Nobody here from the company will comment on this. You're just raging as this is unrelated feedback to the topic - just one more reason to complain more. On glassdoor they have average score as a company, with good and bad reviews - pity you didn't mention both as it would make your post more credible. Notice also that people who complain or are offended are more likely to post commnets. People who are content rarely have a reason to.
Maybe you are right... OR... these comments represent the reality about the company. Because the indications ingame reflect pretty much what the former AND CURRENT employees have to say.
Oh and btw I know stuff about Cryptic that explains WAY MORE, but because of anonymity I will not post it. Just ask a dev about the original source code *hint hint*
Players of every game say this. Complain about certain things - especially in free to play. The game is pretty good, overall. I don't understand that much all this hate for removing AD from Leadership. If it wasn't there in the first place, nobody would mind. Prices in Auction House will change in time, it's purely player based.
I think we are so very...very much beyond the AD loss in Leadership now. And maybe I've gotten way too close to the stink, but this is just the last of many, many BS moves they've made to this game to alienate their player base.
And I think this is the one that breaks its player base for good...
Then how about removing AD from Leadership on Xbox too, since it's not so important, why wait? Let the Xbox players have some fun too.
Because changes to xbox come at slower pace.
I think we are so very...very much beyond the AD loss in Leadership now. And maybe I've gotten way too close to the stink, but this is just the last of many, many BS moves they've made to this game to alienate their player base.
And I think this is the one that breaks its player base for good...
Hardly true. Much was added, lots of good stuff. Some stuff needs to be worked on, but it's not as bad. Can you give some example of how the playerbase is alienated that is not economy based?
Players of every game say this. Complain about certain things - especially in free to play. The game is pretty good, overall. I don't understand that much all this hate for removing AD from Leadership. If it wasn't there in the first place, nobody would mind. Prices in Auction House will change in time, it's purely player based.
First of all, I am not only a player. I am also related to the gaming industry.
Second, if you think the rant is about the removal of AD from LS, your naive and short sighted. The current actions are just another symptomatic example of how Cryptic runs its business, and how bad the implementation of their design decisions are.
"Do it, but do it quick!" "Do not think about quality, but about revenue."
Oh, and the game is still kinda good because some dedicated and caring devs working or have worked their asses of. But the route taken by the people in charge can compromise all that hard work.
You can PM me if you want a little lecture whats going on in the gaming industry right now...
Players of every game say this. Complain about certain things - especially in free to play. The game is pretty good, overall. I don't understand that much all this hate for removing AD from Leadership. If it wasn't there in the first place, nobody would mind. Prices in Auction House will change in time, it's purely player based.
First of all, I am not only a player. I am also related to the gaming industry.
Second, if you think the rant is about the removal of AD from LS, your naive and short sighted. The current actions are just another symptomatic example of how Cryptic runs its business, and how bad the implementation of their design decisions are.
"Do it, but do it quick!" "Do not think about quality, but about revenue."
Oh, and the game is still kinda good because some dedicated and caring devs working or have worked their asses of. But the route taken by the people in charge can compromise all that hard work.
You can PM me if you want a little lecture whats going on in the gaming industry right now...
I'm not saying it's perfect (pun intended), but it's not as bad as it's painted here. Economy is a touchy matter and while I do not agree with several things, I also know how it works. Sometimes you must make unpopular decisions, sometimes you must make the player uncomfortable to buy something - I understand that.
If you work in the gaming industry then you should know how many compromises have to be taken.
I'm really tired of the whole 'I play this game better than you because I pvp (etc)" group. That was the beauty of this game. You could choose how you wanted to play it. I am a solo player. I choose to have my chars play alone and to use the crafting system. That's fun for me. I have no desire whatsoever to pvp. I don't put anyone down that does. I don't criticize anyone else for how they play the game. That's your choice. The thing is, you could all have chosen to use the Crafting system to make a little extra AD, but you didn't. That was your choice. So don't blame or condemn those of us who play multiple characters that did play this way.
But what you don't understand now is this. ------> Today, you still get to play the way you want to!
Players of every game say this. Complain about certain things - especially in free to play. The game is pretty good, overall. I don't understand that much all this hate for removing AD from Leadership. If it wasn't there in the first place, nobody would mind. Prices in Auction House will change in time, it's purely player based.
First of all, I am not only a player. I am also related to the gaming industry.
Second, if you think the rant is about the removal of AD from LS, your naive and short sighted. The current actions are just another symptomatic example of how Cryptic runs its business, and how bad the implementation of their design decisions are.
"Do it, but do it quick!" "Do not think about quality, but about revenue."
Oh, and the game is still kinda good because some dedicated and caring devs working or have worked their asses of. But the route taken by the people in charge can compromise all that hard work.
You can PM me if you want a little lecture whats going on in the gaming industry right now...
I'm not saying it's perfect (pun intended), but it's not as bad as it's painted here. Economy is a touchy matter and while I do not agree with several things, I also know how it works. Sometimes you must make unpopular decisions, sometimes you must make the player uncomfortable to buy something - I understand that.
If you work in the gaming industry then you should know how many compromises have to be taken.
I'm done 'Drinking the Coolaid'...
This is all about a money grab...in its purest form. I don't mind companies making profits...but the product must be equal or better than the money spent. You want to play for free...go ahead, I'm cool with that. Grind your collective butt off for little or no reward. I just remember a time when this game was so very rewarding and fun to play...friends made is the only reason I'm here.
Players of every game say this. Complain about certain things - especially in free to play. The game is pretty good, overall. I don't understand that much all this hate for removing AD from Leadership. If it wasn't there in the first place, nobody would mind. Prices in Auction House will change in time, it's purely player based.
First of all, I am not only a player. I am also related to the gaming industry.
