Friends used to ask me whether NW was truly F2P. And I would always recommend them this game in that regard, because the F2P model over here used to be amazing. You could get anything you wanted because of ZAX. I even wrote a handful of reviews on Steam and a couple of websites promoting this very aspect.
But in the light of recent changes and shifts, and especially the upcoming one which is gonna make it once again a lot more difficult for F2P players to get decent stuff, I can not really do that anymore. Quite the contrary actually, if this change really gets into the game, my conscience will indeed force me to tell everyone who asks me about the game to stay away unless they intend to open their wallet on regular basis.
I love to burst bubbles.
0
lazaroth666Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,332Arc User
while I'm upset about the ward changes from the trade bar merchant what I'm more curious about is this:
Will anyone who already has tokes from the kits get the new number of tokens now, for example before patch I have one coin, after patch would I have 30?
Come on, you already know the answer :rolleyes:. If the HR and GWF didn't get a retraining token after everything they did to these classes, do you really think they will give you 30 coins now?
[*]Tarmalune Tradebar Merchant: Coalescent and Preservation wards sold by the Trade Bar merchant are now Bind on Account. This change is not retroactive. Existing wards will retain their current bind status.
I doubt you had anything to to with this decision, it reeks of marketing, but this is the worst idea I have ever seen in patch notes for this game. Even including the preview patch that briefly introduced TRs losing stealth from at-wills. It's already nigh-impossible to gear up with enchants unless you're already rich. This is just going to make it worse, and already has. Seriously, this is a terrible idea.
Coal wards were already under horrible inflation since the end of last year. Now they're worse. If this is to try to get people to buy more coal wards from the Zen store, let me impress upon everyone that this is not the way to do it - The reason people don't buy them is that they're massively overpriced. Nobody wants to pay 10 bucks for a single enchant. Nobody. Drop the price by half and you control the inflation and get people to buy more often.
I'm not happy with Mod 3. The character create debacle, the grind of IWD, the changes to GG and dungeons making it much harder to get runs in for me, the changes to my HR and GWF with no free respec for such massive changes... I'm already disenchanted. This? This is just a kick to the gut and may well be the last straw. I've got 9 characters. I've been playing since Beta Weekend 3. From the start of open beta to today I've gotten a total of 3 coal wards from invoke chests. That is not a viable method of obtaining upgrades, the drop rate is simply too low.
I am not going to buy coal wards or keys to get around this. The cost is too high, I don't have the RL money or the in-game money. This is the sort of thing that just makes me disgusted and makes me wander away.
I doubt you had anything to to with this decision, it reeks of marketing, but this is the worst idea I have ever seen in patch notes for this game. Even including the preview patch that briefly introduced TRs losing stealth from at-wills. It's already nigh-impossible to gear up with enchants unless you're already rich. This is just going to make it worse, and already has. Seriously, this is a terrible idea.
Coal wards were already under horrible inflation since the end of last year. Now they're worse. If this is to try to get people to buy more coal wards from the Zen store, let me impress upon everyone that this is not the way to do it - The reason people don't buy them is that they're massively overpriced. Nobody wants to pay 10 bucks for a single enchant. Nobody. Drop the price by half and you control the inflation and get people to buy more often.
I'm not happy with Mod 3. The character create debacle, the grind of IWD, the changes to GG and dungeons making it much harder to get runs in for me, the changes to my HR and GWF with no free respec for such massive changes... I'm already disenchanted. This? This is just a kick to the gut and may well be the last straw. I've got 9 characters. I've been playing since Beta Weekend 3. From the start of open beta to today I've gotten a total of 3 coal wards from invoke chests. That is not a viable method of obtaining upgrades, the drop rate is simply too low.
I am not going to buy coal wards or keys to get around this. The cost is too high, I don't have the RL money or the in-game money. This is the sort of thing that just makes me disgusted and makes me wander away.
A lots of ppl feel like you.
