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Think of it this way- the devs want to "encourage" you to move on to the next tier of content while earning the next tier of powers. Now that they have more trials, they *could* do this simply by awarding an all-new XP & salvage for those trials, set new trials to work with that, and have everyone grind those out. That would be the harshest method to push you to new content. |
Originally Posted by rsclark
I would like to know in what way the emp merit change can be seen as an encouragement. It takes something that people want and removes it while replacing it with nothing. All my college psychology may be a bit rusty, but I don't recall any discussion of encouragement that included removal of rewards.
Come up with some better word than "punishment" if you like, because I don't particularly think that one fits either, but "encouragement" is the totally wrong word. |
This is far less harsh.
This lets you get moderately diminished rewards, but at least earn something relevant.
This is more akin to what happens when you level up and the foes in Atlas Park go from white and yellow to blue and green. You get less reward from fighting them because you've advanced beyond the challenge they provide. Eventually, they'll be gray. You're being prodded to move beyond Atlas park and seek challenges elsewhere.
That's what the downgrade of this reward is- once you've unlocked the slots, you get a few Astral merits instead of the more valuable Empyrian. You're getting better, so the trial is getting less challenging, so you're seeing less reward. Move along to other challenges for better reward, or stay at the less challenging but familiar stuff for less reward.
Ideally, it would have been this way from the start.... but they didn't have that many trials back then. This is bound to be an issue since its being done NOW instead of back then, but its hardly a deal-breaker.
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He's referring to the Issue 21 Special Update: Media Blitz : VIP-Beta Patch Notes|
Originally Posted by Sailboat
It would be pretty helpful to link to the thing you just read. It would be even more helpful to specify what parts of it caused you to conclude what you've said here, and why you formed those conclusions.
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Most likely, he's specifically referring to the changes being made to the Mission Architect and BAF and Lambda Sector rewards. Read up on them, but bear in mind these are the very first Beta notes, and are subject to change.
And Chase_Arcanum has summarized the reasoning behind the BAF and Lambda rewards changes quite well.
@Winter. Because I'm Winter. Period.
I am a blaster first, and an alt-oholic second.
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No, that's not ideal in any way.|
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
Ideally, it would have been this way from the start.... but they didn't have that many trials back then. This is bound to be an issue since its being done NOW instead of back then, but its hardly a deal-breaker.
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As crappy as the system is currently, there is a twisted logic to it. You try for the payoff of getting a very rare at the end of the trial, but if you don't, you still get the merit and make some progress along the slow and steady path. It's a net to prevent people from falling too far behind due to bad luck.
This takes away the safety net - and likely long before it has produced enough merits to actually buy something useful. Now instead of the chance at something good and the guarantee of a consolation prize, you instead have a forced gamble. It's the Lottery way of thinking!! Throw your time and effort away and flush til your heart's content. You might just hit the jackpot.
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| That's what the downgrade of this reward is- once you've unlocked the slots, you get a few Astral merits instead of the more valuable Empyrian. You're getting better, so the trial is getting less challenging, so you're seeing less reward. Move along to other challenges for better reward, or stay at the less challenging but familiar stuff for less reward. |
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While I roll my eyes at people who call this "punishment", "no more reason to be a VIP" or being "forced" into certain Trials, I do think it is a bad idea.|
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
Think of it this way- the devs want to "encourage" you to move on to the next tier of content while earning the next tier of powers. Now that they have more trials, they *could* do this simply by awarding an all-new XP & salvage for those trials, set new trials to work with that, and have everyone grind those out. That would be the harshest method to push you to new content.
This is far less harsh. This lets you get moderately diminished rewards, but at least earn something relevant. This is more akin to what happens when you level up and the foes in Atlas Park go from white and yellow to blue and green. You get less reward from fighting them because you've advanced beyond the challenge they provide. Eventually, they'll be gray. You're being prodded to move beyond Atlas park and seek challenges elsewhere. That's what the downgrade of this reward is- once you've unlocked the slots, you get a few Astral merits instead of the more valuable Empyrian. You're getting better, so the trial is getting less challenging, so you're seeing less reward. Move along to other challenges for better reward, or stay at the less challenging but familiar stuff for less reward. Ideally, it would have been this way from the start.... but they didn't have that many trials back then. This is bound to be an issue since its being done NOW instead of back then, but its hardly a deal-breaker. |
There will be a sharp divide between characters who do not have Lore/Destiny unlocked (and thus are at a maximum of +1) and those who have them both slotted with Rares.
