Bind To Character Costume Pieces

themightyzenith · January 2017

Hello folks. As you all know, a while back we started getting auras that only bind to character (not to account). This has escalated quite recently and now we're seeing more and more of this practice.

Now, on PTS, we have three new emotes (Twitchy Fingers, Wall Lean and Military Pose) that bind only to character... I just tested them and it is indeed the case.

To me it looks like bind to character is the way that CO is going with cosmetic items and I'm wondering how long it will be until we start getting bind to character costume pieces. It's not the case at the moment and I'm not saying it will definitely happen so I suppose we can treat this discussion as a "What if...?" scenario.

So what do you, personally, think about the idea of bind to character costume pieces and costume sets being introduced to Champions Online?

avianos · January 2017

The day CO gets character bound costumes will be the game's Swan song for me

Character bound costumes goes against the biggest investigators and fans of this game, ALTitis fans

Sure I can Ignore auras and emotes being character bound, they are tiny cosmetics
But Costumes? NO! That goes against the game main selling point! The character costumization, which is the reason I had been playing 5 years now

As an ALTitis fanatic I have found many costumes which I bought and end up not liking for certains characters only to find use for others or new creations

I know that DEVs are trying their best to pull off marketing strategies to increase the game's income, but if they even make character bound costumes that would be a huge insult for the community and the game itself

STOP IT! You are using the WRONG methods

nacito · January 2017

avianos said:
snip

^this basically

morigosa · January 2017

Character-bound cosmetic anything drastically reduces my interest in that thing. Maybe, if it's absolutely perfect for one specific character, I'll hunt it down. But more likely I'll just make characters that don't need it in the first place.

And something like a wall-lean emote, that's just generically useful to everyone? Having that on some but not all characters - and remembering who has it unlocked and who doesn't - would be beyond frustrating. In that situation I'd rather not unlock it for anyone. Costume parts go in this same category; especially once you start making artistic use of clipping, there's never a way to tell which parts you'll need on whom, and I'd rather keep my characters with the same set of pieces available.

The exception is things that can be reasonably earned by in-game activities. If, say, the wall-lean emote was a reward for some specific perk (maybe tie it to the perk for completing all the snake gulch missions?), or purchaseable for 200 UNTIL recognition, that'd be fine as a per-character thing.

themightyzenith · January 2017

morigosa said:
The exception is things that can be reasonably earned by in-game activities. If, say, the wall-lean emote was a reward for some specific perk (maybe tie it to the perk for completing all the snake gulch missions?), or purchaseable for 200 UNTIL recognition, that'd be fine as a per-character thing.

Would you, personally, consider having costume pieces under your definition of exceptions also @morigosa ?

sterga · January 2017

"So what do you, personally, think about the idea of bind to character costume pieces being introduced to Champions Online?"

Incredibly stupid.

This kind of garbage is what hurts the most dedicated players in the game. Anything over two character slots has to be purchased. Free Form slots have to be purchased. Extra costume slots need to be purchased. Someone with multiple alts is heavily invested into the game money wise, why shaft them so hard with all of this character bound stuff?

Most costume sets in lockboxes end up at 1k gs, so it's not like they're super common. Who the hell is going to blow those kinds of globals or cash on getting costumes for every toon?

Punishing people for making alts is a terrible business decision for a game about customization. It's not like CO is gaining and keeping oodles of new players everyday.

themightyzenith · January 2017

sterga said:
Most costume sets in lockboxes end up at 1k gs, so it's not like they're super common. Who the hell is going to blow those kinds of globals or cash on getting costumes for every toon?

What if they just made some individual costume pieces, like they have done for some individual auras, as bind to character, but left costume sets as bind to character.... as they have done for aura sets so far?

sterga · January 2017

themightyzenith wrote: »

What if they just made some individual costume pieces, like they have done for some individual auras, as bind to character, but left costume sets as bind to character.... as they have done for aura sets so far?

