something to spend your minerals, gasses or liquids on.
equipment crafting and repairing - naturally
thumpers and refineries - the moneymaking stuff
crafting station upgrades and blueprint designing?
cosmetics
consumables
“dungeon keys” - probes to find a mission, specialized thumpers and consumables - whatever gets used up just for attempting some mission
base building and maintenance - doesn’t have to be free-form building. just a progress bar until the next building appears would be great already
minigames? piloting or mining competition, bug racing, dinosaur battles betting. the game takes part of resources to “organize” an event
some totally random stuff? like throwing money at global research without any goals to see what it could reveal next, unpacking crumpled supply crates to see if there are any curiosities inside, cutting into some ancient vaults for a chance to find some to research, donating to chemists to get one of the random buffs that override each other.
fun consumables - fireworks, holograms, music boxes, colored glowsticks
I like the idea of having to spend resources to open a random crate without knowing what’s inside. Yeah, technically a lootbox, but for in-game resources. Also fun consumables is something that would definitely be nice to add
Temporary buffs and such perhaps.
What do you people think about having to craft ammunition while having very small amount of free ammo refill stations? I feel like ammunition could be a good resource sink for low-tier materials, which always end up stockpiling in everyone’s inventory and becoming almost worthless.
crafting or buying - yeah, sure. lots of ammo stations in the starting areas, quickly diminishing in quantity further away from it.
or there could be different ammo types - doesn’t matter if it’s upgrades, sidegrades or both - that can only be crafted. so a player is never left without ammo, but doing harder content with “free” ammo will be problematic.
don’t know if first or second option is better. second option is safer, but may make a palyer think the slow kill speed is intended.
in any case, i believe a player needs to be explicitly told about printing their own bullets and have an easy way to do that. clicking through several menus, then scrolling throguh a list is just not acceptable for something so basic. maybe there could be limited printers - press one button to configure, press another to print a premade order of chosen quantity and quality. or just one button to print one pack (or several - depending on size) if there are no quality and type options.
I like ideas from the first post and dislike lootboxes and craftable bullets, at least with bullet consumable mechanics. Let me explain. I do not like lootboxes because there’s always a feel the gane is cheating and give you less chance that is written. As for consumable bullets - this sounds like soulshots/spiritshots in Lineage - you just need to always buy it, like a routine. Consumable bullets may look like charging weapon with energy - spending global one or at charge station. The spending mechanics is the same, but feels more lore. Something like: I fight a lot, need to made a maintaince. I go to base, charge a weapon, repair frame - and continue.
As for random buffs - that may be smth like experimental laboratory which can randomly give you a positive or positive + negative buff, ex.:
+runspeed
+skilldmg
+jetpacktime
+attack -runspeed
+jetpack +skill_cooldown
Hey, we have had several discussions on resource allocation and many if not all of these have been brought up. I am glad to see others thinking along the same lines.
Of course.
There are interesting posabilities… I have some ideas, but this stuff will be a ways away.
This stuff is interesting, I know we plan on having special missions, but I do not think we have discussed any requirement for a key that must be bought or crafted. There’s been an idea for ‘keys’ that must be unlocked or earned though, this is an idea.
Minigames, I want to say yes, but I can only say probably.
Totally random stuff, also probably. In reality, global research is something I like, it’s a collaborative task, people will need to work together, and I like that. Supply crates, how do you mean? Like find them on a mission and have to open them, or like a daily crate?
This is possible, although I am generally not a fan of repeatedly purchasing/crafting absolute required items like ammo in a shooter, it just feels unnecessary. But if it were optional, like having frames that are capable of almost entirely relying on abilities, then buying ammo would essentially be no different from purchasing/crafting ability mods and it would make since.
To extend on this, if the player has to buy ammo for themselves then wouldn’t they have to buy ammo for turret abilities? How inconvenient would that be? How expensive would that be? Yes, I think it may be possible to balance it out, but I believe it would not be worth it.
This is 100% accurate either way. We need good tutorials.
This is so accurate it is not even funny. If games are not going to work by the odds they display then why post them? Honestly if we ever do have loot boxes of any kind: paid, earned, bought in-game, etc. I either would not put the odds or make the odds slightly in favor of the player, like if the post odds of 10% Legendary, 50% Rare, 40% Common, I would like the real odds to be skewed more like 15-45-40 or 15-50-35, you know something like that. Perception is reality and people can not always perceive the bigger picture so I would at least try to put things in their favor a bit. At any rate, we have not made a final decision on “loot boxes” as far as I can remember.
about the feeling of being cheated by actual lootboxes - i never paid for any and never cared about exact drop rates, so never experienced the feeling either
a random bonus stat to a weapon or an armor but you can always reroll using resources.
ea. Crit chance +4% but you want to try your luck and reroll to get +5% or more crit chance. ofc you could lose and get less then 4%.
Could fit in a RTS framework to expand the narrative of the world inside the melding pushing back against the community of players working together expanding the world in getting better access to new or exotic resources/mission’s/outposts/biomes/worldevent’s. which in turn continues to buildup a perpetual resource sink to progress your character/game world/Narrative/exotic’s/crafting/bases/foundry/Greater faction reveal and realtime pushback. This gives individuals new goals and incentive to work with others as a team later becoming sizable platoons for big events.
This should be refined form of contribution for the RTS framework. Say a global Buff for the area/specific resource/Effect against the melding for a time/Build up for an item to attempt in pushing for a permeant residence in a new area of the melding.
I thinking this more of a instance for reward’s.(EDIT) I take this back I guess like game new world. People can just travel in open world to the active location and join the party raid who ever open it.
I’m thinking foundries for all the players for mat’s the crafting stations can be left alone as is. blueprint’s on the other hand how far would you want it to go Vehicle/jumpads/healthdrops/ammoinfusions/gliders/thumpers/scuba equipment as a start?
You mean foundries like a station where you can research/create different kinds of blueprints with different product stats which are then used for crafting?
No more like a further conversion of resources to use in research/blueprints making it a denominator in the grind to progress. but this might put people off unless there are way’s to improve this aspect when working together out in the game world. the foundries could house all three Menu’s of course it’s not a bad way to go. using the Foundries to apply different stats to resources sounds interesting for additional variables to a base stat of the product depending how the player improved temporarily the station. But this maybe too expensive, time consuming, and could slow down the games performance. But a resource sink nonetheless. personal progress, teamwork , world community working together improving and expand the game world content.
For late game this may be something people will play to do as long as it enables them to play extreme fun PVE builds the frame they grinded for I suppose.