Except he got the product he paid for; he paid for Zen, he got Zen.
He got zen for AD, which in this case he did get what he paid for but could not use the in game currency he paid real money for.
A problem which is stated nowhere in game. So when people purchase zen then exchange it and find it is worthless they are not really receiving what they paid for.
If they put a tool tip stating "Astral Diamonds purchased with zen will have limitations on spending in Auction House" or some thing similar then it would be a different story.
To all the people who say "It shouldn't take long to get to 60" just stop.
People should be able to purchase in game items BEFORE they reach the daily grindfest that is level 60+ missions.
Just because some people like to rush through all the content to get to do the same 3 campaigns dailies day in and day out does not mean that others wouldn't like to be able to spend their AD to grind through the 90% of game content that is programmed for before level 60 players.
Well, I've been back and forth with support and no, I will not quote them here.
The upshot is that on June 14th there was a patch that rolled the <60 cap. Here's a thing though: I can't buy a 25k bow because I am capped, but the system as coded (by design since it clearly states it will exclude high ticket items from the cap when you get the error) is more than happy to let me spend 500k on a single item?
Someone care to take a whack at an explanation on that one?
Not on the table. The change was implemented to combat a far more serious problem.
I understand you are frustrated and feel like this is the most serious issue in the world but this is truly an extremely niche situation you are in and combating the gold farmers and bots is a far more serious problem.
As others have said the mulhorand weapons are luxury items and are far from required to level. In fact you would probably enjoy the game far more if you did not use them the first character you play through the campaign. The guide you are reading is almost assuredly a power leveling guide and not a guide geared for new players. The developers will look for any possible solutions but I guarantee they will not revert the change because of this.
This is a serious issue for you but it is far from normal circumstances.
You're missing the point. People can buy zen and convert to AD to buy things in game, and there is no documentation warning of a spending cap per level prior to paying real money for zen. That is the point. It's suckering people out of their money without their knowledge. That's as bad as the gold farmers IMO.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited September 2014
Chargebacks are not there to be used for buyers remorse. Please read the terms and conditions of using chargebacks on paypal's website.
If you do a chargeback your account will be banned.
You paid for Zen. You receive the Zen.
You then used then Zen to purchase AD. You can use that AD to buy numerous items or benefits in the game other than the specific item you wanted including Zen. Once you reach level 60 on any one character the limitation no longer applies whatsoever.
Zen and AD are sort of like cash credit. You will never receive cash refunds from PWE, Cryptic or any other MMO Company because of buyers remorse; you would receive cash credit which you already have.
Without limiting the foregoing, in addition to the User Content rules set forth in Section 16, you agree not to take any of the following actions:
h. impede or disrupt the Service or the normal flow of game play or dialogue in the Game or in Interactive Areas (defined below) in the Service or use vulgar language, abusiveness, use of excessive shouting (ALL CAPS), “spamming” or any other disruptive or detrimental methods in an attempt to disturb other users or our employees;
I have also run into this problem of being unable to use purchased Zen for the reason I bought them due to an undocumented or hidden game design feature.
Respectfully, you are therefor completely incorrect in labeling this as "buyers remorse". It is not the case that I and others have simply changed our minds about the desirability of our purchase. Rather, we did not receive what we were lead to believe we were purchasing.
You attempt to address this by noting that we intended to buy Zen and did, in fact, get Zen. This literally true, but contextually false. In truth, we intended to buy items from the AH through purchasing Zen. This is what was not received due to Neverwinter's effectively hidden spending caps for new players.
The problem is not that these caps exist, however. Rather, the problem is that they are essentially hidden until after Zen has been purchased. This is a poor business practice I am sorry to see in an otherwise fine game. It is, indeed, appropriate grounds for a chargeback or refund.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited September 2014
And if you choose that path you will be banned per the policy on chargebacks.
The limitations will be removed when you reach level 60. If you want to forgo the game because you refused to spend about a week reaching level 60 then that is your choice but you may not issue a chargeback because you are not happy with what your received.
Chargebacks exist to protect consumers from malicious practices. They are not to be used just because you feel you deserve a refund. Now if you feel that strongly then issue it but know you will not be playing the character.
It's really a trivial point in the long term of the game. You will use that Zen and/or AD later unless you want to leave over something as trivial as not being able to buy a select few items which you absolutely do not need and arguably will ruin your first time experience with the game.
