Tip Missions

[JeridCOH]

From the discord announcements about lowered Tip rewards:

 

Just a little heads-up, we did miss a patch note in regards to rogue missions. A balance change was put in place that reduced  the number of merits you receive from 50 to 20,  due in part to the rapidity of how quickly those 10 missions could be completed

 

How are they supposed to be gained rapidly, when there's a 20 hour timer after you run 5 of them?

 

I know someone in /help the other day said that timer was removed and there was a patch note about it... but that is not the case for me.

After my first Brute hit 20 on Excelsior he started getting tips right away, and ran 5 tips in about an hour (4 morality, and the Unlock for the Flames of Promethus SF contact) and then got no tips for the next couple of hours playing.

 

I thought maybe they just lowered the timer, but I logged in after going to bed and getting back up (about 6 hours), and after running 2-3 missions had no tips that dropped. So I logged off and had to work for the weekend, when I logged him back on after the weekend, I got a tip right away. (filled up 3 tips in one mission)

 

So am I misunderstanding something about the Tip timer? Or is there some kind of bug where the timer is being applied when it shouldn't be.

[Vanden]

That's not cool; those merits were incredibly useful. That's a huge nerf. I would much rather they have reinstated the timer or limited it to 1 morality mission a day, because grinding those missions isn't fun.

[Ragnar]

If they would go after the old Live Server Formula the Payout should be around 35 but only if Tips are unlimited per Day. If limited the 50 was about right.

 

Some Insight on how the Merit Payout was calculated: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Merit_Rewards

 

Minutes per Merit was around 3.7 .. 20 Merits is for like 74 Minutes, but (I at least) need around 20 Minutes give or take a few per Morality Mission at level 30+. 20-29 was a bit faster but the maps changed for the worse.

 

Balance changes just because "it does not feel right" is always a baaad thing. Now it's just not worth anymore.

 

 

[Venture]

The I25 patch notes say:

 

Removed the 20-hour lockout timers after doing tip missions. You can now do 10 Alignment Missions followed by a Morality Mission and repeat without a delay.

[Blackshear]

What's odd about this is hero and villain alignment mishes still reward their respective merits, which according to the merit vendors are still worth 50 merits, so does that mean the timers are still in place for those missions?  Otherwise, just get Null the Gull to change you to hero or villain and grind those tips instead.

[brian9824]

What's odd about this is hero and villain alignment mishes still reward their respective merits, which according to the merit vendors are still worth 50 merits, so does that mean the timers are still in place for those missions?  Otherwise, just get Null the Gull to change you to hero or villain and grind those tips instead.

 

I'm a hero and did my hero morality mission last night and only got 20 merits and no hero merit.  So is it rewarded if you do the mission to CHANGE to hero?

[JeridCOH]

The I25 patch notes say:

 

Removed the 20-hour lockout timers after doing tip missions. You can now do 10 Alignment Missions followed by a Morality Mission and repeat without a delay.

 

Then either I'm bugged or unlucky beyond belief.

 

I'll test it out and see what I get.

[Steatoda1]

Ran it as a hero today and got 20 merits. 

 

I understand why this was changed.  It was a super fast method of gathering merits that could be done from 20 on.  There is now NO reason to do tips at all really.  Story Arcs are completed at about the same rate, and you can change alignments instantly with Null.

 

The rewards should be set around 30, that way if you spend the 10 merits to get tips, you're still finishing up 20.

[Blackshear]

I understand the AE nerf...AE uses a lot of server resources, apparently.  Nerfing tip missions, though, I'm not sure I get the logic.

[Generator]

If 50 was too much, 20 seems like an overcorrection.

[Coyotedancer]

Honestly, as resource-poor as most of us are at the moment and as long as it's likely to take for the auction house market to really stabilize, I'm having a very hard time seeing how fifty was "too much".

[Redlynne]

Removed the 20-hour lockout timers after doing tip missions. You can now do 10 Alignment Missions followed by a Morality Mission and repeat without a delay.

 

I too will have to protest this change, but I will at least explain my reasoning.

 

There needs to be a 20 hour lockout after doing 5 Tip Missions because that encourages "farmers" to play multiple alts to generate hoards of resources.  By throttling the "flow rate" of rewards from Morality Missions in the manner you achieve a greater circulation of characters (alts) through the game than if you throttle the "magnitude" of the rewards from Morality Missions via this reduction.  This has long term game health implications insofar as establishing a broader base of characters to play than just having a SINGLE character for grinding out Tips mindlessly (endlessly?) for Merits without stopping.

[Sanguinesun]

Removed the 20-hour lockout timers after doing tip missions. You can now do 10 Alignment Missions followed by a Morality Mission and repeat without a delay.

 

I too will have to protest this change, but I will at least explain my reasoning.

 

There needs to be a 20 hour lockout after doing 5 Tip Missions because that encourages "farmers" to play multiple alts to generate hoards of resources.  By throttling the "flow rate" of rewards from Morality Missions in the manner you achieve a greater circulation of characters (alts) through the game than if you throttle the "magnitude" of the rewards from Morality Missions via this reduction.  This has long term game health implications insofar as establishing a broader base of characters to play than just having a SINGLE character for grinding out Tips mindlessly (endlessly?) for Merits without stopping.

 

With the game being free and the philosophy thus far seemingly to allow players to freely make choices concerning how they involve themselves in game play, can you better explain why you feel the model you propose(which fits more how it would be per a game charging a subscription model and desiring people to be involved in as much of a time sink as possible) than allowing things as they are now?

 

 

[Dr. Gemini]

I too will have to protest this change, but I will at least explain my reasoning.

 

There needs to be a 20 hour lockout after doing 5 Tip Missions because that encourages "farmers" to play multiple alts to generate hoards of resources.  By throttling the "flow rate" of rewards from Morality Missions in the manner you achieve a greater circulation of characters (alts) through the game than if you throttle the "magnitude" of the rewards from Morality Missions via this reduction.  This has long term game health implications insofar as establishing a broader base of characters to play than just having a SINGLE character for grinding out Tips mindlessly (endlessly?) for Merits without stopping.

 

All it does is delay the inevitable by an insignificant amount of time. Before the servers closed down, I had 3 characters at the Inf cap from farming Hero merits. It took a couple weeks at most. The fact is, the "generate hoards of resources" train left the station at Mach 10 the day you could buy IO set recipes, because it only took an hour a day to farm hero merits, and once you hoarded enough hero merits another 5 or 10 minutes to check what the high selling IO set pieces were, buy with those merits, and craft them. As someone who would rather play the game normally than farm it took almost nothing away from my gaming time. Further, 3 characters as at the cap was far more than I needed to finance 128 alts. That might have changed had I the chance to get more of those alts to level 50, but, endlessly farming merits is not a likely activity for anyone other than those who simply enjoy it, so I can't see it hurting the broader base of characters.