News

ngmoco explains how iPhone shooter Eliminate's pay to play system won't unbalance gameplay

Skill is required to level up

ngmoco explains how iPhone shooter Eliminate's pay to play system won't unbalance gameplay
|
| Eliminate Pro

One of the big issues with ngmoco's online-only iPhone shooter Eliminate is how the micro-transaction system will work.

On the company's blog, Chris Plummer has been explaining how it's been designed to stop people just buying their way to success.

The basic design works like this:

You earn credits by playing the game. The better you play, the more credits you get. Credits are used to purchase and upgrade new gear such as weapons and armour.

However, every time you enter an arena to play the game, you use up some energy.

You can recharge your energy at any time by using Power Cells. You'll get some of these as part of the Eliminate app purchase, and energy also recharges automatically over time.

However, you can purchase additional Power Cells from iTunes or acquire them through other methods that ngmoco hasn't yet revealed.

Plummer says ngmoco's using this system to cover the costs of the global servers and infrastructure used for lobbies, matchmaking, and gameplay.

The question of whether you can just buy loads of Power Cells to become a success is explained thus:

"Most items and upgrades are level bound, meaning you have to earn the prerequisite level through combat experience in order to qualify for the armour or upgrade," says Plummer.

"So just because you pay more doesn't mean you don't have to play like everyone else. That's the whole point of the game - to play and win! You'll level up faster when you're earning credits, so energy is a factor, but you definitely have to play and earn those credits."

In this way, ngmoco hopes the game won't become unbalanced, because if you're a rich but inept player, you'd have to spend a lot of money and play the game a lot to level up at the same speed as a poor but good player.

While very few people will be prepared to spend the amount of money and play the number of games required to level up as fast as very good players.

We'll see how those plans work when Eliminate is released.

You can read the full post on ngmoco's gamemakers' blog.

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.