I understand the frustration, but what some of the posters said here is correct - you will much more enjoy spending Zen/AD on items at level 60 than prior to that. The items you get from regular drops work well enough until level 60. I would not waste the Zen/AD prior to level 60, except I do recommend buying an account-wide purple mount with Zen once you reach level 20 - that really speeds things up a bit in reaching level 60.
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!" pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all." looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
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myles08807Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 409Arc User
It's really a trivial point in the long term of the game. You will use that Zen and/or AD later unless you want to leave over something as trivial as not being able to buy a select few items which you absolutely do not need and arguably will ruin your first time experience with the game.
Hear hear. I hate to come across as the grumpy old man of the game ("Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling...we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!") but IMHO, unless you've leveled once with the gear you find, you will never actually play the game. I occasionally give away minor healing potions to new toons, but that's as much help as you'll get. Now, get off my lawn, you kids!
Hear hear. I hate to come across as the grumpy old man of the game ("Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling...we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!") but IMHO, unless you've leveled once with the gear you find, you will never actually play the game. I occasionally give away minor healing potions to new toons, but that's as much help as you'll get. Now, get off my lawn, you kids!
LOL! That was both extremely funny and informational, at the same time! Classic!
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!" pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all." looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
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Also, ARC Terms of Service are clear on the matter of chargebacks.
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ROLL TIDE ROLL
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
And if you choose that path you will be banned per the policy on chargebacks.
The limitations will be removed when you reach level 60. If you want to forgo the game because you refused to spend about a week reaching level 60 then that is your choice but you may not issue a chargeback because you are not happy with what your received.
Chargebacks exist to protect consumers from malicious practices. They are not to be used just because you feel you deserve a refund. Now if you feel that strongly then issue it but know you will not be playing the character.
It's really a trivial point in the long term of the game. You will use that Zen and/or AD later unless you want to leave over something as trivial as not being able to buy a select few items which you absolutely do not need and arguably will ruin your first time experience with the game.
So imagine walking into the bank, taking out some money and then walking into a store where they tell you, sorry we won't accept it from you till you are 60 years old.
Chargebacks are not there to be used for buyers remorse.
Sometimes, that remorse comes from a legitimate customer who did legitimate business then feeling that he has been cheated. The account will be banned, of course, but some people may be prepared to pay that price to get their hard-earned cash back. They may decide to play a different game instead, due to the extremely unpleasant early experience they have had.
If they did that, it would be entirely due to this company’s sheer lack of communication and lack of customer care. It is brought up constantly. I do not understand why they ignore it.
The OP and others have said why they feel cheated: simply because the company could not be bothered to take care of their paying customers by telling them IN ADVANCE that any Zen they buy will be useless if they exchange it for AD because they will be locked out of the Auction House.
Any decent business ethic dictates that paying customers will be told that IN ADVANCE of making the Zen purchase. All it needs is a warning on the Zen Purchase page to give this essential information.
And all they get is an INCORRECT tool tip when it is already too late, telling them they have already spent over their limit on the AH, when that is not even true because they are NOT ALLOWED to spend any AD on the AH.
All my new characters buy blue gear from the AH, but I already had a few level 60 characters before this stupid limitation came into being. I believe that this AH limitation does nothing to combat botters and gold sellers. It merely inconveniences legitimate customers and helps to destroy the reputation of both Cryptic and PWE.
And the AH is already being scammed by flippers again, indicating the absolute ineffectiveness of inconveniencing legitimate customers. My Halfing TR bought a Spymaster's Elegant Dagger and Ceremonial Shiv for roughly 80k and 159k and my Dragonborn TR bought the Dagger for about 90k on WEDNESDAY. There were several pages of both items. On FRIDAY, when I had the AD for the second Shiv, ALL of these items were GONE, with two postings from the same account asking 800k. So, it looks to me like a flipper with excess AD bought them all up to horde and re-posted them two at a time to keep the price up.
All the OP wanted was some Mulhorand items. All 14 of my characters had three Mulhorand Items until they got better items at level 60.
So I really think that inconveniencing genuine, legitimate paying customers like this does nothing to stop botters.
What MIGHT combat botters is having a visual recognition system for logging in: type what you see in the box. This will be MASSIVELY inconvenient to legitimate customers (considering the number of times I get internal server misdirect errors), but I think it may be one of the few things that an automated program cannot bypass.
