where zen wasn't pegged at 500. That's what my memory says, but I'll concede I may not have been paying super close attention to it. Either way, saying "Everything is and always will have been because of that damned Caturday!" is wildly speculative, and makes it impossible to have any serious discussion about the in-game economy.
You have been trying to be serious about the ingame economy ?
All I have been seeing from you is "Thanks for making the way I play that much better than everybody else's" and "Oh you don't like it ? You must be cheating"
Anyway for someone who argues that everything can't be blamed on caturday you had no problem blaming everything on leadership despite easily seen evidence to the contrary ?
Or are you not the person who said " It's not bots, it's leadership armies. It's *always* been leadership armies."
I never said you were cheating. Leadership armies can affect the game economy without it being cheating.
My point has been that the legitimate players outnumber the cheaters by a pretty large margin, and while botting and other exploits certainly have an impact, it's a question of scale. 60%+ of the player base doing something is going to have a lot more impact than 1-6% of the player base doing something, even if the economic impact of that 1-6% is five times as much.
No one is accusing you of cheating for having a leadership army [EDIT] Actually, some people may be-they're wrong. But I'm not accusing you of cheating for having a leadership army.
*I* have a leadership army (in the sense that I cultivated additional characters and bought character slots in order to farm professions). It's not cheating.
That doesn't mean its existence is good for the game.
You keep saying it's existence is bad for the game but never present any evidence or even plausible argument to support the position.
Arguably leadership in its current incarnation is very good for the game.
1. It manufacturers in game goods that players can and do trade on the AH draining AD from the system 2. It allows people to not fall so far behind if they can't play for a day or two 3. If you have an extended period of time where you can't play it allows you to remain engaged in the game 4. It allows people to lessen the ridiculous level of pain involved in obtaining RP to level their characters
If you think the devs are going to magically rebalance those things into a diffuse benefit for everyone else I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. It's no more likely than the Devs telling players what the estimated real costs of playing the game are.
To be clear, I'm presuming that Leadership armies are bad from the game by virtue of the fact that they're basically removing them. There are theories as to why-basically, when you divorce game wealth from time spent on the game, you create weird incentives where the wealth of various resources isn't determined as a direct function of the active player base which may affect prices. But I don't know why they're moving away from Leadership armies, just that they are, and have been slooooooooooooowly doing so for years now.
I am more sympathetic to counterarguments that "Umm actually leadership armies are GOOD for the game" than arguments along the line of "DON'T INRINGE ON MY PLAY STYLE" though, sure.
So let's address the four points you brought up:
1.) That all works, but what's the boundary in the current system? You create 30 characters, you have 30 times as much creation potential, without spending the necessarily play time on 30 characters. If it's not a problem that there's an excess of product that's fine, but what if it's perceived that it is? (that being said, I *like* RP being cheap, but suspect devs dislike it)
.
Anybody who makes a comment well I love the feature but the devs dislike it and that's enough to let them spoil the gameplay is either a HAMSTER or not serious. ( who knew someone who enjoys receiving pain would be a filtered term and now it's not ?)
I really wished I could torture my customers into paying me three times the going rate if they wanted to or not, and I could simply walk in to their offices and take away equipment I sold them if they liked it or not.
They had other ideas.
If you want to eliminate the benefit from having more characters you have to eliminate transferable wealth and all the little skinner box tricks the devs use to try and keep you logging in no matter what. Me I already find myself playing less and less ,looking at other games, and planning an expansion to my garden.
If wealth is generated by *playtime* and not *wait time* then you don't have to get rid of transferable wealth, because time spent playing on character A is necessarily time not spent playing on character B.
Oh you think the people with "Alt Armies" can't play you into the ground ? You really do like to make assumptions.
If they play 10 hours a day and have an alt army, and then go to only playing 10 hours a day, their relative net work in game terms relative to people who don't have alt armies will still go down.
If, on the other hand, if they're playing 30 minutes a day and have alt armies, and then switch from playing 30 minutes a day to 2+ hours a day to make the same amount of wealth as before ...
Don't you think that's Cryptic saying "Working as Intended?" Getting people to be active in the game is presumably one of the goals.
So which is it?
You keep making assumptions. I can only say I hope you are right about the developers intentions because I hope whoever championed this gets called out on the carpet and has strips taken off their back when it completely fails to do any of the above, and just winds up making the RMT selllers and botters a pot of money.
0
someonediesMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,257Arc User
I wish we could trade in extra character slots, since this mod is making them completely useless by getting rid of salvage/leadership. Like for reals what is the point of getting epic cards from my 11 characters when i can' get salvage from em. Doesn't even have to be full value or for zen just something anything.
Do you really think that abuse "invoke" and "professions" is a kind of gameplay? - This is a botting.
LOL you just called everyone who spent money on alt slots and professions a botter. If you knew a little less and were a bit more high handed you too could be a cryptic developer.
LOL Why do you ignore the word ABUSE?
Dead 🔪
0
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
You keep making assumptions. I can only say I hope you are right about the developers intentions because I hope whoever championed this gets called out on the carpet and has strips taken off their back when it completely fails to do any of the above, and just winds up making the RMT selllers and botters a pot of money.
You keep making assumptions. I can only say I hope you are right about the developers intentions because I hope whoever championed this gets called out on the carpet and has strips taken off their back when it completely fails to do any of the above, and just winds up making the RMT selllers and botters a pot of money.
Didn't really answer the question but ok.
There is no way properly answer the question because it suffered from multiple category errors. Turns out the devs wanted to make people happier with crafting by eliminating the portion of crafting most people participated in. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
2
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
You keep making assumptions. I can only say I hope you are right about the developers intentions because I hope whoever championed this gets called out on the carpet and has strips taken off their back when it completely fails to do any of the above, and just winds up making the RMT selllers and botters a pot of money.
Didn't really answer the question but ok.
There is no way properly answer the question because it suffered from multiple category errors. Turns out the devs wanted to make people happier with crafting by eliminating the portion of crafting most people participated in. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean, you're not wrong-just the statement is less ironic than you make it out to be. Devs want the process to be more involved and enjoyable for people who engage in crafting, and for people who are crafting to feel like they're actually involved in a crafting interface. Like, new system is designed how you'd expect a crafting system to be designed for a new game, rather than being based on the old NW professions system.
Definitely true that most of the people were using the old system as just a way to extract sellable RP from each of their toons though, sure. But I don't know what % of players saw that as enjoyable, and what % just saw it as another source of income.
I'm way more sympathetic to concerns that this is gonna cause RP prices to skyrocket than I am to concerns that alts are somehow useless now.
@theycallmetomu I agree with some of your points and dare I say, even have a similar play style preference.
Just to rewind way back to the OPs main point, he stated that the character slots have been made less valuable and I don't think anyone can argue that point. I don't think a refund is necessary though. The slots still have other uses (until they kill those uses too).
I also want to add that I feel as if there's some negative assumption between having double digit characters and being an alt army. When I initially created a large amount of my alts it was to test SW builds. I probably have about 10 SW alts alone as that was my main.
Then loadouts came out and made the character slots have less value from a testing perspective. But obviously I continued to do professions on them and use them for storage outside of my main 8.
The devs added the AD refining limit devaluing multiple slots even further. Now the change to professions. Yes, they're constantly removing things and making it more alt-unfriendly. Yes we adjust or make a decision to move on.
After years playing the game I tend to think this has more to do with their bottom line than it does with helping the game economy. Maybe at some point they should just come out and admit they made a huge mistake letting people buy 50 character slots! I mean, you would have to be completely incompetent to not see that could turn into a colossal blunder. But what do you think they saw back then? $$$$$$$.
