When will the game be rebalanced around IOs? Never, and here's why.

[cranebump]

23 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 I'm not calling anyone stupid.  Except possibly *scans crowd slowly, points finger emphatically* YOU!]

 HOW did you spot me? I was in the gd back row!:-)

[iBot]

19 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

Dark Melee: Smite allows for the following enhancements: Accuracy, Damage, Recharge, Taunt, To-Hit Debuff, and Endurance Reduction. Thing is there are ways which are seriously poor ways to slot the power which most people simply are never going to do--all recharge, all taunt, some combination of endurance reduction and to-hit debuff, etc. If those bad combinations take up bonus you are forced to take a substandard collection of enhancements to get some given bonus. If only certain combinations get you bonuses then you're constraining the range of builds you were otherwise claiming would be a broadening. 

 

By spreading out commonly sought benefits as the currently used IO system does (there being a Acc/Dam/Rchg enhancer with lower than normal values but which will sum with other enhancer's like values) you give greater flexibility.

The example I gave was just a general thought in the direction I think it could have taken.  I've not sat down and fully thought out all the permutations of such a system so I'm sure there are plenty of places where careful thought would have to be given to make sure that the required slotting is something that is actually useful rather than gimping a power for no reason other than to gain +5 rech or whatever the bonus.  My only point really was that the IO system as implemented was a miss in terms of making it a continuation of the existing origin system rather than a wholesale replacement that then needs a content polish pass since it completely unbalanced the original content.

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

I think it’s pretty ludicrous to suggest that it’s unreasonable for the game to have a *small* (read: doesn’t have to affect you) amount of content with a *base* difficulty (read: not special settings) that requires a little bit of gear investment to comfortably complete. But you guys are ridiculously adamant so ofc these are merely thoughts and I have definitely given up on manifesting them into reality.

The game already has a "small" amount of content with a "base" difficulty.

 

We're ridiculously adamant about what?

 

About the fact that the developers are already in the process of proliferating the Challenge Mode across the game so that they'll be a "large" amount of content with a "base" difficulty? Isn't that what you want?

 

What people are adamant about is that we don't want the entire game nerfed because people who complain "game too easy, bruh" are too lazy to use the difficulty settings that are already in game (buffed enemies, no temp powers, enforced by the game and awarding badges), and too think-headed to understand the words "the devs are solving this problem by adding a Challenge Mode into the whole game."

 

Higher difficulty setting being added to the game, bruh! It's called Challenge Mode! You're getting what you want! Why are you complaining?!? Why am I yelling?!?

[TheZag]

I always get a laugh when people ask and ask for more challenge and then find a mission they cant solo at max difficulty and request it be made easier.  Theres at least 12 easier settings dude 🤪

 

I think more of the existing game will be balanced around IOs but never all of the game.  Specifically the ASF difficulty settings being applied to existing TFs and SFs.  I dont expect it any time soon but i imagine it is on 'the list'.  

 

 

 

[arcane]

35 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

The game already has a "small" amount of content with a "base" difficulty.

 

We're ridiculously adamant about what?

 

About the fact that the developers are already in the process of proliferating the Challenge Mode across the game so that they'll be a "large" amount of content with a "base" difficulty? Isn't that what you want?

 

What people are adamant about is that we don't want the entire game nerfed because people who complain "game too easy, bruh" are too lazy to use the difficulty settings that are already in game (buffed enemies, no temp powers, enforced by the game and awarding badges), and too think-headed to understand the words "the devs are solving this problem by adding a Challenge Mode into the whole game."

 

Higher difficulty setting being added to the game, bruh! It's called Challenge Mode! You're getting what you want! Why are you complaining?!? Why am I yelling?!?

You didn’t accurately represent what I said, but I’m not in the mood to argue anyway.

 

That being said, it would be nice if you didn’t feel the need to shout down discussion about the current state of the game over some change projected in the distant future. It took them like a whole year to release one hard piece of content. There’s no real guarantee I’ll live to see this grand full proliferation you keep yelling about or that the game will survive for as many years as that will take.

 

Maybe take another look at my post  and how I mentioned these are just my thoughts towards game balance and attitudes on this forum. Maybe don’t take everything as an active threat to your experience.

Edited February 1, 2022 by arcane

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 minute ago, arcane said:

You didn’t accurately represent what I said, but I’m not in the mood to argue anyway.

So I asked you a question "We're ridiculously adamant about what?", and your response is "You didn't accurately represent what I said." The way your post was worded I honestly didn't understand what you said! Hence the part where I asked you what you're talking about.

 

7 minutes ago, arcane said:

That being said, it would be nice if you didn’t feel the need to shout down discussion about the current state of the game over some change projected in the distant future. It took them like a whole year to release one hard piece of content. There’s no real guarantee I’ll live to see this grand full proliferation you keep yelling about or that the game will survive for as many years as that will take.

