676 Reply by Crepitus

(38 replies, posted in General discussion)

Dark Omega wrote:

If people can't tolerate taking 10-20 minutes to travel somewhere then I think the A.D.D. meds need to be increased. You could travel from most current places to most other points in that much time. What your driving and how your fit obviously plays a big part in travel time. If you don't like your heavy plated mech's speed, fit light and carry  mods in your cargo.

.. it takes me 40 minutes to get to work.  real life travel times suck and have no place in a game ;P

Go to forum: General discussion

677 Reply by Crepitus

(24 replies, posted in Balancing)

Uncle Mo wrote:

I agree a change needs to be made.  Leave the Transport missions alone IMO and make all the other missions worth while and more interesting.  We need more content as it it.


+1

I'm afraid a transport nerf won't come with a.) any better alternatives b.) any EP refund for the thousands it takes to make it worthwhile.

Go to forum: Balancing

678 Reply by Crepitus

(21 replies, posted in General discussion)

Arga wrote:

I'd ask what people are planning to do with the new Islands, but it would be rather silly for Corps to broadcast those intentions smile

For me, there are a couple of ideas;

Depending on how the beta Islands settle out, I could hang up my solo hat and join some new beta corp/alliance to help tame those new wilds!

Or, settle into a new remote alpha outpost.

Player contracts for transporting materials around would be great here, since I suspect there will be a lot of moving around, if for nothing more than a change of scenery, a lithus could be busy for days smile I know I have 1000's of U of materials, I can only imagine the scale of moving a large corp!!! So exciting

I'll be waiting for the F-NAVY/xxSixx transport drivers who're strutting around in This wink

Go to forum: General discussion

679 Reply by Crepitus

(21 replies, posted in General discussion)

There was a Dev in general chat nearly 2 weeks ago who said today was the day they were aiming for for the islands patch release.  I'm guessing with the blog not even getting an update they're behind where they thought they'd be (not a big deal to me; just an observation).

Go to forum: General discussion

680 Reply by Crepitus

(11 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Arga wrote:

Put a different way, would you pay $500 usd for a LTM, more than it would generally cost if you just subscribed?

If no, would you if there was some unique thing that came with it, if not an ingame item, your name on a LTM board on the website, or something in that vien.

Even having each of the DEVs personally service me wouldn't be worth that much smile

I think the original $150 is fair.  Some of the people talking about doom saying are wrong; the lifetime subs are typically offered for special occasions, like release. 

So are the ones saying it's only one game that's done it, I can think of 3 off the top of my head (DCUO, LOTRO, STO) and I'm sure there are others.  ALL of whom have a larger active player base, I might add, than Perpetuum does.

Go to forum: Feature discussion and requests

681 Reply by Crepitus

(8 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

I've cracked a can once, someone harvesting near where I was mining.  It was a BLOOD can and I've been working with a corp aligned with Domhalarn so I didn't steal any of his triandlus though.

I usually try a can a few times as I'm running by usually but I don't go out of my way for them.

10 tries = pvp flag seems like a good idea, certainly would add some alpha spice; albeit rare.

Go to forum: Feature discussion and requests

682 Reply by Crepitus

(35 replies, posted in General discussion)

Bawdrick wrote:

A killboard only works when the system is automatic.
Any non-official kill-board will always be worth less than the time it took to make.

I think the F-NAVY one looks awesome but I agree, unless they open up the data or implement their own the numbers will never be accurate.

Go to forum: General discussion

683 Reply by Crepitus

(11 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Legedric Warstrike wrote:

I only know one MMOG that offered a lifetime sub and I think we all know where this game went...

And I don't see how a LTM will get more players to the game... So if I have fun playing this game, I will invite my friends playing it and spread the word of mouth and there is no influence on this whether i pay per [insert timeframe] or paid for a LTM...

The argument having a "core player base" is also worng. I paid for a LTM for LOTRO at the time it was released. As I got bored after 2-3 months I quit playing it and had in mind "Damn, I wasted so much money after being addicted by the beta and now this game is just boring... I will never pay for a LTM again". So at least for me, the "Hey I paid so much for it so I will stay here until I got my LTM out" just did not work...

