But hey, whatever tickles yer pickle OP. Good luck with the "fix" so you and your "group" can make more virtual cash.
Thanks yeah. I think we'll get what we want. Another poster mentioned that it's already happening to some extent so I am hopeful. Let's hope it doesn't take too long.
As far as I can tell, the point of bound to character effects is that someone with multiple alts, who actually wants to use the effect on multiple characters, would have to obtain multiple copies. This preserves the usable lifespan of rewards, because it takes longer to get them all. Hence the event auras that are bind to character, etc.
However, there are multiple problems with bind to character, particularly in the case of things that are cosmetic rather than functional. For example:
The character I want the effect for may be unable to get it, due to level, build, or nonexistence. This is sometimes appropriate where the effect it supposed to be an award for a specific achievement, but such rewards should not be sellable anyway.
Auras and costume parts (other than Z-store costumes) do not have a preview mode that tells you what they would look like on your character. Bind to account means that an aura or costume part that doesn't work on one character might still be salvaged for some other character.
I don't always know what a given cosmetic is for -- I'm getting it on the possibility of wanting it. This is incompatible with knowing ahead of time what character I want to get the thing with. This is particularly an issue for BoP (BoE you can just store away until needed).
Some players have one main character they play all the time. Others have a hundred alts. Both should be supported play styles, and at a certain point grinding the same unlock for a large number of alts is just too much effort.
Personally, I'd like to see account versions of auras and the like available at increased cost/rarity. Then again, I doubt characters with large numbers of alts use auras much in the first place, since there's no way to buy an account-wide increase in your aura slots.
Some players have one main character they play all the time. Others have a hundred alts. Both should be supported play styles, and at a certain point grinding the same unlock for a large number of alts is just too much effort.
A couple of good points raised but this one I find especially noteworthy. BtA is a universal perk to be enjoyed by both players who enjoy making lots of alts and those who prefer to play a select few or even just one toon. I don't see justification in removing it completely just because some players have problems selling surpluses of them and don't seek more lucrative forms of trade instead.
Ok, i read like the first 5 posts, then stopped, because it's pretty obvious you people don't know how economy works in MMOs. IF economy was learnt after the 5th post, then disregard this post. However, since most probable this wasn't the case, let's throw up some theoretical scenarios with the real scenario hidden in one of them. See if you can spot it:
Scenario 1) Captain Casual works a fulltime job. He can only log in on weekends and run a single cycle of Cosmics before having to go to sleep to catch the early bus to the coal mines the next day. Captain Casual thinks Sacred Crown Aura is the ****, but can't afford it, because the cheapest one is at 3k in vendor. Captain Casual however got Kigatilik Back, which rarity places it around the same price. He offers to trade it for Sacred Crown Aura, Prol33tGrind9782 sees his plea in Trade chat and accepts. Captain Casual is happy.
Scenario 2) Captain Casual is a single mother. She can only log in on weekends and run a single cycle of Cosmics before Sophia (voted most popular name 2016) wakes up and starts crying. Captain Casual thinks Shadow Destroyer's Cosmic Diaper is the ****, but can't afford it, because the cheapest one is at 2k in vendor. Captain Casual however got lucky and got the super rare drop Sacred Male Boots (no heels, 0.00001% it's in the game, trust me) and was able to sell it for 5k. Captain Casual can now buy Shadow Destroyer's Cosmic Diaper, and has 3k to spare for when a patch fucks up her build and she doesn't receive a free retcon.
Scenario 3) Captain Casual is a fat nerd and has no life. He plays CO 26/7 and has 3 different sets of Justice Gear: 1 for PvE, 1 for PvP, and 1 for ERP in Caprice Elite. However his fat nerdyness is not satisfied and wants a Cosmic Fang of Wrath to slot a Confront V mod (He is a DPS). There are 10 Cosmic Fang of Wraths available in AH, all ranging from 300g to 600g. He has Fire Chest Aura, Kigatilik Back, Shadow Destroyer's Pimp Shoulderpads and Therakiel Blade. He lists them each for 300g, but there are already around 5 other offers for the same price in AH, and when he refreshes the page, 20 other fat nerds already undercut him and posted the same items for 15g. 15 days go by and Captain Casual is now 50g poorer and doesn't have his Cosmic Fang of Wrath. Enraged by this, Captain Casual ventures outside of his basement, steals his mom's credit card and buys 56 Cosmic Keys, and sells them for 80g a day before new lockbox comes out to finally be able to buy his Cosmic Fang of Wrath.
