I can't get over how badly you've overshadowed the dungeons coming back by dropping news of pulling coal wards from tarm bar. Castle Never coming back should be a big story for gamers, but that thread has just 347 views and 10 comments. This thread discussing change to coal wards has 27,000 views and 25 pages of comments in just a few days. And how many pages were deleted by mods? 5 or more?
Pulling coal wards may even be a stupider move than pulling AD from leadership. At least there are other ways to earn AD. But now we need to pay $10 cold hard cash to get 1 coal ward. There is no other way to get them. And nobody is going to pay $310 just to get a single rank 12. That's $620 just to get rank 12 armour and weapon enchants on a single character. That means sellers need to charge 12 million AD for a Transcendent in the AH just to break even. How does that make sense???
Sad what has happened to this game. Just plain sad.
Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where people could create, but not have to worry about making money? Then we wouldn't have any need for the people who are making these decisions; only the ones who want to build a good game.
This game had that in place. It's called the FOUNDRY. People creating amazing content for free. Should have been the heavily promoted and supported centerpiece to this game instead of the crazy cousin left locked in the attic.
A functioning Foundry would result in infinite content created by players for players, for nothing more than pure enjoyment and a challenge. I created a Foundry quest. I liked playing it more than 90% of the game's content. The only limit to Foundry quests are our own imagination.
Could've fixed the lag, the DDos, the lack of balance, the multiple bugs/issues or the fact that people get banned for "exploits" on things you never fixed. But nope you broke something else, something that needed no fixing. I personally won't be buying wards, VIP, keys or even mounts for that matter I'll take advantage of this "free" to play game now and give my money to one of your competitors thanks for making it easy on me to choose. Hope this mess makes it another year.
You build a profitable game by having a larger user base completing micro transactions with regular players subscribing to VIP for tangible benefits. I'm sure you understand this. There are plenty of MMO models you can copy here. I can only conclude that you're looking to kill the game to get out of a difficult licensing agreement that has terms you're unwilling or unable to fulfill. Am I close?
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minotaur2857Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,141Arc User
commanderkruge has grasped the heart of it. If the game has become lame, then STOP playing. Certainly stop PAYING. Kudos to you if you haven't spent a dime here yet. Keep it that way.
Yeah, but I still have 9 months of VIP paid for on completely false pretences.
Nobody's buying their wards in the Zen store because they're overpriced by a factor of at least 10 and possibly closer to 20.
The two acceptable solutions were to slash the price in the Zen store, or make all sources BoA.
As a new player of this game. I enjoyed it while it lasted. I played for a few months and it was fun at first until you reach to a certain level or time of the game where you need to focus on your gear in order to stay alive and move forward. I will admit I spent a few dollars here and there to do what I can to work on gear. During this time I was observing the costs and time it'll take to make a good set to continue without having to grind so much. That is why I spend some money to lessen the time it takes to get the items I need to improve. As time went on I've started to learn the game much more and where to get certain items at lower price, because it was getting a little too expensive to lash out more money. When I studied the VIP and how you can get keys for boxes to get items that could benefit me? I thought it was a good deal and I went for it. I enjoyed opening a box each day and see what goodies I could receive. Upon three months to four months paying VIP, I have accumulated enough Trade Bars to specifically get Coals or Perv Wards. Seeing how it was much cheaper to get rather spending tons of Zen, I was using that method to get the items I needed. Now upon hearing this drastic news? Yes it affects me a lot as well as a new player who once enjoyed this game and have no problem spending money, when I can, towards the game. I have a tight budget and when I can accumulate enough entertainment money, I chose it towards gaming. The choice of game? Never Winter, since I enjoyed it a lot. Not only news like this depresses me, but upon knowing certain things about the game that revolves around spending money? I become very discourage to even continue playing the game. Having to be only 4 months playing this game and didn't see any new content other than changes to the market. I became very bored these recent days.
Boredom + Spending too much money or grind too much hours in order to enjoy the game= going to look elsewhere so I can find a game that would be valuable for time and money. Seriously, I totally understand everyone needs to make money from working or creating things for others to enjoy. I totally get it, but when not much creativity is shown to keep a player tuned to the game more. Makes it less enjoyable. Honestly I am currently looking for another game because I am bored of this one. Hoping for positive changes, yet I come to see negative ones. I had to reread the reasons behind these changes and did it several times to understand the reason to be more consumer friendly, yet each time I finished it all I could see it was a different way of saying the truth behind this reason. You guys should just be up front and say, "you did it because you need people to spend more real money on Zen so we can get paid."
