Suggestion: Limitation of blue/purple catalysts Solution: Make catalysts refineable. Thus you can grind out the needed RP to upgrade your 2 green catalysts to a blue catalyst(one green to upgrade, one green acts as the catalyst in the fusion) and make your own higher level catalysts, otherwise all we'll see if the people with most AD or the most time to run dungeon being the people who can actually use the new system.
I thought they were.
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uurbsMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 449Bounty Hunter
edited November 2013
Bug: Refinement Window: Automatically filling the Refining Slots If I'm using the "Fill All Refining Slots" and select e. g. a stack of 8 enchantments. All five slots get filled. After I click on "Refine", the stack only contains the remaining 3 enchantments, but the 5 refining slots are still filled with 5 enchantments. Clicking on "Refine" initiates the stamping sound as normal, but nothing happens: neither get RP added to the "Item To Refine" nor does the 5 refinement slots get's emptied. Also I do get a error message in any kind. If I remove 2 enchantments from the enchantment slots and click on "Refine" again, the RP value get's added and the refinement slots get cleared.
Therefore you need to check if there are still 5 items in the stack
Proud member of Dragon Clan - German Gaming Community
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uurbsMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 449Bounty Hunter
edited November 2013
Feedback: "Mark of Potency": Add to loot table of "Chest of Goods" It would be nice if you would add the "Mark of Potency" to the loot table of the chests you gain from Leadership. As the Leadership shares to the loot table of the skill nodes on the Live server (at least in my experience/opinion).
I opened a couple hunderds--sorry didn't do an actual counting, as I opened them on a lot of different characters--and I got no "Mark of Potency" drop at all. Therefore I think they are not on the loot table right now.
Well I went over to the preview shard and played with the ranger, love it, played with refinement, hate it. This system is going to destroy the game. I could not believe the astronomical prices it took me to achieve a rank 7 or 8 enchantment. At first I thought an AD sink might make the game economy more healthy, but looking at how fast the 250k AD I had went... I do not like this system at all.
Combining non-type enchants into an upgrade = cool. Removing an enchantment for gold = cool. Enforcing astronomical AD costs to upgrade = not cool. This has to be the worst thing I have seen in the game to date. It will most likely make the game unplayable for me and I am someone who plays the economy well, actively does high end content (MC / CN / T2) and has put over $460 into the game. Personally I think if this game keeps it up they are going to destroy their reputation among the MMO community.
Cyptic devs, I love the stuff you guys come up with, awesome job on the ranger. PWE bean counters, your pushing too hard too fast too far and some push back is coming from the community. Devs fill the server with potential dollars to be made, but the arm twisting in the player economy of AD which we all know = Zen which = $$ are going to empty the server of potential $$ to be made by driving the customer base away.
Here is a thought why not just add a new profession/crafting tab
for enchantments, instead of this insane enchantment system that everyone hates.
and use alchemy assets for the enchant profession crafting.
Combining non-type enchants into an upgrade = cool. Removing an enchantment for gold = cool. Enforcing astronomical AD costs to upgrade = not cool. This has to be the worst thing I have seen in the game to date. It will most likely make the game unplayable for me and I am someone who plays the economy well, actively does high end content (MC / CN / T2) and has put over $460 into the game. Personally I think if this game keeps it up they are going to destroy their reputation among the MMO community.
Cyptic devs, I love the stuff you guys come up with, awesome job on the ranger. PWE bean counters, your pushing too hard too fast too far and some push back is coming from the community. Devs fill the server with potential dollars to be made, but the arm twisting in the player economy of AD which we all know = Zen which = $$ are going to empty the server of potential $$ to be made by driving the customer base away.
Pretty much this
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dardoveMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Feedback: "Mark of Potency": Add to loot table of "Chest of Goods" It would be nice if you would add the "Mark of Potency" to the loot table of the chests you gain from Leadership. As the Leadership shares to the loot table of the skill nodes on the Live server (at least in my experience/opinion).
I opened a couple hunderds--sorry didn't do an actual counting, as I opened them on a lot of different characters--and I got no "Mark of Potency" drop at all. Therefore I think they are not on the loot table right now.
I agree, catalysts and the items that give refining points should be added to the chests and barrels of Leadership.
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rapticorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,078Arc User
edited November 2013
They should really leave rank 1-5, maybe even 6, alone as far as AD costs since nobody bothered to unslot those anyway. If its true that it's actually cheaper over the long run for the higher level enchants then just put the system in place for those and let those who don't care about Rank 7+ enchants continue on with their "free" fusing/refining. Win-Win.
They should really leave rank 1-5, maybe even 6, alone as far as AD costs since nobody bothered to unslot those anyway. If its true that it's actually cheaper over the long run for the higher level enchants then just put the system in place for those and let those who don't care about Rank 7+ enchants continue on with their "free" fusing/refining. Win-Win.