And that is perfectly fine. Devs gotta eat too. Devs don't eat. They starve. They die. We don't get game content. Massive horrors ensue across the globe.
Just don't try to sell me that this, and many other recent changes were done strictly for the good of the economy and not to force people back into the zen market and spending some real $$$s.
I mean, you're not wrong-just the statement is less ironic than you make it out to be. Devs want the process to be more involved and enjoyable for people who engage in crafting, and for people who are crafting to feel like they're actually involved in a crafting interface. Like, new system is designed how you'd expect a crafting system to be designed for a new game, rather than being based on the old NW professions system.
Definitely true that most of the people were using the old system as just a way to extract sellable RP from each of their toons though, sure. But I don't know what % of players saw that as enjoyable, and what % just saw it as another source of income.
I'm way more sympathetic to concerns that this is gonna cause RP prices to skyrocket than I am to concerns that alts are somehow useless now.
Who was complaining about the old system not being enjoyable? Who is saying that the new system is enjoyable? Involved, yet, frustratingly so. Who wants to have to consistently map to Protector's Enclave then map to this room? Who wants to have walking to some object then another then another just to do your professions?
Definitely true that most of the people were using the old system as just a way to extract sellable RP from each of their toons though, sure. But I don't know what % of players saw that as enjoyable, and what % just saw it as another source of income.
How do you know that most people were selling the RP they got from Leadership? I've been running Leadership tasks for months (about 10 to 12 months on my characters) on 13 characters (5 for my wife, 8 for me) and neither one of us has yet sold a single RP gem we've gotten. Even if they didn't release this update to professions, I can't see either one of us selling any RP for at least the next year, if ever. My wife would probably be the first of us to sell some since she's mainly focusing on 1 character, while I'm mainly focusing on 2 (and would focus on others once those two are "finished"). The only thing you know for sure is that "some" people have been selling their RP. You don't actually know how many - whether that's a majority or minority of the Leadership-engaged playerbase - and neither do I.
@theycallmetomu I agree with some of your points and dare I say, even have a similar play style preference.
Just to rewind way back to the OPs main point, he stated that the character slots have been made less valuable and I don't think anyone can argue that point. I don't think a refund is necessary though. The slots still have other uses (until they kill those uses too).
I also want to add that I feel as if there's some negative assumption between having double digit characters and being an alt army. When I initially created a large amount of my alts it was to test SW builds. I probably have about 10 SW alts alone as that was my main.
Then loadouts came out and made the character slots have less value from a testing perspective. But obviously I continued to do professions on them and use them for storage outside of my main 8.
The devs added the AD refining limit devaluing multiple slots even further. Now the change to professions. Yes, they're constantly removing things and making it more alt-unfriendly. Yes we adjust or make a decision to move on.
After years playing the game I tend to think this has more to do with their bottom line than it does with helping the game economy. Maybe at some point they should just come out and admit they made a huge mistake letting people buy 50 character slots! I mean, you would have to be completely incompetent to not see that could turn into a colossal blunder. But what do you think they saw back then? $$$$$$$.
And that is perfectly fine. Devs gotta eat too. Devs don't eat. They starve. They die. We don't get game content. Massive horrors ensue across the globe.
Just don't try to sell me that this, and many other recent changes were done strictly for the good of the economy and not to force people back into the zen market and spending some real $$$s.
That's the other thing. Compensating players for a taking with ingame currency costs literally nothing. It's like paying people in belly button lint. The overwhelming number of players would be more than willing to take the compromise.
You keep making assumptions. I can only say I hope you are right about the developers intentions because I hope whoever championed this gets called out on the carpet and has strips taken off their back when it completely fails to do any of the above, and just winds up making the RMT selllers and botters a pot of money.
Didn't really answer the question but ok.
There is no way properly answer the question because it suffered from multiple category errors. Turns out the devs wanted to make people happier with crafting by eliminating the portion of crafting most people participated in. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean, you're not wrong-just the statement is less ironic than you make it out to be. Devs want the process to be more involved and enjoyable for people who engage in crafting, and for people who are crafting to feel like they're actually involved in a crafting interface. Like, new system is designed how you'd expect a crafting system to be designed for a new game, rather than being based on the old NW professions system.
Definitely true that most of the people were using the old system as just a way to extract sellable RP from each of their toons though, sure. But I don't know what % of players saw that as enjoyable, and what % just saw it as another source of income.
I'm way more sympathetic to concerns that this is gonna cause RP prices to skyrocket than I am to concerns that alts are somehow useless now.
If people found it significantly more enjoyable they would be doing it already. This is an entertainment
I don't know exactly what these changes do, but wanted to address a point of this discussion. Some people wrote that creating alts must be done just ofr the sake of playing other classes and toons, and not to earn more ADs. I strongly disagree. You all talk about alt armies, as if players who create alts would do so only to create armies of ungeared alts to farm professions. It's wrong. There are lots of players who try to play and develop multiple alts exactly for the sake of playing multiple classes and develop them. And doing so, they make the game more rich. For example, my main is a GWF, but i also play a DC alt and developed it (like all my 6 toons: GWF,HR,DC,SW,TR,GF). The fact that i play it, means that when someone needs a DC in game, there's 1 more DC available (DCs are rare), instead of a GWF/DPS. I developed all my alts to 12k+, and i try to bring all of them over 13k. Now, you guys say i should do it "for the sake of it, earning nothing from my alts in terms of AD. Just "extra bag space". Developing an alt costs a lot of time to get boons. Also time to get gear and refine it (artifact sets, artifacts). If you want to develop them you need to spend ADs in mounts to get insignia bonuses, companion gear and a decent companion, enchants (switching all the enchants from a toon to the other would cost too much gold). In a few words: playing and developing multiple toons in NW costs time and in-game currency, and a decent amount of it. Amount that increases the more you develop the alt. Now, up till module 13 you could use those alts to earn extra ADs with randoms. The idea of randoms giving more RAD to refine would be perfect, because the more i gear and develop my alt (which means a lot of time and ADs spent on it), the more efficient it will be when it comes to earning RAD (at11k you can do RAQ, at 13k REQ exc..), compensating for the time and ADs spent of it. It means, alts could've been an INVESTMENT. But they introduced the 100k limit. Which means: to develop 6 toons you spend x6, but we force you do earn only x1. So it's not "you spend more (time/AD), you earn more. It's "you spend more (time/AD), you earn the same". In a few words, instead of making alts an investment, and make it so that the more you develop alts, SPENDING TIME AND adS, the more stuff you get, they made alts just and extra-cost.
Developing alts costs ads and time. You must compensate a bit for it, or no sane player would ever bother to develop alts.
