silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
Simply put, a vast reduction (of over 50% or more of our AD generation) is being removed, but your COSTING remains 100% the same. Its not viable not one iota, we cannot afford to progress and upgrade and donate millions and millions of AD when we cannot generate it.
So many alternatives are giving already, including my own thread. Its pretty simple, your doing this out of order, you cannot remove leadership and not reduce your costing at the same time. Its REALLY bad , its a complete lack of foresight and you will again lose thousands of players.
If your going to do this, DO IT RIGHT. ANNOUNCE a system wide costing reduction at the same time. Its the only way to do this.
Please, as a veteren mmo player, Im asking you do step back and implement this properly, IM trying to get you guys to the table here, you need money, great, find, wonderful, (in fact ive said before just drop the effing exchange, remove your f2p tag (or modify it like other games do) and make it that you can earn zen via playing vs buying it with AD and make AD only usable for AH purposes and progression mats.
Make people pay for thier VIP and remove from zen shop.. im EVEN fine with any and all of that .. but this complete lack of respect for your playerbase is frightening.
WE CANNOT maintain current costing with the AD production we will have, its impossible (sh itself requires it for the sole purpose of removing AD from the system, AD that WILL no longer be available! ) yikes guys.
Please announce something today on this. Each hour is literally loosing you players.
Or what happened to the promise, that life steal for SW will be treated "special"?
While botters can run numerous accounts through dungeons, skirmishes, PvP and Strongholds, 24/7 and make a nice profit from this change... a lot of normal players are just screwed... again.
In other words, history repeating.
And here's your assignment, you have until the end of next week: Goal: 240k AD per day Time: 1-3hrs per day Restrictions: No special loot drops, no PvP, character level between 20 and 60, with the new AD "rewarding" system in place of course. and the clock is ticking.
Post edited by regenerde on
I do believe in killing the messenger...
Want to know why?
Because it sends a message!
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onegaki101Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 327Arc User
They should remove SCA as it is not "playing the game". Why allow it to generate AD from drops, same as leadership. Or any profession. In fact, they should shut down gateway as that is not actively playing the game.
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vinceent1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,264Arc User
edited September 2015
we all believed that hoards nerf is part of bigger .... and after that change we dont get a word from cryptic about them for months till now ..... and so on so on
players are not biased, but there is zero faith at cryptic after all. right now they deserve a salt water...
I'd be ok with getting rid of the leadership grind if they drastically scaled down the cost of everything in the game. But when an upgrade costs 2-5 GMOPS and a Cole ward and RP, for a single enchant or artifact upgrade, progress is glacial. Lets do some math.
Maybe you can earn 48k a day playing on multiple chars. And a single upgrade costs 700k AD (mid tier). 700k/48k = 14.58 days. 2 full weeks for a single upgrade on a single item for many hours of play every day.
Also the AD in leardership should be replaced with RP bags/stones to make up the difference and not make leadership and huge waste of a years time ranking up.
Until then its just a big kick in the teeth.
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tripsofthrymrMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,624Community Moderator
I like it. I always hated the fact, that all the freaking freeloading leeches have better items than someone who spends actual money on Neverwinter. The main issue still will be present in the game, though. I am referring to those who abused leadership.
I bet you a GMOP that a substantial majority of players running Leadership on lots of toons are legitimate players that made an investment of time and money to build up that craft, not bots or cheaters.
Leadership should never have included AD, but it has for 2 years now. People have played the game within the framework that was given. Taking AD away now undermines people's sense of fairness and security. If people do not feel the game developers act fairly, they will not make additional investments in the game.
So if I do both, I am looking up to an estimated 22 to 24 hours of game time every day to make my 19000 to 22000 RAD I can get in a few minutes on leadership. The math doesn't lie.
You will get 18,9k to 21k AD with 2 normal dungeons, 2 normal skirmishes and 2 pvp matches. I think it may be done in less than 1 hour. Now add salvage and invocation on top of that and you'll see that reaching the daily limit is not so out of reach.
Keep in mind that we still have no details about the PvP daily quest that gives the 4k AD in addition to the currency needed for pvp gear or the foundry daily quest.
