rsclark

And the SSA can only be run for the merit once per week.

That's the tradeoff. The hours invested per merit is less, but the number you can acquire over a given period of time is fewer.

That 3 hours of TF content you can run 4 times a day 7 days a week. Even at 6 times the man hours invested, you could earn more merits in 2 days than AMs from SSA in a week.

It's no different than offering one option where people can trade 10 shards for 5 threads and another offering 10 for 10. If you are willing to wait, you get a better ratio. Likewise, if you're willing to wait a week, you get a better time to AM ratio.

It's tortoise vs hare, only they decided to chop the tortoise's back legs off and throw him in a pile of dog crap before the race began.

You need to look up the definition of "definition".

Wow, you're adding a lot that was never stated before - that's what we call changing the topic around these parts.

Guy walks up to a group of people who are talking and speaks to them. They ignore him.

Then end. That's all we were told. Anything else you add to the example is your own invention.

In that exchange, it's not the guy walking up being rude. That's basic human interaction. It happens every time someone bums a smoke or asks directions.

No, that is not making anything. It is transferring 100-400 million inf per hour from one character to another. That does not harm the game. If there was an exploit where someone could produce that much pure inf from the aether, then I would want it corrected quickly as it would have lasting problems, but simply supplying the demand for recipes is not particularly damaging as far as I can see.

The only reasonable result of that is a drop in the price so that no one has to pay 400 million for a miracle.

Plus, for it to be an exploit, I would need to know what rule it was breaking.

Normally, I would find out what the person wants. Where do you live that you routinely ignore people who walk up and start talking to you?

Preach it, Brother.

They would have to first publicly state what "exploit" they were trying to "fix" before I could even begin to come up with a solution.

I don't see much point in figuring out ways to "fix" something I didn't consider broken to begin with. As I said, I am perfectly fine with people farming to flood the market with low level rares. Far from being an exploit in need of fixing, it was an overall positive effect for the game.

So, tell me which of the possible non-exploits they have a problem with and I'll give you a solution, because this is their total lack of transparency at work again. I have no clue what they were trying to "fix".

It just tells part of the playerbase that they are second class citizens.

It is compared to 102.

11

"Look at the shiny shiny"

I can't help but suspect that is intentional.

Not really, because you can do it on multiple characters in parallel. There are more man hours involved in getting ready, but you can still churn out many more than 2 in 2 days.

More importantly, the "fix" also disrupts the ability to play the game normally and get the reward. As a fix, this is like swatting flies with a shotgun. Loud, abrasive, minimally effective, and excelling at collateral damage.

Mine is sentient kerosene. He needed a robot body, otherwise he couldn't ignite himself.

And I don't give those other companies money. Raiding is a big reason for that. And it's not end game grinding. It's end game grinding that requires a dozen people and has virtually no benefit(in the case of getting multiple incarnate enhancement).

I would gladly grind for 1% smashing defense (for example). I won't gladly grind for a different graphic attached to my judgment's basically identical power. At that point it feels like a ripoff.

And it still does. You just have to wait a half week and do prep work, but from then on it still takes the same 10 minutes. What it does do it make using SSA to level in your teens a dumb idea. If you run it even once before you confirm, you waste your first run bonus. It's a trap. And, unfortunately, it's one they put in intentionally.

"Look guys, here's a level 10-20 mission - but if you run it at 15, you're an idiot."

That kind of thing shouldn't exist in a game except as unintended consequences, not as a design decision.

Well, they said "roll a recipe", so if they were talk about selecting a specific recipe, they chose poor words.

While I'd rather they put it back to something sensible, this is the least they could do. It would still slightly slow people making new alts to get 2 merits, but would allow me to play SSA 1 at proper level and not get screwed on the rewards.

Given that patches are normally for fixing broken things, one could sensibly assume that the devs would intentionally screw up something that was working fine just for ***** and giggles.

Isn't that the entire point of having time gated content? If you want to just add massive barriers to something you require more hours to accomplish it - time gating doesn't help to do that. What time gating accomplishes is to equalize the game a bit between people who can spend 8 hours a day playing and people who might get in 2 a week. They can both get some rewards in a reasonable time without the ubers flooding the market.

If your intent is not to allow a reward structure that allows people to trade a shorter play time for a longer overall time, then time gating the content is stupid.