Prismatic Aether and locked costume items

[momentarygrace]

6 hours ago, Zhym said:

snip ...

 

 I'm not talking about the NPC costumes, which are basically like having Halloween costumes year round—having those be lockable is fine.  But at some point soon there's going to be a "mini" costume mode.  That would be perfect for one of my characters, who is already as small as the slider will allow, but should really be much smaller.  But I won't be able to use it unless I collect a bunch of aether first (just how much is still TBD).   

 

So, from my own perspective anyway, it's kind of disappointing to see Homecoming embrace costume options that have to be purchased.

 

Zhym, I hear you.

 

As several other folks have expressed, I don't have any interest in full NPC costumes, nothing against them but the only Halloween one I ever wear is Ghost Pirate 🙂 

 

I get our wonderful volunteer devs wanting to provide rewards for hard mode, and I get that it might be a big negative to have those rewards be anything that affects the ability to use powers, that would just be another Incarnate system.

 

But I truly hope costume pieces on HC won't ever be gated like this, and I also hope mini modes and possible other costume options that still allow for our own unique costumes to be used with won't end up tied to hard  mode play.

 

I have absolutely nothing against hard mode content... for anyone who wants to play it. However that is not and never will be me. That's not what brought me to CoH or made Paragon City my Home. I am not a min/maxer and I can only wish I had as much time as some folks to actually get on and play.  I love CoH because I get to be a super hero, and sometimes when I feel like walking on the other side of the street, a villain, vigilante or rogue. I have a couple of dozen alts (give me time, they increase slowly), and out of all of them, 1 50. She's an Incarnate, all slots unlocked, a couple slotted at tier 4 and a couple at 3 because at this point, she's good and I'm good and I'll get around to it sometime. 🙂 

 

I read the forums to pick up info and enjoy reading the discussions of other folks who like the same game. 80% of the discussions about marketing, slotting, set bonuses, etc. go over my head, but a little bit leaks in from time to time. I don't have a billion inf even on my 50, but I know where the guides are if I wanted to spend time marketing.

 

I wonder now and then how many Homecoming players there are like me. I bet a few but I have no idea.

 

My one true wish is that Homecoming never shifts into something that feels unwelcoming to my style of play. May Thomas Wolfe be wrong, just this one time.

[Mezmera]

13 minutes ago, momentarygrace said:

But I truly hope costume pieces on HC won't ever be gated like this, and I also hope mini modes and possible other costume options that still allow for our own unique costumes to be used with won't end up tied to hard  mode play.

 

This currency doesn't just drop from Hard Mode content, it comes from all types of activity while playing the games content.  I don't disagree though that sub-50 characters should get these Aether drops from the WST just the same as 50's and that there should be a better way of previewing these items but I think this kind of consolidated way to unlock various things that interest you is a good way to generate interest in playing the games features.  

Edited September 1, 2022 by Mezmera

[momentarygrace]

2 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

 

This currency doesn't just drop from Hard Mode content, it comes from all types of activity while playing the games content.  I don't disagree though that sub-50 characters should get these Aether drops from the WST just the same as 50's and that there should be a better way of previewing these items but I think this kind of consolidated way to unlock various things that interest you is a good way to generate interest in playing the games features.  

 

I saw that, the 2% chance for the drop. That's good. At the rate I play (as much as I'm able to play) though it might put mini mode etc. out of my reach for the foreseeable. 

 

We shall see! 🙂 

[Mezmera]

3 minutes ago, momentarygrace said:

 

I saw that, the 2% chance for the drop. That's good. At the rate I play (as much as I'm able to play) though it might put mini mode etc. out of my reach for the foreseeable. 

 

We shall see! 🙂 

 

That's why I think it's a good idea to have the WST reward of these things to be all encompassing and some arc completion bonus.  This is also a good way to get people to level their characters to 50 so they get a full experience.

 

2% chance isn't anything to hang your hat on though yes.  

[Zhym]

1 hour ago, momentarygrace said:

 

I saw that, the 2% chance for the drop. That's good. At the rate I play (as much as I'm able to play) though it might put mini mode etc. out of my reach for the foreseeable. 

 

We shall see! 🙂 

With the "common" NPC costumes costing 10 aether each, I'm guessing the "very rare" costumes like "mini mode" will be at least 100.  Collecting 100 prismatic aether through mission completion bonuses would take about 5,000 missions.  That's rather a lot of missions. 

 

For example: my badger, who has completed every story arc red side, blue side, and gold side at least once,* has completed a total of 2,874 missions per the info kiosk.  If he'd been eligible for prismatic aether for all of those missions, he'd have amassed a grand total of about 57 of them by now.

