How much fan fiction have you written about your professional assets? In what ways have you imaginatively restaged your professional tasks to more closely fit your vision of your roster of characters and the guild they all share?
Yeah, I thought so.
I wouldn't go bragging about that. In fact I wouldn't even tell anyone that. That's just creepy.
It all seems pointless today anyway. Maybe calling attention to botting the Gateway has led more people to do it or they're simply piling into the remaining tasks. In any case I can't get past the whirling loading wheel to do any tasks on Gateway today at all. It doesn't matter what they did to it if it's completely broken.
So, while I don't believe for a second they have hard data to back it up, I do believe what they said is true: The leadership change had no real effect on in-game botting one way or the other.
They are 100% wrong on that. The only possible way their numbers don't show it (assuming they have anything to look at) is because so many people quit due to the change that it just skewed the results.
To prevent botting, it'd be best to make the RP tasks Bind on Pickup.
Yes, bound to character not account. The game making leadership armies a thing was a mistake to begin with.
But if they did all that, they could probably reduce the time of the tasks, or increase the rewards (or both).
Wrong. They need to make the game more fun and not "require" bots or bot armies rather than do more bind on character/account <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. Every change they have made so far, to combat bots has ONLY had a detrimental impact on legitimate players. Bots don't care about grind and inconvenience, only real players do.
If the game is competitive, then if leadership army is an option that is effective, then it is essentially mandatory. Because otherwise, the people with the leadership army are just that much further ahead than the people without the bot army.
Well, I guess you can allow the game to be trivial by having a bot army, and merely playable without. But, well, run into PvP-or even dungeon runs when people are like "No, you have to have such and such stats," and you see that the people who have the bot army will be better off than those that don't have it.
It's a mistake for the game to incentivize having 20 characters for the sake of being able to buff one character. 20 characters that buff themselves income wise is fine, obviously.
A long long time ago (when the game had ways to earn decent AD by actually PLAYING !!!) we could have one char that was able to fund our alt army. Now it's convenient to have (I'm avoiding "need") an alt army to fund a single character - Neverwinter at it "best" a.d 2015
Nancy - Dragonborn, SM Guardian Fighter A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"
1). Is SW more dps or tank based? 2). Yes. I am panzer! 3). Get ACT if you want to celebrate your epeen. 4). Horniness will not stand between me and what I believe - "MM"
I'd still like to see some details on
+ which 3 professions they level to 20 for 1 extra slot
+ which rank 3 result they made, and what they used to get it for 1 extra slot
i mean, everyone is writing about having 9 full slots running 24/7, and i'd like to know exactly how they did that...
I'd still like to see some details on
+ which 3 professions they level to 20 for 1 extra slot
+ which rank 3 result they made, and what they used to get it for 1 extra slot
i mean, everyone is writing about having 9 full slots running 24/7, and i'd like to know exactly how they did that...
For me,
leadership, alchemy, jewelcrafting.
Alchemy with grandmaster, master. -> fast
Alchemy with 3 purple tools. -> fast
I use the char-appropriate armorcrafting for most chars, as it's easier to level in a constant fashion. The RNGesus-interrupted-controlled Alchemy leveling gets tedious and synch-disruptive eventually. I do have it at 25 on two chars and that's enough for me.
So I just came back to the game and found this. Thought it was a bug at first. Guess not. Anyways here's my take on it for whatever good it will do.
[,,,]
2) The UI interface is horrible in game compared to the gateway. [...] because of how the tasks are arranged. On the gateway the top of the list is the rares followed by your highest level tasks. In game it's rares followed by the lowest leveled tasks.
[...]
3) How sure are you that it's bots on the gateway? [...]
You're not wrong about a lot of things, but FYI these are controlled by your personal settings ("sort by" dropdown). Gateway UI is still miles better though, also for things like assigning extra assets to a task.
Gateway also allows you to assign each profession individual sorting rules, whereas the game has a global one.
[/quote]
Something may be messed up then as it typically goes back to sort by lowest everytime I close the client. I can reset it on a per character per session basis which isn't much better.[/quote]
Do you perchance use the "Power Bar" workaround? As all UI settings are stored in that file, you might have to re-save your UI after changing sort order...
And re. 3: The link briefly flashed through this forum, and was - obviously, as even more obviously it wasn't ToS-compliant - Modded out... ...no criticism intended. So the criminals' motive is obvious, means has been demonstrated, and the rest is gracefully not followed up by removing the opportunity.
So I just came back to the game and found this. Thought it was a bug at first. Guess not. Anyways here's my take on it for whatever good it will do.
3) How sure are you that it's bots on the gateway? A lot of people run alt armies for leadership. Not everyone bots. I never have and never will. I'm going to guess there is a good percentage of people like me. I don't know how you could be sure that it's a bot on the webpage to be honest.
They don't know at all. It was hastily done without any thought as to who it was really impacting and all it's done is cause tons of people to quit. Any bots that were using the gateway just moved in game. Players who work and needed the gateway moved to other games. It's a silly slap in the face. [...]
But they do, and with a bit of thought it's easily google-able... ...or can be alphabetized??? :^D
0
plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,404Arc User
I'd still like to see some details on
+ which 3 professions they level to 20 for 1 extra slot
+ which rank 3 result they made, and what they used to get it for 1 extra slot
i mean, everyone is writing about having 9 full slots running 24/7, and i'd like to know exactly how they did that...
I'd still like to see some details on
+ which 3 professions they level to 20 for 1 extra slot
+ which rank 3 result they made, and what they used to get it for 1 extra slot
i mean, everyone is writing about having 9 full slots running 24/7, and i'd like to know exactly how they did that...
For me,
leadership, alchemy, jewelcrafting.
Alchemy with grandmaster, master. -> fast
Alchemy with 3 purple tools. -> fast
I use the char-appropriate armorcrafting for most chars, as it's easier to level in a constant fashion. The RNGesus-interrupted-controlled Alchemy leveling gets tedious and synch-disruptive eventually. I do have it at 25 on two chars and that's enough for me.
