I am a paying player, and continually see my money and time wasted when the things I invested in, like leadership and enchantments were nerfed. To me, this is fraud. I spent a fortune perfecting my life drinker, so it would not die with one hit from a GWF or boss and they just took it away. I am done paying, there are other games out there that actually add new content instead of making you grind all the time.
Things like enchantment nerfs, I feel like there should be buyback programs. "oh, your enchantment no longer does what you expected? Alright, you can trade it in for an equal rank enchantment of the same type."
Things like enchantment nerfs, I feel like there should be buyback programs. "oh, your enchantment no longer does what you expected? Alright, you can trade it in for an equal rank enchantment of the same type."
Good idea. At least then I would not feel like I was being ripped off.
I am a paying player, and continually see my money and time wasted when the things I invested in, like leadership and enchantments were nerfed. To me, this is fraud. I spent a fortune perfecting my life drinker, so it would not die with one hit from a GWF or boss and they just took it away. I am done paying, there are other games out there that actually add new content instead of making you grind all the time.
Things like enchantment nerfs, I feel like there should be buyback programs. "oh, your enchantment no longer does what you expected? Alright, you can trade it in for an equal rank enchantment of the same type."
That's what good companies do. Off the top of my head Blizzard does that in Hearthstone. Every time they change a card you can get full value on it for crafting another card of equal rarity. And that's in a CCG where the whole monetization model is based around bleeding people dry.
Not sure why PWE doesn't do things like that. They didn't do it in Blacklight either. They re-balanced all the armor in open beta and lost like 1/3 of their players. You think they'd learn eventually.
I feel like i just have to put my couple cents in it, not like itll be heard or change anything, since not even 1 mod or someone from staff responded to this topic, but still...
My guild is small, and we all feel the backfire of removing AD form leadership, not talking about investments we made, cuz we are all legit players who hate exploiting. Most of our members are still under 3k, which doesnt stop us from doing crazy things on dungeons...problem is, even running those dungeons brings no profit at all with recent changes. Im talking here about the amount of time, grind, and AD sink in SH alone. 2,5m AD for a 1st lvl boon structure, which only goes up more and more with each building rank. Which btw, isnt even scaled to the size of the guild itself.
Leadership was a great way for a casual f2p to earn his living, thats for sure. Player didnt have to buy ZEN to buy anything, just wait for a couple weeks, like in my case (8 alts) to get some major AD to go on a spending spree... The problem here is, no content is actually worth doing cuz of how unbalanced amount of RAD it gives...not to mention, the formula is based on god knows what, cuz it doesnt even work as intended. In other topic i said that we were doing research, and even the "daily AD bonus on 2 1st runs on dungeon" isnt working properly. Not to mention it doesnt even scale to the difficulty of the run itself. That is 1 major flaw in this system, its made in a rush, without giving it a serious thinking. 2nd thing is, devs didnt stop the botters, cuz they just switched to other content to bot...see the GS farming and number of intances. I havent even heard of 1 banned accout which was grinding there, or rather, botting there.
I have to agree about AD sink, and bag space sink in module 6, its just out of this world (even tho u can still "farm" it daily). But hey, we wanted to get stronger, that was a nice boost...
The real problem with this thing is, it only encouraged more and more players to put macros in foundry. Adding to already massive cuts in content, caused by exploiters, it kinda killed the fun of "getting stronger". And yes, im intentionally mentioning exploiters, cuz we all know why they removed tradeable gear from the game - cuz of GG exploit...which btw wasnt even fixed, but removed completly from content...
Same thing was at the start with sellable lockbox keys...they havent taken care of gold botters then, just went for the easiest thing possible - making keys BoA...and they are continuing to go for the easiest way possible with every major shitstorm about exploit/bug/botting problem they encounter.
Exploit on GG? lets remove content. Exploits on foundry with macros for farming rp? make'em BoA then remove foundry completly as a feature (u guys do remember how long foundry was unaviable even as a daily) Botters farming leadership? easy-peasy, lets remove it.
The problem with those actions are as follows - even less legit players playing and enjoing the game. Becouse botters/exploiters are still running free and are exploiting/botting on different part of the content. Not to mention the whole idea of having 50 chars per account...thats the botterlure itself.
Mod 6 was a total failure when it comes to economy and gameplay. Why? Becouse botting rp, becouse uber-ggeared players getting that stuff for nothing, not to mention not knowing how to actually use it in the right way... I still remember being in a party of guys with 20k+ GS that couldnt do eDV...that was pathetic. And the trend continues on, becouse all ppl are focusing on is their gear, like that will give'em skills to play. And how do they do that? Stop playing , stop learning, but focus on farming/botting/whatever, just to get that damn RP "cuz we have to be orange to complete content"/ The circle closes itself...
Removing old gear was a given fact, seeing the increase in both stats of players and mobs...those bonuses were no longer valid cuz of the amount of buff it was giving... And yes, ill say it clearly that majority of old SWs are still running on dungeons or skirmishes in old sharrandar set, cuz its just freaking bugged giving'em godly advantage.
Other thing, all the exploits that werent fixed by previous team are still here. Im talking about dungeons. We all know the exploit on GWD ECC and other stuff we can use if the party is too weak to finish the run.
And no, mod 7 havent done that. It didnt made us weaker. On the contrary, i think with all our stat increase it was neccessary to buff mobs and bosses to the point they are now. Just to stop ppl from making every class a dps one. Now atleast tank is for tanking, DC for keeping party alive, CW does way better job CC-ing than dpsing...
But those changes require from players switching their builds, not to mention most of their gear/enchants. Thats the real problem behind mod 7, ppl just refuse to adapt, wishing and hoping mod 8 will be a lot easier. And it wont be, itll be even harder and more challanging than the content we already have.
Given that, itll encourage even more botters and exploiters, cuz players have lost a legit way of making AD to sustain the needs of upgrading gear and artifacts. Not to mention the prices on AH havent changed a bit, amount or required donations to SH havent changed a bit, amounts of RP needed havent changed but bazaar prices are still the same...
