Tradable UTs/STs/LH Tops (a new benefit to earning fame)

#1

We’ve all been there. You are a Paladin enthusiast. It’s your favorite class. You just finished maxing a Paladin on your last character slot. You’ve got a generic tops set. You’ve been farming Pentaracts for weeks trying to get an oreo to complete your Paladin’s set. You see a Hermit God on your quest window while hunting Pentaracts. You arrive on the scene of the Hermit God event terrain and begin the fight alongside 84 other people who all teleported to you leaving the godlands empty so that nobody can teleport back after the Hermit dies. After several seconds of plowing through the Hermit God you see it… The elusive white bag containing the Helm of the Juggernaut. You’re ecstatic. You’re shocked. You’re… well… disappointed. It wasn’t that oreo you wanted. You don’t have another character slot to max a Warrior so that you can actually use the Jugg. You work full time at a pizza place in real life. You earn just enough to get by and pay rent. Realm gold is out of the question. Your Jugg must face the same fate as many other UT items, that is, rotting in your vault until your current character dies or until you get birthday money from your parents in a half a year when your birthday swings around.

Unfortunately, this happens all too often. I, personally, have never gotten an event white, but for the longest time I had two midnight stars sitting in my vault rotting away because I really disliked Ninja (until about a month ago when I tried to play the class again). As I said, we have all been there. We all have our classes that we like and those that we dislike. We all have tons of UTs sitting in our vault that will more than likely never be used because they’re for classes that we just really do not like to play. We’ve been hoping for years for another UT weekend so we can finally have our precious storage space back in our vault. It’s probably never going to come. I mean, don’t get me wrong. UT weekends were great back in the day but at this point there’s just so many items in the game that a UT weekend would probably be a bit of a train wreck and DECA’s servers would probably all collapse due to a broken aortic valve because there’s so many trades taking place.

So that gets me wondering… Why not just unsoulbound all items? You may think, “that’s crazy talk!” and I most certainly agree with you. I mean, take a look at all of the negative impacts that full on unsoulbounding all items would cause:

  • Real world traders would be able to have a constant source of income (a source of income that takes away from DECA’s own income)
  • The ST mystery boxes would be even more pointless than they already are as any of these ST items would be traded to dupers and then be duped to oblivion and there would be no reason to ever roll these mystery boxes

These two issues are directly caused by real world trading. However, there is one more issue that seems to be inevitable no matter how we go about unsoulbounding items and that is the following:

  • Players wouldn’t have to try in order to succeed in this game. They could sit in the trade server all day attempting to trade for items they need. They would never have to risk their characters.

Unfortunately, I do not see any sort of solution to this. That would really be the only consequence (that I can think of… there may be more, feel free to respond with other issues you might see) and honestly, being able to trade is meant to be part of the game so I do not really see too terrible of an issue with people trading to win.

All of these points leave me to the question, “How may we unsoulbound equipment in a way that would prevent real world traders from benefiting directly?” And I actually have a solution. One that would honestly feel like nothing has even changed in the game. One that would be fairly easy to program and establish as a feature in the game. One that only the players that put the most time into the game would be able to achieve.

Allow UT equipment, ST equipment, LH tops, etc. to be traded at the cost of a large sum of fame from both parties (both the seller and the buyer).

Now, you may be thinking at this point, “if you have to charge the seller fame as well then nobody is going to sell UTs.” This was the first thing I thought of when I first heard this, however, I feel as if this implementation would create a market where the rarer equipment (such as event whites or Lost Halls equipment) have an absolutely massive cost, let’s say 40 life for a Jugg, because of the fame cost that must come from both parties. If the seller and buyer both have to contribute 5000 fame in order to trade a Jugg, you would expect Jugg to sell for a very expensive cost like 40 life since the seller also has to deal with losing 5000 fame.

Another point I would like to tackle about it “not being worth trading” is that as the game currently stands, many players have plenty of extra fame sitting on their account as they have maxed or almost maxed pets and nothing to do with their fame. This fame could be used to sell the UTs that they have sitting in their vault currently.

Now, in regards to the RWT issue, this method of trading would force real world traders to fame farm an absurd amount if they actually plan to successfully dupe and sell items like Helm of the Juggernaut. At a cost of 5000 fame or more it honestly would not be worth it for real world traders to farm for. Not to mention, they would also have to find someone willing to buy it at the same time. What this whole fame cost does towards RWT is that it makes it so real world traders are unable to mass sell items. They can only sell them to other players one at a time as they continuously farm fame. By having the fame cost it sort of limits the amount of a certain item that may enter the market and thus retaining that item’s rarity.

