Okay so I admit I basically think this game was much better 2 years ago when rank separated players more, and I’m a seasoned (as in played a lot) R17 with over 1k hrs clocked and a deck or two of premium ships so I can talk with experience. With Seed Chips now giving good reason for whales and end-gamers (aka R17+ players) to keep playing, the knock on effect is anyone without a good seed deck cant do any damage, thus cant get any syn, thus can’t rank up ships, thus can’t become a whale or end gamer in the first place. This is not good mechanics.
Grind times for new ships from standard rankings are horrible, and they used to be long enough. DLC ships cost more than most non AAA games so it’s pricey to skip especially considering the playerbase. This is hardly Star Wars or Madden level of investment but I must spend more than that for 2 ships when a drop deck is 4?? Or do you want me to try and fit out 3 R6 to go with my Rockwell and end up playing nothing but the Rock’ out of necessity?
Seed chip costs to remove also mean that basically the entirety of the “useless for PVP but fun to play” ships are now “useless for everything but fun to play” because seed chips also affect OS and Skirmish… And grinding players must find the money to move chips from ship to ship as they rank up or want to play another one of the literally hundred plus ships in the game. This is not good mechanics.
New players feel this the most as they spend match after match watching because Joey Badass with his L67 cap will either drop you in at L20 where you’ll get one shot killed, or one shot everything in your L2 game with his chipped R17 gunboat’o’doom, meaning you get no syn and spend the rest of the day watching him or his copy do either again and again. Don’t even get me started on PVP for a R7 player. This is not good mechanics and is why both PVP and PVE is so empty. No consistent PVE experience gain, no new PVPers. Nobody wants to grind in PVP with only inferior (say, R7) cap so they can watch their ELO and KD look like s*** by the time they reach higher rankings and get module slots.
I genuinely would like to introduce people to this game but the economy balance imo is broken so players need to voice this to the devteam. We need to separate the game level structure again in PVE because Gaijin broke it completely. And yes, I left OS out because the game was big enough without it considering there is no deep guide to item locations and such for a new player.
This is not good mechanics. I can see as much as everyone else how many bots have replaced players.
Please feel free to express you agreement or disapprove. I want a unified community opinion so I know it’s not just me (or maybe it is haha).
Happy Flying ”)
P.S. Also note how many players are in this forum that aren’t yet R15 and remember that that’s the future of the game. They should be a majority but they aren’t. We should collectively work on convincing the devs not to let this game die, and it’s steam stats most certainly say it is on it’s way. This is a great game at it’s core but the eco is killing it. I should either be able to play from scratch solo, have cheap enough shinies to convince my friends to buy into playing with me (say $15 tops not $45 for the four needed), or have a core economy that is encouraging to new players.