Inventive Inf Dumps

[Joshex]

Too much inf in the market? things getting a bit bloated? hopefully not! at this point while typing this, I am happy to say the market seems healthy. This thread exists for that day when the devs/hosts realize that some pruning is necessary on the inf tree.

The goal of this thread is for users to propose things they'd be willing to dump inf into to clean the market as and when it needs it. heck it might even work to offer such options as preventative measures to prevent market inflation! So feel free to dump some ideas here, I cannot vouch for whether any of these ideas will be accepted (because I'm not even on the dev team), but keep in mind that this thread will likely be read through at some point by said devs because it may contain ideas they never had or needed to know what players thought of them.

Discussion is encouraged! please mark all Idea titles in Bold, underlined and red for visibility. please do not use this combo in discussion posts so the devs can easily find the ideas. maybe use Bold underlined and orange for Final revisions based on discussion where "Final" means the latest revision only, meaning edit your other posts stating a revisions and remove the bold underlined and orange styles on the idea title.

Confused? Don't be, heres an example (in spoiler):

[spoiler]Example Inf-Sink Idea Title:
Summary: this idea is an idea which uses a special sink method to absorb player's inf.
Idea: I am proposing a thing in the game which offers the player something or penalizes the player somehow that costs loads of inf, heres how it works and any necessary contact talk box text: ...
Benefits to player: some benefits I thought of are
benefit 1
benefit 2
etc.[/spoiler]

Still confused? here's a real example:

Relief Worker Donation Window:
Summary: give the player a way to "donate" inf to NPCs (thus ridding the game of it)
Idea: this idea proposes a contact talk window for the "Relief Worker" NPC which can be found in Atlas park near Miss Liberty, currently the NPC posts a chat message asking players to "help feed children displaced by the Galaxy City disaster". Why not actually make it possible for the player to click the NPC and open a talk/trade window to give inf? then spam these NPCs (with different looks each time) in multiple zones in areas people usually hang out in or have to pass through, such as RWZ base, Portal Corps square, the train station in Talos, Ouro "Mender Sympathy" etc.
Benefits:
1: Players can get a badge or a series of badges for donating so much. another player suggested this should be a time limited badge, as in it expires and disappears every month etc or until you stop donating so much so often. like a badge for donating 10 mil a day every day, goes away after 30 days if you skip a day, or 100 mil a week goes away after 30 days if you miss a week, or 500 mil a month (stops when you miss a month), or 1.2 bil a year for the yearly badge expires after a year if you stop for 365 days).
2: Pay off XP debt! and Buy patrol XP/Debt Protection up to total donation amount.

"Would you like to donate to help out the poor children of Galaxy City?

These poor children are suffering and the city is struggling to provide for them, many of them lost their families in the disaster, others lost even more. Now they struggle just to get food and new clothes, school supplies and sports equipment. The city is also short on ability to get things like bedding and can't afford to supply heating or air conditioning. If we don't get enough this month they're going to turn off the electricity and water. I'm affraid what these children are going to grow up to become.

So can I count on a donation today?"

"Thank you for your donation, Galaxy City's Children can eat today!"



Idea 2:

Temp Power Refills:
Summary: Allows players to Buy upto 30 extra uses of a temp power they owned from the NPC they originally or could have received it from.
Idea: Limit this transaction by day, week, month, quarter, half year, year, or 2 year period based on the usability of the power, the more powerful/handy it is the more infrequently you can buy it! make it cost a significant amount. 100 mil per use, (max 3 bil/frequency) (Non-Tradable, Non-Sellable, Non-Storable)

Benefits:
1: players can get more of those awesome early mission temp powers so they don't have to save them for years.

contacts who offer such temp powers will have an additional option in their talk menu:
"I would like to help fund you and your affiliates"

Contact text:" Oh the [group I.E. Seraph, Crey labs, M.A.G.I. etc.] thanks you for considering funding their efforts. They'd be willing to share their prototypes/relics/items for testing purposes if you can cover the research costs.

I know people who are currently testing [Temporary power] for dealing with [villain group/type situation]. The prototype/relic/item currently costs 100,000,000 inf per use to produce; counting all the subsequent review of the findings. If this sounds good to you, I can take your donation and you should receive a testable prototype/relic/item soon."