Second, if you think the rant is about the removal of AD from LS, your naive and short sighted. The current actions are just another symptomatic example of how Cryptic runs its business, and how bad the implementation of their design decisions are.
"Do it, but do it quick!" "Do not think about quality, but about revenue."
Oh, and the game is still kinda good because some dedicated and caring devs working or have worked their asses of. But the route taken by the people in charge can compromise all that hard work.
You can PM me if you want a little lecture whats going on in the gaming industry right now...
I'm not saying it's perfect (pun intended), but it's not as bad as it's painted here. Economy is a touchy matter and while I do not agree with several things, I also know how it works. Sometimes you must make unpopular decisions, sometimes you must make the player uncomfortable to buy something - I understand that.
If you work in the gaming industry then you should know how many compromises have to be taken.
I'm done 'Drinking the Coolaid'...
This is all about a money grab...in its purest form. I don't mind companies making profits...but the product must be equal or better than the money spent. You want to play for free...go ahead, I'm cool with that. Grind your collective butt off for little or no reward. I just remember a time when this game was so very rewarding and fun to play...friends made is the only reason I'm here.
A game is a business. It should give you profit, so more money than its costs. Otherwise, the game is being closed. It's simple. From player's perspective - the best situation is when they can enjoy the game fully without paying a cent. That's normal and natural, but it kills the game. The game needs places where players can pay for more comfort and cosmetic items don't work that well, they need things that make the game easier with money.
The trick is to make the game fun to play, but uncomfy at certain instances or by comparing to paying players. It keeps the players and the company more happy. Neverwinter still has a way to go, but it's really not as bad as people say here.
I'm not saying it's perfect (pun intended), but it's not as bad as it's painted here. Economy is a touchy matter and while I do not agree with several things, I also know how it works. Sometimes you must make unpopular decisions, sometimes you must make the player uncomfortable to buy something - I understand that.
If you work in the gaming industry then you should know how many compromises have to be taken.
If you don't see just how bad the state of the game is then I don't know what to say.
This isn't just about removing AD. It's about their direction and the fact that they don't play their own game or listen to any feedback. Whatever issues there were prior to Mod 6, the game was fun back then. Removing more than half the dungeons, removing anyone's ability to earn AD and the excessively grindy nature of SH has caused an exodus of players. Even if you still like the current game, there is hardly anyone left playing. If you consider that "not bad" I'd hate to see what you consider bad.
OR.... hmmm. Maybe because the market is FLOODED with Zen, and people are willing to take almost ANY price to turn CASH into AD's? Because they CAN NOT get AD's any other way? Nah. Wild speculation... or is it?
+1 I'm guilty as charged sold all my ZEN that I was saving up in fear it would be worth 1/2 in AD a month from now. Scroo that... if we can't get diamonds will sit on my diamonds and let all this settle.
Not even the company says it was an exploit. The company says BOTS were using it as an exploit. And legit players are not bots.
Ah, I see. Let me see if I understand you correctly: "Legit Players" doing "X": Fair Play "Botters" doing "X": Exploit
Very compelling argument you have there. /sarcasm off
Legit players are not bots, because bots doing something is an exploit while legit players doing the same thing is not. Go on.
Read this. Leadership As you may remember, we recently disabled the ability to use the Leadership profession on Gateway. This was due to an extreme number of bots generating far too much AD, and creating havoc with the AD economy. By disabling the profession on Gateway, we were able to reduce this artificially inflated number. Unfortunately, botters found a way around this fix. As we looked into the data, and as we analyzed what we could do to fix this exploit, we came to the conclusion that the way to stop the botters was to remove AD from the Leadership profession. There will still be a few sources in there, but nothing that botters can use to continue breaking the economy.
The sad part is I really believe they wanted to stop the botting problem, they just did not think or care about the effect it had on the people who are using the mechanism they implemented to advance their own characters. Notice the LS ban and the removal of any way for a single player to make any amount of AD without committing over a third of the time they are awake to the game. Bots cannot participate in PVP, skirmishes or epic dungeons. Do not expect this to be fixed ever! Any fix that would allow a solo player to make AD can be exploited by bots. If you like solo and causal play unfortunately this will not be the game for you (i'm in this category myself). They have decided you HAVE to play this game the way they want you too, it is the easiest way for them and at the end of the day that seems to be all they care about and I do not see that changing anytime soon. It is a adolescent mentality where they keep thinking about the game as their game and not their product. In your game you can do whatever you want but if you want others to pay for the costs then you HAVE to adjust your thinking and think about how you decisions will effect your customers. They do not have to use your product and it looks like this will be a hard lesson they will have to learn. Other MMO's did not and fell by the wayside.
Reviews of that company from glassdoor.com And there are ton more complains, have just copied some of them.
This is an interesting find however it wasn't even necessary to post it because most of us see through the actions the company takes repeatedly that this is happening internally within. A bad suit MBA or two etc. ruins so many things these days. And I'm not even talking about Leadership. Don't even care about that anymore.
The game we all play here screams of "potential" but in the end just reeks of upper management inabilities/disconnects with what they are actually producing/managing.... if any of them understood that if you took time to build a game people thought you cared about by actually fixing things people report... that alone goes a LONG way towards pulling USD out of my wallet. Show that you actually care about your customer base and their desires goes A LONG way towards building long term customers that reach into their pockets over and over.
Aside from that just releasing mount after mount, companion after companion etc... doing things like making bags bind on equip that were not prior, those are all examples of development that lead to no trust. I see so much quality in the artwork of Neverwinter, the effects, the combat etc. the vision. But somewhere it fell apart... did this all happen when Arcgames came along? Just wondering.
I never blame the DEVs, because they can only do what they are paid/told to do. Build an environment where workers dont like their own product and that just spells disaster.
