Check out other F2P games, and you will find out, that this has nothing to do with F2P itself. F2P does not have to turn out as some Players vs. Devs/Managment showdown.
"You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
It would be better to really listen to player feedback, and at least come up with something, boths sides can agree to, and not just go into the forum, drop the information and then just vanish again...
The evidence that neither the Devs nor the Mods or anybody amongst the suits plays the game is clearly here.
1. Testing done in GOD MODE, with a rank 12 and fully enchanted char, witnessed it many times during these 3 years and during PVP alpha test. EPIC FAIL
2. What is any, i repeat any profession good for now? The old professions were made useless with Mod 6, now LS is dead and who will have the money to make or personalize a jewel?
3. Since SH prices aren't adjusted to zero AD income now, where shall we get those hundreds of millions? Does Cryptic believe, that after losing our TRUST- repeatedly now- a sane person will spend thousands of dollars into SH? What will we do? No old dungeons to play, no professions, just 3 PVP modes full of exploiters and now soon with bots, zero ELO, zero matchmaking.
Devs should have addressed these 3 year old bugs, not make this HAMSTER patch. Hey suddenly they got time and man power, how interesting.
5. How shall a new or fairly new player advance now? Does Cryptic believe, that anybody will pay now thosusands of dollars after this game is nearly empty. Most people have eyes and use them, they can't be fooled so easily now. Even the most naive player will see guilds go down the drain, SH getting empty, guildies leave, etc.
5 Last but not least, what shall we do with all the alts? I clearly remember the Mods here on Forum advertising their huge leadership army! Most of us didn't have that many, i personally have only 10 toons and most of them aren't lvl 20, cause i started LS very late and i played each class until Mod 6.
What shall we do now in a lackluster game like this now? Chat all day? Hell since Mod 6 many of us are more in chat and at guildie rescue, than playing our toons.
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
i think that this change was needed a long time ago. It's a step to the right direction.
Lets face it all the BiS characters are those with leadership army, not countless hours of play nor real money. Only leadership armies. You can easily get 200k+ AD/day with only 20+ toons and there are a lot of players with many more. You can do the math. There are no real money that can buy this amount of AD every single day.
It's total unfair for a player who really likes one or two classes and enjoys playing them for countless hours not to be able to come at least close to those with leadership armies. (i dont even mention casual players for the last 2 mods, they are doomed).
So out of the sudden the player who plays all day cannot go to end game dungeons due to IL and the one that never plays but has a leadership army can go everywhere and kicks the one who plays.
I understand sometimes the need to play different classes to know the class mechanics but this leads to at most 10 toons. And im sure no one enjoys playing all classes. After all this is DnD. We all have a favorite class. But i'm sure that's not the intention of creating all those toons.
Of course as many others already stated this change must be followed by a lot more changes.
1. lower the costs of gmops and coals 2. if not total cancellation of last module at least no sinks of surplus and ADs (but there are many more reasons why srongholds is the worst to day module) 3. Increase of RPs, ADs, drops in dungeons, skirmishes at least to some of them
p.s. I have also 7 toons, 1 main and only 1 more that i enjoy playing (lvl 56 at the moment). Some created for the sigils others for testing the gameplay, only 1 lvl 70, 2 with leadership 20 and I don't mind at all stripping the ADs from leadership.
Why do you all worry so much. This goes live today and on Thursday they will say they had another hacker attack on the servers and need to revert everything to before Tuesday.
LMAO the bots are already runing skirmishes and siting afk at camp fires and now we cant kick them properly. this is going to make a hell of a lot of ppl quit, who will want to sell somethign they payed 8 mill a d for to somone for 200k ad because the rate of ad gain has changed? no one will, you dotn have to feed your family in VR u can sit on it and be part of those that came before, those that come after just wont be able to take part unless they spend $6000us to buy zen to buy ad with, and NW realy isnt that good to expect a new player to fork out that kind of money to be on a par with someone that is already BIS. hopefully you dont bring out any content in near future that forces people into gear comparisons with others or your not going to attract many new people, your definately going to lose a number over this. im one of the few people that didnt have a leadership army because im frankly not that organised. and i can tell u with a 2k+ character of 6 difernt classes about the most i can make in a full day of intese play in a very active 140+ acount member guild is about 100k with dailys ect (they forgot to mention the domination battlemasters dailys in ther ebreakdown of old and new) you get 1/2 -1/3 of the ad u did for pvp now (dom battle masters meant to have 2 quests but after the first time u did it since like mod 6 it hasnt shown up 1 of the 2) but bravo on making sure no one ever challenges the riches of those who are already rich apart from botting out 1 billion r5s or forking out $1000s i doubt the wealth balance or peoples respective place in economy will be able to change much from here on in
The only real way for solo/low time players to get AD removed? Not a good idea, you should have been creative with the botters. This is one of the reasons I do not often play PW games.
what they should of done which would of been a lot simpler is just double all the daily reward amounts for the existing dailys so that people could get there daily cap doing a dungeon and a few skirms or a few pvps or a mix, left leadership alone so that we didnt endup with bots interfeering with content which is what people realy dont like about botts. them keeping the price of refinement low is realy a minor inconvenience and for ppl like me actualy wont change what we spend on game positivly because we dont have the money to pay what cryptic wants to charge to upgrade a item ($20us per 150k rp) when just a main hand takes like 4 million RP in total to level it (380$us) and a weapon enchant costs a lot more then that cause it also takes 14 coal wards which are $10 each and 20+ marks of potency ectra. but at prices cryptic would like to sell stuff at your looking at well over $4000US(6500-7000au) to become BIS for most classes i have spend a few $1000us on the cryptic franchise over the years from city of heroes to champions to startrek to neverwinter but not all on one char and probably not 4 grand total which is what is now expected to have even one complete character......
