this might be the nail in the coffin for me- I used leadership as a way to make AD, rather than playing the game to make AD, as most of the time I can only get in the game long enough to do professions. with all of the lag and DC's that plague this game- it is very hard for me to actually play the game to earn AD. go through half a dungeon then get disconnected, all that time wasted. granted the game has been stable for me after the double AD weekend ended (knock on wood)
Well, even those whales might finally wake up, when they don't have enough real players around to run dungeons, skirmishes or PvP... I'm not even talking about the Stronghold PvP, i doubt that there will be any PvP left on that field after these changes go live.
Spot on!
I told this all in PVP alpha test, but no, of course nobody listened to me, i even got i was a boring academic, now here we are and this boring academic tells Cryptic, whales will leave too, cause if they have nobody to look down or slaughter in their precious playfield, called PVP, they will soon leave. Just think again please.
We, normal players can't do anything againts them now, gap is already huge. Actually an action contrary to this would be much more appreciated for legits, so we could close the gap. The whales/exploiters sit on tons of Caturday exploited AD/ZEN, it will yet again only hurt us, decent players.
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Just gonna leave this here and just point on the 24h task vs the 4h task. Also, want to thank Cryptic for really thinking this one through before rolling it out. *two thumbs up!*
maybe neverwinter become a strange "reality" show - neverleave - and the last in the game will receive one million of dollars.
Just gonna leave this here and just point on the 24h task vs the 4h task. Also, want to thank Cryptic for really thinking this one through before rolling it out. *two thumbs up!*
So basically they just took the existing Leadership professions and removed the AD reward. Wow. Really putting in the effort there, devs. Regardless, thanks for helping me see the light, Cryptic. I wont be spending that much time (or money) in your game anymore.
Well, the ZEN in the ZAX is not generated out of thin air, it is bought by other players with real money. AD in the ZAX is more or less time... and this system was and is working.
Cryptic/PWE gets money. The players get either AD or ZEN.
And all they have to do is go after the botters with real GMs. It's not that complicated... and if they don't improve qualitiy of the rewards from Leadership not only up by a lot and let it be unbound, this change will blow up in their face really bad.
I love how the 4hr quest is the same as the 24hr quest, but with 3x the XP. And why oh why does a lvl 25 leadership quest give you leadership XP to begin with? Give us account bound GMOPs in a lvl 25 week long crafting task. Or account bound Peridot and Pearls and Blood Rubies. I don't want AD for anything other than refining, so skip the middle man and give me account bound refining stuff! That's all I want!
Until I want to upgrade my companion and it takes me a year to earn 750K AD to do it, that is...
if this is the new stuff they really need to think it through. we do NOT need more gold. we need more ways to make RP. take away AD. but have supply RP. make this the new DHE and make it bound to account.
What use do all RPs in the world have, if you can't afford the GMOP to upgrade when the item is full?
Exactly, if they announce GMoP's will no longer be required, similar to the arti gear model, I'd wager many people who find this change repulsive would be content with that. Coal wards are another issue but as Zeb stated VIP would be the middle ground with trade bars.
Just gonna leave this here and just point on the 24h task vs the 4h task. Also, want to thank Cryptic for really thinking this one through before rolling it out. *two thumbs up!*
maybe neverwinter become a strange "reality" show - neverleave - and the last in the game will receive one million of dollars.
This is a problem. Simply put. But it's a symptom rather than the disease. Namely the complete lack of trust between the Devs, the community moderators, and whomever the Powers That Be at PWE are. I and many others have brought this to you when you made the apparent kneejerk reaction to boost mob hitpoints by 50% back in the tail end of mod 6, on the grounds that it was "we found it too easy". We saw it in the account wide companion debacle in the wake of the Second Anniversary. We saw it in the attempt to sneak in a doubling of the 60 to 70 XP requirement during an x2 XP weekend in what many (rightly or wrongly) saw as a blatant attempt to force people to buy more $50 XP boosters.
And now, based off the statements you yourself have made it, it looks like the Devs are going off on this half-cocked, without a plan, and with no idea if it'll actually work. Look at that screenshot. Look at what you've said. "We're looking into. We're looking into." Repeat ad infintium. The last time we were fed that line, it took three months for the appropriate solution (the fixing of some truly outstanding AP bugs, and the nerfing of Mob damage without shooting their HP into the stratosphere in such a way that those of us without access to the "bottomless wallet" artifact could actually best in a meaningful period of time) to actually come about. Three months. Three months while the game hemorrhaged players and your own forum polls told you that 85% of your player based openly despised what you'd done. I've dealt with bank foreclosure law firms that looked downright agile by comparison (which anyone who's ever dealt with them will tell you, tend to be bloated, bureaucracy choked morasses whose response times can charitably be described as "glacial.").
