Meanwhile, what does CO do to reward players? The whole notion that "gear should be special and hard to obtain" is actually rather draconian and outdated. Gear is just the vehicle in which players use to traverse the gamescape and enjoy the game with.
My limited take without (hopefully) being hyperbolic or co-opting/mangling anyone else's specific opinion:
I think a general concern of the 'priced too high' camp (beyond the obvious of the pricing itself) is that people would like some reassurance that this move isn't endemic of a continued focus shift towards content that will be played primarily by specific portions of the playerbase when that portion is perceived by some (at least on the forums) to be a smaller part of the general CO population (for lack of a better term, the CO raiding community). Since we don't get to see the metrics, we can't quantify the overall participation level on TA/Cosmics/upcoming Q-zone as a percentage beyond personal experience (which obviously has both positive and negative feedback, per this and other threads).
Here's a quick illustration of my personal worries, (and please take this with a grain of salt and let it sit as purely an outlying example rather than a direct comparison) but as a corollary to some folks' current content concerns, Wildstar (a game I loved and that also has/had a passionate and talented dev team) suffered some pretty significant financial setbacks for development focus that was too attenuated on 'high end raiding' when they had a product that had literally TONS of other content and components that players loved just as well.
I'm not saying we're DOOOOM'd to follow Wildstar's mistakes (which, as an aside, seems to finally be stabilizing as a free-to-play) and I'm definitely not trying to vilify the concept of a raiding community (because it's something that CO has been missing and definitely needs) but I do think some dev commentary (i.e. state of the game, forum post, etc) addressing their perspective on the balance between end game as it relates to the core product, or even just general design philosophy as it relates to treadmills, alts and casual play, might assuage (or at least redirect) some of the concerns reflected here. There's a lot of great things that have happened to CO over the last year and sometimes it helps when a gold-tagged name points at them and says, "We're still going to expand on these things too." That's my two cents.
Well, it has been 4 months since the devs provided a "state of the game" post. I think those posts should be updated regularly (now would be a good time) so players will feel more "enlightnened" about the direction of the game instead of feeling left in the dark.
Personally, I think the CO devs are trying to avoid the "forum fallout" that DCUO recently experienced when the dev team announced upcoming changes/game direction changes for the rest of the year/early next year/future. The backlash/flaming was SO HARSH that the dev team had add a post that said that they will no longer inform the players of long term projects in that manner, and that they will inform the player base of upcoming changes that are closer to launch dates. You can check out that DCUO forum under "dev development".
I mean... if your concern is that they're focusing too much on "raid content" or anything of that sort, then just take a look at the new zone that is currently on the PTS. It's not "raid content", not even close. It's an open zone where you do daily missions, and you can do them solo or with any number of your buddies. There are some open missions that can be completed by small teams too.
If anything you can't really say that the devs have been focusing on one kind of content. They made a lair, they made open world boss fights, now they made a zone that mixes small-team/solo daily content with open missions. Me personally I remember all the posts in the suggestions forum that asked for these things over the past few years: clearly somebody at the office was paying attention, and is giving us what we asked for.
Also Kyastral is right on the money. They're not going to give us any specifics, because things change and when things change players are less likely to say "well things happen, no biggie" and instead are more likely to say "YOU LIED TO US HOW DARE YOU". As for a 'general design philosophy', they've posted about those sorts of things already, so maybe they will again... you can also just look at the content they've created and get a lot of that.
Well, it has been 4 months since the devs provided a "state of the game" post. I think those posts should be updated regularly (now would be a good time) so players will feel more "enlightnened" about the direction of the game instead of feeling left in the dark.
Personally, I think the CO devs are trying to avoid the "forum fallout" that DCUO recently experienced when the dev team announced upcoming changes/game direction changes for the rest of the year/early next year/future. The backlash/flaming was SO HARSH that the dev team had add a post that said that they will no longer inform the players of long term projects in that manner, and that they will inform the player base of upcoming changes that are closer to launch dates. You can check out that DCUO forum under "dev development".
Yikes! Definitely don't want to open the devs up to that level of vitriol - just feel a little qualification around a price increase or grind increase at the time the change is proposed would help temper the responses in this kind of passionate 'feedback' setting. But yea - I absolutely agree that dev communication on these things should be limited to present tense or immediate future (for their own safety )
I mean... if your concern is that they're focusing too much on "raid content" or anything of that sort, then just take a look at the new zone that is currently on the PTS. It's not "raid content", not even close. It's an open zone where you do daily missions, and you can do them solo or with any number of your buddies. There are some open missions that can be completed by small teams too.
If anything you can't really say that the devs have been focusing on one kind of content. They made a lair, they made open world boss fights, now they made a zone that mixes small-team/solo daily content with open missions. Me personally I remember all the posts in the suggestions forum that asked for these things over the past few years: clearly somebody at the office was paying attention, and is giving us what we asked for.
