Add an Empyrean -> Reward Merit Conversion

[kingsmidgens]

Well, since the reward merit change went live, I guess it's time for a suggestion thread:

It's pretty silly to me that after 3 years of the server this ability is now gone.

This is something that was added for this server specifically, and left in for.. well, the entire time up until now.

You can argue if it was too beneficial but you can't argue that people have already taken advantage of it if they were going to.  Not everyone is going to play in the same cookie-cutter way, and removing avenues that ALL players could take is harmful, regardless of your own opinion on how ideal play should be.  The economy isn't a vacuum, this process isn't just generating influence from nothing - they were, in theory, providing value to other players, or they wouldn't have been profiting.  Many people I've heard from were not even engaging in the market, they were using extra Emps to get enhancements for their own personal use.

If there was in fact some problem with people being able to do it in some edge cases then apply a cooldown to the conversion process.

I'd recommend 10 Merits per level 50 per 20 hrs for 100 reward merits, the same ratio it was before, at a reasonable pace: it'd require over a month of logging in regularly for a player to cash out on a "theoretical" farmed char but still provide a good amount of value to a newer player, who may be struggling when they first reach 50.  I would metaphorically eat my hat if under the proposed system there would end up being an individual with 500+ new (since the update) characters in the process of cashing out merits which is what was alleged by some in the beta thread, that individual people are capable of going through dozens of 50+48s per day and they were doing so with the purpose of getting reward merits.  The mechanics of potentially, at that point, using existing 50s to send merits over so you can log into hundreds of characters per day makes my skin crawl and I'd go so far as to say if somebody is willing to do that they should absolutely be rewarded for it - that's an awful lot of farming they're not doing simply because they're alting for hours on end, every day.  My personal experience here: I turned off Common Recipes because it was taking away too much time from actual farming for too little relative reward - I actually did the math on that - and people think I'm nuts for it.

For the record I have never actually done this, but I would strongly argue against doing anything that nerfs reward structures in a game that's been running for so long.  Participating in the in-game chat, I mostly see newer players tout the ability to breakdown emps into Reward Merits, as they're newly 50 and may be gathering components from play outside of the Veteran system, and are sorely lacking in funds and enhancements for their first chars.  I would recommend that you buff what you feel is underperforming, what you'd like more people to do, and just accept that you added perhaps too generous of rewards to the veteran system.

Disclaimer: I am saying "if" this is a problem.  I don't believe it ever was.  But assuming it is, change the system but do not remove it.  "if" it was a problem, people are going to get a lot more upset than they did with uncommon salvage being 10k inf when 90% of the converter supply disappears, because somebody was supposedly earning something like 15 billion inf per day via converters.  The system as currently designed I feel unfairly punishes non-farmers.

[The_Warpact]

This was hashed out in several locked threads, the change is done thy devs will be done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[arcane]

“Let’s revert a thoroughly discussed piece of a patch that came out 2-3 hours ago because I said so.”

 

[my gif isn’t working and everything sucks]

 

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by arcane

[Oklahoman]

Unfortunately, I guess I have to now say that ship has officially sailed.

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

“Let’s revert a thoroughly discussed piece of a patch that came out 2-3 hours ago because I said so.”

 

[my gif isn’t working and everything sucks]

 

 

 

Pretty much agree that they should just move on. It was discussed to super death.

 

This was also a compromise for what they originally put on beta.

 

I've made my peace with it and moving on. Hopefully they have something in the future to use EMPs for besides alts, for those who don't make any more alts.

[Excraft]

Yeah this ship sailed already.  The time to raise your objections is over, and nobody here wants to hear anything but praise for their changes anyway.  No point in trying to get this added back in.  Either deal with it or do what a lot of other people are doing - move over to New Dawn and enjoy yourself. 

[PeregrineFalcon]

3 hours ago, The_Warpact said:

This was hashed out in several locked threads, the change is done thy devs will be done.

This is exactly what happened last page when people pushed back against the Rune of Protection nerf. The Council of Thirteen realized that people didn't like the Rune of Protection nerf, so they nerfed it even more.

 

People here didn't like the initial nerf to Vet levels in the AE, so the Council reacted by nerfing the EM to RM conversion. A move which punishes casual players more than it does farmers.

 

So the lesson? If you push back against a nerf hard enough the Council nerfs it even harder.

[The_Warpact]

5 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

This is exactly what happened last page when people pushed back against the Rune of Protection nerf. The Council of Thirteen realized that people didn't like the Rune of Protection nerf, so they nerfed it even more.