Ok, let me explain how I see this. I'm driving to McDonalds. My phone rings. My friend says "Hey, McDonalds is having this sale you should go there right now." I reply "I'm driving there now." Then another friend calls and says the same thing. And then another, and then another, and then I finally lose my temper and say "Hey! I'm about to pull into the McDonald's parking lot now!"

 

Now, was that fair to him? Did he know that 17 other people had already called me and said the same thing? Of course not. But you can at least see why I'm irritated.

 

That's how I see this. People keep posting "game too easy, bruh" threads, and people keep responding "the devs are already working on it!" But, because that isn't good enough the OP then goes on with a bunch of other stuff that the devs should do instead and how their idea is much better, etc, etc, etc.

 

Telling people that the devs are working on it isn't "shouting them down", anymore than telling people that I'm already driving to McDonalds is. It's letting them know of the reality of the situation.

[Redletter]

6 hours ago, arcane said:

I think it’s pretty ludicrous to suggest that it’s unreasonable for the game to have a *small* (read: doesn’t have to affect you) amount of content with a *base* difficulty (read: not special settings) that requires a little bit of gear investment to comfortably complete. But you guys are ridiculously adamant so ofc these are merely thoughts and I have definitely given up on manifesting them into reality.

 

Behold... my   P O W E R!

Hgnnn...

Hngaaaa!

Yaaaaaaah!

SHAAAAAAAAAH!

GYAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!

AHHHHHHHH!!!

 

At long last. Difficulty... I've unlocked the power... to tweak the base difficulty! And with this power...

 

 

I can experience, at long last, a challenge! Beyond the feeble machinations of the filthy casuals! They'll never understand... What        T R U E  P O W E R is like! The FOOLS!!

 

 

At long last... the euphoria...

Edited February 1, 2022 by Redletter

[Redletter]

3 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Ok, let me explain how I see this. I'm driving to McDonalds. My phone rings. My friend says "Hey, McDonalds is having this sale you should go there right now." I reply "I'm driving there now." Then another friend calls and says the same thing. And then another, and then another, and then I finally lose my temper and say "Hey! I'm about to pull into the McDonald's parking lot now!"

 

Now I want McDonalds....

[arcane]

22 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

So I asked you a question "We're ridiculously adamant about what?", and your response is "You didn't accurately represent what I said." The way your post was worded I honestly didn't understand what you said! Hence the part where I asked you what you're talking about.

 

Ok, let me explain how I see this. I'm driving to McDonalds. My phone rings. My friend says "Hey, McDonalds is having this sale you should go there right now." I reply "I'm driving there now." Then another friend calls and says the same thing. And then another, and then another, and then I finally lose my temper and say "Hey! I'm about to pull into the McDonald's parking lot now!"

 

Now, was that fair to him? Did he know that 17 other people had already called me and said the same thing? Of course not. But you can at least see why I'm irritated.

 

That's how I see this. People keep posting "game too easy, bruh" threads, and people keep responding "the devs are already working on it!" But, because that isn't good enough the OP then goes on with a bunch of other stuff that the devs should do instead and how their idea is much better, etc, etc, etc.

 

Telling people that the devs are working on it isn't "shouting them down", anymore than telling people that I'm already driving to McDonalds is. It's letting them know of the reality of the situation.

I don’t eat McDonald’s any more, thanks. You’re the one that literally acknowledged yelling one post ago.

 

I don’t need this. Peace out brother

Edited February 1, 2022 by arcane

[ironjoe]

Challenge Mode is going out to more content.

 

Until then:
Run an ASF on Relentless.

Run a Magisterium Really Hard Way which got much harder after Banished Pantheon were 'fixed'.

Run some of the "Master of X" badge runs which are much more difficult with the latest changes.

 

I play with some very different groups at times. One group loves the pain of ASF Relentless, while another was crying at me on it over Malicious. Challenge Mode proliferation will expand the challenge you want while still making most of the game playable by some of the more casual players.

[Aurora_Girl]

It is a truism of retail and basically any service industry or customer facing position:

 

No matter how big you make the signs, people will still walk face-first into the door. 

[Bionic_Flea]

On 1/30/2022 at 11:49 AM, Luminara said:

When the Invention system was released in Issue 9 (May 1, 2007), there was a lot of excitement for what it represented.  Inventions allowed players to sidestep Enhancement Diversification (which had been implemented 18 months earlier), added the potential for significantly greater flexibility in designing and playing characters, and suggested a much more interesting development direction in regard to content.  Many people expected the next several Issues to include content aimed at, using and requiring IOs.  Issue after Issue came and went, and the anticipated IO-dependent content never arrived, which left a lot of people scratching their heads and expressing disappointment and discontent.  There we were with all these great new things, and nothing to test our limits.

 

The question is why that content was never created.  To answer that, we have to go further back, to Issue 6.

