I don't feel like the dungeons need to be lowered in difficulty, BUT, I feel like we DEFINITELY need some dungeons to get decent gear in between T1 and T2. The problem isn't really that the dungeons are too hard, it's that getting gear to do them adequately is too hard.
I still feel like maybe refinement should be done away with entirely also in favor of a system that works like XP for artifacts/artifact gear - kill some mobs, get a small amount of XP for each artifact you have equipped. Ditto for quests, skirmishes, dungeons, PVP. Level up your artifacts by actually PLAYING.
I totally agree that gear should XP lvl not RP lvl, but then cryptic would have a hard time milking that. That's why they went the RP route, to milk the RP from Zen buyers.
That's what they mean about botters being a "problem for the economy", they don't mean game economy or AH economy, they mean cryptics wallet economy.
Botters are preserving their net value through alternate currencies like GMoP that cryptic is having a problem manipulating. Botters are like RL gold/silver hoarders. They buy things that have a bottlenecking effect to them or have intrensic value and buy/sell/hoard them.
The hoarders are just like real gold/silver hoarders, trying to weather the storm. The AD is manipulated by Cryptic, they want to avoid being revalued between each Mod.
The botters that are actually trading instead of hoarding are just trying to reach a higher tier of currency like rare AH items etc. rather than vendor items that Cryptic could still manipulate if with a bit more effort.
So stuff happened to Leadership and everyone has an opinion but, how about a new approach.
Instead of punishing people who do nothing...
REWARD people who do SOMETHING.
............................................................
Have Bind to Account armour / weapons / enchantments / refinement items that drop from bosses / minibosses / small chance of dropping when killing other players.
bring back armour sets, give us a reason to do everything in the game, maybe parts of a set from professions, parts from pve, parts from foundry.
.........................................................
TL:DR: Make harder content give better rewards, so bots can't do it.
I agree with everything you said OP (cut for space). I remember when i first started playing this game in late beta, saw how they had set up the shop, and my gut immediately twisted. bad design. bad implementation. and then they created a means to set up automatic processes to gain the very currency that their game/shop depended on. They are literally giving people more incentive to NOT play the game then they are to play the game. and play it well.
and to top it off, there's very little in the shop that's interesting enough to get people to buy. The games been out for what, a year or two? and they still only have about a half dozen costumes in the shop (and horrid looking ones at that). I think that if they actually made a customization process that was half worth it (not some slap on global cover your character kinda thing), and added suits of customizable armor by the dozens in the cash shop, people would buy. I've been in a few MMO's that do this, and it works.
And they need to take the gear/rewards/progression out of the currency stream. I stopped playing the game when I first hit 60 because I could buy whatever i needed off the AH. That's it. no need to run the irritatingly designed instances at the time, as the only thing i needed higher gear for was those same instances. I bought it...and game was over for me. Crafting did very little that was rewarding, aside from the AD gain of course (and we are now seeing where that bad design has put them).
end game needs to be focused around progression that has to be played to achieve. everything of value should be Bind to Character, period. there can be some optional gear, but the important stuff you should have to play for, not pay for.
One of the best f2p models I've seen yet was Marvel heroes. nothing you could sell came from the cash shop (you can't really sell anything in that game anyways). all rewards that were relevant to your character were found BY YOU. cash shop items were either customization ONLY (like new hero costumes or pets), or they were temporary buffs that only helped you a bit (exp boost, increased item find, etc). the only game pertinent items that were in the shop that you couldn't get anywhere else was storage space...and even then they had in game specials where you could get a bit more.
And it worked great. I spent plenty in the shop, as they had plenty of cool stuff in there. bag space was they're only crutch...but honestly, I didn't mind paying for it in that game. It felt like i was giving back to the company for making a great game.
That's what I think Cryptic doesn't get. I don't feel like Im giving back...I feel like i have to squeeze and eek out every last AD i can out of this horribly designed system. you don't get people to buy more by forcing them into it. they usually just leave the game. You make the game fun enough that people WANT to play, and then make the stuff in the store interesting enough that they WANT to buy.
EDIT: quick note on bots. for people that are saying "bot's will find a way" yeah...if there's a reason for them to bot something, they will bot it. Other "smart" MMO' companies are figuring this stuff out (they did years ago, not sure why Cryptic is so slow to catch up), and they resolve it by REMOVING THE IMPORTANT GEAR FROM THE CASH SYSTEM. bind on character, bind on account. simple as that. gear should be Bind on Character (it's bound when you get it), and mods/gems/ upgradables should be Bind on Account.
when gear is BoC, it not only eliminates the bots who would otherwise grind for said gear to sell, but it also reduces ninja looting. if gear sells for <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> silver at the vendor, and you can't put it up on the AH....people stop botting for it. When gear you buy at special vendors is bound to you the second it hits your bags, there's very little reason to spend more AD then you need to upgrade your stuff.
