Focused Feedback: Costume & Pet Reward Updates

[Sanguinesun]

Given the mindset of devs saying that think character progression is too fast and an "issue" and in conjunction with this return to reward grinding heavy time sinks for these costume things, the real question that to me is most disconcerting is,  is this then the beginning of the reversal of the game players have grown accustomed to enjoying in a more relaxed  atmosphere on HC and are we returning back to the days of exclusivity attitudes so poisonously  groomed by the live devs then (which was for the purposes of subs/mis(influence of ego marketing as that was)....?  The evidence seems to be increasingly compelling that's happening.

 

It also sees obvious this is just the beginning of this feature creep with the function and use of aethers(and lord recluse only knows what else down the pipeline).  

 

I get devs want to create some new things and a time sink for them, but it sure does seem like this is very excessive and with the future to be more so.  

 

Make plain then if collectively the team's intents are to return to the "good ole days".   The community should more transparently know.

 

Personally, I could care less about these current 1500+ aethers worth of grind offerings. Again iIts the thinking that this is ok and should be accept with more/worse to come that is what I and perhaps others see as a concern per what I mentioned already above.

 

And yes, its a shame we lost some folks this week as Faultline has eluded to seemingly derisively.  Perhaps those that have left or thinking about leaving see these sorts of attitudes and shifts in the service of/with the community as part of the reasons why?   Of course that's an uncomfortable thing to consider for those that have taken extensive pride in their efforts with the community on both sides respectively.  But all this isn't happening in a vacuum.

 

 

[Seed22]

55 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

I'd love to have a set of little chibi Rularuu pets. The Image of the Well is close, but just not the same. 

If I can get the ravager so help me I will grind for MONTHS. Do you hear me, MONTHS!

[Zephiyo]

I'll be on the side of 'the prices are fine or should be higher' and here's my opinion:

 

1. Most are 10 Aether. REALLY good-looking ones too, like the Master at Arms himself, or The All-Mother Devoured.

Mind-blowingly neat costumes for such a dirt-cheap price. This is a steal.

 

2. Aether can be bought on the auction house. As of now, Live prices are 7mil each (3mil last week).

This means for the very highest-end costumes, the most expensive ever, is still under 2bil inf. The price of building a few characters to max.

Edit: Sorry, missed the 1,500 Aether one - that's over 10bil. So, to correct, 99% of them at this time are under 2bil and most are like 70mil.

Those who don't want to farm Aether can just pile inf over time to buy the Aether.

 

 

3. Having long-term cosmetic goals is an amazing way to give us a reason to play.

City of Heroes is amazing and I want to play it, but if I'm not working towards anything I don't feel as much enjoyment from playing. I feel like it's 'wasted time' if you will.

Aether alone has made me play for hundreds of hours over the last few months (yeah before it came out because I was preparing toons) and I love the reason to play.

 

 

And I'm sure this probably doesn't need to be said due to the opinion seemingly of the Dev team, but Empyreans should have no part in buying the costumes - only Aether.

1. Empyreans should be solely for the incarnate system for game consistency reasons.

2. People with 2k Empyreans (yeah me) would make Aether market meaningless.

 

 

Edited October 13, 2022 by Zephiyo

[Chrono-Bot]

Hello! I have a bit of feedback about the costume tiers!

 

I have a very hard time telling the yellow and orange from eachother and I would like to suggest a more extreme colour shift - lighten up the yellow and darken the orange. 

 

Thank you for your time.

[Faultline]

5 minutes ago, Chrono-Bot said:

I have a very hard time telling the yellow and orange from eachother and I would like to suggest a more extreme colour shift - lighten up the yellow and darken the orange. 

 

You mean in the recipe colors? Aren't those the same as from the regular enhancement recipes? They should be.

[Number Six]

18 minutes ago, Sanguinesun said:

Make plain then if collectively the team's intents are to return to the "good ole days".   The community should more transparently know.

 

We've literally said multiple times that's not the case, and bent over backwards to make the Prismatic Aether system and hard-mode rewards purely cosmetic items to show off with and not affect gameplay at all.