The OP mainly objects to not being told all this up front; I agree with him, it is extremely shabby and clearly he is going to be upset and feel cheated, even if technically he has not been deliberately cheated. It is just clumsy and careless for the company to do this to him. It is such a shame that the company thinks that this sort of behaviour is OK, considering how many innocents they are stomping on every single day. Their attitude belies the quality of the game.
But the OP can keep his Zen and AD until one of his characters hits level 60, and I think he will enjoy the game if he does.
In the meantime, I would also advise this:
01. Play your main character to get him to level 60 ASAP by doing all the Invocations, Leadership Professions and the Dailies for Rhix, PvP Events, the Main Quest and Side Quests.
02. Get the Professions, Invocations, Horse and Artifact as soon as you can (levels 10, 11 & 20+)
03. Have your second character in Protector’s Enclave doing Invocations every hour you are logged in and Blacklake Skirmish Events – in theory, you can get 20k AD per Event hour by spamming that, but more likely 12 to 16k
04. Do not spend any AD on anything except Scrolls of Identification appropriate for your level at the Wondrous Bazaar – you will need them.
05. Do not spend any Zen on anything yet except New Character Slots – 2 characters for 500 Zen.
06. Get your New Characters to Protector’s Enclave and do The Crown of Neverwinter and then spam Skirmish Events for the AD from level 6.
07. Start doing Professions as soon as you can at level 10 – have them all doing Leadership.
08. At level 11, have them all doing Invocations as well.
09. Shared Bank Slots are also useful for Zen
10. Re-spec tokens can be very useful later on.
11. An Account-Wide Epic Mount is also well worth the money – the more characters you have, the greater the value.
So, when you log in, cycle through doing Invocations and Professions with each character first, then play your main character to advance him.
By the time he is level 60, you should have quite a lot of AD and then whatever your favourite character is, you can equip him with stuff from the AH.
Good luck. I am truly sorry that the company did this to you. If their attitude to Customer Service was 10% of the fun and quality of the actual game, they would probably win a prize for Customer Service.
And you don’t HAVE to spend a penny – you CAN if you wish, just for the convenience of saving time. But you only REALLY need to spend a LOT of money if you want the absolute top Power Level in very high end PvP.
I am now experiencing this problem as well. I just reached level cap and spent a bunch of money on AD from ZEN. I wanted to buy the timeless hero set but I was only able to purchase the shield. I'm not sure why this is affecting me as it says right in the message that max level character's are exempt????? What am I missing here, and am I going to have to spread out my purchases over five to ten days .. in which case I can't play with epic gear until then? What is the logic here?
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arkanoitaMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
edited October 2014
When the buy timer resets? (At least the game doesn't care about my local time for judging what day it is.)
I bought one adventurer (79000ad) for leadership profession and now I can't buy another one, or anything else. I, like all noobs, want to spend my money on some useless stuff like that, so is there any other way to play this game and progressing on crafting also while leveling, than buying the required stuff of the auction? Do I really need to buy some 100 profession booster packs and hope for maybe getting random adventurer for leadership, or is there any reasonable ways to get further in crafting?
I bought one adventurer (79000ad) for leadership profession and now I can't buy another one, or anything else.
Do I really need to buy some 100 profession booster packs and hope for maybe getting random adventurer for leadership, or is there any reasonable ways to get further in crafting?
NO. You absolutely do NOT. That is NO.
So that would be a NO, then. Got it?
Anyway, you can get one for nothing when you complete the Neverdeath Graveyard quests. That is what confirmed for me how poor they truly are.
I have NEVER bought one of those packs. I think they are an absolute waste of time, money and oxygen and are one of the few ways where they are actually going very, very wrong with this game.
If I want a Master Mailsmith or a Steel Grindstone, I would quite probably buy THOSE with Zen. But I am absolutely NOT interested in any way in paying cash money for "A CHANCE" to get an Iron Needle or a Master Tailor.
Be patient.
The FIRST thing you should do with Professions is hire one of each apprentice hireling to unlock each Profession. So you may have to e-mail the Adventurer to yourself, if you have not already hired your first Mercenary or that task will be locked.
You get Leadership to Rank 3 to open the second slot very quickly.
