LOWER CONTENT

Is there any logic to penalizing people from receiving source marks/prestige with higher cr ?

Genuine question.

Especially with cr boosts being an option?

I've always been legendary but for a while now I feel like I'm not getting what I am paying for due to restrictive cr lock outs from older content.

I play on ps and pc and recently started new account on xbox...

I need a lot of feats from certain on duty content, but, nobody is running any lower content. Unless you get lucky or have people willing to queue in with you (which isn't often).

So, is there any logic to only being able to farm the 3 (or so tiers of your cr) ?

Legendary receives access to all dlc's but not the marks/prestige etc associated. Basically 75-80% of the game is redundant at the moment.

To be more accurate we have a total of 37 raids but you only get rewards from 3, so basically 92% of current in game raids are restricted.

Yeah and it grows in % every new episode.

<bump> would be grateful for a dev response/explanation

Yes, there is logic to not having early content give rewards that are just as useful later in the game. It's basic game design. Have you ever played an RPG where at end game you could go back to the starting area, one shot opponents, and get experience/cash in significant enough amounts from each fight to be worth the time/effort? I know I sure haven't. Typically you would get something like 10 exp when you need 1 billion for your next level, or 12 cash when you need millions for your next piece of gear.

This can be accomplished several different ways in game design, and in the past 10 years DCUO has used a few different versions when it comes to marks.

• Originally there were different marks per tier. So only the content in your current tier rewarded relevant currency, while older instances weren't relevant for currency (but were still run for collections/gear sets/feats)
  • This lead to an extremely long, constantly growing currency list. This wasn't terrible, but there were complaints and room for improvement.
• Then only the most recent tier had a unique currency, while lower tiers had the same currency which was given in different amounts each tier (T1 raids gave 10, T2 raids gave 50, T3 gave 250, T4 gave 1250, etc). Prices for the different tiers also increased by the same scale (if T1 weapons cost 90, T2 cost 450, T3 cost 2250, T4 cost 11250, etc). So older instances weren't useful at all for for the newest tier. Also, before getting to the unique currency, older instances weren't terribly useful towards getting the gear you need. I've left out the details of how multiple episodes in the current tier were handled, but you also weren't able to just run the first episode in the tier and buy the gear from the last episode in the tier.
  • This was a good method, but ran into technical issues in later tiers. Basically, in later tiers they weren't able to store the equivalent number of marks you would need for certain items.
• This is when we went to one currency for all tiers, with CR relevancy. Part of the reason for relevancy was so that when a new episode was released, you couldn't just walk up to the vendor and buy all the new gear on day one without entering the new content. I think it was also mentioned at the time that most people stuck to the most recent episodes anyway, so the change didn't really impact most of the player base (based on recorded player behavior).
  • The biggest issue with this one was that it was impossible for players to finish off feats for older episodes. Players were left with a choice of getting the new gear or buying older gear to finish off feats. The older tier gear was reduced in price, but it was still a choice that had to be made.
• That lead to our current situation, where CR relevancy remains, but the latest episodes have a unique currency again. Before artifacts, there was little use for the "universal" currency in the most recent episodes, and this is still the case (outside of catalyst purchases for artifacts). If you had finished off the gear from all previous episodes, you earned marks much faster than you needed them.

The closest we've ever been to "all instances provide useful amounts of currency" is that second one, but as you can see there was a steep drop off in "usefulness" of the currency earned the farther you went back.
The biggest issue facing the current system is the constant "need" for artifact catalysts. I won't go into great detail on this, but basically since there isn't a reliable way to either prevent the loss of catalysts on failed breakthroughs, or increase the success rate of a breakthrough attempt in game, players are left with the "need" to continually buy catalysts if they don't purchase seals from the marketplace (or get one from one of the few Time Capsules where they can drop).
As someone else pointed out, there are currently 37 raids. If they all gave full Source Marks, that would be 370 a week you could earn just from raids. If you run everything in the CR relevant episodes currently, you would have ~400 Source Marks a week already. If we only included Amazon Fury 3 and newer, you could earn ~2400 a week if CR relevancy was removed. There just isn't enough to buy in game for Source Marks to warrant this outside of converting to quarks (which primarily come from opening Time Capsules so this would eat into revenue).
Prestige is slightly different, but is meant to be earned by a league. If full prestige was available from all instances, one person could max out league prestige in a day. That would negate one of the diving factors to create and maintain a league. Honestly though, you can always take the gear drop and donate that for prestige, since the piece has a static amount of prestige that isn't determined by your CR. So one person can still make a huge dent in prestige.