Look I know its too long to read, but in short sentence if you didn't want to read all that is, I do not enjoy this change one bit and I am going to stop paying for VIP. I will be using that money on another game that is worth having, because people who are on a budget can not afford to spend hundreds of dollars to improve your gear. And for what? Because the end game content really sucks too. Sorry to say, but it does because everything is repetitive and THAT gets boring after some time!
Boredom + Spending too much money or grind too much hours in order to enjoy the game= going to look elsewhere so I can find a game that would be valuable for time and money. Seriously, I totally understand everyone needs to make money from working or creating things for others to enjoy. I totally get it, but when not much creativity is shown to keep a player tuned to the game more. Makes it less enjoyable. Honestly I am currently looking for another game because I am bored of this one. Hoping for positive changes, yet I come to see negative ones. I had to reread the reasons behind these changes and did it several times to understand the reason to be more consumer friendly, yet each time I finished it all I could see it was a different way of saying the truth behind this reason. You guys should just be up front and say, "you did it because you need people to spend more real money on Zen so we can get paid."
Look I know its too long to read, but in short sentence if you didn't want to read all that is, I do not enjoy this change one bit and I am going to stop paying for VIP. I will be using that money on another game that is worth having, because people who are on a budget can not afford to spend hundreds of dollars to improve your gear. And for what? Because the end game content really sucks too. Sorry to say, but it does because everything is repetitive and THAT gets boring after some time!
This! I'm with you, but I'm playing this game since Jan 2014, just to share how much I loved this game. Everytime it's a 1 step in the good direction and 4 steps in the bad direction. It's just like being betrayed by your parter/friend/girlfriend: you can forgive once, not always. This time is the worst: "I see you confused: the CWs were a mistake".
Oltreverso guild leader Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
I know this might sound a bit conspiracy-theory-ish, but I'm wondering if the whole trade bar rework was done just so that they could remove the wards without too much legal issue.
Before the whole rework, the only things of real value in the store were the wards. So if the Devs removed them before there were other things in the store, then players could perhaps make a legal claim that the removal had been a substantial reduction in the quality of something that they had paid for (either keys or VIP), and risk a class-action lawsuit.
Fast-forward to now, and they have put pets, mounts, fashions, etc. into the trade bar store. So the removal of the wards and blood rubies is now, in their eyes, much less of a legal risk. Since there are other good items in the store, then VIP and Keys weren't substantially affected, and that might be all the difference from a legal standpoint that they felt they needed.
I know this might sound a bit conspiracy-theory-ish, but I'm wondering if the whole trade bar rework was done just so that they could remove the wards without too much legal issue.
Before the whole rework, the only things of real value in the store were the wards. So if the Devs removed them before there were other things in the store, then players could perhaps make a legal claim that the removal had been a substantial reduction in the quality of something that they had paid for (either keys or VIP), and risk a class-action lawsuit.
Fast-forward to now, and they have put pets, mounts, fashions, etc. into the trade bar store. So the removal of the wards and blood rubies is now, in their eyes, much less of a legal risk. Since there are other good items in the store, then VIP and Keys weren't substantially affected, and that might be all the difference from a legal standpoint that they felt they needed.
Legally, they can do whatever they want to the game with absolute impunity. We have no legal recourse to sue them over anything except billing issues; for example, "i paid money and didn't get my zen." That's it. Read the TOS. That goes for the forums, too.
And before anyone starts: changing the tarm store is not a "billing issue". Your online experience may change without notice, remember? Be glad they even gave us a one day warning before they "fixed" the tarm store... it's more than the poor bastages playing the Xbox version got.
If we wanted to get really semantic here: they could make everything in the game BoP, shut down the AH, shut down the ZAX, and make all of the ingame armor appear to be black leather gimp suits -- complete with ball gags, and there is nothing you could do about it. In fact, I'm pretty sure that ball gags are specifically mentioned in the TOS that we all agreed on. Can't remember which part exactly.
Well.... the "moderator" has been through... and very inconsistent. Some of my comments about the censorship have been removed, but not others. How amusing.
I'm wondering, how many "gifts" were received by AD seller or botter accounts, ... for now we’ve prepared the following gifts for players who had accounts prior to the posting of this message. if you take a look at how massive the AD seller spam is in PE these days, and that they only use an account once for spam.
