Oh not disagreeing, just adding emphasis that however it gets cut, the current balance is busted.
Zero to hero – 1bn Cr in less than 10 hours on a new account.
- Thread starter HappyMoonMonkey
- Start date
That's all true, though the lack of medium/high-difficulty trade or exploration content, the lack of meaningful distinction between ship size classes, and since 2.1 the ability (and expectation) for an engineered ship to make all tasks equally trivial means that even if they were inclined to fix it they probably couldn't start from here.
There's also the issue, of course, that as rainbro hinted at above, the most efficient and least risky way to obtain huge amounts of credits is to have another player give them to you, which makes the balancing issue somewhat bypassable anyway.
(The question you answered was very much directed at people who think it's currently too fast in general, though - shifting around which activities have which payouts is a different topic on which I generally agree with you)
Because it's right there on the big button saying "mission board" every time you dock or view a foot terminal?
I do agree with your more general point, of course - if they had the time, reworking the engineer invitation requirements into (hey, let's be ambitious) voice-acted missions which provide a bit more of that tutorial in terms of introduction to the game world rather than the existing introduction to how to point a spaceship/gun at a target would be very good.
(There was, from fairly early on though I can't remember if as early as 2015, a tutorial stuck somewhere in the start menu that involved a hyperspace jump. It didn't explain anything about why you might want to do so - having you buy a tonne of cargo and then sell it at the other end would have done! - but it was there if you were the sort of person to click on every button to see what it did, and therefore much less in need of a tutorial to start with)
I find this interesting - were things massively different in 2015 than 2017?
I started playing in May 2017 - took a week to learn how to fly (and a month to finalise HOTAS controls) and was flying missions around my starter system, and the surrounding systems, from the start.
Granted, I downloaded and read the game manual - didn't use any online resource until I joined the forum when I was truly 'stuck' in not knowing where to find something...
Yes, I did play the original Elite in 1984, the meory of which enticed me to buy ED. I wasn't disappointed, and, as I am a very simple game player (I've always played the game I have, rather than dream of what it might / should be) it has continued to entertain me since.
I remember celebrating having a whole million credits in my account - now I have a little more than that - but, again, and not bothered by how much easier it is to make millions now, just enjoying doing things I want to do, am I playing it all wrong?
And there lies the problem - they're paying the price for rushing through a bottom of the barrel, predictible and basic BGS to get the game out of the door before it was ready.
They've compounded this by increasing the level of credits given to whatever the latest game runner feels is the 'next big thing' and shied away from actually fixing the issue.
As for earning per hour, it's impossible to work out as the bgs is too basic - for example if the risk / reward actually worked properly then you'd earn more by trading with anarchies, or running illegal goods with the fear of getting destroyed. Conversely landing on a featureless planet and scanning some recoloured thing that looks like a ladypart, or scanning yet another empty system should net you nothing.
In short, not really, in long, actually quite a bit.
It wasn't called a mission board, it was called a Bulletin Board, and missions paid significantly less. You were lucky if a mission for over 100k was offered. Courier missions attracted I think 1,000cr... assassinations are what paid out 100k or so... but even then, if you didn't do a good job, you might face 200k worth of repairs. You didn't have faction faces... in fact, it was pretty hard to tell who was offering a mission beyond the major faction offering it.
Generally speaking, you did missions for influence and rep, not for the credits. As a contrast, a salvage mission would pay something like 25-50k, compared to the ~2m today.
Mission USS didn't exist either (though; I can't remember if that was around later than 2017 or not), you just cruised around til you saw a USS that might have been of the same type you were after, but wasn't necessarily it.
Is that kinda where you were going?
EDIT: I thought the boards looked different to this, but my memory could be off... either way the rewards are about right for the time (and the mission descriptors more interesting!)
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@ratcatcher
Yep, the game was a harsh mistress back then.
Far less money, shorter jump ranges, substantial effort required to buy a new ship and A rate it.
Third party tools were in their infancy or just not there(yet)
Rebuys could be catastrophic. ruining months of work.
Back then you flew more "carefully'.
Fun times.
Yep, the game was a harsh mistress back then.
Far less money, shorter jump ranges, substantial effort required to buy a new ship and A rate it.
