So via recent posts by Bashiok we know Blizzard is at least toying with the idea of certain avenues of micropayment in D3 without directly charging to play online. There's already been a fair amount of discussion on Baskiok's completely invented example of paying to have a HC character resurrected, so I won't re-hash that much.
I thought it might make for an interesting suggestion thread to ask everyone what they think would be good 'perks' for Blizzard to offer that wouldn't seem sketchy, screw with the 'feel' of D3, or seem outright ridiculous (e.g., buying items with real money, paying to advance your character's level, etc.). I'm looking for some interesting, pragmatic theories.
RE: HC resurrection, my opinion lies in line with most of what I've seen discussed so far, which is to say I think it's a weak idea that would effectively ruin HC play. What makes it truly 'hardcore' and offers genuine pride is knowing that if you see someone at #1 on the ladder (or you yourself are there), you know for absolute fact they've died zero times. With this system that person could have died 50 times and just have had the money to shell out for resurrection. It'd create a certain microcosm of the class-system we already face in reality. Bad, bad idea.
An idea I had come up in another thread was the idea of a certain kind of server storage fee -- though we don't know how Blizz plans to hold characters that are idle (i.e., current system versus the WoW system of indefinite storage), if it isn't inherently indefinite, I'd be happy to pay $20 for a year of no-questions-asked storage, meaning if I get busy and my account lies idle for 6 months (unlikely, but let's just say), it'd be nice to know my characters will still be there when I get back.
So, what perks would you like to see? Blizzard is still a company, and to an extent I'm comfortable with them offering ways to earn more revenue off of D3 for themselves, but let's hope they know what lines not to cross in doing so.
Well, perhaps some sort of advanced muling system. Before that turns you off:
In Diablo I and Diablo II we faced the opposition of finite storage capacity, on our characters only in Diablo I and with our characters, Horadric Cubes, and stashes in Diablo II. My guess is that in Diablo III they're not going to have infinite storage on their servers since all servers and databases have physical limits.
However, perhaps a royalty fee for storing, automatically organizing, labeling, and such for items in Diablo III wouldn't be a bad idea. It could work similar to a file system on a PC, just for example, or any other CMS that they can think of.
It could also make your stuff more secure, requiring you to log in to your account in-game (or perhaps on the web) and then log in again, maybe even with a separate password or account, to access your royalty storage. Lord knows we all have had enough mule accounts and characters in previous games that this would probably get used, depending on how expensive and/or efficient it is.
I am 100% against any paying feature that impact gameplay in any way possible.
That includes unlimited storage.
I am fully against it. This kind of thing is garbage (sorry) to have us pay more for it. Any kind of -storage- they have in the game should be what everyone has, no question. I wouldn't suggest Blizzard to cross any of these lines. Its bad.
This kind of lines get crossed one and there is no stopping them. Trust me. Way too much things have been ruined starting from the most stupid things to give to players that helped them, and then it just grows into something big and ruins it for everyone.
As far as HC goes I also agree with you. Something like resurection of an hardcore character is laughable. That this idea would even ever be considered 1 second by Blizzard scares me.
If you could direct me to the other thread in question I'd love to look at it and offer a comment / defense / etc. on this thread, if need be.
The main focus of this thread is to offer discussion on suggestions for ways in which Blizzard might tie micropayments into D3. HC Resurrection is one of many, many possible theories, but has really been the only one to garner much discussion, so the hope is to see many more and discuss them. That said, it (HC theory) is a springboard to this discussion and I just meant if anyone wanted to discuss that further in the larger context of the thread, I was welcoming.
Depending on how they handle Bnet, we may not even need mules.
Sounds like they're making accounts "permanent", like you buy the game, add it to your account, and to only that one account. Basically forcing you to use the same account.
Because of this, they'll probably have to offer advanced mule services automatically, since players won't be able to make multiple accounts (without additional expense, that is)
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Extra storage space is kinda "sigh" to have as a pay for feature.. since eventually you will run out of space (depends how they impelent it but if pay for feature gets you more then you will) and either you get frustrated with the limited space or you "have" to pay for some extra.
