Originally posted by xiirot

... Think about Blizzard offering paid-services such as changing your gender and appearance, and name-changes.

...

Interesting comparison between apples and oranges.

How about debating the impact of a real money respec cost on WoW with the impact of a real money respec cost on Champions Online? How do you think a RMT on respec would be received by the WoW community? Do you think it would have been well received? What makes CO respec so different so as to justify an RMT respec cost?

[On that same note, a bad spec or changes in the game down the line can break a character rendering him ... less fun (or unplayable for some). A sex or similar such change has no such impact. Thus my comment on your comparing apples with oranges. ]

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Originally posted by xiirot

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Sorry that I must inject logic and common sense

Don't worry, you're not injecting logic and common sense. Just paranoia and conspiracy theory.

You don't like microtransactions. You feel that every company using them is planning to rip you off by trying to force you into buying from them. If they say that game-affecting items will be "available through in game means" then obviously, they are planning on making the "in game means" ridiculous to force you to resort to the microtransactions. Ripping you off is what MTs are for, right?

Your glass is half empty. Mine is half full. If it turns out that Cryptic are planning to pish in it, then I'll damn well just go out and get me another glass. 'til then I'm happy to enjoy the honeymoon period.

 

 

No, it's just common sense and logic. The only reason microtransactions are available is to make the game producer more money off of the same product. If items that are available both in game and in the item shop are easy to obtain in game, they would never sell any, defeating the purpose of the item shop to begin with. Therefore, in order to make money off of the item shop, the items available in game must have a certain amount of difficulty/time consumption in order to validate purchasing it in the store. It is common sense really. I'm not saying every item will take years to grind for, but it is really just common sense that those items will have a high enough degree of difficulty in obtaining to push at least some users to buying it in the shop over grinding for it.

And yes, I'm a glass half empty person. That way I'm rarely disappointed, and only pleasantly surprised.

 

Only if the game is p2p plus microtransactions.

CO is a p2p game, however, the item in question is not even an item, it's a service (we are still talking about the respecs, right?).  I don't believe full-respecs can be obtained in-game.  However, you can respec your last ~ten skills that you trained with in-game currency.  Beyond that, you will have to pay.

 

I was just talking about the microtransactions in general, not specifically the respec(which I guess I roamed a bit off topic).  CO is a p2p plus microtransactions game. Services are completely different than MT in my book. A character name change, or a server transfer gets a fee not only to get a little extra money for the developer, but also attempt to mitigate use of that service so that you don't have players constantly changing names and servers on a whim. That really doesn't bother me as people abusing those services can have negative effects on players.

A pay to respec service doesn't really benefit the player at all, only the developer. There is no reason why a full respec can't be available through in game means.

That's absolutely true.  But, no one (as far as I know) has paid for a full respec yet.  So we can't really determine how much impact this has on the game, the game's servers, or the game's staff.

If it has absolutely no impact on any of the above, then it makes no sense to pay for it.  Unless they are attempting to "mitigate use of that service so that you don't have players constantly" respeccing on a whim.

Respecing your character on CO is like getting One class to the cap in WoW and then completely changing the class, not the talent tree, to a completely different class and still being at the level cap. Not the same as speccing between defense and offense, would be more like re-speccing between Hunter and Warlock. Talent trees on WoW are fraction of the impact respecing on CO is.

Also correct me if I'm wrong, I've completely respec'd on CO with in game money several times, is there a cap on how far back you can go once you get higher level or something?

Originally posted by Dionysus187

Respecing your character on CO is like getting One class to the cap in WoW and then completely chaning the class, not the talent tree, to a comletely different class and still being at the level cap. Talent trees on WoW are fraction of the impact respecing on CO is.

 

Also correct me if I'm wrong, I've completely respec'd on CO with in game money several times, is there a cap on how far back you can go once you get higher level or something?

Yes. You can only go back 10 levels. So once you hit level 11, your choices begin to be locked in as you level up.

Just to keep updated on the cash shop. take a look as it just went up.

http://www.champions-online.com/store

With the current mechanics in place. I really forsee this game becoming a FOTM skills game, when skills are buffed/nerfed, people will just buy respecs or roll alts to make a character with whatever is the new best. To be honest though, I really hope this game does fail just because I don't want its P2P and Item Mall business model to be viewed as profitable by MMO companies, and even if it was the best game in the world would refuse the play it on that merit alone.

Originally posted by xiirot

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Originally posted by xiirot

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Sorry that I must inject logic and common sense

Don't worry, you're not injecting logic and common sense. Just paranoia and conspiracy theory.

You don't like microtransactions. You feel that every company using them is planning to rip you off by trying to force you into buying from them. If they say that game-affecting items will be "available through in game means" then obviously, they are planning on making the "in game means" ridiculous to force you to resort to the microtransactions. Ripping you off is what MTs are for, right?

Your glass is half empty. Mine is half full. If it turns out that Cryptic are planning to pish in it, then I'll damn well just go out and get me another glass. 'til then I'm happy to enjoy the honeymoon period.

 

 

No, it's just common sense and logic. The only reason microtransactions are available is to make the game producer more money off of the same product. If items that are available both in game and in the item shop are easy to obtain in game, they would never sell any, defeating the purpose of the item shop to begin with. Therefore, in order to make money off of the item shop, the items available in game must have a certain amount of difficulty/time consumption in order to validate purchasing it in the store. It is common sense really. I'm not saying every item will take years to grind for, but it is really just common sense that those items will have a high enough degree of difficulty in obtaining to push at least some users to buying it in the shop over grinding for it.

And yes, I'm a glass half empty person. That way I'm rarely disappointed, and only pleasantly surprised.

 

Only if the game is p2p plus microtransactions.

CO is a p2p game, however, the item in question is not even an item, it's a service (we are still talking about the respecs, right?).  I don't believe full-respecs can be obtained in-game.  However, you can respec your last ~ten skills that you trained with in-game currency.  Beyond that, you will have to pay.

 

I was just talking about the microtransactions in general, not specifically the respec(which I guess I roamed a bit off topic).  CO is a p2p plus microtransactions game. Services are completely different than MT in my book. A character name change, or a server transfer gets a fee not only to get a little extra money for the developer, but also attempt to mitigate use of that service so that you don't have players constantly changing names and servers on a whim. That really doesn't bother me as people abusing those services can have negative effects on players.

A pay to respec service doesn't really benefit the player at all, only the developer. There is no reason why a full respec can't be available through in game means.

 

That's absolutely true.  But, no one (as far as I know) has paid for a full respec yet.  So we can't really determine how much impact this has on the game, the game's servers, or the game's staff.

If it has absolutely no impact on any of the above, then it makes no sense to pay for it.  Unless they are attempting to "mitigate use of that service so that you don't have players constantly" respeccing on a whim.

That's possible, but that would beg the question why are the players respeccing so much? Also, the same could be accomplished by adding a bit of a time sink to get a full respec through in game means.

I just think a pay to respec system is very open for abuse by the developers. All they have to do is tweak a few powers and suddenly many people may need a full respec and have to pay for it.

OMG action figures thats so OP'd

Anyway, so it seems they are charging cash to basically completely change your class, considering no other game seems to offer that purely 'in-game' (except EQ2 with betrayal, but still in your archetype) I don't really see a problem. Maybe they can offer a purely 'in-game' respec that lets you start over but you can't go outside of the pools you chosen before? would be like a CoX respec that way.