Then, do not buy Adventurers for 79k. Buy four Master Alchemists for a lot less. Use these to unlock the "Complete a Task with a 100% Speed Bonus" to open a new slot. It should come up at Alchemy Rank 2 - any task that has four slots for hirelings; Deep Wilderness Gathering, for example. Now you have three slots open.
Alchemy is by far the quickest to get to level 20 with an actively adventuring character, as long as you have all the resources you need. Now you have six slots open. Leadership is by far the slowest to level up.
That is why I stockpile all the potions I pick up and get from Invocations, as they are used as Experimental Reagents. I also have one Grandmaster Alchemist Character grinding out Aqua Vitae and Aqua Regia for a few days until I have enough and mail them to my active character. Also, Mass Simple and Advanced Vitriol Extraction, as you will need the blue, green yellow and silver vitriol. You''ll need t buy Solvent, Brimstone and Quicksilver from the Elf in PE. She also sells swords and armour for your Leadership staff.
It's only 10 minutes to Experiment to get the Knowledge (although there are a lot of failures), then a few hours to do the Research. This also unlocks the Level 20 slot in a week or so.
And the beauty is you can do all this with a single slot while adventuring and doing Dailies, while doing Leadership in the other Professions slots. Even with lowly mercenaries.
By using one Professions slot for Alchemy on your active character, with all the resources in inventory, you can unlock:
Complete a task with at least a 100% speed bonus
Get any Profession to Level 3
Get any Profession to Level 10
Get any Profession to Level 20
Complete a task and earn the Tier 3 Result - I usually make a batch of dyes or potions, but you'll need four Epic Purple Tools for a good chance of this.
That gives you six slots for doing Leadership, long before your character is even level 30; probably.
So you'd need to e-mail all your Alchemy ingredients etc to your main character while he is doing this. It will take a while with your first character, but once you have several characters (I have 15, 12 at level 60), you can get Alchemy up to level 20 in about a week of normal playing. As long as you have the reagents you need for Experiments and Research.
One Adventurer for a +25% Speed Bonus is a lot cheaper than four Men-at-Arms for a 2 x +10% Speed Bonus on two tasks (you can only ever use two Leadership Staff per task, never four, like all other Professions).
Four Adventurers for a 2 x 25% Speed Bonus on two tasks are a lot cheaper than a single Epic Hero for a 50% speed bonus on a single task.
But watch the prices on the AH and buy the best deal.
I bought about 30 Adventurers for between 69 and 73 k this week. I won't pay more than that. Men-at-Arms are a rip-off and Heros are over-priced. When I have too many Adventurers, I'll upgrade 4x ~72k Adventurers into a 286k Hero - I will not buy one for 360k+.
But, with 12 characters at level 60, I have 10 Heroes and 135 Adventurers, because they are worth it for reducing the time from 12 hours to 8 hours when you have eleven characters with Rank 20 Leadership and four characters with all nine slots unlocked.
As Magenubbie says, for you, they are really not needed yet. They will speed up tasks for 100 AD or that net you 40 XP, but you are a long, long way off from making 200k AD per day from Leadership alone and Adventurers are really not a good investment for you right now.
Sometimes, that remorse comes from a legitimate customer who did legitimate business then feeling that he has been cheated. The account will be banned, of course, but some people may be prepared to pay that price to get their hard-earned cash back. They may decide to play a different game instead, due to the extremely unpleasant early experience they have had.
If they did that, it would be entirely due to this company’s sheer lack of communication and lack of customer care. It is brought up constantly. I do not understand why they ignore it.
The OP and others have said why they feel cheated: simply because the company could not be bothered to take care of their paying customers by telling them IN ADVANCE that any Zen they buy will be useless if they exchange it for AD because they will be locked out of the Auction House.
Any decent business ethic dictates that paying customers will be told that IN ADVANCE of making the Zen purchase. All it needs is a warning on the Zen Purchase page to give this essential information.
And all they get is an INCORRECT tool tip when it is already too late, telling them they have already spent over their limit on the AH, when that is not even true because they are NOT ALLOWED to spend any AD on the AH.
All my new characters buy blue gear from the AH, but I already had a few level 60 characters before this stupid limitation came into being. I believe that this AH limitation does nothing to combat botters and gold sellers. It merely inconveniences legitimate customers and helps to destroy the reputation of both Cryptic and PWE.