 

Issue 6, coinciding with the release of City of Villains, added supergroup bases, prestige and base salvage.  Prestige was a new currency, one which, at that time, was earned mutually exclusively with inf*.  You could earn one or the other, not both (later changed due to the unpopularity of the prestige system, bases... and the fact that not earning inf* while leveling meant not replacing out-leveled enhancements).  For veteran MMORPG players, even in those early-ish years, the advent of a new currency implied newer and harder content.  Adding a new currency with each content update was a common approach in MMORPGs, a method of preventing players from blitzing the new content by purchasing all of the new gear with their old currency, which they'd had months to accumulate.  So the addition of prestige represented, from the players' perspective, a wave of newer and harder content... which, like IO-dependent content, never materialized (the Cathedral of Pain trial wasn't any more difficult than other trials and *Fs).  And that raises yet another question - what was the point of prestige, if it was never intended to be used as a gate to newer and harder content?

If you were around in those days, you'll recall one of the developers mentioning that they were always working two or three Issues ahead.  By the time an Issue went live, Cryptic was in the planning and implementation stages of future Issues.  You'll also remember that it wasn't uncommon for features to be pushed back one or more Issues.  And this tells us the real purpose of prestige.

 

By the time Issue 6 went live, players had been accumulating influence (infamy didn't exist until Issue 6 and the simultaneous release of CoV) for 18 months.  And there just wasn't much to do with it.  Enhancements and inspirations were the only things which could be purchased at that time, and at level 50, players weren't buying more SOs, they were switching to HOs, which could only be acquired through Hamidon raids and direct trades with other players.  Nor were they wasting influence on first tier inspirations, and if they did buy those, they were so inexpensive that it would've taken years of endless clicking to burn enough influence to be broke.  There was, literally, nothing to do with influence beyond funding alts and giving it away.  This meant there was a shocking amount of influence, hundreds of trillions, being banked and hoarded by players, just waiting to be flooded into any economy created to utilize that influence.  This was likely recognized even before Issue 1 was released, but it wasn't until Issue 6 that the first efforts were made to address the problematic nature of having influence and not having anything to do with it.

 

Prestige was not, in fact, a gate currency.  It was an attempt to liquidate and destroy the enormous influence stockpile which was lurking in the shadows, waiting to be unleashed.  In requiring players to forego earning inf* (now applicable because it applied to both heroes and villains), and to spend 1,000,000 inf* to purchase 2000 prestige, Cryptic hoped to reduce the total unspent influence to a manageable level.  We know this by reference to their workflow and design methodology, always looking a few Issues ahead.  When Issue 6 was published, they were already at some point of work on Issue 9, the Inventions and player market Issue.  They may have even intended to go live with those features before Issue 9, as it's not uncommon for content to be pushed back to later releases, not even for large development teams.

 

What Cryptic wanted was for the massive influence backlog to be whittled down, so there wouldn't be a class division when Inventions and the player market went live.  They made two critical errors in judgement, though.

 

First, they set base costs for the desired effect, the draining and destruction of influence, rather than at an attractive point which would have encouraged the majority of players to participate in that aspect of the game, and coupled with the total loss of inf* income when earning prestige, and the destruction of base objects in base raids in addition to the overwhelming rents, the result was far too little inf* being converted to prestige, and far too few players earning prestige instead of inf*, to have the desired impact.

 

Second, they failed to make base building and ownership engaging.  The base editor was confusing and counter-intuitive.  Bases were too limited in how they could be designed even when players figured out how to use the editor, and the expense made experimentation a risk that turned many away.  And most players didn't want the complicated, finicky system they were offered, they wanted something simple and straight-forward.  They wanted a cave, a chateau, a trauma ward with doctors and nurses wandering around, a forest, an underwater complex... having to try to build these things themselves left them frustrated, disappointed and turned off by the whole thing, not to mention short on inf*, which, as noted above, they needed to upgrade their SOs.

 

Consequently, when Issue 9 finally went live, that horrifying surplus of unspent influence was still present, and it was even more disastrous than Cryptic had anticipated.  Co*'s player-driven economy, newly introduced and still sparkling with promise, immediately went into a state of hyperinflation.  It happened so quickly and with such ferocity that it dwarfed the inflation of the German mark in the 1920's or the Hungarian pengő in the 1940's.  Those who had stored up vast amounts of influence were able to immediately dominate the market.  Those with excess sums of inf* simply dumped it on the market to acquire what they wanted immediately, setting a bar for pricing, and those with desirable items noted that pricing and listed them accordingly.  Where a list/sale price discrepancy existed, what was referred to as a niche, other players moved in and owned entire supplies of items, buying at any price to control that niche and relying on long-term sales within the controlled niche to net profits.  

