It’s going to be quite an essay to write about recent changes and why people should be actually supporting them, but there was so many words written already and too many people have awfully biased perception of what should be progress vs grind balance in an online game (not to mention all those buffoons who start to yell pay 2 win whenever something changes), that I don’t really feel guilty of adding to all that my 2 cents… or 20 cents…
Bad things:
1) What we got now was introduced awkwardly and is rather half baked. Lesson for the future - with such drastic change prior notice and some kind of discussion, poll or at least “dev diary” writeup explaining why such change is going to be introduced and what is the “bigger picture” would be highly advisable. Ideally one or two persons from actual development team taking part in discussions on English forums and presenting official and most up to date perception of players suggestions and issues would be priceless.
I know Error is being awesome with maintaining communication but he is forum Administrator. He can’t take responsibility for ninja changes, coding mistakes or vision of the game, imho. That should be coming straight from developers.
2) One of the issues I see now is that people who bought licences for short period of time feel kind of cheated and, honestly, I don’t blame them. Even 200% Loyalty boost from licence won’t change what they expected to get while planning their “grinding weekend” or whatever.
To sum it up: it would be better to prepare full system, present it beforehand (either up for discussion or simply in a matter of “hey, it’s going to work like that, we think it’s going to be better this way, end of story”) and drop it as an integral and consistent change in one big patch.
Good things:
1) Take a look at numbers of battles you played guys, and then take a note of how many hours you spent in combat and in game (it’s all on your profile). Then compare it with ranks you have.
With previous system I managed easily to hit 8/7/7 and Rep 6 with each subfaction. Granted I used my licence, but also without it it wasn’t bad at all. That means T3 ships with MkIII gear and some neat implants. Not to mention purple/green stuff I found in the meantime. It took me only ~350 games to get there.
Let me put it this way - for an online game getting half-way in less than week of normal and maybe a weekend hardcore playing is way too fast. You have to remember, that along with your right to be on equal footing with paying customers, game need to earn some money, so actually those gold weapons, ships and modules have to be some kind of incentive. How much you like it or not - this game is planned as an investment which have to make revenue. I bet you prefer it to be pay 2 not grind than pay 2 win, eh?
If majority of players would hit T3 in a week, we can easily assume they would hit “endgame” in less than month - that’s way too short to keep up with players rotation, and way too short to make sure at least some part of player base will spend enough money to ensure steady monthly revenue for the game.
2) I played all Friday and Saturday to see how actually progression curve changed - and I admit it changed a lot, but I had no problem with keeping at least 1 contract up all the time and with timing rotation ensuring slow-but-steady Loyalty gain. I might be a bit biased most of the time playing more because I like to play it instead of pushing like crazy towards the top of the tech tree and the endgame ladder. Yet, I had no issues with Loyalty nor Reputation and my balance is keeping healthy buffer of 3mil credits for some unexpected fail streak.
So basically, my conclusion is - that such change is actually needed and is going to improve the amount of people logged into game, and have better chance of ensuring at least some steady income for the studio to keep developing the game. What happened was maybe shocking but it looks like good frame to build upon.
How its going to evolve? I’m no dev to tell that - I can only hope and eventually suggest how it could evolve:
+ instead of rising Loyalty per contract - better add plenty of low-to-mid reward contracts with more objectives (I’m bit tired of capping those Comm Buoys, tbh),
+ time them similarly to how low reward contracts are timed now - 30min to 1hr cooldown,
+ keep those daily or weekly expensive contracts as they are - they should indeed act as timed boost to average gain and not part of “daily” contracts rotation grindwheel;
+ make them less restrictive when it comes to using weapons like desintegrator or torpedo,
+ give Loyalty reward for: medals, achievements and excellence in combat (i.e. achieving certain Efficiency Level score in battle or picking up EMP bomb x times).
Over and out.
PS
@Benache, sorry that I spilled some venom last night, I probably had my reasons but charging on you like that was unfair, I suppose - given circumstances…