Reinstate 2x influence at 50

[FullEclipse]

As a casual player I no longer have anyway to afford the 100+Million influence purple sets.  I play casually so I am not a farmer by any stretch of the imagination.  If I cannot make the money to afford the best IOs in the game then I cannot fully enjoy the game and its end game content, task forces etc.  I knew that once I hit 50 I could switch off xp and gain double influence in all the missions I did, there was at least a light at the end of the tunnel and one day I would be able to afford those high end IOs.  I knew there were farmers stock piling influence and quite frankly I didnt care. The market still seems the same today as it was back then.  I as a casual player was thinking of making a farmer and spending a couple hours here and there raising the funds for the rest of my toons.  I have what 1000 character slots for this game and now no way to see them reach the pinnacle of their performance.  I don't have the time or desire to spend months and months and months trying to get a toon IO'ed out once he hits 50.  I say let the farmers farm if that is how they want to play the game. The market seems no better or worse to be honest.  Please give me back the light at the end of the tunnel reinstate double xp at 50.

[Troo]

No.. no no no no

 

Let me get this right: You don't want to put in the work but you want all the toys?

 

The following statement is completely untroo: "If I cannot make the money to afford the best IOs in the game then I cannot fully enjoy the game and its end game content, task forces etc."

 

Correct statements:

• A level 50 using only single origin enhancements can unlock their Alpha slot and participate in all the content.
• Leveling through game play to 50 provides enough rewards ($$, recipes, reward merits, etc.) to get many Invention Origin sets.
• It took me months to get my first character to 50.

[Coyotedancer]

In before someone comes along and tells you to "Learn to play the Market"... 

 

Although that's not actually a bad suggestion, mind...

It may not be any fun for most of us to sit around playing "City of Wentworths", but marketeering actually is the most effective way to make money in the game.  It's far and away more lucrative than farming, even before the nerf. 

[FullEclipse]

Participating and enjoying are two very different things.  Leveling through the game does not provide enough influence or IOs enhancements or even recipes which I then have to pay to make.  It takes me months to level a character and after all that work there is still how many months to make the billion dollars that is needed to make what I would consider the strongest build for my character,  This is a superhero game,  isn't the point to be the best, superhero you can be.  I have been playing this game since it came out in what 2004? I have leveled so many characters and it was always nice to know I could just make a lot more money at any time if I wanted to by flipping a switch.  It is at 50 that you can really start to look at all the IO options available to make your character the best is can be.  I don't have the time to play all weekend as I once was able to, I work and have responsibilities in real life,  I would like to see progress each time I play, whether that see gaining levels or making my bank account grow,  if it becomes a constant drag to spend weeks/months making almost no influence, sadly I lose interest.  

[FullEclipse]

1 minute ago, Coyotedancer said:

In before someone comes along and tells you to "Learn to play the Market"... 

 

Although that's not actually a bad suggestion, mind...

It may not be any fun for most of us to sit around playing "City of Wentworths", but marketeering actually is the most effective way to make money in the game.  It's far and away more lucrative than farming, even before the nerf. 

I am not a stock broker that just isn't how I want to spend my time in game. I shouldn't have to become a stock broker to make money neither should I have to farm either to be honest.  At least if I am farming I am beating the tar out of bad guys and feel super heroish.  It was a nice reward at 50 to just be able to focus on influence and specking out the final build.

[Peacemoon]

16 minutes ago, FullEclipse said:

As a casual player I no longer have anyway to afford the 100+Million influence purple sets.  I play casually so I am not a farmer by any stretch of the imagination.  If I cannot make the money to afford the best IOs in the game then I cannot fully enjoy the game and its end game content, task forces etc.  I knew that once I hit 50 I could switch off xp and gain double influence in all the missions I did, there was at least a light at the end of the tunnel and one day I would be able to afford those high end IOs.  I knew there were farmers stock piling influence and quite frankly I didnt care. The market still seems the same today as it was back then.  I as a casual player was thinking of making a farmer and spending a couple hours here and there raising the funds for the rest of my toons.  I have what 1000 character slots for this game and now no way to see them reach the pinnacle of their performance.  I don't have the time or desire to spend months and months and months trying to get a toon IO'ed out once he hits 50.  I say let the farmers farm if that is how they want to play the game. The market seems no better or worse to be honest.  Please give me back the light at the end of the tunnel reinstate double xp at 50.

