Ridiculous Stronghold Costs

[Tigax]

The necessary components for strongholds are outrageous and prohibitive. I get that they are busy making new content and far more concerned with that than fixing the 11 broken (and inaccessible) dungeons, or fixing the devestated economy. Yeah, I know, they fixed the price of marks (which no one in their right mind would buy anyway) . But they didn't fix the huge price of profession upgrades, hireling upgrades, etc. And if the broken dungeons are any indication, they never will fix it.

So a guild trying to build a stronghold is forced to spend years (literally real-time years), or an eternity for a casual guild (you know, people with lives, kids, jobs, more important things to do with their life than play neverwinter 20 hours on a weekend). It makes the whole "expansion" null. Of course, you Can go and spend money at $35 a pop to buy the things you need to get to build your stronghold, which i suppose is the point.

And this is why free to play games will always be here, they make waaaaaay more money than a subscription based game.

Makes me wonder if a sub based game wouldn't be better really, less cost for little to no restricitions, and none of the welfare cases clogging up the servers..

But I digress, people need to start complaining about the outrageous costs to build a stronghold.

[V4Victrix]

No one needs to complain about the outrageous cost of Strogholds, Stringholds was not intended for small Guilds. I am assuming you are a small guild. other wise you wouldn't be complaining. I am a member of Myrmidons and our guild is a 75 Active players strong... about 125 total on the books... and we have Guild Hall 9 and Market Place 4 (meaning we can buy all the Dragon Flight gear we want) and its hasnt been too hard. In fact we were at Guild Hall 5 in the first 3 weeks. I Have friends in small guilds with like 20 or less members and they are complaining about the same stuff you are... Strongholds was not intended for SMALL guilds, the intention was for people to group up in large numbers to create sub-communities... in other words you need to combine your guyild into another one or just join a bigger guild. We ahve had 3 guilds join us, bringing in numbers ranging from 7-20 players and everyone has benifitted. Think about joining a bigger guild and I promise you will have no complaints. Good luck

[Wolverine]

Vote with your wallet.

No one is forcing you to cough up cash to play the game, just spend your money somewhere else and keep NWO on a F2P basis, until the Devs give you good reasons to start spending money here again.

About Strongholds, there is no room for casuals and solo players in there, it's either be in a big guild, or no usefull Stronghold benefits for you.
And when you think about getting into a big guild, you might want to check out their "requirements" first... some of them are even demanding 3k IL characters.

To add some spice to the whole mess, there're stories going around from players, that were in a guild, donated a lot to the guild Stronghold, but one day just got kicked from the guild...
What happened?
It looks like the guild leader saw the opportunity to make some extra cash by selling his account for real money. And the new account owner started kicking members from that guild, the moment he took the over.
Some of those members even spend a lot of their own money to help the guild progress...

So you really should think twice about putting money into your guild... unless you're the guild leader.

Also take a look at the Steam Charts,
http://steamcharts.com/app/109600
they have lost more then 18% of their players in the last month.

And to those with hopes clinging to Underdark, the next new thing will probably be just another rushed and therefore bugged riddled module.

Btw. there are even plans on placing some of the new Underdark equipment into lockboxes or with the Trade Bars merchant.

[V4Victrix]

I would ignore the rumors that Ironshield is spouting.... they are rumors and nothing else. Give me proof. BTW I haven't put any money into this game since my first month in the game a year ago, and its EASY to make Astral Diamonds if you know what you are doing. Anybody who sya different needs to learn how to play the game. If you are looking to join a good and active guild that is a purely Social Guild, come look us up at MYRMIDON's we have NO item level requirement, just that your character is at minimum level 60 and that you are good perosn who can get along with others We have Guild Hall 9 and Market place 4 (so you can buy all the Dragon Flight gear you want) and we have our own TeamSpeak, though its not required for anyone to be on TS... in fact the only requirement we have in the Guild is to have fun by doing what YOU want to do, thats it. Everyone is very friendly and is willing to help you out getting your gear from the epic dungeons or just doing Dragon Flight runs. So once again, if you are looking for a stable, low key and relaxed guildcome join us, and oncfe you get in, just to allay any fears Ironshield might have stoked with his "rumor" mill, look at Guild Activity and see for yourselwf our record of people being kicked out or leaving... then decide if you want to saty or not. We have 75 Active members from all around the world ranging from North America to across Europe, so no matter what time of day or night you are on, you will have good people/friends to play with. Good luck :)

[Wolverine]

http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/1203612/stronghold-problem-what-if/p1
and guess what happened...
http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/1205873/we-need-more-protection-against-guilds-being-sold-or-leaders-going-mental/p1
there you go, i also doubt that this is the only case...

