Can you no longer convert Empyrean Merits to Reward Merits?

[Sayterra]

So I've been away for several months and came back with my buddy to a lack of empyrean to reward merit conversion and...

Damn, this is the single easiest way to get rid of casual players.  I bank all my emps on my main, and use her to help create builds for other characters. I do not farm, I do not want to farm, and I certainly do not want to grind. CoH was my game to come home to after making games during the day and relax.

My day job, by the way?  I'm a game dev.  I have fifteen 15 years of experience in console and mobile, seeing this go through is just a nightmare for me. I came back from a break to the game I love and it's no longer viable for me to make builds? I remember reading through the last update notes, excited about aether, excited to help my friends out getting costumes they've been waiting years for... 

People can yell "Oh but you can get inf so easily by X". Yeah, I know.  If you have hours to grind, sure. I'm a RPer at heart.  I have a few hours potentially tops per day, and I take breaks.  I don't have a roster of 100+ active characters.  I relied on the conversions to get me the recipes I needed because I rarely had more than 100 million influence banked because I spend far, far more on costume costs. I was pretty active in Hami Raids because a quick way to get merits in general, but I'm just not here for the grind. I'm here to have *fun*.

This wasn't the way to fix the economy if the economy *was* an issue. And if the devs are only listening to the scant few, this has been an issue talked about on repeatedly on voice chats and discords over the last few days when I asked about it and the overall response from dozens of players has been purely negative. No one said: "It makes sense and here's why..."

Even implementing a one-time conversion with a pop-up would have been a far, far better way to introduce the currency's retirement:  "Empyrean Merits are no longer being used to reward merit conversion. Would you like to convert (Slider scale here) Empyrean Merits to Reward Merits?"

That simple.  That would have been an easy way for all of us who are casual to at least get a payout of something we can use.  Take a little bit of the burn off this.

Please think about reinstating Empyrean merits, or at least the one time conversion.  

One super bummed Goat,

-Sayterra

[Sayterra]

It says a ton about how this change affected my play if I never posted on the forums in nearly three years of enjoyment JUST to talk about this...

[Glacier Peak]

Welcome back!

[BlackSpectre]

1 hour ago, Sayterra said:

Even implementing a one-time conversion with a pop-up would have been a far, far better way to introduce the currency's retirement:  "Empyrean Merits are no longer being used to reward merit conversion. Would you like to convert (Slider scale here) Empyrean Merits to Reward Merits?"

Yeah, it’s a good point. It was ONLY because of my passion for tanking and interest in the aggro cap that Led me to log into the test server, then post in the focused feedback, and then branch out to reading about the proposed changes.  
 

So I had two weeks before the patch took effect, and enough time for me to decide what to do with all of the Empyrean merits my main character had collected. I’m an unusual case though because I’ve been performing a community service over the last 2 years to make as many BAF Incarnate trials available to the population as possible. In general I feel it’s a real bummer when one is trying to acquire incarnate powers but no incarnate trial is available. Players end up being more or less stuck. Not cool. So I’m not farming incarnate trials to earn any sort of currency… and yet, it is nice to have some tangible reward for all the time and effort. Icing on the cake. If I had been stuck with 1,200 useless Empyrean merits I would have been as upset as you. If not for sheer luck, I’d be where you are right now. 
 

Maybe the Devs can implement something like the one time pop up/slider you suggest? It would help many people in your situation. 
 

in a different recent thread it was suggested to reduce the merit reward costs of buying recipes and enhancements to make reward merits a viable way to outfit a character (rather than only influence). It’s not a bad idea. 

[tidge]

There must be a spectrum of casual role-players that I didn't appreciate. My casual RP toons are banking Empyrian Merits to rebuild Galaxy City.

[Grouchybeast]

10 hours ago, Novanglus said:

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.

 

Ironically, it was the RPers and casual players who were partly responsible for the Emp --> Merit removal.

 

The original proposal got rid of Incarnate rewards from AE.  Some RPers and AE arc writers pointed out that this would significantly affect people's willingness to use AE for it's actual intended purpose of creating and playing story content, especially since AE rewards were already lower than regular content.  So the AE change was reverted and Emp conversions were removed instead.

