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Should the Exchange be removed from the game?
anrulus
Member Posts: 24 Arc User
Simple fact is, inflation reached a tipping point. An order that could be fulfilled at 400 zen at the start of the year isnt likely to be fulfilled for weeks at a time now at 500 zen.
Its a weird balancing act. In some ways, it helps the devs because it limits the amount of people cheating by buying AD from pirate sites (because that AD can now never really be converted into Zen, theres simply not enough supply), but on the other hand, it screws the players because no matter how much AD they earn, its unlikely that there will ever be enough for them to convert it to Zen and buy stuff from the Zen store.
I honestly dont know what the devs feel about this. Is it creating more illegal purchases because people cant afford items, or less, because people arent buying zen. I would like to see some feedback on this, in pure numbers. If not, I am sure someone has the raw data to review and at least its getting looked at.
Honestly, Im just sitting on my AD just now until something happens to change the situation. Theres no Zen to buy other than through PW and I think most people just cant afford to do that.
Dunno where the game economy goes from here. Either the limit price goes up past 500, or that aspect of the game just gets removed, so we have to buy the only worthwhile currency there is. If the game economy continues in its current form, those 3-4 days to get Zen for your AD will get longer, until we are talking weeks and months. I think EA found out with Dungeon Keeper that if thats the only option, people stop playing. So hopefully PW make a final call on it.
I would appreciate the better geared guys on here giving an opinion, preferably constructive because smacktalk, as amusing as it is, isnt a debate, its comparing E-Peens.
Its a weird balancing act. In some ways, it helps the devs because it limits the amount of people cheating by buying AD from pirate sites (because that AD can now never really be converted into Zen, theres simply not enough supply), but on the other hand, it screws the players because no matter how much AD they earn, its unlikely that there will ever be enough for them to convert it to Zen and buy stuff from the Zen store.
I honestly dont know what the devs feel about this. Is it creating more illegal purchases because people cant afford items, or less, because people arent buying zen. I would like to see some feedback on this, in pure numbers. If not, I am sure someone has the raw data to review and at least its getting looked at.
Honestly, Im just sitting on my AD just now until something happens to change the situation. Theres no Zen to buy other than through PW and I think most people just cant afford to do that.
Dunno where the game economy goes from here. Either the limit price goes up past 500, or that aspect of the game just gets removed, so we have to buy the only worthwhile currency there is. If the game economy continues in its current form, those 3-4 days to get Zen for your AD will get longer, until we are talking weeks and months. I think EA found out with Dungeon Keeper that if thats the only option, people stop playing. So hopefully PW make a final call on it.
I would appreciate the better geared guys on here giving an opinion, preferably constructive because smacktalk, as amusing as it is, isnt a debate, its comparing E-Peens.
Post edited by anrulus on
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Comments
So like I said, if they cap the price of zen store items to match the exchange, there won't be a profit to be made from buying items fro m the zen store. The demand for zen will still be there because people still want coals, but at least the people selling on the AH will have to sell for exchange rates, or go to the exchange.
It takes about four days to fulfil an order at the moment. Hardly weeks.
Have you ever played others MMO?
Ive played many and there were never an option to get the cash currency.
I think its already a nice thing that exist a way to get zen.
If you cant really wait, just charge up some zen...
I believe the system right now is where Cryptic wants it to be.
F2P players still could get zen, but they just have to wait for a week (I just got 30k zen but had to wait for that long).
This would encourage some people during sales to just buy the zen outright
People have figured out that you get more ADs by selling Zen Store items in the AH than you do by converting the Zen to ADs. They buy Zen with ADs, buy a Zen Store item with that Zen, sell it in the AH for more than they spent on the Zen (even after the AH cut), and repeat the cycle.
The solution to this would be to make Zen Store items (or at least the in-demand ones) bound to account. That way, the exploiters can't do what they are currently doing.
Admittedly, this would increase demand for Zen, because instead of being able to buy certain items in the AH, you'd have to spend ADs on Zen to get them. I like the solution that others have proposed to counter this, which is to make some of those highest-demand items available at the Wondrous Bazaar (bound to account). That way, if you want to get those items, you can either convert your ADs to zen and buy an account-bound one from the zen store, or spend your ADs to get an account-bound one at the bazaar. Either way, you've spent a lot of ADs, and got the item you want. People who don't have the ADs needed, or who don't want to wait for the exchange, or who have lots of case, will still buy Zen directly.
Yes, there are going to be flaws with every solution. However, something needs to be done. Sure, the wait is only a few days to a week now, but the backlog of demand for Zen is increasing at a steady rate, and the wait times are getting longer.
i think you have confused idea about whats it is exploiting ... thats not exploiting.
and Make ad/zen permanently avaible boud to char is even worse ... dont you know how many bots with just grind ad and then resell account full of all zen items?
