Vanguard Merit Conversion Ratio Nerf

[Crysis]

I don’t understand the OP’s mentality at all.  Very childish to insist that because you don’t like something the entire structure of the shared asset must be changed to adapt to your level of thinking.

 

People saying “Just go build your own server if you want to play on easy mode” realize this flawed mental model works in reverse too right?  Just go build your own server if you want to force people to adapt to your narrow views of what is “fun” and “right.”

 

The issue we have in either scenario is someone is getting their candy taken away and we both end up with smaller and smaller populations of players because people will get upset over changes, compare their new time spent doing X against the “good old days” and grow frustrated and bored.  This is what happened on Live.  And it led ultimately to the loss of player base and death of the game.

 

But please, go on suggesting ways to enforce your views and then claim victory when server pops start to dwindle.  This will not get you more people willing to partner up to run Dr. Q’s insane waste of time TF.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve teamed with your kind and decided no way did I want to spend two hours of my life listening to you pontificate about how the world should adapt to your points of view of things.  At least with MRS raids I knew EVERYONE there wanted to kill ritki and reap the same shared benefits.  That was teamwork.  Emphasis on WAS because I’m pretty sure after this nerf you’ll see this raid, and likely a significant part of the ENTIRE Vanguard and RWZ story, die quickly.  Good job killing one of the very things you think are necessary: teaming and shared co-op effort.

[Rylas]

If people are getting 1000-1500 V Merits per raid then I agree that the ratio should probably be changed. I think 100:1 is a bit much though, I'd probably do 30:1, that cuts the merit ratio by a third but still makes it on the high end of earning which is probably fair since putting together a full league does require more effort than an 8-man team.

 

Sounds like the devs followed your advice. Not sure when the next patch is scheduled, but it'll change the conversion rate to 30:1.

 

Sad to see it go, as this was my best method to build out a top build with a more limited time for playing. But oh well, I get needing to keep Reward Merits at similar time/reward ratio. Though, I wonder if this has kept the market at lower prices than it otherwise would be.

[DSorrow]

I don’t understand the OP’s mentality at all.  Very childish to insist that because you don’t like something the entire structure of the shared asset must be changed to adapt to your level of thinking.

 

I understand it very well. After all, it would be very short sighted and naive to think there's absolutely no problem in having end game content with ten fold differences in their reward rates, even moreso when there aren't appropriate challenge differences between.

 

Good thing is, the rates are going to be changed to 30:1 which still provides an average return of 35-50 merits per 45 mins that is still better than many TFs, but not in a completely different league.

[Burnt Toast]

The hyperbole is strong with you.

The rewards do not match the time/effort - they will be taken to a normalized level.

 

 

I don’t understand the OP’s mentality at all.  Very childish to insist that because you don’t like something the entire structure of the shared asset must be changed to adapt to your level of thinking.

 

People saying “Just go build your own server if you want to play on easy mode” realize this flawed mental model works in reverse too right?  Just go build your own server if you want to force people to adapt to your narrow views of what is “fun” and “right.”

 

The issue we have in either scenario is someone is getting their candy taken away and we both end up with smaller and smaller populations of players because people will get upset over changes, compare their new time spent doing X against the “good old days” and grow frustrated and bored.  This is what happened on Live.  And it led ultimately to the loss of player base and death of the game.

 

But please, go on suggesting ways to enforce your views and then claim victory when server pops start to dwindle.  This will not get you more people willing to partner up to run Dr. Q’s insane waste of time TF.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve teamed with your kind and decided no way did I want to spend two hours of my life listening to you pontificate about how the world should adapt to your points of view of things.  At least with MRS raids I knew EVERYONE there wanted to kill ritki and reap the same shared benefits.  That was teamwork.  Emphasis on WAS because I’m pretty sure after this nerf you’ll see this raid, and likely a significant part of the ENTIRE Vanguard and RWZ story, die quickly.  Good job killing one of the very things you think are necessary: teaming and shared co-op effort.