 

I'm not quite sure how you're playing your 50s such that you're accumulating lots of Emp merits but no reward merits or saleable drops, but maybe you can adjust 'leveling while hanging out with friends' to some other content.  I level through story arc content, and I find that my characters are all pretty much self-funding, especially if I continue to play them at 50.  Also, you might not have noticed if you've just come back to the game, but rewards from Incarnate trials were all buffed to give substantial extra merits.

[tidge]

37 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

 

I'm not quite sure how you're playing your 50s such that you're accumulating lots of Emp merits but no reward merits or saleable drops, but maybe you can adjust 'leveling while hanging out with friends' to some other content.  I level through story arc content, and I find that my characters are all pretty much self-funding, especially if I continue to play them at 50. 

 

I can imagine how a (solo player) level 50+ could be accumulating Empyrian merits but none of the ways I can imagine feel like casual role-play, at least not on the scale where a single level 50+ would be funding multiple new characters:

• Repeated grinding of Dark Astoria missions yields Emp merits, 1-at-a-time.
• Farming of missions (could be AE, could be anything at x8, including DA missions) to gain vet levels fast enough that the Emp merits roll in, up to a certain vet level.

I don't intend this to be nasty: I see a logical disconnect between wanting to casually play only a few hours a week, yet also have a huge stable of characters that demand the sort of Merit/Inf-vestment that is typically only associated with fully-kitted level 50s. I'm trying to imagine myself in the circumstance where this would be the case, and the most sympathetic circumstance I can imagine is one where my (new) character is buying all items directly via merit vendors and never going near the auction house. If the AH is toxic to a player... that should be recognized a self-punishing choice.

 

Level 50 common recipes can be sold to stores at approximately 100 KInf each. That can be used to buy quite a lot from P2W, and many of the commonly used Enhancements to shore up low-level builds are 4 MInf or less. It isn't necessary to be a "marketeer", "farmer", or "grinder" to be able to afford Performance Shifters, Knockback Protection, etc.

 

I can share my own approach to open myself up to judgement: I play through regular content, often with XP boosts. I share Inf (and enhancements) from older characters to the new characters so they have some advantages between levels 15-25 (Kismets, Perf Shifters, Panaceas)... but generally they have a hodge-podge of partially slotted powers (using common IOs from the AH). They slowly craft & market & play merit-giving content so that at level 50 they can respec into slots/enhancements that they have pretty much bought themselves.

 

There are a couple of ways my older level 50s help the new characters that don't rely on merits, although I suppose merits could be used:

• I recycle a LOT of enhancements via the SG base, including sets of crafted and attuned PvP pieces.

This isn't even financially efficient, yet this is what I've done. Those pieces were recipe drops that were crafted and attuned in the past and are available for slotting (if I think of it) by lower level characters. In a real pinch, it is possible to "burn" respecs on a level 50 (alternate build) to mass-attune pieces for lower-level characters... not recommended, but it saves using unslotters.

• I allow catalysts to accumulate in the SG base, so at level 50 I can "superior" things immediately. If I didn't do this, it would at most take a couple of weeks to accumulate the catalysts via a single character, assuming a couple of 6-piece sets I want catalysed at the same time.

That's about it. I could use merits from other toons to buy Boosters, but by level 50 each character has plenty of merits, such that I may impatiently use merits for Purple pieces when the market is not cooperating... also not efficient, but that's on me.

 

 

[Seed22]

24 minutes ago, tidge said:

I see a logical disconnect between wanting to casually play only a few hours a week, yet also have a huge stable of characters that demand the sort of Merit/Inf-vestment that is typically only associated with fully-kitted level 50s

I’ve done this with 12-15 50s, all at a time when I only had about 3 or so hours to play at most on a good day. It’s done through future proofing, where I basically stored inf so I can immediately buy my builds. It’s actually the legit only reason I still play this game. Well that and family still play

 

It took me about a 3 years(didnt play CoH for half of one) to do this all though. 

Edited October 13, 2022 by Seed22

[tidge]

4 hours ago, Seed22 said:

I’ve done this with 12-15 50s, all at a time when I only had about 3 or so hours to play at most on a good day. It’s done through future proofing, where I basically stored inf so I can immediately buy my builds. It’s actually the legit only reason I still play this game. Well that and family still play

 

It took me about a 3 years(didnt play CoH for half of one) to do this all though. 

 

I did the same, without ever converting an Empyrian merit (to anything other than Incarnate power). I have fewer than three pages of lvl 50s.

