TomatoPhalanges

I mean, Tier 2 and 3 clearly are designed to be a top level reward, whether that's for being rich enough to buy the salvage or skilled enough to do the hard content (or patient enough to save up the Salvage long-long-term for them). Tier 1 though, just run missions and the WST and jump into iTrials when they're run from time to time and you'll get plenty of 'em no problem.

I think this is a pretty compelling argument from Flea. I can't imagine people are going to be grinding 60/day or even remotely close to that. Imagining the average player interested in challenging content is an adult with a day job, or at least other commitments, at most the player would probably do two or three 4-star runs a week, treating it like a WoW raid night. They might do iTrials scattered throughout their week as well, and occasionally have a day of 'binge everything', but those should probably be considered outliers. Any player doing two 4-star runs on a daily basis would probably lose their mind doing the exact same content again and again. With numbers like that, I think an appropriate Time-To-Obtain for the aforementioned 2-runs-a-week player would be something like 3-4 months for one tier-3 costume. Roughly, the player would be making ~130 PAPs per month, so an appropriate T3 price would be something like 500 PAPs. 4 months for one reward for one character on your account is still a long time, especially as more T3 powers eventually get added, but that calculation doesn't factor in days where a player might make extra effort into grinding additional PAPs from chaining itrials across characters, or buying additional PAPs on the AH, or even gain them from the 2% mission drop chance. So yeah, my suggestion would be setting the Tier 3 price to 500/600 Salvage, and Tier 2 to 250/300 Salvage. Tier 1 is perfectly fine as-is.

The only other thing is badges, and there's PVP badges too, so maybe the badgers wouldn't mind too much 😇 I voted B because I like the idea of having two different build environments at least, even if Bloody Bay isn't a great zone in general. Also, current background, I am not a PVPer currently but with the new Temporal Warrior system, intend to dabble a bit more actively. EDIT: As for thoughts on badges being removed, I say don't. The PVP category of badges exists for a reason. If badgers don't want to engage with PVP, that's no different than choosing not to engage with particularly hard TF/Trial/whatever content on PVE's side. Which also should have badges, imo, but that's another discussion entirely.

I just wanna say that I appreciate the amount of time and effort you put into playing around, testing, and typing all of this out. That's all!

As it currently stands, if someone wants the most bang for their buck, they have to do AE. There is literally no other option even remotely comparable in terms of rewards. In other words, to be most rewarded for their time, they have to do the easiest method in the game to gain said rewards. A large chunk of players in games naturally take the path of least resistance. This is game design philosophy 101. It's not about hurting the people who love farming, it's about keeping farming the 'relaxed' way to play and making it no longer the 'best' way to play, thus shoving anyone who wants to play optimally (a large portion of players in this day and age across the grand majority of games) into them. The most challenging content should award the best rewards. The least challenging content should award the worst, in theory, but in practice, maybe not as severe as that- since, as I said earlier, I value the existence of a relaxed playstyle. If we were to split players into: -Group 1: Want to be engaged, regardless of how optimal the rewards are -Group 2: Want to be optimal, and prefer to be engaged by gameplay -Group 3: Want to be optimal, and do not care about being engaged -Group 4: Want to be optimal, and prefer to be relaxed -Group 5: Want to be relaxed, regardless of how optimal the rewards are While we can't explicitly measure it here without a study/poll, the largest group by denomination, traditionally in a game, is Group 2. This is the group least satisfied by the game as it currently exists. To be optimal, currently, they have to skip out on engaging content. Not doing so makes them orders of magnitude slower and less optimal in their gameplay, even if they may find it significantly more enjoyable. Group 1 is currently satisfied, and would remain satisfied. There is engaging content in the game, it exists, that will not change. Group 2, as aforementioned, is very unsatisfied, for reasons aforementioned. Group 3 will change their gameplay and not be phased by the changes. They will remain satisfied. Group 4 will not be happy about the changes, however they have the option to play on Brainstorm and get to the content they want with a complete character at any time. They are also a far, far smaller demographic traditionally than Group 2, in most games. Group 5 is currently satisfied by AE, and will remain mostly satisfied, even if they currently believe they will not be. As has been proven by individuals like @America's Angel, the content is still very farmable. Nothing is being taken from this group that should matter to them. Veteran Levels being removed from AE only removes one thing from the content at all, and that's Merits (via Veteran XP). All other forms of power gain still exist in one form or another- you still gain threads, just far less optimally than Veteran Rewards would provide. You also earn enough Inf to buy plenty of Merits from the AH. I'm not sure that this whole explanation will convince anyone to change their opinions, but hey. Thought I'd go to the effort of writing it out. EDITED ADDENDUM: I recognize that this is a drastic oversimplification of the psychology at play here, but I don't want to write a novel 😛

I'm actually of the opinion that buffing non-farm content much isn't even really super necessary outside of Merits (I feel like I level up plenty fast in it with a 2XP booster), but if it makes people happier about an AE nerf, I support mild buffs

I don't! I think yes for level 1 characters, but 2-5 should be longer, for the RPers that skip gameplay altogether, grab their level 2 for walk and then head straight to RP spots. Not an insignificant portion of the playerbase, especially players who could be called 'semi' active (since they may not have the time to invest in both gameplay and RP)

