For me the most prominent issue is the bag space ...
I run already around with the dragonborn bag, 2 blue bags and the 2 standard bags. Never use the graveyard bag.
And I am full to the limit.
With enchants being BtA AND free (normal drops) I need double the space for refining stuff if I do not want to stop after every 2nd encounter to "refine". That is what bothers me most.
But this post will be swallowed by the many rants, so I expect to have a bag issue, next to a refinement issue.
*sigh*
The other day I also realised that I won't be able to use any fey blessing on top of my dragon hoard (which I use greaters on my main)
You lost me with the "I'm the most serious most active players in your community"... You aren't the only one. The game wouldn't survive with just 1 person. This game is about to lose MANY because of how much of a cash cow it's become.
So . . . after reading almost all of the pages, I don't think I saw one person discuss this:
Perhaps the goal is to phase out the experienced, well-geared players through attrition. Once those players are gone, the only ones left will be the less-hardcore, casual style gamers that really don't remember, or know, how it used to be. The remaining players will buy zen, transfer it to AD and buy stuff in the AH all while grinding the content to get RP drops.
The experienced players are probably not buying zen as much as before (if at all) and as such, are not a source of revenue. PvP seems to be slowing down so less Zen/AD there from the pro Pvp'ers, CN is not profitable anymore so most people are only running it to help guildies or for a break from the grind that is Mod 3/4.
I don't know what the fix SHOULD be, I only know what it SHOULD NOT be. Don't punish those of us that show up each and every day to play a game we love. We helped you build this game into something great. Give us an incentive to keep playing. There are many many many games out there. I have been putting off looking at new games (or existing ones) because I only have so much time each day to play. That may not always be the case.
NOTE: I have run the grind gamut each day and I have the 4th and 5th boon on my SW. While I didn't like it, I did it. Now, with Mod 5 coming up, I'll have to get a total of 400 sigils and secrets (each) to get the 6th (new book so 100 each) and 7th (all three books so 300 each). I'd rather be playing great content than grinding my way through the game each day.
Devs - please stop putting in "fixes" for the bots and exploiters that punish those of us that follow the rules. Just because a thing is difficult to do doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
NOTE: I have run the grind gamut each day and I have the 4th and 5th boon on my SW. While I didn't like it, I did it. Now, with Mod 5 coming up, I'll have to get a total of 400 sigils and secrets (each) to get the 6th (new book so 100 each) and 7th (all three books so 300 each). I'd rather be playing great content than grinding my way through the game each day.
I do not want to defend PWE on this, but I'd like to answer to you, and to many others who cry that this is breaking the game, the end of the world yada yada
I take it you are aware that you do not NEED the boons 6 & 7, neither do you NEED the boons 4 & 5.
Just because they are there does not mean they are totally necessary to enjoy the game. At least in a PvE environment you are perfectly fine to play without said boons. (or without a 5 legendary items worn).
(if a MOD wants to take out my PvP opinion go ahead, as usually PvP is subject to flame and might usually be seen as tolling, i.e. not your poit of view)
Now, for PvP, where this is supposed to be "game breaking" I read a lot from players who claim that they can not beat another one without all boons, 5 leg's, and R10s. Yet most PvP'ers claim to beat others naked with a wet towel.
So, if boons/legendaries/R10s are indeed so powerful that it makes no sense at all if a player without e.g. boons is queued against another player with boons
it should be easy to convince "development" (most like the product manager) that a player with boons must not be queued against a player without boons. This would be a de-facto grouping possibility for PvP.
Add in e.g. "has 1 or more legendary artifact of any type" and you have another tier.
PS: if you don't like playing the game it might be time to stop it. It still is a game!
Imaginary Friends are the best friends you can have!
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luxarkMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
I do not want to defend PWE on this, but I'd like to answer to you, and to many others who cry that this is breaking the game, the end of the world yada yada
I take it you are aware that you do not NEED the boons 6 & 7, neither do you NEED the boons 4 & 5.
Just because they are there does not mean they are totally necessary to enjoy the game. At least in a PvE environment you are perfectly fine to play without said boons. (or without a 5 legendary items worn).
For a lot of people something like this would feel like they are missing something. This is not a very pleasant feeling.
I understand your frustration as ways to make AD have almost completely disappeared from this game (and not coincidentally I think). With that said, there are many people who are using foundries to farm RP and sell it on the AH in order to make AD. I know players that have 20 stacks up of things they keep getting from foundries and making a fortune off it. I don't mind foundry grinding at all as long at the RP stuff gotten is used for your equipment only! Once its being done to put tons of stacks of RP on the AH... well its a little much and can affect the in-game economy in a negative way. I kind of understand why they are doing it and to be honest, this was something that has already been predicted was going to happen by several people not too long ago due to AH exploitation, so this isn't a shock.
However... this game needs to provide many more avenues of obtaining reasonable large amounts of RP from dungeon runs, pve and maybe even pvp. Right now, there is very little incentive for players NOT to be using 3rd party sites or other avenues for obtaining RP. The zen prices for RP are not even a consideration as they are astronomical and would require gamers to basically take out a second mortgage to afford RP through purchasing zen (a little of an exaggeration xD). Also when you don't allow players to make in-game currency at a reasonable rate by limiting AD refinement and creating so many sinks, players will look to other avenues to do so.
This BoA of RP from dragon hoards is in the end, utlimately PWE's fault and we are paying for it because of massive AD sinks, the lack of ways to make AD in this game (BoP items and irrelevant dungeons), and overpriced RP prices in the zen store.
The OP here is right. This is starting to get out of control and pretty soon, PWE won't have an economy to manage anymore. This is not the same issue as the BoA keys. Those keys didn't directly affect the standard of living in-game (i.e. equipment quality). This does.
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lordfuzunMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 54
I do not want to defend PWE on this, but I'd like to answer to you, and to many others who cry that this is breaking the game, the end of the world yada yada
I take it you are aware that you do not NEED the boons 6 & 7, neither do you NEED the boons 4 & 5.
Just because they are there does not mean they are totally necessary to enjoy the game. At least in a PvE environment you are perfectly fine to play without said boons. (or without a 5 legendary items worn).