As for aesthetics… I expect the fame cost for trading UTs to appear similarly to this:
image

And the trade window would notify you how much fame the trade would cost:
image

*The fame cost of Wyrmhide is just a placeholder value. The actual values would be up to DECA’s discretion. Values would change based on the rarity/demand of the individual item.

That’s it for now! In the future I’ll be updating this thread to contain what I suggest as the fame cost for each item. Please leave any comments, remarks, or changes that you thing should be made to the idea below!

#2

Interesting idea, I wonder if that would actually work

#3

Pay to win just turned into fame train to win

#4

I have over 72000 account fame, so 2000 really is nothing (when Deca sell stuff for fame I tend to blow a few thousand on whatever it is just for the hell of it). Fame is easy to get if you want it, rendering the cost pretty pointless, and making the game more grindy and dull as fame trains become common. All in all a terrible idea.

#5

That’s the point though. Giving people who have been playing the game for a long time the ability to buy UTs if they want to. And don’t take the 2000 fame on the image seriously. I just needed a value as a place holder. It would really be up to DECA’s discretion to decide actual prices. The point of this is that it removes the ability for RWTing to occur with these items.

Other than you calling the idea terrible based on the placeholder value, what else makes it terrible?

#6

DECA probably doesn’t want to give players more reason to fame train.

See: plans to rework fame bonuses

#7

I can tell that this idea was very well thought out and planned, and it’s a good idea, but let me make a suggestion.
How about, instead of all of this, let’s just make UTs/STs/LH Tops purchasable in the nexus, for a very large/unfair amount of gold? It would make more money for DECA, and more money means more content, and more content means new items, and those new items could also be sold, which means even more money for DECA! :smile:

Let’s see how many people actually take this reply seriously. I actually do really like this idea though, but it would just give even more people a reason to fametrain, and those who fame farm would have an advantage over those who don’t. Other than that, good idea, I like it! :slight_smile:

#8

There are fame training bots—they just follow the crowd, soak up the fame, and suicide when they hit 250 base fame (when the fame rate drops off) and repeat ad nauseum. I’m sure the RWT shops would be overjoyed to have the opportunity to sell duped UTs again.

:-1:

#9

I like the idea of some sort of barrier to prevent mass trading. However, I don’t think fame would be the barrier for the job. Getting fame is incredibly easy with fame trains, so making it cost 5000 fame to trade for a UT would be nothing for RWTers who invest a considerable amount of time in the game.

Furthermore, the fame cost would bar off a significant portion of the community from ever trading UTs. The majority of rising players spend their fame on upgrading a pet; they simply wouldn’t have the fame left over to buy a UT item.

I think you have a great idea. Blocking off RWTers with some form of a regulation is an excellent thought. However, the grand flaw in your idea is basing it off of fame. The majority of players would not be able to benefit from this system. I can only see the concept of using fame to trade UTs as being a greater incentive to fame farming and killing off characters. Additionally, the fame cost wouldn’t be terribly hard to overcome for fame farming RWTers unless it was some absurdly high amount. But, as previously stated, such a high cost would only serve to bar off the majority of players and, ultimately, would render your system as a means for RWTers to make more profit (especially since they would presumably charge more for the associated fame cost).

I suggest looking into other methods than charging fame to trade UTs. Perhaps limiting UT trading to once a month would work, but then again, this alternative is not wholly satisfactory.

#10

Because it makes UTs tradeable, which would make them far less interesting and special. The main beneficiaries would be RWT sites who would suddenly be able to sell everything. It would make fame trains, one of the worst features of the game, suddenly much more popular.

The problem you describe in your first paragraph is one of the best thing about UTs. If you get a rare UT it prompts you to play that char. Maybe not immediately but when a slot next opens up. If everything was tradeable there would be much less incentive to play all the classes. You could just pick your favourite and buy all the UTs for it.

#11

It’s easy to get large amounts of fame without playing the game for very long. People can just fametrain to quickly obtain the fame necessary to buy an item they want, instead of actually farming dungeons/events/bosses to get said item as a drop. This would give the game a much greater grind aspect than it already has, and it wouldn’t be quite as enjoyable then.

How about giving LH/event bosses a chance to drop 1-2 tokens, and you could trade a large amount of those tokens for a slightly weaker version of their UT drop/s. For example, maybe you could trade 90 or so Cube God tokens (they would stack ofc) for a CDirk that has nerfed stats (98-201 damage, lower projectile speed, etc). Don’t take these numbers seriously, I just thought them up on the spot, you get the point.