 

The end result of this was a complete disenfranchisement of new players.  Those who didn't have, couldn't have... ever.  Or, at least, not in what players considered a reasonable time frame.  Not less than six to twelve months of endless repetitive grinding after hitting 50, in a game coming from a development team which stated that their goal was to make a game in which players could log in, play for an hour and log out feeling like they'd made progress. The entire Invention set system was essentially walled off from new players by the mass of influence dumped onto the market in its first weeks.  The wall was expanded considerably when very rare (purple) sets were added, and it was firmly reinforced by players manipulating the market to build their own wealth (observation, not accusation, unbunch your knickers).  Coupled with low drop rates to counter farming, and even lower drop rates on the most desirable items, anyone who didn't start the game with several hundred million inf*, or discover an untapped niche in marketeering, was effectively restricted to SOs.

 

By the time Paragon took over management of the game, only six months later, there was nothing they could do to pull everything back on course for IO-dependent content.  The damage was done.  They did make an effort, with merits, but like prestige, merits were too heavily gated and items purchased with merits were too expensive for the comparative work put in to earn them (in Paragon's case, this was a short-sighted effort to increase long-term player retention, though equalizing IO set availability would probably have had a stronger effect on long-term retention), and they failed to bridge the gap between "I ain't got no inf*" new players and "I wipe my butt with 1,000,000 inf* bills" old hands.  They tried again with converters and catalysts, but, again, gated by micro-transactions and, at that point, new players weren't bothering when there were easier ways to get what they wanted in other games, and for less cashy-money.

 

In the end, they had no choice but to abandon any plans of IO-dependent content that they might've imagined, and stay on the "SOs are the baseline" course.  Every power they designed, every critter they created, every story arc and mission they envisioned, had to remain consistent with the expectation that players would only have SOs at their disposal, because the gulf between those who could afford IO sets and those who couldn't was as vast as the Atlantic Ocean.

 

We're playing a different game today.  The HC team implemented numerous counter-inflation tactics, the most important of which was making merits the "gold standard" and inf* "gold certificates", which, in concert with merits being easily obtained and widely available now, ensures that even first day players can immediately start kitting out their characters with IO sets.  But we still have 24 Issues, more than 8 years, of legacy content which can't be revised or restructured around IO sets as the baseline, not with the size of the HC team and time available to them.  Future content can be designed around the expectation that players are using IO sets, and the new super-uber-LOLSO difficulty modes are evidence that the HC team is interested in doing that, but the foundation of the game is too large and expansive to retrofit into that design model.

 

Could Paragon have used some of the same approaches that the HC team did?  Probably, and they likely considered some of them.  Salvage seeding would've eased the constriction on that supply, but salvage without recipes is of little use or value, and it was the tightly controlled supply of recipes and crafted IOs by players which determined who could use IOs and who couldn't, and nothing short of a complete reboot of the market, combined with a global inf* wipe, would've had any effect.  They stuck to the belief that long-term retention could only be accomplished through forcing players to grind, either for drops, or for the inf* or merits to buy what they needed/wanted, and the drop rates would've remained consistent.  Ultimately, even a complete reset would've only temporarily stabilized the market.  Inflation would set in as soon as a few players accumulated enough inf* to dominate a niche, then another bout of hyperinflation would've followed, because Paragon wouldn't decouple the grind from the market.

 

Here's some more food for thought: the Incarnate system was intended to smooth out the discrepancies between IO-heavy builds and strictly SO builds so they could, finally, develop more difficult content.  Going beyond 50, in some manner, was always a given with any post-50 content they created, but taking everyone there was far more important, and the only way they could do that was to create a comparable system which didn't require seven to fifteen times the inf* cap to get there.  They had to devise a solution which would include as much of the population as possible, not content which would only be accessible to the wealthy, immensely patient or incredibly lucky, and not another SO-only bore-fest which left the IO crowd feeling underwhelmed.  Thus, Incarnate abilities, which simulate the effects of having IO sets and procs, without the market dependency.

My take:

1. You have entirely too much time.
2. I disagree that you either had inf at the beginning or were locked out.  One lucky drop could finance a entire character, as long as you didn't use purples and PvPIOs.  Beyond that it was not hard to make decent inf either flipping (buy the same item for a little and sell for a mark-up), arbitrating (buying cheap junk and selling to vendors), or, my preferred method, buying recipes and salvage then selling the crafted item.
3. You forgot the chapter on Gagora and all those other inf selling industries.
4. I think you make several very good points.  But you are making definitive statements of the devs' intentions.  Are you making assumptions or do you have inside knowledge?
5. If they thought that incarnates were a bridge between IO-based vs SO-based characters they were high.  Yes, incarnates can provide anyone with great power, but it does nothing to close the gap -- the IO-based character started from a much higher base and went into the stratosphere where the SO-based builds couldn't go.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Bionic_Flea

[Glacier Peak]

56 minutes ago, Aurora_Girl said:

It is a truism of retail and basically any service industry or customer facing position:

 

No matter how big you make the signs, people will still walk face-first into the door. 

