A controversial topic: Is it time to make items scarcer or cost more?

[Troo]

This is a semi-serious question, curious if anyone has thoughts or maybe a quick plusses and minuses. Making things scarcer likely wouldn't work well and could just increase farming.

 

Is there a flip-side to @Yomo Kimyata's question on making all things free?

 

It's easy to make inf, maybe too easy.. which makes things dirt cheap for many. 

Is there really any point to earning more once we can buy everything we want instantly for dozens of characters?

 

The expectation these days seems to be leveling to 50 in a handful of hours (maximizing 2xp, patrol xp, special xp tuned missions) and then getting a complete build immediately while starting to build out incarnates. If this is way off, I'd be happy to hear it.

 

The downside where players are self limiting infamy/influence gain is simply ignored. Maybe it's easy to ignore because $$ is so easy to get. Maybe there's a different reason.

 

Double XP Booster (1 Hour) 

This will immediately grant the player a 100% boost to XP gain. While this boost is active, Influence gain will be reduced by 100%. You may purchase up to 8 hours.

 

Soo... let's see where this ends up.

 

credit: @Yomo Kimyata 

for the original topic this is piggybacking

[MoonSheep]

it won’t be a popular suggestion but i think things are far too cheap. CoH isn’t the sims, it’s a progression based MMO

 

i would remove the ability to convert IOs and remove seeding from salvage so that the economy can have some natural elements reintroduced 

 

if people want an instant lvl 50 fully slotted out they can build those all day long on the beta server, something we weren’t able to do on live

 

the HC population looks to be sufficient to sustain a free market

[Jacktar]

Well CoH may indeed be a progression based pastime but as a player for most of the Live life of the game I was in a position that because the crafted enhancements were just so riduculously expensive to craft, my game progression was in reality NIL.

The game we have now is just so much a better experience for us casual and mostly solo players.

I have an SG (because it is free to build) and use it to travel to all corners of our world.

I can use the inf I earn to craft set IO’s and feel much more ownership of our game, I want to log in.

I have an alt that can join any part of the content and not feel as if I have been given a pity spot.

It bothers me not a jot that we have multi billionaires because now I know I can achieve an alt to stand equally with their alt for the content we would be sharing.

I could never do that on Live.

I was so pleased we were all given a second chance to enjoy this world but would I still be here if it was a mirror of Live, hand on heart, no.

 

PS edit to add….the suggestion to go play on Beta is just the same as Lives version of a pity spot! You poor boys get off of our lawn…

Edited 23 hours ago by Jacktar

[Major_Decoy]

2 hours ago, Troo said:

The downside where players are self limiting infamy/influence gain is simply ignored. Maybe it's easy to ignore because $$ is so easy to get. Maybe there's a different reason.

 

Double XP Booster (1 Hour) 

This will immediately grant the player a 100% boost to XP gain. While this boost is active, Influence gain will be reduced by 100%. You may purchase up to 8 hours.

 

Soo... let's see where this ends up.

 

credit: @Yomo Kimyata 

for the original topic this is piggybacking

Well, I'd argue that the downside of the double xp booster is ignored not because infamy is so easy to get but because both information and experience scale with enemy level, but only experience costs scale with level.

 

I'd argue that if you got the same information for defeating an even con enemy at level one as you did at level fifty, then more people would second guess turning it off.

 

Having more infamy at lower levels would make them less painful (Single Origin Enhancements are available, but who can afford them) and perhaps people would spend more time playing those levels rather than trying to breeze through them.

Edited 22 hours ago by Major_Decoy

[Intrinsic]

2 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

i would remove the ability to convert IOs and remove seeding from salvage so that the economy can have some natural elements reintroduced

 

Enhancement converters were introduced as a band-aid to address the fact that many recipes were worthless.  I'd like to see converters removed too, but it would need to go hand-in-hand with a major loot revamp which the original devs were unwilling to tackle.

[Skyhawke]

[Snarky]

i say we install a device that punishes the player anytime you die

[Skyhawke]

Nut crackaaaaa!

[Doc Spectre]

I don’t see to point of trying to stuff the cat back into to bag now. 
 

With personal base storage I can just strip old alts I’m not playing currently for IOs if I need to so I think all this would do is impact new players.

 

 I you want to make the game more challenging do a second build with no IOs or incarnates.

[twozerofoxtrot]

Case Study we can use for debate:

 

Winter Packs no longer go on sale. There are less Winters in circulation now (conjecture).

 

Is this good, bad, or irrelevant to you because like me you sit upon an unassailable mountain fortress of wealth?

[Mopery]

I think we're at a pretty good point in this game's economy.

Unless you want every character to have a Mids build ready-to-go, with all the set enhancements lined up and ready to start slotting as soon as you hit level 7.

If every character you play must be the "best" from the earliest possible time, then this journey will be a very expensive one. Which I think is perfect.

 

I have 60+ fully built incarnate level 50's, if I farmed and felt the need to build out everything I could possibly make, I would likely have 1000.

At some point, you'll realize that you just don't have the time to play them all, and I'm saying this as someone with no life outside the game.

 

I still don't get the reason they upped the price on winter packs rather than discounting it during, well, the Winter season.

