I'll miss it, never did get a lightfoot theif to drop. It was also good for thinking about your gear, and checking prices on the ah, particularly when trying to sell something expensive quickly.
I'm sorry to see the gateway go, but I understand the need. I do hope the devs will be able to implement some of the great features the gateway had to offer - Specifically superior guild management features and auction house searches.
@cushparl The fast achievements quests have been, and will likely continue to be a problem. Hopefully creating a time limit similar to the 15 minutes required for Daily AD in the past will cut most of those out of contention. The catalog also does need a rework, so that newer material gets visibility. But adding the companion gear to the Foundry still keeps it "free" just a grind like everything else. If there are that many concerns of botting, then the devs could bind the rewards.
"I don't know, I'm making it up as I go..." Featured Foundry Quest:Whispers of an Ancient Evil [v3] - NW-DQ4WKW6ZG Foundry Quest: Harper Chronicles: Blacklake - NW-DCPA4W2Q5
Logging in once a day, plus doing Professions from my cell phone twice a day while at work, allowed us to maximize our enjoyment of Professions ranking and tasks legitimately. If you are going to remove the site, then add a checkbox to tasks indicating "repeat automatically", such as "deep" gathering or "intensive" scrap gathering. Then, when it completes, it repeats itself, up to three times.
The next day, when we login to the game, we can do professions again and select "repeat automatically" on another task. It stops after 24 hours, so it won't go forever. We check a box saying "repeat automatically" inside the normally logged in game, and it repeats as often as possible up to 24 hours.
This will alleviate the loss we are experiencing from being able to do three professions things each day while at work. Thank you!
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?
Improving professions is something near and dear to a few of us. I would like to have an update on it within the next few modules. There is nothing planned yet but there is a lot of missed potential with how it currently is in a number of ways.
@andorrabell We have not yet decided a place for the SCA rewards yet, we still need to review where they would fit and make the time to do it at a time that makes sense. I don't think the community would appreciate waiting another week just to hear where we will put the rewards that they can't get yet,
It's funny (well, not really) how fast some things get attention on one platform, but gets completely ignored on another...
Xbox haven't had access to any decent Companion-only gear since the start, and all topics, posts and tweets regarding that issue have gotten absolutely zero response from the developers.
Gateway gets closed, and pretty much instantly, there are developers working on solutions to get the SCA gear into the game...
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?
Improving professions is something near and dear to a few of us. I would like to have an update on it within the next few modules. There is nothing planned yet but there is a lot of missed potential with how it currently is in a number of ways.
@andorrabell We have not yet decided a place for the SCA rewards yet, we still need to review where they would fit and make the time to do it at a time that makes sense. I don't think the community would appreciate waiting another week just to hear where we will put the rewards that they can't get yet,
Please be careful waht you ask for. The moment they "fix" Professions it will BARELY be profitable... they are on an Orchestrated Campaign to gut this game of the Free aspect of Free to place.. or at least make it technically a possibility...
“Improvise, Adapt and Overcome!”
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
Awesome! So, since you're trying to provide the same features for players on consoles and PC, instead of making possible to link console's accounts to gateway too, you decided not to bother and just remove it from PC too, right? So, I also wonder, when are you going to add the rewards from gateway in game in both PC and console versions?
You know that all this changes that you made in game lately completely unbalanced the economy on the PC version, or you're just devs and don't actually play the game? Now, people that still have this Gateway equipment will sell it for a looot. The adorable companion gear that also have two slots and is the only companion equipment with two slots on the xbox version sells for over 400k ad. Imagine spending 400k ad on a companion piece of equipment when you have the possibility of only making under 30k per day, by spending a lot of time playing the dailies. And afterwards, you don't even have time to play the game anymore and just relax and do the in game activities that you enjoy, because you have to waste all your time in the run for ad and get the feeling that Neverwinter is just a second job and you must do what you must do to make in game money. And most of the people have jobs too, and a social and personal life, not all the spare time to play a game.
I haven't been a freeloader and I also made some in game purchases, but we don't all earn thousands of dollars to afford spending some hundreds monthly on a single game. Each decision you made this past months only affected the game in a negative way, from the time you decided to remove wards from the trade bar merchant. You know...is an mmo, you wanna get more players, not less. What's the point of an playing an mmo when you have to wait 30 mins for a queue to pop up because a lot of players already quit the game.
@panderus What does Cryptic plan to do about this?
This isn't a Communist/Socialist state.. no Price Caps... but.. what they are going to do is provide another means to get the items.
It makes me respect the human race less each time you people propose that the Devs force prices to be different on the AH.. it's free market.
I don't think that poster meant to imply that Cryptic should engage in price fixing of stuff like this- that would be silly. Merely that the pricing of loyal gear at least for now is getting out of hand, and hopes that Cryptic sees this as a problem (I assume they do judging by their communication here, but its still muddy as to what's going to happen).
Please thank the wonderful people who made and balanced the SCA dice game. I got 100s of hours of enjoyment through lots of health issues, and I think they deserve some praise.
...Assuming you haven't fired them already.