Any of this scenario sounds familiar?
You see, when even players who invest a lot of time in this game are not able to amass enough money to buy an incredibly underpriced item, then something in the economy is failing.
So TL;DR, rarer drops that do not unlock for a whole player and his 2 other friends helps the economy flow without requiring insane grinding or real money investment
I prefer scenario 4 where we keep account wide costume unlocks. The economy is for economists and I'm sure the economists have other strategies to improve it if it needs improving.
I prefer scenario 4 where we keep account wide costume unlocks. The economy is for economists and I'm sure the economists have other strategies to improve it if it needs improving.
Costumes yeah, I am not against them being Account Wide (as I stated on another topic discussing this somewhere)
But Auras should def go Bound to Character, and Emotes should stay that way too.
Ok, i read like the first 5 posts, then stopped, because it's pretty obvious you people don't know how economy works in MMOs.
So you just read the first 5 posts of a thread without reading the whole thread, effectively disregarding everything anyone has to say, ignore all counter-arguments or how much validity they might have to oppose the idea of removing BtA after post no. 5, then dismiss people in the thread as not knowing how a MMO economy works. That's nice.
You see, when even players who invest a lot of time in this game are not able to amass enough money to buy an incredibly underpriced item, then something in the economy is failing.
Here I'll point out a simple fact as to why you think something in the economy is failing that people can't amass enough money to buy stuff at the AH. It's because people who put up stuff for auction decide whatever the hell they want to price those items at. How much something is actually worth on any supposed reasonable level is subjective to the players participating as sellers. It's all based solely on perceptions. There's no regulation in place to make sure players don't over-quote on stuff, because it's an open market. I mean, Cryptic could put in a feature to restrict auctioneers to selling stuff for 50G max for anything regardless of rarity so that everyone affords everything, but I don't need to tell you how stupid that would be and the kind of backlash that's expected.
If you got problems selling something at the AH to build up your global reserves, regardless of it being BtA or not, that is in huge supply in the player market that outweighs demand, or lacks the demand in the first place, then it's up to you to be resourceful and seek alternative means of getting revenue. Because that's how a market economy works. I also don't know why it's being suggested that buying of Cosmic Keys and selling them for globals to afford other stuff at the AH is somehow a detrimental thing. In fact, demand for Cosmic Keys has always been consistently up there no matter what. You can spend your stipend to get a couple of hundred globals easy, and if you don't have enough ZEN or a stipend in the first place, then the options of converting questionite to ZEN of paying for ZEN are there. Doesn't hurt in spending a little money to support the game does it now?
As I said before, it's not just about me. Don't make it that because you disagree. I'd like them to change something because I and others would like to sell the extra already unlocked pieces so that we can buy stuff we don't have.
General "you". And that makes no difference, my statements stand. Stop trying to manipulate the market, even by that much. Just let it go, some things sell and some things don't. See jennymachx for more details.
Actually, let's play a game! Fill in the blank with your word/phrase of choice: [Costume Piece], [Aura], or [Emote]
Scenario 4) Captain Casual doesn't get any drops worth trading because he just wasn't lucky enough or people selling what he wants don't want the drops he managed to get. Worse yet, he wants that _______ for at least 10 of his characters, so his choice is to wrangle up 30k (because bound to character, rofl) or throw his hands up in disgust and say screw it. Since Captain Casual is neither insane nor stupid, he makes the only rational choice and no trades happen. Instead, he spots a c-store item that's far from perfect, but at least it's account wide. He settles on that instead.
O Scenario 4) Captain Casual doesn't get any drops worth trading because he just wasn't lucky enough or people selling what he wants don't want the drops he managed to get. Worse yet, he wants that _______ for at least 10 of his characters, so his choice is to wrangle up 30k (because bound to character, rofl) or throw his hands up in disgust and say screw it. Since Captain Casual is neither insane nor stupid, he makes the only rational choice and no trades happen. Instead, he spots a c-store item that's far from perfect, but at least it's account wide. He settles on that instead.
