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.
...but before that bot gets kicked it slows down the party progress, blocks out a legit player, and, hey, guess - considering the playerbase in this game and the trend it'll take when the changes are effected - the chances that the replacement alloted by the big Q System will be a bot, too?
But nothin really happend if they give possibility to buy lvl 60 equipment for 20 silver on woundrous bazar and slavage this for 1000 RAD. Check testing server.
> @macjae said: > So my question is this. Was leadership a fun aspect of the game for people? Did people honestly enjoy the "cookie clicker" aspect of leadership? Or was it the results that made people happy? > > > > Obviously the results. Personally, I've always enjoyed the PvP (though they've been making it increasingly dysfunctional with a lack of support and care over recent mods) and found most of the PvE content beyond tedious -- so much so that clicking through Leadership actually annoyed me a lot less. Other people obviously have different preferences. In either case, Leadership was a beneficial arrangement that allowed people to pursue the content they enjoyed and still earn an income. The changes they've presented will essentially force everyone to do the same content grind to earn maximum AD -- forcing people to do things they don't want to do, if that is PvP, dungeons or skirmishes. > > "Cookie clicking" is less un-enjoyable than the only source of AD being grinding through content you don't enjoy. In other words, do you feel the game would be more fun for people if: > > A) Players were essentially required to run 20-30 or more Leadership toons to be able to play the game > > or > > b) Playing the game was more rewarding, and provided a more clear path to advancement > > > > The answer to this is obviously B, but that's just hypothetical -- the history is abundantly clear on this. Once they nerf some economic aspect of the game, they've NEVER done a tweak that really compensated players; at best they've offered the occasional weak band-aid. Because A is the status quo. If the planned leadership changes were reverted, it would essentially require players to continue to play "cookie clicker" for most of their time, in the hopes that what little slivers of time they had not managing a leadership army was more fun. > > > > Which reflects on just how poor much of their current content is. They gutted the game of dungeons, shut down the Foundry, have left PvP with several dysfunctional elements and very poor balance, kept messing with solo content in wild difficult swings, added a stronghold grinding mode which essentially amounts to "play all the old content more," and they've been continually eradicating the actual feeling of being rewarded for doing things -- from dungeons giving nice drops of set items to giving uninteresting bound items and minor RP, PvP giving out less glory (and always being less rewarding than PvE), and now Leadership being gutted. Biased polls aside, that's the real choice we're looking at here. > > > > The reality is that we're not looking at a "choice"; we're looking at what we get. And what the developers give us. Looking at their history, people have been repeating these ideas forever. The actual actions taken by the developers just show that they're not on the same page, probably not even the same planet, as players when it comes to this. > > If they wanted to do this *right*, they would have either: > > 1) gradually reduced Leadership rewards while increasing rewards from other sources, softening the blow. > > 2) introduced a much stronger reward structure while burning down Leadership (and doing an actual retooling of what Leadership *does* while they're at it, not just removing the AD and leaving everything else as-is, a true hack job). > > However, they were apparently satisfied with just doing their hack job on Leadership and leaving it at that, while not *actually* increasing the rewards for playing. If they had *actually* given some increased rewards and *actually* done a proper rework of Leadership, it might not have been such a terrible thing. > > All they are doing, however, is feeding people stick. There is no carrot. This is the essential problem. Make-believing and dreaming about what the reward system *should* be like is fine and all, but it would be better to stick to the reality of what they're actually *doing*. Until they actually come up with an adequate and functional reward system, they should leave the current less-than-ideal (but still better than what we'll have once this rolls out) system in place. They don't need to starve players for a few months while copy-pasting "we're listening"/"we're monitoring the situation" before increasing RAD rewards by 300 per day or something equally "significant". > > The worst part of it all, however, was how blatantly insulting the developers were about it -- pushing the same old bot story when it's more transparent than glass what their real intentions are. > > If they had actually intended to reward playing more, they would have included something along with this Leadership gimping. They included *nothing*.
Lol, you know things are bad when CWs start fighting each other haha
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.
What "gigantic" backlogs are you talking about? That ridiculous lowish 5m AD? There were backlogs from more then 21m AD in the past, and no one had a problem with that...
And the 5m AD backlog only took a day of 2x RP to melt away.
Insert more artifact equipment probably coming with Underdark, and a 2x RP event per month, there would be no real backlog anymore.
And btw. why would anyone continue to buy ZEN with real money and then exchange it to AD for a lot less then 500 AD per ZEN? The players might rather start selling something from the ZEN shop for AD again directly, or they start buying from botters, that can provide much more AD for a lot less real money. There're no GMs in game, so there is no fear of risking a bann by buying AD from botters. So instead of fighting botters, the Devs just made it even easier for botters to sell their AD to players.
And then you will start seeing some really gigantic backlogs on the ZAX...
I just wish that Cryptic had a true project manager and someone else who is actually good at communication. Because this sucks on both counts - appalling levels of management ability is once again being displayed.
There should be a clear roadmap to huge changes in game i.e. as already mentioned the replacement for Leadership AD generation should already be tested and on the preview server.... not an ad-hock slash/hack job that reeks of hasty implementation.
This change is being implemented badly - anyone seriously can see this.
Frankly, this looks like an attack on solo players who do not dungeon/skirmish/PvP and have leadership maxed. This is every bit as bad a design as the class paragons - where you only have one way to play if you wish to be competive.