We can't see any evidence that you're going to introduce something worthwhile to compensate from suddenly introducing the biggest professions paradigm shift since this game left beta. What do we need XP for? At that point, the toon should be well past 70, and the XP you get is a paltry drop in the bucket for what you need to get an overflow level. Gold? Gold is useless in this game except for buying potions, node kits, and injury kits, and the game already provides you with more than you possibly know what to do with.
Now I apologize if I seem like I'm being unfair to you. I don't want to heap this all on top of you, as I know you're not the one responsible for this decision. But the corporate masters here have so damaged the trust between them and their player base that people are calling this as they see it: a blatant bait-and-switch, the latest in a long line, for no other purpose than to squeeze them for even more money. They see your bosses as stripping them of their primary means of advancing in game, with no evidence that there's even a a framework of a plan in place to address the sudden shortcoming and absolute uselessness of the leadership profession as it will be by this time next week. They see promises of "we're looking into it", which they've come to see as meaning "we may or may not get back to you and address your concerns and the gaping problems this creates at some point before the Universe suffers its heat-death."
I love this game. I want to stay with it. I want to see it succeed. I've found a wonderful guild to take in me and my friends and I'm enjoying the SH module. And as someone who wants to see this game succeed, for all my vitriol and snark, please, please, try to rebuild the trust with your players. Please respond to this quickly. Please, don't let this game die with a whimper, as a desiccated shell of what it once was and could have been.
Luckily I only had one character I ever spent effort in Leadership on due to the annoyance factor, however some ideas to help fix with AD generation: The 24k rough AD cap needs to be raised, there needs to be more ways to earn AD in game, whether that's dungeons, skirmishes, pvp, or even Foundry quests which still waiting to even hear on when that intends to be fixed. Aside from that, Salvaging epic equipment currently is almost pointless as the amount of time spent in earning it does not justify its maximum of 10k salvage cost.
The problem is, they DON'T WANT you to make any AD in game. They want you to buy them for Zen which you should buy with cash.
Although that in itself is not a problem, they have to monetize the game somehow, it's the game breaking, destructive, dump, unimaginative and plain childish way they try to force that down our throats while killing the game by driving so many players away.
This. The ruse has been up for long, but it was forgiven solely because nobody thought they would go as far as to restrict AD sources until the game basically became a "Play this way or stay poor" kind of game.
There is another online game, whose name I will not mention to avoid drama and polemics, which I used to play and of which I'll say, off the top of my head, the kinds of things you can do and that help you progress in it: -Do daily quests in more than a dozen endgame dungeons -Do quests to recruit new companions -Play the Skirmish or Strategic missions, which feature a completely different combat system based on other skills. -Join a Raid with other players, and potentially get huge rewards -Join a Guild dungeon where the collective effort is rewarded with prizes given out at the guild master's discretion -Fight in an event area which is open once a week, can only be accessed for 30 minutes and has an insane Exp and Drop rate, which cuts on grinding time -Join the hourly PvP tournament, which has HUGE nerfs that both make purely offensive and purely defensive tactics less useful than in PvE, factoring in player skill -Join the weekly PvP tournaments and gain prizes even just by participating. You'll get curbed by someone with better gear and skills than yours eventually, but there are enough participants to make the challenge rise at a steady pace -Partake in crafting thousands of different items, all of which are useful because the demand for gear of all levels is always high, and most of them can be refined into higher-level items. -Set up an expedition and let your companions fight on their own. You can let them do their thing or choose to watch them fight, which is pretty entertaining in itself, and once they get back you get any loot they found -Build and decorate your home, which gives you a substantial "utility" boost and also provides you with a place to store your belongings and have stat-boosting parties with friends. -You want to pay and support the game development? You can choose between grab-bag boxes (which sometimes contain very rare and extremely valuable items, but nevertheless contain lots of stuff you can't normally get in the game) or a multi-use item whose value is pretty much stable in the market, which you can immediately exchange for currency. You still have to raise and manage your character yourself, so it's more of a financial bump to overcome small cash gate than a "instant win" option.
