I think Event Items, or Decorative Items (like the Hallowe'en Mask) should be equipable over your normal equipment. This will make people far more willing to buy the items as they can wear their cool holidays items over their normal equipment, and show of their stuff while they're fighting monsters, showing other people how cool the stuff looks, encouraging those people to buy items.
I'm sure they'll look at how well the halloween costumes sell to decide whether they ought to be treated as "adventure gear" instead of "roleplay gear" for future holidays.
I suspect that the black cat pet is going to be the biggest seller, though I've seen a few pumpkin heads and pumpkin staves around. I haven't seen anybody wearing either of the halloween costumes.
Personally, I think $10 real money for a pretend halloween costume is a bit much. If I could buy the entire costume AND a black cat pet for $5, I would have been tempted. As it stands, I'm pretty sure that if you buy the entire costume that you would also have to spend another $5 to have enough crowns left over to get the pet, never mind one of the staves.
As to wearing your halloween gear during your adventures, I think it just comes down to how important it is to min-max. I defeated Baron Mordecai and I got the Plain Pumpkin Mask as a reward. I've been wearing it around ever since, despite dropping close to 100 points of health to do it. It's just fun, and while it certainly is "plain" compared to one of Spooky Bob's masks, it's pretty rare (for now) and unusual looking.
While that would make it cooler and more tempting to wear costumes over adventure gear, that in some little way defeats the purpose of the whole idea.
The IDEA of halloween is to dress up, not to keep fighting and questing. To stop and take a big breath, and let in some halloween spirit. One could buy a costume, slap it on over their adventure gear, and just keep moving on. You would have every single person walking around in costumes throughout the entire year, because there would honestly be no reason to even take it off.
I realize, not everyone would buy it, even if it did NOT affect stats or health, simply because not everybody will have crowns available.
This actually brings up an issue I have with the halloween items. They should have been made available with GOLD, not crowns.
Everybody should have a chance to dress things up a bit, not only the crown buyers. I bet, even if you have to remove your adventure gear for halloween costumes, way more people would get into the whole halloween thing if they did not have to buy crowns just to get something that is a once a year exclusive.
I hope you professors in Wizard City will give this some thought.
Equal opportunity employers will give EVERY person a chance for a job. They wont make anyone have to pay extra cash out of their pocket simply to get a position. This game should act the same way. While you dont need to play this game to make a living, every single player should be given the same exact enjoyability without having to spend additional cash out of their pockets.
Off topic: (This concept should also be applied to the crown equipment from Zeke. For example, downgrade it to match the stats of regular environmental drops, and downgrade the spells to match the power of regular spells.)
Stopping, taking a breath, and taking in the Halloween atmosphere isn't really a reason to make it so the clothes do not just mask your normal clothes. The only reason I would see people stopping to change their clothes and just hang out with friends, is exactly that, if they just hang out with friends. This can be difficult though, what with the menu and filtered text chat. Tons of people want the costumes to mask over your clothes, and if they're going to be a bit pricey, I think they should be able to mask over your clothes. I don't expect KingsIsle to pump out a patch in 5 days just to give us the feature, but it would be nice to know that if they do decide to implement the feature in the future, that they give us a heads up so we can stock up on Halloween goodies.
Even though some people might be running around with holiday items through the entire year, not EVERYBODY will; tons of people will want to show off their awesome gear that bosses drop, some will be playing completely new characters they didn't buy the clothes for, and I'm sure there'll be tons of new players that weren't around for the holiday events.
Although I do agree that KingsIsle should have made at least a couple things more for non-crown buyers, they're still a company. They still need to make money. This is their first holiday event. They're still experimenting with what they're going to do with more future Christmas events. For this Halloween, they decided to give a few missions that everyone can do, and give a single mask to non-crown buyers and leave the rest for people who care to pony up the money.
Some games charge money for extra things as well as have a subscription. You go to Second Life, you can get a Subscription and you'll get some good stuff to support your character. But if you want to get those nice things that make Second Life more fun, you'll probably have to give up some more money to do it. Nobody is getting a less enjoyable time because they're not buying clothes, they're just missing out a nice bonus. They'll have a little harder time soloing things, but it's nothing a few friends can't fix up. If anything, NOT buying the clothes is more enjoyable because it forces you to either improve your strategy and deck or get more friends in the game.
I don't think the stats or cards should be dropped down. That's like asking them to drop the enhanced powers of Treasure Cards over their normal counter-parts. You pay for it, you get a nice bonus; you don't pay, you just deal with not having it.
I read your post, and I respect your opinion. You are abviously able to buy crowns and enjoy all the perks of Zeke and Halloween, otherwise I am 99% sure you would not have said all that. :P
You have treasure cards. You can MAKE treasure cards. That alone gives you spells that are more powerful. But crown buyers should still not get more powerful spells, even if it is only one single card in an entire deck.
I have never actually played Second Life, and when I saw a CSI episode revolving around Second Life gameplay, I thought it was just made up for the sake of a unique CSI episode lol. Either way, Wizard101 is not the only game to use such things as crowns and such, and I know that. But there are plenty of other methods of bringing in the money with items and spells that wont make players any more powerful than their same level counterparts.
Halloween. I am willing to bet you an entire month's paycheck of mine that there is at least ONE person out there, unable to buy crowns, wishing that Spooky Bob's store would accept gold, so they too, could buy a nifty Skeleton outfit with a Black cat pet, especially since its available for only once a year. Maybe it wont even be available again at all.
To prevent this post from becoming a big huge debate, I will just say that I am not mad at how Wizard101 operates, nor will I go out on a rampage and put up a giant protest about it, and that I merely stated my opinion.
Its an opinion, and I am sure a lot more people will disagree with me as much as you did. Thats all it was, an opinion.
So, to keep this post ON topic, I will say again that I do not think roleplay gear should simply be allowed to be slapped over your adventure gear. :)
