Even with the companion cost changes and AD earning/refining changes you're probably looking at ~ three to four months worth of playing the game for ~ two to three hours a day to buy and upgrade your companions. And a lot of that is because there are some good companions in lockboxes that are cheaper to buy at epic than upgrade from rare or uncommon.
That might be true (I really don't know) but so what? Players are not entitled to have all epic companions; they have to earn them or get lucky. At least now it will actually be achievable and worthwhile to upgrade them, even to blue. I have been playing this game since beta and have NEVER upgraded a companion. Not once! Why? Because it was so hard to get AD that I had to spend it on the most necessary needs in order to continue progressing. For the first time, players like me and many casual players will actually be able to own a coalescent ward or an epic companion. It simply wasn't possible unless you botted, cheated, whipped out the credit card, or spent half your life in game playing. For a free to play game, that's no model.
It should be cheaper to get better companions from lockboxes; they have to have a benefit or there's no point to opening them, and it's all random anyway. These now will at least make it reasonably POSSIBLE to upgrade a companion and create better enchantments for players who don't have all day to play or want to spend hundreds of dollars. If they keep doing things like this, people like me might actually spend real money some day.
Earn reasonable amounts of AD by actually playing the game?! Whodathunkit?!
have you ever seen just what can do 1 active companion with ( rank 9 and above) and level 12 bondings? IS like you have a 6th player in the dungeon. THE owner with the above i described through the companion gift deal the double damage than should be. I am in to reduce more the price to upgrade to legendary but this strange stuff need to stop companion is here to help not make you deal the double damage thanks.
ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
Keep in mind with the costing changes, they can always go lower. If these aren't enough, they can keep dropping them.
But it would be murder/death/kill to get in a situation where they dropped prices, then found it to be too low and have to raise them up. They'd never hear the end of it.
So is this the floor for companion prices? I hope not. I still think they're a bit on the high side. I also think mount upgrade costs need to be addressed, and the entire gear transmutation and fashion aspect needs a complete overhaul, not just a cost reduction.
I think it looks pretty reasonable, but is there any way we can get the AD earning back for Foundry content? I am having fun creating new quests, but nobody is running the content anymore w/o the AD bump.. kinda makes it like we're just creating quests for ourselves..
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vinceent1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,264Arc User
edited November 2015
LOL
so what i have learned -
everybody who used leadership to get AD was exploiter . are you kidding me?
stronghold prices - the same
pvp rewards - still very low
october - average player get 60000 ad per day. Who do you think will believe it? maybe including bots selling refinements ....
its only few AD per day more, it dont help player to gear up. its not enough. maybe it dont look at bad on the paper. you can send this by email to all former players, but its not enough make them regural players again. sorry
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
I think it looks pretty reasonable, but is there any way we can get the AD earning back for Foundry content? I am having fun creating new quests, but nobody is running the content anymore w/o the AD bump.. kinda makes it like we're just creating quests for ourselves..
Well blame the DEVs. I'd like to try out foundries but simply have no time anymore.
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darkstarcrashMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,382Arc User
Great news! Thanks for listening your players! I'm looking for limitation of player numbers in all zones. 40 people in one innstance is killing gameplay and cousing lots of lags.
I would like some clarification "In July, PC players were earning 171,000 AD per player." 171k per month? that means it would take 9 months to but something the economy values at 1mil AD (guess what the prices are still that high, you have not corrected market prices)
I think it is per day. Most ppl I know where making that money (me included when I was able to max the rotations on all my alts).
"But if you take out the Leadership exploits, it was only 34,000 AD per player!" What exploit, YOU programmed into the game the ability to generate AD with leadership tasks. Using it was playing the game not exploiting anything. It was the ONLY profession that gave value to players. YOU took it off us, saying blah, blah bots, the change has not impacted botters, they moved to other sources. It DID hurt players.
At the moment, I am earning around 60-70 k AD per day. So I lost about 60% of my earnings. Most of the prices went down by 50% or more. On some things I got actually more buying power, on other I lost around 10%.. I hardly see how this is a problem.
