I don't really mind the "Protect the Caravan" nerf, if your metrics say that people were farming too much AD from what is effectively an offline method then sure, fine. Though the whopping 7200 AD/day/character that could be earned by it doesn't really seem all that significant unless you're allowing for en masse account farming, which would seem to be the real problem here. As long as that continues all you're doing is slowing it down slightly.
But what really bothers me is the "Explore the Area" nerf. Which went from 1 hour to get a local area map and 40 leadership xp, to 2 hours. Halving the xp/hour. Now as this was the ONLY 40 xp/hour leadership quest that didn't require mats, that's a pretty huge nerf to leadership's "ease" of leveling. Note the air quotes, leadership is in NO WAY easy to level. That's 40/hour, not 40k, not 4k, not 400, FORTY. It's an order of magnitude slower than ALL other professions to level, unless of course you chuck ZEN/AD at it and in that case it's the most expensive to level by far.
You should be RAISING the leadership xp/hour, not lowering it.
Its funny they nerf this. For me its -300 ad a day
Meanwhile they allowed the castle never exploit for months.
Those players made 1-20 million ad a day depending on drops and time played.
I never do these exploits because i dont want a ban.
But in this game it seems im the dumb one for not doing them.
Wait until you see the exp required to go from 19 - 20.
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gorrundMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 11Arc User
edited June 2013
I agree 100%. Explore Local Area, followed by Chart Region was the only way to level leadership at anything less than excrutiatingly slow. It's taken me many, many weeks to get to lvl 16 and just going to stop there. It's just painful now as I still need over 18,000xp to reach 17. I didn't use Protect the Caravan much since main goal was to level up, but it was the only semi-decent AD gainer.
I don't really mind the "Protect the Caravan" nerf, if your metrics say that people were farming too much AD from what is effectively an offline method then sure, fine. Though the whopping 7200 AD/day/character that could be earned by it doesn't really seem all that significant unless you're allowing for en masse account farming, which would seem to be the real problem here. As long as that continues all you're doing is slowing it down slightly.
But what really bothers me is the "Explore the Area" nerf. Which went from 1 hour to get a local area map and 40 leadership xp, to 2 hours. Halving the xp/hour. Now as this was the ONLY 40 xp/hour leadership quest that didn't require mats, that's a pretty huge nerf to leadership's "ease" of leveling. Note the air quotes, leadership is in NO WAY easy to level. That's 40/hour, not 40k, not 4k, not 400, FORTY. It's an order of magnitude slower than ALL other professions to level, unless of course you chuck ZEN/AD at it and in that case it's the most expensive to level by far.
You should be RAISING the leadership xp/hour, not lowering it.
TL;DR
This game is not pay2win. Learn2play. Working as intended.
The trouble with protect the caravan and explore local area is that they were among the best options you had at almost any level. Nothing ever beat explore local area for experience. This means that as you got higher and higher in level, if your goal was to level up you would continue making the same lame map over and over again because nothing was better. It's kind of like if making level 1 iron ore gave better experience per hour than any other option all the way to level 20. You may need higher quality ore, but if you make it you would level more slowly. The option to raise the experience of some of the higher level choices would have been nicer, but other than that it is nice to at least not feel forced to make local maps anymore.
Protect the caravan had the same problem. If you want AD there is nothing better that doesn't take a resource until you get to level 20. So you find yourself doing the same lame low level craft over and over again because things don't get any better as you level. You may want to battle undead or fight spellplague, but if you did so you made less AD. Now when you level you get access to crafting options that are actually better than what you had at low level. Once again, it would have been nicer if they improved the higher level options, but other than that it is nice to not have to do a very low level (and worse, short term) craft just to make the most experience or AD possible per hour.
In the long run these changes won't hurt at all. New players will never know how easy we used to have it and old players will come to understand that we had it too good to begin with. I was always amazed that explore local area gave as much experience per hour as it did. It felt like a fluke. And it appears that it was.
0
elendonMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 5Arc User
edited June 2013
Mmm...I made around 600 AD per day using this method, which will be cut to 300 AD.
I think this nerf is un-needed, if they are scared of people building too much astral diamonds, they should instead restrict the amount you can make per day per account.