It is easier for me to do Alchemy because I only need one set of asset and personnel for all character I have. I don't need to invest different asset for different char-appropriate armor crafting. Mind you that before Jewelcrafting was created, I did do char-appropriate armorcrafting for the 3rd profession. For me, Alchemy is kind of easy because I stock up all the potions found by my characters. Yes, I played them. Usually, what I need to do was to run the experiment and usually I have material to do 10 tries before I have to create more. With 5 to 7 slots, making more is not a big deal; usually, finish before the experiment is done. No, I don't buy potion or any materials. They could be shipped from another characters. I make (or pick up) all of them. I can level to 20 in a few days (for opening the slot, level 20 is enough). The speed may not be "constant" but they finish within one day difference.
In addition, it is still available in gateway.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
0
banzaikittenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 220Arc User
well, so much work to make a profession botter it harder to do its work, if they simply did care all about it.
they rewrite the script, and thats it.
i used gateway when i was on my work, now i can only do all other stuff,
> @ejziponken said: > The big picture is that the prices on everything is so out of proportion (not only AH but ZEN store too) so you are forcing players that love the game to find ways to get that AD and at the same time you guys are removing all the legit ways to farm AD. > > Tell me, how does a normal player afford enchants and mounts that cost millions of AD? P2W. There is no other legit way to play all of the content this game offers. Miss the old days where you could actually play the game and gain enough AD to buy stuff. Now you have to farm dungeons etc for hours to even buy a dye pack. > > You will lose a large portion of the playerbase by cutting them off without adding legit ways to gain AD. How long will it take for you to come up with new ways to earn AD? The players will be long gone by then. I don't know a single player that would stick around playing a game where they cant afford to buy anything and progress.
^^^^^^^ Yeah That!!!
First of all I think the question; "WHY are people doing so much botting for AD's?"
This is GAME currency, it's not like they can cash out and go buy a car or something. People are botting to be able to buy 'STUFF' in the game.
WHY are they botting?
Short answer is many people are botting because that is the ONLY way they can play the game, participate in those extremely difficult quests with over powered opponents and survive.
To get the good gear you have to play the epic quests - to play the epic quests you have to have good gear...
> @ejziponken said:
> The big picture is that the prices on everything is so out of proportion (not only AH but ZEN store too) so you are forcing players that love the game to find ways to get that AD and at the same time you guys are removing all the legit ways to farm AD.
>
> Tell me, how does a normal player afford enchants and mounts that cost millions of AD? P2W. There is no other legit way to play all of the content this game offers. Miss the old days where you could actually play the game and gain enough AD to buy stuff. Now you have to farm dungeons etc for hours to even buy a dye pack.
>
> You will lose a large portion of the playerbase by cutting them off without adding legit ways to gain AD. How long will it take for you to come up with new ways to earn AD? The players will be long gone by then. I don't know a single player that would stick around playing a game where they cant afford to buy anything and progress.
^^^^^^^ Yeah That!!!
First of all I think the question; "WHY are people doing so much botting for AD's?"
This is GAME currency, it's not like they can cash out and go buy a car or something. People are botting to be able to buy 'STUFF' in the game.
WHY are they botting?
Short answer is many people are botting because that is the ONLY way they can play the game, participate in those extremely difficult quests with over powered opponents and survive.
To get the good gear you have to play the epic quests - to play the epic quests you have to have good gear...
It's that simple.
Actually I'm of the firm belief that things cost so much because the economy never recovered from several exploits that injected what was likely billions if not trillions of AD into the system. I am not convinced that it has anything to do with leadership.
Just do some limitations to geht rid of bots
1. one account per person
2. limited acces to AH , f.e. 30 slots to sell things in the sum
3. install a cap for ingame ammount of AD, like 10 mio AD, all above this sum is silly and earned by exploits in most cases
4. limit the obtainable ammount of zen that could be bougjt by AD per month, like 3000 f.e
5. lower the costs of gmops, or just make things cheap and obtainable, lower droprates for stuff like fancy mounts , if ppl feel the need for these things...and give mounts a seperate bag to put them..so annoying that they block places in the bag
Just do some limitations to geht rid of bots
1. one account per person
2. limited acces to AH , f.e. 30 slots to sell things in the sum
3. install a cap for ingame ammount of AD, like 10 mio AD, all above this sum is silly and earned by exploits in most cases
4. limit the obtainable ammount of zen that could be bougjt by AD per month, like 3000 f.e
5. lower the costs of gmops, or just make things cheap and obtainable, lower droprates for stuff like fancy mounts , if ppl feel the need for these things...and give mounts a seperate bag to put them..so annoying that they block places in the bag
1) that is reasonable and considering they sell character slots always kind of surprised me.
2) They limit ah slots already unless I'm completely misunderstanding you.
3) People with more will just buy expensive things to bank. You then get people trading cats, keys, etc as alternate currency. Not a good system.
4) Bad for business, that would limit how much ad people could choose to buy with real money, as there may not be enough.
5) GMOPs I agree with, mounts I don't know. You get a basic mount for gold after that I see other mounts as something that I can't object to being cash shop only.
Actually I'm of the firm belief that things cost so much because the economy never recovered from several exploits that injected what was likely billions if not trillions of AD into the system. I am not convinced that it has anything to do with leadership.
May I ask you to detail out 2-3 things that "cost so much" -- with their current price -- and what you think a reasonable price would be? Are you talking enchantments? Weapons/Armor? Profession materials? Something else? Epic mounts and everything on the zen store? (I agree that those are too high, but those prices are set by Cryptic) Being specific would help people understand you. Thanks.
Just do some limitations to geht rid of bots
1. one account per person
2. limited acces to AH , f.e. 30 slots to sell things in the sum
3. install a cap for ingame ammount of AD, like 10 mio AD, all above this sum is silly and earned by exploits in most cases
4. limit the obtainable ammount of zen that could be bougjt by AD per month, like 3000 f.e
5. lower the costs of gmops, or just make things cheap and obtainable, lower droprates for stuff like fancy mounts , if ppl feel the need for these things...and give mounts a seperate bag to put them..so annoying that they block places in the bag
1) that is reasonable and considering they sell character slots always kind of surprised me.
2) They limit ah slots already unless I'm completely misunderstanding you.
3) People with more will just buy expensive things to bank. You then get people trading cats, keys, etc as alternate currency. Not a good system.
4) Bad for business, that would limit how much ad people could choose to buy with real money, as there may not be enough.
5) GMOPs I agree with, mounts I don't know. You get a basic mount for gold after that I see other mounts as something that I can't object to being cash shop only.
