what about boosters that are worth the cost?

So i was curious how the player base would accept the possiblity of having purchaseble (microtransaction) booster content that wasnt just eyecandy.

For instance, rather then a 10 dollar pack of emotes and costumes, if for say 15 dollars you could buy like a IO/influence booster set. Say you for 15 dollars can pick any 5 Purple IOs and 10 Gold set peices and 10 silver (but cant duplicate selections so only like 1 LotG etc) and got like 50 million influence/infamy. But maybe limit the purchase to only use it on level 50 characters.

It just occures to me that there are some players with time and no money, and some with no time and plently of money. Having the option to do a one time per toon booster purchase could help those with more limited time, while those with no money and plently of time can continue to earn the rewards as they do now.

It would i think also aliviate some of the cost on the markets for some of the real big purchases like Ragnoroks and stuff since the demand for them would go down. Sure you wouldnt sell for as much, but those common players not buying boosters could then buy what the markets offered for less also.

Just curious really, i obviously would like it. Its not like allmy toons need purples, but when i do want a set, for the time it would take to earn the influence or get the drops i would be more eager to just drop 15 dollars. My time isnt worth much, but its worth atleast that.

Anything that pits my money versus someone else's money is bad. I have no money = I can't get better perks? No thanks.

I can scrape together enough to pick up the occasional booster which is fluff - because I *like* the fluff. Everything else I earn in the game, thanks. I have an even chance with that stuff. Purchase it? I can't. Everyone who can, therefore, "wins" over me. Sorry, but it's a terrible idea all around.

Buy fluff, it's optional. Earn ingame abilities, it's equally earnable.

I'm more than happy to spend money on fluff. It's fun and it doesn't have any effect on the game. However, I can't really get behind the idea of allowing people to spend real money on something that can effect gameplay.

My biggest personal experience with this concept was the Magic: The Gathering cardgame. With the collector card market that sprang up around this, the game became little more than an exercise in "He who has the most money wins!"

What the others have said.

Now, had this been suggesting to put more emotes and costumed goodness in packs, well...

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

For game balance reasons I don't think this is a good suggestion.

Thought I'm not concerned about the rich vs. poor player argument. People with more money can get nicer stuff. That's life.

LET this be known to the devs: If you add microtransactions that significantly affect gameplay / mess up the market, I and a bunch of people WILL leave this game.

I suppose the "rich vs. poor" arguement could apply to game balance here ML.

As I see it, by allowing players to pay real money for items which will enhance their performance, an imbalance will be created that the Devs will have no way to control short of removing those items once abuse starts occurring and those players who were not "rich" enough to take advantage of that feature start complaining. (and we know it will, it's only a matter of time.)

We've all seen the troubles that are caused when the Devs are required to remove a feature from the game for any reason. I know we've all seen too much of that recently.

I will add myself to those in the thread giving this idea a thumbs down. Based upon the title of this thread, I am assuming that you don't find the current boosters worth the cost. That's fine and dandy. The answer is simple. Don't buy them. Those who do buy them don't really get a significant advantage over you in the game. They get nice costume parts. They get the joy of supporting further development. They get small, well-balanced, non-game breaking powers.

Purchasing of the boosters is completely optional. There is no pressure to buy them. If you provide any significant in-game advantage, they become less optional and more along the lines of, "Well, you don't HAVE to buy it, but you will have a much harder time of it if you don't."

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Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

I don't see the need for NCSoft to sell inf/IOs. It doesn't take much to start earning all you need in WW. Heck, All my toons have over 100mil by the time they get their travel power.

I can't really say what others haven't, but I'll still lend a reverberating voice to strengthen the mortar, I suppose;

The only reason I buy Booster Packs is for the sole reason that they will give me no advantage over another; I will never be able to look at a foe, thankful that I'd spent $10 more than he/she, because I've spent $10 on costume parts, and a nominal power that works infrequently. A mystic fortune? A self-destruct? Mission teleporter? Surely, not one of those has ever allowed me to best a foe, and if they had? I would doubtfully use them again. I buy Booster Packs to support the Developers, and to let them know that their assets should always belong to pay not for the power, but for the play of it all.

Out of the question. Absolutely out of the question. I REFUSE to play a game where the strongest characters belong to the players with the most disposable income. A game of "my wallet is bigger than your wallet" is not something I will pay money to play. I enjoy games because they're fair and relatively balanced. Sure, there are powergamers who will always be many times better than me, but I can accept that they simply are that good and that hardcore and deserve to be. I CANNOT accept the notion that people are better than me because they have more money in real life. It is plain and simple out of the question.

And then, there's the other side of the coin - once this becomes the benchmark, as it does in all games that use this model, it becomes a game of poverty. Because I don't want to shell out for perks, I'm always taking the hardest road everywhere, always taking longer to do everything and always suffering much harder difficulties, all because I wouldn't line the pockets of the developers some more. No, thank you. I pay my tax and I'm an equal citizen. I'm not a lower-class citizen because some Banker Cat is paying more.

I don't CARE what this does to the game, how it affects it or what profit it brings, because I won't be playing it to find out.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The thread title insinuates that the current boosters are not 'worth' the cost paid for them.
I'd just assume not have any 'cool new io sets' put up for sale on ebay with the carnie costume codes. Thanks.

No way will I ever support this idea.

I can accept that someone has a more tricked out character than I do because they spent the time on it. If they spent 100 hours tricking out their toon and I only spent 10? They put the time into it, I didn't, so they deserve to have a better character than me.

But for someone to have a btter character than me because they could afford to spend $15 and I couldn't? No, that just isn't fair. There is nothing fair about your real life financial situation affecting your game performance. Everyone pays the same monthly fee, their performance in the game depends on how much time they are willing to put into it, not how much of their paycheck they are willing to give up.

I know the argument: But it's not fair for a casual player to not perform as well as a hardcore player.

BS. It's perfectly fair. If you call yourself a "casual" player and you care about how well your character performs, you're not really a casual player. You're a hardcore player with limited time. A TRUE casual player could give a crap less how well their character performs, they play for FUN. If it's gooed enough for them to have fun with, that's enough.

There is nothing anywhere that says you have to be able to solo AV's with a defender, or Rikti Pylons with a scrapper. Those are extreme situations that were never intended to be possible for the average player to accomplish. Less than 1% of the population of the game routinely does those things. Less than 25% EVER has.

(Disclaimer: The above percentages are pure guesswork, I have no hard data to back it up. I'm guessing based on a cross section of forum posters.)

My main point is, it is not fair for someone to spend hours on end making their character as good as they can, only to have the next guy spend $15 and have an equal character in 10 minutes.

There has been considerable resistance to selling items that significantly change gameplay for RealBucks (tm). Heack, there has been considerable resistance to selling things like Vet Rewards, which don't particularly.

So you have the issue of players who feel that someone buying something they gamed for cheapens their sense of accomplishment. They may be right or wrong about that, but it is how they feel, which is not amenable to arguments based on cost/benefit analysis.

There is the issue, with purples or similar accoutrements, that people are buying performance they cannot obtain by patience or skill. The nightmare image is getting owned in PvP (assumnig one plays PvP - I myself do not) by someone who is able to beat you because he paid money for an advantage (OK, the nightmare image is getting owned by someone like that who then talks trash about how awesome he is and how pathetic you are).

There is the issue of social class of players entering the relationship between characters. Many Americans are allergic to even recognizing class issues when they walk up and kick them in the fork in real life situations, much less in niches like this one.

And of course there is the moral ambiguity many gamers feel at even a hint of "corporate sponsored RMT."

So this idea is unlikely to gain much traction.