UNofficial: Repeat Purchase Store Items

Zwillinger said:

They can just add 1-hour Health, Stamina, DamageBuffs, etc. After all, potions are really what they are trying to come up with. Just make them 1-2 hour inspiriations.

Another thing they can do is add 1 hour ED breakers. Have the buff function like an enhancement that breaks ED for 1 hour.

To clarify, have a buff that gives you 33% global damage for an hour that can put a power over the ED cap. You'd need some serious limits though.

Something like a 'town portal' power, let's me open up a portal to pop to a town zone, *but* let's me pop back to where I was. The long range teleports and ouroboros portals are nice, but I still end up having to trek all the way back to the hazard zone to finish what I was doing (Big example: First Ward. I either run all the way back to Talos/Cap to unload stuff at auction and/or invent stuff, spend way too long mailing things to myself, or bite the bullet and just sell it)

Wouldn't mind that as a consumable. a buck for, what 5-10 charges?

* Limit Breaker: one minute of bypassing all the caps (damage, resistance, recharge, etc.) in the game.

All of the below would sell like hot cakes and would required minimal work compared to brand new powersets/costumes/etc:

NPC Vendors in SG bases that you can design the costume of.

A costume code for a fake nemesis.

Longbow costume pack.

New themes for bases. (Wallpaper, wooden floors, etc.)

Statues of our characters in zones. (Greyscale doppleganger with stone affect.)

Accolades (Inherent) Unlocks

Accolades (Click Powers) Unlocks

You know what I would buy on a repeat basis?

- Comic Books! Hickman! Nakayama! I choose you! Extra credit if they use an emote like /newspaper so you can read them ingame.

- Along that line, actual ingame trading cards that included more info than is in ParagonWiki about each character, especially if it came with an ingame buff pet mode. Extra credit for chibi character models. Extra Extra credit (and by credit I mean money) if they can execute emotes on command.

- Day Jobs. Extra credit if they come with a costume set and emotes.

- Individual character Bases: prefab and unalterable, to keep server overhead down, in a variety of styles.

I would probably buy most types of low-level skipping or time saving things.

* Something that gives a flat amount of exp (set amount so it's very worthwhile to use at low levels but nearly useless at higher levels) so I can skip over the boring levels.

* Something to turn my enhancements into SOs so I feel less inclined to rush to 22.

* Anything that saves me time getting, or just grants me, accolades. The HP and end ones, +RES/DEF clickers, and portable workbench the most.

* Anything that saves me time or lets me switch characters to rogue/vigilante early. Maybe a token to make a character who starts off as a rogue/vigilante.

* More early unlocks for costume parts. Let me use and create characters who are already using roman parts, ascension parts, and other unlockables. I hate having to wait until a certain event to use certain costume pieces. It kills a few character concepts for me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Purchasable accolades. I have gotten the badges that lead to the accolades on so many characters that hunting fake nemesis, illusionist pets, monkeys, lost leaders, etc. has become a huge grind. I would spend points, tokens, merits, influence, and money to buy them.

A partial respec token that let me rechoose one power or remove one power slot and move it it a different power (level rules still enforced), so that I don't have to do a full respec just to make small changes to a build.

A power that uses the clone tech to summon "pet" versions of characters from my own account, instead of "signature heroes."

The problem with all my ideas (as well as much of what's been posted so far) is that what I want just isn't repeat purchases.

HOWEVER, speaking to Zwill's comments about generating income without investing an enormous amount of time, what I would purchase that would not be a big time sink for them, are things which have already been created. Some examples:

*the mission teleporter, which has a cool-down of what, 3 hours, or something? Let me get more of those to use during that silly huge cool-down period! I would buy those in a heartbeat! Not as repeatable - that's available. But as a permanent thing. Or, alternatively, just buy a shortened timer for the one I have.

*what I refer to as "crap rezzes" - the freebie you can from the day job in the hospital (Or buy at the market), that act like a small wakie, Those things have pulled a few iffy TF's out of the fire for me, but I can get them free, or at low cost, but it's a nuisance to keep checking how many charges it has, or who needs one, and so on. Alternatively, how about a crappy self-rez power? Like a personal wakie, only permanent?

*what about making any of the temp powers (which are often pale imitations of the real power) purchasable as a permanent thing?

That's just what I can think of off the top of my head, I'm sure there's lots more. Hope it's understood that I absolutely am against anything game-changing or game-making being sold at the store. Uber-builds being available only to those paying real money is a terrible idea, and I think the devs have done a really good job at NOT doing that. But I am an advocate of, and would be willing to pay for, any number of QoL items. That said, it completely defeats the purpose of the convenience I'm looking for, to have to keep buying something over and over, and keep track of which toon has what. Everything I've ever bought from the store has been something that is account-wide.

