Everyone:

Here's another angle to consider GÇö would a passive SP booster be enough to make up the difference in playtime between "full-time" players and "part-time" players? If so, a possible corollary would be the question: Is it fair that the latter type of player has to use passive boosters in order to keep up? After all, those boosters cost real-life money.

Perhaps, though, that is CCP's long-term goal, hmm? Despite the risk that such a strategy might not pay off, due to players simply deciding to leave Dust behind. After all, the console market, I believe, doesn't produce players that are as dedicated to games GÇö well, with the exception of the Call of Duty series GÇö as their PC counterparts can be.

A penny for your thoughts, folks, so to speak.

I dunno but maybe this is karma for the working class man getting all upperty and refering to others as no lifers.

Yes, but this doesn't mean there should be no cap. Even if there wasn't I wouldn't have time to catch up, or otherwise take advantage of it most days. I'm certainly not spending my entire weekend, (or those I have anyway), trying to get lots of SP so I can be close to the same as guys who started at the same time and play to cap daily.

If there was no cap, then it would hurt even more, because those that have the time would just accelerate even more and be max skilled in short order, compared to everybody else.

If there was a booster to accommodate part time players, the Full time players would use it.

I already suggested a good option for this: Allow banking of the cap to increase the limit for those who play infrequently, and reduce the difference between passive and active SP limits. If it happens to be 40000 active available per day; cut this in half and make it 20K, then up the Passive per day by 20K. Apply Boosters after.

Other ideas:

Give players who are trying to catch up a boost to active SP on top of active boosters. Make this limited, and available once per week on log in for players who have been unable to play.

(i.e: player logs in and plays Sunday, is off Mon-Wed, logs in Thurs and has the option of activating it. It lasts for 3 hours, then disappears.) It is unavailable for 7 days from the time of activation. This should not be available to more than one character per account.

Couple that with a minimum 48h period between logging off and logging back in again.

Include a Full Passive Booster on the market that gives players using it full SP per day using it. A 30 day booster that can be roughly the equivalent to a subscription cost if you will. This should be bought through the Playstation Store like the Merc pack. Active boosters may apply on top of this, and SP cap gain from them would be excluded from the total.

That basically means that you will still get active SP from the standard cap to the Booster cap.

I'm sure I could think of more ways to make this system more rounded and less detrimental for players like me.


edit: Just checking the AUR costs, 40K for roughly $20 which will buy you the equivalent of 5 passive 7-day Boosters and leave you with 5K AUR. Comparably speaking, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest the 30-day Full Passive Booster above, though you may want to have it limited to one Character per account, as with the other suggestions.

Optional I suppose though as people willing to pay for two of these might as well be able to.

We actually need a daily cap to appease the hardcore gamers so that they won't earn it all in one day then get bored.

But we need a weekly cap to ensure those who don't play everyday that they can catch up.

The solution is the rolling cap, where if you don't play a day/don't hit your cap, the potential left gets added to your cap for the next day.

So if you didn't play monday, on tuesday your SP cap would be 54K. So on and so forth.

I take it you're a member of the landed aristocracy?

I agree that folks may be right about being wrong about disagreeing about a consensus that was wrong about being right then was overturned

Oh LOOK!! another SP thread!
Never seen one of those before


I remember when we got 400, 000 SP per match!! but oh no! folks just had, had, had!! to mess with the SP ratios and post SP threads!!

Carefull what you wish for!
Well now that folks got what they asked for its a Riverworld of QQ and more QQ.

Daily cap hurts everyone...not just people with jobs but hardcore players as well. Because after 4 games, there is no more incentive to play. It really is like you're playing for nothing. And although, CCP feels like the skill point weekly progression is the same.....for the rest of us, it drags and makes playing intolerable after a while.

Go back to the weekly cap.....or, increase the daily softcap to 1000sp/match with boosters. I'm tired of being penalized by guys that don't play the game as much as I do. All because they want to keep up with us in skill points. News flash...everyone can and will not have the same amount of skill points. What about all the new players coming in??? There are no rollovers so how will they keep up?

The players that can not play as much as others should be in the same category as a player who just downloaded the game when everyone is 6 months in

I understand the disappointment with skill point caps GÇö this entire thread is an example of that (particularly, the daily limit).

That said, I don't think the caps will go away. Why? It's purely financial. Since Dust 514 is going to be a free-to-play title, CCP has no guaranteed profit, such as developers who go through storefronts and whatnot would. Therefore, CCP not only needs to find methods to bring in money in order to keep improving Dust 514, but they also need methods to keep "no-life" players from, well, playing most, if not all, of the time.

Why is this? Because those hardcore players are using CCP assets (servers, etc.), and if there wasn't a way to get them to disconnect now and then, there would be a continual drain on CCP's resources. Hence, the SP cap, IMO, has twin purposes: One, to keep players *relatively* even with each other in terms of abilities and, two, to make sure hardcore types don't sit on the servers 24/7/365.

As I've said before, it's a strategy that comes with risk for CCP. The caps might keep folks away who would otherwise play a lot, and buy a lot of Aurum items. But without the caps, those same players could be a type of albatross that shows no return on investment for CCP. At the same time, the caps could attract other players with the incentive that they will stay relatively even with the hardcore players, and those former-type players are potentially also more likely to buy Aurum items as a way to "keep up with the Joneses."

I'm not an economist, by any means. But it wouldn't surprise me one bit if just about everything CCP does has the singular goal of generating profit at some point for CCP. And, I suppose, that's necessary in order to keep Dust up and running.

We all understand the purpose of caps and we're fine with them. I'm not suggesting that we remove caps. I'm suggesting that they improve the way it is implemented so that we can enjoy the game.

Not sure why anyone would stop players from playing a game. It is bad, financially, cause if I don't play then I don't die. Which means that any aur gear I have will last longer. And that means the time between AUR purchases will be that much greater.

Bottom line. If you are a working man or woman you understand other responsibilities come before the game. No one should expect a game to bend to your schedule because you have made your choices and priorities. If anything the skill cap helps the working man because it prevents those with large amounts of free time from getting to big a gap.

If your responsible enough to be a "working man" then this should be a non issue. They do not pospone monday night football if I have to work.