Paragon Points Clarification

Not just microsoft. Nintendo now has a game for their DS system that requires you to save to a propietary flash card, that cant be erased. Their goal is to make the game playable only once so it can't be sold as a used game.

Not just games, if you name a software type I can probably name a horrible scam or complete ripoff of the customer.

The game is from Capcom, specifically.

I dunno if I read it correctly, but it seems to me that your Paragon Rewards standing is equivalent (in at least some ways) to your stature within the current Veteran Rewards program. Now, the fact that buying points can BOOST that standing seems to mean that your standing is your accrued time PLUS some factor related to how many points you have accumulated. I would also think that your accumulated points is NOT the number you have on hand, but instead the total number you have earned... which would include the ones you have already spent. Hmmmm, perhaps the 400 PP stipend VIPs get IS what determines their monthly movement upward in the system. Perhaps it takes 1,200 PPs to move to the next Vet tier.

Which, of course SOUNDS like you can buy your Veteran standing... which is discouraging. But, what it may mean, is that it can get you to certain thresholds but not enable you to just buy your way to an 84 Month Vet on Day One... I hope that is the case. (BTW, I am no where near an 84 Month Vet... just somewhere in the 48 Month area.)

Now, this, this is what I'm concerned about. It sounds great at a glance but I think somewhere down the line we're all going to be paying out the nose. All that "free" stuff is going to look miniscule in comparison. I can only plead that it NOT go down the above path and they keep the pricing fair and stay away from converting the entire economy. Just don't throw us under the bus guys. Not a couple months from now or even years. You owe us that much.

There's different currencies. Paragon Points are for spending in the store. With the purchase or subscription earning of Paragon Points, you will also be awarded Paragon Reward Tokens, to be spent on the new equivalent of the Vet Reward system.

You can pay money for the perks, if you want, but you can't buy the Vet badges, which will continue to be awarded for time subscribed.

Personally, I'd actually like to pay for the "Loyal Customer" perk on my second account, which just got City Traveller earlier this month. It's the only big thing that separates utility of my accounts right now.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I am unsure how this relates to what I said.

Yeah, that is what I meant... but in MY head, the two things are conflated since they have always occurred together before.

That isn't exactly new. Holders of what I call "soft IP" (as in their Intellectual Property doesn't have a physical form, just their distribution method does) have been trying to break consumers of the mentality that they actually own stuff they purchase for a few years now. Usually with very bad results. From DRM ("What do you mean I can only install the game 3 times?!? I bought the game!) to the DMCA ("Wait, wait, wait... Does that section actually say that I do not have the rights to resell the physical product even though I purchased it?!?" [I have to track down what ever happened to that...]).

Without even getting into if that is proper or not, it is an uphill battle because ever since bartering was invented, consumers have always had ownership of what they purchased.

In a much more mild way, CoHF touches that issue too. I know there are some (I predict a large number) MMO customers (across all MMOs, not limited to CoX) that have the perspective that they purchase the content, and the subscription fee is just renting server time. These persons will have one hell of a wake up call when they find out that Paragon isn't just removing the server rental fee with CoHF. And they will feel insulted (the famous "slap in the face") to have to "pay for that content a second time." (I'm referring primarily to MMs and Controllers, but to a lesser degree EATs, and I'm predicting some powersets won't be available by default to Premium players.)

I suspect those holders of "soft IPs" will keep fighting the fight, until consumers finally give in, or they go bankrupt for trying.

I sure as heck hope the answer is NO.

This hasn't happened yet in the 4 hybrid games I can think of right off the top of my head. DDO, LOTRO, CO, & STO. ::shug::

Basically we have games that have gone this route and there is no trace of this predicted DOOM in any of them. Why would COH:Freedom be any different and some how it fall into this horrible fate?

Eh, you can purchase purple recipes by doing the Incarnate trials, Or earning Hero/Villain merits. I'm not certain why Paragon points would be worse than either of those.

Just specifying that Vet--ahem, "Paragon" Rewards aren't purchased with Paragon Points, but Paragon Reward Tokens.

It all boils down to semantics, since you're purchasing them either way.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

note the (from the magic pack) part of that.
That means that you get one costume out of the set, in the magic example, you get the baron costume from that set for $5 then $5 more for the witch one, and then there are the emotes and the auras, and so on. So to get all of the stuff from that one booster pack you will pay a lot more.
Their should still be a way to buy the whole booster pack for 800 points then, but I am willing to bet that will not be the case.

I wouldn't mind this so much if they were not getting rid of the old way to buy things. It sounds like it will cost us a lot more to continue to have access to literally everything. Even taking into account the "$5 Bonus". The fact that they are giving us that "bonus" means there will lots and lots of things to "buy" on top of your $15 monthly fee and less and less things will be included in that fee. Just like when the booster packs started and that was that many less costumes and so on included in each issue.

You can look at it as $10 a month + $5 for points, but when they charge you more for the same stuff or you are the type who will not likely spend those points, then it's not like you can choose not to buy those points. I just can't look at it as any kind of a bonus, especially when they decided to stop giving us the vet rewards too. I figure those 400 points will just barely cover buying the equivalent of a new vet reward every 3 months, like base portal or buff pet.
I really don't like the idea of getting rid of the vet rewards because this doesn't even begin to replace it. It doesn't even cover the cost differential from how much more the booster packs will cost.
My biggest fear is that new characters made after this scheme goes live will no longer be able to claim their rewards. I don't think I could get by without my sands of mu and blackwand and all of the other things I have gotten so used to over the years.
I am jsut glad that after what will be a year and a half (of almost nothing of interest to me) or so by the time i21 comes out, we will finally get a new power set (the only thing that looks interesting there, I was really excited about the new zone, until I found out it was Emp Cole's private garden! Could have been the moon, or underwater, or a space station, or any of the other things requested over the years, but no, it has to be more of the Annoyance Fest, Praetoria).
Finally something beyond QoL improvements (- the new team windows and leagues that are more annoying than anything else) that will affect my game other than running into large groups of yellow names hanging about all over waiting for their next tf to start... oh and new contacts I have to avoid like the plague but yet get thrown in my face at certain levels.