 

Even after the 'nerfs' to get things a bit more even-keel, AE powerleveling is still faster than it was on retail and drops sellable items instead of tickets, merit costs are an order of magnitude lower, there's perma double XP available, market prices are way, way lower than they ever were and you can purple out characters for a fraction of what it would have taken. You get Incarnates for basically free -- tier 4s even! -- for doing other content, rendering iTrials mostly obsolete. Sure, I've said before I think it should have been tier 3s at most through that system, but we have no plans to change it. Other servers joke and say that HC is "easy mode" and comprised of nothing but people who farm all the time, and while I disagree with their perception and think it's not as extreme as some seem to think, it's definitely quite a bit less grindy than when people were paying monthly subs or being pushed into the cash shop.

 

I mean if that was really our intent and all we've managed to do in that direction is add some costume change powers, then we're really bad at it.

 

If you still don't believe it and think we're out to destroy everything out of spite or whatever, I don't think there's anything any of us can say that will make a difference.

[Chrono-Bot]

34 minutes ago, Faultline said:

You mean in the recipe colors? Aren't those the same as from the regular enhancement recipes? They should be.

I'm not sure - a big way I tell recipes apart is the image on them, not just the colour. If Damage Resist and Defense didn't have different images, for instance, I would never be able to tell which was which. Since these two have the same image, I can't do the same. 

 

EDIT 2: Ugh. I just realized 'recipes' not 'enhancements' - The text is very easy to tell apart, actually. But the icons is what I can't tell apart.

 

EDIT: Oh I just had an idea! What if you put a little 1, 2, 3, and 4 on them?

 

Edited October 13, 2022 by Chrono-Bot

[Faultline]

1 minute ago, Chrono-Bot said:

I'm not sure - a big way I tell recipes apart is the image on them, not just the colour. If Damage Resist and Defense didn't have different images, for instance, I would never be able to tell which was which. Since these two have the same image, I can't do the same. 

 

 

Oh, I see, the power icons. @Cobalt Arachne you may want to tweak that, Uncommon and Rare are indeed very close.

[Yuro]

10 minutes ago, Chrono-Bot said:

EDIT: Oh I just had an idea! What if you put a little 1, 2, 3, and 4 on them?

Could make it fancy(ish) and label them with Roman numerals.  I, II, III, IV

[Astralock]

1 hour ago, Seed22 said:

The only problem I have is with the phrasing. It’s not an “issue” for folks to get maxed out characters, this is meant to be a past time and nothing more, so having them get a maxed character in a few hours(takes me personally 5 if I get the time) isn’t terrible.

 

Now, I get the aether stuff. In fact, upon thinking on this further, this could be just what I needed to get back a couple bil.

 

But it is an issue for some people.  I personally know dozens of friends and acquaintances that have left the game over the past three years (and most of them within the first year and a half), because after about three hours of PLing, three hours of getting accolades, and maybe a couple of hours for Incarnate abilities from Transcendent merits... congratulations, you've won.  There's literally nothing else left to accomplish in the game, nothing else to work for, except perhaps badging.  I've nearly left Homecoming myself twice because of that, but a couple of people forbade my leaving. 

 

SCoRE and Homecoming made some great quality of life changes for the game, but in the process they also removed all of the stickiness, all of the reasons for playing for a lot of people.  Advanced Difficulty TFs, aethers, and this new system are an attempt to correct that.

Edited October 13, 2022 by Astralock

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Zephiyo said:

2. Aether can be bought on the auction house. As of now, Live prices are 7mil each (3mil last week).

This means for the very highest-end costumes, the most expensive ever, is still under 2bil inf. The price of building a few characters to max.

Those who don't want to farm Aether can just pile inf over time to buy the Aether.

Might want to check your math.   1500 * 2,000,000 is 3 billion.   (Just forecasting the price may drop a bit, if not, well at 7m each, 10.5 Billion)

I think for players that don't play the market or do other stuff to just generate influence that's quite a bit.  (heck, my liquid assets, might be about 2b if I consolidate, though I suppose I could strip a bunch of alts of enhancements and have a fire sale...)

 

Rest of this isn't really aimed at you in particular.

 

My main objection is to the price of the tier 4.  500 might be doable for someone who doesn't want to grind too much.    Put it at 1500, I doubt I'll even bother.  I'm more of a casual player that has a bunch of alts, I play a lot of solo, and sometimes PUG.  That doesn't generate that much in terms of Aethers. 

 

I'm glad the mini mode is dropped to a more reasonable 250.  That's a bit of effort, but one that can be attained without churning thru some HM content. Honestly, this tier has the most interest to me.

