Perk plane prices.

[Karnak]

Last night while I was on fscott mentioned that Pyro had said that perk rides would cost 1500   points.  Today I see fscott mentioning 500 to 1000 points.  I don't know if this is true, but I hope like hell that it is not.

I have played more this tour than any past tour.  I am likely to end this tour with about 75 perk points.  Even the cheapest of fscott's prices would take me 6 months to earn.  I would have to fly for 6, 12 or 18 months to earn a perk ride.  When I get it I will never have used one in combat and will be at a disadvantage.  I'd probably end up making some C.202 driver VERY happy.    If the prices are going to be this far out of reach, basically taking a chunk of the game and setting it off limits to me, I don't know that I could justify paying $30.00 a month for partial access.

I played Sony's EverQuest.  Verant, the company that made EverQuest, set that game up so that the only way to reach the upper levels or get the good items was to play for stupid amounts of time.  I have friends who played that game like hell and still couldn't complete their high end armor sets and the like.  Basically Verant told the players that they didn't care about the players that had busy lives or actually had jobs.  I would hate to see HTC go down this same route with the perk planes.

I trust HTC to modify the system as required (unlike Verant) and I will not cancel my account immediately if perks come in at these prices.  But if they were to come in at these prices (I don't know that fscott is correct) and remain at these prices, then I would have a really hard time justifying my subscription.

It would suck to have my preferred kite, the Spitfire F.MkXIV, in the arena and only flyable by the players who can rack up 60 points in a mission or the players who can play for 7 hours a day.

I am concerned.

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We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

Sisu
-Karnak

[sling322]

Wouldnt worry about it too much Karnak.  It seems to me that all fscott is about is spouting useless drivel most of the time.  I have yet to see anything useful come out of his messages in the buffer.  The majority of it is just taunting opponents or making sure everybody knows exactly how good he is or that he is ranked higher than you.  I know, I know....if I dont want to read it then squelch it.  There are actually a few good things that go on on channel 1 that I would like to see, therefore I dont squelch it.  Besides, it makes it easier to throw out the <S>! to an opponent.  

[Pyro]

I have no idea what you're talking about.  I've never mentioned prices aside from possibly perking the -1C for a small cost, perhaps just a single point.  I couldn't even tell you what a future perk plane would cost because that's based on point accumulation rates.  We have some adjustments to make in the system before we can really know how that all falls out.  And even then, it will still require fluctuation before it eventually settles.



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Doug "Pyro" Balmos
HiTech Creations

[Karnak]

Thanks Pyro.

As I said, I didn't know if fscott was correct, but it did concern me.

I feel much better now.  

------------------
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

Sisu
-Karnak

[SwampRat]

PYRO IS DA MAN!!

FSCOTT IS DA DRIVELER!!

 

[Tac]

1 point for a chog? Lol. No way.

From my point of view, the average pilot makes 2-4 perk points per sortie (depending on the plane they fly).

So to pay from 8-100 points for a perk plane sounds good (aka CHOG=8 points, me-262=100 points).

[SwampRat]

Sumbody tell Pyro to go check the General discussion area post by fscott before this gets out of hand lol

[danish]

Yesterday evening (Euro time) in MA another HTC spokesman than Pyro gave the number 500-1000 points for the Tempest, stressing that it was a very loose number though.

danish

[Pyro]

Don't get all worked up.  I'm just saying that I haven't said anything, HT may very well have.  Regardless, take it all with a grain of salt because the best estimate we can give now is still just a SWAG.  



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Doug "Pyro" Balmos
HiTech Creations

[Mickey1992]

OK, I give up.  Someone tell me what SWAG means!

[LJK Raubvogel]

Wild Assed Guess  

[Westy]

SWAG?

 Show me the secret hand shake and I'll know that it's ok to tell you  

-Westy

(SWAG = Sxxxx_Wild_Ass_Guess. Not sure what the "S" means. I forget)

[Jimdandy]

 

Originally posted by Westy:
SWAG?

 Show me the secret hand shake and I'll know that it's ok to tell you    

-Westy

(SWAG = Sxxxx_Wild_Ass_Guess. Not sure what the "S" means. I forget)

The "S" stands for Scientific. It's an old term that engineers have used forever. It means your going to make a guess based on your education and knowledge of the field. It goes along with 'Back of the envelope/napkin calculation.' Back when engineers used to 'use' there math they would set and toy with ideas over a cup of coffee or a drink after work and pencil out rough calculation on the back of the most handy peace of paper. This kind of playing around with calculations has lead to most of the great aircraft. Kelly Johnson of Lightning and SR71 fame was well known for setting his performance parameters with a combination of SWAG and back of the envelope calculations. Of course they were refined as they went. I don't know if it was Kelly or not but one of the famous plane designers from that era used to say "If it looks fast it probably is." That was the way most planes started out because they didn't have super computers to test shapes on. They just SWAG'ed it and made a few back of the envelope calculations and threw a model in the wind tunnel. That's way some planes turned out to have very disappointing performance when the calculation said it should be great. Even as the computer started to come along the time on it was very expensive. So SWAG was still used a lot. Now days everyone has a pocket calculator so you here the term back of the envelope calculation less and the computing time is cheep. The reason we 'log on' to a computer is because you used to have to pay for the time you spent on ANY computer. So you would log on and log off and be charged for the time. It was hell for students that needed to use them. They would have to stay up to all hours to run there programs and spend hard earned cash doing it. LOL sorry I went on so long.  

[This message has been edited by Jimdandy (edited 01-18-2001).]