I am pretty sure that Zen has never been 50% off. The original zen store sale was 50% but not for buying zen itself. Also i am pretty sure we haven't gotten to 50% of the store for at least a couple years now.
Every year that I've been buying at Black Friday has been 50% off at Store. It's not announced. I'm NOT buying Zen until then. So they say good bye to 300 to 400 bucks from this account until then... Maybe Cyber Monday will be better.
The BS drops are 33% off. 30% no thank u... I'll wait till next Nov then.......................
dayum, 10 am nuffink. wth.. I'm waiting til monday. but man. what is going on? now is not the time to do a 30% off sale they did a few of those in the last month. honestly, it feels like they're aiming to give the player base as sour a taste as possible..
So no 40% off sale.....very sad. Let's see, I can get a 33% off companion or amount voucher pretty regular. I can get a 20% off anything voucher usually once a day via all my toons.
So only a 10% savings on all items or a 3% loss on other items. Great job Cryptic...this is why you will never get me to spend another dime of real money on this game. I spent a ton of real cash when you were offering the 50 keys and 1 month VIP, and I have about 2 years before my vip runs out, so I did spend money at one time.
With this joke of a sale, sorry to say but no more. Let's take a look at your sales numbers last year and compare to this year....something tells me going to lower due to this cheapskate attitude.
Very bad goodwill with all the other issues we have experienced this year.
I have a hard enough time even wanting to play this game anymore. This garbage just makes it worse. At least before when I played an hour or two everyday I at least felt like I should be buying zen with $ every so often. Now that I barely log in to get key there is zero guilt about not giving them $
I have a hard enough time even wanting to play this game anymore. This garbage just makes it worse. At least before when I played an hour or two everyday I at least felt like I should be buying zen with $ every so often. Now that I barely log in to get key there is zero guilt about not giving them $
yeah I haven't been playing for about 2 weeks. log in log out. I'm honestly pretty much near done with this game sale or no. it's just boring.
Ok - after 10am PST on Cyber Monday and nothing new in Zen store. I managed to convert a fair amount of AD to Zen in time for the sale...I was underwhelmed by my buy options.
Barring any late surprises, IMHO this was the weakest BF event NWN has had since I started playing in early 2014.
> @mentinmindmaker said: > (Quote) > Nothing that in any way can reduce their income > > Really, there are a lot of indicators that NW has suffered a massive income loss. They are likely struggling to keep it afloat.
If this were the issue of expect a bigger sale to entice ppl to buy zen. They aren't losing money by selling in game items for a deeper discount but they are getting more ppl to loosen their wallets. I'm really shocked there isn't a big sale. Honestly I'm flabbergasted
I also spent less than half of what I did than last year, which means they lost a good amount of cash. Makes no sense. It's not like they're selling widgets. Short-sightedness will be the end of this game.
> Really, there are a lot of indicators that NW has suffered a massive income loss. They are likely struggling to keep it afloat.
If this were the issue of expect a bigger sale to entice ppl to buy zen. They aren't losing money by selling in game items for a deeper discount but they are getting more ppl to loosen their wallets. I'm really shocked there isn't a big sale. Honestly I'm flabbergasted
There are many ways to make money, one way (which currently seems preferred in the game) is to put bigger price tags on items and hope there are some people willing to pay those prices... *Reference quote attributed to PT Barnum here
Another way, and the way I wished the game favored, is to keep item prices more moderate and attempt to make many more sales that would likely equal or possibly even exceed the revenue from selling higher priced items.
Of course the problem here is when a player spends real world cash for items and soon discovers those items have rather quickly become obsolete - even for the content they used to be dominant in - those same players tend become skittish about making subsequent purchases figuring history will repeat itself. So I think I understand why the game attempts to sell items at inflated prices, instead of trying to sell more items at moderate prices.
I spent money for Zen to buy level 60 elite gear... New Mod and that gear that used to dominate in quests and campaigns before the Module change became obsolete and almost worthless. Spent money for Zen to purchase more powerful runestones and enchantments and suddenly with another Mod change those top of the line enhancements were no longer top of the line.
