Are Reward Merits Working As Intended?

I just get irritable when people say 'can't be done' when they mean 'will take longer than I want it to'.

In this case it's a little important, because I'm not sure the Devs and Players agree on how long it 'should' take to outfit a character with IOs.

I'm guessing, but I feel confident the Dev design is "it doesn't matter how long it takes, because they are optional".

Thus, WAI. And in my personal case, acceptable, although YMMV.

I do nothing but random rolls. I have never saved up merits to buy that one uber-expensive recipe.

Why would I spend 240 merits on ONE thing, when that many merits will get me 12 chances for that one thing, and the very strong possibility that I'll get something else I need in the process?

I've bought several of the specialty IO's with Merits - usually the LoTG + Recharge, the various healing +Recovery and +Regen IO's, and +Stealth IO's.

Everything else I buy with influence or tickets.

Getting merits quickly is very easy blue-side, especially with all the lower level TF's that are being run all the time. Redside the easy merit acquisition doesn't take off until you are lvl 35+ (unless you feel like soloing Oro arcs).

Most of what I do is TF's, I don't solo much anymore. That may be why it seems easier to get the pricey IO's with merits these days. I can get 200+ merits in a weekend if I feel like it (or a day if I do nothing else).

I don't roll random because I see them as too valuable (at 42nd level, Justice Fencer has only 478 merits). To me a merit is worth a LOT of influence because it represents freedom from having to pay 10's or 100's of millions of influence I don't have on the market. I also avoid anything random on principal because historically my luck is awful in any game going back to D&D 1st edition sitting around a table rolling dice.

I have rolled random recipes using AE tickets but not knowing which ranges or options are best I ended up with 20 recipes that were worthless. I did find one I could craft for enough to make me feel better about my choice; but overall the experience just confirmed my opinion that my merits were too valuable to risk on random rolls since there are only a few recipes I really want anyway.

Maybe as time passes my desire for IO sets will increase and that will push me to get more comfortable with forming my own TF teams to increase my merit income. Maybe then I'll roll randomly and get more involved in the market... but certainly not as it stands now. *shrugs*

IMO, Merits aren't worth enough and MA tickets are worth too much. The system is set up to reward farming MA missions over doing TFs; I'd like to see the value of merits go up and that of tickets go down.

Past that, it might be nice to change the diminishing rewards system on merits to a completion-based outcome. Stealth the whole TF and basically just kill the bosses and AVs? Fewer merits but it's faster. Take the time to kill things? More merits but it takes longer. Average it out so you actually get a certain number of merits per time based on an average team.

A good solution for the random drop problem is have zone events, that cannot be initiated by player actions, drop a Pool C reciepe upon successful completion.

This includes things like Troll Raves*, Halloween Apocalypse Events, Even Rikti Raids or Zombie Invasions with some tooling. A random drop purchasable with Vangaurd Merits would even help a bit.

*some kinda auto exemplar feature when in the area of the raves would be necessary there

It seems to me that the intended purpose of the merits was primarily to keep things the same, even out the reward distribution for time/difficulty to some degree (and make it easier to fine-tune) and to allow people to get a rare recipe that they may not be having any luck getting through other means (none selling on the market, for example). To that end, it is functioning.

Expecting to fully outfit yourself with merits is unreasonable.

However some of the problems the merit system has created that have been brought up do seem valid. The reduction in automatic random rolling means the supply of recipes has gone down because the merits aren't being rolled. Some people are exclusively purchasing exactly the recipes they need and thus a large number of potential rolls aren't taking place, and others aren't even spending their merits. Again, large number of potential rolls not taking place. I expect that purchasing specific recipes with merits was intended to be something done rarely, only when other avenues of obtaining that recipe have been unsuccessful for some time.

Honest question because I have not seen it, though I have not searched extensively: Have any of the people noting the low availability of certain recipe types written a guide of any sort to the best level ranges and levels to roll at, for those ranges? I know this would be helpful to me, since I yet have much to learn about the market and recipe desirability/availability, and I suspect others might be more willing to give rolling a try if they had at least some guiding advice suggesting which rolls, at which levels, in which ranges, would be profitable and a worthwhile use of merits.

I do have to add that allowing rolling at a specific level would be something I would very much desire, because at the moment I'm facing the unpleasant prospect of either locking my character at a lower level until I get all my recipes, to ensure I can get them at the level I want them, or leveling to 50 and potentially not getting the recipes I want at the level I want. Neither of those prospects appeals to me. Being able to continue leveling, but still be assured of getting the recipes at the level I want them at would be nice.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PumBumbler I think that this is as close as it gets for now. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Random_R...ipe_Drop_Rates

Indeed. While I will likely do the necessary work at some point and figure out what I need to - and probably only the bare minimum that I need - I expect most people look at something like that and have no idea where to begin, and give up immediately. A simple, concisely written guide to help people determine what rolls to make would probably increase the number of people rolling, at least to some degree. Some advice on what recipes to look for and check prices on in which roll range and so on.