Is there a reasoning for the Super Deluxe Edition?

Still pretty chuffed about picking up that sweet deal tbh, don't have to worry about waiting for a sale on release.

China has a long bureaucratic tradition - I'm sure they'll have it figured out by now.

I don't think 1 Premium Pack per week for 20 weeks is going to get you lots of new stuff in mp fast really. I imagine we'll be earning 1-2 Premium Packs per hour of playing, although initially it might be slower.

Extra 20$? I see extra $50, $80 for the basic game, and $130 for the Super Deluxe (with the Simple Deluxe being a more reasonable $10 surcharge, at $90). Canadian shekels here.

The 20 packs would make much more sense if you got them all at once. But over the course of 20 weeks...? That's not something that appeals to the players who are going to play a lot because by then they probably have everything maxed out anyways...

I strongly suspect that these super duper packs may be something similar to N7 packs that were given out once per week for N7 challenges. That means that those who have these packs will get two N7 weapon upgrades per week (one from their super pack and one from N7 challenges) while everyone else will be able to get just a single unlock/upgrade. So, by end of week 20, everyone will have, for example, hurricane, crusader, valkyrie rifle, and typhoon at level 5 while those who have the packs will have them at level 10. Although it is a pure speculation. Maybe, these are just regular normal packs available to everyone for in-game credits. Latter won't be nice to those who paid extra for super edition and the former won't be nice to everyone else. Either way, I see it as a no-win somewhat uncomfortable situation for everyone. Apparently, after week 20 it wont matter as there will be already some promotion lords and baby promotion lords in sufficient numbers and apparently, promotion lords will be able to solo diamond difficulty with avenger without consumables at level 1. That makes whatever special anyone gets from mega packs obsolete.

Capped at where exactly? 75% default damage resistance versus starting 5% and 2000 hit points/shields versus starting 500? Looks like a nice cap? There are also caps on damage resistance (80%) and critical chance (huh, 100%, can't have more) in DAIMP. That may be just good enough. Does not make the whole promotion thing right. Anyhow, there is no point in my speculations or your assumptions as we don't know. So, either is useless.

A dev made a post earlier in the thread saying it was capped, but didn't go into any more detail (likely because he wasn't able to for NDA reasons).

This is everything we know so far regarding power grinding and since "player skill is intended to remain a key ingredient", we can assume they are taking it a tad more seriously than they did with DAMP.
( Mind you, quite a few stats were capped in DAMP, too: mathematically they could not get passed 100% chance even by further promotes )


While I will most likely pre-order the game, I will only do it during the last few days if not the last few hours before release: something I do for all games I pre-order. I want to be as informed as possible before making any purchase.

IMO, Mister Ian is a nice guy. He did a very good job with Kingdom of Amalur's combat and crafting. Alas, the other parts of content of this game were not so stellar and loot was pretty much random, very random, very similar to DAI-MP. Otherwise, he is an action/strategy game designer and Andromeda is his first major effort. I'm also quite sure that he can tell things if he wants to tell something but of course, not in some casual non-official forum. He was also very careful at what he said specifically. "Player skill is intended to remain the key ingredient...". Well, not the main ingredient, not the only ingredient, just one of the ingredients. The other is obviously your manifest and certainly your valuable promotions. Well, and the build/powers that you have picked up. We don't know the importance of each of these factors. I sincerely hope it is balanced.

IMO, it looks like the issue of cap bonuses is undecided yet. There will be some, probably that won't change. I just hope they are going to be on the low side of things. Another IMO is that exact nature of packs in discussion is also undecided and probably is being debated. Otherwise, I don't see any reason for withholding that mysterious piece of information. I presume the sales would go up once people know what they are actually paying for. So, that info is obviously coming in closer to the release date.

Well, I can only speak from my own experience and that of some of the players I played with regularly in 2012. I think I still haven't hit the 1000 hours mark actually. But I was maxed out pretty quickly in ME3MP - before the first DLC hit if I remember correctly. And for every DLC that dropped I then had 15-30 million credits saved up and was usually maxed again with the new stuff as soon as I was finished spending that money as soon as the new DLC was live.

I did however do a lot of credit farming speedruns with some other skilled people and never really played anything below Gold. I also participated in most events that had one of the N7 weapons as a reward (before they became ultra rares that could be obtained with the regular packs). So from that experience I figured 20 weeks is such a long time and by that time I will have most of the stuff unlocked anyways. That might not be the case because I won't have as much time to play and the arsenal might be bigger right from the start but anyways... I think if you'd get all those 20 packs on day 1 instead of 1 per week the special edition might appeal to more people. Heck, maybe even I would consider buying it then in a moment of weakness or something 

I maxed my manifest at 868 hours as per N7HQ.

I actually got into ME3MP relatively late, just before the Reckoning DLC came out. My first Weekend Challenge was Operation Firestorm, which I completed on Feb 3rd, 2013. I maxed my manifest around mid-August 2013. From scratch to full manifest it took me 6.5 months, or about 27 weeks, playing 5-ish hours a day. I had played about 300 hours of Bronze and Silver pug before getting into Gold pug, and played a ton of Gold before I started playing Platinum sporadically. I managed to get a decent Platinum worthy team by the last 200-ish hours of my manifest journey. Those days were the best in my gaming life: I remember having 93 UR left at one point (while most of my friends had like 12 or so left), feeling unmotivated, yet managing to get them ALL over the last six weeks of that journey (Big ass thanks for everyone who helped/carried me!).
As for Platinum spawn-blocking speedruns, I played very few of them. I would imagine no more than twenty matches. They hardly had much impact.

If I had had a solid high difficult worthy team from the get-go, I would have reduced the time for maxing my manifest easily by a hundred or two hundred hours, maybe even more. I could have maxed or been pretty close to maxing my manifest in 20 weeks.

Therefore I strongly believe that for hardcore players the Super Deluxe Edition makes no sense.