[Focused Feedback: Attack Typing Adjustments]

1 hour ago, The Curator said:

• These changes only apply to NPCs attacking players, not the reverse.

Why?

We are the superheroes in this situation. We have to clear entire maps. We should have a wide variety of means for avoiding or resisting most attacks. 

They are the NPCs. They exist for a single fight. 

But you've nerfed our defences and left theirs intact? 

[Increase Merit Rewards for Arcs Impacted by Crey Buffs]

6 hours ago, arcane said:

please clarify (1) how cheap do you think a fully maxed out build should be and (2) how quickly should you be able to attain it in in-game time.

Depends what you mean by 'maxed out'. 

Do you mean 'enough to make the game playable', like what I was talking about? Because the answers to that are 'very' and 'instantly'. It should not take any extra time from your regular gameplay to be able to continue to play the game - and as enhancements are necessary for the majority of that time on the majority of characters, they should therefor be cheap enough that you can afford them by completing missions and defeating enemies. Which means the a whole build, capable of dealing with even-level enemies, should cost less than you would earn getting to level 50 by playing content. So, somewhere between one and two million inf - assuming you don't need enhancements before 50, which you do, so a let's say a fraction of two million equivalent to how often on the way to 50 you will have to replace your enhancements. So about 400,000 inf to get your character basically functional. Any more and you may as well be the US medical system, with how much you would be relying on other people's charity.  

If you mean something else, I can't help you. 

 

3 hours ago, A Cat said:

I did not farm or anything, this was from merit rewards from arcs, TF's, and Hami/MSRs (I did a lot of the latter two).

Yes, you were the recipient of charity. Charity that would have been completely worthless if the Merit Rewards for those activities were tied to mean completion time, BTW. There are people in our community who work very hard to make the game more playable, it is good and decent of them to do all that work for rewards get very little value out of just to keep another avenue for profit open for those who can't afford to go down the others. 

It should not be the basis of the health of the game's economy. 

[Increase Merit Rewards for Arcs Impacted by Crey Buffs]

16 hours ago, arcane said:

It’s an indisputable fact that IO’s have become more affordable. Orders of magnitude more affordable in some areas in fact. Some IO’s are literally 100x cheaper than they were at certain points on live. There are literally IO’s I couldn’t dream of owning 1 on live where I now have 100. Did you play on live?

 

I did indeed. And as I said, it is not because of that cheapness that fewer players can't afford them. A decent build is still prohibitively expensive to any new player, or even frequent player who doesn't play in one of a few particular ways. And a less than decent build makes the game very ugly and unappealing to play at the higher levels, and that's even if you're playing a strong AT with a good pair of powersets. If not, the game can become practically unplayable.

'Cheaper than before' is not the same as 'at the price they need to be for the game to function as intended'. 

The thing that's made it so just about everyone can afford build is that just about everyone has been playing for months, if not years, because the player pool is stagnating, and they either got with the program and started playing 'correctly', or they stopped playing because optimal play bored or frustrated them. 

Which you must already understand, because as you said, the number of players who cannot afford IOs is shrinking... meaning it did not shrink all at once when all the prices dropped after live. Where then the shrinkage, if the prices are not in continuous freefall (which they are not)? 

Boat. Hole. Water. 
 

[Increase Merit Rewards for Arcs Impacted by Crey Buffs]

1 hour ago, Vanden said:

Players who can't afford IOs are a shrinking minority.

Not because IOs are becoming affordable, but because new players are a shrinking minority. And since retention is not and never will be 100%... that's just a boat with a hole in it, and I don't know why we would cater to the water instead of getting a bucket. 

[Increase Merit Rewards for Arcs Impacted by Crey Buffs]

11 minutes ago, macskull said:

I'm not going to respond to the rest of the post because I'm getting some pretty strong "I don't know what I'm talking about" vibes but...

Oh, didn't realise that was an option. I'll only respond when you say something worth listening to from now on. 

[Increase Merit Rewards for Arcs Impacted by Crey Buffs]

4 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Content is being completed faster than ever, with or without Incarnates.

For those that can afford to outfit their characters with IOs. But if we let them (us) skew the rewards of content, we further alienate the new players who barely have a million inf to rub together. The game should, and I hope this isn't a controversial opinion, be playable and fair from when you start playing it. 

 

1 minute ago, macskull said:

but I fully expect task force/trial rewards to go down almost across the board even for pre-level 50 stuff

Meaning people will need to run even more content even faster and the game becomes more and more restrictive to anybody not playing that way, including every potential new player, and plenty of old ones to boot. 

 

6 minutes ago, macskull said:

I can't think of any content that's so terrible it causes players to stop playing for months

You need more judgemental friends. 