Did you really think anyone could steal the power of the god of thieves?
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torontodaveMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 992Arc User
For a very long time, players haven't given a second thought to playing Foundry quests because "the loot sucks." Perhaps transferring the drops from SCA to eligible Foundry quests, (using the same 15+ minute requirement as it was for the old Daily Foundry AD,) as RNG drops would create an incentive for players to participate in Foundry content. Perhaps some of the higher end drops, the Lightfoot Thief for example, could be tied to one of the Foundry Community Achievements in the same fashion as the Book Imp companion is tied to the Foundry Authoring Achievements. Perhaps the Damaran Shepherd could be attained after playing a first Foundry quest, since it was attainable in the SCA tutorial. These are just ideas, but they make sense, (which might be the problem.)
NW-DSQ39N5SJ - 'To Infinity, and BEYOND!' - Spelljammer Quest. Skyships, Indiana Jones moments NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
I must admit that I have not been using the NW forum before... And it is sad for me to be posting my first post because of such a sad occurrence, as closing of the Gateway.
Since a long time, playing the SCA have been a great relief for me, while working - a good pause and motivator to push the work forward (like, "correct another paragraph, reward yourself with playing SCA until losing one health point", or "start another computing task, reward yourself with another single challenge on SCA"), much easier and convenient than just starting the NW client (men at a certain age must devote more energy to earning for the living, than to pure virtual hedonism). I am utterly sure I spent more hours on the Gateway than in the "full" client, and it was the SCA that made me decide to buy zen (which I eventually did not, having noticed the Gateway is down), so I can get another companions. I am not sure if I continue to use the game, having lost the possibility to easily access the character, set auctions, manage professions, or just get some additional items from the SCA.
I am surely aware of the fact that botting was a threat to the in-game experience - but at the same time I am downright certain that this is going to spawn a lot of new cheating techniques. Nature does not like void. And, believe me or not, it is absolutely possible, and in the reach of anyone not better trained that, say, freshman's year in any of the natural sciences (which is really not much) to write an ugly but working, simple bot that farms the professions, operating on delays, using shortcuts, and some simple libraries for identification of the screen position. So closing the gateway is not going to help in any possible way. It is going to make all worse - as those new botters will actually log into the game, decreasing the servers' performance.
Concerning the argument that console players do not have ability to play on the gateway... I am sorry to say that it made me a little angry. It's not like someone forces you to use the console to play. My machine of choice is a PC with one of the Linux family systems - as it suits my work needs well. Running NW on such a computer means that I am not going to experience the same performance, as people playing on PCs with MS Windows - it is just an emulation. Does it mean that I should ask to decrease the overall performance of the game? Surely not! Moreover: whereas some of the players can enjoy PvP campaign, other do not: it is necessary to have a powerful PC, and a really fast internet connection to play these games without lags. Do we assume then, that PvP should be deleted from the game? I bet that no one would raise such an argument!
To sum up, I would just like to say that you have made a truly wrong decision. It is not going to help with the botting problem, it is not going to be "fair" for the console players, it is just unfair to the large community of people that used gateway in a decent way and it boosted their in-game experience.
Well that's obnoxious... here's I've been long absent and *trying* to get into the Gateway for the past 2 weeks, but haven't been able to, and now, so I guess I don't qualify for the "recent user" promotion.
"The man I was is the crucible which has forged the man I have become."
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.
Even though I have been a loyal Cryptic customer for over 7 years. Filing hundreds of bug tickets, trying to help improving the game and in that helping them earn more money. I'm a lifetime subscriber of both Champions Online and Star Trek Online and would have been in Neverwinter Online as well if that had been an option. Instead I've been a VIP here for well over a year and poured way more money in to the game then I could afford. The Foundry was what got me hooked. The disappointment was immense when I realized it was discontinued. Left as only a terminated embryo of what could have been the breadwinner for the game.
The ability to access the in game mail and other functions are crucial to me, as well as the SCA, that accompanied me through some long commutes and travels over the years. Sure it had lag and disconnected quite often as well, but when it worked I found it very entertaining. Even though the Epic dungeons too way too long to complete. I was hoping they would add something like it for the Star Trek Online Gateway which is only a shadow of what the Neverwinter version was. I was even hoping for a Champions Gateway.
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.
maybe add shepherd to gold companion vendor?
As Cryptic is in full control of the in game economy, the could solve it by creating a new currency and at a fixed exchange rate players could exchange their old currencies to this new one. Then replace all the in game currencies with this new one. No AD, no Gold, no Seals, no Favors, no Tradebars, just the new currency.
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
What do you mean with "will return"? They never left. Nerfing invocations, removing AD from leadership and all other attempts have all been failures. The only 100% sure way to get rid of them is to remove all currency from the game. Make items only possible to get through actual playing. Making them all bind to account and usable for your character's class on equip would make trading unnecessary. Sure, you may argue that the bots will only start selling all ready leveled up accounts instead. Well sure, but I'm sure that would be way easier for Cryptic to monitor then the failed attempts we have witnessed over the years.
