TIMING OF LEGACY PROJECTS

[Manga]

The major problem with approaching it as you suggest, TheManga, is that it defeats a large part of the purpose and immediately steps us back into it being "pay2win." Selling the "useful" items on the StarMart (whether or not they're also available at in-game vendors) directly is, essentially, saying that the work people put into playing the game to "earn" the items is valued only at $X, and diminishes the sense of accomplishment when one earns it through play because that other guy also has it just for shelling out some cash.

Sense of accomplishment is relative.  Quite a lot of people get a sense of accomplishment from buying expensive toys and waving them around in public.  It doesn't take any effort to do that, does it?  While other people get a sense of accomplishment from working a double shift, earning barely enough money to buy a 6-pack of beer, and sit in front of the TV and enjoy it.  The only thing those two have in common is each of them believes the other is sad.

So my point is let them both have a sense of accomplishment.  People who play through the content and earn all their stuff can be proud of what they built and spent time on.  People who bought all their enhancements can be proud of what their money can buy.

The way that affects balance positively though is the people who bought all their stuff will sell anything they get in-game to vendors or the market because they don't need it.  And that stuff will be steeply discounted (they won't be able to overprice them because they'll be competing with the "second hand" stuff from vendors) so those working hard in-game can buy more stuff.  So in a way, the people with too much money are helping the others!

[Segev]

I agree, people can feel accomplished from either.

But there is a sense that the pay2win method is "cheating" which quickly and easily leads those who feel accomplishment from play2winning to perceive the pay2win method as diminishing their ability to enjoy the game. This is, I hope, diminished by allowing the pay2winners to get what they want only from play2winners who got the stuff and want to sell it.

Besides, this mechanism allows free2players to sell play2win items to the pay2win crowd and gain the ability to buy into parts of the game that are locked in the StarMart. It also ensures that there isn't a plethora of "bought" items that are mechanically advantageous to a dearth of "earned" such items, because the StarMart can't generate them. All were "earned" by somebody.

[silvers1]

I don't like the direction this is going.   

Any pay2win scheme involving the sale of items that have an impact on character performance
will lead to elitism,  player gear requirements to get into TF groups, and alienation between haves/have nots.

The final year of CoH is a good example, I saw quite a few broadcasts like "Fully IOed Scrapper LFG for whatever TF".  I'd just shake my head
and think "I really could care less how you are geared".    I also remember a prime example ...  a Tank in my ITF group bragging how he was fully "Purpled Out".  He then proceeded to impress the rest of us by dieing repeatedly - more than the rest of us combined.

The focus needs to be on having fun and working together toward a common goal, not on who has the biggest baddest gear score ... .
A cash shop for gear will not help in this regard.

Please .... limit the cash shop, if such a thing is needed, to costume pieces, and other fluff items.  I can do without the constant elitism i've seen in every other game out there.

[JaguarX]

I don't like the direction this is going.   

Any pay2win scheme involving the sale of items that have an impact on character performance
will lead to elitism,  player gear requirements to get into TF groups, and alienation between haves/have nots.

The final year of CoH is a good example, I saw quite a few broadcasts like "Fully IOed Scrapper LFG for whatever TF".  I'd just shake my head
and think "I really could care less how you are geared".    I also remember a prime example ...  a Tank in my ITF group bragging how he was fully "Purpled Out".  He then proceeded to impress the rest of us by dieing repeatedly - more than the rest of us combined.

The focus needs to be on having fun and working together toward a common goal, not on who has the biggest baddest gear score ... .
A cash shop for gear will not help in this regard.

Please .... limit the cash shop, if such a thing is needed, to costume pieces, and other fluff items.  I can do without the constant elitism i've seen in every other game out there.

well it was kinf od like that already between people with billion dollar IOed out builds and those that couldn't or didn't have the inf. or didn't enjoy the play marketer portion of the game much (Many knew how to play didn't mean they enjoyed it).

Seen many times people get excluded fro mteams due to not ebing IOed out or team forming messages that said only purpled out 50s allowed or only toons with IOs or regular doms being replaced (kicked from team) with doms with perma domination even though the regular one was performing in an adequate manner.

