Can you no longer convert Empyrean Merits to Reward Merits?

[BlackSpectre]

On 9/20/2022 at 10:47 AM, Erratic1 said:

I sometimes wonder what goes through people's heads. While I refrain from suggesting various possibilities, I will express dismay at being downvoted for a dispassionate response factually stating what was done in the last patch, as if I personally had a hand in patch changes or expressed support or opposition to them.

 

The forum community is becoming a bit too insane/toxic.

 

 

The thing is... you don't know why they down voted it. None of us do. Did they thumbs down because they disagree with your facts? Who knows? Did they not like your tone? Who knows? Did they just think your post was too long, or too short, or used too many big words? Who knows? Did they downvote it because they don't like your negativity... or positivity? Did they down vote it just because they don't want to read anything on the topic, so didn't? Who knows? Did they down vote it because they're in a bad mood and don't care? Who knows? And there are a zillion other reasons people could down vote, up vote, side vote, happy face vote, sad vote, etc. The fact is the gesture is far too general and vague to know... ever.

 

So just ignore the silly emoticons. They literally don't mean anything significant at all.

 

They only thing I find them at all useful for is gauging how many readers visited the post, but even that is wishy-washy. 

[Digirium]

I rarely converted EMs to RMs -- I thought it was wasteful because EMs were more useful kept as they were and RMs are easy to acquire anyway. The only times I did a conversion were to buy recipes from the merit vendor for enhancements needed to complete a build that were being kept artificially priced high in the auction house i.e. to bypass the needy greediness of other players. It was actually more efficient to use converters but I did not fancy rolling dice.

 

May be removing the conversion was a reasonable trade off to keep VLs available in AE?

 

And if it has any impact on RMTers then may be it had to be done?

 

A grievance I actually have with this and the beta for page 4 was the lack of explanation of rationale from HC.

 

 

[blue4333]

35 minutes ago, Digirium said:

I rarely converted EMs to RMs -- I thought it was wasteful because EMs were more useful kept as they were and RMs are easy to acquire anyway. The only times I did a conversion were to buy recipes from the merit vendor for enhancements needed to complete a build that were being kept artificially priced high in the auction house i.e. to bypass the needy greediness of other players. It was actually more efficient to use converters but I did not fancy rolling dice.

 

May be removing the conversion was a reasonable trade off to keep VLs available in AE?

 

And if it has any impact on RMTers then may be it had to be done?

 

A grievance I actually have with this and the beta for page 4 was the lack of explanation of rationale from HC.

 

 

they posted in the beta thread that they were going to release a statement on the changes. 
 

but oppsies. 
 

i guess it’s easier to just let things slide over and have the fans silence any pockets of dissent on the threads as most players in HC don’t scrutinize the forums. 

[Snarky]

On 9/19/2022 at 7:31 AM, mtmittens said:

Used to do this all the time, was a godsend. Now when you go to the merit vendor, the conversion is gone. I'm not sure if they moved it to another location or if they completely scrapped that conversion. Hopefully it  is not the latter, because making the game more grindy isn't fun for anyone.

Honestly not sure why you would want to.  Being serious.  The only reason i see to convert is to earn. So many better ways to earn I cannot count

 

Then there is the unique value of Empyrean merits.  You can fast kit out a new 50 to tier 4 Incarnate in everything with Emp merits.  Or help you get there at least.   No other in game currency provides this

Edited September 22, 2022 by Snarky

[arcane]

2 hours ago, blue4333 said:

they posted in the beta thread that they were going to release a statement on the changes. 
 

but oppsies. 
 

i guess it’s easier to just let things slide over and have the fans silence any pockets of dissent on the threads as most players in HC don’t scrutinize the forums. 

They only ever posted that they were going to release a dev diary on the veteran level change. When that didn’t happen, the promised dev diary was no longer relevant.

 

They DID both explain what I just explained to you AND explained the empyrean merit conversion change. I doubt you missed either explanation but maybe you did.

[InvaderStych]

It would be nice if this sort of information was not buried in the pages of a closed thread, but I'd still rather have developers developing than acting as PR/Community Rep types.

 

It would be even better if there were someone acting in that role on a more regular basis, but that's a question of resources, etc, etc.

