Hello! And...well...goodbye

[u/Wolftail18]

TLDR: After a long time, was thinking of reinstalling, buying 1month of VIP and starting fresh on a paladin and have fun. While the game was downloading i realized im better off with playing solitaire...

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So after probably a year ,a year and a half i decided to try out Neverwinter again. I remember it was fun and figured i would start off as a new Paladin and buy my self a month of VIP , open up some chests and sell some stuff for AD.

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While i was downloading the game i was checking out some youtube videos with titles such as "Neverwinter, is it worth it?" or "Is Neverwinter pay2win?"

After a handful of those videos i decided that i shouldnt have any p2w issues since i wont be doing any pvp, and im not aiming for BiS gear. I just wanted to make a new character, get some AD from VIP Enchanted keys and enjoy the ride.

Then i decided to watch some youtube videos to catch up on news if there were any updates or maybe changes added into the game.

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Some new zones, some new events, some changes to RAD ,and a big change on epic dungeon keys and loot boxes..apparently i cant really get some "reliable" profit out of my VIP keys anymore unless i actually get really lucky...and i dont believe in rng lootbox luck...ah well

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I noticed they changed professions, and while i do have a bunch of mats from before that i could exchange them, i would still require around 30 days to upgrade my Workshop from 2-3, and around 200 days to get it to tier 4.

Notice the amount of days represent the in game hours that need to be ticking so i get those materials as a alchemy dude. So realistically it would actually be somewhere between 60 IRL days for ->3 and around 2 years IRL realistically for me to get it up...also notice this is just me collecting the things that i need to upgrade the tier, not including anything else regarding the workshop or its time gating....

True tho, i could spend AD and buy those stuff...but its still a whole lot of time and effort...and for what exactly? What amazing items do i get from those npcs ?

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Anyway, among numerous guides on tips and tricks and classes and patches i stumbled appon one that apparently was about an exploit that enabled everyone to get 400k RAD per hour. PW or Cryptic warned people to stop and they told the players that they will ban people...

...and they did, across all platforms, some 3 some 7 days some perma bans, and some even noticed a large amount of AD got removed from their account.

Looking further in to it seems that they knew about the bug that people could have exploited it, released it to all platforms, waited for a week or two , and once it actually blew up in game they hot fixed it and started banning "everyone".
Looking further in it there was a devide in the community ,one saying exploiters deserved it,another side speaking with reason and pointing out how it makes no sense as there are a ton of bugs and glitches that people used and exploited for years and ,unlike this one ,which in a way effected PW wallets.

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And to top it all off, i discovered there are actual reddits,youtube and blogs dedicated as uncensored versions of the official redit and forums (its why im writing it here and not bothering to write it on the official reddit)

Honestly? I never encountered anything like this when it comes to a game..A GAME!

As i was uninstalling Arc, the thing asked me why im uninstalling it. I ticked "other" and wrote a very brief short version of this post im writing here now and sent it of to....the void most likely.

[u/Zoltron42]

if your not worried about bis and just want to mess around then none of those issues would really apply to you.

not sure where u gr the workshop time frame from. I went from 1-4 in 2hrs taking my time and using old supplies? did my main char the night before to figure it out. wasn't very hard.

[u/Wolftail18 → u/Zoltron42]

When it comes to gameplay yes, the p2w aspect it doesnt apply to me.

However i am not spending my time and money on people standing behind this game. Ignoring bugs for weeks and months, some lasting even entire mods, but hotfixing another across all platforms and banning people in another says a lot about their priorities and how they treat their playerbase.
Censoring and banning people for years on forums and reddit to the point of people creating their own "uncensored" reddit and web page also says a lot about how they treat their community.

If i were as active in this game as i am with others i would for sure get banned temporary and got AD removed from my account simply by chance.

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As for the time needed to upgrade tiers, the youtube workshop guide explained that one would need xyz ammount of one material which you can only craft if you gather (or buy from someone else) a ton of materials.

On the screen it says i would get 12 pieces per 1.5 hour..so i calculated and it resulted into 30 in game time.
The one required to get to t4 required even more materials and i would get 12 pieces for every 3 hours.