0
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
edited May 2014
I'd rather do without upgrading my existing enchantments than pay ten bucks a ward. And I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of Neverwinter players feels the same way. People who really don't care how much money they spend on a game are a minority.
By the way, if going this route, an un-nerfing of the amount of trade bars you can get per lockbox would be nice. (But never gonna happen, I know. I know.)
Making tarm bar coals BoA is a very bad idea. The economy is already broken and this will make things even worse. There is no zen most of the time on ZAX and this is going to make it very hard for new players to gear up with enchantments. I think this is a very bad move and that it will decrease the player base significantly.
I'm not too concerned since I have been playing since open beta. You could farm dungeons more easily then since nothing was BoP/BoA and you could build your wealth that way. I'm not sure I'd even bother if I was a new player now.
How about realizing that the coal price on Zen market is crazy instead of breaking the game to up it to that price range?
[Heroic Encounters: Removed all loot drops except Black Ice Enchantments for Epic and Major Heroic Encounters. Final rewards on them will gain an additional 30 Raw Black Ice. This is to help with entity draw limits and performance.]
Um.. does this mean black ice weapons and gauntlets will no longer drop from Remorhaz/Black Ice Beholder/Saving the Prospectors?
if yes it means those encounters no longer drop those items.. just how in the heck will we get them?
Please advise.
0
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
Um.. does this mean black ice weapons and gauntlets will no longer drop from Remorhaz/Black Ice Beholder/Saving the Prospectors?
No, "loot drops" in this case is largely the ridiculous amount of copper pieces and single black ice littering the ground plus the odd potion and stuff. They're adding a bit of black ice to the heroic encounter reward you have to open after completion to make up for it. The encounter rewards themselves are not otherwise changing, just the HAMSTER on the ground.
This fix is actually a good call. I don't know that it will actually resolve the issues with disappearing mobs, but every little bit of stuff the system doesn't have to draw should hopefully help.
I have to agree that that making these Coal Ward and Preservation Wards BoA is a bad idea.
Indeed. Those were one of my only reasons for opening lockboxes. If this goes live, I have no reason to spend money to buy keys. There seem to be a lot of bad ideas lately, and each one is driving me closer to finding something else to play, or it might be time to get a fishing license and do some fishing. At least I know they won't nerf the fish!
Indeed. Those were one of my only reasons for opening lockboxes. If this goes live, I have no reason to spend money to buy keys. There seem to be a lot of bad ideas lately, and each one is driving me closer to finding something else to play, or it might be time to get a fishing license and do some fishing. At least I know they won't nerf the fish!
Indeed. Those were one of my only reasons for opening lockboxes. If this goes live, I have no reason to spend money to buy keys. There seem to be a lot of bad ideas lately, and each one is driving me closer to finding something else to play, or it might be time to get a fishing license and do some fishing. At least I know they won't nerf the fish!
So you actually spend money? Interesting.
I was assuming most people didn't spend too much money. They merely sold all their lockbox loot on the auctionhouse, rebuy zen, then use it to buy more keys. They devalue the market and cryptic gains little to no profit.
I'd like to see the statistics of who spends real money buying keys vs those who merely spend astral diamonds before I comment too much on this matter since it is more complex than anyone here knows
Coals are being bound and I can't sell items through the Wonderous Bazaar anymore?! And no mention of any balance fixes for PvP either. This is not good at all.
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Tarmalune Tradebar Merchant: Coalescent and Preservation wards sold by the Trade Bar merchant are now Bind on Account. This change is not retroactive. Existing wards will retain their current bind status.
Err... question, why only these are Bind on Account, what about the costumes and other items such as Ioun Stone of Might?
Character
[*]Tarmalune Tradebar Merchant: Coalescent and Preservation wards sold by the Trade Bar merchant are now Bind on Account. This [/LIST]
Please do one of the following (or both) to compensate for this change. Otherwise it will be near impossible for casual players to ever get armor or weapon enchantments.
