McDuff wrote:ravener96 wrote:
there are more than 4 m4's in the world, if you like your ak you can get another one. the problem in the prototype is that every weapon is more or less one of a kind.
OK, a couple of points that should be obvious but apparently aren't.
Prototype != finished game.
Laser with similar stats = laser with similar stats. It doesn't matter if it's a Honda Blaster II or a Daewoo Shooter III. If it's got X Dam and Y range and Z shootyspeed and whatever else, what's the problem?
If you really want a particular kind of gun and you can't get it anywhere, why not go find the manufacturer and say "hey I would like to buy these guns off you, can you make them for me please?"
I think the point of this post was to make the economy more realistic.
Yes, I agree there should be diversity but there should also be quantity. When was the last time you went into a store or a purchase website and you only saw items that were one of a kind or that the store/website only had one in its inventory? That is not how the economy works.
In fact for a manufacturer it is more profitable to manufacture in bulk (given that the item made gets sold) due to the fact that fixed costs are distributed among a larger number of items and thus increase the profitability each said item sold.
Given that state of affairs you also have to take into consideration branding, if the same manufacturer were to give a different name to each item made even though they are the same then he would make less profit simply because the consumer is not aware of the ARTIFICIAL diversity of the product and even though he/she was satisfied with the first product, he can no longer find a product with the same name and thus is not willing to buy it.
A compromise and a realistic possibility to this would be something similar to what is happening in the auto industry. Take Volkswagen, everybody has heard of the VW Golf, so they don’t remove that part from the name. They just add something like VW Golf 1, 2, 3,… etc. This is not only realistic but practical. Since you let the consumer know it is similar to the product they are looking for but perhaps better because it is a newer generation of the same product.
Again this is a matter of realism in the LT economy.