Live Feedback: Issue 13 : Merit Reward System
By
1VB_FIST,
Posted on: 2008-12-11 18:56 in Developers' Corner
Oh and just wait till the new datamining numbers come out and all the TFs are reduced by half... Just because players learn how to move faster.
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This argument about the "casual player" and "enjoying the game" doesn't work, unfortunately. The "casual player" doesn't care about IOing their toon with the best stuff available. As soon as they do, they're no longer a "casual player" and need to take steps to work toward their goal instead of expecting it to be handed to them.
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Yes, some people comprehend this, including the devs. I recall BAB's priceless line to someone in another forum, "Did you just use the words 'casual player' and 'purple out my warshade' in the same sentence?"
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
I guess people forgot that "farmers" are what supplied the market. Now the Farmers are merit hoarding, so the markets are suffering. There is no such thing as casual any longer. Find a group that you can run with consistently, work on your skill and start "farming" yourself.
"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho
Solution? Bring back the random rolls for all TFs/SFs and trials. Have merits be an OPTIONAL reward instead of the random.
That will make merits much more attractive for longer TFs, but the faster ones will now generate random rolls and help to supply the market.
Let story arcs continue to earn merits (although, please, give all teammates merits on arc completion).
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Solution? Bring back the random rolls for all TFs/SFs and trials. Have merits be an OPTIONAL reward instead of the random.
That will make merits much more attractive for longer TFs, but the faster ones will now generate random rolls and help to supply the market.
Let story arcs continue to earn merits (although, please, give all teammates merits on arc completion).
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This would restore the flow of random recipes to the market while still allowing people to save for the stuff they want (if they choose) and not have to run TFs to do so.
Of course, this only works if you assume that the goal of the merit change is to have lots of recipes on the market.....
@Mindshadow
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Solution? Bring back the random rolls for all TFs/SFs and trials. Have merits be an OPTIONAL reward instead of the random.
That will make merits much more attractive for longer TFs, but the faster ones will now generate random rolls and help to supply the market.
Let story arcs continue to earn merits (although, please, give all teammates merits on arc completion).
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This would restore the flow of random recipes to the market while still allowing people to save for the stuff they want (if they choose) and not have to run TFs to do so.
Of course, this only works if you assume that the goal of the merit change is to have lots of recipes on the market.....
[/ QUOTE ]I think yall are missing the point. The devs have said some tf/sf/trials are not worth a full recipe because they dont take much time to complete. Putting the reward choice on all the other tfs that do give enough for a full recipe is some what pointless. There is no difference in doing that versus people going to the merit vendor. If people are that lazy to go to the merit vendor then there is no hope for them. People just need to get with the program, stuff like Katie, Cap, Hess, Eden and Treespecs will never give enough for a full recipe again so why keep asking for that?
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!!!!
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Solution? Bring back the random rolls for all TFs/SFs and trials. Have merits be an OPTIONAL reward instead of the random.
That will make merits much more attractive for longer TFs, but the faster ones will now generate random rolls and help to supply the market.
Let story arcs continue to earn merits (although, please, give all teammates merits on arc completion).
[/ QUOTE ]
This would restore the flow of random recipes to the market while still allowing people to save for the stuff they want (if they choose) and not have to run TFs to do so.
Of course, this only works if you assume that the goal of the merit change is to have lots of recipes on the market.....
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Not necessarily. People may still favor running the TFs that give more worth, and saving those merits.
I think what you need to do is add Merits on top of the old random drop.
If that's not balanced, the number of merits could be lower than currently (not something I personally favor, but an option), or I think that reducing the worth of the drop by making it drop at the TF level not the player level would be a good balance - and it might even make some lower level content MORE appealing than it used to be. Think about it, you could farm level 30 randoms without stopping leveling a character at 30.
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Solution? Bring back the random rolls for all TFs/SFs and trials. Have merits be an OPTIONAL reward instead of the random.
That will make merits much more attractive for longer TFs, but the faster ones will now generate random rolls and help to supply the market.
Let story arcs continue to earn merits (although, please, give all teammates merits on arc completion).
[/ QUOTE ]
This would restore the flow of random recipes to the market while still allowing people to save for the stuff they want (if they choose) and not have to run TFs to do so.
Of course, this only works if you assume that the goal of the merit change is to have lots of recipes on the market.....
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Not necessarily. People may still favor running the TFs that give more worth, and saving those merits.
I think what you need to do is add Merits on top of the old random drop.
If that's not balanced, the number of merits could be lower than currently (not something I personally favor, but an option), or I think that reducing the worth of the drop by making it drop at the TF level not the player level would be a good balance - and it might even make some lower level content MORE appealing than it used to be. Think about it, you could farm level 30 randoms without stopping leveling a character at 30.
