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Ideas for custom items in the Prefect's Lounge

!Headmaster Danilo

◯ Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 4:34am ✉ 64

As you may know you can exchange donator points in the Prefect's Lounge for special in-game advantages.

Currently there are things such as custom titles, custom weapons, custom armor, custom mounts, custom specialties, extra forest fights, extra gold, extra gems, etc. that can be traded for donator points.

Basically what I'm asking for everyone who reads this to come up with ideas for things you'd like to be able to get in the Prefect's Lounge in exchange for your donator points.

Thanks. =)

✶ Responses ✶

64 witches and wizards have spoken

Teresa · Saturday, January 23, 2010 - 6:33pm #559

what about changing alliance? I mean, you only have human, right? how about vampire or werewolf, giant, semi-giant, etc...?

Teresa · Saturday, January 23, 2010 - 7:43pm #560

*I meant race :S

1b9aaa43b2c8e6b · Saturday, January 23, 2010 - 11:59pm #561

I like Teresa's idea.

Perhaps you could even allow players to buy special skills that stick with you, but don't actually effect other players or speed up your own leveling, they just enhance the experience in certain ways?

(For example, two players could purchase a Parseltongue special skill, which would allow them to write somethings like before their post, resulting in that message being hidden from all but Parseltongues.)

You could also allow a higher costing weapon name change and such, which allows you to choose a weapon type to have custom titles for (example, Wand of the Whomping Willow and Heidster's Hot Branding Iron), and even when you lose the weapon you originally titled, you can custom title any weapon of that 'rank', even after VEs?

Another suggestion is the ability to buy special and unique rooms and items for your dwellings. For example, you could sell short stories in the form of books to go in a new room you can also sell for homes, a personal library.

I'll post more ideas as I get them. :)

~SS

1b9aaa43b2c8e6b · Sunday, January 24, 2010 - 12:02am #562

In the "somethings like" part of my above post, it was meant to be "something like" followed by an example, which was like a colour-code with a P.

1b9aaa43b2c8e6b · Sunday, January 24, 2010 - 12:28am #563

Already got a couple new ideas!

1 - Allow players to pay to change their site skin. The more you pay, the better the site skins become, and after you pay so much, you can upload your own skins. (Simplest skins would be new colours, followed by House Skins - columns carved with House features on the sides of the pages, with House banners and colours - and so on, increasingly grand.)

2 - Allow players to pay to remove advertisements from the game. In the longrun, you would make more money, because I personally ALWAYS make sure I NEVER click an advertisement, but they still annoy me to death and slow down my gameplay by a noticable amount. (When I started, there were no advertisements, for some reason, so I know how much faster HL goes without them.)

When you allow players to spend donator points to remove ads, I'm sure many people like myself will donate. Just make sure it's permanent or can be done in nice long increments of time.

That's all I've got for now, but I will also suggest that you allow players to donate for specific perks and such, rather than just for points. Sometimes you could be left with more points than you needed or wanted, or not enough without spending that extra money, which could lose you potential donators. (Note: I am not speaking of changing the way you do it, but simply adding another way for you AND the players to benefit from it.)

~SS

!Headmaster Danilo · Sunday, January 24, 2010 - 2:29am #564

@Teresa
Additional races are an idea. I'm gonna have to talk to Edmund first to make sure that wouldn't conflict with anything in his modules.

@SeverusSnape
I like a lot of these ideas. I'll discuss these with some of the other staff and see what they think. The ads were disabled by accident and I didn't notice right away. Before it didn't make sense to pay to disable ads cause believe it or not when I allowed them to pay to disable ads the site made less money but now it would make sense to do this. =P

1b9aaa43b2c8e6b · Sunday, January 24, 2010 - 2:56am #565

I'm flattered, Danilo. :D

Another idea: Sell random keys. These keys could have a 50/50 chance of unlocking a randomly found gate or door in the Forbidden Forest, which could lead to a cave, or even an old and deserted manor. Inside, there could be creatures of varying levels, which would drop random loot. After killing them all, you could find a treasure room or chest of some sort, which could give you various responses.

"The chest had a trap set to it, and poisonous gases fill the room as you open it!", "Inside you find 239 gold and 3 gems!", "Inside is a mysterious glowing object..." (extra portkey for the day), etc.

It's sort of a game suggestion, but it's also a way you can make money while expanding the game. Perhaps you could also encourage people to buy keys by offering extra keys for every so many buys?