As a casual player, do you need to afford 100+ million purple sets? 
 

You claim you cannot make the money to afford the purple sets because you’re not a farmer. I have purple sets and I’m not a farmer. Just play the game and you get lots of influence. You also don’t need to be a farmer to get epic drops - and any epic drops you get you can convert to ones you want. 
 

You can easily enjoy the game, missions and task forces without having epic sets.

 

What makes you think others being able to farm at double influence will make epic enhancements cheaper for you? You get

more influence, but you’ll need more to buy the epics.

 

If you want to make a farmer character then you don’t need double influence to make it possible. 
 

You don’t have the time or desire to fully IO out a character everytime they hit 50? There is an easy answer for you then... don’t! (And it doesn’t take months and months).

 

If you need help getting influence, seek help, rather than trying to reverse this change. It ain’t gonna happen.

[FullEclipse]

3 minutes ago, Peacemoon said:

As a casual player, do you need to afford 100+ million purple sets? 
 

You claim you cannot make the money to afford the purple sets because you’re not a farmer. I have purple sets and I’m not a farmer. Just play the game and you get lots of influence. You also don’t need to be a farmer to get epic drops - and any epic drops you get you can convert to ones you want. 
 

You can easily enjoy the game, missions and task forces without having epic sets.

 

What makes you think others being able to farm at double influence will make epic enhancements cheaper for you? You get

more influence, but you’ll need more to buy the epics.

 

If you want to make a farmer character then you don’t need double influence to make it possible. 
 

You don’t have the time or desire to fully IO out a character everytime they hit 50? There is an easy answer for you then... don’t! (And it doesn’t take months and months).

 

If you need help getting influence, seek help, rather than trying to reverse this change. It ain’t gonna happen.

So because I'm a casual player I cant want the best the game has to offer?  I am not saying to roll back the change for farmers, I am saying roll it back for the casual player like me, why cant I have the option to make more money faster at 50 so that I can afford the purple sets faster, the faster I make money the faster I can afford the IO's I want/need.  I remember when HAMI IOS were a billion a piece now what are they? 25k a piece?  The Market will be the Market.  I just always liked the ability to double my influence when I hit 50 and didn't need xp as much.  I do have the desire to IO out every single one of my fifties until I spend days running missions and TFs to see that I haven't earned nearly enough to afford a single purple.  I do not enjoy grinding away day after day for no ROI.

[Gulbasaur]

1 hour ago, FullEclipse said:

As a casual player I no longer have anyway to afford the 100+Million influence purple sets.

You don't need them. Really, you don't. My "can literally tank anything despite not being a tanking archetype" main has maybe two purple enhancements? Unless you are going for a build that sacrifices everything for recharge... you really don't need them. 

 

I get that it's a little bit annoying, but honestly it's less of an impact than you think it is. Unless you plan to solo incarnate trials and raids, a run-of-the-mill endgame build is already a bit overpowered for 95% of the content out there. 

[Troo]

23 minutes ago, FullEclipse said:

This is a superhero game,  isn't the point to be the best, superhero you can be.

Not all super heroes can be the best. Much less the best they can be. Flaws are present throughout the genre.

 

26 minutes ago, FullEclipse said:

It is at 50 that you can really start to look at all the IO options available

Again, this simply isn't troo.

FullEclipse, you've played a bunch, you know this not to be the case. A super reflexes character can softcap well before 50 just as many can get high resists. Many of the best unique IOs are available early in the game.

 

I don't want to slam FullEclipse. I get wanting to be casual. I'm just saying the expectations should match the level of effort we put in.

