Yet another currency type

I'm sure some people already are aware of this, but since it has been openly announced now:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...8&postcount=33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghost Falcon Two questions that many players have asked are: "What are the benefits of remaining a 'Hero' or a 'Villain'"? "Characters in the 'Vigilante' and 'Rogue' alignments have access to both Paragon City and the Rogue Isles and can get badges and experience content on both sides,....what rewards will there be for remaining a Hero or Villain?" So quite simply, Heroes and Villains who "re-affirm" their respective 'Hero' and 'Villain' alignments can earn Hero and Villain merits. These merits are different than merits normally earned via Task/Strike Forces and completing story arcs. Heroes redeem the Hero merits in Fort Trident, and Villains redeem the Villain merits in the Crucible. Characters will be able to CHOOSE the recipe of their choice. (It is not a random roll redemption.) Fort Trident and the Crucible also has additional functions, but the meat of those areas are the Hero and Villain merits reward redemption. Only players who have upgraded their accounts with the Going Rogue expansion, and who've chosen to stay true to their Hero and Villain alignments through the Going Rogue Alignment System will gain access to those hero/villain lounges. We'll have more information about this as the Going Rogue launch approaches. I hope that clarifies it....there were so many things we had to cover during the panel.

I see two ways of this working and one sounds fine and the other awful.

Bad: if you change, you can never earn the merits

Good: this gives non-changers a reason to run the morality arcs

Example:

Villain runs Morality thread 1 picks good solution> Rogue
Villain runs Morality thread 2 picks good solution> Hero
Villain runs Morality thread 3+ picks good solution> new merits

Hero runs Morality thread 1+ picks good solution> new merits

So, once you switch sides fully, you can start getting the merits. Only people who keep flopping back and forth get penalized - as long as you keep banging your head against the floor/ceiling you get merits.

Still, either way, it looks to be a bad choice to try to stay rogue/vigil.

I hope they adjust the costs properly. I'd hate to see these being more time efficient than their regular merit counterparts, and also on the other hand I wouldn't like them to be less time-efficient.

I do like the specific recipe choice, but why couldn't they include a random roll as well?

Also I'd like to point out, that I feel this should only be used for purchasing Incarnate abilities. Just me thinking out loud...

I disagree - I think the merits should be restricted to those that never change.

All the trimmers should be condemned to the fiery pit.

This will have serious affect on current market. I am not pleased with this or how its been implemented so far. But ill have to talk about that in the future for now i dont like what i just read. And ill have to wait to play with it to see how i really feel but for now i am aprehensive.

Its under testing and still subject to changes, most likely in the rates of earning and the 'costs' of the rewards. I dont think the system per se will change much now it has been disclosed publicly.

I'm a bit concerned about the way that this is apparently going to provide an economic avenue that is only accessible to GR players. Granted, if there is an increase in supply it will still affect market prices in general, and all players will benefit to a certain extent. Still, it seems likely to create some additional conflict between the haves and have-nots.

For those who missed the news, HAMs and VAMs are apparently used to buy purple recipes. Which is a curious choice considering that purples can't be used until 47, but presumably you can accumulate HAMs and VAMs starting at 20.

Perhaps this is a clue that it'll take longer to get enough to buy a purple recipe than it takes to get from 20 to 47.

/rumormill

I think the most important part about this, in terms of market impact, is what it will do to relative pricing between things only Alignment Merits (AMs) can buy and things you can buy with both AMs or Reward Merits (RMs).

Here's a basically fictional example of what I mean.

Let's say today that an LotG global can be sold for around 150M, and a purple for around 300M. Roughly speaking, if you can get two LotGs and sell them, you can buy one purple.

Let's say that a LotG costs 5 AMs, and a purple costs 15 AMs. Now let's say that, after the dust settles, we figure out that a single AM has a market worth around roughly 15M inf. The part about the dust settling is important, because I'm talking about letting people figure out the rate they can earn AMs, and the resulting opportunity cost relative to grinding out raw inf or RMs.

Theoretically, if enough people have access to this system to grind out AMs as a way of producing things, the price of both purples and LotGs should drop. In the limit, purples would drop to 225M and LotGs would drop to 75M. (I don't believe it would converge so perfectly, but bear with me for the sake of the example.)

The prices went down. That's great, right?

Not so much for people who actually try to use the market to earn their way to purples by selling non-purple stuff. This situation would be a loss in earning power for sellers, because instead of being able to buy a purple after selling two LotGs, now they have to sell 3.

Now I picked these numbers out of thin air - I have no specific reason to think this is the ratio of purple to non-purple costs we'll end up with. Still, I want to raise it up as something I find a bit worrying as a possibility. If the devs choose a poor ratio for the price of stuff in the AM "store" to the price of stuff you can get with RMs, they're can actually make the market less effective at letting people buy the RM-only goods.

Right now there's no evidence that SHAVAM's can be used to buy things that RM's can buy though. Only purples were mentioned.

In that thread, no. Remember, that's just one player's bullet points of the info given out.

SHAVAM!

What does it stand for?

(... absolutely nothing, say it again! whooah!)

Dammit, now I've got war stuck in my hayyid.

"Morality Merits" has a nicer ring to it

Morality Merits sounds like something out of, like, 1984 or something. Or some McCarthyist parody.

"Citizen, remember, turning in UnAmComSymps isn't just good patriotism, it's good business! Morality Merits can get you a washing machine, a new refrigerator, or even a NEW CAR!"