Real cash or in game cash the end result is usually the same. In game cash when it's player controlled and some people can get billion of inf in a matter of days from a lucky drop to seed their fortune and you have people that put in just as much work but get crappy drops and thus cant get billions fast, there will be elitism that grows. The difference is that some people that was able to make billions in game was able to feel the power they wouldn't have otherwise been able to buy with real cash while in pay to win, people with more cash are able to feel the power that many while good at playing a game market is not so hot at playing the real life "market". And both group tend to tell the outsiders that there is plenty of guides to get to where they are and thus there is no problem. Just do what I did and get more billin (in game) or hundreds of dollars laying around the house (real cash).

If a player controlled market exists, then there shouldn't be any issue with players that are not lucky in game or able to gain billions of in game currency being able to use their real money to get the goods they want. If the issue is about elitism then the player controlled market where players can get elite level loot in a matter of hours through a market should not be in game either because even then people are left out and it creates elitism just as fast as pay to win.

Or another way would simply reign in the luck power. If someone is playing and one person is getting billion worth of drops and another player doing the same thing, get drops that are barely worth 10,000 combined, then that is an issue. They too should get something for their trouble and their game play reward wise. Especially if the focus is supposed to be about fun for everyone instead of fun only for those that either have more in game currency or real cash then they know what to do with. Because having only one, say like only the market, that is leaving a bunch of people out of the fun factor there. Want everyone to have fun then have to give everyone a fair shake and not few people keep getting extremely lucky and making billions and rest left out  in the cold. Yes there are guide, but their are also guides of how to make real money to. Thus having guides or not is highly irrelevant. 

[Manga]

But there is a sense that the pay2win method is "cheating" which quickly and easily leads those who feel accomplishment from play2winning to perceive the pay2win method as diminishing their ability to enjoy the game. This is, I hope, diminished by allowing the pay2winners to get what they want only from play2winners who got the stuff and want to sell it.

I think there's some misunderstanding here.  When I'm talking about purchasable items, I mean things that are available both for in-game currency and real money, concurrently (but not exchangeable one for the other), and also possibly available as gameplay item drops.  THREE ways to get it.  Anyone could scrape up some in-game currency too, or be really savvy and wait until someone drops the item into the market at a steal.  And yes, I know someone snatching one off the market at a steal will make people who grind for drops scream "unfair!", but they had the same chance anyone else did, and they just chose that particular route.

As for players changing teaming requirements because of the availability of those items?  Easy to solve by just making them *incrementally* better.  A small percentage improvement, a useful but not critical bonus, things like that.  It would be a problem if advanced enhancements would make you 50% more damaging, or be the difference between you being able to beat a boss solo or need help (swtor is guilty of that), but the difference should not be so extreme.  In CoH, this wasn't really much of a problem until Incarnate content came along, and then suddenly new requirements were set.

[Segev]

I don't like the direction this is going.   

Any pay2win scheme involving the sale of items that have an impact on character performance
will lead to elitism,  player gear requirements to get into TF groups, and alienation between haves/have nots.

I am uncertain, but I think you're seeing something I'm not suggesting.

The scheme I'm suggesting is that we have a player-controlled AH much like WoW or CoH or other games. Players put things that drop for them up on it to sell. The quirk, however, is that we allow players to put things up for sale for in-game currency or for Stars. By allowing them to put them up for Stars, they can choose to seek access to the StarMart (the c-store) and its contents without necessarily spending a dime. By allowing people to buy things on the AH for Stars, we allow those who would go to the c-store to pay2win to still pay2win...but from other players. The pay2winners are thus subsidizing the players who put their things up on the AH.

As both jaguarX and TheManga have pointed out, there's no way to avoid "elitism" of the "only looking for people kitted out how I think is minimally acceptable in my team" variety. That happens even without AHs; the elite crowd just gets smaller (and the pay2winners just wind up paying more to a smaller number of a few who will power-level characters for other people for money). The goals of this mechanism are to de-incentivize behaviors that are against ToU in most games because they hinder security, maintain the "fairness" of an in-game AH that allows players to trade items amongst themselves, and provide free2players an avenue to get Stars and the items behind the pay wall by just playing the game. All without creating Stars that are not paid for by somebody, and without creating game-useful items just at the wave of a checkbook. Every item bought on the AH was dropped/earned in play.

I think there's some misunderstanding here.  When I'm talking about purchasable items, I mean things that are available both for in-game currency and real money, concurrently (but not exchangeable one for the other), and also possibly available as gameplay item drops.  THREE ways to get it.  Anyone could scrape up some in-game currency too, or be really savvy and wait until someone drops the item into the market at a steal.  And yes, I know someone snatching one off the market at a steal will make people who grind for drops scream "unfair!", but they had the same chance anyone else did, and they just chose that particular route.

