Peerless Girl

I suppose that's true to a point. I'm also looking at it from the perspective of someone who literally spent 6 years under the old system, and while most RPers on Virtue loved to Ex down and help people for basically any reason, I'm not sure if that was true everywhere. I simply feel it encourages teaming at all levels to give 50s reasons to drop down. Least back in the day a lot of people didn't like the "ego hit" they had to take dropping down. Things could well be different now. (This is not me, I've never cared and always ran for RP reasons and/or with friends, though I will miss the extra Inf numbers, I suspect in the long term, plus with whatever other changes the devs have planned it'll be fine).

As I said a few times, the reason it did that/does that originally is because the XP that you earned that would've gone to pay off any debt you had got turned into extra Influence as a "reward" for your being Ex'd down when you didn't "Need to" (had no debt to pay off) to play with lower level players. It was likely intended at the time, and didn't start to become an issue until the Market existed, and only got worse/became an exploit when Patrol XP and the Vet Level XP system started interacting with it...we definitely need SOME kind of reward-incentive for EXing when you dont "need" to, I just don't know what it is...yet.

This is about the only thing in this thread that DOES concern me about this change, and I agree it needs to be examined. There should be plenty of encouragement to EX down and help lower level characters.

"We" Always looked at "Reward per Hour or some such" that's exactly how Paragon's devs came up with and tweaked the initial merit amounts for the TFs and such when that system went in. A Merit was deemed to be "worth" x amount of game play time (I don't remember the metric offhand). As average completion times raised, they lowered the merit rewards, as they fell, they raised them. The game was already set up this way. Marketeering isn't adjusted, as has been stated many times in the thread, because it doesn't generate influence in the system, it moves around existing influence (and in fact removes a portion due to market fees). Ultimately this was as exploit making use of a game mechanic. You don't open a discussion on exploits for obvious reasons. Hyperbolic post is hyperbolic.

This has nothing to do with HC being a "rogue server". Were you on the Live CoH forums? This same stuff happened there on a regular basis, almost this same way, just that the devs tended to put up with it for less time, and lock threads faster. (Castle and BaBs were notorious for this).

I remember the old days of "Ok so, everyone take a break so we can all go level up and green out our SOs, then we'll pick this back up in say 30 minutes? Ok cool!" I do not miss those. I do worry that just having them purchaseable from the enhancement screen will make most of the game vendors pointless. (I do miss the old good feeling you got unlocking your Origin-specific store contact back in the day).

TOs have been a joke since...uh at least issue 6 if not before, I agree with this. Basically the only things I did with TOs were sell them, or slot them up until 7 or whatever level you can slot DOs the first time, and only slotted ones that dropped that happened to match the enhancements I was already going to use. SOs are still arguably better than IOs up until about 30 or so, depending on how much value you assign to "slot and forget" or if you're willing to keep your SOs at least white or maybe green. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about SOs being available so early...but...that'll take time to test and adjust to. I like the *IDEA* of it so far. We'll have to see.

I think it was in the beta patch notes (and may be in the patch notes) but they've said they'll work in more assets as they can, and not to ask for specific pieces, but yeah I'm sure they're aware of that.

The sidekick system was absolutely intended for someone level 35 to be able to play with level 50s, and you did level faster doing that. Cryptic still calls the system "Sidekicking" even in Startrek Online, and of course Champions, if you get far enough from a teamed Starship in STO (kind of hard to do accidently but doable) it will eventually say "you are out of Sidekicking Range" in the system messages. This is still one of the most innovative systems in any MMO ever. It was intended so people of all levels can play together regardless, and it accomplishes that beautifully. Will I miss making the extra influence if I choose to drop down and play with friends, sure, did it possibly make me do it more back in the day on live? Yes, will it stop me from doing it just to play with people in my SG? Nope. The issue is how all of this interacted with the vet levels and the fact you can earn "XP" over 50, plus a longstanding bug in Patrol XP (that didn't matter on live, since it was a very narrow window, then you hit 50 and it stopped). People are spreading misinfo, using it to further their own agendas and basically just argue about it. In the end it won't end up changing anything, the devs will be the devs, and those who simply can't abide the change will find somewhere else to play (but like most who threatened to "quit" back in the day on Live, they somehow managed to continue posting on the forums).

