The games been out a few weeks and the economy is still in its early stages. Plenty of people are not lvl 60 yet or are just reaching it. The economy will be fine and will stabilize it self over time. All this gloom and doom is just over reaching and false assumptions.
One place they could inflate AD money sink is attaching and detaching enchantments to gear. (not to give them the idea mind you but is one place that everyone has to use to improve their characters).
There is already an AD cost to detaching enchantments; applying one to attaching enchantments is possible, but I think quite unlikely.
Fare you well
Let your life proceed by its own designs
Nothing to tell
Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine ...
Based on the ruined economy and the devalued AD, what do you think the "value" of the Founders Pack is today? Can they really still be claiming it is a "$700 value"?
I am a Lawyer in real life, but I try to roleplay an honorable character
I started grinding AD and it takes me a day to make 63 zen (max convert) using NORMAL rates, now the zen rates will probably be over 400 and that number will drop to 40. Its impossible for a free player to compete, I understand the need for a profit and I'm all for fair I actually might buy zen coming up, but if I have to pay for character slots? thats a little redundant to me. Plenty of free model games are successful without the need to buy character slots..
Post **** up by a handful just means it'll take me twice as long to farm CHARACTER SLOTS.
I apologize if I'm sounding ignorant. I'm very new to the game, so my history of its goings-ons is limited.
I see a lot of references in this forum of the game having already been released. Isn't it still supposed to be in Open Beta? That's what I've read, at least. I may have missed something, though.
I can see them saying no more wipes during the beta because maybe they are trying to test out high-level content and don't want to start back at scratch, killing their timelines for testing and release. But it's rare that the progress made in a beta carries over to the release of the game (I haven't heard of any instances where it has, so maybe this is the exception).
Did they state somewhere that they won't do any wipes after the beta has ended? I know they said no complete wipes during the beta, but I'm curious if they explicitly said anything about the official release of the game?
Everything you are saying is correct when it comes to pay to play games that charge a monthly fee. Free to play games officially leave beta (real beta not what they call open beta but is actually a soft launch) when they decide they will never wipe again and they start taking people's real money for something more than just pre-orders. If you go to perfectworld.com the homepage lists all their games and shows Neverwinter market with an "L" which stands for Live rather than an "O" for Open Beta, so even the developers admit the game has been launched and is not in a real open beta (even though the term open beta is often used for months after a game actually lauches). This game has indeed lauched and any damage to the economy is permanent.
As for the original poster's idea of an AD wipe, I had thought of the same thing myself and would even like it, but you know if they did that they would give everyone that bought a founders pack their 600,000 to 2 million AD back and so the economy would still be severly messed up. Hyperinflation was intended from the start in this game. It is a terrible idea, but there is no way to rollback far enough to fix it because even a complete wipe would not work if they refunded the AD of the people that bought founders packs (which they would certainly do).
Also this game has so many AD Sinks (Mounts, Enchanting, Companions, Bag Space, Bank Space, Character Slots, Companion Slots, Prof Assets, Wards, Alteration and renaming of yourself and companions, etc), an overflow of AD would most likely disappear within one or two weeks and even out across the board. And some of those sink holes are not even implemented yet. (Companion upgrades?)
I would feel a lot better if this were true, but I don't think the game has most of those AD sinks. Unless I am missing merchants (and I truly hope I am) there is no place to buy bags or bank slots for AD. The best you can do is trade AD for Zen, but when you do that the AD do not disappear but rather are just given to another person that will also spend them. There are a few things you can buy with AD, but many of them are so stupidly priced that no one in their right mind would ever buy them (enchatments and mount speed upgrades are so expensive you would be a fool not to buy them on the auction house or use your AD to trade for Zen and buy them from the Zen store). AD sinks only work when what you can buy with AD from a merchant is a better deal than what the auction house or Zen store (taking into consideration the AD to Zen exchange rate) can offer.
There is already an AD cost to detaching enchantments; applying one to attaching enchantments is possible, but I think quite unlikely.
I'll put it this way: I'm betting PW/Cryptic would set the cost of attaching enchantments to no more ADs than someone could make from doing one day's worth of dailies, if even that much. More likely, the amount you'd make from your first prayer of the morning. Much more than that risks counter-productivity, & in any event, this idea would have nothing to do with getting players to interact with other players, which is where the real devaluation of ADs is taking place.
Fare you well
Let your life proceed by its own designs
Nothing to tell
Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine ...
I am guessing that the AD and AH will be offline while they check accounts that have used the exploits. It will be tedious, but if they want to restore the economy, this is what I think they'll do, short of a server wipe. Wiping the AH would be probably be a good idea too.
Only way to fix this sad but far far gone economy is to wipe the AD from the market and all accounts, or wipe accounts completely which we know is not happening
Shut up. My gawd. People are already quitting cause of a 7 hour nerf! Imagine a full nerf! This game would be ruined! Cryptic promised us that we keep our characters in the beta and that's gonna stay.
So many dumb people on these forums, it's unbelievable.
You earn ZEN in-game, from doing various things like completing quests, the way Turbine allows you to grind for Turbine Points.
You use in-game currency, like gold, silver, & copper, for buying things from the AH.
You DON'T confuse those things, unless you want to royally screw your game.
You DON'T allow "end game epics" to be sold on the AH for ANY amount.
You DON'T put in a totally wonky separate currency called "Astral Diamonds" which can be earned in-game, converted to Zen, & used as the sole currency for purchasing from the AH.
