WoW, Destiny, Diablo 3, path of exile, need I go on?
I played WoW and had two characters BIS (Rogue and shaman)
Played Destiny and had two lvl 30s(maxed gear/weapons all BIS)
Played diablo 3 and had a "BIS" barb but didnt play an alt - but its easy to do now
Played POE and had "top tier" gear on two characters.
Two characters? That's reasonable, especially if you play a lot. And I know you do. I have a few guildies who have 2 different toons pretty much kitted out in BiS Legndaries.
But people who are expecting to have multiple alts all in the best stuff is stretching it...that's my point. Do you think your average player who plays WoW a few hours a week is going to be carrying around the best in slot, high level raid gear? Not likely at all.
If cryptic made a SET ZAX at 1000:1 but cut all zen prices in half. It makes zen items much cheaper and more players would buy things where as the in game economy wouldnt see a price hike. In short investing through Cryptic would go futlrther.
Brilliant. An elegant solution. People buying Zen with AD will see no change. People spending real money get everything half price.
EDIT: Upon reflection. This seems too easy. There must be a reason why it isn't already implemented.
Two characters? That's reasonable, especially if you play a lot. And I know you do. I have a few guildies who have 2 different toons pretty much kitted out in BiS Legndaries.
But people who are expecting to have multiple alts all in the best stuff is stretching it...that's my point. Do you think your average player who plays WoW a few hours a week is going to be carrying around the best in slot, high level raid gear? Not likely at all.
I dont think anyone is expecting to have multiple characters decked out with BIS equipment. I think people are just mad that its nearly impossible to do to ONE character today. Most players that have that gear got it from unbound RP. When RP became bound it made it nearly impossible to get RP for it.
I think that even an average player who puts in some time each day CAN get top tier equipment in nearly any game. I think thats whats expected.
I mean I dont even know how players expect to get RP for gear its a joke and its not like the power difference between say "Formorian" Weapons and the Artifact Equipment is small, its GIGANTIC! The weapon damage is massively higher, the stats are massively higher and you get TWO offensive slots over 1. Thats HUGE!
What I have said all along, if they want to do the "RP is super expensive game" - fine by me, but players need a way to get TOP TIER (comparable) gear by PLAYING the game.
What this means is we should see Jewelcrafting Belts with +3 Con/Dex/STR compared to the +4 Artifact Equipment Counterpart.
We should see Necks with +6AC or +3%AP every 3-4 seconds (contrasted to the +8AC and 4every 3 Necks).
We should see weapons with nearly the same top end damage and same stat boosts just a little bit less.
We should see offhands with bonuses that match the artifact ones, and stats but maybe just missing the "bonus" stat you can reroll.
ALL of these gives an option to play the game and get comparable gear. Either that or they need to release a way to play the game to get the BIS gear.
But currently there is NOTHING comparable to ARti-Equip in sheer "power" and the only way to get it is to pay.
Brilliant. An elegant solution. People buying Zen with AD will see no change. People spending real money get everything half price.
EDIT: Upon reflection. This seems too easy. There must be a reason why it isn't already implemented.
Because the company that is losing sales is always hesitant to drop their prices. The issue is whoever is running their economic structure is just not very well educated in the actual GAME we have.
They look at other games and say "BIS items sell for $600+ so our artifact items should be priced at $600". That is a DIFFERENT GAME.
What they NEED to look at are:
1) Total Revenue - which is down ALOT. So clearly they need a change
2) Price of RP is WAY over priced by about 200%. $8 for 150k RP? Thats just SILLY if it costs 4.5M+ for ONE item.
3) Price of smaller things like Coal Wards - these shouldnt be $8. I would say more like $5-6.
They need to focus back on MICRO transactions rather than MACRO transactions.
Things like Linu's Favor should be sold for 100 zen in the Zen Store. Do you know how many people would buy alot of those for 100 zen?
