Costumes unlockable per account = good for players.
Costumes unlockable per character = good for the game.
Also, costumes being unlocked per character does not mean they could not be tradeable and they had to be always BoP. So you could always sell your loot, which is also a good thing to have more things on market.
Either way, costumes unlocked per character is just another kind of padding, a way to keep people online to farm them all.
Thing is, considering long term benefits for the game... I could sign with this idea as well...
Regardless, forums aren't really influential on developer's decisions and I'm pretty sure Cryptic at least once pondered making ingame costume unlocks being per character, but for some reason this idea was scrapped.
I wouldn't mind it being half and half.....costume pieces from drops unlocking for account and perks being toon specific. I just skimmed through my list of unlocks and it seems some are account and some aren't but apparently others have them account unlocked so I'm guessing mines bugged but anyway, my point is that perk rewards I feel should all be toon specific, rather than account wide. It'd give perks an actual purpose other than run once and never do them again.
Costumes unlockable per character = good for the game.
I'd probably have bothered with Z-Store Auras if they were account unlocks instead of items that have to be shuffled between characters. There's the chance that I'm in the minority here, but somehow I don't think so.
Changing the current custome pieces to character based unlocks would probably cause a noticable drop in the playerbase. Making new custome pieces that are character based unlocks would probably see those pieces be ignored by most. Even if you could shuffle a piece farmed at level 40 to a level 6 fresh out of the tutorial/character creation, you'd be forced to pay for a costume change or you'd need to use a secondary costume slot just to make your character look like you want him/her to.
My expectation is that making costumes (even if you keep it to a few new ones) limited to the character that unlock them is not going to be good for the game in the long run. Not with the way the game has been set up.
the game would close if they made costumes per character.
after 6 years the other way. and so much taken away already.
we lost an instance from the plasma nerf.
most players would move on.
subtracttive changes is never good for a game
people always feel ripped off, unless they affected game balance
I'd probably have bothered with Z-Store Auras if they were account unlocks instead of items that have to be shuffled between characters. There's the chance that I'm in the minority here, but somehow I don't think so.
Changing the current custome pieces to character based unlocks would probably cause a noticable drop in the playerbase. Making new custome pieces that are character based unlocks would probably see those pieces be ignored by most. Even if you could shuffle a piece farmed at level 40 to a level 6 fresh out of the tutorial/character creation, you'd be forced to pay for a costume change or you'd need to use a secondary costume slot just to make your character look like you want him/her to.
My expectation is that making costumes (even if you keep it to a few new ones) limited to the character that unlock them is not going to be good for the game in the long run. Not with the way the game has been set up.
That's because the mistake was already done and now can not be undone without negative consequences.
But it doesn't mean it was a good idea to begin with, only that it's too late for fixing it...
However... Any future unlockables could be introduced on per character basis while leaving all present costume unlocks unchanged.
And if these were unlocked by players? Well... That's players choice, if they don't want to earn something ingame then probably it's not very needed for their characters. *shrug*
There are a few sorts of achievement-type unlocks that I think should be per-character rather than per-account (I think the PvP belts already are, and titles certainly are), since they really are intended as a marker for "this character accomplished X". However, I think the vast majority of costumes should be account unlocks. It's not like there's such a dramatic shortage of unlocks that we need to force everyone to get them fifty times.
im not saying it needs to be changed, just that it would have been better in my opinion if they'd done perk rewards on a character basis from the start and left it that way. As for drops, like i say, those are better as account unlocks cause otherwise people would never get some of the pieces they have now since the AH would always be empty.
-Edit-
Empty in the sense that not many people bother to do much these days. Its either ren cen, caprice or stood around chatting somewhere else.
said by the person that barely alts.
if this happened you would have a mass exodus from the game from the CC lot that frequently make characters just for a contest entry. Keep in mind the CC lot is one of the few groups that stayed and still thrives.
i have 100 alts, if i had to grind for character as you suggest, i would have quit after 6 months. I earned every drop before alerts, i can honestly say that i wouldn't have bothered if it was per character.
games don't get better by subtraction they get better by addition and improvement. you make things too hard people just give up.
here's a challenge for you Spar. Find 5 people in the game that still play that agree costumes should be character based instead of account.
Nah, said by the person that actually studies economics. Doesn't matter if you wouldn't unlock an article of clothing for all your characters, costumes would actually still be worth something today instead of the 1 gold for most they are now. Concerning over alting is what has also lead Champions into this problem as content was designed around making sure people could play at any level, thus any substantial rewards from said content basically got nixed by that one little facet.
I make alts, but then again, I am not concerned if I don't have a particular costume straight away either. If you really believe that making costumes account wide helped this game, you must really have blinders on since that's ALL this game has going for it since the constant demand on alting pretty much killed reasons to do dungeon runs or any other group content beyond the one time for the achievement.
i will walk away if that happens. This is a casual game, when it stops being that, real life is a better alternative for my free-time.
Haha, oh that was rich I needed that one. Yea, let's see how far that "casual" argument has gotten this game compared to the other "casual" games on the market. It's responses like these that keep killing Champions. You walking away isn't going to kill what's already dead anyways.
Lol. you still stubbornly insist this? You'd be surprised how little of a game there'd be if it was closer to what you thought was "good" for it.
Really? So I guess games doing things I describe from the competition that are doing many times better that aren't floundering are just flukes then? Really, keep telling yourself that Gradii. You keep giving me reasons to laugh at you.