 

(Now I'm really curious how many missions @Snarky has completed with his "do all the missions"...er, mission.)

 

*Except Westin Phipps, because seriously—screw that guy.

Edited September 1, 2022 by Zhym

[Snarky]

1 minute ago, Zhym said:

With the "common" NPC costumes costing 10 aether each, I'm guessing the "very rare" costumes like "mini mode" will be at least 100.  Collecting 100 prismatic aether through mission completion bonus would take about 5,000 missions.  That's rather a lot of missions. 

 

For example: my badger, who has completed every story arc both red side and blue side at least once, has completed a total of 2,874 missions per the info kiosk.  If he'd been eligible for prismatic aether for all of those missions, he'd have amassed a grand total of about 57 of them by now.

 

(Now I'm really curious how many missions @Snarky has completed with his "do all the missions"...er, mission.)

lol  I left the task...in the aether.  I completed every single mission, side switching etc, that could only be done in the certain level ranges, then 50d and incarnated the toon.  But did not start the 35-50, 40-50, 45-50 missions.  

 

I am now on a similar task in another game.  Taking one character and doing every single thing in the game.  A month in I think i probably have another 5 months to go.  Its an old game lol

 

 

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Zhym said:

With the "common" NPC costumes costing 10 aether each, I'm guessing the "very rare" costumes like "mini mode" will be at least 100.  Collecting 100 prismatic aether through mission completion bonuses would take about 5,000 missions.  That's rather a lot of missions. 

 

For example: my badger, who has completed every story arc red side, blue side, and gold side at least once, has completed a total of 2,874 missions per the info kiosk.  If he'd been eligible for prismatic aether for all of those missions, he'd have amassed a grand total of about 57 of them by now.

 

(Now I'm really curious how many missions @Snarky has completed with his "do all the missions"...er, mission.)

Tier one: 10/15

Tier Two: 300/450

Tier Three: 1000/1500 (Mini & Blob)

 

That said, they weren't going to be setting the price until release, so it might be lower.  (or possibly higher)

 

I'd be happier with costs at tier two being 100/150 and maybe if they want Tier three to be rare, 250/375

 

As it is, very few of my characters will bother even though I want to.  (Looks like for my timeline, I'll get my badger enough in six weeks with my playstyle.

 

I know the Tier Three are supposed to be "Oh Wow", but I'll be going "Oh Wow, that was a long grind"

 

Feedback thread with Cobolt's responses noted:

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by lemming
pointing out mini tier

[Zhym]

12 minutes ago, lemming said:

Tier one: 10/15

Tier Two: 300/450

Tier Three: 1000/1500 (Mini & Blob)

1000/1500???  Yeah, that's a long-term reward all right.  At that kind of price, my "little" character will stay 4' tall. 

 

Which is too bad, IMO, because it would have been cool to have a mini-mode for that toon.  But I really don't see myself running enough content of any sort to rack up 1,000 PAs.

[Glacier Peak]

11 minutes ago, Zhym said:

1000/1500???  Yeah, that's a long-term reward all right.  At that kind of price, my "little" character will stay 4' tall. 

 

Which is too bad, IMO, because it would have been cool to have a mini-mode for that toon.  But I really don't see myself running enough content of any sort to rack up 1,000 PAs.

That's fair, players can also purchase the Aether Particles off the Auction House market too. Prices have dropped since release, sitting around 20 million a piece at the moment. And prices could go down or up depending on supply and demand. So if you're not wanting to run content for drops, you could look to bank roll collection of whatever the costumes you're looking to unlock too. 

 

And if you've got enough inf to buy it outright, well, then could you email me some inf too 😆 

[Zhym]

9 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

That's fair, players can also purchase the Aether Particles off the Auction House market too. Prices have dropped since release, sitting around 20 million a piece at the moment. And prices could go down or up depending on supply and demand. So if you're not wanting to run content for drops, you could look to bank roll collection of whatever the costumes you're looking to unlock too. 

 

And if you've got enough inf to buy it outright, well, then could you email me some inf too 😆 

Let me check my alts, my pockets, my couch cushions...nope.  I definitely don't have a spare 20 billion inf sitting around.  My combined character wealth across all my alts is about a tenth of that.

