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AD-->ZEN exchange queue time (Limit listings)
mayorofarta
Member Posts: 57 Arc User
With months waiting for the exchange to take place, I was wondering why they don't limit each account listings to say 5k from 25k and they prefer to increase the ratio instead. Whales will never lose no matter the ratio.
Post edited by mayorofarta on
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Some of the reasons why the backlog is so long.
Not enough people selling zen, it's much more profitable to sell Zen market items on the ah than it is to sell the Zen directly.
You could counter this by making Zen market purchases bound to account but you would create a problem with f2p players not being able to access things they need like wards.
People are using Zen as a savings account since there is a cap on the amount of ad you can have on your account.
You could counter this by putting a cap on the amount of Zen an account can have but then players would be forced to purchase high value items and create bank guilds for storage.
I think one of the major issues with the huge backlog is some players who use the exchange for their vip are not able to renew it in time, and once their vip runs out they don't want to play anymore.
I can't blame them either, I have gotten so used to having a signpost that I can't imagine playing without it
Help me see, why the company prefers to benefit whales with the current system. Is it more profitable to them this way? Maybe forcing new players purchasing zen?
The ZAX is not there to provide AD-grinders with ways to get anything they want without having to pay for it, in a short time frame. The ZAX is there so that anyone who needs AD and is willing to pay cash for Zen has a ready market to convert his $$ into AD any time he likes. Any other uses (wealth storage, or allowing AD-grinders access to cash shop purchases) is basically a gimme. Although they probably contribute to the health and player activity of the game as well, they aren't the primary goal.
If you want to have the Zen to buy things when you need them, then grind your Zen and make your trades well in advance. Build up a store of Zen and then don't blow it all. There is far too much excess AD in the market so the only real 'fix' for the ZAX is to put some major AD sinks in the game and drain some of the extra AD out of circulation.
* The queue wait time will be significantly shorter, which would means people would try to use the ZAX rather than
purchasing Zen out of impatience. This could mean less income for Cryptic.
* It will favor those with little money that only keeps 1-2 queue slots active anyways
* It will certainly release a LOT of AD back into the economy which likely will push the AH prices up
* Since it makes it harder for the big operators on the ZAX it is likely the number of items bought with Zen and reposted
on AH will go down somewhat. That likely will increase AH prices. Note: This is what makes Zen shop items like wards
generally available, without it game certainly would be pay-to-play.
So I think this would lead to higher AH prices on Zen items and less income for Cryptic.
If you want Zen now, buy it for $10 and don't be a barnacle like me. If you don't mind the wait in line, trade AD with other players at 750 AD per Zen. I am told the wait is up to 50 days or more and Cryptic has no responsibility for the backlog. Raising or removing the cap makes people with Zen, AD rich and the grind to make Zen that much longer. For players who plan to buy Zen for cash, you should wait for a charge event, they will gift you other items for buying Zen. Charge events normally will occur around the November and December holidays.
Free to Play is just as it says, you can play this game without spending a dime or any Zen at all. None of the content is locked behind a pay wall or level upgrade. Not using Zen at all is possible, just extremely longer play time. Almost everything matters is available for AD in the Auction House.
Have fun!
If they make it 10k zen backlog will be doubled and in general your wait time will be 2x as long (100 days) doesn’t help
Rip math
The purpose of the ZAX limit (now 750 ad per 1 zen) is there to PROTECT the free to play players, so the AD they get with the time invested is not devaluated to the infinite.
And the game had once a balance in the ZAX, there was instant buy zen or instant buy AD and the prize was up and down depending on lots of reasons.
That said, the ZAX is now what it is, we already said 1000 times lots of reasons. We dont know if Cryptic make more money now or more money before, but I am pretty sure the more players the game have, more money they make.
And Cryptic is responsible of the actual situation. Dont blame the players for use the tools that are in the game to generate incoming. They can do that and they arent doing anything ilegal, just using the game tools.
We dont know if Cryptic want to change this or not, because they wont talk with us about this. They will made the decissions that are better for them, that incluces keep the players happy, but sometimes that includes keep the paying players happy.
And finally, changing this is not easy. They need to address multiple things at the same time, assuming they want to change it, but even then, this kind of changes, if are bad implemented, can be the end of a game. They need to be very carefull, not annoying paying players, not annoying new players, and not annyoing too much ftp players.
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There are some important items you need Zen for:
* VIP
* Character slots
If one can't wait for the queue, one can use money to buy Zen and it is very affordable.
Btw, if i don't take into account mount gear, my character is BiS... I don't say these for my sake.
