Merits:- A bit arbitrary?
By
Archie Gremlin,
Posted on: 2008-12-08 14:32 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Agreed, what with IOs being so easy to build
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Extending Hess would just exacerbate the "go into council cave. kick fascist bottom. rinse. repeat." effect associated with doing the late-20s TFs close together.
Posi could do with being trimmed, but on a small team I wouldn't even say it was long - I'm not exactly the hardest-core CoH player, and I did it in 2h13 recently as part of a trio (tanker/defender/peacebringer).
DCUO and CO will never see my money. The Citygame will keep seeing my money for as long as I keep enjoying it
Positron only needs to be trimed if they keep the same limited missions - if they re-do the mission and tweak the story to allow for more variety, then there's no problem with it's current length, I think.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
The price of the random rolls are 100% spot on, 20/30 merits for a chance of a good recipe is good value for money and can easily be obtained for any person.
I wont ever save up for the 250 merits recipes since i'ld rather have the random drops (3 so far, got 45 mill so far from them on lvl 31 toon xD), 250 merits for 1 recipe or 12 random drops which your almost guaranteed to get the money to buy your own from WW and have plenty of spare change? A no brainer imo.
Edit: Oh and that fire/kin team is all 1 person? That person has 8 accounts? Thats bad 
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
I agree with the Merits dropping a la Vanguard Merits. Or with Starscreamers points. I just disagree with ONLY the team leader getting Merits, when they also get the exp and inf bonuses.
My VEATS are going to be looking at those KB resist IOs for a while longer =[
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Merits are designed specifically to encourage people to stay in the game "working" towards a goal. They are intentionally grind orientated. Their clear goal is to keep people subscribed for longer. This is not necessarily a bad thing, for people who like to feel they have expended significant effort to achieve a significant reward they are perfect.
Where they go wrong is that they balanced them on time taken to run content, when they should be measured against risk faced - which by the way rewards people for their skill and is fair to people who do and don't equate skill to the speed they can complete content in.
XP earned (relative to level of course) is a measure of risk, if it is not a measure of risk, then xp is broken. This is what merits should be based upon.
Additionally merits for story arc owners does two things:
1) Encourages soloing - by adding a reward for doing your own arcs
2) Encourages teams to do the same missions, usually ones that everyone can get easily and keep in synch (e.g. frostfire arc). This will actually reduce the range of content people play, by rewarding certain missions more than others (in effect).
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This is what merits should be based upon.
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Why should merits be based on risk? especially since we already have xp based on risk, it makes more sense to reward soemthing else, and merits are clearly based on time spent.
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1) Encourages soloing - by adding a reward for doing your own arcs
2) Encourages teams to do the same missions, usually ones that everyone can get easily and keep in synch (e.g. frostfire arc). This will actually reduce the range of content people play, by rewarding certain missions more than others (in effect).
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You have always been rewarded for doing your own arcs. Nothing has changed here. I was hoping it might at least encorage PUGs to do something other than endless scanner missions, but no, it's still scanner missions. Absolutely no evidence that merits have changed behavior in any way.
I really should do something about this signature.
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You have always been rewarded for doing your own arcs. Nothing has changed here. I was hoping it might at least encorage PUGs to do something other than endless scanner missions, but no, it's still scanner missions. Absolutely no evidence that merits have changed behavior in any way.
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To some extent i agree with the radio missions, but in the teams iv been in lately we'v been doing more story arc based missions (which i prefer, better ambushes ) and even the small ouroboros tfs, which before i13 i never got invited to a team before to do.
The only zones i think that'll benefit most from PUG arc teams are hollows, faultline, croatoa, midnight, cimerora and ouroboros. Simply due to the fact that its much easier for the entire team to start an arc at the same time in these zones.
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
I'm enjoying the new Merits system, simply because:
- I like working through mission content anyway, and have really loved the new Mercedes Sheldon arc (though someone should point out - SPOILER: if the Magic Man's using time travel, why no Ouroboros Secret access?)
- As I've said on various other threads, I rarely have two hours contiguous gaming time that I can work through a TF on. But, working through the arcs, I've now built up enough for a Trial roll just doing what I enjoy
Is it time for the dance of joy yet?
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Why should merits be based on risk? especially since we already have xp based on risk, it makes more sense to reward soemthing else, and merits are clearly based on time spent.
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Good question, and apologies my wording made it sound like I was making a statement of fact, what I meant was "this is what I believe merits should be based upon". The reason I believe this is, as I mentioned, risk rewards more forms of skill including running content as fast as possible.
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You have always been rewarded for doing your own arcs. Nothing has changed here. I was hoping it might at least encorage PUGs to do something other than endless scanner missions, but no, it's still scanner missions. Absolutely no evidence that merits have changed behavior in any way.
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The previous rewards were not exclusive to the arc owner though. Yes the arc owner got a bonus, but it was just that, a bonus, you get an SO, but you might equally get an SO drop during the mission as any member of the team. Now they are being given rewards in a system that their team is not. Also I said that it encourages certain types of game play, that doesn't mean that it has already effected a behaviour change across the player population.
Just to be absolutely clear, I'm just stating my opinion here, I'm not trying to present these things as facts.
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risk rewards more forms of skill
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Why should skill be rewarded (any more than it is already)? Rubbish players pay just as much subs as l33t players.
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The previous rewards were not exclusive to the arc owner though.
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Yes they where. The SO was in addition to anything else you got in a mission, and back when I first started playing, SOs where much harder to come by than they are now, and story arcs where one of the best ways to get them, especially in the 25-35 level range. The XP and Inf reward was relatively much larger too, mob xp got a major buff since then.
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that doesn't mean that it has already effected a behaviour change across the player population.
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It hasn't had any effect yet, and if it doesn't have an effect when merits are new and shiny, it certainly won't have an effect once the glitter has worn off and players have realised they aren't the uber-loot they thought they where.
I really should do something about this signature.
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I like working through mission content anyway, and have really loved the new Mercedes Sheldon arc (though someone should point out - SPOILER: if the Magic Man's using time travel, why no Ouroboros Secret access?)
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I think that's just an oversight - they probably just missed flagging it as one.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
My view on merits is that the prices are a little bit too excessive and could be reduced by a third.
Merits introduced a lot more of a 'grindy' feel to 'City of' for me. I still believe fixing the too fast or too slow Taskforces to be of a modicum length instead of giving out merits as a carrot on a stick for some truly bloody awful content (yes I'm one of those people that despises running Positron with all my heart).
Reduce Posi/Synapse by a couple of missions (seriously do we need to visit the same map four freaking times in Synapse with no variant to it what so ever) and at the same time introduce a couple of missions to the Katie and Hess TF, sure they would need addition story for these extra missions but it stops them being a joke when awarding merits.
The other problem I have is that the merits are awards based on average run time...the LRSF and STF are some of the hardest content in the game yet because people tend to run them in opitmised teams the merits are a lot lower than they deserve to be...I doubt data mining showed how many times a group started but did not complete those two taskforces.
In my opinion both the LRSF and STF both should award the same 55 merits award by the Posi TF (Posi isn't at all hard on a small team or solo it's just incredibly boring and long).
Overall I think merits were a good idea but the pricing system is a little out of whack and I personally doubt we will ever see recipes drop in price if they prove to be a tad high, we'll only see the TF which become speedfarmed drop in merit value making it even more of a chore to get a recipe through merits.
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