Damn I was hoping for a hyperlinked video attached to your underlined bolded text. Something like:

 

 

[Aurora_Girl]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

My take:

1. You have entirely too much time.
2. I disagree that you either had inf at the beginning or were locked out.  One lucky drop could finance a entire character, as long as you didn't use purples and PvPIOs.  Beyond that it was not hard to make decent inf either flipping (buy the same item for a little and sell for a mark-up), arbitrating (buying cheap junk and selling to vendors), or, my preferred method, buying recipes and salvage then selling the crafted item.
3. You forgot the chapter on Gagora and all those other inf selling industries.
4. I think you make several very good points.  But you are making definitive statements of the devs' intentions.  Are you making assumptions or do you have inside knowledge?
5. If they thought that incarnates were a bridge between IO-based vs SO-based characters they were high.  Yes, incarnates can provide anyone with great power, but it does nothing to close the gap -- the IO-based character started from a much higher base and went into the stratosphere where the SO-based builds couldn't go.

 

If Lumi's got inside info I think we're in good shape. 

[GM Tempest]

If you feel you need more of a challenge, be a Mercs MM like me!

/sob

[TheOtherTed]

On 1/31/2022 at 12:06 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

[HOPEFULLY UNNECESSARY DISCLAIMER:  I'm not calling anyone stupid.  Except possibly *scans crowd slowly, points finger emphatically* YOU!]

 

(...ignore everything after the 38s mark - couldn't find a shorter clip)

[Luminara]

13 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

You have entirely too much time.

 

I'm dinging the big 5 0 in a few months, I'm running out of time.

 

13 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I disagree that you either had inf at the beginning or were locked out.  One lucky drop could finance a entire character, as long as you didn't use purples and PvPIOs.

 

I already addressed that.  But to dig a little further into that, the lucky drops which would fund an entire build, recipes like LotG +Recharge, Crushing Impact, Decimation, Red Fortune, Karma, or Steadfast Protection, yes, those would pay for a (very, very modest) build with common IOs and IO sets, but you'd be using Sleep sets, and Immobilize sets, and Slow sets, frankenslotting and making do more often than not.  The cheap shit, primarily uncommons or rares which offered no desirable bonuses which justified flipping, and that was if you could afford the salvage.

 

At level 25, common IOs have values close enough to SOs to be considered an even swap, but the common IOs most needed and wanted, like Accuracy IOs, had the downside of having a higher salvage cost than expected, making even those difficult to justify or benefit from for the average player.  And drop rates were atrocious on everything.  LotG +Recharge recipes and Steadfast Protection +3% Def (All) recipes didn't rain from the heavens.  Luck Charms, a common magic salvage item, weren't lying around, waiting to be collected.  Getting that lucky drop to pay for an entire IO build wasn't assured, by any stretch of the imagination, and what you did get, and could afford to craft, typically resulted in having a wildly varying collection of IO levels, not always in complete sets, leading to wildly varying degrees of efficiency and total collapse of the build when you exemplared.

 

Luck isn't a progression plan, it's the last, desperate hope of success when plans have failed.

 

14 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Beyond that it was not hard to make decent inf either flipping (buy the same item for a little and sell for a mark-up), arbitrating (buying cheap junk and selling to vendors), or, my preferred method, buying recipes and salvage then selling the crafted item.

 

Buying and crafting is an investment, investment costs, and if you don't have start-up capital, you can't invest, so the foundation of this idea is still dependent on luck.  That precluded the vast majority of players.  Players who were lucky enough to get that one drop of sufficient value to begin marketeering were still playing the long game, relying on incremental profits and small margins to gradually build wealth over a long period of time.

 

Market niches?  Limited.  There were tens of thousands of players logging in every day, but there weren't tens of thousands of niches.  Most players were already locked out of niches by controlling interests, and niches never opened up again in a way which would permit new players to move in.  If a niche controller quit, the next one, who already had billions of inf*, moved right in before you could sneeze.  Flipping could not be argued, in any way, to be a strategy for new players.  It wasn't even a strategy for most existing players, because of the inherent limitation of a set number of items.  There just weren't enough recipes/salvage in the entire game to give every player a niche.  That lack of niches to go around also precluded the use of flipping by new players, in the event of a population increase.  If you only have enough niches for 10,000 players, it doesn't matter if your player base is 150,000 or 1,000,000, you're still leaving the majority of players without niches.

 

Market arbitration could be reliable, but with common salvage priced at 100x the vendor value, and even "trash" recipes priced higher than vendor value, it was an extremely long-term approach.  Put in lowball bids and wait (and wait, and wait, and wait) until someone dumped salvage or recipes at a low enough price for your bid to fill, and make your piddling amount inf*.  Rinse, repeat ad nauseum, and eventually, you'd make sufficient profits to amount to something tangible.