A normal, regular player who has around 2h time to play the game will be able maybe to earn like 24-48k AD per day focusing only on making that AD, not to mention running quests for the guild SH. Now translate that to gmops needed to up enchants/runes/artis...its pure madness.
Removing AD from leadership aybe discouraged some of the botters army to pour artificially earned AD to market, but in the process destroyed the economy as a whole...Why? Becouse botters will still be botting leadership for RP items, which in time will probably significantly drop in price, taking away legit players another way of making some ADs from selling it. And there arent many ways of making AD left...Another thing is, what about ppl who have bajilions of milions AD on their accs? They practically became gods now, and are able to monopolize majority of items on AH, like artifacts and profession assets. Blocking normal players from upgrading their characters significantly.
And as ppl say in zone chat - playerbase decreased, botters remained, unpunished and free to roam and bot however they please. Removing another part of the content wont help in getting rid of those "humans", they will simply change to another part of content thats bottable, unless u want to remove the game as a whole.
Next thing we will see will be probbaly removing skill nodes from all avoiable sources, cuz ppl are using macros or whatever else to farm those all day long. And what will be next? Captacha on pvp and dungeons cuz ppl already do have programs that allow them to get into the instance?
Problem with botters isnt solved, and sont be unless PWE puts some serious though on the problem. Adding that to the amount of exploits that are only added to the game with each new "content". And devs arent even able to fix minor bugs like the 1st prayer still bugged, we still have to do it twice to even do it. Stamina draining enchants in pvp...hell even bugged out boons from campains (most of us do know about avalanche and how much dmg it can do if someone is using it). So what will be next? Removing another part of content cuz devs cant fix it?
That is all form me for now. Althrou im still a beliver the mod 8 will somehow save the game, seeing what is done here i really am worried that i get my hopes up for nothing.
how about a pvp league and a pve league for those who dont like pvp. Have many diff tiers so its fair for all levels and the winner of each tier each day will be rewarded with a very generous amount of AD lets say 100k for lvl 70pvp winner 1 on 1, and 100kad for pve for the player who can clear out a prefixed mob the fastest? I can already see the ppl saying but but the highest geared pvp/pve player will win everytime, not so a player can only win the grand prize once a wee. Take note devs i jsut thought of this as i was typing it out took me 3 min, woulndt take much to create this it would give the players something fun to do and another way to earn AD for bending us over on the leadership nerf(if someone is going to complain about my idea, unless u can do better in 3 min dont bother)
The game definitively needs some economy changes. The dev team has removed one way of receiving AD, but did not change the economy along it. AD prices in game stores should decrease as a result.
It's important to notice that the game actually discourages you to have several characters. It takes too much grinding in campaigns and AD to bother for real. The only thing they're useful is the extra artifact.
It's true that you can get AD through dailies, but doing them all requires a lot of effort and time. If you're older than 20, you might not have it. And it's these people who have cash to support the game.
Also, as for Steam charts... God... players treat it as if it's some oracle how successful is the game. Bullears, it just shows you Steam connected players and completely ignores direct client. I know many players of different games who prefer direct client as Steam devours precious system resources to operate.
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zebularMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 15,270Community Moderator
Also, as for Steam charts... God... players treat it as if it's some oracle how successful is the game. Bullears, it just shows you Steam connected players and completely ignores direct client. I know many players of different games who prefer direct client as Steam devours precious system resources to operate.
As well, even if a user installs the game through Steam, that does not mean they have to play it with Steam Running. Just like you don't if you install through ARC. All you need to do is launch the Neverwinter.exe launcher directly instead of loading Steam or ARC to do so. So, even those who use Steam to install the game may not even be running Steam to play the game.
What I've also noticed is that the prices on the AH are related to the Zen Market and exchange rate, not just botters (IMO). Example , Coalescent Ward, on the zen market cost 1000 Zen. The exchange rate was 500 to 1 with Zen v AD. So $10.00 worth of Zen gave you 500,000 AD in return.
On the AH Coalescent Ward as of right now are running 448,000 AD. Before the change the same item was around 500,000 AD or more on the AH. The difference is that Zen is no longer exchanging for 500 x 1, it's now 447 x 1 or less. $10.00 worth of Zen get's you 447,000 at best.
Same with Companion's, etc, just about anything listed on the AH was directly related to the Zen cost on the Zen Market compared to what players asked for an item and the exchange rate for Zen.
One problem is the value of Zen has decreased while the price of Zen market items have stayed static. You can't run a successful business like that (IMO). It's like the Stock Market crashed and your only investment was AD.
Yes some items on the AH are coming down slightly but the value to buy Zen vs exchange has dropped as well so we're really in the same spot or worse. Only difference is that now Zen has less value for buying Zen to exchange it for AD and the cost of Zen Market's items are a greater cost considering the value of Zen per exchange rate has lowered.
Someone hinted at this already but the evidence is there. With out a doubt it cost MORE to play now than before even if the AH cost have drooped slightly. You get less for Zen vs AD exchange while Zen Market items are the same.
I've spent WAY to much real $ on this game already, I can't invest more to get less value considering it already cost me more to play this game in the last few months than any other I have played in years of playing them (with a sub and market).
That was my decision, I know but it was the only way to get 'geared' properly to be competitive with the rest of the player base and my guild in a P2W environment. How can anyone get geared with a 24K limit on AD when a GMOP cost 100,000 AD? My next upgrade for just one Artifact requires 3 GMOP plus others. A 100,000 AD GMOP was roughly $2.00 in cash, now it's roughly $2.37. I only expect that to go higher.
Like stated above, this is not the only game that is F2P and some of the others really ARE F2P with just 'fluff' market items that are not required to be competitive.
Players are spending a lot less on the Auction House, even with the prices going down, many items are just sitting there. I'm waiting for an Adventurer's Helper Pack to sell for some time now...