[Erydanus]

I'm glad they're only doing a 30 ratio adjustment, I haven't gotten in on this yet -- and honestly I do want the vanguard temp powers and salvage bag as my priority and I need a lot of Vmerits for that. Better they adjust the conversion rate as they are doing than nerf the actual drops.

[EmperorSteele]

The problem with not being able to find things and etc is part of a much larger issue with how easy things have been made. There are a lot of moving parts to this new economy, and it so far seems to discourage a lot of old practices.

 

Let's look at some of these changes.

 

Uncommon recipes are 20 merits. That's like, 1 or two short story arcs. Sounds fair. Rare recipes (And PvP IOs, which have had their rarity reduced and now also drop from PvE enemies) are 50 merits: a task force and maybe a story arc, not unreasonable. Very Rares and ATOs (which can also be won in Super packs for 10 mil inf) are 100 merits. That's like, 2 task forces (maybe 3 if you're just doing shorter ones). We have Enhancement catalysts to make enhancements more powerful, and converters to change up enhancements we don't like (Fun fact, Converters drop from ANY defeated enemies, even if you're level a 50 farming level 10s for a badge. I got 2 last night Kiling Skulz in Perez). The devs have seeded the market with salvage so that you don't have to go broke to craft something yourself.

 

As an aside, even Incarnate progression is MUCH easier. The second you get your alpha slot, threads and shards will drop from any enemy you'd receive rewards from. And you get enough Empy merits to craft VR components every 3 levels (this does drop off, but by the time it does, you probably have all your incarnate stuff at T4). Ends up leaving you with a lot of surplus.

 

The result, which I believe was intended, was to make progression while soloing easier, and ungate ALL THE THINGS, and to do away with the corporate MMO publisher philosophy of making people want to stick around longer to keep paying money. These are all good ideas, especially for a private server.

 

However, there seems to be just a shred of overkill here. There isn't much of an economy when there's no demand because people can just make things themselves after an afternoon of playing. I've watched as Rare enhancements have dropped from 10Mil to 3 Mil, which is maybe where they should be, but it's not very incentivizing to people who want to make a profit. Heck, you're lucky if you can sell a common IO for more than you crafted it. Also, have fun making any money on salvage now that a price ceiling has been established. You want to move some product, you gotta undersell the other thousand people trying to sell the same thing, which fewer people are buying because thanks to how easy and accessible all this is, a lot of people already have their builds all set. Heck, there's even a TASK FORCE that guarantees a purple drop if it's your first time doing it!

 

Strange thing, though. One of the big draws to this new system is converting uncommons to rares, and yet the uncommon recipe market is floored. A lot of them have 0 bids, and were only going for 100 inf at last sale. Guess people just want the enhancements to convert and be saved a step.

 

Now, maybe this is self-correcting. If no one wants to take the time to craft and sell things, demand might eventually even out as more people level up their alts and want enhancements NOW instead of doing several task forces. But as of right now, there's a glut of a lot of things (except Purples, which at 100 Merits isn't quite worth the only 20 Million inf you'd get for them. Especially seeing as merits convert from inf at a rate of 1 million to 1), so it's totally a buyer's market. And it's a young one; the server's only been up for about a month. We should give it time before making any adjustments to the flow of resources and rewards.

 

OP wants to nerf Mothership raid rewards as an answer to all this. While there is economical reasoning behind it, I also get a feeling of "Everyone is doing X, we should stop them from doing X because no one else is doing the other 25 letters of the alphabet!" as we've seen with AE, DFB and DiB. Though, there are other alternatives to just making VMerits useless. Perhaps cap the amount you can earn in 1 raid to 500. That's still a rare recipe for your trouble, or you have to go at it again for the purple, instead of earning a purple AND a rare's worth in a single raid. Or heck, instead of 1 merit per bad guy, change the ratios: Minions have a 25% chance of dropping one, LTs have a 50% chance, Bosses and EBs have a 75% chance. Yu'kon automatically drops 20 on defeat. This would reduce the intake rate by a fair amount without introducing caps or making VMerits worthless. There's probably other solutions, as well.