"our data shows that many players are not engaging in the current system due to the frustration of using it. If the system was performing well and making everyone happy, we would not have invested all of the time and effort into improving it that we have"
The current system works very well is easy and fast to use, it as never had any problems, the only part that is not used is more likely the the enchant removal system, all because it is just not cost effective and most of the time is way over priced
Interestingly, when i recently replaced my weapon, it cost 50k more AD to remove the old enchant than it was to buy a complete new enchant from the AH. I think you will find if many things were actually in a more decent balance to the game economy more players would use the system, as most in the game currently are just not cost effective.
Take for eg; the mount upgrade system, to currently upgrade a 'white' 50% speed horse mount to a 'Purple' 110% speed mount works out around 2.8 milion AD, while you can buy most 'purple' mounts from the AH for less than 1 milion. lol, seriously !
Added to that you can exchange AD to zen and buy any of the Zen store mounts, which are also account wide for far less than 2.8 milion AD, and you wonder why players dont use the mount upgrade system......
You dont need 'data' to analyze to see were the problems are.
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tang56Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited November 2013
Further suggestion: Refining artifacts
Use the same type of marks to catalyse(although my old chem professor would ream you out for saying that when the the "catalyst" is actually a component that is used up) every refinement.
Having marks of potency for enchantments, then 2-3 other types just for the artifacts is overkill, confusing and a drain on inventory space.
the more i think about and use the new system, the better i think it is. i still think that the % chance of success should die with the old system tho.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
the more i think about and use the new system, the better i think it is. i still think that the % chance of success should die with the old system tho.
The way I see it they could kill any one of these and the new system would be decent:
1) Catalysts. Poor holy water on this unholy demon...
2) AD Cost to Upgrade
3) Failure Chance
And that's just to make it decent. If they wanted to make it good they would have to kill two or at least heavilly reduce another.
The improvement to the weapon enhancements is noticeable but Rank 1-5 of normal enchantments are so much worse it's appalling. And the changes to 6-10 make me so sick to my stomache there's just little to convince me that it's superior. The grind is still there just as bad as before and I'm thinking it's far worse.
Truth be told in order to convince me this system is anything other than a complicated mess to make it feel less costly and less of a grind they're going to have to show the numbers themselves.
Show me how common these catalysts drops are.
But even then burn those unholy things to bits. Take them out!
Anything additional which is required to gather is called an additional cost. Period. And unless at least one drops from every dungeon (has anybody tested the drop rate) I don't want those things seeing the light of day. I do dungeons all the time but I want no part of those catalysts as at the very least it will be an additional cost that I will have to justify not selling on the AH unless they drop like candy.
And at that point then I can just get angry at the fact that the marketing team has absolutely no idea how much AD is worth. Stop putting stuff in the shops at exuberant prices and simply put them in at a decent price. If they drop like candy then they're not worth 100K so don't put them in the shop for that much!
I saw those rank 3 enchantments in the shop for 50K AD and it does nothing other than make me lose confidence in the ability of the marketing team to adequately price anything. Price them above their value, yes, but pricing things over that much is just <censored>.
If you expect them to drop so frequently that they'll be worth 5K or so in the AH then price them at 20K. Not 100K. If you're not going to have them drop that much than take this system and scrap it.
the more i think about and use the new system, the better i think it is. i still think that the % chance of success should die with the old system tho.
Yes, at first look it seemed bad, but I have grown to like it. It isn't perfect yet. I don't mind the % chance, but I think the AD prices can be adjusted a bit.
"our data shows that many players are not engaging in the current system due to the frustration of using it. If the system was performing well and making everyone happy, we would not have invested all of the time and effort into improving it that we have"
What does that even mean? The only frustrating thing about the old system was that it takes like two seconds to perform a fusion. You can open 100 lockboxes/leadership reward chests and whatnot in about 20 seconds but the fusion process takes ages. Funny enough that the long duration caused one of the major exploits to date. They shortened it but never entirely got rid of it for some reason...
And hey, refining also is on a "cooldown." Great! Ever tried to stuff hundreds of R4s into one R8? It's effing annoying because you have to wait about two seconds to repeat. I don't get it.
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joshuaofjerichoMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited November 2013
Overall I love this new system, especially that you can "feed" your enchantments while they are slotted. No more need for massive inventory and bank space to save all those runes/enchantments and now I can use enchantments as I grind them up. Plus using gold to unslot them makes it wayyyyy easier to switch gear out for new pieces, heck even to try out different sets.
To those complaining that it cost AD to level these up you have to realize that every currency in any economy has to have a sink for that currency to go into otherwise you have hyper-inflation. Online economies are no different. By inputting sufficient AD sinks they keep the overall value of the AD you are earning higher and thus the work you do more rewarding. So... take an economics class before you complain about an economy, even a virtual one.
I jumped the gun about the new enchantment system.
after messing around with it, i actually like it...
going to have to try to stop judging prematurely. lol
After messing around with it a bit more. I am even more convinced that its horrible.
the only usefulness from this is from weapon and armor enchants.
Regular enchants suffers greatly. I hate it the more I mess around with it. And to add. Its also easy to get them mixed up. If you want to have multiple rank dark enchants, you can accidently feed one of the ranks you've been building on to another enchant by accident with the way its set up.
