new posi TF review/merit whine
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2010-05-24 13:36 in The Market and Inventions
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I strongly disagree with number 3. Although I have never bought a recipe at full price, I feel taking away options is bad.|
Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
I think I've said this before, but if I had my druthers, I'd do the following things with respect to merits (ordered from least to most likely to draw ire):
1. Allow players to set the level that they'd like to roll recipes at. 2. Earned merits go into an account-wide pool. 3. Eliminate the option to purchase specific recipes with merits. 4. Force random rolls whenever the random roll merit threshold is reached through an immediate reward selection popup. |
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Originally Posted by Hellguard
I don't think anyone's answered this yet, but they'd never allow mailing merits to ourselves. Anyone who has the 60-month (not to mention the 72-month) Veteran Reward would have an infinite supply of merits. Create a new character, instantly receive 5 (or 11) Merits, mail them to yourself, delete character, rinse, repeat.
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Not sure how difficult something like would be to implement, but it's an idea.
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We cant mail merits as there is a vet reward that gives new characters merits. Those vets could create lots of characters and pass those merits on for no risk.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Also, why can't we mail merits to ourselves? I have probably a dozen characters with these piddly little piles of merits, useless by themselves but worth a couple of rolls if I could pool them in one spot.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my whine. And go run the new Posi, it's fun even without a recipe roll. |
Oops should of read all the thread first.... just repeating stuff
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Half the point of the merit system was to allow players to work towards getting specific recipes without going through the markets. Horrible horrible awful idea.
| 3. Eliminate the option to purchase specific recipes with merits. |
"I accidently killed Synapse, do we need to restart the mission?" - The Oldest One on Lord Recluses Strike Force
I thought you mostly played Villside Nethergoat, surely you'd be used to great content with crap merit rewards 
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Heartening to see I was spot on in my guesses as to which suggestions would be popular. Also interesting to see how certain steps are difficult to reverse due to their perceived benefit, regardless of the overall net outcome.
And on that note, I wonder if there's a way to reconcile pooled/transferrable merits with the veteran rewards. I'd just change them to a one-time award into the account-wide pool when the badges are earned, but then I don't have to deal with the torches and pitchforks.
@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
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Quote:
And here I thought the point of Merits was to re-balance the system so that you weren't guaranteed a recipe regardless of the difficulty and length of a TF. Sounds to me, like the ITF needs to have it's average completion time recalculated...
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I really, really dislike the fact that you can plug a few hours into a TF and not get a recipe roll out of it. I got 11 merits, which will get me a cup of coffee if I pitch in three bucks of my own. And this is where someone chimes in with "well, you should have run the Imperious Task Force"...but I thought the idea behind merits was to make *all* the TFs 'worth' running instead of everyone just hammering the same one over and over because it was efficient.
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Honestly, I think merits should be account-wide. I get that they're supposed to represent the achievements of the individual characters, but for such an alt-heavy game it doesn't make any sense.|
Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
[...]And on that note, I wonder if there's a way to reconcile pooled/transferrable merits with the veteran rewards. I'd just change them to a one-time award into the account-wide pool when the badges are earned, but then I don't have to deal with the torches and pitchforks.
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I wouldn't make them sellable or tradeable, just account wide. It would help both casual players because they could pool their merits together to buy specific stuff they want as well as fixing a personal peeve of mine, namely having say 17 merits on one character and 3 on another.
You're right though, this would be potentially abuseable with the vet reward. Roll character, claim reward, delete character, repeat, profit.
The issue with making it a one-time claim of 5 merits is that it totally sucks for everyone who reaches the reward after the change, because they'll get 5 merits, where everyone who got it before could have up to 180 (5 merits x 36 character slots).
Making the vet reward a one-time claim of 180 merits seems a little OTT though. Or maybe just those 5 vet reward merits could be made non-account wide? I don't know if there's a flag or something that could be put on them.
So at least if you make a new character, claim your vet reward you've still got to either take 15 merits out of your stash or earn another 15 to make a roll. Which is still kinda problematic, since it makes rolls for vets effectively 15 merits, albeit only at super low levels.