That is not how it read to me. I read 3000 rad for 2 dungeons equals 6000 rad. Then 150 to 500 rad per dungeon after that up to a total of 7000 rad. Either that is 7000 over the already 6000 rad meaning I would still have to run Cragmire Crypts up to a total of 9 times ( at 150 rad a run ) to get just 7000 rad. And if that is a total of 7000 rad over the initial 6000 then if CC only gives 150 rad a run, then that is 47 runs to get that 7000 rad. IF I get 500 rad per run, then I still have to run it 14 times to get that 7000 rad over the initial 6000 rad for doing the first 2 runs. Average about 15 minutes a run will take almost 11 hours to do all 47 dungeon runs. If it is a total of just 7000 then it would take any where from a little over an hour up to about 3 hours to get just the 7000 rad from the dungeons. Then throw in the same time frame for just skirmishes and that can add up to a total of 20 to 22 hours a day to get just 24000 to 26000 rad. Even if it is just 7000 total for both dungeons and skirmishes meaning a total of 14000 rad a day from doing both, you are still looking up to 3 hours a day of nothing but dungeons and skirmishes. And that is assuming you just run CC dungeon and Dread Legion skirmish. And you que instantly every single time. Now throw in a dungeon run or skirmish that takes much longer and that time frame exponentially goes up from there. This does not include any rad or item you might get from said run but if you just do CC dungeon and DL skirmish, you get nothing to sell or salvage.
So as I said before, when is anyone in the game supposed to do ANYTHING ELSE other than run dungeons, skirmishes, or do pvp ( if you like that ). They are not. And how in the world will anyone be able to level up any artifacts or gear from this point on when even an army of 50 leadership toons are not really enough for just 1 character to level up his artifact gear, enchantments, artifacts. Let alone more than 1 character. If you can't devoted more than 5 to 8 hours a day from this point on every day, it won't even be worth attempting to play. I won't even bother. And when everyone finds out how much time it will now take to level up your stuff and how little time and rad you have doing anything other than running dungeons, skirmishes, and pvp, so will everyone else. I myself will spend this weekend looking around at other games to play just in case they really go ahead with this.
I went vip partly for the extra leadership xp so I could get my 3 characters to level 25 faster in order to start earning a few more rad just to get my stuff leveled up since I don't have that much time to spend in game. And I feel lied to, cheated, taking advantage of, and totally ripped off. If I could get my money back from going vip, I would. And many others will feel exactly the same.
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klangeddinMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 882Arc User
So if I do both, I am looking up to an estimated 22 to 24 hours of game time every day to make my 19000 to 22000 RAD I can get in a few minutes on leadership. The math doesn't lie.
You will get 18,9k to 21k AD with 2 normal dungeons, 2 normal skirmishes and 2 pvp matches. I think it may be done in less than 1 hour. Now add salvage and invocation on top of that and you'll see that reaching the daily limit is not so out of reach.
Keep in mind that we still have no details about the PvP daily quest that gives the 4k AD in addition to the currency needed for pvp gear or the foundry daily quest.
That is not how it read to me. I read 3000 rad for 2 dungeons equals 6000 rad.
No, that's not it. The 7200 pool is separate and starts working from the first run. On top of the 3000 bonus. So two runs is a guaranteed 6300 rad (if you get 150), and could be 7000 (if you get 500). On avarage it will be 6650. With 2 skirmishes it will be 6650 just the same. And PvP too.
6650 x 3 = 19950
How long does a 3man non-epic dungeon take? 15 minutes at most (unless you go sightseeing or the others disconnect, or there's something wrong happening IRL, but normally it's very fast). 30 minutes for two run. How long does a non-epic skirmish take? 15 minutes at most (same as normal dungeon). 30 minutes for two run. If you do Epic Skirmishes it may take longer (but with a good group it can be done fast too), but there's also an additional 3k salvage guaranteed from a chest that does NOT require a key. In fact with a very good group, if you run it 2 times you should get over 12k RAD from it in under 30 minutes from that alone. How long does a domination 5vs5 pvp match take? This can vary, but under new rules it's a lot faster than before (1vs1 on node will no longer stop the count, whoever has it will keep getting points). If you get crushed (or crush the opposing team) twice in a row, this will be done VERY fast. Anyways, two matches should not take more than 1 hour.
Even if we are looking at the worst case scenario, this is almost 20k AD in 2 hours. Most likely you'll be doing this in under 90 minutes. And the best days will take less than 1 hour. Now add Invocation on top of it and you're getting very close to 24k. The remaining small part can be done with a salvage, a rare leadership task (they're still there) or additional runs in dungeons, skirmishes or pvp if you feel like it. But if the time invested is too much, those missing 1k-2k will not make or break anything.