Someone else mentioned this somewhere: The problem with "who has it and who doesn't?" Still screwing over the alt happy people, but in a different way. The way Auras were implemented should be more than enough proof that this is irritating to players. I don't think it's too much to ask for Cryptic to learn from their own mistakes.

servantrules · January 2017

Costumes as character bound seems pointless, IMHO. And too much effort for little returns. Animations/emotes, too to a lesser degree. It's just not worth the hassle or the money.

aesica · January 2017

themightyzenith wrote: »

So what do you, personally, think about the idea of bind to character costume pieces being introduced to Champions Online?

I don't like it at all.

I'm also a long-time WoW player, and with every expansion, the team has done more and more to make things account-wide for an improved quality of life. Currently, WoW has the following account-wide stuff: Mounts, Pets, Transmog Collections (costume pieces), Heirloom Collections, Achievements, and a Toybox (vanity items). There's also uncategorized account-wide stuff, such as brawler's guild access, catch-up mechanics for alts, etc. When I started playing, it had none of these things and it's been great seeing more and more account-wide stuff added to the game with every expansion.

Then there's Champions, where I see the exact opposite happening, and I'm like...just why? I know Neverwinter has most things character-bound, however that's not why Neverwinter is more popular than CO. Far from it, actually. If anything, Neverwinter is popular in spite of these things because they really only take away from its appeal rather than adding to it.

So stop with the character-bound stuff. Please? Unless of course the dev team is fine with spending time on things that fewer people will actually care about.

spinnytop · January 2017

I'm fine with it. I don't need everything on every character, and the ones I do want it on I'll get it on. Account wide unlocks are a nice luxury but I don't find it particularly important. I also see the sense in it from a design perspective.

It's clear that the population at large agrees that bind on pickup and unlock per character are fine, since they keep doing these things - if it didn't garner a positive reaction then they wouldn't keep doing it.

PS - these sorts of things are more likely decided by marketing people than game devs.

themightyzenith · January 2017

spinnytop said:
I'm fine with it. I don't need everything on every character, and the ones I do want it on I'll get it on.

I can see how that relates to auras but, to me, account-wide costume unlocks are more 'the option' to use it on present and future characters. They're not on "every character", they're on your account.

spinnytop said:
PS - these sorts of things are more likely decided by marketing people than game devs.

Probably true.

spinnytop · January 2017

The same thing could be said for auras since they are basically just costume pieces as well. The only real difference is that with auras they've always been as they are now - if they had initially made auras so that when you buy them every character on your account gets a copy, and then one day they started coming out with auras that only give you one set like now then you would likely make the same statement about that.

sterga wrote: »

Punishing people for making alts is a terrible business decision for a game about customization. It's not like CO is gaining and keeping oodles of new players everyday.

But punishing people for not having a lot of alts is okay tho, right Sterga?

themightyzenith · January 2017

spinnytop said:
The same thing could be said for auras since they are basically just costume pieces as well.

To me auras are very different both in design and implementation from costume pieces in CO.

roughbearmattach · January 2017

spinnytop said:
The same thing could be said for auras since they are basically just costume pieces as well. The only real difference is that with auras they've always been as they are now - if they had initially made auras so that when you buy them every character on your account gets a copy, and then one day they started coming out with auras that only give you one set like now then you would likely make the same statement about that.

This being a change is makes me annoyed and disappointed. Moving something previously account-wide to character-only really is a loss.

It's not a done deal yet, at least.

reiwulf · January 2017

account bound should be the way for mostly everything in MMOS, everything else is mainly greed and usually impacts both players and finally the company in a bad way... =P Wich exceptions of course.

Unknown · January 2017

This content has been removed.

decorumfriends · January 2017

My old man always said he'd quit smoking once those damn things got to a dollar a pack!

They were $2.50 when he eventually died.

Just sayin'.

roughbearmattach · January 2017

This change isn't a huge deal for me, but it would be quite annoying, and certainly dis-incentivize me from getting such unlocks. But I know that someone like me with 50+ alts is not the typical player.

Who knows? Maybe the most common players are now silver folks who use 1-2 toons, who make purchases to support just those one or two toons. If that is the case, then a per-character system might work for Cryptic.

