Fizzer XCIV wrote:I have issues with Metal Level balancing.
1.) The Meta Levels aren't balanced. At all.
As good as an Officer Weapon is, it isnt 10x better than a Standard Weapon. Not even close.
Maybe 1.5x better, but not 10x.
2.) Variants are higher meta, despite being the same performance wise. This ties into #1.
3.)Why would anyone run in the Prototype tiered battles? Would there even be a point in PRO gear anymore?
4.) If they were to increase ISK payouts in PRO battles, whats to stop AFK ISK farming from becoming a rampant issue in those battles? Ties into #3.
5.) Even if this were rebalanced so that metal levels were balanced, and payouts and AFKing were made right...
It would create another issue of dividing the playerbase, and that would end up with exponentially increased waiting times before battle. It would be like FW except all the time.
As such, I believe that a feature like thus would only do more harm to the game than good, currently.
It should be put on the back burner until all the issues above are accounted for...
Here are my answers to this...
1. Adjusting meta levels would be easy to do.
2. Whether or not they need to be adjusted is another issue. Solid arguments could be made that non-consumable items (user has less to lose) and Aurum items (user gets early access to the technology) should have a higher meta-level than their traditional ISK based variants.
3. Who cares if no one wants to run proto? I have no problem with proto only being used in PC and FW. Players may also choose to not run proto in battles that allow proto in order to reap better payouts. In this situation, other players (who are looking for an advantage) would run proto.
4. AFK could easily be handled by further reducing ISK payouts for time in battle and increasing it for warpoints gained in battle.
5. Dividing the player base is the idea. Give new players a chance and there will be more of them and the size of the player base will grow. Right now, Queue times for the battle academy are just as quick as those for regular public battles. So dividing the player base in this case did nothing to queue times.
Like I said, I really believe that DUST is a great game that appeals to a huge number of players, the problem is new player retention, something has to be tried, if not this then what do you recommend?