If the problem is about bots farming AD, are there other mmo's that have eliminated bots? If so, what are those games and why can't that be implemented onto Neverwinter?
Other games have real GMs to battle botters ingame, and that does work actually. While this here will actually only hit regular players, but not the botters.
Botters run around in guilds. Botters will be able to farm any contet, that a regular player can actually play. Botters might even benefit from this change, since some players may start buying from them now...
And unless they send out real GMs to find and bann those botters, nothing will actually change. Botters don't care where they make their AD from, and time to reach a certain goal is not a problem for them, they can run 24/7 without a break.
And will we be able to get a zen refund for all the extra character slots we bought? Most of the extra character slots I have were bought just to have leadership alts. Seems like it's only fair to give the option to people to return their extra character slots.
The only real asset is TIME. We sell our time in RL to get real money. We spend our time and maybe some real money for entertainment and competition in games.
I calculated I spent 1.3 mill+ AD for footman and slots, and maybe 20 hours each for an extra 10 toons, that's 200 gaming hours. (I level all my toons to 60, and those 10 toons were getting close to lvl-20 leadership, so maybe they generated 200k AD in total, so I lost 1mill ad and 20 bucks).
That investment has been instantly declared worthless.
I'm sure there are people who spent a lot more than that, and some a little less etc. And this is not the first time/way Cryptic has done this kind of thing (dragon hoard enchants, making gear worthless, etc).
There's really only two ways Cryptic can go:
1. Create new harder content. This approach requires dev-work. It indicates an investment by the holding-company in the future of the game, which breeds positive belief by the players, which leads to 'some' purchasing of in-game assets with real-money. A f2p model that works and grows.
2. Churn the flesh. Get rid of the existing players, and attract new ones, into a 'new-game-world' that 'promises' to be competitive, by getting rid of these 'exploiters' and 'bots' and evil people that are one-shotting you in that dom match. Cryptic is having a hard time getting rid of them, but they are trying hard.
Considering the mod-6 disaster, the studio layoffs, the actual removal of game-content (foundry, dungeons, etc)... It seems pretty clear they have chosen option-2. If it wasn't for some real friends I've made in guild, I'm sure I would have uninstalled by now.
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silvergryphMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 740Arc User
Static prices have already gone down because of the VIP program. A Rank 12 VIP gets a 25% discount at the Bazaar. They can then sell a GMoP, for example at 85,000 and still make 1,500 AD profit after the AH takes their cut. Just look on the AH.
If they change leadership to yield more xp and bind on account refinement point items, then I'm moderately OK with it. As it currently stands I fully expect this change to cause more problems than it will solve.
Currently the game is Hemorrhage players faster than the levies in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.
What they need to address is player retention and satisfaction and first and foremost make the game fun again. Once that issue is solved, and it is a big issue, then perhaps they can resort to shoot from the hip solutions to problems that shouldn't even exist in the first place.
So right now, this change is going to cost them half of the remaining player base. Does that really make sense as a starting point?
Okay... You want to fix the botting problem. I'm all for that. Let’s do that... You want to fix the economy problem so all players who play have a reasonable income... I'm all for that as well. Let’s do that.
No more AD from leadership. Cool... no problem. Make leadership a worthless profession, NOT COOL, BIG PROBLEM. How to fix the problem? Make leadership tasks give peridots, aquas, and sapphires which are bound to account. Then people who play the game get rewarded, and botting for AD through leadership goes away.
Next. Make EVERYTHING in game give some AD... Every quest, every skrim, every dungeon, everything. Make it so playing gives a tangible reward every time all the time.
Change the refinement cap for AD, 24k per day per char doesn't work in the current economy, and will be worse in the new. The amount of deflation this is going to cause will seriously hurt everybody... ESPECIALLY casual players and those of us who occasionally spend money on zen to convert to AD because we don't have time to farm endlessly. With this, make sure players can reasonably hit that cap with in a single sitting. Run every campaign daily and you hit the cap. Anything else accumulates for when you don't have time to play.
Make the cap 100k or 200k per day on a single character with an ACCOUNT cap of 500k per day. This way people who have put time, money and effort into an AD generating machine can still benefit and play the game, and the economy will remain stable. This will benefit players who don't have huge amounts of time, while halting players with massive armies at their command.
