bloodyboots

I feel exactly the same way.

Thank you for posting a response that was more than "What do you care what people spend their money on", and actually made some valid points. I still disagree, though, for a number of reasons.

Powerleveling, exploits, gold-farming: these problems are not unique to CoH. It's the company's job to do their best to minimize the negative impacts they may have on the game. Selling enhancements on the Paragon market isn't going to cure this. You might, for example, start seeing gold-farmers trying to undercut the prices on the Paragon market: "5 sets of Kinetic Combat only $15! blah blah blah." Maybe not, but I wouldn't put it past them. I guess we could go back to the days before the invention system, and have everybody slot only SO's and Hami-O's. But who would want this? Certainly not the people running the Paragon Market, now that they've seen that people are ready to pay real money for these items.

"IOs are optional, not required to play his game and shouldn't be so tedious or time-consuming to get a hold of at this stage." Optional? I suppose, but how else are you going to improve your characters after you've gotten, let's say, all your Incarnate abilities? Tedious to get a hold of? I would disagree, but that's just my opinion. If they are really too difficult to get, there are better ways to make them more available: increasing their drop-rates, lowering their Merit costs, allowing players to buy recipes that are "under" their level range. Offering them up for sale on the Paragon market seems the worst solution.

As far as the game being "so alt-oriented", this is not true for every player. Many players only focus on a few (or even one or two) characters.

Isn't the whole point of a video game is that it's NOT life? If I want "life" l can step outside my door. At any rate, we are a long way from everything being purchasable on the market. But I still think that selling enhancements on the Paragon Market sets a bad precedent. Most of the stuff on the market I could care less about, but the invention system is a crucial pillar of the game system. If it becomes, more and more, an element of the Paragon store, I think the long-term impacts are going to negative, both for the community and the company. It has nothing to do with me "keeping up", and everything to do with wanting the game system to remain meaningful.