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Update on the Trade Bar Store (Xbox One)
yetweallfalldown
Member Posts: 134 Arc User
On Tuesday, February 10, the Coalescent Wards, Preservations Wards and Blood Rubies were removed from the Trade Bar Store in the Xbox One version of Neverwinter. We wanted to go over why the decision was made and the process of communicating this change to the community.
First off, let’s discuss the communication. We as a company failed to distribute this information before we made the change. For that, we apologize. It has always been our desire to be transparent with the community in an effort to ensure that you have the necessary information for our game. However, this change wasn’t something that was planned and withheld. Both the PC and Xbox version operate in different ways especially in regards to their economies. Similar to real-world economies, there are highs and lows mixed with hundreds of variables. In this particular situation, we made the decision to remove the wards and rubies late in the cycle of our communication and after we already communicated the previous changes that were available in the PC version of Underdark. This last minute change did not give us the opportunity to distribute that message to the players before the launch of our expansion. In the future, we will work towards giving a larger timeframe to properly communicate this message to you.
Similar to the adjustments that we made with the AD economy, our team is in the process of doing a holistic review of how players are interacting with our economy as a whole. Our investigation is focused on reviewing every variable to look for areas of abuse through either exploitation or fraud, whether through paid currency or achievable in-game currency. The removal of these items was due to a large influx in habits that we have been following from exploiters, who have been obtaining these items and redistributing them as currency for other purposes. To be very clear though, we do not want to discuss our economy in absolutes. There could always be adjustments or exceptions based on how players are interacting with the changes to our in-game systems. This is why Coalescent and Preservation Wards are still available through systems like Invocation.
To speak to this further, one of our guidelines for putting items into in-game stores is to never allow that exact item to also exist in the Zen Market. Doing so can create confusion, as well as introduce perceived equivalencies that aren’t actually true. We made a mistake when allowing these items to exist in both the Trade Bar store and the Zen Market. Though Coalescent Wards and Preservation Wards did exist (at a higher price) in the Trade Bar store before, our attempt to make them more prominent and significantly cheaper had a large negative impact on the in-game economy. We really thought this would be a positive change, but we were wrong and we apologize for taking them away now.
Through this process, and since the launch of our game, community feedback has been paramount to how we perceive our game. We understand that several of you were upset with the changes and want to reiterate that we do not intend to hinder your play experience. We’re gamers too and we review our decisions through the lens of our own gaming habits. We will continue to review our system, but in the meantime we would like to make good on communication. Although we cannot return the removed items from our Trade Bar store, we would like to offer each of our players the following:
We hope you continue to deliver feedback for our team. We are listening to you every time that you post on the forums, Reddit, Twitter and Facebook. You are a critical part of our game and your feedback is important to us.
First off, let’s discuss the communication. We as a company failed to distribute this information before we made the change. For that, we apologize. It has always been our desire to be transparent with the community in an effort to ensure that you have the necessary information for our game. However, this change wasn’t something that was planned and withheld. Both the PC and Xbox version operate in different ways especially in regards to their economies. Similar to real-world economies, there are highs and lows mixed with hundreds of variables. In this particular situation, we made the decision to remove the wards and rubies late in the cycle of our communication and after we already communicated the previous changes that were available in the PC version of Underdark. This last minute change did not give us the opportunity to distribute that message to the players before the launch of our expansion. In the future, we will work towards giving a larger timeframe to properly communicate this message to you.
Similar to the adjustments that we made with the AD economy, our team is in the process of doing a holistic review of how players are interacting with our economy as a whole. Our investigation is focused on reviewing every variable to look for areas of abuse through either exploitation or fraud, whether through paid currency or achievable in-game currency. The removal of these items was due to a large influx in habits that we have been following from exploiters, who have been obtaining these items and redistributing them as currency for other purposes. To be very clear though, we do not want to discuss our economy in absolutes. There could always be adjustments or exceptions based on how players are interacting with the changes to our in-game systems. This is why Coalescent and Preservation Wards are still available through systems like Invocation.
To speak to this further, one of our guidelines for putting items into in-game stores is to never allow that exact item to also exist in the Zen Market. Doing so can create confusion, as well as introduce perceived equivalencies that aren’t actually true. We made a mistake when allowing these items to exist in both the Trade Bar store and the Zen Market. Though Coalescent Wards and Preservation Wards did exist (at a higher price) in the Trade Bar store before, our attempt to make them more prominent and significantly cheaper had a large negative impact on the in-game economy. We really thought this would be a positive change, but we were wrong and we apologize for taking them away now.