 

But here it is anyway:

 

 

From here:

 

[blue4333]

5 minutes ago, InvaderStych said:

It would be nice if this sort of information was not buried in the pages of a closed thread, but I'd still rather have developers developing than acting as PR/Community Rep types.

 

It would be even better if there were someone acting in that role on a more regular basis, but that's a question of resources, etc, etc.

 

But here it is anyway:

 

 

From here:

 

 

Thanks! Was gonna pull that screenshot too.

 

So my point still stands, just postponed.

 

It would be helpful to get their views/direction going forward soon that way at least people can stop fighting fruitlessly against future changes. 🤡

[battlewraith]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

Honestly not sure why you would want to.  Being serious.  The only reason i see to convert is to earn. So many better ways to earn I cannot count

 

 

A lot of people that have chimed in on this simply cannot relate. They see no reason why this is a problem. Honestly I chalk this up to a lack of empathy, imagination, or both.

Personally, I don't like using the market to earn. I find it tedious as hell and it breaks immersion for me (as in why the hell am I doing this crap in a game when there's real life shit like this that I should be worrying about). I don't particularly like farming, but I would seriously rather jump on a farmer and do some braindead grinding then dealing with going through salvage, buying converters, etc. The conversion was a great way to speed up enhancing a character with a currency of which you had a surplus.

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

Then there is the unique value of Empyrean merits.  You can fast kit out a new 50 to tier 4 Incarnate in everything with Emp merits.  Or help you get there at least.   No other in game currency provides this

 

Sure, but for the vast majority of my characters, tier 4 in everything isn't a priority. And emps aren't all that necessary if it is a priority--I have a character that I was casually playing that has at least 2 of every very rare, thousands of threads, etc. So the emps on that character are largely redundant.

 

After the change, I did transfer a large number of emps to a new character to tier 4 some stuff. Which made the itrials that I typically enjoyed doing less important. I've done a bunch of Kahn now, basically to grind merits and that's what people seem to be running, and it's a stupider mission imo. So yay for using the emps to tier 4? 

 

Emps quickly become worthless under this scheme unless you are regularly making new alts and shifting them to the new character to immediately skip Itrials for components.

[Lockpick]

I didn't even know emps could be converted to anything but threads.  I certainly didn't know I could send them to other characters.  I never would have known without this nerf...

[arcane]

Indeed most of the continuing arguments comes from one side insisting that they have an absolute right to have every aspect of their playstyle preserved throughout each patch. Of course, if you know the first thing about how MMO’s are, and have always been, developed over time, then you know this is a ludicrous position. But that’s what it boils down to.

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Indeed most of the continuing arguments comes from one side insisting that they have an absolute right to have every aspect of their playstyle preserved throughout each patch. Of course, if you know the first thing about how MMO’s are, and have always been, developed over time, then you know this is a ludicrous position. But that’s what it boils down to.

 

Notice that there's no argument here either way. It's just an empty platitude aimed at mocking people who are protesting a change. You could use this generic reply against anything that people complain about on these forums:

 

People are farming to the exclusion of regular content?: MMOs are developed over time.

The game is too easy?:MMOs are developed over time.

Too many currencies?: MMOs are developed over time.

etc.

 

There are posters in these discussions that have no stake in the matter and are simply posturing to score some sort of forum brownie points. I haven't yet come across anyone saying they have an "absolute right to have every aspect of their playstyle preserved". Yes that is a ludicrous position--for which no one is arguing. 

[Snarky]

Even if you do not use Emps to incarnate new alts (what kind of sick mind does not alt??) then the things are still more valuable (to me) to bust i to threads to buy Super Inspirations for Really Hard Way incarnate trials etc

[PeregrineFalcon]

8 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

There are posters in these discussions that have no stake in the matter and are simply posturing to score some sort of forum brownie points. I haven't yet come across anyone saying they have an "absolute right to have every aspect of their playstyle preserved". Yes that is a ludicrous position--for which no one is arguing. 

You are clearly and obviously correct.

 

However, since the person that you're responding to is clearly in Dev Suck Up/Defense Mode, there's no point in even responding to him. He's clearly not going to agree with you no matter what you say.

 

Because your facts don't care about his narrative either.

[Excraft]

On 9/19/2022 at 3:59 PM, Omega-202 said:

It was changed to close a loophole that was being exploited by farmers to churn out hundreds of merits per hour.

