My Two Cents on SBEs

Hey, I read a bunch of the replies to the SBE (Store Bought Enhancements for those of you who are like me and can't keep up with all the acronyms) discussion in TwoHeadedBoy's Peacebringer build thread, and I wanted to put in my two cents.

However, since his thread was specifically about his Peacebringer build, I figured I'd go ahead and made a thread specifically for this discussion, because I find it highly interesting and because I was tired of having everyone post an opinion directly followed by "sorry about thread derailment"....lol

One particular thing jumped out at me in that thread:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison I don't get this sentiment. You "beat the game" your way, and someone else just paid to unlock it. He shortchanged himself out of what you would enjoy. It doesn't take anything away from your accomplishments. He doesn't post videos of a warshade soloing level 54 AVs. Even if he does, he can't boast the "I earned all this stuff the 'hard' way." Nothing they do can take away from what you have done.

This is pretty much my sentiment. It isn't the enhancements that suddenly make a character good, although it helps. It is the PLAYER. I've always said that if I let some other inexperienced City of Heroes player jump on my Warshade (my fiance, for example) and try to play it, I guarantee you she wouldn't be able to be nearly as effective with it as I am.

Why? Because I'm an elitist and I think I'm better than everyone else? Well...maybe, but that's beside the point. No, it's because I've put over 2,000 hours on that single character alone (not including time spent on the other Kheldians I've created). Nothing beats experience. Nothing. That's what I want THB to realize. Sure, it may "cheapen" your experience if someone else buys all the same enhancements that you have and make the same "carbon copy" of a toon that you've made, but....so what? All of those enhancements are available to everyone in the playerbase anyway. They'll get it via illegal means if they don't get it via NCSoft. Believe me, someone who is that set on copying you and trying to "act" like their toon is just as good as yours will do it. What they can't "automatically acquire" is the experience you have playing that AT. They can't automatically acquire the ability to solo lvl 54 AVs like THB has done. That takes experience, which is the result of time and practice.

I totally get where THB's are coming from, believe it or not... Technically, I could have been just as upset as him about the incarnate system when they released it... Why? Because it "cheapened" a lot of the accomplishments I had made with my human-only WS build up to that point. Taking on Malta, Arachnos, and Carnies with a human-only build used to be a pretty big accomplishment before Clarion, Lore pets, Reactive, and other iPowers, and I used to enjoy posting videos about being able to handle them before most people could. Now everyone can do that. Easily.

But...then I realized that the important thing wasn't that "only I" could do those things. It was the experienced gained from doing them before it became easy. No one else gets that--except for the people who purposefully challenge themselves to do it without "I win" powers... And those are the kind of people I want on my team.

My 20+ billion influence Warshade would probably play like crap in the hands of someone who didn't know what they were doing. And, I can take comfort in the fact that NCSoft will never be able to put "AlienOne's 2000+ hours experience on his Warshade" up for sale in the market.

However, if they do, then I better get a cut.

"Alien"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades The way you play changes your IO slotting..

On topic. I care about how people are when teamed with me. I care not for how they got there, not for what they do in their own personal time or even what they had for breakfast. I know people may feel robbed of their time for having to do things the time consuming way but the market is reliant on people paying for things from having to spend time going to work and doing stuff, maybe the prices aren't reflective, maybe they are.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlienOne My 20+ billion influence Warshade would probably play like crap in the hands of someone who didn't know what they were doing. And, guess what? I can take comfort in the fact that NCSoft will never be able to put "AlienOne's 2000+ hours experience on his Warshade" up for sale in the market.

I'm trying to get an idea of the average output of Dark Extraction can I watch you farm.

I am on the same side as you Alien. Not to mention as a casual player (10 to 20 hours in a week tops) I find thst this kind of options being better and as I said before many times I don't think anyone who is not dedicated to this game will buy SBE's anyway since there are many gold farmers around the corner which just gives inf cheap.

True story. I have met a variety of people in the game and I can tell you hands down that the people who are always bragging about how "expensive" their character is are the worst people to play with. Oddly enough, with all of the "prices" being so low lately, I bet those people who spent 30 Billion on enhancements are crying because everyone else can now afford to buy those formerly expensive things.

I find it sad that the whole concept of "experience" needs to even be stressed. But, I suppose it comes with the territory of having a long-running game like this. New people want to be able to come right in and rumble with the big dogs. Then they find out the hard way they need to go back to school.

The way I look at it...

...as long as more money is going to NCsoft to keep this game going...I'm happy.

I guess the reason the SBE's bother me is that selling gear is a line I've never seen any other MMO cross. (There may be others out there that have, and I just don't know about them, but none of the ones I've ever tried out/looked into did.) There's a variety of reasons why this could be a bad move, but I admit that I may be overreacting with regard to CoH. I don't like it, but it may turn out to be OK after all, given this particular game's culture and history.

So for the moment I guess you could say I'm concerned.

I actually think SBEs are good for this game. It takes away the power of the "black market" by giving people a way to legally buy things. And, it puts more of that money in the pocket of the game developers rather than going to a bunch of people who are really doing it illegally.

Also, keep in mind that the store-bought enhancements are "attuned" and are account bound. It isn't like you can go spend your points on them and turn around and make a profit on them.