Tricia

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Opportunity Cost. Spending those 20 merits on a random roll at Pool C is a bad bet if you're looking for something specific. The most you'll have to spend for a specific recipe is 250 merits. Or 12.5 random rolls. It's a bad gamble to take the roll. Before this, it wasn't a choice. You did a TF you got a roll, not skeeball tickets.

[/ QUOTE ]That's assuming you want one, and only one thing...and won't be satisfied with inf, either.

How many people will that actually be the case for?

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With the complete loss of Random Pool C's and D's, there will be almost NONE on the market on either side.. Few people, if any, will 'waste' their precious merits buying something just to sell it.

[/ QUOTE ]*shrug* I, on the other hand, know there will be a good number of people that will. I like the Big 3...but I'm not overly concerned with getting them. So I'll still stick with the random roll. If I happen to get one of the big 3, I can sell it, and fund a build on an alt of mine that (probably) doesn't use one of those expensive IOs. If I don't...well, at least I only spent 20 merits on it...and I at least got something either I, or one of my friends, can likely use on one of our alts...or is at least worth a decent chunk on the market.

People really over-dramatize the quality of Pool C. Is every single recipe worth 10 million or more? No. But your odds of getting something at least worth your time are pretty good...especially now, with the ability to roll at a specific level range.



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I don't have that option now. Now I have to grind to get what I want. It just doesn't seem to be a very casual friendly system.

[/ QUOTE ]Instead, you have the option of getting a random roll with almost any task force, and still getting that chance at getting lucky.

You just can't do it in 30 minutes anymore.

((Edit: And yes, I fully realize that other TFs than Katie and Eden can be done quickly, and rewards will be nerfed, and blah blah blah. I don't want to hear the dooooomsaying. It's been repeated enough in this thread already.))

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I had a big response set but based on what others are saying I think you get the picture that you guys are way way off track by trying to force a paying playerbase to play an open ended MMO ANY way other than the way "THEY" want to play.

Your attempt to get people to play the other content "YOU" want them to play makes no sense and cannot be explained away.

[/ QUOTE ]Er...please explain to me where they're forcing you to do anything.

You still have the choice of running random missions...street sweeping...ouroing missions...running a TF...running mission arcs...or even sitting in Pocket D and cybering. Where are they taking this choice away?



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This is the one I don't get. With these merits and no more random, there won't be any recipes on the AH, or the few that are will be even costlier. Hell even the Fear and Confuse sets are going to cost more now, for the few people that do use them. As other posters have mentioned, who the heck is going to piss away merits on Pool C random, when the devs even admit :

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The cost of pool D rewards are higher due to the significantly higher likelihood of getting the desired enhancement with a single roll. Taskforce reward tables have substantially more items on them than Trial reward tables.

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which is translated to "pool c has too much crap", which is what we've been saying on the market forum for 18 frickin months!!

[/ QUOTE ]So...the pool is going to dry up...which means prices are going to go up...which means your likelihood of getting a good recipe will go up.

Hmmm...seems the idea of going random seems more lucrative now, no?

It may not stay exactly the *same*...but random rolls will still be used.


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Why was this not the way it was originally or changed after the above became more than clear? Makes too much sense.

[/ QUOTE ]Some people, myself included, actually *do* consider the fears and confuses and such to be worthwhile recipes.


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Now if you WANT to spend 3000 merits instead of 1000, that's your business. But don't pretend that it makes sense.

[/ QUOTE ]I like you. Let's be friends.


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Doing such under this new systems punishes me. and why? can the dev's give me ONE GOOD REASON why i shouldn't be able to pool my resorces between all my alts? Between my 2 accounts? Bah.

[/ QUOTE ]Not a dev, but my guess would be the difficulty in making them "account tradable", so to speak...and not tradable, period.

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With this system, you're guaranteed to get what you want at the end of those 7 hours.

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No. That is 7 theoretical hours Your merits per hour will vary

[/ QUOTE ]I realize this. I was using his theoretical '7 hours' that he stated in his post.

