Old Content, Source Marks and What Were You Thinking!

Sadly there was more to it than that. Long before players started complaining about the HIGH CR ruining their fun... Players were coming here to moan and comp-lain because as they put it... Players could just run lower, easier content and use the marks they got to buy armor off higher tier vendors. Of course the thing these cry babies failed to mention was back then all armor was not the same price. The Vendor in the wastelands was charging 625 marks for pieces of gear.

Now if you were running stuff like the duos in the Wasteland and the Trigon Prison alert you could get 125 marks just by defeating the boss so just by completing the three duos you had 375 marks.... Lower tier mission paid out a whole lot less and YES it was possible to grab enough marks to buy that gear but it would take weeks to accomplish or you'd need to spend a ton of replay badges.

That was not enough though so the complaints continued until we wound up with the current relevancy set up..

Now here is something that always has struck me as dang near "false advertising" SUPPOSEDLY when I shell out my real money and sub I gain access to the entire game and it is true I can que up and run low level duos, alert and raid or run solo challenge but my rewards? Low CR armor that doe not improve my combat rating at all and is only good for salvage.... And keep in mind a piece of armor at CR 32 hand out an exobyte much lower than the ones I get salvaging gear that is CR 240. As you augment get higher that low tier stuff you salvage barely makes that status bar move. You don't get marks.. You get an Alternate Reward Box that rarely may have a mark inside but usually you get a Token of Prestige (useless to anyone not in a league), A Token of Merit (now those are good as you work on the feat associated with them but reach the highest level feat and then they become useless well) After that you have a few style pieces you can grab or something like a Repair kit or Free Vault Ticket that you can buy at the market.

In short NOTHING that really helps a player build their combat rating and only the Tokens of Merit help you earn more feats to improve your stats.

The best part is then go to that period where lower tier players were crying about high CR in THEIR missions. So the devs stopped handing out any award and all those players stopped. Almost the same day those same lower tier players were back here complaining because it took way too long to find enough players to form a team. THAT is where the Alternate Reward Box came from and pitiful method to TRY and get the higher CR back in those lower missions.

Best part? I have run countless missions where I que up and walk into a mission and my team mate is around the same CR as I am. I figure its no problem WE CAN DO THIS! except the other guy is looking for someone to carry him and when I show up and am not 150 combat ratings higher POOF they disappear. Funny part is when they run out and try to que up again and wind up right back in the same mission with me.. than leave again. So these days especially there are as many, if not more, low level players praying that High CR show up to carry their worthless butts.

Doubtful one will come in here to explain what they were thinking- I'm guessing because they weren't. They weren't/aren't concerned about new players running old content, they care about making new content and trying to keep the players from leaving the game... apparently in that order.

I am not talking about Source Marks as worthy rewards, they are needed but not a worthy reason to run old content.
The devs need to connect with current state of the game, with the rewards, the lack of gates for old content, the vault, the membership perks... all that is disconnected and outdated.

Okay here is a big reason why us HIGH CR players are still invading the lower tiers

Hmmmm let's start with some thing easy like solo challenges.. not "ruining" anything for anyone but there are feats for earning reknow. To get to the final feat a player needs to earn 6500 reknown from each of the three factions Tech, Magic and Meta. How do we get those? Well there are a couple ways but the big one is by completing the solo challenges available at tier 1,2, and 3. Now Each solo award 125 prestige and if a player has reached tier 3 they can run a grand total of 13 solos a day without using replays and the prestige they earn is divided between all three tiers. In other word it takes a while and usually long before you reach 6500 at least1 or 2 if not all three sets of challenges are no longer relevant and handing out alternet reward boxes along with those 125 prestige points. Now you can also grab some prestige doing bounties. The Wanted poster bounties available at level 30 award that ONCE so no matter how many time you defeat Solomon Grundy he only hands you 125 prestige. Now the Rogue bounties available in Central City hand out prestige as well and will award it any time you defeat one IF you have the mission assigned. NOW.. in case its been a while let us review the rules of the CC bounties.... You can do 9 a day and the prestige is available for each after you are assigned the mission. BUT you can not replay those missions at all so you can defeat Captain Boomerang 15 times in one day and it only counts once toward the feast for number of Rogues defeated and you ONLY get 125 prestige. The other 14 defeats award NOTHING. Oh and try to remember both sets of those bounties were designed for an 8 man team so all you get is defeated if you are dumb enough to attack Clayface solo. Now when those missions were new finding an 8 man team was easy.. NOW? most players just wait until their Cr is so high they can solo them because no one is looking to team up and attack them.

Let's go back to the Rogues a minute.. The final feat with them is for defeating 500. NOW like I said you can only get assigned 9 per day, you can't use replays to do more for credit and any you do without being assigned do not count. That means it take around 56 days, 9 X 56 = 504, to get that final feat. Come on I have taken Alts from Level 1 into the CR 200+ range in under 56 days so its totally impossible to be doing them all while you are still relevant. Keep in mind to you can't even get into the Central City zone until you are CR 53 and at that rating you need 5 to 7 other players to help you. Almost all of that is done when a player is getting nothing but an Alternate reward box.

It goes on and on...

At CR 70 you start doing daily missions at Stryker's island and Ace Chemical There is a feat for completing all 10 of the possible missions the contact hand out at ACE. I have had alt still going back at CR 150 trying to get that 10th mission to drop from the contact because like so many other things the RNG is tied into the mission assigned.