You can tell how much they care about the Foundry the way they completely removed the AD reward for doing it instead of including it with their precious Skirmish/Dungeon/PvP runs. A year ago I remember reading a post saying that they loved the foundry and wanted to improved interest in it. I come back a year later and the same 3 quests are still in the top 10 best...Granted they were really good quests, but if they actually cared about their previously stated goal there would have been some new ones up there. I stop doing foundry's now because I have to run 4 of them to get a reward, the experience value is minuscule, and about 33% of the time I can't complete the quest because it bugs out, sometimes even on a quest that I've previously completed without issue.
To make a long story short I like the foundry, but it's not worth the time investment. According to this they either aren't changing the daily quest for foundry AD or are doing away with it completely. Such a course of action will drive people even further away from the foundry, so please add it to the list of things you can do twice for AD.
For what it's worth, I stopped doing foundries because I was continually getting stuck in traps and unable to progress/complete and had to use teleport scrolls to get out. It may have been that I was just awful at getting past the traps, but it was just too big a headache to complete the foundries so I just ended-up seeing them as a massive waste of time if I wanted to efficiently go through my daily quests.
As allready mentioned, this change makes no sense at all.
- They're not going to remove any AD from real botting or bug using or exploiting, which means, while some players will still have millions upon millions at their disposal, other players will be left with "playing" with scraps, or to start forking over a ton of money into a game riddled with bugs and issues.
- Botters are going to love this change, they get access to an easy and bot friendly way to generate more AD all day long. And nothing is done against AD sellers or buyers.
- The AD prices for items probably stay the same, and even those get adjusted in a few weeks or months, guess who will be profiting the most from that...
- Leadership tasks are more or less pointless from now on, even if you can run some highlevel tasks for some RP, i doubt that it will be worth a damn. They might as well fill the former AD "slots" in Leadership with Companion Experience Treatise.
And i really doubt, that a lot of normal players will just take this hit, continue to play and wait for some adjustments in a few weeks or months.
Best thing to do, after this patch comes live, is to bot ourselves for good and make a kind of "Japanese Strike":
- If they want to remove bots by hurting legit players, then, legit players must hurt them back by doing the exact same thing that they want to fight, this is, botting.
lol classic, sadly pretty close to the truth though. who in there right mind has the time to log 50 chars into 2 skirms 2 pvps 2 dungeons a day, lot of ppl will be using some kind of macros for it. particualy the botters with the new path they will be taking for ad gain :P and if your going to be stuck on a team with 4 bots' moeswell have a bot playing your char also
i think that this change was needed a long time ago. It's a step to the right direction.
Lets face it all the BiS characters are those with leadership army, not countless hours of play nor real money. Only leadership armies. You can easily get 200k+ AD/day with only 20+ toons and there are a lot of players with many more. You can do the math. There are no real money that can buy this amount of AD every single day.
Um, I call BS, Son. I've been around since Beta. I've spent money on this game. A decent amount. I worked my tail off, getting all my toons to 60, before Mod6 and only 2 had *ALMOST* all their Boons (the key word is "almost") and they all had their epic gear, which they EARNED. My "leadership army" was nothing and was not the problem.
As of now, I don't have a single toon with BiS. Not one. Most of mine have bits and pieces from Sharandar/Dread Ring and only one has both complete sets. I have a SINGLE set of R10s (and a couple of R9s) that I SHARE between alts. I have to. The power creep is ridiculous and it's the only way for them to survive.
It's total unfair for a player who really likes one or two classes and enjoys playing them for countless hours not to be able to come at least close to those with leadership armies. (i dont even mention casual players for the last 2 mods, they are doomed).
We call this "whining." What's "total(ly) unfair" is the fact that all of *MY* work "for countless hours" over the span of almost 3 years is nerfed, due to a bunch of nOOb crybabies that want to HAMSTER and moan about what they didn't get and what they don't have. I spent REAL money to buy keys, trade Zen for AD to purchase Men-at-Arms and Adventurers to build my "leadership army." Once again, this has nothing to do, with bots and the only people that are really crying foul are the "have nots", who more than likely haven't put a dime in the game.
So out of the sudden the player who plays all day cannot go to end game dungeons due to IL and the one that never plays but has a leadership army can go everywhere and kicks the one who plays.
This is absolutely absurd. I have a TR with an iLevel of 3k and I can't even complete end-game dungeons. Blaming "leadership armies" who can "go anywhere" and "kick(s) the one who plays" is ridiculous. If you're getting kicked in a dungeon, it falls to two spectrums: You either need to learn to play or the Party Leader of your Dungeon Run is a Griefer.
Try again, Skippy.
I understand sometimes the need to play different classes to know the class mechanics but this leads to at most 10 toons. And im sure no one enjoys playing all classes. After all this is DnD. We all have a favorite class. But i'm sure that's not the intention of creating all those toons.
Uh, I've been playing PnP D&D for over 30 years and I can tell you that "And im sure no one enjoys playing all classes" is utterly wrong. I've played EVERY class in both 1st and 2nd Edition D&D and I played *EVERY* class when I worked at BioWare, during Neverwinter Nights. Stop making assumptions for other people. It makes you look foolish.
2. p.s. I have also 7 toons, 1 main and only 1 more that i enjoy playing (lvl 56 at the moment). Some created for the sigils others for testing the gameplay, only 1 lvl 70, 2 with leadership 20 and I don't mind at all stripping the ADs from leadership.
