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[PC] Gateway Closing Down

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  • arnzilla69arnzilla69 Member Posts: 5 Arc User
    I got back into the game to develop companions for SCA. I even considered buying zen for this purpose. Needless to say, I'll not be spending any real money on this game ever again.
  • tanais58cranetanais58crane Member Posts: 111 Arc User
    edited September 2016

    I got back into the game to develop companions for SCA. I even considered buying zen for this purpose. Needless to say, I'll not be spending any real money on this game ever again.

    Sigh.. playing the SCA with them was the only reason I hoarded companions and was buying extra active slots. It was just so much fun to go with different companions, it was expensive to level them up yes, but they had a pretty entertaining use there at least.

    Now all that companions are good for is as damage/stats buffers depending on their active.

    What to say, a huge part of what made this game stand out across the sea of MMOs has just died for me with this latest fruit of a half-assed policy of late, poorly and unproperly.

    Not only that but this is a Dungeons and Dragons game. Where is the fantasy? Where is the Epic Tales of adventure?

    "Here, have endless hours of grinding, the perfect representation of Dungeons and Dragons on a computer!"

    You failed, you outright failed. The SCA had that spark of adventure, buy the companions you want to see going in an adventure through the sword coast, level them up to make them stronger, and watch them face challenge after challenge.

    Yes you had barely put any effort into it.
    Yes the art assets were laughably bad.
    Yes it could had been so much better.

    But it still had that spark of adventure that makes Dungeons and Dragons what it is. A tale of fantasy and adventure.

    Where is the adventure, now that I face Demogorgon for the 1000th time, hoping to finally brute-force my way through the ridiculous RNG behind the +5 ring I need?

    Where is the fantasy, looking at expenses of ~2.000.000 Million Astral Diamonds per significant upgrade to my gear, that I can only feasibly pay by running repetitive content across dozens of alts in the most mind-numbingly way possibly.

    The decision to take down the SCA proves that you as a company failed to even grasp the spirit of fantasy and adventure this game should embrace.

    I do not know what kind of north you are setting sails for, Cryptic.

    But I know that you've just thrown down to the sea one of the very few remnants of the land of fantasy you were supposed to take us to.
    The stars are falling, and the old gods silent as death, with the blood sworn to rip you down from the night sky, what cost will pose too high?
  • minotaur2857minotaur2857 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,141 Arc User
    I didn't like the interface for professions, I don't own a smartphone. My use for gateway - while searching which of my characters had an item I'd stored away, I keep getting disconnected when switching through all my chars in game, so it was much faster in gateway. I also played SCA a bit.

    This sucks, but is not game breaking for me. The loss of the companion gear however ... A vote for adding them to professions.
  • kingramzekingramze Member Posts: 23 Arc User

    kreatyve said:

    2. Trawling the AH with botters BREAKS the AH. This is the reason gateway is down. The servers got FRIED because some thousand accounts, set to trawl AH prices, so overworked the servers that they CAUGHT FIRE!

    Source?
    20 years of experience, time gateway servers were down is approx what would be needed to do physical replacement, wiring repair and testing. Plus another few days to come up with patches that obviously didn't work(only up for an hour before dropping again).
    Yeahh... no. They took the gateway down intentionally -- and they brought it back up accidentally for a short time. They explained as much in previous posts in another thread. There was no physical damage. It was killed on purpose, accidentally brought up after regular maintenance (probably as part of the server reset routine), then taken down on purpose again shortly after along with an apology for accidentally bringing it back and notes that it was definitely not coming back up for the rest of the week... and a developer noted that after a meeting, we'd get an official announcement regarding the gateway later, but in the meantime, they had a task to find other ways of inserting SCA content into the regular gameplay.

    All of this was planned.
  • darkwilydarkwily Member Posts: 5 Arc User
    Neverwinter:Gateway it is now permanently down like i knew it would be, because some people cheat, everything is being stolen from, first ad from professions, ad from invoking, now this. The is the long road from the neverwinter developers to p2p right now it is f2 almost play. it use to be f2p they will blame the botters blah blah blah, there will always be cheaters in the game. Even people that make the games give themselves back doors sometimes to make beta testing easier for them. Fbi has no real rewards worth it. going to repost this on my facebook as i know they won't let it last long if at all... i use to spam my buddies telling them about this game because they didn't have to pay... just work like me maybe pay a little to start and you can make ad/zen with time and get what you want... i don't tell them anymore. 2 weeks after i got lvl 25 leadership, they took ad off of it. i got major irl agro for spending so much time on gateway., This is the next straw that broke the camel's back, only this time it was his neck. lets not forget coal wards from bar merchant and other "minor" stuff like that

