Yoru-Hime

I agree that this is bound to happen someday. Once they do that, I'll have no objection to higher base small-team content. As it hasn't happened yet, though, I can't agree that 54s in solo missions is currently a good idea.

You expect each new character that hits 50 to spend a year in DA before moving on?

You're measuring it wrong. Look at it in terms of amount of gameplay needed to reach the goal (50+3) versus amount of content available (7 arcs, most of them pretty short).

Nope. Story-wise, you can always make a good argument for just about any new content being bigger, badder and therefore higher level, but gameplay-wise, it's the wrong move. The lower challenge cap for level shifted characters is a problem that needs to be resolved, but not at the expense of those who don't already have them.

If this came with I24, your average newly Incarnated solo/small-team player is going to finish the existing content (DA/Vertrano) then run off to the next story and find themselves as a 50+0 (+1 if lucky) facing 54s with no way to turn down the difficulty any further. Whee, fun?

Give us another three or four DA length stories at the existing difficulty level to give characters on this track a reasonable chance to get to 50+3 (without weeks of time-gated mindless repetition) and we can start talking base 54s. Base 51s or 52s might be reasonable, but 54s? Definitely not. The solo/small-team grind is far too long to be looking that far ahead yet.

Fair enough, but I'll respond in kind. I greatly appreciate seeing the changes and that you're taking what we're saying to heart, but if we're being frank with each other...

There is nothing in this thread that you should not have expected from the beginning. You've seen it before with costume change powers that most of us really don't have any use for and you had to know that by tagging a costume option as exclusive you were going to be hitting a much bigger nerve.

We get your side of things. You need to promote social media. That's part of your job. Right or wrong, the number of followers is one measure of your performance. These contests work at increasing them, so you're going to use them. But they also generate ill-will because no one likes to lose. It's the same for giveaways at cons. Not everyone can afford to fly to California and they certainly won't do so for a costume code. They're disqualified by means of finances and geography. They know it and they don't like it. Not to say that you shouldn't use them, but there is a PR cost.

That said, up until now your efforts managing the ill-will that these contests generate have been pretty flimsy. You shrug it off as inevitable, take your gains and move on. If there's enough vocal anger, we get half-hearted promises that exclusive items will emerge from the Promotions Department's vault "someday". Sometimes they're kept. Sometimes not. Unfortunately for you, as a group, players are really good at remembering the "not"s.

You're partially right. This ill-will can't be completely eliminated, but it can be controlled and minimized. The change to the Twitter contest is a big step in the right direction. Limited "exclusive" time periods that we as players learn to trust will be another huge move forward.

This is the sort of thing that needs to be dealt with prospectively, rather than as a reactive response to our complaints. If an item comes under your control as a giveaway prize, there should be a clear plan on how long it's going to stay that way going in. You don't necessarily have to tell the players (though it might not hurt early on to defuse threads like this) but you need to know and plan accordingly. If we start seeing that this summer's new giveaway shiny regularly becomes this fall or winter's Paragon Market feature, we'll stop stressing and either enjoy or ignore the meta-game you've put in front of us, instead of worrying about who's going to be a have vs have-not when the item vanishes.

For contests where you can't have thousands of winners, you do have alternatives that make winners happy without leaving losers out in the cold and furious. (Yes I know, some people will rage over anything). Imagine this:

"Win it before you can buy it! Beat the crowds! Get early access to the _______ Power Set!" Winners get it free and X days early. They get to brag about being the first level 50 ______ on their server, but there's nothing there that others can never have or have to wait too long to get their hands on.

Thanks for listening, Z. Your willingness to get down in the trenches and engage with us even when we're good and mad is remarkable and a great benefit to the community you support.

Thanks for taking our feedback to heart. The others still make some strong and (IMO) valid arguments about exclusive items, but this is a huge improvement over the way it was set up before.

I got from yourself to Mother. With the alternative being to deliver it to Mother. Like a good Praetorian (which I'm not), I took it Mother.

Then I went to lie down for a while.

I don't quite play the way you do, but I do like most of my characters to be self-sufficient monetarily. I don't really like shipping 100 million inf over to a character in order to build them out. If they're worth playing, they'll earn it themselves. What I'll often do when the build I want calls for pricey recipes is grab the next best thing to start with, say Doctored Wounds instead of Numina's C., and keep in mind a long term goal of upgrading, eventually. When the RNG gods favor me, or I have the money or merits saved up, I'll make the switch. I don't go out of my way to grind for them, but as the rewards of normal play accumulate, I upgrade.

It helps if you have an SG base to store things, but it's not absolutely essential either.