I am referring to feats such as kill a bounty 50 times or run alert 50 times. Can we please make these feats account bound based? Meaning that all the toons on my account cumulatively give credit for this. Opposed to the current system where it counts only for each individual toon. This has long been very frustrating for people that love this game and enjoy playing on alts. I end up spending more time but get less credit because my game time is spread out. Please consider and thank you.
For God's sake YES! l play 8 toons. And buy things for them but honestly this feels like a punishment.
Which, kinda made sense when most of their revenue was from respec tokens and given how many feats there were back then. I hope they revisit this issue, especially since they have made it clear they want to make it impossible to grind multiple complete toons recently.
I dont get it? How does it no longer make sense when Feat Unlocking is still an option? And wait, why are we talking about revenues? What revenue would making feats account bound open? Dont take this the wrong way but I believe you may be either arguing for an irrelevant point, or bringing one over from some other older thread. Person 1: I would like Feats to be account bound Person 2: The Feat Unlock System currently facilitates an account bound option. Person 3: Revenues. One of them doesn't fit.
Sure, revenue will decline if population declines, not everyone wants to play the same toon all the time, there have been other options like allies that discourage alts, therefore we don't need the old deterrence, (unlocking feats with money). If it didn't "fit" to have anything that is different in any way, then thety shouldn't have added allies or made them unlockable account bound. Having both is an additional burden for those thatt play multiple toons. I don't think it's that hard to understand, if you are trying...
I get that. But the main problem with anyone trying to speak from a Devs perspective about revenues is, you can't. And I mean "you" as in any of us, myself included. If you ever see any players talking about what brings in the most revenue right now, theres only 3 options for where that information is coming from: 1) Mentioned on a Devstream/Dev Thread (To which any specific revenue details haven't been mentioned in over a year at this stage) 2) An extremely poor "educated guess". So poor in fact, its an insult to the term Educated Guess itself 3) Absolute BS Revenues and Marketplace purchases haven't been discussed enough on any Devstream or Thread within the last year for anyone to competently form a picture of what sells and when. If someone you're talking to is discussing revenues of anything, and you find out theres a full years gap in their data, run. Just run. The Educated Guess one is easier to explain. Educated Guess implies multiple sources of partial information regarding a subject and piecing it together into an estimation. But look at the 1st point. Not one bit of that info is actually coming from the only reliable source, the Devs, for at least a year. If these Educated Guesses are based on hearsay and forum posts, you're talking to somebody who doesn't understand the ability for others to Lie. Finally, the BS one is more or less self-explanatory. Some make up "facts" out of thin air, others misinterpret information and accidentally/purposefully pass on this new misinformation. All without proof or sometimes even without a shred of common sense behind it. Point is, dont be any of the 3 above. Theres plenty of them floating around the forum already mentioning "trends" with little-to-no idea what that actually means. And they usually get called out pretty fast these days. I cant say what Replay Badge sales are like, because im not one of the 3 above. It could be exponentially higher than people think, or it could be the worst sold item in DCUO history. The point is that I dont know, and literally can't without a Dev officially confirming it. What I do know though, is every other positive number is higher in value than 0. And as long as thats true, then a system that brings in any positive number of revenue is of higher value than the system asked for in this thread. A 0 value system.
That all makes sense, and yes... we don't know the exact revenue numbers beyond what they report. However, we know some recent moves were made to address population issues, I'm merely pointing out that the increasing cost of playing alts is most likely a contributing factor to player base loss. Do I have anything except anecdotal evidence? No, but... I've never heard people openly talk about how prohibitively expensive it is to run alts before, now... it's a pretty common complaint in my experience. I'm not sure forcing people to pay an infinitely increasing amount of time and money to play multiple toons is a good idea. But "what do I know"?
Two different arguments happening. One is about the feat counters. One is about making playing alts a less costly, time consuming thing. While there is bound to be some over lap, it should be mentioned these are two completely separate debates. If you worded argument that the running count for the feats should be account bound, in other words the completions are tallied concurrently on all toons, that would be a better argument, and one where feat unlocking isn’t the obvious rebuttal. As for alts being friendlier, I agree, something needs to be done, one of their selling points for membership is making up to 16 toons. No good if no one can afford to play more than one at an end game level of competing. There are a lot of nuances to the alt argument, and revenue (something we can only blindly argue about) is definitely a core factor in it *I believe* however, since hunted made an excellent point about us not having the information to even argue over. What’s the point? Only thing we can do is get enough people to voice their opinion. I’ll start, I wish the game made some changes to make alts more fun, less grind, and less costly to play. I’ll suggest one avenue, make artifacts account bound. Making counter feats run congruent with all toons on an account is another one. We can make suggestions, someone will point out their inadequacies, we revamp our suggestions and combine with other suggestions that have undergone the strict peer review that is these forums, then we make a forum post with all the reviewed suggestions and all the people involved sign off on it. This format is the only way I’ve ever seen player desired change come into being in dcuo. One or two angry posts does nothing. But if we all work together and come up with some thoroughly thought out ideas, we have a chance lol.
Well, now that revenue is gone, we can discuss what we both know without interference from it. I actually partly agree with you. The part where my view diverts is that the current system does not cost "time and money", but instead costs "time OR money". Getting a feat on your main is pretty much null and void in this discussion, as both systems presented as solutions require that equally. You cant expect a feat to just materialize for a Main either so thats out the window. Mains are set as is. So when we move to Alts, its "time OR money" for me because: Time with no Money involvement; You redo all Counter Feats on each alt for the required number counted. No money spent. Money with no Time involvement; You buy Replays with real cash and Unlock the Counter Feats on all alts. No Time involved, unless someone was strange enough to count the 5 secs it takes to Unlock each. You may very well have actually meant Time or Money yourself too, but posts have to be taken at face value and as such, I have to address the literal description given. As for past experience with the prohibitions on Alts? I've personally been seeing that from year 1. My year 1 to be exact, been playing around 9yrs. Its probably been the 1 constant of the game throughout to be honest. Lifes always unfair for Alts according to some. But heres the issue, you'll very very rarely ever see a modicum of personal responsibility come up in these Threads or arguments. One of the older complaints was that the Episode release window is too short for them to gear their alts: "Oh ok, and how many alts do you have?" "Me? Oh i've 30 alts over a few accounts". "But.... altogether theres only 15 powers, why did you need toons with all powers? And why the extra 15 on top of that?" "BECAUSE! Dont question me, it was my choice!" Exactly. Its everyones choice how many Alts they create, its everyones choice how many Alts they decide to keep levelled, and so its everyones choice whether they allow themselves to recognize that they're trying to juggle too many Alts between the system limitations and playtime allowance. This isn't a "its all the players fault" rant though, it isnt. But while DI has been busy implementing new ways to make levelling Alts easier, I could almost guarantee you that at least 70% of the people you hear complaining about Alts Time or Money have taken exactly 0 steps towards taking personal responsibility for their own part in the problem. Just for Clarity too, I have 11 toons. But because of life and responsibilities I juggle 6 of those and the others remain as Storage. DI certainly didn't create my lifes extra responsibilities.
"If you worded argument that the running count for the feats should be account bound, in other words the completions are tallied concurrently on all toons, that would be a better argument, and one where feat unlocking isn’t the obvious rebuttal." This is what I am trying to refer to in this thread. I did not intend to discuss the cost of replays to unlock feats on alts. I am discussing how the running count feats are obtained. If there is a feat that says kill doomsday 100 times. Then I am requesting the running count be based off all the characters on my account. (Alt 1 = 50 kills, Alt 2 = 25 kills, Alt 3 = 25 kills, total 100 kills, feat is granted).
Well one of the smarter guys will tell us why it’s game breaking but when it’s put like that how could you not want it? Devil’s advocates gonna say what about the feats already unlocked and any argument that requires a refund is gonna be a hard sell lol. I’m gonna go with from here on out wouldn’t it be better if approach lol.
Well, since source marks can be bought, yes, I'd agree with that. Time or money. And I woould argue the time or money commitment to maintain an alt has increased not only because of the increase in feats, but allies, gear, op item grind, crafting generator mods.... yes, ever rincreasing time or money. Oh yeah, and artifacts... all this happened since RBs were used to unlock feats. So... the "math" on this is pretty simple. If RBs were = to what is fair to expect from someone maintaining alts then, adding all that other stuff means the commitment is much greater. To say no changes have occurred since then, which... seems to be what you are implying here, is... not the case IMO.
I like this, too. I don't think they'll lose revenue if only the toon that reached the target counter gets the feat. Bec then the other toons must buy the feat. Obviously, we lose the ability to get the feat for free on all other toons after that. Wait a minute, does this mean more revenue then?!? *wink* *wink*
I'm sorry but i'm gonna have to swiftly snap us back to what is being discussed and disregard everything else, otherwise this easily gets off topic. To address the off-topic points very quickly to rid the discussion of them: - The cost of Source Marks was pretty horrendously calculated by DIfor the Marketplace. As we discussed previously, I cannot say "they dont sell" because I don't know, but it would take a very special kind of "more money than sense" type of individual to not see their current price is a rip-off. - My Main is doing great with less-than Level 10 Ally's and so too are all my other Alts. An unnoticable difference. - My Main admittedly has all 200 Artifacts, 3 of my Alts have 1x 200 Artifacts and the others are around 140-160s. I didnt have any early access to Artifacts so had no advantage. If we ended up having a semantic discussion about how DI has made Artifacts unfair for Alts, i'd simply bring up the method I utilized and took personal responsibility planning for, the 2x Artifact XP Bonus Weeks that routinely occur before every Episode release, and that discussion is dead in the water. - OP Item grinds are a strange 1 to bring up. When you max out the OP Item on any toon and get the feat, if you then use the system i've been discussing this entire time, Feat Unlock, to unlock that feat on Alts, you get a 50% Discount on the OP Items catalysts that you can buy from the vendor. Your bringing up something that DI has already made 50% easier about 4 Episodes ago. If you were expecting a handout, its an OP Item.... No. - Stat differences are so negligible between .1 increase Generator Mods that I, hand on heart, have 0 top Generator Mods right now. Not even fussed over the feat for getting 12 of them. Its not a necessity, its a want. - Gear has never been this easy to obtain for Alts. As the person who voluntarily told you that I cant comment on revenues because I prefer honesty over BS, I hope you can appreciate that when I say thats an Unequivocal Fact, I truly believe it and could flood this thread with 9yrs of gear difficulty and role-locked gear and bad %'s on drops in old content until your eyes dried out reading it. It has, without a doubt, improved exponentially. Ask anyone who used to hunt for styles or gear 5yrs ago. Now that the off topic points are in the same bin as revenues, lets get back to the discussion. You bring up a point about RBs that literally can't be answered. You suggest that RBs need to be "fair" with regards to an individuals need to maintain Alts with Feat Unlocking. Thats impossible without the aforementioned personal responsibility. Example: 2 people play DCUO with alts, each have a budget where they can spend a max of $5 per month if needed. Both need to unlock a 5* Feat on Alts. Person A has 3 Alts, meaning 15 Replay Badge necessity, and so they can afford to unlock all 3. Person B has 30 Alts, meaning 150 Replay Badge necessity, so cannot. Here's the issue. When you read that, part of your brain probably jumped up and said "EXACTLY! Its not a fair system". If it did, which is obviously an assumption not a fact, then that part of your brain missed the point entirely. In the above scenario, Person B is very clearly playing DCUO beyond their means and has taken absolutely no personal responsibility for the situation whatsoever. Trust me i'm far from rich myself, so when I say that Person B needs to get a grip on themselves and start realizing that they're trying to maintain faaaar too many Alts for the budget they have, its not coming from some High Class Holier-than-thou individual. If anything, Person B was me with my 11 toons at 1 stage. The point is, theres a reason why we have the old saying "it takes 2 to Tango". Im not here to berate players and I do think that there are some elements DI could still work on or reduce to help Alts, but disregarding everything that has been done and is, right this second, in the game isn't gonna help. With certain players (Not all, but a good amount) levels of personal responsibility regarding Alts, its like somebody putting 50% into their job, showing no initiative or interest in progressing, standing there asking why they haven't been promoted. All of it looping back to the main point. I cant tell you how much Replay Badges make for DI, but common sense suggests Replay Badges make something for DI. The new system discussed wouldn't, ever.
Not gonna quote the whole thing just two points. “ I do think that there are some elements DI could still work on or reduce to help Alts” This is all I’m saying, I put in the work for my three alts, they are all geared and ready for the new dlc. What I’m saying is the amount of cash they are asking for is too high. $165 to get from 180-200? For a game? That’s highway robbery. Regardless of your personal income. That’s my opinion. I cant tell you how much Replay Badges make for DI, but common sense suggests Replay Badges make something for DI. The new system discussed wouldn't, ever.“ Not true, we don’t have the numbers obviously, but it’s pretty logical to suggest that resetting raids is the main way replays are spent, not unlocking feats, if feats were given to alts, there would still be replay badge revenue.” Thanks for the well thought out post and clearly articulated opinions as always.
Interesting. All the qualitative assertions about people's motivations and such, not sure I follow any of that diatribe but to the point, I understand your opinion. I think the OPs suggestion is not game breaking in any way, making the long count feats account bound is not that big of a deal, not sure how I see how that negatively affects you or anyone else. Heavy on fan fiction, light on facts.
Right, but thats the issue I presented from the very beginning, neither of us can argue "facts" about this because neither of us have access to any. We're both basically discussing opposite sides of the implications of changing a system without any real way to say "the ramifications of doing so would be X". As i'm sure you've noticed, i've made sure not to accidentally imply the the change would lose X amount for DI, simply because I dont know what X amount is. My only argument really is that X amount, whatever it is, adds up to more than 0 amount. Both arguments are so-called "fan fiction" if thats how you choose to label it. Either way, I think ep42 and the direction the Episodes have been going lately bring the issue to a close. Each Episode the Counter Feat numbers have been decreasing 1 by 1 and now the latest ones are 3x 20 and 1x 50. Very managable with multiple alts while the wait for new content lasts up till April-May 2022. Good chat anyway.
Yes!!! AND..... Seasonal currency!!! Allowing all characters on the account to share the currency allows us to buy the things we want for each character instead of using mail or shared bank. Some items arent tradeable and forces us to save currency for those while using alts to acquire others. I'm sure it would help with the amount of mail in the system too.