    they give us "rewards" to comphensate the face we are in fact being HAMSTER. Most people like myself cannot spend $50 every week on zen like some of my buddies. i put 3 years into getting where i am today. my fiance 2 3/4 years. now that i had over lvl 20 leadership on my most of my chars you are even taking away making a little from refining stones (what i don't use to work on the 4 chars i play alot) i think it is time for a refunds for all the vip's that were put into this game, i am right now burned 12 months and on my next 6 months. I have recieved 1 epic companion in all this time by the way with multiple different lockboxes by the way. i have a better chance to walk outside on a sunny day. get hit by a truck and struck by lightning at the same time.
  • obsiddiaobsiddia Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,025 Arc User
    ;_; I bought and built up all my classic favorite AD&D monsters so I could
    play the epic SCA. I loved the dice game! Played it endlessly while I was ill.

    Can we PLEASE somehow play the dice game? Build it into the main game as
    if your character is playing a board game. (If bots were playing SCA then
    make the winnings bind to account!)

    I'm so stunned right now. I actually played SCA over 1,000 times.
    Such an adorable game, lost.

    Did you really think anyone could steal the power of the god of thieves?
  • hustin1hustin1 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,458 Arc User
    panderus said:

    kreatyve said:

    @panderus While I am trying to understand and cope with the decisions, I would like to please ask that you PLEASE do not put the Loyal gear in a lockbox. I would prefer it to be more readily available rather than have it in a lockbox. :( Trade bar store comes to mind, that way people still have to buy keys to get it, but are pretty much guaranteed to get the pieces they want/need.

    Lockbox is not likely where we would put them, no.

    Personally, I would like to see the Lightfoot Thief come from some gameplay related activity.
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  • hustin1hustin1 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,458 Arc User
    edited September 2016
    panderus said:

    panderus said:

    kreatyve said:

    @panderus While I am trying to understand and cope with the decisions, I would like to please ask that you PLEASE do not put the Loyal gear in a lockbox. I would prefer it to be more readily available rather than have it in a lockbox. :( Trade bar store comes to mind, that way people still have to buy keys to get it, but are pretty much guaranteed to get the pieces they want/need.

    Lockbox is not likely where we would put them, no.

    Personally, I would like to see the Lightfoot Thief come from some gameplay related activity.
    Maybe an epic level leadership profession task??
    That is an interesting and flavorful place to put them.
    Well, we did just have a short discussion last night in guild chat on whether weaponsmithing and artificing were useful to level up anymore. Losing Fallen Dragon weapons seems to have made them obsolete.
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  • sockmunkeysockmunkey Member Posts: 4,622 Arc User
    In other news, Star Treks gateway is working just fine.

    http://gateway.startrekonline.com

    Perhaps, we should warn them.
  • martelis1981martelis1981 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 121 Arc User
    edited September 2016
    Unbelievable, this is the worse and the dumbest decision that you could take. I don't understand how is possible that you Cryptic don't realize that bots will do their activties:

    IN-GAME

    increasing the lag. Gosh!! is so simple. Why no better say that you want to close the game and stop wasting our time. :/
    Post edited by martelis1981 on
  • krzrsmskrzrsms Member Posts: 164 Arc User
    Sorry.. no one can buy the 'we're so experienced' and 'we've been dealing with bots for a while' and 'it takes too much time'. ...especially within the same post.

    The devs here clearly have no idea how to deal with bots that they perceive to be an existential threat, and have no idea how to make any additional appealing products beyond what was provided for them by previous devs. This is a piece of what has been the slow degradation of this game, eating it self alive.

    Taking content, access, and tools away from real players in order to get at bots that provide a service within this game that has such a messed up economy in the first place is a fools errand. Yes the economy is different then the consoles, but different is not necessarily worse.

    If the devs spend a tiny %age of the amount of time implementing new content .. even just cosmetic content, they would bring in additional $. That is a win win for all involved.

    Eventually you will win you're war against the bots. But it will be a pyhrric victory, accomplished by shuttering the entire game.
  • hustin1hustin1 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,458 Arc User
    Now, if some of those freed resources could be used to fix the Foundry bugs...
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  • sockmunkeysockmunkey Member Posts: 4,622 Arc User
    hustin1 said:

    Now, if some of those freed resources could be used to fix the Foundry bugs...

    You better hope they don't, attention in this case might lead to its termination. Objects of focus tend to melt under their gaze.
  • nameexpirednameexpired Member Posts: 1,282 Arc User
    I also have the feeling that dwindling players on the PC platform (7 million my donkey) do not allow any resources to be spent on a side feature that is not available to the new tow horses PS4 and X-BOX.
    From a investors point of view totally understandable, from a players who has invested much ... make your guess.
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  • superent666superent666 Member Posts: 133 Arc User

    I just hope there's a plan in place to absolutely prevent ANY increase in the prices for rp.

