Also, it is not entirely the high cost of influence that is the problem, (though high costs are part of the problem). The biggest issue as i see it is that there is currently only 1 way to earn influence reliably right now, and that is by grinding HEs on as many alts as you can do. This sucks.
Yup, from the small guild front again, I did Influence on 6 characters last night, which took about two hours. I wasn't quite as efficient as I could have been because other quests took me out of my way a bit, and I had to do some annoying inventory management stuff on each character to track enchant drops.
So we've got (380x5)+400=2300 for my efforts and only need like another 30k to start building a Stable. The diminishing returns means that last HE for 20 isn't really worth doing at all unless you're really close to one and have very high DPS. I do tend to run 4 instead of 3 because it gives a clean finish for the ranger's kill quest. The max return for your time is to keep switching characters after 3 though.
Advancement has come from the event, because I'm churning all the defense supply packs I can generate into Influence, for 100 per blue voucher. Occasional Siege drops help, and a guaranteed one per alt that does the initial errand quest for the Master of Coin. Also, someone bought a bunch of epic vouchers again... this is *a lot* of AD to offset the single day of grind each voucher is worth, but I don't like to tell people how to spend if that's something they want to do.
I say that making the Jubilee trader a permanent feature and not just an ephemeral event tie-in would provide an enormous amount of welcome relief. The SH-produced resources at my guild's level are wasted day after day, sitting in their structures because we can't DO anything with them, because we're looking at weeks or months before it's remotely possible for us to build something else. Turning those wasted resources directly into Influence via a structure that does have to be built again every day and tended several times to maximize the return provides player engagement for folks that feel rather like vomiting at the thought of ever doing Spider Attack again, and makes a visible dent in the requirements for the major projects. For the more advanced guilds, the amount of any resource that the Trader can produce is perhaps only a drop in the bucket, but it's still something to help fill that bucket. And they may be weighing whether they can spare the food and whatnot, or so I understand it shakes out when you get up that high. I think it scales pretty amazingly by a guild's size/rank, because the smaller you are, the more difference the Trader makes in what you can realistically accomplish in a day. It's a brilliant concept for giving guilds of any level a boost in areas they need, but seriously wasted by only being intended to be available for a week. That's just sad. I'm excited to see it in action, but already massively bummed out that it won't be around long enough to make much difference in the long run.
Lastly, although it's not part of guild alliances per se -- I hear what everyone is saying about Influence. I have been wanting to get those costs down, but I haven't managed to convince people (it's the key limiting factor in guild advancement, the only one with a real time gate on it, so people are nervous about lowering it). I will keep pushing for it!
I'd take a look at the number of guilds that started the Stronghold content, but seem to have stalled out. I hope you have the data to do an analysis like this because it would likely show that for a lot of guilds, the time gating was so arduous that they simply opted out of participating. Then build your argument off of that.
I understand you want to stretch out the time it takes people to complete their Strongholds. Obviously a lot of work when into the system, and you didn't want to see people completing their Stronghold too quickly. But if the barrier is perceived as being too high, people simply quit playing altogether, so you're accomplished the goal of making sure people don't consume content too quickly by discouraging people from even doing the content.
The most frustrating part of Strongholds is grinding out these currencies, like Influence, which is often times a debatable activity on the "Fun O'Meter", but it's doubly frustrating to then donate and not see the "needle move" so to speak.
Perhaps we could come to some sort of compromise. Set a cap for the total influence you're able to grind on a per rank basis. Have influence vouchers drop from HE mobs in the Stronghold zone. And make the drop chance higher per the level of the HE. Normal non-HE enemies have a small chance. Minor HE enemies had a bigger chance. Medium HE have a good chance, and a drop is guaranteed from a "boss" mob in the Major HEs.
I think an extra 25k/rank per week would be a nice boost. So if you have a GH rank 10, you have a weekly 250k influence cap on drops. Every time a guild member picks up an influence voucher in the Stronghold zone, it subtracts from this cap. When the drops equal the cap, they stop dropping for the week. Since Alliances are coming up, make sure that vouchers still drop in Allied strongholds, but they count against your guild's cap.
To make sure that people don't miss the drops, have them be BoA and appear automatically in your inventory (like the way Dragon's Hoard Enchantments work).
Or something like that...but whatever is it, give people a break on the influence grind.
"Meanwhile in the moderator's lounge..."
