Not getting Alignment Merit?

[ @Zombie Fryer ][ @Zombie Smasher ]
| Home Server: Virtue |

Twitter: @ZFLikesNachos Save City of Heroes (Titan Network) [Successful "The Really Hard Way" runs: 4] [Click ^]

/seconded. I've got 300-odd characters. Got that same message on one I was fairly sure I *had* run the alignment mission on to begin with. So... dig through your badges/powers, I guess, before running it if you want the merit.

(Seriously, can't we just keep it as a default - you started a hero, you're staying that way, you're good?)

See my Guides and Tutorials

If I had to guess this "side-effect" of pre-level 20 characters only having one reward to choose from now was a change to keep the SSAs from being too easily farmed. *shrugs*

The SSA's aren't really farmable anyway, since each reward option is only chooseable once per week.

NOT once per week per arc. Once per week, period.

Per character.

And most of the recipes available are either one or two merits. Which makes it trivially easy to get tons of recipes, especially if you have a middling number of characters (makes it stupidly easy if you have a lot of characters).

Buy the recipe on one character, global mail it to yourself, repeat with each character playing SSA once they hit 20; kit out your next favorite character in less than half the time.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Bingo...

I think you're probably right as to the intent, but really?! Were there that many teen alt farmers out there? When you're limited to a weekly cap anyhow? Really?

Take a step back and realize why there is no weekly cap.

Once you figure that out you'll understand why this nerf was put in place.

There is a weekly cap, so I'm at a loss as to figure out what you meant.

Since the devs are the ones with the data, I believe that probably means 'yes'.

Or more probably something like this. Tip farming took appreciable amounts of time, so not everyone did it. SSA farming is so mind-numbingly easy that practically everyone is doing it.

So somewhere, MARTy's older brother said "hmm, last month we were handing out 12,000 AM's a day, and now we're handing out 60,000." DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!

And then the devs huddled together and tried to figure out how to throttle the rate without causing a mass shortage of torches and pitchforks. This is their first attempt. I fully expect that if it's not successful, there'll be others.

He could be alluding to the fact that 12 slots * 16 characters means that there isn't an effective cap to the number of SSA's you can do. Level 10 just isn't a significant barrier to entry.

There is only a weekly cap on a per character basis.

But...

What if you just kept making characters lvling them to 10 or 12... doing the ssa1.1 2 times and getting 2 alignment merits... using them to buy a recipe like say a lvl 10 botz -kb IO or lvl 15 celerity +stealth IO and sending it to your main. Then delete and do it again ad nauseum. You've just bypassed the weekly cap. I have it on good authority that you could (with the help of a lvl 50 buddy or second account with a 50) do the entire process in 90 minutes to 2 hours. Essentially generating 2 alignment merits per 2 hours give or take. With no limitations at all. Well there's one limitation... your selection of recipes is limited by your level.

The easiest way is to see if the character has the alignment power or the "countdown" power that precedes the alignment power.

also... isnt there a badge you get for doing a morality mission for the first time?

I'm well aware that the system can be gamed. Of course, the system can be gamed.. All of them can be. It's not not as if it's an exploit. They intended the mission to be as hard as it is (or easy, if you prefer), and for it to offer a hero merit as a reward.
And you're still leveling to 10 or 12 every time, then running the arc twice.. Which isn't peak efficiency anyhow. Were folks really abusing this enough to warrant this? I didn't see any evidence of it. I realize that maybe they were and I was unaware, but most loopholes that cause problems are such that most everyone can't help but notice the effects game-wide.
And, if you're determined, you can just level 60 or 70 alts to 20 or 22, reaffirm 60 or 70 times, and then next week, you don't have to repeat the character creation or leveling, just run the 70+ alts that are reaffirmed over and over again if you're determined to leverage the system. In the long run, that's more efficient.. So they haven't hurt those that are dedicated leveraging the system, but have penalized those just leveling normally via the SSA at the level appropriate time.
And, in general, while they haven't ever condoned farming for rewards, thy haven't ever, that I can recall, just removed a reward to stop non-exploit farming. Timers, sure, but as I said, it's already on a timer. And they didn't do anything to stop multiple characters from claiming rewards, just said that only characters of lvl 20+ can do so..

Just doesn't seem well thought out to my mind..

The alignment power or the cooldown powers are probably plenty easy to verify, but I think you're right. There is a badge, I'm pretty certain, but can't recall the name off the top of my head. I think it's different for each alignment.

I agree with you it doesn't seem well thought out. Systems will always be gamed. Even with these changes I know people who have already found an alternative method of continuous alignment merit income. In fact they say this change actually helps them cause it forces them to lvl higher than they previously did so they have access to higher lvl IOs like the miracle unique, the performance shifter proc and the LotG global. Sure it slows down the process slightly but it's not going to stop it and the increasingly valuable recipes available at the higher level probably makes up for it. Especially if they lvl multiple toons at a time for the express purpose.

I am about to have six days off of work. I was planning on spending at least two days doing this trick. ;P So yes.

It seems we're on the same page. Wish the devs were too on this topic.

And you still can really. To be efficient about it just level multiple toons to 22... then run each of them through 5 tips... do it again the next day then run your morality and bam hit the SSA's. Should net you 3 alignment merits and 26 reward merits. Let the toons stew for a week and do the SSA's again for a 4th alignment merit and 22 more reward merits. You fill that gap of reward merits with a quick ouro arc or another ssa for 5 reward merits and spend some inf to make another alignment merit. so 5 alignment merits for every toon you prepared in the course of a week. The only real limitation is how much you can stomach doing the process over and over. No one I know who's tried it was able to stomach doing it for very long even before this nerf.

I have no doubt some people were. But I don't think that you qualify as 'that many' all by yourself. And yes, I know you're not likely to be all by yourself, but I certainly doesn't seem epidemic like many frequent things that required intervention.

And as I said before, it isn't really stopping the trick, just making the trick take place a few levels higher. So, since you have a block of time, use an extra day on setup, and you'll be better positioned for next week. Not that I'm really intending to tell you to, per se, just pointing out an option.

TBH when I first saw how the system worked... I expected such a flood of IOs that prices would come crashing down... but it never happened. Prices on the easiest to get and sell IOs didn't budge. I honestly believe the process to "game the system" just was so mind numbingly boring no one could stomach doing it enough for it to have any impact on the auction house. Either that or every person who did it used the recipes for their own characters.