Sure, the gift itself is account bound, but what they can do with all those Coals, Pres and Rubies... and i doubt that there is anything done against this.
Anyway, will we get some more official replies on this topic here, or is it just this announcement and nothing else?
> Legally, they can do whatever they want to the game with absolute impunity.
There was a long discussion of that earlier, and that's not at all clear. In fact, it's probably not legally the case. One of my previously censored comments mentioned "Fraud in the Inducement," as do many earlier.
> "Your online experience may change without notice"
If they really do take full advantage of that claim, that's a very good reason to avoid the game and the entire company.
I would like to thank Strumslinger for this ingenious move. He made my choice to move on to a new game very easy. Thanks but I will no longer spend a dime of money on this game and i will not recommend this game to anyone I know. Since the take away ad from leadership and now taking coal ward and preseveration wards from the trade bar store its next to impossible to generate ad in the game. I played about 1 to maybe 3 hrs a night and I sure as hell dont want to do dungeons and skirmishes over and over every night just to earn ad. I wish the Neverwinter community the best of luck but i see no future here with the leadership that's running this game.
I just came back to playing. i had not played since mod 2. noticed i had alot of catching up to do to...gear wise. bought VIP because i could get wards that way, to start catching up. Now you remove wards from trade bars... what you have done is crushing to new or returning players. if i have done the math right...it will cost 150$ in just wards to go from a rank 9 enchantment to a rank 12...and i currently dont have any rank 9 gems...and my current gear can hold 12 enchantments(once upgraded)...so that would be 1800$...that might be a "micro" transaction for some but not me... and that doesnt even include having to get the marks of this or that...or the cost of upgrading your main and off hand...or the cost of upgrading any other artifact equipment... or weapon enchants or artifacts. i like this game but sorry i dont like it enough to pay thousands of dollars to upgrade gear on A toon...let alone alts . i will keep playing but i will not spend any more money nor will i recommend this game to anyone i know.
I just came back to playing. i had not played since mod 2. noticed i had alot of catching up to do to...gear wise. bought VIP because i could get wards that way, to start catching up. Now you remove wards from trade bars... what you have done is crushing to new or returning players. if i have done the math right...it will cost 150$ in just wards to go from a rank 9 enchantment to a rank 12...and i currently dont have any rank 9 gems...and my current gear can hold 12 enchantments(once upgraded)...so that would be 1800$...that might be a "micro" transaction for some but not me... and that doesnt even include having to get the marks of this or that...or the cost of upgrading your main and off hand...or the cost of upgrading any other artifact equipment... or weapon enchants or artifacts. i like this game but sorry i dont like it enough to pay thousands of dollars to upgrade gear on A toon...let alone alts . i will keep playing but i will not spend any more money nor will i recommend this game to anyone i know.
Not that it's really any better but you don't need to use coal wards on every enchantment. Still kind of screwed because you do need to use preservation wards and the amount you'll use on higher ranked enchants/artifacts will cost you about as much as a coal ward used to.
a good solution and a good serious protest anyone who does not agree with the changes that have done would not play for a month and look for something else, there are many. that seeing the way this game is taking this payment again. PS: if something misspelled or been explained that what I'm doing with the translator of google
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.
I have to comment on this - these items have existed in the Trade Bar and Zen Market for some time (since Beta? I never checked as I never opened lockboxes back then). NO ONE is confused, really poor communication right there. Then removing them rather than returning them to the previous price just makes a complete mockery of the attempted point regarding the negative impact. Returning them to that previous price would have been the logical choice to make unless the reasoning is a blatantly clumsy cash-grab move.
For the love of Lloth, listen to your community (for once - break the pattern why not??) and work with us to make this game better. You were doing some good things, returning our lost levelling dungeons was a step. This decision, you just kicked the ladder away from new players and the non-whales.
And let us not now address the blatant bait-and-switch of the VIP program. Not one person I've spoken to in our guilds got VIP for any other reason than to get trade-bars for RP stuff from opening the lockboxes with the free keys. That is moving the goalposts by uprooting them to another stadium on another continent. I will be interested in the number of people not renewing VIP status - as I will be one of those.
Shame on the suits and bean-counters for this decision. As usual removed from the community and just seeing the numbers on an Excel spreadsheet.
I HAVE been playing this game for quite a long time and the notion that anyone has to spend one penny to advance or succeed is ludicrous.
