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A great idea to fix the economy issues
toyeverdale
Member Posts: 91
One of the biggest complaints from vets who play a variety of MMO's is the pay to win aspect of Perfect World games. I agree that you should not have to pay to win in the free to play model.
TLDR: the cost in zen is too high. They need to either lower the market cost or lower the exchange of AD to Zen to spur the market for long term vitality.
I do see that you can exchange Astral Diamonds for Zen; however the rate of exchange is drastic. To fix this, I think a controlled exchange should be implemented. It needs discourse in order to prefect the implementation. So this is by no means of a 'my way or the highway' idea.
Have fixed value entries that have fixed costs, limited resource (obviously player provided first). This would help push sales of the overpriced entries down. The best way to do this is to be close to the bottom entry, and over time, reduce the lowest entry until it is within 'buy now' distance.
Buy now is a cost point where the majority of the player base will expend their resources to purchase that item. Currently I do not see that threshold even being close to appearing.
5$ = 500 zen, whereas the lowest in demand item is 125 zen. The chance of a useful/desired item from the lockbox is soo low that I would have to buy 50$ worth of zen to get what I want. However, the cost of that is far too high for me to get interested.
If the keys were 12 zen a piece, it would be a much better sale, less complaints, and a better return.
TLDR: the cost in zen is too high. They need to either lower the market cost or lower the exchange of AD to Zen to spur the market for long term vitality.
I do see that you can exchange Astral Diamonds for Zen; however the rate of exchange is drastic. To fix this, I think a controlled exchange should be implemented. It needs discourse in order to prefect the implementation. So this is by no means of a 'my way or the highway' idea.
Have fixed value entries that have fixed costs, limited resource (obviously player provided first). This would help push sales of the overpriced entries down. The best way to do this is to be close to the bottom entry, and over time, reduce the lowest entry until it is within 'buy now' distance.
Buy now is a cost point where the majority of the player base will expend their resources to purchase that item. Currently I do not see that threshold even being close to appearing.
5$ = 500 zen, whereas the lowest in demand item is 125 zen. The chance of a useful/desired item from the lockbox is soo low that I would have to buy 50$ worth of zen to get what I want. However, the cost of that is far too high for me to get interested.
If the keys were 12 zen a piece, it would be a much better sale, less complaints, and a better return.
Post edited by toyeverdale on
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Unless Cryptic introduces a new way to buy AD in a way that creates it rather than transferring it from one player to another. If they do, well nothing much will change. The Zen/AD exchange doesn't create AD though so eventually prices should drop. They've already dropped from the 500 AD per Zen that was set throughout the 5 day headstart when everyone had tons of AD.
You think that zen should be cheaper? The sell yours for 50 AD each. Maybe you'll spur a market upheaval.
But Cryptic has nothing to do with it. Players set their own rates, someone else comes along and undercuts them, all the way down to whatever point people are satisfied with how much they are getting and how long the stuff sits in the marketplace, be it AD or Zen.
Better return for who?
Cryptic has to make money here, too. And some people don't mind dropping a few bucks for some stuff. Those keys are paying a lot of bills.
Cryptic likes those people that give them money, see?
So they make a game where people can give them more money and increase their odds of getting better stuff.
For the people that do not want to spend money, well, they're only good for word of mouth and for making life better for the paying customers in terms of queue times and the like.
So why does Cryptic want to cut the cost of keys to a level where people that do not want to pay them any money can get keys easily and get the same neat stuff that they are getting other people to pay for at current prices?
pay to win is bad, but the price of zen is too high?
youre right, it should be EASIER to pay to win! that will solve the pay to win problem!
Having played APB, where the best weapons in the game with the best ROF could ONLY be purchased, that's pay to win.
Everything, and I mean everything, that a person can get via ZEN can also be gotten by someone who doesn't want to pay a dime, through the above mentioned exchange. The only thing the exchange rate controls is how fast someone can do it.
This is not a Pay to Win game. This is a Pay for Convenience game. End of story.
I am not saying NW is pay to win, all I am saying is the cost of zen is too high, and without some controls, it will always be a ratio that only cash will break into (not support, but get involved at all with).
I think a better fix would be making lockbox keys a rare drop. Looking through the zen store, I can see the need to have some more added there in terms of classes and playable content (stuff that is either added later, or additional storylines/quests that can help keep the path to lvl 60 fresh every time you run it).
I think keys, drop rate of 1:500 rares would be enough to make it a carrot that people would pay for.
