Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[Budo]

8 hours ago, nihilii said:

This is actually how it works on Homecoming since these servers went up. You can trade 1M inf for 1 merit, and 100 merits buy you any purple you want. Ergo you can buy any purple for 100M inf. Works for just about any recipe. To fully IO out an alt, you don't ever need to use the market if that's not your thing - but of course, player market prices are much cheaper than straight inf conversion to merits.

 

But...that isn't how it works.

That is converting your dongle to a dangle so you can buy a dingle.

I just wanna give you a dongle and you give me a dingle. Or 10 dongles for 1 dingle, I don't much care about the conversion rate, that's for someone else to balance. 

 

Isn't the problem (or at least one of as mentioned by Six) that there is too much obfuscation? It's baked into the system already. Converting this to that to buy this to flip it to and so on and so on and no clear way of knowing what way it has swung. 

 

I'd say just toss a vendor somewhere and call it a day. Buy everything in the game from him/her/it for a set price. You've instituted a hard cap on what there can be and people can always can get it for cheaper on the market if they want it NOW. I am sure this wouldn't work and would totally change everything, but it seems simple* to me.

 

*which of course means that it is wildly complex and would never work

 

[First Player]

7 minutes ago, Budo said:

I'd say just toss a vendor somewhere and call it a day. Buy everything in the game from him/her/it for a set price. You've instituted a hard cap on what there can be and people can always can get it for cheaper on the market if they want it NOW. I am sure this wouldn't work and would totally change everything, but it seems simple* to me.

 

*which of course means that it is wildly complex and would never work

 

I'd like this but then people'd complain there's no way to make money other than farming.

[Yomo Kimyata]

11 minutes ago, Budo said:

 

But...that isn't how it works.

That is converting your dongle to a dangle so you can buy a dingle.

I just wanna give you a dongle and you give me a dingle. Or 10 dongles for 1 dingle, I don't much care about the conversion rate, that's for someone else to balance. 

 

Isn't the problem (or at least one of as mentioned by Six) that there is too much obfuscation? It's baked into the system already. Converting this to that to buy this to flip it to and so on and so on and no clear way of knowing what way it has swung. 

 

I'd say just toss a vendor somewhere and call it a day. Buy everything in the game from him/her/it for a set price. You've instituted a hard cap on what there can be and people can always can get it for cheaper on the market if they want it NOW. I am sure this wouldn't work and would totally change everything, but it seems simple* to me.

 

*which of course means that it is wildly complex and would never work

 

There already is a soft cap on almost everything, but no one seems to understand that, so I'm going to give up and advocate the vendor idea.  I would support a vendor that will sell you any item in the game for 100mm inf.  That way you cut out the middle man of the merit vendor (currently you have to buy 100 merits at 1mm each, then spend up to 100 merits on your item).

 

I would not support one inf cheaper than 100mm.

[Crysis]

17 minutes ago, First Player said:

I'd like this but then people'd complain there's no way to make money other than farming.

But there’s no reason to “make money” by eliminating the marketplace dynamics and there’s no reason to farm so much if no reason to make money to spend on marketplace and or provide alternative means of acquiring high cost IO’s via farming drops if everything was a fixed, affordable price.

 

This continues to be “the point.”  We keep nerfing things to slow down wealth accumulation but we fail to address wealth accumulation in its entirety.  Which at the end of the day simply demonstrates “we prefer you play THIS way and not THAT way, so we will remove the incentive to do one in favor of the other!”  And yet all this demonstrated is declines in player base in Live and likely to repeat itself here.

 

It’s not the influence it’s the player base population that is most impacted.

[Crysis]

17 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

There already is a soft cap on almost everything, but no one seems to understand that, so I'm going to give up and advocate the vendor idea.  I would support a vendor that will sell you any item in the game for 100mm inf.  That way you cut out the middle man of the merit vendor (currently you have to buy 100 merits at 1mm each, then spend up to 100 merits on your item).

 

I would not support one inf cheaper than 100mm.

