I feel we are being Punished for Playing the Game!

1. The pure existence of CR skip tokens throws your power levelling argument right out the window. There are so few players in lower content it can't get any worse with the current system. Levelling in itself was already stupid fast years ago and Daybreak made it even faster with that new vendor they added. Slowing down levelling can't be done by restricting marks. The whole system needs to be revamped so stop using it as a defence to restrict marks.

2. Lower content in general needs a bigger fix to address its problems but the less you take away from us the better we start off. Trying to use quick bandaid fixes that don't address the actual issue does more harm than good.

3. Are you attempting to shame players who don't want to spend money on seals ? No player should ever have to buy seals. The artifact system is designed for us to burn through catalysts. What problem did we create ? Having to buy loads of catalysts ? Daybreak caused that not us. It appears you're hinting at us creating a problem by not spending money and using a lot of marks to buy catalysts (when its designed for us to do so due to low breakthrough percentages) and that if we just spent money we would be fine. If so then I think you need to have a long sit down and rethink the implications of what you just said because it isn't a good look. Defending exploitative design and then shifting the problems onto players is embarrassing and shameful.

I'm a little late to the conversation, even though I don't think I can add a whole lot to it.

But I'm going to at least try.

By adding somewhat of a visual through my perspective, that might (keyword) serve as an example. I'm also a returning player, who has taken a number of breaks over the last two years playing. I originally discovered this game in mid/late Summer 2106, but didn't start playing till a year later, Summer 2017. Just before the stats revamp I believe, and I think Water made its debut.

Gradually started learning the game. Joined my first league in/around October 2017. I became a subscriber in November on my birthday. Played for about a month or two & had a falling out with a few people in the league I was in, so I took a break for a while. I came back around June of last year, shortly before Member Appreciation Week. I renewed my sub of course and played for a couple more months. But later on around November, I got fed up with all of the lag & constant issues with the game. I quit cold turkey, had my accounts deleted. Put it behind me.

But of course, I couldn't stay away. I came back for a short stint last January when I heard of the free level skips. Created this acct, and a second one I use as my F2P, as kind of a back up. Naturally though I had to start from scratch. Like I said, it was a short stint. I grew bored with the game, so I took another break but I left everything as it was. Came back in mid March and have been playing again since.

Here's that perspective: I'm not an expert player, but I'm not a noob either. But since I've started over, I'm sort of a new player going through all of the old content again, trying to level up my toons. Nowadays, I sit waiting in the queue to run alerts or duos. If I want to run a duo, I simply use my 2 accounts on the same screen and hope they don't flip flop back & forth like they try to do. (I full screen the one I'm running, then switch back every few mins or so to keep it from timing out.) But sitting in the queue for 4 player alerts. If I'm lucky, I get in one but its with a bunch of low level CR's. I'm trying to run my alts to get the source marks, and I'm struggling to earn them when I used to get them in higher numbers. I just ran the week with one alt who is now loot locked on everything, and all I got out of it is he's at around 50 SM's. That's not enough to buy a decent amount of gear to level him up. Well, maybe it is for a few pieces, but I don't just want a few pieces of the tier 2 battle armor. I want the whole thing to complete the look.

My point is, it was said that PVP was a ghost town. That has spread into PVE and into other areas of the game. Yeah, no one wants to run the old content anymore. Its said that its a ghost town, but when you stand outside of Little Bohemia in Metro, or in Central Hub in the WT on the heroes side, there are A TON of players just standing around. Either dueling each other, mingling in chat, or in some cases, standing around constantly throwing beach balls all over the place. (Or in the case of Lil Bo, smashing cars.) What I see is, people are bored!!! People don't play this game just to cosplay, escape reality, or set up their lairs (which some people are REALLY good at, btw). They want to do something more. I know episodes come when they can, just like time capsules come when they can. Things tend to pick up a little bit around the holidays & the game's anniversary after the first of the year. But what about the rest of the year? This game needs......something. But what? We can complain that more powers are needed, lag needs to be dealt with, spam bots need to be removed, or PVP needs to be fixed. But something needs to be figured out.

I agree, something does need to be done.

