We have the scenario influx>consumption, because there's no desirable or proportionate increase in consumption. There's a growing number of players that can now sustain a peaked market where in the past they couldn't. Coal wards > zen price, 18mil for perfect or Doohickey's 4x greater than Zen price? Not a problem.
To keep up, Cryptic have to proactively increase consumption, AD sinks need to by dynamic to keep up, but that also takes development time. It is both.
1. I told this before, but I'll repeat. If the backlog stopped growing where it is now, I *may* be convinced, but we have a constant growth here. Which is logical, since low AD value encourages to NOT buy it with Zen, which makes it even more abundand and less valuable and so on. Anyway, it is dunno, 2 weeks waiting now? At this rate we'll have 1 month waiting in a week or two, and mod4 is before us. So how long can a free player wait before he'll quit the game?
2.a Bad idea. Think of an average free player and the time he would need to farm enough AD. If they remove cap, zax ratio will grow and AH prices won't go down.
2.b indeed
2.c They'll never do that because in that case nobody would buy those items with zen. Or at least very few people.
3. They just need to make AD sinks attractive enough, i.e. reasonably priced, or/and make some items players need avilable with AD only.
1. it is 7-10 days. I do most of my selling on weekends and put out a 500-1000 zen order every week so my data on this is fairly substantial. Converting AD to zen via the ZAX takes the exact same quality as converting Zen to AD through the AH, patience.
2.a. I am thinking of the new player. Due to inflation his drops are increasing in AD value, even more so as the demand for L60 drops will go up in mod4. Since he earns more AD he can afford to pay more for zen. Aditionally with a functioning, fluctuating zen market a clever new player can increase his wealth through market speculation which has no level cap (which is exactly what I did).
2.c. re-check your math. We'll use pres wards as an example. If I have 100 zen I can buy 10 of the zen market. I can convert that 100 via the ZAX into 50k AD. The WB sells them for 54k AD so it makes more sense to buy from the zen. Now what if I want to profiteer? To sell the same 10 pres on the AH and be competitive with the WB I have to sell at a maximum price of 54k AD. minus the 10% market tax this returns 48600 AD less than I get from exchanging my Zen on the ZAX. leaving no incentive to either boost my exchange via AH nor to convert my Zen at 500. Until such time as the ZAX rate falls beneath 500.
3. I have explained several times why AD sinks will not work. Please don't make me go through that again.
The primary reason is that past exploiters and/or botters got enough AD that they can now manipulate, if not outright control, the AH markets.
No, that is a excuse. The reason for this is simple greed. Greed coming from Cryptic and PWE.
They have been punishing the honest playerbase ever since this game went live. Caturday happened and 90% of the people who took advantage of the system got their stuff transfered so that only mule accounts got banned.
The PvP/ stat adjusting exploits happened, and unless someone can tell me different. Not one person who did it got banned from the game. Only suspended. Hell, I'm not even sure that the exploit characters got erased.
Now this BS is happening and the only way out the devs take is the easy one. Make anything of value BOP. I believe that within 6 months 90% of the stuff that drops in game will be BOP either character or account bound.
Now I understand that this is a FTP game, and that Zen and buying stuff is how PWE and Cryptic makes money off of Neverwinter. But it's getting ridiculous. Hell, it's becoming redonkulas. I was with Cryptic all through the City of Heroes years and while I was critical of them, I liked Emmert and his crew. But I dont know if it's just PWE calling the shots here but I really have a bad feeling from this group.
If it wasnt for my guild, I would have left Neverwinter long ago.
It is wrong. The problem isn't incoming rad, the problem is almost zero outgoing ad.
Can we conservatively estimate the level of AH transactions at 100mil a day? That's 10mil in taxes dissappearing a day. Look at the price of wards and remember that each one is 25k to 200k in potency bought from the WB. AD on the other hand is created at a maximum rate of 25k per toon per day.
The question is, if Cryptic/PWE really want to fix the economy, maybe they sell more Zen now that it is in so high demand? Paying customers still can get anything they want, only free players have it hard now.
There is no reason to suggest an increase in ZEN sales, but it can be mathematically proven the income from flipping is a much smaller fraction compared to direct microtransactions income of actual paying customers.