This is forcing people into another one way of playing the game - breaking the strengths that Neverwinter used to have.
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
By your logic, cryptic should never change any existing part the game. Nothing should ever be removed or nerfed because such changes would "force" players to play differently. Bugs and cheats/exploits should never be fixed because that "forces" players to change their playstyle. Bots should be allowed because that's how some people like to "play". Leadership will still work after AD is removed. continue to "play" that if you want.
PvE is this what you do in this game immediately after creating a character. Neverwinter has always been primarily a pve game with optional pvp. People who dislike pve should not play this game, especially strongholds, which is very much focused on pve.
One way to still enjoy is: try out every class up to level 60, or if you like to grind to level 70, and stop there, without ever refining anything at all, and no need for AD along the way.
Had they made playing actually rewarding enough, then maybe it'd be a good decision. Otherwise they've taken out one of the only source of AD people could rely on. Botters will still bot, and with some people earning less, they may benefit from more people buying their AD at possibly higher rates. Leadership was high investment, highish reward. Now it's high investment, barely any reward. How are people expected to pay tens of millions for high end gear at botted rates over 2x rp let alone the prices without any bots...
At best they made chances equal to when neveremeber dailies existed. At worst, with a big chunk of AD generation is removed, a lot of people, especially casuals will be harmed.
a lot of people, especially casuals will be harmed.
Despite being one myself -I have a life outside Neverwinter- I don't consider that a bad thing. There's 1 rule that applies to every game in the world: If you want to progress, you have to play it. We've just been spoiled by a system that can help casuals progress while they aren't playing. A nice consideration, but as soon as people en masse prefer to use leadership armies over playing the game you know you're sitting on a economical timebomb.
Of course it's up to Cryptic to provide us with enough things to do that we enjoy to keep the game working and at the moment I'd say that the game falls short of stuff to do. 6 dungeons and 3 skirmishes isn't enough. People will burn out or get bored.
Its not even that its for casuals. The reality is a person playing 8 hours a day has the potential to earn only slightly more than a person playing two hours a day. That's do to AD flow being controlled by the refinement limit. Thanks to the cost of keys you can only profit from one dungeon a day. Glory is worthless so you only profit from reaching the rhix threshold... you get the point
The counter argument is play your alts and the counter argument to that is gearing and maintain alts cost AD. You don't actually improve your AD per character threshold with playing alts. The game has significant AD sinks, they are so severe that a normal player, on one character cannot keep up with the progression of the game. In the old days you could grind gear, etc and sell it on the AH to people paying RL $ to progress faster in the game. This is how we made AD outside of the daily AD refinement structure. When that was taken away people turned to leadership farms because the investment was far less than equipping/maintaining a playable alt and the return was comparable.
The defenders of this change are either very naive, or are choosing to be willfully ignorant, on how those who sell in game currencies for RL cash can, and do, operate. Bots have been, and will continue to be, able to be scripted to run dungeons even since I started playing MMO's in 2002. Those companies began abusing the VIP system from day 1 of its implementation and their ability to earn millions of AD per week will not be impacted in least bit. Even if the entire server was reset, so that every 'toon was reset to level 1 with no AD, the currency sellers would be back to full force within less than a month. That is just the simple reality with every MMO that I have played.
It also seems that some think their multitude of clicks in combat makes that a more "honorable" way of earning AD than by utilizing a profession. The reality is that there are, and should be, multiple ways to play and enjoy any game. Some people love playing Auction Houses and seeing how much of an economy they can control, others prefer crafting/professions, x percentage prefers to play solo, x percentage prefers to grind dungeons repeatedly with guilds, and etc. All of these are valid play styles and none is better than the other. As individuals we all have different tastes that we may, or may not, share with others.
Having paid my gaming dues by playing 40+ hours per week the first 5 years of playing MMO's, I liked the fact that I could progress nicely in this game with only 5-10 hrs of time investment per week. My 2 toons, out of 12, that have rank 21 leadership took almost 10 months to get there. Don't give me this HAMSTER that the ability to gain large amounts of AD through Leadership is anything that easy for anyone starting this game from scratch. After 10 months of game time I only have a smattering of green Leadership assets and find it very presumptuous to assume that everyone who has leadership factories is cranking out an insane amount of AD for the time they have put into that profession.
The sad reality is that if the game managers had perma-banned game exploiters along the way, and fixed the bugs, they would have grew a much larger player base...which would have generated more income with more people buying Zen.
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
After 10 months of game time I only have a smattering of green Leadership assets and find it very presumptuous to assume that everyone who has leadership factories is cranking out an insane amount of AD for the time they have put into that profession.
Actually, it is extremely easy. Buy your character slots for 500 Zen (or 250k AD). Or cheaper if you waited for the sales. Buy the T3 white assets so you don't have to waste time making higher tier guys. Last time I added 4 toons to my leadership army, they were 8k each. I did six because that's the easiest number of slots you can unlock. So that's another 48000 AD per toon. So that's an upfront investment of 173k AD.
Now, Assuming you go all in on experience, in order to rush to level 25 Leadership the fastest, I think you're looking at 60 days-ish (checking it twice a day on average) to get to level 25. After that, a level 25 toon can easily generate 12k AD/day if only checked one. Or 84k a week.
So last time I added to my farm it was only 4 more Leadership toons, and that was in December. So I invested about 700k AD into those toons. After 60 days, we're cranking out about 500k AD/week with those new toons. And they've been working for 8.5 months, or 30 weeks. So 34 times 500k is 17 million AD. From an upfront investment of 700k. And that's in about 10 months.