When upgradable's are BoA, then it opens possibilities to migrate stuff between your toons, but eliminates the need to farm them in droves, beyond what you need. then they adjust drop rates to take this into account, and reward higher tier play by dropping more of them.
This isn't rocket science. if you look at a dozen other MMO's that have done this well, it's pretty obvious what works and what doesn't. you don't get bot's to stop botting by closing down aspects of gameplay for players, you stop bot's by eliminating their market. if nothings sellable...nothings bottable.
Post edited by temjiu on
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I'm actually kind of surprised NWO is still running, but I don't know what their profit margins (or lack thereof) are like.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I like being a solo player. One of the great things about NWO's 1-60 content is that it's easy to solo. There's no pressure to join a guild and do dungeons, you can handle things yourself. "It's a Mass MULTIPLAYER online role playing game-you're enjoying the game wrong!" Well, yeah, it's an MMO.
But as I've made fun of earlier, I much would have preferred a Neverwinter Nights 3, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on this. Plenty of people like to be able to just do their own things. And I totally understand if Cryptic/PWE/whomever doesn't want the game to appeal to those people. But you certainly can't expect such people to not complain about suggestions of making all content group content.
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
A good MMO has a little bit of something for everyone ;-)
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Yeah, but I strongly suspect that the dev team is in that "If we try and please everyone we'll please no one-ergo, we shouldn't be afraid of alienating players!" mindset (what I've called "Tough Decision Making" with deliberate capitalization).
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
But as I've made fun of earlier, I much would have preferred a Neverwinter Nights 3, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on this. Plenty of people like to be able to just do their own things. And I totally understand if Cryptic/PWE/whomever doesn't want the game to appeal to those people. But you certainly can't expect such people to not complain about suggestions of making all content group content.
The game was perfect as a NN3 until Mod 6. You could play it like NN3 or do many other things. There was a huge trove of ways to play the game. They've been narrowing this for months.
You can still solo if you are a whale or you roll up a new Paladin. Otherwise party up!
Whales get by converting cash to AD and procuring enchants, etc. Cash is king, because your hit points and all other attributes are bound to your equipment--not your character. Some people were getting around this with dragon hoard enchantments or Leadership farming--and they nuked those==just in the last 2-3 mos. They give spare coinage (RP) for the most gargantuan tasks, starting in early April. They briefly gave some decent rewards in IWD until, gasp, they found people playing for it. (Can't have that, now!)
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
Yeah, but I strongly suspect that the dev team is in that "If we try and please everyone we'll please no one-ergo, we shouldn't be afraid of alienating players!" mindset (what I've called "Tough Decision Making" with deliberate capitalization).
They've succeeded!
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
Yeah, but I strongly suspect that the dev team is in that "If we try and please everyone we'll please no one-ergo, we shouldn't be afraid of alienating players!" mindset (what I've called "Tough Decision Making" with deliberate capitalization).
Yeah, but I strongly suspect that the dev team is in that "If we try and please everyone we'll please no one-ergo, we shouldn't be afraid of alienating players!" mindset (what I've called "Tough Decision Making" with deliberate capitalization).
No, I have yet to see anyone beat a T2 without either T2 PVP gear, or nearly all maxed out except the gear. They ARE too hard. No amount of rewards are going to give most players the ability to have r11-12s, mythics, and legendaries in a reasonable time frame. T1 gear should be enough to get T2 gear. Has always been that way until this module. You get blues and do T1, get T1 and do T2, get T2 do VT and MC to get T2.5. Now you get T2 to do T2. Not okay.
No, I have yet to see anyone beat a T2 without either T2 PVP gear, or nearly all maxed out except the gear. They ARE too hard. No amount of rewards are going to give most players the ability to have r11-12s, mythics, and legendaries in a reasonable time frame. T1 gear should be enough to get T2 gear. Has always been that way until this module. You get blues and do T1, get T1 and do T2, get T2 do VT and MC to get T2.5. Now you get T2 to do T2. Not okay.
The way is to make high level enchants actually drop. Then that changes everything. Drop some rank 10s/11s out there as real drops from the dungeons; that makes them actually worth doing.
Most people look at the endgame of neverwinter the wrong way. It is not about doing the dungeons to get your armor; the T2 ones are especially pretty much a waste of time once you have the ilvl 132 armor (the seal-bought ilvl 135 armor is not appreciably better than that for most classes). Running T1 dungeons/skirmishes and hoping for a rare drop (valindra set item, horn of lostmauth, black ice beholder, haarl's book, seldarine emblem) is a much better use of time.
