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

[SableShrike]

I’m gonna vote “Yes” on this.

 

I’m pretty sure Merits could be adjusted or something to replace most market things (as I’ve seen done on other servers).

 

The reason I vote “Yes” is for one reason only:  New players.

 

The market and inventions represent a significant time sink that most newer players do not understand or know how to leverage.

 

You can say that this is for hardcore players, but if you’re gating power increases behind something only 5-10% of folks know how to really use…  Well that’s just bad design.

 

Many of us are older.  How much time do you want to spend sitting in front of auction menus?  Wouldn’t you rather be playing the game?

 

This game as a Live Service grind is dead; I say we let the vestiges of that time die with the Live Service model.

[El D]

1 hour ago, SableShrike said:

I’m pretty sure Merits could be adjusted or something to replace most market things (as I’ve seen done on other servers).

 

The market and inventions represent a significant time sink that most newer players do not understand or know how to leverage.

 

You can say that this is for hardcore players, but if you’re gating power increases behind something only 5-10% of folks know how to really use…  Well that’s just bad design.

 

Transferring Homecoming's economy to function around merits would grind it to a halt, unless the rate at which merits were earned was vastly increased. If the rate at which merits are earned is vastly increased so that players have enough of them to spend... then they've just taken out influence to kitbash its role onto what was a perfectly functional supplementary system. Said system now doesn't fulfill its original use anymore, so that would mean having to create another currency or kitbashing another system to do what merits used to do. That also means there's tons of players - the vast majority of Homecoming's user base - that now have mountains of a worthless currency. There is no degree of trade-ins, alterations, or transfers that will make that pill easy to swallow. Even the perception of making the game's primary currency worthless is Not A Good Idea.

 

Branching off of that, why is the argument in-favor of 'new players' always the proposition that any 'problematic' system or mechanic must be dumbed down, minimized, and or outright removed 'because they don't know how to use it?' Of course they don't know how everything works when they first join, that's the whole point of the game and/or community providing room for them to learn. Also, to that point, the market is not gated. It's accessible to literally any player who has the inf to buy or sell the items they want, which is not remotely hard to reach. Inf is the easiest resource to gain in CoH, by a wide margin and by deliberate design because it's the primary currency. Yes, new players who just start out won't have the same resources as 5+ year old-timers, but that's how starting a new game works. I also don't get the whole 'tiny group of elite marketeers' thing, with them apparently being the sole true beneficiaries of Wentworths. In my experience, the max level characters with tons of inf are the ones who either hang out in Atlas and drop multiple thousands onto random new characters or run massive contests and give literal millions or billions of inf away.

 

With that in-mind, if 'new players struggle when they start and can't catch up' is the core issue of this whole thing... why is the suggestion 'uproot/rewrite the game's entire economy and potentially piss off tons of the active playerbase' instead of 'give new accounts an investment bundle of inf when they start out?'

Edited Wednesday at 03:07 PM by El D

[SableShrike]

The economy in this game is an afterthought, though.  It was not designed with or launched with it!

 

The Market and IOs were tacked on after the fact and drastically changed the game’s landscape.  (I would argue the IOs are solely responsible for power-creep problems, but that’s another story).

 

And while I don’t know what might be a good replacement, I hesitate to say getting rid of the Market is a “dumbing down”.

 

It’s more I find a lot of it to be fiddling with stacks and menus when I’d rather be playing.  Can we not see a future where old systems aren’t holding the game back?

 

Fiddly does not equate to better, which is why I stopped playing Stellaris.  After a while I felt it was just wasting my finite time.

[Zombra]

I would venture that new players who don't want to learn pesky economic systems don't have to and have never had to.  All you have to do is not turn up your difficulty to continue enjoying the game for a long time without ever touching the AH.

 

These new players who supposedly don't want to learn don't want to stay with the game anyway - they want to hit 50 ASAP, 'win' the game and move on.  Kids these days!