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kaisvoresceMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 11Arc User
edited November 2013
Wow this is some strong feed back, actually I'm almost in love with this new system, with 1 critical flaw. So the whole idea behind this new system is to make it as accessible to many players. Allowing people to work on the enchantment currently equipped in their gear, great idea! Collecting enchantments to build points to make progress toward leveling it up to the next tier, simplify the day to day process of collecting enchantments and saves bag space. Requiring AD and marks for catalysts only makes sense as you need something to slow people down from leveling their enchantments to fast or cheaply.
HOWEVER almost all of this is invalidated by requiring a catalyst of the same exact enchantment in your inventory!
This is really important because once the people you're trying to help, the more casual players, reach rank 5 or 6 you're going to see the exact same behavior. Most people have no problem slowly contributing effort to a task but once that effort is maxed out, you're then giving them a dead halt and requiring them to refine a new one in their inventory. All of the suddenly you have dissociated the progress they have been making with collecting something else I.E. the exact reason the current system is not working.
For example I currently have rank 7's in most of my gear, for me to level one of them to Rank 8, first I will collect enchantments as I'm playing them game and build R.P. on my rank 7. Naturally I'm feeling progress, until the bar reaches max! I could either pay AD or do a dungeon to get my Mark catalyst however that's not the problem I'm going to encounter its the new lets call it "Dark" enchantment I need to level to make my 7 an 8.
This is when the people you're trying to help will lose interest. I find a rank 4 "Dark" and then need to level that one up, but while I'm doing so i need to hold on to another rank 4 dark, then I get a rank 5 dark, but now I need to do another rank 4 level up to have 2 darks, which I refine the first rank 5 dark to make a rank 6, which I need to repeat all that I'v said to make the rank 7 I need to continue the progress on my 1 equipped dark 7. Which all of this feels wrong, I've been heavily dissociated with the appearance of progress once I fill my refinement meter.
I think you should stick to 1 or the other side of this coin. 4(x) -> 1(x+1) A collection based system, the current system, simple clean, easy, but not everyone is in to collecting.
OR
Refinement system, which should be simply "Earn points" to max a bar + Pay AD (or a reduced AD cost with naturally finding the catalyst) -> yielding the next tier of Enchantment, having elements of both is horrible. If you need to double the RP and catalyst cost/Requirement and have people need Preservation / Coalescent wards to prevent expensive materials or even partial RP point loss to make this work that seems fine to me, but don't go half "Build Progress" and half "Collection" system, instead of helping people who like one style you're just hurting both styles.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
This is really important because once the people your trying to help, the more casual players, reach rank 5 or 6 your going to see the exact same behavior. Most people have no problem slowly contributing effort to a task but once that effort is maxed out, your then giving them a dead halt and requiring them to refine a new one in their inventory, all the suddenly you have dissociated the progress they have been making with collecting something else IE the exact reason the current system is not working.
Exactly.
The cost of the secondary catalyst + the cost of the Actual Mark of Potency/whatever defeats any gain this system could have.
I'm not seeing any improvement after level 6. Just a worse system under rank 4 and a worse system above rank 5.
I've been playing a bit more of the hunter class, and whilst I'm only at level 16 this new system seems better starting from fresh as opposed to transitioning with a level 60, even a not so well geared one with little more than L5 enchants.
You get 5 catalysts in the adventurers box at level 15, so that's something to get started with and initial AD costs are trivial. I'll see what I think about 1000 AD on a new character when I get to that point.
Of course, once this goes live I'll be able to just mail enchants to my hunter rather than refining them from scratch. So while I dont' see any immediate benefit for me with the new system, it seems like it might be better for the new player.
Edit: Level 20 now. I've run out of catalysts, and none have dropped in game yet. No free ones with the level 20 box either. I've got 5 enchants awaiting upgrade.
