Ok - one sad/hilarious footnote here (depending on your point of view). How many sad sacks blew umpteen REAL DOLLARS on Blood Ruby packs over the last weekend, hoping to earn a Celeste they could turn around and sell for millions of AD?
Like ANYONE will shell out 10+ million AD for ANYTHING now.
This move actually puts a MAJOR hurt on the demand for Enchanted Keys. Because what did most of us do with the good stuff we got using them - like extra purple mounts, companions, equipment and artifacts? We sold it for AD to get what we really wanted.
Now that the value of AD will skyrocket - who needs Enchanted Keys to win HAMSTER no one will buy for a decent price?
And what is the single most popular (aka lucrative for Cryptic) purchase item on the Zen Market? Yup.
Shooting. Self. In. Foot. Cryptic's new acronym for customer service and efficiency - SSIF.
Methuselas, your comment on pharmaceutical companies inspired my sig. Thought you should know. They don't JUST create medication to treat symptoms. They create EVERYTHING. It's up to the doctors to write perscriptions that treat the disease. You can't blame the drugmakers for doctors writing off the concerns of their patients. I know all about that, trust me. When you have lupus, for example, they blame EVERYTHING on it. Which is how my mother went undiagnosed with DOUBLE PNEUMONIA for months. Then, of course, there's always the imfamous horses vs. zebras issue. Of course, you probably believe it's just some vast corporate conspiracy, like everyone else. Hence, zeitgeist.
Now that's off my chest....
I realize all this might sound somewhat in contrast to my points against PWI. Not at all; there's a wide gap between corporate conspiracy and bone-headed mismanagement.
It's the same thing as the corruption in the American Judicial System and it's Political system. People want results, but get treatment for symptoms, not the disease. The Judicial System is still corrupt and Politicians still get rich off lobbyists, while "enforcing the will of the people." The Patriot Act is a shining example of this. Yes, Americans want security, but they don't want to give up their personal freedoms to do it.
With Cryptic, however, the situation is different. Yes, the game is "Free 2 Play", but they still require an investment from the users, to keep the company afloat. Hence, the Zen Store. Now, players have been telling Cryptic, for YEARS, that the prices in the Zen Store are too high and the items lackluster. Once again, a management decision, not a developer's.
Now, when players are purchasing AD from 3rd Party Sellers, to get "more bang for their buck", they're under-cutting Cryptic's profit, which hurts the company and as a result, forces them to change their ability to do so, which in turn will hurt legitimate players, as well, but what choice do they have?
Trust me, I'm one of the biggest trolls on the forums. I give Cryptic no quarter when it comes to bad management decisions, but being someone that worked (and still does, albeit in a much smaller capacity) in game development, I'm starting to feel a little sympathy for the developers. Although, I don't agree with how they presented their dilemma, as I feel they needlessly lied to the user base, when it would have been far better to be honest, I know where they're coming from. My first experience with working with horrible management was with a game company whose management had NO idea what they were doing.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
Well, if the demand for zen relative to AD goes down, AD price of zen will go down, so everything should stabilize in the long run.
Why should someone play to earn AD when its capped at such a low amount? They may as well just grind in map and sell drops and gear, you'd get as much AD for less effort oh and bots can abuse it...
Who exactly do you expect to purchase said drops and gear, if no one has any Astral Diamonds?
I stopped spending real money when they made keys bound. Now I get to stop playing completely.
They just saved me a bunch of money, because, after a couple years of spending nothing, I need 40+ greater marks of potency to raise all my tier 8 enchants to tier 9. Now I don't need them. I was actually contemplating spending cash to get them. oops
Leadership had no use except AD. The 'resources' you get are garbage, and I don't need XP, at least not the piddly amounts you get from leadership.
I am not going to do dungeons, skirmishes or PVP. Didn't before, no reason to start. For the amount of AD they are offering, they are still not worth it.
My play style was to play the new content, each mod, then go 'dormant' and log in a few times each day to keep my 5 characters working on leadership. Now with no leadership, no reason to log in at all. With no progression going on, no point in coming back for any new content either.
I am a causal player who can't do dungeons and the like during the week because i have to get up from my computer frequently (I work at home) so i advanced my characters doing dailies and using leadership...I play dungeons and pvp on the weekends.. I have spent a fair amount of money on this game using the zen market (mounts, companions etc). With this change you have crippled my ability to enjoy solo play, so I'm done... There are a lot of other games out there that, at least, give me the ability to be a solo player and not be punished for it.