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TL;DR: No, the point was to encourage people to run whatever TF they want to and get fair rewards.|
Originally Posted by Thirty-Seven
And here I thought the point of Merits was to re-balance the system so that you weren't guaranteed a recipe regardless of the difficulty and length of a TF.
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Longer: The issue that Merits were intended to address is that because all TFs awarded a single random roll, and some of them could take vastly longer than others to complete and/or were significantly more challenging, many TFs were considered difficult to justify running. When the perception is that some content is effectively not worth playing, that means that the effort that went into creating that content is not paying off in terms of continued player interest. The idea behind merits was to make sure that all TFs gave a reward proportional to the time and effort invested, with the goal being that all TFs were considered equally valid uses of player time. Deciding the ratio between time and effort put out and reward received was a separate design issue.
I could argue that the decision to make any TF reward less than one random roll's worth of merits ran counter to the design goal of making sure that all TFs are considered worth running, especially since merits are earned on a per-character basis. For dedicated TF runners, merit rewards more or less normalized reward over time, but for a casual player who runs TFs only occasionally and on many different alts, the time between tangible rewards (that is, stuff they can actually use or sell as opposed to tokens) was greatly increased if they chose to run TFs that offered less than one roll's worth of merits per run. Anecdotal evidence suggests, and I think datamining will prove, that the popularity of sub-20-merit TFs is in steady decline and the popularity of 20-merit-plus TFs is high and increasing.
I am not advocating a flat across-the-board increase of all end-of-TF merit rewards to 20+, mind. I have no problem with speed running per se, but some level of proportionality is important for speedrunners in the same way that it is for everyone else - to encourage them to play whichever TF they most enjoy rather than get bored running the same one over and over. As stated upthread, I'd rather see the developers take a longer and more thorough look at what they consider to be "worth merits", and then add well-defined (that is, encompassing all the tasks that the developers actually wish to be accomplished in order to earn a reward) optional objectives to existing TFs that can boost the reward to at least 20 merits for a thorough team.
@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
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No, the devs set merit rewards based on median completion time. In the case of Eden, Cap, and KHTF, a majority of the teams running the content were speedrunners, so that may have fudged the datamining a bit.|
Originally Posted by Local_Man
First, I agree that 11 merits is too low. However, the Devs appear to set the merits based upon the amount of time that a really good team can do the TF.
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But yeah, 26 merits for both parts put together is way too low. I'm betting we'll see that number go up once a new round of merit reward changes comes through, because the devs are probably erring on the side of caution with this one.
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"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
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So both parts of Posi combined give 26 Merits?
That's actually disturbing. Not because of the number but because that's very close to what the LRSF gives.
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Yeah, I thought the same when I read that. The only reason I can think of for eliminating direct merit purchases is to try and force people to use the market. While I might be willing to agree that's be better for market health in theory, whether it works out in practice is basically moot. That cat's long out of the bag, and I think it would produce nothing but ill will to try and put it back in. Hell, I want a healthy (healthier) market, but *I* like being able to buy some stuff with merits. In the most extreme cases, it provides me a way to "buy it nao" even when something isn't even for sale on the market.
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Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Well if you haven't everyone else has with the possible exception of 3. Which is just pretty much laughable. The direct purchase option was put there for people that wanted to get particular rewards without dealing with the market. As it stands it lets players know that they have goods they can definitely convert into what they need to make their build. Doubt the devs would be willing to screw them over just to provide some extra volume of unwanted items dumped on the market.
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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
From the formula used to determine merit rewards seen here:
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So presumably the rewards are currently at 60% of what they "should" be. Eventually there will be enough data mined and things will calm down enough from GR that the rewards for the new Posi will get reworked. In the meantime the TF is giving very low rewards.| TimesRunModifier: 1.0 if the task has been run enough times for the developers to be comfortable with the datamining, 0.6 otherwise |
That's why I just ran it once to see it, but I'm waiting to run it again until it gets readjusted.
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Ugh, yeah. Especially if Supernumiphone is right about this giving about 60% of what it "should" give.
