Perhaps I should have amended my statement to "what is there to fix that hasn't been stated in multiple threads about the matter". I know the game needs more AD sinks. There isn't anything appealing to put that AD into, so people just hoard their AD.
However, my statement was aimed more towards the crowd that think economic woes can be easily solved by Cryptic in all things. They can't. Some economic things really are player-controlled.
I hear the excuse from mods way too much that the (exponentially growing) negatives of the game are player controlled. That is mindblowingly frustrating.
The players did not create the game.
The players are not employed to make the game function well.
The players are going away the more the above people fail.
That is the only relevant fact. They need to make this suck less or this game will go away. The AD issue is one of a growing tsunami of issues with this game.
I hear the excuse from mods way too much that the (exponentially growing) negatives of the game are player controlled. That is mindblowingly frustrating.
The players did not create the game.
The players are not employed to make the game function well.
The players are going away the more the above people fail.
That is the only relevant fact. They need to make this suck less or this game will go away. The AD issue is one of a growing tsunami of issues with this game.
Way to completely overgeneralize my statement. Did I say that the players are responsible for EVERY fault of the game? No, I did not. It has been said by several mods--myself included--that the game, indeed, does need more AD sinks.
However, Cryptic is not 100% responsible for the lack of ZEN in the exchange, nor are they 100% responsible for the overage of AD on the market, or the current demand for ZEN--which is the point of this particular thread.
If you wish to argue the other faults of this game and who to lay them upon, do so in other threads rather than a sweeping, broad, generalized statement here.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited May 2014
I have called for improvements to the AD Sinks prices to get more people to use them numerous times. In fact I point to the lack of AD Sinks being used as a large factor in the current situation.
The difference is I also say the doomsaying hyberbole's are doomsaying hyperbole's. Yes the fact it has reached the cap is semi-problematic but it is easily addressed by taking the time out to consider the factors which caused it. The thing is new module, more players and a lot of additional AD being pumped into the game is a large factor and is expected. Inflation with new modules is normal.
"The Zen Market will never drop."
Yeah, comments like this read no different than "the sun will not rise." It's a doomsaying hyperbole.
I also say the irrelevant comments and the extreme suggestions are just that.
For instance raising the cap. NO NEED.
The cap is there to stop any extreme manipulations and protect the free players. The fact it is there should be something you are all happy about because really the higher AD costs the better it is for Cryptic and PWE. The fact they care enough to put a limit on what your time should be worth is something they did for your benefit. It doesn't work perfectly but it is better than nothing.
The other solutions which are just really extreme like having Cryptic inject Zen into the market? No, they really shouldn't ever physically touch the market. Laissez Faire is the correct approach. Nor do I understand why people could even begin to suggest handing out money. It's just an all around no.
So no, we don't defend them. But I'll gladly point out something that is just way out of left field. The only problem which has to be addressed is the usefulness of AD for something other than the AH or the ZExhcange. Anything else is either a bandaid or just completely irrelevant.
degraafinationMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2014
Regardless, something needs to be done about the backlog. We're close to 800,000 ZEN ASK. Most likely it'll cycle through in a couple days, but if it keeps increasing, we'll see continued inflation as poachers can sell items on the AH for insanely higher prices.
The core of this is that Cryptic needs to make money, and in this game their income is from Zen sales. We *all* want Cryptic to make money. It is their income that pays for further development and operation of the game.
What worries me is that the high Zen price signifies a shift in the paying-nonpaying balance towards more nonpaying and less paying customers. This would be ok if there was an actual increase in the number of Zens being injected into the game, but with the way Cryptic is thightening what you *must* use Zen's for, I suspect the amount of Zens incoming to game are falling.
Cryptic got statistics for this that they will not let us see. It is important to remember that the overriding goal for Cryptic in this most likely is to optimize their income for short and long term, and they do have a lot of information unavailable to us. Notably number of players and number of Zens bought.
