Sayterra

It says a ton about how this change affected my play if I never posted on the forums in nearly three years of enjoyment JUST to talk about this...

So I've been away for several months and came back with my buddy to a lack of empyrean to reward merit conversion and... Damn, this is the single easiest way to get rid of casual players. I bank all my emps on my main, and use her to help create builds for other characters. I do not farm, I do not want to farm, and I certainly do not want to grind. CoH was my game to come home to after making games during the day and relax. My day job, by the way? I'm a game dev. I have fifteen 15 years of experience in console and mobile, seeing this go through is just a nightmare for me. I came back from a break to the game I love and it's no longer viable for me to make builds? I remember reading through the last update notes, excited about aether, excited to help my friends out getting costumes they've been waiting years for... People can yell "Oh but you can get inf so easily by X". Yeah, I know. If you have hours to grind, sure. I'm a RPer at heart. I have a few hours potentially tops per day, and I take breaks. I don't have a roster of 100+ active characters. I relied on the conversions to get me the recipes I needed because I rarely had more than 100 million influence banked because I spend far, far more on costume costs. I was pretty active in Hami Raids because a quick way to get merits in general, but I'm just not here for the grind. I'm here to have *fun*. This wasn't the way to fix the economy if the economy *was* an issue. And if the devs are only listening to the scant few, this has been an issue talked about on repeatedly on voice chats and discords over the last few days when I asked about it and the overall response from dozens of players has been purely negative. No one said: "It makes sense and here's why..." Even implementing a one-time conversion with a pop-up would have been a far, far better way to introduce the currency's retirement: "Empyrean Merits are no longer being used to reward merit conversion. Would you like to convert (Slider scale here) Empyrean Merits to Reward Merits?" That simple. That would have been an easy way for all of us who are casual to at least get a payout of something we can use. Take a little bit of the burn off this. Please think about reinstating Empyrean merits, or at least the one time conversion. One super bummed Goat, -Sayterra