AD: A Fair, Easy to Implement Solution

tripsofthrymr · September 2015

Here is a fair solution that addresses the concerns Cryptic has voiced (bots generating huge amounts of AD), legitimate players with large investments in Leadership have voiced (unfair destruction of the value of that significant investment of time and money), and players that have not invested in Leadership have voiced (people with Leadership armies can far outspend them). The proposal ties the benefit of Leadership to participation in game content.

The solution has the added benefit that it should be fairly straightforward for Cryptic to implement.

Restore AD to Leadership
Add one new required resource to each AD-generating task: The AD Vouchers that currently drop from Strongholds. White, green or blue depending on the task level.

Expand the AD Vouchers to drop from

Any HE, at rates similar to in Strongholds. Require a minimum score to avoid camping bots.
From dungeon chests, 100% chance (white, green, or blue depending on dungeon level).
From PVP for finishing in the top 50%.
From solo missions (white, green, or blue depending on the mission level). Exclude any mission that proves easy to bot.
Featured foundries (featured to avoid exploit foundries).

Bind all voucher drops to character. If a character is going to earn AD from Leadership, that character needs to run content, not a main burning through dungeons on their behalf.

Implement an internal mechanism that allows customer support to suspend AD Voucher drops for any account suspected of botting. This provides a less drastic means to control bad behavior than outright banning.

Benefits

Works for solo as well as guild players.
Easy to implement. Leverages existing game mechanics and existing items.
The more you actually play the content, the more you benefit from Leadership.
Provides a fair solution to customers that are currently extremely discouraged by the outright removal of AD from Leadership.
Addresses the concerns of non-Leadership players that Leadership armies generate far too much income.
Addresses Cryptic's stated concern that bots were exploiting Leadership.

barbaraburns · September 2015

This sounds very fair to me ... will solo players that are NOT in a guild be getting the AD Vouchers too? I think so but want to make sure because everyone is not in a guild and they need and want AD too for gmop's etc.

And the new system is very weird - I did normal Temple of the Spider dungeon and I think I got a little over 2000 AD - I did not write it down - I refined my AD so had zero rough AD afterwards. I did not do a 2nd dungeon.

Then I did 2 Kessels Retreat skirmishes.

I had 8211 AD and 0 rough AD before doing the skirmishes.
... the first Kessel run gave me 2070 rough AD ... I did not refine it.
... the second Kessel run gave me 4140 rough AD ... It did not add to my rough AD - it replaced what was there - I had 4140 instead of 6210 rough AD. I refined the 4140 hoping I would not then lose it if I did anything else.

I created a ticket last nite for AD not working correctly. I wrote the info down for Kessels to have exact amounts.

tripsofthrymr · September 2015

barbaraburns said:
This sounds very fair to me ... will solo players that are NOT in a guild be getting the AD Vouchers too?

Yes. Under my proposal, all HE encounters (like the ones in Icewind Dale and Well of Dragons), as well as most solo missions would drop vouchers.

hustin1 · September 2015

I think the only improvement I could make would be to have something similar drop from Foundries, though it might be difficult to cull the farm Foundry quests. One way would be to only do it to featured Foundry quests (assuming that they ever start featuring them again).

psyb3rtr011 · September 2015

Clarify please. These AD Vouchers, are only for Stronghold? No other purpose?
For instance: GMOP's, the main reason people need AD's is to upgrade Enchantments at 500K Ad each..

If usable for GMOPS and such, making them Bound to Character is a non issue. Buy a GMOP with them, and then transfer it to the Main Character, or use it as currency for something from another player.

In either case, not sure it addresses the issue completely. But I could be wrong.

Elaborate.

tripsofthrymr · September 2015

hustin1 said:
I think the only improvement I could make would be to have something similar drop from Foundries, though it might be difficult to cull the farm Foundry quests. One way would be to only do it to featured Foundry quests (assuming that they ever start featuring them again).