How about they limit your ability to convert to zen (e.g. 1 listings per account/10k max per account). Isn't that the best AD sink you can imagine? Your AD multiplication through zen exchange is severly limited. Now if less items are posted by whales in AH and prices go up, isn't that going to sink even more AD? Ofc AD farmers will make multiple accounts to counter this, but I don't believe most will bother doing this, at least it won't be that easy anymore.
Doing this requires some wealth and knowledge that new people don't have.
You could say that the traders are preying on the new, the knowledgeless and the impatient ones.
But the thing is, the traders also provide a valuable service. Without the traders most Zen items would not be easily available on the AH for AD. People basically pay an inflated price for the convenience of not having to wait for Zen trades to get through, and not having to wait for Zen discount offers to come around.
The option to do it the slow way is there for all. The information on how little you can pay if you do it the slow way also is easily accessible to all. People still choose to buy Zen items from AH at inflated prices.
Actually, since many of the items from the Zen store are critical for game play, without the traders NW would be a lot closer to a pay-to-play game since the trading process is so slow that for many people the only option is to spend Zen. That would push the free-to-play gang out of the game.
Once again, the ZAX (zen/AD exchange) is a player to player exchange and both Cryptic Studios and PWE are not manipulating the market. All the players are in complete control of this system. They have supplied the means for players to trade AD for Zen. If they pulled the plug on the ZAX, your only method to convert Zen to AD would be the Auction House and the reverse would just be impossible.
Everyone with Zen is hoarding it at present, waiting on the Black Friday Sales, waiting on Cyber Monday, waiting to see what they can buy with their Zen. Fewer players are converting Zen directly to AD, more players are posting AD to be sold for unavailable Zen, and most of you should know by now this is what causes the backlog.
There is nothing in the Zen store I want or need to play this game. I have played without Zen, but as I have stated, early on in this game I used the ZAX to buy Zen for character slots and shared bank slots. If there was no ZAX, I would have resorted to spending my cash for Zen as I did for my Foundry usage on Star Trek Online back in the Summer of 2012. Once I started playing here on NW, I found there was no need for me to spend my funds other than to support this game. At this point, they could remove the ZAX and there would still be no need for me to spend cash as they have the AH as crystal based currency. That their mistake and it created a system for true Free Play model. They would have to change both the AH and the ZAX to convert this to a Pay to Play model.
We had this conversation before and I grow tired of repeating myself.
Second, who said anything about removing zax?
Third, less/lower listings --> lower backlog.
Last, stop derailing the conversation to different changes that could allow better AD sinks. This is about listings and listings only. (I should put that on the title)
Uncommon and rare mount collars could find their way into the Wondrous Bazaar for example, the green ones for 100k AD and the blue ones for 200k AD, bound to account of course, taking some pressure of the ZAX and also giving players a more reliable way for upgrading their characters.
Or expanding the range of offered uncommon and rare companions in the WB might also be an idea here... and while they're at it, they could also adjust the prices of those companions, so that players might actually think about buying them.
In short Cryptic have full and complete control of the game economy.
The one and only one entity that is responsible for the game economy health is Cryptic. No one else. And who is responsible for the situation? The green fairy that decided that there are no items worth spending AD on, and prices drop by the hour? Is it the purple martian who sets ZEN store discounts so that players backlog in their anticipation? (though practicly, the blackfriday 30% discount is not really worth the time anymore) Different players have different needs. Some want to play the group content and want to upgrade their chars, hence need wards, mounts. Want QoL upgrades like ViP to not waste time in a walking to the edge of the map simulator.
Others do not care and only use the game for chit chat. Well, luckily (most of) everyone else, including the devs, PWE, the majority of the players and so on disagree.
The solution has never been to increase the AD->Zen ratio (which just causes pres ward prices to be higher on the AH) or to limit the number of postings a player can make (as this just creates bot accounts). The only solution would be to BTA consumables from the Zen store (pres wards, and other items that get resold), however this reduces money cryptic makes and would also flood the economy with AD (something cryptic has been unable to manage). Many people with 5x listings back logged would just buy up sought after items on the auction house and inflate their price. Right now, the system works, if you plan ahead. As others stated, no zen item is mandatory, I would like a second mount pack, but my character can still play the game without it or without VIP.
Install a 1% chance to get a Captcha each time a chest is opened. If the player passes the 'im not a bot' captcha, they get an extra 5,000 AD for their inconvenience. If the player fails the captcha (maybe give them 2 tries with a time limit), then their account gets disabled until they contact support. Cryptic would just turn them back on, but would investigate the player activity afterword using a simple profiling checklist. If the account has high potential of being a bot... they could gather data and then ban the account.