Discussion: Purchasable Character Respecs
By
Acemace,
Posted on: 2008-07-31 10:40 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
it would b awesome if it worked:/ i just tried a few times to buy one of these for my MM, and i keep getting the same message over and over "could not connect to billing service, please try again"
I got the same thing for an hour. Then I closed the game, went to the account management page and double checked my billing info. I opened the game and tried again and it worked. You might need to do the same.
woot it worked thanx for the suggestion Philotix!
Offer a respec for real cash that allows the toon to rechoose primary and secondary sets and watch the money roll in.
Yeah that is a respec that I would pay for. But then I wouldn't have any more invulnerable toons. Then again neither would anyone else. Sigh.
Master Gabriel
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Offer a respec for real cash that allows the toon to rechoose primary and secondary sets and watch the money roll in.
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Now your talking. i would pay for that type of respec for a few toons.
But i would be Ticked off if they allowed that to happen before addressing many many outstanding issues the game currently has.
So before dropping another dime into purchasable respecs and costume packs or nifty trinkets to make people happy temporarily . Use the time and money to fix the lag in misson 3 of the ITF, or what ever else maybe outstanding.
Okay, I've read the thread. I've seen the arguments on both sides. This is my 25 Inf on this.
Also, I'm a newb. So if that means my opinion is invalid to you, just skim along and ignore this.
For those of you who are saying "I've got plenty, I'll never use it". This particular feature isn't for you.
As someone who had to take 4 runs at Terra Volta TF1 to get it (bad teams and people who'd drop the minute they heard the word "Debt"), I think this is a good idea for people whose characters really require a respec and aren't in a position to obtain one readily (newer players). Try telling someone at level 24 that they need 25 million Inf or wait X-number of months or just rebuild from scratch and see what they say.
Also, I've helped found of a company that produces online fiction in a subscription format. And one of our prices is, you guessed it, $9.99. Real research was done to discover that this "magical" number is a barrier price for most people. It's small enough that it can be considered a "trivial" expense most of the time.
Yet, the cost isn't so low that most of the profit gets eaten up in transaction fees. Also, it serves as a barrier of entry to help regulate resource utilization as well. While the actual bandwidth, to you, is trivial for a respec, you're actually making substantial changes in a database that is supposed to be static.
Now imagine everyone in the game making changes to this database on a daily basis. Now, instead of spending whatever money they make on paying for new features, they're paying for equipment upgrades on server back-end.
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In the history of the world, has any merchant EVER priced something high to discourage people from buying it?
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Ask this question of an economics teacher. It's about supply and demand. Priced too low, everyone buys one, and your profit gets eaten in overhead. Then the market crashes once demand has been filled.
Also, people here are griping about how the value of their respec recipies will be impacted on the market. They're still valuable. Just less-so now to someone truly desperate to respec. And the CoX guys never promised you that you'd always be able to profit from in-game marketeering.
Now think about them pricing this at $1.99 or $4.99. Or selling them in a pack of 3 for $9.99. The value of respec recipies would drop to approximately ZERO.
As to the notion that giving ready access to unlimited respec (for a price) "lowers the skill of the player base".
All I have to say to this is "HUH"?
Respec is a tool that allows you to directly apply what you learn about the game without having to repeat everything by building a character again and adventuring from level 1.
As for "skill-less" people who'd use it as a constant band-aid to min-max their toon for every given event. SO WHAT? This doesn't really affect you outside of PvP. And IN PvP, it'll keep you from getting complacent about firing off a canned attack sequence against "that annoying munchkin".
Also, not everyone can be a "Highly skilled, super-dedicated" player. And if it were, it'd be so boring and so insular, that you'd chase away new players. I've actually worked with several gaming communities to help try and reverse this sort of trend. To varying degrees of success.
Also, as noted, revenues from this new feature can be used to fund deeper, more meaningful changes. This is, effectively a little nothing of a change (though the devteams at NCSoft and the CoH guys might thwack me about the head and shoulders for so trivializing their work). But it's a little nothing of a change that won't seriously imbalance the game, and will renumerate the devteam for their work.
Small, easy changes like this are relatively easy to implement (rather than completely reworking some of the back-end systems as some of the suggestions listed here would likely require).
And to address the criticism "Change X takes away Y minutes they could spend on RealImportantToMeChange Z".
Maybe it does.
But the revenue generated from this change X makes sure they can AFFORD to pay the devs for the time spent to build RITMC Z".
And, for the people who say this presents a bad precedent of buying things vs loyalty to the game.
Again, this change doesn't affect you. And not everyone realistically has the time or money to devote years to a game.