[snip]
PS: if you don't like playing the game it might be time to stop it. It still is a game!
First part. True, you don't "need" the absolutely best equipment/enchantments and all the boons to play most the PvE game. But players "want" them nonetheless. And that leads into the second bit I quoted...
Players want them because that's the only way to advance their characters post level 60. Put another way, players want and need rewards in playing the game. That's what makes it a game. Doing the same content over and over again with 0 advancement players will get bored and leave the game.
The problem right now is the current 4 artifacts a player had (3 slots and main-hand weapon), the goal posts of Legendary are too far away and/or too expensive to achieve by the causal players. I experience this myself. I had been leveling my main-hand weapon with vendor rash equipment and (stupidly) buying stacks of ID scrolls. But once it got to rare, All I'm getting from Green equipment is miniscule slivers or advancement on the XP bar. And once I realized the amount of money I was spending on ID scrolls stopped even that. The RP items drops are not enough w/o having to spend to of tons of AD again to get something greater then Lesser Dragon Hoard enchantments.
And as a sightly positive not on this. The artifact gear may be Cryptics way of giving players the ability to advance their gears for the supposed advancement of the level caps (aka +30 levels) for the future. But @Cryptic as a feedback for that possible scenario, you should NOT have put Legendary stats into the gear now. And most players would not have put 2 and 2 together, if this is the plan, because you've not said anything publicly to confirm or deny what your long term intentions are.
I do not want to defend PWE on this, but I'd like to answer to you, and to many others who cry that this is breaking the game, the end of the world yada yada
I take it you are aware that you do not NEED the boons 6 & 7, neither do you NEED the boons 4 & 5.
Just because they are there does not mean they are totally necessary to enjoy the game. At least in a PvE environment you are perfectly fine to play without said boons. (or without a 5 legendary items worn).
I agree with you 100% - I DON'T need them. And for the record - I have no legendary belts and both of the artifact weapons I've crafted were not the ones I wanted so that grind continues. You don't need top-level stuff to enjoy this game. As others have stated however, what's the point of playing if there isn't some kind of reward?
But back to chemboy's original question - why make RP BtA?
look at the poll, 15% or more people don't mind these items being BoA. That brings to mind an idea that people will bear and live with it.
Good post, and I agree with all of it except the above.
Yes, 15% seem to think it will simply stop the bots without negatively affecting genuine, legitimate players. But 5% don't care, and almost 80% say they do NOT want it.
And that 15% are mistaken - it will harm the legitimate, genuine players far more than it will harm the bots. Check out YouTube for some very interesting documentaries and interviews with CEOs of Farming Bot Businesses for the details on how bots are simply a part of Free To Play life - because ALL of the things that make the game Free to Play for real players ALSO make it eminently bottable.
We had a level 60, 1.6k Green Gear GWF Bot in PvP only last night. Lord knows why; farming Glory to get Gear to salvage for AD to sell? They can go through PvP over and over and over again as they never get tired, never get bored, never need a bathroom or food break, never have to go to work or college, never have to put up a shelf, go to the shops or take the kids to see the grand parents...
We still won, though, as my DC skills are SO awesome! As long as the CW and SW stand with me and deal the dps I just cannot do! Only 9000 Glory needed to complete my Profound Faithful set!
Trying to stop the bots like this will not work, but it will harm players when they go to the AH.
So
unless the Artifact Gear system is radically overhauled (and I do not even have any Black Ice gear yet)
and/or the drop rate on BtA refining stones is massively increased
the drop rate on the artifact gear is not massively increased, and/or tied to skill rather than RNG and ONLY drops gear for your class
I think people will NEVER get their gear to Legendary, no matter how many centuries they farm.
It would be a tragedy if this game collapsed like a badly run Ponzi scheme as it IS so good when it works. In fact, the only reason my friends and I ever bought any Zen in the first place was to give something back to Cryptic, as the game really was that good.
I do not want to defend PWE on this, but I'd like to answer to you, and to many others who cry that this is breaking the game, the end of the world yada yada
I take it you are aware that you do not NEED the boons 6 & 7, neither do you NEED the boons 4 & 5.
!
Lets stop with the need stuff. We don't NEED to play the game either, but if we are, and boons 4,5,6 and 7 exist thus people will do them, just like they log into the game.
Why on earth should they be brutal, painful and not fun at all to do.
Yes, 15% seem to think it will simply stop the bots without negatively affecting genuine, legitimate players. But 5% don't care, and almost 80% say they do NOT want it.
And that 15% are mistaken - it will harm the legitimate, genuine players far more than it will harm the bots. Check out YouTube for some very interesting documentaries and interviews with CEOs of Farming Bot Businesses for the details on how bots are simply a part of Free To Play life - because ALL of the things that make the game Free to Play for real players ALSO make it eminently bottable.
~
I'm totally against this change as it currently stands.
IF however, they were to make dragon hoards drop a stack of 99 instead of 1, THEN I would be in favor of the BoP change.
I agree with you 100% - I DON'T need them. And for the record - I have no legendary belts and both of the artifact weapons I've crafted were not the ones I wanted so that grind continues. You don't need top-level stuff to enjoy this game. As others have stated however, what's the point of playing if there isn't some kind of reward?
I don't even have a belt, let alone something legendary. I can easily take on all of PvE in this game with my 15-17k GS. And as I have lots of toons to care for, I prefer to get them all to playable status than one to MAXX and always have the fear of a "balance change" to destroy it. But that's me. Currently leveling my 2nd DC. Once I have reached 15k and run all dungeons I consider the "game beaten" and might make another one, who knows!
Remember, there are about 20 beautifully designed areas, and all most people do is rush through for levleling, about an hour in each area. And then limit the view to 15 DD areas, 2 PvP areas, maybe Sharandar, DR and IWD. But there is a whole world out there to play in!
The other day I also realised that I won't be able to use any fey blessing on top of my dragon hoard (which I use greaters on my main)
What is that? Do they not work together?
I have three Rank 8 Dragonhoards on one of my characters. Will I actually get a 6% drop chance, or will it b 2% with all three having a chance to proc, or what?
