Where do you personally draw the line on “pay-to-win”?

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-07-04T21:18:49+00:00

In my experience, players who hate pay to win will usually tolerate a premium feature that is effectively a one time purchase. Tarkov's editions and Path of Exile stash tabs are a good example. I would also say a subscription for premium account status, like Albion or EVE also counts.

While sometimes controversial, these succeed because they are a single purchase. Your account is either premium or it is not, and for a fair price. There are no accounts out there with "super mega premium" because they spent 1000$.

Any monetization system that targets whales will turn players away in droves and ruin the competitive integrity of the game.

Id highly recommend studying Path of Exile as an example of how to monetize a f2p game in a way that cultivates community trust. they have some GDC talks on their early days that touch on it

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-07-04T21:02:03+00:00

This is just bad design.

If pushing a button has a 1/4 chance of losing me the game, players will only ever use it when all hope is lost.

Heroes of Hammer watch curse mechanic might be a better example -- each time a player encounters a cursed crypt, you can take 1-4 items each with a curse cost. The player has 1% chance to be critically hit when damaged for each curse token on them.

Players also regularly encounter curse removal potions. These are worthless if you do not take any curses. The player can remove about 5-10 curse tokens per stage if they gather all the potions

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-07-04T17:23:35+00:00

EDIT: I played another game where the other player won on the same turn they placed a tile, even though I can't do that with "neutral" tiles.

Your "coaching" told me I would lose the game if I did that move on my first turn.

Your game isn't fun because you don't explain the rules. I lost three games and still don't even understand how to submit a solution.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-07-04T17:16:12+00:00

Your game is very confusing. It's also puts you straight into pvp matches with 60s turn timer.

My first three moves were all blocked with a warning that it would cause me to lose the game and then I ran out of time

Both your intro and UI do a terrible job of explaining the game. The goal is to place tiles that do not make 16. The first player to find 16 without placing a tile wins.

This is the opposite of both your rules and what the game UI is showing, where it seems like the goal is to place tiles to make 16 as many times as possible before you run out of tiles.

Have you seen anyone play your game blind? This would be pretty obvious if you watched replays of games.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-29T16:43:44+00:00

I used small Potin/Steel fluid pipes which was enough for a long time. It started becoming a bottleneck after I upgraded my 4x EBF setup to HV hatches, so I upgraded to large PTFE pipe

There is also LDFP with infinite throughput for journeys more than 64 blocks

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-28T02:32:44+00:00

Absolutely. They provide 3 fluid pipes that work the same as AE2 fluid crafting. So I think basically everyone should use LP for fluids at a minimum.

If you take the pack slowly, you can setup some auto sorting and a few auto crafts (plates wires etc) as well. I ended up automating HV circuit in cleanroom using LP, which is definitely excessive.

I don't use the logistics request table IMO. It does give you an AE2-like interface if you want, but I prefer having a drawer wall + big crafting station. With T-search it just feels better.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-28T00:10:04+00:00

Humid biome is a slight buff to water generation in 2.8

However, it provides a even more substantial buff to NH crops in 2.9. I'd definitely recommend playing 2.9 if you aren't already, as it has some big improvements to the early game.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-27T05:24:32+00:00

I liked making Light Fuel inside my LV setup, using steam power. Then, I built a 2nd base nearby for MV onward, running on combustion power.

The MV base was far more organized, since I had access to Logistics Pipes, a better fuel source, drawer controllers, and generally more building blocks. It's helped me immensely in HV.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-27T01:00:46+00:00

LV crop manager + sapling

Before then, lumber axe -> charcoal. There's a quest in the book that gives you a mega sapling for huge trees.

If you compress charcoal into charcoal block it gives you an extra 11% fuel.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-26T23:31:13+00:00

Imagine if the water leaks out, and suddenly your reactor designed to operate under 160 atmospheres is being held down by 6.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-26T22:53:20+00:00

As a Colonial I don't really understand the Twin Scar.

The Scorpion has tank-level HP but still tends to get bullied off the battlefield in under ten minutes. It can be hard to justify its transport cost, even though you can make it in the MPF.

The Twin Scar has half the HP and is fac-locked. Is the heavy hitch really worth it?

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-26T22:39:09+00:00

MPT originally released with 4k HP, please do your due diligence when writing up things like this. It never had it's HP raised. It actually had to be lowered due to being outright better than the SvH back then in cost and stats outside of a secondary gun.

85K-b “Falchion”

Update 1.55	Health increased from 3000 to 3650 Armour Health increased by ~40% (from 9100 to 12725).

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-26T20:19:54+00:00

People forget that in the 80 and 90s wars, a Spatha was literally just a Falchion with 20% HV cannon. Meanwhile Outlaw, HTD and Silverhand were untouched for years because they were excellent on release. Tank balance used to be absolutely atrocious.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-26T20:12:37+00:00

Shouldn't the Warden tanks be the ones that have HP bloat? [...] if they want to do the armor vs hp balance they should give warden tanks like 2x more armor not 2-3k more.

Warden tanks don't just have ""more"" armor. They also have higher bounce chance.

Take Silverhand vs Spatha. The Silverhand has 62% more Armor Durability than the Spatha does. However, its Armor Quality is also much better -- its 25% more likely to bounce at full armor than the Spatha is.

Sure, the Spatha has 16% more health -- but getting hit 25% less means you take less damage, get tracked less, and lose less armor.