Why?  Why would you support any number that requires two-three TF’s (outside of Hami and MSR roads) to earn a purple?

 

Unless in your hidden brilliance you are advocating a currency-free game where instead of earning influence to spend on stuff you earn stuff based on both time played and difficulty factors?  Which is the essence of the XP model for progression.

 

Now THAT.....true “merit-ocracy” is an interesting idea.

[First Player]

2 minutes ago, Crysis said:

But there’s no reason to “make money” by eliminating the marketplace dynamics and there’s no reason to farm so much if no reason to make money to spend on marketplace and or provide alternative means of acquiring high cost IO’s via farming drops if everything was a fixed, affordable price.

 

This continues to be “the point.”  We keep nerfing things to slow down wealth accumulation but we fail to address wealth accumulation in its entirety.  Which at the end of the day simply demonstrates “we prefer you play THIS way and not THAT way, so we will remove the incentive to do one in favor of the other!”  And yet all this demonstrated is declines in player base in Live and likely to repeat itself here.

 

It’s not the influence it’s the player base population that is most impacted.

I meant make money to buy from the vendors.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Just now, Crysis said:

Why?  Why would you support any number that requires two-three TF’s (outside of Hami and MSR roads) to earn a purple?

 

Unless in your hidden brilliance you are advocating a currency-free game where instead of earning influence to spend on stuff you earn stuff based on both time played and difficulty factors?  Which is the essence of the XP model for progression.

 

Now THAT.....true “merit-ocracy” is an interesting idea.

Now you're just haggling over price.  Currently you can buy almost any item in the game for 100mm inf indirectly, and I'm all for making that direct for the people who don't understand the two step process.

 

What you seem to be saying is that 100mm is too expensive for a purple.  Ok, then buy one off the AH for a lot less.  If that's still too expensive, then I'm sorry.  Maybe you can do without it.

[Crysis]

2 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Now you're just haggling over price.  Currently you can buy almost any item in the game for 100mm inf indirectly, and I'm all for making that direct for the people who don't understand the two step process.

 

What you seem to be saying is that 100mm is too expensive for a purple.  Ok, then buy one off the AH for a lot less.  If that's still too expensive, then I'm sorry.  Maybe you can do without it.

Why should I or you have to earn that much influence to enjoy the game?  And price in this game is derived in large part from time invested.  The Devs already said they wanted an equality measure in place for gaining influence, unless we are haggling over semantics here, time = wealth = influence.

 

Just hard cap prices of marketplace items and eliminate ability for anyone to sell/buy items from there without paying fixed price less fees.  No Marketeering possible.  Change merit reward conversions to match same price as in marketplace....25 merit tokens equals a purple and 25MM influence equals a purple.  
 

Farming Influence, TF influence, radio influence accumulation rates can be about same (although farms with no dialogue and limited scale maps/enemies obviously can be run faster), but you earn extra rewards (Merits and Badges that lead to Accolades and such) for running “content” to encourage teaming and longevity.

 

Maybe tweak the drop tables up to increase chance of Rare/Very Rare drops per hour logged in playing that character.

 

Wealth wouldn’t matter, no convoluted Marketplace mechanics, hell even Mids could spit out a “price for IO bill of materials” so people could accurately see how much time/effort it would take to produce that build.

 

And not to be combative, but you have zero right to dictate what I can and cannot “do without” as your wants don’t match my own and neither one of us should ever be in a position to deprive the other of enjoyment of this game.  I’d use the word “need” but it’s a game/pastime and that’s a bit much.  But if my “wants” happen to include soloing a GM or PVP or whatever that becomes an in-game “need” I really can’t do without.

[Drastic]

Direct vendor pricing is absolutely something they should consider. Multiple overlapping-converting currency systems are there to obfuscate game-time to game-resources over time commitments (it's why any f2p game tends to have comical numbers of golds, gems, supergems, platinum crystals, glowing platinum crystals, superduper glowing platinum crystals--buy 99 for $99, best deal!--etc in them; to keep players confused and opting to just shovel money at the game for a dopamine hit), and this here's a dead (but delightfully zombie-lively!) game without any profit motives anymore. So start peeling away the obfuscation.

