Arcanaville

Your point has nothing whatsoever to do with what you said that I directly quoted and responded to:

They have forced us to farm the exact same content over and over again in order to progress. So your statement is false on its face.

Trying to make the argument that HOs weren't end game progress or that Hamidon wasn't farmed is something I wish I could send through a time machine back to mid 2005.


Now as to the notion that Hamidon didn't gate any content but the Incarnate trials do, what content are you talking about? Your statement that "they are being made to stop progression unless you farm the trials" has no basis in fact that I can see. I'm not even exactly sure that that is supposed to mean. They aren't being made to "stop progression" they *are* the end game content through which progression is being made. There is no progression that the trials can stop. That's like saying the content in Issue 1 was created to stop leveling unless you ran it. That's an incredibly bizarre way of saying "you level to 50 by running the 41-50 content in Issue 1."

The incarnate trials are a major departure from the policy that you made up in your head for the devs to follow, but not any policy the devs were actually following at any previous moment in this game's history. Unless you redefine farming to be "repeating limited content that has no cooldown and rewards something other than enhancements" and content gating to be "appearing to block access to content that doesn't exist yet, but I'm sure is coming eventually."

That's quite a bit more latitude than I'm prepared to extend.

What's your point?

Have they ever forced us to do the same thing over and over again because it was the only avenue that existed to progress our toons? Yes: we call him Hamidon. Although ED significantly devalued HOs, from February 2005 until the release of Issue 9 in May of 2007 farming Hamidon was fundamentally the only way to increase the power of our characters. And between February 2005 and November 2005 that potential power increase was *massive* - higher in some respects than what we can get out of the entire invention system today.

In fact, at the moment that Issue 9 came out for most of the history of the game endgame progress was gated primarily behind a single encounter. It wasn't until the beginning of 2009 that you could say that for less than half the existence of this game endgame progress was not primarily gated behind a single piece of content. And I'm not even counting the time before Issue 1 released (when endgame progress was also gated behind the level 40 version of Hamidon).

It doesn't say that specifically, but I'm sure the probability of STO not going F2P stands at negative eleventy percent. I'd say the odds of NWN launching F2P currently stand at 99.99% assuming it launches. The 0.01% is the chance that Earth is conquered by the Ferengi in the next year.

I saw it, but just this once I rather some other dirty mind point it out.

That would be valid if the retail market didn't already have an ala carte model in place in the form of DLC, and if CoDE didn't have a free to play option in its structure. According to the currently released information, CoDE will be free to access with a premium subscription option, and DLC will still exist for purchase ala carte but premium subscribers will be allowed to bundle the costs of DLC with their subscription.

That is *exactly* the hybrid F2P model that most subscription MMOs have converted to recently, including Turbine.

If you read the article carefully, you'll see that they take it completely for granted that free access to multiplayer and ala carte pricing of DLC is a given: it already exists and is wildly successful. What is being discussed as being the huge gamble on the part of Activision is fee-based premium subscription services. In other words, CoD is already based on the F2P model (at least, for online services beyond the box purchase, just like Guild Wars). Nowhere does anyone within that article question the F2P model, because its already a proven quantity for CoD. The big question is on subscription services itself.

They are coming towards the hybrid model from the opposite direction: from F2P adding subscription, rather than subscription adding F2P. Far from supporting your contention that F2P is a "faith-based model" the CoD situation is one where F2P is *the* model, and subscriptions are the novelty leap of faith.

CoDE is less about a subscription service investigating F2P, and more about an F2P service investigating subscription service. Retail gaming already has microtransactions in the form of DLC and online multiplayer is generally free to play already (mostly). But most don't have enhanced services that require a subscription to access which is what CoDE is all about. Its the reverse of an F2P MMO conversion in a different gaming space.

Isn't this a weapon set?

Who are you not agreeing with? I didn't say one had to be me to earn lots of influence. I said what I did was irrelevant to the issue.

What's more the invention system and the associated markets are a special case few give proper credit for. Its very important to state that most players don't participate, or not participate efficiently, because that is the engine that powers the ability for people to progress quickly. Those of us who progress quickly can only do so collectively because most people don't try. There's only so much influence circulating around, and only so many drops that fall. Everything I buy comes from someone else that decides not to use it. All the influence I earn comes from other players.

