TheWeaver

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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.

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I'd be fine with that - so long as I am still able to team to do this. I am a bit concerned that the fact that only the arc holder gets the reward will make it harder to construct teams for this kind of play. I do not play this game to solo, so if that's what I have to do to support my IO habbit, then I'll probably be unhappy.

Look, I get it, you HATE the market. It's not like I'm its biggest fan, but here's the thing - if you have some patience it can be a way to convert INF (something I can get) into Recipes (some of which I never get). I'm a casual player in terms of playtime. I play at most 8 hours per week (and usually a lot less). I play in sessions that average an hour in length (typically in lieu of some TV after the kids are put to bed). My richest toon is a lvl 50 villain who has about 40Mil on him.

Yet... I still am able to make use of set IOs and have a lot of fun with them. I go after the low to mid cost items (I cringe if I have to pay more than 2mil for something) and am somewhat creative with them. It is one of the few remaining reasons that I play the game (going on 4 years now and I've pretty much worn the non-TF content to death). Although it is far from perfect, the current system is working for me and I'd prefer if they didn't mess it up. If merits turn out to be purely additive, then great. If not, I hope they do something to adjust things.

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I just love when people assume that forum reg dates are the same as when someone started the game...

That aside, you're still wrong. Stalkers, for example were never nerfed "way back when". But they were buffed...and rather well, at that.

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IIRC they came in underpowered.

If you want a recent example of the bias PGT villainside.

Not only was it a rapid and major nerf, there was no thought to the need to either rebalance the set or allow people to respec.( Most would probably want to respec out of traps and would probably just delete the chars in disgust, but the principle is the same)

[/ QUOTE ]First things first you are right about how they were underpowered in pve. All the villains ATs came out pre-nerfed when compared to the hero counterparts. Masterminds were the only exception because there were no hero AT equal to them. Aside from stalkers stacking stealth there just really wasnt a single thing that villains did that heroes couldnt do better out of the box. The villain inherrents were tacked on to not make the pre-nerf look so bad. Heroes were all fine without their inherrents villains should have been that way too. If I had done villains I would have made corrupters have way better debuffs than defenders but much weaker buffs and heals. Doms would have had way better control than controllers without domination. Brutes would be alot more tankerish than they are, stalkers would be what they are now and masterminds would have had their epics taliored to fit the their pets. They all would have had a way to combine their pets like voltron or the constructicons.

Now about the PGT, seriously people need to chill with this. That proc thing on PGT was horribly broken and folks need to admit this. I hardly ever talk about saying something needs to be nerfed. I am in fact very anti-nerf, but the PGT thing was insane. Traps is fine after this. The range thing on the trip mines was a bug and is fixed now no one needs to be [censored] about traps.

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Must be so easy to see things clearly from up on that high horse - eh Ryu.

Here's the thing - most of us who play and love traps *have* been saying that the way it reacted to damage procs was at best a cheap gimick and that yes - it needed to go and needed to go quickly. In the process though they've created a power that provides 1/8th the mitigation of Freezing Rain. All without any comment.

All most of us have been saying is that we'd like to have back some of the mitigation potential that was lost when they tried (and failed) to fix the proc issue in I12 (that was when the tick rate went from 4 per second to 1 per second). Even at that rate the new PGT offers just less than 1/2 the mitigation of FR - but that would at least be a start.

But no - it's much more fun to focus on the one or 2 posters who are whining about their exploit being gone - thanks for playing into their hands. As an example of overraction and tinkering to no real effect I think PGT does kind of stand out (not just in this issue, but going back to I12).

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QR (I'z hates the pyramids)

I hate to say it but your just going to have to juggle something around to get more play time if your truely want the rewards, other wise just take the random roll. The thing is you cant lower the merit cost too much or give way too many merits per task otherwise you would just end up making them free because we would have way too many of the items out there. I think what they have now is about where things need to be. The only thing we need is HOs and purples and the system will be perfect for the most part.

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That's not the way Synapse has been framing it. The merit system is supposed to be *additive* for a player like me. A way to get the occasional high level IO that I just can't today. That's what he keeps saying in pretty much every response.

That can only be true if the market for mid-level Pool C recipes remains pretty much just as it is now or if some other, non merit based method of obtaining them is added. Otherwise as you state I'm not going to be able to obtain even the modest level of reward that I do today.

