Curse

spiritofcat · Jun 09, 2005, 04:16 AM // 04:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by stengah

HOWEVER i'm totally againt the Consumables idea, it would make the pvp pointless and simply destroy the game (yeah you know ... auto potion scripts etc + the pvp is balanced, why unbalance it ?)

As I said, it would have to be balanced carefully.
If you're worried about PVP then maybe they should only be usable in PVE.

Mo/R9 · Jun 09, 2005, 04:17 AM // 04:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Khift

Perhaps have these houses as an addition to the Guild Hall? As in, you get your sigil to buy a Guild Hall, then the guild leader can pay some arbitrary amount of gold to "add" land to the Guild Hall island which can later be used as a housing development for the guild members. This could, essentially, combine two gold sinks into one, seeing as the extra land could be used not just for housing but also for extra additions to the Guild Hall, like a storage facility (Xunlai or guild-centered), a practice arena, or even a drinking hall, all of which costs the guild money and acts as a very large gold sink.

But then again, maybe I'm just a town builder.

I have but one thing to say, Age of Empires.

EDIT: I like the idea though, perhaps an armoury too?

MoldyRiceFrenzy · Jun 09, 2005, 04:57 AM // 04:57

Great ideas dude. plastic surgery woot woot

spiritofcat · Jun 09, 2005, 05:17 AM // 05:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoldyRiceFrenzy

Great ideas dude. plastic surgery woot woot

Yes, total character model respec, not just hair!
I dunno, seems sort of wrong to be able to do like Michael Jackson and change from black to white, or tall to short. Change sex too?

Poppinjay · Jun 09, 2005, 05:29 AM // 05:29

I posted about this a while ago.

Let players buy items such as statues of themselves placed in prominant places that go up in price the larger they are.

Monuments, buying special emotes, anythign like that will pull money out of the game.

I will try to find my longer post on the subject and past it here.

Pop

Galatea · Jun 09, 2005, 05:37 AM // 05:37

A long while back in the BWE's, I had suggested consumables - food & drink, medicines, bandages, etc.. that were one-time use, and would apply TEMPORARY stat boots (extra +20 health, or instant heal of +50). The temporary enchantments would last for only 30 seconds, but good if you are solo and don't have someone or the skill to cast on yourself.

People didn't seem to like the idea, but I guess now that we need money sinks, who knows? I like the idea of consumables. Even in FFXI, I would craft up foods & buy foods just because they were cool to have, not even because I needed them -- like this sugar cake thing. I didn't need it at all, but it was pretty to look at, lol.

Khift · Jun 09, 2005, 03:56 PM // 15:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mo/R9

I have but one thing to say, Age of Empires.

EDIT: I like the idea though, perhaps an armoury too?

Cossacks works better.

RTSFirebat · Jun 09, 2005, 03:58 PM // 15:58

Make TRAVEL STONES... which cost a small 20-50 fee to charge up using a NPC in major cities... using the travel stone you can teleport to towns, which costs a single use!

All they need to do is add a travel stone circle in towns where teleport in... that way at least it make sense! Plus 20-50 gold for being able to travel insantly from any place in the world to another is a good pay off.

Stones like these are often called "Recall stones"... but teleport Stone is more fitting.

Talesin Darkbriar · Jun 09, 2005, 04:04 PM // 16:04

Gold sink ideas:
1.) Offer expendables for combat: scrolls, potions, and salves - that give temporary benefits to the user. GW has a good handle on how to balance this in regards to duration, effect, and reuse timers.

2.) More eye candy for sale: Players love anything that allows them to distinguish themselves from others; offer additional items that give no additional beneficial effects other than a unique look. Including; mounts, boats, helm ornamentation, special effects (glows, sparks, smoke, etc.) exotic pets (not ranger pets) and perhaps even the ability to have NPCs do certain emotes upon greeting you - "Hail Prince Rurik" (as the merchant kneels before him)

3.) Allow Guild hall customization; furniture, banners, pennons, flags, and trophies from named monsters defeated! What's a guildhall without a full sized skull of Glint adorning the entry hallway?

May your skills prevail,

Talesin

Caimbeul · Jun 09, 2005, 05:11 PM // 17:11

They could just charge some gold when people teleports themselves from one area to another. The farer the other town/outpost is, the much it could cost!

DrSLUGFly · Jun 09, 2005, 05:16 PM // 17:16

I posted this in another gold sink thread, and a lot of it repeats Talesin's ideas... I won't think of it as repetition, but rather support of good ideas (the OP ideas for player customization were pretty sweet too)

Quote:

Originally Posted by me in another place... another time...

