Friday with Means - February 6th, 2009

[scenenheard]

welcome to the Cotton Wool World!

Seriously, a 220 can earn 20m per hour from selling loot to NPCs obtained from sl statics.... then there's the chance of the phats... and don't tell me thats crap, coz I've even timed it over a day @ 219

[Technogen]

In the end I would say 1m a Level is to much.

Make the perk reset cost between 250k to 500k a Level and you'd be gold, but it does need to reflect level.

Time make it between 72 hours and 1 week.

[Hacre]

In the end I would say 1m a Level is to much.

Make the perk reset cost between 250k to 500k a Level and you'd be gold, but it does need to reflect level.

Time make it between 72 hours and 1 week.

This.

48-72 hours is a more than adequate lockout and still a huge time saver.

50-100m for a 220 to potentially drop SEVENTY perks at once, is a bargain.

[ThePartisan]

So basically, rich players want it to be expensive so that they can enjoy the feeling that they have something poor players don't, and poor players want it to be cheap because... they want it too.

Then people in between, like me, not rich, not poor, don't see any reason to make people waste time either on slow resets or farming money for fast resets. I think a feature like this should be accessible to basically everybody. It's not something that makes you more powerful; it doesn't give you any higher AR, HP, AAD or anything else, and it's DEFINITELY not a Ferrari, nor can it be compared to anything of the sort. Quite the opposite, it's just a time saver. A Ferrari doesn't really get you faster to Scotland, unless you wanna break the law, it's nothing but a status symbol, and I don't think faster perk resets should be a status symbol.

[Technogen]

Its 1 not removing normal normal perks, its a credit sink and time saver, thats it.

2, There is NO other use in game for having a high number of credits.

3, I've only got 85m on me so I'm not exactly rolling in the cred if you think I'm one of the ones with 1b on 10 froob accounts.

[erozc]

Another happy friday, maybe if these updates keep coming up with the same standard I won't need my friday-bottle no more...

Hot topic 1: Instanced pande and the chance of non-instanced 'super-pande'. It sounds very cool that you're considering both options. I can see good things in having both available. Pande raids, as they are, remain interesting as a gathering of a faction. APF doesn't do the same now since it's instanced.

Hot topic 2: Booster team instance. Would be cool to get something not seen before. Obviously, software acceptance testing is a damn hard job and if it's not on test it's just gonna be alpha tested. Things will break. How badly, remains to be seen. How fast can you fix those breaking things? Will people /wrists because they accidentally a whole AMS in the instance because of these likely bugs? It'd be a bold move and I'd enjoy it as a player to get something that there's no guide for in AOU. As a software engineer, I'd probably advise against it. Depends on the abovementioned issues, though, and other testing-related things I won't go on about here..

Hot topic 3: Perk resets. Good idea to reset multiple perks at once. I do think there should be some cost associated with it. It most definitely should be scaled to level. On pricing, I can only give my personal opinion, concerning lvl220 perk reset options:

• 20 mil or less: I'd do it happily if I needed to reset over 8 or so perks.
• 50 mil: Would definitely use if I had a set of 300 symbs waiting.
• 100 mil: Maybe... Probably... I would use it for one-way perk reseting with the 300 symbs.
• 150m or more: I'd have to be really hard pushed to pay that for such a thing.

On the lockout timer: 72h sounds completely reasonable to me. Less than 48 sounds bad. Over 96 hours starts to sound bad again. So 48-96 is my flavor of the moment.

[ThePartisan]

2, There is NO other use in game for having a high number of credits.

L O L ? I definitely need to start smoking something, because people are going on all kinds of trips without me...



But anyway. The best gear in the game will be paid for with lots of credits or lots of time getting it, and that's fine. It makes you more powerful, they are status symbols. EXPENSIVE for a reason.

Faster perk resets...? Heck no.

[Rewo]

good and profitable idea for FC:

for 100.000 paid points let all endgame stuff to be transferred on a character.
another 100.000 for straight AI 30.
another for lvl 220

so you can make your endgame char in 5 minutes and dont have to bother with the boring aspects of the game... just play it!

I really hope my sarcasm detection is on hiatus atm because if serious then that is definitely the absolute worst suggestion in the history of AO.

[Nuclearsmeg]

This.

48-72 hours is a more than adequate lockout and still a huge time saver.

50-100m for a 220 to potentially drop SEVENTY perks at once, is a bargain.

Agree again, but let me point out I'm against this idea of faster resets.

If you're going to do it..it needs to come at a price for the convenience. The old way should work just fine.

250k - 500k per toon level.

I lean more towards the 72-96 hour lockout.

[Lheann]

48-72 hours is a more than adequate lockout and still a huge time saver.

48 hours = 24 perks old way. So what about my 74 twink with 14 perks or 28 hours one way and 28 hours back the old way. If I have move all of them that 56 hours to move them. A savings of 8 hours. Should it take longer to use the PAID method than the the old way? And that would not be 100% faster as means said.

