ZDub 303
Escrow Removal and Acquisition
Dirt Nap Squad.
3061
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Posted - 2014.06.24 20:33:00 -
[1] - Quote
i think a lot of it has to do with the tiercide they plan to do with dropsuits. They idea of purchasing suits makes a lot of sense when you are paying an isk cost for different variations of any one suit (in Dust that would be MLT/STD/ADV/PRO). Without these factors in place, the isk cost would differentiate each suit type. Therefore academy and basic frame suits would be cheaper than racial frame suits. i.e - Basic Assault Dropsuit vs Caldari Assault Dropsuit.
However, the worry comes then, how much of a differential should there really be between dropsuit prices? Make it too large and you are de-incentivizing a large portion of your player base from wanting to progress deeper into the skill tree, as they may not be able to afford the higher price tag on racial dropsuits.
For example... if a Basic Medium were ~5k ISK, a Basic Assault was ~15k ISK and a Caldari Assault was ~45k ISK. But remember, with tiercide all of those suits will be roughly equal in power, you just pay a large price tag for customization and looks.
It may be perceived as 'not worth it' by many players to even bother trying to skill up. Remember, a large motivation to play for many many players is that drive unlock new stuff. If they diminish that feel at all they are hurting their game substantially.
The solution? 'Roughly' normalize the suit cost between variants.
So for example... maybe the progression becomes Basic Medium is ~5000 ISK, a Basic Assault is ~5500 ISK and a Caldari Assault is ~6500 ISK. Okay but if the spread of modules covers from hundreds of isk to hundreds of thousands of isk for STD vs PRO module load outs... then that base price becomes rather meaningless. In fact it becomes more of a chores to continue stocking suits in general and it adds very little to the game play.
I suspect this is the reason why they just want to remove that baseline isk in general. You shift the entire loadout cost to modules that way. In this way they can design manufacturing to be entirely about module creation and not about suit creation. This gives the designers greater freedom to explore a system similar to EVE's salvage and rig system vs the mining and mineral manufacturing system.
I personally believe mining in legion would do that game a serious disservice.
How do vehicles fit into this though? I'm not entirely sure to be honest. BPO vehicles sound like a bad idea though.
Now you say... but this is polar opposite to EVE. And that is entirely correct. However, the 'frame size' in EVE is vastly different to the same idea of frame sizes for dropsuits. A Battleship in EVE is vastly different from a Frigate, and a heavy suit really isnt substantially different from a scout suit in the same manner. ISK cost for hulls makes sense, due to frame size. In Legion, it can certainly make sense as well, but I wouldn't entirely discredit the idea because its 'un-EVE like'. |