I have no idea who came up with this silly, hideously convoluted scheme, but whoever did needs to go look at much better, much more successful F2P models (like EQ2 & LOTRO & DDO) & copy from them. Of course, it's probably too late to reinvent the wheel, but why in the world did Cryptic do so in the first place?????
The thing that tends to distinguish the true F2P games (as opposed to the P2P games that went F2P later on because it was more profitable) is the ability to trade cash shop money for in game money. That is one of the features I most like about true F2P games because it gives in game money a real use. People that don't want to farm for in game money can buy cash shop money and sell it (without having to break the rules by using a third-party gold selling website) and people that don't want to pay for cash shop items can instead trade their in-game currency for cash shop money. It is a great system that I wish all games would adopt. I don't mind farming for cash shop money in Lord of the Rings Online or Dungeons and Dragons Online, but in both of those games I have a ton of in game currency and nothing of value to buy with it because I cannot get any of the good stuff (the cash shop items) with in-game currency.
Where Neverwinter went wrong was not having a game currency to cash shop currency exchange, but rather throwing in an extra currency. There should be gold and there should be Zen. The auction house should use gold and the exchange should trade gold for Zen. This is the way Perfect World International (and most true F2P MMORPG's I have seen) works and it works very nicely.
I agree with the OP, that is exactly what I'm thinking right now.
I've stopped playing Neverwinter for the time being, I'm just watching from the sidelines to see what happens. If they do manage to mass ban the exploiters and somehow remove all the exploited AD and items from the game (or if they decide to wipe the game and start over) then I'll probably come back. But for now, I just don't want to play anymore.
Comments
There is already an AD cost to detaching enchantments; applying one to attaching enchantments is possible, but I think quite unlikely.
Let your life proceed by its own designs
Nothing to tell
Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine ...
Post **** up by a handful just means it'll take me twice as long to farm CHARACTER SLOTS.
Everything you are saying is correct when it comes to pay to play games that charge a monthly fee. Free to play games officially leave beta (real beta not what they call open beta but is actually a soft launch) when they decide they will never wipe again and they start taking people's real money for something more than just pre-orders. If you go to perfectworld.com the homepage lists all their games and shows Neverwinter market with an "L" which stands for Live rather than an "O" for Open Beta, so even the developers admit the game has been launched and is not in a real open beta (even though the term open beta is often used for months after a game actually lauches). This game has indeed lauched and any damage to the economy is permanent.
As for the original poster's idea of an AD wipe, I had thought of the same thing myself and would even like it, but you know if they did that they would give everyone that bought a founders pack their 600,000 to 2 million AD back and so the economy would still be severly messed up. Hyperinflation was intended from the start in this game. It is a terrible idea, but there is no way to rollback far enough to fix it because even a complete wipe would not work if they refunded the AD of the people that bought founders packs (which they would certainly do).
I would feel a lot better if this were true, but I don't think the game has most of those AD sinks. Unless I am missing merchants (and I truly hope I am) there is no place to buy bags or bank slots for AD. The best you can do is trade AD for Zen, but when you do that the AD do not disappear but rather are just given to another person that will also spend them. There are a few things you can buy with AD, but many of them are so stupidly priced that no one in their right mind would ever buy them (enchatments and mount speed upgrades are so expensive you would be a fool not to buy them on the auction house or use your AD to trade for Zen and buy them from the Zen store). AD sinks only work when what you can buy with AD from a merchant is a better deal than what the auction house or Zen store (taking into consideration the AD to Zen exchange rate) can offer.
I'll put it this way: I'm betting PW/Cryptic would set the cost of attaching enchantments to no more ADs than someone could make from doing one day's worth of dailies, if even that much. More likely, the amount you'd make from your first prayer of the morning. Much more than that risks counter-productivity, & in any event, this idea would have nothing to do with getting players to interact with other players, which is where the real devaluation of ADs is taking place.
Let your life proceed by its own designs
Nothing to tell
Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine ...
Shut up. My gawd. People are already quitting cause of a 7 hour nerf! Imagine a full nerf! This game would be ruined! Cryptic promised us that we keep our characters in the beta and that's gonna stay.
So many dumb people on these forums, it's unbelievable.
The thing that tends to distinguish the true F2P games (as opposed to the P2P games that went F2P later on because it was more profitable) is the ability to trade cash shop money for in game money. That is one of the features I most like about true F2P games because it gives in game money a real use. People that don't want to farm for in game money can buy cash shop money and sell it (without having to break the rules by using a third-party gold selling website) and people that don't want to pay for cash shop items can instead trade their in-game currency for cash shop money. It is a great system that I wish all games would adopt. I don't mind farming for cash shop money in Lord of the Rings Online or Dungeons and Dragons Online, but in both of those games I have a ton of in game currency and nothing of value to buy with it because I cannot get any of the good stuff (the cash shop items) with in-game currency.
Where Neverwinter went wrong was not having a game currency to cash shop currency exchange, but rather throwing in an extra currency. There should be gold and there should be Zen. The auction house should use gold and the exchange should trade gold for Zen. This is the way Perfect World International (and most true F2P MMORPG's I have seen) works and it works very nicely.
I've stopped playing Neverwinter for the time being, I'm just watching from the sidelines to see what happens. If they do manage to mass ban the exploiters and somehow remove all the exploited AD and items from the game (or if they decide to wipe the game and start over) then I'll probably come back. But for now, I just don't want to play anymore.