Amount of matching R4s (accumulative) consumed in refining process:
4 (4) for a R4 (1 base, 3 for the RPs) 12 (16) for a R5 48 (64) for a R6 192 (256) for a R7 (128 to refine the R7 itself and 64 R4s for the R7 Catalyst) 640 (896) for a R8 (384 to refine the R8 itself and 256 R4s for the R8 Catalyst) 2048 (2944) for a R9 (1152 to refine the R9 itself and 896 R4s for the R9 Catalyst)
Amount of matching Shards (accumulative) consumed in refining process:
4 (4) for a Shard (1 base, 3 for the RPs) 12 (16) for a Lesser (8 to refine the Lesser itself and one 4 Shards for the Lesser Catalyst) 40 (56) for a Normal (24 to refine the Normal itself and 16 Shards for the Normal Catalyst) 128 (184) for a Greater (72 to refine the Greater itself and 56 Shards for the Greater Catalysts)
ADs [without marks/wards] (accumulative [without marks/wards]) needed for upgrade:
2.335 [1.000] (2.335 [1.000]) for a R5
- (1.000 + [2.67x LMark 1.335]) 36.000 AD [5.000] (38.335 [6.000]) for a R6
- (5.000 + [1x Mark 25.000 + 1.50 PWards 6.000]) 84.320 AD [25.000] (122.655 [31.000]) for a R7
- (25.000 + [2x Mark 50.000 + 2.33 PWards 9.320]) 284.655 AD [81.000] (407.310 [122.000]) for a R8
- (50.000 + [1x GMark 100.000 + 3.00 PWards 12.000] + Catalyst R7 122.655 [31.000]) 698.310 AD [197.000] (1.105.620 [319.000]) for a R9
- (75.000 + [2x GMark 200.000 + 4.00 PWards 16.000] + Catalyst R8 407.310 [122.000]) 1.441.620 AD [419.000] (2.547.240 [738.000]) for a R10
- (100.000 + [2x GMark 200.000 + 9.00 PWards 36.000] + Catalyst R9 1.105.620 [319.000])
130.000 [25.000] (130.000 [25.000]) for a Lesser
- (25.000 + [1.00x CWard 105.000]) 385.000 [75.000] (515.000 [100.000]) for a Normal
- (50.000 + [1x GMark 100.000 + 1.00 CWard 105.000] + Catalyst Lesser 130.000 [25.000]) 895.000 [175.000] (1.410.000 [275.000]) for a Greater
- (75.000 + [2x GMark 200.000 + 1.00 CWard 105.000] + Catalyst Normal 515.000 [100.000]) 1.815.000 [375.000] (3.225.000 [650.000]) for a Perfect
- (100.000 + [2x GMark 200.000 + 1.00 CWard 105.000] + Catalyst Greater 1.410.000 [275.000])
By inputting sufficient AD sinks they keep the overall value of the AD you are earning higher and thus the work you do more rewarding. So... take an economics class before you complain about an economy, even a virtual one.
Take an economics class? Really? Great advice.
The new system is still terrible.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited November 2013
Thanks for doing the math on that j0shi82. I was working on it myselfbut our numbers are very similar if not the same (slight errors probably on my end) so I'm just going to roll with those numbers.
I'm just not seeing any improvement, really.
We now require half of the enchantments to level up past Rank 7, huzzah, but this still means jack diddlysquat due to the AD Fees and catalysts.
The same result could have been garnered from halving the costs on the current system.
Nobody "wasn't participating" in the old enchantment system. Your data showed that but it wasn't because it was a bad system outright it just required too much farming and too many high cost punishments for failure.
You've not addressed the high cost punishment for failure in the least. It's still a 10% chance from rank 9-10. It's still under a 50% chance past rank 5. Now you have removed the pre-7 enchantment sink but you've added this stupid catalyst requirement which is just a bunch of confusing fluff that will result in filling my inventory or costing me even more resources than it currently does prior to rank 7.
And now I see that dreadful 419K AD cost to raise and enchtment from rank 4-10. Do you know what that is? That's an up front fee that I had refused to pay before. We said the fee to remove enchantments was too high. By moving it to a fee to make enchantments it's just going to discourage people from making them to begin with. It's honestly a complete failure to listen. The fee was too high. Pay attention. Too high.
Remove the AD fee below rank 6 and cut the fee to a quarter of what it is currently rank 6-10 and maybe it would be decent...
Here's the crux of the problem with the economy as a whole, to be honest, there is too much and too few astral diamonds in the game.
That doesn't make sense? I thought not...
This game's market is inflated at the moment. People have plenty of AD to spend on various things at any given time and very few places to spend it so the AD in the game has the gear drops from dungeons quite high and well out of reach for the average player to earn through normal gameplay.
At the same time the reason there's so much in the game is because there's too little AD to use on the AD Sinks. I have two words for you: Mount Upgrades. Look at the price of those...give me any reason to the justification of that?! 2.4M to make a single mount T3? That's roughly 60 dollars in the current market.
That's the truth of every single one of the gold sinks within the game. They are so outrageously out of reach that we all blow raspberries at them and don't use them. Take the data for the truth...
The game expects too much grinding from everything so we pick and choose our grinds carefully.
I love grinds. I want grinds. But I want balanced grinds.
If you're seeing people aren't taking part in the grinds don't kid yourself into thinking they don't want to take part in it and consider that the grinds themselves are just out of balance.
If you reduced all of the AD sinks in the game to 1/4 of the fees they are people would be throwing their AD into it. So do us a huge favor and fix your AD sinks to be balanced before you consider mandating them on us.
Unfortunately i dont think they will fundamentally change the sink or the double rank up mechanism from R7 because.. "We have spent a lot of effort into making the experience of slotting, improving and unslotting Enchantments and Runestones much more enjoyable, totally reworking the entire system."
Changing UI elements doesnt invalidate someones work. Reworking the design does. Reworking the catalyst mechanics does. The original design goal (the real one, not this PR spoon fed goal i quoted above to try make it easier to swallow) i'm sure has been met, else it wouldnt have made the cut to test.
What we are seeing will largely go live, save for some minor tweaks for useability.
If you're seeing people aren't taking part in the grinds don't kid yourself into thinking they don't want to take part in it and consider that the grinds themselves are just out of balance.