At the end of the day, dungeons get you 4 slots - head, feet, chest, hands. Crafting gets you 4 - shirt, pants, 2 rings. SCA adventures gets you 3 - the 3 slots on your augment companion. Meanwhile, you have 4 artifact equipment slots, 4 artifact slots (which can be filled by extremely lucky dungeon/lockbox drops, or by having a bunch of level 60 chars, or more likely by buying the artifacts from the AH), and a total of 20 non-utility enchantment slots (14 on your char when the extra slots on your arti equipment are unlocked, 6 on your augment). 28 total massive RP and AD sinks for player improvement - nearly all of which provide bigger bang for your buck than upgrading your armor from T1 to T2.
Until dungeon/skirmish rewards actually reward the REAL endgame currency of Neverwinter - large amounts of RP and upper-level enchants - there is a player power gap that is not going to be realistically be bridged by newer players to the game.
The gateway bot thing is a total red herring, the worst bots are actually in game and making far more AD/RP that way than the capped 24k/day leadership.
grats, you're one of the few with a little sense.
but realy doing something about that needs gm's.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Just to reiterate, the mind-set of "you can't please enough, so people getting angry means it's working" is obviously wrong. I'm in no way endorsing the mindset that I suggested the dev team is following.
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matiagronxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 251Arc User
The game came down to these 2 simple equations:
Human Skill/Effort + Maximum Time Spent = lowest ever reward chance.
Botting Skill + Minimum Time Spent = highest reward available, no chance involved.
Your game model DOES NOT reward the player who advances/progresses and masters his class/toon. You let him high and dry (of ad). You make him grind like a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> bot for a few thousands of ad each day. You give him a slim chance to a great reward that reminds the lockbox chance and u ask of him to either invest with his time 24/7 for this lousy chance or pay 20 euros for 1 lousy million that DOESNT even get you started. How does this model is supposed to work? You dont invest in player's satisfaction, u rather transform every human being into a mindless grinding bot and u wait in the corner for the time when his mental defense will fall from the endless grind and will eventually spend some money. You couldnt think of a worst way to act towards the DnD franchise and its fans. Its really heartbreaking..
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I kind of want to reward leadership entirely, to be quite frank. Add more RP and AD generating mechanisms elsewhere. But leadership as the way players get wealth is, frankly, a failed enterprise.
you don't get people to buy more by forcing them into it. they usually just leave the game. You make the game fun enough that people WANT to play, and then make the stuff in the store interesting enough that they WANT to buy.
This. THIS is the key point that Cryptic fail to grasp. I've said it before - when it comes to stick-and-carrot, Cryptic devs only know how to use the stick.
The whole of Mod 6 is Cryptic trying to force players to play the game a single way and make them spend RL cash to make it bearable. It will never work and the end result will be an empty game and closed servers.
...from what I can see, the only "part of the game" that reliably and continually yields any time-efficient sellable stuff is Sword Coast Adventures. And even there you can have bad streaks, but the chances to hit something decently valuable - a "loyal" ring - are good enough, and the time efffort is OK-ish, too.
So maybe a) this game is intended to deconvolve into a browser game, and b) this is the true reason behind the LShip block - to free capacity on the Gateway for all those SCA players... :^/
I don't feel like the dungeons need to be lowered in difficulty, BUT, I feel like we DEFINITELY need some dungeons to get decent gear in between T1 and T2. The problem isn't really that the dungeons are too hard, it's that getting gear to do them adequately is too hard.
I still feel like maybe refinement should be done away with entirely also in favor of a system that works like XP for artifacts/artifact gear - kill some mobs, get a small amount of XP for each artifact you have equipped. Ditto for quests, skirmishes, dungeons, PVP. Level up your artifacts by actually PLAYING.
I totally agree that gear should XP lvl not RP lvl, but then cryptic would have a hard time milking that. That's why they went the RP route, to milk the RP from Zen buyers.
That's what they mean about botters being a "problem for the economy", they don't mean game economy or AH economy, they mean cryptics wallet economy.
Botters are preserving their net value through alternate currencies like GMoP that cryptic is having a problem manipulating. Botters are like RL gold/silver hoarders. They buy things that have a bottlenecking effect to them or have intrensic value and buy/sell/hoard them.
The hoarders are just like real gold/silver hoarders, trying to weather the storm. The AD is manipulated by Cryptic, they want to avoid being revalued between each Mod.
