I don't have open internet during my day. I do have my phone but I can't log into the game on my phone. All my friends quit with mod 6 but I stayed. Now, they will laugh at me. I wasted months getting leadership up on my characters. I spent all my AD on blue leaders... now I can only go into leadership once a day. Are you guys trying to run out all the players or you just want to get rid of the players who don't spend cash for what they want?
They say it will only be down for a little while but from my experience of other games they prob mean that it will not be reinstated. No leadership in Gateway means less players and guess what less player mean less people actually buying zen ( I was one of them )
So you are going to kill the Leadership profession to prevent AD income generation. That is what it comes down to. Basically you are asking us to believe you are trying to help, but with your track record, what is actually going thru peoples minds is that you are trying to squeeze more money out of us thru the zen market.
You say you want to do something about bots. How about doing something about the bots that stand around in a spot and constantly harvest resources. Or bots that stand in a spot doing the same combat rotations for hours while enemy patrols move by them. How about doing something about the gold bots on the chat channels. I can think of half a dozen ways to deal with any of these and I am an old, past my prime, programmer/database admin. That says a lot about the inability of your own coders and database admins. You are using databases? You do know how to code within the database? You know how to use triggers and such? I hope so.
I really don't see the game lasting long. But maybe that's what you are trying for. You've made your money now it's time to drive people away so you can stop supporting the game. I don't know. I'll hang around to see if player input has any effect here and if you show any motivation and innovation in dealing with existing problems. But if something doesn't happen soon, I'll be moving on to greener pastures. BTW .. I most certainly will not be putting any more money into the game.
The game could remove bots from gateway altogether if a Captcha was required in order to access the professions webpage. Then on an hourly basis it could be required to recomplete the captcha. I've done web design and the gateway setup is impressive so I'd imagine a captcha wouldn't be too difficult to implement. As an additional bonus the captcha could be D&D related (Dice Rolls?) I don't know if this will be implemented but I really like using gateway legitimately, it's one of the things that makes neverwinter unique. Make these cheaters gtfo outta here. B)
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bigredbrentMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 155Arc User
honestly if they have "other plans" how about waiting till you have those "other plans" ready and implementing them instead of just going all hatchet on it, considering how long leadership has been "botted" or "exploited" or whatever on the gateway, this seems like.. it is a little late and extreme????
I urge you to reconsider this change. You need help in coming up with a solution to the problem, LAY OUT THE PROBLEM AS YOU SEE IT AND ASK THE COMMUNITY FOR SUGGESTIONS. Contrary to what zone chat makes it appear, there are some very smart folks who play the game and would love to see it stay around. Don't keep shafting the folks who like your game...ultimately, you guys are the ones who end up suffering.
You will never get rid of botters or the Black Market that has arisen around Neverwinter through prohibition.
Making it more difficult for normal players to earn AD and RP only increases the demand forcing loyal players into
the hands of Black Marketeers.
There is so much truth to this statement it deserves being quoted until it finally sinks in.
This is going to be a gold sellers dream come true, when players have no other viable way to get AD other than paying a fortune for ZEN, or buying it for a fraction of the cost from a gold seller.
Post edited by bigredbrent on
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inyawayupdeepMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 206Arc User
If you are dead set on doing this, why not try this; First get rid of rough astral diamonds entirely, just make them all normal AD. Next put the dungeon running back in the game, it's what everyone wanted to do when they started playing, do this by increasing the salvage rates ten fold to get players doing the dungeons. Make sure every person get a reward that they can salvage for profit or would actually want to use or sell, quit binding everything, and the things you do bind only bind one way, players shouldn't have to lug around three versions of the same item.
Next to make sure your out in front of the inevitable boot fest that's going to occur from top geared players trying run dungeons at full speed by getting rid of weaker players, eliminate kicking entirely, allow dropouts to happen but give short CD period to discourage it. Drop disconnected players automatically and replace immediately. Drop players AFK for two minutes same way so runs won't fail, increase item level scores for entry into epics so the high geared players won't pull their hair out. And for the love of Pete please open up more dungeons. You could also and will need to do the similar types of things in skirmishes and PVP.
Frankly speaking, I think your making a big mistake to do this now especially when you have so many other things in the game that need your full attention, but if you insist on going ahead with this, you better have a plan, this game's continued success is already in question.