In addition I don't see a large cash benefit of it. How many active accounts does Perpetuum have at the moment? Regarding the user online graph there may be 600-1000 paid accounts at the moment. Considering that perhaps 1-5% of those currently active accounts would pay for a LTM at the current state of the game (or in 2-3 months ahead), this would be 1.200$ to 6.000$ (taking 800 active accounts as it's the middle of my numbers).
So I don't believe that there would be a big cash flow increase just because of offering LTM...


They have the real #'s so are better judges of how much they could make.  I think pretty much all the early access people would pay and probably some others so I personally think your numbers are low; but I don't have any more access to the real data than you do.

As for LOTRO just because you didn't/don't play your life time sub doesn't mean the game isn't *still* full of people who do (and who paid for expansions/cash store on top of it).

Go to forum: Feature discussion and requests

684 Topic by Crepitus

(11 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

I think they should be $150 or less (and that's being generous, consider that much larger games like LOTRO have done this; at that rate it'd be more than 2 years worth of sub fee and assuming the game is around that long is definitely a risk).

Benefits:

  • You get an instant, large influx of cash to further the game in a variety of possible ways from hiring contracted temporary devs to fix/implement certain things faster, to more advertising, to purchasing replicated/linked servers in countries closer to most of your user base or increasing network bandwidth or even trying to market yourself to a publisher.

  • You get a small dedicated core of players who will keep the game alive; it's no secret the game is low pop and dwindling as it is. Having essentially pre-paid for a very long time gives people an incentive to check back when they get tired and leave for something else.

  • The built-in player base gives you more time and more flexibility in experimenting with controversial changes.  People who have lifetime subs are far more forgiving and willing to give you a second chance than someone who is paying month to month gets nerfed in to the ground rage-quits and never looks back.

  • People who stick around longer are more likely to bring in new players from word of mouth, especially if they see positive changes occurring regularly (the longer they're around the more likely they are to do this; assuming they view most changes as positive).

  • Long term, this still leaves you the ability to sell expansions.

Detriments:

  • If the game is around more than 2 years your lifetime members aren't paying for server maintenance.  However if the game is around that long it will mean that it's been steadily increasing in subs over all and certainly the influx of people would more than offset the lost maintenance money with their profits and then some.

Go to forum: Feature discussion and requests

685 Reply by Crepitus

(114 replies, posted in General discussion)

personally, and i know there is no chance of it happening, i'd love to see a forum (even a restricted one) where we could see the dev's arguing with eachother about balance and what their focus should be etc.  i suspect these discussions are probably informal at a bar after hours though ;/

Go to forum: General discussion

686 Reply by Crepitus

(44 replies, posted in General discussion)

Arga wrote:
Legedric Warstrike wrote:

Why would the devs have to chase the 1000 trial accounts for that? Just ban/delete the accounts that earn profit with this method... So they wont't have to chase 1000 but perhaps 10 accounts.

Looking at the transactions logs to determine if the account is earning NIC 24 hours a day is exactly what I mean by 'chasing' the account down.

Its incredibly easy to macro the creation of a new email account and a new trial account. These people are already out there doing this to other games, its really no trouble for them to do this with Perpetuum, if they can get enough scale to make it worth it. There are already sites out there selling NIC, i'm not going to link them, just google it.

For every account they track down, another 10 will be created.

But worse than that, what if they accidentally ban a REAL player, that alone will do more to hurt this game then any restrictions ever would.

The other thing with trial accounts, is anyone can create one or two, and then post on the forums from multiple avatars to make a subject look like a bigger issue than it is. I may actually be SparksMcKool, you would never know...

The thing is, the log culling and other things could be partially automated, to say, flag an account after a certain threshold is reached so that a GM could investigate it and not have DEV involved unless there's a question of a ban.

I know they're unbelievably paranoid about gold farmers but I think they'd basically eliminate this problem if they went the way of Eve, allowed people to sell time codes linked to real in game items, and just went after the macros/bots/automated BS. 

Besides currently no gold farmer with any intelligence is going to target a game for farming with less than 200 people in game at any one time and with the actual market for farmed nic being practically none since anyone who wanted more just bought extra accounts to farm with themselves.

Go to forum: General discussion

687 Reply by Crepitus

(44 replies, posted in General discussion)

SparksMcKool wrote:

If game Developers feel they need to so heavily restrict game content at such an early stage, basicly from the outset in a trial, and the content that is being restricted are major game elements, then it would lead me in my opinion to believe that the game itself lacks any real depth of content. I would expect that a game like this to have more content than say old DOS games like Elite.

Sure I understand that developers need to put money in their pockets but a game needs to showcase what you can do, what it offers, give you a taste of the forbidden fruit so you want more not to uninstall.

I want to say to friends catch you online later we're gonna harvest a ton of ore and need haulers and some muscle to cover us. I don't want to say to my friends tried the trial of Perpetuum what a bummer, come over and we'll drink beer and play Mechwarrior on the big screen. :Dlol


What really sucks for you, is that prior to the open trial and the facebook promotions the trial accounts were totally unrestricted because the codes were either directly requested from devs on the forums or came from already registered players who get a trial code with a registered account.

If you had gotten one of those codes you'd have been unrestricted from day 1.

I personally just bought an account outright ($24/3 mos) because there was no box price, i like supporting indie devs, and the monthly fees are lower than most and never was in a trial, but I used the code I got to register a 2nd account, and then the code from that one to register a 3rd, and was never restricted at all.

Go to forum: General discussion

688 Reply by Crepitus

(44 replies, posted in General discussion)

Arga wrote:

Time is money, and a 30 day code is less than $10, I wouldn't suggest slogging around for 13 more days just to use them up when you can just start playing. And I'm 99% sure that you don't lose those free days, they just get tacked on; for example if you apply a 30 day code, you're game time would be good for 43 more days, but without restriction.

As Arga stated, you don't lose the time if you register, you get it added to your account, so you'd have 43 days.

I think the OP should understand though, that even with the insanely restrictive trial limitations lifted, you're still an infant in a playpen who can't get out for quite a while. 

Even after more than 2 months in game my main is still significantly gimped by lack of EP.

Go to forum: General discussion

689 Reply by Crepitus

(114 replies, posted in General discussion)

Arga wrote:

*SNIP*

More important is if tax NIC sinks are implemented, it has to be a set of taxes. I'm not as sneaky as Styx is, but it only takes 1 work-around to avoid a single tax, where a suite of taxes (which have a lower base than a single tax) can cover it. Or a tax on a choke point like selling in the market.

If you tax stores in large volumes, generally corps will convert to NIC and operate more on a JIT production method. This will generate an initial rush of goods through the market, but it will dry up quickly. The net result is that more NIC will be removed from the economy by tax and NIC hording instead of having it flow through the economy.

If you only tax savings, then the opposite will occur.

Taxes are the stick, I would like to see a carrot instead. More NIC flowing through the economy is better all around, it feels more productive and encourages more market activity. I don't know what the % of the overall NIC volume is 'stalled' in wallets and the market, but I'm sure the devs know.

Maybe someone with an economics degree could let us know what a healthy amount of NIC traffic vs GNP is.

*SNIP*

I don't think the volume based thing will work at all.  Rather than having no stores so they're forced to the market, big corps will just break up in to smaller ones to avoid the tax and keep their stuff (assuming it would be significant enough for them to care to start with).

As for having an economist, obviously the game is too small to actually pay someone.  However, they might be able to corral some grad students or something who would be interested in analyzing the data for free for say a thesis or something.

I know that WoW, for example, has had a number of academic papers based on the economy and other things in the game to the point where they now charge for access to that data. 

It might be a boon to some researchers to be able to have access to the financial stuff just for their own research and in return could provide helpful suggestions for improving it and I don't think it would hurt to ask at all.

Go to forum: General discussion

690 Reply by Crepitus

(12 replies, posted in Open discussion)

I got Global Agenda in a STEAM sale for $7.50 and was playing it before I started Perpetuum (No sub required any more).

There is no PVE in it outside the single starter zone unless you count gear grinding (which is all for PVP).  All there is to do at a certain point is queue for Tribes/TF2 style FPS-PVP.  It's really not an MMO at all and gets pretty tired after a short time.

Their RISK style corporate map control stuff is kind of a joke since it's constantly reset and often times no one shows up to fight (heh that part is strangely familiar).

They recently went F2P which means I will never go back personally.

Go to forum: Open discussion

691 Reply by Crepitus

(33 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Campana wrote:

No need - you can't log off if you are targeted (however, I'm presuming this works even if you have instant logged instead of being in the middle of safe logging, which I haven't tried).

This is correct on both counts.

Go to forum: Feature discussion and requests

692 Reply by Crepitus

(43 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

Arga wrote:

*SNIP*


Play the game, get EP.


