EarthWyrm

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1) You are being far to literal in reading the badge text/name.

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Being to literal?!? Like the rest of the badges which say what you did? The badges aside from a bit of flavor says what you are supposed to get the badge for. Feel free to tell me with text like this

"Once you were considered a villain, but now you walk the path of the straight and Narrow."

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I dunno. I think you can make a pretty strong case for this badge with the existing text based on what you do in Gaussian's arc, at least from Longbow's perspective.

"Considered a villain" is pretty broad. It doesn't say, "Once you lived in the Rogue Isles and were believed to be a Destined One." Then your argument might hold more merit based on the reading of badge text alone. Unfortunately, that ain't what it says.

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I somehow missed the first one and had to go scanning through the archives for when it was posted. Whoever's responsible, keep up the good work. =)

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You’ll almost always make more selling any common IO recipe to a vendor than you will if you try to sell it on the market.

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The main exception to this (if you don't mind my adding it) is Endurance Modification recipes from level 20+. I've generally found that not only are people willing to pay more than vendor price for them, for some completely inexplicable reason they're often willing to pay more than it would cost to buy the recipe from a workbench.

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Yeah, he was so busy ranting and so tired that he had a couple of factual errors.

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At least I'm willing to step up and admit to anatomically impossible feats like having both feet in my mouth while my head is shoved somewhere dark and poopy.

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Y'know, I only came up with 2 factual errors. In a tome of that magnitude, that's really not too bad.

I agreed with a lot of what you had to say. I don't like the overt grindiness of the system and its apparent team-unfriendliness. I'm doing a lot more soloing now than I did before, but I will admit straight away that I'm a powergamer, and soloing makes it easier for me to work the system.

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The Merit System Lacks Real Control!

Sure, you can get the particular recipie. But you have zero control over the actual level.

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No, you have it backwards. When you roll RANDOMLY, you can't control the level. When you buy a specific recipe, you can choose the EXACT level.

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Yeah, he was so busy ranting and so tired that he had a couple of factual errors.

I suspect that devs are about as likely to be able to manage the wall o' text as the typical user. They're still human, after all. Folks feeling strongly about this is fine, but keeping the suggestions relatively concise will make them more likely to be listened to and implemented - and give fewer chances for factual errors that hurt the case that's trying to be made. Having said that, I'll just bold the key points below, because I'm also long-winded.


Objective Data from my end: I've earned a large number of merits with villains who haven't run a TF since I13 went live, opening up rewards to me that I wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity to get. At level 50, much of what I was doing was repetitive/grindy before, so that hasn't changed. Being able to get TF or Trial drops for doing regular content is enjoyable.

Subjective: I don't like that the system encourages running on lower difficulties to speed-run things in order to obtain merits. Lower difficulties = faster, but also = boring. I can be entertained by it for a while, but I'll be honest and say that fighting whites and yellows with my 50s is not something that will retain me as a customer; it is, however, what the system currently rewards. The difficulty slider absolutely needs to be incorporated into merit rewards.

In addition, there are sources of Merits that need to be fixed sooner, rather than later. The Kheldian arc that was the source of so many of the merits that allowed the market to be flooded with high-end recipes (via the combination of two exploits, but still) ought to get fixed before people get too used to it. I'm guessing that the relatively small number of Kheldians that make it to that range made it impossible to datamine the arc, plus who was flashing back to it with Nosferatu before the rewards went int? But I think that there's more than enough data now to change its value in the reward table.

Also subjective: I agree with the sentiment that the system as implemented does potentially discourage some "live" (i.e., arc-running) teaming. I would support a merit per teammate per arc mission system, but am honestly curious whether the "doom" aspect of this is present. It discourages random teaming for folks who want to game the system - but what do the data say about teams running arcs before I13 went live and after?

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we wanted to find out from you the Community what your favorite features of the past year have been.

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Do the improvements to Energy Aura count?

What I've enjoyed most is the interaction between the new and upgraded features, actually. I dig the Cimerora content, but think the Merit system is great for giving options, have enjoyed dinking around with dual builds - but it's some of the little QoL features that really keep me happy. I'm still loving my deformable power trays!

Ooh, and Self Destruction roxxors.