Thanks for not giving a damn about your customers! P.S. (I will not be coming back because if you do this now, you will do it again)
This is the approach many have followed. Their guilds are gone, there's no player base, they don't want to PUG, due to bad experiences, so they just solo and in doing so, they don't earn AD. Without AD, there's no incentive to play, as there's no viable currency to gain, to purchase needed items.
If you don't have the equivalent of a full 8 hour day job to spend playing the game, daily, you're not going to get your 24k AD/Day for ONE toon. Most people don't have that kind of time, which means the AD surplus grows smaller. So, you either buy Zen to convert to AD (which will be worth even less, as fewer people have AD to exchange) or you go to a Gold Seller.
I am a causal player who can't do dungeons and the like during the week because i have to get up from my computer frequently (I work at home) so i advanced my characters doing dailies and using leadership...I play dungeons and pvp on the weekends.. I have spent a fair amount of money on this game using the zen market (mounts, companions etc). With this change you have crippled my ability to enjoy solo play, so I'm done... There are a lot of other games out there that, at least, give me the ability to be a solo player and not be punished for it.
Thanks for not giving a damn about your customers! P.S. (I will not be coming back because if you do this now, you will do it again)
I know that the AD exploit needs to be fixed some how but I hope they will make some other changes to let those of us that does not have hours to play everyday enjoy the game. Here's a couple things that I think they need to address soon.
Just upgrading your companion from 30 to 35 to 40 will be almost impossible. I play less than 10 hours a week and at short stints. When they increased companion level from 35-40 and it takes 1 mil AD to upgrade, even with all the AD that I managed to save up. I only have enough AD to upgrade one companion per toon. I hope that once this change settles down. They will look at lowering the cost of companion upgrade. Otherwise, it will take forever to save up enough AD to bring another toon to 40.
Another point that I want to make is that a lot of the bind to character/account stuff seems to be implemented to offset the AD exploits. now that it has been handled. I would want them to ease up so those of us that does not have the time to make repeat runs just to get tier II gears will be able to find them in the auction house since I can't play with a lot of my friends anymore as I don't have the gear score to keep up with them.
Meth; I can't disagree with you more on the business side of the political issue. It's the government that corrupted business, not the other way around. If government had not accumulated so much power over the people, unscrupulous businessmen could not appeal to the strong central authority for favors. The centralization came before the companies which exploited it. In any case, its a far more complicated issue than a greedy businessman buying politicians. It's a generations-old game of quid-pro-quot that's only possible because of the power of government. Take that power away, and the corporate issues will fall as well. As for the politicians themselves, I agree on the broad strokes, perhaps some finer disputes. It's more a case of a political social class; a Washingtonian nobility which is of itself, by itself, and for itself. We even have "royal families" now; most notably the Kennedy's - assumed to be qualified because of their heritage. I don't think anyone would disagree. And, it's on both sides. I personally believe it stems from progressive ideology, which is ultimately a highly Nietzschean philosophy - a small, educated few who think they know whats best for We the People, the real vox populi be damned. It's the people who blindly place the blame wholly on the businesses and, thus, capitalism - useful idiots, as progressives and their philosophical twins, socialists, call them - that boil my blood. You're not necessarily one of these "useful" people - you're obviously too intelligent, but you're clearly around a few too many of them, I'm afraid.
I hope that isn't too insulting... I firmly believe all of this and want to help others "see the light," as it were - insulting people is not the way to achieve that goal, and it is not my intent to do so. Sometimes people need a splash of cold water in order to wake up.
Back to the issue at hand.
I fully understand the complexity of game development. Economics is full of apparent paradoxes and general inherent intricacies. Any company must balance customer satisfaction against its bottom line - and in free-to-play gaming, that must be like juggling sharks. Perhaps in this, I and many others may often be too harsh. But I worry. Simply watching escapism isn't good enough for me. I have to be a part of it. I have to have the characters I've come up with (which are characteristically highly detailed, all with some degree of a backstory - and a story to be told in their futures) move and live and interact with a wider world, before my very eyes. And, from what I've heard, for someone like me, i.e. truly penniless, this game is pretty much it. And it worries me that it's steadily becoming harder and harder to actually enjoy.
Post edited by sylkrode on
If you want robofarming, go play farmville or something.
