Super Hard content and gated rewards/toys

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, Astralock said:

 

Not the day of release, they couldn't.

Yeah. It is even worse. Some of those super smart gamers were selling prismatic from day 1 for stoooooopid high buy it now prices.  Because they were grinding them and knew the price would drop.  So when the market stabilized they could turn the one they sold into many more

[Ghost]

Okay, I’m curious - how many do you have to collect in order to get the badge?

 

As for the SG - sorry to hear it’s pretty much disappeared for you Snarky.  I remember when you would brag about them in seemingly every post on here, so I know you enjoyed being a part of it.  
Have you put any thoughts in running the show/organizing events ?

[Crysis]

6 hours ago, Snarky said:

 

Also I look at the change in Cosmic.  From leading content nearly every night to grinding the newest content for badges and prismatics to gone.  Old SG.  Literally a ghost town for last 4 months 

 

Sounds like a cover story for a vampire killing spree to me…..

[Snarky]

8 hours ago, Ghost said:

Okay, I’m curious - how many do you have to collect in order to get the badge?

 

As for the SG - sorry to hear it’s pretty much disappeared for you Snarky.  I remember when you would brag about them in seemingly every post on here, so I know you enjoyed being a part of it.  
Have you put any thoughts in running the show/organizing events ?

Cosmic is/was a Legacy SG.  The original leadership handpicked the current leadership.  Honestly I do not know how they can be as good as they are.  Both with the game and with people.  That level of quality attracted some great players.

 

I offer none of that.  Just a grumpy old Vampire throwing out Snarky remarks.  I could maybe replace one of these guys in a pinch

[Snarky]

8 hours ago, Ghost said:

Okay, I’m curious - how many do you have to collect in order to get the badge?

 

As for the SG - sorry to hear it’s pretty much disappeared for you Snarky.  I remember when you would brag about them in seemingly every post on here, so I know you enjoyed being a part of it.  
Have you put any thoughts in running the show/organizing events ?

By memory....so faulty....it is 150 for all badges.  which sounds vaguely like what I spent two weeks ago,  Again, all I had earned on every toon since they came out.  Scraped together and dumped on my 2023 badger

[Astralock]

I know that you're looking for something or someone to blame on the Cosmic Council SG leaving Homecoming Snarky, but the truth of the matter is that no supergroup/guild/clan/whatever lasts forever.  Some will last months, some will last years, an extremely rare few will last over a decade.  None last forever.

[Snarky]

16 minutes ago, Astralock said:

I know that you're looking for something or someone to blame on the Cosmic Council SG leaving Homecoming Snarky, but the truth of the matter is that no supergroup/guild/clan/whatever lasts forever.  Some will last months, some will last years, an extremely rare few will last over a decade.  None last forever.

Oh, if only my psychology were that simple.  I mourned and let go Cosmic a while ago.  

 

This thread is about the unnecessary (in my opinion) tendency to require a lot of effort for something that should be fun.  What affect that has on the players. 

 

The role of Cosmic in this thread is as an example.  As I said upthread the Leadership may have been planning this migration for a year.  I do not know. If that is me blaming Cosmic's demise on Prismatics you will need to diagram it out for me.

[Crysis]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

Oh, if only my psychology were that simple.  I mourned and let go Cosmic a while ago.  

 

This thread is about the unnecessary (in my opinion) tendency to require a lot of effort for something that should be fun.  What affect that has on the players. 

 

The role of Cosmic in this thread is as an example.  As I said upthread the Leadership may have been planning this migration for a year.  I do not know. If that is me blaming Cosmic's demise on Prismatics you will need to diagram it out for me.

 

But effort = reward tends to be the nature of pretty much any gaming platform built around the concept of rarity of a particular reward.  I recall when the FPS Battlefield 1 came out playing for literally weeks to figure out the secret to obtaining a particular pistol.  There were no guides yet, no way to 'speed run' it.  You had to follow a rather obtuse set of steps and figure it out for yourself.

 

There are already speed runs for the 'hard way' trials.  I participate in about one per week already.  There will be shortcuts shared/guides created for obtaining these badges and/or costumes over time.  

 

The best way to not let grind-to-obtain mechanics bother you is to not worry about the "obtain" part in the first place.  I've no desire for the costumes.  I admire people who have them and have built entire characters around them and somewhat even rp them that way.  I was one of the early acquirers who sold everything I got knowing I'd be able to buy as many as I wanted at 1/4 the price later on.  I actually have enough on my various alts right now to outfit two with all badges -and- the minifig costumes.  But I don't do that because I just don't care about those rewards.  Hopefully, something will come along to make me want to spend/invest these PA's but until then, it's like all my influence....there's just nothing of interest for me to spend them on.  So I just hoard and wait.  And if nothing ever comes along, I just enjoy the time I spend playing the game and don't do it for the rewards beyond my enjoyment factor.  

