Repairing the merit system and the markets
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2010-05-30 23:45 in The Market and Inventions
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I don't care how you want my post to look... I will do it the lazy way... so Yeah BLAH!! I want to reply to one sentence... I do not want to mess around deleting 2 or 3 paragraphs.
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Originally Posted by Fulmens
Cut and paste and put between quote tags:
[null]blah[/null] only replace null with quote |
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Originally Posted by Pimpstress_Bambi
I don't care how you want my post to look... I will do it the lazy way...
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then i'll do it the lazy way too- welcome to ignore!
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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I can't begin to express how ludicrous that level of laziness is.|
Originally Posted by Pimpstress_Bambi
I don't care how you want my post to look... I will do it the lazy way... so Yeah BLAH!! I want to reply to one sentence... I do not want to mess around deleting 2 or 3 paragraphs.
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I guess we can return the favor by being too lazy to parse your posts.
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
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Except that is exactly the way that the rewards system was first based and the reason that IOs were reasonably available at all levels. This is no longer the case. Let me pose it to you in another way. What is the point of having low level Pool Cs if they are so rarely generated that you have out leveled them before you get any?|
Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Well then there is no need to force people to take random rolls on the way up. The Max level items have always commanded a premium price and still do. The only exceptions are procs and globals and even those tend to have a U shaped price distribution. The only thing making people take random rolls on the way up does is force them to sell at a disadvantage, at a time when the toon has less slots and less storage.
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| Supply and volume on the market have never been better as long as you are working at max level. Its not surprising that the devs haven't taken up the suggestions from their point of view its probably working very well. |
If your contention is correct (and I strongly believe that it is NOT) why even have IO sets under level 50 if the goal is to only have the level 50 range well supplied? Why not just eliminate the lower level IOs and sets?
Because your contention is incorrect. Having only level 50 with any amount of supply is not WAI. Flashbacks, the exemplar system, and most of the content in the game is NOT set at level 50. In fact a preponderance of it is at levels below 50. Clearly these 2 things are at odds and we know that the exemplar system is WAI since it was just recently updated. This lends weight to the statement that the market is not working properly to support the exemplaring system and is therefore broken and in need of repair.
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| Weather or not you agree with what I see as the effects, your changes certainly will not benefit everyone. Not even everyone that likes and wants to participate in the market. |
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
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People who have a problem with the lack of level 50 stuff can just hop on a 50 and generate more stuff. People who have a problem with the lack of lower-level stuff have to resort to gimping their characters in order to generate more stuff. So, who does lack of stuff impact more, the guy who has to do more of what he'd already be doing, or the guy who has to do something he otherwise wouldn't do?
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Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
That can be said of all game changes. The intent isn't to benefit everyone. That isn't possible. The intent is to benefit the largest number of players with the proposed changes. Since far fewer people play at level 50 than at lower levels it is clear that steps need to be taken to change the under supply at low and mid levels.
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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
<only read the first page of the thread>
Eh, I'd make lots more random rolls if I could set the level of the recipe. The vast majority of recipes I slot are below 50; I exemplar a lot. One of the main reasons I hoard merits and do direct-buys is to get a specific level recipe. If I could pick the level for my random rolls, any character's merits could be used at any time to generate the recipes I am looking for, and all the rolls I don't slot would go on the market. Well, all that will sell for anything , that is.
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
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Word to the wise: You are not writing for yourself to read. You're writing for everyone else to read. Pretty much "everyone else" on Internet forums learns to use quote tags and how to read quoted text.|
Originally Posted by Pimpstress_Bambi
I don't care how you want my post to look... I will do it the lazy way... so Yeah BLAH!! I want to reply to one sentence... I do not want to mess around deleting 2 or 3 paragraphs.
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If your content is so earth-shakingly good that people will want to work extra-hard to understand you, you might be able to ignore conventional usage and do what you please. I'm not that awesome -- I prefer to set up my text to make it as easy as possible for the reader; I don't want to pre-annoy people with formatting before they have a chance to be annoyed by my actual ideas.
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
I've got to say that I'd much rather see controllable roll levels before further consideration of forced rolls. I do still think a lot of rolls would be produced at 50, due to a combination of ignorance (meant in the non-mean way Fulmens meant it), laziness or desire for absolute maximum performance at 50. That said, I know more stuff would be random rolled at lower levels, because I know people beyond this thread who talk about wishing they could do that.
No matter how much forcing random rolls might increase supply in theory, I believe many people would view it as a punitive change. I think the option to choose random roll levels would be viewed as a QoL improvement rather than a punitive change, making it a more attractive first choice.
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
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Awesome Thank You!!!
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
then i'll do it the lazy way too- welcome to ignore!
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It just would be easier if they had a system that you could highlight what part you wanted to quote without getting the entire post. When things are said in a certain way like, "Learn to use your quotes". That comes out rude. It does not come out as rude if you say, "Hey it is a little confusing doing it that way.". I do know how, I just wish there was an easier way to do it.
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Originally Posted by Sailboat
Word to the wise: You are not writing for yourself to read. You're writing for everyone else to read. Pretty much "everyone else" on Internet forums learns to use quote tags and how to read quoted text.