-Edit-
Empty in the sense that not many people bother to do much these days. Its either ren cen, caprice or stood around chatting somewhere else.
this is because from when you start the game it says do alerts.
alerts have decent rewards
all the good stuff from open missions and lairs were removed
perks were just one thing that was out there, most of the 5000 ones went to the zen store anyway
there were so many cool devices from crafting drops or rewards
you would actually use gear from leveling or even later if it did something cool
often there would be 8 people farming the area per instance.
you had crafting goals or might find a blueprint.
we lost more than we gained with alerts the worst thing was we could have kept the old, just modify it
Biff pretty much pointed out the big reason why "character bound" costume unlocks are a poor idea. Yes yes, economy, money, replay value, etc etc... all worthless when you consider the dynamic behind costume unlocks. It goes something like this:
1. I get a costume unlock.
2. That costume unlock sparks an idea for a new character.
3. I create a new character and have renewed interest in the game.
per-character costume unlocks would hijack that dynamic at a crucial point:
1. I get a costume unlock.
2. That costume unlock sparks an idea for a new character.
3. I think about how long I will have to farm on that other character before I can even use the idea I've thought of, either to get it to drop, or to get enough resources to buy it.
In the account-wide example, the excitement is immediately capitalized on. In the per-character example, the player is immediately challenged to reconsider their excitement.
There are variations of this such as wanting to use the costume unlock on another character I already have... but first I have to go farm for it... again. I just did the thing to get the reward, why do I have to do it again?
Farming is in itself not a poor feature of a game; however, telling a player that they must farm to use something, after they just acquired it, just stinks of a misunderstanding of how rewards are meant to work.
You can't just ask players to farm repeatedly for everything. repeat-farming style rewards must be crafted as such; tissues were one such reward. Costume unlocks are not.
I'd probably have bothered with Z-Store Auras if they were account unlocks instead of items that have to be shuffled between characters. There's the chance that I'm in the minority here, but somehow I don't think so.
I used to spend very generously on this game. Opened Lockboxes, bought entire costume sets just because a single piece of it looked good for something I was making, bought vehicles I thought just looked cool, whatever. All sorts of stuff. Auras are the one thing I've never touched or spent even Stipend Zen on, because of the way they are implemented.
I can't speak for everyone that plays the game and say without a doubt that if costumes were handled this way, Cryptic would have a lot more money. But I can speak for myself and say they would have a heck of a lot less of my money. And for a game that urges you to make lots of alts, I can't imagine that I'm in a tiny minority here, either.
Who knows which kind of customers make more money for Cryptic? All I know is if have a fatter wallet if more things weren't account unlocks.
I've never posted on the forums before due to not wanting to be apart of flame battles and arguments. However, I must speak my mind here.
Making costumes per character unlock is the DUMBEST IDEA I've ever heard of. People, like myself who have a ton of characters do NOT want to spend money (or zen) over and over on the same costume set for each and every character, especially those with four-five pages of characters, maybe even more.
If it were to be implemented, those who work on outfits for the Costume Contests, or just to make their characters look cool with tinkering with new parts via Z-Store or Lockbox outfits, would end up leaving the game. People who would not want to pay over and over would leave, and CO would lose more people.
CO needs people to JOIN, not LEAVE. Changes, lack of content, nerfs, etc have caused people to leave the game, and there are those of us who genuinely like CO, and are afraid if things keep going downhill, that the game will be shut down. So please DO NOT make costume unlocks Character Unlock Only. That would be one of, if not the, final nails in the coffin for this game.
There are variations of this such as wanting to use the costume unlock on another character I already have... but first I have to go farm for it... again. I just did the thing to get the reward, why do I have to do it again?
Farming is in itself not a poor feature of a game; however, telling a player that they must farm to use something, after they just acquired it, just stinks of a misunderstanding of how rewards are meant to work.
Pretty much this.
Look, the only time I would ever accept Per-Character Costume Unlocks is if they weren't bound to RNG stupidity such as from Vendors. You get tokens often enough from mob defeats and specific mission rewards. Relying on RNG as a means to keep people actively doing something is stressful to the players and is why I don't much care for farming things like Therakial's Blade/Sword and Kigatilik pieces. Making unlocks like that a Per-Character thing is just stupid with the poor drop rates they already have.
Doing this to Zen-Purchased costume pieces is also bad because of the massive expenses one would have to pay just to unlock them for each alt they have in case there's certain costumes they want to take advantage of.
Anyway, if it can be purchased from vendors, including the Snake Gulch one or from the Questionite Store, then I would totally accept that. Perk Rewards included in that. Otherwise, until RNG odds are significantly improved, all Reward Drop costumes should stay Account-Wide and Zen-Purchased sets should remain that way as well.
If I wanted to buy the... hmm, let's say the Holoforce Armor pack and it only unlocked per character
I would spend $710.
On a single costume pack.
I can't laugh at this idea enough. Excuse me, I need a moment.
And as far as farming for a single costume... again, I have 71 characters. Let's not make this game nothing but a grind fest. If I wanted that, I'd go play Neverwin- lol let's be honest, I can't finish that sentence with a straight face.
It's stupid and just seems like a way for a particular player to make more globals because he knows some would be dumb enough to buy the same costume multiple times for different characters. It's stupid and beyond asinine.
You're trying to make the grind in the game worse.
Your idea won't put more money in Cryptics pockets.
Your idea WILL drive new players away. and will make old players that much more ticked off.
How about we have suggestions that actually add to the game. You know, something that keeps players from asking questions in zone like "Im now 40! What can i do?!!?" And no one has a good answer for them. "oh you can grind J gear!" or "You can grind all the other crap you've already done again!!" with your suggestion we can add "You can grind more resources to unlock all the same crap again on another character!! WOOHOO!! Won't that be a ball?!"
Adding new levels of grind doesn't add flavor to the game it just makes it more bitter.
On one hand making costume parts and such unlock on a character-to-character basis would theoretically generate more money.
On the other hand that's a prime reason I'm not playing DCUO right now - because despite that game having more content I haven't experienced yet, separate factions, a more active combat system, a more active playerbase, a good character editor (compared to a lot of MMOs), great graphical design, and much higher-profile names...
I don't play it. Because I have to unlock costume parts on a per-character basis there, and thus, I have to carefully plan out unlocks in advance for which alts I might want to make, which is simply unreasonable. Because I'm pretty sure Chisoku would not be trouncing around in mage robes.