All together, I have 25 leadership toons at level 25. So over 2 million AD/week. Took me about 20 minutes a day to check all those toons. So about 2.5 hours a week...or earning over 800k AD/hr AD.
And you're talking about NOT being able to crank out insane amounts of AD?
I think you're wrong. Very, very wrong.
Which is why, despite losing that income (but gaining my sanity back), I can clearly see how Leadership farms, even run legitimately, are a huge problem for the economy.
I'm gonna be blunt here: please Cryptic do not sell us this change as needed to fix ingame economy, be honest and say that you just need more incomes so you are going to try to milk players some more.
It's sooooo obvious that this change is to push players to the zen store, that I feel that the reasons geiven by the dev as an insult to our intelligence.
In fact, not only you are nerfing the main source of incomes of many players (like me), that bought alts slots for this only purpose, that invested tons of time to level the toons professions, and that get the AD in a legit way by connecting every day, your are also not providing a reliable source of incomes that doesnt take hours of boring grinding to compensate.
This change IMO will remove the last wall that will turn this game from a "Free to play" to a "Pay to Win" model, especially seing the stupidly huge prices of items in the AH (that I cannot afford even with my leadership army unless I save AD for months...).
For me the moment this change sees light (without any compensation), the moment I'll quit. Dunno but with the latest changes since mod 6, it seems to me that you want players to stop playing this game...
How much AD is still around, that was gained through bugs and exploits in the past? Or what about any bugs and exploits used to generate AD right now? I doubt, that that AD will ever be cleaned out properly...
Setting an account limit of 240k AD per day would have been a start, in order to get the bigger leadership armies under control. Then replacing the AD from those rare quests with something usefull and more important really rewarding. And also work on the other Leadership regular missions, adjusting the AD gain per hour, and also removing the junk from all the chest.
What about tracking the flow of AD from all those 2 character slots accounts, to actually nail all the real botters main accounts? Or what about actually banning those players, that buy AD from botters?
There're a lot of ways to work something out, something boths sides can actually keep on playing with. But no, we can't start with some small reasonable changes...
So let's do this, next changes on the list to push through: - Making any purchase from the auction house bound to account. - Making any reward from other professions bound to account. - Making any loot drop bound to account.
That should fix the problem with those botters for sure. And hey, that's what this is all about, right?
Not going to quit, even with those stupid changes... i still have over 320 days left on my VIP clock. But i won't be spending any more money here either.
grind grind grind grind u bots this isnt meant to be fun grind grinf flesh bots grind. wont stop bots they make 1/2 there cash out of rank 5s, how about a new aproach remove the market for bots cause thats the only way youll get rid of bots. this isnt a bot measure this is a attempt to generate more income, guess noone told the finance departement that gfc mk2 is slowly unfolding and people are going to be looking to shrink their entertainemnt budget not grow it, not the first time a game company has shot its self in the foot wont be the last time either
cant even conect to the login server they probably wont have it fixed even before the 15th no double ad weekend for me and realy i think im going to go find enuther game been playing since open beta and sto and CO before that, CO is the only one they havnt totaly ruined with grind or HAMSTER like puting in gfx glitches ecer second to slow down my gfx card because "its to fast" at 2 yrs old for this game since the latest updates to gfx
> @ironzerg79 said: > After 10 months of game time I only have a smattering of green Leadership assets and find it very presumptuous to assume that everyone who has leadership factories is cranking out an insane amount of AD for the time they have put into that profession. > > > > Actually, it is extremely easy. Buy your character slots for 500 Zen (or 250k AD). Or cheaper if you waited for the sales. Buy the T3 white assets so you don't have to waste time making higher tier guys. Last time I added 4 toons to my leadership army, they were 8k each. I did six because that's the easiest number of slots you can unlock. So that's another 48000 AD per toon. So that's an upfront investment of 173k AD. > > Now, Assuming you go all in on experience, in order to rush to level 25 Leadership the fastest, I think you're looking at 60 days-ish (checking it twice a day on average) to get to level 25. After that, a level 25 toon can easily generate 12k AD/day if only checked one. Or 84k a week. > > So last time I added to my farm it was only 4 more Leadership toons, and that was in December. So I invested about 700k AD into those toons. After 60 days, we're cranking out about 500k AD/week with those new toons. And they've been working for 8.5 months, or 30 weeks. So 34 times 500k is 17 million AD. From an upfront investment of 700k. And that's in about 10 months. > > All together, I have 25 leadership toons at level 25. So over 2 million AD/week. Took me about 20 minutes a day to check all those toons. So about 2.5 hours a week...or earning over 800k AD/hr AD. > > And you're talking about NOT being able to crank out insane amounts of AD? > > I think you're wrong. Very, very wrong. > > Which is why, despite losing that income (but gaining my sanity back), I can clearly see how Leadership farms, even run legitimately, are a huge problem for the economy.
The reason I think you are wrong is that you are presuming everyone with leadership "farms" are power-leveling the profession just because you did. I clearly have not, and am sure that are others who have not as well. You, and the other supporters, are failing to see the larger picture.
* This will crush the small guilds who will have no hope of raising their Strongholds to a competitive level. This only exacerbates the disparity between the large and small guilds. No wonder the spam, blind invites are on the rise again as some of the smaller guild are trying to 'zerg up.