Please, tell us more about how the zen required to buy Coals (now) just falls from the sky. Oh, wait... you can get it for AD, right? Now tell us, where does the ZEN you get for AD come from? Try getting them without having to spend a penny now.
Also, keep in mind that RNG on invocation boxes isn't exactly proficient for everyone. (4 months of play since I returned, 4 toons, daily invokes: 2 Coals)
I don't support the change. At all. I'll see you all again when things get better. If they ever do.
It's sad because the original thread on the Xbox forums got closed with this information in the last post by a moderator "Closing this thread up since they have posted an update with how they plan to handle it. You can find that thread here."
the new thread started with the following post
"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 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. In regards to when we will deliver these items, we are in the process of making them available for accounts as described above. Based on our current estimations, we expect to have all of these gifts go out within the next week. We will be updating everyone on the status of the update as we get closer to release.
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."
Which is to say the way they were going to handle it is to do nothing, and they find their community goals for Xbox One accomplished..... HOW?????
It's sad because the original thread on the Xbox forums got closed with this information in the last post by a moderator "Closing this thread up since they have posted an update with how they plan to handle it. You can find that thread here."
the new thread started with the following post
"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 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. In regards to when we will deliver these items, we are in the process of making them available for accounts as described above. Based on our current estimations, we expect to have all of these gifts go out within the next week. We will be updating everyone on the status of the update as we get closer to release.
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."
Which is to say the way they were going to handle it is to do nothing, and they find their community goals for Xbox One accomplished..... HOW?????
Was discussing this with a friend and he pretty much summed up Neverwinter as it stands now
"Neverwinter is a spamtastic greedy cashgrab run by conartists."
I hate to say it but I have to agree with him, as much as I try to like this game every time they "Fix" something they just whittle away a little more of what is left that actually keeps me here.
If they would make actual content other than grindy "elemental Evil" boredom, and Heroic Encounters I might be tempted to keep throwing some cash their way every now and then, but as it stands I have 33 days left on my VIP, and that is the last cash I will ever spend on this game.
This game would have turned out so much better if the devs actually played the game as a normal player would instead of taking shots in the dark and killing half their player base with each clumsy shot. Oh and getting rid of a certain person who has been making poor decisions and ruining the game for everyone since mod 6.
I'm a new player, as well as my wife and five of our friends. We've founded a guild with the goal of doing end-game content and 4/5 of us are working our way between 60 and 70 after a couple months of play. We all paid cash to subscribe to VIP (6 months in the case of my wife and I), as well as buying zen market mounts and a few other items. This was a large initial investment into a game for us, but it's D&D and Forgotten Realms - we figured we'd be playing for quite a long time with the VIP giving us bars to use to slowly, but eventually upgrade equipment and enchantments so that we can actually participate and possibly merge with a more long-standing and well geared guild.
Your change has effectively made this a pipe dream, as none of us has the money to invest the insane amounts of real world cash this will now require. For new/casual players, using bars to buy wards was slow to begin with to try to catch up to required gear scores, and you've effectively made this content exclusive by removing this avenue. Not only this, but the major draw to pay for VIP was the bars, which you've now removed, effectively using true bait and switch on us. i view the remaining months of our VIP a true waste of money now.
On top of that, I see this administrator post (page 25, bottom of the page with a "spiderman sees uncle ben rice and weeps" gif and no quotable text), mocking the absolutely expected - and well deserved - backlash. With this, you have very succinctly demonstrated what you think of your player base and I can say with absolute certainty that we will not be renewing our VIP, and we will not be spending another real-world dime on your game. We will play until it's not fun anymore or, more likely, the game dies due to the obvious lack of respect and care you have proven to have for the player base as you drive them away.
Not that I expect any response to my post, assuming it's not removed by moderators, but did mocking the players feel good?
-Gaidin 62 GWF (1,771 Gear Score, 814 Nigh Useless Tarmalune Trade Bars, and ~4 months of useless VIP left)
Well it was a fun game! I enjoyed the VIP for the shot at the wards, I mean the travel is used all the time, Praying all over is fun, Mail, bank etc.. but I personally did it for buying the Coal wards, I never get anything good from the 1 key a day. Months and Months on multiple accounts VIP between my entirte family we've never saw a good drop but we all had a laugh and a mini competition on who got the most bars to buy a ward with! Sadly thats been taken away. Now 2 family members returned to another MMO as they feel Dev's are too much cash grabbers and they want to support a game that doesnt do that. What would it have hurt to make them BOA?
