Progress and Retirement: Advancing through the game.

[dannypockets]

I feel like I must be missing something. As you progress with a character, the liberation points they generate go down, and they eventually become useless in terms of unlocking the map. So it seems to me that you need to keep retiring your characters to actually keep progressing through the game.

Am I missing something here? Its just that this game is really pretty tedious and unintersting until you gear up and can take on the longer, harder missions. But then the game forces you to give up all the cool gear and fun stuff you've acquired with a character and go back to the really tedious, grindy stuff that is not intersting. That just strikes me as bizaare game design.

Is this really the game play loop or am I missing something fundamental?

[Dauntless Duelist]

You should be able to take on the harder missions with less and less gear the more you play. But yes, this is the core gameplay loop.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Note that you can have four characters at once. You might keep a character whose inventory makes Stronghold Liberation missions reliably survivable, for instance; these are shared among all characters, and there are specific items (slipstreams and sidewinders, for instance) that make these much easier.

But yes, for liberating stations, you'll want to keep retiring and rotating in new blood.

[dannypockets]

Thank you.

It seems like a strange design choice to me.

There are weapons that come up occasionally for hundreds of credits. I saw one for 750.

To grind out that sort of money from a single character, I'd think that you'd have been making little to no liberation progress long before you could afford something that expensive.

So what would be the incentive for grinding for that kind of expensive tech?

[Dauntless Duelist]

Originally posted by dannypockets:

Thank you.

It seems like a strange design choice to me.

There are weapons that come up occasionally for hundreds of credits. I saw one for 750.

To grind out that sort of money from a single character, I'd think that you'd have been making little to no liberation progress long before you could afford something that expensive.

So what would be the incentive for grinding for that kind of expensive tech?

You can retire the character with gear and it can show up later. I guess it would make sense to keep a character with a lot of money to do that.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Originally posted by dannypockets:

There are weapons that come up occasionally for hundreds of credits. I saw one for 750.

To grind out that sort of money from a single character, I'd think that you'd have been making little to no liberation progress long before you could afford something that expensive.

Usually you wouldn't bother even trying to buy that. However, for characters that have as their personal mission "go steal a device", that can pay over 1000...

Still, you probably wouldn't want to buy one specific hyper-expensive device unless it were, say, a self-charging high-capacity slipstream or sidewinder. Even with 1000+ credits, you'd probably be better off blowing it on Mystery Crates for maybe 50-80 or so a pop. Sure, you'll get some orange-tier stuff that is not terribly useful, but you can also get self-charging items, and for 1000+ you'll quite possibly get multiple.

[obliviondoll]

Worth noting, the 750 or other insanely high pricetags are on "overpriced" items. The misc store has these show up as "special stock" when you visit a station, and they're always around triple the price of the normal version of that same item. The disadvantage is that they're stupidly expensive - often to the point of not being worth considering. The advantage is that they're often items you don't have unlocked for purchase at a normal store for a normal price - and are sometimes self-charging items, which you literally can't unlock for normal purchase.

Like the Toaster said, though, the prices are often ridiculous enough that gambling away 50 credits at a time is often more likely to pay off. But also as they mentioned, there are personal "steal the expensive thing to do something that I could probably pay for without stealing the thing given how well some of the other jobs pay in this line of work" missions which can give you a big enough chunk of money to buy things like that. Then have to settle your debt some other way.

[hotmatrixx]

the 'reason' for this design choice is that new characters will find different gear, meaning new loadouts for you to try or experiment with.

I said in an earlier thread, I play through a match and try to use onlyy gear that I find in a run... unless i need something specific for a mission, like a pistol to blow a window (altho most missions usually end up with plenty on the ground)

[Stefan]

Very strange game design to change chars very 3 missions, but it seams that is the way to go...

[Sir Motorsheep]

You're doing something wrong if you change your characters every 3 missions.

Also, playing with different characters is part of the game design. Don't look at it like other games where "new character" means you're starting over from scratch.
Because you aren't.

[dannypockets]

Yes you are literally starting from scratch aside from a bit of meta-progression that allows access to equipment in the store, and a tiny amount of starting dollars. The practical effect is to make you feel as though you're going back to square one... again.

Every three ships is a slight exageration, but you very quickly get to a point of zero progress or choosing to start with a new character.

It's a really weird game loop that is ultimately disatisfying. You can see what he was going for, but it just isn't executed well. It's meant to make progressioin more intersting but it just turns it into a tedious grind. Maybe he should have added loot box micortransaction...?

I got 30 hours out of this game, so I can't complain about value. But I got maybe half way through the map and I can't imagine I'll ever bother playing it again, and I would not recommend it to other people. Maybe a quarter of the time I was really enjoying myself with this game, but the rest was too tedious and frustrating to make up for it. The high points did not ultimately justify the low points.

But if you don't agree, good for you there.

[Aegix Drakan]

I think the main reason this is the core gameplay loop is that eventually you get so MUCH good gear that any mission becomes trivial and thus, kinda boring.

If you have a self-charging EMP grenade launcher, an armor piercing shotgun, Fiasco's Facepuncher and a rechargable SlipStream and a rechargable high capacity key cloner, you're unstoppable. XD

[dannypockets]

Originally posted by Aegix Drakan:

I think the main reason this is the core gameplay loop is that eventually you get so MUCH good gear that any mission becomes trivial and thus, kinda boring.

If you have a self-charging EMP grenade launcher, an armor piercing shotgun, Fiasco's Facepuncher and a rechargable SlipStream and a rechargable high capacity key cloner, you're unstoppable. XD

Sure.

But that's just bad level design.

[obliviondoll]

Originally posted by dannypockets:

Originally posted by Aegix Drakan:

I think the main reason this is the core gameplay loop is that eventually you get so MUCH good gear that any mission becomes trivial and thus, kinda boring.

If you have a self-charging EMP grenade launcher, an armor piercing shotgun, Fiasco's Facepuncher and a rechargable SlipStream and a rechargable high capacity key cloner, you're unstoppable. XD

Sure.

But that's just bad level design.

Unless you like the power fantasy of being able to get to that point and learning to be at that "unstoppable" level with less gear.

[dannypockets]

Originally posted by obliviondoll:

Unless you like the power fantasy of being able to get to that point and learning to be at that "unstoppable" level with less gear.

Right.

In a normal game, with better design, that would be called "hard" mode.

[obliviondoll]

Originally posted by dannypockets:

Originally posted by obliviondoll:

Unless you like the power fantasy of being able to get to that point and learning to be at that "unstoppable" level with less gear.

Right.

In a normal game, with better design, that would be called "hard" mode.

Ummm... wut?