If you're going to want to make costume sets a huge investment in resources, strategized to the character that it'd make the most sense to use on, you sure as hell are going to need some new features to the engine, including:
a global 3D preview mode. Not just convenient promo images or such, but flat-out 3d model previews that give you a real good idea of what the parts look like. This technically exists for CStore parts, but what about ingame unlocks?
some sort of ability to use your unlocks on a new character. Part of the fun of making an alt is being able to just see what kind of crazy stuff you can come up for it with the new things you've gathered.
costume parts will need to be a lot more common on the drop-side. In fact, something that might be able to grant you random costume drops guaranteed (but again, at random) would fuel a lot of trading and keep economy flowing ingame and out.
It can work, but absolutely nobody will be happy, and it'll require investment to get the various required systems and such in place. Look at how much people were complaining over a price change.
Meanwhile, that sort of resources could be put into changing stuff around that the OP mentioned, like:
Making fusing more convenient
Introducing some sort of feature (cosmetic mod?) that can change the colors on your vehicle
Filling in some of the thematic gaps in vehicles - organics, mysticals, etc.
Bringing flavor back to equipment pieces.
Powersets (which... who knows, maybe could be unlocked in the CStore? For moooneeeey?
Devising some other sort of on-character-basis feature or item to get lodesomoney for. (maybe like putting some legacy devices in the qStore?)
we are adding a feature to the wiki btw
all missions will be tagged by when available
so you can select your level in a "What can I do?" nav and it will show you what is available for your level
If I wanted to buy the... hmm, let's say the Holoforce Armor pack and it only unlocked per character
I would spend $710.
On a single costume pack.
I can't laugh at this idea enough. Excuse me, I need a moment.
And as far as farming for a single costume... again, I have 71 characters. Let's not make this game nothing but a grind fest. If I wanted that, I'd go play Neverwin- lol let's be honest, I can't finish that sentence with a straight face.
I don't think they're including C Store purchases in their argument for per-character unlocks. I think they're talking drops and perks, since grinding for those things keeps players actually in the game.
I don't think they're including C Store purchases in their argument for per-character unlocks. I think they're talking drops and perks, since grinding for those things keeps players actually in the game.
Pretty much.
I don't know why people were jumping to conclusion that it's about paid unlocks...
some sort of ability to use your unlocks on a new character. Part of the fun of making an alt is being able to just see what kind of crazy stuff you can come up for it with the new things you've gathered.
This is a big thing here. I like to look at all the parts I have available while at character creation. I don't want to spend half my play time just trying to perfect my look.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I think costume unlocks are character-specific in DCUO (even if they're not, just pretend for the sake of argument). I unlocked a ton of pieces on my character just by doing missions and equipping new gear and stuff, and like 99% of my unlocks were an utter waste, because I don't need my hero's concept to change from crime fighter to steampunk robot to demon to high-tech man over the course of his career.
I hated that about DCUO. The game is kind of fun, but having to wait until I unlock a certain piece on a new character sucks. You don't start your toons with many costume bits. Even if you buy stuff from the shop, you have to get past the character creator to use it anyway. (unless that's changed) Waiting until you get to level cap before you can make your concept sucks. Probably why I never got a character to cap.
Starting over with nothing all the time gets old. That's what would happen if costumes were per character. I made alt accounts to level up ATs and I never bother with them because I have heirloom gear and butt loads of costumes on my main account. The thought of starting over and having to bother with gear / limited costume making does not appeal at all. I'm not even sure if I'd bother leveling characters very often if I didn't have the leveling gear and couldn't make them look awesome from level 1.
Long term, I don't see per-character unlocks being good at retaining players, I see it as driving them away. After playing for a long time, I like having those perks that make it easier to play the game.
Appearance is an important aspect of a character for me. I tend to want a character to have their look down pat at character creation. If I had a character that wouldn't be able to complete their look until some time much later in their career I would not create or play that character.
As it stands now I can unlock a costume piece that is level or time gated using one of my max levels and use it on a new character.
I'm not even sure if I'd bother leveling characters very often if I didn't have the leveling gear and couldn't make them look awesome from level 1.
Long term, I don't see per-character unlocks being good at retaining players, I see it as driving them away. After playing for a long time, I like having those perks that make it easier to play the game.
Exactly. The big deciding factor for something like this would be how many players like us would be affected by something like this. I know for a fact that if I didn't have incentive to make new characters (due to not having all my costume parts on them) I'd have spent less time in the game, which means I'd spend less time spending money, too.
Unless someone knows the ratio of people that have lots of characters and wouldn't bother playing alts and spending money on them, vs the people who would enjoy repeatedly grinding out costume parts, I don't think anyone can say which is better for the game.
I've been playing STO more than CO lately. But one big difference for me between the two is "loot". Almost every story arc in STO drops something useful at the end.
On the contrary, I feel like the mission drops in CO are mostly useless. There's no replay value in re-running most of the games content. You can re-run entire arcs in STO in order get complete sets of gear with nice stats. Most of these rewards scale to level.
CO needs to do something similar.
This is RiverOcean's 2nd Account. Can't combine my STO and CO accounts for some weird reason.
There should only be prestige reasons for making a costume unlock character only. Things like a PvP tournament crown or decoration or an extremely difficult and prestigious raid item(an insignia or decoration that a level 6 street hero can't possibly have, but a planetary savior would) that the developers would use sparingly.
There should only be prestige reasons for making a costume unlock character only. Things like a PvP tournament crown or decoration or an extremely difficult and prestigious raid item(an insignia or decoration that a level 6 street hero can't possibly have, but a planetary savior would) that the developers would use sparingly.
Also, it should only apply to things that are BoP. If it can be sold in the AH, it's clearly not an item that marks an achievement for the character using it.
You have unlocked the Shoulder Pads of Awesomesauce.
"Cool! Those would look really great on--"
This is a per-character unlock. Your other characters must do this exact same content in the exact same way, and have the same luck with the random drops, to use this piece.
"...forget it. What's on TV?"
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
Character creation in the most important part of this game to me. Making any of the costumes "character only" is pretty counter-productive to that concept.