Leardership is now just hard to level up for no good reason. This is one of the reason i will never give real $$ to a free to play game.
Just for your information Cryptic if you don't want botters on your gateway task (the captcha is the way to go). In-game it's a little bit more complicated, but not that much (MJ, check log if a player get 24kAD a day (every day)...)
I'm hoping that the price of stuff will be going down sometine very soon. That kind of update (glitchy as usual) motivate me to play less than before.
If i wasn't in a guild with friend, you'd have lost me there. Please stop trying to make your game a freemium.
to bad they couldn't make a tasks that only unlocks at the end of a dung. Complete a t4 and a leadership task unlocks that earns 2k AD x3. Not gonna get that many bots doing it
Here is my story and why I am so upset with Pefect World. I dont really think it's Cryptic. I think it's PW the parent company.
I have no hatred or animosity towards any of the Devs, they do what they are asked. Whether they like it or not. I see so many comments of Devs this devs that... like they have any choice. It's the guys like Scott that help the game go south, the guys in the suits.
I digress....
Every MMO in order to be FUN solo has to have some form of farm/reward you can do.... in short... for me Leadership replaced the lack thereof ...of anything in this game that you could do to make in-game currency. Dungeon groups fall apart, PVP sucks I hate it, foundry got real boring.
I played when this game first was released, quit, then came back. Realized the same things remained and then saw a post on how to make money with Leadership right here on NW forums....
The work involved spelled out months and months of hard work for me if I wanted to do it. As well as a lot of money if I wanted to do it efficiently. Right now I wish I never saw that post and instead quit NW like I was going to anyhow....
I still have yet to see the Tiamat fight... or any epic dungeon because I was never deemed "FIT" enough to be invited....
I realized that I would never catch my friend of 23,000GS (this is way before Ele Evil) and I also didn't have the abiltity so just outright buy my way nor did I want to. If I spent money on ZEN I wanted it to be in the most efficient manner. Leadership looked to provide that and made sense. If I did the work it would repay me. The only problem was I was bound to do all these jobs every day but it got the job done. The Devs/Designers have a terrible system in place for making in game currency, there are TOO MANY currencies, GOLD is worthless, AD is the only one that really drives the economy and the ingame methods outside LS just totally blow compared to the static costs of EVERYTHING ELSE for upgrading your characters.
So...
I spent literally from Xmas 2014 to now building a good income. Spent close to $1000 between my wife's (and my account) on char slots, assets, and the worst part was the time investment. Levelling so many chars to 60, then 3 professions to 20, and then have 9 slots to work up Leadership was MORE time/grinding than anything I ever did in an MMO. I have nothing close to the stories I hear here of 30/50 characters. I have 7 chars on my account EACH a different class so that I can have fun with any of them. Add to this not knowing this AD change was coming I spent $100 to buy 10 Heroes on Thursday and got sucker punched in the face by PW.
Looking at my account in steam I have over 1000 hours in the game since installing it and I left the scathing review for NW (the digital distribution company most gamers find this game.) Warned players to stay away from this bait and switch company.
If I see the game change for the better I'll be happy to change my view point but for what I see and how the change was done... it's an enormous slap in the face of how I supported this game. I voted positively with my wallet spending money on my hobby... instead they halfA-$$ style remove AD from LS and leave it stupid and worthless with maybe 1 or 2 jobs worth doing.
I see I am not alone, there are nothing but negative reviews for pages and pages on end.
The bottom line: Neverwinter has sooooooo much potential. It saddens me so that it's being run into the ground.
I understand the need to tweak Leadership, I'll be the first to admit it's over the top how fast you can build up millions of AD. But their correction to LS is just wrong the way it was implemented.
It was just LAZY.
I wish the people luck that the company does some good stuff for this game I used to love it. Really enjoyed this past weekend of X2 Refinement event, not knowing this change was coming.... so bummed out.
And if you find anything here harsh and if you are someone on the outside that didn't try Leadership and just want to call us bots or whatnot "shame on you leadership guys" I saw.... you play your way. I chose to buy char slots and work very hard. It didnt come easy at all.... it was a LOT of work.
Anyhow I'm rambling but very disappointed. Sorry. Have fun.
You (Cryptic, PWE) offer me ways to play the game. I (player) decide which way I want to play it.
Conclusion: We (Cryptic, PWE, player) are not sailing the same boat or driving the same road.
