A controversial topic: is it time to make all items free?

[Yomo Kimyata]

This is a serious question, and I'm asking it in this forum rather than Suggestions since I'd like reasoned plusses and minuses rather than fire.  Also, I'm not sure a topic has ever been locked on this subforum!

 

The thing is, it's easy to make inf, but a lot of people just don't want to.  And I understand that in concept.  And those of us who know how and enjoy it, well, there's really no point any more once you can buy everything you want instantly for hundreds of characters.

 

What do you see as plusses and minuses if the devs, for example, made items available as they currently do on Beta?

 

And ... fight!

[Krimson]

I agree with you. Having an economy is a useless time sync and a built-in impediment to creating the character you like. However, that probably won't change, as part of the design philosophy is the idea that players have to waste time for the game to justify its existence. If you could just make what you like when you like, other players would get bent out of shape because "they worked hard to get their toon to where they are", meaning they sunk dozens of hours into it, repeating the same actions over and over ad nauseum.

[Glacier Peak]

Minus(?): It already exists on beta so anyone can enjoy it.

 

Plus: Getting the best rate of return on effort for the highest rewarding content is naturally harder for shards with less players, if not impossible. If everything was free then player count becomes moot since there would be no need to generate anything for the market. 

[Krimson]

Farming would be cut in half easily because no one would need INF anymore. 

[MonteCarla]

 Very good question!

 

I'm stinking rich, thanks to learning the art of converter-roulette. I never buy converters, but run task forces etc to get my merits. And I play a slightly different game from the average player.
I barely know what being mezzed is thanks to the START vendor buffs I wear constantly. I have whatever I want in terms of set items on every character I make. Do I want 5 LotG +Recharges and both ATIO sets? Snap my fingers and make it so!
I've never believed that my experience of this lifestyle is enhanced by other people not having it, so yeah, why shouldn't we make everything free?  

Plusses:
People still struggle with affording basic gear, like SO's. The influence curve for them remains really badly balanced, so a new player with no specialist knowledge will find levelling up ruined by their hard-won enhancements going off. Suddenly when you get to 40, you have more inf than you need. Making these free would fix that bad experience.

 

Minuses:

I really enjoyed figuring out the auction house, and seeing theory become practice, and millions roll in when I worked out the way to get rich.

It started with merits->converters->list at 1 inf to get 1,000,000 per 5 merits, and then I advanced on to using those merits to craft up batches of common recipes and flip them to rares. Working out the best sets for doing this was a lot of fun, and changed as I went. Memorising which enhancements sell well was fun. Knowing I wasn't just flipping and price-gouging, but making things my fellow players needed was awesome.

This would have been a lot less fun if everything was free. (I also enjoy showing other players how to make a few mill from their merits if they're struggling)

I'd hate to take that path away from anyone.

Going to extremes: if we gave everyone the P2W buffs for free, then why not just make those buffs innate, like Fitness? Everyone gets Mag 4 mez protection, +5% Defence and +7.5% Resistance and so on. Everyone gets a Team Transporter. Probably not a great idea.

 

Games work on a desire-satiation cycle. 

I need to defeat that enemy. Feels good to work a little on it by pressing buttons and see them fall over.
I need to get to level 20 to unlock Power X. If I do missions this evening I'll get there, solo or teamed or whatever. Ah, feels good to have done that.

I want to do all 6 task forces to get +5% Hit points. Ahh, did that today and it felt great!

Similarly, amassing inf for some goal feels good, that state of wanting something and figuring out how to get it, and then getting it is really satisfying.

Games provide simple little microcosms for us. I don't know how to become stinking rich or save the world in complex real life, but I enjoy doing both in this simplified little game world. It's not pointless at all, its entertainment.

 

I made a character a while back and decided not to twink her with a big 200 million inf email, but earn everything from scratch.

I had some backstory about her crunching expensive materials in her hands, like Superman doing the coal to diamond trick. 🙂
It felt really cool - with my market knowledge I was loaded after a couple of task forces.

 

To conclude:

- Make SO's free (and they don't go off).

- Keep everything else as it is.

