Originally Posted by
Indra Echo
The main point on this issue seems to be this: if you have no good reason for changing some current mechanic that is not geared toward fixing something and seems likely to add to one big thing driving people away, why do it?
Also, this as part of DLC (though I know the idea is that stims and spikes are new content) is just sad. Spikes I can understand as a way to call down arkfalls (where's the story immersion here-we're arkhunters I thought, not ark controllers), but stims? As I've said I've seen this show before. Grenades today, ammo, EGO, and HP tomorrow.
The fact that it seems no one thought about lag, no one thought about Arenas (you know DLC1), no one thought about grenade synergies, bonuses, or shield buffs to grenades and no one thought very hard about grenade refresh rates is sad and ridiculous. But they did think about economic pressures, risk reward, and some vague issue with inventory clutter--which means grenades must move out of our inventory, and leads to questions as to whether they'd still be able to be traded. It also raises questions as to how exactly this will work.
If I have just 5 grenades right now-that are cluttering up my inventory and that I had no choice over and couldn't use to fit into my strategy (things also said as reasons for doing this), then what happens when I pick up those random grenade loot drops (ok seriously, ammo is ammo and grenade loot drops are ammo-but this probably will be put into the category of loot, to try and get us to buy loot boosts-it is ammo).
My example is I have 5 grenades-say, an orange pyro, purple bio, frag, and cluster along with the infector grenade. I don't want to buy spikes or stims or stacks of grenades. I run out of the stack I have on me, but the placeholder remains-so if I buy more stacks at a vendor, I will again have the oj pyro, purple frag, bio, cluster, and I guess the infector as well. What happens to the stacks I get from enemy drops? Say I loot 3 green pyros-where do they go? Are they in my inventory? Once I use them are they totally gone or does a placeholder remain so I could refill them if I want to? And this placeholder (I don't have a good name for it, but this is supposed to help un-clutter our inventories, so I don't know what to call it), can we sell it if we don't have any reason to ever get a lot of green pyros?
Again my fear is this is just the beginning. I've seen this before. There are games that have tried to up the degree of difficulty by limiting the amount of HP regenerating items you can carry-until you get to some place to replenish it. These other games decided to make a lot of things consumables so as to force players to consider paying real money for things, or as a way to force grinding (which people get sick of so they decide to pay real money), or as a way to insert that perceived difficulty, instead of creating real difficulty.
I can understand wanting to find ways to get people to pay real money, for scrip and loot boosts-I just think there are better ways to do it, and it's a losing proposition to change existing things to try and make it happen. I am sure this is why grenade ammo (in a lot of other games you replenish it by going to an ammo box, if you have to replenish it) is being called loot and is not a thing, whatever that means. It will drop more often with loot boosts.
I really do want this question answered but don't think it will be-I know because of so much that happened with DLC 1-but what part of this new (actually old) content will be part of paid DLC and what part is free? Can't say anyone would pay for a new grenade mechanic, stims, spikes, and different arkfalls. Well maybe some would but then does that mean DLC 3 will have even more types of arkfalls and a change to ammo mechanics which will then be called Gun Replenishment Loot because gun ammo is not a thing?
