Live Patch -- 2.10.09: Discussion!

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Forget Merits (not really) - I'm just glad the bloody chat is fixed. Hard to socialize on an MMO when you can't get a message through Thanks for the patch!

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While boosting the number of merits given for some arcs is a good step, I don't think it really addresses the disparity between what is available on the hero side and what is available on the villain side. In another thread I suggested the inclusion of 4 possible sfs for the villain-side, but the ironic thing is that even if all 4 of those were included at the maximum merit rewards of the ranges I suggested, it would still only bring villains up to less than half of what is available to heroes on any given day.

Now this isn't to suggest that heroes can run every one of the roughly 650 merits worth of tfs that are available to them on a given day. It is a matter, however, of the following:

If villains want to maximize their merit reward potential on a given day, they must run the SAME sfs almost every day. Because heroes have a wider selection to choose from, they are not faced with this sort of monotony. By the nature of the merit system, the tfs that offer the greatest rewards are the most monotonous and the most 'grindy,' but heroes at least have the option of running different material if they want to.

Villains don't have that option, so one of the probable results of this is that primarily villain players will experience burnout from the merit system far sooner than primarily hero players.

In fact, I believe this is already starting to occur. Some of my best friends on the red side have been logging more time blue side than red side since the launch of I13. I believe this is a direct result of the availability of different content on the blue side that offers what the developers have declared to be the path to progression for their characters.

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Theres one high level Hero side arc where they give you 5 minutes to disarm or destroy 3 or 4 items. Is that gonna lower the number of merits in in arc for giving a virtually impossible task?

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People actually fail that mission? It happens so late that you have access to at least 2 stealth powers (PvP zones) and 1 phase shift (also PvP), plus your travel powers. The mission only has robots in it, so unless you have a Kheld on the team nobody will have increased perception. Even if they do, it's still a pretty easy mission. On a team it's almost impossible to fail it since even if someone does flub something and get killed, the rest of the team can take over for them.

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Ummmm who are you to say what type of playing is INTENDED

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Not him, the devs, it's their game after all.

It was they that decided that since not all TFs are equal in difficulty or time it takes to finish that it wasn't fair that the "special" reward at the end to be the same. This led to variable merits instead of a random roll.

So they set the merit amounts based on previous behavior for I13. Those trials and TFs that were being done at breakneck speeds had lower merit values and quickly became unloved by those players who farm them for the random recipes.

Now people being people soon other TF/trial missions, ones that the former recipe farmers had ignored, were found and strategies developed to boost those missions' previous acceptable merit/hour value to something that's not acceptable.

So another round of normalization occurs since this is easier to change the reward amount than revamping the TF/trial.

I see this happening every few months until all TF/trials have been attempted to turn them into speed ones by those players looking for a quick "special" recipe.

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Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components

Tempus unum hominem manet

Okies.. Ill bite? WHAT if its players running the same old content they been playing for 4 issues? Not like its gonna take a team thats done Shark SF over 30 times a whoppin 2 hours + to complete the damn thing? WHAT IF... oooo GAWD forbid.... ITS not SPEEDERS or EXPLOITS but a lack of diverse playable content that penalizes REDSIDE? Ever think of THAT?

I suggest the devs do some research into basic cognitive development. Id start with Pavlov then move onto basic psych experiments of rats//mice in mazes.

I am witholding my final opinion regarding the patch until Mr.Synapse coughs up his promised merit reward change list.

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<ul type="square">[*]Fixed a bug that sometimes caused private tells to be cut off at either end.[/list]
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Hooray!!! Man that was very annoying? So any time frame when the unable to select a mission unless everyone on the team is in the same zone gonna be fixed? That's another one high up on the annoyance list.

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Okies.. Ill bite? WHAT if its players running the same old content they been playing for 4 issues? Not like its gonna take a team thats done Shark SF over 30 times a whoppin 2 hours + to complete the damn thing? WHAT IF... oooo GAWD forbid.... ITS not SPEEDERS or EXPLOITS but a lack of diverse playable content that penalizes REDSIDE? Ever think of THAT?

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See my previous post on forum drama.

One of the reasons they added merits was to help eliminate the difference between CoH and CoV, mainly the fact that CoV didn't have anything like a "speed Kate".

If your problem is that there isn't enough TF/trials in CoV so you can't help but encounter the diminishing rewards mechanism, well that's a different problem.

