Dev Chat Highlights, July 20: Paragon Rewards

That kind of scenario I could get behind and would be fine with. Put it up there for the vets to have first crack at it as a reward and goody, then the rest of us can buy it off the market later with points/money. It's more the issue of the incredibly cool looking armor that they're really playing up being inaccessible to people like me because I'm not an 84 month vet, and by the time I've got the 19 additional merits I need... celestial armor isn't the T9 reward anymore, and there's no way to get at it anymore.

This is an excellent question. Are these repeatable purchases (say 5 unslotters) only 5 globally and going to be redeemed with the new e-mail voucher/certification things and be 1 set of 5 for till the 5 are gone or 1 set of 5 for every single character you have, like current vet rewards are?

The official page does not state how this is to be done.

Yes tiers are just earned.

Each tier gives X benefits for having the tier.

Each tier has a number of slots you can spend tokens on for other benefits, filling a tier up unlocks the next tier.

The only wibbly question I have is do you have access to the next tier when the one before it is full or when you spend your first token in the new tier.

Yes that was unclear in the initial announcement. With this Power Point and talk it becomes clear that you don't have the freedom to skip rewards but you do have the freedom in the order you gain them.

Now when Tier 9 is unlocked you do gain absolute freedom in how you spend your tokens on that tier. Because some of the items can be bought multiple times.

This is what's confusing on the "official page'

This seems to state that any VIP will get all the costume bits & vip stuff for free and not have to spend any tokens for them

"Tier 9 VIP offers new exclusive costumes, powers, and other exciting in-game rewards. These Tier 9 VIP rewards will be refreshed every 3 to 4 months and are available for free for Tier 9 VIP players. Players must have an active VIP subscription in order to claim Tier 9 VIP rewards."

Yeah, I'm pretty confused as well. Let's see if I have this right.

42 month Vet badge comes to 14+3 (rounding down, assuming they do that, no clue what happens with that .5 of a token), so I'd have 17 "tokens," right? That puts me what, somewhere between tier 5 and 6. Okay, fine.

But, if I'm a subscriber and staying that way (aka VIP), then I still get the three "tier" features for 6, 7, and 8 - as it points out those are already open to VIP. So no worries about loosing inventions or large insp drops.

Correct so far?

But the "reward" items are things I have to drop a token to get, right? Does this mean I *loose* my Boxing costume pieces because I don't have the tokens, despite the fact that I have already unlocked them? Not that I'm all bent about that specific costume piece - but it serves as an example of something I already possess in game, that I won't have sufficient "tokens" to slot for the actual reward under the new system.

Let's take the other case then. Say I lapse for a while - my token rewards stay put, I hope? Meaning after I unlock a tier/reward, it's no longer tied to my VIP status (save for things explicitly reserved like the t9 stuff, incarnates, and so on).

Sorry if this has been covered-ish. Call me dense. Long day. :P

I read that. I am pretty sure I understand it. I am pretty sure it does not answer my questions.

When you spend a token are the new Paragon Rewards granted to all characters you have, including ones you have not made yet?

The Vet Rewards all were, it is not clear if some of the new rewards will be.

So I have 36 months now (will have 40is by launch); this puts me in Tier 6. But Tier 7 is the "Access to Invention System" tier. Does that mean that I won't be able to use the invention system for another 8ish months? That can't be right, but that's how it looks unless parts of this tier thing don't apply to VIP accounts? According to the side-by-side, VIPs will have access to the invention system. Sorry if I'm being obtuse, but I just don't get it. Help!

From what they said in the dev chat, most of the tier 'benefits' like inventions, MA, chat channels and MM/Controller unlocking only apply to premium accounts. They've been pretty adamant that nobody will be loosing access to anything once the game goes free to play ... as long as you're a VIP subscriber.

So basically as long as you're a VIP you won't have to worry about it.

Awesome, Olin, thanks so much!

84 Months also comes with 7 more Merits, for a total of 18 availible PER CHARACTER.
This is the main aspect I fear from these changes, that things we get as Veteran Rewards on a Per Character basis will now become Per Account.

Also not a big fan of the lack of ability to skip unwanted rewards.

My understanding so far, as simple as I can say it:
note, since its not out yet and still in development, as they said, its subject to change.

