Topic: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

I'm wondering if there should be an option to reset your account, but you have to buy it, like £10 or £20 or something.

Either someone really screws up their training, wants to correct past mistakes, or a new patch just came out and completely changed the game. All of these are valid reasons that someon would want to reset their account.

You buy an account reset code, apply it, and it gives you the account reset option, delete all characters, reset account, get all EP back.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

I would pay for an EP reset if it meant only the EP and not the character. Also there was no loss of EP, so that twenty percent EP loss would have to disappear. Just make a time limit, like reformatting the spark can only happen once per six months

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

But it's free now.  I'd rather do it for free. O.o

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I play MMOs. I need a signature which is deep, thought provoking, and devours bandwidth with the voracity of rabid weasels. It is also, by nature, vaguely sad with a tinge of my obvious internal, unfathomable loneliness. Like this, sad  , but at 1.3megs packed into 2 by 6 inches. ANIMATED.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

Current dev setup as described in blog is way better than resets.

Paid stuff I'm not a big fan of. But once a year resets for free seems fine.

Winter Solstice wrote:

But it's free now.  I'd rather do it for free. O.o

Free one time. After that you lose EP I think.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

First time free them there is a twenty percent loss of EP. That loss is perminent and can not be gotten back.

6 (edited by Winter Solstice 2011-07-17 18:00:12)

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

But its still FREE.  ie. no money comes out of my wallet.  I give my time, in a sense, voluntarily, to a game after I spend my monthly fee. 

edit: I guess after 6 months 20% is 9.95usd worth of points that you'd be preserving but Id still argue it.  Its setting off something 'wrongness' in my head.

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I play MMOs. I need a signature which is deep, thought provoking, and devours bandwidth with the voracity of rabid weasels. It is also, by nature, vaguely sad with a tinge of my obvious internal, unfathomable loneliness. Like this, sad  , but at 1.3megs packed into 2 by 6 inches. ANIMATED.

7 (edited by Purgatory 2011-07-17 18:20:42)

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

Kamikazie wrote:

First time free them there is a twenty percent loss of EP. That loss is perminent and can not be gotten back.

Soon to be removed in a coming patch.

NO MORE ACCOUNT RESETS COMING IN A PATCH SOON!

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

The penalty system was just fine before except the fact that the 20% is too brutal. It should start at like 5-10% and increase by 5% or so every time.

Giving the +/- option seems more exploitable to me but what do I know

9 (edited by Jack Jombardo 2011-07-18 04:26:23)

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

No.

It would result in "FOTM jumping". Any patch people would respec to the new OP stuff (what ever it would be).

And some hardcore corps might expect you to respec to what they need for every ops (one time EW, next time RR, then heavy mech, after this small roming spezialist, weekend miner to get resurces). And yes, I know such corps/guilds from other games where you have to pay for it with real money wink.

1) no EP is wasted, it might just take a bit longer till you perfect a carier
2) plan your Agent. There are realy good recurses which help you.

When MMOs start a Avatar was your alter-ego. It was YOU in digital form. People where proude of their unique online beeing.
What happend? sad

Winter Solstice wrote:

But its still FREE.  ie. no money comes out of my wallet.  I give my time, in a sense, voluntarily, to a game after I spend my monthly fee. 

edit: I guess after 6 months 20% is 9.95usd worth of points that you'd be preserving but Id still argue it.  Its setting off something 'wrongness' in my head.

Therefore you can move your points UNLIMITED within the first month as long as you don't spec one extension above 5!

This is even better as you then can test all 3 fractions WITHOUT losing EP.

PS: I hope my Agents are both within this first month when the patch comes wink big_smile

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

Its kind of a tough one.

A Paid re-spec would mean too much "pay to win" as those who can afford to change gain an advantage over those who cant.

There is also the problem when Dev's suddenly change something critical, players make decisions based on what they know to be true at the time, if a dev decides to alter that then its not really fair on the player.

City of Heroes is a classic example of this, they ended up having to offer a free 're-spec' to all accounts after every expansion.

A good example is with the proposed changes to 'relations'.  They say... and I quote :

"This is quite unfair, as these characters typically have little extension points invested in combat, so their combat extension spending comes at an expensive rate and they are forced into activities they may not prefer. "

So now, what about all characters who have spent points into combat related skills and were.. and using their own words "unfairly" forced into combat?  Do we all have to petition to get that back?...  you can do that now, but what about when there are hundreds of thousands of accounts?