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Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components

Tempus unum hominem manet

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People actually fail that mission? It happens so late that you have access to at least 2 stealth powers (PvP zones) and 1 phase shift (also PvP), plus your travel powers. The mission only has robots in it, so unless you have a Kheld on the team nobody will have increased perception. Even if they do, it's still a pretty easy mission. On a team it's almost impossible to fail it since even if someone does flub something and get killed, the rest of the team can take over for them.

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It's a very big tech lab map. You don't even need stealth to pull it off, since enemies rarely squeeze off more than a couple shots if you blow past them, but simply charting out the mission map can eat up a lot of time.

At any rate, thank you for fixing the chat bug. Even knowing the workaround, it was a pain in the butt. The overall increased merits should be a nice boon too.

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Arc #41077 - The Men of State
Arc #48845 - Operation: Dirty Snowball

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why?

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why bother putting them on test?

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Lots of 50's yada yada. still finding fun things to do.
Cthulhu loves you, better start running

I�! I�! Gg�gorsch�a�bha egurtsa�ar�ug d� Dalhor! Cthluhu fthagn! Cthluhu fthagn!

You are in a maze of twisty little passages

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Patch Notes: Patch 18.20081210.10T4[*] Failing a mission that is the final (or only) mission of a story arc, task force, strike force or trial may result in reduced rewards. Failing tasks that have 2 or less missions will award 0 merits. Failing tasks that have 3-4 missions will award 50% merits. Failing a task that has 5 or more missions will result in normal merits.

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Ok... so does this mean teams may accually TRY and finish the LGTF mission they always fail? It's only 5 missions IIRC, and you can fail one mission...

I hope i understand that right. I hate that mission. It's a real disappointment in an otherwise wonderful tf.

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@KingSnake - Triumph Server
@PrinceSnake
My common sense is tingling... ~ Deadpool
If you can't learn to do something well... learn to enjoy doing it poorly...

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Ooh. That mission is sort of an 'intentional failure.' I completely forgot about that one.

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I've Never Failed.

(Although, I think the last time I ran it was Pre-Stealth-Clicky-Nerf) &gt;.&gt;

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Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net

Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.

This will be one of the very few times I post a complaint about developer action/inaction/etcetera, but I really do not like this philosophy.

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Q: Why did story arc X have its merit times reduced?

A: Well, again this isn't a simple answer. The short answer is that more people run them and find faster ways of completing these tasks. This in turn changes the average completion time substantially. However, there were a number of tasks--specifically the Kheldian story arcs--that we didn't have much data on. These tasks were literally run only a handful of times, so data was scarce. People started running these arcs to test the number of merits awarded and people realized that these tasks were giving out way more merits than they should. This caused them to be run A LOT! We then realized that these tasks could be completed much faster than our old data suggested. So, these arcs had their rewards adjusted accordingly.

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Essentially, what he is saying is that they are punishing people for getting better at doing the arcs. This is flat out wrong.

That's pretty much the end of my complaining on the subject.

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Er...no. Read again.

He's saying that they didn't have enough data to fully know how well people were doing at the arcs.

The Nictus Insurrection arc, for example, is hard to "get better" at, to a certain point. Other than stealthing, there's not much you can do to speed it up, since it's a pretty short arc. It's a pretty damn easy arc, even if you don't steath (Assuming you can defeat Nosferatu). But the numbers from few number of people did it didn't show that, thus the high rewards.

And the new numbers reflect that. They show the time that should be easily manageable, even without stealthing.

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I'm sorry to disagree, but that isn't what he said at all. This is what he said:

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The short answer is that more people run them and find faster ways of completing these tasks.This in turn changes the average completion time substantially.

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Without even going into specific arcs and what can or cannot be done or how times can be shortened, this implies that in the future as other arcs are run and people "... find faster ways of completing these tasks...," the rewards will also be cut progressively. Hence, excellence in play will be punished, while mediocrity, ie, those arcs that cannot be effectively sped up for whatever reason will be rewarded by disproportionately high rewards.

People can't speed through Katie Hannon because Mary Macomber and her posse are easy to beat ten times in a row. They can speed through Katie Hannon because we all ran the thing ten zillion times when the system was broken and we got a higher reward than deserved for the risk involved. In short, they got better at running Katie Hannon's TF.

Punishing excellence and rewarding mediocrity quite frankly sucks.

I don't like the idea of living in the world of Harrison Bergeron in my mmo, thank you very much.

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People can run Posi in a little more than an hour. People can run the ITF in a half hour. Yet both got buffed. And I could go on and on with more examples.

...I think your complaints are a bit unfounded.

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The Rsf remains at 25 and the STF got bumped to 38........ HELLLOOOWWWWW!!!!!!