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inyawayupdeepMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 206Arc User
Well you wanted response from us... you got it, page after page in the forums and from what I've seen its all negative. everyone seems to be saying the feel cheated and lied to, I fell the same. Your VIP club was a classic bait and switch, it still has some value but I am ashamed that I recommended it to so many people. I suspect that the removal of wards from the trade bar market was done because the new mod will have items (new armor and weapon enchantments) that will need wards badly to improve, and you want to be able to capitalize on the need. I will go back to my previous stance from before VIP. This game needs to get rid of all wards and just give everything a 100% chance to upgrade. The next best solution is to put the wards back in the trade bar store and remove them from the zen market.
You need to readdress the issue hit on by Scott the game administrator who told us that Free to play people should be able to enjoy the game at the same level of the Pay to play people by using time instead of cash, you had just started heading in the right direction before you made this change I spent money in the game on keys and VIP, I improved and played my alts. Now you've gone back to your old way of doing things, Did Scott's vision for the game change? How about a word or two from him.
I'd say that's a smart move, and I support it very much. It seems lots of people are not happy about it, but it's gonna be a lot more beneficial for starters, and the only ones REALLY gonna be upset are the lockbox gamblers, among which group also include lots of hackers and/or ad farming bots. However it's sad for grinders too since they'll get those for a lot more ad than before. But VIP is for making lvling up easier, not for taking advantages over other players, which is bad for everyone if it's to be encouraged. It will even up the loss atm in the long run; the people that are attracted to the game will find it more enjoyable to play within the system and many of them will still be willing to purchase VIP, which include myself. I'm still gonna purchase VIP, and even more happily...... as soon as I see a discount coming up.
It makes it MORE expensive and costly to make enchants, have you not seen what PC and Xbox prices have shot through the roof because of this cash grab decieving tradebar update?
I'd say that's a smart move, and I support it very much. It seems lots of people are not happy about it, but it's gonna be a lot more beneficial for starters, and the only ones REALLY gonna be upset are the lockbox gamblers, among which group also include lots of hackers and/or ad farming bots. However it's sad for grinders too since they'll get those for a lot more ad than before. But VIP is for making lvling up easier, not for taking advantages over other players, which is bad for everyone if it's to be encouraged. It will even up the loss atm in the long run; the people that are attracted to the game will find it more enjoyable to play within the system and many of them will still be willing to purchase VIP, which include myself. I'm still gonna purchase VIP, and even more happily...... as soon as I see a discount coming up.
lol .... what?
Just read the previous 26 pages of different views on this horrible mistake. And maybe you will get an idea on how this game works.
On a side note...
I would like to add that in no way ,employees should be blamed for this mistake. They are just workers here, payed to do a job. They sit there for " -- : -- " hours and do the best they can.
They do not run the show. The people in the " leadership " position do. So i would like to apologize to people that are " not in charge" , you know who you are, and ask for understanding. Some of us, are here a very long time. And even if we do not post any more, that does not mean we do not play this game and are not active players, trying to contribute to our community in-game. That is why, this " mistake " caught us off-guard. I am sure the free apology gift was their idea to appease us. Or at least to give something back.
I'd say that's a smart move, and I support it very much. It seems lots of people are not happy about it, but it's gonna be a lot more beneficial for starters, and the only ones REALLY gonna be upset are the lockbox gamblers, among which group also include lots of hackers and/or ad farming bots. However it's sad for grinders too since they'll get those for a lot more ad than before. But VIP is for making lvling up easier, not for taking advantages over other players, which is bad for everyone if it's to be encouraged. It will even up the loss atm in the long run; the people that are attracted to the game will find it more enjoyable to play within the system and many of them will still be willing to purchase VIP, which include myself. I'm still gonna purchase VIP, and even more happily...... as soon as I see a discount coming up.
Comments
Pulling coal wards may even be a stupider move than pulling AD from leadership. At least there are other ways to earn AD. But now we need to pay $10 cold hard cash to get 1 coal ward. There is no other way to get them. And nobody is going to pay $310 just to get a single rank 12. That's $620 just to get rank 12 armour and weapon enchants on a single character. That means sellers need to charge 12 million AD for a Transcendent in the AH just to break even. How does that make sense???
Sad what has happened to this game. Just plain sad.
A functioning Foundry would result in infinite content created by players for players, for nothing more than pure enjoyment and a challenge. I created a Foundry quest. I liked playing it more than 90% of the game's content. The only limit to Foundry quests are our own imagination.
