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Why do rough astral diamonds exist at all?
thezenzen
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I've never been able to understand their purpose in the game. So you can only convert 19000 RAD into AD per day. Why? It's unlikely you'll be able to generate more than 19,000 per day, and if so, then not by much. Basically you just instantly flush all RAD into AD as soon as you get it and never hit cap. Why does this separate currency exist at all?
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Now, in the current state of this game, yeah - it's not really much of a limit. Over in Star Trek Online, where the refine limit is 8k, and you can make that in an hour (and can make much more total in one day), it's more meaningful. But they've got a somewhat different economy (the dilithium "sinks" aren't as large as the diamond ones, and you don't use Dilithium in the auction), and they've been around longer so more content that produces unrefined Dilithium has been added.
Yes, I am speaking from ignorance here but I would like to understand the need for so many currencies.
It's because of the FTP model basically. Gold is for consumables and not much else. It's rarely used in trade between players despite ppl spamming the hell out of PE chat trying to buy stuff for gold. Astral diamonds are the in game currency for trade between players and buying interesting items from the game itself (companions etc). Zen is a way of getting real money out of people either to transfer it into AD or to buy items directly. You can also convert AD to zen as long as ppl are selling zen that is.
Trade bars.... well that one i'm kinda stuck on. Few things to buy and you get it from lockboxes and nowhere else AFAIK, maybe it's for later.
Seals (the badges/emblems you mentioned) are a pretty standard MMO reward for bosses and bounties to let you get gear in case you are having really bad luck on drops or rolls in dungeons.
I don't think it's a great system since gold is kinda worthless but there we go.
As far as rough astral diamonds go.... if at 60 you do all your dailies, have a bit of luck on invoking and do leadership quests you can go over the limit on converting. Takes some effort though tbh (or some bought leadership assets to speed things up)
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The Trade Bars are to "Encourage" Lockbox purchases. Right now they don't have much of note, but expect a few real "Game Changer" or "Must Have" items to be available for Trade Bars. Right now in Champs they have exclusive high powered vehicles and, of course, "Legacy Items" (items that were removed from the game during the On Alert Conversion for nor discernible reason. That's right, they removed popular items from the game that were usually craftable and then put them back, but only for currency you get in Lockboxes).
'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
The psychology is to accustom the online customer to "different currencies", thus making it easier to reallife money as just another kind of currency.
Mind = Blown
But so many rought diamonds and all that... They need to hold value in ingame currency. Like:
10 Copper = 1 Silver, 10 Silver = 1 gold, 1000000 gold = 1 Diamond, 1 Diamond = 100 Zen... Smt like that: Simple exchange rate for stuff.
The money sinks should become from transaction taxes, consuming and vendor products. (Like 1000 people buying dyes... Thats a good sink.)
Edit: The "faction badges/marks" and the "honor" pvp currency is different... Those are quite the standard. But usually there is normal gold price on them too.
The trade bars are insurance & a bonus. In the average lockbox game, you get the Random Item and that's it. In Cryptic games, there's also a small amount of currency (Lobi crystals, trade bars, whatever). Which means that, as you open boxes.... even if you don't get The Cool Rare Drop, you're still saving up some other currency for other things.
(I've opened a bunch of lockboxes in Star Trek - I get plenty of zen in that game from the exchange, plus I bought some keys on the auction for energy credits; no, I've never lucked out and gotten whatever rare ship was in each lockbox series. But I have gained over 800 lobi crystals, which means I can buy one of the other rare ships. Bonus!)
As for all the various different currencies, all I can say is welcome to a Cryptic game. It's the same across all of their games.
Not sure why you would buy Lockboxes. These seem to drop like flies from mobs.
I'm sure they mean keys for the lockboxes, since that's part of the microtransaction ftp model PWE are promoting.
Rizogue
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I really like this simplification, wish they would look at implementing a system like this, but I expect we are stuck with the present model.
13 currencies in game, not counting Zone-Specific currencies. And to my knowledge, there's space for at least another 5 currencies.
That actually puts me in mind of another thing that should go on the Feature Request List. Put the Zone-Specific currencies into the Riches tab. I might be bothered to keep them if they could sit in there instead of eating up inventory space.