Oh yeah, add up how much you've paid on a monthly basis to rack up all those veteran respecs. Now split it by the number of respecs you actually have used. $9.99 looks like a slightly better bargain now, eh?
And hey. Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne effectively bought their way into the superhero-worldbeater club. Who're you to tell Joe Subscriber that he can't?
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Sorry if the following suggestion has been made; I'm skipping this ridiculously long thread under the assumption that it's mostly argument over whether this is a bad idea or not.
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I suggest pricing paid respecs competitively, compared to the price of buying influence from RMT then buying a Respec Recipe through the auction system. I polled the current inf prices offered by the RMT sites; $4 to an RMT site for 20 million influence (the approximate in-game trading price of Respec Recipe) remains a cheaper alternative than $10 to NCSoft to buy the same thing. By cutting your price to the neighborhood of $5 or less, you will eliminate one of the economic incentives to cheat through an RMT site. This would achieve a policy goal at the same time as a financial goal.
First off the cost of influence or infamy is based also on the server you want it on. Less population servers tend to cost more i have noticed.
Second keep in mind doing so supports the BS spammers in game and makes them want to stay.
Third providing your credit card info to a chinese gold farmer in and of itself i would never do. They dont respect the humanity and rights of there workers but they will respect my credit card number? I dont think so.
But over all i have no problem buying something from NC Soft, there primary concern is maintaining me as a customer. Farmers primary concerns are making money in any way possible.
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In the history of the world, has any merchant EVER priced something high to discourage people from buying it?
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Ask this question of an economics teacher. It's about supply and demand. Priced too low, everyone buys one, and your profit gets eaten in overhead. Then the market crashes once demand has been filled.
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Just a small nitpick: I was commenting on the 'reason' given by other posters for the high price as "to discourage buying it", not on the price itself.
Mostly I'm just glad to see an economics teacher posting! Please get thee to the Market forum.
Competition is also alive and well -- every time someone offers a new product or service someone else will offer it soon after, and cheaper. That said, I'm absolutely shocked by how many times RMT services have been brought up as an alternative on this forum. RMT = bad consequences all around, I thought - for the game and personally.
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In the history of the world, has any merchant EVER priced something high to discourage people from buying it?
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Ask this question of an economics teacher. It's about supply and demand. Priced too low, everyone buys one, and your profit gets eaten in overhead. Then the market crashes once demand has been filled.
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Just a small nitpick: I was commenting on the 'reason' given by other posters for the high price as "to discourage buying it", not on the price itself.
Mostly I'm just glad to see an economics teacher posting! Please get thee to the Market forum.
Competition is also alive and well -- every time someone offers a new product or service someone else will offer it soon after, and cheaper. That said, I'm absolutely shocked by how many times RMT services have been brought up as an alternative on this forum. RMT = bad consequences all around, I thought - for the game and personally.
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Sorry about the nasty stair-step post. But...
It's not about discouraging people from consuming. It's keeping the market from running away with itself and pulling you down with overhead.
And I'm not an economics teacher (something my pocketbook thanks me for). I'm a computer and networking and security specialist (and moonlight as a DBA..in addition to my forays into the gaming industry).
Mostly I'm just a workaholic. Stuff like CoX is all that keeps me as sane (relatively speaking) as I am.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Now I'd have a problem if they started charging for each new character creation, but thats not what they're doing.
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Yet, but when they have used enough little stuff to get people trained to pay for the tings they want then they will start charging for the bigger stuff too.
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We all pay money every month 15 bucks on up. that money needs to be spent on developing content and fixes for the game as it is now. seem that they just used our money and developed a way to make more money by charging 9.99 for a respec.
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Your monthly fee is going towards development of the game, paying salaries, paying for servers (power, bandwidth, maintenance, maintenance staff), etc. And I believe the money from the sales of "extras" goes towards increased development too (recall the wedding pack sales let them do the VEAT's a whole issue early).
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Technically, your monthly fee is paying for access to the game servers. That's it.
What NCSoft as a company chooses to do with the revenues from subscriptions or micro-transactions is really a different matter all together.
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But really, since money is Fungible, Psyte is right. Our payments for access pays salaries, power, bandwidth, etc... see the quoted quote. The Wedding Pack pack is a prime example as was admitted to by the Devs: the costume and emote access we paid for went for future development.
But really, who would play this game for more than a few months if the subscription did not have such benefits. Obviously, we pay for access, but there is a HECK of a lot more to that access than simply access to a server (anyone can have access to 'a' server 
).
Think of a magazine subscription, if all our subscription paid for was server access, then it would be like paying a monthly fee for the same print of a magazine over and over again. The payments, obviously are for more than mere access. 
CatMan - some form on every server
Always here, there, and there again.
