Introduction

Hey there Rebels, it seems the changes to the upcoming Exposure event have some players expressing some concerns. While in hindsight I probably should have done something like this ahead of time, alas that was not the case. But I am putting this together now, in the hopes of addressing many of the concerns that have been surfaced to this point. 

There are two MAJOR changes to how we are used to events running in Vega Conflict; the expanded sector restrictions and the start of season reset. I’d like to take a bit of time to explain those changes, the reasoning behind them and the knock on effects that come from them.

Expanded Sector Restrictions

During the upcoming season of events the temporary event sectors will only allow fleets containing the three new hulls; the V.E.G.A. Valiant, Saprophyte Defiler and the Guardian Divergent.

This is being done to address a long time concern about content in Vega Conflict: anything below Mk6 generally has no value. Given the option of using a fleet of Mk6 ships or literally anything else, the player will always choose the fleet of Mk6 ships, right? This creates a balancing nightmare when targets are intended for anything but a Mk6 ship. 

An example here would be the Djinn targets from the NFC tier, that target was tuned for Mk3 Fiends. Did anyone ever use Mk3 Fends to attack that target? No. They used full fleets of Mk6 Hellions and Ghouls. When creating a target I have to assume that players have the ability to use both the Mk3 Fiends and Mk6 Hellions and Ghouls but there is no way that those two options would ever have similar performance. So the solution in those situations up to this point has always been to “tune” hard against the previous Mk6 ships so their performance is on par with the intended Mk3 ship. 

This often resulted in two major things that I was never a fan of; it artificially inflated the performance of the low level intended hull and intentionally deflated the value and performance of the previously released Mk6 hulls. On top of that, if the tuning was not right on the money, the targets ended up being way too hard for some ships and too easy for others. There was never a proper balance or representation of the abilities of each ship.

Making it so only the new ships can attack the targets that are tuned for them ensures that players get value at each Mk level for every ship they build and each of those ships is able to show their ability because the targets are not being tuned to artificially manipulate how they perform.  

The glaring question then becomes; “What about my old hulls? Are they just useless now?” The short answer is “No” but to further expand upon that, just like I want the lower Mk level hulls to have value a WANT you to feel like your previous hulls retain value and you continue to use them. As such the Omega targets, which are tuned for the first set of Mk6 T15 hulls will see their intel drop scale with each event in the new season. They won’t be worth as much as the brand new targets but will still have value and be able to contribute towards progressing in the events. 

In the upcoming Exposure event the Omega targets are only worth 500 intel, I understand this is a small number and we’ll get into that more later. But during Decimation later on in the season when the newest Delta 216 level targets, that are tuned for the Mk4 versions of the new ships, and are worth 300,000 intel per hit, the exact same Omega targets in the Exposure event that are only worth 500 intel, will now be worth 150,000 intel. I hope that made sense. But the idea is the ships from last season will still be rewarded by always having the second highest value targets available to them in any given event.

Additionally to ensure your current ships have more value, a mid week sub event is being worked on that will have difficult targets, intended for manual flight, tuned for those same Mk6 ships. This is still a work in progress, all of the ground work has been laid but the details are still being sorted out. Stay tuned for additional information.

Season Reset

As many of you have seen from the Exposure event brief, there has been a major de-escalation in this event after the fallout of the Termination event that closed out the first T15 “season”. I can assure you this was always the plan. As explained in a previous Dev Diary, intel values needed to scale between events at an unprecedented level to discourage the concept of “hitting down”, but we can’t just continue to have them scale at that same level. And so there will be a continuous reset with every new season; intel values will decrease and some of the higher level tech will disappear for a short time. 

The important thing is we are keeping the 1 hit for 1 purchase ratio (for the majority of the items in the store) which will ensure that the time and effort put into your events remains largely consistent throughout each season. 

As mentioned, some tech will be disappearing from the events for a short time. This was actually something I really struggled with, much more so than the sector restrictions. Again, due to the necessary intel scaling between events, prices for tech in the stores scale to compensate. The more I thought about it the less sense it made to keep the Mk upgrade credits and higher level gear in the stores when each season resets. If I keep the higher level gear in the store how do I price it? Same with the mk ups. I can't leave it at the previous prices because then you'll have a Mk6 credit that costs 1.5 million intel and the target you're hitting only gives 500. That doesn't make any sense. 

I want to keep pricing of content consistent so players know what to expect, which means repricing everything for each event doesn’t make any sense either. As was evident during the first season, most players absolutely hated that the Mods increased in price every event to keep the 1 hit, 1 purchase ratio, so doing the same thing with all of the other content was not an option.

So instead what will happen is the upgrade credits for the first set of T15 ships will return to the stores a week earlier than the previous cadence and they will be discounted since they are no longer the featured content, the same will be the case for the first set of weapons. The Mods for each of the first set of hulls will ALL be available in the Exposure event, priced at 500 intel per purchase and WILL NOT increase as the season progresses. 

While we’re on the subject of Mods, since the release cadence for the Mods was so unpopular in the first season, I’ve made an additional change there as well. Every other event 2 additional mods will be released for each hull: 2 in the main event, 2 in Escalation and 2 in Decimation. They will be priced at whatever the 1 hit per purchase price would be for that event and will not increase again. So the 2 mods for each of the new hulls being released in the Exposure event will only ever cost 500 intel for the whole season.  

I hope that covers most of the major changes and hope even more that the reasoning and format at least makes sense.

The last thing I need to cover, which reading between the lines seems to be the biggest pain point for many players, is the discrepancy between intel drops on the Omega targets and the new Alpha targets in the Exposure event. Not going to lie, the reaction to that caught me off guard. I don’t expect many players to hit those new Alpha targets, the store is not priced assuming you will, everything in the event is built assuming players will hit the Omega level targets that were built and tuned for the first set of T15 hulls. 

The new Alpha targets are only in this event to give the players who choose to adopt the new hulls early a target for their new ships to hit. That level of investment deserves to be rewarded in some way, that happens to be an easier event in the form of less hits needed to purchase everything in the store. 

They are a stretch goal type target that most players won’t and shouldn’t expect to hit. They will be the primary target you are expected to hit in the Confrontation event next week and will have the same intel drop. That’s the same expected ~5X escalation of target intel drops between events. Hitting those targets is NOT REQUIRED OR EXPECTED.  

But that doesn’t seem to be the perception. Whether accurate or not I do at least see where the arguments are coming from, unfortunately I highly doubt any explanation, respectful conversation or logical thinking will change that. So I have a bit of a conundrum and I am genuinely unsure how to proceed to best serve this game and the community who so passionately supports it.

Do I leave things as they are and hope that my explanations and reasoning win out? Seems unlikely.

Do I remove the Alpha targets from the event all together? Probably not a great idea as it removes any benefit or incentive for players to adopt the new hulls early.

Do I increase the payout on the Omega targets? Hard no, that completely undermines the 1 hit, 1 purchase ratio we’ve established during the whole first season.

Do I reduce the payout of the new Alpha targets? The discrepancy between the payouts of the Omega and Alpha targets is lessened, there is still some incentive and reward for adopting the new hulls early. This is probably the best solution but it involves a version of taking away something from players which is never usually the best course of action.

So I don’t know. I think it is important that we try to remember that change is hard, as humans we don’t like it but that doesn't mean it’s always bad or there is nefarious intent behind it. As always, I will continue to make decisions that I believe are in the best long term interests for this game and welcome any respectful feedback and discussion.

KIX_Damus.