If i was a botter/AD-seller with one account and only could sell 30 things/stacks or less atm using the AH, it will slow down everything.
My bags will probably burst after some time, the "cash flow" will be much worse
If on top I only could earn a limited ammount after that having to buy crazy ammounts of gmops , cats or dogs or whatever it won't make things easier and I have to start to pour out some bags with stacks of rank4 to deposit stuff
Never knowing if my tons of cats ever will be accepted for change and what it will be worth in 3 month
Gmops are common for trading so i would focus these things and drop the value of them in some kind of cleaning-circle
Change some stuff every mod, nextl mod its pmob and you can just burn your g-mobs
If i even can't evade by selling my AD for hard ZEN that much that I want its getting really annoying, sitting there with tons of stuff in the bank, juggling arround from left to right things
prices will fall bc I can't deposit things like I want, things gets much harder like now
dev should limit ip or mac addres to can run only 1 account not to close this and this and this
if someone have 50 char this guy bought slot char with zen and can do what profesion task want if u dont like this limit slot char to 5 and return zen to players who bought many char slots its simple no more char no more amount of ad from leadership dont close gateway leadership for 5% guys who booting
first was bound to char to close 1 way to make ad now close another wayto make ad what is next? to buy id and healt potions with zen? or should pay zen or ad to change map?
Just do some limitations to geht rid of bots
1. one account per person
2. limited acces to AH , f.e. 30 slots to sell things in the sum
3. install a cap for ingame ammount of AD, like 10 mio AD, all above this sum is silly and earned by exploits in most cases
4. limit the obtainable ammount of zen that could be bougjt by AD per month, like 3000 f.e
5. lower the costs of gmops, or just make things cheap and obtainable, lower droprates for stuff like fancy mounts , if ppl feel the need for these things...and give mounts a seperate bag to put them..so annoying that they block places in the bag
1) that is reasonable and considering they sell character slots always kind of surprised me.
2) They limit ah slots already unless I'm completely misunderstanding you.
3) People with more will just buy expensive things to bank. You then get people trading cats, keys, etc as alternate currency. Not a good system.
4) Bad for business, that would limit how much ad people could choose to buy with real money, as there may not be enough.
5) GMOPs I agree with, mounts I don't know. You get a basic mount for gold after that I see other mounts as something that I can't object to being cash shop only.
If i was a botter/AD-seller with one account and only could sell 30 things/stacks or less atm using the AH, it will slow down everything.
My bags will probably burst after some time, the "cash flow" will be much worse
If on top I only could earn a limited ammount after that having to buy crazy ammounts of gmops , cats or dogs or whatever it won't make things easier and I have to start to pour out some bags with stacks of rank4 to deposit stuff
Never knowing if my tons of cats ever will be accepted for change and what it will be worth in 3 month
Gmops are common for trading so i would focus these things and drop the value of them in some kind of cleaning-circle
Change some stuff every mod, nextl mod its pmob and you can just burn your g-mobs
If i even can't evade by selling my AD for hard ZEN that much that I want its getting really annoying, sitting there with tons of stuff in the bank, juggling arround from left to right things
prices will fall bc I can't deposit things like I want, things gets much harder like now
Atm it is or was an "exploiters-dreamland"
I'm sorry I can tell that you are trying to respond to my points but I really can't understand most of your thoughts from this. Maybe if you separate your thoughts a little better. I'm not sure.
dev should limit ip or mac addres to can run only 1 account not to close this and this and this
if someone have 50 char this guy bought slot char with zen and can do what profesion task want if u dont like this limit slot char to 5 and return zen to players who bought many char slots its simple no more char no more amount of ad from leadership dont close gateway leadership for 5% guys who booting
first was bound to char to close 1 way to make ad now close another wayto make ad what is next? to buy id and healt potions with zen? or should pay zen or ad to change map?
Bad idea. People play this game and sometimes so do their wives or kids, sometimes on the same computer. Making them have to spoof macs and ips if they wanted to do so would just lose them customers. Meanwhile the bots would just put each client in it's own virtualization with a separate mac and ip.
> @charononus said: > selastion wrote: » > > > > > Actually I'm of the firm belief that things cost so much because the economy never recovered from several exploits that injected what was likely billions if not trillions of AD into the system. I am not convinced that it has anything to do with leadership.
OK I can concede that the AD economy probably is or has been effected by previous exploits, some of which I don't belive can be addressed, like those reported "3rd party purchases". How does anyone actually know if someone is purchasing from a 3rd party instead of a regular player?
I think there will always be a certain amount of attempted exploitation because as I already mentioned, there are very few ways for people to get the items they actually need just to play effectively and they all evolve around acquiring Astral Diamonds and or Zen.
IMO If there were a more effective way to obtain AD's, or things needed for effective game play didn't cost so much to purchase from Cryptic/PWE, that would remove much of the incentive or perceived need for most people to try to find some work around solution to obtain AD's or Zen and drive private sales costs way down. If it costs less or the same to purchase something from the Zen market, why pay an inflated price to someone in the auction house?
And one more thing, when someone spends the money to purchase something with AD or Zen, stop decreasing it's value, usefulness or in the case of the Greater Bag of Holding - suddenly decide to make it Bound to Character!
I didn't buy it because it was bound to character and was majorly disappointed when something I purchased was altered to such an extent that the reason I purchased it in the first place no longer applied.
But again, just my opinion...
By the way - there are 5 people in my house that play Neverwinter and a couple of those people even use the same computer to access their accounts...
So yeah, banning IP addresses instead of individual character accounts for an infraction (I'm not really tech savvy), not the best of ideas I think.
Well part of the problem is the Zen market being so steep ($30 for a digital candy item like a companion or a mount skin?). They knew that there would a few money bags folks that would actually pay that (maybe Donald trump plays...Bill Shatner plays WoW ). But knew that those that really, really wanted that digital candy would hoard up the AD enough to get it that way. But they didn't want it to take a 1 1/2 yr for the true fan to do that, so they put in some AD generation mechanics that "may" (I don't think so) been to generous.
They found out that most of the true fans weren't of the paper doll set however. most fans are stat driven with the occasional digital candy indulgence. (they perceived, I don't feel so ) People were hoarding up the AD all too well. So as each mod came along, they decided to put in bottleneck items to "drain" the AD away a AD sink.