Having a high Zen price could both increase Zen sales(because those selling Zen get more for it), and reduce Zen sales(because those selling Zen will not need to sell so much to reach their goals).
all i can say about this is it will pass. the market will stabilize one way or the other. if you want to buy zen for AD right now, yes it does suck. but you'll just have to be patient.
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bringitbackMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 26Arc User
edited June 2014
Yeah we know it's gonna stabilize,problem is how fast
Putting up a NPC that trades your AD for ZEN wouldn't fix the problem, would it..? I mean.. those AD would be gone from the market, effectively stabilizing it, plus it'd help out in situations as the current one where the zen market practically stagnated. Let's say the npc would take just as much as the last highest value on the exchange was. See the difference? Just wondering how we'd get that idea into the devs' heads...
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited June 2014
You're asking for PWE to...
1) Give away money for free
2) Directly interact with the market.
Let's pretend they would even consider that...
You are askling them to directly effect the market. Now if they interact with the market by adding Zen then why wouldn't they interact with the market by adding AD? Let's say the actual problem (usefulness of AD) gets addressed but the price of Zen drops to 300. Well since they added Zen to the market why shouldn't they add AD?
No. Just no.
It sets a horrible precedent and would be far better if Cryptic never touched the system.
If you are a US citizen you should know that we all joke (becuse it is easier to laugh than be angry) about the fact Social Security is going to run dry well within the next few decades. The biggest cause of this is because that money was supposed to never be touched by the government but when a financial situation hit they borrowed from it. Once it happened once they did it again and again...
When something shouldn't be touched don't ever let it be touched because it is easier to touch it the second time than it is the first.
mircalla83Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 36
edited June 2014
An example where the 'Premium' Currency is created 'out of thin air', just like the opposite direction, is on the second part in a game series about wars between guilds.
The way their 'Exchange' works is a supposed to be autoadjusting 'Premium Currency to Gold' and 'Gold to Premium Currency' system, which can be manipulated from behind the curtains, it is NOT an exchange.
This however means that technically, there is next to no influx of money except box sales into this game publishers' coffers (another interesting thing is: the developers of this game run quite heavyhanded nerfs on ways to farm Gold every now and then, claiming these nerfs to be countermeasures to farmbots).
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reagenlionel1Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2014
The funny thing I see here is that. They completely changed refining because they're data analysis claimed it wasnt really being used. So they changed the entire thing around.
But til this day, mount and companion upgrades is absurdly priced, and only thing they changed were making certain items free appearance change, which is kind of a bandaid on transmutation as a whole. No one really uses transmutation other than for items that have free appearance changes.
yet they make the free methods of gaining coal wards harder to get, and thus increasing the prices on everything that even uses them and drastically the coal wards themselves. Most things in the game are bind on pick up. The Astral diamond store is mostly unused besides for refinement, the weapons they have is so ridiculously priced I cant even fathom and they are essentially for looks, the functionality of the weapons are nothing special. Same with the armor, the only decently priced thing in that whole store is the fashion items and the spider mount kinda.
Anything the devs price in AD in the game, ends up being absurdly high, thus no one using them.
They seem to be getting a little better with recent things they've added, but not adjusted the stuff thats been there for ages that no one uses.
1) Give away money for free
2) Directly interact with the market.
Let's pretend they would even consider that...
You are askling them to directly effect the market. Now if they interact with the market by adding Zen then why wouldn't they interact with the market by adding AD? Let's say the actual problem (usefulness of AD) gets addressed but the price of Zen drops to 300. Well since they added Zen to the market why shouldn't they add AD?
By putting up a cap, they are already interacting with the market. They wouldn't be giving anything away for free, you still need to have the AD to get the ZEN. They would just be making zen be somewhat available if and when the cap is hit. The fed does this all the time with monetary supply.
What you seem to be asking for is a hands free economy. If you really want that, then they need to remove the cap. As things stand, good luck buying any zen as demand FAR exceeds supply. ALL the cap does is promote a black market economy where players sell keys for AD at the actually supply/demand rate instead of selling Zen directly. I'm sure there may be a few folks that actually sell zen at the 500 rate, but those are the folks that are getting taken advantage of. Just like the ones who buy greater marks of potency on the AH for more than 100K.