I've been playing STO more than CO lately. But one big difference for me between the two is "loot". Almost every story arc in STO drops something useful at the end.
On the contrary, I feel like the mission drops in CO are mostly useless. There's no replay value in re-running most of the games content. You can re-run entire arcs in STO in order get complete sets of gear with nice stats. Most of these rewards scale to level.
CO needs to do something similar.
CO... sort of does. End-arc gear you get from missions sometimes is quite good, but the thing is that there's really no point to that when the stuff you use mainly to level up is gear that automatically scales to your level (and gives you bonus XP), and the endgame stuff is quite easy to gather and is extremely good for what it is.
There should only be prestige reasons for making a costume unlock character only. Things like a PvP tournament crown or decoration or an extremely difficult and prestigious raid item(an insignia or decoration that a level 6 street hero can't possibly have, but a planetary savior would) that the developers would use sparingly.
Some very important caveats to that idea: I totally agree with the plan, but the things I need to suggest include:
It needs to be guaranteed. The task required to get it must be long and challenging, yes, but you need to be able to get it after you've done your time to earn it.
It has to be thematically pertinent to what you just did. The bronze/silver/gold wrestling belts you get for doing awesome in PvP are a great example of this - the parts you get are not going to be very flexible (i.e. something you'd think of a really unorthodox way to use), but they should be widely applicable, and look quite good - stuff like badges, cool hats, prestigious masks/uniforms, etc. In the case of those belts, they also perfectly fit the perk that unlocks them. They're trophees of prowess in show fights!
Ultimately they should be variants of stuff you could feasibly 'create' with normal parts. Kigatilik's face paint's a good example of this - there exist similar parts that somewhat look like it (psi trident facepaint), but it's the details on the rarer costume part (the sheer rarity of the part, the finer texturing and patterning on the paint, etc) that make it desirable. From the get-go, you'll be able to make something similar looking to it, but once you know about it and get it as something to look forward to, you can use it to embelish the look a bit. Just a few things I can prattle off the top of my head for simliar ideas:
Killing 1000 Junkbots = New TV screen options for the junkbot TV head - extra option for existing part.
Defeating Foxbat over 3 different missions (westside, vibora bay, april fools event) = Spotlight/Radio/Mic head - similar to junkbot heads, fairly narrow in applicability... Also in this case fairly simple to get.
Doing a long and epic mission to thwart Mechanon that doesn't exist yet = automatically unlock Clockwork armor for that character - a rare, now no longer offered costume set that is very pertinent to what you just did, and likely would come along with a perk like 'Honorary Clockwork Agent' or something.
the game would close if they made costumes per character.
after 6 years the other way. and so much taken away already.
we lost an instance from the plasma nerf.
most players would move on.
subtracttive changes is never good for a game
people always feel ripped off, unless they affected game balance
NONONO! Some of you guys are having the misunderstand.
What being said is this. No one is saying change this its too far in the day for that.
If it was Champions online day one the costume unlocks should have been as following.
1: Store unlocks are account wide you buy it its unlocked on all your alts.
2: In game unlocks should have been character wide as that will pad the game out a little give some people a little push to play the game instead of standing around in ren cen.
Consider this. Kingdoms of Amalur you can buy clothes and costumes from the PSN right and these things unlock instantly on any character you play but you have to work to get stuff unlocked that only apears in game on that character even if you have played that game before.
Think how arse Skyrim would be if you started a new toon and all the stuff was unlocked because you played it before.
No one here wants in store costume unlocks per toon only. Seriously some of you do tend to get the wrong end of the stick.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
And it's a big **** you to people with Alt-itis, I refuse to support this Idea for all the Good reasons fellow players already stated
I can accept AURAS being per character, but NOT Costumes
I have bought many Costumes for specific characters, only to end up NOT using because they didn't end up with the result I was expecting AND using them on other/new characters
POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
Nepht, it's been a while since I played any of the Skyrim games, but as I recall, the stuff you gather has different capabilities. Of course that doesn't get unlocked for a new character (unless you use cheat codes - my roommate has the codes for most of the games he plays memorized).
However, CO costumes are purely cosmetic. Now, for those that signal you've done something cool (the Gravitar stuff, for instance, or Therakiel's weapon), that makes a certain amount of sense, as it's a recognition of that toon's accomplishments, much like a special title; but by and large, are you really going to grind out whatever content a cosmetic reward is locked behind, once to see what it looks like and once more for every toon who might want it?
Like I said, if it ever comes to that, I for one am going to just toss the game aside and look for something that doesn't feel like another (incredibly pointless) job.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
Think how arse Skyrim would be if you started a new toon and all the stuff was unlocked because you played it before.
It wouldn't matter since by the second play through, I would have gone to Nexus and downloaded an outfit I wanted and have it show up right at the beginning of the game so I could play looking awesome the entire time. By the third play through, I would have fired up Nifscope to make my own weapons and armor cobbled together from the 5k weapon and armor packs I ended up downloading so that I could be awesome the entire time.
Think how arse Skyrim would be if you started a new toon and all the stuff was unlocked because you played it before.
.
i play vanilla Skyrim often, find the mods take out some of the fun. but that is gear changes appearance method. In this game appearance is not linked to powerlevel, the one thing this game does better than anyone else is customization. I would not have stayed if it didnt have that.
there are plenty of other things that could revitalize the old zone without taking a step backwards, or even just adding back what we lost.
2: In game unlocks should have been character wide as that will pad the game out a little give some people a little push to play the game instead of standing around in ren cen.
That part still sucks though. It would have made me play the game less. I know that for a fact. And the less time I spend playing the game, the less money I'll spend on it.
I make a lot of characters, usually ideas sparked by a costume. I get a lot of laughs from people when they see me playing Gravitar's Hotter Sister. You know how not-funny that character would be for 40 levels? (Yes, I made her before her costumes became common and cheap and grinded the pieces out for myself.)
