It's sad and funny, over all the enchantment "reworks" I've lost millions and millions. Each time all my enchantments, lost value, and I had either to upgrade all over again, or they just lost value, took at months to get all rank10? Now we have rank12..and your rank 10 worth like 8 did before. Got rank 12, now we have rank 15 and your 12 are worthless because we changed the upgrade system. Got Rank 15? Now we have a rework that makes all your BI enchants worthless. Oh you remade all radiants? Lets throw in a ZEN pack that make all the 2mil enchants worth 500k.. Ty and F' you.
It became absurd., and you will find years old arguments right on here on the forums, that it became more economically viable, and you make more progress by not playing the game and wait for the next rework, over those who play the game and upgrade gear.
Now I too listened to history, and made millions more by not playing, unlike all the previous times when I've lost millions by playing the game. And by no means chasing BiS, I've never been BiS, just good enough comfortably to run all content.
One point of contention: you can't lose what you never owned.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
Things appeared to recover a little from M17 but not back to pre M16 levels - I see M20 is missing from this chart, my guess is that it'll show even more decline.
Mod20 is the green bars on the right (the legend is a bit messed up as i didn't update the end of mod20). In my opinion, the recovering is mostly due to the "covid lockdown" period rather than the success of module 18. Mod 19 & 20 seem to have been reasonnably good at "players retention" despite the slight decrease.
yes, when lockdown hit the numbers went WAY up. and then started declining again. I remember that uptick and wondering if they'd be able to hold on to it. they weren't. lol
4
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
It's sad and funny, over all the enchantment "reworks" I've lost millions and millions. Each time all my enchantments, lost value, and I had either to upgrade all over again, or they just lost value, took at months to get all rank10? Now we have rank12..and your rank 10 worth like 8 did before. Got rank 12, now we have rank 15 and your 12 are worthless because we changed the upgrade system. Got Rank 15? Now we have a rework that makes all your BI enchants worthless. Oh you remade all radiants? Lets throw in a ZEN pack that make all the 2mil enchants worth 500k.. Ty and F' you.
It became absurd., and you will find years old arguments right on here on the forums, that it became more economically viable, and you make more progress by not playing the game and wait for the next rework, over those who play the game and upgrade gear.
Now I too listened to history, and made millions more by not playing, unlike all the previous times when I've lost millions by playing the game. And by no means chasing BiS, I've never been BiS, just good enough comfortably to run all content.
One point of contention: you can't lose what you never owned.
hmm sure I can, you loan me $100 and I go to Vegas..
I can lose your car keys, and I can even lose your pet.
My ability to lose things is unprecedented, I can lose things I never even saw, but apparently I was responsible for, like old backups.
Semi-jokes aside, if we talk about the semantics of "who owns my accounts" then I can go into the extreme and say "The value in AD of the items on the account that I have access to", or some such, but I think the meaning of "lost" applies well enough even to things I don't own, but have access to, or responsible of.
3
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
IMO one of the more interesting measurements of mod quality is not the initial spike, that will measure the quality of the hype creation, but instead the conversion rate. Meaning how much started (with the spike) and how much you ended up with at the end of the mod.
Another one is end-to-end, this will negate the hype spikes, and shows better how well the actual game does.
IIRC, Barovia was a huge flop in that regard, it created a lot of hype, streamers got paid to promote, but at the end, the retention was low.
Edit2 - minor chart complaint, Looks like the days do not align with the mods, so I think there is a bit of a skew there where end of a mod = lowest is averaged with start of a mod = highest, and only the next bar reflects better the start of a mod though with some decay.
time to repost that, I guess, just to help analysis of which mods worked in growing the playerbase, which were "waiting mods", and which mods trully failed.
(so far, mod 19 and 20 don't seem to be huge failures, though a steady slight decrease in playerbase can be felt over the course of each, I think I would qualified them more as waiting mods rather than failures).
I don't consider the x mod as failure as most players does.. For me, x mod is just yet another expansion. Mod 6 killed 90% of warlocks population, yet there are some of us warlocks who play since this class introduction..
Also I liked mod 6 cuz it was more action driven gameplay.
Very similar case where with mod 16,, while I didn't like much that life steal got removed, it was not a big deal to counter it. Also as like with mod 6, action combat where yet again pushed in front in players gameplays. Not yet some side irrlevant element.
This is also reason why some old nwo players return back to game, cuz they wanted action combat mmo and with mod 16 devs delivered it.
The only reason why I hated and will hate mod 16 is that, due life steal removal it was also removed Temptation Warlock build.
From mod 6 till mod 10 it was abandoned build, whom I took and revived. From mod 10 till mod 10.5 I was challenging status quo that healers where just Paladin and Cleric.. Yet I manage to prove that Templocks where more than viable build.. But mod 16 removed it. This is only reason why I will hate mod 16.
Now as for your data and statistics in general. Through years and playing multiple mmo games I learned one thing.. Ignore players activity statistics.
It does not matter how many players log in daily, the matter how it looks over all..
As example here is Neverwinter,, it does not matter if there are 500 players connected to game server at this moment, it does not matter if its 20k or more/less.