This is something I'd like to expand on. If something is changed from BtA to BtC, then logically it's expected that demand for that something gets much higher if a lot of players are keen to outfit more than one of their toons with the same item. There's a good chance that would cause what's considered to be the usual AH price for the item to get inflated significantly.
There's the claim made earlier that the change would promote better enjoyment of trade activities. Really? If I suddenly had to pay significantly a lot more globals for multiple BtC items than I would have when it was BtA, that's exactly the opposite of feeling enjoyment out of engaging in trade. I'm given all the incentive to just go "**** it, it's not worth it" and move on to other things that I can actually afford. So much for making things more affordable for people who can't seem to amass enough globals.
The latest PTS patch now is testing out a vendor to trade in rare lockbox drops for in-game titles (which have always been character-bound).
This would give folks something to do with rare drops they can't get a great price on, and would do something to provide a price support (a floor, so to speak), since a special title is something of value here on CO.
Ok, i read like the first 5 posts, then stopped, because it's pretty obvious you people don't know how economy works in MMOs.
This argument would be more meaningful if you demonstrated understanding of how economy works in MMOs.
The basic way economics works in MMOs:
The primary game currency generally has a set of spigots (ways currency is introduced into the game) and sinks (ways currency is removed from the game). For CO, the major spigots for globals are smash alerts, mob defeat credits, mission credits, and vendoring trash; the major sinks are retcons, costume changes, and auction house fees.
If you introduce new spigots into the game, the currency becomes less valuable and you see inflation. If you remove spigots or introduce new sinks, the currency becomes more valuable and you see deflation. In a game with a cash shop and tradeable items, the best indicator of currency inflation or deflation is how in-game resources map to real-world cash. Most MMOs have fairly substantial inflation; the CO globals market, oddly enough, appears to be slightly deflationary, probably because some things that generate globals have been removed.
Separately from this, individual items experience price changes relative to the internal currency. This is based on supply and demand.
The basic supply for an item is the rate at which people get the item as a side effect of other activity. If the supply is low relative to demand, it becomes profitable to farm the item (which caps its value); otherwise it gets vendored or sold cheaply.
The demand for an item depends on how desirable it is and on how much of the potential market already has the item and thus doesn't need it. Short term, the prices for new items decline fairly quickly as people get their copy and are done. Long term, absent things that change the desirability (such as new tiers of gear), this stabilizes at a rate based on the rate at which new customers enter the market.
Now, there are two important things about account unlocks vs character unlocks.
For an account unlock, a customer is one account; for a character unlock, a customer is one character. Characters have both a higher total number, and a higher churn rate; thus, the number of items the market can absorb is higher for character level unlocks.
On the minus side, character level unlocks are less desirable, since of course you can only use them for a single character.
What this generally means is that character level unlocks have a lower initial value, but retain value better.
So what does this mean for captain casual? Well, scenarios 1 and 2 are mostly fictional; limited time casual players do not generally farm for items and are unlikely to have anything especially rare, because the drop rate is low relative to how often they do the content. Scenario 3 is typical of a market that has become saturated. Note, however, that none of them is actually relevant to what is good for a game, because catering to the farmers isn't actually an objective, it's just a side effect.
In the end, the point of an MMO is to get people to give the publisher money. People only do that if they actually want to play the game. This means you want to create incentives for people to play the content. The problem with market saturation is that it kills one of the incentives to run content. For an extreme example, look at Steel Crusade. When it was first released, it was super-busy; there were dozens of people running through it. However, you could get everything Steel Crusade had to offer in maybe a month of farming, so people got everything and stopped doing it, and now the space station is a ghost town.
That's not what you want to happen to content. I mean, it's going to happen eventually, but having it happen after a month is bad. Thus, you want to slow down the rate at which the market can get saturated. That means either higher prices/lower drop rates, expanding the market through character-based rather than account-based unlocks, or continually introducing new rewards. The third is usually not an option (even if designer time was unlimited, how many different options can you really introduce?), so CO at the moment seems to be shifting towards the second option, preserving the viability of events with character-based awards.