 

There's also the fact that's it's kinda impossible to partake in a raid without crashing a few times, so that right there is a detriment to both doing it and decreases the amount of merits you take in.

 

SO in general, while I do agree that the impact of MSRs on the market should be softened at some point, I also think we need to wait and see before doing anything too rash.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Strange thing, though. One of the big draws to this new system is converting uncommons to rares, and yet the uncommon recipe market is floored. A lot of them have 0 bids, and were only going for 100 inf at last sale. Guess people just want the enhancements to convert and be saved a step.

The thing is not all uncommon enhancements are created equal. Some uncommon enhancements are more reliable for converting to rares than others. For example check the prices of multi-strike recipes. Last time I checked those were int he 500K-1million range because they are reasonably easy to re-roll into Obliterations.

 

So in general uncommons can be grouped into three categories. The first is ones like Multi-Strike which can be rolled into a specific, valuable rare. The second is ones like Rope A Dope which is guaranteed to roll into a rare but that rare then has to be re-rolled into other rares to get something of value. The third is ones like Calibrated Accuracy which aren't guaranteed to roll into a rare and if they do it's a low value rare.

 

Uncommon recipes in the first category are selling well because it's relatively easy and profitable to buy them and convert. Recipes in the second category are selling ok, you can make a profit on them but it uses more converters, requires more clicking and is less reliable so fewer people are willing to do it. Recipes in the third category are still basically vendor trash since they require even more converters to get something good so they aren't really worth it.

[Solvernia]

get your raids in while you can, lads

[Rylas]

Heck, there's even a TASK FORCE that guarantees a purple drop if it's your first time doing it!

 

Which TF is that? ...asking for a friend.

 

SO in general, while I do agree that the impact of MSRs on the market should be softened at some point, I also think we need to wait and see before doing anything too rash.

 

A prudent approach. My selfish side agrees, because this will greatly slow down my build progress since I don't play as much as I used to. My non-selfish side sees good reason to wait and see how things balance out first, and then adjust as needed. Like you said, it's a young market. Not only that, it's a much smaller player base than the days of live. I was expecting much higher prices on the market due to a lower supply force, the changes you listed really helped with keeping things more affordable.

 

I'm not entirely convinced we "needed" to nerf VM conversion rates. As dynamic as the market can be, and how creative people can get for making influence, I'd prefer to see some more empirical data driving the decision. It'll be interesting to see how the market changes after this. I half expect Purples to start jumping up.

[Shinobu]

Heck, there's even a TASK FORCE that guarantees a purple drop if it's your first time doing it!

 

Which TF is that? ...asking for a friend.

 

That would be the Market Crash TF, level 40+, starts in Kallisti Wharf.  Well, and all of it is in Kallisti Wharf.  And yes, on your first time ever doing it, you should get a purple recipe as a reward.

 

 

 

 

 

[GlacialGadgeteer]

FULL DISCLOSURE: This was way more long-winded than I intended it to be. I nuked my entire lunch break writing this out and have to get back to work, so there's been no proof-reading. Please bear in mind I am not meaning to attack anyone or anyone's ideas with this post. It was more or less an exercise in thinking (typing?) out loud and seeing where it went. There's a TL;DR at the end. I apologize in advance.

 

• 
  in Homecoming there is no longer any problems with player count as there were on SCORE. But the reward ratios stay the same. So what has happened now is that this is by far the largest amount of Merit per minute in the game, by a factor of 10. (seriously. 120-160 Reward Merits per raid (40minutes) is an insane ratio).
   
  This cheapens other content and makes it less desirable to run. Why run a TF when you can get triple the merits in 1/3rd the time?
  

   
  Questioning the Premise of the Issue
   
  Some other hyperbolic questions:
  
  • Why run any content aside from DFB until level 25?
    