[lemming]

I think if people ran a lot of iTrials, they might bank a bunch of Empyreans.    I've got a bit over 100 level 50s, and rarely converted to Reward merits.  Mostly used excess ones to incarnate kit out one of the other 50s.

[Grouchybeast]

3 hours ago, Krimson said:

I never even thought to do this. My Empyrean merits get used for Incarnate stuff. I have 27 toons and they are all 50s. My main has 8 Tier 4 Incarnates, and a couple of toons have 7.

 

I've never converted Emp merits to reward merits...but then I almost never spend reward merits, either, because what if I really need them for something else later?  I have chronic packrat issues in video games.  You should see how many chests I end up with when I play Stardew Valley.

[roleki]

This was a great change and it solved SO many problems, like, server population.

[@Ghost]

3 hours ago, lemming said:

I think if people ran a lot of iTrials, they might bank a bunch of Empyreans.    I've got a bit over 100 level 50s, and rarely converted to Reward merits.  Mostly used excess ones to incarnate kit out one of the other 50s.

I've had long spans of playing where I'd just log in to do a Hami or two a day and log back out. Usually took less than 20 minutes. On Everlasting they go back to back so you get 80 reward merits, and then either 40 reward merits or 4 emps. Since they were exactly equivalent, I took the 4 emps every time for flexibility; I could cash them out for the same 40 reward merits, or keep banking them for alts.

 

Thankfully I read the patch notes and cashed out something like 300+ emps beforehand. Don't know why they didn't change veteran levels to grant a new currency that doesn't convert to reward merits since that was the problem and not emps or AE itself, but c'est la vie.

[RikOz]

21 hours ago, Novanglus said:

but removing player agency and choice, removing the reward for RPers and casuals,

I can say that one of the biggest reasons I finally gave up on WoW after more than ten years was the increasing tendency of the devs to force players into raiding and hard-mode dungeons. Like, I was fine with not having the top gear. But I was not fine with having my progress on professions stymied by being forced to run a dungeon. Or coming back after a several-month break, earning some new gear from ordinary gameplay, only to discover that this new and improved armor was cursed and actively trying to kill me, and I'd have to join a raid to get the materials to decurse my gear.

[DrunkFlux]

Before the patch landed, I got rid of every single E merit on my toons beforehand well in advance.  I still have a massive stockpile of merits across multiple toons as a result.  I did this even on toons without fully developed incarnate powers, specifically since I still had plenty of vet levels that granted e merits left on those toons.

 

My thoughts are two fold:

 

E merits become less valuable over time as you have your chosen incarnate powers advanced to a point.  Many tier 4 incarnate powers are actually not 'that' useful or enough of a gain.  IO's however are a much bigger gain.  So I often used E merit to merit to fund my toons IO's before going back to getting tier 4 incarnate powers.  Cost opportunity; tier 4 incarnate powers are most part not enough of an increase in power per the cost of upgrading from tier 3 to tier 4.  three hundred and eighty to 400 or so merits for a power that was about 10-15% more effective when I could use that influence to get 3-4 IO sets, world of difference.

 

What changed for me ultimately is now many of my toons are far less IO'd out than before, and while I'm playing them longer before I max them out, I'm not as caring or valuing of E merits, in fact as far as I am concerned anything rewarding E merits, but not merits, certainly wouldn't be worth running at all.  I mean why should I bother with them if i have almost everything or everything tier 4 by the time I'm even vet level 30-40 now?

 

I know some people think E merits should only have been used, exclusively, on incarnate powers but all it means is they are simply way, way less valuable now.

[IronJuke]

Hey everyone, I just started playing again today after over a year and SHOCKED! SHOCKED, I tell you, to find out that I was sitting on 363 Emp Merits that I now cannot convert.

 

All because some bozos were abusing the system and messing it up for the rest of us?!  Maybe just ban those people.

 

Since they were on my farming account, I don't have any other toons to spend them on for Incarnate.  Maybe time to create a Farmer on my main account or something so that I can P/L some toons on my other account. Dunno.  I am PERPLEX'd to say the least.  Time to earn more inf on the AH I guess. 

 

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Edited March 24, 2023 by IronJuke

[TheZag]

I would have been more shocked if the game was still the exact same after a year offline.  This subject was talked to death months ago though so ill refrain from restating old opinions.