Hero/Villian Merits, Purple IO's, and PvP rewards

Hello all! I know there are posts out there relating to all of the above but I wanted to reinforce a few points that I have generally seen collective agreements upon. I would like to elaborate on the problem as briefly as I can and keep suggestions simple and easy to tweak from a development standpoint. Before starting I would like to reference a little work done by MsLiberty:


http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=240444

Quote:

So I finally started to grind out some hero merits (because hey there isn't much to do). 1 Hero merit = 11 tip missions or 50 Merits + 20 million influence (Can get 50 merits from Synapse I think which can be run in about an hour to hour and a half). Can earn one once every 20 or 24 hours. 1 Piece of Glad Jav set = 25-30 Hero Merits 1 Full set = 165 Merits 5 Pieces of Apoc = 100 Merits Say you are looking at a Psi/EM 3 sets of glad javs + 1 set of apocs. (3 x 165) + 100 = 595 hero merits to have your standard range offensive toon slotted out for PvP. To be able to do that you'd also need 11.9 Billion influence (if you are converting normal merits) and run the Synapse TF around 600 times. Or you would need to do 6,545 tip missions. You would need to do the Synapse TF every day for over a year and a half. (Synapse TF is 15 missions long though some are deliveries. Either way adds up to 9,000 missions) You can only get 5 tips per day, taking you 2 days to earn a hero merit that way. Off tips alone you would need to do 5 missions 1 day, 6 the next and after 3 and a quarter years you'd have your blaster's main attacks PvPIO/Purpled out. Awesome.

Hero and Villian Merits

See above figures.

What was the purpose of designing this system if it's going to take me and OVERKILL amount of PvE content over a LONG period of time to gain enough reward merits to get even just ONE set of purple or PvP IO's? I consider myself a casual gamer. I have a full time job and like to play City of Heroes in the evenings and on weekends. I do not have the time to grind out what it takes to make use of this reward system as is. I also do not have billions of influence to spend on the ridiculous market prices for select purple IO's. I feel like I should be entitled to have some of the damage purple sets after 5 years of playing this game.

Suggestion:

Make the requirements for these merits not so intense. Perhaps run event's like double merit weekends or increased drop rate week? Just an idea.




Purple IOs

I have run one to two incarnate trials every night since the release of i20. I have not recieved one single purple drop, and I know I am not the only one. Even before i20 in the last 5 months of playing I have also not recieved a single purple recipie drop. I should not be discouraged for obtaining game rewards is how I feel. The incarnate very rare drops are still hard to get but much better than purple IOs.

Suggestion:

Increase the drop rate on these. It doesn't even have to be a lot. After all they are supposed to be "very rare" drops, but at the current rate they are seemingly impossible for some of us to obtain without spending a fortune on the market.




PvP rewards and reputation

I understand I am in the minority here, but I do like PvP and am active in PvP zones a lot. I also realize the developers have limited resources and have to cater to the majority population (PvE). However, it has been years since there have been any real updates to PvP. I believe i13 was a step in the right direction along with the addition of PvP IO's. There still needs to be work done, but that is a seperate issue entirely.

What I am talking about here is incintive. What is the purpose of reputation? The means of aquiring it are fair and fine but what do you do once you cap at 400? I get a badge.. okay.. that isn't really a useful reward. The addition of PvP IO's gave me much more of a reason to play so that was a good thing.

Suggestion:

Make reputation useful. What would be so bad about trading in 400 rep for a random PvP io drop and then resetting rep back to 0? Even if one character combination is not as good as the other, if people are on teams there is a consistent way of obtaining rep. I don't believe this would be very hard from a development standpoint unless someone can prove otherwise.






Thanks for your time

Thanks for the input.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill And there's your problem. You're not "entitled" to them. You have the same chance of them dropping as everyone else. After 5 years of playing, you're entitled to everything from the three month to the 5 year veteran rewards, and they are awarded automatically.

Good point. However the persons like me who have played for a long time with little reward kind of get shafted. Sure random is random, but I feel like I should at least get something. Two purple recipies since they have become available is not cool. Having played the game as long as I have without using real currency to obtain massive amounts of inf, I feel like the "very rare" items should at least be more accessable.

Quote:

You're one of the very few. Most people feel it destroyed the small PVP community - and if they were actually good changes, others would have replaced those who left. Yet, I go into zones or the arena and it's as dead as Dark Astoria.

Freedom has pvp activity most of the time. And i13 was a STEP in the right direction, but needs work. As I said that is another arguement entirely.