That's a great response and I appreciate what you're saying, particularly RE: the diversity of solo/group missions in the new Q-zone. I guess for simplicity sake my post was equating GCR content to CO's 'raid content,' but you're absolutely correct that the devs are not churning out cookie-cutter 'dungeons' but have rather provided a variety of methods for players to earn GCR-gated rewards (though I would still love some form of solo or small group option in the future).
I'm probably losing the forest for the trees when I think about the upcoming gear pricing, which is silly because in the end I should be focusing on the fact that we have a BRAND NEW ZONE WITH NEW MISSIONS alongside plenty of shiny costumes and stuff. I'm sure I'll earn some rewards just exploring and later on I can roll up my sleeves and decide whether to get grumpy about what gear costs. Worst case is that my characters will look cool while they hit the treadmill.
Yikes! Definitely don't want to open the devs up to that level of vitriol - just feel a little qualification around a price increase or grind increase at the time the change is proposed would help temper the responses in this kind of passionate 'feedback' setting.
The justifications and explanations were given. Multiple times. There are just many people who will act like no justification was given because they disagreed with the justification.
Recognition (Gold, Silver, Unity, Event, etc) will not be made sharable under any circumstance. We have limits on how much you can earn recognition from doing specific tasks for a reason and we do not want players bypassing this.
Prices for many items were set far too low in the past and we've been going through and making adjustments. While we understand this can cause frustration, please know that it's being done to keep incentives, progression and the overall game in a healthy state.
Justice gear is high-end gear that's intended to be difficult to acquire. Its previous pricing didn't reflect that accurately due to the token droprate being entirely random, being account shareable and the Rampages not meeting the difficulty level we want to warrant rewarding that type of gear.
Now that we have a few areas where players can earn Gold Champion Recognition we felt it was time to start shifting Justice gear to that pricing model.
At some point we would like to completely remove the Rampage token cost from Justice gear in favor of a pure GCR/SCR cost, but that will be reserved for when we're able to dedicate some time to reviewing rampages. We have no ETA for that.
If you go back and look at subsequent responses, you'll see that many people were never interested in listening to a justification, only in saying "No, you're wrong".
If you go back and look at subsequent responses, you'll see that many people were never interested in listening to a justification, only in saying "No, you're wrong".
That's 'cuz it's wrong.
Dasher@Tool-box, donning his armor to prance into battle and blitz the enemy! No joke!
Cupid@Tool-box, stunningly radiant stag ready to play matchmaker between villain and arrow!
Vixon@Tool-box, frighteningly eager to summon despair for his adversaries!
Jebin Zedalu@Tool-box, elementalist weaponmaster. ...One of these things is not like the others!
Having prices that high for gear.. aka something you are going to need a considerable amount of due to the multi-character nature of CO... is to be quite honest, disgusting.
Sure I can see the "why" of it.. too make people play the content more before giving them the gear to make said content easier, but it's not something I agree with in the slightest, Make the content fun and people will play it regardless of the rewards offered or not... just having the pricing be this high for gear is going to turn off a majority of players from even attempting it [I mean, it took some real hard coaxing to get a couple of buddies of mine to go after a piece of OV gear.. which takes ~2 weeks on average to get...so something with these prices... aint gonna fly]
as for being slightly off-topic.. having those kinda prices for costume/power unlocks however is understandable.. as you only need to get them ONCE.
In all things, a calm heart must prevail.
Member of Paragon Dawn: Because some people like friendly helpful communities.
Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
PTS vendors are showing justice gear at 4 rampage tokens ( two sets of two still ), 450 silver and 225 gold rec
Did they just increase that , I though it was 150 gold rec before? I was sure it was 150 gold rec ,I budgeted a character with 300 gold rec for two pieces
PTS vendors are showing justice gear at 4 rampage tokens ( two sets of two still ), 450 silver and 225 gold rec
Did they just increase that , I though it was 150 gold rec before? I was sure it was 150 gold rec ,I budgeted a character with 300 gold rec for two pieces
If you go back and look at subsequent responses, you'll see that many people were never interested in listening to a justification, only in saying "No, you're wrong".
That's 'cuz it's wrong.
A yup. The players are allowed to say that. We've heard then justification. Some of us don't care.
And some of us have given some very good suggestions, including REDUCING the prices.
PTS vendors are showing justice gear at 4 rampage tokens ( two sets of two still ), 450 silver and 225 gold rec
Did they just increase that , I though it was 150 gold rec before? I was sure it was 150 gold rec ,I budgeted a character with 300 gold rec for two pieces
It was never 150. The 450 and 225 seems correct from the day they launched on test.
I remember them being in that range. I don't ever remember 150.