Next year came around and I thought I'd spend my money a little more wisely and purchased character slots... a LOT of character slots and with a future Mod change there were changes to invocation, professions and even how characters could make Astral Diamonds during dungeon runs. Most of those extra character slots all but worthless, except for "storage" characters, after those changes.
I was happy and willing to overlook those changes when the 50% Black Friday Sale and Cyber Monday Sales were announced so I again spent money to buy Zen trying to catch up a little, a little less happy but still willing to spend(a little less) money for Zen when the Black Friday Sale was dropped to 40% because again I felt I again needed better "stuff" to catch up after more game changes...
Now once again I feel I need better gear, mounts, companions and "stuff" to keep my characters in a good fighting trim and then I realize this is becoming a reoccurring cycle and I'm just throwing good money after bad just to maintain my character's current effective level in existing content and I'd have to spend even more money to buy Zen to be able to effectively play the new content being released.
Maybe there will be some new items, bigger discounts other "things" being offered during the Winter Festival that will make me consider... consider... spending money for Zen before the end of the year. But the longer I play without spending money on Zen the more I realize I can play without spending money to buy items that only exist in the Neverwinter game...
Sure it takes a lot longer and I may not be able to get BIS game stuff all the time but I won't be looking at my credit card account the next time so much of what I bought turns out to be obsolete, wondering why I spent so much to acquire those things in the first place.
DD~
1
putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
many of us save up for the big sales (black friday, new years, and summer). The first couple of years it was a 50% off, then it went to 40% off, now its 30% off. That's not surprising; however, since you can get coupons in game that are near 30% off (some less some more) there is no reason to rush out and buy things during these holiday events. You may as well save your $ for when you want something instead of doing speculative investing on wards, etc that you may need at a later date depending on what content gets released. I know that's what I chose to do.
For anything less than 40% off, just save your $ and see if there is anything in module 18 worth investing in.
3
darthpotaterMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,261Arc User
Really, there are a lot of indicators that NW has suffered a massive income loss. They are likely struggling to keep it afloat.
I dont think they are doing this because they are lossing incoming.
I think this is an effort to make the ZAX go to normal state (not capped) and stop the loop of people buying zen with AD-> wait to 40% offer to spend all the zen -> sell items in AH when the prizes go up -> repeat.
If you watch to the actions they toke, you can see that all of them have the same goal: - Raise zen cap to 750. - Remove the sellable boxes inside the new lockboxes, so you dont make a profit 95% of the time - Reduce the sales - More frecuent Wondorous Bazaar discounts - Introduce preservation wards and coal wards in dungeon chests and events
I bet soon we will see the ZAX go down and by the next big sale (april or so) we will have much less ZAX or nothing, because now is much less profitable to do the cycle, and is harder to keep buying zen because you need a very big pool of AD to do that, and you earn less with each action they take.
I dont say I like it because it is a good income to me, but as allways they take actions to every easy way to make profit in this game, like they did in the past. Remember when keys were unbound?, remember the gateway?, remember the leadership armys?
And even if I dont like the changes, is legit and understandable that they want a better economy in the game wich helps the new players and make the game more fair for them, so they are more willing to spend real cash in the game.
Really, there are a lot of indicators that NW has suffered a massive income loss. They are likely struggling to keep it afloat.
I dont think they are doing this because they are lossing incoming.
I think this is an effort to make the ZAX go to normal state (not capped) and stop the loop of people buying zen with AD-> wait to 40% offer to spend all the zen -> sell items in AH when the prizes go up -> repeat. .
I belive current state cant be dealt with just another "adjustment" of offered items or prices. They need a new system here:
Most healthy I can imagine is:
ZEN store offers items in both - ZEN and ADs currencies. Items bought with ADs are always account bound. Items bought with ZENs are not bounded. ZEN store is offereing ZEN to AD exchange with current 1:750 ratio so paying customer always have a chance to get ADs if he needs them. There is no more ZAX as it is not needed any more.
