Of Respecs and IO Sets...One possibility

So they should listen to the customers who have suggested vehicles, World PvP, complete AT respecs, elastic powers, swinging powers, etc. too? Those get suggested too quite a bit, by a number of different players and they are customers. If you don't like the game the devs made, you are not forced to play it.

It is the latter with the intent that we can keep only 10 and the rest are a sink.

I'd say "yes" to all but one of those, and I think the majority would be happy with getting all but two of them.

I completely agree with your last statement. That being said, at some point, what the customer wants becomes more important than dev vision for a game. But I don't think this particular request is to that point. In fact, I don't think it is close to that point.

While I think being able to keep more enhancements during a respec should be added, I don't think it needs to be added.

The reason I encourage people to keep requesting this, despite dev quotes is because something like this very well could be added if enough people want it.

For example, I realize the reason power customization came to us only recently was because of the massive work involved. But do any of yall really think the manpower would have been invested if it wasn't so demanded?

Actually, yes.

Even if it wasn't "so demanded" - say, one person a year asked about it - it would seem a natural evolution for a game otherwise known for costume options and character customizability. So, when it *became* possible to do, I'd expect that it would have gotten onto "the list."

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There are 2 incredibly huge problems with this.

1: People are stupid. A vast majority of people have no clue what makes a good game, much less a good MMO. Most people have no clue why creating a balanced risk:reward ratio is the one of the single most integral things that is needed for a game to be successful. Most people have no idea why balance is of such paramount importance. The people that continually ask for vehicles, world PvP, and every other utterly horrible ideas pretty much epitomize this statement. There is a reason that the developers are paid to run, update, and determine the future for this game.

2: Running a successful MMO is not the same as doing what the players ask for, even if it's something that many players ask for. One of the biggest things that is necessary for an MMO to be successful is a well maintained and balanced economy. Even as we're discussing this, the economy is already screwed up miserably because there is too much influence being generated compared to the amount of influence being taken out of the system. The ability to save any enhancements is already screwing up what little influence drain already exists in the system. The ability to save more would just screw it up even more. You'd be functionally removing all but the most token of influence sinks from the game.

Aside from the sweeping over-generalizations that tend to gum up logical arguments on internet forums, this is the only statement that is presented as logically refuting the "prespec" idea. And I concede that you are correct Umbral; the MUD-flation currently going on in this game is terrible, and there must be a way for players to use their over-abundance of money.

However, it doesn't neccessarily follow that the prespec would diminish players' incentive because they are saving IOs. I think it's just as likely that they may spend more by buying level 10-30 IOs and sets knowing that they can save them for use later and not lose them because they don't have enough respecs. In addition, that might also increase the supply and demand of 10-30 level IOs sets on the market which at this time is anemic as far as I can tell.

Horsepuckey. What will really happen is that players will use respecs to rip out their current IO's and email them to a mule character which will store them in base storage. This will in turn make desirable IO's harder to find on the market because everyone will be hoarding them, and their absence will cause market prices to become even more inflated.

The new email system makes it ridiculously easy to set up Mule Character/SG's. Players can now set up personal banks dedicated to the storage of a single item. (18 bins of enhancements, or inspirations, or salvage)

Forbin has described the most likely scenario; the newly acquired ability to easily hoard powerful IOs will almost certainly lead to more hoarding, which when paired up with a large and steady increase in the influence/infamy supply will lead to higher prices in markets for highly prized IOs, which leads to IOs being seen as a better long term store of value than influence or infamy.

Unless and until there are more effective influence and infamy sinks in existence, which at least allow for the possibility of deflation in IO prices, then IOs will remain a better long term store of value than influence or infamy. Thus, the predictability of long run inflation, under the current structure for the player economy, promotes hoarding and resulting supply problems on the markets. Supply problems, in turn, provide a further impetus in favor of hoarding.

The problem with this viewpoint is that it assumes that people will continue to buy low level IOs for characters when they've already got them. If this occurred, players would likely buy a single set (or enough sets to function for their entire lowbie collection) and then never buy any again (because you would just respec out of them and give them to a new lowbie). The price would temporarily spike as players bought up these IOs (demand increase) and then the price would plummet as players no longer needed to buy any (demand falls catastrophically).

One of the other, more interesting, side effects of the ability to remove more enhancements is that IO prices would actually drop (or, at the very least, demand would drop, ignoring the effects of further currency value loss due to inflation). Because IOs would never be destroyed (unless destroyed explicitly by the player), the amount of any specific IO on the market would eternally rise while demand would remain largely the same (if not smaller because players don't need to rebuy). Whatever currency was on the market would essentially become worthless (meaning that players would probably create an alternate currency or operate entirely on a barter system).

Well, I must concede that I would certainly store my low level IOs for use in other characters, and you make a convincing argument concerning the flaws of the "prespec" idea. Well argued

Yes, because having more IOs after respec will cause more hoarding than having them locked and thus forced to be hoarded.

I think you are debating the email feature, not IO respecs.

No. The email feature is a minor QoL that is nice to have but wasn't necessary to play the game. It doesn't encourage or discourage hoarding, it just removes the necessity of involving third parties, or activating a second account.

