Focused Feedback: Reward Merits

[kingsmidgens]

Just like with the originally proposed AE changes, why even bother?

It's been 3 years.  People have exchanged their merits, made their money, etc.

Add new currencies - Aether particles are good - don't change existing rewards.

This really only impacts newer players and non-farmers.

Here's why, IMO, it's not even a big deal to be able to earn Emps from AE and also break them down:
It's a small portion of what you generate during the process of leveling up.
It decreases over time.
It's capped at level 99 and effectively softcapped by the time you're earning 5 per 3 levels - you really aren't getting much value at that point.

Farmers would have to make new characters fairly regularly in order to cash in on this, the 99 cap is already limiting - and people have thousands of vet levels on a single character, so this is obviously not a concern for farmers.

--

I will say that I feel like the system is incredibly generous, and has been.  The server just sort of came up and there wasn't much of a discussion period: Here's how things are.  This is probably why the server is so popular.  Changing it now will just slow growth at best or even cause players to quit.

Add inf sinks, more stuff on P2W would help, add new currency, but leave existing rewards alone.

[golstat2003]

4 hours ago, Stormwalker said:

 

I don't consider a straight conversion of Reward Merits to inf with one intermediary step (converters) to be actual effort or "playing the market".  Buying a stack of converters and listing them on the AH takes literally seconds.

 

When I talk about "playing the market", I mean activities that require actually doing market research, which I don't hace the patience to do.

Errr selling the converters is the worst way to make inf with them. That is not at all the way to make the most inf.

[Andreah]

I find it mildly humorous that people who are so against selling things on the auction are so willing to buy things on the auction. And often (even if not in this case) seem upset that prices are too high.

[Stormwalker]

34 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

Errr selling the converters is the worst way to make inf with them. That is not at all the way to make the most inf.

 

Yes, I said that myself, if you go back and read my posts.  I explicitly said that if someone is willing to put actual effort into it, they can make lots more money than I do by actually USING the converters.  My point was that even with minimal effort (i.e. just buying converters with Reward Merits and then selling them), any casual player can make a whole lot of inf.  

 

Or rather, that was the intermediate point on the way to my actual point, which was that the possibility of someone crashing the market by AFK farming thousands of Emp merits, converting them, and flooding the market with items bought with Reward Merits is a Bad Thing for nearly everyone.

Edited July 25, 2022 by Stormwalker

[SeraphimKensai]

Converting Astral/Emp to reward merits to convert to converters or IOs to sell on AH. Hmmm if people doing this is a problem, here's a solution....

Seeing as we already seed salvage, just seed IO's, converters, boosters, catalysts, etc right on the AH. 

 

That would reasonably establish... market stability across the game, and single handedly would kill price inflation like popping aim buildup and using total focus/bone smasher.

 

Yes it's not perfect, the three marketeers would be disrupted, but it would also address another concern should the player base continue to shrink....there would still be IOs to slot your toons with.

[lemming]

Actual feedback:  If we're staying away from Emp->Reward conversion, the initial reward merit structure works for me.

Probably once this is worked out, other arcs that give Emps that currently don't give reward merits should have that option as well.

 

On Cooldowns:

I'm indifferent, but one can just cycle thru characters and get plenty of merits that way, so easily worked around.  Though I have a builtin cooldown since I rarely like repeating content that often...

[Seed22]

Converters, even flipping IO’s, doesn’t net as large a return as I’m looking for. Least not as consistently 

Edited July 25, 2022 by Seed22

[Dazl]

Well done devs. This is a very good solution to an ongoing problem with AE. One simple change that will have a big impact. 01

[Myrmidon]

14 hours ago, Seed22 said:

Converters, even flipping IO’s, doesn’t net as large a return as I’m looking for. Least not as consistently 

I cannot help this one. He is too old. Yes, too old to complete the training.

 

 

 

 

The flip game is the fastest way to earn influence and there are more than a couple of guides in these very forums showing how to do that. Getting rid of the Empyrean-Merit conversion won’t change that.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Myrmidon

[tidge]

1 hour ago, Myrmidon said:

I cannot help this one. He is too old. Yes, too old to complete the training.

 

For my ally is the Auction House, and a powerful ally it is.

[Ukase]

I can't believe I missed this topic. (until now) 

So, I have to step out of this and look at it from a different perspective. Personally, I do not see how the current emp to reward merit conversion is hurting anyone. 