Now, let's compare it with what I can do in NWO. Which should be more impressive given that I'm currently playing it. -Join one of TWO endgame skirmishes...which is always the same enemies, same places, same tactics, up to the bosses whose only gimmick is "Tons of HP, one-hit death to anyone not geared enough", which means you either whittle their health away, get curbed, or curb it if you happen to have a 3k+ in your party. -Join one of THREE endgame dungeons...same thing as skirmishes, but with more class imbalance: every "ideal" group just wants four DPS and someone to keep them alive. Support classes are out of luck. -Go toe to toe in PvP with no balancing system, meaning it's all down to numbers. No skill involved besides knowing which overpowered powers to spam, if you are weaker than your opponent you die, period. -Grind the same 4-5 quests in the same 4 campaign zones over and over and over, until you get the boons and only have to grind again if you need some campaign currencies for your guild or for converting into keys. -Foundry...oh wait, it's not coming back. Strike that off the list. -Craft tons of useless items to max out your profession skills, wait entire days so that you can have higher-ranked workers, and repeat until you can get the one thing that matters for that profession (Jewels/Rings/Armor Kits/Alchemy components)
Really seems like the people who decided to make this major change did not employ any critical thinking whatsoever as this will only increase the amount of bots in game. This will also increase the demand for black market AD. The bots will be rolling in real life cash for the short period time this game will exist if this actually hits the live server while the devs just scratch their heads over what to do next.
Maybe the developers just wanted more free time around the holidays...that is when the layoff notices will be hitting their mailboxes as the player population will tank very quickly. *shrugs*
I still cant understand why you don't simply DELETE accounts using BOTs. BOTs seem to be the root of all evil here, so why don't you just say hey bot meet the BAN HAMMER....
I still cant understand why you don't simply DELETE accounts using BOTs. BOTs seem to be the root of all evil here, so why don't you just say hey bot meet the BAN HAMMER....
Bots aren't the problem from Cryptic's POV. People playing the game for free and not paying real money for Zen is the problem. The real problem that is at the root of this entire decision. Bots are the smokescreen put up to us as the bogeyman, like Dubya did with Saddam Hussein.
A link to this video was posted earlier in this thread and after watching it I feel it strikes to the heart of Neverwinters biggest problem right now.
How to keep the economy active and under control while trying to keep the player base engaged and not completely resentful.
I think this video could be of value for any Developer of any F2P game from any studio. It did a good job of explaining how I got to the point where I don't plan on spending any more cash on Neverwinter.
Well..what I have been predicting since Perfect World bought Cryptic is now coming to pass. Just like every other game I have played and was bought the new owners are trying to milk the players dry.
I saw it first in Dark Orbit...and the game nearly collapsed and has never recovered...then in Wartune..and now the same scenario is happening here.
The new owners start by adding more and more cash items (look at all the stronghold stuff and the huge AD contributions needed and VIP), then they start attacking the in game awards so the only way to get good equipment is to cash because all the other sources of in game currency are gone. The reason is the same too...to stop botters.
It wont be long before you will see the exodus begin...free players will go first...they will leave looking for a game they feel treats them fairly.
Next the moderate spenders will go looking for a game they can be competitive in without spending thousands. Soon all that will be left are a few diehards and the wallet warriors.
But the wallet warriors will soon tire of no easy PVP kills since so many of the free and moderate spenders left and all they face are other Wallet Warriors. Then they start leaving.
In Dark Orbit this happened 3 years ago and even after they lightened up the game has not recovered.
The same scenario has happened in Wartune in the last year and a half.
Mark my words...if Perfect World will follow the same path and in 6 months Neverwinter will be a ghost town.
Hilarious. Sadly I can't play til early October so I can't witness the masses quitting. I'd really love to have a chat with the management of this game. True masters in their fields.
Wow, I thought I was mad before. So instead of fixing a bot problem you punish those of us who have been here since beta and happened to have spent the effort to get alts up on leadership. I may or may not play anymore, but I can guarantee that I will never buy a blood ruby, race, class, character slot, any of those things I've spent money on in the past. You will never get another dime outa me.
The real problem of this game is that you have no freedom. The sheer number of currencies it forces you to track makes it impossible to do what you want. "You want this? Too bad, all that currency you have accumulated can't buy it, you need that other currency, and that many seals, and that many bear asses". There should be multiple ways to skin a cat, or in this case buy some gear. But this game instead likes to restrict you so that to get certain items you need to do a single thing, over and over until you can afford it. If they had just dropped the gold/AD charade altogether, and either made gold the main currency or made diamonds easy to find in a regular way without having to play the same specific content ad nauseam, the game's economy would actually exist, instead on being based on binds and nerfs.