Hire some GM's to police the chat channels AND Auction House. Any account that posts multiple stacks 99 r5 enchants frequently is probably a bot. Anyone who is posting a single cheap item for millions of AD is bot and seller, if you pay attention, you can get both the seller AND the person who is buying AD from a 3rd party site.
Loot from dungeon chests... The only reason to buy a dungeon chest key is so you get the AD at the end AND other things that you can sell the compensate the cost of buying the key. Those of us who bought VIP saw the keys as an extra bonus to get more AD... that won't be the case anymore. Needing a dungeon chest key for a chance at some usually worthless gear and 750ad doesn't cover the cost of the key. WHY would we buy the keys if they don't at least break even on a standard run?
[quote] he just said that they will revise the prices for fixed price items. that includes c wards. [/quote]
Is that going to happen before or after the dungeons all return?
Cryptic nerfs with a nuke, and buffs months later by handing out shovels. You shortsighted people who were pushing for this change, without considering Cryptic's history -- and the Dungeon nuke should have been recent enough to remind you that they cut things early and often. New content, fixes, etc get done "eventually." You should have pushed for buffing in-game time (and just just dungeon runs) first and ONLY. Only when it was actually rewarding -- 4-6 months on Cryptic buff schedule(tm) -- ONLY then consider leadership changes. Nerf hard, nerf often is Cryptic in 2015 -- and the shortsighted fools asked for more.
My prediction: prices for coal wards, etc will be adjusted in a few months. By 15%. Pray it's not 15% up.
@goatshark While I appreciate the communication and the intent of the changes, please consider that the math for "gaining" AD with dungeon runs is flawed. Each subsequent run after the first in a day costs 5k AD just to run. So those runs which provide 120-750 AD, with drop rates being that the most common gain in a Dungeon run is just the item in the final chest (most common being 3k AD salvageable), each run will actually be a net loss and an AD sink.
In the last week of play with my Paladin running 3 or more dungeons daily, the only rewards I had received in dungeon runs were from the chest. No boss drops.
Unless the drop tables are significantly improved or the salvage amounts that rings and belts allow for are increased, each run after the first 2 will be a gamble and oft times result in a loss of AD for a player. Gambling AD is not a REWARD for playing more in any way.
We will be watching what these AD changes do to the average player's holdings. Based off of that data we will be re-evaluating all of our AD pricing in the game.
Basically says they'll look into whether they need changing. doesn't say they'll change 'em. It's a plus, but I'll believe it when I see it.
For someone in the know: How will the AD from skirmishes work for characters 60-70? Currently, there aren't any skirmishes that qualify for Rhix's daily. A couple of earlier ones (Battle for the Bridge, Aberrant Assault) are available at L60-61, will these earn the bonus for characters able to do them?
its double RP right now, i could log on and take advantage of this. Instead i'm eyeballing other games on Steam.... i still have artifacts in blue, and tons of RP in my bank and g-bank. i've ceased all other activity until this is settled.
I am in to minds about this I feel that players that have 1 toon and thus only need to take care of 1 toon will find this positive(exl professions of course). But it will be more difficult to upgrade my secondary toons. a sad fact since now i will only use them to get influence for the guild.
I understand the nerf of AD in professions, I would just have liked to have seen some less time consuming way of gaining ad even if it is small amounts. The problem is most of the dungeons have been removed and it will be boring to repeat the very small amount of dungeons that is available to us(unless the old ones are returning too).
That being said I will give it a chance maybe I will be pleasently surprised by this. After all there are positives and negatives to this. Here's hoping the positives outshine the negatives.
There are more than BIS players in this game RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ???? FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)
I don't think the AD change is bad for bots, seems it should be good for them Seems to me that increased value of AD increases the value of their accounts ... and re-sellers would be able to get even more sales if peeps get desperate for ADs.
(1) if Zens are worth less than 500 AD it is *not* good for folks putting money into the game since Zens would be worth less ADs (2) Without serious adjustments to the fixed AD costs, ADs can't really increase in value that much (aside from being worth more Zens) (3) I would like to understand the time currency calculations, are there posts that describe Cryptic's expectations for "free to play" player progression? (4) Several alts will still be necessary for salvaging the account bound items that are picked up in dungeons, still having invested *time capital* over several months ranking leadership should be rewarded somehow.