Some of the early were the books to improve your mount or companion, transmutes etc. But these weren't really bottleneck enough. So Runes and Enchantments got a early refinement system, with items like coal wards etc. to bottleneck, if you didn't use them you risked totally losing your materials. While that was bottleneckish enough, many folks balked at even paying for those, they just waited for random drops, still enough AD wasn't being drained!
So they revamped the refine system and added a plethora of new items needed to refine, all of which were either a partial bottleneck or a total stopper without AD expenditure. "Hot dog *rubs hands* it's got to work". they said. Not. So let's add "artifacts" new slot items that simply drain away the RP and folks will by our RP items with AD. Folks kept a hoarding, with the exception of high enders, they just simply balked at paying that for digital content.
So for those that wanted to stay relevant to endgame stats, what to do? I know! Make even more characters to farm chests for RP and AD to support the actual 1-3 characters I play rather than 1 character supporting the other 2, I play like before. "OMG! we made the AD worse". they told themselves. So they made the next mod have "mythic" gear that was a total RP/AD drain...player response Alt armies.
What's a Dev to do? We can't tick them off so much by simply turning the AD spigot off in one fell swoop! I know, let's incrementalize! Let's turn up the cool down timers on leadership, then let's blame some mysterious bot's that we don't actually have to produce, sort of the Bigfoot approach. Cut it off the leadership from gateway, they are skill setting far to easily and promptly that way.
Let's promise quest AD awards, since we know most players hate the hour timers on event rewards anyway, don't risk that being only way for AD...then add a new VIP thing to get them to spend some Zen and possibly drain some AD. Then we can start slowly turning off the leadership AD spigot- in increments.
People have told them and told them what would get them to spend AD. People have told them repeatedly the few simple fixes to do (float the Zen cap over 500. drop the bottlenecking, drop the zen digital item cost etc) and they turned a deaf ear.....
The more you manipulate the AD and add sinks a bottlenecks, the more you fail, people are people, they will seek to preserve what they have accumilated, they will simply turn to alternative currency etc. If the bot's were truly the problem you would either take measures to proactively wipe them out or make it not profitable for them to function.
The government's sin taxes on cigarettes and booze are a failure, they have reached a point were they are strangling the golden goose, they spend more on enforcement than they take in. This is the situation you have set up Dev's, the more you tinker and set up sinks etc. the more you have people balking and hoarding and rage quitting.
The more you have to tinker the more you have to later correct for the over correction. Float the market, make things cheap, it will all correct it's self and you need not fiddle with it ever again. If you make things cheap, both on Zen and AD markets, people will lap them up....then you make MORE digital content for them to buy, it's not so hard to do.
Look at some of the other games out there..they have micro-transactioned the hell out of their games for essencially paper doll hanger programs..what do you think Sim's is all about? Some people eat that <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> up (not me ). But make optional-window-dressing-crud cheap so they buy it...then make more! Let them fill a wardrobe up with it, and then buy more room in the wardrobe to buy even more window dressing crud! Give them a 20 slot wardrobe and then make it bottomless in 20 slot increments. (for money! )
The more you have to tinker the more you have to later correct for the over correction. Float the market, make things cheap, it will all correct it's self and you need not fiddle with it ever again. If you make things cheap, both on Zen and AD markets, people will lap them up....then you make MORE digital content for them to buy, it's not so hard to do.
Well, Mod7's mimic chest is going to vastly reduce supply of a lot of items floating around. Reduced supply means prices will rise, not fall. Doesn't matter if there's AD farms or not, if there used to be 500 green profession workers for trade on the AH, when there's only 20 now, those workers will be more expensive.
No idea could be worse than your idea of un capping the Zax. You want people to leave, watch how fast it would happen with the ZaX at 1million AD to 1 zen. Run away inflation doesn't work. The cap keeps the system sane so that players that want the ZaX don't look at it and laugh before uninstalling.
You miss the point. Free market mechanics WORK, yes it will run wild for a while, then it will float to the real value.
Think this through:
scene #1: If I offered you 1 zen for 500 AD and you could get a Zen item you wanted for 100 zen OR you could trade off the AH for that thing for 45,000 AD what would you do? Buy the 45k AD item right? It's "cheaper" to buy the 45k AD item (that and you can earn more AD). So what happens in this instance and you don't have the AD laying around to buy it already? You open your wallet, buy some zen (what they want you to do) and you get what you wanted. Cryptic got you to buy zen, the seller of the item earned some AD and the AD seller got some Zen to buy what he wanted off the zen market,* note something,of all that transaction 10% AD got drained away.
scene #2: If I offered you 1 zen for 1k AD and you wanted that same item, you would be getting a better than 2x exchange rate, at that rate what would you do? I know what others would do..they would buy WAY more AD as an investment, AD rich players would be lining up to sell them, so Cryptic get's you to buy WAY more zen (isn't that good?) to exchange for AD. And AD rich players get AD poorer, and may actually have to buy Zen to buy back more AD
scene #3: so say Zax goes wild and inflation goes crazy..say offers go to 1m AD per zen, what happens? The tard that posts for 1m don't sell them and the person that undercuts them does, people keep undercutting each other because, they too, want the best exchange they can get for Zen (remember the exchange goes both ways) Eventually all that undercutting get's to the real AD exchange rate.
scene #4 so you think because everyone has the incentive to now un-pry their AD bank vault doors and sell them it's going to cause rampant inflation on the AH.....So? What of it? Every AH trade is going to drain 10% during the transaction, so 1M AD minus 10% is far more than 10% of 100 AD, they have the sink they desire and just like #3 it eventually get's undercut to the real rate.
Think of it like this, if you earned your paycheck in dollars, and you have squirreled away some for a vacation, and you are deciding on were to go, would one of your considerations were to go, be were you get more for your dollar? This is why one of mexico's biggest industry's is tourism and cruise ships go there, you get a better return for you entertainment dollar.
Why do states like California have to spend millions of dollars telling you how you really want to go to California for your vacation? Because of there tax structure and social infrastructure has gotten so steep that everything is more expensive, tourists have to be enticed to go brain-dead and go there and get a worse exchange rate than if they went elsewhere.
Think of Cryptic as mexico, would it not be in their interest to keep the exchange rate to the consumers in the consumers favor? It drives them to "consume" their product because the consumer likes the better value, and Cryptic (Mexico) get's a small take of the transaction (taxes).
