Nethergoat

Calling someone an "exploiter" is bashing them.
The entire tone of your OP is "look at these morons who are new and don't know all the ins and outs".

If you aren't willing to stand behind your insults you should speak more carefully.

And that person is not the target audience of high end loot.

I have zero sympathy for some shmoe who looks at the absolute top tier rewards, ignores everything else and gives up before they start.

The market provides great 'equipment' across all price ranges.
SO's still work great and are dirt cheap. Generics work great and can be had for deep discounts from crafters. Frankenslotting IO's works great and can be done for a few million inf, which ANYONE can earn. There are a lot of very good sets with highly useful bonuses you can get cheap.

Yes, 'good' sets are expensive, yes they require special effort to attain if you want to kit out your whole build with them.
Are they out of reach?
Only for quitters and crybabies.
You're arguing for people who won't lift a finger to help themselves.

It'd be nice if every driver in the country could have their pick of a BMW, Ferarri, Mercedes or Lamborghini.
But they can't.
It isn't unfair, it's just how the system works.

Alas, they already did it with costume drops and caved in when the crybabies went mental.


So they're hosed either way.
If the 'high end loot' is cosmetic, the 'casual gamers' cry because they'll "never" get their Fairy Wings.
If the 'high end loot' is functional, the 'casual gamers' cry because they'll "never" get their purples.


I was vehemently opposed to liberalizing costume drops and would love to see more super rare stuff added to the game, functional and otherwise. But I'm afraid the costume drop debacle made them gun-shy. Purples are the only rare thing in the game they haven't (so far) liberalized the availability of.

everything storyline that launched with the game could stand to be pulled up by the roots and replaced.

Wait, didn't you get the memo?
No vet badges means they're filthy MA exploiters who should be insulted and shunned so you can build up your street cred with the "cool kids".


/sarcasm

I did.
I found his backtracking unconvincing.

In any case, the original wording spells out the intent of the OP in neon letters- "MA babiez suk, lol I kno more than them vets r k00l ma babiez drool!"


I realize bashing MA newbies is a spectator sport among a certain class of player, but that doesn't justify the behavior.

Why is it newsworthy that you insulted someone and they reacted badly?

If by 'use' you mean sell stuff on, then you're right.

If by 'use' you mean engage in marketeer gamesmanship, you're dead wrong.

I have a couple of characters with "good" IO builds that got ALL their inf from playing and selling and none at all from market games.
It takes more play time than marketeering, but it works just the same.

The thing is they ARE open to EVERYONE. All it takes is a TINY BIT of motivation.

Compared to WoW, our loot system is positively egalitarian.

You don't need to "work" the market to make vast sums, you just need to sell drops.

It absolutely makes IOs accessible to 'most players'- an ounce of motivation and effort and all the rewards in the game can be yours.

If you want the game to hand people their IO rewards, then no it isn't what you're looking for.

But from the perspective of a dev looking for a timesink/minigame the market is EXTREMELY, almost comically accessible. And to make it even easier on the players they added merits and tickets.


I'm not sure what you're after- Positron in a Santa suit passing out free purples in Atlas?

Why else would they make a LOOT system?
If they wanted a store, they'd have made a store.

This is a circular argument.
Someone says "uh it's boring", someone else says "uh it's exciting" and around and around they go.
You don't have to like it or use it for it to be content.

New stuff to do = content, whatever a random player off the street thinks about it.

Since it is a new thing to do, that's a good idea.

I'm a simple creature- rolling through a mission with the Goat spitting purple and black fire instead of red and yellow fire is a new gameplay experience and it does excite me. I love shiny superficial stuff.
If you don't, that's great.
But it's still content.

Our expectations don't change anything.
Content is content.

Content is content.
Whether you use it or I use it is irrelevant- it exists in the game.

That's not the argument I'm making, but please keep beating your straw man. You could use the exercise.

Oh well- it added a huge amount to mine.
Content is content, whether you like it or use it or not. It's about the game as a whole, not your personal preferences.

I certainly made a crap-ton of inf buying up ultra cheap 'good' recipes at the height of Meow Fever and re-selling them when the inevitable nerf hit.

Your obsession with farmers is equal parts hilarious & pathetic.

back in my con-going days I always packed in a selection of durable foodstuffs- saved me a BUNDLE. Who wants to waste money on food when there's precious MERCH to buy!

It confuses a lot of people.

I have an old AR/Dev I've taken out of mothballs and started messing around with. As he hadn't been played since I9 his finances were in a shambles and he was slotted with a mish-mash of old SO's and DOs. My goal in resurrecting him is to make him an IO monster build and see if it can make him as fun to play as he was in the olden days.

After a respec to dump all his junky enchancements I was sitting on a couple million inf. I started playing him and with minimal effort (checking all his recipe drops & checking raw vs crafted pricing, and flipping Alchemical Gold) he made 100 million on the trip from level 36 to 40. Given how earning power is supercharged when the level 50 generics recipes start droppping, I'm confident he'll have all the inf he needs by the time 50 rolls around.

The people who have trouble outfitting with l337 sets have a defeatist mindset. "Oh, that stuff is TOO EXPENSIVE I can never afford it!" so they don't even try.

The reality is that while price tags may seem daunting those mountains of inf don't take long to earn if you apply yourself even a little bit.

The distinction you're straining for here doesn't exist.

Since I16 launched I've spent a substantial amount of playtime logging in old characters for a power makeover- that's content.

I've also spent a substantial amount of time REALLY ENJOYING running stock missions for the first time in a LONG time thanks to the mission difficulty changes.

New gameplay experiences are content.
Your opinion of their practicality doesn't apply to anything but your game experience.

You can personally dislike the content or not use the content....it remains content.

I haven't run a TF other than Katie in the last few years.
And yet the new TFs of the last handful of issues are still content. I don't have time to run them, but other people do.
They're content.
I haven't played a /fire scrapper yet, but other people have.
That's content.

Etc etc.

Defining "content" as "developer created story arcs" is an idiosyncrasy of some players. I'm sure it's relevant to them, but it is not a useful global definition.

I've been running lots of Vaz missions on an alt and they didn't use it before I16.