theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
edited September 2015
Average RAD acquisition rate should be between 4 and 6 thousand per hour, I would say, if we assume that 24k is "the most anyone should reasonably earn in a given day to avoid socktubing."
And, of course, if you want to make rewards frontloaded, then that rate increases for the first hour was decreasing for subsequent hours.
Put AD as rewards for doing Campaign lairs. They should easily be worth 1-2k. Well of Dragons and IWD lairs could be 2-2.5k. We need to generate income, and the current system is insufficient for their current pricing structure. Queues are taking far too long, and when they do fill, its more than likely an unbalanced group. A lot of people's guilds are being vacated. We couldn't even get a full instance of Tiamat (there's another 1-2k possibility), at a peak North America time.
"I don't know, I'm making it up as I go..." Featured Foundry Quest:Whispers of an Ancient Evil [v3] - NW-DQ4WKW6ZG Foundry Quest: Harper Chronicles: Blacklake - NW-DCPA4W2Q5
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
edited September 2015
one other (slightly crazy, but possibly "crazy enough to work") idea was of making the AH gold based instead of AD based.
Then you'd just make all AD purchase items bind on pickup, so that goldspammers (and everyone else) can't use them as part of transactions.
At that point, the "AD is time, zen is money" tradeoff starts to make sense. Obviously, there's a lot of other adjustments that would need to go into that sort of thing-namely, GMOPs would likely need to be reconsidered, because otherwise bots could just use their AD to refine items, then sell the refined items on the AH for gold.
The problem is, then you open yourself up to TRADITIONAL grotesque inflation issues that MMOs tend to experience.
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
one other (slightly crazy, but possibly "crazy enough to work") idea was of making the AH gold based instead of AD based.
Then you'd just make all AD purchase items bind on pickup, so that goldspammers (and everyone else) can't use them as part of transactions.
At that point, the "AD is time, zen is money" tradeoff starts to make sense. Obviously, there's a lot of other adjustments that would need to go into that sort of thing-namely, GMOPs would likely need to be reconsidered, because otherwise bots could just use their AD to refine items, then sell the refined items on the AH for gold.
The problem is, then you open yourself up to TRADITIONAL grotesque inflation issues that MMOs tend to experience.
Solves nothing. Still have to grind long and hard for gold.
It is very hard to post responses when it is very clear the only response many of you want to see is that the leadership changes will be reversed.
Many of you see AD as a fixed value so you see less AD generation as less value gained when in truth you could be gaining less AD at more value than before. Supply and demand is an economic law even when applied to currency and the rate of AD generation just could not be counterbalanced between all of the leadership farming by bots and players alike. If the economy was healthy then we wouldn't have been sitting at 500:1 AD:Zen for nearly two years.
It reached a point where creating AD sinks to counteract the leadership farming would be exactly what many of you are calling this: detrimental to casual and new players. The economy was being completely offset by those with large farms and especially by the bots who sat and did nothing but farm leadership all day every day. You can't balance the economy with sinks to combat that AD revenue without making it unbearably hard on players who are new or do not want to manage leadership farms like a second job.
The old system was broken and it couldn't be fixed. My only complaint when I heard about this change was that it should have been done a long time ago.
People will have more AD than others due to the old system but that will balance out in time and is absolutely not a reason to cite the old broken as hell system to remain.
Bots will still exist but it will be far harder for them to create bots to grind game content than it will be for them to create account hopping leadership farms.
That doesn't mean it is perfect. The Community Team is not happy with the new Leadership Rewards to start and we definitely want AD to be generated more commonly for more in game activities. The best bit of feedback I collected from this thread was a player saying that he was forced to choose between running dungeons/skirmishes/pvp for AD or doing campaign missions for the one to two hours he had to play and I agree it that is a huge problem.
We are silent because many of you make it clear there is no common ground communication. It's hard to communicate and work together with people who make it clear the only thing they want to hear is 'the broken system is coming back.' The old system was broken and for most of the reasons advocates for it cite as the problem with the direction of the current changes.
The new system is not perfect. It needs tweaking and a lot of it and we are looking through threads such as this one to collect feedback for improvements like the example I provided earlier. If you want more two way communication you are going to have to step beyond the knee jerking 'we want the old system' and look towards what is truly wrong with this system.