That's great. That's YOUR decision. You don't speak for the rest of us, however. I'm glad that you have "1 main and only 1 more that i (you) enjoy playing." That means you were never here during the zenith of Neverwinter. You didn't know what it was like to have a friend's list FULL of online, active players in your guild that were asking you to jump on your CW, 'cos Jose needed help to get his Timeless helm from Spellplague. (This is something I actually went through, myself. I was *SO* grateful to my guildies for helping me get that last piece I needed for my complete set and it took us over 2 hours to do. This was back when R7s were like gold plated latinum.)
Since you're so quick to make assumptions about the rest of us and our "leadership armies", Mega, I'll do the same for you:
You haven't spent a dime on the game. You're a F2P leecher, but since you haven't invested in the game, you can't catch up to the power creep and now you're pissed off, 'cos it's "not fair." You can't afford to buy heroes or adventurers or men-at-arms, 'cos you don't want to put down 10$ on a game you enjoy. So, rather than INVEST in the game, you cry like a baby about "what you didn't get", "whose at fault", "what is fair."
You're a finger pointer. But remember, every time you point fingers, you have three fingers pointing back at yourself.
There's TWO types of "leadership armies" and there's TWO types of "botters." Both, however, fall under the same premise.
You either have a "leadership army" or "bot" to make money.
or
You have a "leadership army" or "bot" to upgrade your alts to make them playable.
It's really that simple. The problem is, in order to combat the gold sellers (and that's who we're really after), you have to think outside the box. I have an idea on that. I'm just waiting to pitch it to Andy. The problem is, people aren't going to like it at first, but it will get you your leadership armies back and AD from leadership jobs. The thing is, it will wholly kill the gold sellers or at least kill their incentive to use NWO as a money maker. I hate to say it, but it's a gold mine for cash, due to how it's designed.
To take an analogy from Greek mythology, Cryptic is Heracles and the Gold Sellers are the Hydra. Cryptic has been attempting to cut the head off the Hydra, only to have 2 more grow back in it's place, every time they do. They're continually swinging the Transcendent Nerf Bat of AO, not realizing that once they have cut the head, they need to BURN the stump.
Like I've been saying, this is management, not the developers. It's a money issue.
I am a returning player and I hope I can see more people actually play the game content rather than farming AD offline on gateway!
hope i see more people queuing for Skirmishes, Dungeons or Domination PvP!!!
0
damnaciousMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 354Arc User
I haven't read through all the response in this thread so please forgive me if i'm simply repeating what someone else has said, however, I seriously don't believe that whomever came up with these changes has really thought it through from a logical perspective, with particular concern for how it will affect players and their different circumstances in game.
For example: In order to use this new method to max out the daily 24k RAD character cap, it would require you to spend:
approximately 4.5 hours doing dungeons ((45min x 2 = 1.5hrs for 6,000 AD) + (45min x 4 = 3hrs for 1,200 AD)).
appoximately 4 hours doing skirmishes ((20min x 2 = 40min for 3,000 AD) + (20min x 10 = 2hrs 20min for 5,800 AD))
appoximately 1.5hrs doing PVP ((15min x 2 = 30min for 4,000 AD) + (15min x 4 = 1hr for 800 AD))
Salvaging 5,800 AD worth of items obtained from dungeons and skirmishes.
So, based upon this, you are required to spend, on average 10 hours per day, per character, actually grinding content, to generate 24k RAD per day.
This does not take into account queue times, which may increase time spent per day by approximately 1 hour.
This then means that each player will need to spend 11 hours each day to grind 24k RAD.
Now, in my opinion, this isn't a reasonable or logical request of players. However, this isn't even the full extent of the serious issues such a change will have on players.
For example, let's assume that a player has two characters for their account. Let's also assume that these changes to AD generation will significantly reduce the ZAX to 350 AD per Zen (not likely, i know, but let's work in the world of it somehow being possible). If, a player wished to purchase a full year of VIP subscription using AD and the ZAX (at 350/zen), doing so would mean that player would need to generate 3,535,000 AD per year to afford that subscription. This means that if the player was able to spend 22+hours each day to enable their two characters to generate sufficient AD, it would take 74 days, or two and a half months.
Based upon this, a player who (somehow) managed to play for 22 hours per day so their character would be able to generate 24k RAD per day, would then have the facility to purchase a one year VIP subscription and still have 14 million AD left over.
Awesome isn't it? No. Not really. When you now consider that it costs, at current prices, 500,000 AD to purchase sufficient Greater Marks of Potency to upgrade artifacts to Legendary and 4 Million AD for refining items, it means a player might have the possibility to upgrade 2 artifacts to Legendary each year and leave approximately 5 Million AD left over for purchasing additional dungeons keys, refining artifact equipment, purchasing and upgrading companions, purchasing and upgrading enchantments etc.
So, when it's clearly obvious that, for any new player, it will take them 22hrs per day for over two years to be less than half as geared as a large proportion of current players, how does the development team responsible for this game seriously expect and encourage new players to bother playing?
When you also factor in that in PVP new players will be likely facing constant death and defeat versus geared players, will they continue to bother playing during the match of simply go AFK at the campfire?
If we now look at considering AD generation from a realistic perspective where a player might be able to spend a maximum of 6 hours per day, the player may be able to generate 30k RAD per day with two characters. Unfortunately, this means that the player will take 118 days to gain sufficient AD to purchase a VIP subscription and leave approximately 7.5 Million AD afterwards for general expenditure.
However, if a player has 2.5hrs to play, they will be able to generate 15k AD RAD per day. This means it will take that player 236 days to purchase a VIP subscription and leaves them with just under 2 Million AD for the entire year.
