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VIP and Astral Diamonds

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  • phedre222phedre222 Member Posts: 8 Arc User
    > @zephyriah said:
    > I'm sure there may be one or two players out there who deliberately avoid earning ADs but still want them...
    > To them I would say, (after asking WHY they don't do stuff that earns AD) "Tough luck, try a skirmish you might enjoy it..."
    >
    > Don't blame the game for removing an exploit, blame the people who just got too greedy.
    >
    > That's part of it, but the disturbing issue is the tendency to redefine "playing the game". At one time Professions was playing the game, it is a feature after all. Invoking was playing the game, you even had a quest to learn it. What's next to go, my guess salvaging will be decided to be "not playing the game" the next time they want to restrict AD coming into the game.
    >
    > They shouldn't use bogus excuses like we want players to earn playing the game, some players prefer crafting/professions, some hate dungeons, some hate skirmishes etc. but they are still playing the game. They should just come out and say that they need to reduce AD coming into the game because it is the way they wish to control the economy and this item is the one they have chosen to address. No unbelievable excuses for why, just do it.



    I agree about them using a bogus excuse but I am one of those older players who has been around the MMORPG block and I know I HATE DUNGEONS & playing with other players! However there are only so few good PS4 single player non-online RPG's out there to play... (Loved Dragon Age) I just started playing this game a little over 2 weeks ago, am lvl 63 already, and I play almost 10 hours a day. I never missed invocation, and it is the only way I get astral diamonds. Now I'm being told I haven't 'been actually playing the game.' I don't LIKE, I HATE, to do dungeons and skirmishes (what are skirmishes even? I only know you have to queue with other players. NO THANK YOU!) I HATE parties with people I don't know (which is everyone except a lvl 5 RL friend!) This is so unfair!

    If they're saying it shouldn't be missed because it was a such a small amount of astral diamonds gained, then WHY are they worried about farmers? IF it's such a paltry amount, why use an excuse like about "the farmers out there are making bank on invocation astral diamonds." BS! So it's either not a paltry amount and 'farmers' are making bank on it, or it's so small they are lying about being worrying about farmers and it's just an excuse to force people to the route of having to PAY PAY PAY rl $$ for astral diamonds. It screws over us little poor people who like to quietly, and for free, play by ourselves! It punishes people who don't play games to be social! Now I basically have no way to get astral diamonds, so good bye to the ability to refine enchantments, artifacts and such. Now how am I going to get the Lesser marks of whatever... and the marks of whatever I need to upgrade my artifacts & refinements? Daily quests are soo boring after doing them more than 4 times, and I'm sorry, but repeating the same quests over and over... isn't 'really playing the game' to me; it's beating a dead horse.
  • bepy1109bepy1109 Member Posts: 8 Arc User
    on all my characters no rough astral diamonds are givien even tho it says they are during pray to diety.. this has happened since the last update
  • darthjafodarthjafo Member Posts: 21 Arc User
    All I know is I got 9k from doing cloak tower this morning. And I gather it will only go up from there? That's pretty nuts tbh.

    Skirmishes though only give about 3k or so. I thought those were also supposed to give 5k each?
  • posineg#7890 posineg Member Posts: 17 Arc User
    I second this bug. Both my daughters accounts and my account produce no rough astral diamonds after a invocation.
  • sundance777sundance777 Member Posts: 1,097 Arc User
    In reality it is faster to just run a quick normal dungeon or two than to pray it out 6 times and if you do the epics you might walk away with a salvage piece as well.
    TR - Sun: 16000 IL
    OP - Sunshine: 16000 IL

    Casual Dailies
  • wdj40wdj40 Member Posts: 1,958 Arc User
    Cracks me up, people playing a Dungeons and Dragons MMO but do not like Dungeons or other players.

    Do you guys actually know that D&D actually involves you know, Dungeons?? And an MMO kind of means Multiplayer and lots of players.

    It would be like me going to play Tennis, but not liking the Racket, or the Net, Or the Empire, Or the other player... basically the complete opposite of what I am looking for.

