oh, the feels...

[Ukase]

So, I've mentioned this before. I believe sometimes, the Page drops are too large. With Page 4, there were some changes in the pipeline that I didn't like, and somehow, some way, I wrote out an objection, and whether it was me, or others like me, or a combination of that and other variables, one of the changes was rescinded. 

Yay! 

Right? 
Right. 

So, now, with all of that stuff on Page 4, I missed something. I mean, to be fair, it's super easy for me to miss something. I am very much obtuse. Short memory, too, because I no longer read anything -- at least, not like I used to when I was younger. I skim things, focusing on keywords that are in my areas of interest. 

This whole Prismatic Aether Particle - I still have no idea why this was implemented when a reward merit (or a number of them) could have done the same exact thing. But, who knows, maybe there's some future lore at work to explain these rather useless objects that some people actually thought were worth 180M each. 

They are worth less than 10M now, it seems. The price may go back up a bit if future costume unlocks are made available, and it's my understanding there may be. Still my guess is that they will stay in the 7-12M range for a while, until they drop even lower. 

All that said, I am still very disturbed by the diminishing returns for these. I'm accustomed to diminishing returns for reward merits when doing a task force. And I can even understand the diminishing returns for doing the same iTrial. 
But I do not understand why there are diminishing returns for doing different content. 

What was the objective? To get people to swap characters? What is the benefit to the game or community there? There certainly isn't a benefit to the player, that I can see. 

I'm sure there are some people who play different characters each day. Play a dom to level 7. Get on a tank, play that until 14, get on a blaster, play it to level 18, etc. 
And some folks might have any number of characters that ding 50 in a week, when they play them organically, or even PL them to 50, getting several characters ready for the incarnate journey. 

I'm not one of those people. I play one until it's done, usually. Unless it sucks for some reason, then I don't delete it, but shelve it. Maybe I'll revisit it later, and see if I can't choose to play it differently so it's more entertaining. Still, I do not see the reason for these diminishing returns on the prismatic. 

Yes, I can buy all of them if I want to. I don't want to buy them. I will if I have to. I have another 150 to get on one character, and about 130 on another. I could get them all today. But, there's no rush. The price of them is only going to fall. So, may as well earn them while I deck out the incarnates on my latest 50. 

But my mind cannot bring me to do more than one itrial a day because of these stupid diminishing returns. I already detest iTrials as I've done them what feels like thousands of times. It's bad enough that I feel like I'm getting ripped off I do a second one in the same day. 

Oh mysterious HC devs - what is it you were trying to do with these diminishing returns? You wanted me out of the farms and playing iTrials I thought, but I am not so sure now. This diminishing return rule is making me thing that not only am I supposed to not afk farm, I'm supposed to play 6 or more characters each day. That's the path of madness for me. There's no mechanic in game for seeing which trials a character has done in the past 18 hours, so sorry - you really need to rethink this diminishing returns policy - at least for the prismatic. At least, I think you need to rethink it. 
It's having an impact on my in-game behavior that seems in contradiction to what you wanted. Less farming, more itrials. But now, with the diminishing returns, you have limited the number of iTrials I'm willing to do to one each day. 

 

The reason I farmed was it was efficient. That is the key word. And not getting a prismatic because I'd already done a different itrial earlier - that's inefficient. So, there's only motivation to do one a day. 

Is that what you were after? 

Enquiring minds want to know. 

I already know that to maximize efficiency, I have to shelf this character until I get several more level 50's ready to go. And I will have to alt out dozens of times just to be sure I get what I have coming to me, my full award of prismatics. And I'll have to do that at the cost of time-efficiency, annoying league leaders by having to alt out after each trial. Granted, there are always people who do this, so it's not that big of a deal to them, but it's always been a big deal to me. 

Incarnate trial leagues already take longer to form than they should. The less alting, the better, unless the league needs something specific. And generally iTrials are fairly simple, so nothing special is needed. 

