Leadership change

flyingleon · July 2015

I don't like the leadership change, but I could not know if it is a right move or not. Because I could not see the consequence yet. But after reading everybody's reaction, I think it might be a problem of both the game's economy and player's attitude. You don't have your AD reward if you don't log into the game. AD is most important ingame currency. You can use it for AH and change to zen. Just think about this is the first day you playing this game, would it be such a surprise? I would not, and I would just accept it. But now everybody seems hate this move.

Don't throw into me complicated logical analysis, these theories could be right or wrong. I can not tell. I just want to change a point of view to see this action. This is such a natural requirement to earn AD. Maybe no access to leadership in gateway is not wrong, other things around this game went wrong. These wrong things also change players' attitude.

quspiv · July 2015

And you had to make yet another thread about this because...?

flyingleon · July 2015

quspiv wrote: »

And you had to make yet another thread about this because...?

Because u can discuss this with different perspectives. I see too many negative comments and doomsaying. In short, why not

therealairhead · July 2015

flyingleon wrote: »

...Just think about this is the first day you playing this game, would it be such a surprise? I would not, and I would just accept it. But now everybody seems hate this move. ...

A fair proposal, let's do that...

1. sign-up...hmm, looks fun, smooth movement and combat, lots of quests, leveling my toon to 60, got dungeons, some pvp, a little story, some user-created missions (foundry), different classes that have different strats, WOOT! Gonna tell others to play this with me!

2. lvl 60. do how many sets of 16 quests for what? What's this campaign stuff? OUCH, that hurt, not going back in there! Maybe I don't know how to play? (but I just went 60 levels? what's up?)

3. lvl 70 (assuming I survived that mind-numbing 60-70 stuff, but hey, I threw in a little witcher-3 to break the monotony, right?)... so, I made max level! Join a group to make some friends, run a dungeon! POW... that trash mob hit me for 60k?! I don't have that many hit points?! hmm... I guess I need some gear. Let's check out pvp... BOOM. "I hit that guy with everything I had and his health went down 5%, and then he 1-shot me?" (inspect). Wow, he's got all this orange stuff on, I need to get that. (run to AH)... rank 10 whatever stone is how much?! millions?! He had a pure-vorpal on, how much is that? wow... i need AD!

4. Got to get some AD... skirmishes, some quests, add it up... hmm, I made my max for the day, 24k. (get out calculator), so if I do this for 100 days, I can get a rank10, but I need 8 of those? 800 days... hmm. Need to make more AD per day, obviously! how? leadership-toons you say? ok... so fork out some real money, 10 bucks will get me 4 toons, takes 3 months to get a toon to max. (face-slap: patch comes out, new max level is 25, tyvm). Well, that's a pain, but with a browser, can hit it some during the day, and this 40 bucks got me 10-12 toons. (face-slap: can not do leadership with browser interface, tyvm). So I can log in to the game at night, and then leveling up to 25 leadership is going to take me how long? 15 months?! hmm... these guys are wack, time to play something else.

there u go... is that what you were looking for? NOTE: regarding those face-slaps in #4, if I just started today, I wouldn't know about those of course. I would just be looking at this huge brick wall: 15 months to level a leadership toon by logging into the game each night. And once leveled, after another year or so, I would be able to run dungeons (with their god-mode trash mobs), with my 'friends' (who left a long time ago and thought I was stupid for playing a game like this)!

icyphish · July 2015

they didnt remove the gateway u can still play sword coast adventure there... and its fun!

healary · July 2015

OP, first ask yourself if it is normal for players to LOG INTO THE GAME ONLINE to earn the game currencies in an mmorpg?

That's what every player in other mmorpg does. Why should offline players in this game, the one which is designed and marketed as an action based mmorpg, make any AD without actually logging into and playing the game the way it is designed and marketed for?

I don't see it stops the gateway bots though. They can just log in to the game to do leadership without the gateway. Even though they complain now but shortly you will see them log in to bot leadership.

icyphish · July 2015

And maybe they would have better in-game detector that can bust out all these bots at once...?

healary wrote: »

OP, first ask yourself if it is normal for players to LOG INTO THE GAME ONLINE to earn the game currencies in an mmorpg?

That's what every player in other mmorpg does. Why should offline players in this game, the one which is designed and marketed as an action based mmorpg, make any AD without actually logging into and playing the game the way it is designed and marketed for?

