I've got 22 character slots filled, and used the Gateway legitimately, so I've been feeling the sting of the shutdown. I mean, I still do a daily profession swap, but I had one character dedicated to crafting - 25 in everything *but* leadership, and I kept the Gateway up on my second monitor to watch for the hourly task change to help me fill orders for guildies (or myself - those personalized rings don't come from thin air!).
I do understand the shutdown. I can soldier on, doing professions in game.
What I would like to see, though, @panderus , is some implementation of the following:
1. Please make the companion account-wide. It's not a great companion to begin with, and, like the "Caturday" gear (which will hopefully be reclaimable soon *hint*), it's a reminder of what has past. Even if it's just to the individual characters on an account as of today, that'd be cool, too (again, like the Caturday gear) 2. Loyal Gear - I see 3 possibilities here: i. Trade bars - My least favorite option, as it only really rewards those with VIP, whereas any player had a chance on the Gateway, VIP or not. ii. Seal Vendor - I'm likely the person @beckylunatic is referring to, and I think this is best. Make it account-bound, with Bind when Equipped, so it can be sent to alts, but not constantly shuffled (if that's possible). This rewards people for playing the game / completing content. As an added bonus, you could add a lower tier of gear available for lesser seals (Current Loyal for Protector's, say, with rare (blue) grade buyable with Element Seals. iii. Professions - Making BoA companion gear with professions would also encourage people to work something beyond Leadership, and expand their crafting horizons. Again, like the seals, you can also implement multiple tiers, so new crafters / players aren't left with nothing. Like Loyal gear, it should be companion only, but offer improved stats.
I'd personally prefer to see them in the seal store, but that's just me. I think it might also help to know what kind of timeline we might be looking at before we see Loyal gear reintroduced.
Thanks. Hope your asbestos undies are holding up ok.
I for one do not accept this companion as compensation for the loss of the gateway. This is in NO WAY an adequate compensation for the time and money spent. Anyone who willingly accepts this as "payment" for the removal of the gateway is a fool.
I am going to say it again. This is feeling like bait and switch. I was sold on this game by the Foundry and Gateway. Things that are still being ADVERTISED on the never winter website, the ARC launcher, and the never winter launcher.
"bait-and-switch" noun: The action (generally illegal) of advertising goods and/or services, that are an apparent bargain, with the intention of substituting inferior or more expensive goods and/or services.
So yet again... the botters take the blame. You'd really think that by now all those hateful individuals would have been eliminated, but apparently that's not the case.
As far as Gateway, I only ever used it to occasionally log in to SCA. The main reason that I did NOT play SCA all that frequently was... every single time I logged in, even If I had logged in just two days before, I had to go thru the verification BS dance. Just like I had to do TODAY to post this.
One wonders... since I was seeing this login verification more or less all the time, and yet "botters" are getting past it, what does this tell us?
That either the botters are VERY good programmers, OR they've totally penetrated Gateway. Consider... you go to login. You are then prompted to go to an external email site to get your code. So our botting friends have to set up a whole subroutine that goes to the email that belongs to said bot, picks out the code, and inserts it into the prompt. Somewhat difficult, if you're a decent programmer, but doable.
BUT. Say the devs set up the code message so that the code moves around in the message or that the code is identified in a different way every time. Again, a good programmer COULD get past this. It adds a good layer of complexity tho. Especially if you vary the LENGTH of the code, or break the code up into groupings.
But all this would require quite a BIT of work on the part of the devs. So much easier to throw up your hands and say "We're done." And this is just a COUPLE of things that the devs could do to beef up their login system.
In game botting for professions may or may not be a problem. This was a problem when AD was being generated directly but there is less incentive for gold sellers to bot RP. On the other hand, there is not much else left for them.
And because of that exact reason, Leadership RP will be next. Gather and save ALL you can now!
@panderus Any chance we could see a bump up in drop rate from our dragon hoards and quartermasters? BtA isn't all bad, then we can use that RP for our toons and the little we can scrape out of leadership will help us with some AD or additional refining.
This was very poorly done and continues to show a complete lack of respect for your players. You took the chicken shat way out, dropped the gateway before the long weekend and ran away like kittens. I suspect I'd be banned if I used the other word for kittens eh?
My recommendation to any new player reading this is quit before you get invested. I'm too invested to leave so I will now officially stop putting money into the game until we see some QoL improvements for the many character slots you sold us! We bought them expecting certain functionality. Cryptic wasn't getting rich off of me but between my son and I we dropped a few $$.