But on the bright side since They no longer want to take my money in exchange for items in a direct transaction, then this game just got cheaper for me, because I won't buy points, that's too close to buying in game money or buying exp, and that's insane. Too much like 2nd life. Even if it means I have access to less stuff, if that last booster is an indication of the level of detail and quality going into the ones coming up then I don't want them anyway. I don't even think I have spent merits (other than the first time to try) other than the rikti ones you have to to make an alpha enh (well, unless you want to keep farming and farming and farming) which I have basically giving up on anyway because it's jsut grinding, ad infinium without the exp to make it interesting. Instead of random drop shards it should be a straight xp like thing, so it is fair. Like EQ's Alt. Advance Xp. A Much Better system.

Just one more thing to be disappointed about this game and the direction it is going. ...and pretty much gaming in general...

"COMPLETE, MAGIC, COSTUME, SET". This means all costume pieces that came with the pack not just a single costume in said pack, this question was already asked, and answered. It's the Magic Pack with out the power or costume change emotes. But it has all the costume pieces, for 400 Points - Five dollars. And yes, it will be 800 points for what would be the old booster pack, they stated there would not be a raise in cost from what we've been used to paying, just more choice of what we want to pick out from something. You see what one person says, and try to turn it into what YOU want to see, rather than truth.

The Paragon Points do not replace the Vet rewards nor are they interchangeable. A new Vet reward system is being put into place that is separate from Paragon Points (I believe they are calling them Paragon Rewards). Paragon Rewards are earned every month you have a subscription and you can earn them by buying enough Paragon Points, if you decide to stop paying your subscription.

Therefore, you are not losing your Vet rewards, they are just being subtly changed, renamed, and possibly even improved.

Because Paragon Points involve an outside of the game currency: actual money. I am NOT in support of being able to spend money to make your character fully Purpled, or what have you. Spend all the time and in-game resources you like. But spending real money? No thanks.

So you don't like the idea of NCSoft making money.

We're not currently discussing specific items included in the new Paragon Market (outside of the specific examples we've already provided) however you can rest assured that there will be a wide variety of items available for purchase using your Paragon Points, much of which will be included automagically with your VIP subscription, if you so chose.

For those wondering about the amount of content that will be included with your VIP subscription: One of our constantly stated goals of the VIP program is to provide more value and more content to our players for the same monthly cost. An added benefit of this is the sheer amount of content we're producing is also increased .

Thanks to everyone who's been following this conversation since day one and are continuing to point folks new to the discussion towards previously provided answers. There's most definitely more information coming down the pipe in the coming weeks that everyone's going to want to hear about .

It circumvents a time-sink put in by the developers (time vs reward as Positron put it on his blog). This would be counter to the purpose of their scarcity which is to keep you playing for extended periods of time.

It also offers a significant, buyable, advantage and could really trivialize gameplay that much faster, resulting in a player being "finished" with the game that much faster.

Finally, if bought, then it could be sold on the market, basically resulting in a round about way to buy influence.

Just my theories, mind you.

You realize that literally all of your questions and fears (except those regarding your apparent dislike of Going Rogue's content, which is already being covered in dozens of other threads that aren't about i21/CoH Freedom) were already answered in the 388 posts preceding yours in this thread, right?

I'm not even going to bother addressing specific things, because absolutely everything you just said is either completely wrong or simply a matter of your own opinion (which you are of course entitled to).

-----
As a rebuttal, this isn't entirely true either. All they said is that the cost of subscription will not change. They haven't said a word about what the cost of booster packs would be under the new system, and it's actually pretty apparent that we'll be looking at $12-15 (960-1200 Paragon Points) per Booster, given the examples we've seen and what was mentioned in last week's Ustreams--namely, that the temp power portion of a Booster Pack would likely cost about 400 points on its own.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Fix'd.

It has also been said that any Veteran Rewards you've already earned will always stay on your account. If you make a new character, you'll still have access to Sands of Mu and everything else that any character you made today would get.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I'm a little torn on this, personally. I see both good and bad in it.

On the good side of buying enhancements: I have less time to play now than I did historically, and even then it took me until January of this year to get my since-day-one main character purpled out, so the option to pay for enhancements on my favorite characters is pretty tempting. (Side note: I almost never farm--nearly everything I got was earned with drops gained just playing the game.) There's also something attractive about the ability to just pay a couple bucks for a Purple/PVP IO and get it now rather than grind for money, post a bid on the market and wait weeks for it to fill (if at all).

On the bad side: it starts out as a way to print in-game money (buy Gladiator +3% Def, sell on market for 2Bil, or on the boards for even more), then slowly collapses the game's economy because the super rare expensive stuff floods the market. People complain that $5 is too much for a PVP IO that now sells for a couple million on the market and demand the price be dropped.

It's a very tough decision for the developers, and I won't personally blame them whichever way the chips end up falling.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Do we actually have red-name clarification of this somewhere, Venom?

It would be nice (and, I think, fair-) if 400 points bought all of the magic pack costume bits, but I actually read that as "400 point for one of the Magic costume sets" not as "400 points for both", too. It's not terribly clear what they mean.