Wow, for a game that was already filled with problems, you guys sure know how to make things even worse. Thankfully Guild Wars 2 went Free to Play so i guess i'll head over there since they actually seem to WANT players to stay.
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
People don't pay $$$ for Zen, because, the items are overpriced. Economics 101....
People will not pay $20 for a blood ruby pack which is only 150k RP which can't upgrade anything. So why blow $20 just to get something 1/4th the way there...? Pay $80 to make your enchant transcendent... That is beyond madness.
I can finally uninstall the game, thanks for changes in leadership.
If leadership was all that kept you to the game, you should have uninstalled much sooner, you clearly don't like the game and should be thankful they gave you this much needed push to better employ your time. :P
You are being foolish if you think that people, other than bots, did not play the game if they had a leadership army. I have 12 leadership alts , and the vast majority of my time is spent playing the game on my main character.
Excuse me, but what are you babbling about? devaneio said that with the leadership change he's going to uninstall, and my post was referred to his situation alone. Where do you and your 12 alts and how you play come into play in all of this?
Now you are going to have to play the game.......read the thread. Why leadership kept him in the game was because it gave him a viable method of advancing his main character , without spending a cubic assload of time doing it.
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
edited September 2015
I've been watching the data and doing a little evaluating of my own:
When Mod 6 came out it was clear that all of our gear was made obsolete and we would have to re-work our characters--like it or leave. Our loss. It was also extremely unpolished--Cryptic is still reworking tooltips, stores, etc. There is still lvl 60 HAMSTER everywhere. They had no idea what they were doing, and are only crawling out of it now.
Now they are removing AD from Leadership, one of the last bastions of earning after making everything BOP and removing drops from just about everywhere. And now they are going to spend 2 modules "evaluating" what effect that will have on the players before they modify any AD sinks or lower prices on anything.
I only have 2 characters and it affects me. Big army, eh? I earn a small amount from Leadership to augment what I earn from daily PVP. And it is not enough. I often buy AD through the Zen store.
There's no integrity from week to week let alone month to month of Cryptic's "universe." Players cannot get ahead no matter how much they play or how much RL $ they pay here.
This game has a major change just about every week, not usually even announced. It is about the most unstable thing I've ever seen. Sorry I spent cash on it.
The only way the AD changes will be reasonable is if you drop the prices of just about everything in the Zen market so it'll still be reasonable for the average player.
But that's not going to happen, is it? Because this isn't about bots AT ALL, it's just about wringing every cent out of the current player base so you can fund the next game you make that you'll tank into the ground in 2-3 years just like with NW. Here's hoping there's enough bots so your log in #'s will still say reasonable.
Just call me Rod. Member of Grievance! CW: Rodrant Turnbul TR: Rodran DC: Rodrat GWF: ROARdrant TurnBRAWL Other GWF: Shieldrant HR: Bowdrant SW: Wardrant Turnlock (my main!) OP: Paladrant (on Preview!)
So, what's the problem? You're gonna lose a little AD that "is not enough to buy anything worth a damn", but you'll get more AD from dungeons, skirmishes and PvP. AD from Invoke and Salvage is still there. This change clearly should not affect you that much. If anything, you should make more than before.
If he can't do more than two or three dungeons a day, he'll actually get less than before, even without considering LS.
Normal ToS takes 5-10 minutes. Dread Ring skirmish takes about 5-10 minutes as well. And it's all content with a 100% success rate and nearly instant queue. If someone can't even dedicate this little time to the game, I'm not sure how he would deserve any progression at all. I'm also pretty sure that someone who can't dedicate 30 minutes to the game could get any kind of leadership setup going at all (unless he does only that and does not play the game at all, but that shoulnd't be the case here, right?).
were is my compensation for all the time invested into leadership just for the extra ad?
Leadership, while no longer a major source of AD, is still a good source for XP, Gold, and loot items. All of these things are valuable to regular players, but less so to botters.
this is by far the most false statement I have ever seen a developer state in the history of gameing I only have leadership to 20 on two char and 17+ on 4 others. There is not a single leadership quest that offers any kind of usefull reward if you think 1g or a potion worth a few silver is worth the time and ad investment leadership takes your sadly mistake and the xp come on an 8 hour mission doesn't even offer the equilivant of a 5 min quest. with out the astral diamonds leadership offers nothing.
all the time I wasted leveling this profession down the drain not to mention the cost of all the assests I bought and I don't even have hero level assets I find this to be an outrage.
now onto second point
the concept of being able to earn the ad at anytime is the way it should have been from day one the idea of hourly events was lame to start with.