PTS vendors are showing justice gear at 4 rampage tokens ( two sets of two still ), 450 silver and 225 gold rec
Did they just increase that , I though it was 150 gold rec before? I was sure it was 150 gold rec ,I budgeted a character with 300 gold rec for two pieces
No, it's always been 450 and 225; 10% lower than Distinguished with the additional token cost.
Reguardless of if the prices were increased or not, they are still DISGUSTINGLY high for gear...to the point where I know for a fact that most of the playerbase is going to look at it, go "lol no" and not bother....ya know.. kinda like with rank 8/9 mods.
so once again, lower the bloody pricing on the gear... as it is atm, by the time you get the gear to make the GCR content not nightmareishly hard.. you'll be sick of said content due to having farmed the hell out of it to get the gear in the first place.
In all things, a calm heart must prevail.
Member of Paragon Dawn: Because some people like friendly helpful communities.
Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
Eh, the price is what it is. It's quite clear that it's set the way the Powers What Is want it, and it's not changing any time soon.
I didn't have the gear before, I won't get it now, the game's been entertaining me so far, so it's just not that big a deal for me.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
We've heard then justification. Some of us don't care.
And this, in short, sums up why devs don't need to bother explaining themselves. Because of people like this who don't actually care to listen to what other people have to say, they're just here to disagree.
Eh, the price is what it is. It's quite clear that it's set the way the Powers What Is want it, and it's not changing any time soon.
I didn't have the gear before, I won't get it now, the game's been entertaining me so far, so it's just not that big a deal for me.
It surprises me that for someone who cares so little for gear, Jon has a really firm grip on how much it actually matters in regards to content, and fun.
Yikes! Definitely don't want to open the devs up to that level of vitriol - just feel a little qualification around a price increase or grind increase at the time the change is proposed would help temper the responses in this kind of passionate 'feedback' setting.
The justifications and explanations were given. Multiple times. There are just many people who will act like no justification was given because they disagreed with the justification.
Here, from page 3 of this thread, a dev speaks:
Fair enough - you're absolutely correct that we did get a dev response a few pages later RE: the upcoming price increases. I think prefacing the increase with this info at the time of the original patch note posting might have helped stem some of the outcry, but at the same time I'm happy we got a glimpse into the thought process behind the decision.
Regardless of my personal feelings, I understand the change is going forward and, per the post your cited, the basis the devs have for making it. I guess when I ask for qualification on these pricing changes, I'm asking more for the general rationale for moving away from previous alt-friendly models of gearing (non-BoA currency, treadmills that we previously accepted by the community being significantly increased, etc). Changes to Heroics, Recog-Purchase Costumes, etc still baffle me, because I feel like the replayability of the game is just as strongly tied to alts as it is to single character progression.
If there's a dev reason for making content more exclusive instead of inclusive (strictly as it relates to one's individual character's and their resources), I can only hope it's because there are plan for additional character-specific progression down the road (such as a new 'end game' level cap, advanced talent tiers, special upper level-only powers/abilities, etc - or even something like epic classes, incarnates tiers, hero classes, etc that we're used to from other games). I understand they can't and won't comment about long-term goals like that. However, if the intent is simply to stretch content/player retention, I think it's important to reiterate the perspective of players like myself that will happily run the same content with 10+ alts to get gear/rewards but will burn out trying to get a single piece of gear on a single player when its priced prohibitively .
It surprises me that for someone who cares so little for gear, Jon has a really firm grip on how much it actually matters in regards to content
And that's the problem with the proposed pricing structure in a nutshell. Grind hard for gear that... actually, might not make a lot of difference to your build. It would be more worthwhile if Justice Gear actually did give you god-mode powers through acquiring it, rather than that setting being down to some obscure build-voodoo. Might make it worth going through the mill to get it.
... and fun.
That's wholly absent from any of the content the devs have cooked up in 2016. Ultimately... you have to wish they hadn't bothered.
I mean... much of what you say after this is explained by the very post I quoted >.>
As for level cap increases and some of the other stuff you said, I wouldn't hold your breath. Keep in mind that it is clear that cross-character progression is still a thing and will continue to be a thing, and that people are primarily making a huge noise about a very small, very specific number of BoP rewards - primarily gear. There is still plenty of BoE, and B2A stuff, some people just don't acknowledge that because they're obsessed with gear.
And that's the problem with the proposed pricing structure in a nutshell. Grind hard for gear that... actually, might not make a lot of difference to your build.
That's actually a virtue, not a flaw, because it means that people who don't go to the effort of getting whatever the gear is can still function effectively. It's actually fairly common to have radical diminishing returns on higher tiers of gear in games.
Effectively without, is fine. But it should be better with. And it's been argued by numerous, conspicuous posters of this parish that the effect of JG is less than the effects of a properly "optimised" build. So why bother?
Effectively without, is fine. But it should be better with. And it's been argued by numerous, conspicuous posters of this parish that the effect of JG is less than the effects of a properly "optimised" build. So why bother?