If your content is so earth-shakingly good that people will want to work extra-hard to understand you, you might be able to ignore conventional usage and do what you please. I'm not that awesome -- I prefer to set up my text to make it as easy as possible for the reader; I don't want to pre-annoy people with formatting before they have a chance to be annoyed by my actual ideas. |
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I just want to point out the markets haven't been fixed as the devs reject those options and put in their own. Just saying.
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Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
Oddly enough all these suggestions have been made before and the devs don't like them anymore now than they did the last time.
This means that new or at least innovative suggestions are going to be needed rather than making the same suggestions over and over that will continue to be rejected. |
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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Patently false. I didn't grind TF before merits existed and I don't grind them now. If I do a TF it's to level and/or get a badge. My main blue badge toon and only blue 50 has never repeated a TF as far as I can recall. She has over 1000 merits and has never spent a single one - that's how important it is to me to "grind for merits."|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Adding merits in the first place "told people how they should play the game", i/e relentlessly grind certain TFs that reward merits efficiently.
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Regarding Milady's_Knight's assertion that people like me who don't cash in, or "hoard," their merits are depriving the people who use the market, of which I am one, of recipies and such and therefore the system should be changed to force them to cash in their merits, I say screw that! If that change ever occured, I would vendor all random recipies I couldn't use just out of spite.
You know who/what is telling you how to play? YOU. YOU are the one deciding you NEED certain recipies or IOs, not the game. Not one of my toons has a single purple enhancement slotted, and few have any really powerful sets slotted, and I enjoy playing them anyway.
The game doesn't force me to spend millions or billions of inf on enhancements to enjoy the upper levels, any more than it forces me to spend hours at a time in RV trying to get the badge for controlling heavies, so if I choose to spend those millions or billions on those enhancements, or those hours in RV trying to get that badge, it is ME telling MYSELF how to play the game, not the Devs.
Things change in life, adapt.
(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon
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Post the link where those were rejected. I don't remember the devs addressing ANY of those except for the market merger part.|
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
Oddly enough all these suggestions have been made before and the devs don't like them anymore now than they did the last time.
This means that new or at least innovative suggestions are going to be needed rather than making the same suggestions over and over that will continue to be rejected. |
EDIT: Also, thinking that forcing players to roll (when that was the exact opposite of the point of the merit system) is somehow innovative or new strikes me as a bit egotistical. We've discussed the idea of forced random rolls before. I don't think the devs ever addressed that idea either.
Either way, the idea that forced random rolls would make more stuff appear on the market is a patently silly idea, when someone can just go VENDOR or HOARD the ones they don't/can't slot.
you haven't proven that your suggestion would do what you want it to.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
Selecting the level of the random roll would really change the balance of the choosing your recipe vs the random roll.
Also the mechanic may be tedious in that choosing the level pool won't necessarily be the level of the recipe received then, so rolling would mean a lot more clicking than before. Eg. select level range of the roll, roll for recipe, then change level.
That would slow down rolls and the devs would have to rebalance the cost of rolling or choosing recipes, or even the odds of which recipes will drop.
I never really thought merits were that great of an idea since TF runners would sell a lot of drops before and now they just hoard merits.
Forcing rolls of any sort at this point is probably a bad idea. Most players will probably see it as a nerf.
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what you personally chose to do doesn't affect the overriding imperative of efficient gameplay for the bulk of players in this game, i/e instead of running Quick Katies for rolls, grind ITFs for outsized piles of merits.|
Originally Posted by mousedroid
Patently false.
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Obviously lots of players play the game lots off different ways, but the bulk of them are reward driven and will thus flow toward the path of least resistance. When the devs change the rules, they change those paths and the behavior of their reward seeking playerbase.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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this is funny in a gallows humor sort of way as merits themselves were a GIGANTIC nerf, and yet most embraced them with open arms.
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Originally Posted by PumBumbler
Forcing rolls of any sort at this point is probably a bad idea. Most players will probably see it as a nerf. |
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Quote:
Except the player base at large DIDN'T see it as a nerf. |
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
this is funny in a gallows humor sort of way as merits themselves were a GIGANTIC nerf, and yet most embraced them with open arms.
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To them, being able to bypass the markets completely, and not having to deal with "oooh I got another crap of the hunter" and choose which recipe they get was not a nerf. For us in the markets forum who understand that random rolling isn't the devil sure, for the average joe, no, it was NOT seen as a nerf.
Quite the opposite.
EDIT: for the quick katie runners, sure they probably saw that as a nerf to THAT tf.
I'd bet though that those folks just moved on to quick itfs.
EDIT2: And most certainly for those who didn't have time to do tfs, it would be seen as a nerf.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
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They were pretty clearly a nerf by design, but they offered the choice of, well, self-nerfing.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
this is funny in a gallows humor sort of way as merits themselves were a GIGANTIC nerf, and yet most embraced them with open arms.