 

 

Edited June 8 by MonteCarla

[Hedgefund2]

Not just farming, but all play probably would be cut in half.  Players need their pellets.  "But I'm RIIICH" one of you will respond, I'm talking about the other 95% of players.  

 

I kind of like the prior post's conclusion -  SOs free, everything else unchanged.  The main complaint I hear is "I can't afford to upgrade" from new players and those same player won't have the savvy for how to acquire IOs effectively.  So I do like that.

[lemming]

I wouldn't even put SOs at free.  They're not that expensive, but instead of the full cost of an upgrade if you use that method it would be cost of what you are upgrading minus what the cost is of your existing enhancements.

 

Example: If you're level 22 and you have a level 20 Damage enhancement slotted, the cost currently to bump up to a level 25 is the full cost of 30,000.

Instead I'd deduct what a 20 would cost (24,000).   So to upgrade from 20 to 25 would be a cost of 6,000.

[Troo]

The game is filled with mini-games.

Some folks may enjoy one mini-game while others enjoy another. Most all mini-games are optional.

 

Improving our character is a core aspect of City of Villains / Heroes. It is not a mini-game.

 

Do I think 'is it time to make all items free?" No.

 

Do I think some items could be free or reduced in price? Yes.

• I like @lemming suggestion on upgrading enhancements. Seems like that is how it should have worked from the implementation of the upgrade button.
• We could drop the crafting cost 80-90% or make crafting free (not the acquisition of recipe and salvage). 

 

Do folks appreciate new 'costs' being introduced to the game? 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

15 hours ago, MonteCarla said:

To conclude:

- Make SO's free (and they don't go off).

 

I feel that the offering of SOs starting at level 5 (so character can slot them at 2) was one of the most egregious errors that Homecoming made.  However, I can support the idea of offering free training enhancements (which they got rid of and really don't add much value but hey better than nothing) at levels 5 and 10, free DOs at levels 15 and 20, and free SOs at levels 25+.  Being able to play with +3 SOs constantly is fine at a certain point, but I also wouldn't want to make the upgrades free.

[Hedgefund2]

I really like the thought of an incremental cost for using the upgrade button.  Not just for new players either, I'd certainly be using that more, at least for non-set pieces, as I level up.

 

Someone should post that in suggestions (won't be me).

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Hedgefund2 said:

Someone should post that in suggestions (won't be me).

I'll go ahead an do so

[Adeon Hawkwood]

12 hours ago, Troo said:

The game is filled with mini-games.

Some folks may enjoy one mini-game while others enjoy another. Most all mini-games are optional.

 

Improving our character is a core aspect of City of Villains / Heroes. It is not a mini-game.

 

Do I think 'is it time to make all items free?" No.

 

Do I think some items could be free or reduced in price? Yes.

• I like @lemming suggestion on upgrading enhancements. Seems like that is how it should have worked from the implementation of the upgrade button.
• We could drop the crafting cost 80-90% or make crafting free (not the acquisition of recipe and salvage). 

 

Do folks appreciate new 'costs' being introduced to the game? 

 

I think removing the crafting cost on Set IOs would lead to significant inflation. While Wentworths fees are the largest Inf sink in the game I'm pretty sure that crafting fees are the second largest.

 

Doing some rough math, assuming that you're buying level 41 uncommon recipes, converting to rares and selling the rares the crafting costs are 121k inf. Now most decent rare enhancements sell for between 1million-3million so if you look at the total amount of inf destroyed in the act of crafting and selling the crafting fee is probably somewhere between 28% and 54% of the total. So if you drop the crafting fee then less inf gets destroyed per crafted enhancement and prices go up since there's more inf in the economy.

[Troo]

56 minutes ago, Adeon Hawkwood said:

prices go up since there's more inf in the economy.

 

I'd be interested in seeing if that is troo.

[Clave Dark 5]

On 6/7/2025 at 7:49 PM, Krimson said:

Farming would be cut in half easily because no one would need INF anymore. 

Eh, maybe half-ish.

 

That joke made, you can PVP for free, so why not everywhere too?   

