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Game economy

I see both sides:

Arguments for reset:
Payout system and shop prices were bugged/inaccurate so people were getting too many cars too soon. On the other hand parts were too expensive so those who upgraded spent more than they should,
Starting everyone off from a level playing field to have a fairer competition. New players will be levelling up alongside old timers using the same untuned starter cars and the best will win.
The longevity of the game depends on attracting and maintaining new players and if they see they are miles behind some on day 1 then they could be discouraged.
Beta was supposed to be about testing for bugs not farming - if there had been an exploit to mass millions of RP, would it have been acceptable to keep it?



Arguments for no reset:
Jack was asked on forum if accounts would be reset between beta and release and said no plans to.
What was the point in having a double RP weekend if players were going to lose it before launch?
Many beta users funded the game with their own money and are passionate players who obviously missed playing for years and jumped at the chance.
Many of these players have had enough of starting from zero 3 or 4 times as this game changes publisher due to no fault of their own.
Beta testing was supposed to be about testing for bugs not farming yet how do you test the shop with no RP?
Beta testing and bug reporting is time consuming so any gains amassed could be considered fair reward for that. You can´t test fully with no players.
The people that got higher XP during beta were not cheating or bug exploiting AFAIK but just maximising revenue under the existing scoring. This will happen in any game on any payout level, it´s part of human nature to want to progress and do so quickly and efficiently. I bet the ones who did that will be the ones with highest level 1 week after official release.
Not all new players will start on day 1 and not all beta testers will stay in the game forever - there will always be people ahead in the game at any given moment.


What I don´t see or like is the idea of havin a reset during beta and allowing 1 week of farming before final version using new scoring. What happens then if someone finds the magic quick way - will there be another reset? It is already pissing some people off (rightly or not I don´t know) that they will lose what they got already and maybe these people will be less willing to invest in the game later. A refund of RP does not make much sense either - then you have the rp but no XP to use it for anything and you will need to wait to unlock the cars anyway.

Perhaps it would have been better in hindsight to give beta acccounts massive RP like Game sages had so they could test everything and have fun then reset it all before the game opens, There is still time to do this in the last week and that would give something back to those who feel slighted by the turnaround in policy.
 
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How about some sort of Open Beta period? Maybe give Closed Beta players extra XP & RP to test out the higher level cars etc., while a new group of testers can come in with nothing and test the economy, servers etc. at the kind of scale that we'll see after launch. Then reset at the end of Open Beta.
 
I'm disappointed with the perfect drift bonus reduction. "Sim VS is racing and not drifting", I agree, but have you seen the Drift mode physics? It's absolutely horrendous...
Drifting in Sim VS is hard (as it is in real life), it requires skill and improves your driving skills as you get better because you start to feel the cars better and that will reflect at racing.
People will just farm doing other things that will probably require less skill. And now that bonus per mile was increased I can see where it will lead.
 
Simply just dont decrease any bonus, while making everything in the shop more expensive.... You think this is good? You know, the people who supported this game are former players of Pt, Level-r, Heat Online. These people now have jobs, families, and we dont have as much time to imorove, like back in the days. About 2 weeks ago Jack said the same things about leveling issues, so I dont really get the point of this latest change in rewards. UNDO THE CHANGES IN THE REWARDS SYSTEM ASAP!!!!!!!!
 
ovecboy said:
Simply just dont decrease any bonus, while making everything in the shop more expensive.... You think this is good? You know, the people who supported this game are former players of Pt, Level-r, Heat Online. These people now have jobs, families, and we dont have as much time to imorove, like back in the days. About 2 weeks ago Jack said the same things about leveling issues, so I dont really get the point of this latest change in rewards. UNDO THE CHANGES IN THE REWARDS SYSTEM ASAP!!!!!!!!
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Don't forget students, like me :3 since I'm a former player from Heat Online.
 
Are you saying go back to the original pricing at the start of the Beta?
 
Jack said:
Are you saying go back to the original pricing at the start of the Beta?
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I think that what is needed is to make a fair calculation of what average player earnings should be over 15 minutes and 1 hour in each game mode including loading screens, voting etc. Look at what the winner and the last placed player get (assuming last player is trying hard too) and then make adjustments to each game mode payout to be as close to the deserved earnings estimate as possible.

Once that is done, then move on to value all shop items according to that barometer and how many game hours are needed to acquire an item.

For example, an average player gets 10k RP per hour and we think that they should play 10 hours to get a Class 4 Cobra then the Cobra price will be set at 100k Rp and let´s say another 5h to buy all the tuning parts. 150k RP and 15h of game time would therefore give you a fully upgraded Cobra, regardless of what game mode is chosen. Then mabe set the unlock level of that car at 20% or so more than whatever level corresponds to 10k XP to encourage people to buy lower class cars first.

Good players will need maybe 1-2h less game time and bad players 1-2h more according to the effect of win and lap bonuses. Of course, this time can be reduced by buying doublers, any server bonuses or prizes. If someone wants to buy the car using CP then the level unlock should be lower or 0 so as not to have them grinding away to get XP too.