So, what this means is that unless you're capable and prepared to spend 22hrs per day, or a reasonably similar amount of time, it is extraordinarily unlikely that you will EVER be in a position where you are able to compete on a reasonable footing with a large proportion of the long-term and established player base.
Now, none of this takes into account that even those long-term and established players will be gradually affected by these changes to the point where they will be eventually reduced to a similar state as other players, and this will depend entirely upon the capacity of those players to utilise existing banked AD to 'weather' the changes. Unfortunately, these changes are extremely unlikely to have the slightest affect on those players that have previously exploited their way to capping their AD on their accounts, as their capacity to 'weather' these changes makes them essentially immune.
So, what this means is that new players will have little to no opportunity to compete on a reasonable level with a large number of players and no one will be able to compete against those that have exploited.
These changes simply serve the purpose of facilitating a greater divide between those players that are AD 'rich' and the rest of the player base, in a manner which essentially penalises new players and those that don't exploit, while effectively protecting those that have exploited.
I really fail to understand how anyone could not be sufficiently intelligent enough to understand and be aware of this before even considering implementing such an idea.
Beyond any doubt, this is a clear and obvious attempt by the designers to 'encourage' players to spend real money in order to play the game in a reasonably competitive fashion.
So, given all of this, is this game really still free-to-play in actuallity or just in name only?
I think you can all guess what my response to this last question is...
0
inyawayupdeepMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 206Arc User
OK Developers now make this game work. get rid of all wards and Marks and make all refining work 100% of the time. All in favor say yea.
What I get out of this change is "Play our game the way WE want you to play it!" That's fine, if your game is Tetris, but mmorpgs have evolved into places where people can play the game THEY want to play.
You pointed out that you are rewarding TIME - ultimately that is everyone's basic currency. No matter what country you are from or what walk-of-life, every one of us has just so many minutes in our life, and we spend those minutes on working, sleeping, parenting, eating, health and hobbies.
Let's say I have 60-90 minutes of my life each day that I'm willing to spend on time in your game. Before the change, that time would include 15-20 minutes of invoking and crafting tasks that would make my characters roughly 16-18k AD per day, each. Mind you, I have PLAYED all seven of my characters to level 70, and I PAID for those extra character slots. That means I could generate... let's call it 130k AD per day, collectively.
Fact: In order to advance in your game, a player needs AD. In fact, they need LOTS of AD. Upgrading companions, mounts, gear - they all take a LOT of AD. But your change reduces the amount of AD that I could make from about 130k AD per day to, probably 24k AD. Then you say that this will increase the amount of AD that most players make. Um, I think not.
Under your new system, I NEED to play skirmish a couple times, I NEED to play a dungeon or two, and I NEED to start playing pvp (of which I am not a fan) in order to make my max allowance of X rough AD per day on ONE character. Well, those events would take more than my allotted 60-90 minutes per day, I'm pretty sure.
Scott, you're being disingenuous. You are either being intentionally dishonest, or you honestly don't know how people are playing your game. How many hours have you and your devs logged in the game of late? Have you seen all the niggling little issues you've created? Have you Invoked lately? The first time, you have to try a couple times to get it to work. Have you played in DR or Shar? People are constantly complaining about the lag!
But instead of fixing problems, you have focused on the botters. Instead of making your game more fun, more playable, more enjoyable, you have attacked the botters. Nobody but the botters care about the welfare of the botters, but in focusing your WMD attention on them, all your regular players have become collateral damage.
I'm in a great guild. A strong guild that has been maxed out for a while. Yesterday, our Guildmaster left the game. He's played since Beta, and created one of the best guilds in your game. Why did he leave? Because Cryptic and NWO no longer provide a fun, reliable play experience.
Based on the knee-jerk changes Cryptic is making, the poor implementation (every time you fix something lately, you break a couple other things), and the absolute disregard you have for your player base, one might think you are trying to destroy your game.
So today you implement your 'bad botters' patch, and then tomorrow you'll have to fix for all the issues the patch created. And there will be some embarrassing glitches that linger for months or years because they aren't big enough to go back and fix, and those embarrassing glitches will continue to add up until the game is unplayable. Too bad, I was a big fan, once.
I think they need to change many things if they want us to trust them again. I think the AD change is a change in the right direction, but ONLY if it's made at the same time than many other needed changes, because by its own, it makes things worse. I think the main problem they need to fix is that now we require huge amounts of RP and refining to get even close to BiS. even if we calculate it in real money or time both options give ridiculous results. It takes either way too long or it's way too expensive.
The main point is that each and ever character should be able to reach BiS by its own within a reasonable price/time. So they either need to lower the RP/GMoPs and any requirements needed to progress, or they need to significatively raise the rewards we get by playing the game.
If they want to lower the requirements they could delete de double item needed for renining at higher levels, delete any marks needed to upgrade items at lower-mid levels, lower general RP necessary to upgrade all artifacts and artifact equipment, and lower requirements for SH progress.
If, on the other side, they decide to raise the rewards so we can meet the actual requirements to progress without lowering them we would need other changes, like make ALL artifacts and artifact equipment get RP just by playing while using them (like getting a part of your exp as RP) making higher levels refine stones in quests and dungeons, getting GMoPs and any other needed items for progression with a decent droprate in high level quests and dungeons, etc...
Unless any of those two things happen, the player's experience with the game will hardly get better and the goals they want to meet will be impossible, leading to frustration and leaving for greener, kinder MMOs
0
banzaikittenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 220Arc User
oh, BTW... when will cryptic take action agains the CHAT bots....
