In this post, I mentioned a very specific and important problem, that can be summed up as such: Investing keys in important “consumable” items almost always nets you with a negative key gain, it’s often better not to use them, at all.
I thought of this potential solution that’s pretty simple to understand in order to fix that issue, and that is this:
A “Bonus Key” criteria should be added to missions.
Some details about this new feature:
- “Bonus Key” (unlike “Equipment Perks”), is a new criteria which rewards you a set amount of keys (not affected by any percentages) depending on how many keys you’ve technically used in missions when the mission is over.
- “Bonus Key” will not be active in the more competitive missions such as Iron Man, the Galactic Cup, Daily Missions, Space Race, and Weekly Challenges. Players need to be warned of this in advance though.
- The keys awarded back will be the same as the key value for the items used in the Galactic Store.
- To stop it from being a potential dupe machine, you can no longer buy “consumables” via the Aftermarket, and Shady Dealers can’t put them up for sale anymore.
- Also, Bonus Keys is not active in Key Rush levels.
You’ll have to decide how much keys is worth spending on that kind of level for a profit.
From the newbies’ perspective:
- This gives newbies a chance to experiment with all kinds of consumables without having to worry about their budget all the time when playing normal missions.
- They get to freely try out any new item, or combine them together to have a ton of fun.
- They’d have alot more fun in the first few hours, which is important, since by then they’d play the game alot more, find out more new things about it, interact with others via Forums, or participate in some of the more advanced missions, all on their own, which is the best outcome for an online game, if it wants to survive and thrive.
From the pros’ perspective:
- They can get more keys in the normal missions, which can then be used to participate in some of the more competitive missions.
- Since this criteria is not applied in the more competitive missions, it should be the same thing as before, except with alot more competition, as the newbies are now capable of joining the fray and may even give you quite a run for your money, literally.
From a coding standpoint:
- This feature should be fairly simple to add, as all you technically need to do, is to track down the number of items the player has used when the mission is over, do some basic math for the keys, and you’re done!
- Also, there’s that whole disabling items from stores thing, though I don’t think that’s that hard to code in.
I didn’t want to ask for a new feature that’s insanely heavy to implement as that’s already not a good idea on its own for an indie dev like IA to have to do.
Note:
- “Bonus Key” name can be changed, I can’t think of good names to replace it though.
- Yes, I thought of that solution in said linked post, but it wasn’t finished, and since then I’ve made lots of adjustments and balancing to make this potential solution work.
- Consumables are: all the items in the Auto-Use, Special Weapons, and Perishables category.