This is just an example, it really depends on how easy you want to make it for people to play for free and how much doublers and CP car sales you need for the game running costs. Once the player base is established and revenue is more predictable, then adjustments could be made by offering server bonuses, item sale events etc but it is probably better to err towards lower payouts at first as it is always easier to give out more than to take away (the issue about resetting beta player accounts is an example).

The main thing for me is that payouts are level across all game modes, maps and physics for the time invested by the player or people will just grind away at the fastest one and 90% of the game gets abandoned till they have the items they want.
 
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AAA said:
I think that what is needed is to make a fair calculation of what average player earnings should be over 15 minutes and 1 hour in each game mode including loading screens, voting etc. Look at what the winner and the last placed player get (assuming last player is trying hard too) and then make adjustments to each game mode payout to be as close to the deserved earnings estimate as possible.

Once that is done, then move on to value all shop items according to that barometer and as per how many game hours are needed to acquire an item.

For example and simplicity, an average player gets 10k RP per hour and we think that you should play 10 hours to get a Class 4 Cobra then the Cobra price will be set at 100k Rp and let´s say another 5h to buy all the tuning parts so 150k RP and 15h of game time would give you a fully upgraded Cobra, regardless of what game mode is chosen. Then set the unlock level of that car at 20% or so more than whatever level corresponds to 10k XP to encourage people to buy lower class cars first.

Good players will need maybe 1h less and bad players 1 or 2h more according to the effect of win and lap bonuses. Of course, this time can be reduced by buying doublers, any server bonuses or prizes. If someone wants to buy the car using CP then the level unlock should be lower or 0 so as not to have them grinding away to get XP too.

This is just an example, it really depends on how easy you want to make it for people to play for free and how much doublers and CP car sales you need for the game running costs. Once the player base is established and revenue is more predictable, then adjustments could be made by offering server bonuses, item sale events etc but it is probably better to err towards lower payouts at first as it is always easier to give out more than to take away (the issue about resetting beta player accounts is an example).

The main thing for me is that payouts are level across all game modes, maps and physics for the time invested by the player or people will just grind away at the fastest one and 90% of the game gets abandoned till they have the items they want.
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So basically what I proposed... https://community.projecttorque.racing/threads/game-economy.168/#post-1326
 
Making all game modes equal on RP per hour is something that I agree on except maybe Arcade should get a bit less than Sim since Sim requires more skill, that way players can play whatever game mode they like and ideally all game modes will have time spent on and not be left abandoned.
 
@Jack, Whatever you think is best for game revenue and to have players invested in the game in terms of time and money. But your original post omitted balancing the payouts per game mode and focused more on car and parts prices.

What I am suggesting is to decide first what fair earnings per hour should be, second apply that to all game modes and then set shop prices.

I don´t know what the game content roadmap is like - if there were to be 100 more cars then prices would have to be lower. With the current lot, people only really need 4 or 5 cars and maybe 1 more specialist car for TA or CTF - the rest are just for variety. If no more cars are coming do we want people to "complete" the game in 2 or 3 weeks?

Other free 2 play games like Raceroom have DLC packs of cars and tracks and keep adding to them so there is always something new to buy once you are bored with the free content. XP unlocking is not an issue as you can only buy those cars not grind them but that brings other problems when the performance of CP cars is better than RP ones or vice versa......
 
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AAA said:
@Jack, Your original post omitted balancing the payouts per game mode and focused more on car and parts prices.
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True,in fact he did omitted it and I consider this point much more relevant than car pricing. Actually,whatever the shopping pricing are atm,the matter is the earnings of each game mode,they must pay equal amounts of XP and RP so people will not be tempted to farm and eventually get bored with an specific farming way.

Could I ask sir @Jack to take care of the game mode payouts?
 
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While I did not go into detail, I did not ignore it. This thread was more about fixing the item costs per race hour and not fixing the rewards to make the shop better or a mixture of the two.
The main issue around the economy is, what are items worth per race hour. Not payout being "too low".

We are looking at the payout, and have since tested balancing measures as per https://community.projecttorque.racing/threads/testing-reward-payout-changes.181/#post-1526
As stated before, I don' t think the payout is bad, it is just not balanced. Once balanced, people can expect to play any game mode for fun rather than a specific one for extra RP.
 
And please remember to increase laps in VS races to allow scoring and payouts to be based on games of similar lengths. Ideally up to 10 min races in VS mode should be permitted.
 
AAA said:
And please remember to increase laps in VS races to allow scoring and payouts to be based on games of similar lengths. Ideally up to 10 min races in VS mode should be permitted.
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20 minutes*
Not everyone wants to go to TA just to have a race longer than 10 minutes.
 
yeah, jack said before that for vs rooms the maps would need to be adjusted and more starting spots added to them in order to increase the number in a room in vs modes.
 
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