 

You're also forgetting that we were restricted to 22 market slots (at level 40, fewer slots at lower levels), which strictly limited the number of bids on "cheap junk" unless we spread our bids across multiple alts.  In addition to limiting access to niches, bids and sales, that market slot restriction also imposed a purchasing/selling power contradiction, because the "best" level for drops was 25.  At level 25, you had a chance to acquire LotG +Recharge recipes (which sold for around 125,000,000 inf* at that level, the highest value non-PvP, non-purple recipe), could still pick up Karmas and Steadfast Protections as drops (not as expensive as LotG, but still damn spendy), could still acquire Luck Charms (25k minimum sale price)... this created a disparity between when it was best to freeze a character's XP and remain perpetually at a set level while grinding, and when best practice marketeering could be accomplished, due to that restriction on market slots.  E-mailing to oneself wasn't an option until Issue 17 (far too late to address the economic situation), and even when it became possible, it was limited to 20 emails and they had a 60 day time limit (at which point the e-mail was automatically deleted, so too bad, so sad if you lost 20 valuable items/amounts of inf* you'd mailed to an alt to hold and didn't remove in time).  So engaging in high level marketeering before Issue 17 required a second account to transfer goods/inf* to alts, and after Issue 17, when it became "easier", was still time-consuming enough to qualify as a full-time job.

 

These weren't solutions for new players.  With niches filled, arbitration and crafting being slow, they weren't solutions for most experienced players.  That was what I meant when I said, "immensely patient or incredibly lucky".  Most of us weren't incredibly lucky, or patient enough to spend hours every day bouncing between alts to juggle items/inf*, flipping, scavenging for crumbs in the form of "underpriced" salvage and recipes, crafting and listing, scouring the market for opportunities and collecting tiny amounts of inf* which only felt like an accumulation of wealth after months of toil.  That wasn't the game we paid a $15/month fee to play, it damn sure wasn't going to be the game new recruits would pay to play.

 

15 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

You forgot the chapter on Gagora and all those other inf selling industries.

 

Both Cryptic and Paragon were efficient in dealing with gold sellers.  Not 100% successful, but enough to prevent them from seriously impacting the market.  They were irrelevant in the long run.

 

16 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I think you make several very good points.  But you are making definitive statements of the devs' intentions.  Are you making assumptions or do you have inside knowledge?

 

I've had no contact with any Cryptic or Paragon developers since Issue 19.5.  My conclusions are based on an extrapolation of the design philosophy and process specific to this game, comments made by developers on the original forums, comprehension of mathematics, game mechanics and economic principles (nowhere near what can be attributed to other members of this community, but i'm not completely uneducated) and knowledge of the game's history.  And copious amounts of caffeine and nicotine, but I swear, those are the only substances of which I partake.  Pinky swear.

 

16 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

If they thought that incarnates were a bridge between IO-based vs SO-based characters they were high.

 

Short term, not a bridge.  A leveler.  A new baseline from which they could proceed with future development plans.  Incarnates would have allowed them to be completely certain that players entering new content would meet specific minimum requirements.  Yes, the difference between an IOed Incarnate and an SOed Incarnate would still have been significant, but the Incarnate system would have accomplished the goal of assuring that the SOed Incarnates were performing at the expected level for the difficulty they envisioned.  The IOed Incarnate would have been more powerful than the SOed Incarnate, but with the Incarnate foundation in place, they could begin addressing the power difference in future updates.  It would have bought them the time they needed to implement a more thorough and lasting solution to the haves versus have-nots problem created by hyperinflation, without resorting to the solution other MMORPGs tended to use (gear treadmill).  Bear in mind that the first iteration of the Incarnate system wasn't even completed when the game shut down, and Positron stated in AMAs that future development would have included more tiers of Incarnates, comparable to the max level bumps used by other MMORPGs, without the actual level bump.

 

As each tier of Incarnates was added, the difference between SO builds and IO builds would have diminished, because the increasing levels of power offered by Incarnate abilities would be cumulative, but provide the SO builds with greater advantages since they weren't soft-capped on Defense, they weren't rocking massive amounts of global +Recharge, they weren't playing at the Damage cap at all times.  Your build with 200% global +Recharge and someone else's SO-only build with 0% global +Recharge perform very differently... but +Recharge is capped, and when the SO-only player begins accumulating global +Recharge from Incarnate abilities, even though you can also benefit, the SO-only player benefits more (because of the way the recharge reduction formula works, you adding another 30% +Recharge to your maxed-out build isn't as pronounced in effect as it is in the build with less global +Recharge.  you might shave 0.2s off of your favorite power's recharge time, whereas the other player might shave 2.3s off of an identical power in an SO build) and isn't bumping into that cap as quickly as you are, so has more headroom to use those click powers like Ageless.  Consequently, after a few Incarnate tiers, you're no longer a god compared to the SO-only player, you're merely slightly more powerful.  You might have a few extra tools and tricks compared to that SO-only build, but if you're both at or near the Recharge cap, the Damage cap, the Accuracy cap, et cetera, your IO build is only offering you more flexibility in how you approach and accomplish the content's directives, not more gross power.