I know that lots of people hate the markets and want nothing to do with them. I'm just trying to point out that there is a segment of the player base that relies on them - not as a means for evil flipping or being a billionaire - but just to add some flavor to my toons. I'd hate to see that destroyed in this process.

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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.

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The problem is, doing it with merits will take alot longer for most people than I think a lot of pro-merits posters really realize.

At 1 merit per minute - five times the devs' intended rate - it's over 3 hours of TF time to get a shiny. At the intended rate, it's about 16 hours of TF time. 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.

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.

[/ QUOTE ]I think you are over stating how long its going to take. Most recipe sets will have only 2 pool c rares and possible 1 pool d rare. You just use merits on the pool c's if they are too high on the market. Since almost all of pool d's good but 2 recipes it wont be so bad to take random roll for that. So you are looking at most 500 merits per power that is using a set IO. Alot of powers will not use sets at all, some will use HOs for better slotting. Everything else you just use the market for. The thing is they wont dare raise the prices on non-purples because we have an alternative now. So basically if people want to be able to sell at all they will have to keep stuff reasonable. It wont work like this initially but after the first month or so and everyone has found out about merits things will drastically change.

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I'm talking about getting one pool C by deterministic choice. Not a full build. Not even a full power's worth of inventions. Just one pool C recipe choice.

200 merits. At 1 minute per merit that's 200 minutes (3 hours, 20 minutes). At 5 minutes per merit, that's 1,000 minutes or 16 hours, 40 minutes.

Assuming you do the intended 5 minutes per merit rate, at 3 hours of taskforce time per week it's going to take you 6 weeks (you'll have a few merits left over). To get one 200-merit recipe.

Edit - at your 500 merits per power, EvilRyu, that's 41 hours, 40 minutes of taskforce time per power at 5 minutes to the merit. In a build where you're slotting say 12 powers with inventions at 500 merits per power, it's going to take 500 hours.

At 3 hours of taskforce time per week, it'll take you 166 weeks and 5 days to get your build. That's 3 years, 2 and a half months.

Now tell me again how this is good for the casual player? Storyarc merits? Heck they could give so many merits from storyarcs as to knock a full two years off the time to completion and the casual player would still be boned here.

[/ QUOTE ]Seriously I dont think its going to be 1 merit for 5 minutes. If it is taking that long on alot of those task then you are just doing it wrong. I am looking at doing 90 minute ITFs. Thats about 10 to get what you want, which would be closer to 15 hours of game time per IO. It cant be any worse than it is now. Seriously dude I started a toon a few months back and did all the heroside tfs except the shard tfs and didnt get [censored] that was useable for that character. It was either snipes, confuses, and other various trash drops. Many of those TFs I ran multiple times. Given the total time I put into it I would say its way more 16 hours per recipe. I think the problem you are seeing is that folks wont put much time into the tfs. I think people will be more willing to put time into tfs after the changes. So that 3 hour per week could end up being 10 to 15 hours per week

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It would be interesting (for me at least) to understand if the devs are also aiming for this result. Are they hoping to get folks to run more TF's and thus balancing around that result?

Again, I really hope not. The fact that I can only spend on average 3 hours per week on TF's (actually my average is a lot lower than that) has nothing to do with desire. It has to do with playtime. I simply don't get 3 hour blocks of time to do TFs in and while it is possible to split a TF over multiple runs - it is often hard to find folks willing to do that (except for the insanely long ones).

So I'd love to run more TF's and I'd love to run some of the longer ones (I've never done an LGTF for instance, though I'd love to) - I just simply don't have the time. One of the things that I've always loved about COH is that other than not getting to see the TF content, I'm not really penalized for this playstyle. 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.

I hope that's not what the devs are going for here, but if it is, I'd like to know now so I can adjust accordingly.

If Flux's choice is reflective of what happens in the game at large - then yes, I think I'm screwed. At least until the devs re-adjust things to account for this behavior. From everything I've heard from the devs they seem to believe that hoarding won't be the norm - not that I necessarily agree with them. I just hope they are right (or have a plan for what to do when they are wrong).

Otherwise I will be effectively shut out from a part of the game that I personally enjoy - the building of non-cookie cutter toons via modest usage of set IOs. Currently the market is a means to that end and I don't see merits as a replacement means.

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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.

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The problem is, doing it with merits will take alot longer for most people than I think a lot of pro-merits posters really realize.

At 1 merit per minute - five times the devs' intended rate - it's over 3 hours of TF time to get a shiny. At the intended rate, it's about 16 hours of TF time. 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.