Through this process, and since the launch of our game, community feedback has been paramount to how we perceive our game. We understand that several of you were upset with the changes and want to reiterate that we do not intend to hinder your play experience. We’re gamers too and we review our decisions through the lens of our own gaming habits. We will continue to review our system, but in the meantime we would like to make good on communication. Although we cannot return the removed items from our Trade Bar store, we would like to offer each of our players the following:
- We are going to look into our player data for those who had 200+ Trade Bars total in their account at the time of our Underdark launch. That means if one character had 197 Trade Bars and another had 3, the account would be treated as though it had 200. For those accounts, we will give out one Coalescent Ward for every 200 Trade Bars that you had in your inventory at the time of launch. The reason we need to use the old pricing is that we are still reviewing the in-game economy as a whole. For this reason, we are also going to cap the maximum amount of wards at 10 Coalescent Wards per eligible individual. You will NOT be charged Trade Bars for this transaction. This is a gift.
- We will also be delivering a free pack to ALL existing accounts that includes: one Coalescent Ward, one Blood Ruby and five Preservation Wards.
- Finally, we are going to consider our community goals for Neverwinter on Xbox One accomplished.
We hope you continue to deliver feedback for our team. We are listening to you every time that you post on the forums, Reddit, Twitter and Facebook. You are a critical part of our game and your feedback is important to us.
Communications Manager - Perfect World Entertainment
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Comments
OP - Sunshine: 16000 IL
Casual Dailies
Xerxes - GWF
Eazy - DC
Tyrian - TR
why not make them bind to account or bind to character and bobs your uncle. no problems. you're buying them because you have an enchant to upgrade. Punishing your entire player base because of a few bad eggs isn't exactly going to spread good will and warm fuzzies.
what about our double enchants and double xp. (we just had a 2x ad so not as worried about that)
Your mistakes and utter disregard for your players is becoming very evident after seeing how badly you've handled an issue this large. Your 'apology' comes nowhere close to what it's cost your players financially because of your poor and borderline illegal business decision.
One thing though - I'd love more honest, open talk and less business speak. This is how you talk to shareholders, not gamers. What I got out of this was:
- We decided not to give these to Xbox after it was rolled out to PCs, hence the old info
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- The biggest worry we had was that AD farmers would use wards as new currency for transferring wealth.
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- Also the wards are the only thing ya'll actually buy for cash
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- PC need it because their AH sells them for heaps, whereas yours are often under 100k
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- We were, like, REAL bad with the communication though.
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- And now, we will buy your love.
I'm down with that. Just say what you mean, and mean what you say. The haters will hate - but as you can see above, they were never going to be happy given what you felt you needed to do to maintain the Xbox economy. So don't even try to please them - just lay it out, tell us the hard truth... and in the name of all that is holy, don't promote something until you know it's 100% doable.I'm off to enjoy more Underdark.
Join us brothers and sisters and distant relations and confused onlookers.
Join us in the shadows where we stand mostly vigilant... although slightly distracted by our inventories.
"In war, unqualified. In peace, disorganised. In death, mild irritation."
JOIN US.
Well Good Job and Goodbye but before i leave i will be filing a complaint with xbox for fraud and false advertising this is not a solution its an attempt to bribe your players and anyone who accepts this is a fool i urge you fellow xbox players to follow in my example and file a complaint with xbox support they already have an investigation going and will more then likely force theem to give us what we were promised not some HAMSTER excuse and a handshake what you did is fraud and is punishable by law in many countries have fun with xbox's lawyers
On one hand, at least it gives us a couple CW on short term... wich is better than nothing. I think i had like 1200 something trade bars before Underdark so i guess i will get 6. So yes FOR NOW its not bad.
But what about the long term? What if i want several enchantements lev 12. Those 6(or 7 with the free one) will only get me one enchantement that high... Just one. 1000 Zen for just one CW is way too much. I think the bigger problem is people do not want to pay zen(or AD converted to Zen) in huge sum for only this. At least with the lockboxes, you had a chance at getting a rare mount or some other cool items, that was the whole point. Even if you would lower the CW to lets say 500 Zen... it would still be an issue.
Zen Market should be for cosmetics and unnessary items, like Mounts/Companions and so on. Rubies at least its possible to refine without them, i mean we get all sorts of stones. But the wards, there only way, more or less, will be that.
And yes... invocations... it can give some, but honestly i must have get like 2 or 3 since i play this way... and i invoke everyday til the last one (or almost)
More or less you may calm down some people on very short term, but in the long run, its not enough. Its just a game, stop talking like the economy is wall street. All we want is up our characters and play some dungeons and have fun among friends. Its not work, its not wall street, its not our lives.
This is my opinion