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plummeting Zen - AD exchange rate and "binds on pickup"
tranglec
Member Posts: 56 Arc User
For a week now the exchange rate of Zen and AD is dropping and showing no sign of recovering. From over 350 we are down to almost 330 now. For the whole time I've been playing now, which is about 2 months, the exchange rate has been relatively stable at around 350, which makes this sudden and drastic drop suspicious to me.
I hope the company isn't manipulating the exchange rate in the expectation that people will buy more Zen because all this does to me - someone stupid and impatient enough to dump hundreds of Euros in Zen so far - is to convince me that it just isn't worth any longer to buy Zen.
This has turned me into one of the more sensible players who use in game methods to earn AD and don't spend real money on the game and I will certainly not spend another dime till the exchange rate has risen to a decent level again.
If the company continues to make it harder to earn AD in game by making everything bind on pick up, I'm done altogether with the game. There is too little Level 60 contend as it is, making farming Dungeons pointless by making the drops impossible to sell means nothing less than to push Level 60 players out of the game. What are we supposed to do with this game if you remove that one last motivation to keep going?
I hope the company isn't manipulating the exchange rate in the expectation that people will buy more Zen because all this does to me - someone stupid and impatient enough to dump hundreds of Euros in Zen so far - is to convince me that it just isn't worth any longer to buy Zen.
This has turned me into one of the more sensible players who use in game methods to earn AD and don't spend real money on the game and I will certainly not spend another dime till the exchange rate has risen to a decent level again.
If the company continues to make it harder to earn AD in game by making everything bind on pick up, I'm done altogether with the game. There is too little Level 60 contend as it is, making farming Dungeons pointless by making the drops impossible to sell means nothing less than to push Level 60 players out of the game. What are we supposed to do with this game if you remove that one last motivation to keep going?
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I do think it is good that the AD exchange is dropping, it will give average players the chance to buy zen items instead of letting the people who control the AH with over priced items.
Although the zen items are far to expensive anyway, so hope they will lower the price of items one day
Pretty much this
I have seen the prices go up and down and 330 is not alarming at all especially with the rate zen prices are going down at lately. Also people are stocking up on Ad for the next module
since some new items are really expensive so there is a bit more undercutting going on right now
Once the tomes are released I expect to see Zen prices fall even further. As people who can't earn enough AD in game will be trying to make AD by selling Zen. I believe this will have a devaluing effect on Zen prices.
Yes this one, the upgrade from Rare to Epic is 750k AD and it will get worst when the patch went live, but anyways, it will start to climb up after few weeks until the next AD sink.
It may be useful to upgrade some companions to Rare so they will have all their slots open, but there is no bang for your buck if you upgrade them to epic. You will barely see an increase. The only companion I saw a real change in was the Man-at-arms. When fully upgraded he is way better than the galub dhur at tanking. He can hold multiple mobs but will die quickly. He can hold one mob for a long time (much longer than the Galub), and depending on the mob he may even win the fight. Anything that hits fast will kill him.
At a 1.55 Million AD price tag it is not worth it to upgrade any white companion to epic and at 750k it is DEFINITELY not worth it to upgrade ANY rare companion to epic. Upgrading should only be done if you have TONS of AD to waste because it truly is a waste. When the patch comes out the forums will be full of posts from angry people who upgraded their and saw no improvement.
As for the topic.... There is no special event running so the Zen exchange price has dropped. It happens all the time and the price will skyrocket again very soon. I am sure there will be a special as soon as the new content hits because we have two new professions and no one has any assets yet so they will run another profession pack special.
It is good to hear your opinion and will not jump on the band wagon on upgrading my pet, ill sit and watch this one and watch the rage if you are correct. Let us just hope that WeaponSmithing worth something, but I dont think it can craft better weapon than boss drop.
Gotta love when folks post about how a game will die as soon as this game other game releases (not the op.) you see those posts all the time and in my 5+ years of DDO, every patch, every change there would be a wall of whine. Same thing with DCUO... but both those games are doing well, and i suspect this game will last me a few years at least. Just remember, if you do not like a game and cannot add anything constructive, dont feel obligated to spew on the forums, and dont let the router hit you in the ***... you will not be missed.
You are correct. It is the same as any other profession in the game. It will cost you more to make the weapons than it will to just buy something better from the AH (not talking about Ancient weapons, just your normal epics that are readily available on the AH). Although I think this might change because I heard they are going to make DD chests items BOP.
Honestly, if they want to make professions useful they need to make the RARE recipes available all the time OR have four mithral tools guarantee tier 3. If they did I would probably craft all my own armor/weapons for my alts. As it is now it is simply cheaper and easier to just gear up from the AH. I tried to gear a toon in all top tier blues from crafting and it was an absolute nightmare that eventually became impossible to do. I started crafting armor for the toon a few weeks before I began to play it and I still could not craft it all.
Crafting low level items to sell them is not really viable because it is cheaper to just get something else from the AH. Crafting your own gear for your alts is pretty much useless unless you start a month in advance and just take what you get and move on to the next slot. Even then you will still have to fill in missed slots from the AH. This makes all crafting professions pretty much a waste IMO and I don't think I will bother with the new ones.
They really messed up their crafting professions because you are at the mercy of EVERY possible slow down method used in other games (and some methods I have never seen before). You have to gather the materials, gather the tools, gather the people, spend huge amounts of time, wait for the recipe to show up, and after all of that you still fall victim to the RNG. I have never seen another game use all of these methods all at one time and it makes their system very unappealing. Honestly, they really need to remove the RNG from the equation. If you have the best people and the best tools you should be able to craft the item you want. You have already sunk a fortune into your profession so you should be able to control the results.
Seems like a minor price variation to me. But, then, I was playing Star Trek Online during the period when people were complaining that the exchange rate wasn't in the 300's anymore.... because it had dropped into the ~130 range, over several months. Then there was the period of "omg, economy collapsing!" threads, when the rate went into the 85-95 range. It's back up around 115 last I saw.
Seriously, a change of 20, when the rate is so high to begin with, seems really minor.
As for spending AD to upgrade my stone, meh, I'll get around to it if I ever find myself with AD to burn. If PWE were smart, they would sell the tomes in the Zen store anyway.
until there is a constant sink for AD, we will always see changes when "new stuff that cost AD" comes out.
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pretty much this, wen I first upgraded to green the price was really cheap, then when I checked back later on preview the price was hiked up really high.
That is a 100% player controlled exchange rate. If you are unhappy because you're Zen doesn't go as far there are players who are happy their Astral Diamonds (in game effort) are worth more. And the same can be said the opposite way around.
It's just how the Zen market works. Buy your Zen during a Zen market sale if you're planning on exchanging them for Astral Diamonds, and if you want to trade in AD for Zen, do it when there hasn't been a sale in a while. The price of Zen will go up again when the next big Zen sale hits, because everyone will be scrambling to exchange their AD to get the Zen to buy stuff while it's cheap.
Good point. you just explain how the market works
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The reason they would add BOP would not be to manipulate the gamer into buying zen. If items are BOP, then a player can't obtain them by buying Zen and converting it to AD, because they're not for sale. So this change would actually drive down Zen sales that are motivated by the desire to essentially buy a gearset on the AH with AD. If they make a change to BOP it would be for gameplay reasons (i.e., not permitting P2W). I don't see them doing this, because they want to have P2W (by which I mean "pay-to-BiS-gear") as an option, precisely because this motivates people to buy Zen.
The BoP works both way. when items are BoE, people will try to "ninja" it instead of letting other players have it because that class actually NEED it (again that goes back to looting rules/coding issue) so some of it will change to BoP to resolve (like seals and PvP stuff which can reduce botting and bots selling PvP gear for AD)
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Firstly, a drop from 350 to 330 is hardly what I would call a plummet.
Secondly, a diminishing AD to Zen ratio is the sign of a GOOD economy, not a bad one. High exchange rates imply that diamonds are worth LESS because it takes MORE of them to purchase Zen. Lower exchange rates mean diamonds are rarer in-game, and therefore each one is worth more.
You DO want your diamonds to be worth more, right?
Isn't the upcoming change only going to affect items from DD chests, though? Those you couldn't ever "ninja loot". The boss drops, IIRC, are going to remain BoE, so the allure of using underhanded tactics to get the item for yourself is still there...
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People don't need to resort to buying zen for gearset because there is enough AD around to buy it off AH.
You see, by removing large source of AD from the system (and therefore from the players) with the BoP DD chest, people will have to resort to zen purchase, rather then exchange AD for zen, to buy items that essentially can only be bought with zen (i.e. allure stone, extra bags, char slots, keys, etc)
i've bought all the aforementioned zen market items on 2 char with proceeds from DD chests mainly, since open beta. But i can guarantee that i would not have these items if DD chests had been BoP. The only way i would have gotten these would if I had bought zen. There is nothing wrong with the economy as it is, unless you are PW/Cryptic.
The problem i have with BoP is this: it makes the keystone event of Neverwinter only worth doing if you need a setpiece. I do 3runs per DD, two or three times a day, with the sole intention of auctioning off whatever i loot in that chest. Most of the time it is junk belts or accessories, but sometimes you are lucky and it may be a swash helm or something of value. That is the fun in it and that's why i do it. It's how i play the game. That avenue to fun is being taken away and that is a problem, for many many players.
All that is how the game stands now, with unimaginative gear and for the most part 2or 3 item worthless loot tables for bosses. Introducing extensive loot tables of a load of new accessories, creating armor/weps that compete with set pieces, and giving trash mobs a rare chance of item drops (like rare crafting recipes (and make crafting useful), Tymora boxes, shards, or whatever) would go a long way to making DD worth doing, character customization something real, and improving the overall fun of the game.
Yes, the boss drop item that the class is for will be able to be needed by that class and no one else. Its really only a problem though if there are two of the same class in the group (and one player actually needs it). Otherwise, the game is just rolling the dice for you by whichever class item it decides to drop (if it even drops one).
That's why all greed runs are sort of silly in practical value, because an item is being rolled on essentially twice - once by the game and once by the player (assuming there is an equal chance of a drop for any particular class).
I mean, alot of players obviously just wait to DD time to even play a dungeon, otherwise you'll be stuck waiting in queues.. or not even getting anything done because people quit when they died a few times.
On top of this, most dungeon groups prefer a greed group, so with it [chest] now BOP, these players probably won't play much at all since it will be bop and has no sale value.
Also since some classes might want the items from bosses they will "need" and others get nothing at all.
I think it will help curb the current glitch fest going on to gain the DD items but why bother even doing the dungeon if you can't sell the items from chests?
I dunno.. kind of good and bad.
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On Beholder, it hasn't been as low as 250 since launch that I've seen, and seems to be stable around the 350 mark. Currently it's at 343.
Personally, I would love to see it down to 330.....250 would be just a dream.
Did Star Trek Online get as low as 150 or something?
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I've seen it as low as 85. Currently, it's been holding steady around 115 for awhile.