If you do not like to be forced into this kind of content, then the complaint is legitimate, but saying that reaching 24k RAD will take 20 to 22 hours is false and it's nowhere close to that.
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
In the beginning there were F2P dungeon farm groups. They farmed dungeons for epic loot to sell on the AH. People who wanted to get geared quickly bought that loot. Giving both F2P players (who had time for many many dungeon runs to earn AD) and P2W players an avenue to progress. P2W progressed faster allowing F2P to be fodder for them in pvp; however, F2Ps always had a since that they were close to being on the same level.
Mod 5 came along and made epic gear worthless
Mod 6 made all epic gear BOP
Taking away these avenues of income, and leaving leadership and rhix quests as the keys to legit AD generation in game.
Another way to generate wealth was farming events. Since no new events (and more specifically cool loot) have been added recently. Many people already have the event items and the events are botted therefore the value in farming events has strongly decreased).
However, Since mod 2 there have been massive AD sinks added to the game. Specifically the new refinement system (and its associated marks) and artifacts. Later with artifact equipment changing every 3-4 months (cubes of augmentation that have 0 value when you use artifact gear as refinement).
The lack of income from questing plus the constant need for RP took a method that was used by a few and made it wide spread. That was the leadership profession which also created a bypass for the daily RAD refinement limit.
The use of leadership to make AD is unique because it requires players with a long term strategy in the game (transient players that enjoy playing multiple games do not typically find interest in this because the results are not immediate). It also has to be less effort than playing the game or be more enjoyable than playing the game because you cannot run an in-game bot on your account while playing the game.
So while there are people who feel like the leadership junkies are ruining the game, these aren't the people killing you in pvp (i will concede that it was possible when leadership was on gateway).
Leadership is not the problem, and AD from leadership is not the problem. Some people really enjoy crafting, let them enjoy it. They shouldn't have to run dungeons, skirmishes, and pvp to enjoy the game. Just as some people only play the AH, its like the stock market to them. There is nothing wrong with it.
This change to leadership doesn't fix the bots, the AD that wrecked the ZAX was made from an exploit that is resolved.
Instead of pointing your angst on people who use leadership, ask yourselves some questions?
1) How did 100s of millions of AD appear out of thin air and cryptic did not have any protection or alert mechanism in place to stop it before it got out of hand? AD only has so many points of origination and all are restrained by the daily refinement threshold, there should have been tracked calculations that says this is how much AD has been generated in the game, the number in game exceed what was generated... emergency maintenance required. BTW that exploit was because of a coding error made by cryptic.
2) Everyone knows where bots can be found in the game. One website even posts a weekly report on how much and what they sold on the AH (here's a hint, the top 63 sellers in the game sold a billion AD of botted items last week). Why is cryptic doing nothing to resolve this issue?
Cryptic is not concerned about stopping botting. They are concerned about getting your money out of your pocket. This change only works to make the game harder for players to progress without making significant RL contributions to do it.
The poll clearly shows people are not ready for this change yet and it could be a very bad decision. I actually suggested replacing ADs with RP items in leadership way back ago (maybe one and a half years ago). But things have changed so much. This idea behind this change seems reasonable. But (a big but) in the current AD generating system, you could not simply delete ADs in leadership without adapting the whole AD generating system gradually. Sadly I am almost sure this will be a very bad decision like many decisions I have saw which seems kind of right but will fail completely.
Even if we are looking at the worst case scenario, this is almost 20k AD in 2 hours. Most likely you'll be doing this in under 90 minutes. And the best days will take less than 1 hour. Now add Invocation on top of it and you're getting very close to 24k. The remaining small part can be done with a salvage, a rare leadership task (they're still there) or additional runs in dungeons, skirmishes or pvp if you feel like it. But if the time invested is too much, those missing 1k-2k will not make or break anything.
If you do not like to be forced into this kind of content, then the complaint is legitimate, but saying that reaching 24k RAD will take 20 to 22 hours is false and it's nowhere close to that.
The most stupid thing about this is that I can just go to WoD and do a dragon run and probably get ~3 lesser resonance stones, 2 minor resonance stones and 15 dragon hoard coffers. And I can just dump all of that on the AH for ~20k. And a dragon run takes ~10 minutes
Personally, I am glad for these changes. I was a slave to the leadership army and I am actually relieved that I don't have to do it anymore.
