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Then there's the use of exploits, how speed edens used to involve flying through holes in the walls. (I have to think that much of the dev's 10 minute average goes back to those.) Exploits are cheating, you'll get no kudos from me for abusing a flaw.
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If there are exploits being used they need to be fixed. You don't warp the entire game to enshrine them.
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And they've already said that they're planning on fixing them, they just don't have time right now to do so. Once things are fixed, adjustments will be made.
@Shenalia
Triumph: Ion Force (SG)
Victory: Evil Triumphs (VG)
Proud member of the Triumphant Defenders Coalition.
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Goodluck everyone trying to slot out your toon's 2nd build done when you can't get merits and anything you find that gives merits faster than they like will get nerfed.
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Oh, I think I can come up with enough funding to fill up the second build with SOs eventually. 
Who knows, I might even toss some common IOs in there...
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Hey, I can understand that you love to listen to the radio, but some of us like Tv. Not just black and white 3 channel either, some of us like color and gasp, even satellite or cable.
The game has evolved, peoples expectations evolve to match it. I'm not against working for what I want, its just irritating that someone else's playstyle is adversely affecting mine.
Hello again, Synapse here. I wanted to take a moment to answer a few more of your questions. I also wanted to address a few concerns I've heard in this thread repeatedly. I'd like to reiterate the fact that we have no intention of carelessly "nerfing" or "buffing" merit rewards. Making any changes to the number of merits a task gives out will be done with very careful consideration, ample data and after exhausting our other options. Additionally, I've heard a number of players refer to the Merit Reward System as a reduction to rewards. I'd like to remind players that only a handful of tasks in the game had their rewards reduced, however the majority of tasks in the game have had their rewards significantly increased and that now story arcs give players a chance at earning rewards that might otherwise be unattainable. That said, we'll also be looking at ways to further grow and enhance our merit reward system over the life of the game. So, what you'll be seeing in Issue 13 launch is not the final version of this system. Like any system in our game, we will continuously improve upon and enhance these systems in the future.
So, as soon as we have some details for you about what changes will be made we will share them with you. Now, without further ado, some answers to your questions:
Poster: EvilGeko
Q: What about the market? Do you care about the players who enjoy that aspect of the game? Do you have any plans for how to address the supply issues in the market that this system will cause for Pool C and D drops?
A: We feel that players will take that chance on the random roll tables for that chance at the reward they want. There will always be that temptation to roll on the Pool C rewards 12 times instead of buying that one shiny IO. If a player doesn't get what they want, they can post these items on the markets. Also consider that before only players running Task Forces and Strike Forces were contributing Pool C and D items to the market, now even solo/casual players will be able to do so.
Poster: Puppycrusader
Q: I accepted that this placed me at a disadvantage in terms of rewards, as TF/SF/Trials were the sole distributer of many desirable recipes, and relegated myself to having to work hard to gain the neccesary INF to purchase them on market.
Now that this is no longer true, though, and TFs are not the sole venue of distribution, is there a reason for this concept of "diminished rate," when many story arcs, particularly high level ones, are almost indistinguishable from a Task Force, save for the mandatory team size that must be met to begin the latter?
A: Task Forces will always award superior rewards due to their general increased difficulty, preparation time and the fact that all players are locked into TF mode. Story Arcs are way more casual, and are much less structured than Task Forces. Solo players, small groups and large groups can do Story Arcs at their leisure. On a side note, one of the greatest things about Story Arc Merit Rewards is that they have no diminishing returns.
Poster: Zombie_Man
Q: Play test has indicated that the Diminishing Returns of Merit rewards is 50% for attempting the same Trial twice in a row.
Is that right?
Would a third attempt also be at 50% or does the DR get more diminishing? And if yes, what are the stats?
Is the DR rate the same for TFs, Trials, and Arc-Completions?
A: This is probably the most complex part of the Merit Reward system. Different types of tasks have different diminishing rates.
-Story Arcs do not have diminishing returns.
-Task Forces without a second reward option will have their rewards reduced by 50% each time the task is completed within 24 hours. So if a task force gives 50 merits the first time done within 24 hours, then the second time will give 25, the third time will give 12, the fourth time 6. This is reset after 24 hours. Also, I wanted to remind players that the 24 hour diminishing returns set up that we currently have may be subject to change.