That way - there gona be no real change for paying customer - for him it is no difference if he changes ZEN for ADs taken form other player or Crytpic.
For regular player - he dont need to wait weeks to get ZENs out of ZAX. And a "loop issue" is solved. And we got massive sink of ADs.
OR
Just one tweak - all item bought form ZEN store with use of ZENs taken form ZAX are account bound. That will also stop that sick loop, but in a long term may put paying customers in disadvantage cos real value of ZEN will possibly drop significantly (most ZEN not paying players are buying is for use with the loop only) due to less demand.
and last but not least.
It is hard to tell if the loop we talk about here is as strong as it used to be. Player base is dvindling or is static at best. So any change may bring just another shock for a population and another player losses.
Very existance of this "loop" is a proof that this system is bad. But changing it now may bring more harm then good. It should have been done with MOD 16 release.
This is what a lot of people have been saying and i agree, the Zen Store, Wondrous Bazaar and the Zen Exchange all need to be fundamentally redesigned to fix the economy that is still broken from years of AD exploits not being addressed on time. Playing around with the pricing and the unbound / account bound nature of different items sold for Zen or AD could be enough and there are many approaches that can be successful if implemented quickly and at the same time.
There should be zero incentive to hoard AD or Zen for Black Friday or Jubilee yet that is what anyone that has even a vague idea about how the economy works does because it's much more beneficial than just spending your resources except in very rare circumstances. This hurts everyone but it especially hurts new players, these big sales should be nothing more than extra incentive to spend in game or real life money, not the ONLY incentive.
I do agree this should have been done for Mod 16 but i disagree that we can wait any longer, the increase on ZAX to 750 was the perfect opportunity to redesign the entire system and the longer we stay like this the worse it will get - these changes need to happen asap.
Well, i've banked thousands of pre Aquisition Inc. lockboxes, i'm only using ViP keys, which means it will take years before i'm forced to waste my keys on any new lockbox. They haven't given me any good reason for spending more money here for several modules now, i doubt that's going to change with Infernal Descent and i also doubt that i'm the only longtime player in this "situation" and/or thinking like that. Not to mention that most of the DLCs/packs released with new modules weren't worth money or even any AD, the last pack that i bought was the Gith Race Pack with the account-wide goodies in it, but i had more then enough ZEN stored in the ZAX for it.
Now let's have a look at a new player... he or she manages to reach 18k IL, sees the new event and starts running it, gets through the first stage of it with using Health Stones/Potions and thinks "Hey, looks like i have a real shot at getting a legendary mount through playing the game, cool!" but then comes Day 8 and the reaction is more like "WTF did just happen!?". Why would this or any other new player even think about spending money now, especially after talking to other players and realising that these kind of things tend to happen again and again?
And then we get bots running 24/7 random queues creating more and more and more AD... And don't get me started on the customer support for NWO or STO these days...
So, they're more or less burning longtime and new players equally through constantly going for one bad choice after the other, why would the AD backlog in the ZAX suddenly decrease in a matter of months?
My guess, unless they improve/upgrade the Wondrous Bazaar with items that are actually worth buying while also bringing back the ZEN charge promotions with account-wide/decent/usefull rewards, i'd say the backlog will increase even more to the point where the ZAX might come to a complete standstill until they go again for the "easy way out" and raise the exchange cap to 1000 AD per 1 ZEN.
Last but not least, i'd say "Huntgate" is also worth remembering here, considering how much damage that whole mess did to the game, not just by the players that exploited the bug, but also by how it was handled by the person(s) in charge later...
Some game companies don't have any sale at all and they are doing fine, if not very well.
I belive I know the company you are talking about. But they implemented healthy system from the start. And high quality of new items they keep offering make it working pretty decent. Smart plan and hard work pays off...always.
Here in Neverwinter..... if one was smart enaugh to invest lets say 1000$ at the start of the game or even straight after coal gate - he after many cycles of the loop should have at least 10% of entire game ADs if not more.... on top of that we had AH controlled trough web site programs.... no wonder that devs lost their control over this game economy.