Third party tools were in their infancy or just not there(yet)
Rebuys could be catastrophic. ruining months of work.
Back then you flew more "carefully'.
Fun times.
I wouldn’t know about 2015 as I didn’t get the base game until 2016, one thing that was different then to now was that one of the reasons missions might be locked was they were too far above your rank. I think that might have changed by the time you started.
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Such is the problem with developing games commercially. If they'd spent twice as long making it before 1.0, then kept it high difficulty to successfully put off the casual players from buying in the first place, they'd never have made it as far as Horizons. And being a company with no experience of making MMOs initially developing for an audience with generally no experience of playing them ... they'd still have got it wrong [1], of course.
But... also, it's an Elite sequel initially very heavily marketed on 80s/90s nostalgia. The previous games were not renowned for their difficulty in making money, complex and balanced economic simulations, or monotonic risk-reward curves. Having the opportunities offered by the game respond to cause-and-effect at all was a major new feature.
[1] At least from the perspective of "long-term credit earnings balance should be the top design priority", which was a long way down the list in the first place, behind at the very least "keeping reasonable continuity with the existing lore", "showing off our ability to simulate a 1:1 scale galaxy" and "appealing to the old fans of the series".
I'm not asking for a detailed spec for long-term game balance in a hypothetical Elite V.
Given the subject of the thread, you presumably feel "10 hours for an Anaconda" is too quick, even for someone who's played the game for years and is starting a new alt with all that experience. Which of "100 hours for an Anaconda", "1,000 hours for an Anaconda", "10,000 hours for an Anaconda" or "it should be impossible for players to own Anacondas" [2] do you think should have been the very approximate design target instead?
[2] In all seriousness. While I probably wouldn't agree with it I think there's a very strong case for making the Asp Explorer (or maybe even the Cobra III) the largest player-flyable ship, if we're talking "how game balance could have been done differently".
As with its FFE equivalent, earnings on the original Bulletin Board were very much balanced around the starter ship owner, and maybe up to the Cobra III.
Sure, you'd only get 1000 cr for a courier mission, but you had 2t of cargo space in your Freewinder so that was a fair bit more than you'd get for using that most of the time. Go to a RES and a lot of the time you'd be shooting down other Sidewinders for 200cr each. The missions paid pretty well in that context.
I remember in days gone by, the games I got came on erm...retail brand disks and cassettes...and the chance of a manual was...nonexistent.
This meant that I had to explore a game and figure out how it worked. This turned out to be a handy skill in life as I discovered that many things in life don't come with a manual either. Later I discovered they gave a formal name to this procedure in some places - the scientific process. Life changing that.
Sort of...
When I started mission payouts were low - pick up any damage along the way and profit could be negative once repairs were paid for.
Yes, this was so when I started - I don't remember exactly when it changed, but not being able to pick up a 'lucrative' (for the time) mission because of not having the rank, I remember.
The game has changed massively since then, at least in earning potential, which is both good and bad - I enjoyed progressing from small to large ships, loved the introduction of the Krait II, still a favourite, even today, and getting rank enough to buy my first Courier - heady days!
Because you copied them from your school buddies.I remember in days gone by, the games I got came on erm...retail brand disks and cassettes...and the chance of a manual was...nonexistent.
Remember some manuals had various features like black text with red background so you couldn't take them to the library and photocopy them.
Hmm, if that were the case, why am I today reading posts calling for this or that ship to be "buffed"?
The two are not mutually exclusive... just the same as how earning credits is "easy", yet there are activities in dire need of an earnings buff (and equally some in need of a nerf, just like some ships)
Our in other words, the lack of any meaningful distinction between ship class sizes does not exclude the need to ensure ships are designed and balanced right.
I'm a little worried for the ladies that you know...
No ships need buffing since they're all the same.
That's not what was being said.
Because there's lots of players with lots of ideas and this is a public forum. Some players want their favorite small sized ship fitted with mega weapons. Or there their massive combat ship with improved maneuverability. It doesn't mean these are good ideas. Most of my ideas are poorely thought out, not well writttin good, and have little understanding of overall game ramifications.
All ships are equal but some are less equal than others which is why they need buffing.
For causing arguments in forums