Hi guys,
Just wanted to chime in to explain a few things regarding the reinstating of limits in the Trooper Shop.
First of all, this is not a change being made in isolation. There are many updates and changes to the game that will be rolling out over the next few months and these limits are just a part of balancing the flow of resources in the economy given those changes. Without getting into too much detail or revealing exact dates, here is a preview of some of the content and features related specifically to this change that we are in the process of developing:
- We are in the process of looking at speeding up the use of Troopers, and of playing quests in general, which will increase the speed and ease of earning Trooper Badges.
- There are more items coming to the Trooper shop within the next few months, including the long heralded Trooper Soul. Our current plan is to offer a one-time, high cost Trooper Soul as well as the farmable weekly fragment option. The price has not been finalized for this Soul, but generally speaking it should not exceed the cost of using 50 troopers over a 5 week period (i.e. between 40K-to-50K Badges) though this is tentative and could change. In regards to how much heads up you'll have about when to start saving up, we are also going to start advertising what events are planned for the month in the News Feed to give people a better idea of what's to come. In theory, by the time we announce the release of this soul, you should have enough time to save up for at least one pull or at least dramatically shorten the time it will take for it.
- With many upcoming events, we are looking for ways to ensure all players have some way of working towards the event rewards outside of just using the ironite or souls they have on hand. To that end there will be many events which will be making more use of all 3 shops in the game in new ways (Arena, Troopers, and Gold Shops). For this to work, we need to make the shops more consistent with each other so that something like unlimited access to rare souls doesn't completely break the economy of the game as it will imbalance the value of various activities and game modes.
In short, with some of the upcoming changes, you'll still be able to earn the same amount of resources, if not much more, but you won't have to dedicate as much energy and time to things like using Troopers. Instead, via events and upcoming features, there should be more of a perceptible cadence to where you can ideally spend you time to maximize your rewards in the game. Yes, this does mean you can't hoard points to buy souls / shards in bulk, but this is also the reason we are communicating these changes now. If you have large stores of Trooper Badges saved up, you may want to consider spending them now as, outside of the aforementioned Trooper Soul, there won't be much reason to save them.
Hopefully that helps explain that particular change. Sparton and I will try and be around on the forums today to answer any additional questions regarding this or other updates from the patch preview notes.
Cheers,
-Kaz