EQ Never

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Zuuljin

Bronze Knight of the Realm
143
0
Perhaps there could be other visual means of determining raid visuals vs bought visuals. Perhaps character tattoos or adornments that show on your character for beating certain raid mobs? Maybe your face gets more fucked up for every 'epic battle' you partake in and win. Scars, missing eyes, torn ear etc. Kill raid mob 'X' and lose an eye! Ok ok that might be too far... but you get the idea. Or special status in cities that let you join exclusive area's only to the raid hardened. There's a lot more than just the look of your armor that can distinguish a raider vs a rich kid.

Edit: Actually, I kind of like my 'battle hardened' method of distinguishing raiders from rich kids. Maybe the more raids you partake in, your armor actually starts to look worn in. Bought armor is always shiny and pristine, which while looks nice, shows that its just paid for, not earned. But if you see someone in epic looking armor, that is dented, worn, blood splattered.... well that dude has been in the shit. Hrm....
 
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Tol_sl

shitlord
759
0
Have a giant price tag tacked onto it that comes out of the collar and can be clicked for a link to the store entry.
 
Dandai

Dandai

<WoW Guild Officer>
<Gold Donor>
5,917
4,493
I was reading your concerns about cash shops effecting item drops, and at first I was nodding my head in agreement, "How could cash shop vanity items not effect regular content/updates? The dev team obviously has limited resources and devoting time towards cash shop vanity items still robs time from regular content, right?" Well, I've never worked on an MMO, but off the top of my head I can think of a few scenarios in which the two would minimally conflict:

1) Separate teams for live content vs. shop content (surely they already do this?)

You might argue that they could put the people from the shop team on the live team and pop out content faster, but in my experience you definitelycanhave too many hands on a project such that the work actually gets slowed down or you have several people sitting around with nothing to do while they wait for dependencies to finish.

2) Dungeon/raid/pvp areas take longer to develop than the actual models or items associated with these new areas.

In this scenario let's say you have a few 3D modelers, a couple designers, and a handful of environmental artists, sound guys, and programmers. For whatever reason the new content areas have a longer development time because of their size or attention to detail or whatever. If the 3D modelers are fast then they could be done much more quickly than the rest of the team thus giving them time to add content to the shop.

Anyway, you get the idea.

tl;dr: I started out thinking that, while I didn't really like how much cash shops have effected gaming, I accepted them as a necessary evil for the business side of gaming. The more I broke it down, analyzed it, and thought about how I would approach it if I were in the producer role of an MMO, the more I realized it's entirely feasible to have both with minimal budgeting conflict.
 
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Sithro

Molten Core Raider
1,497
197
Haven't been keeping up. Do we have any reason to believe that what they sell will simply be vanity items?

I mean, I hear Planetside 2 is cool and all, but this is SOE.
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
2,383
276
No reason really, the current discussion on cash shop is just more general talk about what people would like or dislike in general, like most topics in these 100+ page thread. Known facts about EQN are still close to none. Hopefully the thread can turn towards actual discussion of the game after that SOE event in august.
 
Nirgon

Nirgon

Log Wizard
13,495
21,033
Sadly I can imagine the tsunamii of tears (WTF SoE, this game is stupid!!) of players who destroyed their faction levelling off some mob only to be told they can't do a quest later without grinding twice as much time getting that faction back.

The common sense module in one's brain should say "okay don't kill npcs that like me, especially those of my own race or in my own city" but.. most people gaming today don't have that. They need that NPC to be completely invincible to prevent such behavior.
 
Ambiturner

Ambiturner

Ssraeszha Raider
16,040
19,502
Big W Powah!_sl said:
How did "pay for cool looking visuals" become "pay for badass raid gear"?

For fuck sake, make unique models only available by in game means, and unique models only available by cash shop. Now people will do both to collect the coolest looking shit.

Fuck off with this conversation.
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A game that is completely f2p and is supported by only cash shops and things like vanity items aren't going to do that to the people who support the game. You can look down on the "n00bs", but they're the only reason the game is able to exist in the first place. More people are going to pay for badass looking armor than silly things that are obviously store bought. As long as it's purely visual, the only thing you're losing out on is your smug feeling of superiority over other players. Sorry, but a profitable game is more important to a company than your ego.
 
Nirgon

Nirgon

Log Wizard
13,495
21,033
If the game's good enough, I'll pay for the silly shit just to support it. I do it with LoL. I know my money goes towards supporting something I enjoy and want to see more of.

This is a rare example :p.
 
