Dear Cryptic, from a serious player - please read

chemboy613

Dear Cryptic, hi, it's me. Chem.

I am one of the most serious, most active players in your community.

I am the #1 MoF CW on the server - which has not ever been disputed.

In addition i have publishes numerous guides for this community. There is not a more knowledgeable, skilled, and helpful player than I am on this server. No one else has written as much as I have, or helped as many people as i have. Basically every MoF CW i have ever met has read my work.

I am at the core of your community, and a pillar thereof. When i speak, people listen. I have earned that respect.



Please let me explain my progress from Launch to now.

In the Launch patch, i was still gearing. Earning AD was difficult, but not impossible. Then we started farming CN and the AD started flowing. Yes there were a lot of bugs, and yes every farm group used those bugs, and we made some good AD then.

Same thing happened in Mod 1 - except now we had fomorian and seal equipment. It was worth testing. MC was a great design, thank you. However the drop rate of the mats were abysmal, making it impractical to farm for them. Hence we made AD in CN and then bought from AH to get fomorians. While not as good for the players as the CN system, this was fine as AD was convertible into power.

Mod 2 was about the same thing - only now the dread legion weapons hurt the CN weapon prices, but they were still good. CN was farmable. The point was - you could still make reasonable AD/HR by playing the game. And that was fine. I eventually burned out and took a break from mod 3.

Mod 3 - While i know you were trying to do something for PvPers, what we got was:

a) A lot of very boring and obnoxious dailies that took far too long to complete
b) Good PvP gear that took a long time to farm (which i guess is ok).
c) However the Gloves/weapons have TERRIBLE drop rates.

Hence, we all know people who have spent 2 months or more farming their gloves to go PvP.

The problem isn't that good items are hard to get - the problem is that good items are hard to get in the wrong way. You are rewarded for getting lucky on a RNG roll, NOT for your skill or ability. This trend continued into mod 4.

Mod 4 - Honestly, I like the new dungeons, the design was great! You fixed a ton of bugs and mechanics, and the gameplay is great! Thank you for this.

However, the artifact weapons now made CN unprofitable. There is now NO REASONABLE WAY for good players to make AD in game. Hence many of us are doing lockbox flipping or AH flipping, and hence making AD by playing the economy. I don't like playing the economy, but since my income from playing is so terrible and pitiful I have no other choice if i want to make a reasonable about of AD to gear up.

So I went from making almost 1M AD/day in mod 1/2 to now I make 150k AD/Day - through refining RAD mostly. This is actually very slow, considering the cost it was raising items to legendary.


Now let me fill in about how i helped you financially. I don't have a lot of money for various reasons.

However, I LOVE Neverwinter and I wanted to support you.

Now, in 2013, I spent 50$ in zen (for fashion mainly, lol), and i bought a feywild pack for 60$. I am very happy with the feywild pack. You gave us things we couldn't get through farming and hence was worth paying for.

Now, when you had your last big promotion, I spent 150$, which is significant to me right now, NOT to buy things, but to invest as capital on the AH so I could make AD. As I said, you have taken away all the ways to make AD by playing. I understand you want to sell zen, and you want us to play for... what? "rewards" ?

I have run ELOL 15 times a day, every day, for almost a month now. I have gotten four belts, not the ones i wanted name you. That means i have looked at 700 chests. Hence the drop rate for a desired artifact belt is terrible. Farming it becomes impractical, unless you have tons of time.

Ok, say i want to buy off AH. Well, now that is between 3 and 4 million AD - a substantial amount of my investment capital. If i wanted to buy in, it is 80$ that I simply can't spend on this game.

However, this has been counterbalanced by cheap RP.

Expensive items that are hard to get are fine - they should be fine. Now they should be reasonably expensive to refine.

However, items are no longer hard to get, they are stupidly hard to get. Not because they require a lot of skill to acquire, but rather because they require a lot of dumb luck to get. I have seen players get the item I need TWICE in one hour because they are lucky. Meantime I have spent A MONTH and hours a day and not gotten my belt because I am LESS LUCKY.

This is infuriating enough, and made me consider playing other games. To think that I am one of the best players on the server, I have worked incredibly hard for this community, and I have given you a substantial amount of money, yet it is impossible for me to get what i need? This already made me incredibly annoyed and unmotivated.

However now you propose a change:



Items and Economy
All enchantments and other items that give RP dropped through Fey Blessing, Dragon Hoard and Tymora's Blessing enchantments are now Bound to Account. This change is not retroactive.


Ok, so this means we can no longer buy RP off the auction house. Within ONE HOUR the RP prices have doubled, and will shoot up like crazy.