Getting rid of double inf when XP is turned off at level 50 used to be a thing, revoked because... well, I don't know?

 

Most of these discussions seem to be a big "F--- you, I already got mine!" scenario.

[tidge]

The economy is both quite stable and somewhat deflationary, so I don't understand what the advantage of raising prices (by whatever currency: Inf, Merits, Aethers) would provide. The only real gaps I see in the market are the non-fungible items (some recipes, some non-set enhancements). Let's not ignore that the market (and merit vendors) is pretty much the means by which we can have a diverse set of fun builds... and not just for +4x8 players.

 

I don't think Winter Packs are a good case study for a few reasons:

1. It was a seasonal sale for items (the packs themselves) that have an otherwise fixed price the rest of the year... so players could undersell the store and make a profit.
2. The contents of the Winter Packs were extra-profitable, because of the sale price.

 

If I turn this around and try to think of where it might even make sense to raise prices... I think we'd be playing a different game. For example, if we had to pay Inf to level up, folks with bank wouldn't care... but new players would be scrounging for Inf after something like a DFB with 2XP. That doesn't seem cool.

[ZacKing]

No thank you.  The post limit isn't long enough to post the amount of jrangers for this idea.   This is an absolutely horrible idea.

 

3 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

i would remove the ability to convert IOs and remove seeding from salvage so that the economy can have some natural elements reintroduced 

 

This would be an excellent way to kill character progression, destroy the economy, vastly increase farming, invite gold farmers to sell inf and loot for real cash and drive casual players away.  I would rather not go back to the days on Live where uncommon recipes cost 2 billion inf.  No thank you.

 

3 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

the HC population looks to be sufficient to sustain a free market

 

Some servers barely get 100 players at any given time.  

 

2 hours ago, Jacktar said:

Well CoH may indeed be a progression based pastime but as a player for most of the Live life of the game I was in a position that because the crafted enhancements were just so riduculously expensive to craft, my game progression was in reality NIL.

 

^ That.

[Octogoat]

Tax the rich.

[Skyhawke]

13 minutes ago, tidge said:

The economy is both quite stable and somewhat deflationary, so I don't understand what the advantage of raising prices

 

 

@Mopery answered that question earlier. 

 

 

29 minutes ago, Mopery said:

Most of these discussions seem to be a big "F--- you, I already got mine!" scenario.

 

[skoryy]

Less Controversial Topic: Is it time to disable Win The Day so we don't get instant /jranger posts like these that go on for pages before getting inevitably locked?

[Skyhawke]

16 minutes ago, skoryy said:

Less Controversial Topic: Is it time to disable Win The Day so we don't get instant /jranger posts like these that go on for pages before getting inevitably locked?

 

What does the "win the day" thing do? I've noticed you're vehemently against it, but I don't think I've ever stopped and thought about what it actually is. 

[Maelwys]

3 minutes ago, Skyhawke said:

What does the "win the day" thing do? I've noticed you're vehemently against it, but I don't think I've ever stopped and thought about what it actually is. 

To my knowledge it's just a daily "whose posts got the most reactions today" leaderboard.
I've never noticed it doing anything other than a congratulatory message popping up occasionally at the top of your profile page; even when you "win" multiple days in a row.

It's not like it results in some kind of tangible reward (unless @Snarky has been siphoning them off...) 🧛‍♀️

[battlewraith]

13 minutes ago, Skyhawke said:

 

What does the "win the day" thing do? I've noticed you're vehemently against it, but I don't think I've ever stopped and thought about what it actually is. 

If you check your account profile, it tells you how many days you've won.

[skoryy]

1 hour ago, Maelwys said:

To my knowledge it's just a daily "whose posts got the most reactions today" leaderboard.
I've never noticed it doing anything other than a congratulatory message popping up occasionally at the top of your profile page; even when you "win" multiple days in a row.

It's not like it results in some kind of tangible reward (unless @Snarky has been siphoning them off...) 🧛‍♀️

 

Think of it as a forum PvP high score. Though, I too wonder if @Snarky's been feeding off of them. Can't trust forum nosferatus.

[golstat2003]

Terrible idea. Let's not go back to the idiocy that was the Live Market.

[Seed22]

27 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

Terrible idea. Let's not go back to the idiocy that was the Live Market.

Live Market was turbo ass. 

 

It also was back when I believe you could get 999 bil on a single toon. OP, I dont think you'd wanna see a Fury of the glad going for 150 bil. 

[arcane]

You’d think the OP would have a point, but, whenever I recommend the prismatic aether products to others, they act like we’re in a recession. So I don’t think we’re there yet.

[Go0gleplex]

yah....let's not and say we didn't.  A lot of those issues brought up aren't really all that visible to new or casual players...so aren't really issues at all to us and we really don't go looking for them all that often as a generality. 

[El D]

3 hours ago, Mopery said:

Getting rid of double inf when XP is turned off at level 50 used to be a thing, revoked because... well, I don't know?

 

Inf is already incredibly easy to earn, especially so at level 50. Leaving double inf in-place with no trade-off aside from badge progression - since all the rewards from missed vet levels could be earned a lot faster by regularly running Incarnate content - was just going to further exacerbate the core issue of this thread and the one it's playing off of.