No, I get what you're suggesting.

I'm disagreeing.

Three avenues means that the items are rarely worth hunting for; just grind for in-game currency to buy it from the vendor. Or spend real money on it.

Those who actually find it won't feel particularly accomplished; it wasn't a rare item, just an expensive one at the vendor. Those who buy it at the vendor might feel accomplished if it took a lot to grind the currency, but as inflation accelerates, the price at the vendor will seem less and less impressive (or more and more unfairly arbitrary). And then the pay2win crowd just buys it from the StarMart, and both the former two feel cheated, like they had to work for something just handed to Mr. Moneybags.

Even if you have a "you can't sell the dropped/currency-bought versions for Stars and you can't sell the Star-bought version for anything" rule, you just make it annoying because people start demanding "proof" that an item wasn't Star-bought OR they just feel like you're really trying to extort money from them because the non-Star-bought item is too darned hard to get compared to shelling out a few bucks.

For the items we intend to have significant rarity, I don't want to have Vendors provide easy access to them for any amount of in-game currency. If Vendors do sell them, I want it to be through re-selling things that were sold to them by players that got them from other drops. Or, if we get the Vendors tied to factions appropriately, certain high-faction-affiliation Vendors might sell certain items (requiring in-game earning of just the privilege to access that Vendor's special stock). Obviously, some things will just be Vendor supplies. These are not really an issue; everybody eventually gets them in any game, if they want them. I am not sure how much AH market value they have; certainly, they have less market value on the AH than at the Vendor's store.

So, for things that are not "common Vendor-sold items," I want the primary access mechanism to be drops or other in-game awards (e.g. mission complete, possibly for specific missions). Those who don't have the luck, patience, time, or interest to pursue the right in-game content to acquire the specific drops they want can go to the AH to see about buying them from other players. This, so far, should sound similar to most MMOs with an AH: you go to the AH to buy items from other players which you for some reason can't get ahold of directly.

The twist on this, again, is that we don't sell these items in the StarMart. You can't buy Stars and go behind the pay wall and buy these items without interacting with the players who won the items "the hard way." You can, however, go to the AH and offer Stars for the item. Those Stars go to the player who sold it. Now, you've effectively paid real money to get the item (assuming that's how you got your Stars to begin with), but you haven't created one that didn't exist before. And, you've now given Stars to a player who may not have been willing to spend real money on the game, himself. But he can use those Stars to go visit the StarMart and buy a microsubscription or other material behind the pay wall.

So, as you suggested, there are three ways to get it:

• Win it through play (random drop, mission award, whatever)
• Pay for it in in-game currency (on the AH)
• Buy Stars and effectively pay for it with real money (on the AH)

These are equivalent, player-side, to having the three ways you suggested (as I understood it, anyway):

• Win it through play (random drop, mission award, whatever)
• Buy it with in-game currency (from a vendor)
• Buy Stars and effectively pay for it with real money (at the StarMart)

But from a larger perspective, the first way means it's all sourced from the first "win it through play" option, and the other two methods mean you've provided something to your fellow players commensurate with the reward of having that item. While there will always be the criers of "unfair" who moan if you got the item at the AH rather than winning it "the hard way," their voice is diminished in force and justification when somebody had to earn it. And keeping it out of the StarMart means that nobody can claim that MWM is trying to force people to spend real money to play the game competitively/successfully by having "required" items locked behind a pay wall. (Heck, this mechanism means that even free2players can GET into the StarMart and get real-money items, because they can get Stars without having to spend real money, themselves. Those who buy Stars to use on the AH subsidize the free2players' access to the StarMart!)

[Manga]

I understand what you're saying too, that you want the price of an item to be equivelent to an amount of "work" in order to get it.  The trouble is, "work" in a game means time.  Which means you have to come up with a time chart where you have items listed, and the estimated in-game time required in order to earn it.

Like I've said before though, players are better at math than you are.  They will figure out how to get items faster, usually through farming.  And like anyone who has an idea nobody else does yet, they will use the idea to profit.  They will sell the item at hugely inflated prices, and then they will create a market for it by bragging "I have one and you don't".  Then when other people start farming for it too, it becomes the norm.  Anyone who wants one but does't have the in-game money to pay inflated prices is told "go farm for it".

