Everything going Bound to character. Why not a class re-roll token?

deathbeez · May 2016

This occurred to me in another thread.

Lets say the class/tree you're playing is taken in a direction you don't like, and you want to change classes.

Think about how sunk you are!
150+ million in refinement points all locked up Bound to character artifacts and artifact gear.
Don't forget all the wards and coals it took to get there.
If you bought mounts on the AH or Bazzar for mod 9 mount buffs, Bound to character
My Tenser's Transformation Disk Bound to character
Your legendary Pets costing a million per to upgrade Bound to character

The skill nodes got nerfed, AD from leadership is gone, the refinement/enchantments have all been extremely nerfed.
Foundry got shutdown. It could take half a year, maybe a year, I don't even know anymore, to get to where you where.
I don't have the patience, tolerance, or free time to start completely from scratch again in a game that doesn't have hard-resets.
I can't be the only one, right?
There must of been a few Scourge Warlocks after that massive class 're-work' [mega-nerf] that said 'peace out' and clicked uninstall.

Not only would this be a source of revenue for Cryptic, it would also mean less people would leave the game when their classes are modified in ways they don't agree with, or hey, just want a change.
The game is changing, content, mechanics, balancing. Maybe you're just bored. It happens...

Yes, the class-specific weapon and off-hand would not be usable post-transformation, but your other 60 million AD in assets would be.
Something to think about. I see it as a win/win for Cryptic and the player base.

thefabricant · May 2016

Not going to happen. Why? Because they can make more money from you buying all that stuff again for another class, than they can from you rerolling.

deathbeez · May 2016

thefabricant said:
Not going to happen. Why? Because they can make more money from you buying all that stuff again for another class, than they can from you rerolling.

You may be right.
I'm just tossing it out there because I haven't seen it mentioned before, I'd certainly drop real $ on it, and this game keeps getting more and more 'Bound to character' focused. It might be time to give this idea a fresh look.

It'll come down to the math, no doubt.

But when I look at those dropping players-per-hour stats every month, I'd wager at least a few of them might have stayed if they had this option rather then having no choice but to spend half a year or more rerolling another character into what they have now.

If the players that pay are the ones with the least free time, and the ones with the least free time will leave if forced to reroll with the loss of precious time-spent, wouldn't it be logical that the player most likely to leave post-changes are the ones that pay the most? Food for thought.

thefabricant · May 2016

deathbeez said:

thefabricant said:
Not going to happen. Why? Because they can make more money from you buying all that stuff again for another class, than they can from you rerolling.
You may be right.
I'm just tossing it out there because I haven't seen it mentioned before, I'd certainly drop real $ on it, and this game keeps getting more and more 'Bound to character' focused. It might be time to give this idea a fresh look.

It'll come down to the math, no doubt.

But when I look at those dropping players-per-hour stats every month, I'd wager at least a few of them might have stayed if they had this option rather then having no choice but to spend half a year or more rerolling another character into what they have now.

If the players that pay are the ones with the least free time, and the ones with the least free time will leave if forced to reroll with the loss of precious time-spent, wouldn't it be logical that the player most likely to leave post-changes are the ones that pay the most? Food for thought.

It gets proposed every now and again and whilst I am certainly not against it, I don't think its likely to ever happen. It is something that people have been proposing since the games inception pretty much. Other things that are often proposed are "additional skill sets" (so you can swap between a single target and AoE setup for example), "alternative RP systems" (that don't take up bag space, for the most part), and the option to have 2 builds at once, so you don't need to waste a respec token between pvp and pve for example. Player housing is also often requested, although I have not seen that particular request in a while. All of these ideas came with reasonable strategies to make them lucrative as well.

kvet · May 2016

I happen to agree with both of you. It would be a very good addition if they can figure out the details, but it's pretty unlikely they'll ever actually do it. Race re-roll was fairly straightforward, but so much stuff is based on your Class that the amount of work wouldn't be even remotely trivial and given the long list of other QoL items players want, I would be very surprised to see this one make the cut any time soon. Possible? sure. Likely? Not really. I agree though - it would be a pretty good feature.

sm0ld3r · May 2016

thefabricant said:
Not going to happen. Why? Because they can make more money from you buying all that stuff again for another class, than they can from you rerolling.

How do they make more money if you quit the game?

sockmunkey · May 2016

sm0ld3r said:

thefabricant said:
Not going to happen. Why? Because they can make more money from you buying all that stuff again for another class, than they can from you rerolling.
How do they make more money if you quit the game?

Because you cant really ever quit a F2P game. Its always there, you always have access to it. Sure people might get upset, scream, rant, quit, even delete things. Some might never return, but a percentage always will. There are posters in this very topic who have publicly quit, only to return later.