* This crushes the ability of the solo, and/or, casual player to remain/obtain the ability to be somewhat competitive at the "end game" unless they begin playing 30+ hrs per week.
* This obliterates the hope of any new players coming close to becoming competitive at the end game unless the choose the route of paying RL cash for AD.
* This plays into the hands of those who sell in-game currency and only strengthens their grip on the economy.
* This change will cause the amount of money that the game was taking in from players to crash and become a shadow of what it could have remained.
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
@bilitheaxe66 What you're really upset about is not the leadership changes, but the crazy amount of high level grind that it seemingly takes to make progress. And I agree with you on that.
But just saying "Oh well, make 30 alts and cookie clicker Leadership" isn't a solution. You can't possibly expect new players to feel good about needing to do something crazy like that to feel like they're advancing, can you?
Do you feel good when you tell your friends that "all" they need to do to advance is to farm a silly profession on dozens of different toons for hours each week, then use what extra time they have left over to actually play the game?
The honest truth is the current state of the economy WITH leadership isn't and never was sustainable.
The game needs to be fun and fulfilling through gameplay, not grindplay. And we're not there. But trying to figure that out WITH Leadership in the state it is won't help.
People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with systems that are more fun. A few players have already put out a lot of good ideas, like:
1) Reducing the cost of items in the Wondrous Bazaar, including Marks of Potency, Cubes of Augmentation, and Dungeon Keys
2) Removing the need for duplicate enchantments when refining ALL enchantments, including weapons and armor
3) Significantly reducing the cost to upgrade mounts and companions
4) Significantly reducing transmutation costs
5) Adding Stronghold vouchers back to Leadership to keep some value to the profession, including AD vouchers
6) Removing pure AD costs from Profession tasks, like reinforcement kits
7) Adding BoE gear drops back to dungeons
Those are just a few of the great ideas I've seen getting buried in these threads.
And so I ask you, would you prefer to have the current state of the game, with all the crazy high costs and insane AD requirements, and then play cookie clicker with Leadership?
Or would you be happy to see Leadership (like the rest of the professions) as something optional and those pain points of grind removed?
Which path is better for the long term future of the game?
I 100% agree with ironzerg. Leadership was just an awful way to get over the insane amounts of AD needed to progress. now with that out of the way we can finally hope for a way to earn enough means to progress that doesn't require to make 10 alts only to farm LS and AD. I like all your suggestions, but I really really have to add a foundry option to earn AD too. I know foundry can be exploited with those short quests, so just let it be so daily qualified quests earn AD (that means 15 minutes long quests, the same as a regular dungeon or a skirmish). that would really really also help the foundry.
Right now, all that is showing is AD being removed from Leadership, and that they will patch that next week. How about sticking to that fact, and talk about some future pipe dream changes, when those actual happen?
I enjoy professions, I spent a lot of time, thought and planning to get 6 toons to 25 in leadership by honest grind. We (sometimes) get respecs with major character changes, where is my ability to move those 5 ranks into another profession now this has been nerfed? Too hard to code obviously, so what other compensation is being offered for all my time and effort because the devs can't properly detect, prevent or punish those with bots without hurting all the rest of us? They know this will cause frustration? Understatement. Don't punish honest players along with the wicked.
People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with systems that are more fun. A few players have already put out a lot of good ideas, like:
[...]
Or would you be happy to see Leadership (like the rest of the professions) as something optional and those pain points of grind removed?
Which path is better for the long term future of the game?
If anyone "needs" to do something, the dev team and PWE need to start taking seriously the opinions and grievances of the player base. They show no sign of doing so. They need to start doing their jobs and when they take action to "fix" the economy they need to not merely destroy the main source of AD but take action to remove the real problem, which is insane grinds for refinement, the ludicrous cost of making high level enchantments and enormous AD sinks everywhere (oh, and constantly taking up our bag space for no reason). Players do not "need" to stop expressing themselves over an ill-considered and insulting decision which contains not the least positive change nor hope for any in the future.
The reason the dev team and PWE need to do these things is that, presumably, they would like to continue having jobs.
A responsible and sensible way of making this change would have been to announce it months in advance ALONG WITH a comprehensive plan to restructure the game economy to make it workable for single-character players. All the suggestion made in this and other threads were obvious. They are not new, either. Players have been suggesting them for months if not years.
But the dev team has offered no plan at all to re-scale the game economy, nor any indication that they are willing to even consider it.
So this is not an opportunity to start a conversation. The dev team aren't even in the conversation. When they join and indicate that they are, for once, not only taking our concerns seriously but intend to IMMEDIATELY make serious, drastic changes to the game economy to make gameplay rewarding and character progression possible, only then will bemoaning this decision be a waste of energy.
Shicoff's initial post on taking over was a ray of hope. He then waited months to make fixes whose necessity was obvious to anyone who had played Mod 6 for even a few minutes. What reason do we have to expect any better this time?
ironzerg79 wrote: > People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over > the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more > suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with > systems that are more fun. A few players have already put > out a lot of good ideas [...]
Isn't that supposed to be the designers job? Or the PWE execs job, for that matter?