The botters that are actually trading instead of hoarding are just trying to reach a higher tier of currency like rare AH items etc. rather than vendor items that Cryptic could still manipulate if with a bit more effort.
And there's a relatively easy answer for that, too.
In addition to the aforementioned 'gain RP automatically from kills/quest", make ALL random drops of RP stones (nodes, invoking, boss drops, DH enchantments) BTA on pickup. Make the only unbound source of refinement stones lockboxes, and offer decent refining stones in the zen shop. By decent, I mean if refining something all the way up takes 5 million RP points, make 1 million RP stones and sell them for... I don't know, 1000-1500 zen apiece. 50-75 dollars sounds good, considering 50 is what it costs to unlock full campaigns, boons included. Considering each person has multiple artifacts per toons, that gives them a decent income off of whales who want to level up their characters' artifacts faster.
This requires a decent chunk of money to get it to max level, but not outlandish - using just blood rubies to upgrade your MH weapon all the way, assuming you bought them in 3-packs, costs in the neighborhood of 600 dollars. This is ridiculous. People buy more stuff if you nickel and dime them. If you make stuff cheap enough that people can justify "It's only a few dollars", they will buy more than you'd get off of rich people willing to drop a ridiculous amount of money on something. This is why lockboxes are such an important income here, it's only 1.25 to open one.
But more importantly, it gives people who can't throw hundreds/thousands of dollars at it a way to just play their characters and get their artifacts upgraded gradually. World mobs around your level give the least RP, Dungeon/skirmish mobs give a little more, Bosses give the most, completing quests gives you a small amount of RP as well. It's all split equally between your equipped artifacts. They could even sell RP boosters that you can use to apply to your character, so that you gain this mob/quest based RP at a faster rate, like the XP ones.
There. They make plenty of their income off of the whales who want to upgrade their stuff now (which, less face it, are around 80-90% of a free to play MMO's income anyway) but people who are playing for free (or who can't pay nearly so much) aren't left out. PLAYING the game instead of mindless repetitive grinding of professions or skill nodes is more rewarding, and people who have less money to spend can get something decent for that money as well, inciting them to spend more than they probably would have otherwise.
Also. Offer zen in 5 dollar packs again, or even 1 dollar. It's way easier for people to justify spending that than it is 10, 20, 50 at a time - this is why Freemium games almost always have a .99 cent option in addition to their 20+ options.
How about we just get rid of RP altogether? Why do we even have a refining system really? We grind enough in this game for gear, glory, boons, etc.
Bring back the dungeons, give us a set AD amount per successful run (no kick at the end) and let us buy the upgrades to artifacts (whether weapons or sigils or whatever)? That way, we'd have a light at the end of the tunnel that WAS NOT a "freight coming our way" (props to Metallica) called the RP grind.
People would have a reason to play, whales would no longer have a huge advantage over casual or even moderately hard-core players, bots would disappear (or at the very least decline tremendously since there wouldn't be a market for RP) and players would RETURN to the game.
This would accomplish what the OP was talking about AND get players back in the game which is, I hope, what Cryptic wants.
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Since 10 bucks is a coal ward, yeah.
Which, when you get right down to it, is why Neverwinter fails, and also why Neverwinter isn't pay to win. RP costs aside, you require 10 dollars for a lesser enchant, 30 for a base level, 70 for a greater, 150 for a perfect. Don't get me started on beyond that level (because I haven't worked it out at all), and just having a perfect or transcendent or whatever enchantment is only the START of what makes a build effective.
In an ironic twist, I kind of think the game might be a bit better off if it were more pay to win-ish. Imagine if all zen prices were halved, it might be worth buying things occasionally! Instead of 25 dollar mounts, maybe 10 to 15.
Of course, the AD exchange would probably need to be revised. Double the purchasing power of the zen, you double the AD value of each zen. Though, people also need less zen for the same goods.
That's a paradox of economics, by the way. You'd think that as people's wages rise they have more incentive to work more, but on the other hand, as incomes rise, people consume more and one of the things they "consume" is leisure time.
Also. Offer zen in 5 dollar packs again, or even 1 dollar. It's way easier for people to justify spending that than it is 10, 20, 50 at a time - this is why Freemium games almost always have a .99 cent option in addition to their 20+ options.
and what could you buy with $1 worth of ZEN? everything in the store is WAY overpriced. I'm not even sure $5 would get you anything. which is why they probably start at 10
Idle companion slots. Pres wards. Some basic dyes. Lockbox keys and event currencies are just over 100. At 500 we can even get character slots, stones of health, scrolls of life, even a basic account-wide mount (green, but still). Yes, things do need to be lowered in price in the zen shop, and there's normally very little in there is less than 100 zen, though they do exist.