I'm ok with the account expiration stuff.. I doubt I will ever be 3-6 months away from the game, since I still have my very frist diablo 2 account still running from 2000.. and I have had some long breaks from the game every now and then. So anyways I doubt I'd have to pay for such feature.
Name changes, gender changes are fine for me.. I hope I figure out a name that I won't have to change
But yeah of course i'm not that cheap that I couldn't pay for any feature.. like some battle.net features could be damn nice to get.. who knows what we will get.. maybe we get more info on this when starcraft2 comes out.
I am 100% against any paying feature that impact gameplay in any way possible.
That includes unlimited storage.
At first, I was in total agreement with you, but I'm not entirely sure.
Basically I think there are two things payments like these shouldn't affect. (Expansion packs are naturally excluded from these criteria)
1. Do not give paying players unfair advantages.
2. Do not separate paying players from non-paying.
The first would be exclusive and powerful items in exchange for money, extra skill points, etra storage and stuff like that. I have no fear that Blizzard will institute anything like this.
2. The second included separate dungeons or locations. While the drops won't necessarily be better, it will separate players from each other, as they won't be able to play with everyone at all times. I don't think Blizzard will do this either.
So what does that leave? Purely aesthetic changes, such as titles, characters appearance-chances, renames and whatnot. The problem with this is that, D3 doesn't appear to be an MMO, hence the time invested in a character will never reach the ridiculous amounts of time you can accumulate in WoW. As such, I wonder if name changes and appearance-chances will be economically viable.
Take this example. Let's say you have a chartacter at max level in an MMO, say WoW. You have a play time of say, 60 days (1440 hours) on him. Now suddenly, you get the urge to change your characters name. Since you have a massive amount of play-time invested, giving Blizzard some money is an easy fix.
Now look at Diablo. Depending on leveling, it may just be much easier to level up a new character with a new name instead of renaming the old one. This depends on how fast it goes and other factors, but it's possible.
In short, I'm unsure of what exacly they could charge us for.
PlugY for Diablo II allows you to reset skills and stats, transfer items between characters in singleplayer, obtain all ladder runewords and do all Uberquests while offline. It is the only way to do all of the above. Please use it.
Supporting big shoulderpads and flashy armor since 2004.
Well, if there is nothing to charge us for... then maybe they shouldn't charge us for anything?
I miss the days where buying a game and having absolutely everything with it was standard.
Beside, what does WoW offer?
Name change?
Sex change?
Server change?
Thats it, I think. Diablo 2 certainly doesn't need to drain money any more than simple features like this. Maybe some fee to make your account and its characters permanent (otherwise they are deleted after 90 days). Small things like that. But the point is, they really don't need to do anything more.
I thought it might make for an interesting suggestion thread to ask everyone what they think would be good 'perks' for Blizzard to offer that wouldn't seem sketchy, screw with the 'feel' of D3, or seem outright ridiculous (e.g., buying items with real money, paying to advance your character's level, etc.). I'm looking for some interesting, pragmatic theories.
RE: HC resurrection, my opinion lies in line with most of what I've seen discussed so far, which is to say I think it's a weak idea that would effectively ruin HC play. What makes it truly 'hardcore' and offers genuine pride is knowing that if you see someone at #1 on the ladder (or you yourself are there), you know for absolute fact they've died zero times. With this system that person could have died 50 times and just have had the money to shell out for resurrection. It'd create a certain microcosm of the class-system we already face in reality. Bad, bad idea.
An idea I had come up in another thread was the idea of a certain kind of server storage fee -- though we don't know how Blizz plans to hold characters that are idle (i.e., current system versus the WoW system of indefinite storage), if it isn't inherently indefinite, I'd be happy to pay $20 for a year of no-questions-asked storage, meaning if I get busy and my account lies idle for 6 months (unlikely, but let's just say), it'd be nice to know my characters will still be there when I get back.
So, what perks would you like to see? Blizzard is still a company, and to an extent I'm comfortable with them offering ways to earn more revenue off of D3 for themselves, but let's hope they know what lines not to cross in doing so.
In Diablo I and Diablo II we faced the opposition of finite storage capacity, on our characters only in Diablo I and with our characters, Horadric Cubes, and stashes in Diablo II. My guess is that in Diablo III they're not going to have infinite storage on their servers since all servers and databases have physical limits.