If we were buds in game I might just hand you a purple set. (I would not do that if I thought you'd never be around again, that would just be a waste)

 

FYI - as a casual gamer you totally need that XP after 50 to get your incarnates going.

[Greycat]

All you need to do is play the game. You will get inf. And yes, purple sets will drop.

 

Will it take longer? Yes. Will you get them eventually? Yes.

 

There are also other options. You can, at 50, use merits. You can buy the recipies - looking at the AH right now, at about half the price (And the price is *far* cheaper than it was on live.)  You can check the prices of the VRs, buy the ones going for less (or even cheaper, buy the recipies for the ones going for less) and convert them to what you want. Heck, if you're running content, you're getting merits. Might not be "the most efficient" but you can get them that way.

 

These are not out of reach for someone casually playing.

[Dazl]

I tried to argue this point that casual players like yourself would be the most adversary effected and couldn't believe that that play style was creating unsustainable amounts of inf that would break the economy. Sure disable the inf boost in AE, but leave normal game play alone. Alas everyone is entrenched and it's not likely going to change.

 

I would suggest you consider working to get more merits instead. Hami raids, TF's, story arcs and such. With merits you can get those purple sets pretty fast. I never buy purple sets myself, I always use my merits to get them. I just can't bring myself to spend 20+ million inf on anything in the game, even though I have plenty of inf.   

[Luminara]

10 minutes ago, FullEclipse said:

I am not saying to roll back the change for farmers, I am saying roll it back for the casual player like me

There are no flags for "farmer" and "casual".  The game has no way to discern the difference between the two.  So turning it on for anyone means turning it on for everyone.  That's not going to happen.  And the HC team has better things to do with their time than to waste it recoding the engine to add an "impatient snowflake" setting.

 

Play the market, or use merits, or farm for drops to sell, or save inf*.  Those are the available options.  Pick one and get on it.

[Oubliette_Red]

I'm still trying to reconcile "casual player" and "purple sets".

 

🤔

[ArchVileTerror]

I feel terrified getting drawn in to this thread, because I know how vitriolic people get on this subject . . . but I'm somewhat on the side of FullEclipse here, and I think it sucks that there has to be "sides" on this . . . 

 

The game NEEDS a reward overhaul; the Homecoming Team even acknowledged this numerous times!  Frankly though, I feel that should have happened BEFORE the removal of Double Inf at 50, which was originally a feature added to the game to motivate and encourage players to play with lower-level characters by Exemplar'ing/Malefactoring.  The Double Inf was extended as an option to any time you chose to play without Experience Gain, which I firmly believe was the right design decision.  Obviously, not all design decisions from the original Legacy development are sacrosanct, but I am aghast at how out-of-touch changes like this feel to the players who were just playing the game as they had grown used to -for years.-

In-game rewards are motivators for playing.  Yes, they're meaningless in the grand scheme of reality, but they provide a touchstone for players to feel like what they're doing in the game has purpose.  

 

FullEclipse isn't wrong to be upset by feeling left out due to this change.  It was the Homecoming Team pulling the rug out from under the feet of players like this.  The Devs' motivation may have been to improve the health of the player-market economy, but that is literally changing PvE to benefit PvP.  Because that's what the player-market is:  PvP.  

 

Of all the changes the Homecoming Team has done, I feel this one was handled the most poorly.  And it feels bad.

[SuperDan]

4 minutes ago, ArchVileTerror said:

I feel terrified getting drawn in to this thread, because I know how vitriolic people get on this subject . . . but I'm somewhat on the side of FullEclipse here, and I think it sucks that there has to be "sides" on this . . . 