    Or like going to race a car but not like racing or cars.
    Main - Rydia (HR70) - Xbox One Player only
    Alts :
    Storm (SW70), Edge (TR70), AD Farm (CW70), Grunt (GF70), Rosa (DC70), AD AD AD (GWF70), Your Mum (OP70)

    Member of Q-Snipe
  • zinnabar#1602 zinnabar Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    edited October 2016
    They changed the way they are distributed.
  • posineg#7890 posineg Member Posts: 17 Arc User
    Oh I see:

    Invocation

    Invocation now gives a Rough Astral Diamond bonus instead of granting Rough AD directly.
    The bonus Rough AD awarded is moderately larger than what was previously granted as straight Rough AD.
    In general, Invoking while playing other Rough AD generating activities will see a reasonable increase in AD earned, while Invoking only will see a drastic decrease.


    I guess 0 AD for invoking is a drastic decrease. Even though the result for invoking reads: 300AD +50% bonus, one would think that the 300AD should still appear in the riches rough AD field.
  • tgwolftgwolf Member Posts: 501 Arc User

    Oh I see:

    Invocation

    Invocation now gives a Rough Astral Diamond bonus instead of granting Rough AD directly.
    The bonus Rough AD awarded is moderately larger than what was previously granted as straight Rough AD.
    In general, Invoking while playing other Rough AD generating activities will see a reasonable increase in AD earned, while Invoking only will see a drastic decrease.


    I guess 0 AD for invoking is a drastic decrease. Even though the result for invoking reads: 300AD +50% bonus, one would think that the 300AD should still appear in the riches rough AD field.

    Just go earn some rAD from somewhere, you'll gain up to 50% of that extra from your new AD stock you accumulate every time you invoke.

    The stock stores up to 100,000 potential rAD at a time and will cash some out every time you earn rAD from anywhere but invoking.

    And they actually increased the amount you get per invoke so technically you'll be making slightly more overall.
  • darthjafodarthjafo Member Posts: 21 Arc User
    It's no trouble at all pugging the first two dungeons. And once your a high enough level you can basically solo them anyway. And they are sufficient for getting daily AD.

    of course you also have to deal with whiners saying your going to fast and why aren't you killing every single bad guy..but the speed makes up for it
  • mordekai#1901 mordekai Member Posts: 1,598 Arc User
    phedre222 said:

    > @zephyriah said:

    > I'm sure there may be one or two players out there who deliberately avoid earning ADs but still want them...

    > To them I would say, (after asking WHY they don't do stuff that earns AD) "Tough luck, try a skirmish you might enjoy it..."

    >

    > Don't blame the game for removing an exploit, blame the people who just got too greedy.

    >

    > That's part of it, but the disturbing issue is the tendency to redefine "playing the game". At one time Professions was playing the game, it is a feature after all. Invoking was playing the game, you even had a quest to learn it. What's next to go, my guess salvaging will be decided to be "not playing the game" the next time they want to restrict AD coming into the game.

    >

    > They shouldn't use bogus excuses like we want players to earn playing the game, some players prefer crafting/professions, some hate dungeons, some hate skirmishes etc. but they are still playing the game. They should just come out and say that they need to reduce AD coming into the game because it is the way they wish to control the economy and this item is the one they have chosen to address. No unbelievable excuses for why, just do it.







    I agree about them using a bogus excuse but I am one of those older players who has been around the MMORPG block and I know I HATE DUNGEONS & playing with other players! However there are only so few good PS4 single player non-online RPG's out there to play... (Loved Dragon Age) I just started playing this game a little over 2 weeks ago, am lvl 63 already, and I play almost 10 hours a day. I never missed invocation, and it is the only way I get astral diamonds. Now I'm being told I haven't 'been actually playing the game.' I don't LIKE, I HATE, to do dungeons and skirmishes (what are skirmishes even? I only know you have to queue with other players. NO THANK YOU!) I HATE parties with people I don't know (which is everyone except a lvl 5 RL friend!) This is so unfair!



    If they're saying it shouldn't be missed because it was a such a small amount of astral diamonds gained, then WHY are they worried about farmers? IF it's such a paltry amount, why use an excuse like about "the farmers out there are making bank on invocation astral diamonds." BS! So it's either not a paltry amount and 'farmers' are making bank on it, or it's so small they are lying about being worrying about farmers and it's just an excuse to force people to the route of having to PAY PAY PAY rl $$ for astral diamonds. It screws over us little poor people who like to quietly, and for free, play by ourselves! It punishes people who don't play games to be social! Now I basically have no way to get astral diamonds, so good bye to the ability to refine enchantments, artifacts and such. Now how am I going to get the Lesser marks of whatever... and the marks of whatever I need to upgrade my artifacts & refinements? Daily quests are soo boring after doing them more than 4 times, and I'm sorry, but repeating the same quests over and over... isn't 'really playing the game' to me; it's beating a dead horse.