I know that they try hard to restore that, but I doubt that those solutions will do any good, add dwindling player base (potential customers) on top of that and no wonder that game is far from bringing decent profits.
no increased bonus on Friday (at least, not that I noticed).
I usually buy ZEN for real money, if there is a good deal (e.g. 40-50% percent off in the ZEN shop, significantly better than coupons AND/OR a nice ZEN sale with bonus zen plus additional incentives).
When I was new to the game and the anniversary sale came up, I spent 200$ to get started AND because the game seemed promising. When a game is well-made and the service is agreeable, I tend to support it (because I can). It was a win-win situation. I got a good deal, Cryptic got real money.
After 2+ years I do not really need anything any more. I know how to make AD efficiently, if I need it. I know that the ZAX takes rather long to convert AD to ZEN (2-6 weeks). But the better enchants / gear I have, the less upgrades are needed to run the content I like, including new content (where gear becomes obsolete and enchants/insignias tend to increase by a single rank). I am fairly well equipped, meaning I can wait for good deals.
On special occasions, when there is a good deal (see above), I tend to spend up to 200$ - not because I desperately need the ZEN, - but rather because I appreciate the effort of the devs (the appreciation has gone down a bit with the extremely buggy mod 16, but the situation improved a bit later on - albeit very slowly) - resulting in a win-win situation, - provided they offer a good deal that entices me to buy stuff that isn't really needed
Quite obviously, the current sale was not a good deal, so I am saving my real money for a more favorable offer.
I guess many of the "older" players (1+ years) act similarly.
Now I understand that in order to get players to spend real money, the good deals should not be too predictable, so that everybody saves up for it. So I understand, if they are going to break the easily predictable pattern of two very good deals at two well known dates per year. I hope, that they understand the importance of good deals for "older" and "newer" players, and come up with such good deals in the future (at times that are not that predictable as they were in the past)
Comments
So they say good bye to 300 to 400 bucks from this account until then... Maybe Cyber Monday will be better.
The BS drops are 33% off. 30% no thank u... I'll wait till next Nov then.......................
So only a 10% savings on all items or a 3% loss on other items. Great job Cryptic...this is why you will never get me to spend another dime of real money on this game. I spent a ton of real cash when you were offering the 50 keys and 1 month VIP, and I have about 2 years before my vip runs out, so I did spend money at one time.
With this joke of a sale, sorry to say but no more. Let's take a look at your sales numbers last year and compare to this year....something tells me going to lower due to this cheapskate attitude.
Very bad goodwill with all the other issues we have experienced this year.
Barring any late surprises, IMHO this was the weakest BF event NWN has had since I started playing in early 2014.
I can't wait to see what's going to be offered during Simril (Christmas) this year.
Really, there are a lot of indicators that NW has suffered a massive income loss. They are likely struggling to keep it afloat.
> (Quote)
> Nothing that in any way can reduce their income
>
> Really, there are a lot of indicators that NW has suffered a massive income loss. They are likely struggling to keep it afloat.
If this were the issue of expect a bigger sale to entice ppl to buy zen. They aren't losing money by selling in game items for a deeper discount but they are getting more ppl to loosen their wallets. I'm really shocked there isn't a big sale. Honestly I'm flabbergasted
Another way, and the way I wished the game favored, is to keep item prices more moderate and attempt to make many more sales that would likely equal or possibly even exceed the revenue from selling higher priced items.
Of course the problem here is when a player spends real world cash for items and soon discovers those items have rather quickly become obsolete - even for the content they used to be dominant in - those same players tend become skittish about making subsequent purchases figuring history will repeat itself. So I think I understand why the game attempts to sell items at inflated prices, instead of trying to sell more items at moderate prices.
I spent money for Zen to buy level 60 elite gear... New Mod and that gear that used to dominate in quests and campaigns before the Module change became obsolete and almost worthless. Spent money for Zen to purchase more powerful runestones and enchantments and suddenly with another Mod change those top of the line enhancements were no longer top of the line.