Because you actually want to squeeze the last drops of performance from your build? There are people who max out their gear (r9s and all the works); I'm not one of them, but I don't resent their existence.
There are basically two options for top end gear. Either it's necessary for end game content (in which case it should be fairly accessible, and possible to get without doing end game content), or it's not necessary for end game content (in which case it can be arbitrarily difficult to get, and an appreciable number of people may wind up simply never getting it). CO is using the second model.
So we know that the current prices for Justice Gear on PTS are:
450 SCR 225 GCR 2 Superdense Diamonds 2 [Insert Other Rampage Token Type Here]
^ This is for ONE piece of Justice Gear, not the full set.
If you could adjust this price how would YOU price it?
(Let's try to price it with the assumption that the Development Team will likely not drastically adjust the prices but will want to keep it as close to the current prices as possible. E.g. J Gear re-pricing: 400 SCR, 195 GCR + 4 Rampage Tokens)
So we know that the current prices for Justice Gear on PTS are:
450 SCR 225 GCR 2 Superdense Diamonds 2 [Insert Other Rampage Token Type Here]
^ This is for ONE piece of Justice Gear, not the full set.
If you could adjust this price how would YOU price it?
(Let's try to price it with the assumption that the Development Team will likely not drastically adjust the prices but will want to keep it as close to the current prices as possible. E.g. J Gear re-pricing: 400 SCR, 195 GCR + 4 Rampage Tokens)
Hmm.. ok.. I'll take a crack at that.
475 SCR 300 GCR No Token Requirements
This is the pricing I hope to see when the devs remove the token requirements; no other pricing that will happen before the token removal will be relevant (to me) before then.
We've heard then justification. Some of us don't care.
And this, in short, sums up why devs don't need to bother explaining themselves. Because of people like this who don't actually care to listen to what other people have to say, they're just here to disagree.
Eh, the price is what it is. It's quite clear that it's set the way the Powers What Is want it, and it's not changing any time soon.
I didn't have the gear before, I won't get it now, the game's been entertaining me so far, so it's just not that big a deal for me.
It surprises me that for someone who cares so little for gear, Jon has a really firm grip on how much it actually matters in regards to content, and fun.
Again, they listened. They just have a fundamental difference in how they see the game versus the dev's vision. That is fine. Happens all the time in mmos.
At this point the there really is no point to this thread. I don't think the devs will be lowering the prices or making any changes at all.
What's the point of increasing the price of Justice Gear, with the justification being to increase the longevity of the game?, Everyone who is even remotely "Elitist" already has the set. All you're doing is alienating newer players. Why not make an entirely new set with these increased prices? Stop recycling, start creating.
Also are you gonna add more ways to acquire GCR? currently it is almost impossible for most non-US timezone players to do cosmics.
So we know that the current prices for Justice Gear on PTS are:
450 SCR 225 GCR 2 Superdense Diamonds 2 [Insert Other Rampage Token Type Here]
^ This is for ONE piece of Justice Gear, not the full set.
If you could adjust this price how would YOU price it?
250 GCR 500 SCR
Rampage tokens can be turned in for 25 SCR apiece. Tokens are removed from Rampage drop tables, and the SCR reward of the longer Rampages is upped a bit. Then again, I don't care if rampage queues become completely abandoned, so I'm biased.
I mean... if you can't see that the answer is obviously yes...
Also the point of increasing the price of Justice Gear has been explained... repeatedly. I mean heck on the previous page of this thread I quoted the explanation a dev gave on page 3 of this thread. If you're not going to accept the answer, stop asking, 'cause the answer isn't going to change.
Again, they listened. They just have a fundamental difference in how they see the game versus the dev's vision. That is fine. Happens all the time in mmos.
I mean, if you want to tell them they should shut down the thread because they won't use your feedback then go ahead... but I think that's going to work out the same way your other suggestion did. Right, I feel like I have to give you an example here of what I think you should do because at this point I'm really just mirroring your process and that might be sending mixed messages. So here goes.
I'm just not clear on why they asked for our feedback at all, when they'd decided what the price was going to be and had no intention of changing it. It'd be like me asking for feedback from y'all about my character costumes, like I was going to pay any attention to that at all.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
So we know that the current prices for Justice Gear on PTS are:
450 SCR 225 GCR 2 Superdense Diamonds 2 [Insert Other Rampage Token Type Here]
^ This is for ONE piece of Justice Gear, not the full set.
If you could adjust this price how would YOU price it?
250 GCR 500 SCR
Rampage tokens can be turned in for 25 SCR apiece. Tokens are removed from Rampage drop tables, and the SCR reward of the longer Rampages is upped a bit. Then again, I don't care if rampage queues become completely abandoned, so I'm biased.
I mean... if you can't see that the answer is obviously yes...
