Rumor Control: Stores aren't going anywhere
By
anachrodragon,
Posted on: 2005-07-05 17:10 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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Not sure if this was mentioned or not, but I always thought that there should be some types of enhancements that are only droppable. Something better then SOs (maybe like 40% to one attribute), but still very rare. Enough to where people wont easily be able to farm them until theyre maxed out.
Then again, this presents some problems with balance 
-- Currently Playing --
Dexter Labrynth (SS/FA Brute)
Former member of Tribute and Victory Reborn
Thanks for the clarification Statesman.
In the future, it might be worthwhile for you or someone on your staff to write up the "official summary" of things you say at formal settings outside of the forum, especially when there is no transcript to read.
This would help to avoid misunderstandings such as these in the future.... in theory.
Heh.. Poor flamers.
I freaked out myself mainly because of the worry that stores would be removed without fixes going to the current way contacts handle enhancers and the way enhancers droped. Currently..
Drops = Borked
Contact Origins= Borked
Honestly, right now ehancements are nothing but a big chore. They annoy the hell out of me. Every level or two I go to a store and upgrade/combine my ehnacers to keep my performance constant rather than actualy growing weaker by level. Getting ehnacer drops is even begining to piss me off. Every time I see that I have a new one I look to see what it is. Every time I see that I have nothing but tech/science/magic SOs on my natrual character. Then I have to go sell these ASAP or I won't have Inf to get SOs from the only source I have. A store which is completely out of the way.
Aww....now what am i gonna do with all this post apocolyspe canned meat?!
Thanks States.
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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Training enhancements post level 17 pretty much never see the light of my powers. I imagine for a lot of people Dual Origin enhancements are not seen in their powers post level 30 as well. That training enhancements are still dropped in the 30+ game is somewhat lame since I find I either delete them completely or, if I still have room, sell them off. I also notice that in a lot of missions the enhancements are not the same level as the mission itself (Sidekicking aside), they tend to be 1 or two levels lower making them useful only for combining or, most often, selling.
Now, when I get a DO or SO that is usable or combinable, I certainly slot/combine it. It just seems to be a matter of obtaining those.
As for Trading: are you nuts? I like this game because I don't have to do that garbage. A more organized method of trading (oh, say such as an auction house) would be better suited than broadcats in any number of zones to see if someone may have or want what you have.
CatMan - some form on every server
Always here, there, and there again.
My skin crawls at the thought of trading...
I wonder which zone would be the designated "broadcast for enhancments!" zone?
The arena?
the echo would be deafening though.
I check my drops all the time and on the off chance I get a usable one (about 1 in 50) it gets slotted, or if I get one a friend can use, I gift. TOs aren't even worth carrying to sell post SO level.
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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I guess the flip-side of this was that before Icon, Influence was only good for purchasing Enhancements.
If you want people to use their contacts for this purpose, then contacts should have the best prices, and be able to purchase Enhancements. The 10-Enhancement limit pretty much forces people to go to stores to sell them, and while they are there they often end up purchasing what they need. Add to this that many stores are more convenient, travel-wise, than most contacts, and you have pretty well engineered a system that encourages players to go to stores instead of contacts, for their Enhancement needs.
There are special hero corp(I think that is who they are) shops that give you quite a bit more for trainings than the average store. It is a little more out of the way, but the regular stores are out of the way anyway.
Hey States, if you really need to make some sort of change to enhancements, though, I got a quick and simple one for ya:
Make special enhancements, the ones from the Hydra, Crystal, Titan, etc.. automatically drop! That way, i'm not clearing out my tray in the middle of one of the major battles of my heroes career.
Other than that, or a plain old enh filter, I'm cool. 
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You might get a Contact who has stuff I want and vice versa - and thus we purchase the Enhancements and trade them.
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Honestly that just sounds like a bad idea unless you implement an auction/trading board of some sort... otherwise you'd just get people sitting infront of Luminary screaming their hearts out for a "Polly Cooper ... LF Polly Cooper... trading 2:1 on Polly Cooper enhancements"...
It brings back enhancements into an item sort of role... like loot...
