AoJ Gear Costs Were Never The Problem...

Seems there's some confusion that needs clearing up. For the players who requested a reduction on AoJ vendor costs and feel "tricked" because the open world missions were reduced are not understanding there are three core factors for balancing the content.

longevity - How long the content is supposed to last
vendor costs - How much you have to buy to get everything needed to complete mods, gear, etc
rewards - How many missions and how often do you need to run them to earn enough to buy everything on the vendor

When one of the three is fixed or constant, the other two rise and drop together to maintain balance. In this case, Devs have fixed longevity at ~6-ish months. So, if players demand vendor costs drop, rewards have to drop with them.

In other words, Devs listened to players pissing and moaning for lower vendor costs. The problem is those same players were asking for the wrong thing. They didn't want lower vendor costs, they wanted fixed rewards so they could lower longevity. You were complaining about costs, but you really should have been complaining about how long the dlc was going to last because if the vendor costs were triple their previous values, it wouldn't have mattered if it could all be earned in a month.

It's not a matter of "be careful what you wish for". It's a matter of "don't ask for the wrong thing".

The big question mark - and one that Mepps is increasingly giving a mixed answer to (despite initially saying yes), is whether Episode 29 will be this year. I surely hope so (say November time), and I'd guess that Episode 28 is supposed to last till then.

This is of great relevance to this whole topic.

I still want some missions back for the village area. They over-culled the missions here.

INB4 the people who say" It wasn't fair they took our dailies away"

First off let me thank you for making it not a big read thread.

second i agree with all of that.

^This.

The way I see it is that the only difference from AF2 and AF3 is not the volume of content, but the inflation in gear costs and R&D. The increase in gear cost and the R&D materials is what DBG is using to justify the amount of time the DLC should last. That's the wrong way to go about it. You are giving us the same amount of activity but saying the objectives costs more so this should last you more time. Instead they should be releasing more activities that are laid out in such a fashion that no one can run everything on day one. There was no scaling in any of the DLCs for a while. It's always been here is a bunch of stuff to do, run it all on day one! If DBG really wants to add to the longevity of a DLC then they need to implement scaling difficulties and not gear price inflation. Inflation is meaning less, difficulty scaling is meaningful. Make us work up to the next instance, don't make them all the same difficulty on day one. The last time I was hesitant to run a raid on Day one was Happiness Home, maybe Darseid's War Factory. But even then, after the first week of getting some gear we were able to take on those raids with confidence that we would complete them.

A rough illustration of this scaling difficulty progression could look like this:
Weeks 1 ~ 8: Daily Missions
Weeks 2 ~ 10: Duos
Weeks 4 ~ 24: Alerts
Weeks 8 ~ 24 Elite Alerts
Weeks 12 ~ 24: Raids
Weeks 16 ~ 24 Elite Raids

There are several ways they can pace players as well. They don't have to unlock everything on day one. Maybe holding back the Elite versions of the instances for at least a month or two to ensure that there is a new challenge introduced along the path of the player's progression to the end of the content. They could even do an elite version of a duo if they wanted. So many ways to make a DLC last longer than just Vendor and R&D inflation. They literally chose the easiest route route for themselves and that I think is the root of many people's unhappiness.

PS -

Can you knock it off with the ""Super Great" crap? I think the Devs are taking you seriously and totally missing your sarcasm.

We did want lower vendor costs thats ALL we wanted not a reduction in rewards also. The vendor costs were extreme so that is why the vendor costs were the problem.

No, I'm pretty sure if you read all the posts. The majority were about the longevity of the DLC. That along with the vendor costs. I know your a big supporter of everything they do, that's your opinion and everyone got them.

I feel I asked for the right thing, I just sadly wasn't thorough enough with the request.

I was one that complained that the gear cost was far to high and never once said "Lower the amount of rewards/remove content.". At the same time I also made it known that I felt there was no way that the new DLC was big enough to last 6 months content wise. I did so by stating that the DLC looked good as long as it was not intended to last as long as AFIII (I stated this before they revealed the atrocious cost for items). DLCs that are built to last 6 months have to have the appropriate amount of content. AFIII and AoJ do not have that appropriate amount. Something along the lines of 2 solos, 2 Duos, 2 Alerts and 4 Raids (Elite versions do not count) at the least are roughly the size a DLC needs to be content wise to last 6-7 months. You don't take 6 solos/dailies, 2 Alerts, and 2 Raids and slap a ridiculous amount of items with a ridiculous price and go, "There you go guys. Have fun." because that is not fun...at all. AoJ would have made a great 3-4 month DLC had the gear cost remained the same prices as AFIII and the amount of rewards/content never lowered/removed. I would have been sitting here cheering for the Developers all the way. Sadly, that is not what happened. If the next Event is DLC quality, size, and makes membership REALLY worth it then I will re-sub. Otherwise I will remain Premium once my sub expires at the end of this month.

