I'm not quite seing the glaring issue here. You chose to run a ~50k fit 13 times in a row and left at a loss. Doing relatively well in terms of k/d was pretty much bought with running the not quite inexpensive suit.

The glaring issue i see is that some corps are completely independant of the pub/FW payouts through their PC income. This puts unecessary pressure on all other players, since they have to actually manage their resources.

Let us also keep in mind that, once the secondary market takes over the general economy and becomes the new primary market so to speak, raising payouts will just lead to higher prizes, thus no improvement is achieved in this types of cases at all.

The glaring issue is that there is a major disparity between the casual player who uses Pubs/FW payouts as their primary income and the players (like myself) who receive a paycheck from PC. It's an issue, I feel, because when the matches start getting one-sided, as they often do, it gets to a point where the player has to make a decision between seeing it through or leaving all together. That's not good, in my opinion.

There aren't many close matches, we all understand that much. It usually feels one sided with stacked teams for whatever reason, be it in the Pub-Matches where the match maker throws together a hodge-podge of randomly queued individuals or Faction Warfare which is more free form. My problem is that the disparity between the two player groups is a bit large; I can afford to do this because I have PC funding, whereas another player may not.

That being said, what incentive is there to use the high-end gear for the matches that matter - like in Faction Warfare? If the payouts are the same (or nill, as CCP has stated they want to remove the payout all together) than the casual player is restricted to high-sec pub matches where these occasional high-investment battles can empty the wallet very very quickly.

Let me make it abundantly clear, this isn't Prototype/Complex gear. This is Advanced/Enhanced. If the losses incurred were so high that I couldn't even afford to replace half of them, how is a player without some other means of gaining ISK expected to continue using it in Faction Warfare? Or in a Pub match in which the match-maker for some reason decided to pit them against a team of Prototype-wearing individuals?

The disparity is real and an issue. That we agree on ( though my starting sentence kinda suggested otherwise). I just wanted to emphasise that I see the issue coming from the top end of the chain (PC), not the bottom end (everything else).

Matches should always have the risk of you losing ISK overall if you overcommit to a match that, by the looks of it, was very difficult and i don't think that this should be limited to proto gear.

I think that, for the average/poor player (like myself), the system works as designed. It's the fact that doing well in PC breaks this mechanic as those corps/players are quite simply not relying on pub payouts anymore.

Again, I think the solution is not to raise payouts in the low end, as this only leads to inflation so it isn't going to help the non-PC player much, but to figure out something that makes PC worthwhile that is not just straight up ISK. The FW changes, if done right, could be a a good example of that. I just don't know yet what that could be.

Edit Addendum: Maybe this will all become much better as soon as the secondary market kicks in. The .5b ISK player simply has nothing to spend all this cash on so that wasting it does not result in any loss.

Once you guys have to buy balac's for 5m each to have a fair chance in PC, because....well.... the enemy does so, wasting ISK on pubs could suddenly become a liability.

This means less proto in pubs -> means less pressure to counter with PRO/ADV -> lower cost to compete in this kind of matches.

I'm about to make another thread to illustrate this point more clearly but for a new player that price gets significantly higher (frames costing more than specialization suits).

Once Faction Warfare and PC are in a better place, and a proper (working) P2P market is in order, I'm all for restricting gear in pub-matches to emphasize on wanting to branch out from them.

The expensive basic frames are a cheap (and bad) way to emphasise specialization. I'm all with you on this. They should be hybrids: Jack of all trades - master of none.

I would be really dissapointed if we had to limit gear on certain modes. The whole point this tiered design (that CCP is just finishing to kill in EVE, incidentallly) is to allow players a concious choice between low risk/low performance and high risk/high performance.

I view deliberate "protostomping" to force the opponent in a situation where they can either raise the odds and bring out their own shiny or switch to zerg and guerilla tactics as a valid mechanic in principle. The only thing that's broken about it right now is that "stomping" is no commitment, but a commonplace for too many corps and thus in too many matches.

I also don't like the idea of being able to "chose your encounter" in a New Eden Game. People have to learn at some point, that the enemy can always chose to throw money at the problem, and how to deal with it. Restricting pubs will just mean that they'll have to learn it a little later, at which point they might already be too accustomed to the safety of pubs to accept that.

I run cheap suits most of the time (4-16k) my top tier suits are (47-52k) and they only come out to play occasionally.

I often top the leader board and if I am outside the top 3 on my side I see it as a bad match.

firstly I can't ware a proto suit and just unlocked my second proto gun ( I do not use the proto gun) . I expect my payouts to be in the region of 200-350k although sometimes ill get more if I am lucky (457k once).

how many matches do I play that I do not see full proto? very few is the answer.
how often is my WP so I assume pay out larger than these proto players? more often than not.
how many times at a guess do I think these guys die on average? 6
how much does a proto fit cost? IDK call it 150k
can I afford to compete on a level playing field? no

in all honesty I think its bull **** - I am forever nerfed against who I fight because they do something I am far away from being ready to compete in.

if the "pro players" want to pat themselves on the back for being slayers in newb land then let them at least be forced to ware what we are limited to. passive differences are already enough to give them a large competitive advantage, if they can't chest thump with that then they really are pretty ****.

i made an alt, it had one game in the academy and bam it was fighting proto the next battle? if you were a new player - why on earth would you want to play dust? skill is great but...... gear is king and squads with gear is GOD MODE. for the game to grow it need to take into account the new players experience and casual gamers. both of which would in all likelihood be put off as things stand.