-Task Forces and Trials with unique rewards (respecs or unique enhancements) grant full merit rewards for the first completion within 24 hours and 50% merit rewards for each subsequent completion. So if the first run through a task gives 50 merits, each subsequent run through will give 25.
Poster: MadScientist
Q: Have you considered simply adding 1 Merit per AV?
A: Yes, Archvillains and Monsters are just too easily farmed. There are missions where they are very easily ghosted to and defeated.
Poster: Umbral
Q: Is there any chance that the Challenge System options be included to allow players to gain more merits by imposing limits on themselves? It's a system with a lot of potential that's only really utilized for ouro mishes and, even then, a majority of the badges can only be attained on specific tasks (Gold Medal on 95% of the story arcs and TFs out there?).
A: This was one of our stretch goals for Issue 13 that we simply didn't have enough time to get it in. We hope to have this in a future update. I agree, there is a lot of potential here.
Poster: TheWeaver
Q: 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?
A: You can earn an infinite number of merits through Ouroboros by running your favorite story arcs over again. I don't suspect you'd be able to purchase all of those IOs by simply running through all the story arcs once. However, you might be able to spend some of those merits on random rolls and simply selling what you don't need on the market.
Poster: Wuigly_Squigly
Q: Would it be better if the reward of merits we're timeX spent on said TF, instead of the current: This tf is long, this tf is medium-long, this tf is short, categorizing? For example, you finish a 20 min katie or w/e and get 5 merits or something, whereas you finish that same katie but take an hour you'd get 15 merits, essentially the longer a tf takes, the more merits you get?
A: Well, this would leave a lot of room for exploitation. Players could complete all but the last objective in 20 minutes. Sit around for an hour and 40 minutes and then finish to get the additional merits for doing nothing. So there has to be other factors other than how much time you've spent doing the TF.
I hope this clears up some of your additional questions and concerns.
Best Regards,
Synapse
EDITED: Due to horrible typo.
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Poster: EvilGeko
Q: What about the market? Do you care about the players who enjoy that aspect of the game? Do you have any plans for how to address the supply issues in the market that this system will cause for Pool C and D drops?
A: We feel that players will take that chance on the random roll tables for that chance at the reward they want. There will always be that temptation to roll on the Pool C rewards 12 times instead of buying that one shiny IO. If a player doesn't get what they want, they can post these items on the markets. Also consider that before only players running Task Forces and Strike Forces were contributing Pool C and D items to the market, now even solo/casual players will be able to do so.
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I agree with Pool D. That's a rational decision. Pool C is a fool's errand and that will become clear to people soon.
But respectfully, you didn't answer the questions. Do you care about people who play the market as part of their fun in the game? Do you have a plan if you're wrong and the Pool C market dries up?
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Additionally, I've heard a number of players refer to the Merit Reward System as a reduction to rewards. I'd like to remind players that all but a handful of tasks in the game had their rewards reduced, however the majority of tasks in the game have had their rewards significantly increased and that now story arcs give players a chance at earning rewards that might otherwise be unattainable.
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Yes, you gave miniscule rewards on story arcs (only the owner), while making some of the main supply sources in the game worth less than a random roll.
People are saying that it's a reduction in rewards, because it is. Return the random roll as a choice to all TFs and watch people magically stop saying that.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
Have you considered doing away with Pool C and D altogether and granting these recipes a drop rate equivalent to purple recipes? This would make merits not the only way to get the recipes, help keep the market in stock, and provide a way to gain these recipes without farming.
Liberty Server (@enderbean)
Arcs on Live
#1460 Hometown Rivalry
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But respectfully, you didn't answer the questions. Do you care about people who play the market as part of their fun in the game?
[/ QUOTE ] How is that even remotely respectful? Seems pretty insulting to me. The answer is, of course, that they care about people who play the market as their fun. If they didn't, they would never have introduced the economy.
My Going Rogue Trailer
Virtue (blue) - Wes The Mess
Virtue (red) - Jess The Best
@Razoras
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People are saying that it's a reduction in rewards, because it is. Return the random roll as a choice to all TFs and watch people magically stop saying that.
