Instant leveling fromNCSoft?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-03-15 09:25 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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This is a myth. Just ask Linden Labs.
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Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
If NCSoft endorses RMT, then influence gains a real-world value. If influence has real-world value, the government can tax it. (They might not, but they could)
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I whole heartedly agree with this concept..my opinion so be it.
I am paying for a game right now with my Main being Level 50 Stoner for over a year, and a hand ful of alts. I play to have fun, and right now.. no fun or love for the stoner to do but a few Oros mishes I am slagging on to go back to level 14 or so to finish. Still have some defeat badges.. I just dont care to get.
I play my toons hard, I dont try to super uberize their powers... am now cause nothing else to do. So if I want to try a new powerset.. I am all out for having to pay for a 50 from this company. Could be a vet reward, could have to have so many 50s before offered.
Some just like the PVP aspect, and it takes a damn long time to get a new build up to par to play.
Why enjoy the journey if I have taken the trip so many times already, the view is the same, food could be good still same old thing.
We did a LRSF with 8 and 5 never did it before, and one didnt even have an Oros portal, took an extra few minutes before the mish to explain what was happening,,, dropped a portal for the toon, showed them what to do... and regrouped if there were issues of not understanding or listening.. was not so hard to TEACH someone or assist someone to the game.. speed leveled or normal.
I personally didnt play SF for the first 9 months I played here.. even longer. At that time.. you had to be part of the "in" crowd to get an invite...
so i will take newbies over nothing.....
Personally I would like a side kick at level 50... a new toon I can bring out with my Main like a pet.. to train and play the game with. Chew on that idea for a while.. I am sure I will be killed by the 5th response.
My new toon should be named KILL THE MESSANGER
Its an awesome idea.....
ray
i just want to be able to buy accolades.
pl-ing generates money i use to marketeer and io out my toons. killing 200 marcone bosses, 100 cold demons, 10 pirates and 50 exploration badges does not.
There was a thread a while back that asked "if you worked at NCsoft and could change any one thing what would it be?" and a lot of people said 24 month vets could start characters at lvl 20. Although this doesn't directly answer your question, I believe this is the only thing I personally could agree with. Buying lvls is just a bad idea. Buying lvls by new and inexperienced players is a worse idea. Being rewarded some lvls, to long time vets (theoretically more experienced) is reasonable.
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Actually it's true. At the very least they could slap a sales tax on it.
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Originally Posted by Paladin_Musashi
This is a myth. Just ask Linden Labs.
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Back when AE hit the live servers and people were PLing from 1-50 in the matter of a day or two, things got ugly. A lot of players were upset, a lot of players bypassed most of the game to get to 50 and it caused issues.
Some of those issues might go away if NC-Soft sanctioned this, but I don't think it would turn out much better.
Plus, Positron, (And I'm pretty sure other Rednames.) Stated when AE came out, the game is balanced around a risk vs reward system, and when that goes out the window, it creates problems for the game. IE getting people to play it for more than 5 hours after they got their 50 so easily and then said "So now what? I got the uber toon, this is boring, I'm going to CO."
Not to mention, this only solves part of the RMTer problem. The Paid PLers and RMT websites are selling influence by the truckloads, (According to the spam I get in in-game email, who knows if they actually deliver.)
So even if you take PLing out of the equation, you still got people wanting to buy INF, possibly even more because now theirs a whole bunch more high end toons that need money to enhance and buy sets etc.
In the end I think this would cause a lot more problems than the current RMTers really cause, and it still wouldn't completely solve the RMT problem.
It's a good thought, but not a workable idea.
"Where does he get those wonderful toys?" - The Joker
While NCsoft can never 'win the war' against RMTers, as long as there are people who are lazy, there will be powerlevelling and RMT.
However they do seem to slowly getting there.
The big RMT sites, don't even bother with City of Heroes. Why would they when they can make a vastly larger sum of money focusing on World of Warcraft. Gold is a lot harder to come by in WoW than Inf is in CoH. It's only the little and significantly more risky websites that deal with CoH (ones more than likely to use account info/credit cards) that dabble with CoH.
It takes one or two lucky drops (one purple recipe or two of the 'in demand' taskforce/trial recipe rolls) for a player to outfit their character in all but the most expensive stuff and by expensive I'm talking about Purples or Luck of the gambler uniques.
Last email I got kind of showed they kind of getting despeate, offering a billion inf for around about 10 bucks, if they need THAT much inf to actually turn a decent profit then they're really getting kind of desperate.
