In Magic: the Gathering, they keep printing cards of "common" rarity that are some cheap that they aren't worth the cardstock they're printed on anymore. Some of this is cards so bad they never got played in ANY deck, and some of it is cards that are so easy to find, because they've made so many of them, that you just can't get anything back for them ever.
In CoX the analog of this was the most common salvage components. People would sell them to NPCs or delete them instead of selling them on the market a lot.
Do we even need stuff like this? Why not make all salvage somewhat rare in the first place and oinly have, say trhe uncommon and rare stuff and forget the common salvage entirely? That or make the common stuff upgradable into something better, like 100 Iron Bars plus some INF makes one Steel Bar, etc.
If it weren't for the badge hunters trying to get crafting badges, the common stuff would have been completely ignored, I feel. In any event, the NPC were giving way too much INF for a lot of it in most cases and that shouldn't happen either. Causes inflation.
Not sure what the solution is, just brainstorming ideas on this one currently.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Those crappy cheap commons win games in sealed deck and booster draft tournaments.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Not only crafting badges, but there were badges for selling things on the market as well. My toon Captain Advert WANTED that Power Seller badge.
I have to agree. I hate having non useful salvage type items in my inventory. Then it just became a battle of "What do I delete quickly to keep some space"
Actually it was the UNCOMMON salvage that was typically overflowing with nowhere to go. Common salvage had PLENTY of demand for it, not only with Set IOs but also the making of Common IOs, the latter of which counted towards Badges. UNcommon salvage however only went into Set IOs, and the demand for the creation of those was, shall we say, decidedly lackluster. Set IOs didn't help you get any closer to Memorization requirements.
Luck Charms and Alchemical Silver was always priced through the roof on the market. The corresponding Uncommon salvage was dime a dozen and "worthless" as a result due to oversupply and limited demand.
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I agree. But those tournaments don't allow you to buy 4 Grizzly Bears on the open market and play with them. You have to buy PACKS. Thus the street value of the Grizzly Bear is really low. People may as well throw away their Grizzly Bears as soon as the tournament is over, and some actually do. Not to mention basic land.
By comparison, Co
never had limited events, so the Iron Bar, once randomly generated, was of little value when there are only so many recipes that need it, and nobody wanted to craft those anyway. Eventually they got to the point where people were aware of how cheap they were and yet the NPC vendors in CoX stupidly payed good INF for them anyhow, so people would sell them there instead of the market. Iron Bars got so cheap you had no incentive to sell them using the auction house and became hard to find when you wanted one for that reason. They were so common and inexpensive they weren't traded reliablyh on the AH because nobody felt they could make anything on them, except by buying them to then go and sell to NPCs, which destroys the Iron Bar and is not helping the one person in the game who needs one.
It was a broken system in that sense.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Okay, fair point, I'm remembering this wrong. It was the uncommons that didn't benefit from the Badgers. But even then, I feel like it was a failing of the system that the only driving force behind any commerce for that stuff was so that Badgers could make stuff NOBODY wanted (including themselves) just to get badges.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I bought and sold that stuff. Lvl 30 run speed made a profit. Lvl 45s were badging junk I'll admit. You're universalizing on a limited foundation ... Again
You are also thinking of Top 8 decks. I know several Homebrew decks that run crazy commons combos.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
And lord knows, there are trash uncommons and commons that get broken years after release.
High tide, ghost town, ironclaw orcs
That doesn't create an actual economy for each and every crappy common ever printed. However much fun one person might have with the janky cards they like in whatever formats they play in, that doesn't cause widespread sales of those cards to actually happen. If you don't believe me, open a store and see how long it takes you to get rid of the piles and piles of Shatters and Naturalizes and Mons' Goblin Raiders etc they've printed over the years. You'll go broke trying to sell those to people. You can sell PACKS to people as part of a limited tournament, and they have some value, but the commons that come out of opened packs are largely worthless.
