City of Rewards

QFE.

I can run one AE mission and fill up my recipe inventory with set IOs off bronze rolls.

Time invested: 20 minutes or so.

Meanwhile I ran pretty much the whole Tina Macintyre arc with my super efficient spines/regen scrapper over the last couple of days, and only got a handful of IO recipe drops.

Time invested: several hours.

You're neglecting (for lack of a better term) intangible rewards, which you kind of hit on right there yourself. Perhaps Immeasurable Rewards should be a better terms since, technically, all rewards in the game are intangible. But I digress.

When you said "a sense of accomplishment", that is, itself, a reward.
There's quite a number of these kinds of rewards. One of the examples you used before, Challenge Missions, aren't usually about the phat lewt or the XP or any other in-game reward.

Until the human element is added in, any theorycrafting is simply just numbers. Where the rubber meets the road is in the mind and imagination of the players actually in the game, and that's where theorycraft usually breaks, because it presumes that the "tangible" or fungible rewards are, in fact, the universal and singular goal of all players. Which is rarely the case. Most players have a variety of goals.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

Door Sitting doesn't give "free" rewards. It gives rewards at a cost of time and, as you note, boredom. For many people, time is a precious commodity. You have noted that you, yourself, are not willing to pay the "cost" for those "free" rewards. I think most people are much the same. However, there's a conspicuous segment of the population who are willing. That doesn't make them "most" people unless we're being myopic.

If most people were just after free rewards, Progress Quest would have eclipsed WoW by now.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

You can watch TV, or do the dishes, or chat with friends, or make dinner, or whatever while you doorsit.

I'm at a point now where my time is so limited I want to actually play when I'm logged in, so doorsitting is off my menu.

But it does indeed generate 'free' rewards, in that you can level & get drops while you're AFK doing something else. Even playing another game, if your setup can handle it.

Although pre-MA there were always people in PI offering cash for a doorsit spot, or selling runs...so perhaps the free lunch is a thing of the past after all.

See, that's exactly my point! You're unwilling to pay the cost for the "free" rewards: giving up your time. In your case the "free" rewards have a cost attached of taking away the limited time you have to log in and play. Hence they're not "free" at all! If it wasn't costing you anything, then by your own argument, you'd be doing it.

The only truly free rewards are those that random players will just hand you as they're running by as a nice gesture. All others have a cost attached somewhere.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

No, I wouldn't.
I want to play, so I play.
If I wanted to level fast while I did something else, I'd doorsit.
When I had surplus time, I'd do both.

Of course, the motivation was much greater in the old days- real debt, no xp smoothing, no Oro, no base teleporters...heck, no BASES.

It was a much more appealing prospect that it is today, with all our modern conveniences.

The only thing it 'cost' me to click into a mission then go do the laundry was some fraction of my monthly fee.

I am slightly envious of today's doorsitters, since there were no drops back in my day- well, inspirations and enhancements, but nothing to get excited about.

If you have a Surplus of time, time would have less VALUE. But that doesn't reduce the COST, just your willingness to pay it. You don't do both now, because time is scarce. Hence, for you, it's value has increased. Therefore the cost associated with doorsitting is currently more than you're willing to pay. If you have a surplus of time, the value of time is lower, thus you'd be more willing to pay the cost.

Of course, this isn't even comparing the values of doorsitting and play, which we'd need to in your case, since that directly translates to your situation.

However, the cost is still there.

So, we've seen, in your case, an increase in the value of time and a decrease in the value of door-sitting, so the reason you don't door sit is because the value paid (cost) is no longer worth the value received (reward).

The cost is, however, still there.

It's really all just economics. You're making an economic decision, whether you realize it or not.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

It seems to be par for the course for us, in particular, so yeah probably. But really this whole discussion kinda hinges on semantics. It's impossible to discuss rewards without costs, and to discuss costs without value. And it's impossible to define any of that without identifying what those things ARE.

I agree, provided we also add in the "immeasurable" rewards into that equation, things which don't have direct fungible analogs.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

It's a preference, the 'cost' is so minimal it's not a factor.

