Focused Feedback: Reward Merits

[skoryy]

6 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

I think it a gross over exaggeration.  Were this even remotely true, the vast majority of people would be doing the AFK farming thing already.  Quite clearly they are not.

 

But for how long?  This was a-okey-dokey for three years until now, its likely that the devs are seeing something there now.

[Bionic_Flea]

12 hours ago, America's Angel said:

 

An AFK farmer (player, not character) can bring in 61,500 reward merits in a day. 

 

My guess, working the number backwards:

61,500 reward merits /10 = 6,150 (10 merits per emp)

6,150 emps /24 hours = 256 emps/hour

256 emps /3 accounts = 85 emps/hour/character

and that = ~12 DINGS! per hour.  (Assuming 20 emps every 3 DINGS!)  Seems high to me, but I'm not super efficient.

[America's Angel]

2 hours ago, Marbing said:

Not that I am disagreeing. Just curious how you’re getting those numbers. Can you show the math behind this?

Not without revealing how it's done. And as it breaks the TOS in a way that cannot (currently) be proven, I'd rather not say anything. The devs know these numbers are real. I just posted them to illustrate to people here a possible reason for the emp>reward merit conversion being taken away.

 

That said, I don't think AFK farming emp merits and then converting them to reward merits is a big deal. It's too fiddly having to go emp>reward merit>converter, and then make 1845 market listings to sell the converters in lumps of 10. That's way too much effort. (Especially when you can AFK farm 91bil a week. You just don't need the merits.)

Edited July 20, 2022 by America's Angel

[Marbing]

7 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

Not without revealing how it's done. And as it breaks the TOS in a way that cannot (currently) be proven, I'd rather not say anything. The devs know these numbers are real. I just posted them to illustrate to people here a possible reason for the emp>reward merit conversion being taken away.

 

That said, I don't think AFK farming emp merits and then converting them to reward merits is a big deal. It's too fiddly having to go emp>reward merit>converter, and then make 1845 market listings to sell the converters in lumps of 10. That's way too much effort. (Especially when you can AFK farm 91bil a week. You just don't need the merits.)

Makes sense, thought it was just a math thing but I understand.

[Andreah]

26 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

emp>reward merit>converter, and then make 1845 market listings to sell the converters in lumps of 10.

This is why I'd go through boosters, and accept a generally lower return per merit in exchange for 15x fewer stacks and related clicking.

 

However, there is no way the booster market can handle the volume without crashing prices down. (Which I'll note it's currently down about a third.)

 

While I'm sure there's a tiny and yet very extreme tail on the distribution, and it's surely something, case by case, I doubt our devs approve of, that's not to say it's the only level of this they're concerned about. I suspect there's less extreme AFK emp farming, or even non-AFK emp farming, that they're concerned about. It might be 10x less efficient, but 100x more common. But they haven't told me, and I don't know.

[Andreah]

32 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

Especially when you can AFK farm 91bil a week. You just don't need the merits

The problem becomes how to store this huge amount of Inf. We have our sneaky ways, but some are inconvenient and have other risk exposures. And folks have gotten bitten by those too!

[Oklahoman]

I've never converted emps to reward merits that I can remember, so that part of this isn't really resonating with me though I am sure there is probably a problem to address there. I guess where I am hanging up is for the regular players, who I hope make up the majority of the player base, who just log on and have fun... how many MORE reward merits they are going to have floating around. And, if that's a good thing.

 

On those days when I have the chance to lead everything I like to, here's what another player running with me would walk away with if they didn't alt (just an example):

• Behavioral Adjustment Facility Trial = 18 Reward Merits (KeS badge)
  • BAF SnP badge = 0 Reward Merits
• Lambda Sector Trial = 20 Reward Merits (Antacid badge)
  • LAM Well Stocked badge = 0 Reward Merits
  • LAM Looter + Synchronized = 0 Reward Merits
• Dilemma Diabolique Trial = 30 Reward Merits
• The Magisterium Trial = 22 Reward Merits (Ready to Rumble badge)
  • MAG Triple Threat badge = 0 Reward Merits

Plus an MSR where you can convert vMerits to Reward Merits and end up with 40-ish Reward Merits. (Talking averages here for the zoned event - I understand instanced can get 70-ish.)

