Soulshots in Aion

[Skold]

Its true, there are money sinks in almost every MMORPG at high levels, it's just that I would rather them be cheap and easily obtainable. Not expensive and necessary. Eventually, people will have similar gear, similar skills, but if you lose simply because you didn't have soulshots, that would be silly. I think regeants should be more skill based. In FFXI there was food, and many regeants for each class that were needed to cast spells etc. (Ninja). In WoW, theres potions, class-specific spell regeants and food. So it's really just a bad implementation of a regeant vs. a good implementation. If you are going to add a money sink, they should be cheap, and a necessity, so that everyone can afford to pay it, but also everyone has to pay it. In addition, there will always be consumables in every game that boost your performance, but those kinds of items should be so expensive you would only use them for PvE fights.

[BahamutKaiser]

Sounds like Ammo for your sword, kind of lame.

[Xiy]

If it has a relatively long cooldown and boost performance a little bit, that's fine. Increasing dps x2 is retarded.

If you can chain use them, then it's a big problem imo.

i think WoW does consumables pretty well after the first patch in TBC. Before they were painful. Performance enhancing potions are on shared 2 minute cooldowns and you're only allowed 1 flask or 2 elixirs. Keeps the grind down yet these potions/elixirs are still in demand for crafters.

[Skold]

Yes exactly, WoW does it in a way that they are negligable in PvP.

[hogo]

Originally Posted by Fleiva

Is there any game without a continous money sink at higher levels? with binded items, crafting, etc, I can't imagine any other way to take money out of the market cycle, if it only adds 10 damage? great for me. You could always stock up before going into the abyss, its not like if you were going to be in pvp danger the whole time anyways.

QFT

thats actually the only valid argument in the whole thread so far.



oh and like i said somewhere else i like soulshots, the only con i see as of now is huge price. Enormous price was the main reason why everybody hated shots in L2. So i kinda was hoping that ncsoft won't do the same mistake twice...

[Endrance]

Originally Posted by hogo

QFT

thats actually the only valid argument in the whole thread so far.



oh and like i said somewhere else i like soulshots, the only con i see as of now is huge price. Enormous price was the main reason why everybody hated shots in L2. So i kinda was hoping that ncsoft won't do the same mistake twice...

Ok, since I don't get the whole point of your post I'm gonna ask that: Why would we want Soulshots again? What else did they do, other than the stuff I've stated (since you did read the whole thread you should know about my post)? Cause I couldn't notice anything else for crap. Soulshots are completely unnecessary. But maybe I'm wrong for some quantum time warp reason or something. So please tell me.

[Fleiva]

Money that dissapears daily from the market cycle at higher levels. Helps against inflation.

Why wouldn't you want soulshots? Please, give me a better argument than the one I just stated.

[Frein]

Originally Posted by Fleiva

Money that dissapears daily from the market cycle at higher levels. Helps against inflation.

It does, but I don't see how the current system removes gold from anywhere as the payments go to other players, not NPCs.

Also, as Skold already said, money sinks need to be necessary yet easily affordable to everyone. Things like taxes, travel expenses, repairs and so on. When you start offering god mode for a high price we'll soon get a class based society divided into haves and have nots where becoming a have requires either mind numbing farming for hours on end, bots or RMT, none of which are desirable.

[Fleiva]

wrong, soulshots are sold at npcs mainly in Aion, there are no dwarves controlling the economy in this game like in L2, and then you'd get a few from mobs, just like D grade arrows in L2, you get drops from mobs which help you saving a bit of money, but people buy them from the npc store.

The thing is that, if they want to increase the money drop as the leveling advances, endgame players need something to spend money on, and, to advoid inflation completely, they would have to spend as much money as the one they get from npcs. If endgame players have the same money sink as lowbies, then they should be earning the same ammount of money per hour, which doesn't seem possible in MMOs as players want to feel rewarded as they level.

Making it so it adds low damage means people will use it as an additional luxury, and you use additional luxuries when you have nothing to spend the money on. High levels, or alts.

[Heinel]

Originally Posted by Fleiva

wrong, soulshots are sold at npcs mainly in Aion, there are no dwarves controlling the economy in this game like in L2, and then you'd get a few from mobs, just like D grade arrows in L2, you get drops from mobs which help you saving a bit of money, but people buy them from the npc store.

The thing is that, if they want to increase the money drop as the leveling advances, endgame players need something to spend money on, and, to advoid inflation completely, they would have to spend as much money as the one they get from npcs. If endgame players have the same money sink as lowbies, then they should be earning the same ammount of money per hour, which doesn't seem possible in MMOs as players want to feel rewarded as they level.

Making it so it adds low damage means people will use it as an additional luxury, and you use additional luxuries when you have nothing to spend the money on. High levels, or alts.

Originally Posted by Heinel

The problem with soulshots is it unbalances the competitive aspect of the game and turn it into a time over skill fight of who grinded more.

Originally Posted by Heinel

If it allows people with lower skill to brute their way against player of a higher skill level, then they're even worse than gold sinks.

Originally Posted by Heinel

Some attack skills hit multiple times, that may or may not mean soulshots will also trigger multiple times, resulting in a significant advantage and maybe insta-killing the opponents without them being able to react. Let's face it, consumables lead to degenerate play.

I'm all for gold sinks, but if it comes at the cost of balanced gameplay, then the game fails. Period.

[Fleiva]

You're assuming these things:

1) Soulshots in Aion truly make a difference in damage per second.
2) Soulshots in Aion will be expensive even for high level people.
3) The income from high level mobs will be quite low.
4) There will be a lot of things to spend money on once you are high level.

I'm playing with the facts only, your argument isn't valid.

[Frein]

High level mobs don't have to drop money. Make them drop crafting materials or gear instead and you slow down inflation considerably.

The thing is, people don't want to work to sustain their lifestyles in MMOs. That crap is one of the major issues humanity faces in real life and it has no place within a recreational activity like a computer game.

[Fleiva]

So, once you become high level, you won't be able to afford teleporting or dyes? High level mobs have to drop money, and they have to drop more money than low level mobs, why? Cause low level mobs die in 3 hits, while high level ones dont, you can't make it convenient to roll on alts just to get money.

High level chars MUST spend money on something, why? Cause if they don't, traders will always approach them, knowing they have insane quantities of money, what happens when traders approach high level chars? That low level characters will have it harder as the market evolves.

[Frein]

Originally Posted by Fleiva

So, once you become high level, you won't be able to afford teleporting or dyes? High level mobs have to drop money, and they have to drop more money than low level mobs, why? Cause low level mobs die in 3 hits, while high level ones dont, you can't make it convenient to roll on alts just to get money.

You can sell the crafting materials/gear you get so you don't need direct money drops. It slows down the rate at which money is introduced into the system so money sinks do not need to be as severe.

[ka-kar]

Games without gold sinks fail. You need to spend the money you make on something otherwise whats the point in getting the money in the first place? Money sinks encourage competition between players and make a game worthwhile.