Changes to Zax

thefiresidecat · March 2021

so something like a month ago, it was announced there were going to be sweeping changes to the zax. This has me, and I would guess others... in a very anxious state. I'm afraid to buy zen.. I'm afraid to sell zen.. spending zen is STRAIGHT out... knowing No worries has consistently championed getting rid of the zax altogether.. has me on edge. making statements like that without quickly following up is just mean

.

can we get any update to help resolve this hanging issue that is pretty big for many of us? I'd be satisfied with just clarification of if the zax is going to be gotten rid of or not.

@nitocris83

regenerde · March 2021

Well... the Good, the Bad and the Ugly:
- the Good, working ZEN Charge Promotions with account wide goodies, improved Wondrous Bazaar
- the Bad, removing the ZAX
- the Ugly, increasing the ZAX cap to 1k AD per 1 ZEN
and i'm pretty sure they'll go with the Bad or Ugly option here.

Dev A: This is going to cost us a lot of players.
Dev B: Nah, it'll be fine!

thefiresidecat · March 2021

they already bafflingly have hoarked the market on xbox where it was fine with the massive amounts of ad for the bonding exchange. inflation is rampant... I'd rather anything than the bad option though. lol. the other option that is also bad that could be done is taking the player exchange part out and making it a flat cost to buy zen with ad. imo that's still better than getting rid of it entirely and having no option to get zen other than money.

the real fix is to lessen the amount of ad in the economy. ad sinks that work. neat transmutes. tradebars could be bought for ad, making the ad lockboxes permanent. etc.. not putting sources of massive ad into the system like the bonding exchange for ad. when that went live we went from about 600 zax exchange rate to 12 mil backlog in one day.

hotfrostworm · March 2021

I have assisted players with a spread sheet to forecast the ZAX and when you should see a return. Blargskull started a tracking thread and many players offered data points. My forecast is not very accurate, but seems to be within + or - of 2 days.

The data can be seen here.

If there is a steady increment of 0.606 to 0.608 days per day of wait time added, the wait for any orders post on or after February 17th, will be 6 months or more. However I highly suspect my forecast will not hold and will increase exponentially.

Simply removing the ZAX is not a viable option. The removal and result would either;

A. Return the AD to the people waiting up to 4 months already and upsetting them.
B. Return Zen to the people waiting, costing Cryptic a loss of $700,000 cash sales.

I cannot see either of these options would benefit Cryptic. Several methods to repair the AD, Gold, Zen economy has been discussed. Better items to buy with AD only (wards in the AD store), an auction that runs on Gold and not AD, and numerous others. As for what they have planned, I can only imagine at this point. I could cite some examples, but why give them bad ideas they don't already have?

They can mess with their Zen Exchange or the AD all they want, but they are limited by the parent company PWE as the Zen is their money. I know many of you feel entitled to the Zen you requested on the exchange. However I wouldn't be surprised, if you woke up with the AD stuffed back into your bank one day. I will hope the best for you, unfortunately I expect the worse.

thefiresidecat · March 2021

hotfrostworm said:
I have assisted players with a spread sheet to forecast the ZAX and when you should see a return. Blargskull started a tracking thread and many players offered data points. My forecast is not very accurate, but seems to be within + or - of 2 days.

The data can be seen here.

If there is a steady increment of 0.606 to 0.608 days per day of wait time added, the wait for any orders post on or after February 17th, will be 6 months or more. However I highly suspect my forecast will not hold and will increase exponentially.

Simply removing the ZAX is not a viable option. The removal and result would either;

A. Return the AD to the people waiting up to 4 months already and upsetting them.
B. Return Zen to the people waiting, costing Cryptic a loss of $700,000 cash sales.

I cannot see either of these options would benefit Cryptic. Several methods to repair the AD, Gold, Zen economy has been discussed. Better items to buy with AD only (wards in the AD store), an auction that runs on Gold and not AD, and numerous others. As for what they have planned, I can only imagine at this point. I could cite some examples, but why give them bad ideas they don't already have?

