Would Warbarge refunds back to components be possible?

And then refunding all AUR-bought components back to AUR?

It would still affect the investments, but at least players could invest AUR elsewhere if Warbarge changes come to pass.

Im not gonna lie, I've spent AUR to upgrade the exp factory. I usually get from 4-6 exp/officer weapons on the daily.
If for some reason those values change I'm cool with it , for game balance purposes but I'd at least like my components back for it.

I say yes, stop letting your average player get ahold of officer gear so those who already have huge stockpiles can control the market and officer stomp freely. This is a great idea.

I don't know. And frankly, I don't particularly care one way or another. Maybe they buy skins or keys. Maybe they yell at Sony for some refund.

I'm more of the opinion they keep things mostly the same (save for gear balance [edit: statwise]), until they PORT THE GAME ALREADY or something! Then, they can tear things up, transfer SP/items/progress somehow to the "new" DUST, and nobody will have any legit room to cry.

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.

Some Ideas (mostly stolen):

* Reset warbarges & refund 100% of barge components
* Subsystem 1 - Mobile Factory: No Change
* Subsystem 2 - Market Network: Increase ISK pay EOM (5% per level, max level 10)
* Subsystem 3 - Augmented Munitions: Increase max carry capacity (3% per level, max level 10)
* Subsystem 4 - Neural Statistics: Increase SP yields EOM (5% per level, max level 10)
* Subsystem 5 - Experimental Lab: Outputs Experimental Gear and the occasional Booster

---

* Disallow Officer Gear in Public Contracts (restricts use to FW and PC)
* Increase NPC market buyback price of Officer Gear (encourages removal from circulation)

Depends what you think of as too common, I see an officer weapon at least once in every pub. To me that is too common.

How do you feel about the proliferation of officer weaponry?
In pubs, far too high. Probably no such thing as 'too high' for FW and PC.

How do you feel about passive generation of those weapons?
It seems like the passive generation is built around the fact that you're rolling each time to get one you can actually use. As it stands with trading, every officer weapon you get can be converted to one you can use. Removing trading would really mess things up for the people playing FW and PC though. Unfortunately with the game being in it's current state, any kit that you think players should be able to bring into FW and PC will make it's way into pubs, so you can't balance around the idea of 'players should only want to bring this stuff into FW and PC'.

How do you feel about changes and how they'd affect the investments of players?
It would be a horrible move to change the way that something (the warbarge) fundamentally worked if even one player payed real money for it. Removing a single source of officer weapons is also missing the problem. No one is complaining of too much officer in FW. No one is complaining of too much officer in PC.

There was too much of it pumped into circulation. In my opinion, at least.


Completely agree. Incentivizing earnest participation is an altogether separate issue.

Officer weps are far too common. Both their generation is too great and ability to trade them just emphasizes this.
Too many sources.



Exp gear could be accepted. But, as any, they should have cost to use: be it a single drawback among many good attributes or high fitting cost (note: isk cost is never a balancing factor)


Total removal would entitle a harsh community reaction, and for a reason.
Changes should be allowed, up to imaginary "49%" of the original. Whatever that means.


I have used big buck to upgrade warbarge and I feel very strongly that the following are too powerful:
* passive generation of officer items
* especially the warbarge damage bonus. That was, IMHO, a big design mistake.

IIRC, that's how it was initially designed. We (myself included) complained about the Lab being lackluster, so Rattati dialed up the Officer drop rates.

It seems strange to you that it would later become a problem that players would advocate the passive generation of the most powerful weaponry in the game, completely free of cost once invested in, permanently..?

The only thing this "feature" served to do, imo, was entitle the aristocratic players with a free source of powerful gear that they could buy and trade amongst themselves. Given how crazy expensive it is to even -get- the experimental lab, it certainly isn't helping any new players and I'd be hard pressed to believe it's even attainable in any near future for a player that does not spend Aurum on components.

For those that do, it basically just funnels out free ISK for the gear you don't use and offers a disproportionate amount of power with the gear you do use.

Perhaps if/when we see the other subsystems or if more work is done on subsystems then perhaps the experimental lab could just spit out EXP weapons, then the focused lab could allow you to but X amount of EXP weapons in to exchange them for an officer variants so every 2-3 EXP weapons you'd get 1 x Officer or if basic crafting you could use the refining lab and get Officer grade nanites which you put in focused lab with EXP grade nanites and out pop X amount of Officer weapons so we can still get a reasonable amount of officer weapons with some work invested but you have to lose some EXP wepaons in order to get them, so its a case of do you want a regualr flow of EXP weapons to use or trade them in for a smaller supply of Officer in return.

Another thing could be restricting trading on Officer weapons. that way people can't farm labs and pool them all onto their main. they'd only have the small few they get from lab on their own account whereas EXP could still be traded.

alternativly trading based on Loyalty rank and meta level, the higher the loyalty rank the higher the metal level upto Loyalty 5 being meta 10 (officer)

Lv0 - no trading
Lv1 - Meta 1-2
Lv2 - Meta 3-4
Lv3 - Meta 5-6
Lv4 - Meta 7-8
Lv5 - Meta 9-10

this would allow players to trade their old stuff as their characters grow, selling STD gear to newer players to fund ADV gear, then sellign their ADV gear to fund their new proto gear ect.

Those of us who have played for a while wouldn't be affected by it on our mains, but any alt accounts created to farm labs will be restricted

I really really agree with what you're saying, but:

TBH it's already too late. Even if you stopped new officer gear coming into the game from all sources, they're still going to be a problem for months to come. Look at the quantities available on the Player Trading sub, then imagine how many people have more in their assets but aren't bothered to sell them.

Restricting where they come from won't have it's effects felt for ages, so it's going to be a crazy hard thing to get any feedback on in-game and in turn balance properly. Are you aiming to have them not be a viable option in certain game-modes? Pubs? FW? Anything is a viable option when you've got enough ISK, and there's plenty of players that do. At this point trying to balance the prevalence of an item in Dust through rarity is probably not going to work. You're still going to see those items in at least the top end of the battle in all game-modes. Unless, of course, you lock them out.