The reward tokens are little bonuses you get from spending money on the game either by

• Having the current veteran reward badges and years of playing
• Purchasing paragon points (1200 pts @ $5 per 400 pts IRCC)
• Being a VIP subscriber for 1 month
• Being a VIP subscriber for 1 year (so 13 total per year)

The Paragon Reward Tree/Bush/Shrubery has 9 tiers. Each tier has various numbers of reward slots that each take a token. You have to put a token into EACH slot on a tier to move up to the next tier, but the order that you put a token into the slots on the current tier is completely up to you.

Sucks a little bit that you can't just skip some of the more useless rewards as some have mentioned, but you still can some of the rewards out of the current order if they are more important to you. Plus we'll be getting these rewards 3 times faster now as well. Someone starting on day 1 of Freedom as a VIP can have what the people who have subscribed since day 1 of COH in 3 years instead of 7 and a half, and actually have a bit more than these 7 year + vets will have the day before Freedom Launch.

Tier 9 is a little special. The normal Tier 9 slots are repeatable and consumable and can be claimed as much as you want. There are also VIP Tier 9 slots that you ONLY have access to if you are a VIP subscriber. If you have enough tokens to unlock Tier 9 AND you are a VIP subscriber you may use your tokens on these slots. You don't have to pay an additional fee after what you've already paid to get you VIP subscriber status and your reward tokens in order to use them.

Each tier has its own set of rewards for just getting to that tier in addition, like access to the MA or to MMs and Controllers. If you are VIP, that already grants you access, but if you were ever to drop from VIP to Premium, you would have these unlocked as you move up in tiers. So IIRC MMs and Controllers unlock at Tier 5 as a tier reward. A new player comes in and subscribes as a VIP. Because he is a VIP he has access to the MMs and Controllers without anything else. If, before he has enough tokens to get to Tier 5, he unsubscribes from VIP, he loses access. If he has enough tokens to get to Tier 5, he retains his access.

Now, for the current subscribers, you have already earned many of the rewards that come from putting a reward token into slots, especially at the lower levels. If you've already earned that reward through vet rewards, I believe they've indicated that the token you earned for that vet badge will automagically be put into the corresponding slot. This way you don't lose anything you currently have in the game, but you also can't change the tokens to something on the same tier level. Going forward after Freedom goes online you should be able to choose which slot to place a token into though. In addition to tokens from the vet badges, they are giving you an additional token per year you've been subscribed so those should be able to be used to fill in any gaps and/or choose some new rewards at the time of launch.

I'll be willing to bet that even after choosing the reward slot via tokens, each character will have to 'claim' some individually as well. Thats about the only way to handle the rewards that have a choice, like the vanity pets, combat pets, melee/ranged powers, etc.

Items where like a character gets a costume change tokens, or merits, or respecs or whatever else, its not going to be 1 new costume change per account, its going to be 1 new costume change per character per account. Otherwise, their extremely stressed statements around this system of players won't loose anything they already have is false.

Some of the new repeatable stuff they're introducing though, like the unslotter or enhancement boosters, I don't believe they have specified yet if thats per character or per account, however I'm expecting those two to be 5 per account, and not 5 per character, especially since they are repeatable, people could VERY easily end up with some VERY over-powered characters from the enhancement boosters after several months.

I was also thinking how much easier it would be to softcap things now if we drop the boosts on the glad armor and steadfast global IO's. I sort of wish they worked with set bonuses instead of individual set pieces. It's going to be an obvious choice to drop them in global enhancements and procs.

XP boost is probably exactly like the current vet reward: you redeem it, and get ten bars of patrol XP. You still need to go out and beat things up if you want to turn that into levels.

I don't like that idea either, but at this points its only for tier 9, so they have 34 or so tokens to get before thats possible, and at that point, either someone has WAY too much money to waste on something they would have gotten for free anyways, or its for leveling an alt up a bit faster for half a level or something and they already have several high level characters. Even if they do spend the money to be able to use the XP boost the entire way to level 50 from level 1, they still have to do some work to get any XP at all (assuming its like basically turning on double XP or patrol XP for half a level).

Its not combining IOs. Its boosting IOs. They just described the effect of the boost by comparing it to being similar to when you combine TO/DO/SOs. Basically some of those lvl 50 LotG IOs will become lvl 50+.

