UNofficial: Repeat Purchase Store Items

Outside of a screwed up full respec, I'd guess a good number of powers or slotting remorse happens soon after using the Trainer for a player's newest level up. So as a simpler variant to the partial-respec, what about just an "un-train one level". That is, undo having used a Trainer. Any already slotted enhancements from the previous power selection or new slots gets dumped into your inventory.

It seems to me that un-training would be easier to implement than for the system to figure out what to do with new slots that were allocated after that power pick you now want to get rid of. And as a side effect, there's incentive for the player to need to buy and use 2-3 un-trains to get at a power, so a combo pack is an obvious additional offering.

Let's see... Things I'd buy on a repeat basis.

The key for me is that I'd be paying for convenience. I have limited free time to play the game so if I could save an hour or more of drudgery (ex. crafting all your common IO's when you hit level 27) by blowing $5 or so that's MORE than worth it to me because I could instead use that hour or more actually running missions (i.e. fun).

With that in mind...

1) Common Enhancements: Right now the biggest time sink in the game for me is slotting common IO's when I hit level 27. Paying real money to just not have to worry about and get back to playing the game is worth it to me. If they started at level 10 and scaled up just like the set IOs you can buy in store I'd be even more all over them.

2) Extra Bars of Patrol XP: I generally run out of the ones I get via Paragon Rewards before I hit the mid-30's slump and would gladly shell out $5-10 per character on extra patrol xp just to speed up the leveling to 50 (admittedly if we get more 35-50 content I might change my mind, but right now most of the content is that band is stuff I've been doing since I first joined the game in i4 and I have no real desire to do more of it than I have to).

[b]3) Long duration inspirations/buffs:[b] There are days when I'd be willing to drop money to just go God-Mode and beat the crap out of AV's for an hour... and its cheaper than therapy. (ETA: how about 400 points for an hour of Ultimate Radial FREEM!... not usuable on TF's or Trials)

Though its not convenience oriented, the coolness of it leads me again mention...

4) Summon Alt Temp Power: It's just THAT cool.

As a side-bar I'd spend 2000 points without the slightest regret (yes, $25 of real money) for a permanent power that conjured up a non-combat pet version of one of my alts (and if you allow it to be given petsay commands like a MM pet I'd probably even do 2400+ points without batting an eye). Yes, I DO RP on Virtue. Why do you ask?

Thanks everyone. I love seeing these suggestions.

Here are some of my ideas (some probably already said, some may be available already):

1. Inspiration Packs: comes with tier 1, 2, or 3 inspirations; x amount of each type of inspiration in that tier, but last longer than the usual ones, maybe 30 minutes to an hour.
2. Teleport Pack: comes with 5 charges of team teleport, mission teleport, AH teleport, and maybe other teleports that are valid/useful.
3. Someone mentioned common enhancements that level with you, love this idea so it's worth putting back down here.
4. Salvage packs for recipes. Grants x amount of y type of salvage, more expensive for each tier of salvage (rare costs more then uncommon for example).
5. Temp Buff Pets. Sort like the vet reward ones, but untouchable. Lasts x amount of time and buffs one aspect. You get x amount of uses (so maybe 1 hour pet, 5 uses) before needing to buy another.

Red light zone...requires additional monthly cost to sue and must provide proof of age...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ardrea If the devs looked at the lists of empowerments available from base worktables, and just sold them directly as inexpensive boosts, they'd be handy if the price was right. Convenient, too, to not have to find the salvage or a base empowerment worktable to craft at.

Oh yeah...I always forget about those. Those practically ARE potions!

How about selling SO quality enhancements that aren't level locked (always work as at level with character like the store IOs).

At low levels they would be better then IOs but at mid to high levels weaker.

They would be account bound and market only.

It'd be a nice filler for people who would use market but avoid the IO system.

Well, first off, you don't really need repeatables. The same thing can be achieved by having more desirable stuff than people will be willing to purchase at once. If there were 30 permanent "temp" powers, then i would want them all, but would likely not budget myself to buy them all at once.

The big problem with the market currently is there is very little worth spending money on (and what is there is grotesquely overpriced).

But for actual repeatable purchases, there are at least 3 different types.

1. Per-Alt. These aren't strictly repeatable since once you buy for an alt, you would have it permanently, so there is an eventual limit to how many you will ever buy. In a sense, this is the oldest market transaction we have, because buying character slots is basically a per-alt transaction.

There are plenty of things that would work for this. The mentioned accolade purchases work. Permanent temp powers that are sold per character. But also any type of sold enhancements fit here. Even if you can buy them multiple times for a single character, there is still an eventual limit on how many you will want - it's not a limitless well.

The reason these aren't selling well is because they are horribly overpriced. Any per-alt item needs to take into account not only how much it boosts an individual character, but also how many characters a player may wish to buy it for.

I played the game about killing large lizards in underground areas, and I paid $12.50 for every character I had to reach 7th level. This was a purchase of something that was available ingame, but the convenience was enough that I did not hesitate to pay real money.

