My only concern is that you lay out a proper course of what you will do with the BPO dropsuits players have already purchased.

My prefered course of action would be that each dropsuit BPO gets converted into a power core BPO and a skin BPO.

I love everything else about this proposal and support it.

How is skill progression removed in this proposal?

The real question is do we someday want players in New Eden manufacturing Dust assets from in-game resources?

When i say immersion-breaking that's really what i'm getting at - the idea that someday we will be integrated with EVE. In which case the 1 ISK dropsuit doesn't make much sense, except in an arbitrary technical 'letter of the law' sense.

Why not design Dust in a way that is consistent with the universe it's embedded in?

What i meant was that in Z's original FF proposal, movement through the suit trees was necessary for unlocking weapons/equipment, which was really the thing that players reacted most strongly to.

That is not the case with the current power core proposal, thankfully. But the removal of the dropsuit as something actually manufactured in New Eden is much closer to what Z proposed. At any rate i don't want to derail the thread.

If this gets us performance improvements, i'm for it, the death of a little piece of my New Eden soul not withstanding. o7

Love the skins, love the cores, don't care for tiericide...

But I will htfu.

OK, they cost one ISK because they are mass manufactured and the power comes from the modules that are expensive. Now they are no longer BPO's. Does it change anything in the economy? No. Does it no longer violate New Eden's rule of no BPO's. Yes. Then it must be better, right?

How is skill progression removed in this proposal?

So what I meant by question 3 is changing the racial bonus of the suits. Take a Minmatar Assault for example which has a role bonus to clip size of projectile weapons but isn't as useful for mass drivers. Or all the logis which get a role bonus to a specific piece of equipment which is very limiting. What I'm suggesting is if the role bonus could change based on what power core you have fitted to accommodate a wider variety of play styles. So like a Assault Type-2 Power Core. This would also play into question 2 of changing some base stats to make the variant more interesting.

It would be analogous to how in EVE you have your ship classes (Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, etc) but each race had more than just one type of frigate and so on and they have different bonuses per level of the same skill. Again, more longterm but I believe it's an interesting avenue to explore.

My only concern is that you lay out a proper course of what you will do with the BPO dropsuits players have already purchased.

My prefered course of action would be that each dropsuit BPO gets converted into a power core BPO and a skin BPO.

I love everything else about this proposal and support it.

Dear Players,


[img]http://puu.sh/i0Qfj/5f3d7dc537.png[/img]

Discuss

Oh my sweet Rattati, that price jump between ADV and Proto power core is ridiculously high. D:

I still don't like APEX suits being superior to standard suits. It's a bit pay-to-win.
Before APEX suits, Dust had a very fair microtransaction model.

I still don't like APEX suits being superior to standard suits. It's a bit pay-to-win.
Before APEX suits, Dust had a very fair microtransaction model.

They are still inferior to both ADV and Proto suits, both of which can be obtained purely via ISK.

It's not really pay to win if you can't use it to be competitive.

This is CCP Z's fanfest proposal for 'you are your dropsuit' with the skill progression removed.

Another good thing I would like to see brought in is the tree training; not as a mandatory thing in what CCP Z would suggest; but as a recommendation and optional way of developing your role and various kinds of subroles players come up with. A training regiment, if you will. Players will still be able to frakenstien your suits but the idea of the training tree is to help explain to new players as to why this role fit is synergized. Like due to this suit having large amount of low slots and semi natural high speed armor plate tanking may be viable option significantly raising hp without using more useful precious high slots for more utilitarian things to also help survive such as more advanced sensors. Then I would lace it with rewards, and active goals (kill 100 players as an assault caldari suit; assist in 50 kills with mass driver ect ect) Free BPOs free skins free isk and free aur gear for previewing more powerful things.

Wouldn't this be easier by having some sort of persistant missions, rather like what was done with the recent triathlon challenge?

Think of a second mission panel with missions that don't expire, and do the things you describe. Perhaps with missions that only appear after other missions have been completed, etc?

[Sorry, don't mean to derail the thread]

My plan is to see if I can roll out the first part of this, for Commandos and Logistics, and hit 3 birds with one stone.

That would remove slot progression, and define the true PG/CPU per layer.

When I am able to get a Power Core module in (needs a client update), then phase 2 is the replacement of dropsuits with Power Cores.

The real question is do we someday want players in New Eden manufacturing Dust assets from in-game resources?

When i say immersion-breaking that's really what i'm getting at - the idea that someday we will be integrated with EVE. In which case the 1 ISK dropsuit doesn't make much sense, except in an arbitrary technical 'letter of the law' sense.

Why not design Dust in a way that is consistent with the universe it's embedded in?

Eve Pilots also don't need to pay for their pods. They get those for free.

Same concept. The pod, like the suit i the power core module, is basically just the thing you slot in the important bits. (slot a pod into a real ship, or slot a powercore into the useless suit)

Either way it is the same concept, there is some essential lore-important item that is 'free' because it is pretty pointless to assign a cost to it. The real meat of what makes the game tick is in the items you actually pay for. (Ships / powercores)

Also, I -really- don't see why we are even having this argument. Nothing changes, and we still lose all our ISK assets when we die. The value of losing a suit does not change by a single ISK Cent, and it doesn't even change the number of things you have to buy.

I want you to do something:
Do some research of what 1 ISK is supposed to be worth in New Eden.

Hint: You could buy Google with 1 ISK, from what I last read.

1 ISK is not peanuts. That's why the BPO makes sense - 1 ISK is nothing to immortals, meaning that our employers are likely to just throw the suits at us for free, as the complicated parts are in the power core.
At the same time, even a BPO (i.e. a suit that is so cheap that you don't even calculate its value) suit might be 0.01 ISK, which would still be an insane amount of money for any non-immortal. Enough to buy your own ******* island or something like that.

Always keep in mind the scale.

Just look at your real clothes. A shirt is ten bucks, maybe.
The material for the shirt is maybe one buck. And then there's two cents or so that go to the person who made your shirt.
Ten bucks is nothing for you and for two bucks, you'd buy t-shirts in bulk. The two cents for assembling the shirt are so cheap that you'd consider them a rounding error. You'd throw those two cents away if they didn't fit into your wallet.
The price of the shirt stems entirely from the material and the shipping. The assembly never factors into it.

And that's exactly how BPO dropsuits work. The price of the dropsuit is so neglegible that it's nothing to an immortal. Meanwhile, the person who assembled your t-shirt actually considers two cents per shirt to be real pay. Similar to how 1 ISK could buy you Greece.

Note: I took these numbers out of thin air and based them on past exploitation scandals. I have no idea if they are actually that bad, or even worse.

They are still inferior to both ADV and Proto suits, both of which can be obtained purely via ISK.

It's not really pay to win if you can't use it to be competitive.

Dust 514 isk is valued different than eve online isk. Eve online isk is about 12,000 isk to retire a family in a comfortable middle class life to give some form of measure. Dust 514 isk about 1/10th ratio so 120,000 isk to retire a family.

Looks like I had a bad source.

I still think 1 ISK to retire a family is more fun. It would mean that any mercenary could retire at any time with a hidden shelf full of weapons, each worth more than the collective income of all of the people in his city.
But they don't do that, because why sip a drink on your private island when you can get murdered fifteen times a day and start drag racing across explosions? And don't forget hunting down Thale's snipers. That's the best thing in life.