    It's a multiplayer game. That's what the second "M" stands for in MMO.
    You might not like it, but that's what the game IS. Multiplayer.
    As to repetition... what part of the game isn't repetitive? Once the initial solo campaign material is used up that's all there is. And if you're playing 10 hours a day that's not going to last long unless 9 of those hours are spent in PE people watching.

    You can't blame the game or its designers if you want the game to be something other than it is, was, and always will be.
  • darthjafodarthjafo Member Posts: 21 Arc User
    Ran two dungeons on my 45 warlock..no AD from either. My level 70 did get his as normal though. Something going on?
  • xkrz8xdeathxkrz8xdeath Member Posts: 39 Arc User
    I get on only 3-4hrs a day just to play on my characters I rotate as the class gets boring can't stay on all night to invoke get no ad also mostly only have time to do dailes or maybe half then fall asleep
  • mordekai#1901 mordekai Member Posts: 1,598 Arc User

    I get on only 3-4hrs a day just to play on my characters I rotate as the class gets boring can't stay on all night to invoke get no ad also mostly only have time to do dailes or maybe half then fall asleep

    For the 2 minutes it takes to run through a few characters and do a quick invoke and onto the next, its worth it.
    I run 4, one primary who gets the lion's share of time and three others who share the rest. I usually switch every hour or so, but I make sure to invoke on the others, cos for the few seconds it takes the reward is well worth it in the long run. Even if you only do a couple of invokes a day it builds up.
  • wolflykenowolflykeno Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    yeah but i still don't see any difference in the amount i get from dungeons or by salvaging from this new invoke system.
  • mordekai#1901 mordekai Member Posts: 1,598 Arc User
    If you're not invoking the full amount, you won't, particularly if you redeem it in small batches.
    You get a total per invoke slightly higher than the old amount, but they stored in exactly the same way as Glory bonuses. So when you earn rAD, you get 50% more, as long as you have enough in the pot. You can bank up to 100'000, "potential", so you wait weeks on one character then go on a mad AD rampage and earn 50% on up to 200'000.
  • btairbornebtairborne Member Posts: 352 Arc User
    @phedre222

    There are weekly quests that give out AD for just about every campaign. 2 of which you need to finish the campaign to start. 6 total. It's 4500 AD without the VIP bonus for each so you can still make AD without doing dungeon/skirmish runs.
  • kclowekclowe Member Posts: 157 Arc User
    I have a theory. They want us playing our lower leveled, lower geared alt characters that we normally neglect and use for storage, salvage and a chance at bagged coupons. The vast majority of us use our 4-10 alts for that im guessing. They want us to play a dungeon or skirmish here and there to earn this bonus AD stored from innvocing only in hopes that we will invest in our other storage toons. The more AD drawn from our mains into alts translates into more game time or more zen/cash from us.
    I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist though. what do i know? Lol
  • mordekai#1901 mordekai Member Posts: 1,598 Arc User
    kclowe said:

    I have a theory. They want us playing our lower leveled, lower geared alt characters that we normally neglect and use for storage, salvage and a chance at bagged coupons. The vast majority of us use our 4-10 alts for that im guessing. They want us to play a dungeon or skirmish here and there to earn this bonus AD stored from innvocing only in hopes that we will invest in our other storage toons. The more AD drawn from our mains into alts translates into more game time or more zen/cash from us.

    I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist though. what do i know? Lol

    I'm not sure I see any logical connection between earning the AD on alts and being forced into buying more Zen.
    I play all my characters and buy less Zen than when I only played one...

    But you say that whole thing about playing characters AS character and not storage containers and factory farms like its a bad thing...
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  • mahburgmahburg Member Posts: 598 Arc User
    wdj40 said:

    Cracks me up, people playing a Dungeons and Dragons MMO but do not like Dungeons or other players.