I used to have one Dragonhorde, a Tymora Rank 5 or 6 and a Salvager's one from the event. All three used to proc in large mobs, but the Tymora and Salvager's are now in the bank as the drops were not as useful at level 60. For a character around level 10+, yes.
I have three Rank 8 Dragonhoards on one of my characters. Will I actually get a 6% drop chance, or will it b 2% with all three having a chance to proc, or what?
I used to have one Dragonhorde, a Tymora Rank 5 or 6 and a Salvager's one from the event. All three used to proc in large mobs, but the Tymora and Salvager's are now in the bank as the drops were not as useful at level 60. For a character around level 10+, yes.
~
They should. The point was that the enchants from fey blessing will be bound and so won't stack with unbound ones. The dragon hoard enchants are less of an inventory problem since there's not a big supply of unbound ones whereas enchants come unbound from nodes and mob drops. (No cryptic, binding those too is not a solution). Basically for the the greater fey blessing i bound won't be useful like I planned with the extra utility slots for the neck unless I self botted. I carry partial stacks of each rank 3/4 only dealing them when they're max stacked.
I am one of the most serious, most active players in your community.
I am the #1 MoF CW on the server - which has not ever been disputed.
There is not a more knowledgeable, skilled, and helpful player than I am on this server. No one else has written as much as I have, or helped as many people as i have.
Basically every MoF CW i have ever met has read my work.
I am at the core of your community, and a pillar thereof. When i speak, people listen. I have earned that respect.
Are you serious? You have a really giant ego. I just can't relate to your thread if you start with sth like this. I'm just waiting for a white pigeon and voice from the sky saying - "This is my son Chem, all kneel before Him."
I respect people who know they are great but don't hit you with that in your face. Too much Iron Man I guess. Let me quote:
Steve Rogers: Big man in a suit of armour. Take that off, what are you?
Tony Stark: Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.
Solid points all around, however your effort goes to waste. This game is first and foremost a business. From the moment I picked it up till I logged off last night I've never felt it being anything more than a way to extract cash from people. Sure, it's combat system, animations, visuals are above fine. I'd say they are great. Whoever designed those should get a raise Cryptic, cause he/she is the reason we are still here. The lot of you veteran players who were here since day one and who managed to make millions of AD - dont think it was cause PWE cared for you. The millions came mostly from bugs, so much AD some folks still spent them even today. You were not supposed to make that much ingame cash, you were supposed to pay $. You understand what Im saying ?
That income you were used to was never meant to be. However Cryptic being Cryptic messed up some coding as usual and as a result some folks became the Rockefellers of Neverwinter. Ever since those days they've slowly taken away any and all forms of making ingame money bringing this product to its current state. Let me spell it out for you, a casual player is someone who has a job, hobbies outside of video games, a family, a busy life. A casual player has around 10-15 hours a week for his video game of choice and when he plays, he looks for enjoyment, relaxation not another job. Running 10 dungeons a day isnt something the above described person can manage, so making around 20K AD per day thru dailies and some salvage is about it. So, when he wants more he has to pay for it and that is OK. I'm OK with supporting a business which brings me fun. However Neverwinter's free to play model is vastly more expensive than a subscription based game if you want to be able to compete in PVP for example. Sure, Im a casual but when I engage in PVP I dont like being food for GS monsters. A new game + sub would be around 230 EUR for a whole year! There is a topic on this very forum currently asking people if 200 is OK for a legendary item! One legendarty item! You realize that a new guy who wants to PVP but has no time to grind can easily spent 1000 EUR to get his toon to 20K GS in a day.... and even that madness is OK if there was a way to get to that 20K GS with far less real money investment in lets say 3-4 months of serious, not casual play.. But you cant
Make no mistake, this whole game has been designed from the ground up to extort as much cash as possible from players. People who are really good at it, people who can make AD thru constant grind or thru smart AH play dont matter. PWE cares for people with wallets but even they dont get a real return as they are asked to spent more and more with every new mod. So, PWE actually only cares for wallets..
This is the holy Grail of all truths.Most MMos are like that start as "skill" game and end up mesuring your wallet.
I don't even have a belt, let alone something legendary. I can easily take on all of PvE in this game with my 15-17k GS. And as I have lots of toons to care for, I prefer to get them all to playable status than one to MAXX and always have the fear of a "balance change" to destroy it. But that's me. Currently leveling my 2nd DC. Once I have reached 15k and run all dungeons I consider the "game beaten" and might make another one, who knows!
Your in the demographic that is not impacted by this change one way or the other (you don't care about legendary gear and you shouldn't care about bots either). At the same time, if you haven't leveled up artifacts to legendary then you aren't in a position to comment on this change. The current refining system for artifacts is horrible in every way possible. The availability of reasonably priced refining stacks is about the only thing that made the current system bearable.
Let me add to this that the game has been getting worse and worse from a playability standpoint. I don't care about bots. If a game is fun, I will play it. It is NOT excusable to make a game not fun, solely to fight bots. The solution, should NOT come at the legitimate players expense.
Why would players do content over and over?
In the early days, CN let you farm gear that could be sold for a decent profit to make AD. So either content is fun or there is a clear earnings potential from it.
VT,MC and LoL,Shores essentially were "fun" to run at first, but how many times can you run the same thing without getting bored? Can they be run for profit? Well, not really. There are some items that can drop that sell for a nice sum, but the drop rate is so low that you can run them 500 times and never see a drop. In my book, that makes it unfarmable. So after it loses it's entertainment value, why would someone want to keep running these?
Let me add to this that the game has been getting worse and worse from a playability standpoint.
Why? because you are overpowered now and misused cheap stacks from bots? You have abilities you should not have before M10?
So, you buy botted items, increase your GS and then complain bad playability because you are too powerfull AND had to dish out large amounts of AD AND had to do the tedious refining designed to do in a year within one day, right?
They must be doing a lot of stuff right as you are still sticking around and endure the work that is forced by PWE upon you.
Imaginary Friends are the best friends you can have!