5
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I don't know exactly what these changes do, but wanted to address a point of this discussion. Some people wrote that creating alts must be done just ofr the sake of playing other classes and toons, and not to earn more ADs. I strongly disagree. You all talk about alt armies, as if players who create alts would do so only to create armies of ungeared alts to farm professions. It's wrong. There are lots of players who try to play and develop multiple alts exactly for the sake of playing multiple classes and develop them. And doing so, they make the game more rich. For example, my main is a GWF, but i also play a DC alt and developed it (like all my 6 toons: GWF,HR,DC,SW,TR,GF). The fact that i play it, means that when someone needs a DC in game, there's 1 more DC available (DCs are rare), instead of a GWF/DPS. I developed all my alts to 12k+, and i try to bring all of them over 13k. Now, you guys say i should do it "for the sake of it, earning nothing from my alts in terms of AD. Just "extra bag space". Developing an alt costs a lot of time to get boons. Also time to get gear and refine it (artifact sets, artifacts). If you want to develop them you need to spend ADs in mounts to get insignia bonuses, companion gear and a decent companion, enchants (switching all the enchants from a toon to the other would cost too much gold). In a few words: playing and developing multiple toons in NW costs time and in-game currency, and a decent amount of it. Amount that increases the more you develop the alt. Now, up till module 13 you could use those alts to earn extra ADs with randoms. The idea of randoms giving more RAD to refine would be perfect, because the more i gear and develop my alt (which means a lot of time and ADs spent on it), the more efficient it will be when it comes to earning RAD (at11k you can do RAQ, at 13k REQ exc..), compensating for the time and ADs spent of it. It means, alts could've been an INVESTMENT. But they introduced the 100k limit. Which means: to develop 6 toons you spend x6, but we force you do earn only x1. So it's not "you spend more (time/AD), you earn more. It's "you spend more (time/AD), you earn the same". In a few words, instead of making alts an investment, and make it so that the more you develop alts, SPENDING TIME AND adS, the more stuff you get, they made alts just and extra-cost.
Developing alts costs ads and time. You must compensate a bit for it, or no sane player would ever bother to develop alts.
If you use alts to play them, then none of the new changes from mod 15 prevent that.
If you just say we should have catchup mechanics to allow alts to be playable, I'd say that those exist: Ravenloft in particular made it very easy to get gear.
I don't know exactly what these changes do, but wanted to address a point of this discussion. Some people wrote that creating alts must be done just ofr the sake of playing other classes and toons, and not to earn more ADs. I strongly disagree. You all talk about alt armies, as if players who create alts would do so only to create armies of ungeared alts to farm professions. It's wrong. There are lots of players who try to play and develop multiple alts exactly for the sake of playing multiple classes and develop them. And doing so, they make the game more rich. For example, my main is a GWF, but i also play a DC alt and developed it (like all my 6 toons: GWF,HR,DC,SW,TR,GF). The fact that i play it, means that when someone needs a DC in game, there's 1 more DC available (DCs are rare), instead of a GWF/DPS. I developed all my alts to 12k+, and i try to bring all of them over 13k. Now, you guys say i should do it "for the sake of it, earning nothing from my alts in terms of AD. Just "extra bag space". Developing an alt costs a lot of time to get boons. Also time to get gear and refine it (artifact sets, artifacts). If you want to develop them you need to spend ADs in mounts to get insignia bonuses, companion gear and a decent companion, enchants (switching all the enchants from a toon to the other would cost too much gold). In a few words: playing and developing multiple toons in NW costs time and in-game currency, and a decent amount of it. Amount that increases the more you develop the alt. Now, up till module 13 you could use those alts to earn extra ADs with randoms. The idea of randoms giving more RAD to refine would be perfect, because the more i gear and develop my alt (which means a lot of time and ADs spent on it), the more efficient it will be when it comes to earning RAD (at11k you can do RAQ, at 13k REQ exc..), compensating for the time and ADs spent of it. It means, alts could've been an INVESTMENT. But they introduced the 100k limit. Which means: to develop 6 toons you spend x6, but we force you do earn only x1. So it's not "you spend more (time/AD), you earn more. It's "you spend more (time/AD), you earn the same". In a few words, instead of making alts an investment, and make it so that the more you develop alts, SPENDING TIME AND adS, the more stuff you get, they made alts just and extra-cost.
Developing alts costs ads and time. You must compensate a bit for it, or no sane player would ever bother to develop alts.
If you use alts to play them, then none of the new changes from mod 15 prevent that.
If you just say we should have catchup mechanics to allow alts to be playable, I'd say that those exist: Ravenloft in particular made it very easy to get gear.
"Ravenloft in particular made it painfully obvious how little the gear they were willing to give you mattered and how bad IL is as a measurement"
LOL I know how much time it takes to spend to deal with this only on 1 character. You can not do it without special software. If you use it. TOS here https://www.arcgames.com/en/about/terms.
Lets assume you are right. So it's 3-5 min per character (Boring scrolling, task assignment; you have 9 slots, right?). And you have 50-54 characters(MAXED) - it's 200 min of your real life OR gameplay. I'm really curious how you do it MANUALLY. 3.5 hours? REALLY?
I have 23 toons on my account. All lvl 70, all but one with Lvl 25 leadership. I takes me about an 45 minutes to an hour to swap out professions - and I'm slow, as I'm also invoking, and usually watching guild chat.
3
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I don't know exactly what these changes do, but wanted to address a point of this discussion. Some people wrote that creating alts must be done just ofr the sake of playing other classes and toons, and not to earn more ADs. I strongly disagree. You all talk about alt armies, as if players who create alts would do so only to create armies of ungeared alts to farm professions. It's wrong. There are lots of players who try to play and develop multiple alts exactly for the sake of playing multiple classes and develop them. And doing so, they make the game more rich. For example, my main is a GWF, but i also play a DC alt and developed it (like all my 6 toons: GWF,HR,DC,SW,TR,GF). The fact that i play it, means that when someone needs a DC in game, there's 1 more DC available (DCs are rare), instead of a GWF/DPS. I developed all my alts to 12k+, and i try to bring all of them over 13k. Now, you guys say i should do it "for the sake of it, earning nothing from my alts in terms of AD. Just "extra bag space". Developing an alt costs a lot of time to get boons. Also time to get gear and refine it (artifact sets, artifacts). If you want to develop them you need to spend ADs in mounts to get insignia bonuses, companion gear and a decent companion, enchants (switching all the enchants from a toon to the other would cost too much gold). In a few words: playing and developing multiple toons in NW costs time and in-game currency, and a decent amount of it. Amount that increases the more you develop the alt. Now, up till module 13 you could use those alts to earn extra ADs with randoms. The idea of randoms giving more RAD to refine would be perfect, because the more i gear and develop my alt (which means a lot of time and ADs spent on it), the more efficient it will be when it comes to earning RAD (at11k you can do RAQ, at 13k REQ exc..), compensating for the time and ADs spent of it. It means, alts could've been an INVESTMENT. But they introduced the 100k limit. Which means: to develop 6 toons you spend x6, but we force you do earn only x1. So it's not "you spend more (time/AD), you earn more. It's "you spend more (time/AD), you earn the same". In a few words, instead of making alts an investment, and make it so that the more you develop alts, SPENDING TIME AND adS, the more stuff you get, they made alts just and extra-cost.
Developing alts costs ads and time. You must compensate a bit for it, or no sane player would ever bother to develop alts.
If you use alts to play them, then none of the new changes from mod 15 prevent that.
If you just say we should have catchup mechanics to allow alts to be playable, I'd say that those exist: Ravenloft in particular made it very easy to get gear.
"Ravenloft in particular made it painfully obvious how little the gear they were willing to give you mattered and how bad IL is as a measurement"
FTFY
So, like, are you going to actually engage intellectually in the conversation, or just-you know, whatever this is.
If you use alts to play them, then none of the new changes from mod 15 prevent that.
If you just say we should have catchup mechanics to allow alts to be playable, I'd say that those exist: Ravenloft in particular made it very easy to get gear.
