The "Zero"/"Black Hole" IO

I like the idea, but pricing is a bit tricky. I think the market price of a respec recipe is probably a good place to start. Obviously they aren't used solely for removing IOs but I think it serves as a reasonable metric of the market pricing on the value of removing an IO.

So since you can remove 10 IOs with a single respec recipe that would suggest that a price of 10% of a respec recipe would be a good starting point. However there are two other factors to consdier. First removing IOs with a respec is very frustrating so the market value of a respec recipe is probably lower than it would be if the recipe allowed to to quickly unslot 10 IOs. Secondly using a respec recipe only removes 10% of the inf from the economy rather than the 100% removed by this so you could potentially lower the price a bit more.

Now the problem is that introducing these will have an impact on the market and if they are fixed price then this can be tricky to control. I see three good solutions:

1. Sell them at a fixed price, the devs monitor market activity and adjust this price (either automatically or manually) to help control the market
2. Make them a rare drop similarly to respec recipes
3. Have the game sell them on the market in limited quantities (i.e. X a day) at a fixed minimum bid, allow players to resell them if desired using the market (the market does not differentiate between the auto generated ones and player ones. As long as the number per day is lower than the demand people will be encouraged to leave bids up overnight meaning that they will sell at the market price rather than selling at the fixed price to whomever gets there first.

So what are the pros and cons of each option:

1. Pros: Allows the devs very tight control over them, all inf spent is gone for good. Cons: Devs would need to monitor the market closely and adjust the price as required
2. Pros: No dev intervention required (beyond setting a reasonable drop rate). Cons: Limited as an inf sink. Market forces will tend to drive the price quite high
3. Pros: Provides some dev control (though supply), most of the purchase inf is gone for good (all of it if the purchaser uses it, slightly less if it gets flipped). Cons: Difficult to setup, some players might find the function objectionable.

I'm gonna slightly derail this thread - what if the idea here was changed slightly to a required swap out ? In other words in order to remove an enhancment you have to have a replacement in your tray.

Here's what I'm seeing: you know you want to "remove" 4 enhancements so you buy the 4 replacements and have them in your tray. You open the respec window (there's no turning back once started) and you drop the IO or whatever from your tray onto the IO in your power and they swap. You could obviously do 10 per "new respec". If you make a mistake or forget to buy something to swap out - too bad - the only way out is to hit "finishted" - the cost is final and "finished" ends the "new respec".

With this idea you aren't stripping your toon, you have to buy something to replace the existing enhancement. And maybe add a very long cool down between "new respecs".

EDIT: Taking it a step further - it would be an IO for an IO, SO for SO, etc... so you couldn't replace an IO with a Training.
EDIT: If you try to put a replacement IO in a power that does not accept that kind of IO (recharge in Health, for example) the IO you were trying to replace stays in the power and the 'recharge' goes to the trash.

**Damien**

Don't make it stupid guys.

Only one thing needs to be added: an interface to remove IOs for x inf in the enhancement screen. Everything else is pointless development resource costs and would lead to not so many using it, and this is a feature that improves the market the more it is used.

X inf should probably be something like 200k per level, which is 10mil (10% of respec) at 50. That way it can be used by medium levels, where supply is needed most.

I think this idea has some very good potential.

I can see it making some of the rarer IOs a bit cheaper. After all, this would enable people to more easily move IOs around their characters. Especially from unused to more used ones, making totally new IOs of the same variety less desireable. It is also one of those features I'd really like into the game. Same as a "move one slot" respecs. It's kind of annoying to have to do a full respec in order to move only one slot.

I think it'd also be ok to have a chance that the "Black Hole IO" does nothing. Mildly inconvenient, but it adds to the inf sink so it's all good. I think it should be made so that the lower level Black Hole IOs (if I understood right, only applicable to lower level characters?) should have a lesser chance of failing because influence is scarcer at lower levels, assuming no sugar daddies are involved.

The idea of the BHIO deleting the enhancement in question came up, I think it has some very big problems into it. While a similar system is in place for combining SOs, IOs are a whole other animal. The prices of SOs move within few tens of thousands of each other, so we can basically say they all cost the same. Lose any of the SOs and it doesn't matter that much which it was. With IOs, the thing is that we have mostly cheap IOs, expensive IOs and super expensive IOs. It does really matter which IO happens to get deleted not only because the loss of investment may be devastating, but also because it might drive market prices up due to some rare IOs being erased.

One lost SO, or even generic IO doesn't do much, but imagine something like a PvP 3% Def IO being erased. It would first and foremost be a huge hit to whoever it occurred, second it would drive the price of the PvP IO up because only very few are being produced, I think we're talking of a few dozens per month at maximum. One out of those is already something that hurts.

Good idea, OP.