1) Increase the drop rate of coalescent wards when praying. Assuming it is about 3% it takes at least 227 tries to get at least one ward with a probability of 99,9%. That's 32 weeks.
2) Increase the chances of creating armor and weapon enchantments. Like 20% for a lesser, 10% for a normal, 5% for a greater, and 1% for a perfect. Thus we'd be able to use preservation wards to create at least lesser and maybe normal enchants.
As a guild leader of an "everything" guild for adults (ages range from late 20's to early 70's) this will indeed widen the gap between the have's and have not's. The prior nerf to Coal Wards was enough. I can personally speak for over 150 players who won't be happy about this one bit, as it will take way too long for casual folks to gear up their characters.
Is this retribution to being forced to come up with Mod 4 too quickly for your tastes? If so, take it out on the folks who made that decision, not on your player base.
Are you after price shoppers or value shoppers? Right now it appears you're alienating both. What's left? An empty server that makes you a fraction of the income this one does now?
I was assuming most people didn't spend too much money. They merely sold all their lockbox loot on the auctionhouse, rebuy zen, then use it to buy more keys. They devalue the market and cryptic gains little to no profit.
I'd like to see the statistics of who spends real money buying keys vs those who merely spend astral diamonds before I comment too much on this matter since it is more complex than anyone here knows
Can't speak for others, but, yes, I've spent actual money, as well as used AD. It takes me a while to save up, for either currency type, so I'm sure mine is only a miniscule contribution compared to others. Most items I get from the boxes are either needed on one of my characters, or of too little value to make up the cost of another key. People that only have one or two characters, or open large numbers of boxes, are better able to work out the mechanics of profit from selling.
As an aside, if they plan to bind the wards, maybe they should make the trade bars account bound as well. I have multiple toons that have very small amounts taking up space. It would be nice to be able to shift the bars to a single character so I could use them, and free up space.
0
lancemeszarosMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
I was assuming most people didn't spend too much money. They merely sold all their lockbox loot on the auctionhouse, rebuy zen, then use it to buy more keys. They devalue the market and cryptic gains little to no profit.
I'd like to see the statistics of who spends real money buying keys vs those who merely spend astral diamonds before I comment too much on this matter since it is more complex than anyone here knows
The thing is, people who exchange astral diamonds don't just get Zen from out of nowhere. If I exchange 250k AD for 500 Zen, that does not mean 500 Zen is just created from nothing. Someone bought that 500 Zen and paid Cryptic money for it. Same with all the Zen i the exchange. The reason why this is good is it keeps the game economy flowing. Even if people are just buying keys using Zen from the AD they get from selling lockbox loot, Cryptic still gets money because someone had to have bought the Zen in the first place. Cryptic isn't losing money at all from this, and in fact is most likely profiting quite a bit. Changing this is a pretty obvious and shallow cashgrab that will end up backfiring because not only will most people not buy Zen if they weren't already (I'd rather just get the 500k AD for one at 500AD/Zen), but this now devalues the lockboxes and means that fewer people will pay actual money to buy keys. The Neverwinter execs need to realize that a well-flowing economy is essential to a free-to-play game because it means more people are playing it, and if more people are playing it then not only will more people feel like spending money, but more people will spend money to sell Zen to the people who won't spend money. If they dry that up, people will just stop playing and they lose money from both.
People trading AD for Zen is not a lost-sale; in fact it's the complete opposite. People are still spending money. If Cryptic wants everyone to spend money, then they should make it a subscription-only game.
Tarmalune Tradebar Merchant: Coalescent and Preservation wards sold by the Trade Bar merchant are now Bind on Account. This change is not retroactive. Existing wards will retain their current bind status.
Have you taken leave of your senses?