I'll skip the cynical rant, as many others above have already hit all the sly/unconscious/disingenuous motivations behind this move. Let me focus on constructive input:
I'm a working dad, I get a couple hours of play time at night after the kids go to bed, and I use the gateway during the workday to check in on my professions tasks, most of which are, of course, Leadership. Yes, I need a way to bring in AD since I'm not always on when Skirmish Hour or Dungeon Hour are happening. True, I am a fringe user, statistically, but I do drop a $20 into Zen a couple times/year.
So, how to stymie the Bots? How about using a Turing test or Captcha when logging in or switching between characters on the Gateway? Problem friggin' solved. You can send me $50 via PayPal for the consulting fee..
Every time you jack with the AD system, you're only motivating the Bot farmers further by making the stakes greater.
Ancient Spirits officer
NW-DM9Pj62ZK 'Bear with Me' NW-DOPPZAYKQ 'Retirement Plans' NW-DKJMLS8OQ 'Sleepy in Cea Tull'
Usually I don't post as I'm what's considered a lurker, but this time I realy can't remain silent. It has been said many times in this thread already but this might be the magical drop.
I have a job, I work, and at work I manage to reset my professions in order to keep my toon more or less on par, I am also a user who purchased quite a bit of zen, some of which I transferred into AD, all money for cryptic as I don't use 3rd party websites or anything like that.
This descision is really poor in my opinion; I understand you want to combat botters and Neverwinter is your game, you can do with it as you please, but know I will not be buying any more Zen untill this is reversed.
This is painful. Not quite as painful as the expansion adding 0 new dungeons, actually reducing the number of end game dungeons, or removing all the BoE epic gear from endgame dungeons (making it much harder to come by useful stuff to auction), or failing to fix the Icewind Dale PVP bug that's been around since Icewind Dale PVP was introduced... but painful nonetheless.
To be clear: The best way to make AD in the game has long been leadership. Spending an hour or hours managing multiple toons with high level leadership generates more AD than just about anything you can do on a single toon. This is tied intrinsically to the daily AD cap, ensuring individuals with single toons can never hope to compete with those with multiple toons. You mention more 'Double AD events' - honestly, you could make every day a 100x AD event day, and a single tooned character would still be grossly limited to the 24k AD that single toon can refine.
Also, if (and this is altogether conjecture on my part) the concern is that AD is too often used to purchase Zen, one could CERTAINLY change the AD/Zen cap (exchange rates in any real, viable economy are not fixed).
Very odd priorities. Very odd underlying logic to game mechanics / ties to economic models.
They have plenty of time to turn off dungeons and disable stuff, but where are the fixes?
What will they shut down and not fix next? I know devs, how about you fix an entire race in the game and shut the race down until Hell freezes over?
I happen to like playing my games on Facebook and it was so easy to pop over and collect my stuff and once a day just like I do with Farmville. "Dungeons and Dragons" is like "Pants and Shirt", they work together. So far you have eliminated almost everything we love about this game.
I am going to be revolutionary, I am going to start a campaign in protest, I am going to stop wearing my pants!! Yes my characters will run about without pants in game, just like Juan Peron's shirtless union, but with no pants. Put the stuff back in the game and I will put my pants back on!
I think this will be the last straw for me and others tbh. Now I wasn't one to try and make 100k+ AD thru the gateway each day, I used it to assist in the levelling of my chars and get things like chests and refining stones, which had made leadership more useful than it was in the past. Since I only play on the weekends and days off I used gateway while at work and during weekdays, so now we can't do that with leadership...they r slowly killing off the few good parts of this game for me... However I hear that FFXIV is a good alternative...
This is another in a series of well intentioned and poorly thought out changes to "fix" the economy. This change WILL reduce the amount of AD in circulation. It WILL lower AH prices on items. And while those intentions are good (although I seriously doubt they are motivated by anything other than trying to get more of our IRL money into investing in Zen). It will ALSO make Gateway essentially useless for most dedicated players who already have their Professions maxed. And, worst of all, it appears to us to be another giant EFF YOU to your players.
Over the past few months, you've decimated the ability to progress gear. You killed the drop rate of refinement items for reasons that are unfathomable and were never explained. Then you made a snap change without considering the consequences and made it WAY TOO easy. Then you hamstrung it again...Slap ouch. You raised the time it takes to complete leadership tasks to effectively make them less profitable....slap ouch. You made the best PvP gear in the game (the stuff that takes weeks of dedicated effort to grind out AND waste tons of resources investing in Black Ice to level 5 to get and make) and you GIVE IT AWAY. Now you decide to make the gateway a much less useful tool for those of us who access it from work to try to get AD. You guys are making some AMAZINGLY poor decisions from a PR and gameplay perspective. Coupled with your inability to produce well planned, tested and executed updates, you guys should be bending over backwards to keep folks happy, NOT alienating your core.