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.

[/ QUOTE ]I think you are over stating how long its going to take. Most recipe sets will have only 2 pool c rares and possible 1 pool d rare. You just use merits on the pool c's if they are too high on the market. Since almost all of pool d's good but 2 recipes it wont be so bad to take random roll for that. So you are looking at most 500 merits per power that is using a set IO. Alot of powers will not use sets at all, some will use HOs for better slotting. Everything else you just use the market for. The thing is they wont dare raise the prices on non-purples because we have an alternative now. So basically if people want to be able to sell at all they will have to keep stuff reasonable. It wont work like this initially but after the first month or so and everyone has found out about merits things will drastically change.

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I'm talking about getting one pool C by deterministic choice. Not a full build. Not even a full power's worth of inventions. Just one pool C recipe choice.

200 merits. At 1 minute per merit that's 200 minutes (3 hours, 20 minutes). At 5 minutes per merit, that's 1,000 minutes or 16 hours, 40 minutes.

Assuming you do the intended 5 minutes per merit rate, at 3 hours of taskforce time per week it's going to take you 6 weeks (you'll have a few merits left over). To get one 200-merit recipe.

Edit - at your 500 merits per power, EvilRyu, that's 41 hours, 40 minutes of taskforce time per power at 5 minutes to the merit. In a build where you're slotting say 12 powers with inventions at 500 merits per power, it's going to take 500 hours.

At 3 hours of taskforce time per week, it'll take you 166 weeks and 5 days to get your build. That's 3 years, 2 and a half months.

Now tell me again how this is good for the casual player? Storyarc merits? Heck they could give so many merits from storyarcs as to knock a full two years off the time to completion and the casual player would still be boned here.

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For me at least I don't think it is that bad - but it's still potentially bad. I posted a pretty typical build for me which cost me easily less than 15M to construct. That build uses just south of 1600 merits of Pool C IO's (nothing more fancy than the Scirrocos Tripple) at lvl 37. If I were to have to purchase those IOs using merits only then it would take me 44 weeks of TF time using the metrics above. The 3 hours of TF time per week is pretty accurate for me, I just don't use quite as many IOs as you are suggesting (but more than Ryu seems to assume).

So that's just under a year of play time to build that toon via direct merit purchase. Clearly that's not going to happen. What's less clear is whether doing it that way will be necessary. For this system to mesh well with my personal playstyle the market for those mid-level Pool C's needs to continue to exist in roughly its current form (I could stand a little inflation, but if a Scirroco's tripple starts cost 20M+ then I'm not getting one).

This is why I don't get the folks who are gleefully rubbing their hands and saying "goodie - death to the market". If the market dies, then so does my ability to create the builds that I do today. People picking up their marbles (merits) and bypassing the market to get exactly what they want is the one thing I'm terrified of. Because if that happens it is going to take me 44 weeks to build my very modest character - how is that good for me?

Synapse, hi. Thanks again for taking the time to have this exchange with us on the merit system. Whether or not I agree with everything you've been laying out, I do appreciate that you are taking the time to do it.

One concern that I did not see addressed is the impact of having story arc merit awards go to the arc holder only. Since story arcs are going to be my primary source of merits, I obviously plan to be running as many as possible. I am concerned though that I will have to do so mostly solo. For example, today when teaming with my SG mates in RO I really pay no attention to whether I'm SK'ing up or running my arcs or any of that. I expect that to change once I13 goes live and if it changes for my SG mates as well that could make team formation harder.

So I'm curious, do you share the same concern or is the current assumption that most players will just view the story arc merits as a nice bonus, just as they view the existing arc bonuses? Have you given any more consideration to the possibility of providing the arc merits to all of the participants and not just to the arc holder? If you don't think that is workable I'd like to better understand why.

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I think you must have gotten my post mixed up with someone else, cause your novel really has nothing to do with what "I" said..

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OK then, you waited this long to post *that*. Wow - must be grumpy this morning.

You said:

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What I want to know is after 4 years of promoting alts why the devs do something like this that is so strongly anti-alt. It makes it look like they don't know what they are doing when they do stupid stuff like this.


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I said - tl;dr - the devs only don't know what they are doing if they *intend* for merits to be anti-alt. Because neither you, nor they can *prove* what impact merits will have on alt-ing.

So it seemed a bit premature to be calling them incompetent.

