Warrior General Games

I was just about to go very in depth about this myself. I want to thank Static for getting the ball rolling, but I have some things to add.

SUGGESTIONS:

1) Advanced store has to be position specific.
2) Advanced store should not require tokens to refresh, if you want people to wait for the right item, make it free but make them wait. Like getting 3 new D-League deals when you 1st sign up.
3) Advanced Equipment has to be more expensive/harder to get than standard equipment, but it has to be better.

REASONS:

1+2) Currently, my WR has "superior red cleats" in his advanced equipment store with a super cool bonus of "deflect ball chance +2%." He is a WR, why would I want him to deflect the ball? Now I have to use another Shopping Token to refresh my store so I can find something I actually want, which means I have to wait until tomorrow until I can train on normal again and get one. Which costs me another day of not being able to train on intense which will get me bonus tokens which will allow me to upgrade the equipment that I can't buy in the 1st place because it is not position specific. What if I refresh my store again and get the same thing? (By the way, my CB has a shirt that gives him +1 to Shut Down coverage SA, but also gives him +2 to blocking. What?)

3) My CB has "superior white cleats" which give him +2 to catching, which is useful, but it costs $5000. I can buy standard white cleats +1 catching for $500, save for 4 bonus tokens (10 days), score 1 SP and add it to catching to gain the same advantage or just wait until level 8, and spend $1000 to get to the +2 and diversify my SPs wiser.

I had more, but Static beat me to it. Go Mosquitos!!!

The whole problem with the shopping system as it is now is that it doesn't take into account the opportunity costs of shopping. Why would I bother going shopping to see randomly generated items that have a high probability of being EQ that I wouldn't buy?

If I go shopping I lose out on the uber valuable bonus tokens. Bonus tokens are always good for something. You can get SP from them, or you can use them to upgrade EQ. On the other hand, looking at EQ is not always good for something. The worst part about shopping is you are not guaranteed to find anything useful. That could take anywhere between 1 day and 10 seasons from the look of it.

Every time I go shopping it puts me that much further behind catching up to the normal EQ upgrades. It's like going to a casino, except when you do get lucky you get an item that is inferior and needs to be upgraded with the bonus tokens you missed out on by going shopping.

You need to lower the opportunity cost to shopping or nobody with a brain is going to do it.

Here are a few ways to make it worthwhile:

1. Make the shopping less random. You shouldn't have to feel unsure about how long it's going to take to find the items you need/want.

2. Make the items available to you actually be level appropriate. I don't know about you, but buying a piece of EQ that is +1 doesn't get me anywhere close to replacing one of my other pieces. Not wearing the normal EQ upgrades is an opportunity cost of wearing that advanced EQ. If it takes too long to get that one piece up to your level, then it's worthless. Maybe in 3 seasons if I don't ever go shopping again I can get that +1 item up to +4 or 5, and by then the normal upgrades are still higher and I'm closer to retirement.

3. Give .25 of a bonus token while going shopping. With the cost of upgrading the current advanced EQ, it's the only way you'll ever to catch up to the normal upgrades without getting very lucky finding a piece of good advanced EQ. The advanced EQ is costly in training time. The normal EQ is easy to upgrade and only costs your team money. It is much easier to get +5 to any attribute with the normal stuff. After that it is going to be expensive to your team.

Originally posted by notgoing2argue
The whole problem with the shopping system as it is now is that it doesn't take into account the opportunity costs of shopping. Why would I bother going shopping to see randomly generated items that have a high probability of being EQ that I wouldn't buy?

If I go shopping I lose out on the uber valuable bonus tokens. Bonus tokens are always good for something. You can get SP from them, or you can use them to upgrade EQ. On the other hand, looking at EQ is not always good for something. The worst part about shopping is you are not guaranteed to find anything useful. That could take anywhere between 1 day and 10 seasons from the look of it.

Every time I go shopping it puts me that much further behind catching up to the normal EQ upgrades. It's like going to a casino, except when you do get lucky you get an item that is inferior and needs to be upgraded with the bonus tokens you missed out on by going shopping.

You need to lower the opportunity cost to shopping or nobody with a brain is going to do it.

Here are a few ways to make it worthwhile:

1. Make the shopping less random. You shouldn't have to feel unsure about how long it's going to take to find the items you need/want.

2. Make the items available to you actually be level appropriate. I don't know about you, but buying a piece of EQ that is +1 doesn't get me anywhere close to replacing one of my other pieces. Not wearing the normal EQ upgrades is an opportunity cost of wearing that advanced EQ. If it takes too long to get that one piece up to your level, then it's worthless. Maybe in 3 seasons if I don't ever go shopping again I can get that +1 item up to +4 or 5, and by then the normal upgrades are still higher and I'm closer to retirement.

3. Give .25 of a bonus token while going shopping. With the cost of upgrading the current advanced EQ, it's the only way you'll ever to catch up to the normal upgrades without getting very lucky finding a piece of good advanced EQ. The advanced EQ is costly in training time. The normal EQ is easy to upgrade and only costs your team money. It is much easier to get +5 to any attribute with the normal stuff. After that it is going to be expensive to your team.

