LOL can you imagine the outcry if AD was removed from Leadership? It would be like a thousand times worse than permastealth nerf QQ
A great idea, some could even call it necessary at this point.
I also think AD and XP should be taken away from Invocation. Have the invocation just be the random buff and maybe a celestial/ardent coin if appropriate.
LOL can you imagine the outcry if AD was removed from Leadership? It would be like a thousand times worse than permastealth nerf QQ
A great idea, some could even call it necessary at this point.
I also think AD and XP should be taken away from Invocation. Have the invocation just be the random buff and maybe a celestial/ardent coin if appropriate.
LOL. Leadership and Invocation aren't the reason for the AD gloat. The invocation amount is already level based and limited per day. Leadership is just a pain. You can make a lot of AD with it. But to even get close to the daily cap using leadership you would need to spend so much AD/Zen on assets that you wouldn't break even for months.
Ignoring the rumored exploits the biggest reliable source of AD is salvaging. I can hit the AD cap every day on several of my alts if I choose to using salvage. Besides that, I'm sure the game still has people with some ungodly amount of unrefined AD from the Tymora events and such.
LOL. Leadership and Invocation aren't the reason for the AD gloat. The invocation amount is already level based and limited per day. Leadership is just a pain. You can make a lot of AD with it. But to even get close to the daily cap using leadership you would need to spend so much AD/Zen on assets that you wouldn't break even for months.
Ignoring the rumored exploits the biggest reliable source of AD is salvaging. I can hit the AD cap every day on several of my alts if I choose to using salvage. Besides that, I'm sure the game still has people with some ungodly amount of unrefined AD from the Tymora events and such.
From what I've read, I don't think he was saying leadership was the reason for the AD gloat. In open beta, invocation was heavily abused by some though.
I think he was just saying a lot of players "depend" on leadership. Whether they actually make decent diamonds from it or not, their illusion of dependance on it would produce a lot of outcry from both casual and hardcore players.
Being forced to grind AD for 2 months with nothing else to do but the campaigns and the daily GG/foundry quests and THEN waiting over a month to receive your zen to buy a respec is definitely game breaker in my opinion.
The wait time for zen has been proven at near or around two weeks over and over again.
If you haven't got yours, you are doing it wrong.
Sick of people exaggerating a two week wait into months or even "ill never get my zen".
If wait times are killing you then start saving up some emergency zen. It seriously isn't that hard.
"Hey Mod#xx is coming out, and there are so many threads about how my paragon path eats a nerf bat...maybe I'll start posting some ad to the zax so I have enough to respec when the next mod comes out." It isn't ideal by any means...but not very hard either.
With the backlog decreasing steadily every day how do people know that the economy isnt fixed already or that we aren' just a few weeks off of 430 ad/ zen again. If the backlog was still ballooning I would say that something had to be done.
With new ad sinks(lower wb prices) and killing the huge months long exploit, we could end up with a day or two wait...or even instant zen agian. Not saying we will , but we aren't headed towards doom anymore.
I think he was just saying a lot of players "depend" on leadership. Whether they actually make decent diamonds from it or not, their illusion of dependance on it would produce a lot of outcry from both casual and hardcore players.
Thank you, yes... that was my point. To say that invocation is the "root cause" of our economic woes is not even close to the truth.
HOWEVER
There are plenty of people that use alts to leadership/invoke farm. It remains a viable loophole for future abuse if other avenues to exploit (such as the criminally obvious/easy ZAX loop) are closed down in some way.
With the backlog decreasing steadily every day how do people know that the economy isnt fixed already or that we aren' just a few weeks off of 430 ad/ zen again. If the backlog was still ballooning I would say that something had to be done.
I really like your positive attitude. And it's true... the backlog AMOUNT over the past few days has dropped a couple of percentage points. It's still a 2 week wait, but the most recent data shows that the backlog is getting eaten away slightly faster than it is growing. It sounds like we can wrap this up, right? Put up the Mission Accomplished banner?
OH there's just one more thing...
All it would take is 1 (one) bot manager to decide that he likes having the backlog so he can keep selling AD off the grid, and BAM! he can clog that ZAX so full that it'll be a month wait before anyone sees a transaction. People with many many millions of AD can hold the entire ZAX hostage if they wish -- the backlog is what now? 11 million? I bet a solitary small-time bot manager has 10 times that sitting around somewhere.
The system needs to get looked at. We are not out of the woods.