Solution to this problem: We may part ways.
Some details: I'm a dedicated solo player. Until now I could find my way in the game. No grinding and slowly inching towards what I cared about - which is story and content. Removing a major currency for me and implementing nothing to replace it, means I cannot achieve MY goals anymore. So, you kick me out. Congratulations. You have lost me!
So, with this new change, doing the Leadership task rank 25 gives you 1 Enchanted Coffer + 3000 copper + 500 exp + 250 profession exp. You still only need 1 DAY to complete it!!!
Now let's see the difference with LS rank 23. Ohhh, you get 1 Enchanted Coffer + 1.5k exp (more than R25!?) + 3000 copper + 250 profession exp; and you only need 4 HOURS to complete it! You guys must be pretty smart!
So, with this new change, doing the Leadership task rank 25 gives you 1 Enchanted Coffer + 3000 copper + 500 exp + 250 profession exp. You still only need 1 DAY to complete it!!!
Now let's see the difference with LS rank 23. Ohhh, you get 1 Enchanted Coffer + 1.5k exp (more than R25!?) + 3000 copper + 250 profession exp; and you only need 4 HOURS to complete it! You guys must be pretty smart!
So, with this new change, doing the Leadership task rank 25 gives you 1 Enchanted Coffer + 3000 copper + 500 exp + 250 profession exp. You still only need 1 DAY to complete it!!!
Now let's see the difference with LS rank 23. Ohhh, you get 1 Enchanted Coffer + 1.5k exp (more than R25!?) + 3000 copper + 250 profession exp; and you only need 4 HOURS to complete it! You guys must be pretty smart!
Before the patch, one could earn even more than 25k AD with Leadership plus 10k AD with daily, for a total of 35k. To be conservative in Leadership, we may say 15k + 10k = 25k.
Now the maximum amount is 7,2k + 7,2k + 4,8k = 19,2k. And assuming that I buy a VIP bonus, I will get 15% more AD. Thus 19,2*1,15 = 22k < 25k
Even if I buy a VIP, I will get lesser AD than I used to earn before the patch!!! How can you say that this patch is going to "increase the amount of AD earn in a given day"???
Using Leadership was fine because some days I do not have time to play, but I just want to invest my time in the game, so I just log in, update professions and quit. And it was fine, because I know that without spending money or plenty of hours a day, is almost impossible to have a nice gear, but that was a small source of AD.
Now it seems that all these changes have only the purpose to make people spend money on the game. But please take a look at the Laffer curve: the more you ask for real money reducing earnable AD, the less you will get, because either less people will play the game or some of them will find another way to earn AD (such as using bot on the gateway).
So thank you very much, it was nice, but no way I'm gonna play this game again. And I guess that many others will do the same, looking at the number of people that read this discussion in just few days and comparing it with the views on the ohter topics...
So I actually didn't mind the proposed changes too much (though more ways to earn AD than just PvP/Dungeons/Skirmish would have been nice). Except it seems that none of the bonus AD are working for me. Ran Blacklake Terror for the first time of the day - got 58 raw AD. Yay! So now there's no Skirmish hour and you managed to fail to implement even the promised changes.
How this works! Take the number of your leadership toons and multiply it by 12. That will give you the same income as your leadership army. So a person with 20 leadership toons would require 240 pray toons. Yes it might take you all day to pray on all of them but hey you got to admit it would be more enjoyable than running the same 3 dungeons over and over and over again for AD!
you joke, but the botters will do just that. instead of 12 LS bots they will make 240 pray bots and pray scripts, and the login server and PE instance server will be slammed with 10,000 more bots loggin in and out every 5 seconds. stupid.
So, with this new change, doing the Leadership task rank 25 gives you 1 Enchanted Coffer + 3000 copper + 500 exp + 250 profession exp. You still only need 1 DAY to complete it!!!
Now let's see the difference with LS rank 23. Ohhh, you get 1 Enchanted Coffer + 1.5k exp (more than R25!?) + 3000 copper + 250 profession exp; and you only need 4 HOURS to complete it! You guys must be pretty smart!
So, with this new change, doing the Leadership task rank 25 gives you 1 Enchanted Coffer + 3000 copper + 500 exp + 250 profession exp. You still only need 1 DAY to complete it!!!