How about the fact that with very few exceptions the only content that is any good in this game is the old lvl 1 thru lvl 60 campaigns. Is that not reason to have more character slots?
Well your argument does not hold as you don't need more slots to do that. You can just delete that character and make a new one using the same slot to play lvl 1-60 all over again and again and again....
I really can't belive you did that. Yeah u want to stop otters and all.... but honestly for most of us it does just feel like u want even more of our money all while ruining the game. Prices did go WAY up in the last year I played all while the amounts of AD u earn from dungeons and stuff stayed the same. Wards got expensive, Enchantment stacks did, nowcompanion Gear goes through the celing. REALLY? And Zen store is way too expensive too by the way. Pople would NOT spend less money, if stuff was cheaper bzt would probably buy 3-4 mounts instead of 0-1. Would spend more money on Campaign completions so they can have more alts ompleted and all.... you just want more and more money of us I have the feeling... and If I was not leading a guild I would be gone already, that's for sure. SO disappointed by all the changes u do and all th stuff u do remove or make even harder to get...
@cushparl The fast achievements quests have been, and will likely continue to be a problem. Hopefully creating a time limit similar to the 15 minutes required for Daily AD in the past will cut most of those out of contention. The catalog also does need a rework, so that newer material gets visibility. But adding the companion gear to the Foundry still keeps it "free" just a grind like everything else. If there are that many concerns of botting, then the devs could bind the rewards.
The 15 minutes time limit is good. But they need to add more increments to it. Like a 30 minutes, 45 minutes and a 60 minutes limit one as well. So that if someone makes a complex, campaign like quest, the players would get better rewards from completing it. But this will never happen as Cryptic has abandoned the Foundry. They do not realize what a profit making tool it is for the company. Their customers are freely giving them content that make other customers enjoy their product and probably spend more money while playing it more. But as they have abandoned it (and I'm basing this conclusion on the fact they they do not flag new content added to the game so they can be used in the Foundry. They do not add new maps or functions to it either. They don't even bother to fix the "copy map/items placement coordinates change" bug.
This isn't a Communist/Socialist state.. no Price Caps... but.. what they are going to do is provide another means to get the items.
It makes me respect the human race less each time you people propose that the Devs force prices to be different on the AH.. it's free market.
A free market isn't the perfect solution either. Besides the game have never had a free market. It's 100% controlled by Cryptic. So your argument does not apply to the game economics
So we could theorize over why so little has been done to combat the bots and who actually profits the most by that. But all the punishing of new players with all the limitations and the old players with all the nerfs, really only increased the bots profit margin and pushed even more players in to the goldspammer's arms. So why again are these changes made? And why are these changes kept and not reverted when it hasn't done what was intended? Unless getting rid of the bots was not the real intention? We can theorize about this all we want but we will never find out the truth of what is fueling these anti-player/pro-bot changes to the game. All I know is that Cryptic has over these years made it increasingly more difficult to trust anything they say. Purple Owlbear only possible to get through community events... Yeah. Right.
All I know is that I can barely (and honestly some days I really can't be even that) be bothered logging in to the game any more to claim my VIP Daily Key.
the whole reason bonding pets are better then augmented ones is cause augmented are like normal companions stats wise and all but they don't fight or do anything. i love my bonded pet so i got no were to really complain here. but i can however complain a bit about augments.
i see no need to nerf bonding runestones. instead buff the overall augmentation pets or buff the augment effect.
Silvergriffon's Holistic Suggestion Agency
Augment companions used to be the vastly superior choice, and harder to get than regular companions. Bonding runestones were supposed to make people want to use the combat companions, but they were too good and made Augments greatly inferior. They recently reined in the Bonding stone a little bit, but they are still better than using an Augment companion.
Personally, I think that both should be good choices. Bonding stones are slightly less reliable and bursty, so it is reasonable that they grant more points when they proc. But, right now the gap is too wide. High rank Bonding runestones aren't really all that hard to get and the buff is up pretty much all the time in combat anyway.
I propose two changes.
First, I suggest that Augment companions be given an additional active bonus. Augmentation Affintiy: An active, but not summoned, Augment companion adds 10% of it's stats to the currently summoned companion. This bonus is increased to 100% of stats if the currently summoned companion is also an Augment.
Second, limit the total number of active Augment companions at any one time to two. Atempting to make a third one active will generate an error stating that you may only have two active Augment companions at one time and must make one of your currently active aguments idle before making this one active.
So, under my suggestions, if you have a summoned Augment plus an active Augment you get +100% of stats from each. If you have a summoned combat companion with Bonding runestones and two active Augments then your combat companion would have +20% of the Augment's stats making it more effective and survivable while also increasing the bonus to the character when the Bonding stones proc.
Numbers That Might Be Right (Excluding the companions base stats as this is a small number, probably varies widely, and I am lazy.)
Currently, a combat companion with 3 Rank 12 Bonding Runestones, Loyal Avenger gear with all Rank 12 enchantments gives the character 30,002 stat points when it procs. Currently, an Augment pet with all Rank 12 runestones, Loyal Avenger gear with all Rank 12 enchantments gives the character 11,517 stat points.