 

6 minutes ago, macskull said:

but if task force A is only run 10% as often as task force B despite offering identical rewards for the time spent that tells me there's something going on with task force A, not with the reward system as a whole

Well of course the reward system isn't the problem there, it's just one way to help alleviate the problem. It is one of the few systems available to entice people to play Task Force A without completely retooling it. 
 

 

7 minutes ago, macskull said:

But you do have somewhat of a point - Dr. Q might be worth 244 merits when it's the WST but even at a relatively fast run of 90 minutes it's a drag

It's definitely the most striking example. Only crazy people run Dr. Q when it's not the weekly. But they do run it when it's the weekly. Because the rewards cross the threshold into being acceptable. 

For arcs, a weekly arc target system would be a whole thing, and a lot of work, but it could probably have a similar effect. 

 

9 minutes ago, macskull said:

There might be a handful of task forces which are run more often than the others but it's not like LFG is full of "speed katie lfm" or "speed eden lfm" like you would've seen pre-I13.

But there are plenty you almost never see. 'It's better than it was fourteen years ago' is no reason to give up on improvement. 

 

14 minutes ago, macskull said:

I haven't run the Barracuda SF since probably 2010

 

Of course not. 

 

11 minutes ago, macskull said:

If there's one thing I've noticed with any consistency since Homecoming showed up nearly three years ago, it's that the powers that be put a lot of stock in design formulas and how things "should work" which tells me issues like this are more likely to be fixed by adjusting the content rather than the rewards for the content.

Sure, but they are the ones that changed things for the worse in this case, and rolling back their own changes seems less likely, to me, than adjusting rewards. 
 

 

17 minutes ago, macskull said:

I'd expect with three years of Homecoming-specific data to look at it would mean an overall reduction in rewards.

And I'd expect the result to be an overall reduction in players. 
 

[Increase Merit Rewards for Arcs Impacted by Crey Buffs]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

Incarnates are a non-factor in pre-level 50 content because, well... they don't exist.

Exactly my point. And I made it because people are suggesting that despite that, rewards in pre-50 content will somehow go down, and citing those nonexistent factors as the reason. 
 

 

1 hour ago, macskull said:

Those of us who played before Issue 13 remember running speed KHTF trains nonstop

Yes. That is exactly why rewards need to be adjusted in contrast to other negatives. Because pinning them to time alone only works if all content is roughly equivalent to engage with, instead of some content being fun and some literally causing people to stop playing the game for months because it was so terrible. Because otherwise there will always be the one correct thing to be doing, and the only reason to do any other content is boredom with the optimal content, and requiring either boredom or suboptimal play to engage in the majority of your game's content is insane. 

 

1 hour ago, macskull said:

TL;DR: If the new enemies present that much of a greater challenge, completion times for the arcs featuring them will go up, which will cause the rewards to go up.

As they should. But it shouldn't be the only thing that does. 

It's not like this is a brand new issue people are unaware of. It was directly addressed when we looked at why basically nobody ran the Barracuda SF. It gave nothing like the reward it needed for people to bother dealing with it's problems.

They chose to remove some of those problems, instead of upping the reward, which I also think would be a valid solution in this case. But, if we assume the devs don't want to undo the annoying changes they made, then an increased reward for dealing with said changes is also viable to solve the issue. 

[Increase Merit Rewards for Arcs Impacted by Crey Buffs]

2 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

People who want the "rewarding" content can run that, people who want variety can run many things

This is exactly what I am warning about. If we accept this attitude instead of enticing all players to engage with a variety of content, then the game is going to bleed out. The people always doing the optimal time-for-merits content will do so regardless, but every time a piece of content becomes unappealing to everyone else, the game loses longevity. 

 

5 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

to me, annoyance factor is not difficulty factor, per se, and "they're more annoying now" is more what happened with Crey

Just so. The content is worse, but you get the same reward as before for doing it. Obviously that situation is wrong, and one of those two things needs to improve. Personally I think not having annoying enemies is the better solution, but I'm weird like that, so I'd accept the tradeoff of increasing merit rewards. 

[Increase Merit Rewards for Arcs Impacted by Crey Buffs]

So wouldn't the lack of Incarnates also be relevant? Should characters get four times the merits for running content before they hit 50, then get their rewards nerfed when they unlock their Alpha slot? Or should people without incarnate powers be punished because people who do have them exist? 

The problem with basing merit rewards on completion time is one of relativity. An hour of good content is so much better than an hour of annoying content. If the rewards, however, are based on the hour rather than the content...

Well, if you were to get paid the same amount each time you touched a cool stove or a burning stove for a full minute, how many times would you touch the burning stove? 

None, obviously, you aren't a moron. 

But touching a cool stove gets boring as hell. So eventually, you give up. Do you give up and go touch the burning stove? No. Of course not. You'd get the same benefit from touching the cool one, and annoying isn't the same as interesting. You give up and go do something else. You stop playing the game. 