And regardless of whether or not you agree with the Magic card analogy, the fact is people deleted a lot of junk salvage that probably could have just as well not existed for all the good it was doing anyone, but for the fact that NPCs we're willing to buy it for INF.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
One man's junk is another man's treasure. While YOU may not have sold off your common salvage or used them to create low level IO's doesn't mean that others followed in your exact footsteps. I sold my junk salvage on the Auction House all the time. They usually sold for around 100 inf, and while that may not be a lot it was 100 more than I had before I sold it.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Okay so here's a proposed "Better" salvage sytem than what CoX had. Instead of havong common, uncommon, and rare salvage and watch a lot of it go completely usused, why not just have one "rarity" of salvage, then make people use MORE of it for rarer recipes. So like a purple might need 4 Hamidon Goo, 4 Adamantium Bar, 4 Rikti Alloy, and 4 Complex Chemical Formula while a Positron's Blast set piece would need less than that, and more common stuff would need the same stuff, just less of it. Then there would be a real market for everything.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
And the only reason anyone bought that stuff was to go sell it to an NPC for a mark-up or make a IO that NOBODY needed just to get a badge.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
That is NOT true! There are people, and I knew a few, that WOULD make the lower level IO's that required this so called "Junk Salvage". They didn't do it JUST for a badge either. They actually used those IO's and that character. Some were for PvP in the lower level zones, and other were for specific reasons due to certain TF's or missions that they ran. You can't say that, because you are not correct. I don't care who you think you are, it's just not true.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Useless salvage might've been sellable
but frankly I'd rather just get the cash as a drop directly
because it doesn't fill up my inventory with useless salvage.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
I tended to do a couple of tf then 4 or so AE fire farms then do a hardcore crafting session. Drop all the IOs I didn't want onto wentworth's and go on with my life
Can I get an opinion from anyone on the "make all salvage rare and useful and just require MORE of it for rarer recipes." idea? Because I'm still not sure what _I_ think about that yet.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
In all seriousness, if you make all salvage Rare then it's no longer Rare. It's now just common. Much like if you take away the Commons then the Uncommons are now the Commons. I agree that all salvage should be usable. However, I'm not sure the Crafting system will work in the same way that CoH worked. There may not be quite as many varied recipes as CoH had. Remember we are going to be using Augments and Refinements. We are only going to have 4 slots and then a possibility of 3 Refinements per Augment, IF we can get ahold of those Augments that allow for the Refinements.
I think more information will be needed before we can even really discuss this in greater detail. Unfortunately that information may not be available for quite some time. But I believe Tannim has mentioned that the Crafting system will work a lot better than CoH's did and that there will be less "Junk" Refinements to craft to put into our Augments.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Definitely fewer actual different individual salvage pieces would be an improvement. CoX had way too many.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
So what you mean then is make all salvage the same chance off occurring
and make recipes require different amounts of several equally common ingredients.
Kind of like the essences in Dungeons & Dragons.
they have like 12 essences that are used in different recipes
(Of course they ruin it by adding a bunch of other ingredients but apparently you're wanting to Not ruin it)
then a really powerful recipe might require 5,000 essences of earth and 5,000 essences of magic, and throw in 5,000 essences of fire
while a cheaper recipe might just require 500 mind essences
if I'm reading you right, then yes I'm all for it.
If I'm just way off base let me know.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
I'm still wondering why we'd even want to go to the trouble of having [s]permission slips dropping[/s] salvage at all. Would be so much simpler to just use a more liquid form of resource consumption than a strictly inventory based one.
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Red I like your idea also but I think it might be a bit too different for most people to feel comfortable with.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
Assuming the alternative to having salvage is just spending a lot more in game currency to make your recipe into a working Augment, this might be a way to sink it maybe. Arguably that's all salvage drops did in Cox, they saved you some INF if you wanted to make a IO and you had the right one or cost you some when you wanted to make a thing and had to buy the salvage for it.