The risk, though, is that character-based awards are less desirable: people may simply not go after the award at all, or they might decide "I have it on one character, that's good enough". Having people not play an event at all because "meh, no rewards worth the trouble" is also bad.
It's also worth noting that casual players are unlikely to have gold accounts so their effect on the economy is severely limited. They're not able to buy rare items out of the AH, they have to trade for things, which has little to no effect on the in game economy, or they buy through the zen store or Q-store. They have major limits to the amounts of coin their characters can hold. Events are good ways for silvers to get unlocks, to play the game and potentially buy things in the zen store, but rare drops aren't useful for them because they they have limited sale options and have to trade. It's the non casuals that you need to please and look after and in theory character bound emotes, auras and vehicles might seem like it would give the event replayability I generally think that for most it's just too much work for a sub par reward. Personally I can't be bothered.
As a filthy silver, I can buy and sell anything on the AH at any price. Because there's an item in the cash shop that makes the silver globals limit go away. Even before that, there was a major keys as currency market. There were also silver players with that lifer friend that posted expensive stuff on the AH. It was never an issue, it's just more convenient not dealing with the cap.
A casual player can drop $100 on keys and flood the AH with all their lockbox crap. It doesn't even matter if they're gold or silver since both have access to the cash shop and the AH. The only thing that might limit being able to do that as a silver is the default AH slot limit of 10 per toon. But it's not hard to stagger sales, use alts, or just trade items.
As a filthy silver, I can buy and sell anything on the AH at any price. Because there's an item in the cash shop that makes the silver globals limit go away. Even before that, there was a major keys as currency market. There were also silver players with that lifer friend that posted expensive stuff on the AH. It was never an issue, it's just more convenient not dealing with the cap.
A casual player can drop $100 on keys and flood the AH with all their lockbox crap. It doesn't even matter if they're gold or silver since both have access to the cash shop and the AH. The only thing that might limit being able to do that as a silver is the default AH slot limit of 10 per toon. But it's not hard to stagger sales, use alts, or just trade items.
You're not a casual though Sterga, you play the game a lot, and how likely is it for the average silver to know about the quality of life items in the Zen store? I mean I started out as silver before I figured out I had spent more on the game then a LTS already and knuckled down and saved the cash to buy one for myself. I've been in the game since F2P and I had no idea about those items. Maybe they were added after I went to a LTS but they're clearly not advertised.
You're not a casual though Sterga, you play the game a lot, and how likely is it for the average silver to know about the quality of life items in the Zen store? I mean I started out as silver before I figured out I had spent more on the game then a LTS already and knuckled down and saved the cash to buy one for myself. I've been in the game since F2P and I had no idea about those items. Maybe they were added after I went to a LTS but they're clearly not advertised.
The Welcome window spams the cash shop's existence every single time a person logs in for everyone, not just people with thousand of game time hours. If there is a sale, it's on the Welcome window. Services, such as the global removal, go on sale. Forum and blog posts are made every time there is a sale. The launch window list recent blog post, such as sales.
I don't see how much I do or don't play has anything to do with someone's ability to browse the cash shop.
Is this some backwards Multifaria or some ****? REALLY? MORE CHARACTER BOUND STUFF? OFTEN I BUY A NEW COSTUME PIECE, BECAUSE IT MIGHT FIT THE CHARACTERS I MAKE IN THE FUTURE. SOme of us actually play the game and not just cosmics, some of us make alts (ALOT OF THEM). I hope this CHARACTER BOUND THING is not a trending new thing at CO because it is fucking terrible.
The Welcome window spams the cash shop's existence every single time a person logs in for everyone, not just people with thousand of game time hours. If there is a sale, it's on the Welcome window. Services, such as the global removal, go on sale. Forum and blog posts are made every time there is a sale. The launch window list recent blog post, such as sales.
I don't see how much I do or don't play has anything to do with someone's ability to browse the cash shop.