The reason why I've been here for almost six years and the game hasn't gotten stale for me, and I can do the content dozens of times is because I enjoy the character I'm playing. I made that character, he's mine, and I enjoy watching him punch robots into traffic. If I don't like how my character looks, I don't enjoy playing him, and don't enjoy the game. Limiting how my character looks from the beginning would be a huge issue for me.
I mean, look how well the "streamlined character creator" was received.
NONONO! Some of you guys are having the misunderstand.
What being said is this. No one is saying change this its too far in the day for that.
If it was Champions online day one the costume unlocks should have been as following.
1: Store unlocks are account wide you buy it its unlocked on all your alts.
2: In game unlocks should have been character wide as that will pad the game out a little give some people a little push to play the game instead of standing around in ren cen.
Consider this. Kingdoms of Amalur you can buy clothes and costumes from the PSN right and these things unlock instantly on any character you play but you have to work to get stuff unlocked that only apears in game on that character even if you have played that game before.
Think how arse Skyrim would be if you started a new toon and all the stuff was unlocked because you played it before.
No one here wants in store costume unlocks per toon only. Seriously some of you do tend to get the wrong end of the stick.
I'll just highlight the one bit you guys seemed to have missed. I love you guys but when you lot have a collective bug bear your combined reading skills go out the window :P
I never said change it.
I mean seriously this is coming from a girl who's THIRD tongue is English >_>"
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
I'll just highlight the one bit you guys seemed to have missed. I love you guys but when you lot have a collective bug bear your combined reading skills go out the window :P
I never said change it.
I mean seriously this is coming from a girl who's THIRD tongue is English >_>"
Yes, and I'm saying if it was like this since day one, I would have spent less time on the game, less money on the game, and I might not be here now.
People are saying "If costumes were a character-unlock the game would have made so much more money!" I'm saying if they were, they would have made a lot less money off of me. It would have given me less push to play.
We're saying it wouldn't have been a good idea then, and it wouldn't be a good idea now. Covering all bases on what a bad idea it would have been for the type of player we are.
Yes, and I'm saying if it was like this since day one, I would have spent less time on the game, less money on the game, and I might not be here now.
People are saying "If costumes were a character-unlock the game would have made so much more money!" I'm saying if they were, they would have made a lot less money off of me. It would have given me less push to play.
We're saying it wouldn't have been a good idea then, and it wouldn't be a good idea now. Covering all bases on what a bad idea it would have been for the type of player we are.
Yeah but I wasn't. I think store bought costumes in any mmo should be account wide. Money would play no part of in game unlockables being toon only.
I one of those people that likes fresh starts each alt and to earn stuff through gameplay. I think A prime example of this was me raging at Ultra Streetfighter IV last night playing it on 8 stars trying to get the fight with Oni to trigger.
Ginger was like why dont you just fight him in VS you can play that single player. My reply was "SHUT %$£" UP ITS NOT THE SAME! >:O "
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Yes, and I'm saying if it was like this since day one, I would have spent less time on the game, less money on the game, and I might not be here now.
People are saying "If costumes were a character-unlock the game would have made so much more money!" I'm saying if they were, they would have made a lot less money off of me. It would have given me less push to play.
We're saying it wouldn't have been a good idea then, and it wouldn't be a good idea now. Covering all bases on what a bad idea it would have been for the type of player we are.
yeah, I think 90% of our population's first concern is costume/build/theme. Let's face it this is an alt based game. you hit 40 you get another 40. in my 100 characters not one plays exactly the same. whether the change is stats, powers, passives/role or which stat is stacked higher like the str/con and con/dex/end synergies. and many times that all starts with a costume piece. I got the foxbat belt i made a toon to use it. plus many of these dropped items are very specific. I do think making mech tokens drop from mechanon did lower the shelf life of the new content,but.... that was 5 missions total. and thats prob the real reason why. It just wasn't enough to hold interest once the mega Ds went away.
but let's look at the user experience.
new players are told they can do alerts right from the start, no mention of crime computer or different zones
most open world rewards were replaced with generic rewards that have no creativity and are underpowered
all the new world drops from alerts can be bought with recog. and they drop often
the difference in xp from missions to alerts is too much. both paths should take the same amount of time.
[*]the difference in xp from missions to alerts is too much. both paths should take the same amount of time.
If you actually know where all the missions are (because you've run the chains before) leveling up through missions isn't all that inefficient, but the handoffs that send you from one mission chain to the next don't work very well if you're mixing missions with alerts, because you'll be overlevel.
If you actually know where all the missions are (because you've run the chains before) leveling up through missions isn't all that inefficient, but the handoffs that send you from one mission chain to the next don't work very well if you're mixing missions with alerts, because you'll be overlevel.
It's definitely more even now that xp has been switched to grabs
i still think missions should get a 20-35% xp boost all around, especially since they have no q dailies or any other reward worth it.
I've been playing STO more than CO lately. But one big difference for me between the two is "loot". Almost every story arc in STO drops something useful at the end.
On the contrary, I feel like the mission drops in CO are mostly useless. There's no replay value in re-running most of the games content. You can re-run entire arcs in STO in order get complete sets of gear with nice stats. Most of these rewards scale to level.
CO needs to do something similar.
I play a fair amount of STO as well, and love re-running mission content there, but not for the reason you do. I could care less about the loot. I love the fact that no matter what level you are, the mission is matched to you. I never have to worry about overleveling content.
Add to that the missions are just better crafted IMO. Better storytelling, voice-over work that actually works ever time (as opposed to CO's sometimes-spastic VO work that works from one mission, doesn't on the next), and arcs I actually invest in and care about.
CO's missions feel down quick and dirty, with the bare minimum of investment of resources to develop. Quantity over quality. The comic packs and adventure series feel more like what I feel missions overall should be like, because in large part they are what STO's missions feel like every time.
I play a fair amount of STO as well, and love re-running mission content there, but not for the reason you do. I could care less about the loot. I love the fact that no matter what level you are, the mission is matched to you. I never have to worry about overleveling content.
