After all, there's no reason in the world ( not even evil corporate conspiracy theory reasons ) to raise the prices otherwise.
From Kaiserin in chat last night:
"Vikorin and Bronze King were getting lonely."
Not everyone can Solo those lairs(I know most of my Squishy DPS can't without help), yet alone to get Silver Shinies for Heroics, for the most part UNITY missions are easier and can be done solo so yeah, Obvious.
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
I slept on it and still think that device prices in the Drifter and Q store are wildly inconsistent. Don't make them cost up to 250 DS and 400k Q respectfully. Make all devices the same price at 40-50 DS and 50k Q each.
Lower prices means more sales which means more profit overall. Make it something all players can afford.
I'm actually perfectly fine with the Recog price changes since concerning Onslaught vendor system and rate of token gain turned out to be pretty fair! Well except for the devices which seems extortion. Again think about players with multiple characters. Your biggest sales points should be buying multiple characters, not charging the price of full games for a single device for ONE character.
the prices aren't wildly inconsistent. The most popular ones are the highest prices.
same as normal in games, the best ones cost more to get
The saving grace of all this depends on what the future ways of obtaining more SCR are. If we are going to be getting a lot more SCR than just dailies and unity missions, then I am fine with it. Otherwise, the prices are not just kinda high, they are exorbitant.
Not to mention us only being able to carry 1k of any recognition- a cap I've never once reached in 5 years of playing CO.
I have it on good authority there are no plans to increase the cap, and while people might think it needs raising, it really doesn't matter. Nobody is going to be stocking up 1k SCR or GCR with prices being really high and the rate of gaining the tokens not going to accidentally take you over the cap.
Noone in their right mind is going to spend countless hours for 1 set of heroic gear at all. That time is far better spend getting justice gear. Heroic gear should be easy to obtain, to start you off getting better stuff.
Also, CO is an alting game for many people, they have fun making dozens of different characters. Heroic gear is perfect for those people, they can get it easily and still play without being dead weight, together with their friends who have only a few (or one) characters they like to focus on and that have been fully geared in all the endgame stuff.
This is just like mods, r5 is cheap but works, want some really good stuff you pay 20 times (I know 25 in theory, but AH pricing..) as much for r7, have to much money or time to spend you can pay 20 times as much again for r9. Going from r5 to r7 is about the same difference as going from heroic to justice gear, so I feel very strongly the time you invest should be about a factor 20 difference.
and those who have no luck getting Rampage gear can still work on Heroic. From someone with over 100 alts, Mine get Heroic gear if I have the points for them, Merc if I have any. Otherwise Ah specials.
Nerfed Accession more? ;_; Can you guys please make a raid AOE Heal like medica in FFXIV?
On a healer just pop BCR and spam Iniquity. There's your "raid AoE heal". For best results, BCR rank 3 on a heal build with 8 stacks of Compassion results in nearly 900-1000 heal per tick.
Edit: Also, all of these people pissing and moaning about the SCR price changes...how about instead of complaining on here about it, you try and grind out as much as you can right now before the changes happen?
"There is only one way to support a PFF tank: Send Cyrone lots of money weekly... because he's the only one to successfully be a true PFF Tank." - chuckwolf
Out of context (and incomplete) quote, please don't do that.
The patch notes state there will be other ways to get SCR. Patience.
It was far from out of context or incomplete, as (to the best of my knowledge) it's been your only justification so far as to why players will be required to invest exponentially more time to obtain heroic gear.
"Other ways to get SCR" may indeed be available in the future, but they are largely irrelevant to the looming, unanswered question which has been posed by an awful lot of people: even with potential new additions to SCR drops, why should players be required to grind significantly more for the same gear that has existed for years?
Should you think I am being unfair, I would also note that I deliberately did not post a quote from an earlier session that indicated you felt that the new pricing was appropriate.
Please feel free to elucidate further. We've been very patient so far.
Prices are being raised as store items are not meant to be obtained within a day. Heroic gear was never intended as standard gear, it's endgame gear, and it was far too easy to acquire it.
Legion, Justice and Distinguished are a step up for players wanting that extra bit of effectiveness.
Lesser potent gear, like Mercenary, Bronze King and Vikorin gear (which is available in the Qstore, Andrith Ruins, Mandragalore, and Nemesis Confrontation) were made trivial because of this.
Unity token drops are being lowered because it's easily soloable. Additonal SCR will come from more team oriented content.
After all, there's no reason in the world ( not even evil corporate conspiracy theory reasons ) to raise the prices otherwise.
From Kaiserin in chat last night:
"Vikorin and Bronze King were getting lonely."
Out of context (and incomplete) quote, please don't do that.