Speaking as a solo player who was primarily using Leadership as a slow-and-steady way to build up AD to pay for pretty much everything in this game ... this move reeks. I don't do Dungeons because I don't have BiS gear, Skirmishes only rarely and I avoid PvP like the plague. This move basically kills my AD progression.
Precisely !! Could not have said it better myself. I was making, from Leadership, about 30k AD per day. Nope, I don't have the gear either. I don't do any of the Skirms, Dungeons and also avoid PvP like the plague. I play on an old puter which does NOT handle large groups of people on screen, not to mention the hordes of bad ashes we have to kill. The cost of even a level 20 weap is way beyond what I'm "earning" while playing the game. Considering the cost of just about anything on broker, I'm gonna be running around with sh1p for gear due to the well-known fact that anything that drops from questing is so much dross. Bah! I'll be thinking long and hard about whether I really want to continue with a company which has made decisions affecting me (as a very solo player) with not too much time on my hands to play each day.
Read this. Leadership As you may remember, we recently disabled the ability to use the Leadership profession on Gateway. This was due to an extreme number of bots generating far too much AD, and creating havoc with the AD economy. By disabling the profession on Gateway, we were able to reduce this artificially inflated number. Unfortunately, botters found a way around this fix. As we looked into the data, and as we analyzed what we could do to fix this exploit, we came to the conclusion that the way to stop the botters was to remove AD from the Leadership profession. There will still be a few sources in there, but nothing that botters can use to continue breaking the economy.
The impact on the game is identical.
Implying that only those under the heading "botter" had a negative impact on the economy is disingenuous. Every account with a leadership army helped create the glut of AD.
Sorry but your argument is still weak. This effected everyone who had ANY leadership period. EVEN if you only used it for yourself and ONLY had the 4 slots you are given (hardly an army). Would you say someone who has one character of each type and who plays them but also uses them to generate AD to help each character out the same thing as botters? They are playing the game the same way as everyone else why should they have to take 9X as long to develop their characters IF the game designers developed a mechanism to do so. The idea that the developers did not think about this is totally foolish, of course they thought about it and they really did not care about it. This "fix" is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The argument this is for the economy has NEVER been mentioned by the company (sorry a cm is NOT the same thing). That is an idea we developed in this forum. I'm 100% certain their main concerns were the outside websites making money off their product period. It seems more noble to say we wanted to help the game economy and increase the enjoyment for the players but to be frank that is TOTAL BS. The way they executed this plan, and the response from the community pretty much proves that. I simply do not believe they were that naive and could not see the impact it would have on their customers. They severely crippled the outside sites and that is what they wanted to do and they really do not care (for now) about the effect on their customers. They may be slightly flushed with some cash from the zen weekend and the sale of the VIP programs and I believe they think the introduction of the stronghold PVP will make up for this and they can wait it out. In my opinion they have not fully thought out the effect this will have on the entire stronghold idea and their hope new players will fill in the churn they are creating will not come to pass. The problem is the losses in all likely hood will not be made up and there will only be a few mega guilds that can survive. I think all of the people who like or need solo casual play (who probably represent a good portion of real income generating players) will leave and not come back with the imminent release of other sanctioned D&D products that are soon to be released.
The sad part is I really believe they wanted to stop the botting problem, they just did not think or care about the effect it had on the people who are using the mechanism they implemented to advance their own characters. Notice the LS ban and the removal of any way for a single player to make any amount of AD without committing over a third of the time they are awake to the game. Bots cannot participate in PVP, skirmishes or epic dungeons. Do not expect this to be fixed ever! Any fix that would allow a solo player to make AD can be exploited by bots. If you like solo and causal play unfortunately this will not be the game for you (i'm in this category myself). They have decided you HAVE to play this game the way they want you too, it is the easiest way for them and at the end of the day that seems to be all they care about and I do not see that changing anytime soon. It is a adolescent mentality where they keep thinking about the game as their game and not their product. In your game you can do whatever you want but if you want others to pay for the costs then you HAVE to adjust your thinking and think about how you decisions will effect your customers. They do not have to use your product and it looks like this will be a hard lesson they will have to learn. Other MMO's did not and fell by the wayside.
Bots DO pvp. Not sure about the skirmishes and dungeons. And they love Ghost stories.
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
Seriously... are people still blaming legit people with leadership for this bloat of AD....?
I don't ever recall EVER using all my AD to flip on the ZAX or manipulate prices on the AH...
It went into AD sinks. Ya know, because that's what people actually playing the game do. How did transmute costs, GMoP, and such ruin the economy?
I don't mind companies making profits...but the product must be equal or better than the money spent. You want to play for free...go ahead, I'm cool with that. Grind your collective butt off for little or no reward. I just remember a time when this game was so very rewarding and fun to play...friends made is the only reason I'm here.
Kromryl president now! I really don't care about AD and leadership: I've never used it. This game is for business: it's free to play and free to play doesn't mean fast and free grow of your toon. There's always a cost: time or money. But both dimensions (times AND money) have no value at all: - Time: the message now is "grind forever", you will see some results after months and months doing the same things every day with low AD income. Btw, the recursive repetitions of the same tasks are defenitely what an automated procedure can do better and faster than a man. Bots will always be there. - Money: low value for money. You open the zen market and start crying: so expensive and nothnig (or a few) really valuable.
I do believe that these two dimensions are now really broken. We're discussing AD changes, but what we're really discussing is the value of the time of the players. And most players don't see any value at all becuase the cost in terms of time is too high as well as the cost of the zen market. Consequence: players are quitting....quite normal reaction.
Some players may evaluate to keep on playing because they feel that the current payback is good enough: their choices and I've nothing to say about it. At the end, I'm still waiting for the results of the next financial report at PWE: hit where it hurts...that's my policy and I hope it will be followed by many players.