The thing is that, neverwinter online use Instance based world, and each instance support 15 players. There there are dungeons 5 players party, trial 10 players..
Then the instance where you can bring largest group of players is Guild vs Guild pvp ( 20 vs 20) so it's 40 players.
So who cares if there are 50k or 10k or 200 players online in game sever? In the end there is no game content which can bring more than 40 players in same place anyways.
Every each new mods/expansions claim that game is dead, but tot be fair it's impossible to achieve it, cuz to make that happens you need to have less than 20 players in whole server, which also is global not region restricted. So good luck to get to this point..
Other thing,, while you use Steam gathered data it does only show how many nwo players use or used steam.. But there are players who don't use steam and use ARC client, or some like me use Game client directly.
To get real game statistics you need check server logs and trace uniques IP's, and how many created and loged in. And also count in those who log in and stay for more than 5 min.
The reason why 5 min, is simple. One players log in invoke, or use craft( rare stuffs) or use enchanted keys for alt accounts, then switch to main account and play with it.. Not mentiond there are still one who use Bots for invoke farming. Also don't forget who also manage use multi clients..
In the end, only staff can provide accurate data of players activity, and for players, well I will only suggest, enjoy game, as long it's operational..
======================================================================== “The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. Gustave Le Bon. ==================================================
time to repost that, I guess, just to help analysis of which mods worked in growing the playerbase, which were "waiting mods", and which mods trully failed.
(so far, mod 19 and 20 don't seem to be huge failures, though a steady slight decrease in playerbase can be felt over the course of each, I think I would qualified them more as waiting mods rather than failures).
I don't consider the x mod as failure as most players does.. For me, x mod is just yet another expansion. Mod 6 killed 90% of warlocks population, yet there are some of us warlocks who play since this class introduction..
Also I liked mod 6 cuz it was more action driven gameplay.
Very similar case where with mod 16,, while I didn't like much that life steal got removed, it was not a big deal to counter it. Also as like with mod 6, action combat where yet again pushed in front in players gameplays. Not yet some side irrlevant element.
This is also reason why some old nwo players return back to game, cuz they wanted action combat mmo and with mod 16 devs delivered it.
The only reason why I hated and will hate mod 16 is that, due life steal removal it was also removed Temptation Warlock build.
From mod 6 till mod 10 it was abandoned build, whom I took and revived. From mod 10 till mod 10.5 I was challenging status quo that healers where just Paladin and Cleric.. Yet I manage to prove that Templocks where more than viable build.. But mod 16 removed it. This is only reason why I will hate mod 16.
Now as for your data and statistics in general. Through years and playing multiple mmo games I learned one thing.. Ignore players activity statistics.
It does not matter how many players log in daily, the matter how it looks over all..
As example here is Neverwinter,, it does not matter if there are 500 players connected to game server at this moment, it does not matter if its 20k or more/less.
The thing is that, neverwinter online use Instance based world, and each instance support 15 players. There there are dungeons 5 players party, trial 10 players..
Then the instance where you can bring largest group of players is Guild vs Guild pvp ( 20 vs 20) so it's 40 players.
So who cares if there are 50k or 10k or 200 players online in game sever? In the end there is no game content which can bring more than 40 players in same place anyways.
Every each new mods/expansions claim that game is dead, but tot be fair it's impossible to achieve it, cuz to make that happens you need to have less than 20 players in whole server, which also is global not region restricted. So good luck to get to this point..
Other thing,, while you use Steam gathered data it does only show how many nwo players use or used steam.. But there are players who don't use steam and use ARC client, or some like me use Game client directly.
To get real game statistics you need check server logs and trace uniques IP's, and how many created and loged in. And also count in those who log in and stay for more than 5 min.
The reason why 5 min, is simple. One players log in invoke, or use craft( rare stuffs) or use enchanted keys for alt accounts, then switch to main account and play with it.. Not mentiond there are still one who use Bots for invoke farming. Also don't forget who also manage use multi clients..
In the end, only staff can provide accurate data of players activity, and for players, well I will only suggest, enjoy game, as long it's operational..
All of this is very informative but honestly meaningless because NWs mark of success has nothing to do with how many people login/play but how many people spend. If 500K login and play and 1000 spend it's no different than if 50k login and 1000 spend. As long as they are spending around the same amount. In fact, from their POV smaller numbers of people playing can be better in certain circumstances.
Every FTP MMO looks for a sweet spot where they can maximize people spending % wise to those who are actually playing (for free). That sweet spot can change due to many variables as if a game is purposely winding down a bit they may not need as many people spending as long as they are still making a nice profit vs investment.
It feels to me that NW is in the holding mode now where as long as people spend a certain amount the game can still be above water but they are not going to invest big (expand) in the game any more. The number of actually players are irrelevant as long as revenue is steady at a certain mark.
time to repost that, I guess, just to help analysis of which mods worked in growing the playerbase, which were "waiting mods", and which mods trully failed.
(so far, mod 19 and 20 don't seem to be huge failures, though a steady slight decrease in playerbase can be felt over the course of each, I think I would qualified them more as waiting mods rather than failures).