I don't see it stops the gateway bots though. They can just log in to the game to do leadership without the gateway. Even though they complain now but shortly you will see them log in to bot leadership.

mentinmindmaker · July 2015

The ZAX backlog dropped from 3M to 0 in one day

That should strongly indicate that the Gateway Leadership botting was a big force behind the excess of AD in game.

Good move.

theycallmetomu · July 2015

It can potentially work, but they definitely need to make sure that players have enough AD for the defined price items (EG Greater Marks of Power etc).

theycallmetomu · July 2015

So, here's the thing.

AD prices have gone UP not down.

Dragon eggs cost 50% more than they did a few days ago. Elemental aggregate has about doubled in price, and Unified Elementals have tripled.

Player AD amounts are restricted, but prices go up. We've officially entered Stagflation.

nasfael · July 2015

Personally I changed my organisation, and doing leadership tasks only during online play hours, the evening, and launching other skills tasks during the day seems to fit my needs.

Altough, my suggestion, to players really feeling the need to launch leadership tasks during day time, is to start using in-game bots running from your home PC. ^^

flyingleon · July 2015

theycallmetomu wrote: »

So, here's the thing.

AD prices have gone UP not down.

Dragon eggs cost 50% more than they did a few days ago. Elemental aggregate has about doubled in price, and Unified Elementals have tripled.

Player AD amounts are restricted, but prices go up. We've officially entered Stagflation.

Just want to tell u that there was a exploit of blue an purple element. I heard sometimes in game chat talked about it. If there is a zen to measure AD value, it is quite accurate. We need to wait and see.

flyingleon · July 2015

healary wrote: »

OP, first ask yourself if it is normal for players to LOG INTO THE GAME ONLINE to earn the game currencies in an mmorpg?

That's what every player in other mmorpg does. Why should offline players in this game, the one which is designed and marketed as an action based mmorpg, make any AD without actually logging into and playing the game the way it is designed and marketed for?

I don't see it stops the gateway bots though. They can just log in to the game to do leadership without the gateway. Even though they complain now but shortly you will see them log in to bot leadership.

I agree. That is exactly why I said others things went wrong like way to gain AD from dungeon and skirmish. Player are so relying on leadership and so on.

healary · July 2015

openforbreakfast wrote: »

healary wrote: »

Why should offline players in this game, the one which is designed and marketed as an action based mmorpg, make any AD without actually logging into and playing the game

Playing the game has nothing to do with professions, Leadership included and you should know that. Anyway its quite a desperate move. I was pretty much only doing gateway for some time now, waiting for Cryptic to come to their senses. If they think even for a second that logging in to manage L-ship can somehow make me or someone else dedicate time/money to this current scrapheap of a game they got another thing coming.

Since you said PLAYING the game has nothing to do with professions... you should realize you are not PLAYING the game just to do professions through the gateway. You don't even log into the game to PLAY it.

There should be no complaint since you are not PLAYING the game. You are just trying to get AD through the gateway. AD, the game's currency, should be earned through PLAYING the game but not through leadership via the gateway, botting or not.

healary · July 2015

openforbreakfast wrote: »

healary wrote: »

There should be no complaint since you are not PLAYING the game. You are just trying to get AD through the gateway. AD, the game's currency, should be earned through PLAYING the game but not through leadership via the gateway, botting or not.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda are all meaningless here. AD was made via genuine gameplay back in the CN days before Neverwinter turned into Neveragain.

Fact is bis people with AD in Neverwinter today are either heavy Leadership users, old time exploiters who never got banned or regular whales/money spenders.
Where does "playing the game" fit in the above ?

PS: also, for the record, Im not complaining. I dont care if I can or cant make 20k AD a day from my office via gateway for a game i dont play. However having spent money on this game I do feel entitled to being here to watch it burn, thats all

Every bot is innocent until proven guilty, gateway bot included. I don't think Cryptic can stereotype everybody who runs 100 leadership toons through gateway as bots, but from the perspective of an action based mmorpg (read: the O in mm"o"rpg stands for ONLINE, not OFFLINE), primary rewards should be obtained by PLAYING the game ONLINE. They did not do anything wrong by correcting the big design mistake that steered their game into an offline AD exploiting slumber instead of a supposedly fun action based mmorpg.

BTW, you left out a type of absolutely legitimate BiS people with AD who are no heavy leadership users, old time exploiters, whales or big spenders... and they are smart traders who snowballed the tiny AD Cryptic neglected to nerf into a somewhat relevant fortune by reading the market correctly.

urabask · July 2015

theycallmetomu wrote: »

So, here's the thing.

AD prices have gone UP not down.

