well your numbers are bit wrong,

19.99 gets you a 1 month active booster and enough aurum to buy a 1 month passive booster, after that you hsould have enough aurum left to buy more boosters when needed.

I think I stretch it for about a month and a half for 19.99

so if you look at it that way it should be around 12-15 dollars per month. of course you'd have to not spend your aurum on proto suits.

So, effectively, someone like me that's a full-time student not currently working would just be ******. I think a better solution would be an adjustment to pricing rather than shafting anyone who can't be online every day.

For instance, what if the cost of the 7-Day Passive Booster was applied to a new 30-Day one, and the cost of the lesser time periods was reduced in conjunction? That alone would serve to significantly reduce the cost of "monthly subscription", which I also heartily support, as well.

The monthly subscription option given by SOE for Planetside 2, for example, has gotten them quite a bit of revenue, and is very popular with the community, as it even boosts offline Cert gain so that those who have less time to play aren't left behind as much.

Correct. This game gears toward specialization like EVE does, and there's only so far you can go in each before you've hit the theoretical max, and anyone who reaches it with you will still be on the same level as you, even if they started far later than you did.

TL;DR

Combine the current Active and Passive SP gains into one monthly cap that is earned passively. Active gain allows you to earn this cap faster by playing. Once the cap is reached for the month(through active play) the passive gain stops until next monthly reset. A soft cap still remains in effect for the remainder of the month after hard cap to allow for grinding as it is now.


A subscription of $15/mo(see underline for my rationale though i make room it could be cheaper and really sell at $10) allows for that passive SP cap to be raised by 50%(this would mean the rate at which passive SP is earned is also increase by %50 since it needs to hit a larger number in the same fixed time of 1 month(which i define as every 28 days so its normalized given monthly differences) Additionally the subscription gives you a %50 bump in active SP gain and increase in the soft cap as it is currently).


Before i get ppl freaking out on me this is not P2W. In fact all i have done is elminated the weekly grind, elminated AFKing, created a way to reward players who want to actively play without punishing casual players, by simply combining what you earn passivel and actively over the course of a month and making it all passive and shifting active so all it does is allows you to hit that cap faster after which you can earn a soft cap. Which is not much different from how it is now.

Who knows maybe eventually shift the cap to every 365 days. That will really encourage ppl to power grind and play if they can grind and play for a years worth of SP in a few months and then soft cap for the rest of the year.

---

While i understand your point about free accounts needing to play to justify their free slots. Earning passive SP isn't the issue as it is earning 1s=1sp in match that creates the issue.

Personally i think the model is better served by taking the current passive and active gain earned during the week and put it together and make it full passive and cap the gain month to month with reset being the first wednesday of each month. This however will create longer cycles and shorter cycles given 28, 29, 30 and 31 day months so perhaps normalize reset to every 28th day.



so heres how the system would work.


24K(passive) x7 x 4 + (190,400 x 4)=1,433,600 SP for the month unboosted. 2,150,400 with a booster.


Now what you do is make the system fully passive such that the rate of gain is standardized so that the SP is gained every x number of seconds so that after 28 days you would hit either of those above 2 numbers without having to play.


Well what about active gain, Hanz suggested full passive and that was boo. Well im glad you asked.

Make active gain such that it doesnt add to this number but allows you to earn this cap faster month to month. Set the gain at lets say arbitrarily as 1WP=2-3SP. (No 1s=5WP nonsense) So while you are playing you are passively still earning the SP at the rate required to hit the monthly cap like it runs in the background now. And the active gain simply accelerates the total SP youve earned to date for the month.

As soon as you hit the monthly cap ALL SP GAINS SHUT DOWN INCLUDING PASSIVE. The only thing that can be earned post hardcap is soft cap of lets say 1 WP=1SP.


The booster should be a subscription of $15/mo that gives you boost 50% increase on cap and 50% increase on gain just like it does now. Why $15? Because for $19.99 i can buy a merc pack that gives me a 30day active and enough AUR to purchase 30 day passive, have 12K AUR leftover and all the merc pack goodies.

So you creat a tier subscription. $15 gets just the boosters and $20 gets you the booster 12K AUR and all the goodies every month(guess which option ppl will buy)



So to give you an example of how this works. Lets say im a free player then i earn 1,433,600 SP every month without logging on similar but not quite the same as how it is now(currently you earn 672,000 SP/mo without logging on and "playing") .

I play and earn 2000WP in a match. I just earned 6000SP(1WP=3SP, hypothetical number) which is added to my cumulative count for the month. Once i reach 1,433,600 SP. My passive gain stops and the only way to earn more SP for the month is to play at a soft cap of 1WP=1SP.