The only reason that I, and believe many others, are against the LS change is that it was not well thought out, and planned for, before being implemented. There is no reasonable way to earn the AD needed to continue progressing our 'toons without the AD sinks being removed and new sources of AD revenue being put in place. If they want players to invest their "play" time in to earning AD, then why didn't they add AD as one of the rewards for completing quests(just one of many examples posted throughout this thread). We should not(and believe most will not) have to wait months for "tweaks" that should have been part of the complete package before such a drastic change was made. That is the main source of outrage that I am seeing in the multiple threads.
The myth about all of the Leadership changes made recently pertaining to removing bots runs a pretty close second. Should have just told the truth that efforts were being made to fix the borked economy and you would have have had much more support from the get go as well.
There are other sources of outrage that include those that did invest RL cash into purchasing their Leadership assets, extra character slots, and/or VIP "memberships" with the belief it was going to be the main source of income so they could progress through the game. This really does seem like a bait and switch tactic to make easy money through ZEN sales when this occurs within a couple of weeks of VIP going live. Personally believe the decision to make this change was made after weaker than expected VIP sales and the failure of Strongholds to suck as much AD out the economy as was anticipated...and was not an intentional bait and switch play for money. The poorly thought out and slapdash changes to the LS rewards are at least circumstantial proof to show that it was a hasty decision to implement this change imho.
As for new players expecting to catch up with people who have been playing a game over 2 years, they better expect to grind for 30+ hrs/week, for at least 6-12 months to come even close. It is unreasonable to not expect anything otherwise and would be unfair to those who have sustained a game prior to the late comer joining the party if that was not the case. The reality is that those who start with the launch of any MMO will have an advantage over those that join at later dates. The longer time between initial character creation dates, the harder that gap becomes to overcome.
People are posting because they care about the game and want it to succeed. If we did not care, we would have left without saying anything at all.
Day 2 after changes. Spend the last 4 hours and 30 minutes farming AD. Spent 4 dungeon runs on TOS to get a total of 7.128k AD. 4 at Kessels, only got 4.7k, in all 4 runs someone get's disconnected, I don't know why this is the case but people are getting disconnected today. Did 2 pvp, so got 4k from that. Salvaged all drops i got fro kessels, and did a couple of epics and got 12k total from drops. I forgot that i'm VIP so i get 3 free epic keys, which is the only thing that allowed me to reach the 24k cap.
To cap my 24k AD took 4 hours and 30 minutes. I'm sorry but this is not acceptable. Unless your objective was to make free players peasants to cater to the zen buyers, then you've done goofed!
And regarding prices, how far down do you guys think prices will go? There's no way anyone will sell their GMOP's lower than 75k+10%. And people will always factor the value of GMOP's they used when selling. Never forget that GMOP's are the most important price driver in the game, and their prices will remain fixed.
"As the good archmage often admonishes me, I ought not to let my mind wander, as it's too small to go off by itself." -Danilo Thann[/quote]
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
So, each GMOP takes 25 days of 4 hours playtime each.
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feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
Supply side economics never worked in the real world when it tried to increase the supply of money to the rich, why should it work when it tries to decrease the supply of money? Cryptic/PWE could at least have spoken to someone with the least understanding of economics (instead of letting a decision be probably made by someone with a business degree, which is basically remedial high school disguised as specialized higher education.
I understand their main intention with the changes, but they need to either lower the costs for character progression, or raise the rewards for playing the game.
So, each GMOP takes 25 days of 4 hours playtime each.
If you're not VIP then you probably will only get about 15k a day with 4 hours of play. Considering that there are AD sinks in the game you probably will save about 10k a day. So 1 GMOP will take 8-9 days where you farm(not play, but farm) 4 hours a day.
"As the good archmage often admonishes me, I ought not to let my mind wander, as it's too small to go off by itself." -Danilo Thann[/quote]
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
I understand their main intention with the changes, but they need to either lower the costs for character progression, or raise the rewards for playing the game.