If you reduced all of the AD sinks in the game to 1/4 of the fees they are people would be throwing their AD into it. So do us a huge favor and fix your AD sinks to be balanced before you consider mandating them on us.
Without wanting to defend the system, there is only one game economy and it needs to cater to a wide spectrum of players, both in terms of financial input and time input. As with most f2p game you need a decent amount of one of these to get anywhere within a reasonable time frame.
I don't know where the sweet spot lies but from my persepctive it's slanted towards the higher end of things at the moment. I'm not the best person to judge though as I have neither large amounts of time nor the desire to spend large amounts fo money.
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rapticorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,078Arc User
At the same time the reason there's so much in the game is because there's too little AD to use on the AD Sinks. I have two words for you: Mount Upgrades. Look at the price of those...give me any reason to the justification of that?! 2.4M to make a single mount T3? That's roughly 60 dollars in the current market.
That's the truth of every single one of the gold sinks within the game. They are so outrageously out of reach that we all blow raspberries at them and don't use them. Take the data for the truth...
Same goes for the companion upgrades. It's cheaper to buy a purple from the zen store than it is to upgrade them through the game. The only exception is the Cleric since there isn't really one of those anywhere else. Regardless, I haven't bothered to upgrade my companions because the AD cost is too stupid. If they would cut it in half I'd upgrade a bunch of them.
Sorry, but i don't know why you complain now about the AD-costs. 400k AD is to high? What you THINK?! Yes it's a high number, but you have to say: IT'S PERFECT RANK. With 10k AD/Day you have it in 40d! And what then? What you do then if you have all perfect in within 2 month of play? Cryptic enable a unslotting system, which allow you to unslot all your perfect if new gear come out, that is better or even not. And how often come gear out? 3 month? 6 month? You have to think in mid and longterm! 40d are NOTHING in an Game. Come out of the stupid Single Play Game mentally of playing through content in 2d with perfect gear at the end! Cryptic kill some bad aspects: 1. Need of Wards(85 vs. 15! if you really want to use them) 2. dependent on the exact enchantment type(then i can kill all the useless training runes for other useful runes to gain them up) 3. make unslotting gold dependent instead of high AD-cost. Swaping enchantment is so easy possible. 4. Low bag space needed - i have more than 50! slots filled with the runes/enchantments now. Then i can reduce this easy to 20-30 or even lower!
Mark are a new value that need to put in, but they can find too. In other words: How else you will get the stuff for a perfect Rank?
They could cut them by a half or 1,5x, but 4 seem to much. The horse upgrades are really to high. If there they cut it in 3-4, it's maybe worth it(because you have to count how many times you will make this!) for a single char. For 2 and more char horses the zenexchange is then even better. The companions upgrade could be cut down by 1,5-2x.
I believe this is the crux of the issue with the new system. Previously, there was a path of no AD cost to upgrade enchantments. It was time consuming, yes, but it was absolutely free.
In the new system, there is absolutely no option for a no AD cost upgrade.
I agree this is the perceived crux of the issue, however, it is still possible to trade time instead of real cash for AD. Consequently, it is still possible to upgrade enchants without spending actual money; the grinding merely is focused differently.
Whatever they do with the feedback, I think the developers should note that the most bitter outcry seems to be coming from longer-term, more entrenched players. As a player of only 9 weeks, I welcome some iteration of this new system after the cumulative costs have been reviewed more closely.
Comments
I thought they were.
If I'm using the "Fill All Refining Slots" and select e. g. a stack of 8 enchantments. All five slots get filled. After I click on "Refine", the stack only contains the remaining 3 enchantments, but the 5 refining slots are still filled with 5 enchantments. Clicking on "Refine" initiates the stamping sound as normal, but nothing happens: neither get RP added to the "Item To Refine" nor does the 5 refinement slots get's emptied. Also I do get a error message in any kind. If I remove 2 enchantments from the enchantment slots and click on "Refine" again, the RP value get's added and the refinement slots get cleared.
Therefore you need to check if there are still 5 items in the stack
It would be nice if you would add the "Mark of Potency" to the loot table of the chests you gain from Leadership. As the Leadership shares to the loot table of the skill nodes on the Live server (at least in my experience/opinion).
I opened a couple hunderds--sorry didn't do an actual counting, as I opened them on a lot of different characters--and I got no "Mark of Potency" drop at all. Therefore I think they are not on the loot table right now.
Combining non-type enchants into an upgrade = cool. Removing an enchantment for gold = cool. Enforcing astronomical AD costs to upgrade = not cool. This has to be the worst thing I have seen in the game to date. It will most likely make the game unplayable for me and I am someone who plays the economy well, actively does high end content (MC / CN / T2) and has put over $460 into the game. Personally I think if this game keeps it up they are going to destroy their reputation among the MMO community.
Cyptic devs, I love the stuff you guys come up with, awesome job on the ranger. PWE bean counters, your pushing too hard too fast too far and some push back is coming from the community. Devs fill the server with potential dollars to be made, but the arm twisting in the player economy of AD which we all know = Zen which = $$ are going to empty the server of potential $$ to be made by driving the customer base away.
for enchantments, instead of this insane enchantment system that everyone hates.
and use alchemy assets for the enchant profession crafting.
just a thought.
