Hero Merits for IO's...am I missing something?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-10-25 14:43 in Player Questions
see this thread for a more developed discussion without answers. 
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=240444
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what do you think MMO's strive to be?|
Originally Posted by hewhorocks
I was looking at the cost in Hero Merits for some IO's and noticed thePrices on PvP IO's
OK so it is possible to get credit for 5 alignment missions in a 20 hour period so 4 hours a mission. you need 10 to unlock the award mission which counts as alignment so you need 44 hours real time for 1 hero merit. The PVP sets are 35 merits per IO so 210 Hero Merits for a set. 210 hero merits take 9,240 hours minimum on the clock (2,310 missions.) Thats over a year of play 7 days a week on doing 5 alignment missions per day. I know you could alternatively use 10,500 merits and 4.2 billion inf but that seems a little out of the box. I know the PVP sets are supposed to be rare and all but it seems like the exchange rate on this is artificially high. A single PvP IO recipe takes 77 days to get doing the 5 alignment missions a day? Or 5 Months playing every other day, doing 5 missions a sitting? I understand the concept of rarity in all but wow that seems like a full time job. |
WoW got the formula down pat, and as long as there are 2-3 people who say it's ok for someone to grind that long, game developers will do it because the rest of the population can be calmed down by explaining things like 'random drop' and 'l2play more' and 'time=reward' and all that stuff.
An easier way to get these sets is to do TFs really quickly gathering Merits at an optimum rate then using those merits instead. OR use merits to buy LotG IOs to sell for cash to use for purchasing PvP IO Sets.
Using Hero Merits alone just seems uninteresting and, from what you've shown: quite an undertaking for such an underwhelming reward.
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http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=135484
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Something... seems a bit off in the math here, and I think I know what it is. The "award mission", as you call, is a morality mission, and doesn't count towards your 5 alignment mission per 20 hour limit. You can get 1 alignment merit every 2 days (slightly more often if you adhere yourself to the 20 hour thing without delays)|
Originally Posted by hewhorocks
I was looking at the cost in Hero Merits for some IO's and noticed thePrices on PvP IO's
OK so it is possible to get credit for 5 alignment missions in a 20 hour period so 4 hours a mission. you need 10 to unlock the award mission which counts as alignment so you need 44 hours real time for 1 hero merit. The PVP sets are 35 merits per IO so 210 Hero Merits for a set. 210 hero merits take 9,240 hours minimum on the clock (2,310 missions.) Thats over a year of play 7 days a week on doing 5 alignment missions per day. I know you could alternatively use 10,500 merits and 4.2 billion inf but that seems a little out of the box. I know the PVP sets are supposed to be rare and all but it seems like the exchange rate on this is artificially high. A single PvP IO recipe takes 77 days to get doing the 5 alignment missions a day? Or 5 Months playing every other day, doing 5 missions a sitting? I understand the concept of rarity in all but wow that seems like a full time job. |
So, assuming no other sources of A-Merits (converting), and assuming you don't miss a day, a 35 merit recipe would take you 70 days to save for. 2 and 1/3 months.
Yes, that is quite a while. But your alternative is to play the pvp game (or farm it) and be subject to the possibility or the RNG (almost?) NEVER giving you that recipe you want, at the level you want it. Quite frankly, I appreciate our dev overlords giving us this non-pvp method of obtaining the shinies. May their reign over us be long and prosperous.(That may sound a little sarcastic, but it isnt.)
"My inner mind has become a reality-cracking overgod. He torments me! Help!"
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It's meant to be. They said if they ever put any sort of Purple (ultra-rare) recipe on a vendor, it would be at a ridiculously high price.|
Originally Posted by hewhorocks
I know the PVP sets are supposed to be rare and all but it seems like the exchange rate on this is artificially high.
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It your question wasn't rhetorical, then your answer is, they meant you to spend a lot of investment in getting what you want. The upside is, you are guaranteed to get exactly what you want, not a random chance at a random drop.
Personally I'd tell you that your example is a bit hyperbolic. Running your tip missions and one TF a day isn't that onerous, and can cut the time required more than in half.
The other alternative would be to spend your A-Merits on high value recipes then resell them to the AH for the INF to get what you want, if what you're seeking is something readily available.
Either way, there are better ways to leverage the A-Merit system than to make it as deliberately grindy as possible and then complaining it was set up for you to fail.
Realistically though, they want you to PvP to get PvP drops. There's nothing wrong with designing their system to make doing the intended action easier than the alternative.