Thank you, yes... that was my point. To say that invocation is the "root cause" of our economic woes is not even close to the truth.
HOWEVER
There are plenty of people that use alts to leadership/invoke farm. It remains a viable loophole for future abuse if other avenues to exploit (such as the criminally obvious/easy ZAX loop) are closed down in some way.
Even then Leadership is miniscule. I probably dissolve a week's worth of leadership AD every day just in market tax. Large speculators (like the guys who buy up all the dragon eggs and repost 10 lots every weekend) destroy millions of AD on a regular basis. There are 2 main drivers for AD exchange. 1. Ward costs becuase they create the alternate exchange rate. 2. The desire of real humans in the real world to spend real money on this game because that is how Zen is created. Nothing else matters in this equation.
I also think AD and XP should be taken away from Invocation. Have the invocation just be the random buff and maybe a celestial/ardent coin if appropriate.
Even though it really has nothing to do with the backlog, I can agree with this idea.
As for the Zen backlog, it is an unfortunate side effect of too many manipulations by exploiters. We are just going to have wait out the effects, just like when any market bubble bursts.
I'm curious why everyone thinks the rad should be taken out of invocation, it's a really really small amount of rad. I'm not sure I'd notice if it was gone, with that being the case, why is pulling it out a good idea?
The Ardent and Celestial Coins seem to me to be reward enough for logging in daily and showing your loyalty to the game. Granted it is a miniscule amount of AD isn't that and the XP just a bit over the top?
I'm curious why everyone thinks the rad should be taken out of invocation, it's a really really small amount of rad. I'm not sure I'd notice if it was gone, with that being the case, why is pulling it out a good idea?
I could list the steps required to farm invokes, but the mods might not like us discussing specifically bad player behavior. Let me just answer your question with:
Automating a bot farm for invoking is remarkably easy. Put it on a timer and walk away for a month.
The Ardent and Celestial Coins seem to me to be reward enough for logging in daily and showing your loyalty to the game. Granted it is a miniscule amount of AD isn't that and the XP just a bit over the top?
I guess my thoughts is that it's so small that it's not worth the customer anger removing it would cause. Anytime you remove or nerf in a game you generate some customer anger and lose a few players. I just don't see how the change would be worth it for invocation.
I could list the steps required to farm invokes, but the mods might not like us discussing specifically bad player behavior. Let me just answer your question with:
Automating a bot farm for invoking is remarkably easy. Put it on a timer and walk away for a month.
I'd rather see a Warden addition to the client to fight the botters.
All it would take is 1 (one) bot manager to decide that he likes having the backlog so he can keep selling AD off the grid, and BAM! he can clog that ZAX so full that it'll be a month wait before anyone sees a transaction. People with many many millions of AD can hold the entire ZAX hostage if they wish -- the backlog is what now? 11 million? I bet a solitary small-time bot manager has 10 times that sitting around somewhere.
The system needs to get looked at. We are not out of the woods.
Hmm... every character can make 5 requests.. max 5000 Zen each.. total 25000 Zen / Char.. To create 11millions backlog you needs 440 chars with 12.500.000AD on each one... If one bot manager can have all these and Developers cannot catch him i think there is no hope in MMOS..!!
Anyway.. My final thoughts on this problem are..
1. Backlog was created by ADs overflowing from recent exploits.. thats Temporary and it will heal up in time..
2. If the Backlog was created naturally over months by the game economy as some say in here.. PW would just have Increased the 500/1 cap (not revomed but increased).. But nothing like that is happening..
3. Binding All/Some Zen Market Products could help heal up ZAX way faster by killing Black Market tactics through AH.. Probably PW dont want to take such action if not 100% forced to do.. And maybe they are right..
4. When we have headache we dont cut our head.. we get medicine.. If Leadership or Invocation are getting abused by Bots we must fight the Bots and not the average player who cannot spend more than 2-3 hours farming per day and tries to sneak in to the gateway from his workplace to get that extra 5000 AD.. Removing every single Tools from a game because we cannot protect them is not a Fair Solution..
5. Money in not the only value.. Time is more valuable than money.. if we dont respect the Time a player spends in the game and make him farm a Month to get a service from Zen Market that costs 5$, he will get frustrated and quit. I think PW has done a good job keeping that balance until now.. They are not Greedy and that keeps the game playable for Free players = keeps the game alive.. The weak points here (and not only here) are Bots, Exploits and 3rd Party Sellers..