I agree, catalysts and the items that give refining points should be added to the chests and barrels of Leadership.
This is much more fair, and profitable for PWE.
The current system works very well is easy and fast to use, it as never had any problems, the only part that is not used is more likely the the enchant removal system, all because it is just not cost effective and most of the time is way over priced
Interestingly, when i recently replaced my weapon, it cost 50k more AD to remove the old enchant than it was to buy a complete new enchant from the AH. I think you will find if many things were actually in a more decent balance to the game economy more players would use the system, as most in the game currently are just not cost effective.
Take for eg; the mount upgrade system, to currently upgrade a 'white' 50% speed horse mount to a 'Purple' 110% speed mount works out around 2.8 milion AD, while you can buy most 'purple' mounts from the AH for less than 1 milion. lol, seriously !
Added to that you can exchange AD to zen and buy any of the Zen store mounts, which are also account wide for far less than 2.8 milion AD, and you wonder why players dont use the mount upgrade system......
You dont need 'data' to analyze to see were the problems are.
Use the same type of marks to catalyse(although my old chem professor would ream you out for saying that when the the "catalyst" is actually a component that is used up) every refinement.
Having marks of potency for enchantments, then 2-3 other types just for the artifacts is overkill, confusing and a drain on inventory space.
The way I see it they could kill any one of these and the new system would be decent:
1) Catalysts. Poor holy water on this unholy demon...
2) AD Cost to Upgrade
3) Failure Chance
And that's just to make it decent. If they wanted to make it good they would have to kill two or at least heavilly reduce another.
The improvement to the weapon enhancements is noticeable but Rank 1-5 of normal enchantments are so much worse it's appalling. And the changes to 6-10 make me so sick to my stomache there's just little to convince me that it's superior. The grind is still there just as bad as before and I'm thinking it's far worse.
Truth be told in order to convince me this system is anything other than a complicated mess to make it feel less costly and less of a grind they're going to have to show the numbers themselves.
Show me how common these catalysts drops are.
But even then burn those unholy things to bits. Take them out!
Anything additional which is required to gather is called an additional cost. Period. And unless at least one drops from every dungeon (has anybody tested the drop rate) I don't want those things seeing the light of day. I do dungeons all the time but I want no part of those catalysts as at the very least it will be an additional cost that I will have to justify not selling on the AH unless they drop like candy.
And at that point then I can just get angry at the fact that the marketing team has absolutely no idea how much AD is worth. Stop putting stuff in the shops at exuberant prices and simply put them in at a decent price. If they drop like candy then they're not worth 100K so don't put them in the shop for that much!
I saw those rank 3 enchantments in the shop for 50K AD and it does nothing other than make me lose confidence in the ability of the marketing team to adequately price anything. Price them above their value, yes, but pricing things over that much is just <censored>.
If you expect them to drop so frequently that they'll be worth 5K or so in the AH then price them at 20K. Not 100K. If you're not going to have them drop that much than take this system and scrap it.
Yes, at first look it seemed bad, but I have grown to like it. It isn't perfect yet. I don't mind the % chance, but I think the AD prices can be adjusted a bit.
What does that even mean? The only frustrating thing about the old system was that it takes like two seconds to perform a fusion. You can open 100 lockboxes/leadership reward chests and whatnot in about 20 seconds but the fusion process takes ages. Funny enough that the long duration caused one of the major exploits to date. They shortened it but never entirely got rid of it for some reason...
And hey, refining also is on a "cooldown." Great! Ever tried to stuff hundreds of R4s into one R8? It's effing annoying because you have to wait about two seconds to repeat. I don't get it.
To those complaining that it cost AD to level these up you have to realize that every currency in any economy has to have a sink for that currency to go into otherwise you have hyper-inflation. Online economies are no different. By inputting sufficient AD sinks they keep the overall value of the AD you are earning higher and thus the work you do more rewarding. So... take an economics class before you complain about an economy, even a virtual one.
after messing around with it, i actually like it...
going to have to try to stop judging prematurely. lol
the only usefulness from this is from weapon and armor enchants.
Regular enchants suffers greatly. I hate it the more I mess around with it. And to add. Its also easy to get them mixed up. If you want to have multiple rank dark enchants, you can accidently feed one of the ranks you've been building on to another enchant by accident with the way its set up.
HOWEVER almost all of this is invalidated by requiring a catalyst of the same exact enchantment in your inventory!
This is really important because once the people you're trying to help, the more casual players, reach rank 5 or 6 you're going to see the exact same behavior. Most people have no problem slowly contributing effort to a task but once that effort is maxed out, you're then giving them a dead halt and requiring them to refine a new one in their inventory. All of the suddenly you have dissociated the progress they have been making with collecting something else I.E. the exact reason the current system is not working.
For example I currently have rank 7's in most of my gear, for me to level one of them to Rank 8, first I will collect enchantments as I'm playing them game and build R.P. on my rank 7. Naturally I'm feeling progress, until the bar reaches max! I could either pay AD or do a dungeon to get my Mark catalyst however that's not the problem I'm going to encounter its the new lets call it "Dark" enchantment I need to level to make my 7 an 8.