Its the entire business model with this game. Its less about retaining customers long term, and more about a churn that hopefully keeps people checking in from time to time. After all, someone who takes a break might feel the urge to play catch up, on their return. And the best way to catch up, is with cash.

arandompanda · May 2016

You know...

It's such a darn shame a request like this is even considered necessary. Cryptic has a poor track record of balancing classes in such a way that it makes the game feel more challenging and fun.

I bet people with tons of AD and time sunk into SW sometimes wish they could buy a class re-roll token.

Unknown · May 2016

This content has been removed.

dsn1118 · May 2016

I am talking as PVE player.I havent seen any class taken out of its content since I started this game(mod 4).Only some classes got nerfed after they released too overpowered like OPs and some SWs.That is PWE's or Cryptic's tactic to make people to spend money to new class after its release

Some says TR cant do damage,I saw some 4k TR make 4K GWF eat its dust, other SWs say same thing and well all of us seen the SW hit 41m to egwd boss.All depends on how much you can utilize your class to its best abilities.Only ones I seen got screwed over are HRs until now and they had only one tree that was useful until new mod where other DPSes burn everything so fast that last pathway became pretty much useless too

taitinhakkaaja · May 2016

Those big hit's, like 41m sw hit have almost nothing to do about how you build your class. It's all about party buffs.
My only regret in this game is that i started to play sw as main. If i could do class re-roll, i would do it instantly (yea it's really that bad class)

nathan · May 2016

I have spent several hundred dollars in the two months that I have played. Probably only 50 of that is of any value to me now because it was all on character bound unlocks for characters I no longer play.

I would be fine with the cost of things if they were account bound. Or atleast transferable between same account characters.

deathbeez · May 2016

arandompanda said:
You know...
It's such a darn shame a request like this is even considered necessary. Cryptic has a poor track record of balancing classes in such a way that it makes the game feel more challenging and fun.
I bet people with tons of AD and time sunk into SW sometimes wish they could buy a class re-roll token.

I don't suggest this idea just out of fear of over-balancing. It's also for just a change.
Instead of mothballing a toon when the game changes and you're class isn't needs as much or you're just bored of it.

I'm thinking using that same toon, (minus the main/off hand) and continue to enjoy the game instead of turning into the growing population that logs in to collect their ViP and logs out.

The SW class-kill nerf is what I had in mind when I thought of this idea.

kvet · May 2016

As far as character development and progression goes, in my opinion the best MMO ever created (again, specific with regards to character development and progression) was Ultima Online. In that game, there was no "end-game" - you progressed your character in it's chosen profession until it was Grand Master level. Then.... if your GM Swordsman decided to be a Mage, no problem, you just start practicing magic until, eventually, you're not a GM swordsman anymore but you ARE a GM Mage. So, there's no end game at all, just a constant and never ending ability to progress.

Mind you, I don't recall being able to make alts. Maybe you could... it was a long time ago (late 1990s) that I played that game.

Still, an infinitely malleable character, one that is effectively classless other than depending on the abilities it's using based on it' skill with them, would completely remove this issue. Of course, that's not exactly D&D at that point. I would LOVE if they created a modernized version of Ultima Online with no end game. I hate the end game, it's stupid. I much prefer a feeling a progression and growth - it's on reason I have 19 lvl 70 toons... it's much funner to level a toon even though I've already done it many times already than it is to grind the so-called "end game" instances over and over and over in a single play session.

deathbeez · May 2016

magenubbie said:

There's the truth of the matter: Continuity. Or rather, the serious lack of it. Every so often classes get nerfed to the ground (TRs in particular, but they aren't the only ones), mechanics are not thought-out and get nerfed, altered or in some other way made useless.

Yep. That's the thing. And if a class isn't nerfed harshly, it's just forgotten or scales badly.

My point is alot of people put time/$/resources into a class on an ever-shifting bed of sad.
From a customer's respective. Who want's to buy things that will be eventually taken away from them?
Not even broken or worn out, but actually, consciously taken away. It's a bad investment..

So that's why I like my suggestion. If some people think their class sucks and others are OP.
Buy some zen, and find out if the grass is really greener on the other side.

Alot of people make mains that they later regret (including me!). Like the SW in this thread.
I've seen DCs talk about this too.

It should be Cryptic that offers a life-raft (for a price of-course) for when they make mistakes in class balancing.
The very high power-tower now of char development in this game make just throwing up your hands and rolling another toon an outrageously time-wasting and expensive enterprise that is IMO, is not worth it. Know when to fold 'em, right?

This looks like an alternative to keep people playing, offer a option for disenfranchised players that want to come back, and NWO gets some revenue. And the development? It's a reroll where you take it a step back and add char class selection before the tree selection. Take all gear off the player and toss into their inventory or overload bags. Don't even both trying to sort what is and isn't class-specific. And done. And you got another item for sale.

Everything going Bound to character. Why not a class re-roll token?

Comments