Yes but whether anyone listens to them or not will be based upon the context and evidence for the context they supply for their complaint. Say Billy really likes playing hit and run with the enemy factions slower moving Artillery units. He plays his Fast Assault unit almost everyday and he loves ducking under and over their fire solutions and getting within their turning circles faster than they can swear by the Emperor. Occasionally there's a really good Artillery unit, he uses distance and communication to make Billy's life harder, sometimes his remarkable aim earns him a crispy Assault corpse to cackle about. Billy complains about this but everyone tells him to shut up because he got outplayed. Conversely, the same situation, but instead of good communication and distance killing Billy, the Artillery is a sidegraded founders-hero unit. Instead of dealing 100DPS for 10 seconds, this sidegraded unit deals 120 DPS for 7.5. He does less damage overall, but in a shorter timeframe. Billy gets shat on by Hero Artillery every day, because his faster, burstier attacks offset his lumbering pace and slow turning circle, Billy can't abuse his cooldown as well or cop so much of his fire in the process of getting to him. The Hero is slightly slanted for killing people not bunkers. Not many people would ignore Billy this time around. Most people would agree with Billy that that Hero unit is annoying, and complain that not everyone can have it. Some people would complain that Billy, because he wasn't a founder, can't play the Fast Assault unit that has slightly more armour and less DPS - that unit would have let Billy take some of the more intensive fire and then using his skillful aim and positioning wittle away at the lumbering Artillery efficiently. Then the other 'normie' Artillery dudes pipe in and say: yeah those hero Fast Assault guys with slightly more armor are bullshit, we already have lower DPS than founder units and so these guys just glide past us and . . . You see where I'm going? This sort of crap makes balancing a thousand times more complicated than it needs to be. It can only and will only cause grief. Stay the hell away from it. edit: maths pls
Balancing is not for humans. You are right that it would not be possible to balance this. The dev should not even try to. They shoudl design nice and fun unit to play and accept that everything is unbalaced (I strongly believe that the way the player play will balance the battlefield). Comme to the message of Miguel. I am a father too and I have a work. I still think that XP boost are pay to win and wrong. Why : the one who will buy them are probably the one playing the game more than 20h a week, you cannot choose who will pay. It is fair that the one that play more get more XP (once I tell that to a friend that have a Dojo, and he replied that the guy that train more is the better to that didn't shocked him the least). If you need an XP boost for a casual player to be an asset in the strike force, I strongly sense a design problem in this game. By this logic, if you really want the casual gamer to be on part with the hardcore gamer, you don't need XP Boost, you need a daily XP cap (note I don't like that) or a diminishing reward system. Or better, check the playing time and give free boost to people that don't play enough. Here I only see an excuse for a microtransaction that have no developpement cost for a game that we have already paid for. Best regards, Skanvak Drakken de la Maison des Drakkens.
They have mentioned the possibility of a cap to how often an xp boost can be used along with a limit to how many game hours each boost is worth. The casual player will never be on par with the hardcore fanatic because even with a boost the hardcore player will have more experience in actually playing the game. If for example the boost can only be bought once a week and works for 5 in game hours you prevent the hardcore player form getting any more use out of it then the causal. I'm ok with people paying to get experience faster, they may unlock more variety but they don't necessarily become stronger.
I think (or hope) that EC won't be that troll troll infested as many may think. It is mostly a game for Warhammer 40k fans, so the main goal of the devs and most players would be to feel the grimdark feeling of the 41 millenium. However, I have neither a problem with a reskin, nor with a completely new character. I just hope that I will be able to customise my character in various ways
I'm all for buyable reskins (Chapter Insignia, etc.), but I also feel that alternate weapon modes (as in the example of Miguel Carron, one thing that does 100 dmg every 60 secs and one that does 50 dmg every 30 secs) should be acquirable without the strict need to buy them. As so often before, I would suggest the system of TF2 - weapons and cosmetics can be earned ingame (either with a very, very unlikely chance to simply be found as a random drop, via trading with other players, or via crafting them from various other stuff that you've found). I do of course understand that, financially speaking, a strong incentive to buy stuff for rl money would be very much preferable to the devs, so I suggest that you would either have to spent a significant amount of time ingame to get (not to unlock, but to get a single item of the type), or alternatively, being capable of buying the stuff instantly with rl cash.