The patch notes state there will be other ways to get SCR. Patience.
edit, quoting gone weird, Kaizerin's text up above
NWO, grind fest. STO Delta Rising, chase the gold dragon grind fest. Apparent grind fest incoming to once alt friendly CO. There's a reason I'm concerned.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
That fact of the matter is you can grind out enough SCR in a day for a piece of heroic. End game gear. End. Game. Why use bronze king, why use Vikorin, even Merc gear (someone actually lol'd at merc gear and said it was garbage!?) if Heroic is obtainable in a short amount of time. It should be an achievement, not a "Well... I guess I will just settle with putting heroic on my character instead of going all the way for Justice... IF I HAVE TO GOSH"
I think the prices on the PTS are a bit too high, but the prices on Live are definitely way to low - just look at how most everyone considers it the go to gear for all their alts, completely skipping over all the other available gear Whether or not the reduction in SCR rewards is warranted remains to be seen on the future ways of obtaining it. But lets not just lose our minds before we even know what those ways are going to be.
Prices are being raised as store items are not meant to be obtained within a day. Heroic gear was never intended as standard gear, it's endgame gear, and it was far too easy to acquire it.
Legion, Justice and Distinguished are a step up for players wanting that extra bit of effectiveness.
Lesser potent gear, like Mercenary, Bronze King and Vikorin gear (which is available in the Qstore, Andrith Ruins, Mandragalore, and Nemesis Confrontation) were made trivial because of this.
Unity token drops are being lowered because it's easily soloable. Additonal SCR will come from more team oriented content.
ENDGAME GEAR
HEROICS?
ENDGAME!
DOWNGRADING OLD UNITY 1 AND 2 MISSIONS
ENDGAME!?
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?
You are royaly screwing up new players and people with ALTs
200 SCR for Heroics is NOT OK! Not ok at all! They are EXTREME!
There is no way in hell you will make me use that Garbage Mercenary Gear for lvl 40
So CO will be more Grindy than a Korean MMO
POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergies! Playing since 1 February 2011 128 + Characters (21 ATs, 107 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
A major concern I still have is that lowering the SCR drops from UNITY in this particular way doesn't take into account the differences between individual UNITY missions. I could see making the UNITY 2 enders equal to the UNITY enders since 10 SCR reward is high but Assembling the Antidote (pretty easy to do and has a safe door) isn't on the same level as Burn Em Out (fairly long, high spawn rate in open world means you can be killed trying to get in the mission door).
"Interesting builds are born from limitations not by letting players put everything into one build."
I doubt anyone cares about what was intended years ago and is more concerned with what's happening today. If you wanted the changes to go over better, you should have introduced all of these new SCR token drops along side the new cost. Instead of telling people to be patient, you might as well be telling them to just leave and play another game for the year.
It's obvious that grinding has been a new thing for the last part of 2015 and this is clearly going to be the next grind added for the beginning of this year. I expect after this, new and exciting grind will take it's place. Adding a few new super lairs here and there is no where near enough stuff to do for the new direction of this game.
"Also, all of these people pissing and moaning about the SCR price changes...how about instead of complaining on here about it, you try and grind out as much as you can right now before the changes happen?"
Front load our grind with some grind? That's brilliant. Golf-claps all around.
The problem for Heroic is that people are used to it being trivial to achieve and therefore don't think of it as particularly good.
a Week for a set isn't trivial.
Seriously. I don't honestly understand how someone can justify spending a month on One piece of gear is even remotely okay(they say their adding methods, let's see if that cuts the time a decent amount and not just, "add multiple routes, but if you do one, you have a 24h CD" methods.) Again, this is CO, alt-friendly CO. This is not WoW.
Buffing everything to stupid high levels and nerfing everything to piss poor levels yields the same results, but not the same community reactions.
The problem for Heroic is that people are used to it being trivial to achieve and therefore don't think of it as particularly good.
a Week for a set isn't trivial.
Seriously. I don't honestly understand how someone can justify spending a month on One piece of gear is even remotely okay(they say their adding methods, let's see if that cuts the time a decent amount and not just, "add multiple routes, but if you do one, you have a 24h CD" methods.) Again, this is CO, alt-friendly CO. This is not WoW.
Maybe one of the devs was a fan of the "solo friendly" super slow Dark Astoria Incarnate "path" in CoH.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Prices are being raised as store items are not meant to be obtained within a day. Heroic gear was never intended as standard gear, it's endgame gear, and it was far too easy to acquire it.
Legion, Justice and Distinguished are a step up for players wanting that extra bit of effectiveness.
Lesser potent gear, like Mercenary, Bronze King and Vikorin gear (which is available in the Qstore, Andrith Ruins, Mandragalore, and Nemesis Confrontation) were made trivial because of this.
Unity token drops are being lowered because it's easily soloable. Additonal SCR will come from more team oriented content.
A day .. perhaps a day for one piece, if you have both U1 and 2 unlocked. Also Unity its not so easy without the gear. Once you get the gear .. then yes, the walk there is longer than the instance. Such is the life of gear though
Spending my accumulated tokens as suggested, then probably ignoring Unity .. not sure it will be worth the "walk"
Seriously, if were Upping Unity, "VB/Monster gear" might need a token rate increase, RNG create token decrease, drop increase. Can't wander around naked and the quest gear doesn't cover bases well
So the prices are going from "easy" *coughbscough* to absurd to encourage players to get Q for gear that is ignored because it sucks. Perhaps you should consider buffing the Q store gear instead. Korean style grinders don't work well outside of Asian countries.
