Minipet Disguise and Inventory Upgrade Microtransaction - plus tonic features

Ok this will be focused on Minipet Costumes and Updgrades to the inventory panel available exclusively through microtransactions

The reason I am making it a microtransaction is to protect minipet values to an extent and also to match with anets policy of selling cosmetic changes.

Now previously around 2006 someone wanted minipets to be addable to a newly created inventory slot and most people signed. It wasn't until microtransactions and several years later until costume slots were added to the inventory screen. Now new microtransactions can pay for the work needed to create the minipet costumes and inventory upgrade I will detail.

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Inventory Upgrade
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The Inventory will be expanded with a new space between the character feet and weapons set button. There will be 3 new slots with dropdown boxes.
Slot 1 will be Minipet slot with options (always hide, hide in towns, hide in outpost areas, always show) You can minipet there and it will show up in the box as the minipet inventory icon as well as a really small animated minipet animated to the right of your characters feet.
Slot 2 will be the Minipet Costume Slot with the same 4 options. More detail later on Minipet Costumes.
Slot 3 will be the Everlasting Tonic Slot with the same 4 options. This slot will unfortunately only be able to hold Everlasting Tonics that can be used in explorable areas. Now more than ever this will be useful with all the new birthday tonics and perhaps this will add a little more value to people that own them.
This update will come for only $5.

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Minipet Costumes
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The game is coming to an end soon for many people that will permanently move on to guildwars 2 or significantly decrease their playtime. Now more than ever would be a good time for anet to make some casual players happy, to give the casual player finally a chance at having their favorite minipet (sorta)

The goal is to partially let them have access to any minipet but not hurt the value of minipets too much. Guaranteed this will lower their value but I want this change to preserve it somewhat.

There will be a series of minipet costume packs as follows...
-Year 1 Birthday, as well as 2-5 each year will be $10
-the rest of the minipet costumes will be individual purchases...$5 for white, $10 for purple, $15 for gold and $20 for green...but there will be packs if you want to save a little per costume.
-value pack rainbow , 1 pet costume of your choice of each color $30
-value pack rainbow 3 $60, value pack rainbow 8 $90

Now heres how they work...
You need to have anyminipet in your minipet inventory slot, you than add the minpet costume to that slot and the minipet looks like the minipet of the costume description. There will be a minipet costume npc added to all port cities, guildhall option and presearing. This will facilitate the spawning of the costumes purchased.

Proctections for existing minipets.....
-Minipet costumes not tradeable
-cannot be added to hall of monuments
-hardcore collectors will still want the real thing and casual players will be happy to have the replica (for example old school weapons still have lots of value even though inscriptable ones are available)

Now I saved some other nice features for last
- All celestial minipet costumes will be made so you will be able to have access to those minipets that arent being released for 5 years!
-There will be additional drop box for the everlasting tonic called mode
this mode will let you select a, b, c, d, e, f. Grayed out if not applicable to the tonic but for those tonics with multiple forms you can finally be able to select which form to always show. This will also allow for a future update that will give all hero tonics all their available armors to be displayed. Some people have complained that tonics were to limited in their armor.
-Lastly, a few exculsive minipet costumes that aren't available as minipets, a initial release of 3 with a new one added a few times a year.

Sooo... My collection of mini jungle trolls can look like an army of kanaxais? For only $20? What's with you and microtransactions anyway?

I must be missing something.

Well you can only have 1 on display but yes your troll could look like a kanaxi for $5 inventory upgrade + $20 green individual mini-costume purchase = $25. I was thinking as a micro-transaction it would have a better chance of happening and help with the development as well. If they can do it free that would be cool too.

So you basically want to make all minis worth real life money? It wouldn't matter if you had a seige turtle or a mini vizu, because the turtle could just look like the mini vizu? There's no point in using the original mini besides HoM stuff.... That's about it.

That's a personal thing.

For example to me a inscribable crystalline sword is worth more than an old school one because I see it as a functional advantage. However other people collect items for rarity and the old school one is worth more to them. I feel that would be the case here. Some people would still highly value having the real thing and collect it while others would prefer to spend their time on other things than farming.

So for those who value the original minis have to farm and pay full value for them, but the ones who "spend their time on other things than farming" can just pay money and get whatever minipet skin they want? In that case, can we get obby armor costumes for $20, so we don't have to farm for that?

This here. Though I wouldn't mind it happening, I just see a lot QQ and people whining about how they spent all that time when they could've just bought it for an X amount of money. For example the whole drunkard, survivor, and LDoA situation. And the Mercs, people saw it as unfair so in a later update Anet basically made a free merc (Razah).

