There's three general sentiments permeating online and ingame chat and on multiple discords.
1. Everyone loves this game and want's it and cryptic to succeed! 2. Be patient and wait until everything is said and done before going off the deep end as Mod16 is a work in progress. 3. Apathy,confusion, and frustration. People are starting to look elsewhere for gaming entertainment or at the very lease not going to spend a penny more on this game until it all been corrected in Mod 16/17/18.
I personally fall into all three of these statements as well.. I really hope this all turns around because I've grown to love the people i play with and the game. I've dropped $$$$ into supporting Cryptic and feel very uncertain what I'll be playing come summer time..
Cryptic, just a FYI there's a lot of love for this game in the community, and I 100% agree that a balance needed to happen. However, there's also a TON of people looking to give there time and money to new games coming out in the near future and if people are frustrated with the class there playing or are apathetic and just going through the motions of MEH then the ship could get empty really fast.
Stating the obvious i know, but there’s a feeling in the community that cryptic is not playing the same game we are and that the majority of the feedback is positive…..? I'm not seeing a majority of positive feedback anywhere and that's why players feel there is a disconnect from the dev's and players...
I hope this all get straightened out and thank you for all your hard work thus far.
The lion still looks like a good bonus to me in terms of groupplay -> 30% HP for teammembers and knockback, but it is not a "second life".
I generally agree with your points, but I'd like to emphasize that the knockback isn't generally an advantage in a PvE situation (and the prone lasts about .5 seconds), and I thought the temp HP shield was already severely diminished in PvP due to the nerf to temp HP, no? Besides, part of the benefit of that shield is supposed to be that, if it isn't used up, it provides a small radiant damage bonus. With its effectiveness capped at 30% of a player's HP, this becomes even harder make use of.
I'm not against all changes to legendary mounts and such to make them mesh better with M16, but I think the devs are erring on the side of being too conservative and are suppressing these assets just a bit too much.
Putting aside for the moment the risk that players will not get over their initial negative reactions, the devs are probably setting themselves up to take a hit to the game's income stream by devaluing what is supposed to be the best possible reward from any given lockbox. We're probably never going to see a legendary mount with a better DPS buff than what Swarm has or a better debuff power than what the T-Rex has; mounts with powers that give temporary ability score buffs (i.e. Tenser's) are already devalued because +2 to a damage-boosting ability score is now ~+0.50%; and so on.
Given the above, and if the Snail and the Lion already represent the peak of effectiveness for AP gain and Temp HP shielding, respectively, there doesn't appear to be much left for mechanics-minded players to look forward to in future mount releases. Players buying their first legendary mount from the AH may be happy because the prices may plummet, but players who already have these mounts will be less and less likely to add to their stables when the difference in effectiveness outside of the movement speed becomes truly miniscule for many of them.
Also, people who "speculate" on ZEN are doing a useful service to the community, even though you dont want to see it. If they wouldn't do a useful service, no one would buy from them. So what is their service? Their service is to shorten the time required for the delivery of an item you want. You have 500k+ AD, and want a coal ward. You can either put 400k AD in the ZAX, wait for 1-2 months and buy the coal ward with a 20% coupon (you might have to wait a couple of days for the 1h-coupon). Or you can pay say 520k AD and have the coal ward immediately. I can wait, so I never use this "service". But others obviously find this "service" useful. It is a service, maybe not for you and me, but for the "more impatient" players (likely also those with the bigger pockets).
Nobody need this useful service, like nobody needed this service 2 years ago, when there was no backlog at all and every player could exchange directly, if he wanted to buy anything from the Zenshop. All this nice services just make the players grind more to fill the pockets of those who creating this backlogs.
If nobody needed it, then it wouldn't be economic to provide it and it would have died out. Simple economy laws of supply and demand. Everyone, to the last person in NW, free to list on the ZAX, wait and buy their wards from the ZEN market. Simple fact is that if everyone would do it, no one will buy wards from the AH (by definition of everyone). Simple fact is that doesn't happen.
So simply put, you are wrong.
You are wrong in the understanding of why it is crated - Actually it's the people who grind and create AD, Hyperinflation is a hamster.
You are wrong in the understanding of the implication - Backlog doesn't make anyone grind more, the AD/ZEN ratio is capped, wait and you shall receive.