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But the 2 merit Eden trial worries me, as it's an example of a trend.

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It can't possibly be a trend, because they would have had to repeatedly nerf merit awards due to datamined speeds. It's happened at one point in time (one point in time = not a trend) on multiple TFs, and they've said that they want to fix the content but that this was the easier solution if they wanted to get the merit system live.

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Can we find a single argument here that doesn't involve sticking our heads in the sand and accusing any rational dissenter of being a whiner?

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Can you just ignore them when they're presented?

Oh, wait. You've already demonstrated that you can.

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I mean really I am starting to suspect that the developers just salt these forums with their close friends or maybe even post as random customers. There are so many suck ups and "yes yes yes" people here

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Go ahead and leave already. Your drameh is not needed. You're not saying anything anyone hasn't already said. I tried being nice about it and offered common ground, but you are clearly not LOOKING FOR common ground, or kindness. You just want to be angry. Fine.

So leave. I'd tell you not to let the door hit you, but to be honest? I think it'd do you some good.

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One thing I'd suggest is rejiggering the pools.

First, all the recipes that make most people go "Damn, I got a...", put those in Pool A or Pool B. Trap of the Hunter, etc.

Then, break up all the rest into three groups...useful to most, very useful to most, highly prized. Random rolls for useful to most stays at 20, very useful to most at 40, highly prized to 80.

That way, the not useful to most players stuff goes back to random drops and the market gets them, and there's a real incentve to take a random roll.

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I like this suggestion. If my memory is correct, at some point a redname told us that Pool C was designed to be a lottery, where most of the time you get junk and every once in a while you get a shiny.

Well, now we've got merits. Why continue diluting the pool if the original design goal is no longer relevant for (if the forums are to be believed) the majority of the player base?

Move every mez, snipe, taunt, and debuff recipe into Pool A.

/signed

Or, to put it in Q&A terms:

Synapse, have you considered moving the recipes that people do not like getting as TF rewards into a different pool, in order to maintain availability and incentivize the random roll further? Bumping the cost of a random roll back up to 25 would probably be necessary, of course, but that would be all right based on the logic you've laid out for Pool D rewards.

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A: We feel that players will take that chance on the random roll tables for that chance at the reward they want. There will always be that temptation to roll on the Pool C rewards 12 times instead of buying that one shiny IO. If a player doesn't get what they want, they can post these items on the markets. Also consider that before only players running Task Forces and Strike Forces were contributing Pool C and D items to the market, now even solo/casual players will be able to do so.

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You guys seriously believe this? I have to question your understanding of human nature then.

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No offense, but I have to agree with Heartbreaker here about your staff psychologist. You guys need to get a second opinion.

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Would a Ph.D. qualify me? If so, I think Heartbreaker is DRASTICALLY over-estimating how rational human beings are in their decision-making.

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Nobody who's ever run a TF before is going to spend 20 merits on a random roll.

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Hyperbole doesn't help the argument, especially when I can personally disprove this sentence the first day I13 goes live - and plan to do exactly that.

Why? Because there's nothing I'm dying to get, and because the random roll is more fun than hoarding merits.

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So by this quick sample, I got 60% that was useful in *any* way, and only 20% that was what I could call universally useful to me. Those odds just aren't good enough for me to waste merits on random rolls.

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10 rolls is 200 merits, which we'll round off to say is any one IO of your choice.

you'd rather have taken 1 of your choice instead of 10 rolls that yielded 6 that were useful?

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But 4 of those 6 fall into the 'a little goes a long way' category. In other words, after getting a couple of them they would fall into the 'useless to me' category. So in the long run, I am trading 2 probably useful recipes for one dead certainty of exactly what I need.

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Which, to me, is the strength of the system. You get to choose what you value - the certainty of the single reward, or the chance to get multiple useful things.

Yes, there is a single best choice for ROI (though that will shift over time), but there is room for different people with different playstyles to make different choices and each be happy with what they've done. And people who complain over being screwed by the RNG now have no one to blame but themselves.

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When skilled and powerful players who today favor those TFs for challenge and enjoyment are instead lured into older grindier TFs for their vastly superior rewards, we've already been over what's going to happen.