I hope those who are not happy with the Developer's vision of 6 month DLCs do not purchase the DLC and drop subscription so the Developers can get the message that doing 6 month DLCs like they are trying to do does not work. For those of you happy with the current set up, I sincerely do hope you continue to enjoy it but I refuse to support this ridiculous grind with limited content via my subscription. I'll grind out what I can in the next 3 weeks before my sub ends and then I'll just wait to see if the next Event/DLC wanna-be is worth my subscription. If it isn't then I will carry on just PVP'ing to pass the time in DC along with playing another game.

They didn't lower the rewards though. They cut content, open-world content, one of the aspects the game has been sorely lagging on for so long. I thought they'd learned their lesson since AF3 but this is practically nothing. Not worth the effort to run most days. Two brand spanking new open world areas and you'll be there for less than 5 minutes each, if even that much.

I think you're missing the core of the message. Think about why you wanted the costs to be lowered. What's the negative for you of having the costs too high?

In actuality, yes rewards are cut. They took away missions that cost a single Mark so you could not earn as many marks per day to bring the daily earning potential in line with the reduction in vendor costs. If the open world missions had originally earned two marks each, then there could have been a solution where maybe you cut those rewards per mission in half. Sadly, that was not the case, so the choices were a) eliminate the single mark missions or b) cut the marks earned per weekly bounty an alert. I doubt anyone would have been happy with reducing the Marks per alert or raid.

C) Remove the 411 misions. Nobody cares about those.

or how about one of my crazy concepts and go with what worked for years and stop trying back door sneaky tactics. vendor gear litterally was a set price for years. no 1 ever said cheapen it or we need higher prices. it was good to go and players excepted it just fine. we got the content much like we do now and no issue

if team dcuo wants to give us less content for the same price some adjustments need to be made but not adjusting our gameplay to a boring teadious quest. by your own statement cost is the same dlcs got less so dcuo needs some adjusting

this is nothing more then them calculating how much they want each replay warrior to spend and changing content and cost to match

They give 8 marks each, no? That is 16 total marks a week. They removed 4 missions at 1 mark each and 1 weekly at 8 marks each. For a total of 36 marks. Yeah, they looked at as numbers. Which is why they talked about the percentage increase between AF3 and AOJ gear.

Also, the main concern most people had was that the content wasnt enough to last the 6-7 months the Devs wanted to last. Thats why most complained about the gear cost.
People did the math and when they saw it would take 6-7 months, the outrage begins. All people wanted was a more realistic time grind. Not over exaggerated by artificial methods.

What im saying is that they should have removed those missions and fix the gear cost according to that move. Leaving the daily missions, im pretty sure the riot would have been much less.

Next time devs should take a poll or give options before taking away big chunk of the content available in an already grindy and short DLC for solo / casual player.
No solos, no duo? Okurrr... now no dailies either! Go run 4-8 op or suck it up! NO.

I hate dailies so no loss of life here.

You clearly did not read the threads carefully. In every thread posted on the topic, multiple people posted that they wanted the gear costs lowered because it would take 6-7 months to achieve everything. Someone even did the math multiple times to prove it. I never had the impression people were upset about the costs, only upset that the costs were artificially inflated in order to artificially extend the life of content that in the past lasted 3 months.

Lets be completely honest, this content and its prices have a 6 month timeline. Mepps himself, in multiple posts, stated that this Episode has the same timeline as AF3. However, the amount of actual content is similar or even less than what was expected to last 3 months in the past.

For example, the last three quarterly DLC's:

WOL2 2 open worlds, 1 bounty, 1 solo, 1 duo, 2 alerts, 1 raid less than 3 months until next DLC
AF2 had 2 4 man operations and 3 raids, lasted 3 months and 1 week until next DLC
HOP2 had 1 open world, 1 weekly bounty, 2 duos, 1 4 man operation, 2 raids, less than 3 months until next episode

Monthly content gave us 2 duos, 2 raids, 1 solo, 1 4 man every 3 months.

I think the fundamental disagreement here stems from the fact people aren't as stupid as DBG's thinks they are. They see the same or less content expecting to last longer and some people want to know why, throughout the last few years, we got X amount of content over a 3 month period and now it is supposed to last 6 months. People have asked why and DBG dodges the question. People are getting less value for their paid subscription and less value on replay badges and that is what makes them angry and confused.

DBG has reduced the amount of content and prices have not been adjusted to reflect that. Speaking only for myself, I want to know why am i paying the same for less? Why is the money I paid in going to creating free content for people who don't subscribe to play the game?

There is no confusion, people are very correct in stating this is not a 6 month Episode. I think another area that gets people upset is the blatant dishonesty by certain members of DBG in spinning this change. For example, here is a recent quote from a DBG employee,

"These changes were made directly in response to player feedback."

I challenge you to show me anywhere that people stated they wanted less content to do over the next 6 months. This quote is intellectually dishonest and tries to shift responsibility from the Devs artificially extending the life of a 3 month episode to 6 month. The truth is no one asked for less content. Players asked for the current content not to last 6 months. I would be less upset if a DBG rep actually came out and was honest and said that they need the content to last 6 months vs all the lingual gymnastics Mepps does. They made a decision and they should be upfront and own it. Instead, DBG is trying to deflect and blame the players. People like you have taken up their banner and are fighting their cause by not being completely honest.