but your not concept is not going to work either because we all know that you are not capable of designing new interface to track your progress thru the bonus zen so say I do 4 dungen runs I guess I will have to start a dam tally of how much bonus I got to know when I am done that's about as smart as making F the default key for everything lets ad that to the list of HAMSTER design decisions
also lets look at this
Old: If you picked up the daily quest, you got 3,000 AD for one dungeon. If you had your chest key, you got an additional 3,000 AD. New: 1. Automatically get 3,000 AD for each of the first two dungeons. 2. In addition, get 150 to 750 AD for each dungeon played (up to a maximum 7,200 AD per day from dungeons). Amount varies by time.
let me see Amount varies by time which means tos takes 10 min to run so it will only reward 150 bonus ad.
which means I will have to run ToS a total of 48 times a day just to get the full bonus let me say this you can kiss my hairy white #$@ if you think I would do that I will gladly uninstall the game before I do that.
this is why I don't do the foundry daily now the fast foundry quests take about 20 to 25 min each I have to do 4 of them for for 4k ad that's hour and 20 min but the good quests are few and far between esp now since you still have't renabled the foundry so were stuck with what you think are good quests and there aren't very many of thos worth the time.
so lets do comparison like yours of what I get now.
leadership 8k+8k+3600+3600= 23200 per day is what I get on my leadership I run daily dungen on 6 during event which is 6k per toon x6 for total of 36000 skirmishes no 2 toons for total of 3000 each plus another 3 per run for total of 6000 x2 plus pvp on 2 toons for total of 4k ad for 4 matches plus if lucky another 4k for wins total of 8k x 2 -16000
final tally leadership 23000 time passive dungen s 36000 1 hour skirmishes 12000 1 hour pvp 16000 1 hour
total 87000 for 3 hours time.
new system dungens 6k 2 runs total 20 min additional 7200 at 150 to 750 lets keep time same as now 1 hour so that is total of 36000 no time for any bonus
skirmishes run two skirmishes takes about 15 min each for total of 3k 2 char that's hour so no time for bonus either so only getting 6k total dam half what I am getting now o well
pvp let me correct you hear you actualy get 8000 for 4 match provided 1 of thos 4 was a win. new system get 4k for 2 matches and bonus upto 4800 match lasts about 15 min average so 2 match on two toons were at an hour and for argument sake I got a win I still only walk away with 4k per to total of 8k unlike the 16k would have got on old system.
so total for me in new system dung 36000 time 1 hour skirmishes 6000 time 1hour pvp 4000 time 1 hour total 46000
so old system I get 87000 for 3 hours time new system I get 46000 for same amount of time take your new system and shove it up your HAMSTER were it belongs thank you have nice life if this goes live I will be uninstalling game.
I've been playing this game for 2 years now and it's sad that it seems like all these changes being made to 'stop the botts' amount to nothing more than HAMSTER the actual players more than the bots since the bots just run a different setup and are then able to still make tons od AD. Instead of hurting the players, why don't you dev's look into doing things that will actually effect the bots. A good example of this is that Guild Wars 2 just became F2P and they made it so that bots are not an issue. The way they did this was actually quite simple. 1) limited chat for F2P 2) no in-game trading for F2P 3) no AH use for F2P. Those 3 things can be applied to this game as well in a fashion. Make it so those restrictions are lifted when a player enters in their credit card/bank card info and ties that to the account. Add a rule in the user agreement that states that if caught using a bot or gold spamming, their card will be charged x number of dollars and the account banned. Also, with their creit card/bank card info, you can block any new accounts using that card. Apply this and you won't have to touch the leadership AD since the bots won't want to give their credit card/bank card info.
Comments
I told this all in PVP alpha test, but no, of course nobody listened to me, i even got i was a boring academic, now here we are and this boring academic tells Cryptic, whales will leave too, cause if they have nobody to look down or slaughter in their precious playfield, called PVP, they will soon leave. Just think again please.
We, normal players can't do anything againts them now, gap is already huge. Actually an action contrary to this would be much more appreciated for legits, so we could close the gap. The whales/exploiters sit on tons of Caturday exploited AD/ZEN, it will yet again only hurt us, decent players.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
really guys... that is not a simple detail.
AD in the ZAX is more or less time... and this system was and is working.
Cryptic/PWE gets money.
The players get either AD or ZEN.
And all they have to do is go after the botters with real GMs.
It's not that complicated... and if they don't improve qualitiy of the rewards from Leadership not only up by a lot and let it be unbound, this change will blow up in their face really bad.