However, perhaps a royalty fee for storing, automatically organizing, labeling, and such for items in Diablo III wouldn't be a bad idea. It could work similar to a file system on a PC, just for example, or any other CMS that they can think of.
It could also make your stuff more secure, requiring you to log in to your account in-game (or perhaps on the web) and then log in again, maybe even with a separate password or account, to access your royalty storage. Lord knows we all have had enough mule accounts and characters in previous games that this would probably get used, depending on how expensive and/or efficient it is.
That includes unlimited storage.
I am fully against it. This kind of thing is garbage (sorry) to have us pay more for it. Any kind of -storage- they have in the game should be what everyone has, no question. I wouldn't suggest Blizzard to cross any of these lines. Its bad.
This kind of lines get crossed one and there is no stopping them. Trust me. Way too much things have been ruined starting from the most stupid things to give to players that helped them, and then it just grows into something big and ruins it for everyone.
As far as HC goes I also agree with you. Something like resurection of an hardcore character is laughable. That this idea would even ever be considered 1 second by Blizzard scares me.
If you could direct me to the other thread in question I'd love to look at it and offer a comment / defense / etc. on this thread, if need be.
The main focus of this thread is to offer discussion on suggestions for ways in which Blizzard might tie micropayments into D3. HC Resurrection is one of many, many possible theories, but has really been the only one to garner much discussion, so the hope is to see many more and discuss them. That said, it (HC theory) is a springboard to this discussion and I just meant if anyone wanted to discuss that further in the larger context of the thread, I was welcoming.
Sounds like they're making accounts "permanent", like you buy the game, add it to your account, and to only that one account. Basically forcing you to use the same account.
Because of this, they'll probably have to offer advanced mule services automatically, since players won't be able to make multiple accounts (without additional expense, that is)
I'm ok with the account expiration stuff.. I doubt I will ever be 3-6 months away from the game, since I still have my very frist diablo 2 account still running from 2000.. and I have had some long breaks from the game every now and then. So anyways I doubt I'd have to pay for such feature.
Name changes, gender changes are fine for me.. I hope I figure out a name that I won't have to change
But yeah of course i'm not that cheap that I couldn't pay for any feature.. like some battle.net features could be damn nice to get.. who knows what we will get.. maybe we get more info on this when starcraft2 comes out.
RIP: Demon Hunter: lvl 50 | Barb: lvl 60 (plvl 5) | Monk: lvl12 & lvl70 (plvl 200)
Basically I think there are two things payments like these shouldn't affect. (Expansion packs are naturally excluded from these criteria)
1. Do not give paying players unfair advantages.
2. Do not separate paying players from non-paying.
The first would be exclusive and powerful items in exchange for money, extra skill points, etra storage and stuff like that. I have no fear that Blizzard will institute anything like this.
2. The second included separate dungeons or locations. While the drops won't necessarily be better, it will separate players from each other, as they won't be able to play with everyone at all times. I don't think Blizzard will do this either.
So what does that leave? Purely aesthetic changes, such as titles, characters appearance-chances, renames and whatnot. The problem with this is that, D3 doesn't appear to be an MMO, hence the time invested in a character will never reach the ridiculous amounts of time you can accumulate in WoW. As such, I wonder if name changes and appearance-chances will be economically viable.
Take this example. Let's say you have a chartacter at max level in an MMO, say WoW. You have a play time of say, 60 days (1440 hours) on him. Now suddenly, you get the urge to change your characters name. Since you have a massive amount of play-time invested, giving Blizzard some money is an easy fix.
Now look at Diablo. Depending on leveling, it may just be much easier to level up a new character with a new name instead of renaming the old one. This depends on how fast it goes and other factors, but it's possible.
In short, I'm unsure of what exacly they could charge us for.
I miss the days where buying a game and having absolutely everything with it was standard.
Beside, what does WoW offer?
Name change?
Sex change?
Server change?
Thats it, I think. Diablo 2 certainly doesn't need to drain money any more than simple features like this. Maybe some fee to make your account and its characters permanent (otherwise they are deleted after 90 days). Small things like that. But the point is, they really don't need to do anything more.