If I were somehow rendered unable to perform any other action but stare at my monitor for the duration of the mission, that would be a meaningful cost.

As I would be free to do whatever else I wanted, the 'cost' is reduced a few mouse clicks and a tiny fraction of my attention.

As a min/maxer, I love this kind of discussion. As there is potential for abuse, I will try to be as specific as possible without necessarily providing a cut and dry method for those that might consider this an exploit. I also wanted to state that I do not spend even a significant portion of my time in the game doing this, and have lately abandoned this altogether. I consider myself a powergamer - I want to know the best way to do something and enjoy optimizing my characters to be as powerful as possible. That is fun for me.

Onto the topic.

Reward/Time is also an incomplete analysis. Team composition plays a significant role in kill speed. A good leader (which is rare) is aware of what the team can and cannot do efficiently. There are many AE PUGs that fail immediately because they do not have the capability of handling a boss farm. Others simply do not have the speed necessary to make it worthwhile. In both circumstances, the ideal for the team is an all lieutenant map. However, under an ideal team (you are damage capped and they are debuffed), an All-Boss farm becomes an ideal, however at that point, farming elite bosses or AVs is probably the true ideal.

In the spirit of discovering the ideal method for leveling a lowbie, let's outline a few basic points:

1) Travel time should be minimal. This includes travel time between mobs. The ideal would be that you are continuously saturated with enemies to ensure every AoE is capped for maximal efficiency.
--With this said, all boss spawns pose a significant challenge for many as you are now dealing with 17 bosses. Therefore, under this circumstance a lower level may indeed be the ideal.
--I could choose stone armor, but in doing so, I will reduce my potential damage output somewhat. More on this later.
2) Team size should be minimal.
--As rewards are divided among the players present, unless fellow players can effectively contribute by increasing the kill speed, they are dead weight.
--In practice, this usually means one level 50, one lowbie, and 6 fillers. This actually will drive the earned xp per kill of a lieutenant beyond that you encounter on the boss farms.
3) Achieving both damage and survivability is needed
--As such, brutes are quite effective at this role. Tanks and scrappers both can also perform effectively, however the balance between survivability and damage in the brute AT makes them shine.
--If you decide to increase travel time, controllers and dominators can easily perform well, however survivable melee AoE heavy ATs shine on certain maps where the entire time is spent at the aggro cap. I output a consistent 400 AoE DPS on my brute, while soloing. I have yet to encounter any other AT that can match this.
4) Difficulty Setting impacts reward
--As there is a percentage increase in reward, it is often toted that either +4 or +5 difficulty levels are the ideal for reward. Players often point out that +4 spawns an extra enemy, which certainly does increase reward, however considering that the map we are choosing to farm in already ensures that you are guaranteed to be at the aggro cap, +5 difficulty is ideal. Once the map is wiped clean, it can be repeated.
--We must also consider that by choosing the maximal difficulty, we are also increasing the mob level to +2, which reduces kill speed. However, the reduction in reward/time at lower difficulty becomes even more noticeable when using fills. The xp/time ratio is actually ideal at +5 in this circumstance.
5) Bridging
--When one powerleveled old-school, a bridge was needed to maximize reward. Under the current system, which is set to be eliminated, it is possible to set a map where the lowbie is 5 levels below you, earning rewards for enemies +7 to them.
--At this level, they can offer very little, if any contribution. There will be no enjoyment taken from this, other than watching the XP fly by. Put simply, it's BORING.
--I suppose the ideal AT to join in this brute is the /sonic corruptor. They can cast their AoE debuff on the brute and stay in range, but invisible, avoiding any aggro, and increasing the kill speed. There is a range to this power, so those thinking of making a sonic to doorsit will be disappointed.
6) Enemy type should be selected to minimize risk
--Certain armor sets can cap resistance to a certain element, such as energy or fire. Paired with some defensive slotting to the same element, the incoming damage is negligible.
--Bosses are high risk enemies. If you chose to go the soft-cap route, a few unlucky rolls guarantees a faceplant. Any time spent dead is time lost.
--I can run a SS/elec due to extreme survivability against energy damage and tremendous endurance management tools. A SS/fire can perform just as well against fire enemies at a slight decrease to endurance management.