I don't consider the x mod as failure as most players does.. For me, x mod is just yet another expansion. Mod 6 killed 90% of warlocks population, yet there are some of us warlocks who play since this class introduction..
Also I liked mod 6 cuz it was more action driven gameplay.
Very similar case where with mod 16,, while I didn't like much that life steal got removed, it was not a big deal to counter it. Also as like with mod 6, action combat where yet again pushed in front in players gameplays. Not yet some side irrlevant element.
This is also reason why some old nwo players return back to game, cuz they wanted action combat mmo and with mod 16 devs delivered it.
The only reason why I hated and will hate mod 16 is that, due life steal removal it was also removed Temptation Warlock build.
From mod 6 till mod 10 it was abandoned build, whom I took and revived. From mod 10 till mod 10.5 I was challenging status quo that healers where just Paladin and Cleric.. Yet I manage to prove that Templocks where more than viable build.. But mod 16 removed it. This is only reason why I will hate mod 16.
Now as for your data and statistics in general. Through years and playing multiple mmo games I learned one thing.. Ignore players activity statistics.
It does not matter how many players log in daily, the matter how it looks over all..
As example here is Neverwinter,, it does not matter if there are 500 players connected to game server at this moment, it does not matter if its 20k or more/less.
The thing is that, neverwinter online use Instance based world, and each instance support 15 players. There there are dungeons 5 players party, trial 10 players..
Then the instance where you can bring largest group of players is Guild vs Guild pvp ( 20 vs 20) so it's 40 players.
So who cares if there are 50k or 10k or 200 players online in game sever? In the end there is no game content which can bring more than 40 players in same place anyways.
Every each new mods/expansions claim that game is dead, but tot be fair it's impossible to achieve it, cuz to make that happens you need to have less than 20 players in whole server, which also is global not region restricted. So good luck to get to this point..
Other thing,, while you use Steam gathered data it does only show how many nwo players use or used steam.. But there are players who don't use steam and use ARC client, or some like me use Game client directly.
To get real game statistics you need check server logs and trace uniques IP's, and how many created and loged in. And also count in those who log in and stay for more than 5 min.
The reason why 5 min, is simple. One players log in invoke, or use craft( rare stuffs) or use enchanted keys for alt accounts, then switch to main account and play with it.. Not mentiond there are still one who use Bots for invoke farming. Also don't forget who also manage use multi clients..
In the end, only staff can provide accurate data of players activity, and for players, well I will only suggest, enjoy game, as long it's operational..
All of this is very informative but honestly meaningless because NWs mark of success has nothing to do with how many people login/play but how many people spend. If 500K login and play and 1000 spend it's no different than if 50k login and 1000 spend. As long as they are spending around the same amount. In fact, from their POV smaller numbers of people playing can be better in certain circumstances.
Every FTP MMO looks for a sweet spot where they can maximize people spending % wise to those who are actually playing (for free). That sweet spot can change due to many variables as if a game is purposely winding down a bit they may not need as many people spending as long as they are still making a nice profit vs investment.
It feels to me that NW is in the holding mode now where as long as people spend a certain amount the game can still be above water but they are not going to invest big (expand) in the game any more. The number of actually players are irrelevant as long as revenue is steady at a certain mark.
people who don't pay are just as valuable as those who don't because without a certain number threshold the ones who do pay will have no one to play with and will stop logging on the ones who don't matter are the ones who just log on for daily key. for metrics of just having people "subscribed" I don't know if that matters or not. I do not think there are any advertising dollars at stake here. it seems like their current strategy is screw long time players. let's just try and rope in new players get 100 bucks off them and move on to the next sucka. that's only going to work for so long though. only so many actual new players will want to try this out. what is sad is if before they had just ripped this game apart if they had said to the community. listen. we need funds to keep going monthly subscription to keep the game as it is. I bet a lot of people would have stepped up. probably more so than their current strategy of having a candy cane house to rope in more new players. lol
If you want to get a vague idea of how much money is coming in pay attention to how many people use portable travel gates and banks and how often you witness it.
edit: and how often you see the 'power of vip' buff appear in your pug queue.
Apparently pointing-out the bleeding obvious is a 'personal attack'.
If you want to get a vague idea of how much money is coming in pay attention to how many people use portable travel gates and banks and how often you witness it.
edit: and how often you see the 'power of vip' buff appear in your pug queue.
this isn't even close. I haven't paid for vip with real money in a few years now. yet I've had vip all that time. I don't know anyone whopays for it with real cash. that's from teh zen exchange.
@thefiresidecat there's also soooo many new mmos coming out this year, so prospect of new players replacing those that leave is pretty low.
this is a free game that isn't top down isometric. a lot of people hate top down isometric. for those that like that kind of thing there are a ton of options. for those that don't you have eso, neverwinter and tera. (I think) and tera is basically going to get you onthe govt watch list. lol
0
greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
this isn't even close. I haven't paid for vip with real money in a few years now. yet I've had vip all that time. I don't know anyone whopays for it with real cash. that's from teh zen exchange.
Someone paid for your VIP. There is no free zen.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
this isn't even close. I haven't paid for vip with real money in a few years now. yet I've had vip all that time. I don't know anyone whopays for it with real cash. that's from teh zen exchange.
