Say for example you have healer artifacts at 200. Buy one of these from mp and u can have the same rank in your new one. Makes going from healing to tank or troll to heal easier. We win cause we can switch and dB wins cause they get sales. What say you all?
Hmmm so let's say 1,678,722 xp are needed for Rank 200. Halving it as of right now would only yield 839,361 XP which, basically only get's an Artifact to 160... To then max it again, that is a little bit more than 11 Perfected Artifact XP pieces for 900 each, reaching a total cost of XP only (not counting at least 4 seal of completions if you're impatient) of 9,900 DBC bought from the Marketplace if someone really, really, really wants the artifact before the next double xp. Knowing that, how much should your idea cost? Because if it's significantly less than 9,900 DBC ... there is no chance in heck they will do it.
Personally, I think the current Artifact system is off-putting enough that they lose more sales than they gain. Like many players, I get my Nth Metal naturally through gameplay and never purchase any. Like many players, I am not opposed to the purchase of a Seal here and there to get past an annoying breakthrough, especially when reaching those breakthroughs takes a lot of time. Like every single player I have ever met, I am not going to sink hundreds of dollars into an alt. That is simply a fact. The game is not alt friendly enough to make that money worthwhile. Dropping $20 on Replay Badges for a new character to fast-track them to 150 skill points. Yeah. Sure. No big deal. It was cheap, and it made life easier. While I was at it, I'd spend Replay Badges on whatever style I wanted a new character to have as well. Right up until the point it started to be "...and now pay $600 to max out their Artifacts." Not going to happen. Never. Under no circumstances. Already, all Nth Metal gets funneled up to my main, and the alts only get to keep the Character Bound stuff from the Vault. It's hard to convince me to spend my Source Marks on Catalysts for an alt when they could go to purchase Quarks for the main. I'm definitely never dropping hundreds of dollars to shore up their Artifacts. Which simply means that those alts will never be endgame viable. Which means that I don't need to bother making those Skill Point purchases in the first place. Which means getting 10 extra character slots as a Legendary Sub doesn't actually give me much value. It's a paywall that is so massive that not only will most of us not do it, but it also discourages all the spending that leads up to it. If Artifacts were being handled more like the Style Unlocking menu, where upon each Artifact breakthrough you would unlock a little mini-feat-esque menu that shows how far you had got on that one, and then the alts could spend Replay Badges to clone that Artifact over to them as well at that level, that is something that I would do. Heck, they could even scale it. Cloning a level 20 Artifact costs 20 Replay Badges. Cloning a 160 costs 160 RB. Cloning a 200 costs 200 RB. I'd still do it. Because that is a price that is reasonable. What's more, I'd actually become MORE invested in the Artifact system. Currently, I only bother with my Healing Artifacts for my main, because she's a healer. I do not bother with a DPS set of Artifacts, because it's just too slow, too expensive, too time consuming, too annoying, and it requires eating up even more inventory space to hang on to the things. BUT... if Artifacts were regarded in this unlockable-account-wide fashion, then immediately I see increased value. It's not a question of "Do you want to go through this again to build an alt suit of gear?" Instead, it's a more tempting "If you go ahead and work on Brit's DPS artifacts, then you also can use them to gear up your alts." Suddenly I see value in leveling up more than 3 Artifacts. I have a reason to work on Artifacts for other roles. Then I buy more Seals so that I can break through these extra Artifacts, and I buy more Replay Badges to unlock them on more characters, and since those alt characters become endgame viable again, then I care enough to unlock more feats and skill points on them, and spend money on them to get them whatever extra stuff I want, because they're actually usable. The existing Artifact system looks like a huge cash cow on paper, but I remain very unconvinced that this current state is actually the most profitable one. I think it's off-putting enough that they miss tons of sales and tons of money, by making the paywall too high. The reason why Microtransactions work so well is because they are MICRO-transactions; very small purchases that are easy to convince someone to do. When they make them too expensive, they no longer bring in that bulk of purchases. There is a reason why WalMart puts sodas, candy bars, and small bags of potato chips at the cash register. They are tiny purchases that can be made on impulse. WalMart does not put Flatscreen Televisions, Lawnmowers, and Laptop Computers at the check-out lanes because nobody is going to glance at one and say "Hmm. I didn't specifically come here to buy that, but I've got an extra $800 in my pocket so I might as well." That is how Microtransactions work. They have to be small to appeal to impulse purchases. When they become too large, they have to rely on premeditated purchases. And premeditated purchases allow the customer too much time to think, so (in the case of Artifacts) they can realize "Wait a second. I barely even play this alt. Why on earth do I need to spend $600 on Artifacts for them?" and stop themselves before they spend the money.