True that calling that "exploit" is misleading. At the same time, I think they refer to people that were running 10 accounts with 50 alts on them doing only Leadership. And that is exploiting.
"In October, after the exploits were addressed, and the new AD sources were in place, the average was 60,000 AD per player. So most players were making a lot more." There you go again with exploits, buy a dictionary and look the word up. I do not earn more I earn much much less in much much more time. Can anyone players please respond that they are better off. I think this number is made up nonsense (much like the % chance to refine).
Again, before you could earn 24k AD per alt without logging in a single minute for days. Now you have to play in order to gain those AD. If anything, this should have been implemented at the very beginning and not half way through.
I'm not a fan of the increased refinement cap. But if they claim that's the average amount of AD we make, I suppose the raise makes sense. I just wonder if that's not a bit too much of an AD increase on the market. If it is, casual players will suffer from this if they cannot keep up with the new refinement cap each day. But we'll see.
I was hoping something would be done about the campaign costs, but the AD increase from playing activities might be enough to make up for not changing those prices.
All in all I'm happy something got done. I still have a few things left on my wishlist, but these are definitely very welcome changes. Keep up the good work
Wild guess: they did that because a large number of account has 3 or less alt (playing accounts). Therefore, they would benefit the most from this.
Ppl with more alts (I have 8) will benefit less (I happen to hit 24 on 4 or 5 alts only when I run dungeons all day long).
Clarification: are the salvaging rAD amounts being changed?
No, salvage costs are clearly not included in the increases, only the base and bonus AD for running dungeons and skirmishes. It's still a nice increase:
If you figure a single character runs 2 eLoLs and 2 KRs -- and is pretty unlucky and only gets one extra boss drop, with all 5 salvageable gear being jewelry -- this is their daily AD: Invoking: 3k 2x eLoL: 6.8k 2x KR: 3.6k Salvage: 15k Total: 28.4k rAD (only 24k rAD salvaged)
New amounts: Invoking: 3k 2x eLoL: 10.2k 2x KR: 5.4k Salvage: 15k Total: 33.6k rAD
So an effective 18% increase, but all of it is salvageable daily, with room below the cap if they want to run an extra dungeon, or get luckier with gear drops.
Clarification: are the salvaging rAD amounts being changed?
No, salvage costs are clearly not included in the increases, only the base and bonus AD for running dungeons and skirmishes. It's still a nice increase:
If you figure a single character runs 2 eLoLs and 2 KRs -- and is pretty unlucky and only gets one extra boss drop, with all 5 salvageable gear being jewelry -- this is their daily AD: Invoking: 3k 2x eLoL: 6.8k 2x KR: 3.6k Salvage: 15k Total: 28.4k rAD
New amounts: Invoking: 3k 2x eLoL: 10.2k 2x KR: 5.4k Salvage: 15k Total: 33.6k rAD
So an effective 18% increase, but all of it is salvageable daily, with room below the cap if they want to run an extra dungeon, or get luckier with gear drops.
As I wrote in another 3d, this looks like a move for accounts with low number of alts. And a welcomed one, in my opinion
Please answer my question, if you are under level 70 and thus dont have access to epic items, how are you supposed to get AD? It seems like there are a lot of items that would be nice to have sub level 70 but would be lame after 70...but we can't afford them...how do sub 70s get AD besides Daily/Skirm/PvP and invocation? I'm on the xbox btw...I'm asking a serious question as I only get around 15-18k a day....39k is unheard of
Even with the companion cost changes and AD earning/refining changes you're probably looking at ~ three to four months worth of playing the game for ~ two to three hours a day to buy and upgrade your companions. And a lot of that is because there are some good companions in lockboxes that are cheaper to buy at epic than upgrade from rare or uncommon.
