New AD Drain everyone will welcome

psychoticsatyr

I just thought of a way for ARC to drain a huge amount of AD from game and no one will complain.

Give strongholds another storage tab or 2 at 2 - 5 million AD each. that would remove more AD then probably all the Knox companions and I guarantee every guild still active would thank them.

just my $.02
QM

yes, we would buy one for sure.

nunya

Not a bad idea. I wouldn't use it in my guild, yet, but that's because we still haven't unlocked all the existing tabs. For those guilds that have unlocked all the tabs, I'm sure they'd be keen to have more storage.

eclipseblood

In the grand scheme of things, 5 million isn't much. Increasing the guild sh to 25 then adding an item in the bazaar to get a new required currency to progress the guild halls. That would probably help a lot imo.

psychoticsatyr

adding new bank tabs at 5 million, 7.5 million, and even 10 million AD would be much easier to code I think (not a coder) than adding 5 new levels, new building levels, new boons, etc. and having 2 guilds with tabs full of hunt marks and trophies and wanted posters, I know for a fact that both guilds would pay that first day.

nunya

psychoticsatyr said:

adding new bank tabs at 5 million, 7.5 million, and even 10 million AD would be much easier to code I think (not a coder) than adding 5 new levels, new building levels, new boons, etc. and having 2 guilds with tabs full of hunt marks and trophies and wanted posters, I know for a fact that both guilds would pay that first day.

Depending on how the SH and its buildings are coded, new levels might be very easy to add. If they set up the production structures (farm, mine, etc) to have their production per hour scale by level, and then set all the buildings' maximum levels to be $guildHallLevel/2, then simply changing the maximum guild hall level would adjust the other pieces automatically with no code required. Of course, you still have to deal with costs to upgrade and I haven't seen anything about the costs that indicates an algorithmic solution to that problem. So I doubt any of the rest of the SH is set up to be algorithmically scaled, either.

callumf

Again - can someone please remind me or explain why we need an AD sink? Thanks

greywynd

Because there is too much AD in each player's personal economy.

callumf

And presumably that leads to price inflation which is obviously bad for newer players?

greywynd

Main reason for sinks is that the company has decided that there is too much AD in the game's economy, with more coming in on a daily basis than is leaving.

The main problem on the player side is that there are not enough worthwhile/necessary/repeatable buys set at a reasonable price. Currently a player can manage 4-5 GMoPs/day if they hit cap. Without pres wards to insure those GMoPs that is an expense most players can't/won't stomach. When you move up to SMoPs, you can manage 1/day. Hitting cap daily, you have to go 2 weeks in order to upgrade high-end enchants/runes.

For people selling, they want to recoup their expenses in making those stones, so prices tend to be high. The highest general expense tends to be stacks of pres wards. If a person makes an enchant using no pres wards their asking price will be along the lines of the current AH prices. The same as if they burn through a full stack.

A new player coming in can't afford anything as they have yet to begin accumulating AD. As they accumulate, a lot of things will remain beyond their buying capacity unless they buy zen to toss into the exchange, or happen to get lucky opening a lockbox and getting a high-value item that they might be able to afford the posting fee to sell.

psychoticsatyr

my guild mates & I were talking, we decided we as a guild would pay 25million AD to be able to rank up the guild house to rank 25.... if we would how many others would (especially if there is a shared AD bank like gold) that would remove billions & billions from the game.

nunya

psychoticsatyr said:

my guild mates & I were talking, we decided we as a guild would pay 25million AD to be able to rank up the guild house to rank 25.... if we would how many others would (especially if there is a shared AD bank like gold) that would remove billions & billions from the game.

You do realize that such a cost would prohibit small guilds, and possibly some mid-sized guilds, from ever reaching those levels, right? Granted, I'm hoping that my guild will grow considerably, once my guild finally hits level 10 and I'm able to build the stable and rank it up. (The previous leader, sadly, built the Wizard's Workshop and, while I hate that choice, I have so far been loathe to tear it down since we would get no refund on the construction costs and because we'll eventually just build it again.)

grogthemagnif

When Beta started, 1 Zen = 200 AD, now 1 Zen = 500 AD. A 150% INCREASE. To balance the Economy they have to cut the Zen market prices by 60%. A lockbox key costs 125 Zen, or 25,000 AD, now costs 63,500 AD. An Epic Mount costs 3500 Zen, then 700,000 AD, now 1,750,000 AD.