Also the point of increasing the price of Justice Gear has been explained... repeatedly. I mean heck on the previous page of this thread I quoted the explanation a dev gave on page 3 of this thread. If you're not going to accept the answer, stop asking, 'cause the answer isn't going to change.
Again, they listened. They just have a fundamental difference in how they see the game versus the dev's vision. That is fine. Happens all the time in mmos.
I mean, if you want to tell them they should shut down the thread because they won't use your feedback then go ahead... but I think that's going to work out the same way your other suggestion did. Right, I feel like I have to give you an example here of what I think you should do because at this point I'm really just mirroring your process and that might be sending mixed messages. So here goes.
I don't think they plan to make any changes whatsoever to the price they have on PTR. Full stop. Any other discussion after that is irrelevant.
I'm just not clear on why they asked for our feedback at all, when they'd decided what the price was going to be and had no intention of changing it. It'd be like me asking for feedback from y'all about my character costumes, like I was going to pay any attention to that at all.
Pretty much this.
With that said I am glad they are open to feedback on other things in this upcoming release. Which they have shown by changes made on PTS.
Overall the upcoming content is a great addition to the game.
We just have one small disagreement with it. Nothing major. Happens all the time in mmos.
I'm sure there will be stuff in future releases that some players strongly disagree with that they will stick to their guns on. That's fine. And is the nature of game development/mmos.
Distinguished gear and Justice Gear.. lets see, a REASONABLE, and SANE price would be...
300 SCR and 175 GCR a piece.
Or just 175 GCR, period. For all GCR gear.
The dual-cost model they have in place now is mind-numbingly stupid because, as I've said before, it encourages people to just outright skip Heroic gear in the progression chain.
I don't think they plan to make any changes whatsoever to the price they have on PTR. Full stop. Any other discussion after that is irrelevant.
Pretty much. Although this topic is generating 3 times as much feedback and discussion compared to even the second most active PTS topic, it's little more than a dumping ground for feedback they clearly don't care one bit about at this point. No matter what anyone says here, those prices are probably going live and there's nothing any of us can do other than voting with our wallets and participation.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
So we know that the current prices for Justice Gear on PTS are:
450 SCR 225 GCR 2 Superdense Diamonds 2 [Insert Other Rampage Token Type Here]
^ This is for ONE piece of Justice Gear, not the full set.
If you could adjust this price how would YOU price it?
(Let's try to price it with the assumption that the Development Team will likely not drastically adjust the prices but will want to keep it as close to the current prices as possible. E.g. J Gear re-pricing: 400 SCR, 195 GCR + 4 Rampage Tokens)
Hmm.. ok.. I'll take a crack at that.
475 SCR 300 GCR No Token Requirements
This is the pricing I hope to see when the devs remove the token requirements; no other pricing that will happen before the token removal will be relevant (to me) before then.
Price should be equal to distinguished. your price is even worse than distingished, which is horrible. All gear prices in the SCR and GCR stores could do to see a 30-50% cut.
Um.. if Justice Gear is the best gear in the game at the moment, why should it's pricing be equal to distinguished? The devs have already pointed to the direction they are heading; I do not see them lowering the price of the best gear in the game. They are not going to make it easy for players to get, with or without tokens. Asking for a 30/50% cut for high-end gear prices is asking too much. In my opinion, the more players ask for lower prices, the more the devs are going to stick to their pricing decisions.
I am sure we will see more content that will have opportunities to earn GCR and SCR; we will just have to wait and see.
Um.. if Justice Gear is the best gear in the game at the moment, why should it's pricing be equal to distinguished? The devs have already pointed to the direction they are heading; I do not see them lowering the price of the best gear in the game. They are not going to make it easy for players to get, with or without tokens. Asking for a 30/50% cut for high-end gear prices is asking too much. In my opinion, the more players ask for lower prices, the more the devs are going to stick to their pricing decisions.
I am sure we will see more content that will have opportunities to earn GCR and SCR; we will just have to wait and see.
Technically, its best gear for dps only, distinguished is the best gear for tanks and possibly healers as it gives more defense. So, it should be equal.
Grind hard for gear that... actually, might not make a lot of difference to your build. It would be more worthwhile if Justice Gear actually did give you god-mode powers through acquiring it, rather than that setting being down to some obscure build-voodoo. Might make it worth going through the mill to get it.
This guy/girl gets it. True story: I accidentally unequipped my JG by build switching and didn't even notice for weeks. Just be glad your getting new content after all this time. you don't need JG to enjoy it.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
Price per se shouldn't be the discussion, but how long the devs want a player to have to take to get a full set of Distinguished or JG, and to at least some extent how fun they think the grind should be. They aren't telling us the former and the account bound currency tells me that they want it to be dull and tedious. IMHO a complete set of primaries should be obtainable in 1.5-2 months of steady play. I believe they need to adjust the content (meaning difficulty and amount of rewards) with that in mind.