They can mess with their Zen Exchange or the AD all they want, but they are limited by the parent company PWE as the Zen is their money. I know many of you feel entitled to the Zen you requested on the exchange. However I wouldn't be surprised, if you woke up with the AD stuffed back into your bank one day. I will hope the best for you, unfortunately I expect the worse.

how would B. be a loss of 700k cash sales? you realize the people that are exchanging ad for zen aren't the people who are going to give them money right? they lose nothing because that isn't money they were ever going to get. they would be out nothing if they just awarded everyone zen. who had orders in. people who are likely to buy zen aren't going to wait for the zen market. they're going to just buy it. I have an order for 20k in right now. i'm not about to give them 200 dollars if that doesn't go thru. in the days when I liked this game I spent about 30 dollars every mod drop to "buy" it as it were. but those days are past unless there are some major changes and they actually start listening to what the players want.

it's not about "entitlement" it's about the balance of the games economy. without a gold standard inflation runs rampant (as it's doing) part of the fun of a game like this is the economy. right now it's shot. and some of the things they're doing with ad are just making it worse. they're basically printing ad for people which is what is causing the backlog on the zax to get worse. and causing the prices of everything in game to rise. this makes it unplayable for new people because they don't have the items to sell on the ah to make what they need to gear up. and the prices of things to gear up are going thru the roof. things have basically doubled to quadrupled price within a 2 week span.

frogwalloper · March 2021

thefiresidecat said:
part of the fun of a game like this is the economy. right now it's shot.

I got more enjoyment playing the economy than I have from any mod. Pretty much since they devalued AD on console, it's felt like a big part of the game is just dead. I'll welcome whatever changes so long as they make sense - so long as they work.

hotfrostworm · March 2021

@thefiresidecat how would B. be a loss of 700k cash sales? you realize the people that are exchanging ad for zen aren't the people who are going to give them money right?

Exactly my point. They would need to dump $700,000 worth on Zen on the PC community alone. The backlog is over 70 million Zen. (I don't have the numbers for consoles) Zen is virtual currency owned by PWE and not owned by Cryptic Studios. How do you explain to your parent company, you tossed their money out the window, to make the players who won't buy Zen for cash happy?

If a player buys Zen, do you really think the cash goes straight to Cryptic Studios? It heads to accounting department at the top of the food chain. Only after the various departments get paid at PWE, payments are trickled down to the subsidiaries. Cryptic Studios gets paid by PWE, not the other way around.

This Zen exchange is unique to Cryptic Studios, the other Arc games do not have a Zen exchange. I seriously don't expect to see Cryptic close their ZAX. If they should do this, they will most like place the AD back into your bank account. If they do pull the plug on the ZAX here they will do it on Champions and Star Trek as well. When they do close out things like the Foundry, they do it on a global scale.

thefiresidecat · March 2021

hotfrostworm said:

@thefiresidecat how would B. be a loss of 700k cash sales? you realize the people that are exchanging ad for zen aren't the people who are going to give them money right?

Exactly my point. They would need to dump $700,000 worth on Zen on the PC community alone. The backlog is over 70 million Zen. (I don't have the numbers for consoles) Zen is virtual currency owned by PWE and not owned by Cryptic Studios. How do you explain to your parent company, you tossed their money out the window, to make the players who won't buy Zen for cash happy?

If a player buys Zen, do you really think the cash goes straight to Cryptic Studios? It heads to accounting department at the top of the food chain. Only after the various departments get paid at PWE, payments are trickled down to the subsidiaries. Cryptic Studios gets paid by PWE, not the other way around.

This Zen exchange is unique to Cryptic Studios, the other Arc games do not have a Zen exchange. I seriously don't expect to see Cryptic close their ZAX. If they should do this, they will most like place the AD back into your bank account. If they do pull the plug on the ZAX here they will do it on Champions and Star Trek as well. When they do close out things like the Foundry, they do it on a global scale.

I don't think it works that way. it's fake money. it's an exchange that exchanges one kind of play money for another kind of play money. at no point is it real money except for where it's purchased and put on the exchange. the zen that is going to be purchased will still be purchased. except if they don't keep their player base happy less people will purchase zen or even log on.

at this point there is an imbalance because they keep introducing new ad into the world. clearing the slate as it were would be just that. you could call it "lost money" just by it existing now. think of all those free to play players who buy their vip with it instead of actually paying money because it's in the game. it's the same thing.

there is no lost revenue by clearing the plate because those free to play players are always going to be free to play. the ones who are going to give them money are the ones who are going to give them money.

