Feedback Thread for Economy Overhaul on Test Server

[Donkyhotay]

Personally I would prefer to see greater distinction between the 4 alignments rather then have them blended together. I have posted this before but have long had a dream of seeing the alignment system be expanded to something more similar to what we have goldside. In goldside, chars have 2 alignments, their regular alignment and their original alignment. As they go through the game if you cross alignments you can do "undercover work" for your original alignment. My idea is that all chars, even primal chars, have something similar.

All chars would have a public alignment, that is how the world currently views the char based on their actions (pretty much like standard alignments work now). Characters would also have a true alignment that is how the player views their own character. Unlike goldside "original" alignments a characters true alignment can be shifted/changed in some way. Like goldside as you do tasks based on your public alignment, you have special options to do undercover work based on your true alignment. So a public villain / true hero can report back to the Freedom Phalanx on the Recluse's activities in the Rogue Isles for example, and vice versa of course. This would provide more roleplay opportunities for those interested in such stuff and also breathe a bit of new life into older content. This idea obviously would be a ton of work and definitely be a long term plan but it is something I would love to see.

However this idea would only work so long as the alignments remain separated, blended alignments wouldn't make sense if "anyone" can jump between Paragon City and the Rogue Isles without any concern for alignment. I have also suggested having certain items only be purchasable with specific merit types, such as different signature summons based on alignment, and more stuff like that could be done but I think balancing it could be hard. How do you figure the cost of being able to join red/blue teams with merit purchasing power? That is why the Cryptic devs didn't have vig/rog merits. Thinking about it I think the true solution is to keep the purchasing power of hero/vig/rog/vill merits equal (though slightly different in what they can buy, such as signature summons) but to have the *content* be different.

The advantage of vig/rog's is their ability to join cross alignment teams. That gives them access to more content then hero/vills have. Trying to balance their access to extra content by limiting purchasing power is not easy, if possible. However if we instead limit vig/rog's access to some other form of content, it would be easier to balance out. Suddenly you're not trying to decide between being able to play cross faction content vs. the purchasing power of the rewards, you're choosing between cross faction content vs. true alignment content. It would also make sense from a lore perspective, if you're a vig/rog that "plays both sides" then you're not going to be trusted enough to perform highly sensitive missions.

The problem with this idea though is deciding what content should be blocked from the vigs/rogs? It does become a tough choice that would require a lot of discussion I think. The options I can think of are TF's, SSA's, PvP zones, and "some" story missions. Each has their own pros and cons that I'll need some time to think about however this idea is becoming big enough I think I should probably create a new thread.

[Kismet]

Yeah, I cannot get behind the idea of further fracturing the content available to individual characters by actually limiting what Vigilantes and Rogues can participate in. I will reiterate, we're talking about a player base of no more than 700 individual accounts logging in (how few actual human players is that actually, I wonder, given the number of multi-boxers?). If I divide 700 by the 168 hours in a week we get 4.16 accounts logged in at any particular hour. So, it's possible to have all four characters online under this system of further separating the Alignments be ineligible to do one another's content.

Of course, the server population is not evenly spread around the globe; but, even being on the west coast of the US makes the regular I Trials (the only I Trials run on the server, as far as I know) difficult for anyone working a 9-5, especially if they have a commute. The Monday and Tuesday 6pm Pacific start times would be a no go for me if I had to drive. On the other end of things, if I log in on a weeknight at 10 pm my time the thin roster of players is often skeletal, since 'prime time' has passed for those in the Central Time Zone and further east. I can only imagine that it's more challenging for the European and Asian players.

Setting aside the idea of making four little kiddie pools for people to play in, the bulk of your idea is pie in the sky, as far as I'm concerned. I can't imagine the amount of labor required to rework all four alignments, as well as gating off content, and adding moral decision points (both public and private) to every affected mission. Just writing all the flavor text and dialog could be a months long project, let alone actually getting down to the brass tacks of coding such a thing.

I would also like to address your false assumption that being a Vigilante is necessarily any kind of advantage. Many times I log on there are fewer than 10 people on red-side. If I'm playing a Vigilante the only things I can initiate (as far as I know... and please... correct me if there are other things a Vig/Rog can initiate on the other side) are paper missions, tip mission, and AE missions. That's it... all of which I could just do blue-side.

For a Rogue, of course, the situation is better because of the general popularity of blue-side (a dynamic that is a hold-over from Live and is also the case on Homecoming, which has a MUCH larger player base than Rebirth does).