IMHO a complete set of primaries should be obtainable in 1.5-2 months of steady play.
Define steady play. It's fairly straightforward to get 12 GCR and 24 SCR in a single day -- run TA once (12/12, with daily), get the rest from a mix of Alert dailies, Special Alert dailies, and rampages. That will give you a full set of justice in 57 days (and doubling that value isn't that hard). I'm guessing that's not what you mean by steady play, though.
Price per se shouldn't be the discussion, but how long the devs want a player to have to take to get a full set of Distinguished or JG, and to at least some extent how fun they think the grind should be. They aren't telling us the former and the account bound currency tells me that they want it to be dull and tedious. IMHO a complete set of primaries should be obtainable in 1.5-2 months of steady play. I believe they need to adjust the content (meaning difficulty and amount of rewards) with that in mind.
How many hours a day is that and in what timezone?
IMHO a complete set of primaries should be obtainable in 1.5-2 months of steady play.
Define steady play. It's fairly straightforward to get 12 GCR and 24 SCR in a single day -- run TA once (12/12, with daily), get the rest from a mix of Alert dailies, Special Alert dailies, and rampages. That will give you a full set of justice in 57 days (and doubling that value isn't that hard). I'm guessing that's not what you mean by steady play, though.
Define steady play. It's fairly straightforward to get 12 GCR and 24 SCR in a single day -- run TA once (12/12, with daily), get the rest from a mix of Alert dailies, Special Alert dailies, and rampages. That will give you a full set of justice in 57 days (and doubling that value isn't that hard). I'm guessing that's not what you mean by steady play, though.
On a week night, I can usually do one Cosmic (sometimes two, sometimes none) or one TA run, but not both; the time to round up a team or wait for Cosmic battle to begin is significant. Sometimes, neither one pans out, which can be a real bummer. Finally, I don't play about one night a week. That nets me an average of 30 GCR during the week.
On the weekend, I can play TA once each day, plus two or three Cosmics that day, sometimes getting the daily on that one (but not usually because of dino difficulties). Some weekends, I don't play Saturday at all. That averages to another 40 GCR on the weekend, for a total of around 70 GCR per week.
At that pace, and assuming I earn enough SCR, too, I can pay for a complete Justice Gear set in less than 10 weeks.
That is a good bit of time--too much for some, just fine for others. On the other hand, it means I am playing the same toon every day for two months.
For players that focus on one toon, it isn't much of a grind at all. Normal gameplay of top-tier content would net a full set fairly quickly. For players who play a lot more, they could double my rate, as Pantagruel noted, and earn that set in a month or less.
The biggest difficulties are for altaholics (like myself) and folks who can only play at low server population times.
roughbear hits the mains issues. There is an awful lot of waiting around to find enough players to do either TA or Cosmics (I got soured on TA because of the wait time and because people would quit and we couldn't complete it). Having to wait around makes for a dull in-game experience. One reason I like Rampages is that 3 of them are PUGable. I can do other things in game while I wait, or even read/watch a movie. I am not losing time (as I type I am waiting to see if LI pops). As he also notes, there is the 2 month grind on 1 character, also dull. It should be noted that it has become increasingly difficult to complete the Cosmic daily due to dino mostly being a failure.
I would be much happier to only need 2 tokens from Fire & Ice instead of 6 in order to complete a set of Justice Gear. I think I have the tokens for 1 or 2 more pieces except for the F&I tokens. I just got tired of the wait time for getting into or building a good F&I PQ, most often with no token on completion. My preference would be any system with less frustrating, idle wait time. If there is a system with more wait time being likely, I'd hope the Devs would recognize that and adjust the rewards accordingly. I'm not sure the CO Powers That Be are including that factor in their challenge/rewards equations. If the changes proposed in this thread weren't happening, I'd hope for an increased chance to get a token drop from F&I.
That seems to be a separate debate: whether or not you should have GCR content that supports small teams. If you can actually build a team (all roles, people know what they're doing) the missions themselves won't take any more time than in any other timezone, but getting together the critical mass of skilled people during low server pop periods is rough.
For players that focus on one toon, it isn't much of a grind at all. Normal gameplay of top-tier content would net a full set fairly quickly. For players who play a lot more, they could double my rate, as Pantagruel noted, and earn that set in a month or less.
To emphasize my point: a person who logs lots of play time, especially one who plays every day, plus long play sessions on weekends, can earn complete gear sets in a month or less. This is especially true for folks that use only one toon. The Devs seem to be using this as a benchmark.
Well, you certainly don't want the proposed new gcr system. Far longer waits and 1 of the 3 is almost always a fail these days after trying for a couple hours.