What this change won't do is stop farming from the professionals. They will simply modify the tools they have been using in other MMOs for years will now consume even more server resources by constantly logging in and out to tend to their farms. You think the daily evening lag spikes are bad now? imagine them around the clock as the servers are treated to a steady load of mindless bots logging in, logging out, logging in, logging out...
I urge you to reconsider this change. You need help in coming up with a solution to the problem, LAY OUT THE PROBLEM AS YOU SEE IT AND ASK THE COMMUNITY FOR SUGGESTIONS. Contrary to what zone chat makes it appear, there are some very smart folks who play the game and would love to see it stay around. Don't keep shafting the folks who like your game...ultimately, you guys are the ones who end up suffering.
I cannot say it any better than this. Thanks to forgottenshado for writing something which has so much value that it bears reiterating over and over again. However, I am totally convinced that PWE does not listen or care about its user community, so sadly I believe we will never see anything truly competent from them. I'm off the PWE planet.
Also.. just thought of something. How do they even know these "botters" they seek to vanquish
aren't just really dedicated players? Sure, there may be SOME scammers among them who try to
fetch a pretty penny with it. But is THAT so bad? Some games actually thrived from being able
to sell your ingame stuff for real money.
Modified idea:
- Make selling AD/items legal. Claim a small part of the money as tax or something <as seen in AH>
- Queue-Option in Gateway to give everyone the same chances of keeping up with the game by making the characters automatically harvest and restart the tasks they did before. Or, alternatively, make the players setup a plan for each character what to do for how many times.
- STOP releasing ever more powerful stuff. You're walking on the same spot, since older equipment becomes obselete.
Add new content to play through, still on a playable difficulty level. Raise the max levels if you have to. But do NOT mindlessly release new enchantments, equipment, stuff.
- As many here mentioned, bound items can't be part of the economy. See the first point, if you could earn items and sell them for real money, not only players would become diehard dedicated to the game, you'd also earn your pretty penny from it. Some even might invest the money they made back into the game. Even if selling them for real money would be no option, being able to put them into AH would still help.
I am severely disappointed in this. I have three characters with Leadership at 20, none at 25, four somewhere in the teens, and one with Leadership at one. I stopped playing some time before Elemental Evil came out, and recently returned. I've been slowly leveling up through the 60-70 content, first on my main (currently 66) and eventually on my other characters (all 61 now thanks to invoking). I've been working on my profession tasks in the mean-time, and I'm able to have Gateway open on a second monitor while I do other things when I have no time to actually log in to the game.
When my four characters working on Leadership suddenly couldn't, I was very confused. In particular because Gateway just says "No data available in table" and nothing else. I thought it was a bug at first, hoping it would be resolved on its own.
At the very least, please put some kind of notification within Gateway explaining that Leadership is currently unavailable outside of the game interface.
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treesclimberMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,161Arc User
Nooooooooo untill now i was seeling footman and i just had to login 18 to 18 hours -.-" now everybody will sell them.
I agree with most of the sentiments expressed here. Botters will continue to do in-game botting, and the rest of us normal players will just get frustrated at how hard it is to make AD.
I've been playing 2 years and have spent almost $200 but I realize now anything I do to improve my character will be futile, since the next mod will add a year of grind to get the next BIS <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
Give us something to explore, puzzles to solve, castles to build. Not just a Refinement Treadmill with inadequate running shoes.
1° Reduce Drasticaly the Refine Drops.
2° Make EVERYTHING bound so players cant sell anything on market to produce AD.
3° Create new BiS Refinable Equips Every mod to players expend ad in things that gonna be useless.
4° Turn Artifact Drop Rate From Dungeons and HEs Realy Low.
5° Remove Leadership From the Gateway to destroy their way of lvling it up without log on the game.
Its just me that noticed this game have been goin in an extremly pay to win path?
I hope the NW Team go back with that last decision or probably we gonna see TONS of playeable bots on PE and TONS of honestly players quiting.
if you want that go to wow were everything is bound I hav ebeen here since after beta and now the game is ready to be shut down because of this
1° Reduce Drasticaly the Refine Drops.
2° Make EVERYTHING bound so players cant sell anything on market to produce AD.
3° Create new BiS Refinable Equips Every mod to players expend ad in things that gonna be useless.
