Tickets

Alright, I16 has killed the AE. It is now Mostly Dead, and unless we find a Miracle Max somewhere, which seems unlikely, it will probably remain that way.

I don't particularly care. I didn't use AE for anything XP related. I did use it for tickets, as they represent a huge savings when it comes to buying salvage. Unfortunately, tickets have undergone just as heavy handed a treatment as the rest of the AE.

Since tickets are ONLY usable in the AE and are not tradeable, and as such can only impact the game in a very limited and specific way, two things need to be done with them. First remove the ticket cap. It's highly unlikely, on a map mostly populated by minions, that you'll be able to reach the ticket cap now just through defeats, but the mission reward is very often diminished by the cap, which has always felt like a slap in the face and even moreso now.

Second, increase the ticket drop rate. At least double them for each enemy rank. The only respectable ticket drops come from bosses, especially considering a rare salvage piece costs over five hundred tickets and you can't carry enough to even buy ten at once. Minion ticket drops are utterly pitiful, hardly worth the time it takes to defeat them. Lieutenants are... just okay.

Alternatively, you could make every single enemy, without exception, always drop tickets. And, it would be nice if they always dropped the same amount of tickets per enemy rank. Such as, 25 for minions, 75 for LTs, and 120 for bosses, or something similar.

I loved AE for the availability of salvage that often takes multiple millions to purchase, if it's even available. Now that there's going to be a serious shortage of rare salvage again, AE is the best way for a casual player who doesn't have several hundred million Inf to throw around to acquire these. At least, it used to be. Please fix it so it still can be.

Just a side note. Don't worry, it is on topic.

Am I the only person who sees tickets as a great way to get DO's and SO's for characters? Particularly at those cash strapped, mid-teen levels?

I'm not much of a marketeer. For me, the market is a place to turn salvage I can't use into infuence/infamy that I can use. Tickets give me a great alternative bit of financing.
Even with ticket rates as they are now, I can run one or two AE missions and have enough tickets to pick up most of the enhancements I need at low to mid levels.

Oh, well, there's room for everyone in Paragon.

let's see... run AE missions, get 1500 tickets, roll bronze rolls in low levels to get some decent drops, sell to vendor what isn't worth it, make or sell recipes that are worth it which entails spending a few moments at BM researching, make gobs of infamy. rinse and repeat. now you can afford anything you want.

think of the AE as a carnival. the tickets you get at the carnival can not be used anywhere else so why would they give tickets from doing dev created content when they already give merits for most of them.

I'll have to see about digging up some actual ticket numbers for you, but I have to agree with others in this thread who say that this is a solution seeking a problem.

I'm putting the finishing touches on a 5-mission arc using custom and standard enemies. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the ticket drop rates were nowhere near as low as I thought they'd be. But that likely has a lot to do with how the custom critters are designed. If I recall correctly, to achieve maximum drop rates, custom critters have to include minions, lieutenants, and bosses, and can't all be strictly melee, and should include critters with Hard & Extreme settings. Mine have never been typical farming zombies (melee-only lieutenants or bosses). So, when I fired up the mission in the AE and did the test runs, XP and ticket drop rates were just where I expected them to be from previous runs.

Granted, the mission is challenging. But it's a hell of a lot of fun (I can't wait to watch a team of 8 pee all over themselves). And that'll make for some great advertising.

My point is this: AE isn't dead, ticket drop rates aren't broken (only changed), and farming won't be gone for long (they will figure out how to get around it). Oh, and Miracle Max is off enjoying a nice MLT. They're so perky!

So chill out, relax, go with the flow. I'm enjoying the reprieve from all the farming. It means we can see heroes/villains in the streets doing missions again. Cripes, there were TWO INSTANCES OF PEREGRINE last night.