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There's probably a paper in it for people involved in writing about economics and virtual economies here: what are the dynamics for a powerleveling/goldfarming service when it comes to buying respecs?
Okay, background for those who are interested but don't know what I'm talking about.
In City of Heroes, you can respecify or "respec" your character every so often, picking slightly different powers and choosing the way you enhance those powers differently. You get to do it free for once, can pick up other free respecs over time, do special missions to get extra respecs, or use in-game money to buy a respec. The main intent of the respec mechanic is to let people overcome buyer's remorse (i.e. "that power isn't as useful as I'd hoped" or "I wish I'd started taking Fitness powers earlier so I could have Stamina now"), as well as letting you modify a character to take advantage of the changes that come out every so often (when a new "Issue" update arrives, all characters get a free respec in case their builds are strongly affected by the changes).
Now, for most players, free respecs come often enough that even the trials are unnecessary, and one of the people in my supergroup wondered aloud the other day why anyone would even bother with the "buy a respec" system.
The answer, of course, was "powerlevelers". People who want to get a character to Level 50 as fast as possible in order to concentrate on the content that's designed for that level. You see, at any given level range, there's an optimum combination of powers and enhancements, and they aren't continuous. In other words, in order to be the best possible Level 15 Blaster, you have to have already passed up on some of the things you'd need to do in order to be the best possible Level 25 Blaster, and will have stuff left over by L25 that doesn't really help as much. So, if you can respec frequently, you can be the best possible L15, the best L25, the best L35, etc, making your rise to L50 even faster. Especially if you powerlevel in the Architect system, where a lot of powers are unneeded so long as you pick the right missions, but you might want them later when you leave Architect to do the upper level content that you were making the character for.
So, powerlevelers will often buy influence/infamy (the in-game money) from goldfarmers, trading real money for game money, so that they can buy extra respecs and not have to waste time on respec missions (which don't earn XP as fast as some other mission types, and may require powers that an Architect-based powerleveler doesn't want to waste slots on).
On the other hand, some people cut to the chase and buy a L50 character from the same companies that sell game money. (Note, both of these things are against terms of service, but that doesn't stop people from doing it.) And therein lies the interesting economic dynamic:
If you're running a goldfarming/powerleveling company, how do you allocate your resources to deal with respecs? When is it more profitable to funnel your influence-farming into paid respecs in order to speed up the powerleveling, and when is it more profitable to just sell the influence and powerlevel more slowly? Since the market for the paid respecs fluctuates and varies by server, the answer won't always be the same. And putting more effort into selling influence will tend to make paid respecs more expensive (more ill-gotten influence chasing the same number of auction items), so it could tip a server over into "don't bother ever buying respecs" territory for a while. But if the powerlevelers are the main customers for paid respecs, it could then swing back the other way, etc.
Okay, background for those who are interested but don't know what I'm talking about.
In City of Heroes, you can respecify or "respec" your character every so often, picking slightly different powers and choosing the way you enhance those powers differently. You get to do it free for once, can pick up other free respecs over time, do special missions to get extra respecs, or use in-game money to buy a respec. The main intent of the respec mechanic is to let people overcome buyer's remorse (i.e. "that power isn't as useful as I'd hoped" or "I wish I'd started taking Fitness powers earlier so I could have Stamina now"), as well as letting you modify a character to take advantage of the changes that come out every so often (when a new "Issue" update arrives, all characters get a free respec in case their builds are strongly affected by the changes).
Now, for most players, free respecs come often enough that even the trials are unnecessary, and one of the people in my supergroup wondered aloud the other day why anyone would even bother with the "buy a respec" system.
The answer, of course, was "powerlevelers". People who want to get a character to Level 50 as fast as possible in order to concentrate on the content that's designed for that level. You see, at any given level range, there's an optimum combination of powers and enhancements, and they aren't continuous. In other words, in order to be the best possible Level 15 Blaster, you have to have already passed up on some of the things you'd need to do in order to be the best possible Level 25 Blaster, and will have stuff left over by L25 that doesn't really help as much. So, if you can respec frequently, you can be the best possible L15, the best L25, the best L35, etc, making your rise to L50 even faster. Especially if you powerlevel in the Architect system, where a lot of powers are unneeded so long as you pick the right missions, but you might want them later when you leave Architect to do the upper level content that you were making the character for.
So, powerlevelers will often buy influence/infamy (the in-game money) from goldfarmers, trading real money for game money, so that they can buy extra respecs and not have to waste time on respec missions (which don't earn XP as fast as some other mission types, and may require powers that an Architect-based powerleveler doesn't want to waste slots on).
On the other hand, some people cut to the chase and buy a L50 character from the same companies that sell game money. (Note, both of these things are against terms of service, but that doesn't stop people from doing it.) And therein lies the interesting economic dynamic:
If you're running a goldfarming/powerleveling company, how do you allocate your resources to deal with respecs? When is it more profitable to funnel your influence-farming into paid respecs in order to speed up the powerleveling, and when is it more profitable to just sell the influence and powerlevel more slowly? Since the market for the paid respecs fluctuates and varies by server, the answer won't always be the same. And putting more effort into selling influence will tend to make paid respecs more expensive (more ill-gotten influence chasing the same number of auction items), so it could tip a server over into "don't bother ever buying respecs" territory for a while. But if the powerlevelers are the main customers for paid respecs, it could then swing back the other way, etc.
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Respecs and buying influence
I have been sorely tempted to buy a big chunk of influence, in order to convert a large part of it to prestige, in order to upgrade the base, and perhaps use another portion as recruiting bonuses for people joining the SG. But frankly I don't think thats a viable use anymore. (recruiting)
As for the base, even with a very low grind SG with almost no rules, we've collectedly gathered enough funds to build a raid defensible base, with defendable rooms/corridors and multiple power sources and command/control. I might need one more teleport room, and perhaps another lab to flesh out the magic options and such...
With three accounts it would be nice though to have a wealty SG leader to support all the alts. Meh. I would have to buy a disposible debit card. No way would any of those sites get any access to real cred.
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Re: Respecs and buying influence
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Re: Respecs and buying influence
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Champs Online has a different dynamic for that, since you can "retcon" any time you can afford it.
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The gold farmers offer powerleveling but sharing your info is against TOS, and Nexon CAN ban you if they catch your account being accessed by a different IP. Gold farming has tapered off since they started crackdowns on hackers. Most of the farmers used vacuum hacks and such to group kill monsters and gather drops. There are very few gold farmers left in the US servers now, they mostly stick to the Asian clients.