Someone had mentioned account wide purchases earlier. I love the idea... You want to make more money, offer more zen items/packs with GOOD items account wide! I have purchased the dragon born pack on my account and also on my sons account. That's $150 generated out of thin air. If you made another one that was slightly different with the same(ish) rewards I'd buy it too.
Cryptic, Why do you try so hard to make us hate a game we love so much? And I'm not even talking about dropping the gateway here, I'm talking about RESPECT!
i am also too invested to quit... and doesn't the dragon hoard enchants give bound rp stones?
Sad but necessary. Scripting outside the client is almost impossible to stop so I was expecting this.
As for those that do not understand how they are benefiting and harming the game...Imagine 100 bots making Elemental Shirts and then selling them for 15K ad each in the AH. Easy 1.5 Million AD to sell to others which messes up the game economy.
I will miss the Gateway, but mostly used it to check inventory of another toon while was on the first one.
Also, what about the Companion Only gear that dropped from the Sword Coast only? Will we have a way to get them still or are they being discontinued?
Feel free to close the game due to bots taking advantage of it. Frankly if you couldn't predict bots making use out of it, then you're out of your depth. So much has been removed or restricted in this game, and it's sad to see the direction it's taken. You guys never learn from your mistakes. You had in game restrictions on professions due to botting that ended up only punishing legit players, do you think you have magically fixed it? If the bots still find the game profitable, they will continue to do so. But at least I know how Cryptic operates.
The Gateway to me was a "time saver" i HAD 30 toons but now i'm down to 15. i can't do professions 3hours per day and still find "time" to play the game. So i deleted 15 low-lv-toons from my roster. Ask me someone owes me money for paid slots i'll never use. Also making a new toon meant another professioner. Whats the point of me making two cw's; only need one of each toon now...
you are not the only one... i knew a lot of players with 50 toons to 100 toons across 2 accounts. they ended up deleting most of their toons. i feel sad for all the hard work they put in into getting all those toons on those accounts. their will probably be more people deleting characters. no reason to have more then one per class.
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tripsofthrymrMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,624Community Moderator
It's always a resources battle. You can't keep just throwing resources and time at a problem indefinitely.
@panderus: Would you PM me so I can share some very specific thoughts?
From the response I'm seeing in the forums and in-game, I would say the gateway features are rather important to your player base. No matter how much experience you have, a fresh perspective can often work wonders.
I've got 22 character slots filled, and used the Gateway legitimately, so I've been feeling the sting of the shutdown. I mean, I still do a daily profession swap, but I had one character dedicated to crafting - 25 in everything *but* leadership, and I kept the Gateway up on my second monitor to watch for the hourly task change to help me fill orders for guildies (or myself - those personalized rings don't come from thin air!).
I do understand the shutdown. I can soldier on, doing professions in game.
What I would like to see, though, @panderus , is some implementation of the following:
1. Please make the companion account-wide. It's not a great companion to begin with, and, like the "Caturday" gear (which will hopefully be reclaimable soon *hint*), it's a reminder of what has past. Even if it's just to the individual characters on an account as of today, that'd be cool, too (again, like the Caturday gear) 2. Loyal Gear - I see 3 possibilities here: i. Trade bars - My least favorite option, as it only really rewards those with VIP, whereas any player had a chance on the Gateway, VIP or not. ii. Seal Vendor - I'm likely the person @beckylunatic is referring to, and I think this is best. Make it account-bound, with Bind when Equipped, so it can be sent to alts, but not constantly shuffled (if that's possible). This rewards people for playing the game / completing content. As an added bonus, you could add a lower tier of gear available for lesser seals (Current Loyal for Protector's, say, with rare (blue) grade buyable with Element Seals. iii. Professions - Making BoA companion gear with professions would also encourage people to work something beyond Leadership, and expand their crafting horizons. Again, like the seals, you can also implement multiple tiers, so new crafters / players aren't left with nothing. Like Loyal gear, it should be companion only, but offer improved stats.
I'd personally prefer to see them in the seal store, but that's just me. I think it might also help to know what kind of timeline we might be looking at before we see Loyal gear reintroduced.
