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Developer Blog: Celestial Stag
nitocris83
Member, Cryptic Developer, Administrator Posts: 4,498Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
One of the items in the upcoming Shroud of Souls lockbox is the new Celestial Stag mount. This new Dev Blogs shows the work that went into creating this mount, specifically from a visual effects point of view.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/10472803
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/10472803
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I'm sure some are going to complain about the stat's, but like the Tensers Disk the look for the mount will be it's main selling point. It's to bad I will probably never be able to get one.
Anthony did a great job on the design and effects on the mount!
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Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
That might very well have been the only new mount they added for Zen in an entire year, and while I do see some folks riding it, I think it was dreadfully boring.
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Reminds one of the Marvel comics character "Eternity".
Edit:
And dittos to what has already been said. This is (yet another) missed opportunity.
I would throw cash money at you TODAY to buy this from the zen store, but little/none to gamble for an RNG-chance-in-hell of getting it with 100 keys.
Ya gotta mix it up a bit. Something new and fresh in both boxes and Zen store.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
But yeah, it looks good.
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
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A few suggestions for the mount designers, so they don't run out of ideas
1) Magic flying carpet
2) Undergound creature (a worm, or some sort of submarine) which partially submerges when travelling.
3) Frog
4) Grasshopper/Mantis
5) Seahorse
6) Dolphin
For a looong time, Legendary mounts offered no other benefits than a different skin, but players kept buying keys, and coveting the "new" mount even if they had other Legendary and Epic mounts.
I really think a Legendary Zen-store mount with a decent combat power/equip power would sell like crazy, and not cannibalize enchanted key revenue measureably.
One thing I've thought of is maybe having legendary mounts on a delay, like the glorious resurgence lockbox, for the zen store. That way it's still an exclusive for the lockbox for some time but once it makes it into the glorious resurgence, also have it available in the zen store. The only thing I can't make up my mind on is how I would price it. Would all legendaries have the same price, would they differ as they got older, what would a fair but still revenue generating price be?
@nitocris83 well, I see a few ways:
- "Fashion" mounts, so you can buy the aspect of the mount only. As this doesn't affect gameplay they could even be sold for real money directly.
- Bound to account mounts (cheaper at trade bar store), so you can get them for yourself but you can't speculate with them (that's why they are cheaper).
- Auto adjusted price. Everytime someone buys a mount its price goes up and every other mount goes down. I do think the same way, something like 6 months exclusivity could be fine or even if the last, or two last mounts only appear at lockboxes, and when a new one is added to a new lockbox then the older lockbox one moves to the store.
Price is a good question, right now it's 500/2000/3500 so the progression would call for 5000 zens. Of course, you get double value for the equip power and a mount effect too, so probably it should be more expensive, something 7000/8000 zens.
As there are good mount powers/effects even 10K zens looks fine, but we must remember that there are "not so good" mount powers/effects where even 7000 zens looks expensive. That's the reason I do like auto adjusting prices so the most demanded mounts are more expensive, and the least loved one get cheaper and cheaper.
(Added later)
The above price is for full mounts, so fashion only mounts should be cheaper than those prices.
they should not be discounted ever tho.
by the way i would prefer keeping them in lockboxes only but fixing a cap price when selling them in AH. No mounts should sell for more than 8M (personal thought)
I know legendary mounts used to be 5 million AD, but then the mount powers and stuff got added so i don't think that could be a fair argument for why the legenday mount price could go lower. Cryptic in this case has a lot better idea than we do of the economics of where a fairly priced legendary mount should be at since they control the only source of them (lockboxes) and lockbox keys are one of Cryptic's primary revenue streams.
I am honestly surprised that Cryptic released the other zen mounts as dungeon chest drops, even if rarely, because they were (IMO) a good source of revenue that they suddenly cut off at the knees. I mean, it is possible that the zen store is still doing fine for mount sales, that is another thing i'll never know I guess, but it still seems silly.
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10-15K Zen is (probably) reasonable, I would also consider buying just a speed increase, like the old mount upgrades from back in the day...
Hence, a 30m AD/60k Zen ultra-rare drop from a lockbox will be devalued for a Zen store equivalent of 2.5mAD/5k Zen? 5mAD/ 10k zen? And many are coveting for an account-bound version too. This is all an excessively unreasonable and unfair devaluation.
Not only that, this also effectively devalues and destroys the market for Lockbox Keys as well, since the chase drop will be now worth, say 10k Zen or 5m AD.
Players with hilarious amounts of accumulated wealth can buy these items without spending real money, hell, I'd gladly by an account-wide Tensers for 150k Zen, but that is far from a reasonable price for most.
Legendary mounts in Zen-store would put the AH pricing at a more realistic level, and in no way would it destroy the lockbox revenue, as players will always be chasing the "new" stuff...
Now some of you putted suggested prices for legendary mounts for a zen store. Thats not that easy. If all mounts gona be put to the store I wont be suprised that just w few of those are really wanted - Tenser, Lion, Black Ice - and rest wont be even taken into consideration by most of players. Cos some of those mounts are simply better (better combat power/bonus/insignia configuration/or a look). You can see it right now on AH. Fixed price wont work here. Only solution I see is a new range of mounts having pretty similar bonuses. And even then - how to price them correctly? If such a mount gona be bind on pick up then 25-30k ZEN seems fair,but if such mount would be account wide? Every player have at least 2 character slots, most much more. That simply divides a price by amount of toons you have. So even of such a mount would cost 30k ZEN witch is 15kkAD for some players that mean 7,5kkAD per character, for other this could be even 1,5kk AD or even less. It's like you asking for legandary mounts to drop on every corner.
People still opened lockboxes. Key sales were still most certainly a good moneymaker for the game. The motivators of vanity and novelty are not to be underestimated. And now, by varying the insignias and powers on mounts, they have all the more ways to diversify them to make a single-use mount objectively better than an account one even though it offers less utility for the player.
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