That might be true (I really don't know) but so what? Players are not entitled to have all epic companions; they have to earn them or get lucky. At least now it will actually be achievable and worthwhile to upgrade them, even to blue. I have been playing this game since beta and have NEVER upgraded a companion. Not once! Why? Because it was so hard to get AD that I had to spend it on the most necessary needs in order to continue progressing. For the first time, players like me and many casual players will actually be able to own a coalescent ward or an epic companion. It simply wasn't possible unless you botted, cheated, whipped out the credit card, or spent half your life in game playing. For a free to play game, that's no model.
It should be cheaper to get better companions from lockboxes; they have to have a benefit or there's no point to opening them, and it's all random anyway. These now will at least make it reasonably POSSIBLE to upgrade a companion and create better enchantments for players who don't have all day to play or want to spend hundreds of dollars. If they keep doing things like this, people like me might actually spend real money some day.
Earn reasonable amounts of AD by actually playing the game?! Whodathunkit?!
I wasn't saying it's a bad thing that lockbox companions are cheaper; I'm saying that's the only thing keeping the cost of getting 5 epic companions at the (still unreasonable) price it costs now . Technically there isn't a point to opening those boxes either. The companions that you're able to get on the AH are there because one person lucked out and 100+ whiffed and got cultist emblems. The reason why we're able to get our companions on the cheap are because there are really stupid people out there that are basically subsidizing companion costs with their VIP keys.
And frankly speaking this will have no affect on your ability to own a companion if you play casually. If you're playing casually you should've been buying all your companions already at epic or rare off the AH anyways, and you still should be.
The thing is that companions are one of the more marginal upgrades until you get them to epic. Upgrading all your artifacts will cost less and result in better gains. Getting rank 7s will be dirt cheap relative to companions. Arguing that the companion cost changes actually help casual players is a very clear cut example of people convincing themselves they're getting a deal when they're getting screwed.
Please answer my question, if you are under level 70 and thus dont have access to epic items, how are you supposed to get AD? It seems like there are a lot of items that would be nice to have sub level 70 but would be lame after 70...but we can't afford them...how do sub 70s get AD besides Daily/Skirm/PvP and invocation? I'm on the xbox btw...I'm asking a serious question as I only get around 15-18k a day....39k is unheard of
I do not play on the xBoX. But between lvl 60 and 70 you should have little or nothing to buy. On the PC version, the pieces you need costs 300, 400 AD in most cases.
I have no idea how much the enchantments cost though.
The thing is that companions are one of the more marginal upgrades until you get them to epic. Upgrading all your artifacts will cost less and result in better gains.
A weapon arti requires 4.5 million RP. If I consider that a stack of peridot is at 40 k AD and in double RP weekend is worth 99k RP, that means that a single arti costs a little more than 1.8 million AD. At current prices. Obviously, you do not BUY all those RP, but that is the worth of a legendary arti in AH prices. Upgrading ALL artifacts is a multiple of that.
So, it is not true that refining all arti costs less.
The problem is: a single companion upgrade from purple to orange costs like half of the RP of an arti and it is worthwile only for the very FIRST companion (becuase you get the 15% stat increase on the active companion). It becomes incredibly expensive from the second companion onward.
Well done. I had a feeling it was only time until you addressed some of the high AD prices on some things. Also increasing the AD we get for daily events is fantastic!
One thing I think should also be adjusted is the AD cost of the random Artifact Weapon power. 50k AD for a random power seems like a slightly broken system. I'd say 10k for random, or 100k and we can pick the power.
If the salvage ADs keeps the same, we will still earn less ADs than before.
You mean, we will earn less AD than when we had Leadership armies? We should earn less AD.
Meh.
Even relative to what we earned without AD armies we've got much less purchasing power than we did before the removal of AD from leadership. Most of what has softened that blow has been any AD anyone had hoarded before the price drops hit.
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theycallmetomuMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,861Arc User
they should just retire the AD as a currency entirely. Switch over to AD+! Everyone who has wealth hoarded as AD will be hit pretty badly though. Zen prices skyrocket, go to 500 per. Until eventually, all the AD is out of the economy, and the ZAX is changed to the new currency.