 

People here didn't like the initial nerf to Vet levels in the AE, so the Council reacted by nerfing the EM to RM conversion. A move which punishes casual players more than it does farmers.

 

So the lesson? If you push back against a nerf hard enough the Council nerfs it even harder.

LEARN YOUR PLACE PEASANT!

[PeregrineFalcon]

8 minutes ago, The_Warpact said:

LEARN YOUR PLACE PEASANT!

Ya know, that's exactly what the moderators say to me right before they send me on an involuntary vacation from the forums.

[MoonSheep]

just realised i forgot to convert the 400+ emps i had laying round, whoops

 

oh well

 

[Coyotedancer]

Eh. I still think letting the conversion exist with some reasonable time gate would have been the best compromise... But then, I was one of the people who really hated the "Ne vet-levels" thing. And who has never converted a single Emp to merits. So I don't exactly have much of a dog in this fight.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Coyotedancer

[Ringo]

This change cuts my desire to play my level 50s in half.  But the good news is that I generally don't make an IO build before level 50, so if I'm not playing my 50s then I don't particularly need Reward Merits anyway

 

I guess I hope that forthcoming Incarnate content will lure me back to my 50s some day

[DrunkFlux]

Honestly the change just makes it harder to max out chars who've hit vet levels 20-30+ where they already have a majority of incarnate powers maxed out.  This really just devalues empyrean merits more than anything.  Not sure why they did this when they already stopped people from getting veteran levels in AE.

[Astralock]

23 minutes ago, DrunkFlux said:

Honestly the change just makes it harder to max out chars who've hit vet levels 20-30+ where they already have a majority of incarnate powers maxed out.  This really just devalues empyrean merits more than anything.  Not sure why they did this when they already stopped people from getting veteran levels in AE.

 

They didn't.  I've been seeing a lot of people saying that in-game today, but it's not true.  You can still get veteran levels in AE.  That change was reversed, and instead changed into removing the Empyrean reward merit conversion.

[Silver Lancer]

I was unaware of the change to the conversion until today and it really hurts. 

 

The majority of my in game wealth was collected in those Empyrean merits. 

 

I feel absolutely sick, like I got kicked in the nuts. 

 

For a non-farmer, like me, this is terrible and sets me way back. 

 

 

[ZacKing]

3 hours ago, Silver Lancer said:

I was unaware of the change to the conversion until today and it really hurts. 

 

The majority of my in game wealth was collected in those Empyrean merits. 

 

I feel absolutely sick, like I got kicked in the nuts. 

 

For a non-farmer, like me, this is terrible and sets me way back.

 

 

They don't care if it hurts regular players like yourself.  For everyone now complaining about it, where were you when this was in beta testing?  That was the time to say something.  It's too late now.  Maybe start sending in support tickets in game or notes here on the forums to let them know this change really does suck and needs to be reversed.  Either that or do what was suggested above, just move on to New Dawn and enjoy playing the game again free from the inner circle here.  New Dawn has one free level 50 with all badges and accolades unlocked and whatever IO sets you want per account with free 2 bill influence.  Maybe when the population here drops even further the message will start getting across.

[Arc-Mage]

15 hours ago, Krimson said:

I have mixed thoughts on this. I never did the Emp to Reward Merit thing but I kind of understand why people would do it. But at the same time, the idea of making a disposable toon for the purpose of harvesting Empyrean Merits just does not sit well with me. 

This. @Krimson is totally correct on this.  If I had a guess most people playing the game did nothing with Emp Merits and they just accumulated on toons.
 

What happens when the game has an excess of Emp Merits? Two possibilities, people miss out on content and rewards or, the danger of a large number of players cashing out at the same time causing the in game economy to crash. 
 

I really believe if we had access to the game numbers they would show few people where spending their Emp Merits and there was a huge excess of them in game. 

[ShardWarrior]

16 hours ago, Krimson said:

I have mixed thoughts on this. I never did the Emp to Reward Merit thing but I kind of understand why people would do it. But at the same time, the idea of making a disposable toon for the purpose of harvesting Empyrean Merits just does not sit well with me. 

 

What other people chose to do with their time in game does not bother me in the least.  If they want to waste away their time making disposable characters, more power to them.  Chances are very likely I would never be on a team with them anyway.

 

41 minutes ago, Arc-Mage said:

What happens when the game has an excess of Emp Merits? Two possibilities, people miss out on content and rewards or, the danger of a large number of players cashing out at the same time causing the in game economy to crash. 