If there were a 'paid reset' then it could be seen that Devs do it purposefully to gain a bit of cash when their next toaster fails.

Too many questions here and not enough answers.

11

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

In game currency, RL $, No to both....
I think It should be as the devs are makeing it "adjustable" for the first month up to lvl 5.... After that you should be forced to wait 6 months for another free one if you respec before your 6th month a penalty should incure 20% is perfect. After that Respec you probably will never want to Respec again but should you wish I think the 1 year mark since your 6 month respec would be fine. The 6th month respec should be carried until used IE I dont want to respec my account until its 8 months old. then the 1 year ticker starts on the date the account was reset.

So it sorts like this.
30 day trial with the lvl 5 cap rule in place 1 total reset for free.
6th month free reset again becomes open.
18th month last free reset.
If you use any reset not revolving around those dates then you pay a 20% EP penalty.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

I would disagree that resets are bad for the game, and also agree that 20% loss is much too steep.  There isn't anything wrong with players changing to FOTM as it just highlights that there is a serious balance problem and the developers need to make adjustments. 

I would much rather see an EP cap and let players bank a certain percentage of the excess EP so they can adjust their skills accordingly.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

I just hope it is done before I hit 30 days (i didnt even count) as atm me rerolling has been a logicstical impossibility hmm

----
I play MMOs. I need a signature which is deep, thought provoking, and devours bandwidth with the voracity of rabid weasels. It is also, by nature, vaguely sad with a tinge of my obvious internal, unfathomable loneliness. Like this, sad  , but at 1.3megs packed into 2 by 6 inches. ANIMATED.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

No, please.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

Here is my only real issue with EP reset/recovery.

At some point in the future, there's going to be 'destroyers'. Lets say in 18 months.

This new class of bots is going to need some high extensions to even be available, some of those extensions won't even be released until the destroyer is patched, so there's no way other than saving up EP to get any kind of 'jump' on driving them.

Once those bots are buildable, Power-Corp-X will can simply reset thier combat players then reapply the EP to just the extensions needed for those bots.

Resets aren't really an issue now, the total EP pools are small compared to what they will be in 5 years as well as the EP requirements. I'm sure the 'plan' is for it to take many months of EP to get into these 'new' bots as they release, but with resets, and especially paid resets, you'll have a subset of vetern players in the newest badest bots the day they are released.

That's pay to win. And if it was possible to reset, the devs would have to make the EP requirements with that in mind; that is pools north of a million EP in a few years. So characters that can't or don't want to reset would never be able to drive those bots without a reset.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

Seriously sounds to me like pay to win

17 (edited by Xyberviri 2011-07-18 18:57:32)

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

You know the problem is it costs EP to delete characters and it costs EP to test out characters

to be honest i recommend two things for new players: 1)make 2 trial accounts the one your going to test stuff out on and the one you plan on using in the end, dont make a toon on the 2nd account just let it sit after you activate it.  2) play the 3 races on your throw away account once you get adjusted to what you want to do and decide the game is for you go ahead and toss that account and activate your untouched account with all the ep you gained up to this point.

This inlies the problem, There is no Trial for the features in the game, you have to make a investment as a new player into skills you probably dont know about, with races you dont have a clear cut description of the diffrences, nor have you experienced the game enough to even understand how to mechanics actually affect game play.



They should make a "Training simulator" line in planet side where you could try out all the diffrent bots/mechs. at least the starter ones and the big heavies so players get a feeling for what each one is like because ultimately that affects your play style and choices.

Deciding which side i wanted was the hardest choice

Other than that the only time there should be any free resets is after major mechanics changes like the upcoming Seth/Gropho/Memsier balanceing suggestion.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

Fuehrer wrote:

I would disagree that resets are bad for the game, .

I dont think resets are bad either.  But paying money for them?  Yea..

In fact I'd even arguefor unlimited free re-specs should be available.   People can play with whatever they want, whenever they want and designs armys and squads based around a constant evolving and deep meta-game.

or maybe a free re-spec everything few months, or some kind of in-game acheivment.

But paying for it?.. No.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

Snow, I agree in principal there's nothing wrong with resets, except that we've been shown and told many ways from the Dev's that they would like the world to be persistent. Aside from resetting to hide your identity, the choices and direction you take to develop your character should also be part of the persistent world. I feel that making choices that effect your character permanently adds additional depth to the game, it makes it 'important'.

If the devs decide that persistance isn't an important design principal anymore, then they'll probably agree to make EP refund/reset available in some form again, until that point I doubt there is any view that would sway them to allow it.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

oh yes,  of course you are right.