 

Long-term, the gap would have been all but bridged, and at the very least, made irrelevant.  All we have now is the first round of Incarnates, which make a notable difference in play when comparing IO builds against SO builds, but, again, that was just the first round.  There was more coming.  And when that goal had been achieved, the hyperinflated economy would've been comparatively less pressing, something they could address gradually and without disruption.  Carried to its full extent, the Incarnate system would've alleviated the problem of IO builds versus SO builds by bringing everyone into the same boat, side-stepped the economic instability and permitted development of more complex and challenging content without kicking players in the groin by expecting them to dump billions and billions of inf* into the market to progress.  The game now, with 5% of the Incarnate system implemented, doesn't reflect that, but it would have if Paragon hadn't been shut down.

[Bionic_Flea]

Lumi, I love you but, you are overstating the difficulty of making influence in the game.  Like here, although to a lesser extent, all you had to do was play your 50s and sell your drops.  Of course, we didn't have converters for most of the time on live and those allow you to spin gold from straw.  But back then you could still vendor the straw and some straw still sold for a few million.

 

When inventions came out, I had more than enough infamy to supply my characters with SOs.  I then started slowly converting some old and most of my new alts to generic IOs.  I didn't start with sets because of the costs, but because I had no real sense of sets and bonuses and so forth.  And then I was introduced to a forefather of Mids (Lil Pips' Hero Builder, maybe) and was finally able to learn and think of builds as a whole.  I made an IO set build for a dark/regen scrapper that I wanted to PvP with.  It was terrible by today's standards but it was much better than either the SO or generic IO build.

 

I then started rebuilding my namesake, Bionic Flea an Inv/SS tank, and started slotting set IOs on new characters as I leveled them.  I found that many of the IOs that were terribly expensive were magnitudes cheaper as recipes and started buying stacks of 10 of whatever I wanted.  Then slot one, save two, sell seven.   If they were expensive, that meant that a lot of people wanted them for lots of builds.  And indeed, people paid me much more than the offer price just to BUY-IT-NAO as the cool kids said.  I was a billionaire within the year of my starting that buy/slot/store/sell strategy.  It may have been only a few months but honestly it's all a blur. 

 

Same thing here.  We all started at zero anew.  It wasn't long (a few months maybe) until I had a billion, then several, and now I have somewhere between 30-50 billion.  I stopped keeping track because I have more than enough.  I also stopped aggressively marketing, although I do still craft/convert/sell my drops and occasionally craft or convert things I bought on /AH months ago.  I know that many people have just as much and some have 100s or perhaps 1000s more than me.  And yet I still meet players every day that tell me they can't afford to spend a few million to buy an IO.  And that's just not people who started playing this week. 

 

It was the same in the live game.  Anyone can and could make INF if they took a little time to learn and a minimum amount of effort to do it.

[Bill Z Bubba]

5 hours ago, Luminara said:

I'm dinging the big 5 0 in a few months, I'm running out of time.

 

Same here. Which explains to me WHY I don't remember how my mains were fully tricked out back before the snap. I wasn't in a big SG. I never had alts tucked away with 2B inf laying around. I think I hit it once on BZB. I never played the market. I can only assume what wealth I had came from the same sources as now: killin shit and sellin everything for next to nuthin.

[golstat2003]

On 2/1/2022 at 1:39 PM, arcane said:

You didn’t accurately represent what I said, but I’m not in the mood to argue anyway.

 

That being said, it would be nice if you didn’t feel the need to shout down discussion about the current state of the game over some change projected in the distant future. It took them like a whole year to release one hard piece of content. There’s no real guarantee I’ll live to see this grand full proliferation you keep yelling about or that the game will survive for as many years as that will take.

 

Maybe take another look at my post  and how I mentioned these are just my thoughts towards game balance and attitudes on this forum. Maybe don’t take everything as an active threat to your experience.

Yeah and your suggestion wouldn’t be realistic either and would not give the most bang for the buck in terms of development hours. What the devs are doing is creating a system that can be used over and over again to create more content like the one many folks like you want.

 

To me that is a more realistic and better use of dev time. Especially with the way they are going about it. To each there own I guess.

[Tahliah]

On 1/30/2022 at 1:57 PM, Solarverse said:

So my question is, where do we stand today? Are we finally at the point where we can start creating content that is strictly for players who have kitted out builds? Or do we continue with the idea that no content shall be made that doesn't include SO only builds? Personally I feel we are beyond ready, especially with all the farming going on in this game. It takes nothing to build yourself a farmer and support your own IO's. I buy IOs from the market with the cash my farmer makes, and then dump anything worth of value back in to the market so that players who enjoy crafting can use those Recipes to keep the market filled. Often if I delete a character that has been kitted out, I dump all of those IO's back in to the market at base price, pretty much, the highest bidder gets them regardless of what that high bid is, essentially selling something worth 2 million to somebody who only had to pay 750K to buy. I don't play the market, I do my part in keeping the market prices low by selling at first cheap. Having said all that, I would like to think that we are far ready for IO difficulty content post level 50.