TL;DR:

For the ideal metric for powerleveling, nonwithstanding exploits, lieutenant spawns allow a player to minimize risk while maximizing kill speed while maintaining a good reward value. Bosses increase the reward, however, increase risk and decrease kill speed, to the point that in the ideal setup of constantly being saturated, no AT or powerset can match the rate of reward/time done by a specialized brute farming their ideal enemy.

None of this will change AE gameplay. This process is incredibly dull for the person being leveled, and not many players truly enjoy this type of playsyle long enough to make this worthwhile. Boss farms will continue to be the choice for AE, due to the possibility of actively participating on a team, compared to doorsitting. Also, the level 50 that would powerlevel the lowbie in this fashion is intentionally reducing their rewards so that the lowbie receives the greater reward for less effort. As such, it is highly unlikely that this selfless act will ever be commonplace as it is not worthwhile for the 50 to do this.

I realize by posting this, I am opening a debate to the morality on maximizing reward. That is unfortunate. However, as I initially said, the exploration of what truly is the best and fastest is an enjoyable venture. There is no intentional posting of any exploit, and the one point which could be considered was intentionally left vague enough that no real information was given. Also, as I said earlier, team dynamics has a significant factor on reward/time, and a good team leader will choose missions that are both enjoyable and rewarding to players. Performing the method I outlined is not the ideal method for teams.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Which is what makes it incredibly difficult to give a blanket statement. Team composition plays a significant role, and given how variable it is, this makes predicting the ideal team difficult. However, in general:

Lieutenants in general give a higher rate of xp/time. However, on some teams lieutenants do not last long enough for your kinetics to buff the team from fulcrum, and the damage potential of the team is lost. This is the point typically where boss farms become more efficient with XP/time. However, I'm loathe to say this as well, as this encourages a mentality that believes a certain powerset is required to play the game properly.

I've had mixed feelings about the new system. However, I have yet to come up with any good reason to retain the old one. The only thing I could think of was that one could powerlevel quicker with bridging, and well, that's not a very good argument. So, there isn't a negative to the new system, and I look forward to it. Sure, I'll miss knowing that I could tweak things to do something that most people don't know, or get that lucky invite to a team where I'm getting dragged along. But, now everyone on the team can participate without facing potentially a +7 or +8.

Actually, I have to applaud the developers for making such a careful change that reduces the ideal speeds for powerleveling while making minimal impact to team play (and actually improving team play). I like the new system.

I will actually miss the puzzle on PUGs of figuring out how to best SK people for team efficiency, considering leash range and ideal AT pairings and who should be paired with the highest level toon. I liked the puzzle. But, the new system is better.

A boss has slightly over 3x the hp of a Lt, so if you're doing the same rate of damage, you'll kill the Lt farm faster, with less risk, for the same exp per unit time (although less per individual run).

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Please keep in mind that the main reason I started the thread was to describe general thoughts about the reward system. The most specific conclusion that I feel ready to reach at this point is that as content in the game becomes more varied and more customizable, the reward system needs additional detail in order to keep up. This is more an attempt to open discussion on what should be considered in the reward system. The following distinction is extremely important: I am looking at the reward system from a design point of view, not from a play point of view. Consideration of a player's (appropriate/clever/exploitive/mis-)use of the reward system is solely for the purpose of informing its design.

Clearly time is a consideration in the reward system when looking at merits. My points on this topic were:

1) risk is a poor metric for looking at rewards; indeed, usually when people are talking about risk they're actually talking about time already. The "risk" is a simple consideration of how much time is going to be wasted from player defeats and so on.
2) time is useful, but not sufficient from a design perspective, since we should also be looking at challenge. If time was the only metric being considered then every activity would ideally provide the same reward over a unit of time, from a design perspective. That simply isn't the case. Consider the difference between smashing hordes of greys and hordes of purples; one is clearly easier than the other, and we want the second to provide greater rewards over time since difficulty is a barrier.