    Do you guys actually know that D&D actually involves you know, Dungeons?? And an MMO kind of means Multiplayer and lots of players.

    It would be like me going to play Tennis, but not liking the Racket, or the Net, Or the Empire, Or the other player... basically the complete opposite of what I am looking for.

    Or like going to race a car but not like racing or cars.

    Completely agree, now if only the Devs would agree we would be good do go lol
  • sundance777sundance777 Member Posts: 1,097 Arc User
    This took me a while to wrap my head around so I thought I would state it in a different way to see if if helps others and double check the way I think this works. When you invoke the first time you get 300 (used to be actual rAD) bonus rAD which goes into holding for when you run something that gives rAD. The second invoke is 600 bonus rAD and so on until you have a small stash of bonus AD. Then when you run something, it should pay you the rAD shown on the quest plus a 50% bonus of said quest up to the max you have stashed away from your invokes.

    So if you invoke enough to have a small stash and run something that normally pays 4500 rAD you should get 6750 rAD from that run.
    TR - Sun: 16000 IL
    OP - Sunshine: 16000 IL

    Casual Dailies
  • omegarealities#7219 omegarealities Member Posts: 1,004 Arc User
    Were we supposed to get the bonus for salvaging? I know that I am not.
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  • moogie101#4741 moogie101 Member Posts: 121 Arc User
    kclowe said:

    I have a theory. They want us playing our lower leveled, lower geared alt characters that we normally neglect and use for storage, salvage and a chance at bagged coupons. The vast majority of us use our 4-10 alts for that im guessing. They want us to play a dungeon or skirmish here and there to earn this bonus AD stored from innvocing only in hopes that we will invest in our other storage toons. The more AD drawn from our mains into alts translates into more game time or more zen/cash from us.

    I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist though. what do i know? Lol

    My Alts are still invoking & my storage for salvage, in a month we get another Double AD which combined with the Bonus RAD from them Invoking is going to make me rich!!
  • mordekai#1901 mordekai Member Posts: 1,598 Arc User

    This took me a while to wrap my head around so I thought I would state it in a different way to see if if helps others and double check the way I think this works. When you invoke the first time you get 300 (used to be actual rAD) bonus rAD which goes into holding for when you run something that gives rAD. The second invoke is 600 bonus rAD and so on until you have a small stash of bonus AD. Then when you run something, it should pay you the rAD shown on the quest plus a 50% bonus of said quest up to the max you have stashed away from your invokes.

    So if you invoke enough to have a small stash and run something that normally pays 4500 rAD you should get 6750 rAD from that run.

    In a nutshell that is it, exactly.
  • mordekai#1901 mordekai Member Posts: 1,598 Arc User

    kclowe said:

    I have a theory. They want us playing our lower leveled, lower geared alt characters that we normally neglect and use for storage, salvage and a chance at bagged coupons. The vast majority of us use our 4-10 alts for that im guessing. They want us to play a dungeon or skirmish here and there to earn this bonus AD stored from innvocing only in hopes that we will invest in our other storage toons. The more AD drawn from our mains into alts translates into more game time or more zen/cash from us.

    I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist though. what do i know? Lol

    My Alts are still invoking & my storage for salvage, in a month we get another Double AD which combined with the Bonus RAD from them Invoking is going to make me rich!!
    I hate to be a doom monger, but you realise why they made the changes don't you?
    I know this method sounds like a super way to get round the change, and it is likely to be as inevitable as the rising of the sun that everyone with multiple farmer drones will do this, but... this is the way to go if we want all salvageable gear to become BTC.


    Either that or double AD events will fade away.