Actually it is 5 raids, 3 alerts, 2 solos, and a duo. Plus 3 open worlds. Than marks will convert to source marks so people should still be running Metal 2 content if they are that worried about source marks

Metal Part 2 relevancy stops at 308. Lots of people are above that.

To add on what StealthBlue was saying, even though they increased the Mark cap (which some might say would alleviate the tech issue in the second version mentioned) we'd most likely be looking at an increase in price of Mark items if they were to do away with CR relevancy for Marks. And that would likely include Artifact Catalysts.

From all appearances, the devs have a formula they follow in terms of time played and currency earned. The amount of time I would spend playing content before CR relevancy stayed pretty much the same after they put it into place. I was running less content than I was before relevancy but still keeping the same approximate pace in getting gear for my characters.

And just as a perspective check, imagine being around CR 201 and having to run as much content up to that point (even if you just stuck to solo stuff) as you could on a regular basis to earn the currency needed for gear purchases.

New players/new accounts need a load of source marks. Especially if they have used a cr skip.

Most people skipped cr because nobody is running lower content.

If people have played an account for a long time then they probably won't need as many source marks. (Maybe another conversion for the long time players like the quarks exchange)

I thought prestige was capped? Hard and soft cap?

If they removed the cr lockout for source marks, would it really be a bad thing?

Some content offers reward boxes, maybe add choice rewards, and keep updating choices and have source marks as a choice (don't shoot me down guys, just trying to discuss a way to make older content more relevant)

Some people have all the feats/styles/collections/briefings/investigations etc and not everyone wants to run lower content unless for nostalgia etc but NOBODY wants to do anything for nothing.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to suggest in any way I'm not willing to grind.

I embrace the grind but a lot of instances don't have a tp (openworld i grind and tp instances I grind) it's the instances that can only be entered through on duty or some instances that require 3 to 4 people to do certain mechanics like cogs/consoles etc.

What Hurricane is saying is you can farm the content that still rewards episode specific currency and convert those into Source Marks later on. The episode specific currency doesn't have a CR relevancy gate.

If they removed CR lockout for source marks it would be a bad thing....here's how:

For starters, the fact that we earn our SMs from the top three episodes means we earn a pre-determined amount, and if we want more after running all available content there are two options for more. You can buy them in the marketplace (something I would personally not recommend to anyone) or you can buy replay badges and re-run the content to earn more of everything. You also have the option of exercising patience and dealing with the slowed grind to earn source marks. The company either gets your cash or they get you playing regularly thereby populating the game.

Stealthblue and willflynne also mentioned it, but it bears re-iterating... if restrictions are lifted, they will adjust prices for any and all items costing Source Mark. Right now Artifact catalysts cost 7/10/15 and the prices stay the same with every new episode, take away the restrictions with the amount of marks you can potentially earn every week, the costs would hit triple digits. Gear cost would also go back to ridiculous numbers. You might think "they don't have to raise prices", but they do and we all know they would.

As I said, outside of artifacts (which you don't need to continually change our have at max level to be effective), there is no real use for source marks within the newest episodes. If you are end game cr and run all relevant content you can earn and 400 sleeve marks a week, which can be used to go purchase older vendor gear for feats. There is NO need for the ability to earn 2400+ source marks a week. If you are new to the game or returning after a break, it's going to (and should) take some effort and time to catch up on the things you missed.

I've already addressed the negative affect of completely removing cr relevancy, but I guess it bares repeating. If you could earn 2400+ source marks a week and have nothing else to use it on (artifacts are where you want and you have all older styles), the only thing you could spend on is converting then to quarks. So you'd get 600+ quarks a week, meaning the items in the quark vendors become easily obtained without spending money. As a reminder, quarks typically come from Time Capsules (opened using either the free stabilizers or ones purchased from the marketplace), but we do more have the option of converting source marks to quarks as well. If you can earn significant numbers in game, that takes away from potential purchases, meaning the devs works have to look elsewhere to make money (or potentially have to cut back on what they produce sure to lack of funding).

The alternative/stop gap works be to increase source marks prices across the board (including the quark conversion rate). As mentioned by Khal, this would have to be updated with every episode and it's no small task to update the source mark price of every single item in game every 3 months. They could also remove the conversion to quarks, so there is no impact to money coming into the game.

