I'm curious as to what everyone's thoughts are on BPO items.

The more time goes on, the less and less I like these.


CCP advertised dust as a game defined by RISK vs REWARD. Going into battle and actually losing the assets you bring in if you die. But for the past couple months, with the introduction of more and more BPO weapons and suits, coupled with the flattening of the tiers to make upgrading out of those low tier BPO suits pretty much pointless... It's just left me with a sour taste. While CCP has said there's never going to be BPO items for high-tier stuff... No one even needs it because of how good the current BPO stuff is compared to everything else.

Don't get me wrong. Lately I've been using nothing but a Valor Scout with a militia shotgun blueprint. My fit costs me 0 ISK, and like 10k ISK when I switch to the copy of it that has AV nades. And yet I can still decimate pretty much anyone I see with my OHK shotgun that costs me nothing, even if they are not using free gear?


Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that people who buy high end gear should automatically beat people using the low tier stuff. But there needs to be a reason to upgrade. Prior to both the suit + weapon flattening, a bad player in prototype gear would still lose to a good player in militia. A good player in militia gear would beat a bad player in militia. A good player in proto gear would still beat a bad player in militia. A good player with militia gear facing a good player in proto would be a tossup largely depending on circumstances such as who has better cover, which weapon type they both have, etc. Gear never really mattered a whole lot. It's always been more reliant on player skill. (Exception: Scout suits in the earlier builds. No skill was needed to be invincible in those. Good times!) Granted, a good player using bad gear did have to work a bit more to kill a bad player in good gear. If anything, those differences gave them a better chance against the better player.

The flattening was apparently done to give 'new players' a chance. But really, it didn't do anything more than make it pointless to upgrade! CCP can look at the stats of all the people who rocked high tier gear in past builds. People who went 20+ kills with 0-3 deaths are still going 20+ kills with 0-3 deaths. A good player will always beat a bad player regardless of the stats on the gear either of them are using.


A couple months ago, all militia stuff was BPO. None of it ever ran out, for 1000 isk or so you'd get a permanent copy. When CCP announced changing them to BPC (temporary) items, I was one of the people who highly opposed that change. At the time it seemed crazy. As time goes on, I'm starting to become more and more convinced that they made the right move. But then the introduction of BPO's for aurum kind of killed it.


Personally, I'd much rather that if the tiers remain flat, BPO's get removed entirely. Since everyone is just using cheap/free gear anyways. It would bring back some measure of the whole risk/reward dynamic that is supposed to be huge in this game.

Ideally the tiericide would get reverted and there'd be a reason to upgrade again. But maybe that's hoping for too much.

Current SUIT BPO's could become just BPO's for color schemes, since each BPO suit has a special visual as it is.


EDIT: Starter fits would be the exception. They could remain free since they are all pretty garbage, even though there has been numerous posts on how to improve them.