Whereas if the reward for touching the burning stove is sufficiently greater than the reward for touching the cool stove for the same time, then you have provided incentive to multiple demographics to engage with it, instead of only the ones who would engage with any content, and therefor don't matter at all when considering the longevity of the game. 

The Crey changes turned up the temperature of the stove. The correct response is to increase the payout - regardless of the fact that people can eventually touch enough cold stoves to afford gloves. (Especially when those gloves only apply to the hottest stoves anyway and you are forbidden from using them on any others.)

["Fun" is a Four-Letter Word]

6 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

just trying to interpret your original post

Start by reading all the words actually written there next time. 
 

 

6 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

If you can't tell if you're having fun because you have to wait and see what the outcome is to decide if what you are doing currently is fun, then It seems to be pretty clear that your enjoyment is dependent on the outcome, and that you're entire effort at fun could be wasted if the outcome doesn't go your way, regardless of the path to get there. 

Yes, basically. Sometimes fun is like that. Pretending that fun is only 'are you enjoying this moment, yes or no' is like pretending that sadness is only when you are crying. Or worse, not pretending and actually believing that. 

["Fun" is a Four-Letter Word]

Just now, Blackbird71 said:

So by your standards, statistically only 50% of athletes can enjoy a team game.  

Who said can? If you'll look back to the part of my first post that you quoted, I said "Some enjoyment is conditional"

Can you stop ignoring words I say and adding in others and pretending I said them? 

 

3 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

Sorry, but if you can't enjoy the game for what it is, regardless of the outcome

Good thing I also never said anything like that. 

 

4 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

but if a loss means the game was pointless, then why bother?

Indeed. If only there were something more that could happen during the course of a game... 

But, talking about that that would be overthinking it. Fun is only when you are enjoying something in the moment, fleeting as a bubble on a breeze. Gotta make sure nobody takes it as anything different, especially in a thread in which that is the entire premise. 
 

["Fun" is a Four-Letter Word]

35 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

Seriously, if your idea of fun is so tenuous that any past enjoyment could be instantly nullified and become retroactively unfun because of some prospective future event, and if that dampens your ability to enjoy the game in the present, then you're in the wrong hobby.

Who said prospective? An actual future event can spoil what may have been fun. Just like a singular 'payoff' moment can turn hours of tension into enjoyment. I am not talking on the scale of months here - consider instead a single session, log on to log off. 

It happens all the time in sports. A tense, nailbiting game where you finally win? Well, it turns out you enjoyed that. Meanwhile, a game where your team is ahead the whole way through is the most fun at the time, but comparatively dull when compared to the aforementioned nailbiter. But had that game ended in a loss, then it was simply hours of struggle for nothing. 

Once again, I will side with the overthinkers instead of the underthinkers. Keeping it simple only works if the subject is actually simple. Otherwise you are just dumbing it down. 

 

["Fun" is a Four-Letter Word]

55 minutes ago, Col. Kernel said:

 

I'm a pretty introspective person, one who tends to over analyze things a LOT.

 

So let me just say that you're waaaay overthinking this.

 

Are you enjoying your current activity?  In other words would you like to do this activity again?  If your answer is "Yes" then you're having fun.

And if the answer is "I literally can't tell yet"? 

Some enjoyment is conditional on the outcome of an activity. It can retroactively turn to dust if, for example, your time is wasted. Or it could crystallise if it leads to a particularly incredible moment. 

Even had the leadup to both those moments were exactly the same, in one you might have fun and n the other you wouldn't. Trying to dumb it down just means your view is too ill considered to actually apply. 

I'll stick with the 'over'thinkers, thanks.

[Winter forest inaccessible]

He used to, but since the last Winter Event when they revamped the zone, it has vanished from Null's list. And despite having a TUNNEL entrance, it does not appear to have a TUNNEL exit. 

Which isn't how tunnels work.

But it's mostly the Null option that I care about, since that is the one that seems to have vanished by mistake. 

[Winter forest inaccessible]

As the title says. There appears to be no way to access the new and improved Winter Forest map (or the old one, for that matter). While it's removal from the Long Range Teleporter and TUNNEL lists after the end of the Winter event was expected, it has also been removed from Null's list of transport options, and as far as I know there is no physical way to access it. 

[Focused Feedback: Teleportation Pool Revamp]

What sort of range does Teleport Target have? Is it as good an option for helping my friends with their commute across a zone as Recall Friend?

[Mayhem Missions Randomly Don't Reward Bonus Time]

Can confirm. I've had this problem for months, on some characters more than others, and I cannot determine any particular cause. Sometimes you are simply never granted any bonus time for destruction, and will have to consign yourself to having far less fun for the next half hour or so.