"Null is as much an argument "for removing the cottage rule" as the moon being round is for buying tennis shoes." -Memphis Bill
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Your numbers are way, way, way off. I can do the average alignment mission in 3-10 minutes, with any kind of character. I usually run at +1/x2, so that they aren't a total snoozefest and totally devoid of XP, as well as to increase the chance of tip drops (if you have too few mobs you may not get a tip dropped during a tip mission, which is a time sink in itself). I've done some level 20-29 villain missions in less than two minutes. Travel time between missions (when they force them to be in DA, or CF, or IP) is often longer than the time to do most missions.|
Originally Posted by hewhorocks
OK so it is possible to get credit for 5 alignment missions in a 20 hour period so 4 hours a mission. you need 10 to unlock the award mission which counts as alignment so you need 44 hours real time for 1 hero merit. The PVP sets are 35 merits per IO so 210 Hero Merits for a set.
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If all you're interested in is cranking through them you can set the difficulty to -1/x1 to make it even easier. Once you've done them a couple of times you figure out exactly what you need to do, and minimize the time required. Some of them (escort missions) are hard to speed up, but by careful selection of missions you can avoid taking them. Since you can dismiss tips you can completely avoid the time-consuming ones by deleting them as soon as they drop.
So, quite realistically, you can do your five daily tip missions in 30-60 minutes on one character. If you're hell-bent on getting that full set of IOs in the shortest calendar time possible, just repeat the same process on five other characters.
That means you could, if so inclined, get a set of 6 PvP IOs in 70 calendar days and 210-420 hours of real time (5 characters each at 30-60 minutes per day times 70 days).
Doing 30-36 tip missions a day for two months is probably not realistic, admittedly. But you could probably do it in four to six months. In the meantime, if you're running level 50 tips mission you'll probably get many purple recipe drops that will net you billions if you sell them, and you'll probably be able to buy one or two recipes outright. That will reduce the real time required further.
And then you could always just PvP to get PvP recipes. It might actually be more time efficient...
It isn't the time taken to do the missions that the OP was counting. It's the fact that you can only do 5 Tip missions in 20 hours that count towards getting the Morality mission. Not everybody has a lot of alts, not everybody has more than a couple of hours a day to play. The numbers are fine as a Base number, for a single character.
Personally, though, I agree that PvP IOs should be very expensive to buy with A-Merits. Because, as has been said, they are PvP IOs, and that's how we are supposed to get them. The fact that we can buy them at all is a bonus for those of us who don't want to PvP.
However, it turned out that Smith was not a time-travelling Terminator
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No they're not. |
Originally Posted by Kiken
It isn't the time taken to do the missions that the OP was counting. It's the fact that you can only do 5 Tip missions in 20 hours that count towards getting the Morality mission. Not everybody has a lot of alts, not everybody has more than a couple of hours a day to play. The numbers are fine as a Base number, for a single character.
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| OK so it is possible to get credit for 5 alignment missions in a 20 hour period so 4 hours a mission. |
Character index
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This is one of the aspects of the game that rewards altitis. If you can resist turning tip missions into kill-alls (once you have a full load of tips), it should be pretty easy to blast through a set on a character, then move on to another character and do the same, and so on and so on, instead of just focusing on one character, and then waiting until that one can run tips again. Using enough alts, you can probably get a full PvP IO set in approximately the same amount of time it takes a single character to get 1 IO.|
Originally Posted by hewhorocks
A single PvP IO recipe takes 77 days to get doing the 5 alignment missions a day? Or 5 Months playing every other day, doing 5 missions a sitting? I understand the concept of rarity in all but wow that seems like a full time job.
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This can be illustrated with a riddle I remember in this Star Trek Puzzle Book I had back in grade school.
If it takes 1 Vulcan 2 minutes to eat 1 Vulcan pear. How long would it take 10 Vulcans to eat 10 Vulcan pears? (or something to that effect).
Its worth noting that my original calculations counted "No down time" so represented the fasted you could do it. I didnt know the reward mission doesn't count as one of your 5. That is somewhat helpful. Still I would venture to say however that running a 50 merit TF a day as well as 5 tips (assuming that you are able to keep get the tips which isnt an issue if you Kill em all but can be if you are racing through) would not reward "Alt-itis" at all. I'd have no other time to play.
You'd also need 20 million for the conversion (no big deal but worth mentioning in time consumption) your talking 2-3 hours a day every day for over a month...for one recipe. Is that reasonable or is that a part time job. (Grinding the same TF and 15 missions ( there are about 15 alignment missions?) day after day plus a farm for the inf doesn't sound very fun.)
I wonder what the reasoning was. Why 35? It seems arbitrary. Again I know that the PvP IO's are ultra rare but many seem like winged elephants. So "Ultra rare" that they dont exist.
It's because it isn't, and never was, intended for every character in the game to be completely kitted out with the absolute best stuff you can get.
It's not even really intended for every character to be kitted out with complete IO sets, though that's a little easier to do.
It's very much like other MMOs where there is literally a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of one person out of 40 getting the rare drop that you do an incredibly time consuming raid to get. And in those games there really isn't any way for you to guarantee that you'll get what you want.
The devs responded to constant clamoring for a way to get purples and PvP IOs without paying market prices or PvPing/farming by making them available through alternate means. We got what we asked for, the ability to get them other ways, but we have no right to ask or expect them to be easy to get.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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Which itself is a design flaw.