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
I do not see Influence as a time gate. It is available on the AH and Zen Market. It is more of a paywall that only the richest players can climb.
If you could buy voucher packs the way you can buy shard packs, then there'd be more to be said for paying to relieve the grind as an option or occasional impulse buy. Since the vouchers are only in the Stronghold Starter Pack, the cost is correspondingly very high, certainly higher than most would be willing to pay.
(Both making the same point, but coming at it from different angles.)
But if the barrier is perceived as being too high, people simply quit playing altogether, so you're accomplished the goal of making sure people don't consume content too quickly by discouraging people from even doing the content.
See also: 80 Tiamat wins for two boons? But I've been playing all the classes up until now.... I need how many million refinement points to max out my gear and each of these stones is worth 500?!? I could run this skirmish 500 times and still not get the orange ring I want?!?
Don't be making stuff where the only way to win is not to play.
Don't be making stuff where the only way to win is not to play.
Exactly. A 0.02% drop rate is essentially zero. I have no interest in farming eDemogorgon for a Legendary ring. Hence, I just opt not to do the content at all. Same is true for a lot of players, I suspect.
So you have to find the middle ground. A low enough chance for a reward that it does artificially stretch the life of content (a necessary evil in MMOs, lets just say for arguments sake), but not so low that player opt out of participating all together.
Personally, I don't mind grind. And I don't mind if something "takes a while". But there's a fine line between grinding and tedium, and the balance in Neverwinter never feels quite right on some of these things.
If you could buy voucher packs the way you can buy shard packs, then there'd be more to be said for paying to relieve the grind as an option or occasional impulse buy.
I agree. Voucher packs could definitely be a revenue source for Cryptic. I know the second they went into the Zen store, people would cry bloody murder over "P2W"! But if the price was set well, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for people to trade their time, IE earning AD in game, into Zen to buy these vouchers as another mechanism for converting play time directly to Stronghold resources.
Personally, I don't find that as inherently rewarding as earning them directly through game play, but I would still consider seeing more vouchers in the Zen store as a win/win for Cryptic and the players.
"Meanwhile in the moderator's lounge..."
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
But if the barrier is perceived as being too high, people simply quit playing altogether, so you're accomplished the goal of making sure people don't consume content too quickly by discouraging people from even doing the content.
See also: 80 Tiamat wins for two boons? But I've been playing all the classes up until now.... I need how many million refinement points to max out my gear and each of these stones is worth 500?!? I could run this skirmish 500 times and still not get the orange ring I want?!?
Don't be making stuff where the only way to win is not to play.
Perhaps offtopic but I want to support the sentiment. I'm personally not doing underdark content unless to help someone or from time to time for just do something. The chances are just not worth it. Not going to waste hundreds of hours for a ring that may or may not come.
Many guilds/people just quit over this trend. Not only people are forced into unattainable targets, but also with only one viable option to get it. Want tyranny? Do dailies. - I hate dailies, I don't do solo grind, let me do dungeons from the same campaign or vouchers from something etc..
There is a time-gating problem? No problem -> Keep the caps (though an adjustment is in order), but allow more than one source. Repetitive grind is boring, don't force it on people.
Thanks - for whatever reason Greycloaks seems to be broken. I invite you to try - just invite Greycloaks and see if you get an error. 4 other guilds have tried and gotten an error, maybe you'll get lucky? I created two test guilds and was able to make and alliance with those two new guilds and test guild from Team Fencebane, but... Greycloaks seems to be broken for some reason. We thought it might be because it was maxed out... but clearly that's not it.
This sounds bad. Can you work with some other guilds and post the text (or give a screenshot) of the error message people are getting?
Thanks!
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andorrabellMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 437Arc User
edited May 2016
IMHO the best incentive for the Alliance structure is the ability to fill out DragonFlight/ EMO/Tiamat/CN etc runs during off times with people who want to excel (this is coming from someone with no shopping needs). THAT is what I'm really looking forward to with Alliances.
Personally, I don't find that as inherently rewarding as earning them directly through game play, but I would still consider seeing more vouchers in the Zen store as a win/win for Cryptic and the players.
Definitely not and I want to see in-game relief, but Cryptic has set the price of a Stronghold Chest of Power at 3 bucks, which translates into -10 of each type of shard-generating quest. I don't know if I should make a crack here about how badly this means Cryptic undervalues our time, but 3 bucks for 40 quests of stuff? However you want to view it, you get a lot for how little you pay for this item.
Each Stronghold Chest of Campaigns is -5 characters-worth of daily Influence. If you want to keep it proportionate, then it might be worth a dollar in Cryptic SH math. The only people this would hurt is anyone who resells the vouchers from the starter packs at high prices precisely because it's the only way to get them.
Limiting visitors: a couple of people mentioned this. This should be implemented -- guild leader only. Has anyone tried it? Does it work? If not, please say right away! (There might just barely be time to fix it, depending on what exactly is wrong.) I'm hoping it's all OK and just the people mentioning it didn't realize it was guild leader only.
Limiting visitors: a couple of people mentioned this. This should be implemented -- guild leader only. Has anyone tried it? Does it work? If not, please say right away! (There might just barely be time to fix it, depending on what exactly is wrong.) I'm hoping it's all OK and just the people mentioning it didn't realize it was guild leader only.
There is no such feature anywhere to be found!
Yup, I looked into this on our end and it looks like it just got missed.
Normally there wouldn't be time to add something like this at this point, but because it was *supposed* to be there, there's a chance we can squeeze it in. I will start to put those wheels in motion -- keep your fingers crossed!
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
Each Stronghold Chest of Campaigns is -5 characters-worth of daily Influence. If you want to keep it proportionate, then it might be worth a dollar in Cryptic SH math. The only people this would hurt is anyone who resells the vouchers from the starter packs at high prices precisely because it's the only way to get them.
@beckylunatic Yep, my napkin scratch came out to about 100 Zen for a 5 pack of Vouchers. I'd buy that. Not a ton, but I would definitely be converting more AD to zen to purchase a few a week to help move along the Unrepentant SH.
I would also like to add that a guild is unlikely (before lv 20) to EVER have extra campaign currencies to donate. The grind to obtain such currencies (sharandar, IWD, ToD and even Dread ring) is such that people do not want to grind more than they have to. As such they grind until the goal is achieved and then stop, and whatever currencies they happen to pick up in between the time they stop and they have to start grinding again they will save (since there is no storage penalty) for when they are needed again so as to decrease the amount of grind that is required the next time.
In reality, any guild that has any instinct of self preservation is going to hoard everything they can until such a time as they don't need it, and with the way strongholds work that is only once you are at lv 20 and your boons are at lv 10. You mention things like gems, labor and surplus equipment as things that a large guild might have excess of, and they will. Because these items are all able to be created through professions, which entails a minimum amount of effort in return for an amount of resources. You can take 60 minutes and set up tasks on 50 characters to produce a huge amount of labor, AD, gems and surplus. Or, you spend 60 minutes in IWD doing quests to get frozen treasure points and you come out with enough points for one of the frozen treasure vouchers, which is 1000 points. and just to get a group of lv 5 buildings and lv 10 GH you need over 300k frozen treasures... so 300 hours of grinding? yeah, multiple people can work on this, but if you guild has 50 people, and you ALL work on that, you still spent 300 hours, 6h each, getting 6k frozen points each... and there is supposed to be excess to donate to someone else after?
Once you are at gh lv 18 you are looking at 1.5 million points of frozen treasures needed to advance to lv 20. 1500 hours of grinding ONLY frozen treasures, you get some gem points as well, and RP for personal use depending on your set up, but that is time spent doing rehashed content for nothing but guild advancement for the most part. You could be killing mobs in dungeons and getting RP for personal use too, and dungeons are a heck of a lot more fun.
What it boils down to is that campaign currencies are too onerous to obtain for a guild to have more than what they need. And if they have enough for the moment they are saving for a level later when they need a whole bunch of that currency again. The only things a guild can have excess of is stuff that is easy to produce.
If you want people sharing overflow resources then rework the lv 24 AD crate task in leadership to provide a box with a random green voucher instead, that provides one of the campaign currencies to donate or a green AD voucher. I am not what your game numbers are telling you, but in my experience no one is doing that AD task anymore since they already have a stack or more per alt, and so do their guildmates, and their mimic is full. and the mimics of all their friend's guilds are full. they can't even donate all those nice AD vouchers gained from tiamat and dragonflight anymore. with AD you went from not providing enough vouchers to providing so many they are getting discarded. which is fine, but giving a shot at all the campaign currencies would be better balanced... perhaps that would scare your people too much who are not wanting to change influence
Guild - The Imaginary Friends We are searching for slave labor, will pay with food from our farm!
