Welcome to the first of what will become a regular series of development blogs; our chance to show you what we’re working on and how it is progressing. As this blog continues you will be getting exclusive access to some behind-the-scenes information, pictures and even videos – straight from source.
We’re kicking off with a topic that has recently been setting the forum on fire, that being “physical” Pop-tabs and their management.
As revealed in the rolling change logs (click here) early this month, Exile’s in-game currency of Pop-tabs (PT) will no longer just be the safe little virtual figure that accumulates in your XM8 or on your custom status bar, they are now set to make a more physical appearance in-game.
The first thing to note here is just how “physical” they will be. Upon hearing this news many a player had visions of the impossible task of keeping track of individual PT’s and having inventories dominated by loose unmanaged currency.
However, as the more tech-savvy among you may know, this not only presents inventory management and storage issues but also leaves the door open to abuse and exploitation of A3’s magazine system, a concern high on the team’s priority list. With these issues in mind the system has been devised to remain separate to the magazine system so that money cannot be duped or hacked in, but still has a physical element to present players with more risks and challenges when dealing with currency.
Instead of being an item players can store in their main clothing/rig/backpack inventories, PT’s will be stored and transferable to a new inventory wallet* system (* naming and presentation still to be finalised guys). Because of this it has been necessary to adjust and re-organise the player inventory GUI, as shown in the image below.
Devblog April 12th - Revised Inventory
The screen illustrates the subtle changes made to combine the headgear and tool inventories and the introduction of the new PT inventories for both the player and an interactive storage item.
At this stage of development PT inventories for players and storage objects (such as safes) are unrestricted meaning there are no limits to the amounts allowed to be stored within them, leaving it down to player judgement to regulate; i.e. they can chose how much they carry on themselves at any particular time and how much to deposit in their safes or other storage items. It isn’t until a player is killed that their PT inventory will truly become physical in the form of a single item (the as of yet to be announced new wallet item) that is dropped to denote that their currency is now lootable. This represents another important issue to note; players will no longer be able to transfer Pop-tabs via their XM8 and instead will have to rely on transfers of currency to take place via a physical transaction.
This new system represents a major expansion to Exile’s currency system and marks a conscious effort to improve risk/reward elements of the game. However, it is important to remember that this is only part of the ‘bigger picture’ and further developments on this system and link-ins to other game mechanics are still to be introduced and balanced.
Further announcements will be made regularly via these dev-blogs in the coming weeks including upcoming details on base-raiding, XM8 and new content. Keep us bookmarked to find out here first! In the meantime give us your feedback, thoughts and ideas via the forum.
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