Merits for Every Mission

The idea of this is to give players an easier alternative to buy recipes, without having to deal with the over-inflation in the markets. As of now, merits are only given by Monsters, completing arcs and TFs/trials, but why not regular missions. If they were to be given in regular (non-ae, non-ouroboros) missions, than the desire for teaming may rise up once again. The point is, running contact arcs does give you merits, but not the players that helped you, it's ultimately not fair, and while you can solo most arcs, where's the fun in that? This way, anyone that was on the mission long enough to recieve the end xp/influ bonus, will also recieve a couple merits.

To keep things from getting to out of hand, as in, people farming "rescue" or "steal/retrieve" missions that can easily be stealthed through, a scaling system would be implemented; meaning the more demanding the mission is, the more merits you recieve, i.e. "Defeat Alls" would give more merits than "Retrieve X." What would also be nice is, the more baddies you defeat in your mission, the more merits you'll recieve until you reach the mission merits cap (MMC) which would be approximately 10.

The idea of this post is the increase the flow of merits in CoX, because looking at WWs and the BM, it's just ridiculous, seriously, 500mil for ONE good(emphasize on one) recipe? I understand that good IOs are supposed to be expensive, but that is far out've reach for most casual gamers, and unless you AE alot or get really lucky with a drop, you're going to be saving up for a very long time.

Ultimately, this idea does not hurt AE farmers, it instead gives them a better alternative, as well as everyone else. One may say, well, what happens when I run out of missions to do since paper missions dont give any merits? Simple, go join/form a mission team and run another's arc; because in the end, that's the goal of this idea.

Thoughts and Comments?

Casual player and 500 million IO does not go hand in hand.

P.S. there are actually single recipes that go for more then a billion

I'm made to think of the old truism: Give an inch and they'll take a mile.

There are multiple currency sets in this game on purpose. They interact in specific ways and are balanced very carefully. In the case of salvage I'd say they're balanced very poorly (the whole idea of supply and demand seems to have escaped the notice of the devs when defining rarity) but those imbalances that do exist are a large part of why people think there are problems. The problems aren't with the currency, they're with the goods.

Keep in mind that all currencies also follow the laws of supply and demand. If you increase the quantity of merits (by making them easier to get) you decrease the value per merit. That's called inflation and it can be seen in the market for "common" salvage.

Robin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha ...I have the patience of a coffee-fueled flea...

Honestly? Using the merits as a main, or even a significant method of slotting out your build is utterly impossible given the ratio of merit rewards vs cost. Most recipe merit prices are in three digits, while you'll be lucky to get even two from an average story arc, leaving task forces the main source of merits and thus pushing them into farm territory.

So... why not award merits for non-special content? Why not award merits for missions given by non-repeatable contacts? Because contacts don't have an infinite number of missions, it would be that much harder to farm them, and might even produce some minor appeal for generic "Defeat Sqrt(-1) Haberdasher" missions. The constant trickle of merits would encourage the use of contacts and put more control over the accessibility of wanted enhancements into the hands of the player.

So yeah -

/signed

An open letter to NCsoft

um...if you do ouro arcs you can essentially farm story arcs for merits. yeah it takes a while but it can be done. and some of the arcs give out as many merits as tf/sf's do.

I'm not proposing increasing the merit rewards from story arcs - to do so would also make them viable farming targets. What I am proposing is a system of of merit micropayments - a minor amount of merits for minor tasks, rather than exclusively a system of larger amount for larger tasks.

An open letter to NCsoft

i didn't misread what you said quinch, just trying to point out that if people wanted to use merits to try to io toons that they could do so through ouro. it also fits into your idea of non repeatable content.

While one would assume that more merits in circulation would lead to reduced demand (and hence reduced prices on the market), this is not the case. More merits would mean less things to spend influence on. Since people would have more influence to throw around, it would be like monopoly money and they would be bidding much higher than they already are on the market.

This can be seen by the noticeable increase in prices after AE tickets were introduced. You would think people would use these tickets to buy salvage and salvage prices would drop. That has not proven true though, has it?

Why? Because they use tickets for DOs and SOs. That means the only thing they have to spend their money on is IO recipes and Salvage. They have more to use, so they make use of it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

Since people would have more influence to throw around, it would be like monopoly money and they would be bidding much higher than they already are on the market.

Well aware of the problem, but since the influence simply changes hands, the inflation remains.

An open letter to NCsoft

why would you want to cut off your feet like that though? ouro is a good source of merits besides tf/sf's. not to mention the devs wouldn't spend the time to take merits out of ouro as they are tied into the story arcs just like if you did the arcs for the first time. oh, and could you please be more specific on which "good" recipes are 500 mil. because if you are talking purples, i hate to tell you but they really weren't designed with the casual player in mind. i think you really need to sit back and try to look for a solution to a problem( if there is one ) rather then comming up with a problem looking for a solution.

A merit in every mission! A chicken in every pot!

Yeah, I'm done.

Honestly.... I'm not seeing an actual need for this.

not that I hate the idea... on the contrary, I would not mind if it was in game or not.

...just not seeing the need.

So, would these merits replace existing recipe drops in missions?

I've been thinking about this whole merits thing for awhile. I agree with with concept, that the merit system needs to be reworked. Most of the players are not starting oro farm teams for merits or tf teams etc etc to earn merits fast. And honestly, I wouldn't be too excited knowing how many times I'd have to run the same handful of tf/trials to get enough merits to earn one single recipe, let alone an entire set.. for one power... Yes I think this needs to be looked at.

I agree people will be more inclined to run normal game content alongside AE if they did something to make merits more useful. Give us something to break free from the market entirely. Here's something to think about to. With the huge increase of websites spamming/selling influence you can't deny that more and more people are just spending money outside of the game to get the influence required to spend on the market. This inflation will not go down because of it, people are going to continue supporting the sale of influence over websites so they can buy the highly priced items keeping the prices high. Fix the merit system so we can let those people continue to spend money outside of the game or farm until their eyes bleed and we can enjoy the more content-filled route of earning the recipes we desire.

I personally think earning merits is pretty easy, it's just the cost of the rewards that are a stinker. Instead of increasing or changing the way we earn merits I thought maybe just look into lowering the cost of the items through merit vendors would suffice. 150-250 merits for an IO recipe? Yuck, when you're earning like 6 per arc and 50ish per TF/Trial. with the time restrictions to slow down intake as well. And to think about all the wasted time on teams that disband before TF completion (yes it isn't THAT common but still happens) is upsetting.

Iunno, I think this is a good topic to discuss and look into. Clearly they wouldn't have added the merit system for any random reason. They added it and put vendors up to help players who play the game get the same rewards that farmers get. I support this idea! Good post.

/qr

I wouldn't argue about offering a merit for helping others complete their arcs. How to make it fair, though... it's hard to say. I'll have characters along helping others for multiple levels - missing my own arcs, because we're busy on theirs - then I'll look and realize I have very few merits. Given I've been doing everything but talking to the contact right alongside the others, this *can* be discouraging to teaming. (Yes, I know you can grab the same contact and simul-complete - if you have them, have the arc space, etc.)

"Assistance merits" wouldn't hurt, IMHO. Not per-mission, I don't think, but something as a token for being there.

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