I would be much happier to only need 2 tokens from Fire & Ice instead of 6 in order to complete a set of Justice Gear. I think I have the tokens for 1 or 2 more pieces except for the F&I tokens. I just got tired of the wait time for getting into or building a good F&I PQ, most often with no token on completion. My preference would be any system with less frustrating, idle wait time. If there is a system with more wait time being likely, I'd hope the Devs would recognize that and adjust the rewards accordingly. I'm not sure the CO Powers That Be are including that factor in their challenge/rewards equations. If the changes proposed in this thread weren't happening, I'd hope for an increased chance to get a token drop from F&I.
To emphasize my point: a person who logs lots of play time, especially one who plays every day, plus long play sessions on weekends, can earn complete gear sets in a month or less. This is especially true for folks that use only one toon. The Devs seem to be using this as a benchmark.
For players that focus on one toon, it isn't much of a grind at all. Normal gameplay of top-tier content would net a full set fairly quickly. For players who play a lot more, they could double my rate, as Pantagruel noted, and earn that set in a month or less.
To emphasize my point: a person who logs lots of play time, especially one who plays every day, plus long play sessions on weekends, can earn complete gear sets in a month or less. This is especially true for folks that use only one toon. The Devs seem to be using this as a benchmark.
Hmm.. good points; it seems the devs are moving away from "One toon to feed them all (alts)" to "One toon at a time" gameplay.
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Personally, I think the CO devs are trying to avoid the "forum fallout" that DCUO recently experienced when the dev team announced upcoming changes/game direction changes for the rest of the year/early next year/future. The backlash/flaming was SO HARSH that the dev team had add a post that said that they will no longer inform the players of long term projects in that manner, and that they will inform the player base of upcoming changes that are closer to launch dates. You can check out that DCUO forum under "dev development".
If anything you can't really say that the devs have been focusing on one kind of content. They made a lair, they made open world boss fights, now they made a zone that mixes small-team/solo daily content with open missions. Me personally I remember all the posts in the suggestions forum that asked for these things over the past few years: clearly somebody at the office was paying attention, and is giving us what we asked for.
Also Kyastral is right on the money. They're not going to give us any specifics, because things change and when things change players are less likely to say "well things happen, no biggie" and instead are more likely to say "YOU LIED TO US HOW DARE YOU". As for a 'general design philosophy', they've posted about those sorts of things already, so maybe they will again... you can also just look at the content they've created and get a lot of that.
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I'm probably losing the forest for the trees when I think about the upcoming gear pricing, which is silly because in the end I should be focusing on the fact that we have a BRAND NEW ZONE WITH NEW MISSIONS alongside plenty of shiny costumes and stuff. I'm sure I'll earn some rewards just exploring and later on I can roll up my sleeves and decide whether to get grumpy about what gear costs. Worst case is that my characters will look cool while they hit the treadmill.
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Here, from page 3 of this thread, a dev speaks: If you go back and look at subsequent responses, you'll see that many people were never interested in listening to a justification, only in saying "No, you're wrong".
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Sure I can see the "why" of it.. too make people play the content more before giving them the gear to make said content easier, but it's not something I agree with in the slightest, Make the content fun and people will play it regardless of the rewards offered or not... just having the pricing be this high for gear is going to turn off a majority of players from even attempting it [I mean, it took some real hard coaxing to get a couple of buddies of mine to go after a piece of OV gear.. which takes ~2 weeks on average to get...so something with these prices... aint gonna fly]
as for being slightly off-topic.. having those kinda prices for costume/power unlocks however is understandable.. as you only need to get them ONCE.
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Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
Did they just increase that , I though it was 150 gold rec before?
I was sure it was 150 gold rec ,I budgeted a character with 300 gold rec for two pieces
And some of us have given some very good suggestions, including REDUCING the prices.
I remember them being in that range. I don't ever remember 150.
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so once again, lower the bloody pricing on the gear... as it is atm, by the time you get the gear to make the GCR content not nightmareishly hard.. you'll be sick of said content due to having farmed the hell out of it to get the gear in the first place.
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Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
I didn't have the gear before, I won't get it now, the game's been entertaining me so far, so it's just not that big a deal for me.
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Regardless of my personal feelings, I understand the change is going forward and, per the post your cited, the basis the devs have for making it. I guess when I ask for qualification on these pricing changes, I'm asking more for the general rationale for moving away from previous alt-friendly models of gearing (non-BoA currency, treadmills that we previously accepted by the community being significantly increased, etc). Changes to Heroics, Recog-Purchase Costumes, etc still baffle me, because I feel like the replayability of the game is just as strongly tied to alts as it is to single character progression.
If there's a dev reason for making content more exclusive instead of inclusive (strictly as it relates to one's individual character's and their resources), I can only hope it's because there are plan for additional character-specific progression down the road (such as a new 'end game' level cap, advanced talent tiers, special upper level-only powers/abilities, etc - or even something like epic classes, incarnates tiers, hero classes, etc that we're used to from other games). I understand they can't and won't comment about long-term goals like that. However, if the intent is simply to stretch content/player retention, I think it's important to reiterate the perspective of players like myself that will happily run the same content with 10+ alts to get gear/rewards but will burn out trying to get a single piece of gear on a single player when its priced prohibitively .