[/ QUOTE ]I think what needs to happen is this, allow us to select the level of the recipe upon crafting. Then it wont matter if its a lvl 50 or a level 10 recipe. You just have to pay the appropriate amount of inf for it and use the salvage for the tier you are crafting it in. But once you craft it its baked in forever. If they wont let us scale the recipes up for balance reasons then I see no reason why they cant let us scale level 50 recipes down if a person chooses to.
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!!!!
I think ill just stick to base editing. Screw the game.
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
Well so far, the merit system has been a bit of a mixed bag for me.
My background and progress
(1) I have two characters who have in 300 merits range. Most others have 10-20 each.
(2) I have yet to spend any merits.
(3) I have close to a billion inf spread across various characters
(4) It's hard for me to get in more than on TF a week.
With that said, here is what I have seen so far.
With the drastic increase of people needing things (Double XP and dual builds) there is very little in the way of supply on the markets. While the top couple of recepies have stayed fairly constant or dropped a shade, everything else has either risen in price by a factor or 2 or is just not available. What this means is that someone like me, who has no toon purpled out, and usually frankenslots for minor bonuses, can't do that any more.
In the past, I never had any problems getting IOs for a toon at around 30+ and slotting various sets until I hit 50 and could work on some kind of end game build. However, the irony is that the bulk of playtime on my toons is from 20-50 and now I don't have any real means to play with the junk that I'd want to get. By the time I'm 50, I'll do some stuff, but overall it's more of a fun thing as opposed to, wow it would be nice to have X,Y,Z.
I also find it discouraging that most recopies that I'd want to save merits for run close to 1000+ just for the set. Say the new hold set, I have to run how many Posi's to get that? For me that will never happen, so while I might see a few of the bigger shineys, merits might as well not exist to me. The Random roll is a possibility, but by the time I get enough merits to get any decent amount of rolls, I'm 50. In the past I would have dumped 20+ drops on the market from 30-40 alone.
I really think the random roll should be 15-20 and other costs reduced perhaps by 1/2 or more. I really want IOs for when I am leveling the character, not when I am mostly done with them.
So what Merits have done for me is give me a shot at some of the biggies while removing most of the IOs that I would have used while leveling up. Not really a good trade...
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Solution? Bring back the random rolls for all TFs/SFs and trials. Have merits be an OPTIONAL reward instead of the random.
That will make merits much more attractive for longer TFs, but the faster ones will now generate random rolls and help to supply the market.
Let story arcs continue to earn merits (although, please, give all teammates merits on arc completion).
[/ QUOTE ]
This would restore the flow of random recipes to the market while still allowing people to save for the stuff they want (if they choose) and not have to run TFs to do so.
Of course, this only works if you assume that the goal of the merit change is to have lots of recipes on the market.....
[/ QUOTE ]I think yall are missing the point. The devs have said some tf/sf/trials are not worth a full recipe because they dont take much time to complete. Putting the reward choice on all the other tfs that do give enough for a full recipe is some what pointless. There is no difference in doing that versus people going to the merit vendor. If people are that lazy to go to the merit vendor then there is no hope for them. People just need to get with the program, stuff like Katie, Cap, Hess, Eden and Treespecs will never give enough for a full recipe again so why keep asking for that?
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Many tfs that are said to merit recipies can be done in much shorter time if u know how and have the right team for example itf done in 34 min ..
I like the idea of offering merits as an option not mandating it. The merit system has and is creating an even bigger imbalance among many players.
Some players haven't got the time to do tfs all week and some do not like or have the ability to lead the team and therefore dont do theyre contacts.
We now have the majority of teams doing the leaders contacts.. radio and newspapers are taking a back seat to this.
There is definatly a rise in cost on many servers for recipies and a lack of quantity.
Personaly i dislike the merit system not because its a bad idea but because of how it was implemented. No problems were solved but another farm was created.
make it an option and also add merit drops for kills and missions (any mission) rewards for the entire teams.
saying we are planning this isnt a solution.. its to placate.. it should have been inplace when this system went live..
thats my nickle lol sorry if its winded
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There is definatly a rise in cost on many servers for recipies and a lack of quantity.
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The markets are cross-server, so a rise in cost will happen on all or none for either faction. Just mentioning this since many people still don't realize this is the case.
RagManX
"if the market were religion Fulmens would be Moses and you'd be L. Ron Hubbard. " --Nethergoat to eryq2
The economy is not broken. The players are
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Solution? Bring back the random rolls for all TFs/SFs and trials. Have merits be an OPTIONAL reward instead of the random.
