blazemonger

Good to see the thread is taking a turn for the better btw.. we're talking $15 for 30 days, so it's more like $3.50 for a beer ..

At a monthly rate of $15 I'd venture to say that anyone considering having to pay a beer a week to play this game needs to take a long look in a mirror and probably just stay away. The mere attitude it takes to consider that means that these people will not be productive, contributing characters in game and probably just sit in a camp a few hours a week hoping to catch their loot for the day. Playing a game such as DU or EVE takes commitment and investment of time, an amount of time which in itself would easily justify the current asking price for a monthly sub.

Which is where you seem to not understand the economics of your suggestion.. they would not make money or much less at best.

But you are.. Unless you are saying those who can should pay full price, those who can't should have the option to get in cheaper. The argument that some, while the can afford the sub, may prefer to buy only time spend is just nonsense and shows you are reaching here. Simple truth of the matter is that playing (subscription based) games is a luxury some will not be able to afford. Another simple truth is that what you suggest is economically not viable, unless you suggest NQ tells their partner who provides server time that they should only pay for actual metered use of the servers and not for the fact they are using server space they are not actively using as their users are not logged on. Actually, if that was an option it would probably becomes so much more expensive that they would need to charge so much for 'time spent' sub it would basically be more affordable to just buy a monthly sub anyway for most and the rest would probably not be worth catering to anyway.

DAC should be in a safe place unless you _choose_ to carry it on you or have it stored in a construct you built at which time you open yourself up to the possibility of it dropping when attacked/destroyed/killed. That's how (full) loot works and if people can't take that they should buy a box of legos to build stuff. As a noob starting out in EVE I was foolish enough to buy a PLEX, redeem it at my home station and then fly it out to a major trade hub as I needed to sell it. No clue (yet as to the meaning of wardecs either ... On the way I got killed by a war target and the plex dropped for the other guy to pick it up.. That's a mistake many make and mostly only make once .. It's also absolutely and perfectly acceptable IMO (although there was a lot of noob salt and tears at the time). So yes, DAC should be lootable once you as the player make the choice to put it at risk by carrying it around. At the same time there has to be an option/mechanic to safely store DAC which is not redeemed yet, most obviously in your account and not accessible in game (until redeemed).

IMO the idea of paying for actual game time is not sustainable. Personally I really fail to see how this would be an issue with a sub cost of maybe $3.50 per week. Implementing a system such as this would probably cost more than it benefits the developer if at all.

IMO it's like this pre-Alpha -> Let's see in how many ways we can break things Alpha -> Let's see how what we broke got fixed and gets stable Beta -> we should be good now, let's start playing and apply polish and more stability. So I'd venture to say we're months away from actually playing the game

It's what happens in EVE with the skins.. Although PLEX was split to allow for it to be used for micro-transactions. PLEX can be used for in game purposes only when it is not located in the 'PLEX vault' which IMO a good way of working this. To use PLEX for buying ship skins, clothing or other trinkets the amount of PLEX needed must actually be available in the vault. This mechanic IMO provides a good separation between in game use and game related use outside of the game economy. Obviously by buying stuff in the store you do bring those into the game as assets.

DAC should be lootable when a person is carrying them on him or stores them in a destroyable ship or structure from which other materials/modules can be looted as well. I agree with an earlier post that the system currently in place for PLEX in EVE is good (even though the implementation is not that great), one should be able to 'bank' the DAC in a safe location from where you would need to withdraw it to use in game (at which time it becomes an in game asset and should be lootable). You should still be able to use DAC to get game time or (when implemented) use them for transactions from a store not linked to the in game economy.

pm sent..

The argument was made to allow only paying for time spent.. Not paying the full monthly sub as you may/would not fully use it. I'd say pretty much sums it up..

Next up, Student body expects big discount on DU subscription to allow their 'poor members' to also be able to play the game. Bottom line here is simple, you either pay the sub or put in the effort to be able to generate in game wealth to the point where you do not need to. And make no mistake about it, buying play time with in-game currency will always be more expensive (when translated to $$) once the in game market starts doing it's job. You simply can not claim a right to play a game because the economics in your region would make doing so much more expensive than elsewhere. NQ will budget cost and pay salaries based on where they are to get the people and services they need, not say 'we only pay you half average as we need to be able to have people living in X buy the sub as well' You do not walk into a bakery expecting to be able to pay for three slices of bread at a time as you only eat that much per day. You buy the loaf and it will maybe sometimes go stale..