BUT, having a 1 dollar option for zen is still incredibly useful. Say, someone is JUST short of having enough zen to buy something they've been saving for through the exchange - or JUST short of something they've been saving for with AD. Or there's a sale on something and now it's below 100 zen. You'd see a ton of people who normally spend nothing going "Well, it's just a dollar or two, I can spend that."
Appearance changes are only 200, and you know how vain some people can get. If there was a way to spend JUST 2 dollars to get an appearance change (instead of having to spend 10 to get zen), you'd see WAY more people actually spending money on it.
Also. Offer zen in 5 dollar packs again, or even 1 dollar. It's way easier for people to justify spending that than it is 10, 20, 50 at a time - this is why Freemium games almost always have a .99 cent option in addition to their 20+ options.
and what could you buy with $1 worth of ZEN? everything in the store is WAY overpriced. I'm not even sure $5 would get you anything. which is why they probably start at 10
Idle companion slots. Pres wards. Some basic dyes. Lockbox keys and event currencies are just over 100. At 500 we can even get character slots, stones of health, scrolls of life, even a basic account-wide mount (green, but still). Yes, things do need to be lowered in price in the zen shop, and there's normally very little in there is less than 100 zen, though they do exist.
BUT, having a 1 dollar option for zen is still incredibly useful. Say, someone is JUST short of having enough zen to buy something they've been saving for through the exchange - or JUST short of something they've been saving for with AD. Or there's a sale on something and now it's below 100 zen. You'd see a ton of people who normally spend nothing going "Well, it's just a dollar or two, I can spend that."
Appearance changes are only 200, and you know how vain some people can get. If there was a way to spend JUST 2 dollars to get an appearance change (instead of having to spend 10 to get zen), you'd see WAY more people actually spending money on it.
finally some1 that know what micro transition are, lets see 10 guys spending 10$ a day =100$ not bad, 200 guys spending 2$ = 400$, as a company what do i prefer??? specially when what iam selling its nothing (bites and bit's) 0$ to make 100% profit, i wonder were the guy that set the prices on zen shop studied??? specially when we talk about MMO (meaning world economy) usa monthly income its way diferent from portugal, but both play the game, with those prices only a part of the player base can buy items with zen, i imagine some 1 playing in a country with super low income like 200$ or so hmmm should i eat this month or buy a ward... hmmm lets buy a ward... lol
maybe 1 day they realize not every1 its payed the same everywhere.
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matiagronxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 251Arc User
If the guy from portugal leaves game, the guy from usa will not have anyone to play with. The portugal guy doesnt have to pay nothin cause game is free, he plays and enjoys the game as it is, no rush on it. The USA guy will spend some cash cause he just can. Global economy 101.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
you have to account for the server maintenance costs though. Each player who doesn't spend money is a liability in terms of maintenance costs, but can also act as a draw for those that do spend money. So it's more complicated than all that.
If the guy from portugal leaves game, the guy from usa will not have anyone to play with. The portugal guy doesnt have to pay nothin cause game is free, he plays and enjoys the game as it is, no rush on it. The USA guy will spend some cash cause he just can. Global economy 101.
yes, lets see i can't spend 20$ a month, but u can spend 100$... who cares, no except that after 2 months u have all u need and u stop the cash flow... and i still under geared and i still in need of some zen items, that i cant buy with RL (no $ for PWE) and that i cant buy from u cuz theres no way to make enough ad to buy your zen item (u stop spending $, cuz i cant buy you $ items).
what the game is missing right now are items that u cant get with zen, that u can only get by playing, that u can sell to those u have the ad/zen but can't buy it strait from zen/or shops (ad Sink). the game doesn't have too much ad, to need such big and mandatory ad sinks, what the game have its all the ad in a few accounts, just there siting cuz they will not spend it on sinks cuz they dont need those sinks, and they will buy nothing from other cuz others have nothing to sell.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Even if the server is a fixed cost, your server size determines how much of a net load you can handle. As the number of players dwindles, you can reduce your server size because you don't need to handle as much traffic. Granted, this kind of thing falls under the category of long-term adjustment.
But I'm still pretty sure there are marginal costs involved in terms of bandwidth. Nothing is ever truly free you know.
Comments
I totally agree that gear should XP lvl not RP lvl, but then cryptic would have a hard time milking that. That's why they went the RP route, to milk the RP from Zen buyers.
That's what they mean about botters being a "problem for the economy", they don't mean game economy or AH economy, they mean cryptics wallet economy.
Botters are preserving their net value through alternate currencies like GMoP that cryptic is having a problem manipulating. Botters are like RL gold/silver hoarders. They buy things that have a bottlenecking effect to them or have intrensic value and buy/sell/hoard them.
