New salvage for holding large amounts of Influence/Infamy

[Andreah]

I made this suggestion in the now closed thread by @CU_Krow about a way to allow for holding lots of Inf on a single character without needing to change the hard 2 Billion influence cap per character:

 

... add a new piece of special salvage, which is purchased at the merit Kiosk for inf at 1 Billion each, and which can be sold for 1 Billion Inf at the same Kiosk. These would be transferable only to characters on the same account. Or maybe even allow them to be traded/emailed to anyone -- that's how normal Inf works, after all. Each character could keep as many as 9,999 of these at one time. 

 

If this were done, we would no longer need to store inf on pages of special purpose characters, or float it in emails to ourselves, or in clever auction house bids.

 

I think this could be straightforward to implement and would have a low risk of creating problems.

 

There enough Merit Vendors around, and even in SG bases, that it would be easy to get to to stash inf into the new salvage token, A "Golden Merit", if you will, and convert back at need. It would eliminate the need to keep extra influence kiting in email, stashed on alts clogging the database and 'namespace', or worse, in auction bids that, as we saw with the recent Hamipocalypse, aren't sure to be secure.

 

I get it that many players won't understand this problem, but for those of us who run in-game organizations, love to farm, or work the market, or just play a great deal, this is a real annoyance, and would be a great QoL change.

 

 

 

[Greycat]

I almost want to say there should be a cost for it, but (as I recall, at least) there's not one for converting reward into hero merits or emps into... the other thing I can't remember the name of, so even if INF is treated differently with fees and such for other things, I think it'd be perfectly fair to have this just be a straightforward no-fee "storage salvage."

 

Not that I'm at the point of needing it on any characters - my inf tends to get spent on yet another alt. 🙂

Edited April 1, 2021 by Greycat

[Turric]

I think this is a good idea.

[Kyksie]

Not a bad idea, but 99.9% of people won't use it.

 

I mean, I played on Live from launch until close, and only at one point did one of my characters have 2 billion, and that was only because it was on my bucket list.

[Andreah]

8 hours ago, Kyksie said:

Not a bad idea, but 99.9% of people won't use it.

 

I mean, I played on Live from launch until close, and only at one point did one of my characters have 2 billion, and that was only because it was on my bucket list.

Well, I'm sure most wouldn't use it. I was on a league of about two dozen mixed levels getting ready to do an MSR, and I asked the question of how many had run into the Inf Cap on a character. Three replied they had, one had that much inf, but spread over several alts, most had not, and one did not know there was a cap. So in an unscientific poll (really the only kind we have), four people out of twenty four had run into the cap (myself included). I think it may be more like 10% of players who have run into this problem, not just 0.1%. Not a majority, but a significant number.

Edited April 1, 2021 by Andreah

[TemporalVileTerror]

Of special note; adding a cost to this (or a tax) as @Greycat suggested (and quickly and wisely reneged on) would be counter-productive to the specific design intention.

If you're losing Inf on buying one of these bank tokens, then why not just continue using the existing methods of market, email, and/or alts?

-Maybe- a one-time "convenience fee" that is account-wide, but even then, the most frugal will refuse to pay and just retain their current Inf-storage methods.

 

As far as quality of life improvements go, it's a good one!  It also helps standardize and clean up the UX when it comes to Inf, and they'd make a great way to hand out BIG PRIZES at contests or events.

[dangeraaron10]

I support this!  Even if I will likely never reach 2 billion myself.  A good QoL feature and, as mentioned above, would make for a killer contest prize!

 

I also agree that it doesn't need a tax or nobody would use it, as it would be a niche item to begin with.  Openly tradable too, since you can already do that with billions of raw inf.

[CU_Krow]

I 100% support this idea.

Pretty much for same reasons as shared by everyone else
-easier way of transfering funds
-good for handing out as prizes/events (specially useful for people who run in groups/events)
-even useful for solo players to trade between funds (bypasses clunky email system of typos/keepn tabs on alts/milking for inf)
 

I see no downside to this suggestion.

Edited April 1, 2021 by CU_Krow

[Yomo Kimyata]

10 hours ago, Andreah said:

or in clever auction house bids.

 

 

but, but, I *like* clever auction house bids!

 

My addition to this suggestion that would make it useful to a wider swath of the population is make the denomination an order of magnitude or two lower, so 100mm or even 10mm.  Then it could be useful to the rank and file as well as the top hat and monocle crowd.

[Ukase]

9 hours ago, Kyksie said:

Not a bad idea, but 99.9% of people won't use it.

 

I mean, I played on Live from launch until close, and only at one point did one of my characters have 2 billion, and that was only because it was on my bucket list.

I am quite certain more people would use this than you think. I'm guessing most people have about 10 billion or so at least. It's outside of my imagination how they couldn't, unless they just started. But, I may have an entirely unreasonable perspective. 

[Andreah]

4 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

My addition to this suggestion that would make it useful to a wider swath of the population is make the denomination an order of magnitude or two lower, so 100mm or even 10mm.  Then it could be useful to the rank and file as well as the top hat and monocle crowd.

How about:

 

• Bronze merits -- 10 Million each. Handy to drag and drop on newbies. Includes instructions on how to redeem it to inf at a Merit Vendor, and directs the player to have a look at the P2W vendor.
• Silver Merits -- 100 Million. Handy for costume contest rewards
• Gold Merits -- 1 Billion. 

[Andreah]

8 minutes ago, Ukase said:

I am quite certain more people would use this than you think. I'm guessing most people have about 10 billion or so at least. It's outside of my imagination how they couldn't, unless they just started. But, I may have an entirely unreasonable perspective. 

I don't know about most having that much at one time. I think it's fair a majority of frequent, long term, players have had that much, and spent most of it. 

