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bigspeer

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Respecs - Past and Present

One of the new features in Issue 11 will be the inclusion of Respec Recipes!

QUOTE

Respecs – Past and Present

by Lead Designer, Matt “Positron” Miller

One of the things that players have constantly been asking for has always been a way to earn unlimited Respecs for their characters. When we first introduced the concept of Respecs (Respecializing your character), it was in the form of a not-too-easy Trial that forced you and your team to use some pretty sound tactics to beat a difficult Task Force. This Trial could be repeated two more times by the time you reached level 50, so your character could Respec three times in the course of their career.

Unfortunately at times we made some significant adjustments to a variety of powers, forcing us to give players a free “respec” for their character when those adjustments made it to live. For many players, their characters simply didn’t play the same way as they did before the adjustment came, so we needed to give them a way to change their character without having to run the Trial. We also decided that at most, a character could hold one of these “Freespecs” at a time. When we gave out more, they would not stack. It was a use-it-or-lose it proposition.

With the game nearing it’s fourth year of live operations, many high level characters have wanted to respec their characters to take advantage of new systems that we have added, and they have long since used their three Trial-earned Respecs, and any Freespecs they may have had. We knew that we always wanted a “repeatable” Respec, but were stuck going over exactly how to implement it.

Our first idea was to simply allow you to pay Influence or Infamy for your Respec, with an increasing scale in price. The first one costs X, the second one 2 x X, the third 4 x X, the fourth 8 x X, etc. However, even if we put in decay (the price goes down if you don’t buy one in a while) the prices would still gate some users from accessing the content, while not being any sort of hindrance at all to very rich characters.

The next thought was to “tax the rich”. Respecs could cost 10% of your “total worth”. This would mean that no matter how rich the character was, they would each pay 10% of their total unspent Inf. to get a Respec. Of course, this was immediately exploitable as players could just temporarily hand all of their Influence off to another character, pay for the Respec, and then get all their Influence back. Tada! Cheap Respecs for those players with more than one account, or trusted friends!

With Issue 9 and the Invention system, we really struck gold. We finally had a real economy in the game, with proven commodities and supply and demand. We also had a system that could be used to hold onto Respecs that are unused (much like the three Trial respecs) with Recipes.

In Issue 11, we created the Respec Recipe. This recipe, which is a rare drop off of defeating enemies at any level, allows players to grant themselves a Freespec. This Freespec is used immediately upon crafting the recipe. Now this is an item that any character in the game would be happy to have. The ability to change their power selections and slotting at any time in their career is powerful. We expect these to be highly sought after items. Even though they are not as rare as the new Very Rare Enhancements put into Issue 11, they may very well demand a higher price.

Linky!

11/05/07 11:17

Phedre_D

GameAmp Staff
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Joined: 05/09/2005
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RE: Respecs - Past and Present

Great solution by the devs! The real respec junkies can go bongers if they want too. Although I hope the regular respec TF's stay. I can imagine if you have a crappy build and you desperately need to respec you don't want to continue playing in the hope you'll get the elusive respec recipe. And since you build is crappy you probably don't have the influence or infamy to buy the no doubt pricey recipe off the broker.

Personally I don't see the real need for the respec recipe at all. On most of my characters I still 2 free respecs waiting, plus 3 or more from my veteran awards. But then again, my characters are far from uber.

The GameAmp Noobz Household!

11/05/07 11:36

Rockshock

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Joined: 04/24/2005
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RE: Respecs - Past and Present

I agree! Surely the respec trials, the veteran respec's and the freespecs would be enough to get your character right! I've rarely ever respec-ed my characters, although I can understand people wanting to experiment with powers and slotting.

My veiw of playing City of Heroes is to play like each of your characters is a real character that Marvel or DC would be proud to have. With some exceptions, most superheroes wouldnt have a super power and say 'oh dang, this power isn't all the handy in the feild. Im going to force myself to mutate in order to get rid of this power and get another one.'

If that was possible all of the x-men would just be wolverines or cyclopses

11/05/07 13:38

Mech beta

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Joined: 02/17/2007
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RE: Respecs - Past and Present

QUOTE

If that was possible all of the x-men would just be wolverines or cyclopses

How about a little love for beast?

