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

[Ghost]

[tidge]

There was a recent set of days where a player was routinely (and repeatedly) asking for someone to run a Seige mission for their level 50... and I can guess why. I would have thought that sometime in the 36 hours of them near-constantly asking they'd just run the necessary missions themselves (direct or via Ouro) of join a BAF... but no, "too much effort".

[Mopery]

Gooses! Geeses!

I want my Goose to lay gold eggs for Easter!

[Ukase]

So, to the question asked, my pros and cons. 

Cons: No carrot to make the donkey move. Newer players would certainly grab what they think is good and try things out. There'd be a lot of that, I think. Players trying new things. But consider the folks that spend hours fine-tuning a build specifically for hard mode stuff, and then suddenly, all those prismatics and MAs are just free. Or, alternatively, the stuff you'd get with them are free, so the coins of the realm are essentially nothing more than souvenirs. 
Addressed above in at least one post (haven't read them all yet) is the behavior changes. I'm no expert on behavior. But I'll share with you an interesting behavioral change in myself, which no coincidence, happened about the time the winter packs went on sale for 15M. The 10M sale the previous year helped me a LOT, but at that time, all I could do was buy all I could afford to buy. It certainly paid off, but even then, it wasn't until the 15M sale that I got to really take advantage. I still have another 600 or so to open. So, maybe I did better the first year than I remember. Anyway - the behavioral change was in regards to taskforces. I used to do them all. For the accolade, which I could get redside quick and easily, but mainly for the merits. But now..why? Why spend that time doing the same thing I've always done for some measly reward merits, hanging out with a pug group that may or may not know their butt from their elbow? So, I seldom do blue side tfs anymore. There's just no motivation. While everything might not be free to me, other than HOs, they might as well be. But even the most expensive of those can be bought by me whenever I wish, and I will still have enough to out fit every possible character I could think to create, on all servers. (assuming I use my usual way of kitting them out and not "buying now") 

Pros: People can try new things out. No more people farming just to outfit their zillion alts. They can actually just play. 


I'm also of the opinion that the auto-upgrade could use a tweak. I saw a build in these forums where a player asking for advice had all level 36 SOs, all of which were yellow. I can only assume they were level 37 or 38. But if they're wrapped up in some kmITF, all of those enhancements go red when they ding 40. All at the same time. A new player doesn't normally get the influence in stacks deep enough to replace them all at the same time. At least, anecdotally, I could only get about half of what I wanted. But that was on retail, a long time ago. 

I think it would be best to utilize Lemming's suggestion that they only pay a pro-rated portion, with the SOs they have being automatically sold, before they're upgraded, to take some of the sting out of it for the new player. 



My dad, who I think was smarter than my teen self ever gave him credit for would say, "when in doubt, do nothing". Now, I'm not sure that applies to every scenario, but if I look at this game, the market kept me interested in this game when the content did not. I'm not even sure I'd still play without the labyrinth. 

I think for now, making things free like on Brainstorm would be horrible for the game. A GM would spawn, and people would be like..."Eh, I've got that badge. What's the point?"

MSRs...people might do those to level up, but I really only do those for the HVAS. The MSR used to be fun for me, but now it's very routine. 
Hami Raids? Heck no. If the HOs are readily available...who would do that? 

And when players stop doing these kinds of activities where there's some idle time for chit-chat and jokes and such, then connections between players are reduced. And that means player retention is reduced. Which means a drop in player population. 
Jack Emmert was a lot of things to a lot of people. And people don't like to admit it, but the dude is smart. He wasn't perfect, no. But his view that the purpose of playing this game was to team up, and if you weren't going to team up, there was no point. It wasn't because he didn't want remote workers to enjoy the game while they were supposed to be doing their jobs. It was because he wanted players to get to know each other, so they'd keep playing. Now, the game is free for us to play, so it's not that critically important. But, it is still important, because without the connections we form, this game would eventually get dull for everyone. Where that line is would be different for everyone, but eventually, it would just die. 
At least, that's my opinion. 

[Ukase]

On 6/21/2025 at 1:17 PM, SuperJames said:

I've just logged in to check and the top price for a level 10 Science Origin Accuracy enhancement at Wentworths is 1,250 influence. Damage is 1,000. Recharge is 1,500. If people are concerned about new players struggling, usher them towards the market instead of a vendor.

This is not a consistent supply, though. I've had challenge characters buy all they could and vendor them for profit. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts, and special thanks for those of you who listed pluses and minuses -- you are truly diamonds in the rough.  Everyone else?  The rough!

 

I was trying to look at what would be best for the system and the community, regardless of what mini-games I specifically like to play in this sandbox.  I mostly like the current system, but I do hear occasional complaints about people having a hard time funding their first character or their stable of characters that are below critical inf earning mass.  And although I have mostly gotten bored with accumulating inf for inf's sake, it seems that there are still people who are willing to crank out supply of goodies.

 

But my opinions are superfluous, because what will be will be:

 

 

On 6/17/2025 at 4:39 PM, Faultline said:

/jranger

 

 

[Octogoat]

On 6/26/2025 at 6:03 AM, Ghost said:

Love this movie

[arcane]

I would say making everything free would be such a potent middle finger that I would have to at least think about quitting.

 

Honestly anyone that supports that level of “muh free stuff” is kind of evil.

Edited Monday at 05:55 PM by arcane

[tidge]

On 6/29/2025 at 6:22 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

... And although I have mostly gotten bored with accumulating inf for inf's sake, it seems that there are still people who are willing to crank out supply of goodies.