That said, taking away salvage takes away the need to store it, and thus you can't charge people for inventory space then either :/
Not sure about that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
salvage never really bothered me. even the "junk" ones. I used em here an there, sold em on the AH or just pawned em off on a vendor. did they occasionally get in the way? sure, but it took all of two second to drop em to make room for other, more important, things.
if they developed a salvage free system...would be interesting but also, assuming no gear either, it might kill some of the MMO'rs out there.
[I]"what?!? no gear and no salvage!?! *keels over dead*[/I]
...althooough....perhaps this is a good thing....yes! MWM must thin the herd! no gear AND no salvage! Go MWM, GO! >:)
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"[b]And I'll form ... THE HEAD![/b]"
Go MWM!
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[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXzJ0uipBDw]CHARGE THE LIGHTNING CANNON![/url]
(WARNING: foul language)
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
My position of crafting in superhero MMOs is clear: I hate the traditional systems. Captain America didn't pick up loot. Spiderman DID craft some of his stuff but it was few and far between. Superman had a stupid amount of stuff hidden in his Fortress but he seldom used it except in rare situations. However I understand that the current MMO culture expects some sort of crafting so CoT must have it. All that being said, I would be VERY pleased with an improved crafting system.
What Red proposed is an interesting idea (like most of her ideas...). Why not make the crafting system more fluid and adaptable? Our character don't actually 'wear' the stuff we craft on our costumes (something most of us LOVED about CoX) so why do we really need to 'craft' and use 'drops' at all? What do the actual Enhancements DO for us? Well that depends on the Enhancement slotted. It might make an attack hit harder or use less Stamina but why do we have to associate that with gear and equipment all the time?
How about we break drops into three categories: Improvement Points or IP, Clues and Soecial? Improvement Points are accumulated until you have enough to just MAKE the Enhancement you want. Making enough of the same kind (Damage for instance) nets you badges, discounts making Damange Enhancements later etc. Clues are those tiny tidbits you can use to get other missions. A Simple clue might lead you straight to a Mission or a Contact with a choice of missions. A Complex Clue might have to be 'assembled' with other complex clues to access the mission or Contact. A Special drop is an actual piece of loot...some rare thing seldom seen and often sought-after...that can be traded for Badges and such (yes...making this up as I go along).
Advantages: People who don't like Crafting can stay away from it. You accumulate IP, make your Enhancements and slot them...done. Less Inventory to worry about (IP do not count towards Inventory). Smaller drop system would be easier to program and adapt later. Less sugar-daddy syndrome because IP can't be traded.
Disadvantages: Not much of a Market because IP cannot be bought, sold or traded.
No...I haven't thought this through obviously. I really want the game to succeed but I simply don't like the Enhancement and Crafting system we used before and would consider almost anything an improvement.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
/em rolls eyes
Eh ... I have my moments.
Mainly, I was just interested in "cutting out the middleman" of the hassle of gathering up [i]specific combinations of materials[/i] in order to have the right "collection" of permission slips to perform certain actions with regards to crafting of Enhancements. Reason being is that needing to perform the action of juggling permission slips like that necessitates an Inventory Meta-game, which ... quite honestly ... City of Titans doesn't exactly need for a priority as inconsistent as obtaining Enhancements (ie. low demand).
City of Heroes was originally designed to mandate complete replacement of ALL Enhancements every 5 Levels ... until reaching the Level Cap, at which point you never needed to replace anything ever again and the demand pressure dropped to basically zero. The Invention System functionally interfered with this "every 5 Levels" demand pressure by making IOs of all types substantially (although not entirely) Level Agnostic, unlike TO/DO/SO Enhancements which were Level Sensitive. This in turn crushed the demand for Enhancements down even further into a predictable "One And Done" behavior where once you got your build slotted you never needed to bother with Enhancements ever again until you wanted to Respec (or make an alternate build).
So the salvage demand just went way out of whack with the supply ... and basically stayed there.