Except that's not how it's worded at all. It says you get the VIP rewards free in tier 9. Now from looking at the chart the non consumables are in the VIP segment of the tier 9 tree.

If you have to use a token to "buy" them then they're not "free" as you're still "paying" to access them and the wording on the main page needs to be changed.

If they are "free" and cost no tokens then the front page is fine, though a little clarification with an example would be better. Hell there are so many people questioning what the devs mean that they should go and rewrite the whole thing to be clearer.

Like the earlier question about merits. Are these going to be a global thing claimable by all characters on the account and any future characters, as the veteran rewards work today? Or are they going to be a 1 time claim and you'll have to "buy" them again in the future using up your precious tokens?

IF it's the latter then that sucks! It's far less then what we currently get as long time veterans.

Example: A one time claim of 7 merits according to the page for veterans that you'd have to purchase over and over per character compared to currently getting 18 merits on every single character you have once per character and any new character you make.

Not really accurate.

Current reward grants you a power with 5 charges. When used it'll give 5 bars of patrol xp.
But you do need to earn xp to convert it into real xp.

Yet due to lack of information we don't know. 5 per character is hardly overpowered if every time you want to get 5 more you'd have to spend a monthly token to do so. Also no information on stacking has been released. Can you use these 5x on one enhancer? Can you turn a lotg +7.5% global recharge into a 75% global recharge with 10 of these? (I serously doubt there won't be some sort of limiter like no more then 2 per IO making it a ++...and it may make a 7.5% into a 8.5% so the most you'd get is 9.5% boost for 2 instead of making it a 22.5%...this is pure speculation.)

The whole repeatable thing sounds like you must buy them again for them to be "repeated". That's fine IF they're global per character and not global per account. I would also assume they're not tradeable, though you could unslot something, mail it to yourself, use another character to enhance, mail it back, to get around a 5 / character limit but that's no different then claiming 18 merits, hitting all exploration badges in 1 zone to be over 20, do a random roll and mailing that recipe to another character, deleting the recipe drone and doing it all again.

Actually the absolute easiest method is to count your Vet Reward badges, then add 1 for every four vet badges. That is the formula. At that point if a person doesn't know how many points they got, they should get a calculator. I have the type of dyslexia that interferes with my math skills and I can do that in my head.

I'm just a messenger here. From the description, it gives you a choice as to what you want in a tier and in what order. I know for a fact that this is pretty much straight from the suggestions forum, so a player suggested it. Not me, but I'm not for/against this setup, except for things I already have but the items were not a part of the vet rewards before.

Because a tier has anywhere between 1 and 7 vet rewards in it. Additionally, each item costs ONE Reward Token. The dev's scale of awesome increases with each tier. They want the desirable rewards at or near the top to make people want to continue to subscribe.

Wrong. 84 Months will unlock tier 9. The tier 9 costumes have an additional requirement that you have to be a subscriber (that is what Tier 9 VIP stands for). Next month I'll get the 78 month Vet Reward. With it I'll be at 6/7 tier 8 rewards unlocked (32 tokens). 2 more tokens (2 months, $30, or 1 month & $15) and I'll have my first tier 9 reward. Seeing I'll be a subscriber till December, I'll be able to claim a tier 9 VIP costume. Once a tier is unlocked, a player can choose anything in that tier, in any order. Anything in that tier will be ONE Reward Token.

Yes, we get to choose.

Sorry, too much rant with too little to back it up. Oh, and check out this link, timestamp 33:00 til the end. Timestamp 34:15 shows it in action, not stills. The stills are also in the first post of this thread.

They have repeatedly said that you will lose nothing with this change. I highly doubt that it will change from all characters to 1 for the entire account.

If you have the 39 month vet reward, you will have 16 Reward Tokens. You only need 4 more tokens to get to tier 7. That is 4 months of being a subscriber (actually with the 42nd month you'd get 2 Tokens, one for the month, one for the year) or a bit of extra stuff purchased at the store. At any rate, if you are a subscriber, you'll get access to the invention system while subscribed. You would only lose access if you stopped subscribing before unlocking tier 7.

I don't have the 84 month badge, and the info wasn't on the main site (and I didn't

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Thank you for clearing that up for me Aqua. I was going stir crazy as I was reading, thinking "....Must... Post... Questions....!" instead of sitting back and waiting for my questions to be answered like a good boy.