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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Not true, I often slot enhancements I have gotten from a drop. I would rather run lots of missions and spend time playing the game than shopping and making sure my enh are always green.
I also give away SO's to people on my team who are the same origin all the time .
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DITTO. Id rather play the game than sit around and trade/sell enhancements.
I dont recall Superman doing much shopping.
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I dont recall Superman doing much shopping.
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No, but for about a decade there, his powers changed every other year; a privilege not given to us.
Not that I'd want my character to mysteriously grow a mullet or turn into two [censored] super heroes anyway. 
"Damnit.. I am out of inf. Should I slot my kick [censored] beam eyes or finish my resists? ARRGHH!"
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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First let me say that I am glad they aren't going anywhere. I kind of agree with you that stores aren't quite as cool as a contact giving them away, but as is contacts are massivly flawed. As are drops.
That brings me to the main point of repying to THIS post. Drops are valuable to me to an extent. When I actualy get something I can use I will use it happily and carefully. When I get it that is. On my main(a natrual origin) I got 3 non training enhanments that I could actualy use between the levels 20 and her current 34. I am dead serious, and I am not exagerating. I didn't even get a dual origin that was usable by natruals! When I got anything other than TRAINING enhancers that is.
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I was better- but I seriously learned and went after my optimal drops. As Icy, that was Freakshow. Sweet, Tech-dropping Freakshows.
It wasn't everything I needed, but it sure did wonders for patching up Enhancements into that + or ++ range.
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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If this is true, then heres a suggestion.
Tweak the drop tables so the enhancements that are dropped fit more into the middle range between the "5's" .
We all buy the lvl 5 at lvl 2, the lvl 10's at 7 and so on.
So make it that the drops are more in the *3 and *7 range..
So if I'm lvl 31 and still have 30's, but can't buy 35's, make it so at that range I pick up a lot of 32-34's.
This way I can combine them instead of selling them.
Becuase I end up haveing all 30's, then 35's, then 40's.. But not much in between.
Once i hit the 40's, I tend to buy enhancements every level. So I have 40's, 40+, 40++ then 45's, 45+, 45++ and so on.
Theres no way to buy 43 or 44 enhancements for example.
I like that stores are staying. Yet perhaps phasing in a system of contacts to do something more you envisioned on top of this over time. Perhaps an addition or part of the phased in story arcs for particular Origins. I think that wouldn't be a bad idea. Having more than one way to do things is not a bad idea. Options... always provide more options. In time... MMO Darwinism will phase out stores more than any nerfing you could do if you made a contact based system more appealing and fun. So stores would be there, but empty cause there is something better.
Perhaps may be able to make a best of both worlds.
We shall see in time. You tend to be pretty clever Dev crew.
x Jeremy M.
Global Handle: @JeremyM
City of Heroes LiveJournal Community
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What I said at Origins was...
I liked our first design for stores - where Contacts sold a limited amount of certain Enhancements to each hero. That way a choice of Contacts meant something. You might get a Contact who has stuff I want and vice versa - and thus we purchase the Enhancements and trade them. Plus, we could link the Enhancement types to the background of the Contact. Another big plus.
But, we didn't have the time to do that - so we defaulted to one stop shopping at set locations. That's not quite as "cool" in my opinion, but it's what we've got for now. Until some other system comes along, stores are here for now. So Stores will be here for I5, CoV and beyond.
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Thanks States, for clearing that up. I understand your desired concept, but I too like the stores for the reasons that others have mentioned. But I'm especially happy that you took the time to post and do "rumor control".
Currently Playing:
Frozen Kat - Ice/Ice Blaster (Triumph)
Flaming Kat - Fire/Fire Blaster (Triumph)
You know, if they WANTED to phase such a system in, the easy way to do it would be to switch the prices between what a STORE charges and what your CONTACT charges. It's always nice that my contact sells ALL the SOs I need, but why bother with them when I can get them for what, 30 percent less at a regular store?
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Not true, I often slot enhancements I have gotten from a drop. I would rather run lots of missions and spend time playing the game than shopping and making sure my enh are always green.
I also give away SO's to people on my team who are the same origin all the time .