Bottom line: I don't plan to donate any more $$$ to the game until the content is back up to the level it was before the dungeons, drops and gear sets were removed. The publisher needs to earn my money, if I don't like it, then I don't buy it.
Finally AD gets removed from Leadership, FINALLY. Really happy about this. Of course more has to be done, Foundry and Heroic Encounters should give AD too, but at least the alt armies can go F emselves now and the playing field is a bit more leveled.
+1 to AD for HE's
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" - Frank Zappa
Now, about leadership: Since we are not going to generate AD from this source, allow us to run any task we want more than 3 times, just like any other proffesion, which you can have 9 same tasks running. And add more experience given by the profession tasks. 80/ 160/ 240/ 250 experience fro profession now that AD is gone won't be seen well. The items/ tasks left are useless, except for the one that gives 3 random resonance stones.
Except for the gather and make components you can only do 3 of any the others that actually make things in the other professions. I don't think that needs to change. Might be nice but it isn't necessary.
The AD loss is going to be a tough hit to try to get things leveled up. You added more ways to get refinement points but there are still too many ways and bag space is becoming an issue of keeping things until I need them. If only I could switch my bigger bags i got between alts...oh thats right you took that away as an outright greed grab. This is all to Deja Vu'ish for me.
Great idea to remove AD from Leadership. Never should have been offered that way.
Just wondering if folks who think this way also object to selling pants and shirts an other craftable commodities for AD? If so what is the difference?
Technically all crafting is the same actions, and if you consider leadership to be not playing the game then all crafting is not playing the game. So should people be able to make AD from any of the craftAbles?
Hey folks, thank you for all of the feedback. I know this is a very touchy subject and everyone feels very passionately about it, which is why I wanted to get information out as soon as I could. I'm going to try and clear up a little confusion, and let you know what we're currently evaluating.
These changes are on Preview right now. They will be going live next week.
The bonus AD earned from the first 2 runs of something (like a dungeon) do NOT count towards the other AD cap. So your first 2 dungeon runs will earn you 3000 AD each. On top of that, you'll be earning AD from a separate pool based on what you ran. This other pool is what has the daily cap of 7200 AD. For your 3rd+ runs, you'll only be earning from that separate pool.
We will be watching what these AD changes do to the average player's holdings. Based off of that data we will be re-evaluating all of our AD pricing in the game.
As I'd mentioned, we are looking into solutions for the solo player to get more AD. I hope to have news there very soon.
We will be evaluating leadership tasks to make sure the required times and rewards make sense.
We are also looking into what we can do to make it less painful AD-wise for alts. I really don't want people to feel that the only way to have the resources necessary to alt is to make a leadership army.
Again, thank you for the feedback. We are listening to what you say, and we're watching data. All of this information together will continue to help us make positive changes to the game.
What about all the other professions? They should all produce Astral diamonds.
Great idea to remove AD from Leadership. Never should have been offered that way.
Just wondering if folks who think this way also object to selling pants and shirts an other craftable commodities for AD? If so what is the difference?
You don't have to invest anything in Leadership to produce AD. You do have to invest in other stuff with AD in order to produce AD with those professions and you're at the mercy of the market to actually make AD using these methods.
Leadership was a copout easy way to produce AD and it was abused. It's beyond time it was eliminated.
We are also looking into what we can do to make it less painful AD-wise for alts. I really don't want people to feel that the only way to have the resources necessary to alt is to make a leadership army.
Again, thank you for the feedback. We are listening to what you say, and we're watching data. All of this information together will continue to help us make positive changes to the game.
What about all the other professions? They should all produce Astral diamonds.
I think it was more intended as: *people should feel like they can support alts* (NOT to indicate leadership will continue to be a viable way to do so).
Account bound artifacts may be a good way to start.
Great idea to remove AD from Leadership. Never should have been offered that way.
Just wondering if folks who think this way also object to selling pants and shirts an other craftable commodities for AD? If so what is the difference?
You don't have to invest anything in Leadership to produce AD. You do have to invest in other stuff with AD in order to produce AD with those professions and you're at the mercy of the market to actually make AD using these methods.