Thanks. Hope your asbestos undies are holding up ok.
i would prefer we buy it with gold. since gold is basically trash in the game give us a reason to actually use it. it would be best to not have it bound to account or pickup... bound on equip is fine enough. seals idea isn't bad but i would rather it not be in seals vendor. why not have them drop in skirmishes or normal dungeons? damarian shepherd should become account wide and free for all players and lightfoot thief should drop in any epic dungeon or trial
i would prefer we buy it with gold. since gold is basically trash in the game give us a reason to actually use it. it would be best to not have it bound to account or pickup... bound on equip is fine enough.
Panderus already stated that they are OP. Below is my comment.
Problem with this is they will be very cheap and obtained early in the game. The current stats on them are much higher than other stuff you can put on your pets. This combined with Bonding stones makes it game breaking. It'll have to be behind a stone wall of some sort that we'll have to torture ourselves grinding it out!
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tripsofthrymrMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,624Community Moderator
Leadership As you may remember, we recently disabled the ability to use the Leadership profession on Gateway. This was due to an extreme number of bots generating far too much AD, and creating havoc with the AD economy. By disabling the profession on Gateway, we were able to reduce this artificially inflated number. Unfortunately, botters found a way around this fix. As we looked into the data, and as we analyzed what we could do to fix this exploit, we came to the conclusion that the way to stop the botters was to remove AD from the Leadership profession.
Give the lightfoot thief after 100% completion of 3 of campains. Achieve all boons from Dread Ring, Sharandar, and Well of Dragons to obtain your very own Lightfoot Thief!
i would prefer we buy it with gold. since gold is basically trash in the game give us a reason to actually use it. it would be best to not have it bound to account or pickup... bound on equip is fine enough.
Panderus already stated that they are OP. Below is my comment.
Problem with this is they will be very cheap and obtained early in the game. The current stats on them are much higher than other stuff you can put on your pets. This combined with Bonding stones makes it game breaking. It'll have to be behind a stone wall of some sort that we'll have to torture ourselves grinding it out!
hehe, all games are about the grind. the terrible evil grind, we love it when we finish said grind though. that feeling of accomplishment is overwhelming. then we grind again.
The Gateway to me was a "time saver" i HAD 30 toons but now i'm down to 15. i can't do professions 3hours per day and still find "time" to play the game. So i deleted 15 low-lv-toons from my roster. Ask me someone owes me money for paid slots i'll never use. Also making a new toon meant another professioner. Whats the point of me making two cw's; only need one of each toon now...
you are not the only one... i knew a lot of players with 50 toons to 100 toons across 2 accounts. they ended up deleting most of their toons. i feel sad for all the hard work they put in into getting all those toons on those accounts. their will probably be more people deleting characters. no reason to have more then one per class.
It's always a resources battle. You can't keep just throwing resources and time at a problem indefinitely.
@panderus: Would you PM me so I can share some very specific thoughts?
From the response I'm seeing in the forums and in-game, I would say the gateway features are rather important to your player base. No matter how much experience you have, a fresh perspective can often work wonders.
They know that.. they don't care.
“Improvise, Adapt and Overcome!”
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
i would prefer we buy it with gold. since gold is basically trash in the game give us a reason to actually use it. it would be best to not have it bound to account or pickup... bound on equip is fine enough. seals idea isn't bad but i would rather it not be in seals vendor. why not have them drop in skirmishes or normal dungeons? damarian shepherd should become account wide and free for all players and lightfoot thief should drop in any epic dungeon or trial
I'm going to disagree with gold, precisely because it's, as you say, trash, which would cause an instant devaluation in any attempt to put it on the AH. At least on the seal vendor, players have to run the content to get the gear. This makes sense, as the Loyal gear was, excepting certain rings, pretty much BiS. So, if you're running T2+ content, you should be able to select gear that is an applicable upgrade from whatever was on your companion previously. Given that, I'd would agree that it'd also make sense to add them to the loot table for T2 content (Protector's seals).
The Shepherd - I don't think it'll be missed that much. It'll become a status thing, but generally won't see much use outside of PE.
Lightfoot - I'd make it a rare (very rare) drop from something. Maybe rotate it through older content on a regular basis. Maybe a slim chance at it in weekly quests? (Just spitballing here).
The main thing, though, is that the Loyal gear was *very* good, so should command a similar price in play. Being able to have a level 4 alt wander in to PE, hit the shared bank, and walk away with 4500 stat points for some gold is pretty cheap. An investment of, say 1500-ish Protector Seals - that is something a player worked for, through gameplay.
