*wants to keep all the money in my pocket for all of time*
*wants to sell you shiny stuff*
*wants to keep all your money in my pocket for all of time*
The unannounced feature being disclosed at PAX East is a universal equippable items system that will take inf to repair. 
Will be tied to End-Game. Ooops
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What I'd actually like is to combine this with another popular idea. You can purchase "backpacks" that give you additional storage but that storage is account-wide rather than tied to an individual. As in you pay X inf and get 10 vault salvage slots which all of your characters on a particular side/server can access. One issue I can see with this is what happens if you decide to transfer all of your characters to another server? The obvious solution is that when you buy cross-character storage slots it opens them up on all servers.
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Originally Posted by CapnGeist
Backpacks: No, not back items, but Umbral's basic idea that he keeps tossing around. Extra salvage space, extra recipe space, and extra market slots. Dragon Age, which I've been playing lately, includes these items called Backpacks, and each time you get one, your maximum storage space increases, permanently. And they cost lots of gold. I vote put the same in City.
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Apparently P_P is an inf sink! (rampant female significant other jokes go!)|
Originally Posted by Perfect_Pain
*wants to keep all the money in my pocket for all of time*
*wants to sell you shiny stuff* *wants to keep all your money in my pocket for all of time* |
On a more serious note, the only serious problem I've got with the inf sinks listed is the Casino.
The problem with making purchasable temps an inf sink is part of what you specifically said: they're not very powerful. If they're not powerful and useful, they're not going to drain much money from the system unless they cost an inordinate amount of inf, which is going to stop even more people from wanting to buy them. They're kinda cool but there isn't much impetus beyond the cool factor to encourage spending and the cool factor doesn't extend very far.
Purchasable summon powers are a decent enough idea because we honestly have them already. The prices for the higher tier entities might need to be increased a bit because an AV is going to do a lot more than a Vanguard HVAS and 10 mill is a bit easier to get than 250 VG merits.
The costume pieces are an interesting idea, especially since they'd also include some potential content. Of course, if this were done, you could probably expect a certain degree of "DOOM" from costumers as soon as they find out they need to spend inf and do some content in order to get that costume piece. It might work best to make the costume pieces tied to account wide badges and make the purchasing of those badges be high (10 million for 5-10 new costume pieces).
Non-combat pets already exist as a vet reward so I don't think it would be that difficult for the devs to scale down the size of some enemies in the game (Hydra Spawn, Hydra Tentacle, Rikti Drone, Assault Bots, etc) and release them as the models for some purchasable temp powers. Of course, this might also work as a tie in to the costume piece account wide unlock idea if the devs went that path.
And now to the Castino... The problem with the Casino is that it requires a decent bit of development work to create an inf sink of moderate success. If anything it might provide a minor diversion, but it's not going to eat much influence. If the devs really wanted to make it an inf sink, the rewards could be another currency that allows you to purchase stuff (potentially unique rewards) from Casino itself. Of course, heroes would probably expect something of a kind, though I'm not entirely sure that gambling is legal in Rhode Island.
Even so, adding in casino style mini-games isn't nearly as easy as simply dropping in a vendor or some more badges. It's going to involve a decent bit of programming unless I'm wrong. The advantage of all of those other ideas is that they're reasonably easy to put in game while having a large potential effect upon the economy. The Casino isn't really either of those.
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If that happened, you could probably expect the price to be astronomically high. The devs have already shown themselves to be pretty reluctant to give out additional storage spots for characters (just look at the VG salvage buy up cost) so I'd expect storage spots purchased in game to remain on a per-character basis.|
Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
What I'd actually like is to combine this with another popular idea. You can purchase "backpacks" that give you additional storage but that storage is account-wide rather than tied to an individual. As in you pay X inf and get 10 vault salvage slots which all of your characters on a particular side/server can access. One issue I can see with this is what happens if you decide to transfer all of your characters to another server? The obvious solution is that when you buy cross-character storage slots it opens them up on all servers.