And the AH is already being scammed by flippers again, indicating the absolute ineffectiveness of inconveniencing legitimate customers. My Halfing TR bought a Spymaster's Elegant Dagger and Ceremonial Shiv for roughly 80k and 159k and my Dragonborn TR bought the Dagger for about 90k on WEDNESDAY. There were several pages of both items. On FRIDAY, when I had the AD for the second Shiv, ALL of these items were GONE, with two postings from the same account asking 800k. So, it looks to me like a flipper with excess AD bought them all up to horde and re-posted them two at a time to keep the price up.
All the OP wanted was some Mulhorand items. All 14 of my characters had three Mulhorand Items until they got better items at level 60.
So I really think that inconveniencing genuine, legitimate paying customers like this does nothing to stop botters.
What MIGHT combat botters is having a visual recognition system for logging in: type what you see in the box. This will be MASSIVELY inconvenient to legitimate customers (considering the number of times I get internal server misdirect errors), but I think it may be one of the few things that an automated program cannot bypass.
The OP mainly objects to not being told all this up front; I agree with him, it is extremely shabby and clearly he is going to be upset and feel cheated, even if technically he has not been deliberately cheated. It is just clumsy and careless for the company to do this to him. It is such a shame that the company thinks that this sort of behaviour is OK, considering how many innocents they are stomping on every single day. Their attitude belies the quality of the game.
But the OP can keep his Zen and AD until one of his characters hits level 60, and I think he will enjoy the game if he does.
In the meantime, I would also advise this:
01. Play your main character to get him to level 60 ASAP by doing all the Invocations, Leadership Professions and the Dailies for Rhix, PvP Events, the Main Quest and Side Quests.
02. Get the Professions, Invocations, Horse and Artifact as soon as you can (levels 10, 11 & 20+)
03. Have your second character in Protector’s Enclave doing Invocations every hour you are logged in and Blacklake Skirmish Events – in theory, you can get 20k AD per Event hour by spamming that, but more likely 12 to 16k
04. Do not spend any AD on anything except Scrolls of Identification appropriate for your level at the Wondrous Bazaar – you will need them.
05. Do not spend any Zen on anything yet except New Character Slots – 2 characters for 500 Zen.
06. Get your New Characters to Protector’s Enclave and do The Crown of Neverwinter and then spam Skirmish Events for the AD from level 6.
07. Start doing Professions as soon as you can at level 10 – have them all doing Leadership.
08. At level 11, have them all doing Invocations as well.
09. Shared Bank Slots are also useful for Zen
10. Re-spec tokens can be very useful later on.
11. An Account-Wide Epic Mount is also well worth the money – the more characters you have, the greater the value.
So, when you log in, cycle through doing Invocations and Professions with each character first, then play your main character to advance him.
By the time he is level 60, you should have quite a lot of AD and then whatever your favourite character is, you can equip him with stuff from the AH.
Good luck. I am truly sorry that the company did this to you. If their attitude to Customer Service was 10% of the fun and quality of the actual game, they would probably win a prize for Customer Service.
And you don’t HAVE to spend a penny – you CAN if you wish, just for the convenience of saving time. But you only REALLY need to spend a LOT of money if you want the absolute top Power Level in very high end PvP.
This has also happened to myself and to my girlfriend too.
I agree with most of what you've said, the only thing I don't agree with is trying to get to lvl60 ASAP, I s'pose that comes down to different play styles
Me and my girlfriend both play for the storyline, it's what we both enjoy most about MMO's, and to be honest we're not looking forward to getting to level 60 because of the grind and having to do the same quests (nearly), every single day. TBH, when we reach lvl60 if we find that the grind is too boring we're just gonna (mainly) play foundry, I also can't stomach RNG being used for items that are needed for advancement to new content areas.
We only get to play this game for the first time once, so we don't mind spending some money to support the game and make it more enjoyable, This has been soured by being told by the game that we cannot spend our own money the way we choose. If we'd been warned in advance then we wouldn't have fallen into this trap.
As you and others have said, it is our money and we had intentions to spend that Zen on the things we chose, to have this hidden rule (that is only found out when it's too late) restrict what we can spend that Zen on is wrong, no matter how anyone (even a mod) tries to justify it.
Closing this thread as it has outlived its usefulness and is only being used now to bash on the policies of the company. If you have nothing constructive to add to a thread, please don't post it. Thank you.
