Quanta to Talent points conversion

[AnubisInvictus]

As the title suggests, the idea is giving us the option to convert any spare quanta we have to talent points. This helps new players catch up with old ones, and adds a new way to earn talent points that isn't waiting or earning insignificant points from achievements. Also encourages more logins and playtime to earn quanta for talents so players could then reinvest those talents into making more quanta.
It could be either a static conversion cost or an exponential curve:
Static would have the up and downside of old players easily getting points from their wealth of quanta compared to newer ones, however that's already solved with talents increasing 5 times in cost with each tier, and new players can always resort to waiting for a short while, earn some quanta and easily reinvest in things they need at low tiers.
Exponential curve is so that it becomes more expensive the more points a player already has. Like it could start at 10 quanta = 1 talent point up to 1 million talent points, then 100:1 at 10 million, 1000:1 at 100 million, etc. However people with alt accounts might benefit from trading quanta across accounts to easily level talents but it helps and favors new players more than static.
Of course numbers can be changed and balanced, but they should be set high at the start and later decrease as needed so no full talent wipe is needed in the future. Even if they're always set high, its great to have options.

[CoyoteNZ]

That just lets the hard core players with millions/billions develop even faster than the casual players. 

 

 Me personally I like systems where talents improve with usage, so the PvP guy gets better at weapons, the Pilot chick gets better at flying, and the crazy person who spends all session in his factory gets better st that.

[AnubisInvictus]

32 minutes ago, CoyoteNZ said:

That just lets the hard core players with millions/billions develop even faster than the casual players.

Exponential curve is an option to counter that by making it so much more expensive at some point it becomes unrealistic and a bad idea to do so. Also, hardcore players can already make alt accounts to multiply their talents gain speed and spread the load.
 

32 minutes ago, CoyoteNZ said:

 Me personally I like systems where talents improve with usage, so the PvP guy gets better at weapons, the Pilot chick gets better at flying, and the crazy person who spends all session in his factory gets better st that.

But how would you fairly quantify that? Someone PvPing could shoot at a target dummy ship to get damage up or shoot weapons wastefully. Piloting, just set an autopilot on a high efficiency ship and fly around. Factories? I can't think of anything. These could be abused much easier than a quanta to talent system imo.

[CoyoteNZ]

Shooting target dummies is how you get better at weapons in real life.

 

Repeated landing and taking off (often just touch and go, do a circuit and repeat) is how you get better at piloting. If somebody does that a lot in autopilot does it really matter, because it means that’s how they fly anyhow.

 

For factories really I would prefer schematics somehow came into production of lower items rather than just being rich. 

[AnubisInvictus]

That would be a massive rework that would probably have tree exclusive points instead of the current system, but it still allows old players that invested into something a long time ago to be ahead depending on balance. Catching up in one niche is possible after a very very long time of constant grinding, but then that's more boring grind that NQ has been trying to remove like when we look at mining. Something like mining with the units will become so hard to catch up on too it'd basically be the current system but for just the units.

[Lethys]

Ah yes, p2w ftw i guess. Terrible idea

[AnubisInvictus]

If we're talking p2w, I would talk about the game rewarding people for having money to buy and maintain alt accounts. They get their talent earning speed multiplied while not playing the game, and people who don't do the same are at a disadvantage. Put personal skills on main, put on deploy and factory talents on alts. At least this idea puts everyone on more even ground and rewards people for playing, while also giving people the chance to catch up to people who, in the future, will be years ahead of them in talents. Even now any new player who happens upon the game and might be interested, could be turned off from the game if they have no way to ever reach the level of older players. Keep the current talent queuing, but also have a quanta-to-boost option.

[CoyoteNZ]

But who wants to play a game when there is no return of your investment. If a new player can catch a player who has been playing for a year it is sad.

 

Personally I think the limit ofm5 is the problem. Because of that long term players just get good at everything in their field, as once they have reached 5/5 they can’t get any better so start researching something else.

 

Back in the days of JC and his videos he said maybe you want to be the best at making screws. The problem is you can’t. Once you have 5/5 in the few talents required to make screws, you can’t get any better st it. Your not the best as every other industrialist will probably be the same. If the 5/5 limit was removed, maybe you could be the best, you could keep training. Sure each advancement would be smaller and smaller, but it’s nolonger a get tom5/5 and move on. Then all of a sudden new players actually can be compatible by what they chose; and one can’t ever be the best ever at industry, as every part of it has no iron celling.

[Taelessael]

Allowing players to boost their skills directly with quanta is a terrible idea, it wont fix the disparity in talent points between new and old, just increase it when the players that have had the option to harvest now patched loopholes for cash can suddenly burn their near infinite wealth to skill up a bit.