Hello, IMC.
So, you want to make money, right? And ppl (mostly, secretly) want circle resets. Question is - how not to break a game with such feature? For reasons. Least of them - obviously, there are job-changes that are questionable (crafting professions), but that’s not really a problem in my book if the actual process of job change requires effort.
There’s also a problem of perception. Lots of ppl perceive circle reset as evil, for various reasons. Thus, worsening sales. To change the way they perceive it, why not change the nature of what they’re buying entirely?
So, if you are at least able to deal with the technical aspect of the problem - removal of character levels, experience, circle(s), then I have a suggestion for you:
A consumable item bought from a TP Shop, that, upon consumption, gives you an open-world quest for a rebirth (you can even throw in some valkyries, eh?). Quest should be open-world because any instanced dungeon will mean player can lose his money and never complete quest because of connection or just not being able to complete the dungeon for various reasons. Quest should contain replayable cutscenes with auto-levelled enemies.
Pls also note either Rebirth TP Item or the Rebirth Process should also require player to remove any shops, leave or disbang guild, leave a party and etc. before being usable.
When the quest is finished, player is being Reborn. Rebirth does several things:
- unequips all items
- memorizes his level and job level at the moment the rebirth process started
- memorizes all of his attribute investments, so that if player chooses the same profession, he doesn’t lose invested attribs
- memorizes all cards in card slots, cards “return” with the card slots when you rise to next circle later
- returns character to level 1, circle 1, job level 1.
- sets a huge exp gain boost (~x100 or smth) for this particular character until abovementioned level is reached again, from both cards and hunting monsters
- restricts use of Rebirth TP Item until the exp boost expires
A result for a player: a new quest + an opportunity to relive your character, grind some mobs for adventure rating, find some hidden quests, get some collections you missed, etc, etc, while also fixing some grave mistake you made. You will not get your quests reset of course, but will still be able to use any cards you saved up + grind more in the process thx to Wings of Vibora.
A result for u: you will probably sell even more circle resets this way than if you were selling the one that would’ve just done everything instantly. Also free “new” content for players and no “psychological jobchange problem” (players stop playing their chars when they are able to jobchange and skillreset too often because they lose a feeling of psychological connection to them). A game will still punish a player for testing out something weird and, at the same time, will encourage him to try that reset and relive the char, possibly finding new hidden quests and other missed content.
Sophisticated? Hell yeah. But I’m sure it’ll sell good. So do you care for a game enough to give it such a nice feature, huh?
Thank you for your time.