So say I somehow (in a miracle) get my belt. by playing. Then i need 4.6 MILLION RP to refine it, which is over 1800 lesser resonance stones and/or over 9000 peridots. Now this means, optimistically, I would have to play ten hours a day, every day, for almost a MONTH to get ONE legendary item. This is completely impractical for me, and I have time to kill. You can only imagine what it would be like for someone who can only log on a few hours a week.

I know the hope is that I will buy more zen and buy RP with zen. But what? 3 blood rubies are 20$, which is 150k RP. This means it would cost me 600$ to have a legendary belt. 600$! No one in their right mind would ever pay so much!

So here is where we are

a) I can't make AD to buy the items i want by playing
b) I can't get the items I want by playing (because the drop rate is awful)
and now
c) I can't refine those items, should i have them, by playing.

So what is the point of playing!?!?



I can play ten hours a day, and at the end of the day i will... what? oh yeah, my artifact belt might go up half a level. Great. That money i invested and the thousands of hours i invested are sure doing great work for that half level...

The changes you have made to this game, every module, you are giving serious players less and less of a reason to play. Maybe casuals pay more money? I'm not sure. I already paid you 260$.

But now you are killing my incentive to play. If you do this, there is literally no reason for me to log on. I cannot make any substantial progress outside of spending hundreds of dollars. And for the 1800$ it would cost me to refine my new artifacts with zen-bought RP there are many, many, many other things i'd rather be doing than Neverwinter.

So in your efforts to "make more revenue" you are in fact disincentivizing the most valuable players in your community from playing. We are the people who understand this game. We are the people who write guides for your community. We organize channels, we organize events. It is not just your game, but US that draws people to play.

Once we leave, your community will be a bunch of clueless casuals. You will lose your largest assets because you didn't take care of us and nurture us. Instead you poison us for short term financial gains. Once all the good players have chosen to invest their time and money elsewhere, what will be left for you? Why play Neverwinter then?

There will be no reason. By focusing on short term financials you are destroying your own long term gains.

As a professional strategist - this is terrible strategy.

At the end of that day, it is you, the game company, that is losing most.

Please do not let this change hit live.

Thank you,

Chem.

rashylewizz

I agree with a lot of your points.

Its coming to a point where farming PVE is becoming less and less relevant and doing extra-curricular stuff is the way to go if you want to progress to BIS gear.

ysil6969

I find post 60 to be the most BORING part of this game. Farm these dungeons over and over and over.. it's ridiculous. And like you said, it's getting harder and harder to farm AD, as they're BOA'ing everything. Plus, they let the AH pricing run free range, so things get ridiculous quick. As soon as an item is hard to get and needed, you're paying massive out of pocket dollars to convert the amount of AD needed. It's absurd to pay 50-100 dollars for things in a game, when you can buy FULL games for that price.

hefisdo

I can't express with words how much I agree with your post.

beckylunatic

If you edit your subject line to not address the devs directly and rephrase the "I quit" sentiment to not state such directly, the mods *might* not be required to nuke this thread from orbit.

And you really should. It needs to be seen.

godhric

Add that with the incoming load of legendaries @ mod 5

Grind for the gear, grind for the RP, grind grind grind and moar grinds... the game is obviously designed for mindless robots.
This is such a bad thing..

Please cryptic, for once and after, introduce contents which rewards players for ACTUAL plays.

The only reason i still stay is because of the good graphics & character design.. flashy skills. That's it. Content SUCKS, there is literally no reason to ACTUALLY play it, because the 'legit' way to gearing / progress is either thru playing the AH, or leaderships.

The state of the game is really pathetic considering how much potential it got.. and instead, disappointment after disappointment in later modules.

chemboy613

Can't change subject line now.

Honestly, if I could change zen to dollars i'd just cash out and be done with it. I cannot express how annoyed and angry i am right now, and i can't explain how much self control it's taking to not get myself blocked from the forums.

chemboy613

valencay wrote: »

This is really not respectful for the other people who are in this community and help people. TRUE you helped a lot of MOF cw, and you mighht be one of th best, but that's it. no other class has benefit from your mof guide.
every class has their expert. kweassa, todesfaelle, crixus, ant venom, meldanen, sicarius, ximae, ecc ecc
A LOT of people are helping this community everyday, also people like iambecks and beckylunatic, you are going to see their answer every single noobish thread.

This is not intended to take away from the other wonderful people in these forums. I am rather expressing my frustration. I did not mean this as an insult or a slight to anyone else.

wimpazoid

I have nowhere near the time you have to play this game, but I did play it actively for most of the past year.
Module 4 finally saw me let go of my TR (which even a year of neglect for the TR couldn't do) because dailies started to get stupidly tedious and time consuming and getting RP from playing a TR is slow.