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
Well... *personally* I've barely managed to avoid going over some campaign currency caps from weekly questing on multiple alts due to not being able to donate at home, so to speak. I had to let a lot of Thayan scrolls go recently because I had to do the weekly turn-ins and couldn't burn off enough with other tasks. And I now have 10+ piles of epic DR vouchers I crafted, one per alt, since those are character bound. Plus their blue Siege ones....
I noticed that Fey Sparks had rolled over on one character, but there was coffer space to dump a few hundred each, freeing them all up to run the Reservoir for another couple of weeks apiece without waste.
But that's an insignificant amount in the grand scheme, and when I do have a larger coffer and have access to a better store so that my guild mark management is simplified (ally shop access is a big deal for sure - I resent wasting resources, so very much), my current problem goes away, and will be replaced by the issue of burgeoning requirements.
I do not see Influence as a time gate. It is available on the AH and Zen Market. It is more of a paywall that only the richest players can climb.
If you could buy voucher packs the way you can buy shard packs, then there'd be more to be said for paying to relieve the grind as an option or occasional impulse buy. Since the vouchers are only in the Stronghold Starter Pack, the cost is correspondingly very high, certainly higher than most would be willing to pay.
(Both making the same point, but coming at it from different angles.)
I'm probably missing your point, but just to be clear, you can buy influence vouchers from the AH for much cheaper than buying the entire sh-pack off of the zen market. I suspect you're talking about adding a voucher-only pack to the zen market, but wasn't sure.
Iyon the Dark
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josiahiyonMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 396Arc User
@kvet I can invite your guild to the alliance we have on the ptr if you are still without an alliance. It's the absolute alliance that several have already posted pictures of in this thread.
Thanks - for whatever reason Greycloaks seems to be broken. I invite you to try - just invite Greycloaks and see if you get an error. 4 other guilds have tried and gotten an error, maybe you'll get lucky? I created two test guilds and was able to make and alliance with those two new guilds and test guild from Team Fencebane, but... Greycloaks seems to be broken for some reason. We thought it might be because it was maxed out... but clearly that's not it.
Yup, I receive the same message I've received from attempting to invite a few other guilds:
"[Error] Alliance Error: Invited guild must be same allegiance."
Maybe this is some remnant of the old GG allegiance system (Delzoun, Luskan)?
Thanks! This is really helpful. I've passed it on to QA and to the programmers. I agree the "allegiance" thing looks pretty suspicious, so hopefully that will make it easier to track down.
Thanks for all the feedback. Sorry to take so long to respond -- I've been busy working on the *next* (!!) module. But I managed to catch up (kinda sorta) and thought now would be a good time to post here.
The math of the guild boons -- lots of good comments here, with scathias having one of the more detailed posts. Scathias, you're basically right in terms of the incentives being limited, and players mostly wanting to donate to their own guilds. There are a few things to keep in mind, though:
* One is that there are different resources, and big guilds might have extra of something (eg gems or surplus labor, maybe even something like Icewind Dale currency) that small guilds are not maxed out on. The players in the big guilds still want guild marks, though, so they will donate to the small guilds in that case. Obviously that only applies in some cases -- it's unlikely any guild is going to be donating influence to a smaller guild (unless they are truly capped out).
* The big thing, though, is that the bonuses are a pretty tiny part of the overall system. The biggest benefit to small guilds is the ability to use the big guild's stores (I'm in a small guild myself, and the chance to get some Dragonflight or Lionsmane gear is what I'm looking forward to most). The biggest benefit to big guilds is probably making it easier to spend capped currencies (and thus gain guild marks).
