DevTracker

[Ronyn]

Keep in mind when we talk about "most commonly", there will always be those who fall outside of that.
Myself for example. I don't need progression systems to put a hundred+ hours into a PVE game as long as the combat is fun. I'm not typical in that regard.

To me that's not the way i see it. I was not an MMORPG player. The reason i didn't care about decay was because i didn't care. My stats were not important to me other than my cooldowns. The way i see it it was that the MMO players cared that they lost their gear. I didn't care because i fell more in the shooter camp.

Thing is, if making a shooter game, would you normally put a mechanics that required the player to spend a bunch of time not shooting, scrolling through menu's, crunching numbers, or having to change the nature of their loadout (read: playstyle) because of resource availability? usually that stuff is held back to the supplemental layer, where it acts as an appreciated pallet cleanser and aspect of depth. It is not usually up in the forefront where it creates a lot of mental energy devoted to it. That is because most of the time that will turn tons of shooter players off.

Edit:
Another thing for the avergae a shooter player, they may not be attached to their gear like the average mmo player. But that doesn't mean they want to spend a bunch of time tooling around with the crafter or market menu just to gear up.

 

[Ronyn]

I've read this on the forums so many times, "i don't want my gear to break but i want others to keep buying my crafted gear indefinitely."

That's not what I recall reading from people for the most part.

Most commonly, the people who didn't want their gear to break were not looking for other people to buy their gear indefinitely. While the people who wanted to keep selling their gear indefinitely, were more open to gear breaking. The true disconnect was in the type of player speaking at the time. The "average shooter game player" and the "combat focused mmorpg player "weren't really worried about the economy in and out, they just wanted to know that it wouldn't get in their way. The "sandbox game player" and the more "economically minded MMORPG player" were often interested in the churn of the economy, so they were ok with having to think about it and make decisions regarding it as they played.

One of the big reasons for the schism in firefall's community was that you had people who came to the game expecting very different types of experience. For a time red 5 had the idea that they could please both of those extremes. Is it possible? Maybe. But to my knowledge no game has ever achieved it to date.

If you got a better idea, please share it with the group. No sarcasm, no disrespect intended but it's a delicate and tricky issue. We're all open to suggestions and there are no stupid solutions only unrealistic ones.

The better idea, if there is such a thing, is to start by accepting that one game will not please all preferences.
To not expect the "super crafters" and the "pure shooters" to somehow love the same game.
So then you decide which side of the coin is the "focus", and which side is the "supplement".
There is always some overlap between player bases, but a dev has to choose a main audience.

 

[Ronyn]

First of all, there is no optional power boosts, that significantly increase damage output. Example:
There is big boss for 20 players. If all of them use +50% damage boost, boss is very easy to kill. Game creators must decide what to do - if they increase boss hp, it will be too hard for normal players, if not, it will be too easy for power players. In 99% of cases, they are increasing hp, so players are forced to buy boosts.
I think that a very good idea is to sell cheap and small consumable boosts (run speed, vehicle speed, jump height, +3-5% hp, etc.) with auto-buy option (for non-poor players). This would be great additional sink.

Yes, this is more or less accurate. If the wrong type of power boots were included into the game, they would cease to be optional.

There are some "power creep" solutions in this thread, but all of them have the same rule - resources for power. Does it matter if it is called: consumables, gems, battery, micromodules, tinkering, decay, etc.? What is the difference between:

• consumable: +50% shotgun damage for 12h CT(Combat Time),
• tinkering shotgun from T1 to T2: +50% shotgun damage with X durability (= 12h CT),
• battery +50% shotgun damage with limited power Y (= 12h CT),
• crafting shotgun with better barrel (+50%damage) with Z durability (= 12h CT)?

Only name and psychological effect. So the most important thing is balance between resources in and out. With good crafting, garage and market systems replacing whole shotgun would be as simple as replacing one module/gem/battery.

In the most general sense of them all being a trade of resource for power, those options can indeed lead to the same general end. Balancing resource in and out is certainly key. Still that is an oversimplification of the differences between some of these options. More importantly however, it that it is imperative to understand that the psychological effect is no small thing. The psychological effect of every system in a game must be carefully considered.To put it in simple words, how a game feels to the player is the ultimate goal, the driving purpose, and the end result of every-other-thing you do to make it.

I don't understand why so many people say, that they had problems with resources i Firefall v0.6-0.7. I had never had a problem with resources (only for short time with AMPs). Doing ARES missions and events gave more than enough resources for unlocks and crafting. Below compilation of printscreens from 2013.

There should be no remaining lack of understanding as I have already explained the issue what caused many folks a problem, and later I also mentioned the designers intent behind why that system was created as it was. (to push/force players to change their loadout based on resource availability. which, btw, is very much the opposite of the quick-buy system you suggest.)
So yes, in 6 to 9 it was easy to get a bunch of resources, getting the right resources to make the stuff you actually wanted was quite another matter because of how everything interacted. To show screenshots of resources as rewards and suggest that proves some sort of point is an oversimplification and a disservice to true nature of the issue.

 

[Ronyn]

DAMN SURE RONYN IS NOTING ALL THE PROS AND CON WE GOT SO FAR.

Of that, you can be certain.

 

[Ronyn]

Things break= treadmill. Things don't break, powercreep. It's not rocket science.

I do not even buy in to your above premise. I have already addressed this assertion. I will not again.

I can see how, if you ignore that I am speaking from my stance of what-creates-what, and view my words through your stance on what-creates-what, you heard the stuff about" The original argument was that a damper on power-creep and a functional economy was not "possible", better yet, unlickely. The original argument was that you all supported horizontal progression yet all you cared about was MOAR POWA. "
However, that was not my message. That was not my original argument. As, again, I do not buy into the premise you set. Clearly my attempt to teach has fallen short. I will leave it be then. There is nothing else for me to say.

BTW, I still see deleted posts. heh