New vendor prices?

Events and Episode's are structurally like night and day. They have very little in common. Any attempt to spin it otherwise is complete intellectual dishonesty.

Events come and go. They are time limited (which you acknowledged).

Events do not provide for meaningful end game progression. Episodes can provide upward of 10 (perhaps more) in a CR change for an end game player. With the AF3 max CR being 190, the event was only able to get us to 192. The was only if you did the OP pieces. The actual gear itself gave you no progression for a end game player.

Feats, again dishonest. Mepps has stated that event feats have been designed so you can not finish them while the content is available. There is no such limitation on Episodes, because they are not time limited.

You mentioned some clamping. When i hear the term some, I do not think of a 156 CR clamp. That is what the Starro event gave us if you entered at 190 CR. That isn't some, That is end game to Tier one type clamping. That is huge.

True, both have varying group size missions and open world.

Starro had a duo and an alert that take 2-3 minutes. When you add in the 5 minute daily activities and the weekly ten minute raid, the amount of content available to keep a player interested is poor. Which is hard to imagine, because AF3 may have been one of the worst Episodes ever for amount of content. Even with it's slim amount, it still tops an event. Both raids are longer lasting than Starro. The elite both are much more difficult than the Starro member raid. Not even close, and they are not that difficult.

UT as an alert by itself doubles the amount of time needed for both the event duo and alert.

AF3 has content that is not hard or long lasting, but it is miles ahead of anything that dropped in either event so far.

All this before even mentioning that when the event comes back, like a seasonal, it is the same thing. They don't repeat episodes.

Because I posted the math while taking your "silver lining" into account Jafin, The "silver lining" you claimed you weren't doing.

Dude, the math remember just over 7 months to grind it all (just one set of vendor gear) and I excluded the face, neck and rings.

The reason I'm not excluding the back, waist and head (which are OP items) is because you can't skip them because they're tied to a style feat, tied to progression.

Your silver lining doesn't exist my friend, but instead of listening to me you just got mad at me...

Debunked brother, debunked.

U know why. And i already answered this in the other thread. And im moving onto another thread since some want to derail this one by turning it into a different discussion altogether.

Bravo, Bravo

If you can achieve max CR without buying certain pieces of gear, or even just one less piece of gear then that, by definition, lessens the grind. Did I ever once say it lessens the grind by a significant amount? No. I said it would "lessen the grind a bit."
Max CR if you have a full set of 175 gear: 201.25
CR if you have the level 174 OP mask, neck, ring and utility belt (but still have a 175 trinket in the 174 UB): 201.07
That is four less pieces of gear you have to buy if you want to achieve the max CR sans the new OP items.

I don't think the item level of the new OP items has been released yet so I won't be factoring those calculations in at this time.

You debunked nothing. The only way it could be debunked is if you had to ditch all your previous OP items in order to achieve max CR, which you don't have to do.

I didn't recall seeing what I said being debunked in the other thread, which is why I asked you.

four less pieces of gear I already accounted for in the 7 month grind, what part of this are you missing Jafin?!?

I don't see the part you're missing tbh. In my original post all I said was that having the OP pieces that you didn't have to replace means it lessens the grind in comparison to if you didn't have them. If you don't have to buy a mask for example, then that is one less thing to grind for.

Think of it like this: say you didn't have the AF3 and Starro OP pieces. You have the 7 month grind you've calculated already. How much more of a grind would it be to get the vendor mask, neck, utility belt and ring so that you could achieve max CR?

You're bringing up trivial things. We addressed that it is temporary. While it has a time limit, it went on for almost 2 months. You can get all it offers in 2 months, especially if you use alts.

I'm not saying the Starro event had quality, I thought that was addressed. I'm pretty sure Chill would agree on that one.

But you wanna argue it didn't have progression and/or feats? I don't understand because you brought up feats but then proceeded on a rant about how Mepps said you couldn't. What on earth are you talking about? There isn't a single feat you can't get on this go around. Again, you have to get creative and resourceful. Yes, if you wanna do it in 1 go you need badges and/or alts, but so what? If you're going for the feats, you're going above and beyond. In some episodes you gotta use badges if you wanna get the feats in a short amount of time. AF3 was like that (certain ppl have always gone HAM when a new DLC premiered to get max CR and feats mere days later)

So again, the meat of your argument falls into: the quality is subpar (agreed), the temporary nature isn't great (I don't like it myself, but it's not some huge differentiation or flaw. After all, after 2 months many ppl stop playing even the new DLC. I did that, I was done with AF3 in about 2 or 3 weeks).

