Maybe something like 6 grades of charms (obviously with some variety in selection per grade) so one aimed at every two raid tiers from tier 1-12. We'll say for argument they each take 40 points to fill and a point awarding scale something similar to this:
People with pre-existing charms could hand them in to jump up to whatever the equivalent is in the new system etc.
Lets say for example your guild <Egress> is farming ToT/Tier 8 to back gear replacement players and Noobius the cleric rolls up with a whole lotta AAs/tomes but he just bought his first charm! For shame Noobius... anyways, how many times would <Egress> have to do mobs of the same tier (tier 8)over and over until Noobius had the best possible charm for that tier of play (a grade 5 charm)?
1st Grade=7 boss kills to max
2nd Grade=8 boss kills to max
3rd Grade=10 boss kills to max
4th Grade=20 boss kills to max
5th Grade=40 boss kills to max
Total = 85 Boss kills to go from 1st Grade charm to 5th Grade charm
Each Grade of charm when done at the appropriate tier of play would require 20 boss kills which might sound like a lot on paper but hitting 2-3 targets in a raid night knocks that out pretty quickly.
I think this system combined perhaps with rotating Blessed Zone style system that adds +1 credit on top of what you would gain per kill(would add nothing if you would normally get zero) would be a nice incentive.
Oh yes on top of this I would suggest the implementation of daily quests for the casual man ie: Do a tmap (difficulty relative to the charm you have) get a nice chunk of exp and +1 charm credit.
Anyways obviously these numbers are just for the sake of example but I think it's a system that could work and simpler is always better.
Recently in the Citadel thread you complained about exp and platinum rates being subpar and yet across the board Ikisith has been an immense boon in regards to the rate at which you gain both experience and platinum. So you come here and you put forth that making things easier is "dumbing" the game down, and yet on the flip side of things with Ikisith facilitating faster experience and platinum farming you claim these rates aren't high enough. Well which is it Raxton? Which things are dumb exactly? Is it only the stuff you personally disagree with? Because frankly I don't see much logic behind how you seem to judge things. Did the introduction of Ikisith "dumb" the entire game down?Charms are what make the economy work. The problem with this game is the misconception that gameplay only starts at 20 tomes and 1.2m charm. Dumb this game dumb too much and the backbone of the game thats played for years quit as they easily top out.
I don't have any place in this convo but there are always random ideas not parsed for desirability:
*make a cheap growing charm
*make it slowly grow to supreme-level with exp or time spent in combat or total playtime or who knows, something more than just raiding but not too specific and quite slow
*let people still buy charms if they can make money faster than they can do whatever would grow a growth charm
*add more raid-level plat sinks, i.e. less restricted rez potions, FD potions, all over 1k each.
over time the number of times an item will drop tends toward infinity.
First, I do not think unbinding is used very much (in fact a large percentage of the time it IS used is when people try to steal things from their friends and get banned for theft). Second, I think it is unreasonable to assume that every item that drops must always be desirable. Third, I think droppable items are already "mostly obsolete".. I mean pre-Ikisith you had a handful of desirable droppables out there like RSM Robe, HHK basement stuff, Earthshaker loot, and deep FR. The rest was mostly not that useful or desirable even stuff in those same zones you would say "Oh well, didn't get the good drop" and vendor it for 100pp or whatever. With Ikisith, the droppable market increased and, as you say, the "baseline" for desirable droppable loot went up. Fine, of course that happens when you add more of something and aim to make it better. Why is saying "Oh well, didn't get the good drop" and vendoring for 100pp now not good enough?
Also, your scenario maintains the idea that the only thing to spend money on is droppable loot and charms, but what if this was not the case?
I think this is an interesting take on it (essentially convenience for loss-of-flavor) and also I am glad to see we both technically agree that item values being skewed by artificial vendor price floors screws up true item worth in both directions ("I'm not going to sell that to you for 500pp when it vendors for 1000!" vs "I'm not going to buy that from you for 1000pp when it vendors for 500!").
I think this is an interesting take on it (essentially convenience for loss-of-flavor) and also I am glad to see we both technically agree that item values being skewed by artificial vendor price floors screws up true item worth in both directions ("I'm not going to sell that to you for 500pp when it vendors for 1000!" vs "I'm not going to buy that from you for 1000pp when it vendors for 500!").