 

Slashing away optional systems that many players already enjoy is no way to build a community.

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, El D said:

With that in-mind, if 'new players struggle when they start and can't catch up' is the core issue of this whole thing... why is the suggestion 'uproot/rewrite the game's entire economy and potentially piss off tons of the active playerbase' instead of 'give new accounts an investment bundle of inf when they start out?'

 

And this happened for me. Not because the "game" itself dropped an email to me in-game with influence, but another player a gave me like 10-30 million - which was my capital seed.

I, in turn, as they say "paid it forward" and have given far more than that to others in the game over time. Heck, pretty often I gave some influence to players when they comment on not having enough or just email them an item sometimes (as the character on am on happens to be crafting what they are looking for).

 

If someone reaches out to the other heroes in-game, heroes tend to come to the rescue. At least, that is my experience.

 

 

[Darmian]

2 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

And this happened for me. Not because the "game" itself dropped an email to me in-game with influence, but another player a gave me like 10-30 million - which was my capital seed.

I, in turn, as they say "paid it forward" and have given far more than that to others in the game over time. Heck, pretty often I gave some influence to players when they comment on not having enough or just email them an item sometimes (as the character on am on happens to be crafting what they are looking for).

 

If someone reaches out to the other heroes in-game, heroes tend to come to the rescue. At least, that is my experience.

 

 

Yep. Paying it forward is the way.

[UltraAlt]

On 7/14/2025 at 10:47 PM, skoryy said:

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, SableShrike said:

The economy in this game is an afterthought, though.  It was not designed with or launched with it!

 

It was launched with an in-game economy.

The game always had "influence" and the purchasing of enhancements and insps from venders. And the game was released with a request channel; which is defined in the original CoH manual as "This channel is reserved for those that wish to trade, buy, or sell." 

 

I agree it wasn't launched with the /ah market system which was launched when IO crafting was released. 

[tidge]

2 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

And this happened for me. Not because the "game" itself dropped an email to me in-game with influence, but another player a gave me like 10-30 million - which was my capital seed.

 

I really liked this idea, until I realized that there would be a new class of farming to create alts just to collect the seed money. As I noted, I typically seed all my new characters with Inf, so this was the source of the initial appeal.

[Starhammer]

On 7/21/2025 at 10:05 AM, Zombra said:

 

If you feel like you have to do this to be a part of COH, you had bad teachers.  I can't think of any reason to torture yourself like this except highest end PvP against other trillionaires.

How is it possible that you took my statement to mean that I believe I have to do that to be a part of CoH? I think there's a lot of room for improvement in the system. I think the CoH auction house is the best AH in any mmo I've experienced, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to reduce some of the busywork, since we aren't selling premium packs, jetpack subscriptions, or needing players to expend playtime to extend their service subscription. I'm not saying the active servers need to change to "everything is always free, like on test" but we could move a few elements around.

Don't look to be disdainful of those who don't love everything you love just the way you love it.

[UltraAlt]

14 hours ago, tidge said:

I really liked this idea, until I realized that there would be a new class of farming to create alts just to collect the seed money.

 

I haven't seen this happening.

Most of the people that give out influence keep track of globals. 

So I guess it would be a matter of how many accounts people be willing to make for seed money and if there is a rash of those asking for seed money.

 

Keep in mind that a majority of the players likely don't ever come to the forums for more than setting up an account and then only returning to ask questions about things that they can't get answers for in the game. They will never read this post.

 

14 hours ago, tidge said:

As I noted, I typically seed all my new characters with Inf, so this was the source of the initial appeal.

 

I do that as well. I give them about 300 million at this point, so giving out some random inf or item to some random player isn't really hurting me.

 

I agree I don't want my generosity to be abused. I hopefully have avoided that. But the people that would do that are probably generating a lot of karma for themselves in many other ways with their life choices.

 

[tidge]

42 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I haven't seen this happening.

 

So I guess it would be a matter of how many accounts people be willing to make for seed money and if there is a rash of those asking for seed money.

