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Lycus -> RE: Increase credits gain (2/9/2013 16:54:25)
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Just a few points on this:
Firstly, as a general statement, there are two things that make this game work and allow it to run; in-game currency being purchased and people spending time to play the game. Up to Omega, for the most part, we tried to reward those who played a lot, but did not pay, but with the Varium gap it was very hard to do so. Now in Omega, the gap is much, much smaller and Non-Varium players can get almost every single item in the game/feature in the game, Varium becoming a time saver and therefore we have to set credit prices at a price that means people have to earn through quite a bit of time playing.
We allowed this in multiple ways, NPCs are now unlimited, you can earn as many credits as you want off them, it just takes time! NPCs reward a lot of credits. We have halfed the price of retraining as well as item re-stat costs as of yesterdays patch and as a bonus, allowed Non-Varium players access to almost every item in the game, with a few exceptions.
I have used this analogy before and I personally feel this reflects this very well:
I am sure most of you have played a Pokemon game in your lifetime, those who have will know that when you start the game and progress through the game, you have two choices: Invest time into training in the wilds to get your Pokemon up to as higher level as possibly, making beating trainers and gym leaders easier, giving you money to purchase potions etc.; or you can simply go full in and try to just ride through the game in as little time as possible going from one gym leader to the next, usually getting annoyed by the random wild battles and running. With the first style I mentioned, you get the strongest Pokemon, the strongest moves, the revives and potions needed to survive in battle. However in the latter scenario, you struggle to keep up with the growing power of trainers and gym leaders, end up trying to depend on super-effective moves instead of level advantage, you may earn enough for potions, revives and pokeballs by doing this, but you'd always struggle through the gyms and trainers, since your pokemon would almost always be the same or lower level than their's. All this is despite the fact that Wild pokemon give you less exp and less credits than trainers, but the time you invest is what gives you the huge advantage.
Now you may be wondering why I'm going on about Pokemon, however ED is very much the same concept now. You can plow on through trying to simply win PvPs, do as minimal NPCing as possible, because it gets tedious and is not as fun, but at the same time, you will not have enough to gain the top level stuff nor purchase everything you want, possibly not even enough to retrain or restat. Or you can invest that extra bit of time to farm NPCs, despite the fact it gives less than players, it allows you to get stronger with time, while not effecting your win record, and is there as an unlimited source of credits, just like the wild pokemon in Pokemon.
If we made it too easy to gain enough credits to purchase everything, no one would purchase Varium and the game would be forced to shut down. So we have to create a balance between Varium and the time it takes to gain the credits to purchase something. May be we could do with changing some of the credit costs or rewards, Omega has only just been released this past week, we are still going over everything and changing things where needed - however bare in mind that time spent online helps us just as much as people purchase Varium, so we are encouraging people to make the choice, time or money, the two things we NEED to keep the game running. We felt the old structure put too much pressure on people to pay, so now we feel it is best to give a fair option! NPC credit rewards are dependent on the level difference between yourself and the NPC in question, so if you want more credits, try to find a build that works for an NPC higher level than you, it may help things go faster :) that is the other thing, builds save time, if you find a fast farming build, you will possibly save more time, depending on how many credits it takes to find a build that works!
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