That said, I think that they REALLY need to look at the prices of AD sinks and lower them significantly, however, I don't anticipate that happening very soon. They probably want to try and soak up some of the excess AD floating around, which... I guess is logical.
But I spent five million AD just in GMOPs yesterday, for ONE toon, and he's not even BIS yet. And I have the 25% discount from VIP. That's ridiculous.
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juleadreamMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 372Arc User
Killing AD from Leadership before having a COMPLETE plan in place to ensure that all players, whether PvP, PvE, solo, or group focused, can earn enough AD reliably in place and ready to go is much like trying to replace the transmission in a car but only having half the needed parts available. It won't work. Before removing AD from leadership, Cryptic NEEDS to address all methods of generating AD for all different playstyles, as well as addressing the now even more over-the-top pricing structure in game as well as the insane costs of upgrading the stronghold. Once everything is in place and set to go, only then should AD be taken from leadership. The idea isn't bad in and of itself, but it has to be done in the proper sequence to ensure a smooth transition from one paradigm to the next.
Its a good idea and overdue. Bots take advantage of it, people abuse it by creating multiple accounts for multiple toons and mine AD through it instead of playing the game and working for it.
I have never used leadership for AD gain, my leadership skill on all my characters is under level 5. There are other ways to make AD if people are willing to do more than just login, press a few profession buttons, rinse and repeat and then log off. Gateway was even worse. You dont even have to bother logging into the game, just go via gateway avaialble through any web accessing device...
Now people actually have to play the game to earn AD.
I'm sorry for those who invested a lot of time and money into leadership, but for the overall economy and good of the game, I think this is a truly positive move.
News flash for you, botters will be the only ones, that are going to profit from this change, since they can and will farm any content 24/7 to generate the same or even more AD after this change.
Please explain how this is good for the economy or the game itself.
emany people keep saying bots can run full dungeons and beat their bosses, but I haven't seen it yet. only in ghost stories where they don't finish the quest, so they don't really beat the boss. is this really a thing?
emany people keep saying bots can run full dungeons and beat their bosses, but I haven't seen it yet. only in ghost stories where they don't finish the quest, so they don't really beat the boss. is this really a thing?
They wont have to. Why bother making a complex script when its so much easier to just queue up and hope to get carried while following a random attentive player? Sure some will get kicked, most probably. But in the numbers game of botting, even a small success rate can be multiplied to a profitable level if you do it enough times over a long enough period.
You are looking at it the wrong way. If the bots could actually beat the boss and be somewhat useful, there would be less complaints. But they wont, they will be an obstruction, an anchor, an annoyance. A thing that will only serve to complicate, delay, and annoy legit players trying to do the few things they have been reduced to doing so they can still advance.
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
Its a good idea and overdue. Bots take advantage of it, people abuse it by creating multiple accounts for multiple toons and mine AD through it instead of playing the game and working for it.
I have never used leadership for AD gain, my leadership skill on all my characters is under level 5. There are other ways to make AD if people are willing to do more than just login, press a few profession buttons, rinse and repeat and then log off. Gateway was even worse. You dont even have to bother logging into the game, just go via gateway avaialble through any web accessing device...
Now people actually have to play the game to earn AD.
I'm sorry for those who invested a lot of time and money into leadership, but for the overall economy and good of the game, I think this is a truly positive move.
Why do people say "people actually have to play the game to earn AD". For many people the SCA is the game, the AH is the game, crafting is the game, foundry is the game. One of the beauties about this game is that it had so many ways you can play. It was alt friendly so you could experience every class/role, you could pve, you could pvp, you could use foundry to tell a story, so many things.
And now it seems everyone wants the only way to play the game be their way. Why would you want to force people who don't want to PVP to PVP, who don't like PVE to PVE, etc. I say let people play their way and if its not your way it doesn't hurt you. You will never see them anyhow
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klangeddinMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 882Arc User
Even if we are looking at the worst case scenario, this is almost 20k AD in 2 hours. Most likely you'll be doing this in under 90 minutes. And the best days will take less than 1 hour. Now add Invocation on top of it and you're getting very close to 24k. The remaining small part can be done with a salvage, a rare leadership task (they're still there) or additional runs in dungeons, skirmishes or pvp if you feel like it. But if the time invested is too much, those missing 1k-2k will not make or break anything.
If you do not like to be forced into this kind of content, then the complaint is legitimate, but saying that reaching 24k RAD will take 20 to 22 hours is false and it's nowhere close to that.