And the same goes for direct AD donation to the guild Stronghold coffer. It's either slowing down or even drying up completely. Do the Devs really think, that players will spend more money on this game, to compensate the loss of how much rAD they can make per day now?
Or that players will wait and just stick around until the Devs come up with some improvements... after Underdark is released... so may be somewhere next year?
I do believe in killing the messenger...
Want to know why?
Because it sends a message!
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tassedethe13Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 806Arc User
Underdark is announced for 2015 probably mid November
I'm not being mean, or negative, but the fact you lost your "core" players and rush to get 150 account is one reason why at the first difficulty, the paint is peeling. You may have recruited newcomers in neverwinter, the kind of guy who just has reached lvl 70 and searching for a guild but this kind of player have no attach to the game, generally spend some cash and then quit a few month later because they are bored, causing a huge turnover in guild ( this is why they leave without saying a "I quit" ).
The problem is that this game, with the direction it took, tends to attract only this kind of player. Easy come, Easy spend, Easy leave.
Building a guild is a long time process, find core players, and then add a few more by recruitment wave. I Hope your guild is not too much damaged, and I hope mod 8 will be the savior and will make come back many players.
I second this. I lead the Non Exploit guild True DragonBlood. We are a small-medium guild and have seen 0 difference since they took AD out of leadership. Yes, some people where up sad and they have all the right to be, but it made none quit the game yet. I do want to add that we always recruit actively and have people coming and going all the time, while we have a few core players and growing, but there is no significant different since this change. We love to run dungeons, do raids every night and generally the atmosphere in our guild is very friendly. Most of us are not just online to play, become rich and better asap (although everyone wants that) but most come online to just have a good time and help others. Like @Tassedethe13 said, it depends on what kind of players you are looking for and "buying" players with 30mil AD is often not the kind of player that is going to stick around when things get though. I do not question your leadership or am trying to be mean, we all have our own approach and requirements
Personally I do miss AD gain from leadership, but I play often enough to catch up with skirmishes and dungeons. I do hope that they will introduce new ways of earning AD soon! Perhaps HE's with a cap of AD each day, like we now have with skirms/dungeons. The dungeons and Bind on Equip sets with GOOD set bonuses should come back as well. I think we are all sick and tired of the same old 6 dungeons we have by now... At last, they should make it so that VIP applies to the Gateway. The people that actually pay for VIP have jobs, which means they are too busy to log into the game and won't benefit from their VIP bonuses in the gateway, which is just a honest rip off (ignoring the ZAX users who should significantly drop with AD gain gone from Leadership anyway). Since they are the source of your income, they deserve better than this.
OK, im tired of any/everyone who wants to blame LS armies for the AD changes. I've tried through posts in various threads to tell you all the truth so I'll sum it all up here and give you the full story.
First and foremost, the LS armies are the reaction to the demand for AD that cryptic itself created. Lets list in no particular order all the things cryptic has done that made the need for LS armies.
Making so many items bound.
Making enchanted keys bound.
Campaigns.
New refinement system.
Coalescent ward changes.
extremely high AD sinks.
Reagent changes.
RAD refining limit.
Artifacts.
Artifact equipment.
Mod 6.
Lets tackle these 1 at a time and explain how they forced the players into making LS armies regardless if its just a few toons or 50.
RAD refining limit. Probably the least bothersome change they made since at the time it was made you'd make far more ADs then RADs so lowering the limit from 50k to 24K a day didn't really hurt.
Making enchanted keys bound. This one was a major screw up that seriously started the need for ADs. Before they made them bound you could buy keys for around 10k-15k each and the exchange was was selling zen around 300AD per zen. The moment they made the keys bound the cost of everything started to rise. The reason is obvious and imho understandable.
Before the change demand was great but so was the supply so everything was cheap. After the change the demand was still great but the supply was petty much gone unless you bought keys with zen. So the exchange prices quickly shot up to 500ADs per zen. The prices on the AH started to rise because now the only way to get the items from the lockboxs was to buy them on the AH. Now be honest, in this situation what wold you do? Sell zen for 500AD? or buy keys and open boxes and sell the items you don't want for thousands if not millions of ADs? Its obvious to see which chice most people decided to go with since the exchange had over 2million listing for people looking to buy zen.
Also, I can only imagine the drop in zen buying this change made since people were now able to make more ADs with less zen.
New refining system. Ok this one is actually 3 changes in one. First, the old system was 4 lvl 1s to make a lvl2, 4 lvl2s to make a 3 on so on. yes, it took way more gems but you didn't need reagents, didn't need to rank up and only need cwards for the high level. Granted, it took for more Cwards but that takes us to part 2.
Coalescent ward changes. These lovely item used to not be bound and had a higher drop rate. So they were relatively cheap and easy to get even if you weren't lucky enough to get 1 from a coffer box. But with the refining system cryptic decided to make them bound to fight the "bots" ahh those pesky pesky bots. Now even though just making them BoP was more then enough to fight this problem cryptic didn't stop there. They also lowered the drop rate of the wards from the coffers and then just for poops and giggles also decided to add more items the coffer which in reality made the drop even lower.
Reagent changes. And part 3 in this lovely little kick in the collective players nuts trilogy. So while you now need much less gems to rank up you now need to find or buy these reagents in order to refine. Was never sure how this made the new system better since I now have to find the gems and a bunch of different reagents in order to make a higher level gem. But of course over time cryptic decided to mess the drop rates of reagents and where they drop. Forcing many to end up buying Mark and greater marks of potency from the AH or the bazaar neither of which is cheap. Which leads us to....
Extremely high AD sinks. I for one actually am all for AD sinks being in the game. But the problem is cryptic sets the prices so high that it makes you either not use them or curse at the high prices when you need to. I believe most don't use them unless they absolutely have to like buying Marks from the bazaar or....
Campaigns. Yep, these are really slick AD sinks but at least ones that are kind of useful, 400 more attack is 400 more attack. And while I don't have the exact amount that each zone costs I know that Sharandar for example costs 75k AD just to get all the boons and im gonna go out on a limb and say the other zones cost somewhere near that amount. So 4 areas worth of boons adds up and that's not counting the cost for other things like keys for their dungeons.
Making so many items bound. OK this is kind of obvious. If you make all the "wanted" items bound then that leaves pretty much HAMSTER to sell. Epics were a good source of ADs from selling them on the AH. This was good for the sellers and for the buyers. For the sellers, hey they made ADs. For the buyers it allowed them to get items they may not have otherwise been able to get for any number of reasons like never being able to do a dungeon run because they weren't geared well enough or being kicked for the same reason. And as always high demand plus high supply equals low cost.
Artifacts. These were kind of neat when they were introduced. But at the time you could only have 1. So while not cheap the level up it wasn't too bad. But now we have 4 that we can have. The cost becomes insane when you start adding up the cost to refine them, 11GMOPs per artifact? 1.1mill per artifact or 4.4mill to level all 4 up to mythic. And this doesn't include other items you might need to buys like reagents, wards, and RP items to rank them up.
Artifact equipment. While the cost of ranking these items up isn't as high as the artifacts they still can cost a pretty penny. And of course you lose all that money spent if you want to make one of the new guild artifact weapons since you need to salvage them to get an item needed to make those weapons and then guess what, you get to level up that nice new weapon so now its going to cost you even more money.
Mod 6. As pretty much everyone knows mod 6 flipped the game on its ear. All that nice gear you had pre mod 6 was now pretty much worthless. Before mod 6 I was decked out in CN gear and rocking mostly R5 gems and was able to do most of the content with no problems. Post mod 6, I found woefully under geared. Even with Elven gear, artifact necklace, belt, weapon, offhand and 4 artifacts refined to epic and R7 or gems I find myself needing to run and heal every now and then.
So there you go, these are the things cryptic has done over time to increase the demand for ADs while repeatedly reducing our ability to make ADs. Thus forcing most players to create LS armies (large or small) so they could keep up with the ever increasing demand.
At any point of the years cryptic could have made efforts to lower the demand and reduce the need for LS armies but they didn't. And if any of you really believes that this change has anything to do with bots....I got some magic beans to sell you.
For a long while it has been impossible to become strong enough just to do dungeons as you have to spent ( a damn lot) of time and real money to get your character just to survive. Devs please bring some real balance to this wonderful game. And not just one aspect but ALL aspects of the game
Also, as for Steam charts... God... players treat it as if it's some oracle how successful is the game. Bullears, it just shows you Steam connected players and completely ignores direct client. I know many players of different games who prefer direct client as Steam devours precious system resources to operate.
As well, even if a user installs the game through Steam, that does not mean they have to play it with Steam Running. Just like you don't if you install through ARC. All you need to do is launch the Neverwinter.exe launcher directly instead of loading Steam or ARC to do so. So, even those who use Steam to install the game may not even be running Steam to play the game.
People like to act as if Steam player counts don't matter too. It's still a good measure of how well a game is doing.
In Warframe the vast majority of players use the DE's launcher instead of Steam. They still have 20,000 players on steamcharts at six in the morning. Having only 2600 players on steamcharts for a F2P MMO still means your game is dying.
as a xbox one player, i came across this post and it just makes me feel sad for the future of the game.
They won't try anything like this on Xbox, on PC, we only got the difficulty changes for Elemental Evial, because they were releasing that module to the Xbox. That being said, i wouldn't be surprised, if we see at least some changes for the guild Stronghold building/upgrades resources requirements, when Strongholds is going to be released on Xbox too.
But removing AD from Leadership on the Xbox? Probably not going to happen.
I do believe in killing the messenger...
Want to know why?
Because it sends a message!
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vinceent1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,264Arc User
it should be completely bias if they dont remove AD from leadership on console. new cryptic record
I've played this game since beta. I was a "free to play" one, working hard to make my way thru the game spending so many, many hours. I lived all those changes, ad sinks, ref. system, artifacts, etc. and I could manage them, but when mod 6 came and most of my efforts became almost dust I said "it's enough".
That was my choice. I understand that a company needs to make money, but when I finally saw where things were heading I gave up. Life for no paying players became extremely hard and decided to leave.
I wanna say thanks to devs for all this time I played this wonderful game, for the online friends I made all across the world...I'll take all the good things and be grateful but I think they are killing slowly the goose of golden eggs.
Things in life must born, raise and die, I guess. But for sure there's life beyond Neverwinter.
P.D.: BLUNTFORCE, we will meet us in the next mmo, maybe in Black Desert Say hi to those amazing mates, specially Eon if he's still playing.
frozenfirevrMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,475Community Moderator
Well said @checkmatein3 That's exactly what I have in mind... The pre-mod days were awesome and I totally wasted 'em, not knowing what to do and how to do... None of my pre-mod characters even exist
steam logins at peak are 1/4 of what they were a week ago..... arc dosnt share its login infor but judging from steam figures everyone that joined for mod 7 has left already and its back down to the same level as july after the mod 6 debacle. ive been playing cryptic games solely apart from a short try at archeage but thats also a p2w korean grindfest. im currently looking for something with NW's comabt style but with some content or atleast not somuch grind before you can hang out and play
for the record anyone joining now needs to fork out about $us4000 to gear up off cryptic about 1/2 that from bots or spend 1250 or so days farming for 2 or so hrs a day to get 24k ad for anyone that wants to compare figures this is the steam chart http://steamcharts.com/app/109600 you will still get noobs joining but they arnt going to stay noone invests 4000 per char into a game with 3 endgame pve dungeons and 3 pvp maps no mater how good the combat system is, nw dosnt have a monopoly on that kind of system anymore either i have been discovering
but this was a obvious hack job, who disables the guy you get seals of triumph off on the same day that you release a new pvp armour set? like i was ok i pvp heaps i have piles on multiple chars but anyone who maybe thought about trying pvp with the new content, no ad from it and cant even get one of the components for the armour in game anymore
I am a guild leader of a moderately-sized, semi-casual guild. We managed to save the guild from the previously depressing mod 6 hack job, officer abandonment, and promote activity from June through the first 20 days of Mod 7. We have been able to recruit fun, active players of all levels and playstyles to help build the structures in Strongholds and hold a massive guild lottery event (giving out prizes totalling over 30Mil in AD). Of the 150ish accounts in the guild, over 70% were active within 1 week of play. We were always able to do DF successfully and store up fangs for the new armor sets. It was fun to come online and go in the guild hall and see 25-40 of your friends at any one time running around doing quests, dungeons, DF, whatever. The coffers went up from regular players and big donors, alike. There was a great spirit of comraderie. The mob change to reduce the dmg from mod 6 and the hp nerf helped even more. The previous sins of the developers (removing unbound, set-based epic gear from dungeons; implementing burdensome AD sinks in enchants, artifacts, artifact-gear, and strongholds; etc) were almost forgotten. Almost...
