PortalCoins

Gurn

So, after messing up one round of portalcoins(accidentally went down), I did another one to completion, with the orcs and ogres.

All in all, I gained only as much experience as one run of Kilathu, a little less. My client crashed during this, so I don't have complete numbers, but I can estimate.


Worse, the final chest gave me this:

The hinges of the chest squeal as you pry it open and reach in to pull out an 

inscribed chunk of hematite, a Horn of Terror and a king's ransom of golden 

sovereigns.

The "king's ransom" ended up being 1247 gold, along with a total of 222 gold picked up from the actual hunt.

So... Was this worth it, for 32 credits?

No, not at all. All in all, I'm rather disappointed. Also, the mobs were really easy and and average level 61. I'm aspect. I really wish these were good, but they're just not. There goes 64 credits worth of tokens.

Aulani

Yeah, I instantly went:

32 credits x 10,000 gold per credit = 320,000 gold / 50 mobs = 6,400 gold per mob(yeah right) + strigori/wraith type reward

==

Likely not close to worth it.

Dias

Achievement wise, it is 40 tokens per achievement tree. That leads to a total of 120 tokens or roughly 3500 credits.

I spoke with Jesse a bit about this simply due to the gold output, experience output, and the 'artifact drops' that it wasn't worth the pay for the actual coin or for the achievement. We all know I am an achievement slut, so the fact that I am not willing to drop a dime into this is kind of "oof" to the entirety.

My suggestion was to raise the price on the 3 coins to 10 or 15 tokens. Make it permanent. Can be used once an OOC day, same time frame for falling and people getting in/out, scale back the chance of artifact drops. This would make it a more viable purchase (For those who want to hunt in general peace) and make the achievement feasible.

Ahkan

That wouldn't make anything very interesting either. If I wanted my own personal bashing area it would be kilathu or gongen's hold. I don't want a pocket Eror'rag.

I mean, if they want to make this stuff worthwhile they should take a page out of D&D online and just call it what it is, pay to play content. (I'm going to rip off WoW real fast, warning). I pony up my tokens and I buy a magical chalice of time travel. I sip the koolaid and I'm transported back to a scenario.

We'll say I go back in time to the War when Stavenn is attacking Kinsarmar for the spear (lolno, not Ihsan. The other guy, who was cooler and less mouth breathy.) Czevak and I then go marauding through Kinsarmar killing dudes and curb stomping the purple people eaters. Everyone else gets to join up and play too.

Then there's another scenario. I buy a chalice of space-time-god-bending. Fwoosh. They drop me off at the point in time where Avasyu and company banished the first demon lords. Oh snap, me and my buddies get to kick the piss out of the Demon's (Demon achievement, say what?) for great justice. The counter to this is you can also play against the gods, because damn..I would lovelovelove the opportunity to boom headshot some old gods.

Last scenario. You take a sip of the chalice of manliness. There is one mode. The horde is invading Caanae, how long can you last?  This is basically a tower defense option and it never stops until you die. You can do this once a real life month and the achievement is.
Together they stood victorious with their allies and slew 19403143 ogres..or some crap.

The benefit of this is that you have to buy the tokens to get that content and you can buy the tokens to play both sides. What's even cooler is this is open ended so whenever Svorai is bored, she can drop a story line, make some mobs and code up a wicked bad scenario where we can keep fanboying through. I'm not gonna lie. I would play the shit out of these.

You can have super bosses, epic lewt (Czevak's sword, Spear of Nathariel, temporary items, nice decorations, epic mountz) and invovlement in the story line no one pays attention to. Plus you can say you went 1v1 with Vahin or the Hunger guy. (which would be awwweeeesome)

Also ideas: 

-Defending Antioch from the invasion of teh demonz. (Tag team with the original scrubs for some demonick pwnage)

-Lyria mission. Defend your dudes from the jerks from stavenn. Aka: Defend the caravan. (two sides!)

-God, I would also make an entire scenario around Cimi. We'll say she's mad she got booted out of the Garden and she's focussed her latent butthurt to start a war with a giant mutant akrabi army.

Jeremy Saunders

Good ideas. I will think about some changes.

Khizan

Cairns and Coins are problematic because these things cost 32 credits a pop. 

I doubt you will come up with a consumable that you are comfortable with adding to the game that significant portions of the playerbase will consider worth a token.

I can think of an awful lot of things I'd rather see in the game than super-expensive consumables, personally.

Ahkan

What if 1 token bought 3-5 portal coins?

Sarrius

If gods become bashable mobs, I can finally make the Arlith jokes come true..

'This one time I was dueling Thanatos and killed him and Baar with arc aconite web..'

Also, why are these coins consumables? Just make tokens the buy in to new game modes being unlocked permanently, not the concert tickets to a dissatisfying performance one time.