I started losing interest in this game with the launch of Fangbreaker Island. It's not the everfrost damage that bothers me, because I kill and heal to fast to care. It's the constant need to farm voninblod that ruins everything you guys worked on. To think that I would run a dungeon whose whole purpose is to get the new gear only to have to keep farming voninblod to be able to use it. That means instead of just attaining the gear and using it to play the content I enjoy the most, I'd have to keep coming back to IWD and waste my precious time farming just to keep it active. And now you take away the gateway while blaming botters! Well I don't see why you keep trying to get rid of botters, they make this game better. As far as I'm concerned they made this game more convenient for players and more affordable. They never stopped me from dishing out money to buy zen. So I can't see why you keep going after botters when they've been more considerate of the players then anybody else. I don't see you guys caring about the players at all, not to mention you recently reduce our general AD income by 33% with the reduction of salvage values.
i would prefer we buy it with gold. since gold is basically trash in the game give us a reason to actually use it. it would be best to not have it bound to account or pickup... bound on equip is fine enough. seals idea isn't bad but i would rather it not be in seals vendor. why not have them drop in skirmishes or normal dungeons? damarian shepherd should become account wide and free for all players and lightfoot thief should drop in any epic dungeon or trial
I'm going to disagree with gold, precisely because it's, as you say, trash, which would cause an instant devaluation in any attempt to put it on the AH. At least on the seal vendor, players have to run the content to get the gear. This makes sense, as the Loyal gear was, excepting certain rings, pretty much BiS. So, if you're running T2+ content, you should be able to select gear that is an applicable upgrade from whatever was on your companion previously. Given that, I'd would agree that it'd also make sense to add them to the loot table for T2 content (Protector's seals).
The Shepherd - I don't think it'll be missed that much. It'll become a status thing, but generally won't see much use outside of PE.
Lightfoot - I'd make it a rare (very rare) drop from something. Maybe rotate it through older content on a regular basis. Maybe a slim chance at it in weekly quests? (Just spitballing here).
The main thing, though, is that the Loyal gear was *very* good, so should command a similar price in play. Being able to have a level 4 alt wander in to PE, hit the shared bank, and walk away with 4500 stat points for some gold is pretty cheap. An investment of, say 1500-ish Protector Seals - that is something a player worked for, through gameplay.
i don't care about ah or its prices... if anything seeing the price drop dramatically on it would be great. so you can gear companions easily. that's why i suggested it be on a gold merchant, cause on seals vendor its gonna most likely be bind to account and if earned from dungeons gonna be another grind people are not gonna want but have to do. and i surely don't want to farm seals just to buy companion gear. though that's just my opinion.
I started losing interest in this game with the launch of Fangbreaker Island. It's not the everfrost damage that bothers me, because I kill and heal to fast to care. It's the constant need to farm voninblod that ruins everything you guys worked on. To think that I would run a dungeon whose whole purpose is to get the new gear only to have to keep farming voninblod to be able to use it. That means instead of just attaining the gear and using it to play the content I enjoy the most, I'd have to keep coming back to IWD and waste my precious time farming just to keep it active. And now you take away the gateway while blaming botters! Well I don't see why you keep trying to get rid of botters, they make this game better. As far as I'm concerned they made this game more convenient for players and more affordable. They never stopped me from dishing out money to buy zen. So I can't see why you keep going after botters when they've been more considerate of the players then anybody else. I don't see you guys caring about the players at all, not to mention you recently reduce our general AD income by 33% with the reduction of salvage values.
i cant agree more that botters (cheaters) have been the most helpful player-base in this game.
It wasn't an issue of not knowing if we COULD solve the issue, it was more about how much time have we already spent and how much more time will we need to continually put into it. Botting cannot be 'solved' in some ways, you can really only setup more and different roadblocks but at an increasing cost to development each time.
We have quite a bit of experience in keeping the botters at bay at this point and it wasn't a decision that was come upon lightly at all. The meeting we had went over a long agenda and recounted things we have already tried to resolve this issue as well as weigh all the pros and cons. We even went through the scenario of just keeping up the non botted features of Gateway but there were still some costs that still incurred with little gains (keeping the additional specialized servers up and the fact few people used them).
So you start driving a car and you crash, killing everyone but yourself, you call that "getting experience"? If you manage to crash and kill your passengers several times, would you then call yourself an experienced driver? I wouldnt.