What else do you got? Cause the feats can be done, there isn't much difference in getting them done in comparing them to DLCs. And I'm sure that the gear DID offer a lotta progression to ppl, as I geared up some of my alts there. Plus, the OP stuff was great, but obviously that's up to each individual.

And clamping? Yeah, agreed there, too. It's awful, but you know what? That might be the future of DCUO, and there are several forum members here that want it.

I would also like to remind you all that the forum represents the vast minority of the player base.

I don't think you're being intellectually honest here, actually.

Ok, perhaps we're on two different wave lengths here, obviously if you don't have that the grind is longer, that goes without even saying; but what I'm saying is the 7 month grind in itself is horrendous, which I think is what everyone else is saying and perhaps you're saying as well which is perhaps being lost in miscommunication?

Yes, I think we are honestly talking about two different things. I never said that the grind is not long. All I was saying is that those of us who have already collected the AF3 and Starro OP items will have less to buy in this particular episode, which means a lesser grind to get to max CR in comparison to someone who does not have the AF3 and Starro OP items.

Basically what I'm saying is: People who have the OP items will have to grind for 7 months, and people who do not have the OP items will have to grind for longer.

When AFIII began some players had hit CR 189 within 2 days.
The Replay Spammers have forced the Devs into making it even harder to get gear.
So now we see gear in 2 increment jumps; and probably worse drop rates.
In order to prevent players from disappearing; the solution is exuberant Vendor Prices and drawn out content.
A bolder move would be to eliminate Replays.

Fair enough, Does the fact it indicates maybe only 2 DLC's a year concern you?

Concern has been building up for the past week, but not necessarily about two DLCs a year, more the fact of what's in the DLCs. We used to get four full and unique styles in a quarterly DLC, two per faction. That dropped to two in AF3 and now it has dropped to one for AoJ. I know that overall we're getting roughly the same amount of full style sets per year, but they're coming from different sources now (DLCs, Major Events and Time Capsules). I don't like the fact that putting resources into MEs and TCs is detracting from what we get in DLCs.

Perhaps they are trivial to you. Judging by the multiple threads, the response here, in the rewards threads, in the deleted threads, they are not trivial to many.

I am being very honest. Everything I stated in my post, much of which you surprisingly agreed with before you dismissed it, was truthful.

-Feats- Mepps stated very clearly that the feats from things purchased was designed not to be completed by one character this time around. They will bring it back. Multiple people pointed it out when the prices/feats went on test. Same with Anniversary. Episodes don't do away and anyone can work at those feats as long as they have purchased the episode or sub up. Apples and Oranges baby. Completely different structure.

Also, I never claimed Episodes and Events are basically the same, i.e. meaningful content. I am pointing out how they are not.

The difference is in the details, trivial to you or not.

Yea absolutely agreed.

They don't make changes part way thru the year. Next year things may change again.

Nice one lol

Your funny.

The content that has been released and stat clamped has been a joke, cmon. The MEMBERS raid, which dropped nothing special for members, was nerfed like the first week out. The skill was removed to give in so everyone could complete. This is wrong. Content, which what most of us want, doesn't just consist of gear that does nothing for most. Unless you were power leveling alts, which is a separate issue. The upcoming DLC will feature a free month to freemium and F2P. Why is this needed? Over the last YEAR content has been given away to people that do not contribute. Instead of capitalizing on multiple DC movies coming out this year. The focus is to give away more content to those that have never subbed and sure aren't in need of doing so.

Saying we have stuff to do is a bs answer. I love the game have have supported it for years, and will continue to do so. But the direction we've been stuck in has driven many away. Raising vendor prices to give a false sense of grind and not addressing the replays being devalued. Giving away free episodes over and over. This new DLC, again with the high vendor prices instead of multiple styles. This is all becoming unacceptable to people that are at end game.