If you wanted to dispute my argument you should have accused me of debating Base Storage capacity because each base can have up to 18 enhancement storage bins which can each hold 100 enhancements for a total hoarding capacity of 1800. And players can have as many bases as they have characters.

I think it's obvious that your worried that the devs may decide to implement a more permanent equipment binding feature.

even tho for the past 6 years they have been telling us that all enhancements are locked into powers once slotted.

Sorry sweetie, I been through that very painful road. I believe folks all too often, tend to want to think the worse of things; and then react as such; frankly as you said, its a loosing and pointless battle. Sadly because of such attitudes, I suspect this forum section is not taken as seriously by devs as we would hope they would; there is simply too much emotional chaff with the concept for the devs to read through.

with regards to OPs idea, I fully support it, and hope he does not get the consitent flaming I tend to get...

Stormy

Forbin you make a good point there, and at glance with out further thought, it would be a topping argument.

But if you may, why not study your statement some and then maybe, just maybe, your conclusion may be altered.

What does locked mean? You appear to treat locked as a permanent condition, thus your conclusion that once an enhancement is locked, its permanently affixed and in order to make a change to the power, the locked enhancement must be destroyed.

Now if you may, lets delve into locked and attempt to see if it could be interpreted differently...

I left my house and locked the door, darn it, I must now destroy my door to enter my house, because I locked the door!

I locked my gate, guess its gonna have to be destroyed, if I ever want to enter my yard...

Lock Scope attachment mechanism to the rifle by tightening set screw...

Could it be possible, just possible, that lock is not a terminal type thing, but just a temporary state?

I produce a key from pocket and unlock my house door or gate, I screw-off the retainer screw from my rifle's scope...

So Forbin, could you agree for every lock there is essentially a key, and thus the thought of being able to remove an enhancement off a power does not have to be so repulsive?

Stormy

i think you don't understand what forb was saying. by locking in to a power, he means that the enhancement can not be moved to another power freely. and honestly, all they would have to do is the same thing WoW does with soulbinding equipment. that makes it so that those io's could only be sold at a vendor instead of at the market.

as for the idea of a prespec, /unsigned for the various reasons mentioned.

Sharker, I suspect you did not understand my response to Forbin, or what I was trying to convey.

You simply repeated what Forbin had asserted.

I simply logically challenged the assumption that locked is a permanent state, and indicated that locked items could be unlocked.

Now players could for personal reasons demand that locked be treated as permanent, and suggest that IOs can not be transfered to another player once the IO have been "used", save the exception via a respec and then limited to ten per try.

But frankly I believe it's inappropriate to use "lock" as an excuse to reject a means to uninstall attachments to powers. There should be other more valid an reasonable justifications than "locked" "devs needs an influence sink", etc.

Stormy

The problem with that statement? Who says what's reasonable? I could call every statement that doesn't agree with my viewpoint "unreasonable." Know what that means?

Jack all.

The only ones who can provide any definitive statement are the devs, and whether you or anyone else think it's "reasonable" (either objectively or "it does/doesn't agree with me,") theirs is the only one that counts. They HAVE provided a statement - that keeping 10 was, to them, generous, and they don't seem inclined to change that.

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LOL... what?

I said that your claim that removing more IOs would lead to hoarding made no sense.

You brought some kind of statement from another topic to create an ad hominem.

Very simply, people hoard now by having those IOs slotted. You claimed that if people could hoard less... it would lead to more hoarding. This may be due to different ideas of what hoarding means. To me, it means not putting those IOs up at the market. To you, it apparently means being able to access them, which does not work with any definition of hoarding I know of.

To quote you - "Lol... what?"


So, no, having IOs slotted is not "Hoarding" them, any more than putting gas in my car and driving around is "hoarding" gas, or buying food and making dinner is "hoarding" food. Crafting a bunch of IOs and sticking them in the base just to have them around, or to speculate that the price will go up in the future and throwing them on the market? That's hoarding.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I made five billion influence last double xp weekend by hoarding a bunch of IOs for almost a year.

This post tests at a grade 9 reading level. If you have an issue with it you should consider some night classes.

Bill you get a cookie.

It is interesting that you bring up this argument of a "key" for each "lock." (I won't get into your quite extreme door-explosion example.) This assumes, that you (the player) own both the lock and the key for each enhancement. When I think about "locking" an enhancement in place, I think about you putting something in a crate, and putting a lock on the box. It isn't your lock, you don't have the key. It sticks there until it gets replaced by a new crate and a new enhancement. That's right, you throw away the whole crate, and it gets destroyed... now no one can use it.

There is one exception to that: the respec. Which, if you recall was something that the Devs put into this game by player request. AKA, the Devs gave you a one-time use key to open up all those locked crates. After all, the crates are theirs, and the locks are theirs and the keys, too, are theirs. All the player gets to own, are the enhancements (that is until they lock them away) and the effects of same.

Thread-merging seriously needs to be looked into for these boards, especially this one. I think that's going to be my "dead horse" I keep trotting out.

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