I also think that at this point the only likely merit changes are ones that can be supported by *objective* measures - not belief. But now I've certainly crept into novella length, so I'll stop.

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The devs are apparently betting that most folks will just view merits as an "extra" - a way to get additional reward from non-TF sources and control what items they get from TF's if they want to. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with that assesment, but right now it is all in the realm of conjecture.

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Uhhh no. There is no way anyone could view the merit as an extra. For it to be an extra you would still need the original which will be gone.

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From the dev's point of view I don't think they believe the original *is* gone. You can still run your TF and take your random roll (unless your TF is Katie or Eden) and then sell what you don't want. I can then buy what you don't want and we're both happy.

In the end I think the key to whether this plays out the way the dev's see it or the way some of us fear it might is whether or not the majority of folks continue to take "random" Pool C drops. If by-in-large folks use their merits to buy random drops and then sell what they don't want, then the existing Pool C market will remain pretty much intact. Likely the low end would come up a bit, but it won't go away.

OTOH, if folks don't take the random roll at anywhere near the current frequency, then the supply of "marginal" Pool C recipes will dry up and something we have today will be lost.

I don't think the devs are aiming for the second outcome and so I have to believe that they think most folks will continue to take the random roll and sell what they don't want. The only way we're going to know for sure is to see what happens and what the state of the market is around 2 months after I13 goes live.

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- but let's face it that kind of behavior already occurs - the folks speeding the TF's have specific builds that they use for that purpose.

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For some, sure. But if I want on a KHTF now, all I need is a 30+ to stroll into Croatoa and shout out. Any one of my 30+ will do and I'll get on a team that'll be done within 45 minutes (my worst time ever - first mission was set to invinc and we wiped several times before reforming and restarting.)

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The same thing is true regarding the market for Pool C's. Today as a non-TF runner, I rely on the market to get the recipes that I need - I feed off of what the TF runners don't want. The devs clearly view Merits as additive for a player like me - since with merits I'll be able to use the market *and* get an extra shiny or two that I couldn't before.

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How are you going to be getting enough merits for a shiny if you are a non-TF runner? Seriously, I'd really like to know because my play time is limited too and longer TF's tend to be a no-go for me. I'd love a shiny on several of my toons but at 200-250 merits ... that's a lot of 1-2 merit story arcs. I know I sure don't expect to see a lot of shinies on the market after I-13 goes live (I'll be very happy if I'm wrong about that.)

Don't get me wrong, I *like* what I see in I-13. I just think the devs have missed some pretty obvious things in their design philosophy vs how the various communities in "City of" play the game.

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Note - I said I didn't necessarily agree with all of their current assumptions, I just said that attacking them as stupid because of that disagreement isn't likely to be helpful.

At this point I remain Really Concerned (tm) that I will be negatively impacted in the short term. Despite reassurances from folks I respect I still think there is a very real, non-zero probability that the market for Pool C recipes will be destroyed by this change. Since I rely on that market to build my toons and that's a large part of what's fun for me it is something I will be watching very carefully.

However, my belief - no matter how rational and plausible - cannot at this point be *proved*. I can prove that without TFs my characters will typically earn at most 300 merits in the current system. Toss in a random TF or two and each of my toons will see at most 400 to 500 merits. I can prove that that will net me 2 or 3 shinnies - recipes that today none of my toons have ever gotten (LOTG, Numinas, etc..). So if the devs are right and I can get that *and* still use the market to buy what I do today - then the system is additive. OTOH, if the market for Pool C's goes poof - then I'm not so happy because those 500 merits aren't going to get me all the Pool C recipes that I typically use on a toon - unless I'm really lucky.

But all of that hinges on something neither I, nor the devs can prove - what will be the impact of Merits on the open market for mid-level Pool C recipes? I have my belief, the devs have theirs - since they make this game, we go with theirs. I just have to hope that *if* things don't work out the way the devs think they will that they will react quickly enough to correct things - otherwise I will have lost a part of the game that I find fun.

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Why is everyone so worried about trading merits?

Use your merit toon to collect and craft the reward. Then have a trustworthy friend transfer the crafted enhancements to the toon you want them on.

Problem solved. Boy that was tough.

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Yeah! Oh right.. this means you have one task force character or you cannot accumulate merits in any large number in a reasonable time frame on any character. It doesn't really matter if you're tired of that character and really want to play an alt on the TF run that you and your friends are running tonight.