This was actually touched on later in the thread by Tonality's thoughts on figuring out what a team is capable of handling. Actually, in a very vague sense this has been applied to merit rewards as well, since a few merit activities receive a difficulty bonus beyond what the time would point to. I don't feel it has been sufficiently applied to rewards earned for enemy defeats, which is without question the most crucial element of the reward system in the game.

I'm not sure what to say here, except that if players are expected in any way to consider "what's best for the game" in their own activities we have a real problem.

There was a time I would have agreed with the 'army list' idea, but I have since changed my mind for two simple reasons:

1) I don't think it's very practical. The current system practically requires custom groups that are not intended to contain a full assortment of enemies for use as unique bosses and so on. If we limit the primary (or mass-spawning) groups in this fashion, you still have to manage and restrict all the objectives placed. It's probably doable, but I think it's somewhat unwieldy, and I think it likely to have holes to be exploited.

2) More ideologically, why? I mentioned this before but the question needs to be restated: Is the issue with the content itself, or with the rewards associated with that content? There are certainly justifications for having all-boss, or all-fire-using, or all-whatever groups from the standpoint of creativity, and in many cases they aren't that far from what you can find in developer content. If the basic idea of the content is fine, then why try to restrict that instead of examining rewards?

Players have historically shown an extreme willingness to investigate and discuss data and systems that are not immediately available to them in game. Indeed, that's probably the biggest reason we have access to the amount of data we do now. Rewards are fundamental to any game of this nature, and I for one believe it is prudent--perhaps vital--that we actively participate in shaping the future of reward structures.

I'm not sure how I can be neglecting something if I specifically addressed it in my OP. Simply put, if the answer to "why is this activity worth less rewards than that other thing we could be doing?" is "because this is more fun!", will that ever be satisfactory? I would say absolutely not. What would be satisfactory is "this is more fun for me, at this time and it's not intended to provide rewards commensurate to that other thing." I believe I said before that if two activities show great disparity in the numerical rewards associated with them, there better be a good reason.

I feel confident saying there are currently (and to be fair, have always been) activities in the game that are grossly out of whack with other activities when it comes to the rewards they are intended to give. While the new sk system addresses some of the issues, it certainly does not address all of them.

I never stated it happens in any meaningful numbers. The "backlash" I'm referring to is merely to illustrate that not every player will follow this rule, and I've used myself as an example. In broad terms, I expect the player population gravitates towards high-reward activities with alarming frequency.

To connect to discussion above, examination of these activities is thus extremely useful in figuring out where the reward system tends to be lacking. The fact that eleventy-billion Katies were run for every Positron was a serious problem the devs wanted to address.

The player base as a whole would be foolish not to expect changes to any activities that are run with disproportionate frequency for the purpose of maximizing rewards. I for one would rather open the discussion on the criteria that should be informing these rewards before this happens.

Thank you for posting these ideas Martin_Rudat.

I mentioned the idea of a character's suitability to a task being part of the reward calculations in the OP, though I had an issue with it for reasons that I found difficult to nail down. At this time I think I can describe them a little better. In particular, there is a subtle--but important neverthless--difference between making the content itself more difficult and making yourself less effective. I don't think we ever want to be in a situation where players wish to make their characters or teams less suited to the task in order to gather more rewards. There is also the danger of this data becoming an implicit admission that certain sets of powers are just better than others, but suffer from reduced rewards to compensate.

Ideologically, I believe players should see increased rewards if they pick activities they are highly suited for, but that the discrepancy of these rewards is currently too high. Obviously, this is subjective.

I think looking at the group dynamic of enemies serves the same purpose in quantifying challenge without ever needing to reference player potential directly. In particular, enemy groups that produce a variety of damage types; mix melee, ranged and aoe potential; use debuffs, controls, summons and the like; vary in rank and so forth inherently present a greater challenge than those with more limited variety. I'm working on some specific ideas to quantify this but they're not ready for public analysis yet and I was hoping to begin the discussion from a more abstract perspective anyway.