And last but not least, you are wrong about the cause and effect, without the backlog and discount system to begin with, the entire re-selling of the ZEN items wouldn't work as well as it does. It is a self reinforcing system, but its the existence of the backlog that made this trade system available.
As long as there's a backlog there'll be a backlog. That sounds tautologistic, but what it really means is that, as long as zen is capped at some value, that's purchase cost of zen. Which means you will always have the value of 500 AD for every zen at minimum, but the functional value may be more. Basically, people buy up zen *because* there's a shortage of it in the game, and having control of zen gives you more purchasing power than not having zen, even if you're not selling specific discounted items on the AH.
Zen shop coupons probably don't help things, of course, but they certainly are not alone in creating the backlog.
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
Hence "Self reinforcing system" in my last sentence.
Yet, it can be lowered significantly up to no backlog by a combination of a WB discount (More or less the only AD things that has value are the potency marks), and ZEN charge bonus.
The last time the combination was made the backlog dropped significantly. But this is not a long term solution, it's the tipping point that can create a starting state. To stabilize from that neutral point of "no backlog" and not to return into it, you need incentive to convert ZEN into AD and buy something for that AD.
The only items of this type are MOPs, UES, and direct lockbox drops (like legendary mounts). This is nice, but not what the market needs, Enchants market (MOPs & UES) is not moving left or right, and the market is flooded. And people will not rush to buy multiple legendary mounts.
The easy solution is unbound gear from dungeons. With a bound variant and unbound, an example can be using the epic key loot chest for the bound, and the campaign or additional drop as unbound, to maintain the price. This will provide incentive to farm dungeons on one hand (the f2p crowd) and incentive to spend ZEN as AD for the paying people.
To note, while the backlog system is self reinforcing, there is a caveat, for example right now the market is flooded with wards (and most other ZEN items) that were bought under discount, a person that has ZEN can't profit from immediately buying wards and selling, they will lose as compared to 500:1 towards about 450:1 so they will gain more just by exchanging at 500:1 or keeping the ZEN hoarding it in case of a discount. Having an incentive to invest in something else, AD based, will remove the backlog even in current condition, the problem is the devs reward people for running RQ which is hyper inflation and removed or didn't provide options like was described. At the same time Flash discounts reward people who hoard their ZEN, which again is counter productive to the economy.
RUNES ARE STILL NOT DROPPING FROM HE:s OR AT LAST CHEST ONCE YOU ACTIVATED MASTER RUNS WITH RUNE!!!!
3 rd week on preview and simple THINGS LIKE DROPS from HE:sthat that is a MAJOR PART of the new module have not been adressed.
I understand you have tons of things to fix but this issue been up since beginning of first week 2 patches later still not fixed. It is very hard to test things on preview that has to do with progress if you ignore the bugs that makes progress possible........
There are plenty of smaller changes and bugs that don't fall into the specific category threads. Use this thread for any feedback that doesn't fit anywhere else.
Unidentified Items and Identify Scrolls
With Undermountain we changed it so that gear that drops is no longer unidentified. As such we also stopped dropping identify scrolls in loot as well. Overall unidentified items was not a feature we felt added to the game and that it was time to move away from that concept going forward.
That's funny. All the loot I picked up in UnderMountain needed to be identified, This was yesterday. March 17: Okay - I just noticed that the items that dropped today are identified. Probably a Mea Culpa is required: the gear the wasn't identified may have been from the Live server before I copied to Mimic. Like the time it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop, the world may never know.....
BUGS IN TONG: 1.) The mimic trap is severely bugged. They shoot all over the place, fly off the map, stack on top of each other, and move very, very fast. The purple particle effect tracks all over the place. When I tried to choose one of them, there were two mimics on the left pedistal, I chose that, and one of them deactivated the trap, the other attacked me and the party. Then the third disappeared, and the trap was disarmed. It was hilarious, but probably not what you want to happen 2.) Withers has 2 abilities that are severely broken: First, the hand of force that spins around and knocks people away. This is currently an INSTANT KILL for anyone, even me in Vanguard/tank mode with shield up. Didn't matter. Everyone instantly dies. Second, his hand that smashes you down. That's another instant kill for anyone it hits. Poof.
Couldn't make it to Ras Nsi, because of the Withers bug. It wiped the whole party multiple times. Was pretty much impossible to deal with, we tried a few times but couldn't get past him and gave up.