The only reason I don't like the zen cost is because the only way to obtain them is zen, and the cost for them is either 5$ for 4, or 43,750 AD per key, or 175000 for a set of 4. And that is if the rate was locked at 350AD/zen.
I do know that right now, in the beta, it is crazy due to founder packs. But these people are being ripped off, getting 2000000 AD and blowing it on conversion...
During Neverwinter 1 Zen = $.01 USD
how is one cent too high?
you that poor??
I know they need to make money. The idea is to make what the zen gets you from a want to a WANT. A strong want that drives you to open your wallet. Not a requirement. Making it a requirement (like the keys), just makes it a have or have not. But making them available for a price that people can obtain for work, they will work for a few, then get tired of working just for that item, and open their wallet. It has been proven with other games (most notably ddo).
The game as it is, isn't free to win with 2 slots. By this I mean with 2 slots, you will not make enough in the exchange to unlock everything. So Zen will be bought with cash in order to get more slots.
Also, as new content comes out, it can be zen buy only, so people will have to pay to get the latest expansion.module, etc. I didn't see a letter of free 2 play intent describing how they would manage the free 2 play model. So they have ultimate flexability to make this a lasting money making machine.
Some other ones: offer more slots in the foundry, more options, more features, etc. Allow some to make quests with more loot, better reward options, everything.
As far as $/zen, I think you should get more for paying more. Right now only 50$ really sees any benefit. Each tier should be at a different rate so you are more tempted to buy a higher tier than 5$.
$5 - 500zen : $1:100
$10 - 1200zen : $1:120
$15 - 2100zen : $1:140
$20 - 3200zen : $1:160
$25 - 4125zen : $1:165
$50 - 8500zen : $1:170
$100 - 18000zen : $1:180
The key is 1.25$ for a chance at a decent chance (rare box) or <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. 1:8 odds of getting what you want for 1.25$ It isn't about personal economy; it is about making the cost of what people want low enough that the work to obtain the item is annoying enough to justify the real cash exchange. Right now, the cost of the item is soo high that people ignore the potential buy with just buying zen for keys. In a year, it will be the same with quest packs, classes, gear sets, etc. We have to get it done right now, so in the future, things will be set juuust right and everyone is willing to open their wallets to buy zen.
I guarantee you, for every person buying zen, there are 500 or more not. And it is just because there is no incentive to do so. And making it a requirement is out. Doing so would drive those 500 or more from playing altogether. Cheap? Yeah, I guess. But these people are the meat and potatoes of the future.
the cost of keys purchased with AD is too high?
How long have you been playing?
April 30th the price of a key was over 100k AD. . .its now hovering around 45k on dragon. . .a decrease of over 50% in less than 2 weeks. . .
And those 500 players that never buy Zen with real cash?? pretty sure Cryptic does not give alot of thought to them. . .as "Freeloaders" usually jump ship when the next shiny thing catches thier attention. . .
This has so much truth in it I wanted to attach my name to it. What exactly are you winning my friends? What? the satisfaction of having everything? is that a win? No this game in fun in every way... you pay for Convenience and for those people with Wives and children they can still get satifaction of a really cool mount to roam around in while they role play or kill stuff... Win at pvp maybe? who cares participation garantees rewards? This is the fairest mmo game I've ever played I don't feel like I'm wasting money if I can't play for a few days... this "Pay to Win" arguement is ridiculous...
Thank you mordecia2 we should do some questing sometime...
Win... you hear what he said... win... what are you winning charlie sheen? (joke)
I tried to get a closed beta invite a long time ago, got one, but my registration got fouled up and I had to wait for public. So since public. And, how long has no merit when it comes to the cost of what is now an exspensive, out of reach activity.
I am not saying there aren't ways to make it in the game. At the end of the day, I am saying I think they need to tweak it, and gave a suggestion on what and where. A lot better than saying it sucks and not offering any solutions up. Or saying it is fine and watching the population bail when it hits live.
And again, I wasn't remarking about this being a pay to win scenario; since for me pay to win is pay to bypass the challenge of the game. And since you can exchange AD for Zen, you can earn everything.
If they can sell 100 items at $2 or 200 items at $0.5, they will pick will be the former. If any prices are over/under prices (aka priced not to maximize profits), you can exprect them to change it.
The prices set in the Zen store are from experienced sales people with multiple F2p games under their belt whose job depends on maximizing profits. As opposed to forum posters with almost no experience and a biased opinion whose incentive is to get the cheapest deal possible.
Who would you listen to if you were PW?
