Test Discussion Episode 27: More Loot and Rewards Feedback

The pricing of gear is absolutely ridiculous. Never has it been this much so I really don't understand how this is a good thing.

Honestly, let's just cut to the chase of Replay Badges because at this point with all the micro transactions being implemented people should start to realize they're being chased for their money.

People have done the math and players are absolutely correct about how crooked this system will be. What's worse (and quite funny) is that some people in the company are aware of this but belittle their customers as if noting is happening to begin with.

How do you want players who choose to progress their support roles to do open world solo content? What about the solo and duo? I know a lot of people who don't like running with support roles in duos. So, there's 2-3 pieces of content that become redundant to people who choose their support roles. That leaves the alert and raids, which means less marks for over inflated gear prices.

Less things to run means less crafting materials to get. Complex Material are already overpriced (not everyone is DC rich if you haven't realized that already; premium players) in fact, I've seen a stack of complex materials COST MORE than a stack of Exos multiple times on the broker.

I already put in a large amount of money into this game, if I have to constantly throw money into a mosh pit I'm going to do it in a cheaper game and likely have more fun. Not get a 6 month absence in new content and then hear I have to pay MORE to get LESS.

Sobwhy don't they just upgrade the old mods instead of making new mods? The green name explanation make no sense. I don't think this dlc will bring more people back as is.

Feedback is never disregarded. sheesh

Doubt they have time to add new content, but they could make a special daily starred Solo/Duo/Alert from AF1 or AF2 for full Ancient Coins (yes it'd have to at increased CR/stats or clamped or whatever you want to name it to earn full Marks/AC)

Not sure, not on the Development team but new Episode, new Mods. Pretty sure if there were no mods, folks would be in an uproar.

I know you will defend them, and it maybe even be your job idk, but for what they've said nothing is being changed, the episode will go as is with the extreme grind only meant to make it artificially longer than it really should. There's no point in giving them more feedback since they know most of us just don't like the model, sure it might get changed but it wont be for now, this is getting released just so they can work on stats, so until that's ready there's nothing else to discuss about the grind on this episode.

You know that's not true. It's still t8. If this was t9 your post would be true

This will be a long post so bear with me. Also I have to say that everything I post is just my opinion and assumption, i don't have any facts. Plus I don't think any of the changes i think are fun would be implemented.

My clarification of a replay fest
The replay fest has been on a steady increase for a long time now because the devs want to find a way to increase and keep constant the influx of cash they see when they release new content. They have also start to try and mine the TRK sales as another option to the constant spending. Unfortunately the result is no one will spend constantly on anything. It is just not possible. some of us run out of resources others just get burnt out.

The new content vendor gear prices are set artificially high to see if anyone will replay their way to a full set or conversely how much are people willing to replay before giving up then resetting the prices to that level. This however has put the gear out of reach for the rest of the community that doesn't play this way. this forces the remainder of the population to either use replay or never get the gear. We want best gear we don't need best gear. They have taken the choice of using replays and have made it practically mandatory.

Content will only last 4 to 6 weeks no matter how much they put out. Sorry but attention spans don't last longer than that. Once you beat everything you can only go in there and beat it again so many times before it gets old. The new vendor system requires burn out to get one set of gear.

What would be fun to me.

Gear -
Universal gear with stats for all roles that never gets replaced and has 2 prismatic mod slots one for dps and one for support. I know this is universally hated because of the way they did pvp gear but it has some very distinct advantages. The most glaring advantage is it creates the same grind for everyone. With this change it wouldn't matter if you dps only or play both roles because you don't need 2 sets of gear to play both roles. Everyone would have to do the same amount of work regardless of how you play.

Upgrade -
Instead of replacing gear with new gear, drops (green,blue and purple) and vendor gear are now upgrades that increase the stats and cr of the universal gear when consumed as well as adding any new style. The advantage to this is I don't have to replace mods for every new piece of gear that I get. instead the hard work i put into getting mods from last episode stays with me until I decide to replace them with the new mods from the current. I also don't have to race to best gear just so I can stop using alpha mods.

Leveling Grind-
The grind to reach max level should be playing all instances for 4 weeks. It doesn't matter how long the episode is meant to last or when the nest one will be out, the grind needs to let everyone achieve the gear without having to be burnt out. This type of grind would be reasonable and make the gear more accessible to a lot of players and play styles. Some will still get everything day one but other will take the entire time period.

Secondary grind rewards-
Something this game lacks but there are no rewards for extended game play beyond just getting max Cr. I would use the experience bar that we had while leveling and have it continue as a secondary reward system that is not capped. Everything you do gives you experience and you are never loot locked from getting experience from anything. This would be a pure reward for just game play or being in game. When you reach a certain amount of experience you get a reward. The rewards could be anything from rare styles to reduced rent costs to in game cash. Really could be anything and doesn't even have to increase your stats.

Op elite-
Op gear would be changed to op mods that insert into gear take long bucket list of feats to get and when you have all of them the they just add another op mod slot to the gear. elite really doesn't work in my opinion and should just be a style upgrade.

there is more that I would find fun but i'm tired and this post is too long already.

I think, and am not too sure, but that they said once that balancing the game around 1 set of gear would be an issue. And we've suggested the Upgrade system before but they didn't seem to want it.

Can any tester tell me the rate of complex mats appearing in gear salvages or are we still getting grey crap that's useless and simple mats x3

Complex and simples drop the same way as is on live.

The prices in vendor gear are high, please reduce to the prices as we already know, I.e. Weapon: 70 AC, Head: 55 AC, Ring: 20 AC and so on.

The real issue here is I pay to be legendary but I don't personally have the time for a 12 week grind. I wish I did but I don't, and I can't believe I am the only one in this situation. I enjoy the game but it isn't fun if I can't get gear that makes me efficient enough to not be henderance to my group mates.

I know it needs to be challenging but I don't have hours a day to commit. If the gear progression is too slow and I have to do the same missions so much with little to no reward for the efforts. And I can not see what good sense it is to figure it should take someone to the next episode to get the gear from the previous one.

Given that this has been threaded over and over again Mepps so much that you started yet another it means that your customers are trying to actually tell you something. I work with client everyday and if my company doesn't listen to the customer it doesn't matter how much you think it is 'right' you will still alienate and loose customers

From today's office hours gen1cesyde asked, "have you guys given any thought to payouts of ancient coins?" to which Mepps replied, "We have and continue to give much though to the costs and rewards in AFIII. Right now, we are confident in the plan as it is on test."

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B18KIZbMpTCrbFN5WF9zdDZvcUk/view

Here is the way I am looking at Ep 27. The devs want the Ep. to last around 6 months, give or take. The price on the vendor shows that. Ep. 27 has 10 missions( even counting the elite raids), 7 if you count the 3 outside solo missions that everyone runs at the same time, as one mission. Now turn the clock back 6 months ago and we have 8 mission (counting elite). Now some would say that we have even more content now, which is true. But look at how players are burned out. I know I am, and it takes a lot for me to get burned out on anything.

Back when DLC was out we would normal get around the same amount of content we are getting with Ep27. Players would be at max cr in a month (give or take). But players was still running content for finish up feats, style and what not. We change from that to monthly episodes, which gave us 2 mission with one extra elite in the mix. To me that was not working because of multi reasons, but for the life of the episode players was normal max cr in about a week. Now we are returning to the large content way. Ok, but now we still have the same amount of content as before,but you want to last even twice as long.

How did you guys think the players was going to react to this? Players reacted to the high price of the vendor. Then the devs come out and said the price are spot on for the content to last 6 months. By the my math that means we should have double the amount of missions, right?

Running 10 missions for 6 month going to end just like live is now. people will get burned out on the content and simply quit playing. I have been tying to find something to do for the last 2 months cause I care NOTHING about running any of the content from Prison Break up. Why? Because I have run that content into the ground. At least with double the content ( up to 15 to 20 different missions) I would have more choice of things to run.

I total understand that it can be hard to push out that much in the short amount of time, I do. But this big of a change is going to push players away in about 3 to 4 months of the release of episode 27, because players will get burned out on it.

So developers are you planning on reducing the ancient coins needed per piece of new gear or not?

Not even gonna read the rest of what you put until you can link a green name stating that or a discord message.

They didn't say 6 months specifically but they did say that they plan on having AF3 last longer than 3 months. That means you may still be right.
AF3 has the same "6 pieces of content" that we used to get from AF1 to HoP2, counting open world missions as a single piece of content (which the devs said they do). So while the gear prices may be totally fine if the episode lasts for 4 months or longer, the amount of content may not be enough to keep people motivated over that time. Even with a massive amount of feats and grindables and lots of content variability, I can only listen to the same dialog so often before it starts to feel like I'm torturing myself.
For me it's especially bad with straightforward tank&spank on-rails instances like Phantom Zone. I found it boring the first time but by now it's unbearable. I can't imagine farming it each day for the next 4-6 months and still experiencing anything that qualifies as fun.

I think with another alert and another duo this new reward structure may have been better. It would have allowed those who have time and motivation to farm everything every day to complete their first vendor gear set slightly earlier, and then get another set until the next episode launch. Everyone else could be more flexible with what and how much they want to play each day and still finish their vendor gear set within 3 months without burning out.

On live server using an alt just for the fun of it

100 T1 items salvaged
69 simple mats
5 complex mats

Seems pretty fine if this is the same for T8 items too...lol