Topic: Change sparks from themepark to sandbox
I think it was already bad enough that you absolutely had to run pre-made boring missions over and over to get your industrial character's efficiency up. Now you need to do it even more and with your combat characters too, to get access to sparks.
I have no problem with the idea that the NPC conglomerates can give you access to some sparks if they like you, but the fact that it's the ONLY way to acquire them makes it feel like a theme park mechanic that doesn't belong in a sandbox game.
There's pretty much an infinite amount of solutions to this but here are a few I thought of :
1) Allow people to bribe NPC corporations for relations. This would have the added benefit of being a NIC sink. It would also not only give an alternative for getting sparks but also an alternative for raising your relation bonus when using NPC facilities. If this were to be implemented, I would suggest that it be somewhat affordable at low relation levels and becomes MUCH more expensive as as your relations get higher. It would need to be overall expensive enough so that you don't see everyone buy max relations with every corp, and so that gaining relations through missions remains a viable option.
2) Allow people who gained access to a spark to somehow sell access to other players. Again, selling this spark access to other players should be very expensive for the seller, otherwise as soon as 1 person gets access, his entire alliance gets it too (including spies who give it to all other alliances in the game). This has the up side of encouraging player interaction and encouraging people to run missions (make an extra profit from selling sparks). It also serves as a NIC sink, but unfortunately it would not help industrial characters gain their industry relation bonus through any alternative means.
3) Allow anyone to buy any access to any spark, but make the sparks that are usually gained through relations be extremely expensive. This doesn't seem like a very good option since the only other upside is that it's a NIC sink. It doesn't further encourage player interaction and it doesn't add any alternatives for industrials who want to improve their industry relation bonus.
How is the current mechanic very different from a sandbox mechanic :
It's different because there are absolutely no alternatives. If you want a Seth, you can farm kernels, research it, make a CT, gather materials, then build it. You can also skip any of these steps by buying kernels and/or buying the CT and/or buying the materials and/or buying the Seth itself. Of course there has to be a predetermined way to make a Seth, but you are not in any way forced to make it yourself if you want access to it.
Conclusion : Please make sparks and relation gains more sandbox!
Another solution Dan and I thought of is that you could convert your relation gains into items and sell them to other players. These items could be called bribes or anything else.
This mechanic is already in the game but not very well supported. I can be sitting afk, in a squad with someone else who is running missions and effectively giving me half of the relation gains. I can pay that person for it. The downside with this method is that for no apparent reason I have to be online at the same time as him and I cannot be doing something else in my own squad, which means the person running missions is most likely gonna have to be a corpmate (or at least not an enemy).
It would indirectly fix the problem if a player could trade his relation gains for a Bribe item that he can then sell to other players. The purpose of the item would be to give it to the relevant NPC corp in exchange for relation gains.
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