One thing about most MMORPG's that just "feels wrong" is having to go to "vendors" to SELL dropped items, and finding "game gold" on creatures that don't even have pockets!
Maybe we could get a "Reward Points" bounty from the City for defeating monsters, rescuing citizens, discovering new things and information, and all the other occasions where you should get rewarded for your heroic deeds. Then, you can spend your points at various vendors to purchase various items you need to augment your character. Reward Points would not be tradeable to other characters.
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[h3]-- Mewkychan =^.^=m mew![/h3]
I can think of two issues with a set up like that. First is it precludes any rarity in the game. although you can charge more reward points for bigger/better/more powerful items and supplies, there would be no "rare" drops. Secondly, if there is to be some form of crafting in the game (and the signs point towards yes so far) having to purchase all the supplies needed is going to make it more involved and keep more than a few players out of the system.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
I think the whole idea of CoH calling its main currency Influence/Infamy was an attempt to try to divorce it from just being "game gold" and have it stand as a means to quantify power and popularity among the people of the game world. So in effect it was always meant to be more of a mental concept than actual physical money. Of course in practice Influence/Infamy was simply used as the "game gold" of CoH.
One could make the arguement that Experience Points (XP) are also essentially the same thing as your "Reward Points" idea in that they generically help you advance your character and they can't be traded with other players.
I sort of understand the idea about how it's weird getting "points" and drops from things that physically shouldn't be able to give us anything. But between the concepts of Influence and XP I'm not really sure how they can justify implementing yet another type of "currency" that by definition can't be traded.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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I wish the basic vendor's would actually sell stuff of use. Running around. Find a blacksmith. All he has in stock is a bunch of gear that has basically no use at all to you. Odds are that by the time you got to him, you would have already way better then anything he has. If ya wanted the good stuff you had to go the Elite Gear vendors. >.> Can't that blacksmith have at least something that I could put on that would be of good to me. Why even have those items in his inventory to begin with. o.o they least they could have done was make that useless gear an ingredient for better gear.
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Owner and Big Sister of the Justice Girls -Champions Online-City of Titans-
Forum Breaker
Leader of the Ellysyn Dark Ensemble
Why is it that I had to go to go to Peregrine Island to buy SO's for my level 45+ character. Why couldn't the stuff that was sold from the Atlas Park stores be useful for my character.
Same argument.
To be fair, part of it is "how much stuff do they show for the character". Yes, it *is* doable, but CoX had the same problems, if not worse... (honestly, buying from the SO vendor in Peregrine (forget his name) was annoying, because you could end up scrolling through SO MANY different enhancements to get to the one you wanted...
Ghost Falcon.
The original City of Heroes "method" of giving you access to Contacts who you would buy your Enhancements from was ... horribly, horribly flawed. In most cases, you couldn't tell from the Pick Your Next Contact screen which Origins that Contact aligned themselves with, so it was perfectly possible for you to pick Contacts who didn't stock your Origin and therefore were of no help in filling your slots. In fact, by the time you got to SOs, the odds of picking the "right" Contact for your Origin was only 20% (effectively), and with the "pick one of two" system basically meant you started out with a very high chance of NEITHER of the New Contacts you were being offered being one that carried your Origin's SO Enhancements.
It was ... BAD.
This is why once you reached Level 30 you had access to the Origin Vendor NPCs, like Agent Six and Penny and Dr. Sheridan and the rest ... but then they ALL got replaced by ... Ghost Falcon, standing there in Peregrine Island near the Ferry once you reached Level 40.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I'd say buying in general was annoying, though, even in Atlas. I suspect they would have had to fix the problem with the clunky interface and unneeded scrolling before they could think about having every vender sell every enhancement at every level. (I'd always hoped they'd clean up their badly done vender UI, anyway!)
The only reason I can really think of for limiting it by location that makes sense to me is to limit the amount of NPC's they have in each area and limiting their selection to limit how many player characters would be standing around a vender at any given time. But even that one seems a bit iffy to me.
J
Longtime City of Heroes player, longtime writer. :) Working in Nebraska.
COT: Mission tips writer, studying Cinema 4D animation program
Buying TO's wasn't so bad... it was with DO's and then the SO's that it was *really* annoying. The stores made it easier, but when there are 5 different sorts, and each store only dealt with a certain level range, it made it more annoying.
Contacts were annoying because they had to deal with *all* origins for the level range that they covered.
Yeah, but do you remember when that wasn't the case? Remember when the DOs sold by Contacts only covered the 2 types of DO related to that Contact's Origin for their Missions (and what became their Story Arc)? So if you were dealing the the Magic Contact and the sold DOs, you could buy either Magic/Mutant or Magic/Natural DOs from them, but nothing else? Needless to say it was worse for the SOs sold by Contacts from 22-32, since they only carried the one SO type that fit their Origin. Want Natural SOs? Go to the Natural Contact for your Level Range. What's that, none of your Contacts in this level range have put you in touch with the Natural Contact for this level range? Just do more missions and hope that one of them will give you an opportunity to meet a new Contact, and just HOPE that the Natural Contact is one of your choices, even though the descriptions for the Contacts are almost completely useless in this regard when trying to figure out who to pick! Good hunting (for the Contact you're trying to find)!
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I remember the DO's being like that, and *vagually* remember the SO's from contacts like that as well.
Yeah, without outside help, it was a total hodgepodge of stuff, that thankfully the community helped fix (I still have the original set of vidiotmaps stuff printed out around I3 era.
Then again, I also have the Eve Online system maps printed out somewhere as well....
Besides, it's the Twenty-Fisrt Century! We order our Enhancements from Amaz... er, Acme Online! They're mailed directly to us via Fedups. No need to visit some out-of-the-way Storefront in a hazard-zone.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I remember. This is one reason why I got into the habit early on of slotting just off of what I could find until SOs were an option. Even after it was 'fixed' by being able to go to the various stores (until of course the stores went away and you had to find the correct NPC vendor and run a mission for them. Did I mention that some of these vendors lived in places that would kill you?), I kept just using drops to supply myself til 22.
Like alot of you, I just used drops until I could could so's easily enough. I also used to make some lvl 20ish IO's just so I wouldn't have to keep on replacing enhancements all the time, and then as I lvled, slowly upgraded with a mix of so's and IO's. until I hit 50. Not the most efficient but it made things easier for me and allowed me to use some of the salvage I used to get drop, as I always tended to run out of space in the salvage bag otherwise