[/ QUOTE ]It's only a reduction in rewards for Tarkoss, Katie, and Eden. All other non-Ouro TFs/SFs are worth at least the cost of a random roll...and in most cases, more. Thus, an increase in rewards.
If random rolls *were* for some reason returned, I can imagine it would be these three that they wouldn't be returned to.
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Poster: MadScientist
Q: Have you considered simply adding 1 Merit per AV?
A: Yes, Archvillains and Monsters are just too easily farmed. There are missions where they are very easily ghosted to and defeated.
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And with Diminishing Returns I don't see a problem. First AV/HERO/GM 1 Merit, Second AV/HERO/GM 0.5 Rounded up to 1 Merit ... Third AV 0.25 Rounded down to 0.....
So someone can get 1-2 Merits in an afternoon, big deal. To prevent farming: Tie the Merit to the (Completion of the Mission + Defeat of the AV (AV Only, EB doesn't Count)) so that the mission cannot be outright farmed. Easy, and then it's not meaningless if someone gets a wild hair and decides to go Kill <insert Zone AV GM> or Whatever then Run a few missions out of their Patron Arc. They get at most a couple of merits for an afternoon's play. That sounds more than fair to me.
You could even make it Limit 1 only per 24 hours for a GM/HERO/AV, but if you did that, I'd make it 3 separate timers.
You CAN reward casual play without creating farming havens.
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But respectfully, you didn't answer the questions. Do you care about people who play the market as part of their fun in the game?
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Respectfully as well (and I mean it, I have nothing but respect for you Geko ), they don't need to answer that question. It's a very "Catch-22," "damned if you do, damned if you don't" sort of question. You KNOW they're not going to say, "Pfft, no, we hate you marketeer jerks!" But there's also no real need for them to say, "We love all our individual players equally." Accept that whatever answer they could give to this question, no matter how well-phrased, is going to insult somebody (likely an inferred insult, not direct).
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Do you have a plan if you're wrong and the Pool C market dries up?
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Though it would've been nice if they'd answered that one. My guess is currently, no they do not, but they'd be more than willing to find a solution should the need arise.
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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Synapse what about opening up Ourorboros sooner? Many folks feel the current merit setup will kill casual teaming. What I was thinking is maybe allow us to do all ouroboros arcs starting at lvl 1 if we want so that everyone gets credit for the arc. One thing that makes this a problem is that you have to be 1 level over the arc to start it and everyone that level or higher doesnt get xp. Well to be fair why not make it were you can start the arc so long as you are the minimum level of the arc? That way people can get merits and xp. We no longer would have the issue of the mission owner leveling because the star would just move to another person. The only drawback is that sidekicks lower than the arc level can not join you.
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
The law of unintended consequences is going to bite everyone in the [censored] this time around, as almost always happens with fabricated game economies. Players don't do what you intend them to do; they do what gives them the most advantage for their time.
I forsee most things getting noticeably more expensive and the casual (read, vast majority) of players being put in an even worse position financially than they already are. The really desirable rare recipes will become extremely difficult to acquire.
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."
"Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."
- Thomas Jefferson
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Poster: Wuigly_Squigly
Q: Would it be better if the reward of merits we're timeX spent on said TF, instead of the current: This tf is long, this tf is medium-long, this tf is short, categorizing? For example, you finish a 20 min katie or w/e and get 5 merits or something, whereas you finish that same katie but take an hour you'd get 15 merits, essentially the longer a tf takes, the more merits you get?
A: Well, this would leave a lot of room for exploitation. Players could complete all but the last objective in 20 minutes. Sit around for an hour and 40 minutes and then finish to get the additional merits for doing nothing. So there has to be other factors other than how much time you've spent doing the TF.
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How about:
Datamine long it takes to run through these TFs actually fighting everything in sight.
Assign a "bonus merits" that equals your ratio of merit/hour minus the current default awarded meirts.
See how much XP/Inf is granted in average during both types of run and again, get the difference of xp/inf granted from one version to the other.
Now grant extra merits to people that earn xp above the short run grant, but no more than the max run would grant based on xp/inf granted for killing.