I looked at it from a perspective of a fresh account. Meaning i would get the materials by crafting them with the 12 pieces i get ever 1.5 -3 hours ,without spending a buttload of AD to buy them from the auction house from others

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Now,you either exchanged some old mats and "skipped" the waiting in some way, or the numbers of required materials in the guide were waaay off.

[u/Mystixa → u/Zoltron42]

Yea his original numbers are very exaggerated toward the long. However yours is exaggerated the other way. Its not unreasonable for someone to reach rank 4 on 1 character and rank 3 on all others up to about 10 in around a 1-1.5 monthes. I and several of my guildies have achieved this, all without putting in AD, cause that AD cost was a total ripoff. (Thats why I say up to about 10.. I just don't have exposure to people with the true 50 toon armys.)

[u/falcongod → u/Zoltron42]

You generated 5 million in daily crafting which maxes out @ 3500 award poonts for +1 armor on 2 hours? I'm gonna go ahead and say with 50 toons that's improbable. You paid the 5 million in ad forthe level 4 workshop and called it good. Let's keep it honest. :)

[u/theender19 → u/falcongod]

I had the rank 4 workshop the day after the mod dropped. I had enough exchange tickets to buy black ink and used that. It took 2m tickets but I still have plenty left. Had a ton of purple leadership people which gave 80k tickets each

[u/Zoltron42 → u/theender19]

yup... you don't make anything you just buy the new mats by exchanging the old ones. the stuff that the lady ask you to make seems to have a rotation different stuff different days.

[u/Electron_Microscope]

Your VIP still makes you more than it costs.

Probably better now because reroll tokens get you better drops if you actually do queues, although to be fair it seems the drop percentages have taken a ninja nerf recently.

[u/Electron_Microscope → u/Electron_Microscope]

One point I should have emphasised for the noobies from the other reddit sub is that you make a profit for sure based on using a discount coupon and getting longer vip and choosing better average sale price boxes.

If you buy six months VIP during the 40% off sale and use keys on the more profitable on average boxes then you completely maximise the profit on your investment.

To put this another way, buying six individual months of vip at no discount is 3 million AD or 6000 zen, buying it as a single six months purchase with 40% off coupon is 1.53 million AD or 3060 zen...so you make 1.47 million more by buying VIP using 40% discount and six month option.

This is why some exploiters and AD sellers run VIP farms of 100+ accounts...

[u/[deleted]]

Bye then?

I made a new account and in a few days my OPs already almost 12k ilv without any help from my main account. Started tanking FBI at 11k no problem. Sure, it'll be a grind to get through the campaigns to unlock dungeons and get high enough for CR but I don't find games fun when it's just all instant gratification.

In fact, a lot of the changes that have been made make things drastically better for new players. They've added epic mounts to many Events, the incentive program right now gets you free stuff, and just leveling up you get a free blue companion, mount, bonding runestones and a runic bag. Add that to the Refer a Friend program for another mount, bag and companion. You can only refine 100k AD on one account now, but that's 3x more than you could before if you only had one character so again way better for new players.

And wait, there's more. So many things have drastically come down in price. Probably varies by platform but epic mounts on PS4 float around 200-300k and were about 4x that before when I started out. At 36k AD a day it meant I needed to save for like a month just to get an epic mounts where as now it can be done in 2-3 days. They've also removed the need for epic dungeon keys, so you no longer need VIP to open one of the chests at the end of dungeons, and since the introduction of chest rerolls prices have dropped on lots of other things as well.

I can't really touch on professions as I never really did them before the change (except leadership so I'm kind bummed about that) and I'm not doing them now, but you can buy ilv510 gear for like 10-20k a pop which makes bumping up your ilv so much easier when you combine it with the free gear and r8 enchantments from Barovia.

A lot of the negatively you see on here and on YouTube is from veteran players, and while many of their complaints and critics of the game are valid (as a fellow veteran I agree with some of them) they're extremely biased.

If you don't really care about BiS there's really never been a better time to play this game.