**Post ends here**

11/05/07 13:52

gambit4007

Posts: 2
Joined: 09/14/2005
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RE: Respecs - Past and Present

HELLOO!!!! did you forget about GAMBIT(4007)!!! or BISHOP(dan) alot less commercial and much cooler powers

11/05/07 14:00

RonJ73

GameAmp Staff
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Joined: 01/10/2005
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RE: Respecs - Past and Present

How about a little love for PHOENIX!?! (The real Phoenix...Jean Grey...died on the moon, etc.)

City of Heroes/Villains
Onion - L50 - Katana/Super Reflexes/Body Mastery Scrapper
Scotch Bonnet Girl - L50 - Fire Aura/Fire Melee/Pyre Mastery Tanker
RonJ73 - L50 - Stone/Energy Aura Brute
Aurora Australis - L50 - Willpower/Energy Melee Tanker

11/05/07 16:55

LordStarwolf

Posts: 3
Joined: 08/28/2005
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RE: Respecs - Past and Present

Man, you guys are bringing back a lot of old memories of my misspent youth, back when comics were still cool. Ahhh, back in the days of marvel glory.....

Guardian
Avant Guard = Emp/Rad/Psychic Defender Lvl 50 (Dedicated Healer)
Astral Plane = Peacebringer Lvl 50
Spica = Fire/Em/Energy Tank Lvl 50 (Scranker)
Avant Spines = Spines/Regen Scrapper Lvl 50 (AOE King)
Beliskner = Eng/Eng Blaster Lvl 42 (Blapper)
Avant Kin = Ill/Kin Controller Lvl 39
BMG = AR/Dev Blaster Lvl 29
Avant Psy = Psychic Blast/Empathy Defender Lvl 20 (Offender)
Avant Def = Kinetics/Energy Blast Defender Lvl 16
Avant Stone = Stone/Storm Controller lvl 15 (Super Controller)
Triumph
Lord Yu = MA/Regen Scrapper Lvl 24
Protector
Electrostun = Electric/EM Blaster Lvl 21 (Sapper)
T-99 = Ice/Ice Tanker Lvl 20
Starwolf = Katana/Inv Scrapper Lvl 18 (my very first toon, 3 1/2 years ago)
Pinnacle
Avant Claws = Claws/Regen Scrapper Lvl 24
Champion
Avant Dragon = Fire/Fire Blaster Lvl 20
Freedom
Avant Arch = Archery/NRG Blaster Lvl 50
Avant Char = Fire/Kinetics Controller Lvl 50
Avant Shade = Warshade Lvl 36

And many, many, many more....

11/05/07 19:03

jfire90

Posts: 3
Joined: 06/30/2007
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RE: Respecs - Past and Present

QUOTE

HELLOO!!!! did you forget about GAMBIT(4007)!!! or BISHOP(dan) alot less commercial and much cooler powers

GAMBIT FTW!

Rawr

11/05/07 19:30

Solarix

Posts: 40
Joined: 08/13/2006
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RE: Respecs - Past and Present

respec recipes would be awesome, but sooooo expensive. people paid rediculous amounts of money
for butterfly wings (eg, 32 mill) when they first came out, so how much do you think people would spend on these when i11 hits? 50mill? personally, if my build needs more than the lv 24 TF and both my vetspecs, along with whatever freespecs we get from updates, maybe its the powerset combo, not the individual powers that are the problem.

P.S.: i wish comics were not only cheaper than they are now, which is like $3, but also better. the only series i find worth reading are Runaways and Ultimate Xmen.

Current Projects
CoX
SpecOps Wink - level 42 Claws/Regen Scrapper
Aurelei - level 28 Warshade
Alexis Silver - leveling Energy/Kinetics Corrupter

Guild Wars
Avatar Korren - E/Rit level 20!
Arya Quinn - N/Rit

11/05/07 20:56

bigspeer

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Joined: 02/22/2006
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RE: Respecs - Past and Present

QUOTE

I'm taking this to mean that there will not be any more freespecs given out for new issues.

I think the market for these recipes will be similar to the costume recipes (Graph 1) when the new issue launches, meaning they will be highly sought after and insanely priced immediately, but as the more recipes are added to the market, the price will gradually fall. (Graph 2)

But if the devs find the drop rate to be low after a fixed period of time, they could also create a surplus of respec recipes in the market to drive the price down,(Graph 3) i.e. the same thing as costume drops.

That was your economics lesson for the year. Your homework assignment will be posted later in the day.

Graph 1

Graph 2

Graph 3

***THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED***

My name is Jean Claude Van Damme and I dance for you...

11/06/07 07:45

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