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
edited August 2015
Free markets work when free market principles are upheld. In the real world, free market principles aren't upheld. There's little transparency, there's lots of transaction costs, individuals have market power because the number of competitors are finite, the list goes on.
The Auction House in an MMO has transaction costs (the 10% cut), and profession tasks do allow for a certain level of market power due to the up front investment requirement of having 4 purple tools, as well as the assumed risk resulting from tier 3 tasks not being 100%. But other than that, there's near perfect information, and with the VIP pass eliminating posting costs, there's no longer a risk in posting something for too high and immediately being undercut, so free market principles actually do work to drive prices down to a natural equilibrium.
But, we're specifically talking about the ZAX. And here's where it gets fussy. See, the question is, just how much power do you want the whales to have over the Free-to-players. Without an AD cap, the free market may dictate zen costs 2000 per. In this case, people willing to pay are just going to have an enormous advantage over the rest of us. That may be what the market suggests should happen, but that doesn't axiomatically mean it's the ideal game state.
Also, let me make this perfectly clear:
If we start a RL economics debate in this thread on the basis of the 2008 financial crisis and completely detour from the topic of Neverwinter's AD/Zen economy, this thread will almost certainly get locked by the mods. Sorry I have to bold that, but I've been on the internet long enough to see these sorts of things coming, so I wanted to add in an extra word of advice.
leadership gateway dont closed to stop bots was closed to stop players to product AD many players stopped playng NW and runns only gateway and Devs try to get back again in game this players
remember first was BOC for 80% items to stop players to sell in game now closed gateway leadership about bots sellers in game think is another way to get some cash ( legit NW bots ) and this bots will be newer banned
sry for my english but is not my native language
You miss the point. Free market mechanics WORK, yes it will run wild for a while, then it will float to the real value.
Think this through:
scene #1: If I offered you 1 zen for 500 AD and you could get a Zen item you wanted for 100 zen OR you could trade off the AH for that thing for 45,000 AD what would you do? Buy the 45k AD item right? It's "cheaper" to buy the 45k AD item (that and you can earn more AD). So what happens in this instance and you don't have the AD laying around to buy it already? You open your wallet, buy some zen (what they want you to do) and you get what you wanted. Cryptic got you to buy zen, the seller of the item earned some AD and the AD seller got some Zen to buy what he wanted off the zen market,* note something,of all that transaction 10% AD got drained away.
scene #2: If I offered you 1 zen for 1k AD and you wanted that same item, you would be getting a better than 2x exchange rate, at that rate what would you do? I know what others would do..they would buy WAY more AD as an investment, AD rich players would be lining up to sell them, so Cryptic get's you to buy WAY more zen (isn't that good?) to exchange for AD. And AD rich players get AD poorer, and may actually have to buy Zen to buy back more AD
scene #3: so say Zax goes wild and inflation goes crazy..say offers go to 1m AD per zen, what happens? The tard that posts for 1m don't sell them and the person that undercuts them does, people keep undercutting each other because, they too, want the best exchange they can get for Zen (remember the exchange goes both ways) Eventually all that undercutting get's to the real AD exchange rate.
scene #4 so you think because everyone has the incentive to now un-pry their AD bank vault doors and sell them it's going to cause rampant inflation on the AH.....So? What of it? Every AH trade is going to drain 10% during the transaction, so 1M AD minus 10% is far more than 10% of 100 AD, they have the sink they desire and just like #3 it eventually get's undercut to the real rate.
Think of it like this, if you earned your paycheck in dollars, and you have squirreled away some for a vacation, and you are deciding on were to go, would one of your considerations were to go, be were you get more for your dollar? This is why one of mexico's biggest industry's is tourism and cruise ships go there, you get a better return for you entertainment dollar.
Why do states like California have to spend millions of dollars telling you how you really want to go to California for your vacation? Because of there tax structure and social infrastructure has gotten so steep that everything is more expensive, tourists have to be enticed to go brain-dead and go there and get a worse exchange rate than if they went elsewhere.
Think of Cryptic as mexico, would it not be in their interest to keep the exchange rate to the consumers in the consumers favor? It drives them to "consume" their product because the consumer likes the better value, and Cryptic (Mexico) get's a small take of the transaction (taxes).
Here's the problem and why your idea of unlocking the ZaX is ultimately idiotic no matter how much economic bs you type that no one will read.
Cryptic needs free players.
Free players first of all sometimes become paying customers. Even if they don't however they fill up the world. They give everyone from whales to "standard" players someone to fill up their groups. You unlock the zax and even when it stabilizes it's going to stabilize too high for someone to legitimately earn any zen without exploiting. Free players leave. Some standard players leave. Game gets empty. More standard players leave and some whales leave. Server shuts down.
That is why your idea is good for nothing but laughter.
I suggest keeping real world financial debates out of the thread and the entire board in general. Keep real world experience in mind for a better understanding, but I'd rather not debate it.
The player base and economy in Neverwinter is small, and it is best kept regulated, capped, and controlled. Not because of any sound backing by financial experts, real world market theory, or any such similar notions. Just for the simple facts that it is not the focus of the game, it gives a fairly level field for all players, and is simplistic so that one can focus on playing the game rather than playing the AH, ZaX, or other players.
theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Translating for the free market types:
We assume that the market is being inhibited. Some players are willing to buy zen for cash, and then sell them for AD, but only if that AD amount is greater than 500 AD per zen. But we also need to consider that the existence of free-to-play players in the game has an impact on how much money per AD people are willing to spend. In short, there are externalities involved.
Yet at the end of the day the bots moved in game. Just google it. As has been pointed out the ONLY one hurt is the legitimate player that wants to set and check professions at work on their mobile device.
Despite a new mod being launched, peak players are still near an all time low. Pat the genius on the back that thought up this leadership change and Strongholds instead of adding back some real dungeons.
You miss the point. Free market mechanics WORK, yes it will run wild for a while, then it will float to the real value.
Think this through:
[...]
Yup.
Step one:The profiteer people currently fast-trading e.g. RP the moment the news of a 2x RP weekend drops would rejoice, sell all material assets and buy ZEN. Great, for them, as there's no fee whatsoever on the ZAX. They'd buy almost all ZEN washed into the market, as they do have the bigger AD pools. Common players would only draw blanks.