Leadership was a copout easy way to produce AD and it was abused. It's beyond time it was eliminated.
You have to invest the greatest commodity of all into leadership before it becomes remotely profitable...time, and lots of it.
And again technically all crafting is the same actions...set it and forget it, not really playing by the new definition of playing, so why can one be profitable and not the other?
thegreatmikeyMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 122Arc User
Scott, here is my response to your letter.
You said you wanted everybody to understand the intent behind astral diamonds and the changes you are making. As a customer, I do not care about your intent. The path to hell is paved with good intentions. I care about the results. Consistant good results are what build trust. The Cryptic team's results over the last year have been declared by the masses to be poor.
My kneejerk reaction is, "Oh my gawd! No! You are gonna kill the game!" I stewed for a few minutes, then decided to think on it. I have decided that this does not nessesarily kill the game. But, as currently posted, your letter creates fear because in the end, no matter how you justify it, you are taking something away without a tangible return. People hate that and fear is powerful. So you no doubt will absolutely lose some customers over this. I believe you understand this. I would bet that all the development team warned the guy who made this call about that too.
To stymie this there needs to be a tangible return. This will be the only thing to pacify the fear generated. We all logically get the concept of market correction. We all know this takes a long time. I am sure on your end you will change fixed prices and adjust AD costs for adbancement of guilds and character boons. But you did not say that you would do this immediately. So what about right now? Where is the tangible return?
In the past you have given out in game compensation packages. This is really the only thing you can do. I suggest putting together a compensation package for the complete loss of value of the leadership profession. I emphasized complete because really, by the time you got it to any significant level your character was level 70. Nobody cares about any of the rewards other than astral diamonds. The rest a level 70 character generates just by playing the game.
So what should this compensation package be? I honestly do not know, but it needs to be as signifigant as the loss. It needs to be something long term or permanent too, not something that will be used up quickly like any consumable item or equipment piece that loses it's value after the release of the next new and improved piece of equipment. It needs to not reduce your revenue stream. In the best case scenario it would entice a new or enhance an existing revenue stream.
My suggestion is that everyone get a 1 month(?) free trial of VIP that, once ended, completely goes away. We would all start at the beginning as if we'd never had it before. For those that already have VIP I suggest a free 1 month upgrade or, if already maximized, a free 1 month extention. My reasoninng being that it serves as a promotional offer (Maybe you can even write it off as such) that cannot be sold or traded (though maybe some of the stuff you get in it can be). It also is usable in gameplay, which seems to be what you want to promote. It is definitely not a perfect idea, but I think it has merit.
I am sure other players will come up with other ideas, hopefully even better ones!
Comments
While this here will actually only hit regular players, but not the botters.
Botters run around in guilds.
Botters will be able to farm any contet, that a regular player can actually play.
Botters might even benefit from this change, since some players may start buying from them now...
And unless they send out real GMs to find and bann those botters, nothing will actually change.
Botters don't care where they make their AD from, and time to reach a certain goal is not a problem for them, they can run 24/7 without a break.
The only real asset is TIME. We sell our time in RL to get real money. We spend our time and maybe some real money for entertainment and competition in games.
I calculated I spent 1.3 mill+ AD for footman and slots, and maybe 20 hours each for an extra 10 toons, that's 200 gaming hours. (I level all my toons to 60, and those 10 toons were getting close to lvl-20 leadership, so maybe they generated 200k AD in total, so I lost 1mill ad and 20 bucks).
That investment has been instantly declared worthless.
I'm sure there are people who spent a lot more than that, and some a little less etc. And this is not the first time/way Cryptic has done this kind of thing (dragon hoard enchants, making gear worthless, etc).
There's really only two ways Cryptic can go:
1. Create new harder content. This approach requires dev-work. It indicates an investment by the holding-company in the future of the game, which breeds positive belief by the players, which leads to 'some' purchasing of in-game assets with real-money. A f2p model that works and grows.
2. Churn the flesh. Get rid of the existing players, and attract new ones, into a 'new-game-world' that 'promises' to be competitive, by getting rid of these 'exploiters' and 'bots' and evil people that are one-shotting you in that dom match. Cryptic is having a hard time getting rid of them, but they are trying hard.