The thing is that companions are one of the more marginal upgrades until you get them to epic. Upgrading all your artifacts will cost less and result in better gains.
A weapon arti requires 4.5 million RP. If I consider that a stack of peridot is at 40 k AD and in double RP weekend is worth 99k RP, that means that a single arti costs a little more than 1.8 million AD. At current prices. Obviously, you do not BUY all those RP, but that is the worth of a legendary arti in AH prices. Upgrading ALL artifacts is a multiple of that.
So, it is not true that refining all arti costs less.
The problem is: a single companion upgrade from purple to orange costs like half of the RP of an arti and it is worthwile only for the very FIRST companion (becuase you get the 15% stat increase on the active companion). It becomes incredibly expensive from the second companion onward.
That's why I said artifacts and not artifact equipment.
Getting four artifacts to rank 139 will cost you ~2.5 million if you buy all your RP (and do it during a double RP event, which frankly is about the only time you ever do it anyways). Could probably factor in another 200-400k for wards. Still cheaper than companions.
Honestly just from dragonhoard enchant drops +dragons runs you can get at least one piece to legendary each 2x RP event anyways (and the only really important one is your mainhand).
I applaud the efforts to improve the economy in this game. Thank you! I agree with rewarding AD for actual game play. I would prefer to see more AD available for solo play content. Wasn't there a promise that this would be looked into back when the first big AD changes were made? For example, I'd like to see all the campaign zone dailies offer AD rewards. The rewards for weeklies are nice, but not enough for solo players compared to those who play dungeons and skirmishes. I would have rather seen something like a 200AD reward for dailies in Dread Ring, Sharandar, Ice Wind Dale, and Well of Dragons, than the 50% increase to weeklies and party content (dungeons and skirmishes). 200AD isn't much by itself, but it could add up nicely if you could get it for each daily quest, it would reward AD for playing content, and there's a much wider variety of those daily quests than there is for dungeons and skirmishes, making it feel less grindy. People could play the content they enjoy, and earn AD while doing so.
Someone know about the patch notes? They said they would come out today, right?
I have noticed they tend to post them around 5 pm PST.
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mutjinninjaMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 93Arc User
I enjoy the 50% increase to the content in the game. Now we just need content that doesn't make us want to scream. Having a choice of 5 dungeons (let's be honest, GWD is terrible) to run again and again and again leaves me feeling like it's a chore to gain AD. I wait with bated breath for the return of ALL the dungeons (not just like 3 that have been reworked after this unholy amount of time) so I can feel like I'm actually enjoying the game while making AD.
The rest of the changes are meh. The companions are still far, far too expensive. I'm sorry but a 9% increase from my ioun stone or a 1% more chance and 1 more poison stack on the death slaad are NOT worth such a monumental AD cost. It should be more like:
The active bonus changes and increases are simply not astounding and aren't worth saving enough to build a regular-greater level enchant. I'd rather take the million you want me to spend on a legendary stone and grab something from the zen store or another weapon enchant or a few coal wards instead. If you're going to charge us like crazy to upgrade a companion (and these prices are still much too high), at least make it worth it. 15% of the companion's stats isn't worth it.
Still nothing for solo players. I see nothing here to get excited about, its still more of the same. Those who can stand to run the same content dungeons over and over and over again, get everything. Those who choose to run foundries or campaigns get nothing.
Okay, first of all I'm not okay with you calling people who used leadership exploiters. Botters, sure, but anyone who used leadership to gain AD was an exploiter? That's some bullroar right there. Accept responsibility for what is in effect, your (Cryptic's not the OP's) doing, don't label all players who used a poorly designed system as you'd intended (2+ years with repeated small tweaks, leadership packs in lockboxes, and forums with sanctioned guides advocating its use) as cheaters.
Second, while I'm sure these changes will be mostly well received, you're still greatly missing the mark in my opinion. Specifically two things, one is the lack of earning potential for both casuals and new players, and the other is the still horrible grind from 60-70.