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They're going to run two different skill-based TFs in the same time it's supposed to take to run one grind-based TF and earn pretty close to the same merits?

Even comparing optimized teams for Grindforces to optimized teams for Skillforces, you're probably going to come out pretty close to the same time investment for the same rewards.

The system provides options, and doesn't force anyone to do anything. Your idea of "luring" assumes that the people who run the Skillforces are going to be willing to give up all of their powers and bonuses to exemplar down and grind out Posi or Synapse, or subject themselves to the slog through the Shadow Shard, when they could instead be running multiple different more challenging pieces of content back to back, at full power, for comparable rewards. I don't think that's a safe assumption to make about how this system is going to be played past about 3 weeks in, when people realize that boring content is still boring content, and fast content adds up rewards as fast as or faster than boring content can let them grind it out.

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I'm not trolling, I am very upset that I have been pushed out of the game. I really loved it. - I loved doing Katies and other short taskforces and squeaking out just enough money to get like 1 purple set every 3 months or so,

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The thing that it took me a little while to "get" is that the IO system has always been about the grind. It's a time-sink. You ran stuff, maybe you got what you wanted, maybe you didn't, you ran more stuff. When you say that you collected enough money to get a purple set every 3 months, that just demonstrates that the game was already encouraging you to grind.

It doesn't matter if you play for 30 minutes at a time or 3 hours at a time. If the only way to get stuff is to play more, you're grinding for loot. All I13 does is take off the veneer that let us think we were doing anything other than grind. Once I understood that, and the next point I'm going to make, I was basically okay with the new system.

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Now there is nothing I can do unless I want to stay logged on for 3 or 4 hour spurts and I simply cannot do that.

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Verifiably not true. There are missions you can flash back and earn better than a merit every 5 minutes, solo. You don't have to put together a team, even. The 40 minutes it took the team I was on to do Katie today would have been enough time for my villain to earn 10 or 11 merits thru Ouroboros.

Doing that is no more or less of a grind than logging in and doing a TF you've done 100 times before, either. Yes, it's slower than getting a rare drop now is, thru Katie/Cap/Eden. I'm okay with that, because it's become clear to me that those are SO different from most of the other content in the game that they make for really bad comparators.

What I hear you saying are the same things I said when I first saw the merit system and first realized the effect it was going to have on my (relatively casual, time-wise) playstyle. I've since played with the system fairly extensively on Test and decided that while it will represent a change, it's a change that I can live with, and there are plenty of ways to still get the rewards I want.

Best of luck with whatever game you choose.

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My concern is, if I understand the merit system correctly, it seems like it will kill the market. With just generic Io recipes being dropped, soon influence will be useless.

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Pool A uncommon and rare recipes, as well as Pool B rares, will still drop as they currently do. The market will still support the Pool A trade as it always has, while giving people who don't want to pay a premium for a Crushing Impact acc/dam on the market the opportunity to buy it for 50 merits.

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Players will use merits for set recipes. This seems nice to kill off influence farmers but influence farmers and Leader badge farmers are the main sources of purple recipes. If you make influence nigh useless, influence farmer may leave, which is good, but when they leave the input of purple recipes into the market will dry up.

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Inf will not be useless.

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What isn't subjective is that I'm not the one assigning a value to people's time - the devs are. And the value they've assigned to your time isn't subjective either.

5 minutes of taskforce time, or 12.5 minutes of storyarc time, are worth 1 merit. 1 merit is worth 1/20th for a random pool C drop or 1/200th of a specific pool C drop. 100 minutes of your time is worth a random pool C drop; 1000 minutes is worth a specific pool C drop.

I didn't make that up and tell you what your time was supposed to be worth, the devs did

[/ QUOTE ]...see...now, you're completely skewing things out into left field. Did you miss the part where I said I play this game for fun?

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This is really not an argument worth having. You see, Flux has defined "best" in terms of ROI. Numerically, there's no arguing that the best ROI currently looks to be saving up and taking the most valuable commodity, then either using it or selling it.

If that's all he wants to play the game for - to play Accountants and Actuaries and optimize reward over time - then that's fine. He can have his fun that way. If he wants to sneer at people who have fun other ways, who may already have everything they want and just enjoy playing the game and getting what they get, then that's fine, too.