Oltreverso guild leader Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
I do believe that these two dimensions are now really broken. We're discussing AD changes, but what we're really discussing is the value of the time of the players. And most players don't see any value at all becuase the cost in terms of time is too high as well as the cost of the zen market. Consequence: players are quitting....quite normal reaction.
+1
This is the only MMO I've encountered where the powers that be remove every form of enjoyment systematically. A player needs to feel like they can progress realistically. All successful MMOs (nameless for the sake of debate) do this masterfully. There are things to farm whether to sell or for professions that actually mean something to the player or are in demand by others. All of that leads to enjoyment and a return to the game and an economy that takes care of itself.
Each player then becomes an asset to the game and vise versa.
The next response will be "Then why do you keep playing?" The answer to that is ultimately the combat mechanics are fun which makes me hope things will get better.
This is my first and possibly last post in this forum, but I’m not a new player, I’m just not very opinionated and have instead lurked the forums. I started playing late last year, so mid mod5 or so? And I have had a blast with this game. The storyline was interesting and rewarding, I spent some dollars on it, the maz about of zen, twice, then bought (!) some T2 gear from the AH, an account mount, bags and stuff; in short, I was a really happy player. Then endgame happened and I struggled to cope with it, and the grind it demanded. So I created multiple characters to play, in the end I had 7 in total, covering all classes except for the CW. I played each and every one of them for a good period of time, to level 60, where they were parked since I could find the time to equip them to play them any further. Then mod6 happened and my main character struggled his way through Elemental Evil, only to find out he wasn’t really viable for endgame anymore. So I made a new main character (paladin, boo!!), and everything was a breeze.
Along the way I found the only was to really make the AD needed to survive what the endgame put in front of me, was to level leadership. So I slowly did. Fast forward to today, 1 of my main character reached lvl24, all alts are between lvl20-23 and my second main is lvl21 (started him last). I guess I made between 200k and 300k AD a week, depending on whether I chose to lvl leadership or just to produce AD tasks.
I shouldn’t need to say it, but I did every single click myself, logged in multiple times a day to keep up tasks and put in a huge amount of time and effort doing so. I never ONCE felt like I ‘didn’t play the game’ or ‘created AD out of thin air’. I played the game as it could be played, as most people I talked to played the game, and as moderators of this forum has said they played the game. Yet, reading the OP of this thread, as well as some condescending posts from fellow players, I should apparently feel bad about actually having levelled leadership and using the gateway to do so. What right does anyone have to make me feel this way? And what right do they have to take it away in a heartbeat? I don’t know exactly when either the leadership profession or the gateway was implemented in the game, but it was there when I started (and I suspect it’s been there for far longer). How was I supposed to understand this was not the way it was intended to work. And if the developers saw this as a problem, why wasn’t this handled in a far far better manner a long long time ago?? There was a limit on how much rAD each character could refine. Why couldn’t there be a limit of leadership characters per account? It’s would make economical sense and still reward the effort made by players. This decision is by far the worst I’ve witnessed in this game, and I think I’ve seen a few. You simply cannot wipe the slate clean this way and not expect bad, profound consequences for the game.
I was happy with my small ensemble of invoking AD mules, they made it possible to keep my two main characters afloat, nothing less nothing more. If anything I think the AD gained from doing professions made me stay in the game longer. Because now you have lost me as a player. In the end it comes down to this. I have no incentive to continue playing. Whatever I put down in terms of time and effort to earn, you can obviously yank away instantly and without warning, just because. I can’t play a game like this. And I’m both sad and relieved.
I’m sad because I really have enjoyed this game (the first 6 months, a LOT, the last 6 mounts less, but still). I’m relieved because you have made it easy for me to leave the game behind and don’t look back.
The sad part is I really believe they wanted to stop the botting problem, they just did not think or care about the effect it had on the people who are using the mechanism they implemented to advance their own characters. Notice the LS ban and the removal of any way for a single player to make any amount of AD without committing over a third of the time they are awake to the game. Bots cannot participate in PVP, skirmishes or epic dungeons. Do not expect this to be fixed ever! Any fix that would allow a solo player to make AD can be exploited by bots. If you like solo and causal play unfortunately this will not be the game for you (i'm in this category myself). They have decided you HAVE to play this game the way they want you too, it is the easiest way for them and at the end of the day that seems to be all they care about and I do not see that changing anytime soon. It is a adolescent mentality where they keep thinking about the game as their game and not their product. In your game you can do whatever you want but if you want others to pay for the costs then you HAVE to adjust your thinking and think about how you decisions will effect your customers. They do not have to use your product and it looks like this will be a hard lesson they will have to learn. Other MMO's did not and fell by the wayside.
Bots DO pvp. Not sure about the skirmishes and dungeons. And they love Ghost stories.
It should be easy to spot and report bots in PVP so I doubt that is any sort of major income or else that would be our fault for not reporting them. As for ghost stories I am sure that is what they will be working on long before they work on anything else to fix the problems the LS castration patch caused for people just trying to enjoy the game. They did put a significant hurting on the botting in the short-term. Maybe it will be unprofitable for them to rework them due to the collapsing of the game itself. I NEVER said they totally stopped it just that they put a severe roadblock to them which they did.
This is my first and possibly last post in this forum, but I’m not a new player, I’m just not very opinionated and have instead lurked the forums. I started playing late last year, so mid mod5 or so? And I have had a blast with this game. The storyline was interesting and rewarding, I spent some dollars on it, the maz about of zen, twice, then bought (!) some T2 gear from the AH, an account mount, bags and stuff; in short, I was a really happy player. Then endgame happened and I struggled to cope with it, and the grind it demanded. So I created multiple characters to play, in the end I had 7 in total, covering all classes except for the CW. I played each and every one of them for a good period of time, to level 60, where they were parked since I could find the time to equip them to play them any further. Then mod6 happened and my main character struggled his way through Elemental Evil, only to find out he wasn’t really viable for endgame anymore. So I made a new main character (paladin, boo!!), and everything was a breeze.