Nope , not a solution.
I keep saying the current state is good. Even if we have to wait weeks or months.
If you want to really something , maybe sometimes charge up some zen and buy it.
you will help the economy.
Although I wouldn't call it exploiting myself they are still exploiting the system and the market. The difference being that regular exploits take advantage the the game in a bad way, whereas exploiting the market is more entrepreneurial. If it really was caused by this, then it's only because idiots made it possible. As soon as the exchange was slightly backlogged they should have used the exchange instead of buying for ah inflated prices so that selling on the ah isn't viable. When there's a 10% tax cut, it shouldn't be.
Anyway removing the exchange would be like saying, "ok we can't have a working feature so will just remove it". It doesn't really look good... Then again if they did that, they'd remove a good potion of the game for not working well.
Anyway, while I put in some real money here or there, one of the things I like about neverwinter is even though my cash budget is limited the cash shop is more reasonable with the exchange. For example, my tier 3 mount I paid total 10 dollars irl currency, and the rest from the zax. If I had to pay 35 dollars for it, they would have gotten nothing and I may have moved on to a different game.
If they were to get rid of the exchange, I think they'd need to greatly expand the availability of companions (either new or old), mounts, wards, etc that you can buy for AD from vendors.
Edit: Plus I don't get the argument, "we're waiting a long time to get zen from zax, so let's get rid of the exchange so we never get zen." Unless removal is paired with repricing and addition of many more zen store style items for ad, it seems like a net loss regardless of how long it takes to get zen.
removing the exchange would mean NOBODY can upgrade enchants unless they zen= pay to win game
and i agree that the market is ridiculous because of the cap, blue wards, and lack of ad sinks, gold sellers
those are the main problem atm that caused inflation of ad - but blue ward on zen probally is profit for crypt and gold sellers seem cryptic cant handle them. so i see 2 solution - make wonderous bazar offer sales for ad sinks , add more items to bazar
and/ or remove the cap. although removing cap may sound like it going to just increae value of ad. it is not. the value of ad right now is 630ad per zen - if u take into account that ppl with zen sell keys instead for ad = it the new exchange zen to ad for zenners because zen exchange at 500 is much less viable for zenners.
zenners will quickly start to ignore the zen/ad exchange because they can sell zen items for ad at better price through items.
people saying oh wait 2 week 1 month isnt bad= that not true- this situation will get worst because soon no one will sell zen at 500 to players. so personally - i prefer to pay more ad for zen - so i can get sale items asap. because waiting for a stupid zenner to sell me zen is ridiculous. (yes i said stupid zenner because a smart zenner will sell keys or coals for a better echange of thier zen to convert to ad) why sell to 500ad? when u can sell for 630 through items? this is why system broken because of ad inflation.
do not say it is NOT BROKEN - if we must rely on dumb zenners to sell zen this is twisted. eventually all zenners smarten up and the exchange itself will be ghost - no zen sellers
right now Zen is worth ~700 AD per, and people are getting around the artificial zax cap by buying keys or other zen items and selling them on AH for their true value.
Removing the cap will instantly fix the backlog of orders as well as equalize the prices of zen items on the AH to their true AD/Zen rate.
Until they remove the 500 AD cap, you can build up a huge AD stockpile by simply buying Zen through the ZAX for 500 AD each(waiting a few days), using the Zen to buy keys, and then selling the keys for 700 AD per Zen (630 after AH cut).
edit: as lademonicc points out above, this only works as long as people are stupid enough to sell Zen on the ZAX for 500ad, far less than it's actually worth. Once people realize that the ZAX cap is dumb no one will sell zen on it and you'll be waiting years for your orders to fill.
At that point the ZAX, for all intents and purposes, no longer exists and the free to play players lose the ability to buy anything for Zen directly. They can still buy BOE zen items off the AH for their true AD value but they lose the ability to buy things like BtA mounts etc, that they need to buy with zen directly.
You cannot cap progression in the manner they are doing, people want to play to progress, they dont just want to rip out a credit card to do it.
Not everyone in this game is rich, in fact the VAST majority of people who play this game, do not have more then a million AD at any one time, they dont just drop a few million on a whim on a perfect enchant ect. They want to log on play their 3-4 toons , progress via playing and be done with it.
Things I will pay for are convenience items and/or items that are not going to change play in game that much, Ioun Stones, Mounts, Bags ect, but by removing Cwards from the game, they are choking it, now everyone needs Cwards and the only way to get them is via zen store, because again, MOST players dont have millions of AD at their disposable.
Either lower cwards price in the AH shop, and start making items account bound, people will buy from your store. Your overpriced cryptic!
I do suspect that you're onto something, though I'd counsel against holding my breath.