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What I want to know is after 4 years of promoting alts why the devs do something like this that is so strongly anti-alt. It makes it look like they don't know what they are doing when they do stupid stuff like this.

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Actually it makes them look like they don't agree with your assumptions. You are assuming that because of merits players will focus more on a smaller number of characters. You may be right, but the devs clearly don't believe that will be the case. They probably think that a small number of players might do this - but let's face it that kind of behavior already occurs - the folks speeding the TF's have specific builds that they use for that purpose. The devs are apparently betting that most folks will just view merits as an "extra" - a way to get additional reward from non-TF sources and control what items they get from TF's if they want to. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with that assesment, but right now it is all in the realm of conjecture. You can assert loudly and strongly that this will kill alt-itist and the devs can believe just as strongly that it won't. Neither of you will *know* until the system goes live and we see what happens. And since it is their game, they get to determine which assumption we start with.

The same thing is true regarding the market for Pool C's. Today as a non-TF runner, I rely on the market to get the recipes that I need - I feed off of what the TF runners don't want. The devs clearly view Merits as additive for a player like me - since with merits I'll be able to use the market *and* get an extra shiny or two that I couldn't before. That all works great - as long as there *is* a market for Pool C's in I13. The devs are betting that there will be and while I may not agree with their assesment, it is their's to make and does not make them stupid.

The key for both of these is not so much what the going in assumptions are, but rather what the design intent is. Do the devs *intend* for merits to discourage alts? I don't believe that they do. So if it turns out that merits do have that effect (on a widespread basis, not just for the few of us here) they would probably act to correct things. Same deal with the market - if they *expect* to have a market for Pool C's in I13 and it turns out that there isn't one then I would expect them to adjust the design to achieve their actual goals. Personally I would have preferred that they do more to assure the existance of such a market (by retaining the random drops, or making Pool C more attractive, or adding Pool C drops to critters, or...), but I can understand that since they believe the market will still be there they want to wait and see.

So IMO what we really need to be focusing on here is determining the dev's design intent and presenting data (not conjecture) relating to those parts of the system that we feel thwart that intent.

I think this is the crux of the issue. Will the players take what's behind door number 3 or will they save up for what they really want.

It seems pretty clear that the devs are betting that most folks will take the random roll and sell what they don't want. Thus the market for Pool C/D recipes will remain what it is.

Consider me less than convinced. I think in the end it is going to hinge on which route the farmers/speed runners choose. The data would suggest they run the most of the TFs (otherwise we wouldn't be seeing the reward skews we do), so that means they contribute the most to the influx of recipes across the Pool C spectrum (from crap to spectacular).

Are they going to take the roll and sell what they don't want or are they going to hoard and only buy LOTGs (and Numinas, etc...). Not being one, I don't know. Hey Squez - which is it - you rolling or saving?

OK, so I'm not a big fan of formless worry, which means I needed numbers. Here's what I looked at.

I took my lvl 37 Night Widow build and figured out what Pool C/D IOs I was using. I consider my needs to be modest, but you'll have to judge that for yourself. The list isn't long or exotic, here they are:

Kismet - Def/End/Rech (x2)
Gaussian's - Rech/End (x2)
Impervium Armor - Res/Rech
Dark Watchers - Rech/End
Sciroccos - Acc/Dam/End (x2)

According to City of Data, all of these are Pool C recipes. None of them cost very much on the BM today and are easily attainable without farming missions or running that many SFs (neither of which I do - I run missions - lots and lots of missions).

I have a few more planned for my future, but let's start with these. After compiling this list, I was feeling pretty good - much shorter than I thought it would be (most of my IOs are Pool A/B), so I was all ready to be wrong. Did I mention that I really want to be wrong about this?

Next step - how many merits would this cost, so off to test. Using the numbers currently on test the above list would cost 1575 merits. OK, now that's a bit higher than I was expecting, guess I figured only the LOTG and such were 200+ merits - not so, the cheapest thing on my list is 135, the rest are all >= 200. Feeling less happy (I don't want to be right) I next took a look at the story arc rewards. There is actually a very good list being compiled by folks here on the main forums (pushed by Catwhoorg). This probably isn't the full list quite yet, but if you add up every single story arc reward in there you get 301 merits (or at least I did).