Player Choices:
1: "Yes I'm interested put me down for 1"
2: "Yes I'm Interested, I'd like 5"
3: "I'd like to fund 10 of them"
4: "Can I get 30?"
5: "thanks for the offer, but maybe later. (leave)"

Response text:
0: "Oh, I'm sorry there seems to be a problem with your donation, looks like it wont go through (Not Enough Inf)"
1,2: "Great! I'm glad you can help"
3: "They will be stoked! I hope their research helps you in some way."
4: "Wow! where did you get so much inf? maybe I should change my line of work... uh yeah, definitely they'll get you those ASAP"


Additional: For combat Drop based temporary power recipes, sell them at Arachnos/Freedom Corps bases.


Idea 3:

Signature Summons:

Summary: Everyone from trainers to TF/SF contacts, (everyNPC with powers and a health bar) agrees to aide you for a limited time when you call.
Idea: [Summon: Statesman. L50] (and other fallen heroes) should be a temp power available through ouro for heroes and valid in Hero missions and Task forces.  same thing for every other living powered contact but available at that contact. [Summon: Lord Recluse. L50] for villains in example for villain missions and Strike Forces. The catch is the cost will be very high for 1 use with like a max of 1 use. The summon will not be timed, but will last until death (yours or theirs) or until you exit the map. Not Available in PVP except in gladiator matches. maybe 1 Billion Inf (or inf cap) per use. Could have a time limit between purchases, once every 24 hours, or once a week, once a month etc.

Make them work for it, Make it count.

I can just imagine the text for LR:
"What!? you think I the great Lord Recluse can be bought?.. Oh, 'a bribe' I see! yes, I honor those. I'll see you there, Arachnos thanks you for your devotion to villainy!"

Benefits:
1: players can buy summonable help, great for when you're stuck in a TF/SF or AV mission and need that extra boost to make the team work or finish the content.

[Donkyhotay]

I like these ideas except for the "super summons". I'm of the opinion that signature summons should be tied to AM's to be a future AM sink.

Edit: By AM's I mean Alignment Merits, not Astral Merits.

[Joshex]

I like these ideas except for the "super summons". I'm of the opinion that signature summons should be tied to AM's to be a future AM sink.

Why not both? I think there is an inf to AM conversion (and vice versa), I just can't remember how. And if theres not, that could be another hole for dumping.

now I'm imagining a hami raid with only signiature summons and a couple players.

[Donkyhotay]

I'm very hesitant about having currency types be convertible with each other in games. Do it too much and it can eventually make one obsolete without trying too.

[Joshex]

Last I knew, now that I remember, there is no direct method of conversion from Inf to Astral merit or Astral Merit to Inf, however, there are already indirect methods (however I'm not sure if they are valid in our server, this was from HC, I have yet to get to 50 here)

Astral Merit to Inf:
Super Inspirations + Sell in WW/BM.

Inf to Astral Merit:
Pay the fees to break down incarnate salvage into astral merits (I forget exactly what, I think it costs 100 mil to make the salvage or break it down.)

As long as this is active in rebirth, then the means to do it already exist and we do not need any more-direct methods.

But yeah on that note I was supporting your idea of using Signature Summons as an Astral Merit dump. I was merely stating that your idea works both ways technically both inf and AM could technically be used already to exchange for them (if they were available).

[Donkyhotay]

Oops, I was saying AM for Alignment Merit, not Astral. I'm of the opinion that signature summons should be through Alignment Merits and the signature summon you buy is directly related to your alignment. Not just hero/villain but also vig/rog summons as well. Of course that is assuming we ever get vig/rog merits which is something I would support (if done right).

[Joshex]

Alignment Merits works, theres an indirect method to dump those too,

Alignment merits can be converted into either purple recipes for sale in the market(inf), or reward merits.

Converting inf into alignment merits is also possible, I think thats one of the options in Astral Merit conversion. so inf to convert incarnate salvage into astral merits, then convert astral merits into alignment merits.

yeah, it's very indirect. but it works if people really want to.

[Joshex]

Purple Temp Powers:

Examples:

Power Analyzer MK IV - get information about ANY taget. probably TMI (please add in jokes). makes the target blurt out revealing statements in NPC chat.

Trial Powers: non enhanceable (lower powered?) versions of just about any sort of power in any power set. limited uses on click-type, limited usage time on Toggle, and limited days of usage on Auto. no PVP effect in PVP zones. Only allowed in arenas when temp powers are allowed.

[Draggynn]

D'Spite was suggesting some purely "cosmetic" influence dumps that come with bragging rights that I like the sound of.  Things like:
NPC Praise: & Player Statues:

• Pay to have a prominent NPC (Say Miss Liberty) sing your praises for some period of time so that all of the other supers will know of your greatness
• A statue of your likeness erected somewhere for some period of time.