I understand why you as a company are doing this. It's pretty transparent! But I don't feel that you've properly thought through the wider implications of this change. Of course this is going to significantly widen the gap between the haves and have nots, but there are the other considerations relating to the economy, not to mention how this impacts on player feeling
Is this going to encourage me to buy zen for a coalescent ward? Not a chance. This is a huge disincentive to spend anything, and i'd be interested to see what happens to your sales of lockbox keys now!
Heroic Encounters: Removed all loot drops except Black Ice Enchantments for Epic and Major Heroic Encounters. Final rewards on them will gain an additional 30 Raw Black Ice. This is to help with entity draw limits and performance.
What about gold drop ?
Why not rewarding raw BI depending of the encounter ? For the Veins encounter, at the giant death, there's a LOT of small BI that drop (for more than 30 ...). Why not make it drop the same amount but in 1 time. Or increase BI in the encounter reward ??
I really don't understand why everyone is complaining about coal wards change.
If you think a little - this will change NOTHING. Coal wards will be BOA, but enchantments are NOT.
So instead of trading wards, people will trade enchantments. Yes - this will be some inconvenience, but in long term it will not change cost to have enchantment.
0
fuldryMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 20
while I'm upset about the ward changes from the trade bar merchant what I'm more curious about is this:
Will anyone who already has tokes from the kits get the new number of tokens now, for example before patch I have one coin, after patch would I have 30?
This, can we please have a clear answer ? As boxes were rewarding ONE coin is not a huge difficulty to convert one into 30...
Thank you for you answer,
François
0
silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
I really don't understand why everyone is complaining about coal wards change.
If you think a little - this will change NOTHING. Coal wards will be BOA, but enchantments are NOT.
So instead of trading wards, people will trade enchantments. Yes - this will be some inconvenience, but in long term it will not change cost to have enchantment.
Yes it does, it will increase the pricing of enchantments , so even if these box churners spend the time to fuse enchants and post, they will be double or triple in price. Its the same effect.
Also, say you want to make a little used lifedrinker or frost enchant, well they are not going to make those just for fun, they will invest their time in making only profitable enchants.
I will add my voice into the mix, PLEASE do not do this. take this as a petition and grant a stay of execution to this game.
Its the 11th hour and only minutes remain. NO change now and if you feel its needed to keep cryptic afloat financially, please at least think of access ways to get coal wards into the game. (500k at the bazaar or something)
This is a death-knell to the newer playerbase, no longer able to compete with existing players.
Yes it does, it will increase the pricing of enchantments , so even if these box churners spend the time to fuse enchants and post, they will be double or triple in price. Its the same effect.
This is not how economy works. Prices might go up for a while but in long term it is all about supply/demand. People which now sell wards will still have them and won't be able to sell them so they will make enchantments and sell them instead. This will increase amount of enchantments in AH and price will fall.
People will raise the prices due to the narrowing the ways of obtaining higher runes/all enchantments. Are new lvl 60s supposed to save up straight for Perfects now unless they wanna charge for coals?
Comments
It's obviously a move to grab more $, but one that was hanging over this game since the Zen store first came online.
It will make the rich very happy. We will dominate the weapon/armor enchant market, no one else can now compete. I'll let you figure why.
But in the light of recent changes and shifts, and especially the upcoming one which is gonna make it once again a lot more difficult for F2P players to get decent stuff, I can not really do that anymore. Quite the contrary actually, if this change really gets into the game, my conscience will indeed force me to tell everyone who asks me about the game to stay away unless they intend to open their wallet on regular basis.
Come on, you already know the answer :rolleyes:. If the HR and GWF didn't get a retraining token after everything they did to these classes, do you really think they will give you 30 coins now?
I doubt you had anything to to with this decision, it reeks of marketing, but this is the worst idea I have ever seen in patch notes for this game. Even including the preview patch that briefly introduced TRs losing stealth from at-wills. It's already nigh-impossible to gear up with enchants unless you're already rich. This is just going to make it worse, and already has. Seriously, this is a terrible idea.