(An odd suggestion, but I would like it myself, so I suggest it.)

~SS

1b9aaa43b2c8e6b · Sunday, January 24, 2010 - 4:57am #566

Andd another new idea. (Hoping I'm not coming up with too many, but my head is filled with them. XD)

Perhaps have people pay to customize their own page? For example, Vital Info under Personal Info, on the left side of the page, or Equipment Info on the top of the page. You could even move advertisements if you hadn't disabled them.

The limitations to this would be the Ads have to be within the initial window size of the page, meaning that you can't put an advertisement at the bottom where you have to scroll down, which would be almost as good as disabling them - minus the fact you'd still be slowed down by them.

This would work nicely, since it would give more of a sense of customization, and I know a lot of us are dying for that sense.

There we go. Also, with the assumption an Admin reads and is going to reply to this, could you please give me a point in the right direction if I wanted to suggest new game features and characters? Thanks.

~SS

!Headmaster Danilo · Sunday, January 24, 2010 - 10:04am #567

Keep going. I like suggestions a lot. Even if I don't use your ideas they might influence something a new feature later on. You can just owl me suggestions.

1b9aaa43b2c8e6b · Sunday, January 24, 2010 - 10:01pm #568

Another ideaa.

Custom chats. You could create a building, like Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour in Diagon Alley, and inside you can join a players chat if you're allowed.

When a player buys a chat with donation points, they get their own table in said building, and it works like any normal chat box, except there are mini-admins inside that chat. There could be a list of names beside the chat (that refresh with the chat) which you can click to choose from a few options.

If you're the owner of the chat, you could choose things like "Kick," "Rank," and "Ban." Through 'Kick', that player gets removed from the chat and disallowed from entering until all other players leave.

'Rank' allows the owner of the chat to give that player a rank. You can create your own ranks and get custom colours/titles INSIDE the chat (does not effect the game in any way, really, just your experience in said players chat), but the defaults are "Co-Admin," "Admin," and "Co-Owner."

The last, 'Ban', is rather obvious. It completely removes the rights of a banned player from entering or seeing the chat. This stays like this unless the owner goes to a list of banned players and lifts the ban.

Co-Admins can kick players.
Admins can kick/ban players.
Co-Owners can access all of the options the owner can.
(None can rank, ban, or kick the owner of the chat.)

Sort of complicated, but it's sort of simple in theory, and I'm sure a lot of players would spend some money to get their own chat. (I just had this idea when I saw someone 'flying' in Diagon Alley...without a broom...wand...OR any magical methods. Basically, they're Superman. :P)

~SS

SoylentGrape ~FleurD.Weasley · Sunday, January 24, 2010 - 10:38pm #570

Sheesh Snape. The little workings of your mind...lol

Danilo-

Perhaps we could buy more posts when we run out? When I'm talking to one person in a chat at night, I run out.

And no, I'm way to lazy to write an owl Spinal =P

!Headmaster Danilo · Monday, January 25, 2010 - 1:13am #572

@SeverusSnape
Well your last idea actually exists in one form or another and we don't do it cause of the amount of resources it uses. However, similar ideas could easily be applied to the dwellings.

@FDW
If you don't refresh the page you don't run out of chats. This is done to encourage you to use the live chat, which doesn't use up as many resources as when someone constantly refreshes the page or goes back and forth from the chat page to other pages on the site.

1b9aaa43b2c8e6b · Monday, January 25, 2010 - 3:59am #573

Ah, true. Having that many chats would use LOTS of resources, assuming you don't charge far too much (in which case, there'd probably only be one or two. XD) Perhaps you should make chats for specific things in specific places? It would still use more resources, but it would keep many of the players from being annoyed.

To keep things more on topic:

Allow people to use their donator points to buy different colour shades for use around the site? (Would work like the normal colours, but with new darker and lighter shades.) You could sell them in packs, and allow each letter on the keyboard to be a different colour. (Confusing, but you could also add something to the FAQ on how to use colours, and - read below -, players could write down what colours were certain keys in their journal.

Player journals! A small document attached to the game which can be accessed by clicking on a new link under Personal Info, "Journal". Players can write whatever in their journal, whether it be jotting down info on certain players they'd like to avoid, or writing down a strategy, or something else.