That will make merits much more attractive for longer TFs, but the faster ones will now generate random rolls and help to supply the market.
Let story arcs continue to earn merits (although, please, give all teammates merits on arc completion).
[/ QUOTE ]
This would restore the flow of random recipes to the market while still allowing people to save for the stuff they want (if they choose) and not have to run TFs to do so.
Of course, this only works if you assume that the goal of the merit change is to have lots of recipes on the market.....
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[/ QUOTE ]I think yall are missing the point. The devs have said some tf/sf/trials are not worth a full recipe because they dont take much time to complete. Putting the reward choice on all the other tfs that do give enough for a full recipe is some what pointless. There is no difference in doing that versus people going to the merit vendor. If people are that lazy to go to the merit vendor then there is no hope for them. People just need to get with the program, stuff like Katie, Cap, Hess, Eden and Treespecs will never give enough for a full recipe again so why keep asking for that?
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Why? Because maybe if enough of the playerbase is dissatisfied with how things are implemented, they will change.
Someone in another thread had the right idea. It wasn't mine, but I'll put it here.
TFs that aren't worth a full recipe give merits only.
TFs that are worth a full recipe give a random +1-2 merits
TFs that are worth more than a full give a random and several merits (10-40ish)
Reduce the random roll to 15-20 merits so more people see it as value
Let people choose the level they want to have the recipe at when they buy it as the rewards might have come from a much lower level.
You placate the market, keep merits in the game and everyone should be happy.
Well lets see sence they implemented the Merit System so that it takes more time to get any kind of reward out of TFs. They implemented the Invention Salvage for use in Bases not its own, so now the markets are being used to build bases, creating a higher demand on Markets yet they did not increase the drop rate of salvage.
Looks like to me its eather just really POOR implementing of a system or its all being done for the $$$$. My guess is its the later and that is why everyone is having a fight with the devs over it.
The game is in big trouble right now. Subs are down, the economy is bad, and lots of people are not that happy with how they are being "lissened to" by the dev team. The worst part is there are servers that are basicly dead.
These systems they have implemented have not fixed anything. But they have broken a lot, with the devs saying basicly that we dont understand what is coming and they need to do all this for whats to come. Well I have been here over 4 years now and you know I have heard that statement for 4 YEARS, yet nothing really gets fixed unless its an exploit that "losses" them $$$, then well thats fixed right away.
First it was there were only like 8 of them working on the game as an excuse for not getting that much done. Now they increase the number of Devs and its still the same. Next excuse please....
O ya and just something to think about with the new issue coming. Usally when they do mission creating tool for the players they give them to the player base at the begining of a games life or at the end. You make from that what you will 
Anyways have fun all just my 2 cent and MHO.
Broomhilda BS/Regen/BM Scrapper, Fiddle Faddle Shield/ElecM/BM Tank,
And many others..
Dev's With all the Great new content, Please!! dont forget to fix the bugs with the old content. There is a storm a brewing because they are not getting fixed. If its a problem that no one is reporting them? Well Maybe you need to look at your tech support then..
whats more fun to scream, DOOOOOOOM!!!, or DEWM!!!!!
Well, I was going to stick to base editing until i learned of the item cap causing sg's to "disappear" so i guess its back to my purped out farming tank. Thats fine i guess. I'm still going to sell my items at one inf to try to help the market. I gave the friends i was with my purp drops and rare salvage seeing that my purped out 50 doesnt need any of that mess anymore. I still stand by my opinion. Everything is way overpriced and merits dont drop enough. You should get a merit for every mission you complete. 5-10 on max diff.
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
IO's were a great addition to the game that are almost universally enjoyed by players. It simply does not make any sense to make them so difficult to obtain and use, then to add insult to injury, make them less useful in pvp.
I've always felt it is too difficult to IO out toons. I play a lot, and I never bother with IO's until the toon is lvl 35 or higher. It would be nice if IO's were more viable at the lower levels, but the only way that's going to happen is if the prices drop drastically or the drops increase drastically.
Now it's even more difficult at higher levels to IO up a toon. Even if you're loaded, good luck finding what you need on the depleted market, and even if you do find something, get ready to be [censored].
IO's are a great feature in this game, the devs should seriously consider making it more available to all of their customers, not just the people who farm 8 hours a day. The merit system can help towards that goal, but not at the prices/merit drop levels we have right now. And they're not slightly off, they're WAY off.
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The game is in big trouble right now. Subs are down, the economy is bad, and lots of people are not that happy with how they are being "lissened to" by the dev team. The worst part is there are servers that are basicly dead.
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I see five statements here.