 

Sorry, I was thinking the suggestion was that the game would automatically gift the seed money to new accounts, not other players/characters.

 

In-game, I see no problem with gifting (or asking!) for Inf. Obviously I see accumulating Inf (and merits, and blah, blah, fishcakes) as no big deal as I simply play the game... it looks a lot like the make everything free request is mostly supported by players that simply don't want to bother with asking or accumulating via play. I mean... I can believe that a player wants to create an unending stream of alts, all full-kitted with wagyu IO sets at level 50+, but that feels like more of a grind to me than simply taking one new character on a 1-50 journey to learn how the powers work, establish macros, etc. I mean... if you already know what a Superior Winter's set is going to do in a power at level 50, I don't see what the rush is to get to that point.

[battlewraith]

58 minutes ago, tidge said:

I mean... I can believe that a player wants to create an unending stream of alts, all full-kitted with wagyu IO sets at level 50+, but that feels like more of a grind to me than simply taking one new character on a 1-50 journey to learn how the powers work, establish macros, etc. I mean... if you already know what a Superior Winter's set is going to do in a power at level 50, I don't see what the rush is to get to that point.

 

A lot of the discussions on this forums recently hinge on vocal players that simply cannot relate to other people being different. 

You don't see what the rush is to do something.....so? Should everything revolve around people like you or should this be an actual community with disparate viewpoints?

 

You never answered the question about how many 50s you have. That would give people an idea of what your pacing is like.

[tidge]

37 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

 

A lot of the discussions on this forums recently hinge on vocal players that simply cannot relate to other people being different. 

You don't see what the rush is to do something.....so? Should everything revolve around people like you or should this be an actual community with disparate viewpoints?

 

You never answered the question about how many 50s you have. That would give people an idea of what your pacing is like.

 

I probably have about 8 pages of characters. Not all of them are 50s. I have 50s with over 300 vet levels. I play my original main every day. The characters that aren't 50 don't have Purples or Superiors obviously. 

 

If I was desperate to check their performance, I'd go to Brainstorm. If I had a bunch of 50s I wasn't going to play, I'd strip them for parts. If I had a thousand level 50s I wouldn't need a bunch of free stuff because I wouldn't be playing them. I'm a player not a hoarder. I'm not critical of the way people play... but if a player wants an infinite number of 50s with full kit... I don't know why the game should be changed to support someone's MIDS addiction.

[battlewraith]

33 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

I probably have about 8 pages of characters. Not all of them are 50s. I have 50s with over 300 vet levels. I play my original main every day. The characters that aren't 50 don't have Purples or Superiors obviously. 

 

If I was desperate to check their performance, I'd go to Brainstorm. If I had a bunch of 50s I wasn't going to play, I'd strip them for parts. If I had a thousand level 50s I wouldn't need a bunch of free stuff because I wouldn't be playing them. I'm a player not a hoarder. I'm not critical of the way people play... but if a player wants an infinite number of 50s with full kit... I don't know why the game should be changed to support someone's MIDS addiction.

 

Do you have a rough estimate of how many 50s you have? Are those pages full of 50s or mostly not?

 

What this tells me is that you play this game a lot and a great deal of time is spent playing the same characters repeatedly. If we had to characterize each other in terms of addiction--you are clearly the addict here, not me. I've played this game on and off since it came back, but nowhere near every day, let alone on the same character. I often will go months without logging in, because I don't have time, I'm playing another game, or some other reason. 

 

I know there are a lot of people in this community that are like this--they are only interested in this game or this is the only game their computer will run.

The aging players that are all-in on formulas that date back to the retail days are a niche subset of video game players. It's not the players who want to kit out some concept build that are unusual in the broader scheme of things.

[tidge]

1 minute ago, battlewraith said:

I know there are a lot of people in this community that are like this--they are only interested in this game or this is the only game their computer will run.