The hoarders are just like real gold/silver hoarders, trying to weather the storm. The AD is manipulated by Cryptic, they want to avoid being revalued between each Mod.
The botters that are actually trading instead of hoarding are just trying to reach a higher tier of currency like rare AH items etc. rather than vendor items that Cryptic could still manipulate if with a bit more effort.
I agree with everything you said OP (cut for space). I remember when i first started playing this game in late beta, saw how they had set up the shop, and my gut immediately twisted. bad design. bad implementation. and then they created a means to set up automatic processes to gain the very currency that their game/shop depended on. They are literally giving people more incentive to NOT play the game then they are to play the game. and play it well.
and to top it off, there's very little in the shop that's interesting enough to get people to buy. The games been out for what, a year or two? and they still only have about a half dozen costumes in the shop (and horrid looking ones at that). I think that if they actually made a customization process that was half worth it (not some slap on global cover your character kinda thing), and added suits of customizable armor by the dozens in the cash shop, people would buy. I've been in a few MMO's that do this, and it works.
And they need to take the gear/rewards/progression out of the currency stream. I stopped playing the game when I first hit 60 because I could buy whatever i needed off the AH. That's it. no need to run the irritatingly designed instances at the time, as the only thing i needed higher gear for was those same instances. I bought it...and game was over for me. Crafting did very little that was rewarding, aside from the AD gain of course (and we are now seeing where that bad design has put them).
end game needs to be focused around progression that has to be played to achieve. everything of value should be Bind to Character, period. there can be some optional gear, but the important stuff you should have to play for, not pay for.
One of the best f2p models I've seen yet was Marvel heroes. nothing you could sell came from the cash shop (you can't really sell anything in that game anyways). all rewards that were relevant to your character were found BY YOU. cash shop items were either customization ONLY (like new hero costumes or pets), or they were temporary buffs that only helped you a bit (exp boost, increased item find, etc). the only game pertinent items that were in the shop that you couldn't get anywhere else was storage space...and even then they had in game specials where you could get a bit more.
And it worked great. I spent plenty in the shop, as they had plenty of cool stuff in there. bag space was they're only crutch...but honestly, I didn't mind paying for it in that game. It felt like i was giving back to the company for making a great game.
That's what I think Cryptic doesn't get. I don't feel like Im giving back...I feel like i have to squeeze and eek out every last AD i can out of this horribly designed system. you don't get people to buy more by forcing them into it. they usually just leave the game. You make the game fun enough that people WANT to play, and then make the stuff in the store interesting enough that they WANT to buy.
EDIT: quick note on bots. for people that are saying "bot's will find a way" yeah...if there's a reason for them to bot something, they will bot it. Other "smart" MMO' companies are figuring this stuff out (they did years ago, not sure why Cryptic is so slow to catch up), and they resolve it by REMOVING THE IMPORTANT GEAR FROM THE CASH SYSTEM. bind on character, bind on account. simple as that. gear should be Bind on Character (it's bound when you get it), and mods/gems/ upgradables should be Bind on Account.
when gear is BoC, it not only eliminates the bots who would otherwise grind for said gear to sell, but it also reduces ninja looting. if gear sells for <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> silver at the vendor, and you can't put it up on the AH....people stop botting for it. When gear you buy at special vendors is bound to you the second it hits your bags, there's very little reason to spend more AD then you need to upgrade your stuff.
When upgradable's are BoA, then it opens possibilities to migrate stuff between your toons, but eliminates the need to farm them in droves, beyond what you need. then they adjust drop rates to take this into account, and reward higher tier play by dropping more of them.
This isn't rocket science. if you look at a dozen other MMO's that have done this well, it's pretty obvious what works and what doesn't. you don't get bot's to stop botting by closing down aspects of gameplay for players, you stop bot's by eliminating their market. if nothings sellable...nothings bottable.
But as I've made fun of earlier, I much would have preferred a Neverwinter Nights 3, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on this. Plenty of people like to be able to just do their own things. And I totally understand if Cryptic/PWE/whomever doesn't want the game to appeal to those people. But you certainly can't expect such people to not complain about suggestions of making all content group content.
The game was perfect as a NN3 until Mod 6. You could play it like NN3 or do many other things. There was a huge trove of ways to play the game. They've been narrowing this for months.
You can still solo if you are a whale or you roll up a new Paladin. Otherwise party up!