    And when it happens there will be further outcry from Farmer Giles and all his friends, but remember that they tried to warn us when they changed invoke. When the player base ignores the warning and we slap ourselves on the back at how cleverly we got round it, which is also as inevitable as the rising of the sun, we should all try to remember that playing by the letter of the rules rather than the spirit of the game to maintain an exploit will only ever lead the devs rewriting the rules.
  • omegarealities#7219 omegarealities Member Posts: 1,004 Arc User
    If they make all salvageable gear BTC they might as well get rid of the AH.
  • darthjafodarthjafo Member Posts: 21 Arc User
    They need to be either bound or unbound. Why do I have white pearls that are both free and bound to character or account? Makes inventory control a nightmare
  • spoomeister#9137 spoomeister Member Posts: 105 Arc User
    It screws over us little poor people who like to quietly, and for free, play by ourselves! It punishes people who don't play games to be social! Now I basically have no way to get astral diamonds, so good bye to the ability to refine enchantments, artifacts and such. Now how am I going to get the Lesser marks of whatever... and the marks of whatever I need to upgrade my artifacts & refinements? Daily quests are soo boring after doing them more than 4 times, and I'm sorry, but repeating the same quests over and over... isn't 'really playing the game' to me; it's beating a dead horse.
    Two minor opinions, stated as gently as I can because hey, I'm just one guy and what makes a game fun is different for everyone...

    (tl;dr - You can totally treat this MMO as a single-player game and not get shut out of some of the economies and benefits; I've been doing it that way from the start. All you need to do is learn enough to know how to grunt the right things at people to temporarily team up on some things. That said, if dungeons and skirmishes are too repetitive and/or story-free to really grab you, well, it's nothing you or they are doing wrong, you've just hit your limit on how fun this is for you.)

    1. For your last sentence there, The Grind Is Real. Plain and simple, once you get to about l60, and especially at l70, you have to have enjoyment of / high tolerance for repetition. The boons, enchantments, overall module progression and especially character building is all oriented around repeating a lot of these quests many, many, many times. If that sounds dreadfully dull, then I'm guessing you've gotten most of your enjoyment out of this game and should top out at about where you're at for that character.

    For solo play perhaps it'd be more enjoyable for you to start radically different character classes and builds and take them end to end, with a different play style... but then you'll just be doing all the same content over again and run right into that problem again. So if the repetition eats at you, and you can't find entertainment from e.g. trying to see if you can do these faster, or more efficiently, or 'chain together' some quests to do multiple as quick as possible (like the the Harper quests from Protector's Enclave), then it's nothing you're doing wrong but you may have gotten everything out of this game you're going to.

    2. I absolutely understand what you mean about not being in this game for the social part. But rather than recoiling from dungeons and skirmishes because of not wanting anything to do with other people... well, play like I do. I basically treat other people playing on there as just really (mostly ;) ) intelligent AI. I'm respectful of course and don't just screw people out of stuff or bark orders at them... but I'm not on NW to make friends. Heck, I don't have a USB keyboard or controller keyboard hooked up; all my chat is from using the onscreen keyboard and my controller, so I have to be pretty terse. :)

    Treat it like any other game mechanic that you have to learn a little bit about before really using. If you just do the basics of knowing how to join a party or create one on the fly, it makes some of the repetition and the medium-diamonds / big-diamonds things go SO much easier.

    Take farming Dread Ring for example. Yes, my character can solo Dread Spire. But if I spend a couple minutes finding a group, or even one other person, I can whip through it in a fraction of the time, often without having to spend a single potion or injury kit. I've been spending a good chunk of my playing time each day for the last week specifically farming Dread Ring to get a minor stock of enchantments for the 2x event the next few days. Finding someone to go on Spire with real fast for a few minutes often doesn't involve any more interaction than "spire?" in the LFG chat and then "ty gg" in Group chat when we've finished it a few minutes later.

    Same for heroic encounters. Again, on Dread Ring, if I time it right, I can get a nice little pile of goodies for demon hunting in like 15 - 20 minutes. Go to get the demon hunter quest.... run to start of Dem Slaughter and tell LFG / Zone chat to come to it in whatever instance I'm in, so that there's enough people for the bonus encounter... finish Dem Slaughter for 1, finish the bonus for 2, then gallop over to the other demonic heroic that's immediately in front of the main camp entrance (which is already a couple minutes in by then), pile on some damage there and boom, there's my 3. Took barely any interaction with other people to do it.

    So don't treat the second M in MMO as a hassle or a burden. It's just another game mechanic.

    I've rambled enough here already but I will close by saying that I treat the guild I'm in much the same way. I'm not there to meet anyone or make friends. I've barely talked with any of them except to participate in some farming runs, stronghold influence runs, etc. and that's usually just minimal commands. I donate my equipment and occasional other things, I take my daily allotment from their treasury and buy some stuff, and other than that I'm left alone.



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