False. IT'S THE OPPOSITE: if you create alts to develop them and play them, the changes to RAD cap (ravenloft) and professions now, make it more and more difficult. As i said, gearing up an alt costs a lot. You talk about armor and obtaining the weapon set. Which is a small part of what you need to make a toon strong and gear it up. You need boons = time spent playing campaigns again and again, or an extremely huge amount of zen spent to buy the campaign completion. Even creating the tokens to halven the cost of a campaign currency, some campaigns are time-gated. Plus, the tokens cost 50k AD each. For me, for example, it would be 50kx10x6=3M AD. You need to upgrade/refine the weapon set, artifact set, artifacts up to epic, legendary, and then mythic for artifacts. Going epic is no big deal (but still caosts some RP). Going legendary and then mythic is A LOT of RP. Which is either money to buy them, or time to collect them. You need enchants. You can move armor, weapon enchants, bondings from toon to toon. Costs some gold, but can be done. Problem is, you have also offensive slot enchants, defensive slot enchants, utility slot enchants. Moving every enchant everytime you change toon would cost, with current gear, something like 40 gold each time you switch toon, plus the time spent unbinding and binding the enchants. Gearing your all my toons with enchants, on the other hand, have an absurd cost if i want to go up. Let's say i need to go higher with iLvL and put, let's say, rank 10 enchants or rank 12 on my toons. 16 slots. 500k each enchant, to stay low, with current prices. Do your math. 8Mx6=48M AD. So it's either 40 gold every time i change toon, plus the time, or 48M AD, for enchants, which provide much needed stats, expecially at higher ranks. If i want rank 13 it's 16M per toon. Crazy. Or again, a ton of gold each time i switch toon. You need companions. One active companion, and other companions for active bonus. Let's say you go for 1 legendary companion (talking about making your toon 13-14k+, not BiS but geared), it's 1M AD per toon=6M AD. Let's say you need a good companion and not a placeholder: they cost hundred of thousands of AD. Let's say 600k to stay low, for a strong summoned pet with ring slots. 600kx6= 3,6M AD. Plus now you need the gear for them. You might use primal rings. But you need at least a neck or waist or another piece with 2 slots (if you want to gear past a certain level). More AD spent. Even if you stop at blue fierce gear, it still costs some good AD now (30k, more or less? Might be more, might be less). So it's another 30kx6=180k AD. You need mounts for insignia bonuses, and then you need insignias. You might put random mounts and blue insignias, but if you want to gear up past the 12k point, and make the toon a bit strong, you need certain mounts with certain bonuses. More hundred of thousands of AD gone for at least blue mounts. Not talking about getting a legendary mount to use combat power to activate one of the good insignia bonuses (buff when using a mount combat power). There you go up to milions of AD. And then you need a strong guild, with strong boons. Costs nothing, but you still need to find a strong guild which allows you to join your alts. And you can't join all of them, 6 in my case. May be 3. It's limited, cause the slots are 150 players, 500 characters. Roughly 3 toons per player. So if i have 6 of them, i must join the other in other guilds, which means farming influence and contribute to other guilds SH= time spent.
Armor and weapon primal set only, the things you mentioned, do not make you strong, nor geared. I see 9-10k toons in full primal. There's much, much more if you want to play an alt. What you talk about is making a placeholder toon at 9k, which can run low gear content and do, pretty much, nothing. If you want to develop a toon for real, not to BiS, but to a geared level, you can read the costs above. From someone who play 6 toons and try to develop them all: you guys wrote a ton of BS. It's the point of view of someone who does not develop alts, someone who is playing only 1 toon (and may be some placeholder 10k toon), and knows NOTHING about what really means to try to develop alts in this game.
The truth is what i wrote: right now, if not even leadership will give some income anymore, developing alts (not creating alts: developing them, past 10k) will just be a huge cost. Which is no problem in your egoistic view of the game. It's something you don't do, so who cares.
NW is getting more and more alt-unfriendly. The only way to make it affordable would be to create a shop that allows you to get, at a low AD cost, BtC enchants, mounts, pets, comp gear, of the same level of the ones you have on your main. So for example, if on your main you have all rank 13 offensive/defensive enchants, epic comp gear, legendary mount exc...you can get stuff of the same level for your alt, without spending an impossible amount of AD or time. Also, erase the 50k tokens for campaigns. Just make it so for the alts, compaigns already completed on main cost half the amount of currency and time (quests given faster, not time gated). You can make the shop available once the alt gets to 12k, so people spend some time practicing with the class and getting basic gear. It would still cost something to get to 12k, but nothing crazy in terms of time and AD.
Right now, developing alts is limited to rich players who want to play more classes. Which might be what cryptic wants. Basically: you want to play more than one class and gear it, you must spend a ton of money or time, or both. In a few words: VERY ALT-UNFRIENDLY.
The fact that you say armor = way to get an alt geared, means you probably do not know how much stuff is needed to really gear up (armor, weapons, artifacts, sets, enchants, companion, comp gear, mount, mount insignias, SH boons, campaign boons...). Get real.
So, like, are you going to actually engage intellectually in the conversation, or just-you know, whatever this is.
What you wrote was so out of the reality of the game, that he didn't need to write much. Your statement comments itself. Only someone as crazy as me makes a WOT like the one above to explain to you how absurd your "ravenloft made gearing alts easy" statement, is.
I don't know exactly what these changes do, but wanted to address a point of this discussion. Some people wrote that creating alts must be done just ofr the sake of playing other classes and toons, and not to earn more ADs. I strongly disagree. You all talk about alt armies, as if players who create alts would do so only to create armies of ungeared alts to farm professions. It's wrong. There are lots of players who try to play and develop multiple alts exactly for the sake of playing multiple classes and develop them. And doing so, they make the game more rich. For example, my main is a GWF, but i also play a DC alt and developed it (like all my 6 toons: GWF,HR,DC,SW,TR,GF). The fact that i play it, means that when someone needs a DC in game, there's 1 more DC available (DCs are rare), instead of a GWF/DPS. I developed all my alts to 12k+, and i try to bring all of them over 13k. Now, you guys say i should do it "for the sake of it, earning nothing from my alts in terms of AD. Just "extra bag space". Developing an alt costs a lot of time to get boons. Also time to get gear and refine it (artifact sets, artifacts). If you want to develop them you need to spend ADs in mounts to get insignia bonuses, companion gear and a decent companion, enchants (switching all the enchants from a toon to the other would cost too much gold). In a few words: playing and developing multiple toons in NW costs time and in-game currency, and a decent amount of it. Amount that increases the more you develop the alt. Now, up till module 13 you could use those alts to earn extra ADs with randoms. The idea of randoms giving more RAD to refine would be perfect, because the more i gear and develop my alt (which means a lot of time and ADs spent on it), the more efficient it will be when it comes to earning RAD (at11k you can do RAQ, at 13k REQ exc..), compensating for the time and ADs spent of it. It means, alts could've been an INVESTMENT. But they introduced the 100k limit. Which means: to develop 6 toons you spend x6, but we force you do earn only x1. So it's not "you spend more (time/AD), you earn more. It's "you spend more (time/AD), you earn the same". In a few words, instead of making alts an investment, and make it so that the more you develop alts, SPENDING TIME AND adS, the more stuff you get, they made alts just and extra-cost.
Developing alts costs ads and time. You must compensate a bit for it, or no sane player would ever bother to develop alts.
If you use alts to play them, then none of the new changes from mod 15 prevent that.
If you just say we should have catchup mechanics to allow alts to be playable, I'd say that those exist: Ravenloft in particular made it very easy to get gear.