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chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
Solid points all around, however your effort goes to waste. This game is first and foremost a business. From the moment I picked it up till I logged off last night I've never felt it being anything more than a way to extract cash from people. Sure, it's combat system, animations, visuals are above fine. I'd say they are great. Whoever designed those should get a raise Cryptic, cause he/she is the reason we are still here. The lot of you veteran players who were here since day one and who managed to make millions of AD - dont think it was cause PWE cared for you. The millions came mostly from bugs, so much AD some folks still spent them even today. You were not supposed to make that much ingame cash, you were supposed to pay $. You understand what Im saying ?
That income you were used to was never meant to be. However Cryptic being Cryptic messed up some coding as usual and as a result some folks became the Rockefellers of Neverwinter. Ever since those days they've slowly taken away any and all forms of making ingame money bringing this product to its current state. Let me spell it out for you, a casual player is someone who has a job, hobbies outside of video games, a family, a busy life. A casual player has around 10-15 hours a week for his video game of choice and when he plays, he looks for enjoyment, relaxation not another job. Running 10 dungeons a day isnt something the above described person can manage, so making around 20K AD per day thru dailies and some salvage is about it. So, when he wants more he has to pay for it and that is OK. I'm OK with supporting a business which brings me fun. However Neverwinter's free to play model is vastly more expensive than a subscription based game if you want to be able to compete in PVP for example. Sure, Im a casual but when I engage in PVP I dont like being food for GS monsters. A new game + sub would be around 230 EUR for a whole year! There is a topic on this very forum currently asking people if 200 is OK for a legendary item! One legendarty item! You realize that a new guy who wants to PVP but has no time to grind can easily spent 1000 EUR to get his toon to 20K GS in a day.... and even that madness is OK if there was a way to get to that 20K GS with far less real money investment in lets say 3-4 months of serious, not casual play.. But you cant
Make no mistake, this whole game has been designed from the ground up to extort as much cash as possible from players. People who are really good at it, people who can make AD thru constant grind or thru smart AH play dont matter. PWE cares for people with wallets but even they dont get a real return as they are asked to spent more and more with every new mod. So, PWE actually only cares for wallets..
As someone who is starting up a commercial strategy company - it is certainly not lost to me _at all_ that this is a business first and foremost. They want us to spend money because it's their goal to turn profits. PWE is listed on NASDAQ - meaning it is their fiduciary duty to increase shareholder value. I get this completely!
However, once a game becomes too grindy and/or too expensive, they won't be able to compete with the large amount of games out there. Companies that are successful often do so by treating their customers well. By inspiring loyalty from the customer base, you get them to be repeat customers and to keep on coming back and spending more and more money. This is good tried and true strategy.
This change is instead saying "we don't care about treating you well, we care about killing the bots." Sure, they have a good reason for bot killing - no one is disputing this, but by making things more and more unpleaseant for the player base they are instead inspiring customer anger. This will lead to:
People in the game spending less money out of spite
People leaving the game out of anger/frustration
People moving to playing other games (good ones exist)
People doing other things than gaming.
Now there will of course always be some whales who will spend thousands of dollars to get BIS gear and go PvP - sure these people exist - but they are in the minority. Even if this move appears to make short term profits, turning your customer base against you is economic suicide.
I am not only concerned about the players, but also the health of the game and the company. If enough people leave or stop spending, then they will have to make even less content or shut it down. This is the opposite of what i would like to happen.
I just want to spend a minute to answer to the actual subject.
Cryptic is standing before very hard decisions to be made.
Someone already said that, but I can't quote. Devs are managers they don't like problems, they like solutions.
All your talking about do this / don't do that are probably not much help for them, whats more, look at the poll, 15% or more people don't mind these items being BoA. That brings to mind an idea that people will bear and live with it. But the discussion still rages on and it's on fire.
Cryptic Dev. Team, managers, directors, are probably standing right now somewhere where Nokia was standing few years ago. They have one of the most loved and played MMO out there on the market, it's thiers child, like Nokia had with the mobile phone market. But now, Nokia is not a big player anymore out there, it dissapeared because they missed the moment. Please Cryptic don't miss the moment, stay here good and well. It surely may require new changes, maybe even 180' changes, be bold as when were you introduced refining system instead of fusion. Put life into other, old dungeons, add bonus not-known-before content to them, so people will replay them. Look at the Nintendo they did the same and they had success with reworking the FF series for other consoles. Work on the value system, look what "we" clients want. It's pretty obvious that old dungeons needs tinkering job to be done. Look and search for different solutions, do something that will make people don't need to use the bots sellers out there in the enclave, something that will make people simply don't need these people and make them look silly in our eyes.
This is what Developers are expecting from us on these threads, not the whining you do and speculating on ZEN prices or other "brilliant" ideas that by the end of the day end up in the "round binder".
Thanks for the read.
yes, 15% of people don't mind the change, but 80% of people do. 80% is huge!
Of course, i would love to find a way to make the botters look silly. I know that is their intent, but the bots is there because of demand. the demand is no human is actually willing (or would even want to) run enough foundries to get the RP they require. If they did this change AND coupled with a legit way to make RP - say RP from dungeons that wasn't BtA - then we could either:
a) farm RP by playing the game
or
b) Buy RP from the AH that was made by an actual person.
The bots are there because the RP requirements for legendary are unreasonable to make yourself. If RP was a boss drop, and at a good rate, we wouldn't have this problem.
Also, there are many other good ideas, such as changing RP from EXP, or lowering RP requirements, or glory for RP, etc... any of these ideas (or all of them) would compensate for this change.
However making everything BtA without something else is just making RP farming completely unpalatable. That is the actual problem.
spirit354Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 3Arc User
edited November 2014
Why? because you are overpowered now and misused cheap stacks from bots? You have abilities you should not have before M10?
So, you buy botted items, increase your GS and then complain bad playability because you are too powerfull AND had to dish out large amounts of AD AND had to do the tedious refining designed to do in a year within one day, right?
