BTW....this is indeed the way to do it. I've got an account that I've subbed 2 months, claimed 4 months of stuff, so for 30 bucks I've got 1000 MPC, 300 Replays and 8 destiny tokens (approx value if used on seals $40 bucks) as well as whatever innate benefits are granted while running like cash trade and the 3x marks while I was active. I figure I'd do 3-4(45-60$) sub months a year max and have everything I need to function just fine all year. This is much less than I had previously spent on seals and replays in prior years running premium all year but buying a-la-carte. Side note on this method though, make sure you have already put in 21 days in month 1, and sub late enough that you'll get in 21 days in month 2 before your sub expires. I like the 28th or so as a target date so I have a week's buffer in month 2.
The thing is thou that having more SP after you have maxed your wont actually be as big as an impact as some people claim. Yes having more is always better. But the difference between 200 and 300 is a lot more impactful than the difference between 500 and 600. This is everything. There is a huge difference between creating a path for new players to catch up and outright selling SP. I would even suggest having an event similar to the LPVE even but for grindy feats. But selling SP is a huge no. But one thing people need to understand is that SP has lower value as the more you get. Yes the stats scale up more the higher you go. But after your primary stats they lose value. As for it being hard to get help. Most people dont ask for help either. I don't spend much time in LFG because of trolls. So I only go there when I need a group. But when I do go on LFG i see a lot of groups looking for specific content, mostly end game content. I see a lot of players recruiting, and sadly a lot of gold sellers. However I only see feat groups being formed from time to time. If you need specific feats use LFG. You can't expect to random que a raid and then have everyone agree to help you get a feat. Most people are there for a fast run. If you can not get a group using LFG trying asking your league. Try asking on the forums. Say on X date I want to try and get Y feat. Anyone free to help? you would be surprised how many people are willing to help here. That is not true. Just the other day I made a group to bounty hunt. You an easily make a group using LFG or even using the forums. Not being able to get bounty feats is just a matter of you willing to build a group.
I'd be fine with some kind of 'count multiplier' type token that would do basically what the LPVE weeks do (or similar). But it shouldn't be free, should still require maybe 30-50% of the work applied and shouldn't apply to anything that's <5 years old. That way it could be used to close, but not eliminate, the SP gap but would NOT be straight selling of SP. It also wouldn't impact 'skill' based feats, only repetitive 'count' type ones, which would cut the grind down significantly. Winning 50 AUS pvp maps is a PITA....5 though? 10? Not sure how to program it, or maybe it would not be a 'token' but would be a 'bonus week'....like "10x counts on all bounties week" or something like that.
Then go ahead and do that...but realize you cannot get there overnight, but that you'll also NEVER get there if you stare at top transfixed by the distance (gap/total number). That paralysis will get you exactly nowhere. Of course no one who has done it already would want to do it all over again from scratch...not unless they have all the time in the world with nothing else better to do. Again, for new or returning players, figure what you CAN get on your own without having to run raids and alerts. Figure out what the easy grind is. And if you really want to throw your wallet at it, Time Capsules/Stabilizers. Forget about the collections...sell them all, and focus on the gear and Emblems. Farm whatever Early End Game content you can and get as much Source Marks as you can, buy up all of the available styles which are significantly cheaper these days than they were before (and if you have more money than sense, buy source marks too). Get the easy group feats done, worry about the harder ones latter. In a short amount of time you can get the amount of Stat Points needed to be effective in content. And last but not least, for anyone seriously thinking they can buy their way to the top...you can....Max Artifacts and Allies. Get good with your power and pair it with the best artifacts and allies for your playstyle. No need to put stat points in the marketplace and further erode what's left of this game. It all starts with your attitude. Stop believing in "it's impossible" and try "where do I start"....it's much more effective in getting you where you want to get to eventually.
It is true though, you go into some of those old areas and there's 3 people total if you are lucky and you can shout in LFG for hours and not find a group willing to spam those old bounties. There's just some content people are not willing to do anymore so saying "just build a group" is silly because that's much easier said than done.
As I said before, there’s always someone willing to help. If you can’t find a group on lfg than come here. Make a thread saying you plan on doing x bounty on y date and you’d like help. A lot of the open world bounties have been scaled down to be easier. So you don’t even need a full group.
For someone who came back a few months ago and had to start over from scratch I knew the feats and SP grind was going to be a laborious PITA. But because there is so much I enjoy about this game, I was wiling to do it again. Since restarting, I've only been able to get to 172 SPs presently. I used a ton of source marks to buy up all the iconic styles that I could (instead of things I would have rather spent it on instead), spent countless hours farming boring solo content to complete as many theme styles as RNG was willing to give, and basically did as many of the 2/3 star feats that were within my reach like exploring, races, Booster Gold, etc. Most new players are NOT going to do this in my humble opinion as the vast majority are casual and may not know any better either. But the biggest elephant in the room in my opinion (aside for time itself and how long it takes for meaningful progression) is the stat clamp. When it comes to grinding feats I don't think the stat clamp should apply. All the stat clamp does is hinder people, especially new players, and wastes their time when it comes to this and it shouldn't. Arguing that they should go through the same thing as those who came before them is, quite frankly, bull. The fact that SPs aren't account bound and shared amongst all characters is a damn shame. Tell me, what is the benefit to grinding out SPs on alts? I mean, aside from the obvious money grab for replay badges? Trust me, I get it. It does not bother me one bit that players may want to run older content and crush everything with the least amount of effort. It does not bother me they are chasing styles or marks. What bothers me is the amount of TIME that players have to waste due to stat clamping and this game is not respectful in that regard. I see so many people shouting/LFG repeatedly for help with old/out dated bounties and content. I once phased on someone who had been shouting/LFG for a good 45 minutes about some metal man-bat bounty and he was the only one there. He ended up just giving up after about ten more minutes of asking for help, but I'm pretty sure this is about what to expect when it comes to older content. So it then becomes an issue of time; whether it's being wasted when you've realized an hour has gone by that could have been invested elsewhere in the game or chalking it up to MMOs should be a timesink in general. My questions is, why is this still accepted by the community at large as a normal and appropriate way to play and more importantly enjoy DCUO? So with that in mind about "wasting time" and adding a grindy element (counter feat) on top of that, nothing says "screw your time (and your effort to an extent)" more than that. That's why many modern MMOs are moving away from the old-school thinking of the timesink I've mentioned above; i.e. you want to enjoy this game at its fullest, you need to put in a ridiculous amount of time. Not just time, but the "you-have-no-life-time" kind of time. And anyone who plays video games passionately knows exactly what I mean by that. /2cents
I think the differences here come from thinking about two different kinds of feats, the do-something-special feats and the counter feats. Do-something-special feats aren't too bad to get done, it can definitely take a while in LFG to get enough players but eventually you can find enough people. These are typically completable in one or two runs, but also sometimes might take a lot more for harder feats, sucking up the entire day. I would say most people are okay with these feats not being given out and still having to earn them, since you really only have to do them *once*. If anything though, it'd definitely be nice to have some sort of crutch to doing old content, since for years people could knock these out before stat clamps; or, they'd run with actually good players (especially for old elite content) - keep in mind it's probably noobs who are even attempting these feats. At some point however, there'll be too many of these to catch up on without dedicating a lot of time and effort. I would favor some way to quickly complete many of these old feats at once - a suggestion I haven't heard yet would be some way to pay (preferably with in-game currency, e.g. Source Marks) to remove the stat clamp for temporarily. Keep in mind overwhelming damage is only a possible solution to some feats, and not all. The counter/checklist feats however I can definitely see being "given away" or nerfed somehow. There are fewer of these feats, but they're generally the easier ones to obtain since you just have to repeat them a lot. That just makes them really tedious, and they don't feel rewarding since it's old content. For example, Knight Shift feat from Amazon Fury 1. When this was popular, you could group with people and piggyback off their bounties, but now that's hard to do, and you have to grind dailies for over a month. When this gave good gear/marks, people are willing, but now it's just for a 25pt feat. More recent examples are Calc-Bot, Onimar Synn, even Wonderverse and 31st Century world bosses I can see being very hard to complete in a year or two. Of course eventually you'll finish these feats, but they just take a really long time, while the game keeps moving forward. It's reasonable to say "you don't need those feats to perform," but having those feats will let you perform better. It also feels really bad if you're playing a game that you can't "complete" because you started 5 years too late. To old players who would complain that their "hard work is going to waste," I would argue that their hard work has allowed them to enjoy their skill points for 5 years more than these new players. They paid (in effort) for "early access" to being stronger - similar to how people will pay (in $$) for replay badges for those expensive OP catalysts on day one. TL;DR - Do-something-special feats are fine, might need to have an easier way to finish a bunch of them in the future. Counter feats are tedious/very hard to finish, would like to see e.g. 10x weeks like LPvE or making checklists ones reset instantly.
Amongst all the replies and feedback in this thread, THIS is the most sensible and logical of all. It provides an example based on a real experience, of what is really happening in game. It's easy if you are sitting on 500-600 SP and saying "just ask for help", "you're not doing much", "you're lazy", "it will not fly" or some elitist stuff. This is also a challenge to Mepps and the rest of the Devs to change and improve the game. Their focus should always be us - the players and what would be our experience with the game. They should not be complacent with their work. I know it's been 10 years and the material they are working on is quite limited but if there are ways we can still improve the game, why not do it? And to quote Catastroflare "why is this still accepted by the community at large as a normal and appropriate way to play and more importantly enjoy DCUO?"