4° Turn Artifact Drop Rate From Dungeons and HEs Realy Low.
5° Remove Leadership From the Gateway to destroy their way of lvling it up without log on the game.
Its just me that noticed this game have been goin in an extremly pay to win path?
I hope the NW Team go back with that last decision or probably we gonna see TONS of playeable bots on PE and TONS of honestly players quiting.
if you want that go to wow were everything is bound I hav ebeen here since after beta and now the game is ready to be shut down because of this
Already seeing playable bots on NWO, the server is getting loaded with lag and rubberbanding!!!
New player here, playing for about a month or so. Level 14 trickster rogue. Level 5 leadership. I work 12 hours a day 5 days a week. With an hour drive one way. I had been using gateway on my breaks. Maybe it's because I am new and low level but I had been using copper from leadership to level other professions. Never really minded the astral diamonds gain. So now that plan has been nixed.
I understand the urge of fighting botters, I really do, and this is something that has happened in all of the games I've ever played. That said, I don't think this is the solution, I'm sure that like myself, many of us didn't bot this game, however, we were doing most of our leadership tasks through the gateway.
I play on a daily basis, I'm part of a ver active guild and every day we do epic dungeons & skirmishes as well as campaigns, but still, I can't spend all of my day with the game open, I have to go to work, I have an AFK life as I'm sure all of us do, and taking leadership out of the gateway stops people like me from getting AD from my pc or phone when I'm at work or attending anything not related to the game.
I honestly believe that the solution is not to create more in-game opportunities but to bring back the leadership profession to the gateway, now, since you guys want to fight off botters, how about the leadership profession in the gateway gives less AD? I think that would actually make sense and would result in botters not making as much AD as real hard working people.
Let's make the subject of the petition or vote, as it passes all boundaries already. Again under the rink got all the players, they think that we are the flesh?
Comments
You say you want to do something about bots. How about doing something about the bots that stand around in a spot and constantly harvest resources. Or bots that stand in a spot doing the same combat rotations for hours while enemy patrols move by them. How about doing something about the gold bots on the chat channels. I can think of half a dozen ways to deal with any of these and I am an old, past my prime, programmer/database admin. That says a lot about the inability of your own coders and database admins. You are using databases? You do know how to code within the database? You know how to use triggers and such? I hope so.
I really don't see the game lasting long. But maybe that's what you are trying for. You've made your money now it's time to drive people away so you can stop supporting the game. I don't know. I'll hang around to see if player input has any effect here and if you show any motivation and innovation in dealing with existing problems. But if something doesn't happen soon, I'll be moving on to greener pastures. BTW .. I most certainly will not be putting any more money into the game.
https://www.google.com/recaptcha
Pretty much sums this up exactly.....
Yes please!
There is so much truth to this statement it deserves being quoted until it finally sinks in.
This is going to be a gold sellers dream come true, when players have no other viable way to get AD other than paying a fortune for ZEN, or buying it for a fraction of the cost from a gold seller.
Next to make sure your out in front of the inevitable boot fest that's going to occur from top geared players trying run dungeons at full speed by getting rid of weaker players, eliminate kicking entirely, allow dropouts to happen but give short CD period to discourage it. Drop disconnected players automatically and replace immediately. Drop players AFK for two minutes same way so runs won't fail, increase item level scores for entry into epics so the high geared players won't pull their hair out. And for the love of Pete please open up more dungeons. You could also and will need to do the similar types of things in skirmishes and PVP.
Frankly speaking, I think your making a big mistake to do this now especially when you have so many other things in the game that need your full attention, but if you insist on going ahead with this, you better have a plan, this game's continued success is already in question.
I'm a working dad, I get a couple hours of play time at night after the kids go to bed, and I use the gateway during the workday to check in on my professions tasks, most of which are, of course, Leadership. Yes, I need a way to bring in AD since I'm not always on when Skirmish Hour or Dungeon Hour are happening. True, I am a fringe user, statistically, but I do drop a $20 into Zen a couple times/year.
So, how to stymie the Bots? How about using a Turing test or Captcha when logging in or switching between characters on the Gateway? Problem friggin' solved. You can send me $50 via PayPal for the consulting fee..
Every time you jack with the AD system, you're only motivating the Bot farmers further by making the stakes greater.
NW-DM9Pj62ZK 'Bear with Me'
NW-DOPPZAYKQ 'Retirement Plans'
NW-DKJMLS8OQ 'Sleepy in Cea Tull'
I have a job, I work, and at work I manage to reset my professions in order to keep my toon more or less on par, I am also a user who purchased quite a bit of zen, some of which I transferred into AD, all money for cryptic as I don't use 3rd party websites or anything like that.
