I'm a former Combat Arms player and at the time i dreaded the rental system. You leave town for a couple of days and come back only to find your character butt naked with all the default stuff and all your cool gear expired. I wanted a permanent buy system.
Hawken has just that, but brings a totally different problem to the table:
The prices for permanent items are too damn high.
That's not because i'm whining that i cant get all the cool stuff 2 hours into the game, it's because these high prices make it impossible to TEST or TRY gear. Each purchase has you committing a ton of points, which can only come from days or weeks of accumulated
What if you don't like it? What if you decide you want to try a sniper mech, buy a Sharpshooter, and later find that you are really not attracted to the Sabot rifle? You just spent 9.200 HP
At an average of 60 HP a round (mediocre player) you are looking at approximately 150 full matches worth of wasted HP. If, lets say each match lasts 5 minutes, this amounts to a total of 12.5 hours.
Not to mention that the newly bought mech is completely deprived of internal components and items, which adds 7.750 more HP for a grand total of 16.950 HP for a new, fully stocked mech. (280 matches approximately)
And on top of all that, your experiences with this new mech are hindered by it's low default starting level, which makes it inferior to any other similar mech of the same class and equipment, simply because it just rolled out of the production line.
The beauty of the renting system is that i could log on one day an say "Gee, i think i will got Shottie today" or "I want to pop some heads Vasili style, i'm gonna rent me a sniper for the day"
Here, with the permanent system, its more of a "Mmh, i really want to try the Sabot rifle. But it cost too much. What if it sucks? What if i don't like it? What if i suck with it? 9200 HP is a bit much for a gun i've never used. I think i'll just stick to upgrading my Bruiser with internal components that give fixed percentage bonuses to my attributes and damage that are not perceivable in any way outside of the fact that game tells me they are there"
A Renting system alongside the permanent item system would really help newer / casual players without punishing them for buying item's they might not use that often.
Being able to rent mechs and items at low price gives people the opportunity to try items for a short amount of time and let's them decide whether they like it or not without having to invest a crapton of points, and hence game time.
Am i alone in thinking this?
Would you people support a Renting system in addition to the current Permanent system?
Edited by Hipnox, October 27 2012 - 08:04 AM.

 

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