 

That then makes setting rewards per activity and time a more straightforward question. As it stands now, when you grasp the inf-to-merits-to-merit-vendor shuffle, there's a theoretical ceiling of 6.7 billion-ish inf to a "complete" build (67 slots, 100 million for exactly the enhancement you want in each. Not counting enhancement boosters and such things, also not counting incarnate stuff layered over top of level 50 base builds. EDIT-add: oh, also not counting base slots. So add those too!). Average pricing overall in the consignment house has a much lower practical ceiling (purples ~20-25 million, most non-purple stuff much lower, and that's without doing converter roulettes).

 

So it's probably safe to assume the HC devs see that no-market ceiling of a 100 million per to not be what they want for players (if it was, there'd be no reason to take any steps against inflationary pressures in the game, because they wouldn't see it as a problem if simple market pricing approached and even exceeded the average cost of buying "direct" via merits). Presumably, they "want" it lower, whether that's about where it is now using markets, or some other level.

 

I certainly think it's a lot better where it is now at average market costs than paying 100 million each would be!

Edited April 1, 2020 by Drastic

[MunkiLord]

1 hour ago, Crysis said:

You and many others keep saying that Marketeering gets influence faster and easier.

 

This is absolutely false or it wouldn’t have been the reason the Devs nerfed AE influence awards ENTIRELY while exemp’ed.  They didn’t just fix the exploit, they straight up cut out the reward structure for farming.  And they have openly acknowledged that even with the nerf, farming is still the fastest way to earn influence in the game.  They presumably have data to support this and aren’t just firing off the nerf missle for other “social acceptance” reasons.

 

You don’t have to believe me...just re-read their own rationale:

 

 

Dedicated marketing absolutely outpaces dedicated farming in terms of influence gain, anyone that says otherwise is wrong. But, more people likely farm so it has a bigger impact. Plus the people making tens and hundreds of billions of influence from the market are hoarding most of it. So as far as the economy is concerned that influence doesn't exist because it is out of circulation.

 

6 minutes ago, Crysis said:

Why should I or you have to earn that much influence to enjoy the game?  And price in this game is derived in large part from time invested.  The Devs already said they wanted an equality measure in place for gaining influence, unless we are haggling over semantics here, time = wealth = influence.

 

Just hard cap prices of marketplace items and eliminate ability for anyone to sell/buy items from there without paying fixed price less fees.  No Marketeering possible.  Change merit reward conversions to match same price as in marketplace....25 merit tokens equals a purple and 25MM influence equals a purple.  
 

Farming Influence, TF influence, radio influence accumulation rates can be about same (although farms with no dialogue and limited scale maps/enemies obviously can be run faster), but you earn extra rewards (Merits and Badges that lead to Accolades and such) for running “content” to encourage teaming and longevity.

 

Maybe tweak the drop tables up to increase chance of Rare/Very Rare drops per hour logged in playing that character.

 

Wealth wouldn’t matter, no convoluted Marketplace mechanics, hell even Mids could spit out a “price for IO bill of materials” so people could accurately see how much time/effort it would take to produce that build.

 

And not to be combative, but you have zero right to dictate what I can and cannot “do without” as your wants don’t match my own and neither one of us should ever be in a position to deprive the other of enjoyment of this game.  I’d use the word “need” but it’s a game/pastime and that’s a bit much.  But if my “wants” happen to include soloing a GM or PVP or whatever that becomes an in-game “need” I really can’t do without.

By pushing for eliminating marketing you are absolutely attempting to deprive people of their enjoyment of the game simply because you don't enjoy it.

[Crysis]

10 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

Dedicated marketing absolutely outpaces dedicated farming in terms of influence gain, anyone that says otherwise is wrong. But, more people likely farm so it has a bigger impact. Plus the people making tens and hundreds of billions of influence from the market are hoarding most of it. So as far as the economy is concerned that influence doesn't exist because it is out of circulation.