Guild Hall upgrades!!! 15p for a new addition. If they took the (what is it, 6?) existing guild halls, then designed maybe like 10 possible additions to them with steadily increasing prices, that would work for a limited but plenty drawn out money sink. Example:

-guild storage: 5p
-PvP (guild only) training area: 10p
-Assembly Hall (to which you can invite other players or open it up like a city to whoever wants to go there): 20p
-Menagerie (using a special, expensive, item your guild can capture miscellaneous (and unlimited) creatures from the map and imprison them in your hall. They could later be released for guild only gladiator matches): upgrade-30p, 1 cage (reusable)-10p
-Land purchase (maybe 5 or 10 extra maps available only to guild halls who have purchased the land, complete with quests and mobs and even a few unique mobs): 20p each

Just these 5 items each could potentially cost up to 85p, and if you max out your cages (say 20) and your land (say 10) then you're looking at 385p for a fully upgraded guild hall.

Add to this decorations like statues and extra flags, paintings (it wouldn't be hard to make a "painting" feature of officers and the leader or npc's, creatures etc.) at 5p each.

You could be looking at a fully decked out hall worth over 500p easy. Now that Celestial Sigils don't sell for 100p each (do they?), this would be a great money sink.

edit: these were all ideas on the fly, I'm sure that if the devs sat down and thought about it, they could easily include 10 or 20 other items/upgrades with the expansion that could cost in total something like 2 or 3000 plat. This would give cool objectives to PvE players other than levelling, and give a reason to enter the economy and trade with the community.

Poppinjay · Jun 09, 2005, 06:07 PM // 18:07

Tax the rich.

Every day calculate a each players total assets for all their chars, and tax them based on a scaling system, so that the super wealthy are taxed highly and newbies are not taxed at all.

Also consumables are good, but they need not give a real game advantage adn shift balace. People would pay tons of money for "bragging" items, like statues that they can make bigger and bigger (the larger the statue, the larger the cost). More ability to customize---change hair, etc. Monuments. Fireworks displays. I am sure people would drop LOTS of money to collect new emotes. All these things are very easy to add and would let a lot of the money back out of the game.

I have suggested this about a dozen times. I don't know why the programmers have not picked up on it.

POp

Poppinjay · Jun 09, 2005, 06:11 PM // 18:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by RTSFirebat

Make TRAVEL STONES... which cost a small 20-50 fee to charge up using a NPC in major cities... using the travel stone you can teleport to towns, which costs a single use!

All they need to do is add a travel stone circle in towns where teleport in... that way at least it make sense! Plus 20-50 gold for being able to travel insantly from any place in the world to another is a good pay off.

Stones like these are often called "Recall stones"... but teleport Stone is more fitting.

won't work well enough. It would be a real burden to the poor players and nothing to the wealthy ones. Also it will not allow for that much money to escape the game.

Give the players some things that they can spend as much money as they want on. Guilds would compete to see who can build the biggest statue or monument? Who puts their signs up in the choice areas. And so forth.

Since the monuments can constantly grow there is no real limit as to how much money people can spend on these and still get the benefit of making their statues or monuments bigger. Price should increase by volume.

Pop

Poppinjay · Jun 09, 2005, 06:24 PM // 18:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Talesin Darkbriar

Gold sink ideas:
1.) Offer expendables for combat: scrolls, potions, and salves - that give temporary benefits to the user. GW has a good handle on how to balance this in regards to duration, effect, and reuse timers.

2.) More eye candy for sale: Players love anything that allows them to distinguish themselves from others; offer additional items that give no additional beneficial effects other than a unique look. Including; mounts, boats, helm ornamentation, special effects (glows, sparks, smoke, etc.) exotic pets (not ranger pets) and perhaps even the ability to have NPCs do certain emotes upon greeting you - "Hail Prince Rurik" (as the merchant kneels before him)

3.) Allow Guild hall customization; furniture, banners, pennons, flags, and trophies from named monsters defeated! What's a guildhall without a full sized skull of Glint adorning the entry hallway?

May your skills prevail,

Talesin

It seems we are thinking along similar lines. I have some concerns about #1 for game balance reasons, but the developers should not miss the point that players will spend all kinds of money for things are are just fun but give no pvp or pve advantage.

Let people play for dancing lessons to learn the dances of other professions, or entirely new emotes.

I LOVE the idea of collecting trophies for named mobs.

Let people throw firework shows in their guilds honor.

I think my idea of increasingly large statues is a good idea as well. Also the materials they are made out of could vary in price. The top 7 best monuments could be called the wonders of the world and change periodically as people are outdone.

Let people by exotic dyes for their hair that fade out over time.

Many of these things would take VERY little programming to introduce, very few new graphics, and have no balance issues that the devs need to think through. Nobody becomes more powerful because they have a larger statue or more trophy bosses in their "wax museum" (or whatever) to show off.

Heck, even let guilds bid to place a message of the day that people see when they log on. They could brag in them, or advertise for more members, or whatever---and if people are bidding against each other the price for this every day could get quite high.

All with no balance issues at all.

Poppinjay

Xight · Jun 09, 2005, 08:30 PM // 20:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Talesin Darkbriar

Gold sink ideas:
1.) Offer expendables for combat: scrolls, potions, and salves - that give temporary benefits to the user. GW has a good handle on how to balance this in regards to duration, effect, and reuse timers.