Someone paid for your VIP. There is no free zen.
you don't actually know that. there is nothing stopping them from seeding the zax by a little or a lot. and even if it is true there is also no date on that zen to know when it was purchased and how long it's been hanging out in someone's bank before being recycled back into the economy. not all zen is used when people get it. it can be in circulation for quite awhile. (referring to being able to tell how much money is currently being spend in the game)
They don't and cannot seed the ZAX. If they were seeding and the next employee laid-off spilled the beans (told), no one would ever buy Zen again. Players would grind AD and word would get around, "Don't worry, Cryptic will pay you to play the game.". If you believe that, you are living in a fantasy world. There are 44 unemployed former employees, disgruntle people, you don't think for one minute one of them wouldn't dish the dirt anonymously?
As for how long, please check the link on my signature. I have been tracking it since February. Apparently since the ZAX was at or around 60,000,000 before January we can take 60 million and divide by the number of days (150) for waiting since then. You see players are removing 400,000 per day, this means $4000 is going from paid players into the ZAX today. There has been a lull since the January 21st "big burp" where it increased suddenly by 8 million. That adds 20 days to the wait period.
As for your statement "there is also no date on that zen to know when it was purchased" you must have never purchased Zen with cash or traded in the ZAX? Purchases for cash are a matter of record for both the company and the buyer. The subject about "when" the Zen arrives appears on page 3 of the ZAX duration testing thread. And Blargskull posted this image.
That clearly show time and date upon receipt of individual amounts.
Back on Topic: There is no such thing as a "free ride". ALL of these companies (including Blizzard and ArenaNet) offer their games for free to attract players willing to be slaves or minions of the paid players. Now should the remaining paid players take off, the only Zen the exchange will see is the occasional newbie who tosses down $50 and has no clue how the auction house works. They have a total of 3 games and once more the shutdown of Magic should not affect this game or the others. It will affect the subsidiary as a whole. At the end of the day, it will be up to PWE to decide on support, liquidation, or trading it off.
They don't and cannot seed the ZAX. If they were seeding and the next employee laid-off spilled the beans (told), no one would ever buy Zen again. Players would grind AD and word would get around, "Don't worry, Cryptic will pay you to play the game.". If you believe that, you are living in a fantasy world. There are 44 unemployed former employees, disgruntle people, you don't think for one minute one of them wouldn't dish the dirt anonymously?
As for how long, please check the link on my signature. I have been tracking it since February. Apparently since the ZAX was at or around 60,000,000 before January we can take 60 million and divide by the number of days (150) for waiting since then. You see players are removing 400,000 per day, this means $4000 is going from paid players into the ZAX today. There has been a lull since the January 21st "big burp" where it increased suddenly by 8 million. That adds 20 days to the wait period.
As for your statement "there is also no date on that zen to know when it was purchased" you must have never purchased Zen with cash or traded in the ZAX? Purchases for cash are a matter of record for both the company and the buyer. The subject about "when" the Zen arrives appears on page 3 of the ZAX duration testing thread. And Blargskull posted this image.
That clearly show time and date upon receipt of individual amounts.
Back on Topic: There is no such thing as a "free ride". ALL of these companies (including Blizzard and ArenaNet) offer their games for free to attract players willing to be slaves or minions of the paid players. Now should the remaining paid players take off, the only Zen the exchange will see is the occasional newbie who tosses down $50 and has no clue how the auction house works. They have a total of 3 games and once more the shutdown of Magic should not affect this game or the others. It will affect the subsidiary as a whole. At the end of the day, it will be up to PWE to decide on support, liquidation, or trading it off.
you do not know when the zen was purchased originally. My point was that zen is recycled. someone could have bought the zen you just purchased originally 4 years ago held on to it and then sold it much later. there is no stamp on the zen showing when it originally entered the market. Have you never bought zen and then resold it again when you needed ad for something more than you wanted to buy from the zen market? Looking at who has VIP is not an effective way to tell how much zen is being bought or added.
and I know for sure they do seed the zax at least on some occasions. I was around on ps4 when the game first debuted. it was in 250k chucks in intervals of 25k going downward from max at the time. from what I understand same thing happened with magic.
it's hardly some kind of crazy secret that would be leaked. I don't think it's explosive and I don't think it would keep anyone who plans on buying zen from buying zen from knowing that. I mean so what if they seed it. if you want zen and you don't want to wait for the zax why would you not still buy if they seed the market or not? that's just a weird assumption imo.
There would be no negative impact on players if Cryptic were seeding to ease backlogs, players would welcome it as it would just shorten the wait time for purchasing but not affect the exchange rate if done in small doses.
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Other thing, while you use Steam gathered data it does only show how many nwo players use or used steam.. But there are players who don't use steam and use ARC client, or some like me use Game client directly.
Oh, i have already answered that in the thread @micky1p00 gave a link above :P
Do all your pretty charts and graphs show players who don't use Steam to play the game? I for one play the game directly through the Arc Client, not Steam. I also know i'm not the only one that prefer's that method.
Doesn't matter. Steam charts can only show the number of steamplayers playing NWO which are only a fraction of the total NWO players. Yep.
