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.

Something you dont like and you come crawling out of the woodwork, fascinating. You should be happy CCP has a chance to gain some added revenue.

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.

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

Ok...since you're comparing no booster to Omega booster (rather than regular booster to Omega booster), what you have a problem with is boosters in general, and not Omega boosters in particular? In any case, though, newer players get a lot more bang for their buck when they buy a booster. They could, as an example, take their proficiency level in a weapon from nothing to level 3 or 4 (can't remember the exact numbers). A vet might be at proficiency level 4 already. Those 672000 extra SP are still 100000 or so short of prof. level 5. The new player gets an additional 9 or 12 percent extra damage in the same period that the vet gets closer to having another 3%.



On console, sure. There have been so few F2P titles on console that no-one really knows how and if it can work. On other platforms, there's a lot of stats to pull from. League of Legends, for example, is a hugely successful F2P game very much about killing other players. I haven't played it enough to comment on any specifics regarding the monetization, though.



No, the justification of exaggerated monetary gain is one reason F2P games fail. And a complete or total lack of monetary gain is another. The trick is finding the balance, which I'm sure is something CCP is working on all the time.

OP is ignorant, Money will always win in XP based grind games and any MMO. Even if there was 0 boosters, you could just pay someone in china to grind accounts for you for a few dollars a day every day, and sit back and reap the rewards. Same goes for power leveling in other MMO's or making cash in eve with botting or Chinese grinders. You could AFK or bot dust if you wanted to as well not be hard this game is just not worthwhile enough to have the demand that would create that market. As well as many other forms of boosting available.

I could come up with hundreds of ways to get a advantage over some legitimately playing scrub. And 99% of them are pretty easy to implement today and I know they all work.

And hell you could always work more if you wanted boosters. And if you picking between gaming and food, you have a problem, and I do not feel sorry for you at all.

Its like you want to get ahead but you don't want to admit you might have to pay to do it. or your gonna have to pay with your time either way its a you problem, and if you don't get it any F2P game uses these psychological tactics to get your money so get used to it.

You ignore the fact that League of Legends only has monetary option for cosmetic items and faster access to new characters - but those new characters are continuously rolled out so that new players who don't buy them can still try them out at some point. It has absolutely no impact on the game's balance what-so-ever, a player can be effective without ever spending money. Dust 514, on the other hand, you're not effective against the competition until you have certain skills allocated - especially the 'necessary' skills like Armor/Shield Upgrades which increase your base HP on ALL suits.

While you bring up good points on monetary gain, you're still ignoring the fact that it's creating disparity between those who pay and those who don't - which is bad, very bad.

I encourage you to look at this chart I've made: http://i.imgur.com/yFyqC0V.png

You ignore the fact that League of Legends only has monetary option for cosmetic items and faster access to new characters - but those new characters are continuously rolled out so that new players who don't buy them can still try them out at some point. It has absolutely no impact on the game's balance what-so-ever, a player can be effective without ever spending money. Dust 514, on the other hand, you're not effective against the competition until you have certain skills allocated - especially the 'necessary' skills like Armor/Shield Upgrades which increase your base HP on ALL suits.

While you bring up good points on monetary gain, you're still ignoring the fact that it's creating disparity between those who pay and those who don't - which is bad, very bad.

I encourage you to look at this chart I've made: http://i.imgur.com/yFyqC0V.png

LOL is a not a MMORPG, its just a MMO it has 0 progression, from a MMO standpoint its a simulation. And money can still get you ahead in that game from the keyboard and mouse you use to all the other peripherals and the fact that if you wanted to play professionally you would have to buy chars anyway. There is even a player win % map that shows people who buy chars but play the same amount of hours as people who don't put any money into the game have much higher win percentages over the non buyers, simply from the fact that when you go through team selection being able to pick form a larger pool of familiar chars makes all the difference and can build much more competent teams.

When im hungry I get food........

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.

I'm worried about your last sentence.

If AUR prices (for items or cost of buying AUR) start to drop across the board, it would be ominous. It would indicate a large degree of waning interest.

Which would be a very good indicator that the game really is dying.


Munch

Aeon, I know you are very excited for an exotic dancer, but HELL no is anyone with any sense paying 50 USD for a cosmetic. You need to reasonably price cosmetics in the realm of 1-2 USD.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/8022-Downloadable-Discontent

On the point of people spending money on absurd things...

The reason this game needs PvE is because of people like my friends....

I watched this kid buy a Minecraft texture pack for $3.99

I just.....my brain.....it was there....and then....but I.....and he.....I just.....

People don't think with money, we are frivolous as ****, Americans obviously in particular but we are most certainly not alone. The exotic dancer pack would have to come with 2 dancers (male or female, consumer choice), and then you could purchase more for much cheaper, but you have to actually get the base ones first for however much it is.

I however would have to demand Occulus Rift support

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.

This is still far from pay to win. There is a point where more SP doesn't make you any stronger. If someone wants to keep this game alive and in development by paying a large sum of money, in order to double their SP gain (which still takes time) then more power to them.

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.

It's amazing that every single person who's responded thinks this is about Pay-to-win. Maybe I should just snip that -one sentence- so that the overarching theme of this actually gets across to people but even then I don't think that anyone will listen.

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.

Face it. I provided an option for new players to catch up with older players that's rock solid and damn near flawless, rather than commenting on that it's turned into a debate on whether or not Dust 514 is pay-to-win. I can only assume that my presentation was so perfect that no-one can feasibly argue with it so they have to shift the topic to something else.

You should try reading Hans' blog sometime before you make a ill-placed comment. Added revenue can be attained in better ways than destroying game balance.

Dude, people pay $35 just to GET IN to the local strip club. A personal exotic dancer for $50 for the rest of your life (or as long as this game lasts) isn't much to ask, hell, I'd maybe even sacrifice to shell out that much so I can be like: "This is why you should play dust 514" to the non-believers.

Besides, it's not like people aren't gullible idiots anyway. People pre-ordered Destiny without even knowing what system it was for when all it had was this on the website:

"Destiny features a compelling storyline, competitive multiplayer, cooperative gameplay choices, wide open public combat destinations, and third-person community spaces where you can repair and rearm before going out on your next adventure."

Apart from a vague as hell description which basically entitles -every ******* game in the past decade- (most importantly borderlands) all Destiny had was concept art. But people still dropped pre-orders on it en masse.

Don't tell me people aren't money shelling sheep - $50 isn't jack in a world where a text based sex game netted $200,000 in donations without even an alpha build

Edit: Removed some flavorful wording.

Hence why I said I would remove it, because it attracting far too much attention to the wrong parts of the post to start up a stupid debate anyway.

[quote=CommanderBolt]


Aeon let me be blunt with you.

He is meant to be our rep. Its his job to find ways to communicate with the player base. It isn't my job to go finding obscure blogs poster over the internet.

Now you might think I am being slightly funny but thats the truth. The job role those guys have means they have to deal with people who not only dont go searching for blogs, but they may not even use the forums. A player is still a player and a good CPM would create avenues of communication both in and out of the game.

IWS - I honestly dont agree with him on many thins however he has a forum presence and he feels known around here.

Anyway my point being, right now CCP could probably do with the cash, its either that or the game may die. Right now CCP should be on alert mode I think.