Why do friendly contacts stores cost more?

I spent my first six months in City of Heroes getting ripped off by contacts before I realized they weren't actually rewarding me for my efforts. And I've spent the last year and a half wondering why this happens.

You get to know them, slowly earning their trust, running their errands, saving them, saving their friends, saving their world. "I feel closer to you than ever, Captain-Electric," says Laura Brunetti. "Time for a number of new Enhancements to be made available to you." And then she proceeds to try to rip me off.

The normal stores that are spread around the city are always cheaper than contacts stores. They are easy to get to and shop at. Whereas contacts, for whom you have to work to prove your trustworthiness to, and who may be miles out of the way, want to reward all of your efforts by gouging you. This seems backwards to me, but I've always assumed the answer would gradually become obvious with time. Well, it hasn't.

So, what's the answer?

Because your contacts don't actually have jobs.

It's a judgement call that happens to be wrong, and is rooted in some of the old evils that "classic" RPGs and MMOs used to come standard with. One of the things an old MMO will teach you is that not all shops buy your stuff for the same price, and you'll generally get more for it in a shop that deals with that particular type of item. If multiple shops sell the same items, you'll generally get the best deal in the shops that specialise in those items. That's why he SOs you sell to the "wrong" stores, you sell at half price and the ones you sell at those "buy only" vendors in Croatoa or the Shadow Shard or to vendors standing out in the open can be sell for as little as a tenth of the price.

Why it existed in old RPGs and MMOs I can't really say. I guess it's for the sake of realism from a time before game developers had a good sense of which parts of reality to keep and which to leave out, like needing to eat food with every step in early Ultima games or drop dead. Because contacts are not specialised stores, their prices are "worse" for it. And because contacts started selling enhancements a LONG time ago before the studio resolved to stop time-sinking its players, that's not a good way to buy.

If you want a practical answer to this, it's because stores used to only sell "Power 10" enhancements, which was a collection of 10 enhancements deemed the most popular, with all others becoming available MUCH later or at a lower Tier. Contacts, at one point, were selling non-Power-10 enhancements as soon as the corresponding Power 10 became available, but sold them at a higher cost to compensate for this.

In short, it's a legacy system built around impeding players and providing a time and money sink.

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's because when the game launched, the stores weren't on the map at all.

You could go from level 1 to level 50 and never stumble across them (especially the mutant origin store in Skyway).

Your contacts were originally one of the only ways to acquire enhancements that you didn't have to stumbnle upon by sheer accident.

The devs were much more concerned about money sinks back then, that's why contact bought enhancements are so expensive. It's just never been changed.

I want to know why we still have the insanity of TO and DO enhancements

why teach players that enhancements are useless?

Capitalism is when you buy a SO for a few K at the auction house, because the supply is far greater than demand for SOs. It is also when you pay several M at market for rare stuff with high demand.

In addition, a friendly contact would likely sell stuff at a discount. Many companies have reward systems, where you get benefits if you are a trustworthy member.

Lots of things about contacts have bugged me for a long time. In a modern society, why are they willing to meet us in person before letting us contact them by phone? Why would you be willing to meet face-to-face with a super you don't yet trust, in a city rife with supervillains, where the police are too overwhelmed to protect you? Shouldn't that be the other way around, so we start with phone contact and eventually meet them in person, and meeting in person has perks, like a (preferably revamped) contact store?

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Originally Posted by dugfromthearth I want to know why we still have the insanity of TO and DO enhancements why teach players that enhancements are useless?

TOs are kinda weak. DOs definitely are not. This game is easy enough that you can get by without any enhancements until 22 if you want to, but equipping DOs at 12 definitely makes a difference.

You know how at the little mom and pop store on the corner, the cashier will greet you by name and ask how your family's doing, but they charge $1.99 for a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi?

And at the giant Walmart supercenter across town, they don't know you or much care to, but they charge 98 cents for an identical 2-liter?