Just pointing out that this thread is the true lesson in futility.
I dunno, I would listen to the people paying money. No matter what they adjust it by, if no one buys into it, then they lose.
Experienced sales people are in sales, not in the game. So they have no thread tied to how the player buys. They dig data from purchases and analyze the values there and make decisions based on that, and unfortunately, pretty much that alone.
PW is a middleman. They take projects that aren't sustainable as they were on the market and try to give them new life, or some life by moving to f2p and connecting the product to their Zen market.
All of this I am completely fine and content with. I just think, from my level of experience in front of the screen and behind the screen on other pay to play and free to play games, that these values are not ones that will be long term profit generating.
I think their dollar to zen ratio does not favor purchasing. It is flat values across all tiers. Straight forward yes, but no incentive to buy higher.
I think the exchange market is power player biased. So people who have expendable cash can control the AH through Zen exchange of the zen needy, by charging high AD rates. Then they can outbuy anyone else on the market. If they had some forced structure tot he exchange, it would allow everyone to participate and gather zen or ad resources from the market; instead of only those with zen to burn or AD to burn.
I think when putting ZEN into the AD exchange, you should get paid up front from the exchange at a fixed rate. Then your Zen should be divvied into ratio buckets. The buckets being 50, 75, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, +300. The Zen supplier has already been paid, so where and who the zen goes to is irrelevant. The Zen buyers now have a variety of choices (obviously the lower end tiers will be constantly empty) and the upper tiers get bought still, but the flow of zen and AD is still there.
I know extremists would say they would just haunt the exchange for the 50's and buy that only. That is fine. The ratio could always be dynamic and cap the amount in each bucket per day.
Theres your echonomy fix!
If you watch zone chat, you can make decent purchases with gold. Lesser Tenebrous for 10g, epic armor for ~10g, etc.
Well, the problem with that is for the game Neverwinter it would work, but the company Perfectworld would not. The company has a tiered cash to zen model to monetize from in game purchases. The idea to monetize from these free to play games is to offer enough content that players want, strongly enough, to open their wallets.
A great example of a solid, valueable purchase is the character slots. More than 1, but less than enough to play every class you want to play. So typically, you buy enough zen to get enough slots to play every class. For your zen you get to experience the entire game through new gameplay.
A great example of something that is not as good is character slots, would be a chest of random loot. You can earn it in the game, so the cost of that chance in zen is more than the typical player is willing to invest with their cash; thus grinding content.
A great example of a really bad purchase is a key to use a chest you get rarely (or not soo rarely). Here you have these boxes, advertising rare items to you, but you have no immediate way to deal with them. So you either try to sell them, or destroy them, because they aren't even loot. No one wants to buy them ebcause they have to buy keys themselves and they have a ton of them too.
Ideally, the company would bring out as much of that top tier content. But that takes a lot of dev time and resources, so they have to have more and more of the second tier. However, the easiest to impliment is the third tier. But who pays for that?
What I am trying to say here is they should adjust how we players can turn in AD's for Zen. Make it more worth our while. I know at lvl 60 I will be using the exchange a lot, but I don't even look at it on my way to 60.
Then we can watch those crazy developers die of starvation and not improve the game.
That's a win for everyone ... oh wait ...
Again, PW and Cryptic merely created a system whereby players can trade Astral Diamonds for Zen, and Zen for Astral Diamonds (or whatever other special currency is used in different games... Dilithium in STO, Questionite in CO, etc).
They are not going to "adjust" how we convert AD into Zen because they are not the ones that set the exchange rate.
We did.
Or more accurately, every player that has decided that they will pay in AD what someone has decided to sell their Zen for. If it's 370 AD then that is what other players are paying.
If that is too much for you; If you can not possibly wait as long as it will take you to earn / refine that many ADs to convert to Zen to get whatever all you want to get, then spend a few bucks to hurry the process along or don't.
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$11~ gets you 10 keys. That's less than a monthly sub for most any game. Put $15.00/ month into Zen and you might be surprised by what you can get.
Or spend nothing, insist on spending nothing, ever, and complain about how Cryptic is losing money because they won't cater to the people that want to get the rarest lockbox items at a much cheaper rate than the average.
The people that spent a hundred bucks on keys did it because they wanted that super-rare horse. They did it because they wanted more of this or that that comes from the boxes.
And yes, there are people that have spent hundreds on this game already.
So your claims that somehow they are leaving money on the table sound off to me.
Because those people that have been willing to spend all that money already would have spent a lot less if the same stuff was cheaper.