I apologize for my bad english right now, alt-tabing between work and this 
, my point is to get an xp/inf grant measurement that will grant players extra merits should they not rush the mission and actually stop to fight but set a cap so that players dont just go about farming the mission that is the most easy to herd.
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You could even make it Limit 1 only per 24 hours for a GM/HERO/AV, but if you did that, I'd make it 3 separate timers.
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Unless it's changed and I missed the patch notes, GMs already give 2 Merits each.
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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<QR>
You know they're just going to say, "XP/Inf is its own reward and has nothing to do with the Merit system."
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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Or give more merits based on % of critters killed. 99% or more doubles the bonus. 8-p
Ok, that'd be a nightmare, so It'd take more research than that, but I do think it's a good idea. This system is rewarding only the farmers and speed runners, not the average player that tends to take twice as long per TF as the professionals.
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Unless it's changed and I missed the patch notes, GMs already give 2 Merits each.
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I must hve missed it.
That still leaves AVs and HEROES.
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Do you care about people who play the market as part of their fun in the game? Do you have a plan if you're wrong and the Pool C market dries up?
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While the likely possibility of market dry-up does bother me,
a LOT, I don't know why the developers would be obligated to
care about "playing the market." While it could be argued as a
perhaps-unavoidable side effect of having one, I sincerely
doubt the market was ever intended to serve the function of
a mini-game.
And I doubt this'll do anything to prevent the kind of salvage
flipping that makes supply dry up for random periods of time,
and severely irritates the players just trying to make an IO,
anyway. If anything, it'll intensify it, since salvage will become
the dominating market interest. So it wouldn't be going away.
It would just be shifting focus.
Thank you for sharing the information with us. I certainly appreciate the efforts to increase the amount and frequency of communication.
I'm hoping the story arc merits will outweigh any decreases in random recipes from TF/SF runs under the current system...I guess we'll just have to wait and see how player behavior (hoarding merits to buy one recipe vs spending on random rolls) affects the availability of midrange recipes like SciDerv A/D/E.
Due to my extreme alt-itis 
induced by the great powersets & character creator, I like the idea of fairly easy-to-earn set recipes (purples being the exception) so that we as players can experience the fun of IOs for all of our characters and never give up in frustration over the lack of items on the market, or bad luck with the RNG. Just wanted to share my viewpoint...
Again, thanks for your work on the Merit System, and thanks for listening.
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But respectfully, you didn't answer the questions. Do you care about people who play the market as part of their fun in the game?
[/ QUOTE ] How is that even remotely respectful? Seems pretty insulting to me. The answer is, of course, that they care about people who play the market as their fun. If they didn't, they would never have introduced the economy.
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The market balance points will alter, they do whenever anything changes (to a greater or lesser extent). The only way to keep the market unchanging eternally is to never update or patch again. I doubt that would please anybody in the market, or any of the rest of the player base.
So if the changes will reset some of the market balance, and the data about the changes is out long before the change (I'm guessing most market gurus visit the forums), how is this "unfair" to the marketeers and a demonstration that their entertainment is not cared about? Clever marketeers will still make money, maybe more, maybe less, but probably in slightly different ways than currently.
On a side note, I have made enough out of the market to be comfortably off on my toons (it's a fun mini-game), but I would never want the market to have ANY effect on gameplay decisions. This is not Sim-Wall Street!
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Poster: Wuigly_Squigly
Q: Would it be better if the reward of merits we're timeX spent on said TF, instead of the current: This tf is long, this tf is medium-long, this tf is short, categorizing? For example, you finish a 20 min katie or w/e and get 5 merits or something, whereas you finish that same katie but take an hour you'd get 15 merits, essentially the longer a tf takes, the more merits you get?
A: Well, this would leave a lot of room for exploitation. Players could complete all but the last objective in 20 minutes. Sit around for an hour and 40 minutes and then finish to get the additional merits for doing nothing. So there has to be other factors other than how much time you've spent doing the TF.
[/ QUOTE ]
How about:
Datamine long it takes to run through these TFs actually fighting everything in sight.
Assign a "bonus merits" that equals your ratio of merit/hour minus the current default awarded meirts.
See how much XP/Inf is granted in average during both types of run and again, get the difference of xp/inf granted from one version to the other.