 

The game NEEDS a reward overhaul; the Homecoming Team even acknowledged this numerous times!  Frankly though, I feel that should have happened BEFORE the removal of Double Inf at 50, which was originally a feature added to the game to motivate and encourage players to play with lower-level characters by Exemplar'ing/Malefactoring.  The Double Inf was extended as an option to any time you chose to play without Experience Gain, which I firmly believe was the right design decision.  Obviously, not all design decisions from the original Legacy development are sacrosanct, but I am aghast at how out-of-touch changes like this feel to the players who were just playing the game as they had grown used to -for years.-

In-game rewards are motivators for playing.  Yes, they're meaningless in the grand scheme of reality, but they provide a touchstone for players to feel like what they're doing in the game has purpose.  

 

FullEclipse isn't wrong to be upset by feeling left out due to this change.  It was the Homecoming Team pulling the rug out from under the feet of players like this.  The Devs' motivation may have been to improve the health of the player-market economy, but that is literally changing PvE to benefit PvP.  Because that's what the player-market is:  PvP.  

 

Of all the changes the Homecoming Team has done, I feel this one was handled the most poorly.  And it feels bad.

Don't feel terrified...because you're not the only dissenter. You make some excellent points.

City of Task Forces.

[Rathulfr]

It's not that hard to make money in this game: there are numerous forum posts that explain it quite well.  The easiest is simply picking up zone badges for Merits and then buying Converters with those merits and selling those on the AH.  One hardly needs to be a Gordon Gecko Master of the Universe marketeer to do that.

 

As someone who has a baker's dozen of level 50 characters, less than half of them are fully equipped with IO sets, and only a third of them have "purples" of any kind.  I've never spent more than 20M Inf on any given Enhancement, and only then because it was unavoidable at the time I wanted to equip that particular character.  I've never had more than 500M Inf at any one time (and only for that one specific character): I usually average about 150M Inf total across all servers/characters.

 

All of those characters were equipped by simply playing the game, playing the market, or AE farming with a Spines/Fire Brute with Common IOs (not sets!) at +2x8 or +3x8.  It was only last month (after a year) that I decided to equip my farmer with IO sets, and I did that without any ATOs, Winter Sets, or purples. 

 

I think I spent a total of 200M Inf on that build, and now I can run fire farms at +4x8.  Doing so I make about 30M Inf for completing all 5 Comic Con missions in about 30 minutes.  That's 30M Inf cash only, before I sell any Salvage, Recipes, or Enhancements on the AH, which usually doubles that amount.  This is post-nerf earnings, not pre-nerf.

 

I only run my AE fire farmer when I need to either (a) level an alt to 27 to equip level 30 common IOs, or (b) generate cash for the few IO set procs that are common to all builds (Miracle +Recovery, Numina's +Regen, Steadfast +Def, etc.).  That means I don't farm all that often, because it is boring.  But an hour or two a few times a month is usually enough to equip my alts sufficiently.  That's actually far less tedium than I've endured in other MMOs to get good gear.

 

[nihilii]

Homecoming is probably about x20 influence when it comes to purples compared to old Live servers due to the defacto price caps with merit <-> inf, boosted merits, easier incarnates and general power creep. Complaints like OP feel rather arbitrary: you're focusing on the x2 inf because it's blatant and obvious, but essentially you're complaining this server is only running x20 influence instead of x40 influence.

Purples used to be something a large part of the playerbase couldn't afford for one character. Let alone their full roster. Now we've got people complaining they can't fully IO out 1000 characters slots on 2 hours a week playtime while purposefully refusing to use several of the most lucrative venues.

[Rathulfr]

1 minute ago, nihilii said:

Homecoming is probably about x20 influence when it comes to purples compared to old Live servers due to the defacto price caps with merit <-> inf, boosted merits, easier incarnates and general power creep. Complaints like OP feel rather arbitrary: you're focusing on the x2 inf because it's blatant and obvious, but essentially you're complaining this server is only running x20 influence instead of x40 influence.

Purples used to be something a large part of the playerbase couldn't afford for one character. Let alone their full roster. Now we've got people complaining they can't fully IO out 1000 characters slots on 2 hours a week playtime while purposefully refusing to use several of the most lucrative venues.