This leads into another question -- why is the system so hierarchical? That was how the system came to us from Star Trek, and I resisted it at first. But on further thought, I decided it was actually a good thing. That's because the worst outcome (in my mind) would be if the alliance system encouraged all the big guilds to group together and just left all the small guilds further behind. That's a risk (it mostly hasn't happened on Star Trek, though), but there are some important things that push against it:
* psychologically, the hierarchical flavor makes a big guild not want to be "on the bottom" of the pyramid
* the benefits of the bonuses are small (if they were super-good, then the big guilds *would* all want to group up)
* the best benefit for small guilds (store purchasing) works best if they are allied with a big guild; the best benefit for big guilds (a place to spend excess resources) works best if they are allied with small guilds
* the Helm guild bonus is better than the Gauntlet bonus, so a big guild has a reason to leave Gauntlet position in a giant alliance and become the Helm guild in a new alliance (or to start its own alliance to begin with, rather than join an all-big-guild alliance)
This last point is a mixed blessing -- in my ideal world there would be an awesome bonus that a small guild wanted and a big guild didn't. I haven't been able to come up with one that is simple, clean, and doable in the time we have. There have been some intriguing proposals people have made, but none that fits all those criteria *and* isn't just good for the big guild too. However, although I agree the XP bonus is pretty meh, keep in mind the real small guild benefit -- shopping in a big guild store -- is really, really good. As in, "best alliance benefit in the whole system" good. So to make sure big guilds have some benefit, I think it makes sense that they have the better bonus.
Limiting visitors: a couple of people mentioned this. This should be implemented -- guild leader only. Has anyone tried it? Does it work? If not, please say right away! (There might just barely be time to fix it, depending on what exactly is wrong.) I'm hoping it's all OK and just the people mentioning it didn't realize it was guild leader only.
Shared boons: yes, it was just an example, not an actual feature. It was a feature I really wanted, but it got cut because of time If enough people agitate (politely please!) maybe I can convince people we should do it. If we did it, I'd like to do something like Ironzerg79's suggestion (where you only get 1 or 2 shared boons, so that you still care about your own boon buildings). However, keep it mind it would be a new feature, so it's not something we could do for the upcoming launch of alliances -- it would have to be done later.
Lastly, although it's not part of guild alliances per se -- I hear what everyone is saying about Influence. I have been wanting to get those costs down, but I haven't managed to convince people (it's the key limiting factor in guild advancement, the only one with a real time gate on it, so people are nervous about lowering it). I will keep pushing for it!
I really like Ironzerg's suggestion of the shared boons but only one can be set as shared so that eventually you could have more options. The influence is a pain, as someone else mentioned the diminishing returns of it making the last one being 20 SUCKS so I tend to not bother with it unless I'm on my way from another and run into a HE. IMO, something like doubling the total per day, or raising it to 1k and making each one worth 100 would be far preferable to me.
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
I do not see Influence as a time gate. It is available on the AH and Zen Market. It is more of a paywall that only the richest players can climb.
If you could buy voucher packs the way you can buy shard packs, then there'd be more to be said for paying to relieve the grind as an option or occasional impulse buy. Since the vouchers are only in the Stronghold Starter Pack, the cost is correspondingly very high, certainly higher than most would be willing to pay.
(Both making the same point, but coming at it from different angles.)
I'm probably missing your point, but just to be clear, you can buy influence vouchers from the AH for much cheaper than buying the entire sh-pack off of the zen market. I suspect you're talking about adding a voucher-only pack to the zen market, but wasn't sure.
Yuppers!
Edit for further clarification, people who resell the vouchers from the starter packs slap a very high price tag on them because of the exclusivity. My take on it is that if the Zen store had standalone voucher packs, they'd only be worth 100 Zen, keeping it in proportion with other SH-themed items.
TBH as a leader of a tiny guild with only a handful of currently active members....SH has been more of a bust than a benefit...prior to SH and EE we were a medium sized guild with members on at all hours...afterwards especially with SH release a lot plain quit due to the perception that it was designed with only the large guilds in mind...and quite frankly for the most part I share their sentiment on this...while the addition of campaign currency vouchers and professions crafting to SH helped in all areas except the only one that matters...Influence. The requirements are too high and the cap too low for any realistic advancement. Everyone is aware of this yet nothing changes. The disparity between the high level guilds and the lower ones was apparent.
And with Alliances...you increase the disparity again as there is no real incentive for established guilds to recruit small and tiny guilds into the alliance. As one guild officer said to me...Alliances should benefit all guilds not just the higher ones... after he politely advised my guild was too low to join the their alliance.
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darkstarcrashMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,382Arc User
Since we have a dev talking about influence: maybe one way to deal with it would be to treat it more like campaigns, where there is a weekly task that gives you a big chunk of campaign currency, and daily tasks that give you a smaller amount that totals more than the weekly quest.
