the problem with this is that you would have to many people trying to run it on the highest diff and not being able to finish and then ranting about it. the diff that you choose to do a tf/sf on is your own decission and should not reward or subtract merits. merits are based on time and should be. as it is now, you still have people running speed tf's just for the merits. and i'm sure when the dev's do their datamining again the merits will be changed again.
i do believe though that merits for story arcs should be looked at as some are just to low.
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the problem with this is that you would have to many people trying to run it on the highest diff and not being able to finish and then ranting about it.
[/ QUOTE ] That's not a problem with his suggestion, that's a problem with stupid people.
It's hard enough to get people to drop the difficulty even one notch, no matter how poorly the team is handling the current difficulty, because "OMG, we won't be getting the max XPs!!!". Never mind that you aren't getting any XP when you're waiting for people to rez and to come back from the hospital.
Do this and it'd be "OMG, no, we'd lose Merits!!!". Never mind that you don't get ANY merits if you can't finish the TF/SF.
Leave it based on mean completion time (and it is mean, not average). Run your TFs on Heroic and run more TFs in the same amount of time.
TF's that are set rashly on the highest difficulty by PuGs tend to go wrong anyway. And that's simply the fault of the PuG leader. The devs can take absolutely no blame in the matter because the team leader could just as easily have set the difficulty to the lowest setting.
The teams that can tackle the invincible TF's are usually where everyone knows everyone, and have played with each other on other teams. They have taken the time to get to know each other and assemble amongst themselves a greater team to tackle the harder challenges. They IMO certainly deserve to be rewarded more than the PuG merit farmers, because they have spent that extra time.
I think this could be a small step towards building a tighter community, where players are encouraged to make friends and get to know each other, rather than relying on random PuG's day after day.
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i still see no reason why people who can run a tf/sf on highest diff should get more merits then a pug team doing it on lowest diff.
Considering that merits = time, I say the devs should just award a merit every x minutes you're logged on.
Branching Paragon Police Department Epic Archetype, please!
Considering you can't be automatically logged out in TF mode, people would just stay logged in for a week or more and just continue racking up merits.
I'm okay with upping the number of merits awarded for higher difficulties, but I'm against lowering them for running on heroic. Leave the rewards as they are now on heroic, and raise them from there.
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i still see no reason why people who can run a tf/sf on highest diff should get more merits then a pug team doing it on lowest diff.
[/ QUOTE ] Risk vs. Reward
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I'm okay with upping the number of merits awarded for higher difficulties, but I'm against lowering them for running on heroic. Leave the rewards as they are now on heroic, and raise them from there.
[/ QUOTE ]I don't know about difficulties, but perhaps for the challenge settings.
For example, if you set, say, 2 hour time limit, it can give you +5% merits, but if you don't make it, you lose, say, -3% merits (numbers pulled out of the air as an example). Make the challenge settings used, but make them have a slight drawback.
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Originally Posted by Back Alley Brawler
Did you just use "casual gamer" and "purpled-out warshade" in the same sentence?
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I heartily support this idea, having been saying it myself since the addition of merit rewards. Personally, I think that TF difficulty should be done at the start of the TF along with all of the other challenge settings (allowing the difficulty to remain the same even if the leader d/cs), rather than following and specific character difficulty assignment. The advantage is that it allows the TF to check against itself that the difficulty has remained the same throughout the entire TF (if it didn't the power players would simply run through all but the last on heroic and then crank it to Invinc for the extra merits).
The big problem with using challenge settings as a method for acquiring more merits is that it would require a lot of data mining and number screwery, not to mention that there would be a huge debate on whether the merits would need to be increased on a percent basis (10% more merits) or on a flat number basis (+5 merits). Especially where the time challenges are concerned, there would need to be a lot of testing to determine set numbers for the TF itself. If the times remained the same, some TFs would be utterly pointless to run on Gold (Dr. Q anyone? Bronze would be a stretch for that one...) while others would have no real challenge (Katie and Eden on Gold Medal are pretty much gimmes).
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Risk vs. Reward
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Too bad this metric is useless when it comes to Merits
Case in point Villain Merits vs Hero Merits.
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Too bad this metric is useless when it comes to Merits
[/ QUOTE ] Whatever you wanna tell yourself.
My mistake meant to say isn't used.
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Risk vs. Reward
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Too bad this metric is useless when it comes to Merits
Case in point Villain Merits vs Hero Merits.
[/ QUOTE ]Wah wah wah, devs hate villains...
Villains have shorter TFs and shorter arcs, so fewer merits. Is that *really* that hard to understand?
So tell me how many Elite Bosses does your hero fight before level 10?
How many AV's are in the Positron TF?
How often do heroes run in to confusion powers?
How many NPC's that heroes fight use Placate?
At what level do Heroes encounter -res?
Overall the content Villain side is harder.Yet they consistently get less merits.
Risk vs Reward my foot.
Another draw back to the Ops suggestion is they can change the difficulty several times through out the TF. I remember when I-9 first came out we would run Katies at level 1 until the last mish and up it to level 5 to get the 50 IO.
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So tell me how many Elite Bosses does your hero fight before level 10?
How many AV's are in the Positron TF?
How often do heroes run in to confusion powers?
How many NPC's that heroes fight use Placate?
At what level do Heroes encounter -res?
Overall the content Villain side is harder.Yet they consistently get less merits.
Risk vs Reward my foot.
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The mistaken assumption you're making is that risk vs. reward has anything to do with merits. Merit rewards are based almost entirely on average completion times.
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So tell me how many Elite Bosses does your hero fight before level 10?
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Frostfire, who is actually harder than any of the sorta EBs you get in the Port Oakes arcs.
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How many AV's are in the Positron TF?
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Positron is an endurance test. I'd take an AV for every mission they removed.
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How often do heroes run in to confusion powers?
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Slight less than villains, since it's not common on either side.
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How many NPC's that heroes fight use Placate?
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How many villain side? Seriously, you say this like it's every other spawn.
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At what level do Heroes encounter -res?
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When you start fighting level 15s. They show up in the Council troops then. Are you seriously complaining about the weak Goldbrickers? There are a number of nastier debuffs (-recharge, -end, -recovery, -to-hit) and mobs that you get a lot earlier hero side.
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Overall the content Villain side is harder.
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No it's not.
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.
Awarding the same merit reward to a team beating a TF on heroic as another team beating the same TF on Invincible is kind of unbalanced, IMO. I think the merits should be adjusted to consider difficulty, at least in TF's.
For instance, the current reward for an ITF is 27 merits. Let's make that the level 3 (Rugged/Vicious) reward, while the rewards for levels 1 and 2 are scaled down a few, and levels 4 and 5 are raised an equal amount. So call the rewards (in order of difficulty) 25, 26, 27, 28, 29.
The difference in reward could be judged by the average completion time of the TF (which could be judged by the currently set reward for each TF). A much longer TF, Dr. Quarterfield, for instance, awards 111 merits. Setting that as the level 3 reward, the other could have a greater difference than the ITF. So again, in order of level difficulty... 105, 108, 111, 114, 117.
The difference in reward based on difficulty is purely up to the devs, but I can't imagine the difference being too big (hence a difference of +/-1 up to +/-3).
My Virtue Projects
AE: 38959 - Invasion of the Dark Realm