OK, so now I'm depressed. Let's assume we're not seeing 1/2 the rewards (doubtful, but possible) - that would mean 600 merits available over a villain career via story arcs. The problem is that is from *every* arc, at *every* level. My IO list above is from my lvl 37 toon. Also, you can't actually run *every* arc - not unless you use Oro. But even if you do you still come up with only 1/5 to 1/3 of the merits needed to by my piddly little list. Also, to get these rewards *I* have to be the arc holder. I can't run other folks arcs. I can't SK up. Doing so will only make the problem worse.

I'm really not very happy right now. What am I missing (please tell me I'm missing something). I can't believe the devs intend for this major an impact on my particular approach to the game. Am I somehow acheiving something I'm not supposed to - I don't farm, I don't speed run, heck I don't even stealth newspapers except on rare occasion. I must be missing something.

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1 Numina's Unique is 250 Merits...That's 5 Posi runs on 1 guy. How casual of a gamer can you be and still have time to do that and nothing else.

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How casual a gamer can you be and want a Numana's Unique?

My characters get maybe a few pool A recipe sets during their careers. Four or five if I'm feeling ambitious. The build you posted is alien to me. I seriously doubt there are very many casual gamers who would attempt such a thing now, let alone after I13 goes live.

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This I agree with. Any discussion of the impacts of this on players who don't run lots of TF/SF (which is how I'm going to interpret "casual" for this thread) should avoid examples involving any of the "big time" IOs like Numinas or LOTG. It just undercuts the argument and gives folks a straw man to shoot down.

However, I disagree that this won't have an impact on casual players who currently make use of IOs outside of the majors. My next task will be to take 2 or 3 of my favorite builds (all of which use lots of IOs, but no big ticket items) and see exactly what they will take to reproduce in the new system. If they can't be done using primarily story arc based awards then I think the new system negatively impacts the "casual" player. Right now my intuition is that this will prove true, but I need to go out and prove it (just a hypothesis ATM).

BTW - even if they *can* be done using only story arc based awards there is still the problem that only the arc holder gets said reward - if I'm going to need all my arcs to get the merits I need, then I'm never running someone elses - not desired behavior IMO.

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For a grand total of 2770 Merits 2770/55 (Posi Run Hero Side) = 51 times WITH THE SAME GUY. Times 200 minutes (less than your data mine at current) = 10200 mins (170 hours or 7.1 days). The 3 hour break for claiming Merits would be absorbed into the next running of Posi, so 7.1 days of back to back Posi would get 1 character their Merits.


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QR

The only hope that grinding will not take forever as you opined is if people get fed up and start taking the random roll. And I don't think that will happen for Pool C until the roll rate is 10 or below.

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Below I think - at its current cost why on earth would anyone *ever* take a Pool C random roll. Most of that Pool is complete Bantha PooDoo. How is this not going to mean essentially *no* market for the mid-level Pool C's?

As I outlined above this has me Really Worried (tm). I'm a casual player from the standpoint of my playtime. I'm the father of 2 young girls, the employee of a software startup, I like to golf and even *gasp* spend time with my wife - in short I don't have a lot of gaming time and what time I have tends to come either in short bursts or late at night. That play schedule and Task Forces just don't mix - so I don't do many of them. OTOH, I'm totally obsessed when it comes to builds - I'm an inveterate min/maxer from all the way back to my PnP days. I just find it fun and so the set IO portion of this game is very appealing to me.

As it stands right now the existing drop and market system works for me. Sure, it's not perfect, but it doesn't lock me out of the resources I need to be happy. I can't create the 500Mil+ purpled out, super build - but I can get creative and leverage the IO system to make interesting, non-cookie cutter builds. That's a big part of why I'm still playing.

Unless the rewards from story arcs are increased significantly from where they are now I'm having trouble seeing how I won't end up locked out under this new system. My biggest worry is that this is entirely intentional. That the new design goal is that in order to create the kinds of builds that I currently do you must run TFs - which for me is just generally not an option (love to, can't). If anyone out there can show me how my fears are unfounded then I'm all ears. In particular if Synapse can comment on the *intended* impact on players like myself that would be great. I may not like the answer - but I would like to know what it is.

Welcome to our little slice of <pick a place you'd like a slice of>.

Synapse, hi. First of all, welcome to the nuthouse. Secondly, thank you very much for taking the time to go through and provide answers to our questions. A lot of the follow up posts have focused on the TF rewards, but if I may I'd like to focus on the non-TF rewards. Here was my original question and your response:

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Poster: TheWeaver
Q: What impact are you expecting the merit system to have on those of us who (for one reason or another) tend not to run TF/SF's?