This is when the people you're trying to help will lose interest. I find a rank 4 "Dark" and then need to level that one up, but while I'm doing so i need to hold on to another rank 4 dark, then I get a rank 5 dark, but now I need to do another rank 4 level up to have 2 darks, which I refine the first rank 5 dark to make a rank 6, which I need to repeat all that I'v said to make the rank 7 I need to continue the progress on my 1 equipped dark 7. Which all of this feels wrong, I've been heavily dissociated with the appearance of progress once I fill my refinement meter.
I think you should stick to 1 or the other side of this coin. 4(x) -> 1(x+1) A collection based system, the current system, simple clean, easy, but not everyone is in to collecting.
OR
Refinement system, which should be simply "Earn points" to max a bar + Pay AD (or a reduced AD cost with naturally finding the catalyst) -> yielding the next tier of Enchantment, having elements of both is horrible. If you need to double the RP and catalyst cost/Requirement and have people need Preservation / Coalescent wards to prevent expensive materials or even partial RP point loss to make this work that seems fine to me, but don't go half "Build Progress" and half "Collection" system, instead of helping people who like one style you're just hurting both styles.
Exactly.
The cost of the secondary catalyst + the cost of the Actual Mark of Potency/whatever defeats any gain this system could have.
I'm not seeing any improvement after level 6. Just a worse system under rank 4 and a worse system above rank 5.
You get 5 catalysts in the adventurers box at level 15, so that's something to get started with and initial AD costs are trivial. I'll see what I think about 1000 AD on a new character when I get to that point.
Of course, once this goes live I'll be able to just mail enchants to my hunter rather than refining them from scratch. So while I dont' see any immediate benefit for me with the new system, it seems like it might be better for the new player.
Edit: Level 20 now. I've run out of catalysts, and none have dropped in game yet. No free ones with the level 20 box either. I've got 5 enchants awaiting upgrade.
4 (4) for a R4 (1 base, 3 for the RPs)
12 (16) for a R5
48 (64) for a R6
192 (256) for a R7 (128 to refine the R7 itself and 64 R4s for the R7 Catalyst)
640 (896) for a R8 (384 to refine the R8 itself and 256 R4s for the R8 Catalyst)
2048 (2944) for a R9 (1152 to refine the R9 itself and 896 R4s for the R9 Catalyst)
Amount of matching Shards (accumulative) consumed in refining process:
4 (4) for a Shard (1 base, 3 for the RPs)
12 (16) for a Lesser (8 to refine the Lesser itself and one 4 Shards for the Lesser Catalyst)
40 (56) for a Normal (24 to refine the Normal itself and 16 Shards for the Normal Catalyst)
128 (184) for a Greater (72 to refine the Greater itself and 56 Shards for the Greater Catalysts)
ADs [without marks/wards] (accumulative [without marks/wards]) needed for upgrade:
2.335 [1.000] (2.335 [1.000]) for a R5
- (1.000 + [2.67x LMark 1.335])
36.000 AD [5.000] (38.335 [6.000]) for a R6
- (5.000 + [1x Mark 25.000 + 1.50 PWards 6.000])
84.320 AD [25.000] (122.655 [31.000]) for a R7
- (25.000 + [2x Mark 50.000 + 2.33 PWards 9.320])
284.655 AD [81.000] (407.310 [122.000]) for a R8
- (50.000 + [1x GMark 100.000 + 3.00 PWards 12.000] + Catalyst R7 122.655 [31.000])
698.310 AD [197.000] (1.105.620 [319.000]) for a R9
- (75.000 + [2x GMark 200.000 + 4.00 PWards 16.000] + Catalyst R8 407.310 [122.000])
1.441.620 AD [419.000] (2.547.240 [738.000]) for a R10
- (100.000 + [2x GMark 200.000 + 9.00 PWards 36.000] + Catalyst R9 1.105.620 [319.000])
130.000 [25.000] (130.000 [25.000]) for a Lesser
- (25.000 + [1.00x CWard 105.000])
385.000 [75.000] (515.000 [100.000]) for a Normal
- (50.000 + [1x GMark 100.000 + 1.00 CWard 105.000] + Catalyst Lesser 130.000 [25.000])
895.000 [175.000] (1.410.000 [275.000]) for a Greater
- (75.000 + [2x GMark 200.000 + 1.00 CWard 105.000] + Catalyst Normal 515.000 [100.000])
1.815.000 [375.000] (3.225.000 [650.000]) for a Perfect
- (100.000 + [2x GMark 200.000 + 1.00 CWard 105.000] + Catalyst Greater 1.410.000 [275.000])
Accumulative material needed for upgrade:
R5 (2.67 LMarks - 0.00 Marks - 0.00 GMarks - 0.00 PWards - 0.00 CWards)
R6 (2.67 LMarks - 1.00 Marks - 0.00 GMarks - 1.50 PWards - 0.00 CWards)
R7 (2.67 LMarks - 3.00 Marks - 0.00 GMarks - 3.83 PWards - 0.00 CWards)
R8 (5.34 LMarks - 6.00 Marks - 1.00 GMarks - 7.66 PWards - 0.00 CWards)
R9 (10.68 LMarks - 12.00 Marks - 4.00 GMarks - 19.32 PWards - 0.00 CWards)
R10 (21.32 LMarks - 24.00 Marks - 10.00 GMarks - 47.64 PWards - 0.00 CWards)
Lesser (0.00 LMarks - 0.00 Marks - 0.00 GMarks - 0.00 PWards - 1.00 CWards)
Normal (0.00 LMarks - 0.00 Marks - 1.00 GMarks - 0.00 PWards - 3.00 CWards)
Greater (0.00 LMarks - 0.00 Marks - 4.00 GMarks - 0.00 PWards - 7.00 CWards)
Perfect (0.00 LMarks - 0.00 Marks - 10.00 GMarks - 0.00 PWards - 15.00 CWards)
Take an economics class? Really? Great advice.
