When it come to armor and weapons, simplicity is key for me. I really don't want be a warrior wielding a sword 5x my size.
EQ Never
- Thread starter Convo
- Start date
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First and foremost I would pay cash money for this mount if when standing still the "jump" (i.e. space bar) made it rear up into a middle finger stance.Awesome:
As for cash shops... What's the difference between paying $15 a month for a subscription and paying $15 a month for currency to use in the cash shop, except that the latter gives you options on what you spend it on. (I think SWTOR got this part of it right, get a subscription and get X amount of Cartel Coins every month)
MMO's are now about two phases of leveling. First, you level your character. Next, you level your gear. The first is predominantly about time investment, the second is about time (gathering consumables and raiding), and skill (yours and that of the guild/group you roll with).
The only people that speed to get to the second phase, or the end of the second phase, is meaningful for are the "world's first" crowd. Which is an incredibly small percentage of players. Catering to them is useless and not something profit centric executives will consider. Get over it. IT's funny that some seem to be arguing that "give an XP boost to those with subscriptions" is OK whereas "let them buy a potion/scroll/anal bead string to increase XP gains" is P2W?!?! really? I refer you back to the "get over it" portion of the discussion, good day sir!
With that said I do think that in order for it to be a discovery process and adventure there are some things which have been "improvements" we need to seriously consider not bringing along. Like the "follow the sparkly trail to get to your next quest objective, everything you need to interact with will also sparkle" mechanic. I am also not the biggest fan of the glowing ! and ? , as it means you ignore every other NPC.
Caeden
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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The problem with swtor is EVERYTHING that a sub would want just about costs cartel coins in addition to your sub fee (see the new in game barbershop). That's one where beyond warzone and raid access its really hard to tell what the sub buys.
I mean, ffs, I'm surprised they don't charge cartel coins for number of steps a sub player takes.
I mean, ffs, I'm surprised they don't charge cartel coins for number of steps a sub player takes.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 8,761
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My cash shop ideas are much more radical and don't mess with the core game in anyway. Cash shops are a point of contention because they didn't always exist and some players just want it the way it always was. So these games need to create new ways to make money. Players are competitive and developers need to capitalize on that. My opinion is competitive mini games within the world but don't effect the world.
LOl this is probably going to get me run out of here but hear is one idea. Add a competitive soccer league. Give starting race attributes similar to the game. Trolls have more power but are slower, elves are faster but less power, dark elves play dirty, etc...
Now add booster pots, jersey designs, instance practice fields, home field/soccer ball designs, etc.. To the cash shop. The boosters alone would sell a ton. Assuming this took off with the community of course which it probably would.. I don't even watch soccer but I always liked playing it on nintendo..
Anyway, I'm sure there are all kinds of other mini games they could come up with along these lines.
LOl this is probably going to get me run out of here but hear is one idea. Add a competitive soccer league. Give starting race attributes similar to the game. Trolls have more power but are slower, elves are faster but less power, dark elves play dirty, etc...
Now add booster pots, jersey designs, instance practice fields, home field/soccer ball designs, etc.. To the cash shop. The boosters alone would sell a ton. Assuming this took off with the community of course which it probably would.. I don't even watch soccer but I always liked playing it on nintendo..
Anyway, I'm sure there are all kinds of other mini games they could come up with along these lines.
Please no dyes. And no "skins" of the same things. You should not be able to dye a bronze plate purple and have it look like the cleric BP from Hate.
I hate dyes so much. Dyes should ONLY be usable on crafted gear. Items dropping from NPCs should look like those pieces. That is not to say you can not make different color simple low level gear, but fuck the whole idea of "customization", of the people who are angry because they suddenly have a pink item because they got it from a lady mob in a dungeon. Then either do not use it, or give it to someone who wants it.
When everyone can dye things, everyone starts looking the same. I still remember early EQ and seeing where people had been based on what they were wearing. By the end, the clerics in the guild had all developed some rainbow fetish and had dyed all gear in different rainbow colors.
I do not understand the whole "I am playing the game, so I should decide how I look like and what I can do". What happened to "You are in our world now"? Where death stings and you have to adapt to the world and not have the ability to /petition "I could not solo this, whaaaaaaa. And I lost something while doing it. Whaaaaaa. I do not want to lose anything! Also, all I got was this pink thing. I wanted black, I want to change it whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa".
Those people and the devs that listened are the ruiner of mmorpgs and the cause of the generic shit that inhabits the market today. There is something incredibly wrong when games today have 1000x the itemization and looks than early EQ, yet they all seem far more generic. Sword of the monkey, of the tiger, of the ..... I think at one point items in EQ actually were without the "no lore" stamp, where they were from places. Items might have stories.... Seems unthinkable today where items mean no more than the stats + color of the item.
I will play EQ Next like every other mmo since EQ. I will be dissapointed with it as well. Simple reason being that games today are no longer made "by gamers for gamers". They are funded by bankers who demand a bottom line. A feature that is "limiting" will be shot down because it will remove some customers from the game. What many of us want from EQN are limits. Limits on what you can do alone, limits on gear (no dyes), limits on fast travel, basically do not cater to everyone. Make a world for us all to inhabit and not a generic world that shapes to "your" story for "your" experience.
That game will not be made because you do not need to work on wall street to know that a game with features with closer resemblance to old EQ will sell less than one with a resemblance to WoW.
And a 100 million dollar mmo will never be crowdfunded by a kickstarter, meaning the bottom line will always be money and not features. And I am not talking about lack of money to add features, but rather, the money dictates what features are added or not. If 10000 of us want no dyes at all, but a survey by the marketing department of the ones with the money states that the "majority of players today want full customization", you can bet that dyes will be added even if the developers and players know that the game will look like a generic mess after a year.
