Venture

The idea that each and every toon is supose to struggle and earn their own way is false. Even if you didn't have your own 50 bankrolling your own lowbie. There is still Supergroups. Each with 50's PL members, giving items via enhancement tables or salavage racks.

There is a qualitative difference between getting aid from other players and having your own characters pool resources. Getting aid from others isn't nearly as problematic because other people have their own interests and expect to benefit from the relationship as well. This is desirable because it helps form social networks, which are the key to player retention.

Making it easy for players to pool their own characters' resources leads players to stop thinking of their characters as characters and instead reduces them to assets, no more important than a pawn on a chessboard. That reduces the player's emotional investment in his characters, which is bad for player retention, and it reduces the value of getting help from other players, which is bad for player retention. Developers can't stop players from twinking themselves and they usually can't make it harder without incurring too much collateral damage, but they've got no reason to make it easy.

The problem is that every successful MMOG lets people get around the character = distinct individual idea.

And for the third time, that's because they can't not let you get around it. Even if an MMO had one server and a one character/account rule people could still buy multiple accounts. If they limited accounts to one per person people would get friends to hold accounts for them. And if they did all that they'd go out of business because they'd have torqued off everyone.

We can't prevent crime 100% but that doesn't mean we should forget about having police. MMOs can't prevent people from twinking their own characters but that doesn't mean they should encourage it.

I observe the worlds oldest and most durable profession is based on giving people what they want when they want it and how they want it.

You're making my argument for me. The World's Oldest Profession persists because some people want what they want and they want it now and with no thought for the consequences. And the truth is that they only want what they think they want (physical intimacy) and not what they really need (emotional intimacy). And the practice is harmful, to the people who provide it, to the people who patronize it and even to society in general, though that argument is outside the scope of this forum.

But your assumption about the game being a challenge ? HAH.

I agree that City is too easy, but the solution to that, strangely enough, is not to make it easier.

I will note the merit has been beaten by the people you cite as problems already. When I 13 goes live they will be set to start reaping merits rapidly and have already stocked up on items that will likely go up in value significantly.

I don't think you understand that an awful lot of people are just going to not care what happens to prices at the CH, because that won't be where they get their recipes any more. As for whether or not the merit system is dead before it hits the ground, we'll know in a few weeks, maybe a few months. My prediction is that prices will stay the same or fall, as market manipulators find their would-be victims saying "I don't need this, I'll spend merits instead".

Yes, and we see what booming sucess SWG was eh?

What did I say? Oh yes:

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That ideal can't be reached in an MMO, even with draconian measures that are worse than the problem itself.

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Emphasis added.

This game is SHORT. This game is EASY to level in.

Then making it even shorter and easier to level in doesn't really make any sense.

And what's with the caps? Is UNAUTHORIZED dissemination of this IMPORTANT information HIGHLY encouraged?

A small observation here, most of the people playing this game don't seem to enjoy it in the manner you described.

When I studied system design, one of the first things I was taught echoed something I'd learned on my own many years ago as a GM: you can't give users -- or players -- what they want. You have to give them what they really need. People usually don't know what they really need, only what they think they want. As a system or game designer you have to look past the demands of your constituents and see the bigger picture. That's why I keep quoting Burke.

Players as a group are overwhelmingly likely to be in favor of anything that lets them gain power faster. They want more experience, more loot, more cash, more social status, whatever. If you give it to them, your campaign will spiral into Monty Haul-ism and probably die. The players will blame you for it.

As it stands many are even willing to have extra accounts even though they don't really need them in the game. Some even play multiple accounts at the same time.

There are people who enjoy the Monty Haul environment, but again, that's pathological behavior. Catering to them is a bad idea. These people don't care if the game has any challenge or even point left to it. They just want to log in with their level quadzillion Fighter/Mage/Thief/Archvillain/Demigod and utterly destroy anything in their way by the dozens. It's not too surprising that many of these types find their way into PvP, armchair psychology left as an exercise for the reader.

