Are Reward Merits Working As Intended?

amazing how many of these folk come out of the woodwork in threads like this.

If you are on a tf that required you to be a minimum level, say level 45 or 40, then your random roll will be of that level.

Yet ANOTHER reason why forced random rolls IS NOT a good idea. In addition (for why this is a HORRIBLE IDEA):

What if you are on a tf that gives 34 merits? If you force a random roll (20) you leave that person with 14 merits. And thus we are back to point of many characters having merits that can't spend on random rolls.

BAD IDEA for whatever reason you want to give.

And no, I don't see the devs reducing the random roll amount EVER from 20.

Nono I want to nerf MA tickets

I'm actually okay with the rate of earning things as it currently is, mostly.

Even with Merits, I'm totally okay with the system requiring you to spend ten hours running TFs to get items like LotGs and uniques. They're the most desirable loot in the game and should take a long time to earn.

But the Reward Merits system treats a lot of low-value items as if they are on par with the highest-value stuff in the game.

What I think is broken are the Merit requirements for the rest of the stuff - rare recipes and uncommon IOs. Stuff like Kinetic Crash: Knockback/Damage/Accuracy. Sting of the Manticore. Stuff that the Reward Merits system says should take the same time to earn as a LotG, when the reality is that these things aren't actually worth that much time investment. I take issue with this because it is a false choice - technically, you can buy your Sting of the Manticore set with Merits. But you shouldn't.

It's not even the fact that the time cost is higher that bothers me. It's that it's so much higher, it's obvious to basically anyone that the direct buy is a complete waste of merits for anything but the highest-value loot in the game.

To me, it seems that they designed much of the system with the intention that it would never be used.

So many people quoted me, I thought it worth looking to see how many merits I had. Just logged in and checked my badger, the character I play the most. 663 merits. Is that a lot?

--NT

It's the equivalent of 33 end-of-TF recipe rolls pre-Merits. For someone not dedicated to pursuing them, it's quite a few.

Out of curiosity, if you had automatically received 33 invention recipes, what would you have done with them?

Not to speak for Nuclear Toast, but my guess is that the 29 Trap of the Hunters would have been vendored

I would have (and used to, when they were awarded) sold them. I don't use Set IOs, only Common IOs.

--NT

Which is why when merits were being announced, MANY in the market forum suggested strongly that merits be put ON TOP of the existing reward table.

With Quick Katie (and other speed tfs) in existence at the time that was a no go for the devs.

EDIT: My first sentence means the OPTION of taking a random roll worth of merits, or rolling automatically via the old reward table.

It depends on what NT did to earn the merits. All TFs used to give a random roll. Some now give less than a random roll's worth of merits, and some give significantly more. I believe that if you play a diverse selection of TFs now, you will end up with more random rolls' worth of merits than you would have had random rolls under the old system, for about the same time. This assumes an average player who is not speed running or making selections to optimize merits/time, of course - both the old and the new system have significant room for optimization.

This. Except it's "complement" not "compliment".

I think Reward Merits are working as intended. I don't see the point of them as replacing or being an alternative to the market system, but something to smooth out the rough edges of the game economy. Just like the AE tickets, drops directly from enemies, and the market itself. It's just another tool that the Devs can use to "balance the game economy". Just like the Fed in the real world.

Doh! Curse you and your pedantic dictionary! I heard them... I heard the Reward Merits they said "Those Architect Tickets are jolly nice!"

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

And I'd assume that someone like NT wasn't speed-running Katies, because it doesn't seem like he was concerned about the recipes, which were the whole reason for running speed Katies in the first place.

I dispute the amount of time and effort it takes to outfit a character with IOs, and more specifically with merits I dispute the kind of time and effort it requires. But nowhere did I say it shouldn't take any.