An Irony in ISK

First, apologies for missing so many weeks of content. lolFinals lolSchool lolLife

How do you describe Dust to a potential new player? Usually I try to play to the game's strengths, and so start rattling off features that differentiate it from other FPS games on the market. Problematically a lot of those count themselves part of the Soon(tm) crowd. One that doesn't, though, one that jumps out as an aspect that should really make Dust stand out from the crowd is ISK. What other FPS game employs a system where every time you die you have to pay for the cost of the equipment you used?

It's a pity, then, that the way ISK fits into the current design of Dust it only has mostly negative effects on the gameplay experience as opposed to positive ones. At its core, this situation arises from two factors:

1. Items don't cost enough relative to rewards or alternatively rewards are too high compared to gear costs
2. There aren't enough things to do with ISK

These aren't perfect explanations, and they're perhaps more applicable while talking about dropsuits rather than vehicles. They do, however, provide a basis for a bit of discussion. Admittedly the whole wall-o'-text to follow is based more on the macro scale than the micro, make of that what you will. Inevitably I use "prototype gear" or "proto" throughout as the quintessential example of ISK expenditure since it's the ceiling of what anybody can spend.

To rehash what point #1 means up there, it means that ISK usually isn't the limiting factor in any decisions that involve gear. Examples: 

• Do I pull out proto in this pub match? 
• Do I attack this district? 
• Do I get my team to pull out proto in this PC match? 

When these types of questions arise, the answer: "No, it takes too much ISK," is far from anyone's minds. It leads to problems. A lot of the "pub stomping" that happens these days goes on because players can honestly afford to run proto at a loss for a very long time with little to no repercussions. This problem also makes trying to boost Planetary Conquest's popularity with higher ISK gains basically useless. Since ISK wasn't holding back players from getting into PC in the first place, why would giving out more ISK allow more players to step into the ring? The ISK isn't what's getting them down, it's the personnel, coordination, and other aspects of PC mechanics.

There was a point in time where proto gear cost enough to make ISK a factor in Dust, but CCP wasn't able to hold out against a sea of complaints. After running an event that doubled ISK gains (this one's from memory since I couldn't find the link) from public matches, CCP decided to raise reward levels up about that much because "players liked it". 

Really the first point is less important and hugely exacerbated by the second. The list of things you can do with ISK that involve in-game mechanics is so short they can be listed succinctly. So let's do that: 

1. Buy gear
2. Buy clone packs for Planetary Conquest
3. Pay clone transportation fees for Planetary Conquest
4. Make backroom deals in Planetary Conquest, including buying districts, hiring mercenaries, etc.

Yup, there are only four things*. And three of them are only concerned with Planetary Conquest, a mode of gameplay which is entirely inaccessible for most of Dust's player base because of its rule set. As mentioned before, ISK is not a limiting factor in PC by any stretch of the imagination. Veteran personnel (high SP), organization, experience, and other factors besides are much more pressing concerns than ISK. That leaves backroom deals to worry over, but the secret behind buying and selling districts is that the entire endeavor is useless unless you could have taken and defended the districts you're buying anyways. If you could have taken and defended the districts you bought anyways, you wouldn't need to buy the districts. That's pretty much why the mercenary occupation in PC is completely dead. 

* Skill books are a thing, but they're not worth discussion since they don't recur as a cost.

Taken together it's possible to combine these two observations and conclude: "Sure, ISK doesn't do much for the game, but it doesn't hurt." But there's this nagging problem that, while ISK doesn't have the scope to greatly affect veteran players, it really curbs the fun for new players. That's mostly because veteran players have nothing better to do (limited options by the second factor) with their ISK than to buy proto gear (affordable by the first factor). This doesn't help the game experience at all- it just encourages people to quit playing Dust. 

It's completely fair to say that if you can't make enough to play with proto in pub matches and you can't make enough ISK in pub matches to run proto to break into PC then proto is useless. That's a problem with the amount of content in Dust, though, and that poor horse has been beaten so much that it hasn't any bones left.