The lower-rank Incarnates can either try to form entry Trials among themselves, or they can try to join the higher-ranks in the advanced Trials, and be at a distinct disadvantage (and increase the chance of the whole League failing).
With no recompense for entry Trials, the higher-rank Incarnates basically have to run the advanced Trials if they want the Good Stuff. On smaller servers, there may not be enough Serious Raiders available at most times to organise the advanced Trials, making progress slow or impossible. Not to mention that without their help, the lower-rank Incarnates will have a tougher time with even the entry Trials.
Then there's the people in between, the ones who have run the entry Trials enough to unlock the Lore and Destiny slots, but do not have enough Salvage to slot them with Rares for the cruical +2 Incarnate Shift, or those who are not interested in more difficult Trials but still want some of the Empyrean-only unlocks. They're the ones complaining the loudest right now because they have been left in the cold.
The people interested in endgame raids are already a small part of just the VIP subscribers. Splitting that group up more (and trying to force a large number of them to pick a side) cannot possibly be healthy for the Trials, or for general player goodwill.
Character index
Seriously? You've got to hide this thread. My husband has been pressuring me to downgrade from VIP and this thread gives him all the ammunition he needs to say "just go Premium and be done with it." Neither one of us is a big fan of Incarnates but if he finds out that premium includes the base game for free minus incarnates and AE (which we never touch) I'm screwed!
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tell him you don't have enough reward points to play with IOs
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Originally Posted by Rubberlad
Seriously? You've got to hide this thread. My husband has been pressuring me to downgrade from VIP and this thread gives him all the ammunition he needs to say "just go Premium and be done with it." Neither one of us is a big fan of Incarnates but if he finds out that premium includes the base game for free minus incarnates and AE (which we never touch) I'm screwed!
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"If a system can be exploited, it will be exploited. And if a developer thinks their system cannot be exploited, it'll be exploited like a new actress in her first porn movie." Sanya Weather MMORPG Examiner
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It doesn't take something that people want from the BAF or Lambda specifically. Most of the complainers want the most rewards for the least effort. If that happens to come from a different Trial after these changes, they'll go do that one and you won't hear the complaints anymore. The Devs simply decided that BAF and Lambda gave out too much of a reward for the effort it takes for fully slotted, double level-shifted Incarnates, so they adjusted accordingly. These trials are meant to ramp up in both difficulty and reward. I see nothing wrong with adjusting the reward for a pair of Trials that have become almost trivial to run for the average League.
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Originally Posted by rsclark
I would like to know in what way the emp merit change can be seen as an encouragement. It takes something that people want and removes it while replacing it with nothing. All my college psychology may be a bit rusty, but I don't recall any discussion of encouragement that included removal of rewards.
Come up with some better word than "punishment" if you like, because I don't particularly think that one fits either, but "encouragement" is the totally wrong word. |
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
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Agree. I'd really have them consider making the cutoff based on the level tier (espeically if future Incarnate slots bringing more level-ups) rather than just unlocking the slot.|
Originally Posted by Silver Gale
While I roll my eyes at people who call this "punishment", "no more reason to be a VIP" or being "forced" into certain Trials, I do think it is a bad idea.
There will be a sharp divide between characters who do not have Lore/Destiny unlocked (and thus are at a maximum of +1) and those who have them both slotted with Rares. |
That way, if people want the e-merit, they slot a lesser Lore/Destiny, make it more challenging, and get the e-merit.
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If you see the very rare as the payoff, you're already playing the lottery system, and the difference between getting the e-merit and getting extra astrals (for the first time you run the trial that day) are relatively meaningless.|
Originally Posted by rsclark
No, that's not ideal in any way.
As crappy as the system is currently, there is a twisted logic to it. You try for the payoff of getting a very rare at the end of the trial, but if you don't, you still get the merit and make some progress along the slow and steady path. It's a net to prevent people from falling too far behind due to bad luck. This takes away the safety net - and likely long before it has produced enough merits to actually buy something useful. Now instead of the chance at something good and the guarantee of a consolation prize, you instead have a forced gamble. It's the Lottery way of thinking!! Throw your time and effort away and flush til your heart's content. You might just hit the jackpot. That might be true if UG didn't quickly give you the XP to unlock pretty much everything long before you can slot anything. I have a character who ran it a couple of times who is half done with both destiny and lore, but not even close to slotting anything but Alpha. Unless you follow a particular path in what order you run trials, it is not in any way guaranteed that you will be significantly more powerful when you run the other two than when you run BAF and LAM. If the intent is to make it graded in difficulty, then they should state that somewhere so we don't inadvertently gimp ourselves with no easy way to close the gap. |
I've seen many people run BAF after BAF after BAF, with NO chance of getting the e-merit after that first one, but they don't seem that upset about it.