 

I became bored with the accumulation of Inf many years ago... I swapped to a game of simply accumulating things (recipes, IOs, aethers, merits, catalysts, fishcakes) that the next character will use. I mainly use the market as a garbage disposal mechanism and as a place to get other players' junk that I want to try to use on a new character. I don't have a lot of alts, nor do I power-level... so there isn't much of a need for anything I can't get by simply playing one or more of my existing characters.

 

I think the most recent item I was surprised to see I didn't have immediately on hand was a Scaling Resistance IO... three rolls of converter roulette closed that gap.

[Zect]

Rationally, this would be a terrible move. At the same time, it also strikes me as an oddly compelling one. After all, the economy in this game is hilariously imbalanced (reward merit rates thoroughly borked with no attempt at balancing after multiple patches, little correlation between either difficulty or time spent and income, vast discrepencies in earning rates depending on playstyles - the dictionary definition of imbalance, etc.). What better way to fix an intractable problem than to trash everything and start over? Furthermore, it would be extremely funny to watch the hedonic treadmill in action as people start whining for "something to work towards to" in a week's time. 

 

What I'm saying is, even though it would be disastrous for the game in terms of player engagement and long-term appeal, I would still laugh if the market dies in the fires of a communist uprising (and while we're at it, hand out free exp/incarnate xp potions at START too!). Viva la revolución!

[The Trouble]

Pro: Players could instantly fully realize their build concepts.

Con: Players could instantly fully realize their build concepts.

 

Like others have stated here, I also no longer hoard inf.  I just make money when I need it.  But I find the process fun.  To remove marketing entirely would reduce the amount of activities in this game that I enjoy.  To me, this suggestion is similar to - "Some people find making costumes tedious.  Is it time to have the game assign locked-in costumes?"

 

I don't want to see an entirely optional component of the game broken because a vocal minority dislikes it.

[BurtHutt]

Nope. It's not.

[Ghost]

Once new players make it to their first 50, and actually play it - they’ll forget all about ever having money woes.

[Heliphyn34u]

On 6/8/2025 at 11:54 AM, lemming said:

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.

 

I like this a lot, and I don't think it would significantly impact the in-game economy, adversely or otherwise.

 

Making everything free would alter the game too much.  There are consequences for what we do in-game, and the economy is part of that -- whether you got a toon PLed to 50 using boosters and are now staring at a bunch of empty slots in your powers and no inf, or you played the market so effectively for so long that now everything feels effectively free to you, you made those choices.  The choices we make do affect each other, and some things can still be a struggle for some of us, but no in-game challenge is so insurmountable that it would justify throwing out the entire economy.

 

Look at the bright side, in-game we have free housing and free healthcare!  (Just imagine if we had to pay inf to tp to the hospital.)  And yeah, things are cheaper than they were on live.

 

If I was going to tweak anything, it would be to make a couple more QoL things available for free via the S.T.A.R.T. vendor, specifically one resurrection power, the base teleporter, and possibly the mission teleporter.  I'm not expecting that to happen, but it would be helpful for lowbies.  Alternately, granting a temp rez power at the same time the temp fly power is granted (level 2?) would be a nice little QoL upgrade for people just starting the game.

 

[Plutonix]

No because when I get to where inf isn't a thing I want to look down on the poor unwashed masses.

[El D]

23 hours ago, Ghost said:

Once new players make it to their first 50, and actually play it - they’ll forget all about ever having money woes.

 

This. It's incredibly easy to make boatloads of influence already, to the point where any even moderately played 50 is capable of fully financing other alts. Hell, if someone engages in AE via door-sitting or AFK farming it's possible to make boatloads of influence by not even playing the game at all. The whole 'it's just a repeated grind over and over' comments earlier in this thread never actually account for the fact that A) the game asking players to commit to playing once is fully reasonable and B) doing 'the grind' once already means the effort needed the second time is immediately halved by the sheer amount of rewards earned. Subsequent alts similarly reduce the amount of effort needed.

 

Influence gain is practically geometric growth in CoH. It balloons extremely quickly under practically all circumstances and any amount gained increases the amounts gained later. The barrier of entry posed by inf is, essentially, 'did you bother to log in' and I'd rather not have the game 'win' itself before I even accessed my account.

[Triumphant]

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

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!

This topic is subjective to each player, so only speaking for myself here...

Plusses:  I love to build characters and play them.  I don't like spending time on grinding for inf to buy the items to build those characters (i.e I would rather just get down to the parts of the game that I enjoy and skip the parts that I don't enjoy.  And no, test server play will never be a viable solution to that for me, b/c 1) Bases and 2) Server population.

Minuses:  For me?  None at all.

Now, having said that, I think this idea is a non-starter.  Why?  Because a lot of people (so it seems to me, at least) view working the AH as an enjoyable sub-game within the game itself.  Like a lot of you, I am unable to see how anyone could derive enjoyment from this tedious activity.  But that's not the point.  The point is, many people do seem to enjoy it, and they would have that thing removed forever, if this were to be implemented.  The only way I can think to get around that, would be to have a live-play (not a test) server that has the test server options on it, and I think that might require adding a totally new server, because folks that enjoy the servers that they already play on would probably not wish to change them in so dramatic a way.

So, in theory, I vote yes to this suggestion.  But, in reality, I just don't ever see it happening.  But hey, I could always be wrong about that.  🤷‍♂️