If you're trying to max everything out that's about 8 games of >1000 SP at the end of your Active Cap. That's almost 3 hours of extra grind-time.

But, if you're maxing out than you already have the Omega Passive Boosters and... Given that the Active Omega Boosters give you an additional 100% bonus to the cap... You're looking at a net loss of 107,300 SP (give or take) a week using the normal boosters.

Pff, I think around 150,000 SP a week more. That doesn't sound like much but compare it over a year and it gets pretty ridiculous.

Here's a graph I made a few weeks ago with normal boosters to show the disparity:

http://i.imgur.com/EV5daef.png

Well, most importantly because I'm already having to choose between food and paying for the normal boosters BUT

This item doesn't do anything but make all the pay-to-win arguments that much more powerful. It's reserved solely for the people who have the moola to drop on it and restricting the option only to those players. I know a player who still has Omega Passive Boosters in effect even today and is excited to see them going on sale again despite having such a large reserve already.

Now, it'd be one thing if Omega Boosters were reserved as part of a new player pack or for players who's account is <'x' days/weeks/months old. This would close the gap and largely the concern of new players having a hard time getting to a point where they'd be competitive against older players.

Just as well, it'd be more preferable if they were part of a return prize - log off for 60 days and recover some of the SP you missed out on that you normally would have obtained if you were active, but not as much as if you had. This would make a lot more sense than giving the players who didn't log in something the players who do don't have yet, or had no opportunity to obtain. In this case, they're still being rewarded far more for logging in.

Essentially what these items do is make it more rewarding for players who have money to play, rather than players who don't to have any reason to log-in in the first place. That seems counter productive if you want players to spend more money to reach a point of competitiveness FASTER or to catch up on an area they weren't on for. Further more, it's appealing to the -wrong kind of player-, we're trying to get more players in AND keep the ones we have, not just keep the ones we already have.

There's an inherent problem with this stand point and that is:

It is NOT necessary.

The only thing necessary for long-term Dust development is money, Omega Boosters are not the sole proprietary method of creating revenue - in fact, considering their limited availability in a short time span at such a high price you're only creating a stop-gap method of creating value.

There are plenty of other things that could this money could be used for and I'm sure if marketing ever did the metrics on it they'd find that Aurum HAVs would be in high demand considering just how many we see on the field. So it's not like Cosmetics aren't a viable option, hell at least one player bought the Pyrus Dropsuit/Weapons pack otherwise we'd have never seen the screenshots of the green nova knives.

I'm sure Dust corporations would love to drop a pretty penny for the ability to have custom corp logos or some arbitrary thing. In-game corporation advertisements, color packs (like Warframe) for Dropsuits/weapons... even a few of my corporation members have hinted that they'd spend money for changes to their Mercenary Quarters. I'm pretty sure at least half of the player base would drop $50-100 on their own personal Exotic Dancer to go with their quarters.

Skill Spikes would be incredibly useful to new players, giving a temporary (one week/one month) access to skills you normally wouldn't have and they're even useful for PC players who would buy them solely for the ability to have Prototype Drop Uplinks just before a PC match while spending SP on other necessary improvements.

There's a hundred ways Marketing could make wiser decisions that have lasting value, Omega Boosters potentially being the worst outside of more powerful weapons than ISK variants (which we've already had enough of with the Contact Grenades).

I couldn't agree more, I am deeply unhappy with Omega boosters in their current form.

Selling them as a special promotion here and there only favors the players with the most liquid RL cash in one place at one time to stock them heavily. I think selling Omega boosters on a continuous basis to new players and those who have been away from the game is an extremely elegant solution that not only provides CCP with an ongoing revenue source, but also serves to welcome players back into the community and help them catch up on the progress they've missed.

This concept is tried-and-true in a lot of MMO's, though not with a monetization attached. Log out in a tavern or inn, and you gain an experience bonus when you next log in. Omega boosters could easily be tuned so that they don't allow a player to completely make up for lost time, but get pretty damn close - and presumably they would have been using boosters during that time anyways. This justifies a higher RL money cost, and justifies the higher SP gain as well.

The CPM is in the process of trying to secure a meeting with the Marketing dept so we can discuss Omega boosters (and several other issues as well), if others of you have strong feelings, we'd love to know how you feel about any and all things related to Dust514's monetization. Get in touch with us through the usual channels.

There is a -HUGE- difference in the long term. From Passive SP alone there's a difference of 672,000 SP -per month- disparity. That is an insanely high difference when you compare the time it takes for a new player to gain the skills he needs to be competitive with older players and being as there is no limitation for new players specifically to purchase it, the disparity is only further increased for the older players who have money.

The only limitation to this is the fact that you can't go higher than level 5 in a particular skill.

Just because it works and it makes CCP money does not mean that it isn't impacting the game in a negative way. F2P statistics aren't usually used in competitive games like Dust 514 where the entire point is kill other players. The only other games that I can think of that have these features are probably Battlefield: Play-4-Free which is largely considered an abomination and Combat Arms which was terrible in it's own right.

Again, wiser marketing choices that don't interfere with actual game play - or do so in a creative way that benefits new players, or brings back older players who no longer play the game. The justification of 'monetary gain' is the reason free-to-play games fail.

Didn't they hire an EA guy that specializes in microtransactions?

I've bought a lot of AUR. You can literally spend $100 worth of AUR in a few weeks if you aren't careful. This isn't a Facebook scam game. Why not price stuff in a range that you could run AUR gear for around $20/mon? It solves some of the SP gap issues and it allows a player to branch out into some stuff without having to wait 2 months to grind.

Sometimes less is more. They HAVE to lower the costs of AUR either in game or in the PSN store.

Straight from the Lion to the lambs, homey.

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