With my suggestion, if you have a summoned combat companion equipped as above along with two active Augments equipped as above the character gets 36,569 stat points when the stones proc. With my suggestion, if you have a summoned Augment companion equipped as above along with a second active Augment companion the character gets 23,142 stat points.
The Bonding stones could still deliver many more stat points but the ratio goes down from about 2.6:1 to about 1.6:1. I think that makes it more viable to chose either path.
Plus, from a revenue standpoint players will have two or even three companions that they will need to gear up for each character. Gearing up makes players spend money and/or play more (which ultimately causes somebody to spend money).
The Gateway was my main connection to the game since I used my commute on the train to use the gatway. I can only get a computer that can run it on the weekends. Why didn't suspend accounts that used the bots; Hit the botters with heavy pentilities so it wasn't profitable.
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?
@andorrabell We have not yet decided a place for the SCA rewards yet, we still need to review where they would fit and make the time to do it at a time that makes sense. I don't think the community would appreciate waiting another week just to hear where we will put the rewards that they can't get yet,
I can sort of understand the reasoning for shutting down the Gateway.
But a little green companion as compensation? That feels like a cheap cop out. Granted, the description of it calls back to the humor of the Caterday stuff. But the Gateway was a major feature.
OMG Cryptic did it again, they have shot themselves and us in the foot.
I may sound old school, but sorry i am a history buff and was brought up in a military family, where you learn one thing, never make any decision without a backup plan, call it PLAN B.
What's your PLAN B Cryptic?
Wouldn't it had made more sense to come up with this news, when you have redesigned Professions (what will happen with short quests, like alchemy?), came up with an idea how to get Companion Gear instead (Trade Bar is better than Zen Store, but still not good enough, it would cut into the concept of F2P)?! Also what about guild management tools, about AH trading and last but not least SCA was such a cool feature. Best part of the game, when you wanted to enjoy a DnD mini-game without having to log on (sorry to say, but someday i felt it was more DnD outside on Gateway).
You guys are acting like a bad doctor, who slowly amputates all parts of the patient cause it's infected, you know, what will happen, if you remove more vital parts? *shakes head*
I get it, you have problems with bots, but there are so many (although costly and i think this is the major point for this decision) ways to combat bot activity.
Removing parts of the game in and outside won't solve anything, nearly the entire game can be botted, so what will be removed next?
I have never seen a game, which is less and less each time we get a new Mod. Mod 6 started to take away our dungeons, then Foundry, then AD, the Coa, then this. Where will this insane witch hunt end? History has taught us, there are more innocent victims, than bad guys caught.
Yes you, the publisher have to commit yourself to start thinking about getting on the gloves and start to combat bots the proper way!
All these decisions hurt foremost your customers and secondly your image. (Get some history books and learn a bit strategy )
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
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revan06100Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 205Arc User
This is probably the last nerf of this game i'm going to debate about... That's enough, you already made this game such a bad experience since you introduced mod6. We've been throught so many nerf, issues, changes, inconvenience for all of us that it's getting really tiresome... You know what, we don't care about bots, they don't stop us from playing, this excuse has been used since nerf 1 to blind us for your horribles moves. Maybe you should consider that your prices in the zen market are too high, or that some drop rates are too low, maybe by helping the playerbase and by granting them more things, make them feel they can play for something that is worth playing, you woulnd't have so many bots... I don't wanna hear about these bots anymore, it's your problem guys, but you keep punishing, and punishing, and punishing players for every decision you take, that's enough. Maybe now is the time to take the problem differently... or you will loose everything;..
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
As Cryptic is in full control of the in game economy, the could solve it by creating a new currency and at a fixed exchange rate players could exchange their old currencies to this new one. Then replace all the in game currencies with this new one. No AD, no Gold, no Seals, no Favors, no Tradebars, just the new currency.
Multiple currencies are part of the reason Neverwinter's F2P model is working as well as it is. Especially Gold, AD, and ZEN. That triangle is the foundation that the Neverwinter F2P model rests on.
Gold is earned by playing. Mostly via PvE and can be obtained easily while soloing. AD is earned by playing specific content, mostly group content. (It used to be earned just by showing up. You could log in and Invoke and queue some Leadership and that's it.) ZEN is purchased with real money.
All three of these currencies can be exchanged for either of the other two. Exchanging between ZEN and AD is obvious. You use the Exchange. You can also buy things with ZEN and sell them on the AH for AD. Likewise, you can buy consumables, starter mounts and companions, and profession assets with gold and sell them on the AH for AD. Then use the ZAX to change that into ZEN if you like. You can also buy things for cheap on the AH that can be vendored if you need gold.
The point is that whether you like solo questing, group content in PvE or PvP, campaigns, or even Foundry you can turn whatever kind of currency you earn into whatever kind of currency you need to buy what you want. Since the exchanging between these three currencies can involve ZEN, it inevitably does involve ZEN at some point. As those ones and zeros move around some of them eventually get traded for ZEN or items purchased with ZEN. And the company makes money.