The most stupid thing about this is that I can just go to WoD and do a dragon run and probably get ~3 lesser resonance stones, 2 minor resonance stones and 15 dragon hoard coffers. And I can just dump all of that on the AH for ~20k. And a dragon run takes ~10 minutes
Rough AD and AD made from AH may not be a big difference to you, but in the grand scheme of things, they are truly different beasts. Rough AD is new fresh AD that is printed into the economy, increasing the total stock of AD present and reduces its value because of inflation. AD made from AH is a transaction from a player to another, with posting fees and cuts that actually take AD out of the economy, deflating.
These changes about leadership are all about the value of AD, we have been having gigantic backlogs for too long, now this announcement is made and the backlog is nearly gone. Once this goes live, we'll finally see the ZAX under 500 and return closer to release levels.
emany people keep saying bots can run full dungeons and beat their bosses, but I haven't seen it yet. only in ghost stories where they don't finish the quest, so they don't really beat the boss. is this really a thing?
They wont have to. Why bother making a complex script when its so much easier to just queue up and hope to get carried while following a random attentive player? Sure some will get kicked, most probably. But in the numbers game of botting, even a small success rate can be multiplied to a profitable level if you do it enough times over a long enough period.
You are looking at it the wrong way. If the bots could actually beat the boss and be somewhat useful, there would be less complaints. But they wont, they will be an obstruction, an anchor, an annoyance. A thing that will only serve to complicate, delay, and annoy legit players trying to do the few things they have been reduced to doing so they can still advance.
how can you be carried? if a bot is not fighting and doesn't reply he'll get kicked as simple as that. unless you had bad luck enough to be in a party with more bots of course.
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lairdbansheeMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14Arc User
The most stupid thing about this is that I can just go to WoD and do a dragon run and probably get ~3 lesser resonance stones, 2 minor resonance stones and 15 dragon hoard coffers. And I can just dump all of that on the AH for ~20k. And a dragon run takes ~10 minutes
That's great, except that, unless you have BiS everything, you'll be wondering, even just for a little bit, "Hmm, shouldn't I apply this stuff to make my gear better?" Doesn't MY stuff deserve this more? For me, I always choose, "Yes... yes it does." Otherwise I'd be using the proceeds to... buy things that do the same damned thing.
With Leadership ADs we never have this decision. Hey, it's ADs! WooHoo! Let's go refine it and buy what we need.
how can you be carried? if a bot is not fighting and doesn't reply he'll get kicked as simple as that. unless you had bad luck enough to be in a party with more bots of course.
Ive been in several groups, mostly during events like CTAs and such, where players would literally do nothing but sit at the camp fire and kick attempts would fail. And if the bot moved, via following, and was able to do basic levels of attacking when in combat. Its lackluster playing would only stand out after a little time in the dungeon. Not that you could kick them out initially anyhow with the changes to the kick system. Even if you could detect a bot with 100% certainty. You would still have to do so at the expense of time.
In some cases, like quick skirmishes for example, some might decide its better to deal with the bot then to suffer any delay.
Bots don't have to succeed to win, its a game of percentages. and even with low odds of success they can still win though shear time and numbers.
The most stupid thing about this is that I can just go to WoD and do a dragon run and probably get ~3 lesser resonance stones, 2 minor resonance stones and 15 dragon hoard coffers. And I can just dump all of that on the AH for ~20k. And a dragon run takes ~10 minutes
That's great, except that, unless you have BiS everything, you'll be wondering, even just for a little bit, "Hmm, shouldn't I apply this stuff to make my gear better?" Doesn't MY stuff deserve this more? For me, I always choose, "Yes... yes it does." Otherwise I'd be using the proceeds to... buy things that do the same damned thing.
With Leadership ADs we never have this decision. Hey, it's ADs! WooHoo! Let's go refine it and buy what we need.
I only started playing again at the end of june so there was pretty much no way to actually get enough RP to get my mainhand to legendary. So it's more efficient to sell RP and upgrade artifacts/enchants/companions.
DH enchants got me enough RP to get just about everything to epic in two months anyways.
maybe if they bring back some more dungeons and perhaps drop some more items we can sell on AH or salvage at a reasonable rate of investment ...i can make AD another way...otherwise this was the only way to make the ad needed to buy GMOPs to upgrade enchants, equipment, runestones, etc ....
