Making the game better by revoking a bad design decision is never a bait-and-switch. In a perfect world these sorts of things wouldn't happen, but in practice everyone is fallible. To be honest, the over-generation has been going on so long as to prevent a significant stockpiling problem anyways.

"There's a problem thing and people have stockpiles of it, so obviously we just need to let everyone keep getting more," is literally the stupidest argument possible. Next thing you know we'll be advocating against nuclear disarmament and anti-proliferation efforts.

What is the problem with officer gear? I just don't get it.

Right now it's hard to find a Bons for less than 500k. A Rattati suit is going for 1.5 mil ISK. If a dude is willing to lose things like that in a pub is that not the ISK sink people have been wanting to see?

I don't care what anybody says, gear is not the issue that's harming public matches. We've seen public matches declining in quality for as long as I can remember. There's a problem with participation in public matches. There's no incentive to win so most people give it a shot for a few pushes and then go hide.

I'd 100% support removing the ability to run officer in pubs, but it will not change anything in regards to quality of matches. Just as meta-locking or removing proto wouldn't. We could have full tiercide and it wouldn't change anything for players who don't participate.

Which seems kind of strange that this was the area they choose to listen to QQ.

The DK Market could have driven so much active content. I'm willing to discuss ways to change the way we get the officer weapons, but they are fun and fun is needed in Dust and I think taking it away removes content (trading) that is a big part of keeping people around.

You are correct, introducing fun and an ability to make ISK for the first time outside of exploits of broken and ignored PC mechanics will be hard to put back into the bag.

FYI Aeon thinks Apex suits are game breaking, just for some context. Possibly the single best thing to ever happen for newer players and he also dislikes this. This dude is more anti-fun than Soraya was and that ladies and gentlemen is hard to pull off.

Respect your opinions but you guys are going about this the wrong way.


- Officer weapons are rare.

Player Trading made them plentiful in the hands of collectors who spam them. Thats players making lage collections via meta gaming. Don't ignore the effect trade had in making large amounts of proto into the hands of players that afford them. That was determined by the free market, not by the warbarge availability.

- Collecting via the warbarge is hardly passive.

You do not make enough components per day to collect your officer/experimental gear. You'll run out of components simply logging in and collecting weapons then signing out.You have to activley play and finish either missions or salvage warbarge components from matches in order to have enough to collect from the warbarge. I have my exp. lab, and the component factory at level 3.

1) Warbarge produces 600 components every 48 hours

2) Experimental lab cost 1,188 every 48 hours. Produces 6 random experimental/officer gear.

3) Wait 56 hours to collect 48 hours worth of gear with zero 12 components left over or

4) make up the 588 components up through active gaming every 48 hours and via active gaming save unspent componenets fro futre investment.

I reiterate, these are active gameplay rewards rather than passively generated ones.


Which leade me to my next point
- The biggest cause of officer weapon production is that there is nothing else provided by the warbarge to invest worth investing compeonents into.

I have the option of investing 10,000 warbarge components:

1) 100 more components per 24 hours, 25 days to earn back

2) A tiny increase of SP (67 million SP whats an extra 1,00 going to do for me?)

3) 1 % of damage.

4) A ferw thousand more Isk

5) Experimental / officer gear which in turn gives me access to trade markets and meta gaming.


Its not even a realistic comparision.
There is no levels 6 to save components for and invest into. That leaves the only worthwhile option collecting weapons to trade and enhance the meta game experience.

Have something cool for the remaining, unfinished levels of the warbarge, and you will see player invest more components in other items than just officer gear.

Much better than punishing the entire playerbase for the market forces that lets us use officer in pubs.

No more passive than ISK or SP. Technically nobody needs to play to generate either. But if you aint playing you aren't earning enough.

For what it's worth, I think the experimental lab should produce mainly experimental weapons, producing officer only on rare occasions. Perhaps something like 90% experimental, 10% officer. This would be an easy improvement for CCP to implement.

Firstly this makes sense based on the fact that it's called an experimental lab. The experimental lab is the only source of experimental gear. Also, experimental gear should be more common than officer since it is less powerful.

I feel officer gear is a little too prevalent for it's power. I do not think experimental gear is such an issue as it is only a small amount better than proto, whereas officer is a lot better.

As for the wider subject of the warbarge, I think it is unlikely to change much. I am against passive generation of assets. I thought the warbarge subsystems were going to provide a bonus to rewards earned in game, not just give you stuff. I thought the lab was supposed to use components salvaged from battle.

The augmented ammo providing +% damage I am against. This really is getting into pay to win territory. Many people were upset by this when it was released, but accepted it on the basis you could only get a 4 or 5% bonus. Now this has been increased, making it worse.

In fact, I wish the game was devoid of passive bonuses entirely. Skill points giving access to more expensive gear is fine, as you pay for the better gear. But skills that just bonus what you have are bad, and shouldn't have been part of the game from the start. At least they could have given minor advantages, not the major ones we have. This is a large cause of the poor new player experience in my opinion. To be honest, the more in depth I think about this, the more I want CCP to just start again with a clean slate.

By the way. An Apex suit is no more problematic than arum gear. You could always pay money to avoid the risk to your isk wallet. I don't have a problem with this. At least they are only a little better than standard suits. Giving medium frames the hp of an assault would help even the odds for new players.

That's because people don't like to buy something that isn't permanent.

I think of Apex suits as being similar to the starter fits. Yes they diminish the risk / reward gameplay. However they don't destroy it. There is plenty of room for escalation and risk vs reward with advanced, proto, experimental and officer gear. Plus vehicles.

I like you. Your more sensible than the other cpm.

Officer gear should not be in a experimental lab.

Remove officer gear production. Increase production rate of experimental gear.