It all comes down to time, actually. From your example, you seem to assume that smashing hordes of greys is as quick as smashing hordes of purples, and therefore it could be argued that they should provide the same reward per enemy. This is false, because purples are a lot SLOWER to kill than Greys, and so provide a much higher reward. Risk, for the most part, factors into reward to keep things that are TOO easy or TOO hard from becoming lucrative, because both are incredibly boring and inciting your playerbase to try them is bad business.

Yes, activity difficulty SHOULD be given some importance, but a lot of examinations of it fail to separate difficulty from time delays. A difficult activity is one which you try to do but often fail, resulting in either you having to start over, thus wasting time, or resulting in you able to proceed, but with a penalty, thus again wasting time on having to make up for this penalty. Unlike simple time sinks, however, difficulty is a variable time sink which has both the potential to yield MUCH faster rewards if you're lucky or good, and much WORSE rewards if the universe hates you. It is theoretically possible to examine a perfect difficult activity which always takes exactly as long as a comparable easy activity and then, yes, under those theoretical circumstances I would agree that the difficult one should have the higher rewards. But in practice, every difficult activity ends up being slower to actually do, thus giving difficult activities is a serious gamble, because more often than not, it incites players to find ways to minimize the risk, thus making it easier and faster, yet still consummating the large reward.

What's more, increasing rewards based on potential danger is an even bigger pitfall. We've seen countless exploits of enemies who give greater rewards because they are potentially very dangerous, but practically very harmless with the right approach. This, in a nutshell, is what the old Architect Comm. Officer farms were - farms of an enemy designed with extra reward because it COULD be dangerous, but ends up being an experience snack cake because of how not dangerous it could be and how easy that is to achieve. There's a reason a lot of people cheer at the sight of Comm. Officers in random Rikti spawns.

And you're never going to balance around what's fun and what isn't. This isn't even about personal preferences about what fun actually is, it's about how you're going about balancing these things to begin with. If your players approach the game from a "let's have fun" angle, then you can just view rewards on the basis of how much fun players will have with them and how best to stagger them. Ideally, that's how a rewards system SHOULD work. But players don't approach games that way. They don't think "I like doing this, what rewards I can get for it?" but rather "I want these rewards, what do I have to do to get them?" As such, fun doesn't really enter into it because fun isn't why people do the activities. They do them for the rewards. You have to, therefore, balance based on the value of rewards and the cost of earning them, which is what I said to begin with.

Granted, while some people will numb their minds in the most profitable activity possible, regardless of how dull, there is a certain extent to which most players will got make sure they are getting the best rewards they can while STILL having fun. In my experience, however, reward speed is a far, far more important metric in people's minds than fun. As long as it's not horribly, mind-numbingly, soul-suckingly boring, it's all the same anyway. After all, everyone's been playing the game for five years and we're all tired of everything, as common wisdom goes.

Ideally, activities should be designed as interesting as possible, so that people would WANT to play them, or at the very least not want to SKIP them, but the value of rewards they give should be balanced based based on the cost of doing the activity. All activities should, in the end, be equally worth doing, within reason. At the very least all activities even remotely intended.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

My understanding of your original post was that the cost to the game in allowing certain activities is a sense of player choice, and that players need to decide if they are going to engage in and/or allow the process to continue. Essentially, I take that to mean that players need to police their own activities in order to do what's good for the game. If I'm mistaken in that, can you please reframe so that I can understand?

Immediately, this is where we disagree. If a character is capable of soloing on heroic or on invincible with practically no "risk" (i.e. the impact of player defeat is negligible) should they receive the same rewards over time? My answer is no, since one has an additional barrier to entry. If two activities provide exactly the same reward but one is substantially easier then there is no tangible benefit to approaching more difficult activities. The next logical thing to ask is how much more rewarding over time these activities should be, and I believe it should be noticeable but not compelling enough to feel punitive on characters that must solo on lower settings.

Note that this is already the case in the game, and if anything I believe the discrepancy is currently too high. Again though, this is inherently subjective.

I specifically stated rewards over time when looking at the grey vs. purple example.

I do not believe difficulty should be defined in this manner. A character may see essentially no more risk against 3 +1 minions compared to 3 +0s, and so in a sense there is no difference in difficulty. In another sense however, there is a barrier to entry, an increased challenge that comes with the requirement to deal with +1s. This is intentionally a somewhat trivial example on purpose, since practically any mature character with reasonable effectiveness in soloing qualifies.