EDIT: I'm not defending the design- I don't care to do enough trials to really CARE enough to be emotional about it. I can just see that the system DOES need some method to encourage advancement to the newer, more challenging content, and I can think of many harsher methods to doing it than swapping an e-merit with 2 astrals once every 24 hours (well, twice, as there are two trials affected).
15 e-merits is a bit much...I've yet to unlock any of the costume pieces cause they're 6 e-merits each -_-
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Were i a betting man, rather than a cheapskate, I would lose money on a bet if that went live. the feedback is too direct, this is the kind of thing that lowered the cost of costumes and changed the cot, I have faith that that feature will die a seedling.
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Originally Posted by Mr. DJ
15 e-merits is a bit much...I've yet to unlock any of the costume pieces cause they're 6 e-merits each -_-
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Agreed. I don't think they pulled this number out of thin air, though. Datamining must have shown a lot of hoarders out there holding onto stuff that the devs would rather they didn't.|
Originally Posted by Mr. DJ
15 e-merits is a bit much...I've yet to unlock any of the costume pieces cause they're 6 e-merits each -_-
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Generally speaking, if you can't entice hoarders to let go, and you're concerned that the hoarding levels will make rewards for future content too easily attained, you might:
- reduce the reward rate (see the proposed trial change in beta)
- introduce costly things o buy (see the market)
- give up and just introduce a new currency with limited conversion ( see the previous shards-->threads and different incarnate salvage)
seeing how aggressively they're moving with the first two listed above, I suspect they're trying to head off #3... but that's pure guesswork.
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Pretty much agree with this completely. My only quibble with the change is that I think the trigger for diminished rewards is too early. A better option I think would be to have a flag (maybe with an accompanying badge, though not strictly necessary) that would be set when first crafting a T3 power in Lore and Judgement. This keeps full rewards in place until the character starts acquiring I-shifts, then nudges them on to the next level. Even with this change, I'd still go with a weekly Emp timer instead of a complete drop, but I think the trigger is a more important factor.
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Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
Think of it this way- the devs want to "encourage" you to move on to the next tier of content while earning the next tier of powers. Now that they have more trials, they *could* do this simply by awarding an all-new XP & salvage for those trials, set new trials to work with that, and have everyone grind those out. That would be the harshest method to push you to new content.
This is far less harsh. This lets you get moderately diminished rewards, but at least earn something relevant. This is more akin to what happens when you level up and the foes in Atlas Park go from white and yellow to blue and green. You get less reward from fighting them because you've advanced beyond the challenge they provide. Eventually, they'll be gray. You're being prodded to move beyond Atlas park and seek challenges elsewhere. That's what the downgrade of this reward is- once you've unlocked the slots, you get a few Astral merits instead of the more valuable Empyrian. You're getting better, so the trial is getting less challenging, so you're seeing less reward. Move along to other challenges for better reward, or stay at the less challenging but familiar stuff for less reward. Ideally, it would have been this way from the start.... but they didn't have that many trials back then. This is bound to be an issue since its being done NOW instead of back then, but its hardly a deal-breaker. |
"Trust me, it worked in the Simpsons." - Calash
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A 4th option is to cap the inventory of the hoarded currency. This is a measure that would limit hoarders, but have little to no effect on the more casual.
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Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
Generally speaking, if you can't entice hoarders to let go, and you're concerned that the hoarding levels will make rewards for future content too easily attained, you might:
- reduce the reward rate (see the proposed trial change in beta) - introduce costly things o buy (see the market) - give up and just introduce a new currency with limited conversion ( see the previous shards-->threads and different incarnate salvage) |
"Trust me, it worked in the Simpsons." - Calash
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very good. It would also encourage more of the hoarders to spend their stuff on "frills" that they might otherwise not care about.
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Originally Posted by Jasra
A 4th option is to cap the inventory of the hoarded currency. This is a measure that would limit hoarders, but have little to no effect on the more casual.
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I'm with Samuel here. I read the I21.5 patch notes yawned and then went to trick-n-treat and run the SSA.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
What are you people talking about? I read the I21.5 changes and I see nothing of the sort.