I understand their main intention with the changes, but they need to either lower the costs for character progression, or raise the rewards for playing the game.
If they want, they can just fix leadership chest do drop better loot, and just bring back rhix. Bringing back rhix + current reward system might just be the right fix for the situation.
"As the good archmage often admonishes me, I ought not to let my mind wander, as it's too small to go off by itself." -Danilo Thann[/quote]
So, each GMOP takes 25 days of 4 hours playtime each.
If you're not VIP then you probably will only get about 15k a day with 4 hours of play. Considering that there are AD sinks in the game you probably will save about 10k a day. So 1 GMOP will take 8-9 days where you farm(not play, but farm) 4 hours a day.
I *have* a VIP and it's not giving the reward AD its supposed to.
after 2 days about 4 hours a day I made 164k ad that's not to bad I don't think just takes more work and leaves no time for my campaign stuff but if need to farm diamonds its possible.
I can believe you, but you have to break it down. In theory I see it, in practice its more daunting.
Pretty much what activities did you do, were you pugging? or LFGin or Guilding? Again in ideal conditions, or with select conditions I can see this. But for an avg player its hard to believe, please give more detail and share with playerbase and devs/mods. This isnt to steal your method, but just give everyone an idea on how. (and honestly maybe you dont want to, cause maybe theyll nerf it)
An actual ingame breakdown in practice, with proof even better, is something the devs/mods still havent shown us.
So, each GMOP takes 25 days of 4 hours playtime each.
If you're not VIP then you probably will only get about 15k a day with 4 hours of play. Considering that there are AD sinks in the game you probably will save about 10k a day. So 1 GMOP will take 8-9 days where you farm(not play, but farm) 4 hours a day.
I *have* a VIP and it's not giving the reward AD its supposed to.
do epics and use your keys to open chests to get drops you can salvage for 3-4k AD each. That's the only way being VIP will help.
"As the good archmage often admonishes me, I ought not to let my mind wander, as it's too small to go off by itself." -Danilo Thann[/quote]
The ZAX is on it's way back to 1 ZEN to 500 AD... it may take a few more days, but it's going to happen, until the next 2x RP event is here.
And since AD from Leadership is history, why are there no changes being made to the AD sinks in game at the same time? Where're those changes? What are those changes? When will we see them in game? You were pretty fast with removing AD from LS, can we see the same reaction time for those changes too now?
Another point, there're no real GMs in game, that are actually going after all that AD gained through bugs, exploits or real botting. And that should have been the first step, before removing AD from LS. Any change without a AD clean up is destined to just fail at some point. In fact, this radcial change only made those with tons of bugged/exploited AD even richer over night, by playing with the ZAX...
Then there should have been a presentable strategy ready right from the start, and a lot more then "We're looking into it." as reply to our feedback. Just some, "Hey we're yanking out all the AD for Leadership, but won't do a damn thing to actually keep Leadership a usefull profession. But enjoy our game and keep on paying.", isn't going to cut it anymore. Only dropping this information, and then run and ignore all the feedback in here or in several other threads, was a very bad move. And please don't tell us again, that our feedback is not being ignored. Just go into the Feedback Forum, take a look at the "official" Feedback Thread about Top Issues, it's open for 2 solid months, and practially nothing has been taken from that thread to improve the game. And there're a lot of reasonable suggestions in these forums, a lot more then some "Hello there, we want AD back into our LS, right now!", but to know that, you would have to actually read those threads...
Another fact, leveling Leadership up takes a lot of time, several MONTHS. Now what is it? Do have botters that much time to develop an account this far? Or... Are botters getting banned "every day" and can't risk such investment at all? Let me help you here... It's neither! Botters don't invest that much time into an account. But they can run their bots for months farming profession nodes. So how makes this change any sense at all, it being presented as great action to fight botters?
And now take a wild guess, who is profitting the most from this change? Again, let me help you here... NOT the regular player, BUT the botters are.
And last but not least, you should really be happy with still having some angry "customers" around. You might be able to calm those downs with some reasonable and fast actions, and they might even give the game another chance. But the ones that just leave silently, now of those you should be really afraid of...
I do believe in killing the messenger...
Want to know why?
Because it sends a message!