All of these people happy with another nerf because everybody has to run dungeons now for AD... What exactly are you getting out of these runs that generates AD? You can't sell anything, daily reward is peanuts, same monsters in the same places doing the same things. ...and now you're going to be forced to do it while your gear progression will mostly stay right where it's at.
I guess if people are new here and struggling, they have no idea of how great this game used to be and haven't had to watch what worked in the past get slowly stripped away module by module. The way the game got into this state isn't the fault of any players, exploiters included. Cryptic took one thing at a time away from the game that provided AD until Leadership was the last man standing. They've successfully boiled us, like frogs. Obsequious forum rats have made their job that much easier, too.
New guy, your 24K refined is going to go straight to boons if you know what's good for your toon. This will go on for months. You will be poor forever. No Lostmauth or Valindra artifact lottery, either. Those things will drop in price so far they'll become worthless compared to the fixed price items you'll need to progress. So smug "play the game now" comments need not apply here.
Cheaper Zen isn't going to help you. Even if you put real money in, it's going to give you multitudes less in return. The ZAX isn't going to help with bottomed out prices because your AD is going to be so hard to get, you'll have to buy GMOPs with it, not bags or pets or anything except maybe wards.
Leadership right now = Free to Play. Taking that away won't do anything positive for the game, but might make those who have been too lazy to rank up Leadership happy that their indolence has finally paid off on something. Bringing experienced players with old investments down to nub levels of income won't level the playing field. Are you guys playing on one toon only? Never tried another class? Think, people. This is bad.
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So many alternatives are giving already, including my own thread. Its pretty simple, your doing this out of order, you cannot remove leadership and not reduce your costing at the same time. Its REALLY bad , its a complete lack of foresight and you will again lose thousands of players.
If your going to do this, DO IT RIGHT. ANNOUNCE a system wide costing reduction at the same time. Its the only way to do this.
Please, as a veteren mmo player, Im asking you do step back and implement this properly, IM trying to get you guys to the table here, you need money, great, find, wonderful, (in fact ive said before just drop the effing exchange, remove your f2p tag (or modify it like other games do) and make it that you can earn zen via playing vs buying it with AD and make AD only usable for AH purposes and progression mats.
Make people pay for thier VIP and remove from zen shop.. im EVEN fine with any and all of that .. but this complete lack of respect for your playerbase is frightening.
WE CANNOT maintain current costing with the AD production we will have, its impossible (sh itself requires it for the sole purpose of removing AD from the system, AD that WILL no longer be available! )
yikes guys.
Please announce something today on this. Each hour is literally loosing you players.
Please show a single action taken against botters in the past, that actually hit the botters and not the normal players in the end.
http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/1194402/feedback-needed-top-issues-currently-in-neverwinter-pc
the feedback thread, and what have the Devs taken from it, to actually improve the game for all players?
http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/1191873/bonus-companions-not-account-wide
or what about this one, anything new about this?
With the "chance" to get a Celeste companion from blood ruby packs right now, don't you think that it would be high time to come to a solution for players, that supported the game with their ZEN purchases back then?
Or what happened to the promise, that life steal for SW will be treated "special"?
While botters can run numerous accounts through dungeons, skirmishes, PvP and Strongholds, 24/7 and make a nice profit from this change... a lot of normal players are just screwed... again.
In other words, history repeating.
And here's your assignment, you have until the end of next week:
Goal: 240k AD per day
Time: 1-3hrs per day
Restrictions: No special loot drops, no PvP, character level between 20 and 60, with the new AD "rewarding" system in place of course.
and the clock is ticking.
players are not biased, but there is zero faith at cryptic after all. right now they deserve a salt water...
Maybe you can earn 48k a day playing on multiple chars. And a single upgrade costs 700k AD (mid tier).
700k/48k = 14.58 days. 2 full weeks for a single upgrade on a single item for many hours of play every day.
Also the AD in leardership should be replaced with RP bags/stones to make up the difference and not make leadership and huge waste of a years time ranking up.
Until then its just a big kick in the teeth.