Now I'm neither a badly geared or bad player who couldn't keep up, but I'm simply finding it much less enjoyable to be playing post module 3. In the end, I've just stopped doing any content in-game as it's no longer worthwhile, and reduced to continuing to invoke for coins in the hope that there's a decent game to return to sometime in the future.

damnataanimus

I too agree and wish they would re consider this change.

And this is coming from someone who already has 5 legendary items.

sockmunkey

From what I can see there really is no way to both remove the bots and keep refinement easy without significant changes to the refinement system. I don't see Cryptic accepting the bots undercutting their own zen store items. And I don't see them making significant changes to refinement. This pretty much leaves the entire discussion at an impasse.

rashylewizz

sockmunkey wrote: »

Ill probably get lambasted for this, but wouldn't this have pretty much the same results? If you honestly do remove the bots selling large numbers of stacks of RP. That would simply reduce the supply, raise prices, and make the purchase of refinement materials all that much harder.

From what I can see there really is no way to both remove the bots and keep refinement easy without significant changes to the refinement system. I don't see Cryptic accepting the bots undercutting their own zen store items. And I don't see them making significant changes to refinement. This pretty much leaves the entire discussion at an impasse.

Yes the situation is still dire because PVE is still an unrewarding waste of a time.

BUT

That would punish the botters a lot more than just punishing legit PVE farmers. So there is a consolation for that alternate suggested solution.

chemboy613

We have to look at the long term implications, not just short term. I think the current supply will burn fast or held and sold at very high prices in the future (see coal wards)

geeq5

If there is one thing I know about the game it that the players supporting the game through monetary means are the old players that have been playing for a while, new players come through the game now, and as soon as they hit lvl 60 you wont see them anymore.
Between the 4 different daily campaigns, no rewarding contents, no effective means of making any decent income, and really bad RNG, and BiS requiring a lot of money to get, what new player is going to stay in this conditions?

So if Cryptic cant hold on to their old player base then I wish them goodluck.
I have no incentive to log in everyday now, there was a time when I would log in just to invoke, but now the invoke rewards are so crappy that it not even worth it anymore, so am like fk it.

lnsolvee

chemboy613 wrote: »

We have to look at the long term implications, not just short term. I think the current supply will burn fast or held and sold at very high prices in the future (see coal wards)

Well the way I believe people see this is there won't be anymor eof these items on AH, it's false, the price will just be 2 or 3x more then it was before (which is way better because everyone had legendaries all over the place). There is still many way to optain these items and these ways are not BoP lol

lnsolvee

geeq5 wrote: »

"Lol"?

Is one of those ways a reasonable way to obtain these items, considering that we are getting a ton more of gears that require RP?
If so, I would need you to back up your answers.

Not us, but bots will do. This whole thing will become a problem if bots get nuked out of the game, aslong that they are there, they will sell it in AH (and this is the reasonable way to obtain these items)

godhric

lnsolvee wrote: »

First, this only apply to belt and mainhand, so we can have that straight (artifact dont work like that since you can buy union/power/stab marks and so on).

Don't forget artifact offhand and artifact necklace with its own corresponding artifact belt set coming out..

lnsolvee

The point of this thread is a solution, what do you guys propose? I dont agree with reverting it because it's way too easy to get a legendary artifact.

Maybe Cryptic will bring something else soon, a better way to refine stuff or a better drop rate of BOP RP items lol

To Geeq5 post: My answer is the AH.

chemboy613

Option 1:

Make the RP requirements much, much less. This would make farming for RP more reasonable. I don't think this is preferable because farming for RP is boring.

Option 2: Find a way of killing the bots but letting legit players sell RP

This would be best, IMO, but is not easy to implement. Yes, the price of RP would go up, but maybe they tone down the RP requirements

Option 3: Create a way to MAKE AD IN GAME, then also maintain a legit way to SELL RP IN GAME.

This would be best, but there is every indication they will never, ever do such a thing. If I could buy cryptic, I would buy them and have them do THIS tomorrow.

Option 4:

Do what they are doing, and when the RP dries up, all the experienced players quit because it's impossible to progress at any reasonable rate.

Option 5: Undo this change and we all get cheap RP -

This is also not ideal and doesn't solve the bot problem, but at least us experienced players have a reason to keep playing.

lnsolvee

chemboy613 wrote: »

Option 1:

Make the RP requirements much, much less. This would make farming for RP more reasonable. I don't think this is preferable because farming for RP is boring.