The best add on IHMO would be to offer vault storage by account/server/universe instead as it is now, by character. For example, all my toons in COH/Victory server would have access to the same vault. It would not affect game play and would allow more time actually playing instead of logging alt toons to find a piece of salvage, which then has to be transferred somehow. Or instead of tiime spent managing a massive excel spreadsheet to track salvage as I do now. As for themed costume packs - heck ya I'd spen the $$ as I did for wedding pack and I would especially like to see a the witchs skirt in Croatoa in one! One poster stated that if you were to sell more costumes pieces then there should also be a way to earn them in game. Problem with that is it then becomes a thing to earn and once that happens it becomes a bon of contention - "Well, I earned mine so you should not be able to buy yours" like so many of the things being posted about in this thread!
i have posted other things like that as a suggestion before.
like making your influ/infamy ie. whatever side your on, accesable in a universal way.
if you look in certain areas, like the train and the wall of some buildings there is an ATM. make it clickable and use it to access your influence/infamy, salvage, IOs, enhancements and recipes you want stored.
it would be nice to have it cross servers just for your account but if they want to limit it just have it to where all characters on one account can have access to it all on one server only.
that would still be nice.
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Yeah that is a respec that I would pay for. But then I wouldn't have any more invulnerable toons. Then again neither would anyone else. Sigh.
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I would.
50 Fire/Kin Cont
50 Fire/Axe Tank
50 Spine/Inv Scrap
50 Eng/Dev Blast
50 Claw/SR Scrap
50 Emp/Dark Def
50 Eng/Elec Brute
50 Fire/MM Blast
My DeviantArt Page
To me, this is charging money for something that should be in game. A respec is something characters earn, in game. It's also purchasable in store. To me, this crosses the line in the same way that offering a 100,000,000 influence purchase for $9.99 from the character selection screen would cross the line. If the myriad ways of getting respecs currently - free, WWs, earned in Trial, Vet Rewards - are insufficient for players (which I find hard to imagine), then some sort of repeatable Trial should have been put in place, ie, making a respec an option for the STF/LRSF, that's chooseable every 30 days or something.
It's not about money - I was excited for extra character slots at a theoretical $10/slot price. I thought the wedding outfit was fine. Buying renames and server transfers; no problem.
To me, this is about the integrity of the game, and I think selling a respec which people have traditionally earned and must continue to if they don't want to pay for it, is an error. And I'm sure I'll never need one, due to vast amount of influence I could buy from WWs with, vet rewards coming out my wazoo... I don't think I've even bothered doing the respec trials in like 30+ months. So this has nothing to do with me, except insofar as I see this as a breach of integrity of the game.
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- Allow us to purchase these in-game options through the website
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Lots of trouble for no real reason, imo.
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- Allow us to do character transfers between accounts (I have 4 and would love to shuffle them up).
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/signed. Those of us with multiple accounts I think are likely the ones who will be most free tossing around cash on extras. IIRC, a friend told me that a certain other MMO permits inter-account transfers as long as the billing info is the same on both.
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- Allow us to purchase in-game things like transfers, renames, etc with in-game currency.
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For the same reason I think NCSoft selling a wad of influence directly would violate the integrity of the game, I don't believe ANYTHING should be both acquirable in game AND sold for cash. This is why I object to respecs being sold. To me, respecs have a value in WWs. Selling them for cash is a hair's breadth away from just selling wads of influence for cash - you are taking something with an established in game value, and selling people the right to bypass it. Basically, NCSoft just dipped their toe into being a gold seller, direct to customers. Yes, they're only respecs, and no, you can't sell them for influence - but if you were thinking of buying a recipe from WW for 20m, and spend $9.99 instead, you have effectively just purchased 20m infl for $9.99.
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We all pay money every month 15 bucks on up. that money needs to be spent on developing content and fixes for the game as it is now. seem that they just used our money and developed a way to make more money by charging 9.99 for a respec.
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Your monthly fee is going towards development of the game, paying salaries, paying for servers (power, bandwidth, maintenance, maintenance staff), etc. And I believe the money from the sales of "extras" goes towards increased development too (recall the wedding pack sales let them do the VEAT's a whole issue early).
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Technically, your monthly fee is paying for access to the game servers. That's it.
What NCSoft as a company chooses to do with the revenues from subscriptions or micro-transactions is really a different matter all together.
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But really, since money is Fungible, Psyte is right. Our payments for access pays salaries, power, bandwidth, etc... see the quoted quote. The Wedding Pack pack is a prime example as was admitted to by the Devs: the costume and emote access we paid for went for future development.
But really, who would play this game for more than a few months if the subscription did not have such benefits. Obviously, we pay for access, but there is a HECK of a lot more to that access than simply access to a server (anyone can have access to 'a' server ).