And you can get kicked out of any guild at any given time, which means you lose access to all the Stronghold benefits you "donated" real money or time into.

So much for "spouting rumors".

And i didn't quote you or named your guild in my whole post, but looks like you took it personal... any particular reason for that?

Btw. i'm curious, what is going to happen, when you reach the 150 accounts guild limit, but there're more players around, that would like to join your guild?
Sure you can start another quild with a new Stronghold, but who's going to build that one up to a usefull ranking?
Or what when it all boils down to sorting out and in the end kicking members?

About AD there is only
+ invoking
+ a few rare leadership tasks, that require certain resources and are on a rotation
+ dungeons/skirmish/pvp runs, with the possibility to salvage gear from it for extra rAD
+ a few weekly quests
to create rAD, and with a 24k AD limit per day and per character, you can calculate for yourself, how much time you have to invest now to make enough AD to progress.

To get AD through the AH, you need either a lot of loot luck in some way, or you have to grind your way through a profession to make something to sell.
And any AD you earn through the AH, has to be produced one way or the other from another player, AD doesn't just appear out of thin air.

Anyway, just saying be aware of those facts before you join any guild.

And about the part with Underdark Dusk equipment coming from lockboxes, go into the official NWO forums and read it up for yourself.

Here's a bit more about Underdark:
http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/1206392/mmo-play-underdark-interview/p1
and you can find more there:
http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/categories/neverwinterpreview-announcements-release-notes

[V4Victrix]

Ironshield, I am only saying you seem pretty negative, just because you have a few cases of terrible things doesnt meen that the greater majority of guilds are the same way... sounds like just few. So not a lot.

As to AD, there are many items you can farm, i.e. Dragon Bone weapons, Greater Refinement Stones (Marks of Union, Power, etc...on the weekends) from Dread Ring, Resonance stones from Well of Dragons (Dragon Runs many times a day)... Then there are the weekend events, farming Medalions, coins, bags of waukeen to name a few are easy things to sell for crazy amounts of AD for the amount of work put into getting them, the work being just to play the game. Another way is by Salvageing gear you get in Epics... and yes I did invest some of the AD i earned into buying Blue level Proffesionals to work my professions, Mail Smithing, PlateSmithing and Leather Working so that i could make shirts and pants to sell on the AH for EASY AD... EVERYONE should do that, its just smart and is a small start up cost for BIG rewards later. But most important, the best way to earn AD is to earn AD on Multiple characters. The game gives you 2 automatically and buying 2 more with AD which you transfer into ZEN is easier than ever. 4 Characters beieng the magic number and just by doing half the things on each toon even just on the weekends and you can earn LOTS of AD and then transfer it to whichever is your main character. So per day at minimum without selling stuff on the AH you could in theory make 24K on each 4 toons... thats 96k a day, times 7 days a week is 672,000 AD a week. ...and thats without doing the stuff i listed above like farming Resonance stones or Greater Marks of Union and Power in Dread Ring or special event weekneds to name a few or just selling the stuff i make via professions... Like I said pretty easy, but most people don't think out of the box and just do what is known.

