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THE411 on NeverWinter "pay2win"
Shazzel
Member Posts: 472
Just like in any other F2P MMORPG, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding Neverwinter's Zen shop. I will try to shed some light on the current state of Neverwinter's F2P model by assuming a neutral stance. I hope this helps when you formulate some of your own opinions about this game.
1. Introduction
There are three immediate currency types in Neverwinter: Gold, Astral Diamonds, and Zen. Gold is obatained through normal means and buys the general necessities to play this game such as potions, basic profession items, basic mounts, and basic companions. Astral Diamonds are obtained through special tasks such as special daily quests, skirmish events, invoking your deity, and the Leadership profession. It buys a wide variety items ranging from Identify Scrolls to rare companions to mid-level gear. It is also the only currency usable in the Auction House. Zen is obtained through paying money. It buys many luxuries that helps give paying players a better experience overall. It may also be traded for Astral Diamonds and vice versa. For simplicity's sake, I will list the price of items in terms of USD instead of Zen.
2. Mounts
As a non-paying player of Neverwinter, you get three tokens at level 20 for a standard 50% speed horse that lasts for 5 hours. These horses can also be bought for 5 gold which is entirely manageable. To get a faster mount, you can buy Mount Training which upgrades any horse you own to 80% for 768,000 Astral Diamonds and 110% for 2,064,000 Astral Diamonds. This is progressive so you must buy them in order.
If you decide to drop some Zen for some fancier mounts, a standard 50% mount goes for 5-8 dollars, a rare 80% mount goes for 20-30 dollars, and an epic 110% mount goes for 30-40 dollars. The more expensive mounts of their respective tier has a unique model, such as the Worg and the Howler.
3. Inventory Space
You get a free bag at approximately level 10 and 30. They are 18 and 12 slots respectively. There are no craftable bags. For a free player, that means spending Astral Diamonds to buy extra inventory space. A 12 slot bag costs 6 dollars and a 24 slot bag costs 10 dollars.
A player starts out with 16 bank space. An extra 16 slots of bank space can be bought for 6 dollars.
4. Companions
Starting at level 16, a player is rewarded a free basic companion. These companions have two skills and have a rank cap of 15. An additional companion costs 2 gold each and may be switched anytime out of combat. All companions are disabled in PvP.
Zen buys a couple of companions which have a completely unique aesthetic. 15 dollars nets you an animal of your choice which have a rank cap of 15. 20 dollars hires a friend which has a rank cap of 20. 30-35 dollars gets you an epic quality pet that has a rank cap of 30 and three unique skills.
5. Professions
In Neverwinter, you gain Assets (workers) to do the work for you. Every profession starts you off with the most basic type of worker. You can have them do various amount of tasks on top of hiring more workers. Eventually you can combine 4 workers into an upgraded worker which allows you to tackle harder tasks. On top of these worker Assets, there are also tools Assets. These can be bought for 50s-1g each and have an 8% quality boost. Crafted items have a total of 4 slots for tools and 3 tiers for bonuses that is reached at 100% each.
In the Zen Shop, two different Profession packs exist: Professions Booster Pack and Professions Assets Pack. In the Booster Pack, there is 1 random (both quality and type) worker and random assortments of crafting items. In the Asset pack, there are 1 Purple or Blue Asset, 2 Purple Blue or Green Asset, 1 blue or green Asset and 1 green Asset (for a total of 5 guaranteed Assets). Any player may make any item, but paying customers will get an upwards of 20% stat increase on their crafted equipment.
6. Character
You can make up to 2 characters. Two additional character slots may be purchased for 5 dollars. You may also rename your character for 4 dollars.
Respeccing your skills costs 6 dollars. Respeccing your Feats costs Astral Diamonds determined by your current level.
7. Runes
If nothing else, please read this part. This is potentially their biggest cash grab scheme and everyone should know how it works.
Players are given the option to add additional stats/effects to their equipment in Neverwinter. These come in the forms of Runestones (pets) and Enchantments (Armor/Weapon). For pets, the Runestones are split into Offense and Defense. For Enchantments, they are split into Offense, Utility, and Defense. A single Runestone/Enchantment provides different bonuses depending on which slot there are equipped to. These also have ranks and start from 1 and ends at 9. Four of the same kind may also fuse to move up a tier. The chance of success starts at 95% at rank 1 and 10% at rank 8. You will lose a single Runestone/Enchantment upon failure.
There are two ways to circumvent failure: Preservation Ward and Coalescent Ward. Preservation Wards cost 10 cents each and prevent the loss of materials upon failure. They are also only consumed upon failure. Coalescent Wards cost 10 dollars and guarantees success of fusion. Both these wards may also be obtained on a weekly basis through Celestial Coins (the latter being rarer). Now you may be wondering why there's a huge discrepancy between the two Wards. I was wondering for a while too until I stepped my foot into endgame and found out there was an entirely different type of Enchantments: The Armor/Weapon Enchantments.
