http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/topi … le/page/2/

This may be a good read based on what your asking. Page 2.

The DLC have put new light on the ICE, which is a form of subscription. Anyone with a calculator can tell that its value does not even compare to that of DLC. I am going to expand on the proposition of changes and my thoughts on em(it took me 4 hours writing that first post and ended up going to sleep much later than I was supposed to and so I feel it is not finished).

1. Change the EP boost into an instant one.
This is actually the laziest of propositions which will generate a P2W discussion among the community. It will allow new player to come into the game, put a certain ammount of cash on the table and be granted the requirements. It would solve the problem only in the short run. That person would not have anything more to work towards for and would notice others reaching same goal over time "for free". So most likely only core and most immediate needs would be bought this way. Veterans might not feel like using this option at all.

2. Increase the EP gain on boost.
A better option. This does not have the potential to backlash as the proposition no.1 as even those who paid up ahead would still have to wait for their EP. This would increase the demand on ICE and shorten the time wait and catching up to others. As much as it would help greatly it would not solve the waiting problem entirely - only ease it (which is good).

3. EP items
I think this one would make new players and veterans alike happy(not all of them - its never all of them...).
Imagine an item, consuming which gives you instant EP, requires you to use credits to activate and farming/grinding in the first place to obtain it.
Lets expand the idea now.

We can categorize players into basic 5 cattegories (feel free to add more):
a)Miners/harvesters
b)Production
c)Artifact hunters
d)PvE
e)PvP

A. There is this special kind of resource, a shiny one recycling which gives the same ammount regardles of extensions. So this might be something similar - every now and then a miner would get that special item.
B. Using up CT to 0p gets that item or a % chance of getting it.
C. This one is no brainer - but it could have more chance to drop in those artifacts that people generally only do to "clear".
D. Another easy one. Random chance to get it in the loot.
E. One word - SAP

Now for the mathematics and the actual ammounts example.
A typical player plays 4 hours a day.
A non boosted account recieves 1440 EP daily
1440 divided by 4 = 360
360 unlockable EP in items per hour
Now this calculation makes sense if those items are not tradeable in game.
If it is otherwise then majority of players not needing it will flood the market. But everyone would want a bite of the idea so it can be made much more scarse and therefore expensive/in demand.
This might create situation from point 1 when someone comes into game, buys alot of ICE, gets the items of the market and gets to a veteran level straight off - but veterans would get a bite of it (market sale income and more acces to ICE for ingame currency).

It is generally considered for something to be pay to win if you can get an advantage otherwise not obtainable thru in game means.
Better sparks = P2W (even if its something ridiculous as 1% its still considered as such)
EP = most definitely not P2W
NIC = most definitely not P2W

Whats the difference if you get killed by player with maxed out skills after years of gathering them and a player with maxed out skills becouse he paid cash for it?
At first instance you get enraged becouse he has the unfair (to you) spreadsheet advantage.
At second instance you get enraged becouse he has the unfair (to you) spreadsheet advantage.
But at both instances you can eventually achieve that level without paying a dime for it.

Well You still have the choice to either wait or grind to speed it up.
Larger bots in the future? I would rather expect a retextured ones with some kind of mk3 and unique abilities. And requiring more EP to push the completion goal that so many already achieved further away.
The second question tho is fairly simple, since You can accumulate EP you can have a stock ready for when it is needed for the new stuff - so still those who buy EP can't get advantage over You if prepared accordingly.

First, this doesn't belong in General Chat it belongs in Feature discussions and Requests where it can be more easily, and rightfully, ignored.

You readily admit that the current system kept you logging in for a year for "free" EP which is exactly what it was designed to do.

There is already a *** ton of ICE out there. I don't have any but I know that some people have hundreds. Increasing their efficacy is *** and does not benefit either the game nor AC in any way.

The account upgrades are borderline P2W (especially the sparks), but because they're limited to one time per account purchases it's not that bad and it gives newbies like Mroq the ability to not have to wait 3 months up front - it's exactly what it was designed and intended for - while also giving enough credits to fix mistakes or buy more premium EP time. It was the first thing I did when I came back to the game was purchased all the upgrades on all of my accounts, not all of which have years worth of stockpiled EP.

It's also a fallacy that this is the reason the player base is small is just the waiting. There needs to be a laser focus on PvE - especially SOLO - because it's carebears growing hair on their balls that usually brings people to Beta/Gamma. I personally like the low system requirements - however I do think at the very least AC could provide a high-res texture pack with a config toggle because a lot of people won't play games that aren't shiny - especially if they bought the game based on the trailer...

TL;DR - All of the OPs ideas are *** and ignore the root problems with population - namely lack of PvE *** to do (by actual lack of *** and mechanics that favor locking people out of things with the senseless removal of other existing things) and lack of advertising. AC can't rely solely on Steam and Facebook.

Your description of experience is that you want to progress in wealth power and not actually play the game. That is all has to be for progress. This is not neccesarily how sandbox games need to be played. Also your story would want some paragraph breaks for readability. In particular if there is a lower level bot available to boom stuff why the unavailability of the big bot makes you rather wait for the big than use the little on e in the mean while? It hink game design wise the important thing might be how long does the satisfaction of achieving a middle rank makes you actually use and enjoy the goodies achieved before you start to wait for the next goodie level.

One of the very potentially valuable ideas in your posts to me strikes to be having a cap on how much ep can be extracted from play-activity dependence in a day. This is the main factor that increases its admissibility.

I do not think that making the EP items tradeable would destroy them. I view it more that if it survives trading its proof of the rigiourness of the idea.