There is no middle ground, when he defines the optimal decision structure so narrowly and stops just short of name-calling while actively mocking anyone who dares to disagree with him. At that point, he's just trolling for a response, and it sounds like you've got more entertaining things to do than provide one for him.

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Two questions. One, why do people see merits as a replacement rather than an option? If you want the random roll option, you can use the random roll option. The only difference is that you have to go to a merit vendor to do it rather then rolling on the spot. Okay, and that some TF's will give you less than one random roll (while others will give you more.) But it is still an option. It hasn't disappeared.

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Opportunity Cost. Spending those 20 merits on a random roll at Pool C is a bad bet if you're looking for something specific.

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Agreed. If you have a single-minded focus on obtaining a given reward, you should never take a random roll. If you don't care/have lots of alts you could use lots of different things for/insert other reason here, the random roll certainly makes more sense.

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The most you'll have to spend for a specific recipe is 250 merits. Or 12.5 random rolls. It's a bad gamble to take the roll. Before this, it wasn't a choice. You did a TF you got a roll, not skeeball tickets.

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Again - only a bad gamble if you have something specific you're working toward. Otherwise, it's just something to do with the merits you're getting anyway.

To me, the main problem with merits is that they can make a game that's "All about the journey" into something that is intrinsically destination-focused. If you're grinding out 200 merits to buy a LotG, you're not looking at the journey - you're looking at the end product. That's a significant shift in the way this game has always seemed to market itself, and how players market it to other players.

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Two, why not buy the -KB IO with inf instead? You don't have to rely on merits to get it. Did I miss something and something is going to happen to Pool A drops? If not, the supply will be more or less the same.

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Agreed. The -KB IOs should be extraordinarily cheap depending on where the Universal Travel ones drop.

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Pool C. When I found that out, I laughed. This is supposed to be an answer for folks who complained that there wasn't a -KB IO that went up to 50? Stick it in an already over-full Pool C where random drops won't reliably get you the IO, and purchasing it with merits costs over 100 merits more than what it would cost to get a Karma, which can find a home in two of the existing travel pools? Bad idea. Should've been Pool A.

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With the complete loss of Random Pool C's and D's, there will be almost NONE on the market on either side.. Few people, if any, will 'waste' their precious merits buying something just to sell it.

[/ QUOTE ]*shrug* I, on the other hand, know there will be a good number of people that will. I like the Big 3...but I'm not overly concerned with getting them. So I'll still stick with the random roll. If I happen to get one of the big 3, I can sell it, and fund a build on an alt of mine that (probably) doesn't use one of those expensive IOs. If I don't...well, at least I only spent 20 merits on it...and I at least got something either I, or one of my friends, can likely use on one of our alts...or is at least worth a decent chunk on the market.

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Agreed. I think the people who believe there won't be any Pool C's introduced to the market haven't tested the system much to see what a 50 can produce doing nothing but flashbacks. I've not run that many flashbacks (my postings in the Meritorious Measurement thread pretty much list them all) and have earned better than a hundred merits. Total time investment? Not that huge, and certainly something I could do logging in for a half-hour each day and just running a couple of random flashbacks with friends who happen to be on, or solo. I do ghost everything I can, so not everyone will earn merits at the same rate I do, but I think that most solo-capable toons will be able to earn merits at a pretty good clip - and drops have always favored solo-capable toons, so that's no big change.

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People really over-dramatize the quality of Pool C. Is every single recipe worth 10 million or more? No. But your odds of getting something at least worth your time are pretty good...especially now, with the ability to roll at a specific level range.

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My plan right now is to take random drops from the 10-14 pool whenever I can for the first few weeks the issue is live. Why? So that I can get Pool C recipes from the new 10-30 sets (at max level) as fast as possible, either for my own characters or to take advantage of the "OMGGOTTAHAFITNOW!" crowd's willingness to pay a premium, that I can then use to buy other stuff.

Random is more fun than saving up. Being able to earn more than a random drop's worth of merits for almost every TF out there makes the idea appealing enough that at least until I realize there's something I specifically want for a build, I have no intention of saving up.

And if the doomcryers are correct, and most people aren't taking the random drop, that means that I'll be one of the few people who ARE supplying the market. That's not a bad position to be in, either.