This means that the game is attractive to many different playstyles. Of course, most players switch between different playstyles and content, but all the above still holds true. It also means that this is the first F2P game that has a mechanism to allow you to experience any of the content available without ever opening your wallet. It will take some effort and you actually need to play the game, but every minute you play can be turned into ZEN or AD or gold to get you anything that the paying customer can get. That's pretty rare and brings in a lot of players. More players means more ZEN sold, and the company makes money.
Now, the campaign currencies, seals and event tokens, etc. are a completely different animal. They exist to segregate content, separating advancement into different sections and limiting how much your efforts in one zone or one type of content can advance you in another. This helps them try to control the rate of advancement to keep us busily playing the game. And again, the more we play, the more ZEN gets sold.
Boons are also a great example of this. Your efforts in one zone advance you down a path that is completely separate from any other advancement. Campaigns are, in part, a way to do this as well. They also provide structure, theme and a cohesive story if anybody is paying attention. If people do pay attention, then maybe they play more. And more ZEN gets sold.
Lastly, Tradebars are actually pretty good for players. They ensure that even if you don't get something good in your lockbox, you can still save up the bars to get something of value. Before them, getting unlucky on a lockbox left you with nothing. They therefore encourage sales of keys and VIP for daily keys, making them good for ZEN sales as well. I actually think they should put the Legendary versions of the lockbox mounts in there too. Charge 5 times as many bars as they do for the Epic version.
the whole reason bonding pets are better then augmented ones is cause augmented are like normal companions stats wise and all but they don't fight or do anything. i love my bonded pet so i got no were to really complain here. but i can however complain a bit about augments.
i see no need to nerf bonding runestones. instead buff the overall augmentation pets or buff the augment effect.
Silvergriffon's Holistic Suggestion Agency
Augment companions used to be the vastly superior choice, and harder to get than regular companions. Bonding runestones were supposed to make people want to use the combat companions, but they were too good and made Augments greatly inferior. They recently reined in the Bonding stone a little bit, but they are still better than using an Augment companion.
Personally, I think that both should be good choices. Bonding stones are slightly less reliable and bursty, so it is reasonable that they grant more points when they proc. But, right now the gap is too wide. High rank Bonding runestones aren't really all that hard to get and the buff is up pretty much all the time in combat anyway.
I propose two changes.
First, I suggest that Augment companions be given an additional active bonus. Augmentation Affintiy: An active, but not summoned, Augment companion adds 10% of it's stats to the currently summoned companion. This bonus is increased to 100% of stats if the currently summoned companion is also an Augment.
Second, limit the total number of active Augment companions at any one time to two. Atempting to make a third one active will generate an error stating that you may only have two active Augment companions at one time and must make one of your currently active aguments idle before making this one active.
So, under my suggestions, if you have a summoned Augment plus an active Augment you get +100% of stats from each. If you have a summoned combat companion with Bonding runestones and two active Augments then your combat companion would have +20% of the Augment's stats making it more effective and survivable while also increasing the bonus to the character when the Bonding stones proc.
Numbers That Might Be Right (Excluding the companions base stats as this is a small number, probably varies widely, and I am lazy.)
Currently, a combat companion with 3 Rank 12 Bonding Runestones, Loyal Avenger gear with all Rank 12 enchantments gives the character 30,002 stat points when it procs. Currently, an Augment pet with all Rank 12 runestones, Loyal Avenger gear with all Rank 12 enchantments gives the character 11,517 stat points.
With my suggestion, if you have a summoned combat companion equipped as above along with two active Augments equipped as above the character gets 36,569 stat points when the stones proc. With my suggestion, if you have a summoned Augment companion equipped as above along with a second active Augment companion the character gets 23,142 stat points.
The Bonding stones could still deliver many more stat points but the ratio goes down from about 2.6:1 to about 1.6:1. I think that makes it more viable to chose either path.
Plus, from a revenue standpoint players will have two or even three companions that they will need to gear up for each character. Gearing up makes players spend money and/or play more (which ultimately causes somebody to spend money).
@panderus can we atleast get 3days versions tasks for the leadership ?
because i have alot of toons with leadership and it takes alot of time to cycle through all of them , more than 3-4 hours per cycle (which is kinda too much , since i also have to do dailies for the new campaign and my gamin time is limited.
for example a 3 days version of the Wizard snatchel will give as a reward 6 bags of resonance bags. But atleast i wont have to cycle everyday , any thoughts about this?
@panderus why not makin a auto profession feature?
Make professions player friendly so that everyone can do them, therefor there will be a constant ammount of supply, i would be fine with the RP being bound to account, but atleast make it easier for players to use it, create a UI Control panel for Professions, it is needed... There are alot of games that have a auto pilot nowadays for certain things in the respective game, so i dont see why NW cant have it too.
Longer tasks might help in the short term but the real issue is making game progression without actually having to play the game. A certain amount of it is great so the players who don't play every day don;t have to feel like they are behind the ones who play more often. Too much and the economy only inflates and inflates and it starts to become a burden for the players who haven't been around as long.
That is probably just as bad if not worse. It would certainly invite botters even more into the game.
