No, I'm changing my mind, but I've been continuing to think about the state of the game and what it should look like for launch. (Or at least what *I* feel it should look like at launch). Bear in mind that I DO have limited playtime in game so I may change my opinion on things as I play more or even as game development continues and changes are made. The developers may see things differently than me, and I have no issue with that; they're making the game, not me. What I'm putting down here are my thoughts based on the flaws I see in the current design, some of these flaws may be as much a result of incomplete systems or already being addressed and I just haven't seen. I will be the first to admit that I have not been following development closely and I haven't gone and poured over the planned features and roadmap aside from a quick glance at what's planned for the next couple of updates. Even then I know that on those lists they don't always mention QOL changes as they aren't usually considered 'new features' or major iterations.
First thing I would go into would normally be Inventory. The present personal inventory system can be a little confusing, but I'm not going to go into it too much right now as I do know that they are planning an overhaul to the inventory system so I don't want to dive too much into that until I see the revisions coming and see what, if any, of the flaws I see have been addressed. So instead, I'm going to move to my next point of though, information. Specifically, the information displayed (or in this case not displayed) when buying items, ships, etc.
I'm going to focus mainly on ships for a moment, as it is definitely an area where the game, as it stands, doesn't provide enough information when you're at the terminal to rent or buy a ship. Details such as fuel capacity, hardpoints / weapons, cargo space, storage capacity (personal storage as opposed to cargo) should all be clearly visible when choosing a ship. I guess they figure that since you can't compare ships directly in game (I can't easily look at the RSI Light Freighter, and the Misc Light Freighter to compare price, style, and features) so they assume that I'm going to make that decision via the wiki or external sources. But here is the thing ... I'm old school, if I have to go outside the game for information like that you failed; you failed in design and implementation. Not showing me in game where 'x' resource spawns, THAT is exploration and part of gameplay, not knowing the cargo space on a ship that I'm considering buying (or renting) is dumb. ANY modern car dealer (or rental company) has that kind of information available in terms of passenger ratings and, at least roughly, how much trunk space a vehicle has. Particularly if that is the expected main function of a vehicle.
The inability to easily compare the two ships in the example above, likewise, highlights another failing of the shopping system in general. Namely, be it armor, personal weapons, ship components, or ships, I can only see the inventory of the shop that I'm standing at right now. If I want to compare with a different store or location (which may have different items even if they're the same name store) I have to look at what information I am given about the item, write it down, and then travel to a different station, or city, to look at the other stock, or even to find what I'm looking for if I'm looking for something specific. Again, this is solved outside of game, but I shouldn't need to rely on outside information while I'm playing the game. It is both a hassle AND immersion breaking which is counter to why this was theoretically set up like this to start with.
My proposal here, as I mentioned in the last post, would be to have a central shopping hub at each station, or even better on your MobiGlass (tablet) as that's your window to the world anyway. There you could choose category and then browse the shops in that category. Information would include where the item is currently (what station), and prices would reflect, let's say a 15% surcharge, and you can either go to the station indicated to pick it up, OR pay a 'shipping' fee and wait for it to be delivered to the station of your choice. That shipping fee (and time) would be based on the distance from where the item is in stock and the chosen location. This keeps the store feel, but ads in something we've all become accustomed to ... shopping on the internet. In essence I can compare items quickly and easily in game (including costs) and I can either choose to pay the convenience charge, plus shipping, to get it delivered, or fly to the location and save some money. This could also tie into a player to player sold economy very easily allowing people to sell loot or used gear on the market to other players, and if player manufacturing or crafting is added (as is planned) a way for the manufactured items to go to a player market further developing a dynamic player economy.
Continuing on this, each station, or specific hub stations and the city stations at least, would have an "Exchange" shop (the name could be consistent across all stations or unique for each, however you feel fits into the theme better) where people would post their items for sale. Once posted the item would be in the Exchange's storage and available for purchase at the exchange like any other shop, and like any other shop it would be listed on the central shopping app. Purchase of this would be with the same rules as above, 15% markup on the shopping app plus shipping and time to get the item from the station it's at to where the purchaser wants it. [I should note as well that the purchaser can choose to buy in the app at the markup but then go pick it up themselves by having it delivered to their inventory at the station that the item is already at. Thus, saving the delivery charge and going to get it themselves rather than wait on a timer.]
Even if most people don't buy through the central shopping app described above it would be a nice way to browse stock and know where to go to find what you're looking for rather than have to rely on a 3rd party website or app where the information has the possibility of falling out of date if not maintained or is reliant on an .api to tie into the information from the server or the game itself (which can also have technical issues if changes or updates break the system.) And, if people DO use the central purchasing and delivery, then those fees become additional money sinks to pull money out of the economy, which is one of my next points.