What the heck is diseased, dsyfunctional or mentally disturbed about "Allowing characters owned by the same player to interact "

It results in people doing unreasonable things, like pooling resources to a degree not seen in real relationships, and it has bad effects on game balance.

Why? Nice statments but where is the explanation? What's wrong with the way i currently do things? What am I exploiting? And where have the dev's said as much?

Allowing characters owned by the same player to interact results in pathological behavior. Every character in any RPG is supposed to earn its own progress. That's the ideal. That ideal can't be reached in an MMO, even with draconian measures that are worse than the problem itself. SWG originally allowed only a single character per server, which even the designer had to admit wouldn't stop anyone willing to pay for multiple accounts. That does not, however, mean it is OK to just say "to hell with it" and make self-twinking easy. It can, and should, be made arbitrarily difficult. That won't eliminate the damage but it will contain it.

Under i13 rules you can earn merits on one character until you get the desired reward, whether that's a roll or a specific recipe, then craft that recipe, leave the IO on a base rack and have another character pick it up, or get a friend to help you trade it over. It shouldn't be any easier than that. Making merits tradeable would mean they could be bartered for cash, which would essentially make them the same as cash. Part of the reason for introducing merits is that the cash economy in this game is beyond salvage by any means the developers would even consider implementing (we need a cash wipe, but that's not going to happen). Making them account based would mean either throwing out the diminished returns rule or applying that as account-based as well, which may not even be possible with their current architecture. I have 13 heroes on Virtue, e.g., meaning given RL time constraints I could run the same TF with them all as much as I wanted and pool all those merits instantly. Not just no, but HELL no.

If it were I13, i'd prolly have enough merits to buy 2 LOTG IO's, but COULDN'T because the merits have been spread out over a dozen different heros...

That's the way it's supposed to be.

All the money and resipies i got over this last week have been realocauited to alts that need it, and to my INF "bank". (my current active alt is the bank.)

That's not the way it's supposed to be.

If you at least make the merits tradeable and sellable... it won't be AS bad IMO. if not...

That would be bad.

Seriously You think 120 million inf is absurd compared to running 5 positrons ?


Yes. Easily. Positron is not hard with the right group construction (i.e., small).

If the new design philosophy is that you have to run TF's in order to get even the moderate level of rewards that I do today - then I'm going to be on the outside looking in.

Run flashbacks. The payouts aren't as good as TFs in terms of merit/unit time, but they don't suffer from diminishing returns either.

If you do one to two TFs a week like a lot of casual players do (if that... many I know do maybe 2 TFs a month), at the intended rate you're going to take 4 to 6 weeks to save enough merits for that shiny... unless you actually want to have fun on your TFs and focus on the newer ones (ITF, LGTF, etc) or are a villain, in which cases it will take 8 to 10 weeks.

Those people likely aren't getting anything out of the system as it stands. They likely don't care much, either. Casual players aren't lusting after set builds.

So I think a lot of people will either end up paying whatever the market wants since it's easier for the casual player to get influence than it is for them to get merits, or they won't get their shinies for a very long time.

But now they'll have some leverage. Under the current system you could theoretically run TFs until the servers shut down and never get the C drop you wanted. Under the new system, you can set a goal, schedule your TFs and then that goal has a due date. If someone wants to sell you the drop you're working towards you can say "I don't need this. I'll get it in (e.g.) three weeks if I just keep doing what I'm doing." That's exactly where you want to be at the start of negotiations, and that's why our would-be Trumps are so eagerly pushing the FUD.

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Just wrapped up "The Envoy of Shadow"...this was only worth six merits? "The Clockwork Captive" was worth seven!

And people who aren't willing to pay above the arbitragers's price floor? They'll have to get it from merits, or else won't get their shinies until they change their mind.

Right, people will, when faced with absurd prices, tell the flippers to go do something biologically impossible and get what they want from merits.

I'm sure our cafeteria capitalists won't mind a little competition.

Post deleted by Niviene

1) How will the repricing of bases affect you personally?

Very little. My SG's main base on Virtue is considered to be finished. We may be able to outfit out alternate bases on other servers faster.

