Synapse’s second compendium on the new I13 Merit System.
Hello again, Synapse here. I wanted to take a moment to answer a few more of your questions. I also wanted to address a few concerns I’ve heard in this thread repeatedly. I’d like to reiterate the fact that we have no intention of carelessly “nerfing” or “buffing” merit rewards. Making any changes to the number of merits a task gives out will be done with very careful consideration, ample data and after exhausting our other options. Additionally, I’ve heard a number of players refer to the Merit Reward System as a reduction to rewards. I’d like to remind players that all but a handful of tasks in the game had their rewards reduced, however the majority of tasks in the game have had their rewards significantly increased and that now story arcs give players a chance at earning rewards that might otherwise be unattainable. That said, we’ll also be looking at ways to further grow and enhance our merit reward system over the life of the game. So, what you’ll be seeing in Issue 13 launch is not the final version of this system. Like any system in our game, we will continuously improve upon and enhance these systems in the future.
So, as soon as we have some details for you about what changes will be made we will share them with you. Now, without further ado, some answers to your questions:
Poster: EvilGeko
Q: What about the market? Do you care about the players who enjoy that aspect of the game? Do you have any plans for how to address the supply issues in the market that this system will cause for Pool C and D drops?A: We feel that players will take that chance on the random roll tables for that chance at the reward they want. There will always be that temptation to roll on the Pool C rewards 12 times instead of buying that one shiny IO. If a player doesn’t get what they want, they can post these items on the markets. Also consider that before only players running Task Forces and Strike Forces were contributing Pool C and D items to the market, now even solo/casual players will be able to do so.
Gah. This is just sort of stuff that I hate about market stuff.
FWIW, while I sometimes craft, I tend to just buy crafted IOs. Life is way too short …
Poster: Puppycrusader
Q: I accepted that this placed me at a disadvantage in terms of rewards, as TF/SF/Trials were the sole distributer of many desirable recipes, and relegated myself to having to work hard to gain the neccesary INF to purchase them on market.Now that this is no longer true, though, and TFs are not the sole venue of distribution, is there a reason for this concept of “diminished rate,” when many story arcs, particularly high level ones, are almost indistinguishable from a Task Force, save for the mandatory team size that must be met to begin the latter?
A: Task Forces will always award superior rewards due to their general increased difficulty, preparation time and the fact that all players are locked into TF mode. Story Arcs are way more casual, and are much less structured than Task Forces. Solo players, small groups and large groups can do Story Arcs at their leisure. On a side note, one of the greatest things about Story Arc Merit Rewards is that they have no diminishing returns.
I actually very much appreciate that Story Arcs are now considered Real Game, at least more than they used to be.
Poster: Zombie_Man
Q: Play test has indicated that the Diminishing Returns of Merit rewards is 50% for attempting the same Trial twice in a row.Is that right?
Would a third attempt also be at 50% or does the DR get more diminishing? And if yes, what are the stats?
Is the DR rate the same for TFs, Trials, and Arc-Completions?
A: This is probably the most complex part of the Merit Reward system. Different types of tasks have different diminishing rates.
-Story Arcs do not have diminishing returns.
-Task Forces without a second reward option will have their rewards reduced by 50% each time the task is completed within 24 hours. So if a task force gives 50 merits the first time done within 24 hours, then the second time will give 25, the third time will give 12, the fourth time 6. This is reset after 24 hours. Also, I wanted to remind players that the 24 hour diminishing returns set up that we currently have may be subject to change.
-Task Forces and Trials with unique rewards (respecs or unique enhancements) grant full merit rewards for the first completion within 24 hours and 50% merit rewards for each subsequent completion. So if the first run through a task gives 50 merits, each subsequent run through will give 25.
So for my purposes, we could run the same story arc sequentially and not lose anything for it. Of course, that sounds boring.
Poster: MadScientist
Q: Have you considered simply adding 1 Merit per AV?A: Yes, Archvillains and Monsters are just too easily farmed. There are missions where they are very easily ghosted to and defeated.
Poster: Umbral
Q: Is there any chance that the Challenge System options be included to allow players to gain more merits by imposing limits on themselves? It’s a system with a lot of potential that’s only really utilized for ouro mishes and, even then, a majority of the badges can only be attained on specific tasks (Gold Medal on 95% of the story arcs and TFs out there?).A: This was one of our stretch goals for Issue 13 that we simply didn’t have enough time to get it in. We hope to have this in a future update. I agree, there is a lot of potential here.
Poster: TheWeaver
Q: That leads to my primary concern. If it turns out that what players do with their merits is save them so that they can buy exactly what they want, what will happen to the market for Pool C and Pool D recipes? There is no other way to get them, so my intuition says that the market would dry up. The net result being that unless I earn merits I’ll no longer be able to obtain the level of reward that I currently do.Is this intended? Is the feeling that if you don’t run TF/SF’s that it should not be possible to fully equip a toon with “mid-level” Pool C and Pool D recipes? Here for example is a Mids-data chunk for my lvl 37 Night Widow. Nothing too fancy here and the build cost me around 10-15M to outfit. Should I be able to achieve this type of build using only merits obtained from running Story Arcs?
A: You can earn an infinite number of merits through Ouroboros by running your favorite story arcs over again. I don’t suspect you’d be able to purchase all of those IOs by simply running through all the story arcs once. However, you might be able to spend some of those merits on random rolls and simply selling what you don’t need on the market.
Poster: Wuigly_Squigly
Q: Would it be better if the reward of merits we’re timeX spent on said TF, instead of the current: This tf is long, this tf is medium-long, this tf is short, categorizing? For example, you finish a 20 min katie or w/e and get 5 merits or something, whereas you finish that same katie but take an hour you’d get 15 merits, essentially the longer a tf takes, the more merits you get?A: Well, this would leave a lot of room for exploitation. Players could complete all but the last objective in 20 minutes. Sit around for an hour and 40 minutes and then finish to get the additional merits for doing nothing. So there has to be other factors other than how much time you’ve spent doing the TF.
I hope this clears up some of your additional questions and concerns.
For what it’s worth, for what they’re trying to do, I think they’re doing a good job. It sounds like they are seriously thinking of how to make it fair.