Free players in a F2P mmo has always outweighed paying players by a significantly large proportion. The ratio of free vs paying customer doesn't change drastically. Majority of those unwilling to pay will continue to do so with maybe a few once off spendings, except their AD pool is increasing, while depending on the smaller number of paying customers to flip ZEN (it's not even that less people are flipping).
The only truth is that small piece of pie (flipped ZEN) is now in higher demand by many, while the baker still churns out pies at the same rate.
There is no reason to suggest an increase in ZEN sales, but it can be mathematically proven the income from flipping is a much smaller fraction compared to direct microtransactions income of actual paying customers.
Free players in a F2P mmo has always outweighed paying players by a significantly large proportion. The ratio of free vs paying customer doesn't change drastically. Majority of those unwilling to pay will continue to do so with maybe a few once off spendings, except their AD pool is increasing, while depending on the smaller number of paying customers to flip ZEN (it's not even that less people are flipping).
The only truth is that small piece of pie (flipped ZEN) is now in higher demand by many, while the baker still churns out pies at the same rate.
While it's true that it's unlikely there is a large increase in Zen purchases, it's safe to say there is some increase. There are always those players who farm AD and use the ZAX when it's quick and easy, but pull out their wallets when the ZAX is as it is currently. In other words, willing to spend when being completely free becomes tougher.
While it's true that it's unlikely there is a large increase in Zen purchases, it's safe to say there is some increase. There are always those players who farm AD and use the ZAX when it's quick and easy, but pull out their wallets when the ZAX is as it is currently. In other words, willing to spend when being completely free becomes tougher.
Would you also say it's safe to say there is less income from flipping? Since that's what most of the posters here claim, there is decreasing reason to convert ZEN to AD, because it is mathematically obvious.
So it's not that clear cut that the current situation has actually increased income.
As I already said circumventing ZAX with AH is a RESULT of the backlog, not it's cause.
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and, I'm curious as to how you can be so certain that people are circumventing the zen exchange because other people are offering to buy as much as ten million zen at the maximum allowed exchange rate.
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and, I'm curious as to how you can be so certain that people are circumventing the zen exchange because other people are offering to buy as much as ten million zen at the maximum allowed exchange rate.
you take 100 zen, you buy 10 pres wards. low bid on AH is 94000 AD minus 10% tax is a return of 84600 or 846 Ad per zen as opposed to 500. That is how the ZAX gets circumvented. Normally you only get 650 or so but the event has people buying blueprints instead.
1. it is 7-10 days. I do most of my selling on weekends and put out a 500-1000 zen order every week so my data on this is fairly substantial. Converting AD to zen via the ZAX takes the exact same quality as converting Zen to AD through the AH, patience.
2.a. I am thinking of the new player. Due to inflation his drops are increasing in AD value, even more so as the demand for L60 drops will go up in mod4. Since he earns more AD he can afford to pay more for zen. Aditionally with a functioning, fluctuating zen market a clever new player can increase his wealth through market speculation which has no level cap (which is exactly what I did).
2.c. re-check your math. We'll use pres wards as an example. If I have 100 zen I can buy 10 of the zen market. I can convert that 100 via the ZAX into 50k AD. The WB sells them for 54k AD so it makes more sense to buy from the zen. Now what if I want to profiteer? To sell the same 10 pres on the AH and be competitive with the WB I have to sell at a maximum price of 54k AD. minus the 10% market tax this returns 48600 AD less than I get from exchanging my Zen on the ZAX. leaving no incentive to either boost my exchange via AH nor to convert my Zen at 500. Until such time as the ZAX rate falls beneath 500.
3. I have explained several times why AD sinks will not work. Please don't make me go through that again.
It could be 7-10 days few days ago. Now the backlog is a bit higher, and still growing.
2.a Higher ZAX ratio = higher AH prices. New players usually buy more that they sell, because they can't farm that much yet. They need more of stuff they farm for themselves and making more AD via AH means somebody else (another new player most likely. Veterans do not need blue gear) is losing more AD.
3. Your explanation must have been not convincing, obviously. It is really just a matter of making sinks attractive enough.
... I guess you're right, it's not clear-cut. Only Cryptic knows, having the numbers.
That is why I said "maybe". Actually, I would not suspect increased zen sales if not for the fact that Cryptic is not doing anything to reduce backlog. Just look at the Gond event: making refinement WB item instead of Zen shop item would help much, it is no brainer.