I doubt anyone cares about what was intended years ago and is more concerned with what's happening today. If you wanted the changes to go over better, you should have introduced all of these new SCR token drops along side the new cost.
To be fair, this is all on pts. It's quite possible that on live they will all go together.
I stopped getting SCR gear last year for my lvl 40s. I just go straight for JG now. I guess I have enough SCR now to buy a few complete sets. Guess it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a few more to sell on the AH before prices go through the roof?
I don't care. I just want a long-range, centered on caster, AOE Heal I don't have to target. Ascension was perfect for that in rampages.
I really would like some kind of statement from the Dev team on what their vision is for support players in this game. Over the years support powers have been nerfed and nerfed some more. I realize the existence of Freeform makes having support powers in the game (heals, debuffs, crowd control) difficult. But there needs to be some sort of bone thrown to those of us who like playing as team support.
Right now I'm feeling like support is an unwanted or non-important role in the game. Am I alone in feeling like this? Does our dev team have anything to say? Because all I'm seeing is a slow and steady push for "tanky dps" game play and not much else.
The AoE heals afaik are Arcane Vitality, Vala's Light and Celestial Conduit with Illumination. If those three don't cut it I'd rather see buffs to them than make Ascension not just the best healing AO but the best AoE heal as well.
Prices are being raised as store items are not meant to be obtained within a day. Heroic gear was never intended as standard gear, it's endgame gear, and it was far too easy to acquire it.
Legion, Justice and Distinguished are a step up for players wanting that extra bit of effectiveness.
Lesser potent gear, like Mercenary, Bronze King and Vikorin gear (which is available in the Qstore, Andrith Ruins, Mandragalore, and Nemesis Confrontation) were made trivial because of this.
Unity token drops are being lowered because it's easily soloable. Additonal SCR will come from more team oriented content.
Heroic seems pretty clearly intended as standard gear. I can't think of any other reason for its current price. Surely you're not suggesting no dev until now over almost 4 years could do basic math.
Bronze King and Vikorin will still be garbage even with the change. Too much rng to get a set, and Bronze King at least has terrible bonuses on the defense piece. (I can't even remember what Vikorin bonuses are). Don't expect to see these used just because you make Heroic hard to get. Mercenary might get used, but they're barely better than stuff that just drops from level 40 mobs.
UNITY may be easily soloable, but it takes time. I already don't bother with UNITY 1, and do UNITY 2 on one character only to finish out some 5k kill perks. (And if i get down to just Dogz left, i'll just go burn them in VB). I don't know what the obsession with team content over solo content is - people who don't want to do alerts or team lairs are apparently second-class CO citizens now?
Considering the time involved, someone with the time and 6+ 40s could farm a justice set in 12 days. Certainly no more than 24. If it takes that long to farm a heroic set, no one will bother. 6 days for a full set of heroics is about the most rational people will bother with. (And anything that made justice take longer would similarly make heroic take longer, because both require playing specific content which provides the relevant drops).
(Similarly, current time to a full set of onslaught gear with nothing but the free daily play for a sub is <30 days. If a full set of heroics takes anywhere near that long players will simply forget heroics ever existed).
Seriously, the whole reasoning here is only going to make Heroics a bad joke.
conviction with its advantage is also an AOE heal, but i don't think it's a very big one, and it also has a max of 5 targets, so not worth using as a mainline AOE fire-and-forget heal
conviction with its advantage is also an AOE heal, but i don't think it's a very big one, and it also has a max of 5 targets, so not worth using as a mainline AOE fire-and-forget heal
Conviction AoE advantage, on a dedicated healer at level 40 heals something like 400-500, only on folks nearby (10' or so).
Heroic gear is not worth a month of grinding. Wake up. People who can't literally live in vido games have it much longer than week.
This gear will be more outdated with every new tier of upgrades.
It was faster for established players with more toons. Now it's a change breaking if for newer players. But that's okay. Maybe CO simply gave up on having new players, haha.
Not to mention this game neither has enough ways of grind, nor it can count on having it in future save for an occasional reuse of old assets.
Prices are being raised as store items are not meant to be obtained within a day. Heroic gear was never intended as standard gear, it's endgame gear, and it was far too easy to acquire it.
It wasn't intended as standard gear, but that is what is has become, since there are now already two tiers of gear that are better.
It isn't endgame gear, either--when it was introduced, you could begin getting SCR on toons starting at level 20, and one might have enough for a full set by level 40. The gear you get immediately upon reaching maximum level simply isn't endgame gear. That was true years ago, soon after its release.