All that said, I do think we need to rexamine how professions are meant to reward players. They should probably act as some sort of catchup mechanism, they should ALL have relevant end game tasks and the tasks that make real progress should probably require some amount of gameplay to earn them (ie, Do a quest/dungeon/etc for a doohicky to make it into a thingamabob).
This has ALWAYS puzzled me. Question: Why do I need to know the name and handle of the player selling anything in the Auction House? Am I suppose to use this to write them a thank you letter? This is how gold spammers pass AD farmed by botting. All you needed to do was remove a name field from the Auction House table.
I think most people here would agree, remove the name of the seller and AD cannot be exchanged. You didn't need to tear down a website for that, unless you were just looking for an excuse to place free items in the zen store and trade bar store. But then they won't be "free" anymore will they?
I'm not sure follow what you are trying to say.
Gateway shutdown had nothing to do with AH botter names listed.
Is this related to the blind auction system mentioned elsewhere? That is a significant change to how our AH works and would only have helped one of the avenues of transferring goods and not the botting activity killing performance of the game servers.
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The next day, when we login to the game, we can do professions again and select "repeat automatically" on another task. It stops after 24 hours, so it won't go forever. We check a box saying "repeat automatically" inside the normally logged in game, and it repeats as often as possible up to 24 hours.
This will alleviate the loss we are experiencing from being able to do three professions things each day while at work. Thank you!
Xbox haven't had access to any decent Companion-only gear since the start, and all topics, posts and tweets regarding that issue have gotten absolutely zero response from the developers.
Gateway gets closed, and pretty much instantly, there are developers working on solutions to get the SCA gear into the game...
Why is that?
It makes me respect the human race less each time you people propose that the Devs force prices to be different on the AH.. it's free market.
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Please be careful waht you ask for. The moment they "fix" Professions it will BARELY be profitable... they are on an Orchestrated Campaign to gut this game of the Free aspect of Free to place.. or at least make it technically a possibility...
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You know that all this changes that you made in game lately completely unbalanced the economy on the PC version, or you're just devs and don't actually play the game? Now, people that still have this Gateway equipment will sell it for a looot. The adorable companion gear that also have two slots and is the only companion equipment with two slots on the xbox version sells for over 400k ad. Imagine spending 400k ad on a companion piece of equipment when you have the possibility of only making under 30k per day, by spending a lot of time playing the dailies. And afterwards, you don't even have time to play the game anymore and just relax and do the in game activities that you enjoy, because you have to waste all your time in the run for ad and get the feeling that Neverwinter is just a second job and you must do what you must do to make in game money. And most of the people have jobs too, and a social and personal life, not all the spare time to play a game.
I haven't been a freeloader and I also made some in game purchases, but we don't all earn thousands of dollars to afford spending some hundreds monthly on a single game. Each decision you made this past months only affected the game in a negative way, from the time you decided to remove wards from the trade bar merchant. You know...is an mmo, you wanna get more players, not less. What's the point of an playing an mmo when you have to wait 30 mins for a queue to pop up because a lot of players already quit the game.
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Please thank the wonderful people who made and balanced the SCA dice game.
I got 100s of hours of enjoyment through lots of health issues, and I think
they deserve some praise.
...Assuming you haven't fired them already.
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Thanks for all the fish.
Since a long time, playing the SCA have been a great relief for me, while working - a good pause and motivator to push the work forward (like, "correct another paragraph, reward yourself with playing SCA until losing one health point", or "start another computing task, reward yourself with another single challenge on SCA"), much easier and convenient than just starting the NW client (men at a certain age must devote more energy to earning for the living, than to pure virtual hedonism). I am utterly sure I spent more hours on the Gateway than in the "full" client, and it was the SCA that made me decide to buy zen (which I eventually did not, having noticed the Gateway is down), so I can get another companions. I am not sure if I continue to use the game, having lost the possibility to easily access the character, set auctions, manage professions, or just get some additional items from the SCA.
I am surely aware of the fact that botting was a threat to the in-game experience - but at the same time I am downright certain that this is going to spawn a lot of new cheating techniques. Nature does not like void. And, believe me or not, it is absolutely possible, and in the reach of anyone not better trained that, say, freshman's year in any of the natural sciences (which is really not much) to write an ugly but working, simple bot that farms the professions, operating on delays, using shortcuts, and some simple libraries for identification of the screen position. So closing the gateway is not going to help in any possible way. It is going to make all worse - as those new botters will actually log into the game, decreasing the servers' performance.
Concerning the argument that console players do not have ability to play on the gateway... I am sorry to say that it made me a little angry. It's not like someone forces you to use the console to play. My machine of choice is a PC with one of the Linux family systems - as it suits my work needs well. Running NW on such a computer means that I am not going to experience the same performance, as people playing on PCs with MS Windows - it is just an emulation. Does it mean that I should ask to decrease the overall performance of the game? Surely not! Moreover: whereas some of the players can enjoy PvP campaign, other do not: it is necessary to have a powerful PC, and a really fast internet connection to play these games without lags. Do we assume then, that PvP should be deleted from the game? I bet that no one would raise such an argument!