Not really suggesting they should do something as radical as that and from an immersion point of view it would be a hard sell.

but if you play around with the idea in your mind I cant help but wonder about the potential.

Maybe not 'infinate - free' point re-distribution..  but some kind of in-game mechanic that would alow more customization... I'm all up for that.

City of Heroes was my first MMO,  the customisation for visual effect and for skills blew my mind.  And I never really encounterd another mmo like it.       It was almost like playing Magic the gathering again, spending hours and days thinking about builds.

After CoH I fell in love with Guildwars,  the potential for builds and customisation was great and we spent months developing and tuning builds.

You hear it all the time with PO and Eve... the "blob" problem...  if you dont have enough 'right-stuff'  available then the only strategy is to revert to over-whelming numbers

Maybe the only true way to remove this problem is to alow full customisation.

I'm just purly speculating though and playing around with idea's,  I dont intend to make an argument for it but you do have to explore these idea's

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

I would agree with a "reset-gain".

Points we gain over time like we gain EP now. Just MUCH slower.

Just as excample:
- you collected 2000 reset points
- with this points you can turn down one Extension by one level which cost a maximum of 2000 EP (this one level from 6 back to 5 (example)! not the full extension)
- the EP are go back to 100% into your normal EP-pool
- you can spend this re-gained points like normal EPs again

Second example:
- I trained Recycling to 6. Now I made a second Agent on a second account as transport/producer. So I "wasted" the EP on Jack I used for Recycling 6.
- But as I gain lets say 5000 respec-EP/month I can use them to free this now fixed EP I have in Recycling and use this EP somewhere else.

This way you can have some flexibilty but you still need to plan it carefull as 5k respec-EP isn't realy much wink.

The number is just an example!
How much it would be must be tested by the DEVs.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

As jack so well put it with his reset gain idea, it works and stays true to the idea of the game. Lets look at the argument from the foundation of the game which is the persistence of the world and continuity of the server.

I give you a spark. The spark is escentially a block of code transmitted from earth to nia. It is mechanical in nature as all machines are. The spar, drives the robots of nia around and fights for its corporation. Over time it grows its knowledge and understanding with EP. My understanding of EP is that over time the complexity of the spark increases and you can install in it subroutines that I crease existing equipment or allow access to new equipment. This happens not by putting a skill in queue and over time a capsuleer learns it as he has to read the book, but by installing it to your hard drive much like we installed perpetuum. Just as quickly as I installed perpetuum to my hard drive I can uninstall it and move to a new game. In the case of the game world, I reformatted the hard drive of my spark and installed some new extensions..

Where am I going with this you ask.

Jack mentioned RP. Its an interesting concept and so les a lot of the issues we currently face. Reset anaccount and recreating it destroys the persistence of the game world and its continuity. The account reset destroys the character allowing it to be remade again as seen with all the EP it had prior to rest. Its a drastic change to the game world as it changes the characters that reside in it, it can allow an imbalance in power as Mega corporations gain and lose pilots and we see a flavor of the month emerge.

RP is a solution to this. Since we are complex machines, have there be a penalty to removing an extension in that ripping it out of such a complex system results in damage to what it can do. Escentailly would be a loss in EP. The loss of EP is offset by the reset points as they basically say the system is stable enough to remove xxx EP for redistrobution safely so there will be no EP loss when doing so. There are 525600 EP gained in a year. Allow for reset points to accumulate at a rate of 10:1.this way there will always be more EP thenypu can reset forcing you to think about your choices, but over time of savings theres enough rp to fix the occasional mistake or eventually wipe out a lvl 10 extension and reinvest those points.

To sum up my thoughts on this issuer restores EP.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

I feel that the Reset Point (RP) gain should be 1:1, and will stop people from jumping to the FOTM build

For example, if it took me 2 days to go from lvl5 to 6, it should take me 2 days to "de-level" it. After the 2 days, the EP will go back to my pool.

Newbies will benefit this because they most likely won't exceed skill level 5 in the first few weeks, so it will be easier to play around. This will hit the vets the hardest because level 9 to 10 will take 45 days. In other words, it will be exponentially more cumbersome to "de-level" a super high level char.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

I feel like rest points should pool and accumulate instead of just click de level and wait. I mean they are machines after all, we learn an extension instant based on an EP pool the same should apply to unlearning it.

Re: Should there be a paid for account EP reset?

It's the same thing really: click "de-level" and wait, or wait then unlearning it.