Why don't they just add interesting quests for leadership anyway? Its not that this one is that great, its mostly that they all are bad or clones of each others, none of them even drop assets, not even the super mega chest of doom that require level 20.
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spiderbrigadeMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 14Arc User
Its funny they nerf this. For me its -300 ad a day
Meanwhile they allowed the castle never exploit for months.
Those players made 1-20 million ad a day depending on drops and time played.
There's a key difference between these, though. Gear farmers sell the loot to other players who already have AD. The net AD in the system stays the same (it actually goes down due to the Auction House fees).
Meanwhile someone running Leadership tasks is actually bringing new Astral Diamonds into the economy. So apparently their calculations showed that too many AD were being brought into the system and they need to curb it.
Of course as others have pointed out, this solution doesn't make any sense since presumably the main issue is with people creating dozens of free accounts to grind Caravan with. Now they will...have to create twice as many free accounts? That will definitely stop them >_>
1 good profession
3 fairly useless professions
1 new yet questionable profession.
Choice A: Buff other professions so they approach the usefulness of leadership.
Choice B: Nerf the one good profession to approach the same level of mediocrity of the others.
I'm pretty sure Leadership is far and away the worst profession - it just looks good because it gives you AD directly and doesn't require a lot of time micromanaging short tasks.
Why for you nerf my Protect the caravan x12?
Could it be I was making 25k a day playing a sum of 5min?
Could it be the new profession bots?
Why are botters and exploiters getting away with millions of AD and you punish casuals.
Why is there still no new skirmish or dungeon dailies?
Why does Gauntl daily give so little by comparison?
Seems to me they're just trying to make AD harder to get passively, forcing players to purchase AD or run their crappy dungeons.
I for one don't care that much since my GF is BiS Greaters r7-8. I'm still not running anything but CN.
Gw2 previously had the #1 slot of worst dungeons in an MMO, but this game took that title by storm.
While DD is debatably a horrible concept for gearing your character, the dungeons are just simply not fun at all. I don't care about length, I played EQ Classic/Kunark, I'm used to spending a whole day in a dungeon farming but that game was 20 years old, whats the excuse here?
If you want players to stop cheesing AD then make the game fun to actively farm. And ban some bots for gods sake.
It's not hard at all, you port to a player watch them and report to an exe GM for banning. Gw2 had this excuse like botting was an overwhelming epidemic when anyone with a brain understood that if botters turn a profit then when they get banned they will buy more copies of the game and continue. This game does not share that market gimmick.
Get a guide program, hire more staff, something. I know for a fact you can ban two bots for every email/account that gets created let alone getting those chars to lvl 10-11 so they can effectively bot. Stop looking for the cheap and easy fix and put some money back into your game.
0
tang56Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
To those saying that leadership is the best, or even a good profession.
Take a serious look at leadership:
You can get small amounts of character XP
You can get small amounts of unrefined AD
You can get mats which are only used in leadership
You can get random boxes, which are about the equivalent of a skill node, worse in some respects, better in others.
You can get small amount of leadership XP
The only real benefit leadership has over the other professions is that it's the most useful while leveling. You'll outpace them in gold/AD income and will get a leveling boost. But once you reach high level, leadership becomes mostly worthless. It's only good then if you're lazy (like a bot lazy), all the other professions will easily outpace your income even on a bad selling day, and character XP no longer matters. Also the other professions have no daily limit to their AD income, unlike leadership.
And now the only worth to be had in leadership is at the higher levels, where almost all the 150 AD/hr missions and random boxes with something potentially worth selling are. Leadership already was the hardest professions to level, but now it's even harder.
This game is not pay2win. Learn2play. Working as intended.
Yes, it is working as intended. Whats intended is to make the grind longer which makes paying more attractive. It has nothing to do with Learn2play - as the "intended" part of working as intended is they want you to Learn2pay.
Not going to happen however, because the grind takes place while not having to sit in front of the screen. Leveling occurs while away from computer, so theres no testing of patience involved.
Comments
Meanwhile they allowed the castle never exploit for months.
Those players made 1-20 million ad a day depending on drops and time played.
I never do these exploits because i dont want a ban.
But in this game it seems im the dumb one for not doing them.
...it's not meant to help players.......
3 fairly useless professions
1 new yet questionable profession.
Choice A: Buff other professions so they approach the usefulness of leadership.