Currently there is only 1 first session announced for the pre-alpha test phase. You really should not have the idea you will be able to 'play' the game. This phase will be a lot of downtime, crashes, slowness, lag, bugs, freezes and more nasty stuff, you need to expect to have interruptions. Also I'm not sure where you get he idea they will open up the servers for a few hours on one day per month, can you share a source for that as this says nothing to that effect? Based on how this first session goes, more (frequent) time-slots will (likely) be made available following a patch/fixes round to the point where (I expect) NQ is confident to have access to the servers up 24/7. I doubt it has anything to do with cost and everything with being sure that the servers function and scale as intended.

There will probably be wipes and issues through Alpha and possibly into beta so that will be a while. I fully intent to start playing how I intend to on release to gain both experience and be able to offer suggestions and report issues as I go along.. That is the whole point of this phase, not to stay in the safe zone and build ships only to never use them..

That is not the point of my response.

Raising a question/concern is not the issue here.

So, since in your opinion DU is P2W and as you state you want your game to not be P2W, how are you here when the mechanic of DACs has been established and know for a long time and you can really only have come into the game while knowing this, especially when DACs are part of the backers 'rewards'? Oh.. wait, you are not a backer. So again, why are you here exactly? As I see it you are only here to argue your (IMO) nonsense opinion for the sake of argument as you claim there's (plenty) of games that do not offer what you consider to be P2W. You know what, there's a word for the likes of yourself and it generally is pointless to feed the likes of you so I'll just leave it at that.

^^ This.. Trading in EVE is not understood by the vast majority of players. It is an excellent way to make huge amounts of ISK when done right. For me, my station traders make enough ISK to fund all my operations in EVE with minimal effort although most of them pay for themselves anyway. That said, I am scaling down in that game as I feel DU is (for me) a much better package as a game and what it offers..

perfect then.. good initiative, was just asking..

I'd make sure NQ is good with this. The posted FAQ would seem to indicate they are not by default.

I think the points raised make perfect sense and drive home the fact this is a TEST phase. Frankly, I'd be surprised if uptime for the first session is more than 6 hours total.. but it will be a fun 6 hours for sure!

The notion that PLEX or DAC are Pay2Win mechanics are nonsense. Neither of these will buy you anything in game that will really advance your ability to progress any faster and by the time it would you will probably have enough in game wealth to buy what ever you want anyway. In EVE, while you can use PLEX to buy injectors to sit in a Titan day one of you playing, you won't be able to use or apply what you gain effectively. In EVE, and I would certainly expect in DU, the _experience_ you gain through playing the game at a normal pace will _always_ have more impact. I have actually tested this with someone who made the claim of Pay2Win in EVE. I gave him the injectors to skill up and PLEX to omega his new account. He injected into a t2 exploration frigate with full T2 fit while I created a new alpha and started from scratch. Once I had my T1 exploration frigate we went to null space and started exploration, finding relic sites. After 5 hours he had died three times, lost his loot every time and gave up, he took (and lost) a total of about 350M from sites while flying (and losing) 200M ships. I had not died once, had close to 1.2B ISK in my cargo hold and came out of Null in one piece in my 15M ISK Heron. Similar experiments were done where experienced PVP players in T1 alpha toons would take on 'bought' beginners in T2 fits.. the experience would destroy the bought skills nearly always. No, buying skill does not make you 'win' at a sandbox game like EVE or DU. Gaining experience will.

lol.. 20? I have a very decent server running and it barfs when we'e co-op building with 4 players with all sorts of weird things happening.. And it's always fun to take a seat at the bridge, then get up and find yourself outside the ship.. Or try using a jump drive while not in a seat ..Poof.. there goes your ship while you stay behind adrift in space .. lol.. It's been worse though.. much worse.. And doing a daily restart of the server would generally not be a bad idea and is basically common practice (I would expect DU to do the same).

Something here does not add up..

Can we keep politics out of this please..