Then, the removal of leadership came. With Guild Hall 8 and Market Place 4 already collected for and waiting to be built (construction times are the enemy), the online participation of the guild has dropped to less than 15%. I have asked for a courtesy 'I quit' message if anyone does decide to leave the game. I have received many such emails already. Regardless of what the developers say or what forum moderators edit, the latest change COMBINED with all the previous changes has caused the immediate reduction of active play. There can be no waiting. Even with the new PvP, the game is in throes. The economy is filled with AD sinks everywhere. Those of us who have been around since open beta know of what the economy was like prior to AD sinks. You did not need salvage or Refine points or greater marks of anything because the enchant system was superior (yes, it was) and the unbound epic sets that were earned from dungeon runs had no rp investment and had tremendous party based bonuses. Run a set of T2s and get your epic set, or... buy a set from the AH from those who ran it and are selling it for some nice AD. Do you want different sets? Run different dungeons. There was plenty of space in bags (yes, enchants took up space to level up, but not as much as all the rp does). Everything was unbound until you equipped it. And you could run a plethora of dungeons. Were you bored of Castle Never and the epic T2 drops? Go run Pirate King. Or, Frozen Heart. Or, for a challenge with little reward...epic Dread Vault (dungeons that 2 modules of new players have no idea about).
But, through the small changes, there were no options for players to earn a good income of AD, legitimately. So, the result were leadership armies. Remove the source of AD from gear and implement AD sinks in artifacts and artifact gear (which now, serendipitously have the set bonuses, but weak ones in comparison to the old sets), and players turn to what they can get. Then, through the painful dance of leadership this and leadership that, the removal of AD has left no means by which players can earn AD. The market will correct itself on some things. But, the AD sinks are still everywhere in the game. So, donations to the coffer are down. Participation is down. Morale is down. And the only hope is mod 8, with a new class (maybe), a nerf to the paladin (my guess since new class is always overpowered at beginning), and the return of dungeons. But, this is not sufficient. The restoration of a free economy with no AD sinks must happen first, and quickly. I do not know how long even the most loyal of players can hold out for these changes. But, the proof is in the proverbial pudding. Our guild is suffering since.
Thank you for your time in reading this.
BLUNTFORCE TRAUMA. Officer in Guild Myrmidons
QUoting this entire post because you devs need to pull your collective heads out of your collective butts.
you think bot farming is what's keeping your profit margins low? No, you stupid morons, it's the fact that your managers want you to get stuff done on time rather than MAKE GOOD STUFF.
Gamers are sick of rush job BS. Give us some quality or just close the freaking game down and let us move on.
You people are a freaking embarrassment to developers everywhere right now.
You can't blame the developers for the stuff that is coming out. The only people you can blame is the upper management all the companies. The CEO has to have his 12M+ bonus at the end of every year and that is what it boils down to, the all mighty buck. Reduce, reuse is the management's motto which is why the Mod 6 areas are all copies of what already is.
Checkmatein3 made very valid points. Our guild players have gone on "vacation" as well. We would have 20 to 30 people on every evening and this past week, we have had at most 12 to 13. Hopefully, once they decide they would rather play than pay to play they will be back but I am NOT holding my breath on that one.
The real thing that needs to be changed on this AD discombobulation is that you have to make the AD as part of the chest pick up and not as a drop at the boss level. People have found a way to cheat other people out of their AD and keep more of it for themselves. They just don't pick up their drops until everyone is gone, then they get to keep their whole share while you, as the honest player, lose out on several thousand AD each day. Please make this change ASAP!!!!!
Last post on this issue for me. A simple fix could be to add AD as an award for completing objectives (missions). This is the ONLY MMO I have ever played that doesn't reward some amount of 'main' currency for completing a mission.
That would at least make it possible to make AD, even for a casual player that doesn't run Dungeons or PvP.
I also don't understand having a cap on AD when it's extremely hard to make it anyway, now at least. After hitting your AD cap for the day, why play any longer? At least increase it so it's possible to afford the AD sinks they have implemented to the game.
I'll tell you, the only thing I have done since this 'fix' is to log in and get my VIP rewards then back off. That won't change until something is done.
If it's not changed by the time a unmentioned game goes F2P later this month (11 day's), it's see ya later.
I tried running eLoL right now, and i'm being rubberbanded all over the place right back into the "red" areas. I have no idea why, since i did a skirmish run through the "new" skirmish with a lower level character without any issues. And i'm not that type of player, that just hang back and let the other team players do the work...
So unless they either improve whatever is causing these rubberbanding, or give us rAD through quests, i'm only getting rAD from invoking...
Comments
Things like enchantment nerfs, I feel like there should be buyback programs. "oh, your enchantment no longer does what you expected? Alright, you can trade it in for an equal rank enchantment of the same type."
Good idea. At least then I would not feel like I was being ripped off.
