A relook at MSR rewards

[MsSmart]

As of lately, I have "heard" many complaints that exp has been nurfed for this event, which I tend to believe its not so, its just the composition of the players in the MSR has resulted with reduced DPS, which results with reduced kills and thus reduced exp, inf, etc.

 

I would gather that many folks use MSR for usually one of 2 purposes, the first is to get vanguard merits for pet acquisition, the second is to use to level low level alts towards the magic 50.

 

So it occurs to me, that many repeatable high value TFs tend to half the gains on the second pass, and once again on the third and subsequent...

 

So why not double the exp, inf and vanguard merits on the first pass, when repeated the merit gains, exp and inf gain drop to normal rates, and the third there are no merit gains and exp and inf are now halved, and keep every subsequent repeat

 

By allowing players to get their needs satisfied quicker, it releases players to participate with others to do other game content

 

 

[MsSmart]

Oh common Rudra, you can do better than that...

[Bob]

I strongly disagree with your sentiment.  

 

If the event is made even better than it already is, it will not release people to do other activities, they will simply continue to do more of that activity.  Most of the reward happens from the kills after the actual objective is completed.  So at what point does the event flag a person for having completed it before the kill rewards are nerfed?  And how do you nerf vanguard merit earning per kill if it is giving 1 per kill anyway?  

 

MSR (and similarly, ToT) is plagued by a bunch of leechers.  Absolutely no point in making better an event that, frankly, has half the league (or less) actually fully participating once in the 'bowl'.  

 

You are wrong about the common problem being a compositional one.  It is absolutely a lack of participation that causes such disparity in reward from league to league.   Team to team can be, but so long as 2 actual dps are in each team, they 'should' be capable of tagging almost everything themselves... if they play.

Edited yesterday at 12:10 AM by Bob

[biostem]

I've found that "ramp heroes", who try to engage the spawns far away from the central cluster of players, tend to hamper things more than low-level players - since even such low level players will usually have at least 2 ranged attacks that they can cycle pretty quickly, and with the number of buffs flying around, almost all will hit...

Edited yesterday at 12:18 AM by biostem

[Lunar Ronin]

6 minutes ago, biostem said:

I've found that "ramp heroes", who try to engage the spawns far away from the central cluster of players, tend to hamper things more than low-level players - since even such low level players will usually have at least 2 ranged attacks that they can cycle pretty quickly, and with the number of buffs flying around, almost all will hit...

 

Gravity Controller or Dominator with a large supply of Ultimate inspirations solves that problem.  Just keep Wormholing Rikti from the ramps into the middle of the bowl.

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

Just keep Wormholing Rikti from the ramps into the middle of the bowl.

Oh no doubt, and those that are on top of things, with wormhole or fold space like you've indicated, are a huge help, but the fact still remains that there are some, for whatever reason, that just love to keep inching up those ramps...  

[CoeruleumBlue]

31 minutes ago, Bob said:

I strongly disagree with your sentiment.  

 

If the event is made even better than it already is, it will not release people to do other activities, they will simply continue to do more of that activity.  Most of the reward happens from the kills after the actual objective is completed.  So at what point does the event flag a person for having completed it before the kill rewards are nerfed?  And how do you nerf vanguard merit earning per kill if it is giving 1 per kill anyway?  

 

MSR (and similarly, ToT) is plagued by a bunch of leechers.  Absolutely no point in making better an event that, frankly, has half the league (or less) actually fully participating once in the 'bowl'.  

 

You are wrong about the common problem being a compositional one.  It is absolutely a lack of participation that causes such disparity in reward from league to league.   Team to team can be, but so long as 2 actual dps are in each team, they 'should' be capable of tagging almost everything themselves... if they play.

 

Yes. This is also why it's hard to find people to do the Zombie Apocalypse event with, because you can't just leech on it, even though I want as many zombie apocalypse badges as I can get since they would be nice on many of my characters. 

[JKCarrier]

1 hour ago, biostem said:

Oh no doubt, and those that are on top of things, with wormhole or fold space like you've indicated, are a huge help, but the fact still remains that there are some, for whatever reason, that just love to keep inching up those ramps...  

 

Any time I've done MSR with a melee character, it was damn near impossible to actually close in on an opponent in the bowl. So I can see why people might start picking off targets on the perimeter instead.

