EGG, on 21 November 2014 - 07:52 AM, said:
These threads probably need to be raised/discussed from the point of "do you/we want an economy in CW", rather than "do you/we want RnR back" or the equally bad "do we want RnR 2.0".
RnR is a damaged brand and very few people are going to buy into the idea based on it's last time around. People can understand the concept of some form of economy for CW. Buy some things. Sell some things. Maybe your dropship can only carry so much ammo to a fight. Who knows. But a CW-based economy sounds better in a "hasn't yet been defined" kind of way than RnR.
What exactly it would entail is another matter.
The problem with any economy in a game such as this is that there are rather few ways to really make it work.
1) Economics is realistic, but it's not fun. Look at various wars throughout history. Economics played a big part in winning many of them. WW2 comes to mind, for example. So, there is a "realistic" basis for all this, but is it fun? I think those on the losing side economically would say "no" to that. Slowly being ground down, match by match, until you can't afford to play the game effectively? Nah... pass...
2) The rest of the game is not realistic. Now, sure, it's a game - and one with big, stompy robots - so realism, on some level, is out the door already, but that's not what I'm getting at. In "real" wars, you don't end up with 1 disconnect, and 1 guy piloting an assault mech who deals only 80 damage and dies... and now that you were on the team missing 2 players, you die and end up paying through the nose to repair your mech thanks to a "realistic" economic model. Cute, but "reality" also would have prohibited the disconnect and the total amateur from piloting the assault mech. To point out realistic examples, navies don't hand over aircraft carriers to guys who can barely pilot a motor boat, but that's exactly the type of thing that happens all the time in this game.
Another example is the match itself. No real wars are fought between balanced teams in death-match mode. Real wars have unbalanced forces (in most cases) and the ability to advance and retreat. But, like most such on-line games, you can't retreat if your team is losing. No, you must stick around and be destroyed, which is rather unrealistic... and now we're going to punish you "realistically" for dying without a real choice?
Long-story short, it seems goofy to demand punishment for: bold play, mistakes, bad teams, bad luck, etc. based on "economic realism" when such realism is not fun and is missing from the rest of the game... because it's a game, not war simulation.
Edited by oldradagast, 21 November 2014 - 09:03 AM.