If I put 2 and 2 together and maybe I get 4, maybe I get 22. I'm just not sure what our HC devs are after. 

It seems to be they do not want the afk farmer to recycle their brutes every 24-48 vet levels and use those emps to get reward merits to then get converters or boosters, or whatever it is they get with them. That seems to be what they want to prevent. But who knows? Our HC devs seem to want to keep this something to discuss rather than just state it. 

So what are the negative impacts from a farmer using emp merits to get reward merits? Is it because it's easy for them to do and other than the build, doesn't require much effort? What is it they want from the afk farmer? To stop using the server resources? All they have to do is say so, and set a policy of "no afk-farming if the server load is greater than 250" or some arbitrary figure. 

I don't think they need to discourage play by folks who use those emp merits that they get from running content that's outside of farms. 

I do think that the afk farmer that is in the habit of recycling their character (for those that don't know, I do this. On my farm account, I will level a farmer to vet level 48, because at that point, the emps diminish to 10 emps at vet level 51. And another 10 at VL 54. Six vet levels for 20 emps? I can pl another character to 50 and then vet level 3 for 20 emps faster than I can PL for 6 vet levels. So, that's the reason behind recycling them. 

I would often run two accounts, while I played on a third. The two accounts would take the emp merits and convert them to reward merits and then get converters. This allowed me to list IOs for sale more cheaply. Take this away, and you essentially add 70k (for one converter) times 30 (number of converters on average used) to the cost of the better IOs, depending on the RNG. 

I guess I'm not sure why passing on these savings is bad for the game. Maybe the other farmers are upset because they don't want to respec twice after the vet level 48 is reached. Those 280 emp merits, which become 2800 reward merits, which become 8400 converters. Any idea how long it takes to go through 8400 converters? Longer than most want to spend. I usually use half of them on the drops that the farmer got, and the rest are sent to my primary account so they can avoid buying converters. 

If the change goes through, It will save me some time. I won't be farming on the alt accounts. I'll just make marketers out of them, or do nothing with them, except stash more inf in their email. 
But how does this change impact other folks who haven't been as industrious? 
How are they going to cope with having to essentially farm to get the resources they need? Is that what our HC  devs want? They want our casual player to farm more? Because I think that's where this is heading. 
It could be the additional merit rewards for iTrials and such might prevent that, so that's a positive step. I just don't know if it's enough. 

I simply suggest our HC devs state clearly what they're after. Then we can try to intelligently discuss how to get there from here. 


 

[Astralock]

12 minutes ago, Ukase said:

So what are the negative impacts from a farmer using emp merits to get reward merits? Is it because it's easy for them to do and other than the build, doesn't require much effort? What is it they want from the afk farmer? To stop using the server resources? All they have to do is say so, and set a policy of "no afk-farming if the server load is greater than 250" or some arbitrary figure. 

 

 

The issue is that such a policy would be incredibly difficult to enforce for an all volunteer GM team.  The more egregious AFK farmers already violate the Homecoming terms of service.  You can't just go by IP address, as there are a few different ways around it.  in the end, the only way to enforce a "no AFK farming" rule would be to have GMs randomly peek into players' missions.  No, the solution has to be developer coded, which this is an attempt at.  IMO, the prior solution, removing veteran levels from Mission Architect, was the better solution.

[Myrmidon]

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

If the change goes through, It will save me some time. I won't be farming on the alt accounts. I'll just make marketers out of them, or do nothing with them, except stash more inf in their email. 
But how does this change impact other folks who haven't been as industrious?

1. Less farming (particularly AFK exploitation).

 

2. People playing the rest of the game content.

 

3. Metrics to see how much the reward rates in the rest of the game could use a boost (we all know they do, however, those pesky Devs like statistics, metrics and whatever other method of witchcraft makes these things happen).

 

 

Less farming now, better game later. That gets my vote.

[Marbing]

On 7/23/2022 at 2:05 AM, DarknessEternal said:

You need to read more then.  The people who support this change are the rich ones.

Not true. I am incredibly, laughably poor, and overall I think the change is healthy. But to each their own.

[Bionic_Flea]

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

All they have to do is say so, and set a policy of "no afk-farming . . . "

 

I agree with this.  Even if it is hard to enforce, merely stating it as a rule will have an effect.  Some people stay far away from any possible violations, others like to dance right at the line, and a third group doesn't care what the rules are. 

 

Simply instituting and declaring the rule will get the folks in the first two groups to comply.  That should also make it easier to find the ones who don't care what the rules are.

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, Myrmidon said:

Less farming now, better game later. That gets my vote.

I guess what I'm trying to understand is how afk-farmers are stalling this "better game later". How does my afk-farming prevent the game from being better later? I thought I was doing a pretty good job of making the game better right now, by tediously crafting various IOs that the player base must want, because they certainly buy them all in almost an instant. If we all stop doing this, how much will they cost your average player later? More? I would think so. Certainly not less. 

 

And when you say "better", better for who? 

If I have all the resources I need to create and play my next 800 characters, then I don't think more reward merits are going to prod my play in any direction. I will do what I feel like, in that moment, whether it be an iTrial, a speed Kahn or a solo DiB. Or an afk farm outside of AE. But I'm just one guy, and I certainly don't expect decisions made to revolve around me. As much as I might enjoy that, it wouldn't do much good for those who lack the resources I already have. 

I'm just asking, not trying to be rude, nor discount your view - better for who? and how would it be better? 

[Ukase]

4 hours ago, Astralock said:

The issue is that such a policy would be incredibly difficult to enforce for an all volunteer GM team.  The more egregious AFK farmers already violate the Homecoming terms of service.  You can't just go by IP address, as there are a few different ways around it.  in the end, the only way to enforce a "no AFK farming" rule would be to have GMs randomly peek into players' missions.  No, the solution has to be developer coded, which this is an attempt at.  IMO, the prior solution, removing veteran levels from Mission Architect, was the better solution.

I disagree that the policy would be difficult to enforce is the issue. If it were, we would already have an issue with folks violating the 3 accounts per shard at one time rule. As far as I know, we don't have that issue. I mean, it's pretty clear. They catch you once, they warn you. They catch you twice, they ban you.  So, the egregious afk farmers are likely filtered out by now. I have only seen 3 instances of this in the past 3 years. They were reported by me (except one, which was reported by someone else I know, as they pointed it out to me). Haven't seen either of them on since. 

If what you say is true, that this is an attempt to inhibit AFK-farming, why don't they just say so? 

I'm left wondering why it's such a bad thing. Stress on the servers? Sure. But so is active farming. I suspect your random team just doing missions in AE is also a stress, as are the MSRs and the Hami Raids. I can't believe that the stress on the equipment is behind it, because thus far, the servers don't shut down because of too many farmers. They seem to be incredibly stable, except for Excelsior lately. And I imagine those that farm did not move their characters to Excelsior to farm. For me, it's been the opposite. My farmers are on Indomitable. (although I have some farmers on Excelsior, they only do specific tasks, like help a lowbie get vamps and wolves.) 

I wish I could find the post where  Jimmy the GM stated something positive about farmers, but concern about the AFK farmer, but I can't find it to determine what the concern was. I want to say it's about risk vs. reward. Fair enough, I guess. 

I would still appreciate the HC devs sharing the specifics of their reasoning. It's hard to get behind a change just for the sake of change and be left guessing as to why. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

5 hours ago, Ukase said:

[stuff]

So what are the negative impacts from a farmer using emp merits to get reward merits? Is it because it's easy for them to do and other than the build, doesn't require much effort? What is it they want from the afk farmer? To stop using the server resources? All they have to do is say so, and set a policy of "no afk-farming if the server load is greater than 250" or some arbitrary figure. 

[stuff]

I simply suggest our HC devs state clearly what they're after. Then we can try to intelligently discuss how to get there from here. 


 

 

Hey dude!

 

Of course I thought of you when both the first and second iteration of these proposed changes were announced.  But what I'm about to suggest isn't a response to you, directly, so please know I'm not trying in any way to cause offense.  I'm responding mainly to the two un-stuff sections above.

 

I see a lot of "who does it hurt?" arguments in these forums.  And the answer, of course, is "I don't know".  Maybe the team has done a deep dive on /AH data and think there are way too many converters in the system (which I totally think is true, that there are too many, not that they've done a deep data dive).  Maybe one person said, "You know, AFK farming really grinds my gears!"  And I still don't know.  

 

I have all kinds of ideas about what does or does not make a healthy Homecoming experience (mostly from the /AH and economy side) and I share many of them with, well, anyone who will listen.  In fact, these forums are one of my favorite parts of this game!  But I also know that since I am not a decision maker, I'm not going to get too bent if they don't follow my suggestions, even though THEY ARE THE RIGHT SUGGESTIONS!  But there is no doubt that they made a lot of QoL changes, most for the better, that may not be so good for a population of ?10k active accounts?  I'm just guessing on that number but I think it's not a terrible guess.

 

But this isn't a cheerocracy, sadly.  And I understand the HC team may not know what their goals are, or may not know how to articulate them without hundreds of people saying "who does it hurt if...".  I, for one, do not know.

 

So I guess I don't really have a point, other than saying, I really enjoy trying to fix problems, and I've really tried hard to not get bent out of shape that people aren't listening to THE RIGHT SUGGESTIONS!!!

 

Also, I'm considering re-issuing my dance-off challenge to you where we each put up 500bn inf and winner takes all!

[Bionic_Flea]

53 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Of course I thought of you when both the first and second iteration of these proposed changes were announced.

 Devs hate Ukase more than they hate redside . . . .

[Ukase]

48 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Also, I'm considering re-issuing my dance-off challenge to you where we each put up 500bn inf and winner takes all!

You may be too young...but there was a film I saw in my formative years, starring John Wayne. 
Not John Wayne Bobbit - that gent is famous for something entirely different. 

But John Wayne, up until his death was considered to be a man's man, someone to be admired and looked up to. In the list of folks a young boy my age would want to be if he had the ability to morph into someone else, Spider Man, Superman, Thor, Captain Marvel and John Wayne would have made that short list. 

And watching one of his movies, this attractive woman asks him to dance. He says, "I don't dance. I don't trust men who do and I don't trust women who don't." 

Of course, now that I'm older, I'm not so sure what was so brilliant about it, but back then...that got me through Prom without having to dance once, and got me and my date into the back seat of my Dad's Cadillac that much sooner. 

So, uh, no to any kind of dance off. I worked too hard for that 500B to just give it away in such a frivolous fashion. Especially now since the HC devs seem to be conspiring to prevent my earning of such a sum in the future. No, I believe I'll hoard my goods. 

In fact, do you recall when they seeded the salvage? THAT was the point where I realized things could change in a moment with these HC devs! That was the sole motivation behind my building the farmer in the first place! Because I felt like I'd better make the inf while I could, because they could change things in a flash. 

And now that I think of it, with my 1000+ purples stashed in a couple of bases...I wonder what impact this change will have on those purples...fewer afk farms would mean fewer purples...Me thinks it may be time to bid low on certain recipes...

[Ukase]

2 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

 Devs hate Ukase more than they hate redside . . . .

I know you're joking. I'm sure I've irritated a couple of them with my lack of a filter in various posts, but overall, the devs have shown me nothing but kindness and consideration. But, to be fair, they DID turn me into a trash can during a hami raid. They OWE me some kindness. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

7 minutes ago, Ukase said:

So, uh, no to any kind of dance off.

 

 

Boooo! 

 

 

 

[Bionic_Flea]

22 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Ukase: So, uh, no to any kind of dance off.

 

Yomo: Boooo!

It might go something like this:

 

Edited July 26, 2022 by Bionic_Flea

[Mr. Apocalypse]

On 7/23/2022 at 11:11 PM, Myrmidon said:

I’m curious. When the Homecoming team decides to continue making more Incarnate abilities, yet you’ve used all of your Empyrean Merits in conversions to Merits (which can flow like water by simply playing content), what will you do then?  

I'll just earn more. But since there are no current indications that more incarnate abilities are on the horizon, I would prefer them to be able to be converted.

[Ironblade]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

I wish I could find the post where  Jimmy the GM stated something positive about farmers, but concern about the AFK farmer, but I can't find it to determine what the concern was. I want to say it's about risk vs. reward. Fair enough, I guess.

I don't think he would have said something like that, since it makes zero sense.  THERE IS NO RISK.

He probably would have said something about EFFORT or TIME SPENT vs reward.  After all, that's the metric that was used to determine the reward merits for each task force - average time to completion.  And AFK farming yields rewards for little or no effort, which upsets that paradigm.