It only costs you SHOPPING TOKENS to go shopping, which you get when you train on normal. You get BONUS TOKENS when you train on intense.

Originally posted by supgreg
Originally posted by notgoing2argue

The whole problem with the shopping system as it is now is that it doesn't take into account the opportunity costs of shopping. Why would I bother going shopping to see randomly generated items that have a high probability of being EQ that I wouldn't buy?

If I go shopping I lose out on the uber valuable bonus tokens. Bonus tokens are always good for something. You can get SP from them, or you can use them to upgrade EQ. On the other hand, looking at EQ is not always good for something. The worst part about shopping is you are not guaranteed to find anything useful. That could take anywhere between 1 day and 10 seasons from the look of it.

Every time I go shopping it puts me that much further behind catching up to the normal EQ upgrades. It's like going to a casino, except when you do get lucky you get an item that is inferior and needs to be upgraded with the bonus tokens you missed out on by going shopping.

You need to lower the opportunity cost to shopping or nobody with a brain is going to do it.

Here are a few ways to make it worthwhile:

1. Make the shopping less random. You shouldn't have to feel unsure about how long it's going to take to find the items you need/want.

2. Make the items available to you actually be level appropriate. I don't know about you, but buying a piece of EQ that is +1 doesn't get me anywhere close to replacing one of my other pieces. Not wearing the normal EQ upgrades is an opportunity cost of wearing that advanced EQ. If it takes too long to get that one piece up to your level, then it's worthless. Maybe in 3 seasons if I don't ever go shopping again I can get that +1 item up to +4 or 5, and by then the normal upgrades are still higher and I'm closer to retirement.

3. Give .25 of a bonus token while going shopping. With the cost of upgrading the current advanced EQ, it's the only way you'll ever to catch up to the normal upgrades without getting very lucky finding a piece of good advanced EQ. The advanced EQ is costly in training time. The normal EQ is easy to upgrade and only costs your team money. It is much easier to get +5 to any attribute with the normal stuff. After that it is going to be expensive to your team.

It only costs you SHOPPING TOKENS to go shopping, which you get when you train on normal. You get BONUS TOKENS when you train on intense.

Yes. I believe you do not understand the concept of opportunity cost. It's what you lose by doing something else. Because you are not training intense you essentially lose(miss the opportunity) for .4 of a bonus token by going shopping. Likewise, by training on intense you lose 2.5 shopping tokens. And, since shopping tokens are only good for refreshing a store that randomly chooses items you probably don't want, I'd say the opportunity cost of going shopping is much higher than the opportunity cost of training on intense.

edited for clarification.

Originally posted by Darkus Black
Originally posted by Bort

Thanks for compiling this

There was also a suggestion about combining adv gear with similar normal gear with some sort of "crafting" system, so if anybody has something to add on that, I'm all ears.

http://goallineblitz.com/game/forum_thread.pl?thread_id=1064937

This would be easy.

normal equip adv. equip.

eye black + eye shield

shirt + shoulder pads

etc.

just make them build on each other

Also this would create two sets of equip for each player to buy. Which the owner's (myself included) probably wouldn't like. But Bort has already said he wants to increase cost of contracts. At least this way we get improved players for the increase.

^ I agree. Should be a basic equip slot and then an advanced slot for equipment. Think of it as an advanced add on or something. Then you can switch out the advanced ones as you need too.

You could change the equipment for the advanced too.

Basic

Shirt
Visor
Gloves
Shoes

Advanced

Shoulder Pads
Helmet
Arm Bands
Socks

Everyone will be wanting those magic jumping socks.

http://goallineblitz.com/game/forum_thread.pl?thread_id=1067906

Man I want some of those magic jumping socks!!!!

It makes sense to make the equipment upgradeable from a base piece. So you add 'bits' to your players. Tattoos, socks, jewelry. This way the 'character' develops differently for each player, so when we are all sat there at night drawing our players in their adventures they will all look different.

The pressing equipment matters are obviously being voiced again and again on this forum. Those need to be dealt with first. However, I suggest you use the resources of the community to your advantage to get together better equipment.

#1) Superior (color) (item) is very vanilla. There are a lot of football fans and a lot of MMORPG nerds and sometimes both that play this game. I am fairly certain that we could come up with some sort of naming system for different equipment and what it does.

For example - Gridiron Leather Helmet of Spearing.
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g177/kretchfoop/oldfootballhelmet.jpg

Gridiron = +stamina
Leather Helmet = leather helmet (just the different styles of helmet out there)
Spearing = +monster hit.

#2) You could get some of the more experienced free-lancers to design variations on the equipment for you...perhaps for some flex if the design is used. Only head gear has any variation right now. If we are going to buy advanced equipment, it should look somewhat different.

#3) Realism is out the window right now. Might as well have some unique items that make us chuckle and say "Holy Shit!" For example, Chuck Norris' beard - +10 confidence, +1 to all SAs. Or maybe Hello Kittah mittens of death - +8 STR, +10% chance to hold block.