A booster increases this cap to 2,150,400 and naturally the passive gain increases by 50% to reach it at the end of the month if i never logon. But my active gain is also increased by 50% and so if my soft cap. Therefore now 1WP=4.5SP before reaching hard cap and 1WP=1.5SP at soft cap. Once i have reached the hard cap ALL PASSIVE GAIN STOPS and all im left with is soft cap.

I understand what you're proposing, and I read your second post, but that would still leave most of the SP gain for someone like me reliant on having more time than I actually do to play the game.

Like I said, I'm with you on pricing, not arguing the point that it's too high.

Only one char can have passive SP at a time though, right? Did they change that? If not I dont see how alts give an advantage.

I see, I dont envy CCP, their job seems like an impossible task at times.

Full Time-Student + No Job = Flat Broke. Why do you think I play as many Free-to-Play's as I do? I used to put money into F2Ps occasionally while I was working to go back to school, but I don't have the time or money for that now. I play Dust when I have free time, and the Passive SP allows me to bump along at an acceptable level with the frequency I play.

I've always wanted boosters to be a catch-up thing (whether that's hit cap faster, or unlock ability to reach some global cap, ie a perpetual cap that nobody can surpass that increases each day from last reset), rather than a get-ahead thing.

With boosters working as they are, CCP is monetizing necessary items (SP), instead of focusing on creating appealing optional items.

Reading through the thread now because lots of people posted since I first looked.

Edit: I'm totally in favor of things like boosters that turn your active SP into passive gain to eliminate the grind, though.

Perhaps thats the best middle situation. What i describe is a model where everyone goes on passive with active gain allowing you to grind out the passive cap faster so you can play for soft cap to augment and earn more over time. And a subscription plan that boosts the cap amount you can earn by 50% and the soft cap amount as well.


But perhaps its simpler to keep the current system. And create a booster that turns all SP active and passive for the x days(1,3,7 28) into passive gain.

And all you can earn is soft cap through active play so long as that booster is in effect. That would probably a lot simpler. Additionally you can purchase an active booster that increase the soft cap much like it does now or perhaps include that in the cost of that previous mentioned booster and make that a added feature of that booster.

And it still gives free accounts the current model.

Of course they need to get rid of the 1s=5SP mechanic to entice player to purchase that booster or they will simply AFK that portion for free anyway.

Here it is folks the only 3 plans you need.

F2P= Current model where you have active gain and passive gain on a weekly/daily basis respectively

$10(AUR equivalent perhaps costs more if there is one?) Booster augment turns all active SP gain to passive gain for 30 days. All active play is soft capped at 1WP=2-4 SP(it has to be worthwhile, 2-3 is probably best tho)


$15 Same as above plus some of the merc pack goodies on a rotation(so different stuff every month based on sale items in the market)


$20 Same as above plus x AUR(im thinking 15K)


Simple effective creates an incentive to log on and grind but also allows ppl who just want to set and forget to do the same.



Remember one thing tho if this is a booster purchased with AUR and not a subscription then eventually these items will be available for trade on the 2* player market for ISK.

I thought about it and though you may be right part of the beauty of Dust is you can walk away take a break and still have earned some SP.

Not everyone is going to want to pay to be able to take a break nor should they.

What i did was offer up a simpler suggestion in the form of a booster. The reason why i think it works as a booster is then its subject to trade on the secondary market. Now if someone doesnt want to pay with real money they can do so with play money.

But to earn play money you have to play and earn therefore you overcome the hurdle of them not providing content.

yeah i find this very hard to belive

I don't see anything wrong with the current system.

If you don't have a job or are busy being a student... too bad. Life isn't fair and CCP is not a charity.

dude that is lamest excuse i have ever heard of , stop trying to defend afkers

1. You are not buying anything as an investment. You are buying AUR, to use on whatever it can be used for right now. If it can be used for other things in the future then that is a bonus. Don't fork over money thinking CCP now owes you heaven and earth. They could decide that this whole "console" thing really was just a fad and then turn off the dust servers tomorrow. They would not owe anyone a refund.

2. All AUR lets you do is use things today that otherwise would have required you wait until tomorrow. Boosters help you get SP faster, AUR gear has lower skill requirements. Long term there is no benefit at all.

You can only utilise so many of your invested skill points at any one time. Having skills invested in AV grenades is not making your flux grenades work any better. If you have dumped 5 mill SP into tank skills but today your running around with a shotgun, you may as well be a first day player. Old accounts do not keep on progressing infinitely, newer players can easily catch up to old players in effectiveness at a certain role within a couple of months.

3. No matter how many accounts a bitter vet has been baking for however long, they can still only bring one of those characters to the battle. The other 15 slots(For PC) need to be filled by other players, old or new.

