I see a lot of people calling for a server wipe and can understand their point of view, i can also see it from the old timers. All MMO's have this problem but they manage it.

and so here is a compromise. that should keep both sides happy.


The Next Expansion. Lets call it T23 " The Entitled" (not trolling lol)

New Area's, new AI's , Once max skill is reached here, and endgame begins, the Average player will end up with stats that are 10x more than the base stats they began the expansion with. This is tied into both gear and skills accumulated during the expansion. Of course the AI will also be boosted.

The Second part is The Economy: All mission rewards in "The Entitled" are paid out as MegaCredits, a super currency that cannot be used to buy anything from the previous expansion. Only gained from missions and drops in T23.

Over time the economy will adjust to the new model, as the gear from T23 is vastly superior. but there needs to be a lot of content, or this just becomes another "Twisted zone" tokens situation that is insulated from the rest of the game.

Pros:
Planned Obsolescence of all previous end game gear and ships. Old timers lose their advantage in accumulated gear and credits.
New players dont feel like they will never be able to compete with / kill an old timer.
Gives more flexability for devs, they dont have to re-adjust every item, just forget aobut them.
Easy to plan and rollout.
Adds an Element of danger in exploring new areas where many of the AI are more than a match for you.

Cons:
Planned Obsolescence of all previous end game gear and ships. Old timers lose their advantage in accumulated gear and credits.
This will only work if there is a lot of content. T23 needs to become the new norm.

but what about the newbs i hear you say!

im not sure about this one but i will say it anyway.
Each new account started will come with a single use free boost, to say lvl 2k, but absolute basic gear needed to start in the T23 zone.

This gets them involved with the majority of the player base, there could also be a few disadvantages built in, maybe no access to all Sub T23 content ? but this might not be needed.

Resources need to be totally separate ofc, no overlap or there will be currency trading.

anyways its a starting point. what do you think ?

I made this suggestion a while ago (ignoring the 10x power and boost bit) and it got pretty criticised, even by players who have recently said something similar is a good idea: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=62914

The only thing I don't like about adding T23 is the inevitable developmental halt for the lower tech levels. So that Bindomite problem? That's staying for T22.

Ty maxa, that was the first of a series of concerns this post brings up, the second of which is hordes of new players with tech 23 gear who have no clue what an augmenter even is.

As to the OP, when i first read this post, my assumption was



As people however seem to be taking this seriosly, i would like to repeat back to you what i just read. You think the dev team is going to go through the headache of designing an entire new tech level of gear, ships, and augs, then hand them to you for free because you are so gob smacking awesome. Like i said, i would assume this post was Potato level trolling, but people seem to be taking it seriosly. To which I reply, WTF!

The point of playing a game is the joy of advancement. Why would i want to join a game to be handed the highest level possible simply for showing up, that is stupid beyond all description. Its like watching the last 15 minutes of a movie, if that tells me all i need to know, it was a crappy movie. What the hell is the point of bothering at all.

I am going to risk courting hobers "bad faith argument list" purely because i want to try an fathom what bone headed stupidity is behind this suggestion. If i am mistaken, please, correct me.

The only reason i can fathom why this suggestion is being fielded is people are upset that traders position is so strong they cannot expect to fight them. The problem here is not with traders, it is with everyone else. I have been on high level PvP teams in a dozen games, and the lackadaisical attitude towards team participation in SS shocked me when i first observed it. CLX used to have screaming fits because his team could not understand that rolling on items to vend them was not acceptable conduct. This would have gotten you booted from any PvP team in any game i have ever played, INSTANTLY! DSF just had a member FLOUNCE out and dump all over the team recruitment thread because he was asked to contribute SOME of his extraction to a pool to build kits, augs and drones necessary to defenses. Again, any other PvP game, he would not have had to leave, he would have been kicked, instantly. The only team this uni who set up defensively focused team space was stiffler, who promptly got stomped because he was soloing a team.

There is a theme here, in case you are not noticing. The reason teams are having problems competing is not "Exploited Treasures" it is their failure to function AS TEAMS. Piles of goodies will not solve that, nor will wiping the server. The team with the best coordination is going to win in PvP, always has, always will. Right now that is Traders. If you want to beat them, work harder on BEING A TEAM.

To Rendghast, I believe the idea behind this post is that it is about maintaining a playerbase. Keep creating new content to satisfy current playerbase, but do not leave new players way behind, with no chance to catch up. I am not sure this is a good idea for SS though, or that the dev team would be a fan of this idea. I of course am not speaking for them though, they may very well like this idea after all. I personally do not.

lrellok

If you had read the post properly, you would have seen that new players would be given absolute basic gear , the minimum needed to progress thu the T23 content. this would idealy be done through a series of short starter missions that teach them the absolute basics, how to aug a ship etc.

And if this is such a bonehead stupid idea, how come Blizzard do it every expansion. they have ppl that just research this crap, and i have never seen the playerbase complain that " i wont be able to use my imba priceless 1 of a kind lazer of pwning in T23!"

they expect that old stuff becomes ancient history and isnt usefull forever.

10 million players or whatever it is now, cant be wrong.

how will t23 bring 10k new players?

every expansion creates a larger and larger game between the old players and the new.

gaps got to close.

Steam will bring players, but they need the quality / Intuitiveness / group activity of late game content. no doubt many will quit no matter what you do, but you have more change of keeping people if they form connections with other players in game, thats hard to do when there is no content both groups can do.

I'm perfectly fine with having level ups to place characters at the gate for new content. That would mean level 1000, T19 skills. Level 1500, T20 skills, and level 2000 (for T23), T21 skills.

They still need to play through the lower level p2p content, but they miss the bulk of the grind to get to the lower level p2p content. They would also have to pay a onte time fee extra. Not a big fee, but a fee nonetheless. For Olympus, 5$. Subspace, 10$. T23, 15$. One character per account.

The lower techs need to still be meaningful in combat. We can't have 1 run of the mill T23 player decimating T21 teams on a whim.

I have played enough 1000x servers in RO to know this is a horrible idea. You get a ton of people who have no clue what they are doing fumbling around in dungeons ruining the game for everyone. You need to learn the game, and with something as complex as SS, that takes a long time.

Also, i do not play WoW, for the same reason i do not do fad diets. There is a think called a Bandwagon Fallacy, please look it up.

Simple solution, require the person to have one level 1000 character before the boosts kick/are enabled in for other characters.

I do not like it, but i could at least see that being reasonable.