My progress in the Incarnate system, or the conventional leveling system, is not directly influenced by the amount of progress anyone else makes. XP is not a finite resource that we're fighting over in a zero sum game. Neither are incarnate drops or merits or iXP. But the recipes and influence in the invention system are a finite resource, and the people who progress quickly are basically aggregating more than the average amount of resources by some means. They can only do that because other people have less than the average. Unlike the Incarnate system and the normal leveling system its not true that Everyone can progress quickly. Some can but only because others don't. If everyone followed the guides and farming influence and alignment merits optimally, and tried to get as much out of the system as possible, everyone would be reduced to getting far less than people like me get now. Its simply not possible for everyone to get maxed out builds quickly at the rate I do, or any other min/maxer does, because that would require more influence and more drops than exist, or can exist, given the limitations on play.

That's why its important to look at the averages for the invention system. Because (oversimplifying a bit) everyone above the average implies someone below the average. We cannot all get more than the average. And the average is far, far lower than what I or any other marketeer manages to get. It is a form of PvP where anyone can win, but everyone.

Actually, I've often thought that rather than give dominators Illusion Control they should get a totally different set that is thematically similar, but more tuned to dominators. I would have replaced the Phantom Army with three Dancing Blades in this hypothetical set, so I guess that would technically be a powerset with three blades.

(One of these days I'm going to write up the complete design including the insane things I have to replace group vis and the spectral terror and send them to Black Scorpion just to see what he thinks).


But I'm pretty sure the devs are working on non-weapon powersets as well. Care to place a friendly wager on it?

The incremental costs relative to their average revenue of F2P players is the key metric, because the development costs associated with them separate from the other players is relatively low.

Yes.

No.

Its faster for me as well. But as I specifically said in that post, what you or I can do is essentially irrelevant.

Based on the little numbers out there and various interviews I've read, it seems the incremental cost of supporting one player on an MMO is somewhat less than one dollar per month. Most of the costs of an MMO are the fixed costs of development and support and the not quite fixed but somewhat decoupled costs of infrastructure. You do not need millions of players buying booster packs for this to be profitable. Hundreds of players buying booster packs can support thousands of F2P players that don't buy things ala carte. The critical parameter is the ratio of paying to non-paying players, not the actual numbers. If they could get just tens of thousands of players signing up and buying things, even spending less than average subscribers, that would probably be a net positive gain in revenue. More is better, but this model doesn't require millions of players to turn a profit. Tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of players are plenty.

Babelfish really sucks at this:

Not core standard content, no.


Its level 54 and obviously scaled to be far outside the difficulty range of standard core content.


When we - the forums - say something is "soloable" we mean something radically different than what the game design implies. Soloable to us means "one of us lunatics managed to take it out without a team." By that definition Lusca is soloable. However, for content in this game to be soloable by design the average player with the average soloing build must be able to solo complete it in a reasonable amount of time most of the time.

Similarly, saying that the invention system had no barriers to progress is a theoretically true but practically false statement. Which is to say, its obviously possible to reach basically the limits of the invention system through invention slotting: people have done it. I've done it. But I suspect you'll find if you datamine the players, the vast majority of the players have never done that, or come close to doing that. The effort is simply too high: its outside what they consider to be reasonable. So they progress only so far, and no farther - if at all. Does this mean the invention system is flawed, because the vast majority of players never see or partake of its full potential? Some might say yes, but the devs disagree: its an optional avenue of progress, so its working as intended if everyone decides to tap it to a different extent.

Core content and core progress are interlinked in this game: core progress can be necessary to core content, but optional progress cannot be. The invention system is considered optional progress, so its power cannot be necessary to any core content: core content is designed and balanced without the presumption of its power. Similarly, if the incarnate system is optional progress then it cannot be necessary to core content which it is not. But it can be non-optional to non-core content. The incarnate system and the end game content are linked in that related sense: the primary intent of the incarnate system is to provide additional power intended to assist with end game content. The fact that most of it is usable outside of that content is a bonus: it allows us to continue to grow more powerful relative to the standard content as well, which prevents the incarnate system from being only a relative treadmill powered by the end game.

"Higher" non-standard non-core content doesn't have to be soloable as a design rule. Its not an "argument." Its a statement of the fact that the "standard core content must be scaled to be soloable" rule doesn't apply to that content, so the devs do not obey it for that content. They don't, and never have. It *can* be soloable, for some definition of soloable. But the devs don't, in general, require it.

The way I remember it, this occurs when a thundercloud with a very high density of condensed water droplets is illuminated by the sun while low on the horizon. The atmosphere scatters blue light preferentially: that is why the sky itself appears blue. Red and yellow light from the sun isn't as scattered, so most of it comes straight at us from the sun. The only light coming from other directions in the sky must have ping-ponged around from the sun through the atoms in the atmosphere and then finally to our eyes.

