Lets talk - The negative part of the Double XP Buff.

[A.I.D.A.]

Feeling embarrassed to ask for help is a societal problem, not a game dev problem.

[Yomo Kimyata]

If the problem is that a new character on their first alt doesn’t have enough inf, I can accept this.  The only strategy in this game currently is how to bootstrap yourself to a point where you are throwing off more inf than you are consuming.

 

Rather than increase the inf creation for everyone, how about we focus on new players on their first alt?  Currently I give start up capital to anyone who asks for it, but only once per global account.  I’d be fine if the first character on a new account gets some start up money directly from the game.

 

Because the sheer quantity of people who would use this as an inf farming exploit would dwarf the very small number of new players on their first alt.

 

Be the change you want to see.  Give inf away to new players!

[Timeshadow]

On 1/29/2023 at 2:32 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

Currently I give start up capital to anyone who asks for it, but only once per global account.  I’d be fine if the first character on a new account gets some start up money directly from the game.

 

This is a great idea. I'd say take it a step further and have a short story arc or TF that awards a reasonable amount of inf for the first completion (Like the Market Crash TF gives a guaranteed purple IO but account based rather than for individual toons).

 

Ideally, it'd be something like $10M or so. Enough to get started on IOing your first 50 or providing startup capital to an alt, but not enough to cause a ton of inflation on the market or set newbies up for life. Plus, more content in a nearly 20 year old game is always a worthwhile investment. 

[lemming]

I wonder if there could be a generic enhancement similar to the p2w ones you can get that go up to level 19?  Extend something to 39 even?

Something that would allow a character to be decently effective, but still pales againsts IOs?

 

Of course, maybe we should just make training enhancements free and that way the new player can swap in more useful ones as they drop on them?

[biostem]

1 hour ago, lemming said:

Of course, maybe we should just make training enhancements free and that way the new player can swap in more useful ones as they drop on them?

That could be interesting - a way of getting *some* sort of benefit from your enhancement slots, but nowhere near as good as DOs, SOs, or IOs.

[Uun]

Rather than bringing back training enhancements, either eliminate the origin aspect of DOs and SOs, or make them tradeable at no cost for a similar enhancement of a different origin. The Drops would be far more likely to be useful. As it stands now, the vendor or market price to sell enhancements is a fraction of the cost to purchase them. 

[biostem]

12 minutes ago, Uun said:

As it stands now, the vendor or market price to sell enhancements is a fraction of the cost to purchase them. 

Then let's better inform players about the market and how to make the most of it...

[Excraft]

On 1/21/2023 at 12:14 PM, lemming said:

We have a couple new ones playing with us currently.

 

How do you know they're really new? 

[lemming]

2 hours ago, Excraft said:

How do you know they're really new? 

Communication using words and phrases indicating not having played CoX before.

[MHertz]

This is a complex issue. I’ll try to lay out my thoughts in pieces.

 

1. Yes, you can earn a lot of influence in this game by making use of drops, playing the market, selling judiciously, and doing your homework on the cash-income front.   You can also get free influence in costume contests, should you be lucky enough to win. The question is whether the game should be balanced around the idea that all players could and should participate in these activities in order to get by. As it stands, even on 1 xp rates, you don’t really start to break even on buying SOs until level 35 or so, but until then it can be a struggle … unless you do the above and get lucky now and then with the RNG.
2. I have always been opposed to the idea of loot and auction houses in this game, going all the way back to the invention system on Live, because I don’t want to be forced to slog through the markets to make a fortune just so I can afford to have an average build. Most games with this feature create a wealth imbalance where rare items cost tremendous amounts of cash. This also reflects that games like this have nothing for the super-rich to spend money on. The loot and cash-driven system doesn’t benefit or encourage my playstyle. I acknowledge that some people really do like it, but it’s not for me. I do it to the minimum necessary.
3. However, the above question about balance assumes one will be buying Enhancements as they go. If you skip all the way to 50, there are several side effects. A) since you are not equipping every 5 levels, you save money; B) you may reduce demand on the market for IOs and recipes if you would normally buy them as you go; and C) you may slightly increase supply of IOs if you sell your farmed drops on the market.
4. The number of drops you get contributes to cash flow, but you do not get enough drops — or enough of the right ones — to be self-sufficient. All too often, you end up with drops like Stun or Fear that you can’t use, even when they are compatible with your Origin; or you get the same IO in the set you’re building and you have to use a totally different system to hope to convert it into the one you’re still missing. So one way to alleviate the excess cash — or the need for cash in the first place — is addressing the drop rate and the vast amount of stuff you get that has no purpose to you.
5. You’d also have to look at game difficulty. At what level does the equation 1 player = 3 +0 minions break down due to increased power from Enhancements? That is, at what level is a player required  to have cash in order to keep up with enemy power levels?
6. So the real question about influence and XP is “what kind of behavior is the game trying to incentivize?” Given that this is an MMO, it is unlikely that the solution will be “irrespective of playstyle choices or 2XP, you earn enough Influence on your own that you don’t need any other players.” Is the game trying to encourage the trading of SOs, or is that just an afterthought? Are SOs meant to be a source of cash or something we slot if and when we find them? Would it be easier to just ditch the SOs completely and give us the money? Or would that just push more people toward the invention system that not all players want to engage with? Are players expected to auction their recipes, or use them, or vendor them? Whatever we are trying to incentivize, that’s what new players should be pushed toward and that’s which systems should lead to the middle-road outcome. Right now it’s difficult to see what the intended system looks like. I would prefer a system where the baseline is earning enough Influence to afford SOs for your next level, so new players aren’t shocked by the struggle at level 15 and 20. If people wanted to to extra work to have extra benefits, so be it.