I think the possibility to limit gear may be a little bit more plausible than people may think, an fit is a tool that is used in EVE, so it has a precedence. That being the limiting of certain hull types when you go mission running. But I canGÇÖt say that I have seen that in PvP in EVE.

The potential costs of running a pub match versus those players that have had the opportunity to sink themselves into the pit of money that PC can bring definitely puts newer players and those that are economically disadvantaged into a serious predicament.

Edit:

Previously, I thought this was a complaint about proto suit costs. Now ...

Um. Due respect for the 30 kills, but ... die less.

I run full advanced kit, as a scout, and normally turn a nice little profit. The exception is when my score card looks like the OP: no profit, nor do I deserve one if I'm going to throw quality kit down a hole.

If you're dying a lot, have a basic suit you can switch to that still gets the same job done most of the time.

That would make sense if this were a pub-match but this was Faction Warfare where the stakes are (theoretically) higher. The outcome of the battle actually matters and one would expect that the Factions would pay handsomely for throwing ones' high-end gear at the problem. For the record, the other team was q-synced and almost all of them fielded Prototype gear.

So, one might expect that the higher risk play-style would reward better but it doesn't. In fact, CCP removing ISK rewards from Faction Warfare in FW 2.0 is only furthering the negative impact that the low rewards system has on the game to accomodate for features that aren't in yet (P2P Market). What will inevitably wind up happening is that FW 2.0 is more than likely going to be a playstyle reserved only for the people who -can- afford it (AFKers and PC players) whereas the remainder are left to the broken pub matches.

The "Die Less" argument is subjective and if you think that I did poorly, you should see some of the other guys. It's not always something that can be controlled unless you just Start > Leave Battle or camp the redline with a sniper rifle (incidentally, something I'd imagine all of you hate). Just as well, lowering oneself to using standard, militia or BPO gear is self-defeating because, while it is low risk, it's also low performance. The reason this is a problem is because Proto-stomping teams are already earning a reward for doing well: Precision Strikes. Forcing you to downgrade is just the icing on the cake if they're doing significantly better BECAUSE of that gear.

So which is it? Are we catering to veteran players who already have numerous advantages or are we going to at least make the game challenging (as opposed to punishing) for the rest of the game? I could go either way (I am, after all, getting a paycheck from PC clone sales) but I don't think we're going to do new player retention any favors if we let this slide.

This seems like a false choice. A balance must be struck. The game needs a lot of work and a lot of love; the good news is that it seems to be getting them, if not necessarily as fast as we'd like.

I paid my dues when I first joined, in blood. I was a couple thousand kills in before my K/Dr started evening out. CCP has claimed to have been working on public match matchmaking for the longest time, and I believe them.

I also believe that it's not an easy problem. It's popular to throw mud at CCP, but they're not stupid people.

Now, one of the interesting bits of FW is that it's an area where the matchmaking's hardly there at all. You get quite the assortment. Some more rewards for taking the plunge would be nice, but ... well, I guess we'll see how the LP store ends up working. In the meantime, I suppose I'm willing to just deal with the system as it exists-- that is, field what my budget allows, and start doing damage control when damage control is called for.

We're playing mercs, here. If the system's not making you fight with one eye on your wallet, it seems like it's not doing its job.

The whole point of the ISK rewards is to make you think twice about what you run just like you say. That fully applies to me and I follow the often-quoted EvE maxim that you shouldn't fly what you can't afford to lose. PC corp members do not have to follow that rule because they effectively have no limit to what they can spend, which kills the risk/reward aspect for the majority (who don't do PC) who can't get ahead because they always have to run gear they can't afford.

Cue vicious cycle where they consequently can't make a push into PC because they can't build up a big enough war chest to fund it.

They're not following the "don't fly what you can't afford to lose" rule? To the contrary. They're following it to the letter-- they can just afford to lose more, at least for a little while. It's like one of those pirate corps that can field Machariels.

('Course, even when they can afford it, losing those things still hurts.)

I get what you and Aeon are saying; I just don't agree. Perhaps it's because as a career scout I'm accustomed to being outclassed by any random red dot in a straight fight, but I just don't see inferior equipment as any sort of insurmountable obstacle. The differences are incremental, though they do add up.

Getting into PC from outside is going to require a lot of fighting smart. Really, I think what PC really needs is massive expansion: open up enough of it that even the largest group can't defend more than a small percentage of it. It's an experimental, and very limited, arena at the moment. I agree that the rewards can get outsized, but that seems more like reason to democratize it and maybe adjust those rewards than to start tinkering with other aspects of the game.

Being able to keep myself in advanced gear, plus a modest profit, through FW seems ... about right, really. But, as noted, we'll see how the LP stores work out.

[quote=Aeon Amadi]

I paid my dues when I first joined, in blood. I was a couple thousand kills in before my K/Dr started evening out. CCP has claimed to have been working on public match matchmaking for the longest time, and I believe them.

I also believe that it's not an easy problem. It's popular to throw mud at CCP, but they're not stupid people.

Now, one of the interesting bits of FW is that it's an area where the matchmaking's hardly there at all. You get quite the assortment. Some more rewards for taking the plunge would be nice, but ... well, I guess we'll see how the LP store ends up working. In the meantime, I suppose I'm willing to just deal with the system as it exists-- that is, field what my budget allows, and start doing damage control when damage control is called for.

We're playing mercs, here. If the system's not making you fight with one eye on your wallet, it seems like it's not doing its job.