A: The intention of the system was to also give players who don’t tend to run Task Forces and Strike Forces the chance at earning the same high end rewards as players normally running Task Forces, however at a diminished rate. This gives player an opportunity to earn rewards they normally would not have had access to outside of the Black Market/Wentworth’s.


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The goal you outline sounds great, but I remain somewhat concerned and here's why. As it stands today, I, as a non-TF runner, am already able to obtain pretty much all of the recipes and IOs that I desire. Sure, I never get the really big ones (never seen a LOTG +Rech or Numinas Unique), but that's OK. I can however get pretty much any other Pool C or Pool D recipe via WW/BM because for those there is a fairly liquid market (at least if you have some patience).

That leads to my primary concern. If it turns out that what players do with their merits is save them so that they can buy exactly what they want, what will happen to the market for Pool C and Pool D recipes? There is no other way to get them, so my intuition says that the market would dry up. The net result being that unless I earn merits I'll no longer be able to obtain the level of reward that I currently do.

Is this intended? Is the feeling that if you don't run TF/SF's that it should not be possible to fully equip a toon with "mid-level" Pool C and Pool D recipes? Here for example is a Mids-data chunk for my lvl 37 Night Widow. Nothing too fancy here and the build cost me around 10-15M to outfit. Should I be able to achieve this type of build using only merits obtained from running Story Arcs?

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>| Copy &amp; Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|MxDz;1198;665;1330;HEX;|
|78DAA553596F1251143E0343A785612B142850CA66A231F2E CF2601A04A9D2DAA66|
|8DDE264A49332910ECD30DD7CF207F80FB46ADDD0076334B1 6E3FCC684CF09C7347|
|A20F3E39C97CDFBD67F9EE3967EE2CEC9E5301EE9D05295EE DEAFDBE3667EBED8ED|
|5EB6BABE65A6F4759D49D2D5BEF4E36F5B663F7D68CB6B3D5 CF2FD9E686A1004089|
|83B496AD9B9669AD5716CDF58EA3FD6D4CB60C7D63A767DFA 9B876771B9DB73A866|
|D584EE5F7425DEAF5BA95A6A16F629A9F372B9B86B116E065 BD4BE2515ECF5BDB66|
|DFBC6D764D672F53DB34DB952BB5B996D634B64DDDE9E896B 6A0F71DC3DE4B618DC|
|7F07D8C3D8A67E881032A1C3C03A422949EF0AEEA47923840 02191729F028484938|
|505D070CBD520DC823D7813CF205A4348C37D8584305AF50F 07A49A10463A430036|
|3DFD1380DE33F39EE29EAF9849EE4FBC0A6D0210B3D438F22 3C3E65E0018883FFA5|
|8702FCAF98D4E74CA12A6745AE21E5A08EE74EB8954F94F94 0F508521E122816703|
|D01993D39AA280D0FF0A4A0DB53F0238A6621F299B5739F90 66A174C8BB222A84DD|
|5AC3C7795E65410F51212A3C72544C65F23CB7394953C942B CC1BB4281C31B58644|
|C94E28B8966E2D44C0212A2C3D40BA6D26BA6F280691EB3A6 DC914EF9B8F284F836|
|85A4A0041B9B7EFA1CA298E40FA40CA4BEF148D3510EC8452 4EAAA4C5F2006FB2A5|
|52664A7B7813CE91DA6EC2E579BBD0B34AC8B289B11C743E6 049B16FC84C2342326|
|F148A54CA136FB06A900F9F77CA7F2EF04BD452A4352A1689 15A3CCAA9C37F3D597|
|9745D81A3A0F9A7A5C0F35E92471713240EBA248F2EF17F3D 5F467FCBC432FD172B|
|0497095609AE125C27B8417093E016814630FC3ACA0E9FA48 24E119C263843709F8|
|294004280402508128408C2041182184182204DB04F30FC05 AF810040|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|</pre><hr />


If the new design goal is that a build like that would require me to run SF's it would be good to know now (I may not like it, but at least I won't be surprised by it). If that's not the new design goal then I'll trust that you will monitor the in-game results and adjust things so that the reward level for non-TF runners remains at or above where it is today.

Thanks again for your time.

