Sole Fenychs
Sinq Laison Gendarmes
Gallente Federation
671
   |
Posted - 2015.03.23 13:37:00 -
[1] - Quote
Money balancing can only be done roughly, with levels of investment.
As an extreme example, take a dropsuit that costs 2 billion ISK and has infinite armor and shielding and all of the role bonuses and a 5/5/5 module loadout with H/L/S weapon slots.
You could raise it to 100 billion ISK and would still be completely broken.
Same for a completely useless weapon. If it does zero damage and nothing else, it doesn't matter if it's 0 ISK or even a BPO.
And then you have the current BPO suits, like the APEX, which make ISK balance even more wonky - You can run an APEX and save money, while your opponents don't have APEX and thus either run their Starter Suits (Which give them less payout because they are less effective) or suits that actually cost money. Even if they trade 1:1 with you, death wise, you'll make much more money, which you can then invest into saving up for the 10 trillion ISK Omnisuit.
If you want ISK to be a balancing factor, you have to remove all BPOs, among other drastic measures. The current system is completely broken. And the warbarge money factory, as well as the trading agent, makes it even more of a slippery slope.
Hell, what about removing the starter ISK from new characters? Their suits are free, anyway, and they'll make that money back in about five matches.
And yes, I'm aware that the biomassing of new characters is a very tedious process with only minimal ISK payout already. But it's still a way for free money - If the ISK system was actually balanced, this exploit would be massively disruptive.
Where ISK shines is in the tiers that we currently have. In theory.
Proto is so expensive that it isn't worthwhile for pub play, because it's only marginally more survivable than ordinary suits and can easily die from a random shot from a randomly spawned tank... Except that pubs allow full squads, so this kind of random death source is diminished quite a bit.
Advanced is only good as long as you are doing well, with Basic a better option on the defense... Which is pretty ********, when you think about it. It's on level with the Orbital Bombardement mechanic in terms of creating a slippery slope that disadvantages the losing team even more than it already is. |