Create a meta-economy for clothing similar to CSGO gun skins and PUBG
There are currently a lot of duplicate items in player's stashes and though the natural course of action would be to allow people to break these duplications down into an in-game currency or into different colours for their first item of that kind - I believe another route should be taken.
Currently everyone wants X mask, but the problem is everybody ends up getting it and then it's not that interesting to have anymore. I think there should always be a 2 percent set of items that only a certain amount of players have, due to sheer luck. Experiment with adding a very simple, ugly even, mask and lower the drop rate by 50 percent and I guarantee you'll have players looking to find ways to 'buy' this with real world money and similarly to CSGO, values of certain items going up and down.
Some people wince at the idea of a smaller game like Absolver having this kind of ecommerce infiltrating its brand, but I believe that with tournaments on the horizon that will inevitably award players with exclusive items or cash prizes - other players that aren't tourney ready are going to want to have access to exclusive content too, and buy sell trade to finish sets.
So tl;dr, 80 percent of players will have access to 80 percent of the items after a hundred hours play, but the endgame comes in with tournaments for skilled players to nab exclusive sets, and the non competitive gamers can have access via pure chance drops or micro transactions that scale to how the players value an item and its (hopefully noted on the items stats) ownership percentage. Start with masks as tourney prizes, work up to a full clothing economy run by the players - and kept in control by a possible in game currency.
Cheers for reading.
Currently everyone wants X mask, but the problem is everybody ends up getting it and then it's not that interesting to have anymore. I think there should always be a 2 percent set of items that only a certain amount of players have, due to sheer luck. Experiment with adding a very simple, ugly even, mask and lower the drop rate by 50 percent and I guarantee you'll have players looking to find ways to 'buy' this with real world money and similarly to CSGO, values of certain items going up and down.
Some people wince at the idea of a smaller game like Absolver having this kind of ecommerce infiltrating its brand, but I believe that with tournaments on the horizon that will inevitably award players with exclusive items or cash prizes - other players that aren't tourney ready are going to want to have access to exclusive content too, and buy sell trade to finish sets.
So tl;dr, 80 percent of players will have access to 80 percent of the items after a hundred hours play, but the endgame comes in with tournaments for skilled players to nab exclusive sets, and the non competitive gamers can have access via pure chance drops or micro transactions that scale to how the players value an item and its (hopefully noted on the items stats) ownership percentage. Start with masks as tourney prizes, work up to a full clothing economy run by the players - and kept in control by a possible in game currency.
Cheers for reading.
Comments
For example, take any of the masks you get by beating a boss three times. With what you suggest, it wouldn't be worth it to actually defeat the boss, and the effect of "oh shit that guy has x boss mask" would be completely gone.
Another thing- these aren't just skins, they effect stats. This kind of system would defeat any purpose of people putting effort in to get good gear, they could just by a set or the top tier stuff and the game would become pay to win.
I think any sort of shop system would completely ruin this game- though the ability to just destroy duplicates you wouldn't want is welcome.
That basic premise is only wrong when stuff sold is purely cosmetic. Even then, developers would have to spend money making these items, which means we'd see microtransactions everywhere in an effort to turn a substantial profit for their work. If it's successful then it'll be repeated because of supply and demand. Why would they continue developing the game when they can sell silly items (Hi, Half Life 3).