I mention it because these are quality of life items. Someone who downloads the game, plays on weekends, they're probably not rolling with level 40s, playing end game content, finding themselves dealing with rare drops. I'm not saying it's impossible but I think it's unlikely. I don't think the average casual is going to understand why increasing the G cap is even necessary.
When I say you're not a casual I'm only pointing out that you have a bit more time and energy invested in the game then what I'd consider a casual. If you figure that you're a casual I'm not going to argue, but I'm guessing that you've put hours into this game on costumes alone.
I don't know anyone like that. But it is a real legitimate problem for players who enjoy participating in the game's market by buying and selling stuff that they want. They don't feel entitled to globals.....they'd like trade to work.
Just because a player portion who play the game a lot more frequent than others and obtain Bound to Account items at a much faster rate than others doesn't mean that there's an actual problem with the trade system or the Bound to Account system itself.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties.
Your dismissive belittlement is far more akin to an entitled "hissy fit" than anything I've said here.
Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Yeah, oh-kay then.
I don't know anyone like that. But it is a real legitimate problem for players who enjoy participating in the game's market by buying and selling stuff that they want. They don't feel entitled to globals.....they'd like trade to work.
Just because a player portion who play the game a lot more frequent than others and obtain Bound to Account items at a much faster rate than others doesn't mean that there's an actual problem with the trade system or the Bound to Account system itself.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties.
Your dismissive belittlement is far more akin to an entitled "hissy fit" than anything I've said here.
Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Yeah, oh-kay then.
I don't know anyone like that. But it is a real legitimate problem for players who enjoy participating in the game's market by buying and selling stuff that they want. They don't feel entitled to globals.....they'd like trade to work.
Just because a player portion who play the game a lot more frequent than others and obtain Bound to Account items at a much faster rate than others doesn't mean that there's an actual problem with the trade system or the Bound to Account system itself.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties.
Your dismissive belittlement is far more akin to an entitled "hissy fit" than anything I've said here.
Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Yeah, oh-kay then.
I don't know anyone like that. But it is a real legitimate problem for players who enjoy participating in the game's market by buying and selling stuff that they want. They don't feel entitled to globals.....they'd like trade to work.
Just because a player portion who play the game a lot more frequent than others and obtain Bound to Account items at a much faster rate than others doesn't mean that there's an actual problem with the trade system or the Bound to Account system itself.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties.
Your dismissive belittlement is far more akin to an entitled "hissy fit" than anything I've said here.
Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Yeah, oh-kay then.
I don't know anyone like that. But it is a real legitimate problem for players who enjoy participating in the game's market by buying and selling stuff that they want. They don't feel entitled to globals.....they'd like trade to work.
Just because a player portion who play the game a lot more frequent than others and obtain Bound to Account items at a much faster rate than others doesn't mean that there's an actual problem with the trade system or the Bound to Account system itself.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties.
Your dismissive belittlement is far more akin to an entitled "hissy fit" than anything I've said here.
Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Oh, oh-kay then.
I don't know anyone like that. But it is a real legitimate problem for players who enjoy participating in the game's market by buying and selling stuff that they want. They don't feel entitled to globals.....they'd like trade to work.
Just because a player portion who play the game a lot more frequent than others and obtain Bound to Account items at a much faster rate than others doesn't mean that there's an actual problem with the trade system or the Bound to Account system itself.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties.
Your dismissive belittlement is far more akin to an entitled "hissy fit" than anything I've said here.
Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Yeah, oh-kay then.
I don't know anyone like that. But it is a real legitimate problem for players who enjoy participating in the game's market by buying and selling stuff that they want. They don't feel entitled to globals.....they'd like trade to work.
Just because a player portion who play the game a lot more frequent than others and obtain Bound to Account items at a much faster rate than others doesn't mean that there's an actual problem with the trade system or the Bound to Account system itself.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties.
Your dismissive belittlement is far more akin to an entitled "hissy fit" than anything I've said here.
Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Oh, oh-kay then.
I don't know anyone like that. But it is a real legitimate problem for players who enjoy participating in the game's market by buying and selling stuff that they want. They don't feel entitled to globals.....they'd like trade to work.
Just because a player portion who play the game a lot more frequent than others and obtain Bound to Account items at a much faster rate than others doesn't mean that there's an actual problem with the trade system or the Bound to Account system itself.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties.
