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Enchantment & Respec - only 2 legit complaints
barcajochi
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 10 Arc User
In my opinion, in response to all furor about p2w etc, the only 2 legitimate complaints are the following:
a) Enchantments at high levels, 1% chance of fusing success and need to buy premium mats to get that number up.
My highest character is 30, so i am only working off other peoples input and watching people trying to fuse stuff on twitch or something. Very powerful enchantments that actually cost significant zen to apply to your equipment can be construed as pay to win. Please see my arguments below regarding the zen AD conversion.
b) Paying $6 worth of zen or whatever to respec.
Most of us have played other MMOs, and we are very used to respeccing our characters for pvp or for dungeon running or frankly just to try out something new. And some games we are running a dual spec most of the time if we dont spend time respeccing. Dual speccing might end up being a good answer to this, but i do think it is a legitimate complaint to have to pay zen to respec.
I sort of understand the argument that it is supposed to make our leveling decisions, um, weightier i guess if we have to pay zen to respec. While i can see that as a very D&D driven decision, it is not the reality of modern MMOs, because certain skills are more appropriate for pvp while others are more effective in pve for example. I think at the very least we should be given a dual speccing option to buy for AD not zen, or gold since its something non transferable and won't feed the farmers.
On the conversion of AD to zen --> it has been dropping from 450 to now under 400 i believe. I understand as you level higher, and with doing dailies etc its pretty easy to get a lot of AD, but i don't necessarily think it is enough of an approach to ensure that the game is not P2W. While i applaud not using gold as a universal currency which clearly helps drive out the farmers, I think gold is an extremely underused currency. The companions for gold and 50/80% mounts aren't enough IMO. Maybe start a gold to AD conversion market?
But back to the original point, the conversion from AD to zen i think is a bit too high to justify having things like respeccing and enchantments cost zen. My college econ is a bit rusty at this point, but the more people level to 60 the more AD there will be available on the market so the more expensive zen will be relative to AD. I think the assumption currently, is that more people are buying zen now with real world currency, and using that zen to buy AD driving down the in game value of zen relative to AD, so zen value dropped (and value of AD has therefore risen) from 450 AD to 400 AD. But again, as game matures and more AD becomes available on market I think that might raise the value of zen in terms of AD. Weighting the scales of grind vs pay in favor of paying. Obviously this favors PW/cryptic. I think the operating logic here is as time goes on the astral diamond pool will grow MUCH faster than the Zen pool. I don't think expenditures in the respective currencies will change the balance much. (i apologize if this assumption is incorrect)
This reinforces my point I believe that the Zen AD conversion is not enough to justify a lot of these zen charges as the devs originally, IMO, thought it would.
If past MMOs taught us anything is that scale is where the money is made in western MMOs. Giant Interactive made tons of money in China by building a blatant P2W game, but that will never ever ever fly in the western world. If you want scale in the western world, I think SOME of the monetization strategy needs to be reworked in order to attract and keep enough paying active users to achieve sustainable scale. Not comparing Perfect World to Giant or Neverwinter to ZT online, just using it as a frame of reference for p2w.
So while i would hesitate to pander to a lot of these people crying p2w p2w p2w just because they feel entitled to pay nothing since it is a f2p game, i would like wade thru the mud (read BS and whatever else you want to insert) and highlight the points that may actually have some merit.
Just to sign off here, sorry for the long post. I have enjoyed my time so far in Neverwinter a lot, its a great game and i want to see it succeed. Best combat of any MMO i've played so far, and I frankly haven't put a dime in yet, but planning on it. so that in itself should debunk a large part of this p2w talk. But as I said, there are still some legitimate concerns.
a) Enchantments at high levels, 1% chance of fusing success and need to buy premium mats to get that number up.
My highest character is 30, so i am only working off other peoples input and watching people trying to fuse stuff on twitch or something. Very powerful enchantments that actually cost significant zen to apply to your equipment can be construed as pay to win. Please see my arguments below regarding the zen AD conversion.
b) Paying $6 worth of zen or whatever to respec.
Most of us have played other MMOs, and we are very used to respeccing our characters for pvp or for dungeon running or frankly just to try out something new. And some games we are running a dual spec most of the time if we dont spend time respeccing. Dual speccing might end up being a good answer to this, but i do think it is a legitimate complaint to have to pay zen to respec.
I sort of understand the argument that it is supposed to make our leveling decisions, um, weightier i guess if we have to pay zen to respec. While i can see that as a very D&D driven decision, it is not the reality of modern MMOs, because certain skills are more appropriate for pvp while others are more effective in pve for example. I think at the very least we should be given a dual speccing option to buy for AD not zen, or gold since its something non transferable and won't feed the farmers.
On the conversion of AD to zen --> it has been dropping from 450 to now under 400 i believe. I understand as you level higher, and with doing dailies etc its pretty easy to get a lot of AD, but i don't necessarily think it is enough of an approach to ensure that the game is not P2W. While i applaud not using gold as a universal currency which clearly helps drive out the farmers, I think gold is an extremely underused currency. The companions for gold and 50/80% mounts aren't enough IMO. Maybe start a gold to AD conversion market?
But back to the original point, the conversion from AD to zen i think is a bit too high to justify having things like respeccing and enchantments cost zen. My college econ is a bit rusty at this point, but the more people level to 60 the more AD there will be available on the market so the more expensive zen will be relative to AD. I think the assumption currently, is that more people are buying zen now with real world currency, and using that zen to buy AD driving down the in game value of zen relative to AD, so zen value dropped (and value of AD has therefore risen) from 450 AD to 400 AD. But again, as game matures and more AD becomes available on market I think that might raise the value of zen in terms of AD. Weighting the scales of grind vs pay in favor of paying. Obviously this favors PW/cryptic. I think the operating logic here is as time goes on the astral diamond pool will grow MUCH faster than the Zen pool. I don't think expenditures in the respective currencies will change the balance much. (i apologize if this assumption is incorrect)
This reinforces my point I believe that the Zen AD conversion is not enough to justify a lot of these zen charges as the devs originally, IMO, thought it would.
If past MMOs taught us anything is that scale is where the money is made in western MMOs. Giant Interactive made tons of money in China by building a blatant P2W game, but that will never ever ever fly in the western world. If you want scale in the western world, I think SOME of the monetization strategy needs to be reworked in order to attract and keep enough paying active users to achieve sustainable scale. Not comparing Perfect World to Giant or Neverwinter to ZT online, just using it as a frame of reference for p2w.
So while i would hesitate to pander to a lot of these people crying p2w p2w p2w just because they feel entitled to pay nothing since it is a f2p game, i would like wade thru the mud (read BS and whatever else you want to insert) and highlight the points that may actually have some merit.
Just to sign off here, sorry for the long post. I have enjoyed my time so far in Neverwinter a lot, its a great game and i want to see it succeed. Best combat of any MMO i've played so far, and I frankly haven't put a dime in yet, but planning on it. so that in itself should debunk a large part of this p2w talk. But as I said, there are still some legitimate concerns.
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