Now let's see the difference with LS rank 23. Ohhh, you get 1 Enchanted Coffer + 1.5k exp (more than R25!?) + 3000 copper + 250 profession exp; and you only need 4 HOURS to complete it! You guys must be pretty smart!
P.S: The part about being smart is me being sarcastic in case you didn't notice..
Yep.... aren't you glad you got to level 25!!!!????
Sadly since I just got my LS to rank 25 on my main two days ago, all that work was for nothing! What makes less sense is how you get more rewards (more exp anyway) from a lower rank. They really should get working on their brainstorming (except that would require more time and effort (and brainpower!) on their side which is not gonna be anytime soon)
Like I said, it's not about crippling you, it's about crippling the Gold Sellers. The player base, unfortunately, were a casualty.
So, what does this do? People who need more AD, will go to the Gold Sellers and not purchase Zen.
Why?
Simple economics. Why would anyone spend 100$ on 10,000 Zen, which comes out to 5m in AD (currently), when you can buy 1 million for a tenth of the price and a little over half the price for the same amount of AD? So, even if people do buy AD from Gold Sellers, I guarantee you that in the 2 years of uptime for NWO, along with all the exploits that have happened, they have MONTHS of surplus to sell.
Well, looking at the "Upcoming Events" screen is particularly pathetic.
Domination PvP, Gauntlgrym PVP, Domination PvP, Gauntlgrym Pvp, PvP, and some PvP.
What's good with PvP? A side order of PvP? How about this waffer-thin PvP after-dinner mint. Lame...
I guess with PvP, you can be humiliated into still paying RL $, so it makes sense that's still there.
*sigh*. It's not going to end, is it?
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I used to play Runes of Magic. They had an auction house where you could exchange gold (creature dropped) for diamonds (cash shop currency). They disabled the exchange at some point due to goldspammer activity, and immediately lots of people stopped playing. I stopped playing, anyway!
Somehow, I can't help but think Cryptic may just disable the AH "Temporarily" sometime to try and figure out how to best combat goldspammers.
I used to play Runes of Magic. They had an auction house where you could exchange gold (creature dropped) for diamonds (cash shop currency). They disabled the exchange at some point due to goldspammer activity, and immediately lots of people stopped playing. I stopped playing, anyway!
Somehow, I can't help but think Cryptic may just disable the AH "Temporarily" sometime to try and figure out how to best combat goldspammers.
This is part of my pitch. You remove the AH, you remove the Gold Seller's ability to sell AD.
Yeah, players will whine about it, but you can have your Leadership AD and Leadership armies back. The only place you'll be able to spend your AD is the Campaign Screen, Wondrous Bazaar, Professions and ZAX exchange. Stronghold's AD sink would be removed, as well, due to Gold Sellers.
So only those with leadership AD farming armies have legitimate points of view? What is this idiocy?
And yet there are people saying that those of us that have been playing for YEARS, have spent money on leadership assets, zen and what not, in order to play multiple toons are "repsonsible" for all the "botters", we're "one and the same" as the "botters" and all our hard work and investment should be removed, 'cos YOU whine and opine, "it's not fair, 'cos they have it and we don't."
Yeah, that's logic. *rolls eyes*
Nice strawman.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
edited September 2015
Right, but then the game is basically a single player game.
Players have no ability to interact with each other commerce wise.
Actually, that's not true at all come to think of it. Goldsellers wouldn't sell ADs, they'd just sell GMOPs.
Basically, the "solution" would to make 100% of ad items bound to account on pickup.
Well, looking at the "Upcoming Events" screen is particularly pathetic.
Domination PvP, Gauntlgrym PVP, Domination PvP, Gauntlgrym Pvp, PvP, and some PvP.
What's good with PvP? A side order of PvP? How about this waffer-thin PvP after-dinner mint. Lame...
I guess with PvP, you can be humiliated into still paying RL $, so it makes sense that's still there.
*sigh*. It's not going to end, is it?
Yeah, I've only ever done a single PvP match in all my years of MORPG gaming. Last week. I'll admitt to being a bit skittish about it - I'm not terribly confident in my skills, so I'm wary to pit them against other players. I hate that creeping sense that I'm being carried by more competent players. But, hell, I'm not playing games to feel like I have a bigger... vegetable ... than someone else. I'm playing to have fun.
If you want robofarming, go play farmville or something.
Players have no ability to interact with each other commerce wise.
Then why do we have a trade channel?