They must be doing a lot of stuff right as you are still sticking around and endure the work that is forced by PWE upon you.[/QUOTE]
If the time ratio to progression becomes to imbalanced what the hell is the point? Most people keep playing an MMO because of reasonable progression. If they dont feel like their hours of work accomplished enough they will not play it. If I play 2 hours a day with 5% worth of horde enchantments and average about 10k artifact RP it would take me 300000 days to get ONE!, just ONE artifact to legendary (300000 is significantly more than the 365 days in a year). This is my average, sometimes I get lucky and get more but sometimes I have gone days without more than 500. Or I could give Cryptic a good chunk of most people's rent budget for 1 legendary artifact (around $600). GS is simply a way to measure progression, thus it should see reasonable advancement for actually playing the game.
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chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
Good post, and I agree with all of it except the above.
Yes, 15% seem to think it will simply stop the bots without negatively affecting genuine, legitimate players. But 5% don't care, and almost 80% say they do NOT want it.
And that 15% are mistaken - it will harm the legitimate, genuine players far more than it will harm the bots. Check out YouTube for some very interesting documentaries and interviews with CEOs of Farming Bot Businesses for the details on how bots are simply a part of Free To Play life - because ALL of the things that make the game Free to Play for real players ALSO make it eminently bottable.
We had a level 60, 1.6k Green Gear GWF Bot in PvP only last night. Lord knows why; farming Glory to get Gear to salvage for AD to sell? They can go through PvP over and over and over again as they never get tired, never get bored, never need a bathroom or food break, never have to go to work or college, never have to put up a shelf, go to the shops or take the kids to see the grand parents...
We still won, though, as my DC skills are SO awesome! As long as the CW and SW stand with me and deal the dps I just cannot do! Only 9000 Glory needed to complete my Profound Faithful set!
Trying to stop the bots like this will not work, but it will harm players when they go to the AH.
So
unless the Artifact Gear system is radically overhauled (and I do not even have any Black Ice gear yet)
and/or the drop rate on BtA refining stones is massively increased
the drop rate on the artifact gear is not massively increased, and/or tied to skill rather than RNG and ONLY drops gear for your class
I think people will NEVER get their gear to Legendary, no matter how many centuries they farm.
It would be a tragedy if this game collapsed like a badly run Ponzi scheme as it IS so good when it works. In fact, the only reason my friends and I ever bought any Zen in the first place was to give something back to Cryptic, as the game really was that good.
Why? because you are overpowered now and misused cheap stacks from bots? You have abilities you should not have before M10?
So, you buy botted items, increase your GS and then complain bad playability because you are too powerfull AND had to dish out large amounts of AD AND had to do the tedious refining designed to do in a year within one day, right?
They must be doing a lot of stuff right as you are still sticking around and endure the work that is forced by PWE upon you.
But see that's the problem. This game isn't in beta. This game has been out for YEARS now. They still haven't created tier 3 dungeons with scaled rewards. ALL their content has been catering to solo players who have 12k GS. Heroic encounters and dailies. They need to find a good balance.
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chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
Are you serious? You have a really giant ego. I just can't relate to your thread if you start with sth like this. I'm just waiting for a white pigeon and voice from the sky saying - "This is my son Chem, all kneel before Him."
I respect people who know they are great but don't hit you with that in your face. Too much Iron Man I guess. Let me quote:
Lol, fair enough man. Sadly, i am not quite as rich as Tony Stark and my ego isn't quite that big, but remember he is human too! He uses his resources and name to (eventually) do right by the world.
I suppose i am trying to do the same thing, but in a much much smaller way.
They must be doing a lot of stuff right as you are still sticking around and endure the work that is forced by PWE upon you.
> Allow game to be botted and spammed a high amount
> Ruin the economy twice. One in which it took MONTHS to 'fix'
> Ignore bugs for many many months
> Have the worst balance of any high profiled game
> Have the worst matchmaking of any popular competitive game
> Visual bugs going unfixed
> Worst refining system ever which succeeded an interface which was simpler and less cluttered.
> Make it practically impossible to compete for free with those that... you know
> Neglect the foundry, one of the games selling points practically while at the same time, later advertising the rewards even though the high end ones are almost impossible due to bugs.
> The most repetitive and dull solo content post level 60
> Barely test what they release
> Turn a rewarding game into something that became unrewarding
> Who wants a green artifact, only $60! (promotion)
> Gear updates that are almost all badly designed apart from the words here> artifact gear. DCs still using t1 pve gear...
> I want to force feed that yeti companion
> We value you, here's a sale! loljk <emoticon>
> Here get this totally exclusive piece that we'll make more readily available in future.
Remind me of the 'lot of stuff' they're doing right again since the game came out of beta? If I wasn't close to almost passively making 10m AD per month I would've given up. I'm not staying because they're doing something right. They initially did something pretty well right and then flushed it.
I may have turned a little bitter towards the game, but they wasted potential and screwed the ones supporting them. Pretending they're doing a good job gets me going...
> Allow game to be botted and spammed a high amount
> Ruin the economy twice. One in which it took MONTHS to 'fix'
> Ignore bugs for many many months
> Have the worst balance of any high profiled game
> Have the worst matchmaking of any popular competitive game
> Visual bugs going unfixed
> Worst refining system ever which succeeded an interface which was simpler and less cluttered.
> Make it practically impossible to compete for free with those that... you know
> Neglect the foundry, one of the games selling points practically while at the same time, later advertising the rewards even though the high end ones are almost impossible due to bugs.
> The most repetitive and dull solo content post level 60
> Barely test what they release
> Turn a rewarding game into something that became unrewarding
> Who wants a green artifact, only $60! (promotion)
> Gear updates that are almost all badly designed apart from the words here> artifact gear. DCs still using t1 pve gear...
> I want to force feed that yeti companion
> We value you, here's a sale! loljk <emoticon>
> Here get this totally exclusive piece that we'll make more readily available in future.
Remind me of the 'lot of stuff' they're doing right again since the game came out of beta? If I wasn't close to almost passively making 10m AD per month I would've given up. I'm not staying because they're doing something right. They initially did something pretty well right and then flushed it.
I may have turned a little bitter towards the game, but they wasted potential and screwed the ones supporting them. Pretending they're doing a good job gets me going...
^
This is how I feel. It can't continue down this path much longer.
Remind me of the 'lot of stuff' they're doing right again since the game came out of beta? If I wasn't close to almost passively making 10m AD per month I would've given up. I'm not staying because they're doing something right. They initially did something pretty well right and then flushed it.
