Topic: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

Slightly reduce prices of ammo to make it more affordable for new trial players. I disagree with increasing ammo drops, as Indy players play a crucial role in supplying the demand

2 (edited by Alfredson 2011-08-15 13:32:32)

Re: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

Un-necro'ing this due to on-going complaints from trial users, and no response to original post.

Re: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

REMOVE TRIAL MARKET RESTRICTIONS.
ADD NEW RESET SYSTEM.
BALANCE TRIAL ACCOUNTS.

MONITOR LARGE NIC TRANSFERS.

Re: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

The new CT change makes it easier and more affordable for producers to make ammo below syndicate pricing. This doesn't really solve the trial account issue though, as they can't buy it.

Reducing the cost is the wrong solution for various reasons involving getting things cheap then transfering them to a registered account to be sold at profit.

Maybe create faction ammo that can only be used by trial accounts
Or a simple daily (1 time per 24 hour) mission that provides a fixed amount of ammo for trial players

Monitor large and frequent small NIC transfers too? Maybe better to restrict market purchase/sell to X/NIC per 24 hours.

Unlimited free trials are just bad. Go back to referral trials, seed 1000's of them out to game sites. Allow 50 a day from the website, then refer them to game sites if that's reached. None of those sound really great either, but currently it can't be that many trial accounts from real new customers. Once the game gets larger, then put just allow 15 free days of play with very few limitations.

Re: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

Adding a cheap syndicate ammo, similar to how there's syndicate mods, would be a somewhat decent solution. The stats wouldn't be as high, but at least they'd have something to shoot with.

Take the long way around back to square one
Today we're just outlaws out on the run

Re: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

Yeah, that sounds ok too.... Although if it's so bad that no one else would want to use it, then it's just going to make the trial experience harder i.e. less enjoyable.

Although I'm somewhat confused about what the acutal issue here may be. If trial accounts are running missions, they are getting 2 direct income sources, Reward/Plasma and faction ammo.

I'm less inclined to think that trial accounts should be able to make NIC as opposed to being able to continue playing. that is if the 'issue' is that players aren't making much NIC over and above ammo cost, that's probably balanced correctly.

It was pointed out before, that 15 days is way more time than a player really needs to get a feel for the game. 2 or 3 days of play time covers all the basics, and after that your looking to 'improve' your play, not learn what its about.

The trouble here is the EP system doesn't allow you to say, let them play 20 hours, since they are gaining EP the whole time. Limiting it some way just makes it too complicated and sets the wrong expectations about EP.

Trial is a Trial, if it was free and open for 15 days, it would be 15 days of a free to play game, which just won't work with unlimited trials.

Yeah, there's no easy fix here, that doesn't potentially upset the delicate balance of a game with 200-500 concurrent players.

Re: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

More syndicate variants in general is probably a good idea to help the newest players along.

The ammo issue is best solved with a combo of helping indies reduce prices and dropping trial restrictions. Having to stop after 14 days is a big enough limitation.

Getting a certain amount of your choice of basic ammo when you take an assignment might work, too. But lvl 0-1 missions only, I'd think.

Re: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

Arga wrote:

Although I'm somewhat confused about what the acutal issue here may be. If trial accounts are running missions, they are getting 2 direct income sources, Reward/Plasma and faction ammo.

Could be they're coming from games that either have unlimited ammo, sufficient free ammo, or melee weapons. Just having to pay for ammo at all might be their complaint. Best to tell them it just works differently here: factor ammo cost into the worth of an activity and whether alpha or ROF is the better place for your EP.

Re: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

True. Wow removed ammo because it just got in the way, but Wow isn't a player driven economy of course, but I can see if you came from games like that (or FPS where you just pick it up free off the ground) you would be wondering why you have to waste NIC on ammo when you want to buy new weapons and bots with it.

Re: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

I never had any issues buying ammo when i was playing on a trial account, if your following just the directions in the tutorial alone and using the drops you get from the missions you should have about 140k and plenty of ammo.

then that's where you have issues because you need to change islands and start doing missions for another corporation so you can at least be put up against things that you can kill with relative ease.

Re: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

perhaps they should just change the npcs around terminals from "dps/tank" build to "scout"

even the zero-star (or equivalent) are "havocs" = armor plated.

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Re: Revisit syndicate buy/sell orders

It would make it more fun, but I think the tank/slow bots are more easily handled by slower new players. They would have to somehow nerf the speed of the scouts, you'd have to assume that new players didn't have nav or lwf's, and slow lock times; meaning those scouts would lock and outrun agents. I think that would make them feel 'harder' even though it took less ammo to kill them. And your more likely to have 2 or 3 of them on you, which low DPS new players couldn't kill fast enough. Maybe just make the mission npc's scouts, mixed in with slow havocs, so they can kill them with less ammo and get away from the tanky bots.