The aging players that are all-in on formulas that date back to the retail days are a niche subset of video game players. It's not the players who want to kit out some concept build that are unusual in the broader scheme of things.

 

Ma'am... this is a rewards-based game for playing the game. If a player doesn't want to play the game but want rewards, use Brainstorm. If a player can't figure out how to earn merits or Inf with ANY of your full-kit characters, consult the guides section. I get it... @battlewraithdoesn't like being told they can't have a thing, @battlewraith doesn't like being told to play on a server that will give them stuff for free. @battlewraith thinks those of us who enjoy playing the game and equipping our characters with pieces you daydream about are the bad guys.  I'm not the one being stubborn... I like the game as is and I don't find it to be a chore to enjoy. Trying to dissect @tidge approach isn't going to make anyone feel better about their opposition to my PoV... because I've played the game in a huge number of ways... although I'll admit that any PLing has been limited to seasonal server events or rapid-fire TF participation. I'm not imagining I speak for anyone else in the game, but I have tried to play the game a lot of different ways... and if I wanted to play the @battlewraith way... I certain could, because I'm clever enough to have figured out several ways to have stuff ready for my next 50 alts. @battlewraith wants to judge me for playing one character and using it to get the next one ready... that's being judgemental. When I simply want to test a ful-kit, I go to Brainstorm.

 

I'm sorry @battlewraith is triggered because other players don't have their self-inflicted problems. I'm actually thinking that the OP was made from a point of "OMG someone help me stop making Inf on the market" as much as (or more than) a place of "help people get full kits for no effort."

[battlewraith]

7 minutes ago, tidge said:

Ma'am...

 

Lol dude wtf? What was that post? Hahahahahaha.

 

FWIW I do strip 50s that I don't use. And I can certainly use "clever" strategies to get stuff to put in a new character.

But all this big brained posturing is moot if the assumption is that you're sinking huge amounts of time into the game.

Of course you're going to have a cave full of merits if you're doing that. No shit. But is that the reasonable baseline for player engagement to assume when having a discussion like this?

 

Also, Tidge...how many 50s do you have por favour? Would also be interesting to know how many are kitted out.

 

 

 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

30 minutes ago, tidge said:

I'm actually thinking that the OP was made from a point of "OMG someone help me stop making Inf on the market" as much as (or more than) a place of "help people get full kits for no effort."

 

I made the point from, "Let's open this to debate and let's hear pros and cons of each side."  That has been done to an extent, and with a lot of "This is how I like it.  No, how YOU like it is wrong!" which really wasn't my intent or wish, but I've got no control over the situation.  I'm not calling for the thread to be locked but it wouldn't hurt my feelings if it were, since it is literally no skin off my nose.

[tidge]

7 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

Also, Tidge...how many 50s do you have por favour? Would also be interesting to know how many are kitted out.

 

What has this got to do with anything? My attitude wouldn't change if I had 500 on each server or 10 on a single server. My next characters were self-sustaining after my first one hit 50. I don't care how many level 50s a player has, but if the player is whining that they have no inf or merits and has more than 10 level 50s... I might think that they haven't figured out the game. I suspect that is where @battlewraith is... maybe they figured out MIDS, maybe AE, maybe not much more.... because if you are PLing characters via farm in AE, you should be collecting drops along the way. It should only take 1 hour of x8 farming to get a PVP or purple recipe drop.

 

Having said that: I'm pretty sure I've done a level 50 respec on each of them, many of them have unlocked Incarnates but I generally don't bother slotting post-Alpha incarnates on a character until the character joins some Incarnate content. Several of my characters have multiple level 50 builds. I have had a few level 50s that I delayed the level 50 respec on simply because I wanted to set aside time to test some more things before the final respec... but I am comfortable testing on both Live and Brainstorm pre-50, which it sounds like @battlewraith is not.

[battlewraith]

6 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I made the point from, "Let's open this to debate and let's hear pros and cons of each side."