 

Obviously....YMMV and I respect that.  

[DougGraves]

I think farming is insanely dumb.  But it seems to be one of the most if not the most popular activity in CoH.  It seems that if you removed the "need" to farm by making whatever they are farming for free - those players would just leave.

 

I don't think grinding is driving people away.  I think that it is keeping people playing.  They leave when they no longer have a reason to grind.

 

Not everyone can play for the pure joy of playing and feeling superior to how other people play.

[Astralock]

15 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

I think farming is insanely dumb.  But it seems to be one of the most if not the most popular activity in CoH.  It seems that if you removed the "need" to farm by making whatever they are farming for free - those players would just leave.

 

I don't think grinding is driving people away.  I think that it is keeping people playing.  They leave when they no longer have a reason to grind.

 

Not everyone can play for the pure joy of playing and feeling superior to how other people play.

Bingo.  I know many people who left Homecoming a long time ago because there was just nothing to strive for.  Everything was just given to you.

[ivanhedgehog]

18 hours ago, nihilii said:

At 3M ~ 3M5 per prismatic on the market you could run whatever content you want (at lvl 50) and earn them at a decent pace. Let's say you make 20M inf per hour, that's 5-6 prismatic.

Which makes a standard costume in 2 hours of generic play. A rare costume in 20 hours of play. Then the ultra rare tiers in 50 hours and 300 hours... Ok, now these are getting in excessive territory and you'd definitely want to do something more optimal than baseline 20M/inf hour.

It seems to me for most costumes, the pace is reasonable. As the price that's relevant 90%+ of the time is 10 prismatics. Playing a couple hours to get a fun new cool costume sounds about right, it's a good side objective.

I understand the difference in game design specifically with the previous pattern of getting everything. At the same time, we could instead look at all the things we previously got for free - they're still there, for free. Those new costumes are an optional new system on top, which we can use or ignore.

It's true this sucks for the compulsive-completionist types who need to have it all and need to have it now. Always a difficult balance there: do you deprive the rest of the playerbase of super longtail progression goals, or do you make the game a grind for those completionists?

If buying it is the main way to get them, put them on a vendor. dont set up your preferred playstyle to make bundles of money and claim that just a coincidence. Also, when you buy a costume, why restrict it to that character only? This game is all about alts. except for now that we are trying out wow style mythic content.

[Astralock]

27 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

If buying it is the main way to get them, put them on a vendor. dont set up your preferred playstyle to make bundles of money and claim that just a coincidence. Also, when you buy a costume, why restrict it to that character only? This game is all about alts. except for now that we are trying out wow style mythic content.

Hard modes are not nearly as difficult as WoW mythic content.  You would have to disable Incarnate abilities in hard modes for it to be near as difficult.  It only seems difficult because most CoH content is face rolling easy.  In reality, any mix of any AT and power sets can do even 4* hard modes just fine.  You just need decent builds, a nice mix of roles, and to pay attention.

[nihilii]

44 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

If buying it is the main way to get them, put them on a vendor. dont set up your preferred playstyle to make bundles of money and claim that just a coincidence. Also, when you buy a costume, why restrict it to that character only? This game is all about alts. except for now that we are trying out wow style mythic content.

I'm not sure I understand anything in your post as a reply to mine, so maybe that's on me. But here goes.

I'm not suggesting buying is the main way to get them. It seems much more efficient to run weekly TFs and the odd Hard Mode TF on a low advanced difficulty tier. What I'm saying is regardless, there's a skill-agnostic path to get costumes at a decent rate.

I doubt people are running Hard mode TFs for money at scale. Simply because if they did, the price of prismatic aethers would necessarily decrease from overabundance of supply dumped on the market.

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, Astralock said:

Hard modes are not nearly as difficult as WoW mythic content.  You would have to disable Incarnate abilities in hard modes for it to be near as difficult.  It only seems difficult because most CoH content is face rolling easy.  In reality, any mix of any AT and power sets can do even 4* hard modes just fine.  You just need decent builds, a nice mix of roles, and to pay attention.

Bullshit.  I accidentally joined a 4 star Aeon a couple weeks ago.  (I thought it was a 2 star badge run. It was a 4 star badge run) I am not great but I am not horrible.  There were 4 star vets on the team.  We did not finish.  It was a miserable Fing experience and an example of why I hate the new CoH game

Edited March 16, 2023 by Snarky

[Ruin Mage]

As someone who did Mythic Dungeons and watches MDI as time allows? 4-Star Aeon/ITF is a breeze compared to it.

3/4 stars are punishing because people are too used to just running things over with a hodgepodge team. It can also be said that they aren't for everyone. You have to actually line of sight things, focus fire specific mobs, and stick together outside of Incan. Which are 3 things you don't learn to do in the game these days.