Yes. It's a lot of work on a lot of characters that has taken so long on a constant wip (with breaks between expansion) but I'm fairly close to getting there and am already making a decent amount. Though I blew a huge investment too. #whydidibuy14gondmountsfor3millionad. Still I don't make enough playing anymore so had to resort to it. I started low and expanded.
First part. True, you don't "need" the absolutely best equipment/enchantments and all the boons to play most the PvE game. But players "want" them nonetheless. And that leads into the second bit I quoted...
Players want them because that's the only way to advance their characters post level 60. Put another way, players want and need rewards in playing the game. That's what makes it a game. Doing the same content over and over again with 0 advancement players will get bored and leave the game.
The problem right now is the current 4 artifacts a player had (3 slots and main-hand weapon), the goal posts of Legendary are too far away and/or too expensive to achieve by the causal players.
I don't understand. If you are playing the game for the "rewards", you know that you will eventually run out of possible rewards, right? And then you will quit playing. You will only play so long as Cryptic dangles a carrot in front of you, so why should they take your pleas for a shorter stick seriously? The threat to quit? You WILL quit when you are all best in slot.
I play for fun. When the game starts to feel like a job, like a grind, I quit and play a different game. There are a thousand of them out there. And I don't make a big deal about it, because I can see other people are still having fun.
Some of the posters in this thread have complained about the time they already "invested" in this game. But, you weren't investing your time, you were spending it, you were being entertained by PWE at THEIR expense. Beats watching Big Bang Theory reruns, am I right? And furthermore, "sunk costs" are a logical fallacy:
Anyway, let's give the new module a couple weeks and see how things shake out. There are other changes besides this one and I don't believe you can get the big picture view from the preview shard.
I don't understand. If you are playing the game for the "rewards", you know that you will eventually run out of possible rewards, right? And then you will quit playing. You will only play so long as Cryptic dangles a carrot in front of you, so why should they take your pleas for a shorter stick seriously? The threat to quit? You WILL quit when you are all best in slot.
Nope. Not if this game had lots of PVP modes and maps, difficult dungeons with BOE loot, rewarding ACTUAL raids, guild vs guild content etc.....in summary end game content.
Also, you realize that Castle Never always gave the same possible reward back then but people didn't get bored of it.
Comments
The other day I also realised that I won't be able to use any fey blessing on top of my dragon hoard (which I use greaters on my main)
Perhaps the goal is to phase out the experienced, well-geared players through attrition. Once those players are gone, the only ones left will be the less-hardcore, casual style gamers that really don't remember, or know, how it used to be. The remaining players will buy zen, transfer it to AD and buy stuff in the AH all while grinding the content to get RP drops.
The experienced players are probably not buying zen as much as before (if at all) and as such, are not a source of revenue. PvP seems to be slowing down so less Zen/AD there from the pro Pvp'ers, CN is not profitable anymore so most people are only running it to help guildies or for a break from the grind that is Mod 3/4.
I don't know what the fix SHOULD be, I only know what it SHOULD NOT be. Don't punish those of us that show up each and every day to play a game we love. We helped you build this game into something great. Give us an incentive to keep playing. There are many many many games out there. I have been putting off looking at new games (or existing ones) because I only have so much time each day to play. That may not always be the case.
NOTE: I have run the grind gamut each day and I have the 4th and 5th boon on my SW. While I didn't like it, I did it. Now, with Mod 5 coming up, I'll have to get a total of 400 sigils and secrets (each) to get the 6th (new book so 100 each) and 7th (all three books so 300 each). I'd rather be playing great content than grinding my way through the game each day.
Devs - please stop putting in "fixes" for the bots and exploiters that punish those of us that follow the rules. Just because a thing is difficult to do doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
I take it you are aware that you do not NEED the boons 6 & 7, neither do you NEED the boons 4 & 5.
Just because they are there does not mean they are totally necessary to enjoy the game. At least in a PvE environment you are perfectly fine to play without said boons. (or without a 5 legendary items worn).
(if a MOD wants to take out my PvP opinion go ahead, as usually PvP is subject to flame and might usually be seen as tolling, i.e. not your poit of view)
Now, for PvP, where this is supposed to be "game breaking" I read a lot from players who claim that they can not beat another one without all boons, 5 leg's, and R10s. Yet most PvP'ers claim to beat others naked with a wet towel.
So, if boons/legendaries/R10s are indeed so powerful that it makes no sense at all if
a player without e.g. boons is queued against another player with boons
it should be easy to convince "development" (most like the product manager) that a player with boons must not be queued against a player without boons. This would be a de-facto grouping possibility for PvP.
Add in e.g. "has 1 or more legendary artifact of any type" and you have another tier.
PS: if you don't like playing the game it might be time to stop it. It still is a game!
For a lot of people something like this would feel like they are missing something. This is not a very pleasant feeling.
However... this game needs to provide many more avenues of obtaining reasonable large amounts of RP from dungeon runs, pve and maybe even pvp. Right now, there is very little incentive for players NOT to be using 3rd party sites or other avenues for obtaining RP. The zen prices for RP are not even a consideration as they are astronomical and would require gamers to basically take out a second mortgage to afford RP through purchasing zen (a little of an exaggeration xD). Also when you don't allow players to make in-game currency at a reasonable rate by limiting AD refinement and creating so many sinks, players will look to other avenues to do so.
This BoA of RP from dragon hoards is in the end, utlimately PWE's fault and we are paying for it because of massive AD sinks, the lack of ways to make AD in this game (BoP items and irrelevant dungeons), and overpriced RP prices in the zen store.
The OP here is right. This is starting to get out of control and pretty soon, PWE won't have an economy to manage anymore. This is not the same issue as the BoA keys. Those keys didn't directly affect the standard of living in-game (i.e. equipment quality). This does.
First part. True, you don't "need" the absolutely best equipment/enchantments and all the boons to play most the PvE game. But players "want" them nonetheless. And that leads into the second bit I quoted...
Players want them because that's the only way to advance their characters post level 60. Put another way, players want and need rewards in playing the game. That's what makes it a game. Doing the same content over and over again with 0 advancement players will get bored and leave the game.
