Update: Marks of Power

That is good finally you guys stop making pve so easy for players i remember people used to get full tier gear in just a week it used to be ridiculous ,but the thing i want to know is when is this dlc going to be released i just cant wait !!!

I completely agree here, Sore hit this on the nose. I often have small blocks of time to jump on and off the game between the family time, work, and misc. tasks. By blocking my ability to earn anything in solo marks or the duos it limits the progression possible. I'm an above average player in regards to time spend on the game (especially in the summer since I teach) but there are just days when those blocks of time are limited. This will hurt players like me and those who don't ignore their outside life 100% of the time. Just saying....

Agreed. If every DLC going forward is going to have its own unique mark, then the BEST gear must be the one we buy from the vendor.

I would just like to emphasis the idea of a cap again. A weekly cap would be better though. Around 100 a week? Basically a piece a week if expensive pieces or 2 for mid-priced pieces and multiple of accessories.

With this idea you can have as much content as you please in each DLC, a tier can last however long you want it to last and it also addresses speed issues with an insane amount of Replay Badges. This cap should only apply to current tier content though. Anything regarding Marks of Triumph should be uncapped to help players catch up easily.

I would propose this as the best overall solution as it doesn't change anything else about the system and keeps are content in the tier relevant.

SOE has said on numerous occasions that there will be no mark up-conversion. They'll likely add a means to convert Marks of Power to Marks of Fury, but not vice versa.

If I understand this and other posts correctly, there will be 4 DLC's per tier and each of the DLC's will have their own Marks with which to buy their specific gear. Once the next tier hits, all tier Marks for the previous tier will be converted to Marks of Triumph.

The jump in conversion rates for old Marks into Marks of Triumph is considerable:

Marks of War: 1: 125
Marks of Reality 1:625
Marks of Fury: 1:1,565

When each Tier of gear converts to Marks of Triumph, the amount of Marks of Triumph increases dramatically. The Tier 5 gear's most expensive item currently costs 37,500 MoT. Considering the jump in conversions (MoF converts at 2.504 times the amount MoR converts at) that should bring T6's most expensive item to 93,900 MoT. That's going to be a bit of a problem with our Mark of Triumph cap being 65,000.

Marks of Reality convert 5x what Marks of War convert for while Marks of Fury convert at only 2.504 more than the previous Mark converted for. This is a drop in increase of about half. Even with the next Tier converting at only half of the increase Marks of Fury had (roughly 1.25, to keep the math from getting out of control), that would put the highest price for Tier 7 at 117,375 Marks of Triumph (eventually). So what happens is you guys raise the MoT cap every time a Tier is converted to Marks of Triumph, you go ahead and remove the MoT cap or you come up with something else.

Why not look into using the same downward scaling technique currently used for the PVP sets? While the newest Tier of gear would cost its own Marks, when it is replaced by the next Tier it would cost what the previous Tier cost. For example, when Tier 6 converts to Marks of Triumph it would be priced at what the T5 gear is now while T5 would convert down T4 prices, and so on. Granted, you would eventually get to a point where lower Tiers would be easy to speed through as the prices would be so low, but it would still be time-consuming to run the content, buy, equip (and mod, in some cases) the gear in order to get to the next Tier so you could just do it all again.

Unless you want to go the ever-increasing route of MUD-flation, there will need to be a give on either the upper end or lower end of gear pricing and doing it on the upper end would trivialize the game for your most dedicated players while doing it on the lower end might just keep those newer players around a little longer (immediate gratification can do that ).

Just my 2cp.

Mepps, I usually agree with almost anything u guys do.. But I REALLY believe u should change amazon fury's marks to "power" marks... I believe u will be alienating the people who mostly play small content... And only having large content to earn MOP minimizes options... Who cares if someone earns the new gear running amazon fury content... I'm sure the vendors for the new gear will be somewhere in the new dlc so they still have to purchase it,..please just change all t6 content to MOP so we can use all t6 content to earn marks NAND not force people who hate raids do them...

See, I am completely against that. I don't think that luck should play any role in getting the best gear (omi ring, neck, and head aside). Gaining marks to
buy the best gear isn't taking the easy path. I don't understand that logic.

Either way will lead to the abuse of replay badges, let's be honest, but at least allowing us to buy the best gear takes luck out of the equation. Luck being a factor in my gear progression is, in my humble opinion, just 100% wrong.

Great Idea! And I agree, this Mark change could backfire spectacularly.....

We're saying it doesn't matter if there's a 'ton more content' for tier 6 if we have to manage 4 different sets of marks for it. First off, bringing back different marks for different content undermines the whole reason for taking out marks of distinction, momentum, krypton, war, and reality. Second, it shows how few options you have allowed yourself to choose from. The T4 DLCs moved away from forcing new marks by not having each successive DLC automatically render the previous DLCs' purchasable gear obsolete. T5 had CR caps on the vendors to ensure people had to get some of the earlier gear before getting the next set.
It seems to me that the more you change how people earn gear, making new systems while rendering older ones obsolete, the fewer options you're left with. You can't play one game with another game's rules, you shouldn't change rules mid-game, and you have yet to actually go into a 'different ballgame' with T6 in comparison to previous tiers.