That still matches what you're suggesting though.  It's still "fair" because each players has the ability to farm and it still roughly takes an amount of time to earn the item.  But it also wastes a lot of well generated content (I hope) and makes the entire game a new paradigm of "you do your boring farming for a few months first, and then you get to have fun".  World of Warcraft actually went and built that into the system to avoid adding content that people will ignore anyway in favor of farming.  SWTOR too, in a limited sense, because they want you to farm to get crafting components and craft stuff.

So i guess the question that remains is what kind of game system do you want?  One that is fair, stringent, but will probably end up boring a lot of people?  Or one that looks like unfair, but has a lot more freedom to dive into content and stay there?  It's a design choice, really.  WoW is the most successful MMO there is, so maybe there is something to the time vs reward system, and maybe boring grinds are just part of MMO's.  It's not my thing, but I'm only one person too.

[JaguarX]

I am uncertain, but I think you're seeing something I'm not suggesting.

The scheme I'm suggesting is that we have a player-controlled AH much like WoW or CoH or other games. Players put things that drop for them up on it to sell. The quirk, however, is that we allow players to put things up for sale for in-game currency or for Stars. By allowing them to put them up for Stars, they can choose to seek access to the StarMart (the c-store) and its contents without necessarily spending a dime. By allowing people to buy things on the AH for Stars, we allow those who would go to the c-store to pay2win to still pay2win...but from other players. The pay2winners are thus subsidizing the players who put their things up on the AH.

As both jaguarX and TheManga have pointed out, there's no way to avoid "elitism" of the "only looking for people kitted out how I think is minimally acceptable in my team" variety. That happens even without AHs; the elite crowd just gets smaller (and the pay2winners just wind up paying more to a smaller number of a few who will power-level characters for other people for money). The goals of this mechanism are to de-incentivize behaviors that are against ToU in most games because they hinder security, maintain the "fairness" of an in-game AH that allows players to trade items amongst themselves, and provide free2players an avenue to get Stars and the items behind the pay wall by just playing the game. All without creating Stars that are not paid for by somebody, and without creating game-useful items just at the wave of a checkbook. Every item bought on the AH was dropped/earned in play.
No, I get what you're suggesting.

I'm disagreeing.

Three avenues means that the items are rarely worth hunting for; just grind for in-game currency to buy it from the vendor. Or spend real money on it.

Those who actually find it won't feel particularly accomplished; it wasn't a rare item, just an expensive one at the vendor. Those who buy it at the vendor might feel accomplished if it took a lot to grind the currency, but as inflation accelerates, the price at the vendor will seem less and less impressive (or more and more unfairly arbitrary). And then the pay2win crowd just buys it from the StarMart, and both the former two feel cheated, like they had to work for something just handed to Mr. Moneybags.

Even if you have a "you can't sell the dropped/currency-bought versions for Stars and you can't sell the Star-bought version for anything" rule, you just make it annoying because people start demanding "proof" that an item wasn't Star-bought OR they just feel like you're really trying to extort money from them because the non-Star-bought item is too darned hard to get compared to shelling out a few bucks.

For the items we intend to have significant rarity, I don't want to have Vendors provide easy access to them for any amount of in-game currency. If Vendors do sell them, I want it to be through re-selling things that were sold to them by players that got them from other drops. Or, if we get the Vendors tied to factions appropriately, certain high-faction-affiliation Vendors might sell certain items (requiring in-game earning of just the privilege to access that Vendor's special stock). Obviously, some things will just be Vendor supplies. These are not really an issue; everybody eventually gets them in any game, if they want them. I am not sure how much AH market value they have; certainly, they have less market value on the AH than at the Vendor's store.

So, for things that are not "common Vendor-sold items," I want the primary access mechanism to be drops or other in-game awards (e.g. mission complete, possibly for specific missions). Those who don't have the luck, patience, time, or interest to pursue the right in-game content to acquire the specific drops they want can go to the AH to see about buying them from other players. This, so far, should sound similar to most MMOs with an AH: you go to the AH to buy items from other players which you for some reason can't get ahold of directly.