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drkbodhiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,378Arc User
I made over 60k in 2 days... without really trying...
That being said... I made more before. I do not have a Leadership Army, either.
Atwil "At" - Tiefling TR / Saardush - Black Dragonborn GWF / White - Tiefling OP
Leadership Council of Civil Anarchy
SYNERGY Alliance
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feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
It is very hard to post responses when it is very clear the only response many of you want to see is that the leadership changes will be reversed.
We want it reversed because it was a terrible decision. Terrible is the polite word. Also senseless, irrational, counterproductive, inapposite and unwise.
Many of you see AD as a fixed value so you see less AD generation as less value gained when in truth you could be gaining less AD at more value than before. Supply and demand is an economic law even when applied to currency and the rate of AD generation just could not be counterbalanced between all of the leadership farming by bots and players alike. If the economy was healthy then we wouldn't have been sitting at 500:1 AD:Zen for nearly two years.
The problem you have here is that your approach was the equivalent of lighting a forest fire to get rid of a beehive. Also, supply-side economics DOES NOT WORK. We have 35 years of history to teach us this. Imagine that 90% of the world's economy was agricultural (i.e. farming, get it?). Wiping out the food supply would not enable people to find more productive things to do with their time and stop them generating all that wasteful food. Furthermore, the massive AD sinks through Neverwinter - which are the reason for all the leadership farming, would in this analogy be a tyrant that levies a tax of 95% on all food produced. Now that people can produce no food, the tyrant's army goes unfed. Without analogy, this means players leave because they can't satisfy their in-game needs.
It reached a point where creating AD sinks to counteract the leadership farming would be exactly what many of you are calling this: detrimental to casual and new players. The economy was being completely offset by those with large farms and especially by the bots who sat and did nothing but farm leadership all day every day. You can't balance the economy with sinks to combat that AD revenue without making it unbearably hard on players who are new or do not want to manage leadership farms like a second job.
My leadership army of 12 characters (three of which I used to play regularly before the demands of advancement made it impossible to manage more than one character) took me about 20 minutes a day. It allowed my one character to advance at a very slow but perceptible rate. It brought long-term advancement goals into the realm of possibility. This change takes away that possibility, replacing it with something that is not merely poorly thought through but conspicuously, laughably not thought through at all. Plain and simple.
The old system was broken and it couldn't be fixed. My only complaint when I heard about this change was that it should have been done a long time ago.
Yes, it was broken by massive, ubiquitous AD sinks, the failure to actually target bots when they were easy to find, massive refinement grinds and lack of enjoyable, rewarding content. Leadership farming was the solution, not the problem.
That doesn't mean it is perfect. The Community Team is not happy with the new Leadership Rewards to start and we definitely want AD to be generated more commonly for more in game activities. The best bit of feedback I collected from this thread was a player saying that he was forced to choose between running dungeons/skirmishes/pvp for AD or doing campaign missions for the one to two hours he had to play and I agree it that is a huge problem.
If that's the best bit of feedback then you haven't been looking very hard. I refer you to my lengthier posts of the past week.
We are silent because many of you make it clear there is no common ground communication. It's hard to communicate and work together with people who make it clear the only thing they want to hear is 'the broken system is coming back.' The old system was broken and for most of the reasons advocates for it cite as the problem with the direction of the current changes.
I'll say it again. You broke the system. We fixed it. You took away the fix and left it more broken than before. Now you show no sign of progress toward a real solution and have, above, told us that our completely warranted anger at being treated with conspicuous contempt is the reason you won't fix it right away.
The new system is not perfect. It needs tweaking and a lot of it and we are looking through threads such as this one to collect feedback for improvements like the example I provided earlier. If you want more two way communication you are going to have to step beyond the knee jerking 'we want the old system' and look towards what is truly wrong with this system.