But quite surely, steam NWO population can, for statistic purposes, be chosen as a representative sample for all the NWO players (yeah, maybe it's still a bit biased, Arc users are likely to be more faithful to NWO than steam users maybe for exemple, but I'm confident enough we are not completely missing the target...), especially because the steam population playing NWO is still big enough (remind you that if you play 4h, you are counting as 1 player during 4 hours, and 0 for the rest of the day, the chart shows the peak and the average during 24h, i'm sure you can do at least x6 on the average number to get how many different players has been connected during one day). 10 001 is quite a standard number used in human population survey as a sample for any total population above some few millions of habitants (as an exemple the TV audiences are statistically extrapolated. When channel X says the audience for his show was 3M people in US, in fact it's extrapolated from the fraction of the 25 000 houses equiped with a specific device and who had watched this show).
I don't know how many players are really playing NWO. But I'm quite confident that the portion shown in the steamcharts behaves quite closely to how the total fluctuates.
For the rest of your post, it's an individual opinion, and i sincerely respect it.
Personnally, i value more the social part of the game than the pure technical part, and I have very much experienced the drop in players during mod 16-17.
From an ally perspective (i'm co-leader of the french ally La Grande Hermine, and co-administrator of our discord), it has resulted in less chat activity, less groups for dungeon proposed, less engame possibilities/accompany, less discord activity, less internal events, less participants in everything, etc, leading to the resurgence of players' usual complains "guild/ally not organizing anything". I'm not sure if we have completely recovered from that or not (though it has definitevely improved back since ^^).
From my own player perspective, it didn't really impacted my ability to run whatever i wanted, just not the same diversity and same motivations as half of the players I was used to play with during the 3 years prior to mod16 were suddenly gone in a matter of 3-4 months by the end of mod 17 (including the most impactful for me : my own brother).
In my opinion, the more players, the more will be available to do stuff with each others. A shrinking population means it becomes harder and harder for everyone to find people available to play with. I miss the era when, as a DPS, you could tag a queue alone and get the dungeon with 4 random people in less than a minute.
0
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
They don't and cannot seed the ZAX. If they were seeding and the next employee laid-off spilled the beans (told), no one would ever buy Zen again. Players would grind AD and word would get around, "Don't worry, Cryptic will pay you to play the game.". If you believe that, you are living in a fantasy world. There are 44 unemployed former employees, disgruntle people, you don't think for one minute one of them wouldn't dish the dirt anonymously?
We know for a fact that they do add ZEN to the game, in perhaps negligible quantity, but indeed they do. Every Dev gets a monthly allowance of ZEN. There were various promotions that give ZEN and Magic was seeded.
It doesn't matter to us as players if the ZEN is gained by direct payments from players, or PWE decides to inject X amount into the game, or some rich Nigerian prince decided to by Cryptic and pay all its bills. The question is what I as a player pay for whatever I'm offered, it can be time, it can be personal information, it could be a marketing campaign, or it could be actual cash. As long as I trade whatever I trade, it's irrelevant how they pay their bills. And if I trade time, many will call the game free to play.
There are plenty of business interests of why it is worth a business to give away "free rides".
All of this is very informative but honestly meaningless because NWs mark of success has nothing to do with how many people login/play but how many people spend. If 500K login and play and 1000 spend it's no different than if 50k login and 1000 spend. As long as they are spending around the same amount. In fact, from their POV smaller numbers of people playing can be better in certain circumstances.
Every FTP MMO looks for a sweet spot where they can maximize people spending % wise to those who are actually playing (for free). That sweet spot can change due to many variables as if a game is purposely winding down a bit they may not need as many people spending as long as they are still making a nice profit vs investment.
It feels to me that NW is in the holding mode now where as long as people spend a certain amount the game can still be above water but they are not going to invest big (expand) in the game any more. The number of actually players are irrelevant as long as revenue is steady at a certain mark.
I agree on some parts and disagree on some parts.. Yet I will not comment here, cuz it's seems thread is already heading out of topic.
Now back on topic,, I would only ask staff one question.
My point is that,, smart devs learn from own and other teams/studios mistakes..
So question is there was anything what NWO team learned from Magic The Gathering team.? Both in good ways and from their mistakes.
======================================================================== “The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. Gustave Le Bon. ==================================================
2
lantern22Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,111Arc User
They don't and cannot seed the ZAX. If they were seeding and the next employee laid-off spilled the beans (told), no one would ever buy Zen again. Players would grind AD and word would get around, "Don't worry, Cryptic will pay you to play the game.". If you believe that, you are living in a fantasy world. There are 44 unemployed former employees, disgruntle people, you don't think for one minute one of them wouldn't dish the dirt anonymously?
As for how long, please check the link on my signature. I have been tracking it since February. Apparently since the ZAX was at or around 60,000,000 before January we can take 60 million and divide by the number of days (150) for waiting since then. You see players are removing 400,000 per day, this means $4000 is going from paid players into the ZAX today. There has been a lull since the January 21st "big burp" where it increased suddenly by 8 million. That adds 20 days to the wait period.