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Or as gifts in Atlas or Galaxy. I love giving higher level Enhancments to beginning characters. It's a nice way to give back the help I got when first starting out. 
Of course... those level 22+ training enhancements ROCK!!
COme on seriously states... we use the drops, when they are useable. The problem is that MOST of the time we get DOs, Training, or some off origin SO... so we filter out our 10tray locker until we next hit a store. On the rare occassion I get an SO to my origin that I can use, I do a jig!
People would be less inclined to sell so many enhancements if you had enhancements dropping that were WORTH a damn.
TRAINING ENHANCEMENT FILTER SYSTEM for Quality of LIfe is a start. But the ultimate question is WHY certain enhancements drop after certain levels.
Find me a level 40 hero that has anything but SOs and I will show you a Developer doing obscure testing, OR a player who DESPERATELY needs to read the mysterious manual.
Personally, I believe that if you had MUCH less frequent, but much more VALUABLE drops... trading would be a viable option. AS it stands now, people fill their trays per mission and hit the stores in between because 90% of the drops are worthless other than influence or just get deleted. So if a hero visits the store to sell one or two... might as well sell nearly all of the ones I got. He sure as hell won't be using them.
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You know, if they WANTED to phase such a system in, the easy way to do it would be to switch the prices between what a STORE charges and what your CONTACT charges. It's always nice that my contact sells ALL the SOs I need, but why bother with them when I can get them for what, 30 percent less at a regular store?
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Perhaps it will become a consideration, and things will change. Yet from other things I hear... All enhancements will probably get a price increase in time. Maybe it will only be the stores, and contacts might be more favorable?
Still... before they would consider that... they would have to build in the system and network anyways. That would probably take alot of time.
One of the things I read that I liked alot as a suggestion...
Have a contact list *ALL* the enhancements he can possibly sell all the time, but grey out the ones you can't buy till you level up the contact enough. Then you can see what they are offering down the road some, and you can make in informed decision of how much time to put into a particular contact.
I would *LOVE* this kinda small quality of life change to contact storess. I *know* I would use them more if I knew what I might be getting from them not only now, but down the road.
Hopefully something for States to consider if he is still reading this thread.
x Jeremy M.
Global Handle: @JeremyM
City of Heroes LiveJournal Community
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What I said at Origins was...
I liked our first design for stores - where Contacts sold a limited amount of certain Enhancements to each hero. That way a choice of Contacts meant something. You might get a Contact who has stuff I want and vice versa - and thus we purchase the Enhancements and trade them. Plus, we could link the Enhancement types to the background of the Contact. Another big plus.
But, we didn't have the time to do that - so we defaulted to one stop shopping at set locations. That's not quite as "cool" in my opinion, but it's what we've got for now. Until some other system comes along, stores are here for now. So Stores will be here for I5, CoV and beyond.
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Damn, I was started to descend from trusting you all into pure tinfoil land, and you're sabotaging that.
Oh, and thanks for the update. Groovy.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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I often slot dropped enhancements, because it's advantageous to do so for whatever reason. The problem I run into is that it feels like groups aren't consistent about drops in the 40s - I don't get the sense that CoT always drops magic for me, for example. So the chances of getting SOs I can use and slot is pretty low.
I did have one level 51 end rec SO drop, but I couldn't use it because it was the wrong origin.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
Oh yeah, training enhancements.... I'll allow for those drops during my teens, and even into my 20s, but after 30? Heck, after 40?
), and I received one SO, 1 DO, and five training enhancements! Now what in the world would I do with five 49-51 level training enhancements?
I just did a level 50 mission with my level 46 defender (I was the lowbie in the group
When I solo, and get stuff like that, if I'm in a generous mood, I'll swing by Atlas, Galaxy, Kings Row, or Hollows, and give them to lowbies with cool costumes/backstories... but in a group, those get deleted right away (or given to other heroes... like Go_Sabres =^_^=).
Dungeoncleaners! (ID#125715): Slay the Adventurers! Rescue the Monsters! Return the Treasure!
Peppermint Cat-- Lv50 Mewtant Ice/Eng Bls