Actually, that's not true at all come to think of it. Goldsellers wouldn't sell ADs, they'd just sell GMOPs.
They already do. And Enchants and Mounts and Companions. They'd lose their biggest income, however, which would be AD. And it's the AD selling that hurts Cryptic the most and is what's led to all these AD nerfs.
Also, I never said that the AH would be gone. I just said that it would be shut down. There are ways to circumvent the Gold Sellers on the AH. I'd have to talk to developers, though, to see how the AH is implemented.
Basically, the "solution" would to make 100% of ad items bound to account on pickup.
And then people would whine that they don't do Leadership professions or run skirmishes, dungeons or foundry and say it's "not fair."
Comments
Like ANYONE will shell out 10+ million AD for ANYTHING now.
This move actually puts a MAJOR hurt on the demand for Enchanted Keys. Because what did most of us do with the good stuff we got using them - like extra purple mounts, companions, equipment and artifacts? We sold it for AD to get what we really wanted.
Now that the value of AD will skyrocket - who needs Enchanted Keys to win HAMSTER no one will buy for a decent price?
And what is the single most popular (aka lucrative for Cryptic) purchase item on the Zen Market? Yup.
Shooting. Self. In. Foot. Cryptic's new acronym for customer service and efficiency - SSIF.
With Cryptic, however, the situation is different. Yes, the game is "Free 2 Play", but they still require an investment from the users, to keep the company afloat. Hence, the Zen Store. Now, players have been telling Cryptic, for YEARS, that the prices in the Zen Store are too high and the items lackluster. Once again, a management decision, not a developer's.
Now, when players are purchasing AD from 3rd Party Sellers, to get "more bang for their buck", they're under-cutting Cryptic's profit, which hurts the company and as a result, forces them to change their ability to do so, which in turn will hurt legitimate players, as well, but what choice do they have?
Trust me, I'm one of the biggest trolls on the forums. I give Cryptic no quarter when it comes to bad management decisions, but being someone that worked (and still does, albeit in a much smaller capacity) in game development, I'm starting to feel a little sympathy for the developers. Although, I don't agree with how they presented their dilemma, as I feel they needlessly lied to the user base, when it would have been far better to be honest, I know where they're coming from. My first experience with working with horrible management was with a game company whose management had NO idea what they were doing.
They just saved me a bunch of money, because, after a couple years of spending nothing, I need 40+ greater marks of potency to raise all my tier 8 enchants to tier 9. Now I don't need them. I was actually contemplating spending cash to get them. oops
Leadership had no use except AD. The 'resources' you get are garbage, and I don't need XP, at least not the piddly amounts you get from leadership.
I am not going to do dungeons, skirmishes or PVP. Didn't before, no reason to start. For the amount of AD they are offering, they are still not worth it.
My play style was to play the new content, each mod, then go 'dormant' and log in a few times each day to keep my 5 characters working on leadership. Now with no leadership, no reason to log in at all. With no progression going on, no point in coming back for any new content either.
Good job.
This is the approach many have followed. Their guilds are gone, there's no player base, they don't want to PUG, due to bad experiences, so they just solo and in doing so, they don't earn AD. Without AD, there's no incentive to play, as there's no viable currency to gain, to purchase needed items.
If you don't have the equivalent of a full 8 hour day job to spend playing the game, daily, you're not going to get your 24k AD/Day for ONE toon. Most people don't have that kind of time, which means the AD surplus grows smaller. So, you either buy Zen to convert to AD (which will be worth even less, as fewer people have AD to exchange) or you go to a Gold Seller.
Either way, you and Cryptic lose.
Just upgrading your companion from 30 to 35 to 40 will be almost impossible. I play less than 10 hours a week and at short stints. When they increased companion level from 35-40 and it takes 1 mil AD to upgrade, even with all the AD that I managed to save up. I only have enough AD to upgrade one companion per toon. I hope that once this change settles down. They will look at lowering the cost of companion upgrade. Otherwise, it will take forever to save up enough AD to bring another toon to 40.
Another point that I want to make is that a lot of the bind to character/account stuff seems to be implemented to offset the AD exploits. now that it has been handled. I would want them to ease up so those of us that does not have the time to make repeat runs just to get tier II gears will be able to find them in the auction house since I can't play with a lot of my friends anymore as I don't have the gear score to keep up with them.