2) Will you dismantle your base to gain the additional prestige from the repricing?

No.

3) How long would this process take you if you were to engage in this practice?

Hard to say, can't imagine more than an hour.

4) What are the positive and negative concerns regarding repricing?

There are no negatives. It will make future development faster.

5) How will this feature affect you long term and short term?

I don't expect it will affect me at all in the short term, and little in the long term. We have modest goals.

Base Salvage Exchange to Invention Salvage
1) What is the negative effect on your base for this feature implementation?

None.

2) What is the positive effect on your base for this feature implementation?

It will probably be easier to get the salvage needed for what few items we craft.

3) How long will it take you to adjust to learning this new system?

I already have.

4) What side effects to this system do you currently see from transitioning the old to new system?

I expect we'll install some more salvage racks to take advantage of the ability to store invention salvage publicly, and I expect we'll have some extra rares for a while.

5) What security concerns do you have regarding this change?

None, we don't admit people we don't trust.

I notice the link for the Test Copy page still works, but (still) doesn't seem to be available via the main site's menus.

Given that there are badges for having multiple day jobs, would you agree that the devs didn't intend for people to not have multiple day job badges?

I'd agree that double negatives are bad....

The only people clamoring for people not to be able to get more than a few are, well, you and Venture, and at least he's just trolling.


a) I'm not trolling.

b) I'm hardly "clamoring", I just said that's the way I would have done it. What I have stood by is that it is not a design goal of the badge system for any one character to be able to have every badge in the game, meaning that the complaints about getting all the day job badges on one character are simply not to the point.

Two words:

Beef

Cake


He has Passport? And Bug Hunter?

On the same character?

Actually, I have stated plenty of constructively possible and realistic suggestions in this thread.

All of which miss the point, which is that it isn't a question of what's technologically feasible. It's a question of what the system is intended to do.

The simple fact is you want the badge system to do something other than what the developers want it to do.

Personally I just think the developers, like a good portion of the people responding here, simply do not understand people who like collecting badges.

Or there is a subset of badge collectors who don't understand the intent of the system and have unrealistic expectations that will never be met.

720 is also twice as long as the number of hours on patrol for most of my non-pl'd characters when they hit 50.

Hopefully, you didn't play those characters at least five times as much as you did.

So you are saying that it is proper for the developers to pretty much punish players for wanting to play their badge characters? Because that is what it comes down to.

The only way you could possibly say you were being "punished" for playing your badge character is if you were playing said character for amounts of time you yourself have said would merit an intervention.

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Just to go off on a bit of a tangent, if you think getting these Day Job badges is hard....

...go get a Blood Parrot instead.

Because trying to collect them actively prevents you from playing your character.

No, it prevents you from playing your character 24/7. Even you agree that no one should be doing that, though, so this isn't a particularly strong complaint.

Better that they NOT be visibly collectible items if the implementation is flawed from the start.

It's not flawed. You just don't like it because it doesn't suit your approach to collecting badges.

To make it less of a variance, the developers could cap the reward day at 8 hours per day.

This argument translates to: "I don't want anyone to be able to get this badge faster than I can, so the requirements should be changed to keep that from happening". The answer should be a resounding "no".

I think it's fair to literally "HALF" the time of the badge requirment goals and power recharges.

I don't think it's fair to complain about how fast you're given a reward for doing nothing.

Strictly speaking, Venture, he said "anti-badger," not "anti-badge." I think your longstanding stance against the desire to get every badge on a given character could reasonably be described that way.

"Every badge on one character" is an extreme position. Describing me as an anti-badger because I object to an extreme is like calling someone a communist because he objects to laissez-faire.

And if you're an anti-badger like CodeJunkie and Venture,

Don't have time for a full reply, just wanted to hit this: my main, whom I rerolled (at 50) in i11 to switch origin and primary, has 369 badges.

I'm not "anti-badge". I like badges. I just don't think that a) they should be free or easy or b) that anyone should have any expectation of having them all on one character.