I hate what super boosters have done to the community

Teleporter with 1 hour timer. A waste when in the same zone so of only occasional usefulness.

Teleporter with 30 minute timer to Pocket D which may or may not be helpful. I probably used it once in the last week meanwhile I use Ouroboros TP and base TPs dozens of times a night.

30 second jump pack with 3 minute timer.

You only get one of the secondary mutations at a time and one is a 2 minute can't do anything as a Rikti monkey.

Super Tailor? Oh I see a huge benefit in changing my character's gender. Are you throwing that in because you don't know what it does or to try to make it seem so overwhelming?

You sure are making your case there to anyone who doesn't actually have the ability to use them on one account and not use them on another to see how little difference they actually make.

Or a fool sees a concern where there is none to be found.

I totally massacred a spawn full of Malta Sappers with that. Broke the whole game for me. This game sucks, I'm off to play more Zork.

Oh and pray tell, what are you going to do about it? Be concerned? Oh my, that ought to achieve well nothing really.

uhhhh I agree with boosters being used, but I have to ask, has ANY modern mmo increased it's sub fees from where it originally started?

Make it happen.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

There are 6 powers. If the devolution rarely happens and we choose to ignore it you have a 20% chance every 20 minutes for that boost. Good luck.

Meanwhile there is a base empowerment buff for 20% I can have whenever I want.

Do you know anything about playing this game?

Nope. But the others tended to sell expansions on a regular basis with prices relative to the time frames between them.

They're going to get their money one way or another.

Nobody does it because the whining would be too epic- witness the geyser of nerdrage we've had over their temerity in charging for optional booster packs.

But that's not relevant to my point, which is we're paying less in real terms to play now than we were in 2004.
That's added value.

Given the impracticality of increasing sub fees (if they thought it would work someone would've tried it by now) they have to find profit somewhere else. All MMOs do this in various ways, either through microtransactions or regular expansions or whatever.

I guess I understand why people gripe about this (who doesn't want something for nothing?), but it isn't reasonable or realistic.

Everquest was originally $12.99 a month (1999) and increased to $14.99 in 2005. Planetside went from $12.99 to $14.99 in 2007 (I only saw that while looking for the EQ dates).

Since then, $14.99 seems to be the standard monthly rate and I can't imagine anyone wanting to be the first to increase to seventeen a month when everyone else is still at fifteen bucks.

that's interesting, I didn't realize anyone had actually done it.

I find b preferable to a.

d, selling things that are not powers, would be my absolute preferred choice. Well, no, b would personally be my preferred choice, but d would probably be a big deal to fewer people.

At least Paragon/NCsoft never said outright "we will not sell anything that has an effect on gameplay" (to my knowledge) and then put the boosters out, unlike Cryptic in STO.

All of which are on long timers, and none of which give you a substantive advantage in combat. I'm obviously a long-time vet, and I've bought almost every possible enhancement to my account -- and so I hope you'll forgive me if I'm foggy on the exact details, but the Pocket D thing isn't even a Booster Pack or Vet Reward, as I recall. It's a perk from the Good Versus Evil Edition, isn't it? Each new edition of the game has come with its own perks, which means that there's a sort of built-in equalizer for newer players; they're more likely to have some sort of perk just as a natural consequence of buying the game for the first time, whereas long-time vets have to buy each new thing and upgrade their account.

Then of course there's the biggest equalizer of all, one that few people mention in these discussions: Newer players have a better game from the outset. They benefit from all of the growing pains the vets played through. I'm not saying that vets endured any undue hardship, but there have been countless quality-of-life improvements to the game since it launched. I'd have to spend two or three hours sifting through patch notes just to give you a semi-accurate list.

Honestly, I rarely even bother to put half of my perks on my power bar. They help a bit in the lower levels, but for the most part I don't use them. It's one thing to talk about how well the Nemesis Staff, Blackwand, and Sands of Mu lower your attack downtime, but most of those powers on any given character don't strike me as thematically appropriate. Heck, with normal attacks, brawl, origin powers, the accuracy boost, the lack of debt, the market, the availability of temp travel powers from Mayhems -- with all of those things available to every player, the lower levels should breeze by no matter what.

Making Inherent Fitness part of a Booster Pack would have been objectionable. None of the things we've gotten from Boosters/Vet Rewards are even in the same league. If you want to find annoying microtransactions, go check out what Cryptic's doing in Star Trek Online -- selling individual ships with unique gameplay advantages for $15+ a pop. And in STO, gear is virtually meaningless; there aren't any significant improvements you can make to your build through in-game means.

Here, the best case for inequality you can make references the cumulative effect of everything. That means being a launch-day vet, and having every available upgrade. That's like $1,500, and the total advantage you get for that relatively large investment still doesn't hold a candle to the advantages you get for IOing out a build. There is no meaningful competitive imbalance at the high end.

Most of these are available through alternate, in-game means. Temp travel powers (which are common as dirt now) and temp power boosts (which are, if nothing else, much more predictable than the random Mutation). This is a tempest in a teapot.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Your perception of the reality of the situation is off. It's probably because your falling speed is about 2x your rising speed, so it SEEMS like you're moving slower on the down beat because you reach the ground faster, but the horizontal movement of the jump is exactly the same throughout a jump; because you fall twice as fast, however, 2/3rds of any jump will be up and only 1/3rd will be down.

EDIT: for a demonstration, find a building that you can easily run off. Run off with Super Jump on (run, don't jump) and note how far you travel before hitting the ground. Now go back up and do it again with Super Jump turned off. Note the difference.

Obitus for the win!

Yeah true. Though they say most expansions are optional, in reality they are not.

As a personal aside, would I rather have had expansions in this game instead of the boosters: Yes.

Me either, and unless I'm wrong those games are still around.

I did. Perhaps you don't understand that you cannot control which one you get and you cannot get a different one for the duration of the one you do get.

You were the one who singled out +Recharge and I was responding to it.

Meanwhile someone who knows what they are doing doesn't need it. They use IOs and/or base empowerment station buffs.

You are welcome to be concerned about things that aren't a concern to thinking people who know what they are doing but don't expect us to join you trembling in the corner as you dodge every intelligent rebuttal to your irrational concerns.

I would too. But you know that the whiner brigade would be whining about those instead of the boosters. I have found there is no end to their ability to find something to complain about even if they have to make up things that have not happened but might.

When I played EQ I bought each expansion and enjoyed it. Just as I will do here for boosters that have something I want. All the handwringing in the world by the tremblers won't affect my decisions in the slightest.

/agree but doubt it will matter to the "concerned"