Step two: There would only be two groups profiting: The ZEN buyers - they'd get a lot of AD for their ZEN. and the AD zillionaires - they'd get speculation profits without even the AH AD sink.
Step three: Economy goes bonkers. Barter trades rule, Trade channel scrolls faster than anyone can read due to all people offering their drops and enchantments for GMoPs or somesuch.
Step four: Players leave.
Step five: The two groups from step two leave too - nobody else in here, meh, boring...
Comments
I wouldn't go bragging about that. In fact I wouldn't even tell anyone that. That's just creepy.
They are 100% wrong on that. The only possible way their numbers don't show it (assuming they have anything to look at) is because so many people quit due to the change that it just skewed the results.
If the game is competitive, then if leadership army is an option that is effective, then it is essentially mandatory. Because otherwise, the people with the leadership army are just that much further ahead than the people without the bot army.
Well, I guess you can allow the game to be trivial by having a bot army, and merely playable without. But, well, run into PvP-or even dungeon runs when people are like "No, you have to have such and such stats," and you see that the people who have the bot army will be better off than those that don't have it.
It's a mistake for the game to incentivize having 20 characters for the sake of being able to buff one character. 20 characters that buff themselves income wise is fine, obviously.
A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"
1). Is SW more dps or tank based?
2). Yes. I am panzer!
3). Get ACT if you want to celebrate your epeen.
4). Horniness will not stand between me and what I believe - "MM"
I use the char-appropriate armorcrafting for most chars, as it's easier to level in a constant fashion. The RNGesus-interrupted-controlled Alchemy leveling gets tedious and synch-disruptive eventually. I do have it at 25 on two chars and that's enough for me.
You're not wrong about a lot of things, but FYI these are controlled by your personal settings ("sort by" dropdown). Gateway UI is still miles better though, also for things like assigning extra assets to a task.
Gateway also allows you to assign each profession individual sorting rules, whereas the game has a global one.
[/quote]
Something may be messed up then as it typically goes back to sort by lowest everytime I close the client. I can reset it on a per character per session basis which isn't much better.[/quote]
Do you perchance use the "Power Bar" workaround? As all UI settings are stored in that file, you might have to re-save your UI after changing sort order...
And re. 3: The link briefly flashed through this forum, and was - obviously, as even more obviously it wasn't ToS-compliant - Modded out... ...no criticism intended. So the criminals' motive is obvious, means has been demonstrated, and the rest is gracefully not followed up by removing the opportunity.
But they do, and with a bit of thought it's easily google-able... ...or can be alphabetized??? :^D
It is easier for me to do Alchemy because I only need one set of asset and personnel for all character I have. I don't need to invest different asset for different char-appropriate armor crafting. Mind you that before Jewelcrafting was created, I did do char-appropriate armorcrafting for the 3rd profession. For me, Alchemy is kind of easy because I stock up all the potions found by my characters. Yes, I played them. Usually, what I need to do was to run the experiment and usually I have material to do 10 tries before I have to create more. With 5 to 7 slots, making more is not a big deal; usually, finish before the experiment is done. No, I don't buy potion or any materials. They could be shipped from another characters. I make (or pick up) all of them. I can level to 20 in a few days (for opening the slot, level 20 is enough). The speed may not be "constant" but they finish within one day difference.
In addition, it is still available in gateway.
they rewrite the script, and thats it.
i used gateway when i was on my work, now i can only do all other stuff,
> The big picture is that the prices on everything is so out of proportion (not only AH but ZEN store too) so you are forcing players that love the game to find ways to get that AD and at the same time you guys are removing all the legit ways to farm AD.
>
> Tell me, how does a normal player afford enchants and mounts that cost millions of AD? P2W. There is no other legit way to play all of the content this game offers. Miss the old days where you could actually play the game and gain enough AD to buy stuff. Now you have to farm dungeons etc for hours to even buy a dye pack.
>
> You will lose a large portion of the playerbase by cutting them off without adding legit ways to gain AD. How long will it take for you to come up with new ways to earn AD? The players will be long gone by then. I don't know a single player that would stick around playing a game where they cant afford to buy anything and progress.
^^^^^^^ Yeah That!!!
First of all I think the question; "WHY are people doing so much botting for AD's?"
This is GAME currency, it's not like they can cash out and go buy a car or something. People are botting to be able to buy 'STUFF' in the game.
WHY are they botting?
Short answer is many people are botting because that is the ONLY way they can play the game, participate in those extremely difficult quests with over powered opponents and survive.
To get the good gear you have to play the epic quests - to play the epic quests you have to have good gear...
It's that simple.
Actually I'm of the firm belief that things cost so much because the economy never recovered from several exploits that injected what was likely billions if not trillions of AD into the system. I am not convinced that it has anything to do with leadership.
1. one account per person
2. limited acces to AH , f.e. 30 slots to sell things in the sum
3. install a cap for ingame ammount of AD, like 10 mio AD, all above this sum is silly and earned by exploits in most cases
4. limit the obtainable ammount of zen that could be bougjt by AD per month, like 3000 f.e
5. lower the costs of gmops, or just make things cheap and obtainable, lower droprates for stuff like fancy mounts , if ppl feel the need for these things...and give mounts a seperate bag to put them..so annoying that they block places in the bag
2) They limit ah slots already unless I'm completely misunderstanding you.
3) People with more will just buy expensive things to bank. You then get people trading cats, keys, etc as alternate currency. Not a good system.
4) Bad for business, that would limit how much ad people could choose to buy with real money, as there may not be enough.
5) GMOPs I agree with, mounts I don't know. You get a basic mount for gold after that I see other mounts as something that I can't object to being cash shop only.
May I ask you to detail out 2-3 things that "cost so much" -- with their current price -- and what you think a reasonable price would be? Are you talking enchantments? Weapons/Armor? Profession materials? Something else? Epic mounts and everything on the zen store? (I agree that those are too high, but those prices are set by Cryptic) Being specific would help people understand you. Thanks.
If i was a botter/AD-seller with one account and only could sell 30 things/stacks or less atm using the AH, it will slow down everything.