 

Which was most likely being done by less than a handful of people if that. 

 

On 9/19/2022 at 3:59 PM, Omega-202 said:

What @Excraft is intentionally leaving out is that 90% of content that used to reward Empyrean Merits now also reward standard Reward Merits so you don't lose out.  Incarnate trials used to only give Emps.  Now they give out Emps and Reward Merits, so you don't lose anything.

 

I couldn't have intentionally left this out because I never mentioned it to begin with, but nice try though.  Adding reward merits to iTrials is great if that's what you're interested in doing.  Solo players who were earning merits through story arcs got some nice bonus merits by converting these EMPs from the vet rewards.  Those players have lost that extra bonus now and yeah, adding merits to iTrials is herding people into "correct/approved" content. 

 

On 9/19/2022 at 3:59 PM, Omega-202 said:

The only thing you lose out on is if you made a habit of using your lvl50+ freebie Emps on Reward Merits instead of using them as intended: unlocking Incarnate powers. 

 

Right so you still lose out. 

 

On 9/19/2022 at 4:41 PM, espectro said:

this dude is that other dudes stalker. creepy

 

Yeah he's like a lost puppy dog following me around.  Just ignore him and he'll go away eventually. 

[Bionic_Flea]

People having arguments about anything on these boards is nothing new.  It's some people's favorite pastime! 

 

Besides, without farming we'd have no food.  And without food, we can't cook.

 

[roleki]

4 hours ago, Snarky said:

Honestly not sure why you would want to.  Being serious.  The only reason i see to convert is to earn. So many better ways to earn I cannot count

 

Then there is the unique value of Empyrean merits.  You can fast kit out a new 50 to tier 4 Incarnate in everything with Emp merits.  Or help you get there at least.   No other in game currency provides this

 

Pretty much this... Reward merits are a LOT easier to get ahold of than Emp merits; I wouldn't even consider trading Emps for RMs in an environment where members of the HC team quasi-openly posit that the Vet Level Emps should never have been included in the 'live' game, which signals Emps will eventually be even harder to come by.

[Seed22]

8 minutes ago, roleki said:

 

Pretty much this... Reward merits are a LOT easier to get ahold of than Emp merits; I wouldn't even consider trading Emps for RMs in an environment where members of the HC team quasi-openly posit that the Vet Level Emps should never have been included in the 'live' game, which signals Emps will eventually be even harder to come by.

Emps are very easy to come by. As in, disgustingly easy. Go do an ITF kill most...3 or so times to be safe, and you'll have plenty! Maybe enough for one or, depending on what you come with, TWO T4's(i've gotten 3, but that was because I was coming off a TinPex and had gotten lucky). This idea that emps are hard to get confuses me. They're as easy, wait-easier than getting merits.

 

Don't like ITF? Do literally any content on decent diff, emps will be a flowin after a little while, whereas merits are confined to TFs/certain arcs/trials. Not hard to do for sure, but emps are technically easier to get, given they come from those vet levels.

 

If they become harder to get, I think a new slot would have to open up to make it worthwhile.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Seed22

[MoonSheep]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

(what kind of sick mind does not alt??)

 

 *looks at my two alts*
 

oh

 

🥺

[ForeverLaxx]

Seeing this thread just makes me want to suggest that, like how there's a popup referencing the Page update and other changes, there should probably be a popup telling players that the next Page is currently undergoing its testing and Feedback phase. You're required to have a forum account to sign up for the game so it's not like you're asking players to take extra steps to "get involved."

 

I know some people wouldn't read the popup, just as they don't read the popup now and spam Help/General with questions that would be answered if they read Patch Notes, but it might head off just a few of the repeat threads like this one.

[roleki]

56 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

Emps are very easy to come by. As in, disgustingly easy. Go do an ITF kill most...3 or so times to be safe, and you'll have plenty! Maybe enough for one or, depending on what you come with, TWO T4's(i've gotten 3, but that was because I was coming off a TinPex and had gotten lucky). This idea that emps are hard to get confuses me. They're as easy, wait-easier than getting merits.

 

Don't like ITF? Do literally any content on decent diff, emps will be a flowin after a little while, whereas merits are confined to TFs/certain arcs/trials. Not hard to do for sure, but emps are technically easier to get, given they come from those vet levels.