Lastly, I would suggest that your character having a hidden alignment of some kind is something you can imagine all on your own. I've invented all sorts of stories about odd things that played out in missions, things that struck me funny or weird, or from a comment someone else made. You have the power to make your character into a subversive, a patriot, or whatever you want without someone else's arbitrary system telling you what your character is. I'd also suggest that any such elaborate system of twin alignments may aid your role-playing, but it may also worsen other player's experiences. Every new system (and one as sweeping and complicated as you're proposing would certainly be) comes with all sorts of consequences to existing systems, often times of the unforeseen or unintentional variety. I see no way for people to avoid/ignore the changes you suggest, if they don't care for them.

My suggestion is simple and straight-forward and fits with the topic of what to do in regard to the Alignment Merits, and until someone tells me that my idea is a technical dead end (and I freely admit that it may well be), it's practical, it's simple, and anyone who doesn't want to participate in it can just keep their heroes blue-side and their villains red-side. Every weeknight Villains, Heroes, Rogues, and Vigilantes get together for I Trials and I've never seen anyone comment on the mixing of alignments being a problem. Same with ITF, TinPex, yadda, yadda, yadda.

If you just don't like people being able to easily play together, that's fine (personally, I think that's weird, but we all have different tastes).

However, presenting this incredibly elaborate system of twin alignments (I had to read it twice, and I'm still unsure exactly how it would function) as some sort of subjective 'perfect' that would prevent anything 'good' from happening in the years required to implement such a system is puzzling to me.

[ElBee]

I do want to state that this isn't going to be the last time alignments are going to be touched upon. They fell into the purview of this patch's economy rework by way of being a major method by which players acquire things. Alignments being intended to be a path for solo/low number teams to gain recipes or super packs. As of right now the main benefits of each alignment are
Hero/Villain - Better alignment powers, Better pricing on Hero/Villain Super packs, Access to slightly more stuff (have to double check if those made it in).
Vigilante/Rogue - Better access to group content and badges, better pricing on Vig/Rogue Super packs.

In the future, we hope to expand upon these a bit more. Not only with story arcs for each alignment, but also more clearly defining the benefits of each alignment. Personally, I feel being Pure Hero/Villian should offer additional power of some sort while being Vigilante/Rogue should give you more things you can do.

There will come a time when alignments are specifically focused upon. For now however, our focus has been on the economic impacts of them.

:edit: Also to address concerns about purples, were waiting until after Tuesday's trials on the Test Server to get a full picture.
(just a quick test from: @Draggynn)

[Draggynn]

I would also like to address your false assumption that being a Vigilante is necessarily any kind of advantage. Many times I log on there are fewer than 10 people on red-side. If I'm playing a Vigilante the only things I can initiate (as far as I know... and please... correct me if there are other things a Vig/Rog can initiate on the other side) are paper missions, tip mission, and AE missions. That's it... all of which I could just do blue-side.

I play a vigilante explicitly so I can help out on red side content (join in on an LRSF or other task force, team up with a low level villain) and see it as taking a hit because I lose out on the ability to get hero merits.  It's worth mentioning that vigilantes also have the ability to initiate villain side TFs (something I should probably do more of).  If alignments were unlocked from content, I would probably switch back to being a hero.  From a purely selfish perspective I like that rogues and vigilantes are getting more parity with purchasing power so that it feels like less of a hit going Vigilante.  This may actually help the imbalance that you see red side if more heroes are able to go vigilante without feeling like they're taking such a significant hit.  However, and I know we disagree here, I think for the system to have meaning there still needs to be some impact from making the decision.  Gating existing content is definitely not a beneficial way to make that adjustment though.  I've just been pondering what might be doable to feel significant without feeling necessary.

In the brainstorming category to see if anything sticks: If we were to entirely open up content, like Kismet suggests, what about giving heroes and villains a small buff when running content native to their side?  Initially I was thinking that you could give heroes and villains a buff when running TFs that are alignment locked and Rogues/Vigilantes a buff when running co-op TFs but that seems unfair since co-op TFS are so much more common at high levels.  So then I was thinking, give everyone a Kheldian style power, where heroes and villains get a buff for every hero or villain on their team.  And rogues and Vigilantes get a buff from everyone who's not a hero or villain on their team.  Obviously, this would have to be a tiny tiny power no not break things, and practicality may be non existent (although maybe the warmth of prometheus could be used to figure out how to do it?)  I especially like how thematic that feels.  I suggest you treat these as the family feud model of brainstorming (Category: "Things you find in the ocean", Answer: "Hot Dogs", Family: "Good Answer, Good Answer, I'm sure it'll be up there")

Hero/Villain - Better alignment powers, Better pricing on Hero/Villain Super packs, Access to slightly more stuff (have to double check if those made it in).

I had not notice before that there was any difference in what could be purchased, but I think that's the sort of modest benefit that would be useful in making the pure alignments not feel purely like an RP choice.

[Joshex]

1: very rare attuned enhancements are any Rare or Very Rare enhancement that has been attuned with an Enhancement catalyst.