And by that logic you find logical that casual pay more for less gaming time than Hardcore player that play more? I don't personnally. If there are need for xp boost to unlock then, why not make ask money for all unlock? Paying for an XP boost is not different than paying for an unlock in the end. I am not confortable with decision that are not clear cut.
It's odd that we agree so closely on some things and yet are so distant on others. When did we all become afraid of rewarding people who actually invest their time, effort, emotion and money (to a lesser extent, lest I cast any misconceptions) into a video game? I'm not one of those people that says: "To hell with the casuals, if they want to be as good/as geared as me they should play 50 hours a week too!" Casual players are the lifeblood of any successful title. Look at the current iteration of the Counterstrike series, its managed to achieve a tasteful balance between competitive and casual paradigms, the first Counterstrike to really do so, and it's rapidly growing both competitively and casually. It has been holding steady as the second most played game on Steam for nearly a month now and only grows with each major event (I digress, just trying to prove a point about casual players being good for games). That being said, XP caps? Low-hours played exclusive XP Boosts? What the hell? Why should I be handicapped, literally capped, on the progress I can make in one day, or a week? What if that is the only day I have off work this week? What if I plan to make up for my busy schedule by spending my Saturdays with a nice juicy XP boost, a coffee and some EC action from dawn till dusk? I'm all for having incentives for players that can't play as much. WoW gives (or used to) you Rested Experience, if you logged off in a safe area or any area for long enough you accrued a bonus XP modifier for a percentage of remaining of your level. No capping of gains. Planetside 2 gives you free certs (currency) for having logged out for an extended period of time (not that I'm really a fan of Ps2's model by the way). No gains caps here. If we go down this road of hamstringing those that genuinely have a love for the game, and are willing to give up more than most people to enjoy the product then you're finished before you even start. Goddamn this is Warhammer, of the Games Workshop - you can't be involved in this hobby anymore and not be putting down or have put down in the past a considerable amount of money, time and effort. EDIT: On reflection, reading this post makes it sounds like I'm attacking Skanvak, I'm not - he already stated he doesn't like caps. I'm just talking generally about games and the perceptions surrounding hardcore players. Sorry Skan you just got quoted haha!
Actually, I agree with that (I don't like the cap model either for the reason you state, I just state it as an example) Isn't is like a free bonus XP for player that play less? What I don't want is XP boost sold in a cash shop.
Yeah I edited there to make it a bit clearer that I didn't think you were in the wrong ha, sorry. In-store XP Boosts are something that need to be done carefully. Generally speaking, I'm okay with them - people give a bit back to the game and in return they get a little bit back - but not in any way that gives them a direct advantage over another player. My sword still hits for 5 damage and your sword still hits for 5 damage. My bonus only applies if I manage to kill you, thus granting me XP, making use of my purchase and giving me an indirect advantage (in the form of time spent). If a player is of low calibre, regardless of hours played, they won't be rewarded much - something I'm very on board with. I can see where your beef arises, in that the people playing 50hrs a week are the people that will buy the most XP boosts generally, so the boosts will be used to get even further ahead than those who play 15h and also buy boosts. How much of a difference this makes greatly depends on the mechanics surrounding 'Levels' or how XP is spent generally. If there's not a great deal of difference between a 500 Day Astartes and a 1 Day Astartes, is there an issue? Certainly not. Can the 500 Day Astartes crush the 1 Day Astartes with his very gaze? You need to have a look at how XP boosts work - because when the power curve is steep enough for that sort of crushing imbalance it becomes a race to level cap and those left behind can't enjoy the game. They can only get crushed until they manage to endure a large succession of crushings and finally manage to award themselves a small slice of the crushing for their own nefarious purposes.