Actions speak louder than words. Everything you've done in the past year (that's how long I've been playing) under the pretense of combatting bots, has proven that nobody on the team has the slightest idea on how to effectively combat bots, in fact, like everyone else is saying, it shows that the team is mostly incompetent lazy people that'd rather cut things than come up with something that resembles a good idea. No amount of talk here about how good you are is going to convice anyone.
So just take the free help that is being offered. Its free, for god's sake. Two heads are better than one, you know. Even if their solutions arent perfect, they're still going to be infinitely better than anything you've managed to come up with in the past year (which is nothing except shutting things down).
People have been saying here that SCA is pretty well protected against bots, with the random rolls, rune combinations, and the very limited amount of attempts (and I agree), and that the problem was a very old profession bot. Even the slightest antibotting feature would remove most of the problem. Or you could try, you know, using a combination of a few features? That would remove about 90% of the problem. You can never completely destroy botting, but decreasing it by 90% is pretty damn good. Hell, event decreasing it by 20% would be a good start, and welcomed by all of us active players. What is not welcomed, is removing so many other useful features. Why should we be denied the chance to play SCA, which is quite fun and actually requires you to use your brain to win, instead of the never ending grind that is the main game... Why should we be denied the companions and gear that drop from it? Why in the world should we be denied access to our in-game mail, to our guilds, to our own characters and our own inventories? We cant install the main game on our phones and tablets, or on work computers for those who can afford to play at work. Why should we be denied access to an AH with an actually reasonable sorting system (the in-game one has no useful sorting). And, after all, why should we be denied access to our professions? Because other people cheat? The profession system requires so many hours, so many tasks, so many resources, that you cant possibly expect us to only use it when we have access to our PCs.
So, first, implement some actual antibotting features (shutting things down isnt an antibotting feature, its an antiplayer feature). Then, redesign parts of the game so that they are less appealing to botters. For example, change the profession system to something that doesnt take months of very active playing to upgrade. What makes you think a single profession should take 3 months to upgrade (or, in the case of leadership, more like 10 months)? And that's including playing via gateway - triple or quadruple the time if you can only do it in main game. Nobody wants to do botting. They are forced into it by external factors, which are controlled by you. If you make something unnecesarily hard and grindy for actual players, they are more likely to resort to botting. If professions werent so ridiculously hard, tedious and long to upgrade, you think anyone would use bots to do them? Of course professions need to take some time, but a few months (and a million tasks started and completed) is much too long (unnecessarily so).
I've seen the bots in-game. The bots that farm RP and AD. You know why those bots exist? Because your game requires a ridiculous amount of RP and AD to get anywhere. What makes you think it's ok to demand over 300 dollars to upgrade a single enchant to max level? What makes you think its acceptable to demand over 10 million RP to get a single artifact to max level, or over 4 million RP for artifact gear? A single character has 4 artifact slots, 4 artifact gear slots, and many many enchantment slots. People play multiple characters. How on earth do you expect them to get enough RP for upgrading their gear, when the actual game content drops maybe 1 R5 enchant for every 10 enemies killed? If someone wanted to farm all the RP to upgrade an artifact to max level, they would need to kill at least 100.000 enemies. That's silly. Depending on your class, gear, and IL (which isnt that high considering you're farming for RP), it would take several months of farming to get that many RP (and in the mean time, you're stuck with your begginer unupgraded gear). And that's for just one artifact. There just isnt enough supply of these items in game to meet the demand. Even with the botting, the supply is still nowhere near the demand. Without the botting, I bet there would be no 4k IL players around, and probably no 3k IL players either, as they'd all still be farming RP to upgrade their second artifact to mythic.
These are all conditions that you control. By creating an environment where the demand surpasses the supply by several hundred times, you are creating the need for bots. People need that many RP, not for some fancy feature, but for the basic purpose of getting their IL up and strenghtening their chars to the point where they can even run dungeons. And since they cant farm them, they will try to buy them, which takes AD. A lot of AD, that also isnt easily earned. And that is why people resort to botting (or buying items that were botted). I am not suggesting you lower the needed RP by a huge amount. But it is currently way too high. And the drop rate from playing content is waaaaay too low, it should be much higher (and also the enchants should, at least for solo play, appear directly in our inventories. Nobody wants to pick up 10.000 enchants manually). This disparity is why bots exist. Decrease the disparity, and a lot of botters will go away. Implement a few antibotting features, and more of them will go away. Then get someone (a live person - several people have said here they'd be willing to do this for free or for minimal compensation in in-game items) to permanently ban any offenders that didnt yet go away (and I mean PERMANENTLY and immediatelly after they were spotted/reported).