Not sure why PWE doesn't do things like that. They didn't do it in Blacklight either. They re-balanced all the armor in open beta and lost like 1/3 of their players. You think they'd learn eventually.
My guild is small, and we all feel the backfire of removing AD form leadership, not talking about investments we made, cuz we are all legit players who hate exploiting. Most of our members are still under 3k, which doesnt stop us from doing crazy things on dungeons...problem is, even running those dungeons brings no profit at all with recent changes. Im talking here about the amount of time, grind, and AD sink in SH alone. 2,5m AD for a 1st lvl boon structure, which only goes up more and more with each building rank. Which btw, isnt even scaled to the size of the guild itself.
Leadership was a great way for a casual f2p to earn his living, thats for sure. Player didnt have to buy ZEN to buy anything, just wait for a couple weeks, like in my case (8 alts) to get some major AD to go on a spending spree...
The problem here is, no content is actually worth doing cuz of how unbalanced amount of RAD it gives...not to mention, the formula is based on god knows what, cuz it doesnt even work as intended. In other topic i said that we were doing research, and even the "daily AD bonus on 2 1st runs on dungeon" isnt working properly. Not to mention it doesnt even scale to the difficulty of the run itself. That is 1 major flaw in this system, its made in a rush, without giving it a serious thinking.
2nd thing is, devs didnt stop the botters, cuz they just switched to other content to bot...see the GS farming and number of intances. I havent even heard of 1 banned accout which was grinding there, or rather, botting there.
I have to agree about AD sink, and bag space sink in module 6, its just out of this world (even tho u can still "farm" it daily). But hey, we wanted to get stronger, that was a nice boost...
The real problem with this thing is, it only encouraged more and more players to put macros in foundry. Adding to already massive cuts in content, caused by exploiters, it kinda killed the fun of "getting stronger". And yes, im intentionally mentioning exploiters, cuz we all know why they removed tradeable gear from the game - cuz of GG exploit...which btw wasnt even fixed, but removed completly from content...
Same thing was at the start with sellable lockbox keys...they havent taken care of gold botters then, just went for the easiest thing possible - making keys BoA...and they are continuing to go for the easiest way possible with every major shitstorm about exploit/bug/botting problem they encounter.
Exploit on GG? lets remove content.
Exploits on foundry with macros for farming rp? make'em BoA then remove foundry completly as a feature (u guys do remember how long foundry was unaviable even as a daily)
Botters farming leadership? easy-peasy, lets remove it.
The problem with those actions are as follows - even less legit players playing and enjoing the game. Becouse botters/exploiters are still running free and are exploiting/botting on different part of the content.
Not to mention the whole idea of having 50 chars per account...thats the botterlure itself.
Mod 6 was a total failure when it comes to economy and gameplay. Why? Becouse botting rp, becouse uber-ggeared players getting that stuff for nothing, not to mention not knowing how to actually use it in the right way...
I still remember being in a party of guys with 20k+ GS that couldnt do eDV...that was pathetic. And the trend continues on, becouse all ppl are focusing on is their gear, like that will give'em skills to play. And how do they do that? Stop playing , stop learning, but focus on farming/botting/whatever, just to get that damn RP "cuz we have to be orange to complete content"/ The circle closes itself...
Removing old gear was a given fact, seeing the increase in both stats of players and mobs...those bonuses were no longer valid cuz of the amount of buff it was giving... And yes, ill say it clearly that majority of old SWs are still running on dungeons or skirmishes in old sharrandar set, cuz its just freaking bugged giving'em godly advantage.
Other thing, all the exploits that werent fixed by previous team are still here. Im talking about dungeons. We all know the exploit on GWD ECC and other stuff we can use if the party is too weak to finish the run.
And no, mod 7 havent done that. It didnt made us weaker. On the contrary, i think with all our stat increase it was neccessary to buff mobs and bosses to the point they are now. Just to stop ppl from making every class a dps one. Now atleast tank is for tanking, DC for keeping party alive, CW does way better job CC-ing than dpsing...
But those changes require from players switching their builds, not to mention most of their gear/enchants. Thats the real problem behind mod 7, ppl just refuse to adapt, wishing and hoping mod 8 will be a lot easier. And it wont be, itll be even harder and more challanging than the content we already have.
Given that, itll encourage even more botters and exploiters, cuz players have lost a legit way of making AD to sustain the needs of upgrading gear and artifacts. Not to mention the prices on AH havent changed a bit, amount or required donations to SH havent changed a bit, amounts of RP needed havent changed but bazaar prices are still the same...
A normal, regular player who has around 2h time to play the game will be able maybe to earn like 24-48k AD per day focusing only on making that AD, not to mention running quests for the guild SH. Now translate that to gmops needed to up enchants/runes/artis...its pure madness.
Removing AD from leadership aybe discouraged some of the botters army to pour artificially earned AD to market, but in the process destroyed the economy as a whole...Why? Becouse botters will still be botting leadership for RP items, which in time will probably significantly drop in price, taking away legit players another way of making some ADs from selling it. And there arent many ways of making AD left...Another thing is, what about ppl who have bajilions of milions AD on their accs? They practically became gods now, and are able to monopolize majority of items on AH, like artifacts and profession assets. Blocking normal players from upgrading their characters significantly.
And as ppl say in zone chat - playerbase decreased, botters remained, unpunished and free to roam and bot however they please. Removing another part of the content wont help in getting rid of those "humans", they will simply change to another part of content thats bottable, unless u want to remove the game as a whole.
Next thing we will see will be probbaly removing skill nodes from all avoiable sources, cuz ppl are using macros or whatever else to farm those all day long. And what will be next? Captacha on pvp and dungeons cuz ppl already do have programs that allow them to get into the instance?