Problem is this, whatever they do, people will not like it.

To many people don't see the game as casual or claim to enjoy the game as it is, yet this topic will not fix any of the problems but will leave older content with even less running the content.

Review the reasons needed for the changes called for.

What happens when there are no more styles to purchase, the base generator is not asking for an impossible amount to even dent the amount of marks now.

The only other item is for catalyst, again when caught up, it is not like they are releasing a new anything every 2 weeks, so after running everything in a weekend, alerts twice for a month and a half, as soon as they drop anything on day 1, people will be maxed out.

Which is not a problem for us, but being that we can reach well passed the needed amount very quickly, it will not be long till those who actually felt strongly about needing the extra will see that they rushed for no reason.

Players are bored, most of those same players need styles and feats from that same old content, but here are people who feel that there need to be an even greater need to have some other incentives to run the content.

I'd assume that they are running alts to acquire feats.

I'd also assume that they feel that people run in random queue all the time and are not in leagues, at least the ones they are trying to get to go run the older stuff anyway, being they don't want to run the content with people who are at tier.

There was a time before stat revamp that scared some players, they were for certain that content would become harder for them that they went back for feats.

Well, if there is any indication as to how people will be, next time your in those zones inspect some of the people around those areas, look them up and see where some of them are at with SP and gear.

Then ask yourself this, what do they have to work on?

As I read this discussion it sounds lazy (to me but to each their own), it does not take much.

New players have it much easier than the days of old, most would have probably quit at the pengbot.

The game now, really does not require much skill and if it did people would grind them feats, which would increase their skill.

If I were to make a suggestion, it would be, the Dev's overthought the situation with OC.

There was nothing wrong with the alert, scratch that, the problem was the drops and progression into the raids for the masses.

They kill the fun on day 1 when they release new content.

The raids should be hard on day 1 and decrease as people gear up in difficulty.

The progression is way to fast, the Batcaves may be old to vets, but as your pointing out new players would rather stand around or destroy cars, because they obviously don't need to even step foot into those raids, to even visitsome of the iconic spots of our mentors.

Those raids are free raids at that, open to ftp players, who ignore them because they obsolete due to how progression works.

I read some of the responses and I kind of feel bad for NotChill, he definitely defended the game for them when even I asked that the Dev's tightened the game up some, by actually increasing the difficulty.

In my opinion, if SP actually mattered more, it would actually push people to want to do more, but I also know that it will make people frustrated and feel as though they are worthless and possibly would leave the game, which is why a majority will stick to the easiest content and only run harder content once or twice.

Except more gear dropped back then and you could run a raid killing all the adds in like 7 minutes. Who in their right minds would do that now that you get 2 or 3 drops instead of 10 chances for a style you need?

I played since launch and let's forget how easy it was to get pvp feats back then... to say that it's not harder to complete styles since revamp / putting all the loot behind bosses is... not quite right.

I get your point about if they raised prices and I can see where people would just have a bunch of extra marks doing nothing at a certain point. Maybe there is just no way to get people to run older content... any thing that worked would just be turned into a lootbox anyway.

But all you've really been doing is saying "they shouldn't do it just to appease the ppl on the forums", how is that outlining your point? It does fix part of the solution, as it actually adds an instant gratification type-reward to content that no longer would have it otherwise. Unlike you I actually explained how a certain change can affect a player positively, I have YET after all these big posts of yours seen you actually explain why this would be bad or troublesome.

If just following the precedent set is all you got, you don't really got much sicne that very precedent that's been set is flawed. Now you are talking about actual Episode-marks, we are talking about SOURCE MARKS here. Source marks, of which for us end-game players are not tied to gear progression what so ever. It doesn't have to be done needlessly either. As mentione for probably the third time now, there could be a Tiered system to it.

If somebody took the time to run a whole lot of content to clean out what they need from the Universal vendor, i don't really see the problem. It's not like it's just falling into their lap, and again with a Tiered system you can still slow this process down. Besides, we have now have the perfect Mark-sink to spend Source Marks on, considering we can literally convert them into Quarks for people to spend on the Quarks-vendor, of which they will keep updating. I just think you're overly exaggerating the situation of it.