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and, I'm curious as to how you can be so certain that people are circumventing the zen exchange because other people are offering to buy as much as ten million zen at the maximum allowed exchange rate.
Isn't it self-explanatory?
If there was no backlog, selling Zen items instead of using Zax would not give you any profit because of AH cut. If buying an item using ZAX+ Zen shop is cheaper than, AH, people will most likely do so. Unless they have to wait Oghma knows how long for their Zen, which happens now.
It could be 7-10 days few days ago. Now the backlog is a bit higher, and still growing.
2.a Higher ZAX ratio = higher AH prices. New players usually buy more that they sell, because they can't farm that much yet. They need more of stuff they farm for themselves and making more AD via AH means somebody else (another new player most likely. Veterans do not need blue gear) is losing more AD.
3. Your explanation must have been not convincing, obviously. It is really just a matter of making sinks attractive enough.
1. IT has been consistantly that long regardless of backlog since the zen capped, a couple million either way makes no difference because people who sell zen on the ZAX are a. bad at math or b. impatient. These personal flaws do not variate with the backlog.
2. New players first goal is usually farming gear sets, given the gods of RNG this means that they will gain seceral times as many sell items as use items. I've leveled a 60 within the last couple of weeks and that math has not changed. So if higher ZAX rate = higher AD rate then they will get more for those sale items.
3. No explaination is convincing to people determined to hold a bad idea. I'm not opposed to them. People with poor concepts of economic reactions are where I make most of my profits in and out of game.
That is why I said "maybe". Actually, I would not suspect increased zen sales if not for the fact that Cryptic is not doing anything to reduce backlog. Just look at the Gond event: making refinement WB item instead of Zen shop item would help much, it is no brainer.
Actually, that's more of your personal expectations imposed onto this event. It's not unreasonable for any event by a profit oriented mmo's goal to generate new income.
AD sinks can be implemented without fanfare. No need to hype an event for weeks to implement an AD sink if it's not to generate new income.
Actually, that's more of your personal expectations imposed onto this event. It's not unreasonable for any event by a profit oriented mmo's goal to generate new income.
AD sinks can be implemented without fanfare. No need to hype an event for weeks to implement an AD sink if it's not to generate new income.
Actually, I would prefer permament sinks. It was just an example of a simple thing they could do but they didn't.
Ofc they need to make profit, but I don't see how making their customers unhappy is helping them.
PWE/Cryptic could kill a few birds with one stone by introducing housing to the game. Buying and maintaining a house would be the large ongoing AD sink that everyone's looking for, while upgrades to housing could be monetised in the ZEN store to pay for development. Perhaps then PWE could remove the BoP from wards etc and milk the house-proud instead. The Warren Buffets of Neverwinter could spend up big on their mansions while I deck out my cardboard box.
I don't want to buy into the "too many AD versus not enough ZEN" argument but, to the extent that AD oversupply contributes to the 'problem' (which might be little), housing could help.
PWE/Cryptic could kill a few birds with one stone by introducing housing to the game. Buying and maintaining a house would be the large ongoing AD sink that everyone's looking for, while upgrades to housing could be monetised in the ZEN store to pay for development. Perhaps then PWE could remove the BoP from wards etc and milk the house-proud instead. The Warren Buffets of Neverwinter could spend up big on their mansions while I deck out my cardboard box.
I don't want to buy into the "too many AD versus not enough ZEN" argument but, to the extent that AD oversupply contributes to the 'problem' (which might be little), housing could help.
As long as it would not involve another set of boons or some "must have" gear, I vote yes.
Even if I don't think it will cure all problems.
0
mircalla83Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 36
PWE/Cryptic could kill a few birds with one stone by introducing housing to the game. Buying and maintaining a house would be the large ongoing AD sink that everyone's looking for, while upgrades to housing could be monetised in the ZEN store to pay for development. Perhaps then PWE could remove the BoP from wards etc and milk the house-proud instead. The Warren Buffets of Neverwinter could spend up big on their mansions while I deck out my cardboard box.
I don't want to buy into the "too many AD versus not enough ZEN" argument but, to the extent that AD oversupply contributes to the 'problem' (which might be little), housing could help.