Now grant extra merits to people that earn xp above the short run grant, but no more than the max run would grant based on xp/inf granted for killing.
I apologize for my bad english right now, alt-tabing between work and this , my point is to get an xp/inf grant measurement that will grant players extra merits should they not rush the mission and actually stop to fight but set a cap so that players dont just go about farming the mission that is the most easy to herd.
[/ QUOTE ]
I still like the idea of representative runs, each weighted equally; one "speed run", one "kill on the way to the objectives", one "kill all", and so on with a couple of different team makeups and builds.
That way the speed runs work to counterbalance the kill-all runs, and you end up with something closer to mid-range instead of weighting the speed runs so heavily simply because they're run more often by the same group of people.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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Unless it's changed and I missed the patch notes, GMs already give 2 Merits each.
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I must hve missed it.
That still leaves AVs and HEROES.
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Well, he did say they can't do that due to making them farmer bait. Rough translation anyway.
At the moment, I'm assuming they can't fraction merit rewards that are given on the spot just yet. They have the programing for Taskforce/Trials that will alter the end reward. It was kind of already there, so no big programing changes. No idea how other reward codes work but in the case of merits as programed for Giant Monsters, applying it to AV/Heroes and placeing a diminishing return on the reward to lessen the farming of them might not work without entirely new programing.
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But respectfully, you didn't answer the questions. Do you care about people who play the market as part of their fun in the game?
[/ QUOTE ] How is that even remotely respectful? Seems pretty insulting to me. The answer is, of course, that they care about people who play the market as their fun. If they didn't, they would never have introduced the economy.
[/ QUOTE ]
What's disrespectful about it? That I presumed to ask the question? 
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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Do you care about people who play the market as part of their fun in the game? Do you have a plan if you're wrong and the Pool C market dries up?
[/ QUOTE ]
While the likely possibility of market dry-up does bother me,
a LOT, I don't know why the developers would be obligated to
care about "playing the market." While it could be argued as a
perhaps-unavoidable side effect of having one, [u]I sincerely
doubt the market was ever intended to serve the function of
a mini-game.[u]
[/ QUOTE ]
They stated expressely that it was a goal of the market to serve as a mini-game.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
[ QUOTE ]
A: We feel that players will take that chance on the random roll tables for that chance at the reward they want. There will always be that temptation to roll on the Pool C rewards 12 times instead of buying that one shiny IO. If a player doesn't get what they want, they can post these items on the markets. Also consider that before only players running Task Forces and Strike Forces were contributing Pool C and D items to the market, now even solo/casual players will be able to do so.
[/ QUOTE ]
You guys seriously believe this? I have to question your understanding of human nature then.
If people were given a choice between the Random Roll and Merits upon completion, I could see some people going for instant gratification, but once the Merits are in thier hot little hands, requring people to convert them into a Random Roll is no longer Instant Gratification. Once those Merits are in thier inventorys, the vast majority of people are going to be inclined to hoard them.
Put another way, a LoTG 7.% Recharge currently goes for around 50 Million. For a 20 Merit Random Roll to be worth taking a chancce on, there would need to be AT LEAST 50% odds that that roll will be worth a minimum of 10% a LoTGs sale cost in Inf, or 5 Million. It's an unfortunate fact that the VAST Majority of drops in Pool C arent worth anything near that. In fact at least 50% of them are lucky if theyre worth 1% of a LoTG.
Soo, let's see- Hoard my merits, or blow 10% of a LoTG for a random chance to get something that wont even be worth the time it takes me to post it at WW? Well, I dont know about anyone else, but to me thats a no-brainer.
I dunno about anybody else, but I'll just keep plugging away at Katie, it's nice and short, and one LoTG every 28 Days or so is way better than my current rate of acquisition.
Like I said before though, If people were given a choice between the Random Roll and Merits upon completion, I could see some people going for instant gratification- so here's my suggestion:
I understand the Dev's feel that some TFs are too easy/short, so why not just return the option for a Random Recipie Drop to all remaining TFs that meet a certain metric- say, datamined median times of over 1 hour or something like that.
Guess they got tired of giving non-answers to questions. Pift...
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.