Russ Bullock, on 18 September 2014 - 08:14 PM, said:
Here is my take on this subject being heavily discussed. In case your unaware the summary is that we have plenty of IS loyalists who either missed the chance or chose not to buy a Legendary founders or Phoenix overlord package. Now to qualify for the King Crab their only remaining option is to buy either a Masakari or Man O War package. But of course they are IS loyalists so this option is understandably not much of an option at all.
Here are a few hard stops as I see it:
Although there were many ways we could have gone about the Customer appreciation program and the criteria we set for each of the various rewards. The fact is we launched it under the requirements that we did and many people have already made significant buying decisions based on that information so I don't think it would be fair to adjust that criteria at this point.
Next on to the Foundes and Phoenix programs, I have read the threads and although there is some support in both cases there is also I believe enough players that are against the prospect that it would be unfair of Piranha to bring those programs back.
Trust me bringing back the Founders or Phoenix program would be by far the easiest option for Piranha to provide, however I don't feel we have the complete support we would need to do so. Which means that IF we were to provide a new IS package it would need to be a NEW program.
If we look at the price points of the four qualifying packages they go from 120, 80, 240 and 120. Therefore the lowest price point was the Phoenix Overlord package and with that in mind I think any new program would at least need to match the 80$ package level. Also Piranha has never charged for one of these programs at these dollar amounts unless the value of the packages were high and the biggest part of that value was in the fact the chassis were all new.
So I think if we were to offer a package for IS players to get in order to qualify for the King Crab I think it would need to be a new 80$ package with new IS chassis.
I want to hear your thoughts now on this, because it takes significant resources to develop one of these packages and we would need to have some idea on what the support level would be, how many would be interested?
How about an $80 "prototype" package? many of us are waiting for mechs right on the edge of 3055 and not 100% in the current time frame, but would HAVE to have been already in prototype stage in order to make a 3055 production schedule (some military vehicles can remain in testing for over a decade before production).
An example would be:
Bushwacker (available in 3049, but plagued with electronic problems until the clan invasion) This is a very popular choice
Battle Hawk (Light mech with only 1 variant)
Apollo (Medium mech with plenty of variants)
Albatross (assault mech)
Colossus (assault mech)
Flashfire (light)
Cerberus (Assault)
Anvil (Heavy mech with ECM and lots of variants)
Black Hawk-KU (IS version of the black hawk)
The idea is to add the proper amount of mechs, as a pack with 4 chassis is expected to have 12 total mechs delivered. In this case, you could spread that out where there is only 1 variant available. For example, if there is are 2 chassis with only 1 variant, and 2 chassis with 6 variants, including all 4 chassis could still result in 12 total mechs.
Otherwise, you could potentially make make 6 chassis with 2 variants each (wider variety without the ability to fully elite them. They are prototypes, afterall).
So there are many ways to do this, and it could be released as a "prototype package" for the IS push against clan.
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