Economy, from my limited experience right now there isn't one. Players run missions for NPC entities, players get paid, missions pay well more than expenses (which should be the way it works) so player wallets are ever expanding. Early in the game this is fine, players will be buying and upgrading ships, armor, weapons, etc, but eventually players will reach the point where they have the ship and gear that they want, food and fuel are then their only expenses and (again I'm still new so maybe there's more later that I haven't seen) when a basic hauling contract for 6 SCU (something many starter ships can easily haul) often pays 35-45k .... quantum fuel will likely run 1.5k or less and hydrogen fuel use on such a run will likely be negligible. Food and drink for the time required maybe another 20 creds so net on the run of, let's say for easy numbers, 33-43k credits, and (barring server issues or bugs) likely take 15 minutes. A ship that can hold more, can, if they can find contracts originating in the same port and delivering to the same ports or at least with some overlap can make considerably more than that even with 'small' haulling missions. (Last night I did 2 contracts picking up at the same port, one delivering to 2 stations, one delivering to 3, but 2 were the same as the other contract. Total delivery time was under 20 minutes and the two contracts totalled over 120k and I spent less than 1k in quantum fuel.) With a little work picking and planning runs, I have no doubt I could haul for 1M an hour or so.
As I said, early game that's fine, later in the game that can become a problem. There are a lot of things that can help in this regard. Actual housing (or at least our own rooms to decorate, you have to be a little careful here if you put an upkeep cost on these as you don't want to make people feel that keeping their apartment in a game has become a job. It does, however, allow not only for a money sink rent due at the first of the month, but apartment is suspended if you don't pay until you pay (similar to an impounded ship) the fee doesn't go up, so if I don't play for 6 months when I come back I just make my rent payment and I have access to my place again. Now these will likely have to be instanced with a few entrances in game. You could also maybe have different locations with different monthly costs in each city, or maybe even some of the stations, with more expensive apartments having more space, better views, and the like.
This is something that any RP community that you develop will love, and it's often surprisingly popular with the general gaming population as well. The urge to take a space and make it yours runs very deep with people in general. Don't believe me, go to nearly any office where people sit at the same desk every day (and don't share that desk with others) and for any employee that is there for any reasonable length of time, you will start finding personal items, pictures, figures, knick-knacks. Maybe just a pen or small pen holder with their favorite sports team logo, but there will usually be something there that marks it as their desk.
This got me thinking about insurance as it stands now. Now I know this is likely something that they're still working on and working out. So I'm going to just throw out some thoughts I had in trying to think of ways to sink money from the economy while still letting the new player not get drowned in it. As things stand now all ships are insured and filing a claim results in a 'retrieval' time depending on the ship. The player can pay to 'expedite' that delivery. So let's call the current version of that Teir 1 insurance and say it has a fee of 5% of the ship value, and lasts for 1 claim before needing to be renewed. Any ship purchased with in-game credits has Teir 1 insurance by default (until the first claim). Teir 0 (or default) insurance is automatically applied to any ship that does not currently have an active insurance policy, and Teir 2 (and maybe 3) insurance can be purchased for higher fees (say 10 and 15% of ship value for 1 claim) that have automatically reduced retrieval times.
[NOTE - the following numbers are made up for an example, they do not directly pertain to any ship in the game] So a 2 million credit ship at Tier 1 would cost 100,000 credits (to re-insure) have a wait time of 9 minutes on a claim. Teir 2 insurance would be 200,000 to insure for the next claim but would have a wait time of 4.5 minutes (tier 3 would then be 300,000 with a wait time of 2.25 minutes) ... a default or Tier 0 policy (no insurance) would cost nothing but have a base wait time of 18 minutes. Each of these could then pay for expediting fees to shorten those wait times as currently stands.
Now for ships purchased through the pledge store (thus for real money) those would have automatic Teir 1 always as default, but owners could still choose to pay for a higher insurance plan to get the shortened retrieval time.
This is a rough idea and I'm sure that there are tweaks that would need to happen to make it viable (cost vs time for example IE with the numbers above it would likely be cheaper to not insure but pay the expedite fee), but all of that could easily be tweaked within the system but the concept itself still hold.
The final thing that I can think of that I would like to see added that would be reasonably simple to do (I mean all of the info is in the system it's just not being displayed to the player anywhere) is an account ledger. Yes, it's me, I love spreadsheet simulators, as things stand, I can see my balance on my MobiGlass, and that's fine, but I would really like to be able to see my purchases and mission payments listed out like an account statement. There is a banking app ... but currently all it seems to be for is transferring credits to friends, it doesn't actually seem to have my banking information.
One other last thing, and I know these are planned so I'm not going to go into too much here, but organizations (guilds, corporations, or however you care to call them) are a MMO staple (and let's face it, this IS an MMO) so I'd like to see these in sooner rather than later, and I'd like them to be more than a chat channel, (shared space, hangers, item storage, and the like with access controls based on rank or permissions within the organization). I believe that I saw that there were plans that a person can belong to multiple organizations so that may complicate things, but realistically with modern systems that should be manageable. The Organization is that the heart of MMO community and (in my opinion at least) is vital. I do want to see what their plan is for this aspect of the game as it can be a major factor in the overall community.