I have what might seem like an oddball question, but... If we're talking about something people would want to purchase many times over that gives them some kind of benefit which still doesn't break the game... How about a subscription fee? Or rather, THE subscription fee, the one VIPs like all the bunch of us posting on the VIP forums pay. Does that not count? Is that not enough? Or are we specifically talking about ways to get a persistent, repeatable profit out of Premium players?

The reason I ask is... Why did we go Hybrid/F2P again? I mean, if consistent, monthly payment was the pre-requisite, we were already doing that. Why add a free option and an option to play without a persistent fee, then go out of your way to invent a "subscription" by another name? In other words, why reinvent the wheel and not, instead, just add more perks to VIP players so more players would want to go VIP? You know, instead of fleecing VIPs and causing them to drop down to Premium.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

It does sound counterproductive doesn't it? They changed the entire model of the game in order to attract free players and then discovered that people playing for free didn't want to pay money and have a lot of overhead costs that come with them.

Summon Alt
When used, it summons one Doppelganger-style copy of any of your characters of the same red/blue/gold alignment from the same server as an ally. They will wear the costume you see them in on the character select screen, and have the powers you chose. Yeah, it's the signature character summon, but with one of your characters. Claim the power and you choose right there who to call. You KNOW you want to see a superhero teamup of all your favorite characters.

Debt Immunity (60 minutes)
Going to do something dangerous/stupid? Take on an enemy you know might be beatable, but is going to be tough? Take your debt immunity shot first! Yeah, debt isn't much issue anymore, but if you're trying to solo AVs, or going on a Mothership Raid at a level less than 50, you might want this.

That's all I could think of right now.

a recharge for Amy's Ward or the Warwolf Whistle (or other temp powers) if you have already earned the item. The ouros' echo versions often leave much to be desired.

If Paragon Studios wants recurring purchases, the model is very semple: Sell anything that's a quality of life feature they haven't already given us. Here's an example: extra market, enhancement, recipe or salvage slots. They gave us those already, but here's what they did "wrong": they charged hefty prices for them and but made that justifiable by letting them provide that across our whole account.

What's wrong with that? Well, from my perspective, nothing! I'm going to get a ton of value for that because I get to amortize those costs across all existing and future characters. But from their perspective, they missed the ability to charge us for that QoL feature on a go forward basis.

They need to make things cheap that we will all be tempted to buy, and buy more than once. Today, one extra enhancement trays cost 1600 points. If they charged per character and made it cost 200 points, I probably would have spent between 800 and 2000 points on it up front, and would be tempted to spend 200 points on future characters. Voila - recurring income instead of a large one-time income right after release.

The following suggestion would make Paragon Studios piles and piles of money:

1 time purchase per character (say 400 pts) on a summoning temp power which would allow you to summon another character from your account as a boss-class pet. No reduced rewards from having this helper pet. The pet would be configured just like the "doubles" that we meet in missions sometimes (so maybe wouldn't have an exact map of powers), but we would have the option of choosing/switching which costume they are in. No limit on how much time you could use this pet (except in things like PVP and maybe AE, task forces, and trials). Also, it would be disabled on teams of 5 or more, to prevent character overload.

Obviously this would take some a bit of time implement, but you would be rich beyond your wildest dreams.

(Guild Wars has a similar purchaseable, so you could ask them how it worked out)

(edit: one clarification above, my suggestion presumes that I claim this temp power on a specific character, but then I can summon any character say, on the same server, for the character who claimed it. The character who claimed it could switch which character it summons. it would be repeat in the sense that you would have to buy it for each character that wanted it)

Mostly, they need to sell things to use in-battle.

A 5 minute summons of a MM pet (no controls, it works like a normal combat pet).

The various temp powers that already exist in the game. Iron Sword, Kinetic Shield, Chaingun, ect...

Warburg Nukes, and Bloody Bay Shivans.

One-shot Judgement/Destiny powers (likely only useable by level 50 characters).

A 15-30 minute temp power that grants Super Speed. (We have them for flying and super jump, after all.)

A one-use version of Inner Inspiration, with no timer on how soon you can use another. (The lack of timer will encourage people to use a bunch of them if they're low in Insps and about to need a boost.)

There are a lot of things you could do, some may use others may never use, but would allow a person to something crazy hard, get over a hurdle, help a team out or others, especially if they are cheap enough.

Long range teleport, mission teleport, team tp, other travel powers, or even temp stealth these would be great if you are a lowbie or even at higher level doing a shard TF.

Buffs, these could be simple ones to help accuracy at lower levels or a defense buff to help out at higher ones, you can always put a cool down effect if needed.

Debuffs as well leading a team or solo and suddenly you have a AV, temp debuffs would work great.

Anything like bonus rewards like XP, or drops.

Temp attack powers or even summon helpers. Let us able to stack temp powers as well as long as its not game breaking, but if I want 500 charges on a sword/gun power so I can have a gun/sword hero I can.

So these things could make someone over powerful, but as long as its not to crazy high or abused would be pretty nice.