I would like to bring this up again to cover all the issues and make some conclusions for myself. This is the main idea of the thread, I am not proposing to change anything.
This is like a research to reveal the weak spots of the model.
So basically, this covers economics itself, vessel and equipment prices, ways of earning credits, ways of loosing credits and how this all affects the gameplay and addictivity of the game.
I'll start with a statement that Discovery RP is not a pure RP. Unlike on fRPGs, we are still having single-player arcade and trading sim element, this means that this side of gameplay is regulated by "credits" but not imagination, rules and pre-sets (though, when accumulated enough credits there is no more clear division on that).
The RP is based on the space side of Sirius life, and follows the main gameplay ideology "trade, fight".
Many times it has been mentioned that we have a food chain "trader-pirate-lawful" in its basics, and that it is the key of not pre-arranged activity.
If there is nothing to spend money for, then there is nothing to trade for, and so on (in a nutshell).
The issues that I see in FL economics are:
- Indefinte emission of credits;
- Statical economics;
- Fast wealtg saturation;
- Indefinite equipment resourse;
- Cheap ammunition.
The main things like vessels and guns are bought only once, thus ways of loosing money are as follows:
- Ammunition;
- Occasional repairs;
- iRP reasons;
- Sanctions.
Im am excluding PoBs because the idea behind them being short-resourced without support is actually great.
Now, it has been brought up many times that one might go EVE's way of loosing ship after destruction, and rejected with the mind of the idea is being too harsh.
From another hand this would have eliminated the permanent wealth saturation of a player and need in expensive things for such ones known as "moneysink".
This would, from the other point of view, equalize the income sources, or at least make fighting way of earning money self-sustainable, considering risks. As well it'd provide much tighter relationships between trader and lawful groups for the sake of safety and enrichment on mutual basis.
The current way of treating defeat of a player seems to harm every aspect of the game. For example, when one is trading for oneself, he or she earns cash untill the point of wealth saturation, making the trading role less self-sustainable and more auxilary for gameplay. When the same happens in faction - there are still issues on the matter of saturation, because faction barely has a use of the credits aside from personal wishes of individuals and PoBs in general. The role of trader is not appealing RP-wise (PvP is generally out of question here) because the economy of game world does not rely on trader for real.
I would also like to point out that the gaming environnment with no death penalty (ship loosing) requires different classes to be balanced almost to the point where there are no advantages for any of them. To equal cheap and expensive equipment when player never loses one in case of defeat means making cheap and expensive nearly the same in performance, which leads to lack of logic and so on.
FL is not having a natural way of treating winner or loser, gameplay-wise no one here loses. This alongside with quick wealth saturation brings rather boring gameplay-wise experience, and with rather low player activity it harms the RP side of playing.