 

That's 130-ish Reward Merits per day that they are collecting, on top of whatever they may be collecting already just through normal play. I'm told, though I can't verify, that some players do play with other leaders besides me - and those leaders may be running a similar pattern of iTrials. I'm talking about people who aren't chasing Reward Merits, they're just playing the game and having fun, and now they have 100+ Reward Merits falling in their lap a few days a week on top of the rewards they've been used to getting.

 

Then you've got the people who WILL chase Reward Merits - maybe for the first time, since they are given out easier with this update - who will alt a lot so they can maximize their rewards.

 

I'm trying to think about what this game looks like if the majority of the players (well, Level 50, really) now have a few hundred Reward Merits each week, on top of their normal haul. Because 100 Reward Merits for me usually ends up being 20+ million inf.

[SeraphimKensai]

I've always thought that rewards should be based on risk, so reward merits should scale based on higher difficulty levels played.

 

I don't really see why the need to remove the conversion of emp/astral to reward merits though as you've already removed AE farming's ability to get them in AE. Why not allow someone to convert to a reward merit if they'd rather use those to buy an IO, recipe, booster, etc. Excuse the pun, but It seems like a change without merit.

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, skoryy said:

But for how long?  This was a-okey-dokey for three years until now, its likely that the devs are seeing something there now.

 

I will bet real money they are seeing an extreme edge case being perpetrated by less than a handful of people with no easy fix that unfortunately does not impact the masses.  It is very safe to say the vast majority will not bother with this since they have not done so already.  Just look at the number of people posting in this very thread who after all these years did not know you could even convert EMP merits to Reward Merits. 

 

All one need do is look at Brainstorm.  The capability to roll up any max level character, fully kit them out with whatever IO sets and Incarnate abilities and billions of inf is available on Brainstorm and few take advantage of it.  Everyone can have everything they want on Brainstorm for no effort, yet there is hardly anyone there. 

 

No need to take my word for it either.  Take a look here -

 

13 hours ago, Telephone said:

And yes, we definitely know why not everyone plays on Brainstorm - fundamentally people like to feel like they've earned things.

 

 

[Troo]

1 hour ago, Marbing said:

Makes sense, thought it was just a math thing but I understand.

 

Don't be fooled. No need to make 1,000s of market offerings to reap those rewards. If it was hard they wouldn't be doing it, would they?

AFK farming emp merits at that scale is not anywhere near balanced or equitable.

 

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

My guess, working the number backwards:

61,500 reward merits /10 = 6,150 (10 merits per emp)

6,150 emps /24 hours = 256 emps/hour

256 emps /3 accounts = 85 emps/hour/character

and that = ~12 DINGS! per hour.  (Assuming 20 emps every 3 DINGS!)  Seems high to me, but I'm not super efficient.

 

Oh but Flea, you're staying within the terms of service. How many can be on a team?

Assume two farmers are better than one. Two farmers plus 3 sitters each. Sitters are discarded after maxing reward/time. Try your math from there.

 

 

I mean if we are letting the cat out of the bag. Let's put to bed suspicions and conspiracies.

Just say why regular players who saved up extra Empyreans for whatever are going to be impacted adversely to curb the actions of some bad actors.

 

I am finding hard not to connect the closing down of AFK Empyrean farming and the opening of Instant Level 50s with Incarnates for PvP.

 

Edited July 20, 2022 by Troo

[Bionic_Flea]

4 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Just look at the number of people posting in this very thread who after all these years did not know you could even convert EMP merits to Reward Merits. 

 

I am not surprised people don't know about converting emps or the ease of getting a fully kitted 50 on Brainstorm.

 

There are a lot of people who play this game that just like clicking buttons and feeling good for punching Nazis and never come on to these boards after signing up and another sizeable chunk of players that may come periodically or just follow one thing.  All of us usual suspects (you know who you are!) that practically live here and know all the little tricks and traps are the outliers.

[Andreah]

35 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

as you've already removed AE farming's ability to get them in AE.

They put them back in the new patch notes.

 

 

Edited July 20, 2022 by Andreah

[Bionic_Flea]

9 minutes ago, Troo said:

Oh but Flea, you're staying within the terms of service. How many can be on a team?

Assume two farmers are better than one. Two farmers plus 3 sitters each. Sitters are discarded after maxing reward/time. Try your math from there.

I did think about exploits but I wanted to keep it within the ToS.

 

10 minutes ago, Troo said:

256 emps /3 accounts = 85 emps/hour/character

You could make the denominator whatever you want. 

 

I guess another way to work it is Linea's minutes per level (MPL) and I think he says good farmers get 20 MPL so that's 3 levels an hour which equals 20 Emps/hour.  I'm not sure if that's AFK or active, but lets just say AFK and 24 hours a day.

20 emps x 24 = 480 emps/day

480 emps x 10 = 4800 Reward Merits /day

4800 x 3 accounts = 14,400

4800 x 12 accounts = 62,400

 

 

[ScarySai]

47 minutes ago, Oklahoman said:

I'm trying to think about what this game looks like if the majority of the players (well, Level 50, really) now have a few hundred Reward Merits each week

 

Not anywhere close to as bad as you are attempting to frame it.

 

If anything, the game's general rewards need a buff overall.

[skoryy]

45 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

I will bet real money they are seeing an extreme edge case being perpetrated by less than a handful of people with no easy fix that unfortunately does not impact the masses.  It is very safe to say the vast majority will not bother with this since they have not done so already.  Just look at the number of people posting in this very thread who after all these years did not know you could even convert EMP merits to Reward Merits. 

 

I'm starting to feel like Paul Newman trying to tell everyone the tower's got some problems.

 

There's a reason why devs across the board hammer outliers like this as soon as they find them.  Once word starts spreading, they don't stay outliers.

[Ironblade]

11 hours ago, RicoZaid said:

Sorry I'm pretty new but... if my 3 main characters have their Incarnates and all my alt characters need a lot of IO sets, should I go ahead and convert all my Empyrean/Astral Merit to Reward Merits now? Before they remove the option? 

Personally, I never did this because I generate crazy amounts of Reward Merits by running the weekly task forces.  Also, I didn't know (or had forgotten) that we could.  🙂

 

Having said that:

1)  Consider whether you might want different/additional incarnate powers on some existing characters.  As a specific example, if you're leading or assisting on some content, you might want the Clarion or Incandescence powers in the Destiny slot.

2)  If a character has 50 or more Empyreans, you might want to convert to a Transcendent which allows you to email it to another character on YOUR account and convert back to Empyreans to give them a headstart on the incarnate powers.

 

If you're reasonably certain neither of those situations is applicable, by all means, go ahead and convert to Reward Merits.  I actually went through a bunch of my characters yesterday and found that I had quite a few who had 3 or 4 different Destiny powers *AND* a lot of extra Astral/Empyrean merits.  I ended up emailing NINE Transcendent Merits to my newest 50 and converting some stuff to Reward Merits.

[Astralock]

30 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

I'm starting to feel like Paul Newman trying to tell everyone the tower's got some problems.

 

There's a reason why devs across the board hammer outliers like this as soon as they find them.  Once word starts spreading, they don't stay outliers.

 

 

Yep.  Like when the /enterbasefrompasscode command was accidentally leaked, and then spread like wildfire among the player base to the point that many people assumed that it was intended.  That should have been nipped in the bud once the leak was discovered.

[Ironblade]

43 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I did think about exploits but I wanted to keep it within the ToS.

Here is a direct quote from the Terms of Service:
"We allow a basic level of multiboxing on the Homecoming servers outside of peak times. These rules apply on a shard-by-shard basis (by ‘shard’ we mean Torchbearer, Excelsior, etc)."

 

So you can stay 100% within the ToS and multibox three accounts ON EACH SHARD SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Not sure why they phrased it that way, but they did and went to the effort to clarify exactly what they mean by 'shard'.

The computer I had 18 years ago could run three accounts.  I think it's quite possible my current system could run fifteen.

For the record, I only have three accounts.

[brattycommissar2]

16 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

Here is a direct quote from the Terms of Service:
"We allow a basic level of multiboxing on the Homecoming servers outside of peak times. These rules apply on a shard-by-shard basis (by ‘shard’ we mean Torchbearer, Excelsior, etc)."