If you refine 100,000 AD, that's 200 Zen, but if the prices were Dropped 60% PERMANENTLY, it would be 500 Zen. Keeping the ratio of 1 Zen = 500 AD would drive the Zax temporarily to about 500 Million zen requested, up from about 26 Million recently.

Those Zen Market prices that have dropped less than 60% could drop to 40% of their original (May, 2013) prices so that the price drop stabilizes the market and some prices (VIP [and other items added after 2015] for Example) would remain as they are.

eclipseblood

@nunya#5309 We were mainly focused on guild hall lvl 20-25, the resource costs are enough of a requirement for guilds ranking up still. Most of the players in r20 sh atm are end game, who in this case have a lot of ad in their accounts just sitting around. Not everyone per say, but having an ad sink through sh progression from 20-25 would pull a lot of ad out of the system without affecting players still gearing.

nunya

@eclipseblood#1326 Fair enough.

chidion

psychoticsatyr said:

I just thought of a way for ARC to drain a huge amount of AD from game and no one will complain.

Give strongholds another storage tab or 2 at 2 - 5 million AD each. that would remove more AD then probably all the Knox companions and I guarantee every guild still active would thank them.

just my $.02
QM
yes, we would buy one for sure.

A great idea but why stop there?

Give players the opportunity to double their personal and shared bank space (for a price of course) and while they're at it how about adding a few new player inventory bag slots? That could be a double sink as players will have to pay to open up a slot - then have to buy a new bag to fill that slot!

I suspect a great many more players would jump at the opportunity to increase their personal and shared bank storage capacity and their personal inventory space than would opt for a few more drawers in the guild bank.

eclipseblood

@constantmule#4943 To take ad out of the game so that the adx will get lower? We get less and less because the ad refined each day per a player outweighs wat is pulled out of the game. That's probably a big reason for the salvage changes since barovia gave tons of salvage between enemies and hunts. If they do make more ad sinks, I would personally prefer it to be something we want to spend ad on

constantmule

eclipseblood#1326 said:

@constantmule#4943 To take ad out of the game so that the adx will get lower? We get less and less because the ad refined each day per a player outweighs wat is pulled out of the game. That's probably a big reason for the salvage changes since barovia gave tons of salvage between enemies and hunts. If they do make more ad sinks, I would personally prefer it to be something we want to spend ad on

an AD sink isnt going to lower the adx. we dont have a true economy here its a game. supply and demand matters, but not on everything..what we got is a bunch of people with a lot of zen and a lot of ad set a price, everyone followed because they would feel like they were cheating theirself if they didnt post things for such a ridiculous amount and im pretty sure it will stay that way.

eclipseblood

It might not be a "true" economy but it isnt a good thing to have the adx that high. Right now the zen is more valuable than ad atm, having more enticing ad sinks will cause more ppl to spend their ad on that instead of zen. Especially end game players who are maxed out for instance. I have 2 characters and while I have no intention of making a 3rd I don't have anything else to do other than farm ad while chatting with friends so it builds up after awhile. Opening lockboxes every once in a while also thus buying zen.

dionchi

Removing excessive AD's and the methods players use to exploit accumulating AD's will keep Cryptic from raising the AD to Zen conversion from 500-1, to 1000-1, along with all the items purchased with Zen and AD's getting a similar inflationary price increase, as I've been told has already happened on the Russian (Drider) servers.

Cryptic seems to be trying everything they can think of to keep the exchange rate for Zen down on the Dragon server and I for one appreciate that. If people continue to make use of exploits, hording AD's and the AD glut cannot be nipped in the bud, we too might see the exchange rate doubled, and most of the people I've talked with have said that is something they definitely don't want to see.

Think about it...

< Mod Edit - Removed quote and response to the quote. - Ambisinisterr

adinosii

Well, we expect to see a guild SH increase (probably to 25) next year, and I am pretty certain it will be tuned to be a big AD sink.