Your dismissive belittlement is far more akin to an entitled "hissy fit" than anything I've said here.
Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Oh, oh-kay then.
I don't know anyone like that. But it is a real legitimate problem for players who enjoy participating in the game's market by buying and selling stuff that they want. They don't feel entitled to globals.....they'd like trade to work.
Just because a player portion who play the game a lot more frequent than others and obtain Bound to Account items at a much faster rate than others doesn't mean that there's an actual problem with the trade system or the Bound to Account system itself.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties.
Your dismissive belittlement is far more akin to an entitled "hissy fit" than anything I've said here.
Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Oh, oh-kay then.
Comments
PARSER USAGE GUIDE: click here for an easy how-to ٩(๑･ิᴗ･ิ)۶٩(･ิᴗ･ิ๑)۶
Spectre beats Eido in an SG run: VIDEO HERE
However, there are multiple problems with bind to character, particularly in the case of things that are cosmetic rather than functional. For example:
- The character I want the effect for may be unable to get it, due to level, build, or nonexistence. This is sometimes appropriate where the effect it supposed to be an award for a specific achievement, but such rewards should not be sellable anyway.
- Auras and costume parts (other than Z-store costumes) do not have a preview mode that tells you what they would look like on your character. Bind to account means that an aura or costume part that doesn't work on one character might still be salvaged for some other character.
- I don't always know what a given cosmetic is for -- I'm getting it on the possibility of wanting it. This is incompatible with knowing ahead of time what character I want to get the thing with. This is particularly an issue for BoP (BoE you can just store away until needed).
- Some players have one main character they play all the time. Others have a hundred alts. Both should be supported play styles, and at a certain point grinding the same unlock for a large number of alts is just too much effort.
Personally, I'd like to see account versions of auras and the like available at increased cost/rarity. Then again, I doubt characters with large numbers of alts use auras much in the first place, since there's no way to buy an account-wide increase in your aura slots.Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Scenario 1) Captain Casual works a fulltime job. He can only log in on weekends and run a single cycle of Cosmics before having to go to sleep to catch the early bus to the coal mines the next day. Captain Casual thinks Sacred Crown Aura is the ****, but can't afford it, because the cheapest one is at 3k in vendor. Captain Casual however got Kigatilik Back, which rarity places it around the same price. He offers to trade it for Sacred Crown Aura, Prol33tGrind9782 sees his plea in Trade chat and accepts. Captain Casual is happy.
Scenario 2) Captain Casual is a single mother. She can only log in on weekends and run a single cycle of Cosmics before Sophia
(voted most popular name 2016) wakes up and starts crying. Captain Casual thinks Shadow Destroyer's Cosmic Diaper is the ****, but can't afford it, because the cheapest one is at 2k in vendor. Captain Casual however got lucky and got the super rare drop Sacred Male Boots (no heels, 0.00001% it's in the game, trust me) and was able to sell it for 5k. Captain Casual can now buy Shadow Destroyer's Cosmic Diaper, and has 3k to spare for when a patch fucks up her build and she doesn't receive a free retcon.
Scenario 3) Captain Casual is a fat nerd and has no life. He plays CO 26/7 and has 3 different sets of Justice Gear: 1 for PvE, 1 for PvP, and 1 for ERP in Caprice Elite. However his fat nerdyness is not satisfied and wants a Cosmic Fang of Wrath to slot a Confront V mod (He is a DPS). There are 10 Cosmic Fang of Wraths available in AH, all ranging from 300g to 600g. He has Fire Chest Aura, Kigatilik Back, Shadow Destroyer's Pimp Shoulderpads and Therakiel Blade. He lists them each for 300g, but there are already around 5 other offers for the same price in AH, and when he refreshes the page, 20 other fat nerds already undercut him and posted the same items for 15g. 15 days go by and Captain Casual is now 50g poorer and doesn't have his Cosmic Fang of Wrath. Enraged by this, Captain Casual ventures outside of his basement, steals his mom's credit card and buys 56 Cosmic Keys, and sells them for 80g a day before new lockbox comes out to finally be able to buy his Cosmic Fang of Wrath.