Coal wards were already under horrible inflation since the end of last year. Now they're worse. If this is to try to get people to buy more coal wards from the Zen store, let me impress upon everyone that this is not the way to do it - The reason people don't buy them is that they're massively overpriced. Nobody wants to pay 10 bucks for a single enchant. Nobody. Drop the price by half and you control the inflation and get people to buy more often.
I'm not happy with Mod 3. The character create debacle, the grind of IWD, the changes to GG and dungeons making it much harder to get runs in for me, the changes to my HR and GWF with no free respec for such massive changes... I'm already disenchanted. This? This is just a kick to the gut and may well be the last straw. I've got 9 characters. I've been playing since Beta Weekend 3. From the start of open beta to today I've gotten a total of 3 coal wards from invoke chests. That is not a viable method of obtaining upgrades, the drop rate is simply too low.
I am not going to buy coal wards or keys to get around this. The cost is too high, I don't have the RL money or the in-game money. This is the sort of thing that just makes me disgusted and makes me wander away.
A lots of ppl feel like you.
By the way, if going this route, an un-nerfing of the amount of trade bars you can get per lockbox would be nice. (But never gonna happen, I know. I know.)
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I'm not too concerned since I have been playing since open beta. You could farm dungeons more easily then since nothing was BoP/BoA and you could build your wealth that way. I'm not sure I'd even bother if I was a new player now.
How about realizing that the coal price on Zen market is crazy instead of breaking the game to up it to that price range?
Incredibad move.
A major issue/bug.
All black ice gear since today patch on preview has 0 BI damage resist. I even made a new piece and it is zero. ( HR gear for me)
Silverquick hoped onto to check his gear and it was all 0 black ice damage resist. (CW gear for him)
Also this bars any entry to kessell's retreat, and negates the black ice gear.
Um.. does this mean black ice weapons and gauntlets will no longer drop from Remorhaz/Black Ice Beholder/Saving the Prospectors?
if yes it means those encounters no longer drop those items.. just how in the heck will we get them?
Please advise.
No, "loot drops" in this case is largely the ridiculous amount of copper pieces and single black ice littering the ground plus the odd potion and stuff. They're adding a bit of black ice to the heroic encounter reward you have to open after completion to make up for it. The encounter rewards themselves are not otherwise changing, just the HAMSTER on the ground.
This fix is actually a good call. I don't know that it will actually resolve the issues with disappearing mobs, but every little bit of stuff the system doesn't have to draw should hopefully help.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Indeed. Those were one of my only reasons for opening lockboxes. If this goes live, I have no reason to spend money to buy keys. There seem to be a lot of bad ideas lately, and each one is driving me closer to finding something else to play, or it might be time to get a fishing license and do some fishing. At least I know they won't nerf the fish!
The fish thingy actually made me laught
So you actually spend money? Interesting.
I was assuming most people didn't spend too much money. They merely sold all their lockbox loot on the auctionhouse, rebuy zen, then use it to buy more keys. They devalue the market and cryptic gains little to no profit.
I'd like to see the statistics of who spends real money buying keys vs those who merely spend astral diamonds before I comment too much on this matter since it is more complex than anyone here knows
You have summoned me from my den. It will be investigated. Possibly fixed before tomorrow.
Thanks for the report!
do not reply to this moderation note. instead, send us a PM if you'd like to discuss it.
Err... question, why only these are Bind on Account, what about the costumes and other items such as Ioun Stone of Might?
There's gotta be some kinda reason, right...?
Please do one of the following (or both) to compensate for this change. Otherwise it will be near impossible for casual players to ever get armor or weapon enchantments.
1) Increase the drop rate of coalescent wards when praying. Assuming it is about 3% it takes at least 227 tries to get at least one ward with a probability of 99,9%. That's 32 weeks.
2) Increase the chances of creating armor and weapon enchantments. Like 20% for a lesser, 10% for a normal, 5% for a greater, and 1% for a perfect. Thus we'd be able to use preservation wards to create at least lesser and maybe normal enchants.