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But it's MY sadistic mechanical monster and I'm here to make sure it knows it. - Girl Genius
List of Invention Guides
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Oh then in other words the complaint is that they are giving you something to spend 15 Emp Merits on?
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Originally Posted by Dr_MechanoEU
So yeah...why are they locking powers that are essentially WORSE than the ones you can unlock freely behind a 15 emp merit gate...it just makes no damn sense. |
But it's MY sadistic mechanical monster and I'm here to make sure it knows it. - Girl Genius
List of Invention Guides
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Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait......wait.|
Originally Posted by Rubberlad
Seriously? You've got to hide this thread. My husband has been pressuring me to downgrade from VIP and this thread gives him all the ammunition he needs to say "just go Premium and be done with it." Neither one of us is a big fan of Incarnates but if he finds out that premium includes the base game for free minus incarnates and AE (which we never touch) I'm screwed!
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wait.
Husband? Rubberlad is female?
(or not, and lives in an...enlightened state?)
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
English does not borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar.
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No, I'm male. My husband and I were legally married in an enlightened state in 2008, but we now reside in a license-friendly state that is working on becoming enlightened. |
Originally Posted by ZephyrWind
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait......wait.
wait. Husband? Rubberlad is female? (or not, and lives in an...enlightened state?) |
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If someone threatened you in-game, you should probably report them to a GM |
Originally Posted by Giant2005
They are punishing us for running too many BAFs and Lams and not enough new content. Whether they follow through with the punishment or not, they have already threatened to punish us for our actions.
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Jim Carrey in Liar Liar, "AND THE TRUTH... SHALL SET YOU FREE!"|
Originally Posted by Jasra
A 4th option is to cap the inventory of the hoarded currency. This is a measure that would limit hoarders, but have little to no effect on the more casual.
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I am confident they could find a cap for Astrals, Empyreals, Threads, and Salvage that would be sufficient for anyone still working on crafting but would stop or discourage any hoarders. Granted, it would be a tough line to walk, but I think it is completely doable. /signed.
@Winter. Because I'm Winter. Period.
I am a blaster first, and an alt-oholic second.
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I think one of the keys would be to not take away any currently owned stuff that exceeds the cap, just prevent further earning until enough has been spent to be under the cap.
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Originally Posted by Winterminal
Jim Carrey in Liar Liar, "AND THE TRUTH... SHALL SET YOU FREE!"
I am confident they could find a cap for Astrals, Empyreals, Threads, and Salvage that would be sufficient for anyone still working on crafting but would stop or discourage any hoarders. Granted, it would be a tough line to walk, but I think it is completely doable. /signed. |
"Trust me, it worked in the Simpsons." - Calash
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Have to agree. I'm already behind because I took a break and now have RL issues. Now I'm not going to be able to earn merits in the same fashion as those before me. Not very enthused, to be completely honest. Making certain currencies harder to get and then requiring the currency to open up more powers. Yeah, I'm not feeling it.
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Originally Posted by Jasra
A 4th option is to cap the inventory of the hoarded currency. This is a measure that would limit hoarders, but have little to no effect on the more casual.
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So I just wanted to say that the new Destiny power is actually quite nice. Having some people use it in the MoM trials last night that I was in and having a league tp power is nice as well as the bonus to healing...making my Mind/Emp Controller's PBAoE heal heal for over 400 (maybe 500) HPs is nice!|
Originally Posted by Dr_MechanoEU
...
The Destiny one is a league teleport and a heal...wow...compared to every other Destiny power...that is some major suckage. |
Heal Other was healing for 1k HPs I think and Absorb Pain was doing 2k+ HPs...that's without me using my Power Boost power either.
Is it the best Destiny power ever? No. Is it useful? Absolutely.
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| The only good one out of the bunch is the new Judgement power, useful for Martial arts characters...and it's locked behind 15 emp merits because...? |
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The Inteface slots are...eh..they're not as crappy as the Alpha or the Destiny but chance for endurance drain, chance for imobilize, Maximum HP debuff seems ok but will probably be tiny debuff that doesn't really add much and Chance to confuse which is damn near useless in the ITrials anyway. Compared to the near always useful -regen and -resistance debuffs...they're unfortunately just not upto snuff. So yeah...why are they locking powers that are essentially WORSE than the ones you can unlock freely behind a 15 emp merit gate...it just makes no damn sense. |
But yeah, the other interfaces....meh...
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