The twist on this, again, is that we don't sell these items in the StarMart. You can't buy Stars and go behind the pay wall and buy these items without interacting with the players who won the items "the hard way." You can, however, go to the AH and offer Stars for the item. Those Stars go to the player who sold it. Now, you've effectively paid real money to get the item (assuming that's how you got your Stars to begin with), but you haven't created one that didn't exist before. And, you've now given Stars to a player who may not have been willing to spend real money on the game, himself. But he can use those Stars to go visit the StarMart and buy a microsubscription or other material behind the pay wall.

So, as you suggested, there are three ways to get it:

• Win it through play (random drop, mission award, whatever)
• Pay for it in in-game currency (on the AH)
• Buy Stars and effectively pay for it with real money (on the AH)

These are equivalent, player-side, to having the three ways you suggested (as I understood it, anyway):

• Win it through play (random drop, mission award, whatever)
• Buy it with in-game currency (from a vendor)
• Buy Stars and effectively pay for it with real money (at the StarMart)

But from a larger perspective, the first way means it's all sourced from the first "win it through play" option, and the other two methods mean you've provided something to your fellow players commensurate with the reward of having that item. While there will always be the criers of "unfair" who moan if you got the item at the AH rather than winning it "the hard way," their voice is diminished in force and justification when somebody had to earn it. And keeping it out of the StarMart means that nobody can claim that MWM is trying to force people to spend real money to play the game competitively/successfully by having "required" items locked behind a pay wall. (Heck, this mechanism means that even free2players can GET into the StarMart and get real-money items, because they can get Stars without having to spend real money, themselves. Those who buy Stars to use on the AH subsidize the free2players' access to the StarMart!)

I think in a luck based drop game, "earn" is an over statement and the "unfair" thing is under estimated.

Two people can do the same set of mission put in the same time, work the same, do things the hard way but one walk away with pocket full of purples the other walk away with pocket full of junk. And then have to play the market and do extra farming of in game currency just to afford items that their team mate got when both were doign the same thing. The one with the pocket worth of purps may view it as "I earned it the hard way." what about the team mate that walked away with a bunch of proverbial crap for the same trouble? And just to get equal award must spend extra time and in game curreency buying from his lucky team mate?  AKA why is one team mate earn that drop but the other that did the same work, same amount of time, same mission, dont deserve the same drop? That is where alot of the unfair stuff stems from.

Many people that get lucky and have vast amount of in game currency say they earned it and peopoel have to put in the time like they did but ignore the fact that many people have put in the time and in many cases more, but didnt get lucky drop. So time and stuff and earning when put in that context dont add up. It could have fitted very well if it was "do this mission beat boss get this drop" Yeah, then time and earning would be highly appropriate because anyone can actually go earn it the hard way of doing that mish, and get that drop. But when it's luck based, earning it and time become near irrelevant to the case.

That is why there shoud be another option besides purely playe controled market taht is controlled by the lucky people that got the seed drop to makea fortune and everyone else must pay up simply because they dont have that same luck even if they put in the same amount of work and time. That is the unfair part. There shouldnt be instances where two players play for two hours and one walk away with near billion dollar worth of stuff and the other walk away with barely 10,000 worth of stuff especially when the good stuff, needed or not, cost 10 million-a few hundred million or more. The COX AH market in a way was a in game currency pay to win and that is where alot of the elitism grew from between the haves (lucky) and the have nots (Not so lucky drops).

The market would have worked better if the dro psystem was actually do x and x and y and get this drop instead of do x and x and y and one person get multiple good drops and the other person gets total crap for their efforts. If luck will be a big part of it, have soemthing for the unlucky as they put in just as much time and in many cases more time, effort, work game play, trying to do it the hard way compared to the so called "I earned my billions" that simply get lucky and make billions in a day or so. That dont sound like hard way of earning billions to me personally. That sounds just as bad if not worse than pay to win. With pay to win, the persona at least have to go out and earn some money to pay for the stuff instead of simply having the RNG continously smile down upon them and give crap to everyoen else.

[wyldhunt]

Two people can do the same set of mission put in the same time, work the same, do things the hard way but one walk away with pocket full of purples the other walk away with pocket full of junk.

A thought occurs. CoH and other games have "streak-breaker" code for misses. Games do keep a count of #missions completed, #defeats, #defeated. Games which can "detect" whether a character is "in combat" could also keep track of amount of time "in combat." These could be used to set bands of minimum/maximum #/time whatever to moderate drop rates. In other words, there were TFs which guaranteed certain drops from a table. Drop rates could be stated in terms of minimum and maximum percentages, and adjusted up or down for individual characters depending upon how often items have already dropped for them for certain activities. This may have the effect of causing characters to want different activities when they already receive lucky early drops and incentivizing repeating activities for those who are unlucky at first, as their drop rates would increase.

