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Is Cryptic actually interested in "fixing" the economy?
ixalmaris
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
The economy/ZAX has been a hot topic for a while now with the backlog getting higher and higher and people rather spending Zen on wards to auction them instead of using ZAX to get AD. For most players, this is clearly broken and needs fixing.
But lets look at it with the eyes of Cryptic for a moment.
The only thing Cryptic is in the end interested in is making money. And the way they make most of the money in the game is the sell of Zen.
Coming from this point of view, is the economy really broken?
Having a huge backlog on the ZAX does not affect the rate in which Zen are bought. Cryptic doesn't really care if you buy wards with it or go to the ZAX. It might even increase Zen sales as they are expensive (as expensive as they are allowed to) and you have to wait a week which some people are not willing to.
Likewise, Zen is also very valuable making getting Zen now a real good deal.
So when looking at that this way the economy is not broken at all. It actually runs rather well. Sure, players who do not want to buy Zen complain, but Cryptic does not earn money from them, so what does it matter?
So, with this in mind, do you think Cryptic is actually interested in fixing this? After all it might even cost them money as Zen becomes less valuable.
But lets look at it with the eyes of Cryptic for a moment.
The only thing Cryptic is in the end interested in is making money. And the way they make most of the money in the game is the sell of Zen.
Coming from this point of view, is the economy really broken?
Having a huge backlog on the ZAX does not affect the rate in which Zen are bought. Cryptic doesn't really care if you buy wards with it or go to the ZAX. It might even increase Zen sales as they are expensive (as expensive as they are allowed to) and you have to wait a week which some people are not willing to.
Likewise, Zen is also very valuable making getting Zen now a real good deal.
So when looking at that this way the economy is not broken at all. It actually runs rather well. Sure, players who do not want to buy Zen complain, but Cryptic does not earn money from them, so what does it matter?
So, with this in mind, do you think Cryptic is actually interested in fixing this? After all it might even cost them money as Zen becomes less valuable.
Post edited by ixalmaris on
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If people can't exchange AD for ZEN (one of Cryptic's selling points is that everything can be earned in-game with enough time and effort), they're going to get frustrated and quit. When the "play for free" crowd quits, the population dwindles and the game becomes less fun for the whales who are supporting the game with their purchases. Once the whales stop having fun and leaving, then the revenue declines and no one makes any money.
The maxed out ZAX might be bringing them an increase in incremental revenue right now, but it will cripple the game in the long term.
And I have to imagine there's some smart people at Cryptic who get this.
If you want an item that costs Zen, Cryptic REALLY wants you to buy that Zen with anything other than AD.
However, than is only one side of the 'economy'.
The other side, which revolves around the AH, is inflated to the point that a new player who makes AD only through legit and approved methods will never acquire enough to get Rank 10 enchants and some of the other end game items. At current prices, I do really mean NEVER.
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Except free players are a dime a dozen. There are always people to try a game, get hooked, stick it out for a year then quit. Your "I'm not spending a dime" audience is considered a revolving door. The population dwindles, they buy some popular add space, population shoots back up for a bit. Rinse and repeat. Once they make enough money they'll stop the advertising and let the game die out like Champions Online.
I think you underestimate the power of social networks. Once the general consensus is that Neverwinter isn't "F2P" and that you have to spend money if you ever want to get something out of the Zen shop, that door is going to stop revolving.
And the whales tend to be social animals. They're going to go where their friends are. And if their friends aren't in Neverwinter, their money isn't going to stay in Neverwinter either.
Free players drive the overall success of the game. Whales drive the financial success of the game. In order to maintain long-term profitability, you have to keep BOTH happy. You can just disregard Free Players as "a dime a dozen".
Champions Online anyone?
Cryptic relies more on the brand they make games off than their own reputation.
Except it is free to play. It's completely free to play. More so than most other F2P games out there. You can experience every class, from 0-60 and every bit of content for free. This alone will keep free to players coming here. Until another game comes out that offers more for less, Neverwinter will remain one of the best f2p markets out there. Their problem at this time and date, is going to be keeping the paying costumers around if they don't start fixing/making endgame more interesting.
I am in this camp. People like me spend. But if no one is on and I cant play with anyone.. I probably wont play. The majority of people I know are F2P. I happen to be able to afford it and my friends cant. I think that companies need to stop using stores to gouge players and treat them like the enemy. One day a company will get it really on point, than everyone will follow them when they see how well it works.
You have less than half the issue. The AH runs on AD, not Zen. New people who want AD without running 20 alts and grinding mercilessly while they try and play catch-up use Zen to get AD...or they try to. Now they pay a ludicrous price for 1 million inlfated AD and wait 10 days to two weeks for the privilege...or...they buy it elsewhere and Cryptic gets nothing.
If you (you being the game developers) make it difficult for new players to amass enough AD to buy the things they need off the AH, then some of those players will find the cheaper and quicker solution. Some may just give up and move on to another game.
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What? I agree that new players have it rougher, but if you use zen you'll get your AD instantly. It's buyying zen with AD that takes time.
I'm not sure I understand this mad rush for AD that new players supposedly have. AD are mostly wasted before 60 (other than being exchanged for Zen for account wide perks). At 60, a new first time 60 can easily get them to 8-9k GS by buying cheap blues (and I mean, sometimes 60-100 AD a piece, cheap) and slotting of the R4 enchants that drop like candy in 60 content. At that point in time, they can start farming T1s (although the speed runners might gripe unless they group up through /legit) or Campaigns where Dread Ring lairs drop nice epics for your class fairly routinely. By the time you're through the first three boons in DR, you should have mostly epics (some maybe bought through the DR store or through the AH) and are probably sitting around 11k GS. This assumes that the 60 is doing something to make AD. Leadership, dailys, what have you.
True, it will take absolutely forever to get rank 9s and 10s, or perfects. Frankly, they aren't needed for most L60 F2P PvE content. This all changes of course if you want to PvP. In that case AD and economy are significantly important, and the current state isn't friendly to new toons looking for PvP. But for the new PvE, especially casual, crowd... this game is easy to get into and stay relevant.
And I think you've got the Zax wrong. Currently orders for AD (by spending Zen) should happen almost instantaneously. Everyone wants zen, so if you're selling that on the Zax, you'll get as much AD as you want (at 500:1) So the above new players can whip out a credit card and get 1 million AD for 20USD pretty quickly. Unless I misread what you said. My apologies if I did.
The bugs in the game have nothing or very little to do with Cryptic fixing the economy. And I mentioned in my previous post that it would be a rinse repeat cycle for a time, and then it would be left to die like Champions online.
The AH inflation is somewhat of a problem, except you don't NEED to buy anything off the AH. If you don't want to pay the prices, don't. You can get that stuff by grinding dungeons/invocations/and slowly over the zax.
This is it 100%. People are just lazy and don`t want to work for their stuff. That is why they buy AD. Or they want to boost their epeen by buying 3rd party AD for cheap and maximizing their pvp toons. You have to work for your own enchants, your own perfects, your own gear, or you need to pay money for it. R10s and perfect enchants shouldn`t be common on every level 60 person. It should be noteworthy that a person has a perfect enchantment. Simple solution is, do the work yourself and don`t buy stuff off the AH.
The inflation is caused by the bugs. Without the bugs the hyperinflation wouldn't have happened.
Those aren't game breaking bugs, and are both fixed. So how would that keep new players away?
And again, if those free players choose to leave the game, there will be more free players that join next time they do a big boost in advertising. Even if they read that "It's really hard to get zen store items" it's still better then any other alternative out there. And as more and more free players leave, the zax will unclog as less and less people are filtering AD through. Then more people will come as they hear the game is balancing out again, and the zax will backlog again. It will rise and fall until it is left to die.
Anything on the zen market can be obtained by waiting long enough on the Zax. Most of the stuff on the Zax is absolutely vital anyway (which is needed to prevent this from becoming pay to win). AD can be accrued and almost the same rate as it could when I was playing in late beta and through many of the same methods. Right now the game is "pay to not grind". You can get just about anything you need if you grind enough, or pay Cryptic to spare you the grind.
why not? isn't that the nature of the f2p business model?
fact is without paying players, free players won't have a game to play. that's a hard economic fact.
