![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
demonicgerbilI'm reposting this from the official boards, because it kind of represents my last word on the topic. We're going to get stuck with merits anyway, and a lot of people I know are going to leave for less anal retentive pastures, and then they'll change things to be less restrictive anyway (or I'll join the exodus).
I enjoy katie because there's 10 AVs in a row that get harder and harder. A gauntlet is fun. It's even more fun that it's right down to business and not sending me all over the place for the missions.
And now they're punishing the reward I get for beating up a +3 AV and its ridiculously overpowered /Storm defender spawn because we happen to be pretty good at doing it? Punishing people for being good instead of rewarding them, and providing more options for everyone, is not what City of Heroes is about - or at least not what I thought it was about. Maybe I've been mistaken about that for years now.
Why not keep the same base reward for all TFs (random recipe on a 3 hour timer) and make Faathim worth *more* if people choose the merit option (tons of merits yay!)? Why is there a petulant insistence on nerfing the reward that has been in place since Issue 9 and punishing people for good gameplay?
The fact is that Faathim and the other Shard TFs can be done a lot quicker than what the devs have as 'average'. And once the nerf goes through for Katie and Eden and the Cap SF, the Shard TFs will be farmed until they give pitiful amounts of merits (~50 for Doc Q instead of the 90-something it gives now). And once those are nerfed, Posi, Synapse and Manticore will be farmed into oblivion. And then Sister Psyche, and so on.
All this new system does is punish everyone because a small set of the population (which I admit that I am sometimes in) can blow through the challenges presented in any TF. We just do Katie/Eden because they're easy to get a team together for because the time commitment is so small as to reduce the barrier of entry to "Well, I've got a half hour before I need to go to work..." This serves to increase the population of 'speeders' to include people grabbed Pick-up-Group style from the general game population: after the nerfs go through, look for the hated 'farmers' to become insular in an attempt to slow down the decay of their rewards and to hoard the trophies and loot.
I'll just point out that the XP curve smoothing, debt 'nerfing', and so on have served to promote ease of play and levelling, opening the high-levels up more quickly to more players and characters. The trend over the grand sweep of City of Heroes has been to provide more options, generally slightly easier gameplay, and openness between the developers and the playerbase and the players among each other. This merit change, as described now with it's regulatory guage of '2 hours for a random recipe', will reverse the trend. It will make the 'elite' players less open to new people for fear of their secrets getting out that much quicker; it's already breeding resentment between players and developers (I know two long time players that have quit over the I13 news already - is losing someone who's been here since I2 what the devs are aiming for?). It will make gameplay harder for low level characters as they won't be able to acquire cheap IO set pieces as easily to equip themselves with and they won't have nearly as large a market for their 'windfall' Miracle uniques and such to earn influence. Finding teams for some task forces will become harder in general: who's going to want to to Eden the long way for 2 merits? And who's going to take 20 minutes forming a "SpeEden" team for 2 merits when you could be halfway through a Katie Hannon TF in that time for a slightly better reward?
I'm afraid, for the first time, that I'm going to lose a lot of friends that play this game because the Devs are going the opposite direction that they've been going for a long time.
I don't want this to turn into Ghost Town of Heroes. :(
I enjoy katie because there's 10 AVs in a row that get harder and harder. A gauntlet is fun. It's even more fun that it's right down to business and not sending me all over the place for the missions.
And now they're punishing the reward I get for beating up a +3 AV and its ridiculously overpowered /Storm defender spawn because we happen to be pretty good at doing it? Punishing people for being good instead of rewarding them, and providing more options for everyone, is not what City of Heroes is about - or at least not what I thought it was about. Maybe I've been mistaken about that for years now.
Why not keep the same base reward for all TFs (random recipe on a 3 hour timer) and make Faathim worth *more* if people choose the merit option (tons of merits yay!)? Why is there a petulant insistence on nerfing the reward that has been in place since Issue 9 and punishing people for good gameplay?
The fact is that Faathim and the other Shard TFs can be done a lot quicker than what the devs have as 'average'. And once the nerf goes through for Katie and Eden and the Cap SF, the Shard TFs will be farmed until they give pitiful amounts of merits (~50 for Doc Q instead of the 90-something it gives now). And once those are nerfed, Posi, Synapse and Manticore will be farmed into oblivion. And then Sister Psyche, and so on.
All this new system does is punish everyone because a small set of the population (which I admit that I am sometimes in) can blow through the challenges presented in any TF. We just do Katie/Eden because they're easy to get a team together for because the time commitment is so small as to reduce the barrier of entry to "Well, I've got a half hour before I need to go to work..." This serves to increase the population of 'speeders' to include people grabbed Pick-up-Group style from the general game population: after the nerfs go through, look for the hated 'farmers' to become insular in an attempt to slow down the decay of their rewards and to hoard the trophies and loot.
I'll just point out that the XP curve smoothing, debt 'nerfing', and so on have served to promote ease of play and levelling, opening the high-levels up more quickly to more players and characters. The trend over the grand sweep of City of Heroes has been to provide more options, generally slightly easier gameplay, and openness between the developers and the playerbase and the players among each other. This merit change, as described now with it's regulatory guage of '2 hours for a random recipe', will reverse the trend. It will make the 'elite' players less open to new people for fear of their secrets getting out that much quicker; it's already breeding resentment between players and developers (I know two long time players that have quit over the I13 news already - is losing someone who's been here since I2 what the devs are aiming for?). It will make gameplay harder for low level characters as they won't be able to acquire cheap IO set pieces as easily to equip themselves with and they won't have nearly as large a market for their 'windfall' Miracle uniques and such to earn influence. Finding teams for some task forces will become harder in general: who's going to want to to Eden the long way for 2 merits? And who's going to take 20 minutes forming a "SpeEden" team for 2 merits when you could be halfway through a Katie Hannon TF in that time for a slightly better reward?
I'm afraid, for the first time, that I'm going to lose a lot of friends that play this game because the Devs are going the opposite direction that they've been going for a long time.
I don't want this to turn into Ghost Town of Heroes. :(