Maybe things are being made too complicated by mixing up the DLC sets. There isn't any kind of continuity being provided by having parts of each story being released with such long breaks. Why not have each part of the DLCs offer the same level of gea? Part 1 of WotL, AF, and HoP gives low t6, part 2 for each gives mid t6, and part 3 gives high t6, all the while keeping each DLC series consistent with its own progression. Let people choose which series to go through rather than claim linearity where none exists.

Marks of Fury are currently converting at a half rate just like Marks of Reality were. At the end of the tier they should convert to 3125 Marks of Triumph and be right in line with other tiers. See testing threads around Amazon Fury Part 1 timeframe.

This thread has a lot of derp in it.

Mad about replays? It takes less then 10 days to get to the mark cap, why would you need to use them? If you are the kind of person to use them you have had your gear for a while now with nothing to really spend the marks on in the first place.

Mad about it not being communicated earlier? How many games do you play where developers even acknowledge your existence let alone tell you their plans. Feeling lied to? Get over yourself, you aren't that important.

Think AF1 is skipable? It was end tier and new content, people were going to play it either way. When t7 comes out all this stuff will be triumph and totally relevant again, more so if you like solos and duos.

The people in this thread complaining are the same people that always complain. Doesn't matter what they do. If you guys made good on your threats about quitting, the only consequences would be that the boards would be quieter.

All I've threatened was to cancel my sub, which I did before I even found out about this change. Now I know I made the right decision. Other games have teams that treat their customers better (I don't necessarily mean the teams treat customers better than the team for this game; I mean they treat customers better than your example of teams that do not tell customers anything). If you believe otherwise, you're not paying attention. Times are changing, and companies are realizing that interacting with customers via forums, twitter, etc. is better for their bottom line than keeping their customers in the dark. If you're playing games that keep you in the dark, you're playing the wrong games from my perspective.

It's all a matter of choice, of course. You can continue to play games with development teams that keep you in the dark, or more accurately, you can let them play games with you. Or you can join the new age of gaming with development teams that care enough about the player base to involve them in the evolution of their games. I choose the latter. If you choose the former, I respect that, but then I also question why you posted here to begin with.

Don't like the change. Keep it one type of mark per tier.

So, basically, since I have everything I can buy with MoF, it's pointless for me to waste any time running the AF content going forward. Got it.

Well unfortunately, if you pay attention to who posted a few months ago to now, you'd see lots of people did stop posting... and playing. I sure hope the boards never go quiet.

However, that's not the point. The main point is that you're missing the whole point. 1 mark per dlc means you have less options to get whatever gear they make you grind for. If someone doesn't like raids and alerts, they're forced to do them or just skip the dlc and wait for the next. They said they're doing this because of more future content, yet they're limiting your options to only a handful and without enough variety. Where are the solos/duos to earn marks of power?

You are also missing the point that this change reduces the shelf life of all future DLCs, not just for AF1. Instead of dlcs having a 3 months to 1 year replay value, they all have 3 months flat. People who only grind for top gear have 0 reason to keep running previous dlcs aside from feats. Instead of keeping that dlc tied to progression it cuts it off. People who don't like one end of the solo-raid spectrum have little reason to do specific dlcs except for feats.

You are right, there is a lot of derp in this thread, but there are also several sensible, insightful proposals that take into account the devs' wish to slow progression and the need for content variety in the grind for new gear.

Lots of us are not raging for the sake of rage, we understand the dev position, disagree respectfully and try to offer compromising solutions. And since we have a forum to express our opinion we are using it. Devs have shown to be caring, smart people and have responded possitively to an enormous amount of our suggestions. If devs didn't consider our opinion important they might as well shut the forums down.

I love this game, I have faith in the dev team, I understand and agree with their motives, but I don't agree with their solution. So I offered another, supported those solutions who i deemed fair and try to explain them in a respectful way.

Btw when did any player EVER complain about having TOO MUCH content to run and wishing we had less options. Its laughable. This idea is greed plan and simple. If you really want money...guess what? release styles,hair styles, weapon styles,auras, and other cosmic/fun items on mp , you know the stuff people been saying that they would pay a buttload for me. (myself included!)

Dont know why anyone would use dlc10 for a "gear bridge" between dlc9 and 11. If u have dlc9 u can get to 103cr and all the content for dlc11 requires 100cr. And u could skip 10 and run the alerts in 11 and get some gear b4 u jump in the raids. Idky any person would buy dlc10 after seeing this other than the 5 sp included with all the feats in dlc10. And that comes out to $2 a skill point. Yea thats a great value

Or they could give us the power based auras on the market that some of us have asked for over and over.

Spot on