Leadership should never have included AD, but it has for 2 years now. People have played the game within the framework that was given. Taking AD away now undermines people's sense of fairness and security. If people do not feel the game developers act fairly, they will not make additional investments in the game.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
So as I said before, when is anyone in the game supposed to do ANYTHING ELSE other than run dungeons, skirmishes, or do pvp ( if you like that ). They are not. And how in the world will anyone be able to level up any artifacts or gear from this point on when even an army of 50 leadership toons are not really enough for just 1 character to level up his artifact gear, enchantments, artifacts. Let alone more than 1 character. If you can't devoted more than 5 to 8 hours a day from this point on every day, it won't even be worth attempting to play. I won't even bother. And when everyone finds out how much time it will now take to level up your stuff and how little time and rad you have doing anything other than running dungeons, skirmishes, and pvp, so will everyone else. I myself will spend this weekend looking around at other games to play just in case they really go ahead with this.
I went vip partly for the extra leadership xp so I could get my 3 characters to level 25 faster in order to start earning a few more rad just to get my stuff leveled up since I don't have that much time to spend in game. And I feel lied to, cheated, taking advantage of, and totally ripped off. If I could get my money back from going vip, I would. And many others will feel exactly the same.
So two runs is a guaranteed 6300 rad (if you get 150), and could be 7000 (if you get 500). On avarage it will be 6650.
With 2 skirmishes it will be 6650 just the same. And PvP too.
6650 x 3 = 19950
How long does a 3man non-epic dungeon take? 15 minutes at most (unless you go sightseeing or the others disconnect, or there's something wrong happening IRL, but normally it's very fast). 30 minutes for two run.
How long does a non-epic skirmish take? 15 minutes at most (same as normal dungeon). 30 minutes for two run.
If you do Epic Skirmishes it may take longer (but with a good group it can be done fast too), but there's also an additional 3k salvage guaranteed from a chest that does NOT require a key. In fact with a very good group, if you run it 2 times you should get over 12k RAD from it in under 30 minutes from that alone.
How long does a domination 5vs5 pvp match take? This can vary, but under new rules it's a lot faster than before (1vs1 on node will no longer stop the count, whoever has it will keep getting points). If you get crushed (or crush the opposing team) twice in a row, this will be done VERY fast. Anyways, two matches should not take more than 1 hour.
Even if we are looking at the worst case scenario, this is almost 20k AD in 2 hours. Most likely you'll be doing this in under 90 minutes. And the best days will take less than 1 hour.
Now add Invocation on top of it and you're getting very close to 24k. The remaining small part can be done with a salvage, a rare leadership task (they're still there) or additional runs in dungeons, skirmishes or pvp if you feel like it. But if the time invested is too much, those missing 1k-2k will not make or break anything.
If you do not like to be forced into this kind of content, then the complaint is legitimate, but saying that reaching 24k RAD will take 20 to 22 hours is false and it's nowhere close to that.
Mod 5 came along and made epic gear worthless
Mod 6 made all epic gear BOP
Taking away these avenues of income, and leaving leadership and rhix quests as the keys to legit AD generation in game.
Another way to generate wealth was farming events. Since no new events (and more specifically cool loot) have been added recently. Many people already have the event items and the events are botted therefore the value in farming events has strongly decreased).
However, Since mod 2 there have been massive AD sinks added to the game. Specifically the new refinement system (and its associated marks) and artifacts. Later with artifact equipment changing every 3-4 months (cubes of augmentation that have 0 value when you use artifact gear as refinement).
The lack of income from questing plus the constant need for RP took a method that was used by a few and made it wide spread. That was the leadership profession which also created a bypass for the daily RAD refinement limit.
The use of leadership to make AD is unique because it requires players with a long term strategy in the game (transient players that enjoy playing multiple games do not typically find interest in this because the results are not immediate). It also has to be less effort than playing the game or be more enjoyable than playing the game because you cannot run an in-game bot on your account while playing the game.
So while there are people who feel like the leadership junkies are ruining the game, these aren't the people killing you in pvp (i will concede that it was possible when leadership was on gateway).
Leadership is not the problem, and AD from leadership is not the problem. Some people really enjoy crafting, let them enjoy it. They shouldn't have to run dungeons, skirmishes, and pvp to enjoy the game. Just as some people only play the AH, its like the stock market to them. There is nothing wrong with it.
This change to leadership doesn't fix the bots, the AD that wrecked the ZAX was made from an exploit that is resolved.
Instead of pointing your angst on people who use leadership, ask yourselves some questions?
1) How did 100s of millions of AD appear out of thin air and cryptic did not have any protection or alert mechanism in place to stop it before it got out of hand? AD only has so many points of origination and all are restrained by the daily refinement threshold, there should have been tracked calculations that says this is how much AD has been generated in the game, the number in game exceed what was generated... emergency maintenance required. BTW that exploit was because of a coding error made by cryptic.
