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Tone down the grind
gradii
Posts: 11,744 Arc User
Either raise rewards from content or reduce recognition store prices. it's that simple.
Cryptic, your silly current pricing of items in the recognition stores is driving away paying players.
Cryptic, your silly current pricing of items in the recognition stores is driving away paying players.
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You're going to have to try harder than that.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
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!
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
I'd say that for the top gear in the game, it should require a substantial effort -- too little effort for reward just trivializes it -- but there is a fine line between acceptable and ridiculous. I'd encourage Kaiserin to monitor the pop figures and the playtime of cosmics very carefully (yeah, I'm pretty sure she does this already
Also, it's not enough to hold the line on a declining game population. We need to build it.
I also haven't heard a good reason for why gcr and scr should only be character bound. If they are going to insist on making us suffer longer grinds, at least make those grinds a tiny bit more bearable by allowing at least some of this currency to be account (not character) bound. E.g. allow players to put the equivalent of a full daily (from however many characters are used) into a common account with the rest being character bound. That will at least allow us to play some different characters as we grind along, but not allow some people to use multiple characters to get a ton of gcr and scr each day in a common account, and so preserve the incredibly long grind the devs are seeking..
I should say that if the new system really kicks in I likely won't need to invest much more money into the game. When I used to get a set of JG I would spend some money to get some of the more expensive mods I needed (by buying and selling keys for Gs). With the amount of time that may now be required (and no longer needing to buy drifter salvage) I will have enough stipend from my LTS (unless they nerf that), plus mods that drop from cosmics, plus what I can get from selling costume pieces, to fully equip a new 40 without additional out of pocket expense. This isn't a threat, just explaining how their decisions might have a negative cash impact if there many others with my perspective. Why spend money that I no longer need to? I hope they are taking such factors into account.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
So, let's not kid ourselves. The prices are too high all around. They don't care. They're trying to desperately create incentives for us to let them squeeze just a little bit more out of us for as long as possible, because they don't have the developer resources to make the majority of the game more fun or rewarding, as evidenced by how the vast majority of the content has been abandoned.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
As for heroics to get you on that level to start to grind for gold rec , yes 35 was too cheap but 150 is too far still ,especially as the unity one and two endgame missions got their silver rec awards slashed making them almost pointless ( how about making the rewards gold rec ), does anyone actually do them for rec anymore ?
I often feel like cryptic is trying to discourage us from having alts ,I love my alts , cryptic would have a lot less of my money without them
and yes we need to bolster the games population bringing in new players and their money , how about some advertising especially with all the hero films rolling about there is still an interest, when was the last time you saw an advert for champions outside ARC
Claiming people are exploiting when they are clearly playing the content exactly like it was designed is more than a little silly.
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."
But I do wonder that if a game can hit a limit with grind. I think entry level should be easy but gradually increase in difficulty just like an xp curve that all MMORPG's have.
Omicron - Lvl 4x - Mind
Emerald Myst - Lvl 2x - Claws/Fighting Hybrid
Epsilon - Lvl 2x - Blade
Asterius - Lvl 1x - Electric/Void Hybrid
My path to Champions came via STO, and I enjoyed my initial dive in. I kind of messed about with the low-levels, replayed the tutorial a few times to get a feel for the game, and eventually settled on a Radiant. I'd tried a Grimoire and it didn't perform well, but I revisited that with my second character slot, and Skarn's Bane made a big difference to its capabilities when I finally unlocked it; that was later, though. For my Radiant, I checked out the forums for info on how to gear up, got started acquiring a Merc Primary/Armadillo Secondary, and mostly just tried to sort out how the game works and play the content.
What I found was a fun game, with huge possibilities if I decided to buy a Freeform slot or a LTS (I considered just Subscribing, but at heart I'd rather just buy a game than rent it). The Freeform slot purchase was eliminated pretty quickly; for $50 I'd get one character that I could use to tinker with builds and that was about it, compared to $200 and I'd get a whole account with full access to the game. So I decided to keep playing until a LTS Sale came around and work from there.