 

I've also known a few players who don't really get the monetary system of the game, and are perpetually poor, despite playing often. Some of them spend most of their time levelling to 50 on 2XP, get intimidated by the incarnate system and veteran levels, and then immediately alt to another, and don't earn much inf along the way. Some spend most of their time roleplaying. A few even spend so much on the tailor over and over they don't have but a few millions. at any one time.

 

My perspective is unlike many others, too, and that's why I asked that league forming to get a wider view.

[Yomo Kimyata]

 

8 minutes ago, Andreah said:

How about:

 

• Bronze merits -- 10 Million each. Handy to drag and drop on newbies. Includes instructions on how to redeem it to inf at a Merit Vendor, and directs the player to have a look at the P2W vendor.
• Silver Merits -- 100 Million. Handy for costume contest rewards
• Gold Merits -- 1 Billion. 

 

I want unobtainium merits and a badge!

[Sneeze]

Even if 99% of people don't use it, it's still a good idea. 99% of people don't use Wentworth's, yet it's still there.

I like this idea and hope it does get implemented.

[Andreah]

Just now, Yomo Kimyata said:

I want unobtainium merits and a badge!

Trade 10 Gold Merits in for one badge -- "Platinum Card Holder"

Trade 100 Gold Merits in for another badge -- "The Titanium Card"

Trade 1000 Gold Merits in for another badge -- "The Impervium Card"

Trade 9,999 Gold Merits in for the final badge  -- "The Unobtanium Card"

 

(I am not serious about these. Badgers don't want virtually unobtainable badges, and I'm okay with that.)

 

Perhaps if these were temporary 30-day gold titles instead of badges, it might make sense, and be a fun, if a little ostentatious, influence sink. But that's not really on-topic here.

[The Trinket]

4 hours ago, Andreah said:

How about:

 

• Bronze merits -- 10 Million each. Handy to drag and drop on newbies. Includes instructions on how to redeem it to inf at a Merit Vendor, and directs the player to have a look at the P2W vendor.
• Silver Merits -- 100 Million. Handy for costume contest rewards
• Gold Merits -- 1 Billion. 

My name is Trinket and I approve this message. 

[SSR]

Pls make this happen! After selling my Hami-Os i have nowhere to store my money!  (jking :P) But I def would like more options for storage of Influence and maybe Enhancements/Recipes cause otherwise Im gonna start rolling out toons with the names of the Enhancement/recipes lol!

 

[srmalloy]

5 hours ago, Andreah said:

Perhaps if these were temporary 30-day gold titles instead of badges, it might make sense, and be a fun, if a little ostentatious, influence sink. But that's not really on-topic here.

If you're going to make them award temporary gold titles, then let repeating the qualification re-earn the title, as a more serious inf sink.

Edited April 1, 2021 by srmalloy

[Ukase]

In all seriousness - as I wasn't being entirely serious before - it's April 1, right? I think we have plenty of currencies. And as much as the idea of having a safe place to stash influence pleases me, I think we need worthwhile things to spend our influence on. 

Like a portable p2w for 10 Billion. 
A vanguard computer for the hvas, etc for 5 billion. 

 

[Andreah]

17 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

If you're going to make them award temporary gold titles, then let repeating the qualification re-earn the title, as a more serious inf sink.

Yes, of course those would repeat. The 30-day title would wear off unless you refreshed it.

[Andreah]

Just now, Ukase said:

In all seriousness - as I wasn't being entirely serious before - it's April 1, right? I think we have plenty of currencies. And as much as the idea of having a safe place to stash influence pleases me, I think we need worthwhile things to spend our influence on. 

Like a portable p2w for 10 Billion. 
A vanguard computer for the hvas, etc for 5 billion. 

 

I'm serious about having a new salvage Merit-type to store inf with.

 

I'm not serious, or much less serious about any special titles or such that could be bought with them. 

 

I agree having new things to buy with inf would be good. But I prefer time-limited consumables because they will remove more Influence over the long term than one-time only purchases. 

 

Maybe another thread specifically to discuss new inf-sink one-times and consumables would be good.

[Andreah]

I was thinking about the size of the inf-storage merit, and I think it needs to be at least 100 million, and certainly not only 10 million, if there's only one of them.

 

If it's only 10 million, then if I want to store a billion Inf, then I would need to buy 100 of these -- that's a lot of clicking.  Even at 100 Million each, it could be quite a lot of clicking to store large amount of influence wealth.

 

If there's three of them, 10M, 100M, and 1B; then they can be useful for other purposes as well as large scale wealth storage. The last and primary purpose really doesn't need to be accessible to the unwealthy, because the current 2 Billion inf cap takes care of them already. Anyone whose wealth is getting close to two billion can store it in amounts of one billion.

[Grouchybeast]

7 hours ago, Andreah said:

• Bronze merits -- 10 Million each. Handy to drag and drop on newbies. Includes instructions on how to redeem it to inf at a Merit Vendor, and directs the player to have a look at the P2W vendor.
• Silver Merits -- 100 Million. Handy for costume contest rewards
• Gold Merits -- 1 Billion. 

 

These would be really nifty, not least as a way of avoiding accidentally typoing inf away at the AH.  I know there are options already, but storing inf on other alts is tedious to move around, and storing too much in email makes me nervous.

[Kyksie]

10 hours ago, Sneeze said:

 99% of people don't use Wentworth's,

 

Wait whaaaaaat? I'm sure this isn't true.

[TemporalVileTerror]

I think @Sneeze meant the Wentworth/Market Truck locations in the public zones, as opposed to the /ah interface, @Kyksie.

It is a bit of an apple to oranges situation there, though, since those locations are holdovers to a time before the /ah became available to all players all the time.