Any of this scenario sounds familiar?
You see, when even players who invest a lot of time in this game are not able to amass enough money to buy an incredibly underpriced item, then something in the economy is failing.
So TL;DR, rarer drops that do not unlock for a whole player and his 2 other friends helps the economy flow without requiring insane grinding or real money investment
Lezard out
There's more than one way to skin a cat.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
But Auras should def go Bound to Character, and Emotes should stay that way too.
If you got problems selling something at the AH to build up your global reserves, regardless of it being BtA or not, that is in huge supply in the player market that outweighs demand, or lacks the demand in the first place, then it's up to you to be resourceful and seek alternative means of getting revenue. Because that's how a market economy works. I also don't know why it's being suggested that buying of Cosmic Keys and selling them for globals to afford other stuff at the AH is somehow a detrimental thing. In fact, demand for Cosmic Keys has always been consistently up there no matter what. You can spend your stipend to get a couple of hundred globals easy, and if you don't have enough ZEN or a stipend in the first place, then the options of converting questionite to ZEN of paying for ZEN are there. Doesn't hurt in spending a little money to support the game does it now?
Actually, let's play a game! Fill in the blank with your word/phrase of choice: [Costume Piece], [Aura], or [Emote]
Scenario 4) Captain Casual doesn't get any drops worth trading because he just wasn't lucky enough or people selling what he wants don't want the drops he managed to get. Worse yet, he wants that _______ for at least 10 of his characters, so his choice is to wrangle up 30k (because bound to character, rofl) or throw his hands up in disgust and say screw it. Since Captain Casual is neither insane nor stupid, he makes the only rational choice and no trades happen. Instead, he spots a c-store item that's far from perfect, but at least it's account wide. He settles on that instead.
What makes auras different than costume pieces, other than how you equip them? How about emotes too, for that matter?
- Costume piece: A cosmetic enhancement to your character which has no bearing on its performance.
- Aura: A cosmetic enhancement to your character which has no bearing on its performance.
- Emote: A cosmetic enhancement to your character which has no bearing on its performance.
There's the claim made earlier that the change would promote better enjoyment of trade activities. Really? If I suddenly had to pay significantly a lot more globals for multiple BtC items than I would have when it was BtA, that's exactly the opposite of feeling enjoyment out of engaging in trade. I'm given all the incentive to just go "**** it, it's not worth it" and move on to other things that I can actually afford. So much for making things more affordable for people who can't seem to amass enough globals.
This would give folks something to do with rare drops they can't get a great price on, and would do something to provide a price support (a floor, so to speak), since a special title is something of value here on CO.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
The basic way economics works in MMOs:
- The primary game currency generally has a set of spigots (ways currency is introduced into the game) and sinks (ways currency is removed from the game). For CO, the major spigots for globals are smash alerts, mob defeat credits, mission credits, and vendoring trash; the major sinks are retcons, costume changes, and auction house fees.
- If you introduce new spigots into the game, the currency becomes less valuable and you see inflation. If you remove spigots or introduce new sinks, the currency becomes more valuable and you see deflation. In a game with a cash shop and tradeable items, the best indicator of currency inflation or deflation is how in-game resources map to real-world cash. Most MMOs have fairly substantial inflation; the CO globals market, oddly enough, appears to be slightly deflationary, probably because some things that generate globals have been removed.
- Separately from this, individual items experience price changes relative to the internal currency. This is based on supply and demand.
- The basic supply for an item is the rate at which people get the item as a side effect of other activity. If the supply is low relative to demand, it becomes profitable to farm the item (which caps its value); otherwise it gets vendored or sold cheaply.
- The demand for an item depends on how desirable it is and on how much of the potential market already has the item and thus doesn't need it. Short term, the prices for new items decline fairly quickly as people get their copy and are done. Long term, absent things that change the desirability (such as new tiers of gear), this stabilizes at a rate based on the rate at which new customers enter the market.
Now, there are two important things about account unlocks vs character unlocks.- For an account unlock, a customer is one account; for a character unlock, a customer is one character. Characters have both a higher total number, and a higher churn rate; thus, the number of items the market can absorb is higher for character level unlocks.