Along the way I found the only was to really make the AD needed to survive what the endgame put in front of me, was to level leadership. So I slowly did. Fast forward to today, 1 of my main character reached lvl24, all alts are between lvl20-23 and my second main is lvl21 (started him last). I guess I made between 200k and 300k AD a week, depending on whether I chose to lvl leadership or just to produce AD tasks.
I shouldn’t need to say it, but I did every single click myself, logged in multiple times a day to keep up tasks and put in a huge amount of time and effort doing so. I never ONCE felt like I ‘didn’t play the game’ or ‘created AD out of thin air’. I played the game as it could be played, as most people I talked to played the game, and as moderators of this forum has said they played the game. Yet, reading the OP of this thread, as well as some condescending posts from fellow players, I should apparently feel bad about actually having levelled leadership and using the gateway to do so. What right does anyone have to make me feel this way? And what right do they have to take it away in a heartbeat? I don’t know exactly when either the leadership profession or the gateway was implemented in the game, but it was there when I started (and I suspect it’s been there for far longer). How was I supposed to understand this was not the way it was intended to work. And if the developers saw this as a problem, why wasn’t this handled in a far far better manner a long long time ago?? There was a limit on how much rAD each character could refine. Why couldn’t there be a limit of leadership characters per account? It’s would make economical sense and still reward the effort made by players. This decision is by far the worst I’ve witnessed in this game, and I think I’ve seen a few. You simply cannot wipe the slate clean this way and not expect bad, profound consequences for the game.
I was happy with my small ensemble of invoking AD mules, they made it possible to keep my two main characters afloat, nothing less nothing more. If anything I think the AD gained from doing professions made me stay in the game longer. Because now you have lost me as a player. In the end it comes down to this. I have no incentive to continue playing. Whatever I put down in terms of time and effort to earn, you can obviously yank away instantly and without warning, just because. I can’t play a game like this. And I’m both sad and relieved.
I’m sad because I really have enjoyed this game (the first 6 months, a LOT, the last 6 mounts less, but still). I’m relieved because you have made it easy for me to leave the game behind and don’t look back.
I feel the same way and many here beside us. The naysayers are obviously the minority in this thread and from the other threads showing a huge impact on the game in player counts/instances that are full etc. I'm almost there myself with feeling relieved that I can put this behind me and do something else with my spare time and money as well... my golf swing has improved since this change, I'm actually hitting down on the ball with my irons much better
TIME is the only real asset and in regard to time, everyone is on a level playing field; we all have the same amount of it. We trade time for RL money. We trade time and/or money for entertainment or sport. The whole idea is to maximize time. An MMO generally has tons of things to do, tons of things to increase/improve, mostly entertaining. Some people will talk about 'winning' at an mmo, and maybe think that means BiS or something... but to me, it's the person who maximized their time in the game. All these leadership-ad-farming peeps were 'winning'. The community moderators even self-confessed to running LS armies. It was the winning strategy.
Now its removal will just create another 'winning-strategy' (call it X), and all the smart people playing this game will find it, share it with others, and over time 'work' it.
Will X be worth doing? Is there really enough 'entertainment' value in the product to justify the cost (TIME) expense? And what else is out on the market? (games compete against games). Your knee-jerk reactions like this come across like you've not thought that far ahead; makes you look bad. Players spend half their time 'speculating' about what you are doing because they don't know.
I've played 6 or 7 MMOs in my life; and as I think about it, I left each of them for one of two reasons: - all my friends left the game (that I was playing with) - there was some other game just sitting there that had a higher Entertainment / Cost ratio.
Cryptic, you guys are 'running thin' on that second point. This move increases the Cost. Things like removing dungeons is decreasing the Entertainment. Strongholds increased entertainment generally. Mod-6 didn't increase entertainment that much, maybe just a tad. etc.
When you come out with stuff like this, why not mix the changing cost with changing entertainment? If you are going to increase Cost, come out with something that increases Entertainment at the same time. Sort of the 'spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down' kind of thing. The way this drastic increase of cost was dumped on your players... man, that was just wrong...
Then how about removing AD from Leadership on Xbox too, since it's not so important, why wait? Let the Xbox players have some fun too.
Because changes to xbox come at slower pace.
The Devs are not going to touch AD in Leadership on the Xbox, that is pretty clear to nearly everyone around here.
When Underdark hits PC, and Strongholds is released on Xbox, we might even see a lot of improvements in the Stronghold resources needed to build/upgrade part, but no nerfs for AD rewards anywhere.
I also doubt that any of our feedback will be considered in improving Leadership. They have no big plan about this, they just got ordered to do something, they did it, and now they are back on track for Underdark at the end of this year.
@therealairhead I'm fully with you. Enterteiment/have fun is for sure another parameter. I assume this as implicit: you don't play a game with no fun. It doesn't take too much to realize that the fun at the moment is limited. Grinding forever is not very attrattive. The social activity is poor: the enclave is empty
Oltreverso guild leader Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
The sad part is I really believe they wanted to stop the botting problem, they just did not think or care about the effect it had on the people who are using the mechanism they implemented to advance their own characters. Notice the LS ban and the removal of any way for a single player to make any amount of AD without committing over a third of the time they are awake to the game. Bots cannot participate in PVP, skirmishes or epic dungeons. Do not expect this to be fixed ever! Any fix that would allow a solo player to make AD can be exploited by bots. If you like solo and causal play unfortunately this will not be the game for you (i'm in this category myself). They have decided you HAVE to play this game the way they want you too, it is the easiest way for them and at the end of the day that seems to be all they care about and I do not see that changing anytime soon. It is a adolescent mentality where they keep thinking about the game as their game and not their product. In your game you can do whatever you want but if you want others to pay for the costs then you HAVE to adjust your thinking and think about how you decisions will effect your customers. They do not have to use your product and it looks like this will be a hard lesson they will have to learn. Other MMO's did not and fell by the wayside.