Armor/Weapon Enchantments are for specific slots in your weapon/chest and grant special effects. They come in shards and have a chance to drop from Epic Dungeon bosses. You must combine 4 shards to create a Lesser version of the Enchantment. However, the success chance of fusion is at a staggeringly low 1%. To compensate, they have very strong effects. An example would be the Thunderhead Enchantment. However, the real kicker here is that these "Lesser" versions may be fused again to gain a stronger version. Those may also be fused again to create the strongest version. Ultimately, the Greater Thunderhead Enchantment will have a 30% on crit to damage and stun foes. To create the strongest Enchantment possible, it will cost 160 dollars and 64 shards. Unlike companions, these can be used in PvP.
8. Conclusion
Cryptic wasn't lying when they said this game was 100% F2P. I have done all content on a GF and a DC without fancy Enchantments or Scrolls of Mass Life. However, I fear that a few weeks down the road, players who have paid vast amounts of money will have an incredibly unfair advantage in PvP, including the Gauntlgrym content they have yet to release. And while it is true that you can always buy Zen with Astral Diamonds, simply doing quests/professions/skirmishes is nowhere enough to realistically sustain yourself. I have tried and it is far too difficult to reach 24,000 rough astral diamonds on a daily basis. On Mindflayer, it currently costs 435,000 Astral Diamonds for 10 dollars worth of Zen. I'm sure the market will stabilize soon, but even then it will take non-paying players to take upwards of two weeks to upgrade a single Enchantment.
Thanks to GreenSix, ziddy1232, fcalife, Kesshisan, and sneakycheeses and written by Tadders
TL;DR
You can get everything without paying money into the system mostly. But it's GROSSLY more convenient to pay in. Be Prepared to spend 250-500$.
Comments
Oh my.. I truely am fed up of correcting people on this enchant upgrade and crafting qaulity issue they 'think' there is.
All the items needed for these things can be earned through invocation. The items are also on the AH constantly at very affordable prices.
So.. you can either buy them with Zen bought with real money, invocate and get them from time to time at no cost at all (no ingame or real currency), buy the ones on the AH with Astral Diamonds or exchange Astral Diamonds for Zen to buy them.
If three ways of getting them without paying real money isn't enough then I don't really know what you want...
More conventient to pay.
Work for 30 cents per hour for 30-40 days to get bags, or 2 mins with a credit card... gee I dunno.
Did I say anything about bags?
I will if you want though...
You can create an unlimited amount of free accounts and mail your items for free to those characters and use them as mules. There, problem solved.
Or.. mail your items to yourself and leave them in the mailbox until you need them.
Or we could stop buying into this F2P crap and pony up a mesly 15 per month and get everthing a game has to offer but ohh thats right, we would rather grind endlessly to play a game for free or fire up an "unlimited number of free accounts" to get by, that sounds convienent as well. The more threads I read like this the more in soidifies how completely screwed up F2P games for anyone other than the developers.
You are basicly agree'ing with the article, you can get everything for free, but its VASTLY faster/easier to attain with a credit card. The average Joe will want bags and bank slots, not the mailbox run-around.
A few minutes to set up some accounts and few seconds to switch between them is a small price to pay.. if you don't want to pay.
I'd rather have a subscription game as well. I also don't do that with other accounts.. because there isn't a need to unless you are some sort of hoarder.
The article says be prepared to spend $250-$500.
I just explained why people shouldn't be prepared to spend that.
One one hand it's a fact that you can grind Astral Diamonds to get everything in-game. It may take an excessively long time (if we assume the AD/Zen exchange rate settles to the halfway point like it did for Dilithium/Zen in STO or Questionite/Zen in CO, one year just to upgrade a single weapon if you don't buy anything else), but that option is still there.
On the other hand there's nothing laudable about exploiting people's impatience and poor money management by imposing such long grinding cycles and high prices in the cash store.
I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with pointing out that something is exploitative, even if the people who are being exploited are doing so willingly.
if a cash shop sells 100 items where 5 of them are pay to win and are needed in order to have better gear. The company will not starve if they remove the 5 pay to win items and sell the other 95 items over and over and over.
This kind of comment are the most idiotic in history. No offense to you, but to every comment like this one that come out.
same here. I dont do pvp. Also, having the best gear makes the game easy and boring. I stick to the low rank enchantments and make my game challenging and fun. When i pay cash shop is only for convenience. Not for enchants or those garbages to increase success rate.
But where is your proof of anything of the sort?
proof of what? If the game is good they company doesnt need to offer pay to win items to keep the game afloat. Convenience is more than enough as long as people actually like the game. IM not complaining about the enchantments, i speak in general for all mmos.
This ^^
Short-term cash grab game, which makes no sense considering the IP [D&D and Neverwinter].
Typical Perfect World P2W game, they really blew it on this one because the game seems fairly fun and a league of legends/PoE model would have earned them more than some short-term cash with no retention.
The game is surprisingly good. Its shame its going to be ruined by f2p money grab
Pay or Grind , you are right.
But I suspect they will soon adjust drop rate on those scrolls, and people will hit brick wall, with many item drops but almost no scroll drops.
Perfect way for PW to extort more money
hallo ~_~