[Joshex]

those are some great ideas! many games already do this, but not necessarily for purchase. one I know does this based on a leaderboard situation like a statue of the last person to finish all the content in a zone, or beat some big boss on masters settings. some games have a trio of statues 1st, 2nd and 3rd for longer lasting effect.

Typically the placement is somewhere everyone must pass to really get in the zone.

Sometimes devs allow players to leave a comment with the statue on a plaque.

[Joshex]

3 more Ideas;

Purchasable inventory space in any inventory; salvage, recipes, enhancements, Inspiration tray, WW/BM, Vault storage, AE custom story slots,  Take away lots of free character slots. leave us with 10 or less free on every account, the rest cost inf. same with renames. In addition while each slot costs a billion inf, they also require upkeep to continue to access the items in those slots on a per time basis.

Idea 2: while not a traditional Inf Sink/Dump idea, it has the same effect by different means;

Open up the pawn shops

this was an idea for Project Bane, it was meant to take drops that people dump/delete or that would have dropped but a player had no inventory space to accept it. These Items default to the pawn shop inventory, where they sell for either 3x the highest sale price in the market, or the inf cap if it would be higher than that.

Originally the idea was to sell it in the pawn shop for 3x it's shop sale price, but purple recipes back when we could sell them had fairly abysmal resale value to vendors, the goal was to provide players the chance to get a purple for cheaper by hanging out and browsing the pawn shop. but yeah it can easily be an inf sink if the prices are high enough. it also fixes the whole "there are none of this recipe on WW at this level" problem. alternatively rather than the game figuring the price, devs could set it and revise it periodically.

Benefits to players: all those missed drops and accidental deletions are available for purchase on a small server this provides a wall of recipes for sale that otherwise wouldn't be.

Benefits to inf sinking: the money is not being paid to another player. the game is just eating it in massive chunks.



Idea 3:
[Temporary Power: Over-Powered]
Toggle: self +def 50%, +res 50%, Accuracy +4.0, Tohit + 100%, Damage +1000, Status effect protection and resistance, + speed, -Rech (20 global), End x2, +recovery 1000%, +regen 1000%, + Perception 200%, HP x2. -1,666,666 inf/sec, 100 mil/minute, 6 bil/hour. no value in PVP.

Description: "Inf = Power. You were granted a power with this note on it. You have no idea where it came from but turning it on put a major hole in your bank account. better think twice about when to use it"

[Joshex]

Yet another idea:

Merits as a reputation system right now merits can be used to buy things directly, we could change that, we could for example make there be additional inf prices (that you need to pay along with merits) at the merit vendors, the catch? the inf prices are super high and as you gain so many merits the inf price goes down. but once you spend the merits the inf price goes right back up proportionally.

In example: say a recipe normally costs 150 merits, you have 1 merit, the inf price could be astronomic at 1.5 billion, where at 150 merits it'll cost about 100 mil, from here (the normal sale price) the price goes down at a different rate, so 300 merits wont be a price of -1.4 billion inf instead it'd be 50 million inf cutting the normal sale price in half because you have double the merits (though you only spend 150 merits to buy it, it counts your total merits while calculating the price)

from there 600 merits would lower the cost to 25% of the normal price (25 million), then half of that 12.5 million at 1200 merits, 6.25 million at 2400 merits, 3.125 million at 4800 merits, 1.55125 million inf at 9600 merits.

it's a double win, people can buy stuff from the merit vendors even without enough merits (but the price will be massive in inf and it will cost them whatever merits they have and they need to have at least 1 merit to buy at all), and no matter how many merits a person gets the inf price will never be 0 (subtracting large amounts of inf from the game every time someone buys a recipe from a merit vendor).

[Danaid]

My concern is that this could become punitive for new and casual players as well as players who play a lot of alts and therefore don't spend a lot of time at level 50.

What if there was a system to exchange Inf for merits directly, perhaps at an inflated rate, to accomplish something similar without hurting those who aren't looking to dump Inf?

[Joshex]

My concern is that this could become punitive for new and casual players as well as players who play a lot of alts and therefore don't spend a lot of time at level 50.

What if there was a system to exchange Inf for merits directly, perhaps at an inflated rate, to accomplish something similar without hurting those who aren't looking to dump Inf?

It's a valid concern. perhaps the prices of these things should reflect level of the toon as well.