Lack of AD sink is only half the issue. The other half is that there aren't enough people buying zen. This problem stems from cryptic adding more and more 'forced' purchases, which means zen buyers are overloading on AD. Motivation of the zen buyers isn't to help freemium players, it's to line their own coffers. With nothing to spend diamonds on, they have little use to continue buying zen. All the new overpriced stuff in the zen store only helps them get there faster.
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bringitbackMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 26Arc User
edited June 2014
well,Cryptic needs to make money too,it's a business after all,we will see what happens,it will turn out ok i think.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited June 2014
The cap sets a highest and lowest standard.
It's not directly interacting with it. For all intents and purposes the cap is minimum wage.
You are asking for Cryptic/PWE to print money when they don't like the player market. Not hard to see what causes more issues. Minimum wage is a good thing. Printing money to tamper with a market is never a good thing.
Guys, nobody is going to buy your zen for 700 AD, each. I stopped buying it when the price went beyond 300 AD per zen because my time, is equally as precious as your (parent's?) wallet. And since there is no need, for rich people to gain even more wealth i'd suggest starting to sell at normal, more human prices. Unless you like being chased around with torches and pitchforks, which is inevitable and bound to happen. (irl as much as ingame, give it 5-10 years irl before we see everything burned down to the ground, though.)
To make AD more valuable, the AD sinks has to make you fell like you re getting something in return.
For example i never transmuted any equipment piece, not because of the price, but because unless i had the last and best piece of equipment at the moment, the 50k AD is insane for just a temporary visual change. On the other hand, if "transmuting" allowed players to have that visual on stock and available anytime for any armor from that point on, i ll transmute, several items in fact; you could even collect the diferent visuals.
But as it is now, it s like the enchantments before the refining implementation. Nobody will use them until rank 10 and best equipment, because the price is to high for temporary stuff.
A good AD sink has to be subtle and don t make players feel ripped off.
To make AD more valuable, the AD sinks has to make you fell like you re getting something in return.
For example i never transmuted any equipment piece, not because of the price, but because unless i had the last and best piece of equipment at the moment, the 50k AD is insane for just a temporary visual change. On the other hand, if "transmuting" allowed players to have that visual on stock and available anytime for any armor from that point on, i ll transmute, several items in fact; you could even collect the diferent visuals.
Now that's brilliant. One can argue "ok but once you do it you won't pay again for that kind of visual": but better once MANY times than NEVER all times. Or once a couple-three times (mostly weapon/Head/Neck)
AD sinks won't help anything in the long run.
As long as there are single accounts playing the market with 350 million astral diamonds buying 700+k Zen as soon as it hits the market for 500 AD a piece, then astral diamond sinks wont help. These accounts have so much in them that they throw the whole auction house out of whack. They hold so many resources that the top 5 probably have more influence on market prices than 90% of the rest of the server.
Put limits on how many zen you can have at once, or how many transactions you can put on AH daily.
50 transactions a day would be plenty for most people while it would surely put a cramp in any computer driven auction house exploit.
Seriously who needs 700,000 zen or a third of a billion Astral diamonds? People who sell it in world chat thats who.
This new AD sink will surely take even more AD out of us newbs pockets as i dump what AD i have trying to get me a chicken.
Which after I fail at that and waste all my diamonds trying to get a chicken I will have to go on auction house and buy one from the
guys that could afford to buy a million of the things...at a small profit to them of course.
AD sinks won't help anything in the long run.
As long as there are single accounts playing the market with 350 million astral diamonds buying 700+k Zen as soon as it hits the market for 500 AD a piece, then astral diamond sinks wont help. These accounts have so much in them that they throw the whole auction house out of whack. They hold so many resources that the top 5 probably have more influence on market prices than 90% of the rest of the server.
Put limits on how many zen you can have at once, or how many transactions you can put on AH daily.
50 transactions a day would be plenty for most people while it would surely put a cramp in any computer driven auction house exploit.