You build a profitable game by having a larger user base completing micro transactions with regular players subscribing to VIP for tangible benefits. I'm sure you understand this. There are plenty of MMO models you can copy here. I can only conclude that you're looking to kill the game to get out of a difficult licensing agreement that has terms you're unwilling or unable to fulfill. Am I close?
Nobody's buying their wards in the Zen store because they're overpriced by a factor of at least 10 and possibly closer to 20.
The two acceptable solutions were to slash the price in the Zen store, or make all sources BoA.
Boredom + Spending too much money or grind too much hours in order to enjoy the game= going to look elsewhere so I can find a game that would be valuable for time and money. Seriously, I totally understand everyone needs to make money from working or creating things for others to enjoy. I totally get it, but when not much creativity is shown to keep a player tuned to the game more. Makes it less enjoyable. Honestly I am currently looking for another game because I am bored of this one. Hoping for positive changes, yet I come to see negative ones. I had to reread the reasons behind these changes and did it several times to understand the reason to be more consumer friendly, yet each time I finished it all I could see it was a different way of saying the truth behind this reason. You guys should just be up front and say, "you did it because you need people to spend more real money on Zen so we can get paid."
Look I know its too long to read, but in short sentence if you didn't want to read all that is, I do not enjoy this change one bit and I am going to stop paying for VIP. I will be using that money on another game that is worth having, because people who are on a budget can not afford to spend hundreds of dollars to improve your gear. And for what? Because the end game content really sucks too. Sorry to say, but it does because everything is repetitive and THAT gets boring after some time!
I'm with you, but I'm playing this game since Jan 2014, just to share how much I loved this game.
Everytime it's a 1 step in the good direction and 4 steps in the bad direction.
It's just like being betrayed by your parter/friend/girlfriend: you can forgive once, not always.
This time is the worst: "I see you confused: the CWs were a mistake".
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
Before the whole rework, the only things of real value in the store were the wards. So if the Devs removed them before there were other things in the store, then players could perhaps make a legal claim that the removal had been a substantial reduction in the quality of something that they had paid for (either keys or VIP), and risk a class-action lawsuit.
Fast-forward to now, and they have put pets, mounts, fashions, etc. into the trade bar store. So the removal of the wards and blood rubies is now, in their eyes, much less of a legal risk. Since there are other good items in the store, then VIP and Keys weren't substantially affected, and that might be all the difference from a legal standpoint that they felt they needed.
And before anyone starts: changing the tarm store is not a "billing issue". Your online experience may change without notice, remember? Be glad they even gave us a one day warning before they "fixed" the tarm store... it's more than the poor bastages playing the Xbox version got.
If we wanted to get really semantic here: they could make everything in the game BoP, shut down the AH, shut down the ZAX, and make all of the ingame armor appear to be black leather gimp suits -- complete with ball gags, and there is nothing you could do about it. In fact, I'm pretty sure that ball gags are specifically mentioned in the TOS that we all agreed on. Can't remember which part exactly.
... for now we’ve prepared the following gifts for players who had accounts prior to the posting of this message.
if you take a look at how massive the AD seller spam is in PE these days, and that they only use an account once for spam.
Sure, the gift itself is account bound, but what they can do with all those Coals, Pres and Rubies... and i doubt that there is anything done against this.
Anyway, will we get some more official replies on this topic here, or is it just this announcement and nothing else?
> Legally, they can do whatever they want to the game with absolute impunity.
There was a long discussion of that earlier, and that's not at all clear. In fact, it's probably not legally the case. One of my previously censored comments mentioned "Fraud in the Inducement," as do many earlier.
> "Your online experience may change without notice"
If they really do take full advantage of that claim, that's a very good reason to avoid the game and the entire company.
that seeing the way this game is taking this payment again.
PS: if something misspelled or been explained that what I'm doing with the translator of google
Then removing them rather than returning them to the previous price just makes a complete mockery of the attempted point regarding the negative impact. Returning them to that previous price would have been the logical choice to make unless the reasoning is a blatantly clumsy cash-grab move.
For the love of Lloth, listen to your community (for once - break the pattern why not??) and work with us to make this game better. You were doing some good things, returning our lost levelling dungeons was a step. This decision, you just kicked the ladder away from new players and the non-whales.