Why do I feel like I'm being penalized if I don't alt? (because I am being penalized if I don't alt - I lose out on prismatics)
Clearly, this was something you knew would happen. People would suffer prismatic penalties if they didn't alt out. 
Why are you encouraging people to alt out and play multiple alts in a day? Where is the value to the community in this? 

I can be obtuse, I grant you that. What am I missing? 

[arcane]

Why are you pretending like diminishing returns are a new thing……???

[Neiska]

@Ukase I usually find myself agreeing with you on some things, but I think you may have missed the forest through the trees on this one.

 

As far as the Prismatics themselves, I understand the need for them. If they made the new costumes obtainable via merits, inf, or an already existing currency that people likely have stockpiles of already, then day 1 of the page 4 drop people would have all went out and spent what they had saved on the costumes, and that would have been that. Nothing new to strive for, nothing gained, no new goal to aim for. As far as how to obtain them, the rates, and the prices to trade them, well, I'm more or less "meh" on that part of them. The ones I have found I have pretty much given away to friends, as the rewards are only cosmetic and entire costumes at that. Nor do I particularly like any of the current costumes either. But there are those that do, and that is wonderful for them, and I don't mind helping my friends get them either, as I have multiple piles of INF already, so it benefits me very little to sell them on the AH, I would rather help a friend than get a bit more money.

 

Speaking of prices, I don't think the staff really directly control that, at least not yet. Now yes, they were selling for a whole truckload, but now as there are more on the market the price is coming down, and I don't think that is really a surprise to anyone. As a currency, they don't really stand up due to the low "turnover" rate on them. Converters for example have a very high use/turnover rate, with a heavy consumption. So it will always be worth your salt to get those. But these Prisims? I suspect really only a part of the community is buying and consuming them, I suspect most are actually stockpiling or selling, which will make their value decrease further. In time I expect them to drop to the Enhancer range, of 1-2 mil or so each when it finally bottoms out, but that is entirely guesswork on my part.

 

As far as diminishing returns, I suspect that was placed to prevent people from turning them into the new farming activity. Again, guesswork on my part, but it makes logical sense. If you want to min-max your runs for profit, you will need to do them on multiple characters, for good or ill, take from that what you will.

 

But I would like to highlight that this is an optional reward here, for something that's entirely cosmetic. Now if these were salvage for a new T5 incarnate power or something then sure, I would grant you it's stifling character progression. But we are talking costumes here. Something that is entirely optional and has absolutely zero impact on your characters performance. But if it did then yes, I would be on your side of the fence saying it was an un-needed hamsters wheel or steps to take, but that isn't the case.

[Grouchybeast]

32 minutes ago, Neiska said:

But these Prisims? I suspect really only a part of the community is buying and consuming them, I suspect most are actually stockpiling or selling, which will make their value decrease further. In time I expect them to drop to the Enhancer range, of 1-2 mil or so each when it finally bottoms out, but that is entirely guesswork on my part.

 

As they currently only have two uses (temp costumes and badges) and no way to directly convert them into something else, the floor's the limit, really.

[Zhym]

54 minutes ago, Neiska said:

As far as the Prismatics themselves, I understand the need for them. If they made the new costumes obtainable via merits, inf, or an already existing currency that people likely have stockpiles of already, then day 1 of the page 4 drop people would have all went out and spent what they had saved on the costumes, and that would have been that. Nothing new to strive for, nothing gained, no new goal to aim for.

While that makes sense in the moment, over time it's how you end up with eleventy dozen different currencies.  Every time devs want to introduce something new that rich players can't just buy, do they add yet another new currency?  It would get silly after a while.

 

As for where prices for the PAPs will end up, I think supply will soon exceed demand by quite a lot.  There's some artificial demand at the moment from badgers who need to get 150 of them to pick up four new badges.  But I can't imagine there are enough people who are invested in buying enough NPC costumes to keep demand up after all the badgers have gotten their badges.

Edited September 14, 2022 by Zhym

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

I skim things, focusing on keywords that are in my areas of interest.