Next year came around and I thought I'd spend my money a little more wisely and purchased character slots... a LOT of character slots and with a future Mod change there were changes to invocation, professions and even how characters could make Astral Diamonds during dungeon runs. Most of those extra character slots all but worthless, except for "storage" characters, after those changes.
I was happy and willing to overlook those changes when the 50% Black Friday Sale and Cyber Monday Sales were announced so I again spent money to buy Zen trying to catch up a little, a little less happy but still willing to spend(a little less) money for Zen when the Black Friday Sale was dropped to 40% because again I felt I again needed better "stuff" to catch up after more game changes...
Now once again I feel I need better gear, mounts, companions and "stuff" to keep my characters in a good fighting trim and then I realize this is becoming a reoccurring cycle and I'm just throwing good money after bad just to maintain my character's current effective level in existing content and I'd have to spend even more money to buy Zen to be able to effectively play the new content being released.
Maybe there will be some new items, bigger discounts other "things" being offered during the Winter Festival that will make me consider... consider... spending money for Zen before the end of the year. But the longer I play without spending money on Zen the more I realize I can play without spending money to buy items that only exist in the Neverwinter game...
Sure it takes a lot longer and I may not be able to get BIS game stuff all the time but I won't be looking at my credit card account the next time so much of what I bought turns out to be obsolete, wondering why I spent so much to acquire those things in the first place.
For anything less than 40% off, just save your $ and see if there is anything in module 18 worth investing in.
I think this is an effort to make the ZAX go to normal state (not capped) and stop the loop of people buying zen with AD-> wait to 40% offer to spend all the zen -> sell items in AH when the prizes go up -> repeat.
If you watch to the actions they toke, you can see that all of them have the same goal:
- Raise zen cap to 750.
- Remove the sellable boxes inside the new lockboxes, so you dont make a profit 95% of the time
- Reduce the sales
- More frecuent Wondorous Bazaar discounts
- Introduce preservation wards and coal wards in dungeon chests and events
I bet soon we will see the ZAX go down and by the next big sale (april or so) we will have much less ZAX or nothing, because now is much less profitable to do the cycle, and is harder to keep buying zen because you need a very big pool of AD to do that, and you earn less with each action they take.
I dont say I like it because it is a good income to me, but as allways they take actions to every easy way to make profit in this game, like they did in the past. Remember when keys were unbound?, remember the gateway?, remember the leadership armys?
And even if I dont like the changes, is legit and understandable that they want a better economy in the game wich helps the new players and make the game more fair for them, so they are more willing to spend real cash in the game.
Caturday Survivor
Elemental Evil Survivor
Undermontain Survivor
Mod20 Combat rework Survivor
Mod22 Refinement rework Survivor
They need a new system here:
Most healthy I can imagine is:
ZEN store offers items in both - ZEN and ADs currencies.
Items bought with ADs are always account bound.
Items bought with ZENs are not bounded.
ZEN store is offereing ZEN to AD exchange with current 1:750 ratio so paying customer always have a chance to get ADs if he needs them.
There is no more ZAX as it is not needed any more.
That way - there gona be no real change for paying customer - for him it is no difference if he changes ZEN for ADs taken form other player or Crytpic.
For regular player - he dont need to wait weeks to get ZENs out of ZAX.
And a "loop issue" is solved.
And we got massive sink of ADs.
OR
Just one tweak - all item bought form ZEN store with use of ZENs taken form ZAX are account bound.
That will also stop that sick loop, but in a long term may put paying customers in disadvantage cos real value of ZEN will possibly drop significantly (most ZEN not paying players are buying is for use with the loop only) due to less demand.
and last but not least.
It is hard to tell if the loop we talk about here is as strong as it used to be. Player base is dvindling or is static at best. So any change may bring just another shock for a population and another player losses.
Very existance of this "loop" is a proof that this system is bad.
But changing it now may bring more harm then good. It should have been done with MOD 16 release.