the only loser would be the in game economy. From that point forward if there is no way to get zen other than to pay real money f it would be pay to win. they'd be forcing people to pay money if they wanted things in the zen store. they'd lose money that way because a ton of people would quit the game. but there would be no actual loss of revenue from giving players a fake currency of zen anymore than giving them a flood of fake currency in ad as they are doing now.

thefiresidecat · March 2021

frogwalloper#6494 said:

thefiresidecat said:
part of the fun of a game like this is the economy. right now it's shot.
I got more enjoyment playing the economy than I have from any mod. Pretty much since they devalued AD on console, it's felt like a big part of the game is just dead. I'll welcome whatever changes so long as they make sense - so long as they work.

this is it exactly for me. playing the economy and tinkering with my build is the fun part. if they allowed you to make your own elaborate villas in stronghold I'd be all over that. that's mostly what I do in fallout. it's a cash cow for them too because they sell elements to make cool houses in their store. there are communities based on building houses. lol. so many missed opportunities. strongholds could have been so cool

armadeonx · March 2021

If they make VIP cash only they will lose more players than any other single event (imo). The biggest reason for having VIP is to avoid injuries - the free key comes in as a close second. Removing these benefits from everyone except those willing to spend real money will see a huge backlash that will dwarf the mod 16 debacle.

Unknown · March 2021

This content has been removed.

blargskull · March 2021

Wait, what the what? When did they say this @thefiresidecat ??? I am loving the idea already, sorry I know that is not what you want to hear. Far too long the ZAX, on all three games, just encourages people not to spend money. I say, Auf Wiedersehen to the ZAX, maybe I am one of few who feel this way. Some prices in the AH will drop on items and things like wards will rise, unless they offer them from another source other than praying. Wondrous Bazaar should get some new items, and they should offer VIP in there, if they plan to do this removal.

I really want to know, where this is written? If it happens, I am buying some Zen and becoming a billionaire.

hotfrostworm · March 2021

@blargskull like I was saying, I don't think it will happen. Don't count your chickens, they don't exist.

greywynd · March 2021

For not existing they certainly take up enough inventory space.

hotfrostworm · March 2021

greywynd said:
For not existing they certainly take up enough inventory space.

I see you are holding on to those chickens Juma sold you. He is a demon and has a tendency to lie. Collecting 300 chickens doesn't give you the Legendary Sword of Chickens +1... I know, I tried.

mentinmindmaker · March 2021

The important thing to remember is that Zen sales is Cryptic's main source of income.

So suggestions like removing Zen altogether will never happen.. unless they then introduce the new Nez currency that fulfills the same job of course

* For the people actually paying real money to game, the long ZAX queue is not a problem. The ZAX is still fulfilling its role for those people by giving them instant access to AD for Zen
* For the truly F2P people the long queue is a problem since it denies them access to some goods sold only for Zen, like VIP. But how important are those players for Cryptic?

If Cryptic wants the Zen queue to be shorter, they can fix that by just paying it out. Zen is an artificial currency, so Cryptic can create the necessary funds at will. However, it will be sort of pointless to do that if they do not fix the balance of AD in/out first, as queue will just grow again.

More AD sinks combined with a one-time Zen payout by Cryptic could bring the queue under control quickly.

I think the upcoming Astral lockbox sale will be the first Astral sale with the updated Astral lockbox. It should be valuable enough now that it is worth the AD, mostly because of the increased amount of tt bars in it. Will be interesting to see what happens to the ZAX queue.

frogwalloper · March 2021

Allowing players to exchange AD for Zen is nice, but I think it was a bad move. An argument could be made that many of the problems in the economy stem from that one decision.

I'm reminded again of Warframe's economy. Been a few years since I played, but as I remember, the only way to obtain the money backed currency was either to purchase it from the company, or directly trade another player for it. It was a pain in the neck because they had no auction house at the time, so you had to spend time advertising your wares, lurking the trading thread, or literally stand around the bazaar displaying your merchandise. Neverwinter's auction house would make that process so much easier.

I like being able to trade AD for Zen, but I wouldn't fault them for ditching it.

thefiresidecat · March 2021

hotfrostworm said:

greywynd said:
For not existing they certainly take up enough inventory space.
I see you are holding on to those chickens Juma sold you. He is a demon and has a tendency to lie. Collecting 300 chickens doesn't give you the Legendary Sword of Chickens +1... I know, I tried.