"Ravenloft in particular made it painfully obvious how little the gear they were willing to give you mattered and how bad IL is as a measurement"
FTFY
So, like, are you going to actually engage intellectually in the conversation, or just-you know, whatever this is.
I have 5 toons currently 4 with one open as i deleted my rogue. I started with a hr but once i started my pally it was really fun and i wont go back. I have a dodc as it was what i maind on ps4 n i know the class well. I made a tac gf to see how much fun it is but im not a fan. Im going to make a gwf for my 5th. The reason to have alts and learn their mechanics is for when you have a group and u cant find one type say ur loaded up looking for a pally or dc but cant find out. U have a pally or dc but are currently on your dps char. Well u can switch to your alt and go for a dps which is easier to find. I look at alts as options. One mod kills a class with nerfs so u switch to a dif toon until next mod they balance it properly. Unfortunately most people see alts as a source of income which is not what they intended. Reason why they made rough ad account wide. alts are fun for endgamers who are bored. Its a chance to master a different class.
And saying oh u have to do the campaigns again is dumb. Ur mad u have to play the game again then why make another toon? The fun is playing the game all over and starting from scratch. If u just transferred everything from toon 1 to toon 2 to be end game as well thats pointless 2 endgame characters or more with no work no real sence of acomplishment ? I loved running thru tower district cuz i havent done it in a while and i found some lore i missed before and it felt new. Obviously the quests u remember most but finding new things and playing with other new players is kinda fun. Nothing beats meeting someone who just started neverwinter and being able to give advice as an endgamer you have wisdom to share and make the game more enjoyable for others.
0
someonediesMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,257Arc User
LOL I know how much time it takes to spend to deal with this only on 1 character. You can not do it without special software. If you use it. TOS here https://www.arcgames.com/en/about/terms.
Lets assume you are right. So it's 3-5 min per character (Boring scrolling, task assignment; you have 9 slots, right?). And you have 50-54 characters(MAXED) - it's 200 min of your real life OR gameplay. I'm really curious how you do it MANUALLY. 3.5 hours? REALLY?
I have 23 toons on my account. All lvl 70, all but one with Lvl 25 leadership. I takes me about an 45 minutes to an hour to swap out professions - and I'm slow, as I'm also invoking, and usually watching guild chat.
nah no worth IMO auction gambling and salvage gives more benefits.
Dead 🔪
0
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
LOL I know how much time it takes to spend to deal with this only on 1 character. You can not do it without special software. If you use it. TOS here https://www.arcgames.com/en/about/terms.
Lets assume you are right. So it's 3-5 min per character (Boring scrolling, task assignment; you have 9 slots, right?). And you have 50-54 characters(MAXED) - it's 200 min of your real life OR gameplay. I'm really curious how you do it MANUALLY. 3.5 hours? REALLY?
I have 23 toons on my account. All lvl 70, all but one with Lvl 25 leadership. I takes me about an 45 minutes to an hour to swap out professions - and I'm slow, as I'm also invoking, and usually watching guild chat.
nah no worth IMO auction gambling and salvage gives more benefits.
I've always been skeptical of AH gambling. It involve buy and hold strategies? You'd think the 10% tax would mess them up.
Clearly* the solution is to up the sale tax on the AH to 15%.
*I use the word "Clearly" to signify I am being sarcastic.
1
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
So, like, are you going to actually engage intellectually in the conversation, or just-you know, whatever this is.
What you wrote was so out of the reality of the game, that he didn't need to write much. Your statement comments itself. Only someone as crazy as me makes a WOT like the one above to explain to you how absurd your "ravenloft made gearing alts easy" statement, is.
Moving goalposts etc etc.
All I know is, with Ravenloft, I was able to effortlessly get my off-toons I never even use ILevel 500 to Ilevel 540 gear.
I mean, I then went ahead and salvaged it because I never play those toons anyway and salvaging is going away, but it's the thought that counts!
1
someonediesMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,257Arc User
LOL I know how much time it takes to spend to deal with this only on 1 character. You can not do it without special software. If you use it. TOS here https://www.arcgames.com/en/about/terms.
Lets assume you are right. So it's 3-5 min per character (Boring scrolling, task assignment; you have 9 slots, right?). And you have 50-54 characters(MAXED) - it's 200 min of your real life OR gameplay. I'm really curious how you do it MANUALLY. 3.5 hours? REALLY?
I have 23 toons on my account. All lvl 70, all but one with Lvl 25 leadership. I takes me about an 45 minutes to an hour to swap out professions - and I'm slow, as I'm also invoking, and usually watching guild chat.
nah no worth IMO auction gambling and salvage gives more benefits.
I've always been skeptical of AH gambling. It involve buy and hold strategies? You'd think the 10% tax would mess them up.
Clearly* the solution is to up the sale tax on the AH to 15%.
*I use the word "Clearly" to signify I am being sarcastic.
All I know is, with Ravenloft, I was able to effortlessly get my off-toons I never even use ILevel 500 to Ilevel 540 gear.
I mean, I then went ahead and salvaged it because I never play those toons anyway and salvaging is going away, but it's the thought that counts!
If that's all you know, then you know nothing about playing alts and developing them in this game. Thank you for confirming it. Which makes all you wrote about what needs to be done about alts, nonsense. You base your judgement on the prejudice that alts=invoke army/ leadership army, because, as you wrote above, your maximum effort in upgrading your alts was to switch them from primal to ravenloft hunt gear, because, quoting you "you never play those toons anyway". Wow.
Therefore, you should not speak about something you know NOTHING about (alts, and how to gear them). Thank you for confirming that your posts about this matter are uninformed nonsense.
Now, what i wrote in my WOT is pretty accurate. The cost in NW to develop an alt is absurd. On top of that, playing multiple classes and toons since module 14, is only a disadvantage. There is no reward in spending time and ADs to gear multiple toons. There are 2 solutions, if cryptic wants to make the game alt-friendly (right now, it's VERY alt-unfriendly):
Solution n°1: making gearing alts cost less. For example once you have 16 rank 13 or 14 enchants on your main, you can buy with your alts, from a shop, 16 BtC rank 13-14 of any tipe of enchants, to use on your alt. If you destroy one of those enchants, you can buy another type. Same with companions, mounts, insignias, comp gear exc...If i have a legendary comp and 4 epic comps on my main, i can get the same pets from the shop, BtC, or other companions of the same rank. Same with companion gear and so on.
Solution n°2: giving some reward for developing alts. You spend time and AD to develop multiple toons, you must get a reward, it must be an investment, not a loss. For example, raising the RAD daily cap and the number of times you get the bonus RAD from randoms. This way, with no salvage in module 15, Random queues will be a big way to get RAD fast, and being able to run RAQ or REQ with alts too, will pay back all the time and AD spent in upgrading the alt.
The way it is now, it's impossible to develop more than 1 toon, past a certain point, unless your in that 1% of players who are very, very rich. What this means for the game is simple: most people will play 1 class only. So, less toons available for some rare classes. If someone wanted to develop a DC (rare class) or tank, they will stop and play only their GWF/TR/HR/SW. My DC will stay at 12k, so it's 1 less geared DC available. And so on.
All I know is, with Ravenloft, I was able to effortlessly get my off-toons I never even use ILevel 500 to Ilevel 540 gear.
I mean, I then went ahead and salvaged it because I never play those toons anyway and salvaging is going away, but it's the thought that counts!
If that's all you know, then you know nothing about playing alts and developing them in this game. Thank you for confirming it. Which makes all you wrote about what needs to be done about alts, nonsense. You base your judgement on the prejudice that alts=invoke army/ leadership army, because, as you wrote above, your maximum effort in upgrading your alts was to switch them from primal to ravenloft hunt gear, because, quoting you "you never play those toons anyway". Wow.
