I understand your points but I'm ok with them because they cost a **** ton (36k Aur!!!) for only 12k SP per day difference. Think about it, they are paying $20 for 3 games worth of SP .

Just like life, eh? Folks who got money can enjoy beautiful vacations on islands while the poor can only dream about those vacations. That's just how the cookie crumbles.

I understand your points but I'm ok with them because they cost a **** ton (36k Aur!!!) for only 12k SP per day difference. Think about it, they are paying $20 for 3 games worth of SP .

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.

So how much SP could you earn per week if you ran both Omega's and capped out with the activity bonus?

Isn't it a 30 day thing? And you're gaining 24k SP more per day than normal? So 30 x 24 = 720,000 SP. And 36k AUR equates to $18, so

$18 for 720,000 SP

If someone has money falling out their pockets and drops $90 on this for 5 of them, then they just bought themselves 3.6 million SP.

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.

The Omega gives you 48K SP per day. Regular boosters give you 36k SP per day. No boosters just passive is 24k SP per day.

30 days X 12k SP (the diff. between the Reg and Omega) = 360,000 SP over a month.

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

I'm not making the comparison of one booster to another though. I thought the point of this thread was to discuss if Omegas were pay-to-win or not, and in that regard you have to compare it to the guy who plays for free.

Yeah, that is the gap i been talking about ..and that is assuming that both players started playing the same day. Can you make a graph that compares the SP gap from a new player ( Lets say to day ), to a vet player 6 months from now ? You'll see that that gap will totally ridiculous.

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.

I don't trust anyone who has trouble deciding between feeding themselves and buying aurum......

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.

Just like life, eh? Folks who got money can enjoy beautiful vacations on islands while the poor can only dream about those vacations. That's just how the cookie crumbles.

Believe it or not, gaming + cigarettes is an amazing way to kill the hunger drive. I've embedded it in my mind that when I game, I don't eat, so it's sort of a subconscious thing now.

One day of food or one week of hunger killer? I think the choice is obvious.

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.

TL;DR: Boosters are necessary to fund long-term Dust development, Omega boosters are better at doing so than regular boosters. Omega boosters provide advantages to both the players that buy them and those who don't.

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).

Since you're quoting my TL;DR paragraph, I'm not sure you read my whole post? In any case, for clarification purposes: I'm not saying Omega boosters are the be-all and end-all of monetization. I tried reasoning my way to why they might be a very good way to get a good chunk of income every now and then. I based my reasoning on what I know about F2P game statistics from attending a large number of game business conference talks specifically about the monetization of F2P games.

I'm sure there are plenty of good monetization avenues, but general F2P statistics makes a quite convincing case for items that fit the profile of boosters. The exacts stats for Dust are of course only available to CCP, so neither me nor you are in a position to make blanket statements about one way of monetization being far better or inferior to another in this particular game. Chances are CCP is trying different stuff to see what works best. If we keep seeing Omega booster promotions like the ones we've had so far, chances are they're a good income source. If not, they're probably not.

In any case, the difference between normal and Omega boosters aren't big enough to make a big stink about. I'm not exactly rich myself, and have at times gone several months without any boosters at all, while other players obviously had them. That's fine with me.

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.