I agree but would like a little more info on the founder heroes to see how different they are from normal heroes otherwise I'm pretty excited with the founder program now.
The problem with this school of thought is that inevitably one variant of the (in this case) Bolter will rise to the top as superior. I've seen it happen in numerous games where marginally different weapons eventually give rise to the "superior" version and the rest lay unused. If Founder Weapons are implemented like this, you'll have two scenarios: one where it's useless and Founders feel cheated or it's overpowered and non-Founders feel Pay To Win'd. Development resources are a very real thing. If Behavior had unlimited man-hours and could spend all day fine-tuning weapons to perfection, great. The reality, however, is that they don't. I would much rather them spend resources on balancing other aspects of the game that will inevitably come up than spending time on tweaking Founder Boltguns. I'm glad they want to treat Founders right. But, the best way they can treat us right is by making sure they don't pander to us and make the game fun, accessible, and inclusive for the many thousands who will join the game when it's a finished product.
I like the idea of unlockables which turn up 6 months later for the rest. I'm happy for there to be "unique" stats which are then made available to the rest later, and for the skins/cosmetics to remain actually unique. That sounds great. Unique heros.. not so much. How the hell is that going to work to put in later on? Honestly, I'm really happy to hear the "things turn up later" idea, and it really helps alleviate some of my worries from what I've been hearing so far. That about sums up my thoughts - I'm okay with having temporary access, but it's pretty shitty for anybody who joins after launch to see others being able to play in a way that they will never be able to, just because they turned up late.
While I think the weapon and armor set founders get should be unique in both look and performance, the specific stats shouldn't be "of the gods". However, founders weapons and armor should have longevity and shouldn't be rendered obsolete after a few weeks, or months of gameplay. There's nothing worse than purchasing unique, awesome looking DLC gear in a game, only to find out that gear is totally obsolete after only a day or two of game play. One way of ensuring the longevity of the founders in game items, is to allow the actual founders items skins to be applied to other items in the same category, similar to the way you could switch in/out the appearance on your weapons and armor in Warhammer Online. "Vanity skins" per say..... should also be added to the items founders receive. Unique weapons and armor skins that have no stats at all, but these skins can be applied and reapplied new pieces of gear.
Absolutely! Stuff like awesome particle effects and unique models make it great. I'd hate to have a stat advantage.
Where's the token dev who is gonna vote no? That said I'm gonna very grudgingly set my vote to Ok. Mainly out of temptation to be quite frank. I still think this will backfire regardless of how well it's done, and I know for a fact that I'll be one of the first in line to stone you all if this stuff goes bad, but I guess you have enough of my attention to make me wanna see the result of this.
I say no because all players should have same gameplay elements, no matter when, no matter what. All Rights for the same, no matter if Pre-Order (Founders) or not. Especially since founders is resricted to PC but many new players will come to PS4 and XBone if also developed and that would be just unfair to those who cannot or were not able to join in founders. Unique characters, items, etc. is already far enough!
If something is the same power level, but fills a certain niche that can only be accessed via paying, is it PtW? I'm not sure. But it gets way, way to close for me to be comfortable with it. And I think that many players, entering the game and seeing entire vehicle types that they cannot access and will never be able to access, will be very turned off. Cosmetics and early access are plenty - there's no need to take the risk of founders-only gameplay mechanics. It might not be PtW, but it still might not be fair. EDIT: I thought about how one of my friends (a friendly but competitive guy), who is interested but probably won't get the founders pack, would react to me having a special bike that he could never get access to. And my anticipation is that he would say "wow that's some serious bullshit" and would have a very bad impression of the game right of the bat. Maybe even stop playing. That's a situation I'd like to avoid, and it wouldn't happen if the bonuses were cosmetic only.