There are already some hints the increase is coming so, yea...mod 16 seems likely.

mystar

I'm not sure capping the amount of astral diamonds is fixing this game's economy....seems to only be making it worse. I think they should consider capping the amount that can be exchanged for zen per month. Personally I would rather wait for getting zen through the exchange because I reached the cap rather than waiting because a low number of players have nothing better to do than flood the exchange with their millions of ad. On the other hand, the game does still need to provide something more worthwhile to spend ad on....but that requires a higher level of creativity which this game seems to be starting tolose its grip on...that's probably why they're taking away and changing things the way they are for the sake of "balance." Lack of creativity.

mrderpherpin

adding a sink would do way more harm than good, please for the love of god i just want the exploits to be fixed and the cheating whales to die down a bit, i know people are going to spend irl money on the game, and thats fine, but my issue is, most people on here complaining seem to only care about personal gain rather than an improved experience... TLDR: just fix glitches, and rebalance pricing without benefiting whales, everyones a winner... oh wait i forget, tin foil hat timmy has to spend 500M AD on the exchange to get his precious ZEN he cheated for, god forbid they make the game fair! (end of rant, just wanted to vent, thanks for reading.)

terrek41

With the conversion of salvage, from astral diamonds to refinement points. It seems like their removing the use of alts, that have stored up 100k bonus on salvaging gear into astral diamonds. This is pretty bold, because now the only things alts are really useable for is the invoke / coffer of celstial artifacts (Coal Wards). Aside from the task changes of course via professions.

Now, as a returning player. I view the above as a double edged sword. On one side: Yes I agree that there is way too much AD in the game, and its only getting worse. So with that in mind. Yes I think this is a good thing. However, others won't view it in that light simply because most people are actually quite greedy. Look at the sheer amount of cheaters this game has had over the years. Where did all that AD come from.

On the other hand, everyone who has alts. Are either going to become inactive, or become invoke alts. Which is a drastic change, because now players will have to actually play them, to gain AD, and use up that bonus from invoking.

Admin. You would have been better off not banning the cheaters, but instead. Reset them back to fresh level 1. Sitting at the initial intro quest. With the one starter bag, or two. And nothing else. No mounts. No companions. A fully reset to 0 richs tab. Everything gone. I would leave them their character slots though. Every toon on the account would be the same. Level 1. Bank and shared bank: Empty. Completely Empty. Auction house and mail, and of course zen exchange - emptied.

Bye bye vip too. Since it was probably bought with zen, via cheated AD.

Oh, and I would also ban them from posting in the forums. Its more fun to listen to them in zone chat in PE.

plasticbat

terrek41 said:

With the conversion of salvage, from astral diamonds to refinement points. It seems like their removing the use of alts, that have stored up 100k bonus on salvaging gear into astral diamonds. This is pretty bold, because now the only things alts are really useable for is the invoke / coffer of celstial artifacts (Coal Wards). Aside from the task changes of course via professions.

Now, as a returning player. I view the above as a double edged sword. On one side: Yes I agree that there is way too much AD in the game, and its only getting worse. So with that in mind. Yes I think this is a good thing. However, others won't view it in that light simply because most people are actually quite greedy. Look at the sheer amount of cheaters this game has had over the years. Where did all that AD come from.

On the other hand, everyone who has alts. Are either going to become inactive, or become invoke alts. Which is a drastic change, because now players will have to actually play them, to gain AD, and use up that bonus from invoking.

Admin. You would have been better off not banning the cheaters, but instead. Reset them back to fresh level 1. Sitting at the initial intro quest. With the one starter bag, or two. And nothing else. No mounts. No companions. A fully reset to 0 richs tab. Everything gone. I would leave them their character slots though. Every toon on the account would be the same. Level 1. Bank and shared bank: Empty. Completely Empty. Auction house and mail, and of course zen exchange - emptied.

Bye bye vip too. Since it was probably bought with zen, via cheated AD.

Oh, and I would also ban them from posting in the forums. Its more fun to listen to them in zone chat in PE.

They can't post in chat neither since you want to reset them to level 1. That means they are on the beach. When you reach PE, you are level 4 and you still cannot post in chat until after you finish a lot of quests.

nunya

plasticbat said:

terrek41 said:

With the conversion of salvage, from astral diamonds to refinement points. It seems like their removing the use of alts, that have stored up 100k bonus on salvaging gear into astral diamonds. This is pretty bold, because now the only things alts are really useable for is the invoke / coffer of celstial artifacts (Coal Wards). Aside from the task changes of course via professions.

Now, as a returning player. I view the above as a double edged sword. On one side: Yes I agree that there is way too much AD in the game, and its only getting worse. So with that in mind. Yes I think this is a good thing. However, others won't view it in that light simply because most people are actually quite greedy. Look at the sheer amount of cheaters this game has had over the years. Where did all that AD come from.

On the other hand, everyone who has alts. Are either going to become inactive, or become invoke alts. Which is a drastic change, because now players will have to actually play them, to gain AD, and use up that bonus from invoking.