Option 2: Find a way of killing the bots but letting legit players sell RP

This would be best, IMO, but is not easy to implement. Yes, the price of RP would go up, but maybe they tone down the RP requirements

Option 3: Create a way to MAKE AD IN GAME, then also maintain a legit way to SELL RP IN GAME.

This would be best, but there is every indication they will never, ever do such a thing. If I could buy cryptic, I would buy them and have them do THIS tomorrow.

Option 4:

Do what they are doing, and when the RP dries up, all the experienced players quit because it's impossible to progress at any reasonable rate.

Option 5: Undo this change and we all get cheap RP -

This is also not ideal and doesn't solve the bot problem, but at least us experienced players have a reason to keep playing.

Most ideal option is definitly 2 but yeah, I doubt it will happens even if it would be totally great..

inthefade462

Cryptic is getting enough raw feedback to understand the error of their decision.

The solution is simple. RP must go the way of the Coal ward.

Coal wards were abundant, they had many, many sources of tradeable coal wards in game, mostly via invoking and seperately via tradebars. There were legions of bots as well as real players with characters used only for invoking for the 7 day reward. they cost roughly 80-100k ad each. You needed 85 of them to make a perfect enchantment.

If you bought them from zen market that meant it cost $850 dollars to create 1 perfect enchantment. Nobody bought them from Zen market, ever, and PWE decided this needed to change.

Through several series of changes and patches Coal wards were eventually made mostly BoA, however to make this possible, the need for them was greatly reduced from 85 to 15. Coal wards have pretty much arrived at an equilibrium were they are still slightly cheaper to buy on AH than from zen market, but not so different that nobody buys them from zen market and not nearly as punishing as $850 for a single perfect enchantment.

I have proposed in several threads that the RP cost to reach legendary needs to see a similar reduction, as it would solve all problems we have with the current refinement system, including carpal tunnel induced from refining 3.8-4.6mil rp into your artifact.

Nobody is going to spend $600+ on a single legendary artifact. Especially at the rate that they are being introduced, and the realization that at any point any previous artifact can be made obsolete the very next mod. But if RP requirements were reduced to the point, like coals wards were, so that it wasn't a hassle people might eventually buy blood rubies from Zen.

300k rp for artifacts and 500k rp for artifact equipment is a good baseline for what RP requirements should cost. At that point you can make all the refining stuff BoA and nobody will mind. It cuts deeply at botters/3rd party sellers and isn't such an enormous hassle that normal players would resort to Botting themselves to collect their RP. It also reduces the carpal tunnel experienced using the current refining system.

chemboy613

inthefade462 wrote: »

Cryptic is getting enough raw feedback to understand the error of their decision.

The solution is simple. RP must go the way of the Coal ward.

Coal wards were abundant, they had many, many sources of tradeable coal wards in game, mostly via invoking and seperately via tradebars. There were legions of bots as well as real players with characters used only for invoking for the 7 day reward. they cost roughly 80-100k ad each. You needed 85 of them to make a perfect enchantment.

If you bought them from zen market that meant it cost $850 dollars to create 1 perfect enchantment. Nobody bought them from Zen market, ever, and PWE decided this needed to change.

Through several series of changes and patches Coal wards were eventually made mostly BoA, however to make this possible, the need for them was greatly reduced from 85 to 15. Coal wards have pretty much arrived at an equilibrium were they are still slightly cheaper to buy on AH than from zen market, but not so different that nobody buys them from zen market and not nearly as punishing as $850 for a single perfect enchantment.

I have proposed in several threads that the RP cost to reach legendary needs to see a similar reduction, as it would solve all problems we have with the current refinement system, including carpal tunnel induced from refining 3.8-4.6mil rp into your artifact.

Nobody is going to spend $600+ on a single legendary artifact. Especially at the rate that they are being introduced, and the realization that at any point any previous artifact can be made obsolete the very next mod. But if RP requirements were reduced to the point, like coals wards were, so that it wasn't a hassle people might eventually buy blood rubies from Zen.

300k rp for artifacts and 500k rp for artifact equipment is a good baseline for what RP requirements should cost. At that point you can make all the refining stuff BoA and nobody will mind. It cuts deeply at botters/3rd party sellers and isn't such an enormous hassle that normal players would resort to Botting themselves to collect their RP. It also reduces the carpal tunnel experienced using the current refining system.

Vic - love you and your post, this is a good idea. I'm not sure it's the best idea, but it should be seriously considered.

chemboy613

thecorpser wrote: »

I think the elitist attitudes are more of a problem than BoA enchants. Not being able to buy enchants will certainly hurt, but I play for fun and don't really mind the grind. I gave away all my enchants just before Mod 3 and quit the game for several months. After 2 months of playing, I am better geared than I was before I quit. I can't complain about RNG, because I seem to have the luck of the Irish. I guess in the end, if this game is your job, you're better off leaving and finding a new place to work. If you're in it for fun, this won't destroy your world.