 

If they become harder to get, I think a new slot would have to open up to make it worthwhile.

 

Matter of perspective, I suppose.  I rarely do TFs, so VL is pretty much my only source of Emps.  Flip side, I roll up hundreds of RMs a week doing MSRs, and clear a few thousand running monster hunting teams over the course of the ToT event, although that isn't as lucrative as it was when we had 3x the pop.

[Seed22]

1 hour ago, roleki said:

 

Matter of perspective, I suppose.  I rarely do TFs, so VL is pretty much my only source of Emps.  Flip side, I roll up hundreds of RMs a week doing MSRs, and clear a few thousand running monster hunting teams over the course of the ToT event, although that isn't as lucrative as it was when we had 3x the pop.

Very fair! I’d day really as long as you’re doing what works for you and is still fun, you’re making the most lucrative  move :D

[ivanhedgehog]

5 hours ago, roleki said:

 

Pretty much this... Reward merits are a LOT easier to get ahold of than Emp merits; I wouldn't even consider trading Emps for RMs in an environment where members of the HC team quasi-openly posit that the Vet Level Emps should never have been included in the 'live' game, which signals Emps will eventually be even harder to come by.

the best way to earn inf is to run the preferred content, HM ATF and ITF. It rewards the best hands down.

[DarknessEternal]

I've only logged in one day to save names since this change, no actual play time.  Maybe I'm done.

[tidge]

[Novanglus]

Alright, thoughts incoming so I fully expect people to flame or skip over, but I'm saying it on behalf of a lot of other people I've talked to in the last few days. Feedback is feedback, and I hope that's what everyone takes out of this. There's no wrong or right opinion here, just taking all opinions into account.

I was on a hiatus for a few months and I am shocked by decision to remove Emps. Not only had I banked a lot of Emps I was saving for getting starter builds on some new lvl 50s, but I am a filthy casual who really only does RP groups, not merit-earning activities. Vet levels were practically my sole means of getting builds made for alts.

 

I really have to wonder who is benefiting here and what I'm supposed to do with Emps when I don't do high level content? I don't need nor care about Incarnates, and Incarnates are the least of my concern if I can't even get a basic build on my toon, because I am a casual RPer and broke as hell all the time. The only thing we can spend them on now is Super Insps which are worth a fraction of what they were before when I looked. I mean...at the very least give us something else to spend Emps on. Anything useful, seriously, anything!

 

I mean this in the most heartfelt way possible -- as a player since Year 1 of Live, who was a child at the time and grew up with this game -- this decision is really painful to see. Why? Everyone I know is hurting for it except those who farm a lot (which is my whole circle, cuz we are all casual RPers). Every day I've logged in since my short hiatus, I have never seen such negativity in the player base. Infighting and arguments on every PUG, arguments in General and Help channel, people genuinely expressing frustration, regret, and impending burn out because they are casuals who don't want to grind all the time. Morale took a huge hit with this one. That is not in the spirit of this game or the community.

 

I am 100% for balancing currencies, but removing player agency and choice, removing the reward for RPers and casuals, and causing such negativity in the community is a consequence that is totally not worth the solution the Devs were looking to find with this change. This wasn't thought through at all and I beg the Devs to reconsider the abruptness and rashness of this implementation. At the very least, giving us a few months heads up like the upcoming name policy would have been totally fair. That would have given those who worked hard to bank Emps for the purpose of getting a build started a chance to do that, so we aren't horribly punished for Just Playing The Game. I've taken plenty of breaks throughout CoX's lifespan, and I've never had to fear coming back to a big shaft up the rear before. Cuz that's really how this feels, man, feels bad.

 

At the end of the day, it's punishing players for.... just playing. Why keep playing an old level 50 main if the reward is basically nothing? If just leveling up through hanging out with your friends is somehow an abuse of Emps, I beg to understand why? If farmers are the problem, punish farming.

 

At the end of the day, the amount of divisiveness and negativity that's rolled around in the community over this is really un-fun. I support the idea of reworking our currencies and balancing farming and the economy. This wasn't the way to do it, and I think we should roll it back and try something new. I thank the Devs for their effort in everything they do, and I really hope they find a better solution.

 

Thank you to those who read this and respond with constructiveness and kindness. I want nothing but the best for the community I've been a part of for most of my life.