Its absolutly not about coal wards.
It is not about removing ZEN exchange, also. Bad idea. Even worse would be the removal of the price cap for ZEN.
The one and only solution for a healthy ZEN/AD ratio is the implementation of AD sinks that are worth it. The chicken event clearly proved that. The devs just have to think about more reasonable items to buy with ADs and u would have ZEN available in an instant.
Nothing more to do, really!
Just an idea: Introduce a new BiS companion, with an active bonus of 250 at green level. And with 550 power bonus at purple. This comp would cost 300-400k ad at green. It would be the oberall best active stat wise without beeing op or broken. It wouldnt affect pvp and not pve balance either. Just a cool companion to have that actually doesnt do some gibberish jabbering rng proc HAMSTER like so many other things in this game.
Because it would only be available with AD, the ZEN market would be healthy in an instant and maybe would remain there for several weeks or months.
Such a simple solution :-(
Pretty good idea - lots of AD taken out of the market when originally bought and then it continues to be removed as people upgrade it.
I think they could charge a lot more than 400K for it though.....
So much wrong with this statement, where to begin? Where oh where.
What makes you think it is broken at the moment? People who buy zen still get their AD. F2P players are still able to get zen, they just have to wait longer (I just got 25k zen after a week of waiting).
Cryptic does not need to fix those orders. Keep in mind a lot of those orders also come from exploited AD (billions of them out there) or AD bought from 3rd party sellers.
The only people who need to be secured are those who bought zen with real money and they still have their way. In fact, their zen is worth a lot more now in terms of AD. They could buy keys during sales and sell them at 70k a piece (up from 50k).
Sure this game has a lot of problems as to why the population is declining (no PVE endgame, no raiding, only 1 pvp mode, class imbalance, GF being treated like HAMSTER for a year), but please, do tell why having orders in the zax could shatter the f2p model?
There is no repeatable purchases in-game currently that can rival the demand for reagents to crafting weapon/armor enchants.
! This is the only good idea I have seen here for a long time ! AD sinks are always temporal solutions and always will be, etc. Just don't give the opportunity to resellers and here you go ...
Maybe you can't then call it the free market, but for the greater good, let it happen!
They released the game with the wondrous bazaar and have never done anything to make the contents appealing to people, Mount training books are not price to sell by any stretch of the imagination. Likewise the minion upgrades are priced too high to encourage people to waste AD's.
They also pretty ignored any potential for AD sinks by adding stables or wardrobe functionality into the game. The current cosmetic system is incredibly basic but if you look at games like lotro you'll find there is so much scope to be found. People are more likely to hoard their AD if the prices are stupidly high on the sinks, knocking 30% off the current minion costs and they'd find a whole lot more people running about with level 30's.
Just wait until module 4 and there'll no doubt be a new zen based crafting thing meaning another explosion in the exchange and the best we can hope to see is cryptic increasing the cap for people selling zen via the exchange. A bad move as it will push more people towards the spamming scum if they havent already considered doing so following the icewind crash.
Since you ask so kindly let me lay it out for you. A huge back log of buy orders causes a delay in AD to Zen conversion. This is not a problem per se, however, if this becomes too long it effectively removes the option for getting items in the Zen store for a player that only has access to AD. (And the back log is increasing, mind you.) In other words, the borewall becomes a paywall. Every F2P game I have tried that used paywall saw a rapid decline of active players. Your milage may vary, but very few players will de facto cash out 1000 euro to be competitive. Who will you pride yourself of beating in PvP when it is just you and Mr Perfect Vorpal left?
Now, you do not NEED cosmetic items and companions, they are fun and they help. But you do need enchantments for PvP and dungeons like VT. (Albeit rank 10 is excessive, I have soloed all non-epics wearing only rank 5s to prove a point.) And for that you must have wards that must not be locked away behind a paywall. Capiche?
The root of the problem is likely inflation rather than the cap on the exchange. There are very few things worth buying with AD, and a lot of things worth buying with Zen. For example, if I hadn't wanted the cat because it is a cat, then buying a Stone of Allure with zen would have made more sense.
They need to add more exclusive items to the AD vendor, which would encourage people to spend AD outside of the auction house, and would also encourage people buying Zen to exchange it for AD. Put some new dragon themed items in that can only be bought from the AD vendors and I bet the exchange rate would drop like a rock.
The inflation is caused by very few very rich players/exploiters that can virtually spam any given amount at the ZEN exchange. If I had a sizable amount myself, I would also contribute to the backload and transfer any AD into the exchange. The more backload, the more opportunity to yield a nice return at the AH. Right now it's +20% and it'll likely grow. Yeah sure it takes a whole lot of time, but you can still effortless more than double any investment in about four weeks.
I don't think the problem is too many ADs all around, it's that few have way to many.