Whales get by converting cash to AD and procuring enchants, etc. Cash is king, because your hit points and all other attributes are bound to your equipment--not your character. Some people were getting around this with dragon hoard enchantments or Leadership farming--and they nuked those==just in the last 2-3 mos. They give spare coinage (RP) for the most gargantuan tasks, starting in early April. They briefly gave some decent rewards in IWD until, gasp, they found people playing for it. (Can't have that, now!)
They've succeeded!
who are they pleasing?
Themselves...
The way is to make high level enchants actually drop. Then that changes everything. Drop some rank 10s/11s out there as real drops from the dungeons; that makes them actually worth doing.
Most people look at the endgame of neverwinter the wrong way. It is not about doing the dungeons to get your armor; the T2 ones are especially pretty much a waste of time once you have the ilvl 132 armor (the seal-bought ilvl 135 armor is not appreciably better than that for most classes). Running T1 dungeons/skirmishes and hoping for a rare drop (valindra set item, horn of lostmauth, black ice beholder, haarl's book, seldarine emblem) is a much better use of time.
At the end of the day, dungeons get you 4 slots - head, feet, chest, hands. Crafting gets you 4 - shirt, pants, 2 rings. SCA adventures gets you 3 - the 3 slots on your augment companion. Meanwhile, you have 4 artifact equipment slots, 4 artifact slots (which can be filled by extremely lucky dungeon/lockbox drops, or by having a bunch of level 60 chars, or more likely by buying the artifacts from the AH), and a total of 20 non-utility enchantment slots (14 on your char when the extra slots on your arti equipment are unlocked, 6 on your augment). 28 total massive RP and AD sinks for player improvement - nearly all of which provide bigger bang for your buck than upgrading your armor from T1 to T2.
Until dungeon/skirmish rewards actually reward the REAL endgame currency of Neverwinter - large amounts of RP and upper-level enchants - there is a player power gap that is not going to be realistically be bridged by newer players to the game.
yes thanks for the support. not.
grats, you're one of the few with a little sense.
but realy doing something about that needs gm's.
Human Skill/Effort + Maximum Time Spent = lowest ever reward chance.
Botting Skill + Minimum Time Spent = highest reward available, no chance involved.
Your game model DOES NOT reward the player who advances/progresses and masters his class/toon. You let him high and dry (of ad). You make him grind like a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> bot for a few thousands of ad each day. You give him a slim chance to a great reward that reminds the lockbox chance and u ask of him to either invest with his time 24/7 for this lousy chance or pay 20 euros for 1 lousy million that DOESNT even get you started. How does this model is supposed to work? You dont invest in player's satisfaction, u rather transform every human being into a mindless grinding bot and u wait in the corner for the time when his mental defense will fall from the endless grind and will eventually spend some money. You couldnt think of a worst way to act towards the DnD franchise and its fans. Its really heartbreaking..
The whole of Mod 6 is Cryptic trying to force players to play the game a single way and make them spend RL cash to make it bearable. It will never work and the end result will be an empty game and closed servers.
Aelar Hawkwind - Archer
Karrin Feywinter - Mistress of Flame
Errin Duskwalker - Executioner
Darquess - Soulbinder
So maybe a) this game is intended to deconvolve into a browser game, and b) this is the true reason behind the LShip block - to free capacity on the Gateway for all those SCA players... :^/
And there's a relatively easy answer for that, too.
In addition to the aforementioned 'gain RP automatically from kills/quest", make ALL random drops of RP stones (nodes, invoking, boss drops, DH enchantments) BTA on pickup. Make the only unbound source of refinement stones lockboxes, and offer decent refining stones in the zen shop. By decent, I mean if refining something all the way up takes 5 million RP points, make 1 million RP stones and sell them for... I don't know, 1000-1500 zen apiece. 50-75 dollars sounds good, considering 50 is what it costs to unlock full campaigns, boons included. Considering each person has multiple artifacts per toons, that gives them a decent income off of whales who want to level up their characters' artifacts faster.
This requires a decent chunk of money to get it to max level, but not outlandish - using just blood rubies to upgrade your MH weapon all the way, assuming you bought them in 3-packs, costs in the neighborhood of 600 dollars. This is ridiculous. People buy more stuff if you nickel and dime them. If you make stuff cheap enough that people can justify "It's only a few dollars", they will buy more than you'd get off of rich people willing to drop a ridiculous amount of money on something. This is why lockboxes are such an important income here, it's only 1.25 to open one.
But more importantly, it gives people who can't throw hundreds/thousands of dollars at it a way to just play their characters and get their artifacts upgraded gradually. World mobs around your level give the least RP, Dungeon/skirmish mobs give a little more, Bosses give the most, completing quests gives you a small amount of RP as well. It's all split equally between your equipped artifacts. They could even sell RP boosters that you can use to apply to your character, so that you gain this mob/quest based RP at a faster rate, like the XP ones.