You can sell journals of different character limits for different points. For example, 500 characters = 100 points, 1000 characters = 200 points, 2500 characters = 500 points, and so on, up to a maximum of 2500, I would think. Of course, that might use up resources too, but I don't really know. It'd just be a nice way to store all of that extra info you come across. :P

~SS

TwilightTide Fay · Monday, January 25, 2010 - 12:00pm #574

Lame lol I give up. Custom whatever is fine diddly fine.

The Misanthropic daggershade · Monday, January 25, 2010 - 12:40pm #575

Could something be added to allow players to upgrade their dwelling? What I mean is increasing the size of the coffers. This would allow more gold or gems to be held in the coffers. I understand that getting the next level dwelling will increase the size so it would make sense to put restrictions on them. Say like, the flat can only be upgraded to hold 14000 gold sense the shack can hold 15000. This would mostly come in play when the player got the castle. I don't know for sure but I'm pretty sure currently the highest coffer is the castle at 75000 gold and 150 gems. The thing you could buy with donater points would allow that to expand the amount and sense there isn't another dwelling after the castle then it could potencially reach rather great heights. I heard from some people that there used to be coffers with no limet and got my idea from that in a sense.

9f33ad6dd6e0b95 · Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 4:56am #579

I have no idea if anyone suggested this or not... But I was thinking that maybe there could be special colors for donators to spend points on (to use in the chats). Even if it was just different shades of the colors already available.

I think paying for special text would be cool too. Like the christmas text, only with some more variety...

I also noticed that a lot of people roleplay being an animagus (I do on occasion) maybe we could pay to have a special addition to our Biography (under Pet for example) Labeled Animagus: (and we'd type out animagus much like a custom title).

A lot of ideas were covered up there, but I thought I'd make a couple more suggestion just in case.

Supreme God ferret · Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 3:27am #607

i am not sure about this idea but it has been stuck in my head for a while and if it does not cost to much money to the server (not sure if it will) but when we get a house can we have a picture or something of the house?

The Misanthropic daggershade · Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 1:11pm #609

I'm pretty sure that question about a picture isn't rellivent to this blog. This is for the prefect's lounge not overall game suggestions.

!Headmaster Danilo · Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 4:13pm #611

@Snape
It won't work as a donator thing. Maybe if people really want it blogs that can be set to private if they've donated a certain amount.

@daggershade
I don't even like the fact the coffers are there in the first place cause it lets players exchange resources, which I don't feel is fair and I think unbalances the game.

@Veranda
Love it. I'll have to go through these suggestions and prioritize them. Maybe even extra colors when people customize things.

@ferret
We're trying to not use images.

e38ce4418e64a69 · Saturday, January 30, 2010 - 4:40am #615

Why can't there be other paying options LIKE;
Housephone.
SMS.

SoylentGrape ~FleurD.Weasley · Sunday, January 31, 2010 - 4:05pm #620

Really? Hmm...I guess I'll have to monitor my refreshing and see how that works for me.

!Headmaster Danilo · Sunday, January 31, 2010 - 9:20pm #621

@Drake
I've looked into those possibility before. There's a number of issues with paying via cell phones. Cause when people choose to cancel payments I have to pay the transaction fee out of pocket. And cell phones are a lot easier to pay with illegally than credit cards so there's almost no "merchant protection." I would be the merchant. Also, I'd need a way to automate the awarding of donator points, which is difficult unless the third-party payment processing service offers some sort of API for their payment gateway.

1b9aaa43b2c8e6b · Sunday, January 31, 2010 - 11:00pm #622

Well, I'm stumped. I sort of suggested different colours before, but it doesn't seem like anyone noticed that. :P

Anyways, I'm thinking, the ability to pay to increase the days you have until VE'ing, leveling up, etc., and maybe the ability to pay for a tag in your BIO that says different things. (For example, you've lost internet connection for a while, like I had recently, so you go to the library, buy a cheap tag that says "Broken Internet (Will return soon)", and be on your way.)

You could sell tags for a small price, say, 50 cents a tag, or 2 tags for one dollar. Every time you replaced a tag with another, you lose the old tag. That way, they're cheap enough to get in an emergency, but they're not too cheap.

~SS

The Misanthropic daggershade · Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - 1:38pm #639

Isn't the tag idea kind of useless? I can write that in my bio on my own and not have to pay for it.

Undecided biskywhisky · Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - 11:53pm #646

Okies, I think it would be a nice idea to have the option to be able to reallocate your VE points. It would be very useful :)

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