Quote:

Agreed, the rewards need to be updated (an SO? An inspiration? Really?) But...No. It'd be farmed so fast it'd make the AE 1-50 farms look ridiculous. 400 rep doesn't take that long.

There is a solution to that, a drop timer. Same solution the devs have implemented for sf/tf merit farming.

looks over at that dead horse for the few spots of flesh left...


I am not sure it has sunk in in 7 issues, but just in case it has not...The devs do not care about pvp. They do not care about rewards for pvp, the amount of people who pvp, supporting pvp or even looking in to pvp.

Bill is right, 13 killed the small but active pvp community and is right in saying if the changes were good the player void would have been replaced. It never has been and only grows smaller. Case in point...PVP IOS..do you need to pvp to get them? nope. Why? The pve community complained so loudly they made them available another way.

There are bugs in pvp that are older than 7 issues that have never been fixed. They don't care. Too busy making Mother Mayhem's boobs smaller because someone complained.

Ideas are great. I like to laugh at hope. They need to change the name of this forum to "fantasy posting" forum. It would have as much of a chance of being read, heard or listened too.

In short - like what you have..it will never ever change and when it does it will suck even more.

Asking them to re-visit anything even remotely related to PvP is like asking them to re-visit old zones. It's a dream only.

I'd like to emphasize that this is more about the rewards systems in both pve/pvp and NOT pvp mechanics. Again.. I know that is a dead horse that keeps getting kicked

Alignment merits are a big headache caused by the need to "balance" Hero and Villain moralities versus Vigilante and Rogue moralities. Except that it's an empty choice: You can either get premium rewards easier than normal, or you can...team up...on the opposite side, something largely pointless thanks to the prevalence of co-op zones and the fact that you always have the option of going all the way from hero to villain and villain to hero.

It doesn't help that the original purpose of Fort Trident and the Crucible were lost along the way. The original idea as advertised was to reward characters who never strayed from their chosen path, whereas in implementation anyone who attains Hero/Villain alignment is granted access. The result is that there's really not a whole lot of purpose in maintaining Vigilante or Rogue morality.

I'd also like to know whose idea it was to sell individual costume piece recipes for 1 Alignment merit, because come on.

I primarly regard Hero/Villian merits as a handy way to get rares I specifically want, purple or pvp sets I personally wouldn't bother with the current requirements, I do recall they did seem to have a more reasonable merit cost in either beta or test( I don't remember which).
If your really intent on earning purple/ pvp merits that way, and have the time, run the required tip missions per day on multiple toons( that is run the 5 tip missions one toon, and then switch toons and then run 5 more tip missions on a second toon, and so on), this way you'll be earning more purples/pvp's on an account basis. Problem with this, it means you wouldn't be doing a lot else, and those missions can get pretty old after a while. Primary limit here, is much time per day you have to do this. At any rate, if you earn enough merits to purchase a purple, odds are pretty good that you will have recieved at least one purple drop getting there.

Honestly, I think purple drop rates are on the low side, don't get me wrong I like the merit thing, but..... Really I would prefer the creation of story arcs geared for incarnate toons, where the story arc reward is a random purple drop.

All in all, I think perhaps the system needs to be checked. I have several villain toons who have yet to earn a single villain merit reward. Regardless of how I play the game and the numerous complaints I've made to dev's. Actually, I have one toon how has earned 1 GLORIOUS villain reward and that is only because I recently went through the trouble of changing my alignment from Rogue back to Villain. Since then I haven't earned a single Villain Reward and that was 7 days ago. Does it take 7 days to earn a villain reward when all you've been doing is running villain tips, arcs, etc.?

I'll show the world the same noticed I received regarding the most received reinforcement of my VILLAIN alignment: Desdemona is defeated, and Croatoa is left in flames! You gain 34,625 infamy. XXXX gains 344 prestige. You received 50 units of Reward Merit. This was one for the more recent Villain Morality Missions I pulled where i had to destroy Croatoa and beat-up Desdemona, Overdrive, Miss Thistle and a bunch of PPD beasties. Those are not Villain Merits and they did not show up as villain merits and this toon is a lvl 50 Villain toon who was SWITCHED BACK to a villain from a rogue...seven days ago. And that's after 2 days of running villain tips, so why do I only have the one villain merit reward I got when I switched alignments.

it would be nice if instead of earning an etheral merit, you could earn a villian/ hero merit, it would make earning purples that route a little more viable

I guess I don't understand why multiple full sets of the best gear possible is considered some sort of minimum standard for pvp. It strikes me as the equivalent of never going to war until you develop F-22 Raptor stealth fighter aircraft.

/unsigned

What Bill and the others have said is right.