 

I am really curious where the market will settle for these things.  On the one hand, they're hard to get.  On the other hand, the things you can do with them are limited.  With "mini mode" pretty much unreachable as a practical matter, I'll stop caring about them at all once my badger has gotten all the badges.  Will that be the typical response, or will there be enough costume collectors to keep these things expensive?  We'll find out. 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Zhym

[Glacier Peak]

8 minutes ago, Zhym said:

Let me check my alts, my pockets, my couch cushions...nope.  I definitely don't have a spare 20 billion inf sitting around.  My combined character wealth across all my alts is about a tenth of that.

 

I am really curious where the market will settle for these things.  On the one hand, they're hard to get.  On the other hand, the things you can do with them are limited.  With "mini mode" pretty much unreachable as a practical matter, I'll stop caring about them at all once my badger has gotten all the badges.  Will that be the typical response, or will there be enough costume collectors to keep these things expensive?  We'll find out. 

I'm interested in this outcome as well, since my strategy is to wait it out like I did with the Halloween salvage, and Candy Canes salvage as well. Single purpose, can't spend on anything else. Of course, the devs have mentioned this is a first step towards more npc costume rewards so who knows!

[ivanhedgehog]

19 hours ago, Mezmera said:

 

That's why I think it's a good idea to have the WST reward of these things to be all encompassing and some arc completion bonus.  This is also a good way to get people to level their characters to 50 so they get a full experience.

 

2% chance isn't anything to hang your hat on though yes.  

they need to raise the wst reward to 5 pieces. one is a stupidly low level for an item that was to appeal to casuals and rp'rs. I will not be doing 3 or 4 star raids ever. this kind of gating is why I left wow in the first place. the pitiful drops outside of HM content are just like the single contaminated that spawns in the train station of RV. It was a way for the devs to claim they didnt screw you, when they knew perfectly well they did.

[ivanhedgehog]

17 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

That's fair, players can also purchase the Aether Particles off the Auction House market too. Prices have dropped since release, sitting around 20 million a piece at the moment. And prices could go down or up depending on supply and demand. So if you're not wanting to run content for drops, you could look to bank roll collection of whatever the costumes you're looking to unlock too. 

 

And if you've got enough inf to buy it outright, well, then could you email me some inf too 😆 

So now the one stop shop for all rewards is a couple of hard mode TFs. Great balancing move.

[Ukase]

21 hours ago, BurtHutt said:

This. I never liked the costume 'toggle' pieces we'd get for Halloween. I have no desire to use them. Ever. I could not be less interested in this stuff. 

 

I do like making costumes and that is awesome but not these toggle/complete costume transformations. Pass.

While I am in the same figurative boat as you in this regard, try to realize that there really are some people who genuinely get a kick out of this. 

In fact, I'm one who generally uses the RNG costume generator, and then will generally replace the head and remove the tail, and maybe change the colors. These new costume things might just save me some time. Maybe not. 

I just know that even though it's not for me, there are plenty of people absolutely thrilled about it. I'm just happy that they didn't yank vet rewards from AE. They actually read/listened. I reserve the right to be disappointed about other things, but I'll always be happy about that. 

[Ukase]

17 hours ago, Zhym said:

Let me check my alts, my pockets, my couch cushions...nope.  I definitely don't have a spare 20 billion inf sitting around.  My combined character wealth across all my alts is about a tenth of that.

 

I am really curious where the market will settle for these things.  On the one hand, they're hard to get.  On the other hand, the things you can do with them are limited.  With "mini mode" pretty much unreachable as a practical matter, I'll stop caring about them at all once my badger has gotten all the badges.  Will that be the typical response, or will there be enough costume collectors to keep these things expensive?  We'll find out. 

Time will tell on the stable price of these, but at the beginning, my forecast was 10m-25m. It's at about 24M, last I looked. I expect it to drop down to 10m, pick back up on the next costume patch, then drop again. There are still plenty of us lunatic badgers out there that have a lot of what are now considered "lowball" bids on these items. They should eventually fill, depending on the bid. 

So, about the influence. Honestly, I would give 20 Billion to you, if I could afford to give 20 Billion to everyone that would chime in and want the same. But, it wouldn't take long before my big stack became smaller than the stack you would have once I gave it all away. 

And, with the changes to Afk farming, it would take me longer to recoup the loss. All I can do is tell you that if you've the desire to put in the time, the influence is there to grab. It's the simplest thing, once you know how. 

The downside of that is there are dozens, if not more, other players who are already competing for that influence. Which is great for the casual player, as competition drives down the prices. I mean...the LotG 7.5% has dropped from 7-8M to 5-6m in the past three months. Just the volume of those for sale has increased by over 25% in the past 3 months.  I rather thought all the new alts would have depleted a lot of that supply, but the folks that are working in that niche must have been accumulating a lot of emp merits and made the exchange at the merit vendor before the patch. Or, they're being clever and efficient about it in the other common ways we use to create them. Just makes everyone else's influence go further, so it's a win for everyone. 