2: There is a thread here for Inf Dump ideas, that is Inf Sinks. Any one please feel free to add or discuss. Devs feel free to gain inspiration from it.

3: On live I used to mish in DA a lot and would often get a purple once every 2 hours of +4 x8 farming. For me, that is the right speed. It's a reward for making a good build and continuing to play on it. Not to say squishies are a bad build, but I.M.E. tanks, brutes and scrappers are the money makers. heck throw MM's in there and a few specific Troller and Dom builds. Blaster? maybe -1 x8 if you really know what your goal is, and if a blaster can do it then anything can.

4: On live, I can confirm PVP recipes did in fact drop from normal enemies and missions, both in PVP zones and out. heck even on rebirth I've already gotten a few low level PVP recipes and haven't even done PVP at all. sadly they were not the good ones and there were 0 bidders so I dumped them at the shop. I know I could have crafted and converted out of set. but the level was kinda odd too not super low and not decently high.

[Kismet]

 

It's worth mentioning that vigilantes also have the ability to initiate villain side TFs (something I should probably do more of).

Thank you for pointing that out, Draggynn. I'd only ever tried speaking to the contacts I'd unlocked on the opposite side, only to have them say they couldn't work with me. It never occurred to me that the TFs (signature style missions that seem like the most heroic of the heroic or most villainous of the villainous) would be available for Vigs/Rogs to start on the other side.

While the ability to start TFs does add some value to Vigilantes, it's (imho) nowhere near the value of Alignment Merits on live.

I mention live versus test because I only ever thought of treating Heroes like how Vigilantes are treated now (and the same for red-side) because Draggynn and D'Spite were questioning what value being a hero or villain had under the proposed changes on test:

I don't have any suggestions for minor or moderate tweaks here, things are just too far out of alignment.

This needs to go back to the drawing board, and the first question answered should be "What gameplay reason would anyone have to stay a Hero / Villain now?"

Seeing the whole idea of rebalancing the way Merits are awarded potentially being thrown out was what inspired my solution of just opening up both sides and letting people play together with less hoop-jumping. So, thanks for the inspiration. I liked coming up with the idea, despite my doubts it'll ever happen.



Anyhow, in regard to the purple drop rate and changing vendor prices I can only suggest caution.

There are numerous levers being pulled, some of which will be difficult to un-pull if these changes go live (people will get upset when their toy allowance is reduced). There are so many changes suggested, some of which seem really dramatic (the reduction in price of purples combined with a vastly increased drop rate, alone, are concerning from an economic perspective), so that I don't feel that I can even intelligently comment on what should be adjusted and how.

I do feel like there is a vast chasm between players with established characters and new players to the server. Certainly, rare enhancement sets should require some work to collect and purples should always feel special, but everyone logged on to this game to feel like whatever their vision of a super-person is. Spending, potentially, months at end game playing alongside a platoon of 50+3's with perma-hasten and/or capped defenses and/or capped resistances, etc... would certainly make me feel a lot less super. Sure, some people have the patience to soldier through, but I suspect many people will (and have) become frustrated/discouraged and just go do something else.

To be clear, while I certainly won't turn away any drops or merits, I have enough material laying around on my various characters to take any fresh 50 and kit them out completely. I'm sure there are several other players who not only could do the same thing, but perhaps kit out a whole team of 8! I'm looking at this from the perspective of attracting and retaining quality players in hopes that someday, just maybe, I'll think going through the tip and alignment missions to become a Vigilante is actually worth surrendering something significant for.

I'd really like to see small changes, first. Change a pricing scheme (since the 30 emp purple rate didn't seem to make much of a splash) or modestly increase the drop rate or allow people to select purples from reward tables, but please don't try to change all of it at once. I understand that the test server is just that, a place to test things, but I for one would not like to see ALL of these changes to go live. It just seems like too much.

[Draggynn]

1: very rare attuned enhancements are any Rare or Very Rare enhancement that has been attuned with an Enhancement catalyst.

At least on Rebirth right now, enhancement catalysts can only be used on ATOs and the Winter Sets.  Very Rare attuned enhancements are a possible reward from super packs on test.  Right now they only differ from standard Purple enhancements in that they can't be boosted.

4: On live, I can confirm PVP recipes did in fact drop from normal enemies and missions, both in PVP zones and out. heck even on rebirth I've already gotten a few low level PVP recipes and haven't even done PVP at all.

Hmm, that would have been a bug on live and on Rebirth.  They are only intended to drop during PvP (paragon wiki provided as it's a snapshot from live at shutdown): https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/PvP_IO_Sets.  I know several of the other servers have made changes so that PvP recipes drop in other content, but that shouldn't be happening on Rebirth.