Kierkegaard Soren
Eridani Light Horse Battalion
998
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Posted - 2015.10.19 16:29:00 -
[1] - Quote
Officer Weapons are now endemic within pubs and factional. Since they were designed to be game-breaking by default, this has had an adverse affect upon the game experience. That being said, super-rare, hard to obtain and functionally powerful gear is something that Dust can claim as a unique and enjoyable feature. I'd hate to see them removed completely.
My thoughts on how to balance them appropriately:
1) Remove passive generation of both officer and experimental weapons from the warbarge by fundementally redesigning the way in which the Experimental Lab functions.
- The lab no longer passively generates random bits of rare gear for warbarge components, but instead creates limited run blueprints for Experimental Weapons.
-Each BP will produce 3 Experimental Weapons of the same type once it has been claimed and then activated. It will then expire. Claiming a BP requires no warbarge components, but choosing to produce the weapons ('activating') will require Salvage components.
-BP's can be stored in your assets after claiming them. They are tradeable items.
-Upgrading the Experiemental Lab increases its production efficiency, with each level reducing the Salvage components required to produce the weapons.
2) Officer gear is removed from the game, and replaced with limited-run Blueprints that can be obtained through strongboxes or, on incredibly rare occurances, as loot from the battlefield.
-Officer BP's function exactly as Experimental BP's, except that they can produce only one item before expiring.
-An officer BP can only be activated if the player owns an Experimental Weapon of the same type as the officer BP or, in the case of officer suits, a prototype version of that suit. They must also pay a further cost in Salvage components, by default the rarest ones seeded. If the player meets these requirements, they may create an officer piece.
-Both the Experimental Weapon and the officer BP are consumed in this process.
-Officer BP's are tradeable items. Actual officer gear, however, is bound to the player who created it.
It's a crafting system that has at its heart a resource that can only be obtained from battle, whereby Experimental gear can be obtained in small quantities at a reasonably reliable rate so long as you keep playing and stay to the end of the match to be in with a chance of picking up salvage. True officer gear is now truly RNG'd, but not removed entirely, and adding in the extra level of crafting to bring them into the game proper gives the player choice as to whether to hold onto the Blueprint for when they really want to convert it into the gear or to sell it to somebody else who does need it, but doesn't have it.
EDIT - And here's an idea that deals with this issue from another angle; reduce harvesting accounts (whereby all three mercs assigned to an account have access to an individual warbarge that generates seperate assets) and give each player ONE warbarge for their account. Players must designate one of their mercs as the Captain, who can access and operates the wrabrges' functions and assets. These can be distributed between the other two mercs on that account freely, with no ISK fee for item transfers.
Thoughts?
Dedicated Commando.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing."
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