P.S. I have nothing else to offer to this thread so i ll quit and go slay some dragons
I can't understand why some people think binding zen items could do any good. If anything, it would harm the economy and all you need is a bit imagination to understand that.
If this would happen, people who use to buy those items and resell on AH, would.... not buy it anymore. Remember that things like profession packs and, most of all, lockboxes, have random content, and that's why you keep for yourself only (usually small) part of it and sell the rest. If you can't sell anything, the price suddenly becomes ridiculous.
Which means less zen items bought = Cryptic sells less zen.
And for players? You can't buy things you want from AH therefore you need to get zen using zax....how is that suppose to help reducing backlog?
Ofc you also could open your wallet, but a) people who play for free will rather move to another game than do that, b)people who buy zen will certainly no put it into zax, because if they can't buy things they want from AH, then why do that?
I can't understand why some people think binding zen items could do any good. If anything, it would harm the economy and all you need is a bit imagination to understand that.
If this would happen, people who use to buy those items and resell on AH, would.... not buy it anymore. Remember that things like profession packs and, most of all, lockboxes, have random content, and that's why you keep for yourself only (usually small) part of it and sell the rest. If you can't sell anything, the price suddenly becomes ridiculous.
Which means less zen items bought = Cryptic sells less zen.
And for players? You can't buy things you want from AH therefore you need to get zen using zax....how is that suppose to help reducing backlog?
Ofc you also could open your wallet, but a) people who play for free will rather move to another game than do that, b)people who buy zen will certainly no put it into zax, because if they can't buy things they want from AH, then why do that?
You also eliminate people using the ZAX to get Zen to buy items, to resell on the AH for above 500:1 to make more AD to buy more Zen and repeat the process. This is probably a good part of the backlog.
You also eliminate people using the ZAX to get Zen to buy items, to resell on the AH for above 500:1 to make more AD to buy more Zen and repeat the process. This is probably a good part of the backlog.
This pratice is an outcome of the backlog, not it's cause. And you really think not having things on AH at all is better than having them overpriced?
No, no, binding would be just disatrously stupid. Something like: "Hey, good news, there was a fire and your house just've burned to the ground. All cockroaches died!"
This pratice is an outcome of the backlog, not it's cause. And you really think not having things on AH at all is better than having them overpriced?
No, no, binding would be just disatrously stupid. Something like: "Hey, good news, there was a fire and your house just've burned to the ground. All cockroaches died!"
Ever see a hoarders home on a documentary? Sometimes burning the house down is a good option. The economy is broken, it needs to be burnt to the ground so it can be rebuilt. This means closing loopholes in protective features, and multiple methods to remove ad from the game.
Ever see a hoarders home on a documentary? Sometimes burning the house down is a good option. The economy is broken, it needs to be burnt to the ground so it can be rebuilt. This means closing loopholes in protective features, and multiple methods to remove ad from the game.
Apart from the fact that the backlog is constantly decreasing since mod4 (or since exploit fix) which indicates that the economy works fine and just need some time to recover - how about a solution that would not kill the game?
You also eliminate people using the ZAX to get Zen to buy items, to resell on the AH for above 500:1 to make more AD to buy more Zen and repeat the process. This is probably a good part of the backlog.
But you completely replace them with the people who are buying the items in the first place.
This pratice is an outcome of the backlog, not it's cause. And you really think not having things on AH at all is better than having them overpriced?
That's just not true unfortunately. There were many Zen shop items selling in the AH before the backlog even existed.
*There are more people doing it now, taking advantage of the backlog though. Either way it makes the problem worse. People that would be buying AD from the exchange are using Zen to get it from the AH instead.*
This pratice is an outcome of the backlog, not it's cause. And you really think not having things on AH at all is better than having them overpriced?
No, no, binding would be just disatrously stupid. Something like: "Hey, good news, there was a fire and your house just've burned to the ground. All cockroaches died!"
No it isn't an outcome of the backlog. Even when there was no backlog there were still zen items on the AH for a profit.
Just like you see stuff from the WB on sale in AH for a small markup. Now that we don't see coal wards on the market for 800+k anymore the backlog is falling. I believe the cause of the backlog was all that exploited AD being put into the exchange to get zen to buy ward/items to sell on AH to get zen to buy items to sell on AH to get zen to get items to sell on AH. The same 10 people always having coal wards or pres wards on the market kind of supports that hypothesis.