To elaborate on Astralock's point: If you have zero support (or if you double-dip on certain support sets), you will be fighting a very VERY difficult time. You also can't exactly just scrapper-tank 3-4star. Brutes/Tanks are needed for AVs or else its a world of hurt. Hell, a world of hurt even with brutes/tanks.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Shadeknight

[Snarky]

18 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

As someone who did Mythic Dungeons and watches MDI as time allows? 4-Star Aeon/ITF is a breeze compared to it.

3/4 stars are punishing because people are too used to just running things over with a hodgepodge team. It can also be said that they aren't for everyone. You have to actually line of sight things, focus fire specific mobs, and stick together outside of Incan. Which are 3 things you don't learn to do in the game these days.

To elaborate on Astralock's point: If you have zero support (or if you double-dip on certain support sets), you will be fighting a very VERY difficult time. You also can't exactly just scrapper-tank 3-4star. Brutes/Tanks are needed for AVs or else its a world of hurt. Hell, a world of hurt even with brutes/tanks.

We had two tanks on the 4 star.  Which was a red flag.  That i did not pick up on because i thought it was a two star.  At the end the lead (one of the tanks) said he thought it would be smooth.  I read that “fail to plan, plan to fail”

[Spaghetti Betty]

3 hours ago, Astralock said:

In reality, any mix of any AT and power sets can do even 4* hard modes just fine.  You just need decent builds, a nice mix of roles, and to pay attention.

 

 

To be fair, the group I run with will take on dumb challenges to just to prove it can be done (we were aiming for 90 min), but this is an example of one of our lengthy 4* ITF runs.

 

Yes, it was a massive headache. No, we haven't stopped running all Blasters (+1 Kin) to try and get the time and deaths down.

 

But yeah, I agree. Any combination of ATs can run Hard Mode content successfully with teamwork and determination. Should you be farming it for the reward? Probably not anymore. When people were buying stacks of PAPs for the inf cap, absolutely. But that time is long gone. The reward is the challenge.

[Ruin Mage]

At least your damage wasn't the issue, lol.

[Spaghetti Betty]

4 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

At least your damage wasn't the issue, lol.

No, it wasn't. Getting pimp slapped by Rom in the last mission was the issue.

[Zect]

Homecoming has no hard pve content (if you interpret "hard" to mean "challenging"), the equivalent of e.g high Mythic keys in WoW, final Savage floors/Ultimate raids in FFXIV, etc - content that gates players by skill level. I wouldn't want such content in coh, anyway: the engine can't handle it. "Hard" mode is more accurately described as gear-gated, since the enemy stats compensate for years of power creep by incarnates and IO's, but no additional player skill is needed.

 

If you mean "hard" as in "high time investment", you can just buy them off the MB, which you can't even do with most badges.

 

For what it's worth, I do think achievements locked behind insane grinds are stupid. Even Paragon studios towards the end of the game seemed to agree, because they stopped making "Do ____ fifty million times" badges. Bragging rights rewards should be skill gated if they are gated at all.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Zect

[BraveDecoy]

I was lucky enough to sell a pair of PAPs the day they were added and made roughly 400 million, enough to comfortably kit out two characters. (No purples, but ATOs and LotGs) . 

 

Now  I'm getting curious about buying that mini morph costume thing, at current rates it'd take about 875 million inf. 

I'm a filthy casual.  I don't plan on farming, and I don't plan on shoving my face against the belt sander that is pick-up Hard mode ITFs.

So, I guess I don't plan on getting the mini morph thing.

[Snarky]

5 hours ago, BraveDecoy said:

 

Now  I'm getting curious about buying that mini morph costume thing, at current rates it'd take about 875 million inf. 

I'm a filthy casual.  I don't plan on farming, and I don't plan on shoving my face against the belt sander that is pick-up Hard mode ITFs.

So, I guess I don't plan on getting the mini morph thing.

Same.  
 

what irritates me is i play a 50 for 1-5 hours every day.  But not at grinding 2 hard mode trials.  So will never see that costly option 

[Paradox Fate]

10 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

At least your damage wasn't the issue, lol.

 

It usually never is. But I'd say it's always a time issue since people nowadays don't like to commit multiple hours in a single 'run/raid/dive' than they did before. Especially when it's something that is considered tedious to get through. Like 4-Star ITF's or a ill-prepared Synapse.

[Luminara]

Super hard... toys... gated content... rewards...

 

Are you pimping your OnlyFans channel again, @Snarky?

 

I HAVE A CLIP!  IT'S NASTY!

 

[Snarky]

35 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Super hard... toys... gated content... rewards...

 

Are you pimping your OnlyFans channel again, @Snarky?

 

I HAVE A CLIP!  IT'S NASTY!