As for your statement "there is also no date on that zen to know when it was purchased" you must have never purchased Zen with cash or traded in the ZAX? Purchases for cash are a matter of record for both the company and the buyer. The subject about "when" the Zen arrives appears on page 3 of the ZAX duration testing thread. And Blargskull posted this image.
That clearly show time and date upon receipt of individual amounts.
Back on Topic: There is no such thing as a "free ride". ALL of these companies (including Blizzard and ArenaNet) offer their games for free to attract players willing to be slaves or minions of the paid players. Now should the remaining paid players take off, the only Zen the exchange will see is the occasional newbie who tosses down $50 and has no clue how the auction house works. They have a total of 3 games and once more the shutdown of Magic should not affect this game or the others. It will affect the subsidiary as a whole. At the end of the day, it will be up to PWE to decide on support, liquidation, or trading it off.
This is getting closer. If you tracked the time it took for a zen order to go through and the amount of Zen requested in the Queue at the time of placing the order, then you could work out how much Zen was being converted to AD every day.
Then you need to estimate:
How much Zen is being bought and not converted to AD - when I purchased Zen, not once did I convert it to AD. Note sure how you would estimate that. Probably only cryptic knows.
Would be a few other situations that could affect the results (like AD previously converted to Zen and then converted back to AD) but they would probably be small enough to ignore or could assume the INs balanced the outs.
Sorry - I'm bored.
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
We know for a fact that they do add ZEN to the game, in perhaps negligible quantity, but indeed they do. Every Dev gets a monthly allowance of ZEN. There were various promotions that give ZEN and Magic was seeded.
And ZEN cannot be moved from one game to another.
Giving the devs a stipend for whatever reason is no different than the lifers in CO getting a monthly stipend.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
We know for a fact that they do add ZEN to the game, in perhaps negligible quantity, but indeed they do. Every Dev gets a monthly allowance of ZEN. There were various promotions that give ZEN and Magic was seeded.
And ZEN cannot be moved from one game to another.
Giving the devs a stipend for whatever reason is no different than the lifers in CO getting a monthly stipend.
Yes, but I don't see the relevance. You don't need to move it. As long as the company exercised its ability to increase the Database Zen count without a matching real money income, it is in fact injecting. What is the path to do so is less important. If tomorrow they decide that each Dev, or like in your example, CO platinum (or how they called) get 10mil Zen per month, then they will be injecting (10m x players) to the game because there is no matching income dollars for that Zen
My point is that,, smart devs learn from own and other teams/studios mistakes..
So question is there was anything what NWO team learned from Magic The Gathering team.? Both in good ways and from their mistakes.
Thank you. This was the main question I had when I first started this thread. It is always sad when people get laid off through no fault of their own - I've been there, done that - it sucks emotionally and financially. I do not mean to minimize the human cost of this corporate decision.
But as a player (purely selfishly), my main question is - does the closure of MtG mean PW finally get the message that their default "F2P" model, which both MtG and NW follow, has finally run its course?
Will losing out on the obvious investments made into that tired model in MtG open up the eyes of the bean counters at PW to allow Cryptic to change that model, and perhaps modify NW into something better in order to compete in a fiercely competitive marketplace?
Or, as others have noted, will PW and Cryptic refuse to change, leading to the playerbase continuing to dwindle as brand spanking new MMORPGs (with BIG money - Amazon sized money) hit the market later this year?
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
Yes, but I don't see the relevance. You don't need to move it. As long as the company exercised its ability to increase the Database Zen count without a matching real money income, it is in fact injecting. What is the path to do so is less important. If tomorrow they decide that each Dev, or like in your example, CO platinum (or how they called) get 10mil Zen per month, then they will be injecting (10m x players) to the game because there is no matching income dollars for that Zen
But there is no proof they inject ZEN into Neverwinter beyond the conspiracy theorists.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
Yes, but I don't see the relevance. You don't need to move it. As long as the company exercised its ability to increase the Database Zen count without a matching real money income, it is in fact injecting. What is the path to do so is less important. If tomorrow they decide that each Dev, or like in your example, CO platinum (or how they called) get 10mil Zen per month, then they will be injecting (10m x players) to the game because there is no matching income dollars for that Zen
But there is no proof they inject ZEN into Neverwinter beyond the conspiracy theorists.
no proof they're doing it now but It clearly happened when it was introduced on ps4.
there is no way to know if they're adding or not. I tend to think they are because I find it highly unlikely so many people are still buying zen and then converting instead of using it. AD is easy to come by. 20 million a month or so on xbox. I find that pushes the strands of reality. that's what 20k a month from users on xbox? and that's the percentage who would buy zen and turn around and convert it to ad.. instead of just straight up buying whatever it was that convinced them to make that stupid purchase in the first place. that's like pigs flying.
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
You thinking that, your belief in that, does not make it fact.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
You thinking that, your belief in that, does not make it fact.
no it doesn't. but it also isn't outside the realm of possibility. Like I said, in the second sentence, "there is no way to know...." Sometimes occams razor does come in to play. Do you honestly believe there is a big enough player base on xbox to support those numbers? I don't know what percentage of people who buy converts to ad.. but I do know I've never known anyone that does that. I've done it with 20 zen or so that was just hanging before... but never with spendable sums.