I do understand that, since On Alert, so much new stuff (token/gear grinds, costume drops) can be achieved in a very short period of time. This wasn't the best decision by Devs, since players have come to expect being able to get the new thing after a week or two of play. Anything else seems like an incredibly long grind, but now that's the state of play.
I don't know what model CO has in mind but personally, this is what I feel the gear curve should look like, to cover as many bases (PvPers, soloers, raiders) as possible without making any one group feel inferior or left out.
If current stats are inflated, raise the level cap to 45 so that the ratings are scaled downwards, and the current OP gear can be naturally phased out:
Entry-level endgame set, i.e. welfare set
This is a set that a freshly-capped character should be able to get in roughly a week of dailies, or moderate grinding and buying from the Auction House. Endgame content like Rampages, new dungeons/lairs and PvP should be balanced around this set. Currently the Heroic set, and has been for more than 4 years. Recolor to blue if needed.
Slightly better than Entry-level set
This is where Viko and BK should be IMO. Buff if needed. People should get the entry-level set, then go explore the old lairs and dungeons to pick these up. Roughly the equivalent of a Legion item with a Rank 4 mod's worth of stats baked in.
Pay to win set
A set slightly better than the entry-level set, buyable from the cash shop. May or may not be subject to RNG. Currently the Legion set. Recolor to blue if needed.
Best in slot Group PvE set
Best in slot set that can be bought with about 60 hours' worth of Rampaging or Dungeon grinding a month. Possibly controlled with an account-wide cooldown to limit acquisition rate to 1 set per month. Less grindy than PvP because roughly half of PvE grinding involves party administration and spamming LFG. Currently the Justice set and soon to be joined by Distinguished gear.
Best in slot PvP set
Another best-in slot set. Full set can be bought with about 120 hours' worth of Acclaim with an above average win rate, or around 4 hours a day for a month. Might have a PvP-oriented set bonus. PvP equipment exists but not at this level.
Almost best in slot Solo PvE set
Close to best in slot, but set bonus hampered by stats no one cares about, like bonus Max Energy and Energy Equilibrium, and about 70% the superstat bonus of the best. Involves a ridiculous grind of around 240 hours and may involve either RNG or grindy drops from every Comic Series, Story Pack and Mechanon, but soloable. Rewards dedicated players of the game.
you don't need it when it's already there; it's already possible to hit 40 before you begin monster island, never mind vibora bay or lemuria, provided you hit every mission you can find through MC, the desert and canada (or at least as many as you can find, since you keep getting sent back and forth all over creation with almost every mission giver in the game - the whole quest system need major streamlining and cleaning up, along with the immediate removal of that BS 15 mission limit; it exists in literally no other MMO on the market, it shouldn't exist here)
despite all this, i don't want a level cap raise either, because i already know they'll make it take twice as long to get those final 10 levels as it takes to get all the way to 40 already - they did it for STO, they did it for NWO, they'll do it for here too
Right now I'm feeling like support is an unwanted or non-important role in the game. Am I alone in feeling like this? Does our dev team have anything to say? Because all I'm seeing is a slow and steady push for "tanky dps" game play and not much else.
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
The problem for Heroic is that people are used to it being trivial to achieve and therefore don't think of it as particularly good.
a Week for a set isn't trivial.
So very true. If people were truly buying a full set upon hitting level 40, they they either have alts farming Unity or they must have farmed the everloving bejeebus out of the Special Alert dailies without doing much else.
On one hand, I can see why you'd want to slow down acquisition of Heroic gear and have people use drops (have you fixed the Primary Utility rarity issue yet?) while they save up for good stuff. And for that to happen, you do want some time between each piece. It also raises the percieved value of Mercenary gear, which could become a source of income for Cryptic/PWE, especially since the Q price was lowered and you get them far more frequently than Legion from lockboxes.
On the other hand, the numbers we currently have suggest 20+ days between each piece, which is just silly for something that isn't even Best In Slot. That's a grind only a hardcore player would ever bother with. And a couple of months for a travel power? Remember how many bothered with the Crafted Travel Power grind?
Until the "plans" for additional ways of getting SCR are revealed, I have little actual positive to say about the implementation as presented. And if the additional stuff is going to be team based, then NO. You already added GCR as the team based endgame currency, keep SCR as the solo player endgame currency.
That's all kai is asking for guys. Remember a month or whatever ago when we were all "yay kai!" and "congrats kai!" and "awesome tailor changes kai!". I'm sure enough of that positivity is left hanging around that we can manage to patiently wait to see if all this outcry, outrage, and doom-saying is justified.
Personally I'm super hype to see what new ways we're getting to get SCR, especially that team content! I mean geez, we're already getting the telios lair, what else are they cooking up for us?
In-game time requirement is 3-4 hours. I think this is an overcorrection -- I'd put it at 100 with no changes to UNITY SCR gain -- but heroics at the moment are quite cheap for how good they are.
In-game time requirement is 3-4 hours. I think this is an overcorrection -- I'd put it at 100 with no changes to UNITY SCR gain -- but heroics at the moment are quite cheap for how good they are.