As the light from the sun which is blue-depleted backlights a thundercloud that has a lot of condensed water droplets, the water droplets begin absorbing red light preferentially. That's why the ocean looks blue: ironically for the opposite reason: water absorbs red light, so only the blue light survives to reflect back up through the water and to our eyes.

So blue-depleted light from the sun passes through the cloud and becomes red-depleted. This makes the light that makes it out of the cloud greenish.

To have enough water suspended in the clouds to do this might require strong updrafts which keep water suspended and/or huge moisture content, which might explain why the phenomenon is linked to especially powerful storms.

You cannot make the same case for the Alpha slot level shift, because that level shift is universally on. Its actually a much more valuable level shift than the Incarnate shift in Destiny and Lore. The argument regarding Destiny and Lore incarnate shifts rests with the fact that those shifts are only usable within trials.

The case could be made that the point to the Lore and Destiny level shifts is to be applicable to the latter slots, but that's not really a reasonable design decision given the fact that the devs seem to have decided early on to push those other slots indefinitely into the future. They are planning on expanding options for the existing slots first, with no indication of when they intend to release the other slots. But I can theorize the new slots won't appear until the amount of incarnate content which generates incarnate rewards increases radically enough to justify it. That might be a long, long time from now.

Its not an analogy. I'm stating the fact that people have made the claim the game has made about-face changes that undermined all of its prior existence. That statement does not require qualification: its unambiguously true. I'm also stating the fact that gates of all kinds - including teaming - have been stated to be blocking progress. That statement also doesn't require qualification: it is unambiguously true.

In every case, people found ways to state their position in a way that emphasized some detail that made that particular situation binarily different from all previous decisions. This situation is no exception. People have found a new way to state the situation in a way that makes it different. That will *always* be possible.

But is this happening in a way that makes the distinction being highlighted fundamentally more important in an objective way? Not so far as I can see. The distinction is important to the people who find it important for no reason other than personal preference, which was also true for every other case prior. If your perspective is significant, its only as significant as everyone else's has been every other time. Which means this game has fundamentally altered itself many times.

Now, if you want to make an argument that doesn't just state why this particular change is singularly important and all previous people who asserted the same thing were wrong then if you're convincing I might come to believe this really is a unique event. But if you cannot explain to me why the thing you find important now should be considered more important than all the other things other players found equally important to them, my position is still that this has happened before, and will happen again.

You say that inventions make your character "wider" instead of the incarnate system which makes it "taller." But I don't see them that way, and I doubt the devs see it that way. They certainly were not designed that way. So that's a matter of personal perspective. Just like the people who had similar personal perspectives in the past in other situations.

Its not that I think your personal perspective isn't valid. Rather, the validity I'm granting it is no more and no less than everyone else who has made this claim in similar situations, which means I don't find your perspective and the people who share it uniquely valid. Whatever else you want to say about the changes and whether they improve or degrade the game, the specific point I don't think you have a leg to stand on is that this problem is unique. To say this is a unique break from the past is to say everyone else who said there was a unique break from the past was wrong. I don't believe you can make that case convincingly, because the primary leverage you have to make your own case is perspective, and you can't deny everyone else theirs if you do.

To make the case this problem is unique, you will have to leave the comfort of personal perspective, and make the case objectively in a way that this change judged objectively is fundamentally different from all previous ones, and that therefore all those other people were wrong in a way you aren't now. Its the same playing field I place myself in when I state my opinion of whether or not a game system is correct or incorrect in the literal sense: whether I like them or not, do they function as they should to satisfy the mandates of the game design. And in that sense, I believe I can make the case unambiguously that this game has never in its past made the design promise not to gate character progression behind teamed content. The devs remove gates, and they add gates. They never specifically do anything that would lead someone to believe they opposed gates. They have always stated their intent to be solo-friendly, but not solo-specific.

The reason why you always had a solo path to leveling is due to a completely different rule: core standard content must be soloable. This means things like story arcs. Because story arcs award XP and influence, theoretically speaking so long as you can run story arcs and other core mission content, you can always level and earn influence.

However, there is a separate rule that says enhanced or higher end content does not have to be soloable. Task forces, trials, even content with archvillains within it do not promise the players they can solo them. You might, but if you can't that's working as intended.

Being able to always progress and always achieve virtually all the rewards was a consequence of the first rule in the absence of a conflict with the second rule. But the end game falls under the auspices of the latter rule not the former rule, and there's no design rule that has ever existed in the game to give the former rule preeminence over the latter rule.