Patrol XP was Paragon's "answer" to the by-then-common MMO system of "Rested XP" and to add another aspect to the game for newer players. As this game has, for some people, become a farming sandbox, that part would be irrelevant to them, since it's all about the "rush to 50 to make mad bank" by then. Which was never what CoH was intended to be, but rarely is something used exclusively for what it was created for. Ask J Robert Oppenheimer.

You can keep pushing this theory, doesn't make it any more true than the first time you said it. It eventually boils down to "accept the devs decisions, or...etc. etc."

People didn't really "need" influence on Live either in a lot of ways, and it had no bearing on generating revenue for the game (at least not after Paragon took it Freemium). Back before i9 and the market, Influence was for buying your SOs, paying for your costume changes, and giving it away at costume contests/to newbies, because you had so much there wasn't anything else to do with it. (That's after you got your first high level/50, your first character was always a struggle until/unless you had a sugar momma/daddy to help pay for your stuff (I was lucky in that I did for a lot of my early life (pre-30s on my main in issue 3/issue 4). Once the market went in (and IOs went in around the same time) everything changed, this happened in issue 9 the game had already been around for over 2-2.5 years by this point, also always remember that CoH (though barely) predated the rise of WoW, so there weren't a lot of other examples of MMOs and economies outside of Everquest and Ultima Online, and a few other games to compare to back then. All of those players who'd been around since the Rikti War launch, some sitting on the inf cap, finally had something to do with it all. I was there when the markets launched, and I was in the Closed Beta for the launch of I9, it was insane and nuts, it made Wall Street and the current back and forth thanks to Human Malware look like children selling lemonade. The price of luck charms and the lower level salvage band was in the TENS OF MILLIONS for a single piece, as others have said LotG pieces routinely sold for inf cap (or MORE than Inf Cap) money, with people using multiple characters to "bank" the money to buy ONE recipe. The world we live in now is vastly simpler than that, and the HC devs have market controls in place. Part of it is that Wentworths is a "consignment house" not a true "auction house" (and Paragon's Devs made this very clear at the time). The way the systems work are deliberately (perhaps wrongly by newer modern standards) obfuscated, it's essentially a pawn shop, not ebay. The reason it helps is it's an Inf sink that takes "cuts" out of both ends of a transaction, in a game that had few (the inclusions of the new P2W Vendors and such, and the ability to buy reward merits are other Inf Sinks that have been introduced post live that did not exist at that time, RMs and Hero/Villian Merits were stupid high cost-wise, because part of that was designed to support the "Fremium/Vet Rewards Model" we no longer have running here on HC. Do we NEED the Market? No, probably not. But one of the things it does is help move money between accounts/players in a way that it never was before, and that's healthy for the fun of any game. Is it easier to make Inf marketeering than in other ways? Yes for some people it is, but what many are overlooking is that in using it (either selling or buying) you are taking a portion of the influence out of the game, and helping to stabilize the system, and it's one of the balancing forces against inflation by rate of farming/influence injection by killing mobs. Were it ME I probably would have a lot more inf sinks in game than we do (such as perhaps paying Null the Gull an increasing cost the more times (or at what level you are) to jump sides, and things like that, though I also recognize that that is also needed to stabilize the population of the always-redheaded-stepchild that is Red Side. TLDR; there are many factors why the market should exist, and many many things the HC devs will need to do to streamline the Inf earning and sinking and XP curves of an older game.

It ALSO might be worse with so many more people playing now than "normal" and even mid-week is basically weekend prices...

I normally don't reply with stuff like "QFFT" or "This" but...uh...yes.

I think it became clear that this person didn't want to have a conversation about 6 posts ago (of course that's true of many posters on the Internet).