 

By pushing for eliminating marketing you are absolutely attempting to deprive people of their enjoyment of the game simply because you don't enjoy it.

And by pushing to eliminate Farming it’s basically the same in reverse.

 

Everyone is fine nerfing something else until/unless it comes their way.

 

IO’s and the Crafting system were originally designed as time and influence sinks to slow

down leveling speeds, which followed a huge round of nerfs and “balancing” Regen, GDN, Enhancement Diversification, etc.  And it all

made a little sense because the studios were trying to make more money from dedicated players while using the F2P model to attract new ones.

 

This no longer makes sense.  Just add IO’s and Salvage to ordinary vendors at current market fixed pricing (achieved after one year of in place) and let’s eliminate the wealth accumulation (and personal enjoyment) at the expense of others model.

 

 

 

Edited April 1, 2020 by Crysis
Words

[Yomo Kimyata]

13 minutes ago, Crysis said:

 

 

And not to be combative, but you have zero right to dictate what I can and cannot “do without” as your wants don’t match my own and neither one of us should ever be in a position to deprive the other of enjoyment of this game.  I’d use the word “need” but it’s a game/pastime and that’s a bit much.  But if my “wants” happen to include soloing a GM or PVP or whatever that becomes an in-game “need” I really can’t do without.

I wasn't dictating, and this is probably a topic for a different thread.  There's one in General about ease of the game that you may want to weigh in on.  In that thread, I made an analogy about how CoX is a chessboard, and you can use it to play chess, or you can use it to play a simpler game.  The problem I see with your solution is that it seems like you want to play tic tac toe, and you want the rest of us to play with you on your 3x3 board.  I can't advocate making the entire game fundamentally easier simply because you have a problem with the current 8x8 board. 

 

Happy hunting!

[MunkiLord]

1 minute ago, Crysis said:

This no longer makes sense.  Just add IO’s and Salvage to ordinary vendors at current market fixed pricing (achieved after one year of in place) and let’s eliminate the wealth accumulation (and personal enjoyment) at the expense of others model.

 

You're pushing your desires and it will come at the expense of other's personal enjoyment(those that enjoy marketing). How is that any different from what you're accusing marketers of doing?

[Crysis]

7 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

You're pushing your desires and it will come at the expense of other's personal enjoyment(those that enjoy marketing). How is that any different from what you're accusing marketers of doing?

Actually I’m not accusing Marketeers from hurting my enjoyment of the game.  I Marketeer myself, in addition to farming, teaming, active with my SG buddies etc.  

 

But the Devs have demonstrated that nerfing influence gain per hour is an “equitable” action and they desire to see this equality across the system.  I’m simply trying to get this to the point where it’s truly equitable.  Marketeering throws that off balance.

 

Are you arguing for “Inequality” as the better model?

Edited April 1, 2020 by Crysis

[QuiJon]

On 3/31/2020 at 6:57 AM, Jimmy said:

Long-term your (slightly smaller amount of) influence earned from normal play will be worth more as there will be far less influence being generated by those level 49 missions (and the related exploit).

Look over all it doesn't matter cause we earn enough influence even without the OPTIONS (not exploit it was an in game option put in by the devs) to turn off xp and earn influence or earn more when exempting. However when this game was live a LOTG Recharge global would cost me 150m influence and I would need 4-5 of them to make a perma dom or perma hasten toon. They are now 10 m on a expensive day. A purple ragnorok piece would cost you upward of 70-80 million where are a confuse purple or immb purple would cost you 10-15. And back then there was no convertors. If you wanted that proc or those purples you had to get THOSE recipes.

 

Convertors imo already solved this problem. Any defense set piece is pretty easy to turn into a LOTG global bonus now. Hence why they sell for so much less on AH. You don't have to sit on purples you might never use or sell them in bulk to buy the one thing you really wanted anymore, you can convert them to what you need. Even an ATO doesn't really sell for more then15 million because you can get a random fo 10 and just convert it. A winter pack is pretty much 20-25 now no matter what because that is the cost of the packs and at worst a few convertors and you get what you wanted. 

