macskull

No, it seems I missed you asking that originally. Their datamining for merit rewards post-I13 probably still includes all those pre-I13 speed runs, which is effectively keeping the merit count down, but there are a few problems with throwing the pre-I13 runs out and starting fresh:

1. The merit rewards for particular content are low (Eden, KHTF, Tarikoss, as examples) so there's very little incentive to do them "normally." Even after I13, I've seen very few teams do "kill-most" runs of any of those three pieces of content. This leads to number two:

2. Most teams post-I13 are still completing them relatively quickly. Even if that weren't the case, and merits were upped to the point where they'd actually be worth the time to run again, people would go back to running those pieces of content en masse, which is what merits were designed to prevent in the first place.

Yeah, you're probably right about the respec trials there - at the time I put the spreadsheet together I was simply thinking of the content which gave the most merits, and then figured out average times we were running it in. Never really crossed my mind that dropping the RSF and doing a respec instead would end up coming out better, which is odd especially considering almost everyone I know takes the Hami instead of merits on the RSF.

EDIT: Updated the spreadsheet based on Flea's feedback, and unless my math is wrong, that works out to about 1/3 merits more per hour for heroes, which means it would take sixty hours of running content for the heroes to get 20 merits (or one random roll) ahead of the villains. Just remember that the tab the spreadsheet opens to is the original numbers from I13, which aren't correct anymore - the latest merit numbers are on the third tab of the spreadsheet.

No, they were mostly created so that really long content would give comparable rewards to really short content (i.e. reducing the "KHTF takes 15 minutes and gives a recipe, so why do anything else?" line of thinking). One of the nice things about merits is that not only can you get them from TFs/SFs, but you can get them through Ouroboros flashbacks and regular story arcs (assuming you're the mission holder), which you can complete at your leisure. Don't have time to run task forces a lot? Okay, run some Ouro arcs or maybe a few regular contact arcs. Sure, the merit gain won't be as high as someone who runs a lot of TFs, but it isn't supposed to be.

I do agree with the assertion that the merit system has caused more problems than it solved, but I don't think reducing the cost of buying a recipe outright is the solution.

I downloaded the Xvid codec and use the "Xvid MPEG-4" compression setting in VirtualDub. I just run the raw Fraps recordings through there and they save a lot of space without significantly impacting video quality.

Yep, the only way to obtain a recipe that isn't either your level or the maximum level of the set is to purchase it outright (a level 50 character could get a level 25 LotG but not through random rolls). This is one of the reasons supply at non-max-levels for many pool C and D recipes has hollowed out pretty badly since I13.

It's 7.79 base on a Tanker. Acro gives 9, but some of the meleetards on Justice actually slot KO Blow for KB instead of damage, so you'd probably want a few IOs on top of Acro.

There have been at least two (maybe three?) occasions since I13 where the devs have gone through and rechecked the data to recalculate merit rewards for all tasks, not just specific ones. Some haven't changed (the RSF, for example, still rewards 25 merits), some have gone down (the Nictus Insurrection arc went from 29 merits to 8 merits), but most have gone up (LGTF was originally 30, is now 37, and the ITF was 20 and is now 26). I'm going to detail the examples I just gave, because they're a good representative of why values either change or don't change:

* The RSF rewards 25 merits, compared to the STF which rewards 37 (plus another 2 for the flier, which is a bug that still hasn't been fixed for some reason). The reason for this is because the RSF's median completion time has been datamined to be faster than the STF's. It does not, however, take into account the time used to prepare for the SF, such as collecting Shivans or the Warburg nukes, nor does it take into account teams which do not complete it (i.e. give up on the last mission). The RSF is also the hardest content in the game and it's very rare to see a team slog through it and stick it out over a long period of time, which happens on some STF runs - more likely than not a team either gives up, or they steamroll it. Villain teams in general are faster and more efficient running the same type of content, which is another factor in lowering the median time. Someone brought up the "challenge" aspect of the RSF as a reason to buff merit rewards for the RSF, which Synapse acknowledged, but nothing has been done on that front as of yet.

* The Nictus Insurrection arc is an example of the original merit value simply being set far too high in the first place. That arc had been run so few times that the devs had only a handful of runs to base their completion time on, so they assigned it a 29-merit reward. Someone discovered you could run it in 25-30 minutes easily, so with more data in hand the devs were able to adjust the reward for that arc to what it should have been from the beginning.

* The ITF and LGTF had their merits buffed, and then lowered slightly, but are still well ahead of where they were when I13 launched. Considering these two pieces of content have been the most-run "speed" TFs since I13, and they're still worth more than they were when I13 launched, I'd say the argument that "speed runners cause rewards to be reduced and hurt everyone else" is bunk.

Furthermore, the "heroes have more content that gives better rewards" argument is bunk as well - I spent a while figuring out "optimal" sets of TFs and SFs to run when I13 dropped, and it turns out that *gasp* at level 50 a hero and a villain will have the opportunity to earn about the same amount of merits in the same amount of time. Of course I included co-op content in that, because it's content that's accessible to villains and it would be foolish not to take advantage of it. The argument that does hold some merit, however, is the one of heroes having access to better-rewarding content while leveling up (simply because most hero content is old, long, and clunky and has merit rewards to match the length, while villain content is more streamlined and efficient). Even on my Sonic/Sonic Corruptor, which I soloed most of the way to 35 or so, I had a few hundred merits by the time I hit that level simply by running story arcs as they became available, and hitting Ouroboros to grab the ones I missed (or to run an Ouro SF).

HERE is the spreadsheet where I figured out reward:time between heroes and villains. You'll find the initial values at I13 launch, values after the first merit adjustment, and values after the second adjustment (which I believe was I16).

The huge flaw with this assertion is the implication that you are going to be using merits to purchase every recipe, when in reality you'd probably either purchase only a few, or none (I've never ever ever purchased a recipe outright with merits except on test, because I know I make more on average by doing random rolls in particular level ranges, and can sell the pieces I don't need to pay for the ones I don't get as drops). I've made bank off of simply playing through the game, selling drops I get and don't need, rolling my merits every time I get enough for more than a few rolls (I usually roll at 80 or 100 merits, though I have a few characters with over a thousand that haven't been rolled and I know friends who have several characters merit-capped), keeping the stuff I use, and selling what I don't. My Night Widow has something like 1.5 billion inf without any market games at all, and that's after I finished her build.

The problem merits cause is that they are effectively removing pool C and D supply from the markets, especially at non-max-level (max level being levels such as 30, 40, or 50 depending on the set in question). Prior to I13, every completed task force, strike force, or trial offered a random recipe reward. Merits go a long way toward ensuring tasks offer uniform rewards (yes, it was silly that a Katie gave the same chance at reward as a Dr. Q, I admit this), but players are no longer forced to take a random roll where they would have needed to before, meaning a recipe might never be generated. If, for example, someone decides to save up 200 merits to buy a LotG, rather than doing 10 random rolls, that's effectively 9 recipes that were never created and therefore never entered the market. Except for a few specific examples, buying a recipe outright with merits is a terrible waste compared to buying it off the market.

I foresaw this hollowing-out of recipes in some level ranges before I13 hit (and then before I15 hit, with the weighting system on random rolls), so I snatched up hundreds of "crappy" pool C recipes and have been reselling them for ridiculous profits. For example, I bought several stacks of Freebird stealth IOs redside for 50k a pop, and they're going for at least 100 times that uncrafted now.

That's funny, considering you do the same exact thing.

My estimation of the drop rate being about 1 in 60 rep-valid kills was done in I14 when it was still possible to arena farm (efficiently at least). I was getting about 57 kills per 30-minute arena match, and averaged one drop per match, hence rounding it off to 1 in 60. Epsilon's method which came up with something around 1 in 70 was a bit more scientific (i.e. he actually monitored the number of rep-valid kills and the number of drops, whereas my numbers are based off casual observation rather than hard data).

The reason team lineups are so horribly rigid is because of the system, not the players. I remember playing a Son/EM in a pentad tourney before I13 - when the Rad tagged our target and I got a few attacks off on it, I could often close to melee range and Bone Smasher might drop half their health between all my +dam and the target's -res. You could conceivably get kills with only one Blaster (and maybe an offensive/debuff Defender) because people didn't have retarded base resists and Blasters actually did damage.

So this way I can get a bunch of friends together and report-grief someone's arc so it gets locked and can't be played until a GM reviews it (which could be a while), and then they have to deal with support headaches? Sounds great!

Max stealth radius for VEATs is something like 880 feet, so a perception-capped Stalker would be able to see a stealth-capped VEAT at something like 273 feet - enough to know they're there, but not enough to attack them. Meanwhile a percep-capped VEAT will see a stealth capped Stalker at about 120 feet. Base perception radius is 500 feet, the IO adds another 100, and Tactics will add 484 (on a Stalker; the number varies by AT). Just between those two additions, you'd have a 1084-foot perception radius, cutting the distance you'd be able to see a stealth-capped VEAT from to just above 200 feet (of course, VEATs can't self-cap their stealth unless they're running Invisibility, as they can't be running Cloaking Device/Mask Presence and Stealth at the same time, but they can get to 800 feet without outside help). WP has an in-set +perception power which would put you at the Stalker perception cap without outside buffs - other Stalker secondaries with this ability are SR, Ninjitsu, and Dark.

Forts = psi damage (except TK Blast). MoG doesn't have defense or resistance against Psi (which is also why it's lol when a Regen Stalker hits MoG when he's being set after by half a dozen Psi Blasters).

It does good damage, yes, but Spirit Shark is better so that's what most people open with. On some multi-Stalker teams the one with Jaws will open with it to hold the target long enough for the other Stalkers to get in position for AS, or to drop fliers out of the air. However, even with the crit it's not worth it on its own as an attack just because it drops you out of hide.