RP stones need to sell for lower zen amounts. Lesser Resonance Stones? These should sell for ~15 zen each (literally $.15) This would put an artifact equipment item (4.5MRP) at 27,000 zen which is what $270 dollars? Then double RP events would bring the price WAY down to $135. Now lets say you need 100k RP to level an item up, this would only cost you 600 zen to skip that level ($6) I know ALOT of people that would start buying more zen - ESPECIALLY if the rate was 1000:1 meaning for 600 zen it would cost 600k AD. I think id rather pay $6.
Stuff like this is exactly what needs to happen. Even my solution above for 1000:1 ZAX but cut prices in half would actually do ALOT for the game.
You could buy 150k RP for 400 zen with Blood Rubies now. Double RP would be 300k RP for 400 zen. Heck I would pay that....
0
vinceent1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,264Arc User
Two characters? That's reasonable, especially if you play a lot. And I know you do. I have a few guildies who have 2 different toons pretty much kitted out in BiS Legndaries.
But people who are expecting to have multiple alts all in the best stuff is stretching it...that's my point. Do you think your average player who plays WoW a few hours a week is going to be carrying around the best in slot, high level raid gear? Not likely at all.
and what about this control question....
is it fair that someone who play very casually, spend no dollars, but has many alts has bis gear???
What I have said all along, if they want to do the "RP is super expensive game" - fine by me, but players need a way to get TOP TIER (comparable) gear by PLAYING the game.
That's not the plan.
The plan is, that players are able to get GOOD ENOUGH gear by playing the game as a F2P player. At least it seems self-evident that this is the plan.
It is not that hard to get to purple quality on all artifacts and artifact equipment, even on multiple characters. And that is all that is required to do all of PVE. It is no coincidence that the RP barrier really shoots upward once you get past purple, and not earlier than that.
You only get TOP TIER gear, within 1 or 2 modules' time, by spending money. That is the monetization plan, to exploit certain players' obsessive desire to go all the way to the top, even when it is totally not necessary or required for anything. To the extent that 'high-end' PVP players feel compelled to get all their gear to legendary - well, all the better from PWE's point of view!
Now I'll be honest, I've gotten my artifact mainhand on my CW to legendary, even though I know it's not necessary for PVE. So I am part of the target audience as well. But I've managed to do it without buying any botted RP from the AH, not spending all day every day in farming foundries, and without spending real life money on RP. But I would only do that for one character, I would never do that for all of them. It's just too much.
I go back and forth on this. But until mod6 arrives, all we have is farm tia for linu for boons and collect RP any way we can for artis.
Totally disregarding MoD6. The endgame was pretty much farm RP to lvl arti.
Itts the lack of content and lack of vision of direction of the game, is why many players put so much emphasis on lvling Artis to BIS; its all there is to do, other than run TIA non stop for linu.
MoD6 I hope will relieve this a bit.
I agree pointsman that leggy is eomething not needed, but its all alot of players have to do; so thats why emphasis on it is so largely placed.
Again I hope MoD6 gives us better, quality, time consuming goals and overall better direction.
That is the monetization plan, to exploit certain players' obsessive desire to go all the way to the top, even when it is totally not necessary or required for anything. To the extent that 'high-end' PVP players feel compelled to get all their gear to legendary - well, all the better from PWE's point of view!
Yes the RP grind was their monetization plan, anyone who has played any f2p MMORPG knows every one has some type of refinement system that they heavily monetize after their gamble boxes.
But alot of those other games refinement does not have such a heavy emphasis on it, and there are other activities like actual "raiding" where you can work to improve your character.
You dont only see issues with RP, you also see threads like, where is the content, what do I do now, why is PVP so bad, it almost all falls squarely on such an emphasis on RP, or moreso the way the game funnels you down that path. Direction, vision, alternate paths is where they went wrong.
I like the crafting idea they have for the fomorion/dread, gives an alternate path, doesnt funnel you down the RP train. Things like this I think will help, but up till MoD6, there are/were/will be serious issues; these threads wouldnt become the longest/most viewed threads if they werent a point of contention.
And the problem is the metrics. As long as hardcore PvPer continue to pay to refine their stuff all the way to the top, it's not going to stop.
You say one thing, but do another. Their metrics aren't showing there's a problem, because people are obviously participating in the RP process.