There. They make plenty of their income off of the whales who want to upgrade their stuff now (which, less face it, are around 80-90% of a free to play MMO's income anyway) but people who are playing for free (or who can't pay nearly so much) aren't left out. PLAYING the game instead of mindless repetitive grinding of professions or skill nodes is more rewarding, and people who have less money to spend can get something decent for that money as well, inciting them to spend more than they probably would have otherwise.
Also. Offer zen in 5 dollar packs again, or even 1 dollar. It's way easier for people to justify spending that than it is 10, 20, 50 at a time - this is why Freemium games almost always have a .99 cent option in addition to their 20+ options.
Bring back the dungeons, give us a set AD amount per successful run (no kick at the end) and let us buy the upgrades to artifacts (whether weapons or sigils or whatever)? That way, we'd have a light at the end of the tunnel that WAS NOT a "freight coming our way" (props to Metallica) called the RP grind.
People would have a reason to play, whales would no longer have a huge advantage over casual or even moderately hard-core players, bots would disappear (or at the very least decline tremendously since there wouldn't be a market for RP) and players would RETURN to the game.
This would accomplish what the OP was talking about AND get players back in the game which is, I hope, what Cryptic wants.
Thoughts?
Which, when you get right down to it, is why Neverwinter fails, and also why Neverwinter isn't pay to win. RP costs aside, you require 10 dollars for a lesser enchant, 30 for a base level, 70 for a greater, 150 for a perfect. Don't get me started on beyond that level (because I haven't worked it out at all), and just having a perfect or transcendent or whatever enchantment is only the START of what makes a build effective.
In an ironic twist, I kind of think the game might be a bit better off if it were more pay to win-ish. Imagine if all zen prices were halved, it might be worth buying things occasionally! Instead of 25 dollar mounts, maybe 10 to 15.
Of course, the AD exchange would probably need to be revised. Double the purchasing power of the zen, you double the AD value of each zen. Though, people also need less zen for the same goods.
That's a paradox of economics, by the way. You'd think that as people's wages rise they have more incentive to work more, but on the other hand, as incomes rise, people consume more and one of the things they "consume" is leisure time.
But I digress.
Idle companion slots. Pres wards. Some basic dyes. Lockbox keys and event currencies are just over 100. At 500 we can even get character slots, stones of health, scrolls of life, even a basic account-wide mount (green, but still). Yes, things do need to be lowered in price in the zen shop, and there's normally very little in there is less than 100 zen, though they do exist.
BUT, having a 1 dollar option for zen is still incredibly useful. Say, someone is JUST short of having enough zen to buy something they've been saving for through the exchange - or JUST short of something they've been saving for with AD. Or there's a sale on something and now it's below 100 zen. You'd see a ton of people who normally spend nothing going "Well, it's just a dollar or two, I can spend that."
Appearance changes are only 200, and you know how vain some people can get. If there was a way to spend JUST 2 dollars to get an appearance change (instead of having to spend 10 to get zen), you'd see WAY more people actually spending money on it.
finally some1 that know what micro transition are, lets see 10 guys spending 10$ a day =100$ not bad, 200 guys spending 2$ = 400$, as a company what do i prefer??? specially when what iam selling its nothing (bites and bit's) 0$ to make 100% profit, i wonder were the guy that set the prices on zen shop studied??? specially when we talk about MMO (meaning world economy) usa monthly income its way diferent from portugal, but both play the game, with those prices only a part of the player base can buy items with zen, i imagine some 1 playing in a country with super low income like 200$ or so hmmm should i eat this month or buy a ward... hmmm lets buy a ward... lol
maybe 1 day they realize not every1 its payed the same everywhere.
yes, lets see i can't spend 20$ a month, but u can spend 100$... who cares, no except that after 2 months u have all u need and u stop the cash flow... and i still under geared and i still in need of some zen items, that i cant buy with RL (no $ for PWE) and that i cant buy from u cuz theres no way to make enough ad to buy your zen item (u stop spending $, cuz i cant buy you $ items).
what the game is missing right now are items that u cant get with zen, that u can only get by playing, that u can sell to those u have the ad/zen but can't buy it strait from zen/or shops (ad Sink). the game doesn't have too much ad, to need such big and mandatory ad sinks, what the game have its all the ad in a few accounts, just there siting cuz they will not spend it on sinks cuz they dont need those sinks, and they will buy nothing from other cuz others have nothing to sell.
But I'm still pretty sure there are marginal costs involved in terms of bandwidth. Nothing is ever truly free you know.