Trying to interpret this is like trying to read tea leaves in a hurricane (pre-nerf). However, I share the sense of trepidation expressed by others. If there is one thing the devs have shown that they do not like, it is when one set is widely perceived to out-perform another and everyone flocks to it. It matters not whether the perception is reality or not - if *everyone* who PvP's starts playing /EM blasters then /EM is in for an adjustment (the devs have also shown that they remedy these cases by going after the high water mark, not by floating the rest of the boats).

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--"Queen to Queen's level three" (exceptionally nerdy ST reference).

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was that a Barkley (SP?) refference?

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Oh, man. If you have to ask, you're not nerdy enough.

(You do realize that when the Star Trek Online MMO comes out, there may be a severe rift in the nerd-space continuum?)

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Nahh, because like every other Star Trek game ever created (except possibly Star Fleet Battles) it will likely suck.

I am now fully bandwagon compliant.

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And Castle did indicate that the devs are seeing a piece of the problem:

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As they should. Controllers are better at control type powers. The point you want to make here is that a Controller Secondary power is outperforming a Defender Primary power. We are aware of that and want to correct it at some point in the future.


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What I read from that is that the devs have two imperatives here: controllers should be better at control powers than defenders, all things being equal, and primary powers should be more effective than secondary powers, all things being equal. It seems that the former has precedence over the latter, but the latter isn't being ignored: it just requires a solution that doesn't immediately reverse the former.

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The equatable solution would seem to me to ensure that a power set that is used as both a primary and secondary is stacked so that most of its powers play to the strengths of the AT for whom it is a primary. Further I would argue that all of the powers should have at least some significant effect that favors the primary AT. In general I think that is what the devs have tried to do, but when it comes to some of the Defender sets they seem to have clearly screwed it up*. The thread outlining the impacted powers shows that at least 3 sets have a majority of powers that favor the secondary user over the primary and a couple more that have 1/3 of their powers impacted.

*Actually, I thought about this a bit more and that's not really fair. I think what they tried to do was to develop a couple of "hybrid" power sets like Dark and TA which I think is a great idea. The problem is that having developed these they don't seem to know what to do with them in light of the imperitives that you outline. They get a bit like NOMAD on Trek and keep waffling back and forth until we end up with the complete mess that is Trick Arrow. Anyway, back to the rest of the post already in progress...

Of course at this point we aren't going to get a major rework of the power sets, so what we are left with is splitting hairs and fighting over scraps.

What I'd like to see is a reworking of Defenders and Controlers with much less overlap, more emphasis on soft and/or analog control vs. binary control, and math that makes debuffs actually worth something in the face of enhanced powers. What we get are a statement that the overlaps are intentional, break frees, and a statement that the combat engine can't be touched. Given this I think it is at least understandable that if there is a grey area between debuff and control, the defender community would prefer to see things fudged in our favor for once.

We doing 15 now, well I copied 10, so here they are:

Disease - Matchbox Twenty (Live Accoustic version)
General Attitude - Collective Soul Youth
Which Way to the Top? - Fastball
West Of The Fields - REM
Binky The Doormat - R.E.M.
The One I Love - David Gray
Doth I Protest Too Much - Alanis Morissette
Dancin' In The Stars - Mannheim Steamroller
Angels Of The SIlences - Counting Crows
Cold As It Gets - Patty Griffin

And here's the top 10 from my wife's portion of the list (it's amzaing that we've been married for 15 years, I think it's the fact that she's like Barenaked Ladies ):

The Power - Cher
Hard Day (Shep Pettibone Remix) - George Michael
Leningrad - Billy Joel
Santuary - Madonna
Jane - Barenaked Ladies
Dreaming Of You - Celine Dion
Famous Last Words - Billy Joel
It's In Your Eyes - Phil Collins
Crazy For You - Madonna
Waterloo - ABBA

Here we go, here's the first 10 from ITunes shuffle over my portion of the list:

Let's Get Retarded- Black Eyed Peas
Stumptown - Nickel Creek
Counting the Days - Collective Soul
Lava - The B-52's
Gentle Sheep - The Ditty Bops
Green Eyes - Coldplay
Valparaiso - Sting
Believe - Nils Lofgren
Take the Money and Run - Steve Miller
Nobody's Fool - Avril Lavigne

The whole notion of Luddites as a mob group is just sheer hilarity. Whoever came up with that deserves pie and lots of it.

Oh and to keep on topic, yes War Witch and dev's like her give me hope this game will continue to be fun for a long while.