Even though no one of importance is reading this.. when I was in college I worked at a high end stereo shop as a cleaning/room setup guy. One day while the shop was busy I was asked to baby sit a customer and a half hour later I had an American Express card and an order for $44,000 worth of high end theater equipment. I went on to make about $50k in commissions over the next six months and was top seller for the shop. So what does this have to do with NW and AD.. simple.. I made the company and myself money by giving the customer what they wanted not what I was told to steer them towards. If you listen to your customer, give them what they ask you for and make them happy, they will spend more (much more in some cases) and you will do less work making your money.. its simple really.. Tragic it doesn't work in this case.
Imagine yourself exposed to this virtual environment almost 2 years ago.
A vast task in front of you, to better yourself, the hills you must climb and the battles you must fight.
You are given a tool, those leadership serfs to help better yourself and your virtual fiefdom.
You expand - better serfs and your own armor to help in your battles. Those around you benefit as well, you buy their wares and help them as they help you in battle. You aid the stronghold.
Then after a VERY long period and a heavy investment of currency - your serfs are destroyed in an earthquake and cannot be replaced.
You can no longer better yourself or better those around you.
You feel sick inside for what was lost and what lies ahead in the new wasteland.
Your tool is gone. No recourse. Other tools exist, but the investment and competition are overwhelming.
1) fixed AD costs reduced by 90% (boons, companion/mount upgrade, transmutes, Bazaar, dungeon keys)
2) AD dropping from monster kills like black ice does in Kessel
3) AD and random refining rewards drop in all chests and for all quests in game
4) Fix Foundry and provide real support and real rewards. This area is key to creativity in user base and variety for player sick of fixed content
5) Bring back all dungeons and all skirmishes to play at lvl 70
6) Add huge XP rewards to Leadership so I can at least keep using it for Power Points
7) Give me a week long Leadership task for GMOP. Or better yet, remove GMOP altogether
8) More resonance stone tasks in Leadership
0
soulwizzardMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 11Arc User
Ok What can say is there no way to really make any good income here there changing the AD but everone still can only 24k a day with other games i have play you get rewarded more for playing they don't limit your income if you want to make it so players that don't spend on these game to beable to grow you need to lift the income off AD and reward them for playing the game 1 think the drop rates are bad in the strong hold i see players with rings 700 crit rings and othere item as well i can tell you i ran at least 500 HE and not seen 1 the other issue is all the bond stuff it way to much players can make money thow the AH as well buy sell trade that make income player can move foward
How many people are going to do a 3rd or 4th dungeon run just to earn another 150 - 750 AD? Or even pay 5000 AD for a key to do the 2nd run when they only get 3000 AD back? And awarding 50 - 500 AD for the 3rd and beyond Skirm runs is insulting. 50 AD???? Are you KIDDING ME????
Comments
F2P does not have to turn out as some Players vs. Devs/Managment showdown.
"You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
It would be better to really listen to player feedback, and at least come up with something, boths sides can agree to, and not just go into the forum, drop the information and then just vanish again...
1. Testing done in GOD MODE, with a rank 12 and fully enchanted char, witnessed it many times during these 3 years and during PVP alpha test. EPIC FAIL
2. What is any, i repeat any profession good for now? The old professions were made useless with Mod 6, now LS is dead and who will have the money to make or personalize a jewel?
3. Since SH prices aren't adjusted to zero AD income now, where shall we get those hundreds of millions? Does Cryptic believe, that after losing our TRUST- repeatedly now- a sane person will spend thousands of dollars into SH? What will we do? No old dungeons to play, no professions, just 3 PVP modes full of exploiters and now soon with bots, zero ELO, zero matchmaking.
Devs should have addressed these 3 year old bugs, not make this HAMSTER patch. Hey suddenly they got time and man power, how interesting.
5. How shall a new or fairly new player advance now? Does Cryptic believe, that anybody will pay now thosusands of dollars after this game is nearly empty. Most people have eyes and use them, they can't be fooled so easily now. Even the most naive player will see guilds go down the drain, SH getting empty, guildies leave, etc.
5 Last but not least, what shall we do with all the alts? I clearly remember the Mods here on Forum advertising their huge leadership army! Most of us didn't have that many, i personally have only 10 toons and most of them aren't lvl 20, cause i started LS very late and i played each class until Mod 6.
What shall we do now in a lackluster game like this now? Chat all day? Hell since Mod 6 many of us are more in chat and at guildie rescue, than playing our toons.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Lets face it all the BiS characters are those with leadership army, not countless hours of play nor real money.
Only leadership armies.
You can easily get 200k+ AD/day with only 20+ toons and there are a lot of players with many more. You can do the math. There are no real money that can buy this amount of AD every single day.
It's total unfair for a player who really likes one or two classes and enjoys playing them for countless hours not to be able to come at least close to those with leadership armies. (i dont even mention casual players for the last 2 mods, they are doomed).
So out of the sudden the player who plays all day cannot go to end game dungeons due to IL and the one that never plays but has a leadership army can go everywhere and kicks the one who plays.
I understand sometimes the need to play different classes to know the class mechanics but this leads to at most 10 toons.
And im sure no one enjoys playing all classes. After all this is DnD. We all have a favorite class. But i'm sure that's not the intention of creating all those toons.
Of course as many others already stated this change must be followed by a lot more changes.