There should be zero incentive to hoard AD or Zen for Black Friday or Jubilee yet that is what anyone that has even a vague idea about how the economy works does because it's much more beneficial than just spending your resources except in very rare circumstances. This hurts everyone but it especially hurts new players, these big sales should be nothing more than extra incentive to spend in game or real life money, not the ONLY incentive.
I do agree this should have been done for Mod 16 but i disagree that we can wait any longer, the increase on ZAX to 750 was the perfect opportunity to redesign the entire system and the longer we stay like this the worse it will get - these changes need to happen asap.
Not to mention that most of the DLCs/packs released with new modules weren't worth money or even any AD, the last pack that i bought was the Gith Race Pack with the account-wide goodies in it, but i had more then enough ZEN stored in the ZAX for it.
Now let's have a look at a new player... he or she manages to reach 18k IL, sees the new event and starts running it, gets through the first stage of it with using Health Stones/Potions and thinks "Hey, looks like i have a real shot at getting a legendary mount through playing the game, cool!" but then comes Day 8 and the reaction is more like "WTF did just happen!?".
Why would this or any other new player even think about spending money now, especially after talking to other players and realising that these kind of things tend to happen again and again?
And then we get bots running 24/7 random queues creating more and more and more AD...
And don't get me started on the customer support for NWO or STO these days...
So, they're more or less burning longtime and new players equally through constantly going for one bad choice after the other, why would the AD backlog in the ZAX suddenly decrease in a matter of months?
My guess, unless they improve/upgrade the Wondrous Bazaar with items that are actually worth buying while also bringing back the ZEN charge promotions with account-wide/decent/usefull rewards, i'd say the backlog will increase even more to the point where the ZAX might come to a complete standstill until they go again for the "easy way out" and raise the exchange cap to 1000 AD per 1 ZEN.
Last but not least, i'd say "Huntgate" is also worth remembering here, considering how much damage that whole mess did to the game, not just by the players that exploited the bug, but also by how it was handled by the person(s) in charge later...
Here in Neverwinter..... if one was smart enaugh to invest lets say 1000$ at the start of the game or even straight after coal gate - he after many cycles of the loop should have at least 10% of entire game ADs if not more.... on top of that we had AH controlled trough web site programs.... no wonder that devs lost their control over this game economy.
I know that they try hard to restore that, but I doubt that those solutions will do any good, add dwindling player base (potential customers) on top of that and no wonder that game is far from bringing decent profits.
I usually buy ZEN for real money, if there is a good deal (e.g. 40-50% percent off in the ZEN shop, significantly better than coupons AND/OR a nice ZEN sale with bonus zen plus additional incentives).
When I was new to the game and the anniversary sale came up, I spent 200$ to get started AND because the game seemed promising. When a game is well-made and the service is agreeable, I tend to support it (because I can). It was a win-win situation. I got a good deal, Cryptic got real money.
After 2+ years I do not really need anything any more. I know how to make AD efficiently, if I need it. I know that the ZAX takes rather long to convert AD to ZEN (2-6 weeks). But the better enchants / gear I have, the less upgrades are needed to run the content I like, including new content (where gear becomes obsolete and enchants/insignias tend to increase by a single rank). I am fairly well equipped, meaning I can wait for good deals.
On special occasions, when there is a good deal (see above), I tend to spend up to 200$
- not because I desperately need the ZEN,
- but rather because I appreciate the effort of the devs (the appreciation has gone down a bit with the extremely buggy mod 16, but the situation improved a bit later on - albeit very slowly)
- resulting in a win-win situation,
- provided they offer a good deal that entices me to buy stuff that isn't really needed
Quite obviously, the current sale was not a good deal, so I am saving my real money for a more favorable offer.
I guess many of the "older" players (1+ years) act similarly.
Now I understand that in order to get players to spend real money, the good deals should not be too predictable, so that everybody saves up for it. So I understand, if they are going to break the easily predictable pattern of two very good deals at two well known dates per year. I hope, that they understand the importance of good deals for "older" and "newer" players, and come up with such good deals in the future (at times that are not that predictable as they were in the past)