4. If you are unhappy about buying the SP boosters because you stop playing at less sp than the boosterless cap, then STOP DOING IT!!!! Don't blame CCP for your poor purchasing decisions.

Here are your options:

A - If you have loads of spare time then you can play this cool game for free as much as you want and you will get a fixed maximum of SP per week.

B - If you don't have much spare time because you, for example, have a job. You can use some of that nice money stuff that you earn at said job to buy boosters so that you can still reach at least the same amount of SP per week as the unemployed bum living in their parents basement.

C - You have spare time to play the game, but you happen to really enjoy it and want to get the most out of it. So you decide to PAY THE DEVELOPERS FOR MAKING THIS AWESOME ******* GAME! I know, it sounds crazy. CRAZY LIKE A FOX! In return for paying the developers for all their hard work, you get to use items today that otherwise would have required that you wait until tomorrow.

6 Months later, three different players join a match and happen to all be using the same equipment. Even though each of these three players choose a different approach to their gaming time, all three players do the same damage, have the same HP, reload their at the same speed, in fact, their capabilities are identical. The only difference is that one has a sweet logibro dropsuit fit that they are not using and the third one has a REALLY sweet logibro dropsuit fit that they are not using.

OMG!! IT'S JUST SO UNFAIR!!!

Then all three of them get totally owned by some dude who only ever uses militia gear, cos that's how he rolls.

So in conclusion, you have no idea what the hell you're talking about. If it's doesn't seam to you like paying for boosters is a worthwhile use for your money, THEN DON"T BUY THEM!!

Serious players SHOULD BE PAYING FOR THE GAME!!!!

If you don't think the game is worth spending a bit of money on, then you can't really be that serious can you?

Nowhere in my post did I imply anything about your personal booster habits. I was just responding to points in your post.

1. You are not buying the future of dust. Your paying for what is already there.
2. The only advantage of AUR is time.
3. After enough time that advantage disappears completely.


Though i must say your opening line:



Sure sounds like a judgement call on a value proposition to me.

Why do you absolutely have to use boosters 24/7? It won't kill you to not use them, you know.

SP is time.

So by your reasoning, there will only be two teams of 16 players competing in all of PC, they will have the 32 highest amounts of SP of anyone in the game. This will provide maximum utility and flexibility. It would be absolute lunacy to invite the guy with the 33rd highest number of skill points, because you will severely handicap your team. There is no reason for any other teams to compete, because they don't have the SP and therefore flexibility so they would just loose anyway.

I know that is taking your logic to the extreme, but that's my point. There is a middle ground. You don't need to have the best gear or the most skills points to win, you only need "enough". New players can can catch up to old players in a way that their contribution will be meaningful in a relatively short amount of time. Hell, I run around in all militia gear most of the time, it doesn't stop me from capping points, reviving teammates or taking on opponents who's gear cost 100 times more than mine and still coming out on top. CCP have done a really great job of providing a system that does not provide a pay to win advantage, while still offering a free to play game that motivates enough players to buy conveniences, thus paying for development to continue.

Game design is a fine balance, but then so is bartering any trade worth making. Make no doubt that CCP is thinking very hard about just how to balance in regard to both. So far they are doing an excellent job.

If you want to play your best game then you bring your best players, you take every advantage you can get. But the fact is not everyone has access to the best players. Even the ones you have access to won't be there all the time. That doesn't mean that you can't win, or even that you are at a disadvantage. Heavy dropsuits have many advantages over Scout dropsuits, more damage, more armour, more shields, yet scouts can still kill heavies.

A players own personal skill; critical thinking, communication, cooperation, reflexes, dexterity and experience all count for a lot more than how much SP their character has. When you take all that into account, a players with 10 million SP or 50 million sp, if they have each only put 4 million into their role as a recon scout, then they are both going to have equal potential. The flexibility gain is no more significant that a piece of straw on a tone of bricks.




...but what if it's the straw that broke the proverbial camels back? Well, thats the whole point of the game. If we could figure out who wins just buy adding up the skill points that are being taken advantage of by a teams deployment, we wouldn't need to have a tournament at all. Just do the math. How dull...with fewer explosions.

If you already have said player, then why would you want to swap them? Even for another player with equal SP?

The core of this argument is wrong.

Passive Booster = faster SP.

All it does is increase the rate at which passive SP accumulates. That's the definition of "faster". It doesn't hand you SP without any time spent to accumulate. You still have to wait a week for your week's worth of boosted SP.

Active Booster = easier SP.