 

Using Emp merits was just an idea, I doubt I'd use it myself, but there are people who seem to want to spend them on something other than incarnate abilities.

 

Other feedback:

The new Halloween Vampire & Mummy, seem like decent prices and might sluff off some of that excess halloween salvage.  I anticipate a candy cane version in winter.

 

Pets: 

Semi-spendy on reward merits, but those do seem to have a surplus around and since you were going for the years..  Can't test the Trio since they're locked to certain months

 

For the Hero 1 pet, 10,000 Vanguard Merits?  Isn't 9,999 the max you can have at a time?

 

[Troo]

5 hours ago, Number Six said:

 

Even after the 'nerfs' to get things a bit more even-keel, AE powerleveling is still faster than it was on retail and drops sellable items instead of tickets, merit costs are an order of magnitude lower, there's perma double XP available, market prices are way, way lower than they ever were and you can purple out characters for a fraction of what it would have taken. You get Incarnates for basically free -- tier 4s even! -- for doing other content, rendering iTrials mostly obsolete. Sure, I've said before I think it should have been tier 3s at most through that system, but we have no plans to change it. Other servers joke and say that HC is "easy mode" and comprised of nothing but people who farm all the time, and while I disagree with their perception and think it's not as extreme as some seem to think, it's definitely quite a bit less grindy than when people were paying monthly subs or being pushed into the cash shop.

 

I mean if that was really our intent and all we've managed to do in that direction is add some costume change powers, then we're really bad at it.

 

If you still don't believe it and think we're out to destroy everything out of spite or whatever, I don't think there's anything any of us can say that will make a difference.

 

  Well said Number Six.

 

 

Edited October 13, 2022 by Troo

[Marshal_General]

When the last page dropped, I started a new character and leveled it to 50 and ended up with only 6 ether which is not enough for one of the T1 costumes. I was looking forward to this feature, but now I have decided to ignore it exists.

[M I Abrahms]

For something a little different, can I get an option to return the costumes when I'm done with them? At the moment, I have one character who would actually want any of the offerings, but I have a few that might enjoy the badges that come with. The issue is, the powers window already feels pretty bloated to me, especially since it breaks down to "Primary, Secondary, and literally everything else". 

I, personally, don't even want a particle refund, though I'm sure that's its own discussion. I just want to clean up the space.

Edited October 13, 2022 by M I Abrahms

[flakoff]

9 hours ago, Astralock said:

 

But it is an issue for some people.  I personally know dozens of friends and acquaintances that have left the game over the past three years (and most of them within the first year and a half), because after about three hours of PLing, three hours of getting accolades, and maybe a couple of hours for Incarnate abilities from Transcendent merits... congratulations, you've won.  There's literally nothing else left to accomplish in the game, nothing else to work for, except perhaps badging.  I've nearly left Homecoming myself twice because of that, but a couple of people forbade my leaving. 

 

SCoRE and Homecoming made some great quality of life changes for the game, but in the process they also removed all of the stickiness, all of the reasons for playing for a lot of people.  Advanced Difficulty TFs, aethers, and this new system are an attempt to correct that.

It is an issue for some people that farming is being nerfed also though. You don't get to the end and stop playing,  it means you can now just use your toon in all content and enjoy it. People leave for various reasons including nerfs, hard content they can't do as needs certain powers sets sometimes,  or just because they don't have time .

I myself play many different toons maxed out and farming was the reason,  I'd have got fed up grinding for cash to make alts otherwise and left. And no I'm rubbish at playing the market. 

[Bionic_Flea]

10 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

I find it relatively easier to spam 2-3 stars rather than a 4 star (especially for PUGs) - though throw in an occasional ASF 4-star with successful Vanguard Fight thrown in? You'll be making lots of Aether. It's not a fast path, but this is a chase sort of deal if you REALLY want T2 to T4.

 

Let's see:  At 3 stars you get 13 Aether, so you'd need to complete 115 three star tasks to get 1,500. 

 

At 2 stars you  get 7 Aether, so you'd have to complete 214 two star tasks to get 1,500. 

 

At 1 star you get 2 Aether so you'd have to complete a nice, round 750 one star tasks to get to 1,500.

 

Of course, you would probably accumulate several from random mission completions and WSFs.  But I assume that many if not most players would also want to spend 150 to get the associated badges.

 

Sorry, but . . .