 

I can understand saying there is a gap between the earning potential of farming with no xp and such, however under the current economy the need for money is so much lower that I frankly don't see how this was to impactful on the game. And I might add this actually then just punishes players that do want to play older charactes. Once I hit t4s or vet level 100 I have no real incentive to play my older characters. These options were put into the game to incentives players to want to keep playing older toons because they would grant you higher rewards. It would seem to me that changes like this that take away that incentive should at minimum have been paired with changes that open up more end game content. Maybe the next round of incarnate powers, a few new incarnate trials, a new incarnate level zone SOMETHING that replaces the incentive to want to keep playing the older characters. 

 

HC has been really great about making small alterations to powers and systems for better balance. And though I have no desire to leave homecoming, as we see more new  ATs and power sets become available elsewhere, I do have to question the thought process behind spending time and effort to fix a non-problem like this compared to working on new actual content. If the incentive to play older characters is going to be taken way, then at least a priority should be given to introducing new things to play that can be new experiences for me rather then a 4th staff fighting toon of some type, or a 8th dominator build etc. 

[Infinitum]

6 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

You're pushing your desires and it will come at the expense of other's personal enjoyment(those that enjoy marketing). How is that any different from what you're accusing marketers of doing?

I think thats the point.

[skoryy]

3 minutes ago, Crysis said:

But the Devs have demonstrated that nerfing influence gain per hour is an “equitable” action and they desire to see this equality across the system.  I’m simply trying to get this to the point where it’s truly equitable.

Y'all know Harrison Bergeron was a parody, right?

[MWRuger]

Wow. I have read all 25 pages of this thread and there are a lot of people who don't understand how the market works. I shan't bother trying to explain it, most won't believe it anyway. I was a marketeer on live and had about 25 billion salted away. Nothing compared to some. But here's the thing, I couldn't afford to purple out all my alts, there just wasn't enough supply and too much money chasing what was there. 

Flash forward to Homecoming. I am rocking about 4 billion, I make enough each week to feed my hungry alts, I never have to wait more than a day for bids to fill and can usually buy it now. If I don't I can get it with merits. If I don't get it that way I can flip with converters. It is very easy to get the good stuff if you want it.

But here's the thing, you can play all the content with SO's. Every bit of it. I know people who do and they have fun with the game. Every user can play every bit of content. So they already have vendors who sell enhancements at fixed prices.

Oh you want extra special stuff, well then you have ways to get it but it isn't as easy as the SO's. Do you have to play the market? No, you can get them by doing tip missions for a few days. Just running missions. Is there a faster way? Sure, but you can get it.

If you want a "Push to win" button, fine, but to me that would be boring. The game is easy enough already
 

[skoryy]

1 minute ago, AngelKofsky said:

25 pages of arguing about farmers and economics,
0 pages of discussion on Elec Affinity, the costuming changes, or anything else

Ask question about circuit chains repeating targets:
Silence
Discuss implications of new IOs and powersets on meta:
Silence
Quote John Locke's theories on mercantilism RE an MMO about super powers:
30 MINUTES OF FURIOUS KEYBOARD POUNDING

An exploit was removed, this was going to happen.

[DMW45]

1 minute ago, skoryy said:

An exploit was removed, this was going to happen.

Goes more than removing an exploit--they removed the entire mechanic, they've admitted as such it goes beyond removing an exploit.

[QuiJon]

13 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

You're pushing your desires and it will come at the expense of other's personal enjoyment(those that enjoy marketing). How is that any different from what you're accusing marketers of doing?

It might not be any different but it is equitable isn't it? I mean if I am being told I can only earn so much influence per hour, then there must be a reason. Now I can only imagine that there is a segment of people that look at the prices on the market and complain that they are to high and are being artificially inflated by farmers with disposable incomes. However I think we both know that is not true. The markets now are a fraction of what things used to cost on live back before converters were introduced to the game. 