If nobody needed it, then it wouldn't be economic to provide it and it would have died out. Simple economy laws of supply and demand. Everyone, to the last person in NW, free to list on the ZAX, wait and buy their wards from the ZEN market. Simple fact is that if everyone would do it, no one will buy wards from the AH (by definition of everyone). Simple fact is that doesn't happen.
So simply put, you are wrong.
You are wrong in the understanding of why it is crated - Actually it's the people who grind and create AD, Hyperinflation is a hamster.
You are wrong in the understanding of the implication - Backlog doesn't make anyone grind more, the AD/ZEN ratio is capped, wait and you shall receive.
And last but not least, you are wrong about the cause and effect, without the backlog and discount system to begin with, the entire re-selling of the ZEN items wouldn't work as well as it does. It is a self reinforcing system, but its the existence of the backlog that made this trade system available.
There are two factors that play together in the cycle zen-discount-wards-auction-zax-zen.
1. Ability to sell zen items on auction 2. Cap on zen exchange
Basically cycle create backlog and backlog reinforces cycle. This is happens because market is not free. There is a price fixing on the market because of cap on ZAX.
Removing any of these items will break the cycle for good. As F2P player, I prefer item 1 to be removed. The removal of item 2 would also work, because zen speculation would be less predictable and it could be no more done by bots. One of items need to be removed to make economy healthy.
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited March 2019
I'll answer both posts in one:
For the ability to sell ZEN items on AH which is the same as make wards BtA (which is the same points of the posts above):
Lets assume that happens, then we have to make all the enchants BtC/BtA too, aren't we. Lets assume we do that too. So now, what can you buy with AD? Enchantments / wards are a significant AH commodity, removing it from circulation will result in 3 things:
1. More inflation - You removed a very large AD sink (10% AH). 2. You encourage people to not spend AD, but convert it to ZEN to progress -> guess what will that cause.... 3. You now need even more enchants because you can't trade yours -> more ZEN needed -> yup more backlog.
For the second point of the Cap:
Removing the cap and "make economy healthy" in one sentence is unfortunately a contradiction. The cap is the most significant thing that holds the economy together. Removing that cap will result in immediate loss of value of all AD in the game. Here a nice illustrated explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sumZLwFXJqE
BTW the Russian server has the cap at 1000:1, and you know what they have? Backlog.
Zen speculation and bots: What Bots have to do here? ZEN store discount = buy -> wait -> sell on AH -> ZAX. Nothing to bot here.
It is when things need rapid adjustment and quick sell / buy orders then people use software (e.g. stock exchange) or in the parallel example will be ZAX under cap. So you have the opposite issue, it is under the cap where it happened.
PS: The backlog (at least if we don't count a drop for a week or two) is longer than 2 years.
If nobody needed it, then it wouldn't be economic to provide it and it would have died out. Simple economy laws of supply and demand. Everyone, to the last person in NW, free to list on the ZAX, wait and buy their wards from the ZEN market. Simple fact is that if everyone would do it, no one will buy wards from the AH (by definition of everyone). Simple fact is that doesn't happen.
So simply put, you are wrong.
You are wrong in the understanding of why it is crated - Actually it's the people who grind and create AD, Hyperinflation is a hamster.
You are wrong in the understanding of the implication - Backlog doesn't make anyone grind more, the AD/ZEN ratio is capped, wait and you shall receive.
And last but not least, you are wrong about the cause and effect, without the backlog and discount system to begin with, the entire re-selling of the ZEN items wouldn't work as well as it does. It is a self reinforcing system, but its the existence of the backlog that made this trade system available.
There are two factors that play together in the cycle zen-discount-wards-auction-zax-zen.
1. Ability to sell zen items on auction 2. Cap on zen exchange
Basically cycle create backlog and backlog reinforces cycle. This is happens because market is not free. There is a price fixing on the market because of cap on ZAX.
Removing any of these items will break the cycle for good. As F2P player, I prefer item 1 to be removed. The removal of item 2 would also work, because zen speculation would be less predictable and it could be no more done by bots. One of items need to be removed to make economy healthy.
There are many more factors. You are oversimplifying.
There is no such thing as free market in real life. All markets are controlled in real life. The market in game should be controlled. The question is how.
It behooves Cryptic to sell Zen. As that is how they make most of their money. They do sell some packs for cash, but I doubt that is as lucrative as the zen.
Personally, I think they should sell VIP for cash. Either a monthly or quarterly subscription for VIP.