Thank you, I was thinking the same thing but forgot to include it. Updated my post.

tripsofthrymr · September 2015

psyb3rtr011 said:
Clarify please. These AD Vouchers, are only for Stronghold? No other purpose?
For instance: GMOP's, the main reason people need AD's is to upgrade Enchantments at 500K Ad each..

If usable for GMOPS and such, making them Bound to Character is a non issue. Buy a GMOP with them, and then transfer it to the Main Character, or use it as currency for something from another player.

Currently the AD Vouchers are only usable in Strongholds. My idea is to expand their use to re-enable AD from Leadership tasks. The AD from Leadership would be just like any other AD. You could use it to buy GMOPs either from the Wonderous Bazaar, or from the Auction House.

santralafax · September 2015

I keep reading solutions and alternatives, but I dont think the management team is looking for those. Deaf ears. I think this was primarily about forcing players to buy Zen, which can then be converted to AD. This is about starving us for money.

There was no discussion beforehand, it was implemented sloppily, and there was no reason for them to muck around with the dailies. Certainly, the dailies paid better/quicker the way they were. PVP pays half what it used to, as there were already 2 quests. They could have just re-implemented Lord Neverember's dailies if they wanted to give us more options on income.

I'd like to see them take up the OPs idea, but I see slim hope.

psyb3rtr011 · September 2015

Thanks, which means Leadership Armies and Bots (To a lesser extent, as they would have to actually log i and convert to GMOPS) could still abuse the system.

Seems we are in agreement that something needs to be done, and concepts of what could be done.

Hopefully the devs and decision makers, read these and come up with solutions sooner rather than later. I believe this change is bleeding players from the game, faster than a severed carotid artery.

tom40s · September 2015

They should bring back leadership AD a lot of us worked hard to get it up to level 20 and then to level 25 and for the sole purpose of making our characters stronger. Even with the AD from profession it still takes years to get your character to the point that it is even somewhat a threat in pvp. Now with out the extra astral diamonds it is going to be nearly impossible to level you character up to anything decent especially for new players. Just consider the fact to get an artifact from rare to orange you will have to spend 500,000 astral diamonds for refinement. And that is only one artifact at one level, we now have four slots. Then getting any enchantment to level 12 forget it with the new economy unless you have thousands to spend this game is now spiraling to an end. I have spent a few hundred dollars on this game and sto but at least in sto you get 500 zen a month that you can exchange for dillithium. I bought the hero of the north pack and there is no such deal and a lot of people said its not the same model but it really is; there is no difference in the in game economy of Neverwinter compared to Star trek online. My guild? forget it, strongholds is now on hold because Now instead of getting a few astral diamonds from leadership we have none, so the entire guild stopped to farm AD by playing pvp and other content that takes forever just to start. So now no one has time to actually play the game. Cryptic does not think this is going to get old? Build a stronghold or even to level up one character is now near impossible unless you have cash. Cryptic has said nothing and really what do they care? They will just sucker more people into another game with an in game economy that works and then take that away. Well maybe its time to start living my life I have a gym membership that is going to waste. One more thing, I left Star trek online over two years ago because the only way to get dillithium which was the in game economy you had to play content that took a really long time to complete over and over again like Neverwinter is now doing and yes it becomes old very quickly.

mattsacre · September 2015

santralafax said:
I keep reading solutions and alternatives, but I dont think the management team is looking for those. Deaf ears. I think this was primarily about forcing players to buy Zen, which can then be converted to AD. This is about starving us for money.

There was no discussion beforehand, it was implemented sloppily, and there was no reason for them to muck around with the dailies. Certainly, the dailies paid better/quicker the way they were. PVP pays half what it used to, as there were already 2 quests. They could have just re-implemented Lord Neverember's dailies if they wanted to give us more options on income.

I'd like to see them take up the OPs idea, but I see slim hope.

Of course they had discussion, just not HONEST discussion. They spoke in corp-speak. Like ebonics, it's phony-bologna yada yada, that can later be said it was discussed, they did what they did tough nuts.