  • Why forgo XP boosters when you can level to 50 twice as fast?
    
  • Why roll a character that isn't Spines/Fire Brute if you can be a super fast unkillable farming machine?
    

   

  Assumptions I believe are flawed:

  [*]Players are nearly exclusively running optimal content.

  [*]Players are nearly exclusively using merits for enhancement re-rolls.

  [*]The merit rate in the assumption is maximized - very high end of merit accrual with minimal run time/no setup time.

  [*]The normalized merit accrual rate is entirely balanced.

   

  Talkin' 'bout Them Assumptions

   

  1. The playerbase will always eventually find the optimal content, so this change is what we refer to as "moving the cheese." The cheese will always be found again. For incarnate materials, it's Tin Mage and Apex. They run too fast for incarnate materials! When is that nerf coming? This is a private server with other quality of life improvements. Along those lines, I've viewed this merit ratio as a quality of life option there for the people who want to run it.

   

  I understand the rate discrepancy is wide, but this is the same of all "quality of life" avenues:

  • XP boosters "cheapen" all content prior to 50+incarnate content.
    
  • P2W Vet Reward powers "cheapen" the value of travel powers.
    
  • Enhancement re-rolls "cheapen" the value of all non-optimal enhancements.
    
  • Invention enhancement sets "cheapen" the value of Hamidon enhancements.
    
  • All AoE damage powers "cheapen" the value of sleep powers.
    
  • Burst damage powers "cheapen" the value of general control.
    

  (Cheapen is a weird sounding word now. Also, I grant that RMS was likely not intended to be a QoL avenue for merit accrual.)

   

  In each of those cases, what do players value and why do they value it? What is the motivation for merit farming? Is merit farming a roadblock or a nice-to-have? I think it can be both.

   

  2. The merit enhancement re-roll mini-game... I've seen the recent posts about people using re-rollers to gain on the market. I think it's great that the option exists. I think it's even better that more players can know about it, but, getting anecdotal, the 5-6 people I regularly play with don't frequent forums, subreddits, or discords for tutorials/strategies. In some cases, they are new to the game. In more cases, they were never meta-obsessed in the original live server run. That's not to say they don't want to reach end-game, but they are likely to do so with as little market knowledge as possible outside of what things cost at the merit vendor and what the last few sold-for prices are at Wentworth's. How high should the barrier of entry for end-game enhancements be and/or what types of cost should they incur (in-game currencies, wiki-knowledge, community involvement)?

   

  3. More anecdotes! I see people quote raid times of 30-40 minutes, I've personally never seen one complete that quickly, especially taking into account setup time. I've also never gotten nearly 1600 Vmerits running one either - usually more like 800 with the understanding it's possible to get more. I'm personally winding up with about 100 merits per hour. That's still really good compared to other avenues of merit accrual, but is it an inherently problematic rate?

   

  4. I think it's a little weird no one is questioning whether the normalized rate of merit dispersal is good. I see it phrased in terms of purples per hour, but what is the negative effect of having that be higher in a game where most folks have a main, but also have more alts than they would in other MMOs they'd like to play and see "capped" one day? I think part of the question here should be "How much time should be mandatory to "finish" a character build?

   

  Great... Now I Have Questions...

   

  [*]

  • What do players value and why do they value it?
    
  • What is the motivation for merit farming?
    
  • Is merit farming a roadblock or a nice-to-have?

  [*]How high should the barrier of entry for end-game enhancements be and/or what types of cost should they incur (in-game currencies, wiki-knowledge, community involvement, market manipulation)?

  [*]Is 100-150 merits/hr an inherently problematic rate?

  [*]How much time should it take to "finish" a character build?

   

  Thinkin' 'bout Them New Questions

   

  A lot of these are tied into each other.

   

  [*]

  • If "most" players are only interested in running the content that gives them the most merits, there are a few possible reasons.
    