#12

fame training out of da roof

#13

That would make the game pay to win -_-

#14

That’s the point.
I was clearly joking, I even said so in the post :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

Maybe if fame wasn’t exploitable

#16

I think this would be a great idea if fame was reworked to more closely correlate with real game play as opposed to farming for the sake of farming.
This would also solve the problem of people doing way too many of a dungeon and not getting the UT because they are too unlucky.

#17

GREAT IDEA BRO I LOVE IT I HAVE TOO MUCH FAME XD JK.
but i love the idea

#18

Tradable UT = no profit for deca = deca not approve

#19

There are several huge flaws to this.

  1. This doesn’t encourage active game play. What I mean by this is that you would literally have so people sitting in fame train all day and all night, farming up fame. The fact of the matter is that everyone wants those coveted UTs STs and LH Tops and added to the fact that fame training isn’t very dangerous, you pretty much have a 100% chance of getting whatever UT or ST or whatever it is you want. This lowers the amount of players in realm, which in turn might affect the people who do want to do something besides mindlessly run around godlands in circles. Sooner or later, everyone is going to have a ton of fame, UTs, STs, and maybe even high level pets, just because they did nothing. And we know that UTs are really rare so you’re obviously going to charge a high fame price. This of course will only lead to people sitting for longer hours in the fame train.
  2. Defeats the purpose of running dungeons. Let’s face it, once we max a stat, the only reason we keep running a dungeon is to get that coveted white bag. Rotmg is all about grinding dungeons until you get that coveted item. If you now are able to trade UTs/STs/LH Tops, there is no point whatsoever to running dungeons since you can just buy whatever you want. This devalues a key aspect and major driving force for the game and players.
  3. Too many loopholes. As mentioned above by several people, fame is on hard to get, and fame training is rarely puts you in a risky situation that might kill you. Hackers, dupers or whoever can easily use bots to fame up characters and then dupe the heck out of such rare items. This of course as we all know drives the value of rare items down.
  4. Defeats the purpose of UTs, STs and LH Tops. It just really isn’t the same if you’re able to trade UTs or even STs. I know some people might say this gives lower level players a chance to get these rare items, but it doesnt help at all. Being low level means you’re inexperienced, which will mean you’ll die easier. This will only cause them to sit for hours more in the fame train, giving them little experience learned.
  5. DECA loses out big time. Remember back when people were outraged at the ice tomb not dropping certain whites, or were dropping them at a really low rate? Well the point is that people are really really dedicated to getting rare items, and when people get those rare items, they no longer buy keys, loot potions, or packages in order for a chance to get coveted items. Let’s take LH for an example. LH has some of the best equipment in the game and there are numerous discords dedicated to running LHs in order to get that equipment. If you’re now able to obtain stuff from LH by trading, people no longer will run LH, which in turn cause people to stop buying LH keys which are probably a profit for DECA because of the key price. So this pretty much puts a nail in the coffin.

TL;DR: Bad idea. Period.

#20

So a trading tax payable on UT trades.

I think it’d be naturally logical step to also include an alternate for-gold payment, since if someone wants to pay Deca’s bills via trading then why not let them.

It’s an interesting idea and well-written but won’t fly because regarding sb/unsb, people are either:
a) sb fundamentalists, so will hate this idea by definition;
b) unsb hippies, and these freedom-lovers would not be masochist to enjoy the thought of forced fame training 12 hours a day to afford the items.

There wouldn’t (I imagine) be support for this idea because if the majority of people from both these groups are against it, that’s gonna leave not many people left to get behind it.

This idea is really a solution to if the game was drowning in merchers, since spending all day trading - they’d just run out of fame and be forced “oh no” to actually play again! But that’s not really a problem compared to other things in Rotmg.

Unfortunately (as others mention) anything that uses fame as currency is going to cause a surge in famefarming & famebotting and that’s not healthy for the game, if to compete you feel “pressured” into shady methods just to keep up with the demands of permadeath to replace lost items. Leave the game running overnight on hacked client and “yey” in the morning you can afford a Jugg. Nope to that.

What if instead of fame payment, it was some direct disappear into æther out of the traded items as a tax. Or you have to put some item in a 9th slot for “payment” instead of the fame tax. Would that work? Probably just too complicated, and having a Deca NPC who you could do UT trading with would be simpler.

One thing - you don’t mention ST items which are lest we forget untiered, would they be subject to this? It’s still a huge irritation to me that Etherite, Pixie, ST tome, etc. are tradeable while other untiereds remain locked.

(And complete disclosure: my personal preference is simple full unsb and rebalance the game)