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The price of Uniqueness
ViperHoundz
Member Posts: 46
I had a little idea floating araound in my head, that could potentially increase box sales and add a little uniqueness to the MMO players. I will try to use Starwars and naruto as a starting point.
Say in "star wars galaxies" 1 out of every 10 boxes sold the purchasees' acct is flagged for the "force" Meaning any character on this acct has "force" powers..
In Naruto 1 out of 10 boxes sold, the acct might have tailed beast sealed in side every character made.
I hope you kind of understand where I was trying to go with this, would you as a mmo gamer pay for a chance of uniqueness?
It is basically a lottery system for uniqueness and unique abilites.
Comments
I don't like this idea, simply because it is a Pay to Win way of thinking, at least in my opinion.
What i mean by that is this: A lot of people would either...
1) Buy boxes until they eventually got the 1 out of 10 unlocks.
2) Sell the "Force" unlocked accounts, increasing traffic through sites like Gold Farmer sites in China.
3) If you didn't get a 'special' account, you'd feel cheated. This isn't a fun way to start playing the game.
I think that instead of making players feel special, it would actually do the opposite- it would make most people feel UNspecial. That's the exact opposite of the intention.
I'd like to add this: it might be a better idea if, once a character was created, there was a small chance that they get the 'special'. This way it is based on character creation, as opposed to not. In a system where there is permadeath, it would work. Without permadeath, there would need to be permadeath for 'special' characters, or loss of special powers, and obviously very SIMPLE fixes to possible flaws like creating tons of characters to try to unlock a special one. (Obviously the game would either need one character slot, or tell the player that they only have one chance per [real life time] or that they have to [accomplish goal] before given another chance to unlock the power.
Honestly, as a game designer, I just don't like the idea unless there is permadeath.
Don't think it would work for a mainstream themepark MMO. Look what happened to SWG when it tried to cater to the mainstream crowd. They made Jedi a selectable class.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Agreed, especially number 3. The gambling element can be applied to many things in game (loot tables, chance of items breaking, etc.), but it would be a mistake to tie it to the purchase of the game itself. When something incorporates random chance, the draw is supposed to be that after losing, the player feels driven to try again because "maybe next time I'll get lucky". That doesn't apply here.
If I understand it correctly, Blizzard's WoW-branded trading card game (packs of trading cards where some rare cards contain promo codes for in-game WoW mounts/pets) is essentially this model.
No thanks.
id rather my uniqueness be things I CHOOSE, not things i arbitrarilly can or cant be.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
if you could pull off unlocking a force sensitive character you got the second slot, but it made them vary rare, and therefore very unbalanced considering it was an alpha elite profession that at first took large groups to take down 1 Jedi.
with any systems like the two you describe you walk a fine line between angering current players and allowing for a unique and rare opportunity to become far more powerful then everyone else, which in turn create animosity toward the developer.
My game i currently have in post production will use something similar that you describe. every 1 in 20 players per server will unlock a true human. since my game is based on aliens (grays) wiping out humanity and replacing every human with hybrids, it makes sense that once you unlock a true human you will get the extra slot.
Also a true human will directly seek to destroy the culture that wiped out his species and replaced it so the primary antagonist is the first true human revived from his frozen death. he is also very powerful due to the fact they wiped out the human race because they were entering a final phase of evolution biologically that gave us the power to control matter on a very powerful level with our minds.
I was inspired by SWG on that fact, but I'm still debating myself on how to do it without pissing people off to no end by allowing an alpha character who can change the very nature of matter and physics with his thoughts. I'm curious to see other peoples replies here to help me flesh out the pros and the cons of an alpha class.
"Not even a cray super computer can make this game run well. Thats what happens when you code an MMO in pascal. " - miglor
if you and i pay the same price for game X and you get unique items and i get nothing...... i ask for my refund right away.
Thats what many wrongly managed F2P games do with lucky boxes.... you buy 20 boxes for a chance that one of them drops a unique mount...... maybe the one who bought 2 boxes got the mount while the one who bought 20 boxes didnt get any.,.....
horrible cash grab.... i dont support those practices. Uniqueness comes from a development standpoint, not from shady cash grab practices.
Some may like it, personally I don't. I don't mind paying for something and that something also gives a chance of something else. E.g. pay for collectors edition for maps, cloths... and you get a chance of force. But no way would that be my sole reason for buying anything.
Buy 10 accounts, when I only need one (or two depending on the game and my playstyle), ignore 9 others all for a chance of something. No thanks.
Something for nothing. I smell corrupt staff.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.