[Second Chances]

A thought occurs. CoH and other games have "streak-breaker" code for misses. Games do keep a count of #missions completed, #defeats, #defeated. Games which can "detect" whether a character is "in combat" could also keep track of amount of time "in combat." These could be used to set bands of minimum/maximum #/time whatever to moderate drop rates. In other words, there were TFs which guaranteed certain drops from a table. Drop rates could be stated in terms of minimum and maximum percentages, and adjusted up or down for individual characters depending upon how often items have already dropped for them for certain activities. This may have the effect of causing characters to want different activities when they already receive lucky early drops and incentivizing repeating activities for those who are unlucky at first, as their drop rates would increase.

Having drop rates be informed by more than the immediate random roll is a very interesting idea (especially if that random roll is just going to be on a flat distribution rather than a curve). The actual playervalue of a drop could be recalculated periodically based on how players have been valuing it in the market, for example. Then the odds of a drop along that value range could be massaged as a streakbreaker.

With that recalculated table, the game might also be able to collect some more interesting stats on ongoing drop value for various activities. If possible, it would be worth tracking it per person, so that it could alert on weird results (which might least to discovering some error in the award code).

With drop awards being the primary factor determining the supply of stuff in the game, it is pretty easy to justify paying a lot of attention to it, imo.

[Segev]

I like some of these ideas. Please do keep them coming. ^_^

Honestly, pure randomness is not the goal, here. If we can do things like make the craft system robust enough that even the "crap drops" eventually can be worked around by a dedicated crafter into what he "really wanted," they can sell decently well and work through the economy to become what people want.

I have consistently envisioned vendors who play the market as well as sell retail. One of their functions, due to finite inventory, would be to look at the market for items in their "purview" that are going really hot in price, and, if they don't have enough items of that sort to meet demand, triggering an option to give missions to players who talk to them about the item. The missions would drop either the item directly, or a form of plot coupon that the vendor can transform into the item, possibly giving a "free one" or a discounted one to the player who brings him the plot coupon. The vendor then gets a stockpile of the item in question, which he begins to sell on the market. As long as demand remains high and supply remains low, the vendor will keep striving to send players on missions to increase supply.

[JaguarX]

I like some of these ideas. Please do keep them coming. ^_^

Honestly, pure randomness is not the goal, here. If we can do things like make the craft system robust enough that even the "crap drops" eventually can be worked around by a dedicated crafter into what he "really wanted," they can sell decently well and work through the economy to become what people want.

I have consistently envisioned vendors who play the market as well as sell retail. One of their functions, due to finite inventory, would be to look at the market for items in their "purview" that are going really hot in price, and, if they don't have enough items of that sort to meet demand, triggering an option to give missions to players who talk to them about the item. The missions would drop either the item directly, or a form of plot coupon that the vendor can transform into the item, possibly giving a "free one" or a discounted one to the player who brings him the plot coupon. The vendor then gets a stockpile of the item in question, which he begins to sell on the market. As long as demand remains high and supply remains low, the vendor will keep striving to send players on missions to increase supply.

I find that vendor idea interesting. Just hope thast the vendor is more resistant to out of control inflation than the AH pure player ran market was.

And hopefully with the dedicated crafter thing will come into play because osme people loved to craft. On the same token but on the flip side, some people hated crafting and if chosen between play the market and or spend significant time crafting because the useful drop for them never drops, then it will lead to frustation and hopefully it wont be another half done tool that is too tedious to try and funnel people into playing the market to get items they need.

In reality, either the market should be more of a harder place to become instant billionaire within a couple of hours off a seed drop, a rate of inf even the best gold farmers barely can do, or have other options that are just as effecient and fast. And if another option woudl be considered game breaking if it was jus tas efficient and fast as teh market that is a red flag that indirectly shows that the market was already game breaking in itself and needs to be reigned in.


