I have optimizwed engineering trained to lev 8. The unmodified cpu use for a T4 sensor amp is 19 and the unmodified cpu use for a T4 signal detector is 100.  When I equip them they do not reduce to the modified amount. They remain 19 & 100 respectively.  Both are listed under engineering modules in the information link of the extension and should therefore get the extension bonus but don't.

I’ve dropped back in periodically over the past year to see how PO was doing (Thank you AC for listening to my suggestion a year ago and implementing ICEs), and while the research changes sound promising, too many other things look to remain the same in the future.

Steam is Perpetuum’s best (and maybe last) real chance to finally get some traction and grow instead of shrink.  The problem has never been attracting new players; the trouble has always been keeping them and at that PO has failed miserably.  I have the highest respect for what AC has accomplished technically.  It awes me that a group of 8 guys, with no backing to speak of, can accomplish as much as they have.  But, while they are clearly very good at making a game, they also clearly don’t understand what makes a game very good.  There are lots of little things they did wrong, which in and of themselves wouldn’t have driven people away.  But there are a few big things they got seriously wrong and these need to be fixed ASAP if AC expects to keep the people that Steam brings in (and avoid a repeat of the influx-followed-by-exodus from EVE 2 years ago).  Not all of them will be easy to fix, but most, if not all, need to be if PO is to succeed.

What makes me worth listening to, as opposed to the dozens of other voices each making different suggestions, most at odds with each other?  I’ve been playing mmorpg’s for 15 years and I’ve been studying/analyzing them for equally long – I can’t help it, I study/analyze all kinds of odd things besides my specialization because I’m an academic. It’s what I do with my life. I study things and try to understand them.

So here are my constructive criticisms:

1) Never, ever, ever, EVER prevent a player from advancing their character and PO does just that.

An MMORPG is about the journey, not the destination.  Character development is everything.  Once character development can no longer be achieved, the player leaves because the game is over.  In a skill based sandbox with no cap (level or otherwise), the journey may slow down but it theoretically never ends.  Even in games with level caps, raiding for ever better gear keeps advancement going past the cap.

On this score AC screwed up the mission system (and its real reward – faction standing), by forcing players to go into pvp zones in order to advance.  The rewards for greater risk should be easier, faster, or better rewards, but never anything that can’t be gotten by a risk-averse player some other way (as from the market, by paying someone who took the risk to get it).  By structuring missions so that there is a standing cap by mission level players who choose not to pvp (e.g., someone who prefers to manufacture) hit a lower hard cap to standing that compounds their disadvantage from using lower efficiency facilities.  They usually don’t even wait to hit the cap.  They tend to leave because they’re discouraged as soon as they understand it’s there.  Yes, the actual effect of the standing difference is minor, but that misses the point (it’s a psychological issue).  Perp prevents them from advancing.  EVE got this right. Perp got it wrong.  In EVE one can grind out max standing doing lower level missions. In Perp one can’t.  There is no good reason why someone who is foolish enough to try shouldn’t be able to grind out max standing in Perp doing even level 1 missions for some miniscule fraction of a point of standing for each mission.  If they want to take 3 years to get there, who cares. AC gets their subscription fees and those who inhabit beta and gamma will always have the major advantage of more efficient facilities.  To those who will no doubt scream “it’s risk vs. reward,” I say: Don’t be greedy.

2) Never, EVER make a boring game and PO is boring after any length of time. 

What makes a game boring or addictive is not pvp. It’s loot (broadly defined as anything that drops/spawns in-game).  It’s what pvp fights are over.  If the loot is boring, the pvp is boring and needless to say, so is the pve. 

Human nature makes people inveterate gamblers, and males particularly so due to high evolutionary payoff (in the form of sex) in the past as well as present for high risk (dangerous) low chance of very high reward (large game animals, being viewed as heroic, etc) behaviors.  If the loot lottery is good, the game is addictive. If it’s not, the game is boring. The loot in PO is too predictable and predictable = boring.  The loot lottery (table) badly needs to be improved.