The problem right now is the current 4 artifacts a player had (3 slots and main-hand weapon), the goal posts of Legendary are too far away and/or too expensive to achieve by the causal players. I experience this myself. I had been leveling my main-hand weapon with vendor rash equipment and (stupidly) buying stacks of ID scrolls. But once it got to rare, All I'm getting from Green equipment is miniscule slivers or advancement on the XP bar. And once I realized the amount of money I was spending on ID scrolls stopped even that. The RP items drops are not enough w/o having to spend to of tons of AD again to get something greater then Lesser Dragon Hoard enchantments.
And as a sightly positive not on this. The artifact gear may be Cryptics way of giving players the ability to advance their gears for the supposed advancement of the level caps (aka +30 levels) for the future. But @Cryptic as a feedback for that possible scenario, you should NOT have put Legendary stats into the gear now. And most players would not have put 2 and 2 together, if this is the plan, because you've not said anything publicly to confirm or deny what your long term intentions are.
I agree with you 100% - I DON'T need them. And for the record - I have no legendary belts and both of the artifact weapons I've crafted were not the ones I wanted so that grind continues. You don't need top-level stuff to enjoy this game. As others have stated however, what's the point of playing if there isn't some kind of reward?
But back to chemboy's original question - why make RP BtA?
Good post, and I agree with all of it except the above.
Yes, 15% seem to think it will simply stop the bots without negatively affecting genuine, legitimate players. But 5% don't care, and almost 80% say they do NOT want it.
And that 15% are mistaken - it will harm the legitimate, genuine players far more than it will harm the bots. Check out YouTube for some very interesting documentaries and interviews with CEOs of Farming Bot Businesses for the details on how bots are simply a part of Free To Play life - because ALL of the things that make the game Free to Play for real players ALSO make it eminently bottable.
We had a level 60, 1.6k Green Gear GWF Bot in PvP only last night. Lord knows why; farming Glory to get Gear to salvage for AD to sell? They can go through PvP over and over and over again as they never get tired, never get bored, never need a bathroom or food break, never have to go to work or college, never have to put up a shelf, go to the shops or take the kids to see the grand parents...
We still won, though, as my DC skills are SO awesome! As long as the CW and SW stand with me and deal the dps I just cannot do! Only 9000 Glory needed to complete my Profound Faithful set!
Trying to stop the bots like this will not work, but it will harm players when they go to the AH.
So
I think people will NEVER get their gear to Legendary, no matter how many centuries they farm.
It would be a tragedy if this game collapsed like a badly run Ponzi scheme as it IS so good when it works. In fact, the only reason my friends and I ever bought any Zen in the first place was to give something back to Cryptic, as the game really was that good.
But that was Module 2...
~
Lets stop with the need stuff. We don't NEED to play the game either, but if we are, and boons 4,5,6 and 7 exist thus people will do them, just like they log into the game.
Why on earth should they be brutal, painful and not fun at all to do.
I'm totally against this change as it currently stands.
IF however, they were to make dragon hoards drop a stack of 99 instead of 1, THEN I would be in favor of the BoP change.
Remember, there are about 20 beautifully designed areas, and all most people do is rush through for levleling, about an hour in each area. And then limit the view to 15 DD areas, 2 PvP areas, maybe Sharandar, DR and IWD. But there is a whole world out there to play in!
Bots seem to make quite a profit from it, BtA will reduce this profit. This is what the problem seems to be.
What is that? Do they not work together?
I have three Rank 8 Dragonhoards on one of my characters. Will I actually get a 6% drop chance, or will it b 2% with all three having a chance to proc, or what?
I used to have one Dragonhorde, a Tymora Rank 5 or 6 and a Salvager's one from the event. All three used to proc in large mobs, but the Tymora and Salvager's are now in the bank as the drops were not as useful at level 60. For a character around level 10+, yes.
~
They should. The point was that the enchants from fey blessing will be bound and so won't stack with unbound ones. The dragon hoard enchants are less of an inventory problem since there's not a big supply of unbound ones whereas enchants come unbound from nodes and mob drops. (No cryptic, binding those too is not a solution). Basically for the the greater fey blessing i bound won't be useful like I planned with the extra utility slots for the neck unless I self botted. I carry partial stacks of each rank 3/4 only dealing them when they're max stacked.
Are you serious? You have a really giant ego. I just can't relate to your thread if you start with sth like this. I'm just waiting for a white pigeon and voice from the sky saying - "This is my son Chem, all kneel before Him."
I respect people who know they are great but don't hit you with that in your face. Too much Iron Man I guess. Let me quote:
This is the holy Grail of all truths.Most MMos are like that start as "skill" game and end up mesuring your wallet.
Your in the demographic that is not impacted by this change one way or the other (you don't care about legendary gear and you shouldn't care about bots either). At the same time, if you haven't leveled up artifacts to legendary then you aren't in a position to comment on this change. The current refining system for artifacts is horrible in every way possible. The availability of reasonably priced refining stacks is about the only thing that made the current system bearable.
Let me add to this that the game has been getting worse and worse from a playability standpoint. I don't care about bots. If a game is fun, I will play it. It is NOT excusable to make a game not fun, solely to fight bots. The solution, should NOT come at the legitimate players expense.
Why would players do content over and over?
In the early days, CN let you farm gear that could be sold for a decent profit to make AD. So either content is fun or there is a clear earnings potential from it.
VT,MC and LoL,Shores essentially were "fun" to run at first, but how many times can you run the same thing without getting bored? Can they be run for profit? Well, not really. There are some items that can drop that sell for a nice sum, but the drop rate is so low that you can run them 500 times and never see a drop. In my book, that makes it unfarmable. So after it loses it's entertainment value, why would someone want to keep running these?
So, you buy botted items, increase your GS and then complain bad playability because you are too powerfull AND had to dish out large amounts of AD AND had to do the tedious refining designed to do in a year within one day, right?
They must be doing a lot of stuff right as you are still sticking around and endure the work that is forced by PWE upon you.
As someone who is starting up a commercial strategy company - it is certainly not lost to me _at all_ that this is a business first and foremost. They want us to spend money because it's their goal to turn profits. PWE is listed on NASDAQ - meaning it is their fiduciary duty to increase shareholder value. I get this completely!