What people usually dislike about Grind To Win is that if they ever do not put the daily effort or don't feel like playing they will fall behind and mega-grinders can make quantumn leaps in blink of an eye. However if you put a time-limit cap on what grinding can win for you this addresses this complaint quite nicely. If you grind exactly at the cap (say 100 ep per day) you are guaranteed not to fall behind no matter what. If you grind in excess of that you are in effect buying vacation time. If you make 300 "grind points" per day for every day you play you can afford to take 2 vacation days without risking of falling behind. There is already this kind of structure in that loggin in for 1 day covers your to not log in for 2 days. This is like near the theorethical minimum amount of grind possible. But it maybe highlights the flip side of the design too. Logging in 1000 times in a day does not provide you with additional coverage. In order to qualify those logins must be be dispersed in big real time intervals.

Consider a system of 4 EP tiers instead of the 1 we have now:
tier 0 - log in within 3 days  - 1440 EP
tier 1 - consume tier 1 EP item in 3 days, found in alpha, manufactured from mainly cryoperine, 500 EP
tier 2 - consume tier 2 EP item in 2 days, found in beta, manufactured from mainly epriton, 200 EP
tier 3 - consume tier 3 EP item in 1 days, found in gamma, manufactured from mainly colixium, 100 EP

The difference between a pure waiter only doing tier 0 waiting and one that did all 4 ouf them would be 600 EP about +50% from the baseline. The effect of booster would be to allow the premature consumption of the item to go to queue instead of waste and an additional tier $ - 720 EP income (exactly 50% of tier 0).

In reflection to the fact that you can't put loggins "in store" for tomorrow all the EP items would only live for 1 day. If you wish to trade it its very time sensitive.

Another model would be that each category of activity would generate EP applicaple to that category of skill. So for example first 100 shots fired in a day would generate 1 EP to be used int he category Weapon usage. First 100 resource units processed in industrial process would generate 100 EP spendable in Industry etc. This is similar in FF "slay monsters to get EXP"  put it has a daily cap. Maybe it would be more proper to have small daily activity generate some base level but having bigger activity "beyond the cap" still generate more EP with diminishing returns with a finite limit?

In an effect its a compromise between making the gap between the "haves" and "have nots" smaller while still allowing action to make a difference to "have more". Grind to Win allows the gap to be arbitrarily big. Wait to Win allows the difference to be 0.

The game is a niche (MMO) of a niche (SPACE/SCIFI) of a niche (FULL LOOT PVP - the smallest). It will never ever have even half of EVE's population - but it doesn't need it to be fun and viable and, frankly, at this juncture, the game couldn't support even doubling the population with the Beta/Gamma 2 TP per NPC faction choke point map layout the way it is; the server/bandwidth load notwithstanding.

I think that's complete rubbish. The game supported 4 - 6 thousand players on three beta islands with no gamma and three alphas.

The problem is the game has got progressively more hardcore which narrowed its appeal. In addition there were no feature rich patches regularly and no advertising.

the game was always hardcore.
its just that the vertical progression system made it even more hardcore over time on this limited space that the game provides. starting with the implementation of transition-free travel between carebear-land and hardcore-land (no grey zone inbetween)
back in the days your describing, the whole server had to research stuff, T4 was hardly availiable (especially since you couldn't just research it).
these days, t4 is only matter of grinding the materials, and how many alts you can control at once... even for total new corps.

*edit: Offensive. - DEV Zoom

Its basically someone making honest feedback and someone from PofE insulting them and telling them everything is fine. Its pretty much the same as half the forum.

First post in this topic was my impression when I just returned to game. This one is 1 month later after taking rather active part in the world of Nia.

   We all saw the new player spike when the DLC got introduced. Some of them left becouse of the state the market is in. Some left becouse theres not enough PvE content for them. Some left becouse of impossibility to become competitive in PvP.

   For me its a closed circle:
   Most players who wants to PvP thrive on competitiveness of it. 300k EP you get when you start with both DLC is not even enough to max out a single light bot, single role with a single fit. So forget about getting any new hardcore PvPer in perpetuum becouse those dont like being underdogs with no options to change that (other than going AFK for a year or two). They leave.
   Becouse "oldtime" PvP players are supplying themselves new producer players have noone to sell their merchandise to. Some grind missions/kernels to get more options in hope to get customers when a wider variety of products is presented but fail to sell those too. They leave.
   PvE/miners grind for a bit but regardless of the fun involved in it ultimately their raw materials either dont see any buyers or only the underpriced offers that are pretty much scams feeding on newbros (missions pay much better for those even on alpha - and most of them dont even realise that). Those who do sell are presented with an empty market for their hard earned NIC. They leave.

   Lets do everyones favorite thing now - Eve comparison! When new players were unable to do competitive pvp looong time ago they introduced character transfers. Now its skill injectors/extractors which contributed to both new players income and old timers return to get the skills needed. PLEX prices dropped by 20-30% over 2 months! End of comparison.

   Sure, some can pretend everything is fine running around in 2mil+ EP combat pilots kill whoring the newbies. Unfortunately most of forum activity are those few players. Do pretend its the way it is supposed to be - playerbase clearly shows that right?

   After all that time I described in first post I thought I have the skills needed, it turned out false - much much more is required (one simply cant focus on 1 with such low playerbase a wider variety is needed), especially that difference between minimal and maximum skills is far greater than in other games of this type. So what are my options? Build up stuff? I got a few stacks of pretty much everything I need so no need. Wait for more EP? Damn straight! Therefore I will see you guys every 3 days or utill things change o7 (also during downtime ).