Add to that the missions are just better crafted IMO. Better storytelling, voice-over work that actually works ever time (as opposed to CO's sometimes-spastic VO work that works from one mission, doesn't on the next), and arcs I actually invest in and care about.
CO's missions feel down quick and dirty, with the bare minimum of investment of resources to develop. Quantity over quality. The comic packs and adventure series feel more like what I feel missions overall should be like, because in large part they are what STO's missions feel like every time.
Unfortunately scaling enemies in open world doesn't work as well in CO, but I always thought lairs should scale to level. It was nice when dropped gear scaled to level and/or difficulty.
Comments
Costumes unlockable per character = good for the game.
Also, costumes being unlocked per character does not mean they could not be tradeable and they had to be always BoP. So you could always sell your loot, which is also a good thing to have more things on market.
Either way, costumes unlocked per character is just another kind of padding, a way to keep people online to farm them all.
Thing is, considering long term benefits for the game... I could sign with this idea as well...
Regardless, forums aren't really influential on developer's decisions and I'm pretty sure Cryptic at least once pondered making ingame costume unlocks being per character, but for some reason this idea was scrapped.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Changing the current custome pieces to character based unlocks would probably cause a noticable drop in the playerbase. Making new custome pieces that are character based unlocks would probably see those pieces be ignored by most. Even if you could shuffle a piece farmed at level 40 to a level 6 fresh out of the tutorial/character creation, you'd be forced to pay for a costume change or you'd need to use a secondary costume slot just to make your character look like you want him/her to.
My expectation is that making costumes (even if you keep it to a few new ones) limited to the character that unlock them is not going to be good for the game in the long run. Not with the way the game has been set up.
after 6 years the other way. and so much taken away already.
we lost an instance from the plasma nerf.
most players would move on.
subtracttive changes is never good for a game
people always feel ripped off, unless they affected game balance
That's because the mistake was already done and now can not be undone without negative consequences.
But it doesn't mean it was a good idea to begin with, only that it's too late for fixing it...
However... Any future unlockables could be introduced on per character basis while leaving all present costume unlocks unchanged.
And if these were unlocked by players? Well... That's players choice, if they don't want to earn something ingame then probably it's not very needed for their characters. *shrug*
i will walk away if that happens. This is a casual game, when it stops being that, real life is a better alternative for my free-time.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
-Edit-
Empty in the sense that not many people bother to do much these days. Its either ren cen, caprice or stood around chatting somewhere else.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Nah, said by the person that actually studies economics. Doesn't matter if you wouldn't unlock an article of clothing for all your characters, costumes would actually still be worth something today instead of the 1 gold for most they are now. Concerning over alting is what has also lead Champions into this problem as content was designed around making sure people could play at any level, thus any substantial rewards from said content basically got nixed by that one little facet.
I make alts, but then again, I am not concerned if I don't have a particular costume straight away either. If you really believe that making costumes account wide helped this game, you must really have blinders on since that's ALL this game has going for it since the constant demand on alting pretty much killed reasons to do dungeon runs or any other group content beyond the one time for the achievement.
Haha, oh that was rich I needed that one. Yea, let's see how far that "casual" argument has gotten this game compared to the other "casual" games on the market. It's responses like these that keep killing Champions. You walking away isn't going to kill what's already dead anyways.
Really? So I guess games doing things I describe from the competition that are doing many times better that aren't floundering are just flukes then? Really, keep telling yourself that Gradii. You keep giving me reasons to laugh at you.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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perks were just one thing that was out there, most of the 5000 ones went to the zen store anyway
there were so many cool devices from crafting drops or rewards
you would actually use gear from leveling or even later if it did something cool
often there would be 8 people farming the area per instance.
you had crafting goals or might find a blueprint.
we lost more than we gained with alerts the worst thing was we could have kept the old, just modify it
1. I get a costume unlock.
2. That costume unlock sparks an idea for a new character.
3. I create a new character and have renewed interest in the game.
per-character costume unlocks would hijack that dynamic at a crucial point:
1. I get a costume unlock.
2. That costume unlock sparks an idea for a new character.
3. I think about how long I will have to farm on that other character before I can even use the idea I've thought of, either to get it to drop, or to get enough resources to buy it.
In the account-wide example, the excitement is immediately capitalized on. In the per-character example, the player is immediately challenged to reconsider their excitement.
There are variations of this such as wanting to use the costume unlock on another character I already have... but first I have to go farm for it... again. I just did the thing to get the reward, why do I have to do it again?
Farming is in itself not a poor feature of a game; however, telling a player that they must farm to use something, after they just acquired it, just stinks of a misunderstanding of how rewards are meant to work.
You can't just ask players to farm repeatedly for everything. repeat-farming style rewards must be crafted as such; tissues were one such reward. Costume unlocks are not.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I know at least 20-30 heavy-spenders that would leave the game right away if that ever happen.
Unlocks are account-wide, period.
Make us MORE stuff to do, more zones, more instances, more lairs with good drops...
Give us reason to spend more in the game in a clever way. Unlocking costumes/items toon-only, not smart at all.
People will leave the game like a ship sinking.
I used to spend very generously on this game. Opened Lockboxes, bought entire costume sets just because a single piece of it looked good for something I was making, bought vehicles I thought just looked cool, whatever. All sorts of stuff. Auras are the one thing I've never touched or spent even Stipend Zen on, because of the way they are implemented.
I can't speak for everyone that plays the game and say without a doubt that if costumes were handled this way, Cryptic would have a lot more money. But I can speak for myself and say they would have a heck of a lot less of my money. And for a game that urges you to make lots of alts, I can't imagine that I'm in a tiny minority here, either.
Who knows which kind of customers make more money for Cryptic? All I know is if have a fatter wallet if more things weren't account unlocks.
Making costumes per character unlock is the DUMBEST IDEA I've ever heard of. People, like myself who have a ton of characters do NOT want to spend money (or zen) over and over on the same costume set for each and every character, especially those with four-five pages of characters, maybe even more.