Without free customers paying customers also are in an empty wasteland. Then they stop being paying customers. The big problem isn't that some people pay and some don't. It's that people forget there is a value to the freep, and they think churn can be maintained even with bad reviews, and lets face it Neverwinter is getting bad reviews and press right now.
Now lets look at why the economy is broken because of the ZAX system. There are three classifications you can use for f2p mmo players:
1) The whale, they spend lots of real cash on the game, more than most people think is sensible. They bring in a lot of profit to the company.
2) The complete freep. They don't bring in any cash but they fill up the world. This fullness keeps paying customer happy.
3) Average Joe. He pays for somethings but won't for others. Most people fall into this catagory in my experience with mmos. They pay maybe 10-20.00 every month or so. Individually they don't bring in much profit but the sure number of them makes them the economic backbone of the game.
So number 1 can be ignored because other than the server being shut down they're always going to spend. Number 2 can be ignored because no matter what they don't pay. That means you want to win over category 3 and get them to pay closer to 20 or so a month than 10. The problem with the ZAX atm is that they have saved up their AD for that item they want but don't feel comfortable paying for. They don't have massive ad wealth and haven't been changing some to zen constantly to make sure they have wealth in both categories. So they go to buy their lets say respecc and discover that it's going to be probably about a two week wait with the current 12M backlog. Now they feel like the company is doing a cash grab and that they have to pay to have anything. You then get forum rage (which as a moderator I'm sure you're seeing if what I can see in the lower depths is any indication) and bad reviews on sites that cater to gamers like massively etc. (You can see the latest regarding this type of thing here on massively http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/08/04/neverwinter-exploit-results-in-emergency-maintenance-no-rollbac/ ) This creates a type of feedback loop. It makes current players that see it look at it and second guess themselves, and it makes potential players look at it and think "I'll pass". Because as an mmo you always lose some vets each month, the more people that see this and think "I'll pass" means the less new players are in the game and the emptier the game feels. The empty feeling means that more of all 3 categories leave the game to find a new game that has more players. This then cycles right on back.
The suggestion that fixing the issues (exploits) and then advertising doesn't really work, as many people will still google the product and see the bad press the game has had. Once that bad press builds to a critical mass all the advertising in the world doesn't help. The issues that Neverwinter has had, (I don't want to even name slang titles for these events because of forum rules) has created a lot of bad press, and pwe didn't have a good rep to start with. We are approaching that critical mass of bad press, and without a lot of work on the dev's point to turn things around I think we are going to hit it and the game will fail. This is not something that anyone wants to see. Most of us like the games combat and features even if we have some pet peeves about a few of them. However this imo is the road that the game is currently going down.
And without free players there will be fewer people for the paying players to, well, play with. It's a balancing act and one that's shifted heavily in favor of the paying players in recent months.
Inflation is devaluing AD in general, creating an ever-increasing hit at the auction house. The exchange backlog (over 13 million as of a couple of hours ago) makes it increasingly unfeasable to convert one's hard-earned AD to Zen for those items that can only be bought from the z-store by maxing out the price and imposing a 7-10 day waiting period on top of however long it took to grind.
A full-blown peony needs green foliage to set it off.
When you purchase it there are many packages to chose from. Including getting like a million astral diamonds from PWE. I didn't spend much time looking at the packages because I spent my 30$ worth of zen on a purple mount, extra character slot, and a fashion set.
I was actually amazed that they let people exchange astral diamonds into zen. I started playing in November 2013. I understand economics and I could tell immediately they would have problems down the line.
I have a couple of friends who back in december had already spent like 300$ each. They just bought fun stuff.
PWE target audience is not the free to play crowd. Its the people who are willing to spend money and don't like grinding.
Edit:
The thing about these types of games is that companies want the people who spend 300$. But these people also want to play with friends. Like me, who only spend 30$. And then people like me have friends who don't spend anything - like my brother.
That is why the ftp model has actually worked. 1 person spends enough for 10people.
The reason the economy in game is in shambles is because it takes a keen mind to understand economics. And sadly, simply having a degree in economics doesn't mean your an expert. It just means you paid for university and read some books. And I also doubt dev's have economic backgrounds at all.