Power Socket Extractor

Hi:

With the history amd potential for changes on how powers work, the effectiveness of IO sets, and the likelyhood that new IO recipe sets will be released; it would be nice to be able to remove enhancements of our powers as opposed to throw them away during a respec (if more than ten are impacted) or place a new enhancement over the existing one.

The overall concept is imagine you buy a rifle, thus your basic power. You can then add slots for enhancements to your power. Thus if you want to increase your accuracy you physically add a scope to your rifle, if you want to increase range, you change barrels and use a rifled one, if you want to increase damage you change the nature of the bullets you fire from it, etc. In all cases, you can physically add or detach and enhancement: I remove the old x25 Scope and place a x50 scope, etc. You just don't get a hammer and smash the old scope to pieces and then place the new scope!

So why not have a means to remove our enhancemets from our powers, and later be able to put another or the same enhancement if needed be?

perhaps we can have a fixed cost to remove the enhancement, it should not be expensive, its not in real life, so why should it be different in game?

Yet maybe we can say, well if the instrument is very precise, perhaps it cost more to remove because it takes greater care to do?

So maybe we can base cost on the nature of the enhancement, that is based on rarity perhaps?

White: 50 influence
Yellow: 100 influence
Orange: 200 Influence
Purple: 400 Influence

The values are simple suggestions, no analysis was done for them, they are simply a sample to illustrate a notion...

What do you all think?

Sue aka Stormfront


Ps: Another sample, I have a mixer at my Kitchen; my mixer has many attachments...dough mixer, meat grinder, etc. Note that when I attack something to it, I am not stuck for life with that set-up, I can detach one attachment and replace it with another.

never going to happen.

The developers have been very clear that the only effective influence sink in the game are enhancements. They have also been very clear that they consider giving us 10 slots to save enhancements during respecs is generous.

I liked this idea better.

What PennyPA said. The concept is not unworkable, but the prices are off by a factor of 10,000 to 1,000,000. Every enhancement you extract is an enhancement you don't have to craft or purchase, which means influence you don't have to destroy in crafting and market fees. With the amount of inf in the economy already, and the amount that can be easily generated and is being generated all the time, the developers are looking for more influence sinks, not less.

Oh good I see others have already said it.

Mmm...

I can agree with Penny's observation and suggestion, that there should be a cost to remove enhancements, after all in real life changing attachments to real things; does have a cost.

I do disagree at the referred cost to remove them, for the cost referred to is as high as buying and making many of the IO recipes already in the game. For instance 1M influence to remove a level 50 is really to high. Maybe because in real life I am experiencing a recession and I find myself appalled at throwing away millions of influence, I tend to be a bit reluctant at the throw away money concept.

I saw a poster, quoting developers, and appears to be a proponent of the influence sink dogma, and would like to point out, that like with many developer statements in the past have been reversed. For example, the idiotic need to have players travel across several zones for the heck of it; how often that has been asked to cease and desist by the players? And the developers response is always the same: Its too much fun to deprive you off, also players need to enjoy and learn the maps we worked so hard to craft. At first glance, the observation of a developer "dogma" sticking to it seems to be in favor of the "developers will never change it" Yet how can you explain the introduction of all those portals, "short cuts" such as Ouroboros, Vanguard, Mission Transporter, Base Teleporters, and so forth?

The point is that developers do change their positions, in some cases totally and in others partially.

I believe the developers will have to address at one time or the other, that players are being adverse affected by changes they make in the game. Do note I am not judging the changes as being good, bad or indifferent. But I will submit that those developer changes in general are motivated in improving the game. In the past respeccing and throwing away Singles was really never much of an issue, but with the IO architecture, the cost is significantly higher; and a reasonable person should realize that this aspect must be treated differently. Think of it like this, would you experience the same urgency when treating a scratch when compared to treating someone whose arm got blown off? I hope not.

I find the thought possibly disturbing with regards to influence sinks, and sincerely hope this will never be the case (as far as I can tell, that has not happened): Developers make game changes with the sole purpose to make players dump previous investments to replace with new investments, because the developers made the old powers useless. So far, this has not happened, the changes, solely, have been for game balance purposes and thus are bonafide changes.

Still there is a matter of justice or simply right or wrong...

If I design a build for my AT, and then respec to have the right power-slot structure, then buy IO sets to complete my AT; thus far it is I who is solely responsible if the AT build works as I intended or not. Fair enough?

If the design does not work as I intended, whose fault is this? I trust, you will think: Its the players and not the developers. As a result any cost or loses in repairing or correcting the build should fully be asessed against the player, there is no justification to blame it on the developers; especially with tools such as MIDS' being available.

With me thus far?

Now say you do build an AT architecture and it does work, you employed IO recipes which have been stable for over a year, perhaps even two. Then the developers decide to rebalance the game, or a specific IO set or sets, or even how a power will now work, etc. These changes will in general impact players with these IOs or power sets in a negative manner (I said in general because the great majority of the time the effect is a loss of capability as opposed to an improvement). So the player, if they desire to continue enjoying that ALT, is going to have to likely respec and replace IO sets; this process can be somewhat costly to extremely costly. The question to you all, is it fair to assess the cost to the player solely? If not, is it fair to assign any cost all to the player? If one is to assign a cost to the player, how much percentage of it would be fair? Do note, the player is suffering damages (in the legal term) from a developer initiated activity.