    Prices are up 25% since the German/French/Italian language announcements. I haven't been able to log into the game client since the English announcement to check.

    Can we have some feedback on this? It´s going to increase the disparity between newer and older players...to a level where a player not done with refining would have to be a monkey to even try? It can be prevented. No reason to fail on this, too? I think it would help - to prevent panicking, too- if players would get some feedback on this.
  • denvalddenvald Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 702 Arc User
    They should implement SCA in the game IMO.
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  • kingramzekingramze Member Posts: 23 Arc User
    Here's how this negatively affects me:
    1) Even though I have 8 characters, the gateway was a simple, easy way for me to get avenger companion gear for myself and/or sell to others. Keep in mind, an avenger ring could go for 200K to 250K AD on the AH. I could probably get more than one avenger item in just a couple hours of SCA play and the AD earned would be more than the combined max refineable AD of all my characters combined for the day, yet not be limited by refinement as it was cash in hand from the AH. So, I'm out a significant amount of AD earnings as well as dealing with the lack of avenger gear (which is now selling for over 1M AD in the AH).
    2) SCA was fun, and I specifically chose blue and purple companions to play (which cost a lot of AD), so I'm left with companions I don't get much use out of now.
    3) The gateway was a quick place to find all inventory -- we really need something similar in-game that doesn't require switching characters.... a global view of inventory (current armor, all inventory and stats for all toons)
    4) Gateway provided access to professions out-of-game with easy switching between characters. Again, a global professions window for all characters on an account would be beneficial.
    5) Again, game items are removed unceremoniously without properly informing us of the reasons in advance or explanation for why this solution was chosen over all other alternatives. Every time I feel comfortable about opening my wallet to contribute financially to this game, I get news of such changes and it makes me change my mind -- and I tell others not to spend money also. As mad as I am about this change, I'd be even angrier if I had paid real money and then got this sort of treatment. I suggest Cryptic/Arc needs a revamp of their public relations and marketing. This is not how you garner trust and support of your customers
  • dupeksdupeks Member Posts: 1,789 Arc User
    edited September 2016

    hustin1 said:

    Now, if some of those freed resources could be used to fix the Foundry bugs...

    You better hope they don't, attention in this case might lead to its termination. Objects of focus tend to melt under their gaze.
    That'd be pretty funny if it wasn't so seemingly accurate...

    I do hope that they WERE spending a lot of resources on the Gateway that can be re-purposed now. But I kind of doubt that's the case, I would guess it's almost opposite. I would imagine the gateway mostly took care of itself, with the occasional fix or update once or twice a year to keep it from bugging out. Now that it's become clear that the gateway would need some real resources to address the botting problem, they are unwilling to invest those and so they close it down.

    In some sense, I get it. People have floated the astute observation that consoles don't have Gateway access so resources spent on the Gateway won't ever benefit consoles.

    BUT the Gateway did serve as a great resource and in many ways a crutch that made some of the poor in-game UI design decisions bearable. You could manage your fleet of toons' inventories, your guild activities, your mails. Not even mentioning AH, ZaX, and Professions.

    It's a shame that they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. @panderus I would strongly urge you to consider reworking some of the in-game UIs for guild and mail management. Or maybe you can bring back a stripped down gateway without some of the offending components, like you guys have for STO?
  • truckulatruckula Member Posts: 124 Arc User
    edited September 2016
    @panderus : can you do a few things?
    Remove all the teasing/insulting things linking to the gateway? (As in, the major link on the game launcher, the in game ads for the gateway, heck even the link at the top of this page.)
    Can you answer the questions regarding the companion gear, Shepard pup, Lightfoot Thief? Will these become available in the game somehow?
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  • krzrsmskrzrsms Member Posts: 164 Arc User
    @tanais58crane
    well and artfully said.
  • jinxerfelixjinxerfelix Member Posts: 1 Arc User

    brun2000 said:

    What do you mean you tried? Are you joking? I never saw you try using captcha! It's specifically made to keep bots away AND it works on every platform! You tried nothing! You went into the meeting and the first idea was "just shut it down, i'm tired of this shi*". Getting the cowards way out again! First dropped armors on dungeons can't be sold, then remove coals from tarmalune and make them bound, then make another mod that is exactly the same as the other (daily quests ftw) and now this! You're just murdering yourself really!

    @brun2000 Do a quick Google search for "Captcha and bots" and tell me what you see. There's plenty of software out there than can defeat captchas...it's non-sense to think that's all it would've taken.
    You guys could have at a minimum restricted it to current VIP subs before tossing it out completely.
  • krzrsmskrzrsms Member Posts: 164 Arc User
    edited September 2016
    My wife is an inside wireman (commercial electrician) that installs those servers at datacenters. That physical replacement takes 2 days, assuming no parts are currently on hand and they need to be brought from the warehouse.