My bags will probably burst after some time, the "cash flow" will be much worse
If on top I only could earn a limited ammount after that having to buy crazy ammounts of gmops , cats or dogs or whatever it won't make things easier and I have to start to pour out some bags with stacks of rank4 to deposit stuff
Never knowing if my tons of cats ever will be accepted for change and what it will be worth in 3 month
Gmops are common for trading so i would focus these things and drop the value of them in some kind of cleaning-circle
Change some stuff every mod, nextl mod its pmob and you can just burn your g-mobs
If i even can't evade by selling my AD for hard ZEN that much that I want its getting really annoying, sitting there with tons of stuff in the bank, juggling arround from left to right things
prices will fall bc I can't deposit things like I want, things gets much harder like now
Atm it is or was an "exploiters-dreamland"
if someone have 50 char this guy bought slot char with zen and can do what profesion task want if u dont like this limit slot char to 5 and return zen to players who bought many char slots its simple no more char no more amount of ad from leadership dont close gateway leadership for 5% guys who booting
first was bound to char to close 1 way to make ad now close another wayto make ad what is next? to buy id and healt potions with zen? or should pay zen or ad to change map?
I'm sorry I can tell that you are trying to respond to my points but I really can't understand most of your thoughts from this. Maybe if you separate your thoughts a little better. I'm not sure.
Bad idea. People play this game and sometimes so do their wives or kids, sometimes on the same computer. Making them have to spoof macs and ips if they wanted to do so would just lose them customers. Meanwhile the bots would just put each client in it's own virtualization with a separate mac and ip.
> selastion wrote: »
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> Actually I'm of the firm belief that things cost so much because the economy never recovered from several exploits that injected what was likely billions if not trillions of AD into the system. I am not convinced that it has anything to do with leadership.
OK I can concede that the AD economy probably is or has been effected by previous exploits, some of which I don't belive can be addressed, like those reported "3rd party purchases". How does anyone actually know if someone is purchasing from a 3rd party instead of a regular player?
I think there will always be a certain amount of attempted exploitation because as I already mentioned, there are very few ways for people to get the items they actually need just to play effectively and they all evolve around acquiring Astral Diamonds and or Zen.
IMO If there were a more effective way to obtain AD's, or things needed for effective game play didn't cost so much to purchase from Cryptic/PWE, that would remove much of the incentive or perceived need for most people to try to find some work around solution to obtain AD's or Zen and drive private sales costs way down. If it costs less or the same to purchase something from the Zen market, why pay an inflated price to someone in the auction house?
And one more thing, when someone spends the money to purchase something with AD or Zen, stop decreasing it's value, usefulness or in the case of the Greater Bag of Holding - suddenly decide to make it Bound to Character!
I didn't buy it because it was bound to character and was majorly disappointed when something I purchased was altered to such an extent that the reason I purchased it in the first place no longer applied.
But again, just my opinion...
By the way - there are 5 people in my house that play Neverwinter and a couple of those people even use the same computer to access their accounts...
So yeah, banning IP addresses instead of individual character accounts for an infraction (I'm not really tech savvy), not the best of ideas I think.
They found out that most of the true fans weren't of the paper doll set however. most fans are stat driven with the occasional digital candy indulgence. (they perceived, I don't feel so ) People were hoarding up the AD all too well. So as each mod came along, they decided to put in bottleneck items to "drain" the AD away a AD sink.
Some of the early were the books to improve your mount or companion, transmutes etc. But these weren't really bottleneck enough. So Runes and Enchantments got a early refinement system, with items like coal wards etc. to bottleneck, if you didn't use them you risked totally losing your materials. While that was bottleneckish enough, many folks balked at even paying for those, they just waited for random drops, still enough AD wasn't being drained!
So they revamped the refine system and added a plethora of new items needed to refine, all of which were either a partial bottleneck or a total stopper without AD expenditure. "Hot dog *rubs hands* it's got to work". they said. Not. So let's add "artifacts" new slot items that simply drain away the RP and folks will by our RP items with AD. Folks kept a hoarding, with the exception of high enders, they just simply balked at paying that for digital content.
So for those that wanted to stay relevant to endgame stats, what to do? I know! Make even more characters to farm chests for RP and AD to support the actual 1-3 characters I play rather than 1 character supporting the other 2, I play like before. "OMG! we made the AD worse". they told themselves. So they made the next mod have "mythic" gear that was a total RP/AD drain...player response Alt armies.
What's a Dev to do? We can't tick them off so much by simply turning the AD spigot off in one fell swoop! I know, let's incrementalize! Let's turn up the cool down timers on leadership, then let's blame some mysterious bot's that we don't actually have to produce, sort of the Bigfoot approach. Cut it off the leadership from gateway, they are skill setting far to easily and promptly that way.
Let's promise quest AD awards, since we know most players hate the hour timers on event rewards anyway, don't risk that being only way for AD...then add a new VIP thing to get them to spend some Zen and possibly drain some AD. Then we can start slowly turning off the leadership AD spigot- in increments.
People have told them and told them what would get them to spend AD. People have told them repeatedly the few simple fixes to do (float the Zen cap over 500. drop the bottlenecking, drop the zen digital item cost etc) and they turned a deaf ear.....
The more you manipulate the AD and add sinks a bottlenecks, the more you fail, people are people, they will seek to preserve what they have accumilated, they will simply turn to alternative currency etc. If the bot's were truly the problem you would either take measures to proactively wipe them out or make it not profitable for them to function.
The government's sin taxes on cigarettes and booze are a failure, they have reached a point were they are strangling the golden goose, they spend more on enforcement than they take in. This is the situation you have set up Dev's, the more you tinker and set up sinks etc. the more you have people balking and hoarding and rage quitting.
The more you have to tinker the more you have to later correct for the over correction. Float the market, make things cheap, it will all correct it's self and you need not fiddle with it ever again. If you make things cheap, both on Zen and AD markets, people will lap them up....then you make MORE digital content for them to buy, it's not so hard to do.
Look at some of the other games out there..they have micro-transactioned the hell out of their games for essencially paper doll hanger programs..what do you think Sim's is all about? Some people eat that <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> up (not me
Well, Mod7's mimic chest is going to vastly reduce supply of a lot of items floating around. Reduced supply means prices will rise, not fall. Doesn't matter if there's AD farms or not, if there used to be 500 green profession workers for trade on the AH, when there's only 20 now, those workers will be more expensive.