I enjoyed running though the game, playing the various story missions and the queues/Events, and generally shooting hitpoints, light, and magic. I'd originally settled on Radiant after getting frustrated by the lack of self-healing on my "tank", that kept dying in one of the first story mission I found outside the Tutorial, where you enter an AI wonderland of evil code. Every other character I tried was woefully unprepared for what they found there, since at such low levels you have maybe three powers... and not even my Radiant could handle the boss. Ugh. Then I realized it was supposed to be a team mission and I was stubbornly trying to solo it... so I progressed from burning though comsumables and getting frustraded to Westside.
From there, suddenly the game was enjoyable, and I was on my way. I ran through tons of story missions, did an UNTIL story arc, played queued Dailies, and participated in the Great Chicken Hunt (I also did a Forum Malvanum before that, but it wasn't as fun as the massive battle about Millenium City). By the time I hit level 40 I'd acquired the baseline gear set, and started looking about the various vendors. I found the Drifter, and a few toys looked interesting there (one or two struck me as ridiculously powerful compared to anything else I'd seen), I found the Onslaught Agent and learned that I probably wouldn't ever get that stuff unless I Sub, and I looked into the req's for the Justice gear that was apparently my next step. I also tried to find an up-to-date wiki for info on intermediary stuff and struck out entirely; STO's wiki is pretty out of date, but the ones I found for Champions were missing soooo much info or were just plain incorrect.
Anyway, what I found was a pretty big wall of "do I want to deal with this?", and I think it was right around that time that the pricing changed. As a new player it went from "what do I need to know to get started?" to "I have to do that how many times now?", and that was when the LTS Sale arrived. That triggered a hard look at "is this game a $200 game?", along with the usual "do I want to reward this change?" that often comes to mind when something is made worse for the player. Ultimately, I decided that I really didn't feel like spending $200 to get access to characters that I might want to use to start getting good gear; that isn't all on the grind, the overall price tag and lack of (what I consider reasonable) intermediary options contributed, but what to do once I did buy the full version of the game finished it off.
So that's what I saw when I looked at Champions as a prospective player. I do like the game, and I play now and again during an Event or just to fly around fighting bad guys, but I don't see myself buying in or grinding the resources to F2P it... and I'm definitely not grinding the gear for some of the higher end content. That does limit what content I can run, but I'll accept that and just not run said content.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Let's take myself, for example. I have no intention of getting any more justice gear (and even if I did, the new gcr/scr changes won't affect me one bit; because I have loads of it that I have nothing to spend on). On the other hand, the one piece of gear I really would like to get (Defender gloves for my Behemoth), I flat-out refuse to go for because of the absurd grind, despite other players telling me how much I need it.
You have to take into consideration that the sort of people who are likely to comment on (or even just read) these discussion threads tend to be much more hardcore than the average player (or even most higher tier players). Any argument that can be summarized as "well, you decided it was worth it, so clearly it's not a problem" is flawed. The fact that there are some people who would theoretically be willing to endure a grind for an arbitrarily large amount of time does not make said grind reasonable.
If we want high-end content to be more accessible (which we both agree is positive and has been one of the great successes of the new cosmics), then we need to make sure the wall is not so high that people throw their hands up in the air and don't bother, even though they want to. The average player needs to look at it and believe that the goal is achievable. That doesn't mean it should be easy, or that it should be attractive to every single player, but it does mean the top of the wall shouldn't require binoculars to see.