However, once a game becomes too grindy and/or too expensive, they won't be able to compete with the large amount of games out there. Companies that are successful often do so by treating their customers well. By inspiring loyalty from the customer base, you get them to be repeat customers and to keep on coming back and spending more and more money. This is good tried and true strategy.
This change is instead saying "we don't care about treating you well, we care about killing the bots." Sure, they have a good reason for bot killing - no one is disputing this, but by making things more and more unpleaseant for the player base they are instead inspiring customer anger. This will lead to:
People in the game spending less money out of spite
People leaving the game out of anger/frustration
People moving to playing other games (good ones exist)
People doing other things than gaming.
Now there will of course always be some whales who will spend thousands of dollars to get BIS gear and go PvP - sure these people exist - but they are in the minority. Even if this move appears to make short term profits, turning your customer base against you is economic suicide.
I am not only concerned about the players, but also the health of the game and the company. If enough people leave or stop spending, then they will have to make even less content or shut it down. This is the opposite of what i would like to happen.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
yes, 15% of people don't mind the change, but 80% of people do. 80% is huge!
Of course, i would love to find a way to make the botters look silly. I know that is their intent, but the bots is there because of demand. the demand is no human is actually willing (or would even want to) run enough foundries to get the RP they require. If they did this change AND coupled with a legit way to make RP - say RP from dungeons that wasn't BtA - then we could either:
a) farm RP by playing the game
or
b) Buy RP from the AH that was made by an actual person.
The bots are there because the RP requirements for legendary are unreasonable to make yourself. If RP was a boss drop, and at a good rate, we wouldn't have this problem.
Also, there are many other good ideas, such as changing RP from EXP, or lowering RP requirements, or glory for RP, etc... any of these ideas (or all of them) would compensate for this change.
However making everything BtA without something else is just making RP farming completely unpalatable. That is the actual problem.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
So, you buy botted items, increase your GS and then complain bad playability because you are too powerfull AND had to dish out large amounts of AD AND had to do the tedious refining designed to do in a year within one day, right?
They must be doing a lot of stuff right as you are still sticking around and endure the work that is forced by PWE upon you.[/QUOTE]
If the time ratio to progression becomes to imbalanced what the hell is the point? Most people keep playing an MMO because of reasonable progression. If they dont feel like their hours of work accomplished enough they will not play it. If I play 2 hours a day with 5% worth of horde enchantments and average about 10k artifact RP it would take me 300000 days to get ONE!, just ONE artifact to legendary (300000 is significantly more than the 365 days in a year). This is my average, sometimes I get lucky and get more but sometimes I have gone days without more than 500. Or I could give Cryptic a good chunk of most people's rent budget for 1 legendary artifact (around $600). GS is simply a way to measure progression, thus it should see reasonable advancement for actually playing the game.
Good post! +1
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
But see that's the problem. This game isn't in beta. This game has been out for YEARS now. They still haven't created tier 3 dungeons with scaled rewards. ALL their content has been catering to solo players who have 12k GS. Heroic encounters and dailies. They need to find a good balance.
Lol, fair enough man. Sadly, i am not quite as rich as Tony Stark and my ego isn't quite that big, but remember he is human too! He uses his resources and name to (eventually) do right by the world.
I suppose i am trying to do the same thing, but in a much much smaller way.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
> Allow game to be botted and spammed a high amount
> Ruin the economy twice. One in which it took MONTHS to 'fix'
> Ignore bugs for many many months
> Have the worst balance of any high profiled game
> Have the worst matchmaking of any popular competitive game
> Visual bugs going unfixed
> Worst refining system ever which succeeded an interface which was simpler and less cluttered.
> Make it practically impossible to compete for free with those that... you know
> Neglect the foundry, one of the games selling points practically while at the same time, later advertising the rewards even though the high end ones are almost impossible due to bugs.
> The most repetitive and dull solo content post level 60
> Barely test what they release
> Turn a rewarding game into something that became unrewarding
> Who wants a green artifact, only $60! (promotion)
> Gear updates that are almost all badly designed apart from the
> I want to force feed that yeti companion
> We value you, here's a sale! loljk <emoticon>
> Here get this totally exclusive piece that we'll make more readily available in future.
Remind me of the 'lot of stuff' they're doing right again since the game came out of beta? If I wasn't close to almost passively making 10m AD per month I would've given up. I'm not staying because they're doing something right. They initially did something pretty well right and then flushed it.
I may have turned a little bitter towards the game, but they wasted potential and screwed the ones supporting them. Pretending they're doing a good job gets me going...
This is how I feel. It can't continue down this path much longer.
Leadership data entry?
Yes. It's a lot of work on a lot of characters that has taken so long on a constant wip (with breaks between expansion) but I'm fairly close to getting there and am already making a decent amount. Though I blew a huge investment too. #whydidibuy14gondmountsfor3millionad. Still I don't make enough playing anymore so had to resort to it. I started low and expanded.
I don't understand. If you are playing the game for the "rewards", you know that you will eventually run out of possible rewards, right? And then you will quit playing. You will only play so long as Cryptic dangles a carrot in front of you, so why should they take your pleas for a shorter stick seriously? The threat to quit? You WILL quit when you are all best in slot.
I play for fun. When the game starts to feel like a job, like a grind, I quit and play a different game. There are a thousand of them out there. And I don't make a big deal about it, because I can see other people are still having fun.
Some of the posters in this thread have complained about the time they already "invested" in this game. But, you weren't investing your time, you were spending it, you were being entertained by PWE at THEIR expense. Beats watching Big Bang Theory reruns, am I right? And furthermore, "sunk costs" are a logical fallacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs
Anyway, let's give the new module a couple weeks and see how things shake out. There are other changes besides this one and I don't believe you can get the big picture view from the preview shard.
Nope. Not if this game had lots of PVP modes and maps, difficult dungeons with BOE loot, rewarding ACTUAL raids, guild vs guild content etc.....in summary end game content.
Also, you realize that Castle Never always gave the same possible reward back then but people didn't get bored of it.