Volume.

oh the evil memories.... I haven't thought about the 'power 10' in years! -=cringe=-

I remember hitting 27 and going off to Brickstown to beg someone who had already unlock my 'special' vendor to buy my level 30 SOs (reimbursed of course), since I couldn't unlock the vendor until I actually *hit* level 30.

I feel dirty just thinking about those old days...

It would make so much more sense for the contacts to give you a discount, and that would also reward players who took the time to play through the old contact trees. It would be a nice little benefit for the players who are locked out of the invention system, but it wouldn't have any significant impact on the economy as a whole.

Also, the UI for those old enhancement stores is awful. You can't just buy accuracy enhancements, you have to scroll through the list trying to remember the correct name for your chosen origin. For years I only made Mutant characters because they had the easiest enhancement names.

I can see why they wouldn't prioritize this as a fix, but I still wish they would as a QoL improvement.

Why have to/dos? Well, it used to take _a long time_ to level. Unless you were a fa/ tank.But they are totally useless now. Also, as was pointed out elsewhere, before Peregrin Island was around, the ONLY place you could get things were at the contacts, eg your contact in Bricks.

From the standpoint of "game logic," the Mom and Pop Store versus Volume probably makes the most sense.

From the Developer standpoint, it created a bit of a money sink and a much bigger TIME sink as players scurried off to the various stores in the zones and/or remote locations that paid the most for their dropped enhancements after missions and TFs. I would often hear teammates say "Selling" upon exiting a mission, and off they would go. And you got the best prices at the stores for the particular type of ORIGIN for the enhancement you were selling. Some folks went to each store so as to get the most infl.

I learned very quickly to be careful to buy and sell at the best locations, and VERY often I would still be too broke to buy all the new SOs I needed when they went red on me. I often would burn a Freespec in order to get the infl from selling all my red SOs, otherwise, I would lack enhancements in any number of slots. It took time to go to the right store, but it meant a lot over time.

Once Inventions and the Market showed up, my infl worries were over. But just before then, my brother-in-law, who never upgraded his SOs unless I stood over his shoulder (and I had to plan and print out his build for him, bless his heart) finally hit 50 on his AR/Dev Blaster. He had the jaw-dropping sum of 27 million infl, pretty much because he never bought anything, sold most everything that dropped and took so long to hit 50.

27 million today, well, chump change. Back in the day when I had to delay getting a cape since I could not pay the tailor the 30,000 he wanted, it was a fortune. Buying and selling in the right place back then could mean a difference of a million or two by your mid-thirties, which was serious SO funding. Now, you tip the vendor at Wentworth's that much when you land that Billion Plus Enhancement.

Just one of those old funky Statesman-isms that never got fixed (he never even wanted the stores to be marked on the maps, if I remember right)

Enhancements sell for more to the proper origin store. Contacts are wankers that overprice their enhancements even though you had to unlock their inventory compared to just going to the store (since stores were "secret"?) Contacts were good to buy Insps from...well, until arena store and AE insp vendor and nurses in the hospitals...

I still laugh at the badge they put at the Freedom Corps store in IP. "So far out of the way it's regarded as the cursed job assignment to work there"

I remember acting as a go between, buying DOs and SOs that weren't the "Power 10" for lower level characters. Felt like buying beer for high schoolers. I remember Endurance Mods were in high demand from those taking Stamina at Level 20.

For some godforsaken reason, I was reminded of power 10 enhancements the other day when I found that Ghost Falcon won't buy or sell if you're on a task force.

And as for contacts only selling inspirations, I remember doing the Positron task force for the first time, and none of us were really well equipped to fight the large spawns of Vahzilok and Circle of Thorns, all of which spawned at the TF's level limit (15, I think?) meaning a lot of the TF was purple to many of the participants. I remember specifically going to buy inspirations and discovering that none of my contacts would talk to me. We had to have one of the other players switch characters to buy inspirations for us.

Quality of life was not a significant concern in this game's initial design, I don't think. I think the predominant design theory was to put as many roadblocks as possible to the detriment of quality of life, even if it didn't increase actual gameplay difficulty. I'm not sure how much still exists. All I can think of at the moment is that rest still has a recharge.