Again I think this is completely flawed because the "hardcore" pvpers are not paying Cryptic for the gear. They bought it with AD from the AH when RP was not bound
NOW its bound but players already have it. Also most "hardcore pvpers" have already realized the massinve AD sink each and every module so MOST of the people in our guild have a profession/leadership army. Thus generate 100-500k+ a day and have amassed millions of AD just waiting for module 6 to rinse and repeat.
The second mod 6 drops and we learn how to get all the artifact equip, I know a handful of people that will have orange gear right away (lvl 70 versions) same with artifacts (maxed). Do you think even a non-casual player can do this? No.
Its because we have had time+knowledge. Module 6 for "us" began 3 months ago after we all got orange gear and had nothing to spend AD on... So we saved... For the next module.
All this system does is creates a top "tier" PVP group of "haves" that have figured out ways to get stuff for free over time - via professions. Then you have another group thats smaller that the last, who actually DO pay for their gear because they DONT do professions and they see what the gear does. Then you have 50 feet of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> and then the average players who just play 1-4 hours each day who havnt figured out the only way to keep up was to have started professions a year ago so you can have earned enough AD to buy leadership assets to make you more AD faster.
Most players that have orange gear didnt buy it. So Cryptic is NOT getting massive bucks of a portion of the population. There will always be players with more money than time who are willing to spend though but its not these players either that cryptic is looking at.
They just flat out fail at economics because they are not looking at the right metrics. Like the correlation of people who pay THEM and gear.
um don't give them any ideas to "fix" the economics, i.e. get them to trash leadership pls lol
I'm not a "hardcore PvPer" since the class imbalances (serves me right for making an SW my current main) and power creep and elitism has completely crushed any enthusiasm I used to have for it, but even I've been saving up AD through the 100k+ AD I get a day from leadership to prepare for mod 6. For about a month and a half now.
I'm not sure how much of that's actually going to be spent on RP though, might all go to getting the best of the newly buffed weapon enchants once all their effects have been finalized.
Just call me Rod. Member of Grievance! CW: Rodrant Turnbul TR: Rodran DC: Rodrat GWF: ROARdrant TurnBRAWL Other GWF: Shieldrant HR: Bowdrant SW: Wardrant Turnlock (my main!) OP: Paladrant (on Preview!)
0
vinceent1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,264Arc User
edited February 2015
how many people obsessed by have all orange items is out there? yes, there are some, but instead spend huge amout of money, they use leadership possibility, they already have leadership armies ....
nobody will buy that outdated heavily overpriced refinement items. no games should be lived by selling overpriced consumables, other games will catch unhappy players easily
BAN for everyone selling multiple stacksx99 of high rank refining stones on the AH right now ( oh that would be sweet, ill get front row seats and popcorn ).
Those are illegitimate, botted stones that only upset the natural flow of the game. As long as they are still available Cryptic will do erverything they can to create more and more RP sink-holes which in turn will create an even bigger gap between the bis players and the rest. Which in turn will make PVP an even bigger nightmare.
No need to be jealous just because you didn't do it. As someone who bought multiple stacks and sold some already, why should I be punished for just using the auction house? It's not my job to avoid buying from bots from an official trading place. If they wanted to take action, they should have done it in the first place before they deflated the market.
0
vinceent1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,264Arc User
That is the monetization plan, to exploit certain players' obsessive desire to go all the way to the top, even when it is totally not necessary or required for anything.
a plan? or they AGAIN release numbers about huge decrease money income???
Comments
Two characters? That's reasonable, especially if you play a lot. And I know you do. I have a few guildies who have 2 different toons pretty much kitted out in BiS Legndaries.
But people who are expecting to have multiple alts all in the best stuff is stretching it...that's my point. Do you think your average player who plays WoW a few hours a week is going to be carrying around the best in slot, high level raid gear? Not likely at all.
Can you name another MMO where it's uncommon to have even 1 character with BiS equipment, ever?
Maybe another game by the same company? :P
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
Brilliant. An elegant solution. People buying Zen with AD will see no change. People spending real money get everything half price.
EDIT: Upon reflection. This seems too easy. There must be a reason why it isn't already implemented.
