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[PC] Gateway Closing Down

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  • gphxgphxgphxgphx Member Posts: 184 Arc User
    edited September 2016
    I suggest giving the pet to anyone who has ever used the Gateway not just recently. Punishing people for getting frustrated and cutting back play seems counterintuitive. Not that it matters to most as Movement and Regeneration stats have limited utility to many characters.
  • vinceent1vinceent1 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,264 Arc User
    krysnyte said:

    This really sux I used Gateway on my breaks at work as I work 12 hour shifts and cannot use a PC to get in game. :(

    i am on the same boat as you mate. miss it right now. only option youtube now
  • kingramzekingramze Member Posts: 23 Arc User
    coldcanuk said:

    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?

    Everything that bots could do outside of game, they can do inside of game as well -- though they have to run an instance of the game instead of a simple script. Give them time. They'll just load up dozens of virtual machines to quickly manage multiple free accounts and script login/logouts to cycle through them. It'll take longer and hog more resources, but it is still do-able.

  • genjundeadgenjundead Member Posts: 372 Arc User
    gphxgphx said:

    I suggest giving the pet to anyone who has ever used the Gateway not just recently. Punishing people for getting frustrated and cutting back play seems counterintuitive. Not that it matters to most as Movement and Regeneration stats have limited utility to many characters.

    regen is trash and movement is not helpful. companion is a joke really,,, that's why i suggested giving an epic or legend version.
  • blaize#9771 blaize Member Posts: 3 Arc User
    My family (husband, kids, self) started playing just ONE month ago. We paid for 3 VIP accounts and multiple character slots on all of our accounts because, regardless of the VERY bad press, we thought this sounded like a pretty cool game. We've always been a fan of Forgotten Realms and are lifetime gamers. In just ONE month, your pathetic company has proven that they don't deserve our business or our trust. All of the changes you have made to "combat bots" are only punishing the players. If someone is botting and you can't find a reasonable way to block them or restrict them without punishing the other players, you REALLY need to look into getting programmers that have graduated high school. Why did you bother making the game if you were just going to break it off and close every bit down progressively? That makes no sense at all! So please, keep the $100+ that you got out of us and use it to wipe your aspirations of any more of our hard-earned money coming into your pockets from your collective (and obviously sadly deficient) minds. PWI and any affiliates will never see another cent of our money. Your "free to play" *cough*PAY TO WIN*cough* is a depressing joke and a ridiculous parody of what REAL gaming should be.
  • genjundeadgenjundead Member Posts: 372 Arc User
    kingramze said:

    coldcanuk said:

    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?

    Everything that bots could do outside of game, they can do inside of game as well -- though they have to run an instance of the game instead of a simple script. Give them time. They'll just load up dozens of virtual machines to quickly manage multiple free accounts and script login/logouts to cycle through them. It'll take longer and hog more resources, but it is still do-able.

    most people don't understand how helpful bots are @coldcanuk
    imagine all those items in ah on low prices. its cause of all the bots. players try to undercut some of the bots and that gives us a better price in buying from ah.
    but i don't really like cheaters; i can say thank you bots.
  • rapticorrapticor Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,078 Arc User
    xreverusx said:

    Just so everyone knows... I happen to know EXACTLY what they are talking about. I had first hand (vague?) experience with the gateway botting. it was rampant, all you have to do is look at the auction house silly! All those nice refining stones being sold by the thousands... you think what, we... they all got those INGAME?? no... they set up scripts on gateway and made bajillions of stones and the resulting millions of AD. I'm sorry if you were farming the Loyal gear on SCA, they all ruined it for ya : C

    So make the leadership rewards Account bound. At least the refining items. At that point there'd be no reason to bot leadership. I really don't understand how they overuse Bind to Character/Account nearly everywhere else in the game except the places where it actually makes sense.