And like stated 50 times already, I'm not after only the ability to earn marks. Several things have been mentioned throughout this thread other than marks, you just got stuck whining an incredible amount in regards to just that, for reasons stil unknown. Also, what makes it a lie? Do you realize the different between instant gratification-rewards and highly rare RnG-drops? While there's some incentive to the RnG and rare, pricy items you can get, it does get old if that's all that is left. Not to mention once again, that ther are a LOT of content within various tiers that doesn't hold those rare, pricy RnG-drops, so again, where's the lie? Please explain that lie.

Speaking of the Tiered system regarding being able to earn more marks: they could make it so depending on your CR you only go back X amount of Tiers that allows you more marks to be earned. To state a quick example, as a 273 fully maxed, you'd have both Tier 8 and Tier 9 at your disposal, but Tiers 7 and down would remain the same as currently. Again this is just an example.

First off and I already said this, the skip to CR 210 is not for new players. Please show me a success story of a brand new CR 210 player with 80 SP having any issue not getting kicked or put on ignore.

And I'm not trying to shame anyone looking for an easy and cheap way to get all their artifacts to 160. And that goes for getting Time Capsule feats as well. You've all done a bang up job of that already.

I actually prefer that the old content does not scale.

I would gladly pass on a couple of Source Marks that I really don't need, in exchange for the ability to out-level content and get feats easier. Finding a group of people capable of not screwing up a feat like "No Deaths Necron" has become infinitely less annoying as people outlevel the content and reduce the total challenge.

I realize I seem to be in the minority, but when all content auto-scales to my character (like WoW), then I feel as though all my gear progression is wasted because I never actually become more powerful. And as far as old content being playable, something I've already run 1000 times over the past 10 years is not un-fun because I'm too powerful, and it's not un-fun because the rewards are toned down. It's un-fun because I could do it in my sleep, and the only reason to go back is to finally check off the last remaining feat or style piece and then be done with it forever.

ive always been curious about the instances in game that auto scale. doesnt really seem to put everyone at the same spot. it just sort of brings everyone closer together. cuts down on cheese, relies more on performance. if we could get clamped like this i'd be all for it.

i run older content for several reasons: I could be hunting a feat, hunting base items, trying to finish off an older style or just for fun because i like the story and characters revolving around said instance. i used to go into old content with the intent on helping new players move along. community service.

these days i run older content less. used to be i could queue into older content with a healer or a controller , perform my role and still provide some burn if the rest of the group was too new or too weak without one shotting everything. those used to be so much fun for me. that doesnt happen anymore thanks to the revamp. now if i queue into older content this way and the group is too new or too weak it becomes a nightmare, takes too much time, too frustrating.

in current "event" content top tier players will run the easy version of raids to get fast top tier marks. thats well and sweet if your in a group with a couple of players who are at end game with maxxed out artifacts and op gear. has anybody here ever had a smooth event raid filled with seven characters all bumped up to the minimum cr popping things like the "25x" feat. it becoms its own elite raid. stat clamping doesnt provide knowledge.

i guess i'm in favor of stat clamping. i know there are some instances i used to think were very fun that i avoid now because all i have to do is tap triangle to win.

if anything we should have some new versions of the old dailies. old content either "clamped" or beefed up to current top tier to provide players with a little variety to their grind. its not like this has never been done in the past (the outer and inner alerts, most of the leveling missions).

the concept of "source marks" is a good one...but the fact that source marks can also be used to generate quarks means we arent going to find ourselves in cases where we can earn large quantities of them for relatively fast and easy work.

It's not for new players? Then why is it available to them? This game promotes the highest new content, they want those new players to join in it so they give a free taste then offer the ability to reach it faster. It's not like other games that only allow the skip to work if you already reached a certain point or have a high level alt.

Also them spending a ton on the cr token then getting griefed by the scenario you asserted, that's bad because then new players won't stick around. So it doesn't hold up water. The new player isn't skipping and joining the highest difficulty he has access to, he's just running around and doing whatever is there. Not gaining marks for something he just ran will confuse and frustrate them.