Until I want to upgrade my companion and it takes me a year to earn 750K AD to do it, that is...
This is a problem. Simply put. But it's a symptom rather than the disease. Namely the complete lack of trust between the Devs, the community moderators, and whomever the Powers That Be at PWE are. I and many others have brought this to you when you made the apparent kneejerk reaction to boost mob hitpoints by 50% back in the tail end of mod 6, on the grounds that it was "we found it too easy". We saw it in the account wide companion debacle in the wake of the Second Anniversary. We saw it in the attempt to sneak in a doubling of the 60 to 70 XP requirement during an x2 XP weekend in what many (rightly or wrongly) saw as a blatant attempt to force people to buy more $50 XP boosters.
And now, based off the statements you yourself have made it, it looks like the Devs are going off on this half-cocked, without a plan, and with no idea if it'll actually work. Look at that screenshot. Look at what you've said. "We're looking into. We're looking into." Repeat ad infintium. The last time we were fed that line, it took three months for the appropriate solution (the fixing of some truly outstanding AP bugs, and the nerfing of Mob damage without shooting their HP into the stratosphere in such a way that those of us without access to the "bottomless wallet" artifact could actually best in a meaningful period of time) to actually come about. Three months. Three months while the game hemorrhaged players and your own forum polls told you that 85% of your player based openly despised what you'd done. I've dealt with bank foreclosure law firms that looked downright agile by comparison (which anyone who's ever dealt with them will tell you, tend to be bloated, bureaucracy choked morasses whose response times can charitably be described as "glacial.").
We can't see any evidence that you're going to introduce something worthwhile to compensate from suddenly introducing the biggest professions paradigm shift since this game left beta. What do we need XP for? At that point, the toon should be well past 70, and the XP you get is a paltry drop in the bucket for what you need to get an overflow level. Gold? Gold is useless in this game except for buying potions, node kits, and injury kits, and the game already provides you with more than you possibly know what to do with.
Now I apologize if I seem like I'm being unfair to you. I don't want to heap this all on top of you, as I know you're not the one responsible for this decision. But the corporate masters here have so damaged the trust between them and their player base that people are calling this as they see it: a blatant bait-and-switch, the latest in a long line, for no other purpose than to squeeze them for even more money. They see your bosses as stripping them of their primary means of advancing in game, with no evidence that there's even a a framework of a plan in place to address the sudden shortcoming and absolute uselessness of the leadership profession as it will be by this time next week. They see promises of "we're looking into it", which they've come to see as meaning "we may or may not get back to you and address your concerns and the gaping problems this creates at some point before the Universe suffers its heat-death."
I love this game. I want to stay with it. I want to see it succeed. I've found a wonderful guild to take in me and my friends and I'm enjoying the SH module. And as someone who wants to see this game succeed, for all my vitriol and snark, please, please, try to rebuild the trust with your players. Please respond to this quickly. Please, don't let this game die with a whimper, as a desiccated shell of what it once was and could have been.
There is another online game, whose name I will not mention to avoid drama and polemics, which I used to play and of which I'll say, off the top of my head, the kinds of things you can do and that help you progress in it:
-Do daily quests in more than a dozen endgame dungeons
-Do quests to recruit new companions
-Play the Skirmish or Strategic missions, which feature a completely different combat system based on other skills.
-Join a Raid with other players, and potentially get huge rewards
-Join a Guild dungeon where the collective effort is rewarded with prizes given out at the guild master's discretion
-Fight in an event area which is open once a week, can only be accessed for 30 minutes and has an insane Exp and Drop rate, which cuts on grinding time
-Join the hourly PvP tournament, which has HUGE nerfs that both make purely offensive and purely defensive tactics less useful than in PvE, factoring in player skill
-Join the weekly PvP tournaments and gain prizes even just by participating. You'll get curbed by someone with better gear and skills than yours eventually, but there are enough participants to make the challenge rise at a steady pace
-Partake in crafting thousands of different items, all of which are useful because the demand for gear of all levels is always high, and most of them can be refined into higher-level items.
-Set up an expedition and let your companions fight on their own. You can let them do their thing or choose to watch them fight, which is pretty entertaining in itself, and once they get back you get any loot they found
-Build and decorate your home, which gives you a substantial "utility" boost and also provides you with a place to store your belongings and have stat-boosting parties with friends.