ROLL TIDE ROLL
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
Comments
A problem which is stated nowhere in game. So when people purchase zen then exchange it and find it is worthless they are not really receiving what they paid for.
If they put a tool tip stating "Astral Diamonds purchased with zen will have limitations on spending in Auction House" or some thing similar then it would be a different story.
To all the people who say "It shouldn't take long to get to 60" just stop.
People should be able to purchase in game items BEFORE they reach the daily grindfest that is level 60+ missions.
Just because some people like to rush through all the content to get to do the same 3 campaigns dailies day in and day out does not mean that others wouldn't like to be able to spend their AD to grind through the 90% of game content that is programmed for before level 60 players.
The upshot is that on June 14th there was a patch that rolled the <60 cap. Here's a thing though: I can't buy a 25k bow because I am capped, but the system as coded (by design since it clearly states it will exclude high ticket items from the cap when you get the error) is more than happy to let me spend 500k on a single item?
Someone care to take a whack at an explanation on that one?
You're missing the point. People can buy zen and convert to AD to buy things in game, and there is no documentation warning of a spending cap per level prior to paying real money for zen. That is the point. It's suckering people out of their money without their knowledge. That's as bad as the gold farmers IMO.
If you do a chargeback your account will be banned.
You paid for Zen. You receive the Zen.
You then used then Zen to purchase AD. You can use that AD to buy numerous items or benefits in the game other than the specific item you wanted including Zen. Once you reach level 60 on any one character the limitation no longer applies whatsoever.
Zen and AD are sort of like cash credit. You will never receive cash refunds from PWE, Cryptic or any other MMO Company because of buyers remorse; you would receive cash credit which you already have.
Furthermore please read the Terms of Service:
I have also run into this problem of being unable to use purchased Zen for the reason I bought them due to an undocumented or hidden game design feature.
Respectfully, you are therefor completely incorrect in labeling this as "buyers remorse". It is not the case that I and others have simply changed our minds about the desirability of our purchase. Rather, we did not receive what we were lead to believe we were purchasing.
You attempt to address this by noting that we intended to buy Zen and did, in fact, get Zen. This literally true, but contextually false. In truth, we intended to buy items from the AH through purchasing Zen. This is what was not received due to Neverwinter's effectively hidden spending caps for new players.
The problem is not that these caps exist, however. Rather, the problem is that they are essentially hidden until after Zen has been purchased. This is a poor business practice I am sorry to see in an otherwise fine game. It is, indeed, appropriate grounds for a chargeback or refund.
The limitations will be removed when you reach level 60. If you want to forgo the game because you refused to spend about a week reaching level 60 then that is your choice but you may not issue a chargeback because you are not happy with what your received.
Chargebacks exist to protect consumers from malicious practices. They are not to be used just because you feel you deserve a refund. Now if you feel that strongly then issue it but know you will not be playing the character.
It's really a trivial point in the long term of the game. You will use that Zen and/or AD later unless you want to leave over something as trivial as not being able to buy a select few items which you absolutely do not need and arguably will ruin your first time experience with the game.
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
Hear hear. I hate to come across as the grumpy old man of the game ("Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling...we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!") but IMHO, unless you've leveled once with the gear you find, you will never actually play the game. I occasionally give away minor healing potions to new toons, but that's as much help as you'll get. Now, get off my lawn, you kids!
LOL! That was both extremely funny and informational, at the same time! Classic!
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
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Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
So imagine walking into the bank, taking out some money and then walking into a store where they tell you, sorry we won't accept it from you till you are 60 years old.
You honestly think that is acceptable behavior?
Sometimes, that remorse comes from a legitimate customer who did legitimate business then feeling that he has been cheated. The account will be banned, of course, but some people may be prepared to pay that price to get their hard-earned cash back. They may decide to play a different game instead, due to the extremely unpleasant early experience they have had.
If they did that, it would be entirely due to this company’s sheer lack of communication and lack of customer care. It is brought up constantly. I do not understand why they ignore it.
The OP and others have said why they feel cheated: simply because the company could not be bothered to take care of their paying customers by telling them IN ADVANCE that any Zen they buy will be useless if they exchange it for AD because they will be locked out of the Auction House.
Any decent business ethic dictates that paying customers will be told that IN ADVANCE of making the Zen purchase. All it needs is a warning on the Zen Purchase page to give this essential information.