Considering the mod-6 disaster, the studio layoffs, the actual removal of game-content (foundry, dungeons, etc)... It seems pretty clear they have chosen option-2. If it wasn't for some real friends I've made in guild, I'm sure I would have uninstalled by now.
Champions Online Advanced Forum Search
Here is why.
Currently the game is Hemorrhage players faster than the levies in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.
What they need to address is player retention and satisfaction and first and foremost make the game fun again.
Once that issue is solved, and it is a big issue, then perhaps they can resort to shoot from the hip solutions to problems that shouldn't even exist in the first place.
So right now, this change is going to cost them half of the remaining player base. Does that really make sense as a starting point?
You want to fix the economy problem so all players who play have a reasonable income... I'm all for that as well. Let’s do that.
No more AD from leadership. Cool... no problem. Make leadership a worthless profession, NOT COOL, BIG PROBLEM.
How to fix the problem? Make leadership tasks give peridots, aquas, and sapphires which are bound to account. Then people who play the game get rewarded, and botting for AD through leadership goes away.
Next. Make EVERYTHING in game give some AD... Every quest, every skrim, every dungeon, everything. Make it so playing gives a tangible reward every time all the time.
Change the refinement cap for AD, 24k per day per char doesn't work in the current economy, and will be worse in the new. The amount of deflation this is going to cause will seriously hurt everybody... ESPECIALLY casual players and those of us who occasionally spend money on zen to convert to AD because we don't have time to farm endlessly. With this, make sure players can reasonably hit that cap with in a single sitting. Run every campaign daily and you hit the cap. Anything else accumulates for when you don't have time to play.
Make the cap 100k or 200k per day on a single character with an ACCOUNT cap of 500k per day. This way people who have put time, money and effort into an AD generating machine can still benefit and play the game, and the economy will remain stable. This will benefit players who don't have huge amounts of time, while halting players with massive armies at their command.
Hire some GM's to police the chat channels AND Auction House. Any account that posts multiple stacks 99 r5 enchants frequently is probably a bot. Anyone who is posting a single cheap item for millions of AD is bot and seller, if you pay attention, you can get both the seller AND the person who is buying AD from a 3rd party site.
Loot from dungeon chests... The only reason to buy a dungeon chest key is so you get the AD at the end AND other things that you can sell the compensate the cost of buying the key. Those of us who bought VIP saw the keys as an extra bonus to get more AD... that won't be the case anymore. Needing a dungeon chest key for a chance at some usually worthless gear and 750ad doesn't cover the cost of the key. WHY would we buy the keys if they don't at least break even on a standard run?
he just said that they will revise the prices for fixed price items. that includes c wards.
[/quote]
Is that going to happen before or after the dungeons all return?
Cryptic nerfs with a nuke, and buffs months later by handing out shovels. You shortsighted people who were pushing for this change, without considering Cryptic's history -- and the Dungeon nuke should have been recent enough to remind you that they cut things early and often. New content, fixes, etc get done "eventually." You should have pushed for buffing in-game time (and just just dungeon runs) first and ONLY. Only when it was actually rewarding -- 4-6 months on Cryptic buff schedule(tm) -- ONLY then consider leadership changes. Nerf hard, nerf often is Cryptic in 2015 -- and the shortsighted fools asked for more.
My prediction: prices for coal wards, etc will be adjusted in a few months. By 15%. Pray it's not 15% up.
In the last week of play with my Paladin running 3 or more dungeons daily, the only rewards I had received in dungeon runs were from the chest. No boss drops.
Unless the drop tables are significantly improved or the salvage amounts that rings and belts allow for are increased, each run after the first 2 will be a gamble and oft times result in a loss of AD for a player. Gambling AD is not a REWARD for playing more in any way.
For someone in the know:
How will the AD from skirmishes work for characters 60-70? Currently, there aren't any skirmishes that qualify for Rhix's daily. A couple of earlier ones (Battle for the Bridge, Aberrant Assault) are available at L60-61, will these earn the bonus for characters able to do them?
I understand the nerf of AD in professions, I would just have liked to have seen some less time consuming way of gaining ad even if it is small amounts. The problem is most of the dungeons have been removed and it will be boring to repeat the very small amount of dungeons that is available to us(unless the old ones are returning too).