I've been discussing this with people over a while now, but my personal opinion is AE farming is totally fine! Great, even! A theraputic and relaxing method of earning rewards that doesn't tax a player's energy after a long day of work, when they just wanna sit down and watch videos, That said the current situation is that reward yields from farming are severely, severely outweighing the effort it takes, right now. It is, without question, the best way to play if you have any interest in earning rewards and 'completing' your build in minimal time possible. For the rewards-minded or endgame-minded player, farming stops being a relaxing way to play and starts becoming the only way to play, with the rewards discrepancy being as it is. If we want compelling content to have compelling rewards, we simply can't have the rewards from the easiest form of content in the game being orders of magnitude better than anything else that exists. Others have answered this with 'well, why don't you buff the underperforming content?' and I answered 'yes, do that' - but I also don't think the underperforming content should be buffed to the current levels of AE rewards. I think AE needs to be taken down quite a few pegs, and content outside of it needs to be bumped up a couple - mainly in terms of Merit rewards, but also in general. I also have proposed that we see Hazard Zones and Trial Zones get a street-sweeping XP buff, because that would be a super fun replacement/alternative to active AE farming as an optimal 'mostly mindless' method IMHO. Anyone else down to run around the Hollows and bash Trolls once again? Maybe go for a lap around Eden or Terra Volta?

FWIW apparently the aggro change is a farming buff, not nerf (Specifically the aggro change, and I'm citing @America's Angel on that one if I'm remembering right, not being a farmer myself)

That's the goal, from what I interpreted what the devs were saying - the newbies now actually have to know how to cross zones, which there were cases before that they outright didn't know how before. Also, a newbie starting post-patch will have no need to ask where the building went, because it won't be there in the first place. They won't check it out unless explicitly invited by someone reaching out to lowbies, and, if they do because of that particular reason, as I said, they'll be required to understand how to zone- which is at least a little better than before.

Both of those pretty much, yeah- the devs want to at least teach newbies to switch zones/make it obvious they're leaving the intended leveling routes of the game if they're going to AE (there are legitimate cases of level 50 newbies not knowing how to leave Atlas) and to lower the strain AE puts on those zones when they're already fairly high concentrations of players (mainly Atlas really)

This is... a really good observation. That'd be a really good one to add to Ouro in this way as well, with the impact it has on one of the now most rewarding SFs in the game.

I figure the AH thing is the same as the mission drop rates- it's not going to be cheap to buy 'em, with how rare they are, but you will be able to, if you really don't wanna engage in the content it's trying to motivate for. Alternately, it provides an option to the Hard Mode runners who don't care about the unlockable costumes - they get to just make bank!

The point of the currency is mainly that everyone's starting from 0 with it, it's cosmetic only in terms of rewards, and the only content that rewards it is stuff the devs specifically want to incentivize - Hard Mode especially, but also iTrials and WSTs (with the mission drop rates being a method for anyone to earn them if they really hate their options but still want to participate in that market/earn those Tier 1 rewards, as a nice occasional surprise) Don't think you can really do that with an existing currency in any legitimately effective manner

Also, the final Invention Crafting badge. So annoying and tedious.

Understood!

I'm basically saying, since you have that time invested in that corrupter, you're naturally able to do more of this content than you would otherwise- you're actually being rewarded for the time investment you've put in. On top of that, because someone who hasn't put the same amount of commitment in can't do multiple, your rewards will be valued higher on the Auction House, because much less people will have them. The acquisition system of this currency means it's going to be very lucrative for players to trade.

Personally I'm going to be forming ITFs using phrasing like 'HM2 ITF LFM! Please come level 50 with T2 incarnates' or 'Standard ITF forming! Levels 35-50 welcome' or so on and so forth

It's about the same (tho I'd argue slightly more due to brutes' strength as soloers comparatively), but you had to put in a not-insignificant amount of work to get both characters to levels that rival each-other in power, nor learn how to play said character. You don't just instantly have a fully decked out 50 with full T4s and IO build.

From what I understand, a part of it is to justify the massive payout (relative to other options) while retaining the value of the currency. If you want to make a lot of it, you gotta put a lot of effort in.

Once again, I'll reiterate that there's nothing stopping you from running that +1 or +2 on a second character and mailing the rewards to your main. If you're someone who is willing to put in the effort to have multiple super-built characters, you'll get rewarded for it.

I believe it's referring to the enemy Tactics, not the team's, but I may be wrong on that

Worth mentioning the Dev Choice arcs give full rewards

For what it's worth, you could always run the lower-end difficulties as an alt that isn't locked out with a 4-star in the same time period. Not like you're going to be doing back-to-back 4-stars, good luck getting a group together in enough of an organized state for long enough - and if you can do that easily, you're in a very small minority. Also, i definitely still see people running 'casual' ASFs for the D-Syncs, FWIW

The Dr. Aeon Strike Force is honestly exactly what I was hoping we'd see from Homecoming the moment we discovered the team would be continuing with building new content for the game. More Villain-focused content is always very welcome in a Hero-centric world, and I think Task Forces and Strike Forces are the lifeblood of this game's replayability and content depth. The amount of effort that went into this is so so impressive and encouraging, with all the exciting new boss mechanics pushing what we thought was possible from the game, new unique environments that rival some of the best on offer in previous missions, a whole new difficulty system that will have compound effects in the future of the game in what I think is a very positive way, and a distinct enrichment of the writing, enemy diversity and lore of one of the less well-explored factions in the game. Thank you, Cobalt and Crew, for all of the amazing work on this project, and I'm so excited to see what new content and retroactive changes to legacy content this amazing first step will lead to in future ❤️