    Time is money, and downtime for a server is money not made.

    Those 20 years of experience were apparently served between 1970 and 1990. Im a computer programmer over the last 15 years. Nowadays major players use virtual servers, not a physical server per piece of software. If the hardware goes down, internal links are changed and little if any uptime is lost. The only significant downtime comes from routing outtages, usually due to an entire farm having an issue or translational issues with the top tier provider.

    Even assuming its true that 'not many used' major parts of the gateway. If it was appropriately hosted that would mean low costs at the same time since its obvious that little/no development time has been spent on the gateway for at least the last 2years.

    kreatyve said:

    2. Trawling the AH with botters BREAKS the AH. This is the reason gateway is down. The servers got FRIED because some thousand accounts, set to trawl AH prices, so overworked the servers that they CAUGHT FIRE!

    Source?
    20 years of experience, time gateway servers were down is approx what would be needed to do physical replacement, wiring repair and testing. Plus another few days to come up with patches that obviously didn't work(only up for an hour before dropping again).

  • morrowind69morrowind69 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 26 Arc User
    edited September 2016
    WAR ON BOTS :
    1-old dungeons removed.
    2-Refinement removed from nodes (resources small chance to get too).
    3-wards removed from the tradebar store .
    4-gateway closed ...done.
    5-profesions (leadership) removed ....soon.

    MAKE THE NEW PLAYERS MORE LAZY :
    1-add packs for stronger race.
    2-add packs for campaign completion.
    3-add pack to become lvl70 in one min.

    is the game dying or we just starting get bored ?!!

    oh i forget to add removing AD from the invoking.
  • diogene0diogene0 Member Posts: 2,894 Arc User
    panderus said:

    kreatyve said:

    @panderus While I am trying to understand and cope with the decisions, I would like to please ask that you PLEASE do not put the Loyal gear in a lockbox. I would prefer it to be more readily available rather than have it in a lockbox. :( Trade bar store comes to mind, that way people still have to buy keys to get it, but are pretty much guaranteed to get the pieces they want/need.

    Lockbox is not likely where we would put them, no.

    Personally, I would like to see the Lightfoot Thief come from some gameplay related activity.
    Please make companion gear available at the seals vendor. And not in three months if possible. Given how game breaking bonding runestones are, companion gear is extremely important for character progression. This can't be ignored for long.

    And for god's sake, don't give us lame pets as a little farewell gift. I have 2 endgame characters and an account-wide ioun stone unlocked. I can't get new companion gear but I'm going to get a green pet. What the heck am I supposed to do with that useless HAMSTER?
  • panderuspanderus Member, NW_CrypticDev, Cryptic Developer Posts: 1,007 Cryptic Developer
    @nameexpired There are no dwindling players on the PC shard, our numbers have been stable for a while. We actually have seen an uptick of players just from announcing PS4 and continuing through M10.

    @truckula We currently plan to remove the UI and quests that mention Gateway with the next module release. I have also already mentioned we will be looking at what to do with the SCA rewards before.

    @denvald We went though the thought process of what it would take to bring SCA to the main game. All we would really save is some design and art time but it would still need a lot of UI work to implement. It is still possible we could do it, but it is a pretty big investment for a feature not that many players used a lot of. Part of why it wasnt played as much as expected was just because it was outside the game. I remember playing it a lot when it was released for a long time on an iPad while watching TV, it was nice between commercials or slow parts in a show.
  • thesomething000thesomething000 Member Posts: 6 Arc User
    I'm really gonna miss the gateway just like everyone else. If enough ppl post, maybe they'll take a hint. maybe they could upgrade in game professions. it definatly takes me longer to do professions now
  • lazaroth666lazaroth666 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,332 Arc User
    What's the point in closing the Gateway? The bots were abusing the professions window and the AH, that's all. So, why you didn't disable only the professions and the AH? It doesn't make any sense to close the whole website since only a few parts of it were being abused. The SCA was limited due to the Stamina, you either spend Zen or AD for more companions and stamina. So many hours and money spent in a product just to close it later is a total waste of resources. Of course, there's more than just a botting issue behind this decision. Btw, NWO is starting to look like any other game, the main features: Foundry, Gateway and others were highlights of this game and now it's just the typical boring game: log in and farm like crazy, that's all.
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  • archangelzorak01archangelzorak01 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 324 Arc User
    Its ok everyone, I hear the Gateway was stockpiling WMD's. The good folks over at Cryptic have done us a solid by removing the tyrannical threat that was the bots. (Just don't look too closely at that mini apparatus or you'll notice the hidden recording devices)

    On a side note, I fear for next generation of Sword Coast nobility; no one is guarding them on their trips anymore. They're all doomed... less elemental cultists to worry about though... so there is that I suppose.

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