There's no historical basis for claiming such a rule, so there's no historical basis for saying all progressionally-related rewards must have a standard content outlet. To the extent that was ever true, and it wasn't always true, it has been a coincidence born of simply not having very much end game rewards to gate.

The people complaining *now* are complaining that the game requires teaming to progress at an acceptable rate to progress in the end game system and claiming its a complete change from the past. It is and it isn't. Its true that teaming is far more important in the end game system than it has been for the most part in the past. On the other hand, its not the first time people have claimed the game changed completely from what they perceived it to be in the past. Until I9 you didn't need substantial influence to slot your characters's final build. Then you did: a total about face. Now you could choose to stop at SOs if you wanted to, but if you wanted to continue to progress in the only way the game allowed you had to find some way to acquire high end inventions, and that usually amounted to influence earning. The vast majority of players are not rich: 5 billion inf for a build is not much for some of us, but for others its farther away than trying to slot incarnate powers with shards.

But that's not the first time that happened either. Until February 2005 SOs really were the best the vast majority of players could generally hope for. Then open Hami raids became available and you could generate vastly superior performance: end game progress became a matter of participating in Hami raids. Lots of them. That remained true from February 2005 until about November 2005 when ED took effect in Issue 6 and reduced, but didn't eliminate, the benefits of having lots of HOs.

And there were *many* complaints about that situation as well; people were complaining that end game "advancement" was gated behind Hamidon.

Every situation is unique, so every situation is the first time this game has confronted that situation. Confronting a unique change to the game is itself not unique. Claiming end game progress is gated behind trials or teamed content is not unique. Claiming the game penalizes some portion of the playerbase who do not want to participate in a particular gameplay is not unique. But this game was not something completely different for seven years and then suddenly changed direction. What the end game does, the development has seen fit to do several times in the past and will do again in the future. The change is the same change that happens when a ship sails over the equator and "suddenly" is in the southern hemisphere. The ship itself didn't change course, speed, or destination. Its an artificial line on a map some people find very significant, and other people fail to notice.

I don't know about actually awarding astral and empyrean merits outside of trials or some future incarnate-based alternate content. I could see converting Notices into them, though. Logically, they are time gated in one sense, but if you create a path from NotWs to astrals and then to vouchers, that means you can in a sense earn multiple NotWs in a week by running the WST on multiple alts, but still voucher the results to a single character. It would be a way to reward alt play, but it would also be a violation of the NotW time gate. I would have said that was highly unlikely a week ago, but today I don't think my reasoning for saying that currently applies.

If the devs want to have people running the WST 27 hours a day 500 days a year, that would be one way to encourage that.

I actually have two, and I keep my brother's account alive in case he ever wants to pop in. Trial accounts can access the arena though, so I got five of those.

I wonder how many people actually run real Swiss Draw matches though. It was doing really wonky things to me, like advancing the losers. Took me six tries to get my main through to the end.

I like this game, but not enough to subscribe to eight accounts. Although since I subscribe to three, that probably sounds a bit hollow.

My box is a piddly i7-860 with 16 gigs of Ram and an ATI 5800, and I octoboxed eight logins to get the Swiss Draw badge. Seriously, what does disabling antivirus do on that behemoth, reduce the temperature in the room by a milli-kelvin?

Two good questions. On the matter of the first question, I think an obvious potential source of alternate currency for the merit vendors that can be earned outside the trials are shards and notices. You can already convert shards to threads and then to components and iXP but that is timegated to 10 threads per day (for the efficient path). The devs could have atomic timegates for singular conversions: 60 shards into a single uncommon component voucher in one conversion, rather than 6 shard to thread conversions timegated to six days.

You could also have (probably very high) influence driven conversions for people who have alts that have earned lots of influence but not as much incarnate rewards.


The second question is trickier. I don't want to hit the devs too hard about a system I don't know the details about and hasn't launched yet, but if you can earn incarnate progress on character A and then transfer that to character B, then fundamentally the incarnate system is no longer a character progression system. Its a player progression system of sorts, where the player can spread that progress around to whichever characters they want, but its not specifically a character progress system anymore.

I don't know if the devs fully appreciate the position that sort of decision puts them in. The system as it is now ties incarnate progress to direct character activity, making it character progress. That property affords them some defense against certain kinds of changes. That defense evaporates in a system where incarnate progress can be traded. Incarnate progress becomes a currency, not a progress metric. And once it becomes a currency, a huge weight of argument that currently works in defense of the current system will be turned against the system in its current form.