I think that's a misquote, I didn't say that ^^;
35 feels okay to me really. A single, freshly capped character doesn't have a lot of options they can realistically pick up in a week. Unity 2 and alts make it easier but a new player wouldn't have access to those.
The only concern should be if the time investment needed for Heroic is equal or close to the time investment of Justice Gear, because if it is than people will feel compelled to just skip over it. Whether or not it is depends on future SCR drops.
However, the notion that anything less than Heroic gear is garbage is exactly why we are seeing these price increases. If the argument is "I liked 35 SCR because I could get it easily for all my alts" well, you aren't supposed to get it easily. That negates the purpose of Merc and all the other level 40 gear. Obviously though there should be some middle ground between priced high enough that Mercenary and lower is a preferred choice for end game gear, but not being so high that everyone skips over it because the time investment for it would be better spent elsewhere
To me, the ingame time requirement is fairly moot when there is a daily cap. Yes, alts and unlocking UNITY 2 can speed it up dramatically, but I doubt that's how the majority of players do things. If potential daily SCR income has to be cut, then I'd much rather have the grindy (and somewhat buggy) mess that is UNITY 2 removed from the game than reduced rewards for UNITY in general.
With a 100 cost as you suggest, you'd end up with potentially 20 SCR/day (18 from UNITY and 2 from Special Alert daily) or a 5 day run to get a good piece of max level gear. Two weeks to get a full set of primaries if you do the dailies every day.
I like Selphea's idea on gear. Heroics are FAR easier to get than Vik's stuff, yet is also much better. That seems dumb.
Making Heroics harder to get and lowing the price on Merc gear looks bad. I'm going to be kinda sad if the training wheels 40 gear is now the lockbox set. Wouldn't be surprised if everyone continues to ignore it's existence, though.
I don't know where you've been Spinny, but we just had several months of back-to-back grind-a-thons. And now we're going to enter a new event, which is a double whammy of SCR and GCR grind. It's hard to be excited by new, fabulous things when there's also oodles of grind attached to it in a game that isn't set up well for repeating content.
Unless the devs want to magically un-make this a themepark game. I'm all for Adventure mode style where I could go to MI and do local alerts (bounties) at level 10 instead of Westside for the 50 billionth time. It would also make grinding for currency much less painful since there would suddenly be a variety of alerts all over the world to do. Do a few alerts in an area for a bonus box of currency. It would be 100000x better than "do these 4 rampages for a chance to maybe get a token that you can eventually trade for gear". It would also be a lot better than "run these 4 super dungeon 500 times to buy all the things".
I don't need patients to know that 1000 tokens for bat flight is absurd. I also don't need patients to know that putting in this level of grind is bad, I've tried plenty of asian grinders, and I've seen why they don't work outside of Asian countries. If they have other ways to earn tokens, put them in first not after.
That's all kai is asking for guys. Remember a month or whatever ago when we were all "yay kai!" and "congrats kai!" and "awesome tailor changes kai!". I'm sure enough of that positivity is left hanging around that we can manage to patiently wait to see if all this outcry, outrage, and doom-saying is justified.
Personally I'm super hype to see what new ways we're getting to get SCR, especially that team content! I mean geez, we're already getting the telios lair, what else are they cooking up for us?
How it goes in Censoredcraft: Why are you complaining now? It's just alpha! Why are you complaining now? It's only beta. Why are you complaining now? It's live now and too late, why didn't you complain earlier?
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Heroic gear is not worth a month of grinding. Wake up. People who can't literally live in vido games have it much longer than week.
This gear will be more outdated with every new tier of upgrades.
It was faster for established players with more toons. Now it's a change breaking if for newer players. But that's okay. Maybe CO simply gave up on having new players, haha.
Not to mention this game neither has enough ways of grind, nor it can count on having it in future save for an occasional reuse of old assets.
So, so very true
Buffing everything to stupid high levels and nerfing everything to piss poor levels yields the same results, but not the same community reactions.
That's all kai is asking for guys. Remember a month or whatever ago when we were all "yay kai!" and "congrats kai!" and "awesome tailor changes kai!". I'm sure enough of that positivity is left hanging around that we can manage to patiently wait to see if all this outcry, outrage, and doom-saying is justified.
Personally I'm super hype to see what new ways we're getting to get SCR, especially that team content! I mean geez, we're already getting the telios lair, what else are they cooking up for us?
How it goes in Censoredcraft: Why are you complaining now? It's just alpha! Why are you complaining now? It's only beta. Why are you complaining now? It's live now and too late, why didn't you complain earlier?
^ Yep.
Buffing everything to stupid high levels and nerfing everything to piss poor levels yields the same results, but not the same community reactions.
That's all kai is asking for guys. Remember a month or whatever ago when we were all "yay kai!" and "congrats kai!" and "awesome tailor changes kai!". I'm sure enough of that positivity is left hanging around that we can manage to patiently wait to see if all this outcry, outrage, and doom-saying is justified.