Housing would most likely be optional. Which means that the ones sitting on billions and more of AD will still be sitting after housing is in.
People keep talking about AD sinks - and that's fair. But I proffer the basic premise that there is no AD "oversupply". It's the same supply, and yes it grows with each new user or player character. The issue is that there is an "undersupply" of Zen Points being traded by player for AD.
Granted that in this case it's all the same AD just being moved around from character to character, but the first problem is that AD has no value, hence people are not buying it through the exchange, hence the large backlog. Item pricing in the AH has skyrocket, so even if AD is desired for the purpose of buying through the AH, the amount you can buy (at 500/1) is not sufficient, so why buy AD? No, raising the exchange cap is not the answer, that's a safety measure.
What needs to happen, as has been said countless times over and over again is that there needs to be compelling reason to burn AD, other than the Auction House. AD Value must be raised or people are not going to buy any (I have 30k Zen just sitting around and have no intention of converting to AD - there is not enough *value* in AD to do so).
Because the whole area of AD (except for sinks) is completely player-driven, what is the real answer, then? The idea of creating housing and "exploiting' (by simple definition of the word, not meant in a bad way) those areas of the game for AD sink is a good idea. However, personal housing would be a complete bust. Guild Hall type "housing" would work but then you develop massive (sometimes harmful) competition between Guilds to get member willing to contribute, etc.
I have no answers, I have no suggestions. As they say: it is what it is. I'm not any more happy about it than anyone else. But it always seems to be the same arguments over and over again. Some make sense, others are woefully adolescent when looking at the big picture. Combining many of these ideas concurrently might work, but that's a lot of development time and effort, on a system that is 100% player-controlled.
It seems to be the quickest, easiest answer would be to simply lower the cost of existing sinks, like Mount and Companion upgrades - just 50% would make it affordable enough that a lot more people would actually invest in this, but allas the latest word from Cryptic: "We have no plans at this time..." - which the only good news is that they aren;t completely ruling it out. However, they also don;t want to do anything to damage Zen-Purchase potential, either.
Yeah, I apologize for wasting the time you took to read this. LOL ~sorry~
Also keep in mind that their recent "security" measures have essentially stopped people from being able to buy AD for Zen. This seems to have affected existing players who made many purchases in the past as well as new players.
People keep talking about AD sinks - and that's fair. But I proffer the basic premise that there is no AD "oversupply". It's the same supply, and yes it grows with each new user or player character. The issue is that there is an "undersupply" of Zen Points being traded by player for AD.
<snip>
In a way, the supply of AD has increased, as the game gets new players and such. Also as existing players become more and more hardcore AD farmers. The point here is that even though more people have AD, those new people are not spending them anywhere -- hence the "inflation".
It seems to be the quickest, easiest answer would be to simply lower the cost of existing sinks, like Mount and Companion upgrades - just 50% would make it affordable enough that a lot more people would actually invest in this, but allas the latest word from Cryptic: "We have no plans at this time..." - which the only good news is that they aren;t completely ruling it out. However, they also don;t want to do anything to damage Zen-Purchase potential, either.
Yep - AD sinks will only be implemented when Cryptic decides that said sinks won't negatively affect Zen sales. Offering players a way of upgrading mounts to they can have 110% without spending a dime on Zen would essentially be a case of damaging Zen-purchase potential. So I agree - they won't ever do that. The price is set so high because it nearly guarantees that players will buy a zen-store mount.
I would say to the entire community: don't post an idea for an AD sink unless you truly believe it won't hurt ANY potential zen-store sales.
I know this has been said several times before: please do not discuss or allude to exploits on our forums, in accordance with RoC. Simply because we haven't noticed it right away does not preclude our right--or duty--to remove such violations or give the assumption that such posts are okay.
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
0
mircalla83Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 36
I believe that potions, injury kits, moving enchants, etc. should *all* cost AD. In particular, moving enchants should carry a high AD cost.
Feat respec is already AD based, but probably not used all that often.
You know that, before the current Refine system, removing an Enchant from a LV60 piece of gear was what, 100 or 200k or something? Do YOU want to run dungeons with fully unenchanted people until they have their 'Best in Slot' Gear? When even a 2x Required Gearscore Party isn't even a guarantee for finishing the dungeon?
