Chad Gulzow-Man

I bet showing up on her doorstep, naked, with a rose in your teeth would do it.

That's what their phrasing has led us to believe, yes.

I thought about this a bit, and came up with what I think is a pretty good idea (not that the devs will take me up on it or anything)...

Make it so that you earn 1 Paragon Point for every hour spent teamed with a non-VIP account, up to a max of 50 per month. That's basically giving you up to $0.625 extra every month. It's a small enough amount that even "Freep Farmers" won't get too much extra benefit out of it--just an extra costume piece or two every month. It would take 8 months of 50 hour Freep teaming to equal $5/400 pts.

It could be tracked the same way that the sidekicking badges are now (only not stacking for multiple Freeps in your team) and be zeroed out across the board during the first maintenance of every month.

But that's just my 2 inf.

Already answered in the OP:

Badges will not be purchaseable, only the associated perks.

For example, you'll probably be able to purchase remote access to the auction house, but not the "Loyal Customer" badge.

That's not entirely true Sapph--it was said that VIPs would get free access to content, but there was no mention of paying for powersets in the future other than "Time Manipulation will be included with your VIP subscription." It was heavily implied in the recent Massively.com article that dropped the info about Titan Weapons that the set would need to be purchased in the store.

VIPs, of course, can just use their 400pt/mo stipend to pay for it, so they wouldn't have to pay any additional money to get it.

I actually expect that most of the upcoming powersets will require purchase in the store, and I'm fine with that if that means we get new powersets a lot more often than we do now. If they offer 4 new powersets a year at $5-10 each, HELL YEAH I'm buying them. It beats the pants off the 2 (free) powersets every 18-24 months we're averaging now.

Pretty sure they removed them from this publish because this is the version that will go live. Pending massive bugs, of course.

At the same time, if someone were to think the majority of the pack was stupid, but really wanted, say, the steam backpack and the female bodice, they could just buy those two parts for maybe $1.50 (or thereabouts) and save $3.50 on not buying the parts they didn't want or use the rest of the points to buy individual parts from other packs or consumeable items or something.

It's a good system both ways--the people who want to buy everything get a bundle, and the people who don't get to pick out exactly what they want.

Hehe, don't be... My last name gets spelled (and pronounced) "Guzz-low" more often than it gets pronounced correctly: "Gull-zoh."

I was only being playful when Posi spelled it wrong. I'm very much used to it.

That's kind of what I think, too. My guess is that the Incarnate content and abilities through i21 will be added to the store (ala carte) around the 8th anniversary next year. Anything that comes in i22 and later will probably remain similarly locked as "VIPs only" for another year, and so on.

This is all just conjecture, of course.

No prob, man. I had worse misunderstandings last night in another thread; I know how it goes.

Speaking of which, it's 3:00 AM here, so I really ought to hit the hay myself...

You mean like this one, in this very same thread?
If you drop your subscription, you no longer get Incarnate content or abilities. They don't delete the ones you've earned already, but they're greyed out until you resume your subscription.

GR doesn't unlock Incarnates, but it is a prerequisite to doing Incarnate content. However, in CoHF/i21, all subscribers (aka, VIPs) will automatically have GR added to their accounts whether they've purchased it in the past or not.

They're now enforcing an unspoken prerequisite to Incarnate content: you must be a VIP (have an active subscription) to do the trials or use the Incarnate abilities gained through them. Mind you, you can buy all the GR boxes in town right now and that doesn't give you access to Incarnate content if you don't pay your subscription.

Incarnate access is apparently not being made purchaseable separately at this time.

I read somewhere that you'd buy the costume parts directly from the tailor, and they'd be marked as locked if you don't have it.

Nope, Clockwork 1 said today that Incarnate content is VIP only, and cannot be purchased by a Free/Premium player.

(I fully expect that to change in time; probably around the 8th anniversary, they'll start offering it as a purchaseable add-on.)

It was 6-10 counting both arcs.

I REALLY don't think they'd charge us $25-50 for a new powerset. More likely, $5 per set. $10 at most.

As for the cost of a new AT, my guess would be $10, or $15 if they come as a pair. Obviously I'm not an NCSoft employee, but my gut instinct was pretty good about all the other stuff that Ghost Falcon mentioned at the start of this thread, so I'm reasonably confident in these guesses.

He means that the price you saw (say, the Wizard Beard for $0.25/20 Points) was for a global unlock--all your characters get access to it, and you never have to buy it again.

I just looked through the beta thread about the attempted redesigns. VERY nice costume work, Zombie! Well done!

Can't find the thread that gave the best description of them right now (there've been a LOT of redname posts this week! ), but basically:

They're a story arc given to you by one of the signature heroes (Freedom Phalanx or Vindicators) or signature villains (Arachnos Patrons and their lieutenants) that has you going on an adventure alongside the contact. There will be 2 arcs offered each month (one Hero, one Villain), and each arc will be three to five missions long, with all new arcs the following month. (Not sure if that means the old ones disappear, but I personally doubt it.)

That's about all the info we have on them right now, but it's one of the perks you can either buy on a Free/Premium account or get for free by being a VIP subscriber.

I'm pretty sure it's the opposite, but I'll agree it's a tad vague.

Still, I see "Signature Story Arcs" as a system, and your $5 payment buys you access to the system itself, not the arcs contained therein.

And remember, there are TWO Signature arcs every month--a Hero and a Villain arc, each at 3 to 5 missions apiece.

Aw shucks... ^_^;

Not even if we let them steer?