> @ironzerg79 said: > bilitheaxe66 What you're really upset about is not the leadership changes, but the crazy amount of high level grind that it seemingly takes to make progress. And I agree with you on that. > > But just saying "Oh well, make 30 alts and cookie clicker Leadership" isn't a solution. You can't possibly expect new players to feel good about needing to do something crazy like that to feel like they're advancing, can you? > > Do you feel good when you tell your friends that "all" they need to do to advance is to farm a silly profession on dozens of different toons for hours each week, then use what extra time they have left over to actually play the game? > > The honest truth is the current state of the economy WITH leadership isn't and never was sustainable. > > The game needs to be fun and fulfilling through gameplay, not grindplay. And we're not there. But trying to figure that out WITH Leadership in the state it is won't help. > > People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with systems that are more fun. A few players have already put out a lot of good ideas, like: > > 1) Reducing the cost of items in the Wondrous Bazaar, including Marks of Potency, Cubes of Augmentation, and Dungeon Keys > > 2) Removing the need for duplicate enchantments when refining ALL enchantments, including weapons and armor > > 3) Significantly reducing the cost to upgrade mounts and companions > > 4) Significantly reducing transmutation costs > > 5) Adding Stronghold vouchers back to Leadership to keep some value to the profession, including AD vouchers > > 6) Removing pure AD costs from Profession tasks, like reinforcement kits > > 7) Adding BoE gear drops back to dungeons > > Those are just a few of the great ideas I've seen getting buried in these threads. > > And so I ask you, would you prefer to have the current state of the game, with all the crazy high costs and insane AD requirements, and then play cookie clicker with Leadership? > > Or would you be happy to see Leadership (like the rest of the professions) as something optional and those pain points of grind removed? > > Which path is better for the long term future of the game?
The problem you are failing to see is that this will kill the game and no hypothetical solution that is months down the line, before it even has a chance of occurring, is going to save the game once the Leadership nerf hits the live server. Already seeing an increase in frame rate as the in game population is already dropping before this "game improving" change occurs.
If this change had actually been well thought out and planned for it would have actually had better/more substitute methods of earning AD, a corresponding reduction in AD sinks, a clear explanation of what the new leadership rewards will be, and the reduction of prices for items on the Wondrous Bazaar ready to go at its implementation. There would have been no misinformation that this is an attempt to control bots and reduce the black market AD in the economy. I, and believe many others, would have been much more accepting of this game changing situation if that were the case.
I, and believe the majority of the player-base, would agree there needs to be a major change in how the economy works. This is very poor method of achieving that end and is going to alienate far too many of the players to keep NeverWinter as a viable game in the long run. My greatest fear of this drastic change is that it will be the straw that breaks the camel's back if the Leadership change hits the live server as it is. Please hold off until you can implement all of the other necessary changes to make it work as intended.
Reading about this change is what finally motivated me to actually activate my forum account instead of being a simple lurker trying to glean information on improving my game play. Would hate to see an end to this game and appreciate being able to freely express my thoughts on this topic. While we may disagree on how to achieve a similar end, I think we both have the game's best interest in our hearts.
Comments
Deathstroke to PUGging, IMHO...
> So my question is this. Was leadership a fun aspect of the game for people? Did people honestly enjoy the "cookie clicker" aspect of leadership? Or was it the results that made people happy?
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> Obviously the results. Personally, I've always enjoyed the PvP (though they've been making it increasingly dysfunctional with a lack of support and care over recent mods) and found most of the PvE content beyond tedious -- so much so that clicking through Leadership actually annoyed me a lot less. Other people obviously have different preferences. In either case, Leadership was a beneficial arrangement that allowed people to pursue the content they enjoyed and still earn an income. The changes they've presented will essentially force everyone to do the same content grind to earn maximum AD -- forcing people to do things they don't want to do, if that is PvP, dungeons or skirmishes.
>
> "Cookie clicking" is less un-enjoyable than the only source of AD being grinding through content you don't enjoy. In other words, do you feel the game would be more fun for people if:
>
> A) Players were essentially required to run 20-30 or more Leadership toons to be able to play the game
>
> or
>
> b) Playing the game was more rewarding, and provided a more clear path to advancement
>
>
>
> The answer to this is obviously B, but that's just hypothetical -- the history is abundantly clear on this. Once they nerf some economic aspect of the game, they've NEVER done a tweak that really compensated players; at best they've offered the occasional weak band-aid. Because A is the status quo. If the planned leadership changes were reverted, it would essentially require players to continue to play "cookie clicker" for most of their time, in the hopes that what little slivers of time they had not managing a leadership army was more fun.
>
>
>
> Which reflects on just how poor much of their current content is. They gutted the game of dungeons, shut down the Foundry, have left PvP with several dysfunctional elements and very poor balance, kept messing with solo content in wild difficult swings, added a stronghold grinding mode which essentially amounts to "play all the old content more," and they've been continually eradicating the actual feeling of being rewarded for doing things -- from dungeons giving nice drops of set items to giving uninteresting bound items and minor RP, PvP giving out less glory (and always being less rewarding than PvE), and now Leadership being gutted. Biased polls aside, that's the real choice we're looking at here.
>
>
>
> The reality is that we're not looking at a "choice"; we're looking at what we get. And what the developers give us. Looking at their history, people have been repeating these ideas forever. The actual actions taken by the developers just show that they're not on the same page, probably not even the same planet, as players when it comes to this.
>
> If they wanted to do this *right*, they would have either:
>
> 1) gradually reduced Leadership rewards while increasing rewards from other sources, softening the blow.