And all they get is an INCORRECT tool tip when it is already too late, telling them they have already spent over their limit on the AH, when that is not even true because they are NOT ALLOWED to spend any AD on the AH.
All my new characters buy blue gear from the AH, but I already had a few level 60 characters before this stupid limitation came into being. I believe that this AH limitation does nothing to combat botters and gold sellers. It merely inconveniences legitimate customers and helps to destroy the reputation of both Cryptic and PWE.
And the AH is already being scammed by flippers again, indicating the absolute ineffectiveness of inconveniencing legitimate customers. My Halfing TR bought a Spymaster's Elegant Dagger and Ceremonial Shiv for roughly 80k and 159k and my Dragonborn TR bought the Dagger for about 90k on WEDNESDAY. There were several pages of both items. On FRIDAY, when I had the AD for the second Shiv, ALL of these items were GONE, with two postings from the same account asking 800k. So, it looks to me like a flipper with excess AD bought them all up to horde and re-posted them two at a time to keep the price up.
All the OP wanted was some Mulhorand items. All 14 of my characters had three Mulhorand Items until they got better items at level 60.
So I really think that inconveniencing genuine, legitimate paying customers like this does nothing to stop botters.
What MIGHT combat botters is having a visual recognition system for logging in: type what you see in the box. This will be MASSIVELY inconvenient to legitimate customers (considering the number of times I get internal server misdirect errors), but I think it may be one of the few things that an automated program cannot bypass.
The OP mainly objects to not being told all this up front; I agree with him, it is extremely shabby and clearly he is going to be upset and feel cheated, even if technically he has not been deliberately cheated. It is just clumsy and careless for the company to do this to him. It is such a shame that the company thinks that this sort of behaviour is OK, considering how many innocents they are stomping on every single day. Their attitude belies the quality of the game.
But the OP can keep his Zen and AD until one of his characters hits level 60, and I think he will enjoy the game if he does.
In the meantime, I would also advise this:
01. Play your main character to get him to level 60 ASAP by doing all the Invocations, Leadership Professions and the Dailies for Rhix, PvP Events, the Main Quest and Side Quests.
02. Get the Professions, Invocations, Horse and Artifact as soon as you can (levels 10, 11 & 20+)
03. Have your second character in Protector’s Enclave doing Invocations every hour you are logged in and Blacklake Skirmish Events – in theory, you can get 20k AD per Event hour by spamming that, but more likely 12 to 16k
04. Do not spend any AD on anything except Scrolls of Identification appropriate for your level at the Wondrous Bazaar – you will need them.
05. Do not spend any Zen on anything yet except New Character Slots – 2 characters for 500 Zen.
06. Get your New Characters to Protector’s Enclave and do The Crown of Neverwinter and then spam Skirmish Events for the AD from level 6.
07. Start doing Professions as soon as you can at level 10 – have them all doing Leadership.
08. At level 11, have them all doing Invocations as well.
09. Shared Bank Slots are also useful for Zen
10. Re-spec tokens can be very useful later on.
11. An Account-Wide Epic Mount is also well worth the money – the more characters you have, the greater the value.
So, when you log in, cycle through doing Invocations and Professions with each character first, then play your main character to advance him.
By the time he is level 60, you should have quite a lot of AD and then whatever your favourite character is, you can equip him with stuff from the AH.
Good luck. I am truly sorry that the company did this to you. If their attitude to Customer Service was 10% of the fun and quality of the actual game, they would probably win a prize for Customer Service.
And you don’t HAVE to spend a penny – you CAN if you wish, just for the convenience of saving time. But you only REALLY need to spend a LOT of money if you want the absolute top Power Level in very high end PvP.
I bought one adventurer (79000ad) for leadership profession and now I can't buy another one, or anything else. I, like all noobs, want to spend my money on some useless stuff like that, so is there any other way to play this game and progressing on crafting also while leveling, than buying the required stuff of the auction? Do I really need to buy some 100 profession booster packs and hope for maybe getting random adventurer for leadership, or is there any reasonable ways to get further in crafting?
NO. You absolutely do NOT. That is NO.
So that would be a NO, then. Got it?
Anyway, you can get one for nothing when you complete the Neverdeath Graveyard quests. That is what confirmed for me how poor they truly are.
I have NEVER bought one of those packs. I think they are an absolute waste of time, money and oxygen and are one of the few ways where they are actually going very, very wrong with this game.