 

[Player2]

13 hours ago, Faultline said:

 

You want to know my mindset? I don't want to deal with players threatening to quit, yell at developers, or wasting GM time with tickets because a player turned into a baby in their mission and they absolutely hate the look. When you're on this side and you're exposed to players constantly finding everything you do objectionable, the attitude comes for free.

 

Some players complain about Baby New Year being ugly every time he shows up. Even as an April Fools joke. They have no problem voicing this, saying they will refuse to log in until it goes away, calling developer names, and filing tickets to complain about it. Honestly, I'm not in love with the Baby scale power being available at all because of this. Making it hard to obtain is mitigation. Making it not available at all is the alternative.

See, "the attitude comes for free" part kind of detracts from any logic you might put forth here.  I'm not saying get out if you don't like it, but no one is forcing you to be a developer and deal with all the complaints and hate for things you do that they don't like.  So maybe, if you find you're in a position where you're going to get complaints from both sides no matter what, you could either just present your perspective without attitude or don't put yourself in a position where you'll have to deal with all the hate.

 

People are very passionate about this game and feelings get raw when things go in a direction they don't like.  I'll assume, since this game is non-profit, being very passionate about the game is a motivation for developers too.  But you're in a better position than the players, getting to make decisions and facilitate them.  Players can only sit back and endure the stuff they don't like that is forced onto them by changes made to the game.  So while we should probably all keep our attitudes in check, maybe dev attitudes more so?  Maybe?  Or just don't bother with the job if you can't handle the criticism without dishing out the attitude back at the people who have no control over what changes are made and/or how.

[Aracknight]

Without getting into prices theoretical or confirmed, that shadowy aura one with glowing eyes is badass.

 

I also tried out all the arachnoid and arachnos ones and they appear to work fine.

 

But seriously, the shadowy one is dope.

Edited October 13, 2022 by Aracknight

[Player2]

5 minutes ago, Aracknight said:

Without getting into pricea theoretical or confirmed, that shadowy aura one with glowing eyes is badass.

 

I also tried out all the arachnoid and arachnos ones and they appear to work fine.

 

But seriously, the shadowy one is dope.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of all the costume choices.  Why "hey, look identical to this generic NPC" when we have such a rich and diverse character costume creator.  I know, it fits some people's concept, so... whatever.

 

But the shadowy aura with glowing eyes is definitely cool.  I definitely see value in being able to add an additional aura beyond and on top of what we already have in the character creator.  Here's to hoping we get a lot more of this kind of content.

[Aracknight]

I'm actually suddenly reminded of Star Wars Galaxies storyteller mode with all its different holographic costumes for storytelling and roleplay.  If this got used as that, it could make for some really good roleplay tools.

 

+1 guys.

[twozerofoxtrot]

Wow this is really something.

 

I haven't seen this much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments since the Rage change proposal.

 

And not nearly the concentration of dev responses in that one per page.

 

 

[Marbing]

12 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

I find it relatively easier to spam 2-3 stars rather than a 4 star (especially for PUGs) - though throw in an occasional ASF 4-star with successful Vanguard Fight thrown in? You'll be making lots of Aether. It's not a fast path, but this is a chase sort of deal if you REALLY want T2 to T4.

I agree. 2 Star ITF is very easy to complete relatively quickly if you want to farm Aether. Add that to what you get from other mission completions, and from the market, I think the prices are fair. Most of what is out there you can get for 10... I mean come on, that's super easy. The few that aren't are still relatively easy. The even fewer that are 1500 are goals to achieve down the road, but even then.... not entirely unobtainable if you really wanted it.

 

Could the price of the 1500 come down to say 1000, sure. I think that would be reasonable, but I understand the point of keeping some things out there as accomplishments and not something everyone is running around with. 

[Black Zot]

39 minutes ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

Wow this is really something.

 

I haven't seen this much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments since the Rage change proposal.

 

And not nearly the concentration of dev responses in that one per page.

 

 

 

That's what happens when you gate RP-centric goodies behind a grind aimed at hardcore minmaxers.

[Cobalt Arachne]

1 hour ago, Black Zot said:

 

That's what happens when you gate RP-centric goodies behind a grind aimed at hardcore minmaxers.

The system is explicitly NOT hardcore min-maxers only, if it were, we would have made the Aether account-bound and/or hard mode exclusive.