Admin. You would have been better off not banning the cheaters, but instead. Reset them back to fresh level 1. Sitting at the initial intro quest. With the one starter bag, or two. And nothing else. No mounts. No companions. A fully reset to 0 richs tab. Everything gone. I would leave them their character slots though. Every toon on the account would be the same. Level 1. Bank and shared bank: Empty. Completely Empty. Auction house and mail, and of course zen exchange - emptied.

Bye bye vip too. Since it was probably bought with zen, via cheated AD.

Oh, and I would also ban them from posting in the forums. Its more fun to listen to them in zone chat in PE.

They can't post in chat neither since you want to reset them to level 1. That means they are on the beach. When you reach PE, you are level 4 and you still cannot post in chat until after you finish a lot of quests.

That would be true only if they also reset the flag that enables chat. After all, you only have to get one character to level 15 or whatever to use chat. After that, all characters on your account can use chat. @terrek41 has a good idea, and not resetting the account flags would make it ... interesting.

plasticbat

nunya#5309 said:

plasticbat said:

terrek41 said:

With the conversion of salvage, from astral diamonds to refinement points. It seems like their removing the use of alts, that have stored up 100k bonus on salvaging gear into astral diamonds. This is pretty bold, because now the only things alts are really useable for is the invoke / coffer of celstial artifacts (Coal Wards). Aside from the task changes of course via professions.

Now, as a returning player. I view the above as a double edged sword. On one side: Yes I agree that there is way too much AD in the game, and its only getting worse. So with that in mind. Yes I think this is a good thing. However, others won't view it in that light simply because most people are actually quite greedy. Look at the sheer amount of cheaters this game has had over the years. Where did all that AD come from.

On the other hand, everyone who has alts. Are either going to become inactive, or become invoke alts. Which is a drastic change, because now players will have to actually play them, to gain AD, and use up that bonus from invoking.

Admin. You would have been better off not banning the cheaters, but instead. Reset them back to fresh level 1. Sitting at the initial intro quest. With the one starter bag, or two. And nothing else. No mounts. No companions. A fully reset to 0 richs tab. Everything gone. I would leave them their character slots though. Every toon on the account would be the same. Level 1. Bank and shared bank: Empty. Completely Empty. Auction house and mail, and of course zen exchange - emptied.

Bye bye vip too. Since it was probably bought with zen, via cheated AD.

Oh, and I would also ban them from posting in the forums. Its more fun to listen to them in zone chat in PE.

They can't post in chat neither since you want to reset them to level 1. That means they are on the beach. When you reach PE, you are level 4 and you still cannot post in chat until after you finish a lot of quests.

That would be true only if they also reset the flag that enables chat. After all, you only have to get one character to level 15 or whatever to use chat. After that, all characters on your account can use chat. @terrek41 has a good idea, and not resetting the account flags would make it ... interesting.

That would be interesting if you put a level 1 in PE. I don't know what would happen because there is no chat window for level 1 (as far as I remember). How can a level 1 move up level in PE? There will be no quest he can get because he did not finish the basic quest.
I recently make a storage toon. I could not even leave the intro PE instance (which has no other player and blocked off from stairs) without using VIP to jump to the real PE.

quickfoot

We need *in-game* ad sinks, like the sh bank idea is good. What about Mythic companion upgrades at 5 mil ad or 10 mil f' it, or like 600 - 1200 companion upgrade tokens. Increase companion ilvl to 300 and make Mythic Companion bonus a little higher than the Legendary Companion bonus, along with increase in the companion's stats relative to their rank etc. Like Mythic Companion bonus could be 24%, 12%, 6%, 3%, 1.5% for each mythic companion.

nunya

plasticbat said:

That would be interesting if you put a level 1 in PE. I don't know what would happen because there is no chat window for level 1 (as far as I remember). How can a level 1 move up level in PE? There will be no quest he can get because he did not finish the basic quest.
I recently make a storage toon. I could not even leave the intro PE instance (which has no other player and blocked off from stairs) without using VIP to jump to the real PE.

Well, presumably the account and characters would retain their flags. Therefore, the game would know:
1. The character finished the intro quest.
2. The account has had a character that reached level 15.
3. Which campaigns and quests the character has finished.