If the cause of the high priced AH zen shop items was the backlog, then they would still be at 8-900 k a coal ward instead of the 570 k or so they are at now. There is still close to a two week wait for AD>Zen after all.
Comments
A great idea, some could even call it necessary at this point.
I also think AD and XP should be taken away from Invocation. Have the invocation just be the random buff and maybe a celestial/ardent coin if appropriate.
LOL. Leadership and Invocation aren't the reason for the AD gloat. The invocation amount is already level based and limited per day. Leadership is just a pain. You can make a lot of AD with it. But to even get close to the daily cap using leadership you would need to spend so much AD/Zen on assets that you wouldn't break even for months.
Ignoring the rumored exploits the biggest reliable source of AD is salvaging. I can hit the AD cap every day on several of my alts if I choose to using salvage. Besides that, I'm sure the game still has people with some ungodly amount of unrefined AD from the Tymora events and such.
From what I've read, I don't think he was saying leadership was the reason for the AD gloat. In open beta, invocation was heavily abused by some though.
I think he was just saying a lot of players "depend" on leadership. Whether they actually make decent diamonds from it or not, their illusion of dependance on it would produce a lot of outcry from both casual and hardcore players.
The wait time for zen has been proven at near or around two weeks over and over again.
If you haven't got yours, you are doing it wrong.
Sick of people exaggerating a two week wait into months or even "ill never get my zen".
If wait times are killing you then start saving up some emergency zen. It seriously isn't that hard.
"Hey Mod#xx is coming out, and there are so many threads about how my paragon path eats a nerf bat...maybe I'll start posting some ad to the zax so I have enough to respec when the next mod comes out." It isn't ideal by any means...but not very hard either.
With the backlog decreasing steadily every day how do people know that the economy isnt fixed already or that we aren' just a few weeks off of 430 ad/ zen again. If the backlog was still ballooning I would say that something had to be done.
With new ad sinks(lower wb prices) and killing the huge months long exploit, we could end up with a day or two wait...or even instant zen agian. Not saying we will , but we aren't headed towards doom anymore.
Thank you, yes... that was my point. To say that invocation is the "root cause" of our economic woes is not even close to the truth.
HOWEVER
There are plenty of people that use alts to leadership/invoke farm. It remains a viable loophole for future abuse if other avenues to exploit (such as the criminally obvious/easy ZAX loop) are closed down in some way.
I really like your positive attitude. And it's true... the backlog AMOUNT over the past few days has dropped a couple of percentage points. It's still a 2 week wait, but the most recent data shows that the backlog is getting eaten away slightly faster than it is growing. It sounds like we can wrap this up, right? Put up the Mission Accomplished banner?
OH there's just one more thing...
All it would take is 1 (one) bot manager to decide that he likes having the backlog so he can keep selling AD off the grid, and BAM! he can clog that ZAX so full that it'll be a month wait before anyone sees a transaction. People with many many millions of AD can hold the entire ZAX hostage if they wish -- the backlog is what now? 11 million? I bet a solitary small-time bot manager has 10 times that sitting around somewhere.
The system needs to get looked at. We are not out of the woods.
Even then Leadership is miniscule. I probably dissolve a week's worth of leadership AD every day just in market tax. Large speculators (like the guys who buy up all the dragon eggs and repost 10 lots every weekend) destroy millions of AD on a regular basis. There are 2 main drivers for AD exchange. 1. Ward costs becuase they create the alternate exchange rate. 2. The desire of real humans in the real world to spend real money on this game because that is how Zen is created. Nothing else matters in this equation.
As for the Zen backlog, it is an unfortunate side effect of too many manipulations by exploiters. We are just going to have wait out the effects, just like when any market bubble bursts.
I could list the steps required to farm invokes, but the mods might not like us discussing specifically bad player behavior. Let me just answer your question with:
Automating a bot farm for invoking is remarkably easy. Put it on a timer and walk away for a month.
I guess my thoughts is that it's so small that it's not worth the customer anger removing it would cause. Anytime you remove or nerf in a game you generate some customer anger and lose a few players. I just don't see how the change would be worth it for invocation.
I'd rather see a Warden addition to the client to fight the botters.
Interestingly, a simple randomized captcha at login would defeat the botters as well.
Maybe I need to get my eyes checked but I hate captcha's, I always squint at them and I still get them wrong half the time and have to start over.