That's a very long post to have this embedded. 😉

 

The diminishing returns bit is a bit of an annoyance, since one can just cycle thru characters.  However, I don't worry too much about it since most of my chars do need something they would get from it.   The last thing I'm trying to do is be too efficient, that's a way to make CoX less of a game and more a chore.

 

On Prismatic Aether prices.  I'm fine with them dropping in price, though I don't have any skin in the game.  I'm collecting them on my own, not selling or buying.  If they drop to a million, I might buy a few to get the badge on my badger.  Otherwise, I'll just collect them organically, though I do need to get some ITF & Aeon's in.

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, Neiska said:

@Ukase I usually find myself agreeing with you on some things, but I think you may have missed the forest through the trees on this one.

You'll get no argument from me. I'm always running into trees trying to find the bloody forest. 

On the one hand, I completely get that prismatics have next to no value, inf wise. 
On the other hand, I don't like this idea of having to alt to get what someone else is getting who actually wants to alt. 

I don't want to feel like I have to cycle through characters. 

As for the whole new currency being intro'd because it would be a bit anti-climactic for someone to just buy whatever they needed/wanted - that, I really don't get. So what? 
I can almost grasp the notion of giving players something to work for, but then - there's that word "work". I work enough in real life. I don't like the idea of doing content for a specific reward. 

I much prefer doing content that's of interest and the reward being secondary; a bonus of sorts. That's the way story arcs are for me, in a fashion. Complete the arc, get a hefty bonus. It's not something I pursue, it's just gravy. 

Granted, that's just me. And it's not right for me to expect the CoH world to revolve around me. I'm just wondering the "why".  Generally, Diminishing Returns are for the exact same task force/strike force. NOT different task forces. (unless they're both weeklies - but even then, you'd get the reward merits you're supposed to get, just not the doubled amount. ) 

The way it is now, you'd get 40 reward merits for Apex and 40 for Tin Mage. If the same rule applied to reward merits, we'd get 40 for doing Apex, then 20 for doing Tin Mage. But the rule is different for Prismatics. And as I said, if I want the prismatics, I can buy them. ALL of them. And Keep buying all of them for some time. My point is about the DR rule being for different itrials, and I don't think it's a good policy when you might be switching back and forth so much, you might forget which character has done what. I might do a BAF on Saturday afternoon, and then Sunday, not have a clear memory of what time the last iTrial was for that given character - and then feel ripped off when I get no prismatics. 

Much fuss over very little, I agree. 

I just want to know how everyone else is feeling about this petty DR policy. It doesn't make sense to me. So what if I got an extra prismatic from doing another iTrial. Is that going to break the currency? I seriously doubt it. 

 

[Ukase]

21 minutes ago, lemming said:

That's a very long post to have this embedded. 😉

That's quite true. I'm glad someone caught the irony!

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Why are you pretending like diminishing returns are a new thing……???

I get it. I wrote a lot. I am not new to DR. But the DR rules for different content for the prismatic is different than the rules for task/strike forces. Would you want to do an Apex for 40 reward merits, and then do a tin mage for only 20 reward merits? Or some value less than the 40 you'd get if that's the only tf you did? I would expect not. And while it's easy enough to swap out to another character, reward merits are convertible, any character can use them. 

But incarnate salvage - those are non-transferable, so if I swap out, what do I swap to? A character that doesn't need the incarnate salvage. So it's not really an incentive to swap. 

It's just confusing to be indirectly told  "We don't want you afk-farming, we want you doing content, but only one bit of content per day". 

And yeah,  I get that's a bit of a stretch. 

[The_Warpact]

Just be like me...don't care about them other than to sell them for phat loot.

[Sanguinesun]

Here's my take on your questions and musings Ukase:

 

When one has been groomed by games(including this one when it was live) to be a time sink so that keeps people paying for subs/buying MT's/etc etc, and then folks are presented with such a game outside of that context as CoH is now, its hard to of course balance such time sinks with rewards in its inherent bf skinner model's necessity of diminishing returns on rewards.  