If you added a weekly quest for say 2000 Influence, then even those who only log in on the weekends could make a noticeable contribution to the guild coffers.
TBH as a leader of a tiny guild with only a handful of currently active members....SH has been more of a bust than a benefit...prior to SH and EE we were a medium sized guild with members on at all hours...afterwards especially with SH release a lot plain quit due to the perception that it was designed with only the large guilds in mind...and quite frankly for the most part I share their sentiment on this...while the addition of campaign currency vouchers and professions crafting to SH helped in all areas except the only one that matters...Influence. The requirements are too high and the cap too low for any realistic advancement. Everyone is aware of this yet nothing changes. The disparity between the high level guilds and the lower ones was apparent.
And with Alliances...you increase the disparity again as there is no real incentive for established guilds to recruit small and tiny guilds into the alliance. As one guild officer said to me...Alliances should benefit all guilds not just the higher ones... after he politely advised my guild was too low to join the their alliance.
Well, it would help to drastically reduce the resources across the board on the lower ranking guild stronghold structures... which would help all small guilds directly without any big rework needed. But i'm trying to get that through to the Devs for as long as the guild strongholds are in game without any success.
If any Dev want some good ideas on how building up a stronghold should work, take a look at how some old RTS games do it.
And alliances will only place even more power into the hands of the big guilds leaders... which is another bad idea. Alliances will just finish off any small or even medium guild left standing.
TBH as a leader of a tiny guild with only a handful of currently active members....SH has been more of a bust than a benefit...prior to SH and EE we were a medium sized guild with members on at all hours...afterwards especially with SH release a lot plain quit due to the perception that it was designed with only the large guilds in mind...and quite frankly for the most part I share their sentiment on this...while the addition of campaign currency vouchers and professions crafting to SH helped in all areas except the only one that matters...Influence. The requirements are too high and the cap too low for any realistic advancement. Everyone is aware of this yet nothing changes. The disparity between the high level guilds and the lower ones was apparent.
And with Alliances...you increase the disparity again as there is no real incentive for established guilds to recruit small and tiny guilds into the alliance. As one guild officer said to me...Alliances should benefit all guilds not just the higher ones... after he politely advised my guild was too low to join the their alliance.
Well, it would help to drastically reduce the resources across the board on the lower ranking guild stronghold structures... which would help all small guilds directly without any big rework needed. But i'm trying to get that through to the Devs for as long as the guild strongholds are in game without any success.
If any Dev want some good ideas on how building up a stronghold should work, take a look at how some old RTS games do it.
And alliances will only place even more power into the hands of the big guilds leaders... which is another bad idea. Alliances will just finish off any small or even medium guild left standing.
Couldnt agree anymore with this statement.
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revan06100Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 205Arc User
edited May 2016
So, pretty much, small guilds have to bend for bigger guilds... More eliticism... And if a small guild decide not to join an alliance because of this reason, they don't get all the advantages of being in it... Carry on make big guilds even more powerful and let them rule the other guilds... Great decision.
Since we have a dev talking about influence: maybe one way to deal with it would be to treat it more like campaigns, where there is a weekly task that gives you a big chunk of campaign currency, and daily tasks that give you a smaller amount that totals more than the weekly quest.
If you added a weekly quest for say 2000 Influence, then even those who only log in on the weekends could make a noticeable contribution to the guild coffers.
Comments
So we've got (380x5)+400=2300 for my efforts and only need like another 30k to start building a Stable. The diminishing returns means that last HE for 20 isn't really worth doing at all unless you're really close to one and have very high DPS. I do tend to run 4 instead of 3 because it gives a clean finish for the ranger's kill quest. The max return for your time is to keep switching characters after 3 though.
Advancement has come from the event, because I'm churning all the defense supply packs I can generate into Influence, for 100 per blue voucher. Occasional Siege drops help, and a guaranteed one per alt that does the initial errand quest for the Master of Coin. Also, someone bought a bunch of epic vouchers again... this is *a lot* of AD to offset the single day of grind each voucher is worth, but I don't like to tell people how to spend if that's something they want to do.