Bots DO pvp. Not sure about the skirmishes and dungeons. And they love Ghost stories.
It should be easy to spot and report bots in PVP so I doubt that is any sort of major income or else that would be our fault for not reporting them. As for ghost stories I am sure that is what they will be working on long before they work on anything else to fix the problems the LS castration patch caused for people just trying to enjoy the game. They did put a significant hurting on the botting in the short-term. Maybe it will be unprofitable for them to rework them due to the collapsing of the game itself. I NEVER said they totally stopped it just that they put a severe roadblock to them which they did.
I have always reported any bot I have seen. A lot lol. But they are still in game. Severe roadblock, I agree with that. What I don't know if it's been enough. Botters seem to find a way and adapt to changes fast.
It's obvious to me that PC NW is now a beta test bed for X-Bone NW, and as such the company wants the AD/Zen to be similar on both so that the test bed can make better predictions about changes to be made to the more profitable and stable release. For any changes to X-Bone they need certification from Microsoft, this takes time, so they can't make snap changes. PC however they can change things at the drop of a very ugly helm, er hat and see what happens. If it loses them some money or players, well we won't do that on X-Bone the % loss would be too much higher. It's entirely possible NW PC is no longer highly profitable, but they would have to pay WOTC escape clauses to shut it down, what better use for it than as a test bed for the more profitable X-bone? So I expect the nerfs and changes to continue apace until they they feel sucked out excess AD, campaign currencies and anything else PC has had access to stockpile for longer than the X-bone until we mirror them.
The bottom line is, a change like these should have been analyzed as far as population impact before implementing. Even if people were to suddenly start buying more Zen (which is not going to happen anyway), there are far fewer people left doing so, therefore the net effect is lower profits. So at the end of the day, even if they truly intended to target 3rd party sites (and not trying to shakedown their players), they are shooting off their own feet and their head.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
While it's admirable to go against the tide if you're right, you do not even have your own interests at heart in this. I believe you have said that you have a leadership army as well, correct? And you're OK with having all of your time and money invested into the game thrown out with the strawman "because bots?"
Yes.
I have been here since May of 2012 if not earlier. Finding a post in my history is now like finding a needle in a haystack but I remember a lot of my hopes and desires for the game before launch and I had made plenty of posts regarding my hope for how the game would award AD.
I imagined and hoped for a system where you would get some AD for doing everything. You would log in and play and earn AD for doing whatever you wanted but that is not what we received.
We received a system in which the amount of AD you generated was based on how much time you devoted to maintaining leadership farms. The best way to describe me as a person and as a gamer is that I play to win in every aspect of life. If I devote my time to something then I do whatever I can within the rules to succeed.
So no this is not exactly in my best interests based on what I was forced to do in order to succeed. But I am not, like many of you, applying my current situation to my decision. I am considering what should have been done from the start and how the game should have been and basing my feeling on what will make a better future for the game.
Leadership farms were a bad choice from the start. If you dig hard enough you will find me musing on the possibilities of earning AD for our time investment in the game before the game was even in Alpha as well as posts within the Alpha forums (which you do not have access to) in which I gave negative feedback on the lack of AD earned through standard gameplay.
I'm not unhappy. I'm elated. This is how it should have been from the start and my only gripe is that this decision took two years to make.
The system will balance out in time. The majority of player complaints really do revolve around chicken little comments which show a lack of understanding or remembrance to economic changes. Economies are a balancing acts and the old system had a hundred pound brick on one side and a feather on the other. It was horrible. It will take time for that hundred pound brick to dissipate but it will in time. The sky is not falling.
silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
Two years ago it cost you about 200% less to advance your toons, they increased the amount it takes and ALSO cut the income to do it.
I have NO problems with reducing AD, if they ALSO roll back some of the costing structure.
I do not see why this is so hard to see, nor can I really see why people would argue against it. What is the logical decision to keep the insane costings (that was ONLY placed in the game for the amount of AD that was being generated to remove it.)
ITs been removed, remove the costing and we will be happy.
You are comparing a totally different time in the game to today, its not comparable.
Comments
And I think this is the one that breaks its player base for good...
Second, if you think the rant is about the removal of AD from LS, your naive and short sighted. The current actions are just another symptomatic example of how Cryptic runs its business, and how bad the implementation of their design decisions are.
"Do it, but do it quick!"
"Do not think about quality, but about revenue."
Oh, and the game is still kinda good because some dedicated and caring devs working or have worked their asses of. But the route taken by the people in charge can compromise all that hard work.
You can PM me if you want a little lecture whats going on in the gaming industry right now...
If you work in the gaming industry then you should know how many compromises have to be taken.
But what you don't understand now is this. ------> Today, you still get to play the way you want to!
So this happened:
And it's been pretty consistent in that playing SCA is just plain more rewarding than playing the game.
This is all about a money grab...in its purest form. I don't mind companies making profits...but the product must be equal or better than the money spent. You want to play for free...go ahead, I'm cool with that. Grind your collective butt off for little or no reward. I just remember a time when this game was so very rewarding and fun to play...friends made is the only reason I'm here.
The trick is to make the game fun to play, but uncomfy at certain instances or by comparing to paying players. It keeps the players and the company more happy. Neverwinter still has a way to go, but it's really not as bad as people say here.
This isn't just about removing AD. It's about their direction and the fact that they don't play their own game or listen to any feedback. Whatever issues there were prior to Mod 6, the game was fun back then. Removing more than half the dungeons, removing anyone's ability to earn AD and the excessively grindy nature of SH has caused an exodus of players. Even if you still like the current game, there is hardly anyone left playing. If you consider that "not bad" I'd hate to see what you consider bad.
