Update: Marks of Power

How about as a compromise since it seems that this idea is going to go ahead no matter you put in a vendor for 1 WEEK ONLY allowing people to trade 2 marks of fury for 1 mark of power, This will maybe help people ease into this new marks simpler but keeping people who grinded all marks of fury happy somewhat.

I think you need to be careful how to interpret data saying that duos or alerts are the most popular content (Spytle mentioned something similar in another thread.).
A typical week is 5 days working then 2 days off. So that would imply working is more 'popular' than time off, to use the same logic.
- We know you all work much harder than that on DCUO though!

Raids have a weekly lockout while alerts & duos are daily.
So in a given tier with say 2 raids, 2 alerts and 2 duos all awarding the same mark, I can run 2 raids per week while receiving loot & marks, ignoring replays, but 14 alerts & duos. So of course it's going to appear in a database that alerts and duos are more popular.
That does not mean they are what players prefer.

Personally, I much prefer raids for the strategy and role specialization that's required. While alerts are becoming more a case of eliminating as many roles as possible and stacking DPS (On that subject, it would be great if you would eliminate the roleless buff for top-tier content. It could be re-introduced some time later when fewer people are running the content to help those queuing solo, but there should not be a 'bonus' to eliminating roles at the highest tier.)

Even if raids did reset daily (I know it will never happen), alerts and duos for a given tier/mark would likely still be run more often, due to the greater ease in finding a group and the lower difficulty of the content. But I would view a raid as something to look forward to while alerts/duos are more a chore.


On the topic in question in this thread, I would probably prefer if the top tier marks were, initially, only awarded from the top tier raids,
just as it was for several previous tiers. A subsequent DLC would then allow solo/small-content players to catch up.
FOS1/2/3 were the only way to achieve T3 marks, until Battle for Earth brought in an alert. (Lightning Strikes also aided gear progression for those who could not or did not want to complete the raids.)
Similarly, GOT and PBG were initially the only way to achieve T4 marks, before subsequent DLCs awarded them for alert, duo & solo content.

I'm aware that it's not practical to revert to this scheme for this upcoming DLC, since T5 and the T6 content to date have allowed those who do not raid access to top tier gear. But I think it is a reasonable step that the next DLC will only give marks for 8 and 4 player content. It is an MMO after all, with the emphasis on the middle 'M'.
The relative award of marks for raids an alerts may need tweaking, to maximize the reward from running the raids. Having the best gear as drops from the raid is certainly one reward, but I think it would be good if a person who ran the raids weekly but could not do alerts every single day would accumulate marks at a faster rate than someone who just ran alerts.

Yea the time it takes to create the instance, such as artwork and layout that I agree, but cmon if there were actual real MMO raid mechanics in our raids, the time to develop a raid compared to a duo would be several days of work, but designing the instance would be the same.

I'm going to go with it takes more time to build the instance than the mechanics included in the instance. So in comparison, a raid and a duo equal the same time to build.

Yea exactly they take the same amount of time to build visually, but I would say once you add mechanics( you know objectives, boss does this at x% of health) raid takes longer, but designing, mapping is the same time.

How can anyone say anb is harder than paradox? The devs have even admitted that isnt true. My league beat anb the very 1rst day 3 times. Took us alot longer to finish dox. Anb is NOT harder than paradox. This is fact and not opinion. The devs stated the difficulty of anb was lower than paradox even after paradox was nerfed.

I'm not sure if that actually does make a difference. Bosses in a Duo can have the same mechanics as the bosses in the Raid. Take BFTE bottle duos. Each of the bosses have mechanics that were utilized in the raid bosses. It's probably all predefined and plug in. The hardest part would be the order and amount plugged in. Building the instance itself is where there can be a lot of problems arising.

Remember, when it comes to number raising of npc cr, you are looking at a scale that is increased. Example would be the Satyr trio in TD when it was first on test. They each had the same amount of health as an alert boss. This was due to a scaling of the numbers when they were plugged in. While the design of the map is just as complex as one of the duos from DLC10.

EDIT: I am by no means saying it is really easy to build content. The devs take a lot of time to build them all. I'm just saying they can be equal in the regards of labor.

now that no one wants to run an alert with a healer, this will make it extremely hard for us to get new gear....

No you can just get dps gear, problem solved. The age of the healer is dying. Its either you need 1 or none in content nowadays.

The funniest thing about the devs response is that they say oh well solos are hardly played compared to raids BUT that's because they have only given us Iconic Anamolies as Solo instances since Tier 3 and I literally do not know one player that does not hate the Iconic Anamolies....

Clearly no one is going to play solo instances when you don't even let us play as ourselves in the solos....smh really devs?

And you devs can't say the open world stuff isn't done as much as raids because I see and talk to so many players that run the open world solos so yeah...

I'm not one to ask for compensation ever and I don't like when people ask...

But te main reason people are upset is cause a few of them have spent replays to get a few pieces the say the dlc drops... Obviously thus us the reason you guys are changing thus structure and I gave to agree thus needed to be done....

But I can't help but feel for those like feenix who spent something he purchased on cause a dev confirmed mof would be used in hop and everyone assumed he meant for gear since the question was brought up and answered in the showcase of hopps gear set........

I don't ask for compensation but i think you could make some folks happy if younguys do a 50% player appreciation sale for a few days shortly after halls of power drops..... As ale that doesn't hinder the 50% off sales that happens around Christmas shopping time....

This would be a good way for soe to make some money and to make the players feel better especially if the sale us called player appreciation.....

Just my two cents

I don't hate the iconic solos, I like them a lot actually.

The devs were talking about what they're seeing from their data when it comes the open world stuff not being done as much.

(For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume a number) Seeing and/or speaking with five or so players who are running the dailies whenever you're logged in, isn't exactly disproving what they're seeing from the data.

That's what she said....lol

It's definitely good for the community to have less healers out there! it'll be sweet when they're all gone

Sadly the unemployment rate for healers in dcuo is higher than dps, so better for them to go dps and get work than go healer and end up quitting the game, from a PS perspective, it might be different on pc

There are so many alternative actions that could have been taken that would have had the intended effect. The only logical reason I can think of that this particular coarse of action was chosen...

limiting the number of available marks before lockouts will require the Speed Racers to use a higher volume of Replay Badges.

Yep, that is the aim for this, to slow down progression and got more money. It is pretty obvious, they don't really care about progression speed, except for the fact that it effects there replay sales

this is not why most of us are upset it's because were limited to run the new dlc over and over to progress and people who like solos duos that don't have time to run alerts and raids can't even play AF to get some marks for the new gear in HOP.
WE CAN'T EVEN MIX AND MATCH WHAT WE WANT TO RUN ANYMORE WITH THIS BS IDEA

Yeah and you are pretty much the only DC player that prefers the iconic Anamolies over running a solo on their toon....

If they made solo instances that dropped gear, they would be run the same if not more then the raids...bottom line

Also I am a co leader of a league of 59 members and almost every single person runs the open world solos

So is the introduction of Marks of Power a done deal or are you still “discussing” this with the community?