I say that making the Jubilee trader a permanent feature and not just an ephemeral event tie-in would provide an enormous amount of welcome relief. The SH-produced resources at my guild's level are wasted day after day, sitting in their structures because we can't DO anything with them, because we're looking at weeks or months before it's remotely possible for us to build something else. Turning those wasted resources directly into Influence via a structure that does have to be built again every day and tended several times to maximize the return provides player engagement for folks that feel rather like vomiting at the thought of ever doing Spider Attack again, and makes a visible dent in the requirements for the major projects. For the more advanced guilds, the amount of any resource that the Trader can produce is perhaps only a drop in the bucket, but it's still something to help fill that bucket. And they may be weighing whether they can spare the food and whatnot, or so I understand it shakes out when you get up that high. I think it scales pretty amazingly by a guild's size/rank, because the smaller you are, the more difference the Trader makes in what you can realistically accomplish in a day. It's a brilliant concept for giving guilds of any level a boost in areas they need, but seriously wasted by only being intended to be available for a week. That's just sad. I'm excited to see it in action, but already massively bummed out that it won't be around long enough to make much difference in the long run.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I'd take a look at the number of guilds that started the Stronghold content, but seem to have stalled out. I hope you have the data to do an analysis like this because it would likely show that for a lot of guilds, the time gating was so arduous that they simply opted out of participating. Then build your argument off of that.
I understand you want to stretch out the time it takes people to complete their Strongholds. Obviously a lot of work when into the system, and you didn't want to see people completing their Stronghold too quickly. But if the barrier is perceived as being too high, people simply quit playing altogether, so you're accomplished the goal of making sure people don't consume content too quickly by discouraging people from even doing the content.
The most frustrating part of Strongholds is grinding out these currencies, like Influence, which is often times a debatable activity on the "Fun O'Meter", but it's doubly frustrating to then donate and not see the "needle move" so to speak.
Perhaps we could come to some sort of compromise. Set a cap for the total influence you're able to grind on a per rank basis. Have influence vouchers drop from HE mobs in the Stronghold zone. And make the drop chance higher per the level of the HE. Normal non-HE enemies have a small chance. Minor HE enemies had a bigger chance. Medium HE have a good chance, and a drop is guaranteed from a "boss" mob in the Major HEs.
I think an extra 25k/rank per week would be a nice boost. So if you have a GH rank 10, you have a weekly 250k influence cap on drops. Every time a guild member picks up an influence voucher in the Stronghold zone, it subtracts from this cap. When the drops equal the cap, they stop dropping for the week. Since Alliances are coming up, make sure that vouchers still drop in Allied strongholds, but they count against your guild's cap.
To make sure that people don't miss the drops, have them be BoA and appear automatically in your inventory (like the way Dragon's Hoard Enchantments work).
Or something like that...but whatever is it, give people a break on the influence grind.
(Both making the same point, but coming at it from different angles.)
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80 Tiamat wins for two boons? But I've been playing all the classes up until now....
I need how many million refinement points to max out my gear and each of these stones is worth 500?!?
I could run this skirmish 500 times and still not get the orange ring I want?!?
Don't be making stuff where the only way to win is not to play.
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So you have to find the middle ground. A low enough chance for a reward that it does artificially stretch the life of content (a necessary evil in MMOs, lets just say for arguments sake), but not so low that player opt out of participating all together.
Personally, I don't mind grind. And I don't mind if something "takes a while". But there's a fine line between grinding and tedium, and the balance in Neverwinter never feels quite right on some of these things. I agree. Voucher packs could definitely be a revenue source for Cryptic. I know the second they went into the Zen store, people would cry bloody murder over "P2W"! But if the price was set well, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for people to trade their time, IE earning AD in game, into Zen to buy these vouchers as another mechanism for converting play time directly to Stronghold resources.
Personally, I don't find that as inherently rewarding as earning them directly through game play, but I would still consider seeing more vouchers in the Zen store as a win/win for Cryptic and the players.
Many guilds/people just quit over this trend. Not only people are forced into unattainable targets, but also with only one viable option to get it.
Want tyranny? Do dailies. - I hate dailies, I don't do solo grind, let me do dungeons from the same campaign or vouchers from something etc..
There is a time-gating problem? No problem -> Keep the caps (though an adjustment is in order), but allow more than one source. Repetitive grind is boring, don't force it on people.
Thanks!
P.S. Neat idea to add an Alliance Boon Slot.
https://www.theholycrusaders.com/
Each Stronghold Chest of Campaigns is -5 characters-worth of daily Influence. If you want to keep it proportionate, then it might be worth a dollar in Cryptic SH math. The only people this would hurt is anyone who resells the vouchers from the starter packs at high prices precisely because it's the only way to get them.
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Normally there wouldn't be time to add something like this at this point, but because it was *supposed* to be there, there's a chance we can squeeze it in. I will start to put those wheels in motion -- keep your fingers crossed!
In reality, any guild that has any instinct of self preservation is going to hoard everything they can until such a time as they don't need it, and with the way strongholds work that is only once you are at lv 20 and your boons are at lv 10. You mention things like gems, labor and surplus equipment as things that a large guild might have excess of, and they will. Because these items are all able to be created through professions, which entails a minimum amount of effort in return for an amount of resources. You can take 60 minutes and set up tasks on 50 characters to produce a huge amount of labor, AD, gems and surplus. Or, you spend 60 minutes in IWD doing quests to get frozen treasure points and you come out with enough points for one of the frozen treasure vouchers, which is 1000 points. and just to get a group of lv 5 buildings and lv 10 GH you need over 300k frozen treasures... so 300 hours of grinding? yeah, multiple people can work on this, but if you guild has 50 people, and you ALL work on that, you still spent 300 hours, 6h each, getting 6k frozen points each... and there is supposed to be excess to donate to someone else after?
Once you are at gh lv 18 you are looking at 1.5 million points of frozen treasures needed to advance to lv 20. 1500 hours of grinding ONLY frozen treasures, you get some gem points as well, and RP for personal use depending on your set up, but that is time spent doing rehashed content for nothing but guild advancement for the most part. You could be killing mobs in dungeons and getting RP for personal use too, and dungeons are a heck of a lot more fun.
What it boils down to is that campaign currencies are too onerous to obtain for a guild to have more than what they need. And if they have enough for the moment they are saving for a level later when they need a whole bunch of that currency again. The only things a guild can have excess of is stuff that is easy to produce.
If you want people sharing overflow resources then rework the lv 24 AD crate task in leadership to provide a box with a random green voucher instead, that provides one of the campaign currencies to donate or a green AD voucher. I am not what your game numbers are telling you, but in my experience no one is doing that AD task anymore since they already have a stack or more per alt, and so do their guildmates, and their mimic is full. and the mimics of all their friend's guilds are full. they can't even donate all those nice AD vouchers gained from tiamat and dragonflight anymore.
We are searching for slave labor, will pay with food from our farm!
I noticed that Fey Sparks had rolled over on one character, but there was coffer space to dump a few hundred each, freeing them all up to run the Reservoir for another couple of weeks apiece without waste.
But that's an insignificant amount in the grand scheme, and when I do have a larger coffer and have access to a better store so that my guild mark management is simplified (ally shop access is a big deal for sure - I resent wasting resources, so very much), my current problem goes away, and will be replaced by the issue of burgeoning requirements.
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Iyon the Dark
"[Error] Alliance Error: Invited guild must be same allegiance."
Maybe this is some remnant of the old GG allegiance system (Delzoun, Luskan)?
Iyon the Dark
I really like Ironzerg's suggestion of the shared boons but only one can be set as shared so that eventually you could have more options. The influence is a pain, as someone else mentioned the diminishing returns of it making the last one being 20 SUCKS so I tend to not bother with it unless I'm on my way from another and run into a HE. IMO, something like doubling the total per day, or raising it to 1k and making each one worth 100 would be far preferable to me.
Edit for further clarification, people who resell the vouchers from the starter packs slap a very high price tag on them because of the exclusivity. My take on it is that if the Zen store had standalone voucher packs, they'd only be worth 100 Zen, keeping it in proportion with other SH-themed items.
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And with Alliances...you increase the disparity again as there is no real incentive for established guilds to recruit small and tiny guilds into the alliance. As one guild officer said to me...Alliances should benefit all guilds not just the higher ones... after he politely advised my guild was too low to join the their alliance.
If you added a weekly quest for say 2000 Influence, then even those who only log in on the weekends could make a noticeable contribution to the guild coffers.
But i'm trying to get that through to the Devs for as long as the guild strongholds are in game without any success.
If any Dev want some good ideas on how building up a stronghold should work, take a look at how some old RTS games do it.
And alliances will only place even more power into the hands of the big guilds leaders... which is another bad idea. Alliances will just finish off any small or even medium guild left standing.
Carry on make big guilds even more powerful and let them rule the other guilds... Great decision.
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