How about you buy the T9 from store, do profitable trading runs and earn the money for a cutter 7 times faster than in the T6!
How sure are we the cutter won't be coming to the store next?
It's great to be back but I have a big concern
- Thread starter Refreshing Truth
- Start date
How sure are we the cutter won't be coming to the store next?
Nope. I actually sold it lol. I originally picked it up for exploration but I didn't like the cockpit view and how slow it was. I continued exploring in my DBX. These days I'll take out a DBX or Asp for exploration. Also at the time the best money maker for me was the Python because the loop I was doing required a medium landing pad. So the Conda was pretty useless to me.
I only recently started using it again for mining. Specifically for really long sessions while listening to audiobooks where efficiency isn't the goal but just staying out there for a long time.
You can win and lose system control in solo and open play with PowerPlay, because it's designed to be a competitive player vs player system it is competitive.It's not competitive because Solo mode exists:
Game Mode
Elite Dangerous can be played in one of three different Game Modes: Open Play, Private Group Session, and Solo Play. The game's Background Simulation is shared and affected players across all three modes. There are also two secondary modes, Arena and Training, that allow access to the CQC...elite-dangerous.fandom.com
This might also help clarify things:
Competition - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Power Play has existed for a long time and it's had zero impact on the galaxy at large. It's mostly about your own personal progression (earning power play modules). All player-versus-player competitive aspects of the game are entirely opt-in and not really designed with real profit/loss in mind.
Are you defining competitive as only pvp dogfights? That's not what most people understand the meaning of competition to mean!
You can play PowerPlay from solo and engage in the competition from there by acquiring, reinforcing and undermining other players systems.That's why this game currently contains pay to win elements because real money can help influence that competition.
Point one is a misunderstanding of the gameplay loops. The game neither seeks nor benefits from noobs being fodder for old-timers. The only loops that are vaguely competitive work best when everyone engaged in them has access to the gear they want; compete on strategy rather than grind
Point two also seems like a misunderstanding of the game. Firstly, you're trying to apply "end-game" to an unending game. Secondly, if the purchase would devalue a player's experience (as it would for me) then the player does not purchase and it therefore does not devalue their experience. The option to purchase is for people who want it to enhance their experience; maybe a dad who wants to quickly try out another profession before committing to it because they only get an hour a week to play. I can't speak for why they might buy because I'm not that person, but neither their nor my option to purchase hurts my experience. I think a player with low self-awareness could hurt their own experience, but players have always been their own worst enemy
Point three is a misunderstanding of the game because (as people keep trying to explain and you keep not hearing) YOU CAN'T WIN THE GAME.
Point 3B which you didn't state but inadvertantly make a good case for is that game store quick-start options might be off-putting to potential players who mistakenly assume it's p2w, but hopefully they'll talk to players and be put right
Point two also seems like a misunderstanding of the game. Firstly, you're trying to apply "end-game" to an unending game. Secondly, if the purchase would devalue a player's experience (as it would for me) then the player does not purchase and it therefore does not devalue their experience. The option to purchase is for people who want it to enhance their experience; maybe a dad who wants to quickly try out another profession before committing to it because they only get an hour a week to play. I can't speak for why they might buy because I'm not that person, but neither their nor my option to purchase hurts my experience. I think a player with low self-awareness could hurt their own experience, but players have always been their own worst enemy
Point three is a misunderstanding of the game because (as people keep trying to explain and you keep not hearing) YOU CAN'T WIN THE GAME.
Point 3B which you didn't state but inadvertantly make a good case for is that game store quick-start options might be off-putting to potential players who mistakenly assume it's p2w, but hopefully they'll talk to players and be put right
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I never felt like ships were progression because a more expensive ship never felt like a "level up". Some ships are better for certain tasks but I wouldn't categorize those tasks as "next level".
Ships like the T9 aren't all that great for making credits. I do have a T9 and I only use it to transfer large loads to and from a Fleet Carrier. Large haul trading has never been the best for making credits. There have always been better ways and pretty much all were achievable in cheaper medium ships.
Ships are utility and making enough to buy them comes very quickly. The real progression is in engineering, ranking up, exploring, and setting your own personal milestones. None of that is monetized.
I see, I'm a little sceptical there wasn't a feeling of progression via gaining access to bigger and better ships in your first 200 hours though, but I do understand where you're at now is these ships are different tools and often the biggest and most expensive is not the best, although often it is. Like you say colonisation is now one of the late game progressions, well again whose gonna get their base materials delivered 1st, the T9 from the store or the T6'er, bigger ships are often progression to achieve things we want in game but not always.
For it to be competitive there needs to be something to win and something to lose.You can win and lose system control in solo and open play with PowerPlay, because it's designed to be a competitive player vs player system it is competitive.
Are you defining competitive as only pvp dogfights? That's not what most people understand the meaning of competition to mean!
That's why this game currently contains pay to win elements because real money can help influence that competition.
If your power loses a system you haven't lost anything. The power did lose a system but you, as the player, haven't lost anything. You don't lose merits. You don't lose rank. You don't lose credits. In fact Power Play was designed in such a way that it's basically impossible for the entire power to "lose" it all. It's never even come close to happening.
So let's say two players start the game and only one person buys a T9 in the store. Assuming they both engage in Power Play: the player with the T9 isn't taking anything away from the player who didn't buy the T9.
