Shad0wsFury
Habitual Euthanasia
Pandemic Legion
34
   |
Posted - 2011.11.22 16:33:00 -
[1] - Quote
Seems like the smart thing to do here would be to make the changes to the PRODUCTION process first, THEN change the way the boosters actually work. Doing it the other way around (which is what CCP is apparently planning), is going to create a huge vacuum that booster manufacturers cannot possibly fill due to the increased demand and already existing supply issues, thus creating a huge spke in price (which has already happened due to speculation).
The reason a lot of people don't use boosters is because of the effort. It takes effort to get the boosters out of highsec where most of them are sold. That is a major roadblock for a lot of people who don't know how the arcane mechanics of the customs NPCs work (which randomly get changed by CCP on whims without notice, awesome job there).
What really bothers me here, is that boosters have become in integral part of PvP for a lot of people. Booster use is often one of the few things that differentiates higher-tier PvP players or organizations from their less successful peers. The factors that preclude others from using them are availability and price, not side effects. If standard boosters cost 3-4 million per pill, and THEN you have to smuggle out of highsec (because that's the only reliable place to find them), your average Joe spaceship pilot in Scrub Alliance B is not going to use them, both because they're too expensive in their mind and because they don't know how to regularly supply themselves with them.
It seems that CCP has once again INCORRECTLY identified the issue with a game mechanic, and taken the WRONG approach to fixing it. Instead, they devote weeks of dev blogs to gimmicky new battlecruisers and font and UI changes, and make sweeping changes to PvP mechanics without saying so much as a word about it, except in this topic, where we discover that while CCP's intentions are probably good, their implementation is half-baked AT BEST.
If the goal of this whole project with boosters is to make them used more frequently, congratulations CCP, YOU HAVE ALREADY FAILED. The prices are going to go WAY the hell up, making them even FURTHER out of the reach of average Joe spaceship pilot, while demand among "elite PvPers" is going to stay high, just making them pay more for the boosters they were ALREADY using. Meanwhile, booster manufacturers are boned because the material prices are going to (already have) skyrocket(ed), and their ability to keep a healthy profit margin is going to go down the crapper, leading to many leaving the industry.
tl;dr: way to go CCP for wrongly identifying the underlying issues of a mechanic you aren't pleased with the progress of. Boosters are expensive and rare because the MATERIALS are expensive and rare. They aren't frequently used BECAUSE of their expense, rarity and ILLEGALITY, not because of side effects which rarely happened or impacted actual ship performance. Awesome job putting boosters out of the reach of 99% of players while allowing the richest 1% to still be able to afford them AND use them to much greater effect. *golf clap*
ps. also AWESOME job fixing the forums, good thing I copied that message before hitting post, or I would have raged even harder at your ineptitude. |