Part of the problem is perspective. Some people claim they can't see the top of the wall without binoculars... to me that just sounds like a huge exaggeration. People talk about this stuff taking a year to get... as someone who has four characters in full distinguished, and the knowledge that this content didn't come out four years ago, it makes me wonder how people are managing to make it take so long. Sure, I play more than some people but not to the degree that it would allow me to do in one month what some people claim takes them a year to do. I think folks just got used to everything being short, and they're still adjusting to the fact that that's no longer the case. I mean yeah, when before you only had to take ten steps to get your mail, by comparison having to walk to the end of the driveway is a lot longer... you might even be tempted to act like they're making you run a marathon every day. Just give it some time and that walk to the end of the driveway won't seem that bad... especially when you realize that your next door neighbor has to just constantly run on a treadmill so they'll give him his mail.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I guarantee you the average player would not consider that reasonable. That is not walking to the edge of the driveway for your mail. That is walking fifteen miles in the snow. Remember, this is gear that many players feel that they need in order to do high-end content properly. This isn't a long term goal they're working towards. This is effectively part of leveling up one's character. Case in point, let's use my Behemoth as an example again. She's in Heroic and SCR gear, with a fairly optimized build. Despite that, her threat gen is still borderline unviable for high-end content. And the Behemoth is one of the stronger ATs. What hope would a more average character have?
As for "sometimes people kill defenders and leave the other NPCs" yeah that happens.. doesn't really slow me down much. It might reduce the amount of time I have to stand in Rencen while I let people pewpew at me. I mean, I can tell myself that I NEED a ferrari to be able to drive to work properly... doesn't mean dealerships need to lower ferarri prices, just means I need better information about cars. There are a lot of players with some really inaccurate ideas about what gear they need to do this or that - that problem is best solved by giving people good information, not by validating their bad information.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
And no, two months for three pieces of gear is not reasonable. Not even close. One week would be reasonable. 3, at the absolute most. Two months is not only unreasonable, but quite absurd.
Again, perspective. I'll still be playing this game 2 months from now, so the idea that I have to wait until then to have something doesn't bug me. The total amount of time I have to put into it per day also isn't very much, so it's really not much of a grind. Over that time period, it's only about 12 hours of actual activity. You do see rewards for the "work" you put in though - you actually get the gear at the end, remember? Keep in mind that this 2 months is for all three pieces, and you don't have to wait until you have enough tokens for all 3 to get any of them, so saying you only get paid once in 2 months is just plain wrong. Now you're just plain trying to distort the facts to make things seem worse than they are. Shame on you
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
We were? Did not notice.
The Unleashed is admittedly an unusual case, because its survivability is highly gear-dependent (some archetypes don't need it against her). But we're not talking about the lucky ones. We're talking about people with average skill levels and average builds. I've seen you survive against TA Gravitar for an extended period of time without a single other person up. Most players (good players, at that) don't have that level of skill or build power.
Furthermore, the fact that some characters are more gear-dependent than others adds to the problem, because it means that the incentives for grinding are different for different characters. So, some people who otherwise wouldn't bother with these grinds feel that they have to in order to meet the level of effectiveness that other characters of similar optimization would have. So, by having the grinds be unreasonably difficult, these people are effectively being punished because their build, which in theory should have had an efficiency-to-grind ratio of X is in fact much weaker than expected, because its effectiveness is so heavily dependent on gear.
You have also implicitly posited the idea that people do see rewards for their efforts, because they will inevitably receive rewards, and that they will receive said rewards before they throw up their hands in frustration and ragequit. Neither of these is true. I almost ragequit several times in my quest for justice gear and OV gear. One could easily argue that I pre-emptively ragequit the OV grind for my Behemoth. There are people who have never gotten a single drop from SC.
I can't help but notice that you once again mentioned your own comfort with the level of grind. But it doesn't matter if it's okay for you personally, because you are so clearly not a typical player. You have very clearly demonstrated that you are tolerant of much higher levels of grind than the average player. And anyone with enough free time to devote to a discussion like this will inevitably be more hardcore than the average player. And yet, people participating in this very discussion are saying that the grind is absurd. In other words, if even the hardcore players (who are inevitably going to be more tolerant of grind than most) are saying it's too much, then how on earth can one claim that an average player would be okay with it? The very people who are most tolerant of the grind are split on it! The very fact that this is even a serious discussion should be evidence enough!