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It might be an interesting idea for a booster pack for the tangible reward (i.e. "power") to be 5-10 salvage slots and a couple WW slots available to every character on the account though. Account wide slots for in-game inf, though, are probably pretty unlikely.
The Safeguard/Mayhem temps seem like the best idea since they already exist in the game and I see the fewest balancing issues.
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I know, and to be honest I'm fine with it after all for it to be a decent Inf sink it needs to be high. I'd expect the devs to make it so that the first set of say 10 salvage and 5 recipe slots to be cheap so that everyone can use the service a bit but for it to go up exponentially the more you have.
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Originally Posted by Umbral
If that happened, you could probably expect the price to be astronomically high. The devs have already shown themselves to be pretty reluctant to give out additional storage spots for characters (just look at the VG salvage buy up cost) so I'd expect storage spots purchased in game to remain on a per-character basis.
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I hope you're serious. I really, really do.|
Originally Posted by The_Coming_Storm
The unannounced feature being disclosed at PAX East is a universal equippable items system that will take inf to repair.
Will be tied to End-Game. Ooops |
P.S. Whether you are serious or not, you deserve lots of positive rep for suggesting a GREAT inf sink. Everyone help his rep out!
@Umbal
On the topic of the Casino... I know it's an idea that would be a silly amount of effort, and it's not really feasible, it's just that it would be cool if it happened. Feel free to disregard it, it was mostly just something kicking around in my head. Your comments on the casino are pretty much correct, including illegality in Rhode Island (though Dave and Busters is a rather convincing alternative).
I think, with purchasable temp powers, power and usefulness varies. For example, the Med Kit is a relatively weak power, but it's the sort of thing characters with defense builds are going to want to have on hand and would be willing to shell out cash for. Similarly, a lot of the temp powers are ranged attacks that give a bit of versatility to melee classes and a better way to take down fliers, even if they don't actually increase your DPS in melee.
As for the summons, I don't know if 10 million is too low. Vanguard merits have a very modal form of worth. Either you don't raid and they're precious, precious, precious or your raid a lot and you've got more than you'll ever need. I got the Defeat U'kon Grai 10 times badge, and in the time it took me to do it, I got enough merits for a full vanguard outfit, the storage increase, and maybe 5 HVAS's. HVAS isn't so much a seperate reward as it is the thing you get from completing a Raid. Now, a raid takes about half an hour with about three teams (Pinnacle's standard) so if we were to compare it to a Task Force, that'd be about 10 merits by what the devs want, and let's double it because it's a pain to get together. So, assuming an HVAS is worth 20 merits, and a Gold Recipe is worth 20 merits, how much is the average Gold Recipe worth in infamy? I'd say averaging out the good and the crap, 10, maybe 20 million. Your mileage may vary, but I don't think a summon, even one that garunteed victory over pretty much anything, should be worth more than that. Especially cconsidering what are you using the summon to GET? At best you're using it for help against the Freedom Phalanx or Lord Recluse, and then even forgetting the rest of the TF, you're spending 10 million to ensure 20 some odd merits.
The rest of your post is pretty spot on. Nothing to say there. "Summon Black Scorpion" has just sorta become one of my pet suggestions, so I get a bit vocal about it.
Edit: ...Pet suggestions... UNINTENDED PUN! I apologize. No, no I don't. PUNS RULE!
NPCs: A Single Method to Greatly Expand Bases
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Here's something you might want to consider: don't attempt to equate influence to the value of a merit reward. The basic method of comparison that the devs have shown to use is time. 20 merits is equated to an hour of TFing. How much money do you think a level 50 farmer can make in a single hour? I'm pretty sure it's a good deal more than 10 mill inf. When P_P tells us how much she makes on a single character running a farm in an hour, we'll probably get a good baseline for how much a summon power like that should cost.