There are probably other things the game would know about the characters and the account. I just can't think of them right now. What all this means is that the characters wouldn't be able to collect campaign completion awards, such as Symbol of Savras, mount insignias, and so forth. It would also mean the character would get to keep all its boons. The player would be able to use the chat system, and they wouldn't be stuck in PE being unable to go different places and do quests.

It would mean that the player might have a little bit easier time leveling the character back to 70 because they have all their boons, even though they have no gear. At the same time, they wouldn't get any first-time completion bonuses and they wouldn't get free bags again or other such things. They also wouldn't be able to repeat any one-time completion quests, such as SH quests like "A New Sheriff" and so on. Overall, I think being returned to level 1 with all the relevant flags retained would be a rather mixed bag. It makes me wonder what it would be like to create a new character, get it through the intro quest, then buy campaign completion tokens for all the campaigns that have them available, and then level the character. In fact, I'm curious enough about this that if they ever announce a new class, I think I'm going to try doing exactly this!

EDIT: I just realized that getting back to level 70 could be a real grind since there might not be many/any low level quests to do, depending on which the character did the first time through.

plasticbat

nunya#5309 said:

EDIT: I just realized that getting back to level 70 could be a real grind since there might not be many/any low level quests to do, depending on which the character did the first time through.

I don't even know how to grind because killing mob may not give you XP or enough XP (depends on the flags you talked about). If there is no quest, there is no big XP.

I guess the person has to get some unbound XP book from somewhere (if they still exist) but he has no AD to buy anything.

He can't even invoke unless the invoke flag is still on.

If there is leadership and his profession was not reset, he can go leadership but leadership will be gone in mod 15.

If one wants to come back after this punishment, he may as well create a new account and then whine about it in PE.

nunya

plasticbat said:

If one wants to come back after this punishment, he may as well create a new account and then whine about it in PE.

I was going to write a longer reply, but there's no point. You are right. The player would be better off just creating a new character and starting over.

dionchi

I think the game already has had more than enough instances of trying to punish players for programming errors someone later decides to call "illegal exploits", no need to suggest more punishment for players only playing in a manner allowed by the game's design and programming.

Of course it isn't Cryptic's or Neverwinter's fault, even if accused "exploit" players are only playing the game withing the game's design parameters and are unaware they aren't supposed to do what they are able to do... by the way I have some lovely Florida swamp land for sale that would be a great place to build a house too (please note the not so subtle sarcasm).

Likewise the present idea of needing an "AD sink" is another example of something that later came back to bite Neverwinter in the hind quarters, but was a one time not only a integral part of the game design but a heavy relied upon selling point for the game's economy...

Neverwinter wants players to buy character slots -

• Players buy character slots - uses multiple character to collect AD's on the gateway, so Neverwinter closes down gateway and a player's ability to make AD's with professions in the game.
  
• Players buy character slots - uses multiple characters to invoke in the game to get AD's, so Neverwinter ends the ability of players to directly get AD's by invoking.
  
• Players buy character slots - uses multiple characters so run "Daily" AD scenarios in different locations, so Neverwinter changes the time tables on those scenarios so they can only be run every 5 days or so.
  
• Players buy character slots - uses multiple characters to run dungeons and skirmishes for AD's, so Neverwinter decides only one character per account will be able to get a respectable AD reward from running random content.
  
• Neverwinter adds "salvage items" to campaigns and quests which can be converted to AD's, so now with a glut of AD's in the Neverwinter economy the game is removing the convertible salvage items for AD's option completely.
  

Related - Neverwinter designs certain professions results award refinement points and to stack -

• So players buy character slots - to allow them to produce bags from professions that award Refinement Points items. Then players discover they can multiply the worth of their refinement points by opening those refinement point bags during "Double Refinement Point" events. So Neverwinter changes the double refinement points event turning it into yet another in game "grind", effectively taking the ability to make use of the double refinement point event away from many players.
  
• Players buy character slots - to allow them to produce bags from professions that aware Refinement Points - and also stack - and save the opening of those bags for "Double Refinement Stones" events. So Neverwinter completely does away with the existing professions module and introduces a new professions module where players not only can't stack RP professions bags for double refinement stones, but they now have to pay for previously free professions production, players will have have fewer artisans, who's production ability wanes with use and a random chance of "failure" added for good measure.
  

Neverwinter first encourages players to purchase multiple characters slots - then steadily begins to remove all or most game design incentives for having multiple character slots. This may not feel like punitive measures to everyone else, players being punished for making the best use of the way the game was designed, but it certainly feels like that for me.