One thing about the market that caused alot of trouble and inflation was that it was a pocket in game currency PL tool for those that decent flippable drops. Which isnt bad in itself but COX seriously lacked any way to remove inf or spend inf on. Besides the AH, which merely just transfered inf from one player to another while even more inf got added in circulation each day, especially with increased farming and buying from gold sellers in order to obtain and keep up with the high prices,there wasnt many ways to actually do much with inf. A person that forgoed the market had no where much to spend their earnings. A player with a purp, instant 500 million right there with nothing better to do with it besides turn it into billions. While on the surface, hey people reaching billions and having 25 billion spread across a coupld of dozen toons, sounds good, but that make prices go up beyond the reach of many that either dont play the market or new to the game. 250 million-500 million for one item is nothign for someone with 10 billion. But given that the reward inf from simply playing the game never kept pace, that made it a gold mine for gold sellers, and or people felt they had no choice but to play the market.

[Second Chances]

Honestly, pure randomness is not the goal, here. If we can do things like make the craft system robust enough that even the "crap drops" eventually can be worked around by a dedicated crafter into what he "really wanted," they can sell decently well and work through the economy to become what people want.

Getting lots of drops that are in straight-to-vendor (or delete-if-I-need-room, whichever comes first) status is kind of depressing, so ways to convert them to something more desirable would be great. I dunno the plans for having "levels" for stuff like that (or how they would work in exemping), but if it is like the CoH approach (which was kind of annoying, since it meant I had to weaken the slotted effect of the enhancements if I wanted the set bonuses when I was exemped) I'd also like ways to modify the levels of things. I used to have target levels I would slot for in exemping builds (like 33, which let me hit a good chunk of the TFs w/o losing more than I could live with) and getting everything at that level was not fun.

I have consistently envisioned vendors who play the market as well as sell retail. One of their functions, due to finite inventory, would be to look at the market for items in their "purview" that are going really hot in price, and, if they don't have enough items of that sort to meet demand, triggering an option to give missions to players who talk to them about the item. The missions would drop either the item directly, or a form of plot coupon that the vendor can transform into the item, possibly giving a "free one" or a discounted one to the player who brings him the plot coupon. The vendor then gets a stockpile of the item in question, which he begins to sell on the market. As long as demand remains high and supply remains low, the vendor will keep striving to send players on missions to increase supply.

Something about the player involvement in this bugs me, but I am not sure what. Maybe it is just that I am not sure how it is supposed to work.

Say I am at the AH and I am like, "Man, I am tired of waiting for Ideal Bars to go on sale." When you say "give missions to players who talk to them about the item", is the idea that I would have to know what vendor is into Ideal Bars, and then go there and engage in a dialog to see if she has decided she needs more? And if, due to the game logic that I won't be aware of (or a bug, or the fact that I got the vendor wrong, or who knows what), she hasn't triggered, then I go "grr" and wander off, perhaps to return again tomorrow if Ideal Bars are still not moving in the AH? It seems like the game should be more proactive in contacting folks for help in a case like this.

And what mission would they have you doing? Would it be something kind of meaningless and unvarying like the CoH ones for unlocking origin contact stores? I think it should end up being something that feels kind of fun (or at least not so busyworky) since we don't know how often it will be coming up for folks, but fun is relative. Incentivewise, your idea of getting one of the item (or a discounted price on it, if that makes more sense for the item) sounds like a good reward. Depending on how widely you put out the word that help is needed, you could have it award, or work towards, a badge (those can Placate people who would otherwise be like, "ugh, this again?" without making people who don't care about badges jealous).

That all aside, I really like the basic notion of a mechanism to increase supply when there is a shortage, of course. That should help address inflation concerns. Maybe villains can get a mission to destroy items that are in surplus!

[corvus1970]

Woof. This thread became about something else entirely, didn't it?

[Twisted Toon]

Woof. This thread became about something else entirely, didn't it?

That happens a lot around here, I've noticed.

[grouchybeast]

Having drop rates be informed by more than the immediate random roll is a very interesting idea (especially if that random roll is just going to be on a flat distribution rather than a curve). The actual playervalue of a drop could be recalculated periodically based on how players have been valuing it in the market, for example. Then the odds of a drop along that value range could be massaged as a streakbreaker.

Wasn't that pretty much what the various types of merits in CoX were -- a player-determined streak-breaker?

They provided the players with a controlled number of tokens as a reward-for-time-spent for different types of activities, and the players could exchange them for the drops they wanted if they hadn't got them via play.  There was no need for an elaborate system to determine which items are desirable and how many extra should be dropped -- the players did that themselves.

[Second Chances]

Wasn't that pretty much what the various types of merits in CoX were -- a player-determined streak-breaker?