*SNIP*


Unfortunately, it's not.  It's *pay* for the game, wait, and get the EP. 

Playing nets you very little by comparison (even less after several patches).  My interest in game wanes more by the day and my g/f has been actively encouraging me to play something else.

There are a lot more active accounts than there are people playing them; it's why there is a brief population spike with every patch.

EDIT: As for your preview step mention, it does beg the question, why isn't there an official, up to date planning tool?  Why can't I test builds on the website or in game even like you can in every other MMO?

I do support the respecs but I think they should have like a 90 day timer on them.  Not having one discourages people from playing the game who make mistakes or change minds about what they want to do (example: Say I mine for a while and decide I don't want to do that cause it's boring, I want to play combat but my only option is to start from scratch either with a new account or an alt? Meh. I guess I just won't renew my sub).

Go to forum: Feature discussion and requests

693 Topic by Crepitus

(0 replies, posted in Resolved bugs and features)

The relation screen doesn't show any progress until the whole agent profile is closed (switching focus inside the agent profile does nothing) and re-opened.

I'm assuming it's supposed to refresh on assignment completion.

Go to forum: Resolved bugs and features

694 Reply by Crepitus

(114 replies, posted in General discussion)

Gordon Gekko wrote:

Its not that easy Arga. Almost Everyone is bored and about to leave.
Many did it already and more are about to..

Atm the grind(mine/farm) : fun ratio is 4:1. You spend 4 hours doing boring things for one hour of fun. Devs have to do the rights things to get this game out of the woods.
Waiting five months doesnt fix anything.


Absolutely true.  This combat guy who was my first account and has been in game since February has 6 days played .. My first Indy guy who joined at couple weeks later at like the beginning of March has 16 days played, not sure about the 2nd one but I'm sure it's more than combat.

This has solely been to make money/grind for production ore.  The ratio of grind to pvp is *bad* and very discouraging even with 2 accounts dedicated to supporting the first.

Go to forum: General discussion

695 Reply by Crepitus

(42 replies, posted in Events)

MoBIoS wrote:

*SNIP*

For new players, its just a matter of being canonfodder, correct me if I am wrong.

The main objective should be the fun, however, as a new player wanting to participate in the tournament, there is no chance of winning at all, trying to compete against someone who has an old account, with i.e already basic robotics at lvl  9-10, weapon skills, Mechanics etc.... Its more of a situation if one can alpha hit his opponent or not. It´s not even a matter of, well its fun and you can try your fittings against others.

*SNIP*
MoBIoS

This is correct. 

It's still fun to go if you can afford the loss, but arena fights won't teach newbies much about real pvp anyway since all the fittings and strategies are different from actually going to beta.  It is very dishonest to call it a New/Low EP Starting player tournament, the way it stands though, and makes it look like an Eve style scam when viewed from that angle.

I suspect it's a catch 22 as newbies don't want to sign up knowing they will get 2 shotted, so they don't have other newbies to fight as a result.

I know MORTE was offering to pay for bots and entry fee for people who wanted to go yesterday, I'm not sure if anyone went.  Perhaps having parent corps sponsor newbies so they don't really lose anything is the way to go.

Go to forum: Events

696 Topic by Crepitus

(5 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

I should be able to pick how many U I want of something instead of having to guess at amounts by # (especially since they're all different) roll

Go to forum: Feature discussion and requests

697 Reply by Crepitus

(8 replies, posted in Balancing)

Also, in case anyone is interested, I just finished doing a head to head test of different transport missions on ICS Alpha.

My 2 mining/indy/transport guys run transport together in squad.  These stats are the money earned on 1 guy by having both guys run the same missions and doing all of them as squad assignments.

Both accounts are using diplomacy 5, basic parallel assignments 4, headhunter 3, logistics 1, navigation 9 (with t4 lightweight frames) and my corp has a 10% tax rate (which comes off the top, as most of you already know).

This is from doing the tier 1 assignment circuit (ics alpha -> asintec alpha -> truhold-markson alpha -> ics alpha) in sequers:

199550.25
32967
56943

---------------
289460.25 (1 run 2 guys, 10% taxes, per guy) about 12 minutes

This is from doing the tier 2/3 assignments (ics alpha -> galoly op -> berwelam op -> radholme op -> ics alpha):

114385.52
87412.52
41458.50
16233.75
--------------
259490.29 (1 run 2 guys, 10% taxes, per guy) about 30 minutes t2/t3 transport mixed

Relations are 17% on one guy, 14% on the other, so having more in basic parallel assignments, higher rep (for more mission access) and higher headhunter/logistics etc would make more money.

