Its too bad I was really beginning to enjoy this game once again after they toned down the Uber zones.I'm not a power gamer or whatever you want to call those with max scores and gears. I sit down after supper with a beer when the house is quiet to take my mind off the day for a few hours. To be honest I never thought to become a patron just for the fact you can get trade bars to buy the wards.I would buy the keys hoping to get a decent item from the chest,which of course never happens . What I do however is spend a lot of money on this game(according to my wife) on items from the zen store and converting some to Ad to buy from the AH.I'm more of a spontaneous gamer not always thinking too far down the road and the grind really gets to me as well. I've played my share of mmo's over the years. Usually getting to the point where p2w or content just spikes that makes me lose interest.One game in particular, R@ppelz was a game moderated from china and one of the worst money sucking games out there.They didn't give a r@ts a$$ about the players and never responded well with their players base. Just plain bad. They had there share of spammers and hackers a well and did nothing about them. (I've heard that a lot of the botters and hackers in this game are ex employee's.) Instead of taking away from the game why cant they just fix the problems plaguing it and show us they want people to continue to play. They are losing that loving feeling. Who really has the final say when it comes to dollars and cents , the Dev's ? I'm thinking not. Once you start introducing real money into a game it changes everything. Should we be ticked at them for not enough content ,bugs , glitches ,ddos's , character unbalances, absolutely. To blame them for the cash grabs and roller coaster economy I'm thinking their puppets a well. Once this game fails to make money for those it will be tanked do not doubt that. I feel that this is the beginning of a death spiral for this game. Its too bad it had such potential as no other game comes close to a D&D's feel and who doesn't like killing those monsters of old. So good fortunes to those who will be there til the end and to those who venture forth to other games. Me for one will be going back to R!ft.
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coolgeek357Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 91Arc User
Of course !! they need to do something about it!! and it is good so,
OMG guys be realistic and serious!!
" a 100% Chance just for 75 Bars" This just ridiculous cheap... make no sense. "be realistic" its why the auctionhouse was Overflowed with this items. the value of wards was basically zero.
what kind of game give you a 100% chance just for free, there's no one beside single or private servers.
Stop your flame/crying for nothing.. or keep hating if u want but nothing will change. There's tons of player that never used tradebars and they are fine with that.
Merilee, you didnt realized, taking away coals/rubies from T Bar merchant will hurt artifact and upgrading progression, they are creating bottleneck and wall preventing to grow. and Zen cost way too much. even it is free to play, but it no fun getting one-shotted by mobs they refuse to tone down. it either to give up or being forced by looking for groups with waiting for hours finding a group. many dont have time for it.
it only fun when we get from 1 to 60, then that nightmare grinding to 70 in same burnout zones.
Okay I’m going to put in my last two cents here; Though I understand you are technically not forced to buy any digital content from this company, the fact remains, they WANT you to. They offer incentives IE the VIP status. Are they going to revamp that? The object is to drive sales for the business. I still bought zen to get keys and the other things I wanted for my alts. I am a level 12 VIP, which one giant perk was the single key to open a box and use your bars to help your alts or a friend or guild mate. Or heaven forbid make a few extra AD to buy something you want since the chance of getting it out of a box is next to nil now… I have been with PWE since it’s inception here into the states. Unfortunately I doubt I will stay here after all of this. To me as a consumer, all I see is a reversal of services offered/promised. You need far too much now to truly enjoy the game and now they are taking the one small hope away from us. Upgrading your armor and weapons, as well as you artifacts and runes were a small way to make yourself survivable in the end game content. Now it will cost way too much to even try. It’s sad, I came back after the cap was raised and began to spend money on the game and was enjoying it. The bar store made it fun for the alts I had to get somewhere in the game. Now I just see it as we want you to spend ridiculous amounts of cash to try to even get anywhere near the end game content. I can deal with the glitches and bugs, but when you do something to benefit all players then snatch it away because of the gold spammers whilst under the guise of balancing the economy, is, lets face it an under handed move. This is no way to garner favor from your veteran players or new ones in fact to spend money in/on this game. You build loyalty with long term players in turn they bring in new players to keep the game refreshed and updated with new player enthusiasm. I really do not see how any of this from the trade bar store effected the eco here in any negative way. It made them wards and rubies affordable to those who couldn’t spend on the game. I do hope all in the community realize that the gold spammers will find something else to sell to spam the HAMSTER out of us. I say go after the REAL problem and stop penalizing the common player. What happened to instituting GMs to monitor the game? Just my two pennies. But I will never spend any of my money ever again on this company and any of it’s subsidiaries. It is truly not worth it at this time. And yes I realize they probly will never read this and in the ends it is their loss. They are loosing paying customers over their inability or unwillingness to go after the real problems.