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I appreciate that our feedback has been at least given a good hearing, and some of it, like the Knockback uniques and the Random drop pricing has been tweaked.

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The one thing that bothered me about Synapse's response to my queries was that while the issue with Steadfast Protection vs. Karma KB protection drops is going to be addressed, it's being addressed (IMO) in the wrong way.

Neither recipe is unique, which is the only slotting restriction that exists that modifies prices consistently in the merit window. Both of them are going to cost 50% more than every other non-unique uncommon recipe in Pool A.

Because they're popular? There's an unlimited quantity of things that are popular, so you make people earn more fake loot to buy things that more people want?

This logic makes no sense to me. They should both be the exact same cost as any other uncommon Pool A drop. If you were going to price-adjust based on popularity, the adjustment should be DOWN, not up, because the point of the game is supposed to be to have fun. Getting something that keeps you from getting knocked around enhances fun. Grinding 50% longer to get the same level of reward impedes fun.

I say, just leave the popularity of the recipe out of it. If they see the need to price adjust within pools, make it based on slotting status (unique vs. non) and leave it at that. If they need to increase merit prices for things that are more popular, then it's only logical to decrease merit prices for things that are less popular.

Yes, Trap of the Hunter, Sting of the Manticore, and Glimpse of the Abyss, I'm looking at you. And your reduction should be way more than 50%.

To keep with the Q&A theme of the thread:
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Have you considered simply adding 1 Merit per AV?

This fits Risk-v-Reward, and makes that LRSF "buff" more obvious.

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If you've not considered that, is it because risk vs. reward is no longer the primary concern, but only a secondary balancing factor behind time vs. reward, to be considered when datamining indicates that the teams running a particular piece of content most frequently and thus skewing the distribution are optimized to the point that they create a system that's truly unrepresentative for anyone else, such as 7 corruptors plus a stone brute on the RSF?

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(Not to mention a partial profit if you beat 3 or 4 missions and fail the huge challenge at the end.) Merits for AVs may also help balance KHTF, and maybe even bringing Eden up to something not laughable.

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Would the reason to explicitly not consider a merit per AV be the fact that people would farm the first 9 Mary Macombers in 12 minutes or less, then exit, quit, and re-form the TF? If so, would it be more workable to award any and all AV awards only on TF completion?

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That looks like a good half-day's work (being conservative) pulling together those answers. Thank you for the effort. I know that my major concern - the potential for reward reduction over time - is one that you addressed pretty well, without painting yourself into a corner.

Nicely done, and welcome.

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Given that we're stuck with that design goal, I guess the next question is what might have a decent implementation of that looked like that wouldn't obliterate the market? Does it look anything like the merit system at all?

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I posted a suggestion in another thread (the one specifically about the removal of random drops) that I think does some interesting things that potentially enhance the market as a mini-game. Pasting a little bit of it (I don't want to do the whole thing and get dinked for cross-posting...):

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My proposal on the random Pool C and D recipes is this:

Allow the merit store to actually be a store. Give it the ability to buy any Pool C or D recipe for 5 less than the cost of a random roll in that pool. Don't let it buy anything else - goodness knows, I don't want the market to dry up on common recipes as people swap them for merits. Pools C and D are the only places affected by this change, and therefore represent the limits of my proposal.

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This would give people who want random drops more incentive to use the fixed-price randomness (even if it's still not a great option, mathematically), give them a choice between selling for merits and selling for inf., create a new market mini-game with fluctuations around the value of recipes that can reliably be sold for 20 merits or 30 merits, allow players to share things that are worth merits with friends or alts (thereby removing what is being referred to as the alt-unfriendliness of the current system), and still time-limit the number of recipes entering the game consistent with the apparent reward-over-time goal. It also means that the current vendor trash shouldn't disappear entirely; it will just end up with a price-point around the value the market establishes for 25-35 merits.

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Of course it's not. Being able to slam down a recipe every 30 minutes (barring the 4-hour window) is extremely popular.

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I've never chain-run Katie, or any other speed TF. I have a limited schedule most of the time, though, so being able to catch a faster TF from time to time and get the shot at something cool kept me coming back.