0
chromaticwyrmMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 21Arc User
edited August 2014
Again..why not just fill the top 3 Zen orders? That would remove alot of AD. Then get the bots cryptic! Seriously I consider myself a average player. I have real life things to do. I have a full time job. I log on do my dailys..if I am lucky I can get together a team that can even finish a dungeon I have leadership as a profession on all my toons that can. Combined...maybe just once I had 1mill AD. I have even bought Zen with cash in support of the game. Don't punish us do something about the bots and gold spammers that I am tired of reporting multiple times a day.
I believe that potions, injury kits, moving enchants, etc. should *all* cost AD. In particular, moving enchants should carry a high AD cost.
Feat respec is already AD based, but probably not used all that often.
Enchantments used to cost a significant amount of AD to remove from whatever piece of gear they were in. Problem being that no one was willing to pay the 125k AD it used to cost to remove a lesser weapon/armor enchantment, and whatever it cost to remove the other types of enchantment, they would have rather bought completely all new enchantments all together if they were looking to use multiple sets for PvP and PvE.
So they changed the Refinement system to what it is now where you have to 'feed' you enchantments and pay AD for the Marks of Potency, where as all it used to take was 3 other enchantments of the same type and rank. Although it was strange to go from one method of refining to another it definitely better than it used to be where and I don't think that many people would be hapyp to see it return to the way it was before.
Um, because 12 million Zen = $ 120,000 and they not likely to give away that much money. Cancel all ZEN orders, return the AD to the original accounts, then check the top AD accounts to fins out how they got so much AD. Stop all AD to ZEN transactions until the dust settles. Reality is that PWE created an economy where people buy stuff from the ZEN Market with the full intent of overcharging people in AD because they to cheap to buy the Zen in the first place. Look at the price of Blueprints on the AH this weekend, if you calculate cost in AD to cost of Zen for blue prints, the AD to ZEN ratio was 1100 to 1. The market limits to 500 to 1. PWE created the monster, they need to kill it.
Reality is that PWE created an economy where people buy stuff from the ZEN Market with the full intent of overcharging people in AD
There is no such thing.
Period. Full stop.
There is charging people what they are willing to pay, and no more. The only way to "overcharge" someone for something is to give it to them and simply take however much money from them you feel like. This isn't that. People were offering 120kAD for 1 110Z Blueprint yesterday...and I saw one spike to 150k.
You are right to point out the elephant in the room though; the refusal on PW's part to let ZEN float against the ingame currency and seek its own level. Doing that one thing will break the exchange logjam, redistribute some horded AD, and actually (are you folks at PW listening?) encourage more real $ ZEN sales while hurting the 3rd party AD sellers.
Comments
To keep up, Cryptic have to proactively increase consumption, AD sinks need to by dynamic to keep up, but that also takes development time. It is both.
1. it is 7-10 days. I do most of my selling on weekends and put out a 500-1000 zen order every week so my data on this is fairly substantial. Converting AD to zen via the ZAX takes the exact same quality as converting Zen to AD through the AH, patience.
2.a. I am thinking of the new player. Due to inflation his drops are increasing in AD value, even more so as the demand for L60 drops will go up in mod4. Since he earns more AD he can afford to pay more for zen. Aditionally with a functioning, fluctuating zen market a clever new player can increase his wealth through market speculation which has no level cap (which is exactly what I did).
2.c. re-check your math. We'll use pres wards as an example. If I have 100 zen I can buy 10 of the zen market. I can convert that 100 via the ZAX into 50k AD. The WB sells them for 54k AD so it makes more sense to buy from the zen. Now what if I want to profiteer? To sell the same 10 pres on the AH and be competitive with the WB I have to sell at a maximum price of 54k AD. minus the 10% market tax this returns 48600 AD less than I get from exchanging my Zen on the ZAX. leaving no incentive to either boost my exchange via AH nor to convert my Zen at 500. Until such time as the ZAX rate falls beneath 500.
3. I have explained several times why AD sinks will not work. Please don't make me go through that again.
No, that is a excuse. The reason for this is simple greed. Greed coming from Cryptic and PWE.
They have been punishing the honest playerbase ever since this game went live. Caturday happened and 90% of the people who took advantage of the system got their stuff transfered so that only mule accounts got banned.