Don't accuse people of "sneaking something in" when it was explained why it was done. That you choose not to *believe* it is another issue entirely. It was explained when it became an exploit, only after there were levels above 50, because all it did before was speed the journey and inf you got for all of 1 level, which is outside the range of what is normal for the game (and back early on that was XP meant to pay off debt when EX'd down, it just transferred to INF if you happened to be dropping down to run lowbie content, or play with friends. That wasn't really an issue before the game had what one would constitute as an economy. It was further exacerbated by the "double INF" switch that was added with SSKing. It's a compounding of multiple issues that started back early, got worse, and was finally capped off by Vet Levels/XP above 50. That part of it COULD'VE been discussed, except discussing it required disclosing an exploit that I'm sure they didn't want disclosed until fixed. It's just an unfortunate confluence of events, but I think everything that needs to be said on it has been said, and people will ascribe whatever feelings, ill-will or motive they wish. I myself hope the Inf gain while EXd isn't TOO impacted, as it was always an extra incentive to play lower stuff with friends, it won't affect what I do regardless, but such is life, there are downsides to upsides, to move forward sometimes you have to break a few eggs, etc. etc. Just because it's not the "primary source" of inflation doesn't mean it's not *A* source of it. As Jimmy said I suspect they'll be doing things down the line to bring other playstyles in line as well, as they have for nearly a year now. We should be celebrating the upcoming anniversary, not being divisive. That's just my take on it. Merit Farming/converters aren't an issue, because they end up on the MARKET which only moves Influence AROUND between players, and takes it's cut as it does, it does not manufacturer new influence out of thin air, as farming (or playing normally etc.) does. This is frankly, just an issue of you either grossly misunderstanding how the mechanics of the game works, or (more likely) twisting their interpretation to suit your own agenda. Neither one looks that great.

Repeatedly explained. It was part of an exploit, and exploit fixes don't go into the patch notes during beta, only after being fixed on live. This isn't really about "market issues" it's about Influence inflation. This is what happens when you slap reply without reading the thread (or at least the dev replies) first.

While I understand where people are NOW, back on live, the market and the IOS and all of that was just seen as extra "nice to haves" by most of us who'd played since way back, now everyone treats it like it's REQUIRED. *puts up get off my lawn signs*

Sadly, I doubt they dislike farmers as much as I do, it's probably a good thing I'm not a dev.

much of what is being "debated" here is subjective. It's the internet, that's how it goes. Someone's wrong on the Internet, that can't be allowed. 😛

This boggles my mind. CoH was far harder to progress on live in almost every fashion, not even counting the double XP boosters/mode being active here. And even THEN even with CoH's infinite debt cap, and how hard it was in issue 3, CoH was an "easy" game compared to "real" MMOs like EQ and UO at the time. CoH is one of the most consistently "easy" MMO experiences to exist, even BEFORE HC, and yet somehow people are STILL impatient and in a hurry. I think much of this comes from old vets who are still salty about their lost 50s, and can't get over it, personally.

Jimmy already went over it. The issue isn't the market, or AE, it's the fact that both exist at once, honestly. Original CoH progressed up through the issues with features as it went, and never had to "live" at the issue HC started at. People on live were sitting on inf capped characters before issue 9 even came out, the market insta-inflated and never recovered, and Paragon never really managed it. Live was HORRIBLE for purples. I spent the entire time from i9 until gamer shutdown trying to get my main kitted, and had about half of what I wanted by the time of shutdown, and a lot of that was market playing, and donations from friends better able to play that game than me (I made a lot crafting IOs early when I9 went in). It's a different beast. The whole "the AE XP is nerfed from live" argument is done to death, and actually factually wrong, it's reduced to the original live levels, the difference is that our AE has full drop access and the live one only dropped tickets. People mis-remember a LOT of stuff (or never knew it in the first place).

By that logic, why do anything at all then? Just run the game in maintenance mode?

But, as Jimmy said earlier, they (likely when time permits) WILL rework things to incentivize other activities also.

Right, and I'm an RPer on Everlasting (who had RP reasons to be around Wentworth's actually) and often felt like I had to run AE arc farms back on live too. In the end it boils down to "don't let other people make you feel you have to do something" you don't HAVE to farm any more than you HAVE to play the market in CoH, the devs are just trying to equalize all the "in game" stuff. (The Market is only tangentially connected to in-game activity), as Jimmy and Six said earlier).