Not defeat but make it considerably harder.
Have someone at Cryptic's art section make a new one each day that can pass some of the standard recognition tests and this should help a lot.
Hmm... every character can make 5 requests.. max 5000 Zen each.. total 25000 Zen / Char.. To create 11millions backlog you needs 440 chars with 12.500.000AD on each one... If one bot manager can have all these and Developers cannot catch him i think there is no hope in MMOS..!!
Anyway.. My final thoughts on this problem are..
1. Backlog was created by ADs overflowing from recent exploits.. thats Temporary and it will heal up in time..
2. If the Backlog was created naturally over months by the game economy as some say in here.. PW would just have Increased the 500/1 cap (not revomed but increased).. But nothing like that is happening..
3. Binding All/Some Zen Market Products could help heal up ZAX way faster by killing Black Market tactics through AH.. Probably PW dont want to take such action if not 100% forced to do.. And maybe they are right..
4. When we have headache we dont cut our head.. we get medicine.. If Leadership or Invocation are getting abused by Bots we must fight the Bots and not the average player who cannot spend more than 2-3 hours farming per day and tries to sneak in to the gateway from his workplace to get that extra 5000 AD.. Removing every single Tools from a game because we cannot protect them is not a Fair Solution..
5. Money in not the only value.. Time is more valuable than money.. if we dont respect the Time a player spends in the game and make him farm a Month to get a service from Zen Market that costs 5$, he will get frustrated and quit. I think PW has done a good job keeping that balance until now.. They are not Greedy and that keeps the game playable for Free players = keeps the game alive.. The weak points here (and not only here) are Bots, Exploits and 3rd Party Sellers..
P.S. I have nothing else to offer to this thread so i ll quit and go slay some dragons
If this would happen, people who use to buy those items and resell on AH, would.... not buy it anymore. Remember that things like profession packs and, most of all, lockboxes, have random content, and that's why you keep for yourself only (usually small) part of it and sell the rest. If you can't sell anything, the price suddenly becomes ridiculous.
Which means less zen items bought = Cryptic sells less zen.
And for players? You can't buy things you want from AH therefore you need to get zen using zax....how is that suppose to help reducing backlog?
Ofc you also could open your wallet, but a) people who play for free will rather move to another game than do that, b)people who buy zen will certainly no put it into zax, because if they can't buy things they want from AH, then why do that?
You also eliminate people using the ZAX to get Zen to buy items, to resell on the AH for above 500:1 to make more AD to buy more Zen and repeat the process. This is probably a good part of the backlog.
This pratice is an outcome of the backlog, not it's cause. And you really think not having things on AH at all is better than having them overpriced?
No, no, binding would be just disatrously stupid. Something like: "Hey, good news, there was a fire and your house just've burned to the ground. All cockroaches died!"
I placed an order for 200 Zen at 500AD each on the 8th of august. as of right now, I still haven't received any.
Ever see a hoarders home on a documentary? Sometimes burning the house down is a good option. The economy is broken, it needs to be burnt to the ground so it can be rebuilt. This means closing loopholes in protective features, and multiple methods to remove ad from the game.
Very odd.
/10char
Apart from the fact that the backlog is constantly decreasing since mod4 (or since exploit fix) which indicates that the economy works fine and just need some time to recover - how about a solution that would not kill the game?
This is not normal. I would contact the support.
But you completely replace them with the people who are buying the items in the first place.
That's just not true unfortunately. There were many Zen shop items selling in the AH before the backlog even existed.
*There are more people doing it now, taking advantage of the backlog though. Either way it makes the problem worse. People that would be buying AD from the exchange are using Zen to get it from the AH instead.*
No it isn't an outcome of the backlog. Even when there was no backlog there were still zen items on the AH for a profit.
Just like you see stuff from the WB on sale in AH for a small markup. Now that we don't see coal wards on the market for 800+k anymore the backlog is falling. I believe the cause of the backlog was all that exploited AD being put into the exchange to get zen to buy ward/items to sell on AH to get zen to buy items to sell on AH to get zen to get items to sell on AH. The same 10 people always having coal wards or pres wards on the market kind of supports that hypothesis.
If the cause of the high priced AH zen shop items was the backlog, then they would still be at 8-900 k a coal ward instead of the 570 k or so they are at now. There is still close to a two week wait for AD>Zen after all.
Happens to me all the time. Perhaps we're just not young any longer