Seriously who needs 700,000 zen or a third of a billion Astral diamonds? People who sell it in world chat thats who.
This new AD sink will surely take even more AD out of us newbs pockets as i dump what AD i have trying to get me a chicken.
Which after I fail at that and waste all my diamonds trying to get a chicken I will have to go on auction house and buy one from the
guys that could afford to buy a million of the things...at a small profit to them of course.
I agree. I can personally attest that these accounts are in fact present.
I really think there should be a limit to how much Zen you can purchase per day, similar to the rough astral diamond.
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reagenlionel1Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Guys, nobody is going to buy your zen for 700 AD, each. I stopped buying it when the price went beyond 300 AD per zen because my time, is equally as precious as your (parent's?) wallet. And since there is no need, for rich people to gain even more wealth i'd suggest starting to sell at normal, more human prices. Unless you like being chased around with torches and pitchforks, which is inevitable and bound to happen. (irl as much as ingame, give it 5-10 years irl before we see everything burned down to the ground, though.)
I've done the same thing. I've not bought one lick of zen since it rose above around 360 per. Passed that point. its not happening to me. And its never going to happen.
There is a good point here about the in game AD sinks being over priced.
I have over 6 million AD on my character and I could do things like say, upgrade my companions, but I won't, because it's way too freaking expensive for the benefit provided.
Also, if you want to really see AD disappear from the economy, then adjust the price of the refinement gem (I think it's a sapphire? I can't remember) from the wondrous bizarre so that it's not a completely ripoff and competitive with what's being sold on the AH. This will both hurt the chinese gold farmers who are the ones who profit off of the selling stacks of 99xrank 5 enchantments in the AH, as well as suck up a lot of AD as people improve their enchantments.
There is a good point here about the in game AD sinks being over priced.
I have over 6 million AD on my character and I could do things like say, upgrade my companions, but I won't, because it's way too freaking expensive for the benefit provided.
Also, if you want to really see AD disappear from the economy, then adjust the price of the refinement gem (I think it's a sapphire? I can't remember) from the wondrous bizarre so that it's not a completely ripoff and competitive with what's being sold on the AH. This will both hurt the chinese gold farmers who are the ones who profit off of the selling stacks of 99xrank 5 enchantments in the AH, as well as suck up a lot of AD as people improve their enchantments.
Agreed. This is my solution as well. I'd also like to be able to buy refining stones for gold.
We can assume that the AD cost for refinement points is, say, 2 per point. That's relatively high (rank 4s can get as low as 1 per point), but that's the point: infinitely purchasable items exist not to affect the market, but rather to act as caps on volatility. Then, we can also have stones purchasable for gold. All we do is set a price ceiling for what we want the exchange rate of gold to AD to be. So for instance, if you can spend 1 gold to get 1000 RP, and to get 1000 RP then you'd have to spend 500 AD, then 1 gold = 500 AD. The exacting numbers don't matter, and the exchange rate can still fluctuate, but no one is going to part with their gold for LESS than 500 AD worth of goods, thus stabilizing the price of gold.
As for everyone who says "No one's going to buy zen for 700 AD" well, if you remove the price cap, then you can see just what people are willing to pay. There's people willing to pay 500 or more after all, so the market price of zen is clearly more than 500. Maybe certain individuals are priced out of the zen market, but that's precisely how markets work.
The real issue is, why are people willing to pay so much AD for zen? It's not a question of whether they will or not. The market has already spoken: they will. Whether that's equitable or not or a good thing is another question entirely. If we want players who aren't able/willing to spend a lot of AD on zen to have access to zen items, we have to take extra measures to ensure that that's the case. Otherwise, the zen market is what it is, and so too is the astral diamond market.
As for companion upgrades being too expensive, I'm not sure I agree. It costs millions of AD (either directly or in the opportunity cost arising from not being able to sell the enchantments that drop) to max out a Shard of Valindra's Crown to gain a +5% control boost, or you can spend 750,000 AD in order to upgrade your Cantankerous Mage to purple, getting a +10% control bonus increase compared to him as a blue companion. On the other hand, you obviously gain a lot of stats from upgrading your artifact to orange OTHER than just the control boost, but the point stands: purple companions can give some very exclusive benefits that are difficult to achieve through other means.