Therefore, you should not speak about something you know NOTHING about (alts, and how to gear them). Thank you for confirming that your posts about this matter are uninformed nonsense.
Now, what i wrote in my WOT is pretty accurate. The cost in NW to develop an alt is absurd. On top of that, playing multiple classes and toons since module 14, is only a disadvantage. There is no reward in spending time and ADs to gear multiple toons. There are 2 solutions, if cryptic wants to make the game alt-friendly (right now, it's VERY alt-unfriendly):
Solution n°1: making gearing alts cost less. For example once you have 16 rank 13 or 14 enchants on your main, you can buy with your alts, from a shop, 16 BtC rank 13-14 of any tipe of enchants, to use on your alt. If you destroy one of those enchants, you can buy another type. Same with companions, mounts, insignias, comp gear exc...If i have a legendary comp and 4 epic comps on my main, i can get the same pets from the shop, BtC, or other companions of the same rank. Same with companion gear and so on.
Solution n°2: giving some reward for developing alts. You spend time and AD to develop multiple toons, you must get a reward, it must be an investment, not a loss. For example, raising the RAD daily cap and the number of times you get the bonus RAD from randoms. This way, with no salvage in module 15, Random queues will be a big way to get RAD fast, and being able to run RAQ or REQ with alts too, will pay back all the time and AD spent in upgrading the alt.
The way it is now, it's impossible to develop more than 1 toon, past a certain point, unless your in that 1% of players who are very, very rich. What this means for the game is simple: most people will play 1 class only. So, less toons available for some rare classes. If someone wanted to develop a DC (rare class) or tank, they will stop and play only their GWF/TR/HR/SW. My DC will stay at 12k, so it's 1 less geared DC available. And so on.
To be clear, my position has never been that we should make it harder to develop alts, or that actually RUNNING alts is easy. I mean hell, they coulda just changed the RP drops from leadership tasks to be character bound; that'd let you use the leadership tasks to get the RP for your alt (helping a little towards the ridiculous amount of enchantments you need), but prevent alts from becoming a side piece that you use to boost your main (as I do, because having alts is pointless for its own sake).
Do that, multiply the RP rewards by 10, woulda been fine...ish. Until I realize that people just start refining enchantments with their leadership army and trading it back and forth.
I kind of wish the game removed refining entirely, and replaced it with RP based boons or something. Like, instead of enchantment slots, you just purchased stats directly with RP. But I digress.
Also, to be clear, I would recommend vastly HIGHER RP benefits in such a system. Particularly, a system that makes alts playable should have low entry point, but high diminishing returns on top tier bonuses. Problem there is that what constitutes the entry point keeps moving higher from mod to mod.
Did you even read my post. You talk about refinement points BtC only. It's 5% of the cost of what i listed above. You keep coming up with small stuff (ravenloft armor, refining points) that won't help much. When you refine artifacts you need refining marks and enchanting stones that grow in price. Up to mythic we talk about marks that cost 75k each, plus enchanting stones that cost way more. And you need at least the main artifact to mythic. Then there's mounts, insignias, companions and companion gear. Even refining your own enchants on each alt, you still need the reagents, and they cost a lot. If i upgrade 16 enchants up to at least rank 12, on all my toons, i spend a ton of AD. And your idea of compensation is...some BtC RP. That would help, but i can already get RPs with quartermaster on all alts and rank 12's on main, during 2xenchants event, quests and leadership. We need the ability to get enchants, mounts, insignias, companions, companion gear, of the same rank of the ones we have on the main, for a small AD price, and bound to character. OR, playing multiple toons, should increase the income of ADs when they get past, let's say, 12k iLvL.
In a few words: developing an alt past, let's say, 12k, costs milions of AD. They must either reduce the cost of upgrading alts up to 13-14-15k+, or they must give rewards and increased income to those who invest on alts. The same as people who invest in masterwork spend milions of AD, but then get them back and more.
No offense, but it's quite clear that you have no idea about how much developing an alt and playing multiple classes seriously, means and costs. So please, no more nonsense, useless ideas. At least first try to develop an alt up to 12-13k who can run RAQ dungeons without being carried, then come back and we can talk. Or develop your main up to 16k+ and then an alt up to 15k+, then come tell me you're ok if the "reward" for developing a second toon up to 15k are some BtC RPs.
I might sound rude, but it's just that playing multiple classes seriously in this game was already absurd in terms of AD cost and time spent. Now with mod 14 and 15 it's as if the devs literally kicked in the balls those players who try to play multiple classes. First the 100k RAD account limit (they could just increase the limit by 100k for each toon that was past 11-12k iLvL (limit for RAQ), to stop bots and alt armies. Now running leadership on multiple toons gets nerfed, taking away the small income from RP selling. In the meanwhile, more and more stuff is added to develop a toon: mounts, insignia bonuses, companions with gear up to legendary and 2 slots, rank 14 bondings, enchants going up and up in rank (from 10 to 14 now), artifact weapons, artifact sets, artifacts, and so on.
Personally, i wish they would simply let us get BtC stuff of the same rank of the one we have on our main, at a small price. May be leave only armor/weapon enchants and bondings to switch from one toon to the other. Players can't get 16xrank 12-13-14, legendary companion, epic companion gear with another 6xrank 12/13/14, legendary mount, epic insignias, 1xmythic artifact and legendary weapon set at least, on every toon. It's crazy. Forces players to stop developing alts when they hit the 12k wall, unless they are very rich.
All I know is, with Ravenloft, I was able to effortlessly get my off-toons I never even use ILevel 500 to Ilevel 540 gear.
I mean, I then went ahead and salvaged it because I never play those toons anyway and salvaging is going away, but it's the thought that counts!
If that's all you know, then you know nothing about playing alts and developing them in this game. Thank you for confirming it. Which makes all you wrote about what needs to be done about alts, nonsense. You base your judgement on the prejudice that alts=invoke army/ leadership army, because, as you wrote above, your maximum effort in upgrading your alts was to switch them from primal to ravenloft hunt gear, because, quoting you "you never play those toons anyway". Wow.
Therefore, you should not speak about something you know NOTHING about (alts, and how to gear them). Thank you for confirming that your posts about this matter are uninformed nonsense.
Now, what i wrote in my WOT is pretty accurate. The cost in NW to develop an alt is absurd. On top of that, playing multiple classes and toons since module 14, is only a disadvantage. There is no reward in spending time and ADs to gear multiple toons. There are 2 solutions, if cryptic wants to make the game alt-friendly (right now, it's VERY alt-unfriendly):
Solution n°1: making gearing alts cost less. For example once you have 16 rank 13 or 14 enchants on your main, you can buy with your alts, from a shop, 16 BtC rank 13-14 of any tipe of enchants, to use on your alt. If you destroy one of those enchants, you can buy another type. Same with companions, mounts, insignias, comp gear exc...If i have a legendary comp and 4 epic comps on my main, i can get the same pets from the shop, BtC, or other companions of the same rank. Same with companion gear and so on.
Solution n°2: giving some reward for developing alts. You spend time and AD to develop multiple toons, you must get a reward, it must be an investment, not a loss. For example, raising the RAD daily cap and the number of times you get the bonus RAD from randoms. This way, with no salvage in module 15, Random queues will be a big way to get RAD fast, and being able to run RAQ or REQ with alts too, will pay back all the time and AD spent in upgrading the alt.