Back when isotopes were first introduced I suggested (and others added their suggestions) that the isotopes, in combination with new categories of very rare drops of various other kinds of components be necessary for crafting particularly useful items.  Without such rare drops (and they need to be available to everyone in all zones (though perhaps not in alpha 1 and at higher rates in beta & gamma) there’s little point in killing except to GRIND out more cash (and grinding is boring).  On the other hand, if there’s a chance (however small) that you’ll hit the lottery on the next try, then the game turns into a case of ‘one more try (nothing), another one (nothing), another try,…’ and the next thing the player knows it’s 4 AM, but they had a good time and they can’t wait to log in again and try again the next day.  AC did something like that with the Anniversary/Christmas specials, but those were overkill (a flood of T4 items). They need to make a rational version of that a part of every-day game play.

To compound the problem, AC negated even the rarer, higher payoffs they did put in game (T2,3,4 items).  When you already have 50 of a t2 item and you get another one it’s a non-event when you can’t even recycle it for more than a T1 item yields.

3) Never, ever, ever, EVER make a game tedious and PO is most definitely unnecessarily tedious.

If anyone in RL ever designed a TP system such as the one in PO they’d be fired on the spot.  Imagine a RL situation where every train line is very short and every train has it’s own station no closer than 1 km from any other station leaving the need to walk between stations.  That’s PO.

Here again, EVE got it right (autopilot) and PO got it wrong. The highways helped, but the whole system still reeks of an artificial (not integral to the game) attempt to make players spend time traveling.  I don’t remember how many new players I heard grumbling about the system at various times and who were all gone after a few days. It’s probably too late to change that now, but at a minimum the game needs autopilot routes between all TPs and stations (if someone is dumb enough to use it on beta and gamma islands that’s their problem).  When you TP into an area, one should be able to click on either the nearest TP or nearest station and have an autopilot take them there over the existing highway system.

4) Never, EVER make a game frustrating and the research system in PO was most definitely frustrating.  Grinding out another 2k kernels just to unlock the last 1 or 2 tier 3 or 4 prototypes @~2% per 50 kernels utilized was an exercise is acute frustration (and doubly so after that last one unlocked yet 1 more that required yet another 2k to research).

Hopefully this is already on the way to being fixed.

5) Without players in PvP zones, there is no PvP.

If you want PvP to be successful, you need players to be able to hunt others solo or in small groups (not just in when they’re in blobs).  To do that you need potential solo targets and to generate potential solo targets, players need to feel/think they actually have a chance at getting in and getting out again in one piece.  Nowadays pvp zones are deserted so it’s somewhat doable (there’s just no one around to actually do it), but back in the early days (when there were actually a fair number of players) not so much.  The problem here is that the islands feel small (no place to hide and no way to hide).  The smartest thing EVE ever did was introduce cloaks about 9 months after it went live. 

This whole issue opens a can of worms I’d rather not deal with here and now.  Possibilities for ‘opening up’ beta and gamma include making scanners inoperable for seeing other players, cutting their range in beta and gamma (perhaps proportionally), cloaks (and countermeasures of course), and some that others can no doubt suggest.  For those who complain that it would make rooting out invaders harder, I say: that’s right, it would, and it would give you something to actually do besides grow potatoes and mine ores.

Anyways, that’s my take on the major problems and my suggestions for solutions.

My time in Perp is coming to an end after almost a year and a half. I don't want to discuss why. There's no point to it. I'll just leave it at the game has become more frustrating than fun.  The point I do want to make is this:

I had an active account in EVE for 5 years starting shortly after launch.  It is also the only game in 14 years of playing MMOs (starting with the Asheron's Call beta 0) that I ever returned to after leaving it to play something else.  Of those 5 years, I actually only played 4 years - I played 3, then took a year break to play another mmo, then played EVE for another year.  The reason I came back instead of moving on again was because I still had an active account and the reason I still had an active account was because the last thing I did before I left the first time was use my accumulated isk to buy time codes (I was leaving so I didn't need the isk any more, so what the hell).

When the game I left EVE for got played out after a year, my EVE account was still active, so instead of moving on to yet another game, I ended up going back to EVE and playing for another year.  In fact having the account stay active while I was gone was an incentive to return, if for no other reason than to try out the new skills that had been added in the time I was gone.

So, instead of getting 3 years worth of cash from my subs, which would have been all had I stopped subbing after 3 years, CCP got 5 years worth of money for my account.  The Perp dev team can use all the subs they can get to keep this game going. A plex system would certainly get them more than they would have otherwise.

Just my $.02

It's still happening. I just had an NPC get permanently stuck in the wall at ~1344, 629 Hershfield while trying to get to me.