If it turns out to be a real flop, they could change the marketing/business model around this.

jaazaniah1 · January 2017

I wish they would put new emotes in packs for sale in the zen store and make them account-wide. I did buy the only pack they released that way

flyingfinn · January 2017

Apparently C-store stuff doesn't sell to be worth of making such packs.
Since, come on, after 7 years and the store has like, what? 1 emote pack.....
Cold, hard facts.
And per character emotes. Fine by me. Gives me some playtime.

themightyzenith · January 2017

flyingfinn said:
Apparently C-store stuff doesn't sell to be worth of making such packs.

Since, come on, after 7 years and the store has like, what? 1 emote pack.....

Cold, hard facts.

Not sure I get your point Finn.

flyingfinn · January 2017

themightyzenith · January 2017

I see, but.......

themightyzenith said:
So what do you, personally, think about the idea of bind to character costume pieces being introduced to Champions Online?

What about the topic?

beezeeze · January 2017

Character bound costume locks are so far not actually a thing as far as I am aware. Auras and some new emotes sure, but not costumes yet. Do I enjoy acount wide costume unlocks and want for them to continue? Of course I do! I'll be kinda bummed out if they make everything bind to character... but they haven't done that yet, so no need to get all worked up over something that hasn't happened.

themightyzenith · January 2017

beezeeze said:
Character bound costume locks are so far not actually a thing as far as I am aware. Auras and some new emotes sure, but not costumes yet. Do I enjoy acount wide costume unlocks and want for them to continue? Of course I do! I'll be kinda bummed out if they make everything bind to character... but they haven't done that yet, so no need to get all worked up over something that hasn't happened.

We're just talking about the possibility, I believe it's a valid enough scenario to discuss......

themightyzenith said:
I'm not saying it will definitely happen so I suppose we can treat this discussion as a "What if..." scenario.

I've also edited the OP very slightly to further emphasise that per character costume pieces/sets are not happening atm and that we're discussing a possible scenario. A possible, not very far fetched, scenario given what happened to auras and now emotes.

yogid0nnie · January 2017

If auras had been treated like costume pieces and been in the character creator and freely given to my entire account, instead of the odd system we have now, I would have bought every single pack and tracked down all of them, just like costumes and travel powers. It's part of my OCD and money Cryptic didn't get. If they do the same with emotes, I will ignore them too and not pay. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

themightyzenith · January 2017

yogid0nnie said:
If auras had been treated like costume pieces and been in the character creator and freely given to my entire account, instead of the odd system we have now, I would have bought every single pack and tracked down all of them, just like costumes and travel powers. It's part of my OCD and money Cryptic didn't get. If they do the same with emotes, I will ignore them too and not pay. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Thank you for replying

They are actually doing that with the latest three emotes that are on PTS at the moment so that moment has come.

What about the question below? I'd like to know your thoughts on it....

themightyzenith said:
So what do you, personally, think about the idea of bind to character costume pieces being introduced to Champions Online?

jonsills · January 2017

Very simple - if costume parts ever become per-character, I'll no longer be purchasing costume parts from the store, and will probably cut waaaay back on making new alts. This will, of course, show up in the metrics as "fewer hours played", as I tend to play most heavily on those toons that are still leveling.

markhawkman · January 2017

Auras don't bother me. I usually pick(and change) auras after I make the char. None of my chars uses their original aura.

Emotes I rarely even use.

themightyzenith · January 2017

markhawkman said:
Auras don't bother me. I usually pick(and change) auras after I make the char. None of my chars uses their original aura.

Emotes I rarely even use.

What about the possibility of bind to character costume pieces being introduced to CO?

Would that bother you or would you not mind?

markhawkman · January 2017

depends on how it's acquired. if it's a rare lockbox drop... I'd probably ignore it's existence.

gogoginga1 · January 2017

the whole bind on equip , or the more hateful bind on pickup makes a a lot of people ignore the things unless they absolutely need it for that certain character at that certain time , im talking about auras ,cosmetic devices that have no other function in game than to make your character look cool, I used to stockpile stuff for up and coming characters and ideas ,swap them about depending on my current main, but not with this

themightyzenith · January 2017

markhawkman said:
depends on how it's acquired. if it's a rare lockbox drop... I'd probably ignore it's existence.

Fair enough. And what about if bind to character costume pieces became the norm for non-Z Store costume pieces?