They'll succeed in stopping the farming of certain TFs with this. They'll also succeed in stopping people from logging in just to see if something quick and fun is going on. Bad decision.

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It's also clearly not the speed at which you're supposed to be able to get rare, good recipes.

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I keep seeing this argument. If you could reliably get a Numina's or a Miracle or a LotG7.5 in 30 minutes, it would have merit.

2/3 of Pool C is utter garbage, but now it's going to be utter garbage that no one has access to because only the mathematically impaired will consistently pay 25 merits for a random drop. If 2/3 of the pool is dreck, then you should get something non-dreck 1/3 of the time. So, figure once every 90 minutes you get something relatively cool. 90 minutes in the TF system (5 minutes = 1 merit) is 18 merits, not 25 merits. Even that would be an improvement.

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Getting merits for story arcs should hopefully offset the decrease in rate at least somewhat.

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Depends at least partly on the mechanics and whether teammates get merits for completing live (rather than Ouroboros) arcs. Also, how many missions teammates have to be with you for, if they can get merits for completing live arcs. If it's the whole thing, say buh-bye to PuGs. Of course, they never do anything but papers anyway, and there's no incentive to change that if teammates don't get arc merits. If they do, and it's for less than the full arc, I look forward to the new spam of, "Selling spots for last mish of Praetorian arc, 5m inf/per, pst!"

I had gotten to the point where I convinced myself that this implementation could be interesting and fun. Looking at the numbers, I don't see it. It's pretty much all of my worst fears rolled up into one "grind away" package.

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From the perspective of a player or non-player interested in possibly becoming a player that statement simply is not true. The story arcs in CoH/V do not and have never in any way shape or form evolved.

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Your lack of comprehension of the creative process is telling.

Novels do not "evolve" in the sense that you are seeming to want them to, either. If I read The Fountainhead back in high school, and read it again today, no one would have magically gone in and changed the plot or added/deleted scenes. If you think that's seriously what the evolution of a creative product is like, you're mistaken.

The process of creation is an evolution of ideas. What you think you're going to write changes as you write it and characters make decisions that may surprise you. An outline that you sit down with when you start to write a novel or a story arc may have nothing or everything to do with the final product, and the evolution of ideas may lead you to new ideas for new novels/arcs.

I honestly don't see how you could look at something that says, "Like writing a novel..." and get upset when existing story arcs don't change or get updated any more than your typical novel does, post-publish. The statement seemed perfectly clear to me. The verb is "writing" - that's when the evolution happens. While you write.

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Using the exact language of that statement as written and without any further context (because there is no further context to place it in) it is an untrue statement.

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It is only untrue if you assume that a novel, once published, can change in meaningful ways. If you want to ignore the clear context that indicates it's about the creative process, rather than the product, that's your prerogative. As a writer, I find a great deal of truth in the statement, and have no problem with the conclusions implicit in it.

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Whatever folks, it's been 6 days since someone blabbed a "strategy" for making money at WW and as of 4pm this afternoon you still can't find a recipe that isn't sold out, or already out of profit range.

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I have two characters that are simultaneously working on field crafter. I'm fairly certain that neither one has paid more than 80% of vendor price for any of the recipes I've bought in the last week, and most of the recipes I've bought have been closer to 50% or lower of vendor price.

As with anything in the market, this technique is all about patience.

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In that time we saw 2 spirits and one was actually killed by someone not on the team, who literally said he was sorry after the fact but he just needed a few more spirits to get the badge.

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Seriously. I can't possibly be the only person who changed their standard targeting macro to "targetcustomnext spirit" and spammed it while I was running around PI to see if anybody had had one turn on its stealth and slip away.

In general, there's no reason to kill-steal in this game. With the spirits spawning at such a ridiculously low rate, though, it's going to be an issue during the event.

To put it in perspective, I took my Stormie out and solo ToT'd until I had the Ostentatious badge (50 costumes). I had every other kill badge, short of the GMs and Buster. I sucked it up and joined a ToT team in PI. I kept count - it took 8 spirits, over the course of what must have been 1.5-2 hours, for me to finish off the badge. And one of those wasn't ours, it was one that had been chasing a "click and run" person down the street, and that my macro happened to pick up.