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Never have to use money
Arcona
Member UncommonPosts: 1,182
in Neverwinter
You earn astral diamonds in game reguarly, and sell items on auction to get astral diamonds.
Astral Diamonds can be exhanged into Zen. Click on Astral Diamond Exchange at top of screen..
Then you make a offer how much you will pay for each Zen
So if you sell a few items on auction, you never have to use any money!
Crafting materials will probably sell very easily on auction.
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Thats the best part of the game.
They will end up balancing it.
The spot they want to hit is where you COULD play for free but would not want to if you only play casually.
They DO have to earn money, and that is the balance any f2p game needs to hit to earn anything.
exactly, there is no way they will let what will likely be one of there chief money makers so easy to aquire 'for free' in game.
take the 'its beta, things change' mantra to heart on this one.
Just look at STO and how it works there. It's pretty much same system. Yes, in theory you can grind your butt for ZEN like there is no tomorrow but it won't be easy nor fast. Also, keep in mind Astral DIamon go up pretty much exponentialy so the higher level stuff you want the more expensive it will be (going into millions of ADs) and some things will be ZEN exclusive.
If really true, then the developers have done something wrong, unless having freeloaders is somehow a benefit to the cash paying customers (the role of "victim" comes to mind)
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But 'regularly' doesn't necessarily mean 'frequently' enough to stay away from the cash shop.
Granted, with planning and dedication and determination, you are right. But I bet only the players with a lot of time devoted to game economics can pull this off.
I highly doubt however that the game is designed in such a way that you are not incentivized to go to the cash shop.
I agree, it is technically possible, but whether it turns out to be such an easy work around that we can all take advantage.....well how would the game stay afloat?
There is plenty of benefit from freeloaders for paying customers. It creates market environtment, it creates grouping opportunities, it makes world feel less empty, more peopel to both test and create Foundry content, more pople in PvP, more people gathering and selling crafting materials, constant flow of fresh blood, etc.
If you limit the freeloading gameplay too much people won't stick around. If theyd on't stick around the chances they ever pay you drop to next to 0 and same time the paying guys pool will shrink.
TERA did a great job at their F2P model and they managed to even increase their subscription paying numbers thanks to that.
Best way to earn lots of Astral Diamonds:
If you make a Foundry quest, the users can tip you a few Astral Diamonds.
So if your quest is a little popular you will earn real money
It seems that the cache of currency the Founders get as part of their deal will be more than enough to instantly inflate the economy when the game launches. Normally when a game launches, the playing field is pretty even and everyone can earn enough in game to stay equiped, do some crafting, etc... Depending on how many founders there are, that may not really be possible, which will likely result in cash purchases of currency by a number of players pretty early on after release.
Maybe it will all work out, but I have to admit I was baffled by the fact they they would decide to instantly inflate the economy by including a fairly vast sum as bonus incentive for founders.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
How much do they get? 750k Astral DIamonds? Funnily enough it's not that much. The cheapest of useful things you can buy with those are ID scrolls that are for 800 AD a pop. You don't really have much use of AH early on as well other than trying to sell stuff with hope of whales buying them. First mount you buy for in game gold.
Previous beta I played until 36 level and the only thing I spent AD on was renaming my henchie.
I really doubt that they worked for years on this game just to hand it to players for free . Unless they have machines working for them who don't need salaries.
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i see, that many people didn't played PW's games before.
i was in some of their betas, and they give tons of the CS currency to players to check and get hooked to their shop.
take my advice! wait for the release...yeah, in all of their games you can buy anything from the CS items from AH, but it's so, so, so hard to get that ingame currency to buy the desired item, cus the CS items have huge values...
also be sure, that the ratios of earning ADs will be droped down!
Founder's packs have been updated with additional items and more Astral diamonds as well.
Now it's 2 mil. AD for Hero of the North package and 600k AD for Guardian package.
Update link
That's nic eo fthem, but still makes me admire their cunning. They do give ADs instead ZEN, which means there won't be loads of ZEN on the exchange market to begin with and people will stiill have to spend real money to get soem ZEN exclusive stuff.
I thought that the primary arguement against 'never have to use money' was that the AD you got in general were 'rough'.