The closest equivalent in this game would be the market enhancements - which, for roughly the same price, gave less of a benefit, would be wanted on 5 times as many characters, and were vastly easier to get ingame without paying money. So, the prices are a bit out of whack - same cost for less benefit to a smaller percent of my characters and giving me much less of a gain in convenience.

2. monthly benefits
These are the closest to the subscription model. It is currently used in the invention licenses and in the horribly priced jetpack.
These need to provide real benefit to be worth it. +move speed and +max speed on all characters for a month. While not as useful as an invention liscense, it would still be an in demand item.

Even better, it can be used as another difference between VIPs and premiums - anything that VIPs get for free can be charged to premiums as a monthly fee so the right people are paying.

3. single use items
These are the big problems, because they are insanely overpriced. Not because of the benefit they provide, but because of how fast everything is in this game.

I might use 100 attacks in a single mission. So even at a penny a piece, a moderate damage single target attack is overpriced. It's not just the power that's important, but the frequency of use. Well designed temp powers are the end recovery craftable temp and the SSA2 Villain heal temp. Those aren't powers that you plan on using as part of an attack chain, but when they are needed, they are valuable.

If I could buy a temp power that would cancel slow effects on me for 5 minutes, I would likely do so. It removes an annoyance when it comes up, but it doesn't walk that fine line between "I need to use it constantly to complete an attack chain" and "I already have an attack chain, so it's worthless". It's a situational power.

That lack of situational useability is what is lacking in a lot of the temp power consumables. If I need a heal+def buff, I need it now, not after i click email and find it and then click claim. And I'm probably not going to know I will need it early enough to claim it before I start. I'm certainly not going to know what I need early enough to buy it, claim it, and then use it before I'm face planted.

A better delivery system is needed. If I could have a temp power with X charges, and claim that power on all my alts, but have them draw from the same pool of charges - now that would be something I can see spending money on. It is something there when an emergency arises, but is not a waste if this particular character doesn't need it.

Fully body massages.

Consumables might be more attractive if they were time-based rather than activation-based. This gets to the comments about how fast we use powers in this game. A Holy Shotgun temp power that lasts for, say, 48 hours of game time is vastly more valuable than one with 100 shots.

1. Invention binder

Converts one invention into a bound-to-character enhancement that cannot be traded or sold, but will work without an invention license. Allows premium players to slot and use inventions on a per-invention basis, and also allows premium players to unlock the usage of inventions slotted into legacy characters made while originally VIP subscribers.

Suggested price: 150PP for 10 uses.


2. Archvillain Protection

Click, five minute duration per use. When active, player receives -50 Magnitude protection from hold, sleep, stun, confuse, terrorize, KB, KU, and Placate for 50 seconds out of every 75. Additionally, protection power offers +20% resistance to all and +10% defense to all for duration of power.

Suggested price: 150PP for three uses. Power can be charged up to 30 uses maximum.


3. Metabolic Overdrive Inspiration

Inspiration, three minute duration per use. When active, player receives +100% recharge, regeneration, and recovery, and 50% resistance to recharge, recovery, and endurance debuffs.

Suggested price: 80PP for three.


4. Sapper pack

Two temp powers, one passive power, one day in-game duration. One single target ranged endurance drain attack, one ranged AoE endurance drain attack, one passive endurance drain resistance and energy damage resistance power.

Suggested price: 100 PP

~ Origin change. Sometimes I lose interest in a character because of the concept but I enjoy the power set. If a new costume pack is released or I think of a concept I like I might want to resurrect an old character by remaking that character with a new concept and find that the origin is not appropriate for the character.

~ The False Nemesis badge for a single character. Let me spend a small amount of points to buy it and I am probably just lazy enough to do it for alts if I don't have a lot of playing time. Just this badge; I wouldn't buy any other defeat badges.

~ An enhancer that changes the level of a crafted IO to it's maximum level. So if I want to start crafting my sets in the 30s and 40s I can enhance them to 50s when I reach maximum level.

Actually this might work better as very cheap enhancers that add or subtract a level from a crafted IO up to its maximum for the set or down to its minimum for the set. You could use an many of these as you want on a particular IO and they would change the "base" IO level such that the IO could still be enhanced to +5.

(The goal here is I'd like to start working on sets for my end game build in the 30s and later boosting them instead of rushing to level 47 so I can use IOs with maximum enhancement values.)

~ Alternately an enhancer that modifies a crafted IO to have a variable level like the ones the store sells.

~ A change over from hero to villain and vice versa for those who don't want to do all the tip missions and wait the 4 days.

~ Power set respec within an AT. This would allow people to repick primary and secondary powers on a particular character. It would probably make decent money.

~ A temporary +Accuracy buff power. This toggle costs no End and will last 6 hours of game time.

~ A temporary +Endurance buff power. This toggle costs no End and will last 6 hours of game time.

~ A temporary +Recharge buff power. This toggle costs no End and will last 6 hours of game time.

~ A wand (like the Cure Lost wand) that transforms Master Illusionists to Rikti Monkeys. Make it 50 charges.