I'm just interested in what players think is acceptable for them.

xacchaeus · January 2017

if the devs want to increase the games income, they would do better to try and get new players instead of pissing off the few that remain.

soundsrisky · January 2017

themightyzenith said:
So what do you, personally, think about the idea of bind to character costume pieces being introduced to Champions Online?

The game originally launched with all costume unlocks being character specific, and that included costumes bought from their in-game store. They were changed to account unlocks pretty quickly.

If Cryptic were to revert back to that it would be incredibly surprising, but I suppose Cryptic does like to surprise.

themightyzenith · January 2017

soundsrisky said:
The game originally launched with all costume unlocks being character specific, and that included costumes bought from their in-game store. They were changed to account unlocks pretty quickly.

That's interesting, I didn't know that. Did Cryptic comment on why they changed them to account-wide unlocks at the time?

P.S. I will be sending you a therapy bill for the trauma your forum avatar gave me.

reiwulf · January 2017

xacchaeus said:
if the devs want to increase the games income, they would do better to try and get new players instead of pissing off the few that remain.

pretty much this! I'm all for most things in CO being account bound, since it's a game where people usually have lots of alts. Even myself that I usually play just 1 character per game, have around 4-5 chars in here.

darqaura2 · January 2017

yogid0nnie said:
If auras had been treated like costume pieces and been in the character creator and freely given to my entire account, instead of the odd system we have now, I would have bought every single pack and tracked down all of them, just like costumes and travel powers. It's part of my OCD and money Cryptic didn't get. If they do the same with emotes, I will ignore them too and not pay. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Pretty much this. I don't enjoy the game of trying to remember who has what across many alts. Hard Pass.

Character bound emotes and auras are just one more thing I pretend doesn't exist and have no plans to spend money on.

I say this as someone who regularly buys Keys.

xacchaeus · January 2017

with the exception of the feather aura, i have not farmed any of the character bound auras

soundsrisky · January 2017

themightyzenith said:
Did Cryptic comment on why they changed them to account-wide unlocks at the time?

As far as I can remember the Samurai costume was available in the store when the game launched and it was character bound. People complained, and it was changed. Sadly I don't remember much beyond that.

I want to say the perks system and its costume unlocks change came later.

yogid0nnie · January 2017

themightyzenith said:

Thank you for replying They are actually doing that with the latest three emotes that are on PTS at the moment so that moment has come.

What about the question below? I'd like to know your thoughts on it....

themightyzenith said:
So what do you, personally, think about the idea of bind to character costume pieces being introduced to Champions Online?

I think going back to character bound costume pieces, is a bad idea. It upset a lot of folks in 09, and I would assume do the same in 17. The community rioted and had a massive turn over because of decisions such as that in the games first few months, one of the reasons why a lot of the orginal folks aren't around anymore. I would hope the current Devs would learn from that history, but you know what they say about not knowing history.

guyhumual · January 2017

Character bound anything is horrible. I hated when auras got turned into bind on pickup, I don't use them very often, and so it didn't hurt me that much, but it did make vendor auras virtually useless to me. I hated when they added Bind on Equip vehicles, I do like vehicles, use them quite a bit (they're basically open world travel powers) but thankfully it's limited to one vehicle at the moment. If I were a silver player, or had just one character these changes wouldn't affect me very much, and perhaps this is the case for the majority of CO players, but from my point of view these are changes that were utterly baffling. These changes had me playing the game less as if I couldn't unlock an aura for an upcoming character I had no incentive to play the event. From my point of view these changes were poison to the game as, at best, some people didn't really notice the change, and at worst it effectively removed rewards from the store for most players.

If costumes only unlocked for one player, I don't know, right now they're adding costumes to the gold vendor and that's content that's effectively blocked off for me. I'll never be able to do the content that rewards that recognition, never have the time to run those missions over and over again, and so it might as well be not in the game as the barrier to that content is effectively too high. If they added costumes that unlock per toon I doubt I'd bother going through the trouble of trying to unlock it unless it was either extremely trivial to unlock, (in which case one wonders why they would bother) or if it were something that fit one of my main characters perfectly. Nether scenario seems likely. I can't say that I'd quit the game, but it would likely be something else added to the game that wasn't intended for me, it would be something added for elite players. I might look on with envy at the new shinnies, as I do with the gold vendor costume unlocks, but I'd just have to bitterly accept that this new content is not for me. It's for players that have a lot more time and skill. Casuals like myself will have to make do with whatever scraps the Dev team throws our way.

spinnytop · January 2017

decorumfriends said:
My old man always said he'd quit smoking once those damn things got to a dollar a pack!