Edited February 4, 2023 by MHertz

[Rudra]

3 hours ago, MHertz said:

You’d also have to look at game difficulty. At what level does the equation 1 player = 3 +0 minions break down due to increased power from Enhancements? That is, at what level is a player required  to have cash in order to keep up with enemy power levels?

Level never. I've played to 50 (not in farms) on multiple characters that by the time they reached 50, had maybe 5 (IO) enhancements of any kind slotted because I was saving up for IOs and rabidly offloading the dropped enhancements. (And that includes the free IO from doing the invention system tutorial.) It gets much harder as you level if you have no enhancements, but you are never required to slot to beat the game.

 

3 hours ago, MHertz said:

Is the game trying to encourage the trading of SOs, or is that just an afterthought?

Given the nature of MMOGs from my experience? Yes, we are expected to trade. And the AH makes that easier to do.

 

3 hours ago, MHertz said:

Are SOs meant to be a source of cash or something we slot if and when we find them?

What? SOs are just better DOs that are just better TOs. They are there to enhance your ability to deal with threats in the game. (I know you know this, but you asked.)

 

3 hours ago, MHertz said:

Would it be easier to just ditch the SOs completely and give us the money?

Given the difference between sell and purchase prices? No. It would not.

 

3 hours ago, MHertz said:

Or would that just push more people toward the invention system that not all players want to engage with?

Players are already heavily incentivized to go the IO route. They are directed to by other players. They are encouraged to by the set bonuses which were granted to offset the hatred that was ED. However, it is not necessary to play the game, let alone play it "well".

 

3 hours ago, MHertz said:

Are players expected to auction their recipes, or use them, or vendor them?

Players are most likely expected to use the recipes they can use and vendor or auction the rest.

3 hours ago, MHertz said:

I would prefer a system where the baseline is earning enough Influence to afford SOs for your next level, so new players aren’t shocked by the struggle at level 15 and 20.

I'm thinking of a time when getting enhancements wasn't difficult. I'm pretty sure it was... ... never. Even just TOs prior to IOs was prohibitively expensive for new characters as they progressed. Back on Live, I had one character that was able to stay current in TOs, then DOs, and finally SOs. And that was back in a time when debt had no cap and my Dark/Dark Scrapper was buried under 8 levels of debt. Back before the xp gain rate was pumped up, then pumped up again. So progression was slllllooooooooooooooowwwwwwwww. It did mean I could keep that character slotted with enhancements though.

[MHertz]

7 hours ago, Rudra said:

What? SOs are just better DOs that are just better TOs. They are there to enhance your ability to deal with threats in the game. (I know you know this, but you asked.)

I'm aware what Enhancements do. What I'm asking is, "Around which of the many redundant resources is the game meant to be balanced? What is the design intent?" We have DOs and SOs and IOs, plus set IOs. Is there some hypothetical baseline level of projected income, and where does that income derive from? Is the projected income meant to fall short of getting fully slotted with SOs? (In my experience, it always does at the beginning, unless I load up my alts with cash from my mains. It takes a while to become self-sufficient.) Do the devs consider SOs as trash to be sold, or as baseline equipment to balance around? My suspicion is that there is no coherent design intent any longer. TOs were abandoned. A bunch more stuff was added. Everybody is expected to just dump cash onto lowbies and that's how the game is played now.