Problem with botters isnt solved, and sont be unless PWE puts some serious though on the problem. Adding that to the amount of exploits that are only added to the game with each new "content". And devs arent even able to fix minor bugs like the 1st prayer still bugged, we still have to do it twice to even do it. Stamina draining enchants in pvp...hell even bugged out boons from campains (most of us do know about avalanche and how much dmg it can do if someone is using it). So what will be next? Removing another part of content cuz devs cant fix it?
That is all form me for now. Althrou im still a beliver the mod 8 will somehow save the game, seeing what is done here i really am worried that i get my hopes up for nothing.
It's important to notice that the game actually discourages you to have several characters. It takes too much grinding in campaigns and AD to bother for real. The only thing they're useful is the extra artifact.
It's true that you can get AD through dailies, but doing them all requires a lot of effort and time. If you're older than 20, you might not have it. And it's these people who have cash to support the game.
Also, as for Steam charts... God... players treat it as if it's some oracle how successful is the game. Bullears, it just shows you Steam connected players and completely ignores direct client. I know many players of different games who prefer direct client as Steam devours precious system resources to operate.
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On the AH Coalescent Ward as of right now are running 448,000 AD. Before the change the same item was around 500,000 AD or more on the AH. The difference is that Zen is no longer exchanging for 500 x 1, it's now 447 x 1 or less. $10.00 worth of Zen get's you 447,000 at best.
Same with Companion's, etc, just about anything listed on the AH was directly related to the Zen cost on the Zen Market compared to what players asked for an item and the exchange rate for Zen.
One problem is the value of Zen has decreased while the price of Zen market items have stayed static. You can't run a successful business like that (IMO). It's like the Stock Market crashed and your only investment was AD.
Yes some items on the AH are coming down slightly but the value to buy Zen vs exchange has dropped as well so we're really in the same spot or worse. Only difference is that now Zen has less value for buying Zen to exchange it for AD and the cost of Zen Market's items are a greater cost considering the value of Zen per exchange rate has lowered.
Someone hinted at this already but the evidence is there. With out a doubt it cost MORE to play now than before even if the AH cost have drooped slightly. You get less for Zen vs AD exchange while Zen Market items are the same.
I've spent WAY to much real $ on this game already, I can't invest more to get less value considering it already cost me more to play this game in the last few months than any other I have played in years of playing them (with a sub and market).
That was my decision, I know but it was the only way to get 'geared' properly to be competitive with the rest of the player base and my guild in a P2W environment. How can anyone get geared with a 24K limit on AD when a GMOP cost 100,000 AD? My next upgrade for just one Artifact requires 3 GMOP plus others. A 100,000 AD GMOP was roughly $2.00 in cash, now it's roughly $2.37. I only expect that to go higher.
Like stated above, this is not the only game that is F2P and some of the others really ARE F2P with just 'fluff' market items that are not required to be competitive.
And the same goes for direct AD donation to the guild Stronghold coffer. It's either slowing down or even drying up completely. Do the Devs really think, that players will spend more money on this game, to compensate the loss of how much rAD they can make per day now?
Or that players will wait and just stick around until the Devs come up with some improvements... after Underdark is released... so may be somewhere next year?
Personally I do miss AD gain from leadership, but I play often enough to catch up with skirmishes and dungeons. I do hope that they will introduce new ways of earning AD soon! Perhaps HE's with a cap of AD each day, like we now have with skirms/dungeons. The dungeons and Bind on Equip sets with GOOD set bonuses should come back as well. I think we are all sick and tired of the same old 6 dungeons we have by now... At last, they should make it so that VIP applies to the Gateway. The people that actually pay for VIP have jobs, which means they are too busy to log into the game and won't benefit from their VIP bonuses in the gateway, which is just a honest rip off (ignoring the ZAX users who should significantly drop with AD gain gone from Leadership anyway). Since they are the source of your income, they deserve better than this.
First and foremost, the LS armies are the reaction to the demand for AD that cryptic itself created. Lets list in no particular order all the things cryptic has done that made the need for LS armies.
Making so many items bound.
Making enchanted keys bound.
Campaigns.
New refinement system.
Coalescent ward changes.
extremely high AD sinks.
Reagent changes.
RAD refining limit.
Artifacts.
Artifact equipment.
Mod 6.
Lets tackle these 1 at a time and explain how they forced the players into making LS armies regardless if its just a few toons or 50.
RAD refining limit.
Probably the least bothersome change they made since at the time it was made you'd make far more ADs then RADs so lowering the limit from 50k to 24K a day didn't really hurt.
Making enchanted keys bound.
This one was a major screw up that seriously started the need for ADs. Before they made them bound you could buy keys for around 10k-15k each and the exchange was was selling zen around 300AD per zen. The moment they made the keys bound the cost of everything started to rise. The reason is obvious and imho understandable.
Before the change demand was great but so was the supply so everything was cheap. After the change the demand was still great but the supply was petty much gone unless you bought keys with zen. So the exchange prices quickly shot up to 500ADs per zen. The prices on the AH started to rise because now the only way to get the items from the lockboxs was to buy them on the AH. Now be honest, in this situation what wold you do? Sell zen for 500AD? or buy keys and open boxes and sell the items you don't want for thousands if not millions of ADs? Its obvious to see which chice most people decided to go with since the exchange had over 2million listing for people looking to buy zen.
Also, I can only imagine the drop in zen buying this change made since people were now able to make more ADs with less zen.
New refining system.
Ok this one is actually 3 changes in one. First, the old system was 4 lvl 1s to make a lvl2, 4 lvl2s to make a 3 on so on. yes, it took way more gems but you didn't need reagents, didn't need to rank up and only need cwards for the high level. Granted, it took for more Cwards but that takes us to part 2.
Coalescent ward changes.
These lovely item used to not be bound and had a higher drop rate. So they were relatively cheap and easy to get even if you weren't lucky enough to get 1 from a coffer box. But with the refining system cryptic decided to make them bound to fight the "bots" ahh those pesky pesky bots. Now even though just making them BoP was more then enough to fight this problem cryptic didn't stop there. They also lowered the drop rate of the wards from the coffers and then just for poops and giggles also decided to add more items the coffer which in reality made the drop even lower.
Reagent changes.
And part 3 in this lovely little kick in the collective players nuts trilogy. So while you now need much less gems to rank up you now need to find or buy these reagents in order to refine. Was never sure how this made the new system better since I now have to find the gems and a bunch of different reagents in order to make a higher level gem. But of course over time cryptic decided to mess the drop rates of reagents and where they drop. Forcing many to end up buying Mark and greater marks of potency from the AH or the bazaar neither of which is cheap. Which leads us to....
Extremely high AD sinks.
I for one actually am all for AD sinks being in the game. But the problem is cryptic sets the prices so high that it makes you either not use them or curse at the high prices when you need to. I believe most don't use them unless they absolutely have to like buying Marks from the bazaar or....
Campaigns.
Yep, these are really slick AD sinks but at least ones that are kind of useful, 400 more attack is 400 more attack. And while I don't have the exact amount that each zone costs I know that Sharandar for example costs 75k AD just to get all the boons and im gonna go out on a limb and say the other zones cost somewhere near that amount. So 4 areas worth of boons adds up and that's not counting the cost for other things like keys for their dungeons.
Making so many items bound.
OK this is kind of obvious. If you make all the "wanted" items bound then that leaves pretty much HAMSTER to sell. Epics were a good source of ADs from selling them on the AH. This was good for the sellers and for the buyers. For the sellers, hey they made ADs. For the buyers it allowed them to get items they may not have otherwise been able to get for any number of reasons like never being able to do a dungeon run because they weren't geared well enough or being kicked for the same reason. And as always high demand plus high supply equals low cost.
Artifacts.
These were kind of neat when they were introduced. But at the time you could only have 1. So while not cheap the level up it wasn't too bad. But now we have 4 that we can have. The cost becomes insane when you start adding up the cost to refine them, 11GMOPs per artifact? 1.1mill per artifact or 4.4mill to level all 4 up to mythic. And this doesn't include other items you might need to buys like reagents, wards, and RP items to rank them up.
Artifact equipment.
While the cost of ranking these items up isn't as high as the artifacts they still can cost a pretty penny. And of course you lose all that money spent if you want to make one of the new guild artifact weapons since you need to salvage them to get an item needed to make those weapons and then guess what, you get to level up that nice new weapon so now its going to cost you even more money.
Mod 6.
As pretty much everyone knows mod 6 flipped the game on its ear. All that nice gear you had pre mod 6 was now pretty much worthless. Before mod 6 I was decked out in CN gear and rocking mostly R5 gems and was able to do most of the content with no problems. Post mod 6, I found woefully under geared. Even with Elven gear, artifact necklace, belt, weapon, offhand and 4 artifacts refined to epic and R7 or gems I find myself needing to run and heal every now and then.
So there you go, these are the things cryptic has done over time to increase the demand for ADs while repeatedly reducing our ability to make ADs. Thus forcing most players to create LS armies (large or small) so they could keep up with the ever increasing demand.
At any point of the years cryptic could have made efforts to lower the demand and reduce the need for LS armies but they didn't. And if any of you really believes that this change has anything to do with bots....I got some magic beans to sell you.
In Warframe the vast majority of players use the DE's launcher instead of Steam. They still have 20,000 players on steamcharts at six in the morning. Having only 2600 players on steamcharts for a F2P MMO still means your game is dying.
That being said, i wouldn't be surprised, if we see at least some changes for the guild Stronghold building/upgrades resources requirements, when Strongholds is going to be released on Xbox too.
But removing AD from Leadership on the Xbox?
Probably not going to happen.
I lived all those changes, ad sinks, ref. system, artifacts, etc. and I could manage them, but when mod 6 came and most of my efforts became almost dust I said "it's enough".
That was my choice. I understand that a company needs to make money, but when I finally saw where things were heading I gave up. Life for no paying players became extremely hard and decided to leave.
I wanna say thanks to devs for all this time I played this wonderful game, for the online friends I made all across the world...I'll take all the good things and be grateful but I think they are killing slowly the goose of golden eggs.
Things in life must born, raise and die, I guess. But for sure there's life beyond Neverwinter.
P.D.: BLUNTFORCE, we will meet us in the next mmo, maybe in Black Desert
Keiser.
you will still get noobs joining but they arnt going to stay noone invests 4000 per char into a game with 3 endgame pve dungeons and 3 pvp maps no mater how good the combat system is, nw dosnt have a monopoly on that kind of system anymore either i have been discovering
also i have no intention of coming back to a new mod to enjoy more AD sinks lmao
Checkmatein3 made very valid points. Our guild players have gone on "vacation" as well. We would have 20 to 30 people on every evening and this past week, we have had at most 12 to 13. Hopefully, once they decide they would rather play than pay to play they will be back but I am NOT holding my breath on that one.
The real thing that needs to be changed on this AD discombobulation is that you have to make the AD as part of the chest pick up and not as a drop at the boss level. People have found a way to cheat other people out of their AD and keep more of it for themselves. They just don't pick up their drops until everyone is gone, then they get to keep their whole share while you, as the honest player, lose out on several thousand AD each day. Please make this change ASAP!!!!!
That would at least make it possible to make AD, even for a casual player that doesn't run Dungeons or PvP.
I also don't understand having a cap on AD when it's extremely hard to make it anyway, now at least. After hitting your AD cap for the day, why play any longer? At least increase it so it's possible to afford the AD sinks they have implemented to the game.
I'll tell you, the only thing I have done since this 'fix' is to log in and get my VIP rewards then back off. That won't change until something is done.
If it's not changed by the time a unmentioned game goes F2P later this month (11 day's), it's see ya later.
And i'm not that type of player, that just hang back and let the other team players do the work...
So unless they either improve whatever is causing these rubberbanding, or give us rAD through quests, i'm only getting rAD from invoking...