They were $2.50 when he eventually died.

Just sayin'.

decorum just nailed why "I'll quit if you do this" threats don't work \o/

Cigs are like ten bucks a back nowadays and people still suck them down.

chaelk · January 2017

ah, good to see, someone taking one thing , extrapolating out to something else, then trying to start a panic attack.

themightyzenith · January 2017

chaelk said:
ah, good to see, someone taking one thing , extrapolating out to something else,

That's how ideas work, especially if those things are connected and there's a shown history.

chaelk said:
then trying to start a panic attack.

"panic attack", heh. Now who's extrapolating?

We're just having a discussion which you're welcome to join. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the actual topic.

themightyzenith · January 2017

Here's the OP again for ya @chaelk . Maybe you didn't fully read it ......

themightyzenith said:
Hello folks. As you all know, a while back we started getting auras that only bind to character (not to account). This has escalated quite recently and now we're seeing more and more of this practice.

Now, on PTS, we have three new emotes (Twitchy Fingers, Wall Lean and Military Pose) that bind only to character... I just tested them and it is indeed the case.

To me it looks like bind to character is the way that CO is going with cosmetic items and I'm wondering how long it will be until we start getting bind to character costume pieces. It's not the case at the moment and I'm not saying it will definitely happen so I suppose we can treat this discussion as a "What if...?" scenario.

So what do you, personally, think about the idea of bind to character costume pieces and costume sets being introduced to Champions Online?

themightyzenith · January 2017

spinnytop said:

decorumfriends said:
My old man always said he'd quit smoking once those damn things got to a dollar a pack!

They were $2.50 when he eventually died.

Just sayin'.
Cigs are like ten bucks a back nowadays and people still suck them down.

Not really sure that argument would hold up. Smoking has dropped to an all time low in the UK and the US and is decreasing every year. People are sucking them down less and less over time. Hell, even I quit smoking a year and a half ago and haven't had a ciggy since then (yay me!).

That's analogies for ya.

Edit: sorry for making three posts for the last lot of entries. I meant to put it all in one post but the forums are way OP and need nerfed for PvP purposes.

decorumfriends · January 2017

**facepalms** It's not about the price or usage of cigarettes, it's that people often threaten to "drop" their addictions because of certain triggers and rarely follow through.

themightyzenith · January 2017

decorumfriends said:
**facepalms** It's not about the price or usage of cigarettes, it's that people often threaten to "drop" their addictions because of certain triggers and rarely follow through.

I see many following through with quitting smoking, myself included. The vast majority of my friends that used to smoke have now quit. Also, I haven't advocated quitting CO to anyone. It's a game most of us on these forums love..... but it's just a game and it would be far easier for me to stop playing it than me giving up smoking after 25 years of puffing away.

Perhaps flawed analogies should be avoided. The actual topic isn't that difficult to discuss by itself.

gogoginga1 said:
the whole bind on equip , or the more hateful bind on pickup makes a a lot of people ignore the things unless they absolutely need it for that certain character at that certain time , im talking about auras ,cosmetic devices that have no other function in game than to make your character look cool, I used to stockpile stuff for up and coming characters and ideas ,swap them about depending on my current main, but not with this

I get ya man. My shared account bank still has some account wide auras in it. They encourage me to make alts to use them, as account wide costume unlocks do (the latter giving me even more encouragement). It's a shame that I'm less and less encouraged to play due to bind to character and BoP.

ealford1985 · January 2017

Comparing a game to cancer causing sticks is stupid...

but either way...

I'm here for the tailor and coming up with creative designs that motivates me to play content.

If costumes ever become bound to character I will quit.

There is already a decline in alt players I've seen daily for the last 4 years because of the non-alt friendly events. Just as most people have expressed here, they don't bother because it's bound to character.

Bind To Character Costume Pieces

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