The PvP/ stat adjusting exploits happened, and unless someone can tell me different. Not one person who did it got banned from the game. Only suspended. Hell, I'm not even sure that the exploit characters got erased.
Now this BS is happening and the only way out the devs take is the easy one. Make anything of value BOP. I believe that within 6 months 90% of the stuff that drops in game will be BOP either character or account bound.
Now I understand that this is a FTP game, and that Zen and buying stuff is how PWE and Cryptic makes money off of Neverwinter. But it's getting ridiculous. Hell, it's becoming redonkulas. I was with Cryptic all through the City of Heroes years and while I was critical of them, I liked Emmert and his crew. But I dont know if it's just PWE calling the shots here but I really have a bad feeling from this group.
If it wasnt for my guild, I would have left Neverwinter long ago.
Can we conservatively estimate the level of AH transactions at 100mil a day? That's 10mil in taxes dissappearing a day. Look at the price of wards and remember that each one is 25k to 200k in potency bought from the WB. AD on the other hand is created at a maximum rate of 25k per toon per day.
Free players in a F2P mmo has always outweighed paying players by a significantly large proportion. The ratio of free vs paying customer doesn't change drastically. Majority of those unwilling to pay will continue to do so with maybe a few once off spendings, except their AD pool is increasing, while depending on the smaller number of paying customers to flip ZEN (it's not even that less people are flipping).
The only truth is that small piece of pie (flipped ZEN) is now in higher demand by many, while the baker still churns out pies at the same rate.
While it's true that it's unlikely there is a large increase in Zen purchases, it's safe to say there is some increase. There are always those players who farm AD and use the ZAX when it's quick and easy, but pull out their wallets when the ZAX is as it is currently. In other words, willing to spend when being completely free becomes tougher.
So it's not that clear cut that the current situation has actually increased income.
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and, I'm curious as to how you can be so certain that people are circumventing the zen exchange because other people are offering to buy as much as ten million zen at the maximum allowed exchange rate.
you take 100 zen, you buy 10 pres wards. low bid on AH is 94000 AD minus 10% tax is a return of 84600 or 846 Ad per zen as opposed to 500. That is how the ZAX gets circumvented. Normally you only get 650 or so but the event has people buying blueprints instead.
Well, yeah.
Exactly this.
It could be 7-10 days few days ago. Now the backlog is a bit higher, and still growing.
2.a Higher ZAX ratio = higher AH prices. New players usually buy more that they sell, because they can't farm that much yet. They need more of stuff they farm for themselves and making more AD via AH means somebody else (another new player most likely. Veterans do not need blue gear) is losing more AD.
3. Your explanation must have been not convincing, obviously. It is really just a matter of making sinks attractive enough.
So sadly true.
That is why I said "maybe". Actually, I would not suspect increased zen sales if not for the fact that Cryptic is not doing anything to reduce backlog. Just look at the Gond event: making refinement WB item instead of Zen shop item would help much, it is no brainer.
Isn't it self-explanatory?
If there was no backlog, selling Zen items instead of using Zax would not give you any profit because of AH cut. If buying an item using ZAX+ Zen shop is cheaper than, AH, people will most likely do so. Unless they have to wait Oghma knows how long for their Zen, which happens now.
1. IT has been consistantly that long regardless of backlog since the zen capped, a couple million either way makes no difference because people who sell zen on the ZAX are a. bad at math or b. impatient. These personal flaws do not variate with the backlog.
2. New players first goal is usually farming gear sets, given the gods of RNG this means that they will gain seceral times as many sell items as use items. I've leveled a 60 within the last couple of weeks and that math has not changed. So if higher ZAX rate = higher AD rate then they will get more for those sale items.
3. No explaination is convincing to people determined to hold a bad idea. I'm not opposed to them. People with poor concepts of economic reactions are where I make most of my profits in and out of game.
Actually, that's more of your personal expectations imposed onto this event. It's not unreasonable for any event by a profit oriented mmo's goal to generate new income.
AD sinks can be implemented without fanfare. No need to hype an event for weeks to implement an AD sink if it's not to generate new income.
Actually, I would prefer permament sinks. It was just an example of a simple thing they could do but they didn't.
Ofc they need to make profit, but I don't see how making their customers unhappy is helping them.
I don't want to buy into the "too many AD versus not enough ZEN" argument but, to the extent that AD oversupply contributes to the 'problem' (which might be little), housing could help.