 

Realistically I don't see it, because if you can kit out a toon in 5 minutes, then what's there to play for, past that next five minutes?  Making yourself stupid rich reaches that same point quickly enough too, so I think I'd go in another direction and parcel out the wealth differently in some manner, say "you get 100 merits per 24 hours when you log in (per account)... period" or something.  But I'd also disallow AE farming but that's never going to happen either, the blood-curdling whinging would be the death of us all.

Edited June 9 by Clave Dark 5

[UltraAlt]

On 6/7/2025 at 7:04 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

And ... fight!

 

Yes. I like the PvP of the AH, so thumbs down on this one.

 

 

 

Edited June 9 by UltraAlt

[crimson72]

Just get rid of the AH, and add NPC vendors for the recipes and components which you can use influence to purchase.  

[crimson72]

On 6/7/2025 at 9:28 PM, Glacier Peak said:

Minus(?): It already exists on beta so anyone can enjoy it.

 

Plus: Getting the best rate of return on effort for the highest rewarding content is naturally harder for shards with less players, if not impossible. If everything was free then player count becomes moot since there would be no need to generate anything for the market. 

Making things free on the low player shards might help boost activity on them.  Or, making 1 server where enhancements are free (besides beta) might be a happy median.  

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, crimson72 said:

Making things free on the low player shards might help boost activity on them.  Or, making 1 server where enhancements are free (besides beta) might be a happy median.  

Since the Auction House is cross shard, I don't see the connection to boosting activity. 

[Octogoat]

Why would we deliver souls out of Samsara when suffering is the point?

[jkwak]

NO,
the more stuff in a game is archived without effort the less you get the feeling of archivement and the more the fun of the game is lost,
its a big balancing act to have an MMO like COH completly for free in the first place and its a constant question "was mechanic XYZ a meaningless way to keep engagement and therefor the revenue stream of the game up or is it a mechanic that actually make the game fun" and some mechanics like having an Economy are on the surface level annoying, timeconsuming meaningless crap and fit in the first category but if you look closer are things that make MMOS what they are and actually make them fun like when you finally can afford that cool thing from the Auction house or when you succesfully played the market and turned a profit.

its already highly controversial that Homecoming went away from prestige for Super Groups, which is why many other Servers got prestige back, i personally would want a more balanced inbetween solution for the prestige thing, not get fully rid of it but make rooms and every object that does not give a gameplay advantage completly free ... but i stand alone with that opinion and most people want an everything or nothing solution for that

Edited Tuesday at 09:56 PM by jkwak

[Krimson]

The feeling of achievement is only a feeling, an illusion. Nothing is being achieved. People are running around like mice in a maze, in an endless cycle. People want to hold on their precious status not realizing that it only matters to themselves while they think other players care.

[Monty Haull]

Then who would play my games?  

 

Seriously, I think the way we buy, sell, earn, is great.  It's not perfect but I feel there is enough stopgaps in place to stop inflation.  Like mentioned above, playing the market is a mini game.  Like base buildings and badge collecting.

 

If everything was free I feel it would be boring.  You can go on beta and get what you want and I can't recall the last time they wiped it.   

 

Just like power leveling.  The times I have power leveled a toon, I ended up not liking it because I didn't know how to play it and I had zero attachment to it.  I think players would lose their attachment to a game that becomes zero effort.

 

That's my two cents.

[Yomo Kimyata]

6 hours ago, Monty Haull said:

You can go on beta and get what you want and I can't recall the last time they wiped it.   

the problem I see with the “get all the free stuff you want on beta” is that no one is playing consistently on beta.  You’re not having fabulously effed up pugs.  Unless maybe you’re Snarky

[Ridiculous Girl]

On 6/8/2025 at 1:04 AM, Yomo Kimyata said:

And ... fight!

 

but seriously... on beta you can have all of your levels, inf, and encs you can want for free! the difference is that you do not stay there because you have no investment in what ever is made there. you did not earn those things, hence they have no value. 

[Ironblade]

I would say 'No', for two reasons:

1. You can earn enough inf just by playing the game.  If you want purples, etc, THEN you have to work at it.

2. The auction house is CONTENT.  Just like players, it's content and the game would be lessened by removing it.