Post edited by thefiresidecat on
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
Only Cryptic has the numbers on the number of players. Steam only shows a selection of the player-base.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
But there is no proof they inject ZEN into Neverwinter beyond the conspiracy theorists.
I don't understand why thinking they may inject some Zen in Neverwinter would be linked to any substantial conspiracy theory. Can you clarify your provocation so we can troll together (i may, or may not believe/care they are) ? :P
Comments
I can lose your car keys, and I can even lose your pet.
My ability to lose things is unprecedented, I can lose things I never even saw, but apparently I was responsible for, like old backups.
Semi-jokes aside, if we talk about the semantics of "who owns my accounts" then I can go into the extreme and say "The value in AD of the items on the account that I have access to", or some such, but I think the meaning of "lost" applies well enough even to things I don't own, but have access to, or responsible of.
Another one is end-to-end, this will negate the hype spikes, and shows better how well the actual game does.
IIRC, Barovia was a huge flop in that regard, it created a lot of hype, streamers got paid to promote, but at the end, the retention was low.
I've posted a more detailed post about it long ago, I'll need to find it.
Edit - Here it was a reply to the lies in this thread: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1253884/steam-chart-numbers-worrying/p1
Edit2 - minor chart complaint, Looks like the days do not align with the mods, so I think there is a bit of a skew there where end of a mod = lowest is averaged with start of a mod = highest, and only the next bar reflects better the start of a mod though with some decay.
Also I liked mod 6 cuz it was more action driven gameplay.
Very similar case where with mod 16,, while I didn't like much that life steal got removed, it was not a big deal to counter it.
Also as like with mod 6, action combat where yet again pushed in front in players gameplays. Not yet some side irrlevant element.
This is also reason why some old nwo players return back to game, cuz they wanted action combat mmo and with mod 16 devs delivered it.
The only reason why I hated and will hate mod 16 is that, due life steal removal it was also removed Temptation Warlock build.
From mod 6 till mod 10 it was abandoned build, whom I took and revived. From mod 10 till mod 10.5 I was challenging status quo that healers where just Paladin and Cleric.. Yet I manage to prove that Templocks where more than viable build..
But mod 16 removed it. This is only reason why I will hate mod 16.
Now as for your data and statistics in general. Through years and playing multiple mmo games I learned one thing.. Ignore players activity statistics.
It does not matter how many players log in daily, the matter how it looks over all..
As example here is Neverwinter,, it does not matter if there are 500 players connected to game server at this moment, it does not matter if its 20k or more/less.
The thing is that, neverwinter online use Instance based world, and each instance support 15 players. There there are dungeons 5 players party, trial 10 players..
Then the instance where you can bring largest group of players is Guild vs Guild pvp ( 20 vs 20) so it's 40 players.
So who cares if there are 50k or 10k or 200 players online in game sever? In the end there is no game content which can bring more than 40 players in same place anyways.
Every each new mods/expansions claim that game is dead, but tot be fair it's impossible to achieve it, cuz to make that happens you need to have less than 20 players in whole server, which also is global not region restricted. So good luck to get to this point..
Other thing,, while you use Steam gathered data it does only show how many nwo players use or used steam.. But there are players who don't use steam and use ARC client, or some like me use Game client directly.
To get real game statistics you need check server logs and trace uniques IP's, and how many created and loged in.
And also count in those who log in and stay for more than 5 min.
The reason why 5 min, is simple. One players log in invoke, or use craft( rare stuffs) or use enchanted keys for alt accounts, then switch to main account and play with it.. Not mentiond there are still one who use Bots for invoke farming. Also don't forget who also manage use multi clients..
In the end, only staff can provide accurate data of players activity, and for players, well I will only suggest, enjoy game, as long it's operational..
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Gustave Le Bon.
==================================================
Every FTP MMO looks for a sweet spot where they can maximize people spending % wise to those who are actually playing (for free). That sweet spot can change due to many variables as if a game is purposely winding down a bit they may not need as many people spending as long as they are still making a nice profit vs investment.
It feels to me that NW is in the holding mode now where as long as people spend a certain amount the game can still be above water but they are not going to invest big (expand) in the game any more. The number of actually players are irrelevant as long as revenue is steady at a certain mark.
it seems like their current strategy is screw long time players. let's just try and rope in new players get 100 bucks off them and move on to the next sucka. that's only going to work for so long though. only so many actual new players will want to try this out. what is sad is if before they had just ripped this game apart if they had said to the community. listen. we need funds to keep going monthly subscription to keep the game as it is. I bet a lot of people would have stepped up. probably more so than their current strategy of having a candy cane house to rope in more new players. lol
edit: and how often you see the 'power of vip' buff appear in your pug queue.
As for how long, please check the link on my signature. I have been tracking it since February. Apparently since the ZAX was at or around 60,000,000 before January we can take 60 million and divide by the number of days (150) for waiting since then. You see players are removing 400,000 per day, this means $4000 is going from paid players into the ZAX today. There has been a lull since the January 21st "big burp" where it increased suddenly by 8 million. That adds 20 days to the wait period.