That being said, I suspect it's a psychological effect. It *feels* like a waste of money, even though it's actually a pretty significant return. And, of course, not all companions are created equally.
Way to completely overgeneralize my statement. Did I say that the players are responsible for EVERY fault of the game? No, I did not. It has been said by several mods--myself included--that the game, indeed, does need more AD sinks.
However, Cryptic is not 100% responsible for the lack of ZEN in the exchange, nor are they 100% responsible for the overage of AD on the market, or the current demand for ZEN--which is the point of this particular thread.
If you wish to argue the other faults of this game and who to lay them upon, do so in other threads rather than a sweeping, broad, generalized statement here.
Its the meme that any problem with the game is player-controlled that is so frustrating. I don't mean "any" in the sense of "all" but "any" even in a minimal sense. In other words even things which group player behaviors have a large effect on, it is still frustrating to hear it is player controlled.
I honestly do not care in the least about ad/zen prices. Zen is like a penny and ad is much much much less expensive. There was a time when you could buy ad from source "A" and transfer it to zen from source "B", and use the zen to buy your mount or whatever for what would end up being about 1/3rd of the end USD price of the same mount if bought directly in zen from the zen-market. That kind of thing to me is what I would be focusing on if it were my business, like how to stop it.
Want cheap ad, go the shady route and maybe get your identity stolen or just straight ripped off. Want to help fix the Neverwinter economic problems, avoid the shady route altogether and lobby for more strict procedures regarding gold spammers. When you can buy 10 million AD for 60 bucks, ya of course there is gonna be some pretty severely huge amounts of AD flooding the market and making the whole thing unstable. AD is incredibly devalued so ya, everything is gonna cost more as a result.
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degraafinationMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
It's not directly interacting with it. For all intents and purposes the cap is minimum wage.
You are asking for Cryptic/PWE to print money when they don't like the player market. Not hard to see what causes more issues. Minimum wage is a good thing. Printing money to tamper with a market is never a good thing.
Minimum wage is an awful thing. It means that people and free markets cannot determine their own self-worth (hourly wage). Hiking the minimum wage is a great way to drive jobs overseas as companies find it less profitable to maintain businesses in their own country. But back on point...
Printing money (when necessary) is a very healthy thing. What happened to Rome? Hoarders collected all the silver and gold. What happened? Chaos as they went back to the bartering system? No! They "printed" more by making currency out of lesser valuable metals. Although inflation did occur, the economy could continue to function.
Right now, the economy is functioning, but very poorly. There's a significant demand for Zen, and not enough supply. What's happening? The prices of just about everything is back to where it was about nine months ago. But that isn't the point. The point is with a tapped out market, the economy functions very, very poorly.
Mod 3 comes out and everyone wants Zen to buy the new Black Ice boosters and whatever - so the Astral Diamond-to-Zen ratio jumps up to 500/1 - it becomes a Zen Seller's market. Now all that Zen that was being sold is depleted - there just isn't much Zen being sold - so the conversion rate remains at a 500/1 ratio (or close to it).
This also means there is a massive influx of Astral Diamonds into the game. People who were skating by on 500k to 1 million AD are now sitting pretty at 2 million or 5 million or more Astral Diamonds. The people selling stuff on the Auction House see this and they are pushing the prices up. People with a lot more AD than they had before are still buying these things; it's easier to pay they higher prices because they now have so much AD on hand.
This jacks the entire AH average sell price upward.
there is no massive influx of AD...all the AD that's traded for zen was ALREADY in game
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited June 2014
Tampering with minimum wage is bad.
Enstating it to set up limits for times of economic turmoil is essential.
Which is why the limits are good but should not be tampered with.
Comments
I hear the excuse from mods way too much that the (exponentially growing) negatives of the game are player controlled. That is mindblowingly frustrating.
The players did not create the game.