>
> 2) introduced a much stronger reward structure while burning down Leadership (and doing an actual retooling of what Leadership *does* while they're at it, not just removing the AD and leaving everything else as-is, a true hack job).
>
> However, they were apparently satisfied with just doing their hack job on Leadership and leaving it at that, while not *actually* increasing the rewards for playing. If they had *actually* given some increased rewards and *actually* done a proper rework of Leadership, it might not have been such a terrible thing.
>
> All they are doing, however, is feeding people stick. There is no carrot. This is the essential problem. Make-believing and dreaming about what the reward system *should* be like is fine and all, but it would be better to stick to the reality of what they're actually *doing*. Until they actually come up with an adequate and functional reward system, they should leave the current less-than-ideal (but still better than what we'll have once this rolls out) system in place. They don't need to starve players for a few months while copy-pasting "we're listening"/"we're monitoring the situation" before increasing RAD rewards by 300 per day or something equally "significant".
>
> The worst part of it all, however, was how blatantly insulting the developers were about it -- pushing the same old bot story when it's more transparent than glass what their real intentions are.
>
> If they had actually intended to reward playing more, they would have included something along with this Leadership gimping. They included *nothing*.
Lol, you know things are bad when CWs start fighting each other haha
That ridiculous lowish 5m AD?
There were backlogs from more then 21m AD in the past, and no one had a problem with that...
And the 5m AD backlog only took a day of 2x RP to melt away.
Insert more artifact equipment probably coming with Underdark, and a 2x RP event per month, there would be no real backlog anymore.
And btw. why would anyone continue to buy ZEN with real money and then exchange it to AD for a lot less then 500 AD per ZEN?
The players might rather start selling something from the ZEN shop for AD again directly, or they start buying from botters, that can provide much more AD for a lot less real money.
There're no GMs in game, so there is no fear of risking a bann by buying AD from botters.
So instead of fighting botters, the Devs just made it even easier for botters to sell their AD to players.
And then you will start seeing some really gigantic backlogs on the ZAX...
There should be a clear roadmap to huge changes in game i.e. as already mentioned the replacement for Leadership AD generation should already be tested and on the preview server.... not an ad-hock slash/hack job that reeks of hasty implementation.
This change is being implemented badly - anyone seriously can see this.
Frankly, this looks like an attack on solo players who do not dungeon/skirmish/PvP and have leadership maxed. This is every bit as bad a design as the class paragons - where you only have one way to play if you wish to be competive.
This is forcing people into another one way of playing the game - breaking the strengths that Neverwinter used to have.
PvE is this what you do in this game immediately after creating a character. Neverwinter has always been primarily a pve game with optional pvp. People who dislike pve should not play this game, especially strongholds, which is very much focused on pve.
At best they made chances equal to when neveremeber dailies existed. At worst, with a big chunk of AD generation is removed, a lot of people, especially casuals will be harmed.
The counter argument is play your alts and the counter argument to that is gearing and maintain alts cost AD. You don't actually improve your AD per character threshold with playing alts. The game has significant AD sinks, they are so severe that a normal player, on one character cannot keep up with the progression of the game. In the old days you could grind gear, etc and sell it on the AH to people paying RL $ to progress faster in the game. This is how we made AD outside of the daily AD refinement structure. When that was taken away people turned to leadership farms because the investment was far less than equipping/maintaining a playable alt and the return was comparable.
It also seems that some think their multitude of clicks in combat makes that a more "honorable" way of earning AD than by utilizing a profession. The reality is that there are, and should be, multiple ways to play and enjoy any game. Some people love playing Auction Houses and seeing how much of an economy they can control, others prefer crafting/professions, x percentage prefers to play solo, x percentage prefers to grind dungeons repeatedly with guilds, and etc. All of these are valid play styles and none is better than the other. As individuals we all have different tastes that we may, or may not, share with others.
Having paid my gaming dues by playing 40+ hours per week the first 5 years of playing MMO's, I liked the fact that I could progress nicely in this game with only 5-10 hrs of time investment per week. My 2 toons, out of 12, that have rank 21 leadership took almost 10 months to get there. Don't give me this HAMSTER that the ability to gain large amounts of AD through Leadership is anything that easy for anyone starting this game from scratch. After 10 months of game time I only have a smattering of green Leadership assets and find it very presumptuous to assume that everyone who has leadership factories is cranking out an insane amount of AD for the time they have put into that profession.
The sad reality is that if the game managers had perma-banned game exploiters along the way, and fixed the bugs, they would have grew a much larger player base...which would have generated more income with more people buying Zen.
Now, Assuming you go all in on experience, in order to rush to level 25 Leadership the fastest, I think you're looking at 60 days-ish (checking it twice a day on average) to get to level 25. After that, a level 25 toon can easily generate 12k AD/day if only checked one. Or 84k a week.
So last time I added to my farm it was only 4 more Leadership toons, and that was in December. So I invested about 700k AD into those toons. After 60 days, we're cranking out about 500k AD/week with those new toons. And they've been working for 8.5 months, or 30 weeks. So 34 times 500k is 17 million AD. From an upfront investment of 700k. And that's in about 10 months.
All together, I have 25 leadership toons at level 25. So over 2 million AD/week. Took me about 20 minutes a day to check all those toons. So about 2.5 hours a week...or earning over 800k AD/hr AD.
And you're talking about NOT being able to crank out insane amounts of AD?
I think you're wrong. Very, very wrong.
