The upkeep system has its uses. It does hit people in the pocket so you tend to get fewer of things you don't necessarily want to nerf outright.
You can limit the amount of items other than by this upkeep system. And the balance of an item is (usually) not determined by its abundance. Having only one player use a laserblaster doesn't mean the laserblaster shouldn't be nerfed. On the other hand if everyone runs around with a Kuyak it doesn't mean the Kuyak is OP, it can have various reasons like looks, etc. (That's why I chose the Kuyak as example, since it's just in the "middle" of the rather linear armour line, and still overused. Stat wise it doesn't stand out so much that it would justify the amount oyu see on the servers).
In short: balance wise the popularity of an item has nothing to do with the balance. High popularity can only be an indicator that an item could be OP, but that's it. This doesn't give the upkeep system any benefit over other systems at all.
It allows for a bit more realism in the design, so if you want heavy armour to behave like heavy armour you could make it very expensive so you only really get a few of them per team etc. Otherwise you would need literal or class limits which I don't think they can do.
Again the upkeep system would not be the only one to limit that stuff.
My old suggestion was to have to buy your equipment budget with skill points, which means that if you extend your item budget that far that you can afford a heavy armour you can't exceed your power strike or athletics or weapon master skill. That way a guy with heavy armour just plays DIFFERENTLY than someone with light armour and high skills, but should be more or less on the same level. With the upkeep system you only need to be in a clan stack most of the time, own a fief or do a lot of market place trade (including the sale of a single loom point) and you are BETTER than other players on the same level. Which is BAD balance, imho.
I do like that theres a market and economy, it feels more like an RPG with things to worry about or plan for besides the current game session
Nothing against that, but it should not directly affect your performance ingame.
Saying that though there is some arbitrary upkeep price attached to most weapons atm. We basically have a "trash" rank and a "decent weapon" rank were the upkeep is just a random number. Anything over like 4-7k is usually as good as each other in one way or another. I don't know if its worth changing much atm though, maybe reduce the cost on the more costly weapon types.
This is what I was complaining about often enough. Since the upkeep was not enough to limit the items effectively, the developers started to balance the items in a way that those about three quarters up the quality ladder usually turn out to be the best choice, whereas the "top tier" items remain something rather "extreme" for specialized builds. If the limitation would be more strict than the upkeep system, you can make the items differ much more than now. If you would make the differences between good and bad items much bigger with the upkeep system, everyone would only use the best items or leech in rags to be able to afford using them some time. Which again is bad game design, imho.
I really like Battle mode and don't really see why we should ruin a whole game mode just because people want to be "fair" and say that everything is balanced and should never be nerfed. We simply need a good counter to ranged classes that doesn't involve throwing or shooting projectiles, and we need to give good reasons to players NOT to play ranged. This can be upkeep, paying per shot, weight, no melee weapon (lol, imagine ranged get the same situation as melee do vs ranged)
No, it can't. It's the gameplay itself what deterrs people from infantry and drives them into ranged. Unless the gameplay changes fundamentally nothing will change or help. Currently the gameplay feels like this: infantry has to run around all the time in the search of target to engange, while the only real targets where they have no problems engaging in are other infantry. The rest of the round is spent running around and constantly watching your back for archers and cavalry. On the other hand cavalry and archers can start engaging few seconds after spawning, and they can pick their targets and are much more flexible to react to developments on the battlefield WITHOUT having to stop attacking. Infantry is passive, the other classes are active. Unless this fact changes, the old problems will persist.
We just need to stop pussy footing around the issues and get balancers with some wherewithal (balls) to do what needs to be done, without worrying about people who can't play without left clicking on guys from a safe distance
As I said, it's not a balance issue at all. If there are still ranged nerfs needed to achieve balance and good gameplay, we should be at like 90% process, which means about 10% problems are left. But we have 100% of the old problems with ranged left, so what does this tell us?
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