I think they should make it so you can trade in 10 chickens for an instance wide 10% xp boost chicken soup

thefiresidecat · March 2021

frogwalloper#6494 said:
Allowing players to exchange AD for Zen is nice, but I think it was a bad move. An argument could be made that many of the problems in the economy stem from that one decision.

I'm reminded again of Warframe's economy. Been a few years since I played, but as I remember, the only way to obtain the money backed currency was either to purchase it from the company, or directly trade another player for it. It was a pain in the neck because they had no auction house at the time, so you had to spend time advertising your wares, lurking the trading thread, or literally stand around the bazaar displaying your merchandise. Neverwinter's auction house would make that process so much easier.

I like being able to trade AD for Zen, but I wouldn't fault them for ditching it.

having that exchange gives ad some value and keeps inflation in check. it's the same thing as a gold standard. there would be no meaningful economy without it.

frogwalloper · March 2021

- out of idle curiosity, what do you imagine would happen if they deleted the AD cap in the exchange and allowed it to "self adjust."

kharkov58 · March 2021

The same would happen as when the cap was raised from 500 to 750. Prices in the auction house went up a lot.

I also would appreciate a link to the original announcement about changes to the ZAX.

mentinmindmaker · March 2021

kharkov58 said:
Prices in the auction house went up a lot.

Yes, but is not a lot of that price increase already in effect on the AH? Just look at the price for pwards...

thany · March 2021

Well WHY ?!?! This game is into "limbo" so much right now. Changes to zax will do nothing good. If they do something with that, it'll hit everyone but whales. We need ad sink, not zax changes. Anyway i'am so tired of this game that i think it's time to move on to another game. I'am so tired of bad "ideas". Everything is about zax and mirage set right now like that will solve all our problems..., that's it. Last module is a c.... But our main problems became mirage set somehow. Everything else is just perfect...

thefiresidecat · March 2021

frogwalloper#6494 said:
- out of idle curiosity, what do you imagine would happen if they deleted the AD cap in the exchange and allowed it to "self adjust."

everything would become unimaginably unaffordable and expensive. it's a terrible idea.

but honestly I didn't start this thread to get into a debate about it. nothing i say, nothing you say, nothing anyone says is going to change whatever it is they are plannign to do. I just want to know if they're are or aren't getting rid of the zax so I can act accordingly. you can't make a statement like that and then just leave it hanging. not with the path this game has been on.

frogwalloper · March 2021

I'm not looking for a debate either, just curious. I find the concept of economics fascinating so something like this interests me - even though it's all way over my head.

I know one thing for sure, I'm very glad this isn't my responsibility. Whoever has to make these decisions - I wish them lots of luck.

sandukutupu · March 2021

Hello @thefiresidecat I have just been playing New Sharandar on the weekends, a few hours on two weekends has me at 300, By Monday it ends for me and I doubt it will even be another weekend before I finish up the campaign. This thin campaign schedule, plus the open beta testing announcement, should tell people the obvious. They don't plan to ditch the ZAX here, they plan to place this whole game aside. It will now cater to the weekend soldiers and the loyalists. That announcement means by June or July Magic is coming, they want everyone there and not here. I imagine just after the 8th anniversary here, you will see all these people flood out to play on Magic.

Yes, without the ZAX the AH, becomes the ZAX. You would see massive inflation on items purchased in the Zen store and sold in the AH. I don't think Julia is going to answer (even assuming she knows) I have noticed a tendency for her to just pop in and do her announcements. I believe there are many developers praying and rubbing their lucky rabbit's foot, for Magic to be a huge success. If Magic fails, they will need this game for another 4 to 5 years as a financial crutch.

This is all speculation and guess work on my part but some stems from what they have done in the past. Maybe the new changes to the ZAX will be a global exchange for all 4 games... yes that would be horrible. Neverwinter's deficiency would be absorbed into the new Magic (assuming it has one), STO and CO working exchanges and backlog spreads out across all 4 games. To implement the new GAX? they would need a global currency. Questionite, Dilithium, and Astral Diamonds would be used to purchase the new Global Exchange currency... at what rate? 100:1 maybe? This would mean 750K AD on the GAX is now worth 7,500 AD. Yes, I could see Cryptic doing that instead of anything that would make any sense at all. I don't want to see it happen, but stupid happens.

