Executive Producer Bill Roper has written a letter to the Champions Online community outlining a new in-game economy model that may make it onto the Public Test Shard this weekend. Roper wrote the letter to explain that retcon costs haven't been reduced because the team was in the process of analyzing the overall economy of the game and didn't want retcon prices to drop and then shoot back up, which would have angered players.

As for the changes, Roper said the team is "increasing the number of white upgrade drops in the world by a substantial amount – close to double of what you're seeing now. We're also flattening out the curve on resources gained for selling upgrades to stores, meaning that you'll get a lot more for white primaries, a little less at the highest end (blues and purples)." They're also increasing the amount of resources you get for defeating enemies and for completing missions.

As for retcons, the "pricing curve is going to be much gentler so that players can undo more decisions at any time. It’s important to note that although we’re tuning the overall costing model of retcon during this phase, a substantial retcon will still have a high price." Players will be getting a free retcon when these economy changes go live. Roper's full letter can be found after the jump.

There has been an outcry for a change in retcon pricing, so I wanted to take a few minutes to express why we specifically haven’t reduced the costs. In a nutshell, it all comes down to the economy.

We’ve been analyzing the overall economy of the game. The huge challenge here is that we’ve only been up for 17 days and we needed a reasonable amount of time to pull post-launch, Live Shard data on global resource flow. This then means we have to work with ratios of these numbers and address the relationship of those economic ratios between synergistic and disparate systems. As with any economic model, it’s far more complex than you would first imagine. So, during the past couple of weeks we’ve been working on tuning the entire economy of the game, but we haven’t pushed any changes into the live environment.

Why didn’t we just drop the price of retcon while we figured this out? The concern was that we’d then have to change the pricing back upward after the economy changes were made, and this would only make players mad. So we’ve worked hard and fast and now have solid data and solutions to present.

The concerns that we simply weren’t giving out enough resources to meet the requirements of certain areas of the game were confirmed. We’re attacking this on multiple fronts and are pushing a new economy model to internal QA test tonight and (if all goes well) onto our Public Test Shard this weekend.

So, what’s changing?

We’re increasing the number of white upgrade drops in the world by a substantial amount – close to double of what you’re seeing now. We’re also flattening out the curve on resources gained for selling upgrades to stores, meaning that you’ll get a lot more for white primaries, a little less at the highest end (blues and purples). This equates to distributing about the same overall potential resources while skewing gains to the lower end. We had originally considered just simply increasing the amount of resources you earned from selling all items to “fix” the economy. However, this would have broken crafting – hence the shifting of primary and secondary upgrade values that maintain a net balance of total resources you have coming in from selling upgrades.

We’re also increasing the amount of resources you get for defeating all enemies. This means not only will you naturally get more for doing missions, but you’ll also get more by helping others on their missions or by sweeping the streets. We’re also increasing the resources you get for mission rewards specifically.

The retcon pricing curve is going to be much gentler so that players can undo more decisions at any time. It’s important to note that although we’re tuning the overall costing model of retcon during this phase, a substantial retcon will still have a high price. The heroic, thematic nature of the game doesn't support letting players constantly change their fundamental character concept. But at the same time we want to make it possible for them to completely retcon their character if it’s their goal.

These economy changes will greatly improve the ability for players to retcon their characters, as well as address some longer-term issues we saw on the horizon.

Finally, we’ll be issuing a free retcon for all heroes when the economy changes go Live since it will take a little time for the effects of the new economy to allow players to build up a retcon bankroll.

Remember, we’re pushing the economy change to the Public Test Realm this weekend, so sign up and help us test!