Which is why, despite losing that income (but gaining my sanity back), I can clearly see how Leadership farms, even run legitimately, are a huge problem for the economy.
It's sooooo obvious that this change is to push players to the zen store, that I feel that the reasons geiven by the dev as an insult to our intelligence.
In fact, not only you are nerfing the main source of incomes of many players (like me), that bought alts slots for this only purpose, that invested tons of time to level the toons professions, and that get the AD in a legit way by connecting every day, your are also not providing a reliable source of incomes that doesnt take hours of boring grinding to compensate.
This change IMO will remove the last wall that will turn this game from a "Free to play" to a "Pay to Win" model, especially seing the stupidly huge prices of items in the AH (that I cannot afford even with my leadership army unless I save AD for months...).
For me the moment this change sees light (without any compensation), the moment I'll quit. Dunno but with the latest changes since mod 6, it seems to me that you want players to stop playing this game...
Or what about any bugs and exploits used to generate AD right now?
I doubt, that that AD will ever be cleaned out properly...
Setting an account limit of 240k AD per day would have been a start, in order to get the bigger leadership armies under control.
Then replacing the AD from those rare quests with something usefull and more important really rewarding.
And also work on the other Leadership regular missions, adjusting the AD gain per hour, and also removing the junk from all the chest.
What about tracking the flow of AD from all those 2 character slots accounts, to actually nail all the real botters main accounts?
Or what about actually banning those players, that buy AD from botters?
There're a lot of ways to work something out, something boths sides can actually keep on playing with.
But no, we can't start with some small reasonable changes...
So let's do this, next changes on the list to push through:
- Making any purchase from the auction house bound to account.
- Making any reward from other professions bound to account.
- Making any loot drop bound to account.
That should fix the problem with those botters for sure.
And hey, that's what this is all about, right?
Not going to quit, even with those stupid changes... i still have over 320 days left on my VIP clock.
But i won't be spending any more money here either.
> After 10 months of game time I only have a smattering of green Leadership assets and find it very presumptuous to assume that everyone who has leadership factories is cranking out an insane amount of AD for the time they have put into that profession.
>
>
>
> Actually, it is extremely easy. Buy your character slots for 500 Zen (or 250k AD). Or cheaper if you waited for the sales. Buy the T3 white assets so you don't have to waste time making higher tier guys. Last time I added 4 toons to my leadership army, they were 8k each. I did six because that's the easiest number of slots you can unlock. So that's another 48000 AD per toon. So that's an upfront investment of 173k AD.
>
> Now, Assuming you go all in on experience, in order to rush to level 25 Leadership the fastest, I think you're looking at 60 days-ish (checking it twice a day on average) to get to level 25. After that, a level 25 toon can easily generate 12k AD/day if only checked one. Or 84k a week.
>
> So last time I added to my farm it was only 4 more Leadership toons, and that was in December. So I invested about 700k AD into those toons. After 60 days, we're cranking out about 500k AD/week with those new toons. And they've been working for 8.5 months, or 30 weeks. So 34 times 500k is 17 million AD. From an upfront investment of 700k. And that's in about 10 months.
>
> All together, I have 25 leadership toons at level 25. So over 2 million AD/week. Took me about 20 minutes a day to check all those toons. So about 2.5 hours a week...or earning over 800k AD/hr AD.
>
> And you're talking about NOT being able to crank out insane amounts of AD?
>
> I think you're wrong. Very, very wrong.
>
> Which is why, despite losing that income (but gaining my sanity back), I can clearly see how Leadership farms, even run legitimately, are a huge problem for the economy.
The reason I think you are wrong is that you are presuming everyone with leadership "farms" are power-leveling the profession just because you did. I clearly have not, and am sure that are others who have not as well. You, and the other supporters, are failing to see the larger picture.
* This will crush the small guilds who will have no hope of raising their Strongholds to a competitive level. This only exacerbates the disparity between the large and small guilds. No wonder the spam, blind invites are on the rise again as some of the smaller guild are trying to 'zerg up.
* This crushes the ability of the solo, and/or, casual player to remain/obtain the ability to be somewhat competitive at the "end game" unless they begin playing 30+ hrs per week.
* This obliterates the hope of any new players coming close to becoming competitive at the end game unless the choose the route of paying RL cash for AD.
* This plays into the hands of those who sell in-game currency and only strengthens their grip on the economy.
* This change will cause the amount of money that the game was taking in from players to crash and become a shadow of what it could have remained.
But just saying "Oh well, make 30 alts and cookie clicker Leadership" isn't a solution. You can't possibly expect new players to feel good about needing to do something crazy like that to feel like they're advancing, can you?
Do you feel good when you tell your friends that "all" they need to do to advance is to farm a silly profession on dozens of different toons for hours each week, then use what extra time they have left over to actually play the game?
The honest truth is the current state of the economy WITH leadership isn't and never was sustainable.
The game needs to be fun and fulfilling through gameplay, not grindplay. And we're not there. But trying to figure that out WITH Leadership in the state it is won't help.
People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with systems that are more fun. A few players have already put out a lot of good ideas, like:
1) Reducing the cost of items in the Wondrous Bazaar, including Marks of Potency, Cubes of Augmentation, and Dungeon Keys
2) Removing the need for duplicate enchantments when refining ALL enchantments, including weapons and armor
3) Significantly reducing the cost to upgrade mounts and companions
4) Significantly reducing transmutation costs
5) Adding Stronghold vouchers back to Leadership to keep some value to the profession, including AD vouchers
6) Removing pure AD costs from Profession tasks, like reinforcement kits
7) Adding BoE gear drops back to dungeons
Those are just a few of the great ideas I've seen getting buried in these threads.