Its really not that hard to understand. And it certainly isnt nearly as hard to implement as you make it to be. There are thousands of other games out there that are sucessfully combating bots (evidenced by the fact that they are adding features or at least keeping them, unlike NWO which is removing them, so they must be doing something right). Nobody is going to tell me that NWO has the best antibotting experts, yet is attacked by the even better botters, while the other games are only attacked by noob botters. Therefore, TAKE. THE. HELP. And use it to make the Gateway a worthy addition that increases the value of the game, instead of chickening out and closing it.
PS: If the real issue is (like many say) that console players do not have Gateway, then I dunno what to say. They chose to play the game on a console, either help them get Gateway there, or let them suffer the consequences of choosing an inferior gaming system that is known to not offer all of the functionality. Either way, them not having Gateway is the dumbest reason for taking it away from us too.
The Shepherd - I don't think it'll be missed that much. It'll become a status thing, but generally won't see much use outside of PE.
I have a 100% F2P guildie who says it's very best free companion. But the obvious solution is to make it buyable with 2 gold like all the other common-quality companions.
prepare everyone for the botters will return to protectors enclave in the game... give it like a week to a month and they will all be back and if not all then most
For those who are saying "why not accept the free help?": There's a reason why companies don't generally accept outside help--especially at random on the internet. Not only are there legal ramifications they must consider (for instance, the matter of how your "work" would be classifed under applicable labor law--they might be offering their work as "free" but as to whether the company can legally accept that as such is the province of a court of law) , but they're going to use someone with whom they have a proven track record and rapport. With respect to the qualifications of other posters, to the company, you're just a random joe from the internet. You might do your own job spectacularly, and that's fine. But being unproven to the company and offering help? They'll either ignore the offer or politely tell you "thanks, but no thanks". In fact, there are entire units of major companies whose sole purpose is to do just that--politely decline unsolicited offers of help or ideas. It's not an indictment or a refusal of your skills. It's just that...there's a reason they have a hiring process. If you think you can contribute, apply to the company. That's just how...well, almost any company does business.
If they're gonna do anything, they'll do it with what they have in house. Otherwise, what happens is what you have here: they cut their losses rather than continue to throw money, time, and development resources at a never-ending cat and mouse game.
ROLL TIDE ROLL
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Comments
I do understand the shutdown. I can soldier on, doing professions in game.
What I would like to see, though, @panderus , is some implementation of the following:
1. Please make the companion account-wide. It's not a great companion to begin with, and, like the "Caturday" gear (which will hopefully be reclaimable soon *hint*), it's a reminder of what has past. Even if it's just to the individual characters on an account as of today, that'd be cool, too (again, like the Caturday gear)
2. Loyal Gear - I see 3 possibilities here:
i. Trade bars - My least favorite option, as it only really rewards those with VIP, whereas any player had a chance on the Gateway, VIP or not.
ii. Seal Vendor - I'm likely the person @beckylunatic is referring to, and I think this is best. Make it account-bound, with Bind when Equipped, so it can be sent to alts, but not constantly shuffled (if that's possible). This rewards people for playing the game / completing content. As an added bonus, you could add a lower tier of gear available for lesser seals (Current Loyal for Protector's, say, with rare (blue) grade buyable with Element Seals.
iii. Professions - Making BoA companion gear with professions would also encourage people to work something beyond Leadership, and expand their crafting horizons. Again, like the seals, you can also implement multiple tiers, so new crafters / players aren't left with nothing. Like Loyal gear, it should be companion only, but offer improved stats.
I'd personally prefer to see them in the seal store, but that's just me. I think it might also help to know what kind of timeline we might be looking at before we see Loyal gear reintroduced.
Thanks. Hope your asbestos undies are holding up ok.
I am going to say it again. This is feeling like bait and switch. I was sold on this game by the Foundry and Gateway. Things that are still being ADVERTISED on the never winter website, the ARC launcher, and the never winter launcher.
"bait-and-switch" noun:
The action (generally illegal) of advertising goods and/or services, that are an apparent bargain, with the intention of substituting inferior or more expensive goods and/or services.