Not sure what the point of this post is anymore. I want EQ Next to be good, but I have as much faith in that as I have had with all the "magic patches" that are due to come out for every mmo just before release. When games cost as much as mmos do, power shifts hands from the developers to the people with the money. And like John Stewart said, never trust anyone with a name that rhymes with Wanker.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
- 5,518
- 583
You are missing pay-to-open race/class restrictions. Already mentioned shared bank slots (distinct from bank slots in the EQ universe).
I'm still against P2W. I'm fine with P2P. Release a FTP game where if you're not a gold $15/mth memeber you have to pay to unlock raid content in addtion to the above.
Malakriss
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 12,388
- 11,793
To summarize how shitty cash shops are I present to you the TOR dye system: All crafted colors off trainers and regular vendors are complete shit. Factions that are old and completely useless get some half decent ones. But the good ones are cash shop only where you have to spend 40% of your monthly allowance for a box with two random dyes. The common colors are complete shit, but you have a random chance to get uncommon colors and a rare chance to get something good. Also, dyes are also non-transferable and only apply to a single gear piece. So don't ever change your chestpiece.
The whole design is reversed from how it should be simply to extract money out of the players. The "appearance" part should always be an augments or modifications slotted into gear, not the items or shells themselves. Linking back to what Droigan was saying, you can then have cleric BPs from hate would be an item without an appearance slot. There should always be an advantage having natural earned items over paid-for crap.
The whole design is reversed from how it should be simply to extract money out of the players. The "appearance" part should always be an augments or modifications slotted into gear, not the items or shells themselves. Linking back to what Droigan was saying, you can then have cleric BPs from hate would be an item without an appearance slot. There should always be an advantage having natural earned items over paid-for crap.
Byr
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 3,671
- 4,979
the perfect cash shop is one with nothing but cosmetic/vanity items. Games like Path of Exile and TF2 have shown it to be viable. Nothing in the shop would effect gameplay, just character looks, pets, etc.
Haha, that hand mount is awesome. Seriously though, one of my biggest pet peeves is how tacky a lot of the shit looks. WoW is my favorite example. You zone into ironforge and everyone has rocket-cycles, Ghost-unicorns and gnome santa clauses and it generally just feels stupid. I feel like in some game universes that would be cool, but I just kind of wish the new norrath could stay down-to-earth for awhile. I liked how EC tunnel was mostly people in rags and bronze and the occasional awesome particle effect that drew a crowd. I feel like now it's more like, "zone into social hub, be surrounded by terrible gimmick items." It's not a gameplay thing at all, but I just really personally hate the aesthetic of how over the top and stupid a lot of stuff looks. I hate how ~but my immersion~ that sounds, but it really kind of buzzkills the world for me when everyones running around with a gnome in a santa hat.
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 4,865
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Race/class restrictions is a good one that TOR offers. Though that might a no-go for lore peeps.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Devil's advocate, but I remember PoT looking very similar with 80% of the people running around having bright colors of varying tiers of raid shit and weapons with varying amounts of particle effects and "unique" graphics in that every other person of that class had something similar/the same. I think the proliferation of extreme shit is really just a sign of the extreme age of the game. WoW's been the king for almost a decade at this point, and it started off fairly tame, just like EQ's EC market. The easily obtainable stuff wasn't nearly as flashy as the raid earned things 5 years into the game's life, and the super flashy mounts were still mostly uncommon at best (phoenix mount from TBC, the various primordial drake mounts from Wrath, etc). It's just that the game has been out forever, and everyone has had multiple years to collect super gimmicky stuff. Don't get me wrong: I still think there should be a switch on p2p games that include cosmetic changes to turn off said cosmetic changes for none/all/some of the people around you and yourself. Hell, charge .99 for an "Immersion Bubble" upgrade that lets you turn off cosmetic shit like that. Let the people who want to see the silly shit see it, and let the people who don't enjoy rusty BPs and old gray mares around them.
Because cash shops that affect things cosmetically really are here to stay, and I would be really surprised if EQ strayed from a model they adopted years ago successfully.
Because cash shops that affect things cosmetically really are here to stay, and I would be really surprised if EQ strayed from a model they adopted years ago successfully.
That may not work with an MMORPG, and I'll emphasize "may". Riot makes a ton of money off of champs and champ skins and so does TF2 with their own skins. But the two things that those games have in common is that they are match-based games. Play a game for an hour or two and leave, where nothing is permanent game wise. Not only that, the game doesn't need much investment in content creation because you're constantly playing on the same map therefore you don't need to support a team for content creation.
An MMORPG might be more expensive to run so they might need more things to sell in order to be profitable. A skin/vanity only shop might work if the game was B2P though?
Just something to consider when wondering about the motivations of creating cashshop items.
Oh, absolutely. Last time I was in PoK it was pretty much on par with wow as well, I just can't think of any examples other than everyone having tons of illusions and duck trains and particle purchased weapon skins. What I remember of EQ dyes is everyone went grimdark in black, or decided to be ironic pink plate ogres. WoW vanilla was very good in my eyes, just like EQ it got dumber with age and cash shop/purchase bonuses. I love the idea of gimmick shit being a reskin and having the option to toggle it off so that some of the userbase can have pyro-vision.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
- 4,486
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Totally agree. Ingame gating via ingame currency or something to expand inventory (WoW's bank mechanic, EQ's weight restriction and inventory space increases dropping off raid targets) is just dandy, but don't make it a cash shop shenanigan. And travel speed should be directly related to class/job/role/whatever and overall progression through the game, not the size of someone's RL wallet.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
- 5,518
- 583
Speaking of cashs shops, that's something I'd pay for - the ability to toggle off other player's terrible taste in clothes and/or pets/mounts.