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Originally Posted by DMystic
So both parts of Posi combined give 26 Merits?
That's actually disturbing. Not because of the number but because that's very close to what the LRSF gives. |
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Quote:
If they bump it up the speeders will knock the combined time down to about 35 min. 26 doesn't seem abnormally low to me, but I wouldn't complain if they bumped it either.|
Originally Posted by macskull
No, the devs set merit rewards based on median completion time. In the case of Eden, Cap, and KHTF, a majority of the teams running the content were speedrunners, so that may have fudged the datamining a bit.
But yeah, 26 merits for both parts put together is way too low. I'm betting we'll see that number go up once a new round of merit reward changes comes through, because the devs are probably erring on the side of caution with this one. |
Posi2 is a bit easier than other TFs since you normally use the same team to do Posi1 then Posi2, so the overhead in forming a team is virtually none for the 2nd part. Of course the overhead isn't counted in merit determination by the devs but it is a part of the player's perspective when counting merits/min.
I'd never run pt 1 again for the reward, it was absolutely piebald.
But it was fun, I'd certainly run it with a different team composition just to see how that last mission played out.
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My City Was Gone
Took the time to run both yesterday. The TF is better than it used to be, but it is still pretty terrible.
It's not necessarily the design of it that is terrible, just that Vahz with their abundance of -rech and Cot with ruin mages and spec demons are just a PITA at that level.
I liked facing our reflections though.
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I don't know if it was our weird team composition or what, but on my run all of us at some point or another commented on how the normally annoying enemies (vaz, cot, clocks) weren't bugging us.|
Originally Posted by Frosticus
It's not necessarily the design of it that is terrible, just that Vahz with their abundance of -rech and Cot with ruin mages and spec demons are just a PITA at that level. |
The only time they were a noticeable drag on the fun was the final mission after our cutscreen-induced team wipe. That left a lot of Ruin Mages and their stupid bubbles clustered in a confined space, which was indeed a PITA to clean up.
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AND you can do it over and over again without the 24 hour penalty |
Originally Posted by Local_Man
The old Positron was 66 merits. You can still do the old one via Ouroborus, but it now gives only 40 merits. On the other hand, you can now solo it.
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it being a fb mish now.Hmmm let's do the math:
Old Posi with three people took around a hour 45 to 2 hours to complete
you got 66 merits <- yeah!!
Now, if you did 2 of them in a row, (not like you would want to) but lets say you are feeling wacky... you would get 66 merits for the first one and 33 merits for the second one because of the 24 hour penalty... total would be 99! Now same deal but doing the NEW old posi with 40 merits. 40 for the first and 40 for the second, total would be 80. I guess if you solo it you will get less mobs to deal with compared to having to deal with 3 people spawned tf... I guess
It's better to save the Mystery, than surrender to the secret...
hmm, i wonder....
Is the merit reward for both parts combined too low in GENERAL, or "too low to bother trying to exploit and speed-run"?
Think hard before giving a knee-jerk, defensive answer. Because we all know that if the rewards were any higher, you'd all be finding ways to run the tfs as fast as possible to farm them just for the rewards. Instead, you're letting "low rewards" stop you from constantly replaying probably one of the best missions the game has offered up so far (and mind you that doing both missions does give you enough for a roll).
The missions are simply fun, but you're letting your fun get dampened by a percieved lack of rewards. That don't sound right to me.
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
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Playing the game well is an exploit.
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Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
hmm, i wonder....
Is the merit reward for both parts combined too low in GENERAL, or "too low to bother trying to exploit and speed-run"? Think hard before giving a knee-jerk, defensive answer. Because we all know that if the rewards were any higher, you'd all be finding ways to run the tfs as fast as possible to farm them just for the rewards. Instead, you're letting "low rewards" stop you from constantly replaying probably one of the best missions the game has offered up so far (and mind you that doing both missions does give you enough for a roll). The missions are simply fun, but you're letting your fun get dampened by a percieved lack of rewards. That don't sound right to me. |
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*Pokes Eden Trial*|
Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
hmm, i wonder....