Nothing against you Ironshield, but you just seem like a glass half empty kinda guy and rather unhappy with the game. Rather than look at the good things about the game you only focused on the negative... your posts being the example and you site a few instances that are terrible and hopefully nevber happen again, I agree with you... but there are far more good examples of good guilds suceeding and doing good than there are bad. I would rather focus on the positive, I am tired of the negative debby-downers constantly nay-sayng everything in this game. And trust me, I know, this game needs lots of work... better end game game-play and servers, etc... But if you are so unhappy with the game and don't like it, play something else. Its as if you are trying to convince me and the original poster that there is no hope for this game and that it is sooo terrible...BUT i disagree, my experience with this game has been for the most part: GOOD. I believe the greater portion of NWO is not as bad as you say it is, Guild-wise and game-wise. Just my opinion. I enjoy myself and am apart of a great guild. As to your question as to what happens after we reach the 150 player mark... then i guess we are full. It is not our responsibility to make a home for everyone looking to join a good guild, and some people may not even like our relaxed take on the game and thus would not want to join us anyways but I am sure there are other good guilds out there and hopefully they have room and not do anything terrible like the examples you shared. I guess in the end we will have to agree to disagree as I think we both have strong opinions on all these matters. My reality of the game is just different than yours.

[Wolverine]

I'm not negative, i only have a realistic view on the game.

And as you can see from the links, i'm not "spouting rumors", i just name the problems here.
In the case of the guild strongholds, i'm with that idea presented in those threads, that guild donations should be tied to the player accounts.
Players and guilds should be a two way road, and if a guild leader goes nuts or the account is compromised/sold, then the guild members should at least have the insurance of getting their donations back, if they get kicked out of that guild.

And as i said before, any rAD has to be produced in some way from either you or any other player. You can add those Waukeen bags to the rAD list, but you need luck to pull a rewarding amount of rAD out of those, and their drop is limited to the event time only.
Any AD that you get from the AH or from playing the ZAX has to be produced and then refined by another player first, and this amount is limited per day.
If every player goes into professions and starts crafting gear, then the prices for those items will drop too - supply and demand.
Which also means, that you will make less and less AD from your crafted items per sale.

Anyway, before anyone starts throwing real money into the guild coffer, take a look at the facts, and be sure about what you're getting into.
In the end, if something goes wrong, your investment is lost and you won't get any help from the support in those cases.

And again, this is just being realistic and not aimed and any specific guild at all.
Have fun with your guild stronghold and your way to rank 16 to get access to the guild weapons.

Last but not least, ranking a guild Stronghold up will not take years, but it will take at least 190 days pure building/upgrading time (you can check that in the official forum too) to get to rank 20.

[V4Victrix]

LOL, like I said we can agree to disagree, your reality is not like my own and by the way when you sell bags of waukeen on the AH you get AD NOT rAD so... and btw they were easy to get, all you had to do was kill things. I make on average 350K AD a week on average (sometimes more if i get lucky and sometimes less), I have 4 characters and I try to run as much of the Dailys that give AD away and farm as I play, usually just on 2 (maybe 3) characters a day and on weekends I hit Dread Ring/ WoD and epics hard while still farming the usuall suspects: enchants, peridots, etc... as i play, building stacks to sell in the AH. Now in theory I could make more as i pointed out, in fact 672k AD in total via all 4 charcters just by doing ALL the dailys earning 24k AD with each of the 4 charcters a week...but I don't, becaue i dont have the time to play as much as I used too, so thats out of the question. 350K AD (not rAD) a week is pretty good I think and suits my needs, as my main character has a 3,2 IL and my second best alt is at 2,8 IL which is perfectly suited to my needs. I am happy with that. Though I understand for some people that wouldn't be enough AD a week because they need 'instant gratification'... aka instant riches... millions of AD!!! :) Well i wish for that too, but its not going to happen. NO MMO gives you that, grinding is the name of the game and plus that would not suit the Devs purpose, which is to make money... but I'll get to that later.