[Rudra]

7 minutes ago, MHertz said:

Around which of the many redundant resources is the game meant to be balanced?

Unless something has changed, to the best of my understanding, that is typically held to be SOs.

 

8 minutes ago, MHertz said:

What is the design intent?

A game where all available ATs with any choices of powers from their available power sets can complete the game regardless of whether they play solo or on a team.

 

9 minutes ago, MHertz said:

Is there some hypothetical baseline level of projected income, and where does that income derive from?

Grinding.

 

9 minutes ago, MHertz said:

Is the projected income meant to fall short of getting fully slotted with SOs?

The projected income wasn't even enough to keep a leveling character fully slotted with TOs when the game came out. You were (and still are to the best of my knowledge) expected to upgrade from drops, supplement those with bought, and fill gaps as you go. The process left you with red enhancements that no longer worked more often than not. So if you leveled slowly, you had less gaps to fill. If you were buried under debt, which is no longer possible, you could maintain sufficient income to fill those slots regularly. With the drive to max level as quickly as possible these days? You get to play catch up on enhancements at level 50. Maintaining a full set of enhancements was never doable without either rich alts to sponsor you, very lucky drops, or knowing how to game inf' acquisition. So as far as I'm concerned? The OP is a non-issue. Players want double xp? Go for it. They aren't going to be able to start slotting full sets (or even fill their slots with SOs) until they do some grinding for inf'. That's the trade off.

[A.I.D.A.]

I regularly fund new characters' builds entirely on the merits they earn while levelling via mission arcs. If you use an XP booster, or do the ever-popular DFB-to-20 train, you're missing out on merits while jumping up in level, setting yourself behind. If you're the type of person to turn XP off until you've exhausted all the contacts in a level range, and then street-sweep up to the next range (I am not this kind of person), then you'll be vastly _ahead_ of your level in merits.

 

I never once slot most characters with a single SO. I solo using the five prestige enhancements we all get for free from T4V, and all my powers are basically empty until I can placehold them with plain IOs at Lv. 22, or 27, or something. I do just fine. I just buy enhancement boosters and converters with my merits, and sell them to get the necessary globals and cheaper IO sets as I level. Attuned, of course, so they level with me and last forever.

[gameboy1234]

On 1/31/2023 at 2:30 PM, Uun said:

eliminate the origin aspect of DOs and SOs,

 

I gotta agree with this.  Right now too many enhancements are just vendor trash at best.  I'd actually like to see Enh drops done away with entirely.  Either replace them with some other reward that drops infrequently (like merits at the end of a mission arc) or drop the cost of generic IOs so people just use those instead.

 

Hmm, if one merit bought 5 generic IOs, would that work?  So 1 merit = 5 acc, or 5 damage, or 5 holds, etc. could that replace all enhancements up to IO Sets?  I think it would work OK for most of my own characters.  With a little effort, a menu could be created at the merit vendor that let's you pick 5 generic IOs of any type you like.  This would allow merits to replace all Enhancements up to IO Sets, and your tray would stop plugging up with trash too.  Maybe add a couple of quick tutorials for how to use the Merit vendor for true newbies, and make Death From Below reward 2 or 3 merits the first time a character completes it.

 

Next, get rid of salvage, or at least white salvage.  It costs like < 100 inf at the market most of the time, it's basically an annoyance at best. Again replace this with something different, or just remove the requirements for white salvage from all recipes.

 

[Rudra]

4 hours ago, gameboy1234 said:

 

I gotta agree with this.  Right now too many enhancements are just vendor trash at best.  I'd actually like to see Enh drops done away with entirely.  Either replace them with some other reward that drops infrequently (like merits at the end of a mission arc) or drop the cost of generic IOs so people just use those instead.

 

Hmm, if one merit bought 5 generic IOs, would that work?  So 1 merit = 5 acc, or 5 damage, or 5 holds, etc. could that replace all enhancements up to IO Sets?  I think it would work OK for most of my own characters.  With a little effort, a menu could be created at the merit vendor that let's you pick 5 generic IOs of any type you like.  This would allow merits to replace all Enhancements up to IO Sets, and your tray would stop plugging up with trash too.  Maybe add a couple of quick tutorials for how to use the Merit vendor for true newbies, and make Death From Below reward 2 or 3 merits the first time a character completes it.

 

Next, get rid of salvage, or at least white salvage.  It costs like < 100 inf at the market most of the time, it's basically an annoyance at best. Again replace this with something different, or just remove the requirements for white salvage from all recipes.

 

I have to say, I'm against pretty much everything in your post.