The way it is now, it's impossible to develop more than 1 toon, past a certain point, unless your in that 1% of players who are very, very rich. What this means for the game is simple: most people will play 1 class only. So, less toons available for some rare classes. If someone wanted to develop a DC (rare class) or tank, they will stop and play only their GWF/TR/HR/SW. My DC will stay at 12k, so it's 1 less geared DC available. And so on.
I wasn't talking about real money. Talking about in-game currency. Astral Diamonds. Gearing up a toon even if not making it BiS, with 1 mythic artifact and 3 legendary, 1 legendary mount for combat power, 1-2 Legendary companions, with a good active one, and others with decent active bonuses, 16 enchants at, say, rank 13, and 6 more on companion, plus companion gear...to bring a toon at 15k, non-bis, the AD cost and time cost is high. And, right now, with no return of investment. Cryptic says they want to reward those who play the game, and yet, the penalize more and more those who try to play multiple classes and develop multiple toons.
Comments
Dead🔪Definitely true that most of the people were using the old system as just a way to extract sellable RP from each of their toons though, sure. But I don't know what % of players saw that as enjoyable, and what % just saw it as another source of income.
I'm way more sympathetic to concerns that this is gonna cause RP prices to skyrocket than I am to concerns that alts are somehow useless now.
Just to rewind way back to the OPs main point, he stated that the character slots have been made less valuable and I don't think anyone can argue that point. I don't think a refund is necessary though. The slots still have other uses (until they kill those uses too).
I also want to add that I feel as if there's some negative assumption between having double digit characters and being an alt army. When I initially created a large amount of my alts it was to test SW builds. I probably have about 10 SW alts alone as that was my main.
Then loadouts came out and made the character slots have less value from a testing perspective. But obviously I continued to do professions on them and use them for storage outside of my main 8.
The devs added the AD refining limit devaluing multiple slots even further. Now the change to professions. Yes, they're constantly removing things and making it more alt-unfriendly. Yes we adjust or make a decision to move on.
After years playing the game I tend to think this has more to do with their bottom line than it does with helping the game economy. Maybe at some point they should just come out and admit they made a huge mistake letting people buy 50 character slots! I mean, you would have to be completely incompetent to not see that could turn into a colossal blunder. But what do you think they saw back then? $$$$$$$.
And that is perfectly fine. Devs gotta eat too. Devs don't eat. They starve. They die. We don't get game content. Massive horrors ensue across the globe.
Just don't try to sell me that this, and many other recent changes were done strictly for the good of the economy and not to force people back into the zen market and spending some real $$$s.
Some people wrote that creating alts must be done just ofr the sake of playing other classes and toons, and not to earn more ADs. I strongly disagree.
You all talk about alt armies, as if players who create alts would do so only to create armies of ungeared alts to farm professions. It's wrong. There are lots of players who try to play and develop multiple alts exactly for the sake of playing multiple classes and develop them. And doing so, they make the game more rich. For example, my main is a GWF, but i also play a DC alt and developed it (like all my 6 toons: GWF,HR,DC,SW,TR,GF). The fact that i play it, means that when someone needs a DC in game, there's 1 more DC available (DCs are rare), instead of a GWF/DPS.
I developed all my alts to 12k+, and i try to bring all of them over 13k.
Now, you guys say i should do it "for the sake of it, earning nothing from my alts in terms of AD. Just "extra bag space".
Developing an alt costs a lot of time to get boons. Also time to get gear and refine it (artifact sets, artifacts). If you want to develop them you need to spend ADs in mounts to get insignia bonuses, companion gear and a decent companion, enchants (switching all the enchants from a toon to the other would cost too much gold). In a few words: playing and developing multiple toons in NW costs time and in-game currency, and a decent amount of it. Amount that increases the more you develop the alt.
Now, up till module 13 you could use those alts to earn extra ADs with randoms. The idea of randoms giving more RAD to refine would be perfect, because the more i gear and develop my alt (which means a lot of time and ADs spent on it), the more efficient it will be when it comes to earning RAD (at11k you can do RAQ, at 13k REQ exc..), compensating for the time and ADs spent of it. It means, alts could've been an INVESTMENT. But they introduced the 100k limit. Which means: to develop 6 toons you spend x6, but we force you do earn only x1. So it's not "you spend more (time/AD), you earn more. It's "you spend more (time/AD), you earn the same".
In a few words, instead of making alts an investment, and make it so that the more you develop alts, SPENDING TIME AND adS, the more stuff you get, they made alts just and extra-cost.
Developing alts costs ads and time. You must compensate a bit for it, or no sane player would ever bother to develop alts.
If you just say we should have catchup mechanics to allow alts to be playable, I'd say that those exist: Ravenloft in particular made it very easy to get gear.
FTFY
You need boons = time spent playing campaigns again and again, or an extremely huge amount of zen spent to buy the campaign completion. Even creating the tokens to halven the cost of a campaign currency, some campaigns are time-gated. Plus, the tokens cost 50k AD each. For me, for example, it would be 50kx10x6=3M AD.
You need to upgrade/refine the weapon set, artifact set, artifacts up to epic, legendary, and then mythic for artifacts. Going epic is no big deal (but still caosts some RP). Going legendary and then mythic is A LOT of RP. Which is either money to buy them, or time to collect them.
You need enchants. You can move armor, weapon enchants, bondings from toon to toon. Costs some gold, but can be done. Problem is, you have also offensive slot enchants, defensive slot enchants, utility slot enchants. Moving every enchant everytime you change toon would cost, with current gear, something like 40 gold each time you switch toon, plus the time spent unbinding and binding the enchants. Gearing your all my toons with enchants, on the other hand, have an absurd cost if i want to go up. Let's say i need to go higher with iLvL and put, let's say, rank 10 enchants or rank 12 on my toons. 16 slots. 500k each enchant, to stay low, with current prices. Do your math. 8Mx6=48M AD. So it's either 40 gold every time i change toon, plus the time, or 48M AD, for enchants, which provide much needed stats, expecially at higher ranks. If i want rank 13 it's 16M per toon. Crazy. Or again, a ton of gold each time i switch toon.
You need companions. One active companion, and other companions for active bonus. Let's say you go for 1 legendary companion (talking about making your toon 13-14k+, not BiS but geared), it's 1M AD per toon=6M AD. Let's say you need a good companion and not a placeholder: they cost hundred of thousands of AD. Let's say 600k to stay low, for a strong summoned pet with ring slots. 600kx6= 3,6M AD. Plus now you need the gear for them. You might use primal rings. But you need at least a neck or waist or another piece with 2 slots (if you want to gear past a certain level). More AD spent. Even if you stop at blue fierce gear, it still costs some good AD now (30k, more or less? Might be more, might be less). So it's another 30kx6=180k AD.
You need mounts for insignia bonuses, and then you need insignias. You might put random mounts and blue insignias, but if you want to gear up past the 12k point, and make the toon a bit strong, you need certain mounts with certain bonuses. More hundred of thousands of AD gone for at least blue mounts. Not talking about getting a legendary mount to use combat power to activate one of the good insignia bonuses (buff when using a mount combat power). There you go up to milions of AD.
And then you need a strong guild, with strong boons. Costs nothing, but you still need to find a strong guild which allows you to join your alts. And you can't join all of them, 6 in my case. May be 3. It's limited, cause the slots are 150 players, 500 characters. Roughly 3 toons per player. So if i have 6 of them, i must join the other in other guilds, which means farming influence and contribute to other guilds SH= time spent.