Instead, we designed it to be a commodity, purchasable from others with the influence, the currency that that is commonly mentioned as being over-abundant and without enough uses, to create an ecosystem where those with an excess of influence can buy the herd income Aether from those who need influence more than costumes (under-geared and new players), which helps the entire playerbase thrive. For this reason, we added smaller easy income methods to non-difficult content, and yes while hard mode does give more, why shouldn't it? It's much more involved/difficult content than spending 30 minutes to run the WST or join a quick iTrial.

Nobody should forget that the Aether is NOT market seeded, the only available stock to be purchased has to be put on the AH by those earning it.

 

---

It's also a bit strange seeing the various posts who's stance could be boiled down to:

"It's unfair that players who play more and at a higher level have an advantage over those who play less and more casually."

...Huh?

If somebody spends an enormous amount of time playing City of Heroes, they're naturally going to have more currency, resources, and 50's than somebody who plays less or very casually? Was there going to be any other result to playing more? Is that inherently unfair?

Isn't it more unfair that somebody who puts in that larger effort isn't allowed to have anything (even just something entirely cosmetic) to show for it?
99% of the Aether costumes are extremely reasonable to obtain.

 

---

People should be viewing the 1500-Aether costumes (if the costumes even interest them in the first place) the same way badgers view the 1500-badge collected badge. Tier 4 rewards are less about what you're getting visually and more about being an accomplishment, hence why the more widely desirable rewards like Mini Mode were moved down in price by nearly 500%.

It's an achievement, something that isn't just granted. It's a journey, not a short-term destination.
You won't get Tier 4 costumes in a few days, but you can easily monitor your progress as you're saving up Aether over time, and you can decide how to tackle the Aether from many different angles (using influence to buy it on the AH, doing the WST on your 50's, joining any random quick iTrials, doing hard mode content at any level), and when you finally get there, it's something that shows you actually put in the work, it wasn't just handed to you like almost every power-related growth is.

Some of the responses in this thread have shown that for goal-chasers, this change has made the game substantially more enjoyable for them. Some players need goals to work towards to keep their gameplay time focused and is key for them to enjoy the game long-term, this change was aimed at giving those goal-chasers something to work on.

There are a huge number of types of players in this game...
Roleplayers, powers number-crunchers, AH economists, AE writers, SG base builders, PvPers, costume contest runners, and many more.

We aim to give everyone who plays City of Heroes additions to enhance their favored gameplay experience, but some player types were extremely marginalized, specifically, challenge-seekers and goal-chasers. So we aimed to enhance and improve those aspects of the game with recent feature additions.

 

---

This game can have something for all type of players, and those who advocate for unconditional and instant accessibility be mandatory in every single element of the game (even non-gameplay impacting elements like vanity cosmetics) are doing so at the expense of those other player types, and that isn't a stance we agree with on the developer team, despite agreeing that the game should be as accessible as possible in all gameplay content elements.

 

Perspective: being a maxed Tier 4 incarnate on full superior Invention Origin enhancements isn't even an achievement today, rather, it's become the baseline for what is commonly considered to be a functional high-level character by many players. On live, very few players ever had this without spending an insane amount of time and/or money in the game.

It's all about providing options and variety; Just because a game is extremely accessible to play doesn't mean that it can't accommodate more invested player type styles too, and again, Aether rewards will only ever be used for cosmetic vanity items. If you view Influence as one of the designed and intended methods to obtain Aether via the AH, nearly all content in the game can be played toward earning Aether.

[dom9630]

14 hours ago, Number Six said:

 

I have some old numbers from back in August. As of 21 days after Page 4 dropped and added them to the game, a total of 71,566 aether had been generated. 21,270 had been spent and there was 31,477 spread across a number of characters and on the market. I assume the other 18,819 was in SG base storage or email or otherwise squirreled away somewhere.

 

At that time, 7 characters across 6 different accounts had >1200 aether on them (1200 was going to be the price point for baby mode before it was lowered to 250 and the tier 4s added).

 

I don't have current numbers readily available, but after another 2 months and with the Halloween badges now rewarding up to 10 per character, I can only suppose there's a lot more in circulation.

 

Maybe not the best place for an appreciation post. But as someone who was extremely critical of the pricing before, it's really been a whole turn around with these last patch notes. I love seeing the price values being pulled from 'the numbers' and being more tangible to understand.