Pretty much stating the obvious there, but it's the kind of obvious that CCP has seen fit to ignore for too long. +1

Need to raise the payout percentages for killing proto and advanced dropsuits.

I run proto almost constantly, and my worst fear is higher payouts. Higher payouts would kill this game if they were sustained.
Proto stomping seems at an all time low recently, with advanced being very common.
If payouts were raised, I would never run anything but proto again.

I understand the longing for isk, I've stayed up many a night grinding and wishing there was an easier way, but if proto wasn't as costly where would the excitement and sense of risk go?

People should not be able to run proto after proto and still make a profit. In actuality the baseline ISK earned should be even lower. This will help burn the ISK of those who exploited PC.

OR

Make proto and ADV much more expensive

Both of these actually mean that only those who played PC or played pre-Uprising will be able to afford proto and possibly ADV as well if you seriously believe that ADV should only be for the elite.

Reducing payouts is absurd. Get your hatred of "PC exploiters" away and actually think about this.

My hatred of the exploitation is well deserved. It is the reason that this game will never be truly connected to EVE. It ruined the economy in Dust. From the eyes of EVE players and CCP our ISK is nonexistent.

I am thinking about this. I am thinking about how to erase the billions of ISK that are sitting in peoples wallets. I honestly wouldnt mind an unannounced ISK wipe.

Just like high-sec, really.

So, ISK payouts. They've been in roughly their current incarnation for... a very long time. There've been little tweaks over time but they've never really left the ~200k average zone.

Let's talk about that.


ISK is a key part of this game. Using most gear costs ISK. When you die, you lose this gear and as a result lose ISK. As a result, using most gear is tied into how much ISK you can get. This also provides a significant incentive to not die.

Here's the thing, though - If the ISK payout is too low, you get a massive aversion to risk because nobody wants to die because if they do they'll lose precious ISK and be unable to run gear they like. In a way this means that people can't run their best gear all the time, and that's probably a good thing. What isn't a good thing, though, is the balance between how much people are rewarded for risk and how much they are punished for it.

Sticking all the way through a match without doing anything will earn something like 80-160k ISK. I get this number from my AFKing 'efforts'. That is to say, if you do absolutely nothing in a match, you'll earn ISK in that range.

If you take out a couple of mediocre fits at 30k ISK in a match and go out into the fray, you can start earning more WP and therefore more ISK. If you're a logi or someone able to farm lots of warpoints, that can help your ISK payout noticeably.

But is that worth doing?
With said 30k fits, which I'm using as an average because that's what a cheap ADV fit (which ought to be pretty much average) will cost you, can you earn enough with them to make it worth risking? By charging into the fray and pushing objectives/making a serious effort at changing the game flow, you are inevitably going to lose several of these. If you lose half a dozen of these, will you earn enough ISK to make it worth doing that?

The problem is that you won't. A better than average match may earn you 300k if you make a serious effort and are in the top few slots on the board. In the process of doing this, you'll have lost several suits. Losing half a dozen or so, which I imagine is lower than the average deaths per match, will put your net profit down to the ~100k range.
That's similar to AFK profits! And that's using cheap fits, doing very well in matches, and not dying a huge amount.

This naturally means that people aren't going to want to take risks and this means that there is no incentive to make a serious attempt at fighting.



TL;DR

People are risk averse because ISK payouts for taking risks are too low to justify taking those risks.
This leads to gameplay stagnating people people are unwilling to seriously fight.


I propose increasing the ISK payout and the share of the ISK payout for earning warpoints. Ultimately, those changes should mean that doing nothing earns you either what it does currently or less, but gives significantly more ISK for those who make a genuine effort at winning the match.

Each of those jobs can be done (effectively) from suits that are 35-50k each. If your losses are in the 3/4 of a mill range you probably want to refit your setups.


EDIT- And quit dying already! XD

I like the system Thook came up with :)

Thokk's system is impressive. The multiplier change for gamemodes removes the issue of Ambush not being profitable, which is good comparedbto other variants I've seen.

However, being as rich as I am, I do sit on the fence on this issue. On my alt, which has ~25mil isk, I would love being able to run my proto suits as a profit. That being said, on this char which has ~1.1bil isk, thats no longer a concern. So I'll come to my own conclusion that this helps poorer players far more than those as rich as I.

TLDR - Thokk's system is best.

Also, I will sit with pride knowing I took Arkena's 20,000th Like.