[Bob]

1 hour ago, JKCarrier said:

 

Any time I've done MSR with a melee character, it was damn near impossible to actually close in on an opponent in the bowl. So I can see why people might start picking off targets on the perimeter instead.

Well, we aren't talking taking a step up a bit to get some hits.  Meeting the enemies half way up or all the way up top just slows things down.

 

Either way, the reality is that people join someone else's raid group, then they need to listen.  If they want a far less rewarding timesink, then by all means, they can host their own.

[Ghost]

10 hours ago, Bob said:

 

Either way, the reality is that people join someone else's raid group, then they need to listen.  If they want a far less rewarding timesink, then by all means, they can host their own.

Listen to what?

Any MSR I’ve been a part of consists of my chat filling with non-stop bad jokes.

Are there instructions in there somewhere?

[tidge]

20 hours ago, MsSmart said:

So why not double the exp, inf and vanguard merits on the first pass, when repeated the merit gains, exp and inf gain drop to normal rates, and the third there are no merit gains and exp and inf are now halved, and keep every subsequent repeat

 

Homecoming already scaled back the MSR rewards (w.r.t. Vanguard merit conversion) once; it is unlikely that they'd boost rewards for MSR. There is no shortage of methods for players to get similar rewards... obviously low level characters have it harder, but it isn't impossible. For example, Ghost Falcon's mission can be farmed for Vanguard Merits.

 

I disagree with the sentiment that (m)any players want to re-run MSR consecutively. The pylon phase at least requires movement, the bomb-phase is helter-skelter so quick as it is a blink-and-miss-it, and the bowl phase is not much different than a do-nothing sit-and-farm. Some of us have turned the Drop Ship hunt into something a little different. 

 

20 hours ago, MsSmart said:

So it occurs to me, that many repeatable high value TFs tend to half the gains on the second pass, and once again on the third and subsequent...

 

I'm not sure what is being considered here? Weeklies are "once a week", only the first play of the week includes double rewards, after that rewards are the same as always..

SSA repeats, are sort of like weeklies, except the first repeat is 4x merits and the non-standard merit rewards are 1-per week too. There is a little bit of Reward shenanigans related to Giant Monster defeats, but those not on a rewards timer still drop same rewards (MMV by Inf, but Giant Monsters a poor source of Inf anyway). Market Crash has a special reward that is first-time only, but otherwise the rewards for repeats (modulo weekly) are the same.

[Triumphant]

I don't know why people do it now, whatever the rewards might be.  If the rewards were doubled, I still would not do it.  It remains one of the most boring raids in the game.  Spend 3 seconds per pylon, knocking them down.  Set the bomb to get past the shields.  Spend an interminable amount of time in a huge glob, in the middle of the mothership, hammering buttons until the mission ends.

*Yawn*

[srmalloy]

7 hours ago, Triumphant said:

Set the bomb to get past the shields. 

Knocking down the pylons drops the shield; as far as I know, breaking the grates and setting bombs just summons U'kon G'rai — I think summoning and defeating him is peripheral to the raid proper, and you can carry on with the raid without setting any bombs; you miss out on the merits and badge progress, but it won't affect the rest of the raid. 

[Lunar Ronin]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

Knocking down the pylons drops the shield; as far as I know, breaking the grates and setting bombs just summons U'kon G'rai — I think summoning and defeating him is peripheral to the raid proper, and you can carry on with the raid without setting any bombs; you miss out on the merits and badge progress, but it won't affect the rest of the raid. 

 

Half true, half not.  After the final Rikti pylon is destroyed, you have ten minutes on the clock before the mothership raid ends.

 

• Planting the first bomb will extend the timer three minutes for a total of thirteen.
• If you have fewer than 25 people on a mothership raid league, planting the second bomb spawns U'Kon Gr'ai and adds an additional ten minutes onto the clock for a total of 23 minutes.
• If there are 25 or more people on a mothership raid league, planting a second bomb adds an additional three minutes for a total of sixteen minutes.
• If you have 25 or more people on a mothership raid league, planting a third bomb spawns U'Kon Gr'ai and adds an additional ten minutes onto the clock for a total of 26 minutes. 
• Defeating U'Kon Grai adds an additional five minutes onto the clock for a total of either 28 minutes if you have fewer than 25 people on the mothership raid league, or a total of 31 minutes if you have 25 or more people on the mothership raid league.