2 replies to this topic

[Roland]

Ok, so I think most folks agree that Seismic is kind of game breaking right now, given that it lets you know whenever anyone is even remotely close to you.

Putting all of that aside though, there is an issue here which I think is illustrative of a mistake in design which will tend to be problematic.

First, given the ultimate necessity of the seismic sensor due to the massive situational awareness buff it gives compared to mechs without it, this can become problematic for new players who don't have access to it. Not only do you need a large amount of GXP to unlock it, but it costs 6 million CBills. Trivial for long time players, but certainly not so for new players. Thus, you're adding in something which actually exacerbates the disparity in effectiveness between veterans and new players.

Second, the fact that the thing costs 6 million cbills is just a pain. It's a large enough chunk of change that many folks aren't going to just buy one for every mech. That's the price of a huge XL engine. While some of us have mountains of cash and can just buy everything we want, lots of folks don't.

This means that for most of those folks, you're adding an inconvenience. Now, this generally is fine in a F2P game... But the size of that cost, given that it's on par with an entire mech chassis, is kind of over the top. It means that folks are going to likely just buy one, and keep swapping it back and forth between mechs. At this point, it ends up just being an annoyance. It's not fun. It adds nothing to the game. It's just another extra step that folks need to clear to get to the fun. They can skip it, but again, given the massive benefit the module provides, they are putting themselves at a huge disadvantage.

Generally, I think all of the modules kind of fall into this category.

If I spend a tn of GXP to unlock a module, it's kind of silly for the CB cost to be so freaking immense. It results in this situation where I have to keep swaping modules back and forth between my mechs, because I don't want to buy a million of them... certainly not at 6 million a piece. If the cost were closer to 200k, or even 500k? Then that'd be cool. But at 6 million, it ends up just being an annoyance.

That annoyance is amplified when I get online and then have to remember where the hell I left one of my modules... I need to go flip through a ton of mechs until I can see the one where I've installed it, open up its module config tab, unequip it, then open up the mech I want to drive and load it on.

Please consider modifying this whole deal, PGI. It's one of those barriers to fun that kind of makes the process of actually getting into the game clunky.

[Angel of Annihilation]

The whole point of any game is progression. 15000 GXP and 6 million C-bill per mech if you don't want to have to unequip and reequip every time you change mechs is not trival, it takes time to aquire all that which means you have to invest hours of gameplay. Having access to modules is the reward for that.

[Roland]

It's not fun, Viktor. It's purely an annoyance. I'm not gonna spend 6 million CB's for every module on each of my 45+ mechs.

Thus, it's purely forcing me to click through the clunky interface every time I change the mech I'm playing.

Things which are purely annoying are not good for the game.