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Originally Posted by CapnGeist
As for the summons, I don't know if 10 million is too low. Vanguard merits have a very modal form of worth. Either you don't raid and they're precious, precious, precious or your raid a lot and you've got more than you'll ever need. I got the Defeat U'kon Grai 10 times badge, and in the time it took me to do it, I got enough merits for a full vanguard outfit, the storage increase, and maybe 5 HVAS's. HVAS isn't so much a seperate reward as it is the thing you get from completing a Raid. Now, a raid takes about half an hour with about three teams (Pinnacle's standard) so if we were to compare it to a Task Force, that'd be about 10 merits by what the devs want, and let's double it because it's a pain to get together. So, assuming an HVAS is worth 20 merits, and a Gold Recipe is worth 20 merits, how much is the average Gold Recipe worth in infamy? I'd say averaging out the good and the crap, 10, maybe 20 million. Your mileage may vary, but I don't think a summon, even one that garunteed victory over pretty much anything, should be worth more than that. Especially cconsidering what are you using the summon to GET? At best you're using it for help against the Freedom Phalanx or Lord Recluse, and then even forgetting the rest of the TF, you're spending 10 million to ensure 20 some odd merits.
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Except the raid also includes drops, inf, and experience. Hmm... Okay, it's gonna take some time to come up with appropriate pricing. I think "hardcore farming" is too much, but you might be right in that I'm thinking too little. Still, it's an idea, and there is SOME fair price even if I don't know what it is.
NPCs: A Single Method to Greatly Expand Bases
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Well, pretty much anything you do grants inf, xp, and drops so you can generally get away with ignoring those when calculating prices.|
Originally Posted by CapnGeist
Except the raid also includes drops, inf, and experience. Hmm... Okay, it's gonna take some time to come up with appropriate pricing.
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| I think "hardcore farming" is too much, but you might be right in that I'm thinking too little. |
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| Still, it's an idea, and there is SOME fair price even if I don't know what it is. |
the only thing i would support would be the temp powers that spawn allies, like they currently have the vanguard HVAS for 250 vanguard merits (thats already essentially a sink, but for nonpurchaseable stuff)
Whether the best way to fix the economy is infamy sinks or not, I won't discuss here, but for those of us who think it is, and even those of us that think it isn't, well.. We need some inf sinks. So what I want here is for things that characters could possibly spend inf on to siphon it out of the economy.
A note here: Siphon it out means "Non-Transferable." If you're turning Infamy into trade goods, then it's not leaving the economy, it's just becoming a different form of currency.
So here's my ideas...
Standard Temp powers: Most of the Safeguard temp powers are cool but have too few powers and are nearly impossible to recharge. Making most of them purchasable wouldn't be much of a power boost to characters, but it would be a lot of fun.
Summon Powers: Mercenaries. Temp powers that summon an ally for you to use in battle. Cost and use depends on the strength of the ally. A Hellion thug might cost a mere 10,000 inf, while Black Scorpion could charge upwards of 10,000,000. They'd need to be priced based on power level with a wide scale.
Backpacks: No, not back items, but Umbral's basic idea that he keeps tossing around. Extra salvage space, extra recipe space, and extra market slots. Dragon Age, which I've been playing lately, includes these items called Backpacks, and each time you get one, your maximum storage space increases, permanently. And they cost lots of gold. I vote put the same in City.
Costume Pieces: Enemy-group-specific items, purchasable only from an NPC of that group, possibly after doing a quest chain for them. What if, for example, after completing Lt. Chalmers' arc, a Store opened up where you could buy a Back piece of Raptor Pack or a Porter? Or heroside these items would be unlocked by clearing an arc of that enemy group, instead of for it. Maybe put the Summon powers in the same stores.
Teleporters: We've got the Black Market temporary transporter, which I do admit I keep on a few of my characters. How about a temp power Base Porter and Mission Porter as well?
Non-Combat Pets: Permanent Summon Temp powers that summon creatures that have no combat effect. There's an issue of a lack of models for this, so this is unlikely, but it's an idea.
The Golden Giza: It's a Casino. So make it a casino. Put in a few minigames that invariably favor the house and watch the money slowly sink away from the community.
Any other ideas? Toss 'em here. And remember: NON-TRANSFERABLE.
NPCs: A Single Method to Greatly Expand Bases