You keep saying that everything you say are FACTS, they are not, they are your opinions and in the case of your Forum thread you produced to prove your point its just a "WHAT IF" question... lol!!!! As to your second example, that really sucks for the members of that guild... I wiuld be furious too, but then agin i would just get over ity and start over rather than let it eat me up. In the end that is really just one bad example in a game that has hundreds of Guilds!!! 1 out of 500 doesn't scare me. Your supposed facts are based on your experiences and the representations of others on the forum threads which you believe whole heartedly (aka those Forum threads you referenced) because if they are absolute facts then I must be playing a different game. And just because you read something in the forums doesn't mean it is FACT. Thats like saying everything you read online is a fact. lol. For example I have read that the Devs are going to nerf the Scourge Warllock and the GWF... I have been reading this for a year now and guess what? According to the most sacred forums, (now) they are buffing the Scourge Warlock and not touching the GWF's at all... so which "rumor" is the fact, the older post or the new ones???? So you may have a Negative "REALISTIC" view of the game... I suggest quiting and doing something else with your time. You will become instantly a happier person. Just my own humble prediction, because you sound pretty down on this game. If you don't like it so much please allow people who still enjoy it to have their fun. Like I said, my reality of the game is very different from yours.

As to the Strongholds taking up your idea... I agree that your idea would be wonderful for the individuals and the smaller guilds, but thats not what the devs want apparantly. Why not just do your research and shop around for a good guild and stay when you find one that meets your needs. You only tell about the horror stories and you leave out all the success stories when it comes to Strongholds. In the case of Myrmidons, we originally had a very strong tight nit player base of around 30-some 'active' players from around the world, then Strongholds came out and because our leadership is so organized and good at selling our "relaxed" idea of a guild to others, we had 3 other smaller guilds merge with us so that we could all gain the benifit of a guild with big numbers and build a proper Stronghold ina relative amount of time, how ever long it takes. There is no rush to getting the Guild Hall 16, we will get there when we get there and we aren't sweating it, we are just having fun. And it has been great, I have made new internet friends and have gained new options in as to who i play with on a daily basis and i have gained new knowledge of the game from some of the new people I have met. Getting on our TeamSpeak channel is like entering aroom with a bunch of friends and having a blast playinga game thatw e all enjoy. Great success! Should i write this in the forums so you believe me???

Lastly why keep hoping the devs are all of a sudden going to change and start listening to you, they won't. Case in pioint the underdark expansion... had so much promise but from what some of my guild mates are saying and describing to me (the Great Demogorgon "pit-fight") from the Preview server, its nothing that the players have been asking for and will likely be a huge dissapointment when it comes to the new end game-play we all have been asking for. Am I mad? No. Dissapointed? Slightly.I will get over it. But then I think, "well its better than getting nothing at all," and i know if i get bored with this game or stop having fun, I will just leave and play something else. So just accept the game as it is and work within the system provided... or... play something else because the devs will not listen to you or me and thats the case in the greater majority of games because the free-to-play model is always and will always be about making money. This is how the game stay up and running let alone making a profit which gives the devs insentive to keep it going. Nothing is free in this world despite the Free-to-play model, It is a business.

BTW i will no longer be responding to this post it has become redundant. Hope you find enjoyment in the game again. But arguing with you is just feeding the nagative, i would rather enjoy myself and have fun. We just disagree on the reality of NWO and thats that. Good luck and cheers.

[Nain]

well i have been kicked out of my guild for beeing inactive for a week because of an injury. investment lost, but im not mad. infact, after all the poo the devs are pulling to their playerbase, i dont regret having stopped playing the game alltogether. strongholds was a dissapointment as been seen by the official forums before. like the other modules before that one too. and now that underdark looks the same based on forum posts, i just wont bother anymore.
one lost paying customer.

such a shame because the game was quite fun. appart from all the moneygrabs.

[V4Victrix]

:/ The game need sto come up with better end game material, you can only PvP so much before even that becomes old.

[Tigax]

My guild is at capacity, it's not a small guild, but it's not all 70s, if you have a guild that is only half capacity and you are at level 9, someone dumped a lot of cash into the guild.

To say otherwise only insults us both.

Strongholds being only for the hardcore, no life, gamers is bs. If that was the intention then F this game, i'm out. Why release an expansion which alienates such a vast majority of the player-base?

Realistically speaking, I'm betting they made the requirements asinine for two major reasons.. One to sucker all the rubes into blowing cash to get their stronghold up, and two to make sure the stongholds didn't hit max level right away and then they can pull back on the requirements to more reasonable levels.