If I want a Master Mailsmith or a Steel Grindstone, I would quite probably buy THOSE with Zen. But I am absolutely NOT interested in any way in paying cash money for "A CHANCE" to get an Iron Needle or a Master Tailor.
Be patient.
The FIRST thing you should do with Professions is hire one of each apprentice hireling to unlock each Profession. So you may have to e-mail the Adventurer to yourself, if you have not already hired your first Mercenary or that task will be locked.
You get Leadership to Rank 3 to open the second slot very quickly.
Then, do not buy Adventurers for 79k. Buy four Master Alchemists for a lot less. Use these to unlock the "Complete a Task with a 100% Speed Bonus" to open a new slot. It should come up at Alchemy Rank 2 - any task that has four slots for hirelings; Deep Wilderness Gathering, for example. Now you have three slots open.
Alchemy is by far the quickest to get to level 20 with an actively adventuring character, as long as you have all the resources you need. Now you have six slots open. Leadership is by far the slowest to level up.
That is why I stockpile all the potions I pick up and get from Invocations, as they are used as Experimental Reagents. I also have one Grandmaster Alchemist Character grinding out Aqua Vitae and Aqua Regia for a few days until I have enough and mail them to my active character. Also, Mass Simple and Advanced Vitriol Extraction, as you will need the blue, green yellow and silver vitriol. You''ll need t buy Solvent, Brimstone and Quicksilver from the Elf in PE. She also sells swords and armour for your Leadership staff.
It's only 10 minutes to Experiment to get the Knowledge (although there are a lot of failures), then a few hours to do the Research. This also unlocks the Level 20 slot in a week or so.
And the beauty is you can do all this with a single slot while adventuring and doing Dailies, while doing Leadership in the other Professions slots. Even with lowly mercenaries.
By using one Professions slot for Alchemy on your active character, with all the resources in inventory, you can unlock:
That gives you six slots for doing Leadership, long before your character is even level 30; probably.
So you'd need to e-mail all your Alchemy ingredients etc to your main character while he is doing this. It will take a while with your first character, but once you have several characters (I have 15, 12 at level 60), you can get Alchemy up to level 20 in about a week of normal playing. As long as you have the reagents you need for Experiments and Research.
One Adventurer for a +25% Speed Bonus is a lot cheaper than four Men-at-Arms for a 2 x +10% Speed Bonus on two tasks (you can only ever use two Leadership Staff per task, never four, like all other Professions).
Four Adventurers for a 2 x 25% Speed Bonus on two tasks are a lot cheaper than a single Epic Hero for a 50% speed bonus on a single task.
But watch the prices on the AH and buy the best deal.
I bought about 30 Adventurers for between 69 and 73 k this week. I won't pay more than that. Men-at-Arms are a rip-off and Heros are over-priced. When I have too many Adventurers, I'll upgrade 4x ~72k Adventurers into a 286k Hero - I will not buy one for 360k+.
But, with 12 characters at level 60, I have 10 Heroes and 135 Adventurers, because they are worth it for reducing the time from 12 hours to 8 hours when you have eleven characters with Rank 20 Leadership and four characters with all nine slots unlocked.
As Magenubbie says, for you, they are really not needed yet. They will speed up tasks for 100 AD or that net you 40 XP, but you are a long, long way off from making 200k AD per day from Leadership alone and Adventurers are really not a good investment for you right now.
~
This has also happened to myself and to my girlfriend too.
I agree with most of what you've said, the only thing I don't agree with is trying to get to lvl60 ASAP, I s'pose that comes down to different play styles
Me and my girlfriend both play for the storyline, it's what we both enjoy most about MMO's, and to be honest we're not looking forward to getting to level 60 because of the grind and having to do the same quests (nearly), every single day. TBH, when we reach lvl60 if we find that the grind is too boring we're just gonna (mainly) play foundry, I also can't stomach RNG being used for items that are needed for advancement to new content areas.
We only get to play this game for the first time once, so we don't mind spending some money to support the game and make it more enjoyable, This has been soured by being told by the game that we cannot spend our own money the way we choose. If we'd been warned in advance then we wouldn't have fallen into this trap.
As you and others have said, it is our money and we had intentions to spend that Zen on the things we chose, to have this hidden rule (that is only found out when it's too late) restrict what we can spend that Zen on is wrong, no matter how anyone (even a mod) tries to justify it.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com