 

This came on the heels of the "is it time to make SOs free" thread. That one featured the same kind of intransigence. A bunch of people just saying no. But there was someone that suggested a discount to the upgrade costs.

 

So from a haggling perspective, it was interesting to see if the most extreme position--"make stuff free"--would result in some sort of constructive engagement. It didn't imo, which isn't surprising, but it was still interesting to read the responses.

[battlewraith]

6 minutes ago, tidge said:

What has this got to do with anything?

 

Why is is such a hard question Tidge? It's just a number.

[tidge]

11 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

 

Why is is such a hard question Tidge? It's just a number.

 

Why don't you show your e-peen first?

 

EDIT: I swear, this sounds like a 1980s BBS edge-lord question.  The answer is "I have the right number, until I unlock another" I have level 50s, I played them across content before they were 50, I play them after they hit level 50. I've played them full-kit, I've played them only partially slotted. I've respecced many times.  At no time did I stop playing because I couldn't have something I wanted. I don't judge people based on if they have more or fewer level 50s than I do. I've never had a problem joining any content because of slotting or power choices. I can only play for about two hours a day, but I don't judge folks that play more or fewer hours than I do. My time isn't spent in the AH (except to dump drops) or AE.

 

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 03:36 PM by tidge

[El D]

20 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I made the point from, "Let's open this to debate and let's hear pros and cons of each side."  That has been done to an extent, and with a lot of "This is how I like it.  No, how YOU like it is wrong!" which really wasn't my intent or wish, but I've got no control over the situation.  I'm not calling for the thread to be locked but it wouldn't hurt my feelings if it were, since it is literally no skin off my nose.

 

The more dramatic of a proposed change, the more dramatic of a response it will provoke. Not to say all the dramatics are remotely justified or the levels said dramatics reach on these forums don't often get needlessly overblown, but that's a side effect of 'relatively small group of posters who have interacted with the same people they disagree with on a weekly or daily basis for X years' unfortunately.

[lemming]

Currently, I have 83 50s.   43 that I consider complete, though I'm pretty sure that some adjustments are needed on a few and a bunch of the others are quite playable.    Definitely not materially bound if I wanted to kit out the rest, it's more a time & effort thing and do I really desire to fully kit them out.

I have at least a couple that are getting retired since I make an effort to free up the name, etc..., otherwise I feel obligated to do something with them.

 

Making things "free" wouldn't change this, but I also learned while getting to the point of being self sufficient.

There's a lot of different ways to play this game and ways to learn it.   A veteran player can already produce a fully kitted out 50 with just a little effort.   They've already gotten the dopemine fix on figuring out how to do that.  A new player, probably not.

 

Games need some effort, risk, reward structure and it's going to be a complex formula that will hit different.

[Bionic_Flea]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

Why don't you show your e-peen first?

 

I will!  *FLASH*

 

I have 68 level 50s on HC and 2 non-50s that I made for testing stuff

 

Another 107 level 50s on Test and other servers and 60 something that are not level 50s that were mostly joke characters or made by friends and family messing with the character creator or playing for a few levels.

 

My usual pattern is to come up with an idea for a new character and play it to 50 and usually to at least +3 or all T3 incarnates.  Only my very favorites get to T4 and a few get retired after unlocking a few incarnates.  I may or may not come back to them soon, but I do eventually.

 

I started HC with nothing, just like everyone else.  But I made my first billion within a week or two.  I have no idea how many billions I have scattered across my HC toons, let alone the ones on other servers that may have been artificially boosted.  But I know that I have more than enough to fulfill my needs and if I ever don't have enough it's easy to make more. 

 

Yomo, I am sure, has in pocket and has given away multiples more than I have.  But I think he will admit that he enjoyed getting there, giving some away, and teaching others how to get as much as they need or want.  I did too.  Why wouldn't I want others to have that enjoyment?

 

Also: They have to work for it at least as hard as I did, dagnabbit!

Edited yesterday at 04:59 PM by Bionic_Flea