There is no new system. You've taken the gas out of the tank and expect the passengers to be happy with pushing it uphill. As for what is truly wrong with the system? Massive AD sinks. Little or no attention paid to bug fixes and legitimate player grievances. Lack of real reward for playing the content we are now required to grind for AD. Lack of positive, creative solutions from the people whose JOB it is to present them. The continuing lack of varied dungeons. The continued near-unwinnability of ECC without exploits. A long history of broken promises and punishing many legitimate players for the actions of a few botters. A long history of failure to use or acquire sufficient technical expertise to target botters without hurting players. Obvious lack of respect for the player base's intelligence. Mostly, though, massive AD sinks. You broke it. We fixed it. Don't micturate upon our legs and tell us it's raining and then expect us to thank you for it.
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feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
edited September 2015
"Thanks to this radiation, I don't need to brush my hair or my teeth anymore."
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rickcase276Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,404Arc User
edited September 2015
I have made just 48K each of the last two days, from 16 characters. But too, I am a solo only player, and the only AD is from invoking. And the occasional leadership task that has not been changed.
It is very hard to post responses when it is very clear the only response many of you want to see is that the leadership changes will be reversed.
Many of you see AD as a fixed value so you see less AD generation as less value gained when in truth you could be gaining less AD at more value than before. If the economy was healthy then we wouldn't have been sitting at 500:1 AD:Zen for nearly two years.
It reached a point where creating AD sinks to counteract the leadership farming would be exactly what many of you are calling this: detrimental to casual and new players.
The old system was broken and it couldn't be fixed. My only complaint when I heard about this change was that it should have been done a long time ago.
People will have more AD than others due to the old system but that will balance out in time and is absolutely not a reason to cite the old broken as hell system to remain. Bots will still exist but it will be far harder for them to create bots to grind game content than it will be for them to create account hopping leadership farms.
That doesn't mean it is perfect. The Community Team is not happy with the new Leadership Rewards to start and we definitely want AD to be generated more commonly for more in game activities. The best bit of feedback I collected from this thread was a player saying that he was forced to choose between running dungeons/skirmishes/pvp for AD or doing campaign missions for the one to two hours he had to play and I agree it that is a huge problem.
We are silent because many of you make it clear there is no common ground communication.
The new system is not perfect. It needs tweaking and a lot of it and we are looking through threads such as this one to collect feedback for improvements like the example I provided earlier.
Ok. First i would like to note that every time I bring up zen and money and Ad exchange rates SOMEHOW those responses are soon deleted. Since there is NOTHING i can find in the rules against such commentary, I have to wonder why that is so. Just how can we have meaningful COMMUNICATION when discussion on the real importance of the AD change keeps getting deleted?
SO... if you're really interested in communication, PLEASE DO NOT DELETE THIS RESPONSE.
That being said, I'm going to make a couple of points. Last night At around PST midnight Ad to Zen was abou 412 to One. Today at about 1700 hours PST Ad to Zen was 454 to one.
I'll check it in a couple of minutes but the conclusion is obvious. The botters and gold sellers aren't out of business. If this trend continues we will soon be back to 500 Ad to one Zen. So any comment about AD NOT being/having a fixed value is obviously deluded.
And now the game has a crucial difference. Your common player WILL NOT HAVE an in game ability to readily generate AD. So the ONLY people that will have large amounts of AD will be botters and cheaters. And the few poor fools that actually are paying money into this game at this time.
In my earlier posts I have pointed out that leaderhip worked just fine. It was time, task, resource gated. What was NOT being done is NW was FAILING to identify botters and exploiters and FAILING to delete their accounts and block their re-entrance to the game. I again put out my HINT: your cheaters and exploiters are almost assuredly ANYONE who has MORE than 20 toons. More than two toons of each class? Really? Who are these people trying to kid?
And ONCE you have found and identified those accounts, a programming bud of mine assures me it should be a SIMPLE TASK to generate tracking programs to CONFIRM that they are indeed botting. At which point you close their account out, taking note of emails + credit cards (if any) and permanently lock them out of the game. Easy peasy.
What will inevitably happen at this point is that players will leave. Lots of them. If you have to PAY for every little improvement to ONE toon, forget running two or more. Which is what MMO's are all about. Three, four, Ten toons to cover the various classes and races and to have playstyle variability.
The only ones that are having a communication issue are the devs. Not to mention a common sense and logic issue. I should think that 56 pages of outrage should be a clear and unmistakeable message in and of itself. My mistake.