That's only on the US, they've all but given up on the EU side of things, the last email I recieved about RMT was about 4-5 months ago.
well mech, id say its slightly unfair to call all plers lazy. While i dont do it myself, the importance of having a full leveled character with the slots for set bonuses and accolades does appear important to pvpers, its simply a different set of requirements, and for them to get a guy ready to play, leveling is little more than a starting barrier, so as i said, i can entirely see the point for that. while we cant and shouldnt sell io's or accolades, i can see removing the leveling barrier, for a price.
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Would you accept that they want instant gratification?|
Originally Posted by rian_frostdrake
well mech, id say its slightly unfair to call all plers lazy.
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Also I'll admit I never considered PvP so the PvP only auto level is acceptable to me.
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pvp-only auto level would be great. it would solve a lot of problems.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Would you accept that they want instant gratification?
Also I'll admit I never considered PvP so the PvP only auto level is acceptable to me. |
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
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I'm in favor of this approach - starting at level 20 (or even 10) would be a nice option for people who have subscribed to the game for 2 years or more.
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Originally Posted by dragonslay
There was a thread a while back that asked "if you worked at NCsoft and could change any one thing what would it be?" and a lot of people said 24 month vets could start characters at lvl 20. Although this doesn't directly answer your question, I believe this is the only thing I personally could agree with. Buying lvls is just a bad idea. Buying lvls by new and inexperienced players is a worse idea. Being rewarded some lvls, to long time vets (theoretically more experienced) is reasonable.
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Born in New York City.
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Ah I didn't mean people who PL their own characters, I meant people paying a company to level for them while they work/sleep. |
Originally Posted by rian_frostdrake
well mech, id say its slightly unfair to call all plers lazy. While i dont do it myself, the importance of having a full leveled character with the slots for set bonuses and accolades does appear important to pvpers, its simply a different set of requirements, and for them to get a guy ready to play, leveling is little more than a starting barrier, so as i said, i can entirely see the point for that. while we cant and shouldnt sell io's or accolades, i can see removing the leveling barrier, for a price.
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If you can PL your own characters then more power to you, atleast one of your characters is actually doing some work as opposed to none of your characters doing the work and you not even being at the computer.
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If it were true then Linden Labs would be taxed for the sale of Linden Dollars, which they are not. All they did was put it in their EULA that L$ has no real world value and is purely imaginary. They haven't had any problems with it.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Actually it's true. At the very least they could slap a sales tax on it.
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Last time I checked this wasn't the United States of Linded Labs. They don't get to decide what the government chooses to levy taxes on. If the government decides to tax something they'll tax it.
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Originally Posted by Paladin_Musashi
If it were true then Linden Labs would be taxed for the sale of Linden Dollars, which they are not. All they did was put it in their EULA that L$ has no real world value and is purely imaginary. They haven't had any problems with it.
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Firstly, most EULA's aren't even enforceable against INDIVIDUALS. It goes without saying that it has ZERO bearing on anything the government might decide.
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Originally Posted by Paladin_Musashi
If it were true then Linden Labs would be taxed for the sale of Linden Dollars, which they are not. All they did was put it in their EULA that L$ has no real world value and is purely imaginary. They haven't had any problems with it.
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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
And again, you're dodging the point that a years old MMO (Though I use the term loosely) has a developer sanctioned (Heck, they run it) currency exchange without having all of these legal problems that people keep claiming would instantly occur if the devs allowed RMT officially. Obviously it wouldn't happen.
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Good work. Let's see how long you can keep this thread derailed.
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Originally Posted by Paladin_Musashi
And again, you're dodging the point that a years old MMO (Though I use the term loosely) has a developer sanctioned (Heck, they run it) currency exchange without having all of these legal problems that people keep claiming would instantly occur if the devs allowed RMT officially. Obviously it wouldn't happen.
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Who said anything about instant?
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Originally Posted by Paladin_Musashi
people keep claiming would instantly occur if the devs allowed RMT officially. Obviously it wouldn't happen.
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
I remember hearing about Dark Age of Camelot gave people who'd reached the level cap a command to instantly level up their characters to 20 or so.
As a result the game died, or was at least seriously wounded, because newbies found the starter zones to be ghost towns and had nobody to team with, and assumed the game was dead.
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I love this modified version, but, for me, I would say early 30 month vet status and not to Autolevel all the way to 50.|
Originally Posted by JohnX
I think a modified version of this idea would be fine.