Some ZEN prices are "locked" (mounts, pets) and so is real life money to ZEN (if you dont count some special offers). But ZEN to AD can change, so the value how much in-game gear you get with one $ or € can change, depending how players see the value.
Other "currencies" are there to make players do something different for different items. So you can't just buy every item in the game with RL money or by making money with professions.
I suspect much the AD floating around right now was from Hero of the North. And then since it's F2P, anyone can hop on the game and trade in items under 100k AD pretty easily. In fact, I found when I first started, getting my mount off the AH using AD was easier than trying to save up the gold.
Gold is used for consumables. Consider: 5 deaths = 1 gold in kits. 12.5 potions = 1 gold. In dungeons, it's not unusual to use up to ten kits. In fact, strategic deaths are often used as a tactic to get through dungeons more quickly. The difference between gold and AD is that there is an theoretically unlimited supply of gold. One of the catches is that selling an "unidentified item" only gives you 10% of it's identified value. And identification scrolls cost 145AD each off the Bazaar. (The "Astral Diamond" counterpart to the Zen store)
Of course they also drop and you can farm them up for free. But selling mass quantities of identified green items is a reasonable way to gather gold. In general 1 gold it worth 1000 AD. So each level 60 green is about 100 AD if you are using scrolls you farmed yourself. If you have a lot of AoE damage abilities, like the CW, you can farm drops quite easily. Also worth noting that any level 60 purple quality item sells for 1.6 gold. So even a crappy drop from DD is worth the equivalent of 1600 AD. Same idea for trading excess seals for purple quality gear at 60.
And so that's why AH prices for purple quality items will probably never go below 1.6k AD. As potions and kits are essential, and AD farming is usually much faster than gold farming by selling purple quality drops on the AH, many people will simply buy their potions and kits directly off the AH with AD. This is why people trade keys for gold and so on. Though the keys are really a gimmick. An actual useful type of "currency" is Coalescent Wards. Those are needed to fuse any epic enchants.
I have a suspicion that farming bots (both gold and rough AD on mule accounts) and dungeon "speed runs" are propping up the economy right now. They require lots of potions and kits to do fast, and so it makes gold have real value, since those runs give you T1 and T2 gear that can sell for over 500k AD in some cases. Considering that anyone can make their own foundry, I'd imagine it would be super easy to make a custom foundry for farming drops that you can create a bot to run for you over and over again. You have complete control of the environment. I don't know how else there would be dozens and dozens of stacks of 99 enchants on the AH.
But I digress.
Oh! Gold is also used to buy basic consumable crafting resources. While not terribly expensive, it can certainly add up over time.
In a nutshell:
Actual Currency
Gold = Consumable Purchases, NPC purchases
Astral Diamonds = Standard currency for the game, but cannot be traded directly without using the AH which takes a 10% cut
Zen = Cash shop currency
Specialty Currency
Seal of the "whatever" = tokens from dungeons that let you get watered down versions of dungeon drops (useful for gearing up)
Trade Bars = consolation prize for playing the lockbox gambling game (think scratch off lottery)
Bartering Currency
Keys = needed to open lockboxes. These can be traded. Cost 125 zen.
Coalescent Wards = needed to fuse epic and high-rank enchants, value ~110k AD
Jeweled Idol = item that can be traded between players, turning in to NPC for 40k AD (comes from lockboxes)
There are other things players trade, but those are the most common. Enchants are fairly common as well some companions. My first trade from zone chat was trading a Coalescent Ward for a Phoera. If you pray each day, you have a chance to get a Coalescent Ward in the Coffer of Wondrous Augmentation you can buy with 7 of the daily coins.
Running Castle Never and selling Ancient drops might very profitable, but not too many people can do it. Anyone can go to a foundry and loot 2-3g worth of items, run their daily quests, refine AD, and save or trade as they level and gear up. Though I feel like I lot of the underpinnings come from casual players who don't do a lot of research and just fiddle around in the game because it's free. I doubt even half the players actually come look on the forums or even ask a lot of questions. The game is quite fun to just hack-and-slash through without ever doing epic content.