As far as Gateway, I only ever used it to occasionally log in to SCA. The main reason that I did NOT play SCA all that frequently was... every single time I logged in, even If I had logged in just two days before, I had to go thru the verification BS dance. Just like I had to do TODAY to post this.
One wonders... since I was seeing this login verification more or less all the time, and yet "botters" are getting past it, what does this tell us?
That either the botters are VERY good programmers, OR they've totally penetrated Gateway. Consider... you go to login. You are then prompted to go to an external email site to get your code. So our botting friends have to set up a whole subroutine that goes to the email that belongs to said bot, picks out the code, and inserts it into the prompt. Somewhat difficult, if you're a decent programmer, but doable.
BUT. Say the devs set up the code message so that the code moves around in the message or that the code is identified in a different way every time. Again, a good programmer COULD get past this. It adds a good layer of complexity tho. Especially if you vary the LENGTH of the code, or break the code up into groupings.
But all this would require quite a BIT of work on the part of the devs. So much easier to throw up your hands and say "We're done." And this is just a COUPLE of things that the devs could do to beef up their login system.
In fact, right now I must return to crafting many, many pairs of pants.
As for those that do not understand how they are benefiting and harming the game...Imagine 100 bots making Elemental Shirts and then selling them for 15K ad each in the AH. Easy 1.5 Million AD to sell to others which messes up the game economy.
I will miss the Gateway, but mostly used it to check inventory of another toon while was on the first one.
Also, what about the Companion Only gear that dropped from the Sword Coast only? Will we have a way to get them still or are they being discontinued?
From the response I'm seeing in the forums and in-game, I would say the gateway features are rather important to your player base. No matter how much experience you have, a fresh perspective can often work wonders.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
it would be best to not have it bound to account or pickup... bound on equip is fine enough.
seals idea isn't bad but i would rather it not be in seals vendor.
why not have them drop in skirmishes or normal dungeons?
damarian shepherd should become account wide and free for all players and lightfoot thief should drop in any epic dungeon or trial
Panderus already stated that they are OP. Below is my comment.
Problem with this is they will be very cheap and obtained early in the game. The current stats on them are much higher than other stuff you can put on your pets. This combined with Bonding stones makes it game breaking. It'll have to be behind a stone wall of some sort that we'll have to torture ourselves grinding it out!
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
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The Shepherd - I don't think it'll be missed that much. It'll become a status thing, but generally won't see much use outside of PE.
Lightfoot - I'd make it a rare (very rare) drop from something. Maybe rotate it through older content on a regular basis. Maybe a slim chance at it in weekly quests? (Just spitballing here).
The main thing, though, is that the Loyal gear was *very* good, so should command a similar price in play. Being able to have a level 4 alt wander in to PE, hit the shared bank, and walk away with 4500 stat points for some gold is pretty cheap. An investment of, say 1500-ish Protector Seals - that is something a player worked for, through gameplay.
maybe add shepherd to gold companion vendor?
So you start driving a car and you crash, killing everyone but yourself, you call that "getting experience"? If you manage to crash and kill your passengers several times, would you then call yourself an experienced driver? I wouldnt.
Actions speak louder than words. Everything you've done in the past year (that's how long I've been playing) under the pretense of combatting bots, has proven that nobody on the team has the slightest idea on how to effectively combat bots, in fact, like everyone else is saying, it shows that the team is mostly incompetent lazy people that'd rather cut things than come up with something that resembles a good idea. No amount of talk here about how good you are is going to convice anyone.
So just take the free help that is being offered. Its free, for god's sake. Two heads are better than one, you know. Even if their solutions arent perfect, they're still going to be infinitely better than anything you've managed to come up with in the past year (which is nothing except shutting things down).
People have been saying here that SCA is pretty well protected against bots, with the random rolls, rune combinations, and the very limited amount of attempts (and I agree), and that the problem was a very old profession bot. Even the slightest antibotting feature would remove most of the problem. Or you could try, you know, using a combination of a few features? That would remove about 90% of the problem. You can never completely destroy botting, but decreasing it by 90% is pretty damn good. Hell, event decreasing it by 20% would be a good start, and welcomed by all of us active players. What is not welcomed, is removing so many other useful features. Why should we be denied the chance to play SCA, which is quite fun and actually requires you to use your brain to win, instead of the never ending grind that is the main game... Why should we be denied the companions and gear that drop from it? Why in the world should we be denied access to our in-game mail, to our guilds, to our own characters and our own inventories? We cant install the main game on our phones and tablets, or on work computers for those who can afford to play at work. Why should we be denied access to an AH with an actually reasonable sorting system (the in-game one has no useful sorting). And, after all, why should we be denied access to our professions? Because other people cheat? The profession system requires so many hours, so many tasks, so many resources, that you cant possibly expect us to only use it when we have access to our PCs.