This descision is really poor in my opinion; I understand you want to combat botters and Neverwinter is your game, you can do with it as you please, but know I will not be buying any more Zen untill this is reversed.
To be clear: The best way to make AD in the game has long been leadership. Spending an hour or hours managing multiple toons with high level leadership generates more AD than just about anything you can do on a single toon. This is tied intrinsically to the daily AD cap, ensuring individuals with single toons can never hope to compete with those with multiple toons. You mention more 'Double AD events' - honestly, you could make every day a 100x AD event day, and a single tooned character would still be grossly limited to the 24k AD that single toon can refine.
Also, if (and this is altogether conjecture on my part) the concern is that AD is too often used to purchase Zen, one could CERTAINLY change the AD/Zen cap (exchange rates in any real, viable economy are not fixed).
Very odd priorities. Very odd underlying logic to game mechanics / ties to economic models.
What will they shut down and not fix next? I know devs, how about you fix an entire race in the game and shut the race down until Hell freezes over?
I happen to like playing my games on Facebook and it was so easy to pop over and collect my stuff and once a day just like I do with Farmville. "Dungeons and Dragons" is like "Pants and Shirt", they work together. So far you have eliminated almost everything we love about this game.
I am going to be revolutionary, I am going to start a campaign in protest, I am going to stop wearing my pants!! Yes my characters will run about without pants in game, just like Juan Peron's shirtless union, but with no pants. Put the stuff back in the game and I will put my pants back on!
I cannot say it any better than this. Thanks to forgottenshado for writing something which has so much value that it bears reiterating over and over again. However, I am totally convinced that PWE does not listen or care about its user community, so sadly I believe we will never see anything truly competent from them. I'm off the PWE planet.
Also.. just thought of something. How do they even know these "botters" they seek to vanquish
aren't just really dedicated players? Sure, there may be SOME scammers among them who try to
fetch a pretty penny with it. But is THAT so bad? Some games actually thrived from being able
to sell your ingame stuff for real money.
Modified idea:
- Make selling AD/items legal. Claim a small part of the money as tax or something <as seen in AH>
- Queue-Option in Gateway to give everyone the same chances of keeping up with the game by making the characters automatically harvest and restart the tasks they did before. Or, alternatively, make the players setup a plan for each character what to do for how many times.
- STOP releasing ever more powerful stuff. You're walking on the same spot, since older equipment becomes obselete.
Add new content to play through, still on a playable difficulty level. Raise the max levels if you have to. But do NOT mindlessly release new enchantments, equipment, stuff.
- As many here mentioned, bound items can't be part of the economy. See the first point, if you could earn items and sell them for real money, not only players would become diehard dedicated to the game, you'd also earn your pretty penny from it. Some even might invest the money they made back into the game. Even if selling them for real money would be no option, being able to put them into AH would still help.
- Fix the game before expanding it.
: |
Do you really think they could ever stop bots from exploiting something you run in a browser?
When my four characters working on Leadership suddenly couldn't, I was very confused. In particular because Gateway just says "No data available in table" and nothing else. I thought it was a bug at first, hoping it would be resolved on its own.
At the very least, please put some kind of notification within Gateway explaining that Leadership is currently unavailable outside of the game interface.
I've been playing 2 years and have spent almost $200 but I realize now anything I do to improve my character will be futile, since the next mod will add a year of grind to get the next BIS <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
Give us something to explore, puzzles to solve, castles to build. Not just a Refinement Treadmill with inadequate running shoes.
if you want that go to wow were everything is bound I hav ebeen here since after beta and now the game is ready to be shut down because of this
Cheers,
MacAran
Already seeing playable bots on NWO, the server is getting loaded with lag and rubberbanding!!!
I play on a daily basis, I'm part of a ver active guild and every day we do epic dungeons & skirmishes as well as campaigns, but still, I can't spend all of my day with the game open, I have to go to work, I have an AFK life as I'm sure all of us do, and taking leadership out of the gateway stops people like me from getting AD from my pc or phone when I'm at work or attending anything not related to the game.
I honestly believe that the solution is not to create more in-game opportunities but to bring back the leadership profession to the gateway, now, since you guys want to fight off botters, how about the leadership profession in the gateway gives less AD? I think that would actually make sense and would result in botters not making as much AD as real hard working people.
PS: Sorry about my english