1.They posted and blamed a mysterious boogieman "bot" for ruining things= remove AD from gateway.
2.Declaimed their was any "in-game" boogieman bot problem= we are looking and monitoring it.
3.When indisputable evidence of in game bot problem was offered by fan base= we are looking into solutions, but bot problems in game are "minor".
4.Post that economy is "negatively impacted" by bot AD farmers=remove AD from leadership.
5.Post that we are "looking into" AD generation in game via PvP, Dungeons, Strongholds stay tuned.
6.When lack of solo content generating AD is pointed out, they post "looking into it."

Every step on the way, there was reasonable suggestions from the player base for a fix, there were OBVIOUS and SIMPLE solutions to mitigate the impact to players that have invested in leadership and other AD generation methods. There are plenty of small measure steps that can be taken to ease into it.

Those, in typical corp. fashion, were tossed out for a "BIG SOLUTION" method that will inevitably create it's own problems. This company has a unfortunate history of the "BIG SOLUTION" solutions, sort of like reinventing the efficient and time tested circular model for the wheel for a "better" square model.

So don't say they didn't "discuss" it beforehand, you just didn't recognize corp-speak as "discussion". Even back-stabbing weasels have a language, it's our fault we don't recognize weasle-speak, it's our fault we "misunderstood" and are to dumb to understand......clearly

regenerde · September 2015

The Devs should instead put Stronghold Vouchers into the former rAD Leadership slots, qualitiy depending on the time it takes to accomplish that task.

They should also add rAD to campaign quests, and top it off with adjusting/removing all the AD sinks in game.

ironzerg79 · September 2015

Bots would just farm the HE's, and then return to botting excessive amounts of AD from Leadership.

Ultimately, AD is NOT coming back to the Leadership profession. Leadership is being looked at to see about adding some more value back to the tasks, but the ability to generate AD was removed because it can be exploited, and if there's any way a player can do it, bots will do in en mass.

regenerde · September 2015

Botters, at least the professional ones, are not wasting time with building up leadership alt. characters, they let thousands of bots run Ghost Stories in Neverdeath Graveyard 24/7.

And it looks like that is not even a big risc for them, they advertise their webpages right there into zone chat.

And it seems like their numbers have even grown, if you don't believe me, just go there and see for yourself, there're even screenshots around from several thousands instance of Ghost Stories.

So much for fighting botters...

myleafs · September 2015

If this was truly about bots, there are better ways (simple kaptcha) to address the issue than cutting it outright. No, this is about money, and unfortunately, I don't know what Cryptic can say or do to earn their trust back. Why? Because the legit players actually opened their wallets and invested in the game, all for naught.

It would take a little longer, but it's worth the alternative. I DON'T BOT- I DO EVERYTHING MANUALLY!!!

gankdalf · September 2015

Still does not resolved the biggest problem this game ever had - a way to farm enough AD to afford anything in the game in a reasonable timeline.

Give us items (BoE) to farm and sell in AH so that we can play the game, profit and progress like the old times (CN with Ancient items that was BiS). This is the only thing that would give this game a very much needed buff. Im not farming T2 dungeons for 750 AD per run.. A CN run in the old days gave us a big chance of getting something worth 200k-6m AD and the RNG wasn't that bad because the bosses ALWAYS dropped something.

Making everything BoP was this games biggest mistake.

myleafs · September 2015

GAME OVER

Please insert 25 Cents to continue.

dufisto · September 2015

ironzerg79 said:
Leadership is being looked at to see about adding some more value back to the tasks

they hastily changed EE quests, so now you finish at 67 1/2 - unless you give them money for xp boosts.
they hastily changed ad generation - so now you need to farm dungeons = more keys = money
all decent loot is gated behind keys = more money
the RNG for upgrading flat out lies. i've failed far more times on 60% tasks than i should. oh well i can buy coal wards for more money. not to mention the 1% chance on the most basic weapon chant.

the only thing they're looking into is squeezing more money from folks.

they can implement a change to ad overnight. but cant bring back 1 old dungeon a month?

AD: A Fair, Easy to Implement Solution

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