 

But since the game is no longer following an intended business model, yet wanting to have players (and the dev-players) enjoy it, said HC Devs implemented/are implementing changes and additions so that they feel they can retain players and give folks new things to do.

 

They seemingly wanted to give incentives but not make it (yet) worthless.  Aether is the new shiny.  As time goes on and everyone who really wanted the rewards that can be had from getting aether(aether is a middle man reward afterall), then as it accumulates with little need after that, the values will drop......

 

Unless other game content is introduced to feed the value of aether currency later.   It is essentially feature creep, something that played CoH even before it was sunsetted(and many other games too mind you).   People always want more and its a never ending cycle.   This is really rather easy to see how it goes with World of Warcraft actually and how they every so often compress levels, "revamp" classes, added tokens( which pretty much are like aether here) and introduce new things to keep people subbed.

 

So we have to then keep in mind that the HC devs folks are pretty much entrenched in that never ending cycle now too.  

 

You seem to focus on concerns with aether.  I think that's not where concerns really should lie.  My concerns more lie with devs/players having been groomed from this and other games to start to want/consider game play features from other games that, while it satisfies one segment of that want exclusivity/elitism enjoyment to laud over others(which was intentionally groomed by devs of other games again for their business to make money from pixel crack), in other words, I hope that CoH is not transitioning into a pedestaling of the equivalency of mythic raiding.

[Zhym]

The idea that purely cosmetic things like costumes are something that need to be "earned" through game play, as opposed to just being a new, cool thing players can do, seems to be a philosophy shift.  There used to be lots of things in Live you had to earn, mostly through hitting a certain level (e.g., travel powers at 14), doing certain arcs (e.g., Member of Vanguard stuff), or both (e.g., cape missions at 20, auras at...whenever those became available).  And then there were all the things locked behind Paragon Points, which had to be purchased with real money.  

 

With Homecoming (or possibly SCORE), that all seemed to go out the window.  Since they don't need to worry about profit, they don't need to push the "grind."  You did content because you wanted to do content.  Want to powerlevel to 50?  Fine!  Have an XP multiplier to make that even easier.  Want to do every single story arc?  That's cool too!  Have a "disable XP" setting.  And here, while you're at it, have a store full of stuff you used to have to buy with real money, all for reasonably priced amounts of inf.  Enjoy!

 

Of course, powers are still level locked.  If you're a fire blaster, there's no way to get Inferno until you're level 32.  But there's a difference IMO between gaining powers as you gain experience and locking cosmetic features behind a new currency that, at least initially, people need to grind for. 

 

I don't know if this shift is related to AE farming, to the idea that there's not enough to do at level 50, or what.  If it's the former...well, farming isn't my thing, but if people have a good time with it, good for them.  If it's the latter, it shows rather a lack of imagination.  Here.  Let me say it with a meme:

 

 

  When you're bored at level 50, you're bored with CoX.  A new currency's not going to fix that.

Edited September 14, 2022 by Zhym

[Snarky]

This gating rewards so that certain sub population get exactly what they want has always been a pet peeve of mine.  I like low end content.  Earns diddly even when i play months at it.  Then there is this, earn a decent reward, time gate unless you grab an alt.  But the rewards are transferable so wtf….

[KC4800]

I just got my first PAP to drop today. On the 3rd mission (I think) of Dark Watchers arc. Had to kill Automaton Positron to get it. wewt!

[ivanhedgehog]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

This gating rewards so that certain sub population get exactly what they want has always been a pet peeve of mine.  I like low end content.  Earns diddly even when i play months at it.  Then there is this, earn a decent reward, time gate unless you grab an alt.  But the rewards are transferable so wtf….

very much like wow. give the good rewards to the hm elite. allow the plebes to buy access to it. In wow that generates RMT . Sure, you can do radios till you puke and get them or transfer a butt load of resources(inf) to the chosen ones. non 50's dont even have a non rng way of getting them. Not through gameplay. If I am going to play a wow clone I might as well play wow.

