So I've been going over the proposed economy changes based on the sheet Bee posted. I can tell there's been a lot of work and number crunching done on this already (honestly I'm quite impressed) assuming much of this has been reviewed gone over "behind the closed doors" but I want to go over this a bit. I'm only going to focus on the reward and alignment merits, not the incarnate stuff, since I'm more familiar with them.
One thing to note first is the formula for the original awards which according to the wiki is: Task Forces give an average of 1 merit every 3 minutes of average time (20 merits an hour), Trials give an average of 1 merit every 2.5 minutes (24 merits an hour), and Story Arcs give an average of 1 merit every 7.5 minutes (8 merits an hour).
With the current ratio using purps (what most people want), an alignment merit will be worth about 50 reward merits (400 / 8 = 50). That means a task force earns an "alignment merit" every 150 minutes, or 2.5 hours. I estimate a decent tips team will complete a full alignment + morality run in about 3 hours so this is in a good place as it means the equivalent of an average of 1 merit every 4 minutes (15 merits per hour).
These numbers are good, it means a person jumping in to do a single TF or tips run per night will get a purple about once per week which I think is good. That means even someone playing super casually who only does this twice a week will still get a purple per month even without paragon rewards.
Which bring me to my biggest question with this all this is... why are we keeping alignment merits? The only reasons for having multiple currencies in a video game is to have special items that can only be purchased by one of the currencies but not the other. This is the reason for alignment merits in the first place back on live. You *had* to grind alignment merits to get purps as you could not spend regular merits for them. However with this proposed change that is no longer the case. The same items that can be bought with alignment merits can be bought for reward merits. There's even a consistent conversion between the 2 currencies. Keeping the currencies split doesn't really do anything besides encourage people to use the more efficient of the 2, in this case the reward merits, since you can obtain them faster and you never lose them if you change alignment.
My proposal now is to eliminate all alignment merits and when a player confirms their alignment, whether hero, vig, rog, or vil they get 50 reward merits. That puts keeps the reward equivalent in reward merits as what is proposed in alignment merits. It also takes out what is now an obsolete and irrelevant currency that isn't quite as good as the current reward merits are.
Edit: This is assuming rewards remain as posted. If something is changed so that certain items can only be purchased via alignment merits that are not available from reward merits then there becomes a reason to keep alignment merits.
