Weirdly, I'm actually disappointed that I'm not buying this year's AE bundle. I love PS2, and I want to support the devs. And since I have a job, I can be the raft which keeps the freeloaders F2P players here. But there's just nothing in the bundle for me. I'm OK with buying guns for cash. The cert rate is good for those players who F2P, and (at least when they're on sale) the cash rate isn't bad. So things like the Heroic boost don't really do it for me. What I really want in a special edition package is the bling. When I look at the current AE bundle the only thing in there I want is the AE Lasher. And even that, only a little. Here's what I'd want: A full remodeling of all the basic weapons. Everything from the Carv, to the Mercenary, to the .... what is the VS default sniper called? It's been years since I spent the 100 certs to get a real gun to replace it with. Take cues from the current crop of ES weapons: VS: The Spiker, Lasher and Lancer are great templates to build new weapons from. Extending wings, energy ball reload animations, bits that glow when you're firing. All great stuff. NC: Less inspiration here as the MagScatter is ... uninspiring and a lot of NC guns already look a bit like the Jackhammer, but I think you can go places with the RailJack. Semi-mechanized, lots of long straight lines. TR: Probably the most difficult. Their only really distinctive gun is the MCG. Nothing to sneeze at, as anybody who thinks you can't get something from that needs to do an image search for "Vladof LMG". I also love the Amp's reload mechanic. The idea of this snapping mouth, hungry for bullets, opening up on the side of the Carv makes me smile. Of course, the next obvious step is a remodel of the basic armors. I bought the Holo armors with delight, and when the PS2 servers shut down I shall arrive at the gates of Valhalla - Shiny, and Chrome. Give me armors which play up the faction distinctiveness. More NC Infiltrator running lights. Cover the Vanu with floating, blinking bits. Make people want to check out their death screen just to stare in the cold LED eyes of my TR. But the real question, as you can probably tell from the title, what is the price on this? If I could get a solid re-skin of the entire base game (every gun, armor & vehicle) I don't think I'd mind putting out $120 for that. But then, if I could commission a piece (with the creative control that entails), I wonder how much that would cost to hit up Arctorn for a great model and bribe Yeatts to get it put into the game?
Yeah this year was NOt about the bling sadly. For a lot of us... that's a 'meta content' that really interests us and motivates us to spend cash. Last year was an awesome bling bundle and I was really hoping for something similar... and we got some ... bleh cammo and a couple of meh reskins. This year I felt more like I was donating to the development coffers than buying cool stuff. What blows my mind is it didn't have to be this way. I know they said resources are limited... so do some cheap easy stuff just to pad the bundle? Banners... come on... they aren't that hard. They could have done that pretty quick. Titles! Seriously; how hard can they be? Could have thrown in a couple of cool titles or faction specific ones. Recruit rewards... like 5 people ever got any of the really cool ones. Just throw them in the bundle FFS! Why NOT throw in all the hard-light stuff from last year? Not everyone got it last year!
Sadly, this probably was the 'cheap easy stuff': Camos which are just the main faction color. Guns with a Black + faction custom skin (not a simple camo application at least) Reskin of the Engi tool, which as far as I can tell was just putting a little orange wrench in the bottom corner. But really, I don't want the cheap and easy stuff. I have money, give me the good stuff you keep behind the counter. The sad part is, I don't know if there's many people like me. I mean really, if Yeatts came in here and told us that making the Spiker cost $20,000 to dev do you think we could get a kickstarter funded to convert the Orion to have a similar style?
To be fair the ENG and Medic tools are new models; not just reskins like the heavy gun AE editions. I want the good stuff too; I hear ya. They were pretty up front saying they just didn't have the resources to do much. Which is why I was saying... there's stuff already done they could have thrown in like the hard-light items and the recruit rewards that will never ever get used again since they shut down that system. Really though the recruit reward MBT cannons *ARE* the good stuff they are hiding in the back room! They look awesome! Yet like 5 people ever got them... what a freak'n waste of development time. SELL THEM TO US!!!! TAKE MY MONEY!!!
The medic tool definitely was, though looking at them side by side the default one looked to be the more special looking of the two. I'll have to take your word for the Engi tool, I couldn't see a difference apart from the texturing. I do hear they're planning to add AE effects to them both, but that's not going to happen before the bundle goes off sale (and wouldn't make me purchase the bundle even if it did). Agreed on the recruit reward MBT cannons. Those look sweet. Even if they're for guns nobody uses. Which is sort of my question (in search of an answer that's never coming): If DBG put up a Kickstarter saying they had some artists lined up to do the modeling/rigging/animations/etc, would people contribute? How much would that cost us? I'd honestly love to just have the cash to say "Here is $500,000: go make my game prettier", but I'm sadly still waiting on that lottery win.