1. lower the costs of gmops and coals
2. if not total cancellation of last module at least no sinks of surplus and ADs (but there are many more reasons why srongholds is the worst to day module)
3. Increase of RPs, ADs, drops in dungeons, skirmishes at least to some of them
p.s. I have also 7 toons, 1 main and only 1 more that i enjoy playing (lvl 56 at the moment). Some created for the sigils others for testing the gameplay, only 1 lvl 70, 2 with leadership 20 and I don't mind at all stripping the ADs from leadership.
this is going to make a hell of a lot of ppl quit, who will want to sell somethign they payed 8 mill a d for to somone for 200k ad because the rate of ad gain has changed? no one will, you dotn have to feed your family in VR u can sit on it and be part of those that came before, those that come after just wont be able to take part unless they spend $6000us to buy zen to buy ad with, and NW realy isnt that good to expect a new player to fork out that kind of money to be on a par with someone that is already BIS. hopefully you dont bring out any content in near future that forces people into gear comparisons with others or your not going to attract many new people, your definately going to lose a number over this.
im one of the few people that didnt have a leadership army because im frankly not that organised. and i can tell u with a 2k+ character of 6 difernt classes about the most i can make in a full day of intese play in a very active 140+ acount member guild is about 100k with dailys ect (they forgot to mention the domination battlemasters dailys in ther ebreakdown of old and new) you get 1/2 -1/3 of the ad u did for pvp now (dom battle masters meant to have 2 quests but after the first time u did it since like mod 6 it hasnt shown up 1 of the 2)
but bravo on making sure no one ever challenges the riches of those who are already rich apart from botting out 1 billion r5s or forking out $1000s i doubt the wealth balance or peoples respective place in economy will be able to change much from here on in
them keeping the price of refinement low is realy a minor inconvenience and for ppl like me actualy wont change what we spend on game positivly because we dont have the money to pay what cryptic wants to charge to upgrade a item ($20us per 150k rp)
when just a main hand takes like 4 million RP in total to level it (380$us) and a weapon enchant costs a lot more then that cause it also takes 14 coal wards which are $10 each and 20+ marks of potency ectra. but at prices cryptic would like to sell stuff at your looking at well over $4000US(6500-7000au) to become BIS for most classes
i have spend a few $1000us on the cryptic franchise over the years from city of heroes to champions to startrek to neverwinter but not all on one char and probably not 4 grand total which is what is now expected to have even one complete character......
To make a long story short I like the foundry, but it's not worth the time investment. According to this they either aren't changing the daily quest for foundry AD or are doing away with it completely. Such a course of action will drive people even further away from the foundry, so please add it to the list of things you can do twice for AD.
- They're not going to remove any AD from real botting or bug using or exploiting, which means, while some players will still have millions upon millions at their disposal, other players will be left with "playing" with scraps, or to start forking over a ton of money into a game riddled with bugs and issues.
- Botters are going to love this change, they get access to an easy and bot friendly way to generate more AD all day long. And nothing is done against AD sellers or buyers.
- The AD prices for items probably stay the same, and even those get adjusted in a few weeks or months, guess who will be profiting the most from that...
- Leadership tasks are more or less pointless from now on, even if you can run some highlevel tasks for some RP, i doubt that it will be worth a damn. They might as well fill the former AD "slots" in Leadership with Companion Experience Treatise.
And i really doubt, that a lot of normal players will just take this hit, continue to play and wait for some adjustments in a few weeks or months.
sadly pretty close to the truth though.
who in there right mind has the time to log 50 chars into 2 skirms 2 pvps 2 dungeons a day, lot of ppl will be using some kind of macros for it.
particualy the botters with the new path they will be taking for ad gain :P
and if your going to be stuck on a team with 4 bots' moeswell have a bot playing your char also
As of now, I don't have a single toon with BiS. Not one. Most of mine have bits and pieces from Sharandar/Dread Ring and only one has both complete sets. I have a SINGLE set of R10s (and a couple of R9s) that I SHARE between alts. I have to. The power creep is ridiculous and it's the only way for them to survive.
We call this "whining." What's "total(ly) unfair" is the fact that all of *MY* work "for countless hours" over the span of almost 3 years is nerfed, due to a bunch of nOOb crybabies that want to HAMSTER and moan about what they didn't get and what they don't have. I spent REAL money to buy keys, trade Zen for AD to purchase Men-at-Arms and Adventurers to build my "leadership army." Once again, this has nothing to do, with bots and the only people that are really crying foul are the "have nots", who more than likely haven't put a dime in the game. This is absolutely absurd. I have a TR with an iLevel of 3k and I can't even complete end-game dungeons. Blaming "leadership armies" who can "go anywhere" and "kick(s) the one who plays" is ridiculous. If you're getting kicked in a dungeon, it falls to two spectrums: You either need to learn to play or the Party Leader of your Dungeon Run is a Griefer.
Try again, Skippy. Uh, I've been playing PnP D&D for over 30 years and I can tell you that "And im sure no one enjoys playing all classes" is utterly wrong. I've played EVERY class in both 1st and 2nd Edition D&D and I played *EVERY* class when I worked at BioWare, during Neverwinter Nights. Stop making assumptions for other people. It makes you look foolish. That's great. That's YOUR decision. You don't speak for the rest of us, however. I'm glad that you have "1 main and only 1 more that i (you) enjoy playing." That means you were never here during the zenith of Neverwinter. You didn't know what it was like to have a friend's list FULL of online, active players in your guild that were asking you to jump on your CW, 'cos Jose needed help to get his Timeless helm from Spellplague. (This is something I actually went through, myself. I was *SO* grateful to my guildies for helping me get that last piece I needed for my complete set and it took us over 2 hours to do. This was back when R7s were like gold plated latinum.)