- On the minus side, character level unlocks are less desirable, since of course you can only use them for a single character.
- What this generally means is that character level unlocks have a lower initial value, but retain value better.
So what does this mean for captain casual? Well, scenarios 1 and 2 are mostly fictional; limited time casual players do not generally farm for items and are unlikely to have anything especially rare, because the drop rate is low relative to how often they do the content. Scenario 3 is typical of a market that has become saturated. Note, however, that none of them is actually relevant to what is good for a game, because catering to the farmers isn't actually an objective, it's just a side effect.In the end, the point of an MMO is to get people to give the publisher money. People only do that if they actually want to play the game. This means you want to create incentives for people to play the content. The problem with market saturation is that it kills one of the incentives to run content. For an extreme example, look at Steel Crusade. When it was first released, it was super-busy; there were dozens of people running through it. However, you could get everything Steel Crusade had to offer in maybe a month of farming, so people got everything and stopped doing it, and now the space station is a ghost town.
That's not what you want to happen to content. I mean, it's going to happen eventually, but having it happen after a month is bad. Thus, you want to slow down the rate at which the market can get saturated. That means either higher prices/lower drop rates, expanding the market through character-based rather than account-based unlocks, or continually introducing new rewards. The third is usually not an option (even if designer time was unlimited, how many different options can you really introduce?), so CO at the moment seems to be shifting towards the second option, preserving the viability of events with character-based awards.
The risk, though, is that character-based awards are less desirable: people may simply not go after the award at all, or they might decide "I have it on one character, that's good enough". Having people not play an event at all because "meh, no rewards worth the trouble" is also bad.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
It's also worth noting that casual players are unlikely to have gold accounts so their effect on the economy is severely limited. They're not able to buy rare items out of the AH, they have to trade for things, which has little to no effect on the in game economy, or they buy through the zen store or Q-store. They have major limits to the amounts of coin their characters can hold. Events are good ways for silvers to get unlocks, to play the game and potentially buy things in the zen store, but rare drops aren't useful for them because they they have limited sale options and have to trade. It's the non casuals that you need to please and look after and in theory character bound emotes, auras and vehicles might seem like it would give the event replayability I generally think that for most it's just too much work for a sub par reward. Personally I can't be bothered.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
A casual player can drop $100 on keys and flood the AH with all their lockbox crap. It doesn't even matter if they're gold or silver since both have access to the cash shop and the AH. The only thing that might limit being able to do that as a silver is the default AH slot limit of 10 per toon. But it's not hard to stagger sales, use alts, or just trade items.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
I don't see how much I do or don't play has anything to do with someone's ability to browse the cash shop.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
my deviantart: http://zemmax89.deviantart.com/
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
@zemmax89 in game, former @Pallih
When I say you're not a casual I'm only pointing out that you have a bit more time and energy invested in the game then what I'd consider a casual. If you figure that you're a casual I'm not going to argue, but I'm guessing that you've put hours into this game on costumes alone.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties. Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Yeah, oh-kay then.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties. Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Yeah, oh-kay then.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties. Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Yeah, oh-kay then.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties. Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Yeah, oh-kay then.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties. Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Oh, oh-kay then.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties. Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Yeah, oh-kay then.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties. Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Oh, oh-kay then.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties. Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Oh, oh-kay then.
I get it. You and other like-minded people play the game a lot and get a lot of the Bound to Account stuff. But if you're choosing to spend so many hours of the day playing the game and building up a huge surplus of those items, it's not the fault of the system that you're having problems selling all the surplus, because the more things you stock up, obviously the more of a challenge it is to trade them off completely.
There's nothing wrong with the trade system. It's just not the trade system's job to regulate supply and demand to ensure that everyone participating in the trade system gets 100% what they want whenever they want, because that's expected from an organic, open market with participating players with no obligation to commit to every and any trade opportunties. Oh you mean me criticizing a push for such a drastic, sweeping change to remove Bound to Account with no consideration as to how it might affect players who don't even care about trading away Bound to Account items as opposed to keeping them to use for their characters account-wide is somehow more akin to an entitled hissy fit? Oh, oh-kay then.