Choice B: Nerf the one good profession to approach the same level of mediocrity of the others.
Choice C: Hodor? Hodor!!!
TL;DR
This game is not pay2win. Learn2play. Working as intended.
Protect the caravan had the same problem. If you want AD there is nothing better that doesn't take a resource until you get to level 20. So you find yourself doing the same lame low level craft over and over again because things don't get any better as you level. You may want to battle undead or fight spellplague, but if you did so you made less AD. Now when you level you get access to crafting options that are actually better than what you had at low level. Once again, it would have been nicer if they improved the higher level options, but other than that it is nice to not have to do a very low level (and worse, short term) craft just to make the most experience or AD possible per hour.
In the long run these changes won't hurt at all. New players will never know how easy we used to have it and old players will come to understand that we had it too good to begin with. I was always amazed that explore local area gave as much experience per hour as it did. It felt like a fluke. And it appears that it was.
I think this nerf is un-needed, if they are scared of people building too much astral diamonds, they should instead restrict the amount you can make per day per account.
Why don't they just add interesting quests for leadership anyway? Its not that this one is that great, its mostly that they all are bad or clones of each others, none of them even drop assets, not even the super mega chest of doom that require level 20.
Meanwhile someone running Leadership tasks is actually bringing new Astral Diamonds into the economy. So apparently their calculations showed that too many AD were being brought into the system and they need to curb it.
Of course as others have pointed out, this solution doesn't make any sense since presumably the main issue is with people creating dozens of free accounts to grind Caravan with. Now they will...have to create twice as many free accounts? That will definitely stop them >_>
Edited to add:
I'm pretty sure Leadership is far and away the worst profession - it just looks good because it gives you AD directly and doesn't require a lot of time micromanaging short tasks.
Could it be I was making 25k a day playing a sum of 5min?
Could it be the new profession bots?
Why are botters and exploiters getting away with millions of AD and you punish casuals.
Why is there still no new skirmish or dungeon dailies?
Why does Gauntl daily give so little by comparison?
Seems to me they're just trying to make AD harder to get passively, forcing players to purchase AD or run their crappy dungeons.
I for one don't care that much since my GF is BiS Greaters r7-8. I'm still not running anything but CN.
Gw2 previously had the #1 slot of worst dungeons in an MMO, but this game took that title by storm.
While DD is debatably a horrible concept for gearing your character, the dungeons are just simply not fun at all. I don't care about length, I played EQ Classic/Kunark, I'm used to spending a whole day in a dungeon farming but that game was 20 years old, whats the excuse here?
If you want players to stop cheesing AD then make the game fun to actively farm. And ban some bots for gods sake.
It's not hard at all, you port to a player watch them and report to an exe GM for banning. Gw2 had this excuse like botting was an overwhelming epidemic when anyone with a brain understood that if botters turn a profit then when they get banned they will buy more copies of the game and continue. This game does not share that market gimmick.
Get a guide program, hire more staff, something. I know for a fact you can ban two bots for every email/account that gets created let alone getting those chars to lvl 10-11 so they can effectively bot. Stop looking for the cheap and easy fix and put some money back into your game.
Take a serious look at leadership:
You can get small amounts of character XP
You can get small amounts of unrefined AD
You can get mats which are only used in leadership
You can get random boxes, which are about the equivalent of a skill node, worse in some respects, better in others.
You can get small amount of leadership XP
The only real benefit leadership has over the other professions is that it's the most useful while leveling. You'll outpace them in gold/AD income and will get a leveling boost. But once you reach high level, leadership becomes mostly worthless. It's only good then if you're lazy (like a bot lazy), all the other professions will easily outpace your income even on a bad selling day, and character XP no longer matters. Also the other professions have no daily limit to their AD income, unlike leadership.
And now the only worth to be had in leadership is at the higher levels, where almost all the 150 AD/hr missions and random boxes with something potentially worth selling are. Leadership already was the hardest professions to level, but now it's even harder.
Okay, Panic.
Yes, it is working as intended. Whats intended is to make the grind longer which makes paying more attractive. It has nothing to do with Learn2play - as the "intended" part of working as intended is they want you to Learn2pay.
Not going to happen however, because the grind takes place while not having to sit in front of the screen. Leveling occurs while away from computer, so theres no testing of patience involved.