So, first, implement some actual antibotting features (shutting things down isnt an antibotting feature, its an antiplayer feature).
Then, redesign parts of the game so that they are less appealing to botters. For example, change the profession system to something that doesnt take months of very active playing to upgrade. What makes you think a single profession should take 3 months to upgrade (or, in the case of leadership, more like 10 months)? And that's including playing via gateway - triple or quadruple the time if you can only do it in main game.
Nobody wants to do botting. They are forced into it by external factors, which are controlled by you. If you make something unnecesarily hard and grindy for actual players, they are more likely to resort to botting. If professions werent so ridiculously hard, tedious and long to upgrade, you think anyone would use bots to do them? Of course professions need to take some time, but a few months (and a million tasks started and completed) is much too long (unnecessarily so).
I've seen the bots in-game. The bots that farm RP and AD. You know why those bots exist? Because your game requires a ridiculous amount of RP and AD to get anywhere. What makes you think it's ok to demand over 300 dollars to upgrade a single enchant to max level? What makes you think its acceptable to demand over 10 million RP to get a single artifact to max level, or over 4 million RP for artifact gear? A single character has 4 artifact slots, 4 artifact gear slots, and many many enchantment slots. People play multiple characters. How on earth do you expect them to get enough RP for upgrading their gear, when the actual game content drops maybe 1 R5 enchant for every 10 enemies killed? If someone wanted to farm all the RP to upgrade an artifact to max level, they would need to kill at least 100.000 enemies. That's silly. Depending on your class, gear, and IL (which isnt that high considering you're farming for RP), it would take several months of farming to get that many RP (and in the mean time, you're stuck with your begginer unupgraded gear). And that's for just one artifact. There just isnt enough supply of these items in game to meet the demand. Even with the botting, the supply is still nowhere near the demand. Without the botting, I bet there would be no 4k IL players around, and probably no 3k IL players either, as they'd all still be farming RP to upgrade their second artifact to mythic.
These are all conditions that you control. By creating an environment where the demand surpasses the supply by several hundred times, you are creating the need for bots. People need that many RP, not for some fancy feature, but for the basic purpose of getting their IL up and strenghtening their chars to the point where they can even run dungeons. And since they cant farm them, they will try to buy them, which takes AD. A lot of AD, that also isnt easily earned. And that is why people resort to botting (or buying items that were botted).
I am not suggesting you lower the needed RP by a huge amount. But it is currently way too high. And the drop rate from playing content is waaaaay too low, it should be much higher (and also the enchants should, at least for solo play, appear directly in our inventories. Nobody wants to pick up 10.000 enchants manually). This disparity is why bots exist. Decrease the disparity, and a lot of botters will go away. Implement a few antibotting features, and more of them will go away. Then get someone (a live person - several people have said here they'd be willing to do this for free or for minimal compensation in in-game items) to permanently ban any offenders that didnt yet go away (and I mean PERMANENTLY and immediatelly after they were spotted/reported).
Its really not that hard to understand. And it certainly isnt nearly as hard to implement as you make it to be. There are thousands of other games out there that are sucessfully combating bots (evidenced by the fact that they are adding features or at least keeping them, unlike NWO which is removing them, so they must be doing something right). Nobody is going to tell me that NWO has the best antibotting experts, yet is attacked by the even better botters, while the other games are only attacked by noob botters. Therefore, TAKE. THE. HELP. And use it to make the Gateway a worthy addition that increases the value of the game, instead of chickening out and closing it.
PS: If the real issue is (like many say) that console players do not have Gateway, then I dunno what to say. They chose to play the game on a console, either help them get Gateway there, or let them suffer the consequences of choosing an inferior gaming system that is known to not offer all of the functionality. Either way, them not having Gateway is the dumbest reason for taking it away from us too.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
If they're gonna do anything, they'll do it with what they have in house. Otherwise, what happens is what you have here: they cut their losses rather than continue to throw money, time, and development resources at a never-ending cat and mouse game.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
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