If it were to be implemented, those who work on outfits for the Costume Contests, or just to make their characters look cool with tinkering with new parts via Z-Store or Lockbox outfits, would end up leaving the game. People who would not want to pay over and over would leave, and CO would lose more people.
CO needs people to JOIN, not LEAVE. Changes, lack of content, nerfs, etc have caused people to leave the game, and there are those of us who genuinely like CO, and are afraid if things keep going downhill, that the game will be shut down. So please DO NOT make costume unlocks Character Unlock Only. That would be one of, if not the, final nails in the coffin for this game.
Pretty much why I haven't spent much on them. To much of a hassle to shuffle them between characters or keep track of who I left what with.
Pretty much this.
Look, the only time I would ever accept Per-Character Costume Unlocks is if they weren't bound to RNG stupidity such as from Vendors. You get tokens often enough from mob defeats and specific mission rewards. Relying on RNG as a means to keep people actively doing something is stressful to the players and is why I don't much care for farming things like Therakial's Blade/Sword and Kigatilik pieces. Making unlocks like that a Per-Character thing is just stupid with the poor drop rates they already have.
Doing this to Zen-Purchased costume pieces is also bad because of the massive expenses one would have to pay just to unlock them for each alt they have in case there's certain costumes they want to take advantage of.
Anyway, if it can be purchased from vendors, including the Snake Gulch one or from the Questionite Store, then I would totally accept that. Perk Rewards included in that. Otherwise, until RNG odds are significantly improved, all Reward Drop costumes should stay Account-Wide and Zen-Purchased sets should remain that way as well.
And I will always be @DZPlayer122.
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I have 71 characters.
If I wanted to buy the... hmm, let's say the Holoforce Armor pack and it only unlocked per character
I would spend $710.
On a single costume pack.
I can't laugh at this idea enough. Excuse me, I need a moment.
And as far as farming for a single costume... again, I have 71 characters. Let's not make this game nothing but a grind fest. If I wanted that, I'd go play Neverwin- lol let's be honest, I can't finish that sentence with a straight face.
You're trying to make the grind in the game worse.
Your idea won't put more money in Cryptics pockets.
Your idea WILL drive new players away. and will make old players that much more ticked off.
How about we have suggestions that actually add to the game. You know, something that keeps players from asking questions in zone like "Im now 40! What can i do?!!?" And no one has a good answer for them. "oh you can grind J gear!" or "You can grind all the other crap you've already done again!!" with your suggestion we can add "You can grind more resources to unlock all the same crap again on another character!! WOOHOO!! Won't that be a ball?!"
Adding new levels of grind doesn't add flavor to the game it just makes it more bitter.
On the other hand that's a prime reason I'm not playing DCUO right now - because despite that game having more content I haven't experienced yet, separate factions, a more active combat system, a more active playerbase, a good character editor (compared to a lot of MMOs), great graphical design, and much higher-profile names...
I don't play it. Because I have to unlock costume parts on a per-character basis there, and thus, I have to carefully plan out unlocks in advance for which alts I might want to make, which is simply unreasonable. Because I'm pretty sure Chisoku would not be trouncing around in mage robes.
If you're going to want to make costume sets a huge investment in resources, strategized to the character that it'd make the most sense to use on, you sure as hell are going to need some new features to the engine, including:
It can work, but absolutely nobody will be happy, and it'll require investment to get the various required systems and such in place. Look at how much people were complaining over a price change.
Meanwhile, that sort of resources could be put into changing stuff around that the OP mentioned, like:
we are adding a feature to the wiki btw
all missions will be tagged by when available
so you can select your level in a "What can I do?" nav and it will show you what is available for your level
I don't think they're including C Store purchases in their argument for per-character unlocks. I think they're talking drops and perks, since grinding for those things keeps players actually in the game.
Pretty much.
I don't know why people were jumping to conclusion that it's about paid unlocks...
This is a big thing here. I like to look at all the parts I have available while at character creation. I don't want to spend half my play time just trying to perfect my look.
To be fair, I don't think anyone had made the distinction.
I hated that about DCUO. The game is kind of fun, but having to wait until I unlock a certain piece on a new character sucks. You don't start your toons with many costume bits. Even if you buy stuff from the shop, you have to get past the character creator to use it anyway. (unless that's changed) Waiting until you get to level cap before you can make your concept sucks. Probably why I never got a character to cap.
Starting over with nothing all the time gets old. That's what would happen if costumes were per character. I made alt accounts to level up ATs and I never bother with them because I have heirloom gear and butt loads of costumes on my main account. The thought of starting over and having to bother with gear / limited costume making does not appeal at all. I'm not even sure if I'd bother leveling characters very often if I didn't have the leveling gear and couldn't make them look awesome from level 1.
Long term, I don't see per-character unlocks being good at retaining players, I see it as driving them away. After playing for a long time, I like having those perks that make it easier to play the game.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
As it stands now I can unlock a costume piece that is level or time gated using one of my max levels and use it on a new character.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Exactly. The big deciding factor for something like this would be how many players like us would be affected by something like this. I know for a fact that if I didn't have incentive to make new characters (due to not having all my costume parts on them) I'd have spent less time in the game, which means I'd spend less time spending money, too.
Unless someone knows the ratio of people that have lots of characters and wouldn't bother playing alts and spending money on them, vs the people who would enjoy repeatedly grinding out costume parts, I don't think anyone can say which is better for the game.
So I don't think taking away account wide unlocks is a good idea for that reason and pretty much all the other reasons other people have stated.
On the contrary, I feel like the mission drops in CO are mostly useless. There's no replay value in re-running most of the games content. You can re-run entire arcs in STO in order get complete sets of gear with nice stats. Most of these rewards scale to level.
CO needs to do something similar.
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Block timing explained
"Cool! Those would look really great on--"
This is a per-character unlock. Your other characters must do this exact same content in the exact same way, and have the same luck with the random drops, to use this piece.
"...forget it. What's on TV?"