Prestige does have soft and hard caps, but my point remains. Prestige is something a league is supposed to work on together. Is not meant for one person to be able to reach the soft and/or hard cap in a single day without resetting any content, which is what could happen if you got full prestige from everything.

You may not be aware, but for all content below relevancy you do have a chance at source marks at each boss. They can drop directly, or be a loot choice, with raids having a guaranteed choice of a source mark at each boss. Some of the recent raids that has unique currencies removed are currently missing this guaranteed choice, that is a bug though and needs to be reported. I've noticed it on a few raids, but I always forget to document it with a photo of the loot picker to submit as a bug report, and I don't play those older raids enough so see the issue regularly.

If you haven't finished the drop styles or feats in an instance, you aren't running the insurance for nothing. Also, there is already at least a chance at source marks in older instances (though it is admittedly low in solos, duos, and alerts). Again, with very little to spend source marks on, giving full source marks is not really an incentive for players that have been around for a while to go back to all older instances on a regular basis. The most that would happen would be a raid or two when they need catalysts.

What they could do instead is update an existing, somewhat abandoned system in game. If you haven't noticed, different low tier missions in the on duty menu have a star next to them. Those used to give extra rewards (and may still if you are within relevancy). If that was updated so that every day any solo, duo, alert and every week any raid that no longer rewards unique currency could be chosen as random, and those individual instances gave full source marks (and possibly prestige), you would have a decent compromise. The game wouldn't be over flooded with ways to earn (resolving the issues mentioned earlier), and it would actually focus the player base so that people can get into those instances. This isn't a new idea, someone else mentioned it before, but it is worth repeating and is probably the best compromise.

CR Relevancy is solely designed so you can't earn marks by using easy content. It was made specifically for monthly content that had only one currency. So all new gear costs the same marks as previous gear. They also capped the marks at 100 to prevent hoarding.

Now we have dlc specific currency and CR requirements for high gear, there is no reason to prevent players from getting marks from older content. Especially when lower content is a ghost town and quite a number of things cost this currency.

I'm not advocating opening up the whole thing, but it should be revamped to be more forgiving to players.

Think about it like this: before CR relevancy, a piece of chest armor from a T5 vendor would cost 37,500 Marks.

And no, that's not a typo or exaggeration. I really wish it was because those escalating costs could end up being pretty demoralizing.

And as a side note, if a player decides to use a CR skip they are accepting both the good and bad that comes with it, including a reduced range of content to earn Marks.

They were also supposed to adjust lower tier prices accordingly on a regular basis. They did it twice, but we got monthly content before another happened.

Really, your second point is kind of an issue the devs created. They give you gear, a level 80 artifact, and exos. Nothing else. Kind of like here's some clothes, now have fun finding a job and house. LoL

But in any event, costs are really bad for new players and lower content doesn't pop. They do need to do something. The cr skip helps bring them up to join, but unfortunately it's not enough.

Gotta disagree. The CR skip gives a player exactly what it says, nothing more and nothing less. Anything else falls on the player to take care of. Marks, feats not awarded with the skip, etc.

Okay, but I wasn't asking for something with the it. I'm talking about foundation related issues. Tossing you up then saying okay you are good, is the issue.

Even if they never consider redoing cr relevancy/lockouts etc they still aren't solving anything for the lower content in game.

I guess that was my main reason for starting the post was for incentive toward more people considering lower content runs.

I still don't fully agree with cr relevancy/lockouts. I think there should be maybe a redesign on how it works.

I used cr skips on my new xbox account because nobody is running the lower content. That's the only reason for using the skips.

I know pretty much all the feats and how to achieve them for a good 30 episodes but a lot can't be achieved without people running it.

Like i said earlier instances with tp and open world I can grind no problem. But it's the on duty stuff that's the problem.

I just think cr relevancy doesn't help with the incentive to run lower content.

Cr relevant rewards would be cool if they could find a balance between the drops of what people want/need.

But nobody should be locked out of rewards entirely for being a higher cr. The game has plenty of ways to gear up and get to end game cr but don't think about lower content.

Ps... I'M NOT SUGGESTING CR CLAMPING!!!!! NO WAY!!!!!

I do agree with a lot of what you say.

I agree completely that there should be a compromise.