Edit: consider this analogy. Is it more challenging to lift 40 pounds as opposed to 20 pounds? The answer is a pretty clear yes, since you need more strength to lift the higher weight. That doesn't mean there is any increased risk. For the most part a person is capable of lifting the weight or not.

I see this as a valid variable in considering reward. If a player has more assets (skill, enhancements, powers, whatever--more "strength") to apply they should be rewarded for it. However, that reward should be modest enough that players without that strength are not unduly punished.

I mentioned comm officers earlier. What you're talking about is creating a discrepancy between actual challenge to the players and the way the system measures the challenge. In this case, the discrepancy was m a s s i v e, considered an exploit of the grossest kind. That is not the same as rewarding activities that are genuinely more challenging, and points to an issue in the system.

The actual issue here is that the reward system for defeating enemies has always made certain contextual assumptions that no longer need to be true. Comm officers presented that extra bit of challenge when sprinkled into a typical Rikti spawn, but placed into an entirely different context they become a target that makes xp-seeking players giddy. The solution as I see it is to examine player activities that abuse the reward system to determine its failings, and introduce mechanics that consider context when looking at an enemy's experience value.

I'm not sure if this is directed at me, or what particular statements I made led to it if so, because we completely agree that fun should not be a balancing factor in rewards. Hence my statement that "because it's more fun" is never a satisfactory answer to "why aren't I getting lots of stuff?". "Because this activity isn't intended to give you lots of stuff" is, but should be used sparingly.

When you say "all activities should, in the end, be equally worth doing, within reason," what qualifies for the "within reason" part? I disagree with the notion, as I believe challenge (and I'm speaking about genuine challenge, not a reward exploit) should come with rewards. Put another way, would you prefer a system that measures time in an actual sense? That is, if there were some way to check whether players were actively engaged (i.e. trying to accomplish the goal) in performing a reward-giving task, should they simply receive those rewards at set intervals of time regardless of their progress?

I'm genuinely curious, since my goal is to get a sense of what players think the rewards system should look like before making any attempt to restructure anything.

Coolio Wolfus leader of Coolio�s Crusaders on Union.

Tekna Logik leader of Tekna�s Tormentors on Defiant.

Creator of: Coolio's Tech Beacon Replacements

AE arc 402506, 'The Rise and Demise or Otherwise of Tekna Logik...'.

What I meant was that was supposed to mean that the "cost" of an item shouldn't be viewed as something as simple as time or challenge or even ease. It's a combination of a lot of things, and isn't the same for each player. "Annoyance factor" is something that you cannot really measure, as some people get annoyed by certain things while others don't even notice them, and still others actually enjoy them. Simple example - spam e-mails. Some fly into a murderous rage when they get them. Some shrug their shoulders and delete them. I ENJOY getting them because I enjoy the act of reporting the people who send them. Spam-reporting 50 e-mails takes no more than a couple of minutes, but it makes me feel good at the end.

I'm not saying that players will police themselves, but I'm also saying that you can't artificially police them as you can't make content that is "worth" the same to everybody else. I'm also saying that people ought to look at WORTH more than they look at VALUE, because a lot of the really valuable items aren't actually worth it, especially if you value your time or your enjoyment. Since big rewards are apparently here to stay and big cost is needed to balance them, I'd say less NEED should be put on having them so people would be less likely to substitute value for actual worth. Or maybe I'm just wrong.

If you're already talking about over time, then we're using different terminology. A greater reward per unit of time is the value, a greater difficulty is the cost. A great value balanced by a great cost is just as worth as a low value balanced by a low cost. It's a question of where this balance is, but yes, everything should be WORTH the same. Keep in mind time is not the only COST of acquiring the item. Preparation, danger, penalty and so forth also are. Though, in the end, that still comes down to time.

I don't believe all activities should have the same rewards per unit of time, but that they should have the value of their rewards balanced by the cost of acquiring them. Whatever this cost may comprise of, it should never make people feel like if they should be doing a specific thing because it's the only thing that's worth it.