Wow there's a lot you said there that isn't true, lets just start with an easy one 'there is no winning or losing in elite dangerous'
You can win and lose at the game, there's lots of ways here are just some examples:
PowerPlay Control: Win by successfully controlling systems; lose by losing support or territory.
PvP Piracy: Win by successfully hijacking cargo or defeating another player; lose by being destroyed or escaping with no loot.
Exploration (Mapping and Selling Data): Win by discovering valuable systems and selling data; lose by dying and losing the data.
Trading Profits: Win by making profitable trade routes; lose by bad market fluctuations or piracy.
Bounty Hunting: Win by claiming bounties from targets; lose by failing or being destroyed during a hunt.
Mining (Commodity Prices): Win by finding high-value resources and selling them; lose if you're destroyed with cargo.
Faction Alignment: Win by gaining reputation and spreading factions to neighbouring systems, lose by failing missions, losing rep and seeing your faction system influence diminished.
Exploration (Rare Materials): Win by finding rare materials like Thargoid artifacts; lose if destroyed before selling them.
Are none of these real? What do you do in game, just sit in the ship docked in the station?
You don't gain anything by winning systems and you don't lose anything by losing systems.
The reality is that the system is designed in a way that no one ever loses.
It's not like Eve Online where losing territory will affect your industrial output and will cause the loss of actual items you own in-game. In a game like that P2W can be damaging because players who pay real world money are taking things away from players who are not paying real world money.
Completely avoided by playing in Solo mode.
Also, even if you opt-in, paying real world money will not help you here. Neither as the pirate or as the one being pirated.
This is entirely a single player activity. There's no player on the other side competing with you.
The economy in Elite is not zero sum. Supply and demand is generated out of thin air. There is no in-depth economic simulation where you're competing against other players.
Against players this is totally opt-in by going into Open. Against NPCs it doesn't count as competitive because... it's against NPCs.
Resources are never exhausted. They are infinite.
This is all single player.
There are infinite resources so there's nothing to compete over.
P2W only damages the game when it affects the balance of player-vs-player competition.
If someone buys a T9 in the shop it has zero impact on other players. If they want to skip the early credit earning gameplay then that's fine. Personally I enjoyed it so I'd have never bought it. It really doesn't matter.
Clearly we are not playing the same game and are failing to convince or be convinced, so I'll move along.
As my parting contribution to further discussion: I have it on good authority that none of the store purchases can ever be pay to win, because Codger already won . The rest of us are just keeping the servers warm so FDev can save on winter heating
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No-one is doing anything useful in power play with a T-9. With that and everything else on the list you'd be better or get the same results over time with an Adder.
Its not the money for the Cutter that is the issue, its the rank grind. You could earn the money required in a Sidewinder quicker than you could do the rank grind.
Ah I see, yeah I do like that it works that way, hopefully protects it from being a store purchase anytime soon.
Taking a step back, it really comes down to this, I want the impressive stuff in Elite to be earned by in game hard work, I remember the first time I saw a player flying a giant ship in game and I got that "wow they must know what they're doing, maybe if I work hard I'll get there one day", this is one of my favourite things in mmo's, I get others don't like comparing themselves to others but I do feel in a mmo like elite it's a core part of the social experience, we like to do things to impress others on some monkey brain level. Swiping for big ships just devalues that for me, same thing with EvE online or retail WoW, the game world loses it's meritocracy.
Then you see ships as progression, i don't really see them as that, i see them as a tools to enhance my own gameplay. I still have to make the almost 1000 ly journey to Ancient guardian sites and so on. If anything i've handicapped myself for going all in on credit making, rather than beginning to farm rep and unlock engineers.
I'd say they're more like WoW's lvl boosters, you get to skip the leveling and go straight for the new content and receive some okayish starting gear , but you still have to farm everything else rep and gear.
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Alright then. If it's pay to win, we've had these ships for a year now.
1. How come no-one has won?
2. How were the functionally invincible gankers doing it two years ago? There was no pay-to-win then?
1. How come no-one has won?
2. How were the functionally invincible gankers doing it two years ago? There was no pay-to-win then?
Pay to win doesn't mean a literal winner screen pops up
it means buying in game advantages to competitive gameplay.I think the WoW analogy is fair, it's largely the same and there's still stuff to do past owning ships, I'd argue the buying new ships is one of the cooler part of the game rather than some reputation rank etc but that stuff totally can be enjoyable to unlock too, I don't disagree it's just the ships are kinda the 'wow' factor trophies for me right now vs reputation rank or engineered parts.
The ships are not an in game advantagePay to win doesn't mean a literal winner screen pops up
O7
Seriously, have you ever done exobiology? If you buy an artemis suit with your starter cash, FSS scan the Odyssey starting system and land your sidey on the moon with 7 bio signals, you can be at 20 million credits in a couple of hours (no need for a surface scanner, the place is covered with bios, buy one after cashing in your first haul).
Is it meta-gaming to do this? Only if you think not playing completely blind is meta-gaming. Learning FSS scanning and exobio early is entirely reasonable if 1) you're interested in exploration game loops or 2) you want money and have researched enough to know that exobiology is an excellent way of getting it.
Depends just what we mean by impressive, and who's being impressed. To me, big ships are nice, but much more impressive when fully engineered, and that is always going to be hard work. A fleet carrier is hard work. Good combat skills are extra hard work. Your own Orbis is ... a lot of work
The struggle for the first few million credits that characterised the game a decade ago is gone now, just a fact, and I can sympathise with regret for its passing. Maybe the epic scale of the colonisation game loop can go some way to replace it