Keep on having fun!

thefiresidecat · March 2021

frogwalloper#6494 said:
I'm not looking for a debate either, just curious. I find the concept of economics fascinating so something like this interests me - even though it's all way over my head.

I know one thing for sure, I'm very glad this isn't my responsibility. Whoever has to make these decisions - I wish them lots of luck.

I think this is the series Janne used to post about it when the question came up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W39TtF14i8I

oh and ofc, a new limit of 1000 wouldn't kill the backlog. it would immediately shoot right up again.

thefiresidecat · March 2021

sandukutupu said:
Hello @thefiresidecat I have just been playing New Sharandar on the weekends, a few hours on two weekends has me at 300, By Monday it ends for me and I doubt it will even be another weekend before I finish up the campaign. This thin campaign schedule, plus the open beta testing announcement, should tell people the obvious. They don't plan to ditch the ZAX here, they plan to place this whole game aside. It will now cater to the weekend soldiers and the loyalists. That announcement means by June or July Magic is coming, they want everyone there and not here. I imagine just after the 8th anniversary here, you will see all these people flood out to play on Magic.

Yes, without the ZAX the AH, becomes the ZAX. You would see massive inflation on items purchased in the Zen store and sold in the AH. I don't think Julia is going to answer (even assuming she knows) I have noticed a tendency for her to just pop in and do her announcements. I believe there are many developers praying and rubbing their lucky rabbit's foot, for Magic to be a huge success. If Magic fails, they will need this game for another 4 to 5 years as a financial crutch.

This is all speculation and guess work on my part but some stems from what they have done in the past. Maybe the new changes to the ZAX will be a global exchange for all 4 games... yes that would be horrible. Neverwinter's deficiency would be absorbed into the new Magic (assuming it has one), STO and CO working exchanges and backlog spreads out across all 4 games. To implement the new GAX? they would need a global currency. Questionite, Dilithium, and Astral Diamonds would be used to purchase the new Global Exchange currency... at what rate? 100:1 maybe? This would mean 750K AD on the GAX is now worth 7,500 AD. Yes, I could see Cryptic doing that instead of anything that would make any sense at all. I don't want to see it happen, but stupid happens.

Keep on having fun!

magic is not like neverwinter its a isometric game. totally different audience imo than the neverwinter audience.

regenerde · March 2021

Well, i'd say that a limitless ZAX would lead to the same result as no ZAX at all - it would simply drive more players away from the game... and about Magic: Legends, why would i even bother with that game?

Sure, in another life i played the actual cards with others every now and then and i still have a coffer filled with cards somewhere around, i even played the first card game on PC a long time ago, but those memories aren't good enough to overlook all the HAMSTER happening to NWO and going through the same mess only in another game.

Unless they do something really "magic" improving NWO, i'm not going to spend another bloody Penny here or on any other game of them, that ship has sailed, wrecked and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Now excuse me, while i'm going to toss a coin to my witcher...

Anyway, i doubt we're going to see any official statement "soon" and thus giving us enough time to react accordingly, this will be just another damn "surprise" some day in the near future.

putzboy78 · March 2021

the challenge remains that there is no balance between time currency (AD) and RL$ currency (ZEN). Whether you boost the wondrous bazaar, create professions gear worth sinking AD into, etc. Some balance needs to be achieved... and yet I still see people calling for more ways to earn AD in game. There is far to much AD in game as is and a huge divide between those new to the game trying to get it and those who have been here long enough to win the Bonding Stone buyout lottery.

I never saw an announcement that a big rework is coming to ZEN so please add a reference. But I fully expect that they knew they were totally crashing the ZAX when they introduced the Bonding Stone buyout... not that it was in good shape before it.

One thing I'd like to see come back is unbind gear drops like when the game started. In the beginning gear drops were unbound and people would resell gear on the AH, they took it away when they introduced a salvage option to convert gear to AD which has also been removed. Let's give reselling gear a try again so newer players have ways to gear up quick and elite gear like T3 hunt stuff can be traded in the open economy instead of the shadow economy where cryptic can take their cut of the exchange.

rickcase276 · March 2021

The part about possibly changing the ZAX was mentioned in passing on one of the combat rework livestreams. I do not remember which one it was though.

They do need to add more AD sources for strictly solo players, especially now that they have removed one of the few sources that were in the game. Yes Arcane Reservoir only gave 6,750 AD at max once a week, but for solo only players that was useful.

Changes to Zax

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