 

Given the chatter I have seen about this in game since the patch, there has been an excess of EMP merits for a few years now and the in game economy has never crashed because of them.  It would not have crashed now either. 

 

17 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

So the lesson? If you push back against a nerf hard enough the Council nerfs it even harder.

 

One can only hope they never look into fixing Regen.  😉

[arcane]

Apparently this New Dawn server is such a sad and bitter place that the alleged players all still use Homecoming for its forums. 
 

This is worse than when Lena Dunham promised to move to Canada but stayed here.

Edited August 24, 2022 by arcane

[Oklahoman]

40 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Given the chatter I have seen about this in game since the patch, there has been an excess of EMP merits for a few years now and the in game economy has never crashed because of them.  It would not have crashed now either. 

 

I'm going to be interested to see how doling out RMs for iTrials is going to impact everything. I mentioned in the feedback thread that this change means everyone - even casual gamers who aren't especially chasing RMs - is now going to have hundreds of them falling into their laps per week. Seems like that could potentially have a greater effect on the game than those few people converting Emps to RMs. But, what do I know? May not be a big deal.

 

BTW: Sold 2 Prismatic Aether's on /ah for 100 million each last night, so maybe jump on that little Gamestop of a thing while it lasts if costumes don't matter to you.

[Arc-Mage]

12 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Given the chatter I have seen about this in game since the patch, there has been an excess of EMP merits for a few years now and the in game economy has never crashed because of them.  It would not have crashed now either. 

You didn't read my statement correctly. "The Danger is many people cashing out at the same time." Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it wont ever happen. Maybe I'm unusual but I rarely ever used my EMP Merits and I have probably thousands across all my toons. 

[DrunkFlux]

On 8/23/2022 at 6:37 PM, Astralock said:

 

They didn't.  I've been seeing a lot of people saying that in-game today, but it's not true.  You can still get veteran levels in AE.  That change was reversed, and instead changed into removing the Empyrean reward merit conversion.

 

 

So they punished non-farmers and nothing else.  Well *Slow Clap*.  Afterall, non-farmers deserve to be poor and never, ever get IO'd out to ever get to participate in the newer content.  Why don't they farm more!?  They deserve that!

 

*Please note my sarcasm here since some don't detect it on the internet*

 

Well, onto checking other avenues for influece I guess.

[Paragon Vanguard]

Just feels like we are all being pushed to farming....and yes, doing trials over and over and over and over again for rewards makes you just as much a farmer. Effecting so many non-abusers to target people you feel are abusing something is a good way to cause a slow decline, or at the least, sets a standard for decline. I am NOT hoping for that. I am very appreciative of what Homecoming has done, and the time the devs and others have put into this game. I am just  in hopes they are careful of where they are going with this.

[ShardWarrior]

9 hours ago, Arc-Mage said:

You didn't read my statement correctly. "The Danger is many people cashing out at the same time." Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it wont ever happen. Maybe I'm unusual but I rarely ever used my EMP Merits and I have probably thousands across all my toons. 

 

I read your post just fine.  As you said, people may literally have thousands of EMP merits.  So what?  This has never been an issue before nor is it likely to ever be one.  Sure, it is possible every player would cash out every EMP merit all at once.  It is also possible to get struck by lightning or win the lottery.   Again, even if that did happen, so what?  That does not mean it will crash the economy.  It should be clear now there are quite a lot of players who were converting these to reward merits for Winter IOs, ATOs or Purple Recipes or to buy recipes from the merit vendor for their alts, which is not going to cause inflation or whatever other detrimental thing you seem to be concerned about.  No doubt there are already trillionaires in the game and the economy has not crashed because of them.  

[ShardWarrior]

20 hours ago, Oklahoman said:

I'm going to be interested to see how doling out RMs for iTrials is going to impact everything. I mentioned in the feedback thread that this change means everyone - even casual gamers who aren't especially chasing RMs - is now going to have hundreds of them falling into their laps per week. Seems like that could potentially have a greater effect on the game than those few people converting Emps to RMs. But, what do I know? May not be a big deal.

 

Farming iTrials is great for those who are into that sort of thing.  For the solo player who primarily earned merits through running story arcs, this change does not address the loss of those bonus merits earned by converting EMP merits from vet levels.  Converting allowed you to receive merits above and beyond what you would normally get for the story arcs themselves.  Now those solo players are being herded into doing iTrials or other content that they may have little to no interest in to make up for that loss, or more likely encourage them to start AE farming more to make enough to buy whatever they want.