They provided the players with a controlled number of tokens as a reward-for-time-spent for different types of activities, and the players could exchange them for the drops they wanted if they hadn't got them via play.

I think that adding additional currencies, that had more rigid rules for how they were awarded, was an okay approach given that CoX was a mature game at that point. They went on to add other things (like selling sets in the paragon market, and making converters available) that seemed to have an even bigger impact on market prices (and so, presumably, had a bigger impact on letting players work around the reward system).

I think you have to expect to have workarounds, to let players address problems with your reward system, since you aren't going to get anywhere close to 100% right, but my feeling is that a new game shouldn't start with the assumption that workarounds are a substitute for maintaining their reward tables in the first place.

In any case, if they have reasonable ways to convert undesirable drops into something more desirable, as Segev mentioned, I think they will probably have the workaround part sufficiently covered (and in a less complicated way than adding additional currencies and vendor types to the reward system). If everything falls apart despite that, CoX has shown they can add additional currencies/vendors into the game later, after all.

There was no need for an elaborate system to determine which items are desirable and how many extra should be dropped -- the players did that themselves.

Unless you get rid of the AH, we'll already have the elaborate system for determining player value in place, and there will already be reward tables that express the game's notion of value. The question would be whether it would be worth using that existing player information to periodically adjust the existing game notions, so that a drop which is intended to make a player's heart flutter by X beats-per-second will be more likely to succeed in that goal.

Even if they do use a scheme like that to keep the game's notion of coolness more in line with the playerbase's notion of coolness, there will still be unfortunate-but-inevitable times when it doesn't match an -individual- player's ideas of coolness. Those will be the times when the workarounds will provide some consolation. For one thing, the game will still be dropping a market-value-appropriate reward (much like how I was happy to get a respec recipe drop even though I never had a need to craft one myself) and, if that also fails to satisfy, there would still be the conversion workaround. Overall, that seems (to me) like a more satisfying-to-the-player result than just continuing to drop something that never turned out to be as valuable as the original drafter of the reward table happened to guess it might be.

[wyldhunt]

Wasn't that pretty much what the various types of merits in CoX were -- a player-determined streak-breaker?

My thought goes further than a mere streak-breaker or merits, both of which set a minimum advancement rate. The issue that I was addressing was not a minimum advancement rate, but rather a wildly varying enhancement power advancement rate between players, which breeds resentment in some players. I'm suggesting a streak-moderator, which both speeds up doldrums and slows down gales.

I do wonder about tying individual enhancement drop rate to player-market valuation though. If a +DEF enhancement is more valuable on the player-market precisely because it offers a large ingame advantage compared to +RES, should that mean that +DEF enhancements should be more common just to reduce their value? If so, could that either lead to +DEF nerfs or power creep? It seems that a a drop-rate adjustment system like this would at least have to be carefully balanced around a dev-determined target market value for each item - and even doing that presents issues.

[Second Chances]

If so, could that either lead to +DEF nerfs or power creep? It seems that a a drop-rate adjustment system like this would at least have to be carefully balanced around a dev-determined target market value for each item - and even doing that presents issues.

I think issues and the need to be careful are givens, regardless of whether reward tables were based on actual value or not... if that wasn't the case, there wouldn't be so many complaints about the balance of existing game economies.

Anyway, if the defense against +DEF nerfs or power creep is that the game only allows the well-heeled players to enjoy the [presumably] unbalanced benefit, then you are in that zone you can see JaguarX complain about in earlier posts. Based on what Segev has discussed already, it sounds like they will try to avoid results like that... it should be a thorny but interesting problem, and I wish them luck at it.

[Segev]

Regarding vendors handing out "increase supply of Item Z" missions, exact method is very much up in the air. It wouldn't be triggered by items "not moving," but rather by items moving very fast at high prices. Possibly, there'd even be a tiered trigger: the vendors won't give out the quest if the item's too common and cheap to be worth their time, or their inventory is overflowing with it. At a certain point, they will start to give the quest to those who actually come to them to ask for it, because, hey, sure, they could use more of it (assuming you don't just want to buy it from them and they can't get it off the market easily). And then, at another point, the item's so rare and precious and desirable that they'll actually put a discreet "contact me about Item Z" note on the item in the AH, so those looking for but not finding it have a Clue (either to just unlock talking to that vendor, or to build a mission that includes that item as a drop, or something).