To sum up, I would just like to say that you have made a truly wrong decision. It is not going to help with the botting problem, it is not going to be "fair" for the console players, it is just unfair to the large community of people that used gateway in a decent way and it boosted their in-game experience.
"The man I was is the crucible which has forged the man I have become."
The ability to access the in game mail and other functions are crucial to me, as well as the SCA, that accompanied me through some long commutes and travels over the years. Sure it had lag and disconnected quite often as well, but when it worked I found it very entertaining. Even though the Epic dungeons too way too long to complete. I was hoping they would add something like it for the Star Trek Online Gateway which is only a shadow of what the Neverwinter version was. I was even hoping for a Champions Gateway. I haven't quit the game. I have played two maybe three times since the new Module was released. The new content just isn't enjoyable. 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.
maybe add shepherd to gold companion vendor?
As Cryptic is in full control of the in game economy, the could solve it by creating a new currency and at a fixed exchange rate players could exchange their old currencies to this new one. Then replace all the in game currencies with this new one. No AD, no Gold, no Seals, no Favors, no Tradebars, just the new currency. What do you mean with "will return"? They never left. Nerfing invocations, removing AD from leadership and all other attempts have all been failures. The only 100% sure way to get rid of them is to remove all currency from the game. Make items only possible to get through actual playing. Making them all bind to account and usable for your character's class on equip would make trading unnecessary. Sure, you may argue that the bots will only start selling all ready leveled up accounts instead. Well sure, but I'm sure that would be way easier for Cryptic to monitor then the failed attempts we have witnessed over the years. Well your argument does not hold as you don't need more slots to do that. You can just delete that character and make a new one using the same slot to play lvl 1-60 all over again and again and again.... Please don't stop the otters... They are so cute.
So we could theorize over why so little has been done to combat the bots and who actually profits the most by that. But all the punishing of new players with all the limitations and the old players with all the nerfs, really only increased the bots profit margin and pushed even more players in to the goldspammer's arms. So why again are these changes made? And why are these changes kept and not reverted when it hasn't done what was intended? Unless getting rid of the bots was not the real intention? We can theorize about this all we want but we will never find out the truth of what is fueling these anti-player/pro-bot changes to the game. All I know is that Cryptic has over these years made it increasingly more difficult to trust anything they say. Purple Owlbear only possible to get through community events... Yeah. Right.
All I know is that I can barely (and honestly some days I really can't be even that) be bothered logging in to the game any more to claim my VIP Daily Key.
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Augment companions used to be the vastly superior choice, and harder to get than regular companions. Bonding runestones were supposed to make people want to use the combat companions, but they were too good and made Augments greatly inferior. They recently reined in the Bonding stone a little bit, but they are still better than using an Augment companion.
Personally, I think that both should be good choices. Bonding stones are slightly less reliable and bursty, so it is reasonable that they grant more points when they proc. But, right now the gap is too wide. High rank Bonding runestones aren't really all that hard to get and the buff is up pretty much all the time in combat anyway.
I propose two changes.
First, I suggest that Augment companions be given an additional active bonus. Augmentation Affintiy: An active, but not summoned, Augment companion adds 10% of it's stats to the currently summoned companion. This bonus is increased to 100% of stats if the currently summoned companion is also an Augment.
Second, limit the total number of active Augment companions at any one time to two. Atempting to make a third one active will generate an error stating that you may only have two active Augment companions at one time and must make one of your currently active aguments idle before making this one active.
So, under my suggestions, if you have a summoned Augment plus an active Augment you get +100% of stats from each. If you have a summoned combat companion with Bonding runestones and two active Augments then your combat companion would have +20% of the Augment's stats making it more effective and survivable while also increasing the bonus to the character when the Bonding stones proc.
Numbers That Might Be Right
(Excluding the companions base stats as this is a small number, probably varies widely, and I am lazy.)
Currently, a combat companion with 3 Rank 12 Bonding Runestones, Loyal Avenger gear with all Rank 12 enchantments gives the character 30,002 stat points when it procs.
Currently, an Augment pet with all Rank 12 runestones, Loyal Avenger gear with all Rank 12 enchantments gives the character 11,517 stat points.
With my suggestion, if you have a summoned combat companion equipped as above along with two active Augments equipped as above the character gets 36,569 stat points when the stones proc.
With my suggestion, if you have a summoned Augment companion equipped as above along with a second active Augment companion the character gets 23,142 stat points.
The Bonding stones could still deliver many more stat points but the ratio goes down from about 2.6:1 to about 1.6:1. I think that makes it more viable to chose either path.
Plus, from a revenue standpoint players will have two or even three companions that they will need to gear up for each character. Gearing up makes players spend money and/or play more (which ultimately causes somebody to spend money).
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But a little green companion as compensation? That feels like a cheap cop out. Granted, the description of it calls back to the humor of the Caterday stuff. But the Gateway was a major feature.
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I may sound old school, but sorry i am a history buff and was brought up in a military family, where you learn one thing, never make any decision without a backup plan, call it PLAN B.