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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CO... sort of does. End-arc gear you get from missions sometimes is quite good, but the thing is that there's really no point to that when the stuff you use mainly to level up is gear that automatically scales to your level (and gives you bonus XP), and the endgame stuff is quite easy to gather and is extremely good for what it is.
Some very important caveats to that idea: I totally agree with the plan, but the things I need to suggest include:
NONONO! Some of you guys are having the misunderstand.
What being said is this. No one is saying change this its too far in the day for that.
If it was Champions online day one the costume unlocks should have been as following.
1: Store unlocks are account wide you buy it its unlocked on all your alts.
2: In game unlocks should have been character wide as that will pad the game out a little give some people a little push to play the game instead of standing around in ren cen.
Consider this. Kingdoms of Amalur you can buy clothes and costumes from the PSN right and these things unlock instantly on any character you play but you have to work to get stuff unlocked that only apears in game on that character even if you have played that game before.
Think how arse Skyrim would be if you started a new toon and all the stuff was unlocked because you played it before.
No one here wants in store costume unlocks per toon only. Seriously some of you do tend to get the wrong end of the stick.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
The only thing I'm gonna say to Cryptic is: Don't Screw Up this time!
as for the current subject
Costumes which are per character and NOT Account wide Unlocked?
IN Champions Online?
No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No
That's Beyond Heresy!
And it's a big **** you to people with Alt-itis, I refuse to support this Idea for all the Good reasons fellow players already stated
I can accept AURAS being per character, but NOT Costumes
I have bought many Costumes for specific characters, only to end up NOT using because they didn't end up with the result I was expecting AND using them on other/new characters
However, CO costumes are purely cosmetic. Now, for those that signal you've done something cool (the Gravitar stuff, for instance, or Therakiel's weapon), that makes a certain amount of sense, as it's a recognition of that toon's accomplishments, much like a special title; but by and large, are you really going to grind out whatever content a cosmetic reward is locked behind, once to see what it looks like and once more for every toon who might want it?
Like I said, if it ever comes to that, I for one am going to just toss the game aside and look for something that doesn't feel like another (incredibly pointless) job.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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It wouldn't matter since by the second play through, I would have gone to Nexus and downloaded an outfit I wanted and have it show up right at the beginning of the game so I could play looking awesome the entire time. By the third play through, I would have fired up Nifscope to make my own weapons and armor cobbled together from the 5k weapon and armor packs I ended up downloading so that I could be awesome the entire time.
Mods are why people still play Skyrim.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
i play vanilla Skyrim often, find the mods take out some of the fun. but that is gear changes appearance method. In this game appearance is not linked to powerlevel, the one thing this game does better than anyone else is customization. I would not have stayed if it didnt have that.
there are plenty of other things that could revitalize the old zone without taking a step backwards, or even just adding back what we lost.
That part still sucks though. It would have made me play the game less. I know that for a fact. And the less time I spend playing the game, the less money I'll spend on it.
I make a lot of characters, usually ideas sparked by a costume. I get a lot of laughs from people when they see me playing Gravitar's Hotter Sister. You know how not-funny that character would be for 40 levels? (Yes, I made her before her costumes became common and cheap and grinded the pieces out for myself.)
The reason why I've been here for almost six years and the game hasn't gotten stale for me, and I can do the content dozens of times is because I enjoy the character I'm playing. I made that character, he's mine, and I enjoy watching him punch robots into traffic. If I don't like how my character looks, I don't enjoy playing him, and don't enjoy the game. Limiting how my character looks from the beginning would be a huge issue for me.
I mean, look how well the "streamlined character creator" was received.
I'll just highlight the one bit you guys seemed to have missed. I love you guys but when you lot have a collective bug bear your combined reading skills go out the window :P
I never said change it.
I mean seriously this is coming from a girl who's THIRD tongue is English >_>"
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Yes, and I'm saying if it was like this since day one, I would have spent less time on the game, less money on the game, and I might not be here now.
People are saying "If costumes were a character-unlock the game would have made so much more money!" I'm saying if they were, they would have made a lot less money off of me. It would have given me less push to play.
We're saying it wouldn't have been a good idea then, and it wouldn't be a good idea now. Covering all bases on what a bad idea it would have been for the type of player we are.
Yeah but I wasn't. I think store bought costumes in any mmo should be account wide. Money would play no part of in game unlockables being toon only.
I one of those people that likes fresh starts each alt and to earn stuff through gameplay. I think A prime example of this was me raging at Ultra Streetfighter IV last night playing it on 8 stars trying to get the fight with Oni to trigger.
Ginger was like why dont you just fight him in VS you can play that single player. My reply was "SHUT %$£" UP ITS NOT THE SAME! >:O "
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
yeah, I think 90% of our population's first concern is costume/build/theme. Let's face it this is an alt based game. you hit 40 you get another 40. in my 100 characters not one plays exactly the same. whether the change is stats, powers, passives/role or which stat is stacked higher like the str/con and con/dex/end synergies. and many times that all starts with a costume piece. I got the foxbat belt i made a toon to use it. plus many of these dropped items are very specific. I do think making mech tokens drop from mechanon did lower the shelf life of the new content,but.... that was 5 missions total. and thats prob the real reason why. It just wasn't enough to hold interest once the mega Ds went away.
but let's look at the user experience.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
It's definitely more even now that xp has been switched to grabs
i still think missions should get a 20-35% xp boost all around, especially since they have no q dailies or any other reward worth it.
I play a fair amount of STO as well, and love re-running mission content there, but not for the reason you do. I could care less about the loot. I love the fact that no matter what level you are, the mission is matched to you. I never have to worry about overleveling content.
Add to that the missions are just better crafted IMO. Better storytelling, voice-over work that actually works ever time (as opposed to CO's sometimes-spastic VO work that works from one mission, doesn't on the next), and arcs I actually invest in and care about.
CO's missions feel down quick and dirty, with the bare minimum of investment of resources to develop. Quantity over quality. The comic packs and adventure series feel more like what I feel missions overall should be like, because in large part they are what STO's missions feel like every time.