The Zen issue is easy to fix. Sell wards for both Zen and AD. Decide what exchange rate you want for Zen to AD and set the price using that exchange rate. Easy fix imho.
I am a total ignoramus when it comes to market manipulations, but I know that two main things mess up the economy:
1) exploits making it easy for "someone" to obtain valuables rapidly. 2) Teams of kids & slaves working for gold-selling companies. Often times these are peeps in third-world countries being provided basic survival needs in exchange for farming in-game day and night to obtain items that the Master-Owners can then sell online to real players.
It is up to the devs to combat these problems, and for us to make them aware of the problems. It is not up to us to solve them on our end. We lack the necessary information, motivation, and frankly, skills, to do so.
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
@micky1p00 Why should we make the echantments BtA/BtC, if they aren't a Zen thing? The one, who want to start to speculate on this items, can do this, but shouldn't be surprised when they loose Zen/AD, because Upgrages are still a RNG thing. 1.The 10% fee from AH is just a 10% more grind for the players who buy through AH, istead of Zen shop, because you know the sellers take the 10% through higher prizes to the buyers. 2.I don't encourage anyone to not spend their AD. There is enough stuff everybody have to buy through AD. Mounts, Companions even a bigger thing in the next Module and ofc Marks and so on. 3. not valid, because not bound
There is no more speculation than selling wards, a ward cost at discount 40% less. That means the person who bought discounted BtA wards will always sell cheaper enchantments by the relative discount of the wards component. And it will always be cheaper than your self made at 500:1 wards.
You mistake the RNG component here, when you upgrade one enchantment a deviation in the RNG can be very nice, or very disappointing, when someone does this to resell they do it in large numbers, hence they get much much closer to the estimated value, the average. So actually their risk from RNG is much much lower.
You just added one step... and didn't changed much, the market will balance itself, some will not do it, it will become more profitable for others, and they will.
1. A ward from the AH is 4.8k. stack of 99. A ward on the ZAX is 5k, even if you get a voucher you can only discount 10 wards with it. 2. Hmm? Mounts got itsy bitsy nerfed, if you didn't notice but how many you want of those 5? . Companions? How many you want of those? vs almost 30 enchantments and how many wards go towards artifacts? What we will want to buy more next mod? 3. Read above, people will re-sell enchantments or anything that can be profitable, this is market forces in action.
Again, making wards BtA will not change the backlog, you will need the same total of wards, and they all come from the same place. If suddenly the demand from wards drop then it will be cheaper to buy from the AH anyway, at lower than 500:1 In any case, all those who buy on the AH, will do the exchange themselves and the backlog remains.
Buying wards to re-sell only works because there is demand, and as long as there is demand, the total sum of all the wards bought remains the same...(more or less, ofc there is a buffer of people bought and wait to sell, but they will)
For the ability to sell ZEN items on AH which is the same as make wards BtA (which is the same points of the posts above):
Lets assume that happens, then we have to make all the enchants BtC/BtA too, aren't we. Lets assume we do that too. So now, what can you buy with AD? Enchantments / wards are a significant AH commodity, removing it from circulation will result in 3 things:
1. More inflation - You removed a very large AD sink (10% AH). 2. You encourage people to not spend AD, but convert it to ZEN to progress -> guess what will that cause.... 3. You now need even more enchants because you can't trade yours -> more ZEN needed -> yup more backlog.
Item 3 is your pure fantasy. I never said that enchants should be BtA as well. Only wards. Upgrading enchants is a service to community, as it is a sort of crafting and there are risks involved.
Removing the cap and "make economy healthy" in one sentence is unfortunately a contradiction. The cap is the most significant thing that holds the economy together. Removing that cap will result in immediate loss of value of all AD in the game. Here a nice illustrated explanation:
The video has a point, but there are limits on incoming AD as well. Equivalence could be enforced in some other way as some have suggested, but making some progression-critical items like wards available from multiple sources.
BTW the Russian server has the cap at 1000:1, and you know what they have? Backlog.
The limit was not removed on russian server, so it proves nothing. Any cap + directly sellable on AH items create a backlog automatically. Because backlog makes cycle profitable, and cycle creates backlog. Making items BtA will remove at least one of factors that creates backlog. There are other factors, but why to have an additional one that could be easily removed? All zen store items that are posted on AH now had created a backlog at some point. There are a lot of BtA items on Zen store, and I'm suggesting to make all of them BtA.