Rather than remove wards from the trade bar store, which has heralded as a great success of Mod 8, remove them from the zen store. Sorry that no one wants to buy your extremely overpriced wards in the zen store, but do you really think you're going to sell more now? People didn't buy them in the first place, why would they buy them now?
Even though I'm a true F2P player who has not spent a cent, I certainly hope Cryptic gets their act together to keep people playing. People with money specifically, or this nice MMO is going to go away.
I wonder if this stemmed from a line of thinking like: "Oh no, so many players at our non existent end-game! I know, let's prevent more players from getting there!" or if it was just "收更多的钱".
The upcoming Stronghold discounts better be huge so people have something to progress in, because character wise it's gonna slow down a lot. As for the VIP thing, they'll probably re-hook people by adding stuff like ... whatever is needed for the upcoming stables. Especially for the better looking / more powerful pets and/or pet gear. Need more gear grind you see, for people to use p.wards and coals on. =P
The only confusion that having coalescent wards both on zen and trade bar store was creating, was in your wallets.
Your greediness is only matched by the bravery of making such decisions on a game that is almost dead anyway.
hahaha EXACTLY!! Coal wards have been in both Tarm Bar and Zen store since LAUNCH! And now they're burning a MAIN reason why people are paying for VIP. You'd make more money by having dedicated player base paying VIP every month than the occasional casual player buying 1 or 2 wards in a year. I don't understand this from any perspective. It screws the players, it's stupid for the game.
Good lord people, no one forces you to spend a single penny on this game. Get over yourselves.
For those of you who have been playing "this game daily over the past several months [with characters] advancing at a slow and steady pace..." I just have to laugh. You could invoke from level 20 to level 60 in a couple of weeks and never leave Protector's Enclave.
This is a free to play game. The people who provide this game need to be paid. Stop whining, go play something else, or just don't spend the money.
You want to talk about really caustic disregard for paying customers, go look at SWTOR or any game by SONY. Cryptic/PWI have done well by me for over ten years and while I do not like most of the changes they've made it is THEIR product, they own it. We just rent it.
It is a game people.
You dummy. If you think "level 20 to level 60" is what people mean by "advancing." That represents first 0.10% of advancing your character. The game does not even start, you do not start advancing, until you hit 70 and begin to work on character advancement through gear, enchantments, and item level.
All of which rely on coalescent wards. Which means any real character advancement now has a hard gateway in cold hard cash. But not my cash. I will not be renewing VIP or paying a red cent for a ward. $10 is not worth endless Black Ice Master Packs. Gee, thanks VIP for my 40th grandmaster cryomancer. That does me a lot of good with still only one pair of gauntlets.
Well, I might pay for a ward if the price was actually reasonable. Right now they are 1000% overpriced.
If people want to be paid, they need to produce a product and/or service at a fair price. They also need to protect and nurture their customer base. How many of those things do you see happening?
Even if removing the wards from the trade bar store was, in some insane universe, the right thing to do... the way it was done was a HAMSTER move. And it wasn't even the right thing to do.
Good lord people, no one forces you to spend a single penny on this game. Get over yourselves.
For those of you who have been playing "this game daily over the past several months [with characters] advancing at a slow and steady pace..." I just have to laugh. You could invoke from level 20 to level 60 in a couple of weeks and never leave Protector's Enclave.
This is a free to play game. The people who provide this game need to be paid. Stop whining, go play something else, or just don't spend the money.
You want to talk about really caustic disregard for paying customers, go look at SWTOR or any game by SONY. Cryptic/PWI have done well by me for over ten years and while I do not like most of the changes they've made it is THEIR product, they own it. We just rent it.
It is a game people.
I'm really sorry, not everyone can spend 24hours infront of their PC invoking. You do realize most people commenting here are the ones who already spent.