If it's that easy for you to make AD, feel free to buy my Adventurer's Helper Pack from the Auction House... because i really have my problems with running dungeons or skirmishes for hours to get some AD into my pockets again.
It reached a point where creating AD sinks to counteract the leadership farming would be exactly what many of you are calling this: detrimental to casual and new players. The economy was being completely offset by those with large farms and especially by the bots who sat and did nothing but farm leadership all day every day. You can't balance the economy with sinks to combat that AD revenue without making it unbearably hard on players who are new or do not want to manage leadership farms like a second job.
My leadership army of 12 characters (three of which I used to play regularly before the demands of advancement made it impossible to manage more than one character) took me about 20 minutes a day. It allowed my one character to advance at a very slow but perceptible rate. It brought long-term advancement goals into the realm of possibility. This change takes away that possibility, replacing it with something that is not merely poorly thought through but conspicuously, laughably not thought through at all. Plain and simple.
This is exactly what I lost after playing today. I have 1 legendary artifact and 3 epic, that are ready to upgrade to legendary. I have all rank 8 enchantments that I planned to upgrade to rank 9, and my perfect enchantment to pure, then eventually to trans. I had a road map given the slow but steady progression. I would take me 4 months to get to my goals of all legendary, rank 9 and trans enchantment. It would be slow but atleast the end goal is attainable within the year. Now I can only get as far as upgrading one artifact every 40 days. Not only that, but I have to choose between farming or doing dailies to invest in our guild.
"As the good archmage often admonishes me, I ought not to let my mind wander, as it's too small to go off by itself." -Danilo Thann[/quote]
after 2 days about 4 hours a day I made 164k ad that's not to bad I don't think just takes more work and leaves no time for my campaign stuff but if need to farm diamonds its possible.
Please explain how you got it. I have already posted my very detailed 4 hour farming today and only got 24k ad.
"As the good archmage often admonishes me, I ought not to let my mind wander, as it's too small to go off by itself." -Danilo Thann[/quote]
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feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
We are silent because many of you make it clear there is no common ground communication. It's hard to communicate and work together with people who make it clear the only thing they want to hear is 'the broken system is coming back.'
According to the poll I posted, the people with whom you can't find common ground on this issue are 74% of your remaining players (1/4 as many as you had at the beginning of the year). That's your problem.
No, I don't want a broken system coming back. I want a real fix. Most of us would agree. You have not offered us one and have shown no progress toward one. Based on previous promises to look into other terrible decisions (the nerf to DHE's, the months that it took - until mod 7 - to address the blindingly obvious problems with difficult in mod 6) we have neither faith nor reason to believe that any real fix is forthcoming. Please prove us wrong.
Comments
And, of course, if you want to make rewards frontloaded, then that rate increases for the first hour was decreasing for subsequent hours.
Featured Foundry Quest: Whispers of an Ancient Evil [v3] - NW-DQ4WKW6ZG
Foundry Quest: Harper Chronicles: Blacklake - NW-DCPA4W2Q5
Then you'd just make all AD purchase items bind on pickup, so that goldspammers (and everyone else) can't use them as part of transactions.
At that point, the "AD is time, zen is money" tradeoff starts to make sense. Obviously, there's a lot of other adjustments that would need to go into that sort of thing-namely, GMOPs would likely need to be reconsidered, because otherwise bots could just use their AD to refine items, then sell the refined items on the AH for gold.
The problem is, then you open yourself up to TRADITIONAL grotesque inflation issues that MMOs tend to experience.
The myth about all of the Leadership changes made recently pertaining to removing bots runs a pretty close second. Should have just told the truth that efforts were being made to fix the borked economy and you would have have had much more support from the get go as well.
There are other sources of outrage that include those that did invest RL cash into purchasing their Leadership assets, extra character slots, and/or VIP "memberships" with the belief it was going to be the main source of income so they could progress through the game. This really does seem like a bait and switch tactic to make easy money through ZEN sales when this occurs within a couple of weeks of VIP going live. Personally believe the decision to make this change was made after weaker than expected VIP sales and the failure of Strongholds to suck as much AD out the economy as was anticipated...and was not an intentional bait and switch play for money. The poorly thought out and slapdash changes to the LS rewards are at least circumstantial proof to show that it was a hasty decision to implement this change imho.