For example, Once you acheive say 48 month vet status, you get to autolevel one toon, once a year. But sometimes people THINK they want something, but in fact they really don't. The toons that I've powerleveled have been the very first ones I've abandoned or deleted. If it were offered, I'm not entirely certain that I would use it. |
I have done the lower level stuffs so many times that I could do it in my sleep. I would LOVE to be able to leapfrog straight to level 21 or level 23 depending on what uber power is competing with Stamina for the level 20 slot.
If wishes were fishes
Lisa.
So don't wait for heroes, do it yourself
You've got the power
winners are losers
who got up and gave it just one more try
***Dennis DeYoung
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Originally Posted by Prof_Backfire
I remember hearing about Dark Age of Camelot gave people who'd reached the level cap a command to instantly level up their characters to 20 or so.
As a result the game died, or was at least seriously wounded, because newbies found the starter zones to be ghost towns and had nobody to team with, and assumed the game was dead. |
Dang it...there is always a fly in the ointment....but if you have to have been playing a couple of years to get this perk, tie it up in vet status, maybe it won't be so bad.
Lisa.
So don't wait for heroes, do it yourself
You've got the power
winners are losers
who got up and gave it just one more try
***Dennis DeYoung
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If NCSoft would release the numbers I wouldn't be surprised if they showed that the majority of players here are vets of at least a couple years. So tying this to a vet reward would still have the same effect they saw in DAoC.
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Originally Posted by McCharraigin
Dang it...there is always a fly in the ointment....but if you have to have been playing a couple of years to get this perk, tie it up in vet status, maybe it won't be so bad.
Lisa. |
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Actually it IS true. It's your analysis that's wrong.|
Originally Posted by Paladin_Musashi
If it were true then Linden Labs would be taxed for the sale of Linden Dollars, which they are not. All they did was put it in their EULA that L$ has no real world value and is purely imaginary. They haven't had any problems with it.
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First, Linden Labs does get taxed on the revenue they realize- and that revenue includes its earnings from the sale of Linden Dollars. They're not taxed on the SALES TAX, just as many other "services" aren't taxed online.
There are two areas to look at here. The first is point-of-monetary-transfer (where you exchange L$ for real $)
Linden Labs DOES have to report their own L$ sales as revenue.
Individuals that buy and sell L$ ALSO have to report this as income to the IRS. Most don't, but they should- and if audited, they could face tax evasion charges for not reporting that income if they exceeded the threshold amount (it's considered self-employment).
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Next: the "Virtual Exchange" (exchange L$ for L$, no real money exchanging hands):
Where things get VERY wonky is when you run into the US Federal Tax's "Barter Laws." These were designed to address an emerging issue back in the 80's. Groups started printing catalogues of services they'd offer in exchange for 'points' that could be exchanged for other services. (X prepares Y's legal docs for 8 points each, then pays Z 8 points to do his accounting for him). In the mid-80's such exchanges had catalogs the size of phone books detailing services and goods available. Since no money exchanged hands, there was no "income" and therefore, the idea went, no INCOME TAX!
So, the federal government changed the law. Now ANY exchanged service or good that has real monetary value (i.e. that other people would normally and legally pay for), should be reported and taxed as if that real monetary value exchanged hands-- regardless if there was any real money involved! (there's some latitude for "favors" like mowing your elderly neighbor's lawn for free, but really not too much).
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If you apply that to video games, the theory goes... it's practically all there. We exchange points (influence) for goods and services. If these goods and services were legitimately available for real money too, then the law's wording suggests that we'd ALL have to track and report all our non-money in-game transactions too.
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Do we do that? Hell no. The law would appear to COVER that as it was written, but most doubt that it'd ever be APPLIED that way.
Instead, we treat online games more like we handle "Poker winnings." When you think of it, buyable influence or L$ is like giving cash for a poker chip. You might lose that chip before the night's out... or you might gain a hundred more... heck, you could gain a hundred more then lose it all before you're done. You're not assessed on every "transaction" when that chip (which has monetary value) exchanges hands. You're just taxed on your overall winnings.
In L$ terms: we don't report taxes on anything we (the players) earn in L$ until we exchange it out for real $. Then we report it as earnings.
The screwy part- all the laws governing reporting gambling revenue are so narrowly defined that they REALLY can't be applied to MMO's, but we tend to follow their prescribed behavior because they make more sense than the more broad -and more applicable- laws that govern barter networks that would bring online gaming to a grinding halt.
They Did this suggestion with AE by accident.
Look at what the outcome of it was?
Kittens Club Supergroup Leader@Savannah (Freedom)
And for the record, I've never said that ALL toons need stamina, just that most of the ones that I played weren't as much fun until I DID have stamina on them.