-You want to pay and support the game development? You can choose between grab-bag boxes (which sometimes contain very rare and extremely valuable items, but nevertheless contain lots of stuff you can't normally get in the game) or a multi-use item whose value is pretty much stable in the market, which you can immediately exchange for currency. You still have to raise and manage your character yourself, so it's more of a financial bump to overcome small cash gate than a "instant win" option.
Now, let's compare it with what I can do in NWO. Which should be more impressive given that I'm currently playing it.
-Join one of TWO endgame skirmishes...which is always the same enemies, same places, same tactics, up to the bosses whose only gimmick is "Tons of HP, one-hit death to anyone not geared enough", which means you either whittle their health away, get curbed, or curb it if you happen to have a 3k+ in your party.
-Join one of THREE endgame dungeons...same thing as skirmishes, but with more class imbalance: every "ideal" group just wants four DPS and someone to keep them alive. Support classes are out of luck.
-Go toe to toe in PvP with no balancing system, meaning it's all down to numbers. No skill involved besides knowing which overpowered powers to spam, if you are weaker than your opponent you die, period.
-Grind the same 4-5 quests in the same 4 campaign zones over and over and over, until you get the boons and only have to grind again if you need some campaign currencies for your guild or for converting into keys.
-Foundry...oh wait, it's not coming back. Strike that off the list.
-Craft tons of useless items to max out your profession skills, wait entire days so that you can have higher-ranked workers, and repeat until you can get the one thing that matters for that profession (Jewels/Rings/Armor Kits/Alchemy components)
Maybe the developers just wanted more free time around the holidays...that is when the layoff notices will be hitting their mailboxes as the player population will tank very quickly. *shrugs*
IMHO currently this game feels more like this...
How to keep the economy active and under control while trying to keep the player base engaged and not completely resentful.
I think this video could be of value for any Developer of any F2P game from any studio. It did a good job of explaining how I got to the point where I don't plan on spending any more cash on Neverwinter.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mhz9OXy86a0
I saw it first in Dark Orbit...and the game nearly collapsed and has never recovered...then in Wartune..and now the same scenario is happening here.
The new owners start by adding more and more cash items (look at all the stronghold stuff and the huge AD contributions needed and VIP), then they start attacking the in game awards so the only way to get good equipment is to cash because all the other sources of in game currency are gone. The reason is the same too...to stop botters.
It wont be long before you will see the exodus begin...free players will go first...they will leave looking for a game they feel treats them fairly.
Next the moderate spenders will go looking for a game they can be competitive in without spending thousands. Soon all that will be left are a few diehards and the wallet warriors.
But the wallet warriors will soon tire of no easy PVP kills since so many of the free and moderate spenders left and all they face are other Wallet Warriors. Then they start leaving.
In Dark Orbit this happened 3 years ago and even after they lightened up the game has not recovered.
The same scenario has happened in Wartune in the last year and a half.
Mark my words...if Perfect World will follow the same path and in 6 months Neverwinter will be a ghost town.
Really too bad...it was a nice game.
People will not pay $20 for a blood ruby pack which is only 150k RP which can't upgrade anything. So why blow $20 just to get something 1/4th the way there...? Pay $80 to make your enchant transcendent... That is beyond madness.
When Mod 6 came out it was clear that all of our gear was made obsolete and we would have to re-work our characters--like it or leave. Our loss. It was also extremely unpolished--Cryptic is still reworking tooltips, stores, etc. There is still lvl 60 HAMSTER everywhere. They had no idea what they were doing, and are only crawling out of it now.
Now they are removing AD from Leadership, one of the last bastions of earning after making everything BOP and removing drops from just about everywhere. And now they are going to spend 2 modules "evaluating" what effect that will have on the players before they modify any AD sinks or lower prices on anything.
I only have 2 characters and it affects me. Big army, eh? I earn a small amount from Leadership to augment what I earn from daily PVP. And it is not enough. I often buy AD through the Zen store.
There's no integrity from week to week let alone month to month of Cryptic's "universe." Players cannot get ahead no matter how much they play or how much RL $ they pay here.
This game has a major change just about every week, not usually even announced. It is about the most unstable thing I've ever seen. Sorry I spent cash on it.
But that's not going to happen, is it? Because this isn't about bots AT ALL, it's just about wringing every cent out of the current player base so you can fund the next game you make that you'll tank into the ground in 2-3 years just like with NW. Here's hoping there's enough bots so your log in #'s will still say reasonable.
CW: Rodrant Turnbul
TR: Rodran
DC: Rodrat
GWF: ROARdrant TurnBRAWL
Other GWF: Shieldrant
HR: Bowdrant
SW: Wardrant Turnlock (my main!)