And let us not now address the blatant bait-and-switch of the VIP program. Not one person I've spoken to in our guilds got VIP for any other reason than to get trade-bars for RP stuff from opening the lockboxes with the free keys. That is moving the goalposts by uprooting them to another stadium on another continent. I will be interested in the number of people not renewing VIP status - as I will be one of those.
Shame on the suits and bean-counters for this decision. As usual removed from the community and just seeing the numbers on an Excel spreadsheet.
Xeno, an unhappy Beta player.
Also, keep in mind that RNG on invocation boxes isn't exactly proficient for everyone. (4 months of play since I returned, 4 toons, daily invokes: 2 Coals)
I don't support the change. At all. I'll see you all again when things get better. If they ever do.
the new thread started with the following post
"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 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.
In regards to when we will deliver these items, we are in the process of making them available for accounts as described above. Based on our current estimations, we expect to have all of these gifts go out within the next week. We will be updating everyone on the status of the update as we get closer to release.
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."
Which is to say the way they were going to handle it is to do nothing, and they find their community goals for Xbox One accomplished..... HOW?????
"Neverwinter is a spamtastic greedy cashgrab run by conartists."
I hate to say it but I have to agree with him, as much as I try to like this game every time they "Fix" something they just whittle away a little more of what is left that actually keeps me here.
If they would make actual content other than grindy "elemental Evil" boredom, and Heroic Encounters I might be tempted to keep throwing some cash their way every now and then, but as it stands I have 33 days left on my VIP, and that is the last cash I will ever spend on this game.
GODTWSJ LG LZW JWKUMW
Answer is "No more coal wards...hahaha"
I'm a new player, as well as my wife and five of our friends. We've founded a guild with the goal of doing end-game content and 4/5 of us are working our way between 60 and 70 after a couple months of play. We all paid cash to subscribe to VIP (6 months in the case of my wife and I), as well as buying zen market mounts and a few other items. This was a large initial investment into a game for us, but it's D&D and Forgotten Realms - we figured we'd be playing for quite a long time with the VIP giving us bars to use to slowly, but eventually upgrade equipment and enchantments so that we can actually participate and possibly merge with a more long-standing and well geared guild.
Your change has effectively made this a pipe dream, as none of us has the money to invest the insane amounts of real world cash this will now require. For new/casual players, using bars to buy wards was slow to begin with to try to catch up to required gear scores, and you've effectively made this content exclusive by removing this avenue. Not only this, but the major draw to pay for VIP was the bars, which you've now removed, effectively using true bait and switch on us. i view the remaining months of our VIP a true waste of money now.
On top of that, I see this administrator post (page 25, bottom of the page with a "spiderman sees uncle ben rice and weeps" gif and no quotable text), mocking the absolutely expected - and well deserved - backlash. With this, you have very succinctly demonstrated what you think of your player base and I can say with absolute certainty that we will not be renewing our VIP, and we will not be spending another real-world dime on your game. We will play until it's not fun anymore or, more likely, the game dies due to the obvious lack of respect and care you have proven to have for the player base as you drive them away.
Not that I expect any response to my post, assuming it's not removed by moderators, but did mocking the players feel good?
-Gaidin
62 GWF (1,771 Gear Score, 814 Nigh Useless Tarmalune Trade Bars, and ~4 months of useless VIP left)
You need to readdress the issue hit on by Scott the game administrator who told us that Free to play people should be able to enjoy the game at the same level of the Pay to play people by using time instead of cash, you had just started heading in the right direction before you made this change I spent money in the game on keys and VIP, I improved and played my alts. Now you've gone back to your old way of doing things, Did Scott's vision for the game change? How about a word or two from him.
It makes it MORE expensive and costly to make enchants, have you not seen what PC and Xbox prices have shot through the roof because of this cash grab decieving tradebar update?
Just read the previous 26 pages of different views on this horrible mistake.
And maybe you will get an idea on how this game works.
On a side note...
I would like to add that in no way ,employees should be blamed for this mistake.
They are just workers here, payed to do a job. They sit there for " -- : -- " hours and do the best they can.
They do not run the show. The people in the " leadership " position do.
So i would like to apologize to people that are " not in charge" , you know who you are, and ask for understanding.
Some of us, are here a very long time.
And even if we do not post any more, that does not mean we do not play this game and are not active players, trying to contribute to our community in-game. That is why, this " mistake " caught us off-guard.
I am sure the free apology gift was their idea to appease us. Or at least to give something back.