I dont think anyone is expecting to have multiple characters decked out with BIS equipment. I think people are just mad that its nearly impossible to do to ONE character today. Most players that have that gear got it from unbound RP. When RP became bound it made it nearly impossible to get RP for it.
I think that even an average player who puts in some time each day CAN get top tier equipment in nearly any game. I think thats whats expected.
I mean I dont even know how players expect to get RP for gear its a joke and its not like the power difference between say "Formorian" Weapons and the Artifact Equipment is small, its GIGANTIC! The weapon damage is massively higher, the stats are massively higher and you get TWO offensive slots over 1. Thats HUGE!
What I have said all along, if they want to do the "RP is super expensive game" - fine by me, but players need a way to get TOP TIER (comparable) gear by PLAYING the game.
What this means is we should see Jewelcrafting Belts with +3 Con/Dex/STR compared to the +4 Artifact Equipment Counterpart.
We should see Necks with +6AC or +3%AP every 3-4 seconds (contrasted to the +8AC and 4every 3 Necks).
We should see weapons with nearly the same top end damage and same stat boosts just a little bit less.
We should see offhands with bonuses that match the artifact ones, and stats but maybe just missing the "bonus" stat you can reroll.
ALL of these gives an option to play the game and get comparable gear. Either that or they need to release a way to play the game to get the BIS gear.
But currently there is NOTHING comparable to ARti-Equip in sheer "power" and the only way to get it is to pay.
Because the company that is losing sales is always hesitant to drop their prices. The issue is whoever is running their economic structure is just not very well educated in the actual GAME we have.
They look at other games and say "BIS items sell for $600+ so our artifact items should be priced at $600". That is a DIFFERENT GAME.
What they NEED to look at are:
1) Total Revenue - which is down ALOT. So clearly they need a change
2) Price of RP is WAY over priced by about 200%. $8 for 150k RP? Thats just SILLY if it costs 4.5M+ for ONE item.
3) Price of smaller things like Coal Wards - these shouldnt be $8. I would say more like $5-6.
They need to focus back on MICRO transactions rather than MACRO transactions.
Things like Linu's Favor should be sold for 100 zen in the Zen Store. Do you know how many people would buy alot of those for 100 zen?
RP stones need to sell for lower zen amounts. Lesser Resonance Stones? These should sell for ~15 zen each (literally $.15) This would put an artifact equipment item (4.5MRP) at 27,000 zen which is what $270 dollars? Then double RP events would bring the price WAY down to $135. Now lets say you need 100k RP to level an item up, this would only cost you 600 zen to skip that level ($6) I know ALOT of people that would start buying more zen - ESPECIALLY if the rate was 1000:1 meaning for 600 zen it would cost 600k AD. I think id rather pay $6.
Stuff like this is exactly what needs to happen. Even my solution above for 1000:1 ZAX but cut prices in half would actually do ALOT for the game.
You could buy 150k RP for 400 zen with Blood Rubies now. Double RP would be 300k RP for 400 zen. Heck I would pay that....
and what about this control question....
is it fair that someone who play very casually, spend no dollars, but has many alts has bis gear???
That's not the plan.
The plan is, that players are able to get GOOD ENOUGH gear by playing the game as a F2P player. At least it seems self-evident that this is the plan.
It is not that hard to get to purple quality on all artifacts and artifact equipment, even on multiple characters. And that is all that is required to do all of PVE. It is no coincidence that the RP barrier really shoots upward once you get past purple, and not earlier than that.
You only get TOP TIER gear, within 1 or 2 modules' time, by spending money. That is the monetization plan, to exploit certain players' obsessive desire to go all the way to the top, even when it is totally not necessary or required for anything. To the extent that 'high-end' PVP players feel compelled to get all their gear to legendary - well, all the better from PWE's point of view!
Now I'll be honest, I've gotten my artifact mainhand on my CW to legendary, even though I know it's not necessary for PVE. So I am part of the target audience as well. But I've managed to do it without buying any botted RP from the AH, not spending all day every day in farming foundries, and without spending real life money on RP. But I would only do that for one character, I would never do that for all of them. It's just too much.