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So, I need to spend 7+hrs running TFs to earn myself 1 Knockback Recipe?, when before I may just have been lucky enough to get it as a drop after a single TF OR recieved a Recipe I could sell to buy the one I wanted??, how is THAT a better system?

[/ QUOTE ]Because you only may have gotten that recipe you wanted. Or, you could have gotten nothing but worthless things that you don't want, and sell for little at the market in those 7 hours.

With this system, you're guaranteed to get what you want at the end of those 7 hours.

I find a very adequate reward Trick or Treating. It's a little thing called "fun".

And the weird thing is...that's what I play this game for! Man, that works out well!

Maybe *your* numbers are...but the numbers as of last June (the most recent I've seen) were ~138k active accounts.

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and yes they do have various other games that chrage a monthly fee equal to CoH/V.

[/ QUOTE ]And how many of them have anywhere near the subscriber base of CoH? Guild Wars, which I believe comes in second, charges no monthly fees. (I could be wrong on this...but we're not exactly talking about millions of subscribers here in any case.)

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the fact is that after all is said and done and everything and everyone is paid they have more then enough revenue left to do what they need to and not have to charge for different in game items.

[/ QUOTE ]No, this is your opinion. Unless you can prove that they're putting out a huge profit every year, not just with speculative imaginary numbers, you have no way to say this.

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there was and is no reason to charge for a 30 temp travel power when you get 2 of them before your permanent travel power by doing radio missions.

[/ QUOTE ]Other than the fact that the players asked for it?

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the factor behind this is greed.

[/ QUOTE ]No, the factor behind this is capitalism. Wanting to make money and turn a profit is not greed. It's called being a successful business.

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and why did they make it so that only the cards would get it at first for like 2 months before announcing it and that it would be charged for, and in that matter why does it cost $20 for a game card when the subsciption fee is $15.

[/ QUOTE ]I believe it was an exclusive deal they had with the distributors of said cards.

And $15 for game time + $5 for jetpack = $20


Seems like you need to follow your own advice and "do your research before you speak."




edit:

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Part of our $15 also goes to the development of issues. They are not 'free'.

[/ QUOTE ]You don't have to pay specifically for those issues, like you do in other MMOs, is what is meant by that statement.

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lets look at it this way, 100,000 x $15/mnth is 1.5 million a month. where is this not enough revenue to bring new content to the game? multiply that by 12 months and you get 18, million a year, now add the numbetr of players i forgot and you get well over 20 million a year to develop a game.

and dont forget about the other games NCSoft produces. were probly talking a 100 mil a year buisness here. well mnore then enough to add new content to all the games they provide and still amke out like a bandit.

[/ QUOTE ]Firstly, what games are you thinking earn them 80 million additional a year?

Secondly, you fail at basic economics. You fail to account for the vast number of expenses they have, such as keeping the servers active, actually paying their staff a decent wage, keeping their equipment up to date, rent and utilities in their office space...and I could go on and on. It's not like that 20 million a year is profit.

You could just as easily look at WoW and their 1 million subscribers. Is all that money not enough for them? Why do they have to charge everyone $40 for an expansion pack coming out soon?

Businesses cost money to run. Unless you're the CFO of NCNC, I don't think you're in any position to say "they have enough money to put out everything for free".

You pay $15 a month for access to the servers. Period. End of statement.

The fact that NC has put out 12, and soon to be 13, entirely free huge chunks of content absolutely for free is completely above and beyond anything your $15 pays for. That's them being really nice, and caring about their fanbase.

They put these completely optional packs out so people that want the extra things, and/or want to support the development team that's been so nice to us, can do so.

The detonated person's name is unclickable.

(until they rez/hosp/etc, that is)

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I can't decide if it's sad or funny that people are willing to pay for something they know will vanish after 30 days.

[/ QUOTE ]I can't decide if it's sad or funny that people are willing to spend the same $5 on a cup of coffee that will vanish after 30 minutes.

I bought it both to see what it looked like (I bought one of the cards soon after they came out), and to allow my SJer to actually travel in the Shard so he could get some Rularuu claws. Other people have other completely valid reasons to buy it. Who are you to call them fools for how they spend a fairly trivial amount of money?