Since you're so quick to make assumptions about the rest of us and our "leadership armies", Mega, I'll do the same for you:
You haven't spent a dime on the game. You're a F2P leecher, but since you haven't invested in the game, you can't catch up to the power creep and now you're pissed off, 'cos it's "not fair." You can't afford to buy heroes or adventurers or men-at-arms, 'cos you don't want to put down 10$ on a game you enjoy. So, rather than INVEST in the game, you cry like a baby about "what you didn't get", "whose at fault", "what is fair."
You're a finger pointer. But remember, every time you point fingers, you have three fingers pointing back at yourself.
Food for thought.
Here's the *REAL* problem:
There's TWO types of "leadership armies" and there's TWO types of "botters." Both, however, fall under the same premise.
You either have a "leadership army" or "bot" to make money.
or
You have a "leadership army" or "bot" to upgrade your alts to make them playable.
It's really that simple. The problem is, in order to combat the gold sellers (and that's who we're really after), you have to think outside the box. I have an idea on that. I'm just waiting to pitch it to Andy. The problem is, people aren't going to like it at first, but it will get you your leadership armies back and AD from leadership jobs. The thing is, it will wholly kill the gold sellers or at least kill their incentive to use NWO as a money maker. I hate to say it, but it's a gold mine for cash, due to how it's designed.
To take an analogy from Greek mythology, Cryptic is Heracles and the Gold Sellers are the Hydra. Cryptic has been attempting to cut the head off the Hydra, only to have 2 more grow back in it's place, every time they do. They're continually swinging the Transcendent Nerf Bat of AO, not realizing that once they have cut the head, they need to BURN the stump.
Like I've been saying, this is management, not the developers. It's a money issue.
I am a returning player and I hope I can see more people actually play the game content rather than farming AD offline on gateway!
hope i see more people queuing for Skirmishes, Dungeons or Domination PvP!!!
For example:
In order to use this new method to max out the daily 24k RAD character cap, it would require you to spend:
- approximately 4.5 hours doing dungeons ((45min x 2 = 1.5hrs for 6,000 AD) + (45min x 4 = 3hrs for 1,200 AD)).
- appoximately 4 hours doing skirmishes ((20min x 2 = 40min for 3,000 AD) + (20min x 10 = 2hrs 20min for 5,800 AD))
- appoximately 1.5hrs doing PVP ((15min x 2 = 30min for 4,000 AD) + (15min x 4 = 1hr for 800 AD))
- Salvaging 5,800 AD worth of items obtained from dungeons and skirmishes.
So, based upon this, you are required to spend, on average 10 hours per day, per character, actually grinding content, to generate 24k RAD per day.This does not take into account queue times, which may increase time spent per day by approximately 1 hour.
This then means that each player will need to spend 11 hours each day to grind 24k RAD.
Now, in my opinion, this isn't a reasonable or logical request of players. However, this isn't even the full extent of the serious issues such a change will have on players.
For example, let's assume that a player has two characters for their account. Let's also assume that these changes to AD generation will significantly reduce the ZAX to 350 AD per Zen (not likely, i know, but let's work in the world of it somehow being possible). If, a player wished to purchase a full year of VIP subscription using AD and the ZAX (at 350/zen), doing so would mean that player would need to generate 3,535,000 AD per year to afford that subscription. This means that if the player was able to spend 22+hours each day to enable their two characters to generate sufficient AD, it would take 74 days, or two and a half months.
Based upon this, a player who (somehow) managed to play for 22 hours per day so their character would be able to generate 24k RAD per day, would then have the facility to purchase a one year VIP subscription and still have 14 million AD left over.
Awesome isn't it? No. Not really. When you now consider that it costs, at current prices, 500,000 AD to purchase sufficient Greater Marks of Potency to upgrade artifacts to Legendary and 4 Million AD for refining items, it means a player might have the possibility to upgrade 2 artifacts to Legendary each year and leave approximately 5 Million AD left over for purchasing additional dungeons keys, refining artifact equipment, purchasing and upgrading companions, purchasing and upgrading enchantments etc.
So, when it's clearly obvious that, for any new player, it will take them 22hrs per day for over two years to be less than half as geared as a large proportion of current players, how does the development team responsible for this game seriously expect and encourage new players to bother playing?
When you also factor in that in PVP new players will be likely facing constant death and defeat versus geared players, will they continue to bother playing during the match of simply go AFK at the campfire?
If we now look at considering AD generation from a realistic perspective where a player might be able to spend a maximum of 6 hours per day, the player may be able to generate 30k RAD per day with two characters. Unfortunately, this means that the player will take 118 days to gain sufficient AD to purchase a VIP subscription and leave approximately 7.5 Million AD afterwards for general expenditure.
However, if a player has 2.5hrs to play, they will be able to generate 15k AD RAD per day. This means it will take that player 236 days to purchase a VIP subscription and leaves them with just under 2 Million AD for the entire year.
So, what this means is that unless you're capable and prepared to spend 22hrs per day, or a reasonably similar amount of time, it is extraordinarily unlikely that you will EVER be in a position where you are able to compete on a reasonable footing with a large proportion of the long-term and established player base.
Now, none of this takes into account that even those long-term and established players will be gradually affected by these changes to the point where they will be eventually reduced to a similar state as other players, and this will depend entirely upon the capacity of those players to utilise existing banked AD to 'weather' the changes. Unfortunately, these changes are extremely unlikely to have the slightest affect on those players that have previously exploited their way to capping their AD on their accounts, as their capacity to 'weather' these changes makes them essentially immune.
So, what this means is that new players will have little to no opportunity to compete on a reasonable level with a large number of players and no one will be able to compete against those that have exploited.