2.) More eye candy for sale: Players love anything that allows them to distinguish themselves from others; offer additional items that give no additional beneficial effects other than a unique look. Including; mounts, boats, helm ornamentation, special effects (glows, sparks, smoke, etc.) exotic pets (not ranger pets) and perhaps even the ability to have NPCs do certain emotes upon greeting you - "Hail Prince Rurik" (as the merchant kneels before him)

3.) Allow Guild hall customization; furniture, banners, pennons, flags, and trophies from named monsters defeated! What's a guildhall without a full sized skull of Glint adorning the entry hallway?

May your skills prevail,

Talesin

I would love the idea to be able to upgrade a guild halls items with craft goods. IE Build a storage area with granite slabs, and wood planks. The only I see wrong with the guild add ons with materials required is that I think it will actually promote farming instead of actually being a gold sink. People want the items as bragging rights, but this will drive up the cost for materials if its done that way. Even if it is a gold only purchase, people would farm to get the gold to buy these items. It looks like ArenaNet is trying very hard to get people away from farming so this might not be a viable gold 'sink'.

You want something like the Ale for the people end game to just splurge extra money on. Fairly inexpensive to not promote farming at end game, with no effect on gameplay cept to make people a little happier.

Consumables sound interesting, but I don't think it really has a place here in GW. The lack of it promotes teamplay, and not depending on just yourself or your items. For pvp I think it would unabalance it pretty much. Right now there is a counter to pretty much any skill set/combo. What is there to combat consumables? I think maybe more general skills like rez signet maybe a better solution? 1 time per map consumable use, general access by anyone. However since it's a skill its affected by in game countermeasures. Maybe even put a price on it that is similar to capture signet. That way lower levels pay less to use it, and end game pvpers who have money pay more for it. (capture signet price goes up each purchase, but only because the amount of skills that you accumulated goes up. If its consumable, then you will 'lose' one skill so the price to buy it again should be the same. Also if you buy more than one it will go up for each consumable skill (but only by 5-10 each))

I like the eye candy idea a lot. This would be a nice option to have, and I think it's a great idea.

Trophies I think are a fun idea as well. Maybe even a list of named mobs that have been slayed.

I would love a spectator section in the arena accessable via a small admission fee. Though I can see how it can be abused by people giving off party locations via TS/Vent.

Player Entrance fees to a 1v1, 2v2, 4v4, gvg tournament map. Small entrance fee with a Pot for top 3 placers. This would be kinda fun too

Bergrom · Jun 09, 2005, 09:22 PM // 21:22

I have noted many excellent ideas in this thread but one of the objections was that once enhancements/cosmetics are bought, they cease to be a gold sink. I, for one, fear in-game inflation and like the gold-sink idea. Therefore, have some things, like traders, guild vault, etc, RENTED rather than bought. The long-term cost would likely exceed the various costs suggested above.

In addition to the anti-inflationary aspect, this concept forces guilds to evaluate whether such an addition to their guild hall is worth the pay out. Player model cosmetic changes would almost have to be purchase rather than rent.

DeemosQB · Jun 09, 2005, 09:37 PM // 21:37

Hey do yous guys think the ale was a result of this thread??

Lewick · Jun 09, 2005, 10:15 PM // 22:15

I believe consumables that give buffs has been discussed a few times before and the PvP crowd had a very compelling argument against it. Any consumable in PvP can completely alter the gameplay, as I remember. You can get the +3 regen off statues in PvE, but you can't get them in PvP. Most of what needs to be thought of needs to be done with both PvE and PvP in mind. And this is coming from a PvE person...

Planswalker89 · Jun 09, 2005, 11:19 PM // 23:19

Don't forget the dyes already in the game. I mean, obviously it isn't much of a gold sink, becuase we're discussing others, but someday once I get rich (which'll probably be never, but I can still dream, no?) I'm going to try and get a ton of dyes and give my armor (whatever it is I decide on) some kickass color to differentiate myself from everyone else.

That's cosmetic, if you use it. Though, the fact the dye bottles can be sold kinda gets rid of a lot of the possible money sink. But it's still a sink, if not a very small one.

spiritofcat · Jun 10, 2005, 12:33 AM // 00:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeemosQB

Hey do yous guys think the ale was a result of this thread??

Nope, I started this thread after the ale appeared.

Bergrom, if new cosmetic enhancements were periodically made available it would continue to be a gold sink, but I see your point, it is somewhat limited.

Planswalker, dye, as it currently stands is actually an anti-sink. It drops for free and is sold for huge amounts of money. The way it really needs to be is that it is only available from an NPC merchant, and it can't be re-sold. Maybe the merchant would dye your armour for you...

Travel Stones, I don't quite understand the idea there. We can already instantly teleport to any town we want. Do you mean maybe something like Mark and Recal? So we could mark a position on the map (say, in the middle of an explorable area) and then teleport to there for a fee?

Poppinjay, Hair dye that fades, that's brilliant! Perfect dynamic for a gold sink!