The matchmaking is changed server sided and it has got a few improvements during the last days.
We are still reading your feedback of course it will be improved even more.
http://i.imgur.com/0YF62mw.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HtutIT8.jpg
i had 3 such games actually, but i didnt screen the 3rd one. it is my first time when i see bots in the arcade mode.
Its either the new changes working, or a lot of players really quited the game after last patch.
We’ll see how it goes later in the evening, when, hopefully, there will be more players online.
OK, I may be over-thinking this, but here is my analysis of the changes in the reward system from my perspective:
Getting to r12 with a main faction and r13 with a sub-faction in about a week was the most SEAMLESS and PLEASANT leveling experience I ever had with any game, online or offline, that comes to mind. I could afford new, higher rank ships as soon as I unlocked them. I never had to stop and farm, the whole process never felt like a grind or a chore.
There was a positive feedback loop about it: you played, you had fun and got rep and loyalty and credits, you unlocked better ships and equipment that you could afford, with which you had even more fun and potential for even more rewards, which made you want to play more and the cycle repeated.
Please realize that most other developers can only dream of delivering such a damn near flawless leveling experience.
Depending on what you wanted to focus on, every option was viable:
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If you wanted more loot chances, you could do PVE.
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If you wanted more loyalty, you could do more contracts.
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If you wanted more rep, you could get your best +% reward ship in the tier you felt more successful.
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If you wanted more credits, you could play in the tier you felt was more profitable.
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If you wanted to just have fun, you could play in the tier you felt was more fun/balanced.
No matter what you did, you almost always made meaningful progression in everything.
And then v.0.7.10 happened. It is now possible to make no progression in loyalty after a game. IT GOES DOWNHILL FROM THERE. Which brings us to today.
Now progressing feels like a chore. It seems like you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to accomplish something. Your rep and loyalty go out of sync. Doing contracts in lower ranks (because they are easier to do there, or you just don’t have the ship classes you need for them in your current rank) reduces your rep gain. You have to spend time farming credits. Focusing on one reward works against the others.
There are also plenty of conflicting incentives. As Aedwynn noted, you make players farm credits at a lower rank before advancing to the next, but hurt their credit income when they do so. You make progression so worrisome, then tell us to just have fun and not worry about progression. THAT’S WHAT WE WERE DOING BEFORE. We were having fun and progression just happened. YOU made us worry about progression.
Regarding the increased Mk I prices and buying fully equipped ships to help new players (at higher prices): Um… huh? What? Having extremely cheap Mk I stuff meant that you could afford to experiment. You could buy a module, see how it worked and decide what suits your playstyle better. You could then come up with the order in which you would level your sub-factions to get the Mk III stuff. Now the ships are more expensive to buy, with modules that are more expensive to replace, which means less experimentation. Excuse me, how does this help inexperienced players again? Does it help them REMAIN inexperienced? I must have missed all those forums posts saying “this large variety of affordable modules is straining my fragile little mind, halp”. Or the posts going “after 20 minutes of gameplay I am still getting my inexperienced and under-equipped butt kicked, please fix” for that matter.
Finally, I would like to bring up the human psychology factor. People don’t like being told what to do, even if they were likely to do something on their own anyway. I liked doing contracts before. I would always check out if there were any contracts off cooldown, because I felt that doing them saved me some time in the long run. I HATE doing contracts now. Stop forcing people to play your game the way you think it should be played, doing so never ends well.
TL;DR: Revert the reward system to v.0.7.9 (except maybe the repair costs).
In last few patches economics was changed in a way to force player to donate real money. Or strugle if he wont do so.
It is quite clear if u look at whole picture.
Less income, increase price of ships, increase price of mk1 to make experimenting more expencive. And if u are doing pve and have a lot of green modules to fully fit your new ship, u have to spend money on mk1 anyway.
All of that forces to buy a licence to have more income or u will have to farm all day long. Im sure they will nerf scenarios in future, they alredy did it with the loot nerf, next stop - credits reward.
If u look at the loyality changes u will see that now players have to spend huge ammount of time to fully fit their ship in blue modules. On top of that, they have to spend even more money to do that. They have to level different fractions wich requires buying lots of new ships+mk1’s (wich have increased cost now).
BUT! There is always a gold variant of every mk3 module and u dont have to earn access to it! Just buy it with real money and u are good to go! Pwn some newbs who are grinding to their blue modules mouth over a mounth. just donate some money, fit ur ship in gold and u will instantly have a noitceable advantage over the ship fitted in mk2. No time wasted, no grind needed.
They just turning this game into a pay-to-win. Step by step. Yes u dont have better stats with this items, but u will have access to them immidietly after u donate. A lot faster then any average player who does not donate.