The players are not employed to make the game function well.
The players are going away the more the above people fail.
That is the only relevant fact. They need to make this suck less or this game will go away. The AD issue is one of a growing tsunami of issues with this game.
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Way to completely overgeneralize my statement. Did I say that the players are responsible for EVERY fault of the game? No, I did not. It has been said by several mods--myself included--that the game, indeed, does need more AD sinks.
However, Cryptic is not 100% responsible for the lack of ZEN in the exchange, nor are they 100% responsible for the overage of AD on the market, or the current demand for ZEN--which is the point of this particular thread.
If you wish to argue the other faults of this game and who to lay them upon, do so in other threads rather than a sweeping, broad, generalized statement here.
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The difference is I also say the doomsaying hyberbole's are doomsaying hyperbole's. Yes the fact it has reached the cap is semi-problematic but it is easily addressed by taking the time out to consider the factors which caused it. The thing is new module, more players and a lot of additional AD being pumped into the game is a large factor and is expected. Inflation with new modules is normal.
"The Zen Market will never drop."
Yeah, comments like this read no different than "the sun will not rise." It's a doomsaying hyperbole.
I also say the irrelevant comments and the extreme suggestions are just that.
For instance raising the cap. NO NEED.
The cap is there to stop any extreme manipulations and protect the free players. The fact it is there should be something you are all happy about because really the higher AD costs the better it is for Cryptic and PWE. The fact they care enough to put a limit on what your time should be worth is something they did for your benefit. It doesn't work perfectly but it is better than nothing.
The other solutions which are just really extreme like having Cryptic inject Zen into the market? No, they really shouldn't ever physically touch the market. Laissez Faire is the correct approach. Nor do I understand why people could even begin to suggest handing out money. It's just an all around no.
So no, we don't defend them. But I'll gladly point out something that is just way out of left field. The only problem which has to be addressed is the usefulness of AD for something other than the AH or the ZExhcange. Anything else is either a bandaid or just completely irrelevant.
Enjoy the ride!
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What worries me is that the high Zen price signifies a shift in the paying-nonpaying balance towards more nonpaying and less paying customers. This would be ok if there was an actual increase in the number of Zens being injected into the game, but with the way Cryptic is thightening what you *must* use Zen's for, I suspect the amount of Zens incoming to game are falling.
Cryptic got statistics for this that they will not let us see. It is important to remember that the overriding goal for Cryptic in this most likely is to optimize their income for short and long term, and they do have a lot of information unavailable to us. Notably number of players and number of Zens bought.
Having a high Zen price could both increase Zen sales(because those selling Zen get more for it), and reduce Zen sales(because those selling Zen will not need to sell so much to reach their goals).
1) Give away money for free
2) Directly interact with the market.
Let's pretend they would even consider that...
You are askling them to directly effect the market. Now if they interact with the market by adding Zen then why wouldn't they interact with the market by adding AD? Let's say the actual problem (usefulness of AD) gets addressed but the price of Zen drops to 300. Well since they added Zen to the market why shouldn't they add AD?
No. Just no.
It sets a horrible precedent and would be far better if Cryptic never touched the system.
If you are a US citizen you should know that we all joke (becuse it is easier to laugh than be angry) about the fact Social Security is going to run dry well within the next few decades. The biggest cause of this is because that money was supposed to never be touched by the government but when a financial situation hit they borrowed from it. Once it happened once they did it again and again...
When something shouldn't be touched don't ever let it be touched because it is easier to touch it the second time than it is the first.
The way their 'Exchange' works is a supposed to be autoadjusting 'Premium Currency to Gold' and 'Gold to Premium Currency' system, which can be manipulated from behind the curtains, it is NOT an exchange.
This however means that technically, there is next to no influx of money except box sales into this game publishers' coffers (another interesting thing is: the developers of this game run quite heavyhanded nerfs on ways to farm Gold every now and then, claiming these nerfs to be countermeasures to farmbots).