Is the merit reward for both parts combined too low in GENERAL, or "too low to bother trying to exploit and speed-run"? Think hard before giving a knee-jerk, defensive answer. Because we all know that if the rewards were any higher, you'd all be finding ways to run the tfs as fast as possible to farm them just for the rewards. Instead, you're letting "low rewards" stop you from constantly replaying probably one of the best missions the game has offered up so far (and mind you that doing both missions does give you enough for a roll). The missions are simply fun, but you're letting your fun get dampened by a percieved lack of rewards. That don't sound right to me. |
Hmmm...maybe it's only sleeping.
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Too low in general. KHTF is an excellent example of this. Your team faces an extremely annoying AV that scales up in power 10 times. The only reason it's set at 7 merits is:|
Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
hmm, i wonder....
Is the merit reward for both parts combined too low in GENERAL, or "too low to bother trying to exploit and speed-run"? Think hard before giving a knee-jerk, defensive answer. Because we all know that if the rewards were any higher, you'd all be finding ways to run the tfs as fast as possible to farm them just for the rewards. Instead, you're letting "low rewards" stop you from constantly replaying probably one of the best missions the game has offered up so far (and mind you that doing both missions does give you enough for a roll). The missions are simply fun, but you're letting your fun get dampened by a percieved lack of rewards. That don't sound right to me. |
1) People selected/built toons/teams with the mob's specific weaknesses in mind.
2) People then IO'd out those toons at the appropriate level to maintain all their set bonuses so that they could further increase the rate at which recipes were produced.
3) The number and types of powers available in the KHTF (Level 34) are far greater than those for the posi TF.
Bottom line is that merit farmers will grind the most lucrative TFs out. This skews the data mining on those TFs and the devs reduce the rewards below (in some cases far below) the completion time that an average and non-IO'd out team will run. (Bear in mind that the game is still supposedly balanced around SO use but the current round of merit nerfs pretty clearly doesn't take that into account)
Net result is a global decrease in merit and pool C recipe supply, an increase in prices at the market, and still more "average" players coming here to complain about prices at the market.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
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I don't care how good the missions are. If I'm not getting rewards comparable to other content I could be doing, I'm not going to bother running it more than once or twice as needed.
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Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
The missions are simply fun, but you're letting your fun get dampened by a percieved lack of rewards. That don't sound right to me.
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"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
Quote:
Did the fix the non-scaling of Mary MacComber in the KHTF? It wasn't just the lack of rewards but also that there was no challenge at all to fight the same level AV 10 times in a row.|
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
Too low in general. KHTF is an excellent example of this. Your team faces an extremely annoying AV that scales up in power 10 times. The only reason it's set at 7 merits is:
1) People selected/built toons/teams with the mob's specific weaknesses in mind. 2) People then IO'd out those toons at the appropriate level to maintain all their set bonuses so that they could further increase the rate at which recipes were produced. 3) The number and types of powers available in the KHTF (Level 34) are far greater than those for the posi TF. Bottom line is that merit farmers will grind the most lucrative TFs out. This skews the data mining on those TFs and the devs reduce the rewards below (in some cases far below) the completion time that an average and non-IO'd out team will run. (Bear in mind that the game is still supposedly balanced around SO use but the current round of merit nerfs pretty clearly doesn't take that into account) Net result is a global decrease in merit and pool C recipe supply, an increase in prices at the market, and still more "average" players coming here to complain about prices at the market. |
Felt as boring as the blue side respecs when waiting for the next mob in the reactor core.
All the horror of how hard the old posi was dates back to the days when there was no exemped XP, no stamina and no SSK. Yes it was extremely hard with 8 level 12 toons, and that was how people sometimes did it and took many hours. There was no incentive to do posi with over level toons.
In the new world after these changes, as I said in my previous post, 8 of us wiped basically everything in a posi in 2 hours, and I went 12-19 in the process. All it required was one 16+ for SSK to kick in. Posi has not been frightening for a long time.
Also to respond to another thing, the email system can't be used till level 10, so it's not abusable with a level 1, but yes it wouldn't take long if merits could be emailed.
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