I think that one of two things happens here if you are dealing with people overly troubled by the cost of keys:
1) They buy a few keys, get their horse, and call it good. No more spending money on the keys.
2) They buy a few keys, do not get their horse, and decide that they have better things to do than waste money on those keys.
Neither of those support a large number of people buying keys into the future, nevermind 10 times as many to balance out the drastic price reduction.
That is why I am saying they should do something about how the exchange rate is metered. I am thinking on these lines: If I, who is someone who does not actually care about the rate is seeing it as a barrier for the masses, then the masses will ignore and walk away. I am trying to help them monetize on the majority and the minority at the same time; not excluding anyone out; like is currently in place.
Theoretically, Currently; Out of 10000 sources of income, 100 of them spend 200$ on the game, 200 spend 50$ the game, 300 spend 20$ on the game, and the rest spend nothing on the game. So we have collected 36000$ from 600 sources. Leaving 9400 sources.
Now, if they had a reason to buy; same 10k people. 100 spend 200 (founder packs), 200 spend 50 (max zenners), 300 spend 20 (rpers and a few slots), and because either keys or entry zen is more desireable (cheaper keys or enough in the 5$ to get more chances); half the no buys buy 5$ zen packs.
Changing prices, offering sales, making zen price cuts; all methods to generate and invigorate the economy they are trying to build. Don't see how it is ever a problem not to do it.
1) They will have sales. They always have sales. Where did you ever get it into your head that they would never have a sale on any of the stuff in the Zen store?
2) You are making up numbers to support your claim. You can say that if they priced this at this and that at that that more people would be flocking to the store to spend money at a level that provides them with a profit, and claim that it would be sustained spending, but you can not prove it.
In the meantime, PWE and/or Cryptic have research and history that shows them at what levels they can maximize profit.
Or do you really think that they just pulled these prices out of thin air?
3) The AD-Zen exchange rate is not stable right now. Any time that big new things hit the market prices tend to spike, and game launch is a whole lot of big new things in the market coupled with a bunch of people with AD bonuses from their big purchases.
1. Not saying they wouldn't.
2. Yes I am making up numbers because I do not have the permission to datamine their servers. However, I would if I could, even if I was wrong, dig out the information and share it, because as a paying player, I would love to know if my investment of money is going to pan out long term or not. I do agree that PWE does have info on maximizing profit. That does not mean it is sustainable and long term. Most buyouts are purely for profit. So I can easilly see PWE buying the license to do NW and short term investing, getting to a profit goal, then dumping the product (sell off to someone vested in the product, not the profit). It happened with Horizons. Of course they didn't pull the prices out of thin air. They wouldn't be a company if they did.
3. I understand this.
I am looking a lot further down the line for the product than next week. I like the features and foundry from NW. I would like the game to be around for a decade or more. However, maximizing profit does not make a long lasting game.
A free to play game. Why the complains?
People still don't understand that buying stuff is optional and I kind of fail to see how this game is Pay to win.
I paid $0 and got my GS to 13k almost playing in 3 days from lvl 0-60.
This game is the most simplistic and easy to manipulate game I have yet seen.
Maybe spend more time playing the game besides *****ing about it. Neverwinter is a good waste of time especially making pubs do things to your bidding.
Overall; not a complaint as much as a suggestion based on observation. I don't see why people are complaining either.
Since then I have made more than the 600,000 i started with, I traded 410,000 astrals for 1000 zen for the 24 slot bag, at the time that was the price and right now can be had for 360,000. Which allows you to keep all the enchants and runes you pickup.
Enchants= big money. so buy a bag asap. even if you have to pay 10$ real money. Of course you can also just not pick up all the green trash drops and still have room for the enchants. You just starve yourself on gold though.
Take leadership as your main trade skill and sell every tradeskill component not related. Big easy money there as well.
g/l all.
After buying a few zen, unlocking a few boxes, I can see the Exchange, until I stopped paying attention to it, was fairly close to a magic mark. This being the cost in AD = 125 Zen being close to the 40,000 AD you could get as a reward from the lockbox. It comes down to 320AD per zen will get you that 125 zen for 40,000 AD. The box has a chance to drop that as the idol loot.
I still don't think it is a pay to win situation.
Good tips for new people though Spodean. I haven't gone around selling off enchantments, but I could see what you mean. I am sure people will spend a lot of AD for those stats they need. Mainly I have been grinding them to the highest ranks I can.
I have bought a bag, and may get another.
I have invested in leveling up Leadership, it does offer many good rewards.