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ZAX exchange and Preservation Wards
lordaule
Member Posts: 7 Arc User
We all know the Zen to Astral Diamond exchange (ZAX), and how it's a player-driven market.
There's one significant factor that subverts this exchange, to the detriment of new players and the exchange itself: Preservation Wards.
- Dungeon premium rewards, may drop 1 preservation ward
- Coffer after invoking serveral days, may drop 1 preservation ward
- Special events (such as the RP event, or Gond) may drop 1 preservation ward at a time
- Hell Pit (and Harvester or Nightmares) allows the purchase of 10 preservation ward packs
Because of the aforementioned limitations, the most reliable source of preservation wards is the Zen market. To a player who needs wards, they have two options:
1. Purchase them with Zen
2. Purchase them off the Auction House from another player
For a new player who hasn't decided if they want to invest money in the game but needs to upgrade well, everything, the only viable option is really #2.
This ALSO means that for the player who purchased Zen, they can make a higher exchange rate by reselling wards than they can make from directly converting the Zen to AD using the ZAX, as long as they're willing to wait for the wards to sell. This has three effects:
1. Players who need to purchase wards have to pay a higher rate than the ZAX exchange cap
2. Players selling wards make a higher exchange rate than the ZAX cap
3. Sellers not using the ZAX to exchange zen means the ZAX market backlog only grows, because there's very little downward pressure from sellers.
B. The second suggestion is to modify the ZAX exchange, as follows:
Each day that a Zen order is outstanding, the system should automatically convert 100 Zen worth of AD.
This value is enough to purchase 1 pack of preservation wards. To purchase VIP will take 10 days (out of the 30).
To a player trying to purchase the cap 5,000 zen, this will take almost 2 months.
This slow, steady drain of the capped ZAX will stop operating when the ZAX is no longer backlogged: it will return to a player-driven market.
This slow rate should not reduce in much Zen sales, for the following reasons:
1) The automatic drain would only function when there's a backlog
2) The 100 Zen a day won't allow for purchase of many premium items. For example, it would take 42 days to purchase the Rank 14 Weapon/Armor Enchantment choice box, which is only up for 1 week.
3) There will still be players who purchase Zen to speed up the game, who don't want to wait for the exchange to come in.
These suggestions will help new players and also help return the ZAX exchange to a healthy player-driven market, as it was intended.
There's one significant factor that subverts this exchange, to the detriment of new players and the exchange itself: Preservation Wards.
Problem Description:
New players, or anyone ranking up a new weapon set or artifact set, require preservation wards. Dozens, in fact. And there are very few places to acquire them in-game:- Dungeon premium rewards, may drop 1 preservation ward
- Coffer after invoking serveral days, may drop 1 preservation ward
- Special events (such as the RP event, or Gond) may drop 1 preservation ward at a time
- Hell Pit (and Harvester or Nightmares) allows the purchase of 10 preservation ward packs
Because of the aforementioned limitations, the most reliable source of preservation wards is the Zen market. To a player who needs wards, they have two options:
1. Purchase them with Zen
2. Purchase them off the Auction House from another player
For a new player who hasn't decided if they want to invest money in the game but needs to upgrade well, everything, the only viable option is really #2.
This ALSO means that for the player who purchased Zen, they can make a higher exchange rate by reselling wards than they can make from directly converting the Zen to AD using the ZAX, as long as they're willing to wait for the wards to sell. This has three effects:
1. Players who need to purchase wards have to pay a higher rate than the ZAX exchange cap
2. Players selling wards make a higher exchange rate than the ZAX cap
3. Sellers not using the ZAX to exchange zen means the ZAX market backlog only grows, because there's very little downward pressure from sellers.
Suggestions:
A. The first suggestion is to increase the sources of Preservation wards to new players, for example in the "leveling" dungeons that low item level players routinely use.B. The second suggestion is to modify the ZAX exchange, as follows:
Each day that a Zen order is outstanding, the system should automatically convert 100 Zen worth of AD.
This value is enough to purchase 1 pack of preservation wards. To purchase VIP will take 10 days (out of the 30).
To a player trying to purchase the cap 5,000 zen, this will take almost 2 months.
This slow, steady drain of the capped ZAX will stop operating when the ZAX is no longer backlogged: it will return to a player-driven market.
This slow rate should not reduce in much Zen sales, for the following reasons:
1) The automatic drain would only function when there's a backlog
2) The 100 Zen a day won't allow for purchase of many premium items. For example, it would take 42 days to purchase the Rank 14 Weapon/Armor Enchantment choice box, which is only up for 1 week.
3) There will still be players who purchase Zen to speed up the game, who don't want to wait for the exchange to come in.
These suggestions will help new players and also help return the ZAX exchange to a healthy player-driven market, as it was intended.
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Comments
In addition, old player (when they were new player) went through the same route.
This game has a lot of competition as is, with more games coming up constantly and more major mistakes constantly from this company, they really need to step in with zax and improve how it works.
This was proven when magic legends launched and cryptic added a massive amount of aether (the astral diamonds of magic) to the exchange on that game so players wouldn't have to wait to sell their Zen.
Although i do agree I would like to see more ways to get preservation wards, it's almost half the price to buy a rank 15 enchantment than it is to make one. So maybe the price will level out overtime?
Assuming they added these items alone, it may not be enough for players to pull AD from the exchange. Neverwinter is the only game so far to have the Auction directly linked to the zen via the AD. It has been my observation that mostly new players have purchased 1000 zen and spent it directly on AD. Since this is a very rare occurrence, the zen cart remains empty. Wards can be purchased with zen, converted to more AD in the Auction, only a naive player would bother to throw 1000 zen into the exchange.
If they placed account bound on all wards, then the people buying them only to resell them would stop. They want sales. However the patient player can currently sit on the zen for a year in the exchange and repeat the process without having to grind or play the game. The longer the wait becomes and and the impatient players spend money on zen.
My wife told the team back during alpha testing, the market should be gold based just like Star Trek and Champions before it. This is why those two exchanges don't see a backlog. It is obviously too late to make that kind of change after 8 years. I seriously doubt they will do anything with the exchange at this point. They are making some attempts to absorb AD but none of them seem very functional or well liked by the players.
Currently AD posted in late January is arriving now, anyone posting AD now is estimated to get zen no earlier than late February of 2022. If you are patient, you will eventually get your zen.
PSN Zen AD Exchange - Forecasting Spreadsheet
PSN Zen AD Exchange - Forecasting Spreadsheet