ShardWarrior

To be honest, I do not see hard mode content solving this problem. At the core, it is still the same mundane content, just dialed up a few notches in an attempt to artificially create "challenge" when "tedium" is probably a better descriptor for it. At least to me, the higher difficult is not harder, just more tedious and thereby boring. I have to agree adding higher challenge options does not appear to have done anything to bring in new players, nor from what I can see brought back any existing players who have since left. That is not to say that there are not those who enjoy it, I just do not see them being anywhere near the "silent majority" as I too never see this advertised anywhere, and I belong to quite a lot of the public and private team forming channels.

From what I have read from the HC posts, taking advantage of the early EMP merits from Vet rewards is not an exploit. They were questioned about whether or not there should be a rule against it or not. Exactly this.

While true, I can confidently say that during the times I am online, I never see any hardmode TFs being advertised. Not in LFG and in none of the teaming channels I belong to.

Same thing for me. I have no AFK farmers nor do I have vast stockpiles of resources. Losing out on the conversion is just going to make me farm more to make up for that loss.

As I recall, the "official" response was not to have items in the P2W store with exorbitant prices because all that does is drive players to gold farmers.

Only speaking for myself here, but I do not bother with Incarnates on every alt I make. I do use the conversion to Reward merits for recipes or ATOs on alts as needed. If you had read the whole post you quoted, you would have already answered your own question.

Sure, it prevents a very, very small subset of people from farming EMP merits from Vet levels to the detriment of the vast majority who were not doing that. You can still earn them through Vet levels as far as I know but now you are unable to convert them to Reward merits as it seems quite a lot of people are.

Perhaps. If the objective was to coax people out of AE, then neither change really solves anything in my opinion. Removing Vet Levels from AE just meant moving to PI portal farms and removing the EMP conversion just means more farming to make up for the lost merits or inf from converting them to other items. From my perspective, this change alienates a whole group of solo players while doing very, very little to nothing at all of solving the problem it was intended to address. So now the few who were taking advantage of early Vet levels for the reward merits cannot convert them anymore. So what? They can still sit in AE and farm 24/7.

This is not useful for those of us who already have all the alts we want at whatever Incarnate level we want, if any at all. It is great that people interested in kitting out their alts to T4 will be able to do this. There is a forgotten/ignored group that does not fall into that category. There looks to be quite a lot of solo players who were using those bonus EMP merits to convert to reward merits. What should those solo players do now to make up for the loss? "Run more team content" is not going to work for them. I am asking honestly since it seems to me, at least from the people in my circle, that this is just going to mean even more farming, not less. That seems to be the exact opposite effect of what this change was meant to do.

Not sure I would characterize "lose Vet Levels or EMP Merit conversion or both" as a compromise. Many players are losing out under any situation. Just being honest.

I doubt very much there is any changing anything at this point.

Our group ran the ASF on Hard Mode once for the badges, then never again. Will do the same for the ITF, assuming we stay here. Zero interest in turning TFs into lengthy slogs really.

Sure, assuming being herded into team content is your thing.

Not to mention all of the complaint threads and comments over the years about people begging for PLs in LFG. If there really is that many begging for farms, there must not be a lot of people taking advantage of multi-boxing or AFK farming. As I remember it, the badges and whatever else to unlock them was in response to tokens just costing a lot of inf. The reasoning was making them inf only would just encourage more farming or buying inf from gold farmers.

You can essentially AFK any content on a team and get the reward for it, so your argument singling out the EMP merits from Vet levels does not work.

This still does not matter. I would wager far more people are doing speed runs than are multiboxing several accounts across several machines on server farms to do mass AFK farming. Sure, it is technically possible someone could set up a giant server farm running 10,000 + accounts all AFK farming. It is also possible someone could create enough accounts with enough characters to use up every word combination in the English language. Just because these are technically possible does not in any way mean this is what is happening in reality.

Being a MMORPG does not in any way mean teaming is required or expected for all content. Most all content in the game is not meant for teaming and can be soloed. You are completely wrong on this.

So do not take into account the ideal TF speed run, but do take into account extreme edge case ideal farming in AE. Your whole post falls apart with this.

Others having a different point of view does not make them a troll.

If they are not a reward, then why remove the conversion? Supposedly the conversion is being removed because earning them through Vet levels makes AE "the best place for all rewards" in the game. Quite clearly they see them as a valuable reward.

Well no, you did earn them by doing whatever activities that earned the veteran level XP to get them. Nice try though.

No, not if you make a lot of costume changes. 😁

Thank you. I do the same thing. I have already gotten all the characters I wanted to at T4 incarnates, so I used excess EMP merits to convert to Reward Merits to fill in holes in IO sets or to buy purples or ATOs. Getting the EMP merits via Vet levels to use for other things was a nice bonus. Now I am just going to have to farm even more to make up for that loss. Instead of coaxing me out of AE, this idiotic change is encouraging me to spend even more time in AE to make up for the lost conversion. Just being honest, this is not making me want to play more, it is making me want to play less and less. As @PeregrineFalcon put it so eloquently, yet another swing and a miss.

Rebirth and New Dawn both work just fine without the background updates made by the team here. Both have some very cool changes and additions in their own right. Rebirth has a vastly superior costume editor for one thing. New Dawn opening up signature NPC power sets and even Freeform ATs is a lot of fun. Truly a shame that the various people developing are so fractured.

Oh I already know your answer. 🙂 Apologies, my post was more a general question/statement and not directed at you personally. Sorry if that was confusing. Seems to me that taking extreme edge cases into consideration for balancing rewards is only ever going in one direction.