Dragon eggs cost 50% more than they did a few days ago. Elemental aggregate has about doubled in price, and Unified Elementals have tripled.

Player AD amounts are restricted, but prices go up. We've officially entered Stagflation.

On the other hand it's actually possible to get Zen from the ZAX in less than a week now. I was just transferring my leadership AD wasn't really paying attention and it ended up actually buying zen in the 30 seconds it took to change characters.

rhoriangelus · July 2015

theycallmetomu wrote: »

So, here's the thing.

AD prices have gone UP not down.

Dragon eggs cost 50% more than they did a few days ago. Elemental aggregate has about doubled in price, and Unified Elementals have tripled.

Player AD amounts are restricted, but prices go up. We've officially entered Stagflation.

This is actually because a major exploit involving those items was closed with the patch as well. It's unrelated to Leadership.

gphxgphx · July 2015

openforbreakfast wrote: »

healary wrote: »

reading the market correctly.

Reading the market correctly is "playing the game" ? We are too far apart in our opinions it seems. No need to continue this

The game has an economy. Participating in it is part of the game. If you don't like it take the economy and currencies out of the game.

sm0ld3r · July 2015

rhoriangelus wrote: »

theycallmetomu wrote: »

So, here's the thing.

AD prices have gone UP not down.

Dragon eggs cost 50% more than they did a few days ago. Elemental aggregate has about doubled in price, and Unified Elementals have tripled.

Player AD amounts are restricted, but prices go up. We've officially entered Stagflation.

This is actually because a major exploit involving those items was closed with the patch as well. It's unrelated to Leadership.

That may be true, but prices still won't come down. The real bots with 100ds - 1000ds of leadership toons just use in game bot programs to run leadership. This doesn't change a thing.

Make no mistake, this was strictly targeted at the folks with 10-20 toons getting enough AD to get by with Leadership using their smartphones at work. Their hope is that these folks will now start spending money. The real bots were never going to spend money anyway.

theycallmetomu · July 2015

Ahh, so resources were artifically kept low then.

SHOULD mean that the shirt/pants/rings I sell will increase in price. But they're simultaneously hobbling player astral diamonds acquisition, so not sure if that'll work.

gom8 · July 2015

theycallmetomu wrote: »

Ahh, so resources were artifically kept low then.

SHOULD mean that the shirt/pants/rings I sell will increase in price. But they're simultaneously hobbling player astral diamonds acquisition, so not sure if that'll work.

not sure they were kept artificially low, it was just as more people found out about the exploit more used it and so more were on the market and everyone tried to undercut the next lowest person, until they announced the incoming fix, then everyone flipped out and bought it all back up or canceled sales to sit on it till "later"..

I also agree (and have said the same thing) with previous posts that said the leadership change will not hurt the professional exploiters, just the casual one OR the people who used a smartphone/tablet/computer from office/home/road/etc, and i don't think it will hurt the "ad" market much, or for at LEAST 6 months if any, also if it DOES do what some propose which is lower the AD to zen ratio, all that may end up doing is pushing players to go to the pro exploiters to buy AD (unless they up the price tons in according with AD value change vs Zen)

on that note, i was shocked to see the AD to zen ratio locked at 500, i have suspected for awhile that it should be around 1500-2000 ad per zen (if not more).. that actually was a bonus/encouragement to the spam sellers, because they could WAY WAY undercut that, and the way to tansfer AD (via AH) is soooooo difficult to track for developers, would of been better to just allow us to trade AD, because you could look for "giant" trades to find sellers..

dragonback99 · July 2015

Well I dont know if it was the right move or not in order to get rid of the bots. I do know that they could have used some sort of image capture/code recognition in order to limit botters from doing so many. It doesn't stop individuals, but it would greatly slow down someone that would have to physically sit at the keyboard and type in the word in the distorted image onscreen.

What I do know is that I was leaning away from this game regardless. I had paid (my wife did too) for for the Ilyanbruen(sp?) expansion so I had a nifty mount on all my toons, a pet etc. So just between the two of us we dropped a hundred bucks on the game, and I bought some few times for coin in the market on a few occasions as well. Never been one to go to a botter and get any kind of coin, that just seemed needlessly foolish.

But I was pretty much at the high end nailing Tiamat a couple of times a day over a couple of months saw me outfit 3 of my toons with the gear. The latest expansion put me back at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to equipment etc, and since that time I have pretty much been logging in to do trade skills and once in awhile a quest or 3.