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Originally Posted by Lemur Lad
Realistically though, they want you to PvP to get PvP drops.
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Is it really that high a cost for a sure thing? I mean, at the end, you're guaranteed to have exactly the recipe you wanted. How long would you have to PvP on average to gain that same PVP IO?
If you think it's quicker to PVP (and it should be since that's the intended route) then go for it. If you'd rather take the alternate route for a sure crack at the exact PVP IO you want, there it is.
In the market forum, there's four or five threads (edit: My mistake -- there's eight threads on the first page) selling one of the most sought after IOs so evidently people are managing to get them. The sudden bloom of them would make me guess that everyone's A-Merit gathering is paying off at about the same time.
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Very much this. LotG 7.5%s seem to fluctuate between 100million and 150million. Lets say you get a conservative 120million after costs (market fees, salvage and crafting costs if you craft it). A purple recipe costs 20 A-Merits which equates to 10 LotGs. 10 LotGs would sell for 1.2 billion which even with the current prices is enough to buy 2 or 3 purples from a popular set. I'm less familiar with PvPIO prices but even there I think for everything except the +3% defense one you're probably better off using LotGs.
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Originally Posted by Vel_Overload
An easier way to get these sets is to do TFs really quickly gathering Merits at an optimum rate then using those merits instead. OR use merits to buy LotG IOs to sell for cash to use for purchasing PvP IO Sets.
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You, the OP, have answered your own question. The question behind the question would be "Why is the exchange rate on this artificially high?" | I know the PVP sets are supposed to be rare and all but it seems like the exchange rate on this is artificially high. |
Hint: The answer is in this thread somewhere. Well, "Everywhere."
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So you think you're a hero, huh.
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How is it a design flaw to ask that people do an activity to get an award designed for that activity?
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Originally Posted by rsclark
Which itself is a design flaw.
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Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
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Design choice you disagree with does not equal design flaw.
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Originally Posted by rsclark
Which itself is a design flaw.
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"Null is as much an argument "for removing the cottage rule" as the moon being round is for buying tennis shoes." -Memphis Bill
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Because he can't GET IT NAO.|
Originally Posted by Rajani Isa
How is it a design flaw to ask that people do an activity to get an award designed for that activity?
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Seriously. People asked for PVP based rewards for PVPing. These are given - the random PVP IO drop (which, for *full* benefit - IE, both sets of bonuses - you need to be PVPing anyway.)
Rare? Yes. Supposed to be? Yes.
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It's a choice to put PvE useful items behind a PvP gate. It's no different than if they decided to put a unique power/enhancement at the end of a TF that no one played without first addressing why no one played it. The game should reward fun content, not try to bribe the playerbase into doing content that no one wants to do in the first place.
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Originally Posted by Rajani Isa
How is it a design flaw to ask that people do an activity to get an award designed for that activity?
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And they didn't give that. They gave PvE rewards for PvPing. Take away all of the bonuses for PvE and the price will drop to nothing in milliseconds. If the PvP IOs were actually PvP based rewards, there would be no market for them whatsoever.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
People asked for PVP based rewards for PVPing.
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Sorry, not buying it. It is not a flaw to have a reward be useful in situations other than that which rewards it - or a half the uniques in this game wouldn't work outside of TF mode.
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Originally Posted by rsclark
It's a choice to put PvE useful items behind a PvP gate. It's no different than if they decided to put a unique power/enhancement at the end of a TF that no one played without first addressing why no one played it. The game should reward fun content, not try to bribe the playerbase into doing content that no one wants to do in the first place.
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Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
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The problem with that is that TFs and regular content are part of the same game. PvP is a completely different game. They might as well give enhancements for things you accomplish in Guild Wars.
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Originally Posted by Rajani Isa
Sorry, not buying it. It is not a flaw to have a reward be useful in situations other than that which rewards it - or a half the uniques in this game wouldn't work outside of TF mode.
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I was looking at the cost in Hero Merits for some IO's and noticed thePrices on PvP IO's
OK so it is possible to get credit for 5 alignment missions in a 20 hour period so 4 hours a mission. you need 10 to unlock the award mission which counts as alignment so you need 44 hours real time for 1 hero merit. The PVP sets are 35 merits per IO so 210 Hero Merits for a set.
210 hero merits take 9,240 hours minimum on the clock (2,310 missions.) Thats over a year of play 7 days a week on doing 5 alignment missions per day. I know you could alternatively use 10,500 merits and 4.2 billion inf but that seems a little out of the box. I know the PVP sets are supposed to be rare and all but it seems like the exchange rate on this is artificially high.
A single PvP IO recipe takes 77 days to get doing the 5 alignment missions a day? Or 5 Months playing every other day, doing 5 missions a sitting? I understand the concept of rarity in all but wow that seems like a full time job.