1. But not everyone is at endgame. While the removal of Mark relevancy might not affect progression of endgame players it would DEFINITELY have an effect on those below the top tier, especially after they shifted some of the later episodes to use Source Marks as the currency now.

2. Most of my characters are around or at the CR 150 range. So given my playstyle (mainly solo content) that gives me Deep Desires, Science Spire, Oa Under Siege, Doomed Metro and Last Son of Krypton I can run to get Marks. A full set of gear (weapon, armor, jewelry, face and trinket/utility) will run a player about 156 Marks, so it can be a little challenging to get the Marks but rotating between characters and letting Marks build up via the Vault helps, and the amount of challenge (and as a result involvement) in the content fits.

Removing Mark relevancy means I could run the Tier 1-4 challenges, the Lightning Strikes CC missions, the Home Turf missions, the Iconic anomalies, the WOTL 1 weekly solos and probably the Gotham Wastelands regularly and get the Marks I need without once having to step foot in the content I'm actually rated for. And that's just the solo stuff, that doesn't even take into account the walk-ins for older duos, alerts and raids that I could handle on my own.

That's bad design. It's basically giving players an easy mode for getting Marks, and the devs have explicitly and repeatedly said they don't want players playing like that. And yes, players would still have to run the content and things aren't like they were in the CR differential days, but it's still a walk in the park compared to running the content a player is rated to run.

In theory, I should be one off the loudest voices for removing Mark relevancy given how I play. It'd open up a ton of sources for Marks and allow me to move my characters along faster. But I know I'd be able to circumvent the content I should be running in the process and possibly losing out on some good and/or important learning experiences. Never mind that when I hit the episodes with individual currency, it'd probably be a nasty little shock running content at my level instead of just doing the easy stuff.

As for Chill's statement about the lie, I don't think I'd go that far, but I would go so far as to call it an attempt at deflection. The content is there. If a player is at the appropriate CR to enter and has access via sub or episode purchase, they can run that content. Whether or not they choose to run it is up to them at that point.

Open up mark relevancy only for end game players. Solved. As long as your within ten cr's of end game. Grant mark relevancy. Just an example. Could be 20 cr's. Could be anything.

But this is about the endgame. If you're not, then again what is the issue? Progression continue working on for those at-episode, while as an endgame player you actually get proper mark-rewards off content currently out of relevancy.

But again as stated in parts conveniently cut out in your quote, you could have a TIER SYSTEM to this preventng one from having ALL content giving FULL rewards. The few reasons there is that could negatively impact giving players more marks can all be circumvented by something like this example and others, while giving more players more content they can run.

Believe me, when you're up there in actual high-end, you are very limited in content to run and when there's no mark reward you only keep running the same few pieces of content still within your relevancy and whatever still drops something of value, that you have already ran 500 times with no luck. So again, yes, more marks IS a viable reason to make people run more older content.

These two paragraphs are essentially contradictions. The fact you can run all that content you mentioned in that top paragraph means that other players in those instances (not the solo's obvs) will be getting easy mode as you are over geared for that content. You are around CR 150, so any group content you currently run has the potential for it to be easy mode with players who out-gear said content.

There is no way to enforce difficulty in any content that is not end-game. Mark relevancy is a time control not a difficulty regulator. It limits the speed you can progress without hitting a paywall, that is all, the easy mode claim is redundant.

I don't queue for old group content when I want to run it. I use a walk-in and go it alone, so if there isn't a walk-in I don't run it. Part of it is because I like to throw my characters into tough situations from time to time to see how well I can do (learned how to solo two of the Sub-Avatars that way LOL), but the bigger part is that I don't want to run the risk of spoiling someone's at-level run or experience.

That kind of tier system would essentially be playing favorites with endgame players, and even the appearance of playing favorites with one group/subset of players never goes over well. *shudders at remembering the arguments over Jedi players pre-nge*

I've always played with limited content to run. Choosing to go solo meant having only so many missions to work with at a given time, especially at the beginning of the game when you finished the leveling process. So at the risk of sounding snarky, welcome to my world, endgame players. LOL

If a player chooses not to run a certain piece of content, that's on them. They can have plenty of reasons why they don't run it (some valid, some may be silly, it varies) but they really don't have any excuse to complain when the content is there and available. It's why I don't throw a fit over my slower progression or lower Mark returns on content. I made that choice and I'm owning it.

How would it? It would benefit everyone but those who just started Tier 1, until they actually start reaching upper tiers. What it does is basically increasingly expanding upon the Relevancy Window rather than removing it completely. Not sure how you read into it, but I don't see it playing favorites with anyone really.

So why would such an idea be a bad one considering the way you play, for example? This means you'd have more solo's and small group-content actually giving you marks rather than being very limited on content you want to run when excluding full group-content.

Oh I definately feel that, but when you look at it from an end-game perspective you have years worth of content yet only a couple of episode actually being relevant to you. Something needs to be done about it and more Marks isn't the ultimate solution but rather PART of one, and there are various ways to implement it that circumvents the typical issues that have been brought up so far.

That was my bad, a misinterpretation on my part as far as the playing favorites. It sounded like you were only wanting it to apply to endgame players from the way I initially read it.

As for why it's bad? Well, beyond what I've already stated in other posts I've already played the living daylights out of that older content. LOL But believe it or not, I don't find it necessary. When they first put Mark relevancy in place, I was a little concerned that my progress might be slowed by it. But the price adjustments they made on gear and items that use Marks kept my pace pretty much where it was. The rate at which I purchased gear or styles didn't change because the devs apparently did the math to keep the change from being as harmful as it could have been. I might have been more in favor of the idea once I hit the space between New Genesis and AF3, but with the addition of the Doomed Metropolis content my pace is still remaining fairly consistent.

The extra Marks would be nice to have, but they aren't needed, and there really hasn't been a case made by others for those Marks being needed.

I can understand that end-game player perspective, but I don't agree with it. That content is there. It's not blocked off or forbidden to run it because a player doesn't get progression currency for running it. It doesn't disappear from the queue or the On Duty tab. If they want to run it, they should run it. If they don't want to run it, then don't run it.

And from a high-end player's perspective, you play the living daylight out of the most recent episodes of which also gets very old. Being able to fall back on other content, especially older content and still be able to get some form of instant gratification-type reward as simple as Source Marks wouldn't really break anything or be unfair to anyone yet still offer more incentive for high-end players and players in general to actually go back and play other pieces of content.

Oh, but they are. Lol there has been multiple cases but some people just keep conveniently ducking them for some reason. Must be some underlying agenda I have missed for people being so against players having more access to more content and marks, I don't know.

More marks in play means more incentive to run it = more players crowding otherwise dead content. This isn't just about some players getting more marks faster but also actually getting people back into content. Unlike you, there's dozens of other players through various tiers trying to run actual GROUP content with other PLAYERS. Pretty hard to do that when most of the Tiers is a Ghost town and only a couple of episodes is within a player's relevancy window.

Marks is again, for the umpteenth time, one way to do that. You don't see multiple threads and posts on this issue from dozens of players bringing up the same thing for the fun of it, it is being brought up for a reason.

Honest answer...

Each week I would spend about 2 hours to walk into every Raid that has a walk-in that can be solo'd at 273CR (there are a few that have mechanics which prevent solo'ing), destroy those raids in 5-10 minutes, get my Source marks, and be done. I would then use those marks to buy up the OP collections I am missing and once that was done I would horde marks for Qwark conversion or Catalyst Caches.

VERY rarely would I ever go out of my way to que into old content for Source Marks unless it was to help a friend or league mate. So in my case, I would be overly greedy with the lifting of marks relevancy. Would it increase my play time each week? Sure. Would I be helping the que times for older content? Absolutely not in most cases.

Exactly B, This game is promoting long term play with it's current model it should be doing everything it can to give the players more to do when they log in many of the opposing people here admitted with a straight face of the loop they do while playing. Then turn around and defend their stance saying source mark will break progression. A mark that's used for old gear will break the game that so out of line. I never been part of a game that has it's players really worried about people progressing at an ok pace through old gear levels in a game that lets you buy the option to jump straight to 210.