[Loc]

The prices dropping seems quite normal to me yeah. I'm almost certain that the vast majority of buyers is a small amount of players stockpiling in wait of the news tiers; I'm one of these players. I'm personally starting to stop buying them as I'm pretty happy with my current stockpile and there's probably others like that, hence the rapid drops in price. 

 

I think that unless the new tiers are a high price (as in tier 3 being 1000+) these prisms are gonna crash almost right away to 1mill if that and then almost never bought as their utility is really small and the supply is way too high compared to what you'll need. In another thread I mentioned that I understand that the devs need to make comprises but they need to pick between either low supply or making them non-tradeable and in both cases there need to be high priced rewards. If you totally disagree with that please read the rest of my post so you can see my reasoning.

 

If they have to be tradeable you'd have to tie them to HM content only as that's the only real way to curb the supply in the long run without killing the playerbase willing to do that content. Eventually that 2% drop chance on any mission and WST rewards are gonna accumulate and make HM content not needed to keep up the supply of them. (Trials add to this but I think the former are the bigger issue in the long run) However, I think that is probably too harsh for people who don't wanna do that content so the logical step is to make them non-tradable. Make the WST drop prisms for sub 50ies so people who don't play on 50ies all the time get more than the 2% drop chance and keep the higher rewards on HM. That way everyone gets their shot at these and if they aren't tradeable farming them isn't gonna throw a wrench into everything.

 

Now for the price of costumes. This is mostly to reward people wanting to do the HM content. The fact of the matter is that unless HM gives you substantially more prims people aren't gonna do them very often (and more or less not at all once the novelty wears off). ASF before this update is proof of that. We have that gap in rewards compared to other content now which is a big part of why they are being ran so much. But even if they aren't tradeable you'll get the same result of the content dying if it's only a couple of 100 prisms for the highest rewards. You only need to run them so often to get that amount. So even if you don't run HM understand that this is basically a requirement for it to be played in any meaningful way besides a rare run here and there.

 

Finally something slightly unrelated to the point of my post but that Ukase mentioned: Having to alt for every trial. I mentioned this before as well but this is an all around bad idea. The only thing it does is either making people with no alts or wanting to farm incarnate salvage on their new character feel like they're wasting their time and giving the league leader a headache because of the logistics. The new reward merits given by each trial don't work like that so why do prisms?

[ivanhedgehog]

Here is a radical thought. Content that is fun and has a base of people that actually want to play it(not just want the prismatics) will be played. If they only rewarded merits for 4 star HM's, would anyone play them? How often do people play cathedral of pain? should a dr q TF drop 3 or 4 prismatics?

 

[Loc]

3 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Here is a radical thought. Content that is fun and has a base of people that actually want to play it(not just want the prismatics) will be played.

 

Let me know how you're planning on changing human nature. Every MMO works on reward structures. Content can be the reward (like Oldskool runescape where you have to do quests and level skills to get certain quest unlocks that then give good rewards or unlock certain areas) but you need a reward structure or your game will slowly die.

 

3 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

If they only rewarded merits for 4 star HM's, would anyone play them?

 

Unlikely even if the rewards are pretty high. Reward merits are already too easy to come by for people who'd be interested in regular HM 4stars.

 

4 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

How often do people play cathedral of pain?

 

Not very often. Its rewards aren't very good though if that was your point.

 

9 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

should a dr q TF drop 3 or 4 prismatics?

 

 

Seems fair if it's the WST. DR Q isn't hard though. Just long and relatively boring.

[huang3721]

10 hours ago, Ukase said:

...that some people actually thought were worth 180M each

IMO, that guy who bought it for 180M was a moron. Although rare, PAP has no value compared to other things (enhancement, booster, etc). Why would they do that? 

[Ukase]

18 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Here is a radical thought. Content that is fun and has a base of people that actually want to play it(not just want the prismatics) will be played. If they only rewarded merits for 4 star HM's, would anyone play them? How often do people play cathedral of pain? should a dr q TF drop 3 or 4 prismatics?