Zen speculation and bots: What Bots have to do here? ZEN store discount = buy -> wait -> sell on AH -> ZAX. Nothing to bot here.
It is when things need rapid adjustment and quick sell / buy orders then people use software (e.g. stock exchange) or in the parallel example will be ZAX under cap. So you have the opposite issue, it is under the cap where it happened.
PS: The backlog (at least if we don't count a drop for a week or two) is longer than 2 years.
Process is boring, predictable, and requires attention to multiple accounts, and it spans long time. This is not a kind of activity that humans enjoy or are good at. This could be done by bots. And I suspect it is done by bots guessing from names of some accounts. Even if enchants are upgraded and resold it will be less predictable (price of stones and RP changes, cost of source and result enchant changes, etc.)
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
Item 3 is your pure fantasy. I never said that enchants should be BtA as well. Only wards. Upgrading enchants is a service to community, as it is a sort of crafting and there are risks involved.
So clicking one more button is a service? Because crafting in mass has lower risk than making one.
The video has a point, but there are limits on incoming AD as well. Equivalence could be enforced in some other way as some have suggested, but making some progression-critical items like wards available from multiple sources.
What limits? The refine cap is well known to not be enough and the game hyperinflates. Otherwise there wouldn't be a backlog to begin with. You don't jump from 300:1 AD to 30mil backlog with sufficient "limits to AD". The backlog existed long before wards were only in the ZEN store.
The limit was not removed on russian server, so it proves nothing. Any cap + directly sellable on AH items create a backlog automatically. Because backlog makes cycle profitable, and cycle creates backlog. Making items BtA will remove at least one of factors that creates backlog. There are other factors, but why to have an additional one that could be easily removed? All zen store items that are posted on AH now had created a backlog at some point. There are a lot of BtA items on Zen store, and I'm suggesting to make all of them BtA.
As long as the items have a buyer at the end they contribute exactly the same to the backlog. It doesn't matter if a seller exchanged AD to ZEN, and sold you an item, or you did so directly, the same ZEN went through the ZAX
The self reinforcing part (when there are no discounts) is for people that buy with RL money, and prefer to sell items instead of exchanging. This is not the case right now, as ward price is bellow 500:1 (+10% tax).
your suggested fix just added one point to the cycle ZAX->ZEN->ward->enchantments->AH->ZAX->repeat.
The artificial separation of this is a 'service' but this is not, simply doesn't work. Remove all the wards on the AH, how people will upgrade things? Wait for the ZAX? They will buy enchants directly -> Price go up -> profit for the same people who will just make enchants + add to this nice discount for WB = even more profit.
Process is boring, predictable, and requires attention to multiple accounts, and it spans long time. This is not a kind of activity that humans enjoy or are good at. This could be done by bots. And I suspect it is done by bots guessing from names of some accounts. Even if enchants are upgraded and resold it will be less predictable (price of stones and RP changes, cost of source and result enchant changes, etc.)
Attention needed on multiple accounts? For what? Only thing I can think of is when the ZAX request fulfilled, enough to check it once per few days. Humans can do this very very well. Checking a list of items or account or not sure what, once per day.
Doing fast trades when ZAX goes 480 to 490 and back hourly is something that computers are better than humans at.
Will these new heroic encounters have rewards that are similar to the old model, where you could stack rewards? Or will they be automatically added to our inventory? Also is there any way, to increase the time these new heroics last? By the time I travel to one Shadowdusk, and the heroic is at the other end of the map, by the time I get there it's already almost too late.
Runic Encounters.
Nova - Thaumaturge Wizard Bardtholomew - Minstrel Bard Mariah Carries - Devout Cleric Darth Bane - Thaumaturge Wizard on Xbox
This is not the case right now, as ward price is bellow 500:1 (+10% tax).
your suggested fix just added one point to the cycle ZAX->ZEN->ward->enchantments->AH->ZAX->repeat.
In that cycle you have missed the following steps: 1. Buy source enchant 2. Buy marks 3. Buy RP
As prices on these components and result fluctuate, the profit equation is much more complex and changes over time. Also the upgrade process could fail, with streak limits there failures are limited, but still there are. There is no guaranteed income. Practically, these people will sell result and they will take all manufacturing risks on themselves. This is some service of removing failure cases.
The profit equation with wards is stable and the cycle could produce guaranteed income provided there is backlog.