Again, would be nice but totally unfair.

I see what your saying but my present position would be restrict this to minipets for several reasons

1. minipets serve no purpose except to look at
2. fow armor is obtainable without depending on other players. You can farm the supplies and and craft it
3. mini celestial dragon is unobtainable for several years and many people will leave for gw2
4. Kanaxi is not obtainaible without depending on other players
5. Many minipets depend on luck such as birthday one, the jinglebear one etc, while you can guaranteed get fow armor without any luck, go to rare material trader or complete underworld.

As far as fair well anet has historically done updates that were unfair so whats stopping it now. Old Drunkard pia. New Drunkard Spam Fest for example.

Was releasing asian minipets in only certain geographic areas fair to people in other geographic areas?

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Also minipets will still retain a ton of money....
People will still need to the basic ones for their hom.
Collectors will still need rare ones
The really rich will still used them to store immense wealth.
Kanaxi will still be several piles of armbraces.
Will they take a hit sure but just like the hom update made any green minipet the same for the hall score the pets still kept a lot of the worth.

Be nice if they did some work making the game more challenging, I suspect we don't need anymore inane cosmetic gimmicks.

Maybe if the mini's new appearance was only different to you, I can be behind this.

Otherwise, there will be too much QQ over people's lost e-peen.

Super-rare items, especially ones gotten only by luck or only available for certain regions, should have never existed in the first place, but that's a whole 'nother issue altogether.

or call me crazy but they possible could stop messing round with micro transcations and actually finish making wind of change and maybe even a new expansion ( which we have to buy for money like eton) and actually retain some player base and still make money.

This is plain stupid. QQing,whining? That implies there's no real basis for their arguments. A complete waste of resources, you're basically said 'I want this'. You're seriously suggesting paying up to $90 for something so shallow? There's no reason for this, at least costumes are tied in with in game Lore/Events and appeal to a much wider audience.

This ^

Although I do think Anet deserve an income stream for all the fun we have had so far, but I don't see why some players feel entitled to have everything possible in game with no effort - why play at all?

^^ That

I am surprised Anet has so few opt-in purchasable items.

Personally I think they should add a few more storage panes to increase revenue a bit, I for one think GW is a damn cheap game for all the time and enjoyment we get out of it, and I do not begrudge them one single penny.

I do however feel we do not need a plethora of ill conceived ideas to be bandied about, especially since anything that detracts from real coding time is counter productive to the outcomes we all desire.

I don't like this, much for the same reason that has been stated before - that it allows for people to "buy" some minipets of extreme rarity for relatively cheap. This doesn't seem anything like other cosmetic benefits that ANet has provided so far in the store, namely the costumes, because those cosmetic benefits aren't found anywhere else on the game. By placing a price tag of real money on minipet disguises so that we could take any minipet that we have and make it look like any other minipet in the game, you would certainly see a lot of people go for the rarer and more expensive minis that they could not otherwise get, resulting in the genuine minipets of that appearance getting into a steep price dive.

I'm sure ANet likes money, but not so much that they want to throw things into the game that will make the game's economy implode.

I lol'd. Thanks. I feel better this morning after having read this.

It's one of the worst suggestions Ive ever seen posted here, but it was very entertaining.

Now someone please delete this thread before Stumme sees it. He already wants to make sure every player has every shiney item and title in the game for as little effort as possible. If he can make $20 doing it....I don't even want to think about that. We don't need him getting horrible, horrible ideas like this bouncing around in his head.

Do you enjoy making suggestions as they come into your head, without putting any thought into it? I don't even have to explain, I think the other people did so well enough.

But seriously, you are either trolling or completely ignoring the effect it would have on the mini market.

"1. minipets serve no purpose except to look at"

You destroyed your own argument. If any minipet can look like any other minipet, prices for more expensive ones will drop significantly. Some collectors might still want their original Kanaxai or any other mini in the "stacks of ectos/armbraces" price range, but any mini apart from those will become a lot cheaper.

I think mini kanaxai is supposed to be very rare, and that is for a reason, gaining them is very hard, or very expensive.

it would really be unfair to people who worked very hard for it, got it as an achievement, and then there is someone who just payed $20 and got it.

it would destroy the whole mini market, all prices would come down immediately

/notsigned

besides they could very well make rare minis into drops in the future

yep who wouldn't want a mini panda or a mini vizu. Start with mini pets then it'll turn into weapon skins.
So my mini troll will become a ghostly hero and my gold sword looks like an obi edge? No thanks. Games too old to QQ that i'll never have such high end stuff.
And i certainly wouldn't cheapen it by actually buying something like that.