And I looked at the economics of that and asked the all important question ... why recreate that mess in its entirety? Why not just "skip the middleman" of the permission slips (ie. Salvage) and just run the whole thing on a much more liquid resource consumption basis? Even better yet, why not set things up such that the resources being consumed are the ones that are normally generated simply by playing the game (ie. In-game Currency, XP and Reserves) which didn't involve use of Inventory (and the juggling of that Inventory)?
I'm glad to see that Comicsluvr has [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/what-if-foes-simply-dont-drop-loot]found what I was referring to[/url].
I would also point out that City of Titans [i]already has an entirely different system[/i] in mind which ought to demand the use of Inventory, in some form or fashion ... [b]Clues[/b]. City of Titans is going to be working on a "Build Your Own Mission Adventures" system, where you have to scrounge up Clues which can then be "crafting style" assembled into becoming the Missions that you do. Game mechanically, those Clues are going to function almost exactly the same way that Salvage did for creating IOs in City of Heroes. However, the big difference is ... there will ALWAYS be a demand for Clues to assemble into Missions ... while the demand for Salvage to craft Inventions was something that could (and did) plateau at various points throughout the game in City of Heroes.
Which then brings up a rather obvious monetization possibility. Should Players be able to pay Stars to purchase specific Clues, so as to "guarantee" that there will always be a sufficient supply of Clues circulating within the game's economy? I'm thinking something trivial like 1 Star buys you 1 Clue of any flavor, thus making Clues essentially a "penny stock" sink for Stars to be spent on. However, if you've got tens of thousands of Players playing your game and they're each spending 1 Star per day on buying Clues ... that's $100 per day per 10k Players playing, which may be "chump change" for most companies but something worthwhile for Missing Worlds Media.
Hey, somebody get me [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Ascendant-O%27s]Saul Rubenstein[/url] on the phone!
What's that?
He's busy making phone calls? AGAIN?
Isn't there anyone else there who can-
What did you say?
Who?
Segev?
Never heard of him. Did he start out by marketing [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segway_PT]Segways[/url] or something and have a bad run in with the Russian Mafia over a misunderstanding?
No no, I was joking!
About the marketing thing.
Yes yes, I'll hold.
Damn Ebil Marketeers ...
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I'm in favor of anything that will streamline and simplify the making and implementing of enhancements/improvements/augments/etc. For me, "crafting" is a distraction and something that sucks away play time. Likewise having to camp on the auction board to get the "One Thing" I need to complete a build. I want to play City of Heroes, not City of Market Analysts.
Like many here, I don't even really like the concept of "salvage" dropping from defeated opponents. It is a default MMO convention rather than something defined by the genre of the game. Gaining "Reputation" and the occasional "Clue" from defeating bad guys makes much more sense than going through the pockets of vanquished minions, to me.
Don't understand "Badge Hunting" for its own sake. That is to say, unless the badge yields some tangible game effect, I don't get the collector thing. So I'll leave that aside.
I'll say right out that I hope there is, if not a preference, at least some concern for people who don't want to spend their time in the meta-game but rather in the ACTUAL game world. I believe the hard core "crafter" is in it for the perceived advantage they get from having gear that nobody else can have, not for the pure enjoyment of the activity itself. My fear, then, is that those people who actually just want to play the game, progress at some reasonable pace and enjoy the social aspects of an MMO, are left behind by a dynamic that requires everyone to feed an "economy" that has no bearing on story or character and has been shoe-horned into the genre to satisfy a minority.
Okay, that came out a little more pointed than I intended. In summation, if the mechanic is that you either spend time playing to BUY your upgrades or you spend time shopping and crafting to MAKE your upgrades, that there is some kind of balance. I don't see why there should be an inherent advantage, timewise, for the crafter.
End rant.