Being a working stiff its difficult for me to find the time to get into the game and do power sessions. It was easier before my work schedule got a tad too hectic, but now its the choice between playing a game and paying the bills, and I will definitely will pay the bills.

The gateway was very convenient for this.

My routine was to get up every day, login as I drank my coffee with my wife and do my trade skills, then hop off to work.
And yes I have 7 characters, all level 60+ and they all have leadership at 20+. That was my AD driver. If I had some short term Leadership skills I might log in from the office once or twice a day, but in all actuality the AD that you make from leadership, the good tasks anyways, are all 12+ hours. Even if I have a couple of Heroes doing it the minimum on some was 6-8 hours. Generally my workday lasts 8-9.

Never did the cell phone thing.

Now the only option I have for generating anything is to log in at home in the morning (time away from sitting with my wife and that's not going to happen), and in the evenings when I get home after work. Just what I want to do after a day of sitting in front of a computer is to be forced to log in at home just to try to keep pace with the Jones'. I probably am logging in to "play" (play being doing more than praying and tradeskills), maybe 3x a week.

I'll be uninstalling my game this evening as the trade skills were the only thing keeping me even mildly interested. I would build up enough to buy coin and I like seeing that Zen grow. I never had more than 5k or so at any time as I used to buy bags, pets, etc.

But I really am one of the people that this company would probably like to have around.

I buy once in awhile. I log in almost daily. I don't cheat or hack. I play my toons and do my thing. And I happen to be mid 40s with a 100k+ income given I am a database engineer.

My wife left the game more than a year ago. She didn't see the value after buying the expansion, a bunch of coin, gambling with keys and lock boxes.

I tend to hang on longer. But when I saw the change this morning I just sort of shrugged and took it as a sign. Shame too as I was starting to get back into it after the latest expansion.

They didn't do this to kill the bots. They did this to force people to start spending more real world cash on their game. The bots will always find a way. Heck, I have no doubt that the server farms of bots are simply logging in and out of the actual game over and over again to get the Trade Skills going. Removing the gateway doesn't stop them, its just a speed bump. They keep right on driving.

But you take away the gateway and it forces a great many casual gamers to either pony up for the things they want, or do without.

Personally I'll just find something else to do.

When someone is making it more difficult for you to enjoy yourself, just take the hint and walk away.

Because they really don't want you there to begin with.

bel1evee32 · July 2015

It is no secret that most of the money the botters&gold selling websites are from exploits or ingame bots/ reselling player's AD.

For those unaware the MAJORITY of bots running in neverwinter are in an instance called Ghost Stories.
You can literally see 60 rogues with @asdjhdaszxhc67 from the same guild there 24/7 .

If Cryptic was really motivated to root out bots think about it - Is it really so hard to get an admin to login , press O , type Ghost Stories and start banning?I have personally and I know some of my guildies too did report this ALMOST A YEAR AGO.To this date they are still running.And they are ALL bots , there are no 'legit' players there that may get hurt.

Draw your own conclusions about WHY the gateway is shut down and legit players are targeted.
Draw your own conclusions about how hard it is for someone to bot leadership ingame.

Everyone has to decide whether he will be a sheep and lend support to a company that is scamming people out of legitly invested time/AD/money/nerve by pretending we asked for it.

santralafax · July 2015

rhoriangelus wrote: »

theycallmetomu wrote: »

So, here's the thing.

AD prices have gone UP not down.

Dragon eggs cost 50% more than they did a few days ago. Elemental aggregate has about doubled in price, and Unified Elementals have tripled.

Player AD amounts are restricted, but prices go up. We've officially entered Stagflation.

This is actually because a major exploit involving those items was closed with the patch as well. It's unrelated to Leadership.

I don't recall that in the patch notes....

santralafax · July 2015

sm0ld3r wrote: »

rhoriangelus wrote: »

Make no mistake, this was strictly targeted at the folks with 10-20 toons getting enough AD to get by with Leadership using their smartphones at work. Their hope is that these folks will now start spending money. The real bots were never going to spend money anyway.

Absolutely. They have been closing off any avenue to make money and at the same time creating need to buy (health stones, anyone?). The company has new management and new devs. This is not the game we played last year.

lewstelamon01 · July 2015

Closing this so that we can keep discussion on the Gateway changes to a single thread: http://perfectworld.vanillaforums.com/discussion/1196658/put-into-perspective-the-changes-to-leadership-on-gateway#latest

Leadership change

Join the Greycloaks

Comments

Join the Greycloaks

Join the Greycloaks

Join the Greycloaks