2) Everyone knows where bots can be found in the game. One website even posts a weekly report on how much and what they sold on the AH (here's a hint, the top 63 sellers in the game sold a billion AD of botted items last week). Why is cryptic doing nothing to resolve this issue?
Cryptic is not concerned about stopping botting. They are concerned about getting your money out of your pocket. This change only works to make the game harder for players to progress without making significant RL contributions to do it.
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The most stupid thing about this is that I can just go to WoD and do a dragon run and probably get ~3 lesser resonance stones, 2 minor resonance stones and 15 dragon hoard coffers. And I can just dump all of that on the AH for ~20k. And a dragon run takes ~10 minutes
That said, I think that they REALLY need to look at the prices of AD sinks and lower them significantly, however, I don't anticipate that happening very soon. They probably want to try and soak up some of the excess AD floating around, which... I guess is logical.
But I spent five million AD just in GMOPs yesterday, for ONE toon, and he's not even BIS yet. And I have the 25% discount from VIP. That's ridiculous.
Its a good idea and overdue. Bots take advantage of it, people abuse it by creating multiple accounts for multiple toons and mine AD through it instead of playing the game and working for it.
I have never used leadership for AD gain, my leadership skill on all my characters is under level 5. There are other ways to make AD if people are willing to do more than just login, press a few profession buttons, rinse and repeat and then log off. Gateway was even worse. You dont even have to bother logging into the game, just go via gateway avaialble through any web accessing device...
Now people actually have to play the game to earn AD.
I'm sorry for those who invested a lot of time and money into leadership, but for the overall economy and good of the game, I think this is a truly positive move.
Please explain how this is good for the economy or the game itself.
Let's keep it at least a bit realistic here...
You are looking at it the wrong way. If the bots could actually beat the boss and be somewhat useful, there would be less complaints. But they wont, they will be an obstruction, an anchor, an annoyance. A thing that will only serve to complicate, delay, and annoy legit players trying to do the few things they have been reduced to doing so they can still advance.
And now it seems everyone wants the only way to play the game be their way. Why would you want to force people who don't want to PVP to PVP, who don't like PVE to PVE, etc. I say let people play their way and if its not your way it doesn't hurt you. You will never see them anyhow
Rough AD is new fresh AD that is printed into the economy, increasing the total stock of AD present and reduces its value because of inflation.
AD made from AH is a transaction from a player to another, with posting fees and cuts that actually take AD out of the economy, deflating.
These changes about leadership are all about the value of AD, we have been having gigantic backlogs for too long, now this announcement is made and the backlog is nearly gone.
Once this goes live, we'll finally see the ZAX under 500 and return closer to release levels.
With Leadership ADs we never have this decision. Hey, it's ADs! WooHoo! Let's go refine it and buy what we need.
In some cases, like quick skirmishes for example, some might decide its better to deal with the bot then to suffer any delay.
Bots don't have to succeed to win, its a game of percentages. and even with low odds of success they can still win though shear time and numbers.
DH enchants got me enough RP to get just about everything to epic in two months anyways.
this game is going nowhere faster
I guess if people are new here and struggling, they have no idea of how great this game used to be and haven't had to watch what worked in the past get slowly stripped away module by module. The way the game got into this state isn't the fault of any players, exploiters included. Cryptic took one thing at a time away from the game that provided AD until Leadership was the last man standing. They've successfully boiled us, like frogs. Obsequious forum rats have made their job that much easier, too.
New guy, your 24K refined is going to go straight to boons if you know what's good for your toon. This will go on for months. You will be poor forever. No Lostmauth or Valindra artifact lottery, either. Those things will drop in price so far they'll become worthless compared to the fixed price items you'll need to progress. So smug "play the game now" comments need not apply here.
Cheaper Zen isn't going to help you. Even if you put real money in, it's going to give you multitudes less in return. The ZAX isn't going to help with bottomed out prices because your AD is going to be so hard to get, you'll have to buy GMOPs with it, not bags or pets or anything except maybe wards.
Leadership right now = Free to Play. Taking that away won't do anything positive for the game, but might make those who have been too lazy to rank up Leadership happy that their indolence has finally paid off on something. Bringing experienced players with old investments down to nub levels of income won't level the playing field. Are you guys playing on one toon only? Never tried another class? Think, people. This is bad.