OP: Paladrant (on Preview!)
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
I'm also pretty sure that someone who can't dedicate 30 minutes to the game could get any kind of leadership setup going at all (unless he does only that and does not play the game at all, but that shoulnd't be the case here, right?).
were is my compensation for all the time invested into leadership just for the extra ad?
Leadership, while no longer a major source of AD, is still a good source for XP, Gold, and loot items. All of these things are valuable to regular players, but less so to botters.
this is by far the most false statement I have ever seen a developer state in the history of gameing I only have leadership to 20 on two char and 17+ on 4 others. There is not a single leadership quest that offers any kind of usefull reward if you think 1g or a potion worth a few silver is worth the time and ad investment leadership takes your sadly mistake and the xp come on an 8 hour mission doesn't even offer the equilivant of a 5 min quest. with out the astral diamonds leadership offers nothing.
all the time I wasted leveling this profession down the drain not to mention the cost of all the assests I bought and I don't even have hero level assets I find this to be an outrage.
now onto second point
the concept of being able to earn the ad at anytime is the way it should have been from day one the idea of hourly events was lame to start with.
but your not concept is not going to work either because we all know that you are not capable of designing new interface to track your progress thru the bonus zen so say I do 4 dungen runs I guess I will have to start a dam tally of how much bonus I got to know when I am done that's about as smart as making F the default key for everything lets ad that to the list of HAMSTER design decisions
also lets look at this
Old: If you picked up the daily quest, you got 3,000 AD for one dungeon. If you had your chest key, you got an additional 3,000 AD.
New: 1. Automatically get 3,000 AD for each of the first two dungeons. 2. In addition, get 150 to 750 AD for each dungeon played (up to a maximum 7,200 AD per day from dungeons). Amount varies by time.
let me see Amount varies by time which means tos takes 10 min to run so it will only reward 150 bonus ad.
which means I will have to run ToS a total of 48 times a day just to get the full bonus let me say this you can kiss my hairy white #$@ if you think I would do that I will gladly uninstall the game before I do that.
this is why I don't do the foundry daily now the fast foundry quests take about 20 to 25 min each I have to do 4 of them for for 4k ad that's hour and 20 min but the good quests are few and far between esp now since you still have't renabled the foundry so were stuck with what you think are good quests and there aren't very many of thos worth the time.
so lets do comparison like yours of what I get now.
leadership 8k+8k+3600+3600= 23200 per day is what I get on my leadership
I run daily dungen on 6 during event which is 6k per toon x6 for total of 36000
skirmishes no 2 toons for total of 3000 each plus another 3 per run for total of 6000 x2
plus pvp on 2 toons for total of 4k ad for 4 matches plus if lucky another 4k for wins total of 8k x 2 -16000
final tally
leadership 23000 time passive
dungen s 36000 1 hour
skirmishes 12000 1 hour
pvp 16000 1 hour
total 87000 for 3 hours time.
new system
dungens 6k 2 runs total 20 min additional 7200 at 150 to 750 lets keep time same as now 1 hour so that is total of 36000 no time for any bonus
skirmishes run two skirmishes takes about 15 min each for total of 3k 2 char that's hour so no time for bonus either so only getting 6k total dam half what I am getting now o well
pvp let me correct you hear you actualy get 8000 for 4 match provided 1 of thos 4 was a win.
new system get 4k for 2 matches and bonus upto 4800 match lasts about 15 min average so 2 match on two toons were at an hour and for argument sake I got a win I still only walk away with 4k per to total of 8k unlike the 16k would have got on old system.
so total for me in new system
dung 36000 time 1 hour
skirmishes 6000 time 1hour
pvp 4000 time 1 hour
total 46000
so old system I get 87000 for 3 hours time new system I get 46000 for same amount of time take your new system and shove it up your HAMSTER were it belongs thank you have nice life if this goes live I will be uninstalling game.
NW-DHNVMMGVJ Dragons horde part one.
http://youtu.be/0KbqTWeJqxc
The way they did this was actually quite simple. 1) limited chat for F2P 2) no in-game trading for F2P 3) no AH use for F2P.
Those 3 things can be applied to this game as well in a fashion. Make it so those restrictions are lifted when a player enters in their credit card/bank card info and ties that to the account. Add a rule in the user agreement that states that if caught using a bot or gold spamming, their card will be charged x number of dollars and the account banned. Also, with their creit card/bank card info, you can block any new accounts using that card. Apply this and you won't have to touch the leadership AD since the bots won't want to give their credit card/bank card info.