Livin

Ancient
Herald of the Dead
Ashen_Ring
Immemorial
Ageless
OG 2020
Zorins Treat
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Magus
Old World
Harbinger
Mar 20, 2019
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I've brought it up a few times but I thought I'd broach the subject of vanity mechanics, not sure if there is a widely accepted term for it (please enlighten me if there is) but thats what I call it, and see what others think of it. This is stuff centered around maintaining a certain look and in the case of Deadhaus it pertains to things that allow you to pass as human. Outside of the obvious benefit from the camouflage and being able to walk freely among the living its another fun way to customize our characters. As awesome as it is to be the thing that strikes fear in all who lay their eyes upon you, sometimes you might feel like concealing yourself and see how far you can get before having to reveal your true nature. Perhaps it could even enable participation in missions or quests from the living as long as you maintain the diguise. I don't imagine this is something all classes would be capable of but if you can think of a way within their lore for them to do so I'd be happy to hear it.

In Blood Omen Kain had an illusion spell that allowed him to pass as human and I imagine that would carry over to the vampires of Deadhaus.

For the Liche they could cast continuous rejuvenating magic upon their flesh to sustain its vitality and prevent the body they inhabit from decaying.
-One other way I might suggest involves crafting living flesh that it wears over it's decayed body, think T-800 from The Terminator.

There was a romantic comedy zombie movie from the late 90s that had an interesting idea where zombies had to eat the flesh of the living to fight off their own body's decay and that sounds perfect for the Ghoul, allowing them to regress their bodies back to human forms so long as they feast on living flesh from time to time and doing something akin to a werewolf transformation when dropping the facade.

The Banshee doesn't need much really, just a work around for not being able to speak.

What do you think?
 
I think there are 2 systems mixed together here - a wardrobe/transmog system that allows you to retain certain look for your items and a stealth system that allows you to remain unseen or at least unsuspected among enemies.
 
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The Banshee doesn't need much really, just a work around for not being able to speak.
Maybe some manicure as well? :p

I think Elveone put it well. If classes have disguises, I think being able to customize the appearance of the disguises is a good way to create both immersion and vanity options.
 
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Traditionally speaking the F2P model relies almost exclusively on long term sales coming from cosmetic options. (see literally every successsful F2P RPG in the last forever).

It would be disasterous not to have extensive cosmetic options released each quarter if not monthly.

My recommendation would be to have a dedicated team that sculpts and scripts these for each quarter/month with tie ins. Let players earn most of them in game for free for a limited time, this adds fomo for freebies... ie you can still get it later... if you pay for it... but if you really want it now, for free... best to log in now and earn it... I would argue this kind of fomo isn't strictly unethical tho, as you basically need to show up to the concert to get the free band tee shirt... that's not unreasonable.

While that may seem counter intuitive...

1) you want people playing your game more to create the core community, rewarding them for dedication is the way to do that, and players that play constantly are your biggest fans and already farmed all the new gear the first day it came out. They are also the youtubers and such that play daily and show off all the cool stuff in the game, and thus serve as in and out of game marketing. Additionally, the people that play your game 8 days a week are still going to buy shit anyway, because they can and want to support the game they love. The more time they spend in game the more likely they are apt to spend $5 here and there on something.

2) you aren't restricting these things from players that miss out... you can still get the leather bat wings or whatever, it's just you have to either wait for an annual event to come around for it, or you can buy it now for 3.99 USD's worth of in game premium currency. All of this is very ethical so long as your shop is transparent about the fact that people can earn X cosmetic by doing Y thing.

This creates a much bigger cash shop over time, which leads to expanding revenue streams. This is because as a new player I don't even know what doing the Reverse Necromancer techno feast even means, I just want the bat wings now, and 3.99 is fine for me... OR, I can't afford 3.99 easily, I'm gonna go learn what that is from the wiki and make sure I'm doing that content.

You can also add in user created content/skins like warframe does and that works to the benefit of both the community and the devs.
 
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