A small change with a big impact?

I was respecing some IO's from my ss/shield (War Diety) to my dm/shield (Darklocked)brute today. I think that if Dev's made it so that enhancements were not locked so IO's could be more easily be taken off of toons we would see a decrease in demand as well as an increase in supply.

The reason I see this helping is I have a lot of semi-valuable (obliterations, crushing impact, numina's....) IO's on my SS/Shield the time and cost of respecing to get those IO's off of War Diety means that I will probably never get those off of him. It cost around 100 mil to buy a respec, I can only get ten IO's and I have used all my vet specs. I can still turn a profit by buying the respecs, but I hate spending 100 mil just to get semi-valuable IO's back. If I could more easily move those onto the market or onto another toon I would not need to rebuy them.

I could see a problem arising with people taking highly valuable IO's and moving them around differn't toons, I believe that the time it would take to move these around would be a big enough hassle to keep people from doing it too often.

Also this would not include changing the powers or slots, just the enhancements.

Just would like to hear your comments and concerns, good or bad idea?

So, the only way an IO could dissapear would be if a user actively deleted it but the rate of drops stays the same?

Take a look at the price of positrons blast chance of energy damage. That used to be a very nicely priced item. Now because of the way class C rolls are weighted giving a reasonable supply of the triples its a not so valuable item.

Small change in supply big impact.

Now the question is would it be better for the game the game to have it easier to play with toons rather than the market ? Who knows.

I'm torn, TopDoc is of course right in what he says, but would it encourage people to actually use the mid level IOs and then replace them with 50s later, meaning the mid level market might actually function a bit better ?

You have to realize anyone who "plays" the market will be devastated by this idea. It will simply destroy most if not all of the high end "niches" and their profits will simply disappear. Of course anyone in that position is gonna post a significantly scathing "anti idea" against the OP's good idea.

The flippers would scream doom etc.

The convenience and flexibility of the idea are stellar from the perspective of most players. A VERY significant portion of those who flip and play the market for money will be hammered by this idea. Hence the negative review of it.

Sure what doc said "could" happen. In fact is does happen, but now it only happens with the players who have a LOT of currency. Sound like anyone group we know ? ... marketeers ... who make thier money off the current system ... high end flippers ... big profiteers ...

It plainly obvious that to other players it would be real QoL fix.

So always keep in mind that when the profiteers blast this kinds of idea - it threatens their play style more than anything else. Whether its actually good for the game itself or if it benefits the greatest number of players is irrelevant to them.

I believe Posi once said something along the lines of even being able to keep 10 enhancements in our inventory after a respec was "generous".

Along that thinking, as well as the lack of a global in-game item mail, the inability to invite your alts to an SG without outside help, and other nuances, I'd say the game's design philosophy is squarely set against the idea presented in the OP.

If you pimp-out a character, you're pimping out THAT character, not saving IOs for your alts for when you get bored. IOing a character out is an investment unto THAT character and that character alone. Now I'm no mind reader, but that seems to be the Devs' idea on this sort of thing.

And it's not a "wrong" idea to have. I mean, if you're so bored with your 50s that you're liable to just swap resources and delete them (if it were easy to do so), how long before you did this to all your alts, ultimately got bored, and left the game? CoX needs all the subscribers it can get, and fostering to impatience is NOT a good marketing strategy.

Anyway, if for some reason the Devs allowed this sort of thing, we'd see prices drop pretty much everywhere, as even fewer characters would need anything, and more people would be trying to sell their existing IOs for ones they want. This isn't bad in and of itself, though since this game employs a "carrot on a stick" philosophy to keep people playing, allowing everyone to get their "carrots" might end up being a bad thing in the long run.

I believe the point is being missed here. I am not worried about people twinking or swapping with top-end IO's. That happens already, I do it, other people do it.

Its the supply of the mid-range and mid-level stuff, stuff that just gets deleted in respecs for lvl 50 IO's or the stuff thats not worth buying another respec for to switch out or put back onto the market.

With people having to create sgs to create a mid-range supply this could be another way of getting some mid-range enhancements back onto the market.

I make characters ten at a time and drop them when they get to 50. Along the way I tend to kit them out with low to medium IO sets, from good commons like Thunderstrike/Crushing Impact to low high end gear like Blessing of the Zephyr full sets. I've never had a +Recharge or +Recovery unique, and I've slotted one or two purples for fun (eg Chance for Knockdown in Fire Breath)

I plan ahead, so each one has a vet respec or two sitting around by the time they hit 50.
And yet I've never strip-mined any of them for their IOs to feed the next generation.

I can't be bothered - respeccing a 50 is boring and takes about 5 minutes too long. I'd rather just buy new ones on the market, its part of the anticipation/reward cycling for each character, just like levelling is.

So since that barrier (a 5 minute respec) is enough to turn me off, I think I dont need the easier option of unslotting IOs at any time.

Twinking toons, as many have already said, still happens. The medium in which it happens is influence rather than IOs themselves. This is good because it allows supply and demand to exist. If you are the kind of person that wants to twink toons, you can do that in game.

Introducing the OP's idea would eventually trickle demand away from the high end players and supply away from the low end players. Because the high end players could buy up what they needed to swap around - stuff would no longer be sold because no one would need influence after getting everything they want. Now the low end players could not get these items at the market and must rely on drops instead.

It would make the game too easy if everyone could twink without having to put some kind of effort into it. The bar is pretty low on that, you can make 30-100 mil a day farming AE for an hour a day and more than that if you use the market.

I don't think supply would increase as more people would stop farming once they get the amount of IOs they want to move between toons. With demand going down, people may sell less often as well since people arent buying.