I hope that isn't too insulting... I firmly believe all of this and want to help others "see the light," as it were - insulting people is not the way to achieve that goal, and it is not my intent to do so. Sometimes people need a splash of cold water in order to wake up.
Back to the issue at hand.
I fully understand the complexity of game development. Economics is full of apparent paradoxes and general inherent intricacies. Any company must balance customer satisfaction against its bottom line - and in free-to-play gaming, that must be like juggling sharks. Perhaps in this, I and many others may often be too harsh. But I worry. Simply watching escapism isn't good enough for me. I have to be a part of it. I have to have the characters I've come up with (which are characteristically highly detailed, all with some degree of a backstory - and a story to be told in their futures) move and live and interact with a wider world, before my very eyes. And, from what I've heard, for someone like me, i.e. truly penniless, this game is pretty much it. And it worries me that it's steadily becoming harder and harder to actually enjoy.
Rage against the zeitgeist.
- 1GWF lvl70
- 1TR lvl60
Leardership is now just hard to level up for no good reason.
This is one of the reason i will never give real $$ to a free to play game.
Just for your information Cryptic if you don't want botters on your gateway task (the captcha is the way to go).
In-game it's a little bit more complicated, but not that much (MJ, check log if a player get 24kAD a day (every day)...)
I'm hoping that the price of stuff will be going down sometine very soon.
That kind of update (glitchy as usual) motivate me to play less than before.
If i wasn't in a guild with friend, you'd have lost me there.
Please stop trying to make your game a freemium.
Bye
I have no hatred or animosity towards any of the Devs, they do what they are asked. Whether they like it or not. I see so many comments of Devs this devs that... like they have any choice. It's the guys like Scott that help the game go south, the guys in the suits.
I digress....
Every MMO in order to be FUN solo has to have some form of farm/reward you can do.... in short... for me Leadership replaced the lack thereof ...of anything in this game that you could do to make in-game currency. Dungeon groups fall apart, PVP sucks I hate it, foundry got real boring.
I played when this game first was released, quit, then came back. Realized the same things remained and then saw a post on how to make money with Leadership right here on NW forums....
The work involved spelled out months and months of hard work for me if I wanted to do it. As well as a lot of money if I wanted to do it efficiently. Right now I wish I never saw that post and instead quit NW like I was going to anyhow....
I still have yet to see the Tiamat fight... or any epic dungeon because I was never deemed "FIT" enough to be invited....
I realized that I would never catch my friend of 23,000GS (this is way before Ele Evil) and I also didn't have the abiltity so just outright buy my way nor did I want to. If I spent money on ZEN I wanted it to be in the most efficient manner. Leadership looked to provide that and made sense. If I did the work it would repay me. The only problem was I was bound to do all these jobs every day but it got the job done. The Devs/Designers have a terrible system in place for making in game currency, there are TOO MANY currencies, GOLD is worthless, AD is the only one that really drives the economy and the ingame methods outside LS just totally blow compared to the static costs of EVERYTHING ELSE for upgrading your characters.
So...
I spent literally from Xmas 2014 to now building a good income. Spent close to $1000 between my wife's (and my account) on char slots, assets, and the worst part was the time investment. Levelling so many chars to 60, then 3 professions to 20, and then have 9 slots to work up Leadership was MORE time/grinding than anything I ever did in an MMO. I have nothing close to the stories I hear here of 30/50 characters. I have 7 chars on my account EACH a different class so that I can have fun with any of them. Add to this not knowing this AD change was coming I spent $100 to buy 10 Heroes on Thursday and got sucker punched in the face by PW.
Looking at my account in steam I have over 1000 hours in the game since installing it and I left the scathing review for NW (the digital distribution company most gamers find this game.) Warned players to stay away from this bait and switch company.
If I see the game change for the better I'll be happy to change my view point but for what I see and how the change was done... it's an enormous slap in the face of how I supported this game. I voted positively with my wallet spending money on my hobby... instead they halfA-$$ style remove AD from LS and leave it stupid and worthless with maybe 1 or 2 jobs worth doing.
I see I am not alone, there are nothing but negative reviews for pages and pages on end.
The bottom line:
Neverwinter has sooooooo much potential. It saddens me so that it's being run into the ground.
I understand the need to tweak Leadership, I'll be the first to admit it's over the top how fast you can build up millions of AD. But their correction to LS is just wrong the way it was implemented.
It was just LAZY.