I can't speak for anyone else but I was constantly in need for the "white" salvage to craft stuff. And at certain times, even the common salvage went for more than the yellow/uncommon at the market. I made QUITE a bit of INF by beating up Circle, Carnival, etc., and selling all kinds of Magic Salvage in particular, but even some of the lower-tier tech stuff could sell for significant coin.
As far as "how to get IOs in CoX" goes, I think the best system was what they had toward the end: Hero and Villain Merits. You could crank those out and slowly build what you needed to get the IOs for your build. It could have been a lot finer-grained, but it worked.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I liked the AE RANDOM IO recipe method supplemented by market and merit
In a lot of superhero stories the heroes have support characters who would supply them with stuff. Could we not adapt this?
You start with a helpful connection, a scientist, archeologist or even a garage tinkerer. And maybe you could hire/ befriend/ capture/ blackmail more of them later in the game. And they craft the enhancements for you, requiring mostly time as ressource. And every now and then, they will give you a mission, that needs to be completed so they can continue their work. The scientists lab might be overrun by creatures from another dimension (again), the archeologist needs you to watch over him while he explores a hauntet ruin and the more villainous of us might have to raid the needed materials.
For those who would rather like that their character does everything himself the NPC could be switched with an automatic assembling station, a workbench or an android assistant, it would work just as well, I think.
So basically you just tell your crafter what you need and the next day you have it, provided you keep him well supplied and safe. In the meantime you can just play and enjoy the game.
I dunno. I never had a problem with any of this stuff.
I opposed the idea of crafting before it was implemented. I opposed the auction house before it was implemented. After these systems were put in place, I found I depended on them significantly. This tells me that not only were they well-designed, they enhanced my gameplay.
After salvage, crafting, and the market were introduced it was still possible to ignore all of them. Just turn off notifications and close your inventory window.
But, hey. Maybe others were not as impressed as I was.
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I think most were and I think if the game lacked it, most MMORPG players would avoid the game. I'm not sure how the MOBAMMOs work, but I think one of the things that hurt CoH was it did lack those things in the beginning.
I think most players want a little more than to press keys to take out enemies. They want that, but they want a little more, for when they're not in the mood to quest. Also, it probably gives a more full filling feel to work to 50 and deck out your character.
I was kind of dubious about them as well - but I found I really dug my teeth into them as I played. For entirely optional systems bolted on to an existing game, I thought they worked remarkably well.
The Secret World does something a bit like this. Any drop can be disassembled into raw components. There's 4 physical components (of different degrees of purity but you can always refine them) that go into making weapons and potions and so, and 8 (or maybe 10) different runes that go into making enhancements. The pattern you put your resources in and the quality of both resources and recipe determines the type and quality of the product. And instead of having tons of essentially worthless loot drop you disassemble it all into a limited number of raw resources.
Of course the problem is that mission reward drops are (far) superior to anything you can hope to craft, so the point of doing any crafting is pretty much zilch. But that balance is always difficult to strike in any game.
Personally - and this is not speaking as a dev nor with any authority - I like the idea of crafting working more Minecraft style: you need the right kind of "work table" to arrange the elements on, and to arrange them in the right places and orientation relative to each other and that table's "slots," in order to create the thing(s) you want.
Publicly-available work tables might be scattered around, while some of particular kinds may require paying IGC to "rent" them for a time (or just to use them on a per-craftable basis). And they could be added to your base, to make them YOUR crafting table, and build your own workshop.
No one-use "recipes" which are really the item itself that just requires specific tokens (i.e. salvage) to transform into something useful, no "crafter levels" and chances of failure. You "level up" by getting better tables and tools to use that give you better options.
Heck, tools could be a thing, too, which have to be maintained and which give higher-quality items but cost increasing IGC to maintain (thus creating a sink).
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I feel like there's still a need for very rare items though. Without them, a lot of toons are "done" too fast and I like the replayability it gives to have something to strive for.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Oh, sure. I was not saying anything about non-crafted items.
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If I can't implement an 8-bit processor in the base builder, it's not flexible enough.
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