The Raptor is a street sweeper? I thought that was an April Fools Day joke?! Maybe it still is? If the required 50 recruits each spend $200 on the game over just one year, that’s $10,000 of revenue for CIG. If the Raptor is worth $50, that’s equivalent to CIG sharing a 0.5% finders fee for our advertising effort for them. That’s a fair bit of advertising work for a small return, financially and in ship usefulness. Unless they plan on corpse pile cleanup at med beds being an even bigger feature for the 1.0 release.
It was a Triggerfish gag, the vehicle was made to be an NPC only asset but was so popular they are making it player flyable. I'm not going to work out how much the rest stuff between 1 and 50 referrals is but I don't think it'll bump up the 'finders fee' that much.
As all assets will be earnable in game one wonders about a perceived 'value' of any one item, however they've never said how easy it'll be to earn the asset or what we'll have to sacrifice in game to get it.
For the effort and commitment a 50 referral will need, I'd expect the Raptor to be behind a reputation wall that permanently effects your game, by for example somehow makeing you an enemy of 48% of all systems in the 'Verse or something else that'd be hell of a restriction to your play... or just a grind-a-thon so big as to be your game for years like pick up a million tonnes of trash or literally clean up the whole of Lorville...?
One of the other rewards I love the look of is the 100 referral Freelancer Max with 4 Brands Skins. I can imagine players being able to easily get those skins in game, BUT not all at once: So you do missions and get the Whammers skin, but that puts you negative rep with Ellroy's so you can't get that one without going negative with Whammers and losing the Whammers skin to gain the Ellroys one etc... we could be looking at one of the 'Verses biggest mexican stand-offs where all of the assets are earnable easily but no natural player can hold them all at once, that honour available through the refferal reward...?
All theory crafting of course but good fun, eh?