Armor and weapon primal set only, the things you mentioned, do not make you strong, nor geared. I see 9-10k toons in full primal. There's much, much more if you want to play an alt. What you talk about is making a placeholder toon at 9k, which can run low gear content and do, pretty much, nothing. If you want to develop a toon for real, not to BiS, but to a geared level, you can read the costs above. From someone who play 6 toons and try to develop them all: you guys wrote a ton of BS. It's the point of view of someone who does not develop alts, someone who is playing only 1 toon (and may be some placeholder 10k toon), and knows NOTHING about what really means to try to develop alts in this game.
The truth is what i wrote: right now, if not even leadership will give some income anymore, developing alts (not creating alts: developing them, past 10k) will just be a huge cost. Which is no problem in your egoistic view of the game. It's something you don't do, so who cares.
NW is getting more and more alt-unfriendly. The only way to make it affordable would be to create a shop that allows you to get, at a low AD cost, BtC enchants, mounts, pets, comp gear, of the same level of the ones you have on your main. So for example, if on your main you have all rank 13 offensive/defensive enchants, epic comp gear, legendary mount exc...you can get stuff of the same level for your alt, without spending an impossible amount of AD or time. Also, erase the 50k tokens for campaigns. Just make it so for the alts, compaigns already completed on main cost half the amount of currency and time (quests given faster, not time gated). You can make the shop available once the alt gets to 12k, so people spend some time practicing with the class and getting basic gear. It would still cost something to get to 12k, but nothing crazy in terms of time and AD.
Right now, developing alts is limited to rich players who want to play more classes. Which might be what cryptic wants. Basically: you want to play more than one class and gear it, you must spend a ton of money or time, or both. In a few words: VERY ALT-UNFRIENDLY.
The fact that you say armor = way to get an alt geared, means you probably do not know how much stuff is needed to really gear up (armor, weapons, artifacts, sets, enchants, companion, comp gear, mount, mount insignias, SH boons, campaign boons...). Get real.
Dead🔪Clearly* the solution is to up the sale tax on the AH to 15%.
*I use the word "Clearly" to signify I am being sarcastic.
All I know is, with Ravenloft, I was able to effortlessly get my off-toons I never even use ILevel 500 to Ilevel 540 gear.
I mean, I then went ahead and salvaged it because I never play those toons anyway and salvaging is going away, but it's the thought that counts!
15% tax? no doubt no problem.
Dead🔪Which makes all you wrote about what needs to be done about alts, nonsense. You base your judgement on the prejudice that alts=invoke army/ leadership army, because, as you wrote above, your maximum effort in upgrading your alts was to switch them from primal to ravenloft hunt gear, because, quoting you "you never play those toons anyway". Wow.
Therefore, you should not speak about something you know NOTHING about (alts, and how to gear them).
Thank you for confirming that your posts about this matter are uninformed nonsense.
Now, what i wrote in my WOT is pretty accurate. The cost in NW to develop an alt is absurd. On top of that, playing multiple classes and toons since module 14, is only a disadvantage. There is no reward in spending time and ADs to gear multiple toons.
There are 2 solutions, if cryptic wants to make the game alt-friendly (right now, it's VERY alt-unfriendly):
Solution n°1: making gearing alts cost less. For example once you have 16 rank 13 or 14 enchants on your main, you can buy with your alts, from a shop, 16 BtC rank 13-14 of any tipe of enchants, to use on your alt. If you destroy one of those enchants, you can buy another type. Same with companions, mounts, insignias, comp gear exc...If i have a legendary comp and 4 epic comps on my main, i can get the same pets from the shop, BtC, or other companions of the same rank. Same with companion gear and so on.
Solution n°2: giving some reward for developing alts. You spend time and AD to develop multiple toons, you must get a reward, it must be an investment, not a loss. For example, raising the RAD daily cap and the number of times you get the bonus RAD from randoms. This way, with no salvage in module 15, Random queues will be a big way to get RAD fast, and being able to run RAQ or REQ with alts too, will pay back all the time and AD spent in upgrading the alt.
The way it is now, it's impossible to develop more than 1 toon, past a certain point, unless your in that 1% of players who are very, very rich.
What this means for the game is simple: most people will play 1 class only. So, less toons available for some rare classes. If someone wanted to develop a DC (rare class) or tank, they will stop and play only their GWF/TR/HR/SW. My DC will stay at 12k, so it's 1 less geared DC available. And so on.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Do that, multiply the RP rewards by 10, woulda been fine...ish. Until I realize that people just start refining enchantments with their leadership army and trading it back and forth.
I kind of wish the game removed refining entirely, and replaced it with RP based boons or something. Like, instead of enchantment slots, you just purchased stats directly with RP. But I digress.
Also, to be clear, I would recommend vastly HIGHER RP benefits in such a system. Particularly, a system that makes alts playable should have low entry point, but high diminishing returns on top tier bonuses. Problem there is that what constitutes the entry point keeps moving higher from mod to mod.
Then there's mounts, insignias, companions and companion gear. Even refining your own enchants on each alt, you still need the reagents, and they cost a lot. If i upgrade 16 enchants up to at least rank 12, on all my toons, i spend a ton of AD. And your idea of compensation is...some BtC RP.
That would help, but i can already get RPs with quartermaster on all alts and rank 12's on main, during 2xenchants event, quests and leadership.
We need the ability to get enchants, mounts, insignias, companions, companion gear, of the same rank of the ones we have on the main, for a small AD price, and bound to character. OR, playing multiple toons, should increase the income of ADs when they get past, let's say, 12k iLvL.
In a few words: developing an alt past, let's say, 12k, costs milions of AD. They must either reduce the cost of upgrading alts up to 13-14-15k+, or they must give rewards and increased income to those who invest on alts. The same as people who invest in masterwork spend milions of AD, but then get them back and more.
No offense, but it's quite clear that you have no idea about how much developing an alt and playing multiple classes seriously, means and costs. So please, no more nonsense, useless ideas. At least first try to develop an alt up to 12-13k who can run RAQ dungeons without being carried, then come back and we can talk. Or develop your main up to 16k+ and then an alt up to 15k+, then come tell me you're ok if the "reward" for developing a second toon up to 15k are some BtC RPs.
I might sound rude, but it's just that playing multiple classes seriously in this game was already absurd in terms of AD cost and time spent. Now with mod 14 and 15 it's as if the devs literally kicked in the balls those players who try to play multiple classes. First the 100k RAD account limit (they could just increase the limit by 100k for each toon that was past 11-12k iLvL (limit for RAQ), to stop bots and alt armies. Now running leadership on multiple toons gets nerfed, taking away the small income from RP selling. In the meanwhile, more and more stuff is added to develop a toon: mounts, insignia bonuses, companions with gear up to legendary and 2 slots, rank 14 bondings, enchants going up and up in rank (from 10 to 14 now), artifact weapons, artifact sets, artifacts, and so on.
Personally, i wish they would simply let us get BtC stuff of the same rank of the one we have on our main, at a small price.
May be leave only armor/weapon enchants and bondings to switch from one toon to the other. Players can't get 16xrank 12-13-14, legendary companion, epic companion gear with another 6xrank 12/13/14, legendary mount, epic insignias, 1xmythic artifact and legendary weapon set at least, on every toon. It's crazy. Forces players to stop developing alts when they hit the 12k wall, unless they are very rich.
Cryptic says they want to reward those who play the game, and yet, the penalize more and more those who try to play multiple classes and develop multiple toons.