From opening day, how long will it take for a player run economy to really start taking shape?
In COH I really enjoyed finding salvage that would sell for big bucks...one rare item would keep me in enhancements for a good long while. The tutorial was always worth running because I received a major Heal and Damage enhancement, and they would sell for 5 to 20K at least. enough to keep me maxed enhancement wise for a few levels.
Every Christmas season I would farm candy canes and sell them for big bucks later in the year. It was expensive keeping up with enhancements, and I never savaged the ones I needed or wanted.
so its a given a few will max out their toons the first weekend....But going that fast is not playing/enjoying the game for me. I read the stories and soak up the lore. I learn the names of NPC heroes and explore the dark corners of the city maps.
I just want my toon to earn his way through the game...without supplementing his currency with real world cash. I'll be spending enough real world cash with extra character slots, extra costume slots, costume packs, and all the other goodies.
[b]I just want my accuracy and damage enhancements maxed out. Is that too much to ask?[/b]
PS. Kudos to the level 50 guy who generously paid 1 million influence for a single starting heal. I have no idea who you are...But since I cannot repay you, I have sworn to do the same for some other newbie. COH/COT people are always awesome.
PSPS. question for the devs. in COH i always sold everything at the auction house because the prices were fairer there. In game run stores a rare item (that I don't know is rare) needs to sell for big bucks, I will still get more at the auction house but I really ought to get a better deal with city merchants. Further that rare needs to not disappear, but should be available for sale to the next guy.
rant over. Thanks for letting me vent. ACTION HOUSES on opening day...please.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
As to your PSPS; this seems to be counter productive to producing a healthy player economy.
As an addendum to your suggestions, it would be nice to be able to pull out my SuperCell 7 and do a price check (AH) for whatever enhancements I have in my inventory. Then I can use this info to decide the best place to dispose of my enhancements, salvage, etc.
I agree with Nyxz. The player market naturally would always have better deals than in-game vendors. That takes care of itself. But I happen to know that sometimes if an in-game item is only available at a certain location or behind a certain achievement or skill gate, then the player market may have a mark-up over the in-game vendor for the convenience instead.
One of the things the OP touched on which I have always had an issue with for MMORPG is the useful life of gear/enhancements. I realize CoT will not have gear per se, but it will have craftables if I understand some of the conversations so far.
There seems to be such a rush to get to max level lately in games that there is really little need for crafted items less than the maximum tier other than for just leveling fodder your crafter. Low and mid-level gear seems to be swapped out with such rapidity as to make any level of effort putting together a good set to be wasted. So people just use the common items that drop and whatever rare items they come upon naturally. There's an entire economy wasted.
I like how CoX had a level range for enhancements, but it was still basically the same effect.
Rather, I would like to see enhancements able to be upgraded over the life of your character. This lets people work on sets of enhancements from the get go, and they can improve that set as they level up, or maybe collect a couple different sets they can swap out for the situation. This way your low level super-rare enhancement never gets thrown out and there will always be a need for low level enhancements on the market (if there is a market). As you level up you can sacrifice other enhancements or influence to keep the enhancements you want relevant to your current character level.
There could still be some enhancements and sets that are only available at higher levels or behind achievement gates. I'm not proposing to do away with those.
Then we could address why low and mid-level enhancements are not needed in today's games. I have my own thoughts, but that would not be in keeping with this thread's topic.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Time to emerge? Hours.
Time to settling? If it's dynamic enough to keep churning (like an economy is supposed to!) then ... NEVER ...
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
My only counterpoint to Low Level items still being useful for High Level characters, is that if high level characters have use of low level items, then those items are quickly priced out of the range of what low level characters (without a high level character financing them) can afford.
Few things dishearten me more when starting a new game than looking at the (game version of an auction house/trading post) and realizing I can't even hope to afford anything off of it until max level.
EDIT: This problem is only exacerbated if a system exists wherein players can destroy/salvage items for benefit (be it crafting materials, experience to level other gear, whatever), as these systems allow single high level characters to remove potentially infinite items from the player economy.
The way I see it, when you get loot, three types of things can drop on you:
1. in-game currency (IGC)
2. ready-made items, like Augments or whatever that you could slot into powers right away, or go sell on the market
3. crafting materials, like recipes and components, etc.
I would want there to be various ways to combine and convert these things into each other, in such a way that IGC is sunk in the process of taking large amounts of stuff you have acquired from random drops that doesn't help you and turning it into small amounts of desired items that do help you.
A. Using IGC to buy items you want, selling items you don't want for IGC, with the auction house sinking some IGC in the process.
B. Crafting materials you received and/or bought into items you want by spending IGC.
C. De-crafting items you receive into materials by spending IGC, then selling those mats on the market (sinking IGC due to transaction fees) or using them to craft items you want, thus sinking IGC that way.
Then I think the only thing you have to decide is how to balance the randomized drops so that the economy is good. Ideally, all three categories of things will be annihilated in the process of making rare and very rare items you actually want. Since most people will likely get to the level cap and then keep playing, there is the assumption that a lot of the economy will be all about the highest level stuff, but then the lowbies need items too, and will likely have high-level "sugar daddy" toons backing them with IGC after a while. I would like to see some attention paid to the not-yet-level-capped toons in terms of market and items, but I personally wouldn't waste a lot of IGC on items that will only last for like a day or two before I outlevel them. I think most items you'd use while leveling up would therefore be disposable, except for the uniques and procs that might do their thing well at any level.
Playing your character to max level and beyond ought to get you enough IGC and other stuff to get some good items, which in turn ought to allow you to increase your toon's difficulty settings to the point where you're getting more and better quality stuff a little faster than before, which in turn allows you to outfit your other toons now and so forth.
It would be nice if one class (the mastermind or pet class) didn't have the upper hand on earning potential in the game, but I think that can be dealt with.
I still like the idea of having some stuff that can only be generated in the game via random drops, like the Purples in CoX. That kind of stuff retains market value due to being scarce and valuable. You need some stuff like that. You also need some more pedestrian "okay, but not great" cheapo stuff to use while leveling toons up, and some "better, but not the best" rare gear to use while grinding for the very rare stuff. I like the idea of having some very rare items to have to take a long term approach at, like Purples in CoX or Legendary stuff in GW2. It gives the players some long terms goals to play for. Keep doing that raid or whatever in the hopes of getting a very rare drop, etc. Or keep grinding and generate enough IGC to just buy the thing, and maybe get some other valuable stuff you can sell/use in the process.
For the economy to work right, it may be necessary to make all usable items "bind on equip" in the sense that you cannot sell the item anymore, but you could possibly de-craft them into some small amount of base materials. So like maybe it takes 1000 IGC to buy a low level Augment you want when you hit level 15. You get it, then out-level it. You cannot then go and resell that Augment to someone else for 1000 IGC, you have to destroy it in a way that sinks IGC. So the only option there is to either let it be destroyed in the process of replacing it with something better, or else pop it out of the slot it's in and spend some IGC to de-craft it into a few base materials, which will not replace the value of the lost 1000 IGC you spent on the thing originally, but will be worth a little more IGC than what you spent to pop the item out and de-craft it, you hope. Maybe there's a randomness to that where you make more IGC, slightly, over time doing this, but you can have individual random hits and misses along the way where sometimes you get a lot of materials or really high value ones, but more often than not you get modest amounts/quality and sometimes you get below average amounts or low grade stuff.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising