Regarding honors in PvM

[Mike]

It's been brought to my attention that honor players are currently unable to participate in fights in Nex instances. As such, it's time to once again consider what honors should or should not be able to do.

We are currently considering to allow honor players inside private instances, as long as there is no ironman in the instance. This would give the honor its use again that it lost after the Nex rework update.

Of course, if we are to do this, there are a few important things to consider. First and foremost, should the HP (and subsequently the droprates) scale with each honor account present? Because if so, it would mean the droprates would increase, and as explained in the Nex rework news post, the more players that are present, the fewer damage each player needs to do in order to get the same chance at a drop. So, if Nex' hitpoints and drop rates scales with honors present, that would give players with an honor quite an advantage, not only in terms of damage output, but also in terms of bonus drop rates.

On the other hand, if honors are not taken into account for Nex' hitpoint and drop rate scaling, then they will allow a player to get faster kills without higher drops (making the fights easier without added drops), which might be more balanced. However, as this will help players to get better highscores on the kill timers, this would allow for boss kill times that would otherwise not be possible.

Several things to consider and probably half a dozen things that I'm overlooking. I would like to receive some input and suggesions on this issue so that we can consider what to do with honors in PvM situations. We want the owners of honor accounts to have practical use for them, without making them OP and without causing harm or unfair advantages toward other players.

[Church]

Personally I'm alright with them being phased out of some of, or even most of, end game content. I don't know that I think they should be used for PvM content.

I know this isn't going to be a popular opinion.

[Raj]

Kill timers are essentially irrelevant because they’re not solo-locked anyway. It’s more just an account stat than a competitive thing because masses exist. Maybe we can add a Nex (solo) timer.

If the “honors can do it if there’s no ironmen” route is gone with, I think it should be made that an iron joining will kick honors. Like honors should have lower priority.

I’m more or less with Church though

[Nolan]

You make a good point about the kill timers.

I agree with what those noobs said though. I'm good with them not being allowed, that would be the easy solution, or if they are present the kill timer does not count and drop rates are not increased, perhaps even decreasing the odds of the regular accounts present in the instance as some people would use 3 honors for quicker kills.

[Pk gts]

they dont need to be allowed in nex but if they did u should choose the latter where they dont count to boss hp or drop rate

[Patel]

Honor always struck me as a strongly profit driven idea more than anything else. Admin powers (minus punishing) and restrictions for $80? A lot of folks said "sign me up" and abused the crap out of it early on. So a lot of adjustments have been made over the years which have neutered the rank (with good reason).

Given how weak the rank is now, I think it's fine to allow it in nex (and all sorts of other instances), but honors will negate any sort of kill time or drop rate modification as others suggest.

[Brant]

I'd be down for not allowing honor into any instances and only allowing them to be in the normal world. Perhaps we can think of something else for the honor rank to compensate. Honestly, an entire overhaul of honor rank is in order.

[Attack like]

Honors should 100% be allowed to be used at nex and scale the hp as well. I like the idea of not being able to use them if there is an ironman in the instance too.

I don't get the argument of it just makes nex afk, it literally becomes more click and focus intensive trying to operate multiple accounts there at the same time because if you look away for a couple seconds even with 1 account between phases youre more than likely going to die, and I think those who spend 45B on the status should be allowed to use it at a place they were once always able to.

In my opinion the best solution is
1) not allow honors to join instances with irons
2) scale nex's hp as it would if it were a normal player but not increase the droprate (idk how easy that is to code) and honestly increasing droprates wouldnt matter that much imo since players with alts can already do this.
3) honors should operate in nex the same as any other player in the regard that they have to enter before the fight starts and if they die they cannot teleport or re-enter the room until nex is dead again.

I feel like that is a strong balance between both sides in that it doesn't significantly devalue a long existing meta and rank but it also inherently comes with the trade off of requiring more focus, which I think is fair.
If a player wants the benefit of faster kill times with an honor they're going to have to accept that speeds up kills slightly but also takes more focus.

Also tbh does anyone really care about group kill times at nex anyways? You can already have however many people you want in the instance and if they have a comped alt they can use it aswell, which is faster than a comped acc + an honor anyways, so I think the argument of honors would make kill timers impossible to achieve for players without them doesnt make much since considering 2 comped players should theoretically always be faster than a solo+an honor.

[The underdog]

Should just act the same as bringing any other regular account I suppose. Not allowed with irons indeed but I am already on the fence with irons in group activities ij the first place. What's the difference for an Ironman between a honor attending or a main attending with an Ironman?

[Mike]

Also tbh does anyone really care about group kill times at nex anyways? You can already have however many people you want in the instance and if they have a comped alt they can use it aswell, which is faster than a comped acc + an honor anyways, so I think the argument of honors would make kill timers impossible to achieve for players without them doesnt make much since considering 2 comped players should theoretically always be faster than a solo+an honor.

Good point.

Should just act the same as bringing any other regular account I suppose. Not allowed with irons indeed but I am already on the fence with irons in group activities ij the first place. What's the difference for an Ironman between a honor attending or a main attending with an Ironman?

I sometimes ask myself the same thing. Maybe we don't even need to add restrictions for honors at all. But we'll leave that up to the community to decide.


Great input, please keep it coming. I want to gather as many opinions as possible so that we can pour it into a proper poll where the community gets to help us decide what we want to be doing with honors in the long term.
Also one thing we should definitely think about: private versus public instances. In a private instance, the only thing an honor account can do is help you with your kill (you invited them after all). In a public instance, honors might be more disruptive for other players if they are allowed. As such, should there be restrictions for honors in public instances that don't apply to private instances?