Just my two inf about influence: You can have too much. When you have too much, you begin to get picky about what you do in game. You turn down opportunities that you would otherwise accept. On the plus side, what you do end up doing is probably what you're interested in and more fun, but I can't help thinking I miss out on some good times by turning down pug recruiting offers. Easy for me to say, obviously. But, there it is for what it's worth. 

[arcane]

1 hour ago, ivanhedgehog said:

So now the one stop shop for all rewards is a couple of hard mode TFs. Great balancing move.

The post you quoted is literally highlighting the other ways you can get those rewards without hard mode content???

[High_Beam]

I have received a total of 13 Aether drops on various toons.  Some were doing standard Task Forces (Kal, Sutter, Moonfire) and others just regular missions (a PI Radio and a Kings Row Radio).  I have not done any Hard mode anything and nothing beyond +1/+2 Difficulty setting.  They all went on the market and are funding many alts now.  So even though I am not a costume person, I have profited by it.

[Cobalt Arachne]

On 9/1/2022 at 8:09 AM, Zhym said:

but have the devs said why they introduced another "currency" into the game?

Because we wanted players to actually have new incentives to play the game and earn the costume rewards (or spend a lot of influence) instead of just logging in for 15 minutes to buy everything new immediately after Page 4 went live with massive stockpiles of existing currency and then go back to being 'caught up with nothing to do or work towards'.

[ivanhedgehog]

30 minutes ago, arcane said:

The post you quoted is literally highlighting the other ways you can get those rewards without hard mode content???

what can you get farming that you cant get anywhere else? Didnt they just nerf farming so it wouldnt be the "one stop shop"? They just shoveled billions of inf and loads of merits to hm tfs. It kinda blows out of the water any ide of one avenue of play being as rewarding as any other. A wst dropping 1 damn particle? that was only put there so you could parrot the line that you can get them everywhere. Just like that lone contaminated in recluses victory.

[battlewraith]

Hey blue anime kid--

 

If we gotta grind our asses off or spend all our life savings on costume, why can't they be somethin useful?

like Hobo or gynecologist. No blobs for me.

[Mezmera]

Um you all do realize this thing just came out yes? 

 

I'm sure some data-mining will be made use of to configure these drops are a bit more in line to encourage all types of playing the game.  I'd bet lots of things are on the backburner to get released in this manner for you @battlewraith like a Hobo costume, I wouldn't hold my breath on the Gynecologist one though, patience kemosabe.   

[arcane]

30 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

what can you get farming that you cant get anywhere else? Didnt they just nerf farming so it wouldnt be the "one stop shop"? They just shoveled billions of inf and loads of merits to hm tfs. It kinda blows out of the water any ide of one avenue of play being as rewarding as any other. A wst dropping 1 damn particle? that was only put there so you could parrot the line that you can get them everywhere. Just like that lone contaminated in recluses victory.

Don’t know why you keep overlooking the fact that they can be purchased on the market. Literally any content can get you these things.

[Frostbiter]

55 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

Because we wanted players to actually have new incentives to play the game and earn the costume rewards (or spend a lot of influence) instead of just logging in for 15 minutes to buy everything new immediately after Page 4 went live with massive stockpiles of existing currency and then go back to being 'caught up with nothing to do or work towards'.

 

I appreciate what we have here with the HC Team but this is a little condescending to players. Attempting to add currencies in order to get players to play more is the sort of thing for profit games do. This is not one of those. If the content you create is not compelling enough to get people to run it adding a new shiny to the treadmill doesn't look good IMO.

[Astralock]

8 minutes ago, Frostbiter said:

 

I appreciate what we have here with the HC Team but this is a little condescending to players. Attempting to add currencies in order to get players to play more is the sort of thing for profit games do. This is not one of those. If the content you create is not compelling enough to get people to run it adding a new shiny to the treadmill doesn't look good IMO.

 

It’s not condescending.  It’s a fact that many players (of any game), are both lazy and only care about rewards.  Nothing else matters to them.  So you occasionally need to string a carrot.

[Frostbiter]

Just now, Astralock said:

 

It’s not condescending.  It’s a fact that many players (of any game), are both lazy and only care about rewards.  Nothing else matters to them.  So you occasionally need to string a carrot.

 

I feel like it is and I gave my opinion. I'm not going to sit here and wrangle about whether my opinion is valid or not. find someone else to do that with.