There is a big difference between these situations.
This is not the case right now, as ward price is bellow 500:1 (+10% tax).
your suggested fix just added one point to the cycle ZAX->ZEN->ward->enchantments->AH->ZAX->repeat.
In that cycle you have missed the following steps: 1. Buy source enchant 2. Buy marks 3. Buy RP
As prices on these components and result fluctuate, the profit equation is much more complex and changes over time. Also the upgrade process could fail, with streak limits there failures are limited, but still there are. There is no guaranteed income. Practically, these people will sell result and they will take all manufacturing risks on themselves. This is some service of removing failure cases.
The profit equation with wards is stable and the cycle could produce guaranteed income provided there is backlog.
There is a big difference between these situations.
I have a quick question, I have tried to make a few new toons and found that the skills are not keeping pace with my level. This makes taking down Karzov in blacklake almost impossible. os this something that has not been implimented yet? I have found this across many classes
I have not had a chance to do the lower level content myself. I am 'Hoping" that when they say 'Scaling Down', that they are providing some retained advantage for Having top end items equipped, at least a percent of their effect. Otherwise, where is the reward for attaining them in the first place?
I have not had a chance to do the lower level content myself. I am 'Hoping" that when they say 'Scaling Down', that they are providing some retained advantage for Having top end items equipped, at least a percent of their effect. Otherwise, where is the reward for attaining them in the first place?
Being able to run L80 contents, that's the reward.
I haven't tested everything, but L80 weapons get scaled down to the same level of the Primal set, unexhalted. Most have way worse set bonus. So anyone with L70 weapons at the level of Primal set (unexhalted) or better, you should keep those for L70 content.
OTOH, L80 weapons in L80 areas are much better than any L70 weapon.
Comments
1. Everyone loves this game and want's it and cryptic to succeed!
2. Be patient and wait until everything is said and done before going off the deep end as Mod16 is a work in progress.
3. Apathy,confusion, and frustration. People are starting to look elsewhere for gaming entertainment or at the very lease not going to spend a penny more on this game until it all been corrected in Mod 16/17/18.
I personally fall into all three of these statements as well.. I really hope this all turns around because I've grown to love the people i play with and the game.
I've dropped $$$$ into supporting Cryptic and feel very uncertain what I'll be playing come summer time..
Cryptic, just a FYI there's a lot of love for this game in the community, and I 100% agree that a balance needed to happen. However, there's also a TON of people looking to give there time and money to new games coming out in the near future and if people are frustrated with the class there playing or are apathetic and just going through the motions of MEH then the ship could get empty really fast.
Stating the obvious i know, but there’s a feeling in the community that cryptic is not playing the same game we are and that the majority of the feedback is positive…..?
I'm not seeing a majority of positive feedback anywhere and that's why players feel there is a disconnect from the dev's and players...
I hope this all get straightened out and thank you for all your hard work thus far.
I'm not against all changes to legendary mounts and such to make them mesh better with M16, but I think the devs are erring on the side of being too conservative and are suppressing these assets just a bit too much.
Putting aside for the moment the risk that players will not get over their initial negative reactions, the devs are probably setting themselves up to take a hit to the game's income stream by devaluing what is supposed to be the best possible reward from any given lockbox. We're probably never going to see a legendary mount with a better DPS buff than what Swarm has or a better debuff power than what the T-Rex has; mounts with powers that give temporary ability score buffs (i.e. Tenser's) are already devalued because +2 to a damage-boosting ability score is now ~+0.50%; and so on.
Given the above, and if the Snail and the Lion already represent the peak of effectiveness for AP gain and Temp HP shielding, respectively, there doesn't appear to be much left for mechanics-minded players to look forward to in future mount releases. Players buying their first legendary mount from the AH may be happy because the prices may plummet, but players who already have these mounts will be less and less likely to add to their stables when the difference in effectiveness outside of the movement speed becomes truly miniscule for many of them.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Zen shop coupons probably don't help things, of course, but they certainly are not alone in creating the backlog.
Yet, it can be lowered significantly up to no backlog by a combination of a WB discount (More or less the only AD things that has value are the potency marks), and ZEN charge bonus.
The last time the combination was made the backlog dropped significantly. But this is not a long term solution, it's the tipping point that can create a starting state. To stabilize from that neutral point of "no backlog" and not to return into it, you need incentive to convert ZEN into AD and buy something for that AD.
