Kierkegaard Soren
Corrosive Synergy
Rise Of Legion.
758
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Posted - 2015.04.15 14:16:00 -
[1] - Quote
Buckle up, this is going to be a long one.
So, Warlords has given us a warbarge, and before that the Daily Missions were introduced to spice up the daily grind of pubs for all concerned. Individually, both of these features are perfectly acceptable and working well enough, but I want to ask you all a few questions:
Do you feel like you're in control of your mercenary career more with these features than before they were implemented?
Has your warbarge empowered you enough to make you fight harder on the battlefield, armed with the promise that victory will yield the necessary components to strengthen your fledgeling command ship?
Do these features feel like they are an integrated part of your Dust experience, or do they feel like they've been bolted on a little too hap-haphazardly?
Personally, I think we could all be making much more of these two features, with the overall goal to empower every merc with Choices That Matter. I would like to propose how I would do this here. It's going to contain a fair bit of detail and sadly I can't TL;DR very well, but I'll give it a go:
TLDR:
-The warbarge is your command center, and allows you to shape what kind of rewards you can earn in victory on the battlefield These rewards are, broadly: ISK, SP and Gear.
-These rewards are created by being able to choose, to a limited degree, the types of daily missions you can complete, and how these missions reward you for completing them.
-Victory on the battlefield guarantees the one reward you cannot choose; warbarge components. Components lead to warbarge upgrades, and upgrades lead to greater control over how much of the Daily Mission you have influence over, among other things.
CAVEATS: The vast majority of this pertains to rewarding battles fought solely within the Public Contract domain. FW and PC have their own unique benefits, challenges and rewards to offer, and this is a Good Thing. Of course, Warbarges are going to playing a big part in PC later down the line, and this proposal anticipates that, but suffice to say I'm concentrating on the personal relationship a merc has with his command ship almost exclusively, and I suspect the role warbarges will play in PC will be much more grand and epic in scope.
So, to the details.
Pull the Warbarge apart and start again from scratch.
Is quite a drastic proposal. But necessary. Right now, go look at your warbarge. Look at those modules, and what they are giving you. On the face of it, it all looks pretty solid; components, SP, ISK, fancy guns, even a (utterly insane whyyyyy CCP?) damage bonus. Sweet! What's not to like? Lots, that's what. Consider:
-Component Factory: currently, the amount this pushes out per day, the amount of components needed to upgrade it and the extra components produced from said upgrades are really not right. The increase to production is incremental, which is fine, but the amount to upgrade is exponential, and the upward curve is so steep it's liable to put you into orbit just by following it. 10k components for level 3 production (800 per day output) is obscene when you consider that we currently have no other reliable way to earn them, save for money purchases. It's a killer grind. It kills the feature dead.
-ISK Generator: Designed to help new players who initially have few streams of decent revenue. The amounts of pitiful to begin with, and the upgrade path again gives incremental benefits of ISK at the cost of massively exponential component costs. In the time it would take you to gather the components to upgrade this to an useful level a new player won't be new anymore and will be (hopefully) competently earning ISK from battles and Daily Mission rewards. Great idea, poor execution.
-SP Generator: Same as above. Lovely idea to help along our newbros, but the daily gains from a maxed-out module can be claimed by completing a single mid-tier Daily Mission. Redundant module, not worth the cost to upgrade for any type of player.
-Damage Bonus: Whoah. Whoah. Whoooooah. Put down the pipe, CCP. Step away from that pile of white powder heaped all over your keyboard. Stop, and think. A damage bonus, for free, for everyone, for ever? Rattati loses sleep about increasing the burst AR damage output by fractions of a percent but a blanket buff for every primary weapon that rivals that of an Enhanced damage mod is just waved through into the game like it was a Quafe skin? Mmm, Quafe. Anyway, no. Just, no. Christ :/
-Weapons Lab: Neat idea, this. Terrible execution again, sorry. I agree that you should only gain a few of these a day, because they are powerful, but not being able to know what you're producing is a user experience night terror and the claiming process is a kick in the nuts for all of us component-impoverished mercs. I do not like being robbed by puny scientists at the best of times, and so I am entirely displeased that I have presently employed a team of them and housed them in my own home. They have stolen all of my silverware and used it for science. Not cool, science nerds. Not. Cool.
Dedicated Commando.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing."
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