What's your PLAN B Cryptic?
Wouldn't it had made more sense to come up with this news, when you have redesigned Professions (what will happen with short quests, like alchemy?), came up with an idea how to get Companion Gear instead (Trade Bar is better than Zen Store, but still not good enough, it would cut into the concept of F2P)?! Also what about guild management tools, about AH trading and last but not least SCA was such a cool feature. Best part of the game, when you wanted to enjoy a DnD mini-game without having to log on (sorry to say, but someday i felt it was more DnD outside on Gateway).
You guys are acting like a bad doctor, who slowly amputates all parts of the patient cause it's infected, you know, what will happen, if you remove more vital parts? *shakes head*
I get it, you have problems with bots, but there are so many (although costly and i think this is the major point for this decision) ways to combat bot activity.
Removing parts of the game in and outside won't solve anything, nearly the entire game can be botted, so what will be removed next?
I have never seen a game, which is less and less each time we get a new Mod. Mod 6 started to take away our dungeons, then Foundry, then AD, the Coa, then this. Where will this insane witch hunt end? History has taught us, there are more innocent victims, than bad guys caught.
Yes you, the publisher have to commit yourself to start thinking about getting on the gloves and start to combat bots the proper way!
All these decisions hurt foremost your customers and secondly your image. (Get some history books and learn a bit strategy
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We've been throught so many nerf, issues, changes, inconvenience for all of us that it's getting really tiresome...
You know what, we don't care about bots, they don't stop us from playing, this excuse has been used since nerf 1 to blind us for your horribles moves.
Maybe you should consider that your prices in the zen market are too high, or that some drop rates are too low, maybe by helping the playerbase and by granting them more things, make them feel they can play for something that is worth playing, you woulnd't have so many bots...
I don't wanna hear about these bots anymore, it's your problem guys, but you keep punishing, and punishing, and punishing players for every decision you take, that's enough. Maybe now is the time to take the problem differently... or you will loose everything;..
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Gold is earned by playing. Mostly via PvE and can be obtained easily while soloing.
AD is earned by playing specific content, mostly group content. (It used to be earned just by showing up. You could log in and Invoke and queue some Leadership and that's it.)
ZEN is purchased with real money.
All three of these currencies can be exchanged for either of the other two. Exchanging between ZEN and AD is obvious. You use the Exchange. You can also buy things with ZEN and sell them on the AH for AD. Likewise, you can buy consumables, starter mounts and companions, and profession assets with gold and sell them on the AH for AD. Then use the ZAX to change that into ZEN if you like. You can also buy things for cheap on the AH that can be vendored if you need gold.
The point is that whether you like solo questing, group content in PvE or PvP, campaigns, or even Foundry you can turn whatever kind of currency you earn into whatever kind of currency you need to buy what you want. Since the exchanging between these three currencies can involve ZEN, it inevitably does involve ZEN at some point. As those ones and zeros move around some of them eventually get traded for ZEN or items purchased with ZEN. And the company makes money.
This means that the game is attractive to many different playstyles. Of course, most players switch between different playstyles and content, but all the above still holds true. It also means that this is the first F2P game that has a mechanism to allow you to experience any of the content available without ever opening your wallet. It will take some effort and you actually need to play the game, but every minute you play can be turned into ZEN or AD or gold to get you anything that the paying customer can get. That's pretty rare and brings in a lot of players. More players means more ZEN sold, and the company makes money.
Now, the campaign currencies, seals and event tokens, etc. are a completely different animal. They exist to segregate content, separating advancement into different sections and limiting how much your efforts in one zone or one type of content can advance you in another. This helps them try to control the rate of advancement to keep us busily playing the game. And again, the more we play, the more ZEN gets sold.
Boons are also a great example of this. Your efforts in one zone advance you down a path that is completely separate from any other advancement. Campaigns are, in part, a way to do this as well. They also provide structure, theme and a cohesive story if anybody is paying attention. If people do pay attention, then maybe they play more. And more ZEN gets sold.
Lastly, Tradebars are actually pretty good for players. They ensure that even if you don't get something good in your lockbox, you can still save up the bars to get something of value. Before them, getting unlucky on a lockbox left you with nothing. They therefore encourage sales of keys and VIP for daily keys, making them good for ZEN sales as well. I actually think they should put the Legendary versions of the lockbox mounts in there too. Charge 5 times as many bars as they do for the Epic version.
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Sorry couldn't resist, your post actually got a chuckle out of me
That is probably just as bad if not worse. It would certainly invite botters even more into the game.
All that said, I do think we need to rexamine how professions are meant to reward players. They should probably act as some sort of catchup mechanism, they should ALL have relevant end game tasks and the tasks that make real progress should probably require some amount of gameplay to earn them (ie, Do a quest/dungeon/etc for a doohicky to make it into a thingamabob).
Gateway shutdown had nothing to do with AH botter names listed.
Is this related to the blind auction system mentioned elsewhere? That is a significant change to how our AH works and would only have helped one of the avenues of transferring goods and not the botting activity killing performance of the game servers.