As long as it would not involve another set of boons or some "must have" gear, I vote yes.
Even if I don't think it will cure all problems.
Housing would most likely be optional. Which means that the ones sitting on billions and more of AD will still be sitting after housing is in.
Granted that in this case it's all the same AD just being moved around from character to character, but the first problem is that AD has no value, hence people are not buying it through the exchange, hence the large backlog. Item pricing in the AH has skyrocket, so even if AD is desired for the purpose of buying through the AH, the amount you can buy (at 500/1) is not sufficient, so why buy AD? No, raising the exchange cap is not the answer, that's a safety measure.
What needs to happen, as has been said countless times over and over again is that there needs to be compelling reason to burn AD, other than the Auction House. AD Value must be raised or people are not going to buy any (I have 30k Zen just sitting around and have no intention of converting to AD - there is not enough *value* in AD to do so).
Because the whole area of AD (except for sinks) is completely player-driven, what is the real answer, then? The idea of creating housing and "exploiting' (by simple definition of the word, not meant in a bad way) those areas of the game for AD sink is a good idea. However, personal housing would be a complete bust. Guild Hall type "housing" would work but then you develop massive (sometimes harmful) competition between Guilds to get member willing to contribute, etc.
I have no answers, I have no suggestions. As they say: it is what it is. I'm not any more happy about it than anyone else. But it always seems to be the same arguments over and over again. Some make sense, others are woefully adolescent when looking at the big picture. Combining many of these ideas concurrently might work, but that's a lot of development time and effort, on a system that is 100% player-controlled.
It seems to be the quickest, easiest answer would be to simply lower the cost of existing sinks, like Mount and Companion upgrades - just 50% would make it affordable enough that a lot more people would actually invest in this, but allas the latest word from Cryptic: "We have no plans at this time..." - which the only good news is that they aren;t completely ruling it out. However, they also don;t want to do anything to damage Zen-Purchase potential, either.
Yeah, I apologize for wasting the time you took to read this. LOL ~sorry~
In a way, the supply of AD has increased, as the game gets new players and such. Also as existing players become more and more hardcore AD farmers. The point here is that even though more people have AD, those new people are not spending them anywhere -- hence the "inflation".
Yep - AD sinks will only be implemented when Cryptic decides that said sinks won't negatively affect Zen sales. Offering players a way of upgrading mounts to they can have 110% without spending a dime on Zen would essentially be a case of damaging Zen-purchase potential. So I agree - they won't ever do that. The price is set so high because it nearly guarantees that players will buy a zen-store mount.
I would say to the entire community: don't post an idea for an AD sink unless you truly believe it won't hurt ANY potential zen-store sales.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Feat respec is already AD based, but probably not used all that often.
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
You know that, before the current Refine system, removing an Enchant from a LV60 piece of gear was what, 100 or 200k or something? Do YOU want to run dungeons with fully unenchanted people until they have their 'Best in Slot' Gear? When even a 2x Required Gearscore Party isn't even a guarantee for finishing the dungeon?
Enchantments used to cost a significant amount of AD to remove from whatever piece of gear they were in. Problem being that no one was willing to pay the 125k AD it used to cost to remove a lesser weapon/armor enchantment, and whatever it cost to remove the other types of enchantment, they would have rather bought completely all new enchantments all together if they were looking to use multiple sets for PvP and PvE.
So they changed the Refinement system to what it is now where you have to 'feed' you enchantments and pay AD for the Marks of Potency, where as all it used to take was 3 other enchantments of the same type and rank. Although it was strange to go from one method of refining to another it definitely better than it used to be where and I don't think that many people would be hapyp to see it return to the way it was before.
well said..
There is no such thing.
Period. Full stop.
There is charging people what they are willing to pay, and no more. The only way to "overcharge" someone for something is to give it to them and simply take however much money from them you feel like. This isn't that. People were offering 120kAD for 1 110Z Blueprint yesterday...and I saw one spike to 150k.
You are right to point out the elephant in the room though; the refusal on PW's part to let ZEN float against the ingame currency and seek its own level. Doing that one thing will break the exchange logjam, redistribute some horded AD, and actually (are you folks at PW listening?) encourage more real $ ZEN sales while hurting the 3rd party AD sellers.