The argument this is for the economy has NEVER been mentioned by the company (sorry a cm is NOT the same thing). That is an idea we developed in this forum. I'm 100% certain their main concerns were the outside websites making money off their product period. It seems more noble to say we wanted to help the game economy and increase the enjoyment for the players but to be frank that is TOTAL BS. The way they executed this plan, and the response from the community pretty much proves that. I simply do not believe they were that naive and could not see the impact it would have on their customers. They severely crippled the outside sites and that is what they wanted to do and they really do not care (for now) about the effect on their customers. They may be slightly flushed with some cash from the zen weekend and the sale of the VIP programs and I believe they think the introduction of the stronghold PVP will make up for this and they can wait it out. In my opinion they have not fully thought out the effect this will have on the entire stronghold idea and their hope new players will fill in the churn they are creating will not come to pass. The problem is the losses in all likely hood will not be made up and there will only be a few mega guilds that can survive. I think all of the people who like or need solo casual play (who probably represent a good portion of real income generating players) will leave and not come back with the imminent release of other sanctioned D&D products that are soon to be released.
The sad part is I really believe they wanted to stop the botting problem, they just did not think or care about the effect it had on the people who are using the mechanism they implemented to advance their own characters. Notice the LS ban and the removal of any way for a single player to make any amount of AD without committing over a third of the time they are awake to the game. Bots cannot participate in PVP, skirmishes or epic dungeons. Do not expect this to be fixed ever! Any fix that would allow a solo player to make AD can be exploited by bots. If you like solo and causal play unfortunately this will not be the game for you (i'm in this category myself). They have decided you HAVE to play this game the way they want you too, it is the easiest way for them and at the end of the day that seems to be all they care about and I do not see that changing anytime soon. It is a adolescent mentality where they keep thinking about the game as their game and not their product. In your game you can do whatever you want but if you want others to pay for the costs then you HAVE to adjust your thinking and think about how you decisions will effect your customers. They do not have to use your product and it looks like this will be a hard lesson they will have to learn. Other MMO's did not and fell by the wayside.
Bots DO pvp. Not sure about the skirmishes and dungeons. And they love Ghost stories.
I don't ever recall EVER using all my AD to flip on the ZAX or manipulate prices on the AH...
It went into AD sinks. Ya know, because that's what people actually playing the game do. How did transmute costs, GMoP, and such ruin the economy?
I really don't care about AD and leadership: I've never used it.
This game is for business: it's free to play and free to play doesn't mean fast and free grow of your toon. There's always a cost: time or money.
But both dimensions (times AND money) have no value at all:
- Time: the message now is "grind forever", you will see some results after months and months doing the same things every day with low AD income. Btw, the recursive repetitions of the same tasks are defenitely what an automated procedure can do better and faster than a man. Bots will always be there.
- Money: low value for money. You open the zen market and start crying: so expensive and nothnig (or a few) really valuable.
I do believe that these two dimensions are now really broken. We're discussing AD changes, but what we're really discussing is the value of the time of the players. And most players don't see any value at all becuase the cost in terms of time is too high as well as the cost of the zen market.
Consequence: players are quitting....quite normal reaction.
Some players may evaluate to keep on playing because they feel that the current payback is good enough: their choices and I've nothing to say about it.
At the end, I'm still waiting for the results of the next financial report at PWE: hit where it hurts...that's my policy and I hope it will be followed by many players.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
I started playing late last year, so mid mod5 or so? And I have had a blast with this game. The storyline was interesting and rewarding, I spent some dollars on it, the maz about of zen, twice, then bought (!) some T2 gear from the AH, an account mount, bags and stuff; in short, I was a really happy player.
Then endgame happened and I struggled to cope with it, and the grind it demanded.
So I created multiple characters to play, in the end I had 7 in total, covering all classes except for the CW. I played each and every one of them for a good period of time, to level 60, where they were parked since I could find the time to equip them to play them any further.
Then mod6 happened and my main character struggled his way through Elemental Evil, only to find out he wasn’t really viable for endgame anymore.
So I made a new main character (paladin, boo!!), and everything was a breeze.
Along the way I found the only was to really make the AD needed to survive what the endgame put in front of me, was to level leadership. So I slowly did. Fast forward to today, 1 of my main character reached lvl24, all alts are between lvl20-23 and my second main is lvl21 (started him last). I guess I made between 200k and 300k AD a week, depending on whether I chose to lvl leadership or just to produce AD tasks.
I shouldn’t need to say it, but I did every single click myself, logged in multiple times a day to keep up tasks and put in a huge amount of time and effort doing so. I never ONCE felt like I ‘didn’t play the game’ or ‘created AD out of thin air’. I played the game as it could be played, as most people I talked to played the game, and as moderators of this forum has said they played the game. Yet, reading the OP of this thread, as well as some condescending posts from fellow players, I should apparently feel bad about actually having levelled leadership and using the gateway to do so. What right does anyone have to make me feel this way? And what right do they have to take it away in a heartbeat? I don’t know exactly when either the leadership profession or the gateway was implemented in the game, but it was there when I started (and I suspect it’s been there for far longer). How was I supposed to understand this was not the way it was intended to work. And if the developers saw this as a problem, why wasn’t this handled in a far far better manner a long long time ago?? There was a limit on how much rAD each character could refine. Why couldn’t there be a limit of leadership characters per account? It’s would make economical sense and still reward the effort made by players.
This decision is by far the worst I’ve witnessed in this game, and I think I’ve seen a few. You simply cannot wipe the slate clean this way and not expect bad, profound consequences for the game.
I was happy with my small ensemble of invoking AD mules, they made it possible to keep my two main characters afloat, nothing less nothing more. If anything I think the AD gained from doing professions made me stay in the game longer.