  • Most player interest is not contingent on the breadth or depth of content.
    
  • Most player interest lies somewhere beyond anything which requires merits to obtain (Late-game content? "Finished" characters?)

  [*]It could be that merit farming is a roadblock. I personally enjoy experiencing content at least once, but if given the option to run 10 unique TF 1x each plus 1 mindless thing 30x VS run 10 unique TF 11x (all per character I want to play), I will take the first option every time. It also begs the question of why I have to run that hard to finish a single aspect of a single character (I'm looking at you, 14 years of anniversary badges that cost 100 merits each!) In both cases, there is significant repetition to fully slot my hero/villain out, but in one of these cases, it just shifts the farming onto a single area and saves me time.

  [*]Merit rate is usually expressed in terms of merits/time spent, but it is ultimately time spent/rewards gained by cashing in those merits. At a rate of 30 merits per hour (which I think is the intended normalized rate, feel free to correct me here), getting all the anniversary badges takes 6 days of play time, still having to repeat a large portion of content, just over a potentially wider range of content which may very well lock out all the enhancements and powers a player has worked toward gaining in the first place. 100-150 merits/hr is definitely the relative fire hose here, but what about ways to make other content more rewarding? Something more along the lines of the Weekly Strikes system. Maybe an initial merit boost for any first-time (character lifetime? weekly? monthly?) completion of a merit-rewarding event.

  [*]Heck, I dunno on this one. I've got a bunch of characters I love and want to trick out eventually. I hate the idea of spending 6 days of in-game time farming merits for anniversary badges, but my brain is probably sick enough that I'll do it at some point. I'm not the player who min-maxes the in-game market/plays enhancement rolling, but also not too casual to not be reading these forums. All my incarnate on my main are T2/T3 from staying up until 2am most weeknights and devoting basically an entire day every weekend to playing. I still don't have my character fully slotted. I'll tough it out on my main for nostalgia. Do I wish I had the time and patience to do it on 10 more characters? 1,000%. Will I be able to achieve that and maintain my work and home life? Not by a longshot. I'm not an unemployed student anymore (thankfully)!

   

  No kind of farming is fun forever, even when it's running a five different TFs 3+ times each to slot out one power on one character. Nerfing even an unintended merit fast track guarantees the most exploitative players and players who have run the game hardest so far both maintain a wealth gap and allows the wealth gap to matter. The real calculation should be based on what merit/time spent should be required for the most average of players to "finish" character builds with a few (I think) safe assumptions: 1.) players aren't expected or required to keep coming back month after month as if the game is dependent on a subscription model and 2.) most players honestly love playing the game enough that they want to push more different and unique characters to their limits than in any other MMO. The replayability of the game just by rolling a new character in CoH is one of the game's greatest strengths.

   

  TL;DR

   

  Buff merits across all non-RMS content! Provide incentive to run all content at least once per character! Keep in mind all forms of farming time is potentially multiplied per character a person wants to play. Re-balance merit/reward/time invested to better fit the timeframe a player should be expected to invest in a single character to "complete" it (e.g. three times the number of hours of unique content)!

[Rylas]

FULL DISCLOSURE: This was way more long-winded than I intended it to be. I nuked my entire lunch break writing this out and have to get back to work, so there's been no proof-reading. Please bear in mind I am not meaning to attack anyone or anyone's ideas with this post. It was more or less an exercise in thinking (typing?) out loud and seeing where it went.

 

Whoa whoa whoa, we don't need none of your rationale thinking and pointing out of argument fallacies!

 

+1 on some well reasoned alternative suggestions.

[Rylas]

Heck, there's even a TASK FORCE that guarantees a purple drop if it's your first time doing it!

 

Which TF is that? ...asking for a friend.

 

That would be the Market Crash TF, level 40+, starts in Kallisti Wharf.  Well, and all of it is in Kallisti Wharf.  And yes, on your first time ever doing it, you should get a purple recipe as a reward.

 

Thanks for the tip!