    And yes I realize that would be removing a way for legit players to make AD but you have to make sacrifices somewhere! Of course instead of making them bound to account their next step will be to just remove RP rewards from Leadership altogether because that's another way to try and get players to buy zen.
  • medwardl#7040 medwardl Member Posts: 4 Arc User
    So I just started doing crafts, how am I supposed to progress now? By the time I get one skill to 25 I will have gotten board of the game and stopped playing long ago. Are you going to fix the crafting system so that it works without needing the gateway?
  • genjundeadgenjundead Member Posts: 372 Arc User

    My family (husband, kids, self) started playing just ONE month ago. We paid for 3 VIP accounts and multiple character slots on all of our accounts because, regardless of the VERY bad press, we thought this sounded like a pretty cool game. We've always been a fan of Forgotten Realms and are lifetime gamers. In just ONE month, your pathetic company has proven that they don't deserve our business or our trust. All of the changes you have made to "combat bots" are only punishing the players. If someone is botting and you can't find a reasonable way to block them or restrict them without punishing the other players, you REALLY need to look into getting programmers that have graduated high school. Why did you bother making the game if you were just going to break it off and close every bit down progressively? That makes no sense at all! So please, keep the $100+ that you got out of us and use it to wipe your aspirations of any more of our hard-earned money coming into your pockets from your collective (and obviously sadly deficient) minds. PWI and any affiliates will never see another cent of our money. Your "free to play" *cough*PAY TO WIN*cough* is a depressing joke and a ridiculous parody of what REAL gaming should be.

    though it seems like a pay to win game it is not.
    the game is pay for speed or pay to progress.
    put enough time and energy into this game and you can earn the same stuff as people who pay.

    if anyone wants to quit the game can i have your stuff? anyone who reads this that wants to quit. mail it to Genj@genjundead. =D
  • rapticorrapticor Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,078 Arc User

    @strumslinger @panderus
    did i read that right? a green companion?
    why green? is the love of gateway worth trash? a companion no one will really use and its green. why not give out a legendary companion cause gateway is a legend. we don't want to remember it as some green trash drop that you guys just give out.

    Well obviously so you will spend AD to upgrade it...

  • genjundeadgenjundead Member Posts: 372 Arc User
    rapticor said:

    @strumslinger @panderus
    did i read that right? a green companion?
    why green? is the love of gateway worth trash? a companion no one will really use and its green. why not give out a legendary companion cause gateway is a legend. we don't want to remember it as some green trash drop that you guys just give out.

    Well obviously so you will spend AD to upgrade it...

    so... their shutting down gateway, my main form of gaining and earning ad form sword coast adventures, and now i am getting a companion that is complete trash? am i getting this right.
  • genjundeadgenjundead Member Posts: 372 Arc User
    you know what... dev's do what you want. i am just gonna enjoy what is left in this game. thanks dev's for a good game and ill continue to just play.
  • lewstelamon01lewstelamon01 Member Posts: 7,415 Arc User
    edited September 2016




    so... their shutting down gateway, my main form of gaining and earning ad form sword coast adventures, and now i am getting a companion that is complete trash? am i getting this right.

    In all seriousness, they aren't just gonna dole out a purple or orange companion for the heck of it. Even for Gateway. Blue is probably the best they'll do.

    ROLL TIDE ROLL

    Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?

    PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
  • vinceent1vinceent1 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,264 Arc User




    so... their shutting down gateway, my main form of gaining and earning ad form sword coast adventures, and now i am getting a companion that is complete trash? am i getting this right.

    In all seriousness, they aren't just gonna dole out a purple or orange companion for the heck of it. Even for Gateway. Blue is probably the best they'll do.

    but its green
  • rgutscheradevrgutscheradev Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 182 Cryptic Developer
    I just wanted to say I too am sad about Gateway going down.

    I had lots of fun playing Sword Coast Adventures -- I'd often play during lunch hour (it's a lot easier to play SCA while holding a sandwich than to play NW itself!). For some weird reason, I liked to roleplay more in SCA than in regular NW -- I'd send my Honey Badger into too-tough opponents because "he didn't care", or have my Galeb Duhr fight enemies armed with swords because his rocky skin would protect him (note for those who didn't play SCA: this is NOT a mechanic in the game!).

    I understand why people here felt it had to go (in the end, I was reluctantly convinced myself). The bots that were hitting Gateway were thereby hitting the real game -- that's because the things Gateway does involve the real game. If you look at your gear, you're looking at your gear in the real game. If you do a profession task, you do it in the real game. If your companion gains XP, it gains it in the real game. That means botters were hitting the real game servers by hitting Gateway. This kept happening, then getting fixed, then happening again.

    Can botters try stuff like this in the real game? Sure, but it's a lot harder. And it's a lot easier for us to fight them in-client. And we can and will keep fighting them in-client (note we will never win completely, but we will -- in fact we must -- always keep fighting them). But having to fight them on TWO fronts was not good. Ultimately, we want more of our resources to go to making the game itself better. Having an additional front in the (never-ending) war vs botters meant fewer resources for the game itself.

    A few more things worth mentioning:
    * The pet is blue, not green. It got changed after the screenshot was taken.
    * It will bind to the character that uses it, like all the companions. But we put it in a BoA box so you can give it to whichever of your characters you like. (You can't sell it to other players, though -- we wanted it to be an exclusive for Gateway users.)
    * "Recently used Gateway" means anyone who used it within the past year.
    * If you liked Sword Coast Adventures like I did, you might want to check out the board game Elder Sign (Fantasy Flight Games).

    But I still will miss my Honey Badger, my dog, my other dog (I kept getting the two mixed up), my Galeb Duhr, and all the rest of my furry/rocky crew.
  • medwardl#7040 medwardl Member Posts: 4 Arc User
    will you guys fix crafting so it doesnt take forever to progress a skill since you will not beable to work on it unless you are in game?
  • genjundeadgenjundead Member Posts: 372 Arc User

    I just wanted to say I too am sad about Gateway going down.

    I had lots of fun playing Sword Coast Adventures -- I'd often play during lunch hour (it's a lot easier to play SCA while holding a sandwich than to play NW itself!). For some weird reason, I liked to roleplay more in SCA than in regular NW -- I'd send my Honey Badger into too-tough opponents because "he didn't care", or have my Galeb Duhr fight enemies armed with swords because his rocky skin would protect him (note for those who didn't play SCA: this is NOT a mechanic in the game!).

    I understand why people here felt it had to go (in the end, I was reluctantly convinced myself). The bots that were hitting Gateway were thereby hitting the real game -- that's because the things Gateway does involve the real game. If you look at your gear, you're looking at your gear in the real game. If you do a profession task, you do it in the real game. If your companion gains XP, it gains it in the real game. That means botters were hitting the real game servers by hitting Gateway. This kept happening, then getting fixed, then happening again.

    Can botters try stuff like this in the real game? Sure, but it's a lot harder. And it's a lot easier for us to fight them in-client. And we can and will keep fighting them in-client (note we will never win completely, but we will -- in fact we must -- always keep fighting them). But having to fight them on TWO fronts was not good. Ultimately, we want more of our resources to go to making the game itself better. Having an additional front in the (never-ending) war vs botters meant fewer resources for the game itself.

    A few more things worth mentioning:
    * The pet is blue, not green. It got changed after the screenshot was taken.
    * It will bind to the character that uses it, like all the companions. But we put it in a BoA box so you can give it to whichever of your characters you like. (You can't sell it to other players, though -- we wanted it to be an exclusive for Gateway users.)
    * "Recently used Gateway" means anyone who used it within the past year.
    * If you liked Sword Coast Adventures like I did, you might want to check out the board game Elder Sign (Fantasy Flight Games).

    But I still will miss my Honey Badger, my dog, my other dog (I kept getting the two mixed up), my Galeb Duhr, and all the rest of my furry/rocky crew.

    why not have an in game sca? would it be hard to implement a way to do this? then we can grind in game on that awesome table bored
  • tripsofthrymrtripsofthrymr Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,624 Community Moderator

    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.

    The credentials of the people offering help are pretty well known or easily available to people at PWE. It's straightforward to sign a contractor agreement that covers the legal bases even if no or token monetary compensation is involved. Companies do that all the time.

    Caritas Guild Founder (Greycloak Alliance)

    Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min
  • empalasempalas Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 802 Arc User
    edited September 2016
    So they made the companion blue...its still worthless to me. Too much AD to upgrade it for it to be worth anything and its not worth the AD to upgrade. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been here since day 1 that thinks its trash
  • theycallmetomutheycallmetomu Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,861 Arc User
    Let me just say this:

    I don't care too much about SCA (I'd stopped running it a long time ago), though I do think it's important that we keep access to the loyal items (for newer players).

