Work In Progress What's Next For DCUO: New Plans For Future Episodes.

problem is when that change means punishing your progression.

how will mods not be a factor?

Maybe I overlooked it earlier but just to be sure. When we are over geared for content we will be unable to get marks but still will be able to get loot to finish styles? Or will more styles be added to vendors?

wow even less reasons to play, amazing.

EDIT: This was referring to Mods being useless for CR, might as well stop selling radars then.

You still get drops, just no marks

Well I think its safe to say if you havent got everything out of the rare style vendor by now or within 4 weeks, you might never complete those styles.

Problem is I don't and wont like it, restricting my character to only being rewarded for the new content is not fair, I pay for all content, why should I only be rewarded for the current one, which wont be that much either until 3 months later. If you like that's fine, but I just don't believe it is a fair system. But if only one person likes it, I guess that's enough for them.

well there goes one more reason to play outside the instances.

I debate in my head whether "not being rewarded" is a fair phrasing. There's still gear, plans, base items, cash, etc. "Not being rewarded marks" is more accurate and has a different taste to it.

There's a perk that symbols won't be in your way for any vendor gear. Right now 7 pieces of 8-man content reward MoF but only 3 help your progression. If we go back one DLC, only 4 pieces of 8-man content rewarded MoF and only 1 helped your progression.

If we started T7 with a small group DLC in the old model, you'd only have 1 piece of 8-man content rewarding end-tier marks at all. Everything you run today would all convert to MoT at once.

So it's worth thinking about the ebb and flow we'd be going through otherwise of how much content is relevant in terms of end-tier marks. That's especially true as we're trying to consider HOP raids as something we'd like relevant.

After thinking this through over night my only concern is the first month or 2 after this gets released. Assuming Halls of power part 2 gets released with all its content in it which will last us the next 3 months and then this new system starts in 4 months time. In that first month we will only have 1 new raid and duo and the month after a couple of alerts and solo. I understand come 3 month well have enough content to keep us busy but it feels like the may need to add a little something else on the first month of this to keep people occupied.

As has been stated many times, the amount of marks you can earn per month will be between 500-600. The amount of marks you need for gear will be around 200 per month. That leaves you with 300-400 extra marks per month. 20 will be needed for utility belt and 35 every 60 days for mainframe. You will have plenty of marks to get everything you need.

How?

When this system gets going you'll be able to get over 700 marks a month, You might spend 200 on gear month to month for everything out of the vendor(Thats assuming you don't get a single drop), so theres 500 marks left over to spend.

1. EverQuest 1 tried this business where you had to play "challenging content" to get equipment - it was a horrible mistake. You guys are literally going to destroy older content for new players, because they will have NO ONE to queue up with, because older and higher geared players will have NO reason to go back and play that content with them. It's a pain in the butt to get Kandaq raids as it is. This will put a nail in its coffin.
2. it seems I am right, you will be charging more for less - you are now pushing players out with monthly updates. You are pushing for a monthly subscription model. Didn't this game already try that?


It was nice while it lasted. Thanks for the ride.

I'm not sure if its been answered, but didn't see it in the 48 pages I went threw.

1. How will this change impact monthly boxes. Will we still get one on the older content minus the marks, will they be removed or will we have the same thing but with 1 mark of victory?
2. how will this impact marks of merit. will 1 mark of victory = 1 mark of merit or will 1 mark of victory = what the conversion rate is currently?

Just to be clear...

Them releasing a bit of a DLC monthly has nothing to do with this new system of how they reward people. If they take out how they reward people and keep in how they release the DLCs no one would complain, save for people like me who would point out that it's a nice try at trying to make people forget that full DLCs are supposed to be released monthly in the first place if we base it on what they said when the game was launched and never delivered on.

I am clarifying this because some people seem to be linking the two as you can't have one without the other and that is just nonsense.

The only change is that instead of 10 weeks between content to play that is "relevant" you have 2 weeks, but less content, and you can no longer get anything "relevant" from other content. It's a reduction to everyone, save for those people that burn throught the content so quickly because they are starving for something to do. And those who are more solo based and don't have leagues behind them get reduced content with the same overall wait.

In other words,
if you're in the "hardcore" who has a ready made team or good league and are willing to burn ressets you benefit.
If you're not, the further away from that you are the worse the changes are for you.

So let's say how things right now is a 0.
If you're a "hardcore" player the change is a +1 for you. This is like the 1% of player, probably something like 100 players.
Everyone else gets a -1 and for every component that don't have of "hardcore" you lose a point.
If you're a new player this doesn't affect until you run into a giant brick wall as soon as you hit level 30 since there will be noone playing that content or any "relevant" content to you. T1 and T2 are irrellevant to most people and what you have done is made them less relevant thus hard to get more people to play them.

Further more, it doesn't seem you're taking into account play time. T1 and T2 take longer and takes more skill than most of the later Tiers. The only thing that makes them faster is the fact that higher level people will play them. And these are actual challenging things in there where as in the later tiers the devs used "haha I has 1 hit KO so i win" difficulty rather than actual difficulty. So it doesn't even make sense on time / reward scale.

Hey here's another solution. Instead of keeping with this nonsensical tiered thing, change the reward to be based on time and difficulty factors of the individual stage. You should be able to do that given you have months to figure this out for so little content that can be burned through all of in 2 weeks. That way T1 is objectively harder and longer that that T5 one where you fight those various brainiacs you get a higher relative reward for doing it. And then even though I am against it, you could throw in a stat clamp on those lower levels and look people will think it's worth it to play them and you don't have people skipping content.

Time might factor into that. I'm not sure how many people could get a full 700 each month. If you're constrained, there is a time-efficiency factor to running a T6 duo, converting the marks to MoT, and using it to finish off T1 vendor styles you haven't finished. That's an extreme example because I don't think T1 styles are in the rare vendor but later ones are and scaling plays a factor in their time-efficiency (even if not to the extreme I cited).

Go Legendary. You'll pay nothing more or less.