But til this day, mount and companion upgrades is absurdly priced, and only thing they changed were making certain items free appearance change, which is kind of a bandaid on transmutation as a whole. No one really uses transmutation other than for items that have free appearance changes.
yet they make the free methods of gaining coal wards harder to get, and thus increasing the prices on everything that even uses them and drastically the coal wards themselves. Most things in the game are bind on pick up. The Astral diamond store is mostly unused besides for refinement, the weapons they have is so ridiculously priced I cant even fathom and they are essentially for looks, the functionality of the weapons are nothing special. Same with the armor, the only decently priced thing in that whole store is the fashion items and the spider mount kinda.
Anything the devs price in AD in the game, ends up being absurdly high, thus no one using them.
They seem to be getting a little better with recent things they've added, but not adjusted the stuff thats been there for ages that no one uses.
By putting up a cap, they are already interacting with the market. They wouldn't be giving anything away for free, you still need to have the AD to get the ZEN. They would just be making zen be somewhat available if and when the cap is hit. The fed does this all the time with monetary supply.
What you seem to be asking for is a hands free economy. If you really want that, then they need to remove the cap. As things stand, good luck buying any zen as demand FAR exceeds supply. ALL the cap does is promote a black market economy where players sell keys for AD at the actually supply/demand rate instead of selling Zen directly. I'm sure there may be a few folks that actually sell zen at the 500 rate, but those are the folks that are getting taken advantage of. Just like the ones who buy greater marks of potency on the AH for more than 100K.
It's not directly interacting with it. For all intents and purposes the cap is minimum wage.
You are asking for Cryptic/PWE to print money when they don't like the player market. Not hard to see what causes more issues. Minimum wage is a good thing. Printing money to tamper with a market is never a good thing.
For example i never transmuted any equipment piece, not because of the price, but because unless i had the last and best piece of equipment at the moment, the 50k AD is insane for just a temporary visual change. On the other hand, if "transmuting" allowed players to have that visual on stock and available anytime for any armor from that point on, i ll transmute, several items in fact; you could even collect the diferent visuals.
But as it is now, it s like the enchantments before the refining implementation. Nobody will use them until rank 10 and best equipment, because the price is to high for temporary stuff.
A good AD sink has to be subtle and don t make players feel ripped off.
Now that's brilliant. One can argue "ok but once you do it you won't pay again for that kind of visual": but better once MANY times than NEVER all times. Or once a couple-three times (mostly weapon/Head/Neck)
As long as there are single accounts playing the market with 350 million astral diamonds buying 700+k Zen as soon as it hits the market for 500 AD a piece, then astral diamond sinks wont help. These accounts have so much in them that they throw the whole auction house out of whack. They hold so many resources that the top 5 probably have more influence on market prices than 90% of the rest of the server.
Put limits on how many zen you can have at once, or how many transactions you can put on AH daily.
50 transactions a day would be plenty for most people while it would surely put a cramp in any computer driven auction house exploit.
Seriously who needs 700,000 zen or a third of a billion Astral diamonds? People who sell it in world chat thats who.
This new AD sink will surely take even more AD out of us newbs pockets as i dump what AD i have trying to get me a chicken.
Which after I fail at that and waste all my diamonds trying to get a chicken I will have to go on auction house and buy one from the
guys that could afford to buy a million of the things...at a small profit to them of course.
I agree. I can personally attest that these accounts are in fact present.
I really think there should be a limit to how much Zen you can purchase per day, similar to the rough astral diamond.
I've done the same thing. I've not bought one lick of zen since it rose above around 360 per. Passed that point. its not happening to me. And its never going to happen.
I have over 6 million AD on my character and I could do things like say, upgrade my companions, but I won't, because it's way too freaking expensive for the benefit provided.
Also, if you want to really see AD disappear from the economy, then adjust the price of the refinement gem (I think it's a sapphire? I can't remember) from the wondrous bizarre so that it's not a completely ripoff and competitive with what's being sold on the AH. This will both hurt the chinese gold farmers who are the ones who profit off of the selling stacks of 99xrank 5 enchantments in the AH, as well as suck up a lot of AD as people improve their enchantments.