Just look at the new prices, most f2p would quit b4 they could reach a normal ench. they keep doing this, this game is gonna die soon
I can't be surprised by the ineptitude of the decision making process that produces a drastic change like this. Nor can I be surprised by the completely bogus and insulting reasoning given for it. Before this change was even announced I was watching a recent Q&A session video where a producer and community manager were answering questions. Let's just say I wasn't impressed by the level of professionalism I was was witnessing. Maybe the lack of polish that I saw translates to other departments at Cryptic?
On another note, didn't this thread just jump from 18 pages down to 15? Here comes the censorship!
0
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
For those of you who have been playing "this game daily over the past several months [with characters] advancing at a slow and steady pace..." I just have to laugh. You could invoke from level 20 to level 60 in a couple of weeks and never leave Protector's Enclave.
They're talking about equipment advancement (much of which in in the form of items requiring at least preservation wards), not levelling up. Geez.
Just letting you know that I WON'T be renewing my VIP next week, thanks to this update. Great work!
Yeah, me neither. In fact I'm probably going to stop playing MMOs now. This is the 3rd time I invested time and money into a game only to have it go down the tubes and make it an unfriendly and stressful experience. Going back to regular games. Witcher 3 and Pillars of Eternity up next! F YOU NEVERWINTER!!!! You started out amazing and just got worse with every mod! Could have been the best MMO of all time!
0
viperwitch23Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 205Arc User
This thread just had 17 pages 20 mins aho and now it has 15 where did 2 full pages vanished?
0
dademon1982Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 21Arc User
I can't be surprised by the ineptitude of the decision making process that produces a drastic change like this. Nor can I be surprised by the completely bogus and insulting reasoning given for it. Before this change was even announced I was watching a recent Q&A session video where a producer and community manager were answering questions. Let's just say I wasn't impressed by the level of professionalism I was was witnessing. Maybe the lack of polish that I saw translates to other departments at Cryptic?
On another note, didn't this thread just jump from 18 pages down to 15? Here comes the censorship!
Exactly, and my last post saying exactly that is removed as well, kinda wondering what is so offensive about it, unless they don't want people to know there were WAY more complaints than before. Whats next? in a few hours only 2 pages are left?
I can't be surprised by the ineptitude of the decision making process that produces a drastic change like this. Nor can I be surprised by the completely bogus and insulting reasoning given for it. Before this change was even announced I was watching a recent Q&A session video where a producer and community manager were answering questions. Let's just say I wasn't impressed by the level of professionalism I was was witnessing. Maybe the lack of polish that I saw translates to other departments at Cryptic?
On another note, didn't this thread just jump from 18 pages down to 15? Here comes the censorship!
> @marsambassador said: > Here's a thought... If the Wards are causing economic issues with botters, make them BoA. Problem solved. > > > > This! A thousand times this!!!!
Yep, a simple solution to a gigantic mmo killing issue. Only problem is that's not why they made this change. They made it in an attempt to gain zen store purchases for wards, or at least that's the ONLY reason that logically makes sense. Funny thing is players were already using zen to purchase wards through the VIP system at reasonable rates (finally). How or why they expect ward sales to increase in the zen store now is beyond me, especially at literally $10 each, and when sales were weak before. If they don't reduce ward prices in the zen store drastically, and I'm talking down to $1 or $2 each which is where they should be using conventional f2p mmo logic, then forget advancing your character at a reasonable rate if you're even a semi-casual player.
silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
well the entire thread is meaningless really. It really doesnt matter if they even allow to post, they are doing so to think you have some sort of voice.
But we dont, we either pay it their way or dont.. for content that is "miniscule"
Ive already said my piece ages ago. CWards directly out of the zen market are a "bad" deal and one of the most highly egregious "micro" transactions Ive seen. Blood wards are pretty close to the same as well.
I would say dont do either. When they offer VALUE, Ive bought it in the past, when it has little value, I dont bother.
Lets face it, they dont care about what we think.. they are directed to care about what the bosses say the profit has to be, they believe they are loosing profit, even though VIP program was set up for them to make a continuous profit , instead of spike sales, they seem to think they get to have "both" now.
I do believe that the program shouldve been allowed to continue for the duration of the first 12 month period of VIP though, as the initial purchase from users shouldve been covered on the original advertisement scheme they had in place. They could announce a future change instead.
All sorts of schims have been brought down the line over the years.. "in the name of the players" or "anti-bot" or " lets save the economy (cough in game?)
If they came out and said, folks, monetizing isnt working well on our end, sorry, but we need to pull some stuff back so we can make money.. they wouldve been equally derailed.
They cant really win either way.
But alas.. neither can we.
Frankly I dont care how they do it, if they just offered us some fun dungeon delves instead.. that what I care about the most.
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
There are plenty of posts remaining. There are probably only as many posts in this thread saying they like the change as I have fingers... maybe.
What gets removed (not deleted, but moved to a subforum only mods and staff can see) is the flaming and "I quit" posts, and posts asking where the flaming and "I quit posts" went (for "discussing moderation"). Like it or not, that's how it goes.
And it's probably easier to prune everything into a single mod forum thread than to separate some of it there and some into the Lower Depths (which we can see).
I don't know, but I think they have been doing a lot of damage all a long. I noticed the chance of getting a good item from the boxes, has really dropped. I don't mean one of the high end items either, I just mean something that was actually useful. I used to get one good item, off from every $30.00 spent, it has taken $70.00 this last time. So even buying the keys has not been very worth it.
I noticed that as well. I've been suspecting for some time that the chance of a really good drop from a lockbox is much higher on the first day that it's introduced than later on.
Harper Chronicles: Cap Snatchers (RELEASED) - NW-DPUTABC6X Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
This thread just had 17 pages 20 mins aho and now it has 15 where did 2 full pages vanished?
hahah Cryptic removes the unfavorable posts Now the changes are great no negative comments
Censorship is the easiest way not only to prove that there is a major issue with the recent measures but also to suppress the opinions of players who spent money in this game and now feel victims of injustice. At this point, why would I want to be a customer of a company that does this kind of stuff to its clients. I worked in the hospitality business for many years. I've been a concierge at fancy hotels and I will tell you this. A loyal customer comes back to spend more and usually brings his friends along to do the same. An unsatisfied customer however, rants in forums like this one when disservice is offered instead of what we paid for.
The only good thing VIP ever did for me was to memorize where every freaking trap was on every freaking dungeon before I finally said screw it and got it so I could run through them all and not care. I know they added the injuries to make people want to use VIP and they got me. Sure, I didn't spend real money as I'd be crazy to give them a dime. But to think they would give us anything in return for the hours/money/patience/frustration we have given them of ours.... is kinda crazy in itself.
You guys do realize the one thing PVE players have said for going on like 7 months was they just wanted those old dungeons back and they came back as Demonic HE portal fests that we can level up with.... If anyone thinks they listen to anything we say... Well I'm sorry but that lollipop isn't on the shelf. The devs aren't the monsters. Forum mods maybe but they have to do this b/c I'm sure they get an earful if they don't. But these devs do what they are told, it is that simple.
If you think Strum wrote that post and agreed with any of it that the economy was suffering... wow. The guy is not "special" in that sense. If you think the devs having every live stream photobombed by someone saying nerf pally bubble is ignored then again, I'm sorry. They know what they are doing is wrong.. THEY KNOW. But they don't have the power to do anything about it.
They are allowed to do band-aid fixes. They are allowed to do polls on the forums about which NPC is our favorite. They are not allowed to balance classes. They are not allowed to give us anything, that power being in the devs left the day Crush got here.
So again, devs/forum hall monitors. I'm sorry you guys get so much grief from all of us. I know from the bottom of my heart that you realize what you have to do on a daily basis is wrong, not fair and in some cases even cruel but it is your job. And I think a lot of them try and make the best of it.
coolgeek357Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 91Arc User
edited February 2016
Cost of making one Transcendent Epic Enchantment $310 using CWs. That means you will need to spend $620 for you armor and weapon enchantment if you buy your CWs from the Zen store. The error in the Cryptic's reasoning, nobody that was getting CWs through the trade store is going to buy them from the Zen store. However, they were buying keys and VIP to get trade bars.
