Pro: Get exactly what you want.
Con: None of my characters have anything close to the number of merits required to get anything I want.
Pro: Make the TF/trial pool recipes more accessible to solo characters and people without much time to play than they used to be, since you can earn enough for a roll by doing a few arcs alone.
Con: Overall lower amounts of those recipes being generated. (It seems like this has eased up a bit more recently, though.)
Con: Players seem very likely to just sit on tickets, whereas recipes have much faster turnover times.
Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
Pros: There are a few different ways to gather merit rewards so you are able to explore game content while collecting them.
Cons: They benifit those who do the work fast so alomst all TF's are now Speed TF's. The price to get what you want from the vendor is set way to high for the casual player to get. They do not allow for the rolling of Purple recip[es.((granted neither do tickets))
Virtue
--Blazing Tiger-- 50 Invulrn/Fire Tank
<<Virtues Tankiest Kitty>>
Try my Arcs: #4892 and #112548
@Blazing Tiger and @Aqua Fox
I spent 1000 merits and all I got was this stupid badge!
You're not super until you put on The Cape!
Attercap.Net
For 1000 merits i better get an accolade with a good power.
Virtue
--Blazing Tiger-- 50 Invulrn/Fire Tank
<<Virtues Tankiest Kitty>>
Try my Arcs: #4892 and #112548
@Blazing Tiger and @Aqua Fox
Pros: Good for specific recipes
Cons: You have to find people who want to go through TFs all the time.
Cons: People want to play AE more than TFs lately
DestineeFable's Guide to an MSTF run (fixed!)
My latest AE madness
Pro : Doing Story arcs is worth something now
Cons : Doing some TFs yield less Risk/Reward than story arcs.
Pro: Doing story arcs becomes more attractive for solos or small groups. Some arcs (eg Steven Sheridan) are worth a random roll on their own, just like a Task Force used to be.
This has lead to me running a whole heap of content again and enjoying it.
Task Forces mostly return more recipes than before if you take Random rolls (eg Positron is now worth 3 plus change). This arguably means more of these recipes on the market than before.
Cons: Pick up groups are more likely to be doing the leader's story arc than radio missions, which means more zoning.
The older generic story arcs can be almost impossible to acquire. Gordon Stacy gave me every possible non-arc mission and then told me he was finished, despite the fact I didn't have any other arcs on the go.
Pro: You can ignore it & forget about it. Which I have done. I have yet to spend a single Merit Ticket from any of my guys, though my badge hunter has several thousand. Out of site, out of mind.
Con: No instant gratification from doing TF. No recipe rolls. On the few that offer Hami-Os or something similar, I take those because at least I feel like I'm geting something.
Ignoring it and forgetting aobut it are part f the problem. As someone noted above, the fact that tickets tend to sit in peopels inventories while they decide what to do with them and not circulate is a problem for the market.
Id say the biggst con used to be tha it encouraged ultra-super-duper-uber fast task-forces repeated a trillion times. And task-forces even more so than farms get old FAST! Fortunately, AE has given a better outlet for those wanting to maximize their reward over time.
As a general matter I consider th merit system a good thing an improvement over the previous random rolls. But it does have its downsides.
Merit Rewards seem to be more labor intensive compared to AE Ticket rewards and less fun especially if you've done a Tf about a billion times. If there's something I'm not seeing or a bit of wisedom that I can receive send me a Pm or Post Pros and cons of Merit rewards system according to your views. Thanks