Mecinia Lua
Galactic Express
Frontier Trade League
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Posted - 2007.04.30 12:15:00 -
[1]
I believe the changes proposed in that blog may be detrimental to the game.
What it amounts to in essence is more time sinks.
You'll have to spend time exploring. Not only that but realise that once you mine out an exploration site, something currently a single barge can do in a matter of a few hours, it doesn't respawn. So you are looking at having to explore every single day. At least 1 to 2 hours wasted just looking for a belt. Also in high sec such sites are not common, I see it if they go to this system another attempt to force everyone into low sec and 0.0. It will be catastrophic for the game.
You'll have to spend time skilling. You will have to train to use exploration. You will not be able to depend on the small nearly useless generic scanner all ships will be getting. It will not be sufficient to lead you to anything of value. Its more a starter scanner necessary to allow new players some chance of finding something. Anyone that mines, rats, or does complexes on a regular basis is going to have to train exploration skills. The sites currently are not big enough to accomadate a corp. Therefore you can't say it just takes one or two. To accomadate a mid size corp it would take many such sites.
What does this mean?
It means that once these effects go into play the casual player will be pushed even further out. That means a loss in game subscriptions. I suspect with these measures that the game will become largely unplayable unless you can devote 3 to 5 hours a day as a miner, ratter or complex goer, as you will need time to explore your site daily, and time to actually do your business. You can't assume you can find it one day and do it the next. That won't be a luxury as someone else might find your site and do it for you while you are taking care of real life.
Given the current size of the gaming population, and the current market needs. I would foresee a market crash. Prices will rise considerably due to the extra time wasted just looking for a belt to mine. You might see minerals three to five times current prices. This means a corresponding price rise in modules, ammunition, and ships. The game wouldn't survive.
Could they make it work, possibly. But the way the blog is written gives me doubts. I've mined exploration sites. In order to work as they wish in this blog they will have to be larger. I'd say two to five times larger than the current exploration mining sites.
They'll also need to renew their ores every day at server maintanance. Currently they are a one shot wonder. They should last 3 to 5 days.
Currently escalation is horribly bugged. THere are times the rats will take off or other circumstances will occur to prevent escalation. Before we look to moving the entire game to such a system, I'd look at fixing the current sites.
Another question is they claim this will help server load. But won't it add even more algorithims to do all this? Won't the exploration sites themselves consume more database than the current system. I realise the game is stressed we all can see that. But I'm not sure completely replacing such central parts of the game is the answer. SOE tried such changes with SWG when they proved ineffective in fixing the game, it only made things worse, not better.
I hope they will provide more details, but I certainly have not been encouraged by that blog.
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