The only items of this type are MOPs, UES, and direct lockbox drops (like legendary mounts). This is nice, but not what the market needs, Enchants market (MOPs & UES) is not moving left or right, and the market is flooded. And people will not rush to buy multiple legendary mounts.
The easy solution is unbound gear from dungeons. With a bound variant and unbound, an example can be using the epic key loot chest for the bound, and the campaign or additional drop as unbound, to maintain the price.
This will provide incentive to farm dungeons on one hand (the f2p crowd) and incentive to spend ZEN as AD for the paying people.
To note, while the backlog system is self reinforcing, there is a caveat, for example right now the market is flooded with wards (and most other ZEN items) that were bought under discount, a person that has ZEN can't profit from immediately buying wards and selling, they will lose as compared to 500:1 towards about 450:1 so they will gain more just by exchanging at 500:1 or keeping the ZEN hoarding it in case of a discount.
Having an incentive to invest in something else, AD based, will remove the backlog even in current condition, the problem is the devs reward people for running RQ which is hyper inflation and removed or didn't provide options like was described. At the same time Flash discounts reward people who hoard their ZEN, which again is counter productive to the economy.
RUNES ARE STILL NOT DROPPING FROM HE:s OR AT LAST CHEST ONCE YOU ACTIVATED MASTER RUNS WITH RUNE!!!!
3 rd week on preview and simple THINGS LIKE DROPS from HE:sthat that is a MAJOR PART of the new module have not been adressed.
I understand you have tons of things to fix but this issue been up since beginning of first week 2 patches later still not fixed.
It is very hard to test things on preview that has to do with progress if you ignore the bugs that makes progress possible........
Best
March 17: Okay - I just noticed that the items that dropped today are identified. Probably a Mea Culpa is required: the gear the wasn't identified may have been from the Live server before I copied to Mimic.
Like the time it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop, the world may never know.....
BUGS IN TONG:
1.) The mimic trap is severely bugged. They shoot all over the place, fly off the map, stack on top of each other, and move very, very fast. The purple particle effect tracks all over the place. When I tried to choose one of them, there were two mimics on the left pedistal, I chose that, and one of them deactivated the trap, the other attacked me and the party. Then the third disappeared, and the trap was disarmed. It was hilarious, but probably not what you want to happen
2.) Withers has 2 abilities that are severely broken: First, the hand of force that spins around and knocks people away. This is currently an INSTANT KILL for anyone, even me in Vanguard/tank mode with shield up. Didn't matter. Everyone instantly dies. Second, his hand that smashes you down. That's another instant kill for anyone it hits. Poof.
Couldn't make it to Ras Nsi, because of the Withers bug. It wiped the whole party multiple times. Was pretty much impossible to deal with, we tried a few times but couldn't get past him and gave up.
1. Ability to sell zen items on auction
2. Cap on zen exchange
Basically cycle create backlog and backlog reinforces cycle. This is happens because market is not free. There is a price fixing on the market because of cap on ZAX.
Removing any of these items will break the cycle for good. As F2P player, I prefer item 1 to be removed. The removal of item 2 would also work, because zen speculation would be less predictable and it could be no more done by bots. One of items need to be removed to make economy healthy.
For the ability to sell ZEN items on AH which is the same as make wards BtA (which is the same points of the posts above):
Lets assume that happens, then we have to make all the enchants BtC/BtA too, aren't we. Lets assume we do that too.
So now, what can you buy with AD? Enchantments / wards are a significant AH commodity, removing it from circulation will result in 3 things:
1. More inflation - You removed a very large AD sink (10% AH).
2. You encourage people to not spend AD, but convert it to ZEN to progress -> guess what will that cause....
3. You now need even more enchants because you can't trade yours -> more ZEN needed -> yup more backlog.
For the second point of the Cap:
Removing the cap and "make economy healthy" in one sentence is unfortunately a contradiction. The cap is the most significant thing that holds the economy together.
Removing that cap will result in immediate loss of value of all AD in the game.
Here a nice illustrated explanation:
BTW the Russian server has the cap at 1000:1, and you know what they have? Backlog.
Zen speculation and bots:
What Bots have to do here? ZEN store discount = buy -> wait -> sell on AH -> ZAX. Nothing to bot here.
It is when things need rapid adjustment and quick sell / buy orders then people use software (e.g. stock exchange) or in the parallel example will be ZAX under cap. So you have the opposite issue, it is under the cap where it happened.
