Let me preface by first saying I'm a fully pledged Founder, and if the game progresses as it has been, I will probably pledge more. But: Please don't make functional differences between Founder's items and Normal Player items. Yes, a Rhino will get two people to a destination slower and safer than a two-man attack bike. It's entirely possible the "best" solution will be the Rhino. However, preventing a new player from accessing parts of the game because they weren't a Founder, or wanted to see a more developed game, or any number of reasons, isn't fair. If more Founder's-only items are added like this, it's going to create a nightmare of balancing headaches for the development team and it still won't solve the problem of barring a player from parts of the game purely based on money spent. To provide an example from the extremely popular League of Legends: it would be like letting Founders have a unique champion that only those players can ever use. You have almost 50,000 Founders? What if the game grows to 500,000 active users? You're going to prevent 90% of your playerbase (assuming all your Founders are still active) from playing a part of the game? Please create a version of an attack bike for normal players. Have it release with the Founder version. Make the Founder version shinier. Make it able to have a banner. Make it blare some kind of awesome music. I don't care. This is important, Behavior. Don't start the game off by planting seeds of future headaches and player resentment. You don't want that. I don't want it.
if you supported the game when it was small you should get special things. So YES to founder specific items (with function like bike)
I fully agree with you , yet when voting was done most people here asked for this. At this point we can only cross our fingers and hope this does not damage the gameplay or the reputation of the game on release.
I'm certainly not a pay to win fan, however, i do think that very low density items that give mild increases or different options in functionality or unique aesthetic items that give you comparable stats to high level available game options are very legit if you sink money into the game at this point. The key is to not make it over powered...simply different or at the same power / utility level as normally available high end gear.
There is going to be a bike in game. Just not THIS bike. How the other bike is going to be, we have to see. It may aswell be a one seater.
In fact, it probably will be a one-seater. It's also reasonable to assume that it will not have the same potential for firepower as the founders bike, but will probably be noticeably faster. And, if the direction they're going with the heroes is any indication: the founders bike will probably have fewer options for customizing the specs of the bike compared to the normal one. So in summary, the logical projections are as follows: Founders bikes: more potential firepower, possibly more health, less speed, less performance customization. Standard bikes: less potential firepower, faster, more options for loadout customization. In either case, I can't imagine that they'll be very effective if they aren't operating in groups. And, to be honest, if the difference in speed is in fact significant enough to be considered a design difference, I'd almost be willing to bet money that a group of standard bikes could probably out perform an otherwise identical group of founders bikes. Most of the games I've played have taught me (much to my chagrin, I might add) that the more mobile force usually wins, even if they don't have as much armor or firepower, simply because they can outmaneuver their opponents more effectively and therefore they just get hit less-- negating their worse "staying power" by not trying to stay.
I was also very reluctant hearing about weapons that are both time locked AND behind a paywall, but after doing a bit of searching about the topic and looking at devs interactions with the fanbase, especially Miguel Caron's (http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/miguel-caron-2nd-4chan-tg-ama.20857/), I have faith that they'll keep it balanced. Though I'm still apprehensive about the idea, I really hope cash shop only weapons don't show up after the game launches. I also thought of it this way: it's not just a default weapon and the store weapon to choose from. The founders assault rifle may have +10% fire rate and -10% damage, but there could be another assault rifle in the game we unlock ourselves that's +40% fire rate and -40% damage. As well as several other options It's also worth remembering that fine-tuned balancing is usually done in beta and we're barely in alpha, it'll get sorted then!
According to me, "founder only" item should be cosmetics, visual. But founder skins should be highly visible and epic. This way founder player will be reward for there involvment by shining on the battlefield. Thats what im waiting for this program, epic skins for faction and sub faction.
well in the cash shop after launch there might be more weapons. Some spezial patterns and so on. But we have to see Its just the beginning They said beginning at august, every month, they will add new Items to the store.