So a 60 TOTW twink would be faster old way and cheaper. A 24 Subway twink would be WAY faster. A 30 tower twink would be faster the old way. Ok it may be me but fixed is not cutting it when you look at the range of players that would like to use it.

Please get real and stop living 220/30/70 life. There is much more to the game than that. It has to be viable at all levels. No FIXED time/cost works at all levels. If they don't do a scaling method all the people in this thread will be complaining when they pay XX credits to reset a lower level twink and realize it would have been faster and easier the old way.

And as for making credits. Yeah 5 mil an hour at 150 is easy from SL statics. If you are 140 and can fight a certain mob type solo in a certain static you can make that about 20 to 25 mil an hour on pearl drops and get really good XP for research or whatever. And if you don't know what static I am referencing then maybe your rush to 220 let you miss a huge part of the game.

The end result is that we are getting something we asked for. Remeber city upkeep was considered a modest cost when they add them to the game. So that should be a good reference for what FC thinks is modest.

[drakonman]

So basically, rich players want it to be expensive so that they can enjoy the feeling that they have something poor players don't, and poor players want it to be cheap because... they want it too.

Then people in between, like me, not rich, not poor, don't see any reason to make people waste time either on slow resets or farming money for fast resets. I think a feature like this should be accessible to basically everybody. It's not something that makes you more powerful; it doesn't give you any higher AR, HP, AAD or anything else, and it's DEFINITELY not a Ferrari, nor can it be compared to anything of the sort. Quite the opposite, it's just a time saver. A Ferrari doesn't really get you faster to Scotland, unless you wanna break the law, it's nothing but a status symbol, and I don't think faster perk resets should be a status symbol.

well said.

now i really don't post much on forums, but some stuff people say about the cost and time is plain ridiculous and stupid. But everyone can have an opinion and i can respect that.

The fee:
In my opinion, as some of our beloved play mates suggested (and as it is natural imho), the fee should be something rather symbolic...i don't know like the rookie fee in apf. No one gives a crap if u spent 5 years of your life farming mp nanos or whatever 16 hours a day. Not everyone is that hardcore. Want a cred sink? sure...roll a new toon, dress him up in AI armor, buy him a rpb goc and a full set of symbs and there you have it ....few months of farming hardcore style, and on top of it you have a reward for it: a brand new high end toon.

I am not overly rich either....well except the gear i have on my only tl7 toon, i have a total amount of 200 mil in cash, and i had some 100 mil for a few months. Why? you may ask, since everyone keep suggesting credz are made easily nowadays. Because i'm playing to have fun, and after a hard day's work i don't wanna log in and work some more. I wanna enjoy a few hours of some chatting and pvm-ing with my org, do some bs and match my skills with other opponents. Sure i cannot afford all the equip i'd want anytime i want it...that's the downside of not being a credit farmer and that's the only advantage a person who has all the money in the game should have. PERIOD

The time lockout:

It's easy: shouldn't be more than 24 hrs...altho i'd make it even down to 6 so it would be possible to equip everything in a single twinking session.

now some will jump and say "omagad!? 6 hours?!? are you mad? no j00 must spend xxx dayz and sit on your ass like we used to back in the day" say what? do you think i will ever pay my hard earned money just to sit on my ass for a week? (or more considering i can be on for some 4 hrs a day or less). Now what would be the purpose of this huge time sink? no real reason whatsoever. Do you think it takes more skill to do it the old fashioned way? does it make it harder? does it make you smarter? no. The twinking itself is not about how much time you spend, it's about the art of figuring setups that make equipping some stuff possible. With the help of your xxxx beeelionz and farmed items or whatnot. PR-ing for a week ain't a virtue it's stupid...make it moronic even, and i hope the dude that put it in game won't ever work on a mmorpg again.

The fact:

Means obviously said the fee would be modest (obviously he has some brainz and this issue won't be subjected to change mostly) he also said the time lockout will be discussed, and by means of arguments and reason not by the whines of no lifers.

That being said, have a nice day and a happy life also.

PS: some people need to make a difference between easy and boring

[Technogen]

But anyway. The best gear in the game will be paid for with lots of credits or lots of time getting it, and that's fine. It makes you more powerful, they are status symbols. EXPENSIVE for a reason.

Actually no, end game content does not cost credits at all, players sell them to other players for credits but there is no credit sink to them besides paying for upkeep on the city and paying vendor for the nanos.


Credit sink would be removing credits from within the game, trade from 1 player to another is not a credit sink.

[drakonman]

Actually no, end game content does not cost credits at all, players sell them to other players for credits but there is no credit sink to them besides paying for upkeep on the city and paying vendor for the nanos.