Some may argue, that the developer activity is done for the greater good, and likely that is the entire truth, but that should not forgive them from responsibility. Today a city planner decides a new street needs to be constructed to solve a traffic congestion issue. The city planner decides that a road needs to be constructed through your property, and has the right to do so under "Imminent Domain". So the devs have the rights to change the code, to make the game better under "Imminent Domain" clauses, which only makes good sense.

But Imminent Domain is not a do whatever you want clause, it has limitations which alllows for the citizens rights to be observed. The city planner, is responsible to buy your property at fair market value, the city planner can not just go knock down your fence and part of your house to build the road; the city planner has to pay reasonable reparations, they have a responsbility to the citizen; the tax payer.

So how does the above relates to the game?

Developers changes the game, how it works, to ensure the game is working as intended, to make sure its balanced, to maximize enjoyment, add more content, etc. They like the City Planner, have the right to make changes for the better good of society through Imminent Domain.

Developers should also experience similar responsibility for their actions just as City Planners do. That is a fair reparation to the ones negatively impacted by the City Planners activities must be done; same should be with our Developers.

Given that we can agree with very basic law principles; the next step is how to fairly decide how can developers make reparations to negatively impacted players by their actions?

I do note that with most developer initiated changes, a free respec is provided. That is a good move with regards to making up for how powers work changes, so a player may choose to drop the power or even begin to use it. I can see in the rare occassion a power is improved, that no need for a respec or any allowance may be needed, for no negative impacts is experienced by the player.

But lets address an IO bonus degradation, or power ability degradation; how can a developer make reparations for that?

My suggestion of a free IO extractor tool, was a suggestion on how to mitigate the damage a player experience from a developer initiated change; it matters not if the developer change was good, bad or indifferent. The City Planner decision to put a road through your property may actually solve the problem, make the problem worse, or do nothing.

My basic point is, players like tax payers have a reasonable expectation to be treated honestly and fairly. I do understand that because of that, players should not be able to profiteer from the developers; but its entirely wrong for a developer to do changes with out having a responsibility assessed with it.

Perhaps my socket extractor concept could be available on a time limit basis tied to a game change release, say it last for 2 weeks after the release. I have 34 level 50 ALTs fully IO slotted, if they were all impacted, it would take me quite a bit of time to fix them, I am sure there other players with far more ALTs than I do, perhaps a month might be fair...

Hugs

Stormy

Stop being so bothered by the BotZ change. It was a minor change.

"Reparations"?

I don't think you quite understand how this works here. This is a pretendy fun time superhero game, not a war crimes tribunal.

um, /signed. But that's all I'll say. Not getting into this for the third or tenth thread on this subject this week.

"power socket extractor" sounds incredibly painful, like some kind of torture device disguised as a medical tool.

If I ever saw a "power socket extractor", I'd likely do this:



Then I'd run away.

Mmm

Seems what I am asking for went quite missunderstood...

Yes I am still upset over the BoZ nurf, but not as much with the nurf itself, it did make sense; they were over-powered, but I am mainly upset at the way it was done.

Yes, I agree that developers can change the game in any way they need, to keep the game fun and challenging.

But the question I been making is, when a dev makes a change in the game are they responsible to some extent to the customer for their actions? Please note, I am not judging their activity as good, bad or indifferent.

In fact the developers when they do some activities have offered respecs in the past, I vaguely remember, I think, when they changed regen for the scrappers, the develoeprs gave them a free respec.

So the thought of some allowances for developer origininated changes is not allien to this game. In fact many of you will claim that the free respec given in I17 was just that in fact. I partially agree with most of you over it, but a free respec is standard with any release, so it was not much of a give way, when you really think about it. I will admit, for many of my builds, the single respec was in fact sufficient; but in many other cases it fell noticeably short and costed me nearly a billion in some of thsoe cases.

The IO extractor I suggested is a way to mitigate some of the experienced pain that goes with change, when change does occur it affects players in many ways, as some of you, it did not affect you at all, and others were heavely affected.

Stormy

The freespecs we get with issue releases stem from the fact that most issues change some powersets. There have only been a few that have not. As such, the I17 freespec was given out almost specifically for the BotZ change, since that was one of the only changes.

It is a fair and even exchange, since it allows you to pull out any of those sets that you can, up to 3 full sets (I know of very few people that had more than that on their character). Plus, considering (and you've been told this before) that the Devs have very little way of knowing exactly how much somebody paid to get their character the way that it is, unless they are only using SOs, there's no way to fairly compensate everyone that used those sets. So a freespec is probably the best way to handle that. Freespecs were used to handle much larger changes than the BotZ change, and were therefore appropriate for that change.


There needs to be an influence sink in this game. Which is why I supported the suggestion for an invention that allowed you to remove an enhancement, but at an increasingly high cost depending on how many you used in a short amount of time. The influence for people like you would be higher than the casual player, who might only need to use one or two of them.

The developers can do whatever they want whenever they want at any time and there is no liability or responsibility on their end. You don't own your account, you don't own your character, you are simply being given the privilege to use the service the developers provide and have the legal right to modify at their own will to anything they wish. You agree to this whenever you start up the game and log in.