1) false
2) true or false depending on how you frame it
3) true
4) false
5) false
Your accuracy is either 20% or 40%, depending on how you 'slant' your analysis for statement number two.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
I'm sure I'm like many of us in that I have tons of alts. The difficult thing about merits is that it encourages using only one character to accumulate them. In addition to that, the lack of pool C recipes on the auction houses makes it even more discouraging to try to get your alts outfitted with IOs.
So I see merits as:
- A bit grindy (do content over and over again to get them)
- Favoring the single "main" over numerous alts (the "best" rewards will go to the single character who saves up for them)
- Decreasing the supply of Pool C recipes and thereby making IOs more out of reach for more people than they were pre-merits
Personally I've decided to play as I would normally play (lots of alts, occasional TFs) and mostly ignore merits. If I happen to accumulate enough on one character for a random roll or two, then I'll do that. Unfortunately since I'm not actively "grinding" merits it means that a lot of my characters will be stuck with common IOs when they might have had sets purchased from the market before.
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I've always felt it is too difficult to IO out toons. I play a lot, and I never bother with IO's until the toon is lvl 35 or higher. It would be nice if IO's were more viable at the lower levels
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I agree - most people seem to aim for 25 (where IOs are "break-even" in strength with SOs), or else load up with 40+ range.
From a crafting standpoint, you lose Inf on the vast majority of common IOs, if you're working on the Invention badges. Some IOs simply don't have a demand (eg, Intangibility), while the oversupply of others forces sales below the crafting price (Hold, Immob, Knockback, etc).
Worse still, there are particular pieces of Salvage that are more heavily used that others, which leads to a further imbalance, as prices are driven upward for those pieces (Alchemical Silver comes immediately to mind, though there are others).
It'd be nice if there was some way of "substituting" Salvage for other Salvage types. Maybe a 2-to-1 ratio of Salvage of the same rarity (for example, take 2 of any Common Salvage, and turn it into 1 of a particular Salvage). That would help stabilize the market, and make pieces like Regenerating Flesh actually worth something... 
OOOO look an expert. Please everyone send all questions and statements through Ironblade to make sure if you have them right. In fact i thing everyone should PM Ironblade will all questions and thoughts before they ever post them.
Come on dude, im sry to be mean to you but you really have no clue. Just play the game and stop spending so much time on the forums and youll see what im talking about. go look at the markets on the diff severs and youll figure it out, maybe.....
Broomhilda BS/Regen/BM Scrapper, Fiddle Faddle Shield/ElecM/BM Tank,
And many others..
Dev's With all the Great new content, Please!! dont forget to fix the bugs with the old content. There is a storm a brewing because they are not getting fixed. If its a problem that no one is reporting them? Well Maybe you need to look at your tech support then..
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Come on dude, im sry to be mean to you but you really have no clue. Just play the game and stop spending so much time on the forums and youll see what im talking about. go look at the markets on the diff severs and youll figure it out, maybe.....
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Actually there is no reason to go to different servers since their is only one market for all servers on each side of the game. There is one hero market and one villain market.
OMG! Are you saying the person telling us to get a clue doesn't know how the markets work??? Doom!
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
im not saying your wrong, but how come there are diff amounts of items for sell on diff servers. On justice I can buy just about anything i want if i have the inf, but go to like pinn and if im lucky some of the stuff is avalable? And if it is just one market across all servers then its much worse than i thought it was 
Broomhilda BS/Regen/BM Scrapper, Fiddle Faddle Shield/ElecM/BM Tank,
And many others..
Dev's With all the Great new content, Please!! dont forget to fix the bugs with the old content. There is a storm a brewing because they are not getting fixed. If its a problem that no one is reporting them? Well Maybe you need to look at your tech support then..
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I thought this system was supposed to help me, the casual player, instead it favors the farmers. I see the potential, but the merit costs are too high, and the pools are too confusing. It needs to be cheaper and simplified.
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I keep seeing lines like this, about how the system favors the farmers. Do people seriously not understand that *ANY* system "favors the farmers"? If a TF drops a random recipe, the farmers will run it 10 times a day. If you need merits, the farmers will do what brings in a lot of merits. If you buy things with influence, the farmers will clear maps for influence.
THERE IS NO WAY AROUND THIS! Whatever is necessary to earn rewards, the 'evil nasty farmers' will do it. Any system that "favors the casual player" will simply be used by the farmers who expend 10 times as much effort on it and therefore get 10 times the reward.
By the way, I do agree that merit prices are too high. A LITTLE too high. People calling for reductions by a factor of 5 or 10 are nuts. I think prices need to be reduced by a third, or perhaps by half.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project