Credit sink would be removing credits from within the game, trade from 1 player to another is not a credit sink.

true, BUT

making a credit sink system now after a good number of players have farmed more than 4 accounts worth of max credz per toon would make it unfair for the newer players or for those that simply don't farm credz. You can't change the rules during the game. If such a system wasn't implemented from the begining it would be stupid to put it ingame now. For example the ingots, they were removed from the game after a lot of people became rich over them, now all the newer players never had the chance to profit from that. That doesn't seem fair does it?

[shadowgod]

everyone seems to be forgetting what i've said many times before!

we should just remove all timers and costs for perks!

and while we're at it, IP resets too!

its my character and i should beable to do anything at any time!

which reminds me.. dying in this game is horridly imbalanced in favouring the rich. they clearly can afford dying more than us poor people. so i suggest we remove this too.

[Technogen]

true, BUT

making a credit sink system now after a good number of players have farmed more than 4 accounts worth of max credz per toon would make it unfair for the newer players or for those that simply don't farm credz. You can't change the rules during the game. If such a system wasn't implemented from the begining it would be stupid to put it ingame now. For example the ingots, they were removed from the game after a lot of people became rich over them, now all the newer players never had the chance to profit from that. That doesn't seem fair does it?

Yes, well Ingots isn't the only way to make cred in game obviously. Creating a sink now will help put everyone on the same field, and get rid of that "unfairness" you mentioned. If all those credits made from ingots were taken out of game then it wouldn't matter if the other people had gotten them because no one would benefit from it.

[Herkulease]

Very good news. However, I would like to ask why include a fee? The old way was simply the wrong way of doing it.

My opinion is that to prevent abuse, just put a long timer on it, but allow old perk process to still work. You can reset all of your perks at once, and reperk them all instantly. Right after, you can unperk one. Just make the lock time a couple days or a week.

If you are worried about people reperking for a duel. Just add a flag to a player after that have perk reset, 2-4 hour flag that lets everyone know they just perk reset.

That would prevent someone from asking someone else for a duel, only to find out they now suddenly have brawler, or Highway perked.


Either way, it is great. I just don't want to find out I now have to grind credits, rather then log on every 2 hours for perks. A grind is a grind is a grind. No grind= happy people. 8)

[Mekh]

...snip...
Why "more"? Because this is a luxury fast track feature. You're going from 20 hours to reset a single line, to "hey CLICK all my perks are available!". A nice luxury that should cost you something.
...snip...

All opinion ofc, but imo it's not a "luxury"... It's how it should have been from the very start...

The previous and current mechanics have gone from totally mental towards something resembling reasonable....

[drakonman]

Yes, well Ingots isn't the only way to make cred in game obviously. Creating a sink now will help put everyone on the same field, and get rid of that "unfairness" you mentioned. If all those credits made from ingots were taken out of game then it wouldn't matter if the other people had gotten them because no one would benefit from it.

I wasn't referring to ingots as being a problem, i was just making an example of unfairness of changing the rules during the game. As for putting everyone on the same field ain't exactly fair....cred sink applies to everyone equally, if a rich dude has to spend 100 mil on something so does the poor guy, but before this cred sink the rich guy didn't have to pay an of these amounts and was able to stash it...where as a newer player did not have this opportunity. see my point?

it's like finance, you cannot make a firm pay a 1 mil tax when it's profits are on the 100k range and make another firm pay the same 1 mil when it's making profit in the 10 bil range. Instead they use a % of the profit.

[meritosthene]

i dont know about 100m an hour,

but it should be pretty easy if you can farm clusters at the ace camp in efp just need a few of the rare ones (jobe clusters) or anything 290+ and youre set for a bit (if you can sell them), not to mention all the junk drops -- farming all the miy's and the various rings (essence/endurance, xp rings) and hud devices (NT bits, ncu bits, etc) on rk, pattern parts and dyna loot, novictums 200+ in sl - sure its boring - and crappy drop rates - thats why we have 8 character slots per account so we can have 8 shops full of garbage for all the lazy people to buy so in the wealth model that was prescribed earlier:

A. wealthy by some other means (grinding for credz illustrated above)

B. buying them from outside sources

C. Lazy people


A is taken care of by C and likely B

sure a credit sink would be useful to tighten the economy but i dont see charging more than 10-20m for a perk reset as an option

I like the model about perk resets costing a flat rate per title level.

[sultryvoltron]

So, I think the cost based upon level is cool. Seems to be a nice way to allow new people to reset for a moderate amount, and for high people to actually have to pay for it.

It needs to be exponential scaling though, since obviously a low level will reset far less perks than a 220, and should pay accordingly.

Going from roughly 50k at lvl 20 up to 30-50m at 220. A 200 can EASILY make 50m for a full reset in less than the time it would take to do it the long way.

It could be defined logarithmicly as a c*(level)^t, but I can't be asked to do it since I won't get paid for it