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People can do many things. I can run the Midnight's Hand arc alone much faster than the number of merits now offered for it would warrant, yet overall it got buffed. Does this mean I am the norm for this arc? Obviously no, since the reward for it went up. It only means that the majority of people who do it, run it slower than I do. Hence those groups that can run Posi in an hour or the ITF in little more than a half hour are obviously way outside the norm when compared to the vast majority of people who run it. If they were the norm, the reward would be on the scale of Katie Hannon's TF. The philosophy remains the same and the philosophy pretty clearly indicates that the better we get at running specific tasks, the less we will be rewarded for them.

There are more ways to speed up completion times than simply stealthing the mission. Familiarity with the maps if the maps are static, knowledge of where the objectives are on the map, having just the right combination of powers to blow through a specific AV, etcetera, all contribute to completing an objective faster than you did before.

In short, all of these things contribute to you becoming better at this specific assignment. Under most systems, you would reap an concurrent reward for getting better at them. Under this system, you may in the short term, but as more people learn the tricks that made you excel, your excellence and, by extension the excellence of everyone around you, will result in you being punished via a progressively shrinking reward for completion of that assignment.

My complain is not about any specific change in the patch. It is about the philosophy of the system and what Synapse has said will be his only overriding concern about any specific reward changes that might happen.

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In case anyone missed it...

Synapse, Merits, and are you working too hard for your 'money'?

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.Driver Sweeper * CohHelper * HijackThis * TweakCoH * CPU-ID
* Defraggler * Program Security Scan * PC Performance Scan *

Yes, I posted in there regarding why I think the STF is worth so much more than the RSF, but my post was deleted. I assumed they didn't want any commentary regarding the specific changed. I didn't think anything in my post was particularly offensive.

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I'm sorry to disagree, but that isn't what he said at all. This is what he said:

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The short answer is that more people run them and find faster ways of completing these tasks.This in turn changes the average completion time substantially.

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Without even going into specific arcs and what can or cannot be done or how times can be shortened, this implies that in the future as other arcs are run and people "... find faster ways of completing these tasks...," the rewards will also be cut progressively. Hence, excellence in play will be punished, while mediocrity, ie, those arcs that cannot be effectively sped up for whatever reason will be rewarded by disproportionately high rewards.

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The FACTS contradict you. Ignore the explanatory text and look at the actual changes. Overall, merit rewards were increased (by 26%, FYI).

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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project

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Yes, I posted in there regarding why I think the STF is worth so much more than the RSF, but my post was deleted. I assumed they didn't want any commentary regarding the specific changed. I didn't think anything in my post was particularly offensive.

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You were probably in the reply chain of posts after one of the frothing ranters. When a ranter gets modsmacked, the whole chain of replies after them vanishes into the bit bucket.

If you want to be sure of your reply staying (or sure that you, specifically, were modsmacked) always reply to the first post.

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@Mindshadow

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Ooh. That mission is sort of an 'intentional failure.' I completely forgot about that one.

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It was supposed to be failed?

I still had over 7 minutes on the clock at mission complete. (Warshade with SS ftw)

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The New Contact bug is a welcome fix. Several of my characters have hit the Max Story Arcs Cap because of that issue, and going back to clear out arcs that are ten to twenty levels old is no fun at all.

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@Eisenzahn
GW2 - Melchior.2135
AIM - Euroclydon23
Email - scorpany@yahoo.com or <sameasmyAIM>@aol.com (for the sheer novelty of an almost 20 year old email address that hasn't been overwhelmed by spambots yet)

Well, the global increase is pretty easily explained by this:

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Instead of earning 1 merit every 5 minutes on a task force/strike force you now earn 1 every 3 minutes. Keep in mind that these times are based on average completion times. What this boils down to is roughly:

Trials: 24 merits per hour of average completion time.
Taskforces: 20 merits per hour of average completion time.
Story Arcs: 8 merits per hour of average completion time.

This is why many tasks had their merit rewards increase by quite a bit.

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There was a global increase because... well... there was a global increase. This doesn't change the overall philosophy of punishing the community if the community gets better at doing certain things. In fact, it's rather frightening to me that, in the midst of a global increase in the number of merits awarded, there were some arcs and tfs that actually LOST merits rewarded.

This means that in the future, when these sorts of changes are announced and there is no accompanying global increase in all merits rewarded to go along with the ones that get chopped because completion times declined, the declines in reward for specific arcs will probably be steep and pretty extreme.

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(shrug) I don't have a crystal ball. I'm just looking at the situation based on what has actually happened, rather than trying to guess the future.

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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project