It's fine to push players toward group content in an MMO, it's not fine to practically prevent their ability to earn AD if they don't want to/can't do group content regularly. Even assuming a player has a level 70 character that can solo all of the weeklies and invoke 5 times a day, every day, that's only, what? 39k AD/week? Or less than 6k/day and they could be spending hours running campaign dailies that likely cost them AD to continue doing. The refinement limit increase is pretty meaningless for them. Or how about the low levels who can run skirmishes, pvp, and dungeons until they're blue in the face and still not reach the 24k/day limit? In the case of very low level characters they don't even come remotely close, and many don't even realize that AD has any significant value because the game doesn't properly explain that early on. Your AD system still punishes casuals and new players.
And there's still no recourse for that mind numbing 60-70 grind, you quite simply need to address this in a meaningful way. Strongholds are not the solution, nor is trickling some of the new content to them unless your plan to fix it is for it to be fixed by sometime in 2020. I would suggest either dropping some of the older module content down to level 60, or preferably redoing EE content so that it's not just a bunch of dull vigilance quests with a threadbare storyline that can't even carry the characters to level 68, let alone 70. You're driving away newer/returning players by leaving it as it is.
Finally, you're still not addressing the REAL problem with the AD system in this game, it's not that there are/were means of earning AD without playing the game. I personally hate that, but it wasn't the issue, it's that multiple characters/accounts allow players to easily circumvent your AD earning limits. While not a problem right now, as you (hopefully) add in more means of earning AD again so the game becomes more casual friendly, you risk recreating the exact same situation again where players who work the system have a ridiculously huge advantage over those who just play the game. This game needs an account-wide refining limit, preferably with a soft cap that makes low levels of AD extremely easy to gain but higher levels increasingly more difficult rather than a hard cap, and you need to take steps to make it more difficult for botters to have and run multiple accounts.
The ZAX was unavailable to me for quite some time, and I question as another has about how you get PC players getting 34,000 AD each. In a conversation with my guild overlord, half of what you claim were 'bots' seem to be disciplined players logging in like clockwork to do the Gateway and daily invocations to get the AD's to a reasonable level for working the Auction House et al. As far as I can recall, I have never made it to 34000, and when I got anywhere near it, I had to spend most of it in the Wondrous Bazaar to get scrolls, or refining material(s).
As for the suggested changes, they seem reasonable for balancing, but it is a beast yet to be seen for better or worse.
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darkstarcrashMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,382Arc User
edited November 2015
If it's not worth upgrading companions, then...don't?
I've bought a few epic companions from lockboxes or Zen market -- rust monster and flame sprite -- and gotten a few at Winter Festival. The rest are mostly blues, and I'm fine with that.
After all, the only place you really need to be BiS is pvp, and you can't use companions in most areas of pvp.
The price drop does mean that I'll upgrade a few more green companions that I like to blue, and maybe even consider upgrading beyond that, but I don't feel any more obligated to upgrade to legendary than I did before.
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But it would be murder/death/kill to get in a situation where they dropped prices, then found it to be too low and have to raise them up. They'd never hear the end of it.
So is this the floor for companion prices? I hope not. I still think they're a bit on the high side. I also think mount upgrade costs need to be addressed, and the entire gear transmutation and fashion aspect needs a complete overhaul, not just a cost reduction.
But these are all steps in the right direction.
NW-DM9Pj62ZK 'Bear with Me'
NW-DOPPZAYKQ 'Retirement Plans'
NW-DKJMLS8OQ 'Sleepy in Cea Tull'
so what i have learned -
everybody who used leadership to get AD was exploiter . are you kidding me?
stronghold prices - the same
pvp rewards - still very low
october - average player get 60000 ad per day. Who do you think will believe it? maybe including bots selling refinements ....
its only few AD per day more, it dont help player to gear up. its not enough. maybe it dont look at bad on the paper. you can send this by email to all former players, but its not enough make them regural players again. sorry
I'm looking for limitation of player numbers in all zones. 40 people in one innstance is killing gameplay and cousing lots of lags.