No idea could be worse than your idea of un capping the Zax. You want people to leave, watch how fast it would happen with the ZaX at 1million AD to 1 zen. Run away inflation doesn't work. The cap keeps the system sane so that players that want the ZaX don't look at it and laugh before uninstalling.
Think this through:
scene #1: If I offered you 1 zen for 500 AD and you could get a Zen item you wanted for 100 zen OR you could trade off the AH for that thing for 45,000 AD what would you do? Buy the 45k AD item right? It's "cheaper" to buy the 45k AD item (that and you can earn more AD). So what happens in this instance and you don't have the AD laying around to buy it already? You open your wallet, buy some zen (what they want you to do) and you get what you wanted. Cryptic got you to buy zen, the seller of the item earned some AD and the AD seller got some Zen to buy what he wanted off the zen market,* note something,of all that transaction 10% AD got drained away.
scene #2: If I offered you 1 zen for 1k AD and you wanted that same item, you would be getting a better than 2x exchange rate, at that rate what would you do? I know what others would do..they would buy WAY more AD as an investment, AD rich players would be lining up to sell them, so Cryptic get's you to buy WAY more zen (isn't that good?) to exchange for AD. And AD rich players get AD poorer, and may actually have to buy Zen to buy back more AD
scene #3: so say Zax goes wild and inflation goes crazy..say offers go to 1m AD per zen, what happens? The tard that posts for 1m don't sell them and the person that undercuts them does, people keep undercutting each other because, they too, want the best exchange they can get for Zen (remember the exchange goes both ways) Eventually all that undercutting get's to the real AD exchange rate.
scene #4 so you think because everyone has the incentive to now un-pry their AD bank vault doors and sell them it's going to cause rampant inflation on the AH.....So? What of it? Every AH trade is going to drain 10% during the transaction, so 1M AD minus 10% is far more than 10% of 100 AD, they have the sink they desire and just like #3 it eventually get's undercut to the real rate.
Think of it like this, if you earned your paycheck in dollars, and you have squirreled away some for a vacation, and you are deciding on were to go, would one of your considerations were to go, be were you get more for your dollar? This is why one of mexico's biggest industry's is tourism and cruise ships go there, you get a better return for you entertainment dollar.
Why do states like California have to spend millions of dollars telling you how you really want to go to California for your vacation? Because of there tax structure and social infrastructure has gotten so steep that everything is more expensive, tourists have to be enticed to go brain-dead and go there and get a worse exchange rate than if they went elsewhere.
Think of Cryptic as mexico, would it not be in their interest to keep the exchange rate to the consumers in the consumers favor? It drives them to "consume" their product because the consumer likes the better value, and Cryptic (Mexico) get's a small take of the transaction (taxes).
Aelar Hawkwind - Archer
Karrin Feywinter - Mistress of Flame
Errin Duskwalker - Executioner
Darquess - Soulbinder
The Auction House in an MMO has transaction costs (the 10% cut), and profession tasks do allow for a certain level of market power due to the up front investment requirement of having 4 purple tools, as well as the assumed risk resulting from tier 3 tasks not being 100%. But other than that, there's near perfect information, and with the VIP pass eliminating posting costs, there's no longer a risk in posting something for too high and immediately being undercut, so free market principles actually do work to drive prices down to a natural equilibrium.
But, we're specifically talking about the ZAX. And here's where it gets fussy. See, the question is, just how much power do you want the whales to have over the Free-to-players. Without an AD cap, the free market may dictate zen costs 2000 per. In this case, people willing to pay are just going to have an enormous advantage over the rest of us. That may be what the market suggests should happen, but that doesn't axiomatically mean it's the ideal game state.
Also, let me make this perfectly clear:
If we start a RL economics debate in this thread on the basis of the 2008 financial crisis and completely detour from the topic of Neverwinter's AD/Zen economy, this thread will almost certainly get locked by the mods. Sorry I have to bold that, but I've been on the internet long enough to see these sorts of things coming, so I wanted to add in an extra word of advice.
remember first was BOC for 80% items to stop players to sell in game now closed gateway leadership about bots sellers in game think is another way to get some cash ( legit NW bots ) and this bots will be newer banned
sry for my english but is not my native language
Here's the problem and why your idea of unlocking the ZaX is ultimately idiotic no matter how much economic bs you type that no one will read.
Cryptic needs free players.
Free players first of all sometimes become paying customers. Even if they don't however they fill up the world. They give everyone from whales to "standard" players someone to fill up their groups. You unlock the zax and even when it stabilizes it's going to stabilize too high for someone to legitimately earn any zen without exploiting. Free players leave. Some standard players leave. Game gets empty. More standard players leave and some whales leave. Server shuts down.
That is why your idea is good for nothing but laughter.
The player base and economy in Neverwinter is small, and it is best kept regulated, capped, and controlled. Not because of any sound backing by financial experts, real world market theory, or any such similar notions. Just for the simple facts that it is not the focus of the game, it gives a fairly level field for all players, and is simplistic so that one can focus on playing the game rather than playing the AH, ZaX, or other players.
glassdoor.com - Cryptic Studios Review
We assume that the market is being inhibited. Some players are willing to buy zen for cash, and then sell them for AD, but only if that AD amount is greater than 500 AD per zen. But we also need to consider that the existence of free-to-play players in the game has an impact on how much money per AD people are willing to spend. In short, there are externalities involved.
Despite a new mod being launched, peak players are still near an all time low. Pat the genius on the back that thought up this leadership change and Strongholds instead of adding back some real dungeons.
Yup.
Step one:The profiteer people currently fast-trading e.g. RP the moment the news of a 2x RP weekend drops would rejoice, sell all material assets and buy ZEN. Great, for them, as there's no fee whatsoever on the ZAX. They'd buy almost all ZEN washed into the market, as they do have the bigger AD pools. Common players would only draw blanks.
Step two: There would only be two groups profiting: The ZEN buyers - they'd get a lot of AD for their ZEN. and the AD zillionaires - they'd get speculation profits without even the AH AD sink.
Step three: Economy goes bonkers. Barter trades rule, Trade channel scrolls faster than anyone can read due to all people offering their drops and enchantments for GMoPs or somesuch.
Step four: Players leave.
Step five: The two groups from step two leave too - nobody else in here, meh, boring...
Step six: Servers get shut down.