Lol, Vex, it's a valid perspective. We've played together and know each other - so that's fine.

What's satisfying for me is progression. Better item, better gear, becoming more powerful. That really is my driving force to play. That's what I enjoy, and I think that's a lot of what the old guard enjoys too.

It's not that you are wrong, is that there are many reasons to play.

ghoulz66

Played almost every day for almost 11 months now. The sad thing is that I've only made 1 purple artifact since then, and that was with the help of the double refinement points special. That sucked up all my RP I gained for around 4 months.

I usually just buy my weapon enchantments and such, because it simply takes too long to level up ANY artifact. Talking about a single artifact here. What about new players? They don't have stead RADs coming in to buy anything, and you expect them to be capable of leveling all this stuff?

There needs to be an overhaul for this. There's just too much now. I have a dollar, I want a burger, but a couple months later I also need fries, a drink, a movie, and a pair of eye glasses, but, I've only got this one dollar here.....

vteasy

The OP is spot on, both on the history of the game and his current conclusion. Make no mistake this change would kill the game. The only way to make them BoA is to also change the refining system/requirements.

Nobody likes the botters and we all want to see them go. However, they are the only thing keeping costs reasonable. Mod 5 is shock full of items to refine.

There needs to be more realistic options to farm top end items. Don't force everyone to leave a game they love

thecorpser

Don't get me wrong, I like progression as well. I like the challenge of working the market and building AD to get the things I want to build a more powerful character. I just personally feel once it gets to the point where it becomes a job to play or you get so angry while playing, it simply isn't worth it anymore.

ysil6969

Seems to me the best solution, is capping the AH. Basically the problem is that the more they boa the more expensive these items are going to get on the AH. And since you can only make so much AD a day, the problem here would be the unlimited cost of items. Right now buying AD and selling zen, isn't worth it. The cost to buy items through the zen exchange is not worth the price you're paying. Legendary mounts cost $100-$200 worth of zen. How is this even acceptable in a game? or farm AD for a year straight.

Now if you broke down items into categories, and capped these categories, you'd fix a lot of things. That piece of armor that's sought after, and is sold for millions of AD, would be capped. You'd basically figure out the timeline Cryptic wants a person to take to obtain the item. If someone runs a dungeon for that amount of time, they should have an average amount of AD acquired. That is how much that item should be worth to buy + a little extra.

Ex. If cryptic decides it should take 50 runs to get the latest item. Someone is unlucky as hell, and doesn't get the item in 70 runs. The amount of AD that the average person would get over these 70 runs, plus a little extra for player profit, would be the cap on this item.

Problem right now is AD is in demand, the supply is low, but items are still in high demand, keeping their cost up. It isn't worth it to buy zen for AD because of the zen cap (which keeps zen from becoming unreachable, understandably). So basically everything is capped right now. Zen for AD exchange is capped, the amount of AD you can make in a day is capped, but the AH prices for items are NOT capped. That's the problem.

And if they want to get rid of bots grinding RP items. Then sell those SAME rp items they're trying to stop bots from selling, on the bazaar for the same AD rate they're being sold for now. Then you can make them BoA all you want. As long as the players have a steady supply they can buy for a reasonable price FROM cryptic.

sprawlfx

Got some acknowledgement over in the patch notes thread.. Nice. Congrats. Glad to see it.

thecorpser

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing artifact equipment, leveled not by way of RP but through use. Damage dealt would go to refining the weapon and cut down the need for purchasing bot farmed RP.

sprawlfx

thecorpser wrote: »

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing artifact equipment, leveled not by way of RP but through use. Damage dealt would go to refining the weapon and cut down the need for purchasing bot farmed RP.

That is sort of the way it should be in my opinion also.. XP is for leveling. Let it level the artifact as well. (Not damage. You worked to get the artifact. It should be a leveled by DOING THINGS, not by RNG, or spending.)

k3ll0

thecorpser wrote: »

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing artifact equipment, leveled not by way of RP but through use. Damage dealt would go to refining the weapon and cut down the need for purchasing bot farmed RP.

On a knee-jerk reaction I *like* this idea. It also kind of makes sense conceptually - items and weapons aquire an aura of legendary mystique from being associated with noted people and events, right? Hardly a major step from that to developing increasingly powerful supernatural qualities given what both the worls and the people in it are like.

One can always dream...