Because now you have lost me as a player. In the end it comes down to this. I have no incentive to continue playing. Whatever I put down in terms of time and effort to earn, you can obviously yank away instantly and without warning, just because. I can’t play a game like this.
And I’m both sad and relieved.
I’m sad because I really have enjoyed this game (the first 6 months, a LOT, the last 6 mounts less, but still).
I’m relieved because you have made it easy for me to leave the game behind and don’t look back.
It should be easy to spot and report bots in PVP so I doubt that is any sort of major income or else that would be our fault for not reporting them. As for ghost stories I am sure that is what they will be working on long before they work on anything else to fix the problems the LS castration patch caused for people just trying to enjoy the game. They did put a significant hurting on the botting in the short-term. Maybe it will be unprofitable for them to rework them due to the collapsing of the game itself. I NEVER said they totally stopped it just that they put a severe roadblock to them which they did.
Now its removal will just create another 'winning-strategy' (call it X), and all the smart people playing this game will find it, share it with others, and over time 'work' it.
Will X be worth doing? Is there really enough 'entertainment' value in the product to justify the cost (TIME) expense? And what else is out on the market? (games compete against games). Your knee-jerk reactions like this come across like you've not thought that far ahead; makes you look bad. Players spend half their time 'speculating' about what you are doing because they don't know.
I've played 6 or 7 MMOs in my life; and as I think about it, I left each of them for one of two reasons:
- all my friends left the game (that I was playing with)
- there was some other game just sitting there that had a higher Entertainment / Cost ratio.
Cryptic, you guys are 'running thin' on that second point. This move increases the Cost. Things like removing dungeons is decreasing the Entertainment. Strongholds increased entertainment generally. Mod-6 didn't increase entertainment that much, maybe just a tad. etc.
When you come out with stuff like this, why not mix the changing cost with changing entertainment? If you are going to increase Cost, come out with something that increases Entertainment at the same time. Sort of the 'spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down' kind of thing. The way this drastic increase of cost was dumped on your players... man, that was just wrong...
The Devs are not going to touch AD in Leadership on the Xbox, that is pretty clear to nearly everyone around here.
When Underdark hits PC, and Strongholds is released on Xbox, we might even see a lot of improvements in the Stronghold resources needed to build/upgrade part, but no nerfs for AD rewards anywhere.
I also doubt that any of our feedback will be considered in improving Leadership. They have no big plan about this, they just got ordered to do something, they did it, and now they are back on track for Underdark at the end of this year.
I'm fully with you.
Enterteiment/have fun is for sure another parameter.
I assume this as implicit: you don't play a game with no fun.
It doesn't take too much to realize that the fun at the moment is limited. Grinding forever is not very attrattive.
The social activity is poor: the enclave is empty
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
I have always reported any bot I have seen. A lot lol. But they are still in game. Severe roadblock, I agree with that. What I don't know if it's been enough. Botters seem to find a way and adapt to changes fast.
For any changes to X-Bone they need certification from Microsoft, this takes time, so they can't make snap changes. PC however they can change things at the drop of a very ugly helm, er hat and see what happens. If it loses them some money or players, well we won't do that on X-Bone the % loss would be too much higher.
It's entirely possible NW PC is no longer highly profitable, but they would have to pay WOTC escape clauses to shut it down, what better use for it than as a test bed for the more profitable X-bone?
So I expect the nerfs and changes to continue apace until they they feel sucked out excess AD, campaign currencies and anything else PC has had access to stockpile for longer than the X-bone until we mirror them.
@ doing random things to see what will happen.
The bottom line is, a change like these should have been analyzed as far as population impact before implementing. Even if people were to suddenly start buying more Zen (which is not going to happen anyway), there are far fewer people left doing so, therefore the net effect is lower profits. So at the end of the day, even if they truly intended to target 3rd party sites (and not trying to shakedown their players), they are shooting off their own feet and their head.
I have been here since May of 2012 if not earlier. Finding a post in my history is now like finding a needle in a haystack but I remember a lot of my hopes and desires for the game before launch and I had made plenty of posts regarding my hope for how the game would award AD.
I imagined and hoped for a system where you would get some AD for doing everything. You would log in and play and earn AD for doing whatever you wanted but that is not what we received.
We received a system in which the amount of AD you generated was based on how much time you devoted to maintaining leadership farms. The best way to describe me as a person and as a gamer is that I play to win in every aspect of life. If I devote my time to something then I do whatever I can within the rules to succeed.
So no this is not exactly in my best interests based on what I was forced to do in order to succeed.
But I am not, like many of you, applying my current situation to my decision. I am considering what should have been done from the start and how the game should have been and basing my feeling on what will make a better future for the game.
Leadership farms were a bad choice from the start. If you dig hard enough you will find me musing on the possibilities of earning AD for our time investment in the game before the game was even in Alpha as well as posts within the Alpha forums (which you do not have access to) in which I gave negative feedback on the lack of AD earned through standard gameplay.
I'm not unhappy. I'm elated. This is how it should have been from the start and my only gripe is that this decision took two years to make.
The system will balance out in time. The majority of player complaints really do revolve around chicken little comments which show a lack of understanding or remembrance to economic changes. Economies are a balancing acts and the old system had a hundred pound brick on one side and a feather on the other. It was horrible. It will take time for that hundred pound brick to dissipate but it will in time. The sky is not falling.
I have NO problems with reducing AD, if they ALSO roll back some of the costing structure.
I do not see why this is so hard to see, nor can I really see why people would argue against it. What is the logical decision to keep the insane costings (that was ONLY placed in the game for the amount of AD that was being generated to remove it.)
ITs been removed, remove the costing and we will be happy.
You are comparing a totally different time in the game to today, its not comparable.