QFT: on Retail, I had exactly one (1) character with complete IO sets at shutdown, because IO sets were so ridiculously overpriced it was simply unaffordable/unattainable to do otherwise.  The fact that I have four (4) fully-equipped characters at 50+3 today astonishes me.

[GastlyGibus]

I'm not going to be picking sides on the issue of disabling double INF, as quite frankly, it doesn't affect me either way. I, too, am a pretty casual player. I've also got bad altitis and like 30+ characters that I juggle between on a daily basis. But I will say two things.

Number one, my level 50 Defender now has four purple sets. Gravitational Anchor, Unbreakable Restraint, Ragnarok, and Apocalypse. I did not spend a single penny on any of those enhancements. Merits can be used to buy purple IO's, and you'd be surprised at how quickly merits can pile up by just running a task force or two every so often. Hell, at level 50, most people do Apex and Tin Mage back to back, which altogether rarely takes more than an hour, and nets you 80 merits alone. Join task forces. Do a single mothership raid. Do a Hami raid if your shard has them (which most do to my knowledge) and you'll be able to afford those very rare IO's pretty easily with merits.

Not to mention you can also do incarnate trials at 50, which give you both Astral and Empyrean merits, which can both be converted into regular reward merits at not-insignificant transfer rates. With merits in this game, it is completely possible to fully kit out your character without spending any INF at all. Does it take more time? Yeah, a little, but if you're short on money (like I am, a lot of times) it's not unfeasible by any stretch of the imagination.

Number two, as others have pointed out, IO sets are by no means required to enjoy this game. At all. Are they better than regular SO's? Of course, but the entire game was pretty much balanced around SO's, and there's literally no content out there where you'll be booted from the group because your stats aren't "good enough" to participate, unlike several MMO's I know that I shall not name.

 

I have two level 50's. My defender which I already mentioned, and the one I've spent more time on kitting out, and my Night Widow, which I have spent considerably less time enhancing. My Night Widow is still slotted out with 80% SO's, and has maybe one whole entire IO set to her name, and she still plays perfectly fine and does some insane damage. 

It really does sound to me like you want all of the reward with none of the effort. IO sets are supposed to be difficult to collect, because they make your character obscenely powerful if utilized correctly. You do not need them. They are an entirely optional path for you to take if you really want to push your character above and beyond, but they are by no means essential, and you can still play perfectly fine without them.

Edited May 25, 2020 by GastlyGibus
Added some more advice.

[Generator]

You get double Influence at 50, so does everyone else. They therefore have more influence to throw at purples.

 

The 100m set you've been lustily eyeing now costs 200m.

 

You are effectively no closer to your goal.

[Peacemoon]

My level 28 has done no TFs and has 593 Reward Merits.

 

If I wanted to I could save them till 50 and buy an entire set of epics. I have no idea why people find this so difficult, or rush to 50 and then complain they can’t instantly afford everything they want.

[Troo]

Alternately, just win one of them costume contests. may-23rd-contest

 

The single best overall costume won: 

• 3 permanent costume powers
• A permanent golden title: Anniversary Costume Contest Winner
• 1000 reward merits

[SwitchFade]

I'm sorry, I cannot support this.

 

Hard no vote.

[Sovera]

This reminds me of conversations had on WoW where the casual player wants purple gear. Why? To do their dailies?

 

Why does a casual player *need* purples? Purples are usually terrible and only obtained to min max recharge. There are other sets and much cheaper that deliver half the recharge and still good enough.

 

Do a Tinpex every day and you'll earn 20 mill worth in merits plus incarnate salvage. Do an Hami and it increases to about 50 mill. Do the Abyss Hami and it goes up to 70-80 mill. With those alone (and you can do them on multiple characters) you'll be fully geared in two weeks.

[Generator]

28 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Do an Hami and it increases to about 50 mill. Do the Abyss Hami and it goes up to 70-80 mill.

I'm not disputing that but could you break down where the money comes from there?  Also, why does the Abyss one have a higher yield?

 

Thanks.