Agreed. This is my solution as well. I'd also like to be able to buy refining stones for gold.
We can assume that the AD cost for refinement points is, say, 2 per point. That's relatively high (rank 4s can get as low as 1 per point), but that's the point: infinitely purchasable items exist not to affect the market, but rather to act as caps on volatility. Then, we can also have stones purchasable for gold. All we do is set a price ceiling for what we want the exchange rate of gold to AD to be. So for instance, if you can spend 1 gold to get 1000 RP, and to get 1000 RP then you'd have to spend 500 AD, then 1 gold = 500 AD. The exacting numbers don't matter, and the exchange rate can still fluctuate, but no one is going to part with their gold for LESS than 500 AD worth of goods, thus stabilizing the price of gold.
As for everyone who says "No one's going to buy zen for 700 AD" well, if you remove the price cap, then you can see just what people are willing to pay. There's people willing to pay 500 or more after all, so the market price of zen is clearly more than 500. Maybe certain individuals are priced out of the zen market, but that's precisely how markets work.
The real issue is, why are people willing to pay so much AD for zen? It's not a question of whether they will or not. The market has already spoken: they will. Whether that's equitable or not or a good thing is another question entirely. If we want players who aren't able/willing to spend a lot of AD on zen to have access to zen items, we have to take extra measures to ensure that that's the case. Otherwise, the zen market is what it is, and so too is the astral diamond market.
As for companion upgrades being too expensive, I'm not sure I agree. It costs millions of AD (either directly or in the opportunity cost arising from not being able to sell the enchantments that drop) to max out a Shard of Valindra's Crown to gain a +5% control boost, or you can spend 750,000 AD in order to upgrade your Cantankerous Mage to purple, getting a +10% control bonus increase compared to him as a blue companion. On the other hand, you obviously gain a lot of stats from upgrading your artifact to orange OTHER than just the control boost, but the point stands: purple companions can give some very exclusive benefits that are difficult to achieve through other means.
That being said, I suspect it's a psychological effect. It *feels* like a waste of money, even though it's actually a pretty significant return. And, of course, not all companions are created equally.
Its the meme that any problem with the game is player-controlled that is so frustrating. I don't mean "any" in the sense of "all" but "any" even in a minimal sense. In other words even things which group player behaviors have a large effect on, it is still frustrating to hear it is player controlled.
I honestly do not care in the least about ad/zen prices. Zen is like a penny and ad is much much much less expensive. There was a time when you could buy ad from source "A" and transfer it to zen from source "B", and use the zen to buy your mount or whatever for what would end up being about 1/3rd of the end USD price of the same mount if bought directly in zen from the zen-market. That kind of thing to me is what I would be focusing on if it were my business, like how to stop it.
Want cheap ad, go the shady route and maybe get your identity stolen or just straight ripped off. Want to help fix the Neverwinter economic problems, avoid the shady route altogether and lobby for more strict procedures regarding gold spammers. When you can buy 10 million AD for 60 bucks, ya of course there is gonna be some pretty severely huge amounts of AD flooding the market and making the whole thing unstable. AD is incredibly devalued so ya, everything is gonna cost more as a result.
Jugger Conq GF
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Minimum wage is an awful thing. It means that people and free markets cannot determine their own self-worth (hourly wage). Hiking the minimum wage is a great way to drive jobs overseas as companies find it less profitable to maintain businesses in their own country. But back on point...
Printing money (when necessary) is a very healthy thing. What happened to Rome? Hoarders collected all the silver and gold. What happened? Chaos as they went back to the bartering system? No! They "printed" more by making currency out of lesser valuable metals. Although inflation did occur, the economy could continue to function.
Right now, the economy is functioning, but very poorly. There's a significant demand for Zen, and not enough supply. What's happening? The prices of just about everything is back to where it was about nine months ago. But that isn't the point. The point is with a tapped out market, the economy functions very, very poorly.
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Enstating it to set up limits for times of economic turmoil is essential.
Which is why the limits are good but should not be tampered with.