I am aware that there are some obvious copywrite issues that must be a priority in both the images and names, but I believe the items should have more diversity and there should be some extremely valuable and extremely rare items. Is there a reason not to have us shoot out some ideas now for when the time is right?

Currently there is no reason why any high level player would use the new store.

A few suggestions to help fix

1. Create better items in the store.
- As a LVL 25 WR why would I replace my +4 speed with a +2 catching? It doesn't make sense. If I had more options of a +3 attribute with a 5% chance at something useful, I would consider it. The gap between current equipment for high level players and the new items in the store is too big.

2. Make the store less random
- When I am a QB, why am I getting rolls for blocking and tackling equipment. It's a big waste of my shopping token and discourages me even more from using the store. I don't are if you give me all crap + 1 throwing or vision pieces, I just get discouraged when I see Tackling up there for my QB. I would imagine it would also discourage noob's.

3. If you want to keep things more random and not improve the store, perhaps give players 10 Bonus tokens for use right away. Make these tokens only allowable for use to upgrade equipment in the store. Do not allow these free tokens to be turned in for SP's or anything else. Include 10 Free tokens for every player ever made and for all new players. This would encourage the use of the system and would alow you to keep the store pretty much intact as the way it is now.

MY IDEAS RE: ADVANCED EQUIPMENT

1) Separate Slots

Pants, Shoulder Pads, Knee Pads, Elbow Pads.

Then do what you are doing. Just make these add on and they immediately become worth the trouble it took to implement the system and to save up the shopping tokens.

2) Upgrade Doubles Boosts

If the equipment gives plus 2% to something or +1 to a SA or +2 to a skill, then upgrading adds another 2%, +1 SA, +2 skill to those same things each time you upgrade it.

OR

3) Upgrade Boosts Similar Stats

If you want more variety, then let an upgrade give a similar type of boost to a select menu. IE if the equipment boosts 2% percentage to tackling, then let the menu be to add 2% to tackling or a variety of other defensive events (shed block, force fumble, deflect pass etc) or if 2% to catching then the upgrade is to an offensive menu. If the equipment has a special skill then the upgrade could be to add a special skill of any other skill either on the same side of the ball as the original SA (ie Offense or Defense) or within the same Tree as that SA (or Trees for SAs that are in more than one, ie Shock Block would be give a menu with an O Lineman Tree to select from), and finally if the stat boosts a peripheral skill +2 then you just get the option to boost any peripheral skill plus 2 (ie vision confidence stamina) and if +1 skill then you get to boost one to any skill at all. For multifaceted items you get to do such a boost within each category (ie for your boost you can boost a skill and a SA etc whatever the item had), or if you are feeling chintsy then you get to choose one of these options from the original boosts on the gear.

The more the merrier. Make em DO stuff. Why not? There are more stats than you can shake a stick at and its not possible to boost em all to max in ten seasons anyway.

10 tokens per upgrade is STEEP. Why not use a scaled system for upgrade like with the cash?
6 BT @ lvl 8.
7 BT @ lvl 16.
8 BT @ lvl 24

so on and so on.

This would be per peice. So...15 days of training Intense for lvl 8 EQ upgrade. This also gives the player a choice. Do i get all Lvl 8 ADV Eq, or do i move on and collect BT for my LVL 16 bonus, which will take 18 Days.

With 6 BT per lvl 8 upgrade, it would take 1.5 seasons for 4 eq upgrades of lvl 8. Unless the player purposly stunts his xp gain, his will be near lvl 16 by that point. This therefore gives a tradeoff to the player. 4 pieces of ADV Eq with +1 or 3 pieces of EQ with +2 and 1 ADV EQ with +2.

The numbers above can be tweeked. I starting out thinking that all BT upgrades should be 8 in cost.

Btw, is the Advanced EQ only upgradeable based on your level or is it limitless as long as you have the 10 bonus tokens. For example, could a level 7 player buy a +1 piece of Advanced Eq then upgrade it to be +2? I guess what I'm asking is what is the limiting factor on the bonuses, your player's level or your players bonus tokens?

Could the amount of BT needed to upgrade the equipment vary depending on what you stats would be upgraded? If you are upgrading a +SA, I don't think it would need to be equal to upgrading +1 to a stat.

Originally posted by kretchfoop
The pressing equipment matters are obviously being voiced again and again on this forum. Those need to be dealt with first. However, I suggest you use the resources of the community to your advantage to get together better equipment.

#1) Superior (color) (item) is very vanilla. There are a lot of football fans and a lot of MMORPG nerds and sometimes both that play this game. I am fairly certain that we could come up with some sort of naming system for different equipment and what it does.

For example - Gridiron Leather Helmet of Spearing.
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g177/kretchfoop/oldfootballhelmet.jpg

Gridiron = +stamina
Leather Helmet = leather helmet (just the different styles of helmet out there)
Spearing = +monster hit.


We actually were going to go with a prefix/suffix system but decided against it to keep the "magical gloves of catching" stuff to a minimum. The unique stuff we add later will be like that helmet, though, probably named after people in the game or something.

Originally posted by kretchfoop

Is there a reason not to have us shoot out some ideas now for when the time is right?

Nope, go ahead!