This is why I'm going to let my sub end on the 26th. I was an old player from t4-t6 days. And I really am not for the micro transactions. I understand its how a small game like dcuo can survive, but in my opinion artifacts are bad for the game. It scares people off from getting into dcuo. Everything is a paywall, you want 500 sp? Its gonna take endless hrs with a league carrying you, and real money or just an insane amount of time. Want 3 200 arts? You better play for 2 yrs 24/7 and have a ton of in game cash (that you probably bought with irl cash) or drop $150 an art. Want an alt? You get 1 free 255 skip but you'll want those sp and arts to be end game viable. I think they can make enough revenue if they just had more cosmetics in the mp. And don't make them feat bound like Time Capsules were a big slap in the face. The feat grinders were gonna cough up money for those even with the .00001% drop rates. This game has a small community, but they are loyal and diehard. I'd bet at least 1/3 of the community has dropped $1k on this game easily and others well above that. I have friends that buy dc cash just for a silly 50 point feat. Some people do Meth, and others are addicted to games with micro transactions. You may ask why do I care? Well, it was my first mml, I loved dcuo... now I just can't say I do. Sorry dc but you lost me ill be back to checkout the next superhero mml. If its dcuo 2 that's awesome. if its really an Xman game well that's ok too. If its CoH well now you have my attention.
I said many times don't like the artifact system it has so many problems, and I already spend more money then I should on artifacts. I will only level them up to 120 the most, won't go any higher. Then they constantly coming out with new artifacts, and that artifact maybe better then your current one, so you have to start over again. Then if you play both roles, then you have 6 artifacts. Artifacts feels like more of a job instead of a game enhancement and a new play style.
If artifacts could be made so that you have one leveled artifact usable by all characters on that account it would help a lot, but I get that any attempts to do such a thing would bring along all kinds of technical issues. It would be nice to have to level up only one Scrap of the Soul Cloak... or Eye of Gemini... or Transformation Card... and be able to use that same artifact across all of my characters. Quite honestly once you get your first artifact you can buy whichever one(s) you want from John Constantine, pay for the 75k Nth Metals (you'll need about 22 of them to go to max), the catalysts, and the seals and have a low-level (in the 20s, no less) character with max artifacts. Ridiculous? Yeah... but not impossible. Of course, I also would like a winning Lotto ticket and a place to escape to so I don't get hounded by people and organizations for money... but we all know how likely that is.
Dude. What you just said right there is he problem. You know how much money it is to buy 22 75k XPs and the mats? More than the console itself lol
@mepps what are your thoughts on artifacts? And microtransactions as a whole. Players already have to pay monthly to play. The whole f2p is a halftruth. Should be called free to try
For a member, each one is 900 MC... each seal of completion is 450 MC... a 4-pack of seals of preservation is about 180 MC. You can get 6-packs of each of the catalysts from the Marketplace as well. Nowhere did I suggest this would be a cheap or inexpensive option. There is a triangle related to production... one point is labeled "Cheap," another point is labeled "Good," and another point is labeled "Fast"... you can only ever have two of them. So something cheap and good will not be fast... something cheap and fast will not be good... and something good and fast will not be cheap, which is what you run into here.
The monetization is a slap in the face. Because that's only 1 piece factor in sp, replay badges. People literally drop thousands on dc
And I know players aren't forced to drop the money. But in mmropgs/ online games with character progression. A lot of players want the newest best thing. So yes you can play without artifacts, you'll just do a fraction of what a player with maxed arts can do.
If we only had to level up a single artifact to use across the account, that would be a reasonable expectation.