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rolx_sl

shitlord
561
0
I have a problem with everything being cash shop that isn't armor dye and crap like that. If your buying any type of armor off the cash shop thats faking stupid. Any type of exp pot or mounts. Thats all stuff that should have quests in game for. Theres nothing more stupid than seeing 300 purple chests in my inventory I can't open because I don't buy the keys for real money the only way you can open the chests. (hello neverwinter) That shit just makes me feel like im being nickled and dimed I can't stand the feeling. I would SO much rather have sub. Too bad that isn't going to happen I just watched a vid yesterday that said they are all about f2p and the kings of it and the more money it brings. So all this talk about cash shops is really what is going in eqn.
 
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Jarnin_sl

shitlord
351
0
If EQN can stick to selling non-disruptive things in their cash store, the game will be better for it. Since they keep selling it as a "sandbox game", I'm assuming they're going to have a player driven economy, similar to the one they had in SWG. If this is the case, then they can't really sell items in the cash store or else they'll be competing directly with the players they want to attract. That means that SOE can only sell things like:

Power-Ups. If they sell consumable +exp, +coin, +faction buffs, I'm cool with that.
Services. If they sell services, like changing your characters race/name/sex/skills/etc, I'm cool with that.
Upgrades. If they sell account upgrades, like +bank slots, +character slots, +currency cap, I'm cool with that.
Vanity items. If they have absolutely no in-game benefit besides a unique look, I'm cool with that.
Land. If they want to sell plots of land, where a player (or players) has to pay a monthly fee of some sort to retain land usage, I'm cool with that.

If they sell items for cash, EQN will fail.
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
2,383
276
What about skills and spells? GW1 sold those for cash and did ok (you could also earn the same skills through play).
 
J

Jarnin_sl

shitlord
351
0
Mr Creed_sl said:
What about skills and spells? GW1 sold those for cash and did ok (you could also earn the same skills through play).
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I'm a fan of a wide variety of deep game systems, so not a fan of abilities being sold in a cash store. They could instead sell research resources used to craft abilities in the store if they wanted. That way the only people getting dinged are people who want to make an ability.

Of course the resources to make abilities should also be available in-game via some method. Maybe a minor quest, maybe a dropped item, maybe it costs a lot of plat. The idea is to give the player choices:

Do they want to spendtimefarming research components to make the ability in the game?
Do they want to spendcashin the store to buy the research components to make the ability?
Do they want to spendplatinumto purchase the ability from an NPC trainer?
Do they want to spendgoldto purchase the ability from another player via the market?

I'm a big fan of the F2P system Cryptic/PWE uses. They have an intermediary currency in Star Trek Online called dilithium (or astral diamonds in Neverwinter), which can be used to buy premium items in the game, or exchanged with their cash store currency (Zen) to buy store items that would normally cost real money.

In EQN they could do the same thing. The intermediary currency could be "platinum", which could be used to buy premium items in the game (NPC sold, no-drop only), or exchanged for station cash to buy stuff in the EQ store. If you have lots of time to play you can grind platinum. If you have lots of cash but not a lot of time to play, you can buy station cash and exchange it for platinum to buy in-game items. Or, if you have a lot of gold saved up, you can buy what other players are selling on the market.
 
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NativityInBlack_sl

shitlord
86
0
They should at least consider a cheaper subscription, EQ used to be 9.99. I would gladly pay to not have to worry about the cash shop at all. Hoping for a sub server (if the game is good
smile.png
).

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Randin

Randin

Trakanon Raider
1,931
890
Mr Creed_sl said:
What about skills and spells? GW1 sold those for cash and did ok (you could also earn the same skills through play).
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We practically never see this, but I'd rather like it if the means of getting new skills and spells wasn't so basic that could be replaced with "buy it from the shop". In my ideal dream mmo, the means of getting new abilities would mirror, as much as possible, how it "really" happens, according to the lore, so mages do research, and seek out lost knowledge, clerics get granted magic for service to their god, and shit like that. Much more engaging than having new icons pop on your hotbar when you ding, or throwing money at the trainer to grab abilities off a menu, I'd say.

Odds of getting that out of any mmo (or any rpg at all, it seems) are about nil, but hell, a guy can dream.
 
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rolx_sl

shitlord
561
0
I hope there's spells like ice comet that are found and not just given to everyone. Having rare spells dropped and stuff like that is a great idea.
 
Vaclav

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
rolx_sl said:
I hope there's spells like ice comet that are found and not just given to everyone. Having rare spells dropped and stuff like that is a great idea.
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More realistic (and cooler potentially IMO) - would be to expect base spells that are consistently available with few hiccups and a few premium spells with small bonus modifiers to make them better - but ideally with SPECIAL EFFECTS when they're done.

For example the classic Ice Comet "smash" fx that was unique for a while.

Spells need something to have the "Oh shit, you killed X" factor like weapons do - most sensible version being their graphic in some manner. (Ideally something idle-friendly as well - showing off gear in town is cool - if there's an "equip system" for spells with Next it could be done, otherwise not so sure how it could be demonstrated on character art...)
 
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