Most ppl I know where making that money (me included when I was able to max the rotations on all my alts). At the moment, I am earning around 60-70 k AD per day. So I lost about 60% of my earnings.
Most of the prices went down by 50% or more.
On some things I got actually more buying power, on other I lost around 10%..
I hardly see how this is a problem.
True that calling that "exploit" is misleading. At the same time, I think they refer to people that were running 10 accounts with 50 alts on them doing only Leadership. And that is exploiting. Again, before you could earn 24k AD per alt without logging in a single minute for days. Now you have to play in order to gain those AD.
If anything, this should have been implemented at the very beginning and not half way through.
Lethinath - DC
Fayn Fiddler - HR
Jean Fiddler - OP
Quinn Fiddler - TR
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Bogus Skullslicker - GF
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Alea - GWF
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Therefore, they would benefit the most from this.
Ppl with more alts (I have 8) will benefit less (I happen to hit 24 on 4 or 5 alts only when I run dungeons all day long).
Lethinath - DC
Fayn Fiddler - HR
Jean Fiddler - OP
Quinn Fiddler - TR
Tre'Davious Flynn - SW
Bogus Skullslicker - GF
Vanhankaupunginselk - CW
Alea - GWF
Noble Misfits
If you figure a single character runs 2 eLoLs and 2 KRs -- and is pretty unlucky and only gets one extra boss drop, with all 5 salvageable gear being jewelry -- this is their daily AD:
Invoking: 3k
2x eLoL: 6.8k
2x KR: 3.6k
Salvage: 15k
Total: 28.4k rAD (only 24k rAD salvaged)
New amounts:
Invoking: 3k
2x eLoL: 10.2k
2x KR: 5.4k
Salvage: 15k
Total: 33.6k rAD
So an effective 18% increase, but all of it is salvageable daily, with room below the cap if they want to run an extra dungeon, or get luckier with gear drops.
Lethinath - DC
Fayn Fiddler - HR
Jean Fiddler - OP
Quinn Fiddler - TR
Tre'Davious Flynn - SW
Bogus Skullslicker - GF
Vanhankaupunginselk - CW
Alea - GWF
Noble Misfits
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And frankly speaking this will have no affect on your ability to own a companion if you play casually. If you're playing casually you should've been buying all your companions already at epic or rare off the AH anyways, and you still should be.
The thing is that companions are one of the more marginal upgrades until you get them to epic. Upgrading all your artifacts will cost less and result in better gains. Getting rank 7s will be dirt cheap relative to companions. Arguing that the companion cost changes actually help casual players is a very clear cut example of people convincing themselves they're getting a deal when they're getting screwed.
On the PC version, the pieces you need costs 300, 400 AD in most cases.
I have no idea how much the enchantments cost though.
Lethinath - DC
Fayn Fiddler - HR
Jean Fiddler - OP
Quinn Fiddler - TR
Tre'Davious Flynn - SW
Bogus Skullslicker - GF
Vanhankaupunginselk - CW
Alea - GWF
Noble Misfits
At current prices.
Obviously, you do not BUY all those RP, but that is the worth of a legendary arti in AH prices.
Upgrading ALL artifacts is a multiple of that.
So, it is not true that refining all arti costs less.
The problem is: a single companion upgrade from purple to orange costs like half of the RP of an arti and it is worthwile only for the very FIRST companion (becuase you get the 15% stat increase on the active companion).
It becomes incredibly expensive from the second companion onward.
Lethinath - DC
Fayn Fiddler - HR
Jean Fiddler - OP
Quinn Fiddler - TR
Tre'Davious Flynn - SW
Bogus Skullslicker - GF
Vanhankaupunginselk - CW
Alea - GWF
Noble Misfits
One thing I think should also be adjusted is the AD cost of the random Artifact Weapon power. 50k AD for a random power seems like a slightly broken system. I'd say 10k for random, or 100k and we can pick the power.
Thanks for the hard work guys!
Even relative to what we earned without AD armies we've got much less purchasing power than we did before the removal of AD from leadership. Most of what has softened that blow has been any AD anyone had hoarded before the price drops hit.