 

So you can stay 100% within the ToS and multibox three accounts ON EACH SHARD SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Not sure why they phrased it that way, but they did and went to the effort to clarify exactly what they mean by 'shard'.

The computer I had 18 years ago could run three accounts.  I think it's quite possible my current system could run fifteen.

For the record, I only have three accounts.

the forums need a 'fear' react

[Jacke]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

Everyone can have everything they want on Brainstorm for no effort, yet there is hardly anyone there.

 

Except Brainstorm has 2 drawbacks:

• Except for Page testing, there's virtually no one on Brainstorm and not too many even when testing.
• Brainstorm is subject to being wiped without notice.

People want to make something with the expectation it'll be persistent.

[Myrmidon]

3 hours ago, America's Angel said:

Not without revealing how it's done. And as it breaks the TOS in a way that cannot (currently) be proven, I'd rather not say anything. The devs know these numbers are real. I just posted them to illustrate to people here a possible reason for the emp>reward merit conversion being taken away.

Just tell me that you gave this exploit to the Devs.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Myrmidon

[Astralock]

10 minutes ago, Jacke said:

 

Except Brainstorm has 2 drawbacks:

• Except for Page testing, there's virtually no one on Brainstorm and not too many even when testing.
• Brainstorm is subject to being wiped without notice.

People want to make something with the expectation it'll be persistent.

 

 

There is also a third: Most players are unaware that it exists.

[Myrmidon]

16 hours ago, America's Angel said:

 

An AFK farmer (player, not character) can bring in 61,500 reward merits in a day.  Which works out at 184,500 converters, which can in turn be sold for 13-15 billion inf.

 

That same AFK farmer is also pulling in ~13 billion inf through regular influence farming alongside these emp drops.

 

Which makes a total of 26-28 billion inf per day.

 

Realistically, this is going to be a lower number due to the converting/selling process, as well as setting up new level 50s to farm emp merits on. (Hassles which seem a waste of time tbh when you can just AFK farm 91 billion inf a week without even needing to convert emps.)

Tell me, how is this not an exploit.

[ShardWarrior]

2 hours ago, skoryy said:

I'm starting to feel like Paul Newman trying to tell everyone the tower's got some problems.

 

There's a reason why devs across the board hammer outliers like this as soon as they find them.  Once word starts spreading, they don't stay outliers.

 

I am convinced people have lost objectivity.  That makes perfect sense for a commercial product where there is a financial incentive to fix these.  This is not a commercial product and most commercial products do not have a Brainstorm server where they can make anything they want at any time.  Brainstorm disproves your theory here.  Again, word is already out there that anyone can have unlimited amounts of anything they want (levels, inf, IOs, incarnates, badges) on Brainstorm with zero effort and hardly anyone is there.  If the majority of people wanted to just use exploits to get everything without any effort, you would see Brainstorm being the main server and  than other servers being the ghost towns.  Your argument does not hold any water.

 

50 minutes ago, Jacke said:

Except Brainstorm has 2 drawbacks:

• Except for Page testing, there's virtually no one on Brainstorm and not too many even when testing.
• Brainstorm is subject to being wiped without notice.

People want to make something with the expectation it'll be persistent.

 

To your first bullet point - yes, that is it exactly.  There is virtually no one there despite everyone being able to roll up anything they want any time they want without limitation for free with no effort.  Any player can have a thousand alts on Brainstorm and instantly have any IO set, any Incarnate ability and cap each one with billions of influence within minutes.   Hardly anyone is doing this.

 

Your second bullet point is made meaningless by what you are able to do on Brainstorm.  Think about it objectively - it does not matter if a character is wiped if anyone can just recreate them with everything they had before within a few minutes.  Also, when was the last time Brainstorm was wiped?

 

So why are more people NOT taking advantage of creating everything they want risk and effort free Brainstorm?  Here is a good answer.

 

Edited July 20, 2022 by ShardWarrior

[ShardWarrior]

30 minutes ago, Astralock said:

There is also a third: Most players are unaware that it exists.

 

Start telling people about it.  It helps the Homecoming team here with more people testing in addition to proving not everyone wants everything instantly.