Personally I'm super hype to see what new ways we're getting to get SCR, especially that team content! I mean geez, we're already getting the telios lair, what else are they cooking up for us?
On present evidence, something that doesn't work properly, hasn't been thought through, and doubles the amount of effort required in order to obtain a modest reward. Vigilance (broken). Black Harlequin/Winter Event (requires the collection of absurd numbers of items, broken). Onslaught (don't go there).
I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but recently we've had lots of cosmetic bug-fixes (for which we are grateful, and due credit is given) and some rather substantial mistakes. The Telios lair looks fun and I'm sure it will be re-balanced to iron out the kinks. But otherwise we have a collection of price rises and odd nerfs (I'm sure we all looked at the game today, and shook our heads at the number of OP telepathy characters and ludicrous Skarn's Bane energy-form removal problems) and a promise of something big coming. That promise is a bit like being at work, where you give your boss lots of ideas and feedback and they go away and then something happens and what comes back is, apparently, based on your idea but appears to be the work of a sociopathic alter-ego you didn't know you had. Under those circumstances it's difficult to cheerlead.
You know, at the new token and price change, we might as well just farm Legions and skip Heorics all together. It might actually be a bit faster.
It's a wonder if that might be the intention here...isn't it?
Although it does make me feel bad for the poor soul who saves up or works hard for 35 SCR on their first 40 and then waits till after whenever this patch goes LIVE and finds that, no they were not misreading it, the price has gone up to 200 SCR a piece.
If more people are purchasing Legion Gear, then it would be "okay" to create content which is geared towards higher level content since "everyone" is using "higher level gear".
You know, at the new token and price change, we might as well just farm Legions and skip Heorics all together. It might actually be a bit faster.
It's a wonder if that might be the intention here...isn't it?
Although it does make me feel bad for the poor soul who saves up or works hard for 35 SCR on their first 40 and then waits till after whenever this patch goes LIVE and finds that, no they were not misreading it, the price has gone up to 200 SCR a piece.
If more people are purchasing Legion Gear, then it would be "okay" to create content which is geared towards higher level content since "everyone" is using "higher level gear".
I think this is the most reasonable assumption why the changes with SCR. It never really was about anything else.
Comments
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
Out of context (and incomplete) quote, please don't do that.
The patch notes state there will be other ways to get SCR. Patience.
the prices aren't wildly inconsistent. The most popular ones are the highest prices.
same as normal in games, the best ones cost more to get
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Edit: Also, all of these people pissing and moaning about the SCR price changes...how about instead of complaining on here about it, you try and grind out as much as you can right now before the changes happen?
"There is only one way to support a PFF tank: Send Cyrone lots of money weekly... because he's the only one to successfully be a true PFF Tank." - chuckwolf
"Other ways to get SCR" may indeed be available in the future, but they are largely irrelevant to the looming, unanswered question which has been posed by an awful lot of people: even with potential new additions to SCR drops, why should players be required to grind significantly more for the same gear that has existed for years?
Should you think I am being unfair, I would also note that I deliberately did not post a quote from an earlier session that indicated you felt that the new pricing was appropriate.
Please feel free to elucidate further. We've been very patient so far.
Legion, Justice and Distinguished are a step up for players wanting that extra bit of effectiveness.
Lesser potent gear, like Mercenary, Bronze King and Vikorin gear (which is available in the Qstore, Andrith Ruins, Mandragalore, and Nemesis Confrontation) were made trivial because of this.
Unity token drops are being lowered because it's easily soloable. Additonal SCR will come from more team oriented content.
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
Out of context (and incomplete) quote, please don't do that.
The patch notes state there will be other ways to get SCR. Patience.
edit, quoting gone weird, Kaizerin's text up above
NWO, grind fest.
STO Delta Rising, chase the gold dragon grind fest.
Apparent grind fest incoming to once alt friendly CO. There's a reason I'm concerned.
I think the prices on the PTS are a bit too high, but the prices on Live are definitely way to low - just look at how most everyone considers it the go to gear for all their alts, completely skipping over all the other available gear
Whether or not the reduction in SCR rewards is warranted remains to be seen on the future ways of obtaining it. But lets not just lose our minds before we even know what those ways are going to be.
ENDGAME GEAR
HEROICS?
ENDGAME!
DOWNGRADING OLD UNITY 1 AND 2 MISSIONS
ENDGAME!?
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?
You are royaly screwing up new players and people with ALTs
200 SCR for Heroics is NOT OK! Not ok at all! They are EXTREME!
There is no way in hell you will make me use that Garbage Mercenary Gear for lvl 40
So CO will be more Grindy than a Korean MMO
-Sterga
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
It's obvious that grinding has been a new thing for the last part of 2015 and this is clearly going to be the next grind added for the beginning of this year. I expect after this, new and exciting grind will take it's place. Adding a few new super lairs here and there is no where near enough stuff to do for the new direction of this game.