    What's bothered me the most about not having the gateway though is just how CLUNKY managing professions in game is. The gateway was always more responsive, meaning that even though I had to do the same number of clicks each way, it felt much much faster. Changing between characters was a great deal easier, and even simply collecting rewards.

    I suppose professions SHOULD feel like a chore, but I personally have changed to only handling the multi-day professions as of late (for better or for worse)
  • nightstalkornightstalkor Member Posts: 154 Arc User

    panderus said:



    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).

    @panderus

    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.
    Very well said. Totally agree. Some very good ideas here. Too bad the devs will never use them.
  • andorrabellandorrabell Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 437 Arc User

    I just wanted to say I too am sad about Gateway going down.

    I had lots of fun playing Sword Coast Adventures -- I'd often play during lunch hour (it's a lot easier to play SCA while holding a sandwich than to play NW itself!). For some weird reason, I liked to roleplay more in SCA than in regular NW -- I'd send my Honey Badger into too-tough opponents because "he didn't care", or have my Galeb Duhr fight enemies armed with swords because his rocky skin would protect him (note for those who didn't play SCA: this is NOT a mechanic in the game!).

    I understand why people here felt it had to go (in the end, I was reluctantly convinced myself). The bots that were hitting Gateway were thereby hitting the real game -- that's because the things Gateway does involve the real game. If you look at your gear, you're looking at your gear in the real game. If you do a profession task, you do it in the real game. If your companion gains XP, it gains it in the real game. That means botters were hitting the real game servers by hitting Gateway. This kept happening, then getting fixed, then happening again.

    Can botters try stuff like this in the real game? Sure, but it's a lot harder. And it's a lot easier for us to fight them in-client. And we can and will keep fighting them in-client (note we will never win completely, but we will -- in fact we must -- always keep fighting them). But having to fight them on TWO fronts was not good. Ultimately, we want more of our resources to go to making the game itself better. Having an additional front in the (never-ending) war vs botters meant fewer resources for the game itself.

    A few more things worth mentioning:
    * The pet is blue, not green. It got changed after the screenshot was taken.
    * It will bind to the character that uses it, like all the companions. But we put it in a BoA box so you can give it to whichever of your characters you like. (You can't sell it to other players, though -- we wanted it to be an exclusive for Gateway users.)
    * "Recently used Gateway" means anyone who used it within the past year.
    * If you liked Sword Coast Adventures like I did, you might want to check out the board game Elder Sign (Fantasy Flight Games).

    But I still will miss my Honey Badger, my dog, my other dog (I kept getting the two mixed up), my Galeb Duhr, and all the rest of my furry/rocky crew.

    I appreciate the sentiments, but why put out this change without information on where SCA rewards are going? It's the partial information, again, that has me even more infuriated than losing the ability to play SCA or check my character inventories.
  • uptondarkdiamonduptondarkdiamond Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 169 Arc User

    Let me just say this:

    I don't care too much about SCA (I'd stopped running it a long time ago), though I do think it's important that we keep access to the loyal items (for newer players).

    What's bothered me the most about not having the gateway though is just how CLUNKY managing professions in game is. The gateway was always more responsive, meaning that even though I had to do the same number of clicks each way, it felt much much faster. Changing between characters was a great deal easier, and even simply collecting rewards.

    I suppose professions SHOULD feel like a chore, but I personally have changed to only handling the multi-day professions as of late (for better or for worse)

    I agree with this. It takes me 10 to 20 minutes longer just doing it through game, although i'm getting better at it. Really, what adds the extra time is the character swap and a little bit the UI for crafting. I honestly don't understand why I have to click a thing twice to start it.... There are ways to make the UI for crafting better, its just a matter of Cryptic allocated the resources and people power to get it done.

    As a side note, I would love to see crafting made more relevant. I don't know why campaign stores are the only place to get the armor, weapons, and other gear from. I don't mind it being in the campaign store but how but some love to those people that like doing crafting also??? Would have to add drops while doing the campaign that allow us to my the same or equivalent items from store and umm i don't know add that stuff to the crafting nodes also.....
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