Idea for a token area? Big Monster Hunter. You go to a wooded glade where you fight an awesome supermob like a hydra or catoblepas or dragon or some nonsense. Basically stuff that is slightly removed from the story but wicked cool.

Sarrius

Also, I feel like this idea also opens up the potential for buying the 'rights' to queueing up for Imperian Battlegrounds - Ahkan's 'defend the caravan' made me realize that would be so cool to have a 3v3 PK story scenario or some such nonsense.

Dias

Ahkan's idea isn't half bad honestly.

Jeremy Saunders

I like the idea too. I want a wave modes like this for an arena event as well.

Dias

But my big driving home point was the "3480 credit investment/120 tokens" kinda ridiculous.

Aulani

Ahkan said:

You can have super bosses, epic lewt (Czevak's sword, Spear of Nathariel, temporary items, nice decorations, epic mountz) and invovlement in the story line no one pays attention to. Plus you can say you went 1v1 with Vahin or the Hunger guy. (which would be awwweeeesome)

I so want Czevak's banner to hang in my house from this and other decorative items. I need awesome loots for the Kith'Vahni treasure vault!

Also being able to participate in some of the detailed story lines of Imperian history would be amazing.

This is the direction portal coins should definitely take.

Khizan

Aulani said:

I so want Czevak's banner to hang in my house from this and other decorative items. I need awesome loots for the Vladin treasure vault!

Aleutia

Khizan said:

Aulani said:

I so want Czevak's banner to hang in my house from this and other decorative items. I need awesome loots for the Kith'Vahni treasure vault!

We all now know where her priorities are. Poor Khizan.

<- Khizan

Sarrius

Like I said, I think we could see a much better increase in the use of this system if buying a coin was a one time investment to basically unlock a 'game mode'. I don't think anybody should be obligated to pay 32cr every time they want to do something fun and interesting.

Then maybe we could expand the system by implementing battlegrounds, so to speak. PvP storyline scenarios would be crazy cool.

Aulani

Khizan said:

Aulani said:

I so want Czevak's banner to hang in my house from this and other decorative items. I need awesome loots for the Vladin treasure vault!

You're the one that married Aulani because she was rich and the money comes from the Kith'Vahni side. :P

At least it wasn't Khizan Kith'Vahni.

Gurn

So, after all this talk, I just want to know one thing.

...

...

Can I have my two tokens back?

Sapp

No.

Arakis

For those who don't know, I hoard, spend, and trade tokens like crazy. I own or have owned the majority of the token wares. Out of a desire to hoard treasure I'd never been willing to sink a token into a cairn or portal coin because of the one time use nature. Today, out of boredom, a desire to get more achievements, and having of course tokens to burn, I -finally- tried a portal coin. What resulted was the worst bashing experience I have ever had in Imperian. The mobs were of a good strength being that they adjust to your level, but there were only 52 of them which, at 1 token per 52 mobs that's 116 tokens to get all the achievements, is roughly 3712 credits in tokens ((or 1740 if you sell/buy tokens at 15 credits which has been the current trend.). While you get while you do get three circles of questing xp and some achievement bonuses for it, it's not worth it, even for an achievement addict. After taking about 45 minutes to kill them all (as one of the people that has never successfully finished the Tumble Race, I spent more time getting lost in the unmapped area than I did fighting things.) I got the key, opened the chest to find a +1str soulstone, a 1 week celerity armband, and paltry amount of gold (1200, the same amount I could earn in about 1 minute hunting where I normally do). I gained roughly 1% experience of level 101, and 67% of Sect Faith. I wasted a token and an hour of time I could have bashed in a worthwhile area, gaining nothing of real value to show for it. I waited as long as I did to test out the portal coins because there had been a lack of hype over them, or so thought being someone who didn't read the forums regularly until now. These coins are worthless, utterly worthless. I got more enjoyment out of the fortune cookies offered on Valentines day, I get more enjoyment out of bashing which nowadays I do while watching tv. Ignoring the question of what was I thinking (I wasn't), What in hell was the Admins thinking? I know that Jeremy wanted to make tokens more scarce, but the prizes offered for these one time use items aren't going to entice enough of us to throwaway our, in some cases, small mountain of tokens at them for a meager return. Winning at gladiators has had more value than this, giftbags were worth more than this, heck the new phylacteries have more value than these coins. When are we going to get one time use items that give us something good? sure 8hrs of +1str is decent but you can get it free from rituals along with +1 to all stats though for as long as you want to bash up enough faith to maintain it. a week of double celerity will be nice only because I've been considering buying this artifact and want to test it now. I love bashing, and I was hoping to find something to mix things up and was willing to pay for it, instead I got a jokeresque bang gun pointed at me and got jack for it.