"Also, all of these people pissing and moaning about the SCR price changes...how about instead of complaining on here about it, you try and grind out as much as you can right now before the changes happen?"
Front load our grind with some grind? That's brilliant. Golf-claps all around.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
42 40s, LTSer.
Also Unity its not so easy without the gear. Once you get the gear .. then yes, the walk there is longer than the instance. Such is the life of gear though
Spending my accumulated tokens as suggested, then probably ignoring Unity .. not sure it will be worth the "walk"
Seriously, if were Upping Unity, "VB/Monster gear" might need a token rate increase, RNG create token decrease, drop increase. Can't wander around naked and the quest gear doesn't cover bases well
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
I really would like some kind of statement from the Dev team on what their vision is for support players in this game. Over the years support powers have been nerfed and nerfed some more. I realize the existence of Freeform makes having support powers in the game (heals, debuffs, crowd control) difficult. But there needs to be some sort of bone thrown to those of us who like playing as team support.
Right now I'm feeling like support is an unwanted or non-important role in the game. Am I alone in feeling like this? Does our dev team have anything to say? Because all I'm seeing is a slow and steady push for "tanky dps" game play and not much else.
Bronze King and Vikorin will still be garbage even with the change. Too much rng to get a set, and Bronze King at least has terrible bonuses on the defense piece. (I can't even remember what Vikorin bonuses are). Don't expect to see these used just because you make Heroic hard to get. Mercenary might get used, but they're barely better than stuff that just drops from level 40 mobs.
UNITY may be easily soloable, but it takes time. I already don't bother with UNITY 1, and do UNITY 2 on one character only to finish out some 5k kill perks. (And if i get down to just Dogz left, i'll just go burn them in VB). I don't know what the obsession with team content over solo content is - people who don't want to do alerts or team lairs are apparently second-class CO citizens now?
Considering the time involved, someone with the time and 6+ 40s could farm a justice set in 12 days. Certainly no more than 24. If it takes that long to farm a heroic set, no one will bother. 6 days for a full set of heroics is about the most rational people will bother with. (And anything that made justice take longer would similarly make heroic take longer, because both require playing specific content which provides the relevant drops).
(Similarly, current time to a full set of onslaught gear with nothing but the free daily play for a sub is <30 days. If a full set of heroics takes anywhere near that long players will simply forget heroics ever existed).
Seriously, the whole reasoning here is only going to make Heroics a bad joke.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
This gear will be more outdated with every new tier of upgrades.
It was faster for established players with more toons. Now it's a change breaking if for newer players. But that's okay. Maybe CO simply gave up on having new players, haha.
Not to mention this game neither has enough ways of grind, nor it can count on having it in future save for an occasional reuse of old assets.
It isn't endgame gear, either--when it was introduced, you could begin getting SCR on toons starting at level 20, and one might have enough for a full set by level 40. The gear you get immediately upon reaching maximum level simply isn't endgame gear. That was true years ago, soon after its release.
I do understand that, since On Alert, so much new stuff (token/gear grinds, costume drops) can be achieved in a very short period of time. This wasn't the best decision by Devs, since players have come to expect being able to get the new thing after a week or two of play. Anything else seems like an incredibly long grind, but now that's the state of play.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
If current stats are inflated, raise the level cap to 45 so that the ratings are scaled downwards, and the current OP gear can be naturally phased out:
Entry-level endgame set, i.e. welfare set
This is a set that a freshly-capped character should be able to get in roughly a week of dailies, or moderate grinding and buying from the Auction House. Endgame content like Rampages, new dungeons/lairs and PvP should be balanced around this set. Currently the Heroic set, and has been for more than 4 years. Recolor to blue if needed.
Slightly better than Entry-level set
This is where Viko and BK should be IMO. Buff if needed. People should get the entry-level set, then go explore the old lairs and dungeons to pick these up. Roughly the equivalent of a Legion item with a Rank 4 mod's worth of stats baked in.
Pay to win set
A set slightly better than the entry-level set, buyable from the cash shop. May or may not be subject to RNG. Currently the Legion set. Recolor to blue if needed.
Best in slot Group PvE set
Best in slot set that can be bought with about 60 hours' worth of Rampaging or Dungeon grinding a month. Possibly controlled with an account-wide cooldown to limit acquisition rate to 1 set per month. Less grindy than PvP because roughly half of PvE grinding involves party administration and spamming LFG. Currently the Justice set and soon to be joined by Distinguished gear.
Best in slot PvP set
Another best-in slot set. Full set can be bought with about 120 hours' worth of Acclaim with an above average win rate, or around 4 hours a day for a month. Might have a PvP-oriented set bonus. PvP equipment exists but not at this level.