That being said I will give it a chance maybe I will be pleasently surprised by this. After all there are positives and negatives to this. Here's hoping the positives outshine the negatives.
RIP Real Tiamat, RIP Real Demogorgon RIP real Temple of the spider. Why remove non bis content to give to bis players ????
FORCING the majority of your player base to play 4 mod old dungeons and trial will have a bad result on player base
Changes are getting so bad i would rather prefer no new changes (RIP ICE FISHING in winter fest)
Seems to me that increased value of AD increases the value of their accounts ... and re-sellers would be able to get even more sales if peeps get desperate for ADs.
(1) if Zens are worth less than 500 AD it is *not* good for folks putting money into the game since Zens would be worth less ADs
(2) Without serious adjustments to the fixed AD costs, ADs can't really increase in value that much (aside from being worth more Zens)
(3) I would like to understand the time currency calculations, are there posts that describe Cryptic's expectations for "free to play" player progression?
(4) Several alts will still be necessary for salvaging the account bound items that are picked up in dungeons, still having invested *time capital* over several months ranking leadership should be rewarded somehow.
Bottom line: I don't plan to donate any more $$$ to the game until the content is back up to the level it was before the dungeons, drops and gear sets were removed. The publisher needs to earn my money, if I don't like it, then I don't buy it.
Recently, I don't like it.
The AD loss is going to be a tough hit to try to get things leveled up. You added more ways to get refinement points but there are still too many ways and bag space is becoming an issue of keeping things until I need them. If only I could switch my bigger bags i got between alts...oh thats right you took that away as an outright greed grab. This is all to Deja Vu'ish for me.
Technically all crafting is the same actions, and if you consider leadership to be not playing the game then all crafting is not playing the game. So should people be able to make AD from any of the craftAbles?
Leadership was a copout easy way to produce AD and it was abused. It's beyond time it was eliminated.
Account bound artifacts may be a good way to start.
And again technically all crafting is the same actions...set it and forget it, not really playing by the new definition of playing, so why can one be profitable and not the other?
You said you wanted everybody to understand the intent behind astral diamonds and the changes you are making. As a customer, I do not care about your intent. The path to hell is paved with good intentions. I care about the results. Consistant good results are what build trust. The Cryptic team's results over the last year have been declared by the masses to be poor.
My kneejerk reaction is, "Oh my gawd! No! You are gonna kill the game!" I stewed for a few minutes, then decided to think on it. I have decided that this does not nessesarily kill the game. But, as currently posted, your letter creates fear because in the end, no matter how you justify it, you are taking something away without a tangible return. People hate that and fear is powerful. So you no doubt will absolutely lose some customers over this. I believe you understand this. I would bet that all the development team warned the guy who made this call about that too.
To stymie this there needs to be a tangible return. This will be the only thing to pacify the fear generated. We all logically get the concept of market correction. We all know this takes a long time. I am sure on your end you will change fixed prices and adjust AD costs for adbancement of guilds and character boons. But you did not say that you would do this immediately. So what about right now? Where is the tangible return?
In the past you have given out in game compensation packages. This is really the only thing you can do. I suggest putting together a compensation package for the complete loss of value of the leadership profession. I emphasized complete because really, by the time you got it to any significant level your character was level 70. Nobody cares about any of the rewards other than astral diamonds. The rest a level 70 character generates just by playing the game.
So what should this compensation package be? I honestly do not know, but it needs to be as signifigant as the loss. It needs to be something long term or permanent too, not something that will be used up quickly like any consumable item or equipment piece that loses it's value after the release of the next new and improved piece of equipment. It needs to not reduce your revenue stream. In the best case scenario it would entice a new or enhance an existing revenue stream.
My suggestion is that everyone get a 1 month(?) free trial of VIP that, once ended, completely goes away. We would all start at the beginning as if we'd never had it before. For those that already have VIP I suggest a free 1 month upgrade or, if already maximized, a free 1 month extention. My reasoninng being that it serves as a promotional offer (Maybe you can even write it off as such) that cannot be sold or traded (though maybe some of the stuff you get in it can be). It also is usable in gameplay, which seems to be what you want to promote. It is definitely not a perfect idea, but I think it has merit.
I am sure other players will come up with other ideas, hopefully even better ones!