 

Wow, I read the OP and then this, and I have to say that it all kind of "clicked" for me (not the market/game economy part, that's right over my head).  One of the things that I have struggled to understand is the ability to change the level/number of baddies.  It's supposed to make things more challenging, but it really doesn't on tricked out alts.  It just makes it take longer, which is not fun or hard and gets boring very quickly (on the other side, if you are on a "real" lvl 8, doing Posi at 4/8 is just stupid (IMO, YMMV).

 

There really should be content specific not just to incarnates but to kitted out builds up to and including the incarnate level.  I've seen incarnates (heck, I've run incarnates) that have minimal sets/procs/etc., and they do just as well as kitted out toons.  There should be content for elite/super/expensive/tricked out/uber/whatever we call it builds.  That would be the challenge that just adding more minions or upping the level +4 does not accomplish but may have tried to but cannot while still making it doable by those slotted solely with SOs.  If a toon can manage whatever diff on an SO-only alt, then it's obviously going to be a (quite boring) walk in the park for a kitted out alt.

 

Personally, I don't trick out all my alts, not even most of them.   Exactly one of them at this point, actually.  But I would love to have content to run that is designed for kitted out alts.  Honestly, I would be more inclined to kit more out if that were the case (possibly helping the market in some way I don't get?)!  As is, there doesn't seem much point in making an "uber" alt that is never going to be genuinely challenged.

 

But . .  . I can hear people wailing that no content should "require" a super build.  Sigh. 

 

 

Edited February 3, 2022 by Tahliah
typos

[Tahliah]

On 1/31/2022 at 1:17 AM, Greycat said:

After all, what exactly defines a "kitted out" build? Do you require perma-everything? Recharge times on everything under five seconds? Everything purple?

 

This is an excellent question and provides food for thought.  Off the top of my head, a kitted out build would require at least four sets to five (a lot of people don't get all six).  This would necessarily exclude the Numi/Miracle/PS/LOTG/etc. procs most people get unless they are used in tandem with at least four others from that set in that power.   Of course that would hurt frankenslotters, so that may not be a good measure (I do frankslot on my main, but only on a few powers, but I imagine that there are frankenslotters who do it on most if not all powers).

 

Back to the drawing board.

 

What about scaling diff for these "kitted out" missions not on SOs but on standard IOs, not sets?  It's not ideal, but it would make things a bit better in terms of challenge and fun.

 

Or to keep the original idea, how about a requirement of all IO's, including both standard and sets, but with X percentage being composed of two or more set pieces?  /just tossing out ideas here

[Tahliah]

On 1/31/2022 at 5:38 AM, Solarverse said:

As far as what constitutes as a kitted out build, that is completely up to the player, there is no definition of kitted out. Kitted out simply means, you have IO'ed out your character and perhaps unlocked your 50 +1. How they kit them out is totally up to them, there is no set standard.

 

I agree that "kitted out" is personal, but if we are talking about content for kitted out characters, there has to be some baseline for the devs to go by in creating such content, no?

[Tahliah]

On 1/31/2022 at 11:06 AM, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

As James Carville would say, "It's the economy, stupid!"

 

But the issue I see is that the haves v. the have-nots now are those with the knowledge and/or inclination to min-max v. others.  Yet development continues (mainly, the new difficulty ratings are a welcome exception) on new, more powerful options rather on ways to educate.  As I would say, "It's power creep, stupid!"

 

[HOPEFULLY UNNECESSARY DISCLAIMER:  I'm not calling anyone stupid.  Except possibly *scans crowd slowly, points finger emphatically* YOU!]

 

I don't dislike power creep for the simple reason that I don't bother to provide 99.9% of my characters with a decent (i.e. well-slotted with sets, procs, etc.); therefore, I don't experience power creep at all. 😛

 

But I do like having one alt that I feel fantastic running, a super hero with super powers that makes me super happy.  Is she over-powered?  Not to me, she's not.  She's the exact power level that I poured hours and hours scouring set bonuses and untold amount of influence and merits (and thankless slogging to get both) to build.  She is a labor of love, but she didn't roll off the showroom floor that way. 

 

I would love some tricked out only content to run her in.  Heck, she may totally suck, but I can't know that given our current options.  She's better than a DO'd toon, but then so are pretty much all of my alts sporting IO's, so that's not really saying much.

[Sovera]

On 2/1/2022 at 7:10 PM, Redletter said:

 

Behold... my   P O W E R!

Hgnnn...

Hngaaaa!

Yaaaaaaah!

SHAAAAAAAAAH!

GYAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!

AHHHHHHHH!!!

 

At long last. Difficulty... I've unlocked the power... to tweak the base difficulty! And with this power...

 

 

I can experience, at long last, a challenge! Beyond the feeble machinations of the filthy casuals! They'll never understand... What        T R U E  P O W E R is like! The FOOLS!!

 

 

At long last... the euphoria...

 

 

More please.