We hear you.

This has been a long day in the office, but after chasing various people here and discussing this internally based on your feedback, we have decided not to change boosters for Crucible.


Why so?

• Forced consumption to stay competitive: as you stated, previous approach was flawed as it was turning boosters into mandatory combat consumables (nicknamed here the "potion" problem). Barrier of entry and competition in PvP is quite high already, between rigs, hardwiring implants, faction ammunition and gang links, adding yet another layer on top should be avoided. While side-effects do need to be looked into, blanket removing them may not be the best option as it removes risk value from it.


• Does not make them more available : removal of side-effects does not address the real bottleneck here, which, as you pointed out, is tied with the production. For boosters to be more used, we need to look into their convoluted reaction and manufacturing process. Treating their possible illegality status is another topic altogether, and one that needs to be done carefully, as we would like to use it for future smuggling and contraband features.


• Boosters need more thought and changes as a whole: tied with points above, removing side-effects but not looking into their production dramatically affect their prices, which is in direct opposition of the intended goals. In general, we acknowledge boosters need more work to be made viable, and the attempt to push this for Crucible was too premature.

We do know that is a total reversal from the previous post, but we honestly recognize previous approach was far from ideal and should not have been planned for Crucible release, at least not without proper feedback first. Simply put, we do not want to release something that has not been given enough time and that is almost unanimously considered as degrading game play.

Due for these reasons, we will freeze that booster change for now, go back to the drawing board and keep you in the loop when we iterate on this to make sure we are not repeating the same mistakes again.


Many thanks for your time and feedback on this matter.


Note: we also do know this may ruin some market speculation, but as we stated before, Singularity changes are there to be publicly tested and should not be considered as final until reaching Tranquility (stuff may even change when getting there). As such, we urge you to understand that betting on such changes to actually happen is a risk that is accepted when ISK is committed into it.