Here's the thing - you have no definition for what "challenge" means, and the way people at large tend to use it, it means exactly zilch. You can't say there is no increase in difficulty, but there is an increase in challenge, since challenge in context means the same thing, and outside of context means something that makes no sense in this context. If you're talking about "the price of admission," as it were, which is the TIME invested in planning a build and acquiring the resources to make it happen, then yes, that raises as you increase the difficulty. The mere fact that some people make that investment on their own as part of their status quo does not change the fact that, from the viewpoint of a non-optimising player, it IS extra time spent preparing for the earning of extra reward.

This is also where the annoyance factor comes in, which is probably the only other real balancing factor. However, that is effective only up to a certain point - can I bear to do this. How much less annoying than that an activity is doesn't matter, because it needs to be only as low as to allow people to participate in the activity. After that, reward per unit of time takes over. If something is so annoying that you have to try and die too many times, spend too much farming for the right build to tackle it, or plain build in a way you don't want to have to build your character, then that is still a part of the final cost. But that is, as I said, the price of admission. Having paid that, it IS all about time, and a lot of people have gotten used to paying it. Many have not, however.

Do you realise that this paragraph said exactly nothing? The solution you see is to re-examine the problem and find a solution. Well, I agree. And I don't mean to be a jerk here, please understand, but that's the problem I have with the entire tone of the thread. It states a lot of vague but true facts and does nothing with them.

Rikti Communications Officers are not challenging in ANY context, aside from scripted events with don't qualify. They are potentially dangerous, but even in their native environment, that potential is remote, making spawns that hold them easy, and the Rikti as a whole easier for it. Granted, Chief Mentalists balance that out, but still, Comm Officers themselves are never actually challenging. They give more experience of how they were set up historically.

Originally they gave regular minion experience and their summoned enemies gave experience, but people farmed the gates indefinitely. It costs less to fight an endless, slow stream of enemies than it does to run from spawn to spawn, and the reward is the same. So the spawned enemies were stripped of their reward, making them worthless and so something people don't want to allow to spawn (as it should be) and it was given to the gate itself. This only shifted the problem, because now people wanted to LET the Comm Officer spawn the portal for extra experience. It cost the same whether you let him or didn't, but letting him was more valuable. Because of that and another exploit, experience was stripped from the portal and given the the Comm Officer, and because all these reward-less enemies spawning was getting annoying, they were made into faux-lieutenants to ensure they spawned less often.

They're not dangerous, they're a kludge. Chief Mentalists are dangerous, because they have a lot of hit points, lots of resistances and some of the game's worst status effects, but even they are not equally dangerous to everyone. However, with that big sword and poorly-resisted psi damage, they still manage to be a meaningful threat to most people. Why Chief Mesmerists don't have improved rewards, though... Who knows? They suck MORE yet they're worth less than a fairly harmless Fake Nemesis. Why ARE those worth so much, anyway?

I'll spare you a repeat of my monologue on WORTH = VALUE - COST as I did this in the original post I made in this thread. Suffice it to say that any "drawback" an activity has contributes to its cost. It may cost time, it may cost effort, it may cost annoyance, it may cost discomfort, it may cost a lot of things, but all of these things together make up the item's final cost. The item's value, on the other hand, is comprised of the good things about this item. How much it will help the player, how much the player wants it, how rare it is (and therefore how fortunate the player is to have it) and so on. I'm talking about the final combination of these two, this "worth" of the item. I'm not saying an easy encounter should give the same reward as a hard encounter. Obviously, the hard encounter should give more. But because it's harder to win, it also costs more, so both are, theoretically, worth about the same.

If you're buying Alchemical Gold, it doesn't matter if you buy one for 50 000 two for 100 000, Alchemical Gold is still worth around 50 000. If you're questing for a guaranteed Mu Vestment, it doesn't matter if you do the TF that nets you one in half an hour, or the longer one that nets you two for two hours. They are both worth the same. If you're fighting an enemy with 100 hit points and 100 experience for reward, or you're fighting one with 1000 hit points and 1000 hit points of reward, they might still be worth the same. That would depend on the enemy. The point is that the prerequisite for the reward should be balanced around being worth the reward itself. I don't mind a small reward if it was quick, cheap and easy to get. It's not a big, super-cool reward, but then I didn't have to quest and raid for it for days to get it, so it's still worth it.

