oh, the feels...

[Ukase]

12 hours ago, Krimson said:

If you are doing nothing but regular content, you will have enough threads and Empyrean Merits to get everything to Tier 4 sometime around Vet Level 42ish. Shards only work on Alpha anyway, and I usually only use them for making the second Tier 3 on the way to Tier 4. Out of 26 toons, 25 are level 50 and about 14 of them are fully Incarnate, so I don't just stop at Tier 3. 

Anecdotally, I find I tend to get t-4 in all sooner, but I'm not just doing regular content. 

When I do iTrials, I try to do master runs only, aside from Lambda, as that requires multiple runs. 
The reason, for those that don't know is each badge towards the master awards a random uncommon, and each master earned awards an additional random rare - all in addition to the reward table. 

Cosmic tends to run the Master of Magisterium on Saturdays, or at least has been prior to September. And following that, will run additional Master of iTrial efforts. Getting those badges leads to the extra drops, which makes things more efficient. 

I still look at reward merits for completing these as gravy, as that's not why I run them. But I do need to pay attention to them, because if those diminish for different itrials, then I've really got to ask myself why they want folks to constantly be alting out to another character. I know some folks do that as part of their routine, but I rarely have had multiple characters being developed/leveling at the same time. That just seems like a boring way to play. Do a dfb a few times on one character, log off and repeat it for another? Who does that? Then log in another character and repeat again? Not saying that's what they want, or that's what anyone is doing, but it sounds like that's the way they want us to play. 

Well, the weekend is here, so I'm not gonna sweat things out of my control. I'm just gonna row for a couple of hours and maybe go to Costco. I love watching the Customer Service folks take heat from customers. 

Last time, a chick was returning a sweater because of static cling! And, as you might expect, Costco gave her another one, no charge. 

[PLVRIZR]

8 hours ago, biostem said:

I wonder if people would be accepting of a system that, instead of returning fewer results on repeated runs of the same content, simply permitted X runs of *any* content at full value, then started reducing them from there, globally...

 

Personally, I would not.  I believe the reward of once-per-day (or 20hr. time period) is the sweet spot.  If you take away the merits, completely, in my ITFs and Yins, I would be extraordinarily disappointed...and I'm not even close to be speedy in anything.  Might I still run them, sure, 'cause they're fun, but why shouldn't you get the reward?

[BlackSpectre]

9 hours ago, Frozen Burn said:

 

iTrials never rewarded Reward Merits before page 4.  Not sure where you got that from. 

 

Oh! I’m sorry, I just figured everyone knew about the ability, pre-Page 4, to convert Astral and Emp merits Into Reward Merits. Page 4 took that away.  Thus, we can no longer get as many reward merits from doing BAF after the first run. 

 

P.S., if you'd like to read a verbose post about this, and admittedly it is way too long, try this 

 

Edited September 16, 2022 by BlackSpectre

[Confusion]

On 9/15/2022 at 1:40 PM, Zhym said:

I'd quibble a bit both with the premise that Homecoming losing so many players is a huge problem and with the conclusion that the way to get them back is to add more things to grind for.

 

Yes, Homecoming doesn't have as many players as it had in March 2020.  No surprise there: it was "new" again, and most of us were home all day because of the pandemic.  Homecoming will never have that many players again. 

 

Is that a problem?  Well, I play almost exclusively on Excelsior, where it still doesn't take long for TFs and iTrials to fill.  Hami raids and MSRs are also routinely full.  And of course there's all that content that can be played solo.  If Homecoming's population drops to that of a ghost town, I'll still be incredibly grateful that I could log into that ghost town and play all that solo content that I missed so much after NC Soft took it away.

 

But the loss of players is felt a bit around the edges.  Less popular activities, like Hami Bud "raids" in First ward and Recluse's Victory runs, don't seem to happen as often than they used to.  And we're increasingly reliant on a handful of players who run iTrials on a regular basis.  If @Oklahoman, @STiTcH, and @Confusion got bored with the game and left, parts of the game would practically collapse.  Excelsior would be...well, like most of the other shards.  Fortunately, they don't seem bored with it yet.  And there's plenty of stuff to do even when there isn't a raid or an iTrial going.  By another metric, Homecoming's population is just fine: they're still getting enough donations each month to pay the bills, and getting them fairly quickly.  

 

Homecoming is never going to be the next big thing, even if talks to have legitimate use of the IP eventually resolve.  Maybe it's okay that it's a niche game that a few hundred people love and no one else cares about.

 

But suppose we grant the premise that population loss is bad.  I really don't think it's a lack of locked content or enough things to grind for that's keeping people away.  And adding NPC costumes that are locked behind a new currency isn't going to bring anyone back.  

 

Personally, I think Homecoming's biggest barrier to population growth is that it's gotten kind of unfriendly to new players.  I don't mean "unfriendly" in that we're intentionally hostile and mean when a new player shows up, but the way the game is structured now isn't really newbie friendly.  For example: just yesterday, someone who joined a Hess TF asked how to get to Striga, and it took me a moment to remember the smuggler's submarine and where it is, because what I usually do is use the macro to hop to the Excelsior Transportation Zone base and use a teleporter there.  Until recently, using LFG to get to Cimerora quickly was another piece of arcane knowledge kept from the uninitiated.  And don't get me started again on Homecoming's weird economy, which new players can't possibly be expected to understand unless someone explains it to them.  Someone who wants to try this game they've heard about, where you can be a superhero and fight bad guys, is quickly going to become lost in what Homecoming is now.

 

NPC costumes locked behind a new currency doesn't solve any of that.  In fact, it makes it worse by complicating the game even further. 

 

What would bring more players in?  Beats me, and this post is too long already.  New content is always good, but new content has just turned into the next thing to farm (see: Aeon, which is just full of wonderfulness and challenge but is usually just sped through for the rewards.  The only reason people do the AWESOME Hero 1 fight now is because it rewards Aether...so I guess I'm glad Aether exists, if just for that).  And because I think it's mostly casual players we're losing, adding more hard modes isn't the solution either.  Maybe there isn't a solution.  Maybe that's even okay.

whats good homie, just wanted to say i appreciate the callout 😄 cya around in leagues 😄 

[Frozen Burn]

20 hours ago, BlackSpectre said:

Oh! I’m sorry, I just figured everyone knew about the ability, pre-Page 4, to convert Astral and Emp merits Into Reward Merits. Page 4 took that away.  Thus, we can no longer get as many reward merits from doing BAF after the first run. 

 

P.S., if you'd like to read a verbose post about this, and admittedly it is way too long, try this 

 

 

Yes, I am aware they took away Emp/Astral conversion to Reward Merits, but that's not how your post read or alluded to.  😛