 

But an ATO is always going to cost 10m because a pack to get one cost that. A winter will always cost 20ish becaucse again pack costs. So frankly it seems only fair to say ok we are going to nerf earning potential by 35 percent or so, well then lets put a ceiling on the market value of each level of reward. Maybe no Yellow can sell for more then 2m no orange for more then 5 no purple, pvp or standard ATO for more then 10 no Winter or HamiO for more then 15. 

That change has the same effect as limiting earning in that by limiting prices it caps the NEED for influence so it doesn't matter if you earn less then a farmer you are competing on the equal footing and their "Stockpile" of influence doesn't give them more buying power then someone with less money. 

 

But as you say that takes fun away from the marketers, well so what, what is heroic about playing the markets in a game that is centered around being a super hero? I don't really have skin in this game anyway, I farm and I play markets a bit. I feel this was a solution to a problem that didn't exist. It is like maybe 20 percent as exspenive to build out a toon now as it used to be back before convertors. If people can not get how to use convertors to their advantages after this long and how many guides are around, that is not the farmers fault to pay for. 

[MWRuger]

Oh, the farming nerf? Who the freak cares?

I made 16 million last night running the exmplered farm, I got two purples. Now, that's not typical, some days I don't get any purples, but how is that not a good enough return on investment?

Sure last week it would have been 32 million  and I need the money because I gave away 1.2 billion to a couple of friends who wanted to start farming characters, so I gave them seed money and explained how it worked, they probably won't do it, but why not.

But, I like playing with fake money and the market and converting and running task forces and building bases and designing characters and everything else.

You actually worry about wealth inequality in a game? Try fixing it in the real world where it can actually kill people.

Edited April 2, 2020 by MWRuger
Typos. Damn them to hell!

[QuiJon]

9 minutes ago, AngelKofsky said:

25 pages of arguing about farmers and economics,
0 pages of discussion on Elec Affinity, the costuming changes, or anything else

Ask question about circuit chains repeating targets:
Silence
Discuss implications of new IOs and powersets on meta:
Silence
Quote John Locke's theories on mercantilism RE an MMO about super powers:
30 MINUTES OF FURIOUS KEYBOARD POUNDING

Frankly when was the last time with the power creep in this game that anyone gave a rats a.. if they had a defender on the team to begin with? Frankly I could not think of a less exciting power set to add to the game then a defender set.

 

New IOs, you either use them or not, they are what they are and require no discussion, and frankly being the 3 new pool set they are all pretty much a new theme skinned ot mostly the same powers. 

 

Change to farming and reward, IS the biggest thing in this update.

[Crysis]

11 minutes ago, skoryy said:

An exploit was removed, this was going to happen.

You know, I’ve never cheated in this or any game.  Min/max absolutely but never cheated or willfully used an exploit, even when I knew they existed.  Like...Id use geometry exploits to go see what I couldn’t see otherwise (remember looking inside RWZ before it was RWZ) but never go earn anything other than curiosity points.

 

The Devs have indicated this was an exploit many of us took advantage of without even knowing.  It was just a side effect of how Patrol XP worked.  But rather than just fix that, they just killed a game feature of earning double influence vs XP when exemplared.  Across the entire game.

 

So no, and they’d agree with this, they didn’t just plug an exploit.  They just impacted the entire Exemplar system which goes way beyond plugging a hole.

[QuiJon]

1 minute ago, AngelKofsky said:

(because it was being exploited)

Stupid to argue with, but no it was not being "exploited" it was being used as intended. The intention was to give people playing for no xp or on exempt higher rewards of influence. It did that. Fighting a +4 mob at 49 vs 53s is the same as fighting a +4 mob at 50 vs 54. The original devs knew this, but were giving an incentive to those that wanted to keep playing older characters and that were teaming with lower level characters. Yes perhaps it was not intended to be used in farms. However you still were giving up rewards. My farmer I turned off XP once he was incarnated up. So I stopped earning vet rewards. So that means I also have not earned probably many many emperian merits that I would have earned (that could have been given to other toons cause they transfer) in favor or earning XP. It was still a trade off. 

 

Play options are NOT exploits.