These changes simply serve the purpose of facilitating a greater divide between those players that are AD 'rich' and the rest of the player base, in a manner which essentially penalises new players and those that don't exploit, while effectively protecting those that have exploited.
I really fail to understand how anyone could not be sufficiently intelligent enough to understand and be aware of this before even considering implementing such an idea.
Beyond any doubt, this is a clear and obvious attempt by the designers to 'encourage' players to spend real money in order to play the game in a reasonably competitive fashion.
So, given all of this, is this game really still free-to-play in actuallity or just in name only?
I think you can all guess what my response to this last question is...
You pointed out that you are rewarding TIME - ultimately that is everyone's basic currency. No matter what country you are from or what walk-of-life, every one of us has just so many minutes in our life, and we spend those minutes on working, sleeping, parenting, eating, health and hobbies.
Let's say I have 60-90 minutes of my life each day that I'm willing to spend on time in your game. Before the change, that time would include 15-20 minutes of invoking and crafting tasks that would make my characters roughly 16-18k AD per day, each. Mind you, I have PLAYED all seven of my characters to level 70, and I PAID for those extra character slots. That means I could generate... let's call it 130k AD per day, collectively.
Fact: In order to advance in your game, a player needs AD. In fact, they need LOTS of AD. Upgrading companions, mounts, gear - they all take a LOT of AD. But your change reduces the amount of AD that I could make from about 130k AD per day to, probably 24k AD. Then you say that this will increase the amount of AD that most players make. Um, I think not.
Under your new system, I NEED to play skirmish a couple times, I NEED to play a dungeon or two, and I NEED to start playing pvp (of which I am not a fan) in order to make my max allowance of X rough AD per day on ONE character. Well, those events would take more than my allotted 60-90 minutes per day, I'm pretty sure.
Scott, you're being disingenuous. You are either being intentionally dishonest, or you honestly don't know how people are playing your game. How many hours have you and your devs logged in the game of late? Have you seen all the niggling little issues you've created? Have you Invoked lately? The first time, you have to try a couple times to get it to work. Have you played in DR or Shar? People are constantly complaining about the lag!
But instead of fixing problems, you have focused on the botters. Instead of making your game more fun, more playable, more enjoyable, you have attacked the botters. Nobody but the botters care about the welfare of the botters, but in focusing your WMD attention on them, all your regular players have become collateral damage.
I'm in a great guild. A strong guild that has been maxed out for a while. Yesterday, our Guildmaster left the game. He's played since Beta, and created one of the best guilds in your game. Why did he leave? Because Cryptic and NWO no longer provide a fun, reliable play experience.
Based on the knee-jerk changes Cryptic is making, the poor implementation (every time you fix something lately, you break a couple other things), and the absolute disregard you have for your player base, one might think you are trying to destroy your game.
So today you implement your 'bad botters' patch, and then tomorrow you'll have to fix for all the issues the patch created. And there will be some embarrassing glitches that linger for months or years because they aren't big enough to go back and fix, and those embarrassing glitches will continue to add up until the game is unplayable. Too bad, I was a big fan, once.
I think the main problem they need to fix is that now we require huge amounts of RP and refining to get even close to BiS. even if we calculate it in real money or time both options give ridiculous results. It takes either way too long or it's way too expensive.
The main point is that each and ever character should be able to reach BiS by its own within a reasonable price/time. So they either need to lower the RP/GMoPs and any requirements needed to progress, or they need to significatively raise the rewards we get by playing the game.
If they want to lower the requirements they could delete de double item needed for renining at higher levels, delete any marks needed to upgrade items at lower-mid levels, lower general RP necessary to upgrade all artifacts and artifact equipment, and lower requirements for SH progress.
If, on the other side, they decide to raise the rewards so we can meet the actual requirements to progress without lowering them we would need other changes, like make ALL artifacts and artifact equipment get RP just by playing while using them (like getting a part of your exp as RP) making higher levels refine stones in quests and dungeons, getting GMoPs and any other needed items for progression with a decent droprate in high level quests and dungeons, etc...
Unless any of those two things happen, the player's experience with the game will hardly get better and the goals they want to meet will be impossible, leading to frustration and leaving for greener, kinder MMOs
when will cryptic take action agains the CHAT bots....
A vast task in front of you, to better yourself, the hills you must climb and the battles you must fight.
You are given a tool, those leadership serfs to help better yourself and your virtual fiefdom.
You expand - better serfs and your own armor to help in your battles. Those around you benefit as well, you buy their wares and help them as they help you in battle. You aid the stronghold.
Then after a VERY long period and a heavy investment of currency - your serfs are destroyed in an earthquake and cannot be replaced.
You can no longer better yourself or better those around you.
You feel sick inside for what was lost and what lies ahead in the new wasteland.
Your tool is gone. No recourse. Other tools exist, but the investment and competition are overwhelming.
Some might just fall on their own swords.
Good-bye cruel world.
What you'll likely see is far less real players in the game at all, and far more bots in dungeons and skirmishes to farm AD.
1) fixed AD costs reduced by 90% (boons, companion/mount upgrade, transmutes, Bazaar, dungeon keys)
2) AD dropping from monster kills like black ice does in Kessel
3) AD and random refining rewards drop in all chests and for all quests in game
4) Fix Foundry and provide real support and real rewards. This area is key to creativity in user base and variety for player sick of fixed content
5) Bring back all dungeons and all skirmishes to play at lvl 70
6) Add huge XP rewards to Leadership so I can at least keep using it for Power Points
7) Give me a week long Leadership task for GMOP. Or better yet, remove GMOP altogether
8) More resonance stone tasks in Leadership