The new system is still terrible.
I'm just not seeing any improvement, really.
We now require half of the enchantments to level up past Rank 7, huzzah, but this still means jack diddlysquat due to the AD Fees and catalysts.
The same result could have been garnered from halving the costs on the current system.
Nobody "wasn't participating" in the old enchantment system. Your data showed that but it wasn't because it was a bad system outright it just required too much farming and too many high cost punishments for failure.
You've not addressed the high cost punishment for failure in the least. It's still a 10% chance from rank 9-10. It's still under a 50% chance past rank 5. Now you have removed the pre-7 enchantment sink but you've added this stupid catalyst requirement which is just a bunch of confusing fluff that will result in filling my inventory or costing me even more resources than it currently does prior to rank 7.
And now I see that dreadful 419K AD cost to raise and enchtment from rank 4-10. Do you know what that is? That's an up front fee that I had refused to pay before. We said the fee to remove enchantments was too high. By moving it to a fee to make enchantments it's just going to discourage people from making them to begin with. It's honestly a complete failure to listen. The fee was too high. Pay attention. Too high.
Remove the AD fee below rank 6 and cut the fee to a quarter of what it is currently rank 6-10 and maybe it would be decent...
Here's the crux of the problem with the economy as a whole, to be honest, there is too much and too few astral diamonds in the game.
That doesn't make sense? I thought not...
This game's market is inflated at the moment. People have plenty of AD to spend on various things at any given time and very few places to spend it so the AD in the game has the gear drops from dungeons quite high and well out of reach for the average player to earn through normal gameplay.
At the same time the reason there's so much in the game is because there's too little AD to use on the AD Sinks. I have two words for you: Mount Upgrades. Look at the price of those...give me any reason to the justification of that?! 2.4M to make a single mount T3? That's roughly 60 dollars in the current market.
That's the truth of every single one of the gold sinks within the game. They are so outrageously out of reach that we all blow raspberries at them and don't use them. Take the data for the truth...
The game expects too much grinding from everything so we pick and choose our grinds carefully.
I love grinds. I want grinds. But I want balanced grinds.
If you're seeing people aren't taking part in the grinds don't kid yourself into thinking they don't want to take part in it and consider that the grinds themselves are just out of balance.
If you reduced all of the AD sinks in the game to 1/4 of the fees they are people would be throwing their AD into it. So do us a huge favor and fix your AD sinks to be balanced before you consider mandating them on us.
Changing UI elements doesnt invalidate someones work. Reworking the design does. Reworking the catalyst mechanics does. The original design goal (the real one, not this PR spoon fed goal i quoted above to try make it easier to swallow) i'm sure has been met, else it wouldnt have made the cut to test.
What we are seeing will largely go live, save for some minor tweaks for useability.
I don't know where the sweet spot lies but from my persepctive it's slanted towards the higher end of things at the moment. I'm not the best person to judge though as I have neither large amounts of time nor the desire to spend large amounts fo money.
Same goes for the companion upgrades. It's cheaper to buy a purple from the zen store than it is to upgrade them through the game. The only exception is the Cleric since there isn't really one of those anywhere else. Regardless, I haven't bothered to upgrade my companions because the AD cost is too stupid. If they would cut it in half I'd upgrade a bunch of them.
Mark are a new value that need to put in, but they can find too. In other words: How else you will get the stuff for a perfect Rank?
They could cut them by a half or 1,5x, but 4 seem to much. The horse upgrades are really to high. If there they cut it in 3-4, it's maybe worth it(because you have to count how many times you will make this!) for a single char. For 2 and more char horses the zenexchange is then even better. The companions upgrade could be cut down by 1,5-2x.
I agree this is the perceived crux of the issue, however, it is still possible to trade time instead of real cash for AD. Consequently, it is still possible to upgrade enchants without spending actual money; the grinding merely is focused differently.
Whatever they do with the feedback, I think the developers should note that the most bitter outcry seems to be coming from longer-term, more entrenched players. As a player of only 9 weeks, I welcome some iteration of this new system after the cumulative costs have been reviewed more closely.