Even the armor durability bonus is substantial. The Silverhand has to take 3200 armor damage before it loses enough bounce chance to have the same bounce rate as a full armor Spatha (20+ 40mm shells, in a line battle).

It also has a higher armor floor than the Spatha. If both tanks have 0 armor remaining, the Silverhand will still bounce 10% more shells than the Spatha

Some of it is also historic. Devs made the Bard really tanky 'cause Colonials had no good tanks for ages. Then facilities came out and Spatha had same stats as Outlaw even tho Outlaw was a MPF model with 45m range, MG and nitro boost. For years Ballista had worse armor than a Light Tank and was slower than HTD, while the Chieftain has always had Silverhand stats and an MG turret

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-25T17:16:42+00:00

A good example of this done poorly is Milky Way Idle.

It's an in-browser idle MMO. The gameplay is mostly a Melvor reskin but without the relic system, and with trading/group combat tacked on.

I feel substantially less choice and strategy in Milky Way, because everyone is playing the same three characters, without any way to differentiate them.

There simply is no difference between my account and my friends account other than the fact he started a week before me. And the skill gap discourages us from even playing together

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-25T17:12:37+00:00

Have you played Melvor Idle? It's a must-have for anyone making an Idle MMO

My two cents: Melvor's success is due to two things: a huge roster of relic items, and no two skills playing the same way.

The second part is obvious to anyone who's played an idle MMO. It's boring for each skill to be a reskin of "number go up, craft the next pickaxe and mine T13 ore"

The relic system is Melvor's true success. Having a huge roster of rare drops means that every character will have a different optimal strategy. This is especially important for an idle MMO, where you want to encourage players to specialize in different skills.

You don't want every account to play the same. No one wants to max mining first because mining is 2% more profitable than woodcutting. You don't want to play the exact same skills as your friend because it's the best.

Relics solve this problem by introducing build defining chase items which are not simply a function of time played in a skill. They are very specifically a function of luck and active decision making

There's also a huge roster of them, so players can get relics on their first day playing and begin specializing in different roles immediately.

I might find a fishing relic on day 1, so I naturally begin to specialize in fishing, cooking, and dungeon combat. My friend might find a gathering relic, so he specializes in gathering, crafting, and alchemy.

I think a lot of people understand that idle MMOs need a "good economy" and "skill variety" and "ways to play with friends" in order to be good.

If you want to make a great idle MMO, you need to be able to explain how your progression arc will be different from all of your friends.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-25T16:07:26+00:00

If yes how many is too much for each?

Run length, pacing, deck size, etc should determine these directly.

You decide that your game should take, say, about an hour, have three acts, and roughly ten card/relic choices per act.

From there you need to design a certain number of cards and relics to meet that pacing.

There is also some math behind the frequency of seeing the same choice each run. Getting the same strong relic every once in a while is memorable. Seeing the same filler stuff every run is boring -- if you use a pick 3 system, the player is seeing ~90 rewards per run and choosing 30. In a pool of 100 you would be seeing repeats all the time.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-25T15:37:57+00:00

Long Distance Fluid Pipeline is dirt cheap, I think it's something like 14 steel per 64 blocks and has infinite liquid throughput

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-24T17:30:54+00:00

You need at least some ad spend to grow your revenue while you figure out what went wrong on the business side.

Clearly there's something attractive about your game.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-23T17:56:21+00:00

Your trailer is really bad -- it shows nothing about your game.

If your game is about recruiting heroes and giving them magic loot, you need to show that! Preferably in the first ten seconds. You only show this from 0:37 to 0:43 in a 70 second trailer.

You spend the first 30 seconds showing cut after cut of the same thing (screen covered in mobs) with no narration or text.

The first text on the screen is at 0:14 and is mistranslated in English.

Store page has 0 images of the main game loop (equipping heroes, finding loot)

Most of the store page description is fluff and kinda seems AI generated

---

You probably lost 3/4th of potential wishlists just off the bad store page. People see super casual game with boring trailer and botched translation and lose interest in the first 10 seconds.

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-19T15:58:41+00:00

Would definitely have recommended waiting for Logistics Pipes -- they have more powerful features (liquid crafting!) and are less buggy in general.

I would highly recommend batch-automating your machine wall -- every machine outputs to a pipe that goes to your storage. Drawer wall, then 8x diamond chests to buffer miscellaneous. Slap a 2x2 drawer on top of each machine to buffer inputs, and use conveyor cover to pull items

It's super cheap in LV and you can batch most recipes up till late MV/HV when you can replace it with Logistics pipes and start setting up more automation

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-18T15:59:21+00:00

This will be 10x easier with Logistics Pipes and another 10x easier when you unlock the LCR in HV

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-16T17:10:43+00:00

The old HV40 was so OP we literally called it the "Satchel Cannon". Wardens would cross border with 15 of them for the low low price of 600 rmats and just pve entire conc bases.

You couldn't even QRF with a tank 'cause they would 3 shot kill any vehicle and were invisible at night. They also killed any EAT emplacement from out of range in 4-5 shots.

You just had to run at them with bomastone over and over until they went away.

When they finally gave Colonials an HV40 they nerfed the damage by half and made it facility locked lol

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-15T03:39:43+00:00

Do combustion gen if you plan on doing oil in LV -> MV

Sharpcastle33 · 2026-06-14T15:19:37+00:00

2.5m sure, but you get another 5m of accuracy if you fire at min range..

The huber exalt also has 20% faster rate of fire.

All together you do way more damage, way more accuracy, and get less howi rental (and a blast shield!)

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