As for new players expecting to catch up with people who have been playing a game over 2 years, they better expect to grind for 30+ hrs/week, for at least 6-12 months to come even close. It is unreasonable to not expect anything otherwise and would be unfair to those who have sustained a game prior to the late comer joining the party if that was not the case. The reality is that those who start with the launch of any MMO will have an advantage over those that join at later dates. The longer time between initial character creation dates, the harder that gap becomes to overcome.
People are posting because they care about the game and want it to succeed. If we did not care, we would have left without saying anything at all.
To cap my 24k AD took 4 hours and 30 minutes. I'm sorry but this is not acceptable. Unless your objective was to make free players peasants to cater to the zen buyers, then you've done goofed!
And regarding prices, how far down do you guys think prices will go? There's no way anyone will sell their GMOP's lower than 75k+10%. And people will always factor the value of GMOP's they used when selling. Never forget that GMOP's are the most important price driver in the game, and their prices will remain fixed.
NW-DHNVMMGVJ Dragons horde part one.
http://youtu.be/0KbqTWeJqxc
Pretty much what activities did you do, were you pugging? or LFGin or Guilding? Again in ideal conditions, or with select conditions I can see this. But for an avg player its hard to believe, please give more detail and share with playerbase and devs/mods. This isnt to steal your method, but just give everyone an idea on how. (and honestly maybe you dont want to, cause maybe theyll nerf it)
An actual ingame breakdown in practice, with proof even better, is something the devs/mods still havent shown us.
Fox Stevenson - Sandblast
Oh Wonder - Without You
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas
And since AD from Leadership is history, why are there no changes being made to the AD sinks in game at the same time?
Where're those changes?
What are those changes?
When will we see them in game?
You were pretty fast with removing AD from LS, can we see the same reaction time for those changes too now?
Another point, there're no real GMs in game, that are actually going after all that AD gained through bugs, exploits or real botting.
And that should have been the first step, before removing AD from LS.
Any change without a AD clean up is destined to just fail at some point.
In fact, this radcial change only made those with tons of bugged/exploited AD even richer over night, by playing with the ZAX...
Then there should have been a presentable strategy ready right from the start, and a lot more then "We're looking into it." as reply to our feedback.
Just some, "Hey we're yanking out all the AD for Leadership, but won't do a damn thing to actually keep Leadership a usefull profession. But enjoy our game and keep on paying.", isn't going to cut it anymore.
Only dropping this information, and then run and ignore all the feedback in here or in several other threads, was a very bad move.
And please don't tell us again, that our feedback is not being ignored.
Just go into the Feedback Forum, take a look at the "official" Feedback Thread about Top Issues, it's open for 2 solid months, and practially nothing has been taken from that thread to improve the game.
And there're a lot of reasonable suggestions in these forums, a lot more then some "Hello there, we want AD back into our LS, right now!", but to know that, you would have to actually read those threads...
Another fact, leveling Leadership up takes a lot of time, several MONTHS.
Now what is it?
Do have botters that much time to develop an account this far?
Or...
Are botters getting banned "every day" and can't risk such investment at all?
Let me help you here... It's neither!
Botters don't invest that much time into an account.
But they can run their bots for months farming profession nodes.
So how makes this change any sense at all, it being presented as great action to fight botters?
And now take a wild guess, who is profitting the most from this change?
Again, let me help you here... NOT the regular player, BUT the botters are.
And last but not least, you should really be happy with still having some angry "customers" around.
You might be able to calm those downs with some reasonable and fast actions, and they might even give the game another chance.
But the ones that just leave silently, now of those you should be really afraid of...
That being said... I made more before. I do not have a Leadership Army, either.
The problem you have here is that your approach was the equivalent of lighting a forest fire to get rid of a beehive. Also, supply-side economics DOES NOT WORK. We have 35 years of history to teach us this. Imagine that 90% of the world's economy was agricultural (i.e. farming, get it?). Wiping out the food supply would not enable people to find more productive things to do with their time and stop them generating all that wasteful food. Furthermore, the massive AD sinks through Neverwinter - which are the reason for all the leadership farming, would in this analogy be a tyrant that levies a tax of 95% on all food produced. Now that people can produce no food, the tyrant's army goes unfed. Without analogy, this means players leave because they can't satisfy their in-game needs.