The Brits have a saying for this, "penny wise, pound foolish"
Comments
I've played my share of mmo's over the years. Usually getting to the point where p2w or content just spikes that makes me lose interest.One game in particular, R@ppelz was a game moderated from china and one of the worst money sucking games out there.They didn't give a r@ts a$$ about the players and never responded well with their players base. Just plain bad. They had there share of spammers and hackers a well and did nothing about them. (I've heard that a lot of the botters and hackers in this game are ex employee's.) Instead of taking away from the game why cant they just fix the problems plaguing it and show us they want people to continue to play. They are losing that loving feeling. Who really has the final say when it comes to dollars and cents , the Dev's ? I'm thinking not. Once you start introducing real money into a game it changes everything. Should we be ticked at them for not enough content ,bugs , glitches ,ddos's , character unbalances, absolutely. To blame them for the cash grabs and roller coaster economy I'm thinking their puppets a well. Once this game fails to make money for those it will be tanked do not doubt that. I feel that this is the beginning of a death spiral for this game. Its too bad it had such potential as no other game comes close to a D&D's feel and who doesn't like killing those monsters of old.
So good fortunes to those who will be there til the end and to those who venture forth to other games. Me for one will be going back to R!ft.
and Zen cost way too much.
even it is free to play, but it no fun getting one-shotted by mobs they refuse to tone down. it either to give up or being forced by looking for groups with waiting for hours finding a group. many dont have time for it.
it only fun when we get from 1 to 60, then that nightmare grinding to 70 in same burnout zones.
Though I understand you are technically not forced to buy any digital content from this company, the fact remains, they WANT you to. They offer incentives IE the VIP status. Are they going to revamp that? The object is to drive sales for the business. I still bought zen to get keys and the other things I wanted for my alts. I am a level 12 VIP, which one giant perk was the single key to open a box and use your bars to help your alts or a friend or guild mate. Or heaven forbid make a few extra AD to buy something you want since the chance of getting it out of a box is next to nil now… I have been with PWE since it’s inception here into the states. Unfortunately I doubt I will stay here after all of this. To me as a consumer, all I see is a reversal of services offered/promised. You need far too much now to truly enjoy the game and now they are taking the one small hope away from us. Upgrading your armor and weapons, as well as you artifacts and runes were a small way to make yourself survivable in the end game content. Now it will cost way too much to even try. It’s sad, I came back after the cap was raised and began to spend money on the game and was enjoying it. The bar store made it fun for the alts I had to get somewhere in the game. Now I just see it as we want you to spend ridiculous amounts of cash to try to even get anywhere near the end game content. I can deal with the glitches and bugs, but when you do something to benefit all players then snatch it away because of the gold spammers whilst under the guise of balancing the economy, is, lets face it an under handed move. This is no way to garner favor from your veteran players or new ones in fact to spend money in/on this game. You build loyalty with long term players in turn they bring in new players to keep the game refreshed and updated with new player enthusiasm. I really do not see how any of this from the trade bar store effected the eco here in any negative way. It made them wards and rubies affordable to those who couldn’t spend on the game. I do hope all in the community realize that the gold spammers will find something else to sell to spam the HAMSTER out of us. I say go after the REAL problem and stop penalizing the common player. What happened to instituting GMs to monitor the game? Just my two pennies. But I will never spend any of my money ever again on this company and any of it’s subsidiaries. It is truly not worth it at this time. And yes I realize they probly will never read this and in the ends it is their loss. They are loosing paying customers over their inability or unwillingness to go after the real problems.
I wonder if this stemmed from a line of thinking like: "Oh no, so many players at our non existent end-game! I know, let's prevent more players from getting there!" or if it was just "收更多的钱".
The upcoming Stronghold discounts better be huge so people have something to progress in, because character wise it's gonna slow down a lot. As for the VIP thing, they'll probably re-hook people by adding stuff like ... whatever is needed for the upcoming stables. Especially for the better looking / more powerful pets and/or pet gear. Need more gear grind you see, for people to use p.wards and coals on. =P
All of which rely on coalescent wards. Which means any real character advancement now has a hard gateway in cold hard cash. But not my cash. I will not be renewing VIP or paying a red cent for a ward. $10 is not worth endless Black Ice Master Packs. Gee, thanks VIP for my 40th grandmaster cryomancer. That does me a lot of good with still only one pair of gauntlets.
