Character Transfer incentive: Portal Passport

The free character transfers went down magnificently the last time the developers offered it in the recent year, so much so that they even extended it once or twice so that people could play with their friends no matter what servers they cam from. Now that things had returned to normal, it seems rather unfortunate (though probably necessary) that the transfer fee returned when it finished. Some of us have a 'home server' where we hang out and make the most characters, our friends may be on other servers and while it would be nice to play with them the cost of the transfer as well as the things we lose 'SG membership, maybe even their name' can be a bit too high for most.

I had a suggestion that plays on combining the aspects of free transfers that players love with the compromise of financial feasibility that the transfers already require. I call this idea the Portal Passport.

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The price for a character transfer would be the same, however it would use a passport system for each character with the names of each server their client is able to connect to (US servers for US clients, EU for EU). When you say, make a character on Victory. Their passport shows that they can access the Victory shard (obviously).

When you want to transfer character-A on Victory to Freedom, after the transfer is completed the Passport is updated to show you now have access to Freedom. What this means is that, so long as you don't exceed your transfer limit and restrictions, character-A can now freely transfer between Victory and Freedom without further payments.

If character-A then has a transfer to Virtue on any server, then their passport is updated to say that they now have access to Virtue, thus transfers between Victory, Freedom, and Virtue are now possible without further cost, money-wise anyway.

But what makes this balanced?

Well, the passports are individual to each character, it's not an account-wide thing. Character-A can access the three servers mentioned previously, however Character-B is only going to be able to access their originating server only, unless they're transferred to other servers in the manner of character-A.

For each character transfer you can allow one character free access to one extra server. So depending on how many characters or how many servers you want to try, this can be relatively cheap for the player who wants to play their main on one high-pop server or expensive for those who want to transfer a lot of characters to one server or one character to a lot of servers.

But the main focus of the passport is to allow a one-time fee for you to access a new server while not having to pay for a way back, think of it as a permanent return-ticket to servers you've already been to.

The one of the things good about the free transfers was the no-cost return. People could play on servers with the knowledge they had the chance to return characters to their original server before the free transfers ended, especially if they're part of important SGs they could return to.

The other concern would be for whether you'd want your character to transfer in the first place. Character transfers break memberships to Supergroups, they break pacts which can't be repacted above Lv5 and your character's name might not be available when you transfer over (or nightmarishly, even when you transfer back!). So if you do want to transfer, you'd want to make sure you don't do so if you value one of those details of your character.

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Roleplaying footnote:

A feature like this doesn't necessarily require any RP reasoning for why it should come into existence. But I named the feature the Portal Passport in the way of being able to transfer to different continuities of a similar universe, with an 'invisible' passport to show where you came from and where you've been. The portal corporations of each continuity would know you're allowed to enter their timeline by your passport and that's how you're able to pass through to each server.

/unsigned. for various reasons. the main one being that it is not worth dev time.

If not worth dev time is the best reason you have not to then you really have no reason not to.

Personally I see this as needlessly complicated solution when we can already reroll clones on other servers.

If there is enough play time between server to make the passport worth the cost then there would be enough playtime between servers to level both up to usable levels with the SSK rules.

ok then, how about your toons name, sg's/vg's. you WILL NOT be able to keep any of these on the toon you want to transfer like this. to many headaches.

I like this idea. It would probably have to cost more than the standard character transfer, since it makes server transfers between those two servers permanent and free. I would probably peg it between 29.99 to 49.99, which is prohibitive enough that people don't do it frivolously, but more than "two transfers" worth, since you can now transfer back and forth for free until the game ends.

SGs I don't care about. It's a casualty of the current transfer process, it'd be a casualty of this suggestion as well. You can be reinvited when you come back. All you'll lose is your prestige total.

Character name is a bit tricky. Once a character has Portal Passport transferred once, they effectively have unlimited renames now. Create a character with the Portal character's name on Server B. Transfer Portal character to Server B, get a free rename. Transfer Portal character back to Server A. Repeat as often as a new name is preferred. I am not sure how to deal with this part.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

A linked system between servers might serve better. 2-3 times the cost of a transfer you link two character slots on different servers. The powers and badges would be linked but everything else would be independent to avoid the hassle of trying to find a name open on two severs. Since you can only have on logged in at a time it would have a similar feel of jumping between worlds but wiht out the pain of loosing server side specifics every swap.

As LISAR pointed out about rerolling clones on other servers: Yes you can already do that now, but those clones don't have any of the badges, salvage, influence, temporary powers...etc...etc. While character transfers at least keep all of those except SG/VG membership and such. So it's more about retaining a character's success on another server than just making clones, especially for those with Anniversary badges they retain.

And for Sharker Quint: I already mentioned that SG membership, names and pacts would be broken if you use character transfers, it's no different a limitation than the current transfers that go on now.

Another thing LISAR brought up was the trick on getting free renames. I myself are having a bit of trouble thinking of an idea to fix it. But the way I see it, if you want to change the name of a character you still have to pay the cost of a transfer in order for it to happen, and pay again for each character you want to rename. It's only really unlimited 'per character'. I couldn't see this getting fixed without bumping up the cost to count for the exploit. It's up to the developer's discretion.

A linked character slot function might work but it all depends on whether synching one character to many servers is possible and not infeasibly performance-damaging.