My leadership army of 12 characters (three of which I used to play regularly before the demands of advancement made it impossible to manage more than one character) took me about 20 minutes a day. It allowed my one character to advance at a very slow but perceptible rate. It brought long-term advancement goals into the realm of possibility. This change takes away that possibility, replacing it with something that is not merely poorly thought through but conspicuously, laughably not thought through at all. Plain and simple. Yes, it was broken by massive, ubiquitous AD sinks, the failure to actually target bots when they were easy to find, massive refinement grinds and lack of enjoyable, rewarding content. Leadership farming was the solution, not the problem.
If that's the best bit of feedback then you haven't been looking very hard. I refer you to my lengthier posts of the past week.
I'll say it again. You broke the system. We fixed it. You took away the fix and left it more broken than before. Now you show no sign of progress toward a real solution and have, above, told us that our completely warranted anger at being treated with conspicuous contempt is the reason you won't fix it right away. There is no new system. You've taken the gas out of the tank and expect the passengers to be happy with pushing it uphill. As for what is truly wrong with the system? Massive AD sinks. Little or no attention paid to bug fixes and legitimate player grievances. Lack of real reward for playing the content we are now required to grind for AD. Lack of positive, creative solutions from the people whose JOB it is to present them. The continuing lack of varied dungeons. The continued near-unwinnability of ECC without exploits. A long history of broken promises and punishing many legitimate players for the actions of a few botters. A long history of failure to use or acquire sufficient technical expertise to target botters without hurting players. Obvious lack of respect for the player base's intelligence. Mostly, though, massive AD sinks. You broke it. We fixed it. Don't micturate upon our legs and tell us it's raining and then expect us to thank you for it.
SO... if you're really interested in communication, PLEASE DO NOT DELETE THIS RESPONSE.
That being said, I'm going to make a couple of points. Last night At around PST midnight Ad to Zen was abou 412 to One. Today at about 1700 hours PST Ad to Zen was 454 to one.
I'll check it in a couple of minutes but the conclusion is obvious. The botters and gold sellers aren't out of business. If this trend continues we will soon be back to 500 Ad to one Zen. So any comment about AD NOT being/having a fixed value is obviously deluded.
And now the game has a crucial difference. Your common player WILL NOT HAVE an in game ability to readily generate AD. So the ONLY people that will have large amounts of AD will be botters and cheaters. And the few poor fools that actually are paying money into this game at this time.
In my earlier posts I have pointed out that leaderhip worked just fine. It was time, task, resource gated. What was NOT being done is NW was FAILING to identify botters and exploiters and FAILING to delete their accounts and block their re-entrance to the game. I again put out my HINT: your cheaters and exploiters are almost assuredly ANYONE who has MORE than 20 toons. More than two toons of each class? Really? Who are these people trying to kid?
And ONCE you have found and identified those accounts, a programming bud of mine assures me it should be a SIMPLE TASK to generate tracking programs to CONFIRM that they are indeed botting. At which point you close their account out, taking note of emails + credit cards (if any) and permanently lock them out of the game. Easy peasy.
What will inevitably happen at this point is that players will leave. Lots of them. If you have to PAY for every little improvement to ONE toon, forget running two or more. Which is what MMO's are all about. Three, four, Ten toons to cover the various classes and races and to have playstyle variability.
The only ones that are having a communication issue are the devs. Not to mention a common sense and logic issue. I should think that 56 pages of outrage should be a clear and unmistakeable message in and of itself. My mistake.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
No, I don't want a broken system coming back. I want a real fix. Most of us would agree. You have not offered us one and have shown no progress toward one. Based on previous promises to look into other terrible decisions (the nerf to DHE's, the months that it took - until mod 7 - to address the blindingly obvious problems with difficult in mod 6) we have neither faith nor reason to believe that any real fix is forthcoming. Please prove us wrong.