Well, I might pay for a ward if the price was actually reasonable. Right now they are 1000% overpriced.
If people want to be paid, they need to produce a product and/or service at a fair price. They also need to protect and nurture their customer base. How many of those things do you see happening?
Even if removing the wards from the trade bar store was, in some insane universe, the right thing to do... the way it was done was a HAMSTER move. And it wasn't even the right thing to do.
Just look at the new prices, most f2p would quit b4 they could reach a normal ench. they keep doing this, this game is gonna die soon
On another note, didn't this thread just jump from 18 pages down to 15? Here comes the censorship!
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
FateSpinners Guild Leader We are RECRUITING!!
> Here's a thought... If the Wards are causing economic issues with botters, make them BoA. Problem solved.
>
>
>
> This! A thousand times this!!!!
Yep, a simple solution to a gigantic mmo killing issue. Only problem is that's not why they made this change. They made it in an attempt to gain zen store purchases for wards, or at least that's the ONLY reason that logically makes sense. Funny thing is players were already using zen to purchase wards through the VIP system at reasonable rates (finally). How or why they expect ward sales to increase in the zen store now is beyond me, especially at literally $10 each, and when sales were weak before. If they don't reduce ward prices in the zen store drastically, and I'm talking down to $1 or $2 each which is where they should be using conventional f2p mmo logic, then forget advancing your character at a reasonable rate if you're even a semi-casual player.
Now the changes are great no negative comments
But we dont, we either pay it their way or dont.. for content that is "miniscule"
Ive already said my piece ages ago. CWards directly out of the zen market are a "bad" deal and one of the most highly egregious "micro" transactions Ive seen. Blood wards are pretty close to the same as well.
I would say dont do either.
When they offer VALUE, Ive bought it in the past, when it has little value, I dont bother.
Lets face it, they dont care about what we think.. they are directed to care about what the bosses say the profit has to be, they believe they are loosing profit, even though VIP program was set up for them to make a continuous profit , instead of spike sales, they seem to think they get to have "both" now.
I do believe that the program shouldve been allowed to continue for the duration of the first 12 month period of VIP though, as the initial purchase from users shouldve been covered on the original advertisement scheme they had in place. They could announce a future change instead.
All sorts of schims have been brought down the line over the years.. "in the name of the players" or "anti-bot" or " lets save the economy (cough in game?)
If they came out and said, folks, monetizing isnt working well on our end, sorry, but we need to pull some stuff back so we can make money.. they wouldve been equally derailed.
They cant really win either way.
But alas.. neither can we.
Frankly I dont care how they do it, if they just offered us some fun dungeon delves instead.. that what I care about the most.
What gets removed (not deleted, but moved to a subforum only mods and staff can see) is the flaming and "I quit" posts, and posts asking where the flaming and "I quit posts" went (for "discussing moderation"). Like it or not, that's how it goes.
And it's probably easier to prune everything into a single mod forum thread than to separate some of it there and some into the Lower Depths (which we can see).
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Bad service is bad and enough is enough.
You guys do realize the one thing PVE players have said for going on like 7 months was they just wanted those old dungeons back and they came back as Demonic HE portal fests that we can level up with.... If anyone thinks they listen to anything we say... Well I'm sorry but that lollipop isn't on the shelf. The devs aren't the monsters. Forum mods maybe but they have to do this b/c I'm sure they get an earful if they don't. But these devs do what they are told, it is that simple.
If you think Strum wrote that post and agreed with any of it that the economy was suffering... wow. The guy is not "special" in that sense. If you think the devs having every live stream photobombed by someone saying nerf pally bubble is ignored then again, I'm sorry. They know what they are doing is wrong.. THEY KNOW. But they don't have the power to do anything about it.
They are allowed to do band-aid fixes. They are allowed to do polls on the forums about which NPC is our favorite. They are not allowed to balance classes. They are not allowed to give us anything, that power being in the devs left the day Crush got here.
So again, devs/forum hall monitors. I'm sorry you guys get so much grief from all of us. I know from the bottom of my heart that you realize what you have to do on a daily basis is wrong, not fair and in some cases even cruel but it is your job. And I think a lot of them try and make the best of it.
The Brits have a saying for this, "penny wise, pound foolish"