As for your statement "there is also no date on that zen to know when it was purchased" you must have never purchased Zen with cash or traded in the ZAX? Purchases for cash are a matter of record for both the company and the buyer. The subject about "when" the Zen arrives appears on page 3 of the ZAX duration testing thread. And Blargskull posted this image.
That clearly show time and date upon receipt of individual amounts.
Back on Topic: There is no such thing as a "free ride". ALL of these companies (including Blizzard and ArenaNet) offer their games for free to attract players willing to be slaves or minions of the paid players. Now should the remaining paid players take off, the only Zen the exchange will see is the occasional newbie who tosses down $50 and has no clue how the auction house works. They have a total of 3 games and once more the shutdown of Magic should not affect this game or the others. It will affect the subsidiary as a whole. At the end of the day, it will be up to PWE to decide on support, liquidation, or trading it off.
PSN Zen AD Exchange - Forecasting Spreadsheet
you do not know when the zen was purchased originally. My point was that zen is recycled. someone could have bought the zen you just purchased originally 4 years ago held on to it and then sold it much later. there is no stamp on the zen showing when it originally entered the market. Have you never bought zen and then resold it again when you needed ad for something more than you wanted to buy from the zen market? Looking at who has VIP is not an effective way to tell how much zen is being bought or added.
and I know for sure they do seed the zax at least on some occasions. I was around on ps4 when the game first debuted. it was in 250k chucks in intervals of 25k going downward from max at the time. from what I understand same thing happened with magic.
it's hardly some kind of crazy secret that would be leaked. I don't think it's explosive and I don't think it would keep anyone who plans on buying zen from buying zen from knowing that. I mean so what if they seed it. if you want zen and you don't want to wait for the zax why would you not still buy if they seed the market or not? that's just a weird assumption imo.
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For the rest of your post, it's an individual opinion, and i sincerely respect it.
Personnally, i value more the social part of the game than the pure technical part, and I have very much experienced the drop in players during mod 16-17.
From an ally perspective (i'm co-leader of the french ally La Grande Hermine, and co-administrator of our discord), it has resulted in less chat activity, less groups for dungeon proposed, less engame possibilities/accompany, less discord activity, less internal events, less participants in everything, etc, leading to the resurgence of players' usual complains "guild/ally not organizing anything".
I'm not sure if we have completely recovered from that or not (though it has definitevely improved back since ^^).
From my own player perspective, it didn't really impacted my ability to run whatever i wanted, just not the same diversity and same motivations as half of the players I was used to play with during the 3 years prior to mod16 were suddenly gone in a matter of 3-4 months by the end of mod 17 (including the most impactful for me : my own brother).
In my opinion, the more players, the more will be available to do stuff with each others. A shrinking population means it becomes harder and harder for everyone to find people available to play with. I miss the era when, as a DPS, you could tag a queue alone and get the dungeon with 4 random people in less than a minute.
Every Dev gets a monthly allowance of ZEN. There were various promotions that give ZEN and Magic was seeded.
It doesn't matter to us as players if the ZEN is gained by direct payments from players, or PWE decides to inject X amount into the game, or some rich Nigerian prince decided to by Cryptic and pay all its bills. The question is what I as a player pay for whatever I'm offered, it can be time, it can be personal information, it could be a marketing campaign, or it could be actual cash. As long as I trade whatever I trade, it's irrelevant how they pay their bills. And if I trade time, many will call the game free to play.
There are plenty of business interests of why it is worth a business to give away "free rides".
Now back on topic,, I would only ask staff one question.
My point is that,, smart devs learn from own and other teams/studios mistakes..
So question is there was anything what NWO team learned from Magic The Gathering team.? Both in good ways and from their mistakes.
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Gustave Le Bon.
==================================================
Then you need to estimate:
How much Zen is being bought and not converted to AD - when I purchased Zen, not once did I convert it to AD. Note sure how you would estimate that. Probably only cryptic knows.
Would be a few other situations that could affect the results (like AD previously converted to Zen and then converted back to AD) but they would probably be small enough to ignore or could assume the INs balanced the outs.
Sorry - I'm bored.
Giving the devs a stipend for whatever reason is no different than the lifers in CO getting a monthly stipend.
But as a player (purely selfishly), my main question is - does the closure of MtG mean PW finally get the message that their default "F2P" model, which both MtG and NW follow, has finally run its course?
Will losing out on the obvious investments made into that tired model in MtG open up the eyes of the bean counters at PW to allow Cryptic to change that model, and perhaps modify NW into something better in order to compete in a fiercely competitive marketplace?
Or, as others have noted, will PW and Cryptic refuse to change, leading to the playerbase continuing to dwindle as brand spanking new MMORPGs (with BIG money - Amazon sized money) hit the market later this year?
there is no way to know if they're adding or not. I tend to think they are because I find it highly unlikely so many people are still buying zen and then converting instead of using it. AD is easy to come by. 20 million a month or so on xbox. I find that pushes the strands of reality. that's what 20k a month from users on xbox? and that's the percentage who would buy zen and turn around and convert it to ad.. instead of just straight up buying whatever it was that convinced them to make that stupid purchase in the first place. that's like pigs flying.
:P