more power on newbie computers

[miharu90]

least by my opinion these stats arent enough at all
or do you wanna wait hours for small download?
hell no
example in another hacking game you receive 1mb/s starting connection and here 5kb/s
come on! is that somekinda joke?
and getting raise of 1kb/s for each 150hpd you pay?
absolute NO
raise that for least 100kb/s for each 150hpd

all possible power is being ridicilous!
your with me or against?

[neo alpha]

least by my opinion these stats arent enough at all
or do you wanna wait hours for small download?
hell no
example in another hacking game you receive 1mb/s starting connection and here 5kb/s
come on! is that somekinda joke?
and getting raise of 1kb/s for each 150hpd you pay?
absolute NO
raise that for least 100kb/s for each 150hpd

all possible power is being ridicilous!
your with me or against?

1) I think that the starting BW should be  10 kbps
2) 1 kbps = 300 HPD
3) 100 kbp/s for 150 hpd ? LOL!
4) At SH you start with 1 MBps ; but what here is 30 mb , in SH is 3 GB :P

(By the way ; if sir emi changed the inicial bw , he should add the difference to ALL players 

[Crlaozwyn]

Miharu, I understand that it can be frustrating to feel like you're moving slowly... but you do realize that every other player started exactly where you did, right? The fact that some players have over 5000 bandwidth at the current price should be a good indicator that it's not only possible, but an inevitability if you play long enough. The game's numbers are somewhat arbitrary - don't think of them in terms of real life. How many 20GHz systems do you see in real life? I don't see too many machines with 16 gigs of ram (although it's possible), but that type of setup is going to happen here too.

[miharu90]

well even adding slight power add-on to newbie system
thought raising starter bw bit higher
(off-topic: pay by phone system for those who are unable to use credit card)

[neo alpha]

Well... It's not so hard to start in THP...

The secret , is to vote everyday when you're newbie ;)



I got enought money for some upgrades with the votes


Oh! By the way ; don't research anything until your PC is VERY good and you have the best the secret servers may offer ;)

[HJ®]

Another trick is to take as many 5-15 HPD as you can while your account is smaller. The higher-end players don't take these missions, as it's almost impossible to keep up with when you're doing 50+ at once, but these missions pay the prime amount of HPD for the time it takes to complete them as well, IIRC, along with the fact that there's almost no comptetion for these missions currently.

[Witcher]

Miharu, I understand that it can be frustrating to feel like you're moving slowly... but you do realize that every other player started exactly where you did, right?

I don't believe that statement is entirely correct.

As the game matures, you will have more people above you. Those players which started with the game were competing on a pretty much equal footing with each other. Those who start today will have a few hundred players above them which in various ways, they will have to compete against or learn to live with or something.

I also felt that starting out as a newbie was a REALLY steep climb in this game, early on the main source of income seem to be missions but completing missions either leaves you bottom feeding low pay missions or gambling your small resources to try to complete a couple of longer missions. Neither option is terribly palatable.

Now I saw the value of the game and thought geesh... I like it but I don't have time for mucking around. I am lucky to be able to have dropped a bit of cash to get past the painful start. (Doesn't stop me from making stupid mistakes though! Hence all the time I have now to read these forums.)

But it did get me thinking.

I don't think increasing the initial stats of a server is a good idea. Because in fact many, if not most initial servers are going to end up being hacked and used by older players once newbies "quit" the game. Thus increasing the initial server specs would ironically favour the older players quite a fair bit. (definitely no need to compensate them :p)

It is though true that when you start out it is REALLY difficult to see progress. It may sound silly but when you are learning getting together 300 HPD to increase bandwidth by one is actually quite challenging. Doable, but challenging. I think it may be discouraging people from staying in the game because it is in fact such a steep curve.

Instead I would tweak the storyline - How did you get a hold of that first server anyhow? Maybe a friend set you up with some gear, or an old uncle or whatever... and maybe they still have some more gear lying around which they could get to you cheap...

Here is my suggestion - Have the first few purchases for starting players be at a lower than normal price.

If you do that you will need:

1) To make it VERY clear that this is a special situation. (Yeah mate, I still have an old drive and a bit of extra bandwidth you can use but after that you are on your own!)
2) To balance things carefully - this is something to be tweaked but I would go for a 50% discount on the first 3000 HPD worth of gear spent. Thus a newbie would spend 1500 but get 3000 worth of goodies. You can tweak the numbers but the key thing is that the gift the newbie gets (1500 HPD) is big enough that he can see some progess and is encouraged to stay, but small enough that it is not generating an imbalance, nor discouraging people from paying cash for HPD.