PS: The backlog (at least if we don't count a drop for a week or two) is longer than 2 years.
There is no such thing as free market in real life. All markets are controlled in real life. The market in game should be controlled. The question is how.
It behooves Cryptic to sell Zen. As that is how they make most of their money. They do sell some packs for cash, but I doubt that is as lucrative as the zen.
Personally, I think they should sell VIP for cash. Either a monthly or quarterly subscription for VIP.
The Zen issue is easy to fix. Sell wards for both Zen and AD. Decide what exchange rate you want for Zen to AD and set the price using that exchange rate. Easy fix imho.
1) exploits making it easy for "someone" to obtain valuables rapidly.
2) Teams of kids & slaves working for gold-selling companies. Often times these are peeps in third-world countries being provided basic survival needs in exchange for farming in-game day and night to obtain items that the Master-Owners can then sell online to real players.
It is up to the devs to combat these problems, and for us to make them aware of the problems. It is not up to us to solve them on our end. We lack the necessary information, motivation, and frankly, skills, to do so.
You mistake the RNG component here, when you upgrade one enchantment a deviation in the RNG can be very nice, or very disappointing, when someone does this to resell they do it in large numbers, hence they get much much closer to the estimated value, the average. So actually their risk from RNG is much much lower.
You just added one step... and didn't changed much, the market will balance itself, some will not do it, it will become more profitable for others, and they will.
1. A ward from the AH is 4.8k. stack of 99. A ward on the ZAX is 5k, even if you get a voucher you can only discount 10 wards with it.
2. Hmm? Mounts got itsy bitsy nerfed, if you didn't notice but how many you want of those 5? . Companions? How many you want of those? vs almost 30 enchantments and how many wards go towards artifacts?
What we will want to buy more next mod?
3. Read above, people will re-sell enchantments or anything that can be profitable, this is market forces in action.
Again, making wards BtA will not change the backlog, you will need the same total of wards, and they all come from the same place. If suddenly the demand from wards drop then it will be cheaper to buy from the AH anyway, at lower than 500:1
In any case, all those who buy on the AH, will do the exchange themselves and the backlog remains.
Buying wards to re-sell only works because there is demand, and as long as there is demand, the total sum of all the wards bought remains the same...(more or less, ofc there is a buffer of people bought and wait to sell, but they will)
It doesn't matter if a seller exchanged AD to ZEN, and sold you an item, or you did so directly, the same ZEN went through the ZAX
The self reinforcing part (when there are no discounts) is for people that buy with RL money, and prefer to sell items instead of exchanging. This is not the case right now, as ward price is bellow 500:1 (+10% tax).
your suggested fix just added one point to the cycle
ZAX->ZEN->ward->enchantments->AH->ZAX->repeat.
The artificial separation of this is a 'service' but this is not, simply doesn't work. Remove all the wards on the AH, how people will upgrade things? Wait for the ZAX? They will buy enchants directly -> Price go up -> profit for the same people who will just make enchants + add to this nice discount for WB = even more profit. Attention needed on multiple accounts? For what? Only thing I can think of is when the ZAX request fulfilled, enough to check it once per few days.
Humans can do this very very well. Checking a list of items or account or not sure what, once per day.
Doing fast trades when ZAX goes 480 to 490 and back hourly is something that computers are better than humans at.
Such a nuisance wanting to change one feat and having to redo the whole character.</font>
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1. Buy source enchant
2. Buy marks
3. Buy RP
As prices on these components and result fluctuate, the profit equation is much more complex and changes over time. Also the upgrade process could fail, with streak limits there failures are limited, but still there are. There is no guaranteed income. Practically, these people will sell result and they will take all manufacturing risks on themselves. This is some service of removing failure cases.
The profit equation with wards is stable and the cycle could produce guaranteed income provided there is backlog.
There is a big difference between these situations. If you consider 20% refinement or universal discount from invoke bags, the prices will make sense. Few would buy w/o discount anyway. Such speculation over ZAX could be easily killed by 5% tax on buying Zen.
I haven't tested everything, but L80 weapons get scaled down to the same level of the Primal set, unexhalted. Most have way worse set bonus. So anyone with L70 weapons at the level of Primal set (unexhalted) or better, you should keep those for L70 content.
OTOH, L80 weapons in L80 areas are much better than any L70 weapon.