And that's the problem with the proposed pricing structure in a nutshell. Grind hard for gear that... actually, might not make a lot of difference to your build. It would be more worthwhile if Justice Gear actually did give you god-mode powers through acquiring it, rather than that setting being down to some obscure build-voodoo. Might make it worth going through the mill to get it.
... and fun.
That's wholly absent from any of the content the devs have cooked up in 2016. Ultimately... you have to wish they hadn't bothered.
As for level cap increases and some of the other stuff you said, I wouldn't hold your breath. Keep in mind that it is clear that cross-character progression is still a thing and will continue to be a thing, and that people are primarily making a huge noise about a very small, very specific number of BoP rewards - primarily gear. There is still plenty of BoE, and B2A stuff, some people just don't acknowledge that because they're obsessed with gear.
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There are basically two options for top end gear. Either it's necessary for end game content (in which case it should be fairly accessible, and possible to get without doing end game content), or it's not necessary for end game content (in which case it can be arbitrarily difficult to get, and an appreciable number of people may wind up simply never getting it). CO is using the second model.
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450 SCR
225 GCR
2 Superdense Diamonds
2 [Insert Other Rampage Token Type Here]
^ This is for ONE piece of Justice Gear, not the full set.
If you could adjust this price how would YOU price it?
(Let's try to price it with the assumption that the Development Team will likely not drastically adjust the prices but will want to keep it as close to the current prices as possible. E.g. J Gear re-pricing: 400 SCR, 195 GCR + 4 Rampage Tokens)
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475 SCR
300 GCR
No Token Requirements
This is the pricing I hope to see when the devs remove the token requirements; no other pricing that will happen before the token removal will be relevant (to me) before then.
Happens all the time in mmos.
At this point the there really is no point to this thread. I don't think the devs will be lowering the prices or making any changes at all.
If there were going to, they would have already.
Also are you gonna add more ways to acquire GCR? currently it is almost impossible for most non-US timezone players to do cosmics.
500 SCR
Rampage tokens can be turned in for 25 SCR apiece. Tokens are removed from Rampage drop tables, and the SCR reward of the longer Rampages is upped a bit. Then again, I don't care if rampage queues become completely abandoned, so I'm biased. I mean... if you can't see that the answer is obviously yes...
Also the point of increasing the price of Justice Gear has been explained... repeatedly. I mean heck on the previous page of this thread I quoted the explanation a dev gave on page 3 of this thread. If you're not going to accept the answer, stop asking, 'cause the answer isn't going to change. I mean, if you want to tell them they should shut down the thread because they won't use your feedback then go ahead... but I think that's going to work out the same way your other suggestion did. Right, I feel like I have to give you an example here of what I think you should do because at this point I'm really just mirroring your process and that might be sending mixed messages. So here goes.
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Any other discussion after that is irrelevant.
With that said I am glad they are open to feedback on other things in this upcoming release. Which they have shown by changes made on PTS.
Overall the upcoming content is a great addition to the game.
We just have one small disagreement with it. Nothing major. Happens all the time in mmos.
I'm sure there will be stuff in future releases that some players strongly disagree with that they will stick to their guns on.
That's fine. And is the nature of game development/mmos.
The dual-cost model they have in place now is mind-numbingly stupid because, as I've said before, it encourages people to just outright skip Heroic gear in the progression chain. Pretty much. Although this topic is generating 3 times as much feedback and discussion compared to even the second most active PTS topic, it's little more than a dumping ground for feedback they clearly don't care one bit about at this point. No matter what anyone says here, those prices are probably going live and there's nothing any of us can do other than voting with our wallets and participation.
I am sure we will see more content that will have opportunities to earn GCR and SCR; we will just have to wait and see.
True story: I accidentally unequipped my JG by build switching and didn't even notice for weeks.
Just be glad your getting new content after all this time. you don't need JG to enjoy it.
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now for those of us NOT in US primetime
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On the weekend, I can play TA once each day, plus two or three Cosmics that day, sometimes getting the daily on that one (but not usually because of dino difficulties). Some weekends, I don't play Saturday at all. That averages to another 40 GCR on the weekend, for a total of around 70 GCR per week.
At that pace, and assuming I earn enough SCR, too, I can pay for a complete Justice Gear set in less than 10 weeks.
That is a good bit of time--too much for some, just fine for others. On the other hand, it means I am playing the same toon every day for two months.
For players that focus on one toon, it isn't much of a grind at all. Normal gameplay of top-tier content would net a full set fairly quickly. For players who play a lot more, they could double my rate, as Pantagruel noted, and earn that set in a month or less.
The biggest difficulties are for altaholics (like myself) and folks who can only play at low server population times.
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Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.