Down with the oligarchy! Viva la revolution!
Getting four artifacts to rank 139 will cost you ~2.5 million if you buy all your RP (and do it during a double RP event, which frankly is about the only time you ever do it anyways). Could probably factor in another 200-400k for wards. Still cheaper than companions.
Honestly just from dragonhoard enchant drops +dragons runs you can get at least one piece to legendary each 2x RP event anyways (and the only really important one is your mainhand).
I'm hoping
and...
Someone know about the patch notes?
They said they would come out today, right?
The raise AD Daily Cap is a long time comunity request. Same from lower AD prices of Upgrade.
It is good for players and good for game.
The rest of the changes are meh. The companions are still far, far too expensive. I'm sorry but a 9% increase from my ioun stone or a 1% more chance and 1 more poison stack on the death slaad are NOT worth such a monumental AD cost. It should be more like:
White-Green: 10k
Green-Blue: 50-100k
Blue-Purple: 150-250k
Purple-Orange: 250-500k
The active bonus changes and increases are simply not astounding and aren't worth saving enough to build a regular-greater level enchant. I'd rather take the million you want me to spend on a legendary stone and grab something from the zen store or another weapon enchant or a few coal wards instead. If you're going to charge us like crazy to upgrade a companion (and these prices are still much too high), at least make it worth it. 15% of the companion's stats isn't worth it.
Second, while I'm sure these changes will be mostly well received, you're still greatly missing the mark in my opinion. Specifically two things, one is the lack of earning potential for both casuals and new players, and the other is the still horrible grind from 60-70.
It's fine to push players toward group content in an MMO, it's not fine to practically prevent their ability to earn AD if they don't want to/can't do group content regularly. Even assuming a player has a level 70 character that can solo all of the weeklies and invoke 5 times a day, every day, that's only, what? 39k AD/week? Or less than 6k/day and they could be spending hours running campaign dailies that likely cost them AD to continue doing. The refinement limit increase is pretty meaningless for them. Or how about the low levels who can run skirmishes, pvp, and dungeons until they're blue in the face and still not reach the 24k/day limit? In the case of very low level characters they don't even come remotely close, and many don't even realize that AD has any significant value because the game doesn't properly explain that early on. Your AD system still punishes casuals and new players.
And there's still no recourse for that mind numbing 60-70 grind, you quite simply need to address this in a meaningful way. Strongholds are not the solution, nor is trickling some of the new content to them unless your plan to fix it is for it to be fixed by sometime in 2020. I would suggest either dropping some of the older module content down to level 60, or preferably redoing EE content so that it's not just a bunch of dull vigilance quests with a threadbare storyline that can't even carry the characters to level 68, let alone 70. You're driving away newer/returning players by leaving it as it is.
Finally, you're still not addressing the REAL problem with the AD system in this game, it's not that there are/were means of earning AD without playing the game. I personally hate that, but it wasn't the issue, it's that multiple characters/accounts allow players to easily circumvent your AD earning limits. While not a problem right now, as you (hopefully) add in more means of earning AD again so the game becomes more casual friendly, you risk recreating the exact same situation again where players who work the system have a ridiculously huge advantage over those who just play the game. This game needs an account-wide refining limit, preferably with a soft cap that makes low levels of AD extremely easy to gain but higher levels increasingly more difficult rather than a hard cap, and you need to take steps to make it more difficult for botters to have and run multiple accounts.
Okay, Panic.
As for the suggested changes, they seem reasonable for balancing, but it is a beast yet to be seen for better or worse.
I've bought a few epic companions from lockboxes or Zen market -- rust monster and flame sprite -- and gotten a few at Winter Festival. The rest are mostly blues, and I'm fine with that.
After all, the only place you really need to be BiS is pvp, and you can't use companions in most areas of pvp.
The price drop does mean that I'll upgrade a few more green companions that I like to blue, and maybe even consider upgrading beyond that, but I don't feel any more obligated to upgrade to legendary than I did before.