Totally disregarding MoD6. The endgame was pretty much farm RP to lvl arti.
Itts the lack of content and lack of vision of direction of the game, is why many players put so much emphasis on lvling Artis to BIS; its all there is to do, other than run TIA non stop for linu.
MoD6 I hope will relieve this a bit.
I agree pointsman that leggy is eomething not needed, but its all alot of players have to do; so thats why emphasis on it is so largely placed.
Again I hope MoD6 gives us better, quality, time consuming goals and overall better direction.
Yes the RP grind was their monetization plan, anyone who has played any f2p MMORPG knows every one has some type of refinement system that they heavily monetize after their gamble boxes.
But alot of those other games refinement does not have such a heavy emphasis on it, and there are other activities like actual "raiding" where you can work to improve your character.
You dont only see issues with RP, you also see threads like, where is the content, what do I do now, why is PVP so bad, it almost all falls squarely on such an emphasis on RP, or moreso the way the game funnels you down that path. Direction, vision, alternate paths is where they went wrong.
I like the crafting idea they have for the fomorion/dread, gives an alternate path, doesnt funnel you down the RP train. Things like this I think will help, but up till MoD6, there are/were/will be serious issues; these threads wouldnt become the longest/most viewed threads if they werent a point of contention.
Fox Stevenson - Sandblast
Oh Wonder - Without You
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas
You say one thing, but do another. Their metrics aren't showing there's a problem, because people are obviously participating in the RP process.
Again I think this is completely flawed because the "hardcore" pvpers are not paying Cryptic for the gear. They bought it with AD from the AH when RP was not bound
NOW its bound but players already have it. Also most "hardcore pvpers" have already realized the massinve AD sink each and every module so MOST of the people in our guild have a profession/leadership army. Thus generate 100-500k+ a day and have amassed millions of AD just waiting for module 6 to rinse and repeat.
The second mod 6 drops and we learn how to get all the artifact equip, I know a handful of people that will have orange gear right away (lvl 70 versions) same with artifacts (maxed). Do you think even a non-casual player can do this? No.
Its because we have had time+knowledge. Module 6 for "us" began 3 months ago after we all got orange gear and had nothing to spend AD on... So we saved... For the next module.
All this system does is creates a top "tier" PVP group of "haves" that have figured out ways to get stuff for free over time - via professions. Then you have another group thats smaller that the last, who actually DO pay for their gear because they DONT do professions and they see what the gear does. Then you have 50 feet of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> and then the average players who just play 1-4 hours each day who havnt figured out the only way to keep up was to have started professions a year ago so you can have earned enough AD to buy leadership assets to make you more AD faster.
Most players that have orange gear didnt buy it. So Cryptic is NOT getting massive bucks of a portion of the population. There will always be players with more money than time who are willing to spend though but its not these players either that cryptic is looking at.
They just flat out fail at economics because they are not looking at the right metrics. Like the correlation of people who pay THEM and gear.
I'm not a "hardcore PvPer" since the class imbalances (serves me right for making an SW my current main) and power creep and elitism has completely crushed any enthusiasm I used to have for it, but even I've been saving up AD through the 100k+ AD I get a day from leadership to prepare for mod 6. For about a month and a half now.
I'm not sure how much of that's actually going to be spent on RP though, might all go to getting the best of the newly buffed weapon enchants once all their effects have been finalized.
CW: Rodrant Turnbul
TR: Rodran
DC: Rodrat
GWF: ROARdrant TurnBRAWL
Other GWF: Shieldrant
HR: Bowdrant
SW: Wardrant Turnlock (my main!)
OP: Paladrant (on Preview!)
nobody will buy that outdated heavily overpriced refinement items. no games should be lived by selling overpriced consumables, other games will catch unhappy players easily
No need to be jealous just because you didn't do it. As someone who bought multiple stacks and sold some already, why should I be punished for just using the auction house? It's not my job to avoid buying from bots from an official trading place. If they wanted to take action, they should have done it in the first place before they deflated the market.
a plan? or they AGAIN release numbers about huge decrease money income???