I wish the people luck that the company does some good stuff for this game I used to love it. Really enjoyed this past weekend of X2 Refinement event, not knowing this change was coming.... so bummed out.
And if you find anything here harsh and if you are someone on the outside that didn't try Leadership and just want to call us bots or whatnot "shame on you leadership guys" I saw.... you play your way. I chose to buy char slots and work very hard. It didnt come easy at all.... it was a LOT of work.
Anyhow I'm rambling but very disappointed. Sorry. Have fun.
You (Cryptic, PWE) offer me ways to play the game.
I (player) decide which way I want to play it.
Conclusion: We (Cryptic, PWE, player) are not sailing the same boat or driving the same road.
Solution to this problem: We may part ways.
Some details: I'm a dedicated solo player. Until now I could find my way in the game. No grinding and slowly inching towards what I cared about - which is story and content. Removing a major currency for me and implementing nothing to replace it, means I cannot achieve MY goals anymore.
So, you kick me out. Congratulations. You have lost me!
Now let's see the difference with LS rank 23. Ohhh, you get 1 Enchanted Coffer + 1.5k exp (more than R25!?) + 3000 copper + 250 profession exp; and you only need 4 HOURS to complete it! You guys must be pretty smart!
Wanna see the proof of what I'm talking about? Check this out: http://imgur.com/k2AlEyg
P.S: The part about being smart is me being sarcastic in case you didn't notice..
(http://www.grievancegaming.org)
Now the maximum amount is 7,2k + 7,2k + 4,8k = 19,2k.
And assuming that I buy a VIP bonus, I will get 15% more AD. Thus 19,2*1,15 = 22k < 25k
Even if I buy a VIP, I will get lesser AD than I used to earn before the patch!!! How can you say that this patch is going to "increase the amount of AD earn in a given day"???
Using Leadership was fine because some days I do not have time to play, but I just want to invest my time in the game, so I just log in, update professions and quit. And it was fine, because I know that without spending money or plenty of hours a day, is almost impossible to have a nice gear, but that was a small source of AD.
Now it seems that all these changes have only the purpose to make people spend money on the game. But please take a look at the Laffer curve: the more you ask for real money reducing earnable AD, the less you will get, because either less people will play the game or some of them will find another way to earn AD (such as using bot on the gateway).
So thank you very much, it was nice, but no way I'm gonna play this game again. And I guess that many others will do the same, looking at the number of people that read this discussion in just few days and comparing it with the views on the ohter topics...
(http://www.grievancegaming.org)
But, yeah, the level 25 task is now just painfully bad.
So, what does this do? People who need more AD, will go to the Gold Sellers and not purchase Zen.
Why?
Simple economics. Why would anyone spend 100$ on 10,000 Zen, which comes out to 5m in AD (currently), when you can buy 1 million for a tenth of the price and a little over half the price for the same amount of AD? So, even if people do buy AD from Gold Sellers, I guarantee you that in the 2 years of uptime for NWO, along with all the exploits that have happened, they have MONTHS of surplus to sell.
That's the crux that Cryptic just cannot beat.
Domination PvP, Gauntlgrym PVP, Domination PvP, Gauntlgrym Pvp, PvP, and some PvP.
What's good with PvP? A side order of PvP? How about this waffer-thin PvP after-dinner mint. Lame...
I guess with PvP, you can be humiliated into still paying RL $, so it makes sense that's still there.
*sigh*. It's not going to end, is it?
Somehow, I can't help but think Cryptic may just disable the AH "Temporarily" sometime to try and figure out how to best combat goldspammers.
Yeah, players will whine about it, but you can have your Leadership AD and Leadership armies back. The only place you'll be able to spend your AD is the Campaign Screen, Wondrous Bazaar, Professions and ZAX exchange. Stronghold's AD sink would be removed, as well, due to Gold Sellers.
Legit players, however, won't care.
Players have no ability to interact with each other commerce wise.
Actually, that's not true at all come to think of it. Goldsellers wouldn't sell ADs, they'd just sell GMOPs.
Basically, the "solution" would to make 100% of ad items bound to account on pickup.
Rage against the zeitgeist.
Also, I never said that the AH would be gone. I just said that it would be shut down. There are ways to circumvent the Gold Sellers on the AH. I'd have to talk to developers, though, to see how the AH is implemented. And then people would whine that they don't do Leadership professions or run skirmishes, dungeons or foundry and say it's "not fair."