 

I will be transparent here. The only reason I ...attend/participate is to hang out with Stitch & some of the other TFJs. I don't get to do that as often as I'd like. 
I'm slower than most of them. Not as game savvy as some of them (but still fairly savvy with non-HM content), and yet they let me participate without telling me how slow I am, although I suspect the thought has crossed the minds of some of them. Occasionally the SG I belong to will host one, and I'll attend if needed, but if not, I will do something else. Just depends on who's there. 
I tend to do Cathedral of Pain once a week. It's fast, it's simple. No reason not to do it. 

It wouldn't matter to me if a Dr. Q dropped any prismatics. The question would be - would it drop fewer if you'd just run a Yin earlier in the past 18 hours? If so - then no, I'd pass on the Yin. It shouldn't drop fewer just because you ran different content earlier. Same content? I can see that, although I still don't see the big deal. But different content? That's just not making any sense to me. 
 

[Ukase]

6 minutes ago, huang3721 said:

IMO, that guy who bought it for 180M was a moron. Although rare, PAP has no value compared to other things (enhancement, booster, etc). Why would they do that? 

I have to tell myself it's possible it was an extra zero error. But there were dozens that sold for 175M and 170M, price dropped to about 150M and held steady for a day or so. 

But the reason why is probably in two parts: they had it to spend, and they wanted to be done with the badges. Some folks have multiple badgers. One guy I know, I think, he's working on 15 of them. But he's running a relentless Aeon every day he can, acquiring 30 at a pop, and possibly alting to do it again on another badger. So, in another couple of months of running that, he may be done doing that. But, with the price dropping so low, maybe he's just gonna buy the rest, I dunno. 

[Oklahoman]

I said in the beta feedback threads I think we need FEWER currencies, not more. This will almost certainly never again be a retail game, yet we seem to be acting like it. I doubt it goes away, but I honestly hope it does.

[Zhym]

42 minutes ago, Oklahoman said:

I said in the beta feedback threads I think we need FEWER currencies, not more. This will almost certainly never again be a retail game, yet we seem to be acting like it. I doubt it goes away, but I honestly hope it does.

And incarnate shards are right there, sitting around with nothing to do after you've built all the Alpha slot powers you need.

[biostem]

Truth be told, while I appreciate the devs adding new content, and have no problem with people wanting/playing harder content, I just do not have the kind of time availability to partake in a multi-hour TF the new ITF.  I'm sure the time it takes will be cut down as people develop new and better strategies, but at the same time, I want to play MY character with the costume I created for them, not an NPC model.  And even then, having to manage & track yet more currencies is one reason why it took me so long to delve into Incarnates...

[ivanhedgehog]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

I will be transparent here. The only reason I ...attend/participate is to hang out with Stitch & some of the other TFJs. I don't get to do that as often as I'd like. 
I'm slower than most of them. Not as game savvy as some of them (but still fairly savvy with non-HM content), and yet they let me participate without telling me how slow I am, although I suspect the thought has crossed the minds of some of them. Occasionally the SG I belong to will host one, and I'll attend if needed, but if not, I will do something else. Just depends on who's there. 
I tend to do Cathedral of Pain once a week. It's fast, it's simple. No reason not to do it. 

It wouldn't matter to me if a Dr. Q dropped any prismatics. The question would be - would it drop fewer if you'd just run a Yin earlier in the past 18 hours? If so - then no, I'd pass on the Yin. It shouldn't drop fewer just because you ran different content earlier. Same content? I can see that, although I still don't see the big deal. But different content? That's just not making any sense to me. 
 

I have to agree with you on the DR. doesnt make a lot of sense. Long and boring is a difficulty of its own.

the way things are now, costumes are just dead content. 100 million for 1 costume on 1 character? not interested. Maybe the price will come down. who cares at this point. I am playing less after page 4 anyway.

Edited September 15, 2022 by ivanhedgehog