You still have to enter matches. It doesn't give you SP based on games you already played. It doesn't just hand a pile of SP that ignores the cap. You still have to be playing (or AFKing, but that's another issue) to get the SP bonus from the Booster. But for the effort it would normally take to get 1000 SP, you're rewarded with 1500. More SP for same effort = easier. Again, fits the definition of the word quite nicely.

More SP = nope.

There is no option that says "pay X moneys, get Y SP" None. It doesn't exist. There is nothing that just directly gives you more SP. And there shouldn't be.

Both options - Passive and Active Boosters - let you build up a larger amount of SP than would be the case without them, but the time/effort still needs to be spent to make the most out of them.If you buy a 30 day Passive Booster, then look back on your account in a week, you won't have the full 30 days worth of bonus SP yet. If you buy a 7-day Active Booster, activate it then come back after a week without playing, you don't get a stack of SP for buying the Booster.

Boosters currently only raise the cap. They don't really save me time. I spent about 10 hours yesterday to hit that cap. If a booster was working like a booster it should have taken me 5 hours.

Sorry, I've stopped reading when you said "CoD" and made it sound like it was something you rather buy then the boosters.

Llan Heindell.

There is similar discussions on things inside the CPM we're just waiting on uprising to deploy before we can game play topic focus on those as the whole 'subscription' and aur thing is next on the queue list after most of uprising is dealt with the government thing still looming in discussion.

As he has explained in IRC, not using Boosters is not an option.

If you play without Boosters, you are falling behind.

What part of my statement was not what you said?

Personally, I'm in favor of the new SP system they've been talking about allowing Boosters to reduce the grind, as you called it.

But please don't start arguing for Boosters to be reduced in price just because some people want to keep buying them constantly.

CCP Nothin was working in Reykjavik. What makes you think he's gone?

They're fine to me- actually, I think Dust has by far the best microtransaction system I've seen in any game.

You're grinding less for the same effect as non-aurum users.

"Show of hands, who buys the SP boosters and then stops at less sp than the boosterless cap?"

If you do this, that is on you! Don't waste your money! That would be like going and buying a large Meat Lover Pizza, then throwing 3/4 of it away. No one is forcing you to buy boosters. If you aren't going to maximize your gain using them, why buy them in the first place?


"Right now AUR boosters just give you an edge over free players, they don't actually reduce the grind."

AUR is only supposed to give you a slight advantage, not make it pay to win. How does it not reduce the grind? A new player using boosters will gain SP much faster than a new player not using boosters. This will allow the boosted player to reach a point of having all core skills maxed faster than the non-boosted player, thus reducing the grind.

If one doesn't want to pay $28 a month for boosters, don't! It's as simple as that. I've been playing since mid March. I have only used one 7 day active and one 30 day passive booster.

Ultimately it is the player's choice whether or not to use boosters.

Your entire model is structured to where one would necessarily be forced to buy boosters in order to ever have hopes of being competitive.

The Froob
So do you would have to play every day for a week to get 100k SP? No

How do you figure up to 300k for 4 SP per WP? You are aware most new players only get about 500 WP in a match? This is way beyond the grind we have now. This would equate to 75 1000 WP matches per week. Thats just over 10 1000 WP matches per day for 7 days to get 300k in a week. how many new players do you seriously think can achieve this? The current method is simple and everyone has nearly the same opportunity for SP gain no matter how many WP they get in a match, much more noob friendly!

AFKing is a separate issue.

The Casual
This pushes pay to win in a big way, and goes even further to benefit vets who can earn 2 - 3 thousand WP in a match. You think they should get 30k SP from a booster while a new player might be able to earn 5k SP from the same booster? That is ludicrous!

The Instant
So instead of fixing the problem of AFKers, just let them buy their SP? Seriously?
??????

Removing passive SP gain is a terrible idea! This would only widen the rift between the casual players and the die hard no lifers.

There is nothing wrong with the current SP system. If it isn't broken, don't fix it!

If you would like to kill DUST 514 once and for all, this would be the way to do it.

herpaderp *troll face*

How is this my argument?

Your suggestion is altogether selling SP

Your F2P model says to the player "Hey look at all this SP you have to grind, I bet you wish there was an easier way", while more than doubling the grind from what we have now.

Your first booster suggestion offers the player an option to buy more than 2x the amount of earned SP. This sends the message of "This is a pretty sweet deal. It would make that ridiculous grind actually worth it

Your next "booster" is outright selling SP. This tells the player "Hey no need to actually play the game, just pony up the cash, and you can stay on the same level as your competitors."


Attempting to insult me because I disagree and make perfectly valid points as to why your idea is garbage is immature and only makes you look like an insecure little basement troll and a terrible one at that. You probably think cognitive dissonance has something to do with reading comprehension.

You failed thinking at the first hurdle, sir.