At Cr 84 you have special missions assigned to each duo that are given to you by Wonder Woman after completing 5 daily missions . Defeat Jack, Julius and James 17 times and you earn a feat. Now short of using a pile of replays it takes 5 days to defeat one in each duo so the most you can get is three every 5 days, in TWENTY FIVE DAYS you will have defeated 15.. still need another 5 days running at least 2 dailies to finish the feat. AGAIN.... that is 30 days and I have been above CR 200 in less time than that. Now fortunately uhnlike many those duos can be walked into so it is entirely possible for a high CR to solo them and get the feat. Sadly most feats are not set up that way

In other words the DEV team as set out a ton of feats that require a player to be way above the normal combat rating and still running them in order to get the feat. FUNNY.. We subscribe to the game and as mentioned in my other post here.. have access to it all. So we have as much right to be quing and doing those lower tier missions as anyone else.

That's... just not true. Those feats have existed since the content was fresh- I completed the 500 Central City bounties when the fighters compartment trinket was still best in slot for damage- none of those feats require you to be at an advanced cr.
Now I do agree it's a grind to get those feats these days- but it was a grind back then too.

It won't devalue source marks if you were to add more thing in which source marks could be used for. I.e, if they were to implement a 1:1 exchange for quarks + adding the tc items in booster vendor + adding all op collections into their respective vendors.

I agree. let's test it out. Let's see if the content gets an surge of activity.

I'm sorry but I could swear the title of this thread was

Old Content, Source Marks and What Were You Thinking!

Yeah way, WAY back when Central City was end game it was easy to find 8 players willing to run around Gotham, Metropolis and Central City grabbing 9 marks, working on multiple feats etc.... MY POINT which I could swear I made pretty clear is these days along with a whole pile of other feats tied to everything from Duos, Alert and even Raid requires multiple times in a mission and more often than not players have gone past the point where that content is still Relevant. In Particular to give a really good example. I had one alt that finally manage to have Doc Light show up in the Knightsdome duo in the Wastleland when that character was CR 150. Between feats that require multiple attempts to complete and feats tied to the RNG I can't count how often I have been way above the so called "Limits" of the mission before I finished all that I needed for the feat.

NOW.. add in the fact that there were and still are a pile of players out there forming teams that won't have anything to do with you unless you have a ton of SP..... You tell me why I should skip completing those feats just because "Oh dear I am too high for that mission now> I will ruin it for some one else"

Oh and let's add in the fact that a long time ago those bounties off the Wanted Posters in the Safe Houses used to be the same level and the mobs running around them.. Sure back the if you had thirty guys running around outside the Hospital in Little Bohemia doing the missions to get inside and battle Doc Psycho it was easy to find 7 or 8 willing to attack and defeat Bizzaro. Now? If you get lucky you might find one guy willing to join you. THIS thread does not have a thing to do with the past.... and things are a whole lot different now. Hell with the CR skips how many players don't even go anywhere near any of those bounties unless they decide to solo them... heck they are CR 255.

Like I said the way the game is set up now I can get from level 1 on Brainiac's ship to above Cr 200 in less than 56 days. Back then You had maxed out your CR below CR 70.

Clamp, dat, shyte, and then give additional rewards

May be true but I think the event versions have a lower relevancy than owning the actual content.

I'll agree with that.

No.

My experience running old content when I got back to the game was that a slight majority players at the content's approximate level did not like having higher level people who utterly trivialized it. Also, if max cr players have a reason to run old stuff regularly it just crushes player development even harder. The effective way to allow relevancy for older episodes would be to allow Level Sync like FFXI has where high CR/spm players have their CR/SP/arts/augs/mods/stats optionally capped if they want the level-specific rewards. That said, it'd still be pointless unless they added new currency that was only rewarded for running old content while level sync'd. I'm ok with the concept as long as clamping is purely optional, as the primary motivator for running old stuff would still be base items / collections.

Part 2 of my Manifesto speaks of this, but I agree to an extent with this. "Syndicate" old episodes like events. have a new syndicated episode every two weeks or so, have a syndication currency, where you can buy current gear. Now old content is relevent, but not spread out.

The whole point of this game is to get stronger and find previous content easier that was once more difficult, this has been a fundamental aspect of this game from the very beginning and very game is structured with that in mind.

I don't think nearly as many people care about high level players easily beating content as you'd assert, over playing this game since launch, I've had 2 or 3 people rage at me but have had hundreds if not thousands of people thank me or send me compliments, you might call that anecdotal, but I'd assert I'm not alone in that experience.

Stat clamping is all good and well in an optional environment but that optional environment could quickly change to mandatory unintentionally.

For every mark we recieve the devs consider that in pricing, so asking for more marks goes in tandem with the subsequent byproduct of pricing going up.

If you think you're just going to get something for nothing by expanding relevancy then you're fooling yourself, time and time again in this game the developers have proven with every change comes some kind of consequence like this.

Therefore if prices go up people then need more marks and your optional clamp quickly morphs into a more compulsory one to achieve the same result we had without changing relevancy.

The better way to introduce a clamped optional, albeit it having the result of splitting an already small community, would be to provide a meaningful reward for it that attracts higher players but sits outside of existing progression, like a new mark with an exclusive reward vendor, or you could even reward simply qwarks, high level players would run clamped for qwarks I'm sure.

The people at level could just be rewarded marks like normal and when out of relevancy they're awarded qwarks.

isnt this a sound argument?

It's because you and I have had this argument ad nauseam, you know this but sure let's pretend that hasn't occured in the past within a new thread right.

You know my position, i know your position and it will no doubt be reiterated by each of us every time, and I was talking directly to you when i quoted you.. but let's pretend i don't have an outline to my reasoning, right.. that's quite puposefully disingenuous by you

The solution to this seems so simple, as it has been expressed. Yet, no one in here seems to approve

I remember our old league used to offer to take in people (leagueless people) to the raids and help them get feats. Not only did it help with recruiting, but it also helped the player base when people had more skill points. I still (even though I'm returning from break) try to help get feats in content with people that aren't geared up well. Way early in the game, there were a lot of great folk that would help like that.