Ok, I understand some ship progression is unavoidable but I really hope that as this game develops, frontier sees the advantages of steering away from a progression based model
For one thing, it's not entirely realistic and turns the game into a huge grind. As the game currently stands it's pretty much an algorithm based on how much money you have and how much you need to invest in commodities that determines EXACTLY what ship you are/should be flying. This is boring and makes for the feeling that basically, you just earn more credits and buy the next ship on the ladder. Even the sense that some ships are role specific is mostly an illusion as most of the large combat ships still have more cargo capabilities than the smaller cargo ships. Pretty much, if you could afford an anaconda, it seems like there'd be little reason to fly anything else.
But there's another way to go and I hope frontier starts to do it. Start making ships more role specific and start making comparative advantages to flying different classes of ships -- and give us class options!
I'd like to think that eventually a bunch of combat oriented elite players all of whom had about 200k to spend would not ALL automatically be flying Vipers.
While I realize it's a different sort of game, EVE has done this really well. Not only are there many options at each ship class, but they've achieved something amazing in making it so that even with pretty much unlimited cash and skill to invest, most fleets will still require some diversity of makeup to be successful. You really can be a hugely rich amazingly skilled pilot in that game and still just fly around a small ship meaningfully. Frontier should really think about how to make that happen here.
For starters, I'd like to see many of the role specific cargo ships having significantly more cargo hold than the combat focused ships so that there's a clear reason for their existence. A dedicated mining ship (or two) would be nice. More small fighters with slightly different capabilities yet equal performance overall. And more reasons why fighter support is important for larger ships -- interdiction, Electronic warfare and other tools could all be a little more role based and ship specific and this would be a lot more realistic and give us all a reason to stop thinking so much about the apparent 'ladder' of ships we are meant to climb
Part of the problem right now is that WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO SPEND CREDITS ON? and this is something frontier needs to figure out. If there were meaningful credit sinks of other kinds (Industry, Minigames, etc) then it wouldn't all be about just buying the next ship and there could be a more realistic distribution of ships.
Consider the alternatives. Suppose everything proceeds amazingly and this game is around for years and they add another dozen or so ships each year. Are these ALL just going to be better and better more expensive ships? Or just more ships filling in the 'gaps' in the current ladder or progression. I sure hope not. We should all want a lot more roughly equally priced ships that present playstyle options rather than the equivalent of 'levels'
That's my take anyways
For one thing, it's not entirely realistic and turns the game into a huge grind. As the game currently stands it's pretty much an algorithm based on how much money you have and how much you need to invest in commodities that determines EXACTLY what ship you are/should be flying. This is boring and makes for the feeling that basically, you just earn more credits and buy the next ship on the ladder. Even the sense that some ships are role specific is mostly an illusion as most of the large combat ships still have more cargo capabilities than the smaller cargo ships. Pretty much, if you could afford an anaconda, it seems like there'd be little reason to fly anything else.
But there's another way to go and I hope frontier starts to do it. Start making ships more role specific and start making comparative advantages to flying different classes of ships -- and give us class options!
I'd like to think that eventually a bunch of combat oriented elite players all of whom had about 200k to spend would not ALL automatically be flying Vipers.
While I realize it's a different sort of game, EVE has done this really well. Not only are there many options at each ship class, but they've achieved something amazing in making it so that even with pretty much unlimited cash and skill to invest, most fleets will still require some diversity of makeup to be successful. You really can be a hugely rich amazingly skilled pilot in that game and still just fly around a small ship meaningfully. Frontier should really think about how to make that happen here.
For starters, I'd like to see many of the role specific cargo ships having significantly more cargo hold than the combat focused ships so that there's a clear reason for their existence. A dedicated mining ship (or two) would be nice. More small fighters with slightly different capabilities yet equal performance overall. And more reasons why fighter support is important for larger ships -- interdiction, Electronic warfare and other tools could all be a little more role based and ship specific and this would be a lot more realistic and give us all a reason to stop thinking so much about the apparent 'ladder' of ships we are meant to climb
Part of the problem right now is that WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO SPEND CREDITS ON? and this is something frontier needs to figure out. If there were meaningful credit sinks of other kinds (Industry, Minigames, etc) then it wouldn't all be about just buying the next ship and there could be a more realistic distribution of ships.
Consider the alternatives. Suppose everything proceeds amazingly and this game is around for years and they add another dozen or so ships each year. Are these ALL just going to be better and better more expensive ships? Or just more ships filling in the 'gaps' in the current ladder or progression. I sure hope not. We should all want a lot more roughly equally priced ships that present playstyle options rather than the equivalent of 'levels'
That's my take anyways