But it is clear that t1 pays far better than t2/3 does (more money in less than half the time).

None of these figures take the ammo rewards in to account.

Obviously, transport missions are boring and time consuming, in my opinion they should pay as well or even better than they do just for this reason. 

Like other people I'd like to see player contracts for transport (this could easily be done by using the generic data console model so that people don't have their gear stolen/griefed).

Go to forum: Balancing

698 Reply by Crepitus

(8 replies, posted in Balancing)

Veliera wrote:

Well, the way I see it is like this.  Seek and Destroy Assignments 'auto complete' when you kill the last npc unit.  It would be nice if every assignment 'auto completed' upon docking in the station with the required items. 

The ability to select 'auto complete' or 'manual complete' could be in the 'game play' section of the options. 

It would also be nice if the 'system messages' were removed or able to be turned off.  They stay active even if you undock from the station ... annoying!

Perhaps highlight the assignments that are able to be completed at the current station. 

Please do something to fix the locking up when returning and acquiring the assignments with the main assignment window open. 

One more thing, please be aware that many people have specc'd just to do transport assignments, and when you change them, you might make those of us that had quite unhappy if they feel 'nerfed' and we do not get any and all EP's back that we placed into the Extensions required to effectively do them.  Which does include Industrial Robotics for the Squeaker. 

Thats about it for now.  Yay!  lol

-Veliera

As someone who is currently soloing the game on alpha, if they nerf transport, which is the only viable revenue stream, I'll probably just drop game. 

I have about 49 days left on my primary account (out of 105) and I find myself logging in less and less due to the titanic grind to do *anything*, I'm already debating whether I'll just buy darkspore with my re-sub money and disappear since it appears to have much more accessible and dynamic pvp out of the box (and this *is* a pvp game, it's why most of us are here, not to play virtual trucker).

This is after I considered getting year subs for 3 accounts.  I like a lot of the stuff that the dev's are doing, but for every 3 or 4 great changes they make (for everyone) they make 1 really terrible one that hurts non-'endgame' corp players and the big stuff is *slow* in coming. 

This kind of thing coupled with horrendous lag/spikes/disconnects due to having made a very poor (in my opinion) choice for server location makes it hard to sustain subs for people not in the immediate vicinity of Budapest and/or Europe (although the forums have plenty of complaints about server issues from them as well).

I'm glad to see that they're finally doing a little advertising but if they can't keep players it does little good to have a revolving door.

Go to forum: Balancing

699 Reply by Crepitus

(19 replies, posted in Feature discussion and requests)

I think it would be nice to be able to combine lower level decoders to be able to get higher level ones rather than having them be completely worthless.  I'm not even that far in to manufacturing and I don't use anything less than a 5 and I'd guess the higher level ones see a lot more use.

Being able to, say, combine 5 lvl 1 decoders to get a lvl 2 and 5 2's to get a 3 or whatever would be very nice, and give newbies a small extra revenue stream while giving a minor boost to production for everyone.

Go to forum: Feature discussion and requests

700 Reply by Crepitus

(31 replies, posted in Resolved bugs and features)

Snijder wrote:

On wed. 13 april 2011 at 18:30 (or so), i was playing with my kain when suddenly the connection goes bad (NA). although I still got the chat and even normal internet. Of course my bot got killed and i immediatly appealed to the GM that was online at that moment. However he couldn't help me because the logs he was checking didn't stated that the lag was the fault of the server.
Not sure who's fault it was because I got still the chat end internet connection, but the GM was just following rules. however I still got no Kain anymore and that frustated me alot, I asked the gm where to complain and "tadaa" here i'm.
My question or remark is, why does it matter what kind of lag it is, its ruin my play/fun, because i lost a lot of day's collecting money and stuff.


I don't think they see 'lag', just disconnects.  I've lost millions because of getting disconnected on Beta and then getting rolled while I'm still logging in; they won't do anything about that if you die to a player regardless.

This is common in intrusions especially because there are so many people around and as soon as someone doesn't move when the bot-tide rolls in and out they're focus fired since people know they're d/c'd and it's an easy kill.

Go to forum: Resolved bugs and features