Almost best in slot Solo PvE set
Close to best in slot, but set bonus hampered by stats no one cares about, like bonus Max Energy and Energy Equilibrium, and about 70% the superstat bonus of the best. Involves a ridiculous grind of around 240 hours and may involve either RNG or grindy drops from every Comic Series, Story Pack and Mechanon, but soloable. Rewards dedicated players of the game.
despite all this, i don't want a level cap raise either, because i already know they'll make it take twice as long to get those final 10 levels as it takes to get all the way to 40 already - they did it for STO, they did it for NWO, they'll do it for here too
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
On one hand, I can see why you'd want to slow down acquisition of Heroic gear and have people use drops (have you fixed the Primary Utility rarity issue yet?) while they save up for good stuff. And for that to happen, you do want some time between each piece. It also raises the percieved value of Mercenary gear, which could become a source of income for Cryptic/PWE, especially since the Q price was lowered and you get them far more frequently than Legion from lockboxes.
On the other hand, the numbers we currently have suggest 20+ days between each piece, which is just silly for something that isn't even Best In Slot. That's a grind only a hardcore player would ever bother with. And a couple of months for a travel power? Remember how many bothered with the Crafted Travel Power grind?
Until the "plans" for additional ways of getting SCR are revealed, I have little actual positive to say about the implementation as presented. And if the additional stuff is going to be team based, then NO. You already added GCR as the team based endgame currency, keep SCR as the solo player endgame currency.
Personally I'm super hype to see what new ways we're getting to get SCR, especially that team content! I mean geez, we're already getting the telios lair, what else are they cooking up for us?
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
35 feels okay to me really. A single, freshly capped character doesn't have a lot of options they can realistically pick up in a week. Unity 2 and alts make it easier but a new player wouldn't have access to those.
However, the notion that anything less than Heroic gear is garbage is exactly why we are seeing these price increases. If the argument is "I liked 35 SCR because I could get it easily for all my alts" well, you aren't supposed to get it easily. That negates the purpose of Merc and all the other level 40 gear. Obviously though there should be some middle ground between priced high enough that Mercenary and lower is a preferred choice for end game gear, but not being so high that everyone skips over it because the time investment for it would be better spent elsewhere
With a 100 cost as you suggest, you'd end up with potentially 20 SCR/day (18 from UNITY and 2 from Special Alert daily) or a 5 day run to get a good piece of max level gear. Two weeks to get a full set of primaries if you do the dailies every day.
Making Heroics harder to get and lowing the price on Merc gear looks bad. I'm going to be kinda sad if the training wheels 40 gear is now the lockbox set. Wouldn't be surprised if everyone continues to ignore it's existence, though.
I don't know where you've been Spinny, but we just had several months of back-to-back grind-a-thons. And now we're going to enter a new event, which is a double whammy of SCR and GCR grind. It's hard to be excited by new, fabulous things when there's also oodles of grind attached to it in a game that isn't set up well for repeating content.
Unless the devs want to magically un-make this a themepark game. I'm all for Adventure mode style where I could go to MI and do local alerts (bounties) at level 10 instead of Westside for the 50 billionth time. It would also make grinding for currency much less painful since there would suddenly be a variety of alerts all over the world to do. Do a few alerts in an area for a bonus box of currency. It would be 100000x better than "do these 4 rampages for a chance to maybe get a token that you can eventually trade for gear". It would also be a lot better than "run these 4 super dungeon 500 times to buy all the things".
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Why are you complaining now? It's just alpha!
Why are you complaining now? It's only beta.
Why are you complaining now? It's live now and too late, why didn't you complain earlier?
42 40s, LTSer.
Yep.
42 40s, LTSer.
Personally I'm super hype to see what new ways we're getting to get SCR, especially that team content! I mean geez, we're already getting the telios lair, what else are they cooking up for us?
On present evidence, something that doesn't work properly, hasn't been thought through, and doubles the amount of effort required in order to obtain a modest reward. Vigilance (broken). Black Harlequin/Winter Event (requires the collection of absurd numbers of items, broken). Onslaught (don't go there).
I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but recently we've had lots of cosmetic bug-fixes (for which we are grateful, and due credit is given) and some rather substantial mistakes. The Telios lair looks fun and I'm sure it will be re-balanced to iron out the kinks. But otherwise we have a collection of price rises and odd nerfs (I'm sure we all looked at the game today, and shook our heads at the number of OP telepathy characters and ludicrous Skarn's Bane energy-form removal problems) and a promise of something big coming. That promise is a bit like being at work, where you give your boss lots of ideas and feedback and they go away and then something happens and what comes back is, apparently, based on your idea but appears to be the work of a sociopathic alter-ego you didn't know you had. Under those circumstances it's difficult to cheerlead.
[SIGPIC]http://imgur.com/9gptU4e[/SIGPIC]
Although it does make me feel bad for the poor soul who saves up or works hard for 35 SCR on their first 40 and then waits till after whenever this patch goes LIVE and finds that, no they were not misreading it, the price has gone up to 200 SCR a piece.
If more people are purchasing Legion Gear, then it would be "okay" to create content which is geared towards higher level content since "everyone" is using "higher level gear".
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I think this is the most reasonable assumption why the changes with SCR. It never really was about anything else.