And so I ask you, would you prefer to have the current state of the game, with all the crazy high costs and insane AD requirements, and then play cookie clicker with Leadership?
Or would you be happy to see Leadership (like the rest of the professions) as something optional and those pain points of grind removed?
Which path is better for the long term future of the game?
now with that out of the way we can finally hope for a way to earn enough means to progress that doesn't require to make 10 alts only to farm LS and AD.
I like all your suggestions, but I really really have to add a foundry option to earn AD too. I know foundry can be exploited with those short quests, so just let it be so daily qualified quests earn AD (that means 15 minutes long quests, the same as a regular dungeon or a skirmish). that would really really also help the foundry.
How about sticking to that fact, and talk about some future pipe dream changes, when those actual happen?
The reason the dev team and PWE need to do these things is that, presumably, they would like to continue having jobs.
A responsible and sensible way of making this change would have been to announce it months in advance ALONG WITH a comprehensive plan to restructure the game economy to make it workable for single-character players. All the suggestion made in this and other threads were obvious. They are not new, either. Players have been suggesting them for months if not years.
But the dev team has offered no plan at all to re-scale the game economy, nor any indication that they are willing to even consider it.
So this is not an opportunity to start a conversation. The dev team aren't even in the conversation. When they join and indicate that they are, for once, not only taking our concerns seriously but intend to IMMEDIATELY make serious, drastic changes to the game economy to make gameplay rewarding and character progression possible, only then will bemoaning this decision be a waste of energy.
Shicoff's initial post on taking over was a ray of hope. He then waited months to make fixes whose necessity was obvious to anyone who had played Mod 6 for even a few minutes. What reason do we have to expect any better this time?
> People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over
> the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more
> suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with
> systems that are more fun. A few players have already put
> out a lot of good ideas [...]
Isn't that supposed to be the designers job?
Or the PWE execs job, for that matter?
> bilitheaxe66 What you're really upset about is not the leadership changes, but the crazy amount of high level grind that it seemingly takes to make progress. And I agree with you on that.
>
> But just saying "Oh well, make 30 alts and cookie clicker Leadership" isn't a solution. You can't possibly expect new players to feel good about needing to do something crazy like that to feel like they're advancing, can you?
>
> Do you feel good when you tell your friends that "all" they need to do to advance is to farm a silly profession on dozens of different toons for hours each week, then use what extra time they have left over to actually play the game?
>
> The honest truth is the current state of the economy WITH leadership isn't and never was sustainable.
>
> The game needs to be fun and fulfilling through gameplay, not grindplay. And we're not there. But trying to figure that out WITH Leadership in the state it is won't help.
>
> People need to stop wasting energy gnashing their teeth over the leadership changes, and start putting out more and more suggestions on how to balance out the grind of the game with systems that are more fun. A few players have already put out a lot of good ideas, like:
>
> 1) Reducing the cost of items in the Wondrous Bazaar, including Marks of Potency, Cubes of Augmentation, and Dungeon Keys
>
> 2) Removing the need for duplicate enchantments when refining ALL enchantments, including weapons and armor
>
> 3) Significantly reducing the cost to upgrade mounts and companions
>
> 4) Significantly reducing transmutation costs
>
> 5) Adding Stronghold vouchers back to Leadership to keep some value to the profession, including AD vouchers
>
> 6) Removing pure AD costs from Profession tasks, like reinforcement kits
>
> 7) Adding BoE gear drops back to dungeons
>
> Those are just a few of the great ideas I've seen getting buried in these threads.
>
> And so I ask you, would you prefer to have the current state of the game, with all the crazy high costs and insane AD requirements, and then play cookie clicker with Leadership?
>
> Or would you be happy to see Leadership (like the rest of the professions) as something optional and those pain points of grind removed?
>
> Which path is better for the long term future of the game?
The problem you are failing to see is that this will kill the game and no hypothetical solution that is months down the line, before it even has a chance of occurring, is going to save the game once the Leadership nerf hits the live server. Already seeing an increase in frame rate as the in game population is already dropping before this "game improving" change occurs.
If this change had actually been well thought out and planned for it would have actually had better/more substitute methods of earning AD, a corresponding reduction in AD sinks, a clear explanation of what the new leadership rewards will be, and the reduction of prices for items on the Wondrous Bazaar ready to go at its implementation. There would have been no misinformation that this is an attempt to control bots and reduce the black market AD in the economy. I, and believe many others, would have been much more accepting of this game changing situation if that were the case.
I, and believe the majority of the player-base, would agree there needs to be a major change in how the economy works. This is very poor method of achieving that end and is going to alienate far too many of the players to keep NeverWinter as a viable game in the long run. My greatest fear of this drastic change is that it will be the straw that breaks the camel's back if the Leadership change hits the live server as it is. Please hold off until you can implement all of the other necessary changes to make it work as intended.
Reading about this change is what finally motivated me to actually activate my forum account instead of being a simple lurker trying to glean information on improving my game play. Would hate to see an end to this game and appreciate being able to freely express my thoughts on this topic. While we may disagree on how to achieve a similar end, I think we both have the game's best interest in our hearts.