Is this retribution to being forced to come up with Mod 4 too quickly for your tastes? If so, take it out on the folks who made that decision, not on your player base.
Are you after price shoppers or value shoppers? Right now it appears you're alienating both. What's left? An empty server that makes you a fraction of the income this one does now?
Can't speak for others, but, yes, I've spent actual money, as well as used AD. It takes me a while to save up, for either currency type, so I'm sure mine is only a miniscule contribution compared to others. Most items I get from the boxes are either needed on one of my characters, or of too little value to make up the cost of another key. People that only have one or two characters, or open large numbers of boxes, are better able to work out the mechanics of profit from selling.
As an aside, if they plan to bind the wards, maybe they should make the trade bars account bound as well. I have multiple toons that have very small amounts taking up space. It would be nice to be able to shift the bars to a single character so I could use them, and free up space.
The thing is, people who exchange astral diamonds don't just get Zen from out of nowhere. If I exchange 250k AD for 500 Zen, that does not mean 500 Zen is just created from nothing. Someone bought that 500 Zen and paid Cryptic money for it. Same with all the Zen i the exchange. The reason why this is good is it keeps the game economy flowing. Even if people are just buying keys using Zen from the AD they get from selling lockbox loot, Cryptic still gets money because someone had to have bought the Zen in the first place. Cryptic isn't losing money at all from this, and in fact is most likely profiting quite a bit. Changing this is a pretty obvious and shallow cashgrab that will end up backfiring because not only will most people not buy Zen if they weren't already (I'd rather just get the 500k AD for one at 500AD/Zen), but this now devalues the lockboxes and means that fewer people will pay actual money to buy keys. The Neverwinter execs need to realize that a well-flowing economy is essential to a free-to-play game because it means more people are playing it, and if more people are playing it then not only will more people feel like spending money, but more people will spend money to sell Zen to the people who won't spend money. If they dry that up, people will just stop playing and they lose money from both.
People trading AD for Zen is not a lost-sale; in fact it's the complete opposite. People are still spending money. If Cryptic wants everyone to spend money, then they should make it a subscription-only game.
Have you taken leave of your senses?
I understand why you as a company are doing this. It's pretty transparent! But I don't feel that you've properly thought through the wider implications of this change. Of course this is going to significantly widen the gap between the haves and have nots, but there are the other considerations relating to the economy, not to mention how this impacts on player feeling
Is this going to encourage me to buy zen for a coalescent ward? Not a chance. This is a huge disincentive to spend anything, and i'd be interested to see what happens to your sales of lockbox keys now!
Great news !!!
What about gold drop ?
Why not rewarding raw BI depending of the encounter ? For the Veins encounter, at the giant death, there's a LOT of small BI that drop (for more than 30 ...). Why not make it drop the same amount but in 1 time. Or increase BI in the encounter reward ??
If you think a little - this will change NOTHING. Coal wards will be BOA, but enchantments are NOT.
So instead of trading wards, people will trade enchantments. Yes - this will be some inconvenience, but in long term it will not change cost to have enchantment.
This, can we please have a clear answer ? As boxes were rewarding ONE coin is not a huge difficulty to convert one into 30...
Thank you for you answer,
François
Yes it does, it will increase the pricing of enchantments , so even if these box churners spend the time to fuse enchants and post, they will be double or triple in price. Its the same effect.
Also, say you want to make a little used lifedrinker or frost enchant, well they are not going to make those just for fun, they will invest their time in making only profitable enchants.
I will add my voice into the mix, PLEASE do not do this. take this as a petition and grant a stay of execution to this game.
Its the 11th hour and only minutes remain. NO change now and if you feel its needed to keep cryptic afloat financially, please at least think of access ways to get coal wards into the game. (500k at the bazaar or something)
This is a death-knell to the newer playerbase, no longer able to compete with existing players.