Hey, everyone! Us staff have noticed that generally, the way Zeni has been working is that people will rather quickly earn and spend up most of their Zeni on all of the items they want in the shop, maybe stockpile some UT magazines after that, but then have pretty much nothing else to do with their cash before their characters have even progressed all that far.
Obviously, we'd like Zeni to be a consistently useful currency in the same vein as XP, and while we've racked our brains for a few ideas, such as adding more items to the Zeni shop or allowing people to spend Zeni to make their own mini boards, these are more temporary solutions, and what we'd really like to come up with is a system that has people consistently able to spend their Zeni on something that feels rewarding and benefits their characters, similarly to how XP is used.
This is where you guys come in! While we have a few ideas, we'd like to hear feedback from all of you on what kinds of systems you'd enjoy seeing Zeni put to use for. While we can't promise every suggestion will be fulfilled, we will definitely be reading and considering every one that gets posted here!
I like the idea of using zeni to buy boards. Perhaps build on the idea for a faction housing of sorts? Or impact the world in some other way, representing the wealth our characters have amassed IC? Azoth was having an embassy built on Earth, I think, which is a great idea for something that affects the world without any large mechanical advantage being tied to it.
Purchasable sub-boards would be really cool, but could be a slippery slope if done funkily. Even if they are super pricey, they can run the risk of being too tied to one character, faction, or whatever and wind up being an more or less inactive fodder board if its creator or creators go inactive. (see: Muscle Tower, aka Hale's House on WOD). With a HUGE price tag (like 75-100k Zeni maybe?) and proper restrictions (i.e one per player across all characters, make it have a wide use, etc), it could work.
I do feel like to a degree, Zeni's founding purpose being to buy "non-essential" items is a big part of why it feels useless so quickly. There's only so many things you can make that are decent investments with Zeni while XP takes center stage as the currency for character progression itself. This doesn't really have a solution I think, sadly, aside from the band-aid of a bunch of more items to buy. I'd happy to be proven wrong and see someone big brain some genius addition to Zeni without compromising Sparking's new grading system, though.
Some spitball ideas of mine for new things to buy with Zeni are:
Add a custom message (within reason) to the News Ticker for some period of time. The message should be somewhat IC. No using the news ticker to post dumb OOC memes, more or less, but stuff like IC saiyan/tuffle war propaganda / faction recruitment messages / etc would be cool.
One-time use / lesser versions of some XP shop Battle Items (i.e a Blood Ruby Shard or a Bootleg Arm Blaster)
More Utility items to represent different Utility Skills???? iunno.
A ticket to "reskin" an item of choice, whether it be an XP item or Zeni Item. The mechanics of the item are completely unchanged, but the purchaser supplies a unique item description and icon for it to look fancy in their mini profile. (i.e for my character, Fend, I could buy a reskin ticket to turn a Z-Sword item whenever I get around to buying that into her personal sword, Palibur.) These would probably be pretty expensive and be one per character? If the Zeni Shop gets bloated with them, being inactive for some period of time could get your item removed until you come back or something.
I recall ages ago there was talk of Zeni somehow being used to repair destroyed locations? Dunno how that'd work exactly but it was a thing that was suggested awhile back. obviously destroyed planets cant be restored with the power of cash money though.
I'll add more to the list if I think of 'em, but these are all of my thoughts on the matter for now yeehaw
I think there’s a lot of ways you could use zeni, though I don’t know if you really should. Player housing or faction boards could be cool, but I’d worry about issues of abandoning them? Say you make Camp Awesome for your faction but you and all your friends get bored. Now that board is a wasteland. If you feel that’s an issue that could occur I’d probably avoid it.
I think using zeni (as well as doing multiple open threads) to rebuild a location sounds really cool. Obviously it wouldn’t be a full heal, just less broken than before that way using the Dragon Balls to restore a location still has some serious impact.
Also; some sort of really expensive version of XP items could be cool too. Maybe make them one-use or have them count against your Malus despite costing Zeni, but being able to get say, a battle armor for 3-4 times the cost might be interesting.
I think there’s potential no matter which way you take it. Just be careful that zeni doesn’t become massively important yknow?
I feel like any additions should have no attachment what so ever to power levels, gaining xp, or specific strength in terms of combat pvp. Sure that narrows things down, but I don't think it removes all options.
I've seen mentions, and I made mention myself on discord of a type of player housing, but somehow tying it to the "Home Region" rule for Action Threads. Maybe an upgrade to reduce travel times to a planet your home would reside, or quicker travel for ATs to that home. Just something to play with the idea of that rule specifically to add something to it. You could have a more expensive home option that instead of singular home it's a ship that acts as your Home Region that could only be relocated once a month (just an example time frame).
I really like the idea of home regions but I felt from the start more could be added but I wasn't sure of how to do it, and I'm still not solid on an idea or details.
I feel the home region ship idea could work because it could expand on the idea of transportation already there with Zeni, while adding a wrinkle to it. Perhaps make a variation of it that would be faction specific.
More cosmetic items never hurts. Add some items for disguises, perhaps more vehicles like Bulma's bike from Dragon Ball. I wish I could think of more items off hand, but I'm sure someone smarter than me could make a suggestion.
Post by Daruma & Ichi on Sept 3, 2021 21:23:13 GMT -5
I think there is potential in the idea not of personal boards, but of housing items that tie into the 'home region' rules, definitely. Some upgrades like what we saw on Turbo, with the battle link to do training threads together on different planets, ect would be solid, fun investments.
On the combat useful side (which I am 50/50 on), I do remember in early drafts for sparking we had the zeni blasters and armor that were very weak and consumable. Bringing them back could be interesting.
One idea I had was like, an item you buy that allows you to smuggle one non-AT consumable into an AT, maybe that could be fun?
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