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Most of us here like the market as a tool to get access to inexpensive shinies, where "inexpensive" is measured in the time it would take to get one randomly or (often, even the time it would take to earn merits to buy them outright). Hence, we dislike things that reduce market supply, because that degrades that tool's utility. Merits did that by design by, for example, taking away Quick Katies and Speedens. On the side, it also reduced supply by giving people new freedom to never even generate a recipe after a TF.
But it's fair to point out that people like more freedom, even if they choose to effectively "nerf" themselves (or others) with that freedom. I have difficulty taking a hard line on removing that freedom, even if I'm not a fan of what people do with it from an overall market perspective.
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
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Merits were a gigantic nerf to people running quick Katies. To people who actually wanted to run other TFs, or maybe even run actual story arcs instead of grinding papers, they were very much an improvement.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
this is funny in a gallows humor sort of way as merits themselves were a GIGANTIC nerf, and yet most embraced them with open arms.
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If you assume that everyone who plays the game is a crazy min-maxer who ONLY cares about the most efficient time/reward ratio, then yes, all the merit system did is move the farming to a different TF. However, my personal experience has shown otherwise. I see discussions like "Who wants to do Sara Moore?" "I think so-and-so's forming up a Moonfire:" namely, people playing whatever they feel like and still being rewarded for it, in a manner that is far less punitive towards players that value fun over efficiency than the old "20 minutes for a Crap of the Hunter vs three hours for a Crap of the Hunter" system.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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You said it better than I did.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
They were pretty clearly a nerf by design, but they offered the choice of, well, self-nerfing.
Most of us here like the market as a tool to get access to inexpensive shinies, where "inexpensive" is measured in the time it would take to get one randomly or (often, even the time it would take to earn merits to buy them outright). Hence, we dislike things that reduce market supply, because that degrades that tool's utility. Merits did that by design by, for example, taking away Quick Katies and Speedens. On the side, it also reduced supply by giving people new freedom to never even generate a recipe after a TF. But it's fair to point out that people like more freedom, even if they choose to effectively "nerf" themselves (or others) with that freedom. I have difficulty taking a hard line on removing that freedom, even if I'm not a fan of what people do with it from an overall market perspective. |
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
Quote:
They could have just had all recipes be Pool A and forgone the merits' addition to the game.
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Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Merits were a gigantic nerf to people running quick Katies. To people who actually wanted to run other TFs, or maybe even run actual story arcs instead of grinding papers, they were very much an improvement.
If you assume that everyone who plays the game is a crazy min-maxer who ONLY cares about the most efficient time/reward ratio, then yes, all the merit system did is move the farming to a different TF. However, my personal experience has shown otherwise. I see discussions like "Who wants to do Sara Moore?" "I think so-and-so's forming up a Moonfire:" namely, people playing whatever they feel like and still being rewarded for it, in a manner that is far less punitive towards players that value fun over efficiency than the old "20 minutes for a Crap of the Hunter vs three hours for a Crap of the Hunter" system. |
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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I think they recognized that having a different carrot on TFs, generally unavailable elsewhere (until Gold Ticket Rolls), was an effective way to get people to keep running TFs. I think it worked - people ran TFs way more post I9 than pre I9.|
Originally Posted by SwellGuy
They could have just had all recipes be Pool A and forgone the merits' addition to the game.
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Now, we can get into a pretty deep discussion over the merits (pun sort of intended) of intentionally giving people reasons to re-run the same content over and over. That said, the merit system definitely opened up better variety in what people ran. Networking effects do mean that people tend to flock to scenarios that offer clearly superior rewards, and that meant that there were scads more people running Katies and Eden runs than anything else. Nowadays you defintely see more variety. Unfortunately, Katie and Eden are pretty much bottom of the heap - I've only seen people run them for the badges since merits came along.
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
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I agree with all you wrote. I was just commenting on the options they had when it became clear they over stoked the short TF running desires of people.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
I think they recognized that having a different carrot on TFs, generally unavailable elsewhere (until Gold Ticket Rolls), was an effective way to get people to keep running TFs. I think it worked - people ran TFs way more post I9 than pre I9.
Now, we can get into a pretty deep discussion over the merits (pun sort of intended) of intentionally giving people reasons to re-run the same content over and over. That said, the merit system definitely opened up better variety in what people ran. Networking effects do mean that people tend to flock to scenarios that offer clearly superior rewards, and that meant that there were scads more people running Katies and Eden runs than anything else. Nowadays you defintely see more variety. Unfortunately, Katie and Eden are pretty much bottom of the heap - I've only seen people run them for the badges since merits came along. |
They went with merits but they didn't have to. They could have reconsidered the entire recipes' pools idea. It seems to indicate to me a bias in their thinking that they went with merits.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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So I get to choose how I play the game, but you and the bulk of the players in this game don't? I had no idea. That really sucks for you guys.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
what you personally chose to do doesn't affect the overriding imperative of efficient gameplay for the bulk of players in this game, i/e instead of running Quick Katies for rolls, grind ITFs for outsized piles of merits.
Obviously lots of players play the game lots off different ways, but the bulk of them are reward driven and will thus flow toward the path of least resistance. When the devs change the rules, they change those paths and the behavior of their reward seeking playerbase. |
(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon
so highlight the stuff you don't want and then delete it, like I just did with your post.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone