Merit Reward Calculation Needs Changing

The Problem (as I see it)
Merits are rewarded on a fixed basis for completing a task no matter how long it takes to do that task. This leads people to find faster ways of completing the task. Eventually the Reward merits get reduced, but the team has already had their Merits so they don’t care. An example is the 22 minute LGTF in the fun section.

In the end some tasks stop being done (Eden Trial for example) because the rewards are too low for an average team to bother with.

Solutions
In my opinion the problem is the fixed nature of the reward and the solutions I’m proposing change the reward to variable. I can see issue with all three and I’ve no idea if they are technically possible, that’s for the Devs to work out.

I have three ideas for fixing this as follows

#1 – Reduced Reward if done too quick
This is the simplest of the three, I don’t really like it and I’ll explain later why.

Data Mining could be used to determine the average time taken by 90% of teams. If a team finishes faster than this their reward is reduced.

So if 90% of LGTFs finish in 44 minutes and you did it in 22 minutes you’d get 22/44th = ½ of the merits normally awarded. If you finished in 44 or more minutes you’d get the full merit reward.

I don’t like this one because the 90% times will become know and the 22 minute team will just wait 22 minutes extra before completing the mission.

#2 - % of enemies cleared method
To get the full merits you’d have to defeat at least X% of enemies on each map. If you don’t defeat enough you’d merits are reduced. Possibly if you defeat more than the limit you’d get more merits.

The drawback is its more complex as the game would have to track a statistic throughout a story arc or TF.

#3 – Merits based on XP value of Mobs Defeated
The game would keep track in the total XP value of all mobs defeated and aware merits based on that and the player levels at the end of the task.

This has similar problems to #2.

Conclusion
I’m not sure any of these are the right answer and I suspect that with a little effort they can be abused, but I feel something needs to be done or we’ll end up with none of the TFs having reasonable rewards for the effort required to do them.

I await the traditional, “I’ve already suggested this” and the traditional “You’re talking rubbish, there’s no problem” replies with baited breath.

I dislike punishing fast runs, as it does take a lot of skill to do these runs.

That said, I wouldn't mind rewarding runs that kill extra enemies, so long as it doesn't involve punishing the fast runs.

Something I would love to see is higher merits for higher difficulty settings.

Kahlan I like you idea of increased merits for higher difficulty settings. It never really made sense why it doesn't work like this..... Risk=Reward? To me higher difficulty should mean slight increase in rewards.

Or maybe, check in the datamining if it's the same people running the TFs quick, before throwing it into the average for merit datamining?

Take the ITF for example. I've heard alot of people say they've done a 30min ITF.

I can even see it as possible.

Me? My fastest is 1:03 with my longest being 9hours+, with my average time falling in between 90mins I would think.

Which come to think of it, make an alt, make a team, start the ITF, and have everyone plan to come back a week later to finish it, so it really racks up time on the TF

I don't really like the idea of punishing a team for being skilled. So I am not in favor of penalising those who do well.

I agree with the OP that granting merits solely based on finishing time has some problems. I tried to do a tf more slowly because it was my first time. Nearly everyone quitted or not willing to join because it was not a speed tf.

About the only thing I'd get behind is giving more rewards for more enemies defeated. Everything else has the potential of making things really horrible. Punishing people for doing it faster is not a good idea, and giving vastly higher rewards for higher difficulty settings would simply ensure I never get to do a TF again. My characters plain SUCK at high difficulty settings, and I just know every TF team will want the maximum rewards. Kind of like how people keep thinking Invincible is the only difficulty setting for missions.

Quote:

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.

Minor Nit pick.

Its not based on average (mean) time, it is based on the median time.

A few very fast (or very slow) runs are outliers and dont affect the median as much as they would with the average time.

For the present scheme of merit reward, players can get quick reward for knowing a tf very well (what and where the mission objectives are), player's ability to stealth and team tp (not really required but it helps), and the know-how to beat the final AVs which can be tricky sometimes (certain power sets can speed things up here, so this also involves forming a good team). The scheme is more like doing the minimum that a taskforce requires, and skips all the irrelevant things.

The OP made 3 plausible fixes:

I think it is a good idea to add in new/increased rewards if a TF is done in a different way.

I think the best way to do this is by using the challenge settings already available. Maybe not use the gable method someone quoted above but having smaller bonuses to Merits if you complete the TF within X, or do it without temp powers. The more difficult the settings (e.g. no inspirations or perma debuff on the character) grant more and they stack the more challenges you set yourself.

I think the bonus for X mobs defeated is good but my only concern is that it slightly goes against toons that are designed for stealth. Its only a small thing but its something to think about and only came to my mind because I have a couple of toons really designed to stealth (Mind/TA and Ill/FF trollers). Maybe having some sort of bonus if you manage to get through the mission by only killing select mobs and none others.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.

One solution would be a fixed number of base merits and then award additional merits along the same lines as tickets in AE -- the more mobs, the more merits.

If take more time because you're just slow, you don't get anything more. But if you take more time because you don't know all the tricks and aren't stealthing most of the missions, you would get a reasonable return for your time investment that people are not getting now.

This would obviously lead to farming of TFs for merits. A high but reasonable limit to merits per minute -- perhaps based on a diminishing returns model -- would resolve this issue.

There is probably not a good solution to it. But as a whole the merit system needs to be recalculated. I have trouble with how the Dev's had accessed which TF/SF gets how many merits in the first place. Such as the Positron TF gets 64 merits because it is 14 missions long, while the Binder of Beasts SF gets 12 merits for being 6 missions long. Yet the Binder of Beasts has a hero and an arch-villian in it to be defeated. Even if you doubled the mission in the villian one, thus doubling the merits, you would not even get close to half of the merits from the hero task force. Maybe the idea of a Posi run is suppose to take a long time? But my first time to do was just under 2 hours, I fail to see why it has such high merits. I agree though, something needs to be done.