MMOs tend to forego cost altogether and sucker people in with massive-value rewards with NO regard towards the actual cost of the item, and that creates the horrid raiding systems that see you repeat the same boss over and over and over again hoping for a random, extremely rare drop. I guess they are worth it to the people who do them, but I don't believe that whole system is balanced with worth in mind, because it is NOT worth it for quite a few people, as well. Making super-cool rewards is good and all, but they should not be stuffed behind something that is obectively as hard, long and annoying as you can make it. That's not balanced. That's needlessly overbalanced.

Which is worth what is subject to debate, obviously, but in the end value AND cost ought to come into consideration.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Edit: you have a legitimate complaint here. I haven't always been clear in the distinction I'm making, even to myself.

Perhaps it can be put best this way, in terms of what I am getting at.

Challenge exists independent of the player/character that is attempting the activity. A +1 minion is more challenging than a +0 minion. There may be essentially no change in the likelihood of defeat for a particular player/character, which I would call difficulty. In this sense, one does not necessarily have a clear relationship to the other. Heroes can usually take on certain enemies routinely with little or no chance of death; following this is a fairly narrow range of activity in which defeat is fairly common but not assured; beyond that you tend to faceplant every time.

My original point on this subject is that people usually talk about risk as difficulty in this sense, but it really doesn't mean anything as a balance point for reward. It amounts to some extra time spent offsetting debt, hospital trips and so on, but there isn't any risk because there's nothing else to lose. You can take those defeats and wrap them up into time, but that still leaves the challenge of the encounter as a significant factor in measuring rewards.

Question: when you speak of factors such as annoyance as part of the cost of an activity, I can see that as a consideration from a player perspective, but should it in any way affect reward mechanics from a design perspective? I mean, I really hope the devs aren't saying "yeah this activity gives good rewards, but it's annoying as hell so that's ok."


The point has been missed. Whether that's my fault for not being clear enough or yours for not reading carefully enough I really cannot say. Probably a bit of both.

I see three answers to farmed content:

1) Restrict the content.
2) Leave it alone.
3) Examine the reward structure.

In my experience most arguments devolve into the first two. I'm looking for the third. I don't take this as given by the player base in any sense; people have disagreed with it already in this thread.

If the devs have any solid data that certain activities are giving disproportionately high rewards, I'd be shocked if they aren't already figuring out how to address it. From the list I'd say (2) is not going to happen and (1) is highly undesireable.

That's the first point. However, among those who agree that (3) is the response we want there is a lot of disagreement over how to do it, so the second major point is that enemy group composition should be applied as a contextual variable in determining the rewards an enemy gives. To me, this is something different than where suggestions on changes to rewards usually go. Sure, the system considers context like relative level to characters and size of team, but none of that examines the composition of the group an enemy spawned in. As players are given more tools to customize those groups in terms of size of variety, the lack of this consideration is becoming increasingly problematic.

In a general sense, I was hoping forum readers would contribute their ideas on what factors should come into play for assigning rewards.

In terms of specific systems I'm still in a brainstorming phase. What I'm thinking about is a measurement of variation within the roster a group spawns from which is used to modify rewards given by defeating an enemy in the group.

If two tasks have exactly the same value, but one is more preferred than the other, for no apparent game mechanic reason, would that not be an instance of the less preferred option having a higher cost in say, annoyance, or some other ineffable metric.

If you then inflate the reward rate of the less preferred option sufficiently to entice players to do both in equal measure... have you not then increased the rewards of an activity because it's more annoying than an equally valuable activity?

If you take WORTH = VALUE - COST, you can produce an empirical measure of cost, by adjusting the values of various activities until all are engaged in in equal measure, in which case, the differences between the values assigned to the individual tasks to bring this situation about must then equal the relative cost of the tasks.