It will obviously get changed, people will eventually complain long enough about how the "expanision" is pointless and worthless, no one cares about it and it was a waste of time and money for everyone involved, then they will fix the requirements. But by then people will have left to find a new game to play, one that has acheivable goals and is a fun adventure, instead of a tedious grind.

But alas, this is the way all of the pay 2 win (micro-transaction) games end up, devs are understandably busy trying to squeeze more money out of the playerbase while the game lies in tatters, unfinished, buggy, retooling projects left to die, all to chase that next expansion or next way to entice the masses into opening their wallets without any regard for the actual game.

[V4Victrix]

I agree, even we have hit a wall, trying to level up the guild hall now will literally take months and months more than it took to get to where we are now a goal, with literally no end in sight. I would absolutely support lowering the requirements to upgrade the Strongholds, I don't think anyone would argue with that idea, because you are right they are rediculous even for us and I am sure many other more well-off guilds. I think they are maybe so high that in some guilds and even maybe our own, that energy and level of participation will slowly fade away in the face of what may seem to be a never ending cycle of grinding influence and the sort with no reasonable reward in sight. In that respect I think Strongholds has been a failure. Though our guild has become a true community because of it and participation and guild activity has risen and in effect I have a new large group of internet friends I look forward to talking/playing with on our TeamSpeak when i can get on NW. So in that, the success of strongholds, at least for us, is that our community of players has grown especially since the mergers of the smaller guilds that joined us out of necessaty.

[Wolverine]

Stronghold costs might change, when the module is released on Xbox, but i wouldn't hold my breath for it to happen.

[Tigax]

Strongholds just isn't fun, and it's soley because of the rediculous requirements leaving guilds to grind for no reward, most of the players don't bother because there's no reason to. If at the very least everything started at level one prebuilt and players could give wherever they wanted toward whatever they wanted they would have fun and see a point to the grind. Until there's a market there's literally no point to the grind, and even then there's little point.

Strongholds sounded like a great idea.
Sadly it was a failure, due to outrageous requirements.

[Wolverine]

Well, they could have done it a different and more reasonable way... but it is, what it is.

What i would change... after building the Lumberyard, you can produce wood, so the Farm would require wood, some gold and some AD to be build.
With a Farm you can produce food, upgrading your Guild Hall to rank 2 would require wood, food, some gold and some AD.
The Market would also need wood, food, gold and AD to be build. The same would go for the Quarry and the Mine, and you could trade resources from the Lumberyard, the Farm, the Quarry and the Mine for other resources on the Market.
... in a way like building up a "real" Stronghold and it's surrounding.

And NPCs your rescue during HEs or directly from Orcs on the Stronghold map, would help (labour points) you build your Stronghold too.

Anyway, getting rank 1-5 structures would be easy, so that even solo or casual players would get access to some low Stronghold boons/buff food/equipment.
Maxing a Stronghold would still require a lot of resources and time, and it would reward the bigger guild with better boons/buff food/equipment.

[XXX]

Originalmente postado por Tigax:

The necessary components for strongholds are outrageous and prohibitive. I get that they are busy making new content and far more concerned with that than fixing the 11 broken (and inaccessible) dungeons, or fixing the devestated economy. Yeah, I know, they fixed the price of marks (which no one in their right mind would buy anyway) . But they didn't fix the huge price of profession upgrades, hireling upgrades, etc. And if the broken dungeons are any indication, they never will fix it.

So a guild trying to build a stronghold is forced to spend years (literally real-time years), or an eternity for a casual guild (you know, people with lives, kids, jobs, more important things to do with their life than play neverwinter 20 hours on a weekend). It makes the whole "expansion" null. Of course, you Can go and spend money at $35 a pop to buy the things you need to get to build your stronghold, which i suppose is the point.

And this is why free to play games will always be here, they make waaaaaay more money than a subscription based game.

Makes me wonder if a sub based game wouldn't be better really, less cost for little to no restricitions, and none of the welfare cases clogging up the servers..

But I digress, people need to start complaining about the outrageous costs to build a stronghold.

what do yu think ? cryptic launch stronghold for yu enjoy? No only for GRAB yur money hahahah UNINSTALED long time ago