Think of a magazine subscription, if all our subscription paid for was server access, then it would be like paying a monthly fee for the same print of a magazine over and over again. The payments, obviously are for more than mere access.
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Ultimately, the payments are for whatever NCSoft wants to keep them for. You pay the fee for access to the servers - there is no express guarantee of anything else (even uptime!). In practice, NCSoft and all the players know that if NCSoft doesn't update the game enough to hold our interest, we'll go elsewhere. We don't owe them anything. If they provide enough fun to make it worth our while, we'll keep paying. MMOs have an interesting value curve, because as time goes by, the games get better - all the development that continues to improve them is available for the same monthly fee. Those who remember what we got for our $12-15/mo back at launch know what I mean. There were no respecs, only 40 levels, no epic ATs, no ancillary pools, no hollows/shard/PI/croatoa/pvp/striga, or villains. The graphics were not as good, tons of powersets were not done yet. There were no capes. You only got one costume slot, and you couldn't redo your costume, at all. (No Tailor). The list goes on and on. Only 8 character slots per server, no add-ons. No renames. No transfers. No inventions. Heck, you could only buy 10 types of SOs without access to a special store (you want a To-Hit buff SO? Tough.) No bases. And we paid $50 to start! Nowadays, you can get into the game for $20, and your payout includes massively larger amounts of content and hordes of QoL features. It felt amazing when it came out, but looking back at launch, the original game seems like it was unfinished.
Sweet idea! My thought process was limited! For some reason it did not occur to me to dream of crossover capacity/transfers between COH and COV! On the "Buy" options; toon slots - universal storage- costume sets are as far as I'd like to see them go.
As far as in game rewards - I have a lvl 50 Hero and can access blue side epic ATs now. But, I would like to see ALL epics unlocked with one 50 on my account, regardless of which side. I never play COV but want a blood widow to run out in coop areas with my Hero Buddies... I want to just create her and level her up on COV side - not lvl one toon to get her just to level her up as well... Supposedly this is all one big game universe now with more interaction beween COV and COH in the future... Is the idea of having access to both COH and COV epics after one 50 on an account floating out somwhere else on the forums? If so I missed it in my search.
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If the myriad ways of getting respecs currently - free, WWs, earned in Trial, Vet Rewards - are insufficient for players (which I find hard to imagine), then some sort of repeatable Trial should have been put in place, ie, making a respec an option for the STF/LRSF, that's chooseable every 30 days or something.
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Believe me, there are plenty of players out there who kept fidgeting with their character builds and have no respecs left. They used all three trial respecs, all their vet respecs, and used up their most recent freespec. So right now they have two choices, grind the inf to get one from from ww/bm, or pay $9.99 and get one right away.
The real question is what's worth more, your time or your money?
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Is the idea of having access to both COH and COV epics after one 50 on an account floating out somwhere else on the forums? If so I missed it in my search.
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It was discussed extensively before I12 went live and it's not going to happen. If you want a villain epic, you got to grind a regular villain to level 50 first.
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If the myriad ways of getting respecs currently - free, WWs, earned in Trial, Vet Rewards - are insufficient for players (which I find hard to imagine), then some sort of repeatable Trial should have been put in place, ie, making a respec an option for the STF/LRSF, that's chooseable every 30 days or something.
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Believe me, there are plenty of players out there who kept fidgeting with their character builds and have no respecs left. They used all three trial respecs, all their vet respecs, and used up their most recent freespec. So right now they have two choices, grind the inf to get one from from ww/bm, or pay $9.99 and get one right away.
The real question is what's worth more, your time or your money?
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That exact same question could apply to permitting you to directly purchase influence or recipes/salvage using Real-World Money. When you can buy a set of Armageddon recipes, fully crafted, for $19.99 from the login screen, will that be okay?
(Obviously, I realize this is not truly a slippery slope the devs will go down; but in principle, I believe they are equivalent. This is the first thing we've seen where there is now way to acquire the exact same thing with either influence in game or real money out of game.)
Complain all you want to, but this is NCSoft's baby now. They're a Korean company and love microtransactions. Get used to it now, because it's never going to go back to being a strictly in-game economy.
Welcome to the City of Exteel Heroes 
There is no such thing as an "innocent bystander"
I believe I remeber reading that the in game ads were going to be put back in development however NCSoft could decide tomorrow to put that money elsewhere as it is their money. Heck they could decide to hoard all of it and never develop new content until the game shut down. I am not saying they would but it is their cash once we've paid our subscription fee. If they want to keep those subscriptions they better keep improving the game however and they know it.
Master Gabriel