You had to refine them and there would be a limit to how many you could do daily.
(With the general feeling of most folks being that the limit would make the high end stuff like rare mounts, pets etc take days, weeks etc?)
Has that changed or did I misunderstand something?
Same thing was said during GW2 beta...yet I havent had to spend a penny on anything except Mini's which I just plain WANTED to have just to have, I didnt HAVE TO HAVE to progress in the game nor did they give me an advatage over anyone.
As for the diamonds, yes, they will be easy to get after release...do you think they placed the price on so many things in game because they think everyone is going to drop $30+ a month to get basic items? No, they will be trying to get a small portion of the playerbase to spend $5 a month.
If they can get 200,000 people to spend $5 a month it would equal having 66,666 subscribers at 15 a month which would place it over Champions or City of Heroes in terms of money made.
This is something they can easily do if they make a ton of really nice vanitey items like pets, mounts, costumes and other non-power items.
I doubt it is as easy as it seems at first and even if it is this is going to siply end up as a balance issue that is worked out quickly after release for the reasons you state.
The best of all is that if you become a dungeon creator and make something great that a lot of people like, they'll donate Astral Diamonds so you keep the good work up. And then you'll really not have to spend half a penny to get everything the game has to offer.
It's an awesome incentive for people to make quality stuff for others to play.
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Have you ever played a pw game? If we use every other pw game released along with PWs f2p conversion of STO there will be power items in this cash shop. And pw charges some insane prices for their stuff as well.
I'm gonna use STO as my example because these game have so much in common. Both seem to use a heavily modified version of the Champions Online engine. Astral Diamonds= Dilithum Ore. And both have the foundry for user created missions and both allow you to tip the creator.
Now in STO there are a ton of missions and stuff that let you earn dilithum from a simple daily mining mission thats just a mini-game, fleet actions, pvp daily quests, even completing foundry missions in sto gives you dilithum (the first spotlight foundry mission you do each day even gives a large bonus of dilithum). The 'problem' is not that dilithum is hard to come by in STO its the dilithum is worthless until its refined. Refining dilithum ore is a button click in your 'bag', however each character is hard capped at refining 8k dilithum per day.
When leveling in STO dilithum is neither needed nor is it even a focus of the game. However once you hit max level dilithum becomes the currency that is required for almost everything. Outside of the fleet ships the best ships are cash shop exclusives most cost about 2500 zen or 25$. Most cash shop ships have consoles that can be put on other ships so there are ships (there like gear for your ship with special abilitys if you don't play sto) that you will want to buy just for a console. Now lately Cryptic has been favoring releasing 3 versions of the same ships all with their own unique console, and when you have all 3 version of the console on the same ship you get a set bonus.
Now Cryptic has found it in their heart to allow us the option of buying all 3 for 5000 zen or 50$ as a pack or you can pay 7500 zen or 75 dollars to buy all 3 seperately.
Right now the exchange rate for dilithum or is currently going at 90-100 dilithum ore per zen. On an average If exchanging my ore for zen I can get about 84-90 zen per character per day with the dilithum cap (alts do make it easier as they have their own sepearate refining cap). However I can't just put all my ore into zen because at max level EVERYTHING outside of the auction house has atleast some form of refined dilithum in its costs. And I'm not talking about a little costs I'm talking about 15k for an engine. New reputations have their own stores, each item in there stores has a dilithum costs just to unlock the option for buying it in the store. I payed 2k dilithum and some other items to unlock a romulan rifle, it then cost another 10k dilithum to buy said rifle from the store. In the future i will want more of the rifles/ other guns for my away team members.
Almost everything end game in STO is a dilithum sink. If its not a dilithum sink its a cash shop exclusive like lock box keys. Lock boxes have a chance to get a exclusive 'rare' and powerful ship.
The point of this